in 
 
 imfiKfflfflffl
 
 I'ifrn .v fars-well- ff Straff crd
 
 THE 
 
 STATESMEN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND; 
 
 I.N 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 BY JOHN FORSTER, 
 
 OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 EDITED BY J, 0. CHOULES. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 No. 82 CLIFF-STREET. 
 
 1846.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.
 
 TO 
 
 THOMAS COLLEY GRATTAN, 
 
 HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S CONSUL AT BOSTON, 
 
 THIS EDITION 
 
 OP THE LIVES OF 
 
 THE STATESMEN OP THE COMMONWEALTH 
 Ks Betrfcatetr, 
 
 WITH SENTIMENTS OP ATTACHMENT AND RESPECT, BY 
 
 THE EDITOR,
 
 History triumpheth over Time, which, besides it, nothing but Eternity hath triumphed over ; 
 for it carrieth our knowledge over vast and devouring space for many thousands of years, and 
 giveth to our mind such fair and piercing eyes, that we plainly behold living now, as if we had 
 lived then, that great world, MAGNI DEI SAPIENS OPUS. ... It is not the least debt which we owe 
 unto History, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors, and out of the depth 
 and darkness of the earth delivered us their memory and fame. Out of History we may gather 
 a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's forepast 
 miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings. WALTER RALEIGH.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 AMERICAN citizens can never be indifferent to the history of the struggles 
 for freedom in the land of their fathers ; and there is no more appropriate 
 study for our youth than a careful examination of the men and measures of 
 that period which constituted the transition state of England, from the oppress- 
 ive reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts, to the Constitutional liberty which 
 it afterward enjoyed. The close sympathy which was felt by our pilgrim 
 ancestors with Eliot, Hampden, Milton, and Vane, gave an origin to our na- 
 tional existence, and planted the institutions of piety and learning on our 
 shores. The Puritans were the conservators of civil and religious freedom, 
 and to the days of the civil war we are indebted for the assertion of those 
 political truths which we now cherish as our dearest inheritance. The glories 
 of the English nation in the seventeenth century are our rightful patrimony, 
 and New-Englanders, when they indulge a justifiable pride in the patriotism 
 and statesmanship of Adams and Webster, may remember with exultation 
 that they are the guardians of the same precious ark once watched over by 
 Sidney, Russel, and their compeers. 
 
 The great merit of Mr. Forster's Lives of the Statesmen of the Common- 
 wealth is, that he has afforded a life-like sketch of characters that will con- 
 tinue to appear more extraordinary to those who, by the march of time, are 
 removed farther from the era in which they appeared on the stage of action. 
 I mistake if this volnme does not quicken much thought into activity, for 
 it holds up to view the real life the stirring, glowing, argumentative life of the 
 days of the Protectorate. The thoughtful reader feels that he knows quite as 
 much of the doings in St. Stephens at this period, as he does of the wrangling 
 and personalities in the House of Representatives at Washington ; and if it 
 were possible for old Noll, or Eliot, or Pym to walk our globe again, he 
 would not fail to recognise them. A perusal of this biography compels to the 
 reflection, that faith in eternal verities is as important to nations as to indi- 
 viduals. The strong, earnest faith of England made her revolution at the 
 death of Charles what it was, a blessing, then and forever, while the skepti- 
 cism of France rendered the revolution at the death of Louis a living curse, 
 a widespread damnation. The large sale of this work in America, not-
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 withstanding the London edition in five volumes is so costly, affords gratify- 
 ing evidence that the public mind is called out to the investigation of this 
 period of time, and no part of English history is more deserving the profound 
 attention of the 
 
 " Sons of sires who baffled 
 Crowtfd and mitred tyranny," 
 
 than the days of Charles I., and the devout, God-fearing, and strong-hearted 
 Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 A careful revisal has been given to the work, notes have been added, but 
 no alteration has been made in the text of the author. 
 
 JOHN. OVERTOX. CHOULES. 
 Jane, 1846.
 
 THE STATESMEN 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A DESIRE having been expressed that this 
 portion of a series of British statesmen, 
 originally published in the " Cabinet Cyclo- 
 paedia," should be given to the world in a 
 distinct form, that desire is here complied 
 with. I seize, at the same time, the occa- 
 sion it affords me of soliciting the reader's 
 attention, on the threshold of the work, to 
 some considerations of historical interest 
 that may give greater completeness to its 
 design. It is scarcely possible without 
 some such general view as history will 
 rarely give of the social, political, and re- 
 ligious influences which, in their gradual 
 action after the Norman Conquest, built up 
 what we call the Constitution of the state 
 to understand the secret of the origin 
 and power of that remarkable race of men 
 by whom, on the awful stage of the old 
 English Revolution, events of such influ- 
 ence to succeeding ages were created and 
 controlled. 
 
 Any notice of the Saxon period would 
 be foreign to this purpose, save in so far as 
 the revival of the national spirit, after the 
 Norman invasion, brought back the more 
 sturdy features of our old national charac- 
 ter with the better portions of free Saxon 
 usage. As little needful is it to describe 
 from its earlier beginnings the subversion 
 of the feudal system, which gradually de- 
 clined as towns arose, as municipal com- 
 munities were formed, as capital was ac- 
 cumulated, and the arts cultivated with 
 success. It is obvious that, with the en- 
 richment of a mercantile or manufacturing 
 class, the power of an aristocracy must de- 
 crease ; and our country formed no excep- 
 tion to the rule. It will be more important 
 to explain briefly to the reader the secret 
 of that attachment to monarchy, which, 
 without question, continued to prevail 
 throughout the nation at the beginning of 
 the struggle for liberty described in this 
 volume, and a knowledge of which, while 
 it reveals the less obvious difficulties that 
 beset the struggle, and may refine and ex- 
 alt our perceptions of the policy and states- 
 manship of its leaders, marks also, with 
 singular precision, the commencement of 
 Popular Progress in the Norman period of 
 our history. 
 
 From no principle of passive obedience, 
 but out of the simple instinct of self-pres- 
 
 ervation, that attachment arose. It is 
 clearly indicated, in its relations both to 
 king and people, in one of the proclama- 
 tions of Henry the Third, first discovered 
 and partly quoted by Sir Robert Cotton. 
 From this we perceive that it was not till 
 majesty had been driven to extremities by 
 the barons that it bethought itself of the 
 expediency of securing the affections of the 
 people ; and we observe farther, that the 
 humble prostration of the commons before 
 the feet of sovereignty had at once its 
 motives and its reward in the assurance 
 of a full and sufficient protection against 
 the great lords. A common enemy had, 
 in fact, made common cause between the 
 highest and lowest states of the realm, 
 and the dormant political rights of the peo- 
 ple were suddenly roused into action on 
 behalf of the endangered security at once 
 of people and of king. 
 
 Gradual advances had been made in law 
 and jurisprudence during the reign of the 
 first in the great line of the Plantagenets, 
 the wise and powerful administration of 
 Henry the Second; the general adoption 
 of juries had given justice to the common- 
 alty, and the institution of circuits had car- 
 ried it to each man's door. The Crusades, 
 too, had served to reawaken the failing 
 spirits of men, had loosened more and 
 more the bondage of the feudal laws, and 
 had opened to the new and enterprising 
 race then peopling our English towns vari- 
 ous and most profitable sources of com- 
 merce with other lands. Nor had a silently 
 growing but very potent influence of a 
 higher nature passed unheeded. The gay 
 resources of religious chivalry implied 
 nobler and more generous offices than the 
 mere relaxation of crusading knights, or 
 conciliation of their lady-loves. They 
 scattered the seeds of a national literature, 
 which, whether tracked through the wan- 
 dering paths of Troubadour or Dominican, 
 sprang up afterward, during the whole 
 period of the thirteenth century, in silent 
 but most significant places. Still had no 
 distinct recognition of the people been 
 heard. The thirteenth century opened, 
 and, as an order of the state, they were 
 still unknown. 
 
 But about then it was, and not till then, 
 that, happily in one sense, if unsuccessfully
 
 V1U 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 in another, monarchy appealed to them in 
 its despair. It was the weak and power- 
 less John who first stretched out his hands 
 to them, in fear of his barons, and im- 
 plored them to lift up a distinct voice in 
 the arrangement of public affairs. Strange 
 and memorable for all ages were the events 
 that followed. The success of the barons 
 in the struggle was far from a popular suc- 
 cess ; but it was secretly acted upon by 
 those passing, powerful, and silently ex- 
 panding influences to which allusion has 
 been made, and which shaped the mere 
 exclusive claims of a powerful faction, as 
 against their feudal lord, into an uncon- 
 scious but eternal record of general rights, 
 inalienable and imperishable, nor ever af- 
 terward to be denied to even the meanest 
 Englishman. Little known to its framers 
 were the mighty secrets included in the 
 great Charter. Little did they suspect 
 that, under words that were intended to 
 limit the relations of feudal power, many 
 of the grandest equitable truths of polity 
 lay concealed, as though afraid to show 
 themselves till a milder and more auspi- 
 cious day. They denied protection to serfs, 
 and knew not that the swords which gave 
 them that very power of denial had already 
 cut through forever the bonds of English 
 serfdom. They protested against the 
 power of taxation in a prince, while they 
 reserved it in limitation for themselves, 
 ignorant that the formidable principle would 
 bear down the weak exception. They de- 
 manded the regular summoning of a great 
 council to control the king, whether in im- 
 position of new laws or administration of 
 old ; but they dreamed not that within fifty 
 years the mere tenants of the crown, to 
 whom they limited the commons' portion 
 of that council, would almost insensibly 
 yield to the admission of burgesses and 
 knights by the forms of popular election. 
 Of incalculable importance, for these rea- 
 sons, is it to consider this great charter 
 justly. A truth has not its fair side and 
 its foul. A principle is not a convertible 
 thing ; nor could these iron barons of Mer- 
 ton, all-powerful as they were, claim its 
 operation in the one case, and control it in 
 the other. All was not done when their 
 part was done. It was enough for them 
 to have conceived the prudent thought that, 
 when once the rust of the Norman Conquest 
 had been worn out of the souls of men, the 
 various and discordant elements of England 
 could never be moulded into any safe polit- 
 ical form without a distinct admission, 
 however limited, of political privileges to 
 every rank, and a nominal concession, 
 however unfairly hampered, of civil rights 
 of liberty and property to every class. 
 The selfishness in which that thought be- 
 gan has not availed to check the reverence 
 now fairly due to it. It was for future time 
 to purge the selfishness and leave the 
 
 greatness. It was for a posterity that has 
 heaped upon these men praise they would 
 have trampled on as insolence to demon- 
 strate the inherent force and inexhaustible 
 power of the simple spirit of resistance to 
 irresponsible tyranny, whether lodged in 
 the honest and manly warmth of a peasant's 
 jerkin, or within the harsh and selfish links 
 of a baron's mail. The five centuries that 
 followed the scene at Runnymede were 
 filled with the struggles of freedom, and 
 never, at any new effort, were the provis- 
 ions of that feudal charter appealed to in 
 vain. Even when silent in themselves, the 
 spirit out of which they were born still 
 gave itself forth irresistibly in accents of 
 warning and terror, of strength and con- 
 solation. Whether our thoughts have turn- 
 ed to the terrible death-field of Simon de 
 Montford ; to the gray discrowned head of 
 the second Richard ; to the miserable fate 
 of the first Charles ; to the stakes of Rid- 
 ley and Cranmer, or the as sublime suffer- 
 ings of More ; to the prisons of Eliot or 
 of Marten ; to the scaffold of Strafford or 
 of Vane ; to the glorious fall of Hampden, 
 or the hopeless and irretrievable ascent 
 of Cromwell ; whether our hopes for Eng- 
 lish liberty beat high with the eloquence 
 of Pym, or have been composed to a more 
 sober assurance beneath the wigs of Som- 
 ers, of Danby, or of Halifax, we have yet 
 borne witness, at every new emotion, to the 
 presence of that spirit of MAGNA CHART A. 
 
 Ignorant of the extent of good which had 
 been thus achieved for them, and still, by 
 the influences I have named, controlling 
 the power of the barons by dint of their 
 superior attachment to the monarchy, the 
 English people found themselves now, with 
 the passage of each successive reign, more 
 and more distinctly recognised as a power 
 and a resource in the government. They 
 were formally summoned to the legislature 
 by John's successor ; many of Henry the 
 Third's writs for their election, directing 
 "the sheriffs to elect and return two knights 
 for each county, two citizens for each city, 
 and two burgesses for every borough in the 
 country," were discovered by Prynne ; and 
 in the reigns of the first and second Ed- 
 wards and their successors, we find them 
 a strong and efficient branch of the state. 
 
 That the compact was no slavish one by 
 which the popular rights were thus revived 
 and secured, sufficiently appears in a glance 
 at these succeeding reigns. The sturdiest 
 free Saxon need not have blushed, could 
 he have lived them over. In all affairs of 
 peace and war, in the marriages of princes, 
 in a direct control of the domestic govern- 
 ment, and in the formal tenure of the pub- 
 lic purse, the commons of England, even 
 thus early, claimed and accomplished the 
 privilege of being consulted. Their exist- 
 ence once recognised, all else followed in 
 its course. Not a reign passed that did
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 not give them a more decisive position. 
 With the help of the wiser princes, in de- 
 spite of the weaker, THEIR power still grew. 
 
 In the reign of the first Edward, when 
 so many great improvements in the laws 
 were effected, that the somewhat too lofty 
 title of the English Justinian has been 
 claimed for that prince, they gave the res- 
 idents of the various counties in which, at 
 last, the jury system had been finally con- 
 solidated, the power, which was afterward 
 lost, of electing their own sheriffs. They 
 also claimed at this period a security for 
 free and uninfluenced elections sure evi- 
 dence of a growing importance ; and a re- 
 markable statute, which dates in the third 
 year of Edward, runs in these words : " And 
 because elections ought to be free, the king 
 commandeth, upon great forfeiture, that no 
 man, by force of arms, nor by malice, or 
 menacing, shall disturb any to make free 
 election." The power of the purse was a 
 more formidable claim; but, having wrest- 
 ed it in the weak government of this great 
 monarch's successor, they always after- 
 ward, or at least with rare exceptions, made 
 money supplies conditional, not only that 
 the specific services for which they were 
 voted might be secured, but that, as the 
 voluntary gift of lords and commons, they 
 should not by any pretence be drawn into 
 forced precedents. In Edward the Second's 
 time, we find them voting as a distinct 
 house, apart from the temporal and spirit- 
 ual barons. It is curious and significant, 
 too, to mark in this short reign the com- 
 mencement of the system of government 
 boroughs. Edward the Second's counsel- 
 lors, acting upon a regular plan of strength- 
 ening the regal influence, erected no less 
 than twenty-two new boroughs ; and then 
 it was that the lower house not only claim- 
 ed, in a memorable statute, equal legislative 
 power with the other estates of the realm, 
 but declared that power to be a fundament- 
 al usage of England. " The matters," they 
 said, " to be established for the estate of 
 the king and of his heirs, and for the estate 
 of the realm and of the people, shall be 
 treated, accorded, and established in Parlia- 
 ment by the king, and by the assent of the 
 prelates, earls, and barons, and the com- 
 monalty of the realm, according as hath been 
 before accustomed." Then, too, the great 
 Charter was again confirmed, and with the 
 striking addition of " Forasmuch as many 
 people be aggrieved by the king's ministers 
 against right, in respect of which grievan- 
 ces no one can recover without a common 
 Parliament, we do ordain that the king 
 shall hold a Parliament once in the year, 
 or twice, if need be." Six different statutes 
 in the succeeding reign still more confirm- 
 ed and enlarged its provisions. But the 
 historical student should pause with pride 
 at the name of Edward the Third. 
 
 During the brilliant fifty years' reign of 
 
 IX 
 
 that famous sovereign, seventy Parlia- 
 ments were summoned, and by one of 
 them, which in this may express the spirit 
 of all, it was insisted that the nomination 
 of the chancellor and other great public 
 officers should be committed to itself; a 
 claim which, though tolerated in effect in 
 modern days, would, if formally advanced 
 among us, be condemned as an invasion of 
 regal prerogative. Then, too, was passed 
 one of the most popular laws conceded 
 by any prince, one of the most advan- 
 tageous achieved by any people. This 
 was the statute of treasons, which lim- 
 ited the crime, before vague and uncer- 
 tain, to three principal heads : the conspi- 
 ring the death of the king, the levying war 
 against him, the adhering to his enemies ; 
 and which prohibited the judges, if any 
 other cases should occur, from inflicting 
 the penalty of treason without application 
 to Parliament. Without a struggle, this 
 famous statute was won. For Edward 
 himself, he always conceded freely what 
 weaker sovereigns would have perilled life 
 to hold. He was too wise to mistake in 
 any case a shadow for a substance, and too 
 powerful to fear concessions that had a 
 tendency, without danger to the throne, to 
 conciliate the other authorities of the realm. 
 Peace, therefore, had her victories for him 
 not less renowned than even war. He 
 could compose or amuse his restless lords 
 by a politic foundation of their order of the 
 Garter, as he would propitiate his discon- 
 tented commons by a frank redress of their 
 complaint or grievance. No manlier prince, 
 and none more prudent or successful, oc- 
 cupied the English throne. No influence 
 more brilliant or powerful, or having plain- 
 er tendencies to popular cultivation, sur- 
 vived to a succeeding age. It was Ed- 
 ward's object always to interest men in 
 himself, but for no apparently selfish rea- 
 sons ; to justify his own ambition by the 
 ambition of a common country ; to aggran- 
 dize his own glory, but as the summit of 
 the greater glory of the nation ; and in this 
 he rarely failed. Even his palaces taught 
 something of elevation to his people. The 
 magnificent structures of Westminster 
 Hall and Windsor rank justly with the in- 
 tellectual influences that were then diffu- 
 sed, and, as though an era of so much that 
 was great should not pass without a mark 
 to distinguish it among even the greatest 
 of all future time, the poet Chaucer arose 
 to charm and instruct his countrymen, and, 
 by the purification of their native tongue, 
 to complete the national glory. In the 
 thirty-sixth of the third Edward, an act was 
 passed declaring that the language so en- 
 nobled should be in future used as the lan- 
 guage of legislation. 
 
 Every advance in intellect, how slight 
 sover, unerringly marks the advance of a 
 people. There are tens of thousands of
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 listeners for every new thought, all sure 
 to find it in their own good time, no matter 
 where it was first dropped, or in what ob- 
 scure corner lodged. Wicliff lived in this 
 reign. Michael Scot and Duns Scotus had 
 preceded him ; and Friar Bacon had pro- 
 claimed the advent of the true philosophy, 
 as the morning star the day. 
 
 An imbecile prince succeeded, but the 
 strong or the weak would have been alike 
 powerless in an age upon which such migh- 
 ty agencies as those of the sway of Edward 
 had, in so direct a shape, descended. The 
 beginning and the close of that reign were, 
 therefore, not unworthy of all that had pre- 
 ceded it. The one was marked by a wide 
 revolt of the serf class, and the other by 
 the formal deposition of a rightful king. 
 This last event established on an irremove- 
 able base the political importance of the 
 English people. A king was formally ar- 
 raigned, with at least the nominal co-oper- 
 ation of the constituted authorities of his 
 empire, for treason to the trust reposed in 
 him ; was convicted, and was punished. 
 The terms of " divine right," or indefeasi- 
 ble power," were, from that instant, struck 
 out for ever from the dictionary of the 
 state. " I confess," said that humbled 
 prince, to the men who had sternly and 
 calmly laid down their allegiance, " I rec- 
 ognise, and, from certain knowledge con- 
 scientiously declare, that I consider myself 
 to have been, and to be, insufficient for the 
 government of this kingdom, and for my 
 notorious demerits not undeserving of dep- 
 osition." Nor was the voluntary abdica- 
 tion held sufficient. The houses of lords 
 and commons, in solemn conclave in the 
 hall at Westminster, made Richard the 
 Second's renunciation of his crown their 
 own compulsory act, and, amid the enthu- 
 siastic shouts of thousands of the common 
 people who had there assembled, Henry 
 of Lancaster was conducted to the vacant 
 throne. 
 
 The popular power was, perhaps, seen 
 and felt in more visible action on that mo- 
 mentous occasion than at any preceding 
 period, even among the Saxons. It was 
 only some years before that the exclusive 
 pretensions of the barons had been inva- 
 ded by admission of regal writs of sum- 
 mons into their hereditary house ; and here 
 they were now themselves inducting a new 
 sovereign to the seat of supreme power, 
 with less guarantee that he would found 
 his future pretensions on the fidelity of 
 their swords, than that he would rest it 
 rather on even those commonest shouts 
 of the people. From such shouts, in which 
 the old Saxon liberty again seemed pealing 
 through the air, there no doubt fell more 
 safety on the ear of even the haughty Bo- 
 lingbroke, than from the clanking armour 
 of the barons who led him to Richard's 
 chair. May we not even realize the 
 
 thought which is left us by the poet whose 
 genius takes rank with history, and sup- 
 pose the new sovereign of the house of 
 Lancaster, for years before this crowning 
 day, an earnest and suppliant candidate 
 for the popular shouts that now hailed, at 
 last, the downfall of the family of York ] 
 " Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green, 
 Observed his courtship to the common people. 
 How he did seem to dive into their hearts, 
 With humble and familiar courtesy ; 
 What reverence he did throw away on slaves, 
 Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles, 
 And patient underbearing of his fortune, 
 As 'twere to banish their affects with him. 
 Off' goes his bonnet to an oyster wench ; 
 A brace of draymen bid . . God speed him well . 
 And had the tribute of his supple knee, 
 With . . ' Thanks, my countrymen ! my loving 
 
 friends !' 
 
 As were our England in reversion his, 
 And he our subject's next degree in hope." 
 
 The first great object of these crafty 
 courtesies attained, they did not cease as 
 soon. Ever watchful, and wary as he was 
 bold, the policy of the aspiring Bolingbroke 
 continued the policy of the English king. 
 The parliamentary authority which had 
 given him power, the popular sympathies 
 which had confirmed his title, were 
 strengthened and promoted by every pos- 
 sible resource during fourteen years of 
 great though still disputed rule. It was 
 natural, in the circumstances of such a 
 reign, that the question of succession should 
 assume paramount importance, but the 
 most enthusiastic student of popular prog- 
 ress is scarcely prepared for the elevated 
 as well as resolute character of the meas- 
 ures it calmly originated. 
 
 Never, at any period of the reign, was it 
 denied that the right of Parliament to alter 
 the succession was the solid and single 
 claim of the house of Lancaster. Henry's 
 first house of commons asserted that great 
 principle by formally taking on itself to 
 recognise his son as Prince of Wales and 
 heir-apparent to the throne. It was re- 
 vived and confirmed in the year 1404, 
 when the sovereign, all-powerful save in 
 this, solicited and obtained from the Par- 
 liament a permission that the right of suc- 
 cession to the crown should be vested in 
 the prince's brothers, if he himself should 
 die without heirs. In 1406, another and a 
 grander step was taken, by which the most 
 essential principle of popular right was 
 reached and consummated. The com- 
 mons themselves in that year carried up a 
 petition to Henry, limiting the succession 
 expressly to his sons and their heirs male, 
 and obtained its formal enactment. This 
 was, in effect, a precedent for the settle- 
 ment of the crown in after years on the 
 house of Hanover. 
 
 Other precedents, scarcely less illustri- 
 ous, date from this reign. In the first ses- 
 sion of Henry the Fourth, a law was pass- 
 ed that no judge should be released from
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 the penalty affixed to the sanction of an 
 iniquitous measure, by pleading the orders 
 of the king 1 ; or even the danger of his own 
 life from the sovereign's menaces. In the 
 second year of the reign, that practice, 
 which was afterward one of the strongest 
 bulwarks of popular privilege, was formal- 
 ly insisted on as a right, and a necessary 
 supply was proposed to be withheld from 
 the prince until he had answered a peti- 
 tion of the subject. Three years after this, 
 the king was desired to remove from his 
 household four officers, one of them even 
 his own confessor, who had given offence 
 to the commons ; and Henry, that he might 
 gratify the wishes of his faithful subjects, 
 complied with the request, though he told 
 them that he knew of no offence which the 
 persons complained of had committed. In 
 the sixth year of the same reign, while 
 they voted the king supplies, they appoint- 
 ed treasurers of their own, whom they in- 
 structed to see the money disbursed for 
 the purposes intended, and required to de- 
 liver in regular accounts to the house. In 
 that year, also, new laws to regulate par- 
 liamentary elections attested the rapidly- 
 increasing strength of the commons. An 
 important statute on " the grievous com- 
 plaints of the commons against undue elec- 
 tions for shires from the partiality of sher- 
 iffs," and directing " that the next county 
 court, after writs for Parliament are deliv- 
 ered, proclamation shall be made of the 
 day and place of the Parliament, and that 
 all they that be there present, as well suit- 
 ers duly summoned as others, shall pro- 
 ceed to the election freely and indifferent- 
 ly, notwithstanding any request or com- 
 mand to the contrary" bears date in the 
 year 1406. 
 
 That was the ever-memorable year, too, 
 in which the House of Commons, having 
 been asked to grant supplies, startled the 
 king with a plain proposal that he should 
 seize all the temporalities of the Church, 
 and employ them as a perpetual fund to 
 serve the exigencies of the state. It is 
 needless to. describe what the Church was 
 then, or the extent to which the enormous 
 and ill-gotten wealth of the regular clergy 
 had at last attained. Its accumulation had 
 been somewhat checked by statutes of 
 mortmain under the first and third Edwards, 
 but these were again eluded by licenses 
 of alienation ; and the hand of a church- 
 man, according to the competent evidence 
 of Bishop Burnet, is particularly famous for 
 the habit of never once letting go what it 
 has once firmly grasped. Equally objection- 
 able with the extent of this wealth was its 
 unequal apportionment. While such ab- 
 bots as those of Reading, or Glastonbury, 
 or Battle lived with the riotous pomp of 
 princes, and passed their days in feasting, 
 thousands of monks were labouring with 
 the lowest poverty, and toiling after the 
 
 XI 
 
 loftiest learning. The project of the com- 
 mons included, therefore, a general and 
 reasonable endowment of all the clergy to 
 precede any state appropriation of the 
 enormous surplus of ecclesiastical rev- 
 enues. The argument they urged for it, 
 and returned to again and again with a 
 resolute energy, was, that the exorbitant 
 riches, no less than the too scanty earnings 
 of churchmen, could tend only to disqualify 
 them for performing the ministerial func- 
 tions with proper zeal and attention ; and 
 though they failed in their immediate pur- 
 pose, and had a heretic or two burned in 
 their faces by way of archiepiscopal re- 
 venge, and were dubbed by the higher cler- 
 gy, in scorn, a lack-learning Parliament, 
 they might have felt that, by the very agi- 
 tation of such a question, the seeds were 
 sown of no partial gain for posterity. The 
 feeling it left behind shows the deep im- 
 pression it had made, and in a manner fore- 
 shadows all that followed. " The fat ab- 
 botes swet," says Halle, " the proude priors 
 frouned, the poor friers cursed, the sely 
 nonnes wept, and al together wer nothyng 
 pleased nor yet content." 
 
 It was in the eighth year of this same 
 great reign, however, that the most striking 
 advance was made towards the freedom of 
 a thoroughly and decisively limited mon- 
 archy. Thirty very important articles 
 were then proposed and conceded for the 
 regulation of the king's household and gov- 
 ernment, and the momentous principle of 
 ministerial responsibility was distinctly set 
 forth in them. Henry was required, and 
 he consented, to govern the realm by the 
 advice of a permanent council ; and this 
 council was, at the same time, obliged, with 
 all the judges and all the officers of the 
 royal household, to take a solemn oath in 
 Parliament to observe and defend the 
 amended institutions. This reformation 
 has been termed, on authority well entitled 
 to respect, a noble fabric of constitutional 
 liberty, hardly inferior to the petition of 
 right. 
 
 It is vain to say that many of these vast 
 advantages were, in later years, obscured 
 or disregarded. To show that they were 
 once achieved, and that the principle in- 
 volved in them was solemnly recognised 
 and acted on, is to demonstrate all. There 
 are truths in politics as in morals which, 
 when once revealed to the light, no after 
 darkness suffices to obscure. Seeming 
 dead, they yet speak from what men think 
 to be their graves. He who outrages or 
 denies them does so at his own peril ; no 
 common practice will justify him, no pre- 
 cedent absolve him. A king who con- 
 tinued strong enough to rule by the striet 
 right of the Norman Conquest, fairly meas- 
 ured his reign and its immunities by the 
 length and temper of his sword ; but he 
 who surrendered that right to either pray-
 
 xii 
 
 ers or threatenings, and flung back to his 
 people any portion of the freedom which 
 had been theirs before, which was theirs 
 still, and which no act of theirs could 
 waste or alienate, barred himself and his 
 descendants forever from the resumption 
 of a conqueror's claims. The struggle be- 
 tween two such principles as tyranny and 
 freedom, once set on foot, admits no com- 
 promise. A generation of men who have 
 insisted upon certain rights for themselves, 
 cannot, by subsequent indolence or indif- 
 ference, be said to have bargained away 
 those rights from a succeeding generation ; 
 nor, when the theft of a people's liberties 
 has been confessed by one restoration of 
 them to the just possessors, can any prince, 
 into whose violent keeping they may again 
 have fallen, claim exemption from the pen- 
 alties of political crime. The thief and the 
 receiver are classed together by our laws. 
 
 When Henry the Fifth took up the crown 
 from off his father's deathbed, he said that, 
 as the sword had won it, the sword should 
 keep it still. But in that crown was now 
 implied the popular sanction, and this the 
 generous and impetuous prince well knew 
 the value of preserving. It was not the 
 crown of William the Norman, and the 
 sword that was to keep it did not turn it- 
 self against English breasts. By the splen- 
 dour of foreign conquests, Henry sought to 
 dazzle or propitiate such doubts as were 
 still thought by some to lurk about his title ; 
 but, with the vast majority of his people, 
 none knew better than he that his best se- 
 curity w.as a fair administration of the laws, 
 equitable concessions to his Parliament, 
 and protection to the poor from the op- 
 pression of those above them. As little 
 was he wanting in these, therefore, as in 
 the brilliancy of success in battle, and the 
 year which witnessed the victory of Agin- 
 court completed also, and finally secured, 
 the legislative rights of the English House 
 of Commons. 
 
 It had been found that the privilege left 
 by the commons to the judges, to clothe 
 in the formal terms of legal language, at 
 the close of each session, the various bills 
 and petitions passed in its course, had open- 
 ed many opportunities to fraud on the part 
 of the lawyers. The usage had originally 
 risen from the desire of the house, in those 
 days of imperfect education, to achieve, as 
 far as possible, brevity and precision in the 
 language of their statutes. In very many 
 cases, however, the judges were discover- 
 ed to have deliberately arrested the pur- 
 pose of the commons to their own ends or 
 those of the sovereign, and to have sub- 
 stituted for popular protection a popular 
 snare. Therefore it was that an act was 
 now introduced and passed, providing that 
 " from this time forward, by complaint of 
 the commons asking remedy for any mis- 
 chief, there be no law made thereupon 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 which should change the meaning by addi- 
 tion or by diminution, or by any manner 
 of term or terms." A formal and solemn 
 grant, in the name of the king, was at the 
 same time appended to it, stating that from 
 thenceforth nothing " be enacted to be pe- 
 titions of his commons that be contrary to 
 their asking, whereby they should be bound 
 without their assent." The effect was to 
 secure to the house an unrestricted power 
 over everything that belonged to the sacred 
 trust of legislation. 
 
 What followed was the necessary inci- 
 dent to such a power. Authority, without 
 the means for its sharp and decisive en- 
 forcement, is the most dangerous weak- 
 ness known to a state. The commons 
 claimed, therefore, in the name and for the 
 protection of the people, certain exclusive 
 rights and exemptions needful to the fear- 
 less discharge of the popular trust, to last 
 as long as that trust lasted, and to cease 
 when it was laid down. Among other 
 things, they demanded personal release 
 from such judicial proceedings as might be 
 in danger of impeding parliamentary func- 
 tions. They asserted their right to an ab- 
 solute despotism concerning everything 
 that passed within their own walls. In es- 
 pecial, they solemnly exacted the exclusive 
 jurisdiction of offences, whether committed 
 by their own members or by others, which 
 peculiarly and manifestly tended to impair 
 the powers they held in trust as deputed 
 from the people, and which were, in fact, 
 the people's own, or threatened in any way 
 to obstruct the public duties they were by 
 them called on to discharge. In a word, 
 they achieved what was thenceforward 
 known by the formidable name of PRIVI- 
 LEGE OF PARLIAMENT the shield and buck- 
 ler under whose protection all the battles 
 of liberty were fought in after ages, and by 
 whose assistance they were mainly won. 
 An attempt to drag the adjudication of this 
 privilege into the courts of law followed ; 
 when, in the famous case of Thorpe the 
 speaker, the judges declared "that they 
 would not determine the privilege of the 
 high court of Parliament, of which the 
 knowledge belongeth to the lords of Parlia- 
 ment, and not the justices." It may be 
 safely predicted, that when this privilege is 
 in the smallest degree forfeited or aban- 
 doned, we have lost the best security of 
 true political freedom. When once the 
 deputed privileges of the people are assail- 
 ed successfully, the absolute rights of the 
 people are safe no longer. That Parlia- 
 ments without parliamentary liberties are 
 but a fair and plausible way into bondage, 
 was the saying of one who passed his life 
 in the illustration and enforcement of this 
 and every other truth which could affect 
 the happiness of the English people. First 
 established in practice, as I have thus de- 
 scribed it, by this Parliament of Henry the
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 Fifth and a more enduring honour to tha 
 reign than any of Henry's warlike triumphs 
 it served to herald the way for a yet 
 more tremendous concession to the popu- 
 lar element in the state. It was followed, 
 not many years afterward, by the awfu] 
 right of IMPEACHMENT. 
 
 The reign of Henry the Sixth began in 
 doubt and disaster, as it continued and 
 closed in bloodshed ; yet it began, too, in 
 a formidable assertion of the independent 
 power of Parliament ; and one of its latest 
 statutes bore testimony to the still increas- 
 ing interest and importance of popular 
 representation. 
 
 The first thing done after the death of 
 the hero of Agincourt was an alteration 
 of that form of government, during the mi- 
 nority of the young king, which had been 
 settled by Henry's will. Without paying 
 any regard to the latter, the lords and com- 
 mons at once assumed a power of giving a 
 new arrangement to the whole administra- 
 tion. They would not suffer even the name 
 of regent, as implying too much dignity in 
 the state, apart from the individual claims 
 of a king. The title of protector or guar- 
 dian was supposed to express a more lim- 
 ited authority, and this they substituted. 
 In order, also, to limit the protectoral pow- 
 er still farther, they named a council, with- 
 out whose advice and approbation no 
 measure of importance was ever to be de- 
 termined. Nor less striking or decisive 
 than these are what I have referred to as 
 the later evidences of parliamentary power 
 afforded even by this disastrous reign. 
 They lie in the form and preamble 'of a 
 statute " for the due election of members 
 of Parliament in counties." I have noted 
 the rapid precipitation of the fall of the 
 feudal system, and of its great distinctions 
 of tenure, after the concession of Magna 
 Charta. I have described that enactment 
 of Henry the Fourth (one of the first ad- 
 vantages which accrued to the people from 
 the doubtful title of the house of Lancaster) 
 by which clandestine elections were re- 
 strained, and the power given to every 
 freeholder present at the place of election 
 for that seems to be the true construc- 
 tion of the words used, and certainly not 
 any implication of a right of universal suf- 
 frageto give their votes, whether sum- 
 moned or not, freely and indifferently. 
 The statute now passed, while professing 
 to limit this right to a certain extent of 
 freehold, offers a priceless proof, in the 
 very terms of its preamble, of how much 
 the commonest orders of the English peo- 
 ple had in late years risen ; in all that gives 
 the sense of personal power, the knowl- 
 edge of political privileges, the gradual 
 means to estimate them, and, in the end, 
 the strength to win them. 
 
 This is that famous preamble : " Where- 
 as the election of knights has of late, in 
 
 Xlll 
 
 many counties of England, been made by 
 outrageous and excessive numbers of peo- 
 ple, many of them of small substance and 
 value [an expression confirmatory of the 
 above construction of Henry the Fourth's 
 statute], yet pretending to a right equal to 
 the best knights and esquires, whereby 
 manslaughters, riots, batteries, and divis- 
 ions among the gentlemen and other peo- 
 ple of the same counties shall very likely 
 rise and be, unless due remedy be provided 
 in this behalf." Even our greatest anti- 
 popular historian may here feel impelled 
 to exclaim, What an important matter the 
 election of a member of Parliament was 
 now become ! The " remedy provided" 
 was a limitation of the right of suffrage, 
 exclusively settled by the act on such as 
 possessed forty shillings a year in land free 
 from all burden within the county ; and 
 it was a remedy which happily left un- 
 touched the very seat and core of the dis- 
 ease. When a people have once been 
 thoroughly recognised, it is a worse than 
 vain attempt to seek to thrust them back 
 into obscurity. 
 
 Before describing other passages in this 
 reign, which, in the very centre of all 
 its horrors, its confusions, its desolating 
 streams of blood in field or on scaffold, is 
 to be noted here for its unacknowledged 
 services to civilization and humanity, it 
 will be well to transcribe, from the works 
 of Sir John Fortescue, certain brief passa- 
 ges which, in effect, describe the nature of 
 the settled political advantages achieved 
 before Henry the Sixth's accession. For- 
 tescue was chief justice for many years in 
 this prince's reign ; became his chancellor ; 
 and, having been driven by the civil wars 
 into France, with his royal master's wife 
 and son, employed his leisure in the com- 
 position of learned works, which rendered 
 him, to succeeding times, a great Constitu- 
 tional authority. The chief object of the 
 principal of these was to contrast the po- 
 litical Constitution of England with that of 
 France, and to impress upon the mind of 
 the young prince of the house of Lancas- 
 ter the nature of his legal tenure as a po- 
 itical magistrate in precepts which, it is 
 right to add, Fortescue was not called upon 
 to change when he afterward entered the 
 service of a prince of the house of York. 
 They were precepts recognised by both 
 parties in the nation. This was the " De 
 L,audibus Legum Angliae," the republica- 
 ;ion of which, some years ago, with the 
 earned notes of Mr. Amos now chief 
 commissioner in India, and whose name I 
 can never mention without confessing the 
 warmest and most lasting obligations 
 which a pupil can owe to his teacher 
 conferred an inexpressible benefit on ev- 
 ery student of English history. Its results 
 may be briefly stated before the extracts 
 are submitted to the reader, since their tes-
 
 XIV 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 timony to at least the comparative happi- 
 ness and freedom of all classes of English- 
 men under the Plantagenet rule is strong 
 and incontestable. In France, according 
 to this work and its contents are more 
 than warranted by Philip de Comines 
 the principle of the civil code, that the will 
 of the monarch is law, prevailed, while in 
 England the people lived under the protec- 
 tion of laws of their own enactment. In 
 England they paid taxes of their own im- 
 posing, while in France the people were 
 plundered at the sole discretion of their 
 prince, who at the same time granted the 
 nobility an immunity of taxation, lest he 
 should drive them into rebellion. In Eng- 
 land a man, upon any charge of crime, had 
 the benefit of trial by a jury of his peers, 
 while in France confession was extorted 
 by the rack : " a custom which is not to be 
 accounted law, but rather the high road to 
 the devil." * An independent middle class 
 of society also existed in England, while 
 in France there existed only the two great 
 divisions of a noblesse and a wretched 
 peasantry. In England, in short, the peo- 
 ple lived in reasonable political security, 
 and in circumstances of social comfort ; in 
 France they were in the most debased and 
 most deplorable misery. 
 
 " A king of England," says Fortescue 
 and he speaks of two hundred years before 
 the sixth Henry, as well as of that prince's 
 time " a king of England cannot, at his 
 pleasure, make any alterations in the laws 
 of the land, for the nature of his govern- 
 ment is not only regal, but political. Had 
 it been merely regal, he would have a pow- 
 er to make what innovations and altera- 
 tions he pleased in the laws of the king- 
 dom, impose tallages and other hardships 
 upon the people, whether they would or 
 no, without their consent. . . . But it is 
 much otherwise with a king whose gov- 
 ernment is political, because he can nei- 
 ther make any alteration or change in the 
 laws of the realm without the consent of 
 the subject, nor burden them against their 
 wills with strange impositions ; so that a 
 people governed by such laws as are made 
 by their own consent and approbation en- 
 joy their properties securely, and without 
 the hazard of being deprived of them, 
 either by the king or any other. ... As the 
 head of the body natural cannot change its 
 nerves or sinews cannot deny to the sev- 
 eral parts their proper energy, their due 
 proportion and aliment of blood, neither 
 can a king, who is the head of the body 
 politic, change the laws thereof, nor take 
 from the people what is theirs by right, 
 against their consent. . . . For he is ap- 
 pointed to protect his subjects in their lives, 
 properties, and laws ; for this very end and 
 purpose he has the delegation of power 
 from the people, and he has no just claim 
 to any other power but this. . . . The stat- 
 
 utes of England are not enacted by the sole 
 will of the prince, but with the concurrent 
 consent of the whole kingdom, by their rep- 
 resentatives in Parliament. And if any bills 
 passed into a law, enacted with so much 
 solemnity and foresight, should happen not 
 to answer the intention of the legislators, 
 they can immediately be amended and re- 
 pealed, in the whole or in part ; that is, 
 with the same consent and in the same 
 manner as they were at first enacted into 
 a law. . . . By the laws of England the 
 truth of any matter cannot appear to a 
 judge but upon the oath of. twelve men of 
 the neighbourhood where the fact is sup- 
 posed to be done. . . . "What evidence wit- 
 nesses give in must be in open court, in 
 the presence and hearing of a -jury of 
 twelve men, persons of good character, 
 neighbours where the fact was committed, 
 apprized of the circumstances in question, 
 and well acquainted with the lives and con- 
 versations of the witnesses ; especially as 
 they be near neighbours, and cannot but 
 know whether they be worthy of credit or 
 not ; it cannot be a secret to every one of 
 the jury what is done by or among their 
 neighbours. ... A king of England does 
 not bear sway over his subjects as a king 
 merely, but in a mixed political capacity ; 
 he is obliged by his coronation oath to 
 the observance of the laws, which some 
 of our kings have not been well able to di- 
 gest, because thereby they are deprived 
 of that free exercise of dominion over their 
 subjects, in that full, extensive manner, as 
 those kings have who preside and govern 
 by 'an absolute regal power. ... In Eng- 
 land, no one takes up his abode in another 
 man's house without leave of the owner 
 first had. . . . Neither is it lawful to take 
 away another man's goods without the 
 consent of the proprietor, or being liable 
 to be called to an account for it. ... The 
 king cannot despoil the subject without 
 making ample satisfaction for the same ; 
 he cannot, by himself or his ministry, lay 
 taxes, subsidies, or any impositions of what 
 kind soever upon the subject ; he cannot 
 alter the laws, or make new ones, without 
 the express consent of the whole kingdom 
 in Parliament assembled. . . . The inhab- 
 itants of England are not sued at law but 
 before the ordinary judge, where they are 
 treated with mercy and justice, according 
 to the laws of the land ; neither are they 
 impleaded in point of property, or arraign- 
 ed for any capital crime, how heinous so- 
 ever, but before the king's judges, and ac- 
 cording to the laws of the land. These 
 are the advantages consequent from that 
 political mixed government which obtains 
 in England ; and from hence it is plain 
 what the effects of that law are in practice, 
 which some of your ancestors [the treatise 
 is addressed to the chancellor's pupil, Hen- 
 ry the Sixth's son], kings of England, have
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 endeavoured to abrogate. . . . That mus 
 needs be judged to be an hard and unju 
 law which tends to increase the servitude 
 and to lessen the liberty of mankind ; fo 
 human nature is evermore an advocate fo 
 liberty. God Almighty has declared him 
 self the God of liberty ; this being the gif 
 of God to man in his creation, the other is 
 introduced into the world by means of his 
 own sin and folly ; whence it is that ev 
 erything in nature is so desirous of liberty 
 as being a sort of restitution to its primi 
 live state : so that to go about to lessen 
 this is to touch men in the tenderest point 
 It is upon such considerations as these 
 that the laws of England, in all cases, de- 
 clare in favour of liberty." 
 
 Such is the ancient chancellor's testimo- 
 ny to the truth of the popular progress in 
 England, appealed to triumphantly in after 
 years by Cotton, Coke, and Selden, when 
 they first began to fight with the bloodies 
 weapons of moral and intellectual truth, 
 and under the invincible shield of those 
 laws whose nature it was to " declare in all 
 cases in favour of liberty," the great battle 
 of the people. It is simple, manly, plain, 
 and unaffected by any of those preposter- 
 ous doubts and mysteries about prerogative 
 which were started in later days. Be it 
 observed, at the same time, that the advan- 
 tages it so forcibly commemorates did not 
 by any means at once embrace within their 
 sphere all the various classes that were 
 soon after known by the name of the peo- 
 ple. Even while Fortescue wrote, a vast 
 body of mere men-at-arms and feudal re- 
 tainers, of peasants and of vassals, re- 
 mained to be merged into that recognised 
 class ; but it is no Jess certain that a larger 
 admission of these within the constitutional 
 pale was effected by circumstances be- 
 tween the accessions of Henry the Sixth 
 and Henry the Seventh than in any pre- 
 vious age. 
 
 This period divides itself into two epochs. 
 The first comprises the melancholy con- 
 duct and ignominious close of the second 
 war for the establishment of the Planta- 
 genets in France. But, as in the affairs of 
 men, it is often with the business of nations, 
 that there is a providence which shapes our 
 ends, rough-hew them how we will. Every 
 leaf that was lost from the laurels of Hen- 
 ry the Fifth was a security gained for the 
 internal welfare of England in the rule of 
 his successors ; for by the loss of the last, 
 in which, with such apparent ignominy, 
 the contest ended, all projects of territorial 
 aggrandizement on the European Continent 
 were happily ended also, and with them 
 those accessions to the power of conquer- 
 ing kings that were incompatible with a 
 moderate system of political liberty, as 
 well as that attention given to desired ac- 
 quisitions abroad which had become incon- 
 sistent with a due regard to the subject's 
 
 interests at home. The second epoch in- 
 cludes the wars of the white and red Roses, 
 and to this it is more important to direct 
 the attention of the reader. 
 
 The dispute of the rival houses of York 
 and Lancaster implied at its origin the 
 popular acquiescence and assistance in a 
 change of regal succession, and it exerted 
 a proportionate influence on the political 
 position of the people. When the barons 
 of the Yorkist party revived the dispute in 
 a more bloody form after that temporary 
 insanity of Henry the Sixth, into which 
 his constant imbecility, aggravated by ill- 
 ness, had driven him the influence it ex- 
 erted, though in another form, was of a 
 character still more beneficial. It at once 
 engaged the two great aristocratic factions 
 in a self-exhausting struggle, while it ena- 
 bled, in the interval, a great mass of the 
 people, who stood almost quite aloof from 
 the contest, to improve largely, not only by 
 the exhaustion of the strength of their noble 
 adversaries, but by their own plebeian suc- 
 cesses in commerce and the arts, the pow- 
 ers and rights of the commonalty of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 There is not a matter of more curious 
 
 ontemplation in our history than these 
 
 wars of the white and red Roses. They 
 
 raged only upon the surface of the land ; 
 
 the peaceful current beneath ran on as 
 
 Deacefully as before. No burnings, no 
 
 jlunderings, no devastations, reached the 
 
 ;owns. When we look within the latter 
 
 'or evidence of the desolating strife which 
 
 was deluging the country round in blood, 
 
 we behold commerce increasing ; the arts 
 
 thriving ; schools for education in progress 
 
 Rafter the first endowments in London in 
 
 he twenty-fifth of Henry the Sixth, the 
 
 bundation of grammar schools increased 
 
 rapidly everywhere) ; and, in the only sign 
 
 of outward danger, a still surer symbol of 
 
 'nner and lasting safety, since the town 
 
 combinations against possible outrage from 
 
 the barons took the form of guilds, of cor- 
 
 jorations, and of those other municipal 
 
 safeguards which now for the first time 
 
 arose in the Norman period, and which are 
 
 he schools, or small republics, in which a 
 
 jeople are best taught not only the art of 
 
 elf-government, but its priceless value, its 
 
 ndependence, and its honour. The few 
 
 egislative enactments of this singular pe- 
 
 iod, passed when parliaments were at lei- 
 
 ure from raising or putting down the rival 
 
 overeigns, sufficiently prove the impor- 
 
 ance into which commerce had risen. It 
 
 s unfortunate that they do not also prove 
 
 knowledge of its true interests, or of the 
 
 means of best promoting them. It was a 
 
 parliament of Edward the Fourth which 
 
 fter confirming the statutes of the fourth, 
 
 fth, and sixth Henries, with the impolitic 
 
 nd dangerous distinction of " late, in fact 
 
 ut not of right, kings of England" pro-
 
 XVI 
 
 hibited the importation of foreign corn ; 
 and it is an unhappy circumstance that the 
 idea of a people being ruined by making 
 their food too cheap did not remain the 
 peculiar property of the fifteenth century. 
 It was in parliaments of Edward the Fourth 
 and Richard the Third that importations 
 of foreign manufacture were forbidden, 
 where the like articles could be produced 
 at home. And it was by Richard the Third 
 himself that the practice of extorting mon- 
 ey from merchants and citizens, on pre- 
 tence of loans and benevolences, was abol- 
 ished, for which the usurper has obtained 
 the honourable praise of Lord Bacon " as a 
 prince in militar virtue approved, jealous 
 of the honour of the English nation, and 
 likewise a good law-maker for the ease 
 and solace of the common people." 
 
 But even the lowest ranks of that com- 
 mon people the common men-at-arms 
 themselves were able, out of these wars 
 of York and Lancaster, to snatch a way to 
 rise in. Their actual loss of life in the 
 struggle was nothing in proportion to that 
 of their chiefs ; and the result of the final 
 victory was such as mainly to withdraw 
 their services from the aristocracy, and at- 
 tach them to the people and the king. 
 When Stowe tells us of the battle of North- 
 ampton, he adds, that " the carles of 
 Marche and Warwecke let cry, thorow the 
 field, that no man should lay hand upon the 
 king, ne on the common people, but on the 
 lords, knights, and esquires." When we 
 read of the results of the battle of Bosworth, 
 we find victory in the hands of Henry and 
 the smaller baronial faction of the Lancas- 
 ters, and observe the instant commence- 
 ment of a system by which the preponder- 
 ating Yorkist aristocrats were sought to 
 be depressed, by which severe statutes 
 against the farther prevalence of armed 
 retainers were freshly enacted or revived, 
 restrictions on the devising of land, in effect, 
 removed, and all things directed towards 
 an ultimate transfer of the old baronial 
 strength into new and, as it was supposed, 
 less formidable channels. Large numbers 
 of the baronial vassals took refuge in the 
 towns, increasing their power and privi- 
 leges ; large numbers, unhappily, still re- 
 mained upon the soil ; and these, no longer 
 necessary for the shows of pomp or the 
 realities of war, suffered the worst horrors 
 of destitution, were driven to its last re- 
 sources, became incendiaries or thieves, 
 overran the land as beggars, and, in the 
 end, rendered necessary that great social 
 change which took the name of a Poor 
 Law in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 With the battle of Bosworth Field the civil 
 wars were finally closed, and with them the 
 illustrious line of the Plantagenets. The 
 pretensions of York and Lancaster were 
 compromised by Richmond's marriage with 
 the heiress of the house of York ; and in 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 the person of Henry the Seventh the line 
 of the Tudor princes assumed sovereign 
 rule in England. The strife had lasted up- 
 ward of thirty years ; twelve great pitched 
 battles had been fought in it ; eighty prin- 
 ces of the blood had fallen ; the ancient 
 nobility had been almost entirely annihi- 
 lated ; and in the renowned and powerful 
 Earl of Warwick who was said to have 
 daily feasted at his board, in the different 
 manors and castles he possessed, upward 
 of thirty thousand persons there had fall- 
 en the greatest and the last of those mighty 
 barons by whom the crown had in former 
 times been checked and overawed, and in 
 whom, less happily, a serious obstruction 
 had always existed to the political ad- 
 vancement of the mass of the people. 
 Such, indeed, had been this deluge of noble 
 blood in the field or on the scaffold, that 
 Henry the Seventh could find only twenty- 
 eight temporal peers to summon to his first 
 Parliament ; and such the change effected 
 by it, in a political sense, on the manage- 
 ment of public affairs, that the accession 
 of the first Tudor is considered the origin 
 of the modern system, and from it the con- 
 stitutional historian of England has dated 
 the compiencement of his history. 
 
 It is n,t in itself, however, but by pecu- 
 liar accidents alone, entitled to this distinc- 
 tion. The time at which Henry the Sev- 
 enth ascended the throne marks the exact 
 date, not only of the revival of ancient lit- 
 erature, but of the time when the old Con- 
 tinental system was broken up, and founda- 
 tions laid for the modern political arrange- 
 ment of the European commonwealth. 
 His reign itself includes a period of transi- 
 tion which will be lastingly memorable, 
 not in the annals of England only, but in 
 the history of the world. Great things had 
 been begun, but their completion was wait- 
 ed for ; great men had risen, but the great- 
 er, of whom they were the heralds, had yet 
 to come. I have described the rise of an 
 industrious commercial class, but not the 
 discovery of a new continent and of East- 
 ern commerce. The mariner's compass had 
 guided the eager and adventurous Portu- 
 guese to distant points of Africa, and to 
 regions more profitable still ; but there was 
 also living one calm and courageous Span- 
 iard, by whom a new world was about to 
 be disclosed to the rising hopes or the fail- 
 ing energies of the old. The printing-press 
 of Gutenberg had begun to reveal its might 
 and its mysteries, but William Caxton's 
 was yet silent. Wicliff had taught great 
 doctrines, but the name of Luther was still 
 unheard. The monks had tortured Roger 
 Bacon, and Francis Bacon had not risen to 
 torture the monks. 
 
 What an entire world of intellect lives 
 within these last two names alone. What 
 far-extending views of philosophy and rea- 
 son. What an elevation of the hopes of
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 rvn 
 
 men, and a sharpening of the intellect to 
 achieve them, may be said to have gone 
 forth from the grave of the first of these 
 daring philosophers. A final verdict was 
 then passed against the tricks of Church 
 impostors, against the pretences of magic, 
 against the delusions of abstract reason, 
 against all the bad devices by which craft 
 and hypocrisy are from age to age sustain- 
 ed. It seems a simple thing to have said 
 that no man could be so thoroughly con- 
 vinced by argument that fire will burn as 
 by thrusting his hand into the flames ; yet 
 there lay the ominous germe of that Baco- 
 nian philosophy which taught the vast su- 
 periority of one simple interrogation of na- 
 ture, by actual experiment, over all the 
 cobweb quibbles of all the schools. It is 
 as easy now to laugh at the brazen head 
 of Friar Bacon, as it was easy in his day to 
 invent the story, or to bury the philosopher 
 himself for upward of twenty years in the 
 living grave of a convent prison ; but let 
 the more thoughtful reader imagine what 
 the effect must have been of only one half 
 page of the first circulated " Epistola" of 
 this astonishing genius, as I shall quote its 
 translation here, communicated, as it ne- 
 cessarily was, to many active spirits of the 
 time ; and communicated, not as a tale of 
 wonder or of prodigy, but as the simple 
 revelation of science; not as a mystery 
 of secret and miraculous art to astonish or 
 amuse mankind, but as an honest and plain 
 announcement of the wonders nature had 
 in store for all who could be excited and'en- 
 couraged to a vigorous search after knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 " I will mention," he says, " things which 
 may be done without the help of magic, 
 such as, indeed, magic is unable and in- 
 capable of performing ; for a vessel may 
 be so constructed as to make more way 
 with one man in her than another vessel 
 fully manned. It is possible to make a 
 chariot which, without any assistance of 
 animals, shall move with that irresistible 
 force which is ascribed to those scythed 
 chariots in which the ancients fought. It 
 is possible, also, to make instruments for 
 flying, so that a man sitting in the middle 
 thereof, and steering with a kind of rud- 
 der, may manage what is contrived to an- 
 swer the end of wings, so as to divide and 
 pass through the air. It is no less possi- 
 ble to make a machine of a very small 
 size, and yet capable of raising or sinking 
 the greatest weights, which may be of in- 
 finite use on certain occasions, for by the 
 help of such an instrument, not above three 
 inches high, or less, a man may be able to 
 deliver himself and his companions out of 
 prison, and to ascend or descend at pleas- 
 ure. Yea, instruments may be fabricated 
 by which one man shall draw a thousand 
 men to him by force and against their will, 
 as also machines which will enable men to 
 
 walk without danger at the bottom of seas 
 and rivers." It was not a mere matter of 
 accident that a friar so wonderful should 
 have risen at such a time. 
 
 In the still and wearied pause which had 
 followed a storm of strife, and before these 
 intellectual influences appeared in action 
 on the scene, the first Tudor began his 
 reign. It is useless to disguise the fact 
 that, notwithstanding many great principles 
 asserted and advantages achieved, it was 
 not, in its immediate course, favourable to 
 liberty. But a distinction of vast impor- 
 tance is, at the same time, to be carefully 
 noted. The defection from popular prog- 
 ress did not lie with the people themselves, 
 but with their natural leaders in the state, 
 the House of Commons. Risings in the 
 commonalty were frequent, remonstrances 
 in the commons were few. In the early 
 years of the reign Henry appealed directly 
 to the country for a loan, leviable at a cer- 
 tain rate, but was flatly refused it. In a 
 Parliament of a few years later he found 
 more compliances The truth was, that, 
 relatively to what is called the state, cir- 
 cumstances had thrown an overbalance of 
 power into the hands of Henry, while to 
 the mass of the people these very circum- 
 stances rendered him the unconscious in- 
 strument of transition and of progress. 
 Nor less was this the destiny of all, the 
 Tudors. The position they occupy in his- 
 tory, and the rights they exercised, were 
 peculiar to a great social mission which 
 began and ended with their race. 
 
 Lord Bacon has pronounced the laws of 
 Henry the Seventh to be " deep, and not 
 vulgar." They were not vulgar, but it may 
 be fairly made a question if they were very 
 deep ; just as Henry himself was by no 
 means a great man, and yet very far from 
 a little one. The act which worked most 
 permanently and for great results, was one 
 from which nothing but the most tempora- 
 ry advantages seem to have been originally 
 contemplated ; and it is a question whether 
 the first idea of it is due to Henry the Sev- 
 enth or to Richard the Third. This was 
 the statute of Fines, as it is generally call- 
 ed ; the act out of which arose greater fa- 
 cilities of alienating entailed lands, and 
 which has therefore been ascribed to Hen- 
 ry's sagacious and politic desire still far- 
 ther to reduce the aristocratic influence, and 
 divert it into new channels. Here, how- 
 ever, as in other things, there cannot be a 
 doubt that the king was quite unconscious 
 of the mighty change he was the means of 
 effecting. He knew it as little as that the 
 new powers he first gave to the old Con- 
 silium Regis would in after years, under 
 the name of the Star Chamber, strike, by 
 their vicious uses, at the very heart of the 
 monarchy itself. 
 
 That a more direct power of alienation 
 was never aimed at by the framer of this
 
 XV111 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 statute of fines, will appear from a brief 
 mention of the state of the law at the time. 
 Edward the First's act, De Donis Conditio- 
 nalibus, had declared that lands given to a 
 man and the heirs of his body, with re- 
 mainder to other persons, or reversion to 
 the donor, could not be alienated, either 
 from his own issue or from those who 
 were to succeed them by the possessor for 
 the time being ; but the courts of justice in 
 subsequent reigns made many strong ef- 
 forts to relax the strictness of these en- 
 tails, not out of any hatred to them on the 
 score of principle, but rather because they 
 had been also held incapable of forfeiture 
 for felony or treason ; and ultimately, in 
 the reign of Edward the Fourth, the judges 
 held, in the celebrated case of Taltarum, 
 that a tenant in tail might, by means of an 
 imaginary device of law, which was term- 
 ed suffering a common recovery, divest all 
 who were to follow him of their succes- 
 sion, and become absolute owner of the 
 fee simple. This unwarrantable stretch 
 of judicial authority having been recog- 
 nised, and often acted upon afterward, the 
 intention of Henry the Seventh's statute 
 was merely to throw greater obstructions 
 in the way of those suits for the recovery 
 of lands, which the recent civil turmoil had 
 rendered very frequent, by establishing a 
 short term of prescription. Its effect, at 
 the same time, was to give a great impulse 
 and a more decided efficacy to the power 
 of alienation. It enacted, on the old prin- 
 ciple of favouring possession, that a fine 
 levied with proclamations in a public cour 
 of justice should, after five years, be a bar 
 to all claims upon lands. 
 
 The history of the House of Commons in 
 this reign is not to be contemplated with 
 out pain and sorrow, natural as, perhaps 
 it was in the new position of the king, anc 
 necessary to what followed in the govern 
 ment of his successor : yet it passed two 
 statutes which are not undeserving of hon 
 curable mention. The first was that of 
 Henry's settlement, which " ordained an 
 enacted by the assent of the lords and at the 
 request of the commons, that the inherit 
 ance of the crowns of England and France 
 and all dominions appertaining to them 
 should remain in Henry the Seventh and th 
 heirs of his body for ever, and in none oth 
 er." These words are admirably fitted fo 
 the occasion. The reader need not be re 
 minded that, though Henry was the only 
 surviving heir of the house of Lancaster, the 
 illegitimacy of the ancestor from whom he 
 derived the inheritance precluded its asser- 
 tion as a just right. This, therefore, is 
 artfully avoided in the words quoted, which, 
 while they neither assert nor contradict 
 the pretensions of lineal descent, are fra- 
 med with a view to the creation of a par- 
 liamentary title. At the same time, how- 
 ever, a marriage with the only surviving 
 
 ssue of Edward the Fourth was forced 
 pon Tudor, as though the house really 
 ared to see a " spectre of indefeasible 
 ight standing once more in arms on the 
 omb of the house of York." The other 
 tatute referred to bore upon this subject 
 Iso, and was framed to place the subject's 
 uty of allegiance on a solid ground of 
 eason and justice. Its language is such 
 is a free people had the right to claim, 
 't enacted, after reciting that subjects are 
 y their allegiance bound to serve their 
 irince, for the time being, against every 
 )ower and rebellion raised against him, 
 hat " no person attending upon the king 
 and sovereign lord of this land for the time 
 eing, and doing him true and faithful ser- 
 /ice, shall be convicted of high treason, by 
 act of Parliament or other process of law, 
 nor suffer any forfeiture or punishment ; 
 nit that every act made contrary to this 
 statute should be void and of no effect." 
 The latter provision was, of course, idle, 
 since the laws of one generation cannot 
 )ar the legislation of another ; but it shows 
 from what an- earnest and passionate ex- 
 perience of the horrors of disputed alle- 
 giance this act had risen : an experience 
 well justified in later ages, when the stat- 
 ute was appealed to again and again, and 
 too often vainly. 
 
 The hoards of money amassed by Henry 
 the Seventh through a long and lucky life, 
 with the spirit of an extortioner and the 
 care of a miser, are said to have amounted 
 at his death to a sum that in our days 
 would be tantamount to sixteen millions. 
 With a treasury so enriched, with a title 
 altogether undisputed, with extreme youth 
 and a robust health, with a very handsome 
 person and a more than average intellect, 
 Henry the Eighth succeeded to his father's 
 throne. 
 
 Events of vast importance to mankind 
 do not steal into the world like thieves in 
 the night, though men seldom recognise, 
 till all is over, the heralds that preceded 
 them. Invisible messengers might they 
 have been, 
 
 " Horsed on the sightless couriers of the air," 
 
 that gave the tidings of their coming ; but 
 these were not felt the less, nor the less 
 welcomed : men's souls were stirred, their 
 brains made busy, and their hearts set 
 strongly yearning. Such a ferment was in 
 England long before the voice of Luther 
 was heard from out of Germany. It began 
 with the heresy of Wicliff, a hundred and 
 fifty years before Luther was born. Its 
 workings were at first obscure, but by the 
 light of the fagots that burned the follow- 
 ers of Wicliff they were slowly and sure- 
 ly revealed. 
 
 The martyrdom of a few of these Lol- 
 lards marks the beginning of Henry's reign. 
 It is not my intention to dwell in detail
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 upon any part of its course. The House 
 of Commons became more servile ; the few 
 ancient lords that remained carried on an 
 ignoble struggle with the new lords Henry 
 created, as to which should surpass the 
 other in servility ; the nation looked on in 
 a strange and uncertain attitude of compli- 
 ance and disgust ; while above all there 
 rose, in the festive, riotous, and burly form 
 of Henry, a power of a kind that had been 
 till then unknown a power of unlimited 
 passion, of unrestricted indulgence ; of dai- 
 ly humours that availed against centuries 
 of right and law ; of caprices and lusts be- 
 fore which intellect was nothing, virtue 
 nothing, life or love nothing ; in whose 
 presence even the genius of Wolsey and 
 of More weighed lighter than dust, and at 
 whose slightest frown the perfect graces 
 of Anne Boleyn changed to a bloody hor- 
 ror. And this power, such and so terrible, 
 existed for a purpose far greater and more 
 lasting than its cruelties or crimes could 
 be. and therefore it was permitted to exist. 
 Be it only kept in mind that with the polit- 
 ical Constitution of England it had no natu- 
 ral alliance or connexion, and that with the 
 Progress of the People it only became iden- 
 tified by the vast results for which Provi- 
 dence suffered its continuance during a 
 space of forty years. 
 
 Twelve of those years had passed when 
 Martin Luther appeared before the diet at 
 Worms and flung defiance at the pope. 
 The nations of Europe were not unprepa- 
 red for this, even from an obscure and ap- 
 parently powerless monk. Gregory the 
 Seventh's vast structure of theocratical 
 power had long been broken down, and the 
 various popes after his time, who made 
 such strenuous efforts to excommunicate 
 each other, had been more successful in 
 excommunicating from popular deference 
 or respect the faith which they professed. 
 " Brother Martin has a fine genius," said 
 the dainty and dilettanti Leo, " but these 
 are the squabbles of friars." They were 
 the muttered thunders of nations. England 
 was lying in wait to swell the sound ; the 
 world was ripe to echo it. The civil gov- 
 ernments of Europe had long impressed 
 upon the governed that there was some- 
 thing rotten in them all. A new interest 
 was wanted to engage and elevate men's 
 hearts and souls. Nothing in which the 
 higher nature or faculties of men could 
 participate seemed to be going on in any 
 part of Europe. What was Italy with its 
 Cambray leagues ? What Spain and its Cor- 
 tes under Ferdinand and Isabella, or their 
 successors ? What was France with its 
 States-General under Louis the Twelfth 1 
 What England, with its degenerate House 
 of Commons, in waiting on the lusts of 
 Henry ? The same word suffices for all. 
 The whole was a cheat which men, with- 
 out resistance, could endure no more. 
 
 xix 
 
 Henry himself was one of the first to re- 
 sist Luther, not the pope. This only 
 marks the more truly what a mere brutal 
 instrument he was a mass of passion and 
 will that were convertible for other uses, 
 and in which even the grossest and most 
 indecent inconsistency was suffered to take 
 the shape of power. The title of Defender 
 of the Faith, conferred upon him by Leo, 
 he turned into a battering-ram against 
 Clement. With it he even propitiated large 
 masses of the moderate Catholics in Eng- 
 land who did not pin their doctrines impli- 
 citly to the skirts of the Roman See, but 
 were ready to offer homage to a new pope 
 in the person of Henry himself. 
 
 This was, in fact, Henry's own most pas- 
 sionate desire. It was well that it was so, 
 or Protestantism might never have been es- 
 tablished as it was in his great daughter's 
 reign. He had himself no regard for the 
 truth in anything he did. The Gospel light 
 as little beamed on him from Boleyn's 
 laughing eyes, when she was about to 
 mount his bed, as from her serene and pa- 
 tient look when she was about to mount 
 his scaffold. The Gospel light has nothing 
 to do with lust, has no sympathy for satis- 
 fied cruelty, takes no regard of personal 
 interests, sheds no virtue upon ambitious 
 passions, and could find in the whole huge 
 bulk of Henry not a crevice or a corner 
 into which it might cast even one of its di- 
 viner rays. Yet who, save Henry, could 
 have done what the time cried out for? 
 What, save his reckless brutality, could 
 have discharged that painful but impera- 
 tive work? Who could so have thrust 
 down the monasteries, and hunted out the 
 priests 1 W T ho would have dared, save he, 
 to cram his own exchequer with their enor- 
 mous revenues? Above all, what prince 
 or priest, acting sincerely as a reformer of 
 the faith and a champion of Luther's doc- 
 trines, could have done what was abso- 
 lutely needful at the first flinging down of 
 the national allegiance to Rome : could 
 have kept in resolute check both Protest- 
 ant and Catholic ', could have persecuted 
 with an equal hand the Romanist and the 
 Lutheran; could have passed as an adhe- 
 rent to Catholic doctrines while he spurn- 
 ed the papal authority, and have loudly de- 
 clared his passion for transubstantiation, 
 while he still more loudly shouted forth 
 his abhorrence of submission to a court at 
 Rome. Be it assuredly believed that all 
 was more wisely ordered than the mere 
 wisdom of ordinary policy could presume 
 to have foreseen. This broad and vicious 
 body of Henry the Eighth was as the 
 bridge between the old and the new reli- 
 gions. 
 
 It is fearful, but not unsalutary, to cast 
 a parting glance at it after its great work 
 upon the earth was done. It lay immovea- 
 ble and helpless, a mere corrupt and bloat-
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 ed mass of dying tyranny. No friend was 
 near to comfort it ; not even a courtier 
 dared to warn it of its coming hour. The 
 men whom it had gorged with the offal of 
 its plunder hung back in affright from its 
 perishing agonies, in disgust from its ul- 
 cerous sores. It could not move a limb 
 nor lift a hand. The palace doors were 
 made wider for its passage through them ; 
 and it could only then pass by means of 
 machinery. Yet to the last it kept its 
 ghastly state, descended daily from bed- 
 chamber into room of kingly audience 
 through a hole in the palace ceiling, and 
 was nightly, by the same means, lifted 
 back again to its sleepless bed. And to the 
 last, unhappily for the world, it had its hor- 
 rible indulgences. Before stretched in that 
 helpless state of horror, its latest victim 
 had been a Plantagenet. Nearest to itself 
 in blood of all its living kindred, the Count- 
 ess of Salisbury was, in her eightieth year, 
 dragged to the scaffold for no pretended 
 crime save that of corresponding with her 
 son, and, having refused to lay her head 
 upon the block (it was for traitors to do 
 so, she said, which she was not), but mo- 
 ving swiftly round, and tossing it from side 
 to side to avoid the executioner, she was 
 struck .down by the weapons of the neigh- 
 bouring men-at-arms ; and while her gray 
 hairs streamed with blood, and her neck 
 was forcibly held down, the axe dischar- 
 ged, at length, its dreadful office. The last 
 victim of all followed in the graceful and 
 gallant person of the young Lord Surrey. 
 The dying tyranny, speechless and incapa- 
 ble of motion, had its hand lifted up to affix 
 the formal seal to the death-warrant of the 
 poet, the soldier, the statesman, and schol- 
 ar; and, on the "day of the execution," 
 according to Holinshed, was itself " lying 
 in the agonies of death." Its miserable 
 comfort, then, was the thought that youth 
 was dying too ; that the grave which yawn- 
 ed for abused health, indulged lusts, and 
 monstrous crimes, had in the same instant 
 opened at the feet of manly health, of gen- 
 erous grace, of exquisite genius, and modest 
 virtue. And so perished Henry the Eighth. 
 Not so perished all his passions, or the 
 penalties which are exacted for them in 
 this world. He left children who inherited 
 both, and pursued each other with an un- 
 natural hatred. The legitimacy of Mary 
 branded Elizabeth as illegitimate ; the le- 
 gitimacy of Elizabeth affixed a stain on the 
 birth of Mary ; and both were subject to 
 that stain in the presence of their brother 
 Edward. It had been made treason to hold 
 the marriages both of Catharine of Arragon 
 and Anne Boleyn to be legal ; treason to 
 hold the children by those marriages ille- 
 gitimate ; treason to be silent on the sub- 
 ject ; and treason to refuse to take an oath 
 upon it when required. One statute disa- 
 bled Mary from the succession to make 
 
 way for Elizabeth ; another set aside Eliz- 
 abeth to make room for Edward ; a third, 
 in raising that prince to a settled superior- 
 ity in law, confirmed both his sisters in the 
 imputation of disgrace. What but misery 
 and hate could follow all this ! And hate 
 and misery followed hard indeed. Mary 
 was thirty-two years old when her father 
 died ; Elizabeth was fourteen ; Edward 
 scarcely nine. What wonder that the per- 
 secution of Mary by the authority of her 
 boy-brother tended to change into gall the 
 distempered blood she had inherited] or 
 that the after persecution of Elizabeth by 
 Mary forced forth the less loving qualities 
 of that greater woman Tudor] Very pain- 
 ful is it to contemplate all this, but far 
 more painful would it be to speak in repro- 
 bation of what was vile and cruel, nor care 
 to discriminate the sources to which it 
 owed existence. 
 
 I have refrained from any remark on the 
 popular progress in the civil government 
 of this reign, apart from the great event of 
 the beginning of the Reformation. A word 
 concerning the House of Commons will 
 yet be not without its use, low as the con- 
 dition was to which it had servilely de- 
 scended. Even in its mean and unworthy 
 office of subserving to the interests and 
 wishes of a tyrant, nobler duties were im- 
 plied ; the idea of higher functions was, at 
 least, never lost ; nor the sense that, how- 
 ever unworthy the immediate agent, it 
 alone could be the instrument, of changes 
 that affected the people. Towards that 
 house the people were still instructed to 
 look for good or evil. They saw it still 
 grant subsidies which could not be raised 
 by any other course ; they saw it still used 
 in the proposal of statutes which, without 
 its consent, could never have been bind- 
 ing. Even the worst infringements of pub- 
 lic liberty were but confessions of its pow- 
 er. When the sole proclamations of Hen- 
 ry the Eighth received, under penalty of 
 fine and imprisonment, the force of stat- 
 utes (" provided they should not be preju- 
 dicial to any person's inheritance, offices, 
 liberties, goods, and chattels, or infringe 
 the established laws"), it was the House of 
 Commons which enacted it; declaring thus 
 that without its authority no royal prerog- 
 ative dared ever soar so high, that with- 
 out its assistance liberty could never have 
 fallen under such a fatal wound. When 
 one fifth of the landed property of the na- 
 tion passed from the possession of its own- 
 ers, it was by the act of the House of Com- 
 mons. When bills of attainder struck 
 down the guilty, or shed the blood of the 
 innocent, still it was from that house they 
 came. The king may have been, indeed, 
 all-powerful, but it was in the omnipotence 
 of the parliamentary authority which had 
 been suffered by base servility to descend 
 upon him.
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 xxi 
 
 Finally, two direct cases of constitutional 
 advantage were achieved in this reign, of 
 which some mention should here be made. 
 The first was the extension of parliament- 
 ary representation to the entire principal- 
 ity of Wales, on the basis of certain great 
 and important principles laid down in the 
 preamble of the bill which granted it that 
 it is disadvantageous to any place to be 
 unrepresented ; that representation is es- 
 sential to good government ; and that those 
 who are bound by the laws should have a 
 direct influence in the enactment of those 
 laws. All this is distinctly laid down in 
 the thirteenth chapter of the thirty-fourth 
 and thirty-fifth of Henry the Eighth, by 
 which upward of thirty members were ad- 
 ded to the lower house. The second ad- 
 vantage was in support of privilege of Par- 
 liament. A burgess of the name of Fer- 
 rers had been arrested on his way to the 
 house. The sergeant was at once sent 
 with the mace to the prison to demand his 
 immediate release. The sheriffs in whose 
 names the arrest had been made, as well 
 as the jailer who refused to comply with 
 the demand of the sergeant, were subse- 
 quently brought to the bar and punished 
 with imprisonment, while the king himself, 
 in the presence of his judges, confirmed in 
 the strongest manner this great assertion 
 of privilege. Holinshed, who relates the 
 incident, says, in reference to this demand 
 for release of a party from prison at the 
 mere demand of the sergeant of the house, 
 that " the chancellor offered to grant them 
 a writ of privilege, which they of the Com- 
 mons' House refused, being of a clear opin- 
 ion that all commandments and other acts 
 proceeding from the nether house were to 
 be done and executed by their sergeant 
 without writ, only by show of his mace, 
 which was his warrant." 
 
 In the short reign of Edward the Sixth, 
 the Reformation was really introduced in 
 England, and Protestantism established 
 upon the soil. But the edifice was yet 
 feeble, and was indeed far from comple- 
 tion, when the sudden accession of Mary, 
 on her brother's premature death, over- 
 threw it altogether. The last effort of the 
 Reformers, before that event occurred, may 
 be even said to have constituted the most 
 essential stone of the building; and this 
 was not quite accomplished at its fall. 
 Edward the Sixth, after the example of his 
 father, had been placed in the exact posi- 
 tion of the pope ; and Cranmer, with other 
 bishops, had contented themselves with 
 again taking out the commissions conce- 
 ded to the tyranny of the old king, by which 
 their sees were merely held during pleas- 
 ure. A new scheme of ecclesiastical laws 
 had been drawn up, when the young king 
 was thrown upon his deathbed. 
 
 One thing is quite certain in any careful 
 consideration of the tendencies of this short 
 
 1 reign. The Reformation was pushed on 
 after Henry the Eighth's death much too 
 I precipitately, and the Catholics, in conse- 
 quence, began to recover ground. In vain 
 I did the Princess Mary herself implore to 
 have the exercise of the old religion, to 
 which she clung, conceded to her at home ; 
 in vain did Gardiner and Bonner protest 
 against their unmerited deprivation of lib- 
 erty and property ; in vain did even Heath 
 and Day, worthy and moderate bishops, 
 who had gone as far as the Reformers 
 should have wished, and only stopped 
 where they also should have been content 
 with making a temporary pause in vain 
 did even these solicit charity or justice. 
 Some indulgences there were which Cran- 
 mer and Ridley would have granted, but 
 the young king stood firm against all, and 
 against his sister Mary with an obdurate 
 harshness. 
 
 Much misery had meanwhile been at- 
 tendant on the new distribution of the 
 Church lands, and insurrections every- 
 where told of want and of despair. The 
 comfortable dish at the convent-door was 
 sighed for again. The blessings of the 
 new faith had not fallen according to 
 the promise. The waverers from the old 
 system began to retrace their steps, the 
 protectors of the new to abate their en- 
 thusiasm. What was it that was wanted, 
 then 1 Something that should display the 
 worst vices of the Romanist faith, the big- 
 otry, the intolerance, the spiritual slavery, 
 the lower deep than that lowest into which 
 conscience seemed threatening to return. 
 And then Mary ascended the throne. Still 
 there was something wanted. A transla- 
 tion of the Bible had for some years been 
 offered for sale in the parish churches, but 
 men seemed yet to need an incentive to its 
 study a light to read it by ; and within 
 two years the fires began in Smithfield. No 
 light of greater efficacy could have been 
 devised to show the moderation of its doc- 
 trine, the gentleness of its wisdom, the all- 
 embracing charities of its love. As hun- 
 dreds perished in the flames, thousands 
 upon tens of thousands began to breathe 
 with ardent hope the name of Anne Bo- 
 leyn's daughter. 
 
 This is all that need be said of the de- 
 plorable reign of Mary, save an important 
 reference to one or two strong intima- 
 tions of reviving independence in members 
 of the House of Commons. In these the 
 people seemed rising on the scene once 
 more. No sovereign packed that house 
 more sedulously with the creatures of the 
 crown than Mary did. Men of the new 
 faith were driven from the places of elec- 
 tion by force and terror ; foreign gold was 
 distributed in profusion ; pensions and 
 bribes universally rewarded political prof- 
 ligacy ; and a forcible exclusion from the 
 house, even after regular election, was the
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 xxu 
 
 common tribute to political honour. With 
 all this, Mary approached her first Parlia- 
 ment in fear. She met them with affected 
 moderation on her lips, though the fever 
 of bigotry already consumed her heart. 
 Nor did the result prove the fear mispla- 
 ced. This first Parliament was speedily 
 dissolved for thwarting her in her mar- 
 riage negotiations. Another was sum- 
 moned, and shared the same fate. Within 
 two years she had summoned three Parlia- 
 ments, which, though subject to heavy re- ; 
 sponsibility for many crimes, are not, in 
 some respects, undeserving of most hon- 
 ourable mention. 
 
 In respect to the Spanish marriage, for 
 example, nothing could induce them to 
 give way to Mary's passionate desire for 
 Philip, by conceding to that prince a dig- 
 nity which they believed to be incompati- 
 ble with the independence of the English 
 crown, or by conferring a political author- 
 ity upon him which might involve danger to 
 the privileges and laws of the English peo- 
 ple. They gave him, indeed, the empty ti- 
 tle of king, which was due to his own in- 
 dependent rank, and in everything else ex- 
 acted much and gave nothing. Commend- 
 able spirit was also shown in the repeated 
 negotiations concerning the old property 
 of the Church ; and guilty as these Parlia- 
 ments of Mary were in much that has dis- 
 graced them with posterity, it is a memo- 
 rable circumstance to record that a band of 
 patriots absolutely existed in one of them 
 who, having publicly declared that all their 
 efforts to serve the country were unavail- 
 ing in that assembly, and that they would no 
 longer remain to countenance what they 
 would rather curse, openly and deliberate- 
 ly seceded from the house. Mary's at- 
 torney-general filed an information against 
 them, but it was not pursued, and the 
 reign soon after saw its close. Its work 
 had not been left undone. For the ad- 
 vent of Elizabeth, all parties were now 
 thoroughly prepared. 
 
 The glory of this extraordinary woman's 
 reign was the final uprooting of the Ro- j 
 man Catholic faith, and the establishment 
 of Protestantism. Amid many passions 
 she indulged, and more over which she ex- 
 ercised a great control ; amid many crimes 
 she committed, and many from which she 
 most magnanimously refrained, this has 
 consecrated her memory. It was a policy 
 not restricted to the country which she gov- 
 erned : she championed it throughout the 
 world. All who were carrying on, against 
 overwhelming numbers, the struggle of the 
 new faith in other lands, were taught, not 
 vainly, to appeal to her ; and as it was 
 one of the grand peculiarities of the Refor- 
 mation to have given a new interest to or- 
 dinary politics, by lifting them out of the 
 selfish regions of factious party into the 
 nobler and serener atmosphere of con- 
 
 science and religion, the English queen, 
 while she deservedly won the fame of a 
 defender of mental freedom, assumed, 
 without desert, to be entitled to the office 
 and the praise of a defender of political 
 freedom also. Nor was this delusion 
 practised unsuccessfully. It lasted for at 
 least the half of her entire reign. The de- 
 lusion was then discovered, and in the 
 other half a difference arose. 
 
 The political position of Elizabeth at her 
 accession was in all respects very striking. 
 She at once entered on the easy inherit- 
 ance of that estate which the singular 
 stewardship of her father and grandfather 
 had been cultivating and improving for up- 
 ward of seventy years, and, as it might now 
 almost seem, for her use alone. But the 
 tenure of the estate was not less singular 
 than its growth or its extent. Once car- 
 ried to its highest point of cultivation, it 
 was doomed to inevitable and speedy de- 
 cay ; its ripeness and its rottenness must 
 appear together. Elizabeth lived to enjoy 
 the one, and not altogether to escape the 
 other. The state in the first period of her 
 reign] That was Elizabeth. The state 
 in the second period! That was a combi- 
 nation of Elizabeth, the House of Com- 
 mons, the rack, and the scaffold. 
 
 Her desire and resolve to work out the 
 problem of the political system of her fa- 
 ther and grandfather appeared immediately 
 on her accession. Everything was in fa- 
 vour of the plan. The House of Lords had 
 now no power independent of the crown, 
 for by the sole pleasure and will of the 
 sovereign it had of late existed ; the fear 
 of confiscation and the scaffold on one 
 hand, the hope of influence and Church 
 property on the other, dealt out with a 
 most impartial regard to the regal interest 
 from the steps of the Tudor throne, held 
 that house, from the beginning to the close 
 of the reign, in the humblest subjection to 
 Elizabeth a nullity, a negation in the state. 
 For the House of Commons, there was 
 every reason to suppose that the business 
 of the establishment of Protestantism would 
 so far occupy the members as to leave 
 undisputedly, at the first, a dictation of the 
 main branch of the civil government in the 
 queen's own hands. And this was a just 
 belief; the members were so propitiated. 
 " I have heard of old Parliament men," 
 said Peter Wentworth, from his place in 
 that house, twenty years afterward, " that 
 the banishment of the pope and popery, 
 and the restoring of true religion, had their 
 beginning from this house, and not from 
 the bishops." With regard to the people, 
 it was always Elizabeth's fondest purpose 
 to place herself at their head. The idea 
 which had entered her great spirit seems 
 to have been, that she could fling down 
 every barrier between the sovereign au- 
 thority and the popular allegiance. Her
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 subjects she would have made her children. 
 Her kingdom was to be to her as her own 
 palace. It might be said, even, that she 
 did not so much desire to be a sovereign 
 prince as to be a sovereign demagogue. 
 She would mix with the people, gladly 
 make their interests hers, condescend to 
 their amusements, uphold their prejudices, 
 gossip with them, joke with them, swear 
 with them, but never, on any pretence, 
 suffer them to mount higher than her knee. 
 Their aspiring tendencies she never coun- 
 tenanced. While she patted a mayor or 
 an alderman on the head, she disdained to 
 lift her finger for the support of a Spenser 
 or a Shakspeare. The man of genius found 
 no protection in her. nor did she ever give 
 any direct encouragement to the cultiva- 
 tion of literature. The reverse of this has 
 been stated so confidently and so long, 
 that it is hazardous to replace it by the 
 truth. Sad and sorry as it may be, it is 
 the truth notwithstanding. 
 
 But the people, in her despite, had their 
 Spensers and their Shakspeares ; they had 
 their translation of the Bible, with its les- 
 sons of brotherhood and charity ; they had 
 their tales of a New World, their lessons 
 from the Old ; they had as free an access 
 to the great literature of the ancient wri- 
 ters as to that of the living and surpassing 
 genius which surrounded them ; they had 
 poetry in thought, and poetry in action ; 
 adventure and chivalry moved in living 
 realities through the land ; and the com- 
 monest people might lift caps, as they 
 passed along the streets, to a Drake, a Sid- 
 ney, or a Raleigh. It was only necessary 
 that the rising influences which marked 
 the accession of the Tudor family should 
 thus appear in full and active operation on 
 the minds of the English people, to sen- 
 tence to a gradual but certain downfall the 
 half political, half patriarchal system of 
 this famous woman, by far the greatest of 
 the race. 
 
 Discontent directed itself first against 
 the weakest and most ominous quarter. 
 In the year 1570, the institution of epis- 
 copacy in the Protestant Church was 
 openly assailed by the Lady Margaret's 
 professor of divinity at Cambridge. There 
 had been an active discussion going on 
 for some years on matters of minor con- 
 sideration. Tippets had been violently 
 contested, and sad and serious had been 
 disputes on the surplice. But now, to 
 the amazement of the imperious Parker, 
 who had declared that he would maintain 
 to the death these essentials of the new 
 religion, all farther mention of such mat- 
 ters ceased, and the archbishop was sum- 
 moned to maintain to the death neither 
 tippet nor surplice, but the whole ecclesi- 
 astical hierarchy of England. This was 
 sudden, but the people did not seem to be 
 taken suddenly. Cartwright's lectures 
 were as a match to a train, and a formi- 
 
 dable party of Puritans forthwith started up 
 in England. 
 
 It was obvious, at the commencement 
 of Elizabeth's reign, that the great danger 
 lay here. It was, of course, an essential 
 feature in the Tudor system, that the frame- 
 work of the ancient hierarchy of Rome 
 should be left untouched. At a time when 
 politics had suddenly become, as it were, 
 only a part and parcel of religion, the idea 
 of unlimited spiritual dominion was too 
 valuable to be surrendered, implying, as 
 by a very simple analogy it did, unlimited 
 temporal dominion also. This dominion, 
 again, by the acts of supremacy and uni- 
 formity, was placed at the absolute use and 
 disposal of the sovereign, who thus formal- 
 ly assumed the cast-off robes of the pope. 
 But such an assumption, even so early, 
 scattered the seeds of discontent in fruitful 
 places. The very Catholics assumed a vir- 
 tue in the eyes of the more pure religious 
 Reformers, when they saw the peculiar 
 nature of the persecution with which the 
 queen indiscreetly visited them, and felt, 
 as in the instance of the Act of Uniformity, 
 that even they themselves would not be 
 able altogether to escape its penalties. 
 
 It was prohibited by that statute, under 
 pain of forfeiting goods and chattels for the 
 first offence, a year's imprisonment for the 
 second, and imprisonment during life for 
 the third, that a minister should, whether 
 beneficed or not, use any but the established 
 Liturgy ; and a fine was, at the same time, 
 imposed on all who should absent them- 
 selves from church on Sundays and holy- 
 days. The act of supremacy was much 
 more atrocious. It enacted, with what has 
 been truly termed an iniquitous and san- 
 guinary retrospect, that all persons who 
 had ever taken holy orders, or any degree 
 in the universities, or had been admitted to 
 the practice of the laws, or held any office 
 in their execution, should be bound to take 
 the oath of supremacy when tendered to 
 them by a bishop, or by commissioners ap- 
 pointed under the great seal. A praemunire 
 was the penalty for the first refusal ; death, 
 under the pains of high treason, for a 
 second. 
 
 Not without a manly protest did these 
 statutes pass at the time. " I say," ex- 
 claimed Lord Montagu, in his place in 
 Parliament, " that this law that is pretend- 
 ed is not necessary; forasmuch as the 
 Catholics of this realm disturb not, nor 
 hinder the public affairs of the realm, 
 neither spiritual nor temporal. They dis- 
 pute not, they preach not, they disobey not 
 the queen, they cause no trouble nor tu- 
 mults among the people. ... I do entreat 
 whether it be just to make this penal 
 statute to force the subjects of this realm 
 to receive and believe the religion of the 
 Protestants upon pain of death. This, I 
 say, is a thing most unjust. For that it is 
 repugnant to the law of nature, and all civil
 
 XXIV 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 laws. The reason is, for that naturally no 
 man can, or ought to be constrained to 
 take for certain that which he holdeth to 
 be uncertain. For this repugneth to the 
 natural liberty of man's understanding. 
 For understanding may be persecuted, but 
 not forced. It is sufficient and enough for 
 Protestants to keep possession of the 
 churches, and the authority to preach and 
 excommunicate, not to seek to force and 
 strain men to do or believe, by compulsion, 
 what they believe not ; and not to swear, 
 and to make God witness of their lie." 
 This was spoken in 1562, while, at the same 
 time, Mr. Atkinson vainly adjured the 
 House of Commons with equal eloquence, 
 and as fine a sense of philosophic tolera- 
 tion, to listen to like reason. " Is it not," 
 he asked, " a sufficient punishment for a 
 man that he shall not, by his wit and learn- 
 ing, so long as he continueth a certain 
 opinion, bear any office, or have any coun- 
 tenance in this commonwealth f What 
 better proof can you have of the goodness 
 of the law, that you see, since that time, 
 no great breach of the law ; no seditious 
 congregations, no tumult, but the common 
 peace well kept ? . . . Suppose you that the 
 greatest part will refuse the oath 1 Think 
 you that all that take it change their con- 
 sciences ? Nay, many a false shrew there 
 is, that will lay his hand to the book when 
 his heart shall be far off. Of this hath this 
 house full experience. If men, for trifles, 
 will forswear themselves, it cannot choose 
 but be perilous when their goods, lands, 
 liberties, and lives shall depend upon it. 
 And if men were seditious before, now will 
 they become ten times more seditious. 
 And if any were rebellious before, now 
 will his heart become more rebellious ; for 
 that he is enforced to perjury. . . I beseech 
 you," concluded this admirable speaker, in 
 a tone of prophetic warning, " I beseech 
 you that you will well remember the trust 
 that your country putteth in you ; and, since 
 you have the sword in your hand to strike, 
 be well ware whom you strike. For some 
 shall you strike that are your near friends, 
 some your kinsmen, but all your country- 
 men, and even Christians. And though 
 you may like these doings, yet may it be 
 that your heirs after you may mislike 
 them ; and then farewell your name and 
 worship." 
 
 The dangers thus predicted fell even 
 more heavily than had been foreseen. The 
 sword struck, and recoiled from the breasts 
 of friends as well as foes. Persecution, 
 insurrection, and the scaffold went on, af- 
 ter Protestantism had been immoveably es- 
 tablished, in a continual round. Not the 
 admirable and devoted attitude of the 
 Catholics on the threatened approach of the 
 armada, when, in that " agony of the Prot- 
 estant faith and name," they flocked in 
 every county to the lord-lieutenant's stand- 
 ard, and implored to be allowed to prove 
 
 that the national glory of England was 
 dearer to them than their religion itself: 
 not even this abated the severities against 
 them. On the other hand, not even the 
 hatred borne by the purer order of the Re- 
 formers to Romanism and its professors 
 in the slightest degree tended to the toler- 
 ation of Protestant nonconformity. In- 
 deed, the spirit of persecution in the last 
 case was perhaps more keen and personal 
 than in the first. Elizabeth loved, to the 
 latest moment of her life, the gorgeous 
 ceremonials of religion, as she cherished 
 all that placed in subjection to authority 
 the senses and the faith of men. It was 
 with this feeling that she clothed her 
 own bishops in such supreme authority; 
 that she adhered to forms and ceremonies 
 which, but for this, her masculine sense 
 would have put aside in scorn ; that she 
 called in to a constant share in her govern- 
 ment, during its later period, the rack and 
 the scaffold, and bequeathed to her suc- 
 cessors a regal inheritance rotting to its 
 very core. No bishop, no king, was a danger- 
 ous, and, indeed, fatal maxim. Its very form 
 implied not only an endeavour to check the 
 great impulses of the Reformation, but also 
 the possibility of a rebound from that en- 
 deavour which would involve ruin to both 
 bishop and king. And so it proved. 
 
 Cartwright's lectures at Oxford were fol- 
 lowed by an immediate movement in the 
 House of Commons. A few days after the 
 opening of the session, in the Parliament 
 which met in April, 1571, Mr. Strickland, 
 " a grave and ancient man of great zeal," 
 rose and addressed the house at great 
 length, and with great temper, on the abuses 
 of the Church, and presented a bill for the 
 reformation of the Common Prayer. This 
 was followed, a few days after, by a bill to 
 take away the granting of licenses and dis- 
 pensations by the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. The queen, upon this, interfered, in 
 great anger. Mr. Strickland's bills were 
 arrested, and himself too. He was sum- 
 moned before the council, and commanded 
 not to return to the house till their farther 
 pleasure. This was resented with spirit 
 and success ; and Mr. Strickland, in despite 
 of queen and council, resumed his seat next 
 day, when, in the course of a debate on the 
 subject, Mr. Yejverton said, " that all mat- 
 ters not treason, or too much to the deroga- 
 tion of the imperial crown, were tolerable 
 there, where all things came to be con- 
 sidered of, and where there was such ful- 
 ness of power as even the right of the 
 crown to be determined ; and by warrant 
 whereof we had so resolved, that to say the 
 Parliament had no power to determine of 
 the crown was high treason. He remem- 
 bered how that men are not there for them- 
 selves, but for their counties. He showed 
 it was fit for princes to have their prerog- 
 atives, but yet the same to be straitened 
 within reasonable limits. The prince, he
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 xxv 
 
 showed, could not herself make laws, 
 neither ought she, by the same reason, break 
 laws." He concluded with defending both 
 Mr. Strickland and his bills. 
 
 Such expressions may well startle the 
 believers in that kind of history which com- 
 pares England and Elizabeth to Turkey 
 and its sultan. But they were not then 
 uttered for the first time in this reign. The 
 political achievements of the days of the 
 elder Henrys and Edwards were not to be 
 so soon forgotten. The^principles implied 
 had been laid down over and over again, 
 though the peculiar crisis of affairs at 
 Elizabeth's accession enabled her, as I 
 have shown, to dispense with them largely 
 in her practice. As early as 1566, Onslow, 
 then speaker of the House of Commons, 
 thus referred to the authority of the com- 
 mon law, in his sessional address to the 
 throne. " For, by our common law," he 
 said, " although there be for the prince pro- 
 vided many princely prerogatives and roy- 
 alties, yet it is not such as the prince 
 can take money or other things, or do as 
 he will, at his own pleasure, without order ; 
 but quietly to suffer his subjects to enjoy 
 their own, without wrongful oppression, 
 wherein other princes, by their liberty, do 
 take as pleaseth them." He next proceed- 
 ed to tell the queen " that, as a good prince, 
 she was not given to tyranny contrary to 
 the laws, had not attempted to make laws 
 contrary to order, but had orderly called 
 this Parliament, who perceived certain 
 wants, and thereunto had put their helping 
 hand." Onslow was at this time the 
 queen's solicitor as well as speaker of the 
 house, and Elizabeth offered no denial to 
 his claims either for the house or the com- 
 mon law. 
 
 Harrison, who was a writer of some au- 
 thority, used still stronger language a little 
 later in the reign. " This house," he said, 
 referring to the commons, " hath the most 
 high and absolute power of the realme; 
 for thereby kings and mightie princes have 
 from time to time been deposed from their 
 thrones ; laws either enacted or abrogated ; 
 offenders of all sorts punished ; and cor- 
 rupted religion either disannulled or re- 
 formed. To be short, whatsoever the peo- 
 ple of Rome did in their centuriafis or tri- 
 bunitiis comitiis, the same is and may be 
 done by authoritie of our Parlement House., 
 which is the head and body of all the 
 realme, and the place wherein everie par- 
 ticular person is intended to be present, if 
 not by himselfe, yet by his advocate or at- 
 tornie. For this cause, also, .anything 
 ther enacted is not to be misliked, but 
 obeied of all men without contradiction or 
 grudge." The noble language employed 
 by Hooker, in his " Ecclesiastical Polity," 
 is more accessible, and need not be repeat- 
 ed here. He anticipates in that the whole 
 theory of Locke ; in every part of it de- 
 
 rives the origin of government explicitly, 
 both in right and in fact, from a primary 
 contract ; enlarges on the advantages of a 
 limited monarchy, and expressly lays down 
 that of Elizabeth as a government restrain- 
 ed by law. 
 
 But, finally, I may quote the striking ex- 
 pressions of Aylmer, afterward Bishop of 
 London, as early as 1559, when he answer- 
 ed Knox's " Blast of the Trumpet against 
 the monstrous Regiment of Women." The 
 blast had been blown against Mary, but the 
 echo of the sound loitered disagreeably in 
 the ears of the new queen. " Welly" says 
 Aylmer, " a woman may not reigne in 
 England : better in England than any- 
 where, as it shall wel appere to him that 
 withoute affection will consider the kinde of 
 regiment ; while I conferre ours with oth- 
 er as it is in it selfe, and not maymed by 
 usurpation, I can find none either so good 
 or so indifferent. The regiment of Eng- 
 land is not a mere monarchic, as some, for 
 lack of consideracion, thinke, nor a mere 
 oligarchic, nor democratie, but a rule mixte 
 of all those, wherein each one of these 
 have or should have like authoritie. Thim- 
 age whereof, and not the image, but the 
 thing in dede, it is to be sene in the Par- 
 liament Hous, wherein you shall find these 
 thre estats : the king or quene, which rep- 
 resenteth the monarche ; the noble men, 
 which be the aristocratic ; and the burgess- 
 es and knights, the democratie. The verye 
 same had Lacedemonia, the noblest and 
 best city governed that ever was ; thei had 
 theire kings, theire senate and Hippagretes, 
 which wer for the people. As in Lacede- 
 monia none of these could make or break 
 laws, order for warre or peac, or do any 
 thing without thother; the king nothing 
 without the senate and commons, nor ei- 
 ther of them or both withoute the king (al- 
 beit the senate and the ephori had greater 
 authoritie than the king had). In like ma- 
 ner, if the Parliament use theire privile- 
 ges, the king can ordein nothing withoute 
 them. If he do, it is his fault in usurping 
 it, and theire follye in permitting it. . . But 
 to what purpose is all this 1 -To declare 
 that it is not in England so daungerous a 
 matter to have a woman ruler as men take 
 it to be. For, first : it is not she that' ru- 
 leth, but the laws, the executors whereof 
 be her judges appointed by her, her justi- 
 ces, and such other officers Secondly: 
 she maketh no statutes or laws, but the 
 honorable court of Parliament ; she break- 
 eth none, but it must be, she and they to- 
 gether, or else not. If, on the other part, 
 the regiment were such, as all 'hanged 
 uppon the king's or quene's wil, and not 
 uppon the lawes;wrytten ; if she might de- 
 cre, and make lawes alone, without her 
 senate ; if she judged offences according 
 to her wisdome, and not by limitation of 
 statutes and laws ; if she might dispose
 
 XXVI 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 alone of warre and peac ; if, to be short, she 
 wer a mere monark, and not a mixte ruler, 
 you might, peradventure, make me to feare 
 the matter the more, and the les to de- 
 fend the cause. But the state being as it 
 is or ought to be (if men wer wurth theyr 
 eares), I can se no cause of feare." And 
 no fear there was. The slumber was only 
 for a time. Men were worth their ears, 
 and had resolved that neither pillory nor 
 rack should continue to make light of them. 
 
 After Strickland's return to the house, a 
 very bold step was taken, and taken suc- 
 cessfully. It had been found necessary 
 that the Articles of the English Church, as 
 altered from those of Edward the Sixth, 
 and settled in the convocation of 1562, 
 should receive the sanction of Parliament 
 to make them more binding on the clergy. 
 They were now introduced. On those 
 that related to matters of faith no discus- 
 sion arose ; while, on those that declared 
 the lawfulness of the established form of 
 consecrating bishops and priests, the su- 
 premacy of the crown, and the power of 
 the Church to order rites and ceremonies, an 
 opposition started up of so decided a char- 
 acter, that the house eventually withheld 
 its assent to them, and the insertion of the 
 word " only" into a portion of the statute 
 excluded those articles from legislative as- 
 sent. Peter Wentworth, one of Strick- 
 land's supporters and fellow-patriots, and 
 the most distinguished assertor of civil lib- 
 erty in Elizabeth's reign, described in a 
 subsequent Parliament his conversation on 
 this subject with Archbishop Parker. " I 
 was," said this bold and honest speaker, 
 " among others, the last Parliament sent 
 for unto the Bishop of Canterbury, for the 
 Articles of Religion that then passed this 
 house. He asked us why we did put put 
 of the book the articles for the homilies, 
 consecrating of bishops, and such like 1 
 1 Surely, sir,' said I, ' because we were so 
 occupied in other matters, that we had no 
 time to examine them how they agreed 
 with the Word of God.' ' What,' said he, 
 ' surely you mistook the matter ; you will 
 refer yourselves wholly to us therein 1 ?' 
 ' No, by the faith I bear to God,' said I, 
 'we will pass nothing before we under- 
 stand what it is ; for that were but to make 
 you popes ; make you popes who list,' said 
 I, ' for we will make you none.' And sure, 
 Mr. Speaker, the speech seemed to me a 
 pope-like speech, and I fear lest our bish- 
 ops do attribute this of the pope's canons 
 unto themselves, Papa non potest errare ; 
 for surely, if they did not, they would re- 
 form things amiss, and not to spurn against 
 God's people for writing therein as they 
 do : but I can tell them news ; they do but 
 kick against the pricks, for undoubtedly 
 they both have, and do err." 
 
 Make you popes who list, for we will make 
 you none, is, in a single sentence, a whole 
 history. The people were taught to re- 
 
 ject the false dogma of a papal supremacy, 
 and suddenly found a High Church principle 
 of a character scarcely less offensive lift- 
 ing up its insolent head among them. 
 Having achieved the sacred right of private 
 judgment and national independence in the 
 all-important matter of religion, they were 
 instantly required to submit to an ecclesi- 
 astical usurpation of civil power and con- 
 scientious belief almost less tolerable than 
 that which they so reluctantly bore in the 
 days of papal slavery. The intellect and 
 chivalry of the land, its earnest and serious 
 persuasions, alike forbade it. And now a 
 sudden encounter of both gave birth to a 
 new race of men, who were soon destined 
 to start forth, still affronted by that No king, 
 no bishop cry, bear down both Church and 
 throne into the dust. The sons and daugh- 
 ters of the Arcadia were the parents of the 
 men of Charles and Cromwell. 
 
 Meanwhile the struggle which began 
 against Elizabeth herself was so far con 
 ducted with spirit and with boldness, as to 
 achieve many very solid and large acces- 
 sions to the privileges of the House of 
 Commons (which it is not necessary to 
 make farther reference to), as well as to 
 leave on lasting record a valuable protest 
 against the Tudor system, as one which 
 centuries of English history rejected and 
 disclaimed. It was in vain that Elizabeth 
 packed the house with placemen ; in vain 
 she flooded the country party with up- 
 ward of sixty-two new members. The 
 Wentworths and Stricklands still remain- 
 ed, and still in every session proclaimed 
 at least the duty and the right of Parlia- 
 ment to inquire into every public matter, to 
 remedy every public abuse, to avert, as far 
 as possible, every public mischief. The 
 cry of English liberty was never raised 
 more piercingly, though it remained for 
 later days to send back to it a louder and 
 more terrible echo. 
 
 "Two things, Mr. Speaker," said Peter 
 Wentworth, in the .session of 1575, " two 
 things do great hurt in this place, of the 
 which I do mean to speak. The one is a 
 rumour which runneth about the house, 
 and this it is : ' take heed what you do ; 
 the queen's majesty liketh not such a mat- 
 ter ; whosoever preferreth it, she will be 
 offended with him.' Or the contrary : ' her 
 majesty liketh of such a matter ; whoso- 
 ever speaketh against it, she will be much 
 offended with him.' The other is, that 
 sometimes a message is brought into the 
 house, either of commanding or inhibiting, 
 very injurious to the freedom of speech 
 and consultation. I would to God, Mr. 
 Speaker, that these two were buried in 
 hell ; I mean rumours and messages ... I 
 will show you a reason," continued this 
 honest orator, and he had a brother, Paul 
 Wentworth, worthy of him, " I will show 
 you a reason to prove it perilous always 
 to follow the prince's mind. Many times
 
 POPULAR PROGRESS. 
 
 XXVll 
 
 it falleth out that a prince may favour a 
 cause perilous to himself and the whole 
 state. What are we, then, if we follow 
 the prince's mind ! Are we not unfaithful 
 unto God, our prince, and state ? Yes, 
 truly ; for we are chosen of the whole 
 realm, of a special trust and confidence by 
 them reposed in us ... Sir, I will dis- 
 charge my conscience and duties to God, 
 my prince, and country. Certain it is, 
 Mr. Speaker, that none is without fault, 
 no, not our noble queen, sith her majesty 
 hath committed great fault, yea, danger- 
 ous faults to herself . . . No estate can 
 stand where the prince will not be govern- 
 ed by advice." For these daring referen- 
 ces to the sovereign, \Ventworth was sum- 
 moned before the council, justified all he 
 had uttered, and was flung into the Tower. 
 The house obtained his release after a 
 month's imprisonment ; but shortly after 
 his reappearance he was again arrested 
 and committed, with several friends and 
 supporters ; again released ; and, on re- 
 suming his seat, again in bitter opposi- 
 tion. The spirit which animated him 
 could not be repressed by bonds, could 
 not by death be extinguished. 
 
 How, it may be asked, did Elizabeth re- 
 sist it so long ] Because she had wily 
 counsellors, and, in everything that direct- 
 ly affected the comforts of the great mass 
 of the people, was a wise and prudent prin- 
 cess. She husbanded her tyranny, and, 
 for the most part, laid its finger lightly on 
 the commonalty of England. She would 
 have treated them, in more senses than one, 
 as though they were her own. She was 
 frugal in her personal wants, and never 
 kept an ill-supplied exchequer. In the first 
 session after Wentworth's more determin- 
 ed resistance, she had generously remitted 
 one subsidy voted to her, and was yet able, 
 after the close of that session, which had 
 been more than commonly distasteful, to 
 dispense with farther subsidies for the 
 space of five years, during which she re- 
 frained from summoning another Parlia- 
 ment. When compelled, at last, to do so, 
 the invincible Wentworth again presented 
 himself, with a still stronger and more 
 compact band of allies, and again the re- 
 monstrances began. 
 
 Her last House of Commons met in 1601, 
 and its proceedings imply a serious advance 
 of hostile temper, as well in the country as 
 the house. I quote a singular extract from 
 one of the debates on subsidies which had 
 been rendered more needful to Elizabeth 
 by a foreign war, an Irish rebellion, and a 
 sudden depreciation in the value of money 
 from a report of the time. " Then Ser- 
 geant Heyle : ' Mr. Speaker, I marvel much 
 that the house will stand upon granting 
 of a subsidy, or the time of payment, when 
 all we have is her majesty's ; and she may 
 lawfully, at her pleasure, take it from us. 
 
 Yea, she hath as much right to all our 
 lands and goods as to any revenue of her 
 crown.' At which all the house hemmed, 
 and laughed, and talked. ' Well,' quoth 
 Sergeant Heyle, ' all your hemming shall 
 not put me out of countenance.' So Mr. 
 Speaker stood up and said, ' It is a great 
 disorder that this should be used ; for it is 
 the ancient use of every man to be silent 
 when any one speaketh ; and he that is 
 speaking should be suffered to deliver his 
 mind without interruption.' So the ser- 
 geant proceeded ; and when he had spoken 
 a little while, the house hemmed again, 
 and so he sat down. In his latter speech 
 he said, ' he could prove his former posi- 
 tion by precedent in the times of Henry 
 the Third, King John, King Stephen,' &c., 
 which was the occasion of their hem- 
 ming." It is significant to mark in this 
 that the worthy sergeant stands alone in 
 his obsolete views and obsolete precedents. 
 All the house laughed at him. How short 
 the time that had elapsed since the ser- 
 geant might have been coughing at the 
 house, and the house complaining of the 
 sergeant ! 
 
 But out of doors there is laughter too, 
 and remark upon public affairs. Gathering 
 clusters of common men discuss the do- 
 ings of Parliament, even as Mr. Secretary 
 Cecil passes along in his carriage. Mob 
 orators are collecting; eager faces are 
 turned to them. The common people 
 themselves, at last, seem to be taking pol- 
 itics in hand. " I must needs give you this 
 for a future caution," said Cecil to" the as- 
 sembled commons, on the 25th of Novem- 
 ber, 1601, "that whatsoever is subject to 
 public expectation cannot be good, while 
 the Parliament matters are ordinary talk 
 in the street. I have heard myself, being 
 in my coach, these words spoken aloud : 
 ' God prosper those that further the over- 
 throw of these monopolies ! God send 
 the prerogative touch not our liberty !' I 
 think those persons would be glad that 
 all sovereignty were converted into pop- 
 ularity ; we being here but the popular 
 mouth, and our liberty the liberty of the 
 subject." 
 
 And Cecil might the less inaptly think 
 so, since his mistress had sent him there 
 with a conciliatory message from the 
 throne, freely surrendering her demand of 
 certain monopolies, in consequence of 
 their having occasioned several fierce de- 
 bates of resistance in the house. It is a 
 memorable thing that this should have been 
 one of the last public acts of the great 
 Elizabeth. It illustrates her system of 
 government, the means by which she had 
 sustained it so long, and the inevitable cer- 
 tainty that it could not be sustained much 
 longer. Her mission had reached its close. 
 She went down to the House of Commons 
 a few days afterward, and spoke to them
 
 XXV111 
 
 HISTORICAL TREATISE. 
 
 in a gentle and melancholy tone, as though 
 conscious the meeting would be their 
 last. 
 
 " Of myself," she said, in a spirit of self- 
 vindication, and she might say it with truth 
 and pride, " I must say this : I never was 
 any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strait, 
 fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster ; my 
 heart was never set on worldly goods, but 
 only for my subjects' good. What you do 
 bestow on me, I will not hoard it up, but 
 receive it to bestow on you again. Yea, 
 mine own properties I account yours. 
 Since I was queen," she continued, "yet 
 never did I put my pen to any grant, but 
 that upon pretext and semblance made 
 unto me that it was both good and benefi- 
 cial to the subjects in general, though a 
 private profit to some of my ancient ser- 
 vants, who had deserved it well. But the 
 contrary being found by experience, I am 
 exceeding beholden to such subjects as 
 would move the same at first. . . . And if 
 my kingly bounty hath been abused, and 
 my grants turned to the hurt of my people, 
 contrary to my will and meaning, or if any 
 in authority under me have neglected or 
 perverted what I have committed to them, 
 I hope God will not lay their culps and of- 
 fences to my charge. ... To be a king," 
 she added, with an eloquent and even af- 
 fecting protest against any harsh judgment 
 in posterity, " to be a king and wear a 
 crown is more glorious to them that see it 
 than it is pleasure to them that bear it. 
 For myself, I was never so much enticed 
 with the glorious name of a king, or royal 
 authority of a queen, as delighted that God 
 hath made me his instrument to maintain 
 his truth and glory, and to defend this king- 
 dom from peril, dishonour, tyranny, and 
 oppression. There will never queen sit in 
 my seat with more zeal to my country or 
 care to my subjects, and that will sooner, 
 with willingness, yield and venture her life 
 for your good and safety, than myself. 
 And though you have had, and may have, 
 many princes more mighty and wise sit- 
 ting in this seat, yet you never had, or shall 
 have, any that will be more careful and 
 loving. Should I ascribe anything to my- 
 self and my sexly weakness, I were not 
 worthy to live then, and, of all, most un- 
 worthy of the mercies I have had from 
 God, who hath ever yet given me a heart 
 which never yet feared foreign or home 
 enemies. . . . And so I commit you all to 
 your best fortunes and farther councils. 
 And I pray you, Mr. Comptroller, Mr. Sec- 
 retary, and you of my council, that before 
 these gentlemen depart into their counties, 
 you bring them all to kiss my hand." 
 
 And having so spoken, this lion-hearted 
 woman returned to her palace, passed a 
 few more months there in depression and 
 in sorrow, and, dying, bequeathed her crown 
 to her " cousin of Scotland." The Stuart 
 
 race at once and undisputedly ascended 
 the English throne. 
 
 The movement which hurled them from 
 it, and led to the temporary establishment 
 of a republic in our country, is described in 
 this volume. The biographies it contains 
 are so eventful, that the history of the age 
 itself might well be written in it ; for the 
 times, awful as they were, were not greater 
 than the men. The ideas of both present 
 themselves to us at once, like shadowy and 
 solid giants standing together, and hardly 
 letting us discern which leads the other. 
 
 The subjects have been selected with 
 reference to the various stages in the strug- 
 gle, from the opposition in the reign of 
 James to the breaking out of the civil war, 
 and thence to the execution of Charles, the 
 erection of a republic, the usurpation of 
 Cromwell, and the resumption of power by 
 the Republicans on the abdication of his son. 
 I have included the principal person who 
 adhered to Charles. The exertions of the 
 great men who founded the Commonwealth 
 of England required illustration from those 
 of the only great man who made a brave 
 resistance to them. 
 
 Four lives out of the seven are here 
 written in a detached shape for the first 
 time ; for, though few have been able to 
 dispute the celebrated saying of Bishop 
 Warburton, that, at the period they illus- 
 trate, the spirit of liberty was at its height 
 in this country, " and its interests were 
 conducted and supported by a set of the 
 greatest geniuses for government that the 
 world ever saw embarked together in one 
 common cause," the number of those who 
 have troubled themselves to inquire into 
 the reason or precise value of this saying 
 have been fewer still. It is a grave re- 
 proach to English political biography, that 
 the attention so richly due to the states- 
 men who opposed Charles I., in themselves 
 the most remarkable men of any age or 
 nation, should have been suffered to be 
 borne away by the poorer imitators of their 
 memorable deeds, the authors of the im- 
 perfect settlement of 1688. 
 
 I may, perhaps, be allowed to add, that 
 the latter part of that portion of this work 
 devoted to the life of Cromwell contains 
 what I have endeavoured to render as clear 
 and faithful a statement as it was possible 
 to make of the case of the Republican 
 statesmen who opposed him. 
 
 The portrait of Eliot has been engraved 
 by the courtesy of Lord St. Germains, the 
 patriot's lineal descendant. It is the first 
 published portrait of Sir John Eliot. I am 
 also indebted to the same obliging courtesy 
 for the noble contemporary portrait of 
 Hampden, which, having passed from the 
 possession of Hampden's son as a gift to 
 the son of Eliot, has been carefully pre- 
 served among the heirlooms of that family. 
 
 J. F.
 
 TABLE, 
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL, 
 
 STATESMEN OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A.D 
 1590. 
 
 1607. 
 1609. 
 
 1623. 
 
 1623. 
 
 1624. 
 1625. 
 
 1626. 
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 1590-1632. page 
 
 His Family and Descent 1 
 
 (20th of April.) His Birth . . .. . 1 
 
 Painful Incident of his early Life taken advan- 
 tage of by his political Enemies ... 1 
 
 Enters College 2 
 
 Death of his Father .2 
 
 His Apology to Mr. Moyle ; Extracts from his 
 Letters . . . . . . . .3 
 
 His Studies at the University .... 3 
 
 Visits the Continent j his first Meeting with 
 George Villiers . ... 3 
 
 Returns from the Continent . . 3 
 
 Marries t 
 
 Loses his Wife ....... 4 
 
 Resumes his Intercourse with Villiers . . 4 
 Villiers succeeds Somerset in the royal Favour . 4 
 Eliot made Vice-admiral of Devonshire, and ap- 
 pointed Chairman of the Committee of Stan- 
 naries ........ 4 
 
 False Charges of his political Enemies . . 4 
 (8th of November.) His Letter to the Duke of 
 Buckingham, Lord High Admiral of England 5 
 
 Remarks on this Letter 5 
 
 Aspect of public Affairs at the Meeting of the 
 Parliament which introduced Eliot to public 
 
 Life 5 
 
 Ignominious Defeat of the Elector Palatine by 
 
 Spinola 5 
 
 Deadly Jealousy between Buckingham and the 
 Spanish Minister Olivarez .... 6 
 
 A Parliament summoned ; Dissolution of the 
 Spanish Treaty ...... 6 
 
 Eliot returned for the Borough of Newport in 
 Cornwall ........ 6 
 
 Distinguishes himself, and is received as the 
 Leader of the Country Party .... 6 
 
 (1st of March.) His Speech on the Question of 
 
 the Spanish Treaties 6 
 
 Opposes any Attempt to move from the consti- 
 tutional Usages of the House . . .7 
 His unceasing Exertions against Monopolies . 7 
 His Speech on the Question of the Appeal 
 against the long Delays of the Court of Chan- 
 cery 8 
 
 Terms on which he and his Friends consented to 
 
 furnish Supplies for the Spanish War . . 8 
 Measures passed to reform many Grievances in 
 the Law, and in prevention of vexatious Pros- 
 ecutions 8 
 
 James I. remonstrates with Buckingham . . 9 
 (29th of October.) Dissolution of Parliament . 9 
 Sudden and mysterious Death of James I. . 9 
 
 (18th of June.) Meeting of Parliament; Eliot 
 again at his Post ...... 9 
 
 Unwise Measures of Charles 1 10 
 
 Efforts of the Parliament to secure the future 
 Safety of the People by an Enlargement of the 
 Basis of popular Representation . . .10 
 
 Motion of Sir John Eliot 10 
 
 Origin of Sir Thomas Wentworth's Dislike of him 10 
 Cessation of his personal Intercourse with Buck- 
 ingham 11 
 
 Charges against him .11 
 
 His Opposition to the Measures of the King and 
 
 Buckingham on the Subject of Subsidies . 12 
 (12th of August.) Parliament dismissed ; dis- 
 graceful Scenes 12 
 
 (6th of February.) A Parliament assembled ; the 
 
 King's Message to the Huuse . . . .13 
 Eliot's Speech in answer to his Majesty's Mes- 
 sage ; his bitter Taunt against Buckingham . 13 
 The Commons vote for the Grant of three Subsi- 
 dies and three Fifteenths . . . .14 
 
 1626. Buckingham impeached by the Commons- im 
 
 twelve Articles ...... 14 
 
 Speech of Sir Dudley Digges . . . .14 
 
 Extraordinary oratorical Display of Eliot on this 
 Occasion ........ 14 
 
 Rage of the King when told of Eliot's Speech . 15 
 Eliot committed to the Tower . . . .15 
 
 Memorable expostulation of Sir Dudley Carleton 
 to the House of Commons . . . .16 
 
 Eliot released : his Reappearance in the House 16 
 Buckingham elected Chancellor of Cambridge . 16 
 Stormy Debate in the Commons . . .16 
 
 Parliament dissolved 17 
 
 Oppressive Measures of Charles I. . . .17 
 His Instructions to the Clergy . . . .17 
 Eliot a Prisoner in the Gatehouse . . .18 
 His able Argument against the forced Loan . 18 
 Buckingham undertakes the Command of the 
 
 Expedition for the Relief of Rochelle . . 19 
 Disastrous Results of this Expedition ; Writs for 
 
 a new Parliament issued . . . .19 
 
 1628. /17th of March.) The famous Third Parliament 
 . opened by the Ki ng at Westminster in a Speech 
 
 of insolent Menace 19 
 
 A Resolution passed to grant no less than five 
 
 Subsidies to be paid within twelve Months . 20 
 Sir John Eliot again in Parliament ; acts in all 
 
 Respects as the Leader of the House . . 20 
 Extract from a Speech characteristic of his Style 21 
 Resolutions passed in the Commons declaratory 
 
 of the Rights of the People . . . .21 
 Conference between the Lords and the Commons 21 
 Messages from the King to the Commons . . 22 
 Resistance of the Commons to the Measures of 
 
 the King 23 
 
 The King's Letter to the Lords .... 22 
 The Petition of Right adopted by both Houses 
 
 now presented to the King . . . .23 
 (3d of June.) The King's Answer to the Peti- 
 tion of Right read in the House of Commons . 23 
 Sir John Eliot's Speech on this Occasion . . 24 
 Proceeds to open the Question of " Insincerity 
 
 and doubling in Religion ;" " Want of Councils" 24 
 Develops to the House the Principles of Eliza- 
 beth's Policy in singularly opposite and pitiful 
 Contrast to the prevailing Policy . . .25 
 Tremendous Effect of his Speech upon Bucking- 
 ham and the Ministers ..... 25 
 Resumes his Speech, and continues to urge the 
 Madness of breaking Peace with France at a 
 Time so strangely unfortunate . . .25 
 Third Division of his Argument, "the Insuffi- 
 ciency and Unfaithfulness of our Generals" . 25 
 Consideration of " the Ignorance and Corruption 
 
 of our Ministers" 26 
 
 Concludes his Speech with a Proposition for a 
 
 Remonstrance to the King . . . .27 
 Effects produoed by his Speech ; royal Message 
 
 to the House 27 
 
 Extraordinary Scene in the House . . .27 
 Sir John Eliot accused of having given Offence 
 
 to his Majesty in his recent Speech . . 28 
 Buckingham named as the " Grievance of Griev- 
 ances ;" the Commons' Petition " for a clear 
 and satisfactory Answer in full Parliament to 
 the Petition of Rights" . . . 28 
 
 The Commons summoned to meet the King in the 
 Upper House ....... 28 
 
 The King gives his Assent to the Petition of 
 
 Rights . .28 
 
 Remonstrance against certain Proceedings of 
 
 Buckingham 29 
 
 The King's Speech ; Parliament prorogued . 29 
 Eliot retires into Cornwall ; his Letter to Sir 
 John Cotton 29
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXX 
 
 A.T1. Pa-e 
 
 1G28. Assassination of Buckingham .... 29 
 
 Arruinianism ; arbitrary Measures of the King . 30 
 1629. (20th of January.) Meeting of Parliament ; Ton- 
 
 nage and Poundage ...... 30 
 
 Motion of Sir John Eliot ..... 30 
 
 (27th.) His Speech during the Debate on Re- 
 
 ligious Grievances ...... 31 
 
 Effects of his Speech ...'.. 32 
 The Question of Religion surrendered to a Sub- 
 
 committee ....... 32 
 
 (25th of February.) Report of the Committee . 32 
 
 Remonstrance concerning Tonnage and Pou ndage 33 
 (2d of March.) Eliot's Speech, da presenting his 
 
 Remonstrance ....... 33 
 
 The House in violent and open Disorder . . 33 
 
 Steady and undaunted Conduct of Eliot . . 33 
 Dissolution of Parliament ; Sir John Eliot sum- 
 
 moned to appear before the Council Table . 34 
 
 Proceedings against him ..... 34 
 Sentenced to be imprisoned during the King's 
 
 Pleasure, and to be fined 2000 ... 34 
 
 Committed a close Prisoner to the Tower . . 35 
 Occupies the Hours of his Imprisonment with a 
 
 Work having for its Object the Establishment 
 
 of the Independence of Man's Mind . .35 
 His Letter of Advice to his Sons . . .36 
 His Pain on hearing of the Irregularities of his 
 
 eldest Son ....... 36 
 
 His Letter to his Son Richard . . . .37 
 
 His Letter to Hampden ; Advice and Instruction 
 
 to his Son respecting a Course and Object of 
 
 Travel ........ 37 
 
 Passage from Hampden's Reply on these Points 37 
 His Letter to Sir Oliver Luke . . . .38 
 
 To his Kinsman Knightley, describing the Com- 
 
 mencement of his Disorder .... 38 
 His Letter to Bevil Grenville . . . .38 
 
 1631. (26th of December.) His Letter to Hampden 
 
 complaining of being put under new Restraints 
 
 by Warrant from the King . . . .39 
 Finds Consolation and Sustainment in the philo- 
 
 sophical Work in which he had engaged : . 39 
 Compared to Sir Walter Raleigh . . .39 
 His increasing Illness ; petitions the King to set 
 
 him at Liberty ...... 40 
 
 Sends for a Painter to the Tower, and has his 
 
 Portrait painted exactly as he then appeared . 40 
 His last Moments present the perfect Pattern of 
 
 a Christian Philosopher; Quotations from his 
 
 last Letters to Hampden . . . . . 
 
 1632. (27th of November.) His Death 
 
 40 
 41 
 
 His Son refused Permission to carry his Body into 
 
 Cornwall to be buried . . . . .41 
 His Character as a Statesman . . . .41 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Some Account of an unpublished philosophical 
 Treatise, entitled "The Monarchy of Man," 
 written by Sir John Eliot during his last Im- 
 prisonment ....... 
 
 43 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF 
 STRAFFORD. 
 
 1593-1641. 
 
 1593. (13th of April.) His Birth and Parentage ; re- 
 ceives his earliest and strongest Impressions in 
 the Midst of aristocratic Influences . . .55 
 Little Account of his early Education ; sent to St. 
 
 John's College, Cambridge . . . 55 
 
 Acquires the Honour of Knighthood . . .55 
 1611. His Marriage with Frances, Daughter of the Earl 
 
 of Cumberland ....... 56 
 
 (November.) Proceeds to France ; strange Events 
 
 in France at this Period . I ... 50 
 Events in England ...... 56 
 
 Character of James 1 56 
 
 His unwise Measures 57 
 
 State of Parties 57 
 
 RETROSPECT. The Parliament summoned in 
 1610 ; Impositions by Prerogative ; growing 
 Spirit and Power of the Commons ; a Bill pass- 
 ed against Impositions . . . . .58 
 Farther Allusion to the Proceedings of this distin- 
 guished Session 58 
 
 Negotiation between James and the Commons . 58 
 Shameful Expedient resorted to by the Court . 59 
 1614. Wentworth returned Knight of the Shire for 
 
 Yorkshire 59 
 
 The " Stratford Papers," the Source whereof we 
 derive our Information of the public and pri- 
 vate Character of this Statesman . . .59 
 
 A.D. Faze 
 
 1614. Letter to his early Tutor, Mr. Greenwood . . 60 
 Death of his Father ; takes his Seat in Parlia- 
 ment as Member for Yorkshire . . .61 
 
 State of Parties ; Dissolution of Parliament . 61 
 
 1615. Appointed to the Office of Custos Rotulorum, or 
 
 Keeper of the Archives for the West Riding . 61 
 1617. Receives a Letter from the Duke of Buckingham 
 
 requiring him to resign his Office . . .62 
 Continues in his Place ; meets with strong Oppo- 
 sition from the Savile Party . . . .62 
 Disgraceful Occurrences during the Interval be- 
 tween the two Parliaments . . . .62 
 1621. Assembling of Parliament ; early Sittings of this 
 Parliament distinguished by active and resolute 
 Steps in behalf of Privilege . . . .63 
 Wentworth takes no Part in these Proceedings . 63 
 1622-31. His Illness; Death of his Wife . . . 63 
 His Exertions in Behalf of his Brothers . . 63 
 Extracts from his Correspondence with Sir George 
 
 Calvert, the King's Secretary of State . . 64 
 Playful and conndential Style of his Letters . 64 
 He ventures more openly among the popular Par- 
 ty ; his second Marriage with Lady Arabella 
 
 Hollis 65 
 
 His extreme Moderation ; he advises a Grant of 
 Subsidies ; Adjournment of the Parliament to 
 
 Oxford 65 
 
 Disabled from sitting in Parliament by being ap- 
 pointed Sheriff of Yorkshire . . . .65 
 His Letter to his Kinsman Wandesford . . 66 
 Receives the King's Warrant dismissing him from 
 
 the Office of Custos Rotulorum . . .67 
 His Letter to Sir Richard Weston, Chancellor of 
 
 the Exchequer, on this Subject . . .67 
 Buckingham's violent Dislike to him . . .68 
 The second Parliament dissolved ; Privy Seals 
 
 issued 68 
 
 Wentworth receives a Privy Seal ; Anxiety of 
 
 his Friends 63 
 
 Refuses the Loan ; summoned to the Council Ta- 
 ble at London 69 
 
 Committed to the Marshalsea ; Extracts from the 
 
 Letters of his Brother-in-law Denzil Hollis . 69 
 Is released ........ 69 
 
 His Speech in the Third Parliament on the Dis- 
 cussion of the general Question of Grievances 69 
 His Speech on one of Secretary Cooke's pressing 
 Applications for Subsidies . . . .70 
 
 Proposes a Committee for Grievances ; Effect of 
 his Speeches ....... 70 
 
 (26th of June.) Parliament prorogued . . 70 
 (14th of July.) Created Baroa Wentworth, and 
 called to the Privy Council . . . .70 
 
 Preliminary Remarks previous to entering on the 
 History of his political Life . . . .71 
 
 His deep Esteem for Mr. Greenwood, his early 
 
 Tutor 72 
 
 His Method of Study transmitted to us by Sir 
 
 George Radcliffe 72 
 
 His extreme Cautiousness 73 
 
 Anger one of the Instruments of his Policy . 73 
 His Letter to Secretary Cooke . . . .73 
 Extracts from his Correspondence . . .73 
 Political Principles evidenced in these Letters . 76 
 An Illustration of his Practice of letting slip no 
 Method, however ordinary, of compassing his 
 
 Designs 76 
 
 Proceedings cited in proof of his excessive Vanity 76 
 We resume the Progress of his Fortunes . . 77 
 Surprise excited by his Elevation to his Presiden- 
 cy in the North 77 
 
 Character of the important Office intrusted to 
 him ; defers his Departure to the North until 
 after the Dissolution of Parliament . . .77 
 His first Proceedings on succeeding to this enor- 
 mous Power ....... 77 
 
 Claims for himself, as the Representative of ab- 
 solute Royalty, the most absolute Reverence 
 
 and Respect 78 
 
 His arbitrary Measures 78 
 
 Case of Sir David Foulis 78 
 
 Wentworth's Letter to Lord Cottington on the 
 
 Subject 79 
 
 Foulis degraded from his various Offices, fined 
 5000 to the King, 3000 to Wentworth, and 
 committed to the Fleet during his Majesty's 
 
 Pleasure 79 
 
 Wentworth in his domestic Circle . . .80 
 Death of his Wife, the Lady Arabella ; his Let- 
 ter to Sir E. Stanhope on the Subject . . 80 
 Reappears in his Court at York, and pursues 
 with startling Energy some of his most reso- 
 lute Measures ....... 81 
 
 His characteristic Letter to Weston on being ac-
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 l.D. Page 
 cused of intriguing- for the Staff of the Lord- 
 treasurer 81 
 
 1632. Appointed to the Government of Ireland . . 81 
 Condition of Ireland at this Time in the highest 
 
 degree difficult and dangerous . . .81 
 Energy and Prudence of Wentworth ; the Treas- 
 ury Necessities and Means of Supply his pri- 
 mary Care . 83 
 
 His vigorous Despatch to Lord Cottington . . 83 
 Follows his Despatch in Person, and prevails on 
 
 the Council to enter into his Design . 84 
 Extract from his Letter to the Lord-justices . 84 
 His meditated financial Projects .... 84 
 Establishes a Scheme of absolute Power in Ire- 
 land 85 
 
 Stipulations assented to ; characteristic of his Sa- 
 gacity no less than his Ambition . . .85 
 Resolves not to resign his Presidency of York- 
 shire 86 
 
 His Prosecution of apparent personal Resent- 
 ments, what this was 86 
 
 Commencement of his official Connexion with 
 
 Lord Mountnorris, Treasurer of Ireland . . 87 
 His third Marriage with Elizabeth Rhodes . 87 
 Extracts from some curious Letters relating to 
 this Marriage . . . . . .88 
 
 His Gallantries 89 
 
 His Person 89 
 
 Lady Carlile, Lady Loftus, Lady Carnarvon . 90 
 Wentworth unexpectedly delayed in his Depar- 
 ture for Ireland ...... 91 
 
 1633 (July.) His Arrival in Dublin forms a new Era 
 
 in the Government of Ireland . . . .92 
 
 He orders the Ceremonial of the British Court to 
 be observed within the Castle . . . .92 
 
 Extract from his first Despatch . . . .92 
 
 His Law Reforms 93 
 
 His Exactions 93 
 
 Calls his first Privy Council .... 93 
 Proceedings of the Council . . . . .93 
 
 They propose a Parliament 93 
 
 Power the great Law of Wentworth's Being, how 
 mistaken ........ 94 
 
 His Despatch urging the Necessity of calling a 
 Parliament instantly . . . . .95 
 
 Obtains a reluctant Consent from Charles I. . 96 
 Issues his Writs for a Parliament to be instantly 
 
 held in Dublin 96 
 
 Summons a Privy Council to deliberate on the 
 Propositions to be transmitted to England as 
 S.ubjects for Discussion in the Session . . 96 
 1634. (July.) Meeting of Parliament; an admirably 
 balanced Party of Catholics and Protestants 
 assemble in the Irish House of Commons . . 91 
 
 Speech of the Lord-deputy 97 
 
 Demands at once the enormous Grant of six Sub- 
 sidies , . M 
 
 The Subsidies granted unconditionally . . 98 
 Proceedings of the House of Lords ; Delight and 
 
 Astonishment of the English Ministers . . IS 
 Overbearing Energy of Wentworth's Measures 
 during the Sitting of the second Session of the 
 
 Irish Parliament 99 
 
 Extracts from his Despatches at this Time . 99 
 Extracts from his Correspondence with Laud . 99 
 Introduces into Ireland the Court of High Com- 
 mission 100 
 
 Measures by which he sought to reduce the Peo- 
 ple of Ireland to a Conformity in Religion . 100 
 Removes the Decision of ecclesiastical Rights 
 from the Courts of Common Law to the Castle 
 
 Chamber 102 
 
 Issues a Commission for the Repair of Churches 102 
 Writes to the King to solicit an Earldom, and is 
 
 refused 102 
 
 Presents the Irish common Lawyers with the Ma- 
 jority of the English Statutes that had been 
 passed since the Time of Poynings . . . 103 
 Turns his Attention to the Army ; strengthens 
 
 them in Numbers and in Discipline . . 103 
 His increasing Reputation ..... 103 
 Death of Weston ; Wentworth offered the Treas- 
 urer's Staff 103 
 
 Establishes a permanent Revenue in Ireland . 104 
 A Mint erected in Ireland, in spite of the desperate 
 
 Opposition from the Officers of the English Mint 104 
 Wentworth's Measures for improving the Com- 
 merce of Ireland 104 
 
 Introduces the general Cultivation of Flax to in- 
 duce the Manufacture of Linen . . . 105 
 Announces to the King that the annual Revenue 
 
 should exceed the Expenditure by 60.000 . 105 
 His minute Attention to his private Affairs in 
 England 105 
 
 A.T). 
 
 1634. 
 
 1636. 
 
 1639. 
 
 1640. 
 
 1641. 
 
 PS 
 
 Extracts from his Letter to Mr. Greenwood on 
 
 the Subject ....... 105 
 
 The whole Production impressed with the Pecu- 
 
 linnties of his Subtle and energetic Genius . 106 
 Thwarted by the King in his Desire to continue 
 
 the Parliament ...... 107 
 
 Follows up his Plans for increasing the Estates 
 
 of the Crown by a Search after defective Titles 107 
 Opposition of the Roman Catholics . . .107 
 Proceedings against Lord Mountnorris . . 108 
 Sentence passed ....... 108 
 
 Receives a Remission of his Sentence . . 109 
 Enmity provoked against Wentworth by the Case 
 
 of Lord Mountnorris ..... 109 
 (May.) Obtains Permission from the King to ap- 
 
 pear at the English Court .... 109 
 Gives a detailed Account of all the Measures he 
 
 had accomplished during his Administration in 
 
 Ireland ........ 110 
 
 Leaves the Court for Wentworth Woodhouse ; 
 
 loaded with the Applause of the King and his 
 
 Lords of the Council, and followed by the aw- 
 
 ful Gaze of doubting Multitudes . . . 110 
 Re-appears in York ; his vigorous Measures with 
 
 respect to the Collection of the famous Tax of 
 
 Ship-money ....... 110 
 
 A second Time entreats from Charles the Honour 
 
 of an Earldom, and is refused .... Ill 
 Returns to his Government. in Ireland, and re- 
 
 sumes his Measures precisely at the Point at 
 
 which he had left them ..... Ill 
 A loud and violent Voice of Clamour raised 
 
 against him by the popular Party in England . 112 
 His Letter to the King ..... 112 
 His Letter to Archbishop Laud . . . .112 
 Builds two royal Residences . . . .112 
 His Mode of living equal iri Magnificence to the 
 
 Houses themselves ...... 113 
 
 His private Habits ...... 113 
 
 His Advice to the King on the Subject of the Af- 
 
 fairs of Scotland ...... 114 
 
 Forces down some rising Commotions among the 
 
 60,000 Scottish Settlers in Ulster . . .114 
 Openly expresses his Censure of the royal Scheme 
 
 that had prevailed since the Death of Bucking- 
 
 ham ......... 115 
 
 His Despatches on the Subject of the " Antrim 
 
 Negotiations" ....... 115 
 
 His Letter to his Mother-in-Law Lady Clare . 115 
 (November.) Appears in London . . . 117 
 Created Earl of Strafford and Baron of Raby ; 
 
 adorned with the Garter, and invested with tho 
 
 Title of Lord- lieutenant or Lieutenant-general 
 
 of Ireland ........ 117 
 
 . (March.) Arrives again in Ireland ; Proceedings 
 
 of the Irish Parliament ..... 117 
 Progress of his Infirmities ..... 118 
 (4th of April.) Arrives at Chester . . . 118 
 Dictates a long Despatch to the Earl of Northum- 
 
 berland . ....... 118 
 
 Extraordinary Incident illustrating his unremit- 
 
 ting Vigilance ....... 118 
 
 His characteristic Letter to Windebanke . . 119 
 Proceeds by easy Journeys to London ; takes his 
 
 Seat in the House of Lords . . . .120 
 Appointed to the Command of the Army in the 
 
 Place of Northumberland .... 120 
 Disgraceful Intrigues against him . . . 120 
 Arrives in London ; enters the House of Peers ; 
 
 impeached of high Treason in the Name of the 
 
 Commons of England ..... 121 
 His Letters to Lady Strafford after his Arrest . 121 
 Preliminary Proceedings ..... 122 
 Articles of Accusation against him . . . 122 
 (24th of February.) His Answers in detail to 
 
 the Charges of the Commons read to the House 122 
 (22d of March.) Fixed for his Trial ; his Letter 
 
 to his Wife ....... 122 
 
 Short Summary of the Charges against him . 123 
 (23d of March.) Case opened against him at 
 
 Westminster Hall by Pym . . . .123 
 His uncomplaining Composure duwng his Trial 124 
 He addresses the Lords ..... 124 
 Interest excited in his Favour .... 125 
 The Evidence finally admitted against him ; call- 
 
 ed upon to make his general Defence in Person 
 
 against the Facts, leaving the Law to his 
 
 Counsel ........ 125 
 
 He argues against the Doctrine of arbitrary and 
 
 constructive Treason ..... 126 
 The Triumph of Pym as unparalleled as the 
 
 Overthrow of Stafford ..... 128 
 Defence of the Accused and the Accusers . . 128 
 Strafford condemned ...... 127
 
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXXll 
 
 A.D. Page 
 
 1641. (21st of April.) The Bill of Attainder passed; 
 
 the King addresses the House in his Favour . 127 
 His Letter to the King, releasing him from his 
 
 pledged Word 128 
 
 Farther Efforts ot the King to save him . . 128 
 Remarks on the Conduct of the King . . .129 
 Strafford employs the three more Days of Exist- 
 ence granted to him in the Arrangement of his 
 
 Affairs 129 
 
 His Letter of Advice to his Son . . . .130 
 
 His Speech at the Scaffold 130 
 
 (12th of May.) His Execution . . . .131 
 In the succeeding Reign the Attainder reversed ; 
 the Proceedings obliterated ; and his Son re- 
 stored to the Earldom ..... 131 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 My humble Opinion concerning a Parliament in 
 this your Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland . . 132 
 
 A Copy of the Paper containing the Heads of the 
 Lord Strafford's last Speech, written by his own 
 Hand, as it was left upon the Scaffold . . 134 
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 1584-1643. 
 
 His Birth, Parentage, and Education . . .135 
 His Marriage with Anna Hooker ; her Death . 135 
 Sketch of the Character of this Lady . . .135 
 His affectionate Care towards his Children . 136 
 
 1620. Takes his Seat in Parliament for Calne . . 136 
 State of Parties at this Time . . . .137 
 The King's Speech ; Proceedings of the Commons 137 
 
 Committees of Inquiry 137 
 
 Pym an active and zealous promoter of these Com- 
 mittees . . . . . .138 
 
 (15th of March.) Accusation of Lord Bacon .138 
 
 His Defence 138 
 
 The Commons vote a solemn Declaration of their 
 Resolve to spend their Lives and Fortunes in 
 Defence of the Protestant Cause . . . 139 
 Both Houses adjourned by royal Commission . 139 
 Proceedings against Archbishop Abbot . .139 
 (November.) Assembling of Parliament . . 140 
 Remonstrance to the King 140 
 
 1621. (3d of December.) The King's Letter to the 
 
 Speaker 140 
 
 Commencement of that open Warfare which end- 
 ed in the Destruction of the Stuart Race . 140 
 Reply of the Commons to the King's Letter . 141 
 This Declaration carried to the King at Newmar- 
 ket, by Pym and eleven other Members depu- 
 ted by the House 141 
 
 The King's Rejoinder 141, 142 
 
 Symptoms of Alarm at the Court . . .142 
 The memorable Protest of the Commons . .143 
 Torn out of the Journals by the King . . 143 
 Arrest and Imprisonment of some of the leading 
 
 Members ; Dissolution of Parliament . . 143 
 Petition from Francis Philips to King James, 
 praying for the Release of his Brother, Sir 
 
 Robert 143 
 
 Pym again in Parliament ; his Exertions chiefly 
 employed upon the Declaratory Statute against 
 Monopolies, and against the Delinquencies of 
 the Lord-treasurer, Middlesex . . . 144 
 1625. Takes his Seat for the first Time as Member for 
 the Borough of Tavistock, in the first Parlia- 
 ment of Charles I. ...... 144 
 
 Case of the King's Chaplain, Doctor Montague . 145 
 Pym appointed one of the secret Managers of an 
 
 Impeachment against the Duke of Buckingham 145 
 Proceeds to point out the fatal Consequences to 
 the well-being of the State, no less than to the 
 Morals of the Subject, which must result from 
 the Continuance of such Practices as those of 
 
 the Duke 145 
 
 Extract from his Speech .... 146-148 
 1628. Thrown into Prison ; is released on his Return 
 
 to the third Parliament for Tavistock . . 148 
 His Speech on the Motion for the Grant of Sub- 
 sidies 148 
 
 Hit indefatigable Exertions during the Progress 
 
 and Preparation of the Petition of Rights . 149 
 His general Principle of Parliamentary Interfe- 
 rence in religious Affairs 149 
 
 (4th of June.) His Speech on the Case of Doc- 
 tor Mainwaring ; Division of his Subject 150-153 
 Effects produced by this Speech . . .153 
 Sentence pronounced against Mainwaring . . 154 
 Takes an active Part in the Debates on the Spread 
 of Anninianism 154 
 
 .. 
 
 1028. The Result of these Debates ; the famous Vow 
 
 or Declaration respecting Religion . . . 154 
 
 Apostacy of Wentworth 154 
 
 Charles I. governs by prerogative ; Measures 
 adopted by the Executive to enslave the Peo- 
 ple . 155 
 
 Illegal Impost 155 
 
 A few of these shocking Enormities illustrated 
 by Extracts from the Rev. Mr. Garrard's Let- 
 ters to the Lord-deputy .... 155, 156 
 
 First Introduction of Hackney-coaches commem- 
 orated by Mr. Garrard 156 
 
 Enforcement of illegal Patents and Proclamations 
 of the King 157 
 
 Extract from Clarendon relative to the civil Gov- 
 ernment of England at this Period . . . 157 
 
 Ship-money ; Extract from Garrard's Letters il- 
 lustrating the Manner in which this Tax was 
 worked 158 
 
 Opposition to the Payment of this Tax ; Case of 
 Hampden 159 
 
 Brief Review of Laud's Administration of reli- 
 gious Affairs ....... 160 
 
 1638. (1st of May.) Eight Ships bound for New-Eng- 
 land, and filled with Puritan Families, arrested 
 in the Thames by an Order from the Council ; 
 Plans for the Colonization of Part of the North 
 American Continent ..... 161 
 
 1638. Brief Mention of the Affairs of Scotland . .162 
 1640. (3d of April.) Meeting of Parliament ; Speeches 
 
 of the King and the Lord-keeper . . 162 
 
 Pym again in Parliament ; becomes a Leader by 
 the common Consent of all .... 162 
 
 Petitioning Parliament first organized as a Sys- 
 tem by Pym and Hampden . . . .16 
 
 Speech of Pym on the Subject of Grievances . 163 
 
 Extraordinary Effects of this Speech throughout 
 England 16 
 
 Extracts from this Speech 163 
 
 He propounds divers particular Points wherein 
 the Privilege of the Parliament had been broken 165 
 
 Proceeds to the next Sort of Grievances concern- 
 ing Religion 165 
 
 Proceeds to the third Kind of Grievances, the 
 civil Oppressions of the State .... 166 
 
 Begins with Tonnage and Poundage, and other 
 Impositions not warranted by Law . . .167 
 
 Of enforcing Men to compound for Knighthood . 16 
 
 The great Inundation of Monopolies . . . 168 
 
 Ship-money ........ 169 
 
 Enlargement of the Forests beyond the Bounds 
 and Perambulations appointed and established 
 by Act of Parliament 169 
 
 The military Charges laid upon the several Coun- 
 ties of the Kingdom 17 
 
 Extra-judicial Declarations of Judges . . 170 
 
 That the Authority and Wisdom of ihe Council- 
 table have been applied to the contriving and 
 managing of several Monopolies and other great 
 Grievances ....... 170 
 
 Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Head of civil Griev- 
 ances 171 
 
 These Extracts as important as they are inter- 
 esting 171 
 
 Second and main Branch of his Speech, that the 
 Disorders from whence these Grievances issued 
 were as hurtful to the King as to the People . 171 
 
 Pym resumes his Seat. Extraordinary Impres- 
 sion made by his Speech. Resolution of the 
 Commons to address the Lords . . . 173 
 
 Proceeds to the Lords with the Address ; mem- 
 orable Words uttered by him on this Occasion 173 
 
 Conference between the Lords and Commons ; 
 Debates on Ship-money ; Dissolution of Par- 
 liament 174 
 
 Commitment of individual Members . . . 174 
 
 Extraordinary Exertions of Pym . . . 175 
 
 Disastrous War with Scotland drags the King 
 daily more near to the Feet of his Subjects . 175 
 
 Council of Peers summoned to York . . . 175 
 
 Petition from Pym praying for a Parliament, sub- 
 scribed by 10,000 Citizens of London . . 176 
 
 (3d of November.) Writs issued for a new Par- 
 liament 170 
 
 Character of the Long Parliament . . .176 
 
 The Patriot Leaders 177 
 
 The Commons debate with closed Doors ; Pym's 
 Speech 177 
 
 Message from the Lords desiring instant Confer- 
 ence on a Treaty with the Scots . . . 178 
 
 Impeachment of Strafford resolved . . . 178 
 
 Pym made choice of for the Messenger to perform 
 that Office in the House of Lords . . .178 
 
 Accusations against the Bishops . . . 179
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXX111 
 
 1640. Impeachment and Escape of Windebanke and 
 
 Finch 179 
 
 The Judges called to Account ; Sir Robert Berke- 
 ley impeached of Treason ; publicly arrested in 
 the King's Bench Court . . . .178 
 
 (2d of December.) Extract from Mr. Pym's 
 Speech on this Occasion .... 180-182 
 
 A Vote passed by the Commons decreeing 
 300,000 for the friendly Relief and Aid, and 
 towards the Losses and Necessities of their 
 Brethren the Scots 182 
 
 Triennial Bill 182 
 
 Pym's Speech on presenting the Articles of Im- 
 peachment against Strafford .... 183 
 
 The King makes an Effort to save him by a Com- 
 promise with the Leaders of the Opposition . 183 
 
 Extracts from this Negotiation . . . 183, 184 
 
 Nature and Conduct of the Compromise . . 184 
 1641 (22d of March.) Trial of Strafford opened at 
 
 Westminster Hall 185 
 
 Mr. Pym's Speech 185-187 
 
 Presents to the House certain weighty Reasons 
 for closing the Proceedings against the Earl by 
 the legislative Enactment of a Bill of Attainder 187 
 
 His Motives for this sudden Course . . . 187 
 
 His Speech on the last Day of the Trial ; com- 
 bining the Splendour of one of the Common- 
 places of Cicero with the logical Force of Lord 
 Bacon's profound Meditations . . . 188-193 
 
 Incidents connected wilh the Plots for Stafford's 
 Rescue, illustrating Pym's Character . .193 
 
 Army Plot ; Effects of Pym's Speech . . .194 
 . (9th of May.) The King signs the Bill of Attain- 
 der against Slrafford 194 
 
 Pym's Speech justifying the Impeachment and 
 Detention of Laud ..... 195-197 
 
 This Speech remarkable for the absence of all 
 Sectarian Intolerance 197 
 
 Review of the Times, and Position of the leading 
 Men 198 
 
 Abolition of the Star Chamber and High Commis- 
 sion Courts ....... 199 
 
 The " Root and Branch" Petition revived in the 
 House of Commons 199 
 
 Bishops' Votes ; Division between the Lords and 
 Commons ........ 199 
 
 Debates on the Bill for the Extirpation of Epis- 
 copacy 200 
 
 Extract from Mr. Pym's Speech pointing out the 
 Propriety of impeaching the thirteen Prelates 
 who had been most active in framing the Can- 
 ons 200-202 
 
 The King's Visit to Scotland ; Purposes of this 
 Journey ; narrowly and jealously watched by 
 the Patriots 202 
 
 (9th of September.) Adjournment of Parliament 203 
 
 Increasing Popularity of Pym .... 203 
 
 Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlile . . . 203 
 
 Pym's Movements during the short Recess of Par- 
 liament 203 
 
 Intrigues of Charles I. in Scotland . . . 204 
 
 (20th of October.) Reassembling of Parliament 204 
 
 " The Incident" 205 
 
 Pym reports the Proceedings of the Committee 
 during the Recess 205 
 
 Extracts from the Letters of the King to Sir Ed- 
 ward Nicholas 205 
 
 The Irish Rebellion ; cold and laconic Remark of 
 the King respecting it 206 
 
 Mr. Pym appears at the Head of the Commons 
 in Conference with the Upper House . . 206 
 
 His grave and condensed Statement of the Dan- 
 ger accruing to the Kingdom from the evil 
 Counsellors of the King 206 
 
 Conspiracies against his Life .... 207 
 
 (22d of November.) Presents to the House the 
 grand Remonstrance on the State of the King- 
 dom 208 
 
 Violent and long Debate on its Introduction . 208 
 
 Tumults in the Houses of Parliament . .208 
 
 (25th of November.) Return of the King . .209 
 The grand Remonstrance presented to him at 
 Hampton Court ...... 209 
 
 Bill in the Lower House for raising Soldiers by 
 Impressment ; Conference between the Lords 
 and Commons 209 
 
 Protest of the Bishops 209 
 
 The Commons debate with closed Doors ; Im- 
 peachment and Committal of the Twelve Bish- 
 ops 209 
 
 1642. Disturbance in London and Westminster . . 209 
 
 (3d of January.) The King attempts to seize the 
 Five leading Members of the Commons . .210 
 
 (4th.) Mr. Pym addresses the Speaker on the 
 
 .. , 
 
 1642. Articles of Impeachment presented against him 
 
 by the King's Attorney ..... 211 
 The Rest of the accused Members rise success- 
 
 ively and refute the alleged Charges against 
 
 themselves ....... 212 
 
 The King enters the House ; his Violence . . 212 
 Rushworth's Account of this extraordinary and 
 
 unparalleled Scene . . . . . .213 
 
 The King proceeds in his Search of the Five 
 
 Members ........ 214 
 
 Petition drawn up in Defence of Pym . . 214 
 The House of Commons complete their open De- 
 
 fiance of Charles by adjourning till the llth of 
 
 January, and ordering the accused Members 
 
 on that Day to attend in their Places at West- 
 
 minster, and resume their public Duties . . 215 
 The King offers to compromise .... 215 
 (llth of January.) Triumph and Return of the 
 
 Five Members ....... 215 
 
 Energetic Measures of the Commons . . . 215 
 Pym's Speech during the Conference with the 
 
 Lords ....... 215-218 
 
 Effect of this Speech ...... 218 
 
 The King's Letter to the Speaker complaining 
 
 ofit ......... 219 
 
 Answer of the Commons ..... 219 
 
 Second Letter from the King ; vigorous Remon- 
 
 strance, recommended in an earnest and forcible 
 
 Speech by Pym, forwarded to Charles . . 220 
 Agitation of the Question of the Command of the 
 
 Militia of the Kingdom ..... 220 
 Resolutions passed by the Commons ; the Militia 
 
 Ordinance denounced as illegal by the King . 221 
 Petition of Sir Edward Dering against the Militia 
 
 Ordinance ; Pym's Speech on this Occasion . 221 
 (22d of August.) Charles I. erects his Standard 
 
 at Nottingham ....... 222 
 
 Pym intrusted with the momentous Duty of 
 
 watching over and conducting the Affairs of 
 
 Parliament and the Executive, while the Ma- 
 
 jority of his Friends were absent in the War . 223 
 Spirit of the Public Journals .... 223 
 Pym presents himself at Guildhall ; his Address 
 
 to the Authorities ..... 223-225 
 The King addresses a Manifesto to the City of 
 
 London in the highest Style of a Conqueror . 225 
 Mr. Pym's Speech commenting on the various Al- 
 
 legations of Charles ...... 225 
 
 The Effect of this Speech strikingly described by 
 
 the Reporter ....... 226 
 
 Discovery and Suppression of Waller's Plot . 226 
 Successes of the King ; he issues a free Pardon to 
 
 all, with some few Exceptions, on the laying 
 
 down of Arms ....... 227 
 
 Impeachment against the Queen . . . 227 
 Extracts from the " Mercurius Aulicus" . . 227 
 Charges against Pym ...... 227 
 
 Voted by the Commons to be false and scandalous 228 
 His Illness ; Death of Hampden .... 228 
 
 The Office of Lieutenant-general of the Ordi- 
 
 nance of the Kingdom conferred on him by the 
 
 House of Commons ...... 229 
 
 1643. (8th of December.) His Death ; Account of his 
 
 last Moments ....... 229 
 
 Respect showed to his Memory by the House of 
 
 Commons ........ 230 
 
 (15th of December.) His Funeral . . .230 
 Extracts from the Funeral Sermon preached by 
 Mr. Marshall ....... 231 
 
 Account of his Family and Descendants . . 232 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. A Discovery of the great Plot for the utter Ruin 
 of the City of London and th^ Parliament ; as 
 it was at large made known by John Pym, Esq., 
 on Thursday, being the 8th of June, 1643, at a 
 Common Hall, and afterward corrected by his 
 own Hand for the Press ..... 234 
 
 R Some Extracts from the Sense of the House, or 
 the Opinion of some Lords and Commons con- 
 cerning the Londoners' Petition for Peace . 236 
 
 C. Certain select Observation* on the several Offices 
 
 and Officers in the Militia of England, with the 
 Power of the Parliament to raise the same as 
 they shall judge expedient, &>:.. collected from 
 the Papers of the late Mr. John Pym, a Member 
 of the House of Commons, writ in the Year 
 1641, MS ........ 237 
 
 D. A Sketch of English Affairs from the Dissolution 
 
 of the Third Parliament to the raising of the 
 King's Standard at Nottingham, from a Speech 
 by Sir Arthur Hazlerig on the 7th of Februa- 
 ry, 16S8 ........ 238 
 
 E. A Declaration and Vindication of John Pym, Esq. 23D
 
 XXXIV 
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 .. 
 
 F. A Narrative of the Disease and Death of John 
 Pym, Esq., late a Member of the honourable 
 House of Commons, attested under the Hands 
 of his Physicians, Chirurgeons, and Apothecary 240 
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 1594-1643. 
 
 Preliminary Remarks 241 
 
 1594. His Birth and Parentage 241 
 
 Tradition respecting his Family . . . .24 
 
 1619. His early Education ; his Marriage . . . 242 
 
 1620. Takes his Seat in Parliament for the Borough of 
 
 Grampound ....... 242 
 
 Attaches himself at once to the popular Party . 242 
 
 Makes himself a prominent Member of the famous 
 Glanville Committee, in the first Parliament of 
 Charles ........ 242 
 
 His Opposition to the proposed Loan to the King 243 
 
 Committed to a close and rigorous Imprisonment 
 in the Gate-house 243 
 
 Returned for the Borough of Wendover, and takes 
 his Seat in the celebrated Third Parliament . 243 
 
 Achieves the entire Confidence of the popular 
 Party, and takes Part in the Preparation of the 
 Petition of Rights 243 
 
 Intrusted with the Guardianship of Eliot's two 
 Sons during his Imprisonment .... 244 
 
 Extracts from his Correspondence with Eliot du- 
 ring his Imprisonment in the Tower . 244-247 
 
 His Letter in Allusion to Eliot's younger Son, 
 and to the Passages of the " Monarchy of Man," 
 forwarded for his Perusal .... 244 
 
 His Criticism on the " Monarchy of Man," illus- 
 trating his literary Taste and Skill . . . 245 
 
 His last Letter, a noble Compliment to the Ge- 
 nius of Eliot 247 
 
 Melancholy Progress of public Affairs ; Hampden 
 becomes one of the acknowledged Leaders of 
 the People 247 
 
 1635. His Opposition to the Payment of Ship-money . 247 
 
 1636. Sir Peter Temple, High Sheriff of Bucks, sum- 
 
 moned before the Council-table for his Default 
 of Arrears ; his Letter to his Mother an Illus- 
 tration of the Occasion and the Time . . 247 
 
 Hampden's Trial 248 
 
 Returned Member for Buckinghamshire ; has left 
 
 no Record of his Eloquence behind him . . 248 
 Clarendon's Account of him at this momentous 
 
 Period 248 
 
 Zeal with which he applied himself to the Bu- 
 siness Affairs of this Parliament . . . 249 
 His Letter to the Archbishop of York . . . 249 
 Is again returned for Buckinghamshire ; his sec- 
 ond Marriage 249 
 
 Retires from the Division on the Attainder of 
 
 Lord Strafford 250 
 
 His Conduct on that Attainder discussed . . 250 
 Hampden the first who dared to anticipate a 
 broader Field of Warfare than the Floor of the 
 House of Commons, and to prepare himself for 
 
 a more real Struggle 251 
 
 An earnest Promoter of the grand Remonstrance 
 
 and of the anti-episcopal Measures . . . 251 
 His Speech on the Morning after the Impeach- 
 ment of the Five Members .... 251 
 Mr. Southey's Opinion of this Speech refuted . 252 
 Buckinghamshire Petition in Defence of Hampden 253 
 Commencement of the Civil War ; Hampdeu sub- 
 scribes 2000 to the Wants of the Parliament, 
 and accepts the Commission of a Colonel in the 
 
 Parliamentarian Army 253 
 
 Divisions of th# Parliamentarian Army . . 253 
 
 The King's Forces 255 
 
 Occasional Skirmishes on both Sides . . . 255 
 1642. (23d of October.) Battle of EdgehUl ; Address of 
 
 the King to his Officers 256 
 
 Both Sides claim the Victory ; Hampden's Letter 
 
 ta the Lieutenants of Buckinghamshire . . 256 
 Reverses of the Parliamentarians . . . 257 
 Close of the first Year of the War ; brilliant Suc- 
 cesses of Hampden*, and great Opportunities 
 
 lost by Essex 257 
 
 Extract from the " Mercurius Aulicus" . . 258 
 Vile Insinuations against Hampden's Honesty 
 
 and Virtue 258 
 
 Successes of the Royalists 258 
 
 Serious Discontents in the Parliamentarian Re- 
 giments 258 
 
 Wise Measures of Hampden .... 259 
 Receives his Death Wound .... 259 
 A true Relation of this Affair, abridged from the 
 King's Collection of Pamphlets . . .260 
 
 A. IX Page 
 
 1642. Letter of Essex to the Speaker of the House of 
 
 Commons ........ 261 
 
 Extract from one of the Parliament Newspapers 
 
 giving an Account of Hampdeu's Death . .261 
 Extract from the " Weekly Intelligencer" . . 262 
 Lines from an Elegy written by a Friend and Fel- 
 low-soldier of Hampdeu's .... 263 
 
 His Character 264 
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 1612-1662. 
 1612. His Birth and Parentage 265 
 
 A brief Review of the chief Incidents of the Life 
 of Sir Henry Vane the Elder . . . .265 
 
 Early Education of Sir Henry Vane . . . 266 
 
 Becomes a Gentleman-Commoner of Magdalen 
 Hall ; visits Geneva 266 
 
 Returns to England ; his Prejudice and Bitterness 
 against the Church ; rebuked by the Bishop of 
 London 266 
 
 The opening Passages of his Life decisive eviden- 
 ces of his Greatness ...... 266 
 
 Vane announces his Determination to leave his 
 Country, and seek the Liberty of Conscience 
 denied him here, in the New World beyond the 
 Waters of the Atlantic 267 
 
 Interest and Curiosity excited throughout Europe 
 by the Progress of Colonization in America . 267 
 
 Vane embarks for America ; characteristic Cir- 
 cumstance on board the Passage Ship . . 267 
 
 1635. Arrives at Boston 268 
 
 (3d of March.) Admitted to the Freedom of Mas- 
 sachusetts ....... 268 
 
 1636. Elected Governor of the Colony ; Detail of his 
 
 short Administration 268 
 
 Difficulties which he had to contend with even 
 before a single Act of his Government was . 
 known 268 
 
 His Measure for the Prevention of the Evils ari- 
 sing from the Number of foreign Vessels in the 
 Harbour 269 
 
 Incident of his Government furnishing a striking 
 Illustration of his own Character, no less than 
 the Character of the Men he had to deal with, 
 and who were necessarily associated with him 
 in the Government 269 
 
 He summons the Officers of the British Vessels 
 in the Port to a Conference with himself and 
 the Magistrates of the Colony . . . . 269 
 
 The Conference reopened the following Day with 
 greater Violence 270 
 
 The Case and its Result submitted to the Consid- 
 eration of the Clergy 270 
 
 Commencement of that Hostility which ultimate- 
 ly brought his Administration to a close ; Ex- 
 . tracts from Sikes's Tribute to his Friend . 270 
 
 His great Influence with the People of the Colony 
 enables him for some time to withstand effect- 
 ually the Hostility of its Chiefs ... 271 
 
 Commencement of Occurrences which led to the 
 PequotWar 27 
 
 The Antinomian Controversy . . . .27 
 
 Mrs. Anne Hutchinson ; her Arrival in Boston . 272 
 
 Her uncontrolled and irresistible Influence upon 
 the whole Community 272 
 
 Accused of Heresy ; Vane interferes ; the ever 
 
 fillant and generous Defender of the Rights of 
 aith and Conscience 27! 
 
 Her Doctrines explained 273 
 
 Many of her Doctrines become the ruling Princi- 
 ple of the Life and the Faith of Vane . . 274 
 
 Description of the Divisions and conflicting Par- 
 ties in Christendom, quoted by Sikes from one 
 of Vane's religious Essays .... 275 
 
 His Advocacy of Mrs. Hutchinson only in accord- 
 ance with the Principles which governed every 
 Passage in his Life 276 
 
 Winthrop elected Governor, and Vane and his 
 Friends left out of Office 27 
 
 His Controversy with Vane . . . . 2i7 
 
 This Discussion only to be alluded to here in so 
 far as it illustrates the Character of Vane as a 
 Statesman 277 
 
 1637. Extracts from Vane's Answers to Winthrop's 
 
 " Defence of an Order of the Court, explaining 
 its Intent, and illustrating its Equity" . 277, 278 
 
 (August.) Vane embarks for England . . 278 
 
 His Letters to his old and active Enemy, Win- 
 throp 279 
 
 Brief Review of his colonial Residence and Ad- 
 ministration 280 
 
 His Marriage with Frances, Daughter of Sir 
 Christopher Wray 280
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 A.D. Page 
 
 1640. (April.) Returned Member of Parliament for the 
 
 Borough of Kingston-upou-Hull . . .28 
 
 Appointed Treasurer of the Navy . . .28' 
 
 Receives the Dignity of Knighthood from the 
 Hands of Charles I. 28 
 
 (1st of November.) Again elected Member for 
 the Borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, and takes 
 his Seat at Westminster as a Member of the 
 memorable Long Parliament . . . .281 
 
 His Conduct in the Affair of Lord Strafford's 
 Trial 281 
 
 Distinguishes himself in all Matters of religious 
 Reform ; one of the greatest Supporters of the 
 "Root and Branch" Petition against Prelacy , 282 
 
 Reappointed Treasurer of the Navy by the Par- 
 liament ; memorable Circumstance in connex- 
 ion with this Reappointment .... 28! 
 
 Severe Reverses suffered by the Parliament du- 
 ring the second Year of the Civil War . . 281 
 
 Fervour and Determination of the Adherents of 
 the Parliament 283 
 
 1643. (July.) The Parliament negotiate with the 
 
 Scots; four Commissioners appointed; Vane 
 principally confided in 284 
 
 Clarendon's Description of this Embassy , 
 
 Serious Difficulty occurs in Vane's Departure from 
 London 284 
 
 His Arrival in Edinburgh ; " a solemn League 
 and Covenant effected" 284 
 
 The treacherous Intrigues of the Duke of Hamil- 
 ton foiled on this remarkable Occasion by Vane's 
 Article respecting Religion .... 285 
 
 (17th of August.) The solemn League and Cov- 
 enant voted by the Legislature and the Assem- 
 bly of the Church at Edinburgh . . . 285 
 
 Vane exposed to a more violent Hatred from the 
 Royalists than he had yet experienced . . 285 
 
 Commencement of his Intimacy with the Marquis 
 of Argyle ........ 
 
 (25th of September.) The solemn League and 
 Covenant adopted in England .... 286 
 
 1644. The Opening of the Campaign strengthened by 
 
 the Accession of the Army from Scotland . 286 
 Vane in the Camp of Manchester . . . 266 
 Remonstrance and Discontent of the Presbyte- 
 rians in the Debates in the House of Commons 287 
 Peculiar religious Opinions of Sir Henry Vane . 287 
 Extract from his " Retired Man's Meditations" . 287 
 A portion of his Prayer the Night before his Death 288 
 Different Opinions respecting his religious Opin- 
 ions 289 
 
 Extracts from his religious Essays . . . 290 
 
 State of Parties 293 
 
 Treaty of Uxbridge 294 
 
 The King's Letter to the Queen .... 294 
 Proceedings of the Parliament .... 295 
 The Self-denying Ordinance .... 295 
 
 The New Model 295 
 
 A second Self-denying Ordinance transmitted to 
 
 the Lords .296 
 
 Forces of the Parliament and of the King . . 296 
 
 Battle of Naseby 297 
 
 Defeat of the Royalists the first Result of Vane's 
 Policy in the Matter of the Self-denying Ordi- 
 nance and the New Model .... 298 
 Vane directs his Attention to the State of the 
 
 Representation in the House of Commons . 298 
 Cromwell's Letter to the Parliament . . . 299 
 Charles endeavours to negotiate with the Parlia- 
 ment 299 
 
 Origin of Vane's Conversion to Republicanism . 300 
 Extract from his Essay on Government . . 300 
 Petition secretly got up by the Presbyterians in 
 
 the Name of the City carried into Parliament . 302 
 Mr. Godwin's Description of the Statesmen that 
 
 flourished at this Time 302 
 
 Vane's Position that of the greatest Difficulty . 303 
 Whitelocke's Description of the Troops raised by 
 
 Cromwell 303 
 
 Disgraceful London Riots in Favour of the Pres- 
 byterians 303 
 
 Vane in Fairfax's Camp at Hounslow . . .303 
 Flight of the King from Hampton Court . . 304 
 
 1648. Treaty at the Isle of Wight arranged . . 304 
 Result of the Treaty ; Debate in the House of 
 
 Commons on the Subject ..... 304 
 
 Speech of Sir Henry Vane 304 
 
 Pride's Purge ; Vane refusing to share in a Tri- 
 umph obtained by such Means, retires to Raby 305 
 
 1649. (26th of February.) Leaves his Retirement and 
 
 again joins his old Friends and Associates . 305 
 Elected one of the Members of the Council of 
 State ; refuses to take the Oath expressing Ap- 
 probation of the King's Trial and Execution . 306 
 
 A.D. pjgo 
 
 1649. Proceedings of the Council of State ; Bradshaw 
 
 elected President of the Council . . . 306 
 Milton made Secretary to the Council for Foreign 
 
 Tongues . . 308 
 
 Question considered in the Council the Dismis- 
 sion of the present Parliament, and the sum- 
 moning of another ...... 306 
 
 Objects of Vane ; the Administration of a State 
 without the Intervention of a Sovereign and a 
 Court, and the free and full Toleration of all 
 Modes of religious Worship and Opinion . 307 
 Steps taken to strengthen the present Parliament 308 
 Temporary Arrangement effected . . . 308 
 
 1650. Close of the first Year of the Commonwealth ; 
 
 Reduction of the Rebellion in Ireland . .308 
 Trial and Acquittal of Lilburne .... 309 
 Vane takes his Seat in the second Year's Council 
 of State ; gradual Construction of the Naval 
 
 Administration 309 
 
 Excellence of the Administration ; System of the 
 
 Commonwealth . 309 
 
 Fairfax resigns the Commander-in-chiefship . 309 
 
 1651. Battle of Worcester . . . . . . 309 
 
 The restless Movements again resumed in the 
 
 House of Commons on the Question of Dissolu- 
 tion and a new House 309 
 
 (15th of May.) A Committee appointed to take 
 the Subject into Consideration . . . 309 
 
 1652. (24th of September.) The Subject again discuss- 
 
 ed in the House 310 
 
 Incorporation of Scotland with the English Legis- 
 lature 310 
 
 Speech of Sir Henry Vane on the Subject of the 
 
 Union 310 
 
 His unparalleled Efforts to increase the Navy . 312 
 Sonnet addressed to him by Milton . . . 312 
 
 1653. His Exertions to avert the Despotism of Cromwell 313 
 Cromwell's Plan for dissolving the Parliament . 313 
 (20th of April.) Vane hurries down to the House, 
 
 to make a last Effort to sustain the Republic . 314 
 Cromwell with an armed Force dissolves the Par- 
 liament 314 
 
 Cromwell arrives at Whitehall the absolute Dic- 
 tator of three Kingdoms ; Vane at his private 
 
 Home, a private Man 315 
 
 Brief Review of the Proceedings of the Long Par- 
 liament 315 
 
 Provisions of the Bill orfwhich Vane was content 
 
 to rest his Case with the People and Posterity 316 
 'Vane, a few Days after the Usurpation, settles 
 
 quietly at Raby Castle 317 
 
 Proceedings of Cromwell 318 
 
 Vane publishes his "Retired Man's Meditations" 318 
 Enters the Field after his noble Fashion against 
 the Dictator of the Commonwealth ; Extracts 
 from his Political Treatises .... 319 
 " England's Remembrancer" published ; Vane 
 
 summoned before the Council .... 320 
 (21st of August.) Appears before the Council . 320 
 (9th of September.) Sent a Prisoner to the Isle 
 
 of Wight 321 
 
 1656. (31st of December.) Is Released . . .321 
 Measures adopted to involve his Estates in the 
 Meshes of the Law 321 
 
 1658. (3d of September.) Death of Cromwell . . 321 
 
 1659. (27th of January.) Writs for a Parliament issued 
 
 by the Council of his Son and Successor Rich- 
 ard Cromwell 321 
 
 Extraordinary and extreme Measures to prevent 
 the Election of Sir Henry Vane . . . 322 
 
 Vane once more takes his Seat in the House of 
 Commons 322 
 
 (9th of February.) His Speech during the De- 
 bate on the Question of the Recognition of 
 Richard Cromwell 322 
 
 The Republicans beaten ; the Government vested 
 in a single Person 324 
 
 (18th of February.) Vane again addresses the 
 House on this Point 324 
 
 (21st of February.) His next Effort against Rich- 
 ard Cromwell, aimed at him through his Ad- 
 ministration 325 
 
 His Speech on the Proposition of sending as much 
 Shipping and Forces as might be necessary to 
 .promote the Success of a Mediation in the Af- 
 fairs of the Kings of Sweden and Denmark . 325 
 
 Effect produced by this Speech ; its Recommend- 
 ation most subtilely and effectively aimed . 326 
 
 (1st of March.) His Speech during the Debate 
 on the famous " Petition and Advice" . . 327 
 
 (9th of March.) Directs his Assaults against the 
 Scotch and Irish Nominees .... 328 
 
 His Speech on the Presentation of the Petition 
 from seventy Royalist Prisoners, who had some
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 A.D. Page 
 
 1659. Years before sent to Barbadoes and sold as 
 Slaves 328 
 
 Extraordinary Party formed without the Doors of 
 the House ; Richard Cromwell attempts to dis- 
 solve the Parliament 328 
 
 They debate with closed Doors . . . .32 
 Vane addresses the Speaker .... 329 
 Formal Abdication of Richard Cromwell ; Re- 
 suscitation of the famous Long Parliament ; 
 Administration of the Government for a short 
 Period on Republican Principles . . . 329 
 Rapid Sketch of the general Features of Vane's 
 Conduct before his Arrest .... 329 
 
 1660. RESTORATION. (July.) Arrested at Hampstead, 
 
 and flung into the Tower .... 330 
 Debates in the Commons on the Act of Indemnity 330 
 Vane removed to a solitary Castle on one of the 
 
 Isles of Scilly 330 
 
 Extracts from his religious Works written during 
 
 his Imprisonment 331 
 
 1662. (7th of March.) His Letter to his Wife . .332 
 Removed to the Tower of London, the Grand Jury 
 having found a Bill against him as a false 
 
 Traitor 333 
 
 (2d of June.) Arraigned before the Court of 
 
 King's Bench 333 
 
 The Indictment read to him twice in English . 333 
 Refused the Assistance of Counsel . . . 333 
 
 His Address to his Judges 333 
 
 Before resuming his Seat once more claims the 
 Benefit of Counsel ; refused ; brought up to 
 
 Trial 334 
 
 Substance of the Evidence in Support of the 
 
 Prosecution 334 
 
 Sir Henry Vane called upon for his Defence . 334 
 Extracts from this immortal Defence, in which 
 he illustrated the emphatic Differences which 
 separated his Case from that of almost every 
 other Supporter of the Cause .... 335 
 Proves by a few Witnesses the utter Falsehood 
 
 of much of the Crown Evidence . . . 336 
 A Verdict of Guilty found against him ; carried 
 
 back to the Tower 336 
 
 The King's Letter to Clarendon the Day after 
 
 Vane's Trial 337 
 
 (llth of June.) Vane brought up to receive his 
 
 Sentence . 337 
 
 His Reasons why Sentence of Death should not 
 
 be passed upon him 337 
 
 Sentenced to be executed on Tower Hill . . 339 
 Passages from his Prayer with his Family the 
 
 Night before his Execution .... 339 
 His Conversation with the Sheriff the Morning 
 
 of his Execution 340 
 
 His triumphal Progress from the Tower to the 
 
 Scaffold 340 
 
 His Address to the People 341 
 
 His Execution ; Remark of Sikes on this infamous 
 
 Murder 342 
 
 His eldest Son sworn into William's Privy Coun- 
 cil at the Revolution of 1688, which banished 
 forever from England the detested Family of 
 the Stuarts 342 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. A Healing Question propounded and resolved, 
 upon Occasion of the late public and seasona- 
 ble Call to Humiliation, in order to Love and 
 Union among the honest Party, and with a De- 
 sire to apply Balm to the Wound before it be- 
 come incurable 343 
 
 B. The People's Case stated 347 
 
 C. Vanity of Vanities, or Sir Harry Vane's Picture 351 
 
 D. Sir Harry Vane's Speech at a Committee for the 
 
 Bill against Episcopal Government, June llth, 
 1641 351 
 
 E. A Letter from a Person of Quality to a Relation 
 
 of Sir Harry Vane, a Week after the Execution 352 
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 16021660. 
 
 1602. His Birth and Parentage 353 
 
 His early Education 353 
 
 1619. The Degree of Bachelor of Arts conferred on him 
 
 by the University of Oxford .... 353 
 
 His Marriage 353 
 
 Anecdote of him related by Aubrey . . . 353 
 1640- Chosen to represent the County of Berkshire in 
 
 Parliament 353 
 
 (April.) The Long Parliament summoned ; Mar- 
 ten a second Time returned with Enthusiasm 354 
 
 A.TJ. Page 
 1640. The first who is reported to have avowed Repub- 
 lican Principles 354 
 
 Anecdote relating to this Fact .... 354 
 Clarendon's Imputations on his good Faith re- 
 specting his great political Associates have no 
 
 Warrant or Authority 355 
 
 1640, 1641. He takes a most prominent Part in all the 
 Consultations of the Liberal Leaders, and in 
 all their most memorable Actions . . . 355 
 
 1642. Simple Frame of the first Executive Government 
 
 of the Parliament ; Marten appointed one of 
 the Committee of Safety ..... 355 
 
 A Colonel's Commission granted to him by the 
 Parliament ....... 355 
 
 More successful as a Civilian than a Soldier ; 
 once more at Westminster engaged in fierce 
 Contests and Disputes with the House of Lords 355 
 
 Disputes between the two Houses respecting two 
 young Horses taken out of the King's Stables 
 by a Person of the Name of De Luke . . 356 
 
 Anecdote of Marten, said to belong to this Period, 
 related by Doctor Peter Heylin . . . 356 
 
 1643. (16th of August.) Expelled from the House and 
 
 committed to the Tower ..... 357 
 Discharged after a Fortnight, without paying any 
 
 Fees for his Imprisonment .... 357 
 Contributes out of his own Resources upward of 
 3000 to the parliamentary Commissioners for 
 the Maintenance of the War .... 357 
 During his Absence from the House the Self-de- 
 nying Ordinance debated and passed . . 357 
 
 1646. (16th of January.) A Resolution passed for his 
 
 Reinstatement in the House .... 357 
 Received with an enthusiastic Welcome on re- 
 entering the House of Commons . . . 357 
 His Interference in behalf of Lilburne . . 358 
 
 Anecdotes of his Wit 358 
 
 Case of Judge Jenkins and Sir Francis Butler . 358 
 Humane Interference of Henry Marten . . 359 
 Speech intended to have been spoken by Jenkins 
 
 at the Place of Execution .... 359 
 Another Instance of Marten's humane Interfe- 
 rence in the Case of the Poet Davenant . . 359 
 Strife between the Independents and the Presby- 
 terians ; Marten the most active and perseve- 
 ring of the Opponents of the King . . . 360 
 
 1647. The Scots Commissioners claim the Right of In- 
 
 terference and Dictation in the Terms of Peace 
 proposed to the royal Prisoner . . . 360 
 
 Marten's Argument on this Occasion . . 360, 366 
 
 The Pretences of the Scots and the serious Inva- 
 sions they implied against the newly-achieved 
 Freedom of England ably exposed . . . 361 
 
 The altered Position of the Scots since the Con- 
 clusion of the War exquisitely illustrated in 
 the Answer to their first Argument . . 362 
 
 He describes the wise and tolerant Faith of the 
 Independents with a careless yet noble Sim- 
 plicity 362 
 
 The general Case of the Independents against 
 all their Opponents, whether of England or 
 Scotland, stated with inimitable Ease and 
 Clearness 363 
 
 His Treatment of the fifth and last Argument of 
 the Scots Commissioners .... 36-1 
 
 The Close of this Argument remarkable as illus- 
 trating, wilh superior Force, the Republican 
 Fervour of Marten's Views, the various Wit of 
 his Illustrations, and the Republican Plainness 
 and Strength of his Style .... 365 
 
 Four Bills, imbodying the Conditions of Treaty, 
 sent by Parliament to the King for his Assent 366 
 
 He rejects the Bills of the Parliament, and signs 
 a secret Treaty with the Scots, by which he 
 binds himself to renounce Episcopacy and ac- 
 cept the Covenant in solemn Parliament of 
 both Kingdoms ...... 366 
 
 Commencement of Operations for changing- the 
 Form of Government from a Monarchy into a 
 Republic 366 
 
 Debates on this Subject ; Cromwell's Speech . 366 
 
 Advance of Fairfax upon London : is joined by 
 Marten in his capacity as Colonel . . . 367 
 
 Extracts from Ireton's famous Papers and Re- 
 monstrances to the House of Commons, shown 
 up in behalf of the Army .... 367 
 
 The Parliament renews a friendly Negotiation 
 with the King 368 
 
 He rejects their Proposals with infatuated Scorn 368 
 
 Extracts from these Proposals .... 368 
 
 The Army send up a Remonstrance to the House, 
 calling for the immediate breaking up of the 
 Treaty, and for Justice on the King as the 
 " capital Source of all Grievances" . . . 370
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 XXXVll 
 
 A.D 
 H-47. 
 
 1648. 
 
 1649. 
 
 1650. 
 
 1657- 
 
 I860. 
 
 Pride's Purge . .... 3(0 
 
 (23d of December.) First Step against the Life 
 
 of the King attempted in the House of Com- 
 
 mons ........ 371 
 
 A Committee of Thirty-eight appointed to pre- 
 
 pare Charges against him .... 371 
 Anecdote of Marten's Share in these Deliberations 371 
 (28th of December.) An Ordinance for the King's 
 
 Trial carried into the House of Commons . 371 
 (1st of January.) Charge against the King re- 
 
 ported by the Committee of Thirty-eight . 371 
 (2d of January.) The Ordinance and the Charge 
 
 sent up to the Lords ..... 371 
 (6th of January.) The Ordinance read a third 
 
 time and passed ; the Number of Commission- 
 
 ers named in it a hundred and thirty-five . 372 
 (8th of January.) Proclamation made in West- 
 
 minster Hall by the Sergeant-at-arms of the 
 
 coming Trial of the King .... 372 
 (9th of January.) Report of the Committee for 
 
 the Construction of the Great Seal carried into 
 
 the House of Commons by Henry Marten . 372 
 The Instructions of the Committee adopted, and 
 
 the new Seal ordered to be prepared with all 
 
 convenient Despatch ..... 372 
 (10th of January.) The Commissioners again 
 
 meet; Bradshaw chosen President of the Court 372 
 Counsel for the Prosecution fixed upon ; the 
 
 King brought privately from Windsor to St. 
 
 James's ........ 373 
 
 (20th of January.) Conducted by Colonel Har- 
 
 rison from St. James's to Westminster . . 373 
 The Charge delivered in Writing by Coke, and 
 
 read by the Clerk ...... 374 
 
 The King replies in a grave and collected Man- 
 
 ner ......... 374 
 
 Progress of the Trial ; the Duty of preparing the 
 
 Draught of a final Sentence intrusted to Henry 
 
 Marten ........ 374 
 
 Sentence pronounced on him by Bradshaw . 375 
 Receives the farewell Visit of his Children . 375 
 (29th of January.) The Warrant for his Execu- 
 
 tion signed by the fifty-nine Commissioners . 375 
 Extraordinary scene between Marten and Crom- 
 
 well, said to have occurred on the signing of 
 
 this Warrant ....... 376 
 
 (30th of January.) Execution of the King . 376 
 Its Effect on the Kingdom ..... 377 
 
 The Business of the Commonwealth resumed 
 
 with quiet and resolved Deliberation . . 377 
 A Vote passed in the Commons declaring Monar- 
 
 chy extinguished in England .... 378 
 Marten the most prominent Actor in all the Pro- 
 
 ceedings of the Parliament at this Period . 378 
 (17th of February.) An Executive Council of 
 
 State installed ....... 378 
 
 Proceedings of the Council; Repeal of the Stat- 
 
 ute of Banishment against the Jews . . 378 
 Difficulties which beset the Commonwealth rela- 
 
 ting to the Question of a Dissolution of the 
 
 Parliament ....... 379 
 
 Speech of Marten during the Debate in the House 
 
 of Commons on this Subject .... 379 
 Dissensions in the Army promoted by Lilburne . 379 
 Losses endured by Marten in the Public Service 
 
 taken into consideration by the House of Com- 
 
 mons ........ 380 
 
 One thousand Pounds per Annum settled on him 
 
 by the Parliament ...... 380 
 
 His Disputes with Cromwell .... 380 
 
 Excluded from the Council of State . . .381 
 Instances of his happy Humour during the serious 
 
 Debates of this Period ..... 381 
 His Name again appears in the Council of State 381 
 Last Scene of the Council of State, as described 
 
 by Godwin ; brief and concentrated Remon- 
 
 strance of Bradshaw ..... 381 
 Marten thrown into Prison ..... 382 
 1658. Extracts from Scot's Speeches in Oliver 
 
 Cromwell's last Parliament . . . 3S2, 384 
 Death of Oliver Cromwell ; Resumption of Power 
 
 by the Republicans ...... 384 
 
 Thurloe's Proposition in Richard Cromwell's first 
 
 Parliament ....... 384 
 
 Scot's Speech in Vindication of the Intentions of 
 
 the Long Parliament ..... 385 
 Richard Cromwell driven from the Protectorate ; 
 
 Henry Marten once more takes his Seat in the 
 
 House of Commons ...... 386 
 
 Restoration of Charles II. ; Henry Marten sur- 
 
 renders, and resolves to stand his Trial . . 387 
 (10th of October.) Placed at the Bar of the Old 
 
 Bailey, and required to plead .... 3P7 
 Questions put to him by the Court . . 387 
 
 A.T). Pag 
 
 1660. The Case opened by the Crown Counsel . . 387 
 
 Examination of Witnesses 388 
 
 Sir Purbeck Temple's Evidence .... 388 
 The Solicitor-general addresses the Jury . . 388 
 Marten called upon for his Defence ; he address- 
 es the Court 389 
 
 The Solicitor-general follows in Aggravation of 
 
 the Case 389 
 
 The Lord-chief-baron delivers the Charge ; a 
 
 Verdict of Guilty returned by the Jury . . 389 
 Discussion of the Matter in the House of Com- 
 mons 390 
 
 1660-81. Imprisoned in the Castle of Chepstow, in 
 
 Monmouthshire ...... 390 
 
 Anecdote of his long Imprisonment . . . 390 
 His Death in, the seventy-eighth Year of his Age 391 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 1599-1658. 
 
 1599. (25th of April.) His Birth 392 
 
 His Family 392 
 
 Descended from the Royal Family of the Stuarts 394 
 Amiable Character of his Mother . . . 394 
 Oliver Cromwell baptized in the Parish Church 
 
 of St. John 395 
 
 Marvellous Stories of his Youth . . . . 395 
 Anecdote relative to his first Meeting with 
 
 Charles 1 395 
 
 Singular and awful Incidents connecting his 
 Childhood with the mighty Future that await- 
 ed him 396 
 
 Description of his School Days .... 397 
 
 1616. (23d of April.) Enters Sidney Sussex College as 
 
 a Fellow Commoner ...... 398 
 
 Notice^ of his boyish Irregularities . . . 399 
 
 1617. (June.) Death of his Father, Robert Cromwell 400 
 Enters as a Member of Lincoln's Inn . . . 400 
 Returns to Huntingdon ; his wild, dissolute Char- 
 acter 400 
 
 His Lawsuit with his Uncle, Sir Thomas Steward 401 
 1620. (22d of August.) His Marriage with Elizabeth 
 
 Bourchier 402 
 
 Her amiable Character 403 
 
 Fixes his Residence in his native Town of Hunt- 
 ingdon, and addresses himself to those Studies 
 and Pursuits which were to pave his Way to 
 Greatness 403 
 
 His House becomes notorious as the Refuge of the 
 Nonconformist Ministers ..... 403 
 
 He encourages them in their Opposition, pro- 
 claims their Wrongs, and urges the Necessity 
 of Redress 404 
 
 Dates of the Births of his Children . . . 404 
 1626. (14th of October.) His Letter to Mr. Henry 
 Downtell, of St. John's College, Cambridge, 
 characteristic of his Mind at this Period . . 405 
 1628. (March.) Takes his Seat in the Third Parlia- 
 ment of Charles I., as Member for the Borough 
 of Huntingdon ....... 406 
 
 Is introduced to the House by Hampden . . 406 
 
 His Speech during the Debate in the Case of 
 Main waring 406 
 
 Striking Effect which his Speech created . . 406 
 
 Dissolution of the Parliament ; Cromwell returns 
 to Huntingdon 406 
 
 Appointed Justice of the Peace under the New 
 Charter granted at this Time to the Hunting- 
 don Corporation ...... 407 
 
 1631. Sells his small Patrimony, and removes with his 
 
 Wife and Children to St. Ives . . .407 
 
 Achieves an Influence through the Neighbour- 
 hood, unequalled for Piety and Self-denying 
 Virtue 408 
 
 1635. His Letter to Mr. Stone during his Residence at 
 
 St. Ives 408 
 
 1636. (June.) Removes to the City of Ely on the Death 
 
 of his Uncle, Sir Thomas Steward . . .409 
 
 Appointed to the Trusteeship of some important 
 Charities in the City 409 
 
 Attacked by one of his worst hypochondriacal 
 
 Distempers 409 
 
 1638. (13th of October.) His deeply interesting Letter 
 
 to his Cousin, Mrs. St. John .... 410 
 
 Slight Allusion in this Letter to his domestic Con- 
 cerns ........ 410 
 
 His Eagerness in watching the Progress of Events 
 towards the now inevitable Long Parliament . 411 
 
 Occasion whereof he most skilfully avails himself 
 in furtherance of his eager Hopes and 1 Wishes 411 
 
 Inflames the People everywhere against the 
 greedy Claims of Royalty, and gross Exactions 
 of the Royal Commission . . . . 411
 
 xxxvm 
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1638. 
 
 1640. 
 
 1642. 
 
 1643. 
 1647. 
 
 1643. 
 
 1644. 
 
 1644. 
 
 Completion of the Bedford Level ; popular Dis- 
 
 content ..... . 412 
 
 (November.) Cromwell offers himself as a Can- 
 
 didate for the Representation of Cambridge . 412 
 Is returned after a formidable Opposition by a 
 
 Majority of a single Vote ..... 412 
 (llth of November.) Opening- of the Parliament 413 
 Arrest of the Earl of Strafford . . . .413 
 Sir Philip Warwick's Description of Oliver Crom- 
 
 well at the Beginning of this Parliament . 414 
 Proceedings of the Commons . . . .414 
 Letters of Charles Louis, Prince Elector of the 
 
 Palatinate, to his Mother the Queen of Bohe- 
 
 mia, illustrating the Character and Events of 
 
 the Time ....... .415 
 
 Impoverished State of the Exchequer . . 416 
 Reckless Extravagance of the King . . . 417 
 Passage from Clarendon referring to the latter 
 
 part of this Year . . . . . . 417 
 (12th of November.) Letter of Charles Louis, 
 
 detailing an Interview with his imprisoned Un- 
 
 cle, Charles 1 ........ 418 
 
 Cold and unfeeling Strain of his Letters within 
 
 a Month of his Uncle's Execution . .419 
 Remonstrance of the Commons .... 419 
 Commencement of the Civil War . . . 419 
 Decisive Movements of Cromwell . . 420 
 Organization of his immortal Troop of Iron- 
 
 sides ........ 420 
 
 Excellence of his military Discipline . . . 421 
 Sir Philip Warwick ; his Account of Cromwell's 
 
 Regiment of Ironsides ..... 421 
 Cromwell's last Instruction to this celebrated 
 
 Regiment ........ 422 
 
 Their determined Zeal ..... 422 
 
 Movements of the King's Troops . . . 423 
 Sir Bevil Grenville ; his Letters to his Wife . 424 
 Seizure of Sir Thomas Couisby .... 425 
 
 First pitched Battle between Charles and his 
 
 Subjects ........ 425 
 
 Cromwell's Letter to the Speaker describing 
 
 this Battle ....... 425 
 
 Defeat of the Royalists ..... 425 
 
 Colonel Thornhaugh ; Ireton ; Beginning of his 
 
 Intimacy with Cromwell .... 426 
 Success of the Royal Troops ; Rout of the Par- 
 
 liamentarians at Bradock Down . . . 426 
 Siege of Plymouth ...... 426 
 
 Battle of Lansdowne ...... 427 
 
 The Cause of the Parliament in Danger ; fatal 
 
 Imbecility, and suspected Treachery of Essex ; 
 
 Death of Hampden ...... 427 
 
 Settlement of the Solemn League and Covenant 428 
 Jealousies in the King's Troops .... 428 
 
 Battle of Newbury ...... 428 
 
 Description of this Battle ..... 428 
 
 Lord Falkland slain ; his Character . . . 430 
 Cromwell in Lincolnshire ..... 431 
 
 (9th of October.) Is joined by Fairfax ; his ex- 
 
 traordinary Influence over his determined Iron- 
 
 sides ........ 431 
 
 Close of the Campaign ..... 432 
 
 Cromwell appointed Lieutenant-governor of the 
 
 Isle of Ely ; his Exertions in Cambridge . 432 
 Parliamentary Commission for effecting a Reform 
 
 in the Universities of Cambridge . . 432 
 
 (19th of January.) Commencement of the tre- 
 
 mendous Campaign of 1644 ... . 433 
 Distribution of the Forces of the Parliament and 
 
 of the King . . . . . . 433 
 
 The Royalists defeated at Yprk . " . . 433 
 
 Siege of York ; Movements of the Midland and 
 
 Western Forces ...... 434 
 
 (4th of June.) The King's Letter to his Neph- 
 
 ew, Prince Rupert ...... 434 
 
 Admirable military Movements by the King . 435 
 The Parliamentarians under Waller defeated on 
 
 the Banks of the Charwell .... 435 
 Quarrel between Prince Rupert and the Marquis 
 
 of Newcastle ....... 435 
 
 (2d of July.) Battle of Marston Moor ; Night of 
 
 the Battle ....... 435 
 
 Nearly Half of the entire Kingdom now hopeless- 
 
 ly lost to Charles 1 ....... 437 
 
 Cromwell wounded ; his Letter to his Brother- 
 
 in-law after this Victory ..... 437 
 Rise of the Independents ; their Aversion to Pres- 
 
 byterianiem as well as Prelacy . . . 438 
 Milton's " Areopagitica" ..... 438 
 Condition of the Parliamentary Army and its 
 
 Chiefs ; the King proposes a Negotiation . 438 
 High-minded Policy of the Commons ; Manches- 
 
 ter and Cromwell, Essex and Waller, march 
 
 against the King ...... 439 
 
 A.D. Pago 
 
 1644. (27th of October.) Serious Fight between the 
 
 Royalists and Parliamentarians at Deiming- 
 
 ton 439 
 
 Cromwell seeks Counsel and Co-operation from 
 
 the Genius of the Younger Vane . . .440 
 Resolves to venture a decisive Stroke against the 
 Presbyterian Councils and their Favourers in 
 
 the Parliamentary Army 440 
 
 The first startling Exhibition of the legislative 
 
 Influence of the Independents .... 440 
 Eve and Origin of Cromwell's Greatness and In- 
 fluence as a Politician 440 
 
 Cowley's " Vision," Extracts from . . . 441 
 His Division of the Men whom Cromwell deceived 441 
 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston 442 
 
 Bishop Burnet ; his Account of Cromwell's Con- 
 duct in the House of Commons . . . 442 
 Extract from Hollis's Memoirs .... 442 
 Craft and Duplicity of Cromwell . . . 443 
 His Conversation with Ludlow . . ... 443 
 He endeavours to accomplish a Reconciliation be- 
 tween the Presbyterians and Independents . 444 
 His Character that of a deliberate Usurper . 445 
 Extract from Ludlow at the lime of Cromwell's 
 
 Return from his Government in Ireland . . 445 
 Enthusiastic Democracy of the Army, and its 
 
 fiercely Republican Officers .... 446 
 The Army the first Power of the State . . 446 
 Major-general Harrison ; his Reasons for joining 
 
 Cromwell 446, 447 
 
 Extract from Bishop Burnet illustrating Crom- 
 well's Character 447 
 
 Major Streater, Colonel Okey .... 447 
 Cromwell's Letter to the Governor of the Castle 
 
 of Edinburgh 447 
 
 Style adopted towards Cromwell by indifferent 
 Persons, whom he had obliged, or who hoped 
 
 for Favours from him 448 
 
 Straits to which he was reduced on the Eve of 
 
 the Battle of Dunbar 449 
 
 His Letter to Fairfax on his recovering from Ill- 
 ness 44V 
 
 His Letter to Lord Wharton .... 44' 
 
 His Letter to Mr. Cotton, Pastor at Boston ; a 
 striking Illustration of certain eminent Peculi- 
 arities which lay at the very Root of the 
 Strength and Weakness of his Character . 44C 1 
 His Letter to his eldest Daughter, containing 
 several characteristic Points .... 450 
 
 Extracts from Letters of Harrison and Bradshaw 450 
 Anecdote of Cromwell related by VVhitelocke in 
 his " Memorials" ...... 451 
 
 Anecdote of Cromwell related in the Life af Wal- 
 ler 451 
 
 General Affairs of his Household ; his Strictness 
 in religious Observances ...... 452 
 
 Religion with him rather a Matter of Policy than 
 
 Persuasion . . . ..' 452 
 Selection of his Chaplains : ". . . .452 
 
 His remarkable Fondness for Buffoonery . . 452 
 Extract from a Loyalist Pamphlet, entitled " The 
 
 Court and Kitchen of Mrs. Joan Cromwell" . 453 
 Anecdotes of Cromwell related in Whitelocke's 
 
 " Memorials" 453 
 
 General Remarks on his Character and Abilities 
 
 for Statesmanship 454 
 
 His Want of Truth 454 
 
 Close of the Notices of Cromwell's more familiar 
 
 Habits 454 
 
 (23d of November.) Discontent of the House of 
 Commons with the Affair of Dennington Cas- 
 tle ; Cromwell's Speech on this Occasion . 455 
 Lord Manchester's Narrative of this Affair, in the 
 House of Lords . . . . . . 455 
 
 (2d of December.) Measures against Cromwell 455 
 (9th of December.) The Project of the Self-de- 
 nying Ordinance brought forward in the Com- 
 mons ; Cromwell's Speech . . . 45& 
 Progress of this Measure ; its Defeat by the Lords 457 
 
 1645. A second Measure introduced .... 457 
 (3d of April.) Passed into a Law ; Reduction of 
 
 the Army 457 
 
 Sir Thomas Fairfax appointed Commander-in- 
 chief 457 
 
 (10th of June.) Cromwell appointed a Lieuten- 
 ant-general of Cavalry 458 
 
 His Success at Islip Bridge .... 459 
 Successful Movements of the King . . .459 
 Fixes his Headquarters at Daventry . . . 459 
 Movements of Cromwell and Ireton . . . 460 
 (14th of June.) Battle of Naseby . . .460 
 Fortune of the Day turr-ed by Cromwell . . 461 
 Brilliant and decisive Victory of the Parliament- 
 arians 461
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. Page 
 
 1645. Cromwell's Letter to the Speaker of the House 
 
 of Commons after this Victory . . . 461 
 Vigilance of Cromwell ; Leicester retaken . 462 
 
 (4th of August.) Defeat of the Club Men ; Crom- 
 well's Letter to Fairfax oil this Occasion . 462 
 
 Surrender of Bristol 463 
 
 Marvellous Escape of Fairfax and Cromwell . 463 
 Surrender and Capitulation of Winchester to 
 Cromwell's victorious Troops .... 464 
 
 Fall of Basing- 464 
 
 (14th of October.) Cromwell's Letter to the 
 
 Speaker of the House of Commons . . . 464 
 Continued Successes of Fairfax and Cromwell . 465 
 Flight of the King in Disguise from Oxford . 465 
 Cromwell -received in London with extraordinary 
 
 Honours ; enters the House of Commons . 465 
 (1st of December.) The Title and Dignity of 
 Baron of the Kingdom of England conferred on 
 Cromwell 465 
 
 1646. (31st of January.) A Pension of 2500 settled 
 
 on him by the Commons 465 
 
 Negotiations opened with Cromwell by the King ; 
 Stipulations of the Treaty .... 466 
 
 Rejected by Cromwell 466 
 
 Extract from the Memoir prefixed to the State 
 
 Letters of Orrery 467 
 
 Cromwell recommends to the People of England 
 such a Government as the Netherlands' States- 
 General 468 
 
 Flight of the King to Carisbrooke . . . 468 
 Examination of Colonel Robert Hammond at the 
 
 Bar of "the House of Commons . . .468 
 Cromwell's Letters to him in every way charac- 
 teristic of the Writer 468 
 
 Resolution for establishing a Republic in England 
 
 passed by a Majority of 141 to 92 . . . 469 
 Speeches of Cromwell and Ireton . . . 469 
 Startling Effect of this Measure ; Attempt to dis- 
 band the Army . - . i .' . . . 469 
 Rise of the Agitators ...... 469 
 
 Conduct of Cromwell illustrated by a Letter ad- 
 dressed to some Officers iti the Welsh Counties 469 
 
 1648. Presbyterian Invasion by the Covenanters' Army 
 
 of the Scots, and regular Commencement of 
 the Second Civil War . .. ... . 470 
 
 (17th of August.) Battle of Preston : both King- 
 doms thrown into the Hands of the Republicans 470 
 (20th of August.) Cromwell's Letter to the 
 Speaker of the House of Commons ; a most 
 striking Despatch of this Battle . . . 470 
 
 He marches for Scotland 472 
 
 (20th 'of September.) Issues his Proclamation . 472 
 Is received with Enthusiasm in Edinburgh . 472 
 Returns to London ; Death of his eldest Son . 472 
 His Negotiation with Mr. Majof'for the Marriage 
 
 of his Son Richard 473 
 
 Extracts from his private Correspondence . . 473 
 
 1649. (1st of May.) Marriage of his Son Richard to 
 
 Dorothy Major 476 
 
 Mighty Events created and controlled by Crom- 
 well in the Interval comprised by these mar- 
 riage Negotiations ...... 476 
 
 Bishop Burnet's Account of the Sequel of this 
 
 Second Civil War 477 
 
 Anecdote with Reference to a Cousin of Crom- 
 well's 477 
 
 Execution of the King 477 
 
 Charles II. proclaimed 478 
 
 (10th of July.) Cromwell appointed Lieutenant- 
 general and General Governor of Ireland . 478 
 His Letter to Mr. Major . . . . . 478 
 (13lh of August.) His second Letter, just before 
 his Entrance into Dublin .... 479 
 
 His Letter to his Daughter 479 
 
 Farther Extracts from his private Letters from 
 
 Ireland 479 
 
 His Arrival in Dublin 479 
 
 Selects Drogheda for his first Object of Attack . 480 
 (10th of September.) Sends a Summons to the 
 
 Governor to surrender, which is rejected . 480 
 He effects a Breach, and takes the Town by Storm 480 
 His Despatch, describing the desperate Resist- 
 ance of the Enemy . . ... 480 
 His Progress through Ireland in grim and bloody 
 
 Triumph 480 
 
 Opposition offered by Wexford ; another Deluge 
 
 of Blood 480 
 
 Rosse surrenders to him after a Siege of three 
 Days . . . . . . . .481 
 
 1650. Extracts from his Despatches during his terrible 
 
 Irish Government ...... 481 
 
 Siege and Massacre of Wexford .... 481 
 
 Some Glimpses of Cromwell's wiser Policy visible 
 
 in these Despatches 482 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 A.D. Pag 
 
 1650. Last Extract descriptive of some later Incidents 
 
 in the Campaign 483 
 
 Cromwell returns to England; appointed Com- 
 mander-in-chief, and directed to proceed to 
 Scotland to reduce the Rebellion there . . 484 
 
 (23d of July.) Enters Scotland with 11,000 Horse 
 and Foot ; his Proclamations and wise Disci- 
 pline 484 
 
 David Leslie Commander-in-chief of the Scottish 
 Army 484 
 
 (1st of September.) Cromwell enters Dunbar . 485 
 
 (2d of September.) Holds a Council of War ; 
 Battle of Dunbar 485 
 
 (3d of September.) The Parliamentarians gain 
 a decided Victory 486 
 
 Cromwell's Despatch written the Day after the 
 Battle 486 
 
 His Letter to Richard Major at Hursley . . 487 
 
 Farther Extracts from his private Correspond- 
 ence 487 
 
 Successes of Cromwell in Glasgow and Edin- 
 burgh . . .489 
 
 Spends the Winter in polemical Discussions and 
 Correspondence with various Ministers . . 489 
 
 Transports his Army into Fife, and proceeds to- 
 wards Perth, which he captures after a Siege 
 of two Days 489 
 
 Makes Preparations for the Battle of Worcester 48U 
 
 1651. Charles II. proclaimed at Worcester . . . 490 
 Alarm in London ...... 490 
 
 (2d of September.) Cromwell's Preparations 
 
 completed 490 
 
 (3d of September.) Battle of Worcester, signal 
 Defeat of the Royalists, and Triumph of Crom- 
 well 490 
 
 His memorable Letter to the Parliament of Eng- 
 land ' . . . .491 
 
 His Excitement on the Field .... 491 
 
 1652. State of Parties after the Defeat of Worcester . 491 
 Sublime Talents and Energy of the Men who were 
 
 at the Head of Affairs 491 
 
 A Majority of the People still strongly attached 
 to the Forms of Monarchical Government . 491 
 
 The Government of the new Form has now 
 brought to a successful Issiie its Struggle for 
 Existence . . . '. ' . . . . 492 
 
 Cromwell's Despatches read from the Speaker's 
 Chair to the assembled Commons, and from 
 every Chapel in the vast City to its crowded 
 and excited Congregation .... 492 
 
 Extract from one of his Despatches . . . 492 
 
 Vote of the House at this memorable Crisis . 493 
 
 Four of the first Members of the Government ap- 
 
 pointed by the Parliament to meet and con- 
 gratulate Cromwell at Aylesbury, on his Way 
 to the Capital 493 
 
 His slow and triumphant Progress with his Army 
 towards London 493 
 
 Receives the Parliamentary Commissioners at 
 Aylesbury with an Air of Courtesy and Conde- 
 scension, which had a regal Stamp upon it . 494 
 
 Enters London in great Solemnity and Triumph, 
 accompanied by the Four Commissioners of 
 
 Parliament 494 
 
 1652. (16th of September.) Resumes his Parliament- 
 ary Duties by a Revival of the Debate touching 
 a new Representative ..... 494 
 
 (8th of December.) Sudden Death of the gallant 
 and Virtuous Ireton 495 
 
 (10th of December.) Cromwell summons and 
 holds a Meeting at the Speaker's House of those 
 Friends, military and civil, whom he supposes 
 to be well affected towards his own political 
 Views . 493 
 
 Startling Question which he propounds to them 495 
 
 The Conference opened by the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons . . . .-,. . 496 
 
 Discussion of the Question, Whether a Republic 
 or a mixed Monarchical Government would be 
 best to be settled 496 
 
 Different Opinions on the Subject . . .496 
 
 Conclusion of the Conference .... 497 
 
 A Bill passed to limit the Duration of the Parlia- 
 ment to the 3d of November, 1654 . . . 497 
 
 Energy and Excitement of both Parties in the 
 House at this memorable Crisis . . . 497 
 
 Discussion of the Question for the Reduction of 
 the Army 498 
 
 (12th of August.) The Question referred lo 
 Council of State, to give an Account, with al 
 convenient Speed, of the former Vote respect- 
 ing the Retrenchment of the Forces . . 498 
 
 Cromwell declares open War upon the Parlia- 
 ment ... ... 498
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. "" Page 
 
 1652. A Council of Officers held at Whitehall . . 498 
 (13th of August.) A Petition drawn up and pre- 
 sented by them to the Parliament . . . 498 
 
 Insincerity and Selfishness of the Petition . . 499 
 The Petition referred to a Committee . . 499 
 Consideration of the Bill for the Dissolution of 
 the Parliament, and the Provision for future 
 Parliaments in Succession .... 500 
 (8th of November.) Conference between Crom- 
 well and Lord-commissioner Whitelocke . 500 
 Whitelocke's Account of their private Discourse 500 
 Conclusion of their Conference . . . .501 
 Cromwell turns back to his Military Council . 503 
 Contest between the Chiefs of the Common- 
 wealth and their too powerful Servant . . 504 
 Grand Position assumed by the Republican Lead- 
 ers in closing their War with the Dutch . 504 
 The sacrilegious Purposes of Cromwell suspend- 
 
 , ed for a brief Space 505 
 
 The last great Effort of the Dutch to recover the 
 
 Supremacy of the Sea ..... 505 
 Events tend to establish more decisively than 
 
 ever the internal Power of the Commonwealth 505 
 Cromwell and his Officers endeavour to calum- 
 niate the Parliament, and pronounce them 
 guilty of those Crimes whereof themselves 
 
 were faulty 506 
 
 Proceedings of the Parliament .... 506 
 Deceit and Duplicity of Cromwell . . . 506 
 Sudden Change in the Policy of the Parliament 506 
 Fierce Contempt exhibited by Cromwell for the 
 
 popular Pretences on which he first rested . 507 
 Measures adopted by him for establishing the 
 
 Basis of his Tyranny 508 
 
 Designs to prepare the Minds of the common 
 People by the. Use of his favourite Engine, 
 Fanaticism 508 
 
 1653. (19th of April.) Last Meeting of Cromwell's 
 
 Council 509 
 
 Proceedings of the Council .... 509 
 
 Measures of the Parliament .... 510 
 
 Cromwell's violent Disputes with the Parliament 510 
 Expels the Members by Violence . . . 511 
 Becomes virtually Lord of England, and stands 
 with a heavier and more daring Foot upon her 
 Neck than had ever been placed there by any 
 of her Kings . . . . . . .511 
 
 His Reception by the Council of State . . 512 
 Publishes his Declaration of the " Grounds and 
 
 Reasons for dissolving the Parliament'' . . 512 
 A second and third Declaration published . . 515 
 Sympathies divided between the Old and New 
 
 Parliaments 516 
 
 Cromwell's Speech in Explanation of his Conduct 516 
 Singular and incomprehensible Style of his 
 
 " Justification" 517 
 
 Discontent of the Members at the abrupt Disso- 
 lution of the Parliament 520 
 
 Political Struggles of a great Character for the 
 
 Future rather than the Present . . . 520 
 State of Parties at this Period . . . .521 
 Fatal and disastrous Etfect produced on all by 
 
 the forcible Dispersion of the Long Parliament 522 
 Position of the Statesmen after the Action of the 
 
 20th of April 523 
 
 Necessity a favourite Plea with the Partisans of 
 
 Cromwell 523 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson's Description of the Condition 
 
 of the Commonwealth on the Eve of its Fall . 523 
 Ludlow's Description of the disinterested and im- 
 partial Character of the Long Parliament . 523 
 Brief Sketch of the Measures by which the 
 Statesmen of the Long Parliament made them- 
 selves so famous ...... 525 
 
 Financial Proceedings ..... 525 
 
 System of Sequestration ..... 526 
 
 Various Measures of Law Reform . . . 527 
 Abolition of the Court of Wards . . .527 
 System of Religious Toleration .... 528 
 
 A Bill passed with a View to correct certain Ex- 
 travagances in the Professors of Religion . 528 
 Administrative Genius of the Statesmen of the 
 
 Commonwealth 529 
 
 List of the Names of the Statesmen of the Com- 
 monwealth 532 
 
 State of the Commonwealth at the Time of its 
 
 Overthrow by the Violence of Cromwell . 533 
 Commencement of the Reign of Saiuts . . 533 
 Warlike Construction of the new Council of 
 
 State 533 
 
 Movement of the Royalists 534 
 
 Cromwell seeks the Interests and Friendship of 
 
 Cardinal de Retz . .... 534 
 State of Parties 534 
 
 A. D. Page 
 
 1653. The Spirit of Confusion alone predominant . 535 
 A Parliament called ; the Barbone Parliament . 536 
 
 Test to the Members 537 
 
 General Characteristics of the great Majority of 
 
 the Members 538 
 
 Monk selected by Cromwell to supersede Blake 
 
 in the naval Command 539 
 
 Antony Ashley Cooper and George Monk . . 539 
 (4th of July.) Speech of the Protector on the 
 
 Opening of the Barbone Parliament . .539 
 He deprecates the Proceedings of the late Par- 
 liament 540 
 
 1654. His elaborate and worthless Attempt to vindicate 
 
 the Dispersion of the Long Parliament . .540 
 
 Etfect produced 543 
 
 Close of his memorable Address .... 544 
 
 His Instrument of Government .... 544 
 
 His Resignation accompanied with all the Forms 
 
 that could declare it final and irrevocable . 545 
 Characteristic Incident recorded by Lord Leices- 
 ter in his Journal ...... 545 
 
 Cromwell's favourite Policy, to win open Trust 
 
 and pay it back with secret Treachery . . 545 
 Meeting of the Convention in the Old Parliament 
 House at Westminster ; Mr. Francis Rouse 
 elected Speaker ...... 545 
 
 Cromwell invited to assist in their Deliberations 
 
 as Member of the House 546 
 
 (12th of July.) Proceedings of the Parliament 
 or Convention ....... 546 
 
 First Movement in the House against Tithes . 547 
 (20th of July.) Eleven important Questions re- 
 ferred to as many Committees . . . 547 
 Incidents which marked the Interval between the 
 Issue of the Writs and their Meeting in Obe- 
 dience to them, while the Military Council 
 held supreme Command ..... 547 
 
 Brief Review of the Dutch War . . .548 
 Naval Victory of Monk ; Admiral Dean killed . 548 
 (22d of June.) Arrival of the Ambassadors from 
 
 Holland to negotiate for Peace . . . 548 
 Cromwell receives the Dutch Delegates with a 
 
 haughty Pride ; refuses their Propositions . 549 
 Another naval Victory for England . . . 549 
 Monk issues a memorable and characteristic Or- 
 der through his Ships 550 
 
 (31st of July.) Great naval Victory ; Van Tromp, 
 
 the Dutch Admiral, killed .... 550 
 Reception of the English Admirals in London . 551 
 
 Case of Lilburne 551 
 
 His Reappearance in England : his Arrest . 551 
 Endeavours to obtain a Respite of his Trial till 
 
 the Meeting of the Convention . . . 552 
 Arraigned at the Sessions on the capital Charge 
 of having violated the Statute of his Banish- 
 ment 552 
 
 His Trial and Acquittal 553 
 
 His Trial a striking Characteristic of the Time 553 
 
 Royalist Conspiracy 554 
 
 Cromwell's Letter to his Son-in-law Fleetwood 554 
 Whitelocke sent in the Character of Ambassador 
 
 Extraordinary to the Swedish Queen Christina 554 
 Proceedings of the Parliament of Saints . . 555 
 Their War with the Lawyers ; Act respecting 
 Marriages ....... 555 
 
 A Bill introduced for Relief of Creditors and poor 
 
 Prisoners for Debt 555 
 
 Brief Sketch of its Provisions .... 556 
 List of the Enactments of general Government 
 
 and Policy passed by the Convention . . 556 
 A Bill brought in, read and debated on, for the 
 uniting of Scotland to the Commonwealth of 
 England as a Part of it, with equal Privileges 558 
 Declaration thai the Court of Chancery should 
 
 be totally taken away and abolished . . 558 
 Question how to dispose of the Causes actually 
 pending in the Court, and to substitute a less 
 objectionable Tribunal in its Place . . . 558 
 Second great Vote for a general Revision and 
 new modelling of the whole Body of the Law . 559 
 
 Debates on the Subject 560 
 
 Third Vote involving the Subject of Presentations 
 to Benefices ....... 561 
 
 Third and last Vote involving the much-tried 
 
 Question of Tithes 561 
 
 Debate on this Subject 561 
 
 Disputes in the Parliament .... 562 
 1654. (16th of December.) Cromwell inaugurated 
 
 Lord-Protector 564 
 
 The Instrument of Government read aloud by one 
 
 of the Clerks of the Council .... 565 
 Triennial Parliaments established . . . 566 
 Cromwell's first Act is to revive the Forms of 
 Monarchy 56ft
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 xli 
 
 A.D. Page 
 
 1654. Completes the Arrangement of his Council, as 
 
 named in the Instrument of Government . 567 
 Extravagant Rumours in London . . . 568 
 Proceedings of the Council .... 568 
 Commissioners appointed to approve of public 
 
 Preachers 568 
 
 Persons who suffered under this Ordinance . 569 
 Imprisonment of Feakes and Powell . . . 569 
 Henry Cromwell sent to Ireland . . . 569 
 Monk's successful Mission to Scotland ; the Roy- 
 alist Movement under Middleton vanquished . 570 
 Conciliatory Measures of Cromwell towards the 
 Presbyterians ....... 570 
 
 His Measures with Regard to the Royalists . 571 
 Conspiracy against his Life ; Proclamation of 
 
 Charles Stuart 571 
 
 Trial and Execution of the Conspirators . .572 
 Final Settlement of Portuguese Treaty; Trial 
 and Execution of Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to 
 the Portuguese Ambassador .... 573 
 Cromwell's manner of receiving the Foreign Am- 
 bassadors and Envoys ..... 574 
 The Treaty of Peace with the Dutch signed 
 
 after a ten Months' tedious Negotiation. . . 574 
 Main provisions of the Treaty .... 575 
 Rejoicings in Celebration of this Peace . . 575 
 Milton's congratulatory Address to Cromwell . 576 
 Ratification of the Treaty with Sweden . . 576 
 
 Treaty with Denmark 577 
 
 Extracts from the private Correspondence of 
 
 Cromwell at this Period 577 
 
 His Visit to the City ; is entertained by the 
 Lord-mayor ....... 578 
 
 1655 (4th of September.) Opening of Parliament ; 
 
 Cromwell's Speech 579 
 
 Tokens of Satisfaction, and Hums of Approbation 
 
 which followed this Speech .... 580 
 Angry Debates in the Commons . . . 581 
 Conduct of the Republicans at this Crisis . . 581 
 (12th of September.) Cromwell receives the 
 Members in the Painted Chamber at White- 
 hall 582 
 
 His vigorous Speech on this Occasion . 582, 584 
 Some of the Members refuse to sign the Recog- 
 nition of the Government prepared for them . 584 
 Accident occurs to Cromwell .... 584 
 
 Various Descriptions of this Accident . . 585 
 Debates in the Commons, whether the Protec- 
 torate was to be Hereditary, or for Life only . 586 
 The Amendment of the Court Party carried 
 without a Division ...... 586 
 
 (22d of January.) The House once more sum- 
 moned to meet Cromwell in the Painted Cham- 
 ber 587 
 
 His Speech 587 
 
 Refers to the Question of the Protectorship be- 
 ing made Hereditary ..... 587 
 Declares the Parliament dissolved . . . 588 
 Royalist and Republican Conspiracies crushed . 588 
 Precautionary Measures of Cromwell . . 589 
 First Part of his great despotic Scheme follows 
 in an Ordinance against the Adherents of the 
 
 Stuarts 589 
 
 His Letter to his Son-in-law Fleetwood, recall- 
 ing him from the Government of Ireland . 589 
 His Letter to his Son Henry during his Admin- 
 istration in Ireland 590 
 
 Major-generals appointed ..... 590 
 Substance of their official Instructions . . 590 
 
 Their Powers of Action 591 
 
 Individual Cases, expressing the general Iniquity 
 
 of their Proceedings 591 
 
 State of England at this Period .... 592 
 Review of the Foreign Policy of the Protecto- 
 rate 592 
 
 Example of Cromwell's far-seeing Policy . . 594 
 His characteristic Letter to Major-general For- 
 tescue ........ 594 
 
 Negotiation entered into with France . . 595 
 Projects respecting the Jews .... 595 
 
 Treaty with France signed .... 596 
 
 War with Spain 596 
 
 Case of Cony . .... 597 
 
 Writs issued for a Parliament .... 597 
 View of the Power and Position of Cromwell at 
 
 this Period 597 
 
 Excitement at the Election for the Parliament 
 now summoned exceeds that of any previous 
 
 Occasion 599 
 
 1656. (17th of December.) The Parliament meet the 
 
 Protector in the Painted Chamber . . . 599 
 His obgeure and artful Speech .... 599 
 The Title and Claims of Charles Stuart disan- 
 nulled 602 
 
 6 
 
 A.D. Pag* 
 
 1656. Discussion of private Bills 602 
 
 Presbyterian and Sectarian Measures of this Par- 
 liament COH 
 
 Debate on the Question of the legal Confirmation 
 of the Major-generals 603 
 
 1657. Explosion of the Sexby and Syndercombe Plot 
 
 against Cromwell's Life ..... 603 
 (19th of January. ) Casual Mention of the Policy 
 of re-establishing the Kingship . . . 603 
 
 Debate on the Subject 603 
 
 The Crown offered to Cromwell . . .606 
 His formal Answer ...... 606 
 
 A Committee of the House named for Conference, 
 
 to solve the apparent Doubts of the Protector 607 
 Cromwell proposes to argue the Question on the 
 ground of Expedience ..... 607 
 
 Characteristic Passage from the Memoirs of Lud- 
 
 low 607 
 
 (12th of May.) Cromwell formally declines ac- 
 cepting the Crown 608 
 
 His Speech on this Occasion ; his first grand 
 
 Failure 609 
 
 The Petition and Advice passed without the Title 
 
 of King 609 
 
 Cromwell establishes a House of Peers ; a new 
 and solemn Inauguration follows ; Hollowness 
 
 of this 609 
 
 A Glance at his Foreign Administration . . 610 
 His Remonstrance to the Grand Seignor respect- 
 ing the unjust Surprisal of an English Ship . 611 
 His second Remonstrance addressed to Vizier 
 Azem . . . . . . . .611 
 
 Marriage of his Daughters, Mary and Frances . 612 
 
 1658. (28th of January.) Reassembling of Parliament 613 
 Scot and Hazlerig, backed by a formidable Ma- 
 jority, refuse to acknowledge the new House 
 
 as a House of Lords ..... 614 
 Speech of the Lord Protector . . . .614 
 Conspiracies against his Life .... 616 
 Letter of Lady Elizabeth to her Sister-in-law, 
 
 Mrs. Henry Cromwell 617 
 
 Execution of Slingsby and Hewet . . .617 
 Domestic Afflictions of Cromwell . . . 617 
 Measures for defeating the Republicans . . 617 
 (4th of August.) Death of Lady Elizabeth Clay- 
 pole 618 
 
 Illness of the Lord Protector . . . .618 
 (25th of August.) Thurloe's Despatch to Henry 
 
 Cromwell ...'... 618 
 (3d of September.) Death of the Lord Protector ; 
 Thurloe's Despatch to Henry Cromwell, an- 
 nouncing the melancholy Event . . . 620 
 Cromwell's FORTUNATE DAY .... 620 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. Alexander, Lord-high-steward of Scotland . 621 
 
 B. Oliver Cromwell 622 
 
 C. The Protecting Brewer 622 
 
 D. Sir Oliver Cromwell 622 
 
 E. Cromwell and Christina 624 
 
 Whitelocke first sees Christina in her magnifi- 
 cent Palace, and is not afraid .... 625 
 
 Christina tells Whitelocke, at their first private 
 Interview, her Opinion of Cromwell ; and in- 
 quires if it is really true that he Prays and 
 Preaches 625 
 
 Christina, struck by Whitelocke's Prudence in a 
 long Conference of State, becomes Confiden- 
 tial at its Close 626 
 
 Whitelocke's Device in writing privately to 
 Cromwell ; also his Device in delivering Pres- 
 ents from Mr. Hugh Peters to Christina . 626 
 
 Christina interests herself in the domestic Affairs 
 of Cromwell ; prophesieth his Desire to be 
 King, simple Lord-general as he is ; and start- 
 leth Whitelocke with some delicate Questions, 
 as also with a Piece of Plain-speaking . . 626 
 
 The wise Oxenstierne interested in Cromwell . 627 
 
 News of Cromwell's Usurpation reacheth Stock- 
 holm ; Christina's Opinion of the Protectorate, 
 and her wise Advice ..... 627 
 
 The Swedish Chancellor discusseth Cromwell's 
 Usurpation with Whitelocke ; some Home- 
 truths evaded by the Lawyer-ambassador . 627 
 
 Christina and her Ladies at Whitelocke's May- 
 day Entertainment ; Whitelocke standeth up 
 for the Honour of England .... 628 
 
 Whitelocke danceth with Christina ; a curious 
 Remark afterward 628 
 
 The Chancellor Oxenstierne transmitteth Advice 
 to Cromwell by his Ambassador, which the 
 Ambassador forgetteth to deliver . . . 629 
 
 A youthful Queen, prosperous as she is beloved,
 
 xlii 
 
 ANALYTICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 Page 
 
 tired of State, and resigns her Crown ; 
 the Lord-ambassador Whitelocke's Wonder- 
 ment; he recollects that Cromwell once in- 
 tended to retire 629 
 
 Whitelocke returned ; he recounts to Cromwell, 
 Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, the Ad- 
 ventures of his Embassy to Christina ; the 
 Lord Protector's Remarks thereon . . . 630 
 
 F. A new Ballad to the Tune of Cock-Lorrel . 632 
 
 G. A Sketch of the Civil Wars to the Protectorate 
 
 of Richard Cromwell, in a Letter from John 
 Maidstone, of Oliver's Household, to John 
 Winthrop, Esq., Governor of the Colony of 
 Connecticut in New-England .... 632 
 
 H. Specimens of the Court Circular in Cromwell's 
 
 Protectorate 6S5 
 
 I. Some Extracts from a Description of Cromwell's 
 Lords 635 
 
 K. Procession with Ceremony of the Investiture and 
 Installation of his Highness Oliver Cromwell, 
 as by the Parliament appointed to be perform- 
 ed in Westminster Hall on June 26, 1657 . 638 
 
 L. Death, Funeral Order, and Procession of his 
 Highness, the most serene and most illustrious 
 Oliver Cromwell, late Lord Protector of the 
 Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ire- 
 land, and the Dominions and Territories there- 
 unto belonging 689
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 Page 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT 1 
 
 APPENDIX 43 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD 55 
 
 APPENDIX 132 
 
 JOHN PYM 135 
 
 APPENDIX A 234 
 
 APPENDIX B 336 
 
 APPENDIX C 237 
 
 APPENDIX D 238 
 
 APPENDIX E 239 
 
 APPENDIX F 240 
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN .... 241 
 
 SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER 265 
 
 APPENDIX A 343 
 
 APPENDIX B ' 347 
 
 APPENDIX C 351 
 
 APPENDIX D 951 
 
 APPENDIX E 352 
 
 HENRY MARTEN 353 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL 392 
 
 APPENDIX A 621 
 
 APPENDIX B 622 
 
 APPENDIX C 622 
 
 APPENDIX D 622 
 
 APPENDIX E. 624 
 
 APPENDIX F 632 
 
 APPENDIX G 632 
 
 APPENDIX H 635 
 
 APPENDIX I 635 
 
 APPENDIX K 638 
 
 APPENDIX L 639

 
 HARPER & BROTHERS
 
 THE 
 
 STATESMEN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, 
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 1590-1632. 
 
 JOHN ELIOT was "a Cornishman born, and 
 an esquire's son."* His family, though new 
 residents in that county, were of very ancient 
 Devonshire descent. Prince alludes to them 
 in his " Worthies ;" and Fuller has pointed 
 out the name of Walter Eliot, one of his an- 
 cestors, in the sheriff's return of the gentry of 
 the county of Devon, made in 1433, during the 
 reign of Henry VI. Browne Willis, who may 
 be considered a good authority on the subject, 
 having married a lineal descendant of the fam- 
 ily,! states that this Walter Eliot allied him- 
 self to the family of Sir Richard Eliot, appoint- 
 ed a justice of the Court of King's Bench by 
 Henry VIII., but more illustrious as the father 
 of one of the earliest of our vernacular writers, 
 the famous Sir Thomas Eliot.! The first of 
 the family who settled in Cornwall appears to 
 have been the great-uncle of Sir John, who ob- 
 tained from the family of Champernowne the 
 priory of St. Germain's and its lands, in ex- 
 change for property possessed by him at Cut- 
 lands, near Ashburton. To this priory the 
 name of Port Eliot was then given, which it 
 bears to this day. Its large estates have de- 
 scended with it from father to son, and form a 
 considerable portion of the property of the pres- 
 ent Earl of St. Germain's.!! 
 
 At this seat of Port Eliot John Eliot was 
 born, on the 20th of April, 1590.f In his youth 
 he was subjected to none of the restraints that 
 
 * Anthony Wood, Ath. Oxon., vol. ii., p. 478, ed. Bliss. 
 
 t See Ducarel's " Life of Browne Willis." 
 
 t Browne Willis's " Notitia Parliamentaria," vol. ii., p. 
 142. 
 
 I) " I do not know," says an accomplished living descend- 
 ant of the patriot, "the exact year in which this change 
 took place ; but John Eliot died at the priory of St. Ger- 
 main's, having given it the name of Port Eliot, in 1565. An 
 account of that transaction is to be found in Carew's Sur- 
 vey of Cornwall, published about 1580. Chalmers, in his 
 Biographical Dictionary, speaks of the family of Eliot of 
 Port Eliot, and those of Heath field and Minto, to be de- 
 scended from a Sir W. Aliot, who came over with William 
 the Conqueror ; but this account is merely traditional, and 
 cannot be borne out by proof. The Herald's Visitation of 
 Cornwall, made in 1602, and preserved in the Heralds' Col- 
 lege, gives the armorial bearings of the family ; a shield 
 containing twelve quarterings : a proof, at a time when 
 pretensions to heraldic honours were minutely scrutinized, 
 that the origin of the family could not have been very rt- 
 cent." Lord Eliot. 
 
 II In " Notitia Parliamentaria" (the notice of the borough 
 of St. Germain's, at p. 149, of the second volume), a descrip- 
 tion will be found of Port Eliot. See also " Carew's Survey 
 of Cornwall," ed. 1602 ; and the fourth volume of Mr. D'ls- 
 raeli's " Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles 
 I.," p. 509. 
 
 IT Browne Willis. Anthony Wood fixes it incorrectly at 
 1592. 
 
 should have been applied to a temper naturally 
 ardent. His father was a man of easy habits, 
 kept very hospitable house,* flung it open to 
 every sort of visiter, and never, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, troubled himself to consider the effect 
 of such a course upon the uncontrolled disposi- 
 tion and manners of his son. It is to this lax 
 education that we have to attribute a painful 
 incident in the life of Eliot, of which the most 
 treacherous advantage has been taken by his 
 political enemies. t 
 
 Archdeacon Echard, a notorious advocate of 
 the Stuarts, and a most inaccurate historical 
 writer, gave the first public account of it. Af- 
 ter stating, most untruly (as we have seen), 
 that Eliot was of a " new family,"! this arch- 
 deacon proceeds : " Within his own parish 
 there lived one Mr. John Moyle, a gentleman 
 of very good note and character in his country, 
 who, together with his son, had the honour to 
 serve in Parliament. Whether out of rivalship 
 or otherwise, Mr. Eliot, having, upon a very 
 slight occasion, entertained a bitter grudge 
 against the other, went to his house under the 
 show of a friendly visit, and there treacherously 
 stabbed him, while he was turning on one side 
 to take a glass of wine to drink to him." He 
 states farther : " Mr. Moyle outlived this base at- 
 tempt about forty years, who, with some others 
 of his family, often told the particulars to his 
 grandson, Dr. Prideaux, and other relations, from 
 whom I had this particular account."!! We are 
 here left uncertain, it will be seen, whether the 
 account was received at fifth or sixth hand from 
 gossiping relations, or from the respected and 
 learned Dean of Norwich. A late writer, how- 
 ever, has thought fit to assume the latter, and 
 has insisted, with considerable and very ob- 
 stinate vehemence, on the probable truth of 
 the statement.1 With the help of materials 
 in a lately-published work by Lord Nugent,** 
 
 * See " Carew's Survey of Cornwall." 
 
 t How eagerly such a charge as that which follows 
 would have been seized by the bitter opponents of Eliot 
 among his contemporaries, had a reasonable foundation ex- 
 isted for it, is sufficiently obvious. It might have served as 
 the tithe of an apology for his harsh treatment. Nowhere, 
 however, in Parliament or elsewhere, does a trace of it ap- 
 pear. 
 
 t Echard's History, p. 424, folio, ed. 1720. Is this the 
 " contemporary writer" to whom Mr. D'Israeli alludes in 
 vol. iv., p. 508, of his Commentaries ? I can find no other. 
 
 $ Echard's History, p. 424. II Ibid. 
 
 IT Mr. D'Israeli. See his Commentaries, Tol. ii., p. 270 ; 
 vol. iv., p. 513 ; his pamphlet in answer to Lord Nug,ent r * 
 " Memorials of Hampden," p. 5. 
 
 ** Memorials of Hantpden.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and guided by a fact I have discovered respect- 
 ing Sir John Eliot's father, I now present this 
 singular incident in a new, and, it may be 
 hoped, a final aspect. 
 
 It occurred, so far as there is truth in it, in 
 the extreme youth of Eliot. That he should 
 have earned for himself at that time the epithet 
 "wilful" will scarcely appear surprising after 
 what I have said of the habits and indulgences 
 of his father. Mr. Moyle, who resided at Bake, 
 a district of the parish of St. Germain's, close 
 to Port Eliot,* took upon himself to warn old 
 Eliot that such was the disposition of his son. 
 Miss Aikin, the historical writer, has now in 
 her possession a letter, written by an ancestor 
 of one of the most respectable families of Dev- 
 onshire, wherein the cause and course of the 
 quarrel which ensued are given, as described 
 by the daughter of Mr. Moyle himself, a witness 
 not likely to be unjustly partial to Sir John 
 Eliot.t This is the statement of that letter : 
 Mr. Moyle having acquainted Sir John Eliot's 
 father with some extravagances in his son's 
 expenses, and this being reported with some 
 aggravating circumstances, young Eliot went 
 hastily to Mr. Moyle's house and remonstrated. 
 What words passed she knows not, but Eliot 
 drew his sword and wounded Mr. Moyle in the 
 side. " ' On reflection,' continues Mr. Moyle's 
 daughter, ' he soon detested the fact, and from 
 thenceforward became as remarkable for his 
 private deportment, in every view of it, as his 
 public conduct. Mr. Moyle was so entirely 
 reconciled to him that no person in his time 
 held him in higher esteem.' " 
 
 That this hasty ebullition of will occurred in 
 extreme youth I am now prepared to prove. I 
 find, from documents of the time, that Eliot's 
 father died in 16094 He was buried in the 
 Church of St. Germain's on the 24th of June in 
 that year. Anthony Wood (the best authority 
 on such a point, though on such only) tells us 
 that young Eliot entered college in 1607, and 
 continued there three years. It is evident, 
 therefore, that, at the time of the quarrel with 
 JJoyle, Eliot could not have been more than sev- 
 enteen, or, assuming (which is most unlikely) 
 that it occurred in a college vacation of his first 
 year, eighteen years old. This will be con- 
 sidered as established beyond farther doubt. It 
 is confirmed still more by a remarkable docu- 
 ment which has been found among the Eliot 
 papers,ll "An apologie," addressed to Mr, 
 Moyle by young Eliot, for the " greate injury' 
 he had done him, and witnessed by names 
 some of which were afterward greatly distin- 
 guished in the Parliamentary history of the 
 time. The terms of it are highly curious, and 
 indicate the writer clearly. It is an atonemen 
 which marks the characteristic impulse of a 
 young and generous mind, anxious to repair an 
 
 * Notitia Parliamentaria. Browne Willis, the intimate 
 friend of the Moyles, does not make the slightest allusion 
 to this incident, as remembered harshly by that family ; a 
 circumstance explained by the testimony which has been 
 since obtained from the daughter of the pretended " victim.' 
 
 t See Memorials of Hampden, vol. i., p. 152. Aikiu'i 
 Charles the First, vol. i., p. 265. 
 
 t Willis's Researches into the Pedigree of the Eliots 
 Not. Parl., vol. ii., p. 144. 
 
 fy Ath. Oxon., vol. ii., p. 478. 
 
 II See Lord Eliot's communication to Mr. D'Israeli, ful 
 of excellent feeling;, and a proper concern for the memory 
 of his great progenitor, " Commentaries," vol. iv., p. 509. 
 
 unpremeditated wrong. " Mr. Moyle," so runs 
 he apology, " I doe acknowledge I have done 
 /ou a greate injury, which I wish I had never 
 done, and doe desire you to remit it ; and I 
 desire that all unkindnesse may be forgiven 
 and forgotten betwixt us, and henceforward I 
 shall desire and deserve your love in all friend- 
 y offices, as I hope you will mine. 
 
 "Jo. ELYOTTE." 
 
 That this apology was honestly meant and 
 strictly redeemed that the writer did desire 
 the love of him whom he had hastily injured, 
 and deserve it, and, moreover, obtain it, we are 
 brtunately not without ample proof. In the 
 volume of Eliot papers already referred to ex- 
 st two letters,* written, many years after this 
 jvent, by Sir John to this very Mr. Moyle, grant 
 ng him solicited favours. It was a saying of 
 shrewd severity, that few natures exist capable 
 of making compensation to those whom they 
 may have injured, or even of ceasing to follow 
 them with resentment. Assuredly, however, 
 rare and virtuous as such natures are, John 
 Eliot's was one of them. He held himself the 
 constant and willing debtor of the man he had 
 unwillingly offended. " I am sorry," he says, 
 in one of his letters, after granting Moyle what 
 he had asked, " this return is not better to the 
 occasion you have given me ; it may serve for 
 an expression of my power, though my affec- 
 tion be beyond it. I can command corruption 
 out of no man, but in mine own heart have a 
 clear will to serve you, and shall faithfully re- 
 main your true friend." In the other, written 
 some months after, in answer to an interces- 
 sion by Moyle for an offending tenant of Sir 
 John's, the following passage occurs : " In an- 
 swer to your love, I will give orders to my ser- 
 vant Hill, at his return into the country, to re- 
 pay him the money that's received, and so to 
 leave him to his old interest for the tenement, 
 in which he must acknowledge your courtesy 
 and favour, for whose satisfaction it is done by 
 your most affectionate friend."t 
 
 Taken in connexion with the statements I 
 have given, this incident assumes, in my mind, 
 a more than ordinary interest, and becomes, 
 indeed, an important feature in the life of Eliot. 
 It is the line drawn between his passing youth 
 and coming manhood. Whatever may have 
 been the turbulence of his boyhood, whatever 
 the struggle of its uncurbed passions, this 
 event startled him into a perfect and sober self- 
 control. His '' private deportment," says Mr. 
 
 * Eliot Papers, MS., Nos. 63 and 98. 
 
 t Mr. D'Israeli has said, in his fourth volume, p. 513 (in 
 reference to the " apologie" quoted above), " I perfectly 
 agree that this extraordinary apology was not written by a 
 man who had stabbed his companion in the back ; nor can 
 I imagine that, after such a revolting incident, any approx- 
 imation at a renewal of intercourse would have been possi- 
 ble." He then proceeds, with very amusing pertinacity, to 
 shift the grounds of the charge. His aigument, however 
 on his own admission, is wholly exploded by the letters 
 above cited. No malignity, however desperate or reckless, 
 can again revive it. I cannot leave the subject of this first 
 calumny, in the promotion of which Mr. D'Israeli has joined 
 with such painful and mistaken bitterness, without expres- 
 sing my regret that political passion and preconceived no- 
 tions of character should so bewilder an ingenious mind. 
 Mr D'Israeli, though in all cases too fond of suggesting 
 events from rumours, has rendered many services to his- 
 tory, and notwithstanding his various misstatements re- 
 specting Eliot, which I shall have occasion to refute, has 
 never scrupled to pay a not unwilling tribute to the great- 
 ness of his intellect.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 3 
 
 Moyle's daughter, was as remarkable ever af- 
 ter as that of his public conduct. In the latter 
 his temper never ceased to be ardent for the 
 general good and against the wrongful oppress- 
 or. In private it was ardent in kindness, in 
 busy purposes and affections for those around 
 him. To the " last right end," he stood 
 
 " A perfect patriot, and a noble friend," 
 
 and so his biographer must delineate him, apart 
 from all preconceived affections or prejudices. 
 
 Immediately after the quarrel with Mr. Moyle, 
 it is probable that young Eliot left his home for 
 the University of Oxford. Anthony Wood states 
 that he " became a gentleman-commoner of 
 Exeter College in Michaelmas term, anno 1607, 
 aged 15."* The same authority tells us that 
 he left the University, without a degree, after 
 he had continued there about three years, t 
 That his time, however, was not misspent at 
 that venerable seat of study he afterward well 
 proved. He had naturally a fine imagination ; 
 and when, on the lapse of a few years, it burst 
 forth in the House of Commons, it was sur- 
 rounded with the pomp of Greek and Roman 
 learning. In the studies of his youth, in those 
 invaluable treasures of thought and language 
 which are placed within the reach of every 
 scholar, he had strengthened himself for great 
 duties. And more than this. In his youthful 
 contemplation of the ancient school philosophy, 
 he had provided for his later years the enjoy- 
 ment of those sublime reveries which, we shall 
 have occasion to see, were his chief consola- 
 tions in a dungeon. Little, probably, did he 
 then imagine, as he was first making the ac- 
 quaintance of Seneca, of Plato, and the Stagy- 
 rite, that they would stand him in the stead of 
 friends, when prison bars had shut out every 
 other. 
 
 The sudden interruption to his studies, at the 
 expiration of three years, appears to have ori- 
 ginated in his desire to obtain some acquaint- 
 ance with the common law of England. This 
 knowledge began then to be considered a neces- 
 sary accomplishment for one who aspired to 
 the honours of Parliament, with the view of 
 supporting the principles of the rising country 
 party. Eliot was one of these ; and, as Wood 
 informs us, after leaving the University, " went 
 to, one of the inns of court, and became a bar- 
 rister."}: The lapse of a year or two introdu- 
 ces us to a new incident in his private life, of 
 which a malignant advantage has, as usual, 
 been taken by his political opponents. 
 
 His disposition, never less active than medi- 
 tative, induced him to visit the Continent. At 
 precisely the same period, the discerning Lady 
 Villiers$ had sent her famous son to grace the 
 
 * Ath. Oxon., vol. ii., p. 478. This is incorrect, how- 
 ever, as I have stated, in respect to Eliot's age. He was 
 seventeen. t Ath. Oxon., vol. ii., p. 478. t Ibid. 
 
 <) Buckingham was a younger son, by a second marriage, 
 of Sir George VjUiers, of Brookesley, in Leicestershire, 
 whose family, though ancient, had hitherto been unheard 
 of in the kingdom. His mother is reported to have served 
 in his father's kitchen, but he, being struck with her extra- 
 ordinary beauty and person, which the meanness of her 
 clothes could not hide, prevailed with Lady Villiers, not 
 without difficulty, to raise her to a higher office ; and on 
 the death of that lady he married this her servant. As, 
 however, the heir by a former marriage succeeded to the 
 family estate, it became a grand object with Lady Villiers, 
 who had obtained the means through a second husband, 
 whom she afterward deserted, to accomplish her children 
 for pushing their own fortune in the world. Hence her 
 
 beauty of his face and the handsomeness of his 
 person (his only birthright) by the advantages 
 of foreign travel. Eliot and Villiers met, and 
 the courtesies of English travellers in a foreign 
 country ensued between them.* They jour- 
 neyed together ; and it is not surprising that a 
 generous warmth in the disposition of Eliot 
 should have suited well with the bold address 
 and sprightliness of temper for which alone, at 
 that time, George Villiers was remarkable. It 
 is said they became intimate. In all probability 
 they did so, if we may judge from a circum- 
 stance that shall in due course be noticed. 
 
 Meanwhile, I have another misrepresentation 
 to clear away. After his return from the Con- 
 tinent, Eliot married. It has been reserved for 
 the writer before referred to Mr. D'Israeli, 
 whose ingenuity of research and pleasant at- 
 tractiveness of style are only outstripped by his 
 violent political tendencies and his most amu- 
 sing professions of philosophical impartiality 
 to fasten upon even this domestic and most pri- 
 vate incident in the life of Eliot, as another in- 
 stance of what he is pleased to consider the 
 turbulence and " ungovernable passion" of his 
 " bold and adventurous character."? Without 
 quoting any authority, Mr. D'Israeli states, that 
 " when the House of Commons voted 5000 
 for a compensation to the family for his [Eliot's] 
 ' sufferings,' they also voted another 2000, part 
 of four, for which he had been fined by the 
 Court of Wards, by reason of his marriage with 
 Sir Daniel Norton's daughter." He then goes 
 on to state that this indicates the violent car- 
 rying off of the lady by the turbulent Eliot. 
 What possible authority Mr. D'Israeli can bring 
 forward for this statement I know not. The 
 only record in existence bearing on such a sub- 
 ject, so far as I am aware, is an entry in the 
 Earl of Leicester's journal, of unquestioned au- 
 thenticity and correctness. It is most satis- 
 factory on the point, as will be seen ; and I will 
 not suppose that this was the source from which 
 Mr. D'Israeli derived his statement. It is as 
 follows: "Monday, 18th January, 1646. The 
 House of Commons this day, according to for- 
 mer order, took into consideration the great 
 losses and sufferings of many members, in the 
 yeare tertio Caroli, for speaking (in Parliament) 
 in behalf of the kingdom. A report whereof 
 was made to the House, from the committee 
 to whom it was formerly referred ; and the 
 Commons, upon debate, passed several votes 
 for allowances to be given to such members, 
 in recompense of theyr wrongs and sufferings, 
 as followeth." Several names are then speci- 
 fied, and among them, " that 5000 be allowed 
 to Sir John Elliotte's younger children, and his 
 elder son's fine in the Court of Wards to be re- 
 mitted. "t 
 
 conduct to George, as I have noticed it above. See R. Coke, 
 p. 74. Hacket's Life of Williams, part i., p. 171. Brodie's 
 British Empire, vol. ii., p. 12. 13. 
 
 * Echard's History, p. 424. Mr. D'Israeli claims the 
 merit of having discovered this (vol. iv., p. 507 ; pamphlet, 
 p. 3), a claim on which his friends also insist (see Quarter- 
 ly Review, No. xciv., p. 470), on what authority does not 
 appear. Echard was the first discoverer, if there be any 
 merit in it ; nor would his statement have carried any 
 weight, but that other circumstances have tended to, con- 
 firm it. 
 
 t See Mr. D'Israeli's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 283. 
 
 t Sidney Papers, p. 2, 3. This early portion of the 
 journal is especially remarkable for its accuracy and precis- 
 ion. All of it was written for the author's private use.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 This " elder son," against whose turbulence 
 the reproof of Mr. D'lsraeli ought to have been 
 directed, was a youth of idle and riotous habits, 
 very wild irregularities, which subsequently, as 
 we shall show, proved a source of much anx- 
 iety and disquiet to his father. He was the 
 exact person for the adventure maliciously fix- 
 ed upon Sir Sohn. The latter married without 
 violating the laws of any court, but was de- 
 prived of his wife by death, after she had pre- 
 sented him with two sons.* The "younger 
 children" alluded to in the passage quoted 
 would seem to comprise the family of the sec- 
 ond son. 
 
 Eliot's intercourse with Villiers was now re- 
 sumed. A wonderful change had taken place 
 in the interval. The base creature Somerset 
 had been prosecuted at last, ostensibly for the 
 murder of Overbury.f but in reality to provide 
 room for a fourth favourite, on whom the ma- 
 jesty of the day might lavish its shameless 
 fondness. That new favourite was selected in 
 the person of George Villiers. Well might Lord 
 Clarendon exclaim, " Never any man, in any 
 age, nor, I believe, in any country or nation, 
 rose in so short a time to so much greatness of 
 honour, fame, or fortune, upon no other advan- 
 tage or recommendation than of the beauty or 
 gracefulness of his person."t Among the suc- 
 cessive honours showered in ridiculous abun- 
 dance upon him, fell that of Lord -high -admiral 
 of England. With this office was connected 
 the duty of appointing vice-admirals in the sev- 
 eral counties ; and it is probable that, personal 
 motives of acquaintance, or even friendship, 
 quite apart, the name of Eliot was instantly 
 suggested to the young favourite as one that 
 claimed, on every ground, a promotion of this 
 sort. He possessed one of the largest paternal 
 estates of any gentleman of the time, and had 
 the command of much influence in his own and 
 the neighbouring county. Accordingly, we find 
 that the lapse of a short time after that which 
 saw Villiers promoted to the office of lord-high- 
 admiral saw Eliot made Vice-admiral of Dev- 
 onshire. He was also appointed chairman of 
 the Committee of Stannaries of the duties of 
 which office he has left a manuscript report 
 and, at the same time, he received knighthood. 
 In accordance with the desperate and un- 
 wearied spirit of misrepresentation I have al- 
 ready had so many occasions to allude to, the 
 political enemies of this illustrious person have 
 seized on this change in his estate to attribute 
 it to those vile and vulgar motives which alone 
 they would seem to be acquainted with. Ech- 
 ard leads the way, connecting it, most unfor- 
 tunately for his purpose, with the incident of 
 Mbyle. After giving the false account, for- 
 merly quoted, of that youthful anecdote, the 
 archdeacon proceeds : " And now, supposing 
 he had perfected his revenge, he immediately 
 hastened to London to address himself to his 
 
 * This is evident from the Eliot Papers, MS. 
 
 t I avail myself of the opportunity which the mention of 
 this name affords me to remind the reader that Sir Thom- 
 as Overbury, scarcely remembered but for his misfortunes, 
 js deserving of a better and more grateful remembrance. 
 He was an accomplished scholar, and adorned literature by 
 many delicate writings. Some passages in the "Witty 
 Characters" appended to his poem of " The Wife," are 
 quite unequalled for simplicity and gentleness. 
 
 J History of the Rebellion, folio ed., vol. i., p. 9. 
 
 <> Echard's History, p. 424. 
 
 sure friend the Duke of Buckingham, in order 
 to get his pardon, which, to his great disap- 
 pointment, he could not obtain without advan- 
 cing a considerable sum of money into the ex- 
 chequer. But as soon as his pardon was sealed 
 and the money paid, he received intelligence 
 that Mr. Moyle was unexpectedly recovered. 
 Upon the happy assurance of this, he again ap- 
 plied himself to the duke to procure the repay- 
 ment of the money ; but that being swallowed 
 up in the occasions of the court beyond any re- 
 covery, all that he could obtain in lieu of it was 
 to be knighted ; which, though it might have 
 allayed the heat of his ambition, was so hei- 
 nously taken at the hands of a person once his 
 equal, that after that he never ceased to be his 
 mortal enemy, but helped to blow up such a 
 flame in the House as was never extinguished." 
 This monstrous account, which I have extract- 
 ed partly for the amusement of the reader, has 
 found its believers in the present day.* It is 
 idle to waste words on its refutation. At the 
 period when, it is thus hardily asserted, the 
 assassin Eliot hurried up to his friend the duke 
 to crave protection from the laws he had out- 
 raged, that " assassin" was but a boy, and the 
 " duke" plain George Villiers, with less power 
 than his pretended suppliant. 
 
 But the inconsistencies of the candid " his- 
 torians" and " commentators" do not end here. 
 Mr. D'lsraeli, who adopts the ridiculously false 
 statement just quoted, has attempted to cor- 
 roborate it by the production of a letter written 
 in the year 1623 to the duke.t That is to say, 
 he adopts the statement that Sir John repaid 
 the protection and the knighthood given him by 
 the duke with immediate and violent hostility ; 
 and proposes to corroborate that by producing 
 a letter, written in courteous and deferential 
 terms, by Sir John to the duke, some consider- 
 able time after the period of the knighthood. 
 The gross folly of this is apparent. I pass that, 
 however, to consider the letter, and the posi- 
 tion attempted to be established by its means, 
 namely, " that in 1623 we find Sir John a sup- 
 pliant to, and, at least, a complimentary admi- 
 rer of, the minister, and only two years after, 
 in 1625, Eliot made his first personal attack on 
 that minister, his late patron and friend, whom 
 he then selected as a victim of state."J 
 
 With respect to the first part of this charge, 
 the answer is short and obvious. The letter is 
 not written in Sir John's personal character, 
 but as Vice-admiral of Devonshire to the Lord- 
 high-admiral of England. This is admitted 
 even, in another place, by the author of the 
 charge himself. The office of vice-admiral 
 had proved extremely troublesome to Sir John, 
 involving him in many disputes concerning the 
 wrecks on the coast, and saddling him with the 
 expenses of various trials.il Rather than sub- 
 mit to these, it would appear that, in one in- 
 stance, Eliot preferred to subject himself to the 
 inconveniences of arrest. Under such circum- 
 stances, it was most natural that he should seek 
 some reparation for the injuries he had under- 
 gone in support of the office and rights of the 
 
 * See Mr. D'Israeli's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 270 ; a 
 passage which has not yet been retracted. 
 
 t Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 270. i Pamphlet, p. 6. 
 
 t) Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 270. 
 
 II See Commons' Journals, 27th of February, 1623 ; and 
 again, 2d of March, in the same year.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 5 
 
 Duke of Buckingham. For this purpose the 
 letter in question was written ; its tone is ex- 
 poslulatory, and, courteous as its terms are, it 
 is even deficient in those elaborately compli- 
 mentary phrases which were considered due, 
 in that age, to the ceremonious observances of 
 letter-writing. It is as follows : 
 
 " Right Honourable With what affection I 
 have served your grace, I desire rather it should 
 be read in my actions than my words, which 
 made me sparing, in my last relation, to touch 
 those difficulties wherewith my letters have 
 been checkt, that they might the more fully 
 speak themselves. / shall not seek to gloss them 
 now, but, as they have been, leave them to your 
 grace's acceptance, which I presume so noble, 
 that scandal or detraction cannot decline it. It 
 were an injury of your worth, which I dare not 
 attempt, to insinuate the opinion of any merit 
 by false colours or pretences, or with hard cir- 
 cumstances to endear my labours, and might 
 beget suspicion sooner than assurance in your 
 credit, which I may not hazard. My innocence, 
 I hope, needs not these ; nor would I shadow the 
 least errour under your protection. But when 
 my services have been faithful, and not alto- 
 gether vain, directed truly to the honour and 
 benefit of YOUR PLACE, only suffering upon the 
 disadvantage of your absence, I must importune 
 your grace to support my weakness, that it may 
 cause no prejudice of your rights and liberties, 
 which I have studied to preserve, though with 
 the loss of mine own. My insistance therein 
 hath exposed me to a long imprisonment and 
 great charge, which still increaseth, and threat- 
 ens the ruin of my poor fortunes, if they be not 
 speedily prevented ; for which, as my endeav- 
 ours have been wholly yours, I most humbly 
 crave your grace's favour both to myself and 
 them, in which I am devoted. Your grace's 
 thrice humble servant, J. ELIOT." 
 
 " Novemb. 8, 1623."* 
 
 Now, not a single expression in this letter 
 is inconsistent with the construction which I 
 have placed on it, or justly appropriate to any 
 other construction. The complimentary phra- 
 ses fall evidently short of the notorious custom 
 of the time. I am, indeed, surprised at the 
 bareness of the language, considering the year 
 in which it was written. Buckingham had 
 just then managed to conciliate the country 
 party,t and was bespattered with praise in all 
 directions. The people, freed from the politi- 
 cal panic that had been caused by the prospect 
 of the Spanish match, in the suddenness of the 
 escape showered applauses on the masked 
 duke ; and Sir Edward Coke, leading the oppo- 
 sition in the House of Commons, was betrayed 
 shortly after into the very professional hyper- 
 bole of calling him the " saviour of his coun- 
 try.'^ Had the terms of Eliot's letter, there- 
 fore, been most adulatory, there would have 
 existed little cause for wonder; we see that 
 
 * Cabala, ed. 1663, p. 412, 413. The italics are my own. 
 They show the independence of spirit which breaks through 
 even this official complaining. 
 
 t In the same volume of letters the " Cabala" p. 340, 
 is letter to the duke from a stanch and unslandered pa- 
 triot, Sir Robert Philips, on which a precisely similar 
 charge to this we are now discussing might be as easily 
 founded. Had Mr. D'lsraeli overlooked this? He admits 
 Philip to have been emphatically an independent country 
 gentleman. J Clarendon, Hist., vol. i., p. 7. 
 
 they are not so. Whether the letter was an- 
 swered or not appears uncertain ; but the ac- 
 quaintance of the parties did not cease here, 
 as I shall have occasion to indicate hereafter.* 
 One word more on this subject. Mr. D'Israeli, 
 alluding to the date of this letter, calls it " the 
 close of 1623,"t which would intimate that 
 Parliament had already commenced its sitting, 
 and then goes on to tell his readers that the 
 patriotism of Eliot was a "political revolution, 
 which did not happen till two years after he 
 had been a suppliant to this very minister.''^ 
 This is most untrue. The letter was written 
 in the eighth month of 1623 (old style), two 
 months before the assembling of Parliament ; 
 and in that Parliament the voice of Eliot was 
 heard in stirring accents of honest patriotism. 
 Though none of his speeches at this period 
 have been preserved in the Parliamentary his- 
 tories, I am prepared to prove, from the jour- 
 nals of the House of Commons, and from man- 
 uscript records, that no " political revolution" 
 ever occurred in his life ; that he was consist- 
 ent from the first ; that his eloquence was often 
 exerted in that last assembly of James's reign, 
 and never but in support of the great party for 
 whose rights and privileges he afterward suf- 
 fered death. 
 
 A few words may here be allowed to me, on 
 the aspect of public affairs at the meeting of 
 this Parliament, which introduced Eliot to pub- 
 lic life. I shall always avoid, in these biogra- 
 phies, matters of general history or character, 
 except so far as may be needed in illustration 
 of individual conduct, or of those particular 
 questions which called forth its distinctive en- 
 ergies ; that individual conduct shall also be 
 limited, as much as possible, to the subject of 
 each life. Thus, in the present instance, I have 
 nothing to do with the great men who laboured 
 in, the same cause with Eliot, except as their 
 general policy and characteristics illustrate his 
 exertions. I have nothing to do with the great 
 questions they agitated, except in so far as they 
 called forth his individual energies : what re- 
 mains will be noticed in other biographies ; nor 
 shall I seek in vain the opportunity of observ- 
 ing upon any great incident of this great era of 
 statesmanship. The first object will in all cases 
 be to carry light and life into general history 
 by particular details of character. 
 
 The ignominious defeat of the elector pala- 
 tine by Spinola, and the circumstances which 
 ought especially to have induced James to ren- 
 der assistance to his weak, but unfortunate son- 
 in-law, belong to history. II In not doing so, he 
 
 * At the duke's death a suit pended between them, and 
 accounts still unsettled. Eliot MSS. 
 
 t Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 272. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 227. 
 
 <) For a sketch of the preceding Parliaments, see the bi- 
 ography of Strafford. 
 
 II See the various histories. Dr. Lingard has treated the 
 subject very fully. See, also, some able reasoning on the 
 general question in Bolingbroke's Remarks, p. 285-306, 8vo 
 edit. Mr. Brodie has stated the demerits of James's con- 
 duct with appropriate bitterness. There are, also, some 
 very important communications relative to this in Lord 
 Hardwicke's State Papers ; in the second volume of Som- 
 ers's Tracts, by Scott ; and in Howell's Familiar Letters. 
 See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 76-113 ; Backet's Life of Will- 
 iams ; Heylin's Life of Laud ; and Saunderson's James L 
 Mr. D'Israeli's " Secret History of the Spanish Match" is 
 very pleasant and ingenious. See, also, Roger Coke's 
 " Detection," a very honest book, if we set aside its plagia- 
 risms.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 subjected himself to the derision of Europe,* 
 and to the self-reproach (if he were able to 
 have felt it) of having sacrificed the noblest op- 
 portunity of making himself popular in his own 
 nation, and honoured everywhere as the as- 
 serter of civil and religious liberty. But he 
 was bound in the fetters of Spain, and had set 
 his foolish heart on a match for the prince with 
 the infanta. This was a politic bait thrown 
 out by that wily country, and greedily seized by 
 the king. It was intended as a means of drag- 
 ging the pusillanimous James into the league 
 with the house of Austria for oppressing the 
 Protestants and invading the liberties of Ger- 
 many. It succeeded. The people of England 
 saw their brother Protestants abroad hunted 
 down by tyrants ; they saw the Evangelical 
 League broken and discomfited by the Roman 
 Catholic Union; themselves made parties to 
 the wrong which they abhorred, and enemies 
 to that holy cause of freedom and of conscience 
 on which, at home, they had staked all. Dis- 
 content rose to a frightful pitch, and the person 
 of the king was even threatened, t At this 
 moment the tide of affairs was suddenly turn- 
 ed, and the man who had resisted the outcries 
 of an insulted nation yielded to the peevish 
 complaints of a haughty and offended minion. 
 
 Jealousy of Bristol's negotiations had resolv- 
 ed Buckingham to carry the prince to Spain ; 
 jealousy of the wily Archbishop Williams now 
 induced him to wish for home. Moreover, he 
 had been neglected in that stately country, not 
 to say insulted, for his levity and profligate 
 bearing. A deadly jealousy had also risen be- 
 tween him and the Spanish minister, Olivarez ; 
 and he began to feel that, in proportion as the 
 edifice of his power was lofty, it was unstable. 
 He saw an expedient for securing it on a wider 
 and more solid basis, and straightway seized 
 it. He effected a rupture, and hurried the 
 prince home, whither the welcome news of this 
 new policy had travelled before, securing them 
 an enthusiastic welcome. The unaccustomed 
 acclamations wafted a new sense into the all- 
 grasping soul of Buckingham ; and, resolving 
 to try the game of patriotism, he forced the 
 king to summon a Parliament. He threw him- 
 self into the arms of the (deceived) popular 
 party, and drove the unhappy James from his 
 boasted " kingcraft" into a declaration of war 
 against Spain. J 
 
 The Parliament assembled with hopes never 
 before entertained. The dissolution of the 
 Spanish treaty was justly considered a great 
 
 * From a curious volume, entitled " Truth brought to 
 Light," we learn that in Flanders they presented in their 
 comedies messengers bringing news that England was ready 
 to send a hundred thousand ambassadors to the assistance 
 of the palatinate. "And they pictured the king in one 
 place with a scabbard without a sword ; in another place, 
 with a sword that nobody could draw, though divers per- 
 sons stood pulling at it. In Bruxels they painted him with 
 his pockets hanging out, and never a penny in them, and 
 his purse turned upside down. In Antwerp they pictured 
 the Queen of Bohemia like a poor Irish mantler, with her 
 hair hanging about her ears, and her child at her back, with 
 the king, her father, carrying the cradle after her." Truth, 
 brought to Light. Introduction. 
 
 t See a curious tract, " Tom Tell Truth," in the second 
 Yolume of Somers's Collection. 
 
 t The keenest dissection, as it appears to me, of the con- 
 duct of Buckingham and the prince, throughout the whol 
 of this Spanish affair, will be found in a work very recently 
 published in the present series History of England, voL 
 iv., continued from Sir James Mackintosh. 
 
 national deliverance ; and the favoonte of 
 James, who had disrobed him of his inglorious 
 mantle of peace, was now the favourite of the 
 nation. At this extraordinary juncture Eliot 
 took his seat in the House of Commons. It 
 has been asserted, by Wood* and others, that 
 he sat in the previous Parliament ; but this is 
 certainly a mistake. He was returned now for 
 the first time, with Mr. Richard Estcourt, for 
 the borough of Newport in Cornwall. 
 
 And now, from the first moment of his public 
 life, his patriotism began not from pique, or a 
 spirit of opposition, for as yet he had no oppo- 
 nents save those of his religion and his coun- 
 try ; for be it ever remembered that in that 
 day politics were necessarily and intimately 
 connected with religious doctrine. The Ro- 
 mish cause was the cause of the oppressor, 
 while the Protestant was that of the oppressed ; 
 and the English constitutional party saw no 
 chance for good government save in a root-and- 
 branch opposition to the Roman Catholic faith. 
 Their cause of freedom at home was weakened 
 by the success of popish tyranny abroad ; and 
 the great struggle going on between the Prot- 
 estant patriots of Bohemia and the various Ro- 
 man Catholic powers leagued in extensive con- 
 federacy against them seemed a not improb- 
 able shadowing forth of the future destiny of 
 the popular party in England. So thought the 
 leaders of this Parliament, "the greatest and 
 the knowingest auditory," as a political adver- 
 sary called them, " that this kingdom, or, per- 
 haps, the world, afforded ;"t and so they acted, 
 confirming that great reputation. 
 
 Eliot at once distinguished himself, and was 
 received as a leader of the country party. I 
 have been at some pains to trace his conduct 
 through this Parliament, for it has not been 
 mentioned by any historian, while advantage 
 has been taken of the silence to bear out the 
 assertion of his having been, at this period, a 
 mere undistinguished subserver to the Duke of 
 Buckingham. We shall see how far this is 
 just. 
 
 The Parliament met on the 12th of February, 
 1623. It was adjourned, however, until the 
 19th, when the speech was delivered, and the 
 House farther adjourned until the 23d. The 
 three following days were occupied in arran- 
 ging conferences with the lords respecting the 
 duke's intended "Narrative." On the 27th 
 Eliot arose. It was the earliest day of the ses- 
 sion, and it was his first appearance in the 
 House. He declared at once the cause he had 
 entered to sustain ; and putting aside, as sub- 
 ordinate, even the all-engrossing question of 
 the war, raised his voice for certain ancient 
 privileges of the nation.} On the 1st of March 
 he spoke on the question of the Spanish trea- 
 ties in the high strain of popular feeling. He al- 
 luded to war as that " which atone will secure 
 and repair us," and recommended the setting 
 out of a fleet " by those penalties the papists 
 and recusants have already incurred"^ means 
 which would have been especially odious to 
 
 * Woodis seldom to be relied on in any date except those 
 which are furnished by the Oxford books ; Lord Nugent has, 
 inaccurately adopted his statement that Eliot sal in. tha 
 Parliament of 1621. 
 
 t Racket's Life of Williams, p. 179. 
 
 J Commons' Journals, Feb. 27, 1623. 
 
 i) Journals of that date.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 the court. But Eliot never waited to trim his 
 propositions by the court fashion, even in its 
 popular days, and we never discern in him the 
 bated breath or the whispering humbleness. 
 On that occasion, also, he seems to have resent- 
 ed the long and vacillating negotiations of the 
 king and his secretaries. " Fitter for us to do 
 than to speak," he said, and most justly said, 
 at that crisis. On the 8th of the same month 
 he opposed a hasty decision with respect to 
 the king's answer at Theobald's.* It was not 
 satisfactory, owing to the immediateness of its 
 demand for supplies. He had been appointed 
 one of the deputation ; and, alluding to "many 
 strange reports" since their return, he moves 
 " to have some time each to take copies, and 
 then to deliberate and advise."t This he car- 
 ried. On the llth he went up to the Lords on 
 this same subject, with some of the great lead- 
 ers of the House Philips, Selden, Coke, Rud- 
 yard, Saville, Stroude " to confer with them 
 about his majesty's estate. "t This conference 
 elicited an assurance from the treasurer, the 
 following day, of "his majesty's resolution to 
 call Parliament oft, to make good laws, and re- 
 dress public grievances." From this may be 
 well inferred the nature of the previous day's 
 remonstrance from Eliot and his friends. Nor 
 did this plausible assurance put those faithful 
 men off their guard. They answered the treas- 
 urer, " that we had no doubt here yesterday, as 
 among the lords. We fittest to relieve the 
 king's particular wants, when we have enabled 
 the subjects to do it by removing their grievan- 
 ces. '' An explanation of the disputed passages 
 in the answer was subsequently given, such as 
 satisfied the House. 
 
 In the same spirit were all Eliot's speeches 
 in the matter of this Spanish war. He never 
 supported it but for the promotion of the popu- 
 lar cause, and always accompanied his appro- 
 bation of the measure with an avowal of those 
 greater ulterior objects which he felt it ought 
 to accomplish. I need not go through the nu- 
 merous minutes of the journals in which his 
 name appears at this time. His attention to 
 the business of debate, as to the committees, 
 must have beea most arduous, since it was un- 
 remitting. Besides the great number of private 
 bills in the management of which his name ap- 
 pears, he took part in all public questions, lent 
 his aid to the best legal reforms, and generally 
 formed one in the more learned committees 
 appointed to consider disputed questions on the 
 privileges of the universities.il He opposed al- 
 ways with watchful jealousy any attempt to 
 move from the constitutional usages of the 
 House ; and when the ministers proposed, 
 through Sir Guy Palmer, to have a committee 
 to draw a bill for the continuance of all bills the 
 next session in statu quo, that they might so 
 " husband time," the name of Eliot was found 
 successfully opposed to this, in connexion with 
 his friends, Philips, Coke, and Digges.lT He 
 
 * See the Answer, Parl. Hist., vol. vi., p. 92, edit. 1763. 
 
 t Commons' Journals, March 8, 1623. 
 
 t Ibid., March 11, 1623. $ Ibid., March 12, 1623. 
 
 II Ibid., pastim. He was also very active in endeavour- 
 /ng to set the grants of crowu lands on a better footing. 
 Many instances will be found of his exertions in respect to 
 the universities ; as in the case of the Wadham and Mag- 
 dalen Colleges ; and he is often associated with Coke, Phil- 
 ips, and Gyles, in the forwarding of Cornish private bills. 
 
 j Commons' Journals, April 29, 1624. 
 
 was unceasing in his exertions against monop- 
 olies,* and in reminding the House of the pe- 
 titions those " stinging petitions," as the king 
 used bitterly to call them " not to be forgotten 
 against recusants ;"t but, when duty to the 
 cause permitted it, he never pressed 'the letter 
 of offence against any offender. Humanity 
 came in rescue of the strictness of his judg- 
 ments. When some of the popular party push- 
 ed hard against the under-sheriffof Cambridge, 
 for a misdemeanor at the election, Eliot hu- 
 manely interceded. He suggested that the 
 custody the sheriff had already undergone, and 
 the expenses he had been put to, were surely 
 sufficient punishment, and recommended his 
 immediate dismissal. The ever true and able 
 Sir Robert Philips seconded the suggestion. In 
 no single respect can the enemies of Eliot taunt 
 him with his conduct in this session ; nor will 
 they dare hereafter to use their equally danger- 
 ous weapon, the imputation of his silence, to 
 prove that his patriotism was sluggish or inac- 
 tive, or moving only at the will of others. 
 
 After the most anxious searcli, I can find no 
 allusion from Eliot respecting Buckingham 
 which indicates a feeling of any sort. His si- 
 lence on this head is indeed remarkable, as the 
 lauded name of the duke was then most fre- 
 quently on the lips of other popular members ; 
 and yet, that it did not proceed from any vin- 
 dictive feeling at an abrupt cessation of inter- 
 course, I think I am enabled to prove. From 
 a minute of the journals of the House, it ap- 
 pears that, on one of the debates respecting 
 the Spanish treaties, some private letters of 
 the Duke of Buckingham were referred to, 
 whereupon Eliot stated that he had that morn- 
 ing seen those letters. This is specially en- 
 tered in the journals.t No other member 
 makes the remotest allusion to having seen 
 them. This appears to me to offer a fair pre- 
 sumption that Eliot still continued to meet 
 Buckingham in private intercourse. If this is 
 admitted, then the amiable theory of those 
 writers who have concluded that the letter to 
 the duke, previously quoted, was the last of a 
 series of unanswered applications, and that, 
 from the time of its date, a vindictive feeling 
 had been awakened in the breast of the offend- 
 ed writer that Eliot's patriotism, in fact, was 
 altogether a personal pique at Buckingham? 
 has received another blow, prostrate as it was 
 before. 
 
 And another, should any one chance to think 
 another necessary, remains to be inflicted. In 
 this Parliament a question arose, on which I 
 have discovered the note of a speech by Eliot, 
 which could never have been delivered by him 
 if his character had not rested clearly free from 
 all imputations of personal dependance or po- 
 litical subserviency. It occurred in a debate 
 " at the close of 1623," the very period fixed 
 by our modern commentators from which to 
 
 * Commons' Journals, April 7, 1624. 
 
 t Ibid., April 8, 1624. 
 
 t Commons' Journals, April 1, 1624. In no other place 
 do I find the smallest allusion to Buckingham, not even at 
 the close of the Spanish business, when thanks were moved 
 by Eliot to " the prince, the king, and to God" for the re- 
 sult of the deliberations. Commons' Journals, April 24, 
 1624. 
 
 $ Mr. D'Israeli (passim) ; whose suggestions on this sub- 
 ject have been lately adopted by a distinguished writer.- 
 See Quarterly Review, No. 94, p. 471
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 date their obstinate accusations. At that pe- 
 riod several committees were sitting on the 
 various courts of justice to investigate com- 
 plaints against their mal-administration. Among 
 many petitions presented to the House in con- 
 sequence of these committees, was one from 
 the wife of a person named Grys, complaining 
 of wrongs she had suffered from the court of 
 chancery, and appealing against the long delays 
 of that court. To this petition Sir Edward 
 Coke objected. The lawyer stood in the way 
 of the redresser of grievances. He told the 
 House that the woman was half distracted ; 
 that the wrong she complained of occurred in 
 " Egerton's time ;" that he was now gone ; 
 and that it was a most unusual thing to com- 
 plain against the dead. After some discussion, 
 it was at last resolved that the grievance in 
 question, with others, should be argued by 
 counsel before a sub-committee. This sub- 
 committee was then about to be chosen, when 
 Sir John Eliot rose. He spoke, as was his cus- 
 tom ever, in concern for the wrongs of the op- 
 pressed. He warned the House to be careful 
 in their choice, for he knew of what vast im- 
 portance it was that the " cries of the vexed 
 subject" should be heard by unbiased men. 
 He implored them to " have a special care" 
 that its members should " have no dependance 
 upon men in place ;" he suggested that it 
 would be better to have no lawyers upon it ; 
 that it were more just to " have countrymen 
 that have no dependance."* There are. few 
 who will disagree with me in thinking that 
 these are not the words of a follower of Buck- 
 ingham. That they should have been spoken 
 by one who laboured under the very odium of 
 what he so earnestly condemned is, to a mon- 
 strous degree, improbable. Not on that occa- 
 sion, nor on any other, did his opponents in the 
 House dare to hint such a charge. I find the 
 patriotic old lawyer replying to this earnest ap- 
 peal, with a statement of " great inconvenien- 
 ces in having such a sub-committee," and an 
 entreaty to "have it well considered of;" but 
 not a word of reproach on the motives of Eliot. 
 
 It is necessary that I should now advert to 
 the terms on which Eliot and his friends in this 
 Parliament consented to furnish supplies for 
 the Spanish war. On the gross abuse of these 
 supplies their subsequent bitter opposition was 
 most justly founded. 
 
 Their earnest desire to see James's mean 
 subserviency to Spain at once destroyed, never 
 for an instant blinded them to the serious con- 
 sequence of pressing the people by heavy sub- 
 sidies. Nine hundred thousand pounds had 
 been demanded. They granted three hundred 
 thousand ; promising more if, in the right 
 prosecution of the contest, more should become 
 necessary. Over and over again they distinct- 
 ly stated that the country was not in a condi- 
 tion to hazard a general war ; and, by many 
 sharp stipulations, they restricted hostilities to 
 one object, specific and defined. They seem, 
 indeed, to have had some reason, before the 
 final arrangement, to suspect the gross duplici- 
 tyt which had been practised on them by Buck- 
 ingham, and to have resolved to defend their 
 own policy at all events. They declared that 
 
 * Commons' Journals, March 17, 1623. 
 t This will be alluded to shortly. 
 
 their object, in so earnestly promoting war, was 
 the recovery of the Palatinate, and that alone : 
 that hostilities with Spain, therefore, were to 
 be entered into only in so far as that branch of 
 the house of Austria was expected to assist the 
 others in retaining the territory of the elector 
 palatine. Nothing could be more distinct than 
 their stipulations on this point. They were 
 recognised before the death of James. No war 
 with Spain was proclaimed, though correspond- 
 ence with its court was broken ; and when 
 Mansfield received his commission, with twelve 
 regiments, for the service of the Palatinate, he 
 was required " not to make any invasion, or do 
 any act of war against the country or domin- 
 ion" of the King of Spain.* How far this first 
 condition was preserved, we shall shortly have 
 occasion to see. Another condition there was, 
 proposed by the king himself, that, in order to 
 ensure the application of the grant to the pur- 
 poses sought to be attained, it should be paid 
 into the hands of commissioners, appointed by 
 the House, who should expend the money upon 
 that business alone for which it was granted. t 
 The rupture of peace was no headlong enter- 
 prise, plunged into by the parliamentary lead- 
 ers, without regard to the issue, or the means 
 of its attainment.}: 
 
 Meanwhile, during these negotiations, no 
 popular grievance was lost sight of. Up to this 
 period, a couplet familiar in the common mouth 
 had imbodied the history of parliaments : 
 
 " Many faults complained of, few things mended, 
 A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended." 
 
 With the exception of the subsidy bill of 1621, 
 no bill had been allowed to pass for the space 
 of thirteen years. Legislation was now at last 
 resumed. Measures were passed to reform 
 many grievances in the law, and in prevention 
 of vexatious prosecutions. " Their long coun- 
 sels, which had been weather-bound, came to a 
 quiet road, and their vessel was lighted of stat- 
 utes which are of immortal memory."^ The 
 greatest of all these was that which abolished 
 monopolies for the sale of merchandise, or for 
 using any trade. It was nobly drawn up by 
 Coke, Eliot, Philips, and other members, as a 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 153, 154. 
 
 t Hume calls this " unprecedented in an English mon- 
 arch." (Vol. v., p. 98.) But though the practice had cer- 
 tainly then become unusual, it was common at a former, pe- 
 riod of English history. See Brodie's Hist, of British Em- 
 pire, vol. ii., p. 39. That the king proposed this, however, 
 under compulsion by his new tyrant Buckingham, and as a 
 mere trick to deceive the Commons, was soon evident. To 
 the astonishment of all, on accepting the subsidies, he used 
 this language : " 1 desire you to understand that I must 
 have a faithful secret council of war, which must not be or- 
 dered by a multitude, for so my designs may be discovered 
 before hand. One penny of this money shall not be bestow- 
 ed but in sight of your committees ; but whether I shall 
 send 2000 or 10,000, whether by sea or by land, east or 
 west, by diversion or otherwise, by invasion upon the Bava- 
 rian or the emperor, you must leave that to your king." 
 An ingenious method of rendering the check he had before 
 submitted to, for the purpose of procuring a liberal grant, 
 void and effectless. 
 
 t Commons' Journals, and Parl. Hist., passim. 
 
 <) Racket's Scrinia Reserata (Life of Williams), part i., 
 p. 200. He goes on, in his fashion, to say, " The voices 
 all went one way, as a field of wheat is bended that's blown 
 with a gentle gale, one and all ;" which proves that quaint 
 old gentleman to have been a reader of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher 
 
 * * * " And the people, 
 Against their nature, are all bent for him ; 
 And like a field of standing corn, that's moved 
 With a stiff gale, their heads bow all one way." 
 
 PMlaster. '
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 mere declaratory statute, reciting that such 
 monopolies were already contrary to the an- 
 cient and fundamental laws of the realm. " It 
 was there supposed," says Hume, " that every 
 subject of England had entire power to dispose 
 of his own actions, provided he did no injury 
 to any of his fellow-subjects ; and that no pre- 
 rogative of the king, no power of any magis- 
 trate, nothing but the authority alone of laws, 
 could restrain that unlimited freedom."* Fol- 
 lowing upon this measure, and of an importance 
 no less great, came the impeachment of the 
 Lord-treasurer Middlesex. For two centuries 
 with the single exception of the case of Ba- 
 con, too feeble to fix, with any certainty, the 
 precedent that grand constitutional right had 
 lain dormant. It was now asserted with eager- 
 ness by the Commons, and promoted hotly by 
 Buckingham, who had long hated the growing 
 independence of the power of Middlesex, and 
 as his caprice had raised him from obscurity, 
 now turned to hunt him to disgrace. In vain 
 the shrewdness of James remonstrated " By 
 God, Stenny, you are a fool, and will shortly 
 repent this folly ; and will find that, in this fit 
 of popularity, you are making a rod with which 
 your own breech will be scourged." In vain 
 he turned to the prince, and, with a bitterness 
 of prophecy, like that of Bacon to Middlesex 
 (" Remember that a Parliament will come !"), 
 told him that he would live " to have his belly 
 full of parliamentary impeachments.''! The 
 Commons were suffered to proceed. They 
 proved the guilt of the lord-treasurer ;t and 
 rescued from the disuse of centuries, and be- 
 yond the chance of recall, a vital parliamentary 
 right against future ministers of the crown. 
 
 James never forgave this. Hacket tells us 
 that, in reference to the matter, " he was quip- 
 ped every day with ignominious taunts, that 
 the kind correspondences between him and the 
 Parliament began to have a cloud over them." 
 There were other causes besides this. Farther 
 grievances remained to be discussed, and the 
 House had entered upon them with unwearying 
 zeal. The king then gave them to understand 
 that, though they were to apply redress to some 
 known grievances, they were not to go on seek- 
 ing after more ; and shortly afterward, in dis- 
 content, prorogued them. II He had failed in 
 the object of his concessions. He fancied they 
 would have put him in possession of more 
 money and more power. " He let fall some 
 flowers of his crown," says the quaint Hacket, 
 " that they might gather them up ; which, in- 
 
 * History, vol. v., p. 98, 99. See, also, Lord Coke on the 
 subject of this great act, 3 lust., 181. 
 
 t Clarendon, Hist., p. 20. 
 
 J See the proceedings in the Parl. Hist. Carte thought 
 him clearly guilty, p. 116. It appears also that Nicholas 
 Fcrrar, a most conscientious person, was one of his four ar- 
 dent accusers. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, 
 vol. iv. See, also, Hallam,vol. i.,p. 508. Clarendon, Hack- 
 et, and others consider him to have been used as a sacri- 
 fice to Buckingham's resentment. Eliot acted on all the 
 committees of this impeachment, with Sandys, Digges, Phil- 
 ips, Wentworth, Pym, &c. See Journals, April 12, 1624, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 t> Life of Williams, part i., p. 189, 190. 
 
 I! See Parl. Hist., vol. vi., p. 128, <fcc. Intimation having 
 then gone abroad of the new treaty of marriage carrying on 
 at Paris, the Commons had sent up what the king called 
 a " stinging petition" against the papists. See Rushworth, 
 vol. i., p. 140, et seq. ; also Roger Coke's Detection, vol. i., 
 p. 185. Nothing could exceed the present duplicity of the 
 king and his successor on this subject. 
 
 B 
 
 deed, was no more than deflumum pennarum, 
 the moulting of some feathers, after which the 
 eagle would fly the better."* Much to the as- 
 tonishment and disgust of the eagle in question, 
 however, measures which had for their object 
 the clipping of his wings, the effectual marring 
 of his royal flights, had appeared to be ripening 
 daily. Under these circumstances, on the 29th 
 of October, 1624. the day to which the Parlia-. 
 ment had been prorogued, the Parliament was 
 finally dissolved. 
 
 The death of James, sudden and mysterious, 
 followed close upon this event ; and the House 
 of Commons was almost instantly challenged to 
 a contest by his ill-advised successor. They 
 had prepared themselves for it by their exer- 
 tions of the last five-and-twenty years. They 
 had obtained little, it might be said, in respect 
 of distinct enactments ; but they had fenced 
 themselves round with privileges, never to be 
 questioned more, by favourites or by monarchs. 
 " They had rescued from disuse their ancient 
 right of impeachment ;they had placed on rec- 
 ord a protestation of their claim to debate all 
 matters of public concern ; they had remon- 
 strated against the usurped prerogatives of 
 binding the subject by proclamation, and of 
 levying customs at the outposts ; they had se- 
 cured beyond controversy their exclusive privi- 
 lege of determining contested elections of their 
 members.''! Vast rights remained yet to be 
 asserted, oppressive wrongs to be redressed ; 
 but an increasing energy in the nation gave 
 new confidence and strength to its representa- 
 tives ; and they assembled at the summons of 
 the new monarch, immediately after his acces- 
 sion, more than ever proudly watchful of privi- 
 lege, and more than ever sternly resolved on 
 good government. In this Parliament, which 
 met at Westminster on the 18th of June, 1625, 
 Eliot was again at his post. He took his seat 
 with a new colleague, Mr. Ralph Specot, for 
 the same borough as before that of Newport. 
 
 It may be well, before we listen to the com- 
 ments of Mr. Disraeli, and of others from whom 
 a more liberal consideration was to be expect- 
 ed, as to the severe conduct of this Parliament 
 to their young sovereign, to ask whether any 
 reasonable foundation of confidence had been 
 laid between them before their meeting this 
 day 1 Had any symptoms of a new and better 
 administration appeared in any quarter of the 
 government 1 Did favouritism, intrigue, or cor- 
 ruption seem to have abated a jot of their all- 
 governing influence at court 1 Had oppression 
 and injustice, even for the few little weeks of 
 the new reign, ceased to harass the nation * 
 But for so short a time had the doctrine and 
 the practice of absolute power and monarchy 
 imprescriptable, been vailed before the pres- 
 ence of the people, as their new inheritor, with 
 admirable hypocrisy, vailed his crown before 
 that people's representatives, on this day of 
 their assembling U 
 
 The answer which history gives to these 
 questions is a just warrant for the murmurs of 
 distrust which, in his progress to his first Par- 
 
 * Life of Williams, vol. i., p. 186. 
 
 t Hallam, vol. i., p. 509. 
 
 J Charles, on the day of this Parliament's meeting, wore 
 his crown, vailing it at the opening and the close of his 
 speech, with a solemn and unusual deference
 
 10 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 liaraent, already sounded in the ears of the 
 monarch, which scattered the seeds of disaf- 
 fection in all directions, and planted bitter 
 thorns in the young crown, as yet scarcely set- 
 tled on the temples of its wearer. 
 
 To the amazement of all, the statement made 
 to James's last Parliament by Buckingham, and 
 corroborated by Charles, had been discovered 
 to be one tissue of gross falsehoods. On that 
 statement, it has been seen, the war with Spain 
 was undertaken. We have Clarendon's au- 
 thority for asserting that they knew it to be un- 
 true.* " But yet," says Rushworth, " the prince 
 not only gave the testimony of his silence to 
 these untruths, but, on its being reported to 
 the House the same day, approved thereof 
 there also."t The inevitable discovery of the 
 truth, therefore, by the arrival of Bristol, now 
 completely shattered all the popularity which 
 Charles and Buckingham had acquired in the 
 last reign from the breach of the Spanish trea- 
 ties. But it did more. It inflamed displeasure 
 by the shame of imposition, and poisoned at 
 once those fresh springs of public confidence 
 which a new king has, as it were, a right to 
 claim as his own. Nor was this all. With an 
 almost indecent haste, the king had entered 
 into a marriage with a daughter of Roman Cath- 
 olic France ; had consented to certain secret 
 articles in the settlement of the marriage in fa- 
 vour of her religion ; had agreed to a suspen- 
 sion of the penal laws against the Catholics ; 
 and, as an earnest of his promised indulgences, 
 had already granted to several Romish priests 
 a special pardon, without the formality even of 
 a conviction, of all offences committed by them 
 against the penal laws. In fact, of his own in- 
 considerate will, he had provoked in the Eng- 
 lish nation that precise shame of religious sub- 
 jection, to avoid which they had been anxious 
 to rush into a war with Spain. Nor was this 
 the only religious wrong. Symptoms had shown 
 themselves of an unholy helium episcopate at 
 home. Laud's celebrated schedule of ecclesi- 
 astics, branded with the letters and P, as 
 they happened to be orthodox, or suspected 
 Puritan, had already been discussed in the min- 
 isterial councils, and had been felt also in por- 
 tentous signs of that exclusive system of church 
 patronage, the subsequent effects of which were 
 so terrible. t 
 
 This Parliament, therefore, shaped their de- 
 terminations accordingly. Their first efforts 
 were directed to secure the future safety of the 
 people by an enlargement of the basis of popu- 
 lar representation. On a repetition of the 
 king's demand for supplies, Eliot and his friends 
 went up to him with an address, respectfully 
 and cautiously worded, promising supplies, but 
 claiming the redress of grievances. The intem- 
 perate and threatening answer of the king had 
 no effect on the steady purposes of these great 
 
 * Clarendon, Hist, of Rebellion, vol. i., p. 19, folio ed. 
 A. reference to the proceedings on the mumal charges of 
 Buckingham and Bristol, in Rush-worth's first volume, or in 
 the sixth and seventh volumes of the " Parliamentary His- 
 tory," will supply very satisfactory means of judgment on 
 this and other important points connected with the Spanish 
 business. Nothing, as Mr. Hallam remarks (vol. i., Const. 
 Hist., p. 520), can be more gratuitous, or indeed impossible, 
 than many of Mr. Hume's assertions relating to them. 
 
 t Rushworth, Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 76, et seg., ed. 1682. 
 
 J Ibid., vol. i., p. 167, 168. See, also, Laud's Diary. 
 
 t) See Glanville's Reports. 
 
 men. They voted tonnage and poundage for 
 one year. The House of Lords, disdaining to 
 accept it with such a limitation, rashly rejected 
 the bill. Still, the Commons were not alarmed. 
 They pursued their own course calmly ; granted 
 the king readily, as they had promised, two 
 subsidies, and were proceeding to votes of in- 
 quiry and censure into various wrongs and 
 grievances, when the plague suddenly broke 
 out in London. The major part of the mem- 
 bers objected to continue at their post. " While 
 we are now speaking," said one, " the bell is 
 tolling every minute."* An adjournment to 
 Oxford was consequently proposed, and, after 
 a vast deal of squabbling between the king and 
 his two rival ministers, granted. Williams and 
 Buckingham, now coming fast to an open rup- 
 ture, could not but illustrate the truth of the 
 old saying.t Just as the House was adjourning 
 to Oxford, however, Sir John Eliot, with char- 
 acteristic spirit, rose and made the following 
 motion : " An order that, within three days af- 
 ter our next meeting, the House shall then be 
 called, and the censure of the House to pass 
 upon all such as shall then be absent." Ever 
 true and sincere himself, he would consent to 
 no adjournment which had not some chance, in 
 the sincerity of others, of answering the end 
 proposed.^ 
 
 In the course of the proceedings before this 
 adjournment, I should mention that I have ob- 
 served a circumstance which seems likely to 
 have been the origin of Sir Thomas Went- 
 worth's dislike of Eliot. A feeling of bitterness 
 unquestionably existed between them during 
 the greater part of their parliamentary career.^ 
 Mr. D'Israeli does not fail to suggest, that 
 Wentworth might have " disdained the vio- 
 lence and turbulence of Eliot ;"|| and he goes on 
 to state all the malicious motives that have 
 been suggested on both sides by Hacket and 
 his hero. Even Mr. Hallam is betrayed, I think, 
 on this point, into an unworthy admission. " Al- 
 ways jealous," he says, speaking of Wentworth, 
 " of a rival, he contracted a dislike for Sir John 
 Eliot, and might suspect that he was likely to 
 be anticipated by that more distinguished pa- 
 triot in royal favours. "T Such a supposition on 
 
 * Rushworth, Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 173. 
 
 t A lively'account (though sometimes over ingenious) of 
 this notorious quarrel will be found in Mr. D'Israeli's secret 
 history of the king's first ministers, " Commentaries," vol. 
 i., p. 249-272. It was a Peachem and Lockit affair. "Nev- 
 er trust," says that excellent moralist, Jonathan Wild, 
 " never trust the man who has reason to suspect you know 
 he has injured you." The archbishop and the duke acted 
 with decision on this maxim. While the worthy prelate 
 was intriguing deeply for the duke's impeachment, the no 
 less worthy peer was engaged in a similar plan for the ruin 
 of the bishop. See Brodie's Hist, of Brit. Enip., vol. ii., p. 
 81. Heylin's Life of Laud, p. 139. Racket's Scrinia Re- 
 serata, part xi., p. 16, 17, 18. Rushworth, vol. i. In all 
 their disputes, however, I think Williams has the decided 
 advantage ; and he must have startled Buckingham not a 
 little when he suddenly whispered in his grace's ear the 
 memorable words, " NQ man that is wise will show himself 
 angry with the people of England." 
 
 t Commons' Journals, July 11. 
 
 I) One of Racket's elegant sentences runs thus : " Sir 
 John Eliot of the West, and Sir Thomas Wentworth of the 
 North (the northern cock, as he afterward calls him), both 
 in the prime of their age and wits, both conspicuous for 
 able speakers, clashed so often in the House, and cudgelled 
 one another with such strong contradictions, that it grew 
 from an emulation between them to an enmity." Scrinia 
 Reserata. 
 
 II Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 273. 
 
 T Constitutional History, vol. ii., p. 57.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 11 
 
 Wentworth's part supposes a possibility of its 
 truth on Eliot's. I believe the dislike to have 
 originated in no such matter, but, on the con- 
 trary, in Eliot's keen penetration and unswerv- 
 ing sense of justice. I find that, shortly after 
 this first Parliament assembled, a dispute upon 
 the validity of Sir Thomas Wentworth's return 
 for the county of York came before the House. 
 Sir John Saville claimed a new election. This 
 was opposed by the court party, who, for rea- 
 sons best known to themselves and the intrigu- 
 ing Archbishop Williams, supported Went- 
 worth.* Eliot, on the other hand, supported 
 the claims of Saville, and impressed their jus- 
 tice so forcibly on the popular side of the House, 
 that the election of Wentworth was declared 
 void.t From this I date the hatred of the fu- 
 ture Earl of Strafford towards one whom no 
 court intrigue could influence, whom no friend- 
 ship could persuade to desert the great princi- 
 ples of public justice. Wentworth was again 
 returned ; thenceforward opposed Eliot when- 
 ever he was able ; and, when that great states- 
 man had perished in the cause so basely forsa- 
 ken by himself, he sneered at him as a " fan- 
 tastic apparition," and never ceased to spit forth 
 venom to the creature Laud against his mem- 
 ory and glory. 
 
 Sir John Eliot, however, was on the eve of 
 illustrating, by a more striking example, this 
 great feature in his character. Though he still 
 held the office of Vice-admiral of Devonshire,} 
 he felt that the time had at last arrived which 
 left him no alternative of choice with reference 
 to the lord high admiral. Up to this period he 
 had sustained, as is all but certain from the 
 proofs I have alleged, a personal intercourse 
 with that nobleman, and was certainly still con- 
 nected with him in office. His duty now re- 
 quired that this should cease. His youthful 
 companion had long been lost in the pampered 
 minister of kings, his superior in office was be- 
 neath him in public honesty. Both were aban- 
 doned. Sir John Eliot now saw, in the speedy 
 destruction of Buckingham, the only destruc- 
 
 * I shall have occasion to allude to these more specifical- 
 ly in the biography of Strafford. Eliot is never understood 
 to have been in any way connected with Saville, whose 
 character was not of that stamp to command either his pub- 
 lic or private sympathy. His keen penetration had already 
 pointed to the future Earl of Strafford as a patriot who 
 " rather looked to be won than cared to be obdurate ;" and 
 it is very certain that he looked upon the meaner Lord Sa- 
 ville in future (the period of whose elevation, by-the-by, is 
 singularly misstated by Hume) with a still more contemp- 
 tuous scorn. But the present case was simply one of jus- 
 tice. What its precise merits were, I am unable to state ; 
 but that Wentworth was capable of resorting to the most 
 unscrupulous and disgraceful expedients in furtherance of 
 his own aims, is evident from what we know of his conduct 
 at a former contest with Saville : I allude to the election 
 for York in 1621. The candidates were Wentworth, Sa- 
 ville, and Calvert, the secretary of state. Wentworth, 
 having secured his own return, zealously laboured to pro- 
 voke the freeholders against Saville, and, still apprehensive 
 of Calvert's failure, from his knowledge of the extensive in- 
 fluence of his opponent, wrote to the secretary in these 
 words: "I have heard that when Sir Francis Darcy op- 
 posed Sir Thomas Luke, in a matter of like nature, the 
 lords of the council writ to Sir Francis to desist. I know 
 my lord-chancellor is very sensible of you in this business ; 
 a word to him, and such a letter would make an end of all." 
 Stratford's State Papers, vol. i., p. 10. 
 
 t Commons' Journals, July 4. The motion of " Mr. So- 
 licitor" for counsel for Wentworth was defeated by a ma- 
 jority of thirty-nine. Wentworth, at a new election, was 
 again returned. 
 
 t Harl. MSS., 390. Letter of Mead to Sir Martin Stute- 
 ville, dated Feb. 23. 
 
 tion of that power behind the throne which was 
 greater than the throne itself, and was daily be- 
 coming more and more fatal to the people.* 
 He had at last concentrated in his own person, 
 and in those of his servile adherents, the most 
 considerable offices of the crown, and in his 
 single existence seemed to be content to in- 
 volve the question of the privileges of the na- 
 tion. Eliot, contented also with that issue, 
 buckled himself to the destruction of the min- 
 ister with terrible earnestness. 
 
 It is a striking tribute to the honesty of Eliot 
 that the dishonest men of all parties declared 
 themselves, in turn, against him. Archbishop 
 Williams, in his abject paper of apology to the 
 king, to disclaim all connexion " with any of 
 the stirring men," declared that about this time 
 " Sir John Eliot, the only member that began 
 to thrust in a complaint against me, was never 
 out of my lord duke's chamber and bosom, "t 
 This, one of the cringing falsehoods of that 
 learned divine, simply proves that Eliot hated 
 sycophancy in every shape, whether popular or 
 aristocratic, and was equally opposed to the 
 duke and to Williams, the duke's mortal ene- 
 my. At the very moment when the Jie was so 
 hardily asserted, he had been appointed one of 
 the secret managers to prepare an impeach- 
 ment against Buckingham. 
 
 This charge is yet scarcely so preposterous 
 as one of a similar character, belonging also to 
 this period, gravely brought forward by Mr. 
 D'Israeli. "That Sir John Eliot," says that 
 writer, " was well known to the king, and oft- 
 en in the royal circle, appears by Sir John's 
 complaint in the Parliament at Oxford in 1625, 
 of six Romish priests being lately pardoned, 
 which the duke had prevailed upon the king 
 to be done in his presence at Hamptom Court." 
 Whereupon Mr. D'Israeli concludes that " Eli- 
 ot, like Sir Dudley Digges, was, in fact, a great 
 servant of the duke's."J This is an oddly em- 
 phatic instance of perverse misrepresentation, 
 or I would scarcely hazard the reproach of te- 
 diousness in refuting it. Archdeacon Echard 
 is Mr. D'Israeli's authority. Roger Coke I 
 discover to have been the only authority for 
 Archdeacon Echard. I quote the original pas- 
 sage. " When the Parliament met at Oxford," 
 says Coke, plagiarizing a previous statement by 
 Hacket, " the speaker had no sooner taken his 
 chair but a western knight enlarges the sense 
 of his sorrow that he had seen a pardon for six 
 priests bearing test July 12 ; whereas but the 
 day before it, when they were to part from 
 Westminster, the lord keeper had promised in 
 the king's name, before them all, that the rig- 
 our against the priests should not be deluded. "|| 
 Oldmixon, quoting this account, makes the 
 western knight Sir Robert Philips of Somer- 
 
 * " The whole power of the kingdom was grasped by his 
 insatiable hand ; while he both engrossed the entire confi- 
 dence of his master, and held, invested in his single person, 
 '.he most considerable offices of the crown." Hume's His- 
 ;ory, vol. v., p. 137. "Who he will advance, shall be ad- 
 /anced ; and who he doth but frown upon, must be thrown 
 down." Stafford's Papers, vol. i., p. 28. 
 
 t Scrinia Reserata, part i. This would have been better 
 guessed, as I shall have occasion to show, of Wentworth. 
 Still, it would have been incorrect. 
 
 t Commentaries, vol ii., p. 272. 
 
 I) Echard's History, folio ed., p. 422. 
 
 II Roger Coke's Detection, vol. i., p. 232, ed. 1694. But 
 see, also, Scrinia Reserata, part i.
 
 12 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 setshire, and quotes it correctly enough.* The 
 archdeacon, on the other hand, takes for grant- 
 ed that the western knight must have been Sir 
 John Eliot of Cornwall ; and, with his usual in- 
 correctness, coupling the passage with a few 
 words that go before it, stating that the king 
 had signed the pardon in the presence and by 
 the influence of Buckingham, tortures it into 
 what Mr. D'Israeli has adopted. And Mr. D'ls- 
 raeli consummates the series of misrepresen- 
 tations by supporting upon their authority a 
 charge of sycophancy against Eliot ! I have 
 now to state that, whatever demerit attaches 
 to the circumstance must be removed from 
 Eliot, and from Philips also ; for that the " west- 
 ern knight" who " enlarged . the sense of his 
 sorrow" was Sir Edward Gyles, one of the 
 Cornish members.! 
 
 Eliot had more stirring game in hand. Scarce- 
 ly had the Parliament reassembled at Oxford 
 when secret intelligence reached him that the 
 loan of ships which had been promised to the 
 King of France, at the close of the late reign, 
 for the purpose of employment against the 
 Spanish interest in Italy and the Valtoline, had 
 been perverted, by the deliberate treachery of 
 Buckingham and his minion the king, to the use 
 of the French Catholics against the Huguenots 
 of Rochelle.i He saw and seized his oppor- 
 tunity. He hurried down to the House, and 
 implored them to grant no farther supplies, for 
 that there were heavy grievances to be con- 
 sidered. Charles having heard this, summon- 
 ed the Houses to meet him at the great hall in 
 Christ Church, to " convince them of the ne- 
 cessity of considering his business first." Un- 
 der his direction, his ministers then detailed 
 his wants ; and to prevent the effect, so much 
 
 * Oldmixon's History, p. 78, ed. 1730. 
 
 t Commons' Journals, 1st of August. Brodie gives the 
 name correctly, vol. ii., p. 73. Mrs. Macaulay is also cor- 
 rect, vol. i , p. 276. I was somewhat surprised to find, 
 from the preface to Monsieur Guizot's vivid " Histoire de la 
 Revolution d'Angleterre," that the work by that lady was 
 published in France in 1791, with the name of Mirabeau 
 as its author ! (Hist, par Guizot, vol. i., preface, p. xvii.) 
 It is singularly honourable, I may add, to the French na- 
 tion, that M. Guizot has found encouragement enough to 
 make it worth his while to publish, for the use of his coun- 
 trymen, a series of translations of original memoirs of the 
 times of the two great English revolutions (Collection des 
 Alemoires relatifs d la Revolution d'Angleterre, accompag- 
 nee de Notices et d'Eclaircissimens Historiques), amount- 
 ing to twenty-eight octavo volumes ! Such a collection 
 would be invaluable to the historical inquirer in our own 
 country ; but where is the public patronage that would 
 bear out any English bookseller or English man of letters 
 in such an undertaking? 
 
 t Lord Nugent discovered, among the Earl St. Germain's 
 papers, a copy of the high-minded protest by Admiral Pen- 
 nington, together with the original orders from Bucking- 
 ham, and from Charles himself, relating to this disgraceful 
 business. These I take to have been forwarded secretly by 
 Pennington to Sir John Eliot, in the way of self-vindication. 
 His, as Lord Nugent truly observes, was a hard position. 
 He commanded the ship, and led the fleet, of his sovereign. 
 But he had been sent forth, amid the acclamations of his 
 country, to give effect to a generous treaty with the op- 
 pressed and the besieged. He had no sooner arrived at his 
 destination than he found himself under secret orders to 
 put himself under a foreign command, in a murderous war- 
 fare against the English honour and the Protestant reli- 
 gion .See Nugent's Memorials, vol. i., p. 100, and Appen- 
 dix A. Lord Nugent has omitted to state a singular cir- 
 cumstance in connexion with this business, which renders 
 my suggestion still more probable. On the eve of the 
 meeting of the Oxford Parliament, Pennington was hasten- 
 ing to lay before that assembly an account of the proceed- 
 ings, when, to prevent the effect of such a disclosure, he 
 wot concealed by the interference of the court till the disso- 
 lution, which quickly followed. See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 176, Brodie, Brit. Emp., vol. ii., p. 72. 
 
 dreaded, of the disclosure of the affair at Ro- 
 chelle, Secretary Coke told the Commons, with 
 a cool and deliberate hypocrisy, that "the 
 French king chose to sheath his sword in the 
 bowels of his own subjects rather than declare 
 war against the Catholics."* After the conclu- 
 sion of this conference, the members of the 
 Commons returned to their House, and Sir 
 John Eliot rose. He implored them to pause 
 before they yielded up their only irresistible ar- 
 guments for good government. "It is not 
 usual," he said, " to grant subsidies upon sub- 
 sidies in one Parliament and no grievances re- 
 dressed." He then boldly stated that the treas- 
 ury had been misemployed, that evil counsels 
 guided the king's designs, that the necessities 
 of the nation had arisen through improvidence, 
 and that they had need to petition the king for 
 a strait hand and a better counsel to manage 
 his affairs, t Next, he "desired there might 
 an account be given for all the moneys given in 
 Parliament since the 12th of King James, with 
 some invectives against the commissioners, 
 whom he called the pretending sparers of the 
 king's purse, laying to their charge the loss of 
 thousands of men's lives in our late expeditions 
 by land and sea."t He reserved his heaviest 
 blow for the last, aiming it with a deadly effect 
 against Buckingham. " I desire to know," said 
 Eliot, " whether the money designed for the Pa- 
 latinate did not maintain the ships sent against 
 Rochelle?"^ The Commons, inflamed by this 
 address, threw out intelligible hints of impeach- 
 ing Buckingham. The king, exasperated in the 
 extreme, threatened a dissolution, while he 
 urged once more his necessities. Cold and res- 
 olute was the answer of the Commons. " Ne- 
 cessity is a dangerous counsellor, and is a con- 
 tinual argument of supplies in all Parliaments. 
 Those who have put the king and kingdom into 
 such a necessity and hazard ought to answer 
 for it, whosoever they be. "|| This ominous al- 
 lusion more nearly alarmed the king, and an 
 abrupt dissolution followed. Parliament was 
 dismissed on the 12th of August, f 
 
 It was speedily re-summoned ; but disgrace- 
 ful scenes had intervened. The king, under 
 the advice of Buckingham, had openly dis- 
 pensed with the laws. Letters had been is- 
 sued by order of council, under the privy seal, 
 forcing loans from private persons,** generally 
 
 * Rushworth, Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 178. 
 
 t See Oldmixon's History, p. 79. See, also, Rushworth, 
 vol. i., p. 180. 
 
 t Harleian MSS., 390. Letter of Mead to Stuteville. 
 
 t> See Oldmixon, p. 79, and Rushworth, vol. i., p. ISO. 
 
 II Rushworth, vol. i., p. 190. 
 
 IT Mr. Hume, in one of the early passages of his history 
 (which remains unequalled for its beauty of style and phil- 
 osophical remark, though it is utterly worthless as a book 
 of authority), describes this Parliament with a strango 
 mixture of truth and error. " It was necessary to fix a 
 choice: either to abandon entirely the privileges of the 
 people, or to secure them by firmer and more precise barri- 
 ers than the Constitution had hitherto provided for them. 
 In this dilemma, men of such aspiring genius and such in- 
 dependent fortunes could not long deliberate ; they boldly 
 embraced the side of freedom, and resolved to grant no 
 supplies to their necessitous prince without extorting con- 
 cessions in favour of civil liberty. The end they esteemed 
 beneficial and noble ; the means regular and constitutional. 
 To grant or refuse supplies was the undoubted privilege of 
 the Commons." See the whole passage, vol. v., p. 138, quarto 
 edit., 1763. See, also, Clarendon, vol. i., p. 6, folio edit. 
 
 ** Lord Nugent found one of these requisitions in the 
 MS. collection at Slowe. It is addressed to Sir Willian? 
 Andrews, of Lathbury, in Buckinghamshire, then a tenant 
 of John Hampden's, and afterward one of the deputy lieu-
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 13 
 
 those who were connected with the popular 
 party, for the mad purpose of carrying on the 
 Spanish war ; and the Spanish war was carried 
 on, up to the disastrous, ill-concerted, and most 
 wretchedly conducted expedition to Cadiz. 
 Parliament could then be warded off no longer, 
 hated as was even its name. Buckingham, 
 with an ominous foreboding of the future, 
 strove to disqualify the leading men, by getting 
 them pricked as sheriffs of their respective 
 counties. Elliot, it is said, was the chief ob- 
 ject of his anxiety on this head ;* but, in Eliot's 
 case, he found it impracticable. I think it 
 probable, however, that the duke prevented his 
 election for Newport. Here was only a means 
 of greater triumph. He presented himself to 
 his native county of Cornwall, and was instant- 
 ly^ returned by the electors.! It was an age 
 when the middle and lower ranks of the people 
 shared a common enthusiasm, and were inac- 
 cessible alike to fear or to favour. It is stri- 
 king, and even affecting, to mark the quiet 
 calmness with which Eliot now sought to pro- 
 vide that the risk and danger, to which he 
 knew his conduct in the coming Parliament 
 must expose himself, might not fall heavily on 
 his children. He assigned over every portion 
 of his most extensive estates in trust to rela- 
 tives for the benefit of his family, i Having 
 done this, he repaired to his place in the House 
 of Commons, resolved, at whatever hazard, to 
 strike down the great traitor who had imperill- 
 ed the liberty and the property of the kingdom. 
 At Westminster, on the 6th of February, 
 1626, this " great, warm, and ruffling"^ Parlia- 
 ment assembled. Eliot had scarcely taken his 
 seat, before his vehement eloquence, overflow- 
 ing with imbittered invective, was heard thun- 
 dering against the doomed minister. In his 
 style of oratory, a singular power of severity 
 and keenness united itself with the clearest fa- 
 cility of detail, was adorned with the most 
 pleasing classical allusion, and was directed 
 against its object with such warmth and ear- 
 nestness of passion as it is always most diffi- 
 cult to resist. The case of the chaplain Mon- 
 tagull was abandoned for the higher quarry : 
 searching committees were appointed, and the 
 defeats and disgraces of the nation were traced 
 home to Buckingham. The rage of the king 
 exceeded all bounds, and> under its influence, 
 he sent an insolent message to the Hoase. " I 
 must let you know that I will not allow any of 
 my servants to be questioned among you, much 
 less such as are of eminent place, and near 
 unto me. * * I see you especially aim at the 
 Duke of Buckingham. * * I would you would 
 hasten for my supply, or else it will be worse 
 
 tenants for that county under the Parliament. It appears 
 that for these contributions, exacted with the utmost sever- 
 ity and injustice, collectors were appointed, whose acquit- 
 tance should be a sufficient warrant for repayment in eigh- 
 teen months. " Put not your faith in princes !" Sir Will- 
 iam Andrews' acquittance, remains appended to the requi- 
 sition. 
 
 * Echard's History, p. 426. D'Israeli's Commentaries, 
 vol. i., p 298. 
 
 t Parliamentary History and Commons' Journals. 
 "3., No. 7000. Letter of Pory to P 
 
 'Israeli's Commentari 
 I shall have to advert to this hereafter. 
 
 J Harleian MSS., No. 7000. Letter of Pory to Pucker- 
 ing. See, also, D'Israeli's Commentaries, vol. iv., p. 510. 
 
 i> Whitelocke's Memorials of the English Affairs, p. 7, 
 edit. 1682. 
 
 II I shall hare occasion to allude to this case in the biog- 
 raphy of Pynj 
 
 "or yourselves ; for if any evil happen, I think 
 I shall be the last that shall feel it."* Eliot 
 smiled at this impotent rage. " We have had 
 a representation of great fear," he said ; " but 
 I hope that shall not darken our understand- 
 ngs. Our wills and affections were never 
 more clear," he continued, " more ready, as to 
 lis majesty ; but we are balked and checked 
 n our forwardness by those the king intrusts 
 with the affairs of the kingdom." Again he 
 inflamed the House by comments on the Span- 
 sh expedition. " The last action was the 
 ting's first action ; and in this the king and 
 iingdom have suffered dishonour. We are 
 weakened in our strength and safety ; our 
 men and ships are lost." Then followed a bit- 
 ter taunt against even the personal courage of 
 Buckingham, who, it will be recollected, had 
 left the command of the expedition to Sir Ed- 
 ward Cecil. " The great general had the whole 
 command, both by sea and land ; and could the 
 great general think it sufficient to put in his 
 deputy and stay at home ?" The orator next, 
 taking advantage of the excitement of his hear- 
 ers, thundered forth questions of a more fatal 
 meaning. " Are not honours now sold, and 
 made despicable 1 Are not judicial places sold 1 
 And do not they then sell justice again 1 Ven- 
 dere jure potest emerat ille prius." After some 
 well-employed classical allusions, Eliot pro- 
 ceeded thus : " I shall to our present case cite 
 two precedents. The first was in the eleventh 
 year of Henry III. The treasure was then 
 much exhausted ; many disorders complained 
 of; the king wronged by ministers. Many sub- 
 sidies were demanded in Parliament, but they 
 were denied ; and the Lords and Commons join- 
 ed to desire the king to resume lands which 
 had been improvidently granted, and to exam- 
 ine his great officers, and the causes of those 
 evils which the people then suffered. This was 
 yielded unto by the king ; and Hugh de Burgo 
 was found faulty, and was displaced ; and then 
 the Commons, in the same Parliament, gave 
 supply. The second precedent was in the tenth 
 year of Richard II. Then the times were such, 
 and places so changeable, that any great officer 
 could hardly sit to be warmed in his place. 
 Supply was at that Parliament required : the 
 Commons denied supply, and complained that 
 their moneys were misemployed ; that the Earl 
 of Suffolk (Michael de la Pole) then overruled 
 all ; and so their answer was, ' they could not 
 give ;' and they petitioned the king that a com- 
 mission might he granted, and the Earl of Suf- 
 folk might be examined. A commission," Eliot 
 continued, reserving himself for a closing sar- 
 casm at Buckingham, "at their request was 
 awarded ; and that commission recites all the 
 evil then complained of; and that the king, 
 upon the petition of the Lords and Commons, 
 had granted that examination should be taken 
 of the crown lands which were sold, of the or- 
 dering of his household, and the disposition of 
 the j ewels of his grandfather and father. / hear 
 nothing said in this house of our jewels, nor will 1 
 speak of them ; but I could wish they were within 
 these walls /"t The effect of this speech was 
 
 * Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 3. 
 
 t Buckiiignam had raised money upon the crown jewels 
 and plate, by the king's order, at the Hsgue. Strafford, 
 State Papers, vol. i., p. 28. Ingram to Wentworth. Owing
 
 14 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 complete, and, in the midst of the general in- 
 dignation excited, Dr. Turner's resolutions, 
 that " common fame" was a good ground of 
 accusation against Buckingham, were passed ; 
 and notice was sent to the duke of the proceed- 
 ings against him. At the same time, in illus- 
 tration of the good faith with which they act- 
 ed, they announced that the king's immediate 
 necessities should be relieved while his minis- 
 ter was brought to trial ; and they redeemed 
 this pledge by a vote for the grant of three sub- 
 sidies and three fifteenths.* The king now felt 
 more strongly than ever the imminent danger 
 of his favourite. Again he interfered, and 
 again his interference was defeated by the 
 boldness of Eliot. " Remember," he said, 
 " that Parliaments are altogether in my pow- 
 er for their calling, sitting, and dissolution ; 
 therefore, as I find the fruits of them good 
 or evil, they are to continue or not to be."t 
 The Commons retired to deliberate this with 
 locked doors, and the key placed in the hands 
 of the speaker. What passed in that mem- 
 orable sitting did not publicly transpire ; but 
 I can supply some portion of it at least from 
 a manuscript letter of the time. " Sir John 
 Eliot rose up and made a resolute (I doubt 
 whether a timely)t speech, the sum whereof 
 was, that they came not thither either to do 
 what the king should command them, or to ab- 
 stain where he forbade them ; and therefore 
 they should continue constant to maintain their 
 privileges, and not do either more or less 
 for what had been said unto them." This 
 ominous meeting with locked doors alarmed 
 the king ; negotiations were opened, explana- 
 tions offered, every possible resource of avoid- 
 ance attempted, but in vain. It was too late 
 to dispute the right of impeachment after the 
 precedents of Bacon and Middlesex ; and the 
 Commons, after addressing the king in deco- 
 rous language, impeached Buckingham on 
 twelve articles.lt 
 
 Eight chief managers were appointed. To 
 Pym, Herbert, Selden, Glanville, Sherland, and 
 
 to a singular omission of the editors of the last great parlia- 
 mentary history, we look vainly among the debates they 
 hare collected for this very remarkable speech. It is in 
 Rushworth, however (vol. i., p. 220), and in the Old Parlia- 
 mentary History, vol. vi., p. 441, edit. 1763. 
 
 * Rushworth's Hist. Coll., vol. i., p. 221. Whitelocke's 
 Memorials, p. 3. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 225. Whitelocke, p. 4. 
 
 t Here the timid writer alludes to what was frequently 
 urged against Eliot, the severe and unsparing character of 
 his speeches. Clarendon was accustomed to the House of 
 Commons, and speaks differently. " Modesty and modera- 
 tion in words," says that noble writer, "never was, nor 
 never will be observed in popular councils whose founda- 
 tion is liberty of speech." Hist, of the Rebellion, vol. i., p. 
 7, folio edit. 
 
 <t Harleian MSS. Letter of Mead to Sir Martin Stute- 
 ville, dated April 8. In a subsequent letter of the same 
 correspondent in this collection (dated April 28), I find the 
 first shadowing forth of the iniquitous dispersion of Sir 
 Robert Cotton's library an event which that learned anti- 
 quary was unable to survive. " Sir Robert Cotton's books 
 are threatened to be taken away, because he is accused to 
 impart ancient precedents to the Lower House." 
 
 II The duke's obsequious and fawning answer had simply 
 the effect of adding another charge to the impeachment. I 
 must refer the reader to the various histories for an ample 
 exposure of the disgraceful practices resorted to by the 
 king to rescue his favourite from the powerful opposition of 
 the Earls Bristol and Arundel in the Upper House. Brodie's 
 Hist, of the British Empire, vol. ii., p. 105, et seq. Lin- 
 gard's History, vol. ix., p. 345, et seq. The History, from 
 Sir James Mackintosh, in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, vol. v., p. 
 37-46. 
 
 Wandesford was intrusted the duty of dilating 
 upon the facts of the impeachment ; to Sir Dud- 
 ley Digges the task of opening the proceedings 
 in a " prologue" was committed ; and for Sir 
 John Eliot the arduous duty was reserved of 
 winding up the whole proceedings by one of his 
 impressive perorations, that should serve as an 
 " epilogue" to this mighty drama. They did not 
 over estimate the value of his eloquence.* 
 
 The speech delivered by him on this great 
 occasion is an important chapter in his history. 
 Sir Dudley Digges, a courtly patriot, had spo- 
 ken the "prologue" in the highest prevailing 
 style of ornate circumlocution and quaintly ele- 
 vated metaphor. Professing to deliver himself 
 in " plain country language, setting by all rhe- 
 torical affectations," the monarchy he compared 
 to the creation, the Commons to the earth, the 
 Lords to the planets, the king to the glorious sun, 
 the clergy to the fire, the judges and magistrates 
 to the air, and the Duke of Buckingham to a 
 comet, " a prodigious comet." All this was 
 only a striking foil to the nervous and daring 
 invective, the clear and gorgeous declamation 
 of Eliot. The proud minister, who had kept 
 his seat during the harangue of Digges, inso- 
 lently braving his accuser, and jeering his 
 quaint expressions, was observed to leave the 
 house when Eliot, on the following day, arose. t 
 It was well for himself that he had done so. 
 Never was an attack made, in that or any suc- 
 ceeding time, so eloquent, so bitter, so earnest, 
 so disdainful. The orator excelled himself. 
 He had summoned to his service all his literary 
 accomplishments, and he closely environed his 
 argument with a passion that was absolutely 
 terrible. 
 
 He began by describing the ambition of " this 
 man," as he disdainfully termed the duke, im- 
 peaching it by " the common sense of the mis- 
 eries and misfortunes which the people suf- 
 fer," and protesting in eloquent phrase against 
 those high misdemeanors which " have lost us 
 the regality of our narrow seas, the ancient 
 inheritance of our princes." He then exposed, 
 as " full of collusion and deceit," the " inward 
 character" of the mind of Buckingham. " I 
 can express it," said Eliot, bitterly, " no better 
 than by the beast called by the ancients stcl- 
 lionatus ; a beast so blurred, so spotted, so full 
 of foul lines that they knew not what to make 
 of it." He next presented to their lordships 
 " the duke's high oppression" in all its strange 
 extent, " not to men alone, but to laws and 
 statutes, to acts of council, to pleas and de- 
 crees of court, to the pleasures of his majes- 
 
 * For the history of this impeachment, and reports of 
 the various speeches, see Rushworth, vol. i., p. 302, et seq. ; 
 Parliamentary History, vol. vi. and vii. ; History from Hack- 
 intosh, vols. v., p. 46, et seq. The thirteen articles of the 
 impeachment were arranged under the following heads: 
 Plurality of offices ; buying the place of high admiral ; 
 buying the wardenship of the cinque ports ; not guarding 
 the narrow seas ; unlawfully and corruptly staying a French 
 ship ; extorting 10,000 from the East India merchants ; 
 putting English ships in the hands of the French, to be 
 employed against the Protestants of Rochelle (this embraced 
 two articles) ; compelling Lord Roberts to buy his peerage ; 
 selling places of judicature ; procuring honours for his poor 
 kindred ; malversation of the king's revenue ; giving physic 
 to the late king. 
 
 t The duke's absence is marked by a letter in the Harl. 
 MS., 383. See, also, Rushworth. In Ellis's Original Let- 
 ters, vol. iii., p. 226 (second edit.), an account will be found 
 of the duke's " jeering and fleering insolence," and the spir- 
 ited rebuke it at last provoked.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 15 
 
 ty." The orator afterward, having indulged 
 some quiet sarcasms at Buckingham, his vic- 
 tims, and his extortions, "mathematically ob- 
 served and exquisitely expressed," advanced 
 to the most serious imputations, which he han- 
 dled with a fearful severity. " That which 
 was wont to be the crown of virtue and merit 
 is now become a merchandise for the greatness 
 of this man, and even justice is made his prey ! 
 The most deserving offices that require abil- 
 ities to discharge them are fixed upon the 
 duke, his allies, and kindred. He hath drawn 
 to him and his the power of justice, the power 
 of honour, and the power of command in ef- 
 fect, the whole power of the kingdom, both for 
 peace and war !" Eliot then painted a mourn- 
 ful picture of the result of the favourite's ex- 
 tortions in the present state of the kingdom, 
 the " revenues destroyed, the fountain of sup- 
 ply exhausted, the nerves of the land relaxed," 
 placing beside it, in vivid and indignant con- 
 trast, the gorgeousness of Buckingham's pos- 
 sessions. " He intercepts, consumes, and ex- 
 hausts the revenues of the crown, not only to 
 satisfy his own lustful desires, but the luxury 
 of others ; and, by emptying the veins the blood 
 should run in, he hath cast the body of the 
 kingdom into a high consumption. Infinite 
 sums of money, and mass of land exceeding 
 the value of money, nay, even contributions in 
 Parliament, have been heaped upon him ; and 
 how have they been employed 1 Upon costly 
 furniture, sumptuous feasting, and magnificent 
 building, the visible evidences of the express ex- 
 hausting of the state! And yet his ambition," 
 proceeded Eliot, alluding darkly to more dread- 
 ful charges, " which is boundless, resteth not 
 here, but, like a violent flame, bursteth forth 
 and getteth farther scope. Not satisfied with 
 injuries and injustice, and dishonouring of re- 
 ligion, his attempts go higher to the prejudice 
 of his sovereign. The effects I fear to speak, and 
 fear to think.* I end this passage, as Cicero 
 did in a like case, ne gravioribus utar verbis quam 
 rei naturafert, aut levioribus quam causa necessi- 
 tas postulat." 
 
 The closing passage of Eliot's speech was 
 tremendous, and must have electrified the 
 house. 
 
 " Your lordships have an idea of the man, 
 what he is in himself, what in his affections ! 
 You have seen his power, and some, I fear, 
 have felt it ! You have known his practice, 
 and have heard the effects. It rests, then, to 
 be considered what, being such, he is in refer- 
 ence to the king and state how compatible or 
 incompatible with either 1 In reference to the 
 king, he must be styled the canker in his treas- 
 ure ; in reference to the state, the moth of all 
 goodness. What future hopes are to be ex- 
 pected, your lordships may draw out of his ac- 
 tions and affections. In all precedents I can 
 hardly find him a match or parallel. None so 
 like him as Sejanus, thus described by Taci- 
 tus : Audax sui obtegens, in alias criminator, jux- 
 ta adulator et superbus. My lords, for his pride 
 and flattery it was noted of Sejanus that he did 
 clientes suos provinciis adornare. Doth not this 
 
 * We feel with Eliol on this point. The reader is refer- 
 red to a forcible passage in Mr. Brodie's History of the 
 British Empire, vol. ii., p. 43, 44. I have satisfied myself 
 respecting Mr. Brodie's proof, by referring to the MS. in the 
 Ayscough Collection of the Brit. Museum, No. 4991, p. 206. 
 
 man the like 1 Ask England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland, and they will tell you ! Sej anus's 
 pride was so excessive, Tacitus saith, that he 
 neglected all counsel, mixed his business and 
 service with the prince, seemed to confound 
 their actions, and was often styled imperatoris 
 laborum socius. How lately, and how often, 
 hath this man commixed his actions, in dis- 
 course, with actions of the king ! My lords, I 
 have done. You SEE THE MAN ! By him came 
 all these evils ; in him we find the cause ; on 
 him we expect the remedies ; and to this we 
 met your lordships in conference." 
 
 The rage of the king, when told of Eliot's 
 speech, betrayed him. In a manuscript letter 
 of the time the writer alludes to the unseemly 
 anger displayed as " private news which I de- 
 sire you to keep to yourself as your own, by 
 separating this half sheet, and burning it or 
 concealing it." The allusion to the death of 
 his father, and to Sejanus, had strangely affect- 
 ed Charles. "Implicitly," he exclaimed, "he 
 must intend me for Tiberius !"* and he hurri- 
 ed to the House of Lords to complain of Sir 
 John Eliot. Then began those cruel persecu- 
 tions which Eliot had foreseen, and prepared 
 himself for, and which were only exhausted at 
 last in the death of their illustrious object. He 
 was that day committed close prisoner to the 
 Tower ; and, by an odd kind of chance, which 
 may be worth noting for some of my readers, 
 was flung into the dungeon which, after a few 
 short months, received Felton, Buckingham's 
 assassin, t Digges was also committed. The 
 House of Commons, on hearing of this gross 
 breach of privilege (the first of that series of 
 open and undisguised outrages which brought 
 Charles to the scaffold), broke up instantly, 
 notwithstanding a very heavy press of business 
 before them ; and, after dinner, many members 
 met in Westminster Hall, " sadly communica- 
 ting their minds to one another.":): The follow- 
 
 * Harleian MSS., 383. Letter of Mead, dated May 11. 
 The writer subsequently says that Sir Robert Cotton had 
 told him that the king's affection towards the duke " was 
 very admirable no whit lessened." When Charles, indeed, 
 came in his barge from Whitehall to order Eliot to the Tow- 
 er, Buckingham sat by his side ! MS. letter to Mead. 
 
 t " As Felton the last weeke passed through Kingston- 
 upon-Thames, an old woman bestowed this salutation upon 
 him : ' Now God blesse thee, little David,' quoth she ; 
 meaning he had killed Goliath. He hath hitherto (saith my 
 author) been fairly used in the Tower, being put into the 
 same lodging where Sir John Eliot lav, and allowed two 
 dishes of meat every meal." Harleian MSS., 390. Felton 
 was a miserable enthusiast, who revenged upon Bucking- 
 ham only a private wrong. But his name deserves honour 
 for the memory of one striking incident at the close of his 
 unhappy life. I quote it from Ellis's Original Letters, vol. 
 iii., p. 267, second edit. " Another friend told me that on 
 Tuesday morning, some of the lords being with him, my 
 Lord of Dorset told him, ' Mr. Felton, it is the king's pleas- 
 ure you should be put to tenure, to make you confesse your 
 complices; and therefore prepare yourself for the rack.' 
 To whom Felton : ' I do not believe, my lord, that it is the 
 king's pleasure ; for he is a just and a gracious prince, and 
 will not have his subjects to be tortured against law. I do 
 again affirm, upon my salvation, that my purpose was known 
 to no man living ; and more than I have said before I can- 
 not. But if it be his majesty's pleasure, I am ready to suf- 
 fer whatever his majesty will have inflicted upon me. Yet 
 this I must tell you by-the-way, that if I be put upon the 
 rack I will accuse you, my Lord of Dorset, and none but 
 yourself.' So they left him there without bringing him 
 to the rack." The letter writer might have gone farther, 
 for this was not all. To excuse themselves from the pos- 
 sible supposition that they could have been influenced in 
 this case by terror, the judges were ordered to deliver a de- 
 cision that "no such punishment as the rack is known or 
 allowed by our law." We owe this to Felton. 
 
 t Harleian MSS., 383. Letter to Mead, dated May 12.
 
 16 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ing morning they met in the House ; but when 
 the speaker reminded them of the business of 
 the day, " Sit down ! sit down !" was the gen- 
 eral cry : "no business till we are righted in our 
 liberties !"* A sullen silence succeeded, which 
 was broken by the memorable expostulation of 
 Sir Dudley Carleton, the king's vice-chamber- 
 lain. Unadvisedly he let the court secret out ! 
 After complaining of the violent and contemp- 
 tuous expressions resorted to by Eliot and Dig- 
 ges, he blurted forth as follows : " I beseech 
 you, gentlemen, move not his majesty with 
 trenching on his prerogative, lest you bring him 
 out of love with Parliaments. In his messages 
 he hath told you that, if there were not corre- 
 spondency between him and you, he should be 
 enforced to use new counsels. Now, I pray you 
 to consider what these new counsels are, and 
 may be. I fear to declare those that I con- 
 ceive. In all Christian kingdoms you know 
 that parliaments were in use anciently, until 
 the monaruhs began to know their own strength ; 
 and, seeing the turbulent spirit of their parlia- 
 ments, at length they, by little and little, began 
 to stand upon their prerogatives, and at last 
 overthrew the parliaments throughout Chris- 
 tendom, except here only with us. And, in- 
 deed, you would count it a great misery, if you 
 knew the subjects in foreign countries as well 
 as myself, to see them look not like our nation, 
 with store of flesh on their backs, but like so 
 many ghosts, and not men, being nothing but 
 skin and bones, with some thin cover to their 
 nakedness, and wearing only wooden shoes on 
 their- feet ; so that they cannot eat meat or 
 wear good clothes, but they must pay and be 
 taxed unto the king for it. This is a misery 
 beyond expression, and that which yet we are 
 free from."t Poor Sir Dudley had scarcely 
 delivered himself of this when his ears were 
 saluted with loud and unwelcome shouts, " To 
 the bar ! to the bar !" He narrowly escaped the 
 necessity of apologizing at the bar on his knees. 
 Ultimately Digges, coy patriot, having con- 
 sented to retract certain expressions complain- 
 ed of, was released. Eliot, on the other hand, 
 coldly and sternly refused to listen to any pro- 
 posals ; and the king, unable to keep up the 
 struggle, was obliged, after the expiration of 
 eight days, to sign a warrant for his release. 
 On his reappearance in the House, the vice- 
 chamberlain, by his master's command, repeat- 
 ed the charge of intemperate language ; upon 
 which Sir John, instead of denying anything he 
 had said, or meanly endeavouring to explain 
 away the harshness of the terms he had made 
 use of, in a remarkably eloquent and sarcastic 
 speech avowed and defended every name he 
 had applied to Buckingham.^ The spirit of this 
 
 * Harleian MSS., 383. Letter to Mead, dated May 12. 
 See, also, Rushworth, vol. i., p. 358, and Parliamentary His- 
 tory, vol. vii., p. 159, for other accounts of this scene. 
 
 t Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 6. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 359. Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 159. 
 
 t Hatsell's Precedents. For a report of Sir John's speech, 
 see Rushworth, vol. i., p. 362 ; and Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 
 165. The latter is more full and correct. I quote a striking 
 passage : " For the words, the man, he said he spoke not by 
 the book, but suddenly. For brevity's sake he used the 
 words, The man. He thought it not fit at all times to reit- 
 erate his titles ; and yet thinketh him not to be a god." In 
 conclusion, Eliot touched with a modest and manly forbear- 
 ance on the old charge against him. " For the manner of 
 his speech, as having too much vigour and strength, he said 
 he could not excuse his aatural defects ; but he then en- 
 
 great man communicated itself to the House, 
 and by a unanimous vote, refusing even to or- 
 der him to withdraw,* they cleared him from 
 every imputation. 
 
 Charles, nothing'taught by this egregious fail- 
 ure, continued to play the minion to Bucking- 
 ham, who had now resolved, by another disso- 
 lution, to throw for his only chance of safety. 
 This was, indeed, a desperate step, and so 
 Charles would seem to have considered it ; 
 but his fears, his consciousness of the injuries 
 he was committing on his subjects, everything 
 sank before the influence of the favourite. 
 " The duke being in the audience chamber, pri- 
 vate with the king, his majesty was overheard 
 (as they talk) to use these words : ' What can 
 I do more] I have engaged mine honour to 
 mine uncle of Denmark and other princes. I 
 have, in a manner, lost the love of my subjects. 
 What wouldst thou have me do 1 ' Wh ence some 
 think the duke moved the king to dissolve the 
 Parliament."! Or, it may have been, the duke 
 moved the king to get himself promoted to the 
 chancellorship of Cambridge. Monstrous as it 
 appears, a royal message was sent forthwith to 
 the convocation, on the present occurrence of 
 the vacancy, ordering them to elect the duke ! 
 Vain was every entreaty to postpone the elec- 
 tion ; at least until after the event of the im- 
 peachment were known. It was carried.J and 
 received the formal and elaborate approval of 
 the king. The Commons, then, after a stormy 
 debate, in which Eliot took his usual warm and 
 vigorous part,$ sent to crave audience of his 
 majesty " about serious business concerning 
 all the Commons of the land." The king re- 
 turned answer that they should hear from him 
 the next day. They did hear from him : the 
 next day they were dissolved ;[| and the rash 
 monarch proceeded to. try the effect of those 
 " new counsels" which he and his servants had 
 so often threatened. 
 
 These " new counsels" appeared in the shape 
 of a naked despotism. Everything short of 
 the absolute surrender of the subject to the 
 muskets of the soldiery was resorted to ; and 
 
 deavoured, and ever did in that House, to avoid passion ; and 
 only desired to do his duty." 
 
 * The entry in the Journals is remarkable : " Sir John 
 Eliot of himself withdrew ; the House refusing to order his 
 withdrawing." 
 
 t A letter in the Harleian MSS. Mead to Stuteville, 
 dated May 13. 
 
 t By means the most disgraceful, -which, after all, only se- 
 cured Buckingham a majority of three votes over Lord An- 
 dover, hastily set up by the Commons. In Ellis's Original 
 Letters, vol. iii., p. 231, we have a curious account of the 
 contest. " My lord bishop labours ; Mr. Mason visits for his 
 lord, Mr. Cosens for the most true patron of the clergy and 
 of scholars. Masters belabour their fellows. Dr. Maw 
 sends for his, one by one, to persuade them ; some twice 
 
 over Divers in town got hackneys, and fled to avoid 
 
 importunity. Very many some whole colleges were got- 
 ten by their fearful masters, the bishop, and others, to sus- 
 pend, who otherwise were resolved against the duke, and 
 kept away with much indignation : and yet for all this stirre 
 the duke carried it but by three votes from my Lord Andover, 
 whom we voluntarily set up against him, without motion 
 
 on his behalf, yea, without his knowledge We had 
 
 but one doctor in the whole towne durst (for so I dare speak) 
 give with us against the duke ; and that was Dr. Porter ol 
 Queen's." 
 
 I) It was he who proposed, and had the chief hand in 
 framing, the celebrated remonstrance (Rushworth, vol. i., 
 p 400), which every member of the House held in his pos- 
 session on the day of the dissolution of this Parliament. A 
 proclamation was subsequently issued against it by the king. 
 See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 411. 
 
 II See, also, Sanderson's account in his Life of Charles, p 
 58 ; and Rushworth, vol. i., p. 398.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 17 
 
 we learn, from a remarkable passage in Hume's 
 history, good reason why the new counsels fell 
 short of that. " Had he possessed any milita- 
 ry force," says the philosophical apologist of 
 Charles, "on which he could depend, 'tis not 
 improbable that he had at once taken off the 
 mask, and governed without any regard to par- 
 liamentary privileges. * * * But his army was 
 new levied, ill paid, and worse disciplined ; no- 
 wise superior to the militia, who were much 
 more numerous, and who were, in a great meas- 
 ure, under the influence of the country gentle- 
 men."* As it was, the mask was very clumsi- 
 ly kept on. The first thing attempted under it 
 was to cover, by a bungling imposition, an out- 
 rageous stretch of power. The people were 
 instructed by the agents of government that, 
 as subsidies had been voted in the last House 
 of Commons, they could not legally refuse to 
 pay them, though Parliament had been dissolv- 
 ed before the bill imbodying them had passed ; 
 and they were levied accordingly ! A commis- 
 sion to improve the revenues of crown lands 
 went forth next on a mission of the grossest 
 tyranny ; and, following this, a commission to 
 force the most enormous penalties against 
 religious recusants. Privy seals for the loan 
 of money were at the same time issued, in all 
 directions, to men of reputed property, and an 
 immediate advance of a hundred and twenty 
 thousand pounds was insolently demanded from 
 the city of London. Lastly, a levy of ships 
 was ordered from the port towns and counties 
 adjoining a forecast of the memorable tax of 
 ship money, t As men grieved and wondered 
 at these things, the news arrived of the defeat 
 of the King of Denmark at the bloody battle 
 of Luttern ; and Charles seized the advantages 
 of this disaster to his ally to execute a meas- 
 ure he had long meditated, and of which all 
 these oppressions we have named were but 
 even the feeble foreshadowing. He sent com- 
 missioners into every quarter of the kingdom, 
 with the most frightfully inquisitorial powers, 
 to execute a GENERAL FORCED LOAN.J He issu- 
 
 * History, vol. v., p. 151. Clarendon's account may be 
 subjoined to this : " Upon every dissolution, such as had 
 given any offence were imprisoned or disgraced ; new proj- 
 ects were every day set on foot for money, which served 
 only to offend and incense the people, and brought little sup- 
 plies to the king's occasions ; yet raised a great stock for 
 expostulation, murmur, and complaint, to be exposed when 
 other supplies should be required. And many persons of 
 the best quality and condition under the peerage were com- 
 mitted to several prisons, with circumstances unusual and 
 unheard of, for refusing to pay money required by these ex- 
 traordinary ways." Hist, of Rebellion, vol. i., p. 22. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 411-172. Rymer, xviii., p. 730- 
 842. Whitelocke, p. 7-9. In these authorities ample infor- 
 mation will be found. See, also, Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 320- 
 338. In connexion with these accounts it may be amusing 
 to quote an anecdote from the office book of the master of 
 the revels, " here entered," as he observes, " for ever, to be 
 remembered by my son, and those who cast their eyes' on it, 
 in honour of King Charles my master." The king, reading 
 a manuscript play of Massinger's, had stumbled on the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " Moneys ! we'll raise supplies what ways we please, 
 And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which 
 We'll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Caesars 
 In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws 
 But what their swords did ratify :" 
 
 and, in the disgust of the moment, wrote a halting line 
 against it : 
 
 " This is too insolent, and to be changed !" 
 Truly, nothing should be so disgusting to us as a hideous 
 likeness of ourselves ! 
 
 t It is worth while giving an extract from the private in- 
 itructions of these commissioners. They were " to treat 
 
 r, 
 
 ed an elaborate proclamation at the same time, 
 excusing these new counsels by the exigence 
 of the moment ; and, in private instructions to 
 the clergy, ordered them to use the pulpit in 
 advancement of his monstrous projects.* Rev- 
 erend doctors, with an obedient start, straight- 
 way preached illimitable obedience on pain of 
 eternal damnation.! Imprisonment of various 
 sorts compensated for the inefficacy of reli- 
 gious anathemas. The poor, who could not, 
 or would not pay, were pressed into the army 
 or the navy ; substantial tradesmen were drag- 
 ged from their families ; men of rank, even, 
 were ordered into the palatinate ;t large batch- 
 es of country gentlemen were lodged in custo- 
 dy ; and, as a punishment to some, more ag- 
 
 apart with every one of those who are to lend, and not in the 
 presence or hearing of any other, unless they see cause to 
 the contrary ; and, if any shall refuse to lend, and shall 
 make delay or excuses, and persist in their obstinacy, that 
 they examine such persons upon oath, whether they have 
 been dealt withal to deny, or refuse to lend, or make an ex- 
 cuse for not lending ; who hath dealt so with them, or what 
 speeches or persuasions he or they have used to him tend- 
 ing to that purpose ? And that they shall also charge every 
 such person, in his majesty's name, upon his allegiance, not 
 to declare to any other what his answer was." Rushworth, 
 vol. i., p. 419. 
 
 * Laud, now bishop of Bath and Wells, drew these in- 
 structions up in the name of the king. (See Heylin's Life, 
 p. 161, et seq. ; and Laud's Diary.) "The dexterous per- 
 formance of which service," says Heylin, " as it raised 
 Laud higher in his majesty's good opinion of him, so it was 
 recompensed with a place of greater nearness to him than 
 before he had." 
 
 f Sibthorp, vicar of Brackley, in Northamptonshire, and 
 Mainwaring, a king's chaplain and Vicar of St. Giles's, made 
 themselves most notorious in this slavish and criminal ser- 
 vice. Extracts from the sermons of these men, of the most 
 atrocious description, will be found in Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 422, 423. They had excellent imitators. I find among the 
 Sloane MSS., a letter descriptive of a sermon preached by 
 the Dean of Canterbury, from which the reader may take an 
 extract : " It was the speech of a man renowned for wisdom 
 in our age, that if he was commanded to put forth to sea in 
 a ship that had neither mast nor tackling, he would do it. 
 And being asked what wisdom that were, replied, the wis- 
 dom must -be in him that hath power to command, not in 
 him that conscience binds to obey." The question of the 
 licensing these sermons for publication led to the suspen- 
 sion of Abbot from the See of Canterbury. Abbot, however, 
 was no better than his brother Laud, probably a little worse, 
 since the conduct of the former was at least intelligible. 
 See History, from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 70. The arch- 
 bishop's Narrative in Rushworth, vol. i., p. 434-457. Wai- 
 pole's Royal and Noble Authors, art. Northampton, note by 
 Park. Hallam's Const. Hist., vol. i., p. 570, note. 
 
 t There is something so extremely natural and forcible 
 in Sir Peter Hayinan's sturdy account of his experience in 
 this particular, that I cannot forbear quoting it. After Par- 
 liament had assembled, a debate arose on " Designation to 
 Foreign Employment," whereupon Sir Peter Hayman got 
 upon his legs : " I have not forgot my employment into the 
 palatinate. I was called before the lords of the council, for 
 what I knew not, but I heard it was for not lending on a 
 privy seal. I told them, if they will take my estate, let 
 them ; I would give it up ; lend I would not. When I was 
 before the lords of the council, they laid to my charge my 
 unwillingness to serve the king. I said,' I had my life and 
 my estate to serve my country and my religion. They told 
 me, that if I did not pay I should be put upon an employ- 
 ment of service. I was willing. After ten weeks' waiting, 
 they told me I was to go with a lord into the palatinate, and 
 that I should have employment there, and means befitting. 
 I told them I was a subject, and desired means/ Some put 
 on very eagerly, some dealt nobly. They said I inust go on 
 my own purse. I told them nemo militat suis expensis. 
 Some told me, I must go. I began to think, what, must I ? 
 None were ever sent out in that way. Lawyers told me I 
 could not be so sent. Having this assurance, I demanded 
 means, and was resolved not to stir but upon those terms ; 
 and, in silence and duty, I denied. Upon this, having giv- 
 en me a command to go, after twelve days they told me they 
 would not send me as a soldier, but to attend on an ambas- 
 sador. I knew that stone would hit me, therefore I settled 
 my troubled estate, and addressed myself to that sen-ice." 
 Eliot's comments on this usage were appropriately bitter. 
 Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 403. 
 
 t> Some were brought up to London, and committed to
 
 18 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 gravated and horrible, probably, than any we 
 have named, the remains of the disgraced and 
 infamous troops that had survived the affair at 
 Cadiz were quartered upon their houses, in the 
 midst of their wives and children!* And as 
 these crimes had been sanctioned by the min- 
 isters of religion, so the vile slaves who sat in 
 the seats of justice were ordered to confirm 
 them by law. A voice or two that had hinted 
 from the bench a feeble utterance of opposition 
 were instantly stifled, and the conclave of judg- 
 es remanded five recusants, who had brought 
 their habeas corpus.! 
 
 rigorous confinement in the Fleet, the Gatehouse, the Mar- 
 shalsea, and the New Prison. Eliot was one of these. The 
 rest, as Sir Thomas Wentworth and others, were subjected 
 to confinement, strict, but much less rigorous, in various 
 counties. Hampden had been thrown into the Gatehouse 
 at first, but was afterward released and sent into Hamp- 
 shire. One anecdote will illustrate the numberless instances 
 of quiet and forbearing fortitude, practised by men recollect- 
 ed no longer, but who at this time shed lustre on the English 
 character. George Catesby, of Northamptonshire, being 
 committed to the Gatehouse as a recusant, alleged, among 
 other reasons for his non-compliance, that he considered 
 "that this loan might become a precedent ; and that every 
 precedent, he was told by the lord president, was a flower 
 of the prerogative." The lord president told him that " he 
 lied !'" Catesby merely shook his head, observing, " I come 
 rot here to contend with your lordship, but to suffer." Lord 
 Suffolk then interposed to entreat the lord president not too 
 far to urge his kinsman, Mr. Catesby. The latter, however, 
 waived any kindness he might owe to kindred, declaring 
 that " he would remain master of his own purse." D' Israe- 
 li's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 9. 
 
 * See a letter in Strafford's State Papers, vol. i., p. 40 ; 
 and Rushworth, vol. i., p. 418-420. " There were frequent 
 robberies," says the collector, " burglaries, rapes, rapines, 
 murders, and barbarous cruelties. Unto some places they 
 were sent as a punishment, and wherever they came, there 
 was a general outcry." From his place in Parliament, Sir 
 Thomas Wentworth afterward denounced this : " They 
 hare sent from us the light of our eyes ; enforced companies 
 of guests worse than the ordinances of France ; vitiated our 
 wives and daughters before our faces ; brought the crown 
 o greater want than ever it was, by anticipating the rev- 
 enue ! And can the shepherd be thus smitten, and the flock 
 not be scattered?" Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 370. 
 
 t The case of Sir Thomas Darnel, Sir John Corbet, Sir 
 Walter Earl, Sir John Heveringham, and Sir Everard Hamp- 
 den, which is reported at great length in the State Trials, 
 is an admirable illustration, among other things, of the char- 
 acter of the crown lawyers and judges of the time. There 
 is an abridgment of the proceedings in Rushworth, p. 458- 
 462. Sir Randolph Crew, immediately before this case was 
 argued, having, as Rushworth expresses it, " showed no 
 zeal" (i., 420), was removed to make room for Sir Nicholas 
 Hyde ; and it is quite clear that two of the judges (Jones 
 and Doddridge) who sat with the latter, having shown a de- 
 cided leaning towards the prisoners during the argument, 
 were brought to a better understanding with Sir Nicholas 
 before the decision. When the case was afterward sent 
 before the House of Lords, and the judges were, so to speak, 
 put upon their trial, Judge Whitelock betrayed the secret. 
 " The Commons," he said, " do not know what letters and 
 commands we receive." Beyond all praise was the conduct 
 of the counsel employed for the prisoners on this occasion. 
 The most undaunted courage exalted the profoundest knowl- 
 edge. The sober grandeur of Selden, and the rough energy 
 of Noy, must have struck with an ominous effect on the 
 court councils. It was here that Selden threw out, in a pa- 
 renthesis, those remarkable words, which, it has been ju- 
 diciously observed (History, from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 77), 
 are applicable to periods much later and of more pretension 
 to liberty than that of Charles. They are yet, in fact, to be 
 expounded. " If Magna Charta were fully executed, as it 
 ought to be, every man would enjoy his liberty better than he 
 doth." In connexion with this remarkable case, too, Sir 
 Edward Coke (who argued it before the lords) presented, 
 for the first time, to his astonished profession, the highest 
 vigour of a noble and liberal thought, issuing, as it were, 
 even out of the most formidable technicalities of law. 
 " Shall I have an estate for lives or for years m England, 
 and be tenant at will for my liberty* A freeman to be ten- 
 ant at will for his freedom ! There is no such tenure in all 
 Littleton !" The excited state of the public mind during 
 the arguments on this question is vividly conveyed in a let- 
 ter I have found among the Harleian MSS. " The gentle- 
 men's counsel for habeas corpus, Mr. Selden Mr. Noy, 
 
 Sir John Eliot at this moment lay a prisoner 
 in the Gatehouse. He had been foremost to 
 refuse the loan, was arrested in Cornwall, 
 brought before the council table, and thence 
 committed to prison. In prison, and before the 
 council table, as in his place in the House of 
 Commons, Eliot had the unfailing resource of 
 fearlessness and a composed vigour. Where- 
 ever circumstances placed him. he knew that, 
 so long as they left him life, they left him able 
 to perform its duties. From the Gatehouse he 
 forwarded to the king an able argument against 
 the loan, which he concluded by a request, 
 urged with a humble but brave simplicity, for 
 his own immediate release. This document 
 has been preserved. It commences with a 
 protest against the supposition that " stubborn- 
 ness and will" have been the motives of the 
 writer's recent recusancy. " With a sad, yet 
 a faithful heart," Eliot continues, " he now 
 presumes to offer up the reasons that induced 
 him. The rule of justice he takes to be the 
 law ; impartial arbiter of government and obe- 
 dience ; the support and strength of majesty ; 
 the observation of that justice by which sub- 
 jection is commanded." Through a series of 
 illustrious examples the writer then advances 
 to his position of strict obedience to the laws, 
 in the duty of resisting their outrage. " He 
 could not, as he feared, without pressure to 
 these immunities, become an actor in this 
 loan, which by imprisonment and restraint was 
 urged, contrary to the grants of the great char- 
 ter, by so many glorious and victorious kings 
 so many times confirmed. Though he was 
 well assured by your majesty's promise that it 
 should not become a precedent during the hap- 
 piness of your reign, yet he conceived from 
 thence a fear that succeeding ages might 
 thereby take occasion for posterity to strike 
 at the property of their goods." He concludes 
 by assuring the king that he will never consent 
 to " inconveniences in reason," or to the dis- 
 pensation, violation, or impeachment of the 
 laws. " No factious humour, nor disaffection 
 led on by stubbornness and will, hath herein 
 stirred or moved him, but the just obligation 
 of his conscience, which binds him to the ser- 
 vice of your majesty, in the observance of your 
 laws ; and he is hopeful that your majesty will 
 be pleased to restore him to your favour, and 
 his liberty, and to afford him the benefit of 
 those laws which, in all humility, he craves."* 
 Eliot probably never expected that this petition 
 would be granted. Its publication effected his 
 purpose in strengthening the resolutions of the 
 people ; and he quietly waited in his prison for 
 the day of a new Parliament. 
 
 This was precipitated by the insolent fury 
 of Buckingham, who had consummated the 
 desperate condition of affairs by a new and 
 unprovoked war with France. At the sugges- 
 tion of the duke's outraged vanity.t Charles 
 
 Sergeant Bramsten, and Mr. Colthorp, pleaded yesterday 
 vith wonderful applause, even of shouting and clapping of 
 hands : which is unusual in that place." 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 429. Whitelocke says, that " Sir 
 John Eliot took this way to inform the king what his coun- 
 cil did not." Memorials, p. 8. Anthony Wood oddly con- 
 verts this into a statement that Eliot was obliged to write 
 in this way to the king, because his (Eliot's) "counsel 
 would not assist him otherwise." 
 
 t Clarendon distinctly assigns this as the motive: "In his 
 embassy in France, where his person and presence was
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 19 
 
 had dismissed tha French servants of his young 
 queen ; she herself had been insulted ;* the 
 remonstrances of the French court answerec 
 by a seizure of French ships ; and an expedi 
 tion for the relief of Rochelle undertaken by 
 the very court whose treachery had so lately 
 assisted to reduce it. Recollecting the bitter 
 sarcasm of Eliot,t Buckingham undertook the 
 command of the present expedition in person ; 
 and, having concerted measures so wretchedly 
 as to be obliged to disembark on the adjacent 
 Isle of Rhee he there suffered his army to be 
 baffled by an inferior force, and to be at length 
 overtaken in a situation where valour was of 
 no avail, and where death destroyed them 
 dreadfully, without even the agency of an ene- 
 my.J The result of this was in all respects 
 frightful ; mutiny proved the least of the dan- 
 gers that followed ; and the financial difficulties 
 of the court became so urgent that the last 
 desperate and dreaded resource forced itself 
 upon the king. The loan recusants were set 
 
 wonderfully admired and esteemed (and, in truth, it was a 
 wonder in the eyes of all men), and in which he appeared 
 with all the lustre the wealth of England could adorn him 
 with, and outshined all the bravery that court could dress 
 itself in, and over-acted the whole nation in their own most 
 peculiar vanities, he had the ambition to fix his eyes upon, 
 and to dedicate his most violent affection to, a lady of a very 
 sublime quality." But I will cut short the reader's impa- 
 tience, and this interminable sentence, by saying- at once 
 that Buckingham fell violently in love with the young Queen 
 of France, Anne of Austria, declared his passion, and was 
 listened to with anything but resentment. With what suc- 
 cess the duke might ultimately have urged his suit, it 
 would be impossible to say, since great authorities differ ; 
 but it is certain that his purpose was abruptly foiled by the 
 interference of Cardinal Richelieu, in whom he suddenly 
 discovered a formidable rival. The mad desire to foil this 
 great statesman and most absurd lover, and to be able to re- 
 turn to Anne of Austria in all the triumphs of a conqueror, 
 now urged him to these extremities against France. The 
 thing is scarcely credible, but so it certainly appears to have 
 been. What is to be said of the wretched weakness of 
 Charles? See Memoires inedits du Comte de Brienne, i., 
 Eclaircissements. Madame de Motteville, Memoires d'Anne 
 d'Autriche. Aikin's Court of Charles, vol. i., p. 67. Brodie's 
 Hist, of British Empire, vol. ii., p. 139. Lingard's History, 
 vol. ix., p. 361. Clarendon, vol. i., p. 31. Carte (vol. iv., 
 p. 132) has attempted to throw discredit on it by the pro- 
 duction of dates from the Mercure Francois, but unsuccess- 
 fully. 
 
 * This is not an occasion to notice the personal disputes 
 of the king and queen, nor the way in which, for his own 
 purposes, they were secretly inflamed by Buckingham. 
 Charles, like most unfaithful and decorous husbands, sus- 
 pected his wife ; and his wife, a woman of energy and spir- 
 ited sense, despised him. Buckingham's insults to the queen 
 are described by Clarendon, vol. i., p. 31, and other writers. 
 See History, from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 62. I may add, 
 that the account of the young queen's reception of the news 
 of the dismissal of her servants, as given in a letter of the 
 day, is extremely characteristic of a quick temper redeem- 
 ed by a ready self-command. " It is said, also, the queene, 
 when she understood the designe, grew very impatient, and 
 brake the glasse windows with her little fiste ; but since I 
 heare her rage is appeased, and the king and shee, since 
 they went together to Nonsuche, have been very jocund to- 
 gether." Karl. MSS., 383. Ellis's Original Letters, vol. 
 iii., p. 239. t See p. 13, of this memoir. 
 
 t See a letter of Denzil Hollis to Wentworth. StrafFord 
 Papers, vol. i., p. 42. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 465. Carte, 
 vol. iv., p. 17R, et stq. Many curious particulars, and es- 
 pecially the letters of Charles to Buckingham, connected 
 with this affair, will be found in Hardwicke's State Papers, 
 vol. i., p. 13, et seq. I shall have to advert to it again in 
 noticing one of Eliot's speeches. 
 
 >i Sir Robert Cotton was consulted by the lords of the 
 council, and his advice is said to have determined the mat- 
 ter. It is melancholy to see, however, that this great schol- 
 ar was tempted on this occasion (see his Paper in Rush- 
 worth, vol. i., p. 467) into concessions extremely unworthy 
 of him. It is probable that a rumour of this, coupled with 
 his silence on th affair of the loan, led to his defeat at the 
 Westminster election. Eliot was warmly attached to him. 
 It was at the meetings held at his house, where all the em- 
 
 at liberty, and writs for a new Parliament were 
 issued. > 
 
 Unprecedented excitement prevailed at the 
 elections.* Sir John Eliot was triumphantly 
 returned for Cornwall, and every country gen- 
 tleman that had refused the loan was sent to 
 the House of Commons. " We are, without 
 question, undone !" exclaimed a court prophet ; 
 and the king, agitated by fear and rage, prepared 
 himself to " lift the mask." Secret orders were 
 transmitted to the Low Countries for the levy 
 of 1000 German horse, and the purchase of 
 10,000 stand of arms, immediately to be con- 
 veyed td England, t 
 
 This famous third Parliament was opened by 
 the king at Westminster, on the 17th of March, 
 1628, in a speech of insolent menace. If they 
 did not do their duty, he told them, " I must 
 use those other means which God hath put into 
 my hands, to save that which the follies of oth- 
 er men may otherwise hazard to lose. Take 
 not this as threatening ; I scorn to threaten 
 any but my equals. "t Wonderful was the tem- 
 per and decorum with which the great leaders 
 of that powerful house listened to this pitiful 
 display. The imagination rises in the contem- 
 plation of the profound statesmanship which 
 distinguished every movement of these men, 
 and it is difficult to describe it in terms of ap- 
 propriate praise. Conscious of the rigour of 
 the duties they had to perform, for these they 
 reserved their strength. Not a word was wast- 
 d before the time of action came not an en- 
 rgy fell to the ground as too great for the oc- 
 asion. A resolved composure, a quiet confi- 
 dence steadily shone from their slightest prep- 
 aration ; and the court, who had looked to 
 
 nent men of the day assembled, that Eliot's intimate friend- 
 ship with Selden most probably commenced. See the Cot- 
 :onian MSS., Jul. C., iii. 
 
 * An extract from a manuscript letter, dated March 8, 
 627, will present a lively notion of this excitement. It has 
 quite a modern air : " There was a turbulent election of 
 " >urgesses at Westminster, whereof the duke (Buckingham), 
 >eing steward, made account he should, by his authority 
 and vicinity, have put in Sir Robert Pye. It continued 
 hree days, and when Sir Robert Pye's party cried ' A Pye ! 
 a Pye '. a Pye !' the adverse party would cry ' A pudding ! 
 i pudding ! a pudding !' and others, ' A lie ! a lie ! a lie !' 
 n fine, Bradshaw, a brewer, and Maurice, a grocer, carried 
 t from him by about a thousand voices, they passing by also 
 Sir Robert Cotton, besides our man and Mr. Hayward, who 
 were their last burgesses, because, as it is said, they had dis- 
 ;ontented their neighbours in urging the payment of the 
 oan. It is feared (saith mine author), because such patriots 
 are chosen everywhere, the Parliament will not last above 
 ight days. You hear of our famous election in Essex, 
 where Sir Francis Barrington and Sir Harbottle Grimston 
 lad all the voices of 16,500 men." Sloane MSS. 
 
 t There is no doubt of this. The pretence afterward as- 
 igned was to defend the kingdom from invasion (Carte, iv., 
 i. 183) ; but the real object was to overawe the House of 
 Commons. See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 474. A commission 
 va.s issued at the same time (concurrent with the issuing 
 if the election writs !) to certain privy councillors, to con- 
 ider of raising money by impositions, or otherwise, " where- 
 n form and circumstances must be dispensed with, rather 
 han the substance be lost." These schemes were all de- 
 eated, but their discovery necessarily exasperated the Com- 
 mons. Rushworih, vol. i., p. 614. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 477. The men to whom this 
 oolish impertinence was addressed are thus described in a 
 nanuscript letter of the time by a very moderate politician : 
 ' The House of Commons was both yesterday and to-day 
 is full as pne could sit by another; and they say it is 
 he most noble and magnanimous assembly that ever these 
 walls contained. And I heard a lord intimate they were 
 able to buy the Upper House (his majesty only except- 
 id) thrice over, notwithstanding there be of lords tem- 
 loral to the number of 118: and what lord in England 
 mould be followed by so many freeholders as some of these 
 are?" Letter, dated March 21, 1628, in Shane's MSS.
 
 20 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 strengthen themselves by the provocation of 
 outrage, were lost in a mixed feeling of won- 
 der and doubt, perhaps of even hope. " Was 
 it possible that the ' new counsels' had cooled 
 the fire of patriotism ?" Finch, a man known 
 to be favourably affected to the court, was cho- 
 sen speaker. " Was the expediency of some 
 compromise recognised at last 1 " A resolution 
 was passed to grant a supply, no less than five 
 subsidies, and to be paid within twelve months ! 
 "Was all this possible 1 !" "Were these the 
 men who had been sent from every quarter of 
 the country to oppose the court, to resent the 
 wrongs of their constituents, and to avenge 
 their own 1" Old Secretary Cooke hurried 
 down with feeble haste to grasp at the subsi- 
 dies. He was then quietly told that they could 
 not be paid ; that the bill for collecting them, 
 indeed, should not be framed until certain ne- 
 cessary securities were given by the king for 
 the future enjoyment of liberty and property 
 among the subjects of the kingdom. The crest- 
 fallen ministers resorted to their hypocritical 
 arts of evasion and refusal ; the patriot lead- 
 ers prepared for action. The consummate pol- 
 icy we have described had resolved the dispute 
 into the clearest elements of right and wrong ; 
 and the position of the Commons against the 
 court was firmly and immoveably determined.* 
 What they had resolved to do could now be 
 done ; and, the court policy once openly be- 
 trayed, the passionate eloquence of Eliot was 
 heard, opening up to the public abhorrence the 
 wounds that had lately been inflicted upon the 
 liberties and laws.t 
 
 * I refer the reader, for the only exact account of the 
 proceedings of this Parliament, to the journals and debates. 
 Dr. Lingard has described the conduct of the leaders of the 
 country party very faithfully. " They advanced step by 
 step ; first resolving to grant a supply, then fixing it at the 
 tempting amount of five subsidies, and, lastly, agreeing that 
 the whole should be paid within the short space of twelve 
 months. But no art, no entreaty could prevail on them to 
 pass their resolution in the shape of a bill. It was held out 
 as a lure to the king ; it was gradually brought nearer and 
 nearer to his grasp, but they still refused to surrender their 
 hold ; they required, as a previous condition, thai he should 
 give his assent to those liberties which they claimed as the 
 birthright of Englishmen." History, vol. ix., p. 379. See, 
 also, Hume, vol. v., p. 160. . 
 
 it is," observes Mr. Brodie, " that no copy nas been pre 
 served of Sir John Eliot's speech upon the grievances '. H 
 appears to have been the most eloquent man of his time.' 
 Echoing his regret, I am surprised that Mr. Brodie should 
 have passed without mention a most remarkable speech of 
 Eliot, which I shall have immediate occasion to allude to, 
 delivered by him on the same subject in the present ses- 
 sion, and admirably handed down to us from the MSS. of 
 Napier. He had noble seconders on the occasion referred 
 to in the text. " I read of a custom," said Sir Robert Phil- 
 ips (rising after Eliot had ceased), "among the old Ro- 
 mans, that once every year they held a solemn feast for 
 their slaves, at which they had liberty, without exception, 
 to speak what they would, thereby to ease their afflicted 
 minds; which being finished, they severally returned to 
 their former servitude. This may, with some resemblance 
 and distinction, well set forth our present state ; when 
 now, after the revolution of some time, and grievous suffer- 
 ing of many violent oppressions, we have, as those slaves 
 had, a day of liberty of speech ; but shall not, I trust, be 
 hereafter slaves, for we are free. Yet what new illegal 
 proceedings our states and persons have suffered under, my 
 heart yearns to think, my tongue falters to utter ! I can 
 live," passionately Philips continued, " although another, 
 who has no right, be put to live with me ; nay, I can live 
 although I pay excises and impositions more than I do. But 
 to have my liberty, which is the soul of my life, taken 
 from me by power ! and to have my body pent up in a jail, 
 without remedy by law, and to be so adjudged ! O iinprov- 
 
 The result, after many committees on the 
 liberty of the subject, was a resolution to pre- 
 pare the memorable petition of right.* Sir 
 John Eliot took part in all the debates ; lifted 
 them to the most vigorous and passionately de- 
 termined tone ; and now acted in all respects 
 as the great leader of the House. 
 
 Charles's attempts to get hold of the subsi- 
 dies continued to be unceasing, and every art 
 was resorted to by his ministers. Buckingham, 
 meanwhile, covered with his recent failures 
 and disgraces, had hitherto kept himself out of 
 view ; and it is another proof of the noble pol- 
 icy we have characterized in every movement 
 of the popular leaders at this time, that, intent 
 upon their grander objects, they passed the 
 subdued favourite, so long as he was not in- 
 truded before them, in contemptuous silence. 
 The court party, however, rarely failed to mis- 
 construe conduct of this sort ; and now, with 
 a fatal precipitancy, presumed upon this si- 
 lence. Cooke, the king's secretary, by way of 
 an inducement to suffer him to touch the sub- 
 sidies, assured the House that the king was 
 very grateful for their vote, and, moreover, 
 that Buckingham had implored his majesty to 
 grant all the popular desires, t An extract 
 from a manuscript letter of the time will con- 
 vey the most lively notion of what followed. 
 " Sir John Eliot instantly leaped up, and taxed 
 the secretary for intermingling a subject's 
 speech with the king's message. It could not 
 become any subject to bear himself in such a 
 fashion, as if no grace ought to descend from 
 the king to the people, nor any loyalty ascend 
 from the people to the king, but through him 
 only. Whereunto many in the House made an 
 exclamation, ' Well spoken, Sir John Eliot !' "J 
 From a more detailed report, I will give an ex- 
 tract of this speech, happily characteristic of 
 Eliot's style, of the dignified phrase, not unmix- 
 ed with a composed sarcasm, with which, in 
 the present instance, the sharpness of his re- 
 
 ident ancestors ! O unwise forefathers ! to be so curious 
 in providing for the quiet possession of our laws, and the 
 liberties of Parliament, and to neglect our persons and bod- 
 ies, and to let them lie in prison, and that, durante bene- 
 placito, remediless '. If this be law, why do we talk of 
 liberties 1 Why do we trouble ourselves with a dispute 
 about law, franchises, property of goods, and the like 7 
 What may any man call his own, if not the liberty of his 
 person 7" Sir Benjamin Rudyard followed. " This is the 
 crisis of Parliaments," he said; "by this we shall know 
 whether Parliaments will live or die !" To him succeeded 
 the dark and doubtful energy of Wentworth, and the un- 
 dimmed clearness of the venerable Sir Edward Coke. " I'll 
 begin," said the latter, after approving the proposed sup- 
 plies, "with a noble record. It cheers me to think of it! 
 It is worthy to be written in letters of gold ! Loans against 
 the will of the subject are against reason and the franchises 
 of the land, and they desire restitution. Franchise ! What 
 a word is that 'franchise !'" Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 363, 
 et seq. These men were indeed capable of the great duties 
 that fell to them. [Such specimens of eloquence as these 
 go far to illustrate the opinion of the great orator of our 
 country, that the finest bursts of parliamentary eloquence 
 on record are to be found in the debates of the Parliaments 
 in the reign of Charles I. C.] 
 
 * The grievances detailed before these committees were 
 reduced to six heads; attendance at the council board, im- 
 prisonment, confinement, designation to foreign employ- 
 ment, martial law, undue proceedings in matters of judica- 
 ture. These were severally debated, and Eliot spoke upon 
 all of them with characteristic energy. The portions that 
 remain of his speeches are sufficient to indicate this. 
 Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 399-405, &c. 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 431. 
 
 } Sloane MSS., 4177. Letter from Mr. Pory. Another 
 account will be found among these manuscripts, in a letter 
 from Mr. Mead, dated April 12, 1628.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 21 
 
 buke was tempered : " My joy at this message 
 is not without trouble, which must likewise be 
 declared. I must disburden this affliction, or 
 I cannot, otherwise, so lively and so faithfully 
 express my devotion to the service of this 
 House as I had resolved. I know not by what 
 fatality or infortunity it has crept in, but I ob- 
 serve, in the close of the secretary's relation, 
 mention made of another in addition to his maj- 
 esty ; and that which hath been formerly a 
 matter of complaint I find here still a mix- 
 ture with his majesty, not only in his business, 
 but in name. Is it that any man conceives the 
 mention of others, of what quality soever, can 
 add encouragement or affection to us, in our 
 duties and loyalties towards his majesty, or 
 give them greater latitude or extent than nat- 
 urally they have 1 Or is it supposed that the 
 power or interest of any man can add more 
 readiness to his majesty, in his gracious incli- 
 nation towards us, than his own goodness gives 
 him 1 I cannot believe it ! But, sir, I am sor- 
 ry there is occasion that these things should be 
 argued ; or that this mixture, which was for- 
 merly condemned, should appear again. I be- 
 seech you, sir, let it not be hereafter ; let no 
 man take this boldness within these walls, to 
 introduce it ! It is contrary to the custom of 
 our fathers, and the honour of our times. I 
 desire that such interposition may be let alone, 
 and that all his majesty's regards and goodness- 
 es towards this House may spring alone from 
 his confidence of our loyalty and affections."* 
 The secretary remained silent, but the court 
 remembered that rebuke bitterly. 
 
 Equally firm, however, against its threaten- 
 ing and cajoling, the Commons persisted in 
 their great purpose. Resolutions were passed 
 declaratory of the rights of the people, and a 
 conference appointed with the Lords, that they 
 might concur in a petition to the throne, found- 
 ed upon Magna Charta and other statutes ; di- 
 rected to the security of the person, as the 
 foremost of all securities ; strengthened on 
 that point by twelve direct and thirty-one indi- 
 rect precedents ; completed by certain resolu- 
 tions of their own, reducing those precedents 
 to a distinct unity of purpose ;t and to be call- 
 ed a petition of right, because requiring nothing 
 save the recognition and direction of violated 
 laws. The Lords and Commons met, and the 
 constitutional lawyers stated their case with a 
 startling clearness. " It lies not under Mr. 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 433. In this speech, also, Eliot, 
 referring to the king's thankful recognition of the vote of 
 subsidies, and the honeyed words he had addressed to them 
 through Cooke, expressive of his sense of their claims, 
 threw out a remark in which there appears an ominous 
 union of sarcasm and sternness. " I presume we have all 
 received great satisfaction from his majesty in his present 
 gracious answer and resolution for the business of this 
 House ; in his answer to our petition for religion, so par- 
 ticularly made ; in his resolution in that other considera- 
 tion concerning the point, ALREADY SETTLED HERE, in 
 declaration of our liberties ; and for the Parliament in gen- 
 eral." 
 
 t These resolutions were four in number, and had for 
 their object the security of the subject from those infamous 
 pretences of the court lawyers and court judges, which had 
 been so remarkably exhibited in the case of the five mem- 
 bers. See thorn in Rushworth, vol. i., p. 513. Parl. Hist., 
 vol. vii., p. 407. The profound skill and judgment of the 
 leaders of the Commons, by sealing down the old statutes 
 thus, at once shut out every possible plea of silence or eva- 
 sion from the corrupt judges, and struck from under them 
 their old resource to antagonist enactments, judicial prece- 
 dents, and exercises of prerogative. 
 
 Attorney's cap," exclaimed Sir Edward Coke, 
 " to answer any one of our arguments." "With 
 my own hand," said Selden, " I have written 
 out all the records from the Tower, the Ex- 
 chequer, and the King's Bench, and I will en- 
 gage my head Mr. Attorney shall not find in all 
 these archives a single precedent omitted."* 
 The close of the conference elicited from the 
 Lords a series of counter-resolutions, which 
 were immediately rejected by Eliot and his 
 friends, as nothing more than an ingenious 
 subterfuge. These resolutions, in point of 
 fact, if agreed to, would, after recognising the 
 legality of the precedents urged, have left the 
 matter precisely where it was. The king's 
 word was to be the chief security, t 
 
 The Lords, in truth, had been tampered with ; 
 and the court heedlessly betrayed this by pro- 
 posing, a few days after, in a royal message, 
 precisely the same security, with the addition 
 of a piece of advice that one regrets to see so 
 evidently wasted. It would have been hailed 
 with nods of such profuse delight by a parcel 
 of Chinese mandarins. " The wrath of a king 
 is like the roaring of a lion ; and all laws, with 
 his wrath, are of no effect ; but the king's fa- 
 vour is like the dew upon the grass ; there all 
 will prosper !"t Undoubtedly this was lost upon 
 the present audience. Eliot, who was well read 
 in literature, might, probably, have reminded 
 Philips or Selden of the leonine propensities 
 of the Athenian weaver, who aggravated his 
 voice, however, to such an extent, in roaring, 
 that at last he came to roar as gently as a dove 
 or a nightingale. Certainly no other notice 
 was taken. The Commons returned to their 
 house, and quietly, and without a single dis- 
 sentient, ordered their lawyers to throw the 
 matter of their petition into the shape of a bill, 
 that the responsibility of openly rejecting it 
 might fall on the Lords and the king. 
 
 Message succeeded message, but still the 
 
 * See the reports of the conference in the Journals. 
 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 527, et seq. ; and Parl. Hist., vol. vii., 
 p. 409, et seq. The legal research and vast ability displayed 
 by the popular leaders in this conference determined the 
 Lords to hear counsel for the crown. One of these, how- 
 ever, Sergeant Ashley, having argued in behalf of the pre- 
 rogative in the high tone of the last reign, was ordered 
 into custody by their lordships, who at the same time as- 
 sured the Conimons that he had no authority from them for 
 what he had said. (See Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 47 for the 
 offensive argument ; and afterward, p. 53 and p. 68.) This 
 was a somewhat strong step to take against a king's coun- 
 sel, employed at a free conference ; and Mr. Hallam urges 
 it (Const. Hist., vol. i., p. 533) as a " remarkable proof of 
 the rapid growth of popular principles." It is a compli- 
 ment to the growing influence of the Lower House, but 
 certainly no proof of the popular principles of a body of 
 men who, the very moment after they had thus seemed to 
 condemn arbitrary doctrines, proposed to grant to the king 
 in extraordinary cases, the necessity of which he was to 
 determine, a power of commitment without showing cause ! 
 This was robbing Peter to pay Paul with a vengeance ! 
 See their five propositions in Rushworth, vol. i., p. 546. 
 An anecdote of one of their lordships which occurred at 
 this time is worth subjoining. As the Earl of Suffolk was 
 passing from the conference into the committee chamber 
 of the House, he insolently swore at one of the members of 
 the Commons, and said Mr. Selden deserved to be hanged, 
 for that he had rased a record. This was immediately 
 noised about, and came to the ears of Eliot. He took up 
 the matter with great warmth, in vindication of his regard 
 for Selden, had the circumstances investigated by a com- 
 mittee, and proposed some stringent resolutions against the 
 earl, " which were agreed unto by the whole House." See 
 Commons' Journals, April 17, 1628 ; and Parl. Hist., vol. 
 vii., p. 452. 
 
 t See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 546. 
 
 t See Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 81. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 551. Aikin's Court of Charles, vol. i., p. 206.
 
 23 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Commons proceeded. Briefly and peremptori- 
 ly, at last, Charles desired, through his secre- 
 tary, to know decidedly whether the House 
 would or would not rest upon his royal word. 
 "Upon this there was silence for a good 
 space."* Pym was the first to break it ; and 
 Eliot hastened to relieve Pym from the per- 
 sonal dilemma in which his fearless acuteness 
 threatened to place him. " I move," said he, 
 " that this proposition be put to the question, 
 because they that would, have it do urge us to 
 that point, "t The question was rejected. 
 Charles instantly sent down another message, 
 peremptorily warning them not " to encroach 
 on that sovereignty or prerogative which God 
 hath put into our hands," and threatening to 
 end the session on Tuesday sennight at the 
 farthest. " Whereupon," say the Journals, 
 "Sir John Eliot rose and spoke." He com- 
 plained bitterly of the proposed shortness of 
 the session. " Look," he exclaimed, " how 
 many messages we have ! Interruptions, mis- 
 reports, and misrepresentations produce these 
 messages. I fear," continued Eliot, " his maj- 
 esty yet knows not what we go about. Let us 
 make some enlargement, and put it again be- 
 fore him."J An address for this purpose was 
 instantly agreed to by the House, was present- 
 ed by the speaker, and again the king found 
 himself completely baffled. It would be too 
 painful to follow his windings and doublings 
 through their long and mean course, but that 
 at every turn some new evidence arrests us of 
 the brilliant powers and resources of the great 
 statesman whose character we seek to illus- 
 trate. 
 
 So clear and decisive was the last statement 
 of the Commons, that Charles fancied he had 
 no resource now but to intimate his assent to 
 the proposed bill ; yet, even in doing this, he 
 sought, by an insidious restriction, to withhold 
 from the old statutes and precedents that unity 
 and directness of purpose which the cement- 
 ing resolutions of the House were, for the first 
 time, about to give to them. " We vindicate," 
 Wentworth had said, " what ? new things ? 
 No ! our ancient, legal, and vital liberties by 
 
 * Rushworth, yol. i., p. 553. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 95. 
 
 t There is no mention of this in the debates, but I have 
 it on the authority of a manuscript letter in the collection 
 of Dr. Birch. 1 may take this opportunity of stating that 
 that learned person had with his own hand transcribed for 
 publication, from the Harleian and various other collections, 
 a vast number of letters, illustrative of the reigns of James 
 I. and Charles I. ; but which remain to this day on the 
 shelves cf the Sloane collection as the transcriber left them. 
 Their arrangement and publication would confer a valuable 
 service on history, yet I fear there is no prevailing encour- 
 agement for undertakings of this sort. It is to be regretted. 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 99. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 555. In the address which was voted in consequence of 
 Eliot's proposition, the king is advised distinctly of the na- 
 ture of the resolutions they had passed, as I have above 
 explained them. " They have not the least thought of 
 straining or enlarging the former laws ; the bounds of their 
 desires extend no farther than to some necessary explana- 
 tion of that which is truly comprehended within the just 
 sense and meaning of those laws, icith some moderate pro- 
 vision for execution and performance." Parl. Hist., vol. 
 viii., p. 102. Sir Benjamin Rudyard expressed the matter, 
 in the course of the debate on this address, in a more home- 
 ly way. "For my own part," he said, "I should be very 
 glad to see that good, old, decrepit law of Magna Charta, 
 which hath been so long kept in lain bedrid, as it were 
 I should be glad, I say, to see it walk abroad again, with 
 new vigour and lustre." The conclusion of his speech was 
 a covered rebuke to Charles. " No man is bound to be rich 
 or great no, nor to be wise : but every man is bound to be 
 honest." 
 
 re-enforcing the laws enacted by our ancestors, 
 by setting such a seal upon them as no licen- 
 tious spirit shall dare hereafter to enter upon 
 them !" " I assent," said Charles, unworthily 
 at the same moment seeking to evade this seal, 
 " but so as that Magna Charta and the other 
 six statutes alluded to may be without addi- 
 tions, paraphrases, or explanations."* The 
 Commons had not had time to spurn the prof- 
 fered deceit, when, with a childish imbecility, 
 the king sent down another message, desiring 
 that they should take his word.f The House 
 was at this moment sitting in committee. 
 Secretary Cooke, who brought the message, 
 concluded with an earnest desire that "the 
 debate upon it should be done before the House, 
 and not before the committee." He had good 
 reasons for this ; for he knew what arguments 
 might possibly be urged, and that the court had 
 at least one security against them, in the se- 
 cret commands which the king had already 
 placed upon the timid speaker.J Sir John El- 
 iot, conscious of the weakness of Finch, saw 
 through the secretary's purpose, and effectual- 
 ly foiled it. With great energy he urged pro- 
 ceeding in committee as more likely to be hon- 
 ourable and advantageous. "That way," he 
 said, " leads most to truth. It is a more open 
 way. Every man may there add his reasons, 
 and make answer upon the hearing of other 
 men's reasons and arguments. " The House 
 assented ; the debate proceeded with closed 
 doors ; and the result was a plain and deter- 
 mined resolution by the Commons that they 
 could only take the king's word in a parliament- 
 ary way. They passed their bill, and sent it 
 up to the Lords. II 
 
 To the Lords the king now addressed a let- 
 ter, stating that he could not, without the over- 
 throw of his sovereignty, part with the power 
 of committing the subject, but promising, in all 
 ordinary cases, to obey Magna Charta, and not 
 to imprison, for the future, " any man for re- 
 fusing a loan, nor for any cause which, in his 
 judgment and conscience, he did not conceive 
 necessary for the public good."T This letter 
 was instantly sent to the Lower House, and all 
 the notice we find of it in their journals is given 
 in four words " They laid it aside."** Not 
 so the Lords, who, with customary pliancy, 
 founded upon it a saving clause to reserve his 
 
 * Speech of the lord-keeper, Parl. Hist, TO!, iii., p. 98. 
 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 557. The miserable fatuity of con- 
 senting thus to their proceeding by bill, while he robsthem 
 of all the advantages they sought to achieve by that mode 
 of procedure, is too apparent. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 557. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 
 103. The secretary's wriiftjling' method of delivering this 
 message was curious and instructive. 
 
 t Finch had already commenced his bargain for promo- 
 tion by promising the king to discountenance, as much as 
 possible, any aspersion of his ministers, and, more especial- 
 ly, of Buckingham. I have already suggested the only 
 motive the Commons could have had in electing this man 
 as their speaker. They appeal to have desired to impress 
 the court, on their first meeting, with a sense of how little 
 they were disposed to be actuated in their duties by any 
 violent temper, or the resentment of individual wrongs* 
 They committed an error, but a generous one. 
 
 $ Par!. Hist., vol. viii., p. 104. 
 
 II In the interval between this and the first assent of 
 Charles, the affair of Dr. Mainwaringwas brought before 
 the House. I shall have to allude to it in the biography 
 of Pym. 
 
 IT The Lords' Journals, May 12. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 
 560. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 110. 
 
 ** Rushworth, vol. i., p. 561. Parl. Hist., vol. viii.,p 112.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 23 
 
 majesty's " sovereign power," and, so weak- 
 ened, sent down the bill. " Let us take heed," 
 said Coke, on hearing the addition, " what we 
 yield unto ; Magna Charta is such a fellow that 
 he will have no sovereign." Selden followed 
 with a singular warning and precedent ;* the 
 clause was generally condemned ; and, after a 
 conference, the Lords consented to abandon it. 
 The petition of right, adopted by both Houses, 
 was now presented to the throne. 
 
 Charles, for two long months, had, by every 
 sort of subterfuge, struggled to avoid this cri- 
 sis. It had arrived, notwithstanding. On the 
 one hand, want awaited him ; on the other, the 
 surrender of his darling power. Incapable of 
 either, he sought a passage of escape through 
 one perfidy more, and in this he might have 
 succeeded but for Eliot. He sent for the 
 judges, and, with the most solemn injunctions 
 to secrecy, put three questions to them re- 
 specting the proposed petition of rights : 
 " Whether the king may commit without show- 
 ing a cause !" " Whether the judges ought to 
 deliver on habeas corpus a person commit- 
 ted 1" "Whether he should not deprive him- 
 self of such power of commitment by granting 
 the petition of right 1" The judges answered 
 to the first and second questions, that the gen- 
 eral rule of law was against him, but exceptive 
 cases might arise ; and to the third they said, 
 that it must be left to the courts of justice in 
 each particular case.t Consoling himself 
 
 * Th debate on this question was one of the most re- 
 markable, for a display of ready knowledge and acute judg- 
 ment. See, especially, Seldeii's speech, and that delivered 
 by Glanvil before the Lords. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 562- 
 579. A precedent had been urged by the opposite party, 
 from a petition in the reign of Edward I. Selden's all- 
 wonderful learnin^never failed him. " That clause of 28th 
 Edward I.," he said, at once silencing his opponents, "was 
 not in the petition, but in the king's answer." Then mark 
 how triumphantly he turned the tables on them ; the pas- 
 sage is, in all respects, remarkable. " In 28th Edward I., 
 the Commons, by petition or bill, diJ obtain the liberties 
 and articles at the end of the Parliament ; they were ex- 
 tracted out of the roll, and proclaimed abroad. The addi- 
 tion was added in the proclamation ; but in the bill there 
 was no 'savant,' yet afterward it was put in; and, to 
 prove this, though it is true there is no Parliament-roll of 
 that year, yet we have histories of that time. In the libra- 
 ry at Oxford there is a journal of a Parliament of that very 
 year which mentions so much ; as, also, in the public li- 
 brary at Cambridge there is in a MS. that belonged to an 
 abbey. It was of the same year, 28th Edward I., and it 
 mentions the Parliament, and the petitions, and ' articulos 
 quos petierutt sic eonfirmavit rex, ut in fine adderet, salvo 
 jure eoronce rcgis,' and they came in by proclamation. But, 
 in London, when the people beard of this clause being 
 added in the end, they fell into execration for that addition ; 
 and the great earls that went away satisfied from the Par- 
 liament, hearing of this, went to the king, and afterward it 
 was cleared at the next Parliament. Now there is no Par- 
 liament-roil of this of that time ; only in the end of Edward 
 III. there it one roll that recites it." So closed the debate 
 on " sovereign power." I may add that, upon this proposed 
 addition, that notably bungling intriguer, Bishop Williams, 
 eminently distinguished himself. He professed to be an 
 ardent promoter of the petition of right, yet he stood up 
 mightily for the clause. The consequence was a meeting 
 between himtelf and Buckingham, a perfect reconcilement, 
 and, as we are told, " his grace had the bishop's consent, 
 with a little asking, that he would be his grace's faithful 
 servant in the next session of Parliament ; and was allowed 
 to hold up a seeming enmity, and his own popular estima- 
 tion, that h might the sooner do the work." Such were 
 the public men with whom Eliot had to deal, and upon the 
 faith of such as these have attempts been made upon his 
 character. See Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, p. 77, et seq. 
 
 t The questions and answers were discovered, at length, 
 in the Hargjrave MSS., xxxii., 97. Hallam's Constitutional 
 History, vol. L, p. 533. Ellis's Original Letters, new se- 
 ries, vol. iii., p. 250. History, from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 
 4>2. Much unnecessary trouble, on the part of the king, ap- 
 
 with these assurances, he went to the House 
 of Lords in a sort of secret triumph, resolved 
 to assent to the bill, yet in such terms as might 
 still leave its construction to his convenient 
 parasites on the bench. The Commons hur- 
 ried up to their lordships' bar. " Gentlemen," 
 he said, with a sullen abruptness, " I am 
 come hither to perform my duty. I think no 
 man can think it long, since I have not taken 
 so many days in answering the petition as ye 
 spent weeks in framing it ; and I am come 
 hither to show you that, as well in formal 
 things as in essential, I desire to give you as 
 much content as in me lies." He then, to the 
 surprise of his hearers, instead of the ordinary 
 goit droit fail comme il est de'sire, delivered the 
 following by way of royal assent : " The king 
 willeth that right be done according to the laws 
 and customs of the realm, and that the statutes 
 be put in due execution, that his subjects may 
 have no cause to complain of any wrong or op- 
 pressions, contrary to their just rights and lib- 
 erties, to the preservation whereof he holds 
 himself in conscience as well obliged as of his 
 own prerogative."* 
 
 The next meeting of the House of Commons 
 was a very momentous one. The singular 
 treachery of the king had struck with a para- 
 lyzing effect upon many of the members ; it 
 seemed hopeless to struggle with it farther ; it 
 had continued proof against every effort ; all 
 the constitutional usages of Parliament had 
 fallen exhausted from the unequal contest ; 
 and already the House saw itself dissolved, 
 without the achievement of a single guarantee 
 for the liberty and property of the kingdom. 
 The best and the bravest began to despair. 
 
 But then the genius of Eliot rose to the gran- 
 deur of that occasion ; and, by its wonderful 
 command over every meaner passion, by its 
 great disregard of every personal danger, 
 w r rested the very sense of hopeless discom- 
 fiture to the achievement of a noble security. 
 Knowing more thoroughly than others the 
 character of the king, he knew that he was yet 
 assailable. His conduct at this awful crisis 
 has seemed to me to imbody a perfect union 
 of profound sagacity and fearless magnanimity, 
 unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, in the history 
 of the most illustrious statesmen. 
 
 " On Tuesday, the 3d of June," says Rush- 
 worth, " the king's answer to the petition of 
 right was read in the House of Commons, and 
 seemed too scant. Whereupon Sir John Eliot 
 stood up and made a long speech, wherein he 
 gave forth so full and lively a representation 
 of all grievances, both general and particular, 
 as if they had never before been mentioned."* But 
 observe with what consummate policy. It was 
 not a representation of the grievances alone, 
 such as had been urged some months before : 
 
 pears through all these proceedings ; for he afterward 
 proved himself quite as capable of openly violating a statute 
 enacted in the regular manner, as of playing the game of 
 evasion with his duty and his conscience. But wounded 
 vanity had clearly much to do with it. 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 588. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 145. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 591. The indefatigable collector, 
 however, only gives a brief outline of the speech. It may be 
 worth notice also, that, owing to some confusion in his pa- 
 pers, a portion of this outline was printed in the wrong 
 place, and still stands as a separate speech both in his work 
 and the Parliamentary History. See the latter, vol. vii., p. 
 399 ; and Rushworth, vol. i., p. 520.
 
 24 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 it was a pursuit of them to their poisonous 
 spring and source ; it was an exhibition beside 
 them of their hideous origin ; it was a direction 
 of the wrath of the people against one oppress- 
 or, whose rank was not beyond its reach ; it 
 was, in one word, a fatal blow at Charles 
 through that quarter where alone he seemed 
 to be vulnerable it was, in its aim and result, 
 a philippic against the Duke of Buckingham. 
 Demosthenes never delivered one more clear, 
 plain, convincing, irresistible. It calls to mind 
 that greatest of orators. Eliot's general style 
 was more immediately cast in the manner of 
 Cicero, but here he rose beyond it, into the 
 piercing region of the Greek. Demosthenic 
 strength and closeness of reasoning, clearness 
 of detail, and appalling earnestness of style, 
 are all observable in the naked outline I now 
 present. What may have been the grandeur 
 and the strength of its complete proportions 1 
 I recollect a remark of Mr. Hazlitt's, that the 
 author of this speech might have originated the 
 " dogged style" of one of our celebrated politi- 
 cal writers. " There is no affectation of wit in 
 it," he continued, " no studied ornament, no 
 display of fancied superiority. The speaker's 
 whole heart and soul are in his subject ; he is 
 full of it ; his mind seems, as it were, to sur- 
 round and penetrate every part of it ;" nothing 
 diverts him from his purpose, or interrupts the 
 course of his reasoning for a moment. No 
 thought of the personal loss, then frightfully 
 incurred, no fear of the dangers that were sure 
 to follow. His argument rose paramount, for 
 it was the life of the nation's liberties.* 
 
 " Mr. Speaker," Eliot began, " we $it here 
 as the great council of the king, and, in that 
 capacity, it is OUR DUTY to take into considera- 
 tion the present state and affairs of the king- 
 dom. In this consideration, I confess, many a 
 sad thought hath affrighted me ; and that not 
 only in respect of our dangers from abroad, 
 which yet I know are great, as they have been 
 often in this place pressed and dilated to us, 
 but in respect of our disorders here at home, 
 which do enforce those dangers, and by which 
 they are occasioned. For, I believe, I shall 
 make it cleare unto you that, as at first the cause 
 of these dangers were our disorders, so our 
 disorders now are yet our greatest dangers. It 
 is not so much the potency of our enemies as 
 the weakness of ourselves that threatens us. 
 That saying of the father may be assumed by 
 us : Non tarn potentia sua, quam negligentia nos- 
 tra. Our want of true devotion to Heaven, our 
 insincerity and doubling in religion, our want 
 of councils, our precipitate actions, the insuffi- 
 ciency or unfaithfulness of our generals abroad, 
 the ignorance or corruptions of our ministers 
 at home, the impoverishing of the sovereign, 
 
 * It is a saying of May, the historian, in reference to this 
 and other speeches, that "the freedom that Sir John Eliot 
 used in Parliament was by the people applauded, though 
 much taxed by the courtiers, and censured by some of a 
 more politique reserve (considering the times) among his 
 own party, in that kind that Tacitus censures Thraseas 
 Foetus, as thinking such freedom a needlesse, and therefore 
 a foolish thing, where no cure could be hoped by it. Sibi 
 periculum, nee aliis libertatem." This is the old reproach 
 of the timid and indifferent. I am about to show, in the 
 present instance, that he incurred the danger, which soon 
 after fell upon his life, in no spirit of idle forwardness, but 
 for the achievement of a great practical purpose, which he 
 did achieve. 
 
 the oppression and depression of the subject, 
 the exhausting of our treasures, the waste of 
 our provisions, consumption of our ships, de- 
 struction of our men these make the advan- 
 tage to our enemies, not the reputation of their 
 arms. And. if in these there be not reforma- 
 tion, we need no foes abroad. Time itself will 
 ruin us !" 
 
 A slight interruption from the ministers here 
 appears to have given Eliot a moment's pause. 
 With admirable address he appealed to the 
 House. "You will all hold it necessary that 
 what I am about to urge seems not an asper- 
 sion on the state, or imputation on the govern- 
 ment, as I have known such motions misinter- 
 preted. Far is this from me to propose, who 
 have none but clear thoughts of the excellency 
 of the king, nor can have other ends than the 
 advancement of his majesty's glory. I shall 
 desire," he continued, " a little of your patience 
 extraordinary to open the particulars, which I 
 shall do with what brevity I may answerable 
 to the importance of the cause and the neces- 
 sity now upon us, yet with such respect and 
 observation to the time as I hope it shall not 
 be thought troublesome." 
 
 He then proceeded to open up the question 
 of " insincerity and doubling in religion." He 
 pursued it through many strong and terrible 
 examples. " Will you have authority of books 1" 
 he asked, furnishing them with a series of the 
 most striking passages from the recent collec- 
 tions of the committee that had been sitting on 
 religious affairs. " Will you have proofs ol 
 men]" he continued. "Witness the hopes, 
 witness the presumptions, witness the reports 
 of all the papists generally. Observe the dis 
 positions of commanders, the trust of officers, 
 the confidence in secretaries to employments 
 in this kingdom, in Ireland, and elsewhere ! 
 These all will show it hath too great a certain- 
 ty ; and to this add but the incontrovertible 
 evidence of that all-powerful hand which we 
 have felt so sorely. For if the heavens oppose 
 themselves to us for our impiety, it is we that 
 first opposed the heavens." 
 
 Eliot next handled the " want of councils." 
 " This," he said, " is that great disorder in a 
 state with which there cannot be stability. 
 If effects may show their causes, as they are 
 often a perfect demonstration of them, our 
 misfortunes, our disasters, serve to prove it, 
 and the consequences they draw with them. 
 If reason be allowed in this dark age, the judg- 
 ment of dependencies and foresight of contin- 
 gencies in affairs do confirm it. For, if we 
 view ourselves at home, are we in strength, 
 are we in reputation equal to our ancestors 1 
 If we view ourselves abroad, are our friends as 
 many, are our enemies no more 1 Do our 
 friends retain their safety and possessions ] 
 Do not our enemies enlarge themselves, and 
 gain from them and us 1 To what counsel 
 owe we the loss of the Palatinate, where we 
 sacrificed both our honour and our men ob- 
 structing those greater powers appointed for 
 that service by which it might have been de- 
 fensible 1 What counsel gave direction to the 
 late action, whose wounds are yet bleeding I 
 mean the expedition to Rhee, of which there is 
 yet so sad a memory in all men 1 What design 
 for us, or advantage to our state, could that in>
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT 
 
 25 
 
 port 1 You know the wisdom of our ancestors, 
 and the practice of their times ; how they pre- 
 served their safeties ! We all know, and have 
 as much cause to doubt as they had, the great- 
 ness and ambition of that kingdom WHICH THE 
 
 OLD WORLD COULD NOT SATISFY.* Against this 
 
 greatness and ambition we likewise know the 
 proceedings of that princess, that never-to-be- 
 forgotten, excellent queen, Elizabeth, whose 
 name, without admiration, falls not into men- 
 tion even with her enemies ! You know how 
 she advanced herself, and how she advanced 
 this nation in glory and in state ; how she de- 
 pressed her enemies, and how she upheld her 
 friends ; how she enjoyed a full security, and 
 made them then our scorn who now are made 
 our terror !" 
 
 The principles of that policy by which Eliza- 
 beth had effected all this, Eliot now developed 
 to the House, exhibiting beside them the singu- 
 larly opposite 'and pitiful contrast of the pre- 
 vailing policy. The passage is remarkable for 
 its subtlety, no less than for its exactest truth. 
 " Some of the principles she built on were 
 these ; and, if I mistake, let reason and our 
 statesmen contradict me. First, to maintain, 
 in what she might, a unity in France, that 
 that kingdom, being at peace within itself, 
 might be a bulwark to keep back the power of 
 Spain by land. Next, to preserve an amity and 
 league between that state and us, that so we 
 might come in aid of the Low Countries, and by 
 that means receive their ships and help them by 
 sea. This TREBLE CORD, so working between 
 France, the States, and England, might enable 
 us, as occasion should require, to give assist- 
 ance unto others. It was by this means, the 
 experience of that time doth tell us, that we 
 were not only free from those fears that now 
 possess and trouble us, but our names were 
 also fearful to our enemies. See now what 
 correspondency our actions have with this ; 
 square them by these rules. They have induced, 
 as a necessary consequence, a division in 
 France between the Protestants and their king, 
 of which we have had too woful and lamenta- 
 ble experience. They have made an absolute 
 breach between that state and us, and so enter- 
 tain us against France, and France in prepara- 
 tion against us, that we have nothing to prom- 
 ise to our neighbours hardly to ourselves! 
 Nay, observe the time in which they were at- 
 tempted, and you shall find it not only varying 
 from those principles, but directly contrary and 
 opposite, ex diametro, to those ends ! and such 
 as, from the issue and success, rather might 
 be thought a conception of Spain than begot- 
 ten here with us !" 
 
 ~ Every word was now falling with tremen- 
 'dous effect upon Buckingham, and the minis- 
 ters could endure it no longer. Sir Humphry 
 May, the chancellor of the duchy, and one of 
 the privy council, started from his seat, " ex- 
 pressing," as Rushworth states it, " a dislike. 
 But the House ordered Sir John Eliot to go on. 
 Whereupon he proceeded thus : ' Mr. Speaker, 
 I am sorry for this interruption, but much more 
 sorry if there hath been occasion wherein, as 
 I shall submit myself wholly to your judgment, 
 to receive what censure you should give me, 
 
 * The entire range of English oratory furnishes nothing 
 finer in expression and purpose than this allusion to Spain. 
 
 D 
 
 if I have offended ; so, in the integrity of my 
 intentions and clearness of my thoughts, I must 
 still retain this confidence ; that no greatness 
 shall deter me from the duties which I owe to 
 the service of my king and country, but that, 
 with a true English heart, I shall discharge my- 
 self as faithfully, and as really to the extent of 
 my poor power, as any man whose honours or 
 whose offices most strictly oblige him.' " 
 
 With admirable self-possession, Eliot then 
 resumed his speech at the very point of inter- 
 ruption, and continued to urge the madness of 
 breaking peace with France at a time so em- 
 phatically unfortunate. " You know," he said, 
 "the dangers Denmark was in, and how much 
 they concerned us ; what in respect of our al- 
 liance and the country, what in the importance 
 of the Sound (what an advantage to our ene- 
 mies the gain thereof would be !). What loss, 
 then, what prejudice to us, by this disunion ! 
 we breaking upon France, France enraged 
 by us, and the Netherlands at amazement be- 
 tween both ! no longer could we intend to aid 
 that luckless king, whose loss is our disaster."* 
 Here Eliot having, as it appears to me, reduced 
 the mattei ad absurdum, suddenly turned round 
 to the ministerial bench. " Can those, now, 
 that express their troubles at the hearing of 
 these things, and have so often told us, in this 
 place, of their knowledge in the conjunctures 
 and disjunctures of affairs, say they advised in 
 this 1 Was this an act of council, Mr. Speak- 
 er 1 / have more charity than to think it ; and, 
 unless they make a confession of themselves, I can- 
 not believe it." 
 
 The orator now, under cover of a discussion 
 of a third division of his argument, " the insuf- 
 ficiency and unfaithfulness of our generals," 
 dragged Buckingham personally upon the scene. 
 For a moment, however, before doing this, he 
 paused. "What shall I sayl I wish there 
 were not cause to mention it ; and, but out of 
 apprehension of the danger that is to come, if 
 the like choice hereafter be not prevented, I 
 could willingly be silent. But my duty to my 
 sovereign, my service to this House, and the 
 safety and honour of my country, are above all 
 respects ; and what so nearly trenches to the 
 prejudice of this, must not, shall not be for- 
 borne." 
 
 Then followed this bitter and searching ex- 
 posure of the incapacity of Buckingham in his 
 various actions. How much its effect is in- 
 creased by the ominous omission of his name ! 
 
 " At Cadiz, then, in that first expedition we 
 made, when we arrived and found a conquest 
 ready (the Spanish ships, I mean, which were 
 fit for the satisfaction of a voyage ; and of 
 which some of the chiefest then there them- 
 selves, have since assured me that the satis- 
 faction would have been sufficient, either in 
 point of honour or in point of profit) why was 
 it neglected 1 why was it not achieved 1 it 
 being of all hands granted, how feasible it was ! 
 
 * It would be easy to dilate this speech into a volume, so 
 pregnant is every word with meaning-, so condensed are its 
 views, yet so exact and forcible. The reader who is best 
 acquainted with the general history of the time will appre- 
 ciate it best. The present is an allusion to the disastrous 
 defeat of the King of Denmark by Count Tilly. The Kingf 
 of England had precipitated the quarrel by his weak impor- 
 tunities, and then, by this outrageous war with France, ut- 
 terly disabled his own power of assistance.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " After, when with the destruction of some 
 of our men, and with the exposition of some 
 others, who (though their fortunes since have 
 not been such) by chance came off when, '. 
 say, with the loss of our serviceable men, that 
 unserviceable fort was gained, and the whole 
 army landed why was there nothing done 1 
 j why was there nothing attempted 1 If nothing 
 was intended, wherefore did they land] If 
 there was a service, wherefore were they ship- 
 ped again 1 
 
 "Mr. Speaker, it satisfies me too much in 
 this when I think of their dry and hungry 
 inarch into that drunken quarter (for so the 
 soldiers termed it), where was the period of 
 their journey that divers of our men, being left 
 as a sacrifice to the enemy, the general's labour was 
 at an end /" 
 
 " For the next undertaking at Rhee I will 
 not trouble you much only this, in short. 
 Was not that whole action carried against the 
 judgment and opinion of those officers that 
 were of the council 1 Was not the first, was 
 not the last, was not all, in the landing, in the 
 intrenching, in the continuance there, in the 
 assault, in the retreat, without their assent? 
 Did any advice take place of such as were of 
 the council 1 If there should be made a par- 
 ticular inquisition thereof, these things will be 
 manifest, and more! I will not instance the 
 manifesto that was made for the reason of 
 these arms ; nor by whom, nor in what man- 
 ner, nor on what grounds it was published ; 
 nor what effects it hath wrought, drawing, as 
 it were, almost the whole world into league 
 against us ; nor will I mention the leaving of 
 the wines, nor the leaving of the salt, which 
 were in our possession, and of a value, as it is 
 said, to answer much of our expense ; nor that 
 great wonder which no Alexander or CcBsar ever 
 did, the enriching of the enemy by courtesies when 
 our soldiers wanted help ;* nor the private inter- 
 courses and parleys with the fort which con- 
 tinually were held ; what all these intended 
 may be read in the success, and, upon due ex- 
 amination thereof, they would not want their 
 proofs !" 
 
 Eliot passed to the consideration of " the 
 ignorance and corruption of our ministers. 
 Where," he asked, " can you miss of instan- 
 ces 1 If you survey the court, if you survey 
 the country ; if the Church, if the city be ex- 
 amined ; if you observe the bar, if the bench ; 
 if the ports, if the shipping ; if the land, if the 
 seas all these will render you variety of 
 proofs, and that in such measure and propor- 
 tion as shows the greatness of our disease to 
 
 * The affected gallantries and courtesies practised by 
 Buckingham to the enemy, during this expedition, were ri- 
 diculous in the extreme. When Toiras sent a trumpet to 
 request a passport to convey some wounded officers to the 
 coast, Buckingham sent them his grand chaloupe, or yacht, 
 furnished with every elegant convenience, and lined with 
 ires belle escarlette rouge ; while his musicians, with all the 
 varieties of their instruments, solaced and charmed the 
 wounded enemy in crossing the arm of the sea. Toiras 
 once inquiring " whether they had saved any melons in the 
 island?" was the next day presented, in the duke's name, 
 with a dozen. The bearer received twenty golden crowns ; 
 and Toiras despatching six bottles of orange flower water, 
 and a dozen jars of cypress powder, the duke presented the 
 bearer with twenty Jacobuses ! After a sharp action, when 
 Toiras sent one of his pages with a trumpet, to request leave 
 to bury some noblemen, the duke received the messenger 
 with terms of condolence. See an amusing account in 
 D'lsraeh'i Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 48. 
 
 be such that, if there be not some speedy applica- 
 tion for remedy, our case is almost desperate." 
 Eliot here paused for a few moments. " Mr. 
 Speaker," he said, " I fear I have been too long in 
 these particulars that are passed, and am unwill- 
 ing to offend you ; therefore, in the rest I shall 
 be shorter." As he condenses his statements, 
 it will be seen he becomes more terrible. 
 
 " In that which concerns the impoverishing 
 of the king, no other argument? will I use than 
 such as all men grant. The Exchequer, you 
 know, is empty, and the reputation thereof 
 gone ; the ancient lands are sold ; the jewels 
 pawned ; the plate engaged ; the debt still 
 great ; almost all charges, both ordinary and 
 extraordinary, borne up by projects. What 
 poverty can be greater? What necessity so 
 great 1 What perfect English heart is not al- 
 most dissolved into sorrow for this truth ! 
 
 " For the oppression of the subject, which, 
 as I remember, is the next particular I pro- 
 posed, it needs no demonstration : the whole 
 kingdom is a proof. And for the exhausting of 
 our treasury, that very oppression speaks it. 
 What waste of our provisions, what consump- 
 tion of our ships, what destruction of our men 
 have been ! Witness that journey to Argiers. 
 Witness that with Mansfield. .Witness that to 
 Cadiz. Witness the next. Witness that to 
 Rhee. Witness the last (I pray God" we may 
 never have more such witnesses !). Witness, 
 likewise, the Palatinate. Witness Denmark. 
 Witness the Turks. Witness the Dunkirkers. 
 WITNESS ALL ! What losses we have sustain- 
 ed ! how we are impaired in munition, in ships, 
 in men ! It is beyond contradiction, that we 
 were never so much weakened, nor ever had 
 less hope how to be restored." 
 
 Eliot concluded thus, with a proposition for 
 a remonstrance to the king. 
 
 " These, Mr. Speaker, are our dangers ; these 
 are they which do threaten us, and they are 
 like the Trojan horse, brought in cunningly to 
 surprise us. In these do lurk the strongest of 
 our enemies, ready to issue on us ; and if we 
 do not speedily expel them, these are the signs 
 these the invitations to others. These will so 
 prepare their entrance, that we shall have no 
 means left of refuge or defence. For if we have 
 these enemies at home, how can we strive 
 with those that are abroad 1 If we be free 
 from these, no other can impeach us ! Our 
 ancient English virtue, like the old Spartan val- 
 our, cleared from these disorders a return to 
 sincerity in religion, once more friends with 
 leaven, having maturity of councils, sufficiency 
 of generals, incorruption of officers, opulency 
 n the king, liberty in the people, repletion in 
 treasure, plenty of provisions, reparation of 
 ships, preservation of men our ancient Eng- 
 ish virtue, I say, thus rectified, will secure us ; 
 >ut unless there be a speedy reformation in 
 hese, I know not what hopes or expectations 
 we can have. 
 
 " These are the things, sir, I shall desire to 
 
 lave taken into consideration ; that, as we are 
 
 he great council of the kingdom, and have the 
 
 apprehension of these dangers, we may truly 
 
 represent them unto the king : whereto, I con- 
 
 eive, we are bound by a treble obligation of 
 
 iuty to God, of duty to his majesty, and of duty 
 
 o our country.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 27 
 
 " And therefore I wish it may so stand with 
 the wisdom and judgment of the House, that 
 they may be drawn into the body of a remon- 
 strance, and in all humility expressed ; with a 
 prayer unto his majesty, that, for the safety of 
 himself, for the safety of the kingdom, and fr 
 the safety of religion, he will be pleased to give 
 us time to make perfect inquisition thereof; or 
 to take them into his own wisdom, and there 
 give them such timely reformation as the ne- 
 cessity and justice of the case doth import. 
 
 " And thus, sir, with a large affection and 
 loyalty to his majesty, and with a firm duty and 
 service to my country, I have suddenly (and it 
 may be with some disorder) expressed the 
 weak apprehensions I have ; wherein, if I have 
 erred, I humbly crave your pardon, and so sub- 
 mit myself to the censure of the House."* 
 
 Eliot's purpose was already accomplished ! 
 Scarcely had he resumed his seat, when the ef- 
 fects he had laboured to produce broke forth. 
 " Disaffection !" cried Sir Henry Martin and 
 others of the court party ; " and there wanted 
 not some who said that speech was made out 
 of some distrust of his majesty's answer to the 
 petition."t From the popular side, on the oth- 
 er hand, some stern and significant words were 
 heard about the necessity of a remonstrance. 
 The crisis had unquestionably come. The 
 courtiers went off to tell their news at the 
 council table ; the patriots " turned themselves 
 into a grand committee touching the danger 
 and means of safety of king and kingdom." 
 
 The newsmongers discharged their duty 
 faithfully. The next day a royal message came 
 to the House, acquainting them that within six 
 days the session would close, and desiring 
 them not to touch upon any new matter, but 
 to conclude the necessary business, t The day 
 following that brought another message, " com- 
 manding the speaker to let them know that he 
 will certainly hold that day prefixed without 
 alteration ; and he requires them that they 
 enter not into, or proceed with, any new busi- 
 ness which may spend greater time, or which 
 may lay any scandal or aspersion upon the 
 state, government, or ministers thereof."^ The 
 scene that ensued was in all respects extraor- 
 dinary. Sir Robert Philips was the first to 
 rise. " I consider my own infirmities," said 
 Philips, " and if ever my passions were wrought 
 upon, now this message stirs me up especially. 
 What shall we do, since our humble purposes 
 
 * This speech was preserved in Sir John Napier's manu- 
 scripts, and will be found in the Old Parliamentary History, 
 vol. viii., p. 155. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i.,p. 592. Eliot is said to have remark- 
 ed on this, that he had for some time " had a resolution to 
 open these last-mentioned grievances, to satisfie his majesty 
 herein, only he had stayed for an opportunity." This reads 
 like a sarcasm. Be that as it may, it is remarkable that 
 Wentworth, upon this, is described to have stepped forward 
 and " attested that averment," saying that he had heard 
 such to have been the determination of Eliot. This is the 
 only appearance of courtesy, or, indeed, of any other feeling 
 than a violent dislike, which it is possible to trace in the 
 conduct of Wentworth to Eliot. And it might have been 
 meant in the wayof " damned good-natured friendship." On 
 the whole, however, I suspect it to have been simply anoth- 
 er fillip to the wavering negotiations of the court, which 
 Wentworth was now waiting the issue of. Many commu- 
 nications had already passed through the medium of the 
 speaker and Weston. See Stafford's State Papers, vol. i., 
 p. 46. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 593. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 167. 
 
 4 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 605. Parl. Hist., vol viii., p. 168. 
 
 are thus prevented?"* Eliot here suddenly 
 started up, and spoke with more than ordinary 
 vehemence. "Ye all know," he said, "with 
 what affection and integrity we have proceeded 
 hitherto to have gained his majesty's heart. 
 It was out of the necessity of our duty we were 
 brought to that course we were in. I doubt a 
 misrepresentation to his majesty hath drawn 
 this mark of his displeasure upon us ! I ob- 
 serve in the message, among other sad partic- 
 ulars, it is conceived that we were about to lay 
 some aspersions on the government. Give me 
 leave to- protest, sir, that so clear were our in- 
 tentions, that we desire only to vindicate those 
 dishonours to our king and country ! It is 
 said also, as if we cast some aspersions on 
 his majesty's ministers ! I am confident no 
 minister, how dear soever, can " A strange 
 interruption stopped him. " Here," says the 
 account in the Napier MSS., "the speaker 
 started up from the chair, and, apprehending 
 Sir John Eliot intended to fall upon the duke, 
 said, tmth tears in his eyes, ' There is a com- 
 mand laid upon me to interrupt any that should 
 go about to lay an aspersion on the ministers 
 of the state.' "t Eliot sat down in silence. 
 
 Events for passions include events now 
 crowded together to work their own good work ; 
 and the great statesman, the author, as it were, 
 of that awful scene, may be conceived to have 
 been the only one who beheld it from the van- 
 tage ground of a sober consciousness and con- 
 trol. Into that moment his genius had thrown 
 a forecast of the future. The after terrors he 
 did not live to see, but now concentred in the 
 present spot were all their intense and fervid 
 elements. They struggled in their birth with 
 tears. I do not know whether ft may not be 
 thought indecorous and unseemly now for 
 statesmen to shed tears, but I consider the 
 weeping of that memorable day, that " black 
 and doleful Thursday,"! to have been the pre- 
 cursor of an awful resolve. Had these great 
 men entertained a less severe sense of their 
 coming duty, no such present weakness had 
 been shown. The monarchy, and its cherished 
 associations of centuries, now trembled in the 
 balance. " Sir Robert Philips spoke," says a 
 member of the House, writing to his friend the 
 day after, " and mingled his words with weep- 
 ing. Sir Edward Coke, overcome with passion, 
 seeing the desolation that was like to ensue, 
 was forced to sit down when he began to speak, 
 through the abundance of tears ; yea, the speak- 
 er in his speech could not refrain from weep- 
 ing and shedding of tears, besides a great many 
 whose great griefs made them dumb and si- 
 lent. " 
 
 A deep silence succeeded this storm, and the 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 606. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. i., p. 606. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 191. 
 t This expression is used in a manuscript letter of the 
 day. 
 
 This interesting letter will be found in Rushworth, vol. 
 , p. 609. It will be seen that, in the commencement of it, 
 .he writer, Mr. Alured, distinctly conveys the impression 
 .hat this extraordinary scene had been caused by Eliot's 
 jreat speech of two days before. He gives a sketch of the 
 speech, and afterward describes the interference of the min- 
 sters. " As he was enumerating which, the chancellor of 
 ;he duchy said, ' it was a strange language ;' yet the House 
 commanded Sir John Eliot to go on. Then the chancellor 
 desired, if he went on, that himself might go out. Where- 
 upon they all bade him begone, yet he stayed and heard him 
 out."
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 few words that broke the silence startled the 
 House into its accustomed attitude of resolu- 
 tion and composure. " It is the speech lately 
 spoken by Sir John Eliot which has given of- 
 fence, as we fear, to his majesty."* The ir- 
 resolute men who hazarded these words at 
 such a time little anticipated their immediate 
 result. " Hereupon," says Rushworth, " the 
 House declared 'that every member of the 
 House is free from any undutiful speech, from 
 the beginning of the Parliament to that day,' 
 and ordered ' that the House be turned into a 
 committee to consider what is fit to be done 
 for the safety of the kingdom ; and that no 
 man go out upon pain of being sent to the Tow- 
 er.' " The time for action had arrived. The 
 speaker, in abject terror, " humbly and earnest- 
 ly besought the House to give him leave to ab- 
 sent himself for half an hour, presuming they 
 did not think he did it for any ill intention ; 
 which was instantly granted him. "t He went to 
 the king. In the interval of his absence cheer- 
 ful acclamations resounded once more through 
 the House, for again Buckingham was fear- 
 lessly named as the " grievance of grievan- 
 ces ;" and " as when one good hound," ob- 
 serves a member who was present, " recovers 
 the scent, the rest come in with a full cry, so 
 they pursued it, and every one came on home, 
 and laid the blame where they thought the fault 
 was, and were voting it to the question, ' that 
 the Duke of Buckingham shall be instanced to 
 be the chief and principal cause of all those 
 evils,' when the speaker, having been three 
 hours absent and with the king, brought this 
 message, ' that his majesty commands, for the 
 present, they adjourn the House till to-morrow 
 morning, and*that all committees cease in the 
 mean time.' What we shall expect this morn- 
 ing God of heaven knows, "t 
 
 The king, it is evident, now shook with alarm. 
 The clouds were gathering over his favourite 
 thicker and blacker than ever. That morning, 
 however, with a last vague hope, he sent a 
 cozening message, and a wish for a " sweet 
 parting. " The only notice taken of it by the 
 Commons was the forwarding of a petition 
 "for a clear and satisfactory answer in full 
 Parliament to the petition of rights,"|| and the 
 stern opening of an investigation into several 
 high grievances, more especially the charge I 
 have before mentioned of a design for introdu- 
 cing foreign troops into the kingdom. IT No al- 
 ternative was left to Charles, and the Commons 
 were summoned the next day to meet him in 
 the Upper House. 
 
 " To avoid all ambiguous interpretations, and 
 to show you there is no doubleness in my mean- 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 606, 607. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., 
 p. 192. t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 609. 
 
 i Rushworth, vol. i., p. 610. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 196. 
 
 $ " So for this time," ran the close of the message, "let all 
 Christendom take notice of a sweet parting between him 
 and his people ; which, if it fall out, his majesty will not be 
 long from another meeting ; when such grievances, if there 
 be any, at their leisure and convenience may be considered." 
 Parl. "Hist., vol. viii., p. 197. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 610. 
 
 II Parl. Hist., vol. viii. .p. 201. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 612. 
 
 IT Burlemach, a naturalized Dutch merchant, was exam- 
 ined, and admitted that he had received 30,000 from the 
 treasury, for the raising of German horse, which he had dis- 
 bursed accordingly. He farther admitted that 1000 horse 
 had been levied inconsequence, and arms provided for them 
 in Holland, but that " he heard they were lately counter- 
 manded." Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 200. And see Rush- 
 worth, vol. i., p. 612. 
 
 ing, I am willing to pleasure you as well in 
 words as in substance. Read your petition, 
 and you shall have an answer that, I am sure, 
 will please you."* Such was Charles's speech 
 to the members of the House of Commons who 
 crowded that day round their lordships' bar. 
 The petition was read accordingly, and the 
 usual answer was returned : Soit droit fait 
 comme il est desire. " At the end of the king's 
 first speech," says a memorandum on the Lords' 
 journals, " at the answer to the petition, and 
 on the conclusion of the whole, the Commons 
 gave a great and joyful applause." 
 
 Charles the First, after he left the House of 
 Lords that day, stood in a different relation to 
 the people from that he had occupied before. 
 It is impossible to deny this fact.f The Com- 
 mons had asserted it in cleaving so strongly to 
 their resolutions, the king himself in striving 
 so desperately to evade them. A certainty of 
 direction and operation had been given to the 
 old laws. Charles appeared, indeed, to sanc- 
 tion the notion of a great and vital change by 
 the first step he took. He sent a message 
 to the Commons, desiring " that the petition of 
 rights, with his assent thereunto, should not 
 only be recorded in both Houses, and in the 
 courts of Westminster, but that it be put in 
 print, for his honour and the content and satis- 
 faction of his people. "J 
 
 The Commons, according to Rushworth, 
 "returned to their own house with unspeaka- 
 ble joy, and resolved so to proceed as to ex- 
 press their thankfulness. Now frequent men- 
 tion was made of proceeding with the bill of 
 subsidies, of sending the bills which were 
 ready to the Lords, and of perfecting the bill 
 of tonnage and poundage. Sir John Strange- 
 waies expressed his joy at the answer, and 
 farther added, ' Let us perfect our remon- 
 strance.' " And such was their exact mode 
 of procedure. The largest supplies that had 
 been voted for years were at once presented 
 to the king. The king's commission of excise 
 was demanded to be cancelled under the new 
 act of right. The bill for the granting of ton- 
 nage and poundage, which was already far ad- 
 vanced, was passed, but a protest voted at the 
 same time, on the ground of its inconsistency 
 with the new act, against Charles's old course 
 of levying this imposition without consent of 
 Parliament.il A remonstrance was also voted 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 202. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 613. 
 
 t Hume observes, " It may be affirmed, without any ex- 
 aggeration, that the king's assent to the petition of rights 
 produced such a change in the government as was almost 
 equivalent to a revolution ; and by circumscribing in so 
 many articles the royal prerogative, gave additional secu- 
 rity to the liberties of the subject." Without going so far 
 as this, it is quite certain that it materially altered Charles's 
 position in a moral as well as legal sense. The petition of 
 rights (it is given at length in Hume's History, vol. v., p. 
 171) affirmed and confirmed expresslythe enactments of the 
 9 Hen. III., chap. 29 (Magna Charta), that no freeman be 
 deprived of his liberty or his property except by judgment 
 of his peers, or by the law of the land ; of the 28 Edw. III., 
 chap. 33, that no man, of whatever estate or condition, should 
 be taken, imprisoned, disseized, disherited. or put to death, 
 without being brought to answer by due process of law ; 
 and of the 25, 37, 38, 42 Edw. III., with the 17 Rich. II., to 
 the same intent. But it did even more than this, by its im- 
 bodiment of the supplementary resolutions of the Commons, 
 which, as I have already observed, bound the judges to a 
 strict letter of construction, and deprived them of the plea 
 of antagonist enactments. 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 203. 
 
 I) Rushworth, vol. i., p. 613. 
 
 II The only plea advanced by the court lawyers against
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 29 
 
 and presented to the king against certain pro- 
 ceedings of Buckingham.* These measures 
 were not only in conformity with the petition, 
 but were positively required to give it efficacy 
 and completeness. No opportunity of conces- 
 sion or concord was withheld from Charles, 
 but no distinct right was forborne. The grand 
 committees that were then sitting, on the va- 
 rious heads of religion, trade, grievances, and 
 courts of justice, were ordered to sit no long- 
 er, t Every appearance of unnecessary oppo- 
 sition was carefully avoided. 
 
 But suddenly, in the midst of these meas- 
 ures, the Commons were summoned by the 
 king to the House of Lords. After a long in- 
 terview with the speaker, Charles had hurried 
 there to close the session. "It may seem 
 strange," he said, when they appeared at the 
 bar, " that I come so suddenly to end this ses- 
 sion before I give my assent to the bills. I 
 will tell you the cause, though I must avow that 
 I owe the account of my actions to God alone." 
 This was a very proper commencement to his 
 speech ; for, after peevishly complaining of the 
 remonstrance against Buckingham, he went on 
 to inform them that he would have no inter- 
 ference with his rights over tonnage and 
 poundage ; and, farther, that they had alto- 
 gether misunderstood the petition of rights. ' ' I 
 have granted no new, but only confirmed the 
 ancient liberties of my subjects." His conclu- 
 ding words were very remarkable. "As for toa- 
 nage and poundage, it is a thing I cannot want, 
 and was never intended by you to ask, nor 
 meant by me, I am sure, to grant. To conclude, 
 I command you all that are here to take notice 
 of what I have spoken at this time to be the 
 true intent and meaning of what I granted you 
 in your petition ; but especially you, my lords, the 
 judges, for to you only, under me, belongs the 
 interpretation of laws."t Parliament was 
 then prorogued to the 20th of the following 
 October. 
 
 The patriot leaders separated, it may be sup- 
 posed, with many gloomy forebodings. New 
 miseries and oppressions were about to visit 
 the people. Yet had this immortal session 
 strengthened the people's hearts for endurance 
 no less than it had sharpened their powers for 
 resistance. The patriots had no cause to sep- 
 arate with any distrust of each other. 
 
 Eliot went immediately into Cornwall. ] 
 am fortunately enabled to follow him there 
 Among the manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton 
 I have found a letter written to that learnec 
 antiquary some few days after his arrival. It 
 
 the conduct of the Commons in this matter worthy of notice 
 was founded on the iniquitous judgment of the Court of Ex 
 chequer in Bates's case during the last reign. But this plea 
 had surely been barred by the resolutions I have so often 
 named. Supposing it to be urged that the language of the 
 petition was not sufficiently general to comprehend dutie: 
 charged on merchandise at the outports, as well as interim 
 taxes and exactions an opinion which was strongly con 
 tested by Eliot it is quite certain that the iniquitous appli 
 cation of the statutes in Bates's case, that grossest of in 
 stances of "judge-made law," was distinctly foreclosed 
 Tonnage and poundage, like other subsidies, could thereafte 
 only spring from the free grant of the people. 
 
 * This remonstrance, drawn up by Selden and Eliot, i 
 extremely able. It is impossible, after reading it, to ques- 
 tion its necessity. See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 619. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 613. 
 
 i The reader, coupling this with Charles's previous con 
 ultation with the judges, will readily understand its sig 
 nificancy. 
 
 s, in many points of view, interesting. It is a 
 appy specimen of Eliot's style ; and it proves, 
 f such proof were wanting, that this great 
 tatesman had embraced the public cause with 
 tie deep fervour of a private passion. 
 
 How acceptable your letters are," he 
 writes, " and with what advantage they now 
 ome, I need not tell you ; when, besides the 
 nemorie of my owne losses (which can have 
 10 reparation like the assurance of your fa- 
 our), I but acknowledge the ignorance of 
 hese partes, almoste as much divided from 
 eason and intelligence as our island from the 
 ivorld. That the session is ended we are 
 gladd, because to our understandinges it im- 
 lies a concurrence in the general!, and inti- 
 mates a contynuance of the Parliament hav- 
 ng not the notion of particulars by which we 
 mighte compose ourselves to better judgment. 
 The souldier, the mariner, the shipps, the seas, 
 he horse, the foot, are to us no more than the 
 stories of the poetts, either as thinges fabulous 
 or unnecessarie, entertained now only for dis- 
 course or wonder, not with the apprehension 
 of the least feare or doubte ! Denmarke and 
 he Sound are taken rather for wordes than 
 meaninges ; and the greatnesse and ambition 
 of Austria or Spain are to us a mere chimera, 
 lochell and Dunkirk are all one. What friends 
 we have lost or what enemies we have gained 
 more than that encmie tchich we have bredd our- 
 selves) is not soe much to us as the night show- 
 r or sunneshine ! nor can we thinke of anie 
 thinge that is not present with us. What they 
 doe in Suffolk with their sojourners wee care 
 not, while there are none billeted on us ; and 
 it is indifferent to our reasons, in the contesta- 
 tions which they have, whether the straunger 
 or the countryman prevaile. Onlie one thing 
 gives us some remembraunce of our neigh- 
 bours, which is the greate resorte of Irish dai- 
 lie comminge over, whoo, though they begg of 
 us, wee doubte maie take from others, and in 
 the end give us an ill recompense for our char- 
 itie. This is a bad character, I confesse, which 
 I give you of my country, but such as it de- 
 serves. You onlie have power to make it ap- 
 peare better, by the honor of your letters, 
 which come nowhere without happinesse, and 
 are a satisfaction for all wantes to me. Your 
 affectionate servant, John Eliot."* 
 
 Stirring events, however, soon reached Eliot 
 in his retirement, such as must have moved 
 even those stagnant waters, which he describes 
 so well. The " self-bred" enemy of England 
 was no more Buckingham had fallen by the 
 hand of an assassin, t But the service of des- 
 
 * Cottonian MSS., c. iii., p. 174. 
 
 t Very interesting notices of this event, and the circum- 
 stances which followed it, will be found in the third volume 
 of Ellis's Original Letters, p. 256-282, second edition. The 
 funeral of the so brilliant duke was the most melancholy 
 winding up of all. The king had designed a very grand 
 one ; " Nevertheless," says Mead to Stuteville, " the last 
 night, at ten of the clock, his funeral was solemnized in as 
 poor and confused a manner as hath been seen, marching 
 from Wallingford House, over against Whitehall, to West- 
 minster Abbey ; there being not much above 100 mourners, 
 who attended upon an empty coffin, borne upon six men's 
 shoulders ; the duke's corpse itself being there interred yes- 
 terday, as if it had been doubtful the people in their mad- 
 ness might have surprised it. But, to prevent all disorder, 
 the train bands kept a guard on both sides of the way, all 
 along from Wallingford House to Westminster Church, 
 beating vp their drums loud, and carrying their pikes and
 
 30 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 potism which the king had lost promised to b 
 replaced by a more dangerous, because a mon 
 able, counsellor. Wentworth had gone ove 
 to the court.* Weston, a creature of th 
 late duke's, had been created lord-treasurer 
 Other changes followed. Laud was made Bish 
 op of London, and, with Laud's elevation, Ar 
 minianism reared its head formidably, t Ar 
 minian prelates were the favourites of the 
 court ; the royal favour shone exclusively on 
 Arminian clergymen ; and Montague, obnox 
 ious as he had proved himself by the Arminian 
 tendency of his works, was raised to the bish 
 opric of Chester. On this subject Eliot felt 
 strongly. He had already, from his place in 
 the House of Commons, denounced the ten- 
 dency of those Arminian doctrines, whose es- 
 sential principle he had justly described to be 
 that of claiming for the king, as absolute head 
 of the Church, a power resembling the pope's 
 infallibility an independent state supremacy 
 a power over the liberty and property of the 
 subject. His acute perception had already de- 
 tected in Laud that resolution towards new 
 ceremonies in the Protestant Church which 
 should raise her out of the apostolic simplicity 
 to a worldly equality with the Church of Rome ; 
 and in Laud's fervid sincerity on this point he 
 saw the deepest source of danger. It was 
 even now, indeed, in action, for farther news 
 soon arrived that Charles, as supreme gov- 
 ernor of the Church, had published an author- 
 ized edition of the articles containing the ob- 
 jectionable clause (" the Church hath power to 
 decree rites and ceremonies, and hath author- 
 ity in matters of faith"), and with an order 
 that no doctrine should be taught that differed 
 from those articles, that all controversies re- 
 specting outward policy should be decided by 
 the convocation, and that no man should pre- 
 sume to explain the article respecting justifica- 
 tion contrary to its plain meaning, or to take it 
 in any other than the literal and grammatical 
 sense.J Nor was this all. The terrors of the 
 Star Chamber and High Commission had fol- 
 lowed close upon Laud's new powers ; and the 
 cases of Burton, Prynne, and Gill, their zeal 
 and their frightful sufferings, afflicted the coun- 
 try. The political application of these doc- 
 trines had received, at the same time, a fatal 
 illustration in various flagrant violations of the 
 petition of rights. A copy of the statute itself 
 reached Cornwall, printed by the king's order 
 (a shameless attempt at imposture, which is 
 scarcely to be credited !), with the addition of 
 his first and rejected answer. Tonnage and 
 poundage had been recklessly levied. Richard 
 Chambers, Samuel Vassal, and John Rolles, 
 
 muskets upon their shoulders, as in a march ; not trailing 
 them at their heels, as is usual at a mourning. As soon as 
 the coffin was entered the church, they came all away with- 
 out giving any volley of shot at all. And this was the ob- 
 scure catastrophe of that great man." Harl. MSS., 390. 
 
 * Eliot, it may be presumed, was perfectly prepared for 
 this event. The expression I have elsewhere used of Went- 
 worth's having " basely abandoned" the popular cause is 
 somewhat hasty. I think I shall be able to show that he 
 never, in reality, was attached to it. Pym appears to have 
 thought so, but Eliot had watched more closely. 
 
 t The memoir of Pym will be a more proper occasion 
 than this for a detailed expression of the exact state of opin- 
 ions in religion, and the nature of their influence on polit- 
 ical questions. 
 
 + Bibliotheca Regia, 213. See Lingard's History, vol. 
 ix., p. 400. 
 
 three distinguished merchants, the last named 
 of whom was a member of the House of Com- 
 mons, had submitted to a seizure of their goods, 
 rather than become parties to a violation of the 
 public liberties, and the judges had refused 
 them protection.* Such was the news that 
 travelled day by day to the seat of Sir John 
 Eliot. To crown the whole, Richelieu, laying 
 aside his hat for a helmet, had, by his personal 
 appearance at Rochelle, finally reduced that 
 ill-fated place and driven back the disgraced 
 English fleet, t 
 
 But now, bad news having spent itself, the 
 time fixed for the Parliament approached. Eli- 
 ot left his home, to which he was never to re- 
 turn, and hurried up to London. 
 
 Parliament met, having suffered an interme- 
 diate prorogation, on the 20th of January, 1829. 
 The spirit with which they reassembled was 
 evidenced by their very first movement. They 
 revived every committee of grievance. Sir 
 John Eliot then moved a call of the House for 
 the 27th, when vital matters, he said, would be 
 brought into discussion. It was farther order- 
 ed on his motion, that " Mr. Selden should see 
 if the petition of rights, and his majesty's an- 
 swer thereunto, were enrolled in the Parlia- 
 ment rolls and courts at Westminster, and in 
 what manner." Selden having reported, al- 
 most immediately after, the gross fraud that 
 had been practised, Pym rose and moved an ad- 
 journment of the debate " by reason of the few- 
 ness of the House, many being not then come 
 up." Sir John Eliot's conduct was character- 
 istic. " Since this matter," he said, " is now 
 raised, it concerns the honour of the House, 
 and the liberties of the kingdom. It is true, it 
 deserves to be deferred till a fuller House, but 
 it is good to prepare things, for I find this to be 
 a point of great consequence. I desire, there- 
 fore, that a select committee may both enter 
 into consideration of this, and also how other 
 liberties of this kingdom have been invaded. 
 I found, in the country, the petition of rights 
 printed indeed, but with an answer that never 
 *ave any satisfaction. I desire a committee 
 nay consider thereof, and present it to the 
 House, and that the printer may be sent for to 
 >e examined about it, and to declare by what 
 warrant it was printed." Eliot's influence with 
 the House was paramount ; what he proposed 
 was instantly ordered, and the disgrace of the 
 attempted imposition indelibly fixed upon the 
 king.* 
 
 Eliot followed up this blow. The seizure of 
 ;he goods of Mr. Rolles came into question ; 
 some attempt was made to narrow the inquiry, 
 and Sir Robert Philips proposed to refer the 
 matter to a committee. Sir John rose sharply. 
 ' Three things, sir," he said, " are involved in 
 .his complaint : first, the right of the particular 
 gentleman ; secondly, the right of the subject ; 
 
 * The conduct of the judges in this case showed how 
 arefully they had attended to the significant suggestions 
 f the king. " Vassal pleaded to the information the statute 
 e tallagio non concedendo. The Court of Exchequer over- 
 uled his plea, and would not hear his counsel. Chambers 
 ued out a replevin to recover possession of his goods, on 
 le ground that a seizure for tonnage and poundage, with- 
 ut grant of Parliament, was against law ; but the writ 
 
 as superseded by the Court of Exchequer." 
 
 t See History from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 110. 
 
 * See Parliamentary Hist., vol. viii., p. 245, 246. The 
 rocoedings of this session are but imperfectly reported in 
 .ushworth's Collections.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 31 
 
 thirdly, the right and privilege of the House. 
 Let the committee consider the two former, 
 but, for the violation of the liberties of this 
 House, let us not do less than our forefathers. 
 Was ever the information of a member com- 
 mitted to a committee 1 Let us send for the par- 
 ties. Is there not here a flat denial of the res- 
 titution of the goods 1 Was it not also said 
 that if all the Parliament were contained in him, 
 they would do as they did 1 Let them be sent 
 for."* The Sheriff of London, Acton, who 
 seized the goods, was in consequence sent for, 
 appeared at the bar on his knees, and was or- 
 dered to the Tower. The officers of the cus- 
 toms were, at the same time, punished.! 
 
 The fiery decision of Eliot had its usual ef- 
 fect upon the court. The king sent a message 
 to the House to desire them to forbear all far- 
 ther proceedings until he should have address- 
 ed both houses next day at Whitehall as he 
 purposed. His speech was an entreaty that 
 they should not be jealous of him, and an en- 
 deavour to impose upon them a self-evident ab- 
 surdity that he took tonnage and poundage as 
 a " gift of the people," but as a gift, forsooth, 
 for his life, according to the custom of his pred- 
 ecessors, which he desired them, therefore, to 
 imbody in a bill, since they had no discretion 
 to withhold it.J This speech was not noticed 
 by the Commons. 
 
 The 27th of January, the day fixed for the 
 call of the House on Eliot's motion, arrived. 
 The House was in debate on religious griev- 
 ances. I have already alluded to the encour- 
 agement given to Arminianism by the court, 
 and to the justifiable alarm it had been viewed 
 with by the popular party. Sir John Eliot's 
 present purpose was to break the power of 
 Laud, and to- this full house he now presented 
 himself in all the confidence of an eloquence 
 which worked its greatest influence on minds 
 of the greatest order, which could sway them 
 at will to high excitement or wrap them in 
 deepest admiration. The reader will perceive 
 with what a sober dignity the opening passages 
 of this speech are conceived. 
 
 " Sir," he began, taking advantage of a rest 
 in the debate which had been caused by Mr. 
 Coriton, " I have always observed, in the pro- 
 ceedings of this House, our best advantage is 
 in order ; and I was glad when that noble gen- 
 tleman, my countryman, gave occasion to stay 
 our proceedings, for I feared they would have 
 carried us into a sea of confusion and disor- 
 der. And now, having occasion to present my 
 thoughts to you in this great and weighty bu- 
 siness of religion, I shall be bold to give a short 
 expression of my own affection, and in that or- 
 der that, I hope, will conduce best to the ef- 
 fecting of that work, and direct our labour to 
 an end. To enter, sir, into a particular disqui- 
 sition of the writings and opinions of divines, 
 I fear it would involve us in a labyrinth that 
 we shall hardly get out of, and, perchance, hin- 
 der that way, and darken that path, in which 
 we must tread. Before we know, however, 
 what other men have declared, it is necessary 
 that we should presently ourselves lay down 
 what is truth. I presume we came not hither 
 to dispute of religion. Far be it from the 
 
 * Parl. Hist., rol. viii., p. 255. t Ibid., p. 287. 
 
 t Ibid., p-. 256. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 644. 
 
 thoughts of that Church that hath so long time 
 confessed it now to dispute it. Shall posteri- 
 ty think we have enjoyed our religion fourscore 
 years almost, and are we now doubtful of the 
 defence 1 God forbid. It may be, however, 
 sir, and out of some things lately delivered I 
 have not unnecessarily collected, that there is 
 a jealousy conceived, as if we meant so to deal 
 with matters of faith that did not perhaps be- 
 long unto us, as to dispute of matters of faith. 
 It is our profession. They are not to be dis- 
 puted. Neither will that truth be receded from, 
 this long time held. Nor is that truth decayed. 
 It is confirmed by Parliament, because it was 
 truth. And this, sir, before I come to deliver 
 myself more particularly, give me leave, that 
 have not yet spoken in this great cause, to give 
 some apprehension I have of fear, for it is not 
 in the Parliament to make a new religion, nei- 
 ther, I hope, shall it be in any to alter the body 
 of that truth which we now profess." 
 
 Eliot now alluded to the declaration which I 
 have already described as published in the king's 
 name, but which had issued from the hand of 
 Laud. " I must confess, sir, among all those 
 fears we have contracted, there ariseth to me 
 not one of the least dangers in the declaration, 
 which is made and published in his majesty's 
 name ; and yet, sir, this conclusion exclusive- 
 ly let me state, that I may not be mistaken 
 whatever in this, or other things shall appear 
 to make mention of his majesty, we have not 
 the least suspicion of jealousy of him. I hope 
 it is by those ministers about him which not 
 only he, but all princes, are subject to." The 
 speaker then adduced various precedents which 
 covertly aimed at Laud. " As it was in that," 
 he continued, " so it may be in this. I speak 
 to this end to draw it to this conclusion, that 
 if there be anything that carrieth the title of 
 his majesty, it may be the fault of his minis- 
 ters. Far be it from me to have suspicion of 
 him. And now to that particular, in that dec- 
 laration, wherein, I confess, with me, is an ap- 
 prehension of more fear than I have of all the 
 rest, for in the last particulars we heard what 
 is said of popery and Arminianism. It is true 
 our faith and religion have before been in dan- 
 ger ; but it was by degrees. Here, sir, like an 
 inundation, it doth break in at once. We are 
 in danger at once to be ruined and overwhelm- 
 ed ; for, I beseech you mark, the ground of 
 our religion is contained in these articles. If 
 there be any difference of opinions concerning 
 the sense and interpretation of them, the bish- 
 ops and clergy in convocation have a power ad- 
 mitted to them here to do anything which shall 
 concern the continuance and maintenance of 
 the truth professed ; which truth being con- 
 tained in these articles, and these articles be- 
 ing different in the sense, if there be any dis- 
 pute about that, it will be in them to order which 
 way they please ; and, for aught I know, pope- 
 ry and Arminianism may be a sense introduced 
 by them, and then it must be received. Is this 
 a slight thing, that the power of religion, must 
 be drawn to the persons of those menl I 
 honour their profession and honour their per- 
 sons ; but, give me leave to say, the truth we 
 profess is not men's, but God's ; and God for- 
 bid that men should be made to judge of that 
 truth!"
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 This passage wrought upon the House ; and 
 Eliot, throwing out a sarcasm with his usual 
 skill and effect, thus continued : " I remember 
 a character I have seen in a diary of Edward 
 VI., that young prince of famous memory, 
 wherein he doth express the condition of the 
 bishops and clergy in his time, and saith, under 
 his own handwriting, ' that some for sloth, 
 some for ignorance, some for luxury, and some 
 for popery, are unfit for discipline and govern- 
 ment.' Sir, I hope it is not so with us ! nay, 
 give me leave to vindicate the honour of those 
 men that openly show their hearts to the truth. 
 There are among our bishops such as are fit 
 to be made examples to all ages, who shine in 
 virtue like those two faithful witnesses in heav- 
 en, of whom we may use that eulogy which 
 Seneca did of Caius, that to their memories 
 and merits, ' Nee hoc quidem obstet quod nos- 
 tris temporibus nati sint ;' and to whose mem- 
 ory and merit I may use the saying, that the 
 others' faults are no prejudice to their virtues ; 
 who are so industrious in their works, that I 
 hope posterity shall know there are men that 
 are firm for the truth. But, sir, that all now 
 are not so free, sound, and orthodox in religion 
 as they should be, witness the men complained 
 of and you know what power they have. 
 Witness those men nominated lately Mr. 
 Montague, for instance. I reverence the or- 
 der ; I honour not the man. Others may be 
 named as bad. I apprehend such fear that, 
 should it be in their power, we may be in dan- 
 ger to have our whole religion overthrown. 
 
 " But," Eliot exclaimed, as he saw the ex- 
 citement rising in the House, " I give this for 
 testimony, and thus far do express myself 
 against all the power and opposition of these 
 men ! Whensoever any opposition shall be, I 
 trust we shall maintain the religion we profess, 
 for in that we have been born and bred nay, 
 sir, if cause be, in that I hope to die ! Some 
 of these, sir, you know, are masters of ceremo- 
 nies, and they labour to introduce new ceremo- 
 nies in the church. Some ceremonies are use- 
 ful ! Give me leave to join in one that I hold 
 necessary and commendable, that at the repe- 
 tition of the creed we should stand up to testi- 
 fy the resolution of our hearts, that we would 
 defend that religion we profess. In some 
 churches it is added, that they did not only stand 
 upright with their bodies, but with their swords 
 drawn! and if cause were, I hope, to defend 
 our prince, country, and religion, we should 
 draw our swords against all opposers !"* 
 
 This speech, it has been remarked, was a 
 light that fell into a well-laid train. Its result 
 was a " vow," made on the journals, that " the 
 Commons of England claimed, professed, and 
 avowed for truth that sense of the articles of 
 religion which were established in Parliament 
 in the 13th year of Queen Elizabeth, which, by 
 the public acts of the Church of England, and 
 by the general and current exposition of the 
 writers of that Church, had been declared unto 
 them ; and that they rejected the sense of the 
 Jesuits, Arminians, and of all others, wherein 
 they differed from it."t Eliot did not fail to 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 268. 
 
 t Rush-worth, vol. i., p. 649; Journals, Jan. 29. The 
 13th of Elizabeth was selected, because the Legislature had 
 then ordered the clergy to subscribe the articles, and to 
 read them in the churches, yet neither the English nor the 
 
 follow up this advantage. Some days after- 
 ward he fastened upon Laud by name. " In 
 this Laud," he exclaimed, " is contracted all 
 the danger that we fear ! and I doubt not but 
 that his majesty, being informed thereof, will 
 leave him to the justice of this House."* His 
 majesty, meanwhile, was sending message af- 
 ter message to hasten the tonnage and pound- 
 age bill, every one of which, with admirable 
 skill, was foiled by Eliot and his friends, t In. 
 vain the king continued his messages. Those 
 were commands, they replied, and commands 
 were inconsistent with their privileges. " The 
 heart-blood of the commonwealth," added Eli- 
 ot, " receiveth life from the privileges of this 
 House."J 
 
 The question of religion surrendered to a 
 sub-committee the popular leaders had enga- 
 ged themselves in a conclusion of the inquiry 
 into the seizure of merchants' goods, with a 
 view to the prevention of such future wrongs, 
 by the infliction of some stringent punishment 
 on the delinquents concerned in the present. 
 The chancellor of the duchy threatened the 
 displeasure of the king, and a close to the Par- 
 liament. Eliot, cutting short his threat, quiet- 
 ly observed, " The question, sir, is, whether 
 we shall first go to the restitution, or to the 
 point of delinquency. Some now raise up dif- 
 ficulties in opposition to the point of delin- 
 quency, and talk of breach of parliaments. 
 And other fears I met with, both in this and 
 elsewhere. Take heed you fall not on a rock. 
 I am confident to avoid this would be some- 
 what difficult, were it not for the goodness 
 and justice of the king. But let us do that 
 which is just, and his goodness will be so clear 
 that we need not mistrust. Let those terrors 
 that are threatened us light on them that make 
 them. Why should we fear the justice of a 
 king when we do that which is just 1 Let there 
 be no more memory or fear of breaches ; and 
 let us now go to the delinquency of those men. 
 That is the only way to procure satisfaction."^ 
 Upon this the king sent word that he was the 
 delinquent, for that what the accused did " was 
 by his own direct orders and command."il This 
 brought matters to a crisis, and the House ad- 
 journed itself for two days. 
 
 On the 25th of February, when they reas- 
 sembled, the committee of religion had con- 
 cluded its report, and a long list of formidable 
 charges, levelled against Laud, was agreed to 
 be presented to the king. The question of the 
 king's offence against the privileges of the 
 House, in the seizure he had avowed, was thus 
 judiciously avoided, yet an opportunity given 
 to Charles, by some redemption of the recently 
 violated liberties, of receiving from the patriot 
 leaders, without betrayal of their trust, a pow- 
 er of raising new subsidies. The king showed 
 his appreciation of this conduct by sending an 
 instant command to both Houses to adjourn to 
 Monday, the 2d of March. f 
 
 Latin edition of that year contained the clause respecting 
 the authority of the ministers of the church. 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 284. 
 
 t Evidences of this will be found throughout the debates. 
 On one occasion, poor old Secretary Cooke fell under a 
 sharp rebuke from Eliot, and narrowly escaped a heavier 
 censure. Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 278. 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 311. 
 
 (} Ibid., vol. viii., p. 317. || Ibid., vol. viii., p. 31&. 
 
 T Ibid., vol. viii., p. 326. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 660.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 33 
 
 Eliot now saw what was intended, and pre 
 pared for it with a fearless composure. H 
 drew up a remonstrance concerning tonnag 
 and poundage. In this able document, nothin L 
 that is essential to a just opinion of the con 
 duct of the Commons respecting the bill tha 
 had been proposed is omitted. The delay i 
 shown to have been necessary, and the purpo 
 ses of the leaders of the House are nobly vindi 
 cated. It concludes with a solemn statement 
 that " the Commons had so framed a grant of 
 subsidy of tonnage and poundage to your maj 
 esty, that you might have been the better en 
 abled for the defence of your realm, and you 
 subjects, by being secured from all undue char 
 ges, be the more encouraged cheerfully to pro 
 ceed in their course of trade ; but, not being 
 now 'able to accomplish this their desire, there 
 is no course left unto them, without manifes 
 breach of their duty both to your majesty am 
 their country, save only to make this humble 
 declaration, that the receiving of tonnage anc 
 poundage, and other impositions not grantee 
 by Parliament, is a breach of the fundamenta 
 liberties of this kingdom, and of your majesty's 
 royal answer to the petition of rights."* Eljot 
 at the same time, drew up three articles of 
 protestation, which ran thus : " 1. Whoever 
 shall bring in innovation in religion, or by fa- 
 vour seek to extend or introduce popery or 
 Arminianism, or other opinions disagreeing 
 from the true and orthodox Church, shall be 
 reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and 
 commonwealth. 2. Whosoever shall counsel 
 or advise the taking and levying of the subsi- 
 dies of tonnage and poundage, not being grant- 
 ed by Parliament, or shall be an actor or in- 
 strument therein, shall be likewise reputed an 
 innovator in the government, and a capital en- 
 emy to this kingdom and commonwealth. 3. 
 If any merchant, or other person whatsoever, 
 shall voluntarily yield or pay the said subsidies 
 of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by 
 Parliament, he shall likewise be reputed a be- 
 trayer of the liberty of England, and an enemy 
 to the same."t 
 
 With these documents Sir John Eliot entered 
 the House of Commons on the morning of the 
 2d of March, 1629, for the last time. 
 
 He waited only till prayers had been said, 
 and then arose. For the last time, on that fatal 
 day, this great statesman struck, with daring 
 eloquence, at a profligate courtier and a dis- 
 honest churchman. "Buckingham is dead," 
 he said, " but he lives in the Bishop of Winches- 
 ter and my Lord-treasurer Weston !" (Wes- 
 ton, it was understood, had been a party to the 
 disastrous advice by which Eliot had anticipa- 
 ted too surely they were now about to be dis- 
 solved.) " In the person of the lord treasurer," 
 the orator continued, amid the interruptions of 
 some and the enthusiastic cheering of others, 
 " in his person all evil is contracted, for the in- 
 novation of religion, and for the invasion of our 
 liberties. He is the great enemy of the com- 
 monwealth. I have traced him in all his ac- 
 tions, and I find him building on those grounds 
 laid by his master, the great duke. He se- 
 cretly is moving for this interruption. From 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 327 ; and see the information 
 
 afterward exhibited in the Star Chamber. Rushworth, 
 
 ol. i., p. 665, 666. t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 660 and 666. 
 
 fear, these men go about to break parliaments, 
 lest parliaments should break them." Eliot 
 concluded, as if by a forecast of the future, 
 with these memorable words : " I protest, as I 
 am a gentleman, if my fortune be ever again to 
 meet in this honourable assembly, where I now 
 leave, I will begin again .'"* Advancing to the 
 speaker, Sir John Eliot then produced his re- 
 monstrance, and desired that he would read it. 
 The speaker refused. He presented it to the 
 clerk at the table. The clerk also refused. 
 With fearless determination Eliot now read the 
 remonstrance himself, and demanded of the 
 speaker, as a right, that he should put it to 
 the vote. Again the speaker refused. " He 
 was commanded otherwise by the king." A 
 severe reprimand followed from Selden, and 
 the speaker rose to quit the chair. Denzil 
 Hollis and Valentine dragged him back. Sir 
 Thomas Edmonds, and other privy councillors, 
 made an attempt to rescue him, but " with a 
 strong hand'' he was held down in the chair, 
 and Hollis swore he should sit still till it pleas- 
 ed them to rise. The House was now in open 
 and violent disorder. The speaker weepingly 
 implored them to let him go ; and Sir Peter 
 Hay man in reply renounced him for his kins- 
 man as the disgrace of his country, the blot 
 of a noble family, and a man whom posterity 
 would remember with scorn and disdain. Every 
 moment increased the disorder, till at last it 
 threatened the most serious consequences. 
 Some members involuntarily placed their hands 
 upon their swords. Above the throng was 
 again heard the voice of the steady and un- 
 daunted Eliot. " I shall then express by my 
 ;ongue what that paper should have done !" 
 ie flung it down upon the floor, and placed the 
 protestations I have described into the hands 
 of Hollis. " It shall be declared by us," he ex- 
 claimed, " that all that we suffer is the effect of 
 new counsels, to the ruin of the government of 
 he state. Let us make a protestation against 
 hose men, whether greater or subordinate, 
 hat may hereafter persuade the king to take 
 onnage and poundage without grant of Parlia- 
 nent. We declare them capital enemies to the 
 ting and the kingdom ! If any merchants shall 
 willingly pay those duties, without consent of 
 Parliament, they are declared accessories to 
 he rest !" Hollis instantly read Eliot's paper, 
 iut it to the House in the character of speaker, 
 and was answered by tremendous acclama- 
 ions. During this, the king had sent the ser- 
 geant to bring away the mace, but he could not 
 obtain admission ; and the usher of the black 
 od had followed, with the same ill success, 
 n an extremity of rage, Charles then sent for 
 he captain of his guard to force an entrance. 
 Jut a later and yet more disastrous day was 
 eserved for that outrage ; for, meanwhile, El- 
 ot's resolutions having been passed, the doors 
 were thrown open, and the members rushed 
 )ut in a body, carrying a king's officer that 
 ivas standing at the entrance " away before 
 hem in the crowd. "t Such was the scene of 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. vtii., p. 326. 
 
 t I state this on the authority of a MS. letter in the Sloane 
 ollection (4178). The writeradds, " It is said that a Welsh 
 age, hearing a great noise in the House, cried out, ' I pray 
 ou let hur iii : let hur in ! to give hur master his sword, 
 or they are all a fighting.' " Letter to Paul ITEwes, datet 
 larch 5, 1628.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Monday, the 3d of March, 1629, "the most I 
 gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that ' 
 had happened for 500 years."* 
 
 The king instantly went down to the House 
 of Lords, called the leaders of the Commons 
 " vipers" who should have their rewards, and 
 dissolved the Parliament.! 
 
 Two days afterward, Sir John Eliot received 
 a summons to appear before the council table. 
 This memorable scene closed his public life, 
 and closed it worthily. He was asked "wheth- 
 er he had not spoken such and such words in 
 the Lower House of Parliament, and showed 
 unto the said House such and such a paper 1" 
 Keenly and resolvedly he answered, " that 
 whatsoever was said or done by him in that 
 place, and at that time, was performed by him 
 as a public man and a member of that House ; 
 and that he was,, and alway^s will be, ready to 
 give an account of his sayings and doings in 
 that place, whensoever he should be called unto 
 it by that House, where, as he taketh it, it is 
 only to be questioned ; and, in the mean time, 
 being now but a private man, he would not 
 trouble himself to remember what he had ei- 
 ther spoken or done in that place as a public 
 man." He was instantly committed ; his study 
 was entered by the king's warrant, and his pa- 
 pers seized, t 
 
 Much time elapsed before his case was final- 
 ly adjudged. I will present, however, in as 
 few words as possible, the course of the pro- 
 ceedings that were taken. I am able to illus- 
 trate it by the help of letters of the time. 
 
 Eliot sued for his habeas corpus. An an- 
 swer was returned in the shape of a general 
 warrant, under the king's sign manual. The 
 insufficiency of this return was so clearly shown 
 by Eliot's counsel in the course of the argu- 
 ment, that the judges, " timid and servile, yet 
 desirous to keep some measures with their 
 own consciences, or looking forward to the 
 wrath of future parliaments," wrote what 
 Whitelocke calls a " humble and stout letter"^ 
 to the king, stating that they were bound to 
 
 * MS. diary of Sir Symonds D'Ewes. For the various 
 accounts of this remarkable scene, from which I have drawn 
 the above description, see Rushworth, voL i., p. 660; Parl. 
 Hist., vol. viii., p. 326-333. See, also, the information lodg- 
 ed against Eliot in the Star Chamber (Rushworth, i., p. 
 665), and the proceedings on the subsequent information in 
 the King's Bench ; State Trials, vol. iii., or Rushworth, 
 vol. i., p. 679-691. The examinations before the council 
 table (Parl. Hist., vol. viii., .p. 355) will be found highly in- 
 teresting. Sir Miles Hobart said, " He would not stick to 
 confess that it was he that shut the door that day ; and when 
 he had locked the door, put the key in his pocket [and he 
 did it because the House demanded it]." Denzil Hollis, 
 finding " his majesty was now offended with him, humbly 
 desired that he might rather be the subject of his mercy 
 than of his power." To which the lord treasurer answer- 
 ed, " You mean rather of his majesty's mercy than of his 
 justice. " Mr. Hollis replied, " I say of his majesty's power, 
 my lord." 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 533; and see Whitelocke's 
 Memorials, p. 13. " I must needs say," observed the king, 
 " that they do mistake me wonderfully that think I lay the 
 fault equally upon all the Lower House ; for, as I know there 
 are many as dutiful and loyal subjects as any are in the 
 world, so I know that it was only some vipers among- them 
 that had cast this mist of difference before their eyes." 
 
 J Rushworth, vol. i., p. 661. The same was done with 
 the studies of Selden and Hollis. 
 
 $ Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 14. The conduct of the 
 udges was execrable ; and notwithstanding the efforts of 
 tVhitelocke to exculpate his father, Judge Whitelocke (in 
 tvhich he succeeded with the Long Parliament), it is impos- 
 lible to discern a material difference between him and the 
 
 bail Eliot, but requesting that he would send 
 his directions to do so. This letter was not at- 
 tended to ; the judges in consequence deferred 
 the time for judgment, and Eliot was continued 
 in custody. When the day at last arrived that 
 judgment could no longer be deferred, the body 
 of Eliot was not forthcoming. In vain his 
 counsel called for judgment ; the judges, in 
 the absence of the prisoner, declined. Eliot 
 had been removed by the king's warrant, the 
 evening before the meeting of the court, from 
 the custody of the keeper to whom his writ 
 had been addressed ! Some days after, how- 
 ever, Charles consented that he should be 
 brought up for admission to bail, on condition 
 that he presented a petition declaring he was 
 sorry he had offended. The condition was 
 spurned at once. The offer was repeated by 
 the judges, but Eliot " would do nothing, but 
 resolutely move for his habeas corpus. Where- 
 at one of the judges said, ' Comes he to outface 
 the court ?' " and the severity of his imprison- 
 ment was ordered to be increased.* Some 
 months passed away, and the question still re- 
 mained unsettled. Charles then offered Eliot 
 his privilege of bail if he would give sureties 
 for good behaviour. Eliot at once declared in 
 answer that he would never admit the possi- 
 bility of offending the law by liberty of speech 
 in Parliament. The judges are described upon 
 this to have suggested to him the possibility of 
 his remaining in prison even seven years long- 
 er.t He answered that he was quite prepared ; 
 his body would serve to fill up the breach that 
 was made in the public liberties as well as any 
 other. The king now showed himself equally 
 resolute ; and, refusing an enormous sum that 
 had been offered for his bail,t ordered the at- 
 torney-general to drop the proceedings in the 
 Star Chambet, and to exhibit an information 
 against him in the King's Bench for words spo- 
 ken in Parliament. As member of a superior 
 court at the period of the alleged offence, he 
 pleaded to the jurisdiction, and thus brought in 
 issue the great question of the privilege of the 
 House of Commons the question, in point of 
 fact, upon which the character of " the English 
 Constitution" altogether depended. The battle 
 was fought bravely by his counsel, but vainly. 
 The court held that they had jurisdiction ; Eliot 
 refused to put in any other plea ; and judg- 
 ment was finally given that he " should be im- 
 prisoned during the king's pleasure, should not 
 be released without giving surety for good be- 
 haviour and making submission, and, as the 
 greatest offender and ringleader in Parliament, 
 should be find in 2000."$ 
 
 This iniquitous judgment found Eliot cheer- 
 fully prepared. He immediately sent to the 
 
 * Sloane MSS., 4178. Various striking accounts of the 
 proceedings, as they affected all the prisoners, will be found 
 in this volume one of those transcribed by Dr. Birch es- 
 pecially under dates June 10, June 25, June 28, and October 
 15, 1629. See, also, p. 92 of the same volume. 
 
 t Letter, dated 15th of October. 
 
 J It is said by Mr. D'Israeli, on a private authority, that 
 10,000 had been offered. This was vast indeed. Mr. 
 D'Israeli doubts, however (Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 281), 
 whether any bail could be tendered, since Eliot was con- 
 demned to be imprisoned at the king's pleasure. Mr. 
 D'Israeli forgets that the bail was tendered during the pro- 
 ceedings, and not at their close. 
 
 i> The arguments will be found in the State Trials, vol. 
 iii. : and in Rushworth, vol. i., p. 679-691. The judgment 
 was reversed by the Long Parliament.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 35 
 
 lieutenant of the Tower " to provide him a 
 convenient lodging, that he might send his up- 
 holsterer to trim it up." On being told of the 
 fine, he smiled, and said, "that he had two 
 cloaks, two suits, two pairs of boots and galash- 
 es, and if they could pick 2000 out of that, 
 much good might it do them." (I have already 
 mentioned the course he had taken to provide 
 for the worldly welfare of his sons. His ex- 
 tensive estates were at present held by rela- 
 tives in trust for their use.*) "When I was 
 first committed close prisoner to the Tower," 
 he added, " a commission was directed to the 
 high sheriff of Cornwall, and five other com- 
 missioners, my capital enemies, to inquire into 
 my lands and goods, and to seize upon them 
 for the king ; but they returned a nihil."t I 
 could multiply the evidences of his easy, and 
 even gay, humour at this moment. He is de- 
 scribed, for instance, to have " laughed heartily" 
 at receiving a message from the judges com- 
 plaining of the " misbehaviour of his page and 
 servant, who, with others, had been tossing 
 dogs and cats in a blanket, in the open street 
 of Southwark, near the King's Bench prison, 
 saying, 'We are judges of these creatures, 
 and why should not we take our pleasure upon 
 them as well as other judges upon our mas- 
 ter 1' " After some short delays, he was con- 
 ducted to the Tower, where he had twice be- 
 fore undergone imprisonment, and from which 
 he never stirred again. A man named Dud- 
 son, the under-marshal of the King's Bench, 
 who guarded him there, appears to have con- 
 sidered his person the peculiar property of a 
 dungeon. "Mr. Lieutenant," he said, on de- 
 livering Eliot, " I have brought you this wor- 
 thy knight, whom I borrowed of you some few 
 months ago, and now do repay him again.":): 
 
 A " convenient lodging" had not been pre- 
 pared. The only accommodation that could be 
 had was " a darke and smoaky room." But he 
 was not denied the use of books, and writing 
 materials were, upon his earnest solicitation, 
 granted to him. Some of the letters written 
 at this period from his dungeon have, fortunate- 
 ly, been preserved. $ A great philosophical 
 
 * Boscawen was one of the trustees. A letter to him, 
 written by Eliot during his imprisonment, is preserved 
 among the Eliot MSS. (fol. 56), and sets this beyond a 
 doubt. " Having a great confidence in your worth, as I find 
 you to have been selected by my father-in-law, I have pre- 
 sumed also for myself to name you in a trust for the man- 
 agement of that poor fortune which, through the disturb- 
 ances of these times, I may not call mv own. Your trouble 
 will only be for the sealing of some leases, now and then, 
 upon compositions of my tenants ; for which, as there is oc- 
 casion, I have appointed this bearer, my servant, Maurice 
 Hill, to attend you, to whom your despatch in that behalf 
 shall be a full satisfaction of the trust." Sir John continu- 
 ed, nevertheless, as this extract intimates, to manage his 
 pecuniary affairs himself as long as he was able, and in the 
 early part of his imprisonment he arranged with his own 
 hand many of his tenants' leases. He was liberal in acts of 
 kindness, and strict in matters of justice. He grants his 
 eldest son 200 a year for the expenses of travelling abroad, 
 a very large allowance ; and writes back his opinion on a 
 request from one of his tenants to have a wall rebuilt, to 
 which he (Sir John) was not liable, "There would be more 
 charity than wisdom in this." Maurice Hill was an inval- 
 uable servant to Sir John in these extremities, and deserv- 
 ed the kindness with which the latter often subscribes him- 
 self " your loving master." Mr. D'Israeli has given these 
 interesting circumstances from Lord Eliot's admirable com- 
 munication. See Commentaries, vol . iv., p. 507, et seq. 
 
 t I have derived the above from a letter in the Sloane 
 collection. Mead to Stuteville, dated Feb. 27, 1629-30. 
 
 t Mead to Stuteville, March 13, 1629-30. 
 
 $ Among the Eliot family papers. 
 
 work, on which he employed himself, has also 
 come down to us.* They present Sir John 
 Eliot, in this last scene of all, not simply un- 
 shrinking in fortitude, true to himself, magnan- 
 imous, and patient. All this he was ; but some- 
 thing yet greater than this. It would seem 
 certain that, soon after his imprisonment, a 
 secret feeling possessed him that his active 
 life had closed. He did not acknowledge it to 
 himself distinctly, but it is not the less appa- 
 rent. Daily, under his confinement, his body 
 was sinking. Daily, as his body sank, his soul 
 asserted independent objects and uses. " Not 
 alone," says the poet, whose genius has just 
 risen among us,t 
 
 " Not alone when life flows still do truth 
 And power emerge, but also when strange chance 
 Affects its current ; in unused conjuncture 
 Where sickness breaks the body hunger, watching, 
 Excess, or langour oftenest death's approach 
 Peril, deep joy, or wo." 
 
 And now, as death approached Eliot for, from 
 the first month of his present imprisonment, 
 it approached with the steadiest and surest 
 step a new world revealed itself, to be res- 
 cued and regenerated by his virtue ; a new 
 tyranny to conquer, which needed not the phys- 
 ical aid that had deserted him in his struggle 
 with the old ; a new government to establish 
 which was within the control and accomplish- 
 ment of all "the monarchy of man." He 
 resolved to occupy the hours of his imprison- 
 ment with a work that should have for its ob- 
 ject the establishment of the independence of 
 man's mind ; of its power over the passions 
 and weaknesses of humanity, of its means of 
 wresting these to the purposes of its own gov- 
 ernment the illustration of the greatest good 
 that could be achieved on earth, man's monar- 
 chy over himself, a perfect and steady self-con- 
 trol. Such a plan, while it embraced the lofty 
 thoughts that now sought freedom from his 
 over-informed and sinking body, would enable 
 him also to vindicate the course he had pur- 
 sued in his day of strength and vigour, and, in 
 leaving to his countrymen, finally, an unyielded 
 purpose, an unquailing endurance, a still un- 
 mitigated hatred of oppression, would teacli 
 them, at the same time, that these great quali- 
 ties had victories of their own to achieve, in 
 which no worldly power could foil them ; and 
 that, supposing the public- struggles of the time 
 attended with disastrous issue, it was not for 
 man, with his inherent independence, to admit 
 the possibility of despair. If greater virtue, 
 and beauty, and general perfectness of charac- 
 ter have, at any time, in any age or country 
 been illustrated, I have yet to learn when and 
 by whom. 
 
 These thoughts and purposes of Eliot soon 
 broke upon his friends. Hampden was watch- 
 ing his imprisonment with the most anxious 
 solicitude. It is one proof of the virtuous 
 character of this great man having already 
 dawned, that Eliot had intrusted to him the 
 care of his two sons. Soon after the com- 
 mencement of his imprisonment, Hampden, 
 who discharged this duty with affectionate 
 
 * It may be seen in the Harleian collection, No. 2228. 
 
 t The author of Paracelsus, Mr. Robert Browning. There 
 would be little danger in predicting that this writer will 
 soon be acknowledged as a first-rate poet. He has already 
 proved himself one.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 zeal, received from Eliot a long letter of ad- 
 vice and counsel for them, which sufficiently 
 indicated the studies that already engaged him- 
 self. The opening of it shows the last linger- 
 ing of the struggle which was soon to settle to 
 a perfect composure.* "Sonns," he begins, 
 " if my desires had been valuable for one hour, 
 I had long since written to you ; which, in lit- 
 tle, does deliver a large character of my for- 
 tune, that in nothing has allowed me to be 
 master of myself. I have formerly been pre- 
 vented by employment, which was so tyranni- 
 cal on my time, as all minutes were anticipa- 
 ted ; now my leisure contradicts me, and is soe 
 violent on the contrary, soe great an enemy to 
 all action, as it makes itself unuseful ; both 
 leisure and business have opposed me either in 
 time or libertie, that I have had no means of 
 expression but my praiers, in which I have 
 never failed to make God the witness of my 
 love, whose blessings I doubt not will deduce 
 it in some evidence to you. And now having 
 gotten a little opportunity (though by stealth), 
 I cannot but give it some testimony from my- 
 self, and let you see my dearest expectation in 
 your good." He goes on to say with what de- 
 light he will always hear " of the progress of 
 your learning, of your aptness and diligence in 
 that, of your careful attendance in all exercises 
 of religion, and the instruction and improve- 
 ments of your minds, which are foundations 
 of a future building." Some of the philosophy 
 of his own life he then presents to them. " It 
 is a fine history, well studied the observation 
 of ourselves." He describes to them the many 
 evils he has endured, the continuity of his suf- 
 ferings, " of which there is yet no end. Should 
 those evils," he continues, " be complained 1 
 Should I make lamentation of these crosses 1 
 Should I conceave the worse of my condition 
 in the study of myself that my adversities op- 
 pose me 1 Noe ! I may not (and yet I will 
 not be so stoical as not to think them evils, I 
 will not do that prejudice to virtue by detrac- 
 tion of her adversaries). They are evils, for I 
 doe confess them, but of that nature and soe 
 followed, soe neighbouring upon good, as they 
 are noe cause of sorrow, but of joy ; seeing 
 whose enemies they make us enemies of for- 
 tune, enemies of the world, enemies of their 
 children ; and knowing for whom we suffer 
 for him that is their enemy, for him that can 
 command them whose agents only and instru- 
 ments they are to work his trials on us, which 
 may render us more perfect and acceptable to 
 himself. Should these enforce a sorrow, which 
 are the true touches of his favour, and riot af- 
 fect us rather with the higher apprehension of 
 our happiness 1 Among my many obligations 
 to my Creator, which prove the infinity of his 
 mercies, that like a full stream have been always 
 flowing on me, there is none concerning this 
 life, wherein I have found more pleasure or 
 advantage, than in these trialls and afflictions 
 (and I may not limitt it soe narrowly within 
 the confines of this life, which I hope shall ex- 
 tend much farther) the operations they have 
 had, the new effects they worke, the discover- 
 ies they make upon ourselves, upon others, 
 
 upon all." Nobly and beautifully he subjoins, 
 "This happiness in all my trials has never 
 parted from me. How great, then, is his favour 
 by whose means I have enjoyed it ! The days 
 have all seemed pleasant, nor nights have ever 
 been tedious, nor fears nor terrors have pos- 
 sest me, but a constant peace and tranquillity 
 of mind, whose agitation has been chiefly in 
 thanks and acknowledgments to him by whose 
 grace I have subsisted, and shall yet, I hope, 
 participate of his blessings upon you. I have 
 the more enlarged myself in this, that you 
 might have a right view of the condition which 
 I suffer, least from a bye relation, as through 
 a perspective not truly representing, some false 
 sence might be contracted. Neither could I 
 thinke that altogether unusefull for your knowl- 
 edge which may afford you both precept and 
 example. Consider it, weigh it duly, and when, 
 you find a signe or indication of some error, 
 make it an instruction how to avoid the like ; 
 if there appears but the resemblance of some 
 virtue, suppose it better, and make it a presi- 
 dent for yourselves ; when you meet the prints 
 and footsteps of the Almightie, magnify the 
 goodness of his providence and miracles that 
 makes such low descents ; consider that there 
 is a nature turns all sweetness into venom, 
 when from the bitterest hearbs the bee extracts 
 a honie. Industry and the habit of the soule 
 give the effect and operation upon all things, 
 and that to one seems barren and unpleasant 
 to another is made fruitfull and delightsome. 
 Even in this, by your application and endeav- 
 our, I am confident may be found both pleasure 
 and advantage. This comes only as a testi- 
 mony of my love (and soe you must accept it, 
 the time yielding noe other waie of demonstra- 
 tion), and by this expression know that I daily 
 praie for your happiness and felicity as the 
 chief subject of my wishes, and shall make my 
 continual supplication to the Lord, that from 
 the riches of his mercie he will give you such 
 influence of his graces as your blessing and 
 prosperitie may satisfy, and enlarge the hopes 
 and comforts of your most affectionate father." 
 This is the nature which turns venom into 
 sweetness. Hampden hastens to assure him 
 that the present conduct of his sons is all he 
 could desire. " If ever you live," he writes, 
 "to see a fruite answerable to the promise of 
 the present blossoms, it will be a blessing of 
 that weight as will turn the scale against all 
 worldly afflictions, and denominate your life 
 happy." His affection had spoken with too 
 generous a haste. The elder son, John Eliot, 
 who had been sent, by his father's desire, to 
 Oxford, fell into many irregularities, and great- 
 ly offended the superiors of his college.* This 
 was afterward only slightly intimated to his 
 father, but it cost him much pain. The young- 
 er boy, Richard Eliot, remained at Hampden's 
 seat, and pursued his studies under Hampden's 
 care. He appears to have interested his illus- 
 trious tutor extremely. Delicately, however 
 Hampden is obliged to intimate to his friend, at 
 last, that even Richard is somewhat remiss in his 
 studies. Eliot immediately writes to the boy. 
 He begins by a slight reproach for his not hav- 
 
 * All the extracts from tetters that follow, unless other- 
 wise specified, are from the Eliot family papers, already re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 * This youth afterward, as I have already noticed, "raa 
 off" with a ward in chancery. He hecame, ultimately, a 
 hanger-on in the court of Charles II. Evelyn mentions him.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 37 
 
 ing written to his father. " I had no little 
 doubt, after so long a silence, where you were, 
 or whether you were or no." He desires him 
 to forego the temptations of his young acquaint- 
 ance ; to forego, indeed, all society for the 
 present, " that esca malorum, as Cicero calls it," 
 and to retire wholly to himself. " Virtue," he 
 continues, " is more rigid than to be taken with 
 delights ; these vanities she leaves, for these 
 she scorns herself; her paths are arduous and 
 rough, but excellent, and pleasant to those who 
 once have past them. Honour is a concomi- 
 tant they have to entertain them in their jour- 
 ney, nay, it becomes their servant, and, what 
 is attended by all others, those who travel in 
 that way have it to wait on them. And this 
 effort of virtue has not, as in the vulgar accep- 
 tation, its dwelling on a hill ; it crowds not in 
 the multitude, but extra conspectum, as Seneca 
 says, beyond the common prospect." He illus- 
 trates this farther by some quotations from his 
 favourite Tacitus. That there was no pedan- 
 try in this habit is proved by such familiar re- 
 sort to it in an affectionate advice to his boy. 
 At this time, indeed, as I shall presently show, 
 he was living in the world of the illustrious 
 thinkers of old, and had entitled himself to it as 
 his own. He concludes his letter with the fol- 
 lowing eloquent and earnest remonstrance : 
 " How comes it that your tutor should com- 
 plain you are careless and remiss 1 It can- 
 not be, when there is true affection, there 
 should be indiligence and neglect ; when studie 
 is declined the desires are alienated from the 
 virtue ; for no ends are attained without the 
 means, and the neglect of that shows a diver- 
 sion from the other. If it be since my last, T 
 must resume my fears that, though your own 
 judgment did not guide you, my cautions should 
 be lost. If it should be hereafter, when that 
 advice, those reasons, and the commands and 
 authority of a father (a father most indulgent 
 to the happiness of his child), which I now give 
 you to redeem the time is spent, to redeem 
 the studies you have missed, and to redeem 
 yourself who are ingaged to danger, or that 
 hazard and adventure if these make no im- 
 pressions,, and these must be read in the char- 
 acters of your course, if they work not an al- 
 teration ; if they cause not a new diligency and 
 intention, an intention of yourself, and inten- 
 tion of the object, virtue ; an intention of the 
 means, your study, and an exact intention of 
 the time to improve it to that end ; I shall then 
 receive that wound, which I thank God no en- 
 emy could give me, sorrow and affliction of the 
 mind, and that from him from whom I hoped 
 the contrary. But I still hope, and the more 
 confidently for the promise which your letters 
 have assured me. Let it be bettered in per- 
 formance by your future care and diligence, 
 which shall be accompanied with the prayers 
 and blessings of your most loving father." 
 
 Ultimately, Eliot, having been much entreat- 
 ed to it by his son John, consents that he shall 
 go abroad, and writes to Hampden mentioning 
 this, adding his desire that, before the youth's 
 departure, he should endeavour to obtain his 
 " license," or degree, at Oxford. He forwards, 
 at the same time, a letter of advice and instruc- 
 tion respecting a course and object in travel. 
 He is particular in his directions as to the places 
 
 to be visited, in what order, and with what pur- 
 pose. He shows, in this, a lively knowledge 
 of the state of politics on the Continent. " Be 
 careful," he urges in conclusion, " in your re- 
 ligion, make your devotions frequent, seeke the 
 blessing from above, drawe your imitation to 
 goode patternes, lett not vaine pedantries de- 
 ceive you, prepare your estimation by your vir- 
 tue, which your own carriage and example 
 must acquire, wherein you have assistants in 
 the most earnest prayers and wishes of your 
 loving father." In the same communication to 
 Hampden, Eliot sends an expression of his 
 views respecting his younger son, Richard. He 
 considers that the best mode of employing with 
 a good purpose his quick and vivacious humour 
 will be to send him to the Netherlands, to learn 
 the art of war, in the company of Sir Horace 
 Vere. A passage from Hampden's reply on 
 these points, which is charmingly written, will 
 properly close this subject. " I ame so per- 
 fectly acquainted," he says, "with y cleare 
 insight into the dispositions of men, and abili- 
 ty to fitt them with courses suitable, that had 
 you bestowed sonnes of mine as you have done 
 y r owne, my judgmt durst hardly have called it 
 into question, especially when in laying downe 
 y r desigtie you have prevented the objections 
 to be made ag* it : for if Mr. Richard Eliot will, 
 in the intermissions of action, adde study to 
 practice, and adorne that lively spiritt with 
 flowers of contemplation, he'll raise our expec- 
 tations of another Sir Edward [Horace] Vere, 
 that had this character, all summer jn the field, 
 all winter in his study, in whose fall fame makes 
 this kingdome a great loser : and having taken 
 this resolution from counsaile with the Highest 
 Wisdom (as I doubt not but you have), I hope 
 and pray the same Power will crown it with a 
 blessing answerable to your wish." 
 
 It is a great privilege to be thus admitted to 
 the private thoughts and conduct of such men 
 as Eliot and Hampden. The secret of their 
 public exertions is here expressed. It is by the 
 strenth and right direction of the private affec- 
 tions that we are taught the duty of serving 
 mankind. The more intense the faculty of en- 
 joyment and comfort in the narrow circle of 
 family regards, the more readily is its indul- 
 gence sacrificed in behalf of the greater family 
 of man. The severity of Eliot in the House of 
 Commons is explained by the tender sweetness 
 of these letters from the Tower. 
 
 Without a hope of release, Eliot's impris- 
 onment continued. The whole county of 
 Cornwall, I learn from a manuscript letter, pe- 
 titioned the king for his freedom,* -but no an- 
 swer was deigned. Sustained by the genius 
 of Wentworth, Charles's tyranny was now 
 open and undisguised ; and, in a royal procla- 
 mation, he had forbidden even the name of Par- 
 liament to pass the lips of his people. t Eliot 
 
 * Mead to Stuteville, Sept. 26, 1629. MS. letter. Nor 
 was Eliot without the sympathy of men of learning, cor- 
 respondents of Sir Robert Cotton, in London, at the univer- 
 sities, and on the Continent. " I should gladly heare some 
 cheerful news of Sir John Eliot," writes the learned Richard 
 James. " Will the tide never turn? Then God send us 
 heaven at our last end !'' Nor is it to be supposed that any 
 possible exertion was wanting on the part of his friends. 
 Sir Bevill Grenville, in a letter to his wife, " his best friend, 
 the Lady Grace Grenville," speaks of Eliot as ' being re- 
 solved to have him out of his imprisonment." (Nugenfs 
 Memorials.) Every exertion failed. 
 
 t Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 3. lu this extraordinary docu-
 
 38 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 was not even suffered to remain quietly in his 
 wretched lodging. He was removed from place 
 to place, each one as " darke and smoakey" as 
 the first. " The lodging which I had upon my 
 first remove before Christmas," he writes to 
 Sir Oliver Luke, " being again altered, I may 
 saie of my lodgings in the Tower as Jacob for 
 his wages, 'Now, then, ten times have they 
 chaunged it ;' but, I thank God, not once has 
 it caused an alteration of my mind so infinite 
 is that mercie which has hitherto protected 
 mee, and I doubt not but I shall find it with 
 mee." He concludes by referring to some 
 " light papers" which seem to have engaged 
 him in the intervals of his greater work. " When 
 you have wearied your good thoughts with 
 those light papers that I sent you, return them 
 with the corrections of your judgment. I may 
 one day send you others of more worth, if it 
 please God to continue me this leisure and my 
 health ; but the best can be but broken and in 
 patches, from him that dares not hazard to 
 gather them. Such thinges, from me, falling 
 like the leaves in autumn soe variously and 
 uncertainly, that they hardly meet again ; but 
 with you I am confident what else my weak- 
 ness shall present will have a faire acceptance." 
 This allusion to his health was ominous. Sick- 
 ness had already begun to threaten him. 
 
 Some days after this, he writes to his kins- 
 man Knightly (whose son afterward married 
 one of Hampden's daughters) a description of 
 what he conceives to have been the commence- 
 ment of his disorder, the colds of his prison. 
 " For the present I am wholly at a stand, and 
 have been soe for this fortnight by a sicknesse 
 which it hath pleased my Master to impose, in 
 whose hands remain the issues of life and 
 death. It comes originally from my colds, 
 with which the cough having been long upon 
 me causes such ill effects to follow it, that the 
 symptoms are more dangerous than the grief; 
 it has weakened much both the appetite and 
 concoction, and the outward strength ; by that 
 some doubt there is of a consumption, but we 
 endeavour to prevent it by application of the 
 means, and, as the great physition, seek the 
 blessing from the Lord." Good humour and 
 easy quiet, however, did not desert him, though 
 his disease steadily advanced. A week after 
 the date of the foregoing, he writes to Hamp- 
 den : " Lately my business hath been much 
 with doctors, so that, but by them,, I have had 
 little trouble with myself. These three weeks 
 I have had a full leisure to do nothing, and 
 strictly tied unto it either by their direction or 
 my weakness. The cause originally was a 
 
 ment, the king took occasion also to attack Eliot. In refer- 
 ence, it may be supposed, to his commissioners of inquiry 
 into Eliot's property having had a " nihil" returned to them, 
 Charles observes, " Notwithstanding his majesty's late dec- 
 laration, for satisfying the minds and affections of his loving 
 subjects, some ill-disposed persons do spread false and per- 
 nicious rumours abroad ; as if the scandalous and seditious 
 proposition in the House of Commons, made by an outlawed 
 man, desperate in mind and fortune, tumultuously taken by 
 some few, after that by his majesty's royal authority he had 
 commanded their adjournment, had been the voice of the 
 whole House, whereas the contrary is the truth." The 
 words I have printed in italics are not in Rushworth, but 
 Rymer supplies them. (Foedera, xix., 62.) The infatua- 
 ted king continues, " This late abuse having for the present 
 driven his majesty unwillingly out of that course, he shall 
 account it presumption for any to prescribe any time to his 
 majesty for Parliaments ; the calling, continuing, and dis- 
 solving of them, being always in the king's own power." 
 
 cold, but the symptoms that did follow it spake 
 more sickness ; a gradual indisposition it begot 
 in all the faculties of the bodie. The learned 
 said a consumption did attend it ; but I thank 
 God I did not feel or credit it. What they ad- 
 vised as the ordinance that's appointed I was 
 content to use, and in the time I was a patient, 
 suffered whatever they imposed. Great is the 
 authority of princes, but greater much is their's 
 who both command our purses and our wills. 
 What the success of their government wills, 
 must be referred to him that is master of their 
 power. I find myself bettered, though not 
 well, which makes me the more readie to ob- 
 serve them. The Divine blessing must effec- 
 tuate their wit it is that medicine that has 
 hitherto protected me, and will continue me 
 among other affairs to remain your faithfull 
 friend." It is affecting to observe, even in his 
 manner of writing, a characteristic of the fatal 
 disorder that had seized him. 
 
 As his illness became more determined, the 
 severity of his imprisonment was increased. 
 Pory the letter writer, indeed, remarked, about 
 this time, " I heare Sir John Eliot is to remove 
 out of his darke smoakey lodging into a bet- 
 ter ;" but I can find no evidence of the remo- 
 val. On the contrary, shortly before his last 
 letter to Hampden, he had written to Bevil 
 Grenville (who then opposed the court, but af- 
 terward, with no suspicion of his virtue, died 
 fighting for the king at Landsdowne) a state- 
 ment of increased restraint. His friend had by 
 letter alluded to some rumours that were then 
 abroad,* and on the faith of which Pory seems 
 to have gossiped, as above, of his probable lib- 
 eration. " The restraint and watch uppon me," 
 Eliot answers, "barrs much of my intercourse 
 with my friends ; while their presence is de- 
 nied me, and letters are soe dangerous and 
 suspected, as it is little that way we exchange ; 
 soe as if circumstances shall condemn me, I 
 must stand guiltie in their judgments ; yet 
 yours (though with some difficultie I have re- 
 ceived, and manie times when it was knocking 
 at my door, because their convoy could not en- 
 ter they did retire again, wherein I must com- 
 mend the caution of your messenger, but at 
 length it found a safe passage by my servant) 
 made mee happie in your favour, for which this 
 comes as a retribution and acknowledgment. 
 For those rumours which you meet that are 
 but artificial, or by chance, it must be your 
 wisdom not to credit them. Manie such false 
 fires are flyinge dailie in the ear. When there 
 shall be occasion, expect that intelligence 
 from friends ; for which in the meene time you 
 do well to be provided ; though I shall crave 
 when that dispute falls, properlie and for rea- 
 sons not deniable, a change of your intention 
 in particulars as it concerns myselfe ; in the 
 rest I shall concur in all readiness to serve you, 
 and in all you shall command me who am no- 
 thing but as you represent." His concluding 
 
 * These rumours prevailed strongly at one time. They 
 arose out of whispers of a possibility of a Parliament ; and 
 I find it stated in a letter among the Harleian MSS., 7000, 
 dated Dec. 14, 1631-2, that " Sir John Eliot had lately been 
 courted and caressed in his prison by some great men who 
 are most, in danger to be called in question." If any such 
 overtures were made to him, it is certain that he continued 
 immoveable. Rapiu, indeed, says distinctly (vol. x., p. 263, 
 note), ' Sir John Eliot had been tampered -with, but was 
 found proof against all temptation."
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 39 
 
 words are affecting. " My humble service to 
 your ladie. and tell her that yet I doubt not to 
 kisse her hand. Make much of my godson." 
 
 Immediately after this, instead of any evi- 
 dence of better treatment, I have to furnish 
 proof of an accession of the most savage and 
 atrocious severity. Eliot hitherto had been 
 permitted, under certain restrictions, to receive 
 visits from his friends. This poor privilege 
 was now withdrawn, and it is well that this 
 is to be offered on the best authority, or I could 
 not have asked the reader to give credence to 
 it the comfort of a fire, necessary to life in a 
 damp prison, whose inmate already struggled 
 with a disorder brought on by cold, was. in the 
 depth of winter, wholly, or almost wholly, de- 
 nied to Eliot ! On the 26th of December, 1631, 
 he thus writes to Hampden : " That I write 
 not to you anything of intelligence, will be ex- 
 cused when I do let you know that I am under 
 a new restraint, by warrant from the king, for 
 a supposed abuse of liberty, in admitting a free 
 resort of visitants, and under that colour hold- 
 ing consultations with my friends. My lodg- 
 ings are removed, and I am now where candle- 
 light may be suffered, but scarce fire. I hope 
 you will think that this exchange of places 
 makes not a change of minds. The same pro- 
 tector is still with me, and the same confidence, 
 and these things can have end by him that 
 gives them being. None but my servants, hardly 
 my mn, may have admittance to me. My friends 
 I must desire, for their own sakes, to forbear 
 coming to the Tower. You among them are 
 chief, and have the first place in this intelli- 
 gence. I have now leisure," he continues, 
 with affecting resignation, " and shall dispose 
 myself to business ; therefore those loose pa- 
 pers which you had, I would cast out of the 
 way, being now returned again unto me. In 
 your next give me a word or two of note ; for 
 those translations you excepted at, you know 
 we are blind towards ourselves ; our friends 
 must be our glasses ; therefore in this I crave 
 (what in all things I desire) the reflection of 
 your judgment." 
 
 Thus, in the midst of his worst sufferings, 
 Eliot had the consolation and sustainment of 
 the philosophical work in which he had enga- 
 ged. His own study, as I have described, had 
 been plundered of its papers and sealed up by 
 the king ; but his friends supplied him with 
 books ; and in this office, as in every other 
 care and kindness, Hampden was most for- 
 ward.* Sir Robert Cotton's library would have 
 proved of inestimable value to Eliot at this 
 time, as some few years before it had served a 
 kindred spirit, t but the atrocious tyranny that 
 now prevailed had reached its learned owner. 
 Accused of having furnished precedents to Sel- 
 den and Eliot, Sir Robert Cotton's great libra- 
 ry was seized and held by the king ; and, una- 
 ble to survive its loss, the great scholar died.t 
 
 * I shall have a more proper opportunity (in the notice of 
 Hampden) of eliciting a number of delightful personal char- 
 acteristics from his present conduct to his friend. 
 
 t Sir Walter Raleigh. See an interesting letter in the 
 Biographia Britannica, vol. v., p. 3485. 
 
 t The following extract from Sir Symonds D'Ewes' diary 
 is deeply affecting : " When I went several times to visit 
 and comfort him [Sir Robert Cotton] in the year Ifi30, he 
 would tell me, ' thcv had broken his heart, that had lucked 
 lip his library from hjin.' I easily guessed the reason, be- 
 cause bis honour and ecteein were much impaired by this 
 
 I have spoken of a kindred spirit with that of 
 Eliot. It is impossible, in describing Eliot's la- 
 bours at this moment when, 
 
 Active still, and unrestrain'd, his mind 
 Explored the long extent of ages past, t 
 And with his prison hours enrich'd the world 
 
 not to recollect Sir Walter Raleigh. Kin- 
 dred they were, at least in magnanimity of 
 spirit and largeness of intellect. If it were 
 worth while, I could point out other resem- 
 blances. Their faces, in portraits I have seen, 
 were strongly like. They were both of old Dev- 
 onshire families ; both were new residents in 
 Cornwall ; and, through the Champernownes, 
 one of whom had given birth to Raleigh, their 
 families were in a degree related.* They 
 both died victims of the grossest tyranny, but 
 not till they had illustrated to the world exam- 
 ples of fearless endurance, and left, for the 
 world's instruction, the fruit of their prison 
 hours. In one particular here, or, rather, ac- 
 cident, the resemblance fails ; for Raleigh's in- 
 tention of benefit was fulfilled by the publica- 
 tion of his labours, while Eliot's have remain- 
 ed to the present day unpublished, disregarded, 
 almost unknown. I shall shortly endeavour to 
 remove from literature, at least, a portion of 
 this reproach ; and, in so doing, an opportunity 
 will be given to Eliot himself to complete this 
 allusion to Raleigh, by one of the finest trib- 
 utes that has yet been paid to that gallant and 
 heroic spirit. 
 
 The health of the imprisoned philosopher 
 sank day by day. His " attorney at law," how- 
 ever, told Pory that he was the same cheerful 
 and undaunted man as ever. His friends now 
 appear to have resolved to make a desperate 
 effort to save him. I quote from one of Pory's 
 manuscript letters to Sir Robert Puckering :t 
 ' On Tuesday was sennight, Mr. Mason, of 
 Lincoln's Inn, made a motion to the judges of 
 King's Bench for Sir John Eliot, that, whereas 
 the doctors were of opinion he could never re- 
 cover of his consumption until such time as 
 he might breathe in purer air, they would, for 
 some certain time, grant him his enlargement 
 for that purpose. Whereunto my Lord-chief- 
 justice Richardson answered, that although 
 Sir John were brought low in body, yet was he 
 as high and lofty in mind as ever, for he would 
 neither submit to the king, nor to the justice 
 of that court. In fine, it was concluded by the 
 bench to refer him to the king by way of peti- 
 tion." 
 
 Eliot refused to do this, proceeded still with 
 his treatise, and uttered no complaint. Hamp- 
 den continued to send him books, and, with 
 delicate good sense, rallies him to his labours : 
 " Make good use of the bookes you shall re- 
 ceive from mee, and of your time ; be sure you 
 shall render a strict account of both to your 
 ever assured friend." As the work progressed, 
 
 fatal accident ; and his house, that was formerly frequented 
 by great and honourable personages, as by learned men of 
 all sorts, remained now, upon the matter, empty and deso- 
 late. I understood from himself and others, that Dr. Neile 
 and Dr. Laud, two prelates that had been stigmatized in tho 
 first [last ?] session of Parliament in 1628, were his sore en- 
 emies. He was so outworn, within a few months, with an- 
 guish and grief, as his face, which had formerly been ruddy 
 and well coloured, was wholly changed into a grim and 
 blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a 
 dead visage." Within a "few months" more he died. 
 
 * See a statement at p. 1 of this memoir ; and Biog. Brit., 
 vol. v., p. 34(57. t Sloaae MSS., 4178.
 
 40 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 it was sent in portions to Hampden, who criti- 
 cised it, and, as I shall show, gave value to his 
 praise by occasional objection : " And that to 
 satisfy you, not myselfe, but that by obeying 
 you in a command so contrary to my own dis- 
 position, you may measure how large a power 
 you have over John Hampden." Very little 
 political allusion passed in these letters. It 
 was a dangerous subject to touch, for Eliot's 
 correspondence was never safe from exposure.* 
 Some time before, he had mentioned this, as 
 we have seen, to Grenville ; and he wrote to 
 Denzil Hollis a letter which bears upon politi- 
 cal affairs, but only in dark hints, which he 
 might not express more plainly. " Through a 
 long silence," he says, " I hope you can re- 
 taine the confidence and memoire of your 
 frende. He that knows your virtue in the 
 generate cannot doubt any particular of your 
 charitie. The corruption of this age, if no oth- 
 er danger might occur, were an excuse, even 
 in business, for not writing. The sun, we see, 
 begets divers monsters on the earth when it 
 has heat and violence ; time may do more on 
 paper ; therefore, the safest intercourse is by 
 harts ; in this way I have much intelligence to 
 give you, but you may divine it without proph- 
 esie." 
 
 Nearly four years had now passed over Eliot 
 in his prison. Those popular leaders who had 
 been subjected to confinement at the same 
 time, had all of them, within the first eighteen 
 months, obtained their release. t Eliot only 
 was detained. After the conclusion of the 
 treatise that had so long served to keep up his 
 interest and attention, he appears to have sunk 
 rapidly. Almost worn out by his illness, his 
 friends at last prevailed upon him to petition 
 the king. The-account of his " manner of pro- 
 ceeding" is affecting to the last degree. I give 
 it in the words of a letter from Pory to Sir 
 Thomas Puckering : " Hee first presented a 
 petition to his majesty, by the hand of the lieu- 
 tenant, his keeper, to this effect : ' Sir, your 
 judges have committed mee to prison here in 
 your Tower of London, where, by reason of 
 the quality of the ayer, I am fallen into a dan- 
 gerous disease. I humbly beseech your majes- 
 ty you will command your judges to sett mee 
 at liberty, that, for recovery of my health, I 
 may take some fresh ayer,' &c. Whereunto 
 his majestie's answer was, ' it was not humble 
 enough.' Then Sir John sent another petition, 
 by his own sonne, to the effect following : ' Sir, 
 I am hartily sorry I have displeased your majes- 
 ty, and, having so said, doe humbly beseech 
 you once againe to comand your judges to sett 
 me at liberty, that, when I have recovered my 
 health, I may returne back to my prison, there 
 to undergoe suche punishment as God hath al- 
 lotted unto mee,' &c. Upon this the lieuten- 
 ant came and expostulated with him, saying it 
 was proper to him, and common to none else, 
 
 * Many of Hampden's most beautiful letters never reach- 
 ed him. 
 
 t Before Valentine had obtained his bail, Eliot began to 
 suspect him of juggling for release ; and he writes of him 
 to a friend, Thomas Godfrey, " This is all I can tell you of 
 him, unless by supposition I could judge him in his reser- 
 vations and retirement, knocking at some back door of the 
 court, at which, if he enter to preferment, you shall know 
 it from your faithful friend." I could furnish many such 
 proofs of the jealous care with which Eliot watched the 
 virtue of his friends. 
 
 to doe that office of delivering petitions for his 
 prisoners. And if Sir John, in a third petition, 
 would humble himselfe to his majestie in ac- 
 knowledging his fault and craving pardon, he 
 would willingly deliver it, and made no doubt 
 but hee should obtaine his liberty. Unto this 
 Sir John's answer was : ' I thank you, sir, for 
 your friendly advise, but my spirits are growen 
 feeble and faint, which, when it shall please 
 God to restore unto their former vigour, I will 
 take it farther into my consideration.' "* 
 
 That this is a perfectly correct account can- 
 not be doubted. Pory collected the particulars 
 after the death of Eliot, and gives us his au- 
 thority. " A gentleman," he says, " not un- 
 known to Sir Thomas Lucy, told me, from Lord 
 Cottington's mouth, that Sir John Eliot's late 
 manner of proceeding was this." Moreover, 
 in one of Lord Cottington's own despatches to 
 Wentworth, the savage satisfaction with which 
 the court had received, and with which they 
 knew Lord Wentworth would also receive, the 
 assurance of the approaching death of the for- 
 midable Eliot, is permitted to betray itself. 
 "Your old dear friend, Sir John Eliot," ob- 
 serves the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the 
 Lord-deputy of Ireland, winding up a series of 
 important advices with this, the most impor- 
 tant Of all, " IS VERY LIKE TO DIE."t 
 
 Within two months from that date Lord Cot- 
 tington's prediction was accomplished. Eliot, 
 however, had yet a duty of life left, which he 
 performed with characteristic purpose. He 
 sent for a painter to the Tower, and had hit* 
 portrait painted, exactly as he then appeared, 
 worn out by disease, and with a face of ghast- 
 ly paleness. This portrait he gave to his son, 
 that it might hang on the walls of Port Eliot, 
 near a painting which represented him in vig- 
 orous manhood a constant and vivid evidence 
 of the sufferings he had unshrinkingly borne 
 " a perpetual memorial of his hatred of tyran- 
 ny." These pictures are at Port Eliot still. I 
 have been favoured with a loan of the earlier 
 portrait, by the courtesy of Lord St. Germain's. 
 It represents a face of perfect health, and keen- 
 ly intellectual proportions. In this respect, in 
 its wedge-like shape, in the infinite majesty of 
 the upper region, and the sudden narrowness 
 of the lower, it calls to mind at once the face 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh. Action speaks out from 
 the quick, keen eye, and meditation from the 
 calm breadth of the brow. In the disposition 
 of the hair and the peaked beard, it appears, to 
 a casual glance, not unlike Vandyke's Charles. 
 The later portrait is a profoundly melancholy 
 contrast. It is wretchedly painted, but it ex- 
 presses the reality of death-like life. It pre- 
 sents Eliot in a very elegant morning dress, 
 apparently of lace, and bears the inscription of 
 having been " painted, a few days before his 
 death, in the Tower." 
 
 In the last moments of his life, Eliot present- 
 ed the perfect pattern of a Christian philoso- 
 pher. I quote the last of his letters to Hamp- 
 den. " Besides the acknowledgment of your 
 favour that have so much compassion on your 
 frend, I have little to return you from him that 
 has nothing worthy of your acceptance, but the 
 
 * Harleian MSS., 7000. 
 
 t Strafford's State Papers, vol. i., p. 79, dated October 
 18, 1632.
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 41 
 
 contestation that I have between an ill bodie 
 and the aer, that quarrell, and are friends, as 
 the summer winds affect them. I have these 
 three daies been abroad,* and as often brought 
 in new impressions of the colds, yet, body, and 
 strength, and appetite, I finde myself bettered 
 by the motion. Cold at first was the occasion 
 of my sickness, heat and tenderness by close 
 keepinge in my chamber has since increast my 
 weakness. Air and exercise are thought most 
 proper to repaire it, which are the prescription 
 of my doctors, though noe physic. I thank 
 God other medicines I now take not, but those 
 catholicons, and doe hope I shall not need 
 them. As children learn to go, I shall get ac- 
 quainted with the aer ; practice and use will 
 compasse it, and now and then a fall is an in- 
 struction for the future. These varieties He 
 does trie us with, that will have us perfect at 
 all parts, and as he gives the trial, he likewise 
 gives the ability that shall be necessary for the 
 worke. He has the Philistine at the disposi- 
 tion of his will, and those that trust him, under 
 his protection and defence. ! infinite mercy 
 of our master, deare friend, how it abounds to 
 us, that are unworthy of his service ! How 
 broken ! how imperfect ! how perverse and 
 crooked are our waise in obedience to him ! 
 how exactly straight is the line of his provi- 
 dence to us ! drawn out through all occurrents 
 and particulars to the whole length and meas- 
 ure of our time ! how perfect is his hand that 
 has given his Sonne unto us, and through him 
 has promised likewise to give us all things 
 relieving our wants, sanctifying our necessi- 
 ties, preventing our dangers, freeing us from 
 all extremities, and dying himself for us ! 
 What can we render 1 what retribution can 
 we make worthy soe great a majestie 1 worthy 
 such love and favour 1 We have nothing but 
 ourselves, who are unworthy above all, and 
 yett that, as all other things, is his. For us to 
 offer up that, is but to give him of his owne, 
 and that in far worse condition than we at first 
 received it, which yet (for infinite in his good- 
 nesse for the merits of his Sonne) he is con- 
 tented to accept. This, dear frend, must be 
 the comfort of his children ; this is the physic 
 we must use in all our sicknesse and extremi- 
 ties ; this is the strengthening of the weake, 
 the nuriching of the poore, the libertie of the 
 captive, the health of the diseased, the life of 
 those that die, the death of the wretched life of 
 sin ! And this happiness have his saints. The 
 contemplation of this happiness has led me al- 
 most beyond the compass of a letter ; but the 
 haste I use unto my frends, and the affection 
 that does move it, will, I hope, excuse me. 
 Frends should communicate their joyes : this, 
 as the greatest, therefore, I could not but im- 
 part unto my frend, being therein moved by the 
 present expectation of your letters, which al- 
 ways have the grace of much intelligence, and 
 are happiness to him that is trulie yours." 
 I add to this an extract from one of Pory's 
 
 * The precincts of his prison, it is unnecessary to add, 
 enclosed the " abroad" of Eliot. The " air and exercise" 
 he afterward mentions, as having somewhat "bettered" 
 him, were only what he could win from a few narrow paces 
 within the walls of the Tower. It is easy to conclude from 
 this, that a sight of his native country, the greeting of one 
 healthful Cornish breeze, would almost instantly have re 
 stored him. 
 
 letters, dated November 15, 1632. " The same 
 night, Monday, having met with Sir John El- 
 iot's attorney in St. Paul's churchyard, he told 
 me he had been that morning with Sir John in 
 the Tower, and found him so far spent with 
 his consumption as not like to live a week 
 longer."* 
 
 He survived twelve days. On the 27th of 
 November, 1632, Sir John Eliot died. Imme- 
 diately after the event, his son (Richard, as I 
 presume, since he did not go abroad as he pur- 
 posed) "petitioned his majesty once more, hee 
 would bee pleased to permitt his body to be 
 carried into Cornwall, there to be buried. 
 Whereto was answered at the foot of the peti- 
 tion, ' Lett Sir John Eliot's body be buried in 
 the church of that parish where he dyed.'"t 
 This attempt to wreak an indignity on the re- 
 mains of Eliot was perfectly in accordance 
 with Charles's system. A paltry piece of 
 heartless spite on the lifeless body of a man 
 appropriately closes a series of unavailing at- 
 tempts to reduce his living soul. What re- 
 mained of the great statesman was thrust into 
 some obscure corner of the Tower church, and 
 the court rejoiced that its great enemy was 
 gone. 
 
 Faithful and brave hearts were left to re- 
 member this, and the sufferings of Eliot were 
 not undergone in vain. They bore their part 
 in the heat and burden of the after struggle. 
 His name was one of its watchwords, and it 
 had none more glorious. His sufferings, then, 
 have been redeemed. The manner of his death 
 was no more than the completion of the pur- 
 poses of his life. Those purposes, and the ac- 
 tions which illustrated and sustained them, I 
 have described in these pages, for the first 
 time, with fidelity and minuteness. In doing 
 this, I have also endeavoured to exhibit his 
 personal and intellectual qualities so fully, that 
 any reiteration of them here might be tedious, 
 and is certainly unnecessary. In estimating 
 his character as a statesman, our view is lim- 
 ited by the nature of the political struggle in 
 which he acted. We have sufficient evidence, 
 however, to advance from that into a greater 
 and more independent field of achievement 
 and design. His genius would assuredly have 
 proved itself as equal to the perfect govern- 
 ment of a state, as it showed itself supreme in 
 the purpose of rescuing a state from misgov- 
 ernment. As a leader of opposition, he has 
 had no superior in history, probably no equal. 
 His power of resource, in cases of emergency, 
 was brilliant to the last degree, and his elo- 
 quence was of the highest order. The moral 
 structure of his mind was as nearly perfect as 
 that of the most distinguished men who have 
 graced humanity. It ranks with theirs. 
 
 Yet this is he whose memory has been in- 
 sulted by a series of monstrous slanders flung 
 out against it by political opponents with a 
 recklessness beyond parallel ! The time for 
 such slanders, however, has happily passed 
 away, and the name of John Eliot may now be 
 preserved, unsullied, for the affection and ven- 
 eration of his countrymen. 
 
 What remains to be said of this great per- 
 son, I shall subjoin as an appendix to this me- 
 
 * Harleian MSS., 7000. 
 
 t Ibid., 7000.
 
 42 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 moir. I am about to examine his philosophical ' mingled sweetness and grandeur have been 
 treatise for, I believe, the first time. It has j quoted ; no attempt has even been made to de- 
 been mentioned, certainly by more writers than j scribe them. I am about to remove this re- 
 one, and about twenty lines have been quoted j proach from literature, and to enrich it with 
 from it ; but this is the utmost extent of appre- j several specimens of thought and style, which 
 ciation it has received. No one has yet shown | might give an added lustre to the reputation 
 any evidence of other than the most superficial of our loftiest writers in prose to a Hooker or 
 glance at its contents ; none of its passages of { a Milton.
 
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 SOME ACCOUNT OF AN UNPUBLISHED PHILOSOPHICAL TREATISE, 
 
 THE MONARCHY OF MAN, 
 
 WRITTEN BY SIR JOHN ELIOT DURING HIS LAST IMPRISONMENT. 
 
 A CONSIDERATION of such affecting interest is so imme- 
 diately and vividly excited in looking at the first page of this 
 manuscript, that I have had it carefully copied for the read- 
 er. It presents at once the scene of Eliot's imprisonment, 
 and the lonely and weary hours this cherished work may 
 have lightened. The pure exaltation of the philosopher is 
 approached most nearly by the simplicity of a child ; and 
 how touching is the childlike care and interest which, to 
 while away the lingering time, has so elaborately wrought 
 itself within every letter of this exquisite title ! Crouching 
 under the T and the M two faces will be detected rather 
 
 ungain, indeed, but still sufficient to remind the solitary 
 prisoner of the more " human fece divine." I leave the rest 
 to the imagination of the reader, which is, in many respects, 
 silently and deeply appealed to. I will only add that the 
 omission of the woru " fecit," in the truly and touchingly 
 noble motto, appears to me to be in the highest taste. It 
 reads, as it stands, like an abridged motto on a shield, chiv- 
 alrous and significant. It is no proof of the judgment of 
 the only two writers who have given the title of this trea- 
 tise, that they undertake to repair Eliot's omission in this re- 
 spect 
 
 v.Ueus mu hac 
 
 This wood-cut, it is to be observed, is very considerably 
 reduced from the original, which is of a folio size. The 
 treatise itself occupies two hundred and forty folio pages, 
 which are written over with extreme closeness, and by no 
 means so legibly as the specimen before the reader. Eliot 
 was fond of abbreviations ; and the key of his style, in that 
 particular, has grown something rusty, and tnes the pa- 
 tience. 
 
 Tie treatise opens with a general proposition in favour of 
 what Eliot calls the covenant of monarchy. The example 
 of man's monarchy follows the monarchy of the mind as the 
 greatest of those covenants, after that of the government of 
 nature, of God. 
 
 " Of all covenantes, kingdomes are the best, answering 
 to the first and highest, both of institutions and examples, 
 either in the policie of man or the president of his maker. 
 
 Next to that great monarchic and kingdoms, quod sub Jove, 
 nomen habet, in which the microcosme, the whole world, is 
 comprehended, is the monarchic of man, that little world 
 and microcosme, coming the neerest, both in order and pro- 
 portion, for excellencie of matter and exquisitnes of forme. 
 In tymi! and order nothing makes to question it ; it beeing 
 the instant and imediate successor of that greater, wherein, 
 the Creation being accomplisht, man was made a governour. 
 In excellency and proportion what paralell may it have? 
 what similitude can be given it? its forme beeing like the 
 disposition of the heavens, soe geometricall and exact, that 
 each part, each orbe, hath his owne motion, in his own 
 tyme, to his owne ends, genuine and proper." 
 
 The course of each " orbe and member" is pursued in 
 terms of exalted eulogy, and the ''matter" is next handled. 
 By this is meant the subject matter of the proposed govern-
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ment, which embraces nothing extraneous, nothing connect- 
 ed with creatures that are inferior, in point of grandeur, to 
 man himself. 
 
 "The excellence of the matter likewise does appear, in 
 that it is not an invention of humanitie, a fabrike of art, 
 but of a substance heauenly, the perfection of all creatures, 
 the true image of the Deity. 'Twere too lowe, too narrow, 
 for the founder to reduce the gouernment to beasts, and to 
 confine it to that compasse, which yet likewise was cast 
 within man's will, and those things submitted to his use. 
 This were unworthie the original!, that transcendent great- 
 nes from whence this excellence is derived, to applie it 
 onely to such things. And much more were it unworthie 
 the ends, the glory and the honor, of that greatnes which 
 reflects from purer obiects. 'Tis larger, 'tis better. 'Tis 
 of .man chiefly this goverment consists. Man, to be the 
 gouernour of himselfe, an exact monarchic within him, in the 
 composition of which state nothing without him may have 
 interest, but all stands subservient to his use, nee only to 
 his maker." 
 
 Eliot then proposes to consider the component parts of 
 this monarchy, and the relative duties they sustain. 
 
 " In this monarchic of man, to make the excellence con- 
 spicuous, first is requisite a description of the parts, then 
 the knowledge of theire duties ; that, euery member beeing 
 scene, and theoffice it sustaines,it may then appear of what 
 use and advantages they are, what severall meritts they 
 implie, both in degrees and simplie, what conference they 
 have, of how much importance to the generall, what cor- 
 respondence and relations with themselves. 
 
 " In the parts, the minde doth sitt as soveraigne, in the 
 throne and center of the heart, the station of most aptnes 
 both for intelligence and coinand. Two sorts of servants 
 doe attend him, daylie administering in that court ; the one 
 for use and businesse, as Plutarche has it of Craterus, friends 
 and servants to the KINO ; the other, like Hephestion, for 
 pleasure and delight, friends and servants unto ALEXANDER. 
 These, the rationall and bruite faculties of the soule, are 
 both necessarie in theire kinds, both usefull to their sover- 
 aigne, though differing in theire service, and differing in 
 the way. 
 
 " Of the first a senate is compos'd, a solid body for councill 
 and advice, still intent on the gouernment. Such are mem- 
 orie, judgement, fancie, and theire like. The second are 
 the waiters and followers, which respect not the affaires, 
 but the presence, of theire king, as the will and affections 
 that accompanie him. Subservient to these, and according 
 to these principles, all other things are mov'd, every part 
 and member in his place ; the great officers beeing the sen- 
 c.es ; and ministers subordinate, the organs ; the subiect, 
 the body, in which all these subsist, and though the most 
 unactive part it be, yet it is trucly called the center and 
 foundation of the rest. 
 
 " This is the frame and constitution of this monarchic, 
 and of these parts it does consist." 
 
 The question follows of the several offices and duties of 
 these various parts, and " On this point," Eliot observes, 
 with an allusion of extreme elegance, " wee shall endeavour 
 to expresse, as young painters doe rare beauties, some lines 
 and slight resemblances, though, in the exactness, wee 
 come short of the true figure and perfection." 
 
 " There is one common duetie of them all, to which all 
 are equally obliged ; prince as well as subjects, subjects as 
 theire prince ; all offices are directed to this end, and all are 
 accomptable for that trust ; proportionably indeed to the 
 quallities they are in ; geometrically, and ad pondus, though 
 not arithmetically and alike. The greater and more digni- 
 fied, for more, as more advantage has been given them ; the 
 lesse, and all, for somewhat to the capacities they have. 
 Which is for the conservation of the whole, the publike 
 utilitie and good, wherein all indeavours must conterminate 
 as theire absolute and true end. 
 
 "And the reason is binding in this point. For if the 
 whole fabrike be desolved, how can a part subsist? Be it 
 the chamber of the councill, the head ; or the king's throne, 
 the heart ; or yet, which is more excellent, what they both 
 containe, the king himself and councell, the mind and facul- 
 ties of reason ; what subsistance can they have, or what be- 
 ing can they hold, without that frame and body of which 
 they are king and councell? A father is soe called, but in 
 relation to a child ; and if that childhood cease, he ceases 
 to be a father. It is ignorance, madness, to think that in a 
 disjuncture they can stand, either the prince or the sub- 
 iect ; when the prince is such but in referrence to the sub- 
 iect, and the subiect has not being without the subsistance 
 of the state. Adeo manifestum est (as an emperour speaks 
 in Tacitus) neq ; perire neq ; salvos esse, nisi una, $c. 
 The conjuncture is so strict, that in the dissolution of the 
 generall, noe particuler can be fast ; and, without preserva- 
 tion of the members, the body cannot stand ; therefore each 
 part must strive for the conservation of the whole, and that 
 whole intend the preservation of the parts." 
 
 Eliot then reduces to two heads, the division and limita- 
 tion of their respective duties. The passage is striking. 
 
 " The king is to command ; the subiect to obey. Both, 
 
 however, with like readines in theire places, and like af- 
 fection to each other. The subiect must not make his cen- 
 ter in himself, and direct onely his indeavours to that end, 
 as if there they were to terminate ; but they must alwaies 
 be with respect unto his soueraigne, and to the publike good, 
 therein inclining his will. As the king is to answere this 
 observance in correspondency thereof, he must not retire his 
 thoughts to private purposes and designes, respects that are 
 particuler, peculier interests of his owne ; but his authority 
 must move as it has been appointed, in ordine, for his sub- 
 iects, for the common use and benefit, for the safety and 
 tranquillitie of the state, for the singuler advantage of each 
 member, and the universall happinesse and good." 
 
 The treatise now flows naturally into an examination of 
 the analogies of civil government. 
 
 " And in this, generally, this monarchic is agreeable to 
 all others, of the same frame and constitution ; and what is 
 true in them is conclusive upon this, their reasons being 
 alike ; as conversively from this, may be argued to the rest. 
 Wee will therefore consider them together, to see how the 
 authority does arise, and what powers and judgments have 
 been giuen them. That done, wee will discend to exercises 
 and corruptions, with the effects and consequences that are 
 incident, from whence, by comparison, the knowledge wille 
 be easic. Where the advantage rests, that shall be an ev- 
 idence to iustifie the right. Even the fruite and proffit 
 shall be made arguments to prove it. Wherein, notwith- 
 standing all disguises to the contrarie, the true utile shall 
 be seen, like the heliotropium, that beautie of the gardens, 
 always converting to the sunne, the honestum, to which it 
 shutts and opens, as that is present or removed." 
 
 The original of civil monarchy Eliot seeks for in the 
 heavens. From the solitude of his dungeon, into that clear 
 region, " above the thunder," it was some consolation to 
 pass ! 
 
 " To finde out the original! of these excellencies, the be- 
 ginning of these monarchies and monarchs, wee must first 
 search the heavens, and, by ascending thither by thought 
 and speculation, bring down the knowledge of that truth. 
 Wee shall there see them, from before all eternitie, written 
 in the councells of the court, the great ruler there haueing 
 so decreed it, in conformity to his gouernment. From his 
 owne excellence and perfection was theire idea taken, the 
 patterne and example being himselfe, the worke his owne, 
 the institution and invention his, and the end and scope for 
 which it was ordained. Soe thence wee shall finde theire 
 originalls derived ; there they haue beginning ; from thence 
 they haue continuance ; there both their Genesis and Exo- 
 dus are inroll'd. All their degrees, periods, and revolutions, 
 their remissions, and intentions, are guided by this influ- 
 ence. Inde est imperator (saith Tertullian), vnde et homo : 
 inde potestas, vnde et spiritus. The same power which 
 first created man gave their originall to princes. He who 
 of nothing gave being unto all things he that to man whilst 
 he was yet but clay, that unactive piece of element, infused 
 a spirit and fire to give him life and motion from him pro- 
 ceeds this power.'' 
 
 Aristotle, Dion, Plato, and Pliny give the strength of their 
 authority to the writer ; and, pursuing various monarchical 
 analogies, in a manner much resembling that of Sydney's 
 treatise, through families, cities, and so on, he arrives at 
 the government of the " great glol>e itself," in considering 
 which, he says, the reason sinks, for, since it cannot ascend 
 up to " nature, which is but the daughter of the world," 
 much less should it compass " the world, the universall 
 mother of all nature." Eliot then exclaims, with a passing 
 eulogv on Cicero, which, considering the many points of 
 literary resemblance between them, is very interesting: 
 " Without a maker the world had not been at first, without a 
 ruler it would haue no continuance. The varieties and con- 
 trarieties that are in it, beyond the understanding of weake 
 man, so reconciled to order and agreement, give it a full ex- 
 pression. O the height of this gradation, which none but 
 Cicero could climbe !" And thus he proceeds through a 
 laboured praise, considering the accomplished Roman in all 
 his aspects, " resorting to the person from the cause, from 
 the client to the advocate," till he knows not, as he ex- 
 presses it, " whether his truth or eloquence be more ad- 
 mirable." 
 
 The next passage I shall quote is beautiful and character- 
 istic. Eliot proposes to examine the authority of princes, 
 their powers and judgments, with their controlling rules and 
 limits. In the course he lays down towards this, I recog- 
 nise an admirable sense of the proprieties in argument, with 
 a feeling of the probable public appearance of his labours ; 
 a glance at the strange aspect of the times, and an endeavour 
 to save his work, as it were, from the severities that had 
 fallen on himself ; which will not be read without much 
 interest. It is full of delicate beauty. I subjoin to this the 
 commencing passages of the argument which follows it, be- 
 speaking toleration for the objects and intentions of man, on 
 the ground of the wretched dependancy and infirmity of his 
 acts. 
 
 " Thus then wee see how the authority does rise, and 
 from whence princes have originall, both in particular, far
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 45 
 
 ours, and generally, for all nature, therein assenting. Our 
 next view must be of the powers and judgements that are 
 giuen them, wherein likewise there is community. Then 
 their rules and limits wee will touch, with some notes of 
 advantage and disadvantage from the use. Which done, 
 wee will draw the application to ourselves, to our owne 
 monarchic, the mind, and shew the propriety of that ; hand- 
 ling by the way the questions most in controversie touching 
 the exercise of that power ; which wee will take, as they 
 are emergent from our subject, and arise naturally in dis- 
 course ; not compelling, not coveting, any that does not vol- 
 untarily come in, and readily accost us ; nor balking those 
 which the occasion shall present, for any fear or difficulties. 
 Only this favor wee petition, which candor will allow us 
 for our encouragement in the worke, that no prejudice may 
 impeach us in the censure of our reason ; if it tide contrary 
 to the tymes, if it oppose the stream and current wee are 
 in, either in dilating or contracting the interests and pre- 
 tentious, superior or inferior. Wee shall impartially deliv- 
 er it, if not to the truth of the cause, which may exceed our 
 judgement, yet to the truth and identity of our sense ; and 
 if in that we fail, though it be an error, 'tis not a crime un- 
 pardonable, uncapable of remission. Yet wee shall be care- 
 ful to avoid it, and are not unhopefull in that point, having 
 our affections on a right level, so equally disposed as nothing 
 but ignorance can divert them. 
 
 " First then, to take the just height and latitude of this 
 power, we must begin our consideration at the end the end 
 and scope for which it was ordain'd, which is the perfec- 
 tion of all workes aud the first thing always in intention. 
 Acts may have diverse inclinations and effects, from the ac- 
 cidental intercurrence of new causes contrary to their in- 
 stitution and design, whereon no sound judgement can be 
 grounded. To an act of virtue there may be a concurrency 
 of vice, through the corruption and infirmitie of the object. 
 A charity may be intervened to ill uses, as not seldom hap- 
 pens thro' the depravity of men, and so lose the fruit of vir- 
 tue. The council of Achitophell may be follie, though an 
 effect of wisdom. Equity may be converted to iniquity. 
 Justice into injury, or into cruelty of extremity. No virtue, 
 indeed, in operation is so sacred, but circumstance may cor- 
 rupt it, diverse effects may follow it, as from new causes 
 and intentions intervenient. Thus we see it in the motion 
 of the spheres, the perfection of whose course revolves from 
 east to west, and yet all the lesser and lower orbes run a 
 counter course to that, turning from west to east. Their 
 natural motions and inclinations are irregular, ad raptum. 
 So, in the acts of virtue, oblique intentions may occur to 
 corrupt it in particulars, though the virtue be the same. 
 Therefore, as the intention must be the indication of the act, 
 the end must shew the intention. For as a good act may 
 be ill done in respect of the intention, so the intention of 
 what purity soever may be corrupted by the end. If our 
 descent and end shall terminate in the east ; if our horo- 
 scope and ascendant shall be placed in the period of the 
 west ; if we shall then, as Strato saith, seeke the sunne it- 
 self rising in the west, we cannot conclude properly, or 
 right. For the end of the great workman must direct us, 
 not the effect and operation of the worke. Finis operantis, 
 the end and the proposition of the first mover, the maker of 
 those powers ; not ./tat* operis, the practice and exercise of 
 man, who, like those lower orbes, has no regularity, but ad 
 raptum." 
 
 The authority to be committed to princes, with the as- 
 sistance of their deliberative and executive governments, 
 aud the duties required of them, are then treated by Eliot. 
 He tempers the apparent remoteness of such an authority 
 by many familiar analogies, and illustrates the dangers that 
 beset a prince in the example of the pilot of a ship : " The 
 leaks," he says, " are infidelity and treachery in ministers ; 
 the rocks, inequality and distemper in the gouernment ; the 
 sands and synks are factions and divisions ; the winds and 
 waves, the attempts and invasions of the enemie ; the py- 
 ratts are the false and subtil underminers, that would robb 
 and steale away all law, liberty, and religion." 
 
 A singular passage follows, but it is too long for my pres- 
 ent purpose. Eliot takes up the power to be given to min- 
 isters as a thing to be limited, invariably, and in all things, 
 by rule ; " secundum artem, according to certainty ;" that 
 it should be, in fact, a PRINCIPLE, or the man to whom it 
 is intrusted will turn, as he says, " a sophister and impos- 
 tor." He then ranges through several chemical analogies, 
 combining and condensing them, with a rich facility and 
 skill. He that desires to have " the gold and quintessence" 
 at last, must search laboriously from " metal to metal, ele- 
 ment to element ;" and so, in the view of Eliot, must the 
 course of that man be laid who seeks the true understand- 
 ing of government, "emergent and resultant from the 
 world." Government, he proceeds to reason, is called " su- 
 preme," but it is only so '' for the good and welfare of the 
 subject. The latter part of which definition, though it be 
 not expressly in the words, is included in the sense, as the 
 end and object of all such authority and power. And it fol- 
 lows likewise by inference and reason, if the use and inter- 
 est be not severed. For, as Cicero says, respublica is but 
 
 respopuli ; and if the right and interest be the people's, so 
 should the benefit and use." This supreme power of the 
 state Eliot now reduces to two divisions ; "the first con- 
 cerning the exercise of that power as it is distributive to 
 others," the ministers of princes, which he ties down, with 
 much strong sense and argument, to a strict obedience of 
 the laws ; " the other reflecting particularly upon princes, 
 and the privilege and prerogative of their persons," which, 
 when he comes to discuss, he introduces with a melancholy 
 application to himself. Nothing, at the same time, can be 
 more quiet or firm. I have not found, indeed, in the whole 
 of this remarkable work, one touch of querulous impatience. 
 " The next thing that comes to meet us in our way is the 
 second question we expounded, whether the lawes have an 
 operation upon princes. And this with more difficuties is 
 involved, as lying within that mysterie, the prerogative of 
 kings, which is a point so tender as it will hardly bear u 
 mention. We may not therefore handle it with any rough- 
 ness, lest it reflect some new beam of terror on ourselves ; 
 but with what caution we may, yet without prejudice to 
 truth ; that in what freely we have undertaken we may 
 faithfully be delivered, and safely render the opinion which 
 we gave without suspect of flattery." 
 
 In the next sentence Eliot sets such a suspicion at rest ! 
 With a sudden and indignant sense that the claims set up 
 for princes in that day are "even too absurd for argument, he 
 exclaims, " It falls not into question whether laws have an 
 influence on kings, but conclusive and .in right! It is to 
 question how far such persons should be subject to the laws, 
 what bounds and circumscriptions they have given them, 
 and in what compass and degrees they ought to be limited 
 and confined." He then continues (following up a precedent 
 passage of elaborate eulogium on the law, which I ought to 
 have mentioned, and which is so nobly carried out in Pym's 
 great speech against Strafford, that I cannot help imagining 
 Pym to have been admitted to some knowledge of the com- 
 position of this treatise by his imprisoned friend), " Two 
 things occur in this, the laws and priviledges of each coun- 
 try, in both which the subject has like interest. By the 
 priviledge the prince is free from all things but the law ; by 
 the law he craves in all things to be regulated. By the 
 priviledge he has a propriety of consent in the sanction of 
 all lawes ; by the lawes he has a certain rule and level by 
 which to square his actions. By the priviledge all approved 
 customs are received in the strength and vigour of the lawes ; 
 by the lawes no actual repetitions shall create a custom, 
 without acceptation and allowance. The law is rex omni- 
 um, as Pindarus says, the king and governourof all things ; 
 the other is regi similis, something like unto a king, as Bo- 
 din has it ; as absolute, though less known." 
 
 Eliot, in the next passage, brands the slavish sycophancy 
 of his time. " Of these laws and priviledges," he says, 
 " (which we shall join together, making but one joint subject 
 of this question), the discussion will be easier if we turn 
 our disquisition, and thus state it : What power the king 
 has upon them ? Wherein there is such a confluency of 
 flattery, conducing to our prejudice ; such labour to make 
 monarchic unlimitted, an absoluteness of government with- 
 out rule ; so much affection, or corruption rather, specified ; 
 such distortion and perversion of authorities to that end ; 
 learning made prostitute to fallacy ; religion turned to 
 policie ; heaven brought down to earth ; light transformed to 
 darkness ; as to attempt against it, is now to row against the 
 tide ! against the stream and current of these times to seek 
 a passage unto truth !" Not the less did the philosophic 
 patriot seek it, and he could afford pity, from his dungeon, 
 to the hollow meanness of the slaves whose doctrines kept 
 him there. " Some would insinuate," he says, pointing to 
 the sermons of Sibthorp and Laud, " from the dehortation of 
 the Israelites, a warrant and authority for the extention of 
 that power. What then was said in terrour, they now make 
 it a conclusion of the right ! Others inferr from the con- 
 fession made by David, ' Against thee only have I sinned,' 
 that princes offend not men, and therefore have a liberty 
 upon them to do what acts they please. Which judgements 
 we shall rather pity than contest ! The heathens, likewise, 
 both Greeks and Latins, have been searcht to have their at- 
 testations for this sense ; but how truly we shall, in a few 
 general instances, soon shew !" Eliot then brings up to his 
 aid what Prynne would have called " squadrons" of author- 
 ities. " Plinie shall be first, who in direct terms avers, 
 non est princeps supra leges, sed leges supra principem, noe 
 prince is without the regulation of the laws, but they are 
 far above the authority of princes. We know in what time 
 and state that author wrote, where monarchic and empire 
 had not their meanest exaltation. No princes had a power be- 
 yond the authority of the Romans no Romans greater than 
 the princes of that age. Yet of them he speaks it, who were 
 the masters of all others, that the laws and statutes of their 
 country had a mastery upon them. And so Tacitus does 
 expresse it, of the first laws at Rome." Valentinian fol- 
 lows, and Plato, and all are shown to be emphatic assertors 
 of the great principle, that " nothing but ruin can be the 
 fortune of that kingdom where the prince does rule the laws, 
 and not the laws the prince." Aristotle, iii the same way,
 
 46 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and with the same spirit and wisdom, does confirm it, speak- 
 ing of the miseries and fatalities of those states which hap- 
 pen, as he says, where kings endeavour more than is fitting 
 in the government. A very sharp and masterly dissection 
 of a disputed passage in Aristotle follows, when Eliot shows 
 that the " court parasites" of the day have basely abusec 
 the text. Several fine quotations from various parts of Cic 
 cro are next brought forward, which, as if exultingly, Elioi 
 exclaims, " make it against the law and principles of nature 
 for one man to act his pleasure on another ! ' To detract 
 any thing from any man," says he, ' and this man to draw a 
 benefit to himself from the hurt and prejudice of that, is 
 more contrary to nature than all poverty and sorrow, than 
 whatever can happen to the body, not death itself excepted, 
 or to the outward condition of a man.' What more fully or 
 more plainly can be spoken ? What greater authority can 
 be had, either for the persons or the reasons ? The Greeks, 
 the most excellent of them, and from whom the contrary is 
 insinuated (but how truly have we observed by the way), 
 the Latins likewise, and not the meanest of their kind, 
 whose judgments no posterity can impeach, we have really 
 and actually on our side. Princes and emperors consent- 
 ing ! We may confirm it by the examples of some others, 
 if number be more valuable than weight ; yet not such as 
 shall lessen the esteem; for if no other were produced, 
 their worths might serve for a counterpoise to all opposites." 
 I do not know if every reader will agree with me, but, in 
 this picture of a great mind, forcing itself, as it were, in 
 obedience to the sad necessity of the time, to appear to need 
 satisfaction for the penetration of ils own genius in the au- 
 thority and reverence of past ages, I recognise an object of 
 very deep and affecting interest. The treatise, indeed, is 
 scarcely so remarkable to me for the power it exhibits, great 
 and truly valuable as that is, as for the evidences of a wider 
 power which it restrains. It will be seen, however, as El- 
 iot emerges from the fetters of political discussion, into what 
 beauty and grandeur he ascends, mastering, moulding to his 
 immortal purpose, and impregnating with his own intellect- 
 ual power his variously fine attainments. I may with pro- 
 
 sly n 
 
 priety furnish the reader at this moment with a passage of 
 the criticism of Hampden, written on receiving the first 
 rough draft of this portion of the treatise. " When you 
 have finished the other parte, I pray thinke me as worthy 
 of the sight of it as the former, and in both together I'll be- 
 tray my weakness to my friend by declaring my sense of 
 them. That I did see is an exquisite nosegay, composed of 
 curious flowers, bound together with as fine a thredd. But 
 I must in the end expect honey from my friend. Somewhat 
 out of those flowers digested, made his owne, and givinge 
 a true taste of his own sweetnesse. Though for that I shall 
 awaite a fitter time and place." And again, of other ex- 
 tracts from this portion of the manuscript, with no less del- 
 icate expression, Hampden says, " This I discerne, that 'tis 
 as complete an image of the patterne as can be drawne by 
 lines ; a lively character of a large mind ; the subject, 
 method, and expressions excellent and homogeniall ; and, 
 to say truth (sweete heart), somewhat exceeding my com- 
 mendations. My words cannot render them to the life ; yet 
 (to show my ingenuousness rather than witt) would not a 
 lesse model have given a full representation of that subject ? 
 Not by diminution, but by contraction, of parts. I desire 
 to learn ; I dare not say. The variations upon each partic- 
 ular seem many ; all, I confesse, excellent. The fountaine 
 was full ; the channel narrow ; that may be the cause. Or 
 that the author imitated Virgil, who made more verses by 
 many than he intended to write, to extract a just number. 
 Had I seene all his, I could easily have bidd him make few- 
 er ; but if he had badd me tell which he should have spa- 
 red, I had beene apposed. So say I of these expressions." 
 It is very truly and beautifully said, and, as we advance, 
 the reader will see ample reason for the more exalted and 
 enthusiastic praise which Hampden afterward bestowed on 
 his friend's labours. Meanwhile he will pardon this di- 
 gression. . 
 
 Eliot, producing his examples of princes who have will- 
 ingly ranged themselves on his side, in acknowledgment of 
 the supremacy of law, proceeds: " Plutarche relates it of 
 Antiochus, that great king of Asia, the third of his name, 
 but the first in honour and accomplishment, that he, in con- 
 formity of this duty, sent despatches to his princes for pre- 
 vention of the contrary ; intimating that if any letters or 
 commands should be brought in his name, adverse or in- 
 congruous to the laws, they should believe that (igna.ro se) 
 they were given without his knowledge and consent, and 
 therefore that no other obedience should be yielded than 
 
 his prison. The majority of his extracts from Plato and 
 Aristotle are given in Latin, evidently to help himself on the 
 faster, for the original editions are always referred to, and 
 when he uses the Greek letters, he writes them with too 
 much neatness and labour to have permitted himself their 
 constant use. Other authorities follow Gratian ; and the 
 writer then triumphantly appeals to the opinion of a mas- 
 ter among " both emperors and civilians," to an edict of 
 Prince Theodosius. 
 
 " By him it was thus written for posterity. ' It is the 
 majesty of him that governeth to confesse himself bound to 
 the laws ; so much doth authority depend on law, and so 
 much is submission to the laws greater than authority. 
 And that we will not to be unlawful, we shew it unto others 
 by the oracle of this present edict.' In this," Eliot contin- 
 ues, "a conclusion is laid down, not only that all princes 
 are subject to the laws, but that it is their majestic, their 
 honor and exaltation, so to be ! And the reason follows it, 
 that the law is the ground of authority, all authority and 
 rule a dependant of the law. This edict was not only an 
 edict for that time, but for the generations of succeeding 
 ages, and for all posterity to come. Rightly, therefore, and 
 most worthily, stiled an oracle. And in correspondence to 
 this is the mouerne practice of these times. Almost in all 
 the states of Europe princes, at the assumption of' their 
 ~ tak< 
 
 crowns, assume and take an oath for the maintenance and 
 observation of the laws. So, if we look either into author- 
 ity or example, the use and practice of all times, from the 
 moderne to the ancient, the reason is still cleare, without 
 any difficulty or scruple, de jure, in right, that princes are 
 to be regulated by the laws, and that the laws have an op- 
 eration on the prince." 
 
 " Yet two things," Eliot observes, in a passage of much 
 interest, and which illustrates an opinion I have expressed 
 above, "we are told, do oppose, and are made arguments 
 against this : the honor and the profit of the king, which 
 are said to have some prejudice by this rule. Many pre- 
 tensions there are made, by those that are enemies to law, 
 to inculcate this doctrine unto princes, which in particular 
 to convince were not a task of hardness, if the danger ex- 
 ceeded not the trouble. But the infection of these times is 
 uncompatible of such labours, when scarce the least disease 
 is curable. We shall therefore follow them as wee did in 
 the strength and assistance of authorities, whjch, in point 
 of profit, do conclude that there is no fruit or advantage in 
 injustice. Ubi turpitude, says Cicero, ibi utilitas esse non 
 potest where shame and dishonesty inhabit, there profit 
 cannot sojourne. And that dishonestie he puts for the vio- 
 lation of a dutie. Againe, nihil utile quod non idem hones- 
 turn, et nunquam potest utilitas cum honestate contendere." 
 
 Some historical examples, very graphically told, are now 
 adduced in illustration of the last noble maxims, and Eliot 
 hints at the contrast they present to the examples of modern 
 days. " And yet how much more should those conventions be 
 observed which are ratified by oath, and made with friends 
 and citizens, fellow-citizens and brethren, of the same moth- 
 er!" He thenhandles thequestionof the position in whicha 
 king is placed by having the authority of the law upon him ; 
 whether or not it is a failure of dignity. The following is 
 subtilly expressed : " In reason first, how can it be dishon- 
 our to a king to be subject to himself? No man repines at 
 ;he motioms of his will ; no man thinks those actions dis- 
 lonourable which flow from his own intentions ; nor holds 
 .hat phisike vilifying which works his health and safety. 
 Yet all these must be granted to infer dishonor from the 
 aws. Phisike that works a safety must have a vilified 
 reception ; actions free and voluntary must be in antipathy 
 with our thoughts ; affections must displease ; and so, too-, 
 the inclinations of the will (not as they are depraved, but 
 simply as affections) ; and kings must hold it base to be 
 foverned by themselves, before it be concluded that there 
 :omes dishonor by the laws ; which are but the promulga- 
 ;ions of royaltie ; the proper motions and dispositions of that 
 >ower ; the special acts of princes ; their own influences 
 and intentions ; a health-giving composition of their own, 
 either made actually by their hands, or prepared for them 
 >y their fathers, their predecessors, and accepted by them- 
 elves, so that they become their own ; and in being subject 
 unto them they are but subject to themselves, which cannot 
 be dishonorable. No man can be said to be inferior to 
 himself, yet this must be granted in this case. Upon this 
 honorable punctilio, kings must become inferior to them- 
 selves, and a loyal king must be less than an illegal. Yet 
 all power has root but in the wills of men. Vis omnis im- 
 perij in consensu obedientium constat, all empire and au- 
 
 was challenged by that rule. For which Gratian, on the j thority rests in the obedience of the subject, and the true 
 like occasion, gives a reason, and thereupon reduced it to a j forme of all obedience is comprehended in trie lawes. For 
 law." The words of Gratian are then given. I may here | those services are false, imposed by fear and terror, and so 
 observe that Eliot is scrupulously exact in his method of is that maxim that procures them Oderint dum metuant ! 
 quotation ; that where the words of the original authority Let them hate so that they fear. That versus execrabilit, 
 are used in the text, the book and chapter are carefully j as Seneca calls it ! for he gives it this operation on a prince, 
 written down in the margin ; and that, where the sense only and therefore it is well termed execrable. By it he is driv- 
 of the authority is employed in the treatise, a note gener- | en from extremity to extremity. He is hated because fear- 
 ally supplies the exact quotation and its reference. He ed, and will maintain that fear because he is so hated." 
 must have had at least the companionship of many books in The greater value of love, far beyond this, is next shown,
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 47 
 
 in the example of an affectionate people. Eliot then looks 
 back upon his arguments ; and, in summing them up, en- 
 forces them again with new authorities, and shows great 
 learning in the fathers. He also refers to the great text- 
 book of constitutional law in that day, the famous treatise 
 of Fortescue. " Fortescue, that learned chancellor of Eng- 
 land, calls it impotencie and non-power to do things contrary 
 to the laws ; and therefore the laws, he says, are no restric- 
 tion to power, for to do contrary to them is no act of power ; 
 as it is no power to sinne, or to do evil, or to be sick, or old ; 
 for all these are instances that he gives, and in these re- 
 spects he says they are contingent unto men. Men are less 
 perfect than the angels, who have not libertie in those, and 
 therefore those laws that regulate the will cannot be dis- 
 honourable. Comines, that wise Frenchman, has also a 
 question to this purpose, upon the restraint of Lewis XI., 
 when in the distraction of his sickness." 
 
 Before closing this branch of his subject finally, Eliot de- 
 votes some space to an exposure of the false constructions 
 that had been placed upon writings of authority by various 
 prerogative men. I regret that I cannot give an extract, as 
 it exhibits a very searching vigour. With the following se- 
 vere similitude he closes: 
 
 " He that governs not after the laws and customs of his 
 country, is to be held a tyrant. To him Tacitus has applied 
 the fable, Quod quisquis viscera humana, cum aliarum vie- 
 timarum visceribus forte gusteret, lupus fieri cogitur, that 
 whoever shall taste the interior of a man, though but by 
 chance in the mixtures of the sacrifices, he transforms into 
 a wolf. Those human entrails in the morall are but the 
 publike rights and priviledges ; the devouring whereof, 
 though but by mixture and confusion, is like that cruelty in 
 the proverb, homo homini lupus, man a wolf to man, a trans- 
 formation of humanity into the beastly nature. In the 
 Psalms it has an expression that is higher, to which no ag- 
 gravation can be added, no accumulation can be given. 
 And that likewise proceeding from a king, who, enumera- 
 ting some acts of oppression and injustice (which are the 
 effects of an arbitrary and unlimited dominion, a tyranny, as 
 elsewhere he does call it), accepting of persons, not defend- 
 ing of the poore, destroying of their rights, want of preserva- 
 tion and protection to the people, for these, he says, all the 
 foundations of the earth are out of course ! as if the whole 
 frame of nature had a dependance upon justice, and that the 
 violation of the one threatened the dissolution of the other !" 
 
 The next division of the treatise is devoted to a consider- 
 ation of the power of government, and the qualities neces- 
 sary for its legitimate exercise. Here, under one of many 
 heads, a severe education is insisted on, with great force, 
 as absolutely necessary to a prince. Eliot contrasts vividly 
 Cyrus and his sons. " But the accession of Cyrus to the 
 crowne was from a harder fortune, which fitted him with 
 virtue. His sonnes had a softer education, being brought 
 up by women, eunuchs, and the like, who infused principles 
 of weakness, and with their flattery and adulations taught 
 nothing but the doctrine of greatness. No man was suffer- 
 ed to oppose them in any exercise or purpose ; but all was 
 praising and commending of all they said or did (as who 
 dares yet do otherwise in the familiarity of princes !)." Dis- 
 missing this, however, Eliot proceeds to argue with some- 
 thing like an uneasy sense of the absurdities in abstract 
 reasoning, which are unquestionably connected with the 
 monarchical principle that, taking kings at the very best, 
 as models of temperance and fortitude, they must be allow- 
 ed to need something more. "Princes might have that 
 plenitude of temperance as should restrain them from all 
 license and exorbitance. That likewise should be accom- 
 panied with a fortitude to manage and subdue all loose ap- 
 petites and affections, and make them impenetrable in that 
 part. Yet there would be wanting one thing more neces- 
 sary to perfection, nay, most necessary for the perfection of 
 a kiner, which is a kind of all knowledge and omniscience, a 
 vast and generall comprehension of all things in his govern- 
 ment, with their several incidents, emcrgents, and contin- 
 gents, their conjunctures, disjunctures, relations, and de- 
 pendencies." 
 
 This is a formidable list, and the passage which follows 
 it is striking. Eliot revives, from his favourite author, the 
 image of that Roman tyrant which, at the impeachment of 
 Buckingham, had struck such dismay into Charles, for the 
 purpose of proving that there have been princes in the old 
 time, who, affecting a love for parliaments, were wont to 
 commence projects by that authority, and to carry them 
 on without it ! " In this we have the confession of Ti- 
 berius, not the unwisest, though not the best, of princes, 
 who saith, non posse principcm sua conscientid cuncta com- 
 plecti, a prince cannot have that universality of science to 
 comprehend all things in his braine. A senate, therefore, 
 was thought necessary to be auxiliar and assistant, where- 
 in that emperor did concurre. With all the wisdom of his 
 elders, squaring his profession out to justice, though his ac- 
 tions spake the contrary. Cuncta per consoles incipiebat, 
 says Tacitus, he began all things by the consuls. In rela- 
 tion to the senate, indeed, and in a publike oration to that 
 court, he did declare the necessity of their counsell, saying, 
 
 experiendo didicisse quam arduum, quam sub jectum fortune, 
 regendi cuncta onus, that by experience he had found the 
 danger -and difficulty of sole government." The hypocrisy 
 of Tiberius is afterward shown, and at the same time wrest- 
 ed to a finer purpose in argument than sincerity itself could 
 have illustrated. Eliot closes with some noble passages 
 out of Plato. 
 
 The nature of parliaments themselves, granting the ne- 
 cessity of their existence, is next examined. The powers 
 which were granted them among the Jews at their sanhe- 
 drini, at Athens, in jEtolia, at Rome, in Carthage, and 
 Sparta, are alluded to. The base purposes of those men 
 who poison the ears of princes with jealousy of parliaments 
 are bitterly exposed, and some of the doctrines of Machiavell 
 held up to scorn. A vast number of authorities are quoted, 
 and much use is made of the arguments of Philip de Com- 
 ines. Eliot, in his course, speaks highly of the genius of 
 Sallnst, and bursts into a fine eulogiutn at the mention of 
 Aristotle, " that stupendum hominis, that wonder and mir- 
 acle of reason !" He closes with some general arguments 
 out of Bodin, and, winding up his parallel between a tyrant 
 and a king, strikes heavily at the recent exactions of royal- 
 ty. " This feeds on the affections of his subjects, the other 
 on their fears. This has his fears principally for them ; the 
 other has them for the objects of his fears. This takes no- 
 thing from his subjects, but on publike warrant and neces- 
 sity ; that drinks, carouzes in their blood, and does fatt him 
 with their marrow, to bring necessity upon them." The 
 entire subject of the civil government of man is then wound 
 up in the following broad and satisfactory proposition. 
 " Monarchy is a power of government and rule for a common 
 good and benefit, not an institution for private interests 
 and advantage. To this runs the confluence of all author- 
 ity and reason, either grounded on the end, or the definition 
 and examples of the order." 
 
 Eliot now advances to the grander purpose of his treatise, 
 the consideration of the monarchy of the mind. He opens 
 with some general comparison of the civil with the meta- 
 physical relations in this government. He treats of the 
 "councillors of the mind, "and carries them up to their final 
 aims, " the end and perfection of all empire, the bonum pub- 
 licum of the politicks ; that summum bonum of philosophers, 
 that ne ultra in felicitie." From this inquiry, however, he 
 intimates that we must exclude at once the vanity of am- 
 bition, with its " heapings of Pelion on Ossa ;" and, in work- 
 ing the inquiry out, we must be prepared for the weaknesses 
 of man in many points, since even the wisest men, the 
 philosophers of the old time, have not been able to agree. 
 This carries Eliot into an interesting expression of their dif- 
 ferences. He describes them by the fable of Menippus. 
 
 " He found nothing but confusion upon earth, nothing but 
 incertainty with men. Doubt and ambiguity in some ; dis- 
 sent and contradiction among others ; difference and disa- 
 greement amongst all. Then soe the philosophers, at least 
 their sects in controversie, if not the particulars of all kinds, 
 yet the kinds of all particulars. The Stoicks and Epicure- 
 ans opposed. The Peripatetickes varying from both. The 
 Academickes differing from all. And these divided between 
 the old and new, the Eretrians, Megnrians, and Cyrenians, 
 all in opinions separate and distinguished. Like Hetero- 
 genialls, rather, and things contrary ; not as professors of 
 one science, masters of philosophy, lovers of truth and wis- 
 dom !" 
 
 This is well said. In their differences, however, Eliot 
 discerns elements of the truth. He proposes, therefore, to 
 examine them. " It may be we shall draw some advantage 
 for the information of ourselves by contraction of their fan- 
 cies ; as was thought by a concursion of the atoms, towards 
 the making and creation of the world. Wee will therefore 
 take a short survey of them, and try what they will yield ; 
 judging, not by number, but by weight, what estimation may 
 be given them ; and as we find their true worth and value, 
 so will we rate them in our book, casting the profit which 
 they bring in the accompt of our own endeavours. To 
 which we shall add what in reason or authority we shall 
 find necessary for the opening of this secret ; this end of all 
 our labour ; this scope and object of our hopes ; that sum- 
 mum bonum in philosophic, that bonum publicum in our poli- 
 cy, the consummation and perfection of our happinesse !" 
 
 In accordance with this design, Eliot plunges at once into 
 the various schools of ethics that prevailed among the an- 
 cients, describes them all, and discusses their respective 
 doctrines. At every step he gives proof of the profound 
 scholar, of a man of wide compass of thought, and of that 
 peculiar power in the application of learning which stamps 
 it with the creative genius. A trail of light runs along the 
 track of the old systems as we follow them in his pages. 
 The Peripatetics first appear, the Academics next, and the 
 Stoics follow, with the thunder of Aristotle striking down 
 their systems from beyond. The Eretrians are afterward 
 introduced, and to them the Epicureans, in open opposition. 
 And thus we follow all in turn, the genius of Eliot quicken- 
 ing these dead systems into an active present knowledge 
 Suddenly he exclaims, " But let us draw nearer to the light, 
 and dispel those mists that shadow and obscure it, by the
 
 48 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 beames and radiance of the sun, that so we may find the 
 summum bonum which we look for." 
 
 " SENECA, ' Romani nomiuis et sapentite nmgnus sol,' as 
 Lipsius styles him, ' that great glory of the Roman name 
 and wisdom,' thus compounds it : ' Ex bond conscientia, ex 
 honestis cousiliis ex rectis actionibus, ex contempt^ fortui- 
 torum, ex placido vitre et continuo tenore, unam prementis 
 viam.' ' Of a knowledge and intentions uncorrupted, of 
 council liberal and just, of actions rectified and exact, of 
 scorn of accident, of a propitious and even course and con- 
 stancie of life, its diameter and straightness kept without 
 reflection or transition." Where these are met in a true di- 
 agram and mixture, where these ingredients are consolidate, 
 there he makes that summum bonum, that great happinesse, 
 the term of man's perfection, the true end and object of his 
 hopes." 
 
 Following up the principle of this moral system, Eliot de- 
 fines with an exquisite clearness the relations of virtue. In 
 the midst of this, while borrowing an illustration from Sen- 
 eca, he breaks into a magnificent eulogy of the " wisdom 
 and sublimity of his ethicks. His speculations in philoso- 
 phic," exclaims Eliot, with an intense fervour and beauty 
 of expression, " doe preach divinitie to us, and his unbelief 
 may indoctrinate our faith ! Is it not shame," he afterward 
 asks, " that we that are professors in the art should have 
 less knowledge than those that never studied it? that their 
 ignorance should know that of which our knowledge is still 
 ignorant ? at least in the exercise and practice '." In the 
 following I recognise the sublimity and sweetness of Hook- 
 er. " In this he puts that summum bonum and chiefe good, 
 Deo parere, to be obedient unto God, to be obsequious to his 
 will. Hocfac, tit vives, as was the motto of the law doe 
 this and live. Live in all happinesse and felicity ; in all fe- 
 licity of mind, in all felicity of body, in all felicity of estate ! 
 For all these come from him ; he only has the dispensation 
 of these goods ; and he that serves him shall have the frui- 
 tion of them all. This was the notion of that Heathen, 
 which, what Christian can heare and not admire it? It 
 strikes a full diapason to the concord of the Scriptures, and 
 concents with that sweet harmony ! O let us then apply it 
 to ourselves, and make his words our works ! Let us en- 
 deavour for the benediction in the gospel, knowing these 
 things to be blessed, that we do them !" 
 
 Suddenly Eliot checks himself: "But to return to our 
 own charge and province, that we be not taxed for usurpa- 
 tion in intruding on another ; to resume the disquisition we 
 intended for the end and object our government, the perfec- 
 tion of our monarchy, which our divine Seneca doth deter- 
 mine in that axiome and theoreme, Deum sequi." Several 
 neat touches of statement and description succeed, with the 
 object of a wider direction to Seneca's maxim, after which 
 Eliot remarks : " We will now endeavour, upon all that has 
 been said, to extract a quintessence from the variety of ex- 
 pressions and opinions which we have mentioned ; to make 
 one solid globe, one entire and perfect conclusion." In the 
 course of this the moral and physical relations of the world 
 are surveyed, and from them is shown the possibility of the 
 attainment of a firm and independent position for the mind. 
 
 " This habit and position of the mind, to constitute per- 
 fect happinesse, must be both cleare and firme ; cleare 
 without cloud or shadow to obscure it, and firme in all con- 
 stancy. Immoveable like the centre ! Add then to this that 
 it does come from God that it is munus Dei, his free gift 
 and largesse and then we see what is this choice happi- 
 ness and good, that summum bonum in philosophy, that bonum 
 publicum in our policy, the true end and object of the mon- 
 archic of man ! It is a cleare and firme habit and position 
 of the mind by knowledge, rectifying all the actions and af- 
 fections to the rule and conformity of reason. It is to be 
 happy. Not in greatness, and honor, riches, or the like, 
 but in any state or quality, that elixar may be found ; from 
 the most simple being of mankind that quintessence may be 
 drawn. The mind being brought to that quality and condi- 
 tion, the faculty working on the object, not the object on the 
 faculty, there is in any state, how mean or low soever, an 
 equal passage and ascent to that great height and exalta- 
 tion !" 
 
 The elements by which the proposed monarchy of the 
 mind may be constructed having been thus established, and 
 the possibility of its construction shown, Eliot mentions with 
 exultation the great virtues which, once it is constructed, 
 shall tend to its immortal sustainment. But then he re- 
 strains himself. Before we triumph we must subdue. 
 Through sorrow it may be necessary to advance to joy. 
 " We must do as ^Eneas did with Dido, through sad storys 
 of tragedies and disasters make a transition unto love. As 
 mariners in rowing look contrary to their courses, so wee, 
 in the search of happiness and felicity, must have our eyes 
 upon the subject of our misery. Those we must first behold 
 which are enemies of our state, and from them make a pas- 
 sage to our government. Wherein, if, by knowledge of the 
 adversaries, we can find means to conquer and subdue them, 
 if, by the strength and opposition of the vertues, we can 
 overcome and subjugate the affections, then we may triumph 
 in our victorie, and in all security and peace erect that tro- 
 
 phy of felicity, that summum bonum and chief happiness of 
 man." 
 
 The impediments to man's happiness are accordingly 
 treated, and, from this onward, with such a union of power 
 and sensibility, of sweetness and grandeur, as I do not think 
 has ever been surpassed by the best prose writers in our 
 language. It is the privilege of true intellectual greatness 
 to glorify itself in what the world calls adversity, and never 
 did it employ a means more noble than this of Eliot's. Re- 
 warded with a prison for the service of active years devoted 
 to his country ; the tyranny apparently triumphant, to op- 
 pose which he had surrendered fortune and freedom ; a dis- 
 ease induced by the foul air of his dungeon making rapid 
 strides upon his life, yet only in its prime ; it is impossi- 
 ble to detect in this illustrious person the quailing of a sin- 
 gle nerve. He rises superior to all extremities, in simply 
 continuing equal to himself. The philosopher of the Tower 
 is no more and no less than the statesman of the House of 
 Commons. The essential object of his exertions is in both 
 cases the same, and I look upon these exalted meditations 
 as only a continuance, in intense expression, of the active 
 energies of his life. The steady invasion of disease forbade 
 him to hope that the latter could ever be renewed ; and, 
 thus excluded from the sphere of virtuous public action, he 
 left an example of even greater value to the world an ex- 
 ample to console them in temporary defeat, to carry ardour 
 and enthusiasm unhurt through trial an example that 
 should multiply their powers of action and resistance, by 
 strengthening their moral purposes. I see no unnatural 
 contrast, therefore, in any portion of Eliot's life. I recognise 
 his old brave fearlessness in his present inculcation of a per- 
 fect restraint and self-command ; I trace the rapid grandeur 
 of his younger days in the composed magnanimity of morals 
 which sustains him through this " last scene of all." 
 
 Through the impediments that obstruct man's happiness 
 in self-government, Eliot, as I have said, proceeds. Hem- 
 med in as the mind is shown by him to be, he undertakes 
 to point out the passage of escape from this " bondage and 
 captivitie." The first impediment he notices is " feare." 
 He goes through the various chances that may occasion it, 
 with a pregnant personal reference ; he describes the " ef- 
 fects of power sudden, various, and fearful ; whereia im- 
 prisonment, wounds, and death, and that in a thousand 
 forms, are threatened ; in which both sickness and poverty 
 are involved :" but in none of these, he says, is there real 
 cause of fear. He concludes his masterly examination !hus : 
 " Feare must yield to happinesse, or happinesse to feare." 
 Eliot then passes to what he calls " the next link of this 
 chaine of our uuhappinesse, another part of the fetters that 
 we beare" to that " inexplicable piece of vanity, our hope." 
 This he considers in many respects a great evil. " But not 
 to be mistaken," he says, " for want of some distinction in 
 this case ; all hopes are not like, nor alleuemies of our gov- 
 ernment, though all have one incertainty, by the trouble of 
 expectation, and the dependance upon time. Ail have this 
 vanity and weakness, that their rest is upon others, not in 
 themselves, and in that respect they are obnoxious unto 
 fortune : yet all have not a participation in the evil ; all 
 are not sharers in the guilt ; some are natural, and have 
 their principles in nature." The exceptions are occasion- 
 ally treated, and with a prodigious mass of learned allusion. 
 In conclusion, Eliot dwells with much intenseness on the 
 perpetual agitations in which hope keeps a man ; the fear 
 to lose, the jealousy, the satiety, aixl all the incidents that 
 fall to it. 
 
 Sorrow approaches next, and this is described as the worst 
 and least excusable of the impediments yet named. For yet, 
 Eliot says, fear has some resource of safety, hope has some 
 desire of happiness. " These," he strikingly continues, 
 " have somewhat for justification and apology, at least for ex- 
 cuse and extenuation of their evils. But sorrow only is in- 
 ferior to them all. No argument can be made for her de- 
 fence ; she can pretend neither to happiness, nor safety, nor 
 to what might be subservient to either. As the professed 
 enemie to both, her banners are displayed. She fights 
 against all safety, and bids defiance unto happiness. Her 
 ends, her arts are in contestation of them both. Reason 
 has nothing to alledge why sorrow should be used ; it pro- 
 pounds no advantage in the end, no advantage in the act, 
 but the mere satisfaction of itself, the sole expletion of that 
 humour ; therefore is it the most improper of all others, as 
 incomparably the worst, and that likewise the effects and 
 consequence on the body will show." The conclusion of 
 the subject is a subtle treatment of the selfishness of sorrow. 
 It is not called forth, he says, by the misfortunes of our 
 friends, for that feeling is pity ; nor by the triumphs of our 
 enemies, for that is envy. " Sorrow is selfishness." For 
 the " privation of whatever we hold dear, of whatever is in 
 a tender estimation," Eliot suggests nobler and better rem- 
 edies. 
 
 Pleasure follows. "And thus we see how these enemies 
 doe threaten us. Fear does anticipate, hope divert, sorrow 
 overturn the happiness we look for ; or, rather, they fight 
 against the happiness itself; fear secretly undermining, 
 hope circumventing, sorrow charging it at full. But, above
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 49 
 
 all, the most dangerous is behind PLEASURE '." The rea- 
 son of the peculiar danger that attends the indulgence of 
 pleasure is then shown to consist in the so false resem- 
 blance it bears in itself to happiness, that it is like to steal 
 through all the " guards and watches" that we keep, into 
 our strongest " retreats and strongholds." Nothing, Eliot 
 observes, in the course of much splendour of eloquence and 
 reason, " nothing is so petulant and refractory, so exorbitant 
 and irregular, as pleasure. No rule, no law. no authority 
 cau contain it ; but, like Semiramis, admit her government 
 for a day, she usurps the rule for ever." 
 
 Having considered these impediments to happiness, these 
 obstructions to the monarchy of man, Eliot indulges a spec- 
 ulation on the design of Providence in thus appearing to 
 have opposed, by the creation of such unworthy passions, 
 its own vast and pure design. 
 
 " But here an objection or wonder may be made, how, 
 from one fountain, such different streams should flow ; how, 
 from the self-same head, such contraries should derive them- 
 selves ; and that greater wonder may arise how the great 
 architect and workman, who gave being to all things in his 
 divine wisdom, did so create the mind by the infusion of 
 such principles, that the contrariety of their motions should 
 threaten the destruction of his work ! For faction and di- 
 vision imply this, and the dissension of the parts hazards 
 the confusion of the whole. It's a great cause of wonder, 
 in tlie thing, that it is so, but of far greater admiration in 
 the reason. That he, thus wise, thus willing, thus able to 
 give perfection to his art, should, in the masterpiece there- 
 of, in his own portraiture and image, leave it with .imper- 
 fection ! This is enough for wonder and admiration (if it 
 were so). But yet the next has more the inscrutability of 
 that reason ; which turns these imperfections to perfec- 
 tions ; which in these contrarieties makes agreement ; by 
 these differences, these divisions, these dissensions, works 
 unity and concord ! This is a cause of wonder and admira- 
 tion so transcendent, as human capacity cannot reach. O ! 
 the incomprehensible glory of the wisdom by which such 
 secrets are disposed ! We may see it almost in every 
 thing, as the effect gives illustration to the cause ; and so 
 in fact confirm, though we cannot penetrate, the reason it- 
 self. All things, almost generally, will demonstrate it. If 
 we look into the universality of the world^er the concurrence 
 of its parts, are there more contraries than in the comon 
 materials they consist of? Can there be more antipathy 
 than the elements sustain? What greater enemies than 
 fire and water can be found 7 What more violent than their 
 wars ? And so with the air and earth. Dryness and 
 moisture are opposed ; than which no things can be more 
 different ; yet amongst these what a sweet league anc! ami tie 
 is contracted 1 What mutual love and correspondency they 
 retain ! Fire agrees with water, earth with air, the latter 
 with the former, each severally with other, and so respect- 
 ively with all ! and that which is the perfection of them all, 
 the composition which they make, the frame of those ma- 
 terials, the body so compounded, has its being and existence 
 by the very mixture and diagram of these ! Nay, by the 
 want of either, their dissolution is enforced. So necessary 
 is the contrariety of the parts, and the opposition which they 
 make, that, without it, the whole cannot subsist. As thus 
 as in the generals, so in the particulars from thence. In 
 the immense infinitie of creatures, amongst the dead or liv- 
 ing, are their antipathies to be numbered ? Can arithmetic 
 define the contrarieties they have? Stone opposing stone, 
 metal against metal, plant against plant ; all war ! And 
 animate beasts contrary to beasts, fowls against fowls, fishes 
 against fishes ; in hate, in cruelty opposed, killing and de- 
 vouring e<ich other ; and yet all made serviceable to man ! 
 Amongst men, too, what contestations are there extant ; 
 wha-t wars, what quarrels, what dissensions ! Nation in 
 antipathy with nation, kindred opposed lo kindred, family 
 against family, man against man ! And, besides, how in- 
 finite is their difference and variety in temper, in atFection, 
 in condition ; so that reconciliation seems impossible, and, 
 without it, their subsistence. Yet in the revolution oif that 
 wisdom these thing are so turned, in the divine wheel of 
 providence their conversions are so made, that all move di- 
 rectly to one end ! The alloy and contestations of the parts 
 work the conservation of the whole." 
 
 Eliot now sums up the character and objects of the mon- 
 archy he seeks to establish ; ranging against it its various 
 impediments, that he may enlarge on the means of their re- 
 moval. This is beautifully done, by an exhibition of the utter 
 vanity of the causes to which, in general, they owe their 
 existence. Poverty, for instance, he begins with, as a thing 
 which provokes fear, but in which there is no essential 
 cause for fear. He treats this at great length, and with 
 much fervour. Don Guzman himself never said finer 
 things in behalf of poverty. " Are riches," he asks, " of 
 that virtue that their want should seem so terrible ? How 
 many have they sold to misery and unhappiness ! What 
 worlds of men have they corrupted and betrayed ! cor- 
 rupted in manners and affections, betrayed of their liberties 
 and lives !" Out of these reflections he plunges into a praise 
 of poverty. He tells the poor what they escape. He sums 
 
 G 
 
 up the diseases of the rich, famous for their excruciating 
 pains ; and contrasts with them the "privileges of poverty, 
 the immunities of want." He then drags forth from anti- 
 quity a long list of illustrious poor ; he speaks of the lives 
 of Fabricius, Curio, Menenius, Valerius, and Seneca; and 
 holds them up as the best of all examples to comfort and to 
 teach. " Who more valiant than Miltiades ?" he exclaims ; 
 "who more wise than Cymon? who than Ari slides more 
 just? who more temperate than Phocion? Yet all these 
 the poorest as the best of all their times !" 
 
 Sickness is treated of by Eliot next, as no just cause of 
 fear. From sickness, suggested by his own sufferings, he 
 advances through the various effects of power, to imprison- 
 ment, to death, but in none can he find "just cause of 
 feare." He acknowledges their aspects to be startling. 
 " To dispel the feare of that which power and greatness 
 may impose requires a harder labour, because the dangers 
 seem far greater, and are more various and more sudden. 
 For not to reflect on poverty and sickness as incidents to 
 this (which wounds and confiscations do imply), those too 
 frequent and two known effects of power but to look for- 
 ward and to view it in the other issues, which it has ; dis- 
 grace, imprisonment, DEATH, and those in all their ugli- 
 ness and deformity. This last is that tyrant which our ap- 
 prehensions do so fear ; that monstrum horrendum informe, 
 which strikes us with such terror ; this is that dire aspect 
 at which our resolutions do so fly ; this is that traitor that 
 makes such sedition ill our government, and which we must 
 the more carefully oppose for the vindication of our happi- 
 ness. In this place, therefore, we will only deal with it, 
 and with the rest hereafter." 
 
 Into these passages respecting death Eliot throws all his 
 eloquence : " Death," he says, ' has its consideration but 
 in terror ; and what is assumed from that is like the ima- 
 ginations of children in the darke, a meere fancie and opin- 
 ion." With a melancholy fondness, the anticipation of 
 their approaching intimacy, he defends death as a friend 
 might be defended. It has been slandered, he says, by those 
 who cannot have known it, "most untruly, most unjustly 
 slandered." " For either happiness it contains, or it repels 
 calamity, or gives satiety and weariness an end, or does 
 prevent the hardness of old age ! A conclusion 'tis to all ; 
 to some their wish ; but to none more meriting and deserv- 
 ing than to whom it comes uncalled for ! It frees from 
 servitude, dissolves the chains of captives, sets all prisoners 
 at liberty, and restores the banished to their country. All 
 their sorrows and disasters have termination in this point. 
 It has been called humanis tempestatibusportus, the harbour 
 of human miseries, the sedation of our troubles. Implying 
 thus the comparison of our life to a fluctuation on the seas, 
 we as poor mariners sailing in the weak vessels of our na- 
 ture and fortune, the wind tossing us by the continual agi- 
 tation of her tempests, trouble being instant and upon us, 
 danger most iminent and before us, hope fled, safety no- 
 where to be found ; death only is the haven to receive us, 
 where there is calmness and tranquillity, where there is rest 
 from all these storms and tempests ! In that port all fluc- 
 tuations of our life are quieted and composed; nor winds 
 nor seas have power upon us there ; fortune and time are 
 excluded from that road ; there we anchor in security, 
 without the distractions of new troubles ; there without 
 danger or hazard do we ride." 
 
 With a slight shade of humour, such as issues so natural- 
 ly out of a subject of this sort, and suits with it so well, 
 Eliot next calls for the evidence of men who have them- 
 selves died, as to the character of death. " No great vari- 
 ety," he observes, " can be looked for in this strange kinde 
 of proof, men so seldom returning from the dead." This is 
 simply an introduction to the story of that Athenian whom 
 Plato raised to speak of the terrors below the earth. Such 
 terrors were only for "the oppressors of mankind, such as 
 had made their wills their laws, tyrants, Arideus and his 
 followers, whom hell itself abhorred !" Far different was 
 the lot of the good, " the sen-ants unto virtue." Life is af- 
 terward beautifully presented by Eliot, in contrast with its 
 dark neighbour, as only " an inne to rest in, a lodging for 
 the night, an hostelry in our travels, in our continual jour- 
 ney to the mansion of our fathers !" Nay, life itself, he ex- 
 claims, taken at the best, is only made up of various deaths, 
 one passion dying, another succeeding but to die. "So 
 that our whole life is but an exercise of dying, and all the 
 changes and vicissitudes of nature, death, in a measure and 
 degree ! Why then should death be thought so terrible ? 
 where is the reason of that fear ?" Rather, he afterward 
 suggests, should it be made a matter of triumph and of 
 glory. " What martyrs have there been even in the work 
 of dying ! More joying, more rejoicing, than in all the acts 
 of life ! The glory of the Deity, the incarnate majesty of 
 the Son, those incomprehensible mysteries of divinity, then 
 appearing to them, by revelation to their sense, or by illu- 
 mination of the fancy the heavens opening to give free 
 passage to their view these, as it were, descending unto 
 them, giving them the possession here of that happiness 
 that eternal happiness and felicity, which is the chief ob- 
 ject of all hopes ; not that happiness we treat of, the rum-
 
 50 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 mum bonum of this life, the bonum publicum of our monarchy, 
 but the supernatural felicity to come, the transcendent hap- 
 piness hereafter !" 
 
 Nor will Eliot rest at these examples of the victorious 
 agonies of martyrdom, since they are sustained as it were by 
 the divine presence. There is a bravery which comes 
 nearer to his own, a grandeur of moral courage which needs 
 no miracle to help it. " I will resort," he says, " to patterns 
 of morality. Then, to see the confidence in them, the will- 
 ingness and cheerfulness of dying take it from those Gre- 
 cians, those three hundred at Thermopolis, who, for their 
 country, opposed themselves to all the power of Xerxes to 
 those many millions of the Persians whose thirst scarce 
 seas could satisfy, nor whole regions for one day find pro- 
 visions for their hunger ! Yet unto these those Grecians 
 could expose themselves, so few against so many, for the 
 safety of their mother. The clouds of darts that fell on 
 them they tearm'd an umbrell for the sunne ; their danger 
 they made glory ; their death they thought their life ; so 
 far from terror was it that they made it the subject of their 
 hopes. O happy men ! thus for their country to have died ! 
 Most happy country, to have brought forth such men ! whose 
 death became the character of her life, and was to her and 
 them a patent of immortality !" Among the crowding 
 thoughts of many examples of this kind, Eliot kindles into 
 a greater fervour, and he fills the solitary recesses of his 
 dungeon with men of Rome, of Athens, and of Sparta, " fel- 
 lows whom death itself might fear, sooner than be fearful 
 unto them. Mirrors of men," he finely continues, "are 
 chronicled for a free acceptance of that fate ; women did 
 scorn their children that did not scorn to flie it !" And as 
 Eliot thus recalls the past, an example nobler than all the 
 others rises up, because completer in the elements of moral 
 grandeur, in the perfection of self-control, the monarchy of 
 man. The philosopher Ramus stands before him, " who 
 died not as Cato, to avoid the dying by his enemies, nor 
 suddenly, to prevent the torment of the time, nor as those 
 Grecians, in the heat of blood and danger, when death does 
 come unthought but giving it all leave of preparation, ad- 
 mitting all circumstance of terror, in that form which his 
 enemies had cast, to the extremitie of their malice so he 
 encounters, so he receives and meets it, even in its very 
 contemplation ! His speculations were upon it, it was the 
 subject of his thoughts, and in that he valued it more pre- 
 cious than his life." 
 
 To this illustrious shadow of the past SIR WALTER 
 RALEIGH succeeds ! His image, indeed, had scarcely van- 
 ished from those dark walls that now surrounded Eliot, and 
 his spirit remained in the magnanimity of Eliot's soul. 
 " Shall I not add, as parallel to this, a wonder and example 
 of our own ? such as if that old philosopher were yet living, 
 without dishonour he might acknowledge, as the equal of 
 his virtue. Take it in that else unmatched fortitude of 
 our RALEIGH '. the magnanimity of his sufferings, that large 
 chronicle of fortitude ! All the preparations that are terrible 
 presented to his eye guards and officers about him fetters 
 and chains upon him the scaffold and executioner before 
 him and then the axe, and more cruel expectation of his 
 enemies ! And what did all this work on the resolution of 
 this worthy ? Made it an impression of weak fear 1 or a 
 distraction of his reason? Nothing so little did that great 
 soul suffer ! but gathered more strength and advantage 
 upon either. His mind became the clearer, as if already it 
 had been freed from the cloud and oppression of Hie body ; 
 and the trial gave an illustration to his courage, so that it 
 changed the affection of his enemies, and turned their joy 
 t sorrow, and all men else it filled with admiration ; leav- 
 ing no doubt but this, whether death were more acceptable 
 te him, or he more welcome unto death !" 
 
 How nobly expressed this is ! The style of Eliot, un- 
 cr&mped by the authorities to which he chose at times to 
 link it, was as free and grand as his own free thoughts. 
 These his friend Hampden, as the treatise advances, al- 
 ludes to with a profound deference. " Your apprehensions, 
 rthat ascend a region above those clouds which shadow us, are 
 (fit to pierce such heights ; and others to receive such no- 
 ttions as descend from thence ; which, while you are pleas- 
 ed to impart, you make the demonstrations of your favour to 
 (become the rich possessions of your ever faithful friend." 
 
 Eliot betrays a melancholy reluctance to let the subject 
 of death pass from him. Assuming that these examples of 
 fearlessness in dying are of too exalted a character for the 
 emulation of all men, that all have not the same motives or 
 .means of snstainment, he very beautifully says : " There is 
 no affection within man but has given examples in this case. 
 'Hope, joy, sorrow, fear itself, has conquered it, the weakest 
 oftfH others ! Fear of death has forced men to act the thing 
 theyrfear." And, after some very subtle reasoning to this 
 ipoirn^, he proceeds : " Therefore, that truth so known, we 
 :jnay in a generality conclude that death and fear are con- 
 quered both by love. Sorrow can do as much. And we 
 : have it an the infirmest of her daughters, pity, which is the 
 -tenderect of all thoughts, yet that subdues this fear, as 
 Tcitus inotes it of the multitudes after the fall of Otho." 
 Tfet Eliot concludes not even here. Still he lingers on the 
 
 praise and the privilege of death. " I shall then no more 
 be sick ; I shall then no more be bound ; I shall then leave 
 off to fear; I shall then not die again. If death were an evil 
 at the first, then it shall be no more. All the crosses and 
 disasters, all the calamities and afflictions, all things that 
 are fearful and evil in this life, them shall I be free from ! 
 No death shall thenceforth be an interruption to my happi- 
 ness, therefore why should I fear it ? But if death have all 
 these priviledges, why then do we live ? why do we not, as 
 Cleombrotus, having read Plato's discourses of the immor- 
 tality of the soul, precipitate ourselves? hasten to that ex- 
 cellence J press to that rich magazine of treasures? why do 
 we bear such miseries in life, there being- such felicity in 
 death ? and the transition in our power, so facile and so 
 ready ? The answer with the ethicks is emergent : mors 
 non debet esse fuga actionum, sed actio death must not 
 be a flight from action, but an action. Subterfuge is the 
 property of a coward ; blows and wounds are the honor of a 
 soldier. Dangers must not affright, but harden him, where 
 the cause requires his hazard." And through much elo- 
 quence he proceeds, impressing over again, and with an in- 
 creased fervour, the necessity of subduing fear, " though 
 the sun itself should tremble though th*e immense fabric 
 of the world should shake ;" and at last concluding by pray- 
 ing of all men, in all cases, to " expect calmly that issue 
 which time and virtue have appointed. Thus we must 
 look for death ; not as an enemy, but a friend ; which in his 
 own hours visits us, expects no invitation, may not be com- 
 
 Ielled, but has a free liberty before him. When he comes, 
 e comes attended by many priviledges, decked with flow- 
 ers of happiness, rest, and sweetness, and exemption of all 
 the evils of life. Therefore there is not the least cause to 
 fear it, or to raise that jealousy and distraction in our gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 The duty of opposing the desires is the next matter dis- 
 cussed. Eliot, after a delicate handling of the bodily pas- 
 sions, points out the jealousy and restless irresolution of 
 desire, agitated between the doubt of attainment and the 
 doubt of loss, hindering even its own satisfaction, and join- 
 ed with sorrow. " Shall this, then," he asks, " have en- 
 tertainment in the heart, where happiness and felicity should 
 dwell ? That it is a vanity and mere nothing, either the 
 act or the consequence do prove it ; for, in itself, what is it 
 more than an imagination and light fancy ? In the effect 
 and consequence, does any man conceive there is the least 
 advantage in the thought ? Does the most affectionate in, 
 this case think that the object is drawn nearer by his wish? 
 'Tis true, of faith 'twas said, ' believe, and then thou hast,' 
 but never of this desire. We may desire and want ; nay, 
 that want is but desire. Desire does make the want. As 
 it is nothing in itself, nothing but want does follow it a 
 vain and fruitless issue, like the mother. Nor is this all 
 for which wisdom does oppose it, that it is, thus, a vanity 
 and mere nothing. No ! as an evil likewise she contests 
 it ; nay, as the ground and root of all our miseries, the 
 spring and fountain of calamity !" Wielding, then, vast 
 knowledge with the most perfect ease, giving freshness to 
 old truths, and binding together by living ties the rude ma- 
 terials of dead learning, Eliot goes through the dangers 
 that are in desire ; " the cares, anxieties, and doubts ; the 
 thousand troubles and distractions which men in hope and 
 men in love are charged with ; for these in the notion are 
 but one, though distinguished in the expression. Pardou 
 me, Love," interposes Eliot here, " that soe hardly I have 
 matched thee ! it is my reason, not my affection, that does 
 speake it." He passionately continues, " What theatre or 
 amphitheatre will serve to repr&sent the tragedies it has 
 acted? In tragic scones of blood, what executions have 
 been done by the hand of this affection ! Man a butcher 
 upon man, acquaintance on acquaintance, familiar on famil- 
 iar, friend upon friend, kinsman upon kinsman, brother upon 
 brother, father upon son, the son upon the father ! drinking 
 up blood like leaches ; nay, making sacrifices of themselves, 
 to eternal horror and confusion ; and, with their own hands, 
 forcing a passage to that darkness which even hell itself 
 does tremble at ! What numberless examples of this kind 
 have love, covetousness, ambition, and their like, almost 
 every day exhibited, and are still contriving, to threaten, as 
 it were, the destruction of mankind !" 
 
 In accordance with his general plan of showing in the 
 profoundest view the vanity of the particular passion, by 
 showing the objects that usually excite it to be vain, Eliot 
 now treats the ordinary motives to love. In a portion of his 
 previous discussion of it he had reduced it simply, in its 
 voluptuous form, to " what is pleasant ;" and " pleasure" he 
 had shown to be unworthy. " The felicitie we look for is 
 an action : not a thought, not a dream, or imagination of the 
 fancie ; it is an action of virtue !" As of one of the motives 
 to the passion, he then speaks of the vanity of beauty. 
 " What," he asks, " can be found in beauty the object that 
 love has so to possess the affection of the mind, and cause 
 a defection from reason ? The description that was given 
 it by that unfortunate piece of merit who died where now 
 I live, may be a resolution in this point, who has it in that 
 idea of his wife, that
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 51 
 
 " ' Carnal beauty is but skin deep, 
 But to two senses known ; 
 Short even of pictures, shorter lived than life, 
 And yet survives the love that's built thereon !' 
 " wherein there is such a latitude of sense, such a perspi 
 cuity of truth, that, if all other fancies were collected, fchi 
 might be the judgment of them all. Here, in an abstract 
 is a full comprehension of their natures, with all plainness 
 yet elegantly rendered." 
 
 The name of this " unfortunate piece of merit" may hav 
 already suggested itself to the reader. It is Sir Thoma 
 Overbury. Keen was Eliot's sympathy for oppression in al 
 cases ; and here, in his love of literature (which Overbury' 
 writings, as I have before had an opportunity of saying 1 , had 
 in that age, most delicately adorned), and in some circum 
 stances of his own condition, much conspired to sliarpe 
 even that sharp sympathy. He dwells for some time wit! 
 fondness on this quotation from Overlmry's poem, and then 
 in a passage of lively interest, apologises, as it were, to th 
 reader. "Let it not," he says, " seem a wonder that 
 write this fancy for authority, being so new, and borne 
 amongst ourselves. I must confess my ignorance, if it be 
 so. I esteem it not the less as begotten in this age, and as 
 it is our own I love it much the more. 'Tis truth which 
 do look for, and the propriety of expression to endear it, no 
 only to the judgment, but the affections : making an insin 
 uation also by the language for the sense and reason of th( 
 tiling. This I find here, in this Theoreme, in as great full 
 ness, and as succinctly rendered, as the exoticks can pretend 
 Why then we should not value it to the truth and merii 
 which it bears is a wisdom past the apprehension of my 
 weakness. I must declare my folly in that point. As it is 
 of my country, I honour it the more ; and as it was the pro- 
 duction of this place, my admiration is the greater, that in 
 such solitude and darkness, where sorrow and distraction 
 mostly dwell, such happy entertainments and such minutes 
 were enjoyed." 
 
 I am not acquainted with any passage in the language 
 which expresses, in a few admirable words, a sounder canon 
 of criticism than is to be observed in the course of the above. 
 It is unnecessary to direct the reader's attention to the deep 
 meaning of the closing lines. I may add, that the feeling 
 so strongly intimated here, of opposition to a prevalent fash- 
 ion of that age, a fashion which belongs, perhaps, to the lit- 
 erary coxcombry of all ages, is in many other parts of his 
 work emphatically urged by Eliot. 
 
 Another object of desire riches is now discussed. The 
 passage is a beautiful companion to that of the deprecation 
 of poverty as an object of fear. His opening reasons against 
 the avarice of wealth are strongly stated. " Preposterous 
 and absurd" are the mildest epithets he affords to it at last. 
 He describes riches to be " deceitful in their nature, where- 
 as we think them somewhat, when truth does speake them 
 nothing ; deceitful in their qualities being flitting and un- 
 certain, without any constancie or stabilitie, always wing'd, 
 and flying from one subject to another ; deceitful in their 
 use as we take them to be helpful to our happiness, though 
 working the contrary by continuall anxieties and cares ! 
 Why should we then desire them, being no way to be trust- 
 ed, but in all consisting of fallacie and frauds ?" Very beau- 
 tiful are the series of questions that follow. "Hast thou 
 worth or meritt that might challenge them as due ? That 
 is a mysterie to them. They cannot discerne it. The 
 worthless and the worthy are equal in their sense." "They 
 are the maine occasion," he continues, "of all differences, 
 the ager contentiosus, as it were, the field of quarrel and 
 contention, as that antiently neare Berwicke to the English 
 and Scotch nations." Nobly Eliot sums up their high de- 
 merits. " If these be their proprieties, how can we then 
 desire them ? If they be but serviceable to these, if they 
 have no fellowship with honesty, if they dissolve the pow- 
 ers of reason and of virtue, if they be distractive and con- 
 tentious, blind, mad, deceitful, and uncertain, what is it 
 that should make that attraction in our hearts, and disturb 
 our self-sovereignty and command ?" The subject is closed 
 with a very fine allusion to the only one mode of converting 
 the dross of riches into true gold, by the alchemy of virtue. 
 You may have riches, Eliot says, you may desire them, if 
 your purpose is to convert them to good. " But how is 
 that ?" he asks ; " by what means must it be done ? The 
 poet does expresse it ; 
 
 " ' Divitias proba 
 Virtutis instrumenta facite. Sic 
 Boni credimini, et vitara beatam 
 Degere poteritis !' 
 
 " Make riches instruments of virtne, let them be servants 
 to that mistress. Soe you may live happily and well." 
 
 Honour is the next subject treated by Etiot as an ob- 
 ject of desire. This, in the worldly acceptation, is regarded 
 by him with an extreme scorn. " Something still may be 
 said for beantie and for riches ; but the honour and glory 
 that the world so names have noe reality or substance, noe 
 solidd being or existence, but are suppositious and imagin- 
 arie, like those essences of philosophers, qua quasi aunt, as 
 
 they say, which are but as if they were." "Let the de- 
 scription of that author," Eliot continues, having indulged 
 a severe censure upon the worldly cause of honour, fame, 
 " let the description of that author speake the nature of the 
 subject. Let Fame, from which honour is deduced, show 
 what this honour is, it being the daughter of that mother. 
 In that mother take the qualitie of the daughter. Of which 
 Virgill thus : 
 
 " ' Illam Terra parens, ira inritata deorum, 
 
 Extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Euceladoque sororem 
 Progenuit, pedibus celerem, et pernicibus alis. 
 Monstrum horrendum, ingens : cui, quot sutit corpora 
 Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu, [plumie, 
 
 Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris. 
 Nocte volat coeli medio temeque, per umbram 
 Stridens, nee dulci decimal lumina somno. 
 Luce sedet custos, aut summi culmine tecti, 
 Turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbis: 
 Tarn ficti pravique tenax, quam nuutia veri.' 
 
 (which Eliot translates with freedom}" ' First, as sister to 
 the Gyants, the Earth produced it in malice of the Gods 
 swift-footed, light-winged, a huge and horrid monster; 
 having that strange thing to be told under each feather of 
 her body, a prying watchful eye ; and unto that both ears 
 and tongues as many, and mouths not fewer, always in 
 sound and motion. All night it flies through the middle of 
 the heavens, and divides the darkness, giving no place to 
 rest. And in the day it sits on the supreme tops of houses, 
 or in high turrets, a terror to whole cities, being as well 
 the herald of lies and mischiefs as a reporter of the contra- 
 ry !' This Virgill makes both her nature and descent." 
 
 Adopting the suggestion of the Latin poet, Eliot now 
 works out a very fine contrast between the huge, but inca- 
 pable, energies of the Titans, and the calm accomplishing 
 grandeur of the gods. In the eyes of the latter, he says, 
 and to the perceptions of philosophy, fame is nothing. The 
 following passage succeeds. It is a masterly dissection of 
 one of the things denominated honour, in shape of an inqui- 
 ry into the claim of hereditary rank ; which for sober satire, 
 joined to exalted reason, could with difficulty be excelled. 
 It calls to my memory some forcible and eloquent things, 
 which are urged in a style precisely similar, by one of the 
 most original thinkers of this or of any age, Mr. Walter Sav- 
 age Landor, in his delightful " Examination of Shakspeare 
 r Deer-stealing." " And now to see," says Eliot, " wheth- 
 er this ' honor' be confined within an order, limited to per- 
 sons and degrees, or left promiscuously to all, as their 
 worths and qualities shall deserve it. Wherein let reason 
 be the judge. Is it the reward of virtue or of fortune they 
 would make it ? Let them answer who so magnify this 
 >retence. Do they apply that honor to their houses or 
 hemselves? Is it the distinction of their families, or the 
 faerdon of their merits ? If they will take it for distinction, 
 tis but a name, and the poorest. The basest have as much, 
 and small cause there is to glory in that subject. If it be 
 he distinction of their families, the character of their houses, 
 hough it once implied a glory, what can it be to them more 
 han treasures are to porters ? But they will say it is the 
 flory of their ancestors, the acquisition of their virtues, 
 and from them it does descend hereditarily to us.' So may 
 he porter say. That treasure is his master's, and by his 
 will-imposed upon his shoulders ; but to whose use, and in 
 whose right, has he received it ? in his owne, or to his owne 
 irofit and advantage ? Masters would take this ill, if their 
 ervants should usurp it ; and all men would condemn them, 
 >oth of falsehood and ingratitude. So is it, in the other, an 
 njury to their ancestors, if they pretend that honor to be 
 heirs. They can but carry it to their use, as a monument 
 f their virtues that acquired it, not in their own interest 
 nd right, to the glory of themselves ; nay, not without their 
 tiame, whose purchase cannot equal it, being but the sole 
 nheritors of the fortune, not the worth. But if they waive 
 leir families, and reduce it to themselves, between their 
 irtues and their fortunes, how will they divide it? If for- 
 une do appropriate it, then the most vicious, the most ig- 
 orant, the most dishonorable may be honorable ; slaves, 
 nd they, may be equal in this kind ; for not seldom have 
 ley tasted the liberality of fortune, and this honor none 
 villenvy them. If virtue be the loadstone that procures it, 
 where is it ? Let them shew it in the effect, and then I 
 ope they'll grant that all so qualified may be honorable. 
 .11 men that have the virtue may participate. Where, 
 len, is the propriety they challenge ? where is that pecu- 
 ar interest they claim ? Certainly not in this. This hon- 
 r will not bear it, which is the crown of virtue ! All per- 
 sons, all orders, all degrees extant may be capable thereof, 
 "'hey are without exception or exclusion, and, for such oth- 
 r honors as are fancied, let them enjoy an immunity there- 
 n ; I shall rather pity than malign them !" 
 After this, as it were to while away the time, Eliot bring* 
 p in aid of the general question new " squadrons of author- 
 ties ;" disputing some, exalting; others. " In one word," 
 e subsequently says, " honor is no other than to follow 
 joodnesg. To be a servant unto virtue is to be master of
 
 53 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 true honor, and without that service no honor can be had. 
 Therefore the Romans, those most honorable above all men, 
 in the temples which they dedicated, joined those of virtue 
 and honor to each other, and to that of honor left no entrance 
 or accession but through the gate of virtue ; shewing by 
 that symbol where true honor rests, and how it is attained, 
 which is by following virtue. But how is that ? how is vir- 
 tue to be followed ? in a fair and easy pace ? will that con- 
 duce to honor T can honor be so had ?" Eliot answers 
 these questions with elaborate care, and closes the subject, 
 after a strong reiteration of his protest against the hereditary 
 claim, that honour should not be " appropriated to any or- 
 der or degree, as is pretended," for that " to be gotten and 
 descended even of princes is an accident," with an allusion 
 to those enemies of Roman tyranny whose honour, because 
 it was true, outshone the worst envy of the times. Eliot 
 had a peculiar right to call to mind these men, for in his 
 own nature he presented some of their noblest qualities 
 the fiery energy of Cassius, and Brutus's brave philosophy. 
 " Tacitus," he says, " notes it upon the funeral of Junia, 
 where so many famous images were exhibited, the glory of 
 their families, that Brutus and Cassius being omitted 
 through the envy of those times, they ontshined the rest 
 because their statues were not seen. ' Eo ipso quod effigies 
 eorum non visebantur prefulgebant,' as he has it. They 
 being so concealed, their glory was the greater. Which 
 shews that honor is most had when it is least affected. 
 Why, then, should this disturb us with ambition? why 
 should it make a faction in our government ? why should it 
 cause the distraction of our hopes ? Ambition cannot pur- 
 chase it, the hope thereof is vain ; no art, no practice can 
 acquire it but by the rule of virtue. And so only, as the 
 virtue is intended, let virtue be our aim. Leave that desire 
 of honor. Let it not be a worke of our affections, for in that 
 case we must fight with honor as with enemies." 
 
 The reader will have remarked with what a steady pur- 
 pose, in how close a vice of logic, the main object and ar- 
 gument of the treatise is kept. Eliot now examines his po- 
 sition. " And thus we see from the several objects of desire 
 how little cause there is for that disturbance and impulsion. 
 Honor contains no reason, being rather an enemie than 
 friend to that affection, flying and not following it. Beauty 
 has as little, consisting but of vanity. Riches much less, 
 that are but instruments of corruption. Also for fear, pov- 
 erty, death, sickness, and the like, which have as small 
 warrant and authority for that passion. Let us now search 
 what more there is in Pleasure, that counterfeit of happi- 
 nesse, and apply our laws to that ; for, being the most 
 dangerous of our adversaries, it must the more cautiously 
 be dealt with." To the subject of pleasure, accordingly, 
 Eliot reverts, with the intention of impressing more emphat- 
 ically in that regard the duty of self-restraint. A vast num- 
 ber of authorities are brought to bear upon it, and Eliot 
 takes occasion to express the most exalted admiration of 
 Homer. He calls him a " prophet and a poet." He amuses 
 himself, at the same time, with notices of Lucian' comments 
 upon Homer, and pursues at great length the analogy be- 
 tween the resistance of Ulysses to the Syrens, and a perfect 
 self-restraint in man. He bound himself, he says, he re- 
 stricted his liberty. "But wherewith was that done? 
 What were the obligations he incurred? How shall this 
 come to us ? Most properly and most readily, if we will 
 endeavour but that means, if we will use the example of 
 that worthy. The same safety is for us which was then 
 wrought to him, and that that great prophet has delivered, 
 with all sincerity and fulness. You know he makes Vlys- 
 ses then on ship board. And that much experienced man, 
 most curious of all knowledge, would needs add to that the 
 musick of the Syrens, the perception of that excellence, 
 though not trusting to himself for the resistance of their 
 powers, in which both danger and destruction were implied. 
 To avoid this, he feigns to be fastened to the mast ; his men, 
 meanwhile, do intend their labours, having their senses 
 stopped (vulgar appetites being not capable of such dainties). 
 Now, as this musick was but pleasure, those Syrens the oc- 
 casion, so the virtue were the cords that did restrain and 
 bind him, reason the mast to which he was so fastened, 
 philosophy the ship in which he sailed and went ; and 
 in this ship, thus fastened to that mast, having had both 
 the occasion and delight, he escap't the dangers threatened, 
 and in that preserved the safety of his course. But what 
 was that ? the same that is our government, the way to hap- 
 piness and felicity ! this was his Ithaca, this was that 
 course intended, and with these helpes, notwithstanding all 
 the difficulties, this he accomplished and performed ! Now 
 is not this a plain direction unto us ? Is not our remedy, 
 our deliverance from this danger, aptly expressed in this 
 mirror and example ? Our syrens are not more, their har- 
 monies not stronger ; the same ship we have, with the same 
 tackle ; the same ropes, the same mast continue still. 
 Cannot our course, then, be the same ' Is not the same 
 safety yet before us ? If we doubt that tackle will not hold 
 us against those strong enchantments, let us stop our senses, 
 as Vlysses did with his men, and first avoid the occasions. 
 Nothing is lov'd, not known. Let us, then, stint our curi- 
 
 osity herein, and the desire will leave us. But how is that? 
 how shall that work be done ? Is it to shun all pleasure, 
 all occasions ? That cannot be, nor is it requisite to this ? 
 For virtue in the concrete is not absolute, nor to be so ex- 
 pected in our monarchy," 
 
 All this is subtly and well expressed ; and its deep spirit 
 of philosophy has farther vent in the following remarkable 
 passage : " We daily see it in experience, that those who 
 have least affections are most violent (least, I mean, exten- 
 sively, in respect of number, and the object) ; their passions 
 being impetuous as contracted to that narrowness, and mas- 
 terlessin that. As Tacitus notes it in Tiberius, who, being 
 most reserved and hidden unto all men, to Sejanus yet was 
 open and incautious. SMJ it is likewise unto others. The 
 heart, being straightened by some objects, growcs more vio- 
 lent in those passions ; the affection does inlarge as the 
 scope thereof is lessened. Therefore we thus expose that 
 precept of division : that pleasures may be a remission to 
 the mind, not an intention that we may taste, not swallow 
 them that the appetition may be obtemperate to reason, 
 wherein only true pleasures doe consist." 
 
 Carrying out his plan of reverting to the more dangerous 
 impediments in the way of man's monarchy, Eliot now re- 
 sumes the subject of sorrow : " Sorrow," he again insists, 
 " is a perfect enemy, standing in such antipathy with happi- 
 ness, that it is irreconcileable for our government : there- 
 fore to this also we must oppose all the resistance we 
 have, for this moves most violently against us ; and if it 
 get possession of our hearts, if it once enter on that fort, all 
 our happiness is gone, our monarchy is subverted ! For it 
 destroys the end, the felicity we look for, and then the 
 means is uselesse. It dissolves it in the principle, and so 
 brings it to confusion. For where sorrow is no felicity can, 
 be, and a mind so affected can have no taste of happiness. 
 To encounter it, therefore, as physicians do diseases, we 
 will first meet it in the cause ; for if that can be removed, 
 the effect forthwith will follow it. The object being gone, 
 the affection must fall after it." Eliot then points out, with 
 renewed earnestness, the fallacy and folly of supposing that 
 things which assume at times the aspects of sorrow are in 
 reality sorrowful. He argues the great principle of the poet 
 of nature, that " there's a Providence that shapes our ends, 
 rough-hew them how we will." Above all, however, ha 
 impresses the virtue of opposing- whatever appears in sor- 
 row's shape. The exercise, he says, will be great, a disci- 
 pline of humanity, and an invaluable example to others. 
 "For are not solfliers sometimes heightened in their cour- 
 age by the valour of their fellows ? Do not the valiant often 
 receive new fortitude and spirits by the acts of magnanim- 
 itie of others? Has not admiration, has not emulation this 
 effect, to work the likeness of that virtue which it has seen 
 before it ? to reduce to act the image of that idea which 
 the apprehension has conceived, and, from the excellence 
 of the pattern, to draw an antitype thereof. Wherefore 
 were exhibited those bloody spectacles at Rome those 
 butcheries of men those tragic representations to the peo- 
 plebut to inure them to blood, to harden them in dangers, 
 to familiar them with death ? And shall not better acts, to 
 better ends directed, have the like power and operation 1 
 Shall not divinity, by the works of divine men opposing 
 their afflictions, have as great force in precedent and exam- 
 ple as these Romans had by that fighting with beasts, or 
 contesting one another, to harden, to encourage the minds 
 of the more virtuous against all difficulties, all dangers ?" 
 
 Eliot, after remarking on Plato's noble commentary of the 
 inscription on the Delphic oracle, yvdiQi atavrov, farther, 
 urges this consideration: "It is required of man that he 
 should profit many. It is a common duty of mankind, as 
 far as ability may extend, still to do good to all, or, if not 
 that, to some, as opportunity shall be granted him. Or, if 
 he fail in that, yet to his neighbours, or at least unto 
 himself. But here, in this act of passion and wrestling 
 with calamities, there is advantage given for all. In this 
 contestation of those things we call miseries there is a per- 
 formance of all these. First, to thyself, thou profittest 
 through the favor of the gods, that give thee this instruc- 
 tion, this education, this trial, this knowledge of thyself, 
 this confirmation of thy virtue. Then to thy neighbours, 
 and all others, thou art profitable by thy precedent and ex- 
 ample. Thy fortitude adds courage unto them, stout and 
 valiant. How then how, in this excellence of duty, in this 
 great duty of advantage of advantage to ourselves, of ad- 
 vantage to our neighbours, of advantage nnto all we should 
 repine and sorrow, as 'tis a prejudice to our happiness, it's 
 a wonder unto reason !" With much beauty Eliot after- 
 ward disposes of the last and best plea that would seem to 
 remain for sorrow a friend at the grave of his friend. 
 " Let me first ask this question of the sorrower : For whose 
 sake that passion is assumed 1 for his that is so lost, or 
 for thine own that lost him ? Answer to this, and make a 
 justification for thyself. If thou wilt say for his, where is 
 the evil that he suffers ? Wherein lies the reason of that 
 grief? Design it out ; give it some character to express it. 
 Is it in that he is dead ? in that he has made a transition to 
 the elders ? That cannot be for death contains no evil, as
 
 SIR JOHN ELIOT. 
 
 53 
 
 our former proofs have manifested"; but is a priviledge of 
 immortality, an eternity of happiness. Is it for that he is 
 not ? that he is not numbered with the living * That were 
 to lament but because he is not miserable. Thou canst not 
 but acknowledge the distraction of thy fears, the anxiety of 
 thy cares, the complexion of thy pleasures, the mixture of 
 thy sorrows ! With all these, and upon all, no rest, no quiet, 
 no tranquillity, but a continual vexation of thy thoughts, a 
 servile agitation of thy mind from one passion to another ! 
 And wilt thou grieve for him that has his freedom, his im- 
 munity from these ? On the other side : is that sorrow for 
 thyself, that thou hast lost a friend the sweetness, the ben- 
 efit of his friendship thy comfort in society the assistance 
 of thy business the sublevation of thy cares the extenua- 
 tion of thy griefs the multiplication of thy joys thy cas- 
 tle thy counsel thy sword thy shield thy store thy 
 health thy eye thy ear thy taste thy touch thy smell 
 the CATHOLICON of thy happiness (for all these are attri- 
 butes of friendship) ? consider, first, whether friendship 
 may not change, whether a breach and enmity may not fol- 
 low it, as not seldom happens in the most strict conjunctions, 
 with which then no enmity may compare ! Then 'twere 
 better thus to have lost it, that evil being prevented^ and the 
 obligation, the virtue kept entire ! But if that doubt pre- 
 vails not ; if thou supposes! a perpetuity in that friendship, 
 an assurance of that love ; is it not envy in thee, and un- 
 worthiness thereof, for these respects, those temporary ben-. 
 efits to thyself, to grudge at his happiness and felicity, 
 which is infinite and celestial ? Justice may resolve how 
 far this is from friendship, how unworthy of that name !" 
 This sorrowing, Eliot afterward observes, is variously ap- 
 plied. "Marcellus wept when he had taken Syracuse; 
 Alexander, to have no more worlds to conquer." Conclu- 
 ding with the phrase of the ethics, that to conquer what 
 might be fancied real calamities "not only makes a man a 
 conqueror, and wise, but equal, nay, superior to the gods ;" 
 Eliot, in a passage of great eloquence, banishes sorrow from 
 his government. 
 
 Having thus disposed of the impediments to the monarchy 
 of man of the obstructing passions Eliot now turns to the 
 elevation of the monarchy itself, to the virtues by whose 
 exercise and operation, condensed into two great purposes, 
 the structure is to be raised. " Our next care must be how 
 to obtain the virtue, how to possess the means which must 
 procure that end ; and if that can be acquired, then is our 
 felicity complete, then we have that perfection of our gov- 
 ernment, the summum bonum in philosophy, the bonum 
 publicum in our policy, the true end and object of the mon- 
 archy of man. Two parts it has action and contemplation ; 
 of which the first divides itself into two branches, as the 
 virtue agendo aud dicendo, doing and saying, both which 
 concur to action. By doing, is intended those travels and 
 motions of the body that are necessary in the performance 
 of those works which the duty aud office of our callings re- 
 quire ; by saying, is meant that expression of the tongue 
 whereby the intelligence of the heart is made communicable 
 to others, and the thoughts are conveyed to the understand- 
 ing of the hearers. In these two all action does consist, 
 and so that part of the virtue and perfection. Both these 
 have a rule, and level, and direction, which we did touch 
 before, as the cornon duty of mankind. In that duty their 
 office is implied, which is that it be profitable to many. In 
 the general good and benefit it must be extended, first to all, 
 then, after, to ourselves." Here Eliot interposes in a pa- 
 renthesis this valuable reminder : " For all right of office is 
 destroyed by the inversion of this order. To reflect first 
 upon ourselves, our own particular interests, and then upon 
 the general, is the contrary of duty, the breach of office and 
 relation. Therefore to the publike both our words and ac- 
 tions must first move, without respect, without retraction 
 for our private. They must first intend the common good 
 and benefit, and so descend by degrees unto ourselves. For 
 as members are in bodies for the perfection of the man, so 
 men in bodies politike, as parts of these societies, and for 
 the conservation of the whole, and to that end their chief 
 endeavour must incline." Eliot then, with a noble fervour, 
 inculcating the practice of his own life, thus resumes: 
 " Here some questions will arise ; how far this shall engage 
 us ? what latitude it imports ? what cautions and excep- 
 tions it admits ? Difficulties may occur, and then involve 
 us in anxieties, with troubles and perplexities disturbing our 
 tranquillities, distracting the quietness we are in. And shall 
 we forsake that sweetness ? shall we neglect that fatness of 
 our peace (as the fig and olive said of old) for the publike 
 use and service? for the profit and commodity of others? 
 YES ! no difficulties may retard us, no troubles may divert 
 us, no exception is admitted to this rule ! but where the 
 greater good is extant, the duty and office there is absolute, 
 without caution or respect. That greater good appearing, 
 nothing may dissuade us from the work no respect of ease, 
 no respect of pleasure, no respect of the troubles we may 
 meet ; but in performance of that duty, in accomplishment 
 of that office, our troubles must seem pleasant, our labours 
 must seem facile, all things easy, all things sweet therein ; 
 for the rula is, Officium non fraction scqui, to observe the 
 
 duty, not the benefit, to seek that end which is propounded 
 in the general, not to propound an end and reason of our 
 own. But danger may be incident ! it may betray our 
 safeties, and expose our fortunes, expose our liberties, ex- 
 pose our lives to hazard ! and shall we, then, adventure 
 upon these ? shall we forsake our safeties ? shall we incur 
 those dangers, for foreign interests and respects, for that 
 which concerns but others, which is foreign unto us ? Yes, 
 this likewise we are bound to; our obligation lies in this. 
 No danger, no hazard may deter us. The duty and office 
 stand entire." 
 
 In this first division of material for Eliot's grand structure 
 the reader will recognise the old principle of the ancients, 
 in their separation of the characteristics of wisdom. The 
 one, which we have just seen described, comprehending the 
 beginning and end of all things to be done, <j>p6vtcii, pru- 
 dentia ; the other, which Eliot is now about to subjoin, com- 
 passing the manner and ways conducing to those ends, oo<t>ia, 
 sapientia. " The rest," he says, describing the latter, " all 
 follow this, and are but servants to this mistress, several op- 
 erations of this faculty having their appellations from their 
 works. If we would ask what fancy does intend, what is 
 the signification of that name, the answer is, 'Tis wisdom, 
 the divine spirit of the mind, that hunts out all intelligence . 
 If we may inquire what memory does import, the same an- 
 swer serves, 'Tis wisdom, the influence of that faculty. 
 For where the fancy cannot keep all things upon intention, 
 memory is suggested for supply of that defect, and so makes 
 up the wisdom. If we would know what judgment does 
 implie,the resolution is the same. 'Tis but an act of wis- 
 dom, the operation of that power. Therefore in this con- 
 sists the perfection of all theory, the sum of all contempla- 
 tion, and so that other part of virtue." Very beautiful is 
 the passage that follows : " But how may this wisdom, then, 
 be had ? Where may we seek and find it * The answer is 
 most obvious : In the doctrines of philosophy ; for philoso- 
 phy is the introduction to this wisdom ; so both the word 
 and reason do import ; for by the word is signified only a 
 love of wisdom, a love of that wisdom which we speak of; 
 and that love will be accompanied with an endeavour to at- 
 tain it, which is intended in the common sense and notion. 
 For that science of philosophy is but a guest of wisdom, 
 the study of that excellence : and BO Plato gives it in his 
 gradations unto happiness. Philosophy is the first step he 
 makes as the desire of wisdom; to which he adds the study 
 and contemplation to attain it. From that study and spec- 
 ulation he arises unto wisdom, from that wisdom unto hap- 
 pinesse. So that philosophy is the principle. Wisdom does 
 there begin, which has its end in happinesse, and happi- 
 nesse in this order is the production of philosophy. In sum, 
 all contemplation is but this, but this study of philosophy. 
 If it ascend the heavens to view the glory of that beauty, 
 philosophy does direct it. If it descend to measure the cen- 
 tre of the earth, philosophy goes with it. If it examine na- 
 ture and her secrets, philosophy must assist it. If it reflect 
 on causes or effects, that turn is by philosophy. The con- 
 templation of all ends, all beginnings, all successes, is pro- 
 pounded by philosophy. So that philosophy, in contempla- 
 tion, is as prudence in the virtues, the architect and chief 
 workman, that gives motion and direction to the rest. Great 
 is the excellence of philosophy, as it is chief in contempla- 
 tion, and the accompaniment of that virtue. Greater much 
 it is, as it is a principle to wisdom, and an instructor to the 
 counsell. But beyond all comparison it is greatest, as it is 
 the first degree to happinesse, as it leads on to that perfec- 
 tion of our government ! No words can sufficiently expresse 
 it, nor render a true figure of that worth. Being in con- 
 templation, contemplation only must conceive it !" 
 
 The question then occurs : Which of these great divisions 
 of the virtues is to be considered the highest and most per- 
 fect ? And Eliot answers it. As an exercise of the facul- 
 ties, in pure and single grandeur, he pronounces at once in 
 favour of philosophy, of contemplation ; but is careful to 
 modify this immediately after, by pronouncing no wisdom 
 complete without the active practices of virtue. Speaking 
 on the first head, he urges the superior greatness of the 
 contemplative philosopher, in regard that his thoughts are 
 fixed on the final intelligence : " And he that levels at that 
 mark,.though he come short, yet shoots higher than he that 
 aims but at man. Besides, there is this advantage in it, 
 that nothing can be contracted from the president to preju- 
 dice or corrupt it, which lower examples may induce ; but 
 much perfection may be added hjr the elevation of the mind. 
 A chemicks in the disquisition of the elixar, though the 
 wonder be not found, yet have extracted great varieties by 
 that labour, excellent demonstrations by that work. It ii 
 the way in part to resume the image we have lost, for that 
 was not an outward figure, but a resemblance in virtue. If 
 that similitude was laid in virtue, it cannot so aptly be re- 
 paired as by the imitation of the Deity, in whom the exact- 
 ness of all virtue does remain. This help philosophy does 
 give us in the speculation of eternity ; and likewise it de- 
 rives to our present view and prospect the knowledge of all 
 antiquity, in whit their happiness consisted, what were the 
 ingredient! of that compound, and how it was lost at first,
 
 54 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 whence the judgment may resolve what is true happinesse 
 to us." On the second head, however, Eliot immediately 
 subjoins: " But if so, if philosophy and contemplation have 
 this fruit, that these degrees of happinesse be in them, and 
 so direct a way to happinesse itself, how is it that we in- 
 volve us in such toils, such anxieties and perplexities, to 
 acquire it ? It is a vanity and folly by such hard labour to 
 effect, when a less trouble, a less travail comes so near ' 
 If philosophy and contemplation can procure it, those sweet 
 and gentle motions of the soul, what need the co-operations 
 of the body, those actions and those passions, which virtue 
 does require, and which so often force distraction, nay, de- 
 struction upon men ? Yet they are needful, for without vir- 
 tue true happinesse cannot be, and these compose the other 
 half of virtue. For contemplation and action make the 
 whole. Virtue consists only in both, and in part there is no 
 perfection. Therefore to contemplation action also must 
 be joined, to make a complete virtue, and by that virtue 
 only true happinesse may be had." And, careful not to be 
 misunderstood in what he had said before of the supremacy 
 of contemplation, he adds (with an intimation that he will 
 discuss the matter more fully in a future treatise a project 
 stopped by death !) that contemplation must be considered 
 the chief, for "contemplation is the beginning of all action, 
 the principle of that motion : action but a derivative of that, 
 and no derivation can be equal to the primitive, no second 
 comparable with the first. All actions are but the emana- 
 tion of the will, and the will receives her instance from the 
 apprehension of the mind. But still," he adds, " both must 
 be concurrent. Virtue is a composition of them both. Con- 
 templation must prepare the matter of our happinesse, action 
 dispose and order it." 
 
 Eliot's great purpose now accomplished, he closes his la- 
 bours with an exalted eulogy on the independence and su- 
 periority of the mind. I present it to the reader entire. It 
 is worthy to have closed a work of such nobility in concep- 
 tion and power in execution. 
 
 " This makes up that perfection of our monarchy that 
 happinesse of the mind which, being founded upon these 
 grounds, built upon these foundations, no power or great- 
 ness can impeach. Such is the state and majesty, that no- 
 thing can approach it but by the admission of these ser- 
 vants ; such is the safety and security, that nothing can vi- 
 olate or touch it but by these instruments and organs ; such 
 is the power and dignity, that all things must obey it. All 
 things are subject to the mind, which, in this temper, is the 
 commander of them all. No resistance is against it. It 
 breaks through the orbes and immense circles of the heav- 
 ens, and penetrates down to the centre of the earth ! It 
 opens the fountains of antiquity, and runs down the streams 
 of time, below the period of all seasons ! It dives into the 
 dark counsels of eternity and into the abstruse secrets of 
 nature ! It unlocks all places, and all occasions are alike 
 obvious to it ! It does observe those subtil passages in the 
 air, and the unknown paths and traces in the deeps! 
 There is that great power of operation in the mind, that 
 quickness and velocity of motion, that in an instant it does 
 passe from extremity to extremity, from the lowest to the 
 highest, from the extremest point of the west to the horo- 
 scope and ascendant in the east. It measures in one thought 
 the whole circumference of heaven, and by the same line it 
 takes the geography of the earth. The air, the fire, all 
 things of either, are within the comprehension of the mind. 
 
 It has an influence' on them all, whence it takes all that may 
 be useful, and that may be helpful in its government. No 
 limitation is prescribed it, no restriction is upon it, but in a 
 free scope it has liberty upon all. And in this liberty is the 
 excellence of the mind ; in this power and composition of the 
 mind is the perfection of the man ; in that perfection is the 
 happinesse we look for ; when in all sovereignty it reigns, 
 commanding, not commanded ; when at home, the subjects 
 are subject and obedient, not refractory and factious ; when 
 abroad, they are as servants, serviceable and in readiness, 
 without hesitation or reluctance ; when to the resolutions of 
 the counsell, to the digests of the laws, the actions and af- 
 fections are inclined this is that summum bonum, and 
 chiefe good, which in this state and condition is obtain'd '. 
 The mind for this has that transcendence given it, that man, 
 though otherwise the weakest, might be the strongest and 
 most excellent of all creatures. In that only is the excel- 
 lence we have, and thereby are we made supei.'or to the 
 rest. For in the habits of the body, in all the faculties 
 thereof, man is not comparable to others, in sense and mo- 
 tion far inferior to many. The ancients suppose it the in- 
 discretion of Epimetheus, having the first distribution of the 
 qualities, to leave us so defective, when to the rest he gave 
 an excellence in their kinds. As swiftness and agility to 
 some, strength and fortitude to others ; and whom he found 
 weakest, these he made most nimble, as in the fowls and 
 others it is seen ; and whom he found most slow, to these 
 he gave most strength, as bulls and elephants do expresse 
 it ; and so all others in their kinds have some singularity 
 and excellence, wherein there is a compensation for all 
 wants ; some being armed offensively and defensive, and in 
 that having a provisional security. But man only he left 
 naked, more unfurnished than the rest : in him there was 
 neither strength nor agility to preserve him from the danger 
 of his enemies multitudes exceeding him in either, many 
 in both to whom he stood obnoxious and exposed, having 
 no resistance, no avoidance for their furies ! But in this 
 case and necessity, to relieve him upon this oversight and 
 improvidence of Epimetheus, Prometheus, that wise states- 
 man, whom Pandora could not cozen, having the present ap- 
 prehension of the danger by his quick judgment and intelli- 
 gence, secretly passes into heaven, steals out a fire from 
 thence, infuses it into man, by that inflames his mind with 
 a divine spirit and wisdom, and therein gives him a full sup- 
 ply for all ! For all the excellence of the creatures he had 
 a far more excellence in this. This one was for them all. 
 No strength nor agility could match it. All motions and 
 abilities came short of this perfection. The most choice 
 arms of nature have their superlative in its arts. All the 
 arts of Vulcan and Minerva have their comparative herein. 
 In this divine fire and spirit, this supernatural influence 
 of the mind, all excellence organical is surpast ; it is the 
 transcendent of them all ; nothing can come to match it ; 
 nothing can impeach it ; but man therein is an absolute 
 master of himself; his own safety and tranquillity by God 
 (for so we must remember the ethicks did expresse it) 
 are made dependant on himself. And in that self-depend- 
 ance, in the neglect of others, in the entire rule and domin- 
 ion of himself, the affections being composed, the actions 
 so directed, is the perfection of our government, that 
 summum bonum in philosophy, the bonum publicum in 
 our policy, the true end aad object of this MONARCHY OF 
 MAS."
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD. 1593-1641. 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH was born on the 13th 
 of April, 1593, in Chancery Lane, at the house 
 of his mother's father, Mr. Robert Atkinson, ; 
 bencher of Lincoln's Inn.* He was the eldes 
 of twelve children, and the heir of " an estate 
 which descended to him through a long train 
 of ancestors, who had matched with many 
 heiresses of the best families in the North 
 worth at that time 6000/. a year."t His father, 
 Sir William Wentworth, continued to hold a 
 manor which his ancestors had held from the 
 time of the Conquest downward. J 
 
 The youth of Wentworth was passed, anc 
 his mind received its earliest and strongest im- 
 pressions in the midst of the aristocratic influ- 
 ences. And he was by no means taught to dis- 
 regard them. He must have considered the 
 various ramifications of the family pedigree 
 with a very early pride and zeal, to have been 
 so well prepared, on his sudden elevation to 
 the peerage, with the formidable list of pro- 
 genitors that were cited in his patent. It was 
 there set forth, among other grand and notable 
 things, that he was lineally descended from 
 John of Gaunt, and from the ancient barons of 
 Newmark, Oversley, and so forth ; and that 
 his ancestors, either by father or mother, had 
 matched with divers houses of honour ; as 
 with Maud, countess of Cambridge, daughter 
 to the Lord Clifford of Westmoreland ; with 
 Margaret, daughter and heir to the Lord Philip 
 de Spencer ; the lords D'Arcy of the North ; 
 Latimer, Talboys, Ogle ; Ferrers, earl of Dig- 
 by ; Quincy, earl of Winchester ; Beaumont, 
 earl of Leicester ; Grantmesnil, baron of Hinc- 
 ley and lord-high-steward of England ; Pev- 
 eril, earl of Nottingham ; Leofric, earl of Mer- 
 cia ; and Margaret, duchess of Somerset, grand- 
 mother of Henry VII. It was from the high 
 conventional ground of such proud recollec- 
 tions that Thomas Wentworth looked forward 
 to the future. 
 
 Little account of his early education has 
 been preserved, but he afterward proved that 
 no accomplishment suited to rank and lofty ex- 
 pectations had been omitted ; and it is charac- 
 teristic of the encouragement given by his fa- 
 ther to his aristocratic tendencies, that the col- 
 lege selected for the completion of his studies 
 should have been that which was founded by 
 the illustrious grandmother of Henry VII., 
 whom he claimed as one of his ancestors. He 
 was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge.il 
 Here he soon gave evidence of the powers of 
 a fine intellect, and of that not ungenerous 
 warmth of disposition which is lavish of grati- 
 tude and favour in return for personal service. 
 He met with a tutor, Mr. Greenwood, whose 
 useful attentions to him at this time were se- 
 cured for the future by a prompt appreciation 
 
 * Radcliffe's " Essay towards the Life of my Lord Straf- 
 forde," published as an appendix to " The EARL OF STRAF- 
 FOBDE'S LETTERS AND DISPATCHES," 2 vols. folio, Dublin 
 edit., 1740, vol. ii., p. 429. Biographia Britannica, vol. vii., 
 p. 4172. t Knowler's Dedication to the Letters. 
 
 t An account of the Wentworths will be found in Collins ; 
 and see Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis. 
 
 t) Collins'* Peerage of England, vol. ii., p. 20, 21. 
 
 I Radcliffe'* Essay. 
 
 of their value ; he availed himself of them 
 through his after life, and never at any time 
 failed faithfully, and even affectionately, to re- 
 member and reward them.* I may add, in far- 
 ther proof of this characteristic quality, that 
 we find him shortly after profiting by the ac- 
 tive service of a person named Radcliffe,t con- 
 nected with his family by some claims of clan- 
 ship, and that, from this time, Radcliffe never 
 left his side. He had been found useful. 
 
 Wentworth left his college while yet very 
 young ; he cannot have been more than eigh- 
 teen. But he had received benefits from his 
 residence there, and he did not fail to exhibit 
 his recollection of these also, when the power 
 and opportunity arose.:): Not that it required, 
 in this particular case, the circumstance of ser- 
 vice rendered to elicit Wentworth's return. 
 The memory of his proudly-recollected ances- 
 tress was abundantly sufficient to have called 
 it forth, "being," as he himself, shortly after 
 this, writes to one of his country neighbours, 
 " I must confess, in my own nature, a great 
 lover and conserver of hereditary good-wills, 
 such as have been amongst our nearest 
 friends. " When a hereditary good-will hap- 
 pened to be associated with one of his greatest 
 ancestral glories, it ran little chance of being 
 lessened or lost. 
 
 The next circumstance I trace in the scanty 
 memorials of this portion of his history is his 
 acquisition of the honour of knighthood. II This 
 title was then to be purchased at a reasonable 
 rate of money ; doubtless Wentworth so pur- 
 chased it ; and the fact may be taken, along 
 with the evidences I have already named, in 
 farther corroboration of the development of the 
 aristocratic principle. Though still extremely 
 young, this remarkable person had been left to 
 all the independence of mature manhood ; was 
 treated with deference by his father ; and even 
 now, having not yet passed his eighteenth year, 
 
 * I shall have other occasions to allude to this. It may 
 be worth while to add, that Greenwood was himself a man 
 of ancient family, and not likely, on that account, to prove 
 less suitable to Wentworth. See Biog. Brit., vol. vii., p. 
 4173, note C. t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 9. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 125, 189 ; ii., p. 390. I may 
 allude to this again. On his promotion to the earldom, two 
 years before his death, he acknowledged, in warm phrase, 
 the congratulations of the provost and fellows of his old col- 
 lege : " After my very hearty commendations, so mindful 
 1 am of the ancient favours I received in that society of St. 
 Johns's whilst I was a student there, and so sensible of your 
 present civility towards me, as I may not upon this invita- 
 tion pass by either of them unacknowledged. And there- 
 fore do hereby very heartily thank you for renewing to me 
 the sense of the one, and affording me the favour of the other. 
 And in both these regards shall be very apprehensive of any 
 occasions, wherein I may do any good offices either towards 
 that house or yourselves, the provost and fellows thereof." 
 
 $ Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 25. 
 
 I! The writer in the Biog. Brit., and Mr. MacDiarmid, 
 assign a later period to this, but without authority. Rad- 
 cliffe distinctly, in his Essay, names the year 1611; and 
 there is eitant a letter of Sir Peter Frecheville's to Went- 
 worth's father, Sir William Wentworth, dated in this year, 
 which commences thus : " I do unfeignedly congratulate 
 he honourable fortunes of my cousin, your eldest son ;" in 
 reference, s must be supposed, to the youth's new title. 
 While on this subject I may add, that Mr. MacDiarmid has 
 also fallen into error in attributing certain praises (vol. i., 
 >. 1, of the Strafford Papers) to Thomas Wentworth.; they 
 listmctly relate to his brother William, then educating for 
 '.he bar.
 
 56 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 aspired to the hand of Frances, eldest daughter 
 of the Earl of Cumberland, whom he married 
 before the close of 1611.* If it has seemed 
 strange to the reader that the immediate suc- 
 cessor to an ancient patrimony should have 
 sought to feed his love of rank by the purchase 
 of a paltry knighthood, here is the probable 
 reason that influenced him. A title of any sort 
 matched him more fittingly with a lady of title. 
 Immediately after his marriage, in November, 
 1611, he went into France.! Mr. Greenwood, 
 his former tutor, joined him there, and remain- 
 ed with him.J 
 
 Strange events at that moment shook the 
 kingdom of France. Henry IV. assassinated, 
 the Parliament invaded and beset, Marie de' 
 Medicis regent, Sully disgraced, Concini in fa- 
 vour ! These things sunk deep into the mind 
 of Wentworth. " II put faire des lors," ex- 
 claims the Comte de Lally-Tolendal, " de pro- 
 fondes reflexions sur les horreurs du fanatisme, 
 sur les abus du pouvoir, sur le malheur d'un 
 pays depourvu de ces loix fixes, qui, dans 1'im- 
 possibilite d'anneantir les passions humaines, 
 les balancent du moins 1'une par 1'autre, et les 
 forcent par leur propre interet a servir, meme 
 en depit d'elles, 1'interet general."^ Without 
 adopting M. de Lally-Tolendal's exact con- 
 struction, it is certain that the events I have 
 named, occurring as it were in the immediate 
 presence of Wentworth, || were not calculated 
 to weaken his impressions in favour of strict 
 establishment, and in scorn of popular regards. 
 The image of a Ravillac, indeed, haunted his 
 after life !f 
 
 Meanwhile events, in themselves not so 
 startling and painful as these, but not the less 
 ominous of a stormy future, were occurring in 
 England. In the biography of Eliot I confined 
 myself strictly to an explanation of the circum- 
 stances of general history under which he en- 
 tered his first Parliament : I must now retrace 
 my steps. 
 
 James I. had many reasons to be weary of 
 his own kingdom, when the death of Elizabeth 
 seated him on the English throne. He came 
 to this country in an ecstasy of infinite relief. 
 Visions of levelling clergy and factious nobles 
 had vanished from his aching sight. In hope- 
 ful conceit, he turned to his Scotch followers, 
 and remarked, they had at last arrived in the 
 land of promise. 
 
 His first interviews with his English coun- 
 sellors were no less satisfactory. " Do I mak 
 
 * RadclifiVs Essay. 
 
 t [He married Margaret, eldest daughter of Francis Clif- 
 ford, fourth Earl of Cumberland : for which statement, see 
 Strafford's life in Jesse's Court of Stuarts. C.] 
 
 t Radcliffe's Essay. 
 
 . I) This is the only remark with any pretension to origi- 
 nality I have been able to find through the course of a long 
 " Essai sur la Vie de T. Wentworth, Comte de Strafford," 
 which the Comte de Lally-Tolendal (penetrated with pro- 
 found disgust at the patriotic party in England, and with 
 the striking resemblance between Strafford's fate and that 
 of his own unfortunate father) undertook to write for the in- 
 struction of his countrymen. He perpetrated a very ridic- 
 ulous tragedy on the same subject. 
 
 II He does not appear to have visited France only at this 
 period, as has been supposed. He went on to Venice, where 
 he formed a friendship with Sir Henry Wotton. We find 
 lim afterward, in his correspondence, contrasting to his 
 friend the ambassador, " these cold and sluggish climates," 
 with " the more sublimated air of Italy." Papers, vol. i., p. 
 5. Wotton continued his ardent friend and admirer. 
 
 T His letters afford very frequent evidence of this. 
 
 the judges'! do I mak the bishops?" he ex- 
 claimed, as they pointed out to his delighted 
 attention the powers of his new dominion 
 " then, Godis wauns ! I mak what likes me 
 law and Gospel." There is enough of shrewd- 
 ness in this remark to express James's charac- 
 ter in that respect. He was not an absolute 
 fool, and little more can be said of him. It is 
 a pity he was not, since he was deficient in 
 much wisdom. It is the little redeeming 
 leaven which proves troublesome and mis- 
 chievous ; the very wise or the very foolish 
 do little harm. His " learning," such as it 
 was though not open to the serious censure 
 which is provoked by his preposterous vanity 
 in the matter of " kingcraft," his disgraceful 
 love of personal ease, and his indecent and 
 shameless fondness for personal favourites 
 never furnished him with one useful thought, 
 or a suggestion of practical benefit.* He wrote 
 mystical definitions of the prerogative, and po- 
 lite " Counterblasts to Tobacco ;" issued forth 
 damnation to the deniers of witchcraft,! and 
 poured out the wraths of the Apocalypse upon 
 popery ; but whenever an obvious or judicious 
 truth seemed likely to fall in his way, his pen 
 infallibly waddled off from it. He expounded 
 the Latin of the fathers at Hampton Court,f 
 but avoided the very plain and intelligible Latin 
 of Fortescue. 
 
 Not so the great men, his opponents, who 
 were now preparing for a constitutional strug- 
 gle, of which Europe had as yet given no ex- 
 ample. At the close of Elizabeth's reign th^y 
 had risen to a formidable party ; they had wrun>.: 
 
 * Bacon's opinion has been urged against this, as evidence 
 of genuine praise or of the basest sycophancy. He dedica- 
 ted his greatest work, the "Advancement of Learning," to 
 James. It is worth while, however, to quote the exact 
 words of this dedication. They are very curious. If they 
 were meant seriously, never was so much flattery ingeni- 
 ously mixed up with so much truth. They savour much 
 more of irony. " I am well assured," writes Bacon, " that 
 this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a posi- 
 tive and measured truth ; which is, that there hath not 
 been, since Christ's time, any king or temporal monarch, 
 which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, 
 divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently 
 revolve and peruse the succession of the emperors of Rome, 
 of which Csesar the dictator, who lived some years before 
 Christ, and Marcus Antoninus, were the best learned ; and 
 so descend to the emperors of Gnccia, or of the West, and 
 then to the lines of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and 
 the rest : and he shall find his judgment is truly made. 
 For it seemeth much in a king, if by the compendious extrac- 
 tions of other men's wits and labour, he can take hold of any 
 superficial ornaments and shows of learning, or if he counte- 
 nance and prefer learning and learned men : but to drink in- 
 deed of the true fountain of learning, nay, to have such a 
 fountain of learning in himself, in a king, and in a. king born, 
 is almost a miracle." This makes out too formidable an ex- 
 ception to be quite complimentary, and perhaps James's ir- 
 reverent joke about the book itself was not unconnected with 
 its dedication. " It is like the peace of God," he said, " it 
 passeth all understanding !" It was a fair retort upon the 
 sycophancy of James's more profligate flatterers, when 
 Henry IV. of France admitted that he might be " Solomon, 
 the son of David." 
 
 t See the preface to his " Dsemonologie." 
 
 t An extraordinary account of the indecent conduct of 
 James at this conference is given by Harrington, an eye- 
 witness (Nugae Antiquse, vol. i., p. 181), and is worth refer- 
 ring to. Barlow, a partial observer of the king and bishops, 
 gives a long account of the discussion in his Phojnix Britan- 
 nicus, p. 140, et y., edit. 1707. See, also, Winwood's 
 Memorials, p. 13. James and his eighteen abject bishops 
 boasted that they had thoroughly beaten their four Puritan, 
 adversaries ; and beat them, it must be confessed, thy did, 
 with the rudest and most atrocious insults ; certainly not 
 with learning. In the latter respect, Dr. Reynolds, tha 
 Puritan leader, had the advantage of perhaps any other matt 
 in England. Se Hallam's Const. Hist., vol. i., p. 405.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 57 
 
 concessions even from her splendid despotism, 
 and won for themselves the courteous title 'of 
 "mutineers."* They soon found that they 
 had little to fear from her successor. He had 
 no personal claims on their respect,! no dignity 
 to fence in royalty. They buckled on the ar- 
 mour of their privileges, and awaited his ludi- 
 crous attacks, without respect and without 
 fear 4 
 
 James soon commenced them, and with a 
 hand doubly defenceless. He had impoverished 
 his crown by conferring its estates on his 
 needy followers ; he had deprived it of the 
 sympathy and support of the wealthier barons, 
 in disgusting them with his indiscriminate 
 peerage creations. From this feeble hand, 
 and a head stuffed with notions of his royal 
 " divinity," he issued the first of his proclama- 
 tions for the assembling of Parliament. It 
 contained a deadly attack on the privileges of 
 the House of Commons, in an attempt to regu- 
 late the Parliamentary elections. This was re- 
 sented and defeated, and so the fight began. II 
 
 * Sloane MSS., 4166. Letter of Sir E. Hoby to Sir T. 
 Edmonds, dated Feb. 12, 1605. See, also, Hallam's Con- 
 stitutional Hist., vol. i., p. 401. A curious tract in the 
 Sloane MSS., 827, confirms the loss of Elizabeth's popular- 
 ity, and states its cause, in a short history of the queen's 
 death, and the new king's accession. See, too, the pro- 
 ceedings in the case of Peter Wentworth (a Cornish Went- 
 worth), Parl. Hist., vol. iv., p. 186, et seq. The name of 
 Wentworth fills up more than one illustrious era of the 
 English history. 
 
 t The news of the progress of his journey from Scotland 
 had travelled before him ! " By the time he reached Lon- 
 don," says Carte, a friend of the Stuarts, " the admira- 
 tion of the intelligent world was turned into contempt." 
 The reader will find good reason for this in Harrington's 
 Nugte Antique, vol. i., p. 180 ; Wilson, in Kennet, vol. ii., 
 p. 667 ; Neal, p. 408, quarto edit. ; Fuller, part ii., p. 22 ; 
 Hallam, vol. i., p. 402, 403. Nor is it likely that this con- 
 tempt should have been diminished by his personal aspect, 
 which Weldon (quoting Balfour) has described, and Saun- 
 derson (in his Aulicus Coquinarise an answer to Weldon's 
 book) has not dared to contradict. " He was of a middle 
 stature," says Balfour, " more corpulent throghe his clothes 
 then in his body, zet fatt enouch ; his clothes euer being 
 made large and easie, the doubletts quilted for steletto 
 proofe ; his breeches in grate pleits and ful] stuffed ; he 
 was naturally of a timorous dispositione, which was the 
 gratest reasone of his quilted doubletts ; his eye large, euer 
 roulling after aney stranger cam in his presence ; insomuch 
 as maney for shame have left the roome, as being out of 
 countenance; his beard was werey thin ; his toung too large 
 for his mouthe, vich euer made him speake full in the 
 mouthe, and made him driuke werey uncomelie, as if calling 
 his drinke, wich cam out into the cupe in eache syde of his 
 mouthe ; his skin vas as softe as tafta sarsnet, wich felt so 
 becausse he neuer washt his hands, onlie rubbed his fingers' 
 ends slightly vith ihe vett end of a napkin. His legs wer 
 verey weake ; having had, as was thoughl, some foule play 
 in his youlhe, or rather, befor he was borne ; thai he was 
 not able lo stand at seuin zeires of age ; that weaknes made 
 him euer leaning on other men's shoulders." " His walk," 
 subjoins Wilson, "was ever circular." The satirical Fran- 
 cis Osborne has certainly completed this picture : " I shall 
 leave him dressed for posterily," says that writer, " in the 
 color I saw him in, the next progress after his inaugura- 
 tion ; which was as green as the grass he trod on ; with a 
 feather in his cap, and a horn, instead of a sword, by his 
 side. How suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave 
 others to judge from his pictures." Trad. Mem., c. xvii. 
 
 I An ominous hinl of relative advantage may be quoted 
 from the Journals, vol. i., p. 156. " That a people may he 
 without a king, a king cannot be wilhout a people." 
 
 9 Sec Bolingbroke on Ihe History of England, p. 237, 238. 
 Harris's Life of James, p. 69, 71. " A pasquil," says Wil- 
 son, " was pasted up at St. Paul's, wherein was pretended 
 an art to help weak memories to a competent knowledge of 
 the names of the nobility." P. 7. 
 
 II See Commons' Journals, p. 147, et seq., 166 ; Carte, 
 vol. iii., p. 730 ; Winwood's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 18 ; Bo- 
 lingbroke's Remarks, p. 250. Hume observes that "the 
 facility with which he departed from this pretension is a 
 proof that his meaning was innocent" (vol. v., p. 12). Fear, 
 Jus saving characteristic, is the more obvious solution. 
 
 H 
 
 The popular party proclaimed their intentions 
 at once with boldness, and in explicit lan- 
 guage. They warned the king of his impru- 
 dence ; they spoke of the dissolute and- aban- 
 doned character of his court expenses. They 
 did not refuse to assist his wants, but they 
 maintained that every offer of money on their 
 part should be met with corresponding offers 
 of concession on the part of the crown. They 
 brought forward a catalogue of grievances in 
 the practice of the ecclesiastical courts, in the 
 administration of civil justice, and in the con- 
 duct of the various departments of the govern- 
 ment. For these they demanded redress.* 
 Artifice and intrigue were the first answers 
 they received, and a prorogation the last. 
 
 James had now sufficient warning, but, nev- 
 ertheless, plunged blusteringly forward. With 
 no clear hereditary right to the crown, t he 
 flouted his only safe pretension the consent 
 and authority of the people. With no personal 
 qualities to command respect, he proclaimed 
 himself a " lieutenant and vicegerent of God," 
 and, as such, adorned and furnished with 
 " sparkles of divinity." In total ignorance of 
 the nature and powers of government, nothing 
 could shake his vain conceit of the awe to be 
 inspired by his regal wisdom. The Commons, 
 however, left no point of their claims unas- 
 serted or uncertain ; they reserved no " arcana 
 imperii," after the king's fashion. They drew 
 up in committee a " Satisfaction" of their 1 
 proceedings for the perusal of James, who 
 makes an evident allusion to it in a letter of the 
 time.f It is vain to say, after reading such 
 documents as this, that liberty, a discrimina- 
 tion of the powers and objects of government, 
 was then only struggling to the light, or had 
 achieved no distinct form and pretension. It 
 was already deep in the hearts and in the 
 understandings of men. " What cause," they 
 eloquently said, " we, your poor Commons, have 
 to watch over their privileges is evident in it- 
 self to all men. The prerogatives of princes 
 
 * They tried to get the Upper House to join them in these 
 complaints, but vainly. Their lordships refused. See Som- 
 ers's Tracts, vol. ii., p. 14 ; Commons' Journals, p. 199, 235, 
 
 t Mr. Hallam has admirably and fully discussed this point, 
 Const. Hist., p. 392-400. I have no doubt the king was 
 able to feel his want of clear pretensions acutely ; but his 
 blundering shrewdness taught him no better mode of con- 
 cealing it than by magnifying the inherent rights of primo- 
 genitary succession, as something indefeasible by the Le- 
 gislature. We find him frequently, with much testiness, 
 reminding the Commons, " you all know, I came from the 
 loins of your ancient kings ;" a sure proof that he feared 
 they did not know it. See Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 192. 
 
 t This remarkable paper will be found at length in Petyt's 
 Jus Parliament, ch. x., p. 227 ; and is extracted into Mr. 
 Hatsell's first vol. of Precedents, Appendix, No. 1. Hatsell 
 states that it was not entered on the Journals. This is part- 
 ly a mistake, for at p. 243 the first paragraph will be found. 
 Rapin alludes to it ; and Mr. Hallam has made very spirit- 
 ed use of it (vol. i., p. 418), though he seems to labour under 
 misapprehension in stating that Hume was ignorant of its 
 existence. Hume, on the contrary, makes special allusion 
 
 uueny , auriuuies 11 LU uuuua aim oanuys ; anu inclines 
 to think that it had not been presented to the monarch by 
 the House. The last supposition is certainly incorrect ; 
 and Mr. Hallam produces a letter which appears to indicate* 
 the feelings with which the king regarded it (vol. i., p. 419). 
 About this time, it may be added, mention is made in the 
 Journals that fresh seats were required for the extraordi- 
 nary attendance of members. P. 141.
 
 58 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 may easily, and do daily, grow. The privi- 
 leges of the subject are, for the most part, at 
 an everlasting stand. They may be, by good 
 providence and care, preserved ; but being 
 once lost, are not recovered but with much 
 disquiet." 
 
 Another session succeeded, and the same 
 scenes were again enacted, with the same re- 
 sults. In vain were monopolies cried down, 
 and the merchants lifted their voices unavail- 
 ingly against the inglorious peace with Spain. 
 After this prorogation, James's obstinacy held 
 out for upward of two years, when want of 
 money overcame it. 
 
 The session of 1610 was a most distinguished 
 one, and called the unjust prerogative to a 
 rigorous reckoning. James had most illegally, 
 in the face of two great charters, and twelve 
 other Parliamentary enactments, imposed cer- 
 tain duties on imports and exports. Bates, a 
 Turkey merchant, refused payment of one on 
 currants, and carried his case into the exche- 
 quer.* The judges there refused him justice, 
 in terms more disgraceful and subversive of 
 liberty than even the iniquitous decision. 
 Against this, and in no measured terms, the 
 Commons now protested. Lawyers, more 
 learned than the judges, exposed, in masterly 
 reasoning, the ignorance and corruption of 
 Barons Fleming and Clark. Sir Francis Bacon 
 appealed with all his eloquence to the rever- 
 ence of past ages, and the possession of the 
 present ; but Hakewill proved, t in an argu- 
 ment of memorable clearness and vast knowl- 
 edge, that the only instances adduced were on 
 forbidden articles, and therefore false as pre- 
 cedents ; and Bacon appealed in vain. Still 
 more vain was the rage of the monarch, who 
 hastened to the House to lay his arrogant 
 commands upon them. He told them, after a 
 comparison savouring of blasphemy, that it 
 "was seditious in subjects to dispute what a 
 king may do in the height of his power. "J 
 They answered in a remonstrance of great 
 strength and spirit, and of much learning.^ 
 After producing a host of precedents, they 
 passed a bill against impositions ; but, to use 
 Hume's phrase, " the House of Lords, as is 
 usual, defended the barriers of the throne," 
 and threw out the bill. |[ 
 
 * A very learned preface to the report of the case of Bates 
 in the State Trials, comprising the entire argument on the 
 question, has been written by Mr. Hargrave. Coke, in his 
 2d lust., p. 57, proves the illegality of the decision ; though, 
 in his Reports (p. 12), he had inclined to its favour, on other 
 grounds than those stated by the judges. See, also, Birch's 
 Negotiations, and an eloquent and very learned note on the 
 subject of impositions, in Mr. Amos's Fortescue, p. 28-31, 
 142, 143. I cannot leave the latter work without adding 
 that, various and extensive as is the learning displayed in 
 it, it is for those only to appreciate Mr. Amos's profound ac- 
 quaintance with constitutional law and history who, like 
 myself, have to acknowledge, with the deepest gratitude, 
 information personally communicated. 
 
 t See his speech, State Trials, vol. ii., p. 407. Mr. Hal- 
 lam's statement of the discussion is interesting, vol. i., p. 
 433-438. 
 
 t It is worth referring to this speech, as given in King 
 James's Works, p. 529-531. The discontent it provoked 
 will be found by referring to Winwood's Memorials, vol. 
 iii., p. 175 ; Commons' Journals, p. 430 ; and Miss Aikin's 
 James, vol. i., p. 350. 
 
 $ It will be found at length in Somers's Tracts, vol. ii., 
 p. 159. 
 
 II Hume, referring to this measure, observes : " A spirit 
 of liberty had now taken possession of the House. The 
 leading members, being men of independent genius and large 
 views, began to regulate their opinions more by the future 
 
 I may allude a little farther to the proceed- 
 ings of this distinguished session, since they 
 illustrate forcibly the exact relative positions 
 of the crown and Parliament at the period of 
 Wentworth's return. 
 
 Unwearied in exertion, the House of Com- 
 mons now fastened on a work that had been 
 published by Dr. Cowell, one of the party of 
 civilians encouraged against the Common law- 
 yers, and which contained most monstrous 
 doctrines on the subject of kingly power.* 
 They compelled James to suppress the book. 
 The wily Cecil had striven to effect a compro- 
 mise with them, by the proposition of a large 
 yearly revenue to the crown, in return for 
 which he promised that the liberality of the 
 sovereign in the matter of grievances should 
 be commensurate. He had entreated, how- 
 ever, without success, that the subsidies should 
 have priority : the Commons were resolute in 
 enforcing the condition before yielding the 
 grant. The fate of their impositions' bill had 
 instructed them. Cecil now pressed again for 
 the subsidies; they persisted in the farther 
 entertainment of grievances. They complained 
 of the ecclesiastical high commission court, 
 and its disregard of the common law ; they 
 protested against the recent system of substi- 
 tuting proclamations for laws ; they sought 
 redress for the delays of the courts in granting 
 writs of prohibition and haebeas corpus ; they 
 questioned the right of the council of Wales 
 to exclude from the privileges of the common 
 law four ancient English counties ; they remon- 
 strated against patents of monopolies, and a 
 late most unjust tax upon victuallers ; but, 
 above all, they strove to exonerate the country 
 from the feudal burdens, t They did not dis- 
 pute that these in right belonged to the crown, 
 but they negotiated for their abolition ; for 
 they never then insisted on a right, except with 
 proofs and precedents in their hands for claim- 
 ing it as such. In that particular stage of the 
 contest, the necessity and justice of such cau- 
 tion is apparent, and forms an important fea- 
 ture of their struggles. 
 
 The negotiation now commenced. James 
 did not care to abolish purveyance,t which 
 was sought for ; but with that was coupled a 
 demand for the exchange of every other kind 
 of tenure into that of free and common socage. 
 " What !" said James, " reduce all my sub- 
 jects, noble and base, rich and poor, to hold 
 their lands in the same ignoble manner 1" The 
 indignant " father of his people" would not 
 listen to it, and, after some delay, a compro- 
 mise was struck. The tenure by knight ser- 
 vice was retained ; but its most lucrative and 
 oppressive incidents, such as relief, premier 
 seisin, and wardship, were surrendered, along 
 
 consequences which they foresaw, than by former prece- 
 dents which were laid before them ; and they less aspired 
 at maintaining the ancient constitution than at establish- 
 ing a new one, and a freer, and a better" (vol. v., p. 34). 
 However true this may be in reference to future proceed- 
 ings, it is certainly incorrect as applied to the present. 
 
 * See Roger Coke's Detection, vol. i., p. 50, edit. 1694. 
 These passages have since been suppressed, and it is now 
 considered a useful book. See Hume's admirable note, vol. 
 v., p. 37. 
 
 t See the Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 225-245. Also, the Com- 
 mons' Journals for 1610. Winwood, vol. iii., p. 119. 
 
 t An admirable note on purveyance will be found in 
 Amos's Fortescue, p. 134, 135. 
 
 <) Parl. Hist,, vol. v., p. 229, et seq.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 59 
 
 with purveyance. Still the Commons delayed, 
 for Cecil's demands were exorbitant. They 
 resolved to pause some short time longer, that 
 they might ascertain the best mode of levying 
 so large a sum with the least distress to the 
 nation. The session had already been pro- 
 tracted far into summer ; a subsidy was grant- 
 ed for immediate wants, and a prorogation 
 took place. 
 
 The loss of the Journals of the ensuing ses- 
 sion renders it difficult to follow their proceed- 
 ings. It is certain, however, from other sour- 
 ces, that the events of the interim had resolv- 
 ed the leaders of the House on abandoning the 
 terms proposed. They saw no signs of great- 
 er justice at the outports, or in the proclama- 
 tions, or in the ecclesiastical courts. The most 
 important of their petitions on particular griev- 
 ances had been refused, and now, when they 
 sent one up to the throne for the allowing pris- 
 oners on a capital charge to bring witnesses in 
 their own defence, the king protested to them 
 that, in his conscience, he could not grant such 
 an indulgence. " It would encourage and mul- 
 tiply forgery," he said : " men were already ac- 
 customed to forswear themselves even in civil 
 actions ; what less could be expected when the 
 life of a friend was at stake 1"* Such was the 
 exquisite philosophy of James. A coolness en- 
 sued ; threats followed ; a prorogation was 
 again the intermediate argument, with a disso- 
 lution within nine weeks as the final one. Those 
 nine weeks were employed in vain in the pur- 
 pose of weakening the popular party, and on 
 the day threatened, seven years from their first 
 assembling, the dissolution took place, t 
 
 The interval which ensued was one of profu- 
 sion, debauchery, and riot in the court,:}: and of 
 attempted oppression and wrong against the 
 people. Fortunately, the spirit of liberty had 
 strengthened to resistance. " The privy seals 
 are going forth," says a contemporary writer,^ 
 " but from a trembling hand, lest that sacred 
 seal should be refused by the desperate hard- 
 ness of the prejudiced people." It was refused ; 
 and the shameful expedient was abundantly re- 
 sorted to by the court, of selling the honours of 
 the peerage, and of creating a number of he- 
 reditary knights, who should pay tribute for 
 their dignity. H All would not serve, however ; 
 and Bacon, reckoning somewhat unduly on his 
 own skill,1T prevailed upon the king to summon 
 another Parliament. 
 
 At this eventful moment Wentworth came 
 
 * Commons' Journals, p. 451. Lords' Journals, p. 658. 
 Winwood, vol. iii., p. 193. 
 
 t A curious letter of the king 1 , illustrative of the angry 
 feelings that prevailed at the dissolution, exists in Mars- 
 den's State Papers, p. 813. See Hallam, vol. i., p. 451. 
 
 t Observe the account in Fulke Lord Brooke's Five Years 
 of King James ; Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs ; Weldon, p. 
 166; Coke's Detection, vol. i., p. 42-49. The court pre- 
 sented at this moment a disgusting scene of profligacy. It 
 requires a strong stomach even to get through a perusal of 
 the details. Ladies rendered themselves especially notable, 
 not merely for laxity of virtue, but for the grossest drunken- 
 ness. See Nugas Antique, vol. i., p. 348. 
 
 <) In Winwood's Memorials, vol. iii. 
 
 II An account of this proceeding will be found in Lingard's 
 History, vol. vi., quarto edit., from Somers's Tracts. See, 
 also, Hallam, vol. i., p. 461 ; Aikin, vol. i., p. 389. The 
 project appears to have been the suggestion of Salisbury. 
 See Baker's Chronicle, p. 416, edit. 1679 ; Guthrie, vol. iii., 
 p. 704 ; and Macaulay's History, vol. i., p. 75. 
 
 IT MS. in the possession of Mr. Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. 
 i., p. 461, 462. 
 
 back to England, and was immediately return- 
 ed knight of the shire for Yorkshire.* It is now 
 my duty to follow him through the commen- 
 cing passages of his public life, and I hope to do 
 this faithfully. I have felt very strongly that 
 the truth lies (as it generally does in such ca- 
 ses) somewhere between the extreme state- 
 ments that have been urged on either side, by 
 the friends and the foes of Wentworth. 
 
 One of his latest biographers,t who brought 
 to his task a very amiable feeling and desire 
 which wasted itself at last, however, in an ex- 
 cess of sweetness and candour sets out with a 
 just remark. " The factions which agitated bis 
 contemporaries," Mr. MacDiarmid observes, 
 " far from ceasing with the existing generation, 
 divided posterity into his immoderate censurers 
 or unqualified admirers ; and writers, whether 
 hostile or friendly, have confounded his merits 
 and defects with those of the transactions in 
 which he was engaged. Even in the present 
 day, an undisguised exposure of his virtues and 
 vices might be misconstrued by many into a 
 prejudiced panegyric, or an invidious censure 
 of man as well as of the cause." Now from 
 this I shah 1 certainly, in some measure, secure 
 myself by the course I propose to adopt. The 
 collection of documents known by the title of 
 the " Strafford Papers" seems to me to contain 
 within itself every material necessary to the il- 
 lustration of the public and private character 
 of Ihis statesman, on an authority which few 
 will be disposed to contest, for the record is 
 his own. The general historical statement I 
 have already given was necessary to bring 
 Wentworth more intelligibly upon the political 
 scene ; but hereafter I mean to restrict myself 
 almost entirely to the authorities, illustrations, 
 and suggestions of character that are so abun- 
 dantly furnished by that great work. The let- 
 ters it contains, extending over a period of 
 more than twenty years, comprise the notices 
 of the country gentleman, the anxieties of the 
 Parliament-man, the growing ambition of the 
 president of the North, the unflagging energy 
 of the lord deputy, the intense purpose and 
 reckless daring of the lieutenant-general, and 
 the cares, magnanimously borne, of the ruined 
 and forsaken aspirant, about to render the for- 
 feit of that life which three kingdoms had pro- 
 nounced incompatible with their well-being. 
 Their evidence is the more unexceptionable, 
 that they are no hasty ebullitions, the offspring 
 of the moment, a sudden expression of senti- 
 ments to be disavowed in succeeding intervals 
 of calm. With a view, as it would seem, to 
 guard against the inconveniences of a natu- 
 rally fiery and uncontrollable temperament, 
 Strafford wrote with singular deliberation, and 
 his perspicuous and straightforward despatch- 
 
 * The writer in the Biographia Britannica, and Mr. Mac- 
 Diarmid, reject Sir George Radcliffe's dates without the 
 slightest scruple, but without the smallest excuse. They 
 are all of them extremely accurate, and it is quite certain 
 that Wentworth sat in the Parliament of 1614. The writers 
 n the liiog. Brit, plead in apology that Radclifie's own 
 statement ''my memory is (of late especially) very bad 
 and decayed" quite warrants their freedom with his dates ; 
 uut they seem to have overlooked the fact that Radcliffe 
 distinctly restricts the decay of his memory to facts he has 
 altogether forgotten. " Seeing my unfaithful memory," he 
 subsequently says, " hath lost part of the occurrences which 
 concerned my lord, I am loth to let slip that which yet re- 
 main;." 
 t Mr. MacDiarmid, Lives of British Statesmen, 2 vols.
 
 60 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 es* deliver the results of a thorough conviction. 
 " He never did anything of any moment," re- 
 marks Sir George Radcliffe, " concerning either 
 political or domestical business, without taking 
 advice ; not so much as a letter written by him 
 to any great man of any business, but he show- 
 ed it to his confidents if they were near him. 
 The former part of his life, Charles Greenwood 
 and myself were consulted with ; and the latter 
 part, Chr. Wandesford came in Charles Green- 
 wood's room, Charles Greenwood desiring not 
 to be taken away from his cure ; they met al- 
 most daily, and debated all businesses and de- 
 signs, pro et contra : by this means his own 
 judgment was very much improved, and all 
 the circumstances and probable consequences 
 of the things consulted were discovered and 
 considered."! From the high praise which is 
 given by Sir George to this practice, it is to be 
 inferred, moreover, that it was no cheap expe- 
 dient to obtain an obsequious and all-approving 
 set of counsellors ; for he complacently sub- 
 joins, that such a course " is very efficacious to 
 make a wise man, even though he advise 
 with much weaker men than himself ; for there 
 is no man of ordinary capacity that will not 
 often suggest some things which might else 
 have been let slip without being observed ; and 
 in the debatings of things a man may give an- 
 other hints and occasions to observe and find 
 out that which he that speaks to it, perhaps, 
 never thinks on ; as a whetstone," &c., conclu- 
 ding with that very original simile. It may 
 also be remarked here that, of his more impor- 
 tant despatches to the king, Wentworth was 
 accustomed to transmit duplicates to the lead- 
 ing members of the council. Thus, in a letter 
 to Secretary Cooke, he writes : " Having such 
 confidence in your judgment and good affection 
 both towards his majesty's service and myself, 
 I hold it fit to give you a clear and particular 
 understanding of all my proceedings in these af- 
 fairs, to which end I have sent you the dupli- 
 cates of all my despatches to his majesty and 
 others, as you will find in the pacquet this bear- 
 er shall bring unto you ; only I desire you will 
 be pleased not to take notice thereof, unless it 
 be brought unto you by some other hand. These 
 businesses have cost me a mighty labour, hav- 
 ing been at first written over by my own hand. 
 And I have been as circumspect and consider- 
 ate therein as possibly I could. And now I 
 beseech you, help me with your judgment in 
 anything you shall find amiss, and let me clear- 
 ly and speedily he led into the right path, in 
 case I have erroneously, in anything, swerved 
 from that which is best and honourablest for 
 our master ; for it would grieve me more than 
 any other thing, if my weakness should lead 
 him into the least inconvenience ; and this you 
 ever find in me, that no man living shah 1 more 
 promptly depart from an error than myself, 
 that have, in good faith, no confidence in my 
 own judgment, how direct and intent soever 
 my affections may be." What these letters 
 want, therefore, in those sudden and familiar 
 
 * It is much to be regretted that Mr. Brodie, whose work 
 contains several valuable suggestions towards the life of 
 Stratford, should suffer himself to depreciate so strongly the 
 merit of his letters and despatches, and his intellectual at- 
 tainment! generally. I shall have ample occasion to refute 
 this. t Essay. 
 
 outbreaks which are to be looked for in a less 
 guarded correspondence, is amply made up in 
 the increased authority of the matter thus care- 
 fully elaborated and cautiously put forth. Nor 
 are instances altogether wanting in which the 
 curb is set aside, and the whole nature of the 
 writer has its resistless way. 
 
 I have remarked on the aristocratic influen- 
 ces which surroudned Wentworth's youth. 
 Everything had tended to foster that principle 
 within him. His ancient lineage, extending, 
 at no very distant period, to the blood royal ; 
 the degree of attention which must have early 
 attached itself to the eldest of twelve children ; 
 his inheritance of an estate of 6000 a year, 
 an enormous fortune in those days ; his edu- 
 cation ; all the various circumstances which 
 have been touched upon, contributed to produce 
 a character ill fitted to comprehend or sympa- 
 thize with "your Prynnes, Pyms, Bens, and 
 the rest of that generation of odd names and 
 natures,"* who recognised, in the struggling 
 and oppressed Many, those splendid dawnings 
 of authority which others were disposed to 
 seek only in the One. From the first, we ob- 
 serve in Wentworth a deep sense of his exact 
 social position and its advantages. This is ex- 
 plained in a passage of a remarkable letter, 
 written at a later period to his early tutor, Mr. 
 Greenwood, but which I shall extract here, 
 since it has reference to the present tune : 
 " My sister Elizabeth writes me a letter con- 
 cerning my brother Mathew's estate, which I 
 know not how to answer till I see the will ; 
 nor do I know what it is she claims, whether 
 money alone, or his rent-charge forth of my 
 lands, or both. Therefore I desire the copy of 
 the will may be sent me, and her demand, and 
 then she shall have my answer. This brother, 
 that she saith was so dear unto her, had well 
 tutored her, or she him, being the couple of all 
 the children of my father that I conceived loved 
 me least ; it may be they loved one another 
 the better for that too. However it prove, I 
 know not ; but this I am most assured, that in 
 case any of the three brothers died without is- 
 sue, my father ever intended their rent-charge 
 should revert to me, and not lie still as a clog 
 upon my estate ; or that any daughter of his, whom 
 he had otherwise provided for forth of the estate, 
 should thus intercept his intentions towards his 
 heir. But how often hath he been pleased to ex- 
 cuse unto me the liberal provisions taken forth of 
 my estate for my- brothers and sisters 1 And as 
 often hath been assured by me, I thought nothing 
 too much that he had done for them ; and yet lean 
 make it confidently appear that he left not my es- 
 tate better to me than my grandfather left it to 
 him by 200 a year ; nay, some that understand 
 it very well have, upon speech had with me about 
 it, been very confident he left it me rather worse 
 than better than he received it. But I shall and 
 can, I praise God, and have heretofore, patient- 
 ly looked upon their peevishness and froward- 
 ness towards me, and all their wise and prudent 
 councils and synods they have held against 
 me, as if they had been to have dealt with 
 some cheater or cozener, not with a brother, 
 who had ever carried himself justly and loving- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 344. Such was Wentworth's 
 ill-judged classification. " Ben" may be presumed to have 
 meant Sir Benjamin Rudyard.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 61 
 
 ly towards them ; nor do I, nor will I, deny 
 them the duties I owe unto them, as recom- 
 mended unto my care by my father. Nay, as 
 wise as they did, or do, take themselves to have 
 been, I will say, it had not been the worse for them, 
 as I think, if they had taken less of their own fool- 
 ish, empty fancies, and followed more of my ad- 
 vice, who, I must needs say, take myself to 
 have been full as able to have directed their 
 course as they themselves could be at that 
 age."* Here the remark cannot but occur of 
 the very early age at which these extraordina- 
 ry " excuses" from a father to a son must have 
 been proffered and accepted ! Sir William 
 Wentworth died in 1614, t shortly after his son, 
 who had scarcely accomplished his twenty-first 
 year, was returned to Parliament from York- 
 shire. This patriarchal authority, then, this 
 strong sense of his hereditary rights of proper- 
 ty, was of no late assumption ; and, in after 
 life, it was Wentworth's proud satisfaction 
 that he came not to Ireland "to piece up a 
 broken fortune."} " For," says he elsewhere, 
 " as I am a Christian, I spend much more than 
 all my entertainments come unto ; yet I do not 
 complain ; my estate in England may well 
 spare me something to spend." At his so ear- 
 ly maturity, being called to the family inherit- 
 ance by the death of his father, a new charge 
 devolved to him in the guardianship of his elder 
 sister's children, the issue of Sir George Sa- 
 vile, which trust he faithfully discharged. His 
 own account of his family regards, generally, 
 given in the passage quoted, appears to me to 
 be perfectly just. His disposition was kind, 
 but exacting. Those of his relatives who paid 
 him proper deference received from him atten- 
 tions and care. And it is remarkable to ob- 
 serve in those brothers, for instance, who con- 
 tinued attached to him through all his fortunes 
 one an intimate counsellor, another a "humble 
 poster in his affairs" the complete deference 
 they at all times cheerfully paid to him. 
 
 Such was the new member for Yorkshire, 
 who took his seat in the Parliament of 1614. 
 I have described the condition of affairs. They 
 had arrived at such a point that not to declare 
 in favour of the popular party was to exert an 
 influence against them. The liberal strength 
 had not declined in the present assembly. The 
 confederacy of " undertakers,"^ banded for the 
 purpose of influencing the elections, had pur- 
 sued their vile avocations without effect. The 
 new members were stanch, resumed complaints 
 against monopolies and other unjust grants, 
 called the Bishop of Lincoln to account for dis- 
 respectful words, and received the tribute to 
 their honesty of a dissolution after two months' 
 sitting,!! and of imprisonment, in many cases, 
 
 * Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 484. t Kadcliffe's Essay. 
 
 t Straffbrd Papers, vol. i., p. 138 ; and see TO!, i., p. 79. 
 
 l> For the origin of these " strange ugly kind of beasts," 
 as the king, in his subsequent confession of their existence, 
 oddly called them, see Wilson, in Kennet, vol. ii., p. 696. 
 For James's present false denial of their having been em- 
 ployed, see Carte, vol. iv., p. 19, 20; Bacon's Works, vol. 
 i., p. 695 ; Commons' Journals, p. 462. 
 
 II "This House of Commons," says Hume, "showed 
 rather a stronger spirit of liberty than the foregoing, so lit- 
 tle skill had the courtiers for managing elections" (vol. v., p. 
 49). It subsequently received from the politer courtiers the 
 title of the " addle" Parliament, from the circumstance of 
 its not having been allowed to pass a single bill. Aikin, 
 vol. i., p. 439. See a curious fact mentioned in D'Israeli's 
 Character of James, p. 158, and the king's assertion, in his 
 remarkable commission for the dissolution. 
 
 afterward.* During these two months Went- 
 worth had continued silent ; not unobserved, 
 but silent. I have examined the Journals, and 
 find no trace of his advocacy of either side in 
 the great struggle.! 
 
 At the close of the session he returned to 
 Yorkshire, and a year passed over him at his 
 country residence, engaged, to all appearance, 
 in no pursuits less innocent than his favourite 
 sport of hawking. Let the reader judge, how- 
 ever, if his personal ambitions had been forgot- 
 ten. Sir John Savile, the father of the after- 
 ward Lord Savile and not, as has been inva- 
 riable stated by modern writers, the Lord 
 Savile himself \ at this time held an office of 
 great esteem in the county, that of custos rotu- 
 lorum, or keeper of the archives, for the West 
 Riding. So strong an influence, however, had 
 for some time been moving against Savile in 
 the county, that the Lord-chancellor Elles- 
 mere was induced to interfere. It is instruc- 
 tive to observe that Sir Thomas Fairfax, a 
 near kinsman of Wentworth's, was the most 
 active against Savile. I quote a passage of a 
 letter from Sheffield, the lord president of the 
 North, to Ellesmere : " I desired much to have 
 waited upon you myself, to present an infor- 
 mation lately made unto me of the evil carriage 
 of one Sir George Savile, a gentleman of York- 
 shire, one of the principal in commission, that 
 maketh use of his authority to satisfy his own 
 ends, if sundry complaints be true which of late 
 have been made unto me touching one partic- 
 ular, which, in my opinion, is a matter of foul 
 condition, and which I am bold to intreat your 
 lordship to give me leave to make known unto 
 
 * The compilers of the Parliamentary History have denied 
 this, but see debate on it in Journals of Feb. 5, 12, and 15, 
 1621 ; and Hatsell's proof, vol. i., p. 133, 134, edit. 1796. 
 Hume admits the statement, vol. v., p. 50. 
 
 t In some of the less precisely accurate histories in 
 Echard's, Oldmixon's, and Mrs. Macaulay's Wentworth 
 had been erroneously ranked as one of the "factious" mem- 
 bers of this session, who had earned imprisonment after the 
 dissolution by a violent personal attack on the king. Mr. 
 Brodie set the mistake completely at rest, by showing its 
 origin. A Mr. Thomas Wentworth, a very popular mem- 
 ber, represented Oxford in all the Parliaments of James, 
 and in the first two Parliaments of Charles. It was he who 
 spoke violently, and was imprisoned. It was he, also, who 
 took the active part against Buckingham in the second Par- 
 liament, which had been ascribed to Sir Thomas Wentworth 
 (who did not sit in that Parliament at all), even by Rush- 
 worth. In expressing great surprise at this mistake on the 
 collector's part, however, Mr. Brodie overlooks the circum- 
 stance of its having arisen from a mere error of the press. 
 Had it been otherwise, it would have been difficult (consid- 
 ering that Rushwprth attended the house himself, and was 
 necessarily acquainted with the persons of the different 
 members) to have received even Mr. Brodie's authority and 
 that of Wentworth's own letters against the indefatigable 
 collector. But the context of Rushworth shows the error 
 to have been merely one of the press. He is stating the ar- 
 gument of the lawyers of the House on the difference between 
 " common fame" and " rumour," and observes : " It was de- 
 clared by Sir Tho. Wentworth, Mr. Noy, and other lawyers 
 in the debate," &c. Now Mr. Wentworth was a lawyer, 
 and an eminent one, the author of a legal treatise of great 
 merit, on Executors, and Recorder of Oxford ; but Sir 
 Thomas Wentworth was none of these things. The mis- 
 take does not occur again. See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 217. 
 The author of the History continued from Mackintosh has 
 fallen into Rushworth's error, vol. v., p. 33. 
 
 i It is singular that this mistake should have occurred ; 
 for occasionally, in the Papers, he is called " the old knight," 
 "old Sir John," &c. (vol. i., p. 38, <fec.) ; and in his own 
 letter to the Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, on which the 
 whole of the present business turns, he expressly alludes to 
 " service of forty years under the late queen of gracious 
 memory." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 2. But so incor- 
 rectly are circumstances looked at, which do not seem to 
 bear immediately on the matter in hand, yet are to illus- 
 trate it afterward not unimportantly.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 you by the relation of Sir Thomas Fairfax, a 
 gentleman of good worth, to whom the partic- 
 ulars of that matter are well known." The re- 
 sult was, that in 1615 Savile was removed, and 
 Sir Thomas Wentworth appointed to the office. 
 The court had not forgotten the good services 
 of his silence, and Wentworth was not un- 
 grateful. " Calling to mind," he afterward 
 writes to Weston, " the faithful service I had 
 the honour to do his majesty, now with God, 
 how graciously he vouchsafed to accept and 
 express it openly and sundry times, I enjoy 
 within myself much comfort and contentment. 
 . . . You can best witness the opinion, nay, I 
 might say the esteem his late majesty held of 
 me."* 
 
 But a new actor now appears upon the scene, 
 in whose hands James had become a puppet, 
 and to whose shameless influence he had sur- 
 rendered all his esteems and regards. Having 
 discharged the duties of his new office for 
 nearly two years, Wentworth received (near 
 the close of 1617) a startling notice from no 
 less a person than his grace the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham. Old Savile.had been busy with him. 
 " These are to let you understand that, where- 
 as his majesty is informed that Sir John Sa- 
 vile yielded up his place of custos rotulorum 
 voluntarily unto you, whom now his majesty 
 hath received into favour again, and purposeth 
 to employ in his service, his majesty will take it 
 well at your hands, that you resign it up again 
 unto him with the same willingness, and will 
 be mindful of you to give you as good prefer- 
 ment upon any other occasion."t Bucking- 
 ham, however, had committed a mistake here. 
 Wentworth replied to this notice in a letter 
 which has, unfortunately, been lost, but whose 
 import may be gathered from some passages in 
 Buckingham's reply : " The reasons set down 
 in your letter are so substantial to prove that 
 Sir John Savile made no voluntary resignation 
 of the place to you, but yielded it up rather out 
 of a necessity to avoid that which otherwise 
 would have fallen upon him, that I see it was 
 a misinformation given to his majesty and to 
 me which occasioned the writing of my letter 
 unto you." Other grounds of apology are add- 
 ed, and Buckingham proceeds : " Upon these 
 grounds I thought it could neither be any 
 wrong nor disgrace to move you in that busi- 
 ness ; but I pray you believe that I am so far 
 from doing the least indignity to any gentle- 
 man of your worth, that I would be ready, 
 upon any occasion, to do you the best service 
 I could. Therefore I desire you not to trouble 
 yourself either with any doubt of farther pro- 
 ceeding in this matter, which went so far only 
 upon misunderstanding, or with so long a jour- 
 ney to give me satisfaction, seeing I have fully 
 received, it by your letter, and have acquainted his 
 majesty with the true state of the business, as 
 you have set it down." Buckingham subscribes 
 himself his " very assured friend," and then, in 
 a very curious and significant postscript, be- 
 trays good reason for his sudden change of 
 style, and sufficiently explains the shrewd and 
 determined course that had been adopted by 
 Wentworth : " I beseech you to excuse me to 
 my Lord of Cumberland and my Lord Clifford 
 
 * Letter, dated 1626, Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 35, 36. 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 4. 
 
 that I write not to them now, as I purpose to 
 do at more leisure ; for now I made haste to 
 signify that which I have to you, that I might 
 spare you so troublesome a journey." So 
 Wentworth continued in his place ; and old 
 Savile, eaten up with mortified spleen, waited 
 his first opportunity of retaliation. 
 
 Wentworth foiled him at that game too, by 
 striking the first blow ! A new Parliament 
 was spoken of, and a strong opposition from 
 the Savile party against Wentworth signifi- 
 cantly indicated. He went instantly up to 
 London ; spoke carelessly, it may be supposed, 
 to his friends at court of his indifference about 
 standing any contest ; and so won from the 
 ministerial party an entreaty that he would 
 stand, and endeavour to bring in one of the 
 secretaries of state along with him.* Went- 
 worth then consented, returned to Wentworth 
 Woodhouse, and commenced his election exer- 
 tions. In these his character had full play ; 
 and here, in the first great effort of his public 
 life, were amply vindicated his achievements 
 of a later period. The energy and activity he 
 exhibited amounted almost to a marvel ! Ev- 
 ery difficulty sank before him. Doubts were 
 satisfied, jealousies put to shame, indifference 
 moved to action, enmity even to friendship, 
 dishonesty foiled in its own way, friends stim- 
 ulated, the opposition of those who still con- 
 tinued enemies diverted. I mean to quote 
 these letters at some length hereafter, in im- 
 mediate illustration of the character of the 
 lord-president and lord-deputy, to the right un- 
 derstanding of which they appear to me to of- 
 fer a remarkable assistance. Wentworth, of 
 course, triumphed, for nothing could withstand 
 his vigour and resources. He went to the 
 poll, after all, on the day of his election, with 
 Calvert, in no vain reliance on friendly profes- 
 sions, but with positive lists, furnished him by 
 the petty officers of the several hundreds, of 
 the names of those voters who had distinctly 
 engaged to support his interests. t 
 
 It may be supposed into what a deadly feud 
 the hatred of the Saviles had now been pro- 
 voked. From this time we hear little more of 
 the father : the son, Sir John Savile the younger, 
 supplies his place. He was a person of mean 
 intellect ; but he had a restless ambition, and 
 was active in intrigue. He had " suck'd in 
 with his milk," as Clarendon says, a particular 
 malice to Wentworth ; and through his life he 
 had many opportunities of showing how steadily 
 he remembered that " Strafford had shrewdly 
 overborne his father. "J 
 
 Disgraceful occurrences had filled up the in- 
 terval between the last Parliament and this 
 Parliament of 1621. The exaction of benevo- 
 lences ; the usurpations of the Star Chamber ; 
 
 * " I was at London much entreated, and indeed at last en- 
 joined, to stand with Mr. Secretary Calvert." Strafford 
 Papers, vol. i., p. 10. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 13. 
 
 j Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vol. ii., p. 155, 
 folio edit. 
 
 $ "The benevolence goes on. A merchant of London, 
 who had been a cheesemonger, but now rich, was sent for 
 by the council, and required to give the king 200, or logo 
 into the Palatinate and serve the army with cheese, being 
 a man of eighty years of age. He yielded rather than pay, 
 though he might better have given nine subsidies, accord- 
 ing as he stands valued. This was told to me by one that 
 heard it from his owne mouth. They talk also of privy 
 seals. His majestie at Theobald's, discoursing publicly how
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 63 
 
 the deaths of the unfortunate Arabella Stuart 
 of the promising youth Prince Henry,* and 01 
 the accomplished Overbury ; the rapid rise o: 
 Villiers ; the pardon, and dark allusions of 
 Somerset;! the disgrace of Coke; these ar 
 some of the events which had blotted the his 
 tory of the nation. And these were of horn 
 growth. Abroad, mischief had been equall) 
 busy ; for the small remnant of foreign polic; 
 in the government disappeared with Cecil. Th 
 weak and unassisted Frederic, son-in-law oi 
 the English king, had been ignominiously driven 
 from his new dominions by Spinola ; Prague 
 had furnished its disasters ; and the Protestan 
 interest the faith of which, as he had abun 
 dantly assured Vorstius, James conceited him 
 self the defender was trampled down every 
 where. 
 
 Proportioned to the disgust and indignation 
 with which these things had been contemplatec 
 by the popular party, were the feelings with 
 which they now assembled in this Parliameni 
 of 1621. The early sittings were distinguishec 
 by active and resolute steps in behalf of privi- 
 lege. It is not necessary to allude to them at 
 any length here. Some great state criminals 
 were subsequently struck down ; and after a 
 few months, the Parliament was dissolved by 
 proclamation, and the king committed himself 
 in many acts of foolish violence. \ 
 
 Wentworth had taken little or no part in 
 these proceedings. He avoided the risk of 
 endangering a certain show of country inde- 
 pendence, by active opposition to what was 
 called the country party, and held the most 
 moderate of courses between the court and the 
 people. The service he had already rendered 
 to the former in the matter of Calvert's return 
 he had been enabled to render palatable to his 
 county by the circumstances of the Savile feud ; 
 and it now left him to a convenient kind of 
 neutrality in other respects, which might be 
 felt, in secret quarters, as no less serviceably 
 intended to the court. I find him acting on 
 committees in this Parliament, but never put- 
 ting himself forward as a speaker. Shortly 
 after, "he explained his policy in this respect in 
 a letter to his brother-in-law, Lord Clifford. Al- 
 
 he meant to governe, was heard to say he would governe ac- 
 cording to the good of the common-weale, hut not according 
 to the common will." Such is an extract from a MS. letter 
 of that day. Harl. MSS., 389. It is partly quoted in El- 
 lis's Original Letters, 2d series, vol. iii., p. 241. It is very 
 characteristic. 
 
 * For some account of the strange circumstances attend- 
 ing the death of this prince, see Osborne, p. 531 ; Burnet, 
 vol. i., p. 10; Winwood, vol. iii., p. 410; Harris's Life of 
 James, p. 301, 302. Fox, in his letter to Lord Lauderdale, 
 stated his conviction that Henry had been poisoned. The 
 report of the physicians, however, is unanimous on this 
 point, and unfavourable to the supposition. See Cornwal- 
 lis's Memoir, in the 2d vol. of Somers's Tracts ; and the ad- 
 mirable remark of Hume, vol. v., p. 48. 
 
 t See Osborne, p. 534 ; Weldon, p. 95, 168, 125 ; and 
 Harris, p. 82-86, for certain remarkable points in the char- 
 acter of James. With respect to the allusions of Somerset, 
 see Weldon, p. 118 ; the king's letters to Bacon, in the 
 Cabala ; Birch's edition of Bacon, vol. iii. ; and Von Rau- 
 mer's sixty-third letter, in his Illustrations of History. Sir 
 Walter Scott has a curious note in his edition of Somers's 
 Tracts (vol. ii., p. 488) on this mysterious affair. See, also, 
 Somers's Tracts, vol. ii., p. 335, 336 ; and Brodie's History, 
 p. 15-19. I have no inclination to venture an opinion on so 
 extremely unpleasant a subject ; but if suspicions reasonably 
 prevailed before, the publication of Von Raumer's work on 
 the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not 
 likely to lessen them. Dr. Lingard has put forward objec- 
 tions, which see in his History, vol. vi., p. 116, quarto ed. 
 
 J See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 52-55. 
 
 luding to parliaments, he says, " For my opin- 
 ion of these meetings your lordship knows suf- 
 ficiently, and the services done there coldly 
 requited on all sides, and, which is worse, many 
 times misconstrued. I judge farther, the path 
 we are like to walk in is now more narrow and 
 slippery than formerly, yet not so difficult but 
 may be passed with circumspection, patience, AND 
 PRINCIPALLY SILENCE."* The present dissolu- 
 tion Wentworth regretted ; but he made silence 
 chiefly serve to assist him in this also. " As 
 for the disaster," he writes to Lord d'Arcy, 
 " fallen upon this so hopeful a Parliament, albeit 
 I should take pleasure to relate it, yet the en- 
 closed proclamation for dissolution might well 
 save me the labour ; much more, then, when I 
 cannot think a thought of it but with grief, will 
 it well become me to be silent, "t 
 
 He had moved his family up from Wentworth 
 Woodhouse before the session ; and they re- 
 sided, during its continuance, in Austin Friars. 
 Here his body first began to show its extreme 
 frailty. He had " a great fever," says Sir 
 George Kadcliffe ; one of those pestilential 
 fevers, it is to be presumed, which so often 
 ravaged the close and crowded streets of Lon- 
 don ; and which, at the same time (1622), struck 
 his wife more fatally. He removed from Lon- 
 don, but too late to save the Lady Margaret. 
 She died shortly after, leaving no issue, but a 
 memory which he held in respectful regard.^ 
 
 In his intercourse with his court friends at 
 London, Wentworth had zealously interested 
 himself in behalf of two or three of his broth- 
 ers. The anxiety with which he sought to 
 get them fairly " settled" somehow was ex- 
 tremely characteristic. The first thing we now 
 find him engaged in at Wentworth Woodhouse 
 after his domestic loss is the following out of 
 these exertions for the youths of his family. 
 He writes to Sir Edward Conway, one of the 
 king's principal secretaries of state, to remind 
 him of his promises in behalf of " the bearer, 
 my fifth brother, who, intending to try his for- 
 tune in the wars, desires more than in any 
 place else to serve as a gentleman of the com- 
 pany under my cousin your son." He apolo- 
 gizes for not having seen the secretary before 
 leaving London, on the score of the sudden 
 necessity of his illness. " If you would vouch- 
 safe him," he continues, " so much of your fa- 
 vour, as to recommend him by your letters in 
 such sort, that my cousin may be pleased to 
 afford him his good direction and council, and 
 cast his eye upon him as a kinsman (if his car- 
 riage may be such as may deserve it), I should 
 udge myself much bound unto you for this, as 
 "or other your many noble curtesies bestowed 
 upon me. And this I will be answerable for, 
 hat he shall approve himself, by God's grace, 
 religious, honest, well governed, and daring 
 nough. I conceive, likewise (if it might stand 
 with your good pleasure), that a letter of recom- 
 mendation to Sir Horace Vere might stand him 
 n good stead, which I humbly submit to your 
 kvisdom, and myself to your honourable censure 
 "or this my boldness." This is the same thought, 
 he reader will perceive, as that which suggest- 
 ed itself to Eliot when writing to Hampden of 
 
 * Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 19. t Ibid., p. 15. 
 
 t [She was buried at York. C.I 
 
 i See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 14, 16, 18.
 
 64 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 his younger son. Sir Edward Conway at once 
 granted his request, and Michael Wentworth 
 was sent off to the wars ; not without a letter 
 from his brother, however, of excellent purpose 
 and advice. Among many sound suggestions 
 for his professional advancement, he observes : 
 " Methinks it were good to keep a journal-book 
 of all that passeth during your being in the 
 army ; as of your removes, your skirmishes, 
 your encampings, the order of your marches, 
 of your approaches, of your retreats, of your 
 fortifications, of your batteries, and such like ; 
 in the well and sound disposal whereof, as I 
 conceive, consists the chief skill and judgment 
 of a soldier." The letter concludes admirably : 
 " Only let me add this one counsel, that if you 
 come in person to be brought on in any service, 
 I conceive you shall do well to go on with the 
 sober and staid courage of an understanding 
 man, rather than with the rash and ill-tempered 
 heat of an unadvised youth. In which course 
 too, I conceive, you may sufficiently vindicate 
 yourself from the opinion of fear and baseness, 
 and gain a good esteem among the wiser sort. 
 And, indeed, a man that ventures himself des- 
 perately beyond reason (besides that thereby 
 he too much undervalues himself) shall by men 
 of sure and sad brains be deemed, without 
 doubt, unfit for government and command, that 
 exerciseth none of it first over his own unruly 
 and misleading passions." This conduct, so 
 deprecated here by Wentworth, is a descrip- 
 tion of that very conduct which it is the gen- 
 eral custom to ascribe to the Earl of Strafford, 
 but incorrectly, as I trust I shall be able to 
 show. 
 
 His health had now strengthened, and, with 
 it, a flow of good spirits came. Sir George 
 Calvert, the king's secretary of state, was se- 
 lected for the first advantage of these. " Mr. 
 Tailor telling me," Wentworth writes, " he 
 would see you before the end of this week, I 
 might not omit to present my service unto you 
 in these few lines. Matter worthy your trou- 
 ble these parts afford none, where our objects 
 and thoughts are limited in looking upon a tu- 
 lip, hearing a bird sing, a rivulet murmuring, 
 or some such petty, yet innocent pastime, 
 which, for my part, I begin to feed myself in, 
 having, I praise God, recovered more in a day 
 by an open country air than in a fornight's 
 time in that smothering one of London. By 
 my troth, I wish you, divested of the importu- 
 nity of business, here for half a dozen hours, 
 you should taste how free and fresh we breathe, 
 and how procul metu fruimur modestis opibus, a 
 wanting sometimes to persons of greater emi- 
 nency in the administration of commonwealths. 
 But seeing this is denied to you in your course, 
 and to me as part of my misfortune, I shall 
 pray you may ever receive as full contentment 
 in those more weighty as we do in these lighter 
 entertainments."* 
 
 This " innocent pastime," nevertheless, did 
 not withhold him from the Parliament, which 
 was now summoned. Its proceedings have 
 been described in the life of Eliot. Wentworth 
 played his usual cautious part, and returned to 
 Wentworth Woodhouse, at its adjournment, a 
 better friend than ever, more playful and more 
 confidential, to his majesty's "principal secre- 
 
 .* Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 16. 
 
 tary of state." Calvert himself had gone to 
 his country seat at Thistleworth, and is con- 
 gratulated by his correspondent with many 
 classical similitudes and quotations on having 
 " retired to the delights of his Tusculanie, erep- 
 tus specioso ejus damno." An amusing anec- 
 dote of James, then hunting with his court at 
 Rufford, concludes the letter. " The loss of a 
 stag, and the hounds hunting foxes instead of 
 a deer, put the king, your master, into a mar- 
 vellous chaff, accompanied with those ordinary 
 symptoms better known to you courtiers, I 
 conceive, than to us rural swains ; in the height 
 whereof comes a clown galloping in, and sta- 
 ring full in his face : His blood ! (quoth he) am 
 I come forty miles to see a fellow 1 and presently 
 in a great rage turns about his horse, and away 
 he goes faster than he came ; the oddness 
 whereof caused his majesty and all the com- 
 pany to burst out into a vehement laughter ; 
 and so the fume for that time was happily dis- 
 persed." 
 
 Seven days after this the " rural swain" of 
 Woodhouse writes again to his selected confi- 
 dant. He begins by a laughing mention of 
 having written some politics recently to his 
 " cousin Wandesford, as being a statist," a pol- 
 itician, a meddler in state affairs; "but here 
 with you," he adds, " I have matters of other 
 guess stuff to relate, that our harvest is all in, a 
 most fine season to make fishponds, our plums 
 all gone and past, peaches, quinces, and grapes 
 almost fully ripe, which will, I trow, hold bet- 
 ter relish with a Thistleworth palate, and ap- 
 prove me how to have the skill to serve every 
 man in his right cue. These only we country- 
 men muse of, hoping in such harmless retire- 
 ments for a just defence from the higher pow- 
 ers, and, possessing ourselves in contentment, 
 pray with Dry ope in the poet, 
 
 ' Et siqua est pietas, ab acutte vulnere falcis 
 Et pecoris morsu, froudes defendite nostras.' 
 
 Thus, you see, Ovid serves us at every turn. 
 How bold we are with you since you entred 
 our list ; and how we take time, while time 
 serves ! For, Michaelmas once come, and 
 your secretary's cloak on your shoulders, I 
 trust you shall find us better manner'd than to 
 interrupt your serious hours with our toys." 
 On the arrival of Michaelmas, however, the 
 Parliament was again adjourned, for the pur- 
 pose, as it afterward appeared, of a final disso- 
 lution. Our rural swain, in consequence, de- 
 spatches, with an airy sauciness, to his state 
 friend, in a tone between jest and earnest, 
 some slight shades of significant advice, dashed 
 with a sort of reminder that the writer though 
 given to looking at tulips, and hearing birds 
 sing, and rivulets murmuring, and keeping 
 sheep from biting his hedges, and such like in- 
 nocent pastime might yet be called upon, as 
 an effect of want of employment, to play the 
 part of an " unruly fellow in Parliament." The 
 words of this letter are eminently happy and 
 well chosen. " Now," says Wentworth, "that 
 you have given us a put-off till February, we 
 are at good ease and leisure to pry (the true 
 effects of want of employment) saucily out of 
 our own calling into the mysteries of state ; to 
 cast about for a reason of this sudden change. 
 In a word, we conclude that the French treaty 
 must first be consummate before such unruly
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 65 
 
 fellows meet in Parliament, lest they might ap- 
 pear as agile against this as that other Spanish 
 match. For my part, I like it well, and con- 
 ceive the bargain wholsom on our side, that 
 we save three other subsidies and fifteenths. 
 Less could not have been demanded for the 
 dissolving of this treaty, and still the king your 
 master have pretended to suffer loss (no doubt 
 for our satisfaction only), which certainly we 
 should have believed, and reputed ourselves 
 great gainers, and that rightly too. For is it a 
 small mailer, trow you, for poor swains to unwind 
 so dextrously your courtly true-love knots 1 You 
 think we see nothing ; but believe it, you shall find 
 us legislators no fools ; albeit, you of the court 
 (for by this time I am sure you have, by a fair re- 
 treat from Thistlcworth, quit your part of a coun- 
 try life for this year) think to blear our eyes with 
 your sweet balls, and leave us in the suds when 
 you have done. Thus much for the common-weal. 
 For your own self, I am right glad for your 
 ague recovered, hoping it will cleanse away all 
 bad-disposed humours, and give entrance con- 
 sequently unto a settled continuing health, 
 wherein no man alive shall be more pleased. 
 In the alacrity of which faith, and out of an 
 earnest desire to be made an eyewitness there- 
 of, you shall have (God willing) within these 
 few weeks to attend you, your honour's ever 
 most humbly, most readily to be command, 
 THOMAS WENTWOETH." 
 
 It is just possible that these hints might have 
 been taken at last by the court party, but that 
 Wentworth's proposed journey was retarded 
 by a sudden return of illness. In the spring, 
 Ratcliffe observes, "As I take it, he had a 
 double tertian ; and after his recovery, a re- 
 lapse into a single tertian ; and, a while after, 
 a burning fever." On his recovery from these 
 afflicting disorders, he came instantly up to 
 London. Charles now sat upon the English 
 throne, and Buckingham's influence reigned 
 over the royal councils more absolutely than 
 even in James's time. This, it is probable (for 
 he had good reason to suspect a personal dis- 
 like on Buckingham's part), induced Went- 
 worth to venture more openly among the pop- 
 ular party, and by that means convey to the 
 king, inaccessible through his minister, the im- 
 portance of his talents and services. I shall 
 show very soon how extremely anxious he was 
 to exhibit himself, as it were, personally to the 
 king. We find him now, accordingly, in fre- 
 quent communication with Denzil Hollis, and 
 others of the popular men. He had, from the 
 first, provided a convenient organ of commu- 
 nication with them in the person of his kins- 
 man Wandesford, who subsequently proved so 
 accommodating a patriot. Soon after this (one 
 of the results of his visits to the house of Hol- 
 lis's father, the Earl of Clare), he married the 
 Lady Arabella Hollis, " younger daughter of the 
 earl, a lady exceeding comely and beautiful, and 
 yet much more lovely in the endowments of 
 her mind."* 
 
 Wentworth now began to be talked of as an 
 accession to the Liberal party, and the court 
 grew somewhat alarmed. On the meeting of 
 Parliament, his election for Yorkshire came 
 into dispute, and, as I have shown in the me- 
 moir of Eliot, the ministerial men supported 
 
 * Radcliffe's Essay. 
 
 his claims. No doubt this arose from a desire, 
 by some little sacrifice in a matter of no essen- 
 tial concern, to nip slightly the budding pa- 
 triot. Eliot's opposition threw him out. What 
 has been already suggested on this subject* is 
 corroborated by some occasional allusions in 
 the Strafford papers. Wentworth's friend, Sir 
 Richard Beaumont, for instance, writes in an- 
 swer his earnest request : " My occasions are, 
 and have been such, as with no convenience I 
 can come up to London ; for which I am very 
 sorry, that I shall not enjoy your good com- 
 pany this summer, and give what assistance I 
 could to make good our York election, which I 
 liold as clear as the noon sun ; for if it be tol- 
 erated that men shall come six, seven, nay, ten 
 apprentices out of a house, this is more like a 
 rebellion than an election. The gentry are 
 wronged, the freeholders are wronged."t Sir 
 Richard Beaumont goes on to allude to the 
 borough of Pontefract, observes that he is much 
 beholden for the honour of having been elect- 
 ed there, but hints a private reason which will 
 prevent his accepting, and suggests the name 
 of another friend to be returned on a new writ. 
 " I should have been willing to have kept 
 your place for you, or for any friend of yours, 
 and served in it, and yielded it up of an hour's 
 warning to have done you service ; but as it 
 is," &c. It would appear from this that Went- 
 worth had already, against the chance of de- 
 feat, secured a seat to fall back upon in the 
 borough of Pontefract. t 
 
 When the Parliament commenced proceed- 
 ings, Wentworth partly showed gratitude to 
 the court, and partly redeemed his new alli- 
 ance. He spoke with extreme moderation, 
 and advised a grant of subsidies, while, at the 
 same time, he intimated opposition to Buck- 
 ingham. The adjournment to Oxford then 
 took place ; but, on their reassembling, while 
 Eliot and others were dooming the minister to 
 impeachment, Wentworth continued silent. The 
 cause of this will very soon appear. 
 
 He returned to Yorkshire. Necessity, in a 
 few months, called together another Parlia- 
 ment. He set to work instantly to prepare for 
 his election ; but, in the midst of his arrange- 
 ments, to the infinite surprise of himself no 
 less than of his friends, an announcement 
 reached him that his name was among those 
 of the men disabled from serving by Bucking- 
 ham's notable scheme of pricking them sheriffs 
 of their respective counties. Wentworth was 
 now sheriff of Yorkshire. Sir Arthur Ingram, 
 a cautious friend, writing to him at this mo- 
 ment, gave him one consolation : " It was told 
 me by two counsellors, that in the naming of you, 
 the king said you were an honest gentleman, but 
 not a tittle to any of the rest. This much advan- 
 tage have you that way." He had previously 
 said that every exertion to prevent the step 
 had been used, but added, " I think, if all the 
 council that was at court had joined together 
 in request for you, it would not have prevailed ; 
 for it was set and resolved what should be 
 done before the great duke's going over, and 
 from that the king would not change a tittle. " 
 
 * Memoir of Eliot, p. 31, 32. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 27. 
 
 i See Letter to the Mayor of Pontefract, vol. i., p. 26. 
 
 Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 29.
 
 66 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Buckingham had gone by this time into Hol- 
 land ; and it would thus appear that .Charles, 
 though inclined favourably to Wentworth, did 
 not dare to contravene the order of his minion. 
 Be that as it might, here was a great occasion. 
 It was soon announced to Wentworth that the 
 pricked men were resolved to make a struggle, 
 to defeat the unusual tyranny that had sought 
 to disable them from Parliament. " I met with 
 Sir Francis Seymour here, at Reading," writes 
 the cautious Ingram ; " I find by him that he 
 is very desirous to be of the House, notwith- 
 standing he is chosen sheriff; he hath taken, 
 as he telleth me, very good advice in it ; and 
 he hath been resolved that he may be returned, 
 and serve for any town or city that is out of 
 his own county. He would gladly that you 
 would favour him so much as to get him cho- 
 sen for some place in the north, and he will, 
 if it stand with your good liking, have you cho- 
 sen in the west. This he did desire me to 
 write to you of, and that you would send him 
 or me an answer so soon as you can. This, 
 his desire, I have by these few lines made 
 known unto you, leaving it to your own wis- 
 dom to do therein what you shall think good. 
 For my own poor opinion, it is a thing that no 
 doubt will displease the king exceeding much, and, 
 therefore, to be well considered of. On the other 
 side, I think the House would be exceeding glad 
 of it, and would hold you in, in spite of any. That 
 which induceth Sir Francis the rather in this 
 is, that he knoweth that Sir Edward Coke and 
 Sir Robert Philips will be both returned. But, 
 good sir, out of the love I bear to you, I dare 
 not give you any encouragement in it. "* Went- 
 worth's conduct upon this was decisive of the 
 character I am endeavouring to represent. 
 With the ready and resolved purpose of a man 
 who is already decided on the main course to 
 be pursued, yet is not unwilling that it should 
 receive corroboration or modification from his 
 friends, he instantly consulted several of them. 
 Observe how characteristically this is convey- 
 ed in a letter from his father-in-law, Lord Clare : 
 "You resolve, in my opinion of this particular, 
 rightly; for we live under a prerogative gov- 
 ernment, where book-law submits unto lex lo- 
 quens ; then be these extraordinaries, that rely 
 rather upon inference or interpretation than the 
 letter, too weak staves for such subjects to 
 lean upon. This is a novelty and a stranger, 
 that a sheriff, who, according to the received 
 rule of our forefathers, is tied to his county as 
 a snail to his shell, may cause himself to be 
 chosen a burgess, or servant for a borough, and 
 so, in a sort, quit the greater and the king's 
 service for a subject's and a less : therefore, as 
 a novelty, it is rather to be followed than to begin 
 it, and as a stranger to be admitted as a proba- 
 tioner, and to be embraced upon farther ac- 
 quaintance. For my part, I shall be glad if Sir 
 Edward Coke and Sir Robert Philips can make 
 their undertaking good ; and I could wish Sir 
 Francis Seymour were a burgess, so you were 
 not seen in it ; and if any of them, without your 
 knowledge and consent, shall confer any such place 
 upon you, you are no way in fault thereby ; and 
 yet Caesar's wife must be free from suspicion ; 
 so, as I may conclude, it is not good to stand 
 within the distance of absolute power. But I 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 30. 
 
 see the issue : the question will fall between 
 the king and the Parliament ; the House will 
 demand her member, and the king denies his 
 officer, and the king's election was prior, so as 
 in conclusion some drops of displeasure may 
 fall upon the borough, whose charter is always in 
 the king's reach. But this is my chimera, and 
 the lion may be less terrible than the picture. 
 Howsoever, this well succeeding would put the 
 courtier out of his trick, secure the Parliament 
 better, and the subject in general, and make 
 great ones more cautious in wrestling with that 
 high court. Yet as you write, son, this business 
 is of such a nature, as it is much better to be a 
 spectator than an actor, and in this I give you no 
 opinion ; I only confirm yours."* His resolution 
 now perfectly assured, Wentworth writes in 
 playful confidence to his kinsman Wandesford, 
 whose services he relied on to keep him as 
 well as possible with the popular members. 
 He begins by a pleasant piece of humour : " Re- 
 turna brevium is the office of a sheriff indeed ; 
 but in this, that in this high calling (and now 
 sworn too) I answer your long letter, is more 
 than in justice, scarcely in favour, you could 
 expect from me ; and little less than incivility 
 in you thus to abuse a simple gentleman in his 
 place, and put me beyond the length of my teth- 
 er, it being my part this year, laconicum agere, 
 as- becomes best, to say truth, a man of affairs 
 attendant upon justices, escheators, juries, 
 bankrupts, thieves, and such kind of cattle. 
 Well, then, still to pursue, as a good officer 
 should do, the duties of my vocation, I will tell 
 you, my purpose is to carry myself in such a 
 temper, that for my expense it shall participate 
 of moderation and sobriety, without the least 
 tincture-of wantonness or petulancy, which will 
 both better express the sense wherewith I take 
 it from above, and be more suiting with that 
 just regard I owe the gentry of this country, to 
 whom I have been so much beholden ; of whom 
 I should be too much forgetful, and of my own 
 modesty too, if I did any ways intend (at least 
 as far as my indiscretion could go) to bring the 
 former licentious custom in again so much to 
 their prejudice. Therefore, in a word, come 
 king, come judge, I will keep myself within the 
 articles made when Sir Guy Palmes was sher- 
 iff; and run dog, run cat, drink a red ryal by 
 the place at least, by God's leave." He goes 
 through many topics very amusingly, and then 
 observes, "You will partly see by the enclosed 
 how the pulse beats above," which I take to be an 
 allusion to the letter (he afterward desires it to 
 be enclosed back to him) of his friend Ingram, 
 in which the king's feeling had been so favour- 
 ably expressed. " For my own part," he con- 
 tinues, " / will commit others to their active heat, 
 myself, according to the season of the year, fold 
 myself up in a cold, silent forbearance, apply my~ 
 self cheerfully to the duties of my place, and heart 
 ily pray to God to bless Sir Francis Seymour. 
 For my rule, which I will not transgress, is, 
 ' Never to contend with the prerogative out of a 
 Parliament, nor yet to contest with a king but when 
 I am constrained thereunto.' "t 
 
 Wentworth faithfully adhered to these inten- 
 tions ; and while " the great, warm, and ruffling 
 Parliament" in London was infusing, by the 
 
 * Straffbrd Papers, vol. i., p. 31. 
 t Ibid., p. 32-34.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORIX 
 
 67 
 
 boldness of its acts and words, new spirit and 
 strength into the country, he remained quiet in 
 Yorkshire, discharging his duty, as his humor- 
 ous classification had described it, among "jus- 
 tices, escheators, juries, bankrupts, thieves, and 
 such like cattle." It is true he had found time 
 to attend in London for certain purposes that 
 are speedily to be explained, but he did not 
 meddle with Parliament matters there, return- 
 ing to Yorkshire again as quiet as before, and, 
 indeed, a little more contented.* 
 
 Soon afterward, before the proceedings of 
 the Parliament had closed, and while attending 
 a county meeting in his office of high sheriff, a 
 paper was handed to Wentworth. It was the 
 king's warrant dismissing him from the office 
 he had so ardently desired to hold of custos 
 rotulorum \ Giving way to momentary aston- 
 ishment and indignation, he publicly told the 
 meeting in what manner he had just been dis- 
 charged, and that his successor was to be old 
 Sir John Savile. " Yet I could wish," he add- 
 ed, " they who succeed me had forborne this 
 time this service, a place in sooth ill chosen, a 
 stage ill prepared, for venting such poor, vain, 
 insulting humour. I leave it," he concluded, 
 " not conscious of any fault in myself, nor yet 
 guilty of the virtue in my successor that should 
 occasion this removal."t 
 
 This was admirable for a public display. As 
 soon as he had arrived at Wentworth Wood 
 House, however, he despatched the following 
 letters, one almost immediately after the other, 
 to " the Right Honourable Sir Richard Weston, 
 Knt, Chancellor of his Majesty's Exchequer!" 
 They fully explain, it will be seen, the whole 
 course of Wentworth's recent conduct. " I 
 have been beholden unto you," he begins, " for 
 many courtesies, which in your own particular 
 I will undoubtedly ever thankfully acknowledge. 
 Give me leave, then, to put you in remembrance 
 of some things wherewith you formerly have 
 been acquainted, as also to give you an ac- 
 count of some things which have happened 
 since. At the dissolved Parliament in Oxford, 
 you are privy how I was moved from, and in behalf 
 of, the Duke of Buckingham, with promise of his 
 good esteem and favour ; you are privy that my 
 answer was, I did honour the duke's person, that I 
 mould be ready to serve him in the quality of an 
 honest man and a gentleman ; you are privy that 
 the duke look this in good part, sent me thanks ; 
 as for respects done him, you are privy how, du- 
 ring that sitting, I performed what I had profess- 
 ed. The consequence of all this was the making 
 me sheriff the winter after. It is true, the duke, a 
 little before Whitsuntide last, at Whitehall, in your 
 presence, said, it was done without his grace's 
 knmeledge, that he was then in Holland. At 
 Whitehall, Easter term last, you brought me to 
 the duke, his grace did before you contract (as he 
 pleased to term it) a friendship with me, all former 
 mistakes laid asleep, forgotten. After, I went, at 
 my coming out of town, to receive his commands, 
 to kiss his grace's hands, where I had all the good 
 words and good usage which could be expected, 
 which bred in me a great deal of content, a full 
 security. Now the consequence here again is, that 
 even yesterday I received his majesty's writ for 
 the discharging me of the poor place of cuslos ro- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 35. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 36. 
 
 tulorum which I held here, whose good pleasure 
 shall be cheerfully obeyed ; yet I cannot but 
 observe as ill luck of it, that the reward of my 
 long, painful, and loyal service to his majesty 
 in that place is to be thus cast off, without any 
 fault laid to my charge that I hear of, and that 
 his grace, too, was now in England. I have 
 therefore troubled you with this unartificial re- 
 lation, to show you the singleness of my heart, 
 resting in all assurance justly confident you 
 shall never find that I have, for my own part, 
 in a tittle transgressed from what had passed 
 betwixt us. All which I confess, indeed, to 
 this bare intent and purpose, and no other, 
 that I might preserve myself in your opinion a 
 man of plainness and truth. Which obtained, 
 I have fully my end, and so I rest in the con- 
 stant condition of your truly affectionate friend 
 to dispose of, THOMAS WENTWORTH." The 
 courteous conclusions of Wentworth's letters 
 have a significancy at times. The next letter 
 to Weston, following up the purpose of the last, 
 runs thus : " Calling to mind the faithful service 
 I had the honour to do his majesty now with God, 
 how graciously he vouchsafed to accept and express 
 it openly and sundry times, I enjoy within myself 
 much comfort and contentment. On the other 
 side, albeit therein still strongly dwell entire 
 intentions (and by God's goodness shall, with 
 me to my grave) towards his sacred majesty 
 that now is, yet I may well apprehend the 
 weight of his indignation, being put out of all 
 commissions, wherein formerly I had served 
 and been trusted. This makes me sensible of 
 my misfortune, though not conscious of any 
 inward guilt which might occasion it ; resting 
 infinitely ambitious, not of new employment, 
 but much rather to live under the smile than the 
 frown of my sovereign. In this strait, therefore, 
 give me leave to recommend to you the pro- 
 tection of my innocence ; and to beseech you, at 
 some good opportunity, to represent unto his maj- 
 esty my tender and unfeigned grief for his disfa- 
 vour, my fears also that I stand before his justice 
 and goodness clad in the malevolent interpretations, 
 and prejudiced by the subtle insinuations, of my 
 adversaries ; and, lastly, my only and humble 
 suit, that his majesty will princely deign that 
 either my insufficiency or fault may be shown 
 me ; to this only end, that, if insufficiency, I 
 may know where and how to improve myself, 
 and be better enabled to present hereafter more 
 ripe and pleasing fruits of my labours in his 
 service ; if a fault, that I may either confess 
 my error and beg his pardon, or else, which I 
 am most confident I shall do, approve myself 
 throughout an honest, well-affected, loyal sub- 
 ject, with full, plain, and upright satisfaction to 
 all that can, by the greatest malice or disguised 
 untruth, be objected against me. The content- 
 ment of others in my actions is but subordinate, 
 and consequently neither my principal study 
 nor care. Thus have I presumed upon you, 
 farther than any particular interest of mine can 
 warrant, out of a general belief in your wisdom 
 and nobleness, the rather, too, because I conceive 
 you can best witness the opinion, nay, I might say 
 the esteem, his late majesty held of me. All which, 
 nevertheless, as in good manners and discre- 
 tion I ought, I submit wholly to your best 
 pleasure, without importunately pressing farther 
 herein than may stand with your convcniency, your
 
 68 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 other respects, and, however, retain with me 
 the lasting truth of your honour's most humbly, 
 most readily to be commanded, THOMAS WENT- 
 WORTH."* 
 
 It did not suit with Weston's convenience to 
 answer these letters at the time, but it is prob- 
 able that no word of them was withheld from 
 the king. Buckingham was still too powerful 
 to be in anything gainsayed, and it was clear 
 that he had formed a violent dislike to Went- 
 worth. He sought now to mortify him as much 
 as possible through the means of Savile. The 
 son of the " old knight," or the " old cavalier," 
 as one of Wentworth's correspondentst calls 
 him, was promoted to a barony and an office in 
 the household. It is not difficult, on mature 
 consideration, to assign an intelligible reason 
 for these proceedings by Buckingham, though 
 at first they appear startlingly gratuitous. He 
 had, in truth, an equal motive to be jealous of 
 Wentworth, in the way of favour as in that of 
 opposition. While it is possible that he did not 
 very clearly understand the policy that had been 
 shown by Wentworth in either case, it is more 
 than probable that he feared to be undone by 
 him in both. In favour, he might already have 
 received occasion to suppose Wentworth likely 
 to prove a formidable rival (not dreaming that 
 a large capacity could never so impose upon 
 Charles as a mean one) ; and in opposition, he 
 may still have thought him too likely to be 
 dangerous, for a perfect trust. Nor was he 
 without reason for suspicion, at least, on the 
 latter score. Wandesford, the most intimate 
 friend and kinsman of the quiet sheriff, had 
 been one of the most active managers of the 
 impeachment in the last session. And there 
 were other causes of dread. Wentworth had 
 had some communication with the intriguing 
 Archbishop Williams, and, worse than all, was 
 known to have frequently visited the person 
 whom the duke more deeply feared, the Arch- 
 bishop Abbot. I quote from Abbot's narrative 
 " concerning his disgrace at court," a passage 
 elucidatory on this point. In describing the 
 three of his acquaintances to whom exception 
 had been taken by Buckingham (" I know from 
 the court, by a friend," he interposes, " that 
 my house for a good space of time hath been 
 watched, and I marvel that they have not rather 
 named sixty than three"), the archbishop ob- 
 serves, " The third was Sir Thomas Wentworth, 
 who had good occasion to send unto me, and 
 sometimes to see me, because we were joint ex- 
 ecutors to Sir George Savile,t who married his 
 sister, and was my pupil at Oxford ; to whose 
 son also Sir Thomas Wentworth and I were 
 guardians, as may appear in the Court of Wards, 
 and many things passed between us in that be- 
 half ; yet, to my remembrance, I saw not this 
 gentleman but once in these three quarters of 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 34, 35. 
 
 t Lord Mansfield, who appears to have remonstrated with 
 the Duke of Buckingham himself, while Wentworth thus 
 remonstrated, as it were, with the king, respecting the late 
 proceedings. " I writ my mind," says Mansfield to Went- 
 worth, " at full to my lord duke ; and, I protest to God, no 
 more sparing the old cavalier or his nature than I would 
 speak of him to you, nor mincing my desires or my nature, 
 which is not to do courtesies for injuries." It is most prob- 
 able that this was done at Wentworth's desire. See Pa- 
 pers, vol. i., p. 43. 
 
 t Sir George, it may be remarked, was not a " Yorkshire 
 Savile " 
 
 a year last past, at which time he came to 
 seek his brother-in-law, the Lord Clifford, who 
 was then with me at dinner at Lambeth."* 
 
 The second Parliament dissolved, privy seals 
 were now issuing. Savile, still hot against 
 his old opponent, prevailed with the court to 
 send Wentworth a privy seal. The latter re- 
 ceived 'it while his recent overtures to Weston 
 remained yet unaccepted. It had the appear- 
 ance of a cold rejection of them.t Still he hes- 
 itated as to his course. " I have been here 
 now some two or three months," writes Lord 
 Baltimore to him, " a spectator upon this great 
 scene of state, where I have no part to play ; 
 but you have, for which your friends are sorry. 
 It is your enemies that bring you on the stage, 
 where they have a hope to see you act your 
 own notable harm ; and therefore keep your- 
 self off, I beseech you, et redimas te quam queas 
 minima."!. A letter from Lord Haughton fol- 
 lowed. " It was supposed," he informs Went- 
 worth, " this humour of committing had been 
 spent, till that your antagonist did revive it ; 
 who, I hear, brags he hath you in a toil or di- 
 lemma ; if you refuse, you shall run the fortune 
 of the other delinquents ; if you come in at the last 
 hour into the vineyard, he hopes it will lessen you 
 in the country."^ Such was indeed the dilem- 
 ma, the toil, in which Wentworth found him- 
 self; but he hesitated still! His friends now 
 became extremely anxious, and letter upon let- 
 ter was despatched to him. Their general cry 
 was one of dissuasion, but in all events of im- 
 mediate decision. H Lord Clifford wrote sever- 
 al times in anxious solicitude. " Your friends 
 here do think you take the best course in wri- 
 ting to the commissioners and coming up in- 
 stantly, if you are not yet resolved to lend : but 
 that being the point we all wish you would grant 
 us ; for, without that, we can have no hope of 
 your safety for your health or person. Then, 
 the deferring of the answer will so lessen the gift, 
 as the acceptance of it would be but faint and cold. 
 Whereas, if you would now assent to slip the 
 money into some commissioner's hand, you 
 might wave the trouble to appear, either in the 
 country or here. I must tell you, that I have 
 met here with many that are persuaded that 
 you struck a tally here yourself when you were 
 at London, and my answer to such was igno- 
 rance. Another sort there are, who inquire 
 much after your coming up, and these I con- 
 ceive not out of any good affection, because 
 some of them have relation to old Sir John." 
 Lord Baltimore wrote more earnestly still. " If 
 you resolve betimes to take this course, which 
 I would-to God you would, it may be yet inter- 
 preted obedience to your sovereign, and zeal to 
 his service ; and whatsoever slackness hath been 
 in it hitherto may be excused by your friends here, 
 either by indisposition of health, or some other rea- 
 son, which your own judgment can better dic- 
 tate unto you than my advice. I should say 
 much more to you were you here, which is not 
 fit for paper ; but never put off the matter to 
 your appearance here, for God's sake ; but send 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 451. Written about the year 
 1628-9. 
 
 t In the Life of Eliot I have sufficiently explained the 
 court practices at this time. Privy seals were generally 
 addressed to the " disaffected" only. 
 
 t StrafTord Papers, vol. i., p. 37. $ Ibid. 
 
 II See the Papers, vol. i., p. 37-40.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 your money in to the collectors in the country 
 without more ado. Your friends are much per- 
 plexed and in fear of you, and none more than 7." 
 Wentworth, thus driven, made up his mind, at 
 last, to refuse to lend. He could no longer 
 conceal from himself that a crisis had arrived, 
 and he was not ignorant of a means (though he 
 might have hitherto wished to avoid some in- 
 cidents attached to it) that would possibly force 
 from it a perfect triumph. He refused the loan, 
 and was summoned to the council table at Lon- 
 don. He did not omit an opportunity to his 
 main purpose that seemed to offer itself here. 
 Wandesford describes it in a letter written to 
 him after his committal to the Marshalsea. 
 " Now that you are reckoned with the afflicted, 
 a man may pray safely for your deliverance ; 
 and, seeing it would be no better, I am glad 
 you come in so fair, and so handsomely upon 
 the point itself. Sir Arthur tells me the presi- 
 dent reports well of your carriage at the table. 
 shall be glad to hear of you in your present con- 
 finement, lest that prison and this season give 
 you a nightcap in earnest."* 
 
 He only remained six weeks in the Marshal- 
 sea. He was then removed to Dartford in 
 Kent, where, Radcliffe observes, he " was not 
 to go above two miles from that town." This 
 was an easy imprisonment, and, easy as it was, 
 was still more alleviated by the presence of 
 the Lady Arabella.! She had already present- 
 ed him with a boy, and, during his present re- 
 striction, gave birth to a girl. The letters of 
 her brother, Denzil Hollis, written at this peri- 
 od to Wentworth, are very delightful in many 
 respects, t and, in the disastrous news of the 
 court schemes which they supplied, may have 
 served to strengthen his present patriotic pur- 
 poses. " I am most glad," he writes, "to hear 
 my sister is in so fair a way of recovering 
 strength, since she last made you the second 
 time a father : I wish she may many times do 
 it to both your comforts, and every time still 
 with more comfort than the former ; that yet 
 in our private respects we may have some cause 
 of joy, since the public affords us so little ; for 
 you see how that goes on de mal en pis, as the 
 French say." He then gives a vivid account 
 of the melancholy Isle of Rhee expedition, and, 
 describing the numbers that had been lost, 
 pleasantly concludes thus : " In the mean time 
 we have lost many good men, yet let us make 
 the best of it ; and I hope it will make our wives, 
 instead of bearing wenches, which of late you 
 say they have been much given to, fall to bring- 
 ing of boys, young soldiers for the reincrew of 
 our army : and I know no reason but mine should 
 begin ; and she had as good do it at first, for if 
 she do not, at her peril, I hope to make her go 
 again for it ; and when my sister Arabella shall 
 see how mine is served, I hope she will take 
 fair warning, and do as she should do ; but I 
 fear not her so much, for she has begun pretty 
 well already. And now I will close my letter 
 as you do yours (with thanks by the way for it, 
 as also for the whole letter), heartily praying 
 she may so continue, to make you a glad father 
 
 * Strafford Paperg, vol. i., p. 39. 
 
 t [On the twenty-fourth of February, 1625, he united 
 himself to Arabella, second daughter of John Hollis, first 
 Earl of Clare. C.] 
 
 t See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 4(M2. 
 6 
 
 of many goodly and godly boys and some 
 wenches among, lest the seventh work mira- 
 cles, as old wives will tell us and herself to be 
 a joyful and good mother, as I know she is a 
 good and loving wife, and long may she so be 
 to your comfort and her own." 
 
 Wentworth and the other recusants released, 
 they met, under the circumstances of extreme 
 excitement which have been already described, 
 in the famous third Parliament. It is scarce- 
 ly necessary to remark here, that the under 
 current of intrigue which had been set in mo- 
 tion by Wentworth was only known to his con- 
 venient friend Wandesford. It is not likely, 
 from the tone of Hollis's letters, that he had 
 ever been made acquainted with it. For the 
 rest of the patriots, with the exception of the 
 keen-sighted Eliot, they all held well with 
 Wentworth, as a great and valuable supporter 
 of the popular cause. He had long been known 
 for his talents ; their outburst in, behalf of lib- 
 eral principles had long, by a certain section of 
 the leaders, been anxiously watched for ; and 
 now, disappointing none, even of those who 
 had known them longest, and looked for them 
 most impatiently, they burst forth amid the de- 
 lighted cheers of the House, and with a start- 
 ling effect upon the court. 
 
 On the discussion of the general question of 
 grievances, Wentworth rose. " May this day's 
 resolution," he solemnly began, " be as happy, 
 as I conceive the proposition which now moves 
 me to rise to be seasonable and necessary ! 
 For whether we shall look upon the king or his 
 people, it did never more behove this great 
 physician, the Parliament, to effect a true con- 
 sent amongst the parties than now. This de- 
 bate carries with it a double aspect, towards 
 the sovereign, and towards the subject ; though 
 both be innocent, yet both are injured, both to 
 be cured. In the representation of injuries I 
 shall crave your attention ; in the cure, I shall 
 beseech your equal cares and better judgments. 
 In the greatest humility I speak it, these illegal 
 ways are punishments and marks of indigna- 
 tion. The raising of money by loans, strength- 
 ened by commission, with unheard-of instruc- 
 tions ; the billeting of soldiers by the lieuten- 
 ants, have been as if they could have persuaded 
 Christian princes nay, worlds, that the right 
 of empire was to take away goods by strong 
 hand ; and they have endeavoured, as far as 
 was possible for them, to do it. This hath not 
 been done by the king (under the pleasing shade 
 of whose crown I hope we shall ever gather 
 the fruits of justice), but by projectors ; these 
 have extended the prerogative of the king be- 
 yond its just limits, so as to mar the sweet har- 
 mony of the whole." 
 
 Wentworth then burst suddenly, and with 
 great dramatic effect (he studied this at all 
 times), into the following rapid and passionate 
 invective : " They have rent from us the light 
 of our eyes ! enforced companies of guests 
 worse than the ordinances of France ! vitiated 
 our wives and daughters before our faces ! 
 brought the crown to greater want than ever 
 t was, by anticipating the revenue ; and can 
 ;he shepherd be thus smitten, and the flock not 
 be scattered 1 They have introduced a privy 
 ouncil, ravishing at once the spheres of all an- 
 cient government ! imprisoning us without bail
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 or bond ! They have taken from us what 
 shall I say 1 Indeed, what have they left us ? 
 They have taken from us all means of supply- 
 ing the king, and ingratiating ourselves with 
 him, by tearing up the roots of all property ; 
 which, if they be not seasonably set again into 
 the ground by his majesty's hand, we shall 
 have, instead of beauty, baldness !" 
 
 For this, in the noblest language, the orator 
 proposed his remedy. " By one and the same 
 thing hath the king and people been hurt, and 
 by the same must they be cured to vindicate 
 what 1 New things 1 No ! our ancient, law- 
 ful, and vital liberties ! by reinforcing of the an- 
 cient laws made by our ancestors ; by setting 
 Much a stamp upon them as no licentious spirit 
 shall dare hereafter to enter upon them. And 
 shall we think this a way to break a Parlia- 
 ment 1 No ! our desires are modest and just. 
 I speak truly, both for the interest of the king 
 and people. If we enjoy not these, it will be 
 impossible to relieve him ; therefore let us nev- 
 er fear but they will be accepted by his good- 
 ness. Wherefore I shall descend to my mo- 
 tion, which consists of four parts, two of which 
 have relation to the persons, and two to the 
 property of our goods. 1st. For our persons, 
 the freedom of them from imprisonment, and 
 from employments abroad, against our own 
 consents, contrary to the ancient customs of 
 this kingdom. 2d. For our goods, that no lev- 
 ies may be made but by Parliament ; and no 
 billeting of soldiers. It is most necessary that 
 these be resolved, and that the subjects may 
 be secured in both. Then, for the manner, it 
 will be fit to determine it by a grand commit- 
 tee."* 
 
 Wentworth sustained, through the short but 
 important proceedings of the session, the repu- 
 tation he had achieved by this speech in the 
 House and the country. He spoke on all the 
 great questions and emergencies that occurred. 
 Only two of his speeches, however, remain in 
 any completeness. The second was delivered 
 on one of Secretary Cooke's pressing applica- 
 tions for the subsidies. il I cannot help lament- 
 ing," he said, " the unlawful courses and slights, 
 for which the only excuse is necessity. We 
 are required to give ; but before we can resolve 
 to give, it must be determined what we have 
 to give. What heavy fogs have of late darken- 
 ed our hemisphere, and yet hang over us, por- 
 tending our ruin, none is so weak as to be ig- 
 norant of ! What unsteady courses to dispel 
 these mists have been pursued, and thereby 
 raised near us great storms, I take no pleasure 
 to remember ; yet, in all bodies diseased, the 
 knowledge precedes the cure. I will shortly 
 tell the principals, next their remedies. I must 
 reduce them into two heads : 1. Whereby our 
 persons have been injured ; 2d. Whereby our 
 estates have suffered. 
 
 " Our persons have been injured," continued 
 Wentworth, more earnestly, "both by impris- 
 onment without law nay, against law, bound- 
 less and without bank ! and by being designed 
 to some office, charge, and employment, foreign 
 or domestic, as a brand of infamy and mark of 
 disgrace. Oh ! Mr. Speaker, when it may not 
 be safe to deny payments upon unjust exac- 
 
 * From a MS. in the Harleian Library. See Prl. Hist., 
 l. vii., p. 369-371. 
 
 tions, but we must go to prison for it, nor in 
 this place to speak our consciences, but we 
 must be stamped to unwilling and unfitting 
 employments ! Our estates have been racked 
 two ways ; one in the loan, wherein five subsi- 
 dies were exacted, and that by commission of 
 men of quality, and instructions to prosecute 
 the same with an asperity which no times can 
 parallel ! And hence the other consideration, 
 of the projectors and executioners of it. Nay, 
 this was not all, but ministers in their pulpits 
 have preached it as Gospel, and damned the re- 
 fusers of it so, then, we are already doomed 
 to damnation ! 
 
 "Let no man," he said, in conclusion, after 
 proposing a committee for grievances, " judge 
 this way a break-neck of Parliaments, but a way 
 of honour to the king, nay, of profit ; for be- 
 sides the supply which we shall readily give 
 him, suitable to his occasions, we give him our 
 hearts. Our hearts, Mr. Speaker, a gift that God 
 calls for, and fit for a king!"* 
 
 There may have been more passion than 
 logic in these speeches, but they had their ef- 
 fect. The court now saw more thoroughly the 
 man they had discarded, and Weston hastened 
 to answer his last letter ! He reasoned here 
 not unjustly, that it could scarcely be too late 
 at any time to answer a letter which in its 
 terms so clearly proved the non-existence of 
 any lasting obstacle, such as a firm point of 
 principle. The present conduct of Wentworth, 
 to Weston at least, could appear no other than 
 a temporary resource. Even Buckingham's 
 continued objections were therefore set aside, 
 and, before the conclusion of the session, a ne- 
 gotiation with Wentworth had opened nay, 
 almost before the burning words which have 
 just been transcribed had cooled from off the 
 lips of the speaker, a transfer of his services to 
 the court was decided on ! We have indispu- 
 table evidence that on the 28th of May Finch 
 was acting as a go-between, t On the 26th of 
 June the Parliament was prorogued. On the 
 14th of July Sir Thomas Wentworth was crea- 
 ted Baron Wentworth, and called to the privy 
 council.}: It is clear, however, that at the same 
 time he had stipulated to be made a viscount, 
 and lord-president of the North ; but this ap- 
 parently could not be done till the death of 
 Buckingham had removed a still lingering ob- 
 stacle. [I 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. vii.,p. 440. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 46. 
 
 i [Shortly after his elevation to the peerage, he met his 
 old friend Pym. " You see," said Strafford, " I have left 
 you." " So I perceive," replied the patriot ; " but we shall 
 never leave you, as long as you have a head on your shoul- 
 ders." Pym kept his word, and never lost sight of Straf- 
 ford till he had brought him to the scaffold. C.J 
 
 <> See Papers, vol. ii., p. 390. 
 
 II A passage in Rushworth (vol. viii., p. 768) i corrobo- 
 rative of the view which I have presented of Wentworth's 
 public conduct. The collector professes to give all those 
 parliamentary speeches "in which my Lord of Strafford an 
 discovered his wit and temper, that the court took particu- 
 lar notice of him," and gives only the speeches that were 
 delivered in this, third Parliament. It is clear that he had 
 not rendered himself at all formidable before. Rushworth, 
 indeed, subsequently sets this at rest by adding, "Note he 
 began to be more generally taken notice of by all men, ant! 
 his fame to spread abroad, where public affairs, and the 
 criticisms of the times, were discoursed by the most refined 
 judgments, ; those who were infected with popularity flat- 
 tering themselves that he was inclined to support their in- 
 clination, and would prove a champion on that account ; 
 but such, discourse, a? it endeared him to his country, so
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 71 
 
 1 have thus endeavoured to trace at greater 
 length, and with greater exactness than has 
 been attempted hitherto, the opening passages 
 in the political history of this extraordinary 
 man. The common and vulgar account given 
 by Heylin* has been, it is believed, exploded, 
 along with that of the no less vulgar Hacket.t 
 All Wentworth's movements in the path which 
 has been /olio wed appear to me to be perfectly 
 natural and intelligible, if his true character is 
 kept in view. From the very intensity of the 
 aristocratic principle within him arose his hes- 
 itation in espousing at once the interests of the 
 court. This, justly and carefully considered, 
 will be found the solution of his reluctant ad- 
 vances, and still more reluctant retreats. The 
 intervention of a favourite was hardly support- 
 able by one whose ambition, as he felt obliged 
 to confess to himself even then, would be sat- 
 isfied with nothing short of the dignity of be- 
 coming "the king's mistress, to be cherished 
 and courted by none but himself." He was to 
 be understood, and then invited, rather than 
 forced to an explicit declaration, and then only 
 accepted. The purpose of the alternating at- 
 traction and repulsion of his proceedings, such 
 as I have described them, submissive and re- 
 fractory, might have been obvious, indeed, to 
 an obtuser perception than Buckingham's, but 
 that mediocrity will always find its little account 
 in crushing rather than winning over genius, 
 and is rendered almost as uncomfortable by an 
 uncongenial coadjutor as by a strenuous oppo- 
 nent. Wentworth's conduct, at the last, was 
 forced upon him by circumstances ; but his en- 
 ergetic support of the Petition of Rights was 
 only the completion of a series of hints, all of 
 which had been more or less intelligible ; and 
 even now, unwillingly understood as this was 
 by the minister, it was yet more reluctantly 
 acted upon, for by Buckingham's death alone, 
 as we are informed, the " great bar" to Went- 
 worth's advancement was removed.}: It may 
 be added, that, even in all these circumstances, 
 when many steps were forced upon him which 
 his proud spirit but poorly submitted to, and 
 wronged itself in submitting to, it is yet possi- 
 ble to perceive a quality in his nature which 
 was afterward more fully developed. He was 
 possessed with a rooted aversion, from the first, 
 to the court flies that buzzed around the mon- 
 arch, and as little inclined to suffer their good 
 offices as to deprecate their hostility. The re- 
 ceipt, shortly after this, of divers ill-spelled and 
 solemn sillinesses from the king, seems to have 
 occasioned a deep and enduring gratitude in 
 him for the dispensing with a medium that 
 had annoyed him. " I do with infinite sense," 
 writes he, " consider your majesty's great good- 
 ness, not only most graciously approving of that 
 address of mine immediately to yourself, but 
 allowing it unto me hereafter, which I shall 
 rest myself upon as my greatest support on 
 earth, and make bold to practise, yet I trust 
 without importunity or sauciness." The few 
 attempts to ingratiate himself with the queen, 
 \vhichi were ultimately forced on Wentworth 
 
 begot to him an interest in the bosom of his prince, who 
 (having a discerning judgment of men) quickly made his 
 observation of Wentworth's, that he was a person framed 
 for great affairs, and fit to be near his royal person and 
 councili." * Life of Laud, p. 194. 
 
 t .Scrinia Reserata. i Biog. Britt., vol. vii., p. 4179. 
 
 by his declining fortunes, were attended with 
 but faint success, and he appears to have im- 
 pressed her, on the whole, with little beyond 
 the prettiness of his hands, which she allowed 
 to be " the finest in the world"* to the preju- 
 dice of his head, which she was not so inclined 
 to preserve. 
 
 In one word, what it is desired to impress 
 upon the reader, before the delineation of Went- 
 worth in his after years, is-this, that he was con- 
 sistent to himself throughout. I have always 
 considered that much good wrath is thrown 
 away upon what is usually called " apostacy." 
 In the majority of cases, if the circumstances 
 are thoroughly examined, it will be found that 
 there has been " no such thing." The position 
 on which the acute Roman thought fit to base 
 his whole theory of ^Esthetics, 
 
 " Humano capiti cervicem pictor eqninam 
 Jungere si velit, et varias induce re. plumas, 
 Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atram 
 Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne, 
 Spectatura admissi risum teneatis, amici ?" &c. 
 
 is of far wider application than to the exigen- 
 cies of an art of poetry ; and those who carry 
 their researches into the moral nature of man- 
 kind cannot do better than impress upon their 
 minds at the outset, that in the regions they 
 explore they are to expect no monsters no 
 essentially discordant termination to any " mu- 
 lier formosa superne." Infinitely and distinctly 
 various as appear the shifting hues of our com- 
 mon nature when subjected to the prism of 
 CIRCUMSTANCE, each ray into which it is broken 
 is no less in itself a primitive colour, suscepti- 
 ble, indeed, of vast modification, but incapable 
 of farther division. Indolence, however, in its 
 delight for broad classifications, finds its ac- 
 count in overlooking this ; and among the re- 
 sults, none is more conspicuous than the long 
 list of apostates with which history furnishes 
 us. It is very true, it may be admitted, that 
 when we are informed by an old chronicler 
 that " at this time Ezzelin changed totally his 
 disposition," or by a modern biographer that 
 " at such a period Tiberius first became a wick- 
 ed prince," we examine too curiously if we 
 consider such information as in reality regard- 
 ing other than the act done and the popular in- 
 ference recorded, beyond which it was no part 
 of the writer to inquire. But such historians 
 as these value themselves materially on their 
 dispensation of good or evil fame ; and as the 
 " complete change," so dramatically recounted, 
 has commonly no mean influence on the nature 
 of their award, the observations I have made 
 may be of service to the just estimate of their 
 more sweeping conclusions. 
 
 Against all such conclusions I earnestly pro- 
 test in the case of the remarkable personage 
 whose ill-fated career we are now retracing. 
 Let him be judged sternly, but in no unphilo- 
 sophic spirit. In turning from the bright band 
 of patriot brothers to the solitary Stratford 
 " a star which dwelt apart" we have to con- 
 template no extinguished splendour, razed and 
 blotted from the book of life. Lustrous, in- 
 deed, as was the gathering of the lights in the 
 
 * This is told us by Madame de Motteville, who repeat! 
 what Henrietta had said to her : " II 6tait laid, mais assez 
 agreable de sa personne ; et la reine, me contaut toutes ces 
 choses, s'arreta pour me dire qu'il avait les plus belles 
 
 '*
 
 72 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 political heaven of this great time, even that 
 radiant cluster might have exulted in the ac- 
 cession of the " comet beautiful and fierce," 
 which tarried a while within its limits ere it 
 "dashed athwart with train of flame." But it 
 was governed by other laws than were owned 
 by its golden associates, and impelled by a 
 contrary, yet no less irresistible force than that 
 which restrained them within their eternal or- 
 bits it left them, never to " float into that azure 
 heaven again." 
 
 Before attending Wentworth to his presi- 
 dency in the North, we may stop to consider 
 one of those grand features in his character on 
 which many subordinate considerations depend, 
 and a proper understanding of which ought to 
 be brought, as a first requisite, to the just ob- 
 servation of his measures. 
 
 I cannot believe Wentworth to have been 
 the vain man popular opinion has pronounced 
 him, nor discover in him any of that overween- 
 ing and unwarranted self-confidence which 
 friends no less than foes have laid to his charge. 
 An arrogance, based on the supposed posses- 
 sion of pre-eminent qualities which have no 
 existence, is one thing, and the calm percep- 
 tion of an undoubted superiority is another. 
 Wentworth, indeed, " stood like a tower," but 
 that unshaken confidence did not "suddenly 
 scale the light." Its stately proportions were 
 slowly evolved ; its eventual elevation una- 
 voidable, and amply vindicated. We have met 
 with no evidences of a refractory or self-suffi- 
 cient disposition in the youth of Wentworth. 
 His studies at Cambridge had a prosperous is- 
 sue, and he ever remembered his college life 
 with affection. " I am sorry to speak it, but 
 truth will out," writes he to Laud concerning 
 an episcopal delinquent, "this bishop is a St. 
 John's man of Oxford, I mean, not Cambridge ; 
 our Cambridge panniers never brought such a 
 fairing to the market."* His deep esteem for 
 his tutor, Greenwood, reflects honour on both 
 parties. I have said that it was originated by 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 189. Laud makes merry 
 upon this happy phrase of the lord-deputy's. The passa- 
 ges are characteristic of the correspondence, and therefore 
 worth quoting. " And so your lordship," he writes, " is 
 ' very sorry to tell the truth, but only that it will out. A 
 St. John's man you say he is, and of Oxford your Cam- 
 bridge panniers never brought such a fairing to the mar- 
 ket. Yes, my good lord, but it hath ; for what say you of 
 Dean Palmer 1 who, besides his other virtues, sold all the 
 lead off from the church at Peterburgh ; yet he was brought 
 in your Cambridge panniers; and so was Bishop Rowland 
 too, who used that bishopric as well as he did the deanery. 
 I must confess this man's baseness hath not many fellows, 
 but his bribery may have store. And 1 pray, is that ever 
 a whit the less fault, because it is gentleman-like for hun- 
 dreds and thousands, whereas this man deals for twenty 
 shillings and less ? I hope you will not say so ; and if you 
 do not, then I pray examine your Cambridge panniers again, 
 for some say such may be found there, but I, for my part, 
 will not believe it, unless your lordship make me." Went- 
 worth appears to have contested this point in Laud's own 
 huaaour. The bishop retorts by asking ham what his " Jon- 
 nism" means. " Now you are merry again. God hold it. 
 And what? Dr. Palmer acted like a king? Be it so. 
 But he was another card in the pack. As for Bishop How- 
 land, you never heard of him. What ! nor of Jeames his 
 wife neither? Good Lord, how ignorant you can be when 
 you lit. Yea, but you have taken St. John's Ox. Fla- 
 grante crimine, and I put you to your memory. Is it so ? 
 Come on, then : you know there is a cause in the Star 
 Chambers some were to answer, and they brought their 
 answers ready written. If the Bishop of Lincoln sent them 
 ready for his turn, hath he not an excellent forge ? What 
 if this appear T I hope you will not then say I put you to 
 your memory. 'Tis now under examination, and is not this 
 if, &c., flagraate crimine? Go brag now." 
 
 good services performed, and so, perhaps, it is 
 necessary to limit all Strafford's likings all, 
 except the fatal one which cost him life, his 
 liking for the weak and unworthy king, which 
 had its origin in that abstract veneration for 
 power which (or rather, as he afterward too 
 late discovered, the semblance of which) we 
 have just seen him, by some practices beneath 
 his nature, climbing up to, and in the exercise 
 of which we are to view him hereafter. But 
 his esteem for Greenwood, whatever its origin, 
 was not to have been provoked by truckling 
 sycophancy. Nothing of that sort would have 
 succeeded in impressing its object with so pro- 
 found a respect as dictates the following para- 
 graph in an interesting letter to his nephew 
 and ward, Sir W. Savile. " In these, and all 
 things else, you shall do passing well to con- 
 sult Mr. Greenwood, who hath seen much, is 
 very well able to judge, and certainly most 
 faithful to you. If you use him not most re- 
 spectively, you deal extreme ungrateful with 
 him, and ill for yourself. He was the man 
 your father loved and trusted above all men, 
 and did as faithfully discharge the trust reposed 
 in him as ever in my time I knew any man do 
 for his dead friend, taking excessive pains in 
 settling your estate with all possible cheerful- 
 ness, without charge to you at all. His advice 
 will be always upright, and you may safely 
 pour your secrets into him, which, by that time 
 you have conversed a little more abroad in the 
 world, you will find to be the greatest and no- 
 blest treasure this world can make any mai 
 owner of; and I protest to God, were I it 
 your place, I would think him the greatest an> 
 best riches I did or could possess."* In the 
 same letter Wentworth assures this youth, 
 " You cannot consider yourself, and advise and 
 debate your actions with your friends too 
 much ; and, till such time as experience hath 
 ripened your judgment, it shall be great wisdom 
 and advantage to distrust yourself, and to for- 
 tify your youth by the counsel of your more 
 aged friends, before you undertake anything of 
 consequence. It was the course that I gov- 
 erned myself by after my father's death, with 
 great advantage to myself and affairs ; and yet 
 my breeding abroad had shown me more of 
 the world than yours hath done, and I had nat- 
 ural reason like other men ; only I confess I 
 did in all things distrust myself, wherein you 
 shall do, as I said, extremely well, if you do so 
 too."t There is no self-sufficiency here ! 
 
 Wentworth's method of study has been trans- 
 mitted to us by Sir George RadclifFe, and I quote 
 it in strong corroboration of the view which has 
 been urged. " He writ," RadclifFe assures us, 
 
 as well as he spoke : this perfection he at- 
 tained,, first, by reading well-penned authors in 
 French, English, and Latin, and observing their 
 expressions ; secondly, by hearing of eloquent 
 men, which he did diligently in their sermons 
 and public speeches ; thirdly, by a very great 
 care and industry, which he used when he was 
 young, in penning his epistles and missives of 
 what subject soever; but, above all, he had a 
 natural quickness of wit and fancy, with great 
 clearness of judgment, and much practice, with- 
 out which his other helps, of reading and hear- 
 ing, would not have brought him to that great 
 
 * Papers, vol. i., p. 170. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 169.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 73 
 
 perfection to which he attained. I learned one 
 rule of him, which I think worthy to be remem- 
 bered : when he met with a well-penned oration or 
 tract upon any subject or question, he framed a 
 speech upon the same argument, inventing and dis- 
 posing what seemed Jit to be said upon that subject 
 before he read the book ; then reading the book, 
 compare his own with the author, and note his own 
 defects, and the author's art and fulness, whereby 
 he observed all that was in the author more 
 strictly, and might better judge of his own 
 wants to supply them."* Now this early habit of 
 confronting, so to speak, the full-grown wits of 
 other men of satisfying himself of his own pre- 
 cise intellectual height by thoroughly scanning 
 the acknowledged stature of the world's giants 
 is as much removed from a rash assumption 
 as from the nervous apprehension of mediocrity. 
 Wentworth's temper was passionate ; and it 
 is curious and instructive, in the present view 
 of his character, to mark the steps he took in 
 relation to this. I have already spoken of his 
 extreme cautiousness ; of the select council that 
 canvassed his business, suggested his measures, 
 and revised his correspondence ; of his defer- 
 ence to advice, and, indeed, submission to re- 
 proof, from his assured friends. " He was nat- 
 urally exceeding choleric," says Sir George Rad- 
 cliffe, " an infirmity with which he had great 
 wrestlings ; and though he kept a watchfulness 
 over himself concerning it, yet it could not be so 
 prevented but sometimes upon sudden occasions 
 it would break. He had sundry friends that often 
 admonished him of it, and he had the great pru- 
 dence to take in good part such admonitions : 
 nay, I can say that I, one of his most intimate 
 friends, never gained more upon his trust and 
 affection than by this freedom with him in tell- 
 ing him of his weaknesses ; for he was a man 
 and not an angel, yet such a man as made a 
 conscience of his ways, and did endeavour to 
 grow in virtue and victory over himself, and 
 made good progress accordingly." This " good 
 progress" brought him eventually to a very ef- 
 ficient self-control. In cases where he would 
 seem to have exceeded it, and to have been 
 transported beyond decency and prudence, it 
 would be hasty to assume, as Clarendon and 
 other writers have done, that it was in mere 
 satisfaction of his will. These writers, it will 
 not be difficult to show, have not that excuse 
 for the failure of their principles in Went- 
 worth's person. The truth was, that, as in the 
 case of Nap'oleon and other great masters of 
 the despotic art, anger was one of the instru- 
 ments of his policy. He came to know when 
 to be in a passion, and flew into a passion ac- 
 cordingly. " You gave me a good lesson to be 
 patient," he writes to old Secretary Cooke, 
 " and indeed my years and natural inclinations 
 give me heat more than enough, which, how- 
 ever, I trust more experience shall cool, and a 
 watch over myself in time altogether over- 
 come ; in the mean space, in this at least it 
 will set forth itself more pardonable, because 
 my earnestness shall ever be for the honour, 
 justice, and profit of my master ; and it is not 
 always anger, but the misapplying of it, that is 
 the vice so blameable, and of disadvantage to those 
 that let themselves loose thereunto."-^ 
 
 * Papers, vol. ii., p. 435. 
 t Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 87. 
 K 
 
 In the same despatch to the secretary from 
 which I have taken the above, he had observed, 
 immediately before, " Nor is it one of my least 
 comforts that I shall have the means to resort 
 to so wise and well-affected a friend to me as 
 I esteem yourself, and to a servant that goes 
 the same way to my master's ends that I do ; 
 and therefore let me adjure you, by all the in- 
 terests that I may or would have in you, that 
 as you will (I am sure) assist me when I am 
 right, so, by your sensible and grave counsel, 
 reduce me when I may happen to tread awry."* 
 And thus, from the first, is Wentworth found 
 soliciting the direction of others in all impor- 
 tant conjunctures ; not, indeed, with the vague 
 distress of one unprovided with expedients of 
 his own, and disposed to adopt the first course 
 that shall be proposed, but with the calm pur- 
 pose of one decided on the main course to be 
 pursued, yet not unwilling that it receive the 
 corroboration, or undergo the modification, of 
 an experienced adviser. This has been occa- 
 sionally illustrated in the business of his nom- 
 ination by the king for the office of sheriff, 
 where, having already chosen his party, he sub- 
 mits his determination to his father-in-law, the 
 Earl of Clare, whose answer has been quoted. 
 I have mentioned, also, his practice of trans- 
 mitting duplicates of his despatches on all ur- 
 gent occasions to Laud, Cooke, and Cottington. 
 
 No passage, indeed, in the career of Went- 
 worth proves him to have been a vain man. 
 His singular skill is never satisfied, without an 
 unremitting application of means to any desired 
 end, and the neglect of no circumstance, the 
 most minute and apparently trivial, that may 
 conduce to its success. Would he ensure his 
 own return for a county, and smuggle in a min- 
 isterial candidate under the wing of his own 
 popularity 1 He proceeds as though his per- 
 sonal merits could in no way influence the 
 event, and all his hopes are founded on the ac- 
 tivity of his friends, which he leaves no stone 
 unturned to increase. In one and the same day, 
 Sir Thomas Gower, high sheriff of York, is in- 
 formed that, " Being, at the entreaty of some 
 of my best friends, resolved to try the affec- 
 tions of my countrymen in the next election of 
 knights for the shire, I could do no less than 
 take hold of this fit occasion to write unto you 
 these few lines, wherein I must first give you 
 thanks for the good respect you have been 
 pleased to show towards me, to some of my 
 good friends who moved you for your just and 
 equal favour at the time of the election ; which, 
 as I will be found ready to deserve and affec- 
 tionately to requite, so must I here solicit you 
 for the continuance of your good purposes to- 
 wards me ; and lastly desire to understand 
 from you what day the county falls out upon 
 (which is to be the next after the receipt of the 
 writ), that so I may provide myself and friends 
 to give our first voices for Mr. Secretary, and 
 the second for myself." Sir Henry Bellasis 
 assured that, " Presently upon my return from 
 London, I find by Mr. Carre how much I am 
 beholden unto you for your good affection. la 
 truth, I do not desire it out of any ambition, 
 but rather to satisfy some of my best friends, 
 and such as have most power over me. Yet, 
 if the country make choice of me, surely I will 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 87.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 zealously perform the best service for them 
 that my means or understanding shall enable 
 me unto. And having thus far upon this occa- 
 sion declared myself, must take it as a great 
 testimony of affection in them that shall afford 
 me their voices, and those of their friends for 
 Mr. Secretary Calvert in the prime, and my- 
 self in the second place. Particularly am I 
 hereby to give you therefore thanks, and will 
 so settledly lodge this favour in my heart, that 
 I will not fail to remember and deserve it. In 
 my next letters I will likewise let Mr. Secretary 
 know your good respect and kindness towards him, 
 whereof I dare assure you he will not be unmind- 
 ful. The election day will fall out very un- 
 happily upon Christmas-day ; but it is irreme- 
 diless, and therefore must be yielden unto. If 
 you will please to honour me with the company 
 of yourself and friends upon that day at dinner, 
 I shall take it as a second and especial favour ; 
 in retribution whereof you shall find me still 
 conversant, as occasion shall be ministered, in 
 the unfeigned and constant offices of your very 
 assured and affectionate friend." Sir Henry Sa- 
 vile instructed that " I have received your two 
 letters, and in them both find matter to thank 
 you for your respect and kindness towards me. 
 The later of them I received just the afternoon 
 I came out of town, but I write effectually to Mr. 
 Secretary for a burgess-ship for you at Richmond, 
 in regard I knew my Lord of Cumberland was 
 partly engaged ; but I will amongst them work out 
 one, or I will miss far of my aim. So soon as I 
 hear from Mr. Secretary, I will give you far- 
 ther certainty herein ; in the mean time, me- 
 thinks it were not amiss if you tried your an- 
 cient power with them of Aldborow, which I 
 leave to your better consideration, and in the 
 mean time not labour the less to make it sure 
 for you elsewhere, if these clowns chance to 
 fail you. The writ, as I hear, is this week 
 gone to the sheriff; so the next county day, 
 which must, without hope of alteration, be that 
 of the election, falls to be Christmas-day, which 
 were to be wished otherwise ; but the discom- 
 modity of our friends more upon that day than 
 another makes the favour the greater, our obli- 
 gation the more, and therefore I hope they will 
 the rather dispense with it. If the old knight 
 should but endanger it, 'faith, we might be re- 
 puted men of small power and esteem in the 
 country ! but the truth is, I fear him not. If 
 your health serve you, I shall wish your com- 
 pany at York, and that yourself and friends 
 would eat a Christmas pie with me there: I 
 tell you there would be a hearty welcome, and 
 I would take it as an especial favour, so value 
 it, and as such a one remember it." Sir Mat- 
 thew Boynton reminded that " The ancient 
 and near acquaintance that hath been betwixt 
 us causeth me to rank you in the number of 
 my friends ; and being moved by my friends to 
 stand second with Mr. Secretary Calvert for 
 knight of the shire at this next Parliament, I 
 assure myself I might confidently address my- 
 self unto you for the voices of yourself and 
 friends in the election, which falls out unfortu- 
 nately to be upon Christmas-day. But as the 
 trouble of my friends thereby will be the great- 
 er, so doth it add to my obligation. I hope 
 likewise to enjoy your company and friends 
 that day at dinner. You shall be in no place 
 
 better welcome." And Christopher Wandes- 
 ford given notice that " the writ will be deliv- 
 ered by Mr. Radcliffe within these two days to 
 the sheriff, to whom I have written, giving him 
 thanks for his kindness, desiring the continu- 
 ance thereof. And now, lest you should think 
 me forgetful of that which concerns yourself, I 
 hasten to let you know that I have got an ab- 
 solute promise of my Lord Clifford, that if I be 
 chosen knight, you shall have a burgess-ship (re- 
 served for me) at Appleby, wherewith I must con- 
 fess I am not a little pleased, in regard ice shall 
 sit there, judge, and laugh together." 
 
 The reader will remember that all these, 
 with many other letters, are written and de- 
 spatched on the same day. No apology is ne- 
 cessary for the length at which I quote them ; 
 since, in rescuing them from false and distort- 
 ed arrangement, much misconception is pre- 
 vented, and a very valuable means of judgment 
 furnished on Wentworth's general conduct. 
 
 He goes on to let Sir Thomas Fairfax know 
 that " I was at London much entreated, and, 
 indeed, at last enjoined, to stand with Mr. 
 Secretary Calvert for to be knight of this shire 
 the next Parliament, both by my Lord Clifford 
 and himself; which, after I had assented unto, 
 and despatched my letters, I perceived that 
 some of your friends had motioned the like to 
 Mr. Secretary on your behalf, and were therein 
 engaged, which was the cause I writ no sooner 
 unto you. Yet, hearing by my cousin Middle- 
 ton that, he moving you in my behalf for your 
 voices, you were not only pleased to give over 
 that intendment, but freely to promise us your 
 best assistance, I must confess I cannot forbear 
 any longer to write unto you how much this 
 courtesy deserves of me ; and that I cannot 
 choose but take it most kindly from you, as 
 suitable with the ancient affection which you 
 have always borne me and my house. And 
 presuming of the continuance of your good re- 
 spect towards me, I must entreat the company 
 of yourself and friends with me at dinner on 
 Christmas-day, being the day of the election, 
 where I shall be most glad of you, and there 
 give you farther thanks for your kind respects." 
 And thus reports progress to Mr. Secretary 
 himself: "May it please you, sir, the Parlia- 
 ment writ is delivered to the sheriff, and he by 
 his faithful promise deeply engaged for you. I 
 find the gentlemen of these parts generally 
 ready to do you service. Sir Thomas Fairfax 
 stirs not ; but Sir John Savile, by his instru- 
 ments exceeding busy, intimating to the com- 
 mon sort under-hand, that yourself, being not 
 resiant in the county, cannot by law be chosen, 
 and, being his majesty's secretary and a stran- 
 ger, one not safe to be trusted by the country ; 
 but all this according to his manner so closely 
 and cunningly as if he had no part therein ; 
 neither doth he as yet farther declare himself 
 than only that he will be at York the day of the 
 election ; and thus, finding he cannot work 
 them from me, labours only to supplant you. I 
 endeavour to meet with him as well as I may, 
 and omit nothing that my poor understanding 
 tells me may do you service. My lord-presi- 
 dent hath writ to his freeholders on your be- 
 half, and seeing he will be in town on the elec- 
 tion day, it were, I think, very good he would 
 be pleased to show himself for you in the Cas-
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 75 
 
 tie-yard, and that you writ unto him a few lines, 
 taking notice you hear of some opposition, and 
 therefore desire his presence might secure you 
 of fair carriage in the choice. / have heard, that 
 when Sir Francis Darcy opposed Sir Thomas Lake 
 in a matter of like nature, the lords of the council 
 writ to Sir Francis to desist. I know my lord- 
 chancellor is very sensible of you in this business ; 
 a word to him, and such a letter, would make an 
 end of all. Sir, pardon me, I beseech you, for 
 I protest I am in travail till all be sure for you, 
 which imboldens me to propound these things, 
 which, notwithstanding, I most humbly submit 
 to your judgment. When you have resolved, be 
 pleased to despatch the bearer back again with 
 your answer, which I shall take care of. There 
 is not any that labours more heartily for you 
 than my Lord Darcy. Sir, I wish a better oc- 
 casion wherein to testify the dutiful and affec- 
 tionate respects your, favours and nobleness 
 may justly require from me." Sir Arthur In- 
 gram is then apprized, in a letter which is full 
 of character, that, " As touching the election, 
 we now grow to some heat ; Sir John Savile's 
 instruments closely and cunningly suggesting 
 under-hand Mr. Secretary's non-residence, his 
 being the king's servant, and out of these rea- 
 sons by law cannot, and in good discretion 
 ought not, be chosen of the country ; whereas 
 himself is their martyr, having suffered for 
 them ; the patron of the clothiers ; of all oth- 
 ers the fittest to be relied on ; and that he in- 
 tends to be at York the day of the election 
 craftily avoiding to declare himself absolutely. 
 And thus he works, having spread this jeal- 
 ousy, that albeit I persuade myself generally 
 they would give me their prime voice, yet in 
 good faith I think it very improbable we shall 
 ever get the first place for Mr. Secretary ; nay, 
 I protest we shall have need of our strength to 
 obtain him a second election : so as the likeli- 
 est way, so far as I am able to judge, to secure 
 both, will be for me to stand for the prime, and 
 so cast all my second voices upon him, which, 
 notwithstanding, we may help by putting him 
 first in the indenture. I am exceeding sorry 
 that the foulness and length of the way put me 
 out of hope of your company, and therefore, I 
 pray you, let us have your advice herein by the 
 bearer. Your letter to your friends in Halifax 
 admits some question, because you desire their 
 voices for Mr. Secretary and myself the rather 
 for that Sir John Savile stands not ; so, say 
 they, if he stand, we are left to our liberty. 
 You will therefore please to clear that doubt by 
 another letter, which, delivered to this mes- 
 senger, I will get sent unto them. I fear great- 
 ly they will give their second voice with Sir 
 John. Mr. Leech promised me he would pro- 
 cure his lord's letter to the freeholders within 
 Hallomshire and the honour of Pontefract ; 
 that my cousin Lascells, my lord's principal 
 agent in these parts, should himself labour Hal- 
 lomshire ; Mr. Banister, the learned steward 
 of Pontefract, do the like there ; and both of 
 them be present at the election, the better to 
 secure those parts. I hear not anything of 
 them. I pray you, press Mr. Leech to the per- 
 formance of his promise, letting him know Sir 
 John Savile's friends labour for him, and he 
 declares in a manner he will stand, and get 
 him to send the letters by this my servant. I 
 
 desire likewise he would entreat my cousin 
 Lascells that he would take the pains to come 
 over, and speak with me the Monday before 
 Christmas-day here at my house. Sir, you see 
 how bold I am to trouble you, and yet I must 
 desire you would be pleased to afford me the 
 commodity of your house for two nights, to en- 
 tertain my friends. I shall, God willing, be 
 most careful that nothing be impaired, and shall 
 number this among many other your noble 
 courtesies, which have inviolably knit me unto 
 you." Sir Thomas Dawney is solicited to the 
 same effect, and Sir Henry Slingsby informed 
 that " The certainty I have of Sir John Savile's 
 standing, and the various reports I hear of the 
 country people's affection towards Mr. Secre- 
 tary, makes me desirous to know how you find 
 them inclined in your parts. For this wapen- 
 take, as also that of Osgodcross and Staincross, 
 I certainly persuade myself will go wholly for 
 us. In Skyrack I assure myself of a better 
 part, and I will perform promise with Mr. Sec- 
 retary, bringing a thousand voices of my own 
 besides my friends. Some persuade me that 
 the better way to secure both were for me to 
 stand prime, cast all my second voices on Mr. 
 Secretary, and put him first into the indenture. 
 I pray you consider of it, and write me your 
 opinion ; / would not lose substance for such a 
 loyish ceremony. There is danger both ways : 
 for if Mr. Secretary stand first, it is much to be 
 feared the country will not stand for him firm 
 and entire against Sir John. If I be first cho- 
 sen, which I make no question but I could, then is 
 it to be doubted the people might fly over to the 
 other side, which, notwithstanding, in my conceit, 
 of the two is the more unlikely ; for, after they be 
 once settled and engaged for me, they will not be so 
 apt to stir. And again, it may be so suddenly 
 carried as they shall have no time to move. At a 
 word, we shall need all our endeavours to make 
 Mr. Secretary, and therefore, sir, I pray you 
 gather up all you possibly can. I would gladly 
 know how many you think we may expect from 
 you. My Lord Clifford will be at Tadcaster 
 upon Christmas-eve, about one of the clock : if 
 that be your way, I am sure he would be glad 
 yourself and friends would meet him there, 
 that so we might go into York the next day, vote, 
 and dme together, where you shall be most heart- 
 ily welcome." Sir Thomas Fairfax is again 
 moved very earnestly to make " All the strength 
 of friends and number you can to give their 
 voices for us at the next election, falling to be 
 upon Christmas-day ; the rather, because the 
 old gallant of Hooley intends certainly to stand, 
 whom, indeed, albeit I should lightly weigh, 
 were the matter betwixt him and me, yet I 
 doubt Mr. Secretary (if his friends stand not 
 closely to him) being not well known in the 
 country. Sir, you have therefore hereby an 
 opportunity offered to do us all an especial fa- 
 vour, which shall bind us to a ready and cheer- 
 ful requital, when you shall have occasion to 
 use any of us. My Lord Clifford will be, God 
 willing, at Tadcaster upon Christmas-eve, about 
 one of the clock, where I assure myself he will 
 much desire that yourself and friends will be 
 pleased to meet him, that so we may go into 
 York together ; and myself earnestly entreat the 
 company of yourself and them the next day at 
 dinner, which I shall esteem as a double fa-
 
 76 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 vour." And his cousin Thomas Wentworth 
 advertised that, ' Being, as you know, engaged 
 to stand with Mr. Secretary Calvert to be 
 knights for this Parliament, and Sir John Savile 
 our only opponent, I must make use of my 
 friends, and entreat them to deal thoroughly 
 for us, in regard the loss of it would much prej- 
 udice our estimations above. In which num- 
 ber I esteem yourself one of my best and fast- 
 est friends. The course my Lord Darcy and I 
 hold is, to entreat the high constables to desire the 
 petty constables to set down the names of all free- 
 holders within their townships, and which of them 
 have promised to be at York and bestow their voices 
 with us, so as we may keep the note as a testimony 
 of their good affections, and know whom we are 
 beholden unto, desiring them farther to go along 
 with us to York on Sunday, being Christmas- 
 eve, or else meet us about two of the clock at 
 Tadcaster. I desire you would please to deal 
 effectually with your high constables, and hold 
 the same course, that so we may be able to 
 judge what number we may expect out of your 
 wapentake. As I no ways doubt of your ut- 
 termost endeavours and pains in a matter of 
 this nature, deeply touching my credit, so will 
 I value it as a special testimony of your love 
 towards me. I hope you will take the pains 
 to go along with us, together with your friends, 
 to York, that so we may come all in together, and 
 take part of an ill dinner with me the next day, 
 where yourself and friends shall be right heart- 
 ily welcome."* 
 
 It is not necessary to recall attention to the 
 political principle, or the party views, which 
 are evidenced in these letters ;t but how singu- 
 lar and complete is the illustration they afford, 
 of Wentworth's practice of letting slip no meth- 
 od, however ordinary, of compassing his de- 
 signs ! Is he interested, either, in the success 
 of a lawsuit T we find that " he spent eight 
 years' time, besides his pains and money, in 
 soliciting the business and suits of his nephews 
 Sir George and Sir William Savile, going every 
 term to London about that only, without missing 
 one term in thirty, as I verily believe. And all 
 this merely in memory of the kindness which 
 had passed betwixt him and his brother-in-law 
 Sir George Savile, then deceased, "t And so 
 with all things that interested him. 
 
 To this head, then, the reader is asked to re- 
 fer many proceedings, which hitherto have been 
 cited in proof of an excessive vanity. They 
 were rather the suggestions of a mind well 
 aware of the influence of seeming trifles on the 
 accomplishment of important purposes. The 
 pompous enumeration of his heraldic honours 
 itf the preamble to his patent of nobility, and 
 the " extraordinary pomp" with which he was 
 created viscount and president of the North, 
 were no unnecessary precaution against the 
 surprise and disdain of an insolent herd of 
 courtiers, and were yet ineffectual wholly to 
 restrain their sarcasms. $ The unexampled 
 
 * These various letters will be found in the Strafford 
 Papers. 
 
 t The beginning of electioneering tactics is also curi- 
 ously discernible in them. I Radcliffe's Essay. 
 
 $ " The Duke of Buckingham himself flew not so high 
 in so short a revolution of time. He was made a viscount 
 with a great deal of high ceremony upon a Sunday, in the 
 afternoon, at Whitehall. My Lord Powis, who affects him 
 not much, being told that the heralds had fetched his pedi- 
 gree from the blood royal, viz., from John of Gaunt, said, 
 
 splendour of his after progress to the opening 
 of the Irish Parliament was, no doubt, well cal- 
 culated to " beget an awful admiration" in the 
 minds of a body of men whose services he was 
 then preparing to obtain by far more question- 
 able means ; and his fierce resentment of the 
 slightest infringement of the etiquette he had 
 succeeded in establishing, his minute arrange- 
 ments with respect to the ceremony he con- 
 ceived necessary to the powers he was intrust- 
 ed with, have their censure on other grounds 
 than any intrinsic absurdity they evince. It 
 seems to me to be high time, in cases of this 
 sort, to shift our censure to the grosser absurd- 
 ity of the principles which require such means 
 for their support. Ceremony in the abstract 
 the mere forms of etiquette, sinking through 
 their own emptiness, sustaining no purpose, 
 and unsustained by none Wentworth regarded 
 with a more supreme scorn than they were 
 held in by any of his prudish opponents among 
 his own party. " I confess," writes he on one 
 occasion, "this matter of PLACE I have ever 
 judged a womanly thing, and so love not to 
 trouble myself therewith, more than needs 
 must." He cares not, moreover, submitting 
 cheerfully throughout to the king's unworthy 
 arrangement, that himself should gather " gold- 
 en opinions" by a liberal bestowment of hon- 
 ours in Ireland on the more troublesome of his 
 suitors, while to his deputy was confided the 
 ungracious task of interposing a veto on the 
 royal benefaction, and receiving, in his own per- 
 son, the curses of the disappointed.* Against 
 the bitterness of their discontent Wentworth 
 had his unfailing resource. " I shall not neg- 
 lect," he writes, " to preserve myself in good 
 opinion with this people, in regard I become 
 thereby better able to do my master's service ; 
 longer than it works to that purpose. I am very 
 indifferent what they shall think or can say 
 concerning me." Not the less scruple had he 
 in complaining of the king's arrangement, when 
 it was tortured to purposes he had never con- 
 templated, and he discovered that the charac- 
 ter of his government was become that of an 
 iron rule, wherein reward had no place, even 
 for its zealous supporters. t For the foolish 
 gravity of the luckless king had continued to 
 
 1 Dammy, if ever he comes to the King of England, I will 
 turn rebel.' " Epistolee Howelliana:, No. 34, edit. 1650. 
 
 * See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 140. 
 
 t One instance, out of the many which strikingly illus- 
 trate Wentworth's character in this respect, may be sub- 
 joined. Lord Newburgh had procured from the king a 
 promise of promotion for a young man in the Irish army, 
 which the lord-dpputy felt would be disadvantageous to tha 
 public service. Here are some passages of his remon- 
 strance : " For if I be not favoured so far as that I may bo 
 able to make myself friends, and draw unto myself some 
 dependance by the expectance men may have from me in 
 these places, that so I may have assistance and cheerful 
 countenance from some, as I have already purchased the 
 sour and bent brow of some of them, I foresee I shall have 
 little honour, comfort, or safety amongst them. For a man 
 to enforce obedience by punishment only, and be deprived 
 all means to reward some to be always in vinegar, never 
 to communicate of the sweet is, in my estimation of it, the 
 meanest, most ignoble condition any free spirit can be re- 
 duced unto The conclusion therefore is, I am confi- 
 dent his majesty will not debar me of what (be it spoken 
 under favour) belongs to my place, for all the solicitation 
 of the pretty busy Lord Newburgh, who, if a man should 
 move his majesty for anything in the gift of the chancellor 
 of the duchy, would as perlly cackle, and put himself in 
 the way of complaint, as if he had all the merit and ability 
 in the world to serve his master.' 1 Stratford Papers, vol. 
 i., p. 136-142.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 77 
 
 pen epistle upon epistle, disposing of the mos 
 subordinate posts in the army, as well as th 
 higher dignities of the Church. The system 
 in the first instance, however, was one whicl 
 a proud man, certainly, might submit to, but a 
 vain man would hardly acquiesce in. 
 
 I resume the progress of Wentworth's for 
 tunes. His elevation became an instant sub 
 ject of general remark ; and it is not difficul 
 to discover that, in his native county, where 
 he was best known, the surprise excited by so 
 sudden a change, after such violent opposition 
 was balanced by a greater surprise, on the oth 
 er hand, that the honour should have been de 
 layed so long. " Give me leave to inform you,' 
 writes Sir Richard Hutton,* in a passage which 
 is expressive of both these feelings, " that your 
 late conferred honour is the subject of much 
 discourse here in Yorkshire, which I conceive 
 proceeds from the most, not out of any other 
 cause than their known worth in you, which is 
 thought merited it much sooner and greater ; 
 but this is only to entertain you a little longer ; 
 for I know that your actions are not justly lia- 
 ble to any censure, I am sure not to mine ; for, 
 being yours, it speaks them good to me, if noi 
 the best." The character of the important of- 
 fice intrusted to Wentworth included much that 
 was especially grateful to him : enlarged by his 
 desire, it presented power almost unlimited ; 
 freedom at the same time from the little an- 
 noyances of the court ; and the opportunity of 
 exhibiting his genius for despotic rule in his 
 own county, where personal friends might wit- 
 ness its successes, and old adversaries, should 
 the occasion offer, be made the objects of its 
 triumph. To crown his cause of satisfaction, 
 the Duke of Buckingham, who had still hung 
 darkly over his approach to a perfect confidence 
 and favour, was removed by the knife of Fel- 
 ton. Secret congratulations passed, within a 
 few days after this event, between Wentworth 
 and Weston. Everything seemed to favour 
 his entrance into power, and a light rose upon 
 the future. " You tell me," writes his friend 
 Wandesford to him, " God hath blessed you 
 much in these late proceedings. Truly I be- 
 lieve it, for by these circumstances we know, 
 we may guess at them we know not."t This 
 friend was not forgotten. Though so recently 
 one of the active managers of the impeachment 
 against Buckingham, he was at once received 
 into favour, and Wentworth waited his oppor- 
 tunity to employ the services of others, equally 
 dear and valuable, while he did not fail to im- 
 prove his opportunities of intercourse among 
 his new associates. Laud was the chief object 
 of his concern in this respect, for he had ob- 
 served Laud's rising influence with the king. 
 
 Wentworth wisely deferred his departure to 
 the North until after the dissolution of Parlia- 
 ment. The powers that awaited him there, in- 
 creased by his stipulations, I have described as 
 nearly unlimited. The council of York, or of 
 the North, whose jurisdiction extended over 
 the counties of York, Northumberland, Cum- 
 berland, and Westmoreland, over the cities of 
 York and Hull, the bishopric of Durham, and 
 the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,t included 
 within itself the powers of the courts of com- 
 
 Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 47. 
 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 162. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 49. 
 
 mon law, of the Chancery, even of the Star 
 Chamber. It had originated in the frequent 
 northern rebellions which followed Henry 
 VIII. 's suppression of the lesser monasteries. 
 Before the scheme for the suppression of the 
 greater monasteries was carried into effect, it 
 was judged expedient, in consequence of such 
 disturbances, to grant a commission to the 
 Bishop of Llandaff and others, for the purpose 
 of preserving the peace of these northern coun- 
 ties. This commission was, to all appearances, 
 simply one of oyer and terminer ; but a clause 
 had been inserted in it, towards the conclusion, 
 authorizing the commissioners to hear all caus- 
 es, real and personal, when either or both of 
 the parties laboured under poverty,* and to de- 
 cide according to sound discretion. This lat- 
 ter license, however, was soon afterward de- 
 clared by all the judges to be illegal ; and the 
 power of hearing real and personal causes at 
 all was rarely acted upon up to the second year 
 of Elizabeth's reign, when it also was declared 
 to be illegal, since causes regarding property, 
 whether real or personal, could only be decided 
 by the laws of the land. It was reserved for 
 James to issue, over these decisions, a new 
 commission, " very differing," says Clarendon, 
 "from all that went before." The commis- 
 sioners were no longer ordered to inquire " per 
 sacramentum bonorum et legalium hominum," 
 or to be controlled by any forms of law, but 
 were referred merely to secret instructions, 
 which, for the first time, were sent down to 
 the council. This at once reduced the whole 
 of the North to an absolute subjection, and that 
 so flagrant, that the judges of the court of Com- 
 mon Pleas had the decent courage to protest 
 actively against it, by issuing prohibitions on 
 demand to the president and council ; and James 
 himself was obliged to have the instructions 
 enrolled, that the people might, in some meas- 
 ure, be able to ascertain by what rules their 
 conduct was to be regulated, t 
 
 One of Wentworth's first announcements, in 
 succeeding to this enormous power, the very- 
 acceptance of which was a violation of the vi- 
 tal principles and enactments of the petition 
 of right, was to declare that he would lay any 
 man by the heels who ventured to sue out a 
 prohibition in the courts at Westminster.} 
 His excuse for such a course of proceeding 
 was afterward boldly avowed.^ " It was a 
 chaste ambition, if rightly placed, to have as 
 much power as may be, that there may be 
 )ower to do the more good for the place where 
 a man serves." Now Wentworth's notion of 
 ;ood went straight to the establishment of ab- 
 solute government ; and to this, his one grand 
 object, from the very first moment of his pub- 
 ic authority, he bent every energy of his soul, 
 ie devoted himself, night and day, to the pub- 
 ic business. Lord Scroop'sll arrears were 
 
 * " Quando anibae partes, vel altera pars, gravata pauper- 
 ate fuerit." Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 162. 
 
 t An interesting account of the origin and practices of 
 his council of York was given by Hyde (Lord Clarendon) 
 n the Long Parliament. The speech is reported by Rush* 
 worth, vol. ii., p. 162-165. t Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 159. 
 
 I) In his answers to the charges of his impeachment, 
 ee Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 161. 
 
 II His predecessor in the government of York, afterward 
 Sari of Sunderland. Wandesford speaks of him with great 
 ontempt, in a letter to Wentworth : " Your predeces- 
 or, like that candle hid under a bushel, while he lived in 
 his plape, darkened himself and all that were about him,
 
 78 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 speedily disposed of, an effective militia was 
 imbodied and disciplined, and all possible 
 means were resorted to for an increase of rev- 
 enue. The fines on recusants, the composi- 
 tions for knighthood, and the various exactions 
 imposed by government, were rigorously en- 
 forced by him. At the same time, his hand, 
 though heavy, was equal, and the reports of his 
 government were, in consequence, found to be 
 very various. The complainants contradicted 
 each other. " Your proceeding with the recu- 
 sants," writes Weston, " is here, where it is 
 well understood, well taken, though there be 
 different rumours ; for it is said that you pro- 
 ceed with extreme rigour, valuing the goods 
 and lands of the poorest at the highest rates, 
 or rather above the value, without which you 
 are not content to make any composition. This 
 is not believed, especially by me, who know 
 your wisdom and moderation ; and your last, 
 too, gave much satisfaction even to those who 
 informed me, when they saw thereby that you 
 had compounded with none but to their own 
 contentment."* Cottington, the chancellor of 
 the exchequer, had expressed more character- 
 istically, some days before, the approbation of 
 the court. "For the business of the recu- 
 sants, my lord-treasurer sent immediately your 
 letter to the king (who is in his progress), from 
 whom he received a notable approbation both 
 of your intentions and proceedings, as he him- 
 self will tell your lordship in his own letters ; 
 for you are his mistress, and must be cherished 
 and courted by none but himself." So early 
 did the king deem it expedient to exhibit that 
 peculiar sense of his minister's service. When 
 the minister had bound himself up inextricably 
 with the royal cause, it was thought to be less 
 expedient ! 
 
 In such a course as this which "Wentworth 
 had now entered on, it is quite clear that to 
 have permitted the slightest disregard of the 
 authority assumed must have proved fatal. I 
 cannot see anything unnatural, therefore, in his 
 conduct to Henry Bellasis, and in several other 
 personal questions which at present come un- 
 der notice. Nothing is apparent in it at vari- 
 ance with the system to be worked out, nothing 
 outrageous or imprudent, as his party have 
 been at some pains to allege. These matters 
 are not to be discussed in the abstract. Des- 
 potism is the gist of the question ; and if the 
 phrase "unnatural" is to be used, let it fal 
 upon that. The means employed to enforce it 
 are obliged, as a matter of necessity, to partake 
 of its own nature, or it would not for an instant 
 be borne. One of Wentworth's first measure 
 had been to claim for himself, as the represent- 
 ative of absolute royalty, the most absolute 
 reverence and respect. On the occasion of a 
 " solemn meeting," however, this young man 
 Bellasis, the son of the Lord Faulconberg 
 manifested a somewhat impertinent disregarc 
 of these orders, entered the room without 
 " showing any particular reverence" to the 
 lord-president, remained there with his hat on 
 and as Wentworth himself passed out of the 
 meeting " with his hat off, the king's mace 
 bearer before him, and all the rest of the com 
 
 and dieth towards us (excuse me for the phrase) like a 
 nuff unmannerly left in a corner." Stratford Papers, vol 
 i., p. 49. * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 52 
 
 )any uncovered, Mr. Bellasis stood with his 
 iat on his head, looking full upon his lordship 
 without stirring his hat, or using any other 
 reverence or civility." In a man of rank, this 
 was the less to be overlooked. Bellasis was 
 ordered before the council board, where he 
 )leaded that his negligence had arisen from 
 accident, that his look was turned the other 
 way, that he was not aware of the lord-presi- 
 dent's approach till he had passed, and, finally, 
 that he meant no disrespect to the lord-presi- 
 dent's dignity. He was required to express, in 
 addition, his sorrow for having given offence to 
 ' Lord Wentworth." He refused to do this ; 
 jut at last, after a month's imprisonment in the 
 Gate House, was obliged to submit.* Other 
 cases of the same description occurred. A bar- 
 rister at law, something disaffected to the lord- 
 president's jurisdiction, expiated his offence 
 in a lowly submission on his knees ;t and a 
 punishment fell on Sir David Foulis, heavier 
 and more terrible, in proportion to Wentworth's 
 sense of the conduct that had provoked it. 
 
 Sir David Foulis was a deputy lieutenant, a 
 justice of the peace, and a member of the coun- 
 cil of York. Holding this position in the coun- 
 ty, he had. on various occasions, made very 
 disrespectful mention of the council of York ; 
 had thrown out several invidious insinuations 
 against its president ; and had shown much 
 activity and zeal in instigating persons not 
 to pay the composition for knighthood, which 
 he considered an illegal and oppressive exac- 
 tion. J Wentworth immediately resolved to 
 make him a signal example ; and the extraor- 
 dinary perseverance, and unscrupulous meas- 
 ures, by dint of which he at last secured this, 
 are too singularly illustrative of his character 
 to be passed over in silence. An information 
 was immediately ordered to be exhibited in 
 the Star Chamber against Sir David Foulis ; 
 against his son, who had shared in his offence, 
 and against Sir Thomas Layton, the high sher- 
 iff of the county, who had sanctioned and as- 
 sisted the disaffection. Some necessary delays 
 put off the hearing of the cause till after Went- 
 worth's departure to Dublin. But one of the 
 last things with which he busied himself pre- 
 vious to his departure was the making sure of 
 the issue. He wrote from Westminster to the 
 lord-treasurer (one of the judges that were to try 
 it !), who was then in Scotland, " I have perused 
 all the examinations betwixt me and Foulis, 
 and find all the material parts of the bill fully 
 proved, so as I have him soundly upon the hip ; 
 but I desire it may not be spoken of, for albeit 
 I may by order of the court see them, yet he 
 
 * See the proceedings before the council board, Rush- 
 worth, vol. ii., p. 88. t See Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 160. 
 
 t Foulis had, in less important matters, equally sought 
 to baffle the authority of the lord-president. I find the fol- 
 lowing passage in a letter to Wentworth, from Sir William 
 Pennyman, one of his watchful retainers: "There was a 
 constable under Sir David Foulis (who, by reason of some 
 just excuse, as was pretended, appeared not) that refused 
 to pay twelve pence to Captain Philips, and it was thus dis- 
 covered. I bid one of the townsmen lay down twelve pence, 
 and the constable should pay him again. He answered, 
 That the constable told him, that Sir David Foulis had 
 commanded him, that if any were demanded he should pay 
 none ; and of this I thought it but my part to acquaint your 
 lordship ; not that I would aggravate anything against Sir 
 David Foulis, for it might only be some misprision in the 
 constable, but that your lordship might know of the least 
 passage which may have relation or reflection upon your- 
 self."
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 79 
 
 may not, till the end of the next term."* Wes- 
 tern did not receive this hint at first very cor- 
 dially ; but Cottington, another of the judges, 
 wrote to him a week or two after he had quit- 
 ted London, " We say here that your lordship's 
 cause against Foulis shall come to hearing this 
 term, and I inquire much after it." Went- 
 worth, though then much distracted by sickness 
 and affairs, acted eagerly on this intimation, 
 and sent over a special messenger to Cotting- 
 ton, with a short brief of the strong points of 
 the case, written out by himself, and an ex- 
 tremely characteristic letter. He says boldly, 
 " I must wholly recommend myself to your 
 care of me in this, which I take to concern me 
 as much, and to have therein as much the bet- 
 ter, as I ever had in any other cause all the 
 days of my life ; so I trust a little help will 
 serve the turn." It is clear, in point of fact, 
 that Wentworth felt that much of his authori- 
 ty, in so far as personal claims sustained it 
 or, in other words, that much of his probable 
 success or non-success in the new and desperate 
 assumptions by which alone his schemes of 
 government could be carried on was concern- 
 ed in the extent of punishment awarded in the 
 present case, and the corresponding impression 
 likely to be created. He omits no considera- 
 tion in his letter, therefore, that is in any way 
 likely to influence Cottington. He points out 
 particularly how much the "king's service" is 
 concerned, and that the arrow was " shot at 
 him" in reality. " The sentencing of this 
 man," he continues, " settles the right of 
 knighting business bravely for the crown, for 
 in your sentence you will certainly declare the 
 undoubted right and prerogative the king hath 
 therein by common law, statute law, and the 
 undeniable practice of all times ; and therefore 
 I am a suitor by you to his majesty, that he 
 would be graciously pleased to recommend the 
 cause to the lords, as well in his own right as 
 in the right of his absent poor servant, and to 
 wish them all to be there. You are like to be- 
 gin the sentence, and I will be bold to tell you 
 my opinion thereon. You have been pleased 
 sometimes, as I sat by you, to ask me my con- 
 ceit upon the cause then before us ; admit me 
 now to do it upon my own cause, for, by my 
 troth, I will do it as clearly as if it concerned me 
 not. " An aggravation of every point in the case 
 against Foulis and his son follows, with a cu- 
 rious citation of a number of precedents for a 
 heavy punishment, and a strong personal ap- 
 peal in behalf of his own character. " Much 
 more I could say, if I were in the Star Cham- 
 ber to speak in such a cause for my Lord Cot- 
 tington ; but I will conclude with this, that I 
 protest to God, if it were in the person of an- 
 other, I should in a cause so foul, the proof so 
 clear, fine the father and the son, Sir David 
 and Henry Foulis, in 2000 apiece to his maj- 
 esty, and in 2000 apiece damages to myself 
 for their scandal ; and they both to be sent 
 down to York, and there publicly, at York as- 
 sizes next, to acknowledge, in the face of the 
 whole country, the right his majesty hath to that 
 duty of knightings, as also the wrong he hath 
 done me ; humbly craving pardon of his maj- 
 esty, and expressing his sorrow so to have mis- 
 represented his majesty's most gracious pro- 
 
 * Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 91. 
 
 ceedings, even in that course of compounding 
 where the law would have given him much more, 
 as also for so falsely slandering and belying me 
 without a cause. For Sir Thomas Layton, he 
 is a fool, led on by the nose by the two former, 
 nor was I willing to do him any hurt ; and so 
 let him go for a coxcomb as he is ; and when 
 he comes home, tell his neighbours it was well 
 for him he had less wit than his fellows."* 
 As the hearing approached more nearly, Went- 
 worth, regardless of the equivocal reception 
 Weston had formerly given him, wrote again 
 to the lord-treasurer. " My lord, I have to be 
 heard this term a cause between Sir David 
 Foulis and me in the Star Chamber, and a very 
 good one, if I flatter not myself exceedingly : 
 I do most earnestly beseech your lordship's 
 presence, and that I may taste of the ordinary 
 effects of your justice and favour towards me 
 your faithful servant, albeit here removed in 
 another kingdom. "t Scarcely a member of 
 that considerate court did he fail to solicit as 
 earnestly. 
 
 How could the honest judges fail to perform 
 all that had been so asked of them 1 Foulis 
 was degraded from his various offices ; fined 
 5000 to the king, 3000 to Wentworth ; con- 
 demned to make a public acknowledgment of 
 the most abject submissiveness " to his majes- 
 ty and the Lord-viscount Wentworth, not only 
 in this court, but in the court of York, and 
 likewise at the open assizes in the same coun- 
 ty ;" and finally committed to the Fleet during 
 his majesty's pleasure. His son was also im- 
 prisoned and heavily fined. Layton, the " fool," 
 was presented with his acquittal. Wentworth's 
 gratitude at this result overflowed in the most 
 fervent expressions to his serviceable friends. 
 Cottington was warmly thanked. " Such are 
 your continued favours towards me," he wrote 
 to Laud, " which you were pleased to manifest 
 so far in the Star Chamber in that cause be- 
 twixt Sir David Foulis and me, not only by 
 your justice, but by your affection too, as in- 
 deed, my lord, the best and greatest return I 
 can make is to pray I may be able to deserve," 
 &c. A long despatch to Cooke included an 
 expression of the "obligation put upon me by 
 the care you expressed for me in a suit this last 
 term, which came to a hearing in the Star 
 Chamber, betwixt Sir D. Foulis and me, and 
 of the testimony your affection there gave me, 
 much above my merit. Sir, I humbly thank 
 you," &c., &c. A still more important and 
 weighty despatch to Weston closed with, " I 
 do most humbly thank your lordship for your 
 noble presence and justice in the Star Cham- 
 ber, being the business indeed, in my own esti- 
 mation, which more concerned me than any 
 that ever befel me hitherto in my whole life." 
 And to his cousin the Earl of Cleveland he thus 
 expressed himself: " I understand my cause in 
 the Star Chamber hath had a fair evening, for 
 which I am ever to acknowledge and reverence 
 the justice of that great court to an absent 
 man. Your lordship hath still been pleased to 
 honour me with your presence when anything 
 concerned me there ; and believe me, if ever I 
 
 * Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 145, 146. A more remark- 
 able opportunity was reserved for him, on the occasion of 
 his own impeachment, to express his contempt of this Sir 
 Thomas Layton. See Rushworth, vol. viii., p. 151. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 143.
 
 80 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 be absent from the place where I may serve 
 you, it shall be most extremely against my 
 will. I see it must still be my fortune to work 
 it out in a storm, and I find not myself yet so 
 faint as to give over for that, or to abandon a 
 good cause, be the wind never so loud or sour." 
 One characteristic circumstance remains to be 
 added. All the various letters and despatches 
 in which the passages I have quoted are to be 
 found, together with others to various noble 
 lords, bear the same date.* No one of those 
 who had served Wentworth was left to speak 
 of thanks that he only had received.? 
 
 In relief from this painful exhibition of a false 
 public principle tyrannizing over private morals 
 and affections, I turn to present the somewhat 
 redeeming aspect of those uncontrolled regards 
 which Wentworth could yet suffer himself to 
 indulge. In consequence of incessant applica- 
 tion} to the duties of his office, he was now 
 able to pass little of his time at the family seat ; 
 but he seems to have been anxious that his 
 children, William and the little Lady Anne, 
 should, for health's sake, continue to reside 
 there. He had intrusted them, accordingly, to 
 the charge of Sir William Pennyman, a person 
 bound to his service by various strong obliga- 
 tions. The Lady Arabella, then on the eve 
 of confinement, remained with Wentworth. 
 Pennyman appears to have had careful instruc- 
 tions to write constant accounts of the chil- 
 dren, and it is interesting to observe the sort 
 of details that were thought likely to prove 
 most welcome to their father. "Now," he 
 says, " to write that news that I have, which I 
 presume will be most acceptable, your lord- 
 ship's children are all very well, and your lord- 
 
 * See the Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 189, 194, 202, 204, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 t I may conclude the mention of this Foulis affair by 
 quoting a characteristic note from one of Wentworth's vo- 
 luminous private despatches to the Rev. Mr. Greenwood. 
 After instructions of various sorts respecting his personal 
 affairs in Yorkshire, which occupy eight closely-printed fo- 
 lio pages, the lord-deputy subjoins : " One word more I 
 must of necessity mention, that is, the business betwixt me 
 and Sir David Foulis. How this stands I know not ; but 
 I pray you inform yourself what lands I have received the 
 rents of by virtue of the extent, and what money Richard 
 Marris has received towards my 3000 damages and costs 
 of suit ; and that you will cause a perfect and half year's 
 account to be kept of all the disbursements and receipts 
 concerning this matter in a book precisely by itself. I be- 
 beech you set this business in a clear and certain course, 
 for you may be sure, if any advantage or doubt can be rais- 
 ed, I shall be sure to hear of it." Strafford Papers, vol. i., 
 p. 488. Letter from Dublin, dated Nov., 1635. 
 
 i His friends were constantly, but vainly, warning him of 
 the dangers he incurred by this. " I long," writes his friend 
 Mainwaring to him, " to hear of my lady's safe delivery, 
 and of your lordship's coming up. . . Your lordship must give 
 me leave to put you in mind of your health, for I hear you 
 take no recreation at all." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 54. 
 
 Q This person afterward played his part at the impeach- 
 ment. It may be worth while to quote a passage from one 
 of his letters, written at the period referred to in the text, 
 in illustration of the means which Wentworth employed to 
 engage, as deeply as possible, the devotion of men who 
 promised to be useful to him. " For my own part," writes 
 Pennyman to the lord-president, " I hope shortly to pay my 
 composition, and I wish I could as easily satisfy your debt, 
 and compound with your lordship, as I can with the king. 
 But it is a thing impossible. My best way, I think, is to do 
 like the painter, who, when, after a great deal of pains, he 
 could not describe the infinite sorrow of a weeping father, 
 presented him on a table with his face covered, that the 
 spectators might imagine that sorrow which he was not 
 able to express. My debt, like his sorrow, is not to be de- 
 scribed, much less my thanks and acknowledgments. Yet 
 give me leave to tell your lordship that there is not one alive 
 that more honours you than your lordship's most faithful 
 and indebted servant." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 56. 
 
 i ship need not fear the going forward of your 
 building, when you have so careful a steward 
 as Mrs. Anne. She complained to me very 
 much of two rainy days, which, as she said, 
 hindered her from coming down, and the build- 
 ing from going up, because she was inforced to 
 keep her chamber, and could not overlook the 
 workmen."* This important little maiden, then 
 between three and four years old, had certainly 
 inherited the spirit of the Wentworths. " Mr. 
 William and Mrs. Anne," Pennyman writes on 
 another occasion, " are very well. They were 
 not a -little glad to receive their tokens, and yet 
 they said they would be more glad to receive 
 your lordship and their worthy mother. We 
 all, with one vote, agreed in their opinion, and 
 wished that your lordship's occasions might be 
 as swift and speedy in their despatch as our 
 thoughts and desires are in wishing them."t 
 At the commencement of 1631, Wentworth's 
 second son was born. This child, Thomas 
 Wentworth, after eight months of uncertain 
 health, died. At about this time the services 
 of the lord-president seem to have been urgent- 
 ly required in London, and Weston wrote to 
 him entreating his immediate presence. t The 
 health of the Lady Arabella, however, who was 
 again near the period of confinement, was now 
 an object of deep anxiety to Wentworth, and 
 he remained with her in Yorkshire. In Octo- 
 ber, a second daughter, the young Arabella, 
 was born to him, and within the same month, 
 on a Tuesday morning, says Radcliffe, "his dear 
 wife, the Lady Arabella, died. I took this earl 
 out of bed, and carried him to receive his last 
 blessing from her."|| Wentworth deeply felt 
 her loss, and never, at any time, through his 
 after life, recalled her beauty, her accomplish- 
 ments, or her virtue, without the most tender 
 enthusiasm. 1T 
 
 Some days after this sad event, Wentworth 
 received intelligence from his friend and rela- 
 tion, Sir Edward Stanhope, of certain intrigues 
 which, during his absence, had been moving 
 against him in the court at London. " I re- 
 ceived your letter," he writes back, '* by which 
 I perceive you have me in memory, albeit God 
 hath taken from me your noblest cousin, the 
 incomparable woman and wife my eyes shall 
 ever behold. I must confess this kindness 
 works with me much." After some allusions 
 to Stanhope's intelligence, he proceeds : " Yet 
 truly I cannot believe so ill of the propounders, 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 55. t Ibid., p. 57. 
 
 t " I hope," writes the lord-treasurer, " this bearer will 
 find you well, well disposed, and the better, enduring: so 
 prudently as I hear you do, the loss of your younger son. 
 We are glad here to hear you are in so good a temper, and 
 that you receive it as a seasoning of human felicity, which 
 God often sends where he loves best ; but you need none of 
 my philosophy ; and therefore this is only to remember you 
 of being here in the beginning of the term, according to 
 your promise, and I entreat you to think it necessary to 
 make haste. We want you now for your counsel and help 
 in many things." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 58. 
 
 <) Essay. Mr. Mac Diarmid and other writers have fall- 
 en into the error of supposing that she died after the birth 
 of the last boy. 
 
 II Radcliffe here alludes, "by this earl," to the boy Will- 
 iam, who was Earl of Strafford when his essay was writ- 
 ten. Mr. Brodie whimsically turns it into Sir George Rat- 
 cliffe carrying Wentworth himself oul of bed to receive his 
 wife's last blessing. Brit. Emp., vol. iii., p. 129. 
 
 T [She left him with three children William, who in 
 1665 was restored to his father's titles ; Anne, married to 
 Edward Watson, Earl of Rockingham ; and Arabella, mar- 
 ried to John M'Carthy, Viscount Mountcashel, in Ireland. 
 -C.]
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 81 
 
 both because in my own nature I am the man 
 least suspicious alive, and that my heart tells 
 me I never deserved but well of them indeed 
 passing well. It is impossible it should be plot- 
 ted for my ruin ; sure at least impossible I can 
 think so ; and if there can be such mischief in 
 the world, then is this confidence given me as 
 a snare by God to punish me for my sins yet 
 farther, and to draw me yet more immediately 
 and singly to look up to him, without leaving 
 me anything below to trust or, look to. The 
 worst, sure, that can be is, with honour, profit, 
 and contentment, to set me a little farther off 
 from treading upon anything themselves de- 
 sire ; which granted, I am at the height of my 
 ambitions, brought home to enjoy myself and 
 friends, to leave my estate free and plentiful to 
 your little cousin, and which is more than all 
 this, quietly and in secret to serve my Maker, 
 to commune with him more frequently, more 
 profitably, I trust, for my soul than formerly."* 
 Of short duration was this composed attitude 
 of mind ! The ink was scarcely dry upon his 
 letter when he reappeared in his court at York, 
 pursued with startling energy some of his most 
 resolute measures, and reassured his master in 
 London of the invaluable nature of his services 
 by sundry swellings of the royal revenue. 
 Money, the main nerve that was to uphold the 
 projected system, was still the grand object 
 of Wentworth's care, and money he sent to 
 Charles. The revenue, which, on his succeed- 
 ing to the presidency of York, he had found no 
 more in amount than 2000 a year, he had al- 
 ready raised to an annual return of 9500. t 
 
 Still, however, intriguers were busy against 
 him, and a rumour was conveyed by them to 
 Weston's ear that he had resolved to use 
 his notoriously growing influence with the 
 king to endeavour to win for himself the staff 
 of the lord-treasurer. The trusty Wandesford 
 discovered this, and despatched the intelli- 
 gence to Wentworth. The next courier from 
 Yorkshire brought a packet to Weston. " Let 
 shame and confusion then cover me," ran 
 the characteristic letter it enclosed, " if I do 
 not abhor the intolerable anxiety I well un- 
 derstand to wait inseparably upon that staff, 
 if I should not take a serpent as soon into 
 my bosom, and if I once find so mean a 
 thought of me can enter into your heart, as that 
 to compass whatever I could take most delight 
 in, I should go about beguilefully to supplant 
 any ordinary man (how much more, then, im- 
 potently to catch at such a staff, and from my 
 lord-treasurer !) if I leave not the court in- 
 stantly, betake myself to my private fortune, 
 reposedly seek my contentment and quiet with- 
 in my own doors, and follow the dictamen of 
 my own reason and conscience, more accord- 
 ing to nature and liberty than in those gyves 
 which now pinch and hang upon me. Thus 
 you see how easily you may be rid of me when 
 you list, and, in good faith, with a thousand 
 thanks : yet be pleased not to judge this pro- 
 ceeds out of any wayward weary humour in me 
 neither, for my endeavours are as vigorous and 
 as cheerful to serve the crown and you as ever 
 they were, nor shall you ever find them to faint 
 or flasquer. I am none of those soft-tempered 
 spirits ; but I cannot endure to be mistaken, or 
 
 * Straffbrd Papers, vol. i., p. 61. 
 Li 
 
 t Ibid., p. 89, 90. 
 
 suffer my purer and more entire affections to 
 be soiled, or in the least degree prejudiced, with 
 the loathsome and odious attributes of cove- 
 tousness and ambitious falsehood. Do me but 
 right in this. Judge my watches to issue (as 
 in faith they do) from clearer cisterns. I lay 
 my hand under your foot, I despise danger, I 
 laugh at labour. Command me in all difficul- 
 ties, in all confidence, in all readiness. No, 
 no, my lord," continued Wentworth, lapsing 
 into the philosophic tone he could assume so 
 well, " No, no, my lord ! they are those sover- 
 eign and great duties I owe his majesty and 
 your lordship, which thus provoke me beyond 
 my own nature rather to leave those cooler 
 shades, wherein I took choicest pleasure, and 
 thus put myself with you into the heat of the 
 day, than poorly and meanly to start aside 
 from my obligations, convinced in myself of 
 the most wretched ingratitude in the whole 
 world. God knows how little delight I take in 
 the outwards of this life, how infinitely ill sat- 
 isfied I am with myself, to find daily those 
 calm and quiet retirements, wherein to con- 
 template some things more divine and sacred 
 than this world can afford us, at every moment 
 interrupted through the importunity of the af- 
 fairs I have already. To heaven and earth I 
 protest it, it grieves my very soul !"* Weston's 
 suspicions, which, had he known Wentworth 
 better, would never for a moment have been 
 entertained, could not but sink before such lan- 
 guage as this ; and the lord-president's speedy 
 arrival in London exploded every hostile at- 
 tempt that still lingered about the court against 
 him. 
 
 Charles was now remodelling his counsels. 
 The extraordinary success of Wentworth's 
 northern presidency had inspired him with new 
 hopes ; his coffers had been filled without the 
 hated help of the House of Commons ; ' and that 
 prospect of independent authority which he ear- 
 nestly entertained, no longer seemed distant or 
 hopeless. A conclusion of peace with France 
 and Spain favoured the attempt. He offered 
 Lord Wentworth the government of Ireland. 
 His favourite scheme was to deliver up the 
 three divisions of the kingdom to the superin- 
 tendence of three favourite ministers, reserving 
 to himself a general and not inactive control 
 over all. Laud was the minister for England, 
 and the affairs of Scotland were in the hands 
 of the Marquess of Hamilton. Ireland, accept- 
 d by Wentworth, completed the proposed plan. 
 
 The condition of Ireland, at this moment, 
 was in the highest degree difficult and danger- 
 ous. From the conquest of Henry the Second 
 up to the government of Essex and Montjoy, 
 icr history had been a series of barbarous dis- 
 asters. The English settlers, in a succession 
 of ferocious conflicts, had depraved themselves 
 >elow the level of the uncivilized Irish ; for, 
 "nstead of diffusing improvement and civiliza- 
 ion, they had obstructed both. The system 
 of government was, in consequence, become 
 he mere occasional and discretionary calling 
 of a Parliament by the lord-deputy for the time, 
 composed entirely of delegates from within the 
 English pale, whose duty began and closed in 
 he sanctioning some new act of oppression, or 
 he screening some new offender from punish- 
 
 * Strafford Papeis, vol. L, p. 79, 80.
 
 82 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ment. One glimpse of a more beneficial pur- 
 pose broke upon Ireland in the reign of Henry 
 the Seventh, during the government of Sir Ed- 
 ward Poynings, who procured a decree from 
 the Parliament, that all the laws theretofore 
 enacted in England should have equal force in 
 Ireland. With the determination of destroy- 
 ing, at the same time, the discretionary power 
 that had been used, of summoning and dismiss- 
 ing Parliaments at pleasure, and of passing sud- 
 den laws for the purpose of occasional oppres- 
 sions, Sir Edward Poynings procured the en- 
 actment of his famous bill, that a Parliament 
 should not be summoned above once a year in 
 Ireland, nor even then, till the propositions on 
 which it was to decide had been seen and ap- 
 proved by the privy council of England. But 
 the native Irish chiefs had been too fiercely 
 hardened in their savage distrust of the Eng- 
 lish to reap any advantage from these meas- 
 ures. They retreated to their fastnesses, and 
 only left them to cover the frontier with out- 
 rage and bloodshed. 
 
 Lord Montjoy at last subdued them, released 
 the peasantry from their control, and framed a 
 plan of impartial government. In the course 
 of the ensuing reign new settlements of Eng- 
 lish were accordingly formed, the rude Irish 
 customs were discountenanced, the laws of 
 England everywhere enforced, courts of judi- 
 cature established after the English model, and 
 representatives from every part of the kingdom 
 summoned to the Parliament. When England 
 herself, however, began to groan under oppres- 
 sions, Ireland felt them still more heavily, and 
 was flung back with a greater shock. The ar- 
 bitrary decrees of Charles's privy council, mil- 
 itary exactions, and martial law, were stran- 
 gling the liberties of Ireland in their very birth. 
 Bitter, tqo, in its aggravation of other grievan- 
 ces, was Irish theological discord. The large 
 majority of Papists, the sturdy old Protestants 
 of the Pale, the new settlers of James, Presby- 
 terians, and Puritans, all were in nearly open 
 warfare, and the penalties enforced against re- 
 cusants were equally hateful to all. The rig- 
 our of the Church courts, and the exaction of 
 tithes, kept up these discontents by constant 
 exasperation. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when Charles 
 sent Lord Falkland to Dublin. His lordship 
 soon found that his government was little more 
 than the name of one. The army had gradu- 
 ally sunk to 1350 foot and 200 horse ; which 
 mean force, divided into companies, was com- 
 manded by privy counsellors, who, managing to 
 secure their own pay out of the receipts of the 
 exchequer> compounded with the privates for 
 a third or fourth part of the government allow- 
 ance ! Insignificant in numbers, such manage- 
 ment had rendered the soldiers ten times more 
 inefficient, and, utterly wanting in spirit or con- 
 duct, often, indeed, the mere menial servants of 
 the officers, they excited only contempt. Over 
 and over again Lord Falkland detailed this state 
 of things to Charles, and prayed for assist- 
 ance ; but the difficulties in England, and the 
 deficiencies in the Irish revenue, united to 
 withhold it. At last, however, warned by im- 
 minent dangers that threatened, the king an- 
 nounced his resolution to augment the Irish 
 forces to 5000 foot and 500 horse, and, unable 
 
 to supply the necessary charge from an empty 
 treasury, he commanded the new levies to be 
 quartered on the different towns and counties, 
 each of which was to receive a certain portion 
 of the troops, for three months in turn, and to 
 supply them with the required necessaries. 
 Alarmed by this project and justly consider- 
 ing a great present sacrifice, with some chance 
 of profit, better than to be burdened with a tax 
 of horrible uncertainty, which yet gave them 
 no reasonable reliance for the future the Irish 
 people instantly offered the king a liberal vol- 
 untary contribution, on condition of the redress 
 of certain grievances. Catholics and Protest- 
 ants concurred in this, and delegates from both 
 parties laid the proposal before the king him- 
 self, in London. The money they offered first, 
 in the shape of a voluntary contribution of 
 100,000, the largest sum ever yet returned 
 by Ireland, and to be paid by instalments of 
 10,000 a quarter. Their list of grievances 
 they produced next, desiring relief from the ex- 
 actions of courts of justice, from military dep- 
 redations, from trade monopolies, from the re- 
 ligious penal statutes, from retrospective inqui- 
 ries into defective titles beyond a period of six- 
 ty years,* and finally praying that the conces- 
 sions should be confirmed by an Irish Parlia- 
 ment. Some of these conditions were intoler- 
 able to Charles. A Parliament was at all times 
 hateful to him, and scarcely less convenient 
 than the absence of Parliaments, to a prince 
 who desired to be absolute, was the privilege 
 of increasing the royal revenue, and obliging 
 the minions of royalty, by discovering old flaws 
 in titles. Glorious had been the opportunity 
 of escheating large possessions to the crown, 
 or of passing them over to new proprietors ! 
 Yet here was a present offer of money an ad- 
 vantage not to be foreborne ; whereas, so con- 
 venient was Charles's moral code, an assent to 
 obnoxious matters was a thing to be withdrawn 
 at the first convenient opportunity, and evaded 
 at any time. The " graces," as the conces- 
 sions were called, were accordingly promised 
 to be acceded to ; instalments of the money 
 were paid ; and writs were issued by Lord Falk- 
 land for a Parliament. 
 
 The joyful anticipations raised in conse- 
 quence soon received a check. The writs 
 were declared void by the English council, in 
 consequence of the provisions of Poynings's 
 law+ not having been attended to by Lord 
 Falkland, who was proved to have issued the 
 writs on his own authority, without having 
 previously transmitted to England a certificate 
 of the laws to be brought forward in the pro- 
 posed Parliament, with reasons for enacting 
 them, and then, as he ought to have done, 
 waited for his majesty's license of permission 
 under the great seal. Still the people thought 
 this a casual error, and they waited in confi- 
 dence of its remedy. The Roman Catholic 
 party, meanwhile, encouraged by the favoura- 
 ble reception of their delegates at court, and 
 elated by a confidence of protection from the 
 queen, proceeded to act at once in open de- 
 
 * It had been usual to dispossess proprietors of estates for 
 defects in their tenures as old as the original conquest of 
 Ireland ! No man was secure at his own hearth-stone. 
 See Leland, vol. ii., p. 466-468. 
 
 t These provisions had received additional ratification by 
 subsequent statutes, the 3d and 4th of Philip and Mary.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 83 
 
 fiance of the penal statutes. They seized 
 churches for their own worship, thronged the 
 streets of Dublin with their processions, erect- 
 ed an academy for the religious instruction of 
 their youth, and re-enforced their clergy by 
 supplies of young priests from the colleges of 
 France and Spain. The extreme alarm of the 
 Protestants at these manifestations induced 
 Lord Falkland at last to issue a proclamation, 
 prohibiting the Roman Catholic clergy from 
 exercising any control over the people, and 
 from celebrating their worship in public. The 
 Roman Catholics, incensed at this step, now 
 clamoured for the promised graces and Parlia- 
 ment ; the Protestants had too many reasons 
 to join them in the demand ; and both parties 
 united in declaring that payment of the contri- 
 bution, under present circumstances, was an 
 intolerable burden. In vain Lord Falkland of- 
 fered to accept the payment in instalments of 
 5000 instead of 10,000 a year ; the discon- 
 tents daily increased, and, in the end, drove 
 the lord-deputy from power. Lord Falkland, 
 the object of censure that should have fallen 
 elsewhere, returned to England. 
 
 A temporary administration, consisting of 
 two lords-justices the one, Lord-chancellor 
 Viscount Ely, and the other, Lord-high-treasu- 
 rer the Earl of Cork was formed. Both these 
 noblemen were zealously opposed to the Roman 
 Catholics, and instantly, without waiting the 
 king's orders, commenced a rigorous execution 
 of the penal statutes against recusants. An 
 intimation from England of the royal displeas- 
 ure threw some shadow over these proceedings, 
 but not till the opposition they had strengthen- 
 ed had succeeded in suppressing the academy 
 and religious houses which had been erected 
 by the Roman Catholics in Dublin. To com- 
 plete the difficulties of the present state of af- 
 fairs, the termination of the voluntary contri- 
 bution now fast approached, and the temper of 
 all parties left any hope of its renewal more 
 than desperate. 
 
 Imminent, then, was the danger which now 
 beset the government of Ireland. Without the 
 advantage of internal strength, it had no pros- 
 pect of external aid. The treasury in England 
 could not afford a farthing to increase the ar- 
 my ; the money designed for that purpose had 
 been swallowed up in more immediate neces- 
 sities, and the army sank daily into the most 
 miserable inefficiency. Voluntary supply was 
 out of the question, and compulsory exactions, 
 without the help of soldiers, still more ridicu- 
 lously vain. In the genius of the lord-presi- 
 dent of the North, Charles had one hope re- 
 maining.* 
 
 Wentworth received his commission in the 
 early months of 1632. He resolved to defer 
 his departure, however, till he had informed 
 himself fully of the state of his government, 
 and fortified himself with all the authorities 
 that should be needful. The energy, the pru- 
 dence, the various powers of resource with 
 which he laboured to this end, are only to be 
 appreciated by an examination of the original 
 
 * Ample authorities for this rapid summary of Irish af- 
 fairs will be found in Leland's History, vol. ii., p. 107, to 
 the end, and vol. iii., p. 1-10, edition of 1733. I have also 
 availed myself of Mr. MacDiarmid's account, Lives of Brit- 
 ish Statesmen, vol. ii., p. 125-135. 
 
 documents, which still remain in evidence of 
 all.* They were most extraordinary. The 
 first thing he did was to procure an order from 
 the king in restriction of the authority of the 
 government of lords-justices during his own 
 absence from Dublin. t In answer, then, to 
 various elaborate congratulations from the offi- 
 cers of the Irish government, he sent back cold, 
 but peremptory requests for information of 
 their various departments. The treasury ne- 
 cessities, and means of supply, were his pri- 
 mary care. The lords-justices declared that 
 the only possible resource, in that respect, was 
 to levy rigorously the penalties imposed by 
 statute on the Roman Catholics for absence 
 from public worship. The cabinet in London, 
 powerless of expedient, saw no chance of 
 avoiding this, when Lord Cottington received 
 from York one of Wentworth's vigorous de- 
 spatches. 
 
 " Now, my lord," reasoned the new lord- 
 deputy, " I am not ignorant that what hath 
 been may happen out again, and how much 
 every good Englishman ought, as well in rea- 
 son of state as conscience, to desire that king- 
 dom were well reduced to conformity of reli- 
 gion with us here as, indeed, shutting up the 
 postern gate, hitherto open to many a danger- 
 ous inconvenience and mischief, which have 
 over-lately laid too near us, exhausted our 
 treasures, consumed our men, busied the per- 
 plexed minds of her late majesty and all her 
 ministers. Yet, my lord, it is a great business, 
 hath many a root lying deep, and far within 
 ground, which would be first thoroughly opened 
 before we judge what height it may shoot up 
 unto, when it shall feel itself once struck at, to 
 be loosened and pulled up ; nor, at this dis- 
 tance, can I advise it should be at all attempt- 
 ed, until the payment for the king's army be else- 
 where and surelier settled than either upon the vol- 
 untary gift of the subjects, or upon the casual in- 
 come of the twelvepence a Sunday. Before this 
 fruit grows ripe for gathering, the army must 
 not live pracario, fetching in every morsel of 
 bread upon their swords' point. Nor will I so 
 far ground myself with an implicit faith upon 
 the all-foreseeing providence of the Earl of 
 Cork as to receive the contrary opinion from 
 him in verbo magistri, when I am sure that if 
 such a rush as this should set that kingdom in 
 pieces again, I must be the man that am like 
 to bear the heat of the day, and to be also ac- 
 countable for the success, not he. Blame me 
 not, then, where it concerns me so nearly, both 
 in honour and safety, if I much rather desire 
 to hold it in suspense, and to be at liberty 
 upon the place to make my own election, than 
 thus be closed up by the choice and admission 
 of strangers, whom I know not how they stand 
 affected either to me or the king's service. 
 Therefore let me beseech you to consult this 
 business seriously with his majesty and with 
 
 * See the Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 61-97. 
 
 t Id. ibid., p. 63. After intimating to the lords-justices 
 Wentworth's appointment, the royal order proceeds : " We 
 have, therefore, in the mean time, thought fit hereby to re- 
 quire you not to pass any pardons, offices, lands, or church 
 livings by grant under our great seal of that our kingdom, 
 nor to confer the honour of knighthood upon any, or to dis- 
 pose of any company of horse or foot there ; only you are 
 required in this interim to look to the ordinary administra- 
 tion of civil justice, and to the good government of our sub- 
 jects and army there."
 
 84 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 my lord-treasurer. Admit me here, with all 
 submission, to express myself upon this point ; 
 and finally, be pleased to draw it to some pres- 
 ent resolution, which, the shortness of time 
 considered, must instantly be put in action. I 
 do conceive, then, what difficulties nay, what 
 impossibility soever the council of Ireland hath 
 pretended, that it is a very easy work to continue 
 the contribution upon the country for a year longer, 
 which will be of infinite advantage to his majesty 's 
 affairs ; for we look very ill about us if in that 
 time wejind not the means either to establish that 
 revenue in the crown, or raise some other equiva- 
 lent thereunto. And this we gain, too, without 
 hazarding the public peace of the subject by 
 any new apprehensions, which commonly ac- 
 company such fresh undertakings, especially 
 being so general as is the twelvepence upon the 
 absentees." The despatch then went on to 
 suggest that the very representations of the 
 lords-justices might be used for the purpose 
 of dispensing with their propositions, and to 
 draw out, for the instruction of the council, a 
 succinct plan of effecting this.* 
 
 Distrustful, notwithstanding, of the energy 
 of Cottington and his associates, Wentworth 
 followed his despatch in person, arrived in 
 London, t prevailed with the council to enter 
 into his design, and had a letter immediately 
 sent off to the lords-justices, bitterly complain- 
 ing of all the evils they had set forth, of the 
 impossibility of raising voluntary supplies, and 
 the consequent necessity of exacting the pen- 
 alties. " Seeing," added the king, by Went- 
 worth's dictation, " seeing you conceive there 
 is so much difficulty in the settlement of the 
 payments, and considering the small hopes you 
 mention in your letters of farther improvement 
 there, we must be constrained, if they be not free- 
 ly and thankfully continued, to strcighten our for- 
 mer graces vouchsafed during those contributions, 
 and make use more strictly of our legal rights and 
 profits to be employed for so good and neces- 
 sary a work." Leaving this letter, with other 
 secret instructions, to work their effects, Went- 
 worth next despatched a private and confiden- 
 tial agent to Ireland, himself a Roman Catholic, 
 to represent to his brethren personally and in 
 secret the lord-deputy's regard for them, his 
 willingness to act as a mediator, and his hope 
 that a moderate voluntary contribution might 
 be accepted in release of their heavy fines ; in 
 one word, he sent this person " a little to feel 
 their pulse under-hand."t " The instrument I 
 employed," Wentworth afterward wrote to Cot- 
 tington, " was himself a Papist, and knows no 
 other than that the resolution of the state here 
 is set upon that course [of exacting the recu- 
 sant fines], and that I do this privately, in fa- 
 vour and well-wishing, to divert the present 
 storm, which else would fall heavy upon them 
 all, being a thing framed and prosecuted by the 
 Earl of Cork, which makes the man labour it 
 in good earnest, taking it to be a cause pro aris 
 etfocis." The first thing this agent discovered 
 and communicated to his employer was that 
 his temporary representatives, the lords-justi- 
 
 * See Strafford papers, vol. i., p. 75-77. 
 t This is evident from a subsequent despatch to Cotting- 
 ton, in which he reminds him that the resolution I am about 
 
 yonr lordship, the ! , , _... 
 
 p. 74. t See Strafford Pape 
 
 ces, were seeking to counteract his purpose, 
 and had utterly neglected the instructions of 
 the last letter that had been despatched to 
 them from the king. With characteristic en- 
 ergy, Wentworth seized this incident for a 
 double purpose of advantage. 
 
 There would be little hazard in supposing 
 that their lordships of Ely and Cork were in- 
 debted to the extraordinary letter, from which 
 I shall quote the opening passages, for the 
 strongest sensation their official lives had 
 known. " Your lordships," wrote Wentworth, 
 " heretofore received a letter from his majesty, 
 directed to yourselves alone, of the 14th April 
 last ; a letter of exceeding much weight and 
 consequence ; a letter most weightily and ma- 
 turely consulted, and ordered by his majesty 
 himself ; a letter that your lordships were ex- 
 pressly appointed you should presently cause 
 to be entered in the council book, and also in 
 the signet office ; to the end there might be 
 public and uniform notice taken of his majes- 
 ty's pleasure so signified by all his ministers, 
 and others there, whom it might concern. How 
 is it, then, that I understand this letter hath, 
 by your lordships' order, lain ever since (and 
 still doth, for anything I know) sealed up in 
 silence at the council table 1 Not once pub- 
 lished or entered, as was precisely directed, 
 and expected from your lordships ! copies deni- 
 ed to all men ! and yet not so much as the 
 least reason or colour certified over hither for 
 your neglect, or (to term it more mildly) for- 
 bearance to comply with his majesty's direc- 
 tions in that behalf! Believe me, my lords, I 
 fear this will not be well taken if it come to be 
 known on this side, and in itself lies open 
 enough to very hard and ill construction, re- 
 flecting and trenching deeper than at first may 
 be apprehended. And pardon me, my lords, if 
 in the discharge of my own duty I be transported 
 beyond my natural modesty and moderation, and 
 the respects I personally bear your lordships, 
 plainly to let you know I shall not connive at such 
 a presumption in you thus to evacuate my mas- 
 ter's directions, nor contain myself in silence, see- 
 ing them before my face so slighted, or at least 
 laid aside, it seems, very little regarded. There- 
 fore I must, in a just contemplation of his maj- 
 esty's honour and wisdom, crave leave to ad- 
 vise you forthwith to mend your error by en- 
 tering and publishing that letter as is com- 
 manded you, or I must, for my own safety, ac- 
 quaint his majesty with all ; and I pray God 
 the keeping it close all this while be not, in the 
 sequel, imputed unto you as a mighty disser- 
 vice to his majesty, and which you may be 
 highly answerable for."* The next communi- 
 cation from his popish agent informed Went- 
 worth that the omissions complained of had 
 been repaired, and, farther, that all parties had 
 agreed to " continue on the contribution as 
 now it is," till his coming. The deputy was 
 thus left to complete, without embarrassment, 
 his already meditated financial projects ; and 
 the lords-justices, with their friends, had lei- 
 sure to consider, and amene themselves to, the 
 new and most peremptory lord who was short- 
 ly to appear among them ! 
 
 Ireland was hereafter to be the scene of an 
 absolute government the government of a 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 77
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 85 
 
 comprehensive mind, but directed to a narrow 
 and mistaken purpose. The first grand object 
 of Wentworth's exertions was to be accom- 
 plished in rendering the king's power uncon- 
 trollable. Beyond this, other schemes arose. 
 The natural advantages of Ireland, worked to 
 the purpose of her own revenue, might be far- 
 ther pressed to the aid of the English treasury ; 
 and a scheme of absolute power successfully 
 established in Ireland, promised still greater 
 service to the Royalist side in the English 
 struggle. 
 
 The union of singular capacity with the most 
 determined vigour which characterized every 
 present movement of Wentworth, while it al- 
 ready, in itself, seemed a forecast of vast 
 though indefinable success, left the king no 
 objection to urge against any of the powers he 
 demanded. The following stipulations were at 
 once assented to. They are all characteristic 
 of Wentworth, of his sagacity no less than his 
 ambition. They open with the evident as- 
 sumption that the debts of the Irish establish- 
 ment will soon be settled, and with consequent 
 cautious exceptions against the rapacity of those 
 numerous courtiers, who waited, as Went- 
 worth well knew, to pounce upon the first va- 
 cant office, or even the first vacant shilling. 
 The lord-deputy demanded, 
 . "That his majesty may declare his express 
 pleasure, that no Irish suit, by way of reward, 
 be moved for by any of his servants, or others, 
 before the ordinary revenue there become able 
 to sustain the necessary charge of that crown, 
 and the debts thereof be fully cleared. That 
 there be an express caveat entered with the 
 secretaries, signet, privy seal, and great seal 
 here, that no grant, of what nature soever, 
 concerning Ireland, be suffered to pass till the 
 deputy be made acquainted, and it hath first 
 passed the great seal of that kingdom, accord- 
 ing to the usual manner. That his majesty 
 signify his pleasure that especial care be taken 
 hereafter that sufficient and credible persons 
 he chosen to supply such bishoprics as shall 
 fall void, to be admitted of his privy council, 
 to sit as judges, and serve of his learned coun- 
 cil there ; that he will vouchsafe to hear the 
 advice of his deputy before he resolve of any 
 in these cases ; and that the deputy be com- 
 manded to inform his majesty truly and impar- 
 tially of every man's particular diligence and 
 care in his service there, to the end his majes- 
 ty may timely and graciously reward the well 
 deserving, by calling them home to better pre- 
 ferments here. That no particular complaint 
 of injustice or oppression be admitted here 
 against any, unless it appear the party made 
 his first address to the deputy. That no con- 
 firmation of any reversion of offices within 
 that kingdom be had, or any new grant of a 
 reversion hereafter to pass: That no new 
 office be erected within that kingdom before 
 such time as the deputy be therewith acquaint- 
 ed, his opinion first required, and certified back 
 accordingly. That the places in the deputy's 
 gift, as well of the civil as the martial list, be 
 left freely to his dispose ; and that his majesty 
 will be graciously pleased not to pass them to 
 any upon suit made unto him here."* 
 
 * I have already alluded to the limitation under which 
 this proposition was acceded to by the king. Charles was 
 
 Lord Wentworth farther required and ob- 
 tained, in the shape of supplementary private 
 propositions, the following : 
 
 " That all propositions moving from the dep- 
 uty touching matters of revenue may be di- 
 rected to the lord-treasurer of England, with- 
 out acquainting the rest of the committee for 
 Irish affairs.* That the address of all other 
 despatches for that kingdom be, by speciaF di- 
 rection of his majesty, applied to one of the 
 secretaries singly. t That the Lord-viscount 
 Falkland be required to deliver in writing in 
 what condition he conceives his majesty's rev- 
 enue and the government of that kingdom 
 now stand, together with a particular of such 
 designs for advancing his majesty's service as 
 were either unbegun or unperfected by him 
 when he left the place, as also his advice how 
 they may be best pursued and effected." 
 
 Not even content with these vast and ex- 
 traordinary powers and precautions, Lord 
 Wentworth engaged for another condition 
 the most potent and remarkable of all that he 
 was to consider them changeable on the spot 
 whenever the advancement of his majesty's 
 affairs required. " Your lordship may rest as- 
 sured," writes Secretary Cooke, " that no me- 
 diation shall prevail with his majesty to ex- 
 empt the Lord Balfour from the rest of the op- 
 posers of the contributions, but that he will be 
 left with the rest to the censure of your jus- 
 tice. And I am persuaded, that in this and all 
 the rest of your proceedings for his service, his 
 princely resolution will support you, if the rest of 
 your friends here do their duties in their true rep- 
 resentation thereof unto him. As your speedy 
 passage for Ireland is most necessary for that 
 government, so your safety concerneth his 
 majesty's honour no less than your own. It is 
 therefore found reasonable that you expect 
 Captain Plumleigh, who, with this fair weath- 
 er, will come about in a short time, (so as it 
 may be hoped) he will prevent your coming to 
 that port, where you appoint to come aboard. 
 Your instructions (as you know), as well as the 
 establishment, are changeable upon occasions for 
 advancement of the affairs. And as you will be 
 careful not to change without cause, so, when 
 you find it necessary, his majesty will conform 
 them by his wisdom to that he findeth fit upon 
 your advice. For my service in anything that 
 may tend to farther your noble ends, besides 
 the duty of my place and trust, the confidence 
 you repose in me, and the testimony you give 
 thereof, are so obligatory, that I must forget 
 myself much if you find not my professions 
 made good. For the Yorkshire business, in 
 the castigation of those mad men and foolst 
 
 to make the grants conditionally to the applicants, and 
 Wentworth was to concede or refuse them, as the good of 
 the service required. " Yet so too," stipulated the king, 
 " as I may have thanks howsoever ; that if there be any- 
 thing to be denied, you may do it, not I." Strafford Pa- 
 pers, vol. i., p. 140. 
 
 * Reasons are subjoined to each proposition. As a speci- 
 men, I quote from the few lines appended to the above : 
 " Thus shall his majesty's profits go more stilly and speedily 
 to their ends without being unseasonably vented as they pass 
 along ; and the deputy not only preserved, but encouraged 
 to deliver his opinion freely and plainly upon all occasions, 
 when he is assured to have it kept secret, and in few and 
 safe hands." 
 
 t " This I will have done by Secretary Cooke," so writ- 
 ten by the king himself upon the original paper. 
 
 These " mad men and fools" were " Sir John Bouchier
 
 86 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 which are so apt to fall upon you, that course 
 which yourself, the Lord Cottington, and Mr. 
 Attorney resolve upon, is here also taken, that 
 prosecution may be made in both courts. I 
 find your vice-president a young man of good 
 understanding and counsellable, and very for- 
 ward to promote his majesty's service.* The 
 secretary is also a discreet, well-tempered 
 man."t 
 
 Wentworth, notwithstanding his new digni- 
 ties, had resolved not to resign the presiden- 
 cy of Yorkshire. And here we see, in the 
 midst of his extraordinary preparations for his 
 Irish government, he had yet found time to 
 prosecute every necessary measure that had a 
 view to the security of his old powers in the 
 North. We gather from this letter of the sec- 
 retary their general character. He celebrated 
 his departure by some acts of vigorous power, 
 and he wrung from the council of London such 
 amplifications even of his large and unusual 
 presidential commission as might compensate 
 for the failure of personal influence and ener- 
 gy consequent on his own departure.^ He 
 
 and his complices," who soon received their most unjust 
 judgment. This passage will serve to prove the value of 
 Wentworth's answer to this matter, also urged against 
 him afterward on his impeachment. " For the sentence 
 against Sir John Bouchier, the defendant was not at all ac- 
 quainted with it, being then in Ireland !" See Rushworth, 
 Tol. ii., p. 161. It is to be observed, at the same time, 
 that the Commons had not the advantage of the present 
 evidence. 
 
 * Edward Osborne had been finally chosen by Went- 
 worth. A passage in the following extract from a letter of 
 Sir William Pennyman's shows that the latter had been 
 previously thought of for the office : " My servant can best 
 satisfy your lordship of the good health of Mr. William and 
 Mrs. Anne, for he saw them both before his journey ; they 
 have been very well, and I trust will continue so. I am 
 most willing I wish I could say able too to be your lord- 
 ship's vice-president, but the defect of this must be sup- 
 plied with the surplusage of the other." 
 
 t Strafford Papers, v.ol. i., p. 93. The allusion to Lord 
 Balfour, with which the above despatch opens, requires 
 explanation. Wentworth, who had already possessed him- 
 self of the most intimate knowledge of the stale of parties 
 and disputes in his new government, had written thus 
 some days before to Cooke : " I have sent here likewise 
 unto you a letter from the lords-justices, together with all 
 the examinations taken of the Lord Balfour, and the rest 
 which refused the contribution in the connty of Ferma- 
 nagh, by all which you will find plainly how busy the 
 sheriff and Sir William Cole have been in mutinying the 
 country against the king's service ; and I beseech you ac- 
 quaint his majesty therewithal, and for the rest leave it to 
 me when I come on the other side, and believe me, I will 
 teach both them and others better grounds of duty and 
 obedience to his majesty than they have shown in this wan- 
 ton and saucy boldness of theirs. And so much the more 
 careful must we be to correct this peccant humour in the 
 first beginnings, in regard this is a great revenue, which 
 his majesty's affairs cannot subsist without ; so that we 
 must either continue that to the crown, or get something 
 from that people of as much value another way ; wherein I 
 conceive it most necessary to proceed most severely in the 
 punishment of this offence, which will still all men else for 
 a many years after ; and, therefore, if the king or your- 
 self conceive otherwise, help me in time, or else I shall be 
 sure to lay it on them soundly. My Lord Balfour excuseth 
 his fault, and will certainly make means to his majesty for 
 favour, wherein under correction, if his majesty intend to 
 prosecute the rest, I conceive it is clearly best for the ser- 
 vice to leave him entirely to run a common fortune, as he is 
 in a common case with the rest of those delinquents." 
 Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 87. 
 
 t The obtaining of such a commission formed one of the 
 articles of his after impeachment, and his answer was, that 
 he had never sat as president after the articles were 
 framed. But he did not deny that the power they vested 
 was exercised by his vice-president, on the lord-president's 
 behalf, and consequently with the full responsibility of the 
 latter. His instrumentality in obtaining these instructions, 
 indeed, was not directly proved ; but it was proved that on 
 one occasion " the president fell upon his knees and de- 
 sired his majesty to enlarge his powers, or that he might 
 
 pressed more especially for the settlement of a 
 dispute with Lord Faulconberg by a perempto- 
 ry punishment of the latter: "for this you 
 know," he wrote to the secretary, " is a public 
 business, and myself being to leave this gov- 
 ernment for a while, desirous to settle and es- 
 tablish this council in their just powers and 
 credits, which is fit for the king's service, 
 would fain see ourselves righted upon this arro- 
 gant lord, and so discipline all the rest upon his 
 shoulders, as I might well hope they should exer- 
 cise their jurisdiction in peace during the time of 
 my absence."* Lord Wentworth's fiercest pros- 
 ecution of apparent personal resentments was, 
 in all cases, the simple carrying out of that 
 despotic principle in its length and breadth, and 
 with reference to its ulterior aims, which had 
 become the very law of his being. In this 
 point of view only can they be justly or intelli- 
 gibly considered. The cruelties associated with 
 the name now about to be introduced have 
 their exaggeration or their excuse, according 
 as the feelings of the reader may determine 
 but, at all events, have their rational and phil- 
 osophical solution in this point of view alone. 
 The Lord Mountnorris held at this time the 
 office of vice-treasurer, which in effect was that 
 of treasurer of Ireland. Clarendon observes 
 of him, " He was a man of great industry, ac- 
 tivity, and experience in the affairs of Ireland, 
 having raised himself from a very private mean 
 condition (having been an inferior servant to 
 
 have leave to go home and lay his bones in his own cot- 
 tage." Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 161. The commission was 
 granted immediately after. Its most terrible article was 
 that which in every case, in distinct terms, wrested from 
 the subject the privilege of protection in Westminster Hall, 
 and cut him off from any share in the rights, poor and con- 
 fined as they were, of the rest of his fellow-subjects. Du- 
 ring Wentworth's absence in Ireland, one judge of the Ex- 
 chequer, Vernon, dared to move in defiance of these mon- 
 strous restrictions. The lord-deputy instantly wrote to 
 Cottington, described Vernon's conduct, and thus proceed- 
 ed : "If this were not a goodly example in the face of a 
 country living under the government of the president and 
 council, for the respect and obedience due to the authority 
 set over them by his majesty, of that awful reverence and 
 duty which we all owe to his majesty's declared good-will 
 and pleasure under the great seal, I am much mistaken. I 
 do, therefore, most humbly beseech this judge maybe con- 
 vented at the council board, 'and charged with these two 
 great misdemeanors ; which if he deny, I pray you say 
 openly in council I am the person will undertake to prove 
 them against him, and withal affirm that by these strange 
 extravagant courses he distracts his majesty's government 
 and affairs more than ever he will be of use unto them, 
 and that, therefore, I am a most earnest suitor to his maj- 
 esty and their lordships that he be not admitted to go that 
 circuit hereafter; and, indeed, I do most earnestly beseech 
 his majesty by you, that tec may be troubled no more with 
 such a peevish, indiscreet piece of flesh. I confess, I dis- 
 dain to see the gownmen in this sort hang their noses over 
 the flowers of the crown, blow and smiffle upon them till 
 they take both scent and beauty off them, or to have them 
 put such a prejudice upon all other sorts of men as if none 
 were able or worthy to be intrusted with honour and admin- 
 istration of justice but thimselves." This is surely a char- 
 acteristic betrayal of Wentworth's interest in the powers 
 of the new commission ! Some difficulties appear to have 
 been encountered in the way of the course he proposed 
 against this judge, for we find him at a subsequent date 
 writing thus to the lord-treasurer : " If Mr. Justice Ver- 
 non be either removed or amended in his circuit, I am very 
 well content, being by me only considered as he is in rela- 
 tion to his majesty's service in those parts the gentleman 
 otherwise unknown to me by injury or benefit." See Straf- 
 ford Papers, vol. i., p. 129, 295. 
 
 * A note subjoined to this is too characteristic to be 
 omitted : " There is like to be a good fine gotten of him 
 [Lord Faulconberg] for the king, u-hich, considering the 
 manner of his life, were wonderaus ill lost ; and lost it will 
 be, if I be not here: therefore I pray you let me have iny 
 directions wilh all possible speed."
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 87 
 
 Lord Chichester) to the degree of a viscount 
 and a privy counsellor, and to a very ample 
 revenue in lands and offices ; and had always, by 
 servile flattery and sordid application, wrought 
 himself into trust and nearness with all depu- 
 ties at their first entrance upon their charge, in- 
 forming them of the defects and oversights of 
 their predecessors ; and after the determination 
 of their commands and return into England, in- 
 forming the state here, and those enemies they 
 usually contracted in that time, of whatsoever 
 they had done or suffered to be done amiss, 
 whereby they either suffered disgrace or dam- 
 age as soon as they were recalled from those 
 honours. In this manner he began with his 
 own master, the Lord Chichester, and contin- 
 ued the same arts upon the Lord Grandison 
 and the Lord Falkland, who succeeded ; and, 
 upon that score, procured admission and trust 
 with the Earl of Strafford, upon his first admis- 
 sion to that government."* This is quoted 
 here for the purpose of introducing a letter of 
 Wentworth's, which was written about this 
 time, and which appears to me not only to cor- 
 roborate Clarendon's account, but (in opposi- 
 tion to those who have urged, as Mr. Brodie,t 
 that Wentworth began his official connexion 
 with Mountnorris by " courting" the latter) to 
 give, at the same time, the noble vice-treasurer 
 and informer-general fair warning of the char- 
 acter and intentions of the- lord-deputy he had 
 thereafter to deal with. Mountnorris had pre- 
 viously allied himself with Wentworth by mar- 
 riage with a near relation of his deceased wife, 
 the Lady Arabella. " I was not a little troub- 
 led," runs Wentworth's letter, " when my ser- 
 vant, returning from Dublin, brought back 
 with him the enclosed, together with the cer- 
 tainty of your lordship's yet abode at West- 
 Chester. I have hereupon instantly despatched 
 this footman expressly to find you out, and to 
 solicit you most earnestly to pass yourself over 
 on the other side ; for besides that the moneys 
 which I expect from you (which I confess you 
 might some other ways provide for), the cus- 
 toms there, you know how loose they lie ; our 
 only confidence here being in you." Several 
 other details are pressed with great earnest- 
 ness. " Therefore," he continues, " for the 
 love of God, linger no longer, but leaving your 
 lady with my Lady Cholmondely, in case her 
 present estate will not admit her to pass along 
 with you I will, God willing, not fail to wait 
 on her ladyship over myself, and deliver her 
 safe to you at Dublin ; the rather for that, to 
 tell your lordship plainly, which I beseech you 
 keep very private to yourself, it will be impos- 
 sible for me to despatch the king's business, 
 and my own, and get hence before the end of 
 November at the soonest. My Lord Ranelagh 
 will be here, I believe, within this day or two ; 
 and, in regard of his and my Lord Dungarvan's 
 being here before, I hold it fit to communicate 
 with your lordship the occasion, which is this, 
 that there being a proposition made to me for 
 a marriage with my Lord of Cork's daughter,t 
 
 * Hit. of Rebellion, vol. i., p. 175. 
 
 t Hiit. of Brit. Empire, vol. iii., p. 70. 
 
 t This lady, whom Wentworth, for excellent reasons, 
 declined marrying, afterward married George Goring, son 
 of the Earl of Norwich. This was the lord-deputy's man- 
 agement. Some eight or nine months after, he writes to 
 
 I, that had no thought such a way, did never- 
 theless move a match between the young lord 
 and my Lord Clifford's daughter, which was by 
 them accepted ; and so he comes now, I be- 
 lieve, to treat farther of this matter with my 
 Lord Clifford. But this I must entreat you to 
 keep private ; with this, that albeit the house 
 of Cumberland is to me, as all the world knows 
 that knows me, in next esteem to my own 
 family, yet be you well assured this alliance 
 shall not decline me from those more sovereign 
 duties I owe my master, or those other faiths 
 I owe my other friends." Some other expres- 
 sions of courtesy are then followed by this re- 
 markable passage. " It is enough said amongst 
 honest men ; and you may easily believe me ; but 
 look you, be secret and true to me, and that no sus- 
 picion possess you ; which else in time may turn 
 to both our disadvantages. For God's sake, my 
 lord, let me again press your departure for Ire- 
 land. And let me have 2000 of my enter- 
 tainment sent me over with all possible speed, 
 for I have entered fondly enough on a purchase 
 here of 14,000, and the want of that would 
 very foully disappoint me." It is clear to me 
 in this that Wentworth had resolved, from the 
 first, to watch Mountnorris narrowly, and, on 
 the earliest intimation of any possible renewal 
 of his old treacheries, to crush him and them 
 for ever. 
 
 Lady Mountnorris would possibly be startled 
 in hearing from her lord that the sorrowing 
 widower of the Lady Arabella was already 
 speaking of the negotiation of another marriage. 
 The entire truth would have startled her still 
 more. Lord Wentworth had at this very time, 
 though a year had not passed since the death 
 of his last wife, whom he appears to have loved 
 with fervent and continuing affection, " married 
 Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Godfrey Rhodes,* 
 privately." Such is the statement of Sir George 
 Radcliffe. 
 
 Since Radcliffe wrote, however, some cu- 
 rious letters relating to this marriage have been 
 discovered in the Thoresby museum. Sir 
 George says that the marriage took place in 
 October. I am now about to quote a letter 
 which bears the date of October in the same 
 year (the 30th), and which goes to prove that, 
 supposing the statement in question correct, 
 Wentworth must have sent the lady off to a 
 distance from himself immediately after the 
 ceremony. Nor is this the only singular cir- 
 
 the Earl of Carlile : " Young- Mr. Goring is gone to travel, 
 having run himself out of 8000, which he purposeth to 
 redeem by his frugality abroad, unless my Lord of Cork can 
 be induced to put to his helping hand, which I have under- 
 taken to solicit for him the best I can, and shall do it with 
 all the power and care my credit and wit shall anywise sug- 
 gest unto me. In the mean time, his lady is gone to the 
 bath to put herself in state to be got with child, and when 
 all things are prepared, she is like to want the principal 
 guest. Was ever willing creature so disappointed? In 
 truth, it is something ominous, if you mark it, yet all may 
 do well enough, if her father will be persuaded, and then, 
 if she be not as well done to as any of her kin, Mr. Goring 
 loseth a friend of me forever. You may say now, if you 
 will, I put a shrewd task upon a young man, there being no 
 better stuff to work upon ; but it is the more charity in us 
 that wish it, and the most of all in him that shall perform 
 it et bon et gentil cavalier." Such, I may remark, is the 
 (to him unusual) tone of levity which he seldom failed to 
 employ in writing to this Earl of Carlisle, whose wife, the 
 famous countess, had secretly become his mistress. This 
 earl died in 1636. The countess will be spoken of shortly. 
 See, also, Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 119. 
 * [Of Great Houghton, in Yorkshire. C.]
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 cumstance suggested by this letter. Even Sir 
 George Radcliffe, probably, did not know all. 
 
 " Madam," Wentvvorth writes, " I have, in 
 little, much to say to you, and in short terms 
 to profess that which I must appear all my life 
 long, or else one of us must be much to blame. 
 But, in truth, I have that confidence in you, 
 and that assurance in myself, as to rest secure 
 the fault will never be made on either side. 
 Well, then, this little and this much, this short and 
 this long, which I aim at, is no more than to give 
 you this first written testimony that I am your hus- 
 band ; and that husband of yours, that will ever 
 discharge those duties of love and respect towards 
 you which good women may expect, and are justly 
 due from good men to discharge them, with a hal- 
 lowed care and continued perseverance in them ; 
 and this is not only much, but all which belongs 
 me ; and wherein I shall tread out the remainder 
 of life which is left me. More I cannot say, nor 
 perform much more for the present ; the rest must 
 dwell in hope until I have made it up in the bal- 
 ance, but I am and must be no other than your lov- 
 ing husband." A postscript* closes the letter, 
 referring to some paste for the teeth, which 
 proves that the lady was in London. Went- 
 worth himself was at York, and, it is evident 
 from his letters, had not quitted the country 
 during the whole of that month. The lady's 
 answer to this letter would seem to have been 
 humbly affectionate, and to have conveyed to 
 Wentworth a lowly but fervent expression of 
 thankfulness for that her new husband had 
 promised not to cast her off as a deserted mis- 
 tress ! His reply (dated about a fortnight af- 
 ter his first letter) is in excellent spirit, and 
 highly characteristic : " Dear Besse," he be- 
 gins, with the encouragement of tender words, 
 " your first lines were wellcum unto me, and I 
 will keep them, in regard I take them to be 
 full, as of kindness, so of truth. It is no pre- 
 sumption foi> you to write unto me ; the fellowship 
 of marriage ought to carry with it more of love and 
 equality than any other apprehension. Soe I de- 
 sire it may ever be betwixt us, nor shall it break 
 of my parte. Virtue is the highest value we 
 can set upon ourselves in this world, and the 
 chiefe which others are to esteem us by. That 
 preserved, we become capable of the noblest 
 impressions which can be imparted unto us. 
 You succeed in this family two of the rarest 
 ladies of their time. Equal them in those ex- 
 cellent dispositions of your mind, and you be- 
 come every ways equally worthy of anything 
 that they had, or that the rest of the world can 
 give. And be you ever assured to be by me 
 cherished and assisted the best I can, thorow 
 the whole course of my life, wherein I shall be 
 no other to you than I was to them, to wit, 
 your loving husband, Wentworth." Still, how- 
 ever, Wentworth did not acknowledge her pub- 
 
 * " If you will speak to my cousin Radcliffe for the paste 
 I told you on for your teeth, and desire him to speak to Dr. 
 Moore, in my name, for two pots of it, and that the doctor 
 will see it be good, for this last indeed was not so, you may 
 bring me one down, and keep the other yourself." On the 
 back of this letter the following words are written, in a 
 delicate female hand : " Tom was born the 17th of Septem- 
 ber, being Wednesday, in the morning, betwixt two and 
 three o'clock, and was christened of the 7th of October, 
 1634." There is another letter of Wentworth's to Lady 
 Wentworth, dated from Sligo, in 1635, in the same muse- 
 um, wherein he sends his blessing to "little Tom." This 
 child died, but Elizabeth Rhodes afterward bore Lord Straf- 
 ford a girl, who was yet an infant at her father's death. 
 
 licly ; still he kept her, for some time, at a dis- 
 tance, and finally sent her over to Ireland, in 
 the charge of Sir George Radcliffe, some time 
 before he himself quitted England. She arri- 
 ved in Dublin with Radcliffe in January, 1633,* 
 and was not joined by Wentworth till the July 
 of that year, when his lordship at last ventured 
 to acknowledge her.f Laud, upon this, seems 
 to have put some questions to the lord-deputy, 
 whose answer may be supposed, from the fol- 
 lowing passage in the archbishop's rejoinder, 
 to have been made up of explanations and apol- 
 ogies, and a concluding hint of advice. " And 
 now, my lord, I heartily wish you and your 
 lady all mutual content that may be ; and I did 
 never doubt that you undertook that course but 
 upon mature consideration, and you have been 
 pleased to express to me a very good one, in 
 which God bless you and your posterity, though 
 I did not write anything to you as an examiner. 
 For myself, I must needs confess to your lordship 
 my weakness, that having been married to a very 
 troublesome and unquiet wife before, I should be 
 so ill advised as now, being about sixty, to go mar- 
 ry another of a more wayward and troublesome 
 generation, t There will not be any farther 
 occasion to remark upon the early circumstan- 
 ces of this marriage, which in its subsequent 
 results presented nothing of a striking or unu- 
 sual description, but I shall here add, for the 
 guidance of the reader in his judgment of these 
 particulars of Wentworth's conduct, some few 
 considerations, which in justice ought not to 
 be omitted. 
 
 Lord Wentworth was a man of intrigue, and 
 the mention of this is not to be avoided in such 
 a view of the bearings of his conduct and char- 
 acter as it has been here attempted, for the 
 first time, to convey. It is at all times a deli- 
 cate matter to touch upon this portion of men's 
 histories, partly from the nature of the subject, 
 and partly from a kind of soreness which the 
 community feel upon it, owing to the incon- 
 sistencies between their opinions and practi- 
 ces, and to certain strange perplexities at the 
 heart of those inconsistencies, which it remains 
 for some bolder and more philosophical genera- 
 tion even to discuss. Meantime it is pretty 
 generally understood, that fidelity to the mar- 
 riage bed is not apt to be most prevalent where 
 leisure and luxury most abound ; and, for the 
 same reason, there is a tendency in the richer 
 classes to look upon the licenses they take, and 
 to talk of them with one another, and so, by a 
 thousand means, to increase and perpetuate the 
 tendency, of which the rest of society have lit- 
 tle conception, unless it be, indeed, among the 
 extremely poor ; for similar effects result from 
 being either above or below a dcpendance upon 
 other people's opinions. When it was public- 
 
 * Radcliffe's Essay. 
 
 t His friends were instant in their congratulation, and, in 
 a profusion of compliments, sought to intimate to his lord- 
 ship, that in this marriage of one so far beneath him in rank 
 and consideration, he had only furnished another proof of 
 his own real and independent greatness. There is some- 
 thing pleasanter in the Earl of Leicester's note, who simply 
 regrets that he " had not the good fortune to be one of the 
 throng that crowded to tell you how glad they were that 
 you had passed your journey and landed safely in your gov- 
 ernment, or (which I conceive a greater occasion of rejoi- 
 cing with you) that you were happily and healthfully ar- 
 rived in the arms of a fair and beloved wife." Strdfford 
 Papers, vol. i,, p. 157. 
 
 f Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 125.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 89 
 
 ly brought out, therefore, that Wentworth, as 
 well as gayer men of the court, had had his 
 " levities," as the grave Lord-chancellor Clar- 
 endon calls them, it naturally told against him 
 with the more serious part of the nation ; not, 
 however, without some recoil, in the opinions 
 of candid observers, against the ingenuousness 
 of those who told it, because the latter, as men 
 moving in the same ranks themselves, or on 
 the borders of them, must have known the li- 
 cense secretly prevailing, and probably partook 
 of it far more than was supposed. Lady Car- 
 lile, one of the favourites of Wentworth, sub- 
 sequently became the mistress of Pym himself. 
 Lord Clarendon, backed with the more avowed 
 toleration, or, rather, impudent unfeelingness 
 which took place in the subsequent reign, not 
 only makes use of the term just quoted in 
 speaking of intrigue, but ventures, with a sort 
 of pick-thank chuckle of old good-humour, to 
 confess that, in his youth, he conducted him- 
 self in these matters much as others did, though 
 with a wariness proportionate to his under- 
 standing. " Caute," says he, in the quotation 
 popular at the time, and used by Wentworth 
 himself, " si non caste." 
 
 We are also to take into consideration, that 
 if the court of Charles the First had more sen- 
 timent and reserve than that of his heartless 
 son, it was far from being so superior to courts 
 in general in this respect, as the solemn shad- 
 ow which attends his image with posterity nat- 
 urally enough leads people to conclude. The 
 better taste of the poetry-and-picture-loving 
 monarch did but refine, and throw a veil over, 
 the grosser habits of the court of his father 
 James. Pleasure was a Silenus in the court 
 of James. In that of Charles the Second, it 
 was a vulgar satyr. Under Charles the First, 
 it was still of the breed, but it was a god Pan, 
 and the muses piped among his nymphs. 
 
 Far from wondering, therefore, that Went- 
 worth, notwithstanding the gravity of his bear- 
 ing and the solemn violence of his ambition, 
 allowed himself to indulge in the fashionable 
 license of the times, it was to be expected that 
 he would do so, not only from the self-indul- 
 gence natural to his will in all things, but from 
 the love of power itself, and that he might be 
 in no respect behindhand with any grounds 
 which he could furnish himself with for having 
 the highest possible opinion of his faculties for 
 ascendency. As nine tenths of common gal- 
 lantry is pure vanity, so a like proportion of the 
 graver offence of deliberate seduction is owing 
 to pure will and the love of power the love of 
 obtaining a strong and sovereign sense of an 
 existence not very sensitive, at any price to 
 the existence of another. And thus, without 
 supposing him guilty to that extent, might the 
 common gallantries of the recherche and domi- 
 nant Strafford be owing greatly to the pure 
 pride of his will, and to that same love of con- 
 quest and superiority which actuated him in 
 his public life. 
 
 A greater cause for wonder might be found 
 in the tenderness with which he treated the 
 wives to whom he was unfaithful, and especially 
 the one, this Elizabeth Rhodes, who was com- 
 paratively lowly in birth. But so mixed a thing 
 is human nature, as at present constituted, that 
 the vices as well as virtues of the man might 
 M 
 
 come into play in this very tenderness, and 
 help to corroborate it ; for, in addition to the 
 noble and kindly thoughts which never ceased 
 to be mixed up with his more violent ones, he 
 would think that the wife of a Wentworth was 
 of necessity a personage to be greatly and ten- 
 derly considered on all occasions ; and even 
 his marriage into an obscure family would be 
 reconciled to his pride by the instinct which 
 leads men of that complexion to think it equally 
 difficult for themselves to be lowered by any- 
 thing they choose to do, and for the object of 
 their attention not to be elevated by the same 
 process of self-reference. 
 
 Nor to quit this delicate subject, which I 
 could not but touch on, to assist the reader, 
 with what has gone before, to a proper judg- 
 ment of facts that are yet tp be mentioned, and 
 which, in truth, contains matter for the pro- 
 foundest reflection of those who might choose 
 to consider it by itself will it be thought extra- 
 ordinary by such as have at all looked into the 
 nature of their fellow-creatures, that a man 
 like Wentworth should have treated his wives 
 tenderly at the very times at which he was 
 most unfaithful to them ; for, whether influ- 
 enced by love or by awe, they do not appear to 
 have offended him at any time by their com- 
 plaints, or even to have taken notice of his con- 
 duct ; and they were, in truth, excellent wom- 
 en, worthy of his best and most real love ; so 
 as to render it probable that his infidelities were 
 but heats of will and appetite, never, perhaps, 
 occasioning even a diminution of the better af- 
 fections, or, if they did, ending in the addition- 
 al tenderness occasioned by remorse. It is a 
 vulgar spirit only that can despise a woman for 
 making no remonstrances, and a brutal one 
 that can ill treat her for it. A heart with any 
 nobleness left in it keeps its sacredest and dear- 
 est corner for a kindness so angelical ; and 
 Wentworth's pride had enough sentiment to 
 help his virtues to a due appreciation of the 
 generosity, if it existed, or to give it the bene- 
 fit of supposing that it would have done so, in 
 favour of such a man as he, beloved by wives 
 of so sweet a nature. 
 
 The Lord Wentworth was of a tall and grace- 
 ful person, though much sickness had early 
 bent an originally sensitive frame, which con- 
 tinued to sink more rapidly in after life under 
 the weight of greater cares. Habitual pain 
 had increased the dark hue and deep contrac- 
 tions of a brow, formed and used to " threaten 
 and command," and no less effective in enfor- 
 cing obedience than the loud and impressive 
 voice that required it. He alludes to this spor- 
 tively in a letter to the Earl of Exeter, where- 
 in he writes, " This bent and ill-favoured brow of 
 mine was never prosperous in the favour of ladies ; 
 yet did they know how perfectly I do honour, and 
 how much I value, that excellent and gracious sex, 2 
 ampersuaded I should become a favourite amongst, 
 them tush, my lord, tush, there are few of them 
 know how gentle a gargon I am."* Happy, 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 178, 180. His letters to 
 Lord Exeter and his wife are all very pleasant, and, in 
 their deep sense of personal attentions during illness, touch- 
 ing'. "Be not so venturesome on my occasion," he writes, 
 dissuading Exeter from a winter journey to discharge such 
 offices of friendship, "be not so venturesome on my occa- 
 sion, till this churlish season of the year be past, and the 
 spring well come on. There is old age in years as wull as
 
 90 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 as it is evident, is the opposite conscious- 
 ness, out of which such pleasant complaining 
 flows ! Whereupon Lord Exeter rejoins with 
 justice, in a passage which may serve to re- 
 deem his lordship amply from the stupidity 
 that is wont to be charged to him, " My lord, I 
 could be angry with you, were you not so far 
 off, for wronging of your bent brow, as you 
 term it in your letter ; for, you had been cursed 
 with a. meek brow and an arch of white hair upon 
 it, never to have governed Ireland nor Yorkshire 
 so well as you do, where your lawful commands 
 have gotten you an exact obedience. Content 
 yourself with that brave, commanding part of 
 your face, which showeth gravity without dulness, 
 severity without cruelty, clemency without easi- 
 ness, and love without extravagancy." An un- 
 gallant consolation under female displeasure 
 follows : " And if it should be any impeach- 
 ment unto your favour with that sex you so 
 much honour, you should be no loser ; for 
 they that have known them so long as I have 
 done, have found them nothing less 'than dia- 
 bolos blancos;" which Lady Exeter judges fit 
 to dispense with in a postscript : " I cannot 
 consent to the opinion of the lord that spake 
 last, neither do I believe that it was his own, 
 but rather vented as a chastisement to my 
 particular. To your lordship all our sex in 
 general are obliged, myself infinitely, who can 
 return you nothing but my perpetual well wish- 
 es, with admiration of your virtues, and my 
 heartiest desire that all your employments and 
 fortunes may be answerable."* Wentworth, 
 indeed, had not needed this assurance, under a 
 remark which May's happy quotation, 
 
 " Non formosus crat, sed erat facundus Ulysses, 
 Et tanien aequoreas torsit am ore Deas," 
 
 has long since shown to be uncalled for. The 
 intense passion of a Mirabeau or a Stratford 
 will hardly make shipwreck for the want of a 
 " smooth dispose." 
 
 Wentworth had much wronged his "bent 
 brow," and he knew that he had wronged it. 
 It was sufficiently notorious about the court, 
 that whenever it relaxed in favour of any of 
 the court dames, its owner was seldom left to 
 hope in vain. The Lady Carlile,t the Lady 
 
 in bodies ; January and February are the hoar hairs of the 
 year, and the more quietly, the more within doors we keep 
 them, we with the year grow the sooner young again in the 
 spring." "To neither of you," he concludes, ''with this 
 new year I can wish anything of new, but that you may 
 tread still round the ancient and beaten paths of that hap- 
 piness you mutually communicate the one with the other." 
 
 * Slrafford Papers, vol. i., p. 241. 
 
 t This extraordinary woman, whom Dryden called the 
 " Helen of her country," and from whom Waller borrowed 
 a compliment for Venus ("the bright Carlile of the court 
 of heaven''), played a conspicuous part in the public affairs 
 of the time. " She was thought to he as deeply concerned 
 in the counsels of the court, and afterward of the Parlia- 
 ment, as any in England." After the death of Strafford 
 she had become the mistress of Pym. Yet her passions 
 were not extreme ! Sir Toby Matthews lets us into her 
 character : " She is of too high a mind and dignity not only 
 to seek, but almost to wish, the friendship of any creature : 
 they whom she is pleased to chuse are such as are of the most 
 eminent condition, both for power and employments ; not 
 with any design towards her own particular, either of ad- 
 vantage or curiosity ; but her nature values fortunate per- 
 sons as virtuous." The writer of Waller's life (the countess 
 was aunt to the poet's Sacharissa), in the Biographia Britan- 
 nica, say* that several letters of hers are printed in the 
 " Straffbrd Papers." This is a mistake ; but we find fre- 
 quent allusions to her throughout the correspondence. If 
 any one wished to know of Wentworth's health, they ap- 
 plied to Lady Carlile. *' I hope you are now recovered of 
 your gout, which my Lady of Carlile told me you had" (ii., 
 
 Carnarvon, the young Lady Loftus, were not, 
 if written letters and general rumours deserve 
 trust, the only evidences of this. 
 
 Sad indeed were the consequences of Went- 
 worth's casual appearances in the queen's 
 withdrawing-room ! " Now if I were a good 
 poet," writes the Lord Conway to the lord- 
 deputy himself, " I should, with Chaucer, call 
 upon Melpomene 
 
 ' To help me to indite 
 Verses that weepen as I write.' 
 
 " My Lady of Carnarvon, being well in the fa- 
 vour and belief of her father and husband, came 
 with her husband to the court, and it was de- 
 termined she should have been all this year at 
 London, her lodgings in the Cockpit ; but my 
 Lord Wentworth had been at court, and in the 
 queen's withdrawing-room was a constant looker 
 upon my lady, as if that only were his busmess, 
 for which cause, as it is thought, my Lord of 
 Carnarvon went home, and my lord-chamber- 
 lain preached often of honour and truth. One 
 of the sermons I and my Lady Killegrew, or 
 my Lady Stafford, which you please, were at ; 
 it lasted from the beginning to the end of sup- 
 per ; the text was, that .... \Vhen supper 
 was ended, and we were where we durst speak, 
 my Lady Killegrew swore by G d that my 
 lord-chamberlain meaned not anybody but her 
 and my Lord of Dorset. But my Lady Car- 
 narvon is sent down to her husband, and the night 
 before she went was with her father in his cham- 
 ber till past twelve, he chiding and she weeping, 
 and when she will return no man knows ; if it 
 be not till her face do secure their jealousy, she 
 had as good stay for ever. Some think that my 
 Lord Wentworth did this rather to do a despight 
 to her father and husband than for any great love 
 to her."* 
 
 Sir George Radcliffe, indeed, in his Essay, 
 observes on this head : " He was defamed for 
 incontinence, wherein I have reason to believe 
 that he was exceedingly much wronged. I had 
 occasion of some speech with him about the 
 state of his soul several times, but twice espe- 
 
 124). If any one wanted favour at court, they wrote to 
 Wentworth to bespeak the interest of Lady Carlile. We 
 find even Laud, for a particular purpose, condescending to 
 this : " I will write to my Lady of Carlile," Wentworth 
 writes back, " as your grace appoints me. In good sadness 
 I judge her ladyship very considerable ; for she is often in 
 place, and is extreamly well skilled how to speak with ad- 
 vantage and spirit for those friends she professeth unto, 
 which will not be many. There is this farther in her dis- 
 position, she will not seem to be the person she is not, an 
 ingenuity I have always observed and honoured her for." 
 (Papers, vol. ii., p. 120.) And again, out of many I could 
 put before the reader : " I have writ fully to my Lady of 
 Carlile, and am very confident, if it be in her ladyship's 
 power, she will express the esteem she hath your lordship 
 in to a very great height." (Vol. ii., p. 138.) 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 47. Lord Conway's letters 
 to Wentworth are extremely amusing. They record with 
 particular care the unlucky courtships of Vandyke: "It 
 was thought," he writes on one occasion to the lord-deputy, 
 " that the Lord Cottington should have married my Lady 
 Stanhope; I believe there were intentions in him, but the 
 lady is, as they say, in love with Carey Raleigh. You were 
 so often with Sir Anthony Vandike, that you could not but 
 know his gallantries for the love of that lady ; but he is 
 come off with a coglioneria, for he disputed with her about 
 the price of her picture, ajid sent her word that if she 
 would not give the price he demanded, he would sell it to 
 another that would give more. This week every one will 
 be at London ; the queen is very weary of Hampton Court, 
 and will be brought to bed at St. James's ; then my Lady 
 of Carlile will be a constant courtier ; her dot? hath lately 
 written a sonnet in her praise, which Harry Percy burned, 
 or you had now had it."
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 91 
 
 cially, when I verily believe he did lay open unto 
 me the very bottom of his heart. Once was, 
 when he was in a very great affliction upon the 
 death of his second wife, and then for some 
 days and nights I was very few minutes out of 
 his company ; the other time was at Dublin, 
 on a Good Friday (his birthday), when he was 
 preparing himself to receive the blessed sacra- 
 ment on Easter-day following. At both these 
 times I received such satisfaction as left no 
 scruple with me at all, but much assurance of 
 his chastity. I knew his ways long and inti- 
 mately, and though I cannot clear him of all 
 frailties (for who can justify the most innocent 
 man?), yet I must give him the testimony of 
 conscientiousness in his ways, that he kept 
 himself from gross sins, and endeavoured to 
 approve himself rather unto God than unto 
 man, to be religious inwardly and in truth, 
 rather than outwardly and in show." What 
 has been quoted from Lord Conway's letter, 
 however and, were it necessary to my pur- 
 pose, many letters more, and of stronger mean- 
 ing, are to be produced does not come within 
 Radcliffe's rebuke of the " defamation " em- 
 ployed against Strafford. The only tendency 
 of what Sir George says, therefore, is to con- 
 firm the charge in its warrantable view (with 
 which alone I have dwelt upon it) of illustra- 
 ting duly private conduct and character. Far 
 different was Pym's great object when, instan- 
 cing in the House of Commons, as Clarendon 
 informs us, " some high and imperious actions 
 done by Strafford in England and Ireland, some 
 proud and over-confident expressions in dis- 
 course, and some passionate advices he had 
 given in the most secret councils and debates 
 of the affairs of state, he added some lighter 
 passages of his vanity and amours, that they 
 who were not inflamed with anger and detest- 
 ation against him for the former, might have 
 less esteem and reverence for his prudence and 
 discretion."* 
 
 These words may recall me to the actual 
 progress of Strafford's life and thoughts. Pru- 
 dence and discretion whatever his great asso- 
 ciate of the third Parliament might afterward 
 think right, or just, or necessary to his fatal 
 purposes, to urge still, so far as they may be 
 associated in a grand project of despotism, em- 
 inently characterized every movement of Lord 
 Wentworth. The king had now become ex- 
 tremely anxious for his departure, which the 
 winding up of certain private affairs alone de- 
 layed, t On the completion of these he arrived 
 
 * Clarendon, Hist, of Rebellion, vol. i., p. 137. 
 
 t A note from Radcliffe's Essay will show that the ener- 
 getic method and despatch which made the difficulties of 
 the public business sink before him were no less serviceable 
 in the conduct of his private affairs. " In the managing of 
 his estate and domestical affairs, he used the advice of two 
 friends, Ch. Gr. and G. R., and two servants, Richard Mar- 
 ris his steward, and Peter Man his solicitor. Before every 
 term they met, and Peter Man brought a note of all things 
 to be considered of ; which being taken into consideration 
 one by one, and every one's opinion heard, resolution was 
 had and set down in writing, whereof his lordship kept one 
 copy and Peter Man another : at the next meeting, an ac- 
 count was taken of all that was done in pursuance of the 
 former orders, and a new note made of all that rested to be 
 done, with an addition of such things as did arise since the 
 last meeting, and were requisite to be consulted of. His 
 whole accounts were ordered to be made up twice every 
 year, one half ending the 20th of September, the other the 
 20th of March ; for by that time the former half year's rents 
 were commonly received, or else the arrears were fit to be 
 
 in London, for the purpose of setting sail im- 
 mediately. Here, however, he was unexpect- 
 edly delayed by the necessity of waiting the 
 arrival of a man of war ; for so dangerously 
 was the Irish Channel at that time infested 
 with pirates, that the lord-deputy could not 
 venture to pass over without convoy. " The 
 winds fall out so contrary," he writes in an- 
 swer to the secretaries, who, with the king and 
 court, were engaged in a progress, " that the 
 king's ship cannot be gotten as yet forth of 
 Rochester River ; but so soon as we can speed 
 it away, and I have notice from Captain Plum- 
 leigh that he is ready for my transportation, I 
 will not stay an hour, desiring extremely now 
 to be upon the place where I owe his majesty 
 so great an account, as one that am against all 
 non-residents, as well lay as ecclesiastical." 
 Wentworth took care, at the same time, to 
 avail himself of some opportunities offered him 
 by this delay. He completed some pending 
 arrangements ; secured finally the close coun- 
 sel and assistance of Laud ;* established a pri- 
 vate and direct correspondence with the king 
 himself for the sanction of his more delicate 
 measures ; instructed a gossiping person, a 
 hired retainer of his own, the Rev. Mr. Gar- 
 rard, to furnish him, in monthly packets of 
 news, with all the private scandal, and ru- 
 mours, and secret affairs of the court, and of 
 London generally ; and obtained the appoint- 
 ment of his friends Wandesford and Radcliffe 
 to official situations, and to seats in the privy 
 council, reserving them as a sort of select cab- 
 inet of his own, with whom everything might 
 be secretly discussed. t These things settled, 
 
 sought after ; it being no advantage either to the tenant or 
 landlord to suffer arrears to. run longer. 
 
 * A few months after his departure, Laud was created 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. Wentworth had foreseen this. 
 " One advantage your lordship will have," writes Lord Falk- 
 land, in a somewhat pettish letter, "that I wanted in the 
 time of my government, an Archbishop of Canterbury to 
 friend ; who is, withal, a person of especial power to assist 
 you in that part which shall concern the Church govern- 
 ment, the third and principal member of the kingdom ; for 
 the translation of the late archbishop into heaven, and of 
 the late Bishop of London unto the see of Canterbury, 
 makes that no riddle, being so plain." The sort of stipula- 
 tions for mutual service which passed between the lord- 
 deputy and Laud may be gathered from two out of twenty 
 requests of the latter which reached Dublin Castle before 
 Wentworth himself had arrived there. They are equally 
 characteristic of the sincerity and atrocity of the bigotry 
 of Laud. " I humbly pray your lordship to remember what 
 you have promised me concerning the church at Dublin, 
 which hath for divers years been used for a stable by your 
 predecessors, and to vindicate it to God's service, as you 
 shall there examine and find the merits of the cause." And 
 again : " There is one Christopher Sands, who, as I am in- 
 formed, dwells now in Londonderry, and teaches an Eng- 
 lish school there, and I do mnch fear he doth many things 
 there to the dishonour of God, and the endangering of many 
 poor souls. For the party is a Jew, and denies both Christ 
 and his Gospel, as I shall be able to prove, if I had him 
 here. I humbly pray your lordship that he may be seized 
 on by authority, and sent over in safe custody, and deliver- 
 ed either to myself or Mr. Mottershed, the register of the 
 high commission, that he may not live there to infect his 
 majesty's subjects." Vol. i., p. 81, 82. 
 
 t He found great advantage in this ; and a few months 
 after his arrival in Dublin wrote to the lord-treasurer some 
 strenuous advice, suggested by his experience, " that too 
 many be not taken into counsel on that side, and that your 
 resolutions, whatever they be, be kept secret ; for, believe 
 me, there can be nothing more prejudicial to the good suc- 
 cess of those affairs than their being understood aforehand 
 by them here. So prejudicial 1 hold it, indeed, that on my 
 faith there is not a minister on this side that knows any- 
 thing I either write or intend, excepting the Master of the 
 Rolls and Sir George Radcliffe, for whose assistance in this 
 government, and comfort to myself amidst this generation,
 
 92 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 he now himself became anxious for his depar- 
 ture, which, with some farther delay, and not 
 without some personal loss,* he at last accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Lord Wentworth arrived in Dublin in July, 
 1633. His very arrival, it is justly said, formed 
 a new era in the government of Ireland. He 
 ordered the ceremonial of the British court to 
 be observed within the castle ; a guard, an in- 
 stitution theretofore unknown, was establish- 
 ed ; and the proudest of the Irish lords were 
 at once taught to feel the " immense distance" 
 which separated them from the representative 
 of their sovereign.t 
 
 An extract from the lord-deputy's first de- 
 spatch, written about a week after his arrival, 
 and duplicates of which he forwarded at the 
 same time, with his customary zeal, to Cooke 
 and Cottington, is too characteristic to be 
 omitted. " I find them in this place," he writes, 
 " a company of men the most intent upon their 
 own ends that I ever met with, and so as those 
 speed, they consider other things at a very 
 great distance. I take the crown to have been 
 very ill served, and altogether impossible for 
 me to remedy, unless I be entirely trusted, and 
 lively assisted and countenanced by his maj- 
 esty, which I am bold to write unto your lord- 
 
 I am not able sufficiently to pour forth my humble acknowl- 
 edgments to his majesty. Sure I were the most solitary 
 man without them that ever served a king in such a place." 
 Vol. i., p. 193, 194, <fec. Wandesford's office was that of 
 Master of the Rolls. 
 
 * " They write me lamentable news forth of Ireland," he 
 informs the secretary, in one of his last letters before his 
 departure, "what spoil is done there by the pirates. There 
 is one lyes upon the Welch coast, which it seems is the 
 greatest vessel, commanded by Norman ; another in a ves- 
 sel of some sixty tuns, called the Pickpocket of Dover, lyes 
 in sight of Dublin ; and another lyes near Youghall who 
 do so infest every quarter, as the farmers have already lost 
 in their customs a thousand pounds at least, all trade being 
 at this means at a stand. The pirate that lyes before Dub- 
 lin took, on the 20th of the last month, a bark of Liverpool, 
 with goods worth 4000, and amongst them as much linen 
 as cost me 500 ; and, in good faith, I fear I have lost my 
 apparel too ; which if it be so, will be as much loss more 
 unto me, besides the inconvenience which lights upon me 
 by being disappointed of my provisions upon the place. By 
 my faith, this is but a cold welcome they bring me withal 
 to that coast, and yet I am glad at least that they escaped 
 my plate ; but the fear I had to be thought to linger here 
 unprofitably forced me to make this venture, where now I 
 wish I had had little more care of my goods, as well as of 
 my person." Vol. i., p. 90. 
 
 t See Stafford's Papers, vol. i., p. 200, 201. In the vari- 
 ous orders he procured, he invariably distinguished between 
 the demands of his place and the courtesies due to his per- 
 son. In this despatch to Cooke, a number of minute in- 
 structions are prayed for, which were instantly granted. 
 Among others, he demanded " instructions to call upon the 
 nobility and others to attend the deputy upon all solemn 
 processions to church, and such like. This is not so well 
 observed as it ought, and they grow generally more negli- 
 gent than is fit they were, not truly, I trust, in any distaste 
 to me, for to my person they give as much respect as I desire 
 from them ; but I know not how, in point of greatness, some 
 of them think it too much perchance to be tied to anything of 
 duty, rather desirous it might be taken as a courtesy. It 
 would do, therefore, very well, his majesty were graciously 
 pleased by letter to signify what the attendance is he re- 
 quires at their hands." These he specifies accordingly, 
 with a vast quantity of laborious and ceremonious regula- 
 tions, adding, " I confess I might, without more, do these 
 things ; but where I may seem to take anything to myself, 
 I am naturally modest, and should be extreme unwilling to 
 be held supercilious or imperious amongst them ; so as I 
 cannot do therein as I both could and would, where I were 
 commanded. Therefore, if these be held duties fit to be paid 
 to his majesty's greatness, which is alike operative, and to 
 be reverenced thorough every part of his dominions, I crave 
 such a direction in these as in the other, that GO they may 
 know it to be his pleasure ; otherwise I shall be well content 
 they may be spared, having, in truth, no such vanity in my- 
 self at to be delighted with any of these observances." 
 
 ship once for all, not for any end of my own, 
 but singly for his majesty's service. Besides, 
 what is to be done must be speedily executed, 
 it being the genius of this country to obey a deputy 
 better upon his entrance than upon his departure 
 from them ; and therefore I promise your lord- 
 ship I will take my time ; for while they take 
 me to be a person of much more power with 
 the king, and of stronger abilities in myself, 
 than indeed I have reason either in fact or 
 right to judge myself to be, I shall, it may he, 
 do the king some service ; but if my weakness 
 therein once happen to be discovered among them 
 in this kingdom, for the love of God, my lord, let 
 me be taken home; for I shall but lose the king's 
 affairs, and my own time afterward ; and my 
 unprofitableness in the former, I confess, will 
 grieve me much more than any prejudice which 
 may happen to my own particular by the ex- 
 pense of the latter. The army I conceive to 
 be extremely out of frame ; an army rather in 
 name than in deed, whether you consider their 
 numbers, their weapons, or their discipline. 
 And so, in truth, not to natter myself, must I 
 look to find all things else, so as it doth almost 
 affright me at first sight, yet you shall see I 
 will not meanly desert the duties I owe my 
 master and myself; howbeit, without the arm 
 of his majesty's counsel and support, it is im- 
 possible for me to go through with this work, 
 and therein I must crave leave to use your 
 lordship only as my mediator, so often as I 
 shall have occasion. I send your lordship the 
 original herein enclosed, of the offer for this 
 next year's contribution, and to the secretary 
 but the copy, judging it might be thought fitter 
 for your lordship to present it to his majesty 
 than the other. You will be pleased to send it 
 me safely back, there being many particulars 
 contained therein of which I shall be able to 
 make very good use hereafter, if I do not much 
 mistake myself."* 
 
 Wentworth, in fact, extraordinary as were 
 the powers with which he had been invested, 
 had still reason for distrust in the weakness 
 and insincerity of the king, and thus sought to 
 impress upon his council, as the first and grand 
 consideration of all, that, unless unlimited au- 
 thority was secured to him, he could and would 
 do nothing. One thing, he saw at once, stood 
 in the way of his scheme of government. In 
 the old time, while Ireland continued to be 
 governed only as a conquered country, the 
 lord-deputy and council had used their discre- 
 tion in superseding the common law courts, 
 and assuming the decision of private civil caus- 
 es. During the weaker governments which 
 succeeded, however, this privilege was surren- 
 dered ; and Lord Falkland himself had confirm- 
 ed the surrender by an express prohibition. 
 The common law and its authority had, in con- 
 sequence, gained some little strength at the 
 period of Wentworth's arrival. He had not 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 96, 97. In the lord-treasu- 
 rer's copy of this despatch is the following characteristic 
 note on a money transaction in which Wcston thought he 
 had been somewhat sharply dealt with : " Your lordship is 
 ileaged to term my last letter you received in Scotland an. 
 ingry one ; but, by my troth, your lordship, under favour, 
 vas mistaken ; for I neither was, nor conceived I had causa
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 93 
 
 rested many days in his state chair before this 
 prohibition was suspended, and the old privi- 
 lege restored.* At all risks, even the most 
 fatal, Wentworth silenced the objectors in both 
 countries. He had visions before him which 
 they dared not to contemplate ! Their notion 
 of government was one of sordid scheming : 
 not the less was the subject to be wronged, 
 but the more should the instruments of wrong 
 avoid the responsibility of it ; they saw nothing 
 but their own good, and sought to prevent 
 nothing save their own harm. Wentworth 
 was a despot, but of a different metal. He 
 shrunk from no avowal in shrinking from no 
 wrong ; and, confident of the plans he proposed 
 to execute, felt that the individual injury he in- 
 flicted at present would be redeemed and for- 
 gotten in the general prosperity of the future. 
 " These lawyers," he writes to the lord-mar- 
 shal, "would monopolize to themselves all ju- 
 dicature, as if no honour or justice could be 
 rightly administered but under one of their 
 bencher's gowns. / am sure they little under- 
 stand the unsettled state of this kingdom, that 
 could advise the king to lessen the power of his 
 deputy, indeed his own, until it were brought into 
 that stayed temper of obedience and conformity with 
 that of England, or at least till the benches here 
 were better provided with judges, than God knows 
 as yet they are. Therefore, if your lordship's 
 judgment approve of my reasons, I beseech 
 you assist me therein, or, rather, the king's 
 service, and I shall be answerable with my head."i 
 Equal in all his exactions, he had suspected 
 also from the first that the great complainants 
 against his government would be men of rank ; 
 and now, in farther organization of his powers, 
 procured an order from the king, that none of 
 the nobility, none of the principal officers, 
 " none of those that hath either office or estate 
 here," should presume to quit the kingdom 
 without the license of the lord-deputy. J When 
 his use of this power was afterward spoken 
 against, he silenced the objectors by a stern 
 and sarcastical reference to one of the graces 
 they had themselves solicited, which seemed 
 indeed to warrant the authority, but had been 
 proposed with a far different purpose, that of 
 preventing men of large fortunes from desert- 
 ing their estates, and wasting their revenues 
 abroad ! 
 
 Wentworth called his first privy council. 
 The members of this body had hitherto borne 
 great sway in the government of the island^ 
 
 * " I find that my Lord Falkland was restrained by proc- 
 lamation not to meddle in any cause betwixt party and par- 
 ty, which certainly did lessen his power extremely ; I know 
 very well the common lawyers will be passionately against 
 it, who are wont to put such a prejudice upon all other pro- 
 fessions, as if none were to be trusted, or capable to admin- 
 ister justice, but themselves ; yet how well this suits with 
 monarchy, when they monopolize all to be governed by their 
 year-books, you in England have a costly experience ; and I 
 am sure his majesty's absolute power is not weaker in this 
 kingdom, where hitherto the deputy and council-board have 
 had a stroke with them." Such is an extract from a re- 
 markable despatch to Cooke, which fills nearly ten closely- 
 printed folio pages, written soon after the lord-deputy's ar- 
 rival, and filled with reasoning of the most profound and 
 subtle character, in reference to his contemplated schemes 
 and purposes. See vol. i., p. 194. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 223. 
 
 i Ibid., p. 362, and see p. 348. 
 
 >) The lord-justices were the chief leaders of this body. 
 Wentworth, in one of his despatches, had written thus: 
 " On Thursday seven-night last, in the morning, I visited 
 both the justices at their own houses, which albeit not for- 
 
 greater, indeed, than the lords-deputies them- 
 selves and they were now, for the first time, 
 to see their authority broken, and their rank 
 and influence set at scorn. Only a select num- 
 ber of them were summoned, a practice usual 
 in England,* but in Ireland quite unheard of. 
 But the mortifications reserved for those that 
 had been honoured by a summons were almost 
 greater than were felt by the absent counsel- 
 lors ! Having assembled at the minute ap- 
 pointed, they were obliged to wait several 
 , hours upon the leisure of the deputy, and, when 
 he arrived at last, were treated with no particle 
 of the consideration which deliberative duties 
 claim. 
 
 .Wentworth laid before them a provision for 
 the immediate necessities of government, and 
 more especially for the maintenance of the 
 army. The views of the lord-deputy, some- 
 what more reaching than their own, startled 
 them not a little. Sir Adam Loftus, the son 
 of the lord-chancellor, broke a sullen silence 
 by proposing that the voluntary contribution 
 should be continued for another year, and that 
 a Parliament should meantime be prayed for. 
 "After this followed again a long silence," 
 when the lord-deputy called on Sir William 
 Parsons, the master of the wards, to deliver 
 his opinion. It was unfavourable. " I was 
 then put to my last refuge," says Wentworth, 
 "which was plainly to declare that there was 
 no necessity which induced me to take them 
 to counsel in this business, for rather than fail 
 in so necessary a duty to my master, I would un- 
 dertake, upon the peril of my head, to make the 
 king's army able to subsist, and to provide for it- 
 self amongst them without their help. Howbeit, 
 forth of my respect to themselves I had been 
 persuaded to put this fair occasion into their 
 hands, not only to express their ready affections 
 and duties to his majesty, and so to have in 
 their own particular a share in the honour and 
 thanks of so noble a work, but also that the 
 proposition of this next contribution might 
 move from the Protestants, as it did this year 
 from the Papists, and so these no more in show 
 than substance to go before those in their 
 cheerfulness and readiness to serve his maj- 
 esty; ... so as my advice should be unto 
 them, to make an offer under their hands to his 
 majesty of this next year's contribution, with 
 the desire of a Parliament, in such sort as is 
 contained in their offer, which herewith I send 
 you enclosed. They are so horribly afraid that 
 the contribution money should be set as an an- 
 nual charge upon their inheritances, as they 
 would redeem it at any rate, so as upon the 
 name of a Parliament thus proposed, it was some- 
 thing strange to see how instantly they gave con- 
 sent to this proposition, with all the cheerfulness 
 possible, and agreed to have the letter drawn, 
 
 merty done by other deputies, yet I conceived it was a duty 
 I owed them, being as then but a private person, as also to 
 show an example to others what would always become them to 
 the supreme governor, whom it should please his majesty to 
 set over them." This was a subtle distinction, which their 
 lordships did not afterward find they had much profited by. 
 * " I desire," Wentworth had demanded of Cooke, " that 
 the orders set down for the privy council of England might 
 be sent unto us, with this addition, that no man speak cov- 
 ered save the deputy, and that their speech may not be di- 
 rected one to another, but only to the deputy ; as also, ta- 
 king notice of their negligent meetings upon committees, 
 which, indeed, is passing ill, to command me straitly to 
 cause them to attend those services as in duty they ought."
 
 94 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 which you have here signed with all their 
 hands."* 
 
 A "Parliament!" This word, Wentworth 
 knew, would sound harshly in the ear of Charles, 
 who had, by this time, prohibited its very men- 
 tion in England. But he saw, from what had 
 occurred in the council, in what consideration 
 the mere name was held there ; and he saw, 
 moreover, abroad among the nation, a feeling 
 in favour of it, which might, by a bold move- 
 ment, be even wrested to the purpose of tyr- 
 anny, but could never, with any safety to that < 
 cause, be altogether avoided. 
 
 Nor was this aspect of affairs forced upon 
 Wentworth by necessity alone. He had cer- 
 tainly entered Ireland with one paramount ob- 
 ject, that of making his master " the most ab- 
 solute prince in Christendom," in so far as re- 
 garded that " conquered country." Wealthier 
 he meant her to become, even in the midst of 
 his exactions ; but a slave he had resolved to 
 make her, in so far as the popular control was 
 to be admitted over her government. Yet it 
 has been shown that Wentworth was not a 
 vain man ; that he was ever ready to receive 
 the suggestions of the occasion and the time ; 
 and it is clear that he entered Ireland by no 
 means assured of being able to carry his pur- 
 poses into effect by the simple and straight- 
 forward machinery of an absolute despotism. 
 The king might see in Parliaments nothing but 
 an unnecessary obstruction to the free exer- 
 cise of his royal will, and might have directed 
 Wentworth to " put them off handsomely," or 
 otherwise. But Wentworth had impressions 
 of his own which were not to be so got rid of. 
 These Parliaments which had been only hur- 
 riedly glanced at by the averted eye of Charles, 
 on some occasion when he had been forced to 
 " come at the year's end with his hat in his 
 hand," and to whom the notion they had con- 
 veyed was simply the strengthening his con- 
 viction that " such assemblies were of the na- 
 ture of cats, they ever grew cursed with age" 
 these Parliaments were known thoroughly, 
 and were remembered profoundly by Went- 
 worth. He had been conversant with the 
 measures, and connected with the men. He 
 had been the associate of Pym, and had spoken 
 and voted in the same ranks with Eliot. Such 
 an experience might be abhorred, but could not 
 be made light of; and that mighty power, of 
 which he had been the sometime portion, never 
 deserted the mind of Wentworth. He boldly 
 suffered its image to confront him, that he 
 might the better resist its spirit and divert its 
 tendency. 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 98, 99. With characteristic 
 purpose Wentworth subjoins to this despatch a private note 
 to Cooke : " I should humbly advise that in some part of 
 your next letter you would be pleased to give a touch with 
 
 nour pen concerning Sir Adam Loftus, such as I might show 
 im, for he deserves it ; and it will encourage the well-af- 
 fected, and affright the other, when they shall see their ac- 
 tions are rightly understood by his majesty ; and also some 
 good words for the lord-chancellor, the Lord Cork, the Lord 
 of Ormond, and the Lord Mountnorris ; and chiefly to ex- 
 press in your despatch that his majesty will think of their 
 desire for a Parliament, and betwixt this and Christmas 
 give them a fair and gracious answer, for the very hope of 
 it will give them great contentment, and make them go on 
 very willingly with their payments." Had none of these 
 men afterward thwarted him in his great despotic projects, 
 Wentworth would have sought every means of covering 
 them with rewards, to which he recognised no stint or 
 measure, when called for by his notion of public service. 
 
 When he arrived in Ireland, therefore, he 
 was quite prepared for the mention of Parlia- 
 ment even for the obligation of granting it. 
 He had not watched human nature superficially, 
 though, unfortunately, he missed of the final 
 knowledge. He would have retained that en- 
 gine whose wondrous effects he had witnessed, 
 and had even assisted in producing. He would 
 have compelled it to be as efficient in the ser- 
 vice of its new master, as of late in withstand- 
 ing his pleasure. And Wentworth could not 
 but feel, probably, that the foundation for so 
 vast a scheme as his, which was to imbody so 
 many far-stretching assumptions, might be not 
 unsafely propped at the first with a little rever- 
 ence of authority.* He would set up a Parlia- 
 ment, for instance, which should make itself 
 "eminent to posterity as the very basis and 
 foundation of the greatest happiness and pros- 
 perity that ever befell this nation" by the ex- 
 traordinary and notable process of being forced 
 to confirm the king's claim to unlimited prerog- 
 ative ! That " way of Parliaments," it is evi- 
 dent from many passages in his despatches, he 
 could not but covet, even while he spoke of 
 leaving " such forms," and betaking himself to 
 " his majesty's undoubted privilege." Power, 
 indeed, was the great law of Wentworth's be- 
 ing ; but from all this it may be fairly sup- 
 posed, that even over the days of his highest 
 and most palmy state lingered the uneasy fear 
 that he might, after all, have mistaken the na- 
 ture of power, and be doomed as a sacrifice at 
 last to its truer, and grander, and more lasting 
 issues. The fatal danger he frequently chal- 
 lenged the " at peril of my head," which so 
 often occurs in his despatches must have 
 unpleasantly betrayed this to his confederates 
 in London. 
 
 A Parliament, then, he acknowledged to 
 himself, must ultimately be summoned in Ire- 
 land. But he was cautious in communicating 
 this to the English council. "My opinion as 
 touching a Parliament," he writes to Cooke, 
 " I am still gathering for, but shall be very 
 cautious and cunctative in a business of so 
 great weight, naturally distrusting my judg- 
 ment, and more here, where I am in a sort yet 
 a stranger, than in places where I had been 
 bred, versed, and acquainted in the affairs and 
 with the conditions of men : so as I shall hard- 
 ly be ready so soon to deliver myself therein 
 as formerly I writ ; but, God willing, I shall 
 transmit that and my judgment upon many 
 other the chief services of his majesty betwixt 
 this and Christmas. I protest unto you it is 
 never a day I do not beat my brains about 
 them some hours, well foreseeing that the 
 chief success of all my labours will consist 
 
 * On one occasion, it may be remarked, when the attor- 
 ney-general in England much wished, as he fancied, to 
 strengthen the famous PoyningV act by an abolition of cer- 
 tain incidents attached to it, Wentworth opposed him in an 
 elaborate argument. I quote a remarkable passage from the 
 despatch : " Truly I am of opinion, that in the-se matters 
 of form it is the best not to be wiser than those that went 
 before us, but ' stare super vias antiquas: For better it is 
 to follow the old track in this particular, than questinn the 
 validity of all the statutes enacted since Poyning's act ; for 
 if this which is done in conformity thereunto be not sufficient 
 to warrant the summons of this present Parliament, then were 
 all those Parliaments upon (lie same grounds unlawfully as- 
 sembled, and consequently all their acts void; which is a 
 point far better to sleep in peace, than unnecessarily or far- 
 ther to be awakened." Vol. i., P. 269.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 95 
 
 much in providently and discreetly choosing 
 and saddening my first ground ; for if that 
 chance to be mislayed or left loose, the higher 
 I go, the greater and more sudden will be the 
 downcome."* Some short time, however, af- 
 ter the date of this letter, he forwarded an 
 elaborate despatch to the secretary for the con- 
 sideration of the king. In this despatch he 
 insisted very strongly on the wide distinction 
 between English and Irish Parliaments which 
 had been planted by the act of Poynings.t he 
 dwelt on the exigencies of the state, and al- 
 leged various powerful reasons in that regard. 
 He claimed also the permission to issue the 
 writs instantly ; for if they were deferred till 
 the voluntary contribution should again be 
 about to terminate, they would appear, he ar- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 134. More genuine and 
 characteristic stiil was a letter he enclosed by the same 
 messenger to Lord Carlile : " I am yet ingathering with 
 all possible circumspection my observations, where, upon 
 what, and when to advise a reformation, and to set myself 
 into the way of it, under God's good blessing, and the con- 
 duct of his majesty's wisdom. I shall, before it be long, be 
 ripe to return the fruit of my labours to be examined and 
 considered on that side, and then rightly disposed to set them 
 on work and pursue them here with effect, taking along 
 with me those two great household gods, which ought al- 
 ways to be reverenced in the courts, and sway in the actions 
 of princes honour and justice. These councils, I confess, 
 are secret ones, it being one of my chiefest cares to conceal 
 my intentions Jrom them all here, as they, with the same in- 
 dustry, pry into me, and sift every corner for them ; and 
 this I do, to the end I might, if it be possible, win from them 
 ingenuous and clear advice, which I am sure never to have 
 if they once discover how I stand affected ; for then it is the 
 genius of this place to soothe the deputy, be he in the right 
 or wrong, till they have insinuated themselves into the frui- 
 tion af their own ends, aud then at after to accuse him, even 
 of those things wherein themselves had a principal share, as 
 well in the counsel as in the execution. God deliver me from 
 this ill sort of men, and give me grace so far to see into them 
 beforehand, as that neither my master's service or myself 
 suffer by them. My lord, I ever weary you when I begin, 
 and judge how I should have troubled you if the wind had 
 stood oftener for England." The Earl of Strafford had mel- 
 ancholy and disastrous proof of the truth of that account by 
 Wentworth " of the genius of that place." Some of the 
 men who hunted him most fiercely to the scaffold were men 
 that had been willing instruments of his worst power in Ire- 
 land. 
 
 t The origin of this act has been already adverted to. 
 The popular leaders in England declaimed strongly against 
 Wentworth's interpretation of it. If measures were produ- 
 ced, they maintained, of sufficient weight to satisfy the king 
 and council, the intention of the law was fulfilled ; for, they 
 argued, it was never designed to preclude the members of 
 Parliament, when once assembled, from introducing such 
 other topics as they might deem expedient for the general 
 welfare. Wentworth, on the other hand, strenuously con- 
 tended that the express letter of the law was not to be thus 
 evaded ; that the previous approbation of the king and coun- 
 cil was distinctly required to each proposition ; and that no 
 other measures could ever be made the subject of discussion. 
 Surely, however, looking at the origin of the measure, the 
 popular is the just construction. The act was designed, 
 with a benefical purpose, to lodge the initiative power of 
 Parliament in the English council, as a protection against 
 the tyranny of lords and deputies. But once establish this 
 power, and the restraint was designed to terminate. Great 
 was the opportunity, however, for Wentworth, and he made 
 the most of it. Poynings' act was his shield. " I am of 
 opinion," he writes to Cooke, " there cannot be anything in- 
 vaded, which in reason of state ought to be by his majesty's 
 deputy preserved with a more hallowed care, than Poy- 
 nings' act, and which I shall never willingly suffer to be 
 touched or blemished, more than my right eye." Vol. i.,p. 
 279. Again, when the English attorney proposed something 
 which the lord-deputy feared might work against the stabil- 
 ity of the Poynings' bill, Wentworth described it, " A 
 mighty power gotten by the wisdom of former times ; and 
 it would be imputed to this age, I fear, as a mighty lachete 
 by those that shall still succeed, should we now be so im- 
 provident as to lose it ; and, for my own part, so zealous am 
 I for the prerogatives of my master, so infinitely in love with 
 this in especial, that my hand shall never be had as an in- 
 strument of so fatal a disservice to the crown as I judge the 
 remittal or weakening this power would be." 
 
 gued, to issue from necessity, the Parliament 
 would be imboldened to clog their grants with 
 conditions, " and conditions are not to be ad- 
 mitted with any subjects, much less with this 
 people, where your majesty's absolute sover- 
 eignty goes much higher than it is taken (per- 
 haps) to be in England." A detailed plan suc- 
 ceeded his many and most emphatic reasons, 
 which unquestionably " clinched" them. The 
 Parliament that was to be summoned, Went- 
 worth pledged himself should be divided into 
 two sessions, the first of which should be ex- 
 clusively devoted to the subject of supplies, 
 while the second, which might be held six 
 months afterward, should be occupied with the 
 confirmation of the " graces," and other na- 
 tional measures, which his majesty so fearfully 
 apprehended. Now the Parliament, Went- 
 worth reasoned, would, in its first session, in 
 all probability, grant a sufficient supply for the 
 expenditure of three years, and this once se- 
 cured, the " graces" might be flung over, if 
 necessary. Farther, the lord-deputy pledged 
 himself that he would procure the return of a 
 nearly equal number of Protestants and Catho- 
 lics to the House of Commons, in order that 
 both parties, being nearly balanced against each 
 other, might be more easily managed. He 
 proposed, moreover, to obtain qualifications for 
 a sufficient number of military officers, whose 
 situations would render them dependant on pro- 
 pitiating the pleasure of the lord-deputy. Then, 
 he urged, with the parties nearly equal, they 
 might easily be kept in an equal condition of 
 restraint and harmlessness, since the Catholics 
 might be privately warned, that if no other pro- 
 vision was made for the maintenance of the 
 army, it would be necessary to levy on them 
 the legal fines ; while all that was necessary to 
 keep the Protestants in check would be to hint 
 to them that, until a regular revenue was es- 
 tablished, the king could not let go the volun- 
 tary contributions, or irritate the recusants by 
 the enforcement of the penal statutes. " In 
 the higher house," Wentworth concluded, 
 " your majesty will have, I trust, the bishops 
 wholly for you ; the titular lords, rather than 
 come over themselves, will put their proxies 
 into such safe hands as may be thought of on 
 this side ; and in the rest, your majesty hath 
 such interest, what out of duty to the crown, 
 and obnoxiousness in themselves, as I do not 
 apprehend much, indeed any, difficulty amongst 
 them." 
 
 The whole of this extraordinary document 
 is given in an appendix, and the reader is re- 
 quested to turn to it there. 
 
 Let him turn afterward to the dying words 
 of its author, and sympathize, if he can, with 
 the declaration they conveyed, that " he was 
 so far from being against Parliaments, that he 
 did always think Parliaments in England to be 
 the happy constitution of the kingdom and na- 
 tion, and the best means, under God, to make 
 the king and his people happy." In what sense 
 these words were intended, under what dark 
 veil their real object was concealed, the reader 
 may now judge. It is uplifted before him. 
 Those five sections by which Charles is " fully 
 persuaded to condescend to the present calling 
 of a Parliament" the notice of the villanous 
 juggle of the " two sessions," with which the
 
 96 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 wretched people are to be gulled the chuck- 
 ling mention of the advantage to be taken of 
 " the frightful apprehension which at this time 
 makes their hearts beat" the complacent pro- 
 vision made for the alternative of their " start- 
 ing aside" the king who is to be able, and 
 the minister who is to be ready, " to chastise 
 such forgetfulness," and "justly to punish so 
 great a forfeit as this must needs be judged to 
 be in them" all these things have long ago 
 been expiated by Wentworth and his master ; 
 but their damning record remains against those 
 who would proclaim that expiation to have 
 been unjustly demanded. 
 
 Overwhelmed by his minister's project, 
 Charles at last yielded.* Still, even while, 
 reluctantly, he consented, he could not see al- 
 together clearly the necessity for " these things 
 being done these ways," and all the assurances 
 of the lord-deputy could not prevent Charles 
 bidding him, " as for that hydra, take good 
 heed ; for you know that here I have found it 
 as well cunning as malicious. It is true that 
 your grounds are well laid, and I assure you 
 that I have a great trust in your care and judg- 
 ment ; yet my opinion is, that it will not be the 
 worse for my service, though their obstinacy make 
 you to break them, for I fear that they have some 
 ground to demand more than it is Jit for me to 
 give. This I would not say if I had not confi- 
 dence in your courage and dexterity ; that, in 
 that case, you would set me down there an 
 example what to do here." 
 
 Wentworth now issued his writs for a Par- 
 liament to be instantly held in Dublin, and great 
 joy prevailed among the people. The privy 
 council were summoned, in conformity with 
 the provisions of the law of Poynings, to de- 
 liberate on the propositions to be transmitted 
 to England as subjects for discussion in the 
 session. "To gain this first entrance into the 
 work," Wentworth observes, " I thought it fit 
 to intrust it in this manner with a committee, 
 not only to expedite the thing itself the more, 
 but also better to discover how their pulses 
 beat, wherein I conceived they would deliver 
 themselves more freely than if I had been pres- 
 ent amongst them myself." Soon, however, 
 while the lord-deputy waited without, he was 
 rejoined by his trusty counsellors Wandesford 
 and Radcliffe, with the news that their associ- 
 ates were restive ; that they were proposing 
 all sorts of popular laws as necessary to con- 
 ciliate the houses ; and that, as to subsidies, 
 they quite objected to transmitting a bill with 
 blanks to be filled up at discretion, and were of 
 opinion that the amount should be specified, 
 and confined within the strictest limits of ne- 
 cessity. " I not knowing what this might grow 
 to," writes Wentworth, " went instantly unto 
 them, where they were in council, and told 
 them plainly I feared they began at the wrong 
 end, thus consulting what might please the 
 people in a Parliament, when it would better 
 become a privy council to consider what might 
 please the king, and induce him to call one." 
 The imperious deputy next addressed them in 
 a very long and able speech, pressed upon them 
 the necessities of the nation, and the only 
 modes of arresting them. " The king there- 
 fore desires," he continued, " this great work 
 
 * Stafford Papers, vol. i., p. 231. 
 
 may be set on his right foot, settled by Parlia- 
 ment as the more beaten path he covets to 
 walk in, yet not more legal than if done by his pre- 
 rogative royal, where the ordinary way fails him. 
 If this people, then, can be so unwise as to cast 
 off his gracious proposals and their own safety, 
 it must be done without them ; and for myself, 
 as their true friend, I must let them know that 
 I cannot doubt but they will altogether save 
 me the trouble, hasten in their advice, and af- 
 ford their best means for the fulfilling these his 
 so good intentions. That, as a faithful servant 
 to my master, I shall counsel his majesty to 
 attempt it first by the ordinary means ; disap- 
 pointed there, where he may with so much 
 right expect it, / could not, in a cause so just and 
 necessary, deny to appear for him in the head of 
 that army, and there either persuade them fully his 
 majesty had reason on his side, or else think it a 
 great honour to die in the pursuit of that wherein 
 both justice and piety had so far convinced my 
 judgment as not left me wherewithal to make 
 one argument for denying myself unto com- 
 mands so justly called for and laid upon me." 
 In conclusion, Wentworth gave them a still 
 more characteristic warning : " Again I did 
 beseech them to look well about, and be wise 
 by others' harms. They were not ignorant of 
 the misfortunes these meetings had run in Eng- 
 land of late years ; that therefore they were 
 not to strike their foot upon the same stone of 
 distrust which had so often broken them ; for I 
 could tell them as one that had, it may be, held 
 my eyes as open upon those proceedings as 
 another man, that what other accident this 
 mischief might be ascribed unto, there was 
 nothing else that brought it upon us but the 
 king's standing justly to have the honour of 
 trust from his people, and an ill-grounded, nar- 
 row suspicion of theirs, which would not be- 
 ever entreated, albeit it stood with all the rea- 
 son and wisdom in the world. This was that 
 spirit of the air that walked in darkness be- 
 twixt them, abusing both, whereon if once one 
 beam of light and truth had happily reflected, 
 it had vanished like smoke before it !"* 
 
 The council could not hold to one of their 
 purposes in the presence of such overawing 
 energy, " whereupon they did, with all cheer- 
 fulness, assent unto the council ; professed 
 they would entirely conform themselves unto 
 it ; acknowledged it was most reasonable this 
 
 * See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 236-241, for the de- 
 spatch, in which these things are all most happily described. 
 Laud, in a subsequent letter, gives Wentworth some ac- 
 count of the way in which the despatch had been received. 
 I extract one amusing passage : " The next day, at Green- 
 wich, your despatch to Secretary Cooke was read to the 
 committee, the king present, order given for us to meet, and 
 for speed of our answer to you. If speed be not made to 
 your mind, I am not in fault, and I hope you will have all 
 things in time. Everybody liked your carriage and dis- 
 course to the council, but thought it too long, and that too 
 much strength was put upon it ; but you may see what it is 
 to be an able speaker. \our old friend says he had rather 
 see you talk something into the exchequer, but he pleases 
 himself extremely to see how able Brutus is in the senate- 
 house ! And wot you what ? When we came to this pas- 
 sage in your despatch, ' Again I did beseech them to look 
 well about, and to be wise by others' harms ; they were not 
 ignorant of the misfortunes these meetings had run in Eng- 
 land of late years,' <fcc. Here a good friend of yours inter- 
 posed, ' quorum pars magna fui.' I hope you will charge 
 this home upon my Lord Cottington ; he hath so many 
 Spanish tricks, that I cannot tell how to trust him for any- 
 thing but making of legs to fair ladies." Strafford Papers, 
 vol. i., p. 255, 256.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 97 
 
 kingdom should defray itself ; that they would 
 not offer the pardon, or any other act that might 
 bear the interpretation of a condition ; that they 
 would send over no other laws hut such as I 
 should like ; nay, if I pleased, they would send 
 over the bill of subsidy alone."* 
 
 Another obstruction remained, which was 
 as fiercely and immediately disposed of. The 
 council had ventured to suggest to the lord- 
 deputy the existence of an ancient custom, 
 whereby the Lords of the Pale claimed the 
 right of being consulted respecting the project- 
 ed measures, but which Wentworth had at 
 once silenced by " a direct and round answer." 
 Four days after this, however, the Earl of Fin- 
 gal, on behalf of his brother peers, obtained an 
 interview, and, as the deputy described, " very 
 gravely, and in a kind of elaborate way, told 
 me," &c., &c. It is simply necessary to add, 
 that so peremptory and supremely contemptu- 
 ous was Wentworth's reception of these tra- 
 ditionary claims, that the Lord Fingal was fain 
 to escape from his presence with a submissive 
 apology, t 
 
 Nothing remained now but the elections. 
 Some difficulty attended them at the first, but 
 one or two resolute measures quelled it.J In 
 July, 1634, an admirably balanced party of 
 Catholics and Protestants assembled in the 
 Irish House of Commons. 
 
 With extraordinary pomp and ceremony^ the 
 lord -deputy proceeded to meet them. His 
 speech, however, was more startling than his 
 splendour. He began by telling them that two 
 sessions should be held ; and that the first, 
 " according to the natural order," should be 
 devoted to the sovereign, and the second to 
 the subject. " In demanding supplies," he 
 continued, " I only require you to provide for 
 your own safety ; I expect, therefore, your 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 255. To this Wentworth 
 shrewdly subjoins, " But I, not thinking it fit it should come 
 so singly from the king without some expression of care for 
 the good government of his people, have caused it to be ac- 
 companied, as you will receive it, by this express." 
 
 t See the deputy's own account, Strafford Papers, vol. i., 
 p. 246, 247. 
 
 t " The priests and Jesuits here," writes Wentworth, in 
 a very able despatch to Cooke, " are very busy in the elec- 
 tion of knights and burgesses for this Parliament, call the 
 people to their masses, and there charge them, on pain of 
 excommunication, to give their voice with no Protestant. I 
 purpose hereafter to question some of them, being, indeed, 
 a very insufferable thing for them thus to interpose in 
 causes which are purely civil, and of passing ill consequence 
 to warm and inflame the subjects one against another ; and, 
 in the last resort, to bring it to a direct party of Protestant 
 and Papist, which surely is to be avoided as much as may 
 be, unless our numbers were the greater. A sheriff that, 
 being set on by these fellows, carried himself mutinously in 
 the election of burgesses for this town, we brought into the 
 Castle Chamber upon an ore tenus, where, upun what he 
 had set under his hand, we fined him 200, and 500 more 
 for his contempt in refusing to set his hand to another part 
 of his examination, both at the council board and in open 
 court, disabling him for ever bearing that office hereafter in 
 this city ; which wrought so good an effect, as giving order 
 presently for chasing of a new sheriff, and going on the 
 next day with the election again, the voices were ull order- 
 ly taken ; and the conformable proving the greater number, 
 Catelin, the king's sergeant and recorder of this town, and 
 Alderman Barry, a Protestant, were chosen ; the former 
 whereof I intend to make the speaker, being a very able 
 man for that purpose, and one I assure myself will in all 
 things apply himself to bis majesty's service." Strafford 
 Papers, vol. i., p. 260. 
 
 ^ " It was the greatest civility and splendour," writes 
 Wentworth, " Ireland ever saw. A very gallant nobility 
 and gentry appeared, far above that 1 expected." Vol. i., 
 p. 276. See a programme in the Biog. Brit., vol. vii., p. 
 4184, 4185. 
 
 N 
 
 contributions will be both liberal and perma- 
 nent : that is, there must be a standing reve- 
 nue (mark it well) provided by you to supply 
 and settle the constant payments of the army ; 
 for it is far below my great master to come at 
 every year's end, with his hat in his hand, to 
 entreat that you would be pleased to preserve 
 yourselves." Moreover, he told them that, if 
 they expected constant protection without con- 
 tributing towards it, they looked for more than 
 had ever been the portion of a " conquered king- 
 dom." A bitter warning succeeded this of the 
 fate of English Parliaments. " Take heed," he 
 said, in a lesson from his own patriotic experien- 
 ces, "take heed of private meetings and con- 
 sults in your chambers, by design and privity 
 aforehand to contrive how to discourse and car- 
 ry the public affairs when you come into the 
 houses ; for, besides that they are in themselves 
 unlawful, and punishable in a grievous measure, 
 I never knew them in all my experience to do 
 any good to the public or to any particular man. 
 I have oftenknown them do much harm to both." 
 With these were mingled some just entreat- 
 ments. " Divide not nationally betwixt Eng- 
 lish and Irish. The king makes no distinction 
 betwixt you, but reputes you all without preju- 
 dice, and that upon safe and true grounds, I 
 assure myself, his good and faithful subjects. 
 And madness it were in you, then, to raise that 
 wall of separation amongst yourselves. If you 
 should, you know who the old proverb deems 
 likest to go to the wall ; and, believe me, Eng- 
 land will not prove the weakest. But, above 
 all, divide not between the interests of the king 
 and his people, as if there were one being of 
 the king, and another being of his people." 
 He concluded with a distinct statement, that 
 their conduct during the session should be at- 
 tended, according to its results, with punish- 
 ment or reward.* 
 
 Not in words only, but equally in the man- 
 ner of its delivery, did this speech proclaim the 
 despotic genius of Lord Wentworth. Here he 
 resorted to all those arts which, as I have be- 
 fore remarked, are essentially necessary to the 
 success of the despot ; and illustrated, by con- 
 duct which to such superficial statesmen as my 
 Lord Cottington seemed vain and unnecessary, 
 his profound knowledge of character. " Well," 
 he writes to his more relying friend the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, " well, spoken it is since, 
 good or bad I cannot tell whether ; but sure I am 
 not able yet to help myself to a copy of it. But 
 as it was, / spake it not betwixt my teeth, but so 
 loud and heartily that I protest unto you I was 
 faint withal at the present, and the worse for it 
 two or three days after. It makes no matter, for 
 this way I was assured they should have sound at 
 least, with how little weight soever it should be atr- 
 tended. And the success was answerable ; for 
 had it been low and mildly delivered, I might per- 
 chance have gotten from them, it was pretty well ; 
 whereas this way, filling one of their senses with 
 noise, and amusing the rest with earnestness and 
 vehemence, they swear (yet forgive them, they know 
 not what they say !) it was the best spoken they 
 ever heard in their lives. Let Cottington crack me 
 that nut now."t 
 
 Secure of his measures, Wentworth demand- 
 ed at once the enormous grant of six subsi- 
 
 cu a i uiiue me enurmuus gram 01 six suusi- 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 287-290. t Ibid., p. 273.
 
 98 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 dies. * With the view, at the same time, of pre- 
 venting the possibility of the parties communi- 
 cating in any way with each other, and so cut- 
 ting from beneath them every ground of mutual 
 reliance, he introduced the proposition to the 
 House on the second day of their meeting. Ig- 
 norant of each other's sentiments incapable 
 of anything like a plan of opposition nothing 
 was left for Protestants and Catholics but to 
 seek to rival each other, as it were, in the devo- 
 tion of loyalty. The subsidies were voted un- 
 conditionally.t and one voice of profound re- 
 spect for the lord-deputy rose from allj Not 
 less successful was his management of the 
 convocation of Irish clergy, which had been 
 summoned with Parliament, and from whom 
 eight subsidies were ultimately procured. For- 
 tified with his money bills, and just as the ses- 
 sion was on the eve of closing, Wentworth 
 turned with contempt to the proceedings of the 
 House of Lords. Here had been opposition 
 
 * He had great difficulty in inducing the privy council to 
 accede to this. At last he prevailed : " Sir Adam Loftus," 
 as he writes to Cooke, "first beginning the dance, which 
 is now the second time he hath done the king passing good 
 service in this kind." Vol. i., p. 259. Not a single service 
 did Lord Wentworth ever receive without acknowledging 
 it strongly to the king, accompanied by the special naming 
 of those who had so served him. 
 
 t These were the first " settled subsidies" that had ever 
 been paid in Ireland. See Papers, vol. i., p. 307. 
 
 i See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 277-279. One restive 
 member there was, and one only. This was Sir Robert 
 Talbot ; who, having mentioned Wentworth without a suf- 
 ficiently awful respect, was instantly expelled, and commit- 
 ted to custody till, on his knees, he begged pardon of the 
 deputy. Commons' Journ., vol. i., p. 116. Leland, vol. iii., 
 p. 18. One case may be added to this of a very different 
 character, in proof that, when Wentworth saw the means 
 of advancing the public service, even at the cost of some 
 personal consideration, he did not care to waive the latter. 
 Among the proclamations he had issued to regulate the 
 Parliamentary sitting, he expressly forbade the entrance of 
 any member of either house with his sword, and all obeyed 
 this except the young Earl of Ormond, who told the usher 
 of the black rod that he should have no sword of his except 
 through his body. Equally resolute was his answer to the 
 fiery questioning of the lord-deputy himself, quietly produ- 
 cing his majesty's writ, which had called him to Parliament 
 "cinctum cum gladio," or "per cincturam gladii." The 
 doubt then occurred to the deputy of the superior value of 
 young Ormond's service to his enmity ; and, after consulta- 
 tion with " his two friends, Sir George Radcliffe and Mr. 
 Wandesford," the youth was taken into favour. I am obli- 
 ged to Mr. Crofton Croker for the favour of this note, which 
 I find in a manuscript translation he has been good enough 
 to lend me, of the Irish portion of the travels of a gascona- 
 ding coxcomb of a Frenchman, Sieur de la Boullaye-le-Gouz, 
 who honoured the island with his company in 1644, and 
 obliged the world with a most amusing account of his visit. 
 This very Ormond was then viceroy, and the part he had 
 himself played to Lord Wentworth was curiously enough 
 rivalled on this occasion by the illustrious Le Gouz. " I 
 followed the train," observes our traveller, in Mr. Croker's 
 happy translation, " in order to enter more freely into the 
 castle, but at the door they ordered me to lay down my 
 sword, which I would not do, saying that, being born of a 
 condition to carry it before the king, I would rather not see 
 the castle than part with my arms. A gentleman in the 
 iuite of the viceroy, seeing from my gallant bearing that I 
 was a Frenchman, took me by the hand, saying, ' Strangers 
 shall on this occasion be more favoured than residents,' and 
 he brought me in. I replied to him that his civility equalled 
 that of the French towards his nation, when they met them 
 in France !" 
 
 <) It was one of the strokes of the lord-deputy's policy to 
 aggravate every difference between the two houses. He 
 describes, with singular sarcasm, in one of his despatches, 
 a difference of this sort. " The Commons would not confer 
 with the Lords unless they might sit and be covered as well 
 as their lordships, which the other would by no means ad- 
 mit. For my part I did not lay it very near my heart to 
 agree them, as having heretofore seen the effects which 
 follow when they are in strict understanding, or at differ- 
 ence amongst themselves. I saw plainly that keeping them 
 at distance I did avoid their joining in a petition for the 
 graces." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 279. 
 
 the positive enactment of various salutary 
 regulations the consideration of grievances ! 
 " I let them alone," says one of his despatches, 
 till the last day that I came into the House 
 to conclude the session ; but then, being very 
 jealous lest in my time anything might creep in, 
 and grow upon the king's prerogative in this 
 tender and important particular,* I clearly de- 
 clared they had therein proceeded farther than 
 
 they had warrant for and did beseech 
 
 their lordships to be better advised for the fu- 
 ture, and not to exceed that power which was 
 left them by that law, to wit, a liberty only to 
 offer by petition to the deputy and council such 
 considerations as they might conceive to be 
 good for the Commonwealth, by them to be 
 transmitted for laws, or staid, as to them 
 should seem best ; whereunto they condescend- 
 ed without any opposition." 
 
 The English ministers were rapt in delight 
 and astonishment ! As the time approached, 
 however, for the second session the session 
 of " graces" a shadow fell over their congrat- 
 ulations. Bucklered with his law of Poynings, 
 the lord-deputy bravely reassured them. " For 
 my own part," he wrote to Cooke, in the apt 
 simile of an amusement which he was then, in 
 the intervals of his bodily infirmities, ardently 
 given to, " for my own part, I see not any haz- 
 ard in it, considering that we have this lyme 
 hound in our power, still to take off when we 
 please ; which is not so easy with your Parlia- 
 ments of England, where sometimes they hunt 
 loose, forth of command, choose and give over 
 their own game as they list themselves. "t 
 Farther, however, to quiet the apprehensions 
 of Charles, and induce him to suffer the con- 
 tinuance of Parliament, Wentworth wrote to 
 the king, telling him that the lord-deputy and 
 his council meant to take on themselves the 
 whole responsibility and blame of refusing the 
 obnoxious graces, while the whole merit of 
 granting such as might be granted safely should 
 be given to his majesty.}: 
 
 Wentworth redeemed his pledge. ' It is un- 
 necessary to describe the proceedings of that 
 session at any length. Suffice it to say, that 
 the arts and energy of the first session were 
 redoubled to a greater success in the second. 
 None of the obnoxious graces were accorded. 
 He openly told the Parliament that he had re- 
 fused even to transmit them to England, and 
 asserted his right to do this under the law of 
 Poynings. For a time, the overbearing ener- 
 
 * The law of Poynings. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 305. Wentworth preserved 
 through life, notwithstanding his frightful illnesses, the 
 most passionate fondness for hunting and hawking. It is 
 curious to observe, in his accounts of these amusements, an 
 occasional letting out of another object he may have had in 
 them, besides that of personal enjoyment. They gave him 
 an opportunity of display. " Your defeat of your hawking 
 sport in Wiltshire," he writes at about this time to Cotting- 
 ton, " is nothing like to mine ; for (as the man you wot of 
 said by the pigeons) here hath not been a partridge in the 
 memory of man, so as having a passing high-flying tarsell I 
 am even setting him down, and to-morrow purpose, with a 
 cast or two of spar-hawks, to betake myself to fly at black- 
 birds, ever and anon taking them on the pate with a trunk. 
 It is excellent sport, there being sometimes 200 horse on the 
 field looking upon us, where the Lord of Fonsail drops out 
 of doors with a poor falconer or two ; and if Sir Robert 
 Wind and Gabriel Epsley be gotten along, it is a regale." 
 Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 163. 
 
 t See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 328. And see the de- 
 spatch to Cooke, vol. i., p. 338. 
 
 >> See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 345, et seq.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 99 
 
 gy of his measures forced the members to the 
 silence of fear ; but this was broken by the 
 Catholic party, who, having suffered the most 
 grievous wrong in the deception, at last made 
 a feeble show of resistance. Wentworth in- 
 stantly flung all his influence for the first time 
 among the Protestants, and precipitated the 
 Catholics into a trial of their strength, unadvi- 
 sed with each other, and utterly unprepared. 
 They were at once defeated. The Protestants 
 then claimed their reward, and with an ear- 
 nestness which was only finally subdued by the 
 lord-deputy's threats of worse terrors than 
 those which their wrongs included.* He had 
 nothing left now but to write one of his most 
 pleasing despatches to his royal master, con- 
 taining " at once a clear and full relation of the 
 issue of this second session, which was, through 
 the wayward frowardness of the Popish party, 
 so troublesome upon the first access, but is 
 now recovered and determined by the good as- 
 sistance of the Protestants, with great advan- 
 tage to your majesty, by those excellent and 
 beneficial laws which, with much tugging, are 
 gotten from them ; and all the graces prejudicial 
 to the crown laid also so sound asleep as I am con- 
 fident they are never to be awakened more."t In 
 the next despatch he had the satisfaction of 
 assuring his majesty that the privilege of im- 
 peachment had been wrested both from Lords 
 and Commons ;t in the next, that certain troub- 
 les of the convocation had been most emphat- 
 ically silenced ; and in the next, that his maj- 
 esty was now, in the person of his humble dep- 
 uty, the uncontrolled disposer of the destinies 
 of Ireland ! " So now I can say," wrote Went- 
 worth at the close of a long despatch, which by 
 the same messenger he had forwarded to Laud, 
 and which contains a remarkable summary of 
 the many important services he had rendered 
 
 * "I roundly and earnestly told them I was very indif- 
 ferent what resolution the House should fall upon, serving 
 too just and gracious a master ever to fear to be answerable 
 for the success of affairs in contingence, so long as I did sin- 
 cerely and faithfully endeavour that which I conceived to 
 be for the best. That there were two ends I had my eye on, 
 and the one I wouldinfallibly attain unto either a submission 
 of the people to his majesty's just demands, or a just occasion 
 of breacli, and either would content the king. The first was 
 undeniably and evidently host for them ; but could my mas- 
 ter in his goodness consider himself apart from his subjects, 
 or these become so ingrate, / spake it confidently upon the 
 peril of my head, a breach should be better for him than any 
 tupply they could give him in Parliament. And therefore I 
 did desire that no man should deceive himself: my master 
 was not to seek in his counsels, nor was he a prince that ei- 
 ther could or would be denied just things." For the vari- 
 ous incidents of this session, see Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 
 320, 321, 328, 339, 341, 343, 344, 345, 349, 353. 
 
 t In the same despatch (which see iu Straflford Papers, 
 vol. i., p. 341), Wentworth urges upon the king the neces- 
 sity of his surrendering matters of patronage and so forth 
 more immediately into his lord-deputy's hands : " The fewer 
 sharers in the service, the fewer there will be to press for 
 rewards, to the lessening of your majesty's profit, and the 
 more entire will the benefit be preserved for your own crown ; 
 which must, in all these affairs, and shall, be my principal, 
 
 MAT, INDEED, MY SOLE END." 
 
 i See the case of Sir Vincent Gookin, Papers, vol. i., p. 
 349 and 393. Wentworth established by this case, that, 
 under Poynings' law, acts of judicature no less than of legis- 
 lation were prohibited, save by consent of the deputy and 
 his council. 
 
 $ See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 342-345. " I am not 
 ignorant," subjoined Wentworth to this despatch, with a 
 sort of involuntary forecast of an after reckoning, which he 
 threw off in a self-deceiving jest, " I am not ignorant that 
 my stirring herein will be strangely reported, and censured 
 on that side ; and how I shall be able to sustain myself 
 against your Prynnes, Pirns, and Bens, with the rest of that 
 generation of odd names and natures, the Lord knows." 
 
 to the crown, " so now I can say the king is as 
 absolute here as any prince in the whole world can 
 be, and may be still, if it be not spoiled on that 
 side ; for so long as his majesty shall have here 
 a deputy of faith and understanding, and that 
 he be preserved in credit, and independent upon 
 any but the king himself, let it be laid as a 
 ground, it is the deputy's fault if the king be 
 denied any reasonable desire." 
 
 This was grateful news to Laud. Of all the 
 suggesters of the infamous counsels of Charles, 
 Laud and Wentworth were the most sincere : 
 Laud, from the intense faith with which he 
 looked forward to the possible supremacy of 
 the ecclesiastical power, and to which he was 
 bent upon going " thorough," through every 
 obstacle ; Wentworth, from that strong sense 
 with which birth and education had perverted 
 his genius, of the superior excellence of despot- 
 ic rule. Their friendship, in consequence, not- 
 withstanding Wentworth's immense superiori- 
 ty in point of intellect,* continued tolerably 
 firm and steady most firm, indeed, consider- 
 ing the nature of their public connexion.t The 
 letters which passed between them partook of 
 a more intimate character, in respect of the 
 avowal of ulterior designs, than either of them, 
 probably, chose to avow elsewhere ; and though 
 many of their secrets have been effectually con- 
 cealed from us by their frequent use of ciphers, 
 sufficient remain to shadow forth the extre- 
 mest purposes of both. 
 
 Laud had to regret his position in England, 
 contrasted with that of the Irish deputy. " My 
 lord," he writes to Wentworth, speaking of the 
 general affairs of Church and State, " to speak 
 freely, you may easily promise more in either 
 kind than I can perform ; for as for the Church, 
 it is so bound up in the forms of the common 
 law, that it is not possible for me, or for any 
 man, to do that good which he would, or is bound 
 to do. For your lordship sees, no man clearer, 
 that they which have gotten so much power in 
 and over the Church will not let go their hold ; 
 they have, indeed, fangs with a witness, what- 
 soever I was once said in a passion to have. 
 And for the State, indeed, my lord, I am for thor- 
 ough ; but I see that both thick and thin stays 
 somebody, where I conceive it should not ; and it 
 is impossible for me to go thorough alone. Be- 
 sides, private ends are such blocks in the pub- 
 lic way, and lie so thick, that you may promise 
 what you will, and I must perform what I can, 
 
 * It is amusing, at times, to observe the commissions to 
 which Wentworth descended for the gratification of Laud, 
 laughing at them secretly while he gravely discharged them. 
 The archbishop himself, however, had an occasional suspi- 
 cion of this, and is to be seen at times insinuating, from be- 
 neath velvet words, a cat-like claw : " I perceive you mean 
 to build," he writes to the lord-deputy on one occasion, " but 
 as yet your materials are not come in ; but if that work do 
 come to me before Christmas, as you promise it shall, I will 
 rifle every corner in it : and you know, my good lord, after 
 all your bragging, how I served you at York, and your 
 church work there : especially, I pray, provide agoodriding 
 house, if there be ever a decayed body of a church to make it 
 in, and then you shall be wall fitted, for you know one is made 
 your stable already, if you have not reformed it, of which I 
 did look for an account according to my remembrances be- 
 fore this time." Vol. i., p. 156. Wentworth had forgotten 
 one of his friend's first commissions, which the reader will 
 recollect to have been quoted. 
 
 t A curious and instructive essay might be gleaned from 
 the StrafFord Papers on the subject of the friendships of 
 statesmen, or, rather say, of a king's advisers, for the ma- 
 jority of these men did not deserve the name of state-
 
 100 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and no more."* To this Wentworth answers j their mutual purposes, Wentworth also intro- 
 in a letter which is not preserved. Its import, j duced into Ireland the Court of High Commis- 
 however, may be gathered from this remarka- , sion, and wrested it to various notable pur- 
 ble passage in Laud's rejoinder : " I am very poses, political as well as religious. 
 
 glad to read your lordship so resolute, and more 
 to hear you affirm that the footing of them 
 which go thorough for our master's service is 
 not now upon fee, as it hath been. But you 
 are withal upon so many ifs, that by their help 
 you may preserve any man upon ice r be it nev- 
 er so slippery. As, first, if the common law- 
 yers may be contained within their ancient and 
 sober bounds ; if the word thorough be not left 
 out (as I am certain it is) ; if we grow not 
 faint ; if we ourselves be not in fault ; if it 
 come not to peccatum ex te Israel; if others will 
 do their parts as thoroughly as you promise for 
 yourself, and justly conceive of me. Now, I 
 pray, with so many and such ifs as these, what 
 may not be done, and in a brave and noble way 1 
 But can you tell when these ifs will meet, or 
 be brought together ?"t Satisfactory is the 
 lord-deputy's returning assurance : " For the 
 ifs your lordship is pleased to impute unto me, 
 you shall hereafter have more positive doctrine. 
 I know no reason, then, but you may as well rule 
 the common lawyers in England, as I, poor beagle, 
 do here ; and yet that I do, and will do, in all that 
 concerns my master's service, upon the peril of my 
 head. I am confident that the king, being pleas- 
 ed to set himself in the business, is able, by 
 his wisdom and ministers, to carry any just and 
 honourable action thorough all imaginary oppo- 
 sition, for real there can be none ; that to start 
 aside for such panic fears, fantastic apparitions, 
 as a Prynne or an Eliot shall set up, were the 
 meanest folly in the whole world ; that the debts of 
 the crown taken off, you may govern as you. please ; 
 and most resolute I am that work may be done, 
 without borrowing any help forth of the king's 
 lodgings, and that is as downright a peccatum ex 
 te Israel as ever was, if all this be not effected 
 with speed and ease."t 
 
 Resolutely did the lord-deputy, as I have 
 shown, realize these principles, and every new 
 act of despotism which struck terror into Ire- 
 land shot comfort to the heart of Laud. " As 
 for my marginal note," exclaims the archbish- 
 op, " I see you deciphered it well, and I see 
 you make use of it too ; do so still thorow 
 and thorow. Oh that I were where I might 
 go so too ! but I am shackled between delays 
 and uncertainties. You have a great deal of 
 honour here for your proceedings. Go on a 
 God's name /" And on Wentworth went, 
 stopping at no gratuitous quarrel that had the 
 slightest chance of pleasing the archbishop, 
 even to the demolishing the family tomb of the 
 Earl of Cork, since his grace, among his select 
 ecclesiastical researches, had discovered that 
 the spot occupied by my Lord of Cork's family 
 monuments was precisely that spot upon which 
 the communion-table, to answer the purposes 
 of heaven, ought to stand !|| To minister to 
 
 The distinction between him and his confed- 
 erate during all these proceedings is, neverthe- 
 less, to be discerned as widely as the difference 
 of their respective intellects. Wentworth was 
 a despot, but his despotism included many 
 noble, though misguided purposes. Even with 
 this High Commission Court, unjustifiable as 
 were the means, he unquestionably effected an 
 increase to the respectability and usefulness 
 of the clergy, and reformed the ecclesiastical 
 courts, while, at the same time, he never lost 
 sight of the great present object of his govern- 
 ment, that it should, " in the way to all these, 
 raise, perhaps, a good revenue to the crown."* 
 So, while Laud, in England, was, by a series 
 of horrible persecutions, torturing and muti- 
 lating the Puritans,t the deputy of Ireland 
 could boast with perfect truth that, " since I 
 had the honour to be employed in this place, 
 no hair of any man's head hath been touched 
 for the free exercise of his conscience.''! 
 
 It is also due to Wentworth to observe, that 
 while, at this time, with a view to the further- 
 ance of his general scheme of government, he 
 conceived the vast and unattainable project of 
 reducing all the people of Ireland to a conform- 
 ity in religion, the measures by which he sought 
 to accomplish that project were, many of them, 
 conceived in the profoundest spirit of a large 
 and wide-reaching policy. Theological strife 
 he knew the useless horrors of; and he soon 
 discovered, by his " experience of both houses," 
 that "the root of all disorders in this kingdom 
 is the universal dependance of the popish fac- 
 tion upon Jesuits and friars."^ He speedily 
 declared his determination to the king himself. 
 " I judge it, without all question, far the great- 
 est service that can be done unto your crowns 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 111. f Ibid., p. 155. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i. ( p. 173. Following- this pas- 
 sage, in the same letter, is the language which it would be 
 a gross outrage of decency to quote. The archbishop ap- 
 pears to have relished it exceedingly. 
 
 I) Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 329. 
 
 II It would be impossible to notice in detail the various 
 personal contests in which Wentworth engaged, though 
 none of them passed, not even the most trifling, without 
 
 illustrating, in a remarkable degree, the general features of 
 his character. I may refer the reader respecting this affair 
 of the Earl of Cork to the Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 156, 
 200, 216, 222, 257, 298, 379, 459, and to vol. ii., p. 270 and 
 p. 338. Lord Cork hit upon an ingenious plan of thwarting 
 the lord-deputy, though it failed in consequence of the 
 superior influence of the latter. He wrote to the Lord- 
 treasurer Weston, then notoriously jealous of Wentworth, 
 and opposed to him and Laud, " entreating his favour, for 
 that under this monument the bones of a Weston was en- 
 tombed." * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 187. 
 
 t " Mr. Prynne, prisoner in the Tower, who hath got his 
 ears sewed on that they grew again as before to his head, 
 is relapsed into new errors." Letter of his newsmonger, 
 Gerrard, to Wentworth, Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 266. 
 Again Prynne's ears expiated those " new errors." Laud's 
 own notice in his diary (Nov., 1630) of the punishment of 
 Leighton, a Scotch divine, the father of Bishop Leighton, is 
 more horrible : " Friday, Nov. 16, part of his sentence was 
 executed upon him in this manner, in the new palace at 
 Westminster, in term time. 1. He was severely whipped 
 before he was put in the pillory. 2. Being set in the pil- 
 lory, he had one of his ears cut off. 3. One side of his nose 
 slit. 4. Branded on one cheek with a red-hot iron, with 
 the letters S S. And, on that day sevennight, his sores 
 upon his back, ear, nose, and face being not cured, he was 
 whipped again at the pillory in Cheapside, and there had 
 the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cut- 
 ting off the other ear, slitting the other side of the'nose, 
 and branding the other cheek." Leighton was released, 
 after ten years' captivity, by the Long Parliament, having- 
 by that time lost his sight, his hearing, and the use of his 
 limbs. 
 
 i See his letter to Con, the popish resident, Strafford 
 Papers, vol. ii., p. 112. His correspondences with this per- 
 son are in all respects curious, and, to me, significant of a 
 purpose which his death prevented the open disclosure of. 
 
 If Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 431, 432.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 101 
 
 on this side, to draw Ireland into a conform- 
 ity of religion with England; which, indeed, 
 would undoubtedly set your majesty in greater 
 strength and safety within your own dominions 
 than anything now left by the great and happy 
 wisdom of yourself and blessed father unac- 
 complished, to make us an happy and secure 
 people within ourselves ; and yet, this being a 
 work rather to be effected by judgment and 
 degrees than by a giddy zeal and haste, when- 
 ever it shall seem good in your wisdom to at- 
 tempt it (for I am confident it is left as a 
 means whereby to glorify your majesty's piety 
 to posterity), there will, in the way towards it, 
 many things fall continually in debate and con- 
 sideration at the board, with which it will be 
 very unfit any of the contrary religion be ac- 
 quainted."* 
 
 Urged by the English council, he set about 
 the great work. Undisguised was the aston- 
 ishment of the archbishop, however, at the 
 slow and gradual means proposed by the lord- 
 deputy. His grace had fancied that the trouts 
 who had been so completely tickled out of their 
 moneyt might be as easily tickled out. of their 
 religion, or anything else. The Lord Went- 
 worth thought differently. " It will be ever far 
 forth of my heart." he wrote, in answer to ur- 
 gent pressings of the question, accompanied 
 with especial requests for the enforcing of fines 
 for nonconformity, " to conceive that a con- 
 formity in religion is not above all other things 
 principally to be intended ; for, undoubtedly, 
 till we be brought all under one form of divine 
 service, the crown is never safe on this side ; 
 but yet the time and circumstances may very 
 well be discoursed, and sure I do not hold this 
 a fit season to disquiet or sting them in this 
 kind ; and my reasons are divers. This course 
 alone will never bring them to church, being 
 rather an engine to drain money out of their 
 pockets than to raise a right belief and faith in 
 their hearts, and so doth not, indeed, tend to 
 that end it sets forth. The subsidies are now 
 in paying, which were given with a universal 
 alacrity ; and very graceful it will be in the 
 king to indulge them otherwise as much as 
 may be till they be paid. It were too much at 
 once to distemper them by bringing plantations 
 upon them, and disturbing them in the exer- 
 cise of their religion, so long as it be without 
 scandal. And so, indeed, very inconsiderate, 
 as I conceive, to move in this latter, till that 
 former be fully settled, and by that means the 
 Protestant party become by much the stronger, 
 which, in truth, as yet I do not conceive it to 
 be. Lastly, the great work of reformation 
 ought not, in my opinion, to be fallen upon till 
 all incidents be fully provided for, the army 
 rightly furnished, the forts repaired, money in 
 the coffers, and such a preparation in view as 
 might deter any malevolent licentious spirit to 
 stir up ill humour in opposition to his majesty's 
 pious intendments therein ; nor ought the exe- 
 cution of this to proceed by step or degrees, 
 but all rightly dispersed, to be undertaken and 
 gone through withal at once. And certainly, 
 in the mean time, the less you call the conceit 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 307. 
 
 t " Now, fie upon it, if the salmon of that river be bad, 
 yet your loss is the less, since you have so many trouts that 
 may be tickled into anything, or anything out of them." 
 Laud to Wentworth, Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 329. 
 
 of it into their memory, the better it will be 
 for us, and themselves the quieter ; so, as if 
 there were no wiser than I, the bishops should 
 be privately required to forbear these ecclesiastical 
 censures till they understood farther of his maj- 
 esty's pleasure therein."* 
 
 Steadily he proceeded, as if already, in the 
 far but not uncertain distance, he saw the ac- 
 complishment of this extraordinary design. He 
 began at what he conceived to be the root of 
 the evil. The churches had fallen to ruin ; the 
 Church revenues had been cut to pieces by long 
 leases and fraudulent appropriations ; and the 
 offices of the Church had been given into the 
 hands of the ignorant, since to such only the 
 abject poverty of her means offered any of the 
 inducements of service, t " Now," wrote Went- 
 worth to the still precipitate archbishop, " to 
 attempt the reducing of this kingdom to a con- 
 formity in religion with the Church of England, 
 before the decays of the material churches here 
 be repaired, an able clergy be provided, so that 
 there might be both wherewith to receive, in- 
 struct, and keep the people, were as a man going 
 to warfare without munition or arms. It being, 
 therefore, most certain that this to be wished ref- 
 ormation must first work from ourselves, I am bold 
 to transmit over to your grace these few prop- 
 ositions, for the better ordering this poor 
 Church, which hath thus long laid in the silent 
 dark. The best entrance to the cure will be 
 clearly to discover the state of the patient, 
 which I find many ways distempered : an un- 
 learned clergy, which have not so much as the 
 outward form of churchmen to cover them- 
 selves with, nor their persons any ways rever- 
 enced or protected ; the churches unbuilt ; the 
 parsonage and vicarage houses utterly ruined ; 
 the people untaught through the non-residency 
 of the clergy, occasioned by the unlimited 
 shameful numbers of spiritual promotions with 
 cure of souls, which they hold by commendams ; 
 the rites and ceremonies of the Church run 
 over without all decency of habit, order, or 
 gravity, in the course of their service ; the pos- 
 sessions of the Church, to a great proportion, 
 in lay hands ; the bishops farming out their ju- 
 risdictions to mean and unworthy persons :" 
 and so, through all the sources of the evil, in a 
 despatch of elaborate learning and profound 
 suggestion, the lord-deputy proceeds, enforcing 
 upon the archbishop, finally, that he must sur- 
 render his present hopes of any immediate re- 
 sult. " It would be a brainsick zeal and a 
 goodly reformation, truly," he exclaims, in a 
 supplementary despatch of yet greater energy 
 and earnestness, "to force a conformity to a 
 religion, whereas yet there is hardly to be found 
 a church to receive, or an able minister to 
 teach the people. No, no ; let us fit ourselves 
 in these two, and settle his majesty's payments 
 for the army, discharge his debts, and then 
 have with them and spare not ! I believe the 
 hottest will not set his foot faster or farther on 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 49. 
 
 t The reader will be startled, probably, to hear the value 
 of some of the Irish bishoprics in that day. ' The old 
 Bishop of Kilfanora," writes Wentworth to Laud, " is dead, 
 and his bishopric one of those which, when it falls, goes a 
 begging for a new husband, being not worth above fourscore 
 pounds to the last man ; yet in the handling of an under- 
 standing prelate it might perchance grow to be worth two 
 hundred pounds, but then it will cost money in suit." 
 Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 172.
 
 102 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 than I shall do. In the mean time, I appeal to j 
 any equal-minded man whether they or I be 
 more in the right." 
 
 Unparalleled were the confidence and self- 
 possessed resource with which Wentworth's 
 great schemes now ran side by side. At one 
 and the same moment he forced the revenue 
 by which his projected buildings in the Church 
 were to be raised, and cleared away the ob- 
 structions which still covered the sites he had 
 selected. The decision of ecclesiastical rights 
 was removed by him from the courts of com- 
 mon law to the Castle-chamber ; the Earl of 
 Cork was forced to restore an annual revenue 
 of 2000 which had been originally wrested 
 from the Church ; and, understanding that the 
 Bishop of Killala had been meddling with un- 
 derhand bargains to defraud his see, he sent 
 for him to the presence chamber, and told him, 
 with open and bitter severity, that he deserved j 
 to have his surplice pulled over his ears, and to 
 be turned out of the Church on a stipend of 
 four nobles a year!* His usual success fol- 
 lowed these measures ; lands and tithes came 
 pouring into his hands ; and he issued a com- 
 mission for the repair of churches, and won for 
 it a ready obedience. t 
 
 In the midst of his labours, Wentworth turn- 
 ed aside, for a moment, to prefer a personal 
 suit to the king. Consideration in the eyes of 
 those over whom he held so strict and stern a 
 hand was beyond all things valuable to him. It 
 was, indeed, the very material of his scheme 
 of government. He appears, therefore, to have 
 felt at this time that some sudden and great pro- 
 motion from the king to himself would give his 
 government an exaltation in the eyes of that 
 " wild and rude people," of infinite importance 
 to its security. His claims upon the king were 
 immeasurable, as his services had been admit- 
 ted to be. He wrote to him to solicit an earl- 
 dom. " The ambition," he said, " which moves 
 me powerfully to serve your majesty, as my 
 obligations are above those that preceded in 
 this employment, suggests unto me an hope I 
 may be more enabled in these restless desires 
 of mine, if I might, before our meeting again 
 in Parliament, receive so great a mark of your 
 favour as to have this family honoured with an 
 earldom. I have chosen, therefore, with all 
 humbleness, to address these lines immediate- 
 ly to yourself, as one utterly purposed to ac- 
 knowledge all to your princely grace, and with- 
 out deriving the least of the privity of thanks 
 elsewhere." A characteristic desire closed the 
 letter, that " no other person know hereafter 
 your majesty found it in your wisdom not fit to 
 be done."t And such was Charles's shortsight- 
 ed and selfish wisdom ! He refused the re- 
 quest. It was sufficient for his purpose that 
 Wentworth was now indissolubly bound to him, 
 since the personal hatred his measures had al- 
 
 * See the Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 151-156, 171, 380, &c. 
 
 t One or two of the most remarkable of the measures he 
 projected incidental to this purpose of conformity may he 
 mentioned here. The reader must examine Wentworth's 
 various despatches, if he desires to master the knowledge 
 of them all. He took resolute steps to prevent the children 
 of Catholics from being sent to foreign convents for their 
 education. He proposed the erection of a vast number of 
 Protestant schools throughout Ireland, with large endow- 
 ments and able teachers. He enforced the most rigorous 
 penalties upon non-residence. See Papers, vol. i., p. 393 ; 
 vol. ii., p. 7. t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 301, 302. 
 
 ready excited in the English popular party pre- 
 cluded the possibility of his return to them. Nor 
 had Wentworth provoked the hatred of the pop- 
 ular party alone. Under his superior tyranny, 
 the lords of petty despotism had been crushed,* 
 and incapable oppressors had become the lord- 
 deputy's fiercest accusers of oppression. To 
 please the king, moreover, he had taken upon 
 himself the refusal of various offices to his 
 more importunate courtiers, careless of the odi- 
 um he provoked and scorned. To heap upon 
 him any marks of personal favour, under such 
 circumstances, was an act of courage and hon- 
 esty which the weak monarch did not dare at- 
 tempt. Such wretched tools as Buckingham 
 were more to his personal liking, though less 
 in the balance of his treasury ! " I desire you 
 not to think," he wrote, after refusing the lord- 
 deputy's suit, " that I am displeased with the 
 asking, though for the present I grant it not ; 
 for I acknowledge that noble minds are always 
 accompanied with lawful ambitions. And be 
 confident that your services have moved me 
 more than it is possible for any eloquence or 
 importunity to do ; so that your letter was not 
 the first proposer of putting marks of favour 
 on you ; and I am certain that you will willing- 
 ly stay my time, now ye know my mind so free- 
 ly, that I may do all things a mi modo."^ 
 
 This refusal was sorely felt by Wentworth. 
 Covering their allusion to the king, he threw 
 into his next despatch to Cottington some ex- 
 pressions of uneasy regret. " I spend more 
 here than I have of entertainments from his 
 majesty ; I suffer ext'reamly in my own private 
 at home ; I spend my body and spirits with ex- 
 tream toil ; I sometimes undergo the miscon- 
 structions of those I conceived should not, 
 would not have used me so. ... But I am re- 
 solved to complain of nothing. I have been 
 something unprosperous, slowly heard, and as 
 coldly answered that way. I will either sub- 
 sist by the integrity of my own actions, or I 
 will perish. "J 
 
 The lord-deputy's relief was in the measures 
 with which his enterprising genius had sur- 
 rounded him. I have alluded to his repression 
 of certain turbulences that had arisen in the 
 convocation : he now, by his personal influence, 
 prevailed with the learned Usher to surrender 
 
 * His inquiries into questionable titles and church grants 
 had exploded many a little tyrant, though in this way much 
 private wrong was done. The servants of the English 
 court, however, could never exactly understand his policy 
 in respect of opposition to the aristocracy, and especially 
 his habit of sternly refusing any presents or conciliatory 
 favours from them. I quote a characteristic passage from 
 a despatch of the Secretary Windebank : " Though, while 
 we had the happiness and honour to have your assistance 
 here at the council hoard, you made many ill faces with 
 your pen (pardon, I beseech your lordship, the over free cen- 
 sure of your Vandyking), and worse oftentimes with your 
 speeches, especially in the business of the Lord Falconberg, 
 Sir Thomas Gore, Vermuyden, and others, yet I understand 
 you make worse there in Ireland, and there never appeared 
 a worse face under a cork upon a bottle, than your lordship 
 hath caused some to make in disgorging such church liv- 
 ings as their zeal had eaten up. Another remarkable error 
 of your lordship, which makes much noise here, is that you 
 refuse all presents, for which, in one particular, you had 
 your reward ; for it is said that a servant bringing you a 
 present from his master, and your lordship refusing it, the 
 servant likewise would have none of your reward. By this 
 your lordship may perceive hnw circumspect you hnve reason 
 to be of your ways, considering how many malicious eyes 
 are upon you, and what interpretations they make of your ac- 
 tions." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 161. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 332. $ Ibid., p. 354.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 103 
 
 the ecclesiastical articles he had forwarded to 
 Ireland, and which were anything but accepta- 
 ble to Laud ; he forced upon the clergy a se- 
 ries of hateful metropolitan canons ; and, by a 
 series of measures similar in spirit to those 
 which had subdued the Parliament, he con- 
 founded and subdued the restless parsons.* 
 In an early despatch, he had to boast of only 
 one dissentient voice from a new and most as- 
 tounding " Protestant uniformity!" 
 
 The Irish common lawyers now received 
 some farther proofs of his care, with intelligi- 
 ble hints of his prospective schemes. He pre- 
 sented them with the majority of the English 
 statutes that had been passed since the time of 
 Poynings, but exacted from them certain condi- 
 tions, at the same time, which soon enabled 
 him to describe to the king, in the following 
 terms, his Irish ministers of justice : " Not de- 
 clined to serve other men's unwarrantable pur- 
 poses by any importunity or application ; nev- 
 er in so much power and estimation in the 
 state and with the subject as now, and yet con- 
 tained in that due subordination to the crown 
 as is fit ; ministering wholly to uphold the sov- 
 ereignty ; carrying a direct aspect upon the 
 prerogatives of his majesty, without squinting 
 aside upon the vulgar and vain opinions of the 
 populace."t 
 
 The army next engaged his attention. He 
 supplied them with clothes, with arms, with am- 
 munition ; he redeemed them from licentious- 
 ness,:): and strengthened them in numbers and 
 in discipline. He completed several regiments 
 of foot, collected together some most efficient 
 cavalry, and, in a very short time, astonished the 
 court in England by returns of a richly-appoint- 
 ed and well-marshalled force. They heard with 
 still greater astonishment that the lord-deputy 
 himself could find time to visit the whole ar- 
 my, and to inspect every individual in it ! And 
 he farther declared to them, that he held him- 
 self ever ready to mount horse at a moment's 
 warning, and lead a troop of his own, raised 
 and accoutred at his own charge, to repress, by 
 a sudden movement, any popular commotion. 
 Vainly, however, he strove to communicate 
 energy enough to Charles to procure his sec- 
 onding some wider schemes projected by him 
 in reference to the army. The army was the 
 keystone of that vast building which the ima- 
 gination of Wentworth had already raised in 
 the distance. The army was to hang in potent 
 control over everything, to be " the great peace- 
 maker betwixt the British and the natives, be- 
 twixt the Protestant and the Papist, and the 
 
 * See Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 342-344. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 18. 
 
 t " Whence it is that the soldier is now welcome in every 
 place, where before they were an abomination to the inhabi- 
 tants ; that hy this means the army in true account may 
 be said to be of double the strength it had been appre- 
 hended." Strafford Papers, vol ii., p. 17. 
 
 t) " For myself, I had a dead stock in horses, furniture, 
 and arms for my troop, that stood me in 6000, and all in 
 readiness upon an hour's warning to march. Nor did 1 this 
 out of vanity, but really in regard I did conceive it became 
 me not to represent so great a majesty meanly in the sight 
 of the people ; that it was of mighty reputation to the ser- 
 
 chief securer, under God and his majesty, of 
 the future and past plantations." But Went- 
 worth was foiled, by the indolent envy of his 
 English coadjutors, from realizing the great de- 
 sire he held, " that his majesty breed up and 
 have a seminary of soldiers in some part or 
 other of his dominions."* 
 
 Indolent envy and active opposition notwith- 
 standing, the general reputation of the lord- 
 deputy of Ireland increased daily. " Mr. Sec- 
 retary Cooke," wrote Lord Cottington to him, 
 " is so diligent and careful to give your lord- 
 ship an account of all your despatches and an- 
 swers to them, as there is nothing for me to 
 say, but that, for aught I can discern, every- 
 body else is so too. My lord-marshal is your 
 own, my Lord of Canterbury your chaplain, 
 Secretary Windebank your man, the king your 
 favourite, and I your good lord. In earnest 
 you have a mighty stock of opinion amongst us, 
 which must of necessity make you damnable 
 proud, if you take not heed."t The Lord-treas- 
 urer Weston alone, the old propitiator of the 
 king's regards to the quondam supporter of the 
 petition of rights, but now bitterly jealous of 
 Wentworth's friendship with Laud, scarcely 
 cared to conceal his animosity, t A fatal at- 
 tack of illness, however, at this time removed 
 Weston ; and the only alloy which served to 
 dash the secret satisfaction with which the 
 news of this event was received by Wentworth, 
 was the existence of very decided rumours 
 that the vacant staff would be offered to him- 
 self.^ 
 
 I have already touched on the many objec- 
 tions which Wentworth entertained to an of- 
 fice of this sort, and he now sought by every 
 means, and with characteristic energy, to pre- 
 vent its being offered to him at all. To hi# 
 friends who wrote to him urging its acceptance, 
 he peremptorily answered ; and, at the same 
 time, by the same messenger, forwarded vari- 
 ous requests to several of them, that they would 
 take on themselves to intimate in every quar- 
 ter, as plainly as possible, their knowledge of 
 his objection to it. In farther promotion of 
 this object, he practised a very singular piece 
 of deception. His retained gossip, Mr. Gar- 
 rard who continued faithfully and regularly, 
 in the absence of a newspaper, to fulfil all the 
 duties of one, and to retail to the deputy all 
 the occurrences and scandal of the court and 
 the city had given him, from time to time, 
 most minute accounts of the illness of Weston 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 198. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 430. 
 
 t The truth is, I conceive my lord-treasurer some time 
 before his death wished me no good, being grown extreme 
 jealous of my often writing to my Lord of Canterbury, and 
 myself, out of a sturdiness of nature, not so gently passing 
 by his unkind usage as a man of a softer and wiser temper 
 might have done ; for I confess I did stomach it very much 
 to be so meanly suspected (being as innocent and clear of 
 crime towards him as the day), considering that I had, upon 
 my coming from court, given him as strong a testimony of 
 my faith and boldness in his affairs nay, indeed, a strong- 
 er, than any other friend he had durst, or, at least, would 
 do for him. So as finding myself thus disappointed of the 
 confidence I had in his professions at our parting, I grew so 
 impatient as to profess even to himself I would borrow a 
 being from no man living but my master, and there I would 
 
 vice of the crown, when they saw me in such a posture, aa , fasten myself as surely as I could. So as by his death it is 
 that I was upon an hour's warning able to put myself on ' not altogether improbable that I am delivered of the heavi- 
 horseback, and to deliver, in spight of all opposition, a letter est adversary I ever had." Wentworth to the Earl of New 
 in any part of the kingdom ; and lastly, in regard men should castle, Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 41 1. See, also, a letter 
 tee I would not exact so much duty from any private captain of Laud's, vol. i., p. 329. 
 
 at I did myself upon my myself, being their general." 
 Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 18. 
 
 Q See Garrard's letter, in StrafFord Papers, vol. i., p. 388. 
 389.
 
 104 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 through its progressive stages, and finally had 
 reported his death.* It was Wentworth's pol- 
 icy, however, to convey to the court, that, so 
 indifferent was he in respect of Weston's of- 
 fice, he had never troubled himself to inquire 
 the probable issue of his illness, and, indeed, 
 had never heard of it. As soon, therefore, as 
 an official intimation of the occurrence was 
 sent to him from Cottington, we find him an- 
 swering thus : " My very good lord, I was nev- 
 er more surprised in my life than upon the read- 
 ing of your last letter, not having had any no- 
 tice of my lord-treasurer's least indisposition be- 
 fore. And how it happens I know not, but I 
 am sure I was never well since almost, and 
 that Monday night last I swooned twice before 
 they could get off my cloathes."t And again, 
 assuring Lord Newcastle : " Yet I protest, 1 
 ever wished well to his person, and am heart- 
 ily sorry for his death, which was signified 
 unto me by my Lord Cottington before I heard 
 anything of his sickness, and took me, in a man- 
 ner, by surprise."^. 
 
 These precautions were successful. Left 
 settled in his government of Ireland, he next 
 sought, by every possible resource, to estab- 
 lish a permanent revenue. In this pursuit, he 
 exhausted his industry, his energy, his genius. 
 Under his superintendence, the produce of the 
 customs rose, within four years, from 12,000 
 a year to 40,000, and continued to advance 
 rapidly. Nor were the means by which it was 
 accomplished other than just and honourable. 
 He improved the method of collection, protect- 
 ed the coasts, swept the Channel and the har- 
 bours of pirates, and, in fine, lifted the com- 
 merce and the shipping of Ireland into a rich 
 prosperity, by freeing it from danger. "My 
 bumble advice," observes Wentworth, " forthe 
 increase of trade was, that his majesty should 
 not suffer any act of hostility to be offered to 
 any merchants or their goods within the Chan- 
 nel, which was to be preserved and privileged, 
 as the greatest of his majesty's ports, in the 
 same nature and property as the Venetian state 
 do their Gulf, and the King of Denmark his 
 Sound ; and therefore I humbly besought his 
 majesty and their lordships that it might ac- 
 cordingly be remembered and provided for in 
 all future treaties with foreign princes." In 
 completion of this scheme, the lord-deputy 
 struggled hard to rescue the trade of Ireland 
 from several absurd restrictions and monopo- 
 lies ; and in this, having partially succeeded, 
 his government left a claim for gratitude which 
 is remaining still. $ 
 
 In resorting to just measures occasionally, 
 
 * See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 243, 374, 387, <fcc. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 393. 
 
 J Strafford Papers, p. 411. Cottington himself was a 
 candidate for the office, and never forgave Laud his disap- 
 pointment, which the profits of the mastership of the records 
 were by no means sufficient to heal over. The treasury 
 was administered by commission for twelve months, when 
 it was placed by Laud, to the astonishment of all who were 
 still unacquainted with the archbishop's designs for the state 
 advancement of the Church, in the hands of Juxon, bishop 
 of London. Laud, recording the appointment in his Diary 
 (March, 1636), observes, that " No churchman had it since 
 Henry VII. 's time ;" and adds, "Now if the Church will 
 not hold themselves up under God, I can do no more." 
 
 t) For the various measures, and the elaborate reasoning 
 with which the lord-deputy supported them, see Strafford 
 Papers, vol. i., p. 67, 90, 106, 202, 308, 393, 307, 400, 521 
 192, 351, 366, 386, 405, 174, 340, 299, &c., &c. ; and vol 
 ii., p. 18, 198, 137, 20, 89, 135, 42, 151, &c., &c. 
 
 however, when they were not found to inter- 
 fere with his ulterior schemes, Wentworth had 
 taught himself no lesson of refraining from 
 what was unjust. Money was to be had some- 
 how : if justly, well ; if not, it was to be had 
 no less. He now, for instance, imposed a li- 
 cense upon the retail of tobacco, and himself 
 farmed the privilege for an annual rent of 
 7000, and finally of 12,000. A tax was laid 
 also on brewing, by way of feeler for the intro- 
 duction of the excise an object of mortal ha- 
 tred with the Irish. 
 
 The statutes of wills and uses were intro- 
 duced, no less beneficial to the crown, and, hap- 
 pily, more just to the subject. They strength- 
 ened the tenure of property, fixed a remedy 
 against fraudulent conveyances, restored wid- 
 ows to their jointures, and heirs to their inher- 
 itances. What was vastly more important to 
 Wentworth, they increased the king's fines in 
 the Court of Wards by 10,000 a year ! A 
 mint, also, was erected in Ireland, in spite of 
 desperate opposition from the officers of the 
 English Mint, with the view of remedying the 
 excessive scarcity of coin ; workmen were in- 
 troduced from England, to sink in various parts 
 of the island for saltpetre, which Wentworth 
 fancied might be obtained to commercial pur- 
 poses ; and he made several successful efforts 
 to work the silver mines and marble quarries.* 
 
 Greater projects, too, than these, occupied 
 the mind of the lord-deputy. Before he set 
 foot in Ireland,t he had conceived the noble 
 scheme of opening a victualling trade between 
 Ireland and Spain. The distrust with which 
 the patriotic party regarded Spain may have 
 influenced him first, as if in defiance, to rise 
 superior to such " vain apprehensions ;" but be 
 that as it might, his despatches vindicate his 
 plan. They show how admirably the com- 
 modities and the wants of the respective king- 
 doms correspond, and how closely reciprocal 
 are their interests. They even supply a state- 
 ment, drawn up with enormous pains from the 
 information of various commercial agents, of 
 the commodities which each port in Spain could 
 either receive from Ireland, or give back in re- 
 turn. In one matter especially Wentworth 
 saw the source of enormous advantage, since 
 the great annual fleets to the colonies, which 
 were so often detained in the Spanish harbours 
 for want of provisions, could clearly be sup- 
 plied far more conveniently and cheaply from 
 Ireland than from any other country in Europe. 
 Contemporaneously with this measure, the lord- 
 deputy had resolved to attempt two other proj- 
 
 * I have already supplied various authorities for these 
 measures, to which I must refer the reader. With one of 
 his packets to the king, Wentworth forwarded " an ingot 
 of silver of 300 ounces, being the first that ever was got in 
 Ireland ;" accompanying it with a proud expression of his 
 hope that " this kingdom now at length, in these latter 
 ages, may not only fill up the greatness and dominion, lint 
 even the coffers and exchequer of the crown of England. 
 Sure I am, it becomes not this little one that her breasts 
 should ever be dry, nor ought she with a sparing hand to 
 communicate of her strength and wealth there, considering- 
 with what mass of treasure and streams of blood she hath, 
 been redeemed and preserved by that her elder and more 
 excellent sister. May your majesty's days be as lasting and 
 glorious as the best and purest of metals, and God Almighty 
 prosper and accomplish all your princely thoughts and coun- 
 sels, be they old or new." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 174. 
 
 t See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 93, 94. That remark- 
 able despatch was written while waiting at Westminstei 
 for the ship that was to convoy him to Dublin.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 105 
 
 ects. " And surely, sir," he wrote to the king, 
 " if we be able to furnish, and go through with 
 this undertaking increase the growth and set 
 up the manufactory of hemp and flax in that 
 your kingdom I will hope to leave your sub- 
 jects there in much happier condition than I 
 found them, without the least prejudice. to 
 your subjects here. For this is a ground I 
 take with me, that to serve your majesty com- 
 pleatly well in Ireland, we must not only endeav- 
 our to enrich them, but make sure still to hold 
 them dependant upon the crown, and not able to 
 subsist without us, which will be effected by 
 wholly laying aside the manufacture of wools 
 into cloth or stuff there, and by furnishing them 
 from this kingdom, and then making your maj- 
 esty sole merchant of all salts on that side ; 
 for thus shall they not only have their cloath- 
 ing, the improvement of all their native com- 
 modities (which are principally preserved by 
 salt), and their victual itself from hence (strong 
 ties and enforcements upon their allegiance 
 and obedience to your majesty), but a means 
 found, I trust, much to advance your majes- 
 ty's revenue upon salt, and to improve your 
 customs. The wools there grown, and the 
 cloths there worn, thus paying double duties to 
 your crown in both kingdoms, and the salt out- 
 ward here, both inward and outward there."* 
 In such principles as these, as through the ma- 
 jority of Wentworth's despotic schemes, some 
 good wrestled with the evil. The linen man- 
 ufacture, for instance, springing out of this 
 monstrous intention, turned out to be a bless- 
 ing to the island. Having learned, on his ar- 
 rival in the country, that no article for export 
 was manufactured there except a small quan- 
 tity of coarse woollen yarn, and unwilling, by 
 encouraging this branch, to interfere with the 
 staple of England, he instantly resolved, by in- 
 troducing the general cultivation of flax, to in- 
 duce the manufacture of linen. At his own 
 charge and adventure he imported and sowed 
 a quantity of superior flax seed ; the next year, 
 his first crop having outgone his expectation, 
 he expended 1000 on the same venture, erect- 
 ed a vast number of looms, procured workmen 
 from France and Flanders, and at last sent 
 forth a ship to Spain, at his own risk,t with 
 the first investment of linen that had ever 
 been exported from Ireland. Sanguine of hopes 
 so well laid, Wentworth then hazarded a pre- 
 diction which has since been amply realized. 
 " Very ambitious am I," writes he to Sir Will- 
 iam Boswell, " to set up a trade of linen- 
 cloathing in these parts, which, if God bless 
 so as it be effected, will. I dare say, be the 
 greatest enriching to this kingdom tbat ever 
 befell it."t The other project he had set up 
 along with this happily fell to the ground for 
 want of encouragement. In proposing to mo- 
 nopolize the sale of salt, without which the 
 Irish could neither carry on their victualling 
 trade nor cure their ordinary provisions, and 
 which was at that time either manufactured by 
 patentees or imported from abroad, Lord Went- 
 worth reckoned on a considerable increase of 
 revenue, and the reduction of the Irish to a 
 
 * StrafFord Papers, vol. i., p. 93, 94. 
 t See his characteristic letter to the Duke of Medina, 
 SlraflTdrrJ Papers, vol. ii., p. 109, 110. 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 473. 
 
 
 
 state of complete dependance. The internal 
 manufacture abolished, it would be next to im- 
 possible to smuggle a commodity so bulky and 
 so perishable by sea, and yet, he urged, " again 
 of so absolute necessity as it cannot possibly 
 stay upon his majesty's hand, but must be had 
 whether they will or no, and may at all times 
 be raised in price so far forth as his majesty 
 shall judge to stand with reason and honour. 
 Witness the Gabelles of salt in France."* This 
 once accomplished, Wentworth felt he would 
 have in his own hands the disposal of the food 
 and the clothing of the Irish, and he pressed it 
 with all his vehemence. " Holding them," ex- 
 claimed he, " from the "manufacture of wool 
 (which, unless otherwise directed, I shall by 
 all means discourage), and then enforcing them 
 to fetch their cloathing from thence, and to 
 take their salt from the king (being that which 
 preserves and gives value to all their native 
 staple commodities), how can they depart 
 from us without nakedness and beggary 1 which 
 in itself is so weighty a consideration as a 
 small profit should not bear down !" The 
 small profit, however, in consequence of the 
 jealousies of Weston, did bear it down, and 
 the lord-deputy was obliged at last to surren- 
 der it. 
 
 The embarrassments of the Irish treasury 
 had now vanished ; no anticipations any long- 
 er weakened it ; every charge of government 
 was paid to a day ; and, in the fifth year of his 
 power, Lord Wentworth announced to the king 
 that the annual revenue would exceed the ex- 
 penditure by 60,000. 
 
 This, then, was being " crowned with the 
 completest success !" for, according to such 
 political reasoners as M. de Lally-Tolendal, 
 the prosperity of the exchequer is the true test 
 of the wellbeing of the state, and as long as a 
 wretched people can be flattered or terrified 
 into " coining their hearts" in sums, the king 
 is ably served, and the minister is borne out in 
 his exactions. Yet Wentworth deserves bet- 
 ter advocates ; and it is perhaps due to his 
 fame as a statesman to keep in mind that we 
 do not view his system in a perfect state, since 
 the ground, as it were, had only been cleared 
 for the building w^ien Death struck down the 
 builder. 
 
 Yorkshire, meanwhile, and Wentworth 
 Woodhouse, had not been forgotten by the 
 lord-deputy ! If he had been living simply as 
 a private gentleman in Ireland, instead of being 
 the immediate manager and director of schemes 
 which would have overwhelmed the strength 
 of a dozen ordinary men, he could not have at- 
 tended with greater minuteness and apparent 
 ease to his private affairs in England. I can- 
 not resist extracting here some passages from 
 an extraordinary letter to his early tutor, Mr. 
 Greenwood, which occasion has already been 
 taken to refer to. It is one of the most singu- 
 lar proofs that could be found anywhere of the 
 compatibility of a comprehensive genius with 
 a vigilant attention to the most minute details. 
 From his viceroyalty the Lord Wentworth can 
 signify his desire " that my tenants use their 
 grounds and houses as honest men and good 
 husbands ought to do, according to their sev- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 192, 193 ; and see p. 183, 
 333, 346.
 
 106 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 eral leases ; that my woods be preserved, and 
 at due seasons felled and sold to the best 
 profit spring- woods I mean ; that the hedges 
 and fences be preserved ; that the ponds, 
 pheasants, partridges, and parks be preserved, 
 and as much profit made of the herbage of 
 Tankersly Park as may be without hurt to the 
 deer ; that fires be kept in the houses at Wood- 
 house and Tankersly, and that the housekeep- 
 ers preserve the rooms sweet, and the stuff 
 without spoil, and principally that the houses be 
 kept dry from taking of rain ;" that " the keep- 
 er of Tankersly must have the more imme- 
 diate care of the woods belonging to Tankers- 
 ly, especially those within the park, and to 
 see that the pond-heads there be kept up, and 
 the water to have a large and open passage to 
 run away in the time of flood, and the grates 
 so cleansed and firm as they break not, nor yet 
 choak up, in which cases all the fish will be 
 sure to go away with the flood." And again, 
 that " none of my demains be plowed in any 
 case. I understand in this Richard Marris 
 hath not followed my direction, which indeed, 
 now and then, if a man would never so fain, he 
 would have done. But if, upon advice taken 
 with you and Robin Rockley, you find at any 
 time good for the grounds they were broken 
 up, then would I have them plowed for my 
 own use (for I know right well the profit of those 
 new rift grounds'), taking still care that they be 
 well limed and manured, and so left as fat and 
 full in heart as might be, to which purpose I 
 would have no cost spared, for I would have 
 the grounds about my houses kept aloft, so as there 
 may be beauty and, pleasure communicated even 
 from them to the houses themselves." With these 
 desires are conveyed a vast host of minor di- 
 rections respecting the servants he would have 
 Greenwood reward, promote, confide in, or dis- 
 trust. Nor does he forget to " beseech you to 
 cause my new study there, which looks into 
 the hall, to be glazed, strong doors and locks 
 to be set upon it ; and such boxes being made 
 as are at Woodhouse, which Richard Forster 
 will, upon your direction, give notice for, the 
 evidence may be put into those boxes, and set 
 in that study, where they will be more safe and 
 handsomely kept than where, they are now. If 
 you could cause like locks to be made for that 
 study as are at Woodhouse, so that one key 
 might open the locks in both places, it were 
 much the better, and advising a little with Rich- 
 ard Forster, he might so order the matter as to 
 have them so ;" and to beg that " the red dam- 
 ask bed, with stools, canopies, chairs, &c., be- 
 longing thereunto, be carefully looked unto." 
 We learn also from this omniscient despatch, 
 that the death of his steward, Richard Marris, 
 "troubles me not so much, albeit in truth I 
 loved him very well, as the sadness and indeed 
 fearfulness of the misfortune thorough which 
 he was lost most grievous, God knows, for 
 him, and scandalous to all that have relation 
 to him ; amongst the rest, I am sure to have my 
 share. Nor do I think that he was drowned as 
 you write, for then how should one pocket be dry 1 
 But rather that, heavy with drink, he dropped from 
 his horse near the place where his cloak lay, and, 
 so it may be, amazed with the fall, was dragged 
 by the horse, and the girths loosing, left in that 
 wet place, where he was found dead, and where, 
 
 doubtless for want of company, and in a cold 
 night and lodging, stormed to death. But 
 enough of so woful a subject, which I wish 
 might never be mentioned or remembered 
 again, farther than to consider in it the just 
 judgments of God, and to deter us from this 
 swinish vice, and all other which may draw 
 down upon ourselves like punishments." Sub- 
 joining this, the course to be pursued with re- 
 spect to the brother and heir of the deceased 
 is laid down at great length, and in all its pos- 
 sible bearings, coupled with the following 
 characteristic notice : " I pray you in any case, 
 if it may be, let him be drawn to this by fair 
 and still means ; but if that work not with him, 
 then would I have you let him know that, un- 
 til the account be declared betwixt me and his 
 brother, which I am most willing and desirous 
 may be before the next spring fairly examined 
 by auditors indifferently chosen betwixt us, / 
 will hold the possession both of lands and goods ; 
 that I will assign my debt to the king, and so ex- 
 tend and keep in extent the whole estate, till I be 
 honestly and truly satisfied ; as also that I will 
 perform that last office in accomplishment of 
 that which I know was his brother's intention, 
 to see all his other creditors justly paid before 
 he meddle with the estate, but that then at 
 after I will not be his loss, by the help of God, 
 one farthing. And I pray you, if the first mild- 
 er way take not (which, if there be either hon- 
 esty or conscience in the man, methinks it 
 should), then to proceed roundly the other 
 way, holding all you have, putting the bonds of 
 Darcy Wentworth and Pieter Man in suit upon 
 the land, and keeping all in the state you have 
 already so well settled them, till my coming 
 over." The reverend gentleman had previous- 
 ly been given to understand that, " as for all 
 my rents, the course I desire to be held is thus : 
 A month after every rent day, I would have a 
 time appointed when yourself and Robert Rock- 
 ley may meet, and all the bailiffs be appointed 
 to attend you : there receive their accounts, 
 giving them strict charge to gather what shall 
 be behind, and to bring the remainder and fin- 
 ish their account at Thornhill within a month 
 after. And I beseech you give them no spa- 
 ring, for I have suffered very much by it ; how- 
 ever, I never could perceive my tenants were 
 a groat the better ; besides, when they find 
 they shall be distrained upon, they will observe 
 their day carefully, so as within a rent day or 
 two, this course strictly observed, the rents 
 will come in without any stop." The whole 
 production is, indeed, impressed with the pe- 
 culiarities of Wentworth's subtle and energet- 
 ic genius ; nor was there reason for <VIr. Green- 
 wood to doubt, as he is at the close assured, 
 that the writer " upon a good occasion would 
 not deny his life to him." 
 
 So also, burdened with his mighty schemes, 
 the lord-deputy found time for every office of 
 private service, of friendship, and of scholar- 
 like amusement. He made his newsman, Mr. 
 Garrard, forward him copies of Dr. Donne's 
 poetry,* which he was amazingly fond of; 
 gathered antiquities for the king ;t vanquished 
 Inigo Jones in a discussion on architecture ;J 
 reared a young greyhound among his own chil- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 338, &c. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 82. i Ibid., p. 83.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 107 
 
 dren for the little Prince of York ;* corre- 
 sponded with old friends in Yorkshire ;t dis- 
 cussed with Vandyke on various marbles ; 
 hunted, hawked, J and played at the games of 
 primero and mayo. " He played excellently 
 well," says RadclifTe ; " and for company sake, 
 in Christmas, and after supper, he would play 
 sometimes ; yet he never was much taken with 
 it, nor used it excessively, but as a recreation 
 should be used. His chief recreation was after 
 supper, when, if he had company which were 
 suitable unto him, that is, honest, chearful men, 
 he would retire into an inner room, and set 
 two or three hours, taking tobacco and telling 
 stories with great pleasantness and freedom ; and 
 this he used constantly, with all familiarity in 
 private, laying then aside all state and that due 
 respect which in public he would expect." 
 
 Never for a single instant, however, were 
 the public affairs suffered to wait his leisure 
 They threatened now to demand more than 
 ordinary care, for the king had resolutely 
 thwarted the deputy in his desire to continue 
 the Parliament. "My reasons," he wrote, 
 " are grounded upon my experience of them 
 here. They are of the nature of cats they 
 ever grow curst with age ; so that if ye will 
 have good of them, put them off handsomely 
 when they come to any age, for young ones 
 are ever most tractable. . . . Now that we are 
 well, let us content ourselves there with, "ij 
 Charles, at the same time, had urged upon his 
 minister the preferable course of following out 
 their plans (which were far more favoured with 
 himself than even a submissive Irish Parlia- 
 ment), of increasing the estates of the crown 
 by a search after defective titles. Wentworth, 
 upon this, set resolutely to work. He exam- 
 ined various old records, and discovered that 
 the whole province of Connaught, on the for- 
 feiture of its Irish chieftain, had lapsed, many 
 years ago, to the crown. It had, indeed, even 
 since that time, again been granted away, but 
 the court lawyers now either found flaws in 
 the conveyances or made them. It will be 
 recollected that a recognition of the validity 
 of such titles formed one of the obnoxious 
 " graces" which Wentworth had laid to sleep 
 so soundly. 
 
 Pledging himself at once to the king, there- 
 fore, that he would reduce Connaught to the 
 absolute possession of the crown, the lord- 
 deputy proceeded into the county of Roscom- 
 mon, summoned a jury composed of " persons 
 of such means as might answer the king a 
 
 * The Countess of Dorset had preferred the request, to 
 which Wentworth instantly answered : " I did, with all 
 gladness, receive from your ladyship, by this bearer, the 
 first commands it ever 'pleased our young master to honour 
 me withal, and before Christmas I will not fail to furnish 
 his highness with the finest greyhound this kingdom af- 
 fords ; till then I shall humbly crave his highness's pardon ; 
 for to send any before I may have convenient time, under my 
 own eye, to be sure he is of a safe and gentle disposition, 
 and that I may try him here first, how he shall behave him- 
 self amongst my own children, were the greatest indiscre- 
 tion and boldness in me possible. And albeit I assure my- 
 self your ladyship's care and other his highness's attend- 
 ants would be such as the dog should do no harm, yet that 
 were no thanks to me." Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 303. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 116. 
 
 t " In his later days," Radcliffe observes, "he got little 
 time to see his hawks fly, though he always kept good 
 ones." 
 
 t> Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 365. Wentworth's previ- 
 ous entreaties for a prorogation will be found at p. 353. 
 
 round fine in the Castle-chamber in case they 
 should prevaricate, and who, in all seeming, 
 even out of that reason, would be more fearful 
 to tread shamefully and impudently aside from 
 the truth than such as had less, or nothing to 
 lose,"* told them that his present appeal to 
 them was a mere act of courtesy, and, in re- 
 turn for a series of deep and significant threats, 
 received a ready obedience. The same scenes, 
 with the same results, were acted in Mayo and 
 Sligo, and Lord Wentworth went on to Galway. 
 
 Here he was prepared for opposition. The 
 people, chiefly Roman Catholics, were sup- 
 ported by a formidable body of priests, and had 
 the strenuous countenance and assistance of 
 their hereditary lord, the Earl of St. Alban's 
 and Clanricarde, a nobleman of esteem at the 
 English court. The spirit of Wentworth rose 
 at the prospect, and he prepared the court, in 
 a memorable despatch, for the measures they 
 were to expect from him : " If it be followed 
 with just severity," he wrote, " this opposition 
 will prove of great use to the crown, as any 
 one thing that hath happened since this plan- 
 tation fell in proposition. It shall not only, 
 with a considerable addition of revenue, bring 
 security to this county, which of the whole 
 kingdom most requires it, but make all the 
 succeeding plantations pass with the greatest 
 quietness that can be desired ; whereas, if this 
 froward humour be negligently or loosely han- 
 dled, it will not only blemish the honour and 
 comeliness of that which is effected already, 
 but cut off all hope for the future." He sum- 
 moned a jury on the same principle as in the 
 preceding counties. They were obstinate in 
 their refusal to obey him. The sheriff who 
 had selected them was instantly fined 1000 ; 
 the jurors themselves were cited into the Cas- 
 tle-chamber, and fined 4000 each ; and the 
 Earl of Clanricardet received a heavy repri- 
 mand from the court, and was made to suffer 
 severely. Bitter murmurs were heard in Ire- 
 land, and men spoke out more strongly in Eng- 
 land. But the deputy knew no fear. " This 
 comfort I have to support me against the mal- 
 ice of this race of sturdy beggars, that howbeit 
 they threaten me with a Felton or a Ravillac, 
 yet my master is pleased graciously to accept 
 of my endeavours, and to say publicly at coun- 
 cil-board the crown of England was never so 
 well served on this side as since my coming to 
 the government.":): 
 
 Exasperated, nevertheless, with these signs 
 of opposition, he now thought to silence them 
 ffectually by one terrible warning. His knowl- 
 dge of the character of the vice-treasurer, the 
 Lord Mountnorris, has been already shown, 
 and I have quoted the deeply significant inti- 
 mation which opened their official connexion, 
 vlountnorris had long disregarded this, and 
 lad, indeed, omitted no opportunity which his 
 )lace afforded him of thwarting in every possi- 
 )le way the schemes of Wentworth. A trifling 
 ircumstance now gave the latter an occasion 
 of punishment. Severely afflicted with the 
 ;out for so frightful were his bodily infirmi- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 442 ; a despatch in which 
 he entire proceedings are characteristically given. 
 
 t For the representations made by Wentworth against 
 his nobleman, see Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 451, 479, 
 492 ; and vol. ii., p. 31, 35, 365, 381. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 412 ; and see p. 371.
 
 108 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ties that freedom from one complaint seldom 
 failed to be followed by thraldom to another 
 the lord-deputy sat one day in the presence- 
 chamber, when one of his attendants a Mr. 
 Annesley, a distant relation of the Lord Mount- 
 norris accidentally dropped a stool upon his 
 foot. " Enraged with the pain whereof," says 
 Clarendon, " his lordship with a small cane 
 struck Annesley. This being merrily spoken 
 of at dinner at the lord-chancellor's table, 
 where the Lord Mountnorris was, he said, 
 ' the gentleman had a brother that would not 
 have taken such a blow.' "* These words 
 were spoken in the month of April. Eaves- 
 droppers reported them to Wentworth, who 
 instantly forwarded a messenger to London to 
 bring back a king's commission for the trial 
 of Mountnorris. It was sent at his request. 
 Not till December, however, was any farther 
 step taken, though the interim had been em- 
 ployed in giving security to the lord-deputy's 
 purpose. 
 
 In December, Mountnorris received a sum- 
 mons to attend a council of war the next morn- 
 ing. Ignorant of the cause of so sudden a 
 movement, he was vainly asking his brother 
 councillors to explain it, when Wentworth en- 
 tered, produced the king's commission, charged 
 Lord Mountnorris with an attempt to stir up 
 mutiny against himself as general of the army, 
 and ordered the charge to be read. It ran 
 to this effect : That it having been mentioned 
 at the lord-chancellor's table that Annesley had 
 let a stool fall on the lord-deputy's foot, Mount- 
 norris had scornfully and contemptuously said, 
 " Perhaps it was done in revenge of that pub- 
 lic affront that my lord-deputy did me formerly ; 
 but I have a brother who would not have taken 
 such a revenge." In vain the accused fell on 
 his knees, and requested time for consultation ; 
 in vain he demanded even a copy of the charge, 
 or permission to retain counsel : everything 
 was denied to him ; the lord-deputy cited two 
 articles of war which rendered him amenable 
 to imprisonment and to death ; demanded from 
 the councillors the immediate and summary 
 judgment of a court-martial on both the arti- 
 cles ; and sternly silenced a proposal which 
 they ventured to submit, of separating the char- 
 ges. Guilty the accused was to be voted, " of 
 both or of none ! " Even Lord Moore, one of the 
 councillors who, with Sir R. Loftus, the broth- 
 er of another councillor, had proved Went- 
 worth's case was ordered to resume his seat, 
 and judge the man whom he had accused ! 
 Under the eye of the lord-deputy the council 
 then deliberated and voted ; and their sentence 
 condemned Mountnorris to imprisonment, de- 
 prived him of all his offices, ignominiously dis- 
 missed him from the army, incapacitated him 
 from ever serving again, and finally left him to 
 be shot, or beheaded, at the pleasure of the 
 general. Before the whole court Lord Went- 
 worth then expressed exultation : " the sen- 
 tence was just and noble, and for his part, he 
 would not lose his share of the honour of it !" 
 He turned afterward to the unfortunate Mount- 
 norris ; told him that now, if he chose, he had 
 
 * Clarendon, vol. i., p. 174. This statement is borne 
 out by Baillie's letters. Rushworth, on the other hand, 
 gives it as Wentworth's witnesses afterward swore to it. 
 Collections, vol. iii., p. 187 ; and see Nalsoa's Collections, 
 vol. i., p. 59. 
 
 only to order execution, but that he would pe- 
 tition for his life, and " would sooner lose his 
 hand than Mountnorris should lose his head." 
 
 His purpose was to be more effectually an- 
 swered, in truth, by a contemptuous pardon, 
 and this, from the first, he appears to have de- 
 signed, trusting to the general ignominy that 
 would be thrown over Mountnorris to crush 
 any after-attempt he might make against his 
 own power. The remarks which have been 
 already made on other personal oppressions 
 apply here with still greater force, and to the 
 system which Wentworth had to uphold should 
 the horror and reproach be carried. It is 
 certain that, at the period of this proceeding, 
 Lord Clarendon has justly described the is- 
 sue to which the positions of the parties had 
 brought them : " That either the deputy of Ire- 
 land must destroy my Lord Mountnorris while 
 he continued in his office, or my Lord Mount- 
 norris must destroy the deputy as soon as his 
 commission was determined."* Wentworth 
 was not the man to leave this issue in the 
 hands of chance, nor, at the same time, to 
 blind himself to the results of such conduct as 
 the necessity had forced upon him. " But if, 
 because I am necessitated to preserve myself 
 from contempt and scorn, and to keep and re- 
 tain with me a capacity to serve his majesty 
 with that honour becoming the dignity of that 
 place I here by his majesty's favour exercise, 
 therefore I must be taken to be such a rigid 
 Cato Censorius as should render me almost in- 
 hospitable to humane kind, yet shall not that 
 persuade me to suffer myself to be trodden 
 upon by men indeed of that savage and inso- 
 lent nature they would have me believed to be, 
 or to deny unto myself and my own subsist- 
 ence so natural a motion as is the defence of a 
 man's self." 
 
 The wife of Mountnorris was a kinswoman 
 of the Lady Arabella Hollis, whose memory 
 Wentworth cherished with such enthusiasm, 
 and " in the name and by the memory of her" 
 hoping that God would so reward him. for it 
 upon " the sweet children of her kinswoman," 
 Lady Mountnorris, immediately after the sen- 
 tence, in a deeply pathetic letter, besought 
 Wentworth to take " his heavy hand from off 
 her dear lord."t Every writer concurs in sta- 
 ting that this letter was coldly and contemptu- 
 ously disregarded by the lord deputy, but an 
 extract from one of his despatches may at least 
 serve to throw some doubt over such a state- 
 ment. " I send you," he writes to Secretary 
 Cooke, "here enclosed the sentence of the 
 council of war in the case of the Lord Mount- 
 
 norris I foresee full well how I shall be 
 
 skirmished upon for it on that side : causeless 
 traducing and calumniating of me is a spirit 
 that hath haunted me through the whole course 
 of my life, and now become so ordinary a food 
 as the sharpness and bitterness of it, in good 
 faith, distempers not my taste one jot. Final- 
 ly, as I formerly signed the sentence together 
 
 * The reader may be referred, in case he desires to pur- 
 sue this subject farther, to the most ample materials of judg- 
 ment and discrimination as to the character and bearing of 
 
 the parties. Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 73, 76, 1 19, 250, 349, 
 388, 392, 402, et seq., 448, 497, et seq., 502, 504, 508, et seq., 
 511, et seq., 514, 519; and to vol. ii., p. 5, 14. et seq., and 
 145. The unfortunate want of an index to the Strafford 
 Papers makes these references necessary, 
 t Clarendon's State Papers, vol. i., p. 449.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 109 
 
 with them, so do I most heartily now join in 
 their letters to you, where we all become hum- 
 ble petitioners to his majesty for his life, which 
 was, God knows, so little looked after by me, 
 that howbeit I hold under favour the sentence 
 most just, yet were it left me in choice wheth- 
 er he must lose his head or I my hand, this 
 should redeem that. His lordship was prison- 
 er in this castle some two days, but upon his 
 physician's certificate that the badness of his lodg- 
 ing might prejudice his health, I sent him upon 
 good bond restrained only to his own house, where 
 he is like to remain till I receive his majesty's far- 
 ther pleasure concerning him." It is most un- 
 likely that such an extraordinary favour as this 
 had been granted on the application of a phy- 
 sician merely, while the lord-deputy had an ob- 
 vious reason for keeping out of sight the influ- 
 ence of the lady. 
 
 Some short time after, Mountnorris, on con- 
 dition of submitting to Wentworth, and ac- 
 knowledging the justice of his sentence, re- 
 ceived his liberty. Prosecutions, however, 
 had been lodged against him meanwhile in the 
 Star Chamber, and he felt himself a lowered 
 and wellnigh beggared man. "At my Lord 
 Mountnorris his departure hence," writes the 
 deputy, "he seemed wondrously humbled, as 
 much as Chaucer's friar,* that would not for 
 him anything should be dead ; so I told him I 
 never wished ill to his estate nor person farther 
 than to remove him thence, where he was as well a 
 trouble as an offence unto me; that being done 
 (howbeit thorough his own fault with more 
 prejudice to him than I intended), I could 
 wish there were no more debate betwixt us ; 
 and I told him that, if he desired it, I would 
 spare my prosecution against him in the Star 
 Chamber there." Immediately before this pas- 
 sage occurs, in the same letter, Wentworth 
 had remarked, " I assure you I have had a 
 churlish winter of this ; nor hath the gout been 
 without other attendants that do prognostic no 
 long life for me here below ! which skills not 
 much. He lives more that virtuously and gener- 
 ously spruds one month, than some other that 
 may chance to dream out some years, and bury 
 himself alive all the while." The life of the 
 
 * Chaucer and Dr. Donne appear to have been Went- 
 worth's favourite poets. Chaucer indeed, to the court 
 readers of that day, was as Shakspeare in our own. It is 
 clear, too, from the frequent use of peculiar expressions in 
 his despatches, that the lord-deputy was not unacquainted, 
 and that intimately, with the great dramatist, though he 
 never, as with Chaucer and Donne, quotes connected pas- 
 sages. It is worth subjoining, as an instance out of many, 
 one of Wentworth's sneers at Sir Piers Crosby that " trifle 
 Crosby," as he elsewhere calls him. " Since his depar- 
 ture I have neither heard from him nor of him, more than 
 that he vouchsafed with his pretty composed looks to give 
 the Gallway agents countenance and courtship before the 
 eyes of all the good people that looked upon them, gracing 
 and ushering them to and from all their appearings before 
 the lords ; there is no more to be added in his case but 
 these two verses of old Jeffrey Chaucer : 
 
 ' Nowhere so busy a man as he ther n'as, 
 And yet he seemed busier than he was.' " 
 
 When the newsmonger Garrard heard of the affair of 
 Mountnorris, he quotes Dr. Donne, as if to communicate 
 some tender sympathy to his lordship in that way : " When 
 first I heard the news, which was on St. Stephen's day, and 
 how all men talked of it, it disorder'd me, it brake my sleep, 
 I waked at four in the morning, it made me herd the next 
 day less in company ; not that I believed what was said, 
 but that I had no oracle, no such friend on the sudden to 
 go to, who could give such satisfaction as I desired. No- 
 blest lord, your letter hath done it ; what Dr. Donne writ 
 once is most true, Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls, 
 *br thus friends absent speak," <fcc. 
 
 lord-deputy had, indeed, in the intensity of sen- 
 sation it had required for its sustainment, cov- 
 ered a larger span of existence than years can 
 measure, and now the term that remained to 
 it was fated to be dashed with almost unceas- 
 ing anxieties and troubles, more bitter in pro- 
 portion to the temperament they wrought on. 
 
 His anticipations of the enmity that would 
 be provoked against him by the case of Mount- 
 norris were more than realized. Laud ventur- 
 ed to intimate to him, " I find that, notwith- 
 standing all your great services in Ireland, 
 which are most graciously accepted by the 
 king, you want not them which whisper, and 
 perhaps speak louder where they think they 
 may, against your proceedings in Ireland, as 
 being over-full of personal prosecutions against 
 men of quality And this is somewhat loud- 
 ly spoken by some on the queen's side I 
 
 know you have a great deal more resolution in 
 you than to decline any service due to the king, 
 state, or Church, for the barking of discontent- 
 ed persons ; and God forbid but you should ; 
 and yet, my lord, if you could find a way to 
 do all these great services and decline these 
 storms, I think it would be excellent well 
 thought on."* To this advice succeeded other 
 galling announcements. Lord Clanricarde died 
 suddenly, from a broken heart, it was said, in 
 consequence of the Galway proceedings ; and 
 the death of the sheriff of that county, who had 
 been imprisoned by Wentworth, immediately 
 followed. Both of these deaths were laid at 
 his door. " They might as well," exclaimed 
 the lord-deputy, adverting to the first, " they 
 might as well have imputed unto me for a crime 
 his being threescore and ten years old !" With 
 cooler satire he put off the fate of the sheriff. 
 " They will lay the charge of Darcy the sher- 
 iff's death unto me. My arrows are cruel that 
 wound so mortally ! but I should be more sorry, 
 by much, the king should lose his fine." Still this 
 did not subdue the daily increasing murmurs ; 
 one exaggeration begot another ; and he re- 
 solved at last, by a sudden public appearance 
 in England, to confound his accusers, and, 
 even in their very teeth, to throw for new 
 marks of favour. 
 
 Permission having been obtained from the 
 king, Wentworth appeared at the English court 
 in May, 1 636. He was recerved. with the high- 
 est favour, and so delighted the king with his 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 479. Lord Cottington's ac- 
 count was something different : " You said right, that Mount- 
 norris his business wou'd make a great noise ; for so it hath 
 amongst ignorant, but especially ill-affected people ; but it 
 hath struck little among the wiser son, and begins to be 
 blown away amongst the rest." His lordship, in the same 
 letter, communicates to Wentworth a remarkable sequel to 
 the affair. The lord-deputy, in order to procure Mount- 
 norris's offices for his favourites (chiefly young Loftus. the 
 husband of a lady who has been before adverted to), had 
 proposed to distribute 6000 as a sort of purchase of them, 
 to the principal English ministers. (Strafford Papers, vol. 
 i., p. 508.) The sly old courtier Cottington, however, into 
 whose hands the business fell, hit on a more notable expedi- 
 ent. " When William Raylton first told me," he writes, 
 " of your lordship's intention touching Mountnorris's place 
 for Sir Adam Loftus, and the distribution of moneys for the 
 effecting thereof, I fell upon the right way, which was, to 
 
 uiis jjusi your lorusmp win receive nis majesty s lener tu 
 that effect, so as there you have your business done with- 
 out noise." The money happened to be particularly wel- 
 come to Charles, who had just been purchasing an estate ! 
 See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 311.
 
 110 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 account of the various measures by which he 
 had consolidated the government of Ireland, 
 that he was entreated by his majesty to repeat 
 the details " at a very full council." " How- 
 beit I told him I feared his majesty might be 
 wearied with the repetition of so long a narra- 
 tive, being no other than he had formerly heard, 
 and that I desired, therefore, I might give my 
 account to the lords without his majesty's far- 
 ther expense of time, yet he told me it was 
 worthy to be heard twice, and that he was will- 
 ing to have it so."* No wonder! A more 
 striking description was never spoken. He de- 
 tailed all the measures he had accomplished 
 for the Church, the army, and the revenue, for 
 manufactures and commerce, for the laws and 
 their administration, and through every vigor- 
 ous and well-aimed word shone the author of 
 all those measures ! Wentworth adverted, to- 
 wards the close of his relation, to " some par- 
 ticulars wherein I have been very undeservedly 
 and bloodily traduced." He mentioned the 
 slanders that had been circulated, proclaiming 
 him " a severe and austere hard-conditioned 
 man, rather indeed a basha of Buda, than the 
 minister of a pious Christian king." His report 
 of what followed is a direct illustration of much 
 that has been advanced in this memoir. " How- 
 beit, if I were not much mistaken in myself, it 
 was quite the contrary ; no man could show 
 wherein I had expressed it in my nature, no friend 
 I had would charge me with it in my private con- 
 versation, no creature had found it in the mana- 
 ging of my own private affairs, so as if I stood 
 clear in all these respects, it was to be confessed 
 by any equal mind that it was not anything with- 
 in, but the necessity of his majesty' 1 s service, which 
 enforced me into a seeming strictness outwardly. 
 And that was the reason indeed ; for where I 
 found a crown, a Church, and a people spoiled, 
 I could not imagine to redeem them from un- 
 der the pressure with gracious smiles and gen- 
 tle looks. It would cost warmer water than 
 so ! True it was, that where a dominion was 
 once gotten and settled, it might be stayed and 
 kept where it was by soft and moderate coun- 
 sels, but where a sovereignty (be it spoken 
 with reverence) was going down the hill, the 
 nature of a man did so easily slide into the 
 paths of an uncontrolled liberty as it would not 
 be brought back without strength, nor be forced 
 up the hill again but by vigour and force. And 
 true it was indeed, I knew no other rule to gov- 
 ern by but by reward and punishment ; and I 
 must profess, that where I found a person well 
 and entirely set for the service of my master, 
 I should lay my hand under his foot, and add 
 to his respect and power all I might, and that 
 where I found the contrary, I should not han- 
 dle him in my arms, or soothe him in his unto- 
 ward humour, but if he came in my reach, so 
 far as honour and justice would warrant me, I 
 must knock him soundly over the knuckles ; 
 but no sooner he become a new man, apply 
 himself as he ought to the government, but I 
 also change my temper, and express myself to 
 him, as unto that other, by all the good offices 
 I could do him. If this be sharpness, if this be 
 
 * See Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 13-22. The despatch 
 in which Wentworth again, for the third time, details his 
 remarkable narrative, is addressed to Wandesford, who, in 
 the mean while, was administering the Irish government. 
 
 severity, I desired to be instructed better by 
 his majesty and their lordships, for in truth it 
 did not seem so to me ; however, if I were 
 once told that his majesty liked not to be thus 
 served, I would readily conform myself, follow 
 the bent and current of my own disposition, 
 which is to be quiet, not to have debates and 
 disputes with any. Here his majesty inter- 
 rupted me, and said that was no severity, wish- 
 ed me to go on in that way, for if I served him 
 otherwise I should not serve him as he expect- 
 ed from me." 
 
 Wentworth left the court for "Wentworth 
 Woodhouse loaded with the applause of the 
 king and his lords of the council, and followed 
 by the awful gaze of doubting multitudes. 
 
 As he passed through York he was arrested 
 by enthusiastic friends, and with some difficul- 
 ty escaped them. " I am gotten hither," he 
 writes to Laud, " at last, to a poor house I 
 have, having been this last week almost feast- 
 ed to death at York. In truth, for anything I 
 can find, they were not ill pleased to see me. 
 Sure I am it much contented me to be amongst 
 my old acquaintance, which I would not leave 
 for any other affection I have, but to that which 
 I both profess and owe to the person of his sa- 
 cred majesty. Lord ! with what quietness in 
 myself could I live here in comparison of that 
 noise and labour I meet with elsewhere ; and, 
 I protest, put up more crowns in my purse at 
 the year's end too ! But we'll let that pass ; 
 for I am not like to enjoy that blessed condi- 
 tion upon earth ; and therefore my resolution 
 is set to endure and struggle with it so long as 
 this crazy body will bear it', and finally drop 
 into the silent grave, where both all these 
 (which I now could, as I think, innocently de- 
 light myself in) and myself are to be forgotten. 
 And fare them well ! I persuade myself exuto 
 Lepido I am able to lay them down very quiet 
 ly."* 
 
 His rest was extremely short, for he soon 
 reappeared in York, discharged several of the 
 duties of his presidency, and fell with all his 
 accustomed vigour on the collection of ship- 
 money. That famous tax had recently been 
 levied. The same success waited upon Went- 
 worth's present measures in respect to it as 
 the capacity and energy which animated all he 
 did almost invariably commanded. In every 
 other county, murmurs, threats, and curses 
 accompanied the payment ; in Yorkshire, du- 
 ring Wentworth's presence, silence. His let- 
 ter to the king reads like one of his Irish de- 
 spatches. " In pursuit of your commands, I 
 have effectually, both in public and private, 
 recommended the justice and necessity of the 
 shipping business, and so clearly shown it to 
 be, not only for the honour of the kingdom in 
 general, but for every man's particular safety, 
 that I am most confident the assessment this 
 next year will be universally and cheerfully 
 answered within this jurisdiction."? 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii.. p. 26. 
 
 t In a subsequent letter Wentworth wrote : I forgot in 
 my last humbly to offer my opinion, that in case your maj- 
 esty find or apprehend any backwardness in the south, it 
 were pood the next year's writs for the shipping assessment 
 were hastened first down into these parts, where they are 
 sure to find no opposition or unwillingness, which example 
 may rather further than hinder in the right way which 
 others ought to follow elsewhere."
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The lord-deputy, as the time approached for 
 bis return to his government, unburdened him- 
 self of a suit to the king which he now felt 
 concerned him daily more and more. For the 
 second time he entreated from Charles the 
 honour of an earldom. He begged it in refu- 
 tation of the malicious insinuations of his ene- 
 mies, to prove that their calumnies were dis- 
 believed, and to strengthen him in the eyes of 
 the Irish. At the same time he wrote to Laud, 
 telling him plainly the use the enemies of the 
 state were making of the king's withholding 
 from his deputy some public mark of his fa- 
 vour, and urging the danger it threatened to his 
 authority and to the public service. Again 
 Wentworth's suit was rejected. Since Charles's 
 last answer, his reasons for refusal had in- 
 creased every way. His reply was peremptory. 
 " Believe it, the marks of my favours that stop 
 malicious tongues are neither places nor titles, 
 but the little welcome I give to accusers, and 
 the willing ear I give to my servants." The 
 jest with which his majesty's letter closed did 
 not mend the matter. " I will end with a rule 
 that may serve for a statesman, a courtier, or a 
 lover never make a defence or apology before 
 you be accused." The lord-deputy felt this deep- 
 ly. " I wish," he wrote to Laud, " thorough the 
 opinion that I stand not full to his majesty's 
 liking in my service in this place, his majesty's 
 affairs may not suffer as well as myself. But 
 fall that as it may, I am resolved never to stir 
 that stone more, dead to me it is to be for 
 ever. Indeed, I neither think of it, nor look for 
 it." His friend George Butler he recommend- 
 ed to look for rewards and punishments in the 
 next world ; " for in good faith, George, all be- 
 low are grown wonderous indifferent." Nor 
 did Wentworth scruple to exhibit very broadly 
 to the king the still rankling disappointment. 
 " Out of the truth of my heart," he wrote, 
 " and with that liberty your majesty is pleased 
 to afford me (which shall nevertheless ever re- 
 tain all the humility, modesty, and secrecy pos- 
 sible), admit me to say, reward well applied 
 advantages the services of kings extreamly 
 much ; it being most certain that not one man 
 of very many serve their masters for love, but 
 for their own ends and preferments, and that 
 he is in the rank of the best servants that can 
 be content to serve his master together with 
 himself. Finally, I am most confident, were 
 your majesty purposed but for a while to use 
 the excellent wisdom God hath given you in 
 the constant, right, and quick applying of re- 
 wards and punishments, it were a thing most 
 easy for your servants in a very few years, 
 under your conduct and protection, so to settle 
 all your affairs and dominions as should render 
 you, not only at home, but abroad also, the 
 most powerful and considerable king in Chris- 
 tendom."* 
 
 With Laud, Wentworth communicated more 
 freely on this subject, and in one of his more 
 desponding letters suddenly consoles himself 
 with Dr. Donne and Vandyke. " I most hum- 
 bly thank your lordship for your noble care and 
 counsel tending to the preservation of my 
 health, a free bounty it is of your love towards 
 me, where otherwise of myself I am so won- 
 drous little considerable to anybody else. The 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 41. 
 
 Lady Astrea, the poet tells us, is long since 
 gone to heaven, but under favour I can yet find 
 reward and punishment on earth. Indeed, 
 sometimes they are like Doctor Donn's ' ana- 
 gram of a good face,'* the ornaments missed, 
 a yellow tooth, a red eye, a white lip or so ! 
 and seeing that all beauties take not all affec- 
 tions, one man judging that a deformity which 
 another considers as a perfection or a grace, 
 this, methinks, convinceth the certain incer- 
 tainty of rewards and punishments. Howso- 
 ever, he is the wisest commonly, the greatest, 
 and happiest man, and shall surely draw the 
 fairest table of his life, that understands, with 
 Vandike, how to dispose of these shadows best 
 to make up his own comeliness and advan- 
 tage."! Whereupon his grace of Canterbury 
 warns the lord-deputy from Vandyke and Dr. 
 Donne into the book of Ecclesiastes : "Once 
 for all, if you will but read over the short book 
 of Ecclesiastes, while these thoughts are in 
 you, you will see a better disposition of these 
 things, and the vanity of all their shadows, 
 than is to be found in any anagrams of Dr 
 Donne's, or any designs of Vandyke ; so to the 
 lines there drawn I leave you."J 
 
 Disappointed of that public mark of favour 
 he had claimed so justly, but strengthened by 
 private instructions^ from the king which left 
 no bound or limit to his power, Lord Went- 
 worth returned to Ireland. He resumed his 
 measures precisely at the point in which he 
 had left them, overawed every effort to disturb 
 the breathless tranquillity which his energy had 
 inspired, and under his vigilant eye the infant 
 cultivation, manufactures, and commerce of the 
 country began to increase and prosper. " While 
 the subject enjoyed security from the entire sup- 
 pression of internal insurrections and depreda- 
 tions, the royal revenues, arising from prod- 
 uce and consumption, experienced a rapid in- 
 crease. "II This " security," however, was nev- 
 er felt to be other than that of absolutism, for 
 Wentworth, hand in hand with his most stri- 
 king financial improvements, carried on his in- 
 quiries into defective titles with a terrible rigour. 
 He placed at the king's disposal the entire dis- 
 trict of Ormond, and in his Irish exchequer the 
 sum of 15,000, wrung from the family of the 
 O'Byrnes in Wicklow, to redeem their posses- 
 sions from a similar award. Successful in ev- 
 ery effort he made, he did not care to call into 
 request the new powers he had been intrusted 
 with. 
 
 Not a messenger or a letter arrived from 
 England, however, without news that dashed 
 his prosperity and his pride. He saw as much 
 
 * " Marry and love thy Flavia, for she 
 
 Hath all things whereby others beauteous be ; 
 For though her eyes be small, her mouth is great ; 
 Though theirs be ivory, yet her teeth be jet ; 
 
 <tc. <tc. <fco. 
 
 What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red ; 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Though all her parts be not in th' usual place, 
 She hath yet the anagrams of a good face !" 
 
 Second Elegy. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 159. t Ibid., p. 169. 
 <) See his letter to Wandcsford, Strafford Papers, vol. ii., 
 p. 13, et seq. 
 
 II Mr. MacDiarmid, whose summary of Wentworth's finan- 
 cial measures is very able. I have occasionally availed my- 
 self of it. See Lives of British Statesmen, vol. ii., p. 170- 
 181. The despatches of the lord-deputy, in the early por- 
 tion of the second volume of the Strafford Papers, are sin- 
 gularly powertul.
 
 112 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 beyond the narrow vision of the English cour- 
 tiers as his sagacity outreached theirs, and, in 
 the hollow madness of their measures, had al- 
 ready discerned disastrous issues. The ruin 
 they were precipitating, he bitterly knew would 
 involve himself; yet he had not even the poor 
 consolation of feeling that the only portion of the 
 king's service that had in it any of the elements 
 of stability, his own government, had a single 
 hearty defender in that English court. Their 
 praises obsequiously waited on his presence 
 alone. Laud, indeed, was still his friend ; but 
 Laud's ecclesiastical administration had by this 
 time wellnigh incapacitated its master for any 
 purpose of good. The popular party in Eng- 
 land, meanwhile, taking advantage of the oc- 
 casion, raised a loud and violent voice of clam- 
 our against the lord-deputy of Ireland. He 
 flung it back, in the hasty self-bullying of his 
 will, with a contemptuous scorn ;* but he knew 
 secretly its power, and in his graver despatch- 
 es warned the court from leaving him unpro- 
 tected to its effects : " With the disesteem of 
 the governor," he wrote, " the government 
 shall impair, if not in the existence, sure in the 
 beauty of it, which is as considerable as that 
 most men are guided and- guide themselves by 
 opinion. So as, if you will have my philosophy 
 in the point, let no prince employ a servant 
 longer than he is resolved to have him valued 
 and esteemed by others, thorough those pow- 
 ers he shall manifest to be intrusted with him." 
 Still he saw no symptoms of what he desired, 
 and at last he wrote personally to the king. 
 " Sir," he said, " I take my natural inclinations to 
 be extreamly much more tender and gentle than 
 the smooth looks and cheeks of your ministers 
 on that side find in their own bosoms, and yet 
 heighten the cry upon me !" But Charles had 
 now the queen's influence in many respects 
 upon him, and the queen was not displeased to 
 hear of the sinking fortunes of Wentworth. 
 Lord Holland, her favourite counsellor, was 
 even heard to insinuate that the lord-deputy 
 was subject to occasional touches of madness. 
 This, among the other reports, came to Went- 
 worth's ear. He charged it upon Holland, who 
 denied it, confessing he might have attributed 
 " hypochondriac humours," certainly not mad- 
 ness. Wentworth wrote back to the king : " As 
 for the ' hypochondriac humour' his lordship 
 mentions, it is a great word and a courtly 
 phrase ; but if I mistake not the English of it, 
 
 * " In truth," he wrote to Laud, " I still wish (and take 
 it also to be a very charitable one) Mr. Hambden and oth- 
 ers to his likeness -were well whipt into their right senses ; 
 if that the rod be so used as that it smarts not, I am the 
 
 Paul's, London, and withal show how to jerk, to temper the 
 voice, to guide the hand, to lay on the rod excellently ; sure 
 I am he made me laugh heartily when I was there last ; 
 and the chancellor of the University might with a word 
 fetch up to your lordship at Lambeth both the person and 
 the poems (for I must tell you there is the second, if not the 
 third part of the song), and then bring but Mr. Hambden 
 and Bond in place, and it may every way prove a three 
 man's song. But fetch in the nobleman you mention, and 
 then it may chance to prove a vrty full concert ! As well 
 as I think of Mr. Hambden' s abilities, 1 take his will and 
 peevishness to be full as great, and without diminution to 
 him, judge the other, howbeit not the father of the country 
 (a title some will not stick to give unto them both, to put 
 them, if it be possible, the faster and farther out of their 
 wits), the very sinciput, the vertical point of the whole fac- 
 tion." Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 158. 
 
 it is to be civilly and silently maddish ; and if 
 so, I can assure his lordship, he shall find as 
 little of that in me as of any other more active 
 heat. But I shall not stir that matter farther, 
 only, if it be denied his lordship said I was 
 mad, it were very easy to show his memory 
 might fail him sometimes. . . . Your majesty 
 may be pleased to excuse this foul writing, be- 
 ing in truth so tormented in the present with 
 the toothache, as troubles my sense more than 
 the mistaken reports of any others shall do." 
 Sad indeed were the bodily infirmities which 
 exasperated these complainings of the lord- 
 deputy. The gout, the toothache, the ague, an. 
 intermittent pulse, faint sweats and heaviness, 
 and, to crown all, the frightful disorder of the 
 stone, alternately broke his spirits, and warned 
 him "that no long life awaited him here be- 
 low !" 
 
 What still remained to him, he yet resolved 
 to live out bravely. "A frame of wood," he 
 writes to Laud, " I have given order to set up 
 in a park I have in the county of Wickloe. 
 And, gnash the tooth of these gallants nevei 
 so hard, I will, by God's leave, go on with it, 
 that so I may have a place to take my recrea- 
 tion for a month or two in a year, were it for 
 no other reason than to displease them, by 
 keeping myself, if so please God, a little longer 
 in health."* Among other reports to his prej- 
 udice had been that of " building up to the 
 sky."t We find him afterward adverting to 
 this : " I acknowledge, that were myself only 
 considered in what I build, it were not only to 
 excess, but even to folly, having already hou- 
 ses moderate for my condition in Yorkshire ; 
 but his majesty will justify me, that at my last 
 being in England, I acquainted him with a pur- 
 pose I had to build him a house at the Naas, it 
 being uncomely his majesty should not have 
 one here of his own, capable to lodge him with 
 moderate conveniency (which, in truth, as yet 
 he hath not), in case he might be pleased some- 
 times hereafter to look upon this kingdom ; and 
 that it was necessary in a manner, for the dig- 
 nity of this place, and the health of his deputy 
 and family, that there should be one removing 
 house of fresh air, for want whereof, I assure 
 your lordship, I have felt no small inconveni- 
 ence since my coming hither ; that when it 
 was built, if liked by his majesty, it should be 
 his, paying me as it cost if disliked, a suo 
 damno, I was content to keep it, and smart for 
 my folly. His majesty seemed to be pleased 
 with all, whereupon I proceeded, and have, in a 
 manner, finished it, and so contrived it for the 
 rooms of state, and other accommodations which I 
 have observed in his majesty's houses, as I had 
 been, indeed, stark mad ever to have cast it so for 
 a private family. "t 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 106. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 107. His expensive repairs of the Castle of 
 Dublin had also been reproached to him. But on his first 
 arrival he had certainly alleged a good case of necessity to 
 Cooke : " This castle is in very great decay. I have been 
 enforced to take down one of the great towers, which was 
 ready to fall, and the rest are so crazy as we are still in 
 fear part of it might drop down upon our heads." Vol. i., 
 p. 131. 
 
 t The remains of this building, which was called Juggars- 
 towne Castle, are visible still, and, I am informed by gen- 
 tlemen who have seen them, sufficiently indicate its extra- 
 ordinary grandeur and extent. They cover several acres 
 They are close to the road-side, about sixteen Irish miles 
 from Dublin, and provoke, even. >\ow, from many an unre
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 113 
 
 Between these two royal residences Went- 
 worth now divided a great portion of his time. 
 His mode of living equalled in magnificence the 
 houses themselves. At his own charge he 
 maintained a retinue of 50 attendants, besides 
 his troop of 100 horse, which he had originally 
 raised and equipped at an expense of 6000, 
 and kept up at an enormous yearly cost. Thi: 
 style of living, which he took care to bear out 
 in every other respect, he characteristically 
 vindicated to Cottington as " an expense, not 
 of vanity, but of necessity, judging it not to be- 
 come me, having the great honour to represent his 
 majesty' 1 s sacred person, to set it forth, no, not in 
 any one circumstance, in a penurious mean man- 
 ner, before the eyes of a wild and rude people." 
 Nor did he scruple to conceal the fact that his 
 own private fortune had been assisted, in these 
 vast charges, by certain public profits. "It is 
 very true," he writes to Laud, " I have, under 
 the blessing of Almighty God, and the protec- 
 tion of his majesty, 6000 a year good land, 
 which I brought with me into his service ; and 
 I have a share for a short term in these cus- 
 toms, which, while his majesty's revenue is 
 there increased more than 20,000 by year, 
 proves nevertheless a greater profit to me than 
 ever I dreamed of." When Laud read this 
 passage to Charles, the king observed, impa- 
 tiently, " But he doth not tell you how much ;" 
 and plainly intimated that he grudged the min- 
 ister his share of profit. t Wentworth had few 
 occasions of gratitude to Charles during a life 
 worn out in his service-! In respect of these 
 customs, it is not to be doubted that Charles's 
 suspicions were grossly unjust. He would have 
 had more of abstract justice with him in object- 
 ing to a different source of his lord-deputy's rev- 
 enue, that of the tobacco monopoly, for, on the 
 latter ground, undoubtedly, Wentworth was 
 open to grave charges, though even here the 
 king was the last person from whom with any 
 propriety they could issue. 
 
 The lord-deputy's private habits have been 
 described. He hawked, he hunted,* and fish- 
 
 flecting passer-by, a curse upon the memory of " Black 
 Tom." Such is the name by which the Irish peasantry 
 still remember Stratford. When M. Boullaye-le-Gouz vis- 
 ited Ireland, he found this castle in the property and pos- 
 session of Sir George Wentworth, Strafford's brother, and 
 guarded by forty English soldiers. Mr. Croker's MS. 
 
 * Stratford Papers, vol. i., p. 128. 
 
 t Laud writes, " I have of late heard some muttering 
 about it in court, but can meet with nothing to fasten on : 
 only it makes me doubt somebody hath been nibbling about 
 it." See Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 127. 
 
 t Wittily he writes to Laud, " We are in expectance 
 every hour to hear what becomes of us and the lord-chan- 
 cellor to say the plain truth, whether we shall have a gov- 
 ernment or no ; and to the intent that I might be the better 
 in utrumque paratus, at this present I am playing the Robin 
 Hood, and here in the country of mountains and woods 
 hunting and chasing all the out-lying deer I can light of. 
 But, to confess truly, I met with a very shrewd rebuke the 
 other day ; for, standing to get a shoot at a buck, 1 was so 
 damnably bitten with midges as my face is all mezled over 
 ever since, itches still as if it were mad. The marks they 
 set \vill not go off again, I will awarrant you, this week. 
 I never felt or saw such in England. Surely they are 
 younger brothers to the inuskitcms the Indies brag on so 
 much. I protest, I could even now well find in my heart to 
 play the shrew soundly, and scratch my face in six or seven 
 places." Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 173. This allusion 
 to the lord-chancellor had reference to a judgment recently 
 given against that dignitary by Wentworth himself, in a 
 suit brought against him by Sir John Gifford, on behalf of 
 Sir Francis Ruishe, for an increase of portion to the lady 
 who had married young Loftus : " According to the lord- 
 chancellor's owu clear agreement with Sir Fruncis Kuishe, 
 
 ed,* whenever his infirmities gave him respite. 
 He passed some of his time also among books, 
 and, in one portion at least of these studies, 
 had his thoughts upon a stormy political future. 
 " I wish," writes his friend Lord Conway to 
 him, "you had had your fit of the gout in Eng- 
 land, lest you should attribute something of the 
 disease to the air of that country. I send you 
 the Duke of Rohan's book, ' Le parfait Capi- 
 taine.' Do not think the gout is an excuse from 
 fighting, for the Count Mansfelt had the gout that 
 day he fought the battle of Fleury."^ In the 
 pleasures of the table he indulged little. " He 
 was exceeding temperate," observes Radcliffe, 
 " in meat, drink, and recreations. He was no 
 whit given to his appetite ; though he loved to 
 see good meat at his table, yet he ate very lit- 
 tle of it himself ; beef or rabbits was his ordi- 
 nary food, or cold powdered meats, or cheese 
 and apples, and in moderate quantity. He was 
 never drunk in his life, as I have often heard 
 him say ; and for so much as I had seen, I had 
 reason to believe him ; yet he was not so scru- 
 pulous but he would drink healths where he 
 liked his company, and be sociable as any of 
 his society, and yet still within the bounds of 
 temperance. In Ireland, where drinking was 
 grown a disease epidemical, he was more strict 
 publicly, never suffering any health to be drunk 
 at his public table but the king's, queen's, and 
 prince's, on solemn days. Drunkenness in his 
 servants was, in his esteem, one of the great- 
 est faults." Throughout his various admirable 
 letters to his young wards, the Saviles, in 
 whose education he took extreme interest al- 
 ways, the hatred of this vice is still more char- 
 acteristically shown. He returns to the warn- 
 ing again and again, coupling with drunkenness 
 the equal vice of gaming: the one a "pursuit 
 not becoming a generous, noble heart, which 
 will not brook such starved considerations as 
 the greed of winning;" the other, one "that 
 
 father to the lady." These are Wentworth's words. The 
 chancellor refused to submit to the judgment on the ground 
 that the action ought to have been brought in the ordinary 
 courts of law, and that the tribunal before which it was 
 tried was both illegal and partial. Wentworth, upon this, 
 had resorted to his usual severity, and was now waiting its 
 issue with the king. It may be worth stating, that mis- 
 takes have been made with respect to the name of the lady 
 chiefly affected in this case by Mr. MacDiarmid and other 
 writers, in consequence of Sir John Gifford having brought 
 the original action. She was Lady Loftus, not Lady Gif- 
 ford. 
 
 * For some accounts of his fishing exploits, see Papers, 
 vol. ii.,p. 213, &c. Laud appears to have relished the lord- 
 deputy's presents of "dryed fish" amazingly, and to have 
 !>een anything but fond of his " hung beef out of Yorkshire." 
 His grace had a shrewd eye to appetite : " Since you are 
 for both occupations, flesh and fish, I wonder you do not 
 think of powdering or drying some of your Irish venison, 
 and send that over to brag too." 
 
 t Slrafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 45. Some of Lord Con- 
 ay's letters referred to matters not quite so decent, and 
 the lord-deputy's replies gave him no advantage on that 
 score. See Papers, vol. ii., p. 144-146. Couway's acquaint- 
 ance with his intrigues has already received notice, and the 
 following passage from one of Wentworth's letters to this 
 confidant is not a little significant: " I desire your judg- 
 ment of the enclosed, which was written to this your ser- 
 vant the other day, and chancing to open and read it in the 
 iresence, I burst out before I got it read, that the standers- 
 >y wondered what merry tale it might be that letter told 
 me. But I must conjure you to send it me back, not to 
 trust it forth of your hands, only if you will, I am content 
 I'ou show it my Lord of Northumberland and my Lady of 
 Oarlile, lest if it were shown to others they might judge 
 ne Vane, or something else, of so princely a favour! For 
 ess, the least of her commands are not to be takeu what, 
 then, may we term these her earliest desires V
 
 114 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 shall send you, by unequal staggering paces, to 
 your grave, with confusion of face."* 
 
 No public duty was neglected meanwhile, 
 for from his country parks and castles Went- 
 worth in an hour or two could appear in the 
 Dublin presence-chamber. The king sent him 
 every license he required against the Lord- 
 chancellor Loftus ; and that nobleman, for hav- 
 ing disputed the judicial functions of the depu- 
 ty, "that transcendent power of a chancellor," 
 as Wentworth scornfully called him, was de- 
 prived of the seals, and committed to prison 
 till he consented to submit to the award and to 
 acknowledge his error, t 
 
 But while the king thus secretly authorized 
 these acts of despotism, the English court, no 
 less than the English nation, were known to 
 be objecting to their author. Impatiently he 
 wrote to Laud, demanding at least the charge, 
 something on which to ground an issue. " The 
 humour which offends me," he exclaims, " is 
 not so much anger as scorn, and desire to 
 wrest out from among them my charge ; for, 
 as they say, if I might come to fight for my life, it 
 would never trouble me indeed, I should then 
 weigh them all very light, and be safe under the 
 goodness, wisdom, and justice of my master. 
 Again, howbeit I am resolved of the truth of 
 all this, yet to accuse myself is very uncomely. 
 I love not to put on my armour before there be 
 cause, in regard I never do so but I find my- 
 self the wearier and sorer for it the next 
 morning." 
 
 He could get no satisfactory answer to this, 
 for in truth the English court by this time had 
 enough upon its hands. The king meditated a 
 war with Spain for the recovery of the palati- 
 nate, to which he was the rather urged by the 
 queen, since France had already engaged. For- 
 tunately, before taking this step, he was in- 
 duced to advise with the lord-deputy of Ire- 
 land. This was the first time Wentworth had 
 ever been consulted on the general affairs of 
 the kingdom, and he instantly forwarded a pa- 
 per of opposing reasons to the king, so strong- 
 ly and so ably stated that the war project was 
 given up.f The queen's indifferent feeling to 
 him, it may well be supposed, was not removed 
 by such policy. 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 169, &c. And see an ad- 
 mirable letter at p. 311 of vol. ii. 
 
 t This case was brought forward at the impeachment, 
 and was much aggravated by a discovery, which has been 
 before named, in reference to the young Lady Loftus. " In 
 the preferring this charge," says Clarendon, " many things 
 of levity, as certain letters of great affection and familiarity 
 from the earl to that lady, which were found in her cabinet 
 after her death, others of passion, were exposed to the pub- 
 lic view'' (vol. i., p. 175). Ample details of the entire 
 course of the transaction will be found in referring to the 
 Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 67, et seq., 82, 160, et seq., 172, 
 et sea., 179, 196, 205, 227, et seq., 259, et seq., 298, 341, 
 369, 375, 389. 
 
 t The document will be found in the Strafford Papers, 
 vol. ii., p. 60-64. It is one of the ablest of Wentworth's ar- 
 guments for his scheme of absolute power. He takes oc- 
 casion to say in it, " The opinion delivered by the judges, 
 declaring the lawfulness of the assignment for the ship- 
 ping, is the greatest service that profession hath done the 
 crown in my time." 
 
 I) It ought to be stated, to Wentworth's honour, that, 
 though he much desired to have stood well with her maj- 
 esty, he declined to purchase her favour by acts inconsist- 
 ent with his own public schemes. See curious evidences 
 of this in Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 221, 222, 257, 329, 
 425, 426, &c. When she had solicited an army appoint- 
 ment for some youug courtier, he wrote an earnest entreaty 
 to her chamberlain, accompanying his reasons for declining 
 
 The peace, however, which Lord Wentworth 
 so earnestly recommended was now more fa- 
 tally broken. The whole Scottish nation rose 
 against Charles, in consequence of Laud's re- 
 ligious innovations. Wentworth was not at 
 first consulted respecting these commotions, 
 but he had thrown out occasional advice in his 
 despatches which was found singularly ser- 
 viceable.* He strove as far as possible, by 
 urging strong defensive measures, to prevent 
 an open rupture. " If," he wrote to Charles, 
 " the war were with a foreign enemy, I should 
 like well to have the first blow ; but being with 
 your majesty's own natural, howbeit rebellious sub- 
 jects, it seems to me a tender point to draw blood 
 first; for, till it come to that, all hope is not 
 lost of reconciliation ; and I would not have 
 them with the least colour impute it to your 
 majesty to have put all to extremity till their 
 own more than words enforce you to it."f 
 
 Nor did Wentworth serve Charles at this 
 conjuncture with advice alone, for by his ama- 
 zing personal energy he forced down some 
 opening commotions among the 60,000 Scot- 
 tish settlers in Ulster, and not only disabled 
 them from joining or assisting their country- 
 men, but compelled them to abjure the cove- 
 nant, i Nor this alone. He forwarded from 
 Ireland a detachment of troops to garrison Car- 
 lisle ; he announced that the army of Ireland 
 was in a state of active recruiting and disci- 
 pline ; he offered large contributions from him- 
 self and his friends towards the necessary ex- 
 penses of resistance ; and by every faith of loy- 
 alty, and bond of friendship and of service, he 
 called on every man in Yorkshire to stir him- 
 self in the royal cause. " To be lazy look- 
 ers on," he wrote to the Lord Lome, " to lean 
 to the king behind the curtain, or to whisper 
 forth only our allegiance, will not serve out 
 turn ! much rather ought we to break our shins 
 in emulation who should go soonest and far- 
 thest, in assurance and in courage, to uphold 
 the prerogatives and full dominion of the 
 crown ; ever remembering ourselves that no- 
 bility is such a grudged and envied piece of 
 monarchy, that all tumultuary force offered to 
 kings doth ever, in the second place, fall upon 
 the peers, being such motes in the eyes of a 
 giddy multitude as they never believe them- 
 selves clear-sighted into their liberty indeed 
 till these be at least levelled to a parity as the 
 other altogether removed, to give better pros- 
 pect to their anarchy. " 
 
 The sluggish and irresolute councils of Eng- 
 land looked ill beside the movements of the 
 deputy. The king asked a service from him, 
 but the instructions came too late. " If his 
 majesty's mind had been known to me in time," 
 he wrote to Vane, the treasurer of the house- 
 hold, " I could have as easily secured it against 
 all the covenanters and devils in Scotland as 
 
 the appointment : " If I may by you understand her majes- 
 ty's good pleasure, it will be a, mighty quietness unto me ; 
 for if once these places of command in the army become 
 suits at court, looked upon as preferments and portions for 
 younger children, the honour of this government, and, con- 
 sequently, the prosperity of these affairs, are lost." The 
 king himself appears to have made it a personal request of 
 Wentworth, that he should carry himself " with all duty 
 and respect to her majesty." Vol., ii., p. 256. 
 
 * See vol. ii., p. 191, 192, 235, 280, 324, &c. 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 314. 
 
 J Ibid., vol. ii., p. 270, 338, 345. I) Ibid., p. 210.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 115 
 
 now walk up and down this chamber ; bu 
 where trusts and instructions come too late 
 there the business is sure to be lost." Openly 
 he now expressed his censure of the roya 
 scheme that had prevailed since the death of 
 Buckingham. " I never was in love with that 
 way of keeping all the affairs of that kingdom 
 of Scotland among those of that nation, but 
 carried indeed as a mystery to all the counci 
 of England ; a rule but over mu^h kept by our 
 master, which I have told my Lord of Portland 
 many and often a time, plainly professing unto 
 him that I was much afraid that course woulc 
 at one time or other bring forth ill effects ; 
 what those are, we now see and feel at one 
 and the same instant." Finally, when Vane 
 had written in an extremely desponding tone, 
 he rallied him with a noble energy. " It i 
 very true you have reason to think this storm 
 looks very foul and dark towards us, so do also 
 myself; for if the fire should kindle at Raby, I 
 am sure the smoke would give offence to our 
 eyesight at Woodhouse ! but I trust the even- 
 ing will prove more calm than the morning of 
 this day promises. Dulcius lumen solis esse so- 
 let jam jam cadentis. All here is quiet ; no- 
 thing colours yet to the contrary. And if I 
 may have the countenance and trust of my 
 master, I hope, in the execution of such com- 
 mands as his majesty's wisdom and judgment 
 ordain for me, to contain the Scottish here in 
 their due obedience, or, if they should stir (our 
 8000 arms and twenty pieces of cannon ar- 
 rived, which I trust now will be very shortly), 
 to give them such a heat in their cloaths as 
 they never had since their coming forth of 
 Scotland ! And yet our standing army here is 
 but 1000 horse and 2000 foot, and not fewer 
 of them, I will warrant you, than 150,000, so 
 you see our work is not very easy. The best 
 of it is, the brawn of a lark is better than the 
 carcass of a kite, and the virtue of one loyal 
 subject more than of 1000 traitors. And is 
 not this pretty well, trow you, to begin with ?"* 
 No extremity was urged that found Went- 
 worth unprepared. Windebanke hinted the dan- 
 ger he incurred. " I humbly thank you," he 
 answered, " for your friendly and kind wishes 
 to my safety, but if it be the will of God to 
 bring upon us for our sins that fiery trial, all 
 the respects of this life laid aside, it shall ap- 
 pear more by my actions than words that I can 
 never think myself too good to die for my gra- 
 cious master, or favour my skin in the zealous 
 and just prosecution of his commands. Statu- 
 tum est semcl." Another whom he fancied 
 not unwilling to thwart him, reckoning upon 
 safety from the consequences in the lord-depu- 
 ty's certain destruction he thus warned : 
 " Perchance even to those that shall tell you 
 before their breath I am but as a feather, I 
 shall be found sadder than lead ! for let me tell 
 you, I am so confidently set upon the justice 
 of my master, and upon my own truth, as un- 
 der them and God I shall pass thorough all the 
 factions of court and heat of my ill-willers with- 
 out so much as sindging the least thread of my 
 coat, nor so alone, but to carry my friends 
 
 * This letter is dated " Fairwood Park [the name of his 
 seat in Wicklow], th s Ifith of April, 1639. I will change 
 it with you, if you will, lor Fair Lane." Strafford Papers. 
 vol. ii., p. 325-328. 
 
 along with me." And, in the midst of the 
 storms his measures were raising on all sL'es 
 round him, he found time and ease enough t, 
 amuse himself in tormenting with grave jests 
 a foolish Earl of Antrim, whom the king had 
 sent to "assist" him. The despatches he 
 wrote on the subject of the "Antrim negotia- 
 tions" are positive masterpieces of wit and hu- 
 mour.* At the same time, he did not hesitate 
 to assure the king that, but for the safety of 
 Ireland, he would " be most mightily out of 
 countenance to be found in any other place 
 than at his majesty's side !" 
 
 Charles acknowledged these vast services 
 with frequent letters. Wentworth was now 
 his great hope, and he found, at last, that at all 
 risks he must have him in England. He had 
 formerly declined his offered attendance he 
 now prayed for it. He wished, he said, to con- 
 sult him respecting the army, " but I have much 
 more," he sorrowfully added, " and indeed too 
 much, to desire your counsel and attendance 
 for some time, which I think not fit to express 
 by letter, more than this the Scots' covenant 
 begins to spread too far. Yet, for all this, I 
 will not have you take notice that I have sent 
 for you, but pretend some other occasion of 
 business." 
 
 Wentworth instantly prepared himself to 
 obey. A short time only he took to place his 
 government in the hands of Wandesford and 
 to arrange some of his domestic concerns. 
 His children were his great care. " God bless 
 the young whelps," he said, " and for the old 
 dog there is less matter."t Lady Clare, his 
 mother-in-law, had often requested to have the 
 elder girl with her, and Wentworth had as oft- 
 en vainly tried to let her leave his side. His 
 passion was to see them all near him in a 
 group together, as they may yet be seen in the 
 undying colours of Vandyke, from whose can- 
 vass, also, as though it had been painted yes- 
 terday, the sternly expressive countenance of 
 their father still gazes at posterity. The pres- 
 ent was a time, however, when the sad alter- 
 native of a separation from himself promised 
 him alleviation even, and he resolved to send 
 both sisters to their grandmother. The letter 
 he despatched on the occasion to the Lady 
 Clare remains, and it is too touching and beau- 
 tiful to be omitted here. A man so burdened 
 with the world's accusations as Strafford should 
 be denied none of the advantage which such a 
 document can render to his memory. It is un- 
 necessary to direct attention to its singularly 
 haracteristic conclusion : 
 
 " My Lord of Clare having writ unto me 
 your ladyship desired to have my daughter 
 
 * See the Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 187, 204, 211, 289, 
 et seq., 300, et seq., 321, et seq., 325, 331, 334, 339, 353, 
 156. It is not too much to say that, in reading these pa- 
 >ers, the memory is called to the Swifts of past days, and 
 he Fonblanques of our own. The poor lord's pretensions 
 are most ludicrously set forth, and in a vein of exquisite 
 'leasantry, but little consistent with the popular notion of 
 Itrafford's unbending sternness. 
 
 t See various letters in the course of his correspondence, 
 n which the most tender enthusiasm is expressed for them 
 ind for their dead mother (vol. i., p. 236 ; vol. ii., p. 122, 
 23, 146, 379, 380). Nor was his affection less warmly ex- 
 messed to the child of his living wife. In several affection- 
 te letters to the latter he never fails to send his blessing 
 o " the baby" or to " little Tom." Shortly before this vis t 
 o England, however, the latter died, and shortly after it, a 
 ir! \vas born.
 
 116 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Anne with you for a time in England, to recov- 
 er her health, I have at last been able to yield 
 so 'much from my own comfort, as to send both 
 her and her sister to wait your grave, wise, and 
 tender instructions. They are both, I praise 
 God, in good health, and bring with them hence 
 from me no other advice, but entirely and 
 cheerfully to obey and do all you shall be 
 pleased to command them, so far forth as their 
 years and understanding may administer unto 
 them. 
 
 "I was unwilling to part them, in regard 
 those that must be a stay one to another, when 
 by course of nature I am gone before them. I 
 would not have them grow strangers whilst I 
 am living. Besides, the younger gladly imi- 
 tates the elder, in disposition so like her bless- 
 ed mother, that it pleases me very much to see 
 her steps followed and observed by the other. 
 
 "Madam, I must confess, it was not with- 
 out difficulty before I could perswade myself 
 thus to be deprived the looking upon them, 
 who, with their brother, are the pledges of all 
 the comfort, the greatest at least, of my old 
 age, if it shall please God I attain thereunto. 
 But I have been brought up in afflictions of this 
 kind, so as I still fear to have that taken first 
 that is dearest unto me, and have in this been 
 content willingly to overcome my own affections 
 in order to their good, acknowledging your lady- 
 ship capable of doing them more good in their 
 breeding than I am. Otherways, in truth, I 
 should never have parted with them, as I pro- 
 fess it a grief unto me not to be able as well as 
 any to serve the memory of that noble lady in 
 these little harmless infants. 
 
 " Well, to God's blessing and your ladyship's 
 goodness I commit them ! whe.re-ever they are, 
 any prayers shall attend them, and have of sor- 
 row in my heart till I see them again I must, 
 which I trust will not be long neither. That 
 they shall be acceptable unto you, I know it 
 right well, and I believe them so graciously 
 minded to render themselves so the more, the 
 more you see of their attention to do as you 
 shall be pleased to direct them, which will be 
 of much contentment unto me ; for, whatever 
 your ladyship's opinion may be of me, I desire, 
 and have given it them in charge (so far as 
 their tender years are capable of), to honour 
 and observe your ladyship above all the women 
 in the world, as well knowing that in so doing 
 they shall fulfil that duty whereby of all others 
 they could have delighted their mother the 
 most ; and I do infinitely wish they may want 
 nothing in their breeding my power or cost 
 might procure them, or their condition of life 
 hereafter may require ; for, madam, if I die to- 
 morrow, I will, by God's help, leave them ten 
 thousand pounds apiece, which I trust, by God's 
 blessing, shall bestow them to the comfort of 
 themselves and friends, nor at all considerably 
 prejudice their brother, whose estate shall nev- 
 er be much burdened by a second venter, I as- 
 sure you. 
 
 " I thought fit to send with them one that 
 teacheth them to write , he is a quiet, soft man, 
 but honest, and not given to any disorder ; him 
 I have appointed to account for the money to 
 be laid forth, wherein he hath no other direc- 
 tion but to pay and lay forth as your ladyship 
 shall appoint, and still as he wants to go to 
 
 "Woodhouse, where my cousin Rockley will 
 supply him. And I must humbly beseech you 
 to give order to their servants, and otherwise 
 to the taylors at London for their apparel, 
 which I wholly submit to your ladyship's better 
 judgment, and be it what it may be, I shall 
 think it all happily bestowed, so as it be to your 
 contentment and theirs, for cost I reckon not 
 of; and anything I have is theirs so long as I 
 live, which is only worth thanks, for theirs and 
 their brother's^all I have must be whether I 
 will or no, and therefore I desire to let them 
 have to acknowledge me for before. 
 
 " Nan, they tell me, danceth prettily, which 
 I wish (if with convenience it might be) were 
 not lost, more to give her a comely grace in 
 the carriage of her body, than that I wish they 
 should much delight or practise it when they 
 are women. Arabella is a small practitioner 
 that way also, and they are both very apt to 
 learn that, or anything they are taught. 
 
 " Nan, I think, speaks French prettily, which 
 yet I might have been better able to judge had 
 her mother lived. The other also speaks, but 
 her maid being of Guernsey, the accent is not 
 good. But your ladyship is in this excellent, 
 as that, as indeed all things else which may be- 
 fit them, they may, and I hope will, learn bet- 
 ter with your ladyship than they can with their 
 poor father, ignorant in what belongs women, 
 and otherways, God knows, distracted, and so 
 awanting unto them in all, saving in loving 
 them, and therein, in truth, I shall never be 
 less than the dearest parent in the world ! 
 
 " Their brother is just now sitting by my el- 
 bow, in good health, God be praised ; and I am 
 in the best sort accommodating this place for 
 him, which, in the kind, I take to be the noblest 
 one of them in the king's dominions, and where 
 a grass time may be passed with most pleasure 
 of that kind. I will build him a good house, 
 and by God's help, leave, I think, near three 
 thousand pounds a year, and wood on the 
 ground, as much, I dare say, if near London, 
 as would yield fifty thousand pounds, besides a 
 house within twelve miles of Dublin, the best 
 in Ireland, and land to it which, I hope, will be 
 two thousand pounds a year, all which he shall 
 have to the rest, had I twenty brothers of his 
 to sitt beside me. This I write not to your 
 ladyship in vanity, or to have it spoken of, but 
 privately, to let your ladyship see I do not for- 
 get the children of my dearest wife, nor alto- 
 gether bestow my time fruitlessly for them. 
 It is true I am in debt, but there will be, be- 
 sides, sufficient to discharge all I owe, by God's 
 grace, whether I live or die. And next to 
 these children, there are not any other persons 
 I wish more happiness than to the house of 
 their grandfather, and shall be always most 
 ready to serve them, what opinion soever be 
 had of me, for no others' usage can absolve me 
 of what I owe not only to the memory, but to 
 the last legacy that noble creature left with me 
 when God took her to himself. I am afraid to 
 turn over the leaf, lest your ladyship might 
 think I could never come to a conclusion ; and 
 shall, therefore," &c. 
 
 He had arranged everything for his depar- 
 ture, when one of his paroxysms of illness seiz- 
 ed him. He wrestled with it desperately, and 
 set sail On landing at Chester, he wrote to
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 117 
 
 Lady Wentworth a sad description of the ef- 
 fects of the journey upon his gout, and the 
 " flux" which afflicted him. He rallied, how- 
 ever, and appeared in London in November, 
 1639. In a memorable passage, the historian 
 May has described the general conversation 
 and conjecture which had prepared for his ap- 
 proach. Some, he says, remembering his early 
 exertions in the cause of the people, fondly 
 imagined that he had hitherto been subservient 
 to the court only to ingratiate himself thorough- 
 ly with the king, and that he would now em- 
 ploy his ascendency to wean his majesty from 
 arbitrary counsels. Others, who knew his char- 
 acter more profoundly, had different thoughts, 
 and secretly cherished their own most active 
 energies. 
 
 Wentworth, Laud, and Hamilton instantly 
 formed a secret council a " cabinet council," 
 as they were then enviously named by the oth- 
 er courtiers a "junto," as the people reproach- 
 fully called them. The nature of the measures 
 to be taken against the Scots was variously 
 and earnestly discussed, and Wentworth, con- 
 sidering the extremity of affairs, declared at 
 once for war. 
 
 Supplies to carry it on formed a more diffi- 
 cult question still, but it sank before Went- 
 worth's energy. He proposed a loan subscri- 
 bed to it at once, by way of example, the enor- 
 mous sum of 20,000 and pledged himself to 
 bring over a large subsidy from Ireland, if the 
 king would call a Parliament there. Encour- 
 aged by this assurance, it was resolved to call 
 a Parliament in England also. Laud, Juxon, 
 Hamilton, Wentworth, Cottington, Vane, and 
 Windebanke were all present in council when 
 this resolution was taken. The king then put 
 the question to them whether, upon the res- 
 tiveness of Parliament, they would assist him 
 " by extraordinary ways." They assented, 
 passed a vote to that effect, writs for Parlia- 
 ments in both countries were issued, and Went- 
 worth prepared himself to quit England. 
 
 Charles, unsolicited, now invested him with 
 the dignity of earldom. His own very exist- 
 ence seemed dependant on Wentworth's faith, 
 and there was sufficient weakness in the char- 
 acter of the king to render it possible for him 
 to suppose that, even at such a time, the in- 
 ducement of reward might be necessary as a 
 precaution. The lord-deputy was created Earl 
 of Strafford and Baron of Raby, adorned with 
 the Garter, and invested with the title of Lord- 
 lieutenant, or Lieutenant-general of Ireland a 
 title which had not been given since the days 
 of Essex. " God willing," wrote Strafford to 
 his wife immediately after, "you will soon see 
 the lieutenant of Ireland, but never like to have 
 a deputy of Ireland to your husband any more."* 
 
 On his way to Ireland, the earl was overta- 
 ken at Beaumaris by a severe attack of gout, 
 yet, still able to move, he hurried on board, not- 
 withstanding the contrary winds, lest he should 
 be thrown down utterly. He wrote, at the 
 
 * Letter in the Thoresby Museum, Biog. Brit., vol. vii., 
 p. 4182. Some days before he had written to her charac- 
 teristic news of his children. "The two wenches," he 
 said, " are in perfect health, and now, at this instant, in 
 this house, lodged with me, and rather desirous to be so 
 than with their grandmother. I am not yet fully resolved 
 what to do with them." They were afterward sent back 
 to Lady Clare till the Lady Stnilford arrived in London. 
 
 same time, to Secretary Cooke, in the highest 
 spirits, to assure him and his master that they 
 need not fear for his weakness. " For," ex- 
 claims the lord-lieutenant, " I will make strange 
 shift, and put myself to all the pain I shall be 
 able to endure, before I be anywhere awanting 
 to my master or his affairs in this conjuncture, 
 and, therefore, sound or lame, you shall have 
 me with you before the beginning of the Par- 
 liament. I should not fail, though SIR JOHN 
 ELIOT were living ! In the mean space, for 
 love of Christ, call upon and hasten the busi- 
 ness now in hand, especially the raising of the 
 horse and all together, the rather, for that this 
 work now before us, should it miscarry, we all 
 are like to be very miserable ; but, carried 
 through advisedly and gallantly, shall by God's 
 blessing set us in safety and peace for our lives 
 at after, nay, in probability, the generations that 
 are to succeed us. Fi a faute de courage, je 
 rfen aye que trap ! What might I be with my 
 legs, that am so brave without the use of them] 
 Well, halt, blind, or lame, I will be found true 
 to the person of my gracious master, to the 
 service of his crown and my friends." Strange 
 that, at such a moment, Lord Strafford should 
 have recalled the memory of the virtuous and 
 indomitable Eliot ! He was soon doomed to 
 know on whose shoulders the mantle of Buck- 
 ingham's great opponent had fallen. 
 
 In March, 1640, Strafford again arrived in 
 Ireland. The members of the Parliament that 
 had just been summoned crowded round him 
 with lavish devotion, gave him four subsidies, 
 which was all that he had desired, and declared 
 that that was nothing in respect to their zeal, 
 for that " his majesty should have the fee-sim- 
 ple of their estates for his great occasions." 
 In a formal declaration, moreover, they imbod- 
 ied all this, declared that their present warm 
 loyalty rose from a deep sense of the inestima- 
 ble benefits the lord-lieutenant had conferred 
 upon their country, and that all these benefits 
 had been effected " without the least hurt or 
 grievance to any well-disposed subject."* The 
 authors of this declaration were the first to 
 turn upon Strafford in his distress. Valuing 
 their praise for its worth in the way of exam- 
 ple, the earl forwarded it to England, and re- 
 quested it to be published to the empire. 
 
 He had now been a fortnight in Ireland. 
 Within that time, with a diligence unparalleled 
 and almost incredible, he had effected these re- 
 sults with the Parliament, and levied a body of 
 8000 men as a re-enforcement to the royal ar- 
 my.f He again set sail for England. 
 
 I pause here to illustrate the character of 
 this extraordinary person in one respect, which 
 circumstances are soon to make essential. His 
 infirmities of health have frequently been allu- 
 ded to, but they come now upon the scene more 
 fatally. No one, that has not carefully exam- 
 ined all his despatches, can have any notion of 
 their frightful nature and extent. 
 
 The soul of the Earl of Strafford was indeed 
 lodged, to use the expression of his favourite 
 Donne, within a "low and fatal room." We 
 have already seen his friend Radcliffe inform- 
 ing us that in 1622 " he had a great fever, and 
 
 * See Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 396, 397. Rushworth, 
 ol. iii., p. 1051. Nalson, vol. i., p. 2SO-2S4. 
 t See Radcliffe's Essay.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the next spring a double tertian, and after hi 
 recovery a relapse into a single tertian, and a 
 while after a burning fever." It is melancholy 
 to follow the progress of his infirmities, as they 
 are casually recorded by himself: how the 
 trouble of " an humour, which in strict accept- 
 ation you might term the gout," soon increases 
 to " an extreme fit, which renders him unfit, 
 not only for business, but for all handsome ci- 
 vility," and is aggravated by "so violent a fit 
 of the stone, as I shall not be able to stir these 
 ten days : it hath brought me very low, and 
 was unto me a torment for three days and three 
 nights above all I ever endured since I was a 
 man!" how the eyes that are "these twelve 
 days full of dimness," ere long are " scarce 
 able to guide his pen thorough blindness with 
 long writing ;" and this, too, while " an in- 
 firmity I have formerly had in great measure, 
 saluteth me, to wit, an intermitting pulse, at- 
 tended with faint sweats and heaviness of 
 spirits !" 
 
 But ever by the side of the body's weakness 
 we find a witness of the spirit's triumph a vin- 
 dication of the mightiness of will ! A length- 
 ened despatch to the secretary is begun in " a 
 fit of the gout, which, keeping me still in bed, 
 partly with pain and partly with weariness, 
 makes me unfit for much business." When he 
 entreats a correspondent to " pardon my scrib- 
 bling, for since the gout took me I am not able 
 to write but with both my legs along upon a 
 stool, believe me, which is not only wearisome 
 in itself, but a posture very untoward for gui- 
 ding my pen aright," it is with the consolation 
 that, " as Sir Walter Raleigh said very well, 
 so the heart lie right, it skills not much for all 
 the rest." And the advice to " forbear his night 
 watches, and now begin to take more care of 
 his health," is met by the assurance that, " had 
 he fivescore senses to lose, he did and ought to 
 judge them all well and happily bestowed in his 
 majesty's service !" 
 
 On the occasion of this last return to Eng- 
 land, however, even what, has been described 
 would serve little to express what he suffered. 
 Then, when every energy was to be taxed to 
 the uttermost, the question of his fiery spirit's 
 supremacy was indeed put to the issue by a 
 complication of ghastly diseases ! In the let- 
 ter from Dublin, dated Good Friday, 1640, 
 which assures the king that " from this table 
 I shall go on shipboard," he is compelled to 
 add that, " besides my gout, I have a very vio- 
 lent and ill-conditioned flux upon me, such as 
 I never had before. It hath held me already 
 these seven days, and brought me so weak, as 
 in good faith nothing that could concern my- 
 self should make me go a mile forth of my 
 chamber. But this is not a season for bemoaning 
 of myself; for I shall cheerfully venture this cra- 
 zed vessel of mine, and either, by God's help, wait 
 upon your majesty before the Parliament begin, or 
 else deposit this infirm humanity of mine in the 
 dust /" And " from the table" on " shipboard" 
 he went accordingly, and arrived at Chester on 
 the 4th of April, quite broken down by the fa- 
 tigues of a rough voyage. "I confess," he 
 writes, " that I forced the captain to sea against 
 his will, and have since received my correction 
 for it. A marvellous foul and dangerous night, 
 indeed, we have had of it !" In this state he 
 
 despatches the following letter to the king: 
 "May it please your sacred majesty. With 
 some danger I wrought thorough a storm at 
 sea, yet light on a greater misfortune here in 
 harbour, having now got the gout in both my 
 feet, attended with that ill habit of health I 
 brought from Dublin. I purposed to have been 
 on my way again early this morning, but the 
 physician disadviseth it ; and in truth, such is 
 my pain and weakness, as I verily believe I 
 were not able to endure it. Nevertheless, I 
 have provided myself of a litter, and will try 
 to-morrow how I am able to bear travel, which 
 if possible I can do, then by the grace of God 
 will I not rest till I have the honour to wait 
 upon your majesty. In the mean time, it is 
 most grievous unto me to be thus kept from 
 those duties which I owe your majesty's ser- 
 vice on this great and important occasion. In 
 truth, sir, in my whole life I never desired 
 health more than now, if it shall so please 
 God ; not that I can be so vain as to judge my- 
 self equally considerable with many other of 
 your servants, but that I might give my own 
 heart the contentment to be near your com- 
 mands, in case I might be so happy as to be of 
 some small use to my most gracious master in 
 such a conjuncture of time and affairs as this 
 is. God long preserve your majesty." 
 
 Next, he dictates a long despatch to the Earl 
 of Northumberland, and attempts, at least, to 
 conclude it with his own hand : "And yet, how- 
 beit I am much resolved and set on all occa- 
 sions for your service, will my weary hand be 
 able to carry on my pen not one line farther, 
 than only in a word to write myself, in all 
 truth and perfection, your lordship's most hum- 
 bly to be commanded, STRAFFORDE." 
 
 I quote also from this despatch to Northum- 
 berland an extraordinary incident which oc- 
 curred on this occasion, and which illustrates 
 his unremitting vigilance in matters which he 
 could hardly have been expected to superintend 
 even under far more favourable circumstances. 
 
 Upon my landing at Nesson I observed a 
 Scottish ship there riding upon her anchors, of 
 some six or seven score ton, and of some eight 
 or ten pieces of ordnance, and here in town I 
 learn that the ship belongs to Irwin, that she 
 was fraught by some merchants here with 
 sacks, and that the master, now in town, is 
 this morning to receive some 600 for freight. 
 Hereupon, considering the day for the general 
 imbargo is so instant, as your lordship knows, 
 I have privately advised the merchants to stay 
 payment of the freight until to-morrow, and will 
 a;ive present direction for the apprehension of 
 the master and his mate, now in town. I have 
 also spoken to the customers to send down to 
 Nesson to arrest the said ship upon pretence of 
 ozening the king in his customs, for which the 
 master is to be examined, and, however, the 
 ship to be fraught for the king's service for the 
 transportation of these men. I have likewise 
 iven command to Captain Bartlett presently 
 to repair thither, to be assistant therein to the 
 officers of the customs, and before his leaving 
 the port to see execution of all this, as also to 
 ;ake forth of her all her Scottish mariners, her 
 sails and guns, and to bring them on shore, 
 caving only aboard such English mariners as 
 shall be sufficient to send the ship there, till
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 119 
 
 farther directions. Thus will she lye fair and 
 open for your arrest, and perchance prove your 
 best prize of that kind, and really being manned 
 with English mariners, which may be pressed 
 for that occasion, be of all other the fittest 
 vessel for the transportation of your men and 
 ammunition to Dunbarton. If I have been 
 over-diligent herein, in doing more than (I con- 
 fess) I have commission for, I humbly crave 
 your lordship's pardon, and hope the rather to 
 obtain it, in regard it is a fault easily mended, 
 for my honest Blue-cap will be hereby so af- 
 frighted, as the delivery back unto him of his 
 freight, goods, and ship will sufficiently fulfil 
 his desires and contentment." 
 
 A letter written the following day to Winde- 
 banke is most eminently characteristic : " I 
 thank you," he says, " for your good wishes, 
 that I might be free of the gout ; but a deaf 
 spirit I find it, that will neither hear nor be 
 persuaded to reason. My pain, I thank God, 
 is gone, yet I am not able to walk once about 
 the chamber, such a weakness hath it left be- 
 hind. Nevertheless, my obstinacy is as great 
 as formerly, for it shall have much more to do 
 before it make me leave my station in these 
 uncertain times. Of all things I love not to put 
 off my cloaths and go to bed in a storm. The 
 lieutenant," he proceeds, " that made the false 
 muster, cannot be too severely punished. If 
 you purpose to overcome that evil, you must 
 fall upon the first transgressors like lightning /" 
 
 Beside such zealousness as Strafford's, the 
 devotion of others was like to come tardily off. 
 The letter to Windebanke proceeds : " The 
 proxies of the Irish nobility I have received 
 and transmitted over. I cannot but observe 
 how cautious still your great friend, my Lord 
 of St. Alban's, is, lest he might seem to express 
 his affections towards the king with too much 
 frankness and confidence. Lord! how willing 
 he is, by doing something, as good as nothing, 
 to let you see how well contented he would be 
 to disserve the crown, if it were in his power, 
 as indeed it is not. But if his good lordship 
 and his fellows were left to my handling, I 
 should quickly teach them better duties, and 
 put them out of liking with these perverse fro- 
 ward humours. But the best is, by the good 
 help of his friends, he need not apprehend the 
 short horns of such a curst cow as myself; 
 yet this I will say for him, all your kindness 
 shall not better his affections to the service 
 of the crown, or render him thankful to your- 
 selves longer than his turn is in serving. Re- 
 member, sir, that I told you of it. The Lord 
 Roch is a person in a lesser volume, of the 
 very self-same edition. Poor soul, you see 
 what he would be at, if he knew how. But 
 seriously let me ask you a question, What 
 would these and such like gentlemen do, were 
 they absolute in themselves, when they are 
 thus forward at that very instant of time when 
 their whole estates are justly and fairly in the 
 king's mercy ! In a word, till I see punish- 
 ments and rewards well and roundly applied, I 
 fear very much the frowardness of this gener- 
 ation will not be reduced to moderation and 
 right reason, but that it shall extreamly much" 
 difficult his majesty's ministers, nay, and him- 
 self too, in the pursuit of his just and royal 
 
 Mr. Brodie has accused Strafford's despatch- 
 es of heaviness, and certainly every word in 
 them has its weight. This extraordinary let- 
 ter concludes thus : " It troubles me very much 
 to understand by these your letters that the 
 deputy lieutenants of Yorkshire should show 
 themselves so foolish and so ingrate as to re- 
 fuse to levy 200 men and send them to Ber- 
 wiek, without a caution of reimbursement of 
 coat and conduct money. As for the precedent 
 they allege, they well term them to be indeed 
 of former times, for sure I am none of them 
 can remember any such thing of their own 
 knowledge, or have learned any such thing by 
 their own practice. What they find in some 
 blind book of their fathers kept by his clerk, I 
 know not, but some such poor business is the 
 best proof I believe they can show for that al- 
 legation. Perchance Queen Elizabeth now 
 and then did some such thing; but then it 
 ought to be taken as matter of bounty, not of 
 duty, the law being so clear and plain in that 
 point, as you know. Upon my coming to town 
 I will inform myself who have been the chief 
 leaders in this business, and thereupon give 
 my gentlemen something to remember it by 
 hereafter. But, above all, I cannot sufficiently 
 wonder that my lords at the board should think 
 of any other satisfaction than sending for them 
 up, and laying them by the heels, especially 
 considering what hath already been resolved 
 on there amongst us. What, I beseech you, 
 should become of the levy of your 30,000 men, 
 in case the other counties of the kingdom 
 should return you the like answer 1 And there- 
 fore this insolence of theirs ought, in my poor 
 opinion, to have been suffocated in the birth, 
 and this boldness met with a courage, which 
 should have taught them their part in these ca- 
 ses to have been obedience, and not dispute. 
 Certain I am, that in Queen Elizabeth's time 
 (those golden times that appear so glorious in 
 their eyes, and render them dazzled towards 
 any other object) they would not have had 
 such an expostulation better cheap than the 
 Fleet. The very plain truth is, and I beseech 
 you that it may humbly, on my part, be repre- 
 sented to his majesty in discharge of my own 
 duty, that the council-board of late years have 
 gone with so tender a foot in those businesses 
 of lieutenancy, that it hath almost lost that pow- 
 er to the crown ; and yet such a power it is, 
 and so necessary, as I do not know how we 
 should be able either to correct a rebellion at 
 home, or to defend ourselves from an invasion 
 from abroad, without it. All which, neverthe- 
 less, I mention with all humility in the world, 
 without the least imputation to any particular 
 person living or dead, and humbly beseech his 
 majesty to cause the reins of this piece of his 
 government to be strongly gathered up again, 
 which have of late hung too long loose upon 
 us his lieutenants and deputy lieutenants with- 
 in the kingdom." 
 
 Notwithstanding his desperate state, Straf- 
 ford caused himself to be pushed on to London. 
 A desire of the king that he should not hazard 
 the journey, reached him already engaged in 
 it.* He persisted in being transported thither 
 
 * It is worth quoting, as almost the only expression of 
 care and sympathy Charles had hitherto given fo his min- 
 i*tsr. "Having teen divers letters, Strafford, to my Lord
 
 120 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in a litter by easy journeys. In London a great- 
 er and final occasion was yet to be afforded 
 him for the display of an indomitable nature 
 triumphantly baffling disease and decay, and 
 still, with the increasing and imperious urgen- 
 cy of the need, towered ever proudlier the in- 
 exhaustible genius of Strafford. 
 
 The Parliament had met, and the earl imme- 
 diately took his seat in the House of Lords. 
 Their proceedings, and their abrupt dissolution, 
 belong to history. After that fatal state error, 
 an army, to the command of which Northum- 
 berland had been appointed, was marched 
 against the Scots. Severe illness, however, 
 held Northumberland to his bed, and the king 
 resolved to appoint Strafford in his place. " The 
 Earl of Strafford," observes Clarendon, " was 
 scarce recovered from a great sickness, yet 
 was willing to undertake the charge out of pure 
 indignation to see how few men were forward 
 to serve the king with that vigour of mind they 
 ought to do ; but knowing well the malicious, 
 designs which were contrived against himself, 
 he would rather serve as lieutenant-general un- 
 der the Earl of Northumberland than that he 
 should resign his commission ; and so, with 
 and under' that qualification, he made all pos- 
 sible haste towards the north before he had 
 strength enough for the journey."* The same 
 noble historian, after saying that Strafford could 
 with difficulty, in consequence of illness, sit in 
 his saddle, describes the shock he experienced 
 in receiving intelligence of the disgraceful flight 
 of a portion of the king's troops at Newbourne 
 on the Tyne, and proceeds thus : " In this pos- 
 ture the Earl of Strafford found the army about 
 Durham, bringing with him a body much bro- 
 ken with his late sickness, which was not clear- 
 ly shaken off, and a mind and temper confess- 
 ing the dregs of it, which, being marvellously 
 provoked and inflamed with indignation at the 
 late dishonour, rendered him less gracious, that 
 is, less inclined to make himself so, to the of- 
 ficers upon his first entrance into his charge : 
 it may be, in that mass of disorder not quickly 
 discerning to whom kindness and respect was 
 justly due. But those who by this time, no 
 doubt, were retained for that purpose, took that 
 opportunity to incense the army against him, 
 and so far prevailed in it, that in a short time 
 it was more inflamed against him than against 
 the enemy."t In this melancholy state, with 
 a disgraced and mutinous force, Strafford fell 
 back upon York. 
 
 From this moment he sank daily. Intrigues 
 of the most disgraceful character, carried on by 
 Holland, Hamilton, and Vane, and assisted ev- 
 ery way by the queen, united with his sickness 
 to break him down. Still he was making despe- 
 rate efforts to strengthen and animate his army, 
 when suddenly he found that a treaty with the 
 Scots had actually commenced, and that his es- 
 
 of Canterbury, concerning the state of your health at this 
 time, I thought it necessary by this to command you not to 
 hazard to travel before ye may do it with the safety of your 
 health, and in this I must require you not to be your own 
 judge, but be content to follow the advice of those that are 
 about you, whose affections and skill ye shall have occa- 
 sion to trust unto. If I did not know that this care of your 
 health were necessary for us both at this time, I would 
 have deferred my thanks to you for your great service lately 
 done until I might have seen you. So, praying to God fur 
 your speedy recovery, I rest your assured friend." 
 
 * History, vol. i., p. 114. t Vol. i., p. 115. 
 
 pecial enemy, Lord Savile, was actively em- 
 ployed to forward it. Ultimately, these nego- 
 tiations were placed in the hands of sixteen 
 peers, every one of whom were his personal 
 opponents. And the crowning enemy was be- 
 hind " an enemy," as Lord Clarendon ob- 
 serves, "more terrible than all the others, and 
 like to be more fatal, the whole Scottish -nation, 
 provoked by the declaration he had procured- 
 of Ireland, and some high carriage and expres- 
 sions of his against them in that kingdom."* 
 They illustrated this eminent hatred by per- 
 emptorily refusing, in the midst of much pro- 
 fession of attachment to the king and the Eng- 
 lish nation, to hold any conferences at York, 
 because it was within the jurisdiction of him 
 whom they called that " chief incendiary," their 
 "mortal foe," the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 
 
 In this there was exaggeration. Notwith- 
 standing the assertions of nearly all the histo- 
 ries that Strafford's continual counsel to Charles 
 was to rely on arms alone, it is quite certain, 
 from the minutes of the Council of Peers at 
 York,t that this is erroneous. When he sent 
 the commission to Ormond to bring over his 
 own army of 20,000 men from Ireland, the ne- 
 gotiations had not been resumed, and, on the 
 resumption of them, that commission was with- 
 drawn. Now, however, thwarted and exas- 
 perated on all sides, he resolved to furnish one 
 more proof (it was destined to be the last) 
 of the possibility of recovering the royal au- 
 thority by a great and vigorous exertion. Du- 
 ring the negotiations no actual cessation of 
 arms had been agreed to by the Scots, and he 
 therefore secretly despatched a party of horse, 
 under a favourite officer, to attack them in their 
 quarters. A large body of the enemy were de- 
 feated by this manoeuvre, all their officers ta- 
 ken prisoners, the army inspirited, and the spir- 
 its of Strafford himself restored. Again he 
 spoke confidently of the future, when sudden- 
 ly the king, prevailed on by others, commanded 
 him to forbear. In the same moment, without 
 any previous warning, he was told that a Par- 
 liament was summoned. 
 
 Strafford saw at once the extent of his dan- 
 ger. He had thrown his last stake and lost it. 
 He prayed of the king to be allowed to retire 
 to his government in Ireland, or to some other 
 place where he might promote his majesty's 
 service, and not deliver himself into the hands 
 of his enraged enemies. Charles refused. He 
 still reposed en the enormous value of his min- 
 ister's genius, and considered that no sacrifice 
 too great might be incurred for the chance of 
 its service to himself in the coming struggle. 
 At the same time, he pledged himself by a sol- 
 
 * The hatred was, indeed, mutual. Strafford more than 
 once, in his despatches, shows that he even disliked, and 
 was disposed to turn into ridicule, their mode of speech. 
 Alluding to a Scotchman, for instance, a Mr. Barre, whom 
 he supposed to have been favoured by the court intriguers 
 against him, he writes from Ireland thus : " Then on that 
 side he procures, by some very near his majesty, access to 
 the king, there whispering continually something or anoth- 
 er to my prejudice ; boasts familiarly how freely he speaks 
 with his majesty, what he saith concerning me, and nou'ant 
 pleese your mejcsty ea we.rde mare anent your debuty of Yr- 
 land, with many such like botadoes, stuffed with a mighty 
 deal of untruths and follies amongst." And see Rush- 
 worth, vol. iii., p. 1293. 
 
 t Printed in the Ilardwicke State Papers. And see a 
 very able and impartial view of Strafford's conduct and 
 character, in the History continued from Mackintosh...
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 121 
 
 emn promise, that, " while there was a king in 
 England, not a hair of Strafford's head should 
 be touched by the Parliament !" The earl ar- 
 rived in London. 
 
 " It was about three of the clock in the after- 
 noon," says Clarendon, " when the Earl of 
 StrafTord (being infirm and not well disposed in 
 health, and so not having stirred out of his 
 house that morning), hearing that both houses 
 still sate, thought fit to go thither. It was be- 
 lieved by some (upon what ground was never 
 clear enough) that he made that haste there to 
 accuse the Lord Say, and some others, of hav- 
 ing induced the Scots to invade the kingdom ; 
 but he was scarce entered into the House of 
 Peers, when the message from the House of 
 Commons was called in, and when Mr. Pym at 
 the bar, and in the name of all the Commons 
 of England, impeached Thomas, earl of Straf- 
 ford (with the addition of all his other titles), 
 of high treason !" 
 
 Upward of twelve years had elapsed since 
 Sir Thomas Wentworth stood face to face with 
 Pym. Upon the eve of his elevation to the 
 peerage they had casually met at Greenwich, 
 when, after a short conversation on public af- 
 fairs, they separated with these memorable 
 words, addressed by Pym to Wentworth : " You 
 are going to leave us, but I will never leave 
 you while your head is upon your shoulders !"* 
 That prophetic summons to a more fatal meet- 
 ing was now at last accomplished ! 
 
 Strafford had entered the House, we learn 
 from one who observed him, with his usual im- 
 petuous step " with speed," says Baillie, "he 
 comes to the House ; he calls rudely at the 
 door ; James Maxwell, keeper of the black rod, 
 opens ; his lordship, with a proud, glooming 
 countenance, makes towards his place at the 
 board-head ; but at once many bid him void 
 the House ; so he is forced, in confusion, to go 
 to the door till he was called. . . He offered to 
 speak, but was commanded to be gone with- 
 out a word. In the outer room, James Max- 
 well required him, as prisoner, to deliver his 
 sword. When he had got it, he cries, with a 
 loud voice, for his man to carry my lord-lieu- 
 tenant's sword. This done, he makes through 
 a number of people to his coach, all gazing, no 
 man capping to him, before whom that morn- 
 ing the greatest in England would have stood 
 discovered." 
 
 This was a change indeed ! Yet it was a 
 change for which Strafford would seem to have 
 been found not altogether unprepared. In all 
 the proceedings preliminary to his memorable 
 trial, in all the eventful incidents that followed, 
 he was quiet and collected, and showed, in his 
 general bearing, a magnanimous self-subdue- 
 ment. It is a mean as well as a hasty judg- 
 ment which would attribute this to any un- 
 worthy compromise with his real nature. It 
 is probably a juster and more profound view of 
 it to say, that into a few of the later weeks of 
 his life new knowledge had penetrated from 
 the midst of the breaking of his fortunes. It 
 was well and beautifully said by a then living 
 poet, 
 
 " The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 Lets in new light through chinks that time has made !" 
 
 * An admirable commentary on this fierce text is suppli- 
 rrl liy my friend Mr. Cattenuole, at the commencement of 
 the volume. 
 
 Gl- 
 
 and when suddenly upon the sight of Strafford 
 broke the vision of the long unseen assembly 
 of the people, with the old chiefs and the old 
 ceremonies, only more august and more fatal 
 when he saw himself, in a single hour, dis- 
 abled by a set of men not greater in vigour or 
 in intellect than those over whom the weak- 
 minded Buckingham had for years contemptu- 
 ously triumphed the chamber of that assem- 
 bly forsaken for Westminster Hall its once 
 imperious master become a timid auditor, lis- 
 tening unobserved through his screening cur- 
 tains, and unable to repress by his presence a 
 single threatening glance, or subdue a single 
 fierce voice, among the multitude assembled to 
 pronounce judgment on his minister that mul- 
 titude grown from the " faithful Commons" 
 into the imperial council of the land, and the 
 sworn upholders of its not yet fallen liberties 
 Pym no longer the mouthpiece of a faction 
 that might be trampled on, but recognised as 
 the chosen champion of the people of Eng- 
 land, " the delegated voice of God" when 
 Strafford had persuaded himself that all this 
 vision was indeed a reality before him, we may 
 feel the sudden and subduing conviction which 
 at once enthralled him to itself! the conviction 
 that he had mistaken the true presentment of 
 that principle of power which he worshipped, 
 and that his genius should have had a differ- 
 ent devotion. He had not sunk lower, but the 
 Parliament had towered immeasurably higher ! 
 
 The first thing he did after his arrest was to 
 write to the Lady Strafford. " Sweet harte, 
 You have heard before this what hath befallen 
 me in this place, but be you confident, that if I 
 fortune to be blamed, yet I will not, by God's 
 help, be ashamed. Your carriage upon this 
 misfortune I should advise to be calm, not 
 seeming to be neglective of my trouble, and 
 yet so as there may appear no dejection in 
 you. Continue on the family as formerly, and 
 make much of your children. Tell Will, Nan, 
 and Arabella I will write to them by the next. 
 In the mean time, I shall pray for them to God 
 that he may bless them, and for their sakes 
 deliver me out of the furious malice of my 
 enemies, which yet I trust, through the good- 
 nesse of God, shall do me no hurt. God have 
 us all in his blessed keeping. Your very lov- 
 ing husbande, STRAFFORDE." 
 
 A few days after this, having vainly prof- 
 fered bail, he was committed to the Tower. 
 Thereupon he wrote again to Lady Strafford. 
 "Sweet harte, I never pityed you so much as 
 I do now, for in the death of that great person 
 the deputy, you have lost the principal friend 
 you had there, whilst we are here riding out 
 the storm, as well as God and the season shall 
 give us leave. Yet I trust Lord Dillon will 
 supply unto you in part that great loss, till it 
 please God to bring us together again. As to 
 myself, albeit all be done against me that art 
 and malice can devise, with all the rigour pos- 
 sible, yet I am in great inward quietnesse, and 
 a strong beliefe God will deliver me out of all 
 these troubles. The more I look into my case, 
 the more hope I have, and sure, if there be any 
 honour and justice left, my life will not be in 
 danger, and for anything els, time, I trust, will 
 salve any other hurt which can be done me. 
 Therefore hold up your heart, look to the chil-
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 dren and your house, let me have your prayers, 
 and at last, by God's good pleasure, we shall 
 have our deliverance, when we may as little 
 look for it as we did for this blow of misfortune, 
 which, I trust, will make us better to God and 
 man. Your loving husbande, STRAFFORDE." 
 
 The preliminary arrangements having been 
 settled, and some negotiations proposed by 
 Charles with a view to his rescue having failed, 
 Strafford's impeachment began. Never had 
 such " pompous circumstances" and so "state- 
 ly a manner" been witnessed at any judicial 
 proceeding in England. One only, since that 
 day, has matched it. It was not the trial of 
 an individual, but the solemn arbitration of an 
 issue between the two great antagonist prin- 
 ciples, liberty and despotism. Westminster 
 Hall, which had alternately witnessed the tri- 
 umphs of both, was the fitting scene. Scaf- 
 folds, nearly reaching to the roof, were erected 
 on either side, eleven stages high, divided by 
 rails. In the upper ranks of these were the 
 commissioners of Scotland and the lords of 
 Ireland, who had joined with the commoners of 
 England in their accusations. In the centre 
 sat the peers in their Parliament robes, and the 
 lord-keeper and the judges, in their scarlet 
 robes, were on the woolsacks. At the upper 
 end, beyond the peers, was a chair raised un- 
 der a cloth of state for the king, and another 
 for the prince. The throne was unoccupied, 
 for the king was supposed not to be present, 
 since in his presence, by legal construction, no 
 judicial act could legally be done. Two cabi- 
 nets or galleries, with trellis-work, were on 
 each side of the cloth of state. The king, the 
 queen, and their court occupied one of these,* 
 the foreign nobility then in London the other. 
 The Earls of Arundel and Lindsey acted, the 
 one as High-steward, and the other as High- 
 constable of England. Strafford entered the 
 hall daily, guarded by two hundred trainbands. 
 The king had procured it as a special favour 
 that the axe should not be carried before him. 
 At the foot of the state-cloth was a scaffold for 
 ladies of quality ; at the lower end was a place 
 with partitions, and an apartment to retire to, 
 for the convenience and consultations of the 
 managers of the trial ; opposite to this the wit- 
 nesses entered ; and between was a small 
 desk, at which the accused earl stood or sat, 
 with the Lieutenant of the Tower beside him, 
 and at his back four secretaries. 
 
 The articles of accusation had gradually, du- 
 ring the long and tedious preliminary proceed- 
 ings, swelled from nine which was their ori- 
 ginal number to twenty-eight. Pym, in an 
 able speech, presented them to the House of 
 Lords. Strafford entreated that seeing these 
 charges filled 200 sheets of paper, and involved 
 the various and ill-remembered incidents of 
 fourteen years of a life of severe action the 
 space of three months should be permitted for 
 the answer. He was allowed three weeks, 
 and on the 24th of February, 1641, his an- 
 swers, in detail, to the charges of the Com- 
 mons were read to the House. The 22d of 
 
 * The king, however, observes Baillie, " brake down the 
 screens with his own hands, so they sat in the eyes of all, 
 bat little more regarded than if they had been absent, for 
 the lords sat all covered." Baillie was the principal of the 
 college of Glasgow, and present by order of the Scottish 
 party. 
 
 March was then fixed for the commencement 
 of his trial. 
 
 On the first reception of the articles, Straf- 
 ford, with characteristic purpose, wrote to his 
 wife. " Sweet harte, It is long since I writt 
 unto you, for I am here in such a trouble as 
 gives me little or no respitt. The charge is 
 now come in, and I am now able, I prayse God, 
 to tell you that I conceive there is nothing capitall ; 
 and for the reste, I know at the worste his 
 majestie will pardon all, without hurting my 
 fortune ; and then we shall be happy, by God's 
 grace. Therefore comfort yourself, for I trust 
 thes cloudes will away, and that wee shall have 
 faire weather afterwardes. Farewell. Your 
 loving husbande, STRAFFORDE." He expressed 
 the same opinion in a letter to Sir Adam Loftus. 
 
 A short summary of the charges will be suf- 
 ficient for the present purpose ; for it is not 
 necessary, after the ample notice which has 
 been given of Strafford's life and actions, to 
 occupy any considerable space with the pro- 
 ceedings, which only farther illustrated them 
 here.* 
 
 The grand object which the leaders of the 
 Commons had in view was to establish against 
 Strafford AN ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT THE FUNDA- 
 MENTAL LAWS OF THE COUNTRY. t They had an 
 unquestionable right, with this view, to blend 
 in the impeachment offences of a different de- 
 gree ; nor was it ever pretended by them that 
 more than one or two of the articles amounted 
 to treason. Their course to deduce a legal 
 construction of treason from actions notorious- 
 ly gone " thorough" with in the service and in 
 exaltation of the king was to show that, no 
 matter with what motive, any actions underta- 
 ken which had a tendency to prove destructive 
 to the state, amounted, in legal effect, to a trai- 
 torous design against the sovereign. The sov- 
 ereign, it was argued by these great men, could 
 never have had a contemplated existence be- 
 yond, or independent of, the state. It could 
 never have been the object, they said, to have 
 defended the king by the statute of Edward 
 III., and to have left undefended the great body 
 of the people associated under him. This prin- 
 ciple Strafford had himself recognised in his 
 support of the petition of right, and it is truly 
 observed by Rushworth, that " all the laws con- 
 firmed and renewed in that petition of right 
 were said to be the most envenomed arrows 
 that gave him his mortal wound." The proofs 
 by which it was proposed to sustain the tre- 
 mendous accusation were to be deduced from 
 a series of his actions infringing the laws, from 
 words intimating arbitrary designs, and from 
 certain counsels which directly tended to the 
 entire ruin of the frame of the Constitution. 
 
 Over the three great divisions of his public 
 functions the articles of impeachment were dis- 
 tributed. As president of the council of York, 
 he was charged with having procured powers 
 subversive of all law, with having committed 
 insufferable acts of oppression -under colour of 
 his instructions, and with having distinctly an- 
 
 * Rushworth has devoted a large folio volume to the oc- 
 currences of the impeachment alone. 
 
 t They had passed this vote in the House of Commons, 
 and against it not a voice was raised, even by the earl's 
 most ardent supporters. ' That the Earl of Strafford had 
 endeavoured to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws 
 of the realm, and to introduce arbitrary and tyrannical gov- 
 ernment."
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 123 
 
 nounced tyrannical intentions, by declaring tha 
 the people should find " the king's little finger 
 heavier than the loins of the law." As gov 
 ernor of Ireland, he was accused of having pub 
 licly asserted " that the Irish was a conquerec 
 nation, and that the king might do with them 
 as he pleased." He was charged with acts o 
 oppression towards the Earl of Cork, Lore 
 Mountnorris, the Lord-chancellor Loftus, the 
 Earl of Kildare, and other persons. He had 
 it was alleged, issued a general warrant for the 
 seizure of all persons who refused to submit to 
 any legal decree against them, and for their de- 
 tention till they either submitted, or gave bail 
 to appear before the council table : he had sent 
 soldiers to free quarters on those who would 
 not obey his arbitrary decrees ; he had prevent- 
 ed the redress of his injustice by procuring in- 
 structions to prohibit all persons of distinction 
 from quitting Ireland without his express li- 
 cense : he had appropriated to himself a large 
 share of the customs, the monopoly of tobac- 
 co, and the sale of licenses for the exportation 
 of certain commodities : he had committed 
 grievous acts of oppression in guarding his mo- 
 nopoly of tobacco : he had, for his own inter- 
 est, caused the rates on merchandise to be 
 raised, and the merchants to be harassed with 
 new and unlawful oaths : he had obstructed the 
 industry of the country by introducing new and 
 unknown processes into the manufacture of 
 flax : he had encouraged his army, the instru- 
 ment of his oppression, by assuring them that 
 his majesty would regard them as a pattern for 
 all his three kingdoms : he had enforced an il- 
 legal oath on the Scottish subjects in Ireland : 
 he had given undue encouragement to Papists, 
 and had actually composed the whole of his 
 new-levied troops of adherents from that reli- 
 gion. As chief minister of England, it was laid 
 to his charge that he had instigated the king to 
 make war on the Scots, and had himself, as 
 governor of Ireland, commenced hostilities : 
 that, on the question of supplies, he had decla- 
 red, " That his majesty should first try the Par- 
 liament here, and if that did not supply him ac- 
 cording to his occasions, he might then use his 
 prerogative to levy what he needed ; and that 
 he should be acquitted both of God and man if 
 he took some other courses to supply himself, 
 though it were against the will of his subjects :" 
 that, after the dissolution of that Parliament, 
 he had said to his majesty, "That, having tried 
 the affections of his people, he was loose and 
 absolved from all rules of government, and was 
 to do everything that power would admit ; that 
 his majesty had tried all ways, and was refused, 
 and should be acquitted both to God and man ; 
 that he had an army in Ireland which he might 
 employ to reduce England to obedience." He 
 was farther charged with having counselled the 
 royal declaration which reflected so bitterly on 
 the last Parliament ; with the seizure of the 
 bullion in the Tower ; the proposal of coining 
 base money ; a new levy of ship-money ; and 
 the loan of 100,000 from the city of London. 
 He was accused of having told the refractory 
 citizens that no good would be done till they 
 were laid up by the heels, and some of their 
 aldermen hanged for an example. It was laid 
 to his charge that he had levied arbitrary ex- 
 actions on the people of Yorkshire to maintain 
 
 his troops ; and, finally, that his counsels had 
 given rise to the rout at Newburn."* 
 
 In his answers and opposing evidence, Straf- 
 ford maintained that " the enlarged instruc- 
 tions for the council of York had not been pro- 
 cured by his solicitations ; that the specified 
 instances of oppression in the northern coun- 
 ties were committed after his departure for 
 Ireland ; and that the words imputed to him 
 were directly the reverse of those which he 
 had spoken. With regard to Ireland, he vin- 
 dicated his opinion that it was a conquered 
 country, and that the king's prerogative was 
 much greater there than in England. He con- 
 tended that all the judgments, charged on him 
 as arbitrary, were delivered by competent 
 courts, in none of which he had above a single 
 voice : that the prevention of persons from quit- 
 ting the kingdom without license, as well as 
 placing soldiers at free quarters on the disobe- 
 dient, were transactions consistent with ancient 
 usages : that the flax manufacture owed all its 
 prosperity to his exertions, and that his prohi- 
 bition tended to remedy some barbarous and 
 unjust methods of sorting the yarn : that his 
 bargains for the customs and tobacco were 
 profitable to the crown and the country : and 
 that the oath which he had enforced on the 
 Scots was required by the critical circumstan- 
 ces of the times, and fully approved by the gov- 
 ernment. In regard to his transactions in Eng- 
 land, he answered that hostility against Scot- 
 land having been resolved on, he had merely 
 counselled an offensive in preference to a de- 
 fensive war : that his expressions relative to 
 supplies were in strict conformity to the estab- 
 lished maxim of the Constitution :f that, in 
 such emergencies as a foreign invasion, the 
 sovereign was entitled to levy contributions, or 
 adopt any other measure for the public de- 
 fence : that the words relative to the employ- 
 ment of the Irish army were falsely stated, and 
 that he had not ventured to apply to the king- 
 dom of England words uttered in a committee 
 xpressly assembled to consider of the reduc- 
 tion of Scotland. He said that his harsh ex- 
 pressions towards the citizens of London were 
 :ieard by only one interested individual, and not 
 heard by others who stood as near him : that 
 he contributions in Yorkshire were voluntary: 
 and that the proposals for seizing the bullion and 
 coining base money did not proceed from him.J 
 The charges which remained untouched by 
 these answers were abandoned by the Com- 
 nons, as irrelative or incapable of proof, and 
 on the 23d of March, 1641, the chief manager, 
 Mr. Pym, rose in Westminster Hall, and open- 
 d the case against him. 
 The " getting up" of that mighty scene has 
 >een described, arid a few words may serve to 
 mt it, as it were, in action. 
 
 Three kingdoms, by their representatives, 
 were present, and for fifteen days, the period 
 of the duration of the trial, "it was daily," 
 says Baillie, " the most glorious assembly the 
 sle could afford." The earl himself appeared 
 )efore it each day in deep mourning, wearing 
 
 * Stratfbrti's Trial, p. 61-75. Nalson, vol. ii., p. 11-20. 
 
 t Salus populi suprema lex. 
 
 t Stafford's Trial, p. 61-75. Nalson, vol. ii.. p. 11-20 
 
 have partly availed myself, in the above, of Mr. MacDi- 
 armid's abstract, p. 251-259. Some of the charges specified 
 were added in the course of the trial.
 
 124 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 his George. The stern and simple character 
 of his features accorded with the occasion his 
 " countenance manly black," as Whitelock 
 terms it, and his thick dark hair cut short from 
 his ample forehead. A poet who was present 
 exclaimed, 
 
 " On thy brow 
 
 Sate terror mixed with wisdom, and at once 
 Saturn and Hermes hi thy countenance." 
 
 To this was added the deep interest which 
 can never be withheld from sickness bravely 
 borne. His face was dashed with paleness, 
 and his body stooped with its own infirmities 
 even more than with his master's cares. This 
 was, indeed, so evident, that he was obliged to 
 allude to it himself, and it was not seldom al- 
 luded to by others. " They had here," he said, 
 on one occasion, " this rag of mortality before 
 them, worn out with numerous infirmities, 
 which, if they tore into shreds, there was no 
 great loss, only in the spilling of his, they would 
 open a way to the blood of all the nobility in 
 the land." His disorders were the most terri- 
 ble to bear in themselves, and of that nature, 
 moreover, which can least endure the aggrava- 
 tion of mental anxiety. A severe attack of 
 stone,* gout in one of his legs to an extent 
 even with him unusual, and other pains, had 
 bent all their afflictions upon him. Yet, though 
 a generous sympathy was demanded on this 
 score, and paid by not a few of his worst oppo- 
 nents, it availed little with the multitudes that 
 were present. Much noise and confusion pre- 
 vailed at all times through the hall ; there was 
 always a great clamour near the doors ; and 
 we have it, on the authority of Rushworth him- 
 self, that at those intervals when Strafford was 
 busied in preparing his answers, the mos,t dis- 
 tracting " hubbubs" broke out, lords walked 
 about and chatted, and commoners were yet 
 more offensively loud.f This was unfavoura- 
 ble to the recollection, for disproof, of incidents 
 long passed, and of conversations forgotten !f 
 But conscious that he was not to be allowed in 
 any case permission to retire, as soon as one 
 of his opponent managers had closed his charge, 
 the earl calmly turned his back to his judges, 
 and, with uncomplaining composure, conferred 
 with his secretaries and counsel. 
 
 He had, indeed, it is not to be forgotten, 
 strong assurances to sustain him secretly. He 
 had, first, his own conviction of the legal in- 
 competency of the charges, and to this was 
 added the doubly-pledged faith of the king. In 
 his prison he had received the following letter : 
 " STRAFFORD, The misfortune that is fallen 
 upon you by the strange mistaking and con- 
 juncture of these times being such that I must 
 lay by the thought of employing you hereafter 
 in my affairs, yet I cannot satisfy myself in 
 honour or conscience without assuring you 
 (now in the midst of your troubles) that, upon 
 the word of a king, you shall not suffer in life, 
 honour, or fortune. This is but justice, and 
 therefore a very mean reward from a master 
 to so faithful and able a servant as you have 
 
 * See Nalson, vol. ii., p. 100, et teq. 
 
 t Baillie adds, that in these periods " flesh and bread" 
 was ate, and " bottles of beer and wine were going thick 
 from mouth to mouth." 
 
 t Baillie cannot refrain from saying, while he describes 
 the guilt to have been fully proved, that some of the evi- 
 dence was only " chamber and table discourse, flim-flams, 
 and fearie-fairies." 
 
 showed yourself to be, yet it is as much as I 
 conceive the present times will permit, though 
 none shall hinder me from being your constant 
 and faithful friend, CHARLES." But against 
 these aids were opposed certain significant 
 symptoms of a desperate and fatal purpose on 
 the part of the managers of the impeachment. 
 The bishops, on whom he might reasonably 
 have relied, had, on the motion of Williams, 
 withdrawn from attendance " in agitatione causa 
 sanguinis," surrendering the right they had, un- 
 der what was called " the constitutions of 
 Clarendon," of attending in capital trials up to 
 the stage of judgment. Next, the person on 
 whose evidence Strafford mainly relied in the 
 proof of his answers, Sir George Radcliffe, had, 
 by a master-stroke of Pym's, been incapacitated 
 suddenly by a charge of treason against him- 
 self; not preferred, certainly, without cause, on 
 the presumption of the guilt of the principal 
 for he had been Strafford's guilty agent in all 
 things but preferred with a fatal effect to 
 Strafford himself. Again, though counsel had 
 been granted him, they were restricted by the 
 lords, on conference with the commons, to 
 the argument of points of law. Lastly, with an 
 irresistible energy, equalled only by Strafford's 
 own, Pym had forced from the king a release 
 for all the members of his secret council from 
 their oath of secrecy, in order to their examina- 
 tion before the committee of impeachment. 
 
 " My lords," said Strafford, alluding to this, 
 and to certain words of his own which such 
 examination had been alleged to have proved, 
 " My lords, these words were not wantonly or 
 unnecessarily spoken, or whispered in a corner, 
 but they were spoken in full council, where, by 
 the duty of my oath, I was obliged to speak ac- 
 cording to my heart and conscience, in all 
 things concerning the king's service. If I had 
 forborne to speak what I conceived to be for 
 the benefit of the king and the people, I had 
 been perjured towards Almighty God ; and for 
 delivering my mind openly and freely, shall I 
 be in danger of my life as a traitor 1 If that ne- 
 cessity be put upon me, I thank God, by his 
 blessing, I have learned not to stand in fear of 
 him who can only kill the body. If the ques- 
 tion be whether I must be traitor to man or 
 perjured to God, I will be faithful to my Crea- 
 tor ; and whatsoever shall befall me from pop- 
 ular rage or from my own weakness, I must 
 leave it to that Almighty Being, and to the jus- 
 tice and honour of my judges. My lords, I 
 conjure you not to make yourselves so unhap- 
 py as to disable yourselves and your children 
 from undertaking the great charge and trust of 
 the Commonwealth. You inherit that trust 
 from your fathers, you are born to great 
 thoughts, you are nursed up for the great and 
 weighty employments of the kingdom. But if 
 it be once admitted that a counsellor, deliver- 
 ing his opinion with others at the council-table, 
 candide et caste, under an oath of secrecy and 
 faithfulness, shall be brought into question, 
 upon some misapprehension or ignorance of 
 law if every word, that he speaks from a sin- 
 cere and noble intention, shall be drawn against 
 him for the attainting of him, his children, and 
 posterity I know not (under favour I speak it) 
 any wise or noble person of fortune who will, 
 upon such perilous and unsafe terms, adventure
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 125 
 
 to be counsellor to the king ! therefore I be- 
 seech your lordships so to look On me that my 
 misfortune may not bring an inconvenience 
 upon yourselves. And though my words were 
 not so advised and discreet, or so well weighed 
 as they ought to be, yet I trust your lordships 
 are too honourable and just to lay them to my 
 charge as high treason. Opinions may make 
 a heretic, but that they make a traitor I have 
 never heard till now." 
 
 Again, in reference to matters alleged against 
 him on the evidence of familiar conversations, 
 he eloquently protested thus : " If, my lords, 
 words spoken to friends in familiar discourse, 
 spoken in one's chamber, spoken at one's table, 
 spoken in one's sick bed, spoken perhaps to 
 gain better reason, to give himself more clear 
 light and judgment by reasoning if these things 
 shall be brought against a man as treason, this, 
 under favour, takes away the comfort of all hu- 
 man society by this means we shall be de- 
 barred from speaking (the principal joy and 
 comfort of society) with wise and good men to 
 become wiser, and better our lives. If these 
 things be strained to take away life and hon- 
 our, and all that is desirable, it will be a silent 
 world ! A city will become a hermitage, and 
 sheep will be found amongst a crowd and press 
 of people, and no man shall dare to impart his 
 solitary thoughts or opinions to his friend and 
 neighbour !" Noble and touching as this is, 
 let the reader remember, as he reads it, the 
 case of Mountnorris, and the misquoting and 
 torturing of words, in themselves harmless, by 
 which the lord-deputy of Ireland sacrificed that 
 man to his schemes of absolute power. It is 
 mournful to be obliged to add that it is chiefly 
 the genius of a great actor which calls for ad- 
 miration in this great scene ; for though he 
 was, as we may well believe, sincere in his sud- 
 den present acknowledgment of that power of 
 the Commons which he had so often braved, 
 the same plea of sincerity cannot serve him in 
 his bold outfacing of every previous action of 
 his power. 
 
 As the trial proceeded, so extraordinary were 
 the resources he manifested, that the managers 
 of the Commons failed in much of the effect of 
 their evidence. Even the clergy who were 
 present forgot the imprisonment of the weak 
 and miserable Laud (who now lay in prison, 
 stripped of his power by this formidable Par- 
 liament, which the very despotism of himself 
 and Strafford had gifted with its potently oper- 
 ative force !), and thought of nothing but the 
 " grand apostate" before them. " By this time," 
 says May, " the people began to be a little di- 
 vided in opinion. The clergy in general were 
 so much fallen into love and admiration of this 
 earl, that the Archbishop of Canterbury was 
 almost quite forgotten by them. The courtiers 
 cried him up, and the ladies were exceedingly 
 on his side. It seemed a very pleasant object 
 to see so many Sempronias, with pen, ink, and 
 paper in their hands, noting the passages, and 
 discoursing upon the grounds of law and state. 
 They were all of his side, whether moved by 
 pity proper to their sex, or by ambition of be- 
 ing able to judge of the parts of the prisoner. 
 But so great was the favour and love which 
 they openly expressed to him, that some could 
 not but think of that verse 
 
 " Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses, 
 Et tamcn aequoreas torsit amore deas '." 
 
 Even the chairman of the committee who pre- 
 pared his impeachment, the author of the Me- 
 morials, observes, " Certainly never any man 
 acted such a part, on such a theatre, with more 
 wisdome, constancy, and eloquence, with great- 
 er reason, judgment, and temper, and with a 
 better grace in all his words and gestures, than 
 this great and excellent person did." 
 
 Such, indeed, appeared to be a very prevailing 
 feeling, when, on the morning of the 10th of 
 April, before the opening of that day's trial, 
 Pym entered the House of Commons and an- 
 nounced a communication respecting the Earl 
 of Strafford of vital importance . The members 
 were ordered to remain in their places, and the 
 doors of the House were locked. Pym and the 
 young Sir Harry Vane then rose, and produced 
 a paper containing " a copy of notes taken at a 
 junto of the privy council for the Scots affairs, 
 about the 5th of May last." These notes were 
 made by Sir Henry Vane the elder, and Claren- 
 don says that he placed them in the hands of 
 Pym out of hatred to Strafford. With much 
 more appearance and likelihood of truth, how- 
 ever, Whitelocke states that the elder Vane, be- 
 ing absent from London, and in want of some 
 papers, sent the key of his study to his son, and 
 that the latter, in executing his father's orders, 
 found this paper, and was ultimately induced 
 by Pym to allow its production against Straf- 
 ford. The Commons received this new evi- 
 dence with many expressions of zealous thank- 
 fulness. 
 
 On the 13th of April the notes were read in 
 Westminster Hall by Pym. They were in the 
 shape of a dialogue and conference, and con- 
 tained opinions delivered by Laud and Ham- 
 ilton ; but the essential words were words spo- 
 ken by Strafford to the king. " i'ou have an 
 army in Ireland that you may employ to re- 
 duce this kingdom to obedience." Vane the el- 
 der was then called. He denied recollection 
 of the words at first, till it had been asserted by 
 others of the privy council that Strafford had 
 used those words, " or the like," when the earl's 
 brother-in-law, Lord Clare, rose and suggested 
 that " this kingdom," by grammatical construc- 
 tion, might mean Scotland. With singular abil- 
 ity Strafford directed all his resources to the 
 weakening of this evidence, but it was gener- 
 ally regarded as fatal. He urged his brother- 
 in-law's objection ; the very title of the notes, 
 in proof of the country referred to, " no danger 
 of a war with Scotland, if offensive, not defen- 
 sive ;" and protested against a man's fife be- 
 ing left to hang upon a single word. The evi- 
 dence was finally admitted against him, and he 
 was called upon to make his general defence 
 in person against the facts, leaving the law to 
 his counsel. 
 
 He began by adverting to his painful and ad- 
 verse position, alone and unsupported, against 
 the whole authority and power of the Com- 
 mons, his health impaired, his memory almost 
 gone, his thoughts unquiet and troubled. He 
 prayed of their lordships to supply his many 
 infirmities by their better abilities, better judg- 
 ments, better memories. "You alone/' he 
 said, " I acknowledge, with all gladness and 
 humility, as my judges. The king condemns
 
 126 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 no man ; the great operation of his sceptre is 
 mercy ; he dispenses justice by his ministers ; 
 hut, with reverence be it spoken, he is not my 
 judge, nor are the Commons my judges, in this 
 case of life and death. To your judgment alone, 
 my lords, I submit myself in all cheerfulness. 
 I have great cause to give thanks to God for 
 this, and celebrated be the wisdom of our an- 
 cestors who have so ordained." 
 
 With great force and subtle judgment he 
 then argued against the doctrine of arbitrary 
 and constructive treason, and afterward pro- 
 ceeded : " My lords, it is hard to be questioned 
 upon a law which cannot be shown. Where 
 hath this fire lain hid so many hundred years, 
 without smoke to discover it, till it thus bursts 
 forth to consume me and my children t That 
 punishment should precede promulgation of a 
 law, to be punished by a law subsequent to the 
 fact, is extreme hard ! What man can be safe 
 if this be admitted 1 My lords, it is hard in an- 
 other respect that there should be no token 
 set by which we should know this offence, no 
 admonition by which we should avoid it. My 
 lords, be pleased to give that regard to the 
 peerage of England, as never expose yourselves 
 to such moot points such constructive inter- 
 pretations of laws : if there must be a trial of 
 wits, let the subject-matter be of somewhat 
 else than the lives and honours of peers. It 
 will be wisdom for yourselves, for your poster- 
 ity, and for the whole kingdom, to cast into the 
 fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of 
 constructive and arbitrary treason, as the prim- 
 itive Christians did their books of curious arts, 
 and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the 
 law and statute, that telleth us what is and what 
 is not treason, without being more ambitious to 
 be more learned in the art of killing than our 
 forefathers ! It is now 240 years since any 
 man was touched for this alleged crime, to this 
 height, before myself. Let us not awaken these 
 sleeping lions to our destructions, by taking up 
 a few musty records, that have lain by the walls 
 so many ages, forgotten or neglected. May 
 your lordships please not to add this to my oth- 
 er misfortunes let not a precedent be derived 
 from me, so disadvantageous as this will be in 
 its consequence to the whole kingdom. Do 
 not, through me, wound the interest of the Com- 
 monwealth : and howsoever these gentlemen 
 say they speak for the Commonwealth, yet in 
 this particular I indeed speak for it, and show 
 the inconveniences and mischiefs that will fall 
 upon it ; for, as it is said in the statute 1 Hen. 
 IV., ' No one will know what to do or say for 
 fear of such penalties.' Do not put, my lords, 
 such difficulties upon ministers of state, that 
 men of wisdom, of honour, and of fortune may 
 not with cheerfulness and safety be employed 
 for the public. If you weigh and measure them 
 by grains and scruples, the public affairs of the 
 kingdom will lie waste ; no man will meddle 
 with them who hath anything to lose. My 
 lords, I have troubled you longer than I should 
 have done, were it not for the interest of those 
 dear pledges a saint in Heaven hath left me." 
 At this word (says the reporter) he stopped a 
 while, letting fall some tears to her memory ; 
 then he went on : " What I forfeit myself is 
 nothing ; but that indiscretion should extend 
 to my posterity woundeth me to the very soul. 
 
 You will pardon my infirmity ; something I 
 should have added, but am not able ; therefore 
 let it pass. Now, my lords, for myself, I have 
 been, by the blessing of Almighty God, taught 
 that the afflictions of this present life are not to 
 be compared to the eternal weight of glory 
 which shall be revealed hereafter. And so, my 
 lords, even so, with all tranquillity of mind, I 
 freely submit myself to your judgment, and 
 whether that judgment be of life or death, Tc 
 Deum Laudamus."* 
 
 Great was the struggle to be made against 
 such noble and affecting eloquence, and Pym 
 proved himself not unequal to it. While we 
 yield due admiration to the unexampled de- 
 meanour of Strafford in this conjuncture to 
 that quick perception of his exact position, 
 which, while it revealed to him the whole mag- 
 nitude of the danger, suggested the most plau- 
 sible defence, and supplied resolution where, 
 to an ordinary spirit, it would have induced 
 despair, so that, while sinking down the tre- 
 mendous gulf into which he had been so sud- 
 denly precipitated, he displayed the same cool- 
 ness in catching at every weed, however feeble, 
 that might retard his descent, as though the 
 peril had long been foreseen and the methods 
 of escape long rehearsed while we praise this 
 in him,, let us not forget the still more extra- 
 ordinary bearing of his adversary the triumph 
 of Pym, as unparalleled as the overthrow of 
 Strafford. In either case, the individual rose 
 or fell with the establishment or the withdrawal 
 of a great principle. Pym knew and felt this, 
 and that with him it now rested whether or not 
 the privileges so long contested, the rights so 
 long misunderstood, of the great body of the 
 people, should win at last their assured consum- 
 mation and acknowledgment. In the speeches 
 of Pym, the true point is to be recognised on 
 which the vindication of Strafford's death 
 turns. The defence of the accused was tech- 
 nical, and founded on rules of evidence and 
 legal constructions of statutes, which, though 
 clearly defined since, were in that day recog- 
 nised doubtfully, and frequently exceeded. The 
 
 * This is from Whitelocke's Memorials. It is the most 
 beautiful and complete report that has been given. I may 
 subjoin a characteristic note from Baillie's letters. "At 
 the end, he made such a pathetic oration for half an hour 
 as ever comedian did on the stage. The matter and expres- 
 sion was exceeding brave. Doubtless, if he had grace and 
 civil goodness, he is a most eloquent man. One passage is 
 most spoken of his breaking off in weeping and silence 
 when he spoke of his first wife. Some took it for a true de- 
 fect in his memory, others for a notable part of his rhetoric ; 
 some that true grief and remorse at that remembrance had 
 stopt his mouth ; for they say that his first lady, being with 
 child, and finding one of his mistress's letters, brought it to 
 him, and chiding him therefore, he struck her on the breast, 
 whereof she shortly died." Letters, p. 291. The latter 
 statement is only one of a thousand horrible and disgusting 
 falsehoods which, notwithstanding the abundance of true 
 accusatory matter, were circulated at the time against 
 Straflford, and one or two specimens of which maybe found 
 in the fourth volume of Lord Somers's Collection of Tracts. 
 His friends, however, it is to be remarked, were not less 
 forward in getting up all sorts of fictitious points of sympa- 
 thy (in some respects, also, unnecessary, since they had 
 plenty of true resources in that regard) around him and his 
 memory ; and as an instance I may mention that an ex- 
 tremely pathetic letter of Sir Walter Raleigh to his wife 
 (the most pathetic, probably, in the language), written 
 while he expected execution, was printed with Strafford's 
 signature, and with the alteration of words to meet the cir- 
 cumstances of Strafford's death. The writers of the Biog. 
 Brit, do not seem to have been aware of this. But see Som- 
 ers's Tracts, vol. iv., p. 249, 250 ; and compare with Eiog. 
 Brit., vol. v., p. 3478.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 127 
 
 defence of the accusers, if they are indeed to 
 be put upon their defence before a posterity 
 for whose rights they hazarded all things, rests 
 upon a principle which was implanted in man 
 when he was born, and which no age can deaden 
 or obscure. " My lords," said Pym, " we charge 
 him with nothing but what the ' law' in every 
 man's breast condemns, the light of nature, 
 the light of common reason, the rules of com- 
 mon society."* Nor can it be doubted that 
 occasions must ever be recognised by the phi- 
 losopher and the statesman when the commu- 
 nity may be reinvested in those rights which 
 were theirs before a particular law was estab- 
 lished. If ever such an occasion had arisen, 
 surely, looking back upon the occurrences of 
 the past, and forward upon the prospects of the 
 future, it had arisen here. It was time that 
 outraged humanity should appeal, as Pym after- 
 ward urged, to " the element of all laws, out 
 of which they are derived, the end of all laws, 
 to which they are designed, and in which they 
 are perfected. "t The public liberty was in 
 danger from the life of Stratford, and the ques- 
 tion of justice reared itself above the narrow 
 limits of the law ; for yet, again Pym urged, 
 the law itself can be no other than that " which 
 puts a difference betwixt good and evil, betwixt 
 just and unjust. It is God alone who subsists 
 by himself; all other things subsist in a mutual 
 dependance and relation. "t Nor can it be al- 
 leged, even by the legal opponents of this im- 
 peachment, that the proofs advanced under 
 the fifteenth article, which had charged Straf- 
 ford with raising money by his own authority, 
 and quartering troops upon the people of Ire- 
 land, did not advance far more nearly to a sub- 
 stantive treason, within the statute of Edward 
 III., than many of the recognised precedents 
 that were offered. " Neither will this," Pym 
 contended on that ground with a terrible ear- 
 nestness, "be a new way of blood. There are 
 marks enough to trace this law to the very 
 original of this kingdom ; and if it hath not 
 been put in execution, as he allegeth, this 240 
 years, it was not for want of a law, but that all 
 that time hath not bred a man bold enough to 
 commit such crimes as these !" 
 
 At this moment, it is said, Strafford had 
 been closely and earnestly watching Pym, when 
 the latter, suddenly turning, met the fixed and 
 wasted features of his early associate. A rush 
 of other feelings crowding into that look for a 
 moment dispossessed him. " His papers he 
 looked on," says Baillie, " but they could not 
 help him to a point or two, so he behooved to 
 pass them." But a moment, and Pym's elo- 
 quence and dignified command returned. He 
 had thoroughly contemplated his commission, 
 and had resolved on its fulfilment. The occa- 
 sion was not let slip ; the energies, wound up 
 to this feat through years of hard endurance, 
 were not frozen, and the cause of the people 
 was gained. In the condemnation of Strafford 
 they resumed an alienated power, and were 
 reinstated in an ancient freedom. 
 
 He was condemned. The judges themselves, 
 on a solemn reference by the House of Lords 
 for their opinion whether some of the articles 
 amounted to treason, answered unanimously, 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. viii., p. 108, 109. 
 t Ibid., p. C63. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 661. 
 
 that upon all which their lordships had voted 
 to be proved, it was their opinion the Earl of 
 Strafford did deserve to undergo the pains and 
 penalties of high treason by law. 
 
 Meanwhile, before this opinion was taken, 
 the Commons had changed their course, and 
 introduced a bill of attainder. This has been 
 sorely reproached to them, and one or two of 
 the men who had acted with them up to this 
 point now receded. Lord Digby was the prin- 
 cipal of these. " Truly, sir," he said, on the 
 discussion of the bill, " I am still the same in 
 my opinions and affections as unto the Earl of 
 Strafford. I confidently believe him to be the 
 most dangerous minister, the most insupport- 
 able to free subjects, that can be charactered. 
 I believe his practices in themselves as high, 
 as tyrannical, as any subject ever ventured on, 
 and the malignity of them hugely aggravated 
 by those rare abilities of his, whereof God had 
 given him the use, but the devil the application. 
 In a word, I believe him to be still that grand 
 apostate to the Commonwealth, who must not 
 expect to be pardoned in this world till he be 
 despatched to the other ; and yet, let me tell 
 you, Mr. Speaker, my hand must not be to that 
 despatch. I protest, as my conscience stands 
 informed, I had rather it were off!"* The 
 authority of Digby in this affair, however, may 
 well be questioned, since it has been proved 
 that he had at this time entered into an intrigue 
 to save the life of the prisoner, and though he 
 spoke against the bill with extreme earnest- 
 ness, he at the same time no less earnestly of- 
 fered to swear that he knew nothing of a cer- 
 tain copy of important notes which had been 
 lost, though they were afterward found in his 
 handwriting in the royal cabinet taken at Nase- 
 by, and it turned out that, having access to 
 them as a member of the impeachment com- 
 mittee, he had stolen them.t 
 
 The bill of attainder was passed on the 21st 
 of April. While on its way to the Lords, the 
 king went to that house and addressed them. 
 " I am sure," he said, " you all know that I 
 have been present at the hearing of this great 
 case from the one end to the other, and I must 
 tell you that I cannot in my conscience con- 
 demn him of high treason : it is not fit for me 
 to argue the business ; I am sure you will not 
 expect that ; a positive doctrine best becomes 
 the mouth of a prince." After beseeching 
 them not to treat the earl with severity, he 
 thus concluded : " I must confess, for matter 
 of misdemeanors, I am so clear in that, that 
 though I will not chalk out the way, yet let me 
 tell you that I do think my Lord Strafford is 
 not fit hereafter to serve me or the Common- 
 wealth in any place of trust, no, not so much 
 as that of a constable ; therefore I leave it to 
 you, my lords, to find some such way as to bring 
 me out of this great strait, and keep ourselves 
 and the kingdom from such inconveniences. 
 Certainly he that thinks him guilty of high 
 treason in his conscience may condemn him of 
 misdemeanor." 
 
 When Strafford- heard in his prison of this 
 intended interference, he had earnestly pro- 
 
 * [This speech of Digby's is one of the most beautiful 
 specimens of eloquence which we have received from the 
 many great speakers of that day. The whole may be tumid 
 in Sir R. Baker's Chronicles of England. C.] 
 
 t See Whitelocke, p. 43.
 
 128 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 tested against it, and on learning that the step 
 was actually taken, he gave himself up for lost.* 
 He had judged truly. The leaders of the 
 Commons took advantage of the occasion it 
 offered. The Presbyterian pulpits of the fol- 
 lowing day, which happened to be Sunday, 
 sent forth into every quarter of London cries 
 of "justice upon the great delinquent;" and 
 on the succeeding morning, furious multitudes, 
 variously armed, thronged the approaches to 
 the House of Lords ; placarded as " Strafford- 
 ians, or betrayers of their country," the names 
 of those commoners who had voted against the 
 attainder ; and shouted openly for the blood of 
 Stratford. 
 
 Pym, meanwhile, had discovered and crush- 
 ed a conspiracy for his release, which had ori- 
 ginated in the court, and was disclosed by the 
 inviolable fidelity of the governor of the Tower. 
 
 No hope remained. The lords, proceeding 
 upon the judicial opinion I have named, passed 
 the bill of attainder, voting upon the articles 
 judicially, and not as if they were enacting a 
 legislative measure. 
 
 The Earl of Strafford, with a generosity 
 worthy of his intellect, now wrote to the king 
 and released him from his pledged word. " To 
 say, sir," he wrote in the course of this memo- 
 rable letter, " that there hath not been a strife 
 in me, were to make me less man than, God 
 knoweth, my infirmities make me ; and to call 
 a destruction upon myself and my young chil- 
 dren (where the intentions of my heart at least 
 have been innocent of this great offence), may 
 be believed, will find no easy consent from 
 flesh and blood." Its concluding passages ran 
 thus : " So now, to set your majesty's con- 
 science at liberty, I do most humbly beseech 
 your majesty, for prevention of evils which 
 may happen by your refusal, to pass this bill, 
 and by this means to remove, praised be God 
 (I cannot say this accursed, but, I confess), 
 this unfortunate thing forth of the way towards 
 that blessed agreement which God, I trust, 
 shall ever establish between you and your sub- 
 jects. Sir, my consent shall more acquit you 
 herein to God than all the world can do besides. 
 To a willing man there is no injury done. 
 And as, by God's grace, I forgive all the world 
 with a calmness and meekness of infinite con- 
 tentment to my dislodging soul, so, sir, to you 
 I can give the life of this world, with all the 
 cheerfulness imaginable, in the just acknowl- 
 edgment of your exceeding favours, and only 
 beg that in your goodness you would vouch- 
 safe to cast your gracious regard upon my poor 
 son and his three sisters, less or more, and no 
 otherwise, than as their (in present) unfortu- 
 nate father may hereafter appear more or less 
 guilty of this death." 
 
 The singular note which has been preserved 
 by Burnet, and which relates circumstances 
 taken from the lips of Hollis himself, continues 
 the deep interest of this tragic history : " The 
 Earl of Strafford had married his sister : so, 
 though in the Parliament he was one of the 
 hottest men of the party, yet when that matter 
 was before them he always withdrew. When 
 the bill of attainder was passed, the king sent 
 for him to know what he could do to save the 
 Earl of Strafford. Hollis answered that, if 
 
 * Clarendon and Radcliffe. 
 
 the king pleased, since the execution of the 
 law was in him, he might legally grant him a 
 reprieve, which must be good in law ; but he 
 would not advise it. That which he proposed 
 was, that Lord Strafford should send him a pe- 
 tition for a short respite, to settle his affairs 
 and to prepare for death, upon which he advi- 
 sed the king to come next day with the petition 
 in his hands, and lay it before the two houses, 
 with a speech which he drew for the king, and 
 Hollis said to him, he would try his interest 
 among his friends to get them to consent to it. 
 He prepared a great many by assuring them 
 that, if they would save Lord Strafford, he 
 would become wholly theirs in consequence of 
 his first principles, and that he might do them 
 much more service by being preserved than he 
 could do if made an example upon such new 
 and doubtful points. In this he had wrought 
 on so many, that he believed if the king's party 
 had struck into it he might have saved him."* 
 
 While the party thus prepared to second 
 Hollis waited their time, the king suddenly re- 
 sorted to a different scheme, and, having with 
 tears in his eyes signed the commission for 
 giving assent to the bill, declaring at the same 
 time that Strafford's condition was happier 
 than his own, sent the Lords a letter, written 
 by his own hand, and, as a farther proof of his 
 deep interest, with the young Prince of Wales 
 as its messenger. " I did yesterday," ran this 
 letter, " satisfy the justice of the kingdom by 
 passing the bill of attainder against the Earl 
 of Strafford ; but mercy being as inherent and 
 inseparable to a king as justice, I desire at this 
 time, in some measure, to show that likewise, 
 by suffering that unfortunate man to fulfil the 
 natural course of his life in a close imprison- 
 ment ; yet so, if ever he make the least offer 
 to escape, or offer directly or indirectly to med- 
 dle in any sort of public business, especially 
 with me, either by message or letter, it shall 
 cost him his life without farther process. This, 
 if it may be done without the discontentment 
 of my people, will be an unspeakable content- 
 ment to me. To which end, as in the first 
 place, I by this letter do earnestly desire your 
 approbation, and to endear it more, have chose 
 him to carry it that of all your House is most 
 dear to me. So I desire, that by a conference 
 you will endeavour to give the House of Com- 
 mons contentment, assuring you that the exer- 
 cise of mercy is no more pleasing to me than 
 to see both houses of Parliament consent, for 
 my sake, that I should moderate the severity 
 of the law in so important a case. I will not 
 say that your complying with me in this my in- 
 tended mercy shall make me more willing, but 
 certainly 'twill make me more cheerful in grant- 
 ing your just grievances. But if no less than 
 his life can satisfy my people, I must say fiat 
 justitia. Thus, again recommending the con- 
 sideration of my intention to you, I rest." The 
 following was added as a postscript : " If he must 
 die, it were charity to reprieve him until Saturday." 
 
 Hollis's scheme was now thoroughly defeat- 
 ed, and death secured to Strafford. This pitia- 
 ble letter ended all. It is a sorry office to plant 
 the foot on a worm so crushed and writhing as 
 the wretched king who signed it, for it was one 
 of the few crimes of which he was in the event 
 
 * Own Time, book i.
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 129 
 
 thoroughly sensible, and friend has for one 
 co-operated with foe in the steady applicatior 
 to it of the branding iron. There is, in truth 
 hardly any way of relieving the "damned spot 
 of its intensity of hue, even by distributing the 
 concentrated infamy over other portions of 
 Charles's character. The reader who has gone 
 through the preceding details of Strafford's lift 
 can surely not suggest any ; for when we hav 
 convinced ourselves that this " unthankful king' 
 never really loved Strafford ; that, as much as 
 in him lay, he kept the dead Buckingham in 
 his old privilege of mischief, by adopting hi: 
 aversions and abiding by his spleenful purpo 
 ses ; that, in his refusals to award those in 
 creased honours for which his minister was a 
 petitioner, on the avowed ground of the roya 
 interest, may be discerned the petty triumph 
 of one who dares not dispense with the servi- 
 ces thrust upon him, but revenges himself by 
 withholding their well-earned reward stil 
 does the blackness accumulate to baffle our ef- 
 forts. The paltry tears he is said to have shec 
 only burn that blackness in. If his after con- 
 duct indeed had been different, he might have 
 availed himself of one excuse ; but that the 
 man who, in a few short months, proved that 
 he could make so resolute a stand somewhere, 
 should have judged this event no occasion for 
 attempting it, is either a crowning infamy or 
 an infinite consolation, according as we may 
 judge wickedness or weakness to have prepon- 
 derated in the constitution of Charles I.* 
 
 Sufficient has been said to vindicate these 
 remarks from any, the remotest, intention of 
 throwing doubt on the perfect justice of that 
 bill of attainder. Bills of attainder had not 
 been uncommon in England ; are the same in 
 principle as the ordinary bills of pains and pen- 
 alties ; and the resort to that principle in the 
 present case arose from no failure of the im- 
 peachment, as has been frequently alleged,! but 
 because, in the course of that impeachment, 
 circumstances arose which suggested to the 
 great leader of the popular cause the greater 
 safety of fixing this case upon wider and more 
 special grounds. Without stretching to the 
 slightest extent the boundaries of any statute, 
 they thought it better at once to bring Straf- 
 ford's treason to the condemnation of the sour- 
 ces of all law. In this view it is one of their 
 wisest achievements that has been brought 
 within the most hasty and ill-considered cen- 
 sure their famous proviso that the attainder 
 should not be acted upon by the judges as a 
 precedent in determining the crime of treason. 
 As to Strafford's death, the remark that the 
 people had no alternative includes all that it is 
 necessary to urge. The king's assurances of 
 his intention to afford him no farther opportu- 
 nity of crime, could surely weigh nothing with 
 men who had observed how an infinitely more 
 disgusting minister of his will had only seemed 
 to rise the higher in his master's estimation for 
 the accumulated curses of the nation. Nothing 
 but the knife of Felton could sever in that case 
 the weak head and the wicked instrument, and 
 
 * [The world will more readily forgive the faults of 
 Strafford than they will acquit Charles for having consent- 
 ed to his death. Spe Jesse's Court of England under the 
 Stuarts, vol. ii., p. 370. C.] 
 
 t The judges and peers voted judicially even on the bill, 
 as has been already stated. 
 
 R 
 
 it is to the honour of the adversaries of Straf- 
 ford that they were earnest that their cause 
 should vindicate itself completely, and look for 
 no adventitious redress. Strafford had outra- 
 ged the people : this was not denied. He was 
 defended on the ground of those outrages not 
 amounting to a treason against the king. Foi 
 my own part, this defence appears to me deci- 
 sive, looking at it in a technical view, and with 
 our present settlement of evidence and treason. 
 But to concede that point, after the advances 
 they had made, would have been in that day to 
 concede all. It was to be shown that another 
 power had claim to the loyalty and the ser- 
 vice of Strafford ; and if a claim, then a ven- 
 geance to exact for its neglect. And this was 
 done. 
 
 Nor should the subject be left without the 
 remark that the main principle contended for 
 by Pym and his associates was, at the last, 
 fully submitted to by Strafford. He allowed 
 the full power of the people's assembly to take 
 cognizance of his deeds and to dispose of his 
 life, while most earnestly engaged in defending 
 the former and preserving the latter. Now 
 the calm and magnanimous patience of Straf- 
 ford was very compatible with a fixed denial 
 of the authority of his judges, had that appear- 
 ed contestable in his eyes ; but we find no in- 
 timation of such a disposition. He would not 
 have the Parliament's " punishment precede 
 promulgation of a law ;" he pleads that " to 
 be punished by a law subsequent to the fact is 
 extreme hard ;" and that " it is hard that there 
 should be no token set by which we should 
 know this offence, no admonition by which we 
 should avoid it ;" and he is desirous that " a 
 precedent may not be derived from one so dis- 
 advantageous as this ;" but, in the mean time, 
 the cause is gained, the main and essential 
 point is given up ! The old boasts of the lord- 
 lieutenant's being accountable to the king alone, 
 of the king's will being the one and the only 
 law of his service, are no longer heard. It may 
 be said that a motive of prudence withheld 
 Strafford from indignantly appealing to the king 
 in his lurking-place from the unrecognised ar- 
 ray of questioners and self-constituted inquisi- 
 tors who had taken upon themselves to super- 
 sede him ; but when the sentence was passed 
 and its execution at hand, when hope was gone 
 and the end rapidly hastening, we still find 
 Strafford offering nothing against the right. 
 
 One momentary emotion, not inconsistent 
 with his letter to the king, escaped him when 
 le was told to prepare for death. He asked if 
 he king had indeed assented to the bill. Sec- 
 etary Carleton answered in the affirmative ; 
 and Strafford, laying his hand on his heart, and 
 aising his eyes to heaven, uttered the memor- 
 able words, " Put not your trust in princes, nor 
 n the sons of men, for in them there is no sal- 
 ation." Charles's conduct was indeed incred- 
 bly monstrous. 
 
 Three days more of existence were granted 
 o Strafford, which he employed calmly in the 
 arrangement of his affairs. He wrote a peti- 
 ion to the House of Lords to have compassion 
 n his innocent children ; addressed a letter to 
 is wife, bidding her affectionately to support 
 ler courage, and accompanied it with a letter 
 f final instruction and advice to his eldest
 
 130 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 son.* This is in all respects deeply touching 
 " MY DEAREST WILL," he wrote, " these are tin 
 last lines that you are to receive from a fathe 
 that tenderly loves you. I wish there were a 
 greater leisure to impart my mind unto you 
 but our merciful God will supply all things bj 
 his grace, and guide and protect you in all you 
 ways to whose infinite goodness I bequeath 
 you. And therefore be not discouraged, bu 
 serve him, and trust in him, and he will pre 
 serve and prosper you in all things. Be sun 
 you give all respect to my wife, that hath eve 
 had a great love unto you, and therefore wil 
 be well becoming you. Never be awanting in 
 your love and care to your sisters, but let therr 
 ever be most dear unto you ; for this will give 
 others cause to esteem and respect you for it 
 and is a duty that you owe them in the memo 
 ry of your excellent mother and myself, there 
 fore your care and affection to them must be 
 the very same that you are to have of your 
 self; and the like regard must you have to 
 your youngest sister, for indeed you owe it her 
 also, both for her father and mother's sake 
 Sweet Will, be careful to take the advice of 
 those friends which are by me desired to ad 
 vise you for your education." And so the ten- 
 derness of the father proceeds through many 
 fond and affectionate charges. With charac- 
 teristic hope he says, " The king, I trust, wil 
 deal graciously with you, and restore you those 
 honours and that fortune which a distemperec 
 time hath deprived you of, together with the 
 life of your father." Advice is next given to 
 meet the occurrence of such a chance. " Be 
 sure to avoid as much as you can to inquire af- 
 ter those that have been sharp in their judg- 
 ments towards me, and I charge you never to 
 suffer thought of revenge to enter your heart, 
 but be careful to be informed who were my 
 friends in this prosecution, and to them apply 
 yourself to make them your friends also ; and 
 on such you may rely, and bestow much of 
 your conversation amongst them. And God 
 Almighty of his infinite goodness bless you and 
 your children's children ; and his same good- 
 ness bless your sisters in like manner, perfect 
 you in ever good work, and give you right un- 
 derstandings in all things. Amen. Your most 
 loving father, THOMAS WENTWORTH."! 
 
 At one time, probably, a deeper pang would 
 have been involved to Strafford in this affect- 
 ing surrender of his cherished title than in that 
 of existence itself. But this was not the time. 
 Nothing but concern for his family and friends 
 disturbed the composure of his remaining hours. 
 He wrote kind and encouraging letters to " dear 
 George," as he called Sir George Radcliffe ; 
 shed tears for the death of Wandesford, whom 
 
 * [He also wrote a beautiful letter to Guildford Slingsby, 
 his secretary ; this is the finest effort of his pen. C.] 
 
 t Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 416. The letter bears date 
 the llth of May, 1641, and has the following- postscript: 
 " You must not fail to behave yourself towards my Lady 
 Clare, your grandmother, with all duty and observance ; 
 for most tenderly doth she love you, and hath been passing 
 kind unto me. God reward her charity for it. And both 
 in this and all the rest, the same that I counsel you, the 
 same do I direct also to your sisters, that so the same may 
 be observed by you all. And once more do I, from my 
 very soul, beseech our gracious God to bless and govern you 
 in all, to the saving you in the day of his visitation, and 
 join us again in the communion of his blessed saints, where 
 is fulness of joy and bliss for evermore. Amen, Amen." 
 The " youngest sister" was the infant of Lady Strafford. 
 
 he had intrusted with the care of his govern- 
 ment and family, but who broke his heart on 
 hearing of the sad events that had fallen on his 
 patron ; and requested of the Primate of Ire- 
 land (Usher), who attended him, to desire "my 
 lord's Grace of Canterbury," his old friend, the 
 now imprisoned and afflicted Laud, " to lend 
 me his prayers this night, and to give me his 
 blessing when I go abroad to-morrow, and to 
 be in his window, that, by my last farewell, I 
 may give him thanks for this, and all other, his 
 former favours." He had previously asked the 
 Lieutenant of the Tower if it were possible to 
 have" an interview with Laud, adding, with 
 playful sarcasm, " You shall hear what passes 
 betwixt us. It is not a time either for him to 
 plot heresy, or me to plot treason." The lieu- 
 tenant, in reply, suggested a petition to the 
 Parliament. "No," was the quiet rejoinder. 
 " I have gotten my despatch from them, and 
 will trouble them no more. I am now peti- 
 tioning a higher court, where neither partiality 
 can be expected nor error feared." 
 
 Laud, old and feeble, staggered to the win- 
 dow of his cell as Strafford passed on the fol- 
 lowing morning, and, as he lifted his hands to 
 bestow the blessing his lips were unable to ut- 
 ter, fell back and fainted in the arms of his at- 
 tendant. 
 
 Strafford moved on to the scaffold with un- 
 disturbed composure. His body, so soon to be 
 released, had given him a respite of its infirmi- 
 ties for that trying hour. Rushworth, the clerk 
 of the Parliament, was one of the spectators, 
 and has minutely described the scene. " When 
 he arrived outside the Tower, the lieutenant 
 desired him to take coach at the gate, lest the 
 enraged mob should tear him in pieces. ' No,' 
 said he, Mr. Lieutenant, I dare look death in 
 the face, and the people too ; have you a care 
 I do not escape ; 'tis equal to me how I die, 
 whether by the stroke of the executioner, or 
 by the madness and fury of the people, if that 
 may give them better content.' " Not less 
 than 100,000 persons, who had crowded in 
 from all parts, were visible on Tower Hill, in 
 a long and dark perspective. Strafford, in his 
 walk, took off his hat frequently, and saluted 
 them, and received not a word of insult or re- 
 proach. His step and manner are described 
 3y Rushworth to have been those of " a gen- 
 ral marching at the head of an army, to 
 jreathe victory, rather than those of a con- 
 demned man, to undergo the sentence of 
 death." At his side, upon the scaffold, stood 
 his brother, Sir George Wentworth, the Bish- 
 op of Armagh, the Earl of Cleveland, and oth- 
 rs of his friends, and behind them the indefat- 
 gable collector Rushworth, who " being then 
 ;here on the scaffold with him," as he says, 
 ook down the speech which, having asked 
 heir patience first, Strafford at some length 
 addressed to the people. He declared the in- 
 nocence of his intentions, whatever might have 
 >een the construction of his acts, and said that 
 he prosperity of his country was his fondest 
 ivish. But it augured ill, he told them, for the 
 people's happiness, to write the commence- 
 nent of a reformation in letters of blood. "One 
 hing I desire to be heard in," he added, " and 
 o hope that for Christian charity's sake I 
 hall be believed. I was so far from being
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 131 
 
 against Parliaments, that I did always think 
 Parliaments in England to be the happy con- 
 stitution of the kingdom and nation, and the 
 best means, under God, to make the king and 
 his people happy."* 
 
 He then turned to take leave of the friends 
 who had accompanied him to the scaffold. 
 He beheld his brother weeping excessively. 
 " Brother," he said, " what do you see in me 
 to cause these tears 1 Does any innocent fear 
 betray in me guilt 1 or my innocent boldness 
 atheism 1 Think that you are now accom- 
 panying me the fourth time to my marriage 
 bed. That block must be my pillow, and here 
 I shall rest from all my labours. No thoughts 
 of envy, no dreams of treason, nor jealousies, 
 nor cares for the king, the state, or myself, 
 shall interrupt this easy sleep. Remember me 
 to my sister and to my wife ; and carry my 
 blessing to my eldest son, and to Ann, and 
 Arabella, not forgetting my little infant, that 
 knows neither good nor evil, and cannot speak 
 lor itself. God speak for it, and bless it !" 
 While undressing himself, and winding his 
 hair under a cap, he said, looking on the block, 
 " I do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this 
 time as ever I did when I went to bed." 
 
 "Then," proceeds Rushworth, closing this 
 memorable scene, "then he called, 'Where is 
 the man that shall do this last office 1 (mean- 
 ing the executioner). Call him to me.' When 
 he came and asked him forgiveness, he told 
 him he forgave him and all the world. Then 
 kneeling down by the block, he went to prayer 
 again by himself, the Bishop of Armagh kneel- 
 ing on the one side, and the minister on the 
 other ; ro the which minister after prayer he 
 turned himself, and spoke some few words 
 softly ; having his hands lifted up, the minis- 
 ter closed his hands with his. Then bowing 
 himself to the earth, to lay down his head on 
 the block, he told the executioner that he 
 would first lay down his head to try the fitness 
 of the block, and take it up again, before he 
 laid it down for good and all ; and so he did ; 
 and before he laid it down again, he told the 
 executioner that he would give him warning 
 when to strike by stretching forth his hands ; 
 and then he laid down his neck on the block, 
 
 * The paper of minutes from which he had spoken this 
 speech was afterward found lying on the scaffold, and was 
 printed by Rushworth, vol. viii., p. 761. See Appendix to 
 this Memoir. 
 
 stretching out his hands ; the executioner 
 struck off his head at one blow, then took the 
 head up in his hand, and showed it to all the 
 people, and said, ' God save the king !' " 
 
 Thus, on Wednesday, the 12th of May, 1641, 
 died Thomas Wentworth, the first Earl of 
 Strafford. Within a few weeks of his death 
 the Parliament mitigated the most severe con- 
 sequences of their punishment to his children, 
 and in the succeeding reign the attainder was 
 reversed, the proceedings obliterated, and his 
 son restored to the earldom.* 
 
 A great lesson is written in the life of this 
 truly extraordinary person. In the career of 
 Strafford is to be sought the justification of 
 the world's " appeal from tyranny to God." In 
 him Despotism had at length obtained an in- 
 strument with mind to comprehend, and reso- 
 lution to act upon her principles in their length 
 and breadth, and enough of her purposes were 
 effected by him to enable mankind to see " as 
 from a tower the end of all." I cannot discern 
 one false step in Strafford's public conduct, one 
 glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, 
 one instance of a dereliction of the law of his 
 being, which can come in to dispute the deci- 
 sive result of the experiment, or explain away 
 its failure. The least vivid fancy will have no 
 difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, 
 and by wholly enfeebling or materially imbold- 
 ening the insignificant nature of Charles, and 
 by according some half dozen years of immu- 
 nity to the " fretted tenement" of Strafford's 
 "fiery soul," contemplate then, for itself, the 
 perfect realization of the scheme of "making 
 the prince the most absolute lord in Christen- 
 dom." That done, let it pursue the same 
 course with respect to Eliot's noble imagin- 
 ings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and 
 apply in like manner a fit machinery to the 
 working out the projects which made the dun- 
 geon of the one a holy place, and sustained 
 the other in his self-imposed exile. The re- 
 sult is great and decisive ! It establishes, in 
 renewed force, those principles of political con- 
 duct which have endured, and must continue 
 to endure, " like truth from age to age." 
 
 * [The eulogy of his enemy Whitelocke deserves to be his 
 epitaph: "Thus," he says, "fell this noble earl, who for 
 natural parts and ability, and for improvement of knowledge 
 by experience in the greatest affairs ; for wisdom, faithful- 
 ness, and gallantry of mind, hath left few behind him that 
 can be ranked as his equals." C.]
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE 
 
 LIFE OF THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 MY HUMBLE OPINION CONCERNING A PARLIAMENT IN THIS YOUR MAJESTY S KINGDOM OF IRELAND. 
 
 CHARLES B. 1. Albeit the calling 1 of a 
 
 Sections 1,2, 3,4, 5. Upon Parliament in this kingdom 
 
 Parliament ; and especially as it is in England, where 
 relying upon your faith and there is a liberty assumed to 
 dexterity in managing so offer everything in their own 
 -reat a work for the good of time and order ; and this sub- 
 ur service, we are fully per- ordination, whereunto they 
 uaded to condescend to the have been led by the wisdom 
 
 tion always weighty very 
 necessary to ; be considered 
 with great deliberation whether the present conjuncture 
 of affairs doth now advise a Parliament or no t And, after 
 a serious discourse with myself, my reason persuades me 
 
 the 
 
 a serious uisuuurse wii.ii in 
 for the assembling thereof. 
 
 or uie assemuiiug uiereui. 
 2. For, the contribution from the country towards the 
 
 trmy ending in December next, your majesty's revenue 
 jails short twenty thousand pounds sterling by the year of 
 the present charge it is burdened withal, besides the vast 
 debt of fourscore thousand pounds Irish upon the crown, 
 
 be at least an attempt first to effect it with ease, were to 
 love difficulties too well, rather voluntarily to seek them, 
 than unwillingly to meet them, and might seem as well 
 vanity in the first respect so to affect them, as faintness to 
 bow under them when they are not to be avoided. 
 
 3. The next inclination thereunto ariseth in me from th 
 condition of this country, grown very much more civil am 
 
 affairs and expenses abroad ; that this great charge is sus- 
 tained, and this great debt contracted through employments 
 for a public good, whereof the benefit hitherto hath been 
 entirely theirs ; that there hath been but one subsidy grant- 
 ed in all this time, nor any other supply but this contribu- 
 tion ; in exchange whereof, your princely bounty returned 
 
 creased under tne guard 01 your wisdom ana justice, so ut- 
 tle issued hence from them, the crown so pressed only for 
 their good, and so modest a calling upon them now for a 
 -upply, which in all wisdom, good nature, and conscience 
 they are not to deny should they not conform themselves 
 to your gracious will, their unthankfulness to GoH and the 
 best of kings becomes inexcusable before all the world, and 
 
 JUOl., CL11U JUOH_y lu [IUI1I3U SU 
 
 needs be judged to be in them. 
 
 4. Next, the frightful apprehension, which at this time 
 makes their hearts beat, lest the quarterly payments towards 
 the army, continued now almost ten years, might in fine 
 turn to an hereditary charge upon their lands, inclines them 
 to give any reasonable thing in present to secure themselves 
 of that fear for the future ; and therefore, according to the 
 wholesome counsel of the physician, Dum dolet accipe. 
 
 5. And, lastly, If they should meanly cast from them 
 these mighty obligations, which indeed I cannot fear, your 
 majesty's affairs can never suffer less by their starting 
 aside, when the general peace abroad admits a more united 
 power in your majesty, and less distracted thoughts in your 
 ministers, to chastise such a forgetfulness, to call to their 
 remembrance, and to enforce from them other and better 
 duties than these. 
 
 Sect. 6, 7, 8, 9. We ap- 6. In the second place, the 
 
 point the time of the meeting time your majesty shall in 
 
 to be in Trinity term next, for your wisdom appoint for this 
 
 the reasons you here allege. meeting imports very much ; 
 
 which, with all submission, 
 
 I should advise might not be longer put off than Easter, or 
 Trinity term at farthest ; and I shall crave leave to offer 
 my reasons. 
 
 7. The improvements mentioned in my despatch to the 
 lord-treasurer, from which I no ways recede, would not be 
 foreslowed, wherein we lose much by deferring this meet- 
 ing, a circumstance very considerable in these streights, 
 wherein, if surprised, might be of much disadvantage, in 
 case the Parliament answer not expectation ; and to enter 
 upon that work before would be an argument for them to 
 scant their supply to your majesty. 
 
 8. Again, a breach of Parliament would prejudice less 
 thus than in winter, having at the worst six months to turn 
 our eyes about, and many helps to be gained in that space ; 
 where, in the other case, the contribution ending in Decem- 
 ber next, we should be put upon an instant of time, to read 
 over our lesson at first sight. 
 
 9. Then the calling of a Parliament and determining of 
 the quarterly payments falling out much upon one, might 
 make them apprehend there was a necessity enforcing a 
 present agreement, if not the good one we would, yet the 
 best we could get, and so imbolden them to make and flat- 
 ter themselves to gain their own conditions, and conditions 
 are not to be admitted with any subjects, less with this 
 people, where your majesty's absolute sovereignty goes 
 much higher than it is taken, perhaps, to do in England. 
 
 Sect. 10. We well approve 10. And, lastly, There be- 
 and require the making of two ing some of your majesty's 
 sessions, as you propose. The graces which, being passed 
 first to be held in summer for into laws, might be of great 
 our own supplies, and the sec- prejudice to the crown; and 
 and in winter, for passing yet it being to be feared they 
 such laws and graces only as will press for them all, and 
 shall be allowed by us. But uncertain what humour the 
 this intimation of two sessions denying any of them might 
 we think not fit to be imparted move in their minds, I con- 
 to any till the Parliament be ceive, under favour, it would 
 set. And farther, we will ad- be much better to make two 
 mil no capitulations nor de- sessions of it, one in summer, 
 mands of any assurance under the other in winter ; in the 
 our broad seal, nor of sending former to settle your majes- 
 over deputies or committees ty's supply, and in the latter 
 to treat here with us, nor of to enact so many of those 
 any restraint in our bill of graces as in honour and wis- 
 subsidies, nor of any condition dom should be judged equal, 
 of not maintaining the army ; when the putting aside of the 
 but in case any of these be in- rest might be of no ill conse- 
 sisted upon, and that they will quence to other your royal 
 not otherwise proceed or be purposes. 
 satisfied with our royal prom- 
 ise for the second session, or shall deny or delay the passing 
 of our bills, we require you thereupon to dissolve the Par- 
 liament, and forthwith to take order to continue the contri- 
 butions for our army, and withal to proceed to such improve- 
 ments of our revenue as are already in proposition, or may 
 hereafter be thought upon for the advantage of our crown. 
 
 Sect. 11. Concerning the 11. All the objections I am 
 short law to preserve the ut- able to suggest unto myself 
 termost benefit of the compo- are two : That it might ren- 
 sitions upon concealments, der fruitless the intended im- 
 and the plantations of Con- provement upon the conceal- 
 naght and Ormond, we like it ments, and prejudice the 
 well, if you can obtain it, for plantations of Connaght and 
 confirmation of what you have Ormond. The former may 
 done, or shall hereafter do easily be helped by a short 
 about those businesses. But law, propounded in my de- 
 your promising of such a law, spatch to my lord-treasurer ; 
 we doubt, may hinder the ser- and posito, that there no oth- 
 vice, and cause them to be er law pass the first session : 
 satisfy'd with nothing but a the second is likewise suffi- 
 special statute. ciently secured. 
 
 Sect. 12, 13, 14, 15. For 12. Then it is to be fore- 
 demandsto be made for us, we seen what your majesty wil]
 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD, 
 
 133 
 
 allow your propositions in demand, how induce and pur- 
 these sections, both in the sue the same, for the happy 
 matter and in the form ; only settlement of the regal rights 
 the last clause, which giveth and powers in this more sub- 
 hope to maintain the army ordinate kingdom. 
 afterward without farther 13. My humble advice is, 
 charge to them at all, we con- to declare, at the first open- 
 ceive may be drawn to a bind- ing of the meeting, that your 
 ing assumption ; and besides, majesty intends and promises 
 it is not necessary, the very two sessions ; this former for 
 proposition being sufficient to yourself, that latter, in Mi- 
 that effect. chaelmas term next, for them; 
 
 this to ascertain the pay- 
 ments of your army, and to strike off the debts of your crown ; 
 that, for the enacting of all such profitable and wholesome 
 laws as a moderate and good people may expect from a wise 
 and gracious king. 
 
 14. That, this being the order of nature, reason, and ci- 
 vility, your majesty expects it should be entirely observed, 
 and yourself wholly intrusted by them ; whjch they are 
 not only to grant to be fit in the general case of king and 
 subjects, but ought indeed to acknowledge it with thank- 
 fulness due to your majesty in particular, when they look 
 back, and call to mind how, for their ease, you were con- 
 tent to take the sixscore thousand pounds (which their 
 agents gave to be paid in three) in six years ; and not barely 
 so neither, but to double your graces towards them the 
 while, which they have enjoyed accordingly, much to their 
 advantage and greatly to the loss of the crown. 
 
 15. And that, considering the army hath been represent- 
 ed over to your majesty from this council, and in a manner 
 from the body of this whole kingdom, to be of absolute ne- 
 cessity, to give comfort to the quiet minds in their honest 
 labours, to contain the licentious spirits within the modest 
 bounds of sobriety, it consists not with your majesty's wis- 
 dom to give unto the world, no, not the appearance of so 
 much improvidence in your own counsels, of so much for- 
 getfulness in a case of their safety, as to leave that pillar 
 of your authority and their peace unset for continuance, at 
 least one six months before the wearing forth of their con- 
 tribution. 
 
 Sect. 16, 17, 18. We do 16. Therefore your majes- 
 not conceive that hereby you ty was well assured, in con- 
 purpose easily to relinquish formity to the rules of reason 
 any of our demands, for all and judgment, they would 
 which you have laid so fair presently grant three sub- 
 and solid grounds. And con- sidies, to be paid in three 
 sidering the payment of the years, to disengage the crown 
 army is absolutely necessary of fourscore thousand pound 
 to be borne by the country, debt, and continue their 
 they cannot pretend by their quarterly payments towards 
 three subsidies to make a fit- the army four years longer, 
 ting recognition of respect in which time it was hopeful 
 for our coming to the crown (suitable to your gracious in- 
 without that last addition to tentions) some other expedi- 
 buy in rents and pensions. ent might be found out to 
 maintain the army without 
 
 farther charge to them at all ; which law past, they shou'd 
 have as much leisure to enact for themselves at after as they 
 could desire, either now or in winter. Nay, your majesty 
 wou'd be graciously pleased, with the assistance of your 
 council, to advise seriously with them, that nothing might 
 remain either unthought of ordeny'd conducing to the pub- 
 lic good of this kingdom ; but if they made difficulty to pro- 
 ceed with your majesty in this manner, other counsels must 
 be thought of, and little to be rely'd or expected for from 
 them. 
 
 17. I am not to flatter your majesty so far as to raise any 
 hope on that side that all this shou'd be granted but by 
 pressing both, and especially the continuance of the quar- 
 terly payments to the army, which they dread above any 
 earthly thing. I conceive it probable that, to determine 
 and lay asleep (as they think) the contribution, and in ac- 
 knowledgment of your majesty's happy access to the crown, 
 they may be drawn to a present gift of three subsidies, pay- 
 able in three years, which alone wou'd keep the army on 
 foot during that time, and if my calculation hold, almost 
 discharge the debt of the crown besides. 
 
 18. For thus I make my estimate : the contribution from 
 the country is now but twenty thousand pounds sterling by 
 the year, whereas I have good reason to trust each subsidy 
 will raise thirty thousand pounds sterling, and so there 
 will be ten thousand pounds for three years over and above 
 the establishment ; which thirty thousand pounds sterling, 
 well and profitably issued, will, I trust, with honour to 
 your majesty, and moderate satisfaction of the parties, strike 
 off the whole fourscore thousand pounds Irish which in 
 present presseth so sore upon this crown. 
 
 Sect. 19, 20, 21, 22. We 19. And then, sir, after that 
 like well the appointing of in Michaelmas term all bene- 
 tuch a committee, and we re- ficial acts for the subject be 
 fer the nomination to yourself, thought of, as many, no few- 
 We have a/so given order to er nor no more, enacted, than 
 tome of our council here, with were fit in honour ami wis- 
 
 the assistance of our attorney- dom to be granted; if, for 
 general, to consider of the a conclusion to this Parlia- 
 graces, that nothing pass by ment, we could gain from 
 Taw which may prejudice our them other two subsidies, to 
 crown. buy in rents and pensions, to 
 
 ten thousand pounds yearly 
 
 value (a thing they are inclinable unto, as is mention'd in 
 my despatch to the lord-treasurer), I judge there were a 
 happy issue of this meeting; and that it shou'd, through 
 God's blessing, appear to the world in a few years you had, 
 without charge, made a more absolute conquest of this na- 
 tion by your wisdom than all your royal progenitors have 
 been able to accomplish by their armies, and vast expensa 
 of treasure and blood. 
 
 20. These being the ends, in my poor opinion, which are 
 to be desired and attained, the best means to dispose and fit 
 all concurring causes thereunto are not to be forgotten ; and 
 therefore, as preparatives, I make bold to offer these ensu- 
 ing particulars : 
 
 21. It seems to be very convenient a committee be forth- 
 with appointed of some few of us here, to take into consid- 
 eration all the bills intended when there was a Parliament 
 to have been called in the time of my Lord Falkland ; such 
 as shall be judged beneficial, to make them ready ; such as 
 may be of too much prejudice to the crown, to lay them 
 aside ; and to draw up others, which may chance to have 
 been then omitted. This work may be by the committees 
 either quickened or foreslowen, as the Parliament proceeds 
 either warmer or cooler in your majesty's supplies. 
 
 22. Next, that your majesty's acts of grace, directed to 
 my Lord Falkland the 24th of May, 1628, may be consid- 
 ered by such of your council in England as shall please 
 your majesty to appoint, there being many matters therein 
 contained which in a law wou'd not futurely so well sort 
 with the power requisite to be upheld in this kingdom, nor 
 yet with your majesty's present profit ; which hath persua- 
 ded me to except against such as I hold best to be silently 
 passed over, and to transmit a paper thereof to my lord- 
 treasurer. 
 
 Sect. 23. We approve the 23. It is to be feared the 
 reformation of these pressures meaner sort of subjects here 
 and extortions by examples live under the pressures of 
 and by commissions, by our the great men, and there is 
 own authority, but by no a general complaint that of- 
 means to be done by Parlia- ficers exact much larger fees 
 ment. than of. right they ought to 
 
 do. To help the former, if it 
 
 be possible, I will find out two or three to make examples 
 of; and to remedy the latter, grant out a commission for 
 examining, regulating, and setting down tables of fees in 
 all your courts, so as they shall find your majesty's good- 
 ness and justice watching and caring for their protection 
 and ease both in private and public respects. 
 
 Sect. 24. We allow of this 24. I shall endeavour the 
 course. lower House may be so com- 
 
 posed as that neither the re- 
 cusants, nor yet the Protestants, shall appear considerably 
 more one than the other, holding them as much as may be 
 upon an equal balance, for they will prove thus easier to 
 govern than if either party were absolute. Then wou'd I, 
 in private discourse, show the recusant that, the contribu- 
 tion ending in December next, if your majesty's army were 
 not supply'd some other way before, the twelve pence a 
 Sunday must of necessity be exacted upon them ; and show 
 the Protestant that your majesty must not let go the twenty 
 thousand pounds contribution, nor yet discontent the other 
 in matters of religion, till the army were some way else 
 certainly provided for ; and convince them both that the 
 present quarterly payments are not so burdensome as they 
 pretend them to be, and that by the graces they have had 
 already more benefit than their money came to : thus pois- 
 ing one by the other, which single might perchance prove 
 more unhappy to deal with. 
 
 Sect. 25. To make' captains 25. I will labour to make 
 and officers burgesses we alto- as many captains and officers 
 gether dislike, because it is burgesses as possibly I can, 
 Jitter they attend their char- who, having immediate de- 
 get at that time. Hake your pendance upon the crown, 
 choice rather by particular may almost sway the business 
 knowledge of men's interests betwixt the two parties which 
 and good affections to our way they please. 
 service. 
 
 Sect. 26. In the higher 26. In the higher House, 
 House, for the Prelates, we your majesty will have, I 
 have written our special letter trust, the bishops wholly for 
 to the. Primate of Armagh, you. The titular lords, rath- 
 addressing him therein to be er than come over them- 
 directed by yourself. selves, will put their proxies 
 
 into such safe hands as may 
 
 be thought of on this side ; and in the rest, your majesty 
 hath such interest, what out of duty to the crown, and ob- 
 noxiousness in themselves, as I do not apprehend much an7 
 difficulty among them. 
 
 Sect. 27. For the Peers, 27. To these, or to any-
 
 134 
 
 that their proxies may be well 
 disposed, we wou'd have you 
 send with speed the names of 
 those there in whom you re- 
 post special trust. And in 
 case your list cannot be here 
 in time, we will give order 
 that all the proxies be sent to 
 you with blanks to be assigned 
 there. In general, for the 
 better preventing of practices 
 and disorders, you shall suf- 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 thing else directed by your 
 majesty, I will, with all pos- 
 sible diligence, apply myself 
 so soon as I shall understand 
 your pleasure therein, most 
 humbly beseeching you will 
 take it into your gracious 
 memory how much your maj- 
 esty's speedy resolution in 
 this great business imports 
 the prosperity of your affairs 
 in this place, and m that re- 
 
 fer no meetings during the spect vouchsafe to hasten it 
 setting of the houses, save as much as conveniently may 
 only in public, and for the be. WENTWORTH. 
 
 service of the houses by ap- 
 pointment, and for no other 
 ends. 
 
 1634, April 12. 
 
 The answers contained in 
 the apostiles are made by his 
 majesty, and by his command- 
 ment set down in this manner. 
 JOHN COKE. 
 
 A COPY OF THE PAPER CONTAINING THE HEADS OF THE LORD STRAFFORD S LAST SPEECH, WRITTEN 
 BY HIS OWN HAND, AS IT WAS LEFT UPON THE SCAFFOLD. 
 
 1. I come to pay the last debt we owe to sin. 
 
 2. Rise to righteousness. 
 
 3. Die willingly. 
 
 4. Forgive all. 
 
 5. Submit to what is voted justice, but my intentions in- 
 nocent from subverting, &c. 
 
 6. Wishing nothing more than great prosperity to king 
 and people. 
 
 7. Acquit the king constrained. 
 
 8. Beseech to repent. 
 
 9. Strange way to write the beginning of reformation and 
 settlement of a kingdom in blood on themselves. 
 
 10. Beseech that demand may rest there. 
 
 11. Call not blood on themselves. 
 
 12. Die in the faith of the Church. 
 
 13. Pray for it, and desire their prayers with me.
 
 HURPLR (t BROTHERS.
 
 JOHN PYM. 1584-1643. 
 
 JOHN PYM, the son of a Somersetshire 
 "esquire," was born at Brymore, in his fa- 
 ther's county, in the year 1584. His family, 
 though described by Clarendon as of a "private 
 quality and condition of life,"* were rich and 
 of very old descent ; his mother was afterward 
 Lady Rous ;+ and this boy, the only issue of 
 her first marriage,:): was sent, in the beginning 
 of the year 1599, to Broadgate's Hall, now 
 Pembroke College, Oxford, where he entered 
 as a gentleman commoner. Here he made 
 himself remarkable, not only by quick natural 
 talents, but by a sleepless and unwearied pur- 
 suit of every study he took in hand. Lord 
 Clarendon has indulged a sneer at his " parts," 
 as having been " rather acquired by industry 
 than supplied by nature or adorned by art ;"|| 
 but we have it on the better authority of An- 
 thony a Wood, that Pym's lighter accomplish- 
 ments of literature, no less than his great 
 learning ftnd " pregnant parts," were admired 
 in the University. " Charles Fitz-Geoffry, the 
 poet, styled the said Pym, in 1601, Phabi deli- 
 cice Lepos puclli."^ 
 
 It is stated in some of the histories that, on 
 leaving Oxford, Pym entered one of the inns 
 of court with a view to the bar ; but it is diffi- 
 cult to find good authority for this.** He was 
 throughout life, however, remarkable for his 
 thorough knowledge of the laws ; and no doubt 
 he studied them, at this time, with the almost 
 certain expectation of being called upon, at no 
 distant day, to serve in Parliament by the side 
 of that great party who had already, by no un- 
 equivocal signs of their power and resolution, 
 startled the misgoverned people into hope. 
 He had certainly, even thus early, attracted 
 the attention of the great Whig nobleman of 
 the day, the Earl of Bedford ; and to his influ- 
 ence, it is probable, he owed that appointment 
 to a responsible office in the Exchequer, in 
 which, according to Lord Clarendon, many af- 
 ter years of his youth were passed, and where, 
 it is to be supposed, he acquired the knowledge 
 and habits of business, and great financial 
 skill, which, scarcely less than his genius for 
 popular government, distinguished him through 
 the long course of his public life. 
 
 In the Parliamentary returns of the year 
 1614, the name of " John Pym" is to be found 
 as member for the borough of Calne.ft These 
 were the returns of that "addle" Parliament 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist., vol. iv. (Oxford ed. of 1826), p. 437. 
 
 t See the dedication to the sermon delivered at the fu- 
 neral of this lady, among the pamphlets at the British Mu- 
 seum. 
 
 t The dedication in the sermon I have just referred to 
 evidently restricts her issue by Mr. Pym to the great sub- 
 ject of this memoir. 
 
 <l " In the year of his age," says Anthony 4 Wood, " fif- 
 teen, being then, or soon after, put under the tuition of 
 Degory Whear." 
 
 II Clarendon's Hist., vol. iv. (Oxford ed. of 1826), p. 437. 
 
 T Wood's Ath. Oxon., ed. Bliss, vol. iii., p. 73. 
 
 ** Anthony a Wood merely says, " Before he (Pym) took 
 a degree, he left the University, and went, as I conceive, to 
 one of the inns of court." 
 
 tt It has been incorrectly stated that Pym first sat as 
 member for Tavistock ; he did not sit for the latter borough 
 till some years after. It was the same influence, however, 
 which returned him for both places. 
 
 which has been before described,* and which, 
 "meeting according to their summons, such 
 faces appeared there as made the court 
 droop ;"t among the new faces were those of 
 Pym and Wentworth. 
 
 Upon the precipitate dissolution of this Par- 
 liament, after a sitting of two months, several 
 of the more forward members were called be- 
 fore the council and committed to the Tower. 
 If Rushworth is correct in saying that Pym. 
 was twice imprisoned in the reign of James, it 
 may reasonably be supposed that he was one 
 of those committed on the present occasion.J 
 It is certain that he at once took an active 
 share^ in the measures of the opposition, and 
 the " maiden speech" of such an accession to 
 the popular party is not unlikely to have been 
 rewarded by a warrant from the council-table. 
 
 About this time Pym married Anna, the 
 daughter of John Hooker, Esquire, a country 
 gentleman of Somersetshire. For the next 
 six years his name is not to be found in con- 
 nexion with public affairs. These years were 
 probably passed in retirement, where the mind 
 does not find it difficult to imagine him, 
 strengthening himself, in the calmness of do- 
 mestic quiet, for the absolute devotion of his 
 great faculties and deep affections to that old 
 cause which was now again, not dimly, dawn- 
 ing upon the world. 
 
 In the year 1620 the wife of Pym died. The 
 private memorials of this great man are too 
 rare, and obtained with the cost of too much 
 labour, to be thought unworthy of the reader's 
 attention, however scanty they may be. What 
 I shall now quote gives a grateful sketch of the 
 character of this lady, on the authority of an 
 excellent and accomplished man. The year in 
 which she died witnessed also the death of 
 Philippa, Lady Rous, Pym's mother ; and on 
 the occasion of the funeral of Lady Rous, a 
 sermon was delivered by the famous Charles 
 Fitz-Geoffry, II which, on its subsequent publi- 
 cation, he dedicated to Pym. 
 
 * Life of Stratford, p. 61. 
 
 t Wilson in Kennet, vol. ii., p. 696. 
 
 t In the Reliqua; Wottonianse (p. 443) some of the "re- 
 fractory" members so committed are characteristically de- 
 scribed : 1st, Sir Walter Chute, "who, to get the opinion 
 of a bold man after he had lost that of a wise, fell one morn- 
 
 a lawyer, " whose fault was the application of certain texts 
 in Ezekiel and Daniel to the matter of impositions ;" and, 
 4th, Christopher Nevil, "a young gentleman fresh from the 
 schools, who, having gathered together divers Latin sen- 
 tences against kings, bound them up in a long speech." 
 These are the only names specified, but it is known that 
 upward of ten men were committed. 
 
 i) See the Journals. 
 
 II For curious notices of this writer, see Wood's Ath. 
 Oxon., vol. ii., p. 607 ; Mere's Wit's Commonwealth, part 
 ii., and Censura Literaria. He was thought a "high-tow- 
 ering falcon" in poetry, on the strength of a really fine and 
 loftily-written account, in Latin verse, of the life and ac- 
 tions of Sir Francis Drake. His minor compositions are 
 
 'Blind poet Homer you do equalize, 
 Though he saw more with none than with most eyes: 
 Our Geoffry Chaucer, who wrote quaintly neat, 
 In verse you match, equal him iu conceit :
 
 136 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " I present you here," he writes in this dedi- 
 cation, " with that whereat you could not be 
 present, your dearest mother's funerall a la- 
 bour I could willingly have spared, if God had 
 been so pleased. But, seeing the great Dis- 
 poser hath otherwise decreed, I gladly publish 
 what I sorrowfully preached. Neither will I 
 use that triviall apology for this publication 
 the importunitie of friends. I confess mine 
 ambition to divulge my observance of that 
 house to which I owe my best endeavours. . . . 
 What the religious cares of others received 
 with some comfort, I here offer to your judi- 
 cious eye ; that as you are interested in the 
 same sorrows, so you may be partaker of the 
 same comforts. Poor, I confesse, are these 
 of mine to those rich ones which the rare gifts 
 of nature and grace afford to yourselfe ; yet 
 herein I would have you symbolize with the 
 great ones of this world, who, although they 
 possess whole cities and kingdoms, will yet 
 accept an offer of a few acres." 
 
 " You may well take up," Fitz-Geoffry con- 
 tinues to Pym, " the complaint of the pathet- 
 ical prophet ' I am the man that have seen 
 affliction :' a great affliction, first, in being de- 
 prived of a most loving, holy, helpfull wife ; 
 whose learning rare in that sex, whose vir- 
 tues rarer in this age, whose religion the rarest 
 ornament of all the rest, could not choose but 
 level the sorrow of losing her with the former 
 comfort of enjoying her. This crosse is now 
 seconded with the losse of a dear mother, and 
 such a mother as was worthy that sonne, who 
 was worthy such a wife. With the prophet's 
 complaynt I doubt not but you also take up his 
 comfort : ' It is good for a man that he beare 
 the yoke in his youth.' " 
 
 " I have fairly gayned by this publication," 
 the writer concludes, " if hereby you take no- 
 tice of my thankfulnesse to yourselfe, the world 
 of my serviceablenesse to my patron. If God 
 shall conferre a farther blessing (as commonly 
 he doth in all good attempts), that as some re- 
 ceived comfort in hearing, so many may be edi- 
 fied by reading these my weake endeavours, 
 this I shall esteeme my happinesse. In this 
 hope, bequeathing the successe to him who is 
 able to doe above all that we can doe or thinke, 
 yourselfe to his chiefest blessing, my best af- 
 fections to your worthy selfe, remaineth yours 
 in all love and duty, CHARLES FITZ-GEOFFRY."* 
 
 Featured you are like Homer in one eye, 
 
 Rightly surnamed the son of Geoffry." 
 
 * Death's Sermon unto the Living, delivered at the fu- 
 neral of the religious Lady Philippa, 4to, 1620. From the 
 sermon itself one or two points, touching on the personal 
 characteristics of Pym's mother, will be thought worth ex- 
 tracting. "Expect not," says the preacher, " that I should 
 speake of her ancestors, and make that the beginning of her 
 prayse, which is rather the prayse of others." From the 
 following it is evident that the first husband of Lady Phil- 
 ippa, the father of Pym, must have died very soon after 
 Pym's birth. She is spoken of as " A comfortable helper 
 to her loving husband (her second husband), and no small 
 support of so great a house for more than thirtie years' con- 
 tinuance and an especiall ornament unto hospitalitie, the 
 long-continued praise of that house." One of the conclu- 
 ding passages of the sermon is eloquently descriptive of this 
 excellent woman: ' She who not long sithence came cheer- 
 fully into this place on the Lord's day (as her godly man- 
 ner was), hath caused us mournfully to repayre hither on 
 this day. She who used to come in her coach, is now carri- 
 ed in a coffin. She who used to heare attentively and look 
 steadfastly on the preacher, is here now (so much of her as 
 remaineth), but. can neither see nor hear the preacher ; hut I 
 in silence preacheth to the preacher himself, and to every | 
 
 Pym was now left with five young children, 
 two sons and three daughters ;* and he did not 
 marry again. "What he was from that mo- 
 ment," says a learned contemporary divine, 
 Dr. Stephen Marshall, " was only for the pub- 
 lic good : in and for this he lived in and by 
 this he died. It was his meat and drink ; his 
 work, his exercise, his recreation, his pleasure, 
 his ambition his ALL." Such enthusiastic ex- 
 pressions may justly describe his general course 
 of life thenceforward, though the reader will be 
 careful not to construe them too literally. Pyra 
 never was a candidate for the honours of ascet- 
 icism : he required something besides an im- 
 peachment to dine upon, and was not content 
 with supping off a religious committee : nor 
 ever, it must be added, did the heavy distrac- 
 tion of public affairs bewilder him from that af- 
 fectionate care towards his children, which is 
 observed upon by many of those who were 
 about him, and which was afterward richly rec- 
 ompensed. In this respect he was more for- 
 tunate than his friend Eliot. His second son, 
 Charles, afterward sat with him.t a fellow-la- 
 bourer, in the Long Parliament ; and the name 
 of his eldest son, John, appears in the returns 
 of the Short Parliament,} and also in the list 
 of those gallant Parliamentarians who were 
 severely wounded at the battle of Newbury. 
 
 On the assembling of the Parliament of 
 1620-21, Pym again took his seat for Calne. 
 A series of truly disgraceful events^ had filled 
 
 hearer and beholder, that this is the end of all men. And 
 by her own example (which is the life of preaching) she 
 confirmeth the doctrine, that neither arms nor scutcheons, 
 nor greatness of state, nor godliness of life, nor gifts of 
 mind, nor sobriety of diet, nor art of physicke, nor husband's 
 care, cost, nor diligence of attendants, nor children's tears, 
 nor sighs of servants, nor prayers of the Church, can ex- 
 cept us from that common condition ; for if they could, we 
 had not seen this great and sad assembly here this day." 
 
 Worthily, from the bosom of such a mother, can we ima- 
 gine young Fym instructed to the great achievements of 
 his after life! "The boy," says our great poet Words- 
 worth, " is father to the man ;" so also, anticipating Words- 
 worth, Charles Fitz-Geoffry said in this very sermon. The 
 passage is quaint and curious, but pregnant with meaning. 
 Speaking from the text of death, he suddenly breaks forth, 
 thus : " for that is the end of all men. Man is, as it were, 
 a book ; his birth is the title-page ; his baptism, the epistle 
 dedicatory ; his groans and crying, the epistle to the reader ; 
 his infancie and childhood, the argument or contents of the 
 whole ensuing treatise ; his life and actions, the subject ; 
 his crimes and errors, the faults escaped ; his repentance, 
 the connexion. Now there are some large volumes in folio, 
 some little ones in sixteens ; some are fayrer bound, some 
 playner; some in strong vellum, some in thin paper, some 
 whose subject is piety and godliness, some (and too many 
 such) pamphlets of wautonesse and folly ; but in the last 
 page of every one there stands a word which is finis, and 
 this is the last word in every book. Such is the life of 
 man : some longer, some shorter, some stronger, some weak- 
 er, some fairer, some coarser, some holy, some profane ; but 
 death comes in, like finis at the last, to close up the whole ; 
 for that is the end of all men." 
 
 * See the Perfect Diurnall, No. 21, from llth Dec. to the 
 18th of Dec., 1643. 
 
 t For the Devonshire borough of Beeralstone. See the 
 returns. 
 
 t Which met in April, 1640. He sat for Pool, in Dorset- 
 shire. 
 
 $ See Life of Strafford, p. 62, 63. Let an intelligent 
 foreigner describe the state of the public mind during the 
 progress of these events. " Consider, for pity's sake," runs 
 one of Count Harley de Beaumont's reports, " what must 
 be the state and condition of a prince, whom the preachers 
 publicly from the pulpit assail ; whom the comedians of 
 the metropolis covertly bring upon the stage ; whose wife 
 attends these representations in order to enjoy the laugh 
 against her husband ; whom the Parliament braves nnd de- 
 spises, and who is universally hated by the whole people." 
 Let me complete the picture by referring the reader to au- 
 thorities at p. 63, note t, col. 1.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 137 
 
 up the interval since the last dissolution, but 
 one of these events had been attended with a 
 great result in attaching Sir Edward Coke to 
 the popular party. Hampden also, in this year, 
 first entered the House of Commons, and in 
 the preparations for the session we observe the 
 first formation of the system of Parliamentary 
 party which has wrought such great results, 
 for good and ill, in England. The men who 
 were foremost in opposition to the court, 
 whether in or out of the House of Commons, 
 held constant meetings at the house of the 
 great antiquary, Sir Robert Cotton, in West- 
 minster. Here assembled, for a common pur- 
 pose, the men of learning and of action the 
 intellectual and moral power of England. Here 
 were the Pyms and Seldens leagued ; Camden, 
 Coke, Noy, Stpwe, Spelman, Philips, Mallory, 
 Digges, Usher, Holland, Carew, Fleetwood, 
 and Hakewell, acknowledged a common object 
 here. The famous library of Sir Robert Cot- 
 ton, now the priceless property of the nation, 
 furnished to these meetings the precedents 
 from which their memorable resolutions were 
 taken ; and from within its walls the statutes 
 of the great days of England were, one by one, 
 unrolled, and launched in succession upon the 
 popular mind. May we not, with slight altera- 
 tion, apply to it the matchless language of Mil- 
 ton ! " Behold now that mansion-house of 
 liberty, encompassed and surrounded with 
 God's protection ; behold that shop of war, 
 with its anvils and hammers working, to fash- 
 ion opt the plates and instruments of armed 
 justice in defence of beleaguered truth ; behold 
 the pens and heads there, sitting by studious 
 lamps, musing, searching, revolving new no- 
 tions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with 
 their homage and their fealty, the approaching 
 reformation !" 
 
 If the courtiers drooped, then, at the last 
 Parliament, how much more reason had they 
 to sink down at this !* It required all the en- 
 ergy and intellect of Lord Bacon who had 
 then, just on the eve of his terrible fall, attain- 
 ed to the highest summit of official rank, pow- 
 er, and fame to reassure and strengthen them. 
 Never, he told the king, would he have a better 
 chance of success with a Parliament than now, 
 if, taking advantage of the universal depression 
 of the Protestant interest abroad, he humoured 
 the anti-Catholic zeal of the popular party by 
 asking money from them in support of a cru- 
 sade to be undertaken in behalf of the interests 
 of Protestantism.f James could only half un- 
 derstand his chancellor's purpose ; and in the 
 speech to the Commons on their day of meet- 
 ing, having substituted his own jargon for Ba- 
 
 * The Count Harley de Beaumont, writing from Eng- 
 land a month before this Parliament met, observes : " Au- 
 dacious language, offensive pictures, calumnious pamphlets, 
 these usual forerunners of civil war, are common here, and 
 are symptoms doubly strong of the bitter temper of men's 
 minds, because in this country men are in general better 
 regulated, or by the good administration of justice are more 
 kept within the sphere of their duties. Yet I doubt that 
 any great action will come of it, inasmuch as the kin? will, 
 in case of need, surely join the stronger party." This was 
 correctly guessed ; for most certainly, had James been in 
 the place of Charles, the civil war would not have been. 
 A little blustering, and he would have yielded. 
 
 t See Bacon's works, vol. v., p. 531, 532. Aikin's Life 
 of James I., vol. ii., p. 194-198. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 20, 
 21. Parl. History, vol. v., p. 309-319. Liugard, vol. ix. 
 (8vo ed.), p. 243-245. 
 S 
 
 con's grave and cautious periods,* he managed 
 to foil it completely. What he said to them 
 was meant to be conciliatory, but it was a fee- 
 ble mixture of threats and supplications. 
 
 The Commons listened coldly, and, on its 
 conclusion, turned to the consideration of their 
 privileges. They complained, in strong terms, 
 of the imprisonment of the members at the 
 close of the last Parliament for their conduct 
 in that house, and broadly asserted that to the 
 House itself belonged alone the right of judg- 
 ing and punishing every breach of decorum 
 committed within its walls. The king in vain, 
 attempted to parry this remonstrance, and was 
 at last obliged to defer to it by a solemn assu- 
 rance that as he had already granted, so it was 
 his intention thenceforward to maintain, that 
 liberty of speech which was demanded by his 
 faithful Commons. Upon receiving this mes- 
 sage, they voted two subsidies, but without 
 tenths or fifteenths ; so small a sum, in fact, 
 that it only left the king more completely at 
 their feet. James hereupon, with his usual 
 clever folly, returned them thanks in the most 
 grateful terms, t Though the supply was small, 
 he preferred it, he told them, to millions, be- 
 cause it was so freely given ; lastly, he exhort- 
 ed them, in the exuberance of his cunning, to 
 apply to the redress of the national grievances, 
 assuring them that they would always find him 
 ready " to more than meet them half way."J 
 
 Avoiding, with quiet indifference, the royal 
 snare thus set for them, the leaders of the 
 House at once proposed to restrict their literal 
 acceptation of his majesty's speech to the lat- 
 ter half of it only. They sent him back reso- 
 lutions from their committees of inquiry, lev- 
 elled against certain notorious monopolists, who 
 had long crippled the freedom of English trade, 
 
 * This expression may startle those who are acquainted 
 with the schoolmaster tone of Bacon in addressing Parlia- 
 ments generally, yet a glance at his "reasons for assem- 
 bling the Parliament," which is drawn up with very great 
 eloquence, will show that it is not misplaced. He observes, 
 at its conclusion, " that in respect of so long intermission of 
 a Parliament, the times may have introduced some things 
 fit to be reformed, either by new laws or by the moderate 
 desires of our loving subjects dutifully intimated to us, 
 wherein we shall ever be no less ready to give them all 
 gracious satisfaction than their own hearts can desire." 
 Bacon's subsequent arrogant speech to this very Parliament 
 the haughty spirit going before a fall ! is not for an in- 
 stant to be weighed against this cautious and elaborate com- 
 position. 
 
 t See Roger Coke's Detection, part i., p. 111. 
 
 t See the Journals of the House of Commons, p. 523. 
 Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 328, &c. 
 
 ^ Three patent monopolies had been the especial subject 
 of discussion in the meetings of the opposition, as abuses 
 of the highest degree of enormity : they were those for the 
 licensing of inns, the licensing of hostelries, and the manu- 
 facture of gold thread ; in which two notorious projectors, 
 Mompesson and Michel, were pretty generally known to be 
 only the agents of Buckingham and his family. By virtue 
 of the first two, the patentees were enabled to exact foi 
 their licenses whatever sums they pleased ; and on the re- 
 fusal of innkeepers or publicans to comply with their arbi- 
 trary extortions, they fined or threw them into prison at 
 their discretion. The knaveries and oppressions practised 
 under the authority of the third patent were manifold. The 
 monopolists manufactured thread so scandalously debased 
 with copper that it was said to corrode the hands of the ar- 
 tificers and the flesh of those who wove it. This adultera- 
 ted article they vended at an arbitrary and exorbitant price ; 
 and if they detected any persons in making or selling a bet- 
 ter and cheaper article, they were empowered to fine and 
 imprison such interlopers, without law ; while a clause in 
 their patent protected themselves from ali actions to which 
 they would otherwise have been liable in consequence of 
 these attacks upon the liberty and property of their fellow- 
 subjects, and of the right of search, even in private houses, 
 which they assumed. (Aikin's James the First, vol. ii., p.
 
 338 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and against some officers of the king's courts, 
 by whom the administration of justice had been 
 for some time openly polluted.* Of the com- 
 mittees from which these several charges em- 
 anated, Pym was an active and zealous pro- 
 moter, t 
 
 The king, with every mean desire to whee- 
 dle money from the Commons,! was by this 
 bold course startled into his old attitude of 
 blustering arrogance ; and at his elbow stood 
 Buckingham, who, knowing too well that his 
 brother, Sir Edward Villiers, would be struck 
 down along with the other state criminals now 
 plainly aimed at by the Commons, urged him 
 at once to a dissolution ; when, from a little 
 distance, was heard the voice of the wily Will- 
 iams, then creeping slowly but very surely up 
 the state ladder, " Swim with the tide, and you 
 cannot be drowned. If you assist to break up 
 this Parliament, being now in pursuit of jus- 
 tice, only to save some cormorants who have 
 devoured that which must be regorged, you 
 will pluck up a sluice which will overwhelm 
 yourself. Delay not one day before you give 
 Sir Edward Villiers a commission for an em- 
 bassage to some of the princes of Germany, or 
 the Northlands, and despatch him over the sea 
 before he be missed. Those empty fellows, 
 Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michel, 
 let them be made victims to the public wrath, 
 and cast all monopolies and patents of griping 
 projectors into the Dead Sea after them. I 
 have searched the signet office, and have col- 
 lected almost forty, which I have hung in one 
 bracelet, and are fit for revocation. Damn all 
 these by one proclamation, that the world may 
 see that the king, who is the pilot that sits at 
 the helm, is ready to play the pump to eject 
 such filth as grew noisome in the nostrils of 
 his people. " Ultimately this was accepted as 
 a piece of wise counsel, and, observes Hacket, 
 "out of this bud the dean'sll advancement very 
 shortly spread out into a blown flower." 
 
 Sir Edward Villiers fled ; Sir Giles Mompes- 
 son the original of Massinger's Overreach 
 and his creature Sir Francis Michel were im- 
 peached and degraded ; and many minor offend- 
 ers were swept down in the same righteous 
 
 207. Lingard, vol. ix., p. 247, 248.) " Others," says Hack- 
 et, "remonstrated against a pack of cheaters, who procu- 
 red the monopoly of gold thread, which, with their spin- 
 ning, was palpably corrupted and embased. These gilt 
 flies were the bolder, because Sir Edward Villiers was in 
 their indenture of association, though not named in their 
 patent." Scrinia Reserata, p. 49. 
 
 * Among these were Field, bishop of Llandaff ; Sir John 
 Bennet, judge of the prerogative court ; and Sir Henry Yel- 
 verton, the king's attorney-general. See Bacon, vi., 383. 
 
 t In the unjustifiable proceedings against Floyde, into 
 which the House were shortly after betrayed, I cannot dis- 
 cover that Pym took any active share. No doubt, however, 
 in the melancholy religious excitement that prevailed at 
 the time, and which was the natural result of the then in- 
 variable appearance of popery, both at home and abroad, in 
 affinity and alliance with despotism, Pym did not resist the 
 general feeling. I shall have many opportunities for show- 
 ing, however, that he was not an intolerant man. For the 
 circumstances of Floyde's case, see the State Trials, vol. 
 ii., p. 1159. Carte, vol. iv., p. 78-80. 
 
 t In one of the despatches of Tillieres, then French am- 
 bassador in London, I find a shrewd reason given for the 
 aniiety of the court to secure, by any expedient, a supply 
 of money from Parliament. By that, the Frenchman ar- 
 gues, the opposition will be "kept in check ;" for, he con- 
 tinues, " however ill inclined they appear, these grar.ts of 
 money, which give a claim on their property, compel them 
 to proceed with more gentleness and reverence." 
 
 * See Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, p. 49, 50. 
 
 II Williams was at this time Dean of Westminster. 
 
 storm of popular indignation, above which, mo- 
 ving and directing, Pym was seen pre-eminent. 
 So especially active was he about those affairs 
 at this time, that the king, as we learn from 
 the authority of Anthony a Wood, singled him 
 out from the rest of the members as a man of 
 "a very ill-tempered 'spirit."* 
 
 The most melancholy duty of this famous Par- 
 liament remained to be performed, to the world's 
 wonder and its lasting loss. On the 15th of 
 March, Sir Robert Philips reported to the House, 
 as chairman of one of its committees of inqui- 
 ry, that they had received information respect- 
 ing a case of bribery which " touched the hon- 
 our of so great a man, so endowed with all 
 parts both of nature and art, as that he would 
 say no more of him, not being able to say 
 enough. "t We turn aside, with deep regret 
 and self-humiliation, at the thought of the dis- 
 grace of Lord Bacon ; but, careless of the in- 
 fluence of Pope's worthless and senseless dis- 
 tich,:): it is only just that we should remember, 
 in some reassurance of the goodness as well 
 as greatness of the intellect, that Bacon's sub- 
 mission was wrung from him by the mean and 
 paltry spite of Buckingham ; that he was not 
 confronted with his accusers ; never cross-ex- 
 amined any of the witnesses against him ; nev- 
 er adduced any on his own behalf. It becomes 
 us, therefore, using his own most affecting ap- 
 peal, to give to that submission " a benign in- 
 terpretation ; for words that come from wasted 
 spirits and an oppressed mind are more safe in 
 being deposited in a noble construction than in 
 being circled with any reserved caution. When 
 the book of hearts shall be opened, I hope I 
 shall not be found to have the troubled fount- 
 ain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of 
 taking rewards to pervert justice, howsoever 
 
 * Ath. Oxon., vol. iii., p. 73. Wood adds, as some set- 
 off to the king's opinion, that Pym was not without great 
 esteem at the time, as a " person of good language, voluble 
 tongue, and considerable knowledge in the common law." 
 
 t See the Commons' Journals, p. 530-563. Parl. Hist., 
 vol. v., p. 350. Rushworth, vol. i., p. 28. State Trials, 
 vol. ii., p. 1088. Clarendon and Carte have striven to rep- 
 resent the impeachment of Bacon as the result of private 
 pique and resentment in the one case, on the part of Coke ; 
 in the other, on that of Buckingham. Whatever may have 
 been the truth in either case, the Commons, having had the 
 charges submitted to them, had no resource but that which 
 they adopted ; and the deference and tenderness exhibited 
 by them, during the whole of the proceedings, towards the 
 illustrious accused, was truly remarkable. I should add 
 that, though Coke did not appear prominently, his conduct 
 in endeavouring to implicate Bacon in Mompesson's crimes 
 favours the supposition of his having done his best to move 
 the original committee of inquiry. See the Journals of 
 March 9th, and Carte, iv., 74. 
 
 t " If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined 
 The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind !" 
 
 One of these superlatives must be questioned let the 
 common sense of the reader determine which. 
 
 t> It will probably be in the reader's recollection that a 
 servant of Bacon's subsequently said very distinctly, that 
 his lord was absolutely prohibited by the king from making 
 his defence. This may be questioned ; but can it be ques- 
 tioned that, had Basan not been restrained either by a pos- 
 itive command of James, or, at least, by a knowledge of 
 what must be the royal wish, he might have palliated his 
 offence in a very great degree ? Many of the alleged bribes 
 were, in reality, the customary compliments to chancellors ; 
 and of the worst of his delinquencies Buckingham was the 
 sole instigator the great cause and origin, as any one who 
 reads the now published correspondence of Bacon and Buck- 
 ingham will see to be established beyond a doubt. To 
 this, indeed, Lord Bacon alludes, in this memorial of ac- 
 cess to the king in 1622. " Of my offences, far be it from 
 me to say, Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas, hut 
 I will say that I have good warrant, for ' they were not the 
 greatest offenders in Israel on whoa the wall of Shilo fell.' "
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 139 
 
 I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the 
 times." It was with this feeling the manly 
 and earnest mind of Jonson contemplated Ba- 
 con's fall ; for he had celebrated his prosperity, 
 and would not shrink from him in his years of 
 adversity and sorrow. " My conceit of his per- 
 son was never increased towards him by his 
 place or honours ; but I have and do reverence 
 him for the greatness that was only proper to 
 himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his 
 words, one of the greatest men, and most wor- 
 thy of admiration, that had been in many ages. 
 In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would 
 give him strength, for greatness he could not 
 want. Neither could I condole in a word or 
 syllable for him, as knowing no accident could 
 do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it 
 manifest," 
 
 Strengthened by the great good they had al- 
 ready achieved, Pym and the other leaders of 
 the country party in this famous Parliament now 
 addressed themselves to subjects which, while 
 they deeply interested the religious feelings of 
 the people, involved, as they well knew, some 
 of the most dearly-cherished prejudices of the 
 king. A war for the recovery of the Protest- 
 ant cause in the Palatinate ; some repeal of 
 the indulgence granted to Catholics in the non- 
 execution of the penal laws ; destruction of 
 those treaties that had been concluded with 
 the King of Spain and the Emperor, to the 
 heavy discouragement, as it was generally felt, 
 of Protestantism ; and, finally, arrest of the ne- 
 gotiations now carrying on for the marriage of 
 the Prince of Wales with the Spanish Infanta : 
 these questions day by day gathered formida- 
 ble influence in the House, and at last, in the 
 utter absence of any signs of immediate sup- 
 ply, effectually alarmed James. He lost tem- 
 per and patience, and, suddenly dropping the 
 mask he had worn so ill, sent an intimation to 
 the House of Commons that he expected them 
 to adjourn over the summer. This was re- 
 ceived with extreme dissatisfaction ; much an- 
 gry parleying followed ; but after some days' 
 delay both houses were adjourned by royal com- 
 mission. The Commons, however, before sep- 
 arating, voted a solemn declaration of their re- 
 solve to spend their lives and fortunes in de- 
 fence of the Protestant cause* (the reader will 
 keep in view what has been already urgedt re- 
 specting the inseparable connexion of this cause 
 in that day with civil freedom) ; and this dec- 
 laration was " sounded forth," says a person 
 who was present, " with the voices of them all, 
 withal lifting up their hats in their hands so 
 high as they could hold them, as a visible tes- 
 timony of their unanimous consent, in such sort 
 that the like had scarce ever been seen in Par- 
 liament." 
 
 A recess of five months followed, in the 
 course of which the whole Church was thrown 
 into confusion, and the king's theology suffered 
 a great eclipse. The cause is worth adverting 
 to, in illustration of the personal positions of 
 the dignitaries of the Church ; for it was against 
 this class of men, according to Lord Clarendon, 
 that Pym first showed himself " concerned and 
 passionate, "t 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 472, 473. 
 
 t See Life of Eliot, p. 6. 
 
 t Hist, of RebeL, vol. iv., p. 437, 
 
 The good, easy Archbishop Abbot happened 
 to have joined the Lord Zouch on a hunting- 
 party at Bramzhill Park, in Hampshire. Here 
 his grace, having singled out a buck one morn- 
 ing, " and warned the company to be on their 
 guard," took his aim, and, as the accounts say, 
 " through mistake or want of skill," shot the keep- 
 er of the park, who was passing over the ground 
 on horseback. A verdict of unintentional hom- 
 icide was returned ; but the opportunity was 
 too happy to be lost, wherefore a pack of his 
 grace's reverend opponents set in full cry after 
 him, urging that by the canon law he had be- 
 come incapable of holding any ecclesiastical 
 preferment, or exercising any ecclesiastical 
 function. His leading opponents were no less 
 than four bishops elect, all of whom, under the 
 circumstances, refused to receive consecration 
 at his hands, and took their stand, very pathet- 
 ically, upon impassable scruples of conscience, 
 to which it would, of course, be a gross insult 
 to suggest that, with two at least of these four 
 reverend men, the hope of succeeding to the 
 dignity of the disabled archbishop must have 
 been strongly present. It was, in fact, notori- 
 ous, that Williams and Laud* entertained this 
 hope. The sober and religious people of Eng- 
 land were, meanwhile, attentively listening, and 
 from the high places in Church and State no- 
 thing was to be heard but an agitation of the 
 momentous question of whether the amuse- 
 ments of hunting and shooting wore allowable 
 in a bishop. James suffered all the throes of the 
 strongest theological conceptions, but brought 
 nothing forth. In despair of his own delivery, 
 he at last appointed a commission of prelates 
 and canonists : they could not agree ; but, by 
 way of a compromise, the majority proposed 
 that Abbot should be absolved from all irregu- 
 larity ad majorem ca.utda.rn. An agonizing ques- 
 tion followed : Where was the ecclesiastical 
 superior to absolve the metropolitan 1 A brill- 
 iant thought at last relieved the unprecedented 
 difficulty. It was suggested that the king, as 
 head of the Church, possessed exactly that 
 plenitude of power which in Roman Catholic 
 countries resided in the pope. Whereupon 
 James issued his triumphant commands to the 
 eight consecrated bishops, and Abbot was par- 
 doned forthwith, upon the issue of a solemn 
 declaration from the conclave that " the hunting 
 aforesaid was decent, modest, andpeaceable."t 
 
 Laud had a quarrel of twenty years' standing- with Ab- 
 jot, who had, on several occasions, at Oxford, opposed and 
 censured him on account of the Roman Catholic tendencies 
 of doctrines maintained by him in his academical exercises, 
 t This will probably be pronounced to have been, upon, 
 ;he whole, a wise as well as important decision, and is cer- 
 tainly not without even present application to affairs of this 
 sort. There is a kind of hunting nowadays indulged occa- 
 sionally by clergymen and archdeacons which is anything 
 jut decent and peaceable. Buck-shooting, even at the oc- 
 casional risk of an accidental loss of life, as in his grace of 
 Canterbury's case, is in reality nothing to it. It may be 
 ery much the fashion, therefore, when we see a minister 
 jf the Gospel partridge-shooting or fox-hunting, to pull forth 
 our Bibles, and make a parade of our acquaintance with 
 Paul and Timothy ; but the propriety of the practice is 
 really more than doubtful, since the consequences may be 
 such as to put society under serious disobligation to the 
 rash hinderer of clerical pastimes. A pheasaHt is more al- 
 owable game than a peasant. When Domitian left off fly- 
 tilling, he took to killing Roman citizens ; and our times 
 lave witnessed less innocent amusements, on the part of 
 the clergy, than the sports of the field. As for the silence 
 of Holy Writ about detonators, it is not more silent about 
 detonators than about lawn sleeves and mitres ; and, be-
 
 140 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 The Parliament assembled in November, 
 and in some anger at the imprisonment of one 
 of their members, Sir Edwin Sandys,* during 
 the recess. Some few days after their meet- 
 ing, Pvm seconded Sir Edward Coke in mo- 
 ving, as one of their first resolutions, that they 
 should remonstrate with the king on the caus- 
 es of the public discontent then prevailing, and 
 point out the remedies. A petition was ac- 
 cordingly prepared, suggesting, among other 
 things, Prince Charles's marriage with a Prot- 
 estant ; and that the king should direct his ef- 
 forts against that power (Spain) which first 
 maintained the war against the Protestant 
 cause in the Palatinate. t This petition was 
 opposed by the court party as utterly without 
 precedent ; the chancellor of the duchy said 
 that " it was of so high and transcendent a na- 
 ture, he had never known the like within those 
 walls." Privately, meanwhile, a copy of it had 
 been sent to the king, on whom it took sudden 
 and desperate effect. Calvert and Weston, 
 according to Wilson, " had aggravated the 
 matter to him, with all the acrimony they 
 could, so far as to reflect upon particular per- 
 sons that were the most active instruments in 
 it."J Foremost among the persons so named 
 were Pym, Coke, and Philips. Accordingly, 
 from Newmarket, whither he had gone at the 
 
 sides, if it says nothing for them, it certainly says nothing 
 against. " If you must drink," says the ordinary of New- 
 gate to Mr. Jonathan Wild, " if you must drink, let us have 
 a bowl of punch ; a liquor I the rather prefer, as it is no- 
 where spoken against in Scripture." The same reason 
 holds for an archbishop's or archdeacon's dog and gun, with 
 precisely the same force. 
 
 * Sandys had been placed under arrest with Selden, not 
 then a member of the House ; also Lords Oxford and South- 
 ampton, Sutcliff, dean of Exeter, the Bishop of Bangor, Sir 
 Christopher Neville, Sir G. Leeds, and Brise, a Puritan 
 minister ; after examination before the council, and a short 
 confinement, they were restored to liberty. See Camden's 
 Annals of James, 1621. Kennel's History, vol. ii., p. 657. 
 Their offences are not assigned, but it would seem they 
 had indulged in talking " arcana imperil'' against a royal 
 proclamation. Secretary Calvert was commissioned by the 
 king to declare that Sandys, the only member committed, 
 had not been committed for any Parliamentary matter, and 
 Sir Thomas Wentworth even discountenanced the resent- 
 ing it as a breach of privilege. But it is difficult to doubt 
 the cause of Sandys' commitment. See Debates and 
 Journals. 
 
 t See Rushworth, vol. i., p. 40. This remonstrance, it 
 has been truly said, was fitted to disconcert all the projects 
 of James : it penetrated without reserve into the deepest 
 recesses of those arcana imperil which he held so dear and 
 BO sacred ; it proclaimed the futility of those negotiations 
 in which he had exposed himself to become the dupe of 
 Spain and the laughing-stock of Europe ; it warned him 
 that his arbitrary suspension of laws would be no longer 
 borne with ; it taught him that the darling project of alli- 
 ance which had prompted all these sacrifices of dignity and 
 principle was contemplated with abhorrence ; and, above 
 all, that the purses of the English people would never be 
 opened to him but in the cause of Protestantism and the 
 liberties of Germany against the great Catholic league, the 
 emperor, and especially the King of Spain. The following 
 passage closed the petition : " This is the sum and effect 
 of our humble declaration, which we (noways intending to 
 press upon your majesty's undoubted and regal prerogative) 
 do with the fulness of our duty and allegiance humbly sub- 
 mit to your most princely consideration : the glory of God, 
 whose cause it is ; the zeal of our true religion, to which 
 we have been born, and wherein, by God's grace, we are 
 resolved to die ; the safety of your majesty's person, who 
 is the very life of your people ; the happiness of your chil- 
 dren and posterity, the honour and good of the Church 
 and State, dearer unto us than our own lives having kin- 
 dled these affections, truly devoted to your majesty." The 
 words in italics were not in the petition as first proposed to 
 the House, but were inserted in the course of the debate 
 on it to meet some scruples of the time. See Journals. Parl. 
 Hist., vol. v., p. 489, and Aikin's James, vol. ii., p. 275-7. 
 
 J See Wilson, in Kennel's History, vol. ii., p. 740. 
 
 time, " to be farther from the sound of that 
 noise of the discontent of the Commons," 
 James instantly despatched a letter to the 
 speaker complaining of the influence possessed 
 by some certain* " fiery, popular, and turbu- 
 lent spirits" in the lower House, forbidding 
 them to inquire into the mysteries of state, or 
 to concern themselves about the marriage of 
 his son, or to touch the character of any prince, 
 his friend or ally, or to intermeddle with caus- 
 es which were submitted to the decision of the 
 courts of law, or even to send to him their pe- 
 tition, if they wished him to hear or answer it ; 
 and, finally, to recollect that he (King James) 
 thought himself " very free and able to punish 
 any man's misdemeanours in Parliament as 
 well during their sitting as after, which we 
 mean not to spare hereafter, upon any occasion 
 of any man's insolent behaviour there that 
 shall be ministered unto us ; and if they have 
 already touched any of these points which we 
 have forbidden in any petition of theirs which 
 is to be sent unto us, it is our pleasure that 
 you shall tell them that, except they reform it 
 before it come to our hands, we will not deign 
 the hearing nor answering of it."t 
 
 From the date of this letter the 3d of De- 
 cember, 1621 may be dated the commence- 
 ment of the kind of open warfare of antagonist 
 principles which ended in the destruction of 
 the Stuart race. The historian Hume con- 
 fesses that it was " rash and indiscreet" in the 
 king thus to risk the " tearing off that sacred 
 veil which had hitherto covered the English 
 Constitution, and which threw an obscurity 
 upon it so advantageous to royal prerogative : 
 every man began to indulge himself in political 
 reasonings and inquiries ; and the same fac- 
 tions which commenced in Parliament, were 
 propagated through the nation. "t Would the 
 philosopher have thought James rash and in- 
 discreet if his letter had proved successful 1 
 The truth was, that, backed by all the power 
 of the executive, and with all the prisons of the 
 Tower at his command, James's venture was 
 perfectly in accordance with Hume's princi- 
 ples. He had, however, miscalculated the 
 characters of the men opposed to him, the 
 great majority of whom were already, for life 
 or death, devoted to the achievement of a pop- 
 ular and responsible government in England. 
 
 In the spirit of men so leagued their reply to 
 this letter was framed. The greatest respect 
 tempered the most resolute firmness. Some 
 abstract of this document will find a fitting 
 place here, since Pym was one of the most ac- 
 tive members^ of the committee appointed to 
 draw it up, and it is, besides, of the last im- 
 portance that the reader should distinctly un- 
 derstand the exact ground that was occupied 
 by the opposing parties in this, the first open 
 
 * The following, which stands upon the journals imme- 
 diately after the king's letter, is an evidence of Pyin's quick 
 resolution and high courage: " Mr. Pym saith that the 
 words of ' fiery, popular, and turbulent' are laid by his maj- 
 esty on the whole House ; for since we have not punished or 
 questioned any such, but (as the letter saith) been led by 
 their propositions, it is the acl of the whole House. He 
 desireth a petition may be from us to the king, to know who 
 his majesty hath been informed those fiery, turbulent spirits 
 are, that we may justify ourselves, and clear the House of 
 the taint of those words." 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 492. Roger Coke's Declaration, 
 vol. i., p. 119, ed. 1694. 
 
 t Hist., vol. v., p. 82, quarto ed. I) See Journals.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 141 
 
 contest between the English Parliament and 
 the English king. 
 
 They began by professing their sorrow at the 
 displeasure shown by his majesty's letter to 
 the speaker, while they took comfort to them- 
 selves in the assurance of his grace and good- 
 ness, and of their own faithfulness and loyal- 
 ty. They entreated that their good intentions 
 might " not undeservedly suffer by the misin- 
 formation of partial and uncertain reports, 
 which are ever unfaithful intelligencers," but 
 that his majesty would vouchsafe to under- 
 stand from themselves, and not from others, 
 what their humble petition and declaration, re- 
 solved upon by the universal voice of the 
 House, did contain. They beseeched, also, 
 that his majesty would not henceforth give 
 credit to private reports against all or any of 
 the members of that House, on whom they 
 themselves should not have inflicted a cen- 
 sure, but that they might ever " stand upright" 
 in his royal judgment. Adverting, then, to the 
 cause of their assembling in Parliament, and 
 to the particulars of information laid before 
 them by his majesty's command, they inferred 
 that they " were called to a war," and certain- 
 ly with the King of Spain, who had five armies 
 on foot, and who was known to have occupied 
 the lower Palatinate ; and hence they took 
 credit for the unprecedented celerity and alac- 
 rity with which their zeal for his majesty and 
 his posterity had prompted them to proceed in 
 voting the necessary supplies, and considering 
 of the mode of conducting hostilities. To this 
 they added, that although they could not con- 
 ceive that the honour and safety of his majes- 
 ty and his posterity ; the patrimony of his chil- 
 dren, invaded and possessed by their enemies ; 
 the welfare of religion and the state of the 
 kingdom, were matters at any time unfit for 
 their deepest consideration in time of Parlia- 
 ment, yet that, at this time, they were clearly 
 invited to it ; and that the mention of Popish 
 recusants, and whatever said touching the hon- 
 our of the King of Spain in which, however, 
 they contended that they had observed due 
 bounds had necessarily arisen out of the sub- 
 ject. Next they disclaimed all intention of in- 
 vading his majesty's undoubted prerogative in 
 disposing of his son in marriage, but mairitain- 
 ed that, as the representatives of the whole 
 commons of England, who have a large inter- 
 est in the prosperity of the king and royal fam- 
 ily, and of the State and Commonwealth, it be- 
 came them to offer their opinion respecting this 
 matter. On these considerations, they hoped 
 that his majesty would now be pleased to re- 
 ceive their petition and declaration at the 
 hands of their messengers, to read and favour- 
 ably to interpret it, and to give answer to as 
 much of it as relates to Popish priests and 
 recusants, to the passing of bills, and to par- 
 dons. The declaration ended thus : " And 
 whereas your majesty doth seem to abiidgr. 
 us of the ancient liberty of Parliament for free- 
 dom of speech, jurisdiction, and just liberty of 
 the House, and other proceedings there (where- 
 in we trust in God we shall never trangress 
 the bounds of loyal and dutiful subjects) ; a 
 liberty which we assure ourselves so wise and 
 so just a king will not infringe, the same being 
 our ancient and undoubted right, and an inherit- 
 
 ance received from our ancestors ; without 
 which we cannot freely debate, nor clearly dis- 
 cern of things in question before us, nor truly 
 inform your majesty ; in which we have been 
 confirmed by your majesty's most gracious for- 
 mer speeches and messages : we are, there- 
 fore, now again enforced, in all humbleness, to 
 pray your majesty to allow the same, and 
 thereby to take away the doubts and scruples 
 your majesty's late letter to our speaker hath 
 wrought upon us."* 
 
 This declaration, with the original petition, 
 was carried to the king at Newmarket by Pym 
 and eleven other members deputed by the 
 House. " Chairs !" cried the king, as they en- 
 tered the presence chamber ; " chairs ! here 
 be twal' kynges comin' !" In the interview 
 which followed he refused to receive the ori- 
 ginal petition ; and, as Roger Coke expresses it, 
 after reading the second declaration, " furled 
 all his sails, and resolved to ride out this storm 
 of the Commons." In other words, he set to 
 work, and endited, with his own hand, an enor- 
 mously long rejoinder, which may be thus trans- 
 lated and abridged from the rich Scotch dialectt 
 of the original. 
 
 He began by applying to the case some words 
 of Queen Elizabeth, addressed to an insolent 
 ambassador : " We looked for an ambassador 
 we have received a herald." So, he assert- 
 ed, he had looked for thanksgiving from the 
 Commons for all the " points of grace" he had 
 conceded to them. " But not only," he con- 
 tinues, " have we heard no news of all this, 
 but contrary, great complaints of the danger of 
 religion within this kingdom, tacitly implying 
 our ill-government in this point. And we 
 leave you to judge whether it be your duties, 
 that are the representative body of our people, 
 so to distaste them with our government ; 
 whereas, by the contrary, it is your duty, with 
 all your endeavours, to kindle more and more 
 a dutiful and thankful love in the people's hearts 
 towards us, for our just and gracious govern- 
 ment." In respect to their taxing him with 
 trusting uncertain reports and partial informa- 
 tions, he proceeded thus : " We wish you to 
 remember that we are an old and experien- 
 ced king, needing no such lessons, being in 
 our conscience freest of any king alive from 
 hearing or trusting idle reports ;" and as to 
 their petition in particular, he went on to say, 
 that he had made their own messengers com- 
 pare the copy of it which they brought with that 
 which he had received before, which corre- 
 sponded exactly, excepting a concluding sen- 
 tence added by them afterward. Having thus 
 satisfied himself with a reason which did not 
 even glance at the gross breach of privilege 
 complained of, he next told them, that if, in ig- 
 norance of the contents of their petition, he 
 had received it, to his own great dishonour, he 
 could have returned nothing to their messen- 
 gers but that he judged it unlawful and unwor- 
 thy of an answer. ' For," he observes, " as 
 to your conclusion thereof, it is nothing but pro- 
 testatio contraria facto ; for in the body of your 
 petition you usurp upon our prerogative royal, 
 and meddle with things far above your reach, 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. i., p. 46. Parl. Hist., rol. v., p. 495. 
 Aikin's James the First, vol..ii., p. 282, 284. 
 t Roger Coke, vol. i., p. 121.
 
 142 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and then, in the conclusion, you protest the 
 contrary ; as if a robber would take a man's 
 purse, and then protest he meant not to rob 
 him." He denied that the communications 
 made by him to the House could in any manner 
 authorize their proceedings. He had, indeed, 
 made known that he was resolved by war to re- 
 gain the Palatinate, if otherwise he could not ; 
 and had invited them to advise upon a supply 
 for keeping the forces there from disbanding, 
 and raising an army in the spring. "Now 
 what inference," he continues, " can be made 
 upon this, that therefore we must presently 
 denounce war against the King of Spain, break 
 our dearest son's match, and match him to one 
 of our religion, let the world judge. The dif- 
 ference is no greater than if we would tell a 
 merchant that we had great need to borrow 
 money from him for raising an army ; that 
 thereupon it would follow that we were hound 
 to follow his advice in the direction of the 
 war, and all things depending thereupon. But 
 yet, not contenting yourselves with this excuse 
 of yours, which indeed cannot hold water, you 
 come after to a direct contradiction, saying 
 that the honour and safety of us and our pos- 
 terity, the patrimony of our children, invaded 
 and possessed by their enemies, and the wel- 
 fare of religion and state of our kingdom, are 
 matters at any time not unfit for your deepest 
 considerations in Parliament. To this gener- 
 ality we answer, with the logicians, that where 
 all things are contained nothing is omitted. 
 So this plenipotency of yours invests you with 
 all power upon earth, lacking nothing hut the 
 Pope's, to have the keys, also, both of heaven 
 and purgatory. And to this vast generality of 
 yours we can give no other answer, for it will 
 trouble all the best lawyers in the House to 
 make a good commentary upon it. For so did 
 the Puritan ministers in Scotland bring all 
 kind of causes within the compass of their ju- 
 risdiction, saying that it was the Church's of- 
 fice to judge of slander, and there could be no 
 kind of crime or fault committed but there was 
 a slander in it, either against God, the king, or 
 their neighbour : or like Bellarmine's distinc- 
 tion of the Pope's power over kings, in ordine 
 ad spiritualia, whereby he gives them all tem- 
 poral jurisdiction over them." With respect 
 to the war, he then professed in general terms 
 that he would suffer no consideration, not even 
 the marriage of his son, to interfere with the 
 restitution of the Palatinate ; and boasted that 
 by his intervention with the King of Spain and 
 the archduchess in Flanders, he had already 
 preserved it from farther conquest for a whole 
 year. " But," he added, " because we conceive 
 that ye couple this war of the Palatinate with 
 the cause of religion, we must a little unfold 
 your eyes therein." And he proceeded, in de- 
 fiance of all historic truth, to lay the whole 
 blame of the war of Bohemia, and the conse- 
 quent oppression of the Protestants in Germa- 
 ny, on the ambition of his son-in-law, and his 
 unj ust usurpation of the crown of another. He 
 severely reprimanded the Parliament, next, for 
 the terms in which the King of Spain and his 
 inordinate ambition were spoken of in their pe- 
 tition, not to allude to " the particular ejacula- 
 tions of some foul-mouthed orators in your 
 house against the honour of that king's crown 
 
 and state." Respecting the prince's marriage, 
 he professed himself indignant that the House 
 should not place so much confidence in his re- 
 ligion and wisdom as to rely on his former dec- 
 laration, that religion should receive no injury 
 by it ; and then informed them that he was al- 
 ready too much advanced in the treaty to re- 
 tract with honour. After much more objurga- 
 tory language respecting what he treats as 
 their unpardonable presumption, quoting the 
 proverb, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, he conde- 
 scends ungraciously enough, but yet out of a 
 sort of ungainly desire of seeming to conciliate 
 to explain away, in some degree, his general 
 prohibition of their meddling with matters of 
 government and mysteries of state, accusing 
 them, at the same time, of misplacing and mis- 
 judging his sentences, as " a scholar would be 
 ashamed so to misplace and misjudge any sen- 
 tences in another man's book." With the fol- 
 lowing very startling passage he at last con- 
 cludes : " And although we cannot allow of 
 the style, calling it your ancient and undoubted 
 right and inheritance, but could rather have 
 wished that ye had said that your privileges 
 were derived from the grace and permission of 
 our ancestors and us (for most of them grow 
 from precedents, which shows rather a tolera- 
 tion than inheritance), yet we are pleased to 
 give you our royal assurance that, as long as 
 you contain yourselves within the limits of 
 your duty, we will be as careful to maintain 
 and preserve your lawful liberties and privile- 
 ges as ever any of our predecessors were 
 nay, as to preserve our own royal prerogative ; 
 so as your house shall only have need to be- 
 ware to trench upon the prerogative of the 
 crown, which would enforce us, or any just 
 king, to retrench them of their privileges that 
 would pare his prerogative and flowers of the 
 crown. But of this we hope there never shall 
 be cause given."* 
 
 This letter had not been long despatched, 
 when symptoms of alarm broke out at the 
 court. Williams recommended the qualifica- 
 tion of its terms " with some mild and noble 
 exposition ;"t and the king prepared to adopt 
 this suggestion, after he was told that the 
 Commons, on receiving his letter, had on the 
 instant appointed a committee to prepare a pro- 
 test. Secretary Calvert accordingly went down 
 to the House with an explanatory message 
 from the king, wherein, while he reiterated 
 his assurances respecting their privileges, and 
 tacitly withdrew the menace that rendered 
 them precarious, he said that he could not with 
 patience endure his subjects to use such anti- 
 monarchical words to him concerning their lib- 
 erties as " ancient and undoubted right and in- 
 heritance," without subjoining that they were 
 granted by the grace and favour of his prede- 
 cessors. The house heard this coldly. Cal- 
 vert and the other ministers, seeing the coming 
 storm, made a still more desperate effort to 
 avert it by admitting the king's closing expres- 
 sions in the original letter to be incapable of 
 defence, and calling them a slip of the pen at 
 the close of a long answer.}: This availed as 
 
 c o te ngs etter. 
 
 See Hallam's Const. Hist., vol. ii., p. 500.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 143 
 
 little as the former. The last and worst expe- 
 dient was then resorted to, and the clerk of the 
 House received notice of instant adjournment 
 till the ensuing February. 
 
 In this extremity the leaders of this great 
 Parliament acquitted themselves with memo- 
 rable courage. Nothing, they said, should sep- 
 arate them till they had placed on record a pro- 
 test against the monstrous pretensions of 
 James. The time that remained to them was 
 indeed short, but they proved it long enough 
 for the accomplishment of an act which exert- 
 ed a sensible influence on the contest between 
 the people and the king up to its very close. 
 All that was done in the most celebrated Par- 
 liaments of Charles followed, as a natural con- 
 sequence, from what was done now. 
 
 Instantly upon the receipt of this notice of 
 adjournment, a message was sent to the com- 
 mittee to whom the king's letter had been re- 
 ferred ; some time passed in debate meanwhile, 
 and it was not, as it would seem by the king's 
 subsequent proclamation,* until " six o'clock at 
 night, by candle-light," a thing unprecedented 
 in those days, " that the said committee brought 
 into the House a protestation (to whom made 
 appears not) concerning their liberties." This 
 assertion of ignorance on the king's part, as to 
 whom the protestation was made, emphatical- 
 ly points out the nobler quarter to which it ad- 
 dressed itself the great mass of the English 
 people. To them it was made, and, sinking 
 into their hearts, met with a fruitful and con- 
 genial soil. After a long and earnest debate, 
 advancing to a very late hour, the protestation 
 was entered " as of record" upon the journals 
 in the following ever-memorable words : 
 
 "The Commons now assembled in Parlia- 
 ment, being justly occasioned thereunto, con- 
 cerning sundry liberties, franchises, and privi- 
 leges of Parliament, do make this protestation 
 following : That the liberties, franchises, privi- 
 leges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the 
 ancient and undoubted birthright and inherit- 
 ance of the people of England : and that the 
 arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, 
 state, and defence of the realm, and of the 
 Church of England, and the maintenance and 
 making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and 
 grievances which daily happen within this 
 realm, are proper subjects and matter of coun- 
 cil and debate in Parliament : and that in the 
 handling and proceeding of those businesses, 
 every member of the House of Parliament hath, 
 and of right ought to have, freedom of speech 
 to propound, treat, reason, and bring to con- 
 clusion the same : and that the Commons in 
 Parliament have like liberty and freedom to 
 treat of these matters in such order as in their 
 judgments shall seem fittest : and that every 
 member of the said House hath like freedom 
 from all impeachment, imprisonment, and mo- 
 lestation (other than by censure of the House 
 itself) for or concerning any speaking, or rea- 
 soning, or declaring of any matter or matters 
 touching the Parliament, or Parliament busi- 
 ness : and that if any of the said members be 
 complained of and questioned for anything done 
 or said in Parliament, the same is to be show- 
 
 * See Parl. Hist., vol. v., p. 514-16. Memorial of the 
 King's Reasons for destroying the Protestation of the Com- 
 mons. 
 
 ed to the king by the advice and assent of all 
 the Commons assembled in Parliament, before 
 the king give credence to any private informa- 
 tion."* 
 
 No time was lost by the courtiers, it may be 
 supposed, in communicating intelligence of this 
 act to the king, who instantly, frantic with 
 spite and outraged imbecility, hurried up to 
 London from Newmarket, hastily assembled 
 around him at Whitehall the privy council and 
 six of the judges who happened to be in town, 
 sent for the clerk of the House of Commons, 
 and commanding him to produce his journal- 
 book, tore out the protestation with his own 
 hand, and ordered the deed to be registered by 
 an act of council. His next exploit was to dis- 
 solve the Parliament.t This he did by procla- 
 mation, assigning as the necessity which had 
 driven him to it, the " inordinate liberty" as- 
 sumed by some " particular members of the 
 House" " evil-tempered spirits" who sowed 
 tares among the corn."! Finally, he summoned 
 these " evil-tempered spirits" before the coun- 
 cil-table in the persons of Coke, Philips, Pym, 
 and Mallory, and, having in vain endeavoured 
 to exact submission from them, committed 
 them to separate prisons. 
 
 I have found, and will here quote, a curious 
 letter in illustration of the nature of these im- 
 prisonments, which have been sometimes spo- 
 ken of by writers of the court party as though 
 they spoke of matters comparatively trifling 
 a sort of temporary detention or honourable 
 arrest. What follows will show the full ex- 
 tent of the dangers to which men of high birth 
 and fortune were now content to expose them- 
 selves, in the hope, by such means, of still 
 more quickening the sympathies and strength- 
 ening the purposes of the mass of the common 
 people. It describes the capture and impris- 
 onment of Sir Robert Philips, Pym's intimate 
 friend on the occasion now in question ; and 
 describes, also, there can be little doubt, the 
 course adopted, at the same time and for the 
 same reason, towards Pym himself. It is in 
 the shape of a petition from Francis Philips 
 to King James, praying for the release of his 
 brother, Sir Robert. 
 
 >' It is not for myself," he writes, " I thus 
 implore your majesty's grace, but for one that 
 is far more worthy, and in whom all that I am 
 consists my dear brother ; who, I know not 
 by what misfortune, hath fallen, or rather been 
 pushed, into your majesty's displeasure ; not in 
 dark and crooked ways, as corrupt and ill-af- 
 fected subjects use to walk, and neer to break 
 their necks in, but even in the great road, 
 which both himself and all good Englishmen 
 that know not the paths of the court, would 
 have sworn would have led most safely and 
 
 * Rushworth, vol., i., p. 53. 
 
 t A ludicrous anecdote of what very ominously befell the 
 king on the same day is given in a manuscript letter of ths 
 time. "The Parliament was, on Wednesday, cleane dis- 
 solved by proclamation. The same day his ma>e rode by 
 :oach to Theobald's to dinner, not intending, as the speech 
 is, to returne till towards Easter. After dinner, ryding on 
 horseback abroad, his horse stumbled and cast his majestic 
 into the New River, where the ice brake: he fell in, so 
 that nothing but his boots were scene. Sir Richard Yong 
 was next, who alighted, went into the water, and lifted 
 him out. There came much water out of his mouth and 
 tmdie ; his majestie rode back to Theobald's, went into a 
 warme bed, and, as we heare, is well, which God continue." 
 Harl. MSS., 389. t Rushworth, vol. i., p. 55.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 most directly to your majesty's service from 
 your majesty's displeasure. There needs no 
 other invention to crusifie a generous and hon- 
 est-minded suppliant, upon whom hath issued 
 and been derived a whole torrent of exemplary 
 punishment, wherein his reputation, his person, 
 and his estate grievously suffered ; for, having 
 (upon the last process of Parliament) retired him- 
 self to his poor house in the countrey, with hope 
 a ichilc to breathe after these troublesome affairs, 
 and still breathing nothing- but your majesty's ser- 
 vice, he was sent for, ere he had finished his Christ- 
 mas, by a sergeant at arms, who arrested him in 
 his men house, with as much terror as belongs to 
 the apprehending of treason itself; but (thanks be 
 to God) his conscience never started, and his 
 obedience herein showed it was not in the 
 power of any authority to surprise it ; for at the 
 instant, without asking one minute's time of reso- 
 lution, he rendered himself to the officer's discretion, 
 who (according to his directions) brought him 
 up captive, and presented hirn at the council- 
 table as a delinquent, from whence he was as 
 soon committed to the Tower, where he ever 
 since hath been kept close prisoner, and that with 
 so strict a hand, as his own beloved wife and my- 
 self, having some time since urgent and unfeigned 
 occasion to speak with him about some private bu- 
 siness of his family, and hereupon making hum- 
 ble petition to the lords of your majesty's most 
 honourable privy council for the favour of ac- 
 cess, we were, to our great discomforts, denied it; 
 by reason, as their lordships were pleased to 
 declare unto us, that he had not satisfied your 
 majesty fully in some points, which is so far 
 from being his fault, as, I dare say, it is the 
 greatest part of his affliction, that he sees him- 
 self debarred from the means of doing it. The 
 lords commissioners that were appointed by 
 your majesty to examine his offence, since the 
 first week of his imprisonment have not done 
 him the honour to be with him, by which means 
 not only his body, but (the most part of his 
 mind) his humble intentions to your majesty, 
 are kept in restraint. May it please, therefore, 
 your most excellent majesty, now at length, af- 
 ter five months' imprisonment and extreme durance, 
 to ordain such expedition in this cause as may 
 stand with your justice, and yet not avert Jfcur 
 mercy either of them will serve our turns 
 but that which is most agreeable to your royal 
 and gracious inclination will best accomplish 
 our desire. To live still in close prison is all one 
 as to be buried alive ; and for a man that hath any 
 hope of salvation, it were better to pray for the day 
 of judgment than to lie languishing in such wa- 
 king misery ; yet not ours, but your majesty's 
 will be done." 
 
 A subsequent passage of the petition runs 
 thus : " If (I say) it be not yet time to have 
 mercy, but that he must still remain within the 
 walls of bondage to expiate that which he did in 
 these privileged ones, my hope is that he will 
 die at any time for your majesty's service, and 
 will find patience to live anywhere for your 
 majesty's pleasure ; only thus much let me be- 
 seech your majesty's grace, again and again, 
 not to deny your humble and most obedient 
 suppliant, that you will, at least, be pleased to 
 mitigate the rigour of his sufferings so far as to 
 grant him the liberty of the Tower, that he may 
 no longer groan under the burthen of those in- 
 
 commodities which daily prejudice his health 
 and fortune in a higher degree (I believe) than 
 either your majesty knows or intends." 
 
 No answer was returned by the king ; and 
 under this kind of restraint Pym and his friends 
 were all, with one exception,* kept close pris- 
 oners, t until, as Roger Coke states, the break- 
 ing of the Spanish match necessitated the king 
 to call another Parliament. Such sufferings, 
 however, while they excite all the sympathies 
 of the heart and mind, are much too high for 
 pity. " I had rather," said Pymt on more than 
 one occasion, " I had rather suffer for speak- 
 ing the truth, than that the truth should suffer 
 for want of my speaking." The prisons of 
 such men are the sanctuaries of philosophy and 
 patriotism. 
 
 The last Parliament of James was summon- 
 ed, and Pym, having obtained his release, again 
 sat for Calne. The proceedings of this Parlia- 
 ment have been followed so minutely in the 
 biography of Eliot, that it is not necessary to 
 say more here than that Pym's exertions, du- 
 ring its continuance, were chiefly employed 
 upon the declaratory statute against monopo- 
 lies, and against the delinquencies of the Lord- 
 treasurer Middlesex. 
 
 James died, and Charles ascended the throne. 
 The precise condition of affairs at this junc- 
 ture has been already placed before the read- 
 er ;|| and it will be only necessary to remind 
 him, that the bitter distrust awakened in the 
 English people towards their young king by the 
 Earl of Bristol's exposure of the circumstan- 
 ces attending the breach of the Spanish trea- 
 ties at the close of the reign of James, was ag- 
 gravated by ostentatious and ill-timed indul- 
 gences granted to the professors of the Roman 
 Catholic religion immediately upon Charles's 
 accession. Under the influence of these feel- 
 ings, the first Parliament of the new reign met, 
 when Pym took his seat, for the first time, as 
 member for the borough of Tavistock, in Dev- 
 onshire, which he represented in all succeed- 
 ing Parliaments till his death. 
 
 The first matter we find him engaged in 
 heref was the case of the king's chaplain, Doc- 
 
 * This exception was in the case of Selden, who, though 
 not a member of the Parliament, had been consulted by it, 
 and given very decisive opinions respecting questions of 
 privilege. He was released in consequence of the earnest 
 intercession of the subtle Lord-keeper Williams, an extract 
 from whose letter on this subject, addressed to Bucking- 
 ham, supplies us with one or two curious hints of character. 
 " Now," says our artful bishop, " poor Mr. Selden petitions 
 your lordship's mediation and favour. He and the world 
 take knowledge of that favour your lordship hath ever af- 
 forded my motions ; and myself, without the motion of any ; 
 and so draweth me along to entreat for him, the which I do 
 the more boldly, because, by his letter enclosed, he hath 
 absolutely denied that ever he gave the least approbation 
 of that power of judicature lately usurped by the House of 
 Commons. My lord, the man hath excellent parts, which 
 may be diverted from an affectation of applause of idle peo- 
 ple to do some good and useful service to his majesty. He 
 is but young, and it is the first offence that ever he commit- 
 ted against the king. I presume, therefore, to leave him 
 to your lordship's mercy and charity." Hacket's Scrinia 
 Reserata, part i., p. 69. Doctor Racket proceeds, after giv- 
 ing this letter, in his characteristic style : " These soft 
 words mollified anger, and Mr. Selden was released by the 
 next pacquet that came from the court in progress." 
 
 t Detection, vol. i., p. 130. 
 
 t See speech on the journals of the lust Parliament of 
 James ; also on the 17th March, 1641. I) P. 6, 9. 
 
 II Life of Eliot, p. 9, 10. 
 
 T I should mention, also, that Pym was a very active 
 member of the celebrated committee known by the name ot 
 its chairman, Mr. Sergeant Glanville. This was that grand
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 145 
 
 tor Montague, which may be very briefly ex- 
 plained. The then inseparable connexion, in 
 the minds of the English people, between Po- 
 pery and despotism, has been very frequently 
 touched on. The effect of the Reformation 
 the sense of emancipated intellect which had 
 naturally flowed from it had been such as to 
 imbue men's minds generally with the deepest 
 sense of the paramount importance of a pure 
 system of religious ethics in matters of politi- 
 cal government. This sense struck still more 
 deeply into the heart of England, when in ev- 
 ery quarter of the Continent the Romish cause 
 appeared as the cause of the oppressor, while 
 the Protestant was that of the oppressed ; and 
 nowhere was a struggle for good government 
 to be seen, that had not instantly arrayed 
 against it all the powers and influences of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. If anything was 
 wanting to strengthen a consequent necessity, 
 on the part of the men who now enjoyed the 
 confidence of the great masses of the people, 
 of a bitter opposition to the doctrines of Po- 
 pery, it was furnished by the conduct of those 
 High Church court divines who were known 
 to be most favourable to the despotic system 
 in politics. They made every effort to intro- 
 duce, under the cover of the Arminian tenets, 
 a sort of bastard Popery into the Church of 
 England. Their design was plainly to secure a 
 safe retreat for absolute monarchy under a 
 timely alliance of prerogative with priestcraft 
 and Church power. 
 
 Foremost in support of this design was Mon- 
 tague, one of the king's chaplains ; and upon 
 this divine Pym fastened with inveterate pur- 
 pose. He had republished, on Charles's ac- 
 cession, a book which Archbishop Abbot had 
 censured, at the request of the House of Com- 
 mons, in the preceding year. Encouraged by 
 Laud, he composed also a defence of this book, 
 called it an appeal to Caesar, and inscribed it 
 to Charles. Here he asserted the Romish 
 Church to be a true church, resting on the 
 same authority and foundation as the English, 
 and differing from it only in some points of 
 lesser importance ; defended the use of ima- 
 ges ; affirmed that the saints had knowledge 
 and memory of human things, and exercised 
 peculiar patronage over certain places and per- 
 sons ; maintained the real presence ; numbered 
 ordination among the sacraments ; and ap- 
 proved confession and absolution, and the use 
 of the sign of the cross. In the same work, 
 as a contrast to all this, much bitterness was 
 indulged against the Puritans ; lecturing and 
 preaching were decried ; even the reading of 
 the Scriptures was alluded to with a sneer ; 
 and, finally, by way of gratifying the despotic 
 propensities of the king, a prerogative was 
 claimed for him, founded on divine right, and 
 paramount to the English laws.* 
 
 Pym was the author of the report upon this 
 book presented to the House of Commons. 
 
 committee of privileges, whose report is still referred to as 
 an eminent achievement of " Parliamentary reform." Ad- 
 vancing from their decisions on certain contested returns, 
 they drew out a general outline and system of the legal 
 right of voting, and issued new writs to several places, to 
 three Buckinghamshire boroughs among them, where the 
 custom of returning members had fallen into disuse. Hamp- 
 den was also an active member of this famous committee. 
 
 * See Montague's works, entitled " A new Gag for an old 
 Goose," and "Appello Caesareiu." 
 
 Montague was ordered immediately after into 
 the custody of the sergeant at arms, and 
 brought, for submission, before the bar of the 
 House. A vehement intercession was then 
 made for him by Laud, who so far betrayed 
 himself, in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, 
 as to declare that it was impossible to con- 
 ceive how any civil government could be sup- 
 ported, if the contrary of Montague's doctrines 
 were to be maintained ; and urged him to en- 
 gage the king to reclaim to himself the judg- 
 ment of the cause, as a branch of his preroga- 
 tive.* Upon this Charles interfered, but with 
 no other effect than to expose himself still 
 more to the distrust of his people. Notwith- 
 standing his request that, since Montague was 
 his servant, the punishment might be referred 
 to himself, the prisoner was obliged to give bail 
 for his appearance before the House when 
 called on, in the sum of 2000. 
 
 After the first ill-advised dissolution, and on 
 the eve of the issue of writs for Charles's sec- 
 ond Parliament, Rushworth tells us that " Bish- 
 op Laud procured the Duke of Buckingham to 
 sound the king concerning the cause, books, 
 and tenets of Doctor Richard Montague ; and 
 understanding by what the duke collected that 
 the king had determined within himself to leave 
 him to a tryal in Parliament, he said, ' / seem 
 to see a cloud arising and threatening the Church 
 of England : God for his mercy dissipate it /' "t 
 
 But this Parliament, guided by the energy 
 and intellect of Eliot, had higher game in hand ; 
 and Pym found himself, some few days after 
 its assembling, appointed one of the secret man- 
 agers of an impeachment against the Duke of 
 Buckingham. This impeachment has been al- 
 ready described at some length,t but one or 
 two characteristic extracts from the speech 
 with which Pym presented the eleventh and 
 twelfth articles to the judgment of the House 
 of Lords will find a proper place here. Those 
 articles, it will be recollected, charged the duke 
 with procuring titles of honour and grants of 
 land for poor and unworthy creatures of hia 
 own, and also with embezzling the king's mon- 
 ey, and securing to himself grants of crown 
 property of enormous value on dishonest con- 
 ditions, to the gross prejudice of the crown no 
 less than of the subject.^ 
 
 Pym began his task by observing that " want 
 of oratory" would be no disadvantage to his 
 cause, since the " proportion of matter" he had 
 to deliver was such that their lordships would 
 not be likely to criticise his "art or expression." 
 Having read the eleventh article, he proceeded 
 to point out the fatal consequences to the well- 
 being of the state, no less than to the morals 
 of the subject, which must result from the con- 
 tinuance of such practices as those of the duke. 
 A grave, deliberative, and weighty style will 
 
 * See Heylin's Life of Laud, p. 137. Cabala, p. 156. 
 
 t Rushworth, Coll., vol. i., p. 199. 
 
 J Eliot's Life, p. 13-16. 
 
 $ Anthony Wood observes, " Pym was a great enemy to 
 the favourite of King Charles I., called George Villiers, 
 duke of Buckingham, and very active in aggravating some 
 of the articles that were put up against him ; viz., that he 
 forced Sir Richard Roberts, Bart., knowing him to be rich, to 
 take the title of Lord Roberts of Truro upon him, and that, 
 in consideration thereof, to make him pay for it to him the 
 said duke 10,000. Farther, also, that he sold the offic'. 
 of lord-treasurer to the Earl of Manchester for 20,000, and 
 the office of master of the wards to the Earl of Middlesex 
 for 6000," &c., &c. Afh. Ox,, jol. ii., p. 73.
 
 146 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 arrest the reader's attention in the extracts 
 which follow ; and let him think what a mas- 
 terly and effective foil this must have been to 
 the quick and impassioned eloquence of Eliot. 
 " There are some laws." he said, alluding to 
 the tampering of the duke with grants and hon- 
 ours, "peculiar, according to the temper of 
 several states ; but there are other laws that 
 are co-essential and co-natural with govern- 
 ment, which being broken, all things run unto 
 confusion ; and such is that law of suppressing 
 vice and encouraging virtue by apt punishments 
 and rewards. Whosoever moves the king to 
 give honour, which is a double reward, binds 
 himself to make good a double proportion of 
 merit in that party that is to receive it the 
 first of value and excellency, the second of con- 
 tinuance ; for as this honour lifts them above 
 others, so should they have virtue beyond oth- 
 ers ; and as it is also perpetual, not ending 
 with their persons, but depending upon their 
 posterity, so there ought to be, in the first root of 
 this honour, some such active merit to the Com- 
 monwealth as may transmit a vigorous example to 
 their successors, to raise them to an imitation of 
 the like." Waving, then, with great dignity, 
 any reflections " on those persons to whom 
 this article collaterally relates, since the com- 
 mands I have received from the Commons con- 
 cern the Duke of Buckingham only," the speak- 
 er proceeded to urge, from the facts stated in 
 the article itself, the heavy nature of the griev- 
 ance charged. " It is prejudicial," he said, 
 "first, to the noble barons ; secondly, to the king, 
 by disabling him from rewarding extraordinary 
 virtue ; thirdly, to the kingdom, which compre- 
 hends all. It is prejudicial to this high Court of 
 Peers. I will not trouble your lordships with 
 recital how ancient, how famous this degree of 
 barons hath been in the western monarchies ; 
 I will only say, the baronage of England hath 
 upheld that dignity, and doth conceive it in a 
 greater height than any other nation. The 
 lords are great judges a court of the last re- 
 sort ; they are great commanders of state, not 
 only for the present, but as law-makers and 
 counsellors for the time to come ; and this, not 
 by delegacy and commission, but by birth and 
 inheritance. If any be brought to be a mem- 
 ber of this great body who is not qualified to 
 the performance of such state functions, it must 
 needs prejudice the whole body ; as a little 
 water put into a great vessel of wine, which, 
 as it receives spirits from the wine, so doth it 
 leave therein some degrees of its own infirmi- 
 ties and coldness. It is prejudicial to the king. 
 Not that it can disable him from giving honour, 
 for that is a power inseparable from the crown ; 
 but, by making honour ordinary, it becomes an 
 incompetent reward for extraordinary virtue. 
 When men are made noble, they are taken out 
 of the press of the common sort ; and how can 
 it choose but fall in estimation when honour it- 
 self is made a press 1 It is prejudicial to the 
 kingdom. Histories and records are full of the 
 great assistance which the crown has received 
 from the barons on foreign and domestic occa- 
 sions ; and not only by their own persons, but 
 their retinue and tenants ; and therefore they 
 are called by Bracton, ROBUR BELLI. How can 
 the crown expect the like from those who have 
 no tenants, and are hardly able to maintain 
 
 themselves 1 Besides, this is not all ; for the 
 prejudice goes not only privatively from thence, 
 in that they cannot give the assistance they 
 ought, but positively, in that they have been a 
 greater burden to the kingdom since, by the 
 gifts and pensions they have received nay, 
 they will even stand in need to receive more 
 for the future support of their dignities. This 
 makes the duke's offence greater, that in this 
 weakness and consumption of the state he hath 
 not been content alone to consume the public 
 treasure, which is the blood and nourishment 
 of the state, but hath brought in others to help 
 him in this work of destruction ; and, that they 
 might do it the more eagerly by enlarging their 
 honour, he hath likewise enlarged their neces- 
 sities and appetites." With several precedents 
 from early reigns, clearly and forcibly urged to 
 the House, in proof that " when men are called 
 to honour, and have not livelihood to support 
 it, it induceth great poverty, and causeth bri- 
 beries, extortions, embraceries, and mainte- 
 nance," Pym concluded his " aggravation" of 
 this article. 
 
 He now desired the twelfth article to be read, 
 imbodying various charges of embezzlement in 
 various ways, both of money and land ; and 
 then, having subdivided these charges into sep- 
 arate branches, he presented each to the at- 
 tention of the House with such popular clear- 
 ness and brevity, and in such a natural and lucid 
 order, that what must otherwise have been con- 
 fused and unintelligible to all save those peers 
 who were thoroughly versed in the nicest dis- 
 tinctions of property and technicalities of la\v, 
 took, from the style of Pym, a remarkable sim- 
 plicity and plainness. In speaking of the lands 
 which the duke had procured, with unusual con- 
 ditions of favour, from the crown, and urging 
 the monstrous grievance, " that in a time of 
 necessity, so much land should be conveyed to 
 a private man," the orator interposed thus : 
 " And because the Commons aim not at judg- 
 ment only, but at reformation, they wish that, 
 when the king bestows any lands for support 
 of honours, those ancient cautions might be 
 revived of annexing the land to the dignity (lest, 
 being wasted, the party returns to the crown 
 for a new support) ; by which provision the 
 crown will reap this benefit, that as some lands 
 go out by new grants, others will come in by 
 extinct entails." Observing next upon the un- 
 usual clauses inserted in these grants for the 
 duke, Pym directed their lordships' attention 
 more especially to " the surrender of divers par- 
 cels of those lands back to the king, after he 
 had held them some years, and taking others 
 from the king in exchange. Hence," contin- 
 ued he, " the best of the king's lands, by this 
 course, being passed away, the worst remain- 
 ed upon his hand ; so that, having occasion to 
 raise money, such lands could not supply him. 
 Opportunity was also hereby left to the duke 
 to cut down woods, to enfranchise copyholders, 
 to make long leases ; and yet, the old rent re- 
 maining still, the land might be surrendered at 
 the same value. Whether this be done I am 
 uncertain, not having time to examine ; but I 
 recommend it to your lordships to inquire af- 
 ter it ; and the rather, for that the manor of 
 Couphill, in Lincolnshire, was so dismembered, 
 and by a surrender turned back to the king."
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 147 
 
 In the next branch of his subject, a favourite 
 style of embezzlement with Buckingham was 
 admirably handled that of selling the king's 
 lands, and causing tallies to be struck for the 
 money paid, as if it had really gone into the 
 Exchequer, whereas it had notoriously been 
 received by the duke. " Divers parcels of land 
 were sold and contracted for by his own agents, 
 and the money received to his own use ; and 
 yet tallies struck as if the moneys had come 
 into the Exchequer. This is to be proved by 
 his own officers, by the officers of the Excheq- 
 uer, and by the tallies themselves, which tal- 
 lies amount to 44,090 5s. Whence I observe, 
 1. That there ran one thread of falsehood to- 
 wards the king through all his dealings. 2. 
 That it was a device to prevent the wisdom of 
 Parliament, if it should be thought fit, from 
 making a resumption ; for by these means these 
 grants seem to have the face of a valuable con- 
 sideration, whereas they were free gifts. 3. 
 If the title of these lands prove questionable, 
 yet, it appearing by record as if the king had 
 received the money, he was bound in honour 
 to make the estate good, and yet the duke had 
 the profit." 
 
 Alluding afterward to Buckingham's gross 
 practice of procuring, under pretence of secret 
 service, great sums to be issued by privy seals 
 to sundry of his creatures, Pym thus, with ear- 
 nest gravity in a speaker whose style was 
 less steady and deliberative it would have 
 passed for severity or passion hinted at the 
 punishment which such practices might require. 
 " The quality of the fault," he said, " I leave 
 to your lordships. I leave to your lordships 
 the proportion of judgment in which you will 
 rate it whether to that crime which in the 
 civil law is called crim.cn peculatus, which was 
 when any man did unjustly turn to his own use 
 that money which was either sacra, dedicated to 
 God's service, or re ligiosa,.\ised about funerals or 
 monuments of the dead, or publica, as the busi- 
 ness now in question is ; the rather, because 
 the public treasure was held in the same repu- 
 tation with that which was dedicated to God 
 and religion. This offence crim.cn pcculatus 
 by that law, was death and confiscation. Or 
 whether your lordships will think it to carry pro- 
 portion with that crime which is called in the 
 civil law crimcn falsi, and is defined to be when 
 any shall simulatione veri suum compendium, alieno 
 dispendio, faccre, viz., by semblance of truth make 
 gain to himself out of others' losses ; which, in 
 the case of a bondman, was death, and in the 
 case of other men was banishment and confis- 
 cation, as the nature of the fact required. Or 
 whether your lordships will esteem it according 
 to the sentence of the Star Chamber ordinary 
 in cases of fraud, or according to the common 
 law, which so much detests this dealing, which 
 they term covin, as it doth vitiate ordinary and 
 lawful actions. Or, lastly, whether your lord- 
 ships will estimate it according to the duke's own 
 judgment, in his own conscience; for direct ac- 
 tions are not afraid to appear open-faced, but 
 ill dealings desire to be masked with subtlety 
 and closeness ; and therefore it were even of- 
 fence sufficient, were there no more than a 
 cunning concealing of what he received from 
 the king, since that argues either guilt of un- 
 thankfulness, in hiding his master's bounty ; 
 
 guilt of unworthiness, as if he durst not avow 
 the receipt of that which he had not merited ; 
 or guilt from fear of punishment, by these in- 
 quisitions into his actions which now are come 
 to pass." 
 
 One extract more in reference to the great 
 danger that had been done to the state in the 
 confusion between the king's estate and Buck- 
 ingham's, by the duke's practices of falsifying 
 the records and entries will illustrate the 
 quarter from which Pym doubtless derived his 
 admirable habits of business and order. "By 
 the wisdom of the law, in the constitution of 
 the Exchequer, there be three guards set upon 
 the king's treasurer and accompts. The first 
 is a legal impignoration, whereby the estates, 
 personal and real, of the accomptants, are 
 made liable to be sold for the satisfaction of 
 their debts. The second is an act of control- 
 ment, that the king relies not upon the industry 
 nor sincerity of any one man ; but, if he fail in 
 either, it may be discovered by the duty of 
 some other officer, sworn to take notice of it. 
 The third is an evidence and certainty, not for 
 the present time only, but of perpetuity, because 
 the king can neither receive nor pay anything 
 but by record. All these ways have been bro- 
 ken by the Duke of Buckingham, both in the 
 case next>before recited, and in these that fol- 
 low. The custom of the Exchequer, my lords, 
 is the law of the kingdom for as much as con- 
 cerneth the revenue. Now every breach of 
 that law, by particular offence, is punishable ; 
 but such an offence, as is the destruction of 
 the law r itself, is of a far higher nature." Pym 
 next alluded to " two privy seals of release 
 the one the 16th, the other the 20th Jac. con- 
 cerning divers sums secretly received to his 
 majesty's use, but by virtue of these releases 
 to be converted to the Duke of Buckingham's 
 own profit, the proof whereof is referred to 
 the privy seals themselves ;" and thus con- 
 tinued : " Hence, my lords, appear the duke's 
 subtilties, by which he used to wind himself 
 into the possession of the king's money, and 
 to get that by cunning steps and degrees, 
 which, peradventure, he could not have ob- 
 tained at once. A good master will trust a 
 good servant with a greater sum than he would 
 give him ; yet after, when it is out of his pos- 
 session, will be drawn the more easily to re- 
 lease him from accounting for it, than to have 
 made it a free gift at first." 
 
 Having gone through the various charges in 
 detail, Pym now presented to the House in one 
 mass the gross amount in money and land ab- 
 sorbed from the public estate by Buckingham, 
 and afterward summed up his share of the great 
 duty that had been assigned to him by the 
 House of Commons in this grave and deliberate 
 manner. " This is a great sum in itself, but 
 much greater by many circumstances. If you 
 look upon the time past, never so much came 
 into any one private man's hands out of the 
 public purse. If you respect the time present, 
 the king had never so much want, never so 
 many occasions, foreign, important, and expen- 
 sive. The subjects have never given greater 
 supplies, and yet those supplies are unable to 
 furnish those expenses. But as such circum- 
 stances make that sum the greater, so there 
 are other circumstances which make the sum
 
 148 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 little, if it be compared with the inestimable 
 gain the duke hath made by the sale of honours 
 and offices, and projects hurtful to the states 
 both of England and Ireland, or if it be com- 
 pared with his own profuseness. Witness, 
 notwithstanding this gift, his confession before 
 both Houses of Parliament to be indebted 
 100, 000 and above. If this be true, how can we 
 hope to satisfy his immense prodigality 1 if false, 
 how can we hope to satisfy his covetousness 1 And, 
 therefore, no wonder the Commons so earnest- 
 ly desire to be delivered from such a grievance. 
 I shall now produce the precedents of your 
 lordship's predecessors. Precedents they are 
 in kind, but not in proportion, for in that view 
 there are no precedents. The first is the 10th 
 Rich. II., which was in the complaint against 
 Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, out of which 
 I shall take three articles. The first, that be- 
 ing chancellor, and sworn to the king's profit, 
 he had purchased divers lands from the king, 
 more than he had deserved, and at an under 
 rate. The second, that he had bought an an- 
 nuity of 50 per annum, which grant was void, 
 and yet he procured the king to make it good. 
 The third, whereas the master of St. Anthony's, 
 being a schismatic, had forfeited his estate in- 
 to the king's hands, this earl took it in farm at 
 20 marks the year, converting the overplus, 
 which was 1000 marks, to his own benefit, 
 which should have come to the king. The 
 next precedent is one of the llth Rich. II., out 
 of the judgment against Robert de Vere and 
 others, out of which I shall take two articles, 
 the fifth and seventh. The fifth was for taking 
 lands and manors annexed to the crown, where- 
 by they themselves were enriched, and the king 
 made poor. The seventh was intercepting the 
 subsidies granted for the defence of the king- 
 dom. The third precedent is 28 Hen. VI., in 
 the Parliament roll, out of the complaint against 
 William, duke of Suffolk, to the effect that, be- 
 ing next and privatest of council to the king, 
 he had procured him to grant great possessions 
 to divers persons, whereby the king was much 
 impoverished, the expense of his house unpaid, 
 wages, the wardrobe, castles, navy debts unsat- 
 isfied ; and so, by his subtile counsel and un- 
 profitable labour, the revenues of the crown, 
 of the Duchy of Lancaster, and of other the 
 king's inheritances, so diminished, and the 
 commons of the realm so extremely charged, 
 that it was near a final destruction ; and, more- 
 over, that the king's treasure was so mischiev- 
 ously diminished to himself, his friends, and 
 well-wishers, that, for lack of money, no ar- 
 mour nor ordnance could be provided in time. 
 These precedents, my lords, the Commons pro- 
 duce as precedents in kind, but not in propor- 
 tion ; and, since these great persons were not 
 brought to judgment upon these articles alone, 
 you will observe this as a just conclusion, that 
 ravening upon the king's estate is always ac- 
 companied with other great vices. All these 
 considerations I humbly submit to your lord- 
 ship's great wisdom, and conclude with hoping 
 that, as this great duke has so far exceeded all 
 others in his offences, he may not fall short of 
 them in punishment."* 
 
 * See the Old Parliamentary History, vol. vii., p. 123- 
 139. The recent editors of the Parl. Hist, have entirely 
 omitted this striking speech. I cannot resist subjoining, in 
 
 The result of this great movement against 
 Buckingham, the abrupt dissolution of the sec- 
 ond Parliament, and the disastrous events that 
 followed, have been sufficiently placed before 
 the reader. Pym was thrown into prison, and 
 only again released on his return to the third 
 Parliament for Tavistock. In that memorable 
 third Parliament, his exertions were only sec- 
 ond to those of Eliot. With that great patriot 
 and statesman, indeed, Pym went hand in 
 hand ;* and his deference to Eliot's powers 
 was only less admirable than the extent and 
 capacity of his own. 
 
 When, after the first debate on grievances, 
 in which the member for Tavistock did not fail 
 to distinguish himself, the motion for granting 
 five subsidies was brought forward, in accord- 
 ance with the noble plan of operations deter- 
 mined upon by Eliot, and already fully de- 
 scribed in my account of his exertions, it was 
 Pym who urged most emphatically upon the 
 House the necessity of the immediate grant. 
 " In business of weight," he said, " despatch is 
 better than discourse. We came not hither 
 without all motives that can be towards his 
 majesty. We must add expedition to expedi- 
 tion : let us forbear particulars. A man in a 
 journey is hindered by asking too many ques- 
 tions. To give speedily is that which the king 
 calls for. 'A word spoken in season is like 
 an apple of gold set in pictures of silver ;' and 
 actions are more precious than words. Let 
 us hasten our resolutions to supply his majes- 
 ty.'^ Now it might really have been upon 
 
 this note, a very remarkable list of precedents similar to 
 those urged by Pym, which were furnished by Sir Robert 
 Cotton, when sitting in the previous Parliament at Oxford. 
 " I will tell you what I have found, since this assembly at 
 Oxford, written by a reverend man, twice vice-chancellor 
 of this place : his name was Gascoigne a man that saw 
 the tragedy of De la Pole. He tells you that the revenues 
 of the crown were so rent away by ill counsel, that the king 
 was enforced to live de tallagiis populi, and was grown in, 
 debt quinque centena millia Hbrarum ; that his great favour- 
 ite, in treating a foreign marriage, had lost his master a 
 foreign duchy; that, to work his ends, he had caused the 
 king to adjourn the Parliament in villis et partibus remotis 
 regni, where few people, propter defectum hospitii et vic- 
 tualium, could attend, and by the shifting that assembly 
 from place to place, to enforce (I use the author's own 
 words) illos paucos qui remanebant de communitate regni 
 concedere regi guamvis pessima. It was," says he, in con- 
 clusion, "a speeding article against the Bishop of Win- 
 chester and his brother, in the time of Edward III., that 
 they engrossed the person of the king from his other lords. 
 It was not forgotten against Gaveston and the Spencers in 
 the time of Edward II. The unhappy ministers of Richard 
 II., Henry VI., and Edward VI., felt the weight, to their 
 ruin, of the like errors. I hope we shall not complain in 
 Parliament again of such. I am glad we have neither just 
 cause nor undutiful dispositions to appoint the king a coun- 
 cil to redress those errors in Parliament, as those 42 Henry 
 III. We do not desire, as 5 Henry IV. or 29 Henry VI., 
 the removing from about the king any evil counsellors. We 
 do not request a choice by name, as 14 Edward II., 3, 5, 11 
 Richard 11., 8 Henry IV., 31 Henry VI. ; nor to swear them 
 in Parliament, as 35 Edward I., 9 Edward II., 5 Richard 
 
 II. ; or to line them out their directions of rule, 43 Henry 
 
 III. and 8 Henry VI." This sort of display of learning has 
 a wonderful significancy of meaning beneath it. See His- 
 tory 15, from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 10, 11. 
 
 * Pym was the only man in the House of Commons who 
 seemed to have a perfect understanding with Eliot as to the 
 course of his intentions towards Buckingham, and, in pros- 
 ecuting the matter in such a way as to give the greatest 
 possible effect to Eliot's policy, he showed himself master 
 of the same large ulterior views. When the news of the 
 arrest of Eliot was carried to the House of Commons, Pym 
 was the only person present who did not seem startled out 
 of his self-possession. In the midst of tumultuous shouting 
 and cries for instant adjournment, his voice was heard coun- 
 selling judgment and temper. See Journals, May 12, 1626. 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. vii., p. 430.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 149 
 
 such words as these, spoken with a view to 
 give effect to the noble and temperate policy 
 which was thought necessary for the achieve- 
 ment of the petition of right, that Lord Claren- 
 don afterward ventured,* in his indulgence of 
 revengeful spleen against the memory of Pym, 
 to ground his famous accusation, that, at a par- 
 ticular time, " Mr. Pym made some overtures 
 to provide for the glory and splendour of the 
 crown, in which he had so ill success that his 
 interest and reputation visibly abated." The 
 time named by the historian is indeed much 
 later ; but the speech which has just been quo- 
 ted is about the best semblance of authority for 
 such a charge that can be found on the debates 
 or journals of the House of Commons ;t and it 
 will scarcely be maintained that, in the absence 
 of such corroborative authority, Lord Claren- 
 don's assertion upon such a matter is entitled 
 to the smallest weight. J 
 
 Certainly the court was soon fated to be un- 
 deceived, if it had ever persuaded itself to con- 
 strue these words of the patriot leader into a 
 shrinking or relenting from the popular cause. 
 Pym's activity in searching every possible 
 quarter for precedents during the preparation 
 of the petition of rights was marked and inces- 
 sant ; he was said by Sir Edward Coke to have 
 examined every state paper in the manuscript 
 collections at Lambeth. Equally indefatigable 
 were his exertions during the progress of that 
 great measure through the houses ; and many 
 of the wretched expedients^ vainly resorted to 
 by Charles, day by day, and week by week, to 
 elude the purpose or weary out the perseve- 
 rance of his opponents, were defeated by Pym's 
 address and courage. When Secretary Cooke 
 carried down Charles's brief and peremptory 
 message to the House, desiring to know wheth- 
 er they would or would not rest upon his royal 
 word, || it was Pym's voice which broke the 
 long silence that followed the startling ques- 
 tion. He rose and said, with consummate 
 presence of mind and admirable temper, "We 
 have his majesty's coronation oath to maintain 
 the laws of England what need we then to 
 take his word 1" and afterward quietly pro- 
 posed to move " whether we should take the 
 king's word or no." Old Cooke, upon this, 
 started from his seat with the indignant ques- 
 tion, " What would they say in foreign parts if 
 the people of England refused to trust their 
 king 1" " Truly," rejoined Pym, quickly, " tru- 
 ly, Mr. Speaker, I am just of the same opinion 
 I was, namely, that the king's oath is as pow- 
 erful as his word." Eliot then came to the as- 
 sistance of Pym, and the dishonest message 
 was rejected.! So, when the petition of rights 
 itself was sent down from the House of Lords 
 with the addition of the saving clause proposed 
 by Williams, to the effect that " they would 
 
 * See Hist, of Rebellion, vol. iv., p. 438. 
 
 t I have carefully examined them all with this view, and 
 may here remark, that were I to give only the names of the 
 numberless committees of which Pym was the leading mem- 
 ber through all the Parliaments of Charles, I might fill half 
 this volume with such details alone. His habits of business 
 must have been wonderful indeed ! 
 
 t See post, p. 183, note. The speech there referred to 
 is not upon the journals. 
 
 * They are all described in the Life of Eliot. 
 
 II ' Upon this there was silence for a good space." See 
 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 553 ; Parl. Hist., vol. xviii., p. 95 ; 
 Life of Eliot, p. 22. T Sloane MSS., 4177. 
 
 leave entire the SOVEREIGN POWER with which 
 his majesty was trusted, for the protection, 
 safety, and happiness of the people," Pym rose 
 from his seat, and uttered these remarkable 
 words : " I am not able to speak to this ques- 
 tion. I know not what it is. All our petition 
 is for the laws of England, and this ' power' 
 seems to be another distinct power from the 
 power of the law. I know how to add sover- 
 eign to the king's person, but not to his pow- 
 er. We cannot 'leave' to him a sovereign 
 power, for we never were possessed of it."* 
 The issue has been fully described. 
 
 Great as Pym's exertions were, however, 
 during the progress of the petition of right, we 
 do not find that they in any way served to 
 abate his attendance on the various religious 
 committees of this famous session, at all of 
 which he sat as chairman. An ingenious ad- 
 mirer of Charles I. has, in allusion to this, ob- 
 served : " The profound politicians among the 
 patriots, as Pym and Hampden, now allied 
 themselves to the religionists. The factions 
 at first amalgamated, for each seemed to assist 
 the other, and, while the contest was doubtful, 
 their zeal, as their labours, was in common. 
 Religion, under the most religious of monarchs, 
 was the ostensible motive by which the patri- 
 ots moved the people. When, on one occa- 
 sion, it was observed that the affairs of religion 
 seemed not so desperate that they should whol- 
 ly engross their days, Pym replied, that they 
 must not abate their ardour for the true reli- 
 gion, that being the most certain end to obtain 
 their purpose and maintain their influence. "t 
 This is not correctly stated, since no such al- 
 liance, except in so far as the objects of both 
 parties could not be kept apart, was at this 
 time formed. Pym was never, at any period 
 of his life, a Nonconformist ; he died, as he had 
 lived, in the discipline, no less than in the faith, 
 of the pure English Church, " a faithful son of 
 the Protestant religion. "t It is true that he 
 was the means of exacting from the country 
 party in the House of Commons a greater at- 
 tention than they had before been used to pay 
 to matters of religious faith and doctrine, but 
 with what aim 1 not, most surely, to inflame the 
 religious passions of the people, or to strength- 
 en any set of dissenters from the Church, 
 but to assault, through the sides of court di- 
 vines, the strongest holds of absolute power. 
 The sect of the Puritans was not increased 
 by Pym's exertions. It was the good work of 
 Laud, and of such as Laud, to enlist upon their 
 side the deepest sympathies of even the most 
 sober sections of the English people, who 
 thought it hard indeed that vast numbers of 
 high-minded, industrious, and conscientious 
 men, firmly attached to the laws of England, 
 should be driven from their native soil, or har- 
 assed in property and estate, or mutilated in 
 person, only for scrupling to comply with a few 
 indifferent ceremonies that had no relation to 
 the favour of God or to the practice of virtue. 
 Laud Puritanized England. Pym's share in 
 the work, as well as his general principle of 
 Parliamentary interference in religious affairs, 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 118. 
 
 t D'Israeli's Commentaries on the Life of Charles the 
 First, vol. hi., p. 296, 297. 
 
 t His own words. See Rushworth's Collections, vol. v., 
 p. 377.
 
 150 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 will be best explained by his speech in the case 
 of Doctor Mainwaring. 
 
 While the House of Commons were delibera- 
 ting, in distrust and resentment, on the king's 
 first answer to the petition of right, which had 
 just been presented to them, Pym seized the 
 occasion of carrying up to the House of Lords 
 a " declaration" against Mainwaring. During 
 the last interval of Parliament, this divine, one 
 of the royal chaplains, had rendered himself 
 notorious by the slavish doctrines of his ser- 
 mons. In obedience to Laud's instructions* 
 to the clergy to " preach the loan," he had de- 
 livered two infamously servile discourses, with 
 a view to show that " the king could make laws 
 and do whatsoever pleased him'; that he was 
 not bound by any pre-existing law respecting 
 the rights of the subject ; and that his sole will 
 in imposing taxes without the consent of Par- 
 liament obliged the subjects' conscience, on 
 pain of eternal damnation."! One extract from 
 these effusions will show their style and char- 
 acter. " Of all relations, the first and original 
 is between the Creator and the creatures ; the 
 next between husband and wife ; the third be- 
 tween parents and children ; the fourth between 
 lord and servants ; from all which forenamed 
 respects there doth arise that most high, sa- 
 cred, and transcendent relation between king 
 and subject." 
 
 On Wednesday, the 4th of June, Pym pre- 
 sented himself to the Lords as the accuser of 
 Mainwaring. He began by saying that he 
 should speak to this cause with more confi- 
 dence, because he saw nothing to discourage 
 him. " If I consider the matter," he continued, 
 " the offences are of a high nature and of easy 
 proof; if I consider your lordships, who are 
 the judges, your own interest, your own hon- 
 our, the examples of your ancestors, the care 
 of your posterity, all will be advocates with me 
 in this cause on the behalf of the common- 
 wealth. And when I consider the king our 
 sovereign the pretence of whose service and 
 prerogative might, perchance, be sought unto 
 as a defence and shelter for this delinquent I 
 cannot but remember that part of the king's an- 
 swer to the petition of right of both houses, 
 ' that his majesty held himself bound in con- 
 science to preserve their liberties,' which this 
 man would persuade him to impeach. Nor, 
 my lords, can I but remember his majesty's 
 love to piety and justice, manifested upon all 
 occasions ; and I know Love to be the root and 
 
 * These instructions commenced thus. They were drawn 
 up by Laud in the name of the king : " We have observed 
 that the Church and the State are so nearly united and 
 knit together, that, though they may seem two bodies, yet, 
 indeed, in some relation they may be accounted but as one, 
 inasmuch as they are both made up of the same men, which 
 are differenced only in relation to spiritual or civil ends. 
 This nearness makes the Church call in the help of the 
 State to succour and support her whensoever she is pressed 
 beyond her strength. And the same nearness makes the 
 State call in for the service of the Church, both to teach 
 that duty which her members know not, and to exhort 
 them to, and encourage them in, that duty which they 
 know. It is not long since we ordered the State to serve 
 the Church, and, by a timely proclamation, settled the 
 peace of it ; and now the State looks for the like assistance 
 from the Church, that she and all her ministers may serve 
 God and us by preaching peace and unity at home, that it 
 may be the better able to resist foreign force uniting and 
 multiplying against it." Who can doubt the design so 
 plainly intimated in this passage, of a crusade of Church 
 and State against the people's liberties? 
 
 t Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 8-10. 
 
 spring of all other passions and affections. A man 
 therefore hates, because he sees somewhat in that 
 which he hates contrary to that which he loves ; a 
 man therefore is angry, because he sees somewhat 
 in that wherewith he is angry that gives impedi- 
 ment and interruption to the accomplishment of 
 that which he loves.* If this be so, by the same 
 act of apprehension by which I believe his 
 majesty's love to piety and justice, I must 
 needs believe his hate and detestation of this 
 man, who went about to withdraw him from 
 the exercise of both." 
 
 After this very striking commencement, Pym 
 proceeded to that which he said was the task 
 enjoined him, " To make good every clause of 
 that which had been read unto them ; which, 
 that he might the more clearly perform, he pro- 
 posed to observe that order of parts into which 
 the said declaration was naturally dissolved. 
 1. Of the preamble. 2. The body of the charge. 
 3. The conclusion, or prayer of the Commons. 
 
 " The preamble consisted altogether of reci- 
 tal first, of the inducements upon which the 
 Commons undertook this complaint ; second, 
 of those laws and liberties against which the 
 offence was committed ; third, of the violation 
 of those laws which have relation to that of- 
 fence. Now," he continued, " from the con- 
 nexion of all these recitals, it was to be ob- 
 served that there did result three positions, 
 which he was to maintain as the groundwork 
 and foundation of the whole cause. The first, 
 that the form of government in any state could 
 not be altered without apparent danger of ruin 
 to that state. The second, that the law of 
 England, whereby the subject is exempted 
 from taxes and loans not granted by common 
 consent of Parliament, was not introduced by 
 any statute, or by any charter or sanction of 
 princes, but was the ancient and fundamental 
 law, issuing from the first frame and constitu- 
 tion of the kingdom. The third, that this lib- 
 erty of the subject is not only most convenient 
 and profitable for the people, but most honour- 
 able and necessary for the king ; yea, in that 
 very point of supply for which it was endeav- 
 oured to be broken. 
 
 " As for the first position, the best form of 
 government is that which doth actuate and 
 dispose every part and member of a state to 
 the common good ; and as those parts give 
 strength and ornament to the whole, so they 
 receive from it again strength and protection 
 in their several stations and degrees. If this 
 mutual relation and intercourse be broken, the 
 whole frame will quickly be dissolved and fall 
 in pieces ; for while, instead of this concord 
 and interchange of support, one part seeks to 
 
 * Mr. Browning has worked upon the same noble thought 
 iu his poem : 
 
 * * * " All love renders wise 
 
 In its degree ; from love which blends with love 
 
 Heart answering heart to that which spends itself 
 
 In silent mad idolatry of some 
 
 Pre-eminent mortal some great soul of souls 
 
 Which ne'er will know how well it is adored ! 
 
 * * Love is never blind, but rather 
 
 Alive to every the minutest spot 
 
 That mars its object, and which hate (supposed 
 
 So vigilant and searching) dreams not of. 
 
 * * * Trust me, 
 
 If there be friends who seek to work our hurt, 
 To ruin and drag down earth's mightiest spirits, 
 Even at God's foot, 'twill be from such as love 
 Their zeal will gather most to serve their cause 
 And least from those who hate." Paracelsus, part 3.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 151 
 
 uphold the old form of government, and the 
 other part to introduce a new, they will mis- 
 erably consume and devour one another. His- 
 tories are full of the calamities of whole states 
 and nations in such cases. But it is equally 
 true that time must needs bring about some 
 alterations, and every alteration is a step and 
 degree towards a dissolution : those things 
 only are eternal which are constant and uni- 
 form. Therefore it is observed by the best 
 writers on this subject, that those common- 
 wealths have been most durable and perpetual 
 which have often reformed and recomposed them- 
 selves according to their first institution and ordi- 
 nance ; for by this means they repair the breach- 
 es, and counterwork the ordinary and natural 
 effects of time. 
 
 " The second is as manifest. There are 
 plain footsteps of those laws in the govern- 
 ment of the Saxons : they were of that vigour 
 and force as to overlive the Conquest nay, to 
 give bounds and limits to the Conqueror, whose 
 victory only gave him hope, but the assurance 
 and possession of the crown he obtained by 
 composition, in which he bound himself to ob- 
 serve these and the other ancient laws and 
 liberties of the kingdom, and which afterward 
 he likewise confirmed by oath at his corona- 
 tion ; and from him the said obligation de- 
 scended to his successors. It is true they have 
 been often broken, and they have been often 
 confirmed by charters of kings and by acts of 
 Parliaments ; but the petitions of the subjects, 
 upon which those charters and acts were found- 
 ed, were ever PETITIONS OF RIGHT, demanding 
 their ancient and due liberties, not suing for any 
 new. 
 
 " To clear the third position may seem to 
 some men more a paradox, that those liberties 
 of the subject should be so convenient and 
 profitable to the people, and yet most neces- 
 sary for the supply of his majesty. But sure- 
 ly," he said, " if those liberties were taken 
 away, there would remain no more industry, 
 no more justice, no more courage ; for who 
 will contend, who will endanger himself for that 
 which is not his own 1 And yet," he added, 
 " he would not insist upon any of those points, 
 nor upon others equally important ; but only 
 observe, that if those liberties were taken 
 away, there would remain no means for the 
 subjects, by any act of bounty or benevolence, 
 to ingratiate themselves with their sovereign." 
 And, in reference to this point, he desired their 
 lordships to remember " what profitable pre- 
 rogatives the laws had at various times ap- 
 pointed for the support of sovereignty, as ward- 
 ships, treasures-trouve, felons' goods, fines, 
 amercements, and other issues of courts, 
 wrecks, escheats, and many more, too long to 
 be enumerated ; which, for the most part, are 
 now, by charters and grants of several princes, 
 dispersed into the hands of private persons ; 
 and that, besides the ancient demesnes of the 
 crown of England, William the Conqueror did 
 annex to the crown, for the better mainte- 
 nance of his estate, great proportions of those 
 lands which were confiscate from those Eng- 
 lish who persisted to withstand him, of which, 
 notwithstanding, very few remain at this day 
 in the king's possession ; yet also, since that 
 time, the revenue of the crown hath been sup- 
 
 plied and augmented by attainders and other 
 casualties, and in the age of our fathers by the 
 dissolution of monasteries and chantries, of 
 which near a third part of the whole land came 
 into the king's possession." He remembered 
 farther that constant and profitable grant of 
 the subjects in the act of tonnage and pound- 
 age. " But of what avail," he added, " have 
 all these grants and prerogatives been 1 They 
 were now so alienated, anticipated, or over- 
 charged with annuities and assignments, that 
 no means were left for the pressing and im- 
 portant occasions of the time but one, and that 
 one the voluntary and free gift of the subjects 
 in Parliament. It is that which is now as- 
 sailed ; but trust me, my lords," Pym exclaim- 
 ed, " the hearts of the people, and their bounty in 
 Parliament, are the only constant treasure and rev- 
 enue of the crown which cannot be exhausted, alien- 
 ated, anticipated, or otherwise charged and encum- 
 bered .'" 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable in the 
 speeches of Pym than what may be emphati- 
 cally termed their wisdom. This will have fre- 
 quent and abundant illustration in the course 
 of this memoir. Never, in the most excited 
 moments of even his latter life, did he seem 
 other than far removed above the idle clamours 
 of party, and the little views of the "ignorant 
 present," while with this he could combine, at 
 will, the most immediate and most practical 
 resources of the orator ; for the wisdom I have 
 spoken of was, as it always is with the great- 
 est men, a junction of the plain and practical 
 with the profound and contemplative ; to such 
 an extent, however, in his case, and in such 
 perfection, as may not be equalled in that of 
 any other speaker of ancient or modern time, 
 with the single exception of Burke. Hence 
 his speeches were not simply a present achieve- 
 ment of the matters he had in hand, but a grand 
 appeal, on their behalf, to the enlightened judg- 
 ment of the future ; and the presenting the 
 more prominent passages of them thus, for the 
 first time, to the attention and admiration of 
 his fellow-countrymen, is no less to discharge 
 a very tardy act of justice to his memory, than 
 to furnish the most striking, and, as it were, 
 living materials for a judgment on the great 
 times in which he lived. 
 
 After a farther homiletic subdivision of his 
 subject, a practice of which he was extremely 
 fond, and which gave a certain weight and 
 scholastic formality to the commonest point 
 he touched on, Pym proceeded at great length 
 through the second grand division of his speech, 
 step by step to " show the state of the case 
 as it stood both in the charge and the proof;" 
 to "take away the pretensions of mitigation 
 and limitation of his opinions urged by the doc- 
 tor in defence ;" to " observe circumstances 
 of aggravation ;" and " to propound some pre- 
 cedents of former times, wherein, though he 
 could not match the offence now in question, 
 yet he should produce such as should suffi- 
 ciently declare how forward our ancestors 
 would have been in the prosecution and con- 
 demning of such offences, if they had been then 
 committed." The materials of the charge, he 
 observed, were contrived into three distinct 
 articles. The first of these comprehended two 
 clauses : " First. That his majesty is not bound
 
 152 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to keep and observe the good laws and cus- 
 toms of the realm concerning the right and lib- 
 erty of the subject to be exempted from all 
 loans, taxes, and other aids laid upon them 
 without common consent in Parliament. Sec- 
 ond. That his majesty's will and command, in 
 imposing any charges upon his subjects with- 
 out such consent, doth so far bind them in their 
 consciences that they cannot refuse the same 
 without peril of eternal damnation !" Two 
 kinds of proof were produced upon this arti- 
 cle : " The first was from assertions of the 
 doctor's, concerning the power of kings in gen- 
 eral, but, by necessary consequence, to be ap- 
 plied to the kings of England. The next was 
 from his Censures and Determinations upon 
 the particular case of the late loan, which, by 
 necessity and parity of reason, were likewise 
 applicable to all cases of a like nature ; and 
 lest, by frailty of nature, he might mistake the 
 words or invert the sense, he desired leave to 
 resort to a paper, wherein the places were care- 
 fully extracted out of the book itself." 
 
 And then he read each particular clause, 
 pointing to the page for proof, and afterward 
 proceeded and said, that from this evidence of 
 the fact doth issue a clear evidence of his wick- 
 ed intention to misguide and seduce the king's 
 conscience, touching the observations of the 
 laws and liberties of the kingdom, and to scan- 
 dalize and impeach the good laws and govern- 
 ment of the realm, and the authority of Parlia- 
 ments. " Now, my lords," continued Mr. Pym, 
 " if to give the king ill counsel in one particu- 
 lar action hath heretofore been heavily punish- 
 ed in this high court, how much more heinous 
 must it needs be thought to pervert and se- 
 duce, by ill counsel, his majesty's conscience 
 that sovereign principle of all moral actions in 
 man, from which they are to receive warrant 
 for their direction before they be acted, and 
 judgment for their reformation afterward ! If 
 scandalum magnatum slander and infamy cast 
 upon great lords and officers of the kingdom 
 has been always most severely censured, how 
 much more tender ought we to be of that slander 
 and infamy which is here cast upon the laws and 
 government, from whence are derived all the hon- 
 our and reverence due to those great lords and ma- 
 gistrates ! All men, my lords, and so the great- 
 est and highest magistrates, are subject to 
 passions and partialities, whereby they may be 
 transported into over-hard injurious crosses ; 
 and though these considerations can never jus- 
 tify, they may sometimes excuse, the railing 
 and evil speeches of men who have been so 
 provoked ; it being a true rule, that whatsoever 
 gives strength and enforcement to the tempta- 
 tion in any sin, doth necessarily imply an abate- 
 ment and diminution of guilt in that sin. But 
 to slander and disgrace the laws and govern- 
 ment is without possibility of any such excuse, 
 it being a simple act of a malignant will, not in- 
 dMced nor excited by any outward provocation ; for 
 the laws, carrying an equal and constant respect 
 to all, ought to be reverenced equally by all." And 
 thus he derived the proofs and enforcements 
 upon the first article of the charge. 
 
 In the same strain of grave and lofty elo- 
 quence Pym urged the second and third arti- 
 cles of the impeachment, and then observed, 
 with conclusive effect, upon Mainwaring's at- 
 
 tempted limitations of his doctrines. The doc- 
 tor had pleaded, for instance, among other 
 things, that " he did not attribute to the king 
 any such absolute power as might be exercised 
 at all times or upon all occasions, but only upon 
 necessity extreme and urgent ;" and to this 
 Pym answered, " That it is all one to leave the 
 power absolute, and to leave the judgment ar- 
 bitrary when to execute that power ; for, al- 
 though these limitations should be admitted, 
 yet it is left to the king alone to determine 
 what is an urgent and pressing necessity, and 
 what is a just proportion, both in respect of the 
 ability and of the use and occasion ; and what 
 shall be said to be a circumstance, and what the 
 substance of the law. Thus the subject is left 
 without remedy ; and, the legal bounds being 
 taken away, no private person shall be allowed 
 to oppose his own particular opinion, in any of 
 these points, to the king's resolution ; so that 
 all these limitations, though specious in show, 
 are in effect fruitless and vain." 
 
 Having answered, in the same easy strain, 
 all Mainwaring's flimsy defence, he now took 
 up some " circumstances of aggravation," and 
 presented them to the Lords. The remark he 
 makes on the fact of some of these sermons 
 having been preached before the "king and 
 court at Whitehall," is very singular and sig- 
 nificant. 
 
 " The first," he said, alluding to the circum- 
 stances of aggravation, " was from the place 
 where these sermons were preached the court, 
 the king's own family, where such doctrine was 
 before so well believed that no man need to be con- 
 verted. Of this there could be no end but ei- 
 ther simoniacal, by flattery and soothing to 
 make way for his own preferment, or else ex- 
 tremely malicious, to add new afflictions to 
 those who lay under his majesty's wrath, dis- 
 graced and imprisoned, and thus to enlarge the 
 wound which had been given to the laws and 
 liberties of the kingdom. The second was from 
 the consideration of his holy function. He is 
 a preacher of God's word, and yet he had en- 
 deavoured to make that, which was the only 
 rule of justice and goodness, to be the warrant 
 for violence and oppression. He is a messen- 
 ger of peace, but he had endeavoured to sow 
 strife and dissension, not only among private 
 persons, but even betwixt the king and his peo- 
 ple, to the disturbance and danger of the whole 
 state. He is a spiritual father ; but, like that 
 evil father in the Gospel, he hath given his 
 children stones instead of bread ; instead of 
 flesh he hath given them scorpions. Lastly, 
 he is a minister of the Church of England, but 
 he hath acted the part of a Romish Jesuit : 
 they labour our destruction, by dissolving the 
 oath of allegiance taken by the people ; he doth 
 the same work, by dissolving the oath of pro- 
 tection and justice taken by the king." 
 
 With the same eloquent boldness he next 
 observed, as a circumstance of aggravation, 
 that the authors quoted by Mainwaring in sup- 
 port of his doctrines were " for the most part 
 friars and Jesuits ;" and, worse than this, that 
 he had been guilty of " fraud and shifting in ci- 
 ting even those authors to purposes quite dif- 
 ferent from their own meanings." In this por- 
 tion of his great task, Pym gave some mem- 
 orable illustrations of the labour and learning
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 153 
 
 he had applied to it, only one very short speci- 
 men of which may he given here. " In the 
 twenty-seventh page of his first sermon," Mr. 
 Pym continued, " he cites these words, Suarez 
 de Legibus, lib. v., cap. 17 : Acceptationem popu- 
 li non esse conditionem necessariam, ex vi juris 
 naturalis aut gentium, neque ex jure communi. 
 Now the Jesuit adds, Neque ex antique jure His- 
 panic, which words are left out by the doctor, 
 lest the reader might be invited to inquire what 
 was antiquum jus Hispania. ; though it might 
 have been learned from the same author, in an- 
 other place of that work, that about two hun- 
 dred years since this liberty was granted to the 
 people by one of the kings, that no tribute 
 should be imposed without their consent ; and 
 this author adds farther, that after the law is 
 introduced, and confirmed by custom, the king 
 is bound to observe it." From this place Pym 
 took occasion to make this short digression : 
 " That the kings of Spain, being powerful and 
 wise princes, would never have parted with such a 
 mark of absolute royalty if they had not found in 
 this course more advantage than in the other ; and 
 the success and prosperity of that kingdom, through 
 the valour and industry of the Spanish nation, so 
 much advanced since that time, do manifest the 
 wisdom of the change." It would be scarcely 
 possible to illustrate Pym's courage and high- 
 minded indifference to popular prejudice better 
 than by these few words in praise of the Span- 
 ish nation, at that time the object of universal 
 execration with the English people. 
 
 As a concluding point of aggravation, Pym 
 now mentioned the circumstance of Mainwa- 
 ring's having repeated, " in his own parish 
 church of St. Giles," the very offensive doc- 
 trines originally charged against him, " even 
 since the sitting of Parliament and his being 
 questioned in Parliament ;" and then " desired 
 the Lords that this circumstance might be care- 
 fully considered, because the Commons held it 
 to be a great contempt offered to the Parlia- 
 ment for him to maintain that so publicly^which 
 was here questioned. A great presumption, 
 they held it, for a private divine to debate the 
 right and power of the king, which is a matter 
 of such a nature as to be handled only in this 
 high court, and that with moderation and ten- 
 derness." 
 
 Pym now, in conclusion, produced some such 
 precedents as might testify what the opinion 
 of our ancestors would have been, if this case 
 had fallen out in their time ; and herein, he 
 said, " he would confine himself to the reigns 
 of the first three Edwards, two of them princes 
 of great glory." He began with the eldest 
 West. I., cap. 34 : " By this statute, 3 Edw. I., 
 provision was made against those who should 
 tell any false news or device, by which any 
 discord or scandal may arise betwixt the king, 
 his people, and great men of the kingdom. By 
 27 Edward I. (Rot. Parl., n. 20), it was decla- 
 red by the king's proclamation, sent into all the 
 counties of England, that they that reported 
 that he would not observe the great charter 
 were malicious people, who desired to put 
 trouble and debate betwixt the king and his 
 subjects, and to disturb the peace and good es- 
 tate of the king, the people, and the realm. In 
 5 Edward II. (Inter novas Ordinationes), Henry 
 de Beamond, for giving the king ill counsel 
 U 
 
 against his oath, was put from the council, and 
 restrained from coming into the presence of 
 the king under pain of confiscation and banish- 
 ment. By 19 Edward II. (Clause, Mem. 26, 
 indors.), commissions were granted to inquire 
 upon the statute of West. I. touching the spread- 
 ing of news, whereby discord and scandal might 
 grow betwixt the king and his people. In 10 
 Edw. III. (Clause, M. 26), proclamation went 
 out to arrest all of those who had presumed to 
 report that the king would lay upon the woods 
 certain sums, besides the ancient and due cus- 
 toms ; where the king calls these reports ' ex- 
 quisita mendacia, &c.. quae non tantum in pub- 
 licam laesionem, sed in nostrum cedunt dam- 
 num, et dedecus manifestum.' In 12 Edward 
 III. (Rot. Almaniae), the king writes to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, excusing himself 
 for some impositions which he had laid, pro- 
 fessing his great sorrow for it ; desires the 
 archbishop, by indulgences and other ways, to 
 stir up the people to pray for him ; hoping that 
 God would enable him, by some satisfactory 
 benefit, to make amends, and comfort his sub- 
 jects for those pressures." Having added to 
 these temporal precedents one or two from ec- 
 clesiastical records, Pym presented to their 
 lordships the following result to be collected 
 from them : " If former Parliaments were care- 
 ful of false rumours and news, they would have 
 been much more tender of such doctrines as 
 these, which might produce great occasions of 
 discord betwixt the king and his people. If 
 those who reported the king would lay imposi- 
 tions and break his laws were thought such 
 heinous offenders, how much more should the 
 man be condemned who persuaded the king he 
 is not bound to keep those laws ! If that great 
 king Edward was so far from challenging any 
 right in this kind, that he professed his own 
 sorrow and repentance for grieving his sub- 
 jects with unlawful charges if confessors were 
 enjoined to frame the conscience of the people 
 to the observances of these laws, certainly such 
 doctrines as those of Mainwaring, and such a 
 preacher as this, would have been held most 
 strange and abominable in all those great times 
 of England!" 
 
 Then, having recited the prayer of the Com- 
 mons, desiring Mainwaring to be brought to 
 examination and judgment, Pym concluded, 
 " That, seeing the cause had strength enough 
 to maintain itself, his humble suit to their lord- 
 ships was, that they would not observe his in- 
 firmities and defects, to the diminution or prej- 
 udice of that strength."* 
 
 Laud trembled at the effects of this speech, 
 and even expressed to the king his alarm for 
 an impeachment against himself; but Charles 
 ;old him to be under no uneasiness till he saw 
 rim forsake his other friends, t Yet even 
 
 harles winced from an open defiance of the 
 manifest feeling excited by Pym, and for a time 
 pretended to yield up Mainwaring to the judg- 
 ment of Parliament. " Truly," says Sander- 
 son,J " I remember the king's answer to all : 
 ' He that will preach other than he can prove, 
 let him suffer ; I give them no thanks to give 
 
 I have collected this speech from various documents ; 
 int a fair report will be found in the Old Parliamentary 
 History, vol. iii., p. 171-189. 
 
 t Heylin's Life of Laud, p. 171. See, also, Laud's Diary. 
 
 } Life of Charles the First, p. 115.
 
 154 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 me my due ;' and so, being a Parliament busi- 
 ness, he (Mainwaring) was left by the king and 
 Church to their sentence." Immediately after 
 the passing of the petition of right, that sen- 
 tence was pronounced by the upper House ; 
 and, in spite of Mainwaring's tears and affected 
 penitence, to say nothing of his impudent hy- 
 pocrisy, he was condemned to imprisonment du- 
 ring the pleasure of Parliament ; to be fined a 
 thousand pounds to the king ; to make a sub- 
 mission, both in writing and personally, at the 
 bar of the House, and also at the bar of the 
 Commons ; to be suspended from the ministry 
 for three years ; and to be incapable of ever 
 holding an ecclesiastical dignity or secular of- 
 fice, or of preaching at court. Lastly, the peers 
 ordered his sermons to be burned.* " A heavy 
 sentence, I confess," observes Heylin.t " but 
 such as did rather affright than hurt him ; for 
 his majesty, looking on him in that conjuncture 
 as one that suffered in his cause, preferred him 
 first to the parsonage of Stamford-Rivers in 
 Essex (void not long after by the promotion of 
 Montague to the see of Chichester), afterward 
 to the deanery of Worcester, and, finally, to 
 the bishopric of St. David's. This was indeed 
 the way to have his majesty well served, but such 
 as created hirr. some ill thoughts towards the 
 Commons for bis majesty's indulgence to him." 
 Theae disgraceful promotions, strengthened 
 by the translation of Laud himself to the see of 
 London, took place during the prorogation of 
 Parliament, and the feelings with which the 
 Commons reassembled in consequence have 
 already been described.:): Pym took an active 
 part in their debates on the spread of Armin- 
 ianism, and spoke with bitterness of the re- 
 cent promotions. " Who," he asked, " could 
 pretend to ignorance of the articles of the true 
 Protestant religion 1 Had they not been set- 
 tled by the Articles set forth in 1552 ; by the 
 Catechism set forth in King Edward the Sixth's 
 days ; by the writings of Peter Martyr, Martin 
 Bucer, Wicliffe, and others ; by the constant 
 profession, sealed by the blood of so many mar- 
 tyrs, as Cranmer, Ridley, and others ; by the 
 Thirty-nine Articles set forth in Queen Eliza- 
 beth's time ; and by the Articles set forth at 
 Lambeth as the doctrine of the Church of Eng- 
 land, which King James sent to Dort and to 
 Ireland as the truth professed here 1 Lastly, 
 had they not been set forth by his majesty's 
 own declaration and proclamation to maintain 
 unity in the settled religion 1 Yet these are 
 now perverted and abused, to the ruin and sub- 
 version of religion ! Consider the preferments 
 which such have received since the last Parlia- 
 ment who have heretofore taught contrary s to 
 the truth ! Then consider again for what overt 
 acts these men have been countenanced and 
 advanced ! what pardons they have had for 
 false doctrines ! what manner of preaching hath 
 been lately before the king's majesty ! what 
 suppression of books that have been written 
 against their doctrines, and what permitting of 
 such books as have been written for them!" 
 Subsequently Pym propounded certain reme- 
 dial measures, which he urged it to be the duty 
 of the Parliament in general, and of each Chris. 
 
 * Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 151, &c. Rushworth, vol. i., 
 .. 585-593. t Life of Laud, p. 180. 
 
 T.ifn of Flint, n. 30 
 
 i. ooo-aaa. 
 i Life of Eliot, p. 30. 
 
 tian in particular, to follow, " For," he contin- 
 ued, " howsoever it is alleged that the Parliament 
 are not judges in matters of faith, yet ought they 
 to know the established and fundamental truths, 
 and the contrary to them ;* for Parliaments have 
 confirmed acts of general councils, which have 
 not been received until they have been so au- 
 thorized ; and Parliaments have enacted laws 
 for trial of heretics by juries. The Parliament 
 punished the Earl of Essex for countenancing 
 of heretics ; and there is no court can meet 
 with these mischiefs but the court of Parlia- 
 ment. The convocation cannot, because it is 
 but a provincial synod, only of the jurisdiction 
 of Canterbury, and the power thereof is not 
 adequate to the whole kingdom ; while the con- 
 vocation of York may, perhaps, not agree with 
 that of Canterbury. The High Commission 
 cannot, for it hath its.authority derived from 
 Parliament, and the derivative cannot preju- 
 dice the original. It is, in short, reserved for 
 the judgment of the Parliament, that being the 
 judgment of the king and of the three estates 
 of the kingdom."! 
 
 The result of these debates was the famous 
 vow or declaration:): respecting religion, which, 
 as Carte takes upon himself to inform us, " Mr. 
 Pym, having the more time to take care of oth- 
 er people's religion because he had very little 
 of his own, drew up, and presented to the 
 House." This was the last great act of that 
 most celebrated Parliament, in which Pym had 
 achieved for himself, almost equally with Eli- 
 ot, the pursuing hatred of the court. Fortu- 
 nately, however, he was not an actor in the 
 stormy and tempestuous scene of its dissolu- 
 tion, and therefore escaped that vengeance by 
 which the popular cause lost so formidable a 
 champion, and himself so dear a friend. 
 
 But another friend had fallen from his side 
 some few months before, alienated by a worse 
 stroke, in the thought of Pym, than that of im- 
 prisonment or death. Sir Thomas Wentworth 
 had gone over to the court ; and Pym, who is 
 described to have been the only one of the lead- 
 ing popular men, besides Hollis, really intimate 
 with Wentworth, is said to have felt this de- 
 sertion with singular acuteness. Vainly ima- 
 gining that 
 
 " Mutual league, 
 
 United thoughts and counsels, equal hope, 
 And hazard in the glorious enterprise," 
 
 had joined them inseparably, it was probably 
 Pym who, whenever Eliot impugned the trust- 
 
 in Aikin's Life of Charles, and also in the history from 
 Mackintosh, the following words are attributed to Pym in 
 this debate : " It belongs to Parliament to establish true 
 religion and to punish false." But the passage in the text 
 is the original from which that truly sweeping apophthegm 
 of Parliamentary supremacy and persecution has been ta- 
 ken ; and, it is scarcely necessary to add, it does not by any 
 means authorize such a violent and absurd construction. I 
 had before observed (Life of Eliot, p. 30) that Rushworth's 
 reports of this session are very incorrect, and the words in 
 question are taken from Rushworth. But for the correct 
 speech, see Old Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 262-5263. 
 
 t Oliver Cromwell's first reported speech in Parliament 
 was made on this occasion, and is worth subjoining. He 
 said " that he heard by relation from one Dr. Beard, that 
 Dr. Alablaster had preached flat popery at St. Paul's Cross, 
 and that the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Neile) commanded 
 him, as he was his diocesan, he should preach nothing to 
 the contrary. He said that Mainwaring, so justly censured 
 for his sermons in this House, was, by this bishop's means, 
 preferred to a rich living. If these are steps to Church 
 preferments, what may we not expect ?" 
 
 t See the Life of Eliot, p. 32. 
 
 i) Carte, History, vol. iv., p. 200.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 155 
 
 worthiness of Wentworth, pledged his own 
 faith for him, and so increased for himself the 
 bitterness of the present desertion. Feeling, 
 therefore, in all its force, the truth of one of 
 his own favourite thoughts, hatred now sprang 
 into the place of his former love. The anec- 
 dote which dates the first terrible dawning of 
 the change rests on the cautious authority of 
 Doctor Welwood.* "There had been a long 
 and intimate friendship," he says, "between 
 Mr. Pym and Sir Thomas Wentworth, and they 
 had gone hand and hand in the House of Com- 
 mons. But when Sir Thomas Wentworth was 
 upon making his peace with the court, he sent 
 to Pym to meet him alone at Greenwich, where 
 he began in a set speech to sound Mr. Pym 
 about the dangers they were like to run by the 
 courses they were in, and what advantages 
 they might have if they would but listen to 
 some offers which would probably be made 
 them from the court. Pym, understanding his 
 drift, stopped him short with this expression : 
 You need not use all this art to tell me that you 
 have a mind to leave us ; but remember what 
 I tell you : You are going to be undone ; and re- 
 member also, that though you leave us now, I will 
 never leave you while your head is upon your shoul- 
 ders !' " Pym kept his word. 
 
 The desperate course of government by pre- 
 rogative now began. Charles, while disrobing 
 himself on the day of the Parliament's dissolu- 
 tion, passionately vowed that he would never 
 put on those robes again ; and, not content 
 with a violent declaration of his reasons for 
 the dissolution, issued a proclamation which 
 forbade even the word Parliament to cross the 
 lips of his people, since he who alone had the 
 power of calling, continuing, and dissolving 
 Parliaments, was the best judge when to as- 
 semble them, and now declared that though 
 such an event might happen, it would only be 
 after the country had evinced a better disposi- 
 tion, and the " vipers of the Commonwealth" 
 had received their condign punishment, and 
 " those who are misled by them had come to a 
 better understanding of his majesty and them- 
 selves." With deep sorrow for the miseries 
 which now, for a time, impended over Eng- 
 land, and afflicted to the soul by the personal 
 sufferings of many of his dearest friends, it may 
 be yet supposed that Pym looked forward de- 
 liberately and undespairingly, since, if for no 
 reason else, he had to keep the appointment he 
 had made with Wentworth. 
 
 It will be necessary to sketch very briefly 
 the measures by which the executive now 
 sought to enslave the people. 
 
 The duties of tonnage and poundage, which 
 Charles had solemnly pledged himself never to 
 take but as a gift from his people, were rigor- 
 ously extorted ; warrants were issued by the 
 council to seize the goods of all who attempted 
 to land them without authority, and to detain 
 them till the customs were paid ; and orders 
 were despatched to imprison all who attempted 
 to recover their property by replevin. Richard 
 Chambers a name ever memorable among 
 London citizens courageously appealed from 
 the vengeance of the council ; but he was drag- 
 ged into the Star Chamber, fined 2000, and 
 doomed to imprisonment till he made various 
 
 * See Memorials of English Affairs, p. 46, 47. 
 
 abject submissions : these he refused to make, 
 and for twelve years he languished in prison, 
 from which he was released a beggar. Various 
 merchants made attempts to elude these meas- 
 ures by sending their goods beyond the seas ; 
 but nothing is so vigilant as tyranny, and the 
 goods were seized in England, while unlimited 
 orders were issued in consequence to search 
 warehouses, and prevent what was denomina- 
 ted a fraud on the revenue. 
 
 Equally disgraceful were the taxes imposed 
 for the support of muster-masters of the mili- 
 tia ; coat and conduct money was also exact- 
 ed, while soldiers were billeted as of old. But 
 the grievance which out-Heroded all the rest 
 was the revival of monopolies. This was car- 
 ried to an extent which was truly appalling. 
 Under the pretext, for instance, that certain 
 persons had made discoveries in the manufac- 
 ture of soap, and that the dealers in general 
 imposed a bad article upon the people, these 
 persons were erected into a corporation, and 
 the right of the manufacture and sale of the 
 commodity vested in them exclusively, they 
 having paid ten thousand pounds for their pat- 
 ent, and rendered themselves liable to a tax of 
 eight pounds per ton upon the sale. The ori- 
 ginal pretext, it may be easily supposed, was a 
 lie, the commodity being, in fact, so adultera- 
 ted as to ruin the clothes of the people. In the 
 same manner, almost every article of ordinary 
 consumption, whether of manufacture or not, 
 was exposed to a similar abuse. Upon every- 
 thing, no matter how insignificant, the fetters 
 of monopoly were fixed. Salt, starch, coals, 
 iron, wine, pens, cards and dice, beavers, felts, 
 bone-lace, meat dressed in taverns, tobacco, 
 wine-casks, brewing and distilling, lamprons, 
 weighing of hay and straw in London and 
 Westminster, gauging of red herrings, butter 
 casks, kelp and seaweed, linen cloth, rags, hops, 
 buttons, hats, gutstring, spectacles, combs, to- 
 bacco-pipes, saltpetre, gunpowder, down to the 
 sole privilege of gathering of rags, were all sub- 
 jected to monopolies, and consequently heavily 
 taxed ! 
 
 Some few of these shocking enormities may 
 be illustrated by extracts from the Rev. Mr. 
 Garrard's letters* to the lord-deputy. " Here 
 is much ado," he writes on one occasion, " about 
 the soap business ; it is very doubtful whether 
 in the end it will stand or no. For the present, 
 it is strongly backed, and I hear a proclamation 
 shall come forth to stop all mouths that speak 
 against it. Commissioners have been appoint- 
 ed : the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William 
 Becher, Sir Abraham Williams, Spiller, joined 
 to the lord-mayor and some aldermen. They 
 have had two general washing-days at Guild- 
 hall ; most of them have given their verdict for 
 the new soap to be the better ; yet continual 
 complaints rise up that it burns linen, scalds 
 the laundress's fingers, wastes infinitely in 
 keeping, being full of lime and tallow ; which 
 if true, it is of that use in this kingdom that it 
 will not last. The lord-mayor of London, by 
 the king's commandment, received a shrewd 
 reprimand for his pusillanimity in this business, 
 being afraid of a troop of women that clamor- 
 ously petitioned him against the new soap : 
 my lord-privy-seal, his brother-in-law, was to 
 
 j ~ ' ____ " _._ 
 
 See Life of Stratford, p. 91.
 
 156 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 give it him at the board, and did very sharp- 
 ly."* " Here are two commissions afloat," he 
 writes on another occasion, " which are attend- 
 ed diligently, which will bring, as it is conceiv- 
 ed, a great sum of money to his majesty. The 
 first, concerning the licensing of those who 
 shall have a lease for life to sell tobacco in and 
 about London, and so in all the boroughs and 
 villages in England ; fifteen pounds fine, and 
 as much rent by the year. . . . The other is for 
 buildings in and about London since a procla- 
 mation in the thirteenth of King James." In 
 the cases of the latter, three years' rent, and 
 " some little rent to the king" additional, was 
 exacted by the commissioners as a composi- 
 tion for suffering the buildings to stand. " How 
 far this will spread," Garrard adds, " I know 
 not ; but it is confidently spoken that there are 
 above 100,000 rents upon this string about 
 London. I speak much within compass. For 
 Tuttle [Tothill], St. Giles's, St. Martin's Lane, 
 Drury Lane, Covent Garden, Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, Holborn, and beyond the Tower from 
 Wapping to Blackwall, all come in, and are li- 
 able to fining for annoyances, or being built con- 
 trary to proclamation, though they have had 
 licenses granted to do so : my Lord of Bed- 
 ford's license in this case, as it is said, will not 
 avail him."t The first notice of coal as an 
 article of export is made thus : " My Lords of 
 Dorset and Holland have obtained a beneficial 
 suit of the king, worth better than 1000 a 
 year apiece to them, for seacoal exported." 
 Then we are startled by the following : " We 
 have very plausible things done of late. The 
 book called the Declaration of the King's for 
 rectifying of taverns, ordinaries, bakers, ostel- 
 ries, is newly come forth. I'll say no more of 
 it ; your agent here will send it to your lord- 
 ship. All back doors to taverns on the Thames 
 are commanded to be shut up : only the Bear 
 at the bridge-foot is exempted, by reason of 
 the passage to Greenwich. To encourage gen- 
 tlemen to live more willingly in the country, 
 all game fowl, as pheasants, partridges, ducks, 
 as also hares, are by proclamation forbidden to 
 be dressed or eaten in any inns, and butchers 
 are forbidden to be graziers. "t 
 
 The first introduction of hackney-coaches is 
 next commemorated by Mr. Garrard : " Here 
 is one Captain Bailey ; he hath been a sea-cap- 
 tain, but now lives on the land about this city, 
 where he tries experiments. He hath erected 
 according to his ability some four hackney- 
 coaches, put his men in a livery, and appoint- 
 ed them to stand at the Maypole in the Strand, 
 giving them instructions at what rates to carry 
 men into several parts of the town, where all 
 day long they may be had. Other hackneymen 
 seeing this way, they flocked to the same 
 place, and perform their journeys at the same 
 rate, so that sometimes there is twenty of them 
 together, which disperse up and down, so that 
 they and others are to be had anywhere." 
 But now, within two short months of this date, 
 during which time the plan, serving as a com- 
 fort and luxury to the great mass of the people, 
 
 had succeeded to an extraordinary extent, we 
 find Garrard mentioning " a proclamation com- 
 ing forth about the reformation of hackney- 
 coaches, and ordering of other coaches about 
 London : nineteen hundred was the number of 
 hackney-coaches of London, base lean jades, 
 unworthy to be seen in so brave a city, or to 
 stand about a king's court." Nothing that con- 
 tributed, unencumbered by monopoly, to the 
 comfort of the people, was permitted to con- 
 tinue ! Again Garrard writes, " Here is a proc- 
 lamation coming forth to prohibit all hackney- 
 coaches to pass up and down in London streets ; 
 out of town they may go at pleasure, as here- 
 tofore. Also the attorney-general hath sent to 
 all taverns to prohibit them to dress meat ; 
 somewhat was required of them a halfpenny 
 a quart for French wine, and a penny for sack 
 and other richer wines, for the king ; the gen- 
 tlemen vintners grew sullen and would not give 
 it, so they are well enough served."* No sin- 
 gle thing escaped that had escaped monopoly : 
 the monopolists only were allowed to thrive. 
 Soon after the above we find Garrard mention- 
 ing " a project for carrying people up and down 
 in close chairs, for the sole doing whereof Sir 
 Sander Duncombe, a traveller, now a pension- 
 er, hath obtained a patent from the king, and 
 hath forty or fifty making ready for use." The 
 next enormity which Garrard alludes to in his 
 packets of news is monstrous indeed. " Here 
 is at this present," he says, " a commission in 
 execution against cottagers, who have not four 
 acres of ground laid to their houses, upon a 
 statute made the 31 Eliz., which vexeth the 
 poor people mightily, all for the benefit of the 
 Lord Morton, and the secretary of Scotland, 
 the Lord Sterling : much crying out there is 
 against it, especially because mean, needy, and 
 men of no good fame, prisoners in the Fleet, are 
 used as principal commissioners to call the peo- 
 ple before them, to fine and compound with 
 them."t Subsequently he remarks, " The tav- 
 erns begin to victual again ; some have got 
 leave. 'Tis said that the vintners within the 
 city will give 6000 to the king to dress meat 
 as they did before ; and the suburbs will yield 
 somewhat. "J Such illustrations, curious and 
 valuable as they are, considering the source 
 whence they proceed, and to whom they are 
 addressed, might be largely indulged ; but one 
 more will serve. " Here," writes Garrard, 
 "here are abundance of new projects on foot, 
 upon seacoal, salt, malt, marking of iron, cut- 
 ting of rivers, setting up a new corporation in 
 the suburbs of London much opposed by the 
 Londoners and many others. Where profit 
 may come to the king, let them pass ; but to 
 enrich private men, they have not my wishes. 
 Discontinuance of Parliaments brings up this 
 kind of grain, which commonly is blasted when 
 they come." 
 
 And all these fearful outrages were commit- 
 ted upon the people, while there was probably 
 not a single family in England, with the small- 
 est share of education or intelligence, in whose 
 house a copy of the famous PETITION of RIGHT 
 
 * Strafford's Papers, vol. i., p. 507. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. i., p. 206. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 176. 
 
 t> Rnshworth has recorded that in the first year of Charles 
 there were not above twenty coaches to be had for hire in 
 and about London. " The grave judges of the law," he 
 
 adds, "constantly rid on horseback, in all weathers, to 
 Westminster.'' Collections, vol. ii., p. 317. 
 
 * Straffbrd Papers, vol. i., p. 507. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. i., p. 117. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 262. 
 
 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 55.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 157 
 
 might not be found ! But this consideration it 
 was, beyond every other, that still sustained 
 with the strongest hope, during the twelve 
 terrible years' continuance of such outrages, 
 such men as Pym and Hampden. It was this 
 which, even while their friend Eliot sank to 
 his death under the murderous vengeance of 
 the court, and while others of their friends, as 
 Noy, Digges, Littleton, and Glanville, crept 
 over to the side of the public enemy it was 
 this which reassured them that least of all were 
 they then to despair. The breath of God was 
 not to be monopolized, neither was the petition 
 of rights to be recalled. 
 
 In enforcement of the illegal patents and 
 proclamations of the king, most grievous com- 
 missions also were granted, to one or two of 
 which Garrard's correspondence has alluded. 
 They were such, for instance, as a commission 
 touching cottages and inmates ; another about 
 services ; one for compounding with offenders 
 for transporting butter ; another for compound- 
 ing with those who used or imported logwood ; 
 one to compound with sheriffs, and such as 
 had been sheriffs, for selling under-sheriffs' 
 places ; another for compounding for the de- 
 struction of wood in iron works ; another for 
 concealments, and encroachments within twen- 
 ty miles of London ; and the list might be 
 stretched indefinitely. 
 
 Nor had the resources of tyranny expended 
 themselves here. Under the candid pretext 
 of curing defects in titles of land, a proclama- 
 tion was issued, proposing to grant new titles 
 upon the payment of a reasonable composition ; 
 and all who declined to avail themselves of 
 this general offer from the court were threat- 
 ened, in no measured terms, with the loss of 
 their property : nor, indeed, were such cases 
 unfrequent. Many pretended flaws in titles 
 were dragged into the courts, where a parcel 
 of obsequious judges sat ready to establish the 
 objections. Even the form of the judges' pat- 
 ents was changed to fix their slavish depend- 
 ance more surely ! The old clause, guamdiu 
 se bene gesserit was changed into durante bene 
 placito, and the benefit of the first clause was 
 even denied to one judge who had received his 
 patent before the change, because he was 
 thought too upright for the designs in hand.* 
 
 Other means, too, were adopted to bring the 
 civil government of England into unison with 
 these enormities. The jurisdiction and pow- 
 ers of the courts of Star Chamber and High 
 Commission were enlarged to a most extraor- 
 dinary degree. New illegal oaths were en- 
 forced, and new courts, with vast powers, 
 erected without colour of law ; and when com- 
 missions were issued for examining into the 
 extent of fees that were complained of, the 
 commissioners compounded with the delin- 
 quents, not only for their past offences, but 
 their future extortions. Finally, the orders of 
 the council board were received as positive 
 law. Clarendon tells us that Finch, who, for 
 
 * See May's History, p. 17. Hut. Mem., vol. i., p. 132. 
 Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 16. For the various authori- 
 ties in support of the text, see Mr. Brodie (Hist, of Brit. 
 Emp., vol. ii., p. 275-286) ; also Rushworth, throughout his 
 first and third volumes of Collections ; Old Parl. Hist., vol. 
 ix., p. 62, et seq. ; Hilyard's Case ; Clarendon's Life, p. 
 37, 73 ; May's History j Aikin's Charles the First ; and 
 Strafford's Letters. 
 
 his conduct in the late Parliament, had been 
 promoted to the office of lord-keeper of the 
 great seal, now boldly declared " that while he 
 was keeper no man should be so saucy as to 
 dispute orders of the council board, but that 
 the wisdom of that board should be always 
 ground enough for him to make a decree in 
 chancery." 
 
 An extract from the same noble historian 
 shall complete my sketch of the civil govern- 
 ment of England at this period. " Supple- 
 mental acts of state were made to supply de- 
 fect of laws ; and so tonnage and poundage, 
 and other duties upon merchandises, were col- 
 lected by order of the board, which had been 
 positively refused to be settled by act of Par- 
 liament, and new and greater impositions laid 
 upon trade ; obsolete laws were revived and 
 vigorously executed, wherein the subject might 
 be taught how unthrifty a thing it was, by too 
 strict a detaining of what was his, to put the 
 king as strictly to inquire what was his own. 
 And by this ill husbandry the king received a 
 vast sum of money from all persons of quality, 
 or, indeed, of any reasonable condition, through- 
 out the kingdom, upon the law of knighthood. 
 And no less unjust projects of all kinds many 
 ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous 
 were set on foot, the envy and reproach of 
 which came to the king, the profit to other 
 men. To recompense the damage the crown 
 sustained by the sale of the old lands and by 
 the grant of new pensions, the old laws of the 
 forest were revived, by which not only great 
 fines were imposed, but great annual rents 
 intended, and like to be settled by way of con- 
 tract ; which burden lighted most upon persons 
 of quality and honour, who thought themselves 
 above ordinary oppressions, and were, there- 
 fore, like to remember it with more sharpness. 
 For the better support of these extraordinary 
 ways, and to protect the agents and instru- 
 ments who must be employed in them, and to 
 discountenance and suppress all bold inquirers 
 and opposers, the council table and Star Cham- 
 ber enlarged their jurisdictions to a vast ex- 
 tent, < holding' (as Thucydides said of the Athe- 
 nians) ' for honourable that which pleased, and 
 for just that which profited ;' and being the 
 same persons in several rooms, grew both 
 courts of law to determine rights, and courts 
 of revenue to bring money into the treasury 
 the council table by proclamations enjoining to 
 the people what was not enjoined by the law, 
 and prohibiting that which was not prohibited, 
 and the Star Chamber censuring the breach, 
 and disobedience to those proclamations, by 
 very great fines and imprisonment, so that any 
 disrespect to acts of state, or to the persons of 
 statesmen, was in no time more penal, and 
 those foundations of right, by which men val- 
 ued their security, to the apprehension and un- 
 derstanding of wise men, never more in dan- 
 ger to be destroyed."* The reader will scarce- 
 ly conceive this picture capable of aggrava- 
 tion ; but the noble historian afterward pro- 
 ceeds, very dryly, to tell how the people chiefly 
 borne down by these terrible measures were 
 Protestants, while the Papists were not only 
 encouraged, but protected, as the chief promo- 
 ters of the mischief. " They grew," he says, 
 
 * Hist, of Rebellion, vol. i., p. 119-122.
 
 158 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " not only secret contrivers, but public pro- 
 fessed promoters of, and ministers in, the most 
 grievous projects ; as that of soap, formed, 
 framed, and executed by almost a corporation 
 of that religion, which, under that license and 
 
 notion, might be, and were suspected to be, 
 qualified for other agitations." No wonder the 
 Roman Catholics were hated ! It is to be add- 
 ed, that whatever trifling fragments of law or 
 protection might be supposed to remain to the 
 people still, were utterly swept away from a 
 long line of northern counties by the terrible 
 administration of the presidency of the North. 
 Yet the king continued poor ! His advocate 
 has hinted a justification of him in the extract 
 just given, to the effect that while the reproach 
 of these monstrous extortions came to him, 
 the profit went to other men ; but this is much 
 more in the nature of an aggravation. When 
 Charles found that the case was so, it served 
 him only as a better excuse for breaking down 
 the spirit of the people by still heavier burdens. 
 What Clarendon has said is indeed quite true, 
 that the tax upon the community was infinitely 
 beyond what came into the Exchequer. For 
 the monopoly of wine, for instance, the king 
 received only 38,000 per annum ; but then 
 the vintners paid 40s. per tun to the patentees, 
 which, upon 45,000 tuns, raised the tax to 
 90,000. The vintners, again, imposed 2d. 
 per quart, which raised it to 8 per tun, or 
 360,000 nearly twelve times as much as 
 went into the Exchequer.* And so with other 
 impositions. The difficulties of the court, 
 therefore, in the disastrous career they had 
 entered on, were only becoming, day by day, 
 more imminent, when the famous invention of 
 Mr. Attorney-general Noyt came in to give a 
 longer lease to tyranny, and make more fatal 
 its final redemption. 
 
 " Lastly" (I again avail myself of the lan- 
 guage of Lord Clarendon), " for a spring and 
 magazine that should have no bottom, and for 
 an everlasting supply of all occasions, a writ 
 was framed in a form of law, and directed to 
 the sheriff of every county of England, ' to 
 provide a ship of war for the king's service, 
 and to send it, amply fitted and provided, by 
 such a day to such a place ;' and with that 
 writ were sent to each sheriff instructions that, 
 
 * See the Old Pail. Hist., vol. ix., p. 62, et seg. 
 
 t " He was a man," says Dr. Heylin, in his Life of Laud, 
 p. 301, "extremely well versed in old records, with which 
 consulting frequently in the course of his studies, he had 
 excerpted and laid by many notes and precedents for the 
 king's levying of such naval aid upon the subjects, by his 
 own authority, whensoever the preservation and safety of 
 the kingdom did require it of them ; which notes and pre- 
 cedents, taken as they came in his way, on small pieces of 
 paper (most of them no bigger than one's hand), he kept in 
 the coffin of a pye, which had been sent him by his mother, 
 and kept there till the mouldincss and corruptibleness had 
 perished many of his papers." The singularity of Noy's 
 manners gives colour to this story. I cannot resist subjoin- 
 ing another anecdote, which seems a proof, in a certain 
 sort, that Noy winced a little under his new position, after, 
 as his friends used to say, "he was bewitched to become 
 the king's." When created attorney-general, a messenger, 
 as usual, was sent to attend on him ; but, after enduring 
 his presence with very angry scowlings for a few days, Noy 
 could not bear it any longer. He ordered him to get home 
 and hide himself, " lest the people, who have always seen 
 me walk free and alone, should fancy me a state prisoner." 
 See Wood's Ath. Oxon., vol. ii., p. 582. Noy died soon 
 after his discoveries in the matter of ship-money, and they 
 were wonderfully improved upon by Finch: see Hallam's 
 Const. Hist., vol. ii., p. 16-21. For admirable characters 
 of Noy and Finch, see Clarendon's Hist., vol. i., p. 129-131. 
 
 ' instead of a ship, he should levy upon his 
 county such a sum of money, and return the 
 same to the treasurer of the navy for his maj- 
 esty's use, with direction in what manner he 
 should proceed against such as refused ;' and 
 from hence that tax had the denomination of 
 
 SHIP-MONEY ; a word of lasting sound in the mem- 
 ory of this kingdom, by which for some years 
 really accrued the yearly sum of 200,000 to 
 the king's coffers ; and it was, in truth, the 
 only project that was accounted to his own 
 service." 
 
 A lively illustration of the manner in which 
 this tax was worked will be supplied by one or 
 two extracts from Garrard's letters to the 
 Lord-deputy of Ireland. In one letter* he 
 writes, " In my last I advertised your lordship 
 that the Mayor of London received some rep- 
 rimand for being so slow in giving answer to 
 the writ sent into the city about the shipping 
 business ; afterward the city council were 
 called before the Lords, and received some 
 gentle check, or, rather, were admonished to 
 take heed how they advised the city in a case 
 so clear for the king, wherein his majesty had 
 first advised with his learned counsel and with 
 his council of state. It wrought this effect, 
 that they all yielded, and instantly fell to seiz- 
 ing in all the wards of London. It will cost 
 the city at least 35,000. They hoist up the 
 merchant strangers, Sir William Curtyre, 360 ; 
 Sir Thomas Cuttcale, 300 : great sums to pay 
 at one tax, and we know not how often it may 
 come. It reaches us in the Strand, being with- 
 in the liberties of Westminster, which furnish- 
 eth out one ship. My Lord of Bedford, 60 ; 
 my Lord of Salisbury, 25 ; my Lord of Clare, 
 40 ; the lord-keeper and lord-treasuer, 20 
 apiece : nay, lodgers, for I am set at 40s. Giv- 
 ing subsidies in Parliament, I was well content 
 to pay to, which now hath brought me into this 
 tax ; but I tell my Lord Cottington that I had 
 rather give and pay ten subsidies in Parliament 
 than Ws. this new-old way of dead Noye's. Let- 
 ters are also gone down to the high sheriffs of 
 the maritime counties to quicken them. Have 
 you heard the answer given by a great lord 
 that hath been a judge 1 ' 'Tis true this writ 
 hath not been used when tonnage and pound- 
 age was granted, now 'tis not, but taken by 
 prerogative, ergo, this writ is now in full force.' " 
 On a subsequent occasion he writes, " The 
 sheriff of Sussex sent up to the Lords to re- 
 ceive their farther directions what he was to 
 do, giving them information that seven or eight 
 poor towns in that county stood out, and would 
 not pay towards the shipping. But as soon as 
 they heard that the sheriff, by a new command, 
 began to distrain, they came roundly in and 
 paid their money. "t The lord-deputy speedily 
 corrected his correspondent's complaints about 
 the tax, having furnished the court with his 
 opinion that it was " the greatest service the 
 legal profession had done the crown in his 
 time ;" while he added, " but unless his majes- 
 ty hath the like power declared to raise a land 
 army upon the same exigent of state, the crown 
 seems to me to stand but upon one leg at home, 
 to be considerable but by halves to foreign prin- ' 
 ces abroad ; yet sure this, methinks, convinces 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 358. 
 t Ibid., vol. i., p. 372.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 a power for the sovereign to raise payments 
 for land forces, and consequently submits to 
 his wisdom and ordinance the transporting of 
 the money or men into foreign states, so to 
 earry, by way of prevention, the fire from our 
 selves into the dwellings of our enemies (an 
 art which Edward III. and Henry V. well un- 
 derstood) ; and if, by degrees, Scotland and 
 Ireland be drawn to contribute their propor- 
 tions to these levies for the public, omne tulit 
 punctum. Well fortified," Wentworth contin- 
 ued, " this piece forever vindicates the royalty 
 at home from under the conditions and re- 
 straints of subjects, and renders us also, abroad, 
 even to the greatest kings, the most considera- 
 ble monarchy in Christendom."* Stimulated 
 thus, the court partially extended their viewi 
 that way, and, advancing gradually from the 
 maritime districts, levied the hated tax upon 
 almost every man in England. " For home 
 news," Garrard writes in one of his subsequent 
 letters,! " the shipping business goes on cur- 
 rently all over England, so 'tis apprehended at 
 court. Some petitions have been offered to 
 the king from poor towns, which he hath re- 
 ferred to his council." Again : " The London- 
 ers have not been so forward in collecting the 
 ship-money, since they have been taught to 
 sing Hey-down-derry, and many of them will 
 not pay till after imprisonment, that it may 
 stand upon record they were forced to it. The 
 assessments have been wonderful unequal and 
 unproportionable, which is very ill taken, it 
 being conceived they did it on purpose to raise 
 clamour through the city." And again, he 
 writes, " Your lordship is very right, that there 
 is no reason all public works should be put 
 upon the crown. And yet you see how un- 
 willing the people are to contribute to any, be 
 it never so honourable or necessary for them- 
 selves. Witness the ship-money, which at this 
 very present ending of the term is under argu- 
 ment in the Exchequer chamber before all the 
 judges, brought thither upon a case of Mr. 
 Hambden's, as I think ; but I am sure, either 
 upon a case of his or the Lord Say's. So have 
 you the greatest news of the time." 
 
 Great news this was indeed ! Many men 
 had resisted ship-money ; many poor men had 
 been flung into prison for refusing to pay it, and 
 lay there languishing and unknown ; many rich 
 men had vainly stirred themselves against it ; 
 but at last, in the person of Hampden, the pop- 
 ular party prepared to make their final and re- 
 solved resistance, and in his great name all the 
 renown of that resistance has been absorbed. J 
 Pym and St. John were Hampden's close 
 counsellors in the interval before the public tri- 
 al, and six months were passed in preparations 
 on both sides. At last, after a display of extra- 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 61, 62. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. i., p. 468. 
 
 i It may be observed, at the same time, that doubtless 
 the court party were to be consulted as to the choice of a 
 person in whose case the right of resistance was to be deci- 
 ded, since up to this period, when refusers of ship-money 
 had gone before the courts, the judges on circuit had over- 
 ruled, or declined to entertain, any plea founded on the 
 assumed illegality of the imposition, and thus the question 
 of right had remained undecided. Unable, however, to re- 
 sist any longer the demand for a settlement of the question, 
 it is probable that the king's party thought that, in its 
 progress, the "affability and temper" of Hampden as an 
 opponent would serve them best. It is certain that Lord 
 Say and Sele was distinctly refused a trial. 
 
 ordinary learning and power on the part of St. 
 John, till then almost unknown in the courts, 
 and a scarcely less remarkable exhibition of 
 venal prostitution of research on the part of the 
 crown lawyers, judgment was pronounced in 
 favour of ship-money, and against the illus- 
 trious defendant, by nine out of the twelve 
 judges. Of the three dissentients Hutton,* 
 Croke, and Denham Croke would also have 
 given judgment for the crown, had not his wife, 
 a lady of eminent piety and a truly heroic spir- 
 it, sustained his sinking virtue. " She told 
 him," says Whitelocke.t " she hoped he would 
 do nothing against his conscience, for fear of 
 any danger or prejudice to her or his family ; 
 and that she would be contented to suffer want, 
 or any misery with him, rather than be the oc- 
 casion for him to do or say anything against 
 his judgment or conscience." 
 
 Lord Clarendon observes that this decision 
 " proved of more advantage and credit to the 
 gentleman condemned than to the king's ser- 
 vice. Men before," he adds, "pleased them- 
 selves with doing somewhat for the king's ser- 
 vice, as a testimony of their affection, which they 
 were not bound to do ;% many really believing the 
 necessity, and therefore thinking the burden 
 reasonable. But when they heard this demand- 
 ed in a court of law as a right, and found it, by 
 sworn judges of the law, adjudged so, upon such 
 grounds and reasons as every stander-by was 
 able to swear was not law, and so had lost the 
 pleasure and delight of being kind and dutiful to 
 the king ; and instead of giving were required 
 to pay, and by a logic that left no man anything 
 which he might call his own ; when they saw 
 in a court of law (that law that gave them title 
 to, and possession of, all that they had) rea- 
 sons of state urged as elements of law, judges 
 as sharpsighted as secretaries of state, and in 
 
 * Hutton was a friend of Lord Weutworth's, and address- 
 ed a long and curious letter to him, exculpatory of the hon- 
 est course he pursued on this question. I subjoin a char- 
 acteristic extract from the lord-deputy's reply : " Con- 
 sidering it is agreed by common consent that in time of 
 public danger and necessity such a levy may be made, and 
 that the king is therein sole judge how or in what manner 
 or proportion it is to be gathered, 1 conceive it was out of 
 humour opposed by Hambdeu, beyond the modesty of a sub- 
 ject, and that reverence wherein we ought to have so gra- 
 cious a sovereign ; it being ever to be understood, the pros- 
 pects of kings into mysteries of state are so far exceeding- 
 those of ordinary common persons, as they be able to discern 
 and prevent dangers to the public afar off, which others 
 shall not so much as dream of till they feel the unavoidable 
 stripes and smart of them upon their naked shoulders ; be- 
 sides, the mischief which threatens states and people are 
 not always those which become the object of every vulgar 
 eye, but then commonly of most danger when least discov- 
 ered nay, very often, if unseasonably over early published, 
 albeit privately known to the king long before, might rather 
 nflame than remedy the evil ; therefore it is a safe rule for 
 us all, in the fear of God, to remit these supreme watches 
 o that regal power, whose peculiar indeed it is ; submit 
 ourselves in these high considerations to his ordinance, as 
 >eing no other than the ordinance of God itself ; and rather 
 attend upon his will, with confidence in his justice, belief 
 n his wisdom, assurance in his parental affections to his 
 ubjects and kingdoms, than feed ourselves with the curi- 
 ous questions, with the vain flatteries of imaginary liberty, 
 which, had we even our silly wishes and conceits, were we 
 o frame a new Commonwealth even to our own fancy, 
 night yet, in conclusion, leave ourselves less free, less hap- 
 iy than now, thanks be to God and his majesty, we are, 
 iay, ought justly to be, reputed by every moderate-minded 
 Christian." t Memorials, p. 25. 
 
 t But they were, before the decision, bound to obey the 
 ax, and that by sharper conditions than attended any other 
 levy. These and other expressions of Lord Clarendon in the 
 extract are artful misrepresentations, easily seen through: 
 the extract is very valuable evidence, notwithstanding.
 
 160 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the mysteries of state, judgment of law ground- 
 ed upon matter of fact, of which there was nei- 
 ther inquiry nor proof, and no reasons given for 
 the tax in question but what included the 
 estates of all the standers-by, they no more 
 looked upon it as the case of one man, but the 
 case of the kingdom, nor as an imposition laid 
 upon them by the king, but by the judges, which 
 they thought themselves bound in conscience 
 to the public justice not to submit to." In oth- 
 er words, the event justified the policy of the 
 leaders of the people, and they now quietly re- 
 sumed their former position, hopeful and de- 
 termined. Laud soon wrote to Wentworth 
 that the " faction are grown very bold, and the 
 king's moneys come in a great deal more slow- 
 ly than they did in former years, and that to a 
 very considerable sum ;"* and Whitelocke 
 closes his description of the proceedings with 
 these words : " Hampden and many others of 
 quality and interest in their counties were un- 
 satisfied with the judgment, and continued, 
 with the utmost of their power, in opposition 
 to it, yet could not at that time give any other 
 stop or hinderance ; but it remained, alia mente 
 repostum." 
 
 Leaving it thus, for a time, in the minds of 
 Pym and Hampden, it is now necessary in 
 completion of such a sketch of the present gov- 
 ernment of England as will be thought essen- 
 tial to a right judgment of the exertions of 
 Pym's latter life that I should slightly revert 
 to Laud's administration of religious affairs. 
 It was frightfully consistent with the view that 
 has been furnished of the condition of civil 
 matters. The barbarous punishment of Leigh- 
 ton^ the Scotch divine ; the cruel persecution 
 of Balmerinot at Edinburgh ; the shocking se- 
 verities that were practised upon Prynne, Bur- 
 ton, and Bastwick,^ need only be alluded to to 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 170. 
 
 t See Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 55; Whitelocke, p. 15; 
 Neal, vol. i., p. 547 ; aud see Laud's Diary for November 
 16, 1630. 
 
 t See Carte, vol. iv., p. 222. State Trials, vol. iii., &c. 
 
 Q See Laud's Diary ; Neal's History of the Puritans ; 
 Rushworth, vol. ii., p. 220, et seg. Heylin's Life of Laud, 
 249, <fec. Garrard writes to Lord Wentworth : " Some few 
 days after the end of the term, in the palace-yard two pil- 
 lories were erected, and there the sentence of Star Cham- 
 ber against Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne was executed : 
 they stood two hours in the pillory ; Burton by himself, be- 
 ing degraded in the High Commission Court three days be- 
 fore. The place was full of people, who cried and howled 
 terribly, especially when Burton was cropt. Dr. Bastwick 
 was very merry : his wife, Dr. Foe's daughter, got a stool, 
 and kissed him ; his ears being cut off, she called for them, 
 and put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them 
 away with her. Bastwick told the people, the lords had 
 collar-days at court, but this was his collar-day, rejoycing 
 much in it. Since, warrants are sent from the lords to the 
 sheriffs of the several counties where they are to be im- 
 prisoned, to receive them aud see them placed. Also Dr. 
 Layton, homo ejusdemfarinae, censured seven years since, 
 and now prisoner in the Fleet, is removed to some remote 
 prison of the kingdom." From that prison Leighton was 
 not released till ten years after, when he had lost sight, 
 hearing, and the use of his limbs ! Another of the lord- 
 deputy's correspondents had before described the mutila- 
 tion of Prynne : " No mercy showed to Prynne : he stood 
 in the pillory, and lost his first ear in a pillory in the pal- 
 ace at Westminster in full term, his other in Cheapside ; 
 where, while he stood, his volumes were burned under his 
 nose, which had almost suffocated him." Lastly, Laud 
 himself wrote thus to Wentworth : " I have done expect- 
 ing of thorow on this side, and therefore shall betake my- 
 self to that which you say, and I believe, is the next best ; 
 and yet I would not give over neither. But what can you 
 think of thorow where there shall be such slips in business 
 of consequence ? What say you to it that Prynne and his 
 followers should be suffered to talk what they pleased 
 
 recall the horror and disgust with which their 
 sufferings have passed into history. The very 
 name of toleration was banished from England. 
 A refusal to attend divine worship in the par- 
 ish church was, in all persons, without excep- 
 tion, punished in the first instance by fine, and 
 on a repetition of such refusal by transporta- 
 tion. Popish recusants, indeed, were allowed 
 to compound for these penalties by a heavy an- 
 nual payment ; and the celebration of mass, 
 though illegal, was connived at ; but no similar 
 indulgence was extended to the religious ser- 
 vices of Protestant dissenters. The dissenting 
 ministers, in point of fact, did not yet form a 
 distinct class ; they were, with very rare ex- 
 ceptions, ordained and beneficed clergy of the 
 English Church ; and being thus lawfully sub- 
 ject to the authority of their diocesan, the 
 means of detecting and punishing their devia- 
 tions from conformity were easy and obvious. 
 Accordingly, from Laud they found no quarter. 
 At the thought of every episcopal visitation the 
 clergy groaned and trembled. Lecturers were 
 peremptorily s lenced ; domestic chaplains in 
 the houses of private gentlemen punished, and 
 their patrons ordered to attend their parish 
 churches ; while the parochial clergy, where 
 non- conformable, were fined, suspended, in 
 some cases deprived, and ultimately, in very 
 many instances, driven out of England with 
 the more zealous of their followers, happy to 
 escape without some mutilation of their per- 
 sons, for scarcely a sitting of the Star Chamber 
 passed without its victim, and its consequent 
 exhibition, in the public streets, of some scene 
 of bloody human agony ! On one occasion, 
 while Lilburne and Wharton, after having suf- 
 fered a severe whipping, were standing ex- 
 posed in the pillory, news was carried to the 
 Star Chamber that Wharton, unsilenced by his 
 suffering or his shame, was scattering pamph- 
 lets about and haranguing the mob ; and the 
 court, happening to be sitting at the moment, 
 made an order that he should be gagged, and 
 the order was executed instantly ! Prynne, 
 having had his old ears stitched to his head, 
 " relapsed," as Garrard expresses it, " into new 
 errors," and again suffered a mutilation of the 
 fragments ! Meanwhile, the language of Went- 
 worth and Laud held out no hope of change. 
 " Go it as it shall please God with me," wrote 
 Wentworth, " believe me, my lord, I will be 
 still thorough and thoroughout, one and the same.* 
 The cure of this grievous and over-spreading 
 leprosy is, in my weak judgment, to be effected 
 rather by corrosives than lenitives ; less than 
 thorough will not overcome it : there is a can- 
 cerous malignity in it, which must be cut forth !" 
 What wonder if, in the midst of all this fright- 
 ful despotism over the property and conscien- 
 ces of men, large numbers of the English peo- 
 ple now sent their thoughts across the wide 
 Atlantic towards the New World that had ris- 
 en beyond its waters ! Such were the gloomy 
 apprehensions and terrors with which the Old 
 World was filled, that only two alternatives 
 
 while they stood in the pillory, and win acclamations from 
 the people, and have notes taken of what they spake, and 
 those notes spread in written copies about the city, and 
 that when they went out of town to their several imprison- 
 ments, there were thousands suffered to be upon the way 
 to take their leave, and God knows what else J" 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. i., p. 298.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 161 
 
 indeed now seemed to many persons to remain : 
 that, as May expresses it,* " Things carried so 
 far on in a wrong way must needs either en- 
 slave themselves and posterity forever, or re- 
 quire a vindication so sharp and smarting as 
 that the nation would groan under it." Too 
 weak to contemplate the last alternative, and 
 too virtuous to submit to the first, crowds of 
 victims! to the tyranny of Church and State 
 now accordingly left their homes and their 
 country, willing to encounter any sufferings, 
 privations, and dangers in the distant wilder- 
 ness they sought, because of the one sole hope 
 they had, that there, at least, would be found 
 some rest and refuge for liberty, for religion, 
 for humanity ! 
 
 So extensive, however, did the emigration 
 threaten to become, that Laud thought it ne- 
 cessary to interfere at last, and with a refine- 
 ment of tyranny of which, it has been truly 
 said, the annals of persecution afford few equally 
 strong examples to seek to deprive the con- 
 scientious sufferers of that last and most mel- 
 ancholy of all resources, a rude, and distant, 
 and perpetual exile. On the 1st of May, 1638, 
 eight ships bound for New England, and filled 
 with Puritan families, were arrested in the 
 Thames by an order in council. It has been a 
 very popular " rumour of history," that among 
 the passengers in one of those vessels were 
 Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and Hazelrig. 
 
 Were this anecdote authentic, the hand of 
 fate had been visible upon Charles indeed ! But 
 there is no good authority:): for it, and it is de- 
 ficient in all the moral evidences of truth. The 
 mind cannot bring itself to imagine the spirits 
 of such men as these yielding so easily to the 
 despair of country ; and at this moment Hamp- 
 den was the " argument of all tongues" for his 
 resistance to ship-money, while to Pym the vis- 
 ion of the fatal meeting to which he had sum- 
 moned Wentworth now became daily more and 
 more distinct. Nor are we wanting of absolute 
 circumstances of proof, obvious enough to me, 
 of the utter incorrectness of the statement. In 
 the same part of Rush worth's Collections where 
 the original order is to be found, a subsequent 
 proclamation may be seen also, wherein, after 
 stating the seizure of the ships, the following 
 passage occurs : " Howbeit, upon the humble 
 petition of the merchants, passengers, and own- 
 ers of the ships now bound for New England, 
 and upon the reasons by them represented to 
 the board, his majesty was graciously pleased 
 to free them from their late restraint, to pro- 
 ceed in their intended voyage."^ So that, in 
 
 * History of the Long Parliament, p. 17. 
 
 t " The plantations of Ormond and Clare," writes Laud 
 to Wentworth at this time, " are a marvellous great work 
 for the honour and profit of the king and safety of that king- 
 dom, and you have done very nobly to follow that business 
 so close ; but I am sorry to read in your letters that you 
 want men extremely to fill that work ; and this is the more 
 considerable a great deal, that you should want men in Ire- 
 land, and that, the while, there should be here such a uni- 
 versal running to New England, and God knows whither ; 
 but this it is, when men think nothing is their advantage but 
 to run from government. As for your being left alone in 
 the envious and thorny part of the work, that is no news at 
 least to me, who am forced to the like here, scarce a man 
 appearing where the way is rough indeed." 
 
 t The only known authorities are Dr. George Bates and 
 Dujjdale, both zealous Royalists, and, on this point, quite 
 beneath ronsideration. 
 
 Q See Rushworth.vol. ii., p. 409, and see Aikin's Charles, 
 vol. i., p. 473. 
 
 X 
 
 fact, there is no reason for supposing that all 
 who had embarked for New England on board 
 the eight ships alluded to did not proceed to 
 New England. No doubt they did so. 
 
 The anecdote in question, however, is not 
 without ground of a certain kind. Some years 
 before its date, the attention of the leading men 
 among the patriots had been strongly directed 
 to the subject of the colonization of part of the 
 North American Continent, with a view to its 
 affording a refuge of safety and comfort to such 
 of their party or their families as the sad troub- 
 les which impended over England might force 
 from their homes. The subject had occupied 
 even Eliot's thoughts in his prison, as a pas- 
 sage from one of Hampden's letters to him may 
 serve to show. " The paper of considerations 
 concerning the Plantation might be very safely 
 conveyed to me by this hand, and after trans- 
 cribing, should be as safely returned, if you 
 vouchsafe to send it to me."* The result of 
 all this consideration of the subject was the 
 purchase of a large grant of land in the name 
 of Lord Brook, and Lord Say and Sele ; and in 
 1635, according to Horace Walpole, these two 
 lords " sent over Mr. George Fenwick to pre- 
 pare a retreat for them and their friends, in 
 consequence of which a little town was built, 
 and called by their joint names Saybrooke."t 
 Now in this scheme there can be little doubt 
 that Hampden was concerned ; and I have 
 found certain evidence, in Garrard's letters to 
 Lord Strafford, that Pym was a party to it. 
 " Our East India Company," writes that inde- 
 fatigable newsmonger, " have this week two 
 ships come home, which a little revives them. 
 The traders also into the Isle of Providence, 
 who are the Earl of Warwick, the Lord Say, 
 the Lord Mandeville, the Lord Brook, Sir Ben- 
 jamin Rudyard, Mr. Pym, and others, have ta- 
 ken a prize, sent home worth 15,000 by vir- 
 tue of letters of marque granted to the planters 
 there by his majesty for some injuries done 
 them by the Spaniard."* The date of this let- 
 ter is December, 1637 ; and from that date, as 
 the prospects of the court darkened, the hopes 
 of Pym and Hampden must have grown with 
 the passage of every day. 
 
 Time and fate soon pressed in hard, indeed, 
 upon the government of Charles. Driven to 
 the close of every expedient, his last hope cen- 
 tred in the Lord-deputy of Ireland, and Went- 
 worth's capacity and vigour had now twice re- 
 stored the court finances and paid the king's 
 debts. Ruin again impended, when Laud, as 
 if to dash at once into the gulf, made a despe- 
 rate attempt to impose the yoke of the Com- 
 mon Prayer Book upon the Scotch people. A 
 fool might have seen the result, and indeed one 
 fool did see it, and was whipped for his folly. 
 I do not know that it has been remarked be- 
 fore, but the disgrace of the famous Archy, the 
 jester of Charles I., took place at this time. 
 " Archy is fallen into a great misfortune," writes 
 a letter of the time. " A fool he would be, but 
 a foul-mouthed knave he hath proved himself; 
 being in a tavern in Westminster, drunk, he 
 saith himself, he was speaking of the Scottish 
 
 * Eliot MSS. in Lord Eliot's possession, 
 t See Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, 
 vol. ii., p. 352, ed. Park. 
 
 i Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 140.
 
 162 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 business, he fell a railing on my Lord of Canter- 
 bury, said he was a monk, a rogue, and a traitor. 
 Of this his grace complained at council, the 
 king being present : it was ordered he should 
 be carried to the porter's lodge, his coat pulled 
 over his ears, and kicked out of the court, nev- 
 er to enter within the gates, and to be called 
 into the Star Chamber. The first part is done, 
 but my Lord of Canterbury hath interceded to 
 the king that there it should end. There is a 
 new fool in his place, Muckle John, but he will 
 never be so rich, for he cannot abide money." 
 This last must have seemed a fool indeed ! 
 
 The affairs of Scotland belong to general 
 history, and require only a brief mention here. 
 Suffice it, then, to say, that after several months' 
 alternation of persecution and negotiations, the 
 Scottish people remained firm. Most truly has 
 it been said of the conduct of the Covenanters, 
 that the display they now made of fearless pur- 
 pose, and even of fearless reason ; of unwea- 
 ried, unwinking energy and sagacity ; of ardour 
 without violence, and enthusiasm without ex- 
 travagance, has done imperishable honour to 
 the Scottish character. Why should it be de- 
 nied that Pym, Hampden, and others of the 
 English opposition placed themselves immedi- 
 ately in communication with those men? It 
 stands upon the authority of Whitelocke, and 
 may not be denied. With the dawning of the 
 fierce opposition in Scotland to the frightful tyr- 
 anny of conscience attempted by Laud, sprang 
 up the consummation of the hopes entertained 
 during twelve long years of oppression by Pym 
 and Hampden, that a day for the liberties of 
 England would still come. Let the friends of 
 Charles I. make what use of the admission 
 they please, it is quite certain that at the Lon- 
 don meetings of the Scotch commissioners from 
 the Covenant, headed by Lords Loudon and 
 Dumferling, not only Pym and Hampden took 
 an active part, but also Lords Essex, Holland, 
 Bedford, and Say. 
 
 Meanwhile Lord Wentworth stood by the 
 side of Charles in England, and a war was re- 
 solved upon against the Scottish people. The 
 lord-deputy's unparalleled exertions at this pe- 
 riod have been already described,* but the si- 
 lent efforts of Pym and Hampden flung them 
 powerless back, and all the attempts at loans and 
 ship-money levies now fell flat to the ground. 
 The strong spirit of hope was in truth again 
 gone forth among all classes of men, and that 
 word which had been proscribed by Charles 
 twelve years before, was again heard as a fa- 
 miliar word in England. 
 
 A Parliament, it was resolved, should be in- 
 stantly summoned. Wentworth was created 
 Lord Strafford ; returned to Ireland as lord- 
 lieutenant ; called a Parliament there ; pro- 
 cured a large sum of money from them, with a 
 farther offer of " their persons and estates," if 
 required ; and in the beginning of April return- 
 ed to England. The example of the Irish Par- 
 liament would, it was vainly hoped, influence 
 the Parliament of England. Meanwhile, the 
 elections for members had been concluded 
 without a single demonstration of tumult in 
 any part of the country ; and on the 3d of 
 April, 1640, the king opened the houses in per- 
 son, and in the midst of a larger number of 
 * See Life of Strafford, p. 117. 
 
 members of the Commons than had ever been 
 known to assemble on the first day of the ses- 
 sion. His speech was equally short and un- 
 gracious. " My lords and gentlemen," he said, 
 " there never was a king that had a mor-e great 
 and weighty cause to call his people together 
 than myself: I will not trouble you with the 
 particulars. I have informed my lord-keeper, 
 and command him to speak, and desire your 
 attention."* The lord-keeper's speech was in 
 the absurdest strain of high prerogative. He 
 observed that " his majesty's kingly resolutions 
 were seated in the ark of his sacred breast, 
 and it were a presumption of too high a nature 
 for any Uzzah uncalled to touch it ; yet," he 
 continued, " the king is now pleased to lay by 
 the shining beams of majesty, as Phoebus did 
 to Phaeton, that the distance between sover- 
 eignty and subjection should not bar you from 
 that filial freedom of access to his person and 
 councils ; only let us beware how, like the son 
 of Clymene, we aim not at the guiding of the 
 chariot." He proceeded subsequently to say, 
 " that his majesty did not expect advice from 
 them, much less that they should interpose in 
 any office of mediation, which would not be 
 grateful to him ; but that they should, as soon 
 as might be, give his majesty a supply, and that 
 he would give them time enough afterward to 
 represent any grievances to him."t 
 
 " The House," proceeds Lord Clarendon, 
 who on this occasion made his first entrance 
 into the House of Commons as Edward Hyde, 
 member for the borough of Wootton-Basset, 
 " met always at eight of the clock, and rose at 
 twelve, which were the old Parliament hours, 
 that the committees, upon whom the greatest 
 burden of business lay, might have the after- 
 noons for their preparation and despatch. It 
 was not the custom to enter upon any impor- 
 tant business during the first fortnight, both 
 because many members used to be absent so 
 long, and that time was usually thought neces- 
 sary for the appointment and nomination of 
 committees, and for other ceremonies and 
 preparations that were usual ; but there was 
 no regard now to that custom ; and the ap- 
 pearance of the members was very great, there 
 having been a large time between the issuing 
 out of the writs and the meeting of the Parlia- 
 ment, so that all elections were made and re- 
 turned, and everybody was willing to fall to the 
 
 . 
 
 A leader only was wanting ; and in this great 
 position, by the common consent of all, Pym 
 now placed himself. As he looked round the 
 seats, crowded as they were with members, 
 what gaps must have appeared in them to him ! 
 The line of his early friends and associates was 
 broken indeed. " The long intermission of 
 Parliament," observes Clarendon, " had worn 
 out most of those who had been acquainted 
 with the rules and orders observed in those 
 conventions." Sir Edward Coke and Sir Rob- 
 ert Philips^ were dead now, and Sir John Eliot 
 
 * Rushworth, vol. iii. (part second), p. 1114. Rushworth 
 was appointed, this session, clerk-assistant to the House of 
 Commons. t See Clarendon, vol. i., p. 233. 
 
 i Clarendon's History, vol. i., p. 233-234. 
 
 t> " Sir Robert Philips," wrote Garrard to the lord-depu- 
 ty on the 10th of May, 1638, " Sir Robert Philips, your old 
 acquaintance, has died of a cold choked with phlegm." 
 Strafford Papers, vol. ii., p. 164.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 163 
 
 had perished in his prison. But it was a great 
 and redeeming consolation to Pym that Hamp- 
 den still sat by his side, and that up to the close 
 of their illustrious career the most intimate 
 private friendship henceforth united them even 
 more closely, if that were possible, than the 
 great public objects they pursued in common. 
 Hitherto Hampden had been " rather of reputa- 
 tion in his own country than of public discourse 
 or fame in the kingdom ;" but the business of 
 ship-money had made him the argument of all 
 tongues ; and to the toils and perils of public 
 life he n>>w, by Pym's side, entirely devoted 
 himself. He brought up all his family to Lon- 
 don from their seat in Buckinghamshire, which 
 only at a few chance intervals he ever saw 
 again ; and it is an additional proof of the close 
 intimacy I speak of, that henceforward they 
 lived in lodgings near Pym's house,* which was 
 then in Gray's Inn Lane, until the commence- 
 ment of the following Parliament, when Pym 
 having changed his residence to Westminster, 
 Hampden removed there also.f Before the 
 meeting of the present Parliament, I should 
 also mention, they had ridden together through 
 several of the English counties, less with the 
 view, as Anthony a Wood states, of " promo- 
 ting elections of the Puritanical brethren," than 
 of urging the people to meet and send petitions 
 to the House of Commons as soon as possible 
 after it had assembled. Petitioning Parliament 
 was first organized thus, as a system, by Pym 
 and Hampden. The result was sensibly felt 
 the day after the delivery of the king's speech, 
 when several county members rose and pre- 
 sented petitions from their respective counties,t 
 complaining of ship-money projects and monop- 
 olies, the Star Chamber and High Commission 
 courts, and other heavy grievances. Hence 
 though the king had, at the close of the lord- 
 keeper's speech the day before, distinctly asked 
 of the House that they should proceed at once 
 to the consideration of the Scotch business 
 with a view to supplies, and for this purpose 
 had specially ordered the lord-keeper's speech 
 and his own to be entered on the journals 
 even the Royalist members of the House could 
 not but recognise, after the presentation of 
 such a series of petitions from the people they 
 represented, a certain sort of " divided duty." 
 This was exactly the occasion Pym had sought, 
 and he availed himself of it. 
 
 " While men gazed upon each other," says 
 Lord Clarendon, " looking who should begin 
 (much the greater part having never before sat 
 in Parliament), Mr. Pym, a man of good repu- 
 tation,^ but much better known afterward, who 
 had been as long in those assemblies as any 
 man then living, brake the ice ; and in a set 
 discourse of above two hours, after mention of 
 the king with profound reverence, and com- 
 mendation of his wisdom and justice, he ob- 
 served, ' that by the long intermission of Par- 
 liaments many unwarrantable things had been 
 practised, notwithstanding the great virtue of 
 his majesty ;' and then enumerated all the proj- 
 ects which had been set on foot ; all the ille- 
 
 * See Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden, vol. i., p. 
 296. t See Clarendon's Life. 
 
 $ Rushworth, vol. iii., p. 1131. 
 
 Q Whitelocke thus describes him : " Master Pym, an an- 
 cient gentleman of great experience in Parliamentary af- 
 fairs, and no less known fidelity to his country." 
 
 gal proclamations which had been published, 
 and the proceedings which had been upon those 
 proclamations ; the judgment upon ship-money, 
 and many grievances which related to the ec- 
 clesiastical jurisdiction ; summing up shortly 
 and sharply all that most reflected upon the 
 prudence and justice of the government, and 
 concluding ' that he had only laid that scheme 
 before them that they might see how much work 
 they had, to do to satisfy their country, the method 
 and manner of the doing whereof he left to 
 their wisdoms.' " To this may be added the 
 characteristic description given by May, the 
 historian of the Long Parliament : " Master 
 Pym, a grave and religious gentleman, in a 
 long speech of almost two hours, recited a cat- 
 alogue of the grievances which at that time lay 
 heavy on the Commonwealth, of which many 
 abbreviated copies, as extracting the heads only, 
 were with great greediness taken by gentlemen, 
 and others throughout the kingdom, for it was not 
 then in fashion to print speeches of Parlia- 
 ment." 
 
 The effect of this speech was so extraordi- 
 nary throughout England, that it has been made 
 matter of general comment with all the histo- 
 rians of the period. The only reference they 
 are able to give, however, is to the abstract 
 supplied by Rushworth ;* and this seemed to 
 me to be so unsatisfactory a version, that I 
 commenced a search among the pamphlets at 
 the British Museum, in the hope that some pub- 
 lication of a speech that had produced such re- 
 sults, and which might possibly have taken 
 place with Pym's authority, had escaped the 
 notice of the indefatigable collector. This hope 
 was not disappointed ; and some extensive ex- 
 tracts shall now be laid before the reader, from 
 a report 'which received the subsequent correc- 
 tion of Pym himself. These extracts are re- 
 markable on every account : they do not simply 
 illustrate the period better than any laboured 
 history can ; they will be found to mark, also, 
 most emphatically, a certain grave and subdued 
 style and manner in the speaker, which singu- 
 larly contrasts with his tone at the meeting of 
 the Parliament that followed. It is as though 
 he spoke and doubtless he did speak with the 
 thorough knowledge that, as the present Par- 
 liament had been called by the king, the next 
 was to be forced into existence by the people. 
 The report is given in the third person, and 
 opens thus : 
 
 " Never Parliament had greater businesses 
 to dispatch, nor more difficulties to encounter ; 
 therefore wee have reason to take all advanta- 
 ges of order and addresse, and hereby wee shall 
 not only doe our owne worke, but dispose and 
 inable ourselves for the better satisfaction of 
 his majestie's desire of supply. The grievances 
 being removed, our affections will carry us with 
 speede and cheerefulnesse, to give his majestic 
 that which may be sufficient both for his hon- 
 our and support. Those that in the very firet 
 place shall endeavour to redresse the grievan- 
 ces, will be found not to hinder, but to bee the 
 best furtherers of his majestie's service. Hee 
 that takes away weights doth as much advantage 
 motion as he that addeth wings. Divers pieces 
 of this maine worke have heene already pro- 
 pounded ; his endeavour should be to present 
 
 * Vol. iii., p. 1131. Old. Purl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 425.
 
 164 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to the House a modell of the whole. In the | 
 creation, God made the world according to that i 
 idea or forme whicn was eternally pre-existent I 
 in the divine minde. Moses was commanded 
 to frame the tabernacle after the patterne shew- 
 ed him in the mount. Those actions are seldome 
 well perfected in the execution which are not first 
 well moulded in the designe and proposition." 
 
 In such passages as these, for abundance of 
 argument, and weight, no less than closeness 
 of reasoning, the eloquence of Pym approaches 
 to the more deliberate compositions of Lord 
 Bacon. 
 
 " He said he would labour to contract those 
 manifold affaires, both of the Church and State, 
 which did so earnestly require the wisdome and 
 faithfulnesse of this House, into a double meth- 
 od of grievances and cures. And because there 
 wanted not some who pretended that these 
 things wherewith the Commonwealth is now 
 grieved are much for the advantage of the king, 
 and that the redresse of them will be to his 
 majestie's great disadvantage and losse (hee 
 said), he doubted not but to make it appeare 
 that in discovering the present great distem- 
 pers and disorders, and procuring remedie for 
 them, we should bee no lesse serviceable to his 
 majestic, who hath summoned us to this great 
 councell, than usefull to those whom we doe 
 here represent. For the better effecting where- 
 of he propounded three maine branches of his 
 discourse. In the first (he said) he would offer 
 them the severall heads of some principal! 
 grievances under which the kingdome groaned. 
 In the second he undertook to prove that the 
 disorders from whence those grievances issued 
 were as hurtfull to the king as to the people. 
 In the third he would advise such a way of 
 healing and removing those grievances as might 
 bee equally effectuall to maintaine the honour 
 and greatnesse of the king, and to procure the 
 prosperitie and contentment of the people. 
 
 " In the handling whereof he promised to 
 use such expressions as might mitigate the 
 sharpnesse and bitternesse of those things 
 whereof he was to speake, so far as his duty 
 and faithfulnesse would allow. It is a great 
 prerogative to the king, and a great honour at- 
 tributed to him, in a rnaxime of our law, that 
 he can doe no wrong ; he is the fountaine of 
 justice; and, if there be any injustice in the 
 execution of his commands, the law casts it 
 upon the ministers, and frees the king. Actim- 
 tie, life, and vigour are conveyed into the sublu- 
 nary creatures by the influence of Heaven; but 
 the malignitie and distemper, the cause of so many 
 epidemicall diseases, doe proceed from the noysome 
 vapours of the earth, or some ill affected qualities 
 of the aire, without any infection or alteration of 
 those pure, celestiall, and incorruptible bodies. In 
 the like manner (he .said), the authoritie, the 
 power, and countenance of princes may concur 
 in the actions of evill men, without partaking 
 in the injustice and obliquitie of them. These 
 matters whereof we complaine have been pre- 
 sented to his majestie, either under the pre- 
 tence of royall prerogatives, which he is bound 
 to maintaine, or of publike good, which is the 
 most honourable object of regall wisdome. But 
 the covetous and ambitious designes of others 
 have interposed betwixt his royall intentions 
 and the happinesse of his people, making those 
 
 things pernicious and hurtfull which his majes- 
 tie apprehended as just and profitable." 
 
 How admirable is the grace and modesty of 
 expression in the first passage that follows, and 
 how thoughtful and comprehensive the tone of 
 the rest ! 
 
 " He said, the things which he was to pro- 
 pound were of a various nature, many of them 
 such as required a very tender and exquisite 
 consideration. In handling of which, as he 
 would be bold to use the libertie of the place 
 and relation wherein he stood, so he would be 
 very carefull to expresse that modestie and hu- 
 militie which might be expected by those of 
 whose actions he was to speake. And if his 
 judgement or his tongue should slip into any 
 particular mistake, he would not thinke it so great 
 a shame tofaile by his own weaknesse, as he should 
 esteem it an honour, and advantage to be corrected, 
 by the wisdome of that House to which he submitted 
 himselfe, with, this protestation, that he desired no 
 reformation so much as to rcforme himselfe. 
 
 " The greatest libertie of the kingdome is re- 
 ligion ; thereby we are freed from spirituall 
 evils, and no impositions are so grievous as those 
 that are laid upon the soule. The next great 
 libertie is justice, whereby we are preserved 
 from injuries in our persons and estates ; from 
 this is derived into the Commonwealth peace, 
 and order, and safety ; and when this is inter- 
 rupted, confusion and danger are ready to over- 
 whelm all. The third great libertie consists in 
 the power and priviledge of Parliaments ; for 
 this is the fountaine of law, the great councell 
 of the kingdome, the highest court ; this is in- 
 abled, by the legislative and consiliarie power, 
 to prevent evils to come ; by the judiciarie 
 power, to suppresse and remove evils present. 
 If you consider these three great liberties in 
 the order of dignitie, this last is inferiour to 
 the other two, as meanes are inferiour to the 
 end ; but if you consider them in the order of 
 necessitie and use, this may justly claime the 
 first place in our care, because the end cannot 
 be obtained without the meanes ; and if we 
 doe not preserve this, we cannot long hope to 
 enjoy either of the other. Therefore (he said), 
 being to speake of those grievances which lie 
 upon the kingdome, hee would observe this 
 order : 
 
 " 1. First to mention those which were 
 against the priviledge of Parliaments. 2. Those 
 which were prejudiciall to the religion estab- 
 lished in the kingdome. 3. Those which did 
 interrupt the justice of the realme in the lib- 
 ertie of our persons and propriety of our es- 
 tates. 
 
 " The priviledges of Parliament were not 
 given for the ornament or advantage of those 
 who are the members of Parliament. They 
 have a reall use and efficacie towards that 
 which is the end of Parliaments. We are free 
 from suits that we may the more intirely ad- 
 dict ourselves to the publike services ; we 
 have, therefore, libertie of speach, that our 
 counsels may not be corrupted with feare, or 
 our judgements perverted with selfe respects. 
 Those three great faculties and functions of 
 Parliament, the legislative, judiciarie, and con- 
 siliarie power, cannot be well exercised with- 
 out such priviledges as these. The wisdome of 
 our laws, the faithfulnesse of our counsels, the
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 165 
 
 righteousnesse of our judgements, can hardly 
 be kept pure and untainted if they proceed from 
 distracted and restrained mindes. 
 
 " It is a good rule of the morall philosopher, 
 Et non ladas mentem gubernatricem omnium ac- 
 tionum. These powers of Parliament are to 
 the bodie politike as the rationall faculties of 
 the soule to a man : that which keepes all the par Is 
 of 'the Commonwealth in frame and temper, ought 
 to be most carefully preserved in that freedome, 
 vigour, and activitie which belongs to its selfe. 
 Our predecessors in this House have ever beene 
 most carefull in the first place to settle and se- 
 cure their priviledges ; and (he said) he hoped 
 that we, having had greater breaches made 
 upon us than heretofore, would be no lesse ten- 
 der of them, and forward in seeking reparation 
 for that which is past, and prevention of the like 
 for the time to come. 
 
 " Then hee propounded divers particular 
 points wherein the priviledge of Parliament 
 had beene broken. First, in restraining the 
 members of the House from speaking. Sec- 
 ondly, in forbidding the speaker to put any 
 question. 
 
 " These two were practiced the last day of 
 the last Parliament (and, as was alledged, by 
 his majestie's command) ; and both of them 
 trench upon the very life and being of Parlia- 
 ments ; for if such a restraining power as this 
 should take root and bee admitted, it will be im- 
 possible for us to bring any resolution to per- 
 fection in such matters as shall displease those 
 about the king. 
 
 " Thirdly, by imprisoning divers members of 
 the House for matters done in Parliament. 
 Fourthly, by indictments, informations, and 
 judgements in ordinary and inferiour courts, 
 for speaches and proceedings in Parliaments. 
 Fifthly, by the disgraceful order of the King's 
 Bench, whereby some members of this House 
 were injoyned to put in securitie of their good 
 behaviour ; and for refusall thereof were con- 
 tinued in prison divers yeares, without any 
 particular allegation against them. One of 
 them was freed by death.* Others were not dis- 
 missedf till his majestic had declared his inten- 
 tion to summon the present Parliament. And 
 this he noted not onely as a breach of priviledge, 
 but as a violation of the common justice of the 
 kingdome. Sixthly, by the sudden and abrupt 
 dissolution of Parliaments, contrary to the law 
 and custom. 
 
 " Often hath it beene declared in Parliaments 
 that the Parliament should not be dissolved 
 till the petitions be answered. This (he said) 
 was a great grievance, because it doth prevent 
 the redresse of other grievances. It were a 
 hard case that a private man should bee put to 
 death without being heard. As this represent- 
 ative body of the Commons receives a being 
 by the summons, so it receives a civill death by 
 the dissolution. Is it not a much more heavie 
 
 * This allusion to Eliot is interesting ; and I should add 
 that, two or three days after, Pym moved " that it be re- 
 ferred to the committee of the Tower to examine after what 
 manner Sir John Eliot came to his death, his usage in the 
 Tower, and to view the rooms and places where he was im- 
 prisoned, and where he died, and to report the same to the 
 House." I have not been able to find the report. The 
 terms of the notice are very remarkable, and suggest other 
 notions besides that of Pym's affection for his old friend. 
 
 t That is, not released from bail. They were all released 
 from prison before Eliot. 
 
 doome by which we lose our being, to have 
 this civill death inflicted on us in displeasure, 
 and not to be allowed time and libertie to an- 
 swer for ourselves 1 that we should not onely 
 die, but have this mark of infamy laid upon us ? 
 to bee made intestabiles, disabled to make our 
 wills, to dispose of our businesse, as this House 
 hath always used to doe before adjournments 
 or dissolutions 1 Yet this hath often beene our 
 case ! We have not beene permitted to poure 
 out our last sighes and groanes into the bo- 
 some of our deare soveraigne. The words of 
 dying men are full of piercing affections ; if we 
 might bee heard to speake, no doubt we should 
 so fully expresse our love and faithfulnesse to 
 our prince, as might take off the false sugges- 
 tions and aspercions of others : at least we 
 should in our humble supplications recommend 
 some such things to him in the name of his 
 people as would make for his owne honour and 
 the publike good of his kingdome. 
 
 " Thus he concluded the first sort of griev- 
 ances, being such as were against the priviledge 
 of Parliament, and passed on to the next, con- 
 cerning religion, all which hee conveyed under 
 these four heads. The first was the great en- 
 couragement given to poperie, of which he pro- 
 duced these particular evidences: 1. A sus- 
 pension of all laws against Papists, whereby 
 they enjoy a free and almost publike exercise 
 of that religion. Those good statutes which 
 were made for restraint of idolatrie and super- 
 stition are now a ground of securitie to them 
 in the practice of both, being used to no other end 
 but to get money into the king's purse ; which, as 
 it is clearly against the intentions of the law, 
 so it is full of mischiefe to the kingdome." 
 
 Here Pym interposed a few words, which 
 vindicate his memory from the charge that has 
 so often beene urged against it, of religious big- 
 otry and intolerance. Laud's indulgences to 
 the Catholics may possibly be thought now- 
 adays, and justly so thought, unworthy of ei- 
 ther regret or blame ; but let the reader place 
 himself in the position of a Protestant Noncon- 
 formist of that period, and think of the hard- 
 ships he would have suffered for refusing to 
 bow his conscience to certain prescribed for- 
 mulae in doctrine and ceremoniall, and contrast 
 them next with these Catholic indulgences ; 
 or, considering himself only as a statesman 
 bent on the achievement of responsible govern- 
 ment, let him, knowing the connexion in that 
 day of popery with absolute power, observe 
 the eager servility with which the " indulged" 
 Catholics sought to make themselves, upon ev- 
 ery occasion, the most active instruments of 
 Charles's despotism. Thoroughly was Pym 
 justified in saying what follows ! 
 
 " By this means a dangerous party is cher- 
 ished and increased, who are ready to close 
 with any opportunitie of disturbing the peace 
 and safety of the state. Yet (hee said) hee did 
 not desire any new laics against poperie, or any 
 rigorous courses in the execution of those alreadie 
 in force : he was far from seeking the ruin of their 
 persons or estates ; onely he icish't they might be 
 kept in such a condition as should restraine them 
 from doing hurt. 
 
 " It may bee objected, there are moderate 
 and discreet men amongst them, men of es- 
 tates, such as have an interest in the peace
 
 166 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and prosperitie of the kingdome as well as wee. 
 These (hee said) were not to be considered ac- 
 cording to their owne disposition, but according 
 to the nature of the body whereof they are par- 
 ties. The planets have severall and particular 
 motions of their owne, yet they are all rapt and 
 transported into a contrarie course by the su- 
 perior orbe which comprehends them all. The 
 principles of poperie are such as are incompat- 
 ible with any other religion. There may be a 
 suspension of violence for some by certain re- 
 spects ; but the ultimate end even of that mod- 
 eration is, that they may with more advantage 
 extirpate that which is opposite to them. Laws 
 will not restrain them oathes will not. The 
 pope can dispense with both these, and where 
 there is occasion, his command will move them 
 to the disturbance of the realme, against their 
 owne private disposition yea, against their 
 owne reason and judgement to obey him ; to 
 whom they have (especially the Jesuiticall par- 
 ty) absolutely and intirely obliged themselves, 
 not onely in spiritual matters, but in temporal, 
 as they are in order ad spiritualia. Henry III. 
 and Henry IV. of France were no Protestants 
 themselves, yet were murthered because they 
 tolerated the Protestants. The king and the 
 kingdome can have no securitie but in their 
 weaknesse and disabilitie to do hurt. 
 
 " 2. A second incouragement is their admis- 
 sion into places of power and trust in the Com- 
 monwealth, whereby they get many depend- 
 ants and adherents, not onely of their owne, but 
 even of such as make profession to be Protest- 
 ants. 3. A third, their freedome of resorting 
 to London and the court, whereby they have 
 opportunitie, not onely of communicating their 
 counsels and designes one to another, but of 
 diving into his majestie's counsels, by the fre- 
 quent accesse of those who are active men 
 amongst them, to the tables and company of 
 great men ; and, under subtile pretences and 
 disguises, they want not means of cherishing 
 their owne projects, and of indeavouring to 
 mould and biasse the publike affairs to the great 
 advantage of that partie. 4. A fourth, that as 
 they have a congregation of cardinals at ROme, 
 to consider of the aptest wayes and means of 
 establishing the pope's authoritie and religion in 
 England, so they have a nuncio here, to act 
 and dispose that partie to the execution of those 
 counsels, and, by the assistance of such cun- 
 ning and Jesuiticall spirits as swarm in this 
 town, to order and manage all actions and 
 events to the furtherance of that maine end. 
 
 " The second grievance of religion was from 
 those manifold innovations lately introduced 
 Into several parts of the kingdome, all inclining 
 to poperie, and disposing and fitting men to 
 entertain it. The particulars were these : 1. 
 Divers of the chiefest points of religion in dif- 
 ference betwixt us and the Papists have beene 
 publikely defended, in licensed bookes, in ser- 
 mons, in universitie acts and disputations. 2. 
 Divers popish ceremonies have beene not only 
 practised, but countenanced, yea, little less 
 than injoyned, as altars, images, crucifixes, 
 bowings, and other gestures and observances,* 
 which put upon our churches a shape and face 
 of poperie. Hee compared this to the drie bones 
 
 * See the Life of Eliot, p. 30 ; and Life of Stratford, p. 
 99-101. 
 
 in Ezekiel. First, they came together ; then the 
 sinews and the flesh came upon them ; after this 
 the skin covered them ; and then breath and life 
 icas put into them ! So (hee said"), after these 
 men had moulded us into an outward forme and 
 visage of poperie, they would more boldly endeav- 
 our to breathe into us the spirit of life and poperie. 
 
 "The third grievance was the countenan- 
 cing and preferring those men who were most 
 forward in setting up such innovations : the 
 particulars were so well knowne that they need- 
 ed not to be named. 
 
 "" The fourth was the discouragement of those 
 who were knowne to bee most conscionable 
 and faithful! professors of the truth. Some of 
 the wayes of effecting this he observed to be 
 these : The courses taken to inforce and Marge 
 those unhappy differences, for matters of small mo- 
 ment, which have beene amongst ourselves, and to 
 raise up new occasions of further division, 
 whereby many have beene induced to forsake the 
 land, not seeing the end of those voluntarie 
 and human injunctions in things appertaining 
 to God's worship. Those who are indeed lov- 
 ers of religion, and of the .churches of God, 
 would seek to make up those breaches, and to 
 unite us more entirely against the common 
 enemie. 2. The over-rigid prosecution of those 
 who are scrupulous in using some things injoyned, 
 which are held by those who injoyn them to be in 
 themselves indifferent. It hath beene ever the 
 desire of this House, exprest in many Parlia- 
 ments in Queene Elizabeth's time and since, 
 that such might be tenderly used. It was one 
 of our petitions delivered at Oxford to his maj- 
 estie that now is ; but what little moderation 
 it hath produced is not unknowne to us all ! 
 Any other vice almost may be better endured in a 
 minister than inconformitie ! 3. The unjust pun- 
 ishments and vexations of sundry persons for 
 matters required without any warrant of law : 
 as, for not reading the booke concerning recre- 
 ation on the Lord's day ; for not removing the 
 communion table to bee set altarwise at the 
 east end of the chancell ; for not coming up to 
 the railes to receive the sacrament ; for preach- 
 ing the Lord's day in the afternoone ; for cat- 
 echising in any other words and manner than 
 in the precise words of the short catechisme in 
 the Common Prayer Booke. 
 
 " The fifth and last grievance concerning re- 
 ligion was the incroachment and abuse of ec- 
 clesiastical jurisdiction. The particulars men- 
 tioned were these : I. Fining and imprisoning 
 in cases not allowed by law. 2. The challen- 
 ging their jurisdiction to be appropriate to their 
 order, which they alledge to be jure divino. 
 3. The contriving and publishing of new arti- 
 cles, upon which they inforce the churchward- 
 ens to take oathes and to make inquiries and 
 presentments, as if such articles had the force 
 of canons ; and this, he said, was an effect of 
 great presumption and boldnesse, not onely in 
 the bishops, but in their archdeacons, officials, 
 and chancellors, taking upon themselves a 
 kinde of synodall authoritie. The injunctions 
 of this kinde might, indeed, well partake in 
 name with that part of the common law which 
 is called the extravagants !" 
 
 A more masterly statement than this, of the 
 precise bearings of one of those great questions 
 of the time, which it is probably the most diffi-
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 167 
 
 cult to sympathize with now, except, indeed, 
 in the broad statement of a certain widely-felt 
 ecclesiastical oppression, could not possibly be 
 furnished ; and from such a speaker it is inval- 
 uable. 
 
 But Pym's treatment of the civil oppressions 
 of the state is felt, from the nature of the sub- 
 ject, with still greater force. A more massive 
 document was never given to history. It has 
 ail the solidity, weight, and gravity of a judicial 
 record, while it addresses itself equally to the 
 solid good sense of the masses of the people, 
 and to the cultivated understandings of the time. 
 The deliberative gravity, the force, the broad, 
 decided manner of this great speaker, contrast 
 forcibly with those choice specimens of awk- 
 ward affectations and laboured extravagances 
 that have not seldom passed in modern days 
 for oratory. 
 
 " Having dispatched these several points, hee 
 proceeded to the third kinde of grievances, be- 
 ing such as are against the common justice of 
 the realme, in the libertie of our persons and 
 proprietie of our estates, of which (he said) he 
 had many to propound : in doing whereof, he 
 would rather observe the order of time where- 
 in they were acted than of consequence ; but 
 when hee should come to the cure, hee should 
 then persuade the House to begin with those 
 which were of most importance, as being now 
 in execution, and very much pressing and ex- 
 hausting the Commonwealth. 
 
 " He began with the tonnage and poundage, 
 and other impositions not warranted by law ; 
 and because these burdens had long lain upon 
 us, and the principles which produced them are 
 the same from whence divers others are deri- 
 ved, he thought it necessarie to premise a short 
 narrative and relation of the grounds and pro- 
 ceedings of the power of imposing herein prac- 
 tised. It was (he said) a fundamental truth, 
 essential to the constitution and government of 
 this kingdome an hereditarie libertie and priv- 
 iledge of all the freeborn subjects of the land 
 that no tax, tallage, or other charge might be 
 laid upon us, without common consent in Par- 
 liament. This was acknowledged by the Con- 
 queror ; ratified in that contract which he made 
 with this nation upon his admittance to the 
 kingdome ; declared and confirmed in the lawes 
 which he published. 
 
 " This hath never beene denyed by any of our 
 kings, though broken and interrupted by some 
 of them, especially by King John and Henry 
 III. Then, againe, it was confirmed by Mag. 
 Chart, and other succeeding lawes, yet not so 
 well settled but that it was sometime attempt- 
 ed by the two succeeding Edwards, in whose 
 times the subjects were very sensible of all the 
 breaches made upon the common libertie, and, 
 by the opportunitie of frequent Parliaments, 
 pursued them with fresh complaints, and for 
 the most part found redresse, and procured the 
 right of the subject to be fortified by new stat- 
 utes. 
 
 " He observed that those kings, even in the 
 acts whereby they did break the law, did really af- 
 firm the subject's libertie, and disclaime that right 
 of imposing which is now challenged ; for they 
 did usually procure the merchants' consent to 
 such taxes as were laid, thereby to put a col- 
 our of justice upon their proceeding; and or- 
 
 dinarily they were limited to a short time, and 
 then propounded to the ratification of the Par- 
 liament, where they were cancelled or confirm- 
 ed, as the necessitie and state of the kingdome 
 did require. But, for the most part, such char- 
 ges upon merchandise were taken by authoritie 
 of Parliament, and granted for some short time, 
 in a greater or lesser proportion, as was requi- 
 site for supply of the publike occasions six or 
 twelve in the pound, for one, two, or three yeares, 
 as they saw cause, to be employed for the de- 
 fence of the sea ; and it was acknowledged so 
 clearly to be in the power of Parliament, that 
 they have sometimes beene granted to noble- 
 men, and sometimes to merchants, to bee dis- 
 posed for that use. Afterward they were grant- 
 ed to the king for life, and so continued for di- 
 vers descents, yet still as a gift and grant of 
 the Commons. 
 
 " Betwixt the time of Edward III. and Queene 
 Mary, never prince (that he could remember) 
 offered to demand any imposition but by grant 
 in Parliament. Queene Mary laid a charge upon 
 cloth, by the equitie of the statute of tonnage 
 and poundage, because the rate set upon woolle 
 was much more than upon cloth ; and, there 
 being little wooll carried out of the kingdome 
 unwrought, the queene thought she had reason 
 to lay on somewhat more ; yet not full so much 
 as brought them to an equalitie, but that still 
 there continued a lesse charge upon wooll 
 wrought into cloth than upon wooll carried out 
 unwrought, until King James's time, when, upon 
 Nicholson's project, there was a further addi- 
 tion of charge, but still upon pretence of the 
 statute, which is that we call the pretermitted 
 custome. 
 
 " In Queene Elizabeth's time, it is true, one 
 or two little impositions crept in, the generall 
 prosperitie of her raigne overshadowing small er- 
 rors and innovations. One of these was upon 
 currants, by occasion of the merchants' com- 
 plaints that the Venetians had laid a charge 
 upon the English cloth, that so we might bee 
 even with them, and force them the sooner to 
 take it off. But this being demanded by King 
 James, was denyed by one Bates, a merchant, 
 and upon a suit in the Exchequer, was adjudged 
 for the king. Now the manner of that judge- 
 ment was thus : There were then but three 
 judges in that court, all differing from one an- 
 other in the grounds of their sentences. The 
 first was of opinion the king might impose upon 
 such commodities as were forraigneand super- 
 fluous, as currants were, but not upon such as 
 were native and to be transported, or necessa- 
 rie, and to be imported for the use of the king- 
 dome. The second judge was of opinion he 
 might impose upon all forraigne merchandise, 
 whether superfluous or no, but not upon native. 
 The third, that forasmuch as the king had the 
 custody of the ports and the guard of the seas, 
 and that he might open and shut up the ports 
 as he pleased, hee had a prerogative to impose 
 upon all merchandise, both exported and im- 
 ported. Yet this single, distracted, and divided 
 judgement is the foundation of all the imposi- 
 tions now in practice ! for after this King James 
 laid new charges upon all commodities outward 
 and inward, not limited to a certaine time and 
 occasion, but reserved to himself, his heires 
 and successors forever the first impositions in
 
 168 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 fee simple that were ever heard of in this kingdome. 
 This judgement, and the right of imposing there- 
 upon assumed, was questioned in septimo and 
 duodecimo of that king, and was the cause of 
 the breach of both those Parliaments. In 18 
 & 21 Jacobi, indeed, it was not agitated by this 
 House, but onely that they might preserve the 
 favour of the king for the dispatch of some oth- 
 er great businesses upon which they were more 
 especially attentive.* But in the first of his 
 present majestie, it necessarily came to be re- 
 membered, upon the proposition on the king's 
 part for renewing the bill of tonnage and pound- 
 age ; yet so moderate was that Parliament, that 
 they thought rather to confirm the impositions 
 alreadie set by a law to be made than to abolish 
 them by a judgement in Parliament ; but that 
 and divers insuring Parliaments have beene un- 
 happilie broken before that endeavour could be ac- 
 complished : onely at the last meeting a remon- 
 strance was made concerning the libertie of 
 the subject in this point ; and it hath alwayes 
 beene expressed to bee the meaning of the 
 House, and so it was (as hee said) his owne 
 meaning in the proposition now made, to settle 
 and restore the right according to law, and not 
 to diminish the king's profit, but to establish it 
 by a free grant in Parliament. 
 
 " However, since the breach of the last Par- 
 liament, his majestie hath, by a new booke of 
 rates, very much increased the burden upon 
 merchandise ; and now tonnage and poundage, 
 old and new impositions, are all taken by pre- 
 rogative, without any grant in Parliament, or 
 authoritie of law, as we conceive, from whence 
 divers inconveniences and mischiefes are pro- 
 duced : 1. The danger of the president, that a 
 judgement in one court and in one case is made 
 binding to all the kingdome. 2. Men's goods 
 are seized, their legall suits are stopped, and 
 justice denyed to those that desire to take the 
 benefit of the law. 3. The great summes of 
 money received upon these impositions, intend- 
 ed for the guard of the seas, claimed and de- 
 fended upon no ground but that of publike trust, 
 for protection of merchants and defence of the 
 ports, are dispersed to other uses, and a new 
 tax raised for the same purposes. 4. These 
 burdens are so excessive, that trade is thereby 
 very much hindered, the commodities of our 
 owne growth extremely abased, and those 
 mported much enhaunced ; all which lie not 
 upon the merchant alone, but upon the gener- 
 alitie of the subject ; and by this means the 
 stock of the kingdome is much diminisht, our 
 exportation being lesse profitable, and our im- 
 portation more changeable. And if the warrs 
 and troubles in the neighbour parts had not brought 
 almost the whole streame of trade into this king- 
 dome, we should have found many more preju- 
 diciall effects of these impositions, long before 
 this time, than yet wee have done. Especially 
 they have beene insupportable to the poore 
 plantations, whither many of his majestie's sub- 
 jects have beene transported, in divers parts of 
 the Continent and islands of America, in fur- 
 therance of a designe tending to the honour of 
 the kingdome and the inlargement of his majes- 
 tie's dominions. The adventurers in this no- 
 ble worke have for the most part no other sup- 
 port but tobacco, upon whic hsuch a heavie rate 
 
 * The war with the Palatinate. See Life of Eliot, p. 6-8. 
 
 is set, that the king receives twice as much as 
 the true value of the commoditie to the owner. 
 5. Whereas these great burdens have caused 
 divers merchants to apply themselves to a way 
 of traffique abroad by transporting goods from 
 one countrey to another, without bringing them 
 home into England ; but now it hath beene 
 lately endeavoured to set an imposition upon 
 this trade, so that the king will have a dutie 
 even out of those commodities which never 
 come within his dominions, to the great, dis- 
 couragement of such active and industrious 
 men. 
 
 " The next' generall head of civill grievances 
 was inforcing men to compound for knighthood ; 
 which though it may seeme past, because it is 
 divers yeares since it was used, yet upon the 
 same grounds the king may renew it, as often 
 as he pleaseth, for the composition looks back- 
 ward, and the offence continuing is subject to 
 a new fine. The state of that businesse he lay- 
 ed downe thus : Heretofore, when the services 
 due by tenure were taken in kind, it were fit 
 there were some way of triall and approbation 
 of those that were bound to such services. 
 Therefore it was ordained, that such as were 
 to doe knight's services, after they came of age 
 and had possession of their lands, should bee 
 made knights ; that is, publikely declared to be 
 fit for that service : divers ceremonies and so- 
 lemnities were in use for this purpose ; and if 
 by the partie's neglect this was not done, he 
 was punishable by fine, there being in those 
 times an ordinary and open way to get knight- 
 hood for those who were borne to it. Now it 
 is quite true- that, although the use of this hath 
 for divers ages beene discontinued, yet there 
 have past very few kings under whom there 
 hath not beene a generall summons, requiring 
 those who had lands of such value as the law 
 prescribes to appeare at the coronation, or some 
 other great solemnitie, and to bee knighted, and 
 yet nothing intended but the getting of some 
 small fines. So this grievance is not altogeth- 
 er new in the kind, but it is new in the manner, 
 and in the excesse of it, and that in divers re- 
 spects : 1. First, it hath beene extended beyond 
 all intention and colour of law. Not only inne- 
 holders, but likewise leaseholders, copyholders, 
 merchants, and others ; scarce any man free 
 from it. 2. The fines have beene immoderate, 
 far beyond the proportion of former times. 3. 
 The proportion have beene without any exam- 
 ple, president, or rule of justice ; for though 
 those that were summoned did appeare, yet dis- 
 tresses infinite were made out against them, 
 and issues increased and multiplyed, and no 
 way open to discharge those issues, by plea or 
 otherwise, but onely by compounding with the 
 commissioners at their owne pleasure. 
 
 " The third generall head of civill grievances 
 was the great inundation of monopolies, where- 
 by heavie burthens are laid, not onely upon for- 
 raigne, but also native commodities. These 
 began in the soape pattent. The principall un- 
 dertakers in this were divers popish recusants, men 
 of estate and qualitie, such as in likelyhood did 
 not onely aime at their private gaine, but that by 
 this open breach of law the king and his people might 
 be more fully divided, and the wayes of Parliament 
 men more thoroughly obstructed. Amongst the 
 infinite inconveniences and mischiefes which
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 169 
 
 this did produce, these few may be observed : 
 1. The impairing the goodnesse, and enhaun- 
 cing the price of most of the commodities and 
 manufactures of the realme, yea, of those which 
 are of most necessarie and common use, as 
 salt, soape, beere, coles, and infinite others. 2. 
 That, under colour of licences, trades and man- 
 ufactures are restrained to a few hands, and 
 many of the subjects deprived of their ordinary 
 way of livelihood. 3. That upon such illegall 
 grants, a great number of persons had beene 
 unjustly vexed by pursevants, imprisonments, 
 attendance upon the councell-table, forfeiture 
 of goods, and many other wayes. 
 
 " The fourth head of civill grievances was 
 that great and unparalleled grievance of the 
 ship-money, which, though it may seeme to 
 have more warrant of law than the rest, be- 
 cause there hath a judgement passed for it, yet 
 in truth it is thereby aggravated, if it bee con- 
 sidered that the judgement is founded upon the 
 naked opinion of some judges without any writ- 
 ten law, without any custome, or authoritie of 
 law-bookes, yea, without any one president for 
 it ! Many expresse lawes, many declarations 
 in Parliaments, and the constant practice and 
 judgement at all times being against it ! yea, in 
 the very nature of it, it will be found to be dis- 
 proportionable to the case of ' necessitie 1 which 
 is pretended to be the ground of it ! Necessitie 
 excludes all formalities and solemnities. It is 
 no time then to make levies and taxes, to build 
 and prepare ships. Every man's person, every 
 man's ships, are to be imployed for the resist- 
 ing of an invading enemie. The right on the 
 subject's part was so cleare, and the pretences 
 against it so weake, that hee thought no man 
 would venture his reputation or conscience in 
 the defence of that judgement, being so con- 
 trary to the grounds of the law, to the practice 
 of former times, and so inconsistent in its 
 selfe. 
 
 " Amongst many inconveniences and obli- 
 quities of this grievance, he noted these : 1. 
 That it extendeth to all persons and to all 
 times ; it subjecteth our goods to distresse, and 
 our persons to imprisonment ; and, the causes 
 of it being secret and invisible, referred to his 
 majestie's breast alone, the subject was left 
 without possibilitie of exception and reliefe. 2. 
 That there were no rules or. limits for the pro- 
 portion ; so that no man knew what estate he 
 had, or how to order his course or expences. 
 3. That it was taken out of the subject's purse 
 by a writ, and brought into the king's coffers 
 by instructions from the lords of his most hon- 
 ourable privie councell. Now in the legall de- 
 fence of it, the writ onely did appeare ; of the 
 instructions there was no notice taken, which 
 yet in the real execution of it were most pre- 
 dominant. It carries the face of service in the 
 writ, and of revenue in the instructions. Why, if 
 this way had not beene found to turn the ship 
 into money, it would easily have appeared how 
 incompatible this service is with the office of a 
 sherifie in the inland counties, and how incon- 
 gruous and inconvenient for the inhabitants ! 
 The law in a body politike is like Nature, which 
 always prepareth and disposcth proper and Jit in- 
 struments and organcs for every naturall opera- 
 tion. If the law had intended any such charge 
 as this, there should have beene certaine rules, 
 
 suitable meanes and courses, for the levying 
 and managing of it. 
 
 " The fifth head was the inlargement of the 
 forrests beyond the bounds and perambulations 
 appointed and established by act of Parliament, 
 27 & 28 Edward I. ; and this is done upon the 
 very reasons and exceptions which had beene 
 on the king's part propounded, and by the Com- 
 mons answered, in Parliament, not long after 
 that establishment. It is not unknowne to 
 many in this House, that those perambulations 
 were the fruit and effect of that famous charter 
 which is called Charta de forrestd, whereby 
 many tumults, troubles, and discontents had 
 beene taken away, and composed between the 
 king and his subjects ; and it is full of danger, 
 that, by reviving those old questions, wee may 
 fall into the like distempers. Hereby, howev- 
 er, no blame could fall upon that great lord, 
 who is now justice in Eyre, and in whose name 
 these things were acted ; it could not be ex- 
 pected that he should take notice of the lawea 
 and customes of the realme, therefore he was 
 carefull to procure the assistance and direction 
 of the judges ; and if any thing were done 
 against law, it was for them to answer, and 
 not for him. 
 
 " The particular irregularities and obliquities 
 of this businesse were these : 1. The surrepti- 
 tious procuring a verdict for the king, without 
 giving notice to the countrey, whereby they 
 might be prepared to give in evidence for their 
 own interest and indemnitie, as was done in Es- 
 sex. 2. Whereas the judges in the justice seat 
 in Essex were consulted with about the entry of 
 the former verdict, and delivered their opinion 
 touching that alone, without meddling with the 
 point of right, this opinion was after inforced 
 in other counties, as if it had beene a judgement 
 upon the matter, and the counsell for the coun- 
 ty discountenanced in speaking, because it was 
 said to be alreadie adjudged. 3. The inherit- 
 ance of divers of the subjects have beene here- 
 upon disturbed, after the quiet possession of 
 three or four hundred years, and a way opened 
 for the disturbance of many others. 4. Great 
 summes of money have beene drawn from such 
 as have lands within these pretended bounds, 
 and those who have forborne to make compo- 
 sition have beene threatened with the execu- 
 tion of these forrest lawes. 5. The fifth was 
 the selling of nusances, or at least some such 
 things as are supposed to bee nusances. The 
 king, as father of the Commonwealth, is to take 
 care of the publike commodities and advanta- 
 ges of his subjects, as rivers, highways, com- 
 mon sewers, and such like, and is to remove 
 whatsoever is prejudiciall to them ; and for the 
 triall of those, there are legall and ordinary 
 writs of ad quod damnum ; but of late a new 
 and extra-judiciall way hath beene taken, of de- 
 claring matters to be nusances ; and divers 
 have thereupon beene questioned, and if they 
 would not compound, they have beene fined ; 
 if they doe compound, that which was first 
 prosecuted as a common nusance is taken into 
 the king's protection, and allowed to stand ; 
 and having yeelded the king money, no further 
 care is taken whether it be good or bad for the 
 Commonwealth. By this a very great and pub- 
 like trust is either broken or abused. If the mat- 
 ter compounded for be truly a nusance, then it
 
 170 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 is broken to the hurt of the people ; if it bee 
 not a nusance, then it is abused to the hurt of 
 the partie. The particulars mentioned were : 
 First, The commission for buildings in and about 
 this towne, which heretofore hath beene pre- 
 sented by this House as a grievance in King 
 James his time, but now of late the execution 
 hath beene much more frequent and prejudi- 
 ciall than it was before. Secondly, Commis- 
 sion for depopulations, which began some few 
 yeares since, and is still in hot prosecution. 
 By both these the subject is restrained from 
 disposing of his owne. Some have beene com- 
 manded to demolish their houses ; others have 
 beene forbidden to build ; others, after great 
 trouble and vexation, have beene forced to re- 
 deeme their peace with large summes, and they 
 still remaine, by law, as lyable to a new ques- 
 tion as before ; for it is agreed by all, that the 
 king cannot licence a common nusance ; and 
 although indeed these are not such, yet it is a 
 matter of very ill consequence, that under that 
 name they should be compounded for, and may 
 in ill times hereafter bee made a president for the 
 kings of this realme to claime a power of licencing 
 such things as are nusances indeed. 
 
 " The seventh great civill grievance hath 
 beene the militarie charges laid upon the sever- 
 all counties of the kingdome, sometimes by 
 warrant under his majestie's signature, some- 
 times by letters from the councell-table, and 
 sometimes (such hath beene the boldnesse and 
 presumption of some men) by the order of the 
 lord-lieutenants, or deputy-lieutenant alone. 
 This is a growing evill, still multiplying and in- 
 creasing from a few particulars to many, from 
 small summes to great. It began first to be 
 practised as a loane, for supply of coat and con- 
 duct money ; and for this it hath some coun- 
 tenance from the use in Queene Elizabeth's 
 time, when the lords of the councell did often 
 desire the deputy-lieutenants to procure so 
 much money to be laid out in the countrey as 
 the service did require, with a promise to pay 
 it againe in London, for which purpose there 
 was a constant warrant in the Exchequer. 
 This (he said) was the practice in her time, 
 and in a great part of King James's. But the 
 payments were then so certaine, as it was little 
 otherwise than taking up money upon bills of 
 exchange. At this day they follow these presi- 
 dents in the manner of the demand (for it is with 
 a promise of a repayment), but not in the cer- 
 taintie and readinesse of satisfaction. 
 
 " The first particular brought into a tax (as 
 he thought) was the muster-master's wages, 
 at which many repined ; but being for small 
 summes, it began to bee generally digested ; 
 yet, in the last Parliament, this House was 
 sensible of it, and to avoid the danger of the 
 president that the subjects should be forced to 
 make any payments without consent in Parlia- 
 ment, they thought upon a bill that might bee a 
 rule to the lieutenants what to demand, and to 
 the people what to pay. But the hopes of this 
 bill were dasht in the dissolution of that Parlia- 
 ment. Now of late divers other particulars 
 are growing into practice, which make the 
 grievance much more heavie. Those mention- 
 ed were these : 1. Pressing men against their 
 will, and forcing them which are rich or un- 
 willing to serve, to find others in their place. 
 
 2. The provision of publike magazines for pow- 
 der and other munition, spades and pickaxes. 
 
 3. The salarie of divers officers besides the 
 muster-master. 4. The buying of cart-horses 
 and carts, and hiring of carts for carriages. 
 
 " The eighth head of civill grievances was 
 the extra-judiciall declarations of judges, where- 
 by the subjects have beene bound in matters of 
 great importance without hearing of councell 
 or argument on their part, and are left without 
 legall remedie, by writ of errour or otherwise. 
 He remembered the expression used by a for- 
 mer member of the House, of a ' teeming Par- 
 liament.' This (hee said) was a teeming griev- 
 ance ; from hence have issued most of the 
 great grievances now in being : the ship-money, 
 the pretended nusances alreadie mentioned, and 
 some others which have not yet beene toucht 
 upon, especially that concerning the proceed- 
 ings of ecclesiastical courts. 
 
 " The ninth generall head was, that the au- 
 thoritie and wisdome of the councell-table have 
 beene applied to the contriving and managing of 
 severall monopolies, and other great grievances. 
 The institution of the councell-table was much 
 for the advantage and securitie of the subject, 
 to avoid surreptitious and precipitate courts in 
 the great affaires of the kingdome. But by law 
 an oath should be taken by all those of the 
 king's councell, in which, amongst other things, 
 it is exprest that they should for no cause for- 
 beare to doe right to all the king's people. If 
 such an oath be not now taken, he wisht it might 
 be brought into use againe. 
 
 " It was the honour of that table to bee, as it 
 were, incorporated with the king ; his royall pow- 
 er and greatnesse did shine most conspicuous- 
 ly in their actions and in their councells. Wee 
 have heard of projectors and resurees hereto- 
 fore ; and what opinion and relish they have 
 found in this House is not unknowne. But that 
 any such thing should be acted by the councell- 
 table which might give strength and counte- 
 nance to monopolies, as it hath not beene used till 
 now of late, so it cannot be apprehended without the 
 just griefe of the honest subject, and encourage- 
 ment of those who are ill affected. He remem- 
 bered that in tertio of this king, a noble gentle- 
 man, then a very worthy member of the Com- 
 mons' House, now a great lord and eminent 
 counsellour of state, did in this place declare 
 an opinion concerning that clause used to bee 
 inserted in patients of monopolie, whereby jus- 
 tices of peace are commanded to assist the pat- 
 tentees ; and that he urged it to bee a great dis- 
 honour to those gentlemen which are in com- 
 mission to be so meanely employed : with how 
 much more reason may wee, in jealousie of the 
 honour of the councell-table, humbly desire that 
 their precious time, their great abilities, de- 
 signed to the publike care and service of the 
 kingdome, may not receive such a staine, such a 
 diminution, as to be imploycd in matters of so ill 
 report, in the estimation of the law ; of so ill effect, 
 in the apprehension of the people ! 
 
 "The tenth head of civill grievances was 
 comprised in the high court of Star Chamber, 
 which some thinke succeeded that which in the 
 Parliament rolls is called magnum concilium, 
 and to which Parliaments were wont so often 
 to referre those important matters which they 
 had no time to determine. But now this court,
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 171 
 
 which in the late restauration or erection of it, 
 in Henry VII.'s time, was especially designed 
 to restraine the oppression of great men, and 
 to remove the obstructions and impediments 
 of the law this, which is both a court of coun- 
 cell and a court of justice hath beene made an 
 instrument of erecting and defending monopo- 
 lies and other grievances ; to set a face of right 
 upon those things which are unlawfull in their 
 owne nature, a face of publike good upon such 
 as are pernicious in their use and execution. 
 The soape-pattent and divers other evidences 
 thereof may be given, so well knowne as not to 
 require a particular relation. And as if this 
 were not enough, this court hath lately inter- 
 meddled with the ship-money ! divers sheriffes 
 have beene questioned for not levying and col- 
 lecting such summes as their counties have been 
 charged with ; and if this beginning bee not 
 prevented, the Star Chamber will become a 
 court of revenue, and it shall bee made crime 
 not to collect or pay such taxes as the state 
 shall require ! 
 
 " The eleventh head of civill grievance was 
 now come to. Hee said hee was gone very 
 high, yet hee must go a little higher. That great 
 and most eminent power of the king, of making 
 edicts and proclamations, which are said to be 
 leges temporis, and by means of which our prin- 
 ces have used to encounter with such sudden 
 and unexpected danger as would not indure so 
 much delay as assembling the great councell of 
 the kingdome this, which is one of the most 
 glorious beames of majestic, most rigorous in 
 commanding reverence and subjection, hath, to 
 our unspeakable griefe, beene often exercised 
 of late for the injoyning and maintaining sun- 
 dry monopolies and other grants, exceeding 
 burdensome, and prejudiciall to the people. 
 
 " The twelfth next. Now, although he was 
 come as high as he could upon earth, yet the 
 presumption of evill men did leade him one step 
 higher even as high as heaven as high as the 
 throne of God ! It was now (hee said) growne 
 common for ambitious and corrupt men of the 
 clergie to abuse the truth of God and the bond 
 of conscience, preaching downe the lawes and 
 liberties of the kingdome, and pretending divine 
 authoritie for an absolute power in the king, to 
 doe what he would with our persons and goods. 
 This hath beene so often published in sermons 
 and printed bookes, that it is now the high way 
 to preferment ! 
 
 " In the last Parliament we had a sentence 
 of an offence of this kind against one Main- 
 waring, then a doctor, now a bishop, concern- 
 ing whom (hee said) hee would say no more but 
 this, that when he saw him at that barre, in the 
 most humble and dejected posture that ever he ob- 
 served, he thought he would not so soone have leapt 
 into a bishop's chaire ! But his successe hath 
 emboldened others ; therefore (hee said) this 
 may well bee noted as a double grievance, that 
 such doctrine should be allowed, and that such 
 men should bee preferred yea, as a roote of 
 grievances, whereby they indeavour to corrupt 
 the king's conscience, and, as much as in them 
 lyes, to deprive the people of that royall pro- 
 tection to which his majestic is bound by the 
 fundamentall lawes of the kingdome, and by his 
 owne personall oath. 
 
 " The thirteenth head of civill grievances he 
 
 would thus expresse : The long intermission of 
 Parliaments, contrary to the two statutes yet 
 in force, whereby it is appointed there should 
 bee Parliaments once a yeare at the least ; and 
 most contrary to the publike good of the king- 
 dome, since, this being well remedied, it would 
 generate remedies for all the rest." 
 
 These extracts will be thought as important 
 as they are interesting by every student of Eng- 
 lish History, or of the noblest aspects of the 
 English character. To abridge them would be 
 indeed to realize the story of the man who put 
 a brick in his pocket, thinking to show it as the 
 model of a house. What a grave, clear, solid, 
 and laborious style ! What honest seriousness 
 and simplicity of tone in the reasoning ! What 
 an exquisite general union of fact and feeling 
 in the ideas ! What tenacity and firmness in 
 the expression ! Nowhere is there any affec- 
 tation of philosophy or fine taste ; the under- 
 standing is invigorated and nourished through- 
 out with its proper food. I will only observe 
 farther, that the wonderful adaptation of the 
 manner and construction of the speech to the 
 peculiar circumstances of the occasion will be 
 better felt by the reader hereafter. 
 
 " Having gone through the severall heads 
 of grievances, he came to the second maine 
 branch, propounded in the beginning : that the 
 disorders from whence these grievances issued 
 were as hurtfull to the king as to the people, of 
 which he gave divers reasons : 1. The inter- 
 ruption of the sweet communion which ought 
 to be betwixt the king and his people in matters 
 of grace and supply. They have need of him 
 by his general! pardon ; to be secured from pro- 
 jectors and informers ; to bee freed from obso- 
 lete lawes ; from the subtle devices of such as 
 seek to restraine the prerogative to their owne 
 private advantage and the publike hurt ; and he 
 hath need of them for counsel and support in 
 great and extraordinary occasions. This mu- 
 tuall intercourse, if indeed sustained, would so 
 weane the affections and interests of his sub- 
 jects into his actions and designes, that their 
 wealth and their persons would be his; his owne 
 estate would be managed to most advantage ; 
 and publike undertakings would be prosecute 1 
 at the charge and adventure of the subject. 
 The victorious attempts in Queene Elizabeth's 
 time upon Portugall, Spaine, and the Indies 
 were for the greatest part made upon the sub- 
 jects' purses, and not upon the queene's, though 
 the honour and profit of the successe did most 
 accrew to her. 2. Those often breaches and 
 discontentments betwixt the king and the peo- 
 ple are very apt to diminish his reputation 
 abroad, and disadvantage his treaties and alli- 
 ances. 3. The apprehension of the favour 
 and incouragement given to poperie hath much 
 weakened his majestie's partie beyond the sea, 
 and impaired that advantage which Queene 
 Elizabeth and his royall father have hereto- 
 fore made, of being heads of the Protestant 
 union. 4. The innovations in religion and rig- 
 our of ecclesiastical courts have forced a great 
 many of his majestie's subjects to forsake the 
 land, whereby not onely their persons and their 
 posteritie, but their wealth and their industry, 
 are lost to this kingdome, much to the reduc- 
 tion, also, of his majestie's customes and sub- 
 sidies. And, amongst other inconveniences of
 
 172 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 such a sort, this was especially to be observed, 
 that divers clothiers, driven out of the countrey, 
 had set up the manufacture of cloth beyond the 
 seas, whereby this state is like to suffer much 
 by abatement of the price of woolls, and by 
 want of employment for the poore, both which 
 likewise tend to his majestie's particular losse. 
 5. It puts the king upon improper wayes of 
 supply, which being not warranted by law, are 
 much mare burdensome to the subject than advan- 
 tageous to his majestie. In France, not long 
 since, upon a survey of the king's revenue, it 
 was found that two parts in three never came 
 to the king's purse, but were diverted to the 
 profit of the officers or ministers of the crowne, 
 and it was thought a very good service and ref- 
 ormation to reduce two parts to the king, leav- 
 ing still a third part to the instruments that 
 were employed about getting it in. It may well 
 be doubted that the king may have the like or 
 worse successe in England, which appeares al- 
 ready in some particulars. The king, for in- 
 stance, hath reserved upon the monopoly of 
 wines thirty thousand pound rent a yeare ; the 
 vintner payes forty shillings a tun, which comes 
 to ninety thousand pounds ; the price upon the 
 subject by retaile is increased twopence a quart, 
 which comes to eight pound a tun, and for for- 
 ty-five thousand tun brought in yearely, amounts 
 to three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, 
 which is three hundred and thirty thousand 
 pounds losse to the kingdome above the king's 
 rent ! Other monopolies also, as that of soape, 
 have beene very chargeable to the kingdome, 
 and brought very little treasure into his majes- 
 tie's coffers. Thus it is that the law provides 
 for that revenue of the crowne which is naturall 
 and proper, that it may be safely collected and 
 brought to account ; but this illegall revenue, 
 being without any such provision, is left to haz- 
 ard and much uncertaintie, either not to be re- 
 tained, or not duly accounted of. 6. It is apt 
 to weaken the Industrie and courage of the sub- 
 ject, if they be left uncertaine whether they 
 shall reape the benefit of their own paines and 
 hazard. Those who arc brought into the condition 
 of slaves will easily grow to a slavish disposition, 
 who, having nothing to lose, doe commonly 
 show more boldnesse in disturbing than defend- 
 ing a kingdome. 7. These irregular courses 
 doe give opportunitie to ill instruments to in- 
 sinuate themselves into the king's service, for 
 we cannot but observe that if a man be officious 
 in furthering their inordinate burdens of ship-mon- 
 ey, monopolies, and the like, it varnisheth over all 
 other faults, and makes him fit both for imploy- 
 ment and preferment ; so that out of their offices, 
 they are furnisht for vast expences, purchases, 
 buildings, and the king loseth often more in 
 desperate debts at their deaths than he got by 
 them all their lives. Whether this were not 
 lately verified in a Westerne man, much im- 
 ployed while he lived, he leaves to the knowl- 
 edge of those who were acquainted with his 
 course ; and he doubted not but others might be 
 found in the like case. The same course, againe, 
 has beene pursued with those that are affected to 
 poperie, to prophanenesse, and to superstitious 
 innovations in matters of religion. All kinds of 
 spies and intelligencers have means to be counte- 
 nanced and trusted if they will be but zealous in 
 these kinde of services, which, how much it de- 
 
 tracts from his majestie in honour, in profit, 
 and prosperitie of publike affaires, lyes open to 
 every man's apprehension. And from these 
 reasons, or some of them, he thought it pro- 
 ceeded that through the whole course of the Eng- 
 lish story it might be observed, that those kings 
 who had beene most respectfull of the lawes had beene 
 most eminent in greatnesse, in glory, and successe, 
 both at home and abroad ; and that others, who 
 thought to subsist by the violation of them, did 
 often fall into a state of weaknesse, povertie, 
 and infortunitie. 8. The differences and dis- 
 contents betwixt his majestie and the people at 
 home have in all liklyhood diverted his royall 
 thoughts and councells from those great oppor- 
 tunities which he might have, not onely to weak- 
 en the house of Austria and to restore the Pal- 
 atinate, but to gaine himself a higher pitch of 
 power and greatnesse than any of his ances- 
 tors ; for it is not unknowne how weake, how 
 distracted, how discontented the Spanish col- 
 onies are in the West Indies. There are nowe 
 in those parts, in New-England, Virginia, and the 
 Carib Islands, and in the Barmudos, at least, sixty 
 thousand able persons of this nation, many of them 
 well armed, and their bodies seasoned to that cli- 
 mate, which, ivith a very small charge, might be 
 set downe in some advantageous parts of these pleas- 
 ant, rich, and fruitfull countries, and easily make 
 his majestie master of all that treasure, which not 
 onely foments the warre, but is the great support of 
 poperie in all parts of Christendome. 9. And 
 lastly, those courses are like to produce such 
 distempers in the state as may not be settled 
 without great charge and losse, by which means 
 more may be consumed in a few months than, 
 shall be gotten by such wayes in many yeares. 
 
 " Having thus past through the two first gen- 
 erall branches, he was nowe come to the third, 
 wherein he was to set downe the wayes of 
 healing and removing those grievances, which 
 consisted of two maine branches : first, in de- 
 claring the law where it was doubtfull ; the 
 second, in better provision for the execution of 
 law, where it is cleere. But (hee said) be- 
 cause he had alreadie spent much time, and be- 
 gan to finde some confusion in his memory, he 
 would refer the particulars to another opportu- 
 nitie, and for the present onely move that which 
 was generall to all, and which would give 
 waight and advantage to all the particular 
 wayes of redresse. 
 
 " That is, that wee should speedily desire a 
 conference with the Lords, and acquaint them 
 with the miserable condition wherein wee finde the 
 Church and State ; and as we have alreadie re- 
 solved to joyn in a religious seeking of God, 
 in a day of fast and humiliation, so to intreat 
 them to concur with us in a Parliamentary 
 course of petitioning the king, as there should 
 be occasion, and in searching out the causes 
 and remedies of these many insupportable 
 grievances under which we lye ; that so, by the 
 united wisdome and authoritie of both houses, 
 such courses may be taken as (through God's 
 blessing) may advance the honour and great- 
 nesse of his majestie, and restore and establish 
 the peace and prosperitie of the kingdome. 
 
 " This (hee said) wee might undertake with 
 comfort and hope of successe ; for though there 
 be a darknesse upon the land, a thick and palpable 
 darknesse, like that of Egypt, yet, as in that the
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 173 
 
 sunne had not lost his light, nor the Egyptians 
 their sight (the interruption was onely in the 
 medium), so with us there is still (God be thanked) 
 light in the sunne wisdome and justice in his maj- 
 estic to dispell this darknesse ; and in us there 
 remains a visual faculty, whereby we are inabled 
 to apprehend, and moved to desire, LIGHT ; and 
 when we shall be blessed in the injoying of it, 
 we shall thereby be incited to return his maj- 
 estie such thanks as may make it shine more 
 cleerely in the world, to his owne glory, and in 
 the hearts of his people, to their joy and con- 
 tentment."* 
 
 * I found this speech, as I have already stated, in the 
 very valuable collection of king's pamphlets now deposited 
 in the British Museum. The effect it produced, and the 
 numerous abridgments of it taken at the time by different 
 members, for the purpose of circulation through the coun- 
 try, as described by May, have led to a curious confusion 
 respecting it. The varying versions of the same speech 
 have been treated as separate speeches by all the historians, 
 collectors, and memorialists, except Lord Clarendon. I can- 
 not account for the error in Rushworth's case (compare vol. 
 iii., p. 1131, of his collections, with vol. iv., p. 21), save by 
 the supposition of the second report having been inserted 
 by the publisher after the collector's death. The loose way 
 in which it appears, thrown in, as it were, " in a lump," 
 with the other speeches that folio wit, certainly favours this 
 supposition ; which is strengthened by the circumstance of 
 this very collection of speeches, including the abridgment 
 of Pym's speech in the April Parliament, having been pub- 
 lished in 1641, as delivered in the Long Parliament, where- 
 as many of them, with Pym's, belong to the previous meet- 
 ing. Compare Rudyard's, Grimston's, &c. This would 
 probably not be thought worth remarking on, were it not 
 that it establishes Clarendon's accuracy on a point that has 
 been disputed, and is important in reference to Pym him- 
 self. It is now clear to me, as Clarendon states, that the 
 first speech delivered by this great statesman in the Long 
 Parliament was the speech in which he denounced Lord 
 Strafford. It marks emphatically the difference that was 
 obvious in his " temper." I will subjoin, as a curiosity, the 
 naked outline which Whitelocke gives of " Pym on griev- 
 ances ;" and upon which it is to be observed, that, though 
 it is given in the mention of the opening proceedings in the 
 Long Parliament, Whitelocke's words by no means imply a 
 contradiction of the fact that it was delivered the Parlia- 
 ment before. He says, " many smart speeches were made 
 in the House of Commons touching grievances, which Mr. 
 Pym divided into three heads." The following abstract is 
 then given in an isolated form, no mention of its delivery, 
 or the delivery of any thing like it, having been made by 
 the memorialist in his report of the April Parliament : 
 
 "I. Against privilege of Parliament. II. Prejudice of 
 religion. III. Liberty of the subject." Under the first head 
 were reckoned, " 1. Restraining the members of Parliament 
 from speaking. 2. Forbidding the speaker to put a question. 
 3. Imprisoning divers members for matters done in Parlia- 
 ment. 4. By proceedings against them therefor in inferior 
 courts. 5. Enjoining their good behaviour and continuance 
 in prison even unto death, b'. Abrupt dissolutions of Parlia- 
 ments." Under the second head, of religion, were mentioned, 
 " 1. The suspension of laws against them of the popish reli- 
 gion ; laws and oaths will not restrain them ; the pope dis- 
 penseth with all. 2. Their places of trust and honour in the 
 Commonwealth. 3. Their free resort to London and to the 
 courts to communicate their counsels and designs. 4. As 
 they have a college in Rome for the pope's authority in Eng- 
 land, so they have a nuncio here to execute it." Under the 
 innovations of religion were brought in, " 1. Maintenance 
 of popish tenets in books, sermons, and disputes. 2. Prac- 
 tice of popish ceremonies countenanced and enjoined, as al- 
 tars, images, crucifixes, and bowings. 3. Discouragement 
 of Protestants by rigid prosecution of the scrupulous for 
 things indifferent ; no vice made of so great as inconformi- 
 ty. 4. Encroachment of ecclesiastical jurisdiction : (I.) In 
 fining and imprisoning without law ; (2.) Challenging their 
 jurisdiction to be appropriate to their order, jure divino ; 
 (3.) Contriving and publishing new orders of visitation in 
 force, as of canons, the boldness of bishops, and all their 
 subordinate officers and officials." Under the third head, 
 the grievances : " 1. By tonnage and poundage unduly taken. 
 2. Composition for knighthood. 3. The unparalleled griev- 
 ance of ship-money. 4. Enlargement of the forests beyond 
 the due bounds. 5. Selling of nuisances by compounding for 
 them. 6. The commission for building. 7. The commission 
 for depopulations. 8. Unlawful military charges, by war- 
 rant of the king, letters of the council, and orders of the 
 lieutenants of the counties and their deputies. 9. Extra-ju- 
 dicial declarations of judges, without hearing council or a 
 
 When Pym resumed his seat, the king's so- 
 licitor, Herbert, attempted, " with all imagina- 
 ble address," to call off the attention of the 
 members from the impression his extraordinary 
 speech had made, but vainly. The deadly 
 force of Pym's statements and reasoning, 
 equalled only by the singular moderation of 
 his tone, had diffused through the House a deep 
 and settled calm of determination. A commit- 
 tee was immediately appointed to inquire into 
 the violation of privilege by the speaker of the 
 last House of Commons, in refusing to put a 
 question on the ground of prohibition from the 
 king ; the proceedings in the Star Chamber 
 and King's Bench respecting the imprisoned 
 members and the deceased Eliot were ordered 
 to be called for by the speaker's warrant, to- 
 gether with whatever proceedings had taken 
 place in the Exchequer Chamber, and any 
 other courts, respecting ship-money. Subse- 
 quently it was resolved that grievances should 
 be considered before supply, and that confer- 
 ence on grievances should be desired by the 
 Lords. Pym and St. John were appointed 
 managers of this conference " Mr. Pym for 
 the first, and to make an introduction to the 
 whole business."* 
 
 Meanwhile the House of Lords, at the ear- 
 nest and humiliating entreaty of the king, had 
 passed two resolutions, to the effect that sup- 
 ply ought to have precedence of grievances, 
 and that the Commons should be invited to a 
 conference in order to their being disposed 
 thereto."! 
 
 These resolutions had just passed, when 
 Pym laid them before the House of Commons 
 as a gross breach of privilege. An address to 
 the Lords was, in consequence, agreed to and 
 approved, " and that Mr. Pym should go up to 
 that House with it." Pym instantly proceeded 
 to the Lords, and the words he uttered are in- 
 deed memorable : "Your lordships have med- 
 dled with, and advised concerning, both matter 
 of supply and the time when the same should 
 be made, and this before such time as the 
 same was moved to your lordships by the Com- 
 mons. As a course for the repair of this breach 
 of privilege, the Commons beg to suggest that 
 your lordships would, in your wisdoms, find out, 
 yourselves, some sort of reparation, and of 
 prevention of the like infringement for the fu- 
 ture. And the Commons humbly desire, through 
 me, to represent to your lordships that, in case 
 your lordships have taken notice of any orders 
 or proceedings of the Commons concerning re- 
 ligion, property, and privileges, and that they 
 were to proceed to the supply, which they have 
 some cause to conceive by these words : ' That 
 this being done, your lordships would freely 
 join with the Commons in those three things ;' 
 for the avoiding all misunderstandings between 
 your lordships and the Commons for time to 
 come, they desire your lordships hereafter to 
 take no notice of any thing which shall be debated 
 by the Commons until they shall themselves de- 
 
 guments. 10. Monopolies countenanced by the council-table, 
 and justices of the peace required to assist them. 11. The 
 Star Chamber Court. 12. The king's edicts and proclama- 
 tions lately used for maintaining monopolies. 13. The am- 
 bitious and corrupt clergy preaching divine authority and 
 absolute power in kings to do what they will. 14. The in- 
 termission of Parliaments." Memorials, p. 36. 
 
 * Pail. Hist., vol. viii., p. 456. 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, April, 1640.
 
 174 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 dare the same unto your lordships, which the 
 Commons shall always observe towards your 
 lordships' proceedings, conceiving the contra- 
 ry not to consist with the privileges of the 
 House."* 
 
 Some few short years before, such an asser- 
 tion of power and privilege as this would have 
 seemed monstrous ; for it implies, it will be ob- 
 served, that even upon the king's information 
 and authority their lordships were not ever to 
 touch upon the proceedings of the Commons. 
 But the reader who has observed the course 
 pursued by Pym and his associates in James's 
 Parliaments of 1614 and 1620, as detailed in 
 these pages, and reflects how deeply the prin- 
 ciples then insisted on must have sunk, during 
 the succeeding twenty years, into the minds of 
 the people, and what a consequent vigour and 
 diffusion had been given to the democratic 
 principle, his surprise at Pym's tone will cease. 
 How much more flagrantly absurd is the ap- 
 pearance which Charles's pretensions assume ! 
 
 On Pym's return to the House, he was thank- 
 ed " for the good service he did them ;"t and 
 the original conference appointed with the 
 Lords was directed to proceed. Pym and St. 
 John, on the part of the Commons, persisted in 
 claiming precedence for redress of grievances ; 
 but the dispute was interrupted in this stage 
 by a message from Charles, demanding an im- 
 mediate answer whether he was to have sup- 
 ply or not ; and followed by a proposition from 
 the elder Vane, now secretary of state, as well 
 as treasurer of the household, that the king 
 would give up his right to ship-money in con- 
 sideration of a grant of twelve subsidies, pay- 
 able in three years. Strenuous debates arose 
 on this proposition. Pym and Hampden, back- 
 ed by the more fearless patriots, objected, not 
 only that the sum was too great, but that such 
 a transaction would recognise the legality of 
 ship-money. The court party, seconded by 
 Hyde and the trimmers, urged the advantage 
 of closing with the offer. The debates lasted 
 two days. On the second day, after the House 
 had sat from eight in the. morning till five in 
 the afternoon, debating two antagonist resolu- 
 tions from Hampden and Hyde, the latter pro- 
 posing to grant a supply " without naming the 
 amount," Vane told the House distinctly that 
 the king would accept nothing short of his 
 original demand in amount and manner, and 
 an instant adjournment was the consequence. 
 At an early hour on the following morning the 
 Parliament was dissolved. 
 
 Clarendon has ascribed this dissolution to 
 the perfidy of Vane, and asserts that Charles 
 himself repented of the act the instant after it 
 was performed. But the king's solicitor, Her- 
 bert, is not accused of perfidy, and Clarendon 
 admits that he seconded Vane's statement, 
 while all the other privy counsellors present 
 sanctioned it in silence. The truth is, that the 
 noble historian wishes to make it appear that 
 the House would have favoured his proposal in 
 the end, whereas Vane interpreted the temper 
 and disposition of the members far more truly, f 
 
 * Old Parl. Hist., vol. yiii.j p. 455. t Ibid. 
 
 t I subjoin a passage from a historian who equally ad- 
 mires both Clarendon and the king-, and which seems to me 
 to set the question at rest. Carte, in his General History, 
 vol. iv., p. 281, 282, says: "From the part Vane acted 
 soon after, he was supposed to have given those assurances 
 
 Neither Laud nor his biographer have accused 
 Vane ; Secretary Windebanke declared at the 
 time, that though the dissolution was " a very 
 great disaster," there was " no other way ;"* 
 and, finally, the king himself has thoroughly 
 repudiated the " case" his noble advocate 
 strives to make out, by one of his own accus- 
 tomed and deliberate acts of imbecile rage and 
 madness. Some days after the dissolution, he 
 consigned Mr. Crew, the chairman of the com- 
 mittee for religion, to the Tower, because that 
 high-spirited gentleman refused to surrender 
 certain petitions that had been intrusted to 
 him, when their disclosure would have aban- 
 doned many clerical petitioners to the ven- 
 geance of their metropolitan. Two other mem- 
 bers, Sir John Hotham and Mr. Bellasis, were 
 also committed for refusing to disclose to the 
 council what had passed in Parliament. And 
 these proceedings were appropriately wound 
 up by the issue of a declaration of reasons for 
 the dissolution, in which, among other notable 
 matters, Pym, Hampden, St. John, and the 
 rest are thus described : " The ill-affected mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons, instead of an 
 humble and dutiful way of presenting their 
 grievances to his majesty, have taken upon 
 them to be the guiders and directors in all mat- 
 ters that concern his majesty's government, 
 both temporal and ecclesiastical ; and (as if 
 kings were bound to give an account of their regal 
 actions and of their manner of government to their 
 subjects assembled in Parliament) they have, in a 
 very audacious and insolent way, entered into 
 examination and censuring of the present gov- 
 ernment, traduced his majesty's administration 
 
 with as much malice as falsehood, in order to throw all into 
 confusion ; either out of disaffection to his majesty, or a 
 mortal hatred to the Ear! of Stratford, who had opposed his 
 promotion, and whose ruin was then projecting. There was 
 no guessing at the motives of Herbert's conduct ; and though 
 his views were different from Vane's, they both joined in 
 representing the general humour and disaffection of the 
 House to be so violent, that if the members came together 
 again, they mould pass such a vote against ship-money as 
 would blast that revenue and other branches of the receipt. 
 The noble historian from whom this relation is taken, and 
 who bore so considerable a part in the debate, seems to have 
 thought this representation exaggerated ; but it may well be 
 questioned whether his candour and favourable opinion of 
 some persons, with whom he unwarily concurred in many of 
 their measures, and whose dark designs he had not yet dis- 
 covered, did not bias his judgment ; and there was certaiuly 
 a great failure at least of his memory in the accounts he 
 gives of the debates, as if they had taken up two days, 
 whereas what he says of them passed only on the second 
 day (Monday), when the proposal of twelve subsidies was 
 made, and embarrassed the question. On Saturday, the 
 debate could only turn on the single point whether a supply 
 should or should not be granted. If this question was not 
 then put, it must be imputed to the strength of the party 
 which was for postponing the supply till after the redress of 
 grievances, and had the day before, by a majority of 257 to 
 148, rejected the Lords' desire of a present conference, be- 
 cause they would not be diverted from prosecuting the busi- 
 ness of ship-money. Whoever likewise considers the whole 
 tenour of proceedings in this Parliament, and compares 
 them with those of the disaffected faction in the former 
 Parliaments of this reign, after which it copied, and ob- 
 serves that a day for the judicial hearing of the cause of 
 ship-money, in order to repeal the sentence of the judges, 
 had been appointed without any appearance of an opposi- 
 tion, and was actually come, will be apt to think it not ill 
 founded. * * His majesty could scarce entertain better hopes, 
 or expect different measures, from an assembly whose pro- 
 ceedings were chiefly directed by Pym and Hampden ; two 
 whole days spent in debates, without coming to a conclusion 
 or putting a question, showed sufficiently an indisposition 
 to grant a supply; all appearances countenanced the sug-- 
 gestion of these terrible votes about ship-money, and other 
 branches of the revenue, which would have been the utter 
 ruin of his majesty's affairs." 
 * See the Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., p. 86.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 175 
 
 of justice, and rendered, as much as in them 
 lay, odious to the rest of his majesty's subjects, 
 not only the officers and ministers of state, but 
 even his majesty's very government." 
 
 On the occasion of this dissolution there was 
 no violence, no protest, no show of resistance 
 in the smallest degree on the part of the Com- 
 mons. Everything was deep, settled, calm : if 
 there was a ruffle on the surface, it was one of 
 joy. Hitherto the faces of sagacious men had 
 darkened at a Parliament's dissolution, but they 
 were serene and smiling now. " It was ob- 
 served," says Clarendon, " that in the counte- 
 nances of those who had most opposed all that 
 was desired by his majesty, there was a mar- 
 vellous serenity ; nor could they conceal the 
 joy of their hearts, for they knew enough of 
 what was to come to conclude that the king 
 would be shortly compelled to call another Par- 
 liament. Within an hour after the dissolving, 
 Mr. Hyde met Mr. Saint John, who had natu- 
 rally a great cloud in his face, and very seldom 
 was known to smile, but then had a most 
 cheerful aspect ; and seeing the other melan- 
 cholic, as in truth he was from his heart, asked 
 him what troubled him ; who answered, that 
 the same that troubled him, he believed, troub- 
 led most good men : that in such a time of 
 confusion, so wise a Parliament, which alone 
 could have found remedy for it, was so unsea- 
 sonably dismissed ; the other answered, with a 
 little warmth, ' That all was well ; and that it 
 must be worse before it could be better ; and that 
 this Parliament could never have done what 
 was necessary to be done.' " 
 
 The reflection of the joy which thus lighted 
 up the countenance of St. John exhibited itself 
 in the short-sighted multitude in the forms of 
 turbulence and insurrection ; and Clarendon 
 takes the opportunity of observing that a gen- 
 eral impression prevailed, that such a set of 
 sober and dispassionate men, or fewer who 
 brought ill purposes with them, as had gone to 
 the formation of the House just dissolved, 
 would never meet in Parliament again. This 
 is simply one of Clarendon's thousand attempts 
 to mislead the judgment. A comparison of the 
 lists of the Parliaments of April and November* 
 will at once convince the reader that the so 
 terrible change for the court was in the times, 
 and not the men. 
 
 From the instant of the dissolution Pym's 
 exertions were truly extraordinary. The par- 
 ty, and the purposes of the party, were now to 
 be organized for the last time. " Mr. Pym," 
 says Clarendon, " continued after the unhappy 
 dissolution for the most part about London, in 
 conversation and great repute amongst those 
 lords who were most strangers to the court, 
 and were believed most averse to it ; in whom 
 he improved all imaginable jealousies and dis- 
 contents towards the state." There is no 
 doubt that a close correspondence with the 
 Scotch commissioners was now entered into, 
 under the management of himself and Hamp- 
 den ; and two places, Broughton Castle, in 
 Oxfordshire, the seat of Lord Say,t and Faws- 
 
 * In Nalson, the Old Parliamentary History, or Rush- 
 worth. 
 
 t "It was much observed," says Echard, "that in the 
 Lord Say's house there was a particular room, and a passage 
 to it, which his servants were not permitted to come near ; 
 and wheu the company was complete, great nuise and talk- 
 
 ley, in Northamptonshire, the house of Sir 
 Richard Knightley (whose son had married 
 Hampden's daughter), were, from their position 
 with reference to the North Road, and their 
 easy distance from London, fixed upon for the 
 purposes of frequent consultation.* Pym, 
 Hampden, and St. John, with Lords Say and 
 Brook, and, somewhat later in the year, the 
 Earls of Bedford, Warwick, and Essex, Lord 
 Holland, Nathaniel Fiennes, and young Vane, 
 here held their meetings ; and a private press, 
 which Sir Richard Knightley's father had es- 
 tablished at Fawsley, was brought into con- 
 stant requisition. Whenever, on the other 
 hand, necessity obliged the meetings to be held 
 in London, they took place at Pym's house in 
 Gray's Inn Lane, from whence various reports 
 were instantly communicated to the chief pla- 
 ces in the country, t 
 
 Meanwhile the disastrous war with Scotland 
 was dragging the king daily, as Pym had fore- 
 told, to the feet of his subjects. Not a day 
 now passed over the heads of the court party 
 without accumulating upon them some fresh 
 evidences of weakness or dishonour. The 
 melancholy part which Strafford was forced 
 to play has been already told. In the midst 
 of their worst distresses, when Charles had 
 been driven back to York after the disgraceful 
 affair of Newbourne, and when, as Laud ex- 
 presses it, the king's counsellors were " at the 
 wall,"J Secretary Windebanke wrote to inform 
 them of the frequent assemblage in London 
 and elsewhere of certain persons of quality, 
 mentioning Pym, Hampden, Lords Say, Rus- 
 sel, and Brook, who, he said, had prevailed 
 with some lords to join them, "that had been 
 observed not to be very well contented at the 
 time, namely, the Earles of Essex, Warwick, 
 and Bedford." These meetings, Windebanke 
 added, were much apprehended to be " for 
 some dangerous practice or intelligence with 
 the rebels of Scotland." In Charles's worst 
 moments of terror and alarm, he could not di- 
 vest himself of his habits of deceit and perfidy. 
 He now thought to avert the danger closing 
 round him by imposing on his people something 
 of the show of a Parliament, which should in- 
 duce them to give what every arbitrary expe- 
 dient had again failed in procuring, and disarm 
 the popular leaders of their resources. Ac- 
 cordingly, upon a precedent of Edward III.'s 
 time, he summoned to York a " council of 
 peers." While his people, under the guidance 
 
 ings were usually heard amongst them, to the admiration 
 of those who lived in the house, who could not see or dis- 
 cover the persons themselves." 
 
 (from MS. note), I find the following (p. 39) : " It is report- 
 ed that the Lord Digby, of late being at Mr. Knightley's 
 house in Northamptonshire, in a parlour there, whilst his 
 souldiers were busily searching, and plundering, and rifling 
 other roomes, hee smote his hand upon the table, and swore 
 ' that that was the table whereat all these civil wars had 
 been plotted at least a dozen yeares before.' It should 
 seem Mr. Pym had sojourned some time in that house, and 
 that was sufficient for an inference that the nest of Ana- 
 baptists had been there too, and that that nest had studied 
 ' 
 
 's State Papers. 
 Hardwicke, State Papers, vol. ii., p. 168.
 
 176 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of Pym and Hampden, were advancing with 
 giant strides into the just and responsible gov- 
 ernments of the future, this imbecile man pro- 
 posed to satisfy them by crawling back into 
 precedents of the comparatively barbarous 
 times of England ! 
 
 As soon as this measure was made public, 
 Pym saw that his work was accomplished. 
 He prepared a petition for a Parliament ; pla- 
 ced, with their consent, the names of Bedford, 
 Hertford, Essex, and Warwick at its head; 
 and, with Hampden and St. John, repaired to 
 York.* Eight more signatures were here ob- 
 tained from the peers then assembled, and the 
 petition was presented to the king. Bedford 
 and Hertford, being called to a conference with 
 the committee of state on the subject, declared 
 boldly that they acted, not for themselves 
 alone, but in trust for " many other noblemen, 
 and most of the gentry in several parts of 
 the kingdom." A second petition was forward- 
 ed to the committee immediately after from 
 the hands of Pym, also praying for a Parlia- 
 ment, and subscribed by 10,000 citizens of 
 London.f Other petitions from different quar- 
 ters, but with the same prayer, reached York 
 at the same moment ; and the king, hunted 
 through all his father's shifts and expedients 
 of " kingcraft," issued writs for a new Parlia- 
 ment on the 3d of November. 
 
 And now again, without the pause of an in- 
 stant, Pym and Hampden were seen in the 
 discharge of their great duty as chiefs and ad- 
 visers of the people. It is stated in several 
 books of the time, and repeated by many of the 
 historians,}: that between the interval of the 
 issue of the writs and the elections, they rode 
 through every county in England, urging the 
 electors to their duty. Warwick, Brook, and 
 Bedford, Lord Kimbolton (the Earl of Man- 
 chester's son), Fiennes (Lord Say's second 
 son), and the younger Vane, exerted them- 
 selves, meanwhile, in their respective districts ; 
 and Warwick soon wrote to his Essex friends 
 from York, so recently the headquarters of 
 the king, that " the game was well begun." 
 The party of the king were not less active, but 
 they were less successful. 
 
 In the opinion of the great mass of the peo- 
 ple, Pym was the author of this Parliament^ 
 by the common consent of all, he was to be 
 
 * " At the same time," says Clarendon, " some lords from 
 London (of known and since published affections to that in- 
 vasion) attended his majesty at York with a petition, signed 
 by others, eight or ten in the whole, who were craftily per- 
 suaded by the liegers there, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, and Mr. 
 Saint John, to concur in it, being full of duty and modesty 
 enough, without considering that nothing else at that time 
 could have done mischief, and so suffered themselves to be 
 made instruments towards those ends which in truth they 
 abhorred." Clarendon, vol. i., p. 259. 
 
 t The lord-mayor had been implored to suppress this pe- 
 tition, but refused. 
 
 t Echard ; Carte; Warwick; Anthony Wood. 
 
 I) I find this in a curious pamphlet of the time, which I 
 was not able to discover in the king's collection, but which 
 I purchased from Mr. Rodd, of Newport-street, to whose in- 
 telligence and liberality so many historical collectors have 
 to confess their obligations. The pamphlet is a petition 
 sent up to the king by large numbers of the common people, 
 at the time of his attempted impeachment for high treason ; 
 and among answers to the king's charges against Pym, con- 
 tains the loilowiiig : " In the fifth article he is impeached, 
 4 that he hath traitorously indeavoured to subvert the rights 
 and very being of Parliaments.' To this we may answer 
 with great facilitie, he was the chief cause that this Parlia- 
 ment was assembled, and it seems very incongruous that he 
 should subvert the same." 
 
 placed in the position of its leader. Preparing 
 himself for that great office, he well knew that 
 the highest duty of his life, and the most fatal, 
 there awaited him. He was to keep his old 
 appointment with Wentworth, now the Earl of 
 Strafford. Any allusion to this illustrious man 
 has been hitherto avoided as much as possible, 
 since a previous portion of this work was devo- 
 ted to an analysis of his character and actions ; 
 and little allusion will even now be necessary for 
 those who have had that analysis before them. 
 Pym judged Wentworth's course as a minister 
 too truly when, on the occasion of their separa- 
 tion twelve years before, he had threatened 
 him with a visionary doom. The twelve years 
 had realized one of the greatest geniuses for 
 despotic government that the world has known ; 
 but they had also strengthened, with an almost 
 superhuman power of popular resistance, the 
 mind of Pym. Wentworth himself had re- 
 ceived occasional very ominous proofs of this, 
 and some correspondence passed concerning it 
 between himself and the king ; but Pym's si- 
 lence respecting the minister in his famous 
 speech of the preceding April, instead of seem- 
 ing most ominous of all, had driven back, for a 
 time, the fear of danger. The conduct of the 
 great opposition leader, however, after the dis- 
 solution, recalled Stratford's worst apprehen- 
 sions ; and on the disastrous failure of his 
 Scotch expedition, he prayed the king to be al- 
 lowed to return to his Irish government. But 
 the genius of Strafford was the king's last and 
 only hope ; and, pledging a " royal word" that 
 not " a hair of his head" should be touched by 
 the Parliament, the king ordered his minister's 
 presence in London. Charles himself knew 
 not so well as Pym how much Strafford's ge- 
 nius was indeed his last resource. And how 
 much less did he know, that while he pledged 
 his word for Strafford's safety, a few weightier 
 words, lingering yet in the mind of Pym, would 
 bring to the people's service the Tower and the 
 Block, and break, in one short instant, that 
 spell of arbitrary power with which he and his 
 father, and the worst ministers of both, had 
 been for upward of thirty years struggling to 
 subdue the rising liberties ! In the death of 
 Srafford, Pym saw that the prestige of royalty, 
 which had hitherto, in Charles's worst extrem- 
 ities, availed so much, would be utterly over- 
 thrown. 
 
 On the 3d of November the Long Parliament 
 met. There are few well-informed students of 
 English history who, with a fearless and frank 
 admission of the errors of this illustrious as- 
 sembly, do not pause with emotion at the men- 
 tion of its name, mindful that there is scarcely 
 a privilege of good and safe government now 
 enjoyed by the common people of England that 
 does not justly date from its commencement. 
 The day that witnessed that commencement 
 was a bright day for every one in England, save 
 the ministers and apologists for tyranny. " It 
 had a sad and melancholic aspect," says Lord 
 Clarendon, "upon the first entrance, which 
 presaged some unusual and unnatural events. 
 The king himself did not ride with his accus- 
 tomed equipage nor in his usual majesty to 
 Westminster, but went privately in his barge 
 to the Parliament stairs, and after to the church, 
 as if it had been to a return of a prorogued or
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 177 
 
 adjourned Parliament. And there was like- 
 wise an untoward, and, in truth, an unheard-of 
 accident, which broke many of the king's meas- 
 ures, and infinitely disordered his service be- 
 yond a capacity of reparation. From the time 
 the calling a Parliament was resolved upon, 
 the king designed Sir Thomas Gardiner, who 
 was recorder of London, to be speaker in the 
 House of Commons ; a man of gravity and 
 quickness, that had somewhat of authority and 
 gracefulness in his person and presence, and in 
 all respects equal to the service. There was 
 little doubt but that he would be chosen to 
 serve in one of the four places for the city of 
 London, which had very rarely rejected their 
 recorder upon that occasion ; and, lest that 
 should fail, diligence was used in one or two 
 other places that he might be elected. But the 
 opposition was so great and the faction so 
 strong to hinder his being elected in the city, 
 that four others were chosen for that service, 
 without hardly mentioning his name ; nor was 
 there less industry used to prevent his being 
 chosen in other places." This incident was in- 
 deed an omen of ill promise for the court. It 
 was in that day the invariable usage to select 
 a speaker on the king's private recommenda- 
 tion ; yet on this occasion, without the small- 
 est appearance of discourtesy, the slavish 
 usage, by means of the admirable organization 
 of the popular party, was warded off. The 
 king, taken by surprise, and obliged to name an- 
 other member hastily, recommended Lenthall, 
 then only known as a practising barrister. 
 
 The members assembled in great crowds to 
 hear the king's speech. All the chief leaders 
 of the Commons were there : Pym (who had 
 again been returned, with Lord William Rus- 
 sel, for Tavistock), Hampden (who sat for 
 Buckinghamshire), St. John, Denzil Hollis, 
 Nathaniel Fiennes, the younger Vane ; and, 
 still acting with the people, Lord Digby (the 
 fantastically chivalrous son of the Earl of Bris- 
 tol), Lord Falkland, and Edward Hyde. The 
 chief popular peers were present also : Francis 
 Russel, earl of Bedford (between whom and 
 Pym there had been the friendship and mutual 
 counsel of a life) ; William Fiennes and Robert 
 Greville ; Lords Say and Brooke ; Robert Dev- 
 ereux, earl of Essex ; the brothers Henry and 
 Robert Rich, earls of Holland and Warwick ; 
 and Edward Montague, lord Kimbolton, son 
 of the Earl of Manchester. Upon the faces of 
 almost all these men, Clarendon says, there 
 was a " marvellous elated" expression, and he 
 proceeds to remark of the members of the Com- 
 mons, that " the same men who six months be- 
 fore were observed to be of very moderate tem- 
 pers, and to wish that gentle remedies might 
 be applied, without opening the wound too wide 
 and exposing it to the air, and rather to cure 
 what was amiss than too strictly to make in- 
 quisition into the causes and original of the 
 malady, talked now in another dialect both of 
 things and persons." The truth was, that as 
 Mr. Hyde was returning from the House of 
 Lords through Westminster, he fell into con- 
 versation witli Pym, and that bold statesman, 
 sounding Hyde with some distrust of his hon- 
 esty, cared no longer to conceal his own pros- 
 pects or his temper. The anecdote is worth 
 giving in the words of one of the parties. 
 
 " Mr. Hyde, who was returned to serve for a 
 borough in Cornwall, met Mr. Pym in West- 
 minster Hall, and conferring together upon the 
 state of affairs, the other told Mr. Hyde ' that 
 they must now be of another temper than they were 
 the last Parliament; that they must not only 
 sweep the house clean below, but must pull down 
 all the cobwebs which hung in the top and corners, 
 that they might not breed dust, and so make afoul 
 house hereafter ; that they had now an opportu- 
 nity to make their country happy by removing 
 all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them 
 by the roots, IF ALL MEN WOULD DO THEIR DUTIES ;' 
 and used much other sharp discourse to the 
 same purpose ; by which it was discerned that 
 the warmest and boldest counsels and over- 
 tures would find a much better reception than 
 those of a more temperate allay, which fell out 
 accordingly." 
 
 The first week was devoted to the appoint- 
 ment of committees and the reception of peti- 
 tions. "Troops of horsemen," says White- 
 locke, " came from several counties with peti- 
 tions for redress of grievances and exorbitan- 
 cies in Church and State."* One or two sharp 
 debates arose on the presentation of these pe- 
 titions, but Pym took no share in them. On 
 the 10th of November, Lord Strafford arrived 
 in London. 
 
 On the llth of November, Pym suddenly t 
 rose in his place in the House of Commons, 
 stated that he had matter of the highest impor- 
 tance to lay before the House, and desired that 
 the strangers' room should be cleared, the out- 
 er door of the House locked, and the keys laid 
 upon the clerk's table. What followed this om- 
 inous announcement must be given chiefly in 
 the words of one of the members present, since 
 the destruction of this portion of the journals 
 has left us without any other record of the mo- 
 mentous scene that passed. 
 
 " Mr. Pym," says Clarendon, " in a long 
 formed discourse, lamented the miserable state 
 and condition of the kingdom, aggravated all 
 the particulars which had been done amiss in 
 the government, as ' done and contrived mali- 
 ciously and upon deliberation, to change the 
 whole frame, and to deprive the nation of all 
 the liberty and property which was their birth- 
 right by the laws of the land ; which were now 
 no more considered, but subjected to the arbi- 
 trary power of the privy council, which govern- 
 ed the kingdom according to their will and 
 pleasure ; these calamities falling upon us in 
 the reign of a pious and virtuous king, who 
 loved his people, and was a great lover of jus- 
 tice.' And thereupon enlarging in some spe- 
 cious commendation of the nature and good- 
 ness of the king, that he might wound him with 
 less suspicion, he said, ' We must inquire from 
 what fountain these waters of bitterness flowed ; 
 what persons they were who had so far insinu- 
 ated themselves into his royal affections as to 
 be able to pervert his excellent judgment, to 
 abuse his name, and wickedly apply his author- 
 ity to countenance and support their own cor- 
 rupt designs. Though he doubted there would 
 be many found of this class who had contribu- 
 ted their joint endeavours to bring this misery 
 upon the nation, yet he believed there teas one 
 
 * Whitelocke's Memorials. 
 
 t This is Rushworth's expression.
 
 178 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 more signal in that administration than the rest, 
 being a man of great parts and contrivance, and 
 of great industry to bring what he designed to 
 pass ; a man who, in the memory of many present, 
 had sate in that House an earnest vindicator of the 
 laws, and a most zealous assertor and champion 
 for the liberties of the people, but long since turned 
 apostate from those good affections, and, according 
 to the custom and nature of apostates, was become 
 the greatest enemy to the liberties of his country, 
 and the greatest promoter of tyranny, that any age 
 had produced;' arid then he named 'the EARL 
 of STRAFFORD, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and 
 lord -president of the council established in 
 York for the northern parts of the kingdom ; 
 who,' he said, 'had in both places, and in all 
 other provinces wherein his service had been 
 used by the king, raised ample monuments of 
 his tyrannical nature ; and that he believed, if 
 they took a short survey of his actions and be- 
 haviour, they would find him the principal au- 
 thor and promoter of all those counsels which 
 had exposed the kingdom to so much ruin ;' and 
 to this end instanced some high and imperious 
 actions done by him in England and in Ireland, 
 some proud and over-confident expressions in 
 discourse, and some passionate advices he had 
 given in the most secret councils and debates 
 of the affairs of state ; adding some lighter pas- 
 sages of his vanity and amours, that they who were 
 not inflamed with anger and detestation against 
 him for the former, might have less esteem and rev- 
 erence for his prudence and discretion ; and so 
 concluded, ' that they would well consider how 
 to provide a remedy proportionable to the dis- 
 ease, and to prevent the farther mischiefs they 
 were to expect from the continuance of this 
 great man's power and credit with the king, and 
 his influence upon his counsels.' " 
 
 In this brief sketch we may trace the outlines 
 of Pym's speech on this great occasion, and it 
 is a fresh proof of his extraordinary powers. 
 But the resources of a profound understanding 
 are as inexhaustible as the human heart itself. 
 Variously adapting to his various hearers the 
 eloquent austerity of his invective, behold Straf- 
 ford at one moment elevated to the alarm of 
 every wise patriot, and in the next shrunk be- 
 low the contempt of the meanest person pres- 
 ent ! Passion, prejudice, patriotism, every emo- 
 tion that can actuate the virtuous or the base, 
 were called into existence by the orator. It 
 may be to Pym's advantage or disadvantage to 
 state this, but it was so. When he had ceased, 
 there was but one flame raging through that 
 great assembly, and the power of Strafford was 
 blasted forever. 
 
 Meanwhile, as several members from every 
 side of the House were swelling the general 
 outcry against the accused, a message arrived 
 from the Lords, desiring instant conference on 
 a treaty with the Scots. Pym, at once suspect- 
 ing that the extraordinary precautions which 
 had just been taken respecting the exclusion of 
 strangers had given surprise and perhaps alarm 
 in certain quarters, and that these messengers 
 had a very different object from their professed 
 one, despatched them quickly with an answer 
 to decline the meeting, on the ground of very ! 
 weighty and important business ; and at the 
 same moment gave " such advertisement to 
 
 some of the lords, that that House might likewise 
 
 be kept from rising, which would otherwise very 
 much have broken their measures."* 
 
 " In conclusion," proceeds Clarendon, " after 
 many hours of bitter inveighing, and ripping up 
 the course of the Earl of Stratford's life before 
 his coming to court, and his actions after, it 
 was moved, according to the secret resolution 
 taken before, ' that he might be forthwith im- 
 peached of high treason ;' which was no sooner 
 mentioned than it found a universal approbation 
 and consent from the whole House ; nor was 
 there, in all the debate, one person [not even Mr. 
 Hyde !] who offered to stop the torrent by any 
 favourable testimony concerning the earl's car- 
 riage, save only that the Lord Falkland (who 
 was very well known to be far from having any 
 kindness for him), when the proposition was 
 made for the present accusing him of high trea- 
 son, modestly desired the House to consider 
 ' whether it would not suit better with the grav- 
 ity of their proceedings first to digest many of 
 those particulars which had been mentioned by 
 a committee before they sent up to accuse him, 
 declaring himself to be abundantly satisfied that 
 there was enough to charge bim ;' which was 
 very ingenuously and frankly answered by Mr. 
 Pym, ' that such a delay might probably blast 
 all their hopes, and put it out of their power to 
 proceed farther than they had done already ; 
 that the earl's power and credit with the king, 
 and with all those who had most credit with 
 the king or queen, was so great, that when he 
 should come to know that so much of his wick- 
 edness was discovered, his own conscience 
 would tell him what he was to expect, and 
 therefore he would undoubtedly procure the 
 Parliament to be dissolved rather than undergo 
 the justice of it, or take some other desperate 
 course to preserve himself, though with the 
 hazard of the kingdom's ruin ; whereas, if they 
 presently sent up to impeach him of high trea- 
 son before the House of Peers, in the name 
 and on the behalf of all the Commons of Eng- 
 land, who were represented by them, the Lords 
 would be obliged in justice to commit him into 
 safe custody, and so sequester him from re- 
 sorting to counsel, or having access to his maj- 
 esty, and then they should proceed against him 
 in the usual form with all necessary expedi- 
 tion.' These reasons of the haste they made," 
 continues Clarendon, " so clearly delivered, 
 gave that universal satisfaction, that, without 
 farther considering the injustice and unreason- 
 ableness of it, they voted unanimously (for 
 aught that appeared to the contrary by any 
 avowed contradiction) that they would forth- 
 with send up to the Lords, and accuse the Earl 
 of Strafford of high treason, and several other 
 crimes and misdemeanors, and desire that he 
 might be presently sequestered from the coun- 
 cil, and committed to safe custody ; and Mr. 
 Pym was made choice of for the messenger to 
 perform that office." 
 
 After an interval of four hours, passed by 
 many persons outside with intense and varied 
 anxiety, the doors of the House of Commons 
 opened at last to give way to Pym, who, issu- 
 ing forth at the head of upward of 300 repre- 
 sentatives of the English people, proceeded to 
 the House of Lords, where " Mr. Pym, at the 
 bar, and in the name of the lower House, and 
 
 * Clarendon, vol. i., p. 302. Rushworth, vol. iv., p. 43.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 179 
 
 of all the Commons of England, impeached 
 Thomas, earl of Stratford, with the addition of 
 all his other titles, of high treason."* 
 
 The earl was already in the House, according 
 to Clarendon,! when Pym appeared at the bar, 
 and was even prepared with evidence of a cor- 
 respondence between Pym and other popular 
 leaders and the Scotch, supplied by the perfidy 
 and forgery of Lord Savile, on which he de- 
 signed at that very instant to accuse them of 
 treason. According to the lively and graphic 
 narrative of Baillie, however, Strafford had not 
 yet entered the House with this view ; but, af- 
 ter Pym's sudden appearance, the earl's is thus 
 described : " The Lords began to consult on 
 that strange and unexpected motion. The 
 word goes in haste to the lord-lieutenant, where 
 he was with the king ; with speed he comes to 
 the House ; he calls rudely at the door ; James 
 Maxwell, keeper of the black rod, opens ; his 
 lordship, with a proud, glooming' countenance, 
 makes towards his place at the board-head. 
 But at once many bid him void the house ; so 
 he is forced, in confusion, to go to the door till 
 he was called. After consultation, being call- 
 ed in, he stands, but is commanded to kneel, 
 and on his knees to hear the sentence. Being 
 on his knees, he is delivered to the keeper of 
 the black rod, to be prisoner till he was cleared 
 of those crimes the House of Commons had 
 charged him with. He offered to speak, but 
 was commanded to be gone without a word. 
 In the outer room, James Maxwell required 
 him, as prisoner, to deliver his sword. When 
 he had got it, he cries with a loud voice for his 
 man to carry my lord-lieutenant's sword. This 
 done, he makes through a number of people to- 
 wards his coach, all gazing, no man capping to 
 him before whom, that morning the greatest of Eng- 
 land would have stood discovered. Coming to the 
 place where he expected his coach, it was not 
 there ; so he behooved to return that same way, 
 through a world of gazing people. When at 
 last he had found his coach, and was entering, 
 James Maxwell told him, 'Your lordship is my 
 prisoner, and must go in my coach,' and so he 
 behooved to do. For some days too many went 
 to visit him ; but since, the Parliament hath 
 commanded his keeping to be straiter."J 
 
 The result proved this to have been what 
 Pym anticipated, the master-stroke of the time. 
 In whatever view, or with whatever sense it is 
 regarded, whether of regret or admiration, it 
 cannot be denied to have been, in its practical 
 results, the greatest achievement of this great 
 age of statesmanship. It struck instant terror 
 into every quarter of the court, and left the 
 king, for a time, powerless and alone. 
 
 Every resolution of the House of Commons, 
 from the hour of Slrafford's impeachment, took 
 the shape of action. Every discussion ended 
 in something done. Monopolists and patentees 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist , vol. i., p. 305. 
 
 t " It was about three of the clock in the afternoon when 
 the Earl of Strafford (being infirm, and not well disposed in 
 his health, and so not having stirred out of his house that 
 morning), hearing that both Houses still sat, thought fit to 
 go thither. It was believed by some (upon what ground 
 was never clear enough) that he made that haste then to 
 accuse the Lord Say and some others of having induced the 
 Scots to invade the kingdom ; but he was scarce entered 
 into the House of Peers when the message from the House 
 of Commons was called in." History, vol. i., p. 350. 
 
 t Baillie's Letters, vol. i., p. 217. " 
 
 were at once declared incapable of serving in 
 the House ; the tax of ship-money, and the pro- 
 ceedings in Hampden's case, were declared sub- 
 versive of property, of the laws, of the resolu- 
 tions of former Parliaments, and the petition 
 of rights ; the new Church canons issued by 
 Laud were condemned; and, on the llth De- 
 cember, the London petition against the prel- 
 ates and prelacy, signed by 15,000 citizens, and 
 praying that that episcopal government, with all 
 its dependancies, " roots and branches," might 
 be abolished, was received in ominous silence 
 by the House. 
 
 "William, lord-archbishop of Canterbury," 
 was then, on the motion of Pym, accused of 
 high treason ; and Denzil Hollis carried up the 
 accusation to the House of Lords.* The Scotch 
 commissioners denounced him at the same time 
 as an " incendiary in the national differences ;" 
 and, after ten weeks' confinement in the house 
 of the usher of the black rod, the Tower re- 
 ceived Laud also. 
 
 Informations were now lodged against Wren, 
 bishop of Ely, for oppression and idolatry ; and 
 against Pierce, bishop of Bath and Wells, for 
 corruption of religion ; and those prelates were 
 ordered to give large securities that they would 
 abide the judgment of Parliament. Impeach- 
 ments of treason were next prepared against 
 Secretary Windebanke and Lord-keeper Finch. 
 Windebanke escaped to France, and Finch fled 
 to Holland. 
 
 " So that," says Clarendon, " within less than 
 six weeks, for no more time was yet elapsed, 
 these TERRIBLE REFORMERS had caused the two 
 greatest counsellors of the kingdom, and whom 
 they most feared and so hated, to be removed 
 from the king, and imprisoned under an accu- 
 sation of high treason - f and frighted away the 
 lord-keeper of the great seal of England, and 
 one of the principal secretaries of state, into 
 foreign kingdoms, for fear of the like ; besides 
 the preparing all the lords of the council, and 
 very many of the principal gentlemen through- 
 out England, who had been high sheriffs and 
 deputy-lieutenants, to expect such measure of 
 punishment from their general votes and reso- 
 lutions as their future demeanour should draw 
 upon them for their past offences.f 
 
 These gentlemen had no cause, except in 
 their own consciences, to tremble. The lead- 
 ers of this great Parliament sought a severe, 
 but a just atonement. They struck down the 
 chief abettors of tyranny in the kingdom, but 
 pardoned its miserable agents. Their terrible 
 inquisition passed over the various sheriffs who 
 had lent their influence to the enforcement of 
 ship-money, while it fixed itself on the servile 
 judges who had prostituted the laws to its sup- 
 port. Bramstone, Davenport, Berkeley, Craw- 
 ley, Trevor, and Weston were obliged to give 
 securities in enormous sums that they would 
 abide the judgment of Parliament ;t while Sir 
 Robert Berkeley, as the principal supporter of 
 the iniquitous tax, was impeached of treason, 
 publicly arrested in the King's Bench court, 
 " taken from off the bench where he sat, and 
 
 * Whitelocke says in his Memorials (p. 39) that Pym car- 
 ried it up ; but this is an error. See Journals. 
 
 T Hist, of the Rebellion, vol. i.,p. 311. 
 
 i The old clause, quamdiu se btne gesserint, was also re- 
 stored, in place of the durante berte placito. See Old Parl. 
 Hist., vol. ix., p. 208.
 
 180 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 carried away to prison, which struck a great 
 terror in the rest of his brethren then sitting in 
 Westminster Hall, and in all his profession."* 
 
 The speech which led to this latter startling 
 step was delivered in the House of Commons 
 on the 2d of December, and there is every rea- 
 son to believe by Pym. It appears in pamphlets 
 of the time without the speaker's name ; but 
 in Cromwell's Parliament of 1650, Sir Robert 
 Goodwin brought forward a precedent which, 
 he said, " was urged by John Pym in the Long 
 Parliament," and the only resemblance to which 
 is in the speech alluded to.f Some passages, 
 indeed, at the commencement, would seem to 
 discountenance this supposition of authorship, 
 but the general tone and manner are, emphat- 
 ically, those of the Long Parliament's most fa- 
 mous orator. In the sustained eloquence, the 
 practical wisdom, the singular weight, gravity, 
 and precision of language, and the careful pro- 
 test it records against the hasty judgments of 
 posterity, we feel the voice of Pym. Some 
 passages are too remarkable to be omitted here. 
 After a comparison of the body politic with the 
 body natural a favourite parallel with Pym 
 he thus proceeds : 
 
 "This Commonwealth is, Mr. Speaker, or 
 should be, but one body ; this House the great 
 physician of all our maladies. But, alas ! sir, 
 of what afflicted part shall we poor patients 
 complain first 1 Or, rather, of what shall we 
 not complain 1 Are we not heart-sick 1 Is 
 there in us that which God requires unity, 
 purity, and singularity of heart 1 Nay, is not 
 religion, the soul of this body, so miserably dis- 
 tracted, that (I speak it not without terror) 'tis 
 to be feared there is more confusion of religion 
 among us than there was of tongues at the sub- 
 version of Babel 1 And is it not, then, high 
 time that we understand one another, that we 
 be reduced to one faith, one government] Sir, 
 is the head whole the seat of government and 
 justice, the fountain from whose sweet influ- 
 ence all the inferior members of this body 
 should receive both vigour and motion 1 Nay, 
 hath not rather a general apoplexy, or palsy, 
 taken or shaken all our members] Are not 
 some dead ; others buried quick ; some dis- 
 membered; all disordered by the diversion of 
 the course of justice 1 Is the liver, nature's ex- 
 chequer, open, from whose free distribution 
 each limb may receive his proper nutriment 1 
 or, rather, is it not wholly obstructed our 
 property taken from us 1 May it not justly be 
 said of us, 
 
 " ' Sic vos non vobis fertis Aratra ?' " 
 
 The hard destiny which for so many years 
 had attended upon labour, is now described 
 with a noble pathos ; and those views respect- 
 ing Church government are stated, which are 
 ascribed, with the greatest justice, to Pym. 
 
 " Our ancestors drank the juice of their men 
 vines, reaped and ate the fruit of their own harvest, 
 but now the poor man'* plough goes to furrow the 
 seas to build ships ! We labour, not for our- 
 selves, but to feed the excrescions of nature 
 things grown up out of the ruins of the natural 
 members monopolists ! Sir, these are maxima 
 
 vitalia religion, justice, property the heart, 
 the head, the liver of this great body ; and these 
 being so distempered or obstructed, can the 
 subordinate parts be free 1 The truth is, all is 
 so far out of frame, that to lay open every par- 
 ticular grievance were to drive us into despair 
 of a cure ; in so great confusion, where to be- 
 gin first requires not much less care than what 
 to apply. Mr. Speaker, I know 'tis a right mo- 
 tion to begin with setting God's house in order 
 first. Whoever presses that moves with such 
 advantage, that he is sure no man will gainsay 
 him. 'Tis a well-becoming zeal to prefer reli- 
 gion before our own affairs ; and, indeed, 'tis a 
 duty not to be omitted, where they are in equal dan- 
 ger ; but in cures of the body politic or natural, we 
 must prefer the most pressing exigencies. Physi- 
 cians know that consumptions, dropsies, and 
 such like lingering diseases are more mortal, 
 more difficult to cure, than slight external 
 wounds ; yet if the least vein be cut, they must 
 neglect their greater cures to stop that, which, 
 if neglected, must needs exhaust the stock of 
 nature, and produce a dissolution of the whole 
 man. A defection from the duties of our reli- 
 gion is a consumption to any state : no founda- 
 tion is firm that is not laid in Christ. The de- 
 nial of justice, the abridgment of our liberties, are 
 such an obstruction as renders the Commonwealth 
 leprous ; but the wounds in our property let out the 
 life blood of the people. The reformation of 
 Church government must necessarily be a work 
 of much time ; and, God be thanked, the dis- 
 ease is not desperate. We serve one God, we be- 
 lieve in one Christ, <fnd we all acknowledge and, 
 profess one Gospel. The stop of justice can yet 
 injure but particulars. 'Tis true, there may be 
 many, too many, instances of strange oppres- 
 sions, great oppressors, but 'twill be hard to 
 judge the conclusion : et sic de cceteris. But 
 take from us the property of our estates, our 
 subsistence, we are no more a people : this is 
 that vein which hath been so deep cut, so far 
 exhausted, that to preserve our being we must 
 doubtless stop this current. IT WILL BE TIME 
 
 ENOUGH TO SETTLE RULES TO LIVE BY WHEN WE 
 ARE SURE TO LIVE." 
 
 While this, as contrasted with Pym's tone 
 in the Parliament of April, is a perfect illustra- 
 tion of his present change of temper, it was 
 also, it cannot be doubted, intended to vindi- 
 cate himself from a charge which I find brought 
 against him by more than one of the Puritans 
 at the time a lukewarmness concerning the 
 bold questions of episcopal government,* in fa- 
 vour of the more practical strokes of policy by 
 which he sought, first of all, to assault and take 
 by storm the strongholds of the government of 
 the king. The last words of the passage just 
 quoted are a noble defence of what he had done 
 and was about to do, with this great view. In 
 truth, the difficulties of the period, the consid- 
 erations which should weigh with posterity 
 against a hasty judgment of the most startling 
 measures, were never so weightily expressed 
 
 "Known," says Clarendon, speaking- of Pym at this 
 time, " to be inclined to the Puritan party, yet not of those 
 furious resolutions against the Church as the other leading 
 men were, and wholly devoted to the Earl of Bedford, who 
 had nothing of that spirit." History, vol. i.. p. 323. Pym 
 was, in fact, like Selden, and the majority of lawyers in the 
 House of Commons, a disciple of Erastus in mailers of 
 Church government.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 181 
 
 as in these few words. The first aim was to 
 8ave the life of the republic, the next was to 
 govern it. 
 
 " Mr. Speaker," he continued, "he that well 
 weighs this little word property, or propriety, 
 In our estates, will find it of a large extent. 
 The leeches that have suck'd this blood have 
 been excise, benevolence, loans, impositions, 
 monopolies, military taxes, ship-money, cum 
 multis aliis all which spring from one root. 
 And is it not high time to grub up that root that 
 brings forth such fruit 1 Shall we first stand 
 to lop the branches one by one, when we may 
 down with all at once 7 He that, to correct an 
 evil tree which brings forth bad fruit, shall begin 
 at the master-bough, and so lop downwards, is in 
 danger to fall himself before the tree falls. The 
 safer and speedier way is to begin at the root ; and 
 there, with submission, would I lay the axe. 
 
 "The root of most of our present mischiefs, 
 and the ruin of all posterity, I hold to be those 
 extra-judicial (judgments I cannot say, but rath- 
 er) dooms, delivered by all the judges under 
 their hands out of court, yet recorded in all 
 courts, to the subversion of all our fundament- 
 al laws and liberties, and the annihilation, if 
 not confiscation, of all our estates : ' that, in 
 case of danger, the king may impose upon his sub- 
 jects ; and that he is the sole judge of the danger, 
 necessity, and proportion.' This, in brief, is to 
 take what, when, and where he will ; which, 
 though delivered in the time of a gracious and mer- 
 ciful prince, who, we hope, will not wrest it be- 
 yond our abilities, yet, when left to the interpreta- 
 tion of a succeeding tyrant, if ever this nation be 
 so unfortunate to fall into the hands of such, it is 
 a record wherein every man might read himself a 
 slave that reads it ; having nothing he can call 
 his own, but all prostitute to the will of an- 
 other. 
 
 " What to do in such a case, we are not to 
 seek for precedents. Our honourable ances- 
 tors taught us, in the just and exemplary pun- 
 ishments of Chief-justice Tresilian and his 
 complices,* for giving their judgments out of 
 Parliament, against the established laws of Par- 
 liament, how tender they were of us. How 
 careful, then, ought we to be to continue those 
 laws, and to preserve the liberty of our poster- 
 ity ! I am far from maligning the person, nor 
 in my heart wish I the execution, of any man ; 
 but certainly it shall be a justice well becoming this 
 House to lay their heads at his majesty's mercy, 
 who laid us under his feet who had made us but 
 tenants at will of our liberties and our estates. And 
 though I cannot but approve of mercy as a great 
 virtue in any prince, yet I heartily pray it prove a 
 precedent as safe and useful to this oppressed state 
 as that of justice .'" 
 
 The force and condensation of these passages 
 are wonderful indeed. But what follows is yet 
 more striking, when taken as a great appeal to 
 the future. 
 
 "Mr. Speaker, blasted may that tongue be 
 that shall in the least degree derogate from the 
 glory of those halcyon days our fathers enjoy- 
 ed during the government of that ever-blessed, 
 never-to-be-forgotten royal Elizabeth. But cer- 
 tainly I may safely say, without detraction, it 
 
 * These are the precedents alluded to by Goodwin, as 
 having been urged " by John Pyin in the beginning of the 
 Long Parliament." 
 
 [ was much advantage to the peace and pros- 
 1 perity of her reign, that the great examples of 
 j Empson and Dudley were then fresh in memo- 
 ; ry. The civility of our law tells us that the 
 king can do no wrong ; but then only is the state 
 secure when judges, their ministers, dare do none. 
 \ Since our times have found the want of such exam- 
 | pies, J tis fit we leave some to posterity ! God for- 
 bid all should be thought or found guilty ; there 
 are doubtless some ringleaders ; let us sift them 
 out. In public government, to pass by the no- 
 cent is equal injustice as to punish the inno- 
 cent. An omission of that duty now will be a 
 guilt in us, render us shamed in history, and cursed 
 by posterity. Our gracious, and, in that act of 
 voluntary justice, most glorious king, hath giv- 
 en up, to the satisfaction of his afflicted people, 
 the authors of their ruins. THE POWER OF FU- 
 TURE PRESERVATION IS NOW IN US. El qui UOU 
 
 servat patriam cum potest, idem trad.it destruenti 
 patriam. What though we cannot restore the 
 damage of the Commonwealth, we may yet re- 
 pair the breaches in the bounds of monarchy ; 
 though it be with our loss and charge, we shall so 
 leave our children's children fenced as with a wall 
 of safety, by the restoration of our laws to their 
 ancient vigour and lustre ! 
 
 " 'Tis too true that it is to he feared the rev- 
 enues of the crown, sold outright, would scarce 
 remunerate the injuries or repay the losses of 
 this suffering nation since the pronouncing of 
 that fatal sentence. What proportionable sat- 
 isfaction, then, can this Commonwealth receive 
 in the punishment of a few inconsiderable de- 
 linquents ? But 'tis a rule valid in law, and ap- 
 proved in equity, that Qui non habcnl in crume- 
 nd, luant in corpore ; and 'tis, without all ques- 
 tion, so in policy, that exemplary punishments 
 conduce more to the safety of a slate than pecuniary 
 reparations. Hope of impunity lulls every bad 
 great officer into security for his time ; and who 
 would not venture to raise a fortune, when the al- 
 lurements of honour and wealth are so prevalent, if 
 the worst that can fall be but restitution only 1 
 We see the bad effects of this bold erroneous 
 opinion. What was, at first, but corrupt law, is 
 since, by encouragement taken from, their impuni- 
 ty, become false doctrine. The people are taught 
 in pulpits ' that they have no property ;' kings 
 instructed in that destructive principle 'that 
 all is theirs ;' and it is thence deduced into ne- 
 cessary state policy, and whispered in council, 
 'that he is no monarch who is bounded by any 
 law.' 
 
 " By these bad consequences the best of 
 kings hath been, by the infusion of such poi- 
 sonous positions, diverted from the sweet in- 
 clinations of his own natural equity and jus- 
 tice ; the very essence of a king having been 
 taken from him, which is the preservation of 
 his people. And whereas salus populi is, or 
 should be, suprema lex, the power of undoing 
 us is masked under the style of royal preroga- 
 tive. And is it not high time for us to make 
 examples of the first authors of this subverted 
 law bad counsel worse doctrine 1 Let no 
 man think to divert us from the pursuit of jus- 
 tice by poisoning the clear streams of our af- 
 fections with jealous fears of his majesty's in- 
 terruptions if we look too high. SHALL WE 
 
 THEREFORE DOUBT OF JUSTICE, EEC AUSE WE HAVE 
 
 NEED OF GREAT JUSTICE ! We may be confi-
 
 182 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 dent, the king well knows, that his justice is 
 the band of our allegiance that it is the staff, 
 the proof of his sovereignty." 
 
 Never was a finer answer given to an often- 
 repeated fallacy than is contained in that sud- 
 den question of the orator ; and the following 
 peroration seems to me quite unequalled in any 
 ancient or modern speaker for its beauty and 
 condensation of thought. Its commencement 
 is indeed an absolute and final vindication of 
 such men as Pym, who, professing themselves 
 the advocates of monarchy, were soon obliged 
 to strip from the monarch all his abused re- 
 sources of prerogative. 
 
 " 'Tis a happy assurance, sir, of his majesty's 
 intention of grace to us, that our loyalty hath 
 at last won him to tender the safety of his peo- 
 ple. And certainly (all our pressures well weigh- 
 ed this twelve years last past) it will be found 
 
 that THE PASSIVE LOYALTY OF A SUFFERING NA- 
 TION HATH OUTDONE THE ACTIVE LOYALTY OF ALL 
 
 TIMES AND STORIES. As the poet hath it, 
 
 " ' Fortiter, ille facit, qui miser esse potest ;' 
 
 and I may as properly say, Fideliter fccimus. 
 We have done loyally to suffer so patiently. 
 
 " Then, since our royal lord hath in mercy 
 visited us, let us not doubt but in his justice he 
 will redeem his people. Qui timide rogat, docet 
 negare ! When religion is innovated, our liberties 
 violated, our fundamental laws abrogated, our 
 modern laics already obsolcted, the property of our 
 estates alienated NOTHING LEFT us WE CAN CALL 
 
 OUR OWN BUT OUR MISERY AND OUR PATIENCE 
 
 if ever any nation might justifiably, we certainly 
 may now now most properly, most seasonably cry 
 out, and cry aloud, ' Vel sacra regnet justitia, 
 vel ruat caelum !' " 
 
 And in the full acceptation of the spirit of 
 these words, Pym prosecuted the great work 
 he had now in hand, scarcely so much, as he 
 here explains, in the hope of achieving present 
 happiness, as of securing the liberties and hap- 
 piness of the future. He has been bitterly as- 
 sailed by the enemies of freedom for urging 
 forward the measures now in contemplation, 
 on the ground that, their tendency being anti- 
 monarchical, he thus, as an equally professed 
 friend to liberty and to monarchy, gave the lie 
 to his professions. But was this so ? Has he 
 not placed an undeniable refutation of it on 
 record 1 The question had been reduced, in 
 truth, as between Pym and the popular party, 
 and Charles the First, to a question strictly 
 personal. The nation had been brought into 
 such a position by the government of Charles, 
 as to make many of the hitherto undented pre- 
 rogatives of majesty incompatible, in the per- 
 son of Charles, with freedom. This is not to 
 be denied ; nor can the high and weighty con- 
 siderations involved in it be dismissed by any 
 affected discussion of them in the "abstract," 
 or to the exclusion of the one grand element 
 of the whole the insincerity and perfidy of 
 Charles himself. 
 
 In his opening speech of the session, the 
 king had termed the Scots people " rebels." 
 A vote was now passed by the Commons de- 
 creeing 300,000 " for the friendly relief and 
 aid, and towards the losses and necessities, of 
 their brethren the Scots."* Pym's object, 
 
 * Inquiries were also ordered into the losses suffered by 
 various members of the House by fine and imprisonment after 
 
 through all his measures at this time, was ap- 
 parently to strengthen the democratic power so 
 far above that of the prerogative as to enable 
 the Commons to resist a dissolution, in case a 
 dissolution should be threatened. He was so 
 far successful in achieving it, that an open ef- 
 fort to secure the continuance of Parliament 
 was now thought advisable. And this in two 
 short months ! But the final stand had doubt- 
 less now been taken by Pym and the chief men 
 of the party ; and, with unswerving reliance on 
 that political and religious faith of the people 
 to which they had been educated by the strug- 
 gles and miseries of so many years, they moved 
 forward with a steadiness of aim and determi- 
 nation which bore down every opposing effort, 
 and even every wish, against them. Claren- 
 don, Falkland, and I)igby were carried along 
 with the stream. Up to this time, and far be- 
 yond it, we hear no whisper of resistance on 
 the score of danger to the monarchy. " Truly, 
 I am persuaded," observes Clarendon, howev- 
 er, in a sort of self- vindication, " whatever de- 
 sign, either of alteration or reformation, was 
 yet formed I mean in the beginning of the 
 Parliament was only communicated between 
 Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Fiennes, Mr. St. 
 John, the Earl of Bedford, the Lords Say and 
 Kimbolton, who, together with the Earl of 
 Rothes and the Lord Louden (the Scots com- 
 missioners), managed and carried it on ; and 
 that neither the Earl of Essex, Warwick, nor 
 Brooke himself no, nor Mr. Hollis nor Strode, 
 nor any of the rest, were otherwise trusted 
 than upon occasion, and made use of according 
 to their several gifts ; but there was yet no 
 manner of difficulty in swaying and guiding the 
 affections of men, all having brought resolution 
 and animosity enough against the excesses and 
 exorbitancies that had been exercised in the 
 former government, and dislike enough to the 
 persons guilty of the same, and not yet discern- 
 ing that there was any other intention than of a 
 just and regular proceeding, and reformation upon 
 both." So far, at least, this is valuable testi- 
 mony. It is a warrant, from the authority of 
 the strongest professed friends to the monar- 
 chy, for the justice of the impeachment and 
 attainder of Strafford, and for all the measures 
 up to the period of his death. 
 
 We have seen Pym alluding, in one of his 
 speeches, to two statutes of Edward III. for 
 the holding of annual Parliaments. Upon this 
 suggestion Mr. Prideaux now introduced a bill 
 for yearly Parliaments, which, however, by the 
 amendments received in committee,* was chan- 
 ged into a triennial measure. The most singu- 
 lar care and precaution were used in framing 
 this statute. The issuing of writs was made 
 imperative on the keeper of the great seal ; in 
 case of his failure, upon the Lords ; on failure 
 of the latter, upon the sheriffs ; and, in the last 
 resort, representatives might be chosen by the 
 people themselves. Charles made a desperate 
 effort to elude assent to this famous bill ; but 
 an assent was extorted from him, and the peo- 
 
 the third Parliament of Charles. Among the names speci- 
 fied I find those of Pym and Hampden : the last I take te 
 be on the score of ship-money ; but was not aware, before, 
 that Pym had then also been subjected to imprisonment 
 and loss. Old Parl. Hist., vol. ix., p. 86. 
 
 * See Journals of the House, 30th Dec., 1640 ; and again, 
 Journals of 9th January.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 183 
 
 pie welcomed the event with bonfires and ev- 
 ery mark of joy.* 
 
 Meanwhile Pym had abated none of his ex- 
 ertions in preparing for the impending trial of 
 Strafford. A masterly series of twenty-eight 
 articles of impeachment had been drawn up by 
 himself and St. John, in which fourteen years 
 of Strafford's life were set forth with wonder- 
 ful force and precision ; blending offences of 
 various degrees, but so planned as to exhibit 
 through them all the one grand offence charged 
 upon the earl an attempt to subvert the funda- 
 mental laics of the country. Information was 
 now conveyed that Sir George Radcliffe was 
 mainly relied upon by Strafford for the proof 
 of his answers,! and Pym, well knowing Rad- 
 cliffe to have been the wretched instrument of 
 the lord-deputy's guilt throughout, instantly 
 charged high treason upon him also. Radcliffe 
 shortly after escaped ; but an extract from 
 Pym's speech in presenting the articles against 
 him will not be thought inappropriate here. 
 
 " The earl," my lords, " is charged as an au- 
 thor ; Sir George Radcliffe as an instrument 
 and subordinate actor. The influence of supe- 
 rior planets is often augmented and enforced, 
 but seldom mitigated, by the concurrence of 
 the inferior, where merit doth arise, not from 
 well doing, but from ill. The officiousness of 
 ministers will rather add to the malignity of 
 their instructions than diminish it, that so they 
 may more fully ingratiate themselves with those 
 upon whom they depend. In the crimes com- 
 mitted by the earl, there appears more haughti- 
 ness and fierceness, being acted by his own 
 principles. Those motions are ever strongest 
 which are nearer the primum mobile. But in 
 those of Sir George Radcliffe there seems to 
 be more baseness and servility, having resign- 
 ed and subjected himself to be acted upon by 
 the corrupt will of another. The Earl of Straf- 
 ford hath not been bred in the study and prac- 
 tice of the law, and having stronger lusts and 
 passions to incite, and less knowledge to restrain 
 him, might more easily be transported from the 
 rule. Sir George Radcliffe, in his natural tem- 
 per and disposition being more moderate, and, 
 by his education and profession, better ac- 
 quainted with the grounds and directions of 
 the law, was carried into his offences by a 
 more immediate concurrence of will, and a 
 more corrupt suppression of his own reason 
 and judgment. My lords, as both these have 
 been partners in offending, so it is the desire 
 of the Commons they may be put under such 
 trial and examination, and other proceedings 
 of justice, as may bring them both to partake 
 of a deserved punishment, for the safety and 
 good of both kingdoms." 
 
 As the trial of Strafford approached, the king 
 made an effort to save him by a compromise 
 with the leaders of the opposition. White- 
 locke's account of this negotiation^ is unsatis- 
 
 * See Parl. Hist., and Stat. 16, Car. I., c. i. Claren- 
 don's Hist., vol. i., p. 367. 
 
 t See Clarendon's Hist., vol. i., p. 377. 
 
 i These are his words: " But there was a proposal (the 
 subject of much discourse) to prevent all this trouble, and 
 to restore the Earl of Strafford to his former favour and 
 honour, if the king would prefer some of the grandees to of- 
 fices at court, whereby Strafford's enemies should become 
 his friends, and the king's desires he promoted. It was, 
 
 that should be made lord-treasurer, the Lord Say 
 
 master of the wards, Mr. Pym chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 
 factory and obscure ; but it is possible that, 
 from some extracts I shall now make from 
 Clarendon, a just notion of the whole transac- 
 tion may be arrived at. This is the more ne- 
 cessary, since it has been made matter of 
 grave accusation against the virtue of Pym and 
 Hampden by a writer* who is not less distin- 
 guished by his genius than his zeal. 
 
 " From the time," says the noble historian, 
 " that there was no more fear of the Archbish- 
 op of Canterbury, nor the lord-lieutenant of Ire- 
 land, nor of any particular men who were like 
 to succeed them in favour, all who had been 
 active in the court or in any service for the 
 king being totally dispirited, and most of them 
 to be disposed to any vile offices against him, 
 the great patriots thought they might be able to do 
 their country better service if they got the places 
 and preferments in the court,] and so prevent the 
 evil counsels which had used to spring from thence. 
 . . . The Earl of Bedford was to be treasurer ; 
 in order to which, the Bishop of London had 
 already desired the king to receive the staff. 
 And so the treasury was for the present put 
 into commission. Mr. Pym was to be chancel- 
 lor of the Exchequer. . . . These two were en- 
 gaged to procure the king's revenue to be lib- 
 erally provided for,t and honourably increased 
 
 Mr. Hollis secretary of state, Mr. Hampden tutor to the 
 prince ; others to have other places. In order whereunto, 
 the Bishop of London resigned up his treasurer's staff, the 
 Lord Cottington his place of the master of the wards, and 
 the rest were easily to be voided. But whether upon the 
 king's alteration of his mind, or by whatever means it came 
 to pass, is uncertain, these things were not effected, and 
 the great men baffled thereby became the more incensed 
 and violent against the earl, joining with the Scotch com- 
 missioners, who were implacable against him." The blank 
 is supposed to have been left for Lord Bedford's name. 
 
 * Mr. Southey, in the Quarterly Review. 
 
 t In the spurious editions of Lord Clarendon that is, in 
 every edition published before the Oxford one of 1826, this 
 passage stands thus : " if they got the places and prefer- 
 ments of the court for themselves." See Hist., vol. i., p. 369. 
 
 t I may here quote the charge which is subsequently 
 brought by Clarendon (vol. iv., p. 438-439) against the 
 memory of Pym, and which I have already (p. 149) adverted 
 to. " The king at one time intended to make Mr. Pym 
 chancellor of the Exchequer, for which he received his 
 majesty's promise, and made a return of a suitable profes- 
 sion of his service and devotion ; and thereupon, the other 
 being no secret, somewhat declined from that sharpness in 
 the House which was more popular than any man's, and made 
 some overtures to provide for the glory and splendour of the 
 crown ; in which he had so ill success, that his interest and 
 reputation then visibly abated, and he found that he was 
 much better able to do hurt than good, which wrought very 
 much upon him to melancholy, and complaint of the violence 
 and discomposure of the people's affections and inclinations." 
 If any period could have been carefully selected before an- 
 other with a view to prove the utter falsehood of this charge, 
 it had been this very time named by Lord Clarendon. Pym's 
 interest and repute with the Commons was never so extraor- 
 dinary and commanding as during and after the proceed- 
 ings against Strafford, nor did it ever, as we shall see, in 
 the slightest respect abate till after the disastrous reverses 
 at the commencement of the civil war. Now observe upon 
 what the spite of Lord Clarendon, for which truly there was 
 natural and sufficient cause, seems, with even less reason 
 than on the words quoted at p. 149, to have trumped up all 
 this. In a pamphlet of the time, entitled " The Diurnall 
 Occurrences of bjth Houses from the 3d of November, 1(540, 
 to the 3d of November, 1641,'' I find mention made of a de- 
 bate respecting ship-money and tonnage and poundage, 
 which took place on the 27th of November, 1640, and in 
 which some words spoken by Selden gave rise to the fol- 
 lowing from Pym. The reader will recollect that the very 
 srep he here recommends was stated by him to be on the 
 eve of being taken when the third Parliament was dissolved. 
 " That morning-, also. Master Pym, the great Parliament 
 man, declared that they would make the king the richest 
 king- in all Christendome ; and that they had no other in- 
 tenlion, but that he should continue their king to govern 
 them ; and pressed he might have tonnage and poundage 
 granted him by act of Parliament, which took well in the
 
 184 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and settled ; and that this might be the bet- 
 ter done, the Earl of Bedford prevailed with 
 the king, upon the removals mentioned before, 
 to make Oliver St. John his solicitor-general, 
 which his majesty readily consented to, hoping 
 that he would have been very useful in the present 
 exigence to support his service in the House of 
 Commons, where his authority was then great ; 
 at least, that he would be ashamed ever to ap- 
 pear in any thing that might prove prejudicial 
 to the crown. And he became immediately 
 possessed of that office of great trust, and was 
 so well qualified for it at that time, by his fast 
 and rooted malignity against the government, 
 that he lost no credit with his party, out of any 
 apprehension or jealousy that he would change 
 his side ; and he made good their confidence, 
 not in the least degree abating his malignant 
 spirit, or dissembling it, but with the same ob- 
 stinacy opposed every thing which might ad- 
 vance the king's service, when he was his so- 
 licitor, as ever he had done before. The Lord 
 Say was to be master of the wards, and Den- 
 /il Hollis secretary of state. Thus far the in- 
 trigue for preferments was entirely complied with ; 
 and it is great pity that it was not fully execu- 
 ted, that the king might have had some able men 
 to have advised or assisted him, which probably 
 these very men would have done after they had 
 been so thoroughly engaged. . . . But the Earl 
 of Bedford was resolved that he would not en- 
 ter into the treasury till the revenue was in 
 some degree settled ; at least, the bill for ton- 
 nage and poundage passed, with all decent cir- 
 cumstances, and for life ; which both he and 
 Mr. Pym did very heartily labour to effect, and 
 had in their thoughts many good expedients by 
 which they intended to raise the revenue of the 
 crown. And none of them were very solicitous to 
 take their promotions before some other accommo- 
 dations were provided for some of the rest of their 
 chief companions, who would be neither well 
 pleased with their so hasty advancement be- 
 fore them, nor so submissive in the future to 
 follow their dictates. Hampden was a man 
 they could not leave unprovided for, and there- 
 fore there were several designs, and very far 
 driven, for the satisfaction and promotion of 
 him, and Essex, and Kimbolton, and others, 
 though not so fully concluded as those before 
 mentioned. For the king's great end was, by 
 these compliances, to save the life of the Earl of 
 Strafford, and to preserve the Church from ruin ; 
 for nobody thought the archbishop in danger of 
 his life. And there were few of the persons men- 
 tioned before who thought their preferments would 
 do them much good if the earl were suffered to live ; 
 but in that of the Church, the major part even of 
 those persons would have been willing to have sat- 
 isfied the king, the rather because they had no 
 reason to think the two Houses, or, indeed, 
 either of them, could have been induced to 
 have pursued the contrary. And so the contin- 
 ued and renewed violence in the prosecution of the 
 Earl of Strafford made the king well contented 
 
 House ; but stood upon it to have grievances first reformed, 
 AND so IT WAS LEFT AT LARGE." So that here, immedi- 
 ately after Strafford and Laud had been yielded to the Tow- 
 er, and long before any compromise of office was thought of, 
 we find Pym simply recommending what the third Parlia- 
 ment wished to have done, with a condition which it is even 
 possible that Parliament would have dispensed with ; and 
 this is twisted into the charge first quoted, to gratify the 
 pleen aud spite of a personal and political opponent. 
 
 (as the other reasons prevailed with the other 
 persons) that the pulling of those promotions in 
 practice should be for a time suspended."* And 
 in a subsequent passage, Lord Clarendon, prob- 
 ably without intending it, supplies some very 
 singular and serviceable comments on his 
 present account of these transactions. " If 
 that stratagem," he says, " of winning men by 
 places had been practised as soon as the reso- 
 lution was taken at York to call a Parliament 
 (in which, it was apparent, dangerous attempts 
 would be made, and that the court could not be 
 able to resist those attempts), and if Mr. Pym, 
 Mr. Hampden, and Mr. Hollis had been then 
 preferred with Mr. Saint John before they were 
 desperately embarked in their desperate de- 
 signs, and had innocence enough about them to 
 trust the king and be trusted by him (having yet 
 contracted no personal animosities against 
 him), it is very possible that they might either 
 have been made instruments to have done good 
 service, or at least been restrained from en- 
 deavouring to subvert the royal building, for 
 supporting whereof they were placed as princi- 
 pal pillars. But the rule the king gave him- 
 self (very reasonable at another time), that they 
 should first do service, and compass this or that 
 thing for him, before they should receive favour, 
 was then very unseasonable ; since, besides that 
 they could not in truth do him that service with* 
 out the qualification, it could not be expected 
 they would desert that side, by the power of 
 which they were sure to make themselves con- 
 siderable, without an unquestionable mark of 
 interest in the other, by which they were to 
 keep up their power and reputation. And so, 
 whilst the king expected they should manifest their 
 inclinations to his service by their temper and mod- 
 eration in those proceedings that most offended 
 him, and they endeavoured, by doing all the hurt 
 they could, to make evident the power they had to 
 do him good, he grew so far disobliged and provo- 
 ked that he could not in honour gratify them, and 
 they so obnoxious and guilty that they could 
 not think themselves secure in his favour ; and 
 thence, according to the policy and method of 
 injustice, combined to oppress that power they 
 had injured, and to raise a security for them- 
 selves by disenabling the king to question their 
 transgressions. "t 
 
 Now surely there cannot remain a doubt, af- 
 ter a careful observation of these extracts, of 
 the precise nature and conduct of the " com- 
 promise" which Whitelocke has so imperfectly 
 and obscurely stated. It is quite clear that 
 Pym and Lord Bedford never for an instant 
 contemplated the restoration of Strafford as 
 their condition of entering office. It is here 
 acknowledged that the thought of office was 
 only entertained by the patriots on the under- 
 standing that Strafford and Laud, with all theii 
 evil counsels, were silenced forever ; and it is 
 proved, in the case of St. John, that the great 
 body of the opposition had sufficient faith in 
 their leaders to see them assume office with- 
 out the fear that they would "change sides." 
 Doubtless, when the negotiation was first en- 
 tered on, some pledge for what is called by 
 Clarendon the " security of the Church " was 
 given by Pym, since there was nothing in his 
 
 * Hist., vol. i., p. 369-372. 
 
 t Hist, of Rebel., vol. ii., p. 60, 61.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 185 
 
 opinions on that subject* that should have rais- 
 ed up an insurmountable obstacle. The eccle- 
 siastical constitution of England, as it existed 
 in that day, apart from Laud's gross adminis- 
 tration, and as it exists now, is as nearly as 
 possible Erastian in theory, and almost wholly 
 Erastian in practice. But, admitting that such 
 a pledge was given, it is to be observed, also, 
 that neither Pym nor Lord Bedford would con- 
 sent to treat with the king on any narrow or 
 personal consideration the people were to 
 have a secure guarantee for a thoroughly and 
 completely popular ministry. "Neither of them 
 were very solicitous to take their promotions 
 before accommodations were provided for the 
 rest of their chief companions." And why was 
 the whole negotiation suddenly broken off? 
 Because of a " continued and renewed violence 
 in the prosecution of the Earl of Strafford," is 
 the distinct reply of Clarendon ; because none 
 of the popular statesmen " thought their prefer- 
 ment would do them much good if the earl 
 were suffered to live." It is true that the 
 same writer, in another part of his voluminous 
 work, has apparently a partial contradiction of 
 this ; but its precise terms are worth notice. 
 " The Earl of Bedford secretly undertook to his 
 majesty that the Earl of Strafford's life should 
 be preserved, and to procure his revenue to be 
 settled as amply as any of his progenitors.''! 
 Here Pym's name is omitted, and the "secre- 
 cy" of the undertaking alluded to would seem to 
 imply treachery on the part of Lord Bedford to 
 his political associates. Now Clarendon is not 
 the best authority to receive such an accusa- 
 tion from. Laud, though he was then a pris- 
 oner, had ample opportunity of making himself 
 master of the state of parties and affections, 
 and his testimony may be taken with greater 
 confidence. He accuses the Earl of Bedford 
 with remaining " savagely" intractable respect- 
 ing the death of Strafford. " The earl," he 
 says, in his diary, " being thus laid low, and his 
 great services done in Ireland made part of his 
 accusation, I cannot but observe two things : 
 the one, that upon Sunday morning before, Fran- 
 cis, earl of Bedford (having about a month before 
 lost his second son, in whom he most joyed), 
 died, the smallpox striking into his brain. This 
 lord was one of the main plotters of Strafford's 
 death ; and I know where he, with other lords, 
 before the Parliament sat down, resolved to 
 have his blood. But God would not let him live 
 to take joy therein, but cut him off in the morn- 
 ing, whereas the bill for the Earl of Strafford's 
 death was not signed till night," &c. 
 
 This, then, is the conclusion to which all im- 
 partial men must come respecting this much-dis- 
 puted passage of history that whatever shape 
 or ultimate purpose these proposed changes 
 might have assumed in the mind of Charles, 
 they have left unsullied the motives of Pym and 
 Hampden. With the king the negotiation may 
 
 * " la the House of Commons, though of the chief lead- 
 ers, Nathaniel Fiennes and young Sir Harry Vane, and 
 shortly after Mr. Hampden (who had not before owned it), 
 were believed to be for root and branch ; which grew short- 
 ly after a common expression, and discovery of the several 
 tempers ; yet Mr. Pym was not of that mind, nor Mr. Hol- 
 lis,nor any of the Northern men, nor those lawyers who drove 
 on most furiously with them : all of whom were pleased with 
 the government itself of the Church." Clarendon's History 
 of the Rebellion, vol. i.., p. 410. See afterward vol. iv., p. 
 437. t Hist., vol. i., p. 446. 
 
 A A 
 
 have been merely a stratagem of despair, but 
 with the patriots it was entertained with a sin- 
 cere and bond fide hope of serving the cause, 
 and possibly of saving the king. Happy would 
 the issue, in all probability, have proved for 
 England ; but, whether or no, little did Pym 
 and Hampden then deserve to have it said of 
 them, in after times, that they only "wanted 
 places and power ; and being disappointed in 
 their expectations, they determined upon shed- 
 ding the blood of the man with whom, if they 
 might have been taken into office, they were 
 willing to have coalesced."* Granting, for an 
 instant, that it were possible to reconcile such 
 a charge with our impressions of virtue of the 
 accused, how could it consist with their undis- 
 puted genius 1 They had been shortsighted 
 fools, and not wise statesmen, to have hazard- 
 ed such an outrage on that people whose confi- 
 dence had given them their power. Mr. South- 
 ey is an able and unflinching defender of his 
 party ; but when he sees the propriety of with- 
 drawing this remark, he will be the last to re- 
 fuse such a concession to truth. t 
 
 The impeachment of Strafford now moved 
 gradually forward, and at last, on the 22d of 
 March, the trial was opened in Westminster 
 Hall. That mighty scene has been already de- 
 scribed,t and it is only necessary here to pre- 
 sent some memorable passages from the speech- 
 es of the second chief actor in it, the accuser 
 Pym. The first day was occupied with a reca- 
 pitulation of the charges and answers. 
 
 " My lords," said Pym, rising on the morning 
 of the second day, "we stand here by the. com- 
 mandment of the knights, citizens, and burgess- 
 es, now assembled for the commons in Parlia- 
 ment. And we are ready to make good that 
 impeachment whereby Thomas, earl of Straf- 
 ford, stands charged in their name, and in the 
 names of all the commons of England, with 
 high treason. 
 
 " This, my lords, is a great cause, and we 
 might sink under the weight of it, and be as- 
 tonished with the lustre of this noble assembly, 
 if there were not in the cause strength and vig- 
 our to support itself and to encourage us. It 
 is the cause of the king ; it concerns his maj- 
 esty in the honour of his government, in the 
 safety of his person, in the stability of his 
 crown. It is the cause of the kingdom ; it con- 
 cerns not only the peace and prosperity, but 
 even the being of the kingdom. We have that 
 piercing eloquence, the cries and groans, and 
 tears and prayers, of all the subjects assisting 
 us. We have the three kingdoms, England, 
 and Scotland, and Ireland, in travail and agita- 
 tion with us, bowing themselves, like the hinds 
 spoken of in Job, to cast out their sorrows. 
 
 " Truth and goodness, my lords they are 
 the beauty of the soul ; they are the protection 
 of all created nature ; they are the image and 
 character of God upon the creatures. This 
 beauty evil spirits and evil men have lost ; but 
 yet there are none so wicked but they desire to 
 march under the show and shadow of it, though 
 they hate the reality. 
 
 * Mr. Southey, in the Quarterly Review. 
 
 T I should not omit to say that Hume's view of this mat- 
 ter (History, vol. v., p. 264, quarto ed.) does not materially 
 differ from that which I have taken. 
 
 t Life of Strafford, p. 122, 124.
 
 186 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " This unhappy earl, now the object of your 
 lordships' justice, hath taken as much care, 
 hath used as much cunning, to set a face and 
 countenance of honesty and justice upon his 
 actions, as he hath been negligent to observe 
 the rules of honesty in the performance of all 
 these actions. My lords, it is the greatest 
 baseness of wickedness that it dares not look 
 in its own colours, nor be seen in its natural 
 countenance. But virtue, as it is amiable in 
 all respects, so the least is not this, that it puts 
 a nobleness, it puts a bravery upon the mind, and 
 lifts it above hopes and fears, above favour and 
 displeasure. It makes it always uniform and con- 
 stant to itself. The service commanded me and 
 my colleagues here is to take off those vizards 
 of truth and uprightness which hath been sought 
 to be put upon this cause, and to show you his 
 actions and his intentions in their own natural 
 blackness and deformity. 
 
 " My lords, he hath put on a vizard of truth 
 in these words, wherein he says ' that he should 
 be in his defence more careful to observe truth 
 than to gain advantage to himself He says 
 he would endure any thing rather than be saved 
 by falsehood. 
 
 " It was a noble and brave expression if it were 
 really true. 
 
 "My lords, he hath likewise put the vizard 
 of goodness on his actions when he desires to 
 recite his services in a great many particulars, 
 as if they were beneficial to the Commonwealth 
 and state, whereas we shall prove them mis- 
 chievous and dangerous. 
 
 " It is left upon me, my lords, to take off 
 these vizards, and appearances of truth and 
 goodness, in that part of his answer which is 
 the preamble ; and that I shall do with as much 
 faithfulness and brevity as I can. 
 
 " The first thing, my lords, that I shall ob- 
 serve in the preamble, is this : That having re- 
 cited all those great and honourable offices 
 which he hath done under his majesty, he is 
 bold to affirm that he hath been careful and 
 faithful in the execution of them all. 
 
 " My lords, if he might be his own witness 
 and his own judge, I doubt not but he would be 
 acquitted. It is said in the Proverbs of the 
 adulterous woman, ' that she wipes her mouth,' 
 and says ' she had done no evil.' Here is a 
 wiping of the mouth, here is a verbal expression 
 of honesty. But, my lords, the foulness and 
 unjustness will never be wiped off, neither from 
 his heart nor from his actions I mean for the 
 time past : God may change him for the time 
 to come !" 
 
 With the same earnest gravity, and in the 
 same confident and inflexible tone, Pym pro- 
 ceeded to observe upon the various parts of 
 Strafford's " apologetical preamble." Among 
 other allegations, for instance, that in all things 
 he had " endeavoured the honour of the king." 
 Here the accuser exclaimed, " The honour of 
 the king ! My lords, we say it is the honour 
 of the king that he is the father of his people, 
 that he is the fountain of justice ; and it can- 
 not stand with his honour and his justice to 
 have his government stained and polluted with 
 tyranny and oppression !" Another of Straf- 
 ford's allegations was, that by his means many 
 good and wholesome laws had been made since 
 his government in Ireland. " Truly, my lords," 
 
 said Pym, " if we should consider the particu- 
 lars of these laws, some of them will not be 
 found without great exception. But I shall 
 make another answer. Good laws, nay, the 
 best laws, are no advantage when will is set 
 above law ; when the laws have force to bind 
 and restrain the subject, but no force to relieve 
 and comfort him." 
 
 Pym then proceeded thus : " He says he was 
 a means of calling a Parliament not long after 
 he came to his government. My lords, Parlia- 
 ments without Parliamentary liberties are but a 
 fair and plausible way into bondage. That Par- 
 liament had not the liberties of a Parliament. 
 Sir Pierce Crosby, for speaking against a bill in 
 the Commons' House, was sequestered from the 
 council-table, and committed to prison. Sir John 
 Clotworthy, for the same cause, was threatened 
 that he should lose a lease that he had. Mr. 
 Barnewell, and two other gentlemen, were 
 threatened they should have troops of horse put 
 upon them for speaking in the House. Proxies 
 by dozens were given by some of his favourites ; 
 and, my lords, Parliaments coming in with 
 these circumstances, they be grievances, mis- 
 chiefs, and miseries ; no works of thanks or 
 honour." 
 
 Strafford had urged his having been a means 
 to put off monopolies and other burdensome pro- 
 jects from the subject, upon which his accuser 
 observed thus bitterly : " If he had hated the in- 
 justice of a monopoly or the mischief of a monop- 
 oly, he would have hated it in himself he him- 
 self would have been no monopolist. Certainly, 
 my lords, it was not the love of justice, nor the 
 common good, that moved him. And if he were 
 moved by any living else, he had his reward. 
 It may be it was because he would have no man 
 gripe them in the kingdom but himself; his own 
 harvest crop would have been less if he had had 
 sharers. It may be it was because monopolies 
 hinder trade ; he had the customs, and the benefit 
 of the customs would have been less. When we 
 know the particulars, we shall make a fit and 
 proper answer to them. But in the mean time 
 we are sure that, whatsoever was the reason, 
 it was not justice, nor love of truth, that was 
 the reason." 
 
 Alluding next to Strafford's plea that he had 
 no other commission but what his predecessors 
 had, and that he had executed that commission 
 with all moderation, the orator proceeded thus 
 powerfully : " For the commission, it was no 
 virtue of his if it were a good commission. I 
 shall say nothing of that. But for the second 
 part his moderation ! When you find so many 
 imprisoned of the nobility ! so many men, some 
 adjudged to death, some executed without law ! 
 when you find so many public rapines on the 
 state, soldiers sent to make good his decrees 
 so many whippings in defence of monopolies 
 so many gentlemen that were jurors, because 
 they would not apply themselves to give ver- 
 dicts on his side, to be fined in the Star Cham- 
 ber men of quality to be disgraced, set on the 
 pillory, and wearing papers, and such things (as 
 it will appear through our evidence) can you, 
 my lords, think there was any moderation] 
 And yet truly, my lords, I can believe that if 
 you compare his courses with other parts of 
 the world ungoverned, he will be found beyond 
 all tyranny and harshness ; but if you compare
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 187 
 
 them with his own mind and disposition, per- 
 haps there was moderation ! Habits, we say, are 
 more perfect than acts, because they be near- 
 est the principle of actions. The habit of cruel- 
 ty in himself (no doubt) is more perfect than any 
 act of cruelty he hath committed ; but if this be 
 his moderation, I think all men will pray to be 
 delivered from it. I may truly say that that is 
 verified in him, ' The mercies of the wicked are 
 cruel!' " 
 
 Then, after exposing at length, and with sin- 
 gular precision, the fallacies respecting reve- 
 nue in the answers of Strafford, Pym took up 
 one of his statements, to the effect that many 
 churches had been built since his government ; 
 and went on, " Truly, my lords, why he should 
 have any credit or honour if other men builded 
 churches, I know not ; I am sure we hear of no 
 churches he hath built himself. If, indeed, he 
 had been careful to have set up good preachers, 
 that would have stirred up devotion in men, 
 and made them desirous of the knowledge of 
 God, and by^hat means made more churches, 
 it had been something. But I hear nothing of 
 spiritual edification, nothing of the knowledge 
 of God, that by his means hath been dispersed 
 in that kingdom. And certainly they that strive 
 not to build up men's souls in a spiritual way 
 of edification, let them build all the material 
 churches that can be, they will do no good : 
 God is not worshipped with walls, but he is 
 worshipped with hearts." 
 
 It is necessary to hasten, however, through 
 many remarkable details in this speech to the 
 memorable words which closed it : " The earl 
 concludes, my lords, with a desire ' that he may 
 not be charged with errors of his understand- 
 ing or judgment, being not bred up in the law ; 
 or with weakness, to which human nature is 
 subject.' Truly, my lords, it would be far from 
 us to charge him with any such mistakes ! No, 
 my lords, we shall charge him with nothing but 
 what the law in every man's breast condemns the 
 light of nature, the light of common reason, the 
 rules of common society. And this will appear 
 in all the articles which my colleagues will of- 
 fer to you." 
 
 It has been observed in the course of this 
 work* that in the speeches of Pym alone will be 
 found a real vindication of all the proceedings 
 against Strafford up to the exaction of his life. 
 From them alone is indeed reflected that " flow- 
 ing and existing light of the public welfare," 
 which discovered to virtuous statesmen then 
 what was requisite to be done, and without 
 which now our sight is dull and feeble. It ap- 
 pears to me that Pym, and of all the managers 
 Pym alone, argued the accusation and convic- 
 tion of the earl as of the substance of eternal 
 right, in opposition to the technical forms which 
 the defence assumed. That crisis of danger to 
 the public liberties had in his view already ar- 
 rived, wherein, by every precedent of great and 
 virtuous statesmanship, the question of JUS- 
 TICE reared itself above the narrow limits of 
 the law. 
 
 Hence it was that, early on the morning of 
 the thirteenth day of the trial when the elo- 
 quence, the dignity of demeanour, and the ob- 
 vious bodily sufferings of the noble accused had 
 weighed as much in his favour with the lords 
 
 Life of Strafford, p. 126. 
 
 his judges as the commanding intellect and 
 mournful severity of his features had prepos- 
 sessed the lady spectators on his side Pym 
 rose in his place in the House of Commons, and 
 announcing a discovery of the last importance 
 respecting Strafford, presented to the House 
 certain weighty reasons for closing the proceed- 
 ings against the earl by the legislative enact- 
 ment of a bill of attainder. He then produced 
 Vane's famous notes, in proof of advice from 
 Strafford given to the king at the council-table, 
 that he had an army in Ireland by which Eng- 
 land might be reduced to obedience ; and mo- 
 ved that the bill of attainder, which he now also 
 produced, should be read a first time. 
 
 Pym's motives to this sudden course are ob- 
 vious. They are distinctly explained by a mo- 
 tion which he submitted to the House six days 
 after, when, on the bringing up the report of 
 the bill previous to its third reading, he prevail- 
 ed with the House to pass, unanimously, a pre- 
 vious resolution, " That it has been sufficiently 
 proved that Thomas, earl of Strafford, hath en- 
 deavoured to subvert the ancient and funda- 
 mental laws of these realms of England and 
 Ireland, and to introduce an arbitrary and ty- 
 rannical government against law."* In the 
 course of the proceedings of the impeachment, 
 and on the discovery of Vane's notes, the poli- 
 cy, no less than the necessity, had made itself 
 apparent to him, of fixing the case of Strafford 
 on wider and more special grounds than were 
 found to be involved in a very strict construc- 
 tion of the old statute of treasons. Admitting 
 this, however, nothing is so vain as to argue 
 this question with a view to our present settle- 
 ment of the laws of evidence and treason. The 
 rules of evidence, and legal constructions of 
 statutes, which are now clearly and intelligibly 
 defined, were then recognised doubtfully, and 
 frequently exceeded ; nor is it to be denied that 
 the people at least accustomed as they were 
 to perpetual stretchings of the statute of Ed- 
 ward by constructive interpretation were un- 
 able to attach any definite sense to the crime. t 
 In Pym's refusal even to risk any arbitrary con- 
 struction of a statute which might thereafter 
 be turned against the people, we see only a 
 fresh evidence of his never-ceasing care of the 
 public freedom, which he would not consent to 
 endanger, even in so extraordinary an emer- 
 gency, by any possible invasion of the securi- 
 ties of regular jurisprudence. He resolved on 
 a bill of attainder. Bills of attainder were not 
 then unusual, were the same in principle as the 
 ordinary bills of pains and penalties ; and the 
 argument against such a proceeding, as an act 
 of retrospective punishment, was thoroughly 
 answered in the case of Strafford by the course 
 which Pym adopted. The histories do not 
 mention the resolution I have just quoted, but 
 it imbodies his grand vindication. It plainly 
 reduced the reasoning of Strafford to this, that 
 though to trangress a particular law is a crime, 
 he who takes advantage of circumstances to 
 overturn the whole established laws had no le- 
 gal warning of his guilt, and therefore was no 
 criminal. Pym only waited till he had reason 
 to believe that the proofs he advanced under 
 the fifteenth article of the impeachment did not 
 
 * See Journals of 16th April, 1641. 
 
 t See Uallam's (Joust. Hist., vol. ii., p. 146.
 
 188 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 amount to a substantive treason under the stat- 
 ute, when it is very clear that he at once re- 
 solved upon this course, wisely judging it bet- 
 ter to fix the guilt of Strafford on higher and 
 grander considerations,* and to bring the trea- 
 son that had been committed against the laws 
 and liberties of the Commonwealth to the im- 
 mediate arbitration of what he justly termed 
 " the element and source of all laws, out of 
 which they are derived ; the end of all laws, to 
 which they are designed, and in which they are 
 perfected." With this view, also, he inserted 
 the famous proviso in the bill, that the present 
 attainder should not be acted upon by the judg- 
 es as a precedent in determining the crime of 
 treason. Truly has Mr. Godwin saidt that 
 this illustrates emphatically the clearness of 
 his conceptions and the equality of his temper 
 through the whole of these memorable proceed- 
 ings. 
 
 Nothing has been so little understood, not to 
 say grossly misrepresented, as the exact course 
 of Pym in this matter. He did not wait till 
 "the impeachment had obviously failed;" he 
 did not wait to see " the effect of Vane's notes 
 upon the lords ;" he did not at last hurry the 
 bill of attainder through the lower House " with 
 indecent haste." Clarendon's assertions, that 
 the bill was not introduced till after Strafford's 
 defence was made, and that then it was " re- 
 ceived with wonderful alacrity, and immedi- 
 ately read the first and the second time, and 
 so committed, which was not usual in Parlia- 
 ments,":): are simply untruths. Pym introdu- 
 ced the bill on the 10th of April, when it was 
 read the first time ; Vane's notes were not read 
 in Westminster Hall till the 13th of April, im- 
 mediately before Strafford's defence ; on the 
 day following (the 14th) the bill of attainder 
 was read a second time ; and the third reading 
 did not pass till the 21st of April. Meanwhile 
 Pym and St. John had both stated to the House 
 of Lords that the Commons did not seek "to 
 decline their lordships' justice in a judicial 
 way"|| by submitting the bill of attainder to 
 them ; and ultimately the House of Lords did 
 in fact vote upon each article of the bill judi- 
 cially, and not as if they were enacting a legis- 
 lative measure ; while the judges themselves, 
 on a solemn reference by the Lords for their 
 opinion whether some of the articles charged 
 upon Strafford amounted to treason, answered 
 unanimously that upon all which their lordships 
 had voted to be proved, they considered the 
 earl to be guilty of that crime. So that, in 
 truth, there is no reason to suppose a failure 
 of the impeachment, had it been allowed to pro- 
 ceed. It was Pym who first refused to sanc- 
 tion that proceeding with the weight of his au- 
 thority in after-times ; and to him, and the great 
 men who acted with him, be awarded the praise 
 of having thus stamped the guilt of Strafford as 
 a treason against the people rather than the 
 king, and, while they guarded with profound 
 and sagacious care the liberty of the subject 
 and the strict authority of the law, of having 
 written for all future ages, in the death of 
 
 * See these considerations urged at greater length in the 
 Life of Strafford, p. 126-129. 
 
 t Hist, of the Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 92. 
 
 t Hist., vol. i., p. 398. 
 
 i; See the Journals of those days ; or the Old Parl. Hist., 
 vol ix., p. 252. || Nalson's Collections, vol. ii., p. 163. 
 
 Strafford, the terrible lesson of a nation's ret- 
 ribution. 
 
 I now return to the last day of the trial in 
 Westminster Hall, where the Lords still pro- 
 ceeded as if they were ignorant of the bill now 
 pending in the lower House. On the 13th of 
 April, after Lord Strafford had delivered the 
 noble and affecting burst of eloquence with 
 which his defence concluded, Pym rose, and, 
 in the language of an honest writer* who was 
 present, " made, in half an hour, to the confes- 
 sion of all, one of the most eloquent, wise, free 
 speeches that ever we heard, or I think shall 
 ever hear."t The speech was indeed extra- 
 ordinary. It seems, by all the accounts, to 
 have been delivered with the evident sense 
 that the great occasion of the speaker's life had 
 come, and that with him it now finally rested 
 whether or not the privileges so long contested, 
 and the rights so long misunderstood, of the 
 great body of the people, should win at last their 
 assured consummation and acknowledgment. 
 
 " My lords," he began, " many days have 
 been spent in maintenance of the impeachment 
 of the Earl of Strafford by the House of Com- 
 mons, whereby he stands charged with high 
 treason ; and your lordships have heard his de- 
 fence with patience, and with as much favour 
 as justice will allow. W r e have passed through 
 our evidence ; and the result is, that it remains 
 clearly proved that the Earl of Strafford hath 
 endeavoured, by his words, actions, and counsels, 
 to subvert the fundamental laws of England and 
 Ireland, and to introduce an arbitrary and tyran- 
 nical government. 
 
 " This is the envenomed arrow! for which 
 he inquired in the beginning of his replication 
 this day, which hath infected all his blood ; 
 this is that intoxicating cup (to use his own 
 metaphor) which hath tainted his judgment and 
 poisoned his heart ! From hence was infused 
 that specifical difference which turned his 
 speeches, his actions, his counsels into trea- 
 son ; not cumulative, as he expressed it, as it 
 many misdemeanors could make one treason, 
 but formally and essentially. It is the end 
 that doth inform actions, and doth specificate 
 the nature of them, making not only criminal, 
 but even indifferent words and actions to be 
 treason when done and spoken with a treason- 
 able intention. 
 
 " That which is given to me in charge is to 
 show the quality of the offence, how heinous it 
 is in the nature, how mischievous in the effect 
 of it ; which will best appear if it be examined by 
 that law to which he himself appealed, that uni- 
 versal, that supreme law, SALUS POPULI. This 
 the element of all laws, out of which they are 
 
 * Baillie, the principal of the Glasgow University. 
 
 t " The king," Baillie adds, "never heard a lecture of so 
 free language against that his idolized prerogative. Some 
 of the passages, and no more but some, and these defaced, 
 I send you in priut, as they have been taken in speaking by 
 some hand." 
 
 t In the commencement of the defence which had just 
 closed, Strafford, observing upon the statement of his ac- 
 cusers that separate articles in the impeachment might be 
 no treason in themselves, and yet conduce to the proof of 
 treason, had said, " And hence, my lords, I have all along 
 watched to see if I could find that poisoned arrow that should 
 envenom all the rest that deadly cup of wine that should 
 intoxicate a few alleged inconveniences and misdemeanors, 
 to run them up to high treason." Pym's remarks on this 
 and other important points of the defence proves that in 
 general management, and much of the expression, this great 
 speech of his was delivered extempore.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 derived ; the end of all laws, to which they are 
 designed, and in which they are perfected. How 
 far it stands in opposition to this law I shall en- 
 deavour to show, in some considerations which 
 I shall present to your lordships, arising out of 
 the evidence which hath been opened. 
 
 " The first is this : it is an offence compre- 
 hending all other offences. Here you shall 
 find several treasons, murthers, rapines, op- 
 pressions, perjuries. The earth hath a semi- 
 nary virtue, whereby it doth produce all herbs 
 and plants, and other vegetables : there is in 
 this crime a seminary of all evils hurtful to a 
 state ; and if you consider the reasons of it, it 
 must needs be so. 
 
 " The law is that which puts a difference betwixt 
 good and evil, betwixt just and unjust. If you 
 take away the law, all things will fall into a con- 
 fusion. Every man will become a law to him- 
 self, which, in tht depraved condition of human na- 
 ture, must needs produce many great enormities. 
 Lust will become a law, and envy will become a 
 law ; covetousness and ambition will become laws ; 
 and what dictates, what decisions such laws will 
 produce, may easily be discerned in the late gov- 
 ernment of Ireland ! 
 
 " The law hath a power to prevent, to re- 
 strain, to repair evils. Without this, all kinds 
 of mischief and distempers will break in upon 
 a state. It is the law that doth entitle the 
 king to the allegiance and service of his peo- 
 ple ; it entitles the people to the protection and 
 justice of the king. It is God alone who sub- 
 sists by himself; all other things subsist in a 
 mutual dependence and relation. He was a 
 wise man that said that the king subsisted by 
 the field that is tilled : it is the labour of the 
 people that supports the crown. If you take 
 away the protection of the king, the vigour and 
 cheerfulness of allegiance will be taken away, 
 though the obligation remain. 
 
 " The law is the boundary, the measure, be- 
 twixt the king's prerogative and the people's 
 liberty. Whilst these move in their own orbs, 
 they are a support and a security to one anoth- 
 er the prerogative a cover and defence to the 
 liberty of the people, and the people, by their 
 liberty, enabled to be a foundation to the pre- 
 rogative ; but if these bounds be so removed 
 that they enter into contestation and conflict, 
 one of these mischiefs must ensue : if the pre- 
 rogative of the king overwhelm the liberty of 
 the people, it will be turned into tyranny ; if 
 liberty undermine the prerogative, it will grow 
 into anarchy." 
 
 The whole compass of our language does not 
 contain a nobler description of law than this. 
 It has indeed been justly pronounced, by no 
 partial witness* to Pym's memory, to combine 
 the splendour of one of the commonplaces of 
 Cicero with the logical force of Lord Bacon's 
 profound meditations. It has even greater 
 force, philosophy, and beauty, when viewed in 
 relation to the wider appeal which the speaker 
 had already judged it necessary to make, not 
 less to prevent the possibly undue stretching 
 of a statute, than to wither and destroy the 
 monstrous assumption of the accused that 
 he, forsooth, was a pleader for the law, while 
 the very principle assumed in his argument is 
 that of having laboured to overturn all law. 
 
 * Mr. D'kraeli in his Commentaries, vol. iv., p. 467. 
 
 It will be observed, however, that nothing 
 more strikingly impresses itself upon us, ia 
 reading Rushworth's report* of this extraordi- 
 nary speech, than the instant and impressive 
 practical application to the defence which Straf- 
 ford had just delivered, with which all the great 
 principles and abstract truths on which Pym 
 must have thought for years, now, with a state- 
 ly vehemence, rushed forth from him. This it 
 is, as with the greatest orators, to comprehend 
 the whole of a subject, no matter how over- 
 whelming in its interests and proportions, at a 
 single glance ; and then, out of an armory of 
 words and thoughts, collected through the unti- 
 ring exertions of a life of observation and study, 
 to know how to send every word and every 
 thought to its errand, like an arrow to its mark, 
 with unerring aim. The first of the noble pas- 
 sages which follow has reference to what 
 Strafford had said in his defence respecting 
 Ireland that it was a conquered country, and 
 that his illegal exertions there were to main- 
 tain the king's absolute sovereignty. This 
 was as good an argument as many that have 
 been since advanced, with less excuse, for sub- 
 sequent oppressions in the same quarter ; but 
 mark with what final and unanswerable elo- 
 quence Pym crushes every such sophism or 
 pretension ! 
 
 " The law is the safeguard, the custody of all 
 private interests. Your honours, your lives, 
 your liberties, and estates are all in the keep- 
 ing of the law. Without this, every man hath 
 a like right to any thing ; and such is the con- 
 dition into which the Irish were brought by 
 the Earl of Strafford. But the reason which 
 he gave for it hath even more mischief in it 
 than the thing itself! They were a conquered 
 nation ! There cannot be a word more preg- 
 nant and fruitful in treason than that word is. 
 There are few nations in the world that have 
 not been conquered, and no doubt but the con- 
 queror may give what law he pleases to those 
 that are conquered ; but if the succeeding pacts 
 and agreements do not limit and restrain that 
 right, what people can be secure 1 England hath 
 been conquered, and Wales hath been conquer- 
 ed, and by this reason will be in little better 
 case than Ireland. If the king, by the right of a 
 conqueror, gives laws to his people, shall not the 
 people, by the same reason, be restored to the right 
 of the conquered to recover their liberty if they can ? 
 What can be more hurtful, more pernicious to 
 both, than such propositions as these 1 And in 
 these particulars is determined the first consid- 
 eration. 
 
 " The second consideration is this : arbitra- 
 ry power is dangerous to the king's person, and 
 dangerous to his crown. It is apt to cherish 
 ambition, usurpation, and oppression in great 
 men, and to beget sedition and discontent in 
 the people ; and both these have been, and in 
 reason must ever be, causes of great trouble 
 and alteration to princes and states. If the 
 histories of those Eastern countries be pursued, 
 where princes order their affairs according to 
 the mischievous principles of the Earl of Straf- 
 ford, loose and absolved from all rules of gov- 
 ernment, they will be found to be frequent in 
 combustions, full of massacres, and of the tragi- 
 cal ends of princes. If any man shall look into 
 
 My quotations are taken from it.
 
 190 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 their own stories in the times when the laws 
 were most neglected, he shall find them full 
 of commotions of civil distempers, where- 
 by the kings that then reigned were always 
 kept in want and distress, the people consumed 
 with civil wars ; and by such wicked counsels 
 as these some of our princes have been brought 
 to such a miserable end as no honest heart can 
 remember without horror, and an earnest pray- 
 er that it may never be so again.* 
 
 " The third consideration is this the sub- 
 version of the laws ; and this arbitrary power, 
 as it is dangerous to the king's person and to 
 his crown, so is it in other respects very pre- 
 judicial to his majesty, in his honour, profit, and 
 greatness. And yet these are the gildings and 
 paintings that are put upon such counsels : 
 ' these are for your honour for your service ;' 
 whereas, in truth, they are contrary to both. 
 But if I take off this varnish, I hope they shall 
 then appear in their own native deformity, and 
 therefore I desire to consider them by these 
 rules. 
 
 " It cannot be for the honour of the king that 
 his sacred authority should be used in the prac- 
 tice of injustice and oppression that his name 
 should be applied to patronise such horrid 
 crimes as have been represented in evidence 
 against the Earl of Strafford ; and yet how fre- 
 quently, how presumptuously his commands, 
 his letters, have been vouched throughout the 
 course of this defence ! Your lordships have 
 heard that when the judges do justice it is the 
 king's justice ; and this is for his honour, be- 
 cause he is the fountain of justice ; but when 
 they do injustice the offence is their own ; how 
 these officers and ministers of the king, who 
 are most officious in the exercise of arbitrary 
 power, do it commonly for their own advan- 
 tage ; and, when they are questioned for it, 
 then they fly to the king's ' interest' to his 
 'direction!' Truly, my lords, this is a very 
 unequal distribution for the king, that the dis- 
 honour of evil courses should be cast upon him, 
 and they to have the advantage ! 
 
 "The prejudice which it brings to him in re- 
 gard of his profit is no less apparent, since it 
 deprives him of the most beneficial and most 
 certain revenue of his crown ; that is, the vol- 
 untary aids and supplies of his people. His 
 other revenues, consisting of goodly demesnes 
 and great manors, have by grants been vari- 
 ously alienated from the crown, and are now 
 exceedingly diminished and impaired. But this 
 revenue, it cannot be sold ; it cannot be bur- 
 dened with any pensions or annuities ; it comes 
 entirely to the crown. It is now almost fifteen 
 years since his majesty had any assistance 
 from his people, and these illegal ways of sup- 
 plying the king were never pressed with more 
 violence and art than they have been in this 
 time ; and yet I may, upon very good grounds, 
 affirm, that in the last fifteen years of Queen 
 Elizabeth she received more by the bounty and 
 affection of her subjects than hath come to his 
 majesty's coffers by all the inordinate and rig- 
 orous courses which have been taken ; and as 
 
 * The king- was present, the reader will recollect, though 
 not recognised as being so. A screen of trellis-work was be- 
 fore him. It may be supposed that now, while these mem- 
 orable words sounded through the hall, was the moment of 
 ' breaking down the screen with his own hand,'' as Baillie 
 records him to have done. 
 
 those supplies were more beneficial in the re- 
 ceipt of them, so were they like in the use and 
 employment of them. 
 
 " Another way of prejudice to his majesty's 
 profit is this : such arbitrary courses exhaust 
 the people, and disable them, when there shall 
 be occasion, to give such plentiful supplies as 
 otherwise they would do. I shall need no oth- 
 er proof of this than the Irish government un- 
 der my Lord Strafford, where the wealth of the 
 kingdom has been so consumed by those horri- 
 ble exactions and burdens, that it is thought the 
 subsidies lately granted will amount to little 
 more than half the proportion of the last sub- 
 sidies. The two former ways are hurtful to the 
 king's profit in that respect which they call lu- 
 crum ccssans, by diminishing his receipts ; but 
 there is a third yet more full of mischief, and 
 it is in that respect which they call damnum 
 emcrgens, by increasing his disbursements ; for 
 such irregular and exorbitant attempts upon the 
 liberties of the people are apt to produce such 
 miserable distractions and distempers, as will 
 put the king and kingdoms to so vast expenses 
 and losses in a short time that they will not be 
 recovered in many years. We need not go far 
 to seek a proof of this these two last years 
 will be a sufficient evidence ; within which time 
 I assure myself it may be proved, that more 
 treasure hath been wasted, and more loss sus- 
 tained by his majesty and his subjects, than 
 was spent by Queen Elizabeth in all the war of 
 Tyrone, and in those many brave attempts 
 against the King of Spain, and the royal as- 
 sistance which she gave to France and the Low 
 Countries, during all her reign. 
 
 " Now, as for greatness, this arbitrary pow- 
 er is apt to hinder and impair it, not only at 
 home, but abroad. A kingdom is a society of 
 men conjoined under one government for the 
 common good. The world is a society of the 
 kingdoms and states. The king's greatness 
 consists not only in his dominion over his sub- 
 jects at home, but in the influence which he 
 hath upon states abroad ; that he should be 
 great, even among kings, and by his wisdom 
 and authority be able so to incline and dispose 
 the affairs of other states and nations, and 
 those great events which fall out in the world, 
 that they shall be for the good of mankind, and 
 for the peculiar advantage of his own people. 
 This is the most glorious and magnificent great- 
 ness to be able to relieve distressed princes, 
 to support his own friends and allies, to pre- 
 vent the ambitious designs of other kings ; and 
 how much this kingdom hath been impaired in 
 this kind by the late mischievous counsels, your 
 lordships best know, who, at a near distance, 
 and with a more clear sight, do apprehend these 
 public and great affairs than I can do. Yet 
 thus much I dare boldly say, that if his majes- 
 ty had not with great wisdom and goodness 
 forsaken that way wherein the Earl of Strafford 
 had put him, we should, within a short time, 
 have been brought into that miserable condi- 
 tion as to have been useless to our friends, con- 
 temptible to our enemies, and incapable of un- 
 dertaking any great design either at home or 
 abroad. 
 
 " A fourth consideration is, that this arbitra- 
 ry and tyrannical power which the Earl of 
 Strafford did exercise with his own person, and
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 191 
 
 to which he did advise his majesty, is incon- 
 sistent with the peace, the wealth, the prosper- 
 ity of a nation : it is destructive to justice, the 
 mother of peace ; to industry, the spring of 
 wealth ; to valour, which is the active virtue 
 whereby only the prosperity of a nation can be 
 procured, confirmed, and enlarged. It is not 
 only apt to take away peace, and so entangle 
 the nation with wars, but doth corrupt peace, 
 and put such a malignity into it as produceth 
 the effects of war. We need seek no other 
 proofs of this but the Earl of StrafTord's gov- 
 ernment, where the Irish, both nobility and oth- 
 ers, had as little security of their persons or 
 estates in this peaceable time as if the king- 
 dom had been under the rage and fury of war. 
 " And as for industry and valour, who will 
 take pains for that which, when he hath gotten, 
 is not his own 1 or who fight for that wherein 
 he hath no other interest but such as is subject 
 to the will of another 1 The ancient encour- 
 agement to men that were to defend their coun- 
 tries was this, that they were to hazard their 
 person, pro arts et focis, for their religion and 
 for their homes ; but by this arbitrary way 
 which was practised in Ireland, and counselled 
 here, no man had any certainty either of reli- 
 gion, or of his home, or of any thing else to be 
 his own ; and besides this, such arbitrary cour- 
 ses have an ill operation upon the courage of 
 a nation, by embasing the hearts of the people. 
 A servile condition does for the most part be- 
 get in men a slavish temper and disposition. 
 Those that live so much under the whip, and 
 the pillory, and such servile engines as were 
 frequently used by the Earl of StrafFord, they 
 may have the dregs of valour sullenness and 
 stubbornness, which may make them prone to 
 mutinies and discontents, but those noble and 
 gallant affections which put men to brave de- 
 signs and attempts for the preservation or en- 
 largement of a kingdom they are hardly capa- 
 ble of. SHALL IT BE TREASON TO EMBASE THE 
 
 KING'S COIN, THOUGH BUT A PIECE OF TWELVE- 
 PENCE OR SIXPENCE 1 AND MUST IT NOT NEEDS BE 
 THE EFFECT OF A GREATER TREASON TO EMBASE 
 THE SPIRIT OF HIS SUBJECTS, AND TO SET UP A 
 STAMP AND CHARACTER OF SERVITUDE UPON THEM, 
 WHEREBY THEY SHALL BE DISABLED TO DO ANY- 
 THING FOR THE SERVICE OF THE KING AND CoM- 
 MONWEALTH 1 
 
 " The fifth consideration is this, that the ex- 
 ercise of this arbitrary government in times of 
 sudden danger, by the invasion of an enemy, 
 will disable his majesty to preserve himself and 
 his subjects from that danger. This is the only 
 pretence by which the Earl of Strafford, and 
 such other mischievous counsellors, would in- 
 duce his majesty to make use of it ; and if it 
 be unfit for such an occasion, I know nothing 
 that can be alleged in maintenance of it. When 
 war threatens a kingdom by the coming of a 
 foreign enemy, it is no time then to discontent 
 the people, to make them weary of the present 
 government, and more inclinable to a change. 
 The supplies which are to come in this way 
 will be unready uncertain ; there can be no 
 assurance of them no dependance upon them, 
 either for time or proportion ; and if some 
 money be gotten in such a way, the distrac- 
 tions, divisions, distempers which this course 
 is apt to produce, will be more prejudicial to 
 
 the public safety than the supply can be advan- 
 tageous to it. Of this we have had sufficient ex- 
 perience the last summer. 
 
 " The sixth is, that this crime of subverting 
 the laws, and introducing an arbitrary and ty- 
 rannical government, is contrary to the pact 
 and covenant betwixt the king and his people. 
 That which was spoken of before was the legal 
 union of allegiance and protection ; this is a 
 personal union, by mutual agreement and stip- 
 ulation, confirmed by oath on both sides. The 
 king and his people are obliged to one another in 
 the nearest relations. When Justice Thorp, in 
 Edward III.'s time, was by the Parliament con- 
 demned to death for bribery, the reason of that 
 judgment is given, because he had broke the 
 king's oath ; not that he had broke his own 
 oath, but he had broken the king's oath, that 
 solemn and great obligation which is the secu- 
 rity of the whole kingdom. Now if for a judge 
 to take a small sum in a private cause was ad- 
 judged capital, how much greater was this of- 
 fence, whereby the Earl of Strafford hath bro- 
 ken the king's oath in the whole course of his 
 government in Ireland, to the prejudice of so 
 many of his majesty's subjects in their lives, 
 liberties, and estates, and to the danger of all 
 the rest !* The doctrine of the Papists, fides 
 non est survanda cum hareticis, is an abominable 
 doctrine ; yet that other tenet, more peculiar 
 to the Jesuits, is more pernicious, whereby sub- 
 jects are discharged from their oath of allegi- 
 ance to their prince whensoever the pope 
 pleaseth. Now, my lords, this may be added, 
 to make the third no less mischievous and de- 
 structive to human society than either of the 
 rest, that the king is not bound by that oath 
 which he hath taken to observe the laws of the 
 kingdom, but may, when he sees cause, lay tax- 
 es and burthens upon them without their con- 
 sent, contrary to the laws and liberties of the 
 kingdom. This hath been preached and publish- 
 ed by divers ; and this is that which hath been 
 practised in Ireland by the Earl of Strafford in 
 his government there, and endeavoured to be 
 brought into England by his counsel here. 
 
 " The seventh is this : it is an offence that 
 is contrary to the end of government. The end 
 of government is to prevent oppressions, to 
 limit and restrain the excessive power and vi- 
 olence of great men, to open the passages of 
 justice with indifferency towards all. This ar- 
 bitrary power is apt to induce and encourage 
 all kinds of insolences. Another end of the 
 government is to preserve men in their estates, 
 to secure them in their lives and liberties ; but 
 if this design had taken effect, and could have 
 been settled in England as it is practised in Ire- 
 land, no man would have had more certainty in 
 his own than power would have allowed him. 
 But these two have been spoken of before ; 
 there are two behind more important, which 
 have not yet been touched. 
 
 * This precedent, by-the-by, is likely to have been that 
 which was in Sir R. Goodwin's mind when he referred to 
 Pym in Cromwell's Parliament of 1658 ; but I have allowed 
 the speech to stand, which has been attributed to Pym on 
 the ground of its containing a similar precedent, both be- 
 cause of its extraordinarily marked style, which, in the ab- 
 sence of any known author, and in spite of strong opposing 
 evidence, still seems to point to Pym as having had a sharo 
 in its authorship, and also because, being a most striking 
 illustration of the times, it is yet excluded from the com- 
 mon Parliamentary histories.
 
 192 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " It is the end of government that virtue 
 should be cherished, vice supprest ; but where 
 this arbitrary and unlimited power is set up, a 
 way is open not only for the security, but for 
 the advancement and encouragement of evil. 
 Such men as are apt for the execution and main- 
 tenance of this power are only capable of pre- 
 ferment ; and others who will not be instru- 
 ments of any unjust commands, who make a 
 conscience to do nothing against the laws of 
 the kingdom and liberties of the subjects, are 
 not only not. passable for employment, but sub- 
 ject to much jealousy and danger. It is the end 
 of government that all accidents and events, all 
 counsels and designs, should be improved to the 
 public good ; but this arbitrary power is apt to 
 dispose all to the maintenance of itself. The 
 wisdom of the council-table, the authority of 
 the courts of justice, the industry of all the of- 
 ficers of the crown, have been most carefully 
 exercised in this ; the learning of our divines, 
 the jurisdiction of our bishops, have been mould- 
 ed and disposed to the same effect ; which, 
 though it were begun before the Earl of Straf- 
 ford's employment, yet hath been exceedingly 
 furthered and advanced by him. Under this 
 colour and pretence of maintaining the king's 
 power and prerogative, many dangerous prac- 
 tices against the peace and safety of the king- 
 dom have been undertaken and promoted. The 
 increase of popery, and the favours and encour- 
 agement of Papists, have been, and still are, a 
 great grievance and danger to the kingdom. 
 The invocation, in matters of religion, upon 
 usurpations of the clergy, the manifold burthens 
 and taxations upon the people, have been a 
 great cause of our present distempers and dis- 
 orders ; and yet those who have been chief 
 furtherers and actors of such mischiefs have 
 had their credit and authority from this, that 
 they were forward to maintain this power. 
 The Earl of Strafford had the first rise of his 
 greatness from this ; and in his apology and 
 defence, as your lordships have heard, this hath 
 had a main part. 
 
 " The royal power and majesty of kings is 
 only glorious in the prosperity and happiness 
 of the people. The perfection of all things 
 consists in the end for which they were ordain- 
 ed. God only is his own end. All other things 
 have a further end beyond themselves, in at- 
 taining whereof their own happiness consists. 
 If the means and the end be set in opposition 
 to one another, it must needs cause an impo- 
 tency and defect of both." 
 
 These extracts carry with them their own 
 praise. They belong, indeed, to the very high- 
 est order of eloquence ; they imbody the truths 
 of a sound philosophy with the great substan- 
 tial truths of common sense, and mingle, with 
 a power and purpose that are truly masterly, 
 the great maxims of the old English Constitu- 
 tion with the real interests and general feelings 
 of mankind in every country and under every 
 circumstance. 
 
 Pym now turned to certain special excuses 
 and justifications which Strafford had urged in 
 his defence. " The eighth consideration is the 
 vanity and absurdity of those excuses and jus- 
 tifications which he made for himself, whereof 
 divers particulars have been mentioned in the 
 course of this defence. 
 
 " 1. That he is a counselloi, and might not 
 be questioned for any thing which he advised 
 according to his conscience. The ground is 
 true. There is a liberty belongs to counsellors, 
 and nothing corrupts counsels more than fear. 
 He that will have the privilege of a counsellor, 
 however, must keep within the just bounds of 
 a counsellor : those matters are the only prop- 
 er subjects of counsel which in their times and 
 occasions may be good or beneficial to the king 
 or Commonwealth ; but such treasons as these 
 the subversion of the laws, violation of liber- 
 ties they can never be good or justifiable by 
 any circumstance or occasion. Therefore his 
 being a counsellor makes his fault much more 
 heinous, as being committed against a greater 
 trust, and in a way of much mischief and dan- 
 ger, lest his majesty's conscience and judgment 
 (upon which the whole course and frame of his 
 government do much depend) should be poison- 
 ed and infected with such wicked principles and 
 designs. This Lord Strafford hath endeavour- 
 ed to do, which by all laws and in all times 
 hath in this kingdom been reckoned a crime of 
 a high nature. 
 
 " 2. He labours to interest your lordships in 
 his cause by alleging it may be dangerous to 
 yourselves and your posterity, who by your 
 birth are fittest to be near his majesty, in pla- 
 ces of trust and of authority, if you should be 
 subject to be questioned for matters delivered 
 in council. To this it is to be answered, that 
 it is hoped their lordships will rather labour to 
 secure themselves and their posterity in the 
 exercise of their virtues than of their vices, 
 that so they may, together with their own hon- 
 our and greatness, preserve the honour and 
 greatness both of the king and kingdom. 
 
 " 3. Another excuse is this, that whatsoever 
 he hath spoken was out of good intention. 
 Sometimes, my lords, good and evil, truth and 
 falsehood, lie so near together that they are 
 hardly to be distinguished. Matters hurtful 
 and dangerous may be accompanied with such 
 circumstances as may make them appear use- 
 ful and convenient ; and, in all such cases, good 
 intention will justify evil counsel. But where 
 the matters propounded are evil in their own na- 
 ture, such as the matters are wherewith the 
 Earl of Strafford is charged as to break a pub- 
 lic faith, and to subvert laws and government 
 they can never be justified by any intentions, 
 how good soever they be pretended. 
 
 "4. He allegeth it was a time of great ne- 
 cessity and danger, when such counsels were 
 necessary for the preservation of the state. 
 Necessity hath been spoken of before, as it re- 
 lates to the cause ; now it is considered as it 
 relates to the person. If there were any ne- 
 cessity, it was of his own making : he, by his 
 evil counsel, had brought the king into a neces- 
 sity ; and by no rules of justice can be allowed 
 to gain this advantage by his own fault, as to 
 make that a ground of his justification which 
 is a great part of his offence. 
 
 "5. He hath often insinuated this, that it 
 was for his majesty's service, in maintenance 
 of that sovereign power with which he is in- 
 trusted by God for the good of his people. The 
 answer is this : no doubt but that sovereign 
 power wherewith his majesty is intrusted for 
 the public good hath many glorious effects, the
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 193 
 
 better to enable him thereunto ; hut without 
 doubt this is none of them, that, by his own will, 
 he may lay any tax or imposition upon his peo- 
 ple without their consent in Parliament. This 
 hath now been five times adjudged by both 
 Houses in the case of the loans, in condemn- 
 ing commissions of the excise, in the resolu- 
 tion upon the saving clause offered to be added 
 to the petition of right, in the sentence against 
 Mainwaring, and now against Lutell, in con- 
 demning the ship-money. And, therefore, if 
 the sovereign power of the king can produce 
 no such effect as this, the allegation of it is an 
 aggravation, and no diminution, of his offence, 
 because thereby he doth labour to interest the 
 king against the just grievance and complaint 
 of the people. 
 
 " 6. That this counsel was propounded with 
 divers limitations and provisions for securing 
 and repairing the liberty of the people. This 
 implies a contradiction : to maintain an arbi- 
 trary and absolute power, and yet to restrain 
 it with limitations and provisions ; for even 
 those limitations and provisions will be subject 
 to the same absolute power, and to be dispen- 
 sed in such manner and at such time as itself 
 shall determine. Let the grievances and op- 
 pressions be never so heavy, the subject is left 
 without all remedy but at his majesty's own 
 pleasure. 
 
 " 7. He allegeth they were but words, and 
 no effect followed : this needs no answer, but 
 that the miserable distempers into which he 
 hath brought all the three kingdoms will be evi- 
 dence sufficient that his wicked counsels have 
 had such mischievous effects, within these two 
 or three last years, that many years' peace 
 will hardly repair those losses and other great 
 mischiefs which the Commonwealth hath sus- 
 tained." 
 
 Pym now offered his concluding considera- 
 tions, which, it will be seen, bear emphatic 
 reference to the new course which he had al- 
 ready initiated in the House of Commons, of 
 declaring Strafford's treason by the justice of 
 a special enactment. 
 
 " The ninth consideration, my lords, is this : 
 that if this be treason in the nature of it, it 
 doth exceed all other treasons in this, that in 
 the design and endeavour of the author it was 
 to be a constant and permanent treason. Other 
 treasons are transient, as being confined with- 
 in those particular actions and proportions 
 wherein they did consist ; and those being 
 past, the treason ceaseth. The powder trea- 
 son was full of horror and malignity, yet it is 
 past many years since. The murder of that 
 magnanimous and glorious king, Henry IV. of 
 France, was a great and horrid treason, and 
 so were those manifold attempts against Queen 
 Elizabeth, of blessed memory ; but they are 
 long since past : the detestation of them only 
 remains in histories and in the minds of men, 
 and will ever remain. But this treason, if it 
 had taken effect, WAS TO BE A STANDING, PER- 
 PETUAL TREASON, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN IN 
 CONTINUAL ACT J NOT DETERMINED WITHIN ONE 
 TIME OR AOE, BUT TRANSMITTED TO POSTERITY, 
 EVEN FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER. 
 
 " The last consideration is this : that as it is 
 a crime odious in the nature of it, so it is odi- 
 ous in the judgment and estimation of the law. 
 BB 
 
 To alter the settled frame and constitution of 
 government is treason in any state. THE LAWS 
 
 WHEREBY ALL OTHER PARTS OP A KINGDOM ARK 
 PRESERVED WOULD BE VERY VAIN AND DEFECTIVE 
 IF THEY HAD NOT A POWER TO SECURE AND PRE- 
 SERVE THEMSELVES." 
 
 The orator concluded with these condensed 
 and terrible words : " The forfeitures inflicted 
 for treason by our law are of life, honour, and 
 estate, even all that can be forfeited ; and this 
 prisoner having committed so many treasons, 
 although he should pay all these forfeitures, 
 will be still a debtor to the Commonwealth. 
 Nothing can be more equal than that he should 
 perish by the justice of ttiat law which he 
 would have subverted. Neither will this be a 
 new way of blood. There are marks enough to 
 trace this law to the very original of this king- 
 dom ; and if it hath not been put in execution, 
 as he allegeth, these 240 years, it was not for 
 want of law, but that all that time hath not bred a 
 man bold enough to commit such crimes as these /" 
 
 An interesting incident now occurred, which 
 has already been described in this work,* but 
 which cannot be omitted here. Through the 
 whole of the speech Strafford is described to 
 have been closely and earnestly watching Pym ; 
 when the latter suddenly turning, as the above 
 words were spoken, met the fixed and faded 
 eyes and haggard features of his early associ- 
 ate, and a rush of feelings from other days 
 so fearfully contrasting the youth and friend- 
 ship of the pastf with the love-poisoned hate 
 of the present and the mortal agony impending 
 in the future for a moment deprived the pa- 
 triot of self-possession. " His papers he look- 
 ed on," says Baillie, " but they could not help 
 him ; so he behooved to pass them." For a 
 moment only ! Suddenly recovering his dig- 
 nity and self-command, he told the court that 
 the solicitor-general, St. John, would, on a fu- 
 ture day, and " with, learning and abilities much 
 better for that service," argue certain points 
 of law before them, and solicited their lord- 
 ships, for the present, to consider the proceed- 
 ings closed. 
 
 The few eventful weeks of life which still 
 remained to Strafford have already been detail- 
 ed ; but some incidents connected with the 
 plots devised for his rescue, not given before, 
 may now be used in illustration of Pym's char- 
 acter. While the bill of attainder was on its 
 way to the Lords,* Mr. Hyde (Lord Clarendon) 
 was sent up to that house with a message sta- 
 ting that the Commons apprehended a design 
 for the escape of Strafford, and requesting that 
 the Irish army should be disbanded. Five days 
 after this, and two days after the ill-advised 
 interference of the king,$ a furious mob of up- 
 ward of 6000 people, variously armed, throng- 
 ed round Westminster Hall, clamoured for 
 Strafford's blood, and placarded the names of 
 those members of the Commons who, out of a 
 
 * Life of Strafford, p. 127. 
 
 t The expression conveyed in Strafford's look may be felt 
 on reading a few of the touching words which graced his 
 eloquent defence : " That I am charged with treason by the 
 honourable Commons is my greatest grief: it pierces my 
 heart, though not with guilt, yet with sorrow, that i my 
 gray hairs I should be so misunderstood by the companions 
 of my youth, with whom I have formerly spent to much time" 
 
 t On the 28th of April. 
 
 <) See Life of Strafford, p. 127.
 
 194 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 house of 263,* had voted against the attainder, 
 as " Straffordians, and betrayers of their coun- 
 try." The Lords instantly demanded a con- 
 ference on the subject, and were refused. The 
 Commons were at that moment listening, in 
 the deepest agitation, to Pym, whose sleepless 
 vigilance had discovered a formidable and dan- 
 gerous conspiracy, and was then denouncing 
 it, in all its details, and with the names of all 
 its actors. He discovered to the House va- 
 rious desperate intrigues and dangerous de- 
 signs, both at home and abroad (referring to 
 France), against the Parliament and the peo- 
 ple ; and especially a plot " to disaffect the 
 army to the Parliament," and bring it up from 
 the North, with the king's assent, to overawe 
 their proceedings ; also of a design upon the 
 Tower for Lord Strafford's escape, and of an 
 intended descent of the French upon Ports- 
 mouth in furtherance of these machinations. 
 He stated farther, that "persons of eminence 
 about the queen" appeared to be deeply impli- 
 cated ; and moved that his majesty be request- 
 ed to shut the ports, and to give orders that 
 no person attending on himself, the queen, or 
 the prince, should quit the kingdom without li- 
 cense of his majesty, by the advice of Parlia- 
 ment, t 
 
 The immediate effects of Pym's speech were 
 very memorable. The Commons, who remain- 
 ed sitting on the occasion with locked doors 
 from seven in the morning till eight at night, 
 drew up a " protestation," at last, on Pym's 
 motion,}: "to defend the Protestant Church, 
 his majesty's person and power, the privileges 
 of Parliament, and the lawful rights and liber- 
 ties of the people ;" which was instantly sign- 
 ed by every member present (" Edward Hyde" 
 is the second name attached to it), subsequent- 
 ly by the members of the House of Lords (the 
 Catholic peers excepted, and who were in con- 
 sequence absent during Strafford's attainder), 
 and then circulated, in various copies, for uni- 
 versal signature throughout the kingdom. The 
 sensation thus created was felt everywhere, 
 
 * "The question being then put for passing the bill 
 against the eaal, it was carried in the affirmative by 204 
 against 59. Mr. Pym was ordered to carry this bill to the 
 Lords, and to express to them ' that it was a bill that high- 
 ly concerned the Commonwealth in the expediting of it.'" 
 This was oa the 21st of April. Old Parl. Hist., vol. iz., p. 
 262, 263. 
 
 t Subsequent discoveries have placed us in possession of 
 the exact course and substance of Pym's present disclosures. 
 They are thus shortly summed up in the History from Mack- 
 intosh : " Goring, then a colonel in the army, and Percy, 
 brother of the Earl of Northumberland, took the lead iu a 
 consultation of officers, held under an oath of secrecy. It 
 originated with Sir John Suckling, who was soon thrown 
 aside from distrust of his personal courage. The Parlia- 
 ment was to be overawed or dissolved ; and, in short, the 
 king rendered abesVute, by the sudden march of the army to 
 London. They addressed to the king a petition, which he 
 received and approved, and marked with the initials C. R. : 
 it seriously compromised him. This movement was com- 
 bined with the escape of Strafford. Balfour, lieutenant of 
 the Tower, was offered by the earl 22,000, the marriage 
 of Balfour's son to his eldest daughter, and the king's war- 
 rant for his indemnity. He received the king's command, 
 at the same time, to receive Captain Billingsley, one of the 
 conspirators, with 100 picked men, into the Tower. Dread- 
 ing the vengeance of the House of Commons, he rejected 
 the bribe, and refused obedience to the military order. The 
 king and queen charged Jennyn, already the queen's fa- 
 vourite, to reconcile the rival pretensions of Goring and 
 Percy, but failed to do so ; and Goring disclosed the plot to 
 Lord Newark, from whom, through Bedford, Say, and Kim- 
 bolton, it reached Pym." 
 
 t See the speech of Pym, as reported in Clarendon, vol. 
 i., p. 43&-441. 
 
 and the popular leaders took advantage of it to 
 achieve a still more memorable measure. Pym 
 pointed out the nature of the dangers that had 
 threatened them before this discovery, and ask- 
 ed whether they were safer now. The king 
 had listened to and approved a proposal of ap- 
 pealing from the House of Commons to a mili- 
 tary force. Were they now secure from in- 
 stant dissolution 1 and, supposing a dissolution 
 at the present crisis, with a term of three years 
 for prerogative measures against the people, 
 were not the public liberties in danger of being 
 lost forever 1 A bill to secure the existence 
 of the present Parliament, on which depended 
 every thing, was then named, and fervently 
 welcomed by the House. " A rapid impulse," 
 observes Mr. Hallam,* " rather than any con- 
 certed resolution, appears to have dictated a 
 hardy encroachment on the prerogative. The 
 bill against the dissolution of the present Par- 
 liament without its own consent was resolved 
 in a committee on the 5th of May,t brought in 
 the next day, and sent to the Lords on the 
 7th." On the 8th the bill passed. On the 
 same day Strafford's attainder passed also, and 
 both measures were presented to the king. 
 
 He at once signed the bill for the continu- 
 ance of Parliament ; and Mr. Hallam suggests 
 that "his ready acquiescence in this bill, far 
 more dangerous than any of those at which he 
 had hitherto demurred, can only be ascribed to 
 his own shame and the queen's consternation 
 at the discovery of the late plot. He implored 
 for some delay, however, before signing Straf- 
 ford's attainder. Nothing could be more vain. 
 The same discovery had also enmeshed him 
 here ; for it was already obvious, into such a 
 state had the public mind been thrown, that 
 had the Commons even consented to a tempo- 
 rary respite, it must have been in defiance of 
 Imminent danger to the kingdom. The bill was 
 signed on the 9th of May ; and on the 12th, 
 Strafford, " the greatest subject in power, and 
 little inferior to any in fortune that was at that 
 time in any of the three kingdoms,":): suffered 
 on the scaffold. 
 
 Such were the instant consequences of Pym's 
 discovery of the army plot ; and others, almost 
 equally remarkable, will be noticed hereafter. 
 Lord Clarendon has not failed, therefore, to 
 assail the character of the vigilant patriot on 
 this point ; and, treating the real plot as a very 
 trifling affair, charges Pym in his history with 
 having used it only to agitate the public mind, 
 and raise terrifying tumults. Admitting, how- 
 ever, subsequently, that what was really dis- 
 covered "gave great credit and reputation to 
 Mr. Pym's vigilance and activity," he takes oc- 
 casion to add, that at this period " Mr. Pym had 
 all tavern and ordinary discourses carried to 
 him ;" which only leaves us to regret that the 
 treachery of such men as " Mr. Hyde " should 
 have rendered such vigilance necessary. Not- 
 withstanding all this, nothing is more certain, 
 at least, than that this same " Mr. Hyde " par- 
 took of the terrors which Pym excited, since 
 he carried up the first message to the Lords, 
 was foremost in the affair of the " protesta- 
 tion," which so effectually roused the country, 
 
 * Const. Hist., vol. ii., p. 155. 
 
 t That is, two days after Pym's discovery of the army 
 plot. t Clarendon.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 195 
 
 and, with his friend Lord Falkland, managed a 
 sudden conference with the Lords respecting 
 the bill for the continuance of Parliament.* It 
 was only the "Earl of Clarendon " who, many 
 years after, found it convenient to represent 
 the conspiracy as having been exaggerated for 
 factious purposes ; and, notwithstanding the 
 thorough exposure of his falsehoods, careless- 
 ness, and disingenuousness by Mr. Brodie and 
 Mr. Hallatn,t he has found a very resolute and 
 ingenious follower in the present day, who yet 
 persists in saying that the only solid mischief 
 of the army plot was worked " by the adroit 
 management of Pym, whose vigorous concep- 
 tions could create mighty consequences from 
 slight events, and on whose bold designs now 
 revolved the fate of an empire."}: 
 
 It is now necessary to go back a little. Some 
 few weeks before the death of Strafford, Pym 
 had been specially chosen by the Commons to 
 justify the impeachment and detention of Laud, 
 on the occasion of their delivering to the Lords 
 the articles that had been prepared against him. 
 The time was well selected, in reference to 
 measures respecting prelacy and the Star Cham- 
 ber, then instantly depending ; and the speech 
 is not only so remarkable in itself, but so little 
 known, that it claims a place in his memoir.^ 
 The articles having been read, Pym opened his 
 task with a very striking effect. 
 
 " My lords," he said, " there is an expression 
 in the Scripture which I will not presume either 
 to understand or to interpret ; yet, to a vulgar 
 eye, it seemes to have an aspect something 
 suitable to the person and cause before you. 
 It is a description of the evill spirits, wherein 
 they are said to bee ' spirituall wickednesses in 
 high places.' Crimes acted by the spirituall 
 faculties of the soule, the will, and the under- 
 standing, exercised about spirituall matters, con- 
 cerning God's worship and the salvation of man, 
 seconded with power, authoritie, learning, and 
 many other advantages, doe make the partie who 
 commits them very suitable to that description 
 
 SPIRITUALL WICKEDNESSES IN HIGH PLACES. 
 
 "These crimes, my lords, are various in 
 their nature, haynous in their qualitie, and uni- 
 versall in their extent. If you examine them 
 theologically, as they stand in opposition to the 
 trueth of God, they will bee found to bee against 
 the rule of faithe, against the power of godli- 
 nesse, against the meanes of salvation. If you 
 examine them morally, as they stand in opposi- 
 tion to the light of nature, to right reason, and 
 the principles of humane societie, you will then 
 perceive pride without any moderation ; even 
 such a pride as that is which 'exalts' itselfe 
 ' above all that is called God.' Malice without 
 any provocation, malice against vertue, against 
 innocency, against pietie ! Injustice without 
 any meanes of restitution ; even such injustice 
 as doeth robbe the present times of their pos- 
 sessions, the future of their possibilities ! If 
 they bee examined, my lords, by legall rules, in 
 a civill way, as they stand in opposition to the 
 
 * See the Journals. Colepepper, with Falkland, Hyde, 
 and Whitelocke, all " moderate men, 1 ' were equally warm 
 supporters of this very " unconstitutional" measure. 
 
 t Hist, of Brit. Empire, vol. iii., p. 109-114, note. Const. 
 Hist., vol. ii., p. 154, note. 
 
 t D'Israeli's Commentaries, vol. iv., p. 172. 
 
 $ I give the extracts from a small quarto in my possession, 
 printed for Ralph Mabb, 1641. 
 
 publike goode, and to the lawes of the land, the 
 accused will bee found to bee a traytour against 
 his majestie's crowne, an incendiary against 
 the peace of the state, the highest, the boldest, 
 the most impudent oppressour that ever was 
 an oppressour both of king and people. 
 
 " This charge, my lords, is distributed and 
 conveyed into fourteene severall articles, as 
 you have hearde ; and those articles are onely 
 generall ; it being the intention of the House 
 of Commons (which they have commanded me 
 to declare) to make them more certaine and 
 particular by preparatory examinations, to bee 
 taken with the helpe of your Lordships' House, 
 as in the case of my Lord of Strafford. For 
 the present I shall runne through them with a 
 light touch, onely marking, in each of them, 
 some speciall points of venome, virulency, and 
 fnalignitie. 
 
 " The first article, my lords, doth containe 
 his indeavour to introduce into this kingdome 
 an arbitrary power of government, without any 
 limitations or rules of law. This, my lords, is 
 against the safetie of the king's person, the 
 honour of his crowne, and most destructive to 
 his people. Those causes which are most per- 
 fect have not onely a power to produce effects, 
 but to conserve and cherish them. The sem- 
 inary vertue, and the nutritive vertue in vege- 
 tables, doe produce from the same principles. 
 It was the defect of justice, the restrayning of 
 oppression and violence, that first brought gov- 
 ernment into the world, and set up kings, the 
 most excellent way of government ; and by the 
 maintenance of justice, all kindes of govern- 
 ment receive a sure foundation and establish- 
 ment. It is this that hath in it an abilitie to 
 preserve and secure the royall power of kings 
 yea, to adorn and increase it. 
 
 " In the second article your lordships may 
 observe absolute and unlimited power defended 
 by preaching by sermons and other discours- 
 es, printed and published upon that subject ; 
 and truely, my lords, it seemes to bee a prodi- 
 gious crime that the trueth of God and his holy 
 law should bee perverted to defend the lawless- 
 nesse of man ; that the holy and sacred func- 
 tion of the ministery, which was ordained for 
 instruction of men's soules in the wayes of 
 God, should bee so abused that the ministers 
 are become trumpets of sedition, the promoters 
 and defenders of violence and oppression ! 
 
 " In the third article, my lords, you have the 
 judges, who, under his majestie, are the dis- 
 pensers and distributors of justice, frequently 
 corrupted by feare and solicitation ; you have 
 the course of justice in the execution of it 
 shamefully obstructed ; and, if a willful act of 
 injustice in a judge bee so high a crime in the 
 estimate of the law as to deserve death, under 
 what burthen of guilt doth this man lye, who 
 hath beene the cause of great numbers of such 
 voluntary and willful acts of injustice 1 ? 
 
 " In the fourth article hee will bee found, in 
 his owne person, to have sold justice in causes 
 depending before him, and by his wicked coun- 
 sell indeavouring to make his majestie a mer- 
 chant of the same commoditie ; onely with this 
 difference, that the king, by taking money for 
 places of judicature, should sell it in grosse, 
 whereas the archbishop sold it by retaile. 
 
 " In the fifth article there appeares a power
 
 196 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 usurped of making canons, and of laying obli- 
 gations on the subjects in the nature of lawes ; 
 while this power is abused to the making of 
 such canons, as are in the matter of them very 
 pernicious, being directly contrarie to the pre- 
 rogative of the king and the libertie of the peo- 
 ple. In the manner of pressing of them may 
 bee found fraud and shuffling ; in the conclu- 
 sion, violence and constraint, men being forced 
 by terrour and threatening to subscribe to all : 
 which power, thus wickedly gotten, has beene 
 laboured to bee established by perjurie, and the 
 injoyning such an oathe for the maintenance 
 of it as can neither bee taken nor kept with a 
 goode conscience. 
 
 " In the sixth article you have the king rob- 
 bed of his supremacy ; you have a papall power 
 exercised over his majestie's subjects, in their 
 consciences and in their persons ; you have 
 ecclesiasticall jurisdiction claimed by an inci- 
 dent right, which the law declares to proceed 
 from the crowne. And herein your lordships 
 may observe, that those who labour in civill matters 
 to set up the king above the lawes of the kingdome, 
 doe yet, in ecclesiasticall matters, indeavour to set 
 up themselves above the king. This was first 
 procured by the archbishop to bee extra-judi- 
 cially declared by the judges, and then to bee 
 published in a proclamation. In doing whereof 
 bee hath made the king's throne but a foot- 
 stoole for his owne and their pride. 
 
 " You have, my lords, in the seventh article, 
 religion undermined and subverted ; you have 
 poperie cherished and defended ; you have all 
 this seconded with power and violence : by se- 
 vere punishment upon those which have oppo- 
 sed this mischievous intention, and by subtile 
 and eager persecution, hath the power of eccle- 
 siasticall commissioners, of the Star Chamber 
 and councell-table, beene made subservient to 
 the wicked designs. 
 
 " My lords, you may observe, in the eighth 
 article, great care taken to get into his owne 
 hande the power of nominating to ecclesiasti- 
 call livings and promotions. You have as much 
 mischievous, as much wicked care taken in 
 disposing of these preferments, to the hinder- 
 ance and corruption of religion ; and by this 
 meanes, my lords, it is that the king's sacred 
 majestic, instead of sermons fit for spirituall 
 instructours, hath often given forth invectives 
 against his people, incouragements to injustice, 
 or to the overthrow of the lawes ! Such chap- 
 laines have beene brought, indeed, into his 
 owne service, as have as much as may bee la- 
 boured to corrupt his owne household, and 
 beene eminent examples of corruption to oth- 
 ers ; which hath, moreover, so farre prevailed, 
 as that it hath exceedingly tainted the univer- 
 sities, and beene generally disperst through all 
 the chiefe cities, the greatest townes and au- 
 ditories of the kingdome ; the grievous effects 
 whereof are most manifest to the Commons' 
 House, there being divers hundred complaints 
 there depending against scandalous ministers, 
 and yet I believe the hundredth part of them 
 not yet brought in. 
 
 " The ninth article sets out the like care to 
 have chaplaines of his owne, that might bee 
 promoters of this wicked and traytorous de- 
 signe ; men of corrupt judgements, of corrupt 
 practice, extreamly addicted to superstition ; 
 
 and to such men's cares hath beene committed 
 the lycensing of bookes to the presse, by meanes 
 whereof many have beene published that are 
 full of falshoode of scandals ; such as have 
 beene more worthy to bee burnt by the hande 
 of the hangman in Smithfield (as I thinke one 
 of them was*) than to bee admitted to come 
 into the handes of the king's people. 
 
 " In the tenth article it will appeare how bee, 
 having made these approaches to poperie, 
 comes now to close and joyne more nearely 
 with it. Hee confederates with priests and 
 Jesuits ; hee, by his instruments, negotiates 
 with the pope at Rome,\ and hath correspondence 
 with them that hee authorized from Rome here. 
 Hee hath permitted a Romane hierarchic to bee set 
 up in this kingdome. And though hee hath 
 beene so carefull that a poore man could not 
 goe to the neighbour parish to heare a sermon 
 when hee had none at home, could not have a 
 sermon repeated nor prayer used in his owne 
 family but hee was a fit subject for the High 
 Commission court ; yet the other hath beene 
 done in all partes of the realme, and no notice 
 taken of it by any ecclesiasticall judges or 
 courts. 
 
 " My lords, you may perceive preaching sup- 
 pressed in the eleventh article ; divers godly 
 and orthodox ministers oppressed in their per- 
 sons and estates. You have the king's loyall 
 subjects banished out of the kingdome, not as 
 Elimeleck, to seeke for bread in forraigne coun- 
 tries by reason of the great scarcitie which was 
 in Israel, but travelling abroad for the bread of 
 life because they could not have it at home, by 
 reason of the spirituall famine of God's word 
 caused by this man and his partakers ; and, by 
 this meanes, you have had the trade, the man- 
 ufactory, the industry of many thousands of 
 his majestie's subjects carried out of the land. 
 It is a miserable abuse of the spirituall keyes 
 to shut up the doors of heaven and to open the 
 gates of hell ; to let in prophaneness, ignorance, 
 superstition, and errour. I shall need say no 
 more. These things are evident, and abun- 
 dantly knowne to all. 
 
 " In the twelfth article, my lords, you have 
 a division indeavoured betweene this and the 
 forraigne reformed churches. Now the Church 
 of Christ is one body, and the members of 
 Christ have a mutuall relation as members of 
 the same body. Unity with God's true Church 
 everywhere is not onely the bcautie, but the strength 
 of religion ; of which beautie and strength hee 
 hath sought to deprive this church, by his man- 
 ifold attempts to break this union. To which 
 purpose hee hath suppressed the priviledges 
 granted to the Dutch and French churches ; 
 hee hath denyed them to bee of the same faithe 
 and religion with us ; and many other wayes 
 hath hee declared his malice to those churches. 
 
 " In the thirteenth article, as hee hath sought 
 to make an ecclesiasticall division, or religious 
 difference betweene us and forraigne nations, 
 so hee hath sought to make a civill difference 
 
 * An allusion to one of Mainwaring's books. 
 
 t The celebrated offer from the court in Italy to make 
 Laud a cardinal, and his doubts, hesitation, and final refu- 
 sal "because somewhat dwelt within him which would 
 not suffer that, till Rome was other than it was" were all 
 recorded in Laud's diary by his own hand, and are well 
 known. Rome still cherisht;d, in those days, the project of 
 restoring its communion in England.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 197 
 
 betweene us and his majestie's subjects of the 
 kingdome of Scotland. And this nee hath pro- 
 moted by many innovations, there prest by him- 
 selfe and his owne authoritie. When they 
 were uncapable of such alterations, hee ad- 
 vised his majestic to use violence. Hee hath 
 made private and publike collections towards 
 the maintenance of that warre, which hee might 
 justly call his owne warre ; and with an impu- 
 dent boldnesse, hee hath struck tallies in the 
 exchequer for divers summes of money pro- 
 cured by himselfe, pro defensione regni ; when, 
 by his councells, the king was drawne to under- 
 take, not a defensive, but an offensive warre. 
 
 " Hee hath lastly, my lords, thought to se- 
 cure himselfe and his partie by seeking to un- 
 dermine Parliaments, and thereby hath labour- 
 ed to bereave this kingdome of the legislative 
 power, which can onely bee used in Parlia- 
 ments. We should then have beene left a 
 kingdome without that which, indeed, makes 
 and constitutes a kingdome, and is the onely 
 meane to preserve and restore it from distem- 
 pers and decayes. Hee hath hereby indeav- 
 oured to bereave us of the highest judicatory; 
 such a judicatory as is necessarie and essen- 
 tiall to our government. Some cases cannot 
 bee tried in any inferiour court, as divers cases 
 of treason, and others concerning the preroga- 
 tive of the crowne and libertie of the people. It 
 is the supreame judicatory to which all difficult 
 cases resort from other courts. Thus hee hath 
 sought to deprive the king of the love and coun- 
 sell of his people, of that assistance which hee 
 might have from them, and likewise to deprive 
 the people of that reliefe of grievances which 
 they most humbly expect from his majestie. 
 
 "My lords, the Parliament is the cabinet 
 wherein the chiefest Jewells both of the crowne 
 and kingdome are deposited. The great pre- 
 rogative of the king and the libertie of the peo- 
 ple are most effectually exercised and main- 
 tained by Parliaments. Here, my lords, you 
 cannot passe by this occasion of great thankes 
 to God and his majestie for passing the bill 
 whereby the frequent course of Parliaments is 
 established ; which, I assure myselfe, hee will 
 by experience finde to bee a strong foundation 
 both of his honour and his crowne. 
 
 "This is all, my lords, I have to say to the 
 particulars of the charge. The Commons de- 
 sire your lordships that they may have the 
 same way of examination that they had in the 
 case of the Earle of Strafford ; that is, to ex- 
 amine members of all kindes of your Lordships' 
 House and their owne, and others, as they shall 
 see cause ; and those examinations to bee kept 
 secret and private, that they may with more 
 advantage bee made use of when the matter 
 comes to try all." 
 
 Nothing is more striking in this speech than 
 the utter absence of any thing like sectarian in- 
 tolerance ; and nothing, it will be admitted, af- 
 ter reading this and other evidences of opinion 
 to be adduced hereafter, has been so much 
 misunderstood as the nature and influence of 
 religion on the mind of this great speaker and 
 statesman. It will have been observed through- 
 out the speech just given, that he restricts him- 
 self with singular closeness to the political influ- 
 ence of Laud's administration ; that he chooses 
 the plainest and most obvious illustrations of 
 
 its despotic tendency ; and that he employs no 
 language, strong as the temptation would have 
 been to a man of bigoted persuasions, beyond 
 what is simply necessary to carry his positions 
 distinctly home. The leading sentiment through 
 the whole is that of a vigorous and practical 
 statesman. In the exposing Laud's design to 
 set up a " Roman hierarchic" in the showing 
 the false claim to " ecclesiasticall jurisdiction," 
 grounded on "an incident right" which "the 
 law declares to proceed from the crowne" in 
 the stripping bare the pretensions of "those 
 who labour in civill matters to set up the king 
 above the lawes of the kingdome, and yet in 
 ecclesiasticall matters doe indeavour to set up 
 themselves above the king" we see nothing 
 that is not worthy of the highest order of po- 
 litical capacity, and, indeed, nothing that has 
 not directly proceeded from it. It is to be sup- 
 posed, in charity, that all the elaborate accounts 
 in the family histories of the bigotry and intol- 
 erance of Pym, and that all the accusations 
 against him of " mysterious jargon" in the re- 
 ligious matters of government, are not the off- 
 spring of deliberate falsehood. I have found it 
 difficult even to find many of Pym's speeches, 
 and others may have found it equally difficult, 
 or, at least, inconvenient, to read them. 
 
 Now, however, once for all, before I proceed 
 to resume the active course of Pym's life, after 
 the death of Strafford, let me interpose some 
 few remarks concerning this " mysterious jar- 
 gon" which we have heard so much of, from 
 so many various quarters, in reference to the 
 speeches of Pym and the popular leaders of the 
 day. Its utter inapplicability, practically speak- 
 ing, has been proved already by these pages ; 
 but there is a certain question involved in the 
 very circumstance of the charge having been 
 made at all, which bears a relation to the sub- 
 ject of this memoir too important to be passed 
 over in silence. 
 
 "Mysterious jargon, "being translated, means 
 nothing more than a frequent recurrence of the 
 phraseology of Scripture ; and to this, in a cer- 
 tain kind and degree, Pym may very proudly 
 plead guilty. Something beyond this, howev- 
 er, is to be said ; not in vindication of the prac- 
 tice, for it needs none, but in explanation of 
 the influences it sprang from, and of the cause 
 of its so potent and universal action at 'this 
 period in the atmosphere of life and thought. 
 This is never sufficiently kept in view. Every 
 one can think himself privileged to laugh at 
 the too exclusive search after parallelism in 
 the deeds of the Hebrew worthies indulged by 
 the people generally in Pym's days ; but very 
 few have thought it worth while to go suffi- 
 ciently back to understand the original idea, or 
 movement of the mind, of which these are the 
 vestiges only. The mighty sound is gone : by 
 the mere echo, thunder itself seems no peril- 
 ous matter. 
 
 Revert, however, to the very beginning. It 
 is not my province or intention here to explain 
 or reason on, but simply to state the fact, that 
 the fountain of influence of the great influ- 
 ence in this world has been the Bible ; that 
 book whose first words* announce what phil- 
 osophers have at length agreed to be the one 
 
 * IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND 
 THE EARTH.
 
 193 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and only truth we are capable of demonstra- 
 ting, and which one truth seems a fit object 
 enough to employ, and destined to employ, life. 
 In the next place, that book is .the history of a 
 certain race : it is meant to be the type of a 
 nation. The nature of the institutions it re- 
 cords is not within my present province to- dis- 
 cuss ; suffice it to say, that whenever the gen- 
 eral intellect of man has grown too large for 
 its institutions, or its tyrannies of habit and 
 custom, it has gone instinctively back to those 
 records to renew its strength, and to take a 
 new course by their direction,, as the enfeebled 
 or restless man of civilization might compare 
 himself from time to time with Plato's original 
 type of man, to ascertain his precise situation. 
 Afterward Christ came to " fulfil the law ;" in 
 other words, to give this type anew in all its 
 freshness. Then the Crusades followed ; the 
 Reformation ; the emancipation of mind, and 
 modern freedom of thought all of which are 
 to be held, in an inquiry of this kind, as recur- 
 rences to the one grand type. The graceful 
 arts, meanwhile, constituted as they are to 
 benefit man, must of course rise or fall with his 
 dignity, and hence a simultaneous influence on 
 these arts has been the effect of these recur- 
 rences. This is not the place to pursue the in- 
 quiry in detail ; but let the scholar, at his lei- 
 sure, glance at the progress from Dante through 
 all the changes till Milton from Giotto and 
 Ghiberti to Michael Angelo, and down again 
 to Poussin or advance from the most timid 
 Christianism of Palestrina and Pergolesi to the 
 pure and magnificent Hebraism of Handel. 
 
 Keeping all this in view, the nature of the 
 epoch we are considering, and the position of 
 the men, will explain the rest. An attempt 
 appeared to be in progress to check the impul- 
 ses of the Reformation, when terrible energies 
 sprang from the rebound, and imbodied them- 
 selves in the Eliots, the Pyms, the Hampdens, 
 and the Vanes ; and new passions and emo- 
 tions were scattered abroad among the people, 
 under the forms of the great original type of 
 power and expression, to check the threatened 
 retreat into bigoted faith and slavish obedience. 
 It is not difficult to follow up the result. Ima- 
 gine the great public mind overlaid and opposed 
 by a dissolute and artificial court, consecrated 
 and made plausible in its pretences by a litera- 
 ture growing out of, and adapted to, the most 
 servile court in the world (that of Augustus) : 
 see all thoughts expressing themselves in that 
 literature testing themselves, their worth, 
 their approvedness by it only, and running only 
 in such a channel and then imagine that mind 
 recurring, in unison with the laws I have men- 
 tioned, to the old type bursting forth into the 
 primaeval liberty plunging itself suddenly back 
 among the rich treasures of thought and feel- 
 ing disclosed in the translation of the Bible 
 the ancient manners revealed ! the lessons of 
 the inspired teachers taught again ! the days 
 when all were equal contrasted, to the people, 
 with their own ! or when, in the midst of the 
 petty kings of Moab and Edom, the free people 
 of Israel, without a king, lived majestically ! 
 Imagine all this, and nothing will be wanting 
 to explain the source of the wildest fancies of 
 the time, or the origin of the form which many 
 of the thoughts of the greatest writers and or- 
 
 ators assumed. There will be an opportunity 
 of pursuing this into all its relations when treat- 
 ing of the life and works of Vane. Meanwhile 
 Pym restrained the tendency, while he guided it 
 no less, up to the hour of his death. In him- 
 self, in Eliot, and in Hampden, we see the grand 
 development of one of those recurrences to the 
 first idea or type the beginning of that move- 
 ment of mind, of that stride in the progress of 
 man, which had its subsequent consummation 
 in the intellect of Vane. Pym was Vane's first 
 friend he was his teacher, so to speak : he in- 
 troduced him into public life.* 
 
 Every accession, if the term may be used, 
 of originality of thought, brings with it neces- 
 sarily an accession of a certain originality of 
 style. The one is progressive as the other, 
 with obvious limits and restrictions. The 
 thoughts of Pym's days, assimilating them- 
 selves in the grandness of a common object to 
 the first and intensest ideas of the world, clung 
 also round the simple and sublime language of 
 the earliest ages, and indeed sought and strug- 
 gled not to be disconnected from the very words 
 last used when God was before his people in the 
 cloud and the flame. But, apart from this nat- 
 ural consequence, where can be found such an 
 oratorical text-book as the Bible] Not, assu- 
 redly, in Greece or Rome ! Pym availed him- 
 self of it with a most admirable taste, no less 
 than the profoundest political purpose. Noth- 
 ing, indeed, throughout this great man's life, is 
 more observable than that in which it has been 
 most grossly misunderstood his invariable 
 treatment of religion as an element of political 
 government. Let it always be recollected that, 
 to him, a true political government was religion. 
 Hia was that great capacity in which bad gov- 
 ernment and good faith, or good government 
 and bigoted faith, could not coexist. To be 
 free in thought and in act to secure responsi- 
 bility in government, and security in the public 
 liberties, was, with him, to set up the true re- 
 ligion in its purity. It was with Pym the prac- 
 tice first began, in these days, of prosecuting 
 the public measures on the Sabbath itself in 
 certain crises ;t and no doubt with a view to 
 its profound result on the minds of the people, 
 that, in thus using the very day they were most 
 urgent to free from the desecration of the court, 
 they made, as it were, their business Heaven's 
 own, and, " standing in the great hand of God," 
 had become once again his ministers. 
 
 All this it was which produced Milton also ; 
 whose life and works are a deliberate looking 
 forth into the world and into paradise, and a 
 final choice of the latter. His thoughts ever 
 aspired upward and upward to the Hebrew the- 
 ocracy, beyond " insolent Greece and haughty 
 Rome," and "all that they have left us." In 
 his Paradise Regained, indeed, he has chosen 
 to condense the whole argument in one glori- 
 ous and triumphant passage. After bringing 
 forward irresistibly, to all antagonists but one, 
 and that one himself the position that 
 
 "All knowledge is not coueh'd in Moses" law, 
 The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote : 
 The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach 
 To admiration, led by Nature's light, 
 And with the Gentiles much thou must converse" 
 
 * Strafford Papers, vol. ii. 
 
 t He did this on the occasion of the discovery of Waller's 
 plot, as will be seen shortly.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 199 
 
 aftr going to the very heart of the argument 
 and fortifying it by a eulogium on Athens which 
 makes even the greatest work of Sophocles 
 written professedly to flatter Colonos, his na- 
 tive <%/o?, wholly tame in the comparison, he 
 calmly and forever sets the question at rest in 
 that magnificent reply of the Saviour, the con 
 elusion of which is indeed the true " device ' 
 of the Pyms and Vanes. 
 
 " Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those 
 The top of eloquence ; statists indeed, 
 And lovers of their country, as may seem ; 
 But herein to our PROPHETS far beneath, 
 As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
 The solid rules of civil government, 
 In their majestic, unaffected style, 
 Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
 In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, 
 What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so !" 
 
 After the death of Strafford, public affairs 
 advanced to a crisis rapidly. The gradual dis- 
 closures made under Pym's committee, appoint- 
 ed to investigate the recent and still continuing 
 conspiracies against the Parliament and peo- 
 ple, served to keep the public mind excited and 
 vigilant ; special measures were taken for the 
 security of Portsmouth ; the queen's confessor 
 and other Roman Catholic attendants were dis- 
 missed ; and her mother, Mary de Medici, who 
 had sought shelter in England from the power 
 of Richelieu, was requested ("the rather, for the 
 quieting of the jealousies in the hearts of his 
 majesty's well-affected subjects, occasioned by 
 some ill instruments about the queen's person") 
 to leave the kingdom. Upon this, Henrietta 
 herself expressed a wish and an intention to 
 leave England, her health requiring her, she 
 said, to take the waters of Spa. That this was 
 not her real purpose, however, was more than 
 suspected by the popular leaders ; and Pym 
 conducted certain negotiations on the subject 
 which ended in her majesty's declining the 
 journey. It was supposed, and subsequently 
 rendered almost certain, that Henrietta's mo- 
 tive was to have sought foreign aid against the 
 Parliament.* 
 
 Bills had passed, meanwhile, for the abolition 
 of the Court of Star Chamber, the High Com- 
 mission, the Court of York, the Court of the 
 Welsh Marches, and other horrible engines of 
 the administration of Strafford and Laud ; and 
 a subsidy bill was sent with them to the king 
 to receive the royal assent. The subsidy bill 
 received it at once, while no notice was taken 
 of the others. Charles still madly clung to his 
 
 * See Rushworth, vol. iv., p. 349, 350 ; and Parliamenta- 
 ry History. The message of the Commons after her maj- 
 esty's compliance with their request, and her answer, are 
 characteristic : " That because we understand, by Sir The- 
 odore Mayeme, that the chief cause of her majesty's sick- 
 ness and distempers proceed from some discontent of her 
 mind, the House of Commons have thought good to declare, 
 ' that if any thing within the power of Parliament may give 
 her majesty contentment, they are so tender of her health, 
 both in due respect to his most excellent majesty and her- 
 self, that they will be ready to further her satisfaction in 
 all things, so far as may stand with that public duty to 
 which they are obliged.'" Answer: " I give many thanks 
 to both houses of Parliament for their great care of my 
 health, and their affection to me, hoping I shall see the ef- 
 fect of it. Truly nothing but my health could have made 
 me to resolve of this journey ; and if I thought I could 
 erve the king and this kingdom with the hazard of my life, 
 I would do it. And I hope you will believe that I have so 
 much interest in the good of this kingdom, that I shall nev. 
 r wish any thing to the prejudice of it. You will pardon 
 the imperfectness of my English. I had rather spoken in 
 any other language, but I thought this would be most ac- 
 ceptable." 
 
 old ecclesiastical government, and could not, 
 
 without heavy pangs, surrender the terrors of 
 the Star Chamber. But it fared with this as 
 with every thing else. While murmurs were 
 not distantly heard throughout the city, and 
 while the Commons were in hard and secret 
 debate with closed doors, the monarch, sud- 
 denly alarmed, hurried down to the House of 
 
 Lords, and summoning the Commons, and re- 
 buking them for their distrust, gave his assent 
 to both the bills. It was the sad misfortune of 
 this prince to banish every semblance of grace 
 from his concessions. In each and all he never 
 failed to leave a drop of bitterness that was 
 enough to poison the whole. His conduct on 
 the present occasion, betraying what his hope 
 and his will still was, had the effect of driving 
 in the current against Church government and 
 the prelacy more strongly and violently than 
 ever. The " root and branch " petition was 
 revived in the House of Commons. 
 
 The rise and present influence of the Repub- 
 lican party in that house will be described in 
 the life of Vane. It is only necessary to treat 
 of these religious questions, in which they now 
 especially busied themselves, in so far as they 
 strikingly illustrate the political course of Pym, 
 which was, in reality, as decided here as it 
 was in every other dispute where good govern- 
 ment lay on one side and tyranny on the other. 
 It might serve Clarendon's purpose to secure 
 the authority of Pym in favour of his darling 
 Episcopacy ; but why have modern writers, 
 without his cause to sustain, adopted his errors 
 and misrepresentations?* 
 
 A vote passed to the effect that the bishops 
 should not sit in Parliament, and the grounds 
 of the vote were communicated in a conference 
 to the Lords. Their lordships at once resolved 
 the contrary of this vote ; not in much love for 
 the bishops, but with no little alarm for them- 
 selves. The Commons, on this, lost no time 
 in changing their resolution to a bill, which 
 disabled the bishops and clergy from temporal 
 functions. On the third reading in the upper 
 House.t the bishops' votes were restored, and 
 the Commons, after two conferences, refused 
 to receive the " amended" bill. A memorable 
 result followed. A bolder measure was pro- 
 jected ; and a bill for the utter abolishing and 
 ;aking away of archbishops, bishops, deans, 
 archdeacons, and their officers, out of the 
 Jhurch of England, was drawn up by Saint 
 John, and at once introduced. It was read 
 wice on the day of its introduction,^ and went 
 nto committee on the llth of June, fifteen 
 days after. 
 
 Now mark what Clarendon says on this sub- 
 ect. After observing that on its first intro- 
 
 * Lord Nugent says, in his Memorials of Hampden, that 
 ' Pym was but a faint supporter of the bill to restrain the 
 >ishops from voting ; and that, on the further measures for 
 .bolishing Episcopacy, he was openly opposed to Hampden, 
 'ane, Fieanes," &c. This, as will be shown presently, is 
 m utterly groundless assertion, in so far as the existence of 
 Spiscopacy was ever brought in question. My former ref- 
 rence to this subject (p. 185) was in relation to the opin- 
 ons held by Pym on the ecclesiastical constitution of Eng- 
 and as a human institution. 
 
 t On this, as on every other matter connected with thi 
 ill, Clarendon is guilty of the most wilful, or the most 
 jrossly inaccurate error. He says on this that " the Lords 
 ould not be prevailed with so much as to commit the bill, 
 ut at the second reading utterly cast it out." 
 
 t See Journals of May, 1641, and an admirable remark in 
 iodwiu's History of the Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 61.
 
 200 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 duction " the rejecting it was earnestly urged 
 by very many," and repeating some of the re- 
 marks to this effect, the " historian" thus pro- 
 ceeds : " The bill was at last read, and no 
 question being to be put upon the first reading, 
 it was laid by, and not called upon in a long 
 time after.* When everybody expected that 
 nothing should be meniioned in the House but 
 the dispatch of the treaty of the pacification, 
 they called in a morning ' for the bill' (that had 
 so long before been brought in by Sir Edward 
 Deringt) ' for the extirpation of Episcopacy,' 
 and gave it a second reading ; and resolved ' that 
 it should be committed to a committee of the 
 House, and that it should be proceeded upon 
 the next morning.' It was a very long debate 
 the next morning, after the speaker had left 
 the chair, who should be in the chair for the 
 committee ; they who wished well to the bill 
 having resolved 'to put Mr. Hyde into the 
 chair, that he might not give them trouble by 
 frequent speaking, and so too much obstruct 
 the expediting the bill.' In conclusion, Mr. 
 Hyde was commanded to the chair ; they who 
 were enemies to the bill being divided in opin- 
 ion, many believing that he would obstruct the 
 bill more in that place than if he remained 
 at liberty, and they found it to be trite. . . The 
 chairman perplexed them very much ;t for besides 
 that at the end of his report every day to the 
 House, before the House put the question for 
 the concurrence in the votes, he always en- 
 larged himself against every one of them, and 
 so spent them much time ; when they were in 
 the heat and passion of the debate, he often en- 
 snared them in a question ; so that when he re- 
 ported to the House the work of the day, he did 
 frequently report two or three votes directly con- 
 trary to each other. . . After near twenty days 
 spent in that manner, they found themselves 
 very little advanced towards a conclusion, and 
 that they must review all that they had done ; 
 and the king being resolved to begin his jour- 
 ney for Scotland, they were forced to discon- 
 tinue their beloved bill, and let it rest."|| 
 
 Such and so despicable is the self-sketched 
 character of the loyal and religious Clarendon ! 
 Setting aside his plain falsehoods in these mem- 
 orable extracts, what mean and pitiful petti- 
 fogger of the law would not feel shame to be 
 set down as a party to the tricks which are 
 here unblushingly, and, indeed, with a self-sat- 
 isfied chuckle, described ! And what is the 
 worth of the testimony of such a writer on any 
 disputed matter 1 not to speak of the present, 
 wherein he lent himself to such despicable 
 meanness. 
 
 Another extract, from Clarendon's own life, 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 418. 
 
 t The only just remark I can find in Clarendon about the 
 whole of this matter relates to this weak and silly gentle- 
 man, to whose hands the bill was injudiciously committed, 
 and who will be heard of soon in a very different character. 
 Clarendon observes that the popular party " prevailed with 
 Sir Edward Dering, a man very opposite to all their designs 
 (but a man of levity and vanity, easily flattered by being 
 commended), to present it to the House ; which he did from 
 the gallery, with the two verses in Ovid, the application 
 whereof was his greatest motive : 
 
 " Cuncta prius tentanda, sed immedicabile vulnus 
 Ense recidendum est, ne pars sincera trahatur." 
 Vol. i., p. 416. 
 
 $ These words are introduced for the first time in the re- 
 cent Oxford edition. 
 
 I) These also are restored for the first time. 
 
 II Vol. i., p. 484. 
 
 completes the picture he has left of Jiimself at 
 this period. " When Mr. Hyde sat in the chair, 
 in the grand committee of the House for the 
 extirpation of Episcopacy, all that party made 
 great court to him, and the House keeping 
 those disorderly hours, and seldom rising till 
 after four of the clock in the afternoon, they 
 frequently importuned him to dine with them 
 at Mr. Pym's lodgings, which was at Sir Rich- 
 ard Manly's house, in a little court behind 
 Westminster Hall, where he and Mr. Hamp- 
 den, Sir A. Hazlerig, and two or three more, 
 upon a stock kept a table, where they transacted 
 much business, and invited thither those of 
 whose conversion they had any hope." Ex- 
 cept in the lively illustration it affords of the 
 party system of the time, this statement is 
 quite as little worth credit as the others, and, 
 indeed, carries internal evidence of misrepre- 
 sentation. The same writer, in his history, 
 could say that Pym took no interest in the 
 progress of the anti-Episcopacy measure ! The 
 truth was, that if he was interested in any 
 thing more than that at this particular time, it 
 was in the evident trimming and shuffling of 
 " Mr. Hyde" himself. 
 
 Meanwhile, before turning to consider the 
 latter, let me exhibit the feelings of Pym re- 
 specting these questions in an unequivocal 
 shape. When, for various reasons, this Church 
 bill was temporarily suspended, Pym was the 
 author of a very resolute and decisive meas- 
 ure. Some months before, in the midst of all 
 the threatening aspects of the time, the bish- 
 ops had exhibited their gross love of tyranny, 
 and their still grosser folly, in enacting a series 
 of canons in convocation, which imposed oaths, 
 introduced innovations, and set aside the laws 
 of the land. Pym now pointed out the pro- 
 priety of impeaching the thirteen prelates who 
 had been most active in framing the canons. 
 I will extract the result of this motion from its 
 place in the journals. 
 
 " Mr. Pym declared from the House of Com- 
 mons that there is nothing of greater impor- 
 tance to the safety and good of the kingdom, 
 than that this high court of Parliament, which 
 is the fountain of justice and government, 
 should be kept pure and uncorrupted, free from 
 partiality and bye respects. This will not only 
 add lustre and reputation, but strength and au- 
 thority, to all our actions. Herein, he said, 
 your lordships are specially interested, as ycu 
 are a third estate by inheritance and birth- 
 right ; so the Commons are publicly interested 
 by representation of the whole body of the 
 commons of this kingdom, whose lives, for- 
 tunes, and liberties are deposited under the 
 custody and trust of the Parliament. 
 
 " He said, the Commons have commanded 
 him and his colleague, Mr. Solicitor General, 
 to present to your lordships two propositions, 
 which they thought very necessary to be ob- 
 served and put in execution at this time. First, 
 that the thirteen bishops, which stand accused 
 before your lordships for making the late pre- 
 tended canons and constitutions, may be ex- 
 cluded from their votes in Parliament. Sec- 
 ondly, that all the bishops may be suspended 
 from their votes upon that bill, entitled, An Act 
 to disable all Persons in Holy Orders to exer- 
 cise any Jurisdiction or Authority Temporal.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 201 
 
 "The first of these was committed to his 
 charge, and he said he would support it with 
 three reasons : First. That the thirteen bish- 
 ops have broken that trust to which every 
 member of Parliament is obliged ; which trust 
 is to maintain, 1. The prerogative of the king. 
 2. The privilege of Parliaments. 3. The prop- 
 erty of the subject. 4. The peace of the king- 
 dom. These were the jewels, he said, that are 
 deposed under the trust of Parliament ; and 
 this trust these prelates had broken, not by 
 one transient act, but by setting up canons in 
 nature of laws to bind the kingdom forever. 
 
 " That the canons are of this nature, appear- 
 ed by the votes of both Houses ; and that they 
 were all parties to the making thereof, appear- 
 ed by the acts of that synod. The book itself 
 the Commons cannot tender to your lordships, 
 because they sent for it, but he that hath the 
 book in custody was out of town ; but a mem- 
 ber of their own House, upon view of it, is 
 ready to depose that their names were entered 
 among those that did subscribe to it. 
 
 " Wherefore the House of Commons desire 
 your lordships, in the first place, to consider 
 whether they that take to themselves a legislative 
 power, destructive to Parliaments, be Jit to exercise 
 that power of making laws which only belongs to 
 the Parliament. 
 
 " Secondly. Whether it be safe for the Com- 
 monwealth that they should be trusted with 
 making laws, who, as much as in them lay, 
 have endeavoured to deprive the subject of 
 those good laws which are already made. 
 
 " A third reason is this, That they stand ac- 
 cused of crimes very heinous ; that is, of sedi- 
 tion, and of subversion of the laws of the king- 
 dom. This will easily appear in the nature of 
 the canons themselves, as also by the votes to 
 which your lordships and the Commons have 
 already agreed. Standing so accused, is it fit 
 that they should have the exercise of so great 
 a thing as the continuing of their votes and 
 places in Parliament 1" 
 
 And, though it occurred some few months 
 after this time, I will here present also Pym's 
 speech at a conference with the Lords, on de- 
 livering a charge against Lord Digby (recently 
 raised to their Lordships' House), since it has 
 immediate relation to the same question, is 
 sufficiently explanatory of itself, and is a still 
 more distinct and forcible expression than any 
 which has yet been given of the grounds of 
 Pym's opposition to the temporal power and 
 authority of bishops : 
 
 "My lords, the knights, citizens, and bur- 
 gesses of the House of Commons, now assem- 
 bled in Parliament, have commanded me to pre- 
 sent to your lordships this information, which 
 they have received against the Right Honour- 
 able George, lord Digby, of such dangerous 
 consequence, that, if not prevented, evil and 
 troublesome events may ensue, to the great 
 hazarding the peace of this kingdom, and the 
 great hinderance of the happy proceedings of 
 this Parliament. 
 
 " My lords, I humbly crave your patience to 
 declare to your lordships what I am command- 
 ed concerning the said information, which is, 
 that he, the said Lord Digby, should give forth 
 report, upon reading the late petition and prot- 
 estation of the twelve bishops, ' that the pres- 
 Cc 
 
 ent Parliament was a forced one ; and that the 
 acts, votes, and laws that should be enacted 
 therein, without the votes and assents of the 
 bishops, are void and of none effect, and not 
 binding to the subject.' 
 
 " My lords, this report is of great danger to 
 the state, if proved against the said lord, in 
 these three respects, as I, under your lord- 
 ships' favour, conceive. First, it is a great 
 breach of the rights and privileges of Parlia- 
 ment ; secondly, it intrencheth much on the 
 prerogative of the king, and abridges his royal 
 power ; thirdly, it is the first step to bring into 
 this state an arbitrary and tyrannical form of 
 government. 
 
 " My lords, it is a breach of the privileges 
 of Parliament for these reasons : It is against 
 the votes of Parliamentary proceedings, which 
 ought to be reserved and unquestionable during 
 the free sitting thereof. It is against the late 
 act of Parliament, in that case made and pro- 
 vided, for not adjourning or abrupt breaking up 
 of the same. This act, my lords, was freely 
 voted by both Houses ; freely and willingly passed 
 by his majesty, -without any force or compulsory 
 means used by any, or private working of any of 
 the members of either House to induce his majesty 
 to do the same ; nay, the act was voted as well 
 by the said lord as the rest of this honourable 
 House. This report, therefore, of his must 
 needs be against his knowledge and former 
 free consent in passing that act. Besides, my 
 lords, one privilege of Parliament, and that one 
 of the greatest, is to accuse and freely proceed 
 to the punishment of delinquents that have 
 caused the troubles in this state, both in 
 Church and Commonwealth. Lord Digby's re- 
 port is against this privilege, since it opposeth 
 altogether our proceedings against the bishops, 
 accused as the greatest delinquents both in 
 Church and State. For, my lords, if the Par- 
 liament is forced in the absence of the bishops, 
 how may then the Parliament proceed lawfully 
 against them"! If the bishops sit and have 
 their votes, although delinquents, in Parlia- 
 ment, how can we proceed, I beseech you, 
 against their votes 1 Then, my lords, to re- 
 dress the grievances of the Commonwealth 
 is a privilege of Parliament. This report is 
 against this privilege. How, I pray you, my 
 lords, can our grievances be redressed, when 
 the oppressions, injustice, and vexatious troub- 
 ling of his majesty's loyal subjects by the bish- 
 ops may not be called in question, nor the mis- 
 doers therein prosecuted and punished for the 
 same 1 Lastly, my lords, under this head, the 
 report is against divers acts of Parliament of 
 this kingdom that have been made without the 
 voice of bishops in Parliament, as is on record 
 in the Parliamentary rolls. And thus, under 
 favour, I have shown you how this report is 
 against the privileges of Parliament. 
 
 " Next, my lords, this report intrencheth on 
 the royal power and prerogative of the king, 
 and that in two respects : It intrencheth 'on his 
 royal prerogative in making and enacting laws 
 by Parliament, it resting only in his power to 
 pass or refuse the votes of Parliament. My 
 lords, the king of this realm has the greatest 
 prerogative (to require the counsel and assist- 
 ance of the whole State, upon any occasion 
 whatsoever, when it pleaseth him) of any prince
 
 202 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in the world, except the King of France ; and, 
 under favour, my lords, I conceive a Parliament 
 cannot be termed forced when it is freely call- 
 ed and willingly continued by the king. I con- 
 ceive, my lords, a forced Parliament is when, 
 against the free consent of a king and his lords, 
 and without lawful calling by writ, men assem- 
 ble themselves, and by force of arms sit in 
 council and enact laws not tending to the wel- 
 fare of the kingdom. The Parliament holden 
 in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward 
 II. was a forced Parliament ; the barons com- 
 ing thither with horse and arms, and compel- 
 ling the king to pass what they thought proper 
 to have enacted. Moreover, my lords, this re- 
 port intrencheth on the royal power of the king 
 in making of laws ; for, as before I have touch- 
 ed, Parliaments have, without bishops, made 
 and enacted laws. By this supposition, my 
 lords, that laws made without bishops are void, 
 bishops, be they never so vile and disaffected 
 to the tranquillity and security of the state, yet 
 must have votes in rectifying and setting in 
 order such things as are amiss in the same 
 amiss as well by their own procuring as others 
 a 'rectifying' not then likely to take any 
 good effect. Nay, my lords, it is too apparent 
 they have been the greatest opposers of our pro- 
 ceedings in (his Parliament, and the chief est cause 
 why no more is done. 
 
 " Thirdly and lastly, my lords, this report is 
 the first step to bring in an arbitrary and tyran- 
 nical form of government ; and that, under fa- 
 vour, for these reasons : Free Parliaments are 
 the securest and safest government that ever 
 could be found for this nation, and that in re- 
 spect of the power and wisdom thereof. It is 
 upholden, defended, and preserved by the whole 
 body of the kingdom ; therefore powerful : the 
 members thereof are men elected, one out of 
 ten thousand, by the whole state ; therefore 
 esteemed wise. Then to oppose the proceed- 
 ings thereof, to deny the government thereof, 
 is to change the same ; and, if changed to an- 
 other form (none being so secure, so powerful, 
 and so wise), it must needs be arbitrary, and 
 so tyrannical. Also, my lords, if no laws can 
 be binding to the subject but such as are voted 
 and assented to by the bishops, then none can 
 be expected but such as are destructive to the state, 
 their affections being altogether averted from free 
 Parliamentary proceedings, and their designs only 
 agitated for the opposing the government thereof ; 
 and we cannot but daily fear the utter confu- 
 sion of the same thereby. 
 
 " Now, my lords, having, to my weak ability, 
 fulfilled the command of the House of Commons 
 in speaking something on this information, I 
 am to desire your lordships, in their name, that 
 the said George, lord Digby, may answer the 
 said information, or otherwise be proceeded 
 against as the Parliament shall think fit." 
 
 I have remarked that Pym had already seen 
 reason to suspect the secession of " Mr. Hyde" 
 from the popular cause. That celebrated per- 
 son could never have seemed very secure to 
 the sagacious mind of the leader of the party, 
 and he had given forth no unequivocal signs of 
 his feeling and desires on the already noticed 
 disagreement between the two Houses on the 
 bill to restrain bishops' votes. Beside him, 
 also, were a party of weak, though probably 
 
 well-intentioned men, whom his influence con- 
 trolled. The danger to the cause would ob- 
 viously be great, if at this moment, and before 
 the bulwarks so recently obtained for the pres- 
 ervation of the public liberties had been firmly 
 placed, such a desertion as Hyde could effect 
 from the ranks of the popular members should 
 be suddenly exhibited to the people. Nothing 
 had been more apparent throughout all the con- 
 cessions wrested from Charles than that they 
 had only been yielded, subject to a good occa- 
 sion for reclaiming them. Strafford could not 
 be raised from the dead, and therefore, only, 
 the concession in his case had been harder 
 than in the rest. With a certain semblance of 
 a popular ministry, backed by all the arts of 
 Hyde, and the pretences of half-popular meas- 
 ures, the king had yet the power to strike a 
 heavy blow for the old prerogative. Moreover, 
 the House of Lords were not to be relied on ; 
 and there was too much reason to fear, in va- 
 rious quarters of the country, some still undis- 
 covered sections of the army plot. Charles 
 himself was evidently recovering confidence, 
 while, to save the bishops, the universities 
 were moving heaven and earth.* The course 
 which was, under such circumstances, propo- 
 sed by Pym, with a view to avert these dan- 
 gers, has no parallel for vigour and capacity, no 
 less than a most decisive boldness, even in the 
 records of his life. 
 
 Charles had warning of it before he departed 
 for Scotland. Doctor Hacket tells us, in his 
 life of Archbishop Williams, that " the bishop, 
 coming to the king, besought his majesty, that 
 for his sake he would put off his Scotch jour- 
 ney to another season. ' Sir,' says he, ' I would 
 it were not true that I shall tell you : some of 
 the Commons are preparing a declaration to 
 make the actions of your government odious. 
 If you gallop to Scotland, they will post as fast, 
 to draw up this biting remonstrance. Stir not 
 till you have mitigated the grand contrivers 
 with some preferments.' ' But is this credi- 
 ble 1' says the king. 'Judge you of that, sir,' 
 says the bishop, ' when a servant of Pym's (in 
 ichose master's house all this is moulded) came to 
 me, to know of me in what terms I was con- 
 tented to leave mine own case in the Star 
 Chamber exhibited among other irregularities 1 
 and I had much ado to keep my name, and 
 what concerns me, out of these quotations ; 
 but I contrived that of the fellow, and a prom- 
 ise to do me more service, to know all they 
 have in contrivance, with a few sweetbreads 
 that I gave him out of my purse.' Yet nothing 
 was heeded. "t 
 
 Charles's purpose in this journey was nar- 
 rowly and jealously watched by the patriots. 
 Many and various reasons had been publicly 
 assigned for it, but the real intention the 
 double attempts at negotiation with the dis- 
 banded officers on the borders, with the Cov- 
 enanters, and with those who had supplied to 
 Lord Strafford the forged letter by which Sa- 
 vile strove to implicate Pym and Hampden in 
 treasonous purposes all this was kept care- 
 fully in the back ground. One course remain- 
 ed under these circumstances, and was at once 
 adopted. Commissioners were deputed nomi- 
 
 * May's History of the Parliament. 
 
 t Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, part ii., p. 163.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 nally to treat with the Scots concerning the 
 satisfaction of the treaty, but really to thwart 
 and check the king's negotiation with the Cov- 
 enanters, and to report upon them to the Par- 
 liament. Charles went to Scotland, and, al 
 the same time, a committee, openly appointee 
 by the votes of both Houses and consisting 
 of Lords Bedford and Howard of Escricke, of 
 Hampden, Fiennes, Sir Philip Stapleton, and 
 Sir William Armyne openly followed him. 
 Soon after his departure, the two Houses, hav- 
 ing respectively appointed committees to sit 
 and act during the recess, and intrusted them 
 with extraordinary powers,* adjourned over 
 from the 9th of September to the 20th of Oc- 
 tober. Pym was appointed chairman of the 
 committee of the House of Commons. 
 
 His fame and influence at this period were 
 unbounded. " I think Mr. Pym was at this 
 time," says Lord Clarendon, " the most popu- 
 lar man, and the most able to do hurt, that hath 
 lived in any time." His name was in the mouths 
 of all, whether the residents of palaces or of 
 the " huts where poor men lie." Every nook 
 and corner of the kingdom was pervaded with 
 his influence and renown, and the fiercest hate 
 or the most unbounded love were equally his 
 great reward. 
 
 It is difficult to ascertain, except on the doubt- 
 ful authority of his enemies, what his private 
 habits were at this time. It is certain, how- 
 ever, that they were not of the rigid or puri- 
 tanic sort, any more than his opinions were 
 those of the Puritans. The quaint Dr. Hacket 
 describes him, in his peculiar style, as " homo 
 ex argilld, et Into factus epicurao, as Tully said 
 of Piso that is, in Christian English, a paint- 
 ed sepulchre, a belly-god ;"t and the Royalist 
 songs, while they charge him in still plainer 
 terms with having been warmly devoted to 
 Bacchus and Ceres, have left us to conclude 
 that in other matters his habits were by no 
 means constrained. t It is not my duty here 
 to enlarge on a point of this kind, which I have 
 already, perhaps, sufficiently adverted to, nor 
 would a mention of such statements, drawn as 
 they are from the political lampoons of the 
 time, have been worth giving at all, were it 
 not that graver authorities have seemed to 
 bear them out. With such authority, even fu- 
 gitive ballads, poignant with the bitterness of 
 the hour so long passed away, are not among 
 the despicable materials of history ; and to me, 
 as illustrations of the fugitive aspects of char- 
 acter, catching, as they recede forever, the 
 glancing points of personal manners, they have 
 seemed most valuable. What remains to be 
 said rests on the authority of Sir Philip War- 
 wick, a " grave writer," though a Royalist, as 
 even Mr. Godwin admits, and certainly a very 
 honourable man. 
 
 The famous Lucy Percy, the countess of 
 Carlile, now a beautiful dowager of about forty, 
 had been for some years "entirely devoted" to 
 Strafford, when, upon the death of her favour- 
 ite, she suddenly transferred her affections to 
 Pym ; and from this time, it is certain the 
 countess still preserving appearances at court 
 
 * See the instructions, Old Parl. Hist., vol. ix., p. 537. 
 t Scrinia Reserata, part ii., p. 150, 151. 
 t See some extracts from a curious satire of trie time, in 
 Appendix B. $ Life of Stratford, p. 89. 
 
 the interior of Whitehall was always better 
 known to the patriot than that of the House of 
 Commons to the king. 
 
 The character of such a woman needs some 
 explanation. Warburton calls her the " Eryn- 
 nis" of her time, but without just authority. 
 Her passions were certainly not extreme. The 
 reader who is startled at the apparent contra- 
 dictions of her life has not read rightly Sir 
 Toby Mathew's description of her character.* 
 " She is of too high a mind and dignity not 
 only to seek, but almost to wish, the friendship 
 of any creature ; they whom she is pleased to 
 choose are such as are of the most eminent condi- 
 tion both for power and employments, not with 
 any design towards her own particular either 
 of advantage or curiosity, but her nature values 
 fortunate persons. . . She prefers the conver- 
 sation of men to that of women ; not but she 
 can talk on the fashions with her female friends, 
 but she is too soon sensible that she can set 
 them as she wills that pre-eminence shortens 
 all equality. She converses with those who 
 are most distinguished for their conversational 
 powers. . . Of love freely will she discourse ; 
 listen to all its faults, and mark all its power. 
 . . She cannot herself love in earnest, but she 
 will play with love . . . and will take a deep in- 
 terest for persons of condition and celebrity." 
 
 What wonder, then, if, on the fall of Straf- 
 ford, and the sudden and most brilliant rise of 
 Pym's fame, we find the grave Sir Philip War- 
 wick playing the part of the scandalous chron- 
 icle, and announcing that " Master Pym" had 
 succeeded to the situation of the Earl of Straf- 
 ford in the affections of my Lady Carlile If 
 How much of politics there may have been in 
 Pym's love, or how much love in his politics, 
 the reader must determine. As the fact has 
 been stated, it is presented to him with a com- 
 mentary from Sir Toby Mathew, which seems 
 to render it by no means improbable, on the 
 part of the lady, at least. The wonder remains 
 of how "Master Pym" could find leisure, in 
 the midst of his wonderful and unwearied pub- 
 lic labours, for such affairs of practical gallan- 
 try as this, and others charged upon him. For 
 the imputation of Hacket, it may remain as he 
 has made it. " Voluptuous and wise withal" 
 the great patriot may have been ; and, undoubt- 
 edly, the portly and well-dressed person repre- 
 sented in the various engravings circulated at 
 this periodt as the " true effigies of the burgess 
 for Tavistocke ;" the open and intelligent face, 
 so resolute and yet so quiet ; the long hair 
 flung negligently back from the lofty and deep- 
 thoughted forehead ; the full mustaches upon 
 the upper lip, and the neat arrangement of the 
 peaked beard and dress below, present alto- 
 gether such a picture as may be willingly re- 
 ceived of Pym neither inconsistent with the 
 xtraordinary intellect which every one con- 
 ceded to him, nor bidding absolute defiance to 
 the Royalist slanders. 
 
 Of Pym's movements during this short recess 
 of Parliament, and generally before the king's 
 return from Scotland, I have been fortunate in 
 
 * See Mathew's Letters, or the notes to Fenton's edition 
 of Waller. t See Sir P. Warwick's Memoirs, p. 204. 
 
 Several may be seen in the collection at the British 
 Museum : that by Edward Bower is the best, and I allude 
 to it in the text.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 obtaining somewhat curious intelligence (not 
 noticed sufficiently by the histories) in the cor- 
 respondence of Evelyn. Sir Edward Nicholas, 
 who succeeded Windebanke in the office of 
 secretary of state, had it left to him in charge 
 by the king, before his departure, to furnish 
 diligent information of what was going on in 
 London ; and the letters in which this was 
 done, noted and answered in the margin by 
 Charles and posted back to the writer, ultimate- 
 ly fell into Evelyn's hands. These shall now 
 be used in illustration of some striking and dis- 
 puted historical passages, and of some certain 
 personal details. 
 
 The day after the adjournment, Nicholas 
 wrote to Charles a long account of a consoling 
 hope he had, that there were decided differ- 
 ences to be now expected between the two 
 Houses, upon which the king remarks that he 
 is " not much sorrie for it."* In another let- 
 ter, under date of the 27th of September, men- 
 tion is made to Charles of a certain paper, the 
 contents of which are not named, but which 
 he says the Lady Carlile had given to the 
 queen, saying "she had it from the Lord Mande- 
 ville." Taken in connexion with this, the fol- 
 lowing is very curious : " I heare," continues 
 Nicholas, " there are diverse meeting's in Chelsey 
 att -f Lo. Mandeville-house and elsewhere, by 
 Pym and others, to consult what is best to bee 
 done at their next meeting in Parliament." 
 Whereupon is this remark by the king : " It 
 were not amiss that some of my servants met 
 lykewise to countermynd their plots, to w'ch 
 end speake w'th my wyfe, and receive her direc- 
 tions, "t 
 
 This Lord Mandeville is better known by the 
 title of his barony, Kimbolton, in right of which 
 he was at about this period called up to the 
 House of Lords. He now lived at Chelsea, 
 and Pym had taken lodgings near him. The 
 meetings alluded to in the above extracts, the 
 presence of Lady Carlile, the temper of the 
 king, and his anxiety for a " plot" of his own, 
 and the graphic touch with which his majesty's 
 note concludes, are worth rescuing from the 
 secret records of the time. In none of the cor- 
 respondences do Henrietta's intrigues and the 
 king's subjection}: appear more manifest than 
 in this of Sir Edward Nicholas. My next ex- 
 tracts will prove her distinct participation, and 
 also that of the king, in Goring's army plot. 
 
 In this plot Sir John Berkeley, afterward gov- 
 ernor of Exeter, and Captain O'Neale, were 
 deeply implicated.^ Under date of the 29th of 
 September, Nicholas writes to the king : " Yes- 
 terday, at Oatlands, I understood that Sir Jo. 
 Berkeley and Capt. O'Neale were come over, 
 and that they had beene the day before privately at 
 Weybridge : I was bould then to deliver my opin- 
 ion to the queene, that I did believe, if they con- 
 
 * Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. ii., part ii., p. 18, quarto ed., 
 1819. In the two following letters there are some curious 
 particulars respecting the crown jewels, with injunctions to 
 peculiar secrecy, which are not a little significant of the 
 king's purposes at this time. P. 21-23. 
 
 t In a subsequent letter Nicholas tells the king that he 
 had communicated respecting all this with her majesty, but 
 that she " saith that cannot bee done in your majestie's ab- 
 sence." Charles answers : " I confess, not so well, but yet 
 so much as may do much good ; therefore be diligent in it." 
 P. 34. 
 
 t See a curious marginal note by Charles at p. 142. 
 
 v See iMay's History. 
 
 tinued in England, they would bee arrested [by 
 Pym]. Her majestie seemed (when I tould it 
 her) to appehend noe lesse, and will, I believe, 
 take order that notice may bee given to them of y* 
 danger." In a letter of the 5th of October he 
 adds : " The Commons' committee met, and 
 had before them Sir Jo. Berkeley and Capt. 
 O'Neale, who were (as I heare) yesterday ap- 
 prehended by the servant of the serjeant att 
 arms."* Here the king remarks, " / hope some 
 day they may repent their severitie ;" and at the 
 close of the letter, Nicholas having told him 
 of the jocund cheerfulness of Pym and his 
 friends, Charles subjoins, " / believe, before all 
 be done, that they will not have such great cause 
 of joy." Again: Nicholas having written in 
 his next letter, "Mr. Pym reports that the 
 Earle of Arguile is chancellor of that kingdome 
 (Scotland) ;" Charles affixes to the passage 
 these significant words : " You may see by this 
 that all his designes hit not ; and I hope, before all 
 be done, that he shall miss of more." And in the 
 despatch following this, the secretary having 
 implored the immediate return of the king, say- 
 ing that, " if your majestie doe not hasten to 
 bee here some dayes before ye next meeting in 
 Parliament, I doubt there will bee few that will 
 dare to appeare here to oppose ye partie that 
 now swayeth ;" Charles answered : " Though 
 I cannot return so soon as I could wishe, yet I 
 am confident that you willjinde there was neces- 
 sitie for it, and I hope that manie will misse of 
 their ends." 
 
 No one in the slightest degree acquainted 
 with the character of Charles, and with the pe- 
 culiar intrigues he was at this very period car- 
 rying on in Scotland, will hesitate to attach suf- 
 ficient meaning to these covert threats against 
 Pym and the popular leaders. There had nev- 
 er been a time in which greater danger threat- 
 ened the people's cause than now ; never was 
 there a time looking at the daily defections 
 within the House of Commons, at the falling 
 off of the Lords without, at the rotten condi- 
 tion of the army, and the notorious and well- 
 proved perfidy of the king wherein a greater 
 necessity existed for some grand appeal to the 
 people, not simply to save the freedom of Par- 
 liament, but even the lives of its most illus- 
 trious members ; not simply to secure the per- 
 manence of those provisions which had been 
 achieved for the public liberty, but even to 
 ward off the substitution of a naked despotism. 
 Pym and Hampden acted with a perfect knowl- 
 edge of these things, then, far beyond our im- 
 perfect surmise now. 
 
 Parliament reassembled, after the recess, on 
 the day to which it stood adjourned, the 20th 
 of October. In an able and lucid statement, t 
 
 * Pym's own report of this affair, delivered on the reas- 
 sembling of Parliament, differs from this. He said, " Next 
 there came to me, to my lodgings at Chelsea, Sir John Berke- 
 ley and Serjeant-major O'Neal, who said they heard they 
 were accused, and had rashly withdrawn themselves ; but, 
 upon better consideration, they were returned to submit to 
 the pleasure of the House. I thought it my duty to make 
 some privy counsellor acquainted therewith, whereupon I 
 went to my Lord Willmot with them, who undertook they 
 should attend the committee the next sitting, which they 
 did accordingly ; and, in pursuance of the order and warrant 
 of the House for the apprehending of them, they were both 
 attached by the Serjeant's deputy : so the House may be 
 pleased to send for them, arid to do therein as they see 
 cause." Parl. Hist., vol. x., p. 5. 
 
 t See Parl. Hist., vol. x., p. 1-6.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 Pym reported the proceedings of the commit- 
 tee during the recess. While yet engaged upon 
 this duty, news arrived in London of that cele- 
 brated occurrence at Edinburgh which is well 
 known in history by the name of the "Inci- 
 dent." Through all the mystery which yet en- 
 wraps this affair, one thing is not denied ; that 
 Charles received from Montrose his project of 
 assassination, and, having received it, continu- 
 ed Montrose in his service and confidence. 
 Montrose had indeed established a lasting hold 
 upon Charles's favour by the proposition he 
 coupled with his scheme of assassination to 
 cut off the English leaders by the milder, but 
 not less certain course of law, on evidence of 
 a " treasonable correspondence" with the Scot- 
 tish army. The king's every thought now bore 
 upon the latter scheme : he had entered Scot- 
 land with a view to conciliate the Covenant- 
 ers, in the vain hope of effecting it in that 
 way ; failing of this, he concerted with Mont- 
 rose to trample upon the Covenant, only with 
 a view to the same end. Pym, Hampden, 
 and the rest struck down, the world of despo- 
 tism would be once again before him where to 
 choose ! 
 
 But with the news of the " incident," letters 
 from Hampden, still in Edinburgh with the com- 
 mittee, were placed in Pym's hands. Their 
 contents may be surmised from the fact that 
 Pym instantly proposed and conducted a con- 
 ference with the lords " concerning the securi- 
 ty of the kingdom and Parliament ;"* denoun- 
 ced again a branch conspiracy in London ; and 
 demanded that all the military posts of the city 
 should be occupied with a strong force. This 
 was at once acceded to, and, besides this, the 
 Westminster trainbands were brought up to 
 guard the Houses of Parliament by night as well 
 as day.f 
 
 Secretary Nicholas, deeply alarmed, wrote 
 to the king, " It is thought that this businesse 
 will bee declared to bee a greater plot against 
 the kingdome and Parliamts in Eng : and Scotl : 
 than hath beene discovered at all. There have 
 leene some well-affected Parliament-men here with 
 me this morning, to know whether I had any re- 
 lac'on of that businesse ; but rinding I had none, 
 they seemed much troubled, as not knowing what 
 to say to it." To this the king answers with 
 cautious reserve. In a subsequent letter 
 Nicholas mentions the sudden introduction of 
 another bill for abolishing the temporal func- 
 tions of the bishops, accompanying it with a 
 remark, that " it is said to bee against ye an- 
 tient order of P'liamt to bring in a bill againe 
 ye same sessions that it was rejected ;" where- 
 upon the king eagerly seizes this objection, and 
 orders Nicholas to "bid his servants make as 
 much use of it as may bee."J 
 
 They did so, and were foiled by Pym. His 
 great object at this time was to weaken the 
 powers of mischief in the upper House ; and 
 finding that his impeachment against the thir- 
 teen bishops on the ground of their share in 
 the recent canons must be quashed on some 
 points of informality (the lords had already ad- 
 mitted their demurrer), he counselled the rein- 
 troduction of the first bill against the bishops 
 
 ' See Rushworth, vol. iv., p. 390. 
 t Rushworth, vol. iv., p. 392. 
 t Evelyn, vol. ii., part ii., p. 45. 
 
 as a temporary compromise for a great ulti- 
 mate gain. I will describe the result in Clar- 
 endon's words, as recently restored :* " Mr. 
 Pym and his party found that they were so far 
 from having gotten credit by their angry bill 
 against the Church for the extirpation of bish- 
 ops, that they had lost ground in the attempt, 
 and therefore they seemed to decline any far- 
 ther thought of such a violent proceeding, and 
 to have more moderate inclinations ; and so, 
 one morning, they brought in and desired to 
 have a bill read for the taking away the votes 
 of the bishops out of the House of Peers, no 
 otherwise differing from the former than it was 
 shorter. It was opposed by many that it should 
 be received or read ; for it was a known rule 
 of the House that a bill rejected could not be 
 brought again into the House during the same 
 session, which was an order that had never 
 been known to be violated, which Mr. Pym con- 
 fessed, but said, ' that our orders were not like 
 the laws of the Medes and Persians, not to be al- 
 tered > but that they were in our own power ; and 
 that the receiving this bill, since it was in our 
 power, was very necessary, and would quiet 
 the minds of many, who, it may be, would be 
 contented with the passing this bill, who would 
 otherwise be importunate for more violent rem- 
 edies ; and that there was reason to believe 
 that the Lords, who had rejected the former 
 bill, were very sorry for it, and would give this 
 a better reception ; and if they did not, it would 
 meet with the same fate the other had done, 
 and we should have the satisfaction of having 
 discharged our own consciences.' The con- 
 tent many men had to see the former violence 
 declined and more moderate counsels pursued, 
 prevailed so far, that the bill was received and 
 read ; and the same reasons, with some sub- 
 sequent actions and accidents, prevailed after- 
 ward for the passing it in the House of Com- 
 mons, though it received a greater opposition 
 than it had done formerly. And the Lord Falk- 
 land then concurring with his friend Mr. Hyde 
 in the opposing it, Mr. Hampdent said that he 
 was sorry to find a noble lord had changed his 
 opinion since the time the last bill to this pur- 
 pose had passed the House ; for he then thought 
 it a good bill, but now he thought this an ill 
 one. To which the Lord Falkland presently 
 replied, that he had been persuaded at that 
 time by that worthy gentleman to believe many 
 things which he had since found to be untrue, 
 and therefore he had changed his opinion in many 
 particulars, as well as to things as persons." 
 
 Very true and candid was this, but not very 
 startling, since Pym and Hampden knew it well 
 already ; and " Mr. Hyde" had taken good care 
 that, by this time, the king should know it too. 
 " I may not forbeare to let your matie knowe," 
 wrote Sir Edward Nicholas, under date of the 
 29th of October, " that the Lo. Falkland, Sr Jo. 
 Strangwishe [Strangeways], Mr. Waller, Mr. 
 Ed. Hyde, and Mr. Holborne have lately stood 
 as champions in maintenance of your preroga- 
 tive, whereof yr matie shall doe well to take some 
 notice (as yor matie shall thinke best) for their 
 incouragement.'" The king answered, eagerly 
 and earnestly, " I command you to doe it in 
 
 * Oxford ed. of 1826, vol. ii., p. 75, 76, note, 
 t Hampden had returned from Scotland some few days 
 before.
 
 206 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 my name, telling them that I will doe it my self e 
 at my returned From the date of this corre- 
 spondence, at least, these men were retained 
 on behalf of Charles. But Pym watched them 
 more and more narrowly as the great struggle 
 drew nigh. 
 
 News of the Irish rebellion and massacre 
 now burst upon London. Following so closely 
 upon the Scottish " incident," and coupled with 
 the evidence of still more striking circumstan- 
 ces against the king, this shocking event in- 
 creased to a fearful degree the prevailing ex- 
 citement. The cold and laconic remark of 
 Charles to Sir Edward Nicholas respecting it 
 has not been noticed. " I hope," he merely 
 wrote, " I hope this ill newes of Ireland may 
 hinder some of theas follies in England."* 
 
 The " follies" and their authors only moved 
 more resolutely forward. A petition had been 
 in agitation for some time in the lower House, 
 " to be presented" (I quote Sir Edward Nich- 
 olas's description) " to yo* matie, to receave 
 the Parliament's approbation of such officers, 
 councillors, &c., as yo r majtie shall choose, for 
 better prevenc'on of the great and many mis- 
 chiefs that may befall ye Commonwealthe, by 
 ye choice of ill councillors, officers, amb'dors, 
 and ministers of state." Nothing could exceed 
 the king's alarm at this proposed measure, or 
 the earnestness of his commands that it should 
 by some means or other be " stopp'd." Hyde 
 and Falkland, as may naturally be supposed, 
 with their present prospects, opposed it bitter- 
 ly, step by step ; but Pym and Hampden active- 
 ly urged it on. At last, on the 10th of Novem- 
 ber, according to the Lords' journals, Pym ap- 
 peared at the head of the Commons, in confer- 
 ence with the upper House, and proceeded to 
 explain to their lordships the several steps, as 
 they are there called, by which evil counsels 
 had wrought such danger to the kingdom, and 
 demanded remedy so loudly. 
 
 " First. That the dangers which come to the 
 state by ill counsels are the most pernicious of 
 all others. Since it is usual to compare poli- 
 tick bodies with natural, the natural body is in 
 danger divers ways : either by outward vio- 
 lence, that may be foreseen or prevented, or 
 else by less appearing maladies, such as grow 
 upon the body by distempers of the air, im- 
 moderate exercise, or diet ; and when the 
 causes of the disease are thus clear, the remedy 
 is easily applied ; but diseases which proceed 
 from the inward parts or the more noble parts 
 it is a hard thing to apply a cure to such dis- 
 eases. Ill counsels are of that nature ; for the 
 mischiefs that come by evil counsel corrupt 
 the vital parts, and overthrow the public gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 " Secondly. That there have been lately, and 
 still are, ill counsels in this kingdom and about 
 the king. That there have been lately, you 
 will not doubt, when the main course of the 
 government hath been so employed as popery 
 thereby hath been maintained, the laws sub- 
 verted, and no distinction kept between justice 
 and injustice ; and that there are ill counsels 
 still is apparent by the courses taken to advance 
 mischievous designs : his majesty's wisdom 
 and goodness kept them from his heart, tho' 
 they were not kept out of his courts. So must 
 
 * Evelyn, part ii., vol. ii., p. 45. 
 
 principal and mischievous designs have been 
 practised by such as had near access unto his 
 majesty, tho' not to his heart, and the apolo- 
 gists and promoters of ill counsels are still pre- 
 ferred." 
 
 The singular and grave caution of these dis- 
 tinctions is not the least remarkable character- 
 istic of Pym. No man could so thoroughly 
 keep within the nice bounds of Parliamentary 
 phrase while urging the bitterest things. 
 
 " Thirdly. The ill counsels of this time are 
 in their own nature more mischievous and 
 more dangerous than the ill counsels of former 
 times : former counsels have been to please 
 kings in their vices, from which our king is 
 free ; and sometimes for racking of the prerog- 
 ative. If it had gone no farther, it had brought 
 many miseries, but not ruin and destruction. 
 But the ill counsels of this time are destructive 
 to religion and laws, by altering them both, and 
 therefore more mischievous in their own nature 
 than those of former times. 
 
 " Fourthly. That these ill counsels have pro- 
 ceeded from a spirit and inclination to popery, 
 and have had a dependance on popery, and all 
 of them tend to it. The religion of the Pa- 
 pists is a religion incompatible with any other 
 religion ; destructive to all others, and not en- 
 during any thing that opposeth it. Whosoever 
 doth withstand their religion, if they have pow- 
 er, they bring them to ruin. There are other 
 religions that are not right, but not so destruc- 
 tive as popery, for the principles of popery are 
 destructive of all states and persons that op- 
 pose it. With the progress of this mischievous 
 system of evil counsel they provide counsel- 
 lors, fit instruments and organs, that may exe- 
 cute their own designs, and so turn all coun- 
 sels to their own ends. You find now, in Ire- 
 land, that those designs that have been upon all 
 the three kingdoms do end in a war for the main- 
 tenance of popery in Ireland. They would do 
 the like here if they were able, so intent are 
 they to turn all to their own advantage. 
 
 " Fifthly. That unless these ill counsels be 
 changed, it is impossible that any assistance, 
 aid, or advice that the Parliament can take to 
 reform will be effectual, for the public orders 
 and laws are but dead if not put in execution. 
 Those that are the ministers of state put things 
 into action ; but if acted by evil men, and while 
 these counsels are on foot, we can expect no 
 good. It is like a disease that turns nutritives 
 into poison. 
 
 " Sixthly. That this is the most proper time 
 to desire of his majesty the alteration and 
 change of the evil counsellors, because the 
 Commonwealth is brought into distemper by 
 them, and so exhausted that we can endure no 
 longer. Another reason why we cannot admit 
 of them is to show our love and fidelity to the 
 king in great and extraordinary contributions 
 and aids. When God doth employ his servants, 
 he doth give some promise to rouse up their 
 spirits ; and we have reason now to expect the 
 king's grace in great abundance. This is the 
 time wherein the subjects are to save the king- 
 dom of Ireland with the hazard of their lives 
 and fortunes, and therefore expect it from his 
 majesty in a more large and bountiful manner 
 than at other times. This is a time of great 
 agitation and action, when other states being
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 207 
 
 ready, by preparation, to annoy us, ill and false 
 counsels at home may quickly bring us to ruin. 
 As we have weakness at home, so we ought to 
 discern the actions abroad, where great pro- 
 visions are made ; and a carelessness and im- 
 providence herein, when our neighbours are so 
 provided, and have great fleets at sea, will open 
 a way to sudden ruin and destruction, before 
 we can be prepared ; and therefore it is now 
 the fittest time to move the king. 
 
 " Seventhly and lastly. That this alteration 
 of counsels will bring great advantages to the 
 king in his own designs. In all our actions, 
 our prayers to God should be that his name 
 may be glorified ; so our petitions to his maj- 
 esty should bring honour, profit, and advantage 
 to him, by a discouragement to the rebels, a 
 great part of their confidence resting in the evil 
 counsels at home, as by the examinations ap- 
 peareth. It will be a great encouragement to 
 the king's good subjects at home, who hazard 
 their lives, and give aid and contribution, to 
 have things governed for the public good. It 
 will make men afraid to prefer servants to the king 
 that are ill counsellors, when they shall come to 
 the examination of the Parliament ; for many 
 times servants are preferred to princes for the 
 advantage of foreign states. This will put an 
 answer into the king's mouth against all impor- 
 tunities, that he is to prefer none but such as 
 will be approved of by Parliament. Those that 
 are honourable and most ingenuous are aptest 
 to be troubled in this kind, and not to deny ; 
 therefore the king may answer, ' He hath prom- 
 ised his Parliament not to admit of any but by 
 advice of Parliament.' This will silence them 
 all. These are domestick advantages ; but it 
 will also make us fitter to enter into union and 
 treaty with foreign nations and states, and to 
 be made partakers of the strength and assist- 
 ance of others : it will fortify us against the 
 designs of foreign princes. There hath been 
 one common counsel at Rome and in Spain, to 
 reduce us to popery : if good counsel at home, 
 we shall be the better prepared to preserve 
 peace and union, and better respect from Ire- 
 land. It will also make us fit for any noble de- 
 sign abroad." 
 
 Secretary Nicholas, after describing to the 
 king the effect of this grave and condensed 
 statement, adds : " Yo r ma tie may perceave of 
 what extream necessitie and importance yo r 
 ma tie' S p ee( iy returne is, w ch I beseech y r ma tie 
 by all meanes to hasten." Its effect in other 
 quarters was like to have proved of immediate 
 personal danger to Pym. Some few days af- 
 ter he entered the House with an open letter 
 in his hand, and told the speaker that he had 
 just received a letter from a porter at the door 
 of the House, and that, upon the opening of it, 
 a covering which had come from a plague 
 wound* dropped out of it, and that the letter 
 itself contained many menaces, and much rail- 
 ing against him. The porter, being examined, 
 said " a gentleman on horseback, in a gray coat, 
 gave him twelve pence for the speedy delivery 
 of it." " Whatever the matter was," observes 
 Nalson, " it made a mighty noise both in the 
 House and out of the House, in the city and 
 country ; for Mr. Pym was then one of the 
 
 * The plague still lingered in various places in and about 
 London. 
 
 greatest idols of the faction. All the art ima- 
 ginable was used to find out the author of this 
 dangerous attempt to infect Mr. Pym with the 
 plague, but to no purpose." In a curious pam- 
 phlet published four days after Pym's death, 
 and called " A short View of his Life and Ac- 
 tions,"* I find a literal copy of this letter, su- 
 perscribed " To my honoured friend John Pym, 
 Esquire," and in-written thus : " Master Pym, 
 do not think that a guard of men can protect 
 you, if you persist in your courses and wicked 
 designes. I have sent a paper messenger to you, 
 and if this do not touch your heart, a dagger 
 shall, so soon as I am recovered of my plague. 
 In the mean time, you may be forborn, because 
 no better man may be indangered for you. Re- 
 pent, traitour." In the same pamphlet it is 
 said, that soon after this occurrence a gentle- 
 man, " mistaken for Mr. Pym," was stabbed in 
 Westminster Hall by a ruffian who escaped, 
 so that it is probable the amiable letter-writer 
 kept his word ! 
 
 Nor was this all. Sir Edward Nicholas, in 
 the same letter which details the above at- 
 tempts to the king, adds, that " on Monday last, 
 in y e evening, another as desperate and dan- 
 gerous a conspiracy against Mr. Pym was dis- 
 covered by a poor zealous taylor." And by 
 other conspiracies besides these against his 
 lifet were the public virtues and services of 
 this great person acknowledged and sought to 
 be repaid. A series of harassing suits were 
 commenced against him, with a view to deprive 
 him, if possible, of his Parliamentary privilege, 
 till at last, so eagerly were they followed, the 
 House itself thought fit to interfere, and pro- 
 tect him by a special order. J 
 
 It was a vain persuasion that by such means 
 as these the spirit of Pym could be broken or 
 subdued. It rose to its duties with greater re- 
 solvedness ; and in a subsequent conference 
 with the Lords, who still held back from any 
 thing like willing co-operation, he suddenly 
 threw out a very plain and very memorable 
 warning, which produced a deep impression at 
 the time, and had, no doubt, the practical effect 
 its author intended ; since, while it brought the 
 divisions that now, under the management of 
 Hyde and his friends, distracted the Commons 
 themselves, to what might be called the ex- 
 treme point of difference, it settled also the 
 terms of the struggle, and the conditions of the 
 victory, in the great party contest now instant- 
 ly impending. When a great fight is to be 
 fought for great results, it is better to take up 
 position upon an extreme ground of certain and 
 defined principle, than on the half covered way 
 of policy. Pym recommended the upper House 
 to consider that " the Commons were the rep- 
 resentative body of the whole kingdom, while 
 
 * See No. 135 of King's Pamphlets, Brit. Mus. 
 
 t Clarendon alludes to them with his usual want of in- 
 genuousness. " Men being thus disquieted, and knowing 
 little, and so doubting much, every day seemed to them to 
 produce a new discovery of some new treason and plot against 
 the kingdom. One day, ' a letter from beyond seas, of great 
 forces prepared to invade England ;' another, ' of some at- 
 tempt upon the life of Mr. Pym.' " Vol. ii., p. 24. 
 
 I " It was this day ordered that Mr. Pym, being sued for 
 tythe wood, shall have the privilege of Parliament, and that 
 Lewis Lushford and others, the solicitor and attorney on, 
 the other side, be hereby enjoyned to forbear to prosecute, 
 or further to proceed in that suit, or any other that con- 
 cerns the said Mr. Pym." (.Yukon's Collections, vol. ii , 
 p. 393.)
 
 208 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 their lordships were but as particular persons, 
 and present in Parliament in a particular ca- 
 pacity."* The trimmers shrank from his side 
 at this ; but the trimmers were held of little 
 value by Pym and Hampden. 
 
 On the 22d of November their great meas- 
 ure was presented to the House by Pymt 
 their final appeal to the nation on behalf of lib- 
 erty against despotism the Grand Remon- 
 strance" on the state of the kingdom. It was a 
 " severely elaborate" review of Charles's mis- 
 government in Church and State from the com- 
 mencement of his reign ; it summed up all the 
 grievances under which the people had suffered 
 in language of great energy and power, and it 
 pointed out the redress already achieved, and 
 what still remained to be done. Great securi- 
 ties for the people were yet to be struggled for ; 
 and the patriots, in directing their present ap- 
 peal emphatically to the people, exercised a 
 wise and just policy of enlightening them, and 
 guiding them to the future by severe reference 
 and warning to the past. By other means their 
 object must have failed of accomplishment. 
 They did not scruple to declare frankly " that, 
 without a seasonable care to disappoint some 
 councils still entertained, all the good acts 
 which they had obtained were in danger of be- 
 ing lost." And stronger and plainer than this 
 was their allusion to the Lords, that they had 
 no hope of settling the kingdom's distractions, 
 for want of a concurrence on the part of the 
 upper House. 
 
 " What can we the Commons do," said the 
 words of the remonstrance itself, " without the 
 conjunction of the House of Lords 1 And what 
 conjunction can we expect there, where the 
 bishops and recusant lords are so numerous 
 and prevalent that they are able to cross and 
 interrupt our best endeavours for reformation 1 
 They have already hindered the proceedings 
 of divers good bills, passed in the Commons' 
 House, concerning the reformation of sundry 
 great abuses and corruptions both in Church 
 and State." One passage, memorable for its 
 effect upon the people, will illustrate the tone 
 and purpose of the statement of grievances 
 Referring to the dissolution of the third Parlia- 
 ment, the remonstrants proceed : " The privi- 
 leges of Parliament broken, by imprisoning di- 
 vers members of the House, detaining them 
 close prisoners for many months together, with- 
 out the liberty of using books, pen, ink, or pa- 
 per ; denying them all the comforts of life, all 
 means of preservation of health, not permitting 
 their wives to come unto them, even in time 
 of their sickness ; and, for the compleating ol 
 that cruelty, after years spent in such misera- 
 ble durance, depriving them of the necessary 
 means of spiritual consolation, not suffering 
 them to go abroad to enjoy God's ordinances in 
 God's house, or God's ministers to come to 
 them, to administer comfort unto them in their 
 private chambers ; and to keep them still in 
 this oppressed condition, not admitting them to 
 be bailed according to law, yet vexing them 
 
 * Nalson's Collections, vol. ii., p. 712. 
 
 t Clarendon's History, vol. ii.,p. 606, restored text. His 
 words, though they convey a misrepresentation, are stri- 
 king : " On Monday, the 22d oP November (the king being 
 within two miles of London), MY. Pym brought in the re- 
 monstrance, which was read ; having no direction to the 
 king, or mention of the House of Peers, but being a plain 
 declaration from the House of Commons to the people." 
 
 with informations in inferior courts ; sentencing 
 and fining some of them for matters done in 
 Parliament, and extorting the payments of 
 hose fines from them ; enforcing others to put 
 n security for good behaviour before they could 
 be released. The imprisonment of the rest, 
 who refused to be bound, still continued (which 
 might have been been perpetual, if necessity 
 had not, the last year, brought another Parlia- 
 ment to relieve them), of whom one (Sir John 
 Eliot) died by the cruelty and harshness of his 
 mprisonment, which would admit of no relaxation, 
 notwithstanding the imminent danger of his life 
 did sufficiently appear by the declaration of his 
 thysician, and his release, or at least his refresh- 
 ment, was sought by many humble petitions. AND 
 
 HIS BLOOD STILL CRIES FOR VENGEANCE ! Or TC- 
 
 jentance of those ministers of. state who at 
 once obstructed the course both of his majes- 
 ty's justice and mercy !" The document closed 
 with a general petition that the bishops should 
 3e deprived of their votes, and that none should 
 
 intrusted with the public affairs whom the 
 Parliament might not approve of. 
 
 A violent and long debate arose on its intro- 
 duction. The House had commenced its sit- 
 ting at eight o'clock in the morning ; at twelve 
 at noon the debate commenced ; at twelve at 
 midnight the remonstrance was carried by a 
 majority of eleven. Hampden then openly dis- 
 closed the purpose of the remonstrants by mo- 
 ving that the remonstrance should be printed. 
 Hyde opposed this with a counter motion ; de- 
 nied the right of the House of Commons to 
 print any thing without the concurrence of the 
 Peers,* (!) and asserted for himself the right 
 of protesting against the vote of the majority. 
 In this he was joined by several members, and 
 a desperate effort was made to enter a formal 
 protest of the minority against the decision of 
 the House. The conflict of voices and of pas- 
 sions became tremendous, and bloodshed, Sir 
 Philip Warwick says, was like to have ensued. 
 " We had catched at each other's locks, and 
 sheathed our swords in each other's bowels, 
 had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. 
 Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it, and 
 led us to defer our angry debate until the next 
 morning." Meanwhile, at about two o'clock, 
 Hampden's motion for the printing had been 
 carried, and now, at three in the morning, the 
 House adjourned. 
 
 Clarendon shall tell what occurred on the 
 meeting of the following day. It may serve to 
 explain one of the reasons of his personal, no 
 less than public hatred of the memory of Pym. 
 " About three of the clock, when the House 
 met, Mr. Pym lamented the disorder of the 
 night before, which, he said, might probably 
 have engaged the House in blood, and had pro- 
 ceeded principally from the offering a protesta- 
 tion, which had been never before offered in 
 that House, and was a transgression that ought 
 to be severely examined, that mischief might not 
 result hereafter from that precedent ; and there- 
 fore proposed that the House would the next 
 morning enter upon that examination, and in 
 the mean time men might recollect themselves, 
 and they who used to take notes might peruse 
 their memorials, that the persons who were the 
 
 * Hist., vol. ii., p. 43. The word " never" is replaced in 
 this edition for the substituted " seldom."
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 chief causers of the disorder might be named, and 
 defend themselves the hest they could ; and 
 with this resolution the House rose, the vexa- 
 tion of the night before being very visible in 
 the looks and countenance of many."* 
 
 During this stormy and eventful scene the 
 king was on his way from Scotland. He ar- 
 rived on the 25th of November, " brooding in 
 secret over his purposed vengeance on the 
 popular leaders. "t His first act was to reward 
 the deserters from the people. He made Falk- 
 land secretary, and Colepepper chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, while Hyde proposed to waive 
 office for himself at present, on the ground that 
 " his services would be more useful without 
 it," or, in other words, that he had not yet 
 lost the hope of secretly betraying the cause. 
 Charles's next step was to remove the guards, 
 which, since the Scotch incident and the Irish 
 rebellion, had protected both Houses. The 
 Commons strongly objected, and the king an- 
 swered that his presence was a sufficient pro- 
 tection ! 
 
 On the 1st of December the grand remon- 
 strance was presented to him at Hampton 
 Court. He evaded an immediate answer, and 
 promised to send one. The Commons at once 
 published the remonstrance, " contrary," says 
 Whitelocke,J " to the king's desire, and before 
 his answer made to it." In a few days, how- 
 ever, an answer, secretly drawn up by Hyde, 
 was made public in the name of Charles. Ev- 
 ery thing was rushing to a crisis. 
 
 A bill now depended in the lower House for 
 raising soldiers by impressment. Charles sud- 
 denly intimated that he should pass it only with 
 an express saving of his prerogative, and add- 
 ed that he was " little beholding to him, who- 
 ever at this time began this dispute." Pym at 
 once proceeded to the House of Lords, at the 
 head of a conference, and proposed the follow- 
 ing resolutions : " It is our opinion, that the 
 privileges of Parliament are broken, 1. By his 
 majesty's taking notice of the bill for pressing, 
 it being in agitation in both Houses, and not 
 agreed on. 2. In that his majesty should pro- 
 pound a limitation and provisional clause to be 
 added to the bill before it was presented to him 
 by the consent of both Houses. 3. In that his 
 majesty did express his displeasure against 
 some persons for matters moved or debated in 
 Parliament during the debate and preparation 
 of that bill. 4. That a declaratory protestation 
 be entered into by both Houses for the claim 
 of these privileges and liberties ; and that a 
 petitionary remonstrance be drawn up and pre- 
 sented to his majesty about them." An " hum- 
 ble petition" was immediately presented, im- 
 bodying the stern request that " he (the king) 
 should take notice that the privilege of Parlia- 
 ment was broken, and to desire him that it may 
 not be done so any more hereafter." Charles 
 made an " ample apology." 
 
 The remonstrance, meanwhile, was doing its 
 work among the people, and the popular dis- 
 contents against the bishops were loudly heard. || 
 
 * History, vol. ii., p. 45, 46. 
 
 t History from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 283. 
 
 t Memorials, p. 48. 
 
 (> Consult the restored text of the History. 
 
 II Clarendon snys that the temporal peers had become 
 equally objects of popular odium. And he proceeds to say, 
 but without any authority of the reports or journals to bear 
 
 Do 
 
 Upon this Williams, who had recently made his 
 peace with Charles, and succeeded to the arch- 
 bishopric of York, committed that act which, 
 considered as a rashness, was such a strange 
 departure from his character, but, viewed as a 
 first step to the king's cherished purpose of re- 
 voking all that had been done in the past year, 
 on the ground that the Parliament had not been 
 free, was in perfect keeping with the huge in- 
 trigue of his life. He drew up a declaration, 
 and prevailed with eleven other prelates to join 
 him in it, to the effect that the bishops could 
 no longer, without danger to their lives, attend 
 their duty in Parliament, and that they there- 
 fore protested against the validity of any votes 
 or resolutions of the House of Lords during 
 their absence. This was delivered by the lord- 
 keeper, and heard with extreme resentment. 
 The Lords treated it as a breach of privilege, 
 and communicated with the Commons ; when 
 the latter, after a debate with closed doors, 
 impeached the twelve bishops of high treason. 
 On the 30th of December they appeared as cul- 
 prits on their knees at the bar of the upper 
 House. Ten were committed to the Tower, 
 and two, on the score of age and infirmity, to 
 the usher of the black rod. 
 
 Thus closed 1641, the most eventful year of 
 the English history, and upon the first day of 
 1642 blood was shed. A dissolute Royalist of- 
 ficer drew his sword at Westminster, and, in- 
 venting a term which afterward became very 
 famous, threatened death to " the Roundheads 
 who bawled against the bishops." Colonel 
 Lunsford, too, who had been appointed to the 
 Tower by Charles, in defiance of the wishes of 
 the Commons, drew his sword upon the popu- 
 lace ; several of his friends followed his exam- 
 ple ; and some of the citizens were wounded, 
 while one, Sir Richard Wiseman, was killed. 
 
 The next scene took place in the House of 
 Commons. The question of a guard was again 
 debated, with halberts in the House for their 
 defence. Pym had presented to the Lords the 
 following condensed and most significant state- 
 ment of reasons for the protection claimed. 
 " The great number of disorderly, suspicious, 
 and desperate persons, especially of the Irish 
 nation, lurking in obscure alleys and victual- 
 ling-houses in the suburbs, and other places 
 near London and Westminster. The jealousy 
 conceived upon discovery of the design in Scot- 
 land for the surprising of the persons of divers 
 nobility and members of the Parliament there, 
 which had been spoken of here some few days 
 before it broke out, not without some whispering 
 intimation that the like was intended against di- 
 vers persons of both Houses, which found the 
 more credit by reason of the former attempts 
 of bringing up the army to disturb and inforce 
 this Parliament. The conspiracy in Ireland, 
 
 him out, " Hereupon the Lords sent to the House of Com- 
 mons, and many members of that house complained ' that 
 they could not come with safety to Ihe House ; and that 
 some of them had been assaulted, and very ill entreated, by 
 those that crowded about that door.' But this conference 
 could not be procured, the debate being still put off to some 
 other time, after several speeches had been made in justifi- 
 cation of them, and commendation of their affections, some 
 saying ' they must not discourage their friends, this beinef 
 a time they must make use of all friends ;' Mr. Pym himself 
 saying, ' God forbid the House of Commons should proceed 
 in any way to dishearten people to obtain their just desires 
 in such a way.'" History of the Rebellion, vol. ii., p. 87.
 
 210 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 managed with so much secrecy that, but for 
 the happy discovery at Dublin, it had been ex- 
 ecuted in all parts of the kingdom upon one 
 and the same day, or soon after, and that some 
 of the chief conspirators did profess that the 
 like course was intended in England and Scot- 
 land, which being found in some degree true in 
 Scotland, seemed the more probable to be like- 
 wise designed for England. Divers advertise- 
 ments beyond the sea, which came over about 
 the same time, ' That there should be a great 
 alteration of religion in England in a few days, 
 and that the necks of both the Parliaments 
 should be broken.' Divers examinations of 
 dangerous speeches of some of the popish and 
 discontented party in this kingdom. The secret 
 meetings and consultations of the Papists in 
 several parts : their frequent devotions for the 
 prosperity of some great design in hand. These 
 several considerations do move the Parliament 
 to desire a guard, which for the most part 
 should be under the command of the Earl of 
 Essex ; and they do conceive that there is just 
 cause to apprehend that there is some wicked 
 and mischievous practice to interrupt the peace- 
 able proceedings of the Parliament still in hand ; 
 for preventing whereof, it is fit the guard should 
 be continued under the same command, or such 
 other as they should choose ; but to have it 
 under the command of any other not chosen 
 by themselves, they can by no means consent 
 to, and will rather run any hazard than admit 
 of a precedent so dangerous both to this and 
 future Parliaments. And they humbly leave it 
 to his majesty to consider whether it will not 
 be fit to suffer his high court of Parliament to 
 enjoy that privilege of providing for their own 
 safety which was never denied other inferior 
 courts, and that he will be pleased graciously 
 to believe that they cannot think themselves 
 safe under any guard of which they shall not 
 be assured that it will be as faithful in defend- 
 ing his majesty's safety as their own, whereof 
 they shall always be more careful than of their 
 own." And now Pym rose to add additional 
 reasons, drawn from the recent practices and 
 menaces of the English "malignant party." 
 
 The House of Commons was still in debate 
 the 3d of January, 1642 when Herbert, the 
 attorney-general, appeared at the clerks' table 
 of the House of Lords, and said that " the king 
 had commanded him to tell their lordships that 
 great and treasonable designs and practices 
 against him and the state had come to his maj- 
 esty's knowledge, for which the king had given 
 him command to accuse, and he did accuse, the 
 Lord Kimbolton, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, Mr. 
 Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerigge, and Mr. Strode, 
 of high treason." He then read the articles, 
 which sufficiently indicate how the blow would 
 have been followed up in case it had succeeded 
 thus far. 
 
 They were couched in these words : " First. 
 That they have traitorously endeavoured to 
 subvert the fundamental laws and government 
 of this kingdom, and deprive the king of his 
 regal power, and place in the subjects an arbi- 
 trary and tyrannical power. Second. That 
 they have traitorously endeavoured, by many 
 foul aspersions upon his majesty and his gov- 
 ernment, to alienate the affections of his people, 
 and to make his majesty odious to them. Third. 
 
 That they have endeavoured to draw his maj- 
 esty's late army to disobedience to his majes- 
 ty's commands, and to side with them in their 
 traitorous designs. Fourth. That they have 
 traitorously invited and encouraged a foreign 
 power to invade his majesty's kingdom of Eng- 
 land. Fifth. That they have traitorously en- 
 deavoured to subvert the rights and very being 
 of Parliaments. Sixth. That for the comple- 
 ting of their dangerous projects they have en- 
 deavoured, as far as in them lay, by force and 
 terror, to compel the Parliament to join with 
 them in their traitorous designs ; and to that 
 end, have actually raised and countenanced tu- 
 mults against the king and Parliament. Sev- 
 enth. That they have traitorously conspired to 
 levy, and actually have levied, war against the 
 king." Herbert added a desire on the part of 
 his majesty, " First. That a select committee, 
 under a command of secrecy, may be appointed 
 to take the examination of such witnesses as 
 the king will produce in this business, as for- 
 merly hath been done in cases of like nature, 
 according to the justice of this House. Sec- 
 ond. Liberty to add and alter if there should 
 be cause. Third. That their lordships would 
 take care for the securing of the persons, as in 
 justice there should be cause." 
 
 Had this monstrous attempt of tyranny end- 
 ed here, it would have stood a lasting evidence 
 of the perfidy and folly of the king. The old- 
 est rights of the subject were insolently viola- 
 ted by it. The attorney-general had v not a 
 shadow of right to impeach Pym or Hampden, 
 any more than the House of Lords had the 
 right to try them. The only mode of legal 
 trial, upon such a suit preferred by the king, 
 was by a petty jury on a bill found by a grand 
 jury. But thus far we have only seen the be- 
 ginning of the end ! 
 
 The lower House were told of the attempt 
 against them by a message from the Lords, 
 and in the same moment heard that persons 
 were sealing up the trunks, papers, and lodg- 
 ings of the accused members. They sent the 
 speaker's warrant on the instant to break the 
 seals and apprehend the persons by whom they 
 were put on ; ordered, at the same time, that 
 any members upon whom similar seizures were 
 attempted should stand upon their defence ; 
 and finally desired an immediate conference 
 with the Lords, as parties interested no less 
 than themselves. 
 
 Mr. Francis, sergeant-at-arms, having been 
 meanwhile admitted without his mace, deliver- 
 ed the following message to the House : " I 
 am commanded by the king's majesty, my mas- 
 ter, upon my allegiance, that I should come 
 and repair to the House of Commons, where 
 Mr. Speaker is, and there to require of Mr. 
 Speaker five gentlemen, members of the House 
 of Commons, and that these gentlemen being 
 delivered, I am commanded to arrest them, in 
 his majesty's name, of high treason. Their 
 names are, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Hollis. 
 Sir A. Hazlerigge, and Mr. William Strode." 
 The House sent a deputation to the king in 
 reply, saying that the matter was too serious 
 to be decided without consideration, but that 
 the accused would be ready to answer any le- 
 gal charge. Pym and Hampden were present 
 at the moment, and the speaker, in the name
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 211 
 
 of the House, formally requested them to at- 
 tend, with the other three members, on the 
 morning of the following day.* 
 
 The scene must now change, early on the 
 morning of the 4th of January, to the king's 
 apartments at Whitehall, for a page of the se- 
 cret history of this memorable event has re- 
 cently been opened to us. 
 
 The project of seizing the accused members 
 in person from within the walls of the House 
 was probably Charles's own, but had certainly 
 been canvassed earnestly with the queen till 
 late on the preceding night. From a curious 
 manuscript account, left by Sir W. Coke of 
 Norfolk, to Mr. Anchetil Grey, it would then 
 appear that the king, apprehensive of the haz- 
 ard of the attempt that had been agreed on at 
 night, went the next morning to the queen's 
 apartment, and finding Carlile with her majes- 
 ty, he retired with the latter into her closet, 
 and there discoursed with her about the con- 
 sequence of the design, urged many reasons 
 against it, and expressed a resolution not to 
 put it into execution ; upon which the queen 
 could no longer contain, but broke into these 
 angry and passionate words : " Allez ! poltron! 
 go, pull these rogues out by the ears, OK ne me 
 revoycz jamais /"t The king left the room. 
 Madame de Motteville supplies the sequel in 
 describing the queen, while waiting with vio- 
 lent impatience, rejoined by Lady Carlile. " She 
 was impatiently," says that celebrated gossip 
 and waiting-woman, " awaiting news from the 
 House ; at length, thinking that the hour was 
 past, and the stroke made or missed, she said 
 to Lady Carlile, ' Rejoice ! for I hope that the 
 kino; is now master in his states, and such and 
 such are in custody.' Lady Carlile immediate- 
 ly sent intelligence to Mr. Pym, where it ar- 
 rived in time. The queen owned her indiscre- 
 tion, with great penitence, to her husband, who 
 forgave her."t 
 
 Pym, Hampden, and the other members were 
 in their places in the House of Commons very 
 early on the 4th of January, and as soon as 
 prayers were said, Pym had risen, and address- 
 ed the speaker on the articles of impeachment 
 presented against him the day before by the 
 king's attorney. The clearness, force, and beau- 
 ty of his speech will be felt by all. " What," 
 we may say with ^Eschines, " what if we had 
 heard him !" 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, these articles of high treason, 
 exhibited by his majesty against me, and the 
 other gentlemen in the accusation charged with 
 the same crime, are of great consequence and 
 much damage to the state. The articles in 
 themselves, if proved, are, according to the 
 laws of the land, high treason. 
 
 " First. To endeavour to subvert the fundament- 
 al laws of tke land is, by this present Parliament, 
 in the Earl of Stafford's case, adjudged high 
 treason. Secondly, to endeavour to introduce 
 into this kingdom an arbitrary and tyrannical 
 
 * Journals of the Commons. In the afternoon of the 4th, 
 there is a memorandum entered, "that all the five members 
 aforementioned did appear in the House, according' to yes- 
 terday's injunction." 
 
 t Sir Arthur Hazlerisr himself, in an account he p^ive of 
 this affair, in Cromwell's Parliament of 1658, uses these 
 words in part. His account is loose, hut fair corroborating 
 evidence on the whole. See some extracts from his speech 
 in Appendix D. 1 Margure, p. 429. 
 
 form of goverment, is likewise voted high trea- 
 son. Thirdly, to raise an army to compel the 
 Parliament to make and enact laws, without 
 their free votes and willing proceedings in the 
 same, is high treason. Fourthly, to invite a 
 foreign force to invade this land, to favour our 
 designs agitated against the king and state, is 
 high treason. Fifthly, to animate and encour- 
 age riotous assemblies and tumults about the 
 Parliament, to compel the king to assent to 
 votes of the House, is treason. Sixthly, to 
 cast aspersions upon his majesty and his gov- 
 ernment, to alienate the affections of his peo- 
 ple, and to make his majesty odious unto them, 
 is treason. Seventhly, to endeavour to draw 
 his majesty's army into disobedience, and to 
 side with us in our designs, if against the king, 
 is treason. 
 
 " I desire, Mr. Speaker, the favour of this 
 House to clear myself concerning this charge. 
 I shall only parallel and similize my actions 
 since the sitting of this Parliament with these 
 articles. 
 
 " First, Mr. Speaker, if to vote with the Par- 
 liament as a member of the House, wherein all 
 our votes ought to be free (it being one of the 
 greatest privileges thereof to have our debates, 
 disputes, and arguments in the same unques- 
 tionable), be to endeavour to subvert the fun- 
 damental laws, then I am guilty of the first ar- 
 ticle. 
 
 " Secondly. If to agree and consent with the 
 whole state of the kingdom, by vote, to ordain 
 and make laws for the good government of his 
 majesty's subjects, in peace and dutiful obedi- 
 ence to their lawful sovereign, be to introduce 
 an arbitrary and tyrannical form of government 
 in the state, then am I guilty of this article. 
 
 " Thirdly. If to consent, by vote with the 
 Parliament, to raise a guard or train'd band to 
 secure and defend the persons and the mem- 
 bers thereof, being environed and beset with 
 many dangers in the absence of the king ; and, 
 by vote with the House, in willing obedience 
 to the royal command of his majesty, at his re- 
 turn, be actually to levy arms against the king, 
 then am I guilty of this article. 
 
 " Fourthly. If to join with the Parliament of 
 England, by free vote, to crave brotherly as- 
 sistance from Scotland (kingdoms both under 
 obedience to one sovereign, both his loyal sub- 
 jects) to suppress the rebellion in Ireland, which 
 lies gasping every day in danger to be lost from 
 his majesty's subjection, be to invite and en- 
 courage a foreign power to invade this king- 
 dom, then am I guilty of high treason. 
 
 " Fifthly. If to agree with the greatest and 
 wisest council of state to suppress unlawful 
 tumults and riotous assemblies ; to agree with 
 the House, by vote, to all orders, edicts, and 
 declarations for their repelling, be to raise and 
 countenance them in their unlawful actions, 
 then am I guilty of this article. 
 
 " Sixthly. If, by free vote, to join with the 
 Parliament in publishing of a remonstrance ; 
 in setting forth declarations against delinquents 
 in the state ; against incendiaries between his 
 majesty and his kingdom ; against ill counsel- 
 lors which labour to avert his majesty's affec- 
 tion from Parliament ; against those ill-affect- 
 ed bishops that have innovated our religion 
 oppressed painful, learned, and godly ministers
 
 212 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 with vexatious suits and molestations in their 
 unjust courts by cruel sentences of pillory and 
 cutting off their ears by great fines, banish- 
 ments, and perpetual imprisonments : if this, 
 Mr. Speaker, be to cast aspersions upon his 
 majesty and his government, and to alienate 
 the hearts of his loyal subjects, good Protest- 
 ants and well affected in religion, from their 
 due obedience to his royal majesty, then am I 
 guilty also of this article. 
 
 " Seventhly. If to consent, by vote with the 
 Parliament, to put forth proclamations, or to 
 send declarations to his majesty's army to ani- 
 mate and encourage the same to his loyal obe- 
 dience ; to give so many subsidies, and raise 
 so many great sums of money willingly for 
 their keeping on foot to serve his majesty upon 
 his royal command on any occasion ; to appre- 
 hend and attack as delinquents such persons in 
 the same as are disaffected both to his sacred 
 person, his crown and dignity, to his wise and 
 great counsel of Parliament, to the true and 
 orthodox doctrine of the Church of England, 
 and the true religion, grounded on the doctrine 
 of Christ himself; and established and confirm- 
 ed by many acts of Parliament in the reigns 
 of King Henry VIII., King Edward VI., Queen 
 Elizabeth, and King James of blessed memory : 
 if this, Mr. Speaker, be to draw his majesty's 
 army into disobedience, and siding with us in 
 our designs, then am I guilty of this article. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Speaker, having given you a 
 touch concerning these articles, comparing 
 them with my actions ever since I had the 
 honour to sit in this House as a member there- 
 of, I humbly crave your consideration and fa- 
 vourable judgment of them, not doubting they 
 being weighed in the even scales of your wis- 
 dom I shall be found innocent and clear from 
 these crimes laid to my charge." 
 
 Nor, in the triumph of this masterly self-vin- 
 dication, did Pym forget the higher duty which 
 then waited upon his position as leader of the 
 House upon his virtue, and on his never-quail- 
 ing courage. As the members expected him 
 to resume his seat, he gravely and earnestly, 
 amid loud cheering from various quarters, add- 
 ed these words : 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I humbly crave your further 
 patience to speak somewhat concerning the 
 exhibiting of this charge, which is to offer to 
 your consideration these questions, viz. : First, 
 whether to exhibit articles of high treason by his 
 majesty's own hands in tkis House agrees with the 
 rights and privileges thereof? Secondly, whether 
 for a guard armed to come into the Parliament 
 to accuse any of the members thereof be not a 
 breach of the privilege of Parliament 1 Third- 
 ly, whether any of the members of Parliament, 
 being so accused, may be committed upon such 
 accusation without the whole consent 1 Fourth- 
 ly, whether a Parliament hath not privilege to 
 bail any member so accused 1 Fifthly and last- 
 ly, whether, if any of the members of Parlia- 
 ment so charged, and by the House discharged, 
 without release from his majesty may still sit 
 in the House as members of the same 1 
 
 " And thus, Mr. Speaker, I humbly crave par- 
 don for my presumption in so far troubling this 
 honourable House, desiring their favourable 
 consideration of all my actions, and that I may 
 have such trial as to this wise council shall 
 
 seem meet, cheerfully submitting myself and 
 actions to the righteous judgment of the same." 
 
 The rest of the accused members afterward 
 rose successively, and refuted the alleged char- 
 ges against themselves. The dinner hour's ad- 
 journment then took place ; and the House had 
 scarcely resumed when, between three and four 
 o'clock, Pym received Lady Carlile's intelli- 
 gence, and at once stated it to the House. The 
 five members were requested to withdraw, to 
 avoid the bloodshed which it was felt would be 
 the necessary consequence of their remaining, 
 and after some difficulty they did so. Then the 
 House, having ordered Mr. Speaker to keep his 
 seat, with the mace lying before him, awaited 
 in awful silence the approach of their strange 
 and unwelcome visiter.* 
 
 A loud knock threw open the door ; a rush 
 as of many armed men was heard ; and above 
 it the voice of Charles, commanding " upon 
 their lives not to come in."t He entered the 
 moment after, accompanied only by his nephew, 
 the prince palatine ; and as he advanced up to 
 the chair uncovering himself, and the mem- 
 bers standing up uncovered he darted a look 
 " on the right hand, near the bar of the House, 
 where Mr. Pym used to sit, but not seeing him 
 there (knowing him well), went up to the chair."J 
 This the speaker yielded to him, but he contin- 
 ued standing on the step. Again his eye glan- 
 ced around, searching once more for the portly 
 person of the popular leader. The multitude 
 of faces that met his own, and the sullen and 
 awful silence that prevailed, confused him. He 
 spoke at last, but in a subdued tone, and with 
 an abruptness which made more evident than 
 usual the painful defect in his enunciation. He 
 assured them hastily " that no king that ever 
 was in England should be more careful of their 
 privileges ; but in case of treason, he held that 
 no person hath a privilege." He took " this 
 occasion again to confirm, that \vhatever he 
 had done in favour and for the good of his sub- 
 jects, he would maintain." Then again "he 
 called Mr. Pym by natne."$ None answered. 
 He asked the speaker if he was in the House. 
 Lenthall, inspired by the greatness of the oc- 
 casion, kneeled, and desired him to excuse hia 
 answer, for " in this place I have neither eyes 
 to see nor tongue to speak but as the House is 
 pleased to direct me, whose servant I am." 
 "The birds, then, are flown!" said Charles, 
 passionately ; and, abruptly insisting that the 
 accused members must be sent to him, or " he 
 must take his own course," left the place where 
 he stood, " pulling off his hat till he came to 
 the door."|| A low and ominous murmur of 
 " Privilege! privilege !" sounded in his ears as 
 he retired. His hired and tumultuous bands 
 of bravoes, who, while he was in the House, 
 had been waiting in the lobby for " the word," 
 cocking their pistols, and crying " Fall on,''? 
 
 * The subsequent entry on the Journals is simply this : 
 " Jan. 4, P.M. The king came into the House of Com- 
 mons and took Mr. Speaker's chair. 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am sorry to have this occasion to come 
 unto you *** 
 
 " Resolved, upon the question, that the House shall ad- 
 journ itself till to-morrow one of the clock." 
 
 t Verney's Pencil Notes. t Rushwort'i. 
 
 $ Verney's Pencil Notes. HaHam, vol. ii., p. 17S. 
 
 II Ibid. 
 
 IT The following passage is taken from the subsequent 
 " declaration" of the Commons. " It did fully appear that
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 213 
 
 now followed him shouting to Whitehall, from 
 whence he issued a proclamation in the course 
 of that night, directing that the ports should be 
 stopped, and that no person should, at his peril, 
 venture to harbour the accused members. 
 
 During the whole of this extraordinary and 
 unparalleled scene, one person only sat quiet 
 and unmoved. This was Rushworth, the cele- 
 brated historical collector, then assistant clerk 
 to the Commons. I will here subjoin the ac- 
 count which he has left, since it is remarkable 
 for many reasons, and not least for containing 
 the very words that were spoken by Charles 
 and Lenthall, and which the indefatigable clerk 
 coolly wrote down as they broke upon the ter- 
 rible silence. The closing paragraph carries 
 us, too, a step beyond the sketch given above, 
 which is taken, it should be added, in the points 
 of difference or addition to Rushworth, from 
 the pencil notes of Sir Ralph Verney, who was 
 also in the House at the time. 
 
 " When the five accused members came this 
 day, after dinner, into the House, they were 
 no sooner sat in their places but the House 
 was informed by one Captain Langrish, lately 
 an officer in arms in France, that he came from 
 among the officers and soldiers at Whitehall, 
 and understanding by them that his majesty 
 was coming with a guard of military men, com- 
 manders and soldiers, to the House of Com- 
 mons, he passed by them with some difficulty 
 to get to the House before them, and sent in 
 word how near the said officers and soldiers 
 were come ; whereupon a certain member of 
 the House* having also private intimation from 
 the Countess of Carlile, sister to the Earl of 
 Northumberland, that endeavours would be 
 used this day to apprehend the five members, 
 the House required the five members to depart 
 the House forthwith, to the end to avoid com- 
 bustion in the House if the said soldiers should 
 use violence to pull any of them out, to which 
 command of the House four of the said mem- 
 
 many soldiers, Papists and others, to the number of about 
 500, came with his maj. on Tuesday, the 4th instant, to the 
 said House of Commons, armed with swords, pistols, and 
 other weapons ; and divers of them pressed to the door of 
 the said House, thrust away the doorkeepers, and placed 
 themselves between the said door and the ordinary attend- 
 ants of his maj., holding up their swords ; and some holding 
 op their pistols, ready cocked, near the said door, and say- 
 ing, ' I ara a good marksman ; I can hit right, I warrant 
 you ;' and they not suffering the said door, according to the 
 custom of Parliament, to be shut, but said ' they would hare 
 the door open ; and, if any opposition were against them, 
 they made no question but they should make their party 
 good, and that they would maintain their party.' And 
 when several members of the House of Commons were com- 
 ing into the House, their attendants desiring that room 
 might be made for them, some of the said soldiers answered, 
 ' A pox of God confound them ;' and others said, ' A pox 
 take the House of Commons ; let them come, and be hang- 
 ed ; what a-do is here with the House of Commons !' And 
 some of the said soldiers did likewise violently assault, and 
 by force disarm, some of the attendants and servants of the 
 members of the House of Commons, waiting in the rooms 
 next the said House ; and, upon the king's return out of 
 the said House, many of them, by oaths and otherwise, ex- 
 pressed much discontent, that some members of the said 
 House, for whom they came, were not there ; and others 
 of them said, ' When comes the word ?' and no word being 
 given, at his majesty's coming out, they cried, ' A lane ! a 
 lane !' Afterward, somo of them, being demanded ' what 
 they thought the said company intended to have done,' an- 
 swered, ' that, questionless, in the posture they were set, 
 if the word had been given, they should have fallen upon 
 the House of Commons.'" 
 
 * There seems a sort of delicacy here implied, as if the 
 assistant clerk did not care to announce publicly Pym's 
 connexion with Lady Carlile. 
 
 bers yielded ready obedience ; but Mr. Strode 
 was obstinate, till Sir Walter Earle (his antient 
 acquaintance) pulled him out by force, the king 
 being at that time entering into the new palace- 
 yard in Westminster. And as his majesty came 
 through Westminster Hall, the commanders, 
 reformadoes, &c., that attended him, made a 
 lane on both sides the hall through which his 
 majesty passed, and came up the stairs to the 
 House of Commons, and stood before the guard 
 of pensioners and halberteers, who also attend- 
 ed the king's person ; and the door of the House 
 of Commons being thrown open, his majesty 
 entered the House, and as he passed up towards 
 the chair, he cast his eye on the right hand, 
 near the bar of the House, where Mr. Pym used 
 to sit ; but his majesty, not seeing him there 
 (knowing him well), went up to the chair, and 
 said, ' By your leave, Mr. Speaker, I must bor- 
 row your chair a little ;' whereupon the speaker 
 came out of the chair, and his majesty stepped 
 up into it. After he had staid in the chair a 
 while, he cast his eye upon the members as 
 they stood up uncovered, but could not discern 
 any of the five members to be there ; nor, in- 
 deed, were they easy to be discerned, had they 
 been there, among so many bare faces all stand- 
 ing up together. 
 
 " Then his majesty made this speech. ' Gen- 
 tlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming 
 unto you. Yesterday I sent a sergeant-at-arms, 
 upon a very important occasion, to apprehend 
 some that, by my command, were accused of 
 high treason, whereunto I did expect obedience, 
 and not a message ; and I must declare unto 
 you here, that albeit no king that ever was in 
 England shall be more careful of your privile- 
 ges, to maintain them to the uttermost of his 
 power, than I shall be, yet you must know that 
 in cases of treason no person hath a privilege, 
 and therefore I am come to know if any of 
 these persons that were accused are here ; 
 for I must tell you, gentlemen, that so long as 
 these persons that I have accused, for no slight 
 crime, but for treason, are here, I cannot ex- 
 pect that this House will be in the right way 
 that I do heartily wish it ; therefore I am come . 
 to tell you that I must have them wheresoever 
 I find them. Well, since I see all the birds are 
 flown, I do expect from you that you will send 
 them unto me as soon as they return hither. But 
 I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did 
 intend any force, but shall proceed against them 
 in a legal and fair way, for I never meant any 
 other. And now, since I see I cannot do wha* 
 I came for, I think this no unfit occasion to re- 
 peat what I have said formerly, that whatso- 
 ever I have done in favour and to the good of 
 my subjects, I do mean to maintain it. I will 
 trouble you no more, but tell you I do expect, 
 as soon as they come to the House, you will 
 send them to me, otherwise I must take my own 
 course to find them.' 
 
 ' When the king was looking about the 
 House, the speaker standing below by the 
 chair, his majesty asked him whether any of 
 these persons were in the House whether he 
 saw any of them and where they were. To 
 which the speaker, falling on his knee, thus 
 answered : ' May it please your majesty, I have 
 neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this 
 place but as the House is pleased to direct me,
 
 214 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 whose servant I am here ; and humbly beg your 
 majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other 
 answer than this to what your majesty is pleased 
 to demand of me.' 
 
 " The king, having concluded his speech, went 
 out of the House again, which was in great 
 disorder, and many members cried out aloud, 
 so as he might hear them, Privilege ! privilege ! 
 and forthwith adjourned till the next day at 
 one o'clock. 
 
 " The same evening his majesty sent James 
 Maxwell, usher of the House of Peers, to the 
 House of Commons, to require Mr. Rushworth, 
 the clerk assistant, whom his majesty had ob- 
 served to take his speech in characters at the 
 table in the House, to come to his majesty ; and 
 when Maxwell brought him to the king, his maj- 
 esty commanded him to give him a copy of his 
 speech in the House. Mr. Rushworth humbly 
 besought his majesty (hoping for an excuse) to 
 call to mind how Mr. Francis Nevil, a York- 
 shire member of the House of Commons, was 
 committed to the Tower for telling his majes- 
 ty what words were spoken in the House by 
 Mr. Henry Bellasis, son to the Lord Faucon- 
 berg ; to whom his majesty smartly replied, ' I 
 do not ask you to tell me what was said by any 
 member of the House, but what I said myself;' 
 whereupon he readily gave obedience to his 
 majesty's command, and in his majesty's pres- 
 ence, in the room called the jewel-house, he 
 transcribed his majesty's speech out of his char- 
 acters, his majesty staying in the room all the 
 while, and then and there presented the same 
 to the king, which his majesty was pleased to 
 command to be sent speedily to the press, and 
 the next morning it came forth in print."* 
 
 Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Hazlerig, and Strode 
 had taken refuge in Coleman-street, in the city. 
 The city, it has been well observed, was at this 
 time the fastness of public liberty, and " a place 
 of at least as much importance as Paris during 
 the French Revolution."! Instead of being, as 
 now, a huge collection of immense warehouses 
 and counting-houses, frequented by clerks and 
 traders during the day, and left almost desert- 
 ed during night, it was then " closely inhabited 
 by 300,000 persons, to whom it was a place of 
 constant residence," and who had as complete 
 a civil and military organization as if it had 
 been an independent republic. The troops they 
 afterward furnished turned the tide of many an 
 action at the opening of the civil war. The 
 municipal offices were filled by the most opu- 
 lent and respectable merchants of the king- 
 dom, and " the pomp of the magistracy of the 
 capital was second only to that which surround- 
 ed the person of the sovereign." Finally, the 
 numbers, the intelligence, the wealth of the 
 citizens, the democratic form of their local gov- 
 ernment, that had educated them to notions of 
 liberty, and their vicinity to the court and to 
 the Parliament, made them " one of the most 
 formidable bodies in the kingdom." 
 
 Into the city Charles proceeded on the fol- 
 lowing morning in search of the five members. 
 He was received with marked signs of discon- 
 tent. The multitude cried aloud, " Privileges 
 of Parliament ! privileges of Parliament !" and 
 
 * Rushworth's Collections, vol. iv., p. 477, 478. 
 t See a brilliant article on Lord Nugent's Memorials of 
 Hampden, in the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 one of them, more zealous than the rest, flung 
 into the window of his carriage a paper, on 
 which was written the famous words of the ten 
 tribes when they forsook the foolish and wan- 
 tonly tyrannical Rehoboam : " To your tents, 
 Israel !" Meanwhile, the houses, the purses, 
 the pikes of the citizens were freely placed at 
 the command of the Commons. They kept 
 themselves all night in arms, and on the fol- 
 lowing day all signs of business were suspend- 
 ed, the shops closed, and the streets thronged. 
 A committee had been appointed to sit in the 
 city for investigating the outrage ; a deputation 
 of the common council welcomed its members ; 
 several of the halls of the companies (then for- 
 midable clans) were offered for its sittings ; 
 guards were furnished in abundance ; and the 
 sheriffs watched over the safety of Pym and 
 his friends, and conducted them to and from 
 the committee with every mark of honour. 
 
 Nor was this all. While four thousand Buck- 
 inghamshire men rode up from their county to 
 watch over the safety of Hampden, an immense 
 body of the common people assembled to " de- 
 fend Mr. Pym." From a curious pamphlet, to 
 which reference has already been made,* I find 
 that a petition and defence of Pym was on this 
 occasion drawn up by these faithful and strong 
 friends, and meant for presentation to the king. 
 Whether it was ever so presented I cannot as- 
 certain ; but some extracts, which have not yet 
 found a place in any record of the time, are ap- 
 propriate and interesting. 
 
 Waiving any allusion to the other members 
 accused, the petitioners confine themselves to 
 the alleged guilt of Pym. " We doe unani- 
 mously suppose," they say, " that your majes- 
 tie hath beene either misinformed, or else sug- 
 gested by some malicious persons who are ill 
 affected to the said Mr. Pym ; the man we have 
 experimentally found to bee a chiefe pillar of 
 religion ; who, when the pure sanctitie there- 
 of had sunke too low into the vault of heresie 
 in the late turbulent times, and when it almost 
 languished in so disastrous a manner, was the 
 chiefest supporter thereof, and did alwayes 
 study with carefull vigilancie to erect and ele- 
 vate the same." Again, adverting to the first 
 article, " that Mr. Pym hath traytorously in- 
 deavoured to subvert the fundamentall lawes 
 and government of England," the following re- 
 mark is made : " This seemes contrary, in re- 
 gard that hee solely did alwayes oppose any 
 man whom hee either found or could suspect 
 guiltie of the same crime, and hath laboured 
 rather to ratifie and confirme the fundamentall 
 lawes, than either subvert or confound the 
 same ; for in his diurnall speeches in the Par- 
 liament was alwayes specified his reall intent 
 in the institution, and not diminution or sub- 
 version of any law which was not detrimentall 
 to the safetie and prosperitie of thiskingdome." 
 The allegations in the fourth and fifth articles 
 are answered thus : " It is declared that hee 
 hath traytorously invited and incouraged a 
 forraigne power to invade his majestie's king- 
 dome of England. To this your petitioners 
 dare boldly say, that this nefarious invitation 
 and incouragement of a forraigne power was 
 never undertooke by him ; for hee hath beene 
 
 * See p. 176 of the present volume, note : "The Com- 
 mons' petition to the king."
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 215 
 
 very vigilant to preserve and defend this king 
 dome, in as great fortification as possibly migh 
 bee, to the flourishing prosperitie of this whol 
 realme ; and therefore hee hath oftentimes ex 
 press-ed his affection towards the safetie of this 
 nation, and of stronger forces that should be< 
 raised, to keepe out any forraigne enemy o 
 power, least, peradventure, they steale upon us 
 unawares. In the fifth article hee is impeach 
 ed thus : That hee hath traytorously indeav 
 oured to subvert the rights and very being of 
 Parliaments. To this we may answer with 
 great facilitie, Hee was the chiefe cause that thi 
 Parliament was assembled, and it seemes very 
 incongruous that hee should subvert the same 
 Moreover, hee is the sole man that stands for 
 the antient rights and liberties of the Parlia 
 ments, and it seemes a stupendious thing tha: 
 hee should confound the same. In this resped 
 your petitioners dare speake with confidence 
 that there was not one man in the Parliament 
 House who did stand more strongly for the 
 rights of Parliament than Mr. Pym did." 
 
 What need to pursue this subject farther 1 
 The House of Commons, having declared the 
 king's " warlike entrance" a gross breach of 
 privilege, and his proclamation of the five mem- 
 bers as traitors a " false, scandalous, and ille- 
 gal paper," completed their open defiance of 
 Charles by adjourning till the llth of January, 
 and ordering the accused members on that day 
 to attend in their places at Westminster, and 
 resume their public duties. Charles sought to 
 effect a compromise ; offered a " free pardon ;" 
 and said he found now " good cause wholly to 
 desert any prosecution ;" but it was too late. 
 The resolute determination of the Commons, 
 the proceedings which were afterward taken to 
 dare the utmost investigation, and, finally, the 
 punishment of the king's attorney, belong to 
 history. 
 
 The llth of January was a brilliant day, and 
 the Thames appeared covered with boats, and 
 its bridges and banks crowded with spectators. 
 Armed vessels, and barges manned by sailors, 
 and carrying ordnance with matches lighted, 
 attended the embarcation of the sheriffs, with a 
 portion of the city guard. Two brilliant lines of 
 flags and colours ranged themselves from Lon- 
 don Bridge to Westminster Hall, and through 
 these Pym and Hampden, and their friends, in 
 a vessel manned by sailors who had volunteer- 
 ed their services, returned to the scene of their 
 dangers and glories. A farther division of the 
 trainbands of the city had meanwhile marched 
 up the Strand, attended by vast crowds of shout- 
 ing people, for the purpose of guarding the av- 
 enues to the House of Commons ; and as the 
 patriots landed, the enthusiastic applauses of 
 the multitude, outringing the clattering dischar- 
 ges of ordnance, followed them in their passage 
 to the lobby. Pym rose immediately after ta- 
 king his old seat, and fervently thanked the 
 citizens of London. Hampden, Hollis, Hazle- 
 rig, and Strode stood uncovered while Pym 
 spoke. In conclusion, the sheriffs were thank- 
 ed by a unanimous vote of the House, and or- 
 ders given that a guard, selected from the train- 
 bands of the city, "should attend daily to watch 
 over the safety of the Parliament." 
 
 Late on the night before this public triumph, , 
 the king, his queen, and their chitfren left Lon- . 
 
 don and proceeded to Hampton Court. When 
 Charles returned again, he returned a prisoner. 
 
 The crisis had now arrived, and the last ap- 
 peal alone was waited for. Clarendon says 
 that Pym and Hampden returned to their places 
 in Parliament altered and fiercer men. Fiercer 
 they probably were, but they were not altered. 
 The times had changed, not they. Their hopes 
 of any intermediate reconciliation were now 
 forever blasted ; and it was clear that no mu- 
 tual terms could be held again until one of the 
 parties .had thoroughly subdued the other. 
 
 The Commons pursued their measures with 
 singular energy. Major-general Skippon was 
 placed, with a sufficient guard, over the Tower ; 
 and a memorable order was at once issued, that 
 Lord Newport, master-general of the ordnance, 
 and Sir John Byron, lieutenant of the Tower, 
 should suffer no removal of ordnance or ammu- 
 nition " without the king's authority, signified 
 by both Houses of Parliament." Goring was 
 sent to hold Portsmouth under the same au- 
 thority, and Sir John Hotham to Hull. The 
 king remained irresolute and inactive mean- 
 while. 
 
 The Commons wanted money beyond all 
 things, and now negotiated a loan with the 
 city. The authorities, by petition, declined 
 lending, except upon certain conditions, which 
 they delivered in the form of twelve specific 
 grievances to be at once redressed. These 
 conditions are supposed to have been the sug- 
 gestion of Pym. The Commons instantly de- 
 sired a conference with the Lords respecting 
 this London petition, and divers others of a 
 similar character from the counties of Middle- 
 sex, Essex, and Hertford. Pym managed the 
 conference, and the speech he delivered there 
 is a masterpiece of eloquence ; solid, concise, 
 and vigorous, nervous and simple. It may re- 
 main, with the language itself, an everlasting 
 evidence of the wisdom and courage of the 
 orator. 
 
 ' My lords, I am commanded by the knights, 
 citizens, and burgesses, assembled for the Com- 
 mons in Parliament, to present to your lord- 
 ships divers petitions which they have received 
 from several parts concerning the state of the 
 iingdom, whereunto they are chiefly moved by 
 that constant affection which they have always 
 expressed, of maintaining a firm union and good 
 :orrespondence with your lordships, wherein 
 hey have ever found much advantage and con- 
 entment, but never held it more important and 
 necessary than at this time, when the wisdom 
 and resolution of Parliament have as many 
 reat dangers and difficulties to pass through 
 as ever heretofore. 
 
 We are united in the public trust, which is 
 lerived from the Commonwealth, in the com- 
 mon duty and obligation whereby God doth 
 ind us to the discharge of that trust ; and the 
 Commons desire to impart to your lordships 
 whatsoever information or intelligence, what- 
 oever encouragement or assistance, they have 
 eceived from those several counties which 
 hey represent, that so likewise we may be 
 inited in the same intentions and endeavours 
 f improving all to the service of his majesty, 
 nd the common good of the kingdom. 
 " The petitions which I am directed to com- 
 municate to your lordships are four : from Lon-
 
 216 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 don, Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire. W 
 have received many more, but it would take u 
 too much time and be too great a trouble t 
 peruse all ; and in these four you may perceiv 
 the effect and sense of all. First, I am to de 
 sire your lordships to hear them read ; and the 
 I shall pursue my instructions in propoundin 
 some observations out of them." 
 
 " These petitions," the report continues, " be 
 ing read by four several members of the House 
 Mr. Pym resumed his discourse. 
 
 " My lords, in these four petitions you ma] 
 hear the voice, or rather the cry, of all England 
 and you cannot wonder if fhe urgency, the ex 
 tremity of the condition wherein we are, dc 
 produce some earnestness and vehemence ol 
 expression more than ordinary. The agony 
 terror, and perplexity in which the kingdom 
 labours are universal ; all parts are affectec 
 with them ; and therefore in these you may 
 observe the groans and miserable complaints 
 of all. 
 
 " Divers reasons may be given why those 
 diseases which are epidemical are more dan 
 gerous than others. First, The cause of such 
 diseases is universal and supernal, and not from 
 an evil constitution, or evil diet, or any other 
 accident ; such causes, therefore, work with 
 more vigour and efficacy than those which are 
 particular and inferior. Secondly, In such dis- 
 eases there is a communicative quality, where- 
 by the malignity of them is multiplied and en- 
 forced. Thirdly, They have a converting, trans- 
 forming power, that turns other diseases and il 
 affections of men's bodies into their own na- 
 ture. 
 
 " First, The common and epidemical disease 
 wherein this Commonwealth now lies gasping 
 hath a superior and universal cause from the 
 evil counsels and designs of those who, under 
 his majesty, bear the greatest sway in govern- 
 ment. Secondly, It hath a contagious and in- 
 fectious quality, whereby it is diffused and dis- 
 persed thro' all parts of the kingdom. Thirdly, 
 It is apt to take in the discontents, evil affec- 
 tions, and designs of particular persons, to in- 
 crease and fortify itself. 
 
 " I shall take occasion, from several branch- 
 es of those petitions which your lordships have 
 heard, to observe, First, The variety of dan- 
 gers to which this kingdom is now subject. 
 Secondly, the manifold distempers which are 
 the cause of those daggers. Thirdly, The mul- 
 tiplicity of those evil influences which are the 
 causes of those distempers. 
 
 "The first danger is from enemies abroad. 
 This may seem a causeless and impertinent 
 observation at this time, seeing we are in peace 
 with all nations about us. But, my lords, you 
 may be pleased to consider that the safety of the 
 kino-dom ought not to depend upon the will and 
 disposition of our neighbours, but upon our own 
 strength and provision. Betwixt states there 
 are often sudden changes from peace to war, 
 according to occasion and advantage. All the 
 states of Christendom are now armed, and we 
 have no reason to believe but that those of 
 greatest power have an evil eye upon us in re- 
 spect of our religion ; and if their private dif- 
 ferences should be composed, how dangerous- 
 ly, how speedily might those great armies, and 
 other preparations now ready, be applied to 
 
 some enterprise and attempt against us ! If 
 there were no other cause, this were sufficient 
 to make us stand upon our guard. But there 
 are divers more especial symptoms of dangers 
 of this kind^ 
 
 "We may perceive by several advertisements 
 from abroad that they did foresee our dangers 
 many months before they broke out. They 
 could foretell the time and manner of them, 
 which is a clear evidence they held intelligence 
 with those who were the contrivers and work- 
 ers of the present troubles. 
 
 " We have, in truth, many dangerous traitors 
 and fugitives now in other parts, who can dis- 
 cover the weakness and distemper of the king- 
 dom, who hold intelligence with the ill-affected 
 party here, and, by all cunning and subtle prac- 
 tices, endeavour to incite and provoke other 
 princes against us. 
 
 " Some of the ministers of our neighbour 
 princes, my lords, may be justly suspected to 
 have had a yet more immediate hand and op- 
 eration in the insurrection and rebellion in Ire- 
 land ; many of the commanders, and most of 
 the soldiers levied for the service of Spain, are 
 now joined with the rebels there ; and those 
 Irish friars which were employed by the Span- 
 ish ambassador for the making of those levies 
 are known to have been the chief incendiaries 
 of this rebellion, and are still very active in the 
 prosecution and encouragement of it. The reb- 
 els have, moreover, a ready and speedy supply 
 from some of our neighbours. Two convoys 
 of munition and arms we are certainly inform- 
 ed of one from Dunkirk, the other from Nantes 
 in Brittany ; and certainly those that are so for- 
 ward to enable others to hurt us, will not for- 
 bear to hurt us themselves, as soon as they 
 hall have means and opportunity to do it. 
 
 " Another danger is from the Papists and ill- 
 affected party at home. The Papists here are 
 actuated by the same principles with those in 
 freland. Many of the most active of them have 
 ately, indeed, been there, which argues an in- 
 ;ercourse and communication of councils. They 
 lave still store of arms and munition at their 
 disposing, notwithstanding all our endeavours 
 to disarm them ; they have a free resort to the 
 city and to the court ; they want no opportu- 
 nity to consult together ; they have the same 
 or greater encouragements, from above and from 
 about them, than ever, in respect of the example 
 and success of the rebels in Ireland, and the 
 great confusions and divisions which, by their 
 sunning and subtle practices, are raised and 
 bmented amongst ourselves at home. 
 
 " A third danger is of tumults and insurroc- 
 ions of the meaner sort of people, by reason 
 if their ill vent of cloth and other manufac- 
 ures, whereby great multitudes are set on 
 >vork, who live for the most part on their daily 
 gettings, and will, in a very short time, be 
 rought to great extremity if not employed. 
 Nothing is more sharp and pressing than ne- 
 essity and want ; what they cannot buy they 
 vill take ; from them the like necessity will 
 uickly be derived to the farmers and husband- 
 nen, and so grow higher, and involve all in an 
 quality of misery and distress, if it be not in- 
 tantly prevented ! And, at this time, such tu- 
 mlts will be more dangerous, because the king- 
 om is full of disbanded soldiers and officers,
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 217 
 
 who will be ready to head and to animate 
 the multitude to commit violence with more 
 strength and advantage ; and if they once grow 
 into a body, it will be much more difficult to 
 reduce them into order again, because neces- 
 sity and want, which are the causes of this 
 disturbance, will still increase as the effects in- 
 crease. 
 
 " A fourth danger is from the rebels in Ire- 
 land, not only in respect of that kingdom, but 
 in respect of this. They have seized upon the 
 body of that kingdom already ; they abound in 
 men of very able persons ; they increase in 
 arms and munition ; they have great hopes of 
 supplies from abroad and of encouragement 
 here, and are sure of good entertainment from 
 the popish party, so that they begin to speak 
 already there of transporting themselves hither, 
 and making this kingdom the seat of the war. 
 
 " The distemper, my lords, which hath pro- 
 duced these dangers is various and exceeding 
 violent. Whensoever Nature is hindered in 
 her proper operations and faculties, distempers 
 will necessarily follow. The obstructions, my 
 lords, which have brought us into this distem- 
 per are very many, so that we cannot wonder 
 at the strength and malignity of it. Some of 
 the chiefest of these obstructions I shall en- 
 deavour to remember. 
 
 " First. The obstruction of reformation in 
 matters of religion. No grievances are sharper 
 than those that press upon the tender consciences 
 of men ! and there was never church or state 
 afflicted with more grievances of this kind than 
 we have been ; and though they are, by the 
 wisdom of this Parliament, partly eased and 
 diminished, yet many still remain ; and as long 
 as the bishops and the corrupt part of the cler- 
 gy continue in their power, there will be little 
 hope of freedom, either from the sense of those 
 which continue, or the fear of those which are re- 
 moved. And of this obstruction, my lords, I 
 must clear the Commons. We are in no part 
 guilty of it. Some good bills have passed us, 
 and others are in preparation, which might have 
 been passed before this if we had not found such 
 ill success in your Lordships' House. Whatso- 
 ever mischief this obstruction shall produce, we are 
 free from it : we may have our part of the misery, 
 we can have no part in the guilt or dishonour. 
 
 " Secondly. An obstruction in trade. It is 
 trade that brings food and nourishment to the 
 kingdom ; it is that which preserves and in- 
 creases the stock of the whole, and distributes 
 a convenient portion of maintenance to every 
 part of it, therefore such an obstruction as this 
 must needs be dangerous ; the freedom of trade 
 being so necessary, the benefit so important, 
 that it gives life, strength, and beauty to the 
 whole body of the Commonwealth. But I must 
 protest the House of Commons hath given no 
 cause to this obstruction ; we have eased trade 
 of many burdens and heavy taxes, which are 
 taken off; we have freed it from many hard 
 restraints by patents and monopolies ; we have 
 been willing to part with our own privileges to 
 give it encouragement ; we have sought to put 
 the merchants into security and confidence in 
 respect of the Tower of London, that so they 
 might be invited to bring in their bullion to the 
 mint, as heretofore they have done; and we 
 are no way guilty of the troubles, the fears, 
 Ei 
 
 and public dangers which make men withdraw 
 their stocks, and keep their money by them, to 
 be ready for such sudden exigencies as in these 
 great distractions we have too much cause to 
 expect. 
 
 " Thirdly. The obstruction in the relief of 
 Ireland. It must needs be accounted a great 
 shame and dishonour to this kingdom that our 
 neighbours have showed themselves more for- 
 ward to supply the rebels than we have been 
 to relieve our distressed brethren and fellow- 
 subjects. But I must declare we are altogether 
 innocent of any neglect herein. As soon as 
 the first news of the rebellion came over, we 
 undertook the war, not by way of supply and 
 aid, as in former rebellions the subjects have 
 used to do, but we undertook the whole charge 
 of it, and we suffered not twenty-four hours to 
 pass before we agreed to a great levy of money 
 and men, to be employed against the rebels, 
 even in a larger proportion than the lords, jus- 
 tices, and council there did desire ; and from 
 time to time we have done all for the further- 
 ance thereof, though in the midst of many dis- 
 tractions and diversions. But the want of 
 commissions for levying of men, for issuing 
 arms, and divers other impediments, have been 
 the causes of that obstruction : and I wish we 
 had not only found impediments to ourselves ; 
 we have found also encouragements to them. 
 Many of the chief commanders, now at the 
 head of the rebels, after we had, with your 
 lordships' concurrence, stop't the ports against 
 all Irish Papists, have been suffered to pass by 
 his majesty's immediate warrant, much to the 
 discouragement of the lords-justices and the 
 council there ; and this procured, as we believe, 
 by some evil instruments too near his royal per- 
 son, without his majesty's knowledge and inten- 
 tion. 
 
 " Fourthly. The obstruction in prosecution 
 of delinquents. Many we have already brought 
 up to your lordships, divers others we have 
 been discouraged to transmit, such difficult 
 proceedings have we met withal, such terrors 
 and discountenance have been cast upon our- 
 selves and our witnesses. My lords, those who 
 have showed themselves the friends and pa- 
 trons of delinquents have found it the most 
 ready way to preferment ! Yea, his majesty's 
 own hand hath been obtained, and his majes- 
 ty's ships employed, for the transporting of di- 
 vers of those who have fled from the justice of 
 Parliament ! 
 
 " Fifthly. A general obstruction and interrup- 
 tion of the proceedings in Parliament by those 
 manifold designs of violence which, thro' God's 
 mercy, we have escaped ; by the great and fre- 
 quent breaches of privilege ; by the subtle en- 
 deavours to raise parties in our House, and 
 jealousies betwixt the two Houses. 
 
 ' Sixthly. The obstruction in providing for 
 the defence of the kingdom, that we might be 
 enabled to resist a foreign enemy, or to sup- 
 press all civil insurrections. What a pressing 
 necessity there is of this, the exceeding great 
 decays in the navy, in the forts, in the power 
 of ordering the militia of the kingdom, and 
 means of furnishing them with munition, are 
 sufficient evidences, known to none better than 
 your lordships. And what endeavours we have 
 used to remove them, but hitherto without that
 
 218 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 success and concurrence which we expected, 
 and where the stop hath been, and upon what 
 good grounds we may claim our own innocency 
 and faithfulness, we desire no other witnesses but 
 yourselves. 
 
 " Lastly, I come to the evil influences which 
 have caused this distemper ; and I shall con- 
 tent myself with mentioning those which are 
 most important. 1. I shall remember the evil 
 counsels about the king, whereof we have often 
 complained. Diseases of the brain are most 
 dangerous, because from thence sense and mo- 
 tion are derived to the whole body. The ma- 
 lignity of evil counsels will quickly be infused 
 into all parts of the state. None can doubt but 
 we have exceedingly laboured under most dan- 
 gerous and mischievous counsels. This evil 
 influence hath been the cause of the prepara- 
 tion of war with Scotland of the procuring a 
 rebellion in Ireland of corrupting religion 
 suppressing the liberty of this kingdom and 
 of many fearful and horrid attempts to the sub- 
 verting the very being of Parliaments, which 
 was the only hopeful means of opposing and 
 preventing all the rest. The last, indeed, doth 
 appear to be a most predominant evil of the 
 time, whereat we need not wonder when we 
 consider how counsellors have been preferred 
 and prepared ; and I appeal to your lordships' 
 own consciences whether the giving and coun- 
 tenancing of evil counsel hath not been almost 
 the only way to favour and advancement. 2. 
 The discouragement of good counsel. Divers 
 honest and approved counsellors have been put 
 from their places, others so discountenanced as 
 that the way of favour hath been shut against 
 them, and that of danger and destruction only 
 open to them. 3. The great power that an in- 
 terested and factious party hath in the Parlia- 
 ment by the continuance of the votes of the 
 bishops and popish lords in your Lordships' 
 House, and the taking in of others, both out of 
 the House of Commons and otherwise, to in- 
 crease their strength. 4. The fomenting and 
 cherishing of a malignant party throughout the 
 whole kingdom. 5. The manifold jealousies 
 betwixt the king, his Parliament, and good sub- 
 jects, whereby his protection and favour hath 
 in a great measure been withheld from them, 
 and their inclination and resolution to serve 
 and assist him hath been very much hindered 
 and interrupted." 
 
 The force and boldness of all this were equal 
 to the great emergencies of the hour ; and as 
 the orator proceeded, we may suppose him 
 more than repaid by the expression of proud 
 and affectionate admiration that rested on the 
 countenances of Hampden and Fiennes, who 
 were sitting by his side. His closing passages 
 were simple and noble in the extreme. They 
 condensed into a few words all the ominous 
 warnings which, throughout his great task, he 
 had addressed to the upper House ; and the in- 
 spiration 'of a memorable lesson, announced not 
 less for the present than as a precedent and 
 example for remoter times, was stamped upon 
 them. 
 
 " We have often suffered under the misin- 
 terpretation of good actions, and false imputa- 
 tion of evil ones which we never intended, so 
 that we may justly purge ourselves from all 
 guilt of being authors of this jealousie and mis- 
 
 understanding. We have been, and are still, 
 ready to serve his majesty with our lives and 
 fortunes, with as much chearfulness and ear- 
 nestness of affection as ever any subjects were; 
 and we doubt not but our proceedings will so 
 manifest this, that we shall be as clear in the 
 apprehension of the world as we are in the tes- 
 timony of our own consciences. 
 
 " I am now come to a conclusion. I have 
 nothing to propound to your lordships by way 
 of request or desire from the House of Com- 
 mons. I doubt not but your judgments will tell 
 you what is to be done. Your consciences, 
 your honours, your interests will call upon you 
 for the doing of it. The Commons will be glad- 
 to have your concurrence and help in saving 
 of the kingdom ; but, if they fail of it, it shall 
 not discourage them in doing their duty. And 
 whether the kingdom be lost or saved (I hope, 
 through God's blessing, it will be saved !), they 
 shall be sorry THAT THE STORY OF THIS PRESENT 
 PARLIAMENT SHOULD TELL POSTERITY THAT, IN 
 SO GREAT A DANGER AND EXTREMITY, THE HOUSE 
 OF COMMONS SHOULD BE ENFORCED TO SAVE THK 
 KINGDOM ALONE, and that the Peers should have 
 no part in the honour of the preservation of it, 
 having so great an interest in the good success 
 of those endeavours in respect of their great 
 estates and high degrees of nobility. 
 
 "My lords, consider what the present neces- 
 sities and dangers of the Commonwealth re- 
 quire, what the Commons have reason to ex- 
 pect, to what endeavours and counsels the con- 
 current desires of all the people do invite you ; 
 so that, applying yourselves to the preservation 
 of the king and kingdom, I may be bold to as- 
 sure you, in the name of all the commons of 
 England, that you shall be bravely seconded !" 
 
 The first effect of this speech, which was en- 
 thusiastically hailed by the Commons,* was in 
 the passing of the bill for taking away the bish- 
 ops' vote, with three dissentient voices only. 
 The king refused his assent to it, but subse- 
 quently yielded, and in this gave great offence 
 to his party. It may be supposed, however, 
 that some subsequent explanation was sat:r fac- 
 tory to them, since the following notabie dis- 
 closure has escaped from Lord Clarendon's 
 pen : " I have some cause to believe that the 
 argument, which was unanswerable, for the re- 
 jecting that bill, was applied for the confirming 
 it ; an opinion that the violence and force used 
 in procuring it rendered it absolutely invalid 
 and void, made the confirmation of it less con- 
 sidered, as not being of strength to make that 
 act good which was in itself null ; and I doubt 
 this logic had an influence upon acts of no less 
 moment than these." There is scarcely an act 
 in the life of Charles I. that does not bear the 
 stain of some such perfidy. Where were the 
 leaders of the English people now to lean, if not 
 upon their own strength, the wisdom of their 
 
 * " The foregoing- speech of Mr. Pymme's was so agree- 
 able to the Commons, that the same day they ordered ' that 
 Mr. Speaker, in the name of the House, shall give thanks 
 unto Mr. Pymme for his so well performing the service he 
 was employed in, by the commands of this House, at this 
 conference. And it was further ordered, that Mr. Pymrae 
 be desired to put the speech he made at this conference into 
 writing, and to deliver it into the House, to the end that it 
 may be printed.' This was done accordingly." Parlia- 
 mentary History. The copy in the text is taken from a 
 large paper copy of this authorized version now in posses- 
 sion, " printud for Johu Bothwell," 1641.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 219 
 
 long and hard experience, and the confidence 
 of the people who trusted them 1 
 
 The second great effect of Pym's speech wa 
 exhibited by the king himself. He wrote to the 
 speaker and complained of it, more especially 
 of that passage which stated several of the Irish 
 rebels to have passed the ports " by his majes- 
 ty's immediate warrant." The Commons vin- 
 dicated the speech, and the king replied ; it was 
 again defended more strongly still ; and the 
 many conferences and declarations that passed 
 served to widen the breach between the Par- 
 liament and the king.* The tributes which it 
 had meanwhile brought pouring in, of faith and 
 affection to the Parliament, most materially 
 strengthened the cause. t 
 
 The king now directed all his resources, 
 whether of force or stratagem, to the acquisi- 
 tion of the two great magazines of the king- 
 dom, Hull and the Tower. His various at- 
 tempts, and their thorough defeat, are told in 
 all the histories. The result was, that Charles 
 proclaimed Hotham a traitor by sound of trum- 
 pet, and sent two angry messages to the House 
 demanding reparation for the repulse he had 
 met with. "If," he added, "we are brought 
 into a condition so much worse than any of 
 our subjects, that whilst you all enjoy your 
 privileges, and may not have your possessions 
 disturbed or your titles questioned, we only 
 may be spoiled, thrown out of our towns, and 
 our goods taken from us, 'tis time to examine 
 
 * Charles's pertinacity about this speech was curious. 
 Whenever, for some weeks after, the Commons sent him 
 any message, his remark would be, " I must tell you, that 
 I rather expected a vindication for the imputation laid on 
 me in Mr. Pym's speech ;" and as the war approached more 
 nearly, his reference to it grew less respectful : " Concern- 
 ing Pym's speech you will have found by what the Lord 
 Compton and Mr. Baynton brought from us in answer to 
 that message they brought to us, that, as yet, we rest no- 
 thing satisfied in that particular." 
 
 t Even the London women, wives of tradesmen, became 
 infected with the popular enthusiasm, and sent in a long 
 petition of affection to the House of Commons, and prayers 
 that they would redress all grievances. Butler is supposed 
 to have alluded to this in his couplet : 
 
 " The oyster-women lock'd their fish up, 
 And trudged away to cry ' no bishop ;' " 
 and the satire was allowable enough. The Journals of the 
 House stale, however, that " this petition was presented by 
 Mrs. Anne Stager, a gentlewoman and brewer's wife, and 
 many others with her of like rank and quality ; and that, 
 after some time spent in reading of it, the House sent them 
 an answer by Mr. Pym, which was performed in this man- 
 ner. Mr. Pym came to the Commons' door, and called for 
 the women, and spake unto them in these words : ' Good 
 women, your petition, with the reasons, hath been read in 
 the House, and is thankfully accepted of, and is come in a 
 seasonable time. You shall, God willing, receive from us 
 all the satisfaction which we can possibly give to your just 
 and lawful desires. We intreat you, therefore, to repair 
 to your houses, and turn your petition which you have, de- 
 livered here into prayers at home for us ; for we have been, 
 are, and shall be, to our utmost power, ready to relieve you, 
 your husbands, and children, and to perform the trust com- 
 mitted unto us towards God, our king, and country, as be- 
 Cometh faithful Christians and loyal subjects.' " This speech 
 is no bad evidence of Pym's popular and easy address. No- 
 thing could have been more happily turned. I should add, 
 also, from the journals of the same period, another kind of 
 testimony to the present influence of Pym. " Information 
 being given to the Lords that Edw. Sundeford, a taylor, of 
 London, had said ' that the Earl of Essex was a traitor ; 
 that all the Parliament wore traitors ; that the Earl of War- 
 wick was a traitor, and he wished his heart in his boots ; 
 and that he cursed the Parliament, and wished Mr. Pym 
 (calling him King Pym) and Sir John Hotham both hanged ;' 
 the said Edw. Sandeford was brought to the bar, and asked 
 what he had to alledge in his defence ; but not being able 
 to disprove the charge, he and the witnesses against him 
 were ordered to withdraw, and a sharp sentence of punish- 
 ment was decreed against him." 
 
 how we have lost those privileges, and to try 
 all possible ways, by the help of God, the law 
 of the land, and the affection of all our good 
 subjects, to recover them, and to vindicate our- 
 self from those injuries ; and if we shall mis- 
 carry herein, we shall be the first prince in this 
 kingdom that hath done so having no other 
 end but to defend the true Protestant profes- 
 sion, the law of the land, and the liberty of the 
 subject. And God so deal with us as we con- 
 tinue in those resolutions." And in a subse- 
 quent more elaborate paper, drawn forth by an 
 order of the Commons justifying Hotham, and 
 " suppressing" the forces the king had raised 
 against Hull, Charles writes, or, rather, " Mr. 
 Hyde" writes for him, " We are not unwilling 
 to join issue with them in this way, and to let 
 all the world know how necessary, just, and 
 lawful all our proceedings have been in this 
 point ; and that the defence of these proceed- 
 ings is the defence of the law of the land, of 
 the liberty and property of the subject ; and 
 that by the same rule of justice which is now 
 offered to us, all the private interest and title 
 of all our good subjects to all their lands and 
 goods are confounded and destroyed. Mr. Pym 
 himself tells you, in his speech against the Earl 
 of Strafford (published by the order of the House 
 of Commons), 'The law is the safeguard, the 
 custody of all private interests ; your honours, 
 your lives, your liberties, and estates are all in 
 the keeping of the law : without this, every 
 man hath a like right to any thing.' And we 
 would fain be answered, What title any subject 
 of our kingdom hath to his house or land, that 
 we have not to our town of Hull 1 Or what 
 right hath he to his money, plate, or jewels, 
 that we have not to our magazine or munition 
 there 1 If we had ever such a title, we would 
 know when we lost it. . . We conclude with 
 Mr. Pym's own words : ' If the prerogative of 
 the king overwhelm the liberty of the people, 
 it will be turned to tyranny ; if liberty under- 
 mine the prerogative, it will grow into an- 
 archy ;' and so we say into confusion." 
 
 Now mark the answer of the Commons, in 
 perhaps the boldest and most remarkable state 
 document of the time. The hand of Pym may 
 be traced in every line of it. The commence- 
 ment of the extract which follows is indeed 
 almost literally copied from one of his finest 
 speeches. " If," say the Commons of England 
 to their king, " if we have done more than ever 
 our ancestors have done, we have suffered more 
 than ever they have suffered ; and yet, in point of 
 modesty and duty, we shall not yield to the 
 best of former times ; and we shall put this in 
 issue. Whether the highest and most unwar- 
 rantable proceedings of any of his majesty's 
 predecessors do not fall short of, and much be- 
 low, what hath been done to us this Parlia- 
 ment ; and, on the other side, whether, if we 
 should make the highest precedents of other 
 Parliaments our patterns, there would be cause 
 to complain of ' want of modesty and duty in 
 us,' when we have not so much as suffered 
 such things to enter into our thoughts which 
 all the world knows they have put in action 1 
 Another charge which is laid very high upon 
 us (and which were indeed a very great crime 
 if we were found guilty thereof) is, ' that, by 
 avowing this act of Sir J. Hotham, we do, in
 
 220 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 consequence, confound and destroy the title 
 and interest of all his majesty's good subjects 
 to their lands and goods ; and that, upon this 
 grbund, that his majesty hath the same title to 
 his own town of Hull which any of his subjects 
 have to their houses or lands ; and the same to 
 his magazine or munition there, that any man 
 hath to his money, plate, or jewels ; and there- 
 fore that they ought not to have been disposed 
 of without or against his consent, no more than 
 the house, land, money, plate, or jewels of any 
 subject ought to be without or against his will.' 
 Here that is laid down for a principle which would 
 indeed pull up the very foundation of the liberty, 
 property, and interest of every subject in particu- 
 lar, and of all the subjects in general, if we should 
 admit it for a truth ' that his majesty hath the 
 same right and title to his towns and magazine 
 (bought with the public moneys, as we conceive 
 that at Hull to have been) that every particular 
 man hath to his house, lands, and goods ;' for 
 his majesty's towns are no more his own than his 
 kingdom is his own ; and his kingdom is no more 
 his own than his people are his own ; and if the 
 king had a property in all his towns, what would 
 become of the subjects' property in their houses 
 therein 1 and if he had a property in his king- 
 dom, what would become of the subjects' prop- 
 erty in their lands throughout the kingdom 1 or 
 of their liberties, if his majesty had the same 
 right in their persons that every subject hath in 
 their lands or goods 1 and what.would become 
 of all the subjects' interest in the town and forts 
 of the kingdom, and in the kingdom itself, if 
 his majesty might sell, or give them away, or 
 dispose of them at his pleasure, as a particular 
 man may do with his lands and with his goods 1 
 This erroneous maxim being infused into prin- 
 ces, that their kingdoms are their own, and that 
 they may do with them what they will (as if their 
 kingdoms were for them, and not they for their 
 kingdoms'), is the root of all the subjects' 1 misery, 
 and of all the invading of their just rights and 
 liberties; whereas, indeed, they are only in- 
 trusted with their kingdoms, and with their 
 towns, and with their people, and with the pub- 
 lic treasure of the Commonwealth, and what- 
 soever is bought therewith. By the known law 
 of this kingdom, the very jewels of the crown 
 are not the king's proper goods, but are only 
 intrusted to him for the use and ornament 
 thereof; as the towns, forts, treasure, maga- 
 zine, offices, and people of the kingdom, and 
 the whole kingdom itself, are intrusted unto 
 him for the good, and safety, and best advan- 
 tage thereof ; and as this trust is for the use of 
 the kingdom, so ought it to be managed by the 
 advice of the houses of Parliament, whom the 
 kingdom hath trusted for that purpose, it being 
 their duty to see it be discharged according to 
 the condition and true intent thereof, and as 
 much as in them lies, by all possible means to 
 prevent the contrary ; which if it hath been 
 their chief care and only aim in the disposing 
 of the town and magazine of Hull in such man- 
 ner as they have done, they hope it will appear 
 clearly to all the world that they have dischar- 
 ged their own trust, and not invaded that of his 
 majesty's, much less his property, which, in this 
 ease, they could not do." 
 
 A second answer was returned by the king, 
 more weak and more elaborate than the first, 
 
 and a vigorous remonstrance, recommended in 
 an earnest and forcible speech by Pym,* was 
 forwarded to Charles. It opened with these 
 words : " We, your majesty's most humble and 
 loyal subjects, the lords and commons of this 
 present Parliament assembled, do hereby call 
 God, this kingdom, and the whole world to 
 witness, that we have, ever since our first 
 meeting in this present Parliament, with fidel- 
 ity to your majesty and the state, with much 
 patience and constancy in respect of the great 
 affronts and interruptions, the pernicious plots 
 and attempts wherewith we have been encoun- 
 tered, distracted, and opposed, employed our 
 counsels and endeavours to maintain God's 
 true religion, the honour and rights of your 
 crown, the peace and safety of your royal per- 
 son and your kingdoms, and the just liberties 
 of your people ; that so we might ease them 
 of their great grievances, and prevent the fears 
 and dangers, yea, the imminent ruin and de- 
 struction, which have been contrived and fos- 
 tered, not only in your court, but even very 
 near your own person ; and however our liber- 
 ties have been invaded, many of our lives en- 
 dangered, and such attempts made upon us as 
 might have subverted the very being of Parlia- 
 ment, yet have we so kept ourselves within 
 the bounds of modesty and duty, that we have 
 given no just occasion of your majesty's ab- 
 sence at this time." In reference to a com- 
 plaint in the king's last paper, the following 
 remark is made : " And whereas his majesty 
 saith 'he could wish that his own immediate 
 actions, which he avows on his own honour, 
 might not be so roughly censured under that 
 common style of evil counsellors,' we could 
 also heartily wish we had not cause to make 
 that style so common ; hut, how often and un- 
 dutifully soever these wicked counsellors fix 
 their dishonour upon the king, by making his 
 majesty the author of those evil actions which 
 are the effects of their own evil counsels, we, 
 his majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects, can 
 use no other style, according to that maxim in 
 the law, ' The king can do no wrong ;' but if 
 any ill be committed in matter of state, the 
 council must answer for it ; if in matters of 
 justice, the judges." 
 
 Every step in this paper war now brought 
 the combatants nearer and nearer to a more 
 real and a more fatal field. The great ques- 
 tion on which all else depended was at last in 
 vehement agitation the command of the mili- 
 tia of the kingdom. The very condition of the 
 parties between whom the discussion arose 
 precluded from the first the possibility of agree- 
 ment. Some idea of the labour and research 
 which Pytn, notwithstanding, devoted to this 
 memorable question, will be gathered from a 
 curious document in the appendix at the end 
 of this article, t and which is highly character- 
 istic of the man. 
 
 The disposal of the militia, however, cannot 
 be argued, in the present case, on abstract 
 grounds, though Pym has made out the most 
 forcible case, even in that view, which has 
 been yet attempted. The Parliament had been 
 undoubtedly forced into a position to make the 
 
 * See this speech in Cobbett's Parl. Hist., vol. ii., p. 11C2. 
 t Appendix C.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 221 
 
 demand they did,* when, as a ground of trust, 
 they required that the king should place the 
 army and navy under the command of officers 
 possessing the confidence of both Houses. On 
 refusal of this, he was asked whether, for a 
 time, the militia might 'not be granted! " No, 
 by God !" his sacred majesty, according to 
 Rushworth,t swore ; " not for an hour ! You 
 have asked that of me in this was never asked 
 Of any king, and with which I will not trust 
 my wife and children." 
 
 On a subsequent motion of Pym, the Com- 
 mons unanimously passed their ordinance for 
 disposing the militia, and sent it up to the Lords. 
 Meanwhile they again memorialized his majes- 
 ty, who, in return, vapoured upon them thus : 
 " We will propose no more particulars to you, 
 having no luck to please or to be understood by 
 you. Take your own time for what concerns 
 our particular, but be sure you have an early, 
 speedy care of the public ; that is, of the only 
 rule that preserves the public, the law of the 
 land : preserve the dignity and reverence due 
 to that. It was well said in a speech made by 
 a private person (it was Mr. Pym's speech 
 against the Earl of Strafford, and formerly quo- 
 ted by us), The law is that which puts a dif- 
 ference betwixt good and evil, betwixt just and 
 unjust. If you take away the law, all things 
 will fall into a confusion ; every man will be- 
 come a law unto himself, which, in the depra- 
 ved condition of human nature, must needs 
 produce many great enormities. Lust will be- 
 come a law, and envy will become a law ; cov- 
 etousness and ambition will become laws ; and 
 what dictates, what decisions such laws will 
 produce, may easily be discerned.' So said 
 that gentleman, and much more, very well, in 
 defence of the law, and against arbitrary pow- 
 er. It is worth looking over and considering ; 
 and if the most zealous defence of the true 
 Protestant profession, and the most resolved 
 protection of the law be the most necessary 
 duty of a prince, we cannot believe this miser- 
 able distance and misunderstanding can be long 
 continued between us ; we have often and ear- 
 nestly declared them to be the chiefest desires 
 of our soul, and the end and rule of all our ac- 
 tions." And again, in one of his subsequent 
 productions, he returned to the same strain. 
 " We remembered them long ago, and we can- 
 not do it too often, of that excellent speech of 
 Mr. Pym's : The law is that which puts a dif- 
 ference," &c. And Mr. Hallam can say of 
 these tedious and evasive documents that they 
 excel the manly, earnest, and straightforward 
 productions of the popular leaders ! 
 
 The next motion of the Commons " shook 
 Charles's throne and title to the centre."! Af- 
 ter obtaining, by a masterly stroke of vigorous 
 policy, possession of the fleet, they passed the 
 three following resolutions: "1. That it ap- 
 pears that the king, seduced by wicked coun- 
 sel, intends to make war against the Parlia- 
 
 * Even Lord Clarendon admits, on the passing of the mi- 
 litia ordinance, that " when this bill had been, with much 
 ado, accepted and first read, there were few men who im- 
 agined it would ever receive farther countenance, but now 
 there were few who did not believe it to be a very necessa- 
 ry provision for the peace and safety of the kingdom ; so 
 great an impression had the late proceedings made upon 
 them." t Vol. iv., p. 533. 
 
 t History from Mackintosh, vol. v., p. 304. 
 
 ment, who, in all their consultations and ac- 
 tions, have proposed no other end unto them- 
 selves but the care of his kingdoms, and the 
 performance of all duty and loyalty to his per- 
 son. 2. That whensoever the king maketh war 
 upon the Parliament, it is a breach of the trust 
 reposed in him by his people, contrary to his 
 oath, and tending to the dissolution of his gov- 
 ernment. 3. That whosoever shall serve or 
 assist him in such wars, are traitors by the 
 fundamental laws of this kingdom, and have 
 been so adjudged by two acts of Parliament, 
 and ought to suffer as traitors." 
 
 The king now, in his turn, denounced the 
 militia ordinance as illegal, and began to issue 
 his commissions of array. On the 12th of July 
 the Commons voted the raising of an army, to 
 be commanded in chief by the Earl of Essex. 
 Some days after, a proclamation from the king 
 declared Essex a traitor. 
 
 At this point a temporary pause maybe made, 
 for the purpose of introducing a speech by Pym,* 
 of a style very different from any that has yet 
 been given, but conceived and expressed in 
 exactly that sort of exquisite gravity of hu- 
 mour which such a subject was likely to call 
 forth from such a speaker. On the publication 
 of the militia ordinance, Sir Edward Bering 
 whose fantastic vanity, before adverted to, had 
 already separated him from the popular party 
 and banished him from the House bethought 
 himself of a new project for notoriety, and, 
 " albeit a justice of the peace," presented him- 
 self, with some equally dignified friends, as can- 
 didates to serve on the grand jury of the coun- 
 ty of Kent (which he had before represented in 
 the Commons), which being allowed', he whee- 
 dled all the jurors into his purpose ; or, in the 
 words of the charge preferred against him, 
 having drawn up the heads of a strong petition 
 against the militia ordinance and the Housd of 
 Commons, he "did tender the said heads to 
 the said grand jury, and did then and there 
 wickedly and unlawfully persuade, labour, and 
 solicit the rest of the grand jury to agree to 
 the same, and have them drawn into a petition 
 to the Parliament, to be presented by the said 
 grand jury to the judge of the said assizes and 
 the rest of the bench there, to be by them as- 
 sented to and approved of ; and did then and 
 there wickedly conjure the said grand jury to 
 secrecy, and not to discover any thing touch- 
 ing the said petition, till it should be by them 
 agreed upon and presented as aforesaid, false- 
 ly persuading them that they were thereunto 
 bound by their oath." Some of the jury con- 
 sented, some refused ; but Sir Edward persist- 
 ed, ultimately managed to present his petition 
 to the judges, and was proposing to do a vast 
 deal more, when " Mr. Pym" interfered, lodged 
 an information against him, and supported it, 
 before the House of Lords, in the following ad- 
 mirable speech of grave satirical humour : 
 
 " Your lordships see by this that hath been 
 read unto you, that nondum recentis Ilii fatum 
 stetit ; that, notwithstanding the many strange 
 and variable attempts against the Parliament, 
 and their wonderful and miraculous preserva- 
 tions, yet mischief is so fruitful and generative 
 as to produce a new brood of serpents, which 
 
 * This speech appears anonymously in tin common Par- 
 liamentary histories, but in the Journals it is given to Pym.
 
 822 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 are continually hissing, maligning, and prac- 
 tising against the pious and noble endeavours 
 of both Houses, and against the peace, pros- 
 perity, and happiness of this afflicted kingdom. 
 If the evil and seducing spirit which doth ani- 
 mate those designs were asked from whence 
 he comes, doubtless his answer would be, ' from 
 compassing the earth,' having removed his 
 scene into many several parts, and found so 
 many friends and patrons of his audacious 
 achievements, amongst whom this gentleman, 
 Sir Edward Bering, is one : a man of mark 
 and eminency ; of wit, learning, and zeal, at 
 least in show and appearance ; and yet all these 
 miserably shipwreck'd upon the shelves and 
 sands of the Kentish shore ! The thing itself 
 appears to your lordships to be a manifest 
 breach of the rules of law, justice, and reli- 
 gion ; and yet, under the cloak of all three, a 
 fast must be proclaimed to take away Naboth 
 and his vineyard ! The yeomanry of Kent, 
 heretofore in great esteem, is now become vile 
 and contemptible ; an extraordinary grand jury 
 must be prepared of knights, gentlemen, and 
 justices of the peace, for some extraordinary 
 service what it is your lordships have heard. 
 They must descend from their places on the 
 bench, and from themselves too, not to serve 
 their country (for that were no disparagement), 
 but to serve their own unworthy, ambitious, 
 and seditious ends. 
 
 " This gentleman, a ringleader, late a mem- 
 ber of the House of Commons, the grand jury 
 of the whole kingdom (and there so highly es- 
 teeming of his wisdom), is contented now to 
 descend so low as to become one of the com- 
 mon jury of the county. Such is the mean- 
 ness and pusillanimity of high thoughts, as, for 
 compassing of their own ends, to stoop to any 
 condition, how low soever it may be ! 
 
 " Having set the cards, however, he plays 
 the game very foully. He leads his fellows 
 out of the way, and makes them, like ill hunt- 
 ers, instead of following the chase, at the quest 
 of one ill mouth to fall upon a flock of sheep ! 
 Their duty was to have inquired diligently of 
 the matters given them in charge. Surely this 
 was out of the charge, because the judge had 
 told them it was out of his commission. And 
 yet they leave other matters which they were 
 charged with as accidents and trifles, and in- 
 sist upon this, which they had nothing to do 
 with, as the principal business. 
 
 " He obtrudes on them also, be it observed, 
 divers monstrous and seditious heads, and by 
 sinister suggestions, labours, and solicitations, 
 which ought not to be used to a jury, and by a 
 kind of violence ofTered them, seeks to enforce 
 them to a consent, contrary to their own rea- 
 son, judgment, and consciences, when they re- 
 fused, opposed, and protested against it. Fail- 
 ing of this, 
 
 " Fleeter e si nequeam super os, acker onto, mo- 
 vebo ! instead of inquiring upon the statute of 
 witchcraft and conjuration, he useth his con- 
 jurations and enchantments upon them to con- 
 jure them to secrecy, falsely persuading them 
 that they will be bound unto it by their oath. 
 When all this would not serve, he then applies 
 himself to the bench ; and by the enchantments 
 and conjurations used there, prevails so far as 
 to have it there voted and assented to by such 
 
 as were present, and, to give the more strength 
 and countenance to it, wants not the aid and 
 concurrence of some appearing reverend di- 
 vines, and of civilians also ; and sticks not to 
 affirm that he can have 40,000 persons to at- 
 tend the petition ! proclaims a meeting at Black- 
 heath, a place fatal and ominous for actions of 
 this nature ! and all this under colour of a pe- 
 tition being, in truth, a challenge, an adjura- 
 tion, and a scandal upon the Parliament, and 
 purporting nothing else but a desperate design 
 to put not only Kent, but, for aught is known, 
 all Christendom into combustion, carrying sails 
 full swollen with spite, arrogancy, and sedition. 
 
 " The particular instances I forbear to trouble 
 your lordships with, because you will find some 
 of them upon perusal of the petition. Many 
 arguments might be used in aggravation of 
 them, from the eminency of the power of the 
 person, and the arrogancy of his mind ; from 
 the acrimony of his spirit, and from the topping 
 place of Kent, which former ages have found 
 obnoxious to these infelicities ;* which this 
 gentleman, so well read in story, should have 
 been mindful of in these troublesome times ! 
 But all these, and other circumstances, I leave 
 to your lordships' noble and judicious consider- 
 ation, desiring, amongst other motives, that 
 your lordships will be pleased to reflect upon 
 the acts of your own justice in a case of like 
 nature, which, being first begun here, near at 
 hand, might have spread the flame and con- 
 tagion over all England, had not the great wis- 
 dom and justice of both Houses in due time 
 prevented it. 
 
 " I shall add no more at this time but what 
 I have read of a people in Africa, who sent a 
 challenge to the wind, whereupon, at the meet- 
 ing, the wind blew down mountains upon them 
 and overwhelmed them. I hope those bold 
 and insolent adventurers, who have presumed 
 to send a challenge or defiance to the great 
 Houses, shall find a like stroke of their wonted 
 power and justice, and that they shall meet 
 with such a wind as will blow down their high 
 thoughts upon themselves, return their votes 
 into their own bosoms, and their mischievous 
 designs upon their own heads ! 
 
 " All which I am warranted, in the name of 
 the House of Commons, and of all the com- 
 mons of England, to desire of your lordships ; 
 and that you will be pleased to make this gen- 
 tleman, the principal author of this foul act, a 
 spectacle and pattern of exemplary justice to 
 present and future times." 
 
 On the 22d of August, Charles I. erected his 
 standard at Nottingham. The day was stormy 
 and tempestuous, says Clarendon, and the king 
 appeared more melancholic than he used to be. 
 " The standard itself was blown down, the 
 same night it had been set up, by a very strong 
 and unruly wind, and could not be fixed again 
 in a day or two, till the tempest was allayed." 
 Essex was in the field almost equally soon ; 
 and the green-coat regiments of Hampden, the 
 London red-coats of Hollis, the purple of Lord 
 Brook, the blue of Lord Say, were soon seen 
 gathering over the English fields. Sir William 
 Waller, the firm friend of the Parliament, wrote 
 
 * Pvm here makes allusion to what has been commem- 
 orated so nobly by our great poet Wordsworth, in his son- 
 net beginning " Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent !"
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 223 
 
 to his " noble friend" Sir Ralph Hopton, entire- 
 ly devoted to the king, in these words : " My 
 affections to you are so unchangeable, that 
 hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to 
 your person ; but I must be true to the cause 
 wherein I serve. The old limitation of usque 
 ad aras holds still. . . . The great God, who is 
 the searcher of my heart, knows with what re- 
 luctance I go upon this service, and with what 
 perfect hatred I look upon a war without an 
 enemy. But I look upon it as opus Domini, and 
 that is enough to silence all passion in me. 
 The God of peace in his good time send us 
 peace, and in the mean time fit us to receive 
 it ! We are both on the stage, and we must 
 act the parts that are assigned us in this tra- 
 gedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and 
 without personal animosities." It stands on 
 record, to the immortal honour of the English 
 character, that in this noble and affecting spir- 
 it, with very rare exceptions, our great civil 
 war was to the last fought out on both sides. 
 
 None of its details, however, belong to this 
 memoir. To Pym was intrusted the momen- 
 tous duty of watching over and conducting the 
 affairs of Parliament and the executive while 
 the majority of his friends were absent in the 
 war. The executive power had been vested 
 in what was styled a " Committee of Safety," 
 comprising five peers, Essex, Northumberland, 
 Pembroke, Holland, and Say, and ten common- 
 ers, Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Marten, Fiennes, 
 Pierrepoint, Glyn, Sir William Waller, Sir Phil- 
 ip Stapleton, and Sir John Meyrick. But all its 
 most arduous duties fell upon Pym, and to their 
 performance, with his old and unwearied en- 
 ergy, he entirely devoted what was left of his 
 great and useful life. 
 
 With a view to that solemnity which was 
 thought befitting the capital of a country 
 through which civil war now raged, one of the 
 first acts of the Houses was the issue of an or- 
 der that, during the present period of calamity, 
 " when humiliation and prayer better became 
 the state of public affairs than mirth and lev- 
 ity," all public stage-plays should cease and be 
 forborne. There is something grand in this, 
 with which the liveliest and most liberal ima- 
 gination among us now need not fail to sym- 
 pathize. The players, however, were not dis- 
 comfited. Scorning plain prose, they sent up 
 a rhymed petition to the Houses, and then fol- 
 lowed the army of the king. From the petition 
 itself a line or two may serve : 
 
 * * * " We vow 
 
 Not to act any thing you disallow. 
 We will not dare at your strange votes to jeer, 
 Or personate King Pym with his state fleer."* 
 
 "King" Pym was a favourite and scarcely ob- 
 jectionable term of Royalist reproach against 
 one who reigned with absolute power over the 
 
 * King Pym has been personated at last, however, or, if 
 not personated, at least delineated, by Mr. Browning, with 
 infinite force, expression, and beauty, in the recent tragedy 
 of " Strafford." But the offences against Pym at this time 
 were not all so harmless as that alluded to in the text. I 
 copy from the Old Parl. Hist., vol. ii., p. 266: "Two were 
 tried. this day at the Lords' bar; one of them, Mr. Winde- 
 bank, for saying ' that Mr. Pym had taken a bribe of 30, 
 sitting in the chair in Easter tirrm ; that he had as many 
 sugarloaves given for bribes as he had sold for 6 or 700. 
 That before he was a Parliament man he was worth little, 
 but he had now cozened the king of as much money as he 
 had bought a good estate, and given 10,000 of the king's 
 money to the marriage of his daughter." 
 
 affections of the great mass of the English 
 people. 
 
 As the players went out, pamphlets and news- 
 papers, a new, and many may think a some- 
 what less exceptionable series of " abstract and 
 brief chronicles of the time," came in. Now 
 " News from Hull," " Truths from York," and 
 "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," coursed 
 the country side ; now the " Scots' Dove" as- 
 saulted and tore to pieces the " Parliament 
 Kite" or the " Secret Owl ;" and the "Weekly 
 Discoverer" suddenly found himself " The Dis- 
 coverer stript naked." The principal regular 
 newspapers, however, were, on the side of the 
 Parliament, the Mercurius Britannicus, written 
 by the famous Marchamont Needham, or " foul- 
 mouthed Ned," as his polite opponents styled 
 him ; and, on the king's side, the Mercurius 
 Aulicus, published under the classic auspices 
 of Oxford, and written, as Needham used to 
 say, " by Birkenhead the scribe (afterward Sir 
 John), Secretary Nicholas the informer, George 
 Digby the contriver," and that very reverend 
 divine, Doctor Peter Heylin. The wars of 
 these rival journalists were carried on without 
 much scruple on either side, though the court 
 undoubtedly carried off the palm for indecency ; 
 and they served to disseminate, in every pos- 
 sible shape, the fiercest hate and malice. I 
 have examined them all (I believe) with the ut- 
 most care, and shall be able to illustrate the 
 remaining part of my subject with an occasionl 
 extract. 
 
 The exertions which Pym found requisite to 
 maintain the interest and honour of Parliament 
 at this time are almost incredible ; and as the 
 checkered fortunes of the Parliamentarian army 
 darkened into positive losses, the difficulties 
 of his position were only less extraordinary 
 than the resources they called forth from him. 
 " From three of the clock in the morning to the 
 evening, and from evening to midnight," says 
 an unimpeachable witness, Dr. Marshall,* who 
 stood by his side, he laboured in the service of 
 the Commonwealth. Now on the field of ac- 
 tion, consulting with Hampden ; now in the 
 tent of Essex, strengthening his failing pur- 
 pose ; again at Westminster ; and then among 
 the London citizens it was Pym, and Pym 
 alone, who held at this awful crisis the frame 
 of the executive together. 
 
 And, what in this was probably the most ex- 
 traordinary, his influence sustained itself in de- 
 fiance of all the violent changes and affections 
 of the shortsighted multitude. In the opening 
 months of the war, for instance, a negotiation 
 with the king was opened, and became highly 
 unpopular. Pym acknowledged its propriety, 
 however, and, with some of the committee, 
 presented himself at the Guildhall, and thus 
 addressed the authorities :f 
 
 "My lord-mayor and gentlemen, I and my 
 colleagues are here to represent to you (to you 
 of this famous city of London, who will make 
 it much more famous by these noble affections, 
 which you have showed still to the public good, 
 and by yielding so much aid and so much en- 
 couragement as you have done to the Par- 
 liament in maintaining it!) the state of both. 
 
 * Funeral Sermon, p. 36. 
 
 t This speech is not in Rushworth. I coj'yfroman edi* 
 tion printed " for Peter Cole."
 
 224 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Houses, and the reasons and motives upon 
 which they did desire peace ; motives, indeed, 
 that have wrought with us from the beginning 
 of this war to this time ; for we should never 
 have stepped one step towards war if we might 
 have had, or hoped for, such a peace as might 
 have secured religion and liberty, and the pub- 
 lic good of the kingdom. But truly ill counsel 
 did exclude us from such hope. 
 
 " We now conceive that the king, having 
 seen the courage of his subjects, having seen 
 the danger of his own person, and so much 
 blood shed about him, will be more tractable to 
 good conditions of peace than he would have 
 been before, and that is the reason why we do 
 think fit to try him once more, after this battle 
 that hath been lately fought, before it come to 
 another battle. 
 
 " It is true that this may seem a resolution 
 contrary to that which was opened to you with- 
 in these few days ; but you will conceive that 
 all great councils are subject to alter their res- 
 olutions, according as matters alter, and as the 
 apprehensions of matters alter ; for if things 
 appear more clear and hopeful to them at one 
 time than another, it is no dishonour for them 
 to vary according to their appearance, judg- 
 ments, and best reasons, so long as they do it 
 with affections to the best purpose, which you 
 may rest assured the Parliament hath done. 
 And though we desire peace very much, yet a 
 peace to betray religion or to betray our liber- 
 ties we shall always esteem worse than war ; 
 therefore we shall put it to a very quick issue, 
 if the king receive the petition, to make such 
 propositions as you may see. 
 
 " First, whether you shall be secured in your 
 religion ; in your religion with a hope of ref- 
 ormation ; such a reformation as may maintain 
 the power of religion, and the purity of religion, 
 as well as the name of religion ; for we shall 
 not be contented with the name, nor without 
 a reformation that shall maintain the power of 
 it. Next, we shall pursue the maintenance of 
 our liberties liberties that may not only be in 
 laws and statutes, but liberties that may be in 
 practice and in execution and to take such 
 course that you may have the effects of them 
 in truth ; for to have printed liberties, and not 
 to have liberties in truth and reality, is but to 
 mock the kingdom ; and I hope we shall take 
 care for that in the second place. Thirdly, we 
 shall take care to maintain the dignity and the 
 honour of Parliament, for that is what will be 
 a lasting security to you in your liberty and re- 
 ligion. We shall take care, in the fourth place, 
 to answer the affections of the city of London, 
 that we will not consent to anything that shall 
 be prejudicial to them. We will preserve them 
 in the highest degree of honour that ever this 
 city of London was in ; and truly it is now in 
 the highest degree of honour that ever it was, 
 for you have carried yourselves in such a re- 
 gard to the public as never any of your prede- 
 cessors did before, and therefore we shall, in 
 a peace, be as careful of you as of ourselves ; 
 and you may be assured of this,, that if we have 
 not this peace, our lives, our pains, our estates, 
 they shall all join with you in maintaining that 
 with the sword which we can not get in an 
 humble way by petition. And this, I again say, 
 we shall bring to a quick issue. 
 
 " Therefore I shall only move you, as I am 
 commanded to do from the Parliament, that 
 you will not think there is any fainting on our 
 parts ; that we are more cold or less affection- 
 ate to any of these good ends than heretofore 
 we have been, but that we would compass 
 them with more secure advantage ; for if you 
 can get these by peace, you will have great 
 advantages by it : you will hinder foreign in- 
 vasions from beyond the seas ; you will quick- 
 ly be able to master the rebels in Ireland ; you 
 will quickly be able to suppress the Papists that 
 begin to rise in England : then you shall have 
 a perpetual security that they shall never be 
 able to hurt you more. Therefore, if we can 
 have such a peace without further hazard and 
 blood-shedding, we shall praise God, and es- 
 teem it as a great blessing ; but if not, pray lay 
 not down the same spirits, for we have the 
 same hearts, and multitudes of spirits, and the 
 kingdom inclinable to us. W'here the king has 
 been, many, to save their estates and lives, 
 have showed themselves but men, for it was 
 not to be thought that single counties should 
 maintain themselves against an army ; but they 
 have hearts as they had theretofore, and no 
 doubt but they will join with us, with more 
 alacrity, when they see we have desired peace 
 by all the ways we could, and cannot have it. 
 
 " We shall, by this means, satisfy our own 
 consciences ; we shall satisfy many members 
 of Parliament that desired it might be put on 
 this way ; we shall satisfy many of the king- 
 dom, too, that have held themselves indiffer- 
 ent ; but when they see there is no hope of 
 peace in such a way without blood, certainly 
 they will stand to us for religion and liberty, 
 which must be destroyed if we cannot secure 
 them without war. Therefore I shall com- 
 mend to you that you would not let fall any 
 part of your contributions, for it is that which 
 must maintain the army, nor entertain ill ap- 
 prehensions of the Parliament, but go on so as 
 you have done. The end of all, I hope, will be 
 such that God may have all the glory, and you 
 all the comfort !" 
 
 Two little months after, however, when \var, 
 again less successfully resumed, was not so 
 popular, he presented himself in the same place, 
 and requested from the same authorities a far- 
 ther assessment of supply upon the citizens. 
 
 " My lord-mayor and gentlemen," he said, 
 " we come not to tell your lordship and these 
 worthy citizens only our wants and dangers, 
 but we come to speak the thanks of the Par- 
 liament to you for that which you have already 
 done ; for that you have showed so much af- 
 fection to the public, and that it hath produced 
 so good effects throughout the whole kingdom. 
 Now you have indeed an army raised, most 
 out of this city, able to defend (with God's 
 blessing) the religion and liberty of the king- 
 dom, if it may be upheld ! And we come not 
 only to give you thanks for that which you 
 have done, but to stir you up to join with us 
 in giving thanks to God that hath given such a 
 blessing to our endeavours, that when, by let- 
 ters sent into all parts almost, our enemies did 
 presume beforehand to triumph in the ruin and 
 plundering of this city, God prevented it, and 
 hath kept you safe ; kept your houses, your 
 walls, your suburbs, safe from that that was
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 225 
 
 intended against you ! And now, truly, as we 
 have sought for this blessing by fasting and by 
 prayer, so it is fit that we should testify our 
 thanksgiving for it ; and this is a necessary 
 part of our errand which we are sent about. 
 And that we may be serviceable to God's prov- 
 idence still, as he hath stirred up your hearts 
 to do so much already, so that he would stir 
 you up still to continue to do that which is fit 
 to be done for the future, and that you will do 
 it in such a way as may be most pleasing to 
 yourselves. 
 
 " We come not hither, that, by any consent 
 here in public, you should bind yourselves in 
 particular, but we come to let you know the 
 dangers of the kingdom, with the sense the 
 Parliament hath of it, and of the city especially, 
 that you may not lose that which hath been 
 already done, but that you may go on still 
 chearfully to do the full work. And we come 
 to tell you' that the Parliament doth intend the 
 burden shall not lie upon you that are well af- 
 fected and come in voluntarily, but that they 
 have thought upon a way, and have begun it 
 already, and I hope, within two or three days 
 at the most, it shall be published to you, that 
 all that are indisposed shall be forced to do that 
 which, out of readiness and chearfulness to the 
 public good, they will not do of themselves. 
 Neither limit we it to the city and suburbs, but 
 we are in a course to draw in all the counties 
 of the kingdom, that as the burden is universal, 
 so the aid may be universal. These are the 
 thoughts of the Parliament. 
 
 " If it please God to bless your forces that 
 are already raised and continued, we hope you 
 shall not only see peace again in the kingdom, 
 and security for your religion, but see that the 
 burden shall lie upon those who have been the 
 engines and actors of the mischiefs and troubles 
 that are come upon us. They shall then rec- 
 ompense the charges you have been at already ! 
 
 " This is the intention of the Parliament. 
 Only for the present do somewhat ! Every 
 man, as God shall enable him, do somewhat ! 
 Thus we may meet the present necessities, and 
 prevent the dangers that require a present sub- 
 sistence and present supply of the army ; with- 
 out which, what is it will follow but the dan- 
 ger of the city, the ruin of the countries about, 
 the stopping up of the river, which is almost 
 taken from you, and the loss of the seacoasts ! 
 You cannot have better hearts than you have ; 
 God hath enabled many of you with purses. I 
 hope it will be so readily disposed that we shall 
 have a full joy in the recompense of it and of 
 the retribution. This let us all pray to God to 
 bring to pass." 
 
 A supply followed this speech, which is an 
 exquisite specimen of those " wonderful popu- 
 lar arts" which Clarendon ascribes to Pym. It 
 would, indeed, be difficult to imagine any thing 
 better adapted to the occasion so forcible, yet 
 worded with such nice subtlety, as the passa- 
 ges which have just been quoted. Meanwhile 
 the king, heated with his imagined successes, 
 addressed a paper to the city of London in the 
 highest style of a conqueror. Their recent ac- 
 tions he represented herein as outrages of so 
 tremendous a nature that they called down the 
 immediate vengeance of God, unless the city 
 would purge itself of guilt by delivering up to 
 Fr 
 
 him their pretended lord-mayor and other lead- 
 ers, whom he had particularly marked as trai- 
 tors in his proclamations;* he graciously of- 
 fered pardon to the rest, and added that he 
 would give them the honour of his presence 
 when they should put themselves in a proper 
 posture to receive him ; with a warning that 
 whosoever should henceforward contribute, by 
 the payment of tonnage and poundage, or any 
 other tax, on what pretence or authority soev- 
 er, to the maintenance of the army under the 
 Earl of Essex, must expect the severest pun- 
 ishment the law could inflict. He concluded 
 with an express command that this his mani- 
 festo should be read out publicly in the city of 
 London. This command, at least, was obeyed. 
 The Parliament was communicated with, and 
 a committee of both Houses were present when 
 it was read. 
 
 " Methinks I see him," says Mr. Godwin, in 
 reference to this period, " methinks I see 
 Charles, in his principal entrance into London, 
 surrounded by all his minions and myrmidons, 
 his horse's hoofs wet with his country's blood." 
 
 But this was not to be while Pym lived. The 
 king's manifesto was read, and a deep silence 
 followed, when "Mr. Pym, that worthy mem- 
 ber of the House of Commons and patriot of 
 his country," as Peter Cole styles him in his 
 edition of the speech, rose and commented, 
 elaborately, but with singular force and clear- 
 ness, on the various allegations of Charles. 
 He acknowledged the generous and magnani- 
 mous conduct of the city, and their steady ad- 
 herence to the principles of liberty ; he avowed 
 that all those actions with which they had been 
 reproached by the king had been done in obe- 
 dience to the commands of Parliament ; he 
 vindicated those commands, and showed that 
 the king's answer was a libel, stuffed with 
 scandalous, injurious aspersions on the two re- 
 spectable bodies of Parliament and city ; as to 
 the king's assertion that he was driven by tu- 
 mults out of the city, Pym remembered the 
 company of the king going, the day after his 
 attempt to seize the members, into the city 
 without a guard, and his residing divers days 
 at Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Windsor, 
 without any attempt which could give him ap- 
 prehension of fear. On Charles's accusation 
 against the two Houses of destroying the prop- 
 erty of the subject by taking away the twen- 
 tieth part by an arbitrary power, Pym observed 
 that there was little reason for this objection 
 on his majesty's behalf, when it was well known 
 that from the subjects who were within the 
 power of his army he did take the full yearly 
 value of their lands, and in some cases more ; 
 that not only particular houses, but whole 
 towns, had been plundered by command and 
 design ; and that by proclamations men were 
 declared to forfeit all their estates because they 
 would not obey arbitrary commands. To the 
 king's declaration that he expected to be kept 
 from tumults and affronts, Pym observed, that 
 his majesty's expressions, in his answer, tend- 
 ing to the making a division in the city, and to 
 the raising a party which might make disturb- 
 ances in the orderly government now estab- 
 lished in it, would be more prejudicial to his 
 
 * These were Yen, Foulke, and Mainwaring.
 
 226 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 quiet aoode in London than any thing which 
 had ever been acted by the houses of Parlia- 
 ment, or the present governors of the city. In 
 conclusion, as to the threatening part of the 
 matter, Pym added, with a stern indifference, 
 that the danger arising from these ill councils 
 which influenced the king could not be kept 
 off but by the power of arms ; and that the 
 Lords and Commons were so far from being 
 frighted by his menaces, that they had just de- 
 clared farther contribution towards the main- 
 tenance of the army ; that they hoped for the 
 continuance of the good affections of the city, 
 and indeed desired that they would add at once 
 some farther contributions towards the support 
 of the forces which were now in existence for 
 all their safeties. 
 
 ,The effect of this speech is strikingly de- 
 scribed by the reporter. " At the end of every 
 period the applause was so great that he was fain 
 to rest till silence was again made ; and at last 
 (the company ready to be dissolved), after some 
 pause and consultation with the committee of 
 Lords and Commons then present, silence being 
 made, he closed all with the words following : 
 'Worthy citizens, you have understood the 
 sense of both houses of Parliament concerning 
 my lord-mayor here, and those worthy mem- 
 bers of your city that are demanded ; you have 
 heard the Parliament declare that they will pro- 
 tect them in that which they have done by di- 
 rection of both Houses ; and they expect that 
 you should express it yourselves likewise, that 
 if any violence be offered to them, you will se- 
 cure and defend them with your uttermost 
 force ; and you shall always find that this pro- 
 tection of the Parliament shall not only extend 
 to these, but to all others that have done any 
 thing by their command ;' which words were 
 no sooner uttered, but the citizens, with one 
 joint harmony of minds and voices, gave such 
 an acclamation as would have drowned all the 
 former, if they had been then breathing ; which, 
 after a long continuance, resolved itself into 
 this more articulate and distinct voice, 'We 
 will live and die with them ! We will live and 
 die with them !' and the like. So that," con- 
 cludes Mr. Peter Coles, " in the managing of 
 this day's work, God was so pleased to mani- 
 fest himself, that the well affected went away, 
 not strengthened only, but rejoicing ; and the 
 malignants (as they have been called), some 
 convinced, others silenced, many ashamed, it 
 fully appearing how little power they had to 
 answer their desires of doing mischief. In- 
 stead of dividing the city, the city were more 
 exceedingly united ; instead of a dissipation, 
 thousands were unexpectedly brought, as it 
 were, into an unthought-of association, to live 
 and die in the defence of those zealous and 
 honourable assertors of their peace and liber- 
 ties, all which we may sum up in that triumph 
 of the man of God, ' In the thing wherein they 
 dealt proudly, God was above them.'" 
 
 Proud indeed was Pym's bearing through 
 these great extremities of the cause, which, 
 however, now threatened to deepen daily. Sir 
 William Waller suffered a serious check from 
 his old friend Sir Ralph Hopton, and was sub- 
 sequently completely routed by Wilmot. Exe- 
 ter and Bristol at about the same time surren- 
 dered to the king. The London people began 
 
 to murmur, and the danger was imminent in- 
 deed. 
 
 Again Pym saved the Commonwealth. The 
 formidable conspiracy against the Parliament, 
 and the life of Pym, its principal member, known 
 by the name of Waller's Plot, was now discov- 
 ered by the unwearied and unwinking vigilance 
 of the patriot, and the feeling produced by its 
 disclosure reanimated the sympathies of the 
 people. The plot had been got up by Edmnnd 
 Waller the poet, in concert with two associates 
 named Challoner and Tomkins. The object was 
 to seize the persons of Pym and the leading 
 members of the Commons, and deliver up the 
 city to the king. The proceedings were nearly 
 ripe, when, says Clarendon, " a servant of Mr. 
 Tomkins, who had often cursorily overheard 
 his master and Mr. Waller discourse of the ar- 
 gument, placed himself behind a hanging at a 
 time they were together, and there, whilst 
 either of them discoursed the language and 
 opinion of the company they kept, overheard 
 enough to make him believe his information 
 and discovery would make him welcome to 
 those whom he thought concerned, and so 
 went to Mr. Pym, and acquainted him with all 
 he had heard. The time when Mr. Pym was 
 made acquainted with it is not known, but the 
 circumstances of the publishing it were such as 
 filled all men with apprehensions. It was on 
 Wednesday the thirty-first of May, their solemn 
 fast-day, when, being all at their sermon in St. 
 Margaret's Church at Westminster, according 
 to their custom, a letter or message is brought 
 privately to Mr. Pym, who thereupon, with 
 some of the most active members, rise from 
 their seats, and, after a little whispering to- 
 gether, remove out of the church. This could 
 not but exceedingly affect those who stayed be, 
 hind. Immediately they sent guards to all the 
 prisons, as Lambeth House, Ely House, and 
 such places where their malignants were in. 
 custody, with directions ' to search the prison- 
 ers,' and some other places which they thought 
 fit should be suspected. After the sermons 
 were ended the Houses met, and were only 
 told ' that letters were intercepted going to the 
 king and the court at Oxford that expressed 
 some notable conspiracy in hand to deliver up 
 the Parliament and the city into the hands of 
 the Cavaliers, and that the time for the execu- 
 tion of it drew very near.' Hereupon a com- 
 mittee was appointed ' to examine all persons 
 they thought fit, and to apprehend some nomi- 
 nated at that time ;' and the same night the 
 committee apprehended Mr. Waller and Mr. 
 Tomkins, and the next day such others as they 
 thought fit."* 
 
 The utmost available use was made of this 
 
 * Hist., vol. iv., p. 66, 67. In No. 112 of King's Pam- 
 phlets, part xiv., p. 300, is a preposterous account of this 
 plot, stating that it was merely a "commission issued by 
 Charles against traitors," and that certain members of the 
 House of Commons, assuming themselves to be the traitors, 
 having found in whose hands the commission was, " on 
 Wednesday, May the 31st, when the rest of their body were 
 at church to observe the fast, some fifty of them went into 
 the House of Commons, and delegated the whole power of 
 the House to Master Pym, Master Glyn, Mr. St. John, Sir 
 Harry Vane the younger, and Sir Gilbert Gerard ; who, 
 raising the trained bands, seized upon such persons as they 
 thought were likely to cross their purposes, and filled the 
 town with all the noise and clamour before remembered," 
 &c., &c. The only effect of this is to implicate the king 
 more deeply in the treachery.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 227 
 
 discovery by Pym, and the most striking was 
 the introduction of a vow against this or any 
 similar design, which, though nominally op- 
 tional, served all the purposes of a test. Tom- 
 kins and Challoner were tried and executed, 
 and died acknowledging the justice of their 
 punishment. Waller had disclosed so much, 
 that on the payment of a fine of 10,000 and a 
 year's imprisonment, he was suffered to carry 
 his ignominy to France. The whole course 
 and management of the plot, and its discovery, 
 were enlarged on in the city with Pym's usual 
 adroitness and popular power, and a copy of 
 the elaborate speech he delivered at the Guild- 
 hall, "corrected by his own hand," will be 
 found in the Appendix.* 
 
 Still the king's successes continued, and still 
 the inadequacy and slackness of Essex became 
 more and more apparent. A proclamation ap- 
 peared from Charles, promising free pardon to 
 all, with some few exceptions,! on the laying 
 down of arms. The exceptions included Pym 
 and Hampden as principal traitors. Some of 
 the moderate PresbyteriansJ in the House 
 showed signs of wincing. The answer of 
 Pym was one of the boldest and most decisive 
 measures yet adopted. He carried up an im- 
 peachment against the queen,$ which Hollis has 
 commemorated in his memoirs as the first 
 great victory gained by the Independents over 
 the Presbyterians. It is clear to me that the 
 great patriot resorted to this as a stroke of im- 
 mediate policy alone, and without any view to 
 serious measures against Henrietta. (I am 
 equally certain that, had Pym survived, poor 
 feeble Laud would not have died upon the scaf- 
 fold.) Any hope of compromise with the House 
 of Commons, as a body, after the queen's im- 
 peachment, was utterly hopeless. 
 
 The abuses poured out from Oxford upon 
 Pym were commensurate with these services 
 to the " good old cause." " Mercurius Aulicus" 
 
 * Appendix A. 
 
 t See Parl. Hist., vol. xii., p. 311, 312. 
 
 t By the aid of this very party, Pym was foiled more than 
 once in a moderate and generous policy as to the conduct 
 of the war. From one of the, newspapers of a lew months 
 before, for instance, I take the following: " It was adver- 
 tized from London, that upon Wednesday, May 17, at the 
 recommendation of the Earle of Essex, a motion was made 
 in the House of Commons that the Countesse of Rivers 
 might have her coach-horses restored, which had before 
 beene taken from her by some of the horse-takers for the 
 two houses of Parliament j which, though it was a very 
 easie courtesie, considering that she had beene rifled by 
 them (as themselves confessed) to the value of 40, 000, and 
 that it was proposed by Master Pym (no meane man, I hope), 
 would bv no meanes passe." 
 
 <) "A message being sent up from the lower House to 
 desire the Lords to sit a while, for they had a matter of 
 great importance to communicate to them ; soon after came 
 up Mr. Pym to acquaint their lordships that the Commons 
 had discharged their consciences by the following vote, 
 which they had passed : ' That the queen had levied war 
 against the Parliament and kingdom ;'and having discharged 
 their consciences, they think it lit to discharge their duty 
 too ; and said, he was commanded by the House of Com- 
 mons assembled in Parliament, in the name of themselves, 
 and of all the commons of England, to accuse and impeach, 
 and he did accordingly now accuse and impeach, Henrietta 
 Maria, queen of England, of high treason. And they de- 
 sired their lordships to issue forth proclamations to summon 
 her to appear before them, and receive a trial and due sen- 
 tence for the same. It is observable (hat these votes were 
 carried in the House of Commons nem. con. The queen 
 had just before met the king at Edge Hill with a re-enforce- 
 ment of 3000 foot, 30 troops of horse and dragoons, and six 
 pieces of cannon, besides great store of other warlike am- 
 munition, which made the House of Commons so exaspera- 
 ted against her." Parl. Hist., vol. xii., p. 265. 
 
 of March the 8th, 1643, observes : " It was car- 
 ried from London by letters of the 2d of March, 
 that in the House of Commons, the day before, 
 there had beene a great adoe about his majes- 
 tie's proclamation prohibiting the association 
 projected and agreed upon by them* betweene 
 the counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and 
 Hampshire, which was inveighed against with 
 all possible acrimony by Mr. Pym, who spake 
 against it no lesse than seven times, and that 
 with so much violence and passion that hee 
 was faine to take breath." Some passages fol- 
 low that may not with propriety be quoted, con- 
 cerning the " hums and plaudites" bestowed 
 upon " this Mr. Pym." The same respectable 
 journal of a few weeks later, after describing 
 the shift to which the Commons had been put 
 for want of money, and a warrant circulated by 
 Lady Waller to arrest the deserters from her 
 husband's army, proceeds thus : " This war- 
 rant a gentleman of goode credit saw this 
 weeke, which you must suppose was drawn up 
 at the honourable she-committee, which is ever 
 full of feares and sadnesse lest that goode fat man. 
 Master John Pym, should lose his vote by going to 
 Master Hampden upon some earnest businesse." 
 " He tells us," rejoins Needham to this in the 
 " Mercurius Britannicus," " he tells us of our 
 she-committee again. Aulicus, let our ladies 
 alone ; they love not to be handled like yours 
 at Oxford." Pym's change of residence has 
 the honour of mention in a succeeding "Auli- 
 cus" : " It is signified in the same letters that 
 the committee for disposing of delinquent 
 estates have appointed the Earle of Derby's 
 house in Westminster to bee a dwelling for 
 Pym, with especiall directions that hee bee not 
 too modest or reserved in the use thereof; and 
 that others of the houses and householde staffe 
 about the Tower are like to bee disposed by the 
 same authoritie (to whose share, think you, will 
 Whitehall fall in this distribution?)." On the 
 other hand, an opposition journal states a very 
 handsome tribute to the patriot, as paid by the 
 court at Oxford : " It is credibly affirmed that 
 the Cavaliers do usually drink this wicked and 
 blasphemous health, viz., ' 1. A health to his 
 majestie, by whom we live, move, and have 
 our being. 2. A health to the confusion of 
 Pym, his God, and his gospel.'" One extract 
 more from the Oxford court journal : " From 
 London we are certified that one Master Carle- 
 ton hath so frequently feasted the worthy mem- 
 bers, one whereof was Master Pym (who, the 
 world knowes, is a man of quick dispatch), that 
 they have eaten the said Carleton into a prettie 
 broken fortune, and rendered him fit to bee a 
 new common councilman; but, to make him 
 whole againe, the worthies have preferred him 
 to a captaine's place in his excellence's army, 
 where, if hee thrive apace, hee may rise to bee 
 as high as Mainwaring or Ven, at least as great 
 as the Earle of Essex." 
 
 Nor was this the only kind of attack now 
 made upon the patriot. Clarendon boldly affirms 
 " that his power of doing shrewd turns was ex- 
 traordinary, and no less in doing good offices 
 for particular persons ; and that he did preserve 
 many from censure who were under the se- 
 vere displeasure of the Houses, and looked 
 
 * By Hampdeu and Pym. See Life of Hampden, post, 
 P. 252.
 
 228 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 upon as eminent delinquents ; and the quality 
 of many of them made it believed that he had 
 sold that protection for valuable considera- 
 tions." This latter deduction may be supposed 
 to rest on the same authority to which Lord 
 Clarendon has confessed himself indebted for 
 other slanders against the patriot that of " an 
 obscure person or two."* The incident, with- 
 out the deduction, would have better deserved 
 mention, as an evidence of Pym's generosity 
 and kindness ; but the wonder would have been, 
 if such a forward and eminent person as Pym, 
 in times of such exasperation, had escaped 
 these fiercest slanders. They passed unnoticed 
 by himself; but the Commons themselves in- 
 terfered at last. When Sir John Hotham, for 
 instance, brought to the bar of the House for 
 desertion to the king, was asked "whether he 
 knew of any members of that House, or of the 
 Lords, that had conveyed any treasure beyond 
 seas, he answered, he knew of none, if he were 
 to die that instant. And being again asked 
 whether he knew that Mr. Pym had conveyed 
 any treasure in like manner, with some astonish- 
 ment he asked if that question was asked him in- 
 earnest ; protested he knew nothing of it, and 
 that he had never reported any such thing." 
 I will quote the sequel of this, as it is given in 
 the Parliamentary History, t "In the course 
 of these examinations, the reader may observe 
 that Mr. Pym is mentioned as charged with 
 some indirect practices. To do justice to that 
 great man, on the same day, Sir Edward Bain- 
 ton, a member of the House of Commons, was 
 sent for, charged with saying that the Lord Say 
 and Mr. Pym had betrayed the west and north ; 
 and being demanded whether he had spoke 
 those words charged upon him, answered, he 
 did not speak them as they were there laid 
 down. Being then demanded what he had spo- 
 ken to that purpose, answered that he had learn- 
 ed, since he had sat here, that he ought not to 
 speak any thing here that reflected to the preju- 
 dice of another member, and therefore desired 
 to be excused, unless he were enjoined and 
 commanded. Whereupon he was enjoined to 
 speak the whole truth ; and then he said that 
 he did not say that Mr. Pym had betrayed the 
 west, but that he had betrayed his county, which 
 he did by being a means of detaining him in 
 prison who only was able to maintain and pre- 
 serve that county till the said county was quite 
 lost, notwithstanding many orders 'made for his 
 bringing up. As for betraying the north, he 
 knew nothing more of that than he had heard in 
 the House, which sounded bad enough, viz., 
 that the offer of the Lord Savile and Sir William 
 Savile to deliver up to the Parliament's forces 
 York and that whole county, if they might not 
 be prejudiced in their persons and estates, was 
 prevented ; adding, that he had heard it said 
 and affirmed, with solemn and deep oaths and 
 protestations, that the Lord Cottington had 
 treated with his majesty for the pardon of the 
 Lord Say and Mr. Pym, and that, if they had 
 had the preferments they expected, we had 
 not been brought to the condition we now are 
 in. Being demanded from whom he heard 
 this, answered, it was from the Lord Grandi- 
 son's brother, Lieutenant-colonel Brett, and 
 
 * Se the text restored in Clarendon, vol. i., p. 493. 
 t Purl. Uit., vol xii., p 379. 
 
 Sergeant-major juques, all officers in the king's 
 army, and prisoners with him at Gloucester. 
 Mr. Pym, in answer to the charge, protested 
 solemnly that he never had intercourse with 
 the Lord Cottington, by one means or other, 
 since the difference between the king and Par- 
 liament : that he never received but two mes- 
 sages from him since this Parliament began; 
 the one was by Sir Arthur Ingram, long before 
 he died ; the other by Sir Benjamin Rudyard. 
 Upon the whole, the Commons voted the charge 
 laid upon Mr. Pym by Sir Edward Bainton to 
 be false and scandalous, and that the said Sir 
 Edward should be forthwith sent to the Tower, 
 there to remain a prisoner during the pleasure 
 of the House." 
 
 Increasing in malignity, however, Pym's 
 slanderers now fixed upon his religious faith 
 and personal relation to the king, and levelled 
 such monstrous charges against him in regard 
 to both, that he thought it necessary at last to 
 issue a " declaration and vindication," which 
 will be found at length in the Appendix.* In 
 this, with great modesty of language and feel- 
 ing, he compares his fate with that of "the 
 orator and patriot of his country, Cicero." " I 
 will not," he says, " be so arrogant as to par- 
 allel myself to that worthy ; yet my case, if we 
 may compare lesser things with great, hath to 
 his a very near resemblance ; the reason I am 
 so much maligned and reproached by ill-affect- 
 ed persons being, because I have been forward 
 in advancing the affairs of the kingdom, and 
 have been taken notice of for that forward- 
 ness ; they, out of their malice, converting that 
 to a vice which, without boast be it spoken, I 
 esteem my greatest virtue." He concluded with 
 affirming his continued attachment to a form 
 of limited and constitutional monarchy in Eng- 
 land. Such a monarchy,t had his life and that 
 of Hampden been spared, would, in all prob- 
 ability, have resulted from the war; and the 
 settlement of its conditions, and of the true 
 extent of the power and authority of the peo- 
 ple, would doubtless have put to shame the 
 feeble and uncertain settlement of 1688. But 
 this hope was already vain. 
 
 News of Hampden's death had reached Lon- 
 don, and Pym felt himself sinking under a grad- 
 ual and wearing illness. His labours had over- 
 tasked his strength. Still he appeared in the 
 House of Commons, however, and had still 
 one of the greatest achievements of his life to 
 perform.! 
 
 * Appendix E. 
 
 t Shortly before the death of Pym, the elector-palatine 
 sent letters to the Parliament, declaring his satisfaction 
 with the covenant, and bemoaning the conduct of his broth- 
 er, Prince Rupert, in fighting against the legislative body. 
 This very constitutional allegiance obtained, eventually, 
 for the elector, a pension from the Parliament, more than 
 equivalent to that which he had been accustomed to receive 
 from the king. The elector himself arrived in England just 
 after Pym's decease, la it possible that something more 
 than this grant, frustrated by the patriot's death, had been 
 secretly in agitation, and that Pym had originally contem- 
 plated the introduction of this electoral prince as the found- 
 er of a new royal dynasty, if it became necessary to depose 
 Charles I. ? 
 
 t In a recent compilation, entitled " Memoirs of Selden," 
 Pym receives casual mention, at this period, as having sin- 
 gular influence. " Mr. Baillie," says the compiler, " gives 
 this instance of the popularity of Mr. Pym in 1643 : ' Ou 
 Wednesday, Mr. Pym was carried from his house to West- 
 minster on the shoulders of the chief men in the lower 
 House, all the House going in procession before him.'"
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 229 
 
 Sanguine hopes prevailed at Oxford that the 
 way to London was open at last. Waller wa 
 routed in the west, and the strong places were 
 in Charles's hands. Gainsborough was recap- 
 tured, and Hull in imminent danger. The 
 queen joined the king with a re-enforcement, 
 and London was without an army or fortifica- 
 tions for its defence. But Pym was there ! 
 The Mercurius Aulicus had heard of his illness, 
 however, and took occasion to throw out the 
 following significant hint : " We are heare very 
 glad to heare that the French ambassadour is 
 most certainly arrived, and doth now reside at 
 Sommerset House ; the king and queen doe 
 both desire that he may be the happy meanes 
 to settle peace in this kingdome, and that Pym, 
 if he be sicke, for so we are certifide by letters, 
 may live to see the king againe, and, by asking 
 God forgivenesse, may die in his bed : a mercy 
 which he does not deserve." This perfidious 
 suggestion availed nothing. Pym was not yet 
 so ill but that he retained his intellect, and, 
 with that, his power ; and now he used them 
 both, with a last and memorable effect, against 
 the king. 
 
 Essex, despairing, or willing to compromise, 
 wrote to the House of Lords,* advising accom- 
 modation. A petition was voted accordingly, 
 and was taken into consideration by the Com- 
 mons after a vehement struggle ; but ultimate- 
 ly, by the unparalleled efforts of Pym and St. 
 John, a majority of two was obtained against 
 it. All the pulpits of London were brought 
 into requisition, and the people wrought to the 
 last pitch of political and religious enthusiasm. 
 Yet the danger of the defenceless state of the 
 capital remained unprovided against, and the 
 discontent of Essex himself threatened the 
 worst of dangers. Then it was that Pym nobly 
 discharged himself of his last duty to the Com- 
 monwealth, and, oppressed with illness as he 
 was, presented himself, with St. John, at the 
 tent of Essex, and there, as Clarendon says.t 
 
 Poor Mr. Baillie little thought the use his description of the 
 patriot's funeral would be put to ! It was, alas ! the dead 
 body of Pym thus carried by his old friends to its last rest- 
 ing-place, in testimony of their affectionate respect. 
 
 * Many of the lords, originally left in the executive, were 
 now sighing once more for the court, and several unseemly 
 exhibitions had already taken place between them and the 
 more resolute members of the Commons. The following is 
 from a curious pamphlet of the time : " The committee for 
 the House of Commons, which came from Oxford, made a 
 relation to the House of his majestis's answer, which was 
 much commended and extolled by all moderate men, and 
 thought to bee both full and satisfactorie ; but that upon 
 the other side it was so farre from pleasing the engaged 
 malignant partie, that Master Martyn said expressly yt it 
 was rather to bee scorned than answered ; and finally, that 
 at a conference the same day betwixt the Houses for giving 
 some answer to his majestie's messages, in the painted 
 chamber, the Earle of Northumberland, standing by the 
 fire, asked Master Martyn (whom he found there) why hee 
 brake open certaine letters which were sent to him to Ox- 
 ford (for such a saucy trick had been put upon him), and 
 finding little reason for it in his reply, gave him a bastinado 
 with his cane, and a blow with his fist ; whereupon Martyn, 
 getting neare him, caught him by the collar of his doublet, 
 or, as some say, by his George, which occasioned divers of 
 the standers-by to draw their swords, amongst whom the 
 Earle of Pembroke is said to bee one, and Master Pym an- 
 other. And it was certified, with all, that the quarrell is 
 so much resented, that the Commons have voted it to bee a 
 breach of their privilege, and the Lords of theirs." 
 
 t " Mr. Pym," he observes, " always opposed all over- 
 tures of peace and accommodation ; and when the Earl of 
 Essex was disposed, the last summer, by those lords, to an 
 inclination towards a treaty, as is before remembered, Mr. 
 Pym's power and dexterity wholly changed him, and 
 wrought htm to that temper which he afterward swenred 
 
 by " his power and dexterity, wholly changed 
 him, and wrought him to that temper which he 
 afterward swerved not from." In other words, 
 he assured Essex of the support and confidence 
 of the House, opened his eyes to the king's 
 particular resentments and personal character, 
 and confirmed him in his duty. It has been 
 truly said, in reference to this self-possessed 
 sagacity and courage, that "men actuated by 
 either extreme of violent temper or vulgar 
 prudence would have removed from the com- 
 mand a general whom they had reason to dis- 
 trust." Pym's nobler policy held together the 
 army without a flaw, and, from that hour, the 
 tide of fortune gradually turned. 
 
 He did not live to see this, but the wise con- 
 sciousness of what he had done was consola- 
 tion sufficient for such a mind. The hand of 
 death was now upon him. Some disgraceful 
 riots broke out at this time, in consequence of 
 the wants and deprivations incident to the war ; 
 and, according to Rushworth, a great multi- 
 tude of the wives of substantial citizens, assist- 
 ed by a large body of men in women's clothes, 
 came to the House of Commons with a petition 
 for peace, and blocked up the door for two 
 hours. " Give us the traitor Pym," they cried, 
 " that we may tear him in pieces ! Give us 
 the dog Pym !" but a troop of horse dispersed 
 them. The traitor or the patriot Pym the 
 words may be probably thought synonymous 
 here was then lying on his deathbed. 
 
 The House of Commons, anxious to give 
 their great leader one proof of confidence more, 
 had conferred on him, in November, the all- 
 important office of lieutenant-general of the 
 ordnance of the kingdom ; but from this mo- 
 ment he sank rapidly. With gloating expecta- 
 tion, his death was waited for by the Royalists. 
 " From London we hear that Pym is crawling 
 to his grave as fast as he can," writes Trevor 
 to the Marquess of Ormonde, in a letter dated 
 from Oxford in December.* A yet more stri- 
 king evidence of this feeling is supplied in the 
 following extract from the Parliament Scout, 
 published some days before : " We have given 
 the enemy a great and notable defeat this week, 
 if our news hold true ; for whereas they have 
 for many weeks expected the death of Master Pym, 
 and horses have stood ready in several stables, and 
 almost eaten out their heads, for those that were 
 to go with the news to Oxford, and had promise 
 of great reward and knighthood that brought it 
 first, now he is like to recover, and to sit in 
 the House of Commons again, to facilitate busi- 
 ness there, and see an end of the miseries of 
 England ; and this will trouble the other party 
 more, by far, that he is mending, than the rout 
 that Sir William Waller gave to Sir Ralph Hop- 
 ;on on Tuesday last." 
 
 Very vain was this hope ; for on the 8th of 
 December, 1643, Pym died at Derby House. 
 An account of the last moments of his sickness 
 las been left by onet who knew him intimately 
 through life, and attended his deathbed. From 
 that we learn that he maintained the same 
 evenness of spirit which he had in the time 
 
 jot from. He was wonderfully solicitous for the Soots 
 coming to their assistance, though his indisposition of body 
 -7as so great that it might well have made another impres- 
 ion upon his mind." History, vol. iv., p. 440, 441. 
 
 * Carte's Letters, vol. i., p. 26. 
 
 t Dr. Marshall, iu his funeral sermon, 1644.
 
 230 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of his health, professing to myself that it was 
 to him a most indifferent thing to live or die : 
 if he lived, he would do what service he could ; 
 if he died, he should go to that God whom he 
 had served, and who would carry on his work 
 by some others ; and to others he said, that if 
 his life and death were put into a balance, he 
 would not willingly cast in one dram to turn 
 the balance either way. This was his temper 
 all the time of his sickness." The same in- 
 teresting memorial tells us that " such of his 
 family or friends who endeavoured to be near 
 him (lest he should faint away in his weak- 
 ness), have overheard him importunately pray 
 for the king's majesty and his posterity, for 
 the Parliament and the public cause, for him- 
 self begging nothing. And a little before his 
 end, having recovered out of a swound, seeing his 
 friends weeping around him, he cheerfully told 
 them ' he had looked death in the face, and knew, 
 and therefore feared not, the worst it could do, 
 assuring them that his heart was filled with 
 more comfort and joy which he felt from God 
 than his tongue was able to utter ;' and (whilst 
 a reverend minister was at prayer with him) 
 he quietly slept with his God." After reading 
 this calm and affecting account of the last mo- 
 ments of this immortal advocate of civil and 
 religious freedom, no one will feel disposed to 
 deny the justness of that prophecy in which 
 the good and amiable Baxter has indulged in 
 translating Pym into heaven : " Surely" (I 
 quote from the " Saint's Everlasting Rest" of 
 that good man), " surely Pym is now a mem- 
 ber of a more knowing, unerring, well-ordered, 
 right-aiming, self-denying, unanimous, honour- 
 able, triumphant senate than that from whence 
 he was taken !" 
 
 On the news of Pym's death,* say the au- 
 thors of the Parliamentary History, " the House 
 of Commons showed a respect to his memory 
 that is without precedent in the whole course 
 of these inquiries ; for we find in the journals 
 ' that a committee there named was appointed 
 to consider of the estate of Mr. Pym, deceased, 
 and to offer what they think fit to be done in 
 consideration of it to the House ; likewise to 
 take care to prepare a monument for him at 
 the charge of the Commonwealth.' It was also 
 ordered ' that the body of Mr. Pym be interred 
 in Westminster Abbey, without any charge for 
 breaking open the ground there ; and that the 
 speaker, with the whole House, do accompany 
 his body to the interment.' "t 
 
 * Welcome news, of course, at Oxford. I extract from 
 The Kingdome's Weekly Post, " with his packet of letters 
 publishing his message to the city and country." "It is 
 everywhere remarkably observed concerning the taking of 
 Alton (the particulars whereof are suffy commund to the 
 kingdome alreadie, our Post not using to relate what hath 
 beene printed before), that the very same day there was a 
 great feast at Oxford ; and great preparations made- for 
 bonejires that night, which was done accordingly. The rea- 
 son was, for that they heard that Master Pirn was dead; and 
 it was observed that many Cavaliers at Oxford drank that 
 day the confusion of the Roundheads, and particularly Sir 
 William Waller." 
 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. xii., p. 462. From the " Kingdom's 
 Weekly Intelligencer" 1 take the following : " The Parlia- 
 ment so highly honours the memorie of Master Pym, that 
 they have ordered a monument to bee erected in the Abbey 
 at Westminster, where hee is to bee interred ; and the 
 House of Commons have appointed themselves to accompa- 
 nie the corpse to the grave, so highly doe they value and 
 esteeme the merits and deservings of so goode, so excellent 
 a patriot and Commonwealth's man. They have also taken 
 
 On the 15th of December, what remained of 
 the great patriot " was buried," says Claren- 
 don,* " with wonderful pomp and magnificence, 
 in that place where the bones of our English 
 kings and princes are committed to their rest." 
 The body, followed by Charles and Alexander 
 Pym, was carried from Derby House to West- 
 minster Abbey on the shoulders of the ten 
 chief gentlemen of the House of Commons, in 
 the deepest mourning : Denzil Hollis, Sir Ar- 
 thur Hazlerig, Sir Henry Vane the younger, Oli- 
 ver Saint John, Strode, Sir Gilbert Gerard, Sir 
 John Clotworthy, Sir Nevil Poole, Sir John 
 Wray, and Mr. Knightley ; " and was accom- 
 panied" (says the authority I quote, the Per- 
 fect Diurnall' of the following week) " by both 
 houses of Lords and Commons in Parliament, 
 all in mourning, by the Assembly of Divines, 
 by many other gentlemen of quality, and with 
 two heralds of armes before the corpse bearing 
 his crest. His funeral sermon was made by 
 Mr. Marshall, who tooke his text out of the 7th 
 of Micah, part of the first and second verses, 
 in these words : ' Wo is me, for the good man 
 hath perished out of the earth.' " 
 
 A few extracts from this noble and affecting 
 sermon may fitly close this attempt to do tardy 
 justice to the life and memory of Pym.t 
 
 order, in regard Master Pym hath not onely spent his life 
 in the service of the kingdome, but lost his estate, that a 
 speciall care bee taken for a subsistence for his sons, who 
 are likewise in the service of the Parliament and kingdome ; 
 it being a thing very considerable and remarkable, that the 
 father's care was so totally taken up for the goode of the 
 publike, that hee even neglected a necessarie care to pro- 
 vide for his children." 
 
 * I may here subjoin one or two points from this writer's 
 character of Pym. The main part of it has already been 
 noticed in these pages. " No man had more to answer for 
 the miseries of the kingdom, or had his hand or head deep- 
 er in their contrivance. And yet, I believe, they grew much 
 higher, even in his life, than he designed. . . Besides the 
 exact knowledge of the forms and orders of Parliament, 
 which few men had, he had a very comely and grave way 
 of expressing himself, with great volubility of words, natu- 
 ral and proper ; and understood the temper and affections 
 of the kingdom as well as any man ; and had observed the 
 errors and mistakes in government ; and knew well how to 
 make them appear greater than they were. . . He seemed to 
 all men to have the greatest influence upon the House of 
 Commons of any man ; and, in truth, I think he was the 
 most popular man, and the most able to do hurt, that hath 
 lived in any time." 
 
 t A volume might be rilled with the various characters 
 of the patriot with which the various publications now, and 
 for many weeks after, teemed. I will only quote, as a spe- 
 cimen, an "Elegie" which appeared "in deep mourning" 
 in. the Mercurius Britannicus. 
 
 " No immature nor sullen fate 
 
 Did his immortal soule translate ; 
 
 Hee passed gravely hence, even 
 
 Kept his old pace, from earth to heaven ! 
 
 Hee had a soule did alwayes stand 
 
 Open for businesse, like his hande. 
 
 Hee took in so much, I could call 
 
 Him more than individual! ; 
 
 And so much businesse waited by, 
 
 Would scarcely give him leave to die. 
 
 Hee knew the bounds, and every thing 
 
 Betwixt the people and the king ; 
 
 Hee could the just proportions draw 
 
 Betwixt prerogative and law ; 
 
 Hee lived a patriot here so late, 
 
 Hee knew each syllable of state, 
 
 That had our charters all beene gone, 
 
 In him we had them every one. 
 
 Hee durst bee goode, and at that time 
 
 When innocence was half a crime. 
 
 Hee had seene death before hee went, 
 
 Once had it as a token sent ; 
 
 Hee surfeited on state affaires, 
 
 Di'd on a pleurisie of caires ; 
 
 Nor doth hee nowe his mourners lacke, 
 
 We have few soules but goe in blacke,
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 231 
 
 " Our Parliament is weakened," said this 
 eloquent and earnest preacher, " our armies 
 wasted, our treasure exhausted, our enemies 
 increased ; and of those few able hearts, heades, 
 and handes who abode faithfull to this great 
 cause and worke in hande, it might even stab 
 us to the very heart to thinke how many of 
 them the Lord hath even snatcht away, in the 
 middest of their worke, and our greatest neede ! 
 That excellent-spirited lord, the Lord Brooke ; 
 that rare man, Master John Hampden ; that 
 true-hearted Nathaniel, Master Arthur Good- 
 win (pardon me, I beseeche you, though I men- 
 tion them amongst these friends, who cannot 
 thinke of them without bitternesse) ' How 
 are these mighty men fallen in the middest 
 of the battell, and the weapons of warre per- 
 ished ! the beautie of our Israel is slaine in the 
 high places !' . . . And nowe we meete to la- 
 ment the fall of this choice and excellent man, 
 in whose death the Almightie testifies against 
 us, and even fills us with gall and worm- 
 woode. I knowe you come hither to mourne ; 
 so fully prepared for it, that although I am 
 but a dull oratour to move passion, I may 
 serve well enough to drawe out those teares 
 wherewith your hearts and eyes are so big 
 and full. There is no neede to call for the 
 ' mourning women, that they may come, and 
 for cunning women, that they may take up a 
 wailing, to helpe your eyes to runne downe 
 with teares, and your eyelids to gush out with 
 waters ;' the very looking downe upon this 
 beere, and the naming of the man whose corpes 
 are here placed, and a very little speech of his 
 worth, and our miserable losse, is enough to 
 make this assembly, like Rachel, not onely to lift 
 up a voice of mourning, but even to refuse to 
 bee comforted. ... I am called to speake of a 
 man so eminent and excellent, so wise and gra- 
 cious, so goode and usefull, whose workes so 
 praise him in every gate, that if I should alto- 
 gether holde my tongue, the children and babes 
 (I had almost said, the stones) would speake : 
 upon whose herse could I scatter the sweetest 
 flowers, the highest expressions of rhetorike 
 and eloquence, you would thinke I fell short of 
 his worth ; you would say, this very name, JOHN 
 PYM, expresseth more than all my words could 
 doe. Should I say of him, as they of Titus, that 
 hee was ' amor et deliciae generis humani ;' 
 should I say of his death, as once the Sicilians 
 upon the Grecians' departure, 'Totum ver periit 
 ex anno Siciliano ;' should I say hee was not 
 onely as one of David's thirtie worthies, but one 
 of the three, one of the first three, even the first 
 and chiefe of them, the Tachmonite who sate 
 in the seat ; should I say our whole lande groan- 
 eth at his death, as the earth at the fall of a 
 great mountaine, I might doe it without envie 
 in this assembly." 
 
 " I shall forbeare," Doctor Marshall contin- 
 ued, " to speake any thing of his family, educa- 
 
 And for his sake have nowe put on 
 A solemne meditation. 
 Teares are too narrow dropps for him, 
 And private sighes too strait for Pym ; 
 None can compleatcly Pym lament, 
 But something like, a Parliament ! 
 The publike sorrow of a state 
 Is but a grief e commensurate. 
 We must enacted passions have, 
 Jind laweifor weeping at hit grave." 
 
 tion, naturall endowments ; his cleare under- 
 standing, quick apprehension, singular dexteri- 
 tie in dispatch of businesse ; his other morall 
 eminences, in his justice, patience, temperance, 
 sobrietie, chastitie, liberalitie, hospitalitie ; his 
 extreame humanitie, affabilitie, curtesie, chear- 
 fulnesse of spirit in every condition ; and (as a 
 just reward and sweet just fruit of all these) 
 the high and deare esteeme and respect which 
 hee had purchased in the hearts of all men of 
 every ranke who were acquainted with him, 
 such onely excepted of whom to bee loved and 
 well reported is scarce compatible with true 
 vertue. All men who knew him either lov'd 
 or hated him in extremitie : such as were 
 goode, extreamely delighted in him, as taken 
 in a sweet captivitie with his matchlesse worth ; 
 the bad as much hated him, out of their antip- 
 athy against it His excellent, usefull 
 
 spirit was accompanied with three admirable 
 properties, wherein hee excelled all that ever I 
 knew, and most that ever I read of. First, 
 such singlenesse of heart, that no by-respect 
 could any whit sway him ; no respect of any 
 friend : hee regarded them in their due place, 
 but hee knew neither brother, kinsman, nor 
 friend, superiour nor inferiour, when they stood 
 in the way to hinder his pursuit of the publike 
 goode 'magis arnica respublica ;' and hee used 
 to say, ' Such a one is my entire friend, to 
 whom I am much obliged ; but I must not pay 
 my private debts out of the publike stock.' 
 Yea, no self-respect, no private ends of his 
 owne or family, were in any degree regarded, 
 but himselfe and his were wholly swallowed up 
 in the care of the publike safetie ; insomuch 
 that when friends have often put him in mind 
 of his family and posteritie, and prest him, that 
 although hee regarded not himselfe, yet hee 
 ought to provide that it might bee well with his 
 family (a thing which they thought hee might 
 easily procure), his ordinary answer was, ' If it 
 went well with the publike, his family was well 
 enough.' Secondly, such constancy and reso- 
 lution, that no feare of danger or hope of re- 
 ward could at any time so much as unsettle 
 him. How often was his life in danger ? What 
 a world of threats and menaces have beene 
 sent him from time to time 1 Yet I challenge 
 the man that ever saw him shaken by any of 
 them, or thereby diverted from, or retarded in, 
 his right way of advancing the publike goode. 
 Nor could the offers of the greatest promotions 
 (which England could afford) in any way bee a 
 block in his way : in that hee was as another 
 Moses (th 1 only man whom God went about to 
 bribe), who desired that hee and his might nev- 
 er swim, if the cause of God and his people did 
 ever sinke ; his spirit was not so low as to let 
 the whole world prevaile with him so farre as 
 to hinder his worke, much lesse to bee his wa- 
 ges. Thirdly, such unweariablenesse, that from 
 three of the clock in the morning to the even- 
 ing, and from evening to midnight, this was 
 his constant employment (except onely the 
 time of his drawing nigh to God), to bee some 
 way or other helpfull towards the publike goode, 
 burning out his candle to give light to others. 
 Who knowes not all this to bee true who knew 
 this man's conversation 1 Not onely since the 
 time of this Parliament, but for many yeares 
 together, hath hee beene a great pillar to up-
 
 232 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 hold our sinking frame ; a master workman, 
 labouring to repaire our ruinous House ; and un- 
 der the weight of this worke hath the Lord per- 
 mitted this rare workman to bee overthrown." 
 
 Allusion was now made to one of the Roy- 
 alist fabrications* which had assailed the great 
 statesman's memory, and which is worth ex- 
 tracting, since it remains treasured up in the 
 pages of Clarendon : " It may bee some of you 
 expect I should confute the calumnies and re- 
 proaches which that generation of men who 
 envyed his life doe alreadie begin to spread 
 and set up in libells concerning his death, as 
 that hee died raving, crying out against that 
 cause wherein hee had beene so great an in- 
 strument ; charging him to dye of that loathe- 
 some disease which that accursed Balsack, in 
 his booke of slanders against Mr. Calvin, 
 charged him to dye of. But I forbeare to spend 
 time needlessly, to wipe off those reproaches 
 which I knowe none of you believe. And this 
 will satisfy the world against such slanders, 
 that no lesse than eight doctors of physike of 
 unsuspected integritie, and some of them stran- 
 gers to him (if not of different religion from 
 him), purposely requested to bee present at 
 the opening of his body ; and well neare a thou- 
 sand people, first and last, who came, many of 
 them out of curiositie, and were freely permit- 
 ted to see his corpse, can and doe abundantly 
 testify the falshoode and foulnesse of this re- 
 port." 
 
 " Verily," concluded this fearless and virtu- 
 ous divine, " when I consider how God hath 
 followed us with breach upon breach, taken 
 away all those worthy men I before mentioned, 
 and all the other things wherein the Lord hath 
 brought us low ; and nowe this great blow, to 
 follow all the rest, I am readie to call for such 
 a mourning as that of Hadadrimon in the Val- 
 ley of Megiddon. But mistake me not ! I doe 
 not meane that you should mourne for him, 
 you his deare children ; you right honourable 
 Lords and Commons, who esteeme him little 
 lesse than a father; I meane not that you 
 should mourne for him ! his worke is done, 
 his warfare is accomplished ; hee is delivered 
 from sin and sorrow, and from all the evills 
 which we may feare are coming upon our 
 selves : hee hath received at the Lord's hande 
 a plentifull reward for all his labours. I be- 
 seeche you, let not any of you have one sad 
 thought touching him. Nor would I have you 
 mourne out of any such apprehension as the 
 enemies have, and for which they rejoice, as 
 if our cause were not goode, or wee should 
 lose it for want of handes and heades to carry 
 it on : No, NO, BELOVED, THIS CAUSE MUST PROS- 
 
 IPER ; AND ALTHOUGH WEE WERE ALL DEAD, OUR 
 ARMIES OVERTHROWN, AND EVEN OUR PARLIA- 
 MENTS DISSOLVED, THIS CAUSE MUST PREVAILE." 
 
 Alexander Pym died some short time after 
 his father, but Charles survived him many 
 years ; and on the Restoration, though he had 
 
 * See Clarendon, vol. iv., p. 436. An official statement, 
 signed by the famous Sir Theodore Mayerne, subsequently 
 appeared, and will be found in Appendix F. Whitelocke 
 says, after a singular mistake as to the date of the death, 
 " it was believed that the multitude of his business and 
 cares did so break his spirit and health that it brought his 
 death." 
 
 continued in the ranks of the Parliamentarian 
 army, was created a baronet. It may be add- 
 ed, that, on an investigation by the committee 
 of the House of Commons appointed to inquire 
 into the patriot's estate, it was found neces- 
 sary not only to vote 10,000 for the settle- 
 ment of the debts it was discovered to be in- 
 volved in, but also to pension this son, Charles, 
 upon the Parliament. No precedent existed 
 for such votes as these, but the House justly 
 decided that so specially eminent a case was 
 not likely to have occurred before. In these 
 proceedings, at least, the lie was peremptorily 
 given to those slanders on the patriot's public 
 virtue, which had represented him, some years 
 before his death, privately amassing the public 
 money for his own peculiar ends. 
 
 Since the early sheets of this memoir went 
 to press, some information respecting the fam- 
 ily and estate of the Pyms has been kindly com- 
 municated to me by a gentleman who was re- 
 cently connected with their native county of 
 Somersetshire, and whose interest in the sub- 
 ject of these researches is another testimony 
 to his distinguished zeal in the public cause. 
 Mr. Leader tells me that the estate of the Pyms 
 must originally have been very extensive, but 
 that, of the old mansion house, a large porch, 
 with a pointed G&thic doorway and Gothic pin- 
 nacles, is all that remains to attest its splen- 
 dour or picturesqueness. In addition to their 
 estate of Brymore, which the family held, in 
 direct issue, from the reign of Henry III. to 
 that of Charles II., my informant acquaints me, 
 on the authority of the present owner of Bry- 
 more (the Hon. Mr. Bouverie, Lord Radnor's 
 brother), that they held also the estate of Wool- 
 lavington in the same county, which is still oc- 
 casionally called " Woollavington Pym." From 
 a patent of baronetcy now in Mr. Bouverie's 
 possession, it would appear, moreover, that 
 Charles Pym's dignity was first conferred upon 
 him in 1658 by Richard Cromwell, immediate- 
 ly upon the death of Oliver, and received sub- 
 sequent confirmation from Charles II. 
 
 The following detailed account of the family 
 of the Pyms is kindly furnished to me by Mr. 
 Leader, from Collinson's History of Somerset- 
 shire, under the title of the " Hundred of Can- 
 nington :" 
 
 " On the west side of this parish is an an- 
 cient estate called Brymore, formerly part of 
 the lordship of Radway above mentioned, and 
 held from thence by the service of the tenth 
 part of a knight's fee. Geffrey de Bramora 
 held it in the beginning of the reign of Henry 
 III. ; soon after which it was possessed by 
 Odo, son of Durand de Derleigh, who conveyed 
 the same to William Fitchet, and he to Elias 
 Pym. 
 
 "This Elias Pym was father of several chil- 
 dren, William, John, and Roger, his eldest son 
 and heir, who possessed this estate 27 Ed- 
 ward I. 
 
 " The eldest son and successor of this Roger 
 was of his own name, and bore on his seal a 
 saltire between four quatre foils He died 23 
 Edward III., and was succeeded by Elias his 
 brother ; after whose death, without children, 
 the inheritance devolved to Philip the third 
 son, who, 50 Edward III., being then parson 
 of Kentisbury t in Devonshire, conveyed all his
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 233 
 
 right herein to Philip Pym, son of Henry his 
 brother, and to the heirs of the said Philip. 
 
 " Philip Pym was dead before 1 Henry IV. 
 He had two sons by his first wife Emmota, 
 daughter and coheir of Alexander de Camelis, 
 whose names were Roger and William ; by his 
 second wife he had also a son called Elias, to 
 whom he gave several estates in Dulverton and 
 Brumpton-Regis. 
 
 " Roger Pym, the eldest son, married Joan, 
 daughter and coheir of John- Trivet, of Sidbury 
 in Devonshire, a younger branch of the family 
 of Trivet of Durborough. This Roger was pos- 
 sessed of Brymore from the 1st year of Henry 
 IV. to 13 Henry VI., in which last year he was 
 succeeded by Philip, his eldest son. The coat 
 of this Philip was.a bull's head within a wreath. 
 He was living 16 Edward IV., and had two sons, 
 Roger, his successor, and Philip. 
 
 Roger Pym married Joan, daughter and heir 
 of John Gilbert, of Woollavington, by Alianor, 
 daughter and coheir of William Doddisham. 
 He was living the last year of Edward IV., at 
 which time he made over all his estate lying at 
 Go 
 
 Brymore, Woollavington, and other places, to 
 his son Alexander ; 
 
 " Which Alexander married Thomasine, 
 daughter of William Stainings, Esq., and died 
 8 Henry VII. He was succeeded by Reginald 
 Pym, his eldest son, who, by Mary, daughter 
 of Thomas Dabridgecourt, was father of Eras- 
 mus Pym, and grandfather of the famous John 
 Pym, Esq., member for the borough of Tavis- 
 tock. 
 
 "This John, by Anna, daughter of John 
 Hooker, Esq., was father of several children ; 
 the eldest of whom, Charles, was, on the Res- 
 toration, made a baronet, and was succeeded 
 in his honour and estates by a son of his own 
 name ; who dying without issue, the estate 
 fell to his sister Mary, the wife of Sir Thomas 
 Hales, Bart., progenitor of the present Sir Phil- 
 ip Hales, Bart." 
 
 This was at the close of the last century. 
 Since that period the estate of Brymore has 
 passed, by will, from Miss Hales, the last de- 
 scendant of the Pyms, to Mr. Bouverie, its pres- 
 ent possessor.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN PYM. 
 
 A. 
 
 A THscovery of the great Plot for the utter Ruine of the 
 Citie of London and the Parliament, as it was at large 
 made knowne by John Pym, Esq., on Thursday, being the 
 8th of June, 1643, at a Common Hall, and afterward cor- 
 rected by his owne Hande for the Presse. 
 
 JOHN PYM, ESQ., HIS SPEECH. 
 
 MY LORD-MAJOR, and you, worthy citizens of this famous 
 and magnificent citie, We are sent hither to you from the 
 House of Commons, to make knowne to you the discovery 
 of a great and a mischievous designe, tending not onely to the 
 ruine and destruction of the citie and of the kingdome, but 
 which, in those ruines, would likewise have buried religion 
 and liberiie. I might call it a strange designe, though in 
 these late times designes of this kiude have beene very fre- 
 quent, because it exceedes others in divers considerable cir- 
 cumstances of it in the malice of the intention, in the sub- 
 tletie of contrivance, in extente of mischiefe, and nearnesse 
 of execution ; all which arose from the wickednesse of the 
 authors. Two others may bee added, that is, the clearnesse 
 of the discovery and proofe, and the greatnesse of the deliv- 
 erance proceeding from the great mercies of God. 
 
 1 shall, in the opening of this designe, take this course 
 for my owne memory and yours. 
 
 Observe, first, what was in their ayms. Secondly, the 
 yarietie of preparations. Thirdly, the degrees of proceed- 
 ing. Fourthly, the maturitie and readinesse for execution. 
 The Parliament, the citie, and the army seeme to bee the 
 three vitall parts of this kingdome, wherein not onely the 
 well-being, but the very life and being of it doth consist : 
 this mischiefe would have seized upon all these at once. 
 
 The citie should have beene put into such a combustion 
 as to have your swordes imbrued in one another's blood ; 
 the Parliament should have beene corrupted and betrayed 
 by their owne members ; the army destroyed, if not by force, 
 yet for want of supply and maintenance, that so they might 
 have had an open and a clearer way to the rest, which they 
 had in proposition, especially to that maine and supreame 
 end, the extirpation of religion. 
 
 I shall tell you, first, out of what principles this did rise. 
 It was from the ashes of another designe that failed that 
 mutinous petition which was contrived in this citie. The 
 actors of that petition being therein disappointed, they fell 
 presently into consultation how they might compasse their 
 former end in another way, that is, under pretence of se- 
 curing themselves by force against the ordinances of Par- 
 liament. Thus, under pretence of procuring peacs, they 
 would have made themselves masters of the citie, yea, of 
 the whole kingdome, and they would have ruined and de- 
 stroyed all those that should have interrupted them in their 
 mischievous intentions. 
 
 The first step in their preparation was to appointe a com- 
 mittee that might often meete together, and consult how 
 they might compasse this wicked end. Their next was, 
 that they might inable that committee with intelligence 
 from both the armies, as well those on the king's side (as 
 they call themselves, tho' we bee of the king's side indeed) as 
 those that are raised by the Parliament ; especially they 
 were carefull to understand the proceedings of Parliament, 
 that so by the advantage of this intelligence they might the 
 better effect that which they had in project, and finde the 
 readiest and the nearest wayes to it. After they had thus 
 provided for intelligence, how they might procure power 
 and countenance to this action by some appearing authoritie 
 of his majestie was next considered ; for which purpose, 
 they projected to get a commission from the king, whereby 
 many of themselves, and of those that were of their owne 
 consort, should bee established a councell of warre in Lon- 
 don and parts adjacent, with power to raise forces, make 
 provisions of ammunition, and of other kinde of armes, and 
 to give authoritie for the leading and conducting of those 
 forces, and to raise money for the maintenance of them, 
 and, as it is express'd in the commission, for the destruction 
 of the army under the command of Robert E. of Essex, rais- 
 ed by authoritie from the two houses of Parliament. 
 
 Having layd these grounds, I shall, in the next place, dis- 
 cover to you those that should have beene actors and agents 
 in this businesse, their several! qualifications and relations. 
 The first sort was some members of the citie, whereof 
 there were divers (you shall heare the names out of the 
 proofe) ; and the next was (in their pretence, as they gave 
 
 LUC 1111.11 auu loab uuuaisieu uui ill um; mall, lilac we yet UlS- 
 
 cover, and that was the Lord of Falkland, that kept corre- 
 spondency with them from the courte. These were to bee 
 the actors in this mischievous designe. 
 
 e acors n s mscevous esgne. 
 They began then to thinke upon some other courses of 
 very great advantage to themselves. 
 
 And for this purpose there was devis'd a protestation of 
 secresy, whereby, as they were Christians, they did binde 
 themselves to keepe one another's counsell, not to reveall 
 that which they had knowledge of, or which they were 
 trusted with. And the second was a warinesse in discover- 
 
 came 
 ee by 
 
 acquainte above two in this businesse ; that so, if it 
 to examination, it should never goe further than three by 
 the same partie that discovered it ; and then those two had 
 the like power, that any one of them might discover it to 
 two others, that so still it might bee confined within the 
 number of three ; then there was a speciall obligation (as 
 was pretended by Mr. Waller), which hee had made to those 
 that hee said were members of both houses of Parliament, 
 and consenting to this plot ; but that is yet but a pretence 
 
 suotiiiie to irrnace men s minues against tne rarliament. 
 They found out those that thought themselves most heavily 
 burdened with the taxes ; they did cherish all that had any 
 
 urbs and places adjoyning in every parish, to observe th 
 
 uius auu places aujuyiiing 111 every parmn, 10 ooserve mo 
 that were for them, whom they called right men, and others 
 that were against them, whom they called averse men ; and 
 then a third sort, whom they called neutralls and indifferent 
 men ; and they appointed severall persons that were trusted 
 with this survey and enquiry to fiude out these severall de- 
 grees and sorts in every parish. 
 
 Thus farre this designe seemes to bee but a worke of the 
 brain to consist onely in invention and subtiltie of de- 
 signe ; but the other steps and degrees which I shall nowe 
 observe to you will make it to bee a worke of the hande, to 
 bring it somewhat nearer to execution. 
 
 The first step that came into action and execution was, 
 that they procur'd this commission which they had before 
 designed, and indeavour'd to obtaine. Nowe they had ob- 
 tained a commission (as I told you before) to establish cer- 
 taine men, seventeen in number ; their names are there ex- 
 pressed, and you shall heare them read to you. They were 
 to bee a councell of warre here within the citie. These 
 seventeen men had power to name others to themselves to 
 the number of twenty-one, and both were to bee inabled to 
 appointe, not onely colonells and captaines, and other infe- 
 riour officers of an army, but to appointe and nominate a 
 generall ; they had power to raise men, to raise armes, am- 
 munition, and to doe all those other things that I told you 
 before; and to lay taxes and impositions to raise money; 
 and to execute martiall law. 
 
 When they had gone thus farre, in the next place they 
 did obtaine a warrant from the king, and this was to Mr.
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 Challoner, that hee might receive money and plate of all 
 those that, either by voluntary contribution or loan, would 
 furnish the king (a* they called it) in this necessitie of his ; 
 and thereby the king was obliged to the repayment of it. 
 This was obtained. 
 
 By this cometh in the list, and what was before part of the 
 designe Cometh nowe into act. The citizens that were 
 trusted with framing of this list brought it in, except in 
 some few parishes, under those heades of discovery that I 
 formerly told you of; that is, in every parish, who were 
 right, and who were indifferent and neutral!, and who were 
 averse; and those were brought to Mr. Waller's house ; and 
 after they had delivered that list, the citizens then declared 
 themselves that nowe they had done their part ; they had 
 discovered to them a foundation of strength, they did expect 
 from them a foundation of countenance and authoritie, 
 namely, from both houses of Parliament ; and they did de- 
 clare that they would proceed no further till they knew the 
 names of those members of both houses that should joyn 
 with them, and should undertake to countenance this busi- 
 nesse. Mr. Waller made this answer : That hee did assure 
 them that they should have members of both Houses, both 
 lords and commons, to joyn with them ; that hee himselfe 
 was but their mouth ; that hee spoke not his owne wordes, 
 but their wordes ; that hee was but their agent, and did 
 their worke ; that they should have of the ablest, of the 
 best, and of the greatest lords, and the greatest number 
 nay, that they should pick and chuse ; that they could not 
 wish for a lord whom hee doubted not but to procure them : 
 this was the vanitie of his boasting to them to drawe them 
 on, and to incourage them in this plot. This being done 
 nowe, and propounded by the citizens on their part, so Mr. 
 Waller propounded from the lords divers quaeries, questions 
 which had beene framed (as he said) by the lords and com- 
 mons, and in their name hee did present Ihem, that were 
 for the removall of difficulties, of some obstructions that 
 might hinder this worke. Those quseries were delivered 
 upon Friday was se'eunight to some of the citizens, and 
 upon the Saturday morning (that was Saturday se'unnight) 
 they were returned back againe with answers. 
 
 I shall now relate to you both the quaeries, and the an- 
 swers that were returned by those of the citie. 
 
 The first quaerie was, What number of men there were 
 armed ? The answer was, That there were a third part 
 well armed, and a third part with halberts, and another 
 third part with what they could get, with that that came 
 to hande. 
 
 The second quaerie was, In what places the magazines 
 were laide ? The answer to that was, At Alderman Fowks's 
 house, at Leaden Hall, and at Guild Hall. 
 
 The third quasrie was, Where the rendezvouz should bee ? 
 The answer was, At all the gates, at the places of the mag- 
 azines, in Cheapside, in the Exchange, and at what other 
 places the lords should thinke fit. 
 
 The fourth quaerie was, Where the place of retreat, if 
 there should bee occasion ? The answer was, That they 
 had Banstead Downs, they had Blackheath in proposition, 
 but they did referre the conclusion of the place to the lords. 
 
 The fifth was, What colours there should bee 7 To this 
 it was answered, That at every rendezvouz there should 
 bee colours. 
 
 A sixth consideration was, By what markes and tokens 
 they should bee distinguished from others, and knowe their 
 friends from their enemies ? To that it was answered, 
 That they should have white ribands or white tape. 
 
 Then, in the seventh place, it was asked, What strength 
 there was within the walls, and what strength without the 
 walls ? To that it was answered, That within the walls 
 there was, for one with them, three against them ; but with- 
 out the walls, for one against them there was five for them. 
 
 The eighth was, What was to bee done with the Tower? 
 The answer was, That they could conclude nothing in that 
 pointe. 
 
 The ninth was, Where the chiefe commanders dwelt? 
 To that they made this answer : That every parish could 
 tell what new commanders and captaines they had, and who 
 of the militia dwelt in it. 
 
 The tenth and the last was, What time this should bee 
 put in execution ? To that the answer was, That the time 
 was wholly left to the lords. 
 
 After these quaeries thus propounded and answered, Mas- 
 ter Waller told them that hee would acquainte the lords 
 with those answers that hee had received from them to their 
 quaeries, and wished them not to bee troubled, though the 
 lords did not yet declare themselves, for they could doe them 
 as goode service in the House. 
 
 Being proceeded thus farre, they came then to some prop- 
 ositions which should bee put in execution, and they were 
 these : 
 
 First, that they would take into their custodie the king's 
 children that were here. The second was, that they would 
 lay hold of all those persons that they thought should bee 
 able lo stand in their way, ur to give them any impediment, 
 or at least of some considerable number of them. It is un- 
 
 like that all were named ; bnt ome were named. Of the 
 Lord's House there was named my Lord Say and my Lord 
 Wharton, and besides, my lord-major, whom they took into 
 their consideration, as the heade of the citie. There was 
 named of the House of Commons Sir Philip Stapleton, Mas- 
 ter Hampden, Master Strode, and they did me the honour and 
 the favour to name me too. 
 
 When they had taken into consideration the surprizall of 
 these members of both Houses, they did further take into 
 their further resolution, that with my lord-major should have 
 beene seized all your committee of militia ; they would not 
 spare one of them. They intended further, that they would 
 release all prisoners that had beeue committed by the Par- 
 liament, that they would seize upon the magazines, and 
 that they would make a declaration to satisfy the people. 
 
 There are no designes, bee they never so ill, but they doe 
 put on a maske of some goode ; for betwixt that that is ab- 
 solutely and apparently ill, there it no congruitie with the 
 will of man, and therefore the worst of evills are undertaken 
 under a shadow and a shew of goodnesse. Thus declarations 
 must bee set out, to make the people beleeve that they stood 
 up for the preservation of religion ; for the preservation of 
 the king's prerogative, of the liberties of the subject, of the 
 priviledges of Parliament ; and of these one thousand were 
 to bee printed ; they were to bee set upon postes and gates 
 in the most considerable and open places : and they were 
 to bee dispersed as much as they could thorow the citie 
 against the time it should bee put in execution. This was 
 done upon Saturday last was se'eunight, in the morning. 
 
 Then, in the next place, they thought fit to give intelli- 
 gence to the courte of what proceedings they had made 
 here, and thereupon Master Hazel hee was sent to Oxford 
 that very Saturday in the afternoon from Master Waller's 
 house. There were two messages sent by him, for this 
 maine designe they would not trust in writing. The first 
 message was from Master Waller : it was, that hee should 
 tell my Lord of Falkland that hee would give him a more 
 full notice of the great businesse very speedily ; the other 
 message from Master Tomkins, and that was, that the de- 
 signe was nowe come to goode maturitie ; that they had so- 
 strong a partie in the citie, that, though it were discovered, 
 yet they would bee able to put it in execution. They prom- 
 ised also to give notice to the king of the very day, and, if 
 it were possible, of the very hour, wherein this should bee 
 put in execution ; and then they did desire, that when they 
 had seized upon the outworkes, that there might some par- 
 tie of the king's army come up within fifteen miles of the 
 citie, who, upon knowledge of their proceedings, must bee 
 admitted into the citie. These were the foure pointes upon 
 which the message did consist, which was sent from Mas- 
 ter Tomkins to my Lord of Falkland by Master Hazel. To 
 both these messages my Lord of Falkland returned an an- 
 swer by word of mouth. They kept themselves so closely 
 that they durst not venture to write ; but hee bid the mes- 
 senger lo tell Master Waller, Master Tomkins, and Master 
 Hampden (a gentleman that was sent up with a message 
 from the king, and remained here in towne to agitate this 
 businesse, and made that use of his being here in lowne) that 
 hee could not well write, but did excuse himselfe, but pray- 
 ed them that they would use all possible haste in the maine 
 businesse. 
 
 Master Waller, having plotted it and brought it on thus 
 farre, nowe began to thinke of putting it further ; and the 
 Tuesday following this Saturday, which was Tuesday was 
 se'ennight, in the evening, after hee came home to his lodg- 
 ings, Master Tomkins and hee being together, hee told Mas- 
 ter Tomkins that the very next morning, that was Wednes- 
 day, the fast day, hee should goe to my Lord of Holland and 
 acquainte him with this plot, discover so much to him as 
 hee thought fit, that hee himselfe would goe to some other 
 lords, and doe the like. This was the Tuesday night, in 
 which conference they had put on that confidence in expec- 
 tation of successe in this plot, that Master Waller broke out 
 with a great oathe, to affirme, that if they did carry this 
 throughout, then we will have any thing. This hee spake 
 to Master Tomkins with a very great deall of earnestnesse 
 and assurance. So farre they went on in hope and expec- 
 tation ; but here they were cut short. That very night 
 there were warrants issued (upon some discoveries that 
 were made of this plot) to the lord-major and to the sheriffes 
 here, which they did execute with so much diligence and 
 care of the goode of the citie, that the next morning, when 
 Master Tomkins and Master Waller should have gone about 
 their businesse, they were apprehended, and the rest of the 
 citizens, divers of them ; but some escaped. 
 
 Thus farre I have discovered to you the materials and the 
 lineaments of this michievous designe ; you shall nowe hee 
 pleased to heare the proofes and the confessions out of whicn 
 this narration doth arise, and that will make all this goode 
 to you that I have said ; and after those are read, I shall 
 then tell you what hath beene done since in the House of 
 Commons, somewhat in the House of Lords, and what else 
 is in proposition to bee offered to you from the House of 
 Commons ; but I shall desire you first that you may bee
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 fully convinced of the great goodnesse of God in discovery 
 of this plot, and the truth of these things that 1 have spo- 
 ken to you, that you will heare the evidence of the proofes, 
 and then we shall goe on to those other things which we 
 have in charge. 
 
 The proofes having beene read, Mr. Pym proceeded thus : 
 
 Gentlemen, we have held you long ; you are nowe almost 
 come to the end of your trouble. I am to deliver to .you 
 some short observations upon the whole matter, and then to 
 acquainte you with the resolutions thereupon, taken in the 
 House of Commons ; and to conclude with a few desires 
 from them to you. 
 
 The observations are these : First, I am to observe to you 
 the contrarietie betwixt the pretences with which this de- 
 signe hath beene mark'd and the truth. One of the pre- 
 tences was peace ; the truth was blood and violence. An- 
 other of the pretences was the preserving of proprietie ; the 
 truth was the introducing of tyranny and slavery, which 
 leaves no man master of any thing hee hath. 
 
 A second observation is this : The unnaturall way by 
 which they meant to compasse this wicked designe : that 
 was to destroy the Parliament by the members of Parliament, 
 and then, by the carcasse and shadow of a Parliament, to 
 destroy the kingdome. What is a Parliament but a carcasse 
 when the freedome of it is suppressed ? when those shall bee 
 taken away by violence that can or will oppose, and stand in 
 the way of their intentions ? The high courte of Parliament 
 is the most certaine and constant guardian of libertie ; but 
 if it bee deprived of its owne libertie, it is left without life 
 or power to keepe the libertie of others. If they should bring 
 a Parliament to bee subject to the king's pleasure, to bee 
 correspondent (as they call it) to his will, in the middest of 
 such evill counsells which nowe are predominant, there 
 would little or no cure bee left ; but all things that are most 
 mischievous would then seeme to bee done by law and au- 
 thoritie. 
 
 The third observation is this : With what an evill con- 
 science these men undertooke this worke. They that pre- 
 tended to take armes to defend their owne proprietie, obtain- 
 ' ed a commission to violate the proprietie of others ; they 
 would take the assertion of the lawes of the lande, but as- 
 sumed to them such a power as was most contrary to that 
 law to seize upon their persons without due processe, to 
 impose upon their estates without consent, to take away 
 some lives by the law martiall ; and besides all this, with- 
 out any commission they intended to alter the government 
 of the citie, which is nowe governed by your owne councell, 
 and by a magistrate chosen by yourselves then to bee gov- 
 erned by violence. 
 
 The fourth observation is this : That the mischievous ef- 
 fect of this designe would not have ceased in the first night's 
 worke. All the godly part in the kingdome, all faithfull 
 ministers especially, would have beene left not onely to the 
 scorn and reproach, but to the hatred, malice, and crueltie 
 of the Papists and malignants. 
 
 The fifth and last observation I shall make to you is this : 
 That this matter was prosecuted in part, and agitated and 
 promoted by those that were sent from the king, and seem- 
 ed to bee messengers of peace ; and while we should bee 
 amazed with pretences of gracious messages to propose 
 peace, this villanous project, which should have set you all 
 in blood, was promoted by those messengers, and should 
 nave beene put in execution very shortly after. This is all 
 I shall trouble you with by way of observation. 
 
 The matters resolved on in the House of Commons are 
 these things : First, that there bee publike thanksgiving to 
 God, both in the citie and throughout the kingdome, for 
 this great deliverance ; that a neare day bee appointed for 
 the citie, the Parliament, and the parts adjacent, and a 
 convenient day for other parts of the kingdome. The next 
 thing resolved on was, that the House of Peeres, they should 
 bee made acquainted with these proofes, and with all this 
 discovery, which hath beene done accordingly. It was 
 likewise resolved that there should bee a covenant made, 
 whereby we should both testify our detestation of this mis- 
 chievous plot, and joyne ourselves more closely in the main- 
 tenance of the common interest of the Church and Common- 
 wealth, in religion and libertie, which are still in great 
 danger, and would have beene utterly subverted if this proj- 
 ect had taken effect. It was resolved, in the fourth place, 
 which is nowe partly executed, that this should bee commu- 
 nicated to you of the citie, that so, as you have a great part 
 in the blessing, you may doe your part in the dutie of thank- 
 fulnesse, together with us. It is further resolved, that it 
 shall bee communicated to the armie, that they likewise take 
 notice of this great mercy of God, and joyne with us, both 
 in the thanksgiving, and in the protestation and covenant, 
 as we shall likewise desire you of the citie to doe. 
 
 Then we are commanded to give thankes to my lord-ma- 
 jor, to the sheriffes, and to the rest of the officers of the 
 citie, for their great care in the apprehending of these per- 
 sons, in guarding the peace and the quiet of the citie. 
 
 We are likewise to give thankes to those gentlemen that 
 have had the custody of these prisoners. We knowe it can- 
 
 not but bee a trouble to them ; there was no meanes to 
 keepe them safe from messages one to another, and from 
 speeches, but by such a way of putting them in honest men's 
 handes. The House of Commons have commanded us to 
 give them special! thankes that they would undertake this 
 care, and to assure them that they will see them fully rec- 
 ompensed for all the trouble and charge they shall undergoe 
 by it. 
 
 And we are to give you thankes, which are the citizens 
 of this citie, for your goode affections to the publike cause, 
 and for your continuall bountie for the support of it. 
 
 Thus farre we are enjoyned by the resolution of the House. 
 Now we are further to intreate you to heare both the cove- 
 nants : you shall thereby knowe to what we have bound 
 ourselves, and to what we desire you should bee bound. 
 There are two covenants, that is, one proper for the houses 
 of Parliament, which hath beene taken in the House of 
 Commons by all the members, by those gentlemen that are 
 named in those examinations to have beene privy to this 
 plot, which they all have disavowed ; and the other cove- 
 nant is to bee taken by all the other part of the kingdome, 
 by the citizens, by the armie, and the rest of the people gen- 
 erally in all places. 
 
 The draught of these two covenants we shall communi- 
 cate to you ; the House of Lords, they have had them al- 
 ready, and have taken them into consideration ; and we 
 heare they doe resolve that which is appointed for them 
 shall bee taken by the members of that House. 
 
 We are further to desire you that you would bee service- 
 able to the Divine providence, to God's great mercy to this 
 citie and the whole kingdome. God doth not onely doe 
 goode, but thereby gives assurance that hee will doe goode. 
 His mercies, they are comforts for the present, they are 
 pledges for the future ; but yet our care must not cease. 
 
 We are to desire that you would keepe yourguardes, and 
 look well to your citie, and that you would finde out these 
 evill members that are among you, as neare as may bee, that 
 so for the time to come this plot may bee prevented, as 
 hitherto hath beene stopped ; for out of doubt all the malig- 
 nity is not drawne out of them, though the present oppor- 
 tunitie is hindered for the present of putting it in execution. 
 
 I am to tell you further, that in desire to winne those that 
 shall bee taken with remorse for this wicked designe and 
 conspiracy, it is resolved, that if any man shall come in be- 
 fore the 15th day of this present June, and freely confesse 
 his fault, and what hee knowes of this conspiracy, that hee 
 shall have a full, and free, and plenary pardon for the time 
 to come, except those that are already or fled. I say, those 
 that come in voluntarily shall bee pardoned. 
 
 Your care and our care, they will bee all little enough ; 
 we hope God's blessing will bee so upon them both, that 
 you shall bee restored to a full peace, and that in the mean 
 time you shall enjoy such a degree of safetie and prosperitie 
 as may make way to it. 
 
 B. 
 
 Some Extracts from THE SENSE OF THE HOUSE, or the 
 Opinion of some Lords and Commons concerning the Lon- 
 doners' Petition for Peace. Oxford ; printed by the Uni- 
 versity Printer, Leonard Lichfield. 
 " Give ear, beloved Londoners 
 Fie ! fie ! you shame us all ! 
 Your rising up for peace will make 
 
 The Close Committee fall. 
 Wonder you should aske for that 
 Which they must needs deny : 
 Here's thirtie swears they'll have no peace, 
 And bid me tell you why." 
 
 A number of lords are then represented giving reasons 
 against peace. Thus : 
 
 " ' First, I'll no peace,' says Essex, 
 ' For my chaplin says 'tis sinne, 
 To lose a 100 a day 
 
 Just when my wife lies inn; 
 They cry, God bless your excellence ; 
 
 But if I lose my place, 
 They'll call me rebell, popular asse, 
 And cuckold to my face.' " 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Their lordships disposed of, the leading members of tho 
 lower House follow with similar reasons : 
 
 " ' My venum swels,' quoth Hollis, 
 
 ' And that his majestic knowes ;' 
 'And I,' quoth Hampden, 'fetch the Scots, 
 
 Whence all this mischiefe growes.' 
 ' I am an asse,' quoth Hazlerigge, 
 ' But yet I'me deepe i' th' plot ;' 
 ' And 1,' quoth Stroud, ' can lye as fast 
 As Master Pym can trott.'
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 237 
 
 'But I,' quoth Pym, 'your hackney am, 
 
 And all your drudgery dne, 
 Have made goode speeches for myselfe, 
 
 And priviledges for you : 
 I sit, and can lonke downe on men, 
 
 Whilst others bleede and fight ; 
 I eate their lordships' meate by day, 
 
 And give it their wives by night.' 
 
 ' Zounds,' said Henry Martin, 
 ' We'l have no accommodation ; 
 D'ye not knowe 'twas I that tore 
 
 His majestie's proclamation ? 
 In the House I spake high treason ; . 
 
 I've sold both lande and lease ; 
 Nay, I shall then have but three * * *, 
 A pox upon this peace.' 
 * * * 
 
 ' Who talks of peace,' quoth Ludlow, 
 
 ' Hath neither sense nor reason, 
 For I ne'er spake i' th" House but once, 
 
 And then I spoke high treason ; 
 Your meaning was as bad as mine 
 
 You must defend my speech, 
 Or else you'll make my mouth as fam'd 
 
 As was my father's * * *.' 
 ' You see (beloved Londoners) 
 
 Your peace is out of season, 
 For which you have the sense of th* House 
 
 And every member's reason. 
 Oh, doe not stand for peace, then, 
 
 For, trust me, if you doe, 
 Each county of the kingdome will 
 
 Rise up and doe so too." 
 
 C. 
 
 Certain Select Observations on the several Offices and Offi- 
 cers in the Militia of England, with the Power of the Par- 
 liament to raise the same as they shall judge expedient, 
 tfC. Collected and found among the Papers of the late 
 Sir. John Pym, a member of the House of Commons. Writ 
 in the Year 1641. MS. 
 
 WHEN kings were first ordained in this realm, the king- 
 dom was divided into forty portions, and every one of those 
 portions or counties was committed to some earl, to govern 
 and defend it against the enemies of the realm. Mirror of 
 Justice, p. 8. 
 
 Those earls, after they received their government in each 
 county, divided them into centurians or hundreds ; and in 
 every hundred was appointed a centurian or constable, who 
 had his portion and limits assigned him to keep and defend 
 with the power of the hundred, and were to be ready, upon 
 all alarms, with their arms, against the common enemy. 
 These, in some places, are called wapentakes, which, in 
 French, doth signify taking of arms. Mirror, p. 10. 12 
 Henry 8, folio 16, 17. 
 
 King Alfred first ordained two Parliaments to be kept 
 every year for the government of the people, where they 
 were to receive laws and justice. Mirror, p. 10, 11. 
 
 The Peers, in Parliament, were to judge of all wrongs 
 done by the king to any of his subjects. Mirror, p. 9. 
 
 The ancient manner of choosing and appointing of officers 
 was by those over whom their jurisdiction extended. 
 
 INSTANCES. 
 
 1. Tythingman : This man was, and at this day is, chosen 
 by the men of his own tything, and by them presented to 
 the lect, to be sworn for the true execution of his office. 
 
 8. Constable : This officer is chosen by the inhabitants, 
 who are to be governed by him, and those of the place where 
 his jurisdiction lieth, and presented unto the leet to be 
 sworn. 
 
 3. Coroner: This officer hath jurisdiction within the 
 whole county, and therefore was chosen by the freeholders 
 of the county in the county court. Cook's Magna Charta, 
 p. 174, 175, 559. 
 
 4. Such as had charge to punish such as were violators 
 of Magna Charta : These were chosen in the county court, 
 as appeareth by stat. 28 Ed. 1, c. 1, 17. 
 
 5. Sheriffs : were in time past, and by the common law, 
 to be chosen likewise in the county court. Lamb. Saxon 
 Laws, fo. 136, stat. 28 Ed. 1, c. 8, 13. Cook's Magna 
 Charta, 175, 559. Mirror, p. 8. 
 
 6. Lieutenants of counties (anciently known by the name 
 of Heretoch} were chosen in the county court (which Cook, 
 upon Magna Charta, p. 69, calls the Folkmote). Lamb. 
 Saxon Laws, folio 136. Mirror, p. 8, 11, 12. 
 
 7. Majors and bailiffs, in boroughs and towns corporate, 
 are chosen by the commonalty of the same corporation 
 within their jurisdiction. 
 
 8. Conservators of the peace were anciently chosen by 
 
 the freeholders in the county court. Cook's Magna Chart*, 
 558, &c. 
 
 9. Knights for the Parliament are to be chosen in the 
 county court, stat. 7 H. 4, cap. 15 ; 1 H. 5, cap. 1 ; 8 H. 6, 
 cap. 7 ; 10 H. 6, cap. 2. 
 
 10. Verderers of the forest are chosen within their juris- 
 diction by the inhabitants. Cook's Magna Charta, 559. 
 
 11. Admirals, being the sheriffs of the counties, as Sel- 
 den, in his Mare Clausum, p. 169, 188, affirms, must be 
 chosen as the sheriffs were, viz., in the county court. But 
 the Parliament of R. 2, folio 29, saith they are chosen in 
 the Parliament, the representative body of the realm, be- 
 cause they had the defence of the realm by sea committed 
 unto them. 
 
 12. The captain of Calais, viz., Richard, earl of War- 
 wick, in the time of Henry 6, refused to give up his cap- 
 tainship of Calais unto the king because he received it in 
 Parliament. Cowel's Interpreter, in the word Parliament. 
 
 13. The Lord-chancellor, to whom is committed the great 
 seal of England, being the publick faith of the kingdom, 
 was in former times chosen in Parliament. Lamb. Archeion, 
 p. 48. Dan. Chronicle, p. 139, 148, 195. 
 
 14. Lord-treasurer, an officer to whom is of trust com- 
 mitted the treasure of the kingdom, was, in like manner, 
 chosen in Parliament. 
 
 15. Chief-justice, an officer unto whom is committed the 
 administration of the justice of the realm, was chosen in Par- 
 liament. Lamb. Archeion, p. 48, ut supra. 
 
 Anno 15 Ed. 3d. The king was petitioned in Parliament 
 that the high officers of the kingdom might, as in former 
 times, be chosen in Parliament. To which the king yield- 
 ed, that they should be sworn in Parliament. Dan. Chron- 
 icle, p. 195. Quaere the Parliament roll and petitions. 
 
 And it appeareth by a printed statute, Anno 15 Ed. 3, 
 cap. 3, that the great officers of the kingdom were sworn to 
 maintain Magna Charta. 
 
 16. The great council of the king and kingdom, namely, 
 the Parliament, is chosen by the Commons ; for they choose 
 the knights and citizens, and burgesses, or barons, for so 
 the citizens were anciently called ; and the cinque-ports re- 
 tain that name to this day. 
 
 And this was, as I conceive, the ancientest constitution 
 of the kingdom for choosing of their officers. 
 
 In the next place, it will be requisite to inquire which of 
 these officers are now altered, and by what authority. 
 
 And, first, of sheriffs. The choice of sheriffs was first 
 taken from the freeholders by the statute of 9 Edward 2, 
 and the choice of them committed to the lord-chancellor, 
 treasurer, the barons of the Exchequer, and the justices of 
 either bench. Cook's Magna Charta, p. 559. 
 
 This election is to be made the morrow after All-Souls- 
 Day, in the Exchequer, by statute 14 Edward 3, c. 7. 
 
 Quaere 1. If they choose none at that day and place, but 
 at some other time, whether the choice be good ? Or if he 
 be chosen by any other ? 
 
 Objection. The king himself doth usually make and ap- 
 point sheriffs in every county by his prerogative. 
 
 Solution. It hath been agreed by all the judges that the 
 king cannot nppoint any other to be sheriff than such as are 
 named and chosen according to the statute of Lincoln 
 Cook's Magna Charta, p. 559. 
 
 If so, then it is questionable whether the making of Mr. 
 Hastings sheriff of Leicestershire be warrantable by law or 
 not? 
 
 Quaere 2. If no sheriff be legally chosen, whether the free- 
 holders of the county shall not choose one, as they were 
 accustomed before the making of the stat. of 9 Ed. 2, for these 
 reasons : 
 
 1. If there be no sheriff legally chosen, there will be a 
 failure of justice, which the law will not permit. 
 
 2. Because the statute is In the affirmative, and therefore 
 doth not altogether take away their power of choosing, be- 
 cause affirmative statutes do not alter the common law. 
 
 Next, let us consider the choice of justices of the peace, 
 who, as they are commissioners of the peace, are not 
 officers by the common law ; and therefore this case 
 will differ in some respects from the former, it being an 
 office created by statute. 
 
 1. I conceive that no court may be erected without the 
 authority of Parliament ; for the court of first-fruits was 
 erected bj stat. 32 Henry 8, cap. 45 ; the court of wards by 
 stat. 32 Hen. 8, cap. 46 ; the court of justice in Wales by 
 stat. 34 H. 8, c. 6 ; and power to erect courts given 1. Mar. 
 ses. 2, cap. 10. And it was resolved in this Parliament, at 
 the trial of the Earl of Strafford, that the court at York was 
 against law, albeit it hath had continuance these hundred 
 years, because it was not erected by Parliament. 
 
 And justices of the peace, being judges of record, were 
 first ordained by statute, as appeareth by 18 Ed. 3, cap. 2, 
 and 34 Ed. 3, cap. 1 ; with such other additions of power 
 as later statutes have given unto them. 
 
 Justices of the peace, then, having their being by virtue 
 of the statute law, they are to be ordained in the same man- 
 ner as the statutes prescribed, and not otherwise.
 
 238 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 1. After their first institution, the statutes did leave the 
 choice of them indefinitely in the crown, as I conceive, un- 
 til the statute of 12 R. 2, 27 ; which statute doth instruct 
 the chancellor, treasurer, keeper of the privy seal, steward 
 and chamberlain of the king's house, the clerk of the rolls, 
 The justices of both benches, barons of the Exchequer, and 
 others, to name and make them. 
 
 2. Other statutes do appoint what persons shall be chosen 
 to be justices of the peace ; namely, such as reside in the 
 Fame county where they are justices of peace, as stat. 12, 
 R. 2, c. 10. And they must be of the most sufficient knights, 
 esquires, and gentlemen of the same county, stat. 17, Rich. 
 2, 10 ; and dwelling in the same county, 2 H. 5, stat. 2, 
 cap. 1 (except lords and justices of assizes). Upon this last 
 statute, it may be doubted if choice may be made of any 
 lords and justices of assizes which have no residence or es- 
 tate in the county where they are so made justices of the 
 peace ; which, if it doth, it doth repeal all former statutes 
 which confine them to such persons as are of the same coun- 
 ty, which I conceive is against their meaning, for that stat- 
 ute doth only dispense with the residence of lords and jus- 
 tices of assize, because men of the same county, inhabiting 
 in the county where they are justices of peace, in regard of 
 their other employments in the Commonwealth which ne- 
 cessarily requireth therr absence, and so it amounteth only 
 to a dispensation for their residency. 
 
 Objection. The common practice is, that the lord-keeper 
 doth appoint whom he pleases, and that by virtue of the 
 statute of 18 Henry 6, cap. 1. 
 
 Solution. True, such is the practice ; but the doubt is, 
 how warrantable his act is ; for the statute of 18 II. 6 doth 
 give the lord-chancellor (alone by himself) no other power 
 but in case there be no men of sufficiency in the county, 
 and where none of twenty pounds per annum are to be 
 found ; for, in such case, he hath power to appoint such as 
 he conceives are men most fit. But, in case there are men 
 of sufficient estates in the county to be found, he must join 
 with the others mentioned in the statute, viz., the treasurer, 
 privy-seal, &c., who have a joint and undivided power with 
 him. 
 
 If this be so, then it may he douhted whether the Lord- 
 viscount Falkland, being no peer of the realm, Sir Peter 
 Miche, Sir Edward Nichols, of late put into the commission 
 of the peace in many counties of this kingdom, are, by the 
 law, capable of being justices of the peace in those counties 
 where they do not reside. Et sic de similibus. 
 
 Quaere, also, whether a justice of the peace, being once 
 legally chosen according to the statute before mentioned, 
 nv\y be put out at the pleasure of the lord-keeper alone, 
 without any just cause alledged ; for, being a justice of rec- 
 ord, whether some matter of record must not appear to dis- 
 able him ? for, being settled by law, he is to be displaced by 
 law, and not upon displeasure or surmise. 
 
 3. A third officer is the lieutenants in every county, in 
 former times known (for the name only is out of use) by the 
 name of heretoch, Lamb. Saxon Laws, fol. 136. And here 
 will fall into debate the ordinance in Parliament about the 
 settling of the militia of the kingdom. 
 
 The choice of these, as was formerly mentioned, was by 
 the freeholders in the county court ; but of later times they 
 have exercised the same power, being appointed by the 
 king, under the shadow of his prerogative. 
 
 First, it is to be demanded whether the king's prerogative 
 can take away that ancient right which the subjects had by 
 law invested in them ? If so, then the king, by his prerog- 
 ative, may do wrong, which is contrary to a maxim in law. 
 Fnrtesque, de Legibus, &c., fol. 25. If not, then whether 
 the power of choosing a lieutenant, or heretoch, doth not 
 yet remain in the subject, so as they may now choose one 
 as well and by the same rij>ht they did in former times ! 
 
 If freeholders of a county may yet choose, then I conceive 
 the Parliament, being the representative body of the whole 
 kingdom, may appoint lieutenants ; because they include 
 them, or, at least, they are not excluded from such a power, 
 no more than where the statute, giving power unto justices 
 of peace to inquire of a riot, doth exclude the power of the 
 King's Bench, which no man will affirm. And therefore 
 the ordinance of the militia is legal. 
 
 That the Parliament hath power to make an ordinance 
 may be proved a minori. For, 
 
 If the inhabitants of a town, without any custom to en- 
 able them, may make an ordinance or bye-law for the rep- 
 aration of their church, highway, or bridge in decay, or any 
 the like thing, being for their publick good, and upon a pe- 
 cuniary pain in case of neglect, and if it be made by the 
 greater part, that it shall bind all within the town, as hath 
 been agreed for law. 44 Ed. 3, fol. 19 ; Cook, lib. 5, fol. 
 63; the Chamberlain of London's case ; Clarke's case ; and 
 Jefferyes's case, ibid., fol. 64, 65. 
 
 If a township be amerced, and the neighbours, by assent, 
 shall assess a certain sum upon every inhabitant, and agree 
 that if it be not paid by such a day, that certain persons 
 thereto assigned shall distrain ; and, in this case, the dis- 
 tress is lawful. Doctor v. Student, fol. 74, 6, cap. 9. 
 
 If a bye-law that every one that holdeth land shall pay 
 one penny towards the reparation of a church, and, for non- 
 payment, shall forfeit to the churchwardens twenty shillings, 
 be good and doth bind, as the book saith, 21 H. 7, fol. 20. 
 holdeth. 
 
 If a town make bye-laws, and they shall bind every one 
 of the town, if it be for the common good, as 11 H. 7, fol. 
 14, then, by the same reason, may the Parliament make or- 
 dinances and bye-laws for the common good of the kingdom, 
 as shall bind all. For if a town may make ordinance, much 
 more may the knights and burgesses of the Parliament, be- 
 cause they have their power ad faciendum et consentiendum ; 
 as appeareth of record under their hands and seals in chan- 
 cery, in their return of their several elections for knights 
 and burgesses. 
 
 Lastly, as every private man is by law bound to preserve 
 the peace as, in case an affray be made by two, and a third 
 man standing by shall not use his best endeavour to part 
 them and preserve the peace, he may be indicted and fined 
 for it why may not the Parliament, being entrusted with 
 the preservation of the peace of the realm, make an ordi- 
 nance for the preservation of the peace in case of apparent 
 danger ? 
 
 Ordinance made in Parliament, 8 Ed. 2, for the preserva- 
 tion of the alienation of the king's laud, and fines set upon 
 such as presume to break them. Rot. Parl., 28 H. 6, Art. 
 29. 
 
 The judges and courts at Westminster may make an or- 
 dinance for fees to be paid unto the clerk of their courts, 
 and for bar fees taken by sheriff and gaolers. 21 H. 7, fol. 
 
 An ordinance made in Parliament, 21 Ed. 3, fol. 60, for 
 exemption of the Abbot of Bury from the jurisdiction of the 
 Bishop of Norwich. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 702 ; 12 
 H. 7, fol. 25. 
 
 Heyborne and Keylond's case, M. 14 Ed. 4, Rot. 60, in 
 Banco. Reg. Crook, page 25, who had his money taken 
 away from him by virtue of an ordinance, and was adjudged 
 that the ordinance did bind him. 
 
 Whether an infant may be a colonel, admiral, <fec. 
 
 1. None, by the intention of the law, can do knight's ser- 
 vice before he be twenty-one years of age. And this is the 
 reason of wardship. 
 
 2. It is an office of trust, which may not be executed by 
 a deputy. 
 
 3. Such an office requires personal attendance, for other- 
 wise the county may be overthrown unawares in the ab- 
 sence of such a governor from his charge. 
 
 D. 
 
 A Sketch of English Affairs, from the Dissolution of the third 
 Parliament to the raising of the King's Standard at Not- 
 tingham ; from a Speech by Sir Arthur Hazlerig, on the 
 1th of February, 1658. 
 
 THE council-table bit like a serpent, the Star Chamber 
 like scorpions. Two or three gentlemen could not stir out 
 for fear of being committed for a riot. Our souls and con- 
 sciences were put on the rack by the archbishop. We might 
 not speak of Scripture, or repeat a sermon at our tables. 
 Many godly ministers were sent to find their bed in the 
 wilderness. The oppression was little less in the lower 
 courts and in the special courts. 
 
 Altars were set up, and bowing to them enjoyned ; pic- 
 tures were placed in church windows, and images set up at 
 Durham and elsewhere ; with many other exorbitances in- 
 troduced , both in Church and State . The archbishop would 
 not only impose on England, but on Scotland, to bring in 
 the Book of Common Prayer upon them. They liked it 
 not ; and, as luck would have it, they would not bear it. 
 He prevailed with the king to raise an army to suppress 
 them. The king prevailed with his nobles to conquer them 
 into it. He went to their country, and, finding himself not 
 able to conquer them, came back. 
 
 He called a Parliament, which was named the little, or 
 broken Parliament ; disbanded not his army, but propound- 
 ed that we should give him a great sum to maintain the war 
 against Scotland. We debated it, but the conseque.nce of 
 our debate made him fear we would not grant it. We had, 
 if he had suffered us to sit. Then did Strafford and his 
 council advise him to break us and to rule arbitrarily, and 
 that he had an army in Ireland to make it good. For this, 
 Strafford lost his head. The king suddenly broke that Par- 
 liament. I rejoiced in my soul it was so. He raised the 
 gallnntest army that ever was the flower of the gentry and 
 nobility. The Scots raised too, and sent their declaration 
 into England, that by the law of God and nature they might 
 rise up for their own preservation ; and thus they came into 
 England. At Npwliurn the armies met. We were worsted. 
 God was pleased to disperse our army, and give them the 
 day. The Scots passed Newburn, and advanced to New- 
 castle. 
 
 Then some of our nobles Say, Essex, and Scroop hum- 
 bly petitioned his majesty for a Parliament. He, seeing
 
 JOHN PYM. 
 
 danger, called a Parliament. This was the Long Parlia- 
 ment. The first proposition was to raise money for the 
 Scots. We gave them a brotherly assistance of 300,000. 
 They showed themselves brethren and honest men, and 
 peaceably returned. Then money was pressed for our own 
 army. The House, considering how former Parliaments 
 had been dealt with, was unwilling to raise money till the 
 act was passed not to dissolve the Parliament but by their 
 own consent. It passed freely by king, Lords, and Com- 
 mons. This was wonderful the very hand of God that 
 brought it to pass ; for no man could then foresee the good 
 that act produced. 
 
 The king then practised with the Scots, then with his 
 army, to assist him against this Parliament, and to miike 
 them sure to his particular interest. Sir John Conyers dis- 
 covered it, to his everlasting fame. Mr. Pym acquainted 
 the House. Divers officers of the army Lord Goring, Ash- 
 burnham, Pollard, and others were examined here. They 
 all absented. The House desired of the king that they 
 might be brought to justice ; but the king sent them away 
 beyond sea. 
 
 k The king demanded five members, by his attorney-gen- 
 eral. He then came personally to the House, with five 
 hundred men at his heels, and sat in your chair. It pleased 
 God to hide those members. I shall never forget the kind- 
 ness of that great lady, the Lady Carlile, that gave timely 
 notice. Yet some of them were in the House after the no- 
 tice came. It was questioned if, for the safety of the House, 
 they should be gone ; but the debate was shortened, and it 
 was thought fit for them, in discretion, to withdraw. Mr. 
 Hampden and myself being then in the House, withdrew. 
 Away we went. The king immediately came in, and was 
 in the House before we got to the water. 
 
 The queen, on the king's return, raged and gave him an 
 unhandsome name, "poltroon," for that he did not take 
 others out ; and certain if he had, they would have been 
 killed at the door. 
 
 Next day the king went to the city. They owned the 
 members. Thereupon he left the Parliament, and went 
 from step to step, till he came to York, and set up his stand- 
 ard at Nottingham, and declared the militia was in him. 
 
 From the diary of Thomas Burton, Esq. 
 
 E. 
 A Declaration and Vindication of John Pym, Esq. 
 
 IT is not unknown to the world (especially to the inhab- 
 itants in and about London) with what desperate and fame- 
 wounding aspersions my reputation, and the integrity of my 
 intentions to God, my king, and my country, hath been in- 
 vaded by the malice and fury of malignants, and ill-affected 
 persons to the good of the Commonwealth;- some charging 
 me to have been the promoter and patronizer of all the in- 
 novations which have l>een obtruded upon the ecclesiastical 
 government of the Church of England*; others, of more 
 spiteful and exorbitant spirits, alledging that I have been 
 the man who have begot and fostered all the so-lamented 
 distractions which are now rife in this kingdom. And 
 though such calumnies are ever more harmful to the authors 
 than to those whom they strive to wound with them, when 
 they arrive only to the censure of judicious persons, who can 
 distinguish forms, and see the difference betwixt truth and 
 falsehood ; yet, because the scandals inflicted upon my in- 
 nocence have been obvious to people of all conditions, many 
 of which may entertain a belief of those reproachful reports, 
 though in my own soul I am far above such ignominies, and 
 so was once resolved to have waved them as unworthy my 
 notice, yet at last, for the assertion of my integrity, I con- 
 cluded to declare myself in this matter, that all the world, 
 but such as will not be convinced either by reason or truth, 
 may l>ear testimony of my innocency. To pass by, there- 
 fore, the Earl of Stratford's business, in which some have 
 been so impudent as to charge me of too much partiality 
 and malice, I shall declare myself fully concerning the rest 
 of their aspersions, namely, that I have promoted and fo- 
 mented the differences now abounding in the English 
 Church. 
 
 How unlikely this is, and improbable, shall, to every in- 
 different man, be quickly rendered perspicuous ; for that I 
 am, and ever was, and so will die, a faithful son of the Prot- 
 estant religion, without having the least relation in my be- 
 lief to those gross errors of Anahaptism, Brownism, and the 
 like, every man that hath any acquaintance with my con- 
 versation can bear me righteous witness ; these being but 
 aspersions cast upon me by some of the discontented clergy, 
 and their factors and abettors, because they might perhaps 
 conceive that I had been a main instrument in extenuating 
 the haughty power and ambitious pride of the bishops and 
 prelates. As I only delivered my opinion as a member of 
 the House of Commons, that attempt or action of mine had 
 been justifiable both to God and a good conscience, and had 
 no way concluded me guilty of a revolt from the orthodox 
 doctrine of the Church of England because I sought a refor- 
 mation of some gross abuses crept into the government by 
 
 the cunning and perverseness of the bishops and their sub- 
 stitutes ; for was it not high time to seek to regulate their 
 power, when, instead of looking to the cure of men's souls 
 (which is their genuine office), they inflicted punishment 
 on men's bodies, banishing them to remote and desolate 
 places, after stigmatizing their faces, only for the testimony 
 of a good conscience ; when, not contented with those in- 
 sufferable insolencies, they sought to bring in unheard-of 
 canons into the Church Arminian or Papistical ceremonies 
 (whether you please to term them, there is not much di (Ter- 
 ence) imposing burdens upon men's consciences which 
 they were not able to bear, and introducing the old abolish- 
 ed superstition of bowing to the altar \ If it savoured either 
 of Brownism or Anabaptism to endeavour to suppress the 
 growth of those Romish errors, I appeal to any equal-mind- 
 ed Protestant either for my judge or witness. Nay, had the 
 attempts of the bishops desisted here, tolerable they had 
 been, and their power not so much questioned as since it 
 hath ; but when they saw the honourable the high court of 
 Parliament had begun to look into their enormities and 
 abuses, beholding how they wrested religion like a waxen 
 nose to the furtherance of their ambitious purposes, then 
 Troy was taken in then they began to despair of holding 1 
 any longer their usurped authority ! and therefore, as much 
 as in them lay, both by public declarations and private coun- 
 cils, they laboured to foment tho civil differences between 
 his majesty and his Parliament, abetting the proceedings of 
 the malignants with large supplies of men and money, and 
 stirring up the people to tumults by their seditious sermons. 
 
 Surely, then, no man can account me an ill son of the Com- 
 monwealth if I delivered my opinion and passed my vote 
 freely for their abolishment ; which may, by the same equi- 
 ty, be put in practice by this Parliament, as the dissolution 
 of monasteries, and their lazy inhabitants, the monks and 
 fryars, were in Henry the Eighth's time ; for, without dis- 
 pute, these carried as much reputation in the kingdom then, 
 as bishops have done in it since ; and yet a Parliament then 
 had power to put them down. Why, then, should not a 
 Parliament have power to do the like to these, every way 
 guilty of as many offences against the state as the former? 
 For my own part, I attest God Almighty, the knower of all 
 hearts, that neither envy, nor any private grudge, to all or 
 any of the bishops, hath made me averse to their functions, 
 but merely my zeal to religion and God's cause, which I 
 perceived to be trampled under foot by the too extended 
 authority of the prelates, who, according to the purity of 
 their institution, should have been men of upright hearts 
 and humble minds, shearing their flocks, and not flaying; 
 them. 
 
 And whereas some will alledge it is no good argument to 
 dissolve the function of bishops, because some bishops are 
 vitious ; to that I answer, since the vice of these bishops 
 was derivative from the authority of their function, it is 
 very fitting the function, which is the cause thereof, be cor- 
 rected, and its authority divested of its borrowed feathers ; 
 otherwise it is impossible but the same power which made 
 these present bishops (should the episcopal and prelatical 
 dignity continue in its ancient height and vigour) so proud 
 and arrogant would infuse the same vices into their suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 But this is but a molehill to that mountain of scandalous 
 reports that have been inflicted on my integrity to his 
 majesty ; some boldly averring me for the author of the 
 present distractions between his majesty and his Parliament, 
 when I take God and all that know my proceedings to be 
 my vouchers that I neither directly nor indirectly ever had 
 a thought tending to the least disobedience or disloyalty 
 to his majesty, whom I acknowledge my lawful king and 
 sovereign, and would expend my blood as soon in his ser- 
 vice as any subject he hath. 'Tis true, when I perceived 
 my life aimed at, and heard myself proscribed a traitor 
 merely for my intireness of heart to the service of my coun- 
 try ; when I was informed that I, with some other honour- 
 able and worthy members of the Parliament, were, against 
 the priviledges thereof, demanded, even in the Parliament 
 House, by his majesty, attended by a multitude of men-at- 
 arms and malignants, who, I verily believe, had, for some 
 ill ends of their own, persuaded his majesty to that excess 
 of rigour against us ; when, for my own part (my conscience 
 is to me a thousand witnesses in that behalf), 1 never har- 
 boured a thought which tendered to any disservice to his 
 majesty, nor ever had any intention prejudicial to the state ; 
 when, I say, notwithstanding my own innocence, I saw my- 
 self in such apparent danger, no man will think me blame- 
 worthy in that I took a care of my own safety, and fled for 
 refuge to the protection of the Parliament, which, making 
 my case their own, not only purged me and the rest of ths 
 guilt of high treason, but also secured our lives from the 
 storm that was ready to burst out upon us. 
 
 And if this hath been the occasion that hath withdrawn 
 his majesty from the Parliament, surely the fault ran no way 
 be imputed to me, or any proceeding of mine, which never 
 went further, either since his majesty's departure, nor be- 
 fore then, so far as they were warranted by the known laws
 
 240 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of the land, and authorized by the indisputable and undeni- 
 able power of the Parliament. So long as I am secure in 
 my own conscience that this is truth, I account myself above 
 all their calumnies and falsehoods, which shall return upon 
 themselves, and not wound my reputation in good and im- 
 partial men's opinions. 
 
 But in that devilish conspiracy of Catiline against the 
 state and senate of Rome, none among the senators was so 
 obnoxious to the envy of the conspirators, or liable to their 
 traducements, as that orator and patriot of his country, 
 Cicero, because by his council and zeal to the Common- 
 wealth their plot for the ruine thereof was discovered and 
 prevented. Though I will not be so arrogant to parallel 
 myself with that worthy, yet my case (if we may compare 
 lesser things with great) hath to his a very near resem- 
 blance ; the cause that I am so much maligned and reproach- 
 ed by ill-affected persons being because I have been forward 
 in advancing the affairs of the kingdom, and have been taken 
 notice of for that forwardness, they, out of their malice, 
 converting that to a vice which, without boast be it spoken, 
 I esteem as my principal vertue my care to the public util- 
 ity. And since it is for that cause that I suffer these scan- 
 dals, I shall endure them with patience, hoping that God in 
 his great mercy will at last reconcile his majesty to his high 
 court of Parliament, and then I doubt not but to give his 
 royal self (though he be much incensed against me) a suf- 
 ficient account of my integrity. In the interim, I hope the 
 world will believe that I am not the first innocent man that 
 hath been injured, and so will suspend their further censures 
 of me. 
 
 F. 
 
 A Narrative of the Disease and Death of that noble Gentle- 
 man, John Pym, Esquire, late a Member of the honourable 
 House of Commons, attested under the Hands of his Phy- 
 sicians, Chyrurgions, and Apothecary. 
 FORASMUCH as there are divers nncertaine reportes and 
 false suggestions spred abroad touching the disease and 
 death of that noble gentleman, John Pym, Esquire, late a 
 member of the honourable House of Commons, it is thought 
 fit (for the undeceiving of some, and prevention of miscon- 
 struction and suspitions in others) to manifest to those who 
 desire information the true cause of his lingring disease 
 and death, as it was discovered (while hee lived) by his 
 physitians, and manifested to the view both of them and 
 many others, that were present at the dissection of his body 
 after his death ; for the skin of his body, it was without so 
 much as any roughness, scarr, or scab, neither was there 
 any breach either of the scarfe or true skin, much lesse any 
 phthiriaiis or lousie disease, as was reported ; and as for 
 
 that suggestion of his being poysoned, there appeared to the 
 physitians no signe thereof upon the view of his body, nei- 
 ther was there any exhorbitant symptome (while hee lived) 
 either in his animal}, vitall, or -natural] parts, for hee had 
 his intellectualls and senses very entire to the last, and his 
 sleep for the most part very sufficient and quiet. As for the 
 vitall parts, they were all found very sound, and (while hee 
 lived) they were perfect in their actions and uses ; and as 
 for the naturall parts contained in the lower belly, they did 
 not otherwise suffer than from that large imposthume that 
 was there contained ; the stomack being smooth and fairs 
 in all its coates ; the liver and kidnies goode enough, onely 
 much altered in their colour ; the spleen faire, but little. 
 But the most ignoble part of this lower belly, the meientry, 
 was found fundi calamitas, the shop wherein the instrument 
 of his dissolution was forged ; there being a large abscesse 
 or imposthume, which wrought itselfe to such a bulke as was 
 easily discovered by the outward touch of his physitians at 
 the beginning of his complaining, and did increase to that 
 capacitie as (being opened) it did receive a hande contract- 
 ed, and in its growth did so oppresse the gall and stop its 
 vessels as occasioned the jaundice. Besides, this abscesse 
 (by the matter contained in it) did so offend the parts adja- 
 cent as most of them suffered by its vicinitie, yet without 
 any such turbulent symptome as did at any time cause him 
 to complaine of paine, being sensible onely of some sorenesse 
 upon the touch of the region of the part affected ; and from 
 its vapours the stomack suffered a coutinuall inappetency 
 and frequent nauseousnesse, and it did so deprave and hin- 
 der the concoction, distribution, and perfection of nourish- 
 ment, that it produced an atrophy or falling of the flesh ; so 
 that inappetency, faintnesse, and nauseousnesse were the 
 great complaints hee usually made. At last, after a long 
 languishment, this imposthume breaking, hee often fainted ; 
 and soon after followed his dissolution, December the 8th, 
 1643, about 7 a clocke at night. 
 
 Attested by the physitians that attended him in his sick- 
 ness : 
 
 Sir THEODORE MAYERS, 
 
 Dr. CLERK, 
 
 Dr. MEREVELL, President of the Colledge of Physi- 
 tians. 
 
 Dr. GIFFORD, "I that were present at the dis- 
 
 Dr. MICKLETHWAIT, I section of his body (together 
 
 Dr. MOULIN, [with two of those above men- 
 
 Dr. COLLADE, J tioned). 
 
 And Chyrurgions : 
 
 THOMAS ALLEN, and 
 
 HENRY AXTALL, his servant. 
 Apothecary : 
 
 JOHN CHAPMAN, servant to WILLIAM TAYLOE
 
 
 HARPER t BROTHERS
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 1594-1643. 
 
 AN outline of the life of Hampden is all that 
 will now be required for the purposes of this 
 work. So little, after the most extensive re- 
 searches, is known of the man, that all may, 
 unfortunately, be very briefly told : his history 
 is written in the great public actions he for- 
 warded through life, and in the assertion and 
 defence of which he died ; and these have al- 
 ready been minutely recorded, in the foregoing 
 memoir of the dearest and most intimate of his 
 friends, and the most eminent of his great fel- 
 low-labourers. Such are the only, though the 
 sufficient records that permanently attest the 
 wonderful influence of his character ; for of all 
 the speeches he delivered in the House of Com- 
 mons, only one remains, and even its authen- 
 ticity is more than doubtful. 
 
 John Hampden was born in London* in 1594, 
 ten years after the birth of Pym. His family 
 may be traced in an unbroken line from the 
 Saxon times. It received from Edward the 
 Confessor the grant of the estate and residence 
 in Buckinghamshire, from which the name is 
 derived, and which in Doomsday Book are en- 
 tered as in the possession of Baldwyn de Hamp- 
 den. Escaping from the rapacity of the Nor- 
 man princes, and strengthened by rich and pow- 
 erful alliances, it continued in direct male suc- 
 cession, and increased in influence and wealth. 
 Noble says, in his " Memoirs of the Protectoral 
 House of Cromwell,"t with which, as well as 
 with the old ancestors of Lord Say and Sele, 
 the family of the Hampdens were allied, that 
 few were so opulent in the fourteenth century 
 as this family, but that one of them was then 
 obliged to forfeit to the crown the three valu- 
 able manors of Tring, Wing, and Ivengo, for a 
 blow given to the Black Prince in a dispute at 
 tennis ; and that by this only he escaped with- 
 out losing his hand. A rude couplet, still re- 
 membered in that part of the kingdom, sustains 
 the tradition : 
 
 " Tring, Wing, and Ivengo did go 
 For striking the Black Prince a blow." 
 
 This story, indeed, has not been suffered to 
 pass without many doubts ; but whether true 
 or not, it has served no mean purpose in giving 
 a name to one of the noblest works of roman- 
 tic fiction in these latter times. Sir Walter 
 Scott possessed himself of the tradition, as of 
 every other, and the shape he received it in 
 will be thought a corroboration of it, when com- 
 pared with the versions of Noble and Lysons : 
 
 " Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe, 
 For striking of a blow, 
 Ilarapden did forego, 
 And glad he could escape so ! " 
 
 Be the story true or false, however, no doubt 
 the property of the Hampdens at this period 
 was very extensive. They were not only rich 
 and flourishing in their own county, but enjoy- 
 ed considerable possessions in Essex, Berk- 
 shire, and Oxfordshire. In Buckinghamshire 
 they were lords of Great and Little Hampden, 
 
 * This rests on the authority of Wood, who ascertained 
 it indisputably by reference to the matriculation books at 
 Oxford. t Vol. ii., p. 62. 
 
 HH 
 
 Stoke Mandeville, Kimble, Prestwood, Dunton, 
 Hoggestone, and Hartwell, and had lands in 
 many other parishes. They appear to have 
 been distinguished in chivalry ; they were often 
 intrusted with civil authority, and represented 
 their native county in several Parliaments. 
 We find, in the Rolls of Parliament, that some 
 lands were escheated from the family on ac- 
 count of their adherence to the party of Henry 
 VI., and that they were excepted from the gen- 
 eral act of restitution in the 1st Edward IV. 
 Edmund Hampden was one of the esquires of 
 the body, and privy counsellor to Henry VII. ; 
 and in the succeeding reign we find " Sir John 
 Hampden of the Hill" appointed, with others, 
 to attend upon the English queen at the inter- 
 view of the sovereigns in the Field of Cloth 
 of Gold. It is to his daughter, Sibel Hampden, 
 who was nurse to the Prince of Wales, after- 
 ward Edward VI., and ancestress to William 
 Penn, of Pennsylvania, that the monument is 
 raised in Hampton Church, Middlesex, which 
 records so many virtues and so much wisdom.* 
 During the reign of Elizabeth, Griffith Hamp- 
 den, having served as high sheriff of the county 
 of Buckingham, represented it in the Parlia- 
 ment of 1585. By him the queen was received 
 with great magnificence at his mansion at 
 Hampden, which he had in part rebuilt and 
 much enlarged. An extensive avenue was cut 
 for her passage through the woods to the house ; 
 and a part of that opening, Lord Nugent says, 
 is still to be seen on the brow of the Chilterns 
 from many miles around, and retains the name 
 of " The Queen's Gap," in commemoration of 
 that visit. His eldest son, William, who suc- 
 ceeded him in 1591, was member, in 1593, for 
 East Looe, then a considerable borough. He 
 married Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Hen- 
 ry Cromwell, of Hinchinbrooke in Huntingdon- 
 shire, and aunt to the Protector, and died in 
 1597, leaving two sons, John and Richard, the 
 latter of whom, in after times, resided at Em- 
 mington in Oxfordshire. 
 
 The fact of London having been the birth- 
 place of the patriot has been disputed, but ap- 
 parently without reason. He was reported to 
 have been born at the manor-house, long in 
 the possession of his family, at Hoggestone, in 
 the hundred of Cottlesloe, in Buckinghamshire : 
 it was only so said, because the people of that 
 county adored his name. Succeeding to his 
 father's estate in his infancy, Hampden remain- 
 ed for some years under the care of Richard 
 Bouchier, master of the free grammar-school 
 at Thame in Oxfordshire. t In 1609 he was 
 
 See a copy in Noble's Cromwell, vol. ii., p. 64. This 
 is an extract : 
 
 " To courte she called was, to foster up a king, 
 Whose helping hand long lingering sutcs to speedie end 
 
 did bring. 
 
 Twoo queenes that sceptre bore, gave cready t to the damOj 
 Full many yeres in cowrte she dwelte, without disgrace 
 
 or blame." 
 
 Query Do these lingering sutes in any way allude to the 
 royal quarrels of her ancestor ? 
 
 [For the authority of this page, the reader may consult 
 ;he admirable life of Hampden by Lord Nugent, whence it 
 is derived, p. 4-6, vol. j. C.J 
 t Anthony Wood.
 
 242 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 entered as a commoner at Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, where his attainments gained him 
 reputation, and he was chosen, with others, 
 among whom was Laud, then master of St. 
 John's, to write the Oxford gratulations on the 
 marriage of the Elector-palatine with the Prin- 
 cess Elizabeth.* In 1613 he entered the Inner 
 Temple as a student of law. And now, wheth- 
 er, at this youthful period, he had been induced, 
 from his cheerful habits and fascinating man- 
 ners, to enter into the dissipations of the age, 
 and had begun the life of " great pleasure and 
 licence' 1 which Clarendon,! not, as it seems, 
 unjustly, has charged upon his earlier years, 
 we have no means of knowing ; but it is cer- 
 tain that he never, at any period of his life, 
 abandoned intellectual exertion, or neglected 
 the literary labours to which his taste always 
 inclined him. Accordingly, at the Inner Tem- 
 ple, he did not fail to make considerable prog- 
 ress in his new study ; and we find the courtier, 
 Sir Philip Warwick, bearing testimony to his 
 " great knowledge, both of scholarship and 
 law." Nor does the next circumstance of his 
 life to which our attention is directed indicate 
 any taste on his part for " licence" of the more 
 abandoned sort. He was married in the church 
 of Pyrton, in Oxfordshire,* 1619, to Elizabeth, 
 only daughter of Edmund Symeon, Esq., lord 
 of that manor and estate. To this lady he was 
 tenderly attached, and often, after her early 
 death, paid sorrowful and affectionate tribute 
 to her virtues, talents, and affection. 
 
 Hampden entered the House of Commons 
 the following year, having taken his seat for 
 the borough of Grampound on the meeting of 
 James's Parliament of 1620. He attached him- 
 self at once to the popular party, though cer- 
 tain of his frieftds were desirous that he should 
 seek other means of advancement. His mother 
 was very urgent with him to look to adding a 
 peerage to the dignity of his family. " If ever," 
 says this lady, in a characteristic letter pre- 
 served in the British Museum, " if ever my 
 sonn will seeke for his honour, tell him nowe 
 to come ; for heare is multitudes of lords a 
 making Vicount Mandvile, Lo. Thresorer, 
 Vicount Dunbar, which was Sr. Ha. Con- 
 stable, Vicount Falkland, which was Sir Har- 
 ry Carew. These two last of Scotland ; of Ire- 
 land divers, the deputie a vicount, and one 
 Mr. Fitzwilliams a barron of Ingland, Mr. Vil- 
 lers a vicount, and Sr. Will. Fielding a bar- 
 ron I am ambitious of my sonne's hon- 
 our, which I wish were nowe conferred upon 
 him, that hee might not come after so many 
 new creations." But this counsel was not fol- 
 lowed. The discovery is due to Lord Nugent,^ 
 
 * " These verses," says Lord Nugent, " published at Ox- 
 ford, 1613, in a volume entitled ' Lusus Palatini,' contain 
 little worth remark, unless it be the last three lines: 
 " ' Ut surgat inde proles, 
 Cui nulla terra, nulla 
 Gens, sit parem datura.' 
 
 Remarkable when it is remembered that from this marriage 
 Rupert was born, who led the troops at Chalgrove, by whom 
 Hampden was slain ; but also that from it sprang the suc- 
 cession to which stands limited the guardianship of the free 
 monarchy of England." t Hist., vol. iv., p. 61. 
 
 t Register of Pyrton, June 24, 1019. He died on the an- 
 niversary of that day. 
 
 <l I shall have frequent occasion to refer to Lord Nugent's 
 recent and interesting "Memorials of Hampden." It is 
 much to be regretted, howe\er, that, with every advantage 
 of research, his lordship should not have succeeded in com- 
 municating more. [To this remark of Mr. Forster, I would 
 
 and it is in all respects very grateful. It throws 
 a steady light on Hampden's early character, 
 and is a comfort and a guide to our understand- 
 ing in following his after-exertions. Here was 
 no personal vanity ; no private interest ; no 
 boundless ambition ; no reckless or unsatisfied 
 desires. He always saw a nobler dignity than 
 was to be won in James I.'s presence chamber, 
 and that and immortality he achieved together. 
 
 In considering the character of Hampden, it 
 will not appear strange that for many years he 
 made no considerable figure in Parliament. In 
 disposition he was unobtrusive ; of " rare tem- 
 per and modesty," to use the words of Claren- 
 don ; whilst his wonderful energy of mind was 
 under exact discipline. He saw that the lead- 
 ing members of the opposition were sufficient 
 to their present task, and cared not to thrust 
 himself unnecessarily forward. Recording his 
 votes for freedom always, he waited a fitting 
 opportunity for greater personal exertion. But 
 as he was resolved wisely not to anticipate the 
 call of the occasion, so he prepared himself not 
 to disobey it. In the retirement of his yet pri- 
 vate life, he earnestly investigated the great 
 political questions of the time. It is interest- 
 ing to be able to add, that Lord Nugent has 
 seen a curious manuscript volume of Parlia- 
 mentary cases and other papers, at Mr. Rus- 
 sell's, at Checker's Court, in which Tie says 
 there is abundant evidence of the pains which 
 Hampden took to fortify himself in the science 
 of precedent and privilege. A great part of 
 that volume is filled with extracts from what 
 are called "Mr. Hampden's notes." We may 
 imagine the effect produced on his mind by 
 such studies ; nor do we wonder to hear from 
 Clarendon that at this period " he retired to a 
 more reserved and melancholy society ;" while we 
 feel to love him the more for it when the his- 
 torian adds that he yet preserved his own nat- 
 ural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, 
 a flowing courtesy to all men. 
 
 In the first Parliament of Charles, however, 
 he was by no means idle. He made himself a 
 prominent member of the famous Glanville 
 committee, already referred to. " The cases 
 of the three Buckinghamshire boroughs," says 
 Lord Nugent, " there is little reason to doubt, 
 were in reality drawn up and put forward by 
 Hampden, although ostensibly managed by 
 Hakewill. This is all the more probable from 
 its appearing, from, Hampden's correspondence,* 
 that Hakewill had before been frequently em- 
 ployed by him to conduct suits and arbitrations 
 for him respecting his property in that county." 
 In consequence of these petitions, Noy and Sel- 
 den were ordered to make search in the record, 
 and the committee reported that all four had 
 the right, and ought to be admitted according- 
 ly ; furthermore declaring it to be " the ancient 
 privilege and power of the Commons in Parlia- 
 ment to examine the validity of elections and 
 returns concerning this House and Assembly," 
 in opposition to the former decision of James 
 
 add my humble opinion, that the Memorials of Hampden 
 by his lordship afford an invaluable commentary upon the 
 men and events of the times, and especially would I call at- 
 tention to his most admirable estimate of the character of 
 James I., p. 18-31, vol. i. C.] 
 
 * This correspondence Lord Nugent does not adduce. 
 Why ? It would have been an interesting addition even to 
 his interesting " Memorials."
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 243 
 
 that they should be judged in ch.ancery. Wheth- 
 er Hakewill was aware or not of the full extent 
 of the object for which he was working, does 
 not appear. It seems, at all events, probable 
 that the greater number of the opposite party 
 were not ; and that those who were, did not at 
 the beginning think it prudent to give the alarm. 
 King James, however, had shrewdness enough 
 to detect the tendency of this measure ; and 
 accordingly, notice thereof being given to him, 
 he stated his unwillingness to have the number 
 of the burgesses increased, " declaring," says 
 Glanville, "he was troubled with too great a 
 number already, and commanded his then so- 
 licitor, Sir Robert Heath, being of the House 
 of Commons, to oppose it what he might ; and 
 most of the courtiers then of the House, under- 
 standing the king's inclination, did their utmost 
 endeavours to cross it." The report, never- 
 theless, was in the end confirmed by the House. 
 " Whereupon," says Glanville, " a warrant un- 
 der the speaker's hand was made to the clerk 
 of the crown in the chancery for the making 
 of such a writ, which was issued out accord- 
 ingly ; and therefore were elected and return- 
 ed to serve in the same Parliament, for Amer- 
 sham, Mr. Hakewill and Mr. John Crew ; for 
 Wendover, Mr. John Hampden, who beareth 
 the charge, and Sir Alexander Denton ; for 
 Marlow, Mr. H. Burlace and Mr. Cotton." 
 
 On the dissolution of Charles's second Par- 
 liament, Hampden resolutely refused the loan ; 
 and on being asked why he would not contrib- 
 ute to the king's necessities, startled the que- 
 rist with these memorable words : " That he 
 could be content to lend as well as others, but 
 feared to draw upon himself that curse in mag- 
 na charta which should be read twice a year 
 against those who infringe it."* The privy 
 council, not being satisfied with his own recog- 
 nizance to appear at the board, although an- 
 swerable with a landed property nearly the 
 largest possessed by any commoner of Eng- 
 land, committed him to a close and rigorous 
 imprisonment in the Gate-house. Being again 
 brought before the council, and persisting in 
 his first refusal, he was sent into private deten- 
 tion in Hampshire. 
 
 His sufferings had now made him prominent- 
 ly known ; and in the celebrated third Parlia- 
 ment, to which he was returned as member for 
 the borough of Wendover, he achieved the en- 
 tire confidence of the popular party, and took 
 part in the preparation of the petition of right. 
 
 " From this time forward," Lord Nugent says 
 truly, " scarcely was a bill prepared or an in- 
 quiry begun upon any subject, however remote- 
 ly or incidentally affecting any one of the three 
 great matters at issue privilege, religion, or 
 the supplies, but he was thought fit to be asso- 
 ciated with St. John, Selden, Coke, and Pym 
 on the committee." On the 21st of March, a 
 few days after the meeting of Parliament, he 
 was placed upon the committee on " an act to 
 restrain the sending away persons to be popish- 
 ly bred beyond seas ;" and on the 28th, on one 
 " to examine the warrants for billeting soldiers, 
 or levying money, in the county of Surrey." 
 On the 3d of April he was on the committee 
 on a bill " to regulate the pressing men as am- 
 bassadors, or on other foreign service, so as to 
 
 Rushworth, vol. i., p. 428, &c. 
 
 promote the good of the people as well as the 
 service of the state ;" and during the course 
 of the same month he was engaged in others, 
 " for the better continuance of peace and unity 
 in the Church and Commonwealth ;" " on the 
 foundation of the Charter House ;" on acts 
 against "scandalous and unworthy ministers ;" 
 concerning " subscription, or against procuring 
 judicial appointments for money or other re- 
 wards ;" and "on the presentments of recu- 
 sants made by the knights of the several 
 shires." On the 10th of May he was put upon 
 the committee "on the case of the Turkey 
 merchants," whose goods were detained till 
 they should pay the tonnage and poundage ; 
 and afterward on the committees for " redress- 
 ing the neglect of preaching and catechising ;" 
 " on the petitions of Burgesse and Sparke," 
 who had been persecuted by the Bishop of Dur- 
 ham ; " to search for records and precedents ;" 
 " to consider the two commissions for com- 
 pounding with recusants ;" and " for explain- 
 ing a branch of the statute 3d of James." On 
 the 13th of June he closed for the season his 
 laborious share in this sort of business with 
 two committees, the one " to take the certifi- 
 cates of the Trinity House merchants for the 
 loss of ships," and the other "to meet that af- 
 ternoon on the Exchequer business." 
 
 On the reassembling of this Parliament after 
 the prorogation, and when the disgraceful in- 
 vasion of religion and property, committed in 
 the interval by Laud and Charles, had inflamed 
 the passions of the leading members in regard 
 to both these questions, Hampden's exertions' 
 became absorbed in the committees that were 
 appointed to discuss them. His name is to be 
 found on the committees for preparing bills for 
 enlarging the liberty of " hearing the Word of 
 God ;" and " against bribery, and procuring 
 places for money and other rewards ;" and on 
 the committee to prepare a bill to explain the 
 statute 3d James "concerning the appropria- 
 tion of vicarages. " He was also put upon com- 
 mittees " to view the entries of the clerk's book, 
 and to search the entry of the petition of right ;" 
 and " to examine a person who had petitioned 
 the king with articles against Dr. Williams, 
 bishop of Lincoln, the keeper ;" and again, 
 " concerning the differences in the several im- 
 pressions of the "Thirty-nine Articles." Again, 
 " to examine the matter and the information in 
 the Star Chamber ;" and "concerning the par- 
 ticulars of Sir Joseph Eppesley, and all others 
 where commissioners are drawn to answer be- 
 fore the Lords ;" and " to search the course 
 and precedents in the Exchequer concerning 
 the injunction against merchants' goods detain- 
 ed for the non-payment of duties ;" and, lastly, 
 " to prevent corruption in the presentation and 
 collation to benefices, headships, fellowships, 
 and scholarships in colleges." 
 
 Hampden took no part in the stormy scene 
 of the day of the dissolution that " most 
 gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England," as 
 Sir Symonds d'Ewes has termed it, " that had 
 happened for five hundred years" and there- 
 fore escaped the fierce vengeance under which 
 Eliot perished. Before that brave and virtu- 
 ous man entered his prison, he committed his 
 two sons to Hampden's care. 
 
 Upon this circumstance I have already re-
 
 244 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 marked in the memoir of Eliot. It is enough | 
 to add here, that, besides in the thought of that ' 
 great person's sufferings having served the 
 cause that was dearer to him than happiness 
 or life, the sorrow with which we contemplate 
 them has some redemption, in the delightful 
 view which they have been the means of hand- 
 ing down to us of the character of Hampden, 
 and his generous and gentle feeling. We find 
 in him, at this trying period, nothing wanting 
 in the qualities that command respect and love 
 for their amiable and exalted nature. He ap- 
 pears to us the guardian of the two young 
 Eliots, turning his great mind anxiously to 
 their improvement, leaving nothing undone for 
 their welfare, and disclosing, throughout his 
 correspondence with their father, a fine fancy ; 
 a heart of honour full, as of gentleness ; of true 
 wisdom and scholarship, as of kindness and in- 
 trepidity. This it was which made Hampden 
 a patriot : his love for all men, and for all good 
 and graceful things. In looking at his life, 
 these letters are of the last importance ; the 
 feelings they disclose enable us to judge his 
 latter years by a true test, and to discover the 
 secret of his bold endeavours then the end to 
 which he looked in all his patriotic toils and 
 enjoyments unbounded love and gentleness to 
 mankind. 
 
 These letters, then, I will here present to 
 the reader, as they have been copied* from the 
 manuscripts in Lord Eliot's possession. They 
 follow in the order of their dates, and refer oc- 
 casionally to circumstances which have been 
 already explained in this work.t 
 
 The first alludes to Eliot's younger son, and 
 to the passages of the " Monarchy of Man" for- 
 warded for Hampden's perusal. 
 
 " Sir, If my affections could bee so dull as 
 to give way to a sleepy excuse of a letter ; yet 
 this bearer, our common friend, had power to 
 awaken them, and commaund it : to the pub- 
 like experience of whose worth in doing, I can 
 nowe adde my private of his patience in suf- 
 fering the miseryes of a rough-hewn entertain- 
 ment, to bee tolerated by the addition of your 
 sonne's company ; of whome, if ever you live 
 to see a fruite answerable to the promise of 
 the present blossoms, it will bee a blessing of 
 that weight as will turne the scale against all 
 worldly afflictions, and denominate your life 
 happy. 
 
 " I returne your papers with many thankes, 
 which I have transcribed, not readd ; the dis- 
 course, therefore, upon the subject must bee 
 reserved to another season, when I may, with 
 better opportunitie and freedome, communicate 
 my thoughts to you, my friend. Till then, with 
 my salutations of all your societie, and prayers 
 for your health, I rest, 
 
 " Your ever assured friend and servant, 
 " JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 " Hampden, January 4th." 
 
 The son here alluded to was Hampden's fa- 
 vourite. The character of the elder son, whose 
 college riots are touched on with so indulgent- 
 ly slight a hand in the next letter, has been de- 
 scribed}: before. 
 
 * With one exception, the fifth letter, which is to be 
 found in the British Museum, aud therefore appears never 
 to have reached Eliot. 
 
 t Life of Eliot, p. 35-41. t Ibid., p. 36. 
 
 Sir, I hope you will receave yor sonnea 
 both safe, and that God will direct you to dis- 
 pose of them as they may bee trained up for 
 his service and to yor comfort. Some words I 
 have had wth y r younger sonne, and given him 
 a taste of those apprehensions hee is like to 
 finde wth you, wch I tell him future obedience 
 to yor pleasure, rather than justification of past 
 passages, must remove. He professeth faire, 
 and ye ingenuitie of his nature doth, it without 
 words; but you knowe vertuous actions flow 
 not infallibly fro. the flexiblest dispositions : 
 there's onely a fit subject for admonition and 
 government to worke on, especially that wch is 
 paternall. I confesse my shallownesse to re- 
 solve, and therefore unwillingnesse to say any 
 thing concerning his course ; yet will I not give 
 over the consideration, because I much desire 
 to see yt spiritt rightly managed. But for yor 
 elder, I thinke you may with securitie returne 
 him in conuenient time, for certainly there was 
 nothing to administer from a plott ; and in an- 
 other action y t concerned himselfe, wch hee'll tell 
 you of, hee receaved goode satisfaction of the 
 vice-chancellor's faire carriage towards him. 
 I searched my study this morning for a booke 
 to send you of a like subject to yt of ye papers 
 I had of you, but finde it not. As soone as I 
 recouer it, I'll recommend it to yor view. 
 When you haue finished ye other part, I pray 
 thinke me as worthy of ye sight of it as ye for- 
 mer, and in both together I'll betray my weak- 
 nesse to my friend by declaring my sense of 
 them. That I did see is an exquisite nosegay, 
 composed of curious flowers, bound together 
 with as fine a thredd. But I must in the end 
 expect hony fro. my frend. Somewhat out of 
 those flowers digested made his owne, and giv- 
 ing a true taste of his owne sweetnesse, though 
 for that I shall awaite a fitter time and place. 
 The Lord sanctify unto you ye sowrenesse of 
 yor present estate, and ye comforts of yor pos- 
 ter itie. 
 
 " Yor ever ye same assured frend, 
 
 " Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 "April 4th, 1631." 
 
 The delicacy and beauty of the criticism at 
 the close of this letter could scarcely be sur- 
 passed. Eliot, in answer to the letter, proposes 
 to send his younger son, Richard, to the Neth- 
 erlands, to learn the art of war in the company 
 of Sir Horace Vere. This he thinks will be 
 the best mode of employing to a good purpose 
 his quick and vivacious humour. He states, 
 also, his elder son's desire to go to France, but 
 his own wish that he should remain at Oxford 
 till he should have obtained his "licence" or 
 degree at that university. Hampden replies in 
 an animated strain. Most beautiful and touch- 
 ing is his closing allusion to their mutual friend- 
 ship. Well did his after life "improve" and 
 approve the " noble purchas" of Eliot's affec- 
 tion ! 
 
 " Sir, I am so perfectly acquainted with 
 your cleare insight into the dispositions of men, 
 and abilitie to fit them with courses suitable, 
 that, had you bestowed sonnes of mine as you 
 have done yor owne, judgement durst hardly 
 have called it into question, especially when, in 
 laying the designe, you have prevented ye ob- 
 jections to bee made against it ; for if Mr. Rich.
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 245 
 
 Eliot will, in the intermissions of action, adde 
 study to practise, and adorn that lively spiritt 
 with flowers of contemplation, hee'll raise our 
 expectations of another Sr Edvv. Veere, that 
 had this character, ' All summer in the field, all 
 winter in his study ;' in whose fall fame makes 
 this kingdome a great loser ; and, having taken 
 this resolution from councell, with ye highest 
 wisdome (as I doubt not you haue), I hope and 
 praye y e same power will crowne it with a 
 blessing answerable to our wish. 
 
 " The way you take with my other frend de- 
 clares you to bee none of ye Bp of Exeter's 
 converts, of whose minde neither am I super- 
 stitiously ; but, had my opinion beene asked, I 
 should (as vulgar conceipts use to) haue shew- 
 ed my power rather to raise objections than to 
 answer them. A temper between Fraunce and 
 Oxford might have taken away his scruple, 
 with more advantage to his yeares to visit 
 Cambridge as a free man for varietie and de- 
 light, and there entertaine himselfe till ye next 
 spring, when universitie studyes and peace had 
 beene better settled than I learne it is ; for, 
 although hee bee one of those that, if his age 
 were looked for in no other booke but that of 
 the minde, would bee found no ward if you 
 should dye to-morrow, yet 'tis a great haz- 
 ard, methinkes, to see so sweete a disposi- 
 tion guarded with no more, amongst a people 
 whereof many make it their religion to bee su- 
 perstitious in impietie, and their behaviour to 
 bee affected in ill manners. But God, who 
 onely knowes ye periods of life, and opportuni- 
 ties to come, hath designed him (I hope) for 
 his owne service betime, and stirred up yor 
 providence to husband him so early for great 
 affaires. Then shall hee bee sure to finde him 
 in Fraunce, that Abraham did in Sichem, and 
 Joseph in Egipt, under whose wing alone is 
 perfect safetie. 
 
 Concerning that lord who is nowe reported 
 to bee as deepe in repentance as hee was pro- 
 found in sinne, the papers, &c., I shall take 
 leave fro. your favour, and my streight of time, 
 to bee silent till the next weeke, when I hope 
 for the happinesse to kisse your handes, and 
 present you with my most humble thankes for 
 yor letters, wch confirm ye observation I have 
 made in the progresse of affections, that it is 
 easier much to winne upon ingenuous natures 
 than to meritt it. This, they tell me, I have 
 done of your's ; and I account it a noble pur- 
 chas, wch to improve with the best services 
 you can commaund, and I performe. shall be ye 
 care of 
 
 " Your affectionate frend and servant, 
 " Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 
 " Hampden, May llth, 1631. 
 
 ' Present my services to Mr. Long, Mr. Val- 
 entine, &c. 
 
 " Do not thinke by what I say, yt I am fully 
 satisfied of your younger sonne's course intend- 
 ed, for I have a crotchett out of ye ordinary 
 way, wch I had acquainted you wth if I had 
 spoken wth you before hee had gone, but am 
 almost ashamed to communicate." 
 
 The mention of the " lord" in this letter re- 
 fers to Merven Touchet, the infamous Lord 
 Audley, of whose removal from the Tower, and 
 trial and sentence, Eliot had spoken in a pre- 
 vious letter. 
 
 The next letter is from Hampden to one of 
 the sons, his "young friends." It is to Rich- 
 ard, his favourite, who had been, for a time only, 
 admitted to live with his father in the Tower : 
 
 " Sir, I receaved yor commaunds by y e 
 handes of Mr. Wian, and was glad to knowe 
 by them that another's word had power to 
 commaund yor faith in my readinesse to obey 
 you, wch mine, it seemes, had not. If you yet 
 lack an experience, I wish you had put me 
 upon ye test of a worke more difficult and im- 
 portant, yt yor opinion might bee changed into 
 beliefe. That man you wrote for I will unfain- 
 edly receave into my goode opinion, and de- 
 clare it really when hee shall have occasion to 
 put me to ye proofe. I cannot trouble you with 
 many words this time. Make goode use of the 
 booke you shall receave from me, and of yor 
 time. Be sure you shall render a strict ac- 
 count of both to 
 
 " Yor ever assured frend and seruant, 
 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 
 " Present my service to Mr. Long. I would 
 faine heare of his health. 
 
 "Hampden, June 8th, 1631." 
 
 All the remaining letters are to Eliot. This 
 which follows is merely an apology for not wri- 
 ting ; but how gracefully it is worded ! 
 
 " Noble Sir, 'Tis well for me that letters 
 cannot blush, else you would easily reade me 
 guiltie. I am ashamed of so long a silence, 
 and knowe not how to excuse it ; for as no- 
 thing but businesse can speake for me, of wch 
 kinde I have many advocates, so can I not tell 
 how to call any businesse greater than holding 
 an affectionate correspondence with so excel- 
 lent a frend. My onely confidence is, I pleade 
 at a barre of love, where absolutions are much 
 more frequent than censures. Sure I am that 
 conscience of neglect doth not accuse me, 
 though evidence of fact doth. I would add 
 more, but ye entertainment of a stranger frend 
 calls upon me, and one other inevitable occa- 
 sion ; hold me excused, therefore, deare frend ; 
 and if you vouchsafe me a letter, let me beg of 
 you to teach me some thrift of time, that I may 
 imploy more in your service, who will ever bee 
 
 " Your faithful servant and affectionate frend, 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 
 " Commend my service to ye soldier, if not 
 gone to his colours. 
 
 "Hampden, March 21."* 
 
 The sweet and nervous style of the next, 
 which is a criticism on the " Monarchy of Man," 
 illustrates the literary taste and skill of Hamp- 
 den : 
 
 " Sir, You shall receave ye booke I prom- 
 ised by this bearer's immediate hande ; for ye 
 other papers I presume to take a little, and but 
 a little, respitt. I have looked upon yt rare 
 piece onely with a superficiall view, as at first 
 sight to take ye aspect and proportion in ye 
 whole ; after, with a more accurate eye, to 
 take out ye lineaments of every part. "Twere 
 rashnesse in me, therefore, to discover any 
 judgement before I have ground to make one. 
 This I discerne, that 'tis as compleate an im- 
 
 * This letter is addressed " To my honnored and deare 
 friend Sir John Eliott, at his lodging- in the Tower." I 
 copy it, as I have said, from the British Museum. The date 
 seems to me to be an obvious error for June. " The sol- 
 dier" referred to is Richard Eliot, of whom he speaks ia the 
 next letter, as fearing him to have gone.
 
 246 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 age of ye patterne as can be drawne by lines ; 
 a lively character of a large minde ; the sub- 
 ject, method, and expressions excellent and 
 homogeniall, and, to say truth (sweete heart), 
 somewhat exceeding my commendations. My 
 words cannot render them to the life ; yet <to 
 show my ingenuitie rather than wit) would not 
 a lease modell have given a full -representation 
 of that subject : not by diminution, but by con- 
 traction of parts 1 I desire to learne ; I dare 
 not say. The variations upon each particular 
 seeme many ; all, I confesse, excellent. The 
 fountaine was full ; ye channell narrow ; yt 
 may bee y e cause ; or that the author imitated 
 Virgill, who made more verses by many than 
 hee intended to write. To extract a just num- 
 ber, had I seen all his, I could easily have bidd 
 him make fewer ; but if hee had badd me tell 
 which hee should have spared, I had beene ap- 
 posed. So say I of these expressions ; and 
 that to satisfy you, not myselfe, but that, by 
 obeying you in a commaund so contrary to my 
 owne disposition, you may measure how large 
 a power you have ouer " Jo. HAMPDEN. . 
 
 "Hampden, June 29th, 1631. 
 
 " Recomend my seruice to Mr. Long ; and if 
 Sr 01. Luke bee in towne, expresse my affection 
 to him in these words ; ye first part of ye pa- 
 pers you had by ye handes of B. Valentine long 
 since. If you heare of yor sonnes, or can send 
 to ym, let me knowe." 
 
 The present of a small buck from the seat at 
 Hampden accompanied this next very graceful 
 note. By the postscript it appears that John 
 Eliot, the elder son, had been permitted to go 
 to France as he desired. 
 
 " Deare Sir, I receaued a letter from you 
 the last weeke, for wch I owe you ten, to coun- 
 tervaile those lines by excesse in number that 
 I cannot equall in weight. But time is not 
 mine nowe, nor hath beene since that came to 
 my handes ; in your favour, therefore, hold me 
 excused. This bearer is appointed to present 
 you wth a buck out of my paddock, wch must 
 bee a small one to hold proportion with ye place 
 and soyle it was bred in. Shortly I hope (if I 
 doe well to hope) to see you ; yet durst I not 
 prolong ye expectation of yor papers. You 
 have concerning them layde commaundes upon 
 me beyond my abilitie to give you satisfaction 
 in ; but if my apology will not serve when we 
 meete, I will not decline ye seruice to ye be- 
 traying of my owne ignorance, which yet I 
 hope yor love will couer. 
 
 " Yor ever assured frend and seruant, 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 
 " Hampden, July 27. 
 
 " I am heartily glad to learne my frend is 
 well in Fraunce. Captaine Waller hath beene 
 in these parts, who I have scene, but could not 
 entertaine ; to my shame and sorrow I speake 
 it." 
 
 The next refers to the emigration schemes* 
 
 * An ingenious attempt has been made by Mr. Towill 
 Rutt to show that Hampden had interested himself so far in 
 the " New World" as actually, in the recess between 
 James's last two Parliaments, to visit it in person. But 
 Hampden had recently married ; and, as no mention is 
 made of Mrs. Hampden in the record of the visit, does Mr. 
 Rutt think the patriot had tired so soon of her society ? 
 The attempt is too ingenious, however, to be passed alto- 
 gether, and therefore J present it to the reader from the 
 pages of the Examiner journal, where it appeared some 
 years since : " In a work printed at ' Boston N. E, 1736,' 
 
 in which the patriots of the time took so great 
 an interest. 
 
 " Noble Sir, I hope this letter is conveyed 
 to you by so safe a hande yt yo" will bee ye 
 first yt shall open it ; or, if not, yet, since you 
 injoy, as much as without contradiction you 
 may, ye libertie of a prison, it shall bee no of- 
 fence to wish you to make ye best use on't, 
 and yt God may finde you as much his, now 
 you injoy ye benefit of secondary helpes, as you 
 found him yo while, by deprivation of all oth- 
 ers, you were cast upon his immediate support. 
 This is all I have, or am willing to say ; but 
 yt ye paper of considerations concerning ye 
 plantation might bee very safely conueyed to 
 me by this hande, and, after transcribing, should 
 bee as safely returned, if you vouchsafe to send 
 it me. I beseeche you present my seruice to 
 
 entitled, A Chronological History of ffev> England, by 
 Thomas Prince, M. A., at p. 129, from ' Winslow's Rela- 
 tion,' one of the earliest ' printed tracts,' I find the follow- 
 ing narrative : ' 1623. March. News comes to Plimouth 
 that Masassoit is like to die, and that a Dutch ship is driv- 
 en ashore, before his house, so high, that she could not be 
 got off til! the tide's increase. Upon which the governor 
 sends Mr. Edward Winslow and Mr. John Hampden, a gen- 
 tleman of London, with Hobomak, to visit and help him, 
 and speak with the Dutch. The first night we lodge at 
 Namasket ; next day, at one, coine to a ferry in Corbitant's 
 country, and, three miles further, to Mattapuyst, his dwell- 
 ing-place (though he be no friend to us), but find him gone 
 to Pakanokik, about five or six miles off. Late within night 
 we get thither, whence the Dutch had departed ; find Ma- 
 sassoit extreme low, his sight gone, his teeth fixed, having 
 swallowed nothing for two days ; but using means, he sur- 
 prisingly revives. We stay and help him two nights and 
 two days. At the end of the latter, taking our leave, he 
 expresses his great thankfulness. We come and lodge with 
 Corbitant at Mattapnyst, who wonders that we, being two, 
 should be so venturous. Next day, on our journey, Hobo- 
 mak tells us, that at his coming away, Masassoit privately 
 charged him to tell Mr. Winslow there was a plot of the 
 Massachusuks. That night we lodge at Namasket ; the 
 next get home.* Edward Winslow, one of the fathers of 
 New England, first appears, ' 1620, Dec. 6,' among ' ten of 
 
 of the best family of any of the Plimouth planters, his fa- 
 ther being a person of some figure at Droitwich, in Wor- 
 cestershire.' The following entry in the Chronological 
 History (p. 140) may fix, with great probability, in the ab- 
 sence of any information on the subject, the date of Hamp- 
 den's return to England : ' 1623, Sept. 10. This day the 
 Ann sails for London, being laden with clapboards, and all 
 the beaver and other furs we have ; with whom we send 
 Mr. Winslow, to inform how things are, and procure what 
 we want.' Edward Winslow printed his 'Account of N. E. 
 to Sept. 10' during this visit to London, whence he returned 
 in 1624. After governorships of Plimouth and missions to 
 England, he settled there in 1646 as agent for the colony. 
 In 1665 he was appointed by the Protector one of ' three 
 commissioners to superintend and direct the operations of 
 Penn and Venables,' and ' died on board the fleet, in the 
 West Indies,' aged 60, leaving a 'name' that ' in New Eng- 
 land will never be forgotten.' Such was the associate of 
 John Hampden. Of the other dramatis persona:, Masassoit 
 was a 'great sagamore,' who, 'in 1621,' had visited the 
 governor, when, ' after salutations, the governor kissing his 
 hand, and the king kissing him, they agree on a league of 
 friendship,' which ' lasted to 1675.' Hobomak was ' a chief 
 captain of Masassoit's,' and Corbitant 'a petty sachem.' 
 Dr. Holmes, of Cambridge, N. E., in his American Annals 
 (1808), says (i., 185), ' Mr. Hampden wintered (1623) with 
 the Plimouth colonists, and desired much to see the coun- 
 try, and is supposed by Dr. Belknapp (Biog,, ii., 229) to be 
 the same who afterwards distinguished himself by his op- 
 position to the arbitrary demands of Charles I.' From these 
 early associations, Hampden would probably be foremost, in 
 1638, to promote that well-known project of emigration 
 which Charles, so fatally for himself, interrupted by his 
 prerogative. It appears, in the Parliamentary History, that 
 from Feb. 1621-2 to Feb. 1623-4, Hampden's senatorial du- 
 ties must have been entirely suspended. Thus there would 
 be abundant leisure for the visit to America." [I see nothing 
 to militate against Mr. Rutt's view of the case. In an aga 
 that called for sacrifice, Hampdea would readily quit his 
 home for public service. C.]
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 247 
 
 Mr. Valentine, and Mr. Long, my countryman, 
 if with you, and let me bee honoured with the 
 style of 
 
 " Yor faithful frend and seruant, 
 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN." 
 
 The last letter contains a noble compliment 
 to the genius of Eliot. 
 
 " Sir, In the end of my travailes, I meate 
 ye messengers of yor love, wch bring me a most 
 gratefull wellcome. Yor intentions outfly mine, 
 that thought to have prevented yo, and con- 
 vince me of my disabilitie to keepe pace with 
 you or the times. My imployment of late in 
 interrogatory with like affaires hath deprived 
 me of leisure to compliment, and ye frame of 
 dispositions is able to justle the estyle of a let- 
 ter. You were farre enough above my emula- 
 tion before ; but, breathing nowe the same 
 ayre wth an ambassador, you are out of all 
 ayme. I believe well of his negociation for ye 
 large testimony you have given of his parts, 
 and I believe ye King of Sweden's sword will 
 bee ye best of his topicks to persuade a peace. 
 'Tis a powerfull one nowe, if I heare aright, 
 fame giving Tilly a late defeate in Saxony wth 
 20,000 losse, the truth whereof will facilitate 
 yor worke, the Spaniard's curtesy being knowne 
 to bee no lesse than willingly to render that 
 which hee cannot hold. The notion of these ef- 
 fects interrupts not or quiet, though ye reasons 
 by wch they are gouerned do transcend or pitch. 
 Yor apprehensions, yt ascend a region above 
 those clouds wch shadow us, are fit to pierce 
 such heights, and 0" to receave such notions 
 as descend from thence ; which while you are 
 pleased to impart, you make the demonstra- 
 tions of yor favour to become ye rich posses- 
 sions of 
 
 " Yor ever faithful frend and seruant, 
 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN. 
 
 " Present my seruice to Mr. Long. 
 
 " Hampden, October 3. 
 
 " God, I thanke him, hath made me father of 
 another sonne." 
 
 The melancholy progress of the public affairs 
 during this correspondence, and after it had 
 been closed by the death of the illustrious pris- 
 oner,* has been amply described. In retire- 
 ment at his estate in Buckinghamshire, Hamp- 
 den continued to improve the literary tastes 
 and acquirements in which he already excelled 
 so highly, and, it is said, while the crisis of af- 
 fairs approached more nearly, began to prepare 
 himself for the last extremity they threatened. 
 Davila's history of the civil wars of France 
 became his manual his vade mecum, as Sir 
 Philip Warwick calls it ; as though in the 
 study of that sad story of strife and bloodshed 
 he already saw the parallel which England was 
 to afford so soon. The bitterness of spirit with 
 which he thought of these things may have 
 been greatly increased by the death of his 
 wife,t which happened at about this time. At 
 
 * Eliot and Hatnpden, it is worth adding, had changed 
 portraits some time before, and both these portraits are now 
 in the possession of the Eliot family. That of Hampden, 
 the only original in existence, and a portrait of noble ex- 
 pression, has been engraved for this work, by the courteous 
 permission of the Earl of St. Germain's. A dose and earnest 
 look at the engraving, which is exquisitely faithful, will fur- 
 nish an eloquent description of the face of Hampden. 
 
 t She lies buried in the chaucel of great Hampdeu church, 
 where an epitaph on a plaiu bluck stone records her merits 
 
 last, however, he abandoned his retirement, 
 dismissed the thought of a solitary and seclu- 
 ded life, and became one of the acknowledged 
 leaders of the people. He imitated in this the 
 great and virtuous Coligny, described in his 
 favourite work. 
 
 In the autumn of 1635, ship-money writs 
 were sent into Buckinghamshire. Many gen- 
 tlemen of that county refused to pay, and 
 among them Hampden. Accordingly, on the 
 25th of January, 1635-6, new sheriffs having 
 been in the interval appointed, a writ was is- 
 sued, directed " To Sir Peter Temple, Baronet, 
 late high sheriff, and Heneage Proby, Esq., 
 now appointed high sheriff for the county of 
 Bucks," directing the one to deliver, and the 
 other to receive, the original warrant, as well 
 as all accounts and returns concerning the 
 levy of the former year. This return was ac- 
 cordingly made by the assessors of the differ- 
 ent parishes ; and, among others where pay- 
 ment had been delayed, a return by those of 
 the parish of Great Kimble, a village at the 
 foot of the Chiltern Hills, round which the 
 principal property of John Hampden lay, and in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of his house. The 
 return contains the names of those who, with 
 him, had tendered their refusal to the consta- 
 bles and assessors, together with an account 
 of the sums charged upon each person. Among 
 the names of the protestors, it is to be observ- 
 ed that the constables and assessors had the 
 courage to return their own, and at the head 
 of the list stands that of John Hampden, " as a 
 passport," Lord Nugent justly says, " for the 
 rest to an honourable memory, so long as the 
 love of liberty shall retain a place in the hearts 
 of the British nation." 
 
 This protest, however, was not thought suf- 
 ficient, by the then rampant tyranny of Charles, 
 to excuse Sir Peter Temple for his default of 
 arrears. He was summoned before the coun- 
 cil-table : ill health prevented his instant at- 
 tendance ; and an officer was at once sent to 
 hold him in close custody at his own residence 
 at Stowe. Lord Nugent found one of his let- 
 ters, written under these circumstances, among 
 the manuscripts there. It is worth quoting, 
 as an illustration of the occasion and the time : 
 
 " Deere Mother, In haste I write to you. I 
 hauing my handfts full, cannot write to you 
 with my owne handes, I hauing byne latelye ill 
 at London, and takeing physicke. Yet must I 
 leaue the meanes of my health to doe the kinge 
 seruice. I was sente for on the 30th of June, 
 by a messenger, to attend the kinge on Sun- 
 daye, the 3d of July, about the shippe-moneye ; 
 wherein I am blamed for the sherriffe's actions 
 that nowe is, and am compelled wth a messen- 
 ger, nowe wayting on me, with all the distress- 
 es and imprisoneings that maye be imposed on 
 the cOuntrye. But the sherriffe must answere 
 what is done by me in the future tyme. I am 
 to attende the kinge at Theobalde's, on the 17th 
 daye of July, to giue an accompte to him what 
 I haue done in the seruice, and, as he likes my 
 proceedinges, I am to continue in the messen- 
 
 ineou ui i yni mill ii.unj'ut'ii , aim niv euuim .\i 
 
 afterward married to Sir Robert Pye, of Berkshire,
 
 248 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ger's hande, or be releassed, or worsse. My 
 lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath byne for 
 manye yeares, to the commonwealth, and nowe 
 to the kinge. The change is somethinge 
 amended for the pressent, but yet released of 
 neither. Not soe much tyme as to doe my du- 
 tye to my deere parentes, nor to sende to them. 
 Yett I hoped that they wolde haue sente for a 
 bucke, or what Stowe wolde afforde, before thys 
 tyme. But, seeinge they will not, I will spare 
 rnyselfe soe much tyme as to pressente nowe 
 unto them one by thys bearer. 
 
 "Although I am debarred from father, moth- 
 er, wife, and chilldren, and state though some 
 of them farre absente wyth thys I pressente 
 my dutye, wyth these unhappye lynes, and re- 
 mayne 
 
 " Yor sonne, that loues and honoures 
 my father and you, 
 
 " PETER TEMPLE. 
 
 " Stowe, thys 8th of July, 1630. 
 
 " To his deere mother, the Lady Hester 
 Temple, at Dorsett, theis pressente." 
 
 The history of Hampden's immortal trial, in 
 which for many days, though in the midst of 
 public dangers and disquiet, the fundamental 
 laws of our country were contested without re- 
 proach or passion, has been sufficiently glanced 
 at in these pages. " The judgment," says 
 Clarendon, "proved of more advantage and 
 credit to the gentleman condemned than to the 
 king's service." Then indeed Hampden "be- 
 came the argument of all tongues, every man 
 inquiring who and what he was, that durst at 
 his own charge support the liberty and property 
 of the kingdom, and rescue his country, as he 
 thought, from being made a prey to the court."* 
 Even courtiers and crown lawyers spoke re- 
 spectfully of him ; for, adds Clarendon, "his 
 carriage throughout that agitation was with 
 that rare temper and modesty, that they who 
 watched him narrowly to find some advantage 
 against his person, to make him less resolute 
 in his cause, were compelled to give him a just 
 testimony." The court continued, after the 
 trial, to levy the hated tax more recklessly 
 than ever, but it soon became the recklessness 
 of despair. 
 
 The third Parliament was summoned, and 
 Hampden whose share in the immediate caus- 
 es which led to that memorable event has been 
 described in the memoir of Pym having re- 
 turned from London to his native seat, was 
 solicited, by the grateful men of Buckingham- 
 shire, to become their representative. In this 
 character, and with all the new influence it 
 gave him, he soon again left Hampden, never, 
 except at rare intervals of some few hours' du- 
 ration, to return to it again. " His mansion," 
 says Lord Nugent, " still remains. It stands 
 away from both the principal roads which pass 
 through Buckinghamshire, at the back of that 
 chalky range of the Chilterns which bounds, on 
 one side, the vale of Aylesbury. The scenery 
 which immediately surrounds it, from its seclu- 
 sion little known, is of singular beauty, opening 
 upon a ridge which commands a very extensive 
 view over several counties, and diversified by 
 dells, clothed with a natural growth of box, 
 juniper, and beech. t What has once been the 
 
 * Clarendon. 
 
 t The woods of Hampden terminate to the north upon 
 
 abode of such a man can never but be interest- 
 ing from the associations which belong to it. 
 But, even forgetting these, no one, surely, who 
 has heart or taste for the charm of high, breezy 
 hills, and green glades enclosed within the 
 shadowy stillness of ancient woods, and ave- 
 nues leading to a house on whose walls the re- 
 mains of the different styles of architecture, 
 from the early Norman to the Tudor, are still 
 partly traced through the deforming innovations 
 of the eighteenth century no one, surely, can 
 visit the residence of Hampden, and not do 
 justice to the love which its master bore it, and 
 to that stronger feeling which could lead him 
 from such a retirement to the toils and perils 
 to which, thenceforth, he entirely devoted him- 
 self." 
 
 Hampden has left no record of his eloquence 
 behind him, but its influence is stamped immor- 
 tally on Clarendon's account of him at this mo- 
 mentous period. ".Mr. Hampden," says the 
 noble historian, describing the leading members 
 of this Parliament, " was a man, it may be, of 
 the most discerning spirit, and of the greatest 
 address and insinuation to bring any thing to 
 pass which he desired, of any man of that time, 
 and who laid the design deepest. He was a 
 gentleman of a good extraction and a fair for- 
 tune, who, from a life of great pleasure and li- 
 cense, had on a sudden retired to extraordinary 
 sobriety and strictness, and yet retained his 
 usual cheerfulness and affability ; which, to- 
 gether with the opinion of his wisdom and jus- 
 tice, and the courage he had showed in opposing 
 the ship-money, raised his reputation to a very 
 great height, not only in Buckinghamshire, 
 where he lived, but generally throughout the 
 kingdom. He \vas not a man of many words, 
 and rarely begun the discourse, or made the 
 first entrance upon any business that was as- 
 sumed ; but a very weighty speaker, and after 
 he had heard a full debate, and observed how 
 the House was like to be inclined, took up the 
 argument, and shortly, and clearly, and craftily 
 so stated it, that he commonly conducted it to 
 the conclusion he desired ; and if he found he 
 could not do that, he never was without the 
 dexterity to divert the debate to another time, 
 and to prevent the determining anything in the 
 negative which might prove inconvenient in the 
 future. He made so great a show of civility, 
 and modesty, and humility, and always of mis- 
 trusting his own judgment, and of esteeming 
 his with whom he conferred for the present, 
 that he seemed to have no opinions or resolu- 
 tions but such as he contracted from the infor- 
 mation and instruction he received upon the 
 discourses of others, whom he had a wonderful 
 art of governing and leading into his principles 
 and inclinations, while they believed that he 
 
 arils to recall their troops from the pursuit
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 249 
 
 wholly depended upon their counsel and advice. ; 
 No man had ever a greater power over himself, 
 or was less the man that he seemed to be, } 
 which shortly after appeared to everybody, 
 when he cared less to keep on the mask." The 
 character of Clarendon himself is too well 
 known to render any modification of this lan- 
 guage necessary. The circumstances which 
 explain the colour he always strives to give to 
 the profound policy of the popular leaders have 
 had abundant illustration in these pages. It is 
 enough now to show that that policy is, even 
 thus, confirmed by him ; and that upon him, 
 equally with the men of their own party, the 
 genius of its great authors impressed itself 
 the more deeply, perhaps, that it was so obsti- 
 nately resisted. 
 
 To the business affairs of this Parliament 
 Hampden applied himself with his accustomed 
 zeal. On the 16th, three days after its meet- 
 ing, he was on a committee to examine all 
 questions relating to election returns, and other 
 privileges ; and on the 17th, on one to report 
 upon the state of the journals and records. On 
 the 18th, on one concerning the violation of 
 privilege, at the close of the last Parliament ; 
 and on the 20th, on another to prepare an ad- 
 dress to the king, praying " that the like in- 
 fringement of their liberties might not be prac- 
 tised in future, to their prejudice and his own." 
 On the 21st he was on the committee appointed 
 to inquire into the effect of the commission 
 lately granted to convocation ; and on the 22d, 
 on two others one upon the case of Smart, a 
 prebendary of Durham, who had petitioned, as 
 a prisoner, against Bishop Neile ; and the other 
 to prepare the heads of a conference with the 
 Lords concerning the petitions from the coun- 
 try. On the 23d he was on one to expedite 
 the matter of this conference, by stating the 
 reasons for postponing the supplies until effect- 
 ual means should have been taken to prevent 
 innovations in religion, to secure the property 
 of the subject, and the privileges of Parliament, 
 and to prepare an answer on these heads to the 
 king. On the 24th he was manager of that 
 conference ; on the 25th he reported it to the 
 House ; and on the 1st of May we find him re- 
 porting a second conference, touching some 
 matters which had occurred in the first. 
 
 The disgrace of Williams has been alluded 
 to : the wily prelate had long been striving to 
 regain his position by petitions to the king ; or, 
 by a summons before Parliament, to make an 
 effort for it that way. Sentence, however, in- 
 terrupted his schemes at last, suspending him 
 from all his offices and dignities, and imposing 
 upon him a fine of 10,000, and imprisonment 
 during the king's pleasure. 
 
 Finding the Lords not disposed to assert with 
 spirit the question of privilege in his behalf, he 
 endeavoured to engage Hampden, during this 
 session, to make his case one of Parliamentary 
 grievance. With this view, it may be sup- 
 posed, he affected his old patriotic arts to en- 
 gage the patriot's sympathy. Be this as it may, 
 among the manuscripts at Lambeth is a sheet 
 of notes in his handwriting, under the title of 
 " Remembrances to Mr. Hampden," dated April 
 27th. to which the answer is found appended. 
 The style of cold civility in which Hampden 
 declines this business was that of a man who 
 Ii 
 
 already suspected that the public virtue of the 
 bishop was wavering, and that he was preparing 
 to embark again in the course of court favour, 
 into which, on his enlargement and elevation to 
 the archbishopric of York, he soon relapsed. 
 Hampden's answer was as follows : 
 
 " My Lord, I should be very ready to serve 
 you in anything I conceaved good for you and 
 fitt for mee ; but in your Ipp's present com- 
 mands I doubt that to make overture of yor in- 
 tentions, and be prevented by a suddaine conclu- 
 sion of ye Parlt, w>cA many fearc, may render yor 
 condition worse than nowe it is. To begin in 
 or house is not ye right place ; the most im- 
 portant businesses of the king and king<i are 
 press'd on with such expedition yt any of a 
 more particular nature will be but unwellcome, 
 and hardly prosecuted wth effect ; besides that 
 there is at this instant a tendernesse betweene 
 ye Lords and us about priviledge ; and for my 
 owne unfittnesse, I neede mention no more but 
 my disability to carry through a businesse of 
 this nature, though yr IP may easily conceave 
 another incompetency in my person. In these 
 regards I humbly desire yor IP to excuse mee, 
 and thereby to lay a newe obligation upon mee 
 of being, Your Idps most humble servant, 
 "Jo. HAMPDEN.* 
 
 " Westmr, Apr. 29, 1640." 
 
 In the Long Parliament, Hampden again sat 
 for Buckinghamshire. His exertions in the 
 great interval of excitement before it met have 
 been already detailed. He had married again 
 during the present year, and now his wife join- 
 ed him, with his family, in London, and the es- 
 tablishment at Hampden was broken up. The 
 lady's name was Letitia Vachell, the daughter 
 of a gentleman of Coley, near Reading. She 
 survived Hampden very many years, during 
 which she again resided on her husband's old 
 estate. 
 
 Hampden discharged himself of his duties, 
 at this the final crisis of the English liberties 
 and laws, as became the virtue and courage of 
 his character. He who had been formerly, 
 though ever pursuing the strictest line of duty, 
 yielding and gentle, was now stern and reso- 
 lute ; he who had kept within the letter of 
 precedents while yet serving the cause in his 
 private capacity, now found "the eyes of all 
 men fixed upon him as their Patrice Pater, and 
 the pilot that must steer the vessel through 
 the tempests and rocks which threatened it." 
 What wonder that, with such responsibility, 
 his views became larger and more extended 1 
 What wonder if, from a meek bearing, as Lord 
 Clarendon tells us, " his nature and carriage 
 seemed much fiercer than before 1" Thrust 
 from the legitimate ground of warfare on which 
 he would willingly have taken issue, he rose, 
 by his resources of mind and heart, and shift- 
 ing from the narrower grounds of precedent 
 and privilege, fell back on the great rights of 
 mankind, out of which, and for which, all laws 
 arise. It is useless to deny that Hampden had 
 then become (as Clarendon terms him) a "Root 
 and Branch man." All his subsequent acts 
 prove it. He had taken higher ground, and 
 would no longer be contented with lopping off 
 the branches, but was resolved to lay the axe 
 
 * Nugent's Memorials, rol. i., p. 297.
 
 250 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to the root, of the tree of corruption. Why 
 does Lord Nugent shrink from contemplating 
 his character in this view? It would have 
 helped him to conclusions more just, and to 
 reflections more beneficial, than those which 
 disfigure the latter portion of the first volume 
 of his "Memorials," where he speaks of "the 
 memory of Hampden not being stained by any 
 appearance of his having been concerned in 
 Stratford's attainder." If his name does not 
 appear in the proceedings, neither does that of 
 Oliver Cromwell : but what will the noble au- 
 thor of the " Memorials" infer from that 1 That 
 Cromwell opposed the attainder 1 Is it even 
 pretended that Hampden opposed it] By no 
 means !* We are simply told by Lord Nugent 
 that, " being only doubtful as a matter of pre- 
 cedent, but clear to him in respect of the guilt 
 of the accused person," and knowing that, if it 
 did not pass, " all law but that of the sceptre 
 and the sword was at an end," he did what 1 
 he stood by with all his lofty thoughts of the 
 thousands of families whose quarrel he had 
 embraced, and left the burden of the deed ne- 
 cessary for their happiness to his great fellow- 
 labourer Pym, that he might himself escape 
 the odium of having departed from a strict let- 
 ter of precedent, and might appear graceful, to 
 an aristocratic posterity ! And Lord Nugent 
 thinks he is adorning the memory of Hampden 
 while striving to inflict this stain upon it, and 
 talks of the injustice which has been done to 
 the great patriot on this point by Clarendon 
 and others. Why, if it be indeed true that he 
 retired from the division on the attainder be- 
 fore the question was put, no doubt he had ad- 
 mirable reasons for doing so, and rested mean- 
 while on the surety of its passing ; for even 
 Lord Nugent does not pretend to say that he 
 had not its success much at heart. Why, then, 
 blame Clarendon 1 for it seems to me that what 
 Clarendon says (in one of his passages of cov- 
 ert and falsely-coloured meaning) of Hamp- 
 den's character so far bears out Lord Nugent, 
 and that they both conspire in this instance to 
 reflect no additional honour on the patriot. 
 " He begot many opinions and motions," says 
 that historian, " the education whereof he com- 
 mitted to other men ; so far disguising his own 
 designs, that he seemed seldom to wish more 
 than was concluded ; and in many gross con- 
 clusions, which would hereafter contribute to 
 
 * " But why then, it is asked, if Hampden disapproved 
 of the precedent of a bill of attainder, did he not make head 
 Bgninst it as manfully as he had before supported the im- 
 peachment? Plainly because, in a case doubtful to him 
 only as a matter of precedent, but clear to him in respect 
 of the guilt of the accused person in a case in which the 
 accused person, in his estimation, deserved death, and in 
 which all law but that of the sceptre and the sword was at 
 an end if he had escaped it when all the ordinary protec- 
 tion of law to the subject throughout the country was sus- 
 pended, and suspended mainly by the counsels of Stratford 
 himself, Hampden wag not prepared to heroically immolate 
 the liberties of England in order to save the life of him who 
 xvould have destroyed them. Hampden probably considered 
 the bill which took away Strafford's life (and, indeed, it 
 must in fairness be so considered) as a revolutionary act, 
 undertaken for the defence of the Commonwealth. That 
 in his conscience he believed it to be an act of substantial 
 injustice to the person arraigned, no man has any right to 
 conclude. I moreover aver, that there is not more ground 
 for imputing a participation in that measure to him than to 
 Lord Clarendon, and not near so much as to Lord Falk- 
 land." Nugent's Memorials of Hampden, vol. i., p. 379, 380. 
 Lord Clarendon supported the measure, and so, most cer- 
 tainly, did Lord Falkland. 
 
 designs not yet set on foot, when he found them 
 sufficiently backed by majority of voices, he 
 icould withdraw himself before the question, that 
 he might seem not to consent to so much visible 
 unreasonableness."* 
 
 But this is merely another of Lord Claren- 
 don's dexterous attempts to mislead, and it is 
 to be regretted that a friend to the "good 
 cause" should in any way countenance it. 
 What is Lord Nugent's authority for his opin- 
 ion that Hampden shrunk from the side of Pym 
 during the progress of Strafford's attainder! 
 I will quote the entire passage of the " Memo- 
 rials." "Falkland, it appears clearly from Sir 
 Ralph Verney's notes, on the 15th of April, 
 spoke in answer to Digby and in favour of the 
 bill Hampden never; and on the 16th, while 
 Hampden was on one committee to prepare 
 heads for a conference ' concerning their lord- 
 ships' resolution to hear counsel in matter of 
 law, and to desire that their lordships would 
 use all expedition to give an end to this trial 
 as much as in justice may be,' Falkland was 
 on another which was appointed to prepare 
 heads for a conference ' concerning the further 
 proceedings,' on the report of which committee 
 it was that the bill was passed. In debate, 
 Hampden never alluded to the proceeding by 
 bill but once. On the 16th of April, when it 
 was discussed, pending the attainder, whether 
 the Commons should continue to hear the earl's 
 counsel at the bar of the Lords, or proceed 
 with the bill, St. John, having said that, ' being 
 possessed of a bill, they had made themselves 
 judges, and being so, it were a dishonour to 
 hear counsel anywhere but at their own bar ;' 
 and Colepepper having said, 'if we reply to 
 Lord Strafford's counsel before the Lords, we 
 prejudice our cause in taking away the power 
 of declaring treason,' Hampden, according to 
 Sir Ralph Verney's notes, in opposition to his 
 fellow-managers, urged that they should pro- 
 ceed, not by bill, but by trial at the Lords' bar. 
 'The bill nowe depending doth not tie us to 
 goe by bill. Our counsell hath been heard ; 
 ergo, in justice, we must heare his. Noe more 
 prejudice to goe to heare matter of law, than 
 to heare counsell to matter of fact.' " Now 
 the latter words do not bear out the previous 
 statement of them. It has been justly observ- 
 edf that there is good reason to question wheth- 
 er, in this discussion, it was considered as an 
 alternative to hear the earl's counsel at the 
 Lords' bar or proceed with the bill, for by the 
 result of that day's debate it appears that both 
 were done, the committee answering, " after 
 some deliberation with the House, that since 
 the Lords had so resolved, they would not deny 
 it to be there present, and to hear what his 
 counsel could say for him ; but to reply any 
 more in public they neither could nor would, 
 because of the bill already past ; only if the 
 
 * I have ventured to reprint these remarks on this great 
 error, as I conceive it to be, of Lord Nugent's book, from a 
 periodical for which they were written at the time of its 
 publication. I have seen no reason to alter my opinion du- 
 ring the last six years, and I again use the same expression 
 of it, because it became the subject of remark and quotation 
 in a subsequent controversy between Mr. Southey and Lord 
 Nugent, and I would not be supposed to have merely stolen 
 my present opinion from the " professor of the hip- and-thigh. 
 school," so often referred to there. I have had no reason, 
 hitherto to avoid avowing myself as that " hip-and-thigh. 
 professor." t Quarterly Review, voL xlvii., p. 501.
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 251 
 
 Lords should take any scruple in the matter 
 of law, they would be ready to give them sat- 
 isfaction by a private conference." So that 
 Harapden's opinion, it appears, prevailed, and 
 the bill nevertheless proceeded. It has not 
 been discovered that on any other occasion he 
 alluded to the bill ; and it is obvious that there 
 is no ground here for such a charge as that of 
 Lord Nugent, or such a mere party statement 
 as Lord Clarendon's. 
 
 Very certain and unequivocal indeed must 
 be the evidence that should so impugn Hamp- 
 den's memory. Sufficient has been said in the 
 progress of this work to prove that no one of 
 that age not even Pym himself looked at the 
 great question of resistance to tyranny on lar- 
 ger or more extended grounds, or in a more 
 philosophic spirit. It was Hampden who first 
 dared to anticipate a broader field of warfare 
 than the floor of the House of Commons, and 
 to prepare himself for a more real struggle ; 
 /and, constantly in communion with his friend 
 and cousin, Oliver Cromwell, it was Hampden 
 who advised with him great projects of free- 
 dom ; whose penetrating spirit first pointed to 
 that remarkable person as likely to become, 
 " in case of a breach with the king, the greatest 
 man in England ;" and whose virtue, at all 
 times equal to his intellect and courage, would 
 most surely, had not death stepped in, have 
 prevented even Cromwell's traitorous usurpa- 
 tion on the English Commonwealth. 
 
 Hampden's course in this Parliament was 
 given at the time the great questions of Pym's 
 life were detailed. Hampden was second to 
 Pym alone, and to the aid of everything which 
 the wisdom and vigilance of that great states- 
 man planned, he brought an influence of almost 
 irresistible power. He was, as I have shown, 
 an especially earnest promoter of the grand re- 
 monstrance and of the anti-episcopal measures. 
 In regard to the latter, it may be important 
 here to use, as an illustration of his real opin- 
 ions, even one of the most artful and disingen- 
 uous statements of Clarendon. Describing the 
 first debate on the bill for taking away the 
 bishops' votes, and mentioning Lord Falkland's 
 support of it, " Mr. Hyde," in the dignity of the 
 historian Clarendon, observes : " The House 
 was so marvellously delighted to see the two 
 inseparable friends [Falkland and Hyde] divided 
 in so important a point, that they could not 
 contain from a kind of rejoicing ; and the more, 
 because they saw Mr. Hyde was much sur- 
 prised with the contradiction ; as in truth he 
 was, having never discovered the least incli- 
 nation in the other towards such a compliance ; 
 and therefore they entertained an imagination 
 and hope that they might work the Lord Falk- 
 land to a farther concurrence with them. But 
 they quickly found themselves disappointed, 
 and that, as there was not the least interrup- 
 tion of close friendship between the other two, 
 so, when the same argument came again into 
 debate, about six months after, the Lord Falk- 
 land changed his opinion, and gave them all 
 the opposition he could : nor was he reserved 
 in acknowledging ' that he had been deceived, 
 and by whom,' and confessed to his friends, 
 with whom he would deal freely, 'that Mr. 
 Hampden had assured him that, if that bill 
 might pass, there would be nothing more at- 
 
 tempted to the prejudice of the Church ;' which 
 he thought, as the world then went, would be 
 no ill composition."* 
 
 And why had that bill ceased to be a " good 
 composition 1" Because it was refused by the 
 House of Lords when first presented there. It 
 was the old story of the sibyl and her leaves ; 
 and though two hundred years have passed, 
 that story is again in the course of rehearsal. 
 No one should have known better than Claren- 
 don the great truth which the very distinction 
 he himself has marked between the early and 
 later years of Hampden so strikingly illustrates 
 that justice deferred, and rights withheld, 
 will always enhance the price at which safety 
 and peace must, in the end, be purchased. 
 
 Hampden's mission to Scotland to overlook 
 and check the king is already before the read- 
 er ; and I now approach the only speech which 
 remains upon record with his name attached to 
 it. It purports to have been spoken on the 
 memorable morning already so fully described, 
 after the impeachment of the five members, 
 among whom Hampden's eminence and bold- 
 ness had of course placed him. I quote it, 
 without abridgment, from a small quarto pam- 
 phlet of the time. 
 
 "Mr. SPEAKER, It is a true saying of the 
 wise man, ' That all things happen alike to all 
 men, as well to the good man as to the bad." 
 There is no state or condition whatsoever, ei- 
 ther of prosperity or adversity, but all sorts of 
 men are sharers in the same : no man can be 
 discerned truly by the outward appearance, 
 whether he be a good subject either to his God, 
 his prince, or his country, until he be tried by 
 the touchstone of loyalty. Give me leave, I 
 beseech you, to parallel the lives of either sort, 
 that we may in some measure discern truth 
 from falsehood ; and in speaking, I shall simi- 
 lize their lives. 
 
 " I. In religion towards God. II. In loyalty 
 and due subjection to their sovereign, in their 
 affection towards the safety of their country. 
 
 " I. Concerning religion. The best means to 
 discern between the true and false religion is 
 by searching the sacred writings of the Old and 
 New Testament, which is of itself pure, indited 
 by the Spirit of God, and written by holy men, 
 unspotted in their lives and conversations : and 
 by this sacred word may we prove whether our 
 religion be of God or no ; and by looking in 
 this glass, we may discern whether we are in 
 the right way or no. 
 
 " And looking into the same, I find by this 
 truth of God that there is but one God, one 
 Christ, one faith, one religion, which is the 
 Gospel of Christ, and the doctrine of the 
 prophets and apostles. 
 
 " In these two Testaments is contained all 
 things necessary to salvation ; if that our reli- 
 gion doth hang upon this doctrine, and no other 
 secondary means, then it is true ; to which 
 comes nearest the Protestant religion, which 
 we profess, as I really and verily believe ; and, 
 consequently, that religion which joineth with 
 this doctrine of Christ and his apostles, the tra- 
 ditions and inventions of men, prayers to the 
 Virgin Mary, angels, saints, that are used in the 
 exercise of their religion, strange and super- 
 
 * Hist., Tol. i., p. 413,414.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 stitious worshipping, cringing, bowing, creep- 
 ing to the altar, using pictures, dirges, and such 
 like, cannot be true, but erroneous, nay, devil- 
 ish : and all this is used and maintained in the 
 Church of Rome, as necessary as the Scripture 
 to salvation ; therefore is a false and errone- 
 ous church, both in doctrine and discipline, and 
 all other sects and schisms, that lean not only 
 on the Scripture, though never so contrary to 
 the Church of Rome, is a false worshipping of 
 God, and not the true religion. And thus much 
 concerning religion, to discern the truth and 
 falsehood thereof. 
 
 " II. I come now, Mr. Speaker, to the second 
 thing intimated unto you, which was how to 
 discern, in a state, between good subjects and 
 bad, by their loyalty and due subjection to their 
 lawful sovereign ; in which I shall, under fa- 
 vour, observe two things. 
 
 " (1.) Lawful subjection to a king in his own 
 person, and the commands, edicts, and procla- 
 mations of the prince and his privy council. 
 
 " (2.) Lawful obedience to the laws, statutes, 
 and ordinances made, enacted by the king and 
 the. Lords, with the free consent of his great 
 council of state assembled in Parliament. 
 
 " For the first. To deny a willing and duti- 
 ful obedience to a lawful sovereign and his 
 privy council (for as Camden truly saith, the 
 commands of the Lords, privy councillors, and the 
 edicts of the prince are all one, for they are insep- 
 arable, the one never without the other), either to 
 defend his royal person and kingdoms against 
 the enemies of the same, either public or pri- 
 vate ; or to defend the ancient privileges and 
 prerogatives of the king, pertaining and belong- 
 ing of right to his royal crown, and the main- 
 tenance of his honour and dignity ; or to defend 
 and maintain true religion, established in the 
 land, according to the truth of God, is one sign 
 of an evil and bad subject. 
 
 " Secondly. To yield obedience to the com- 
 mands of a king, if against the true religion, 
 against the ancient and fundamental laws of 
 the land, is another sign of an ill subject. 
 
 " Thirdly. To resist the lawful power of the 
 king, to raise insurrection against the king, ad- 
 mit him adverse in his religion, to conspire 
 against his sacred person, or any ways to rebel, 
 though commanding things against our con- 
 sciences in exercising religion, or against the 
 rights and privileges of the subject, is an abso- 
 lute sign of a disaffected and traitorous subject. 
 
 " And now, having given the signs of discern- 
 ing evil and disloyal subjects, I shall only give 
 you, in a word or two, the signs of discerning 
 which are loyal and good subjects, only by turn- 
 ing these three signs already showed on the 
 contrary side. 
 
 "(1.) He that willingly and cheerfully en- 
 deavoureth himself to obey his sovereign's 
 commands, for the defence of his own person 
 and kingdoms, for the defence of true religion, 
 for the defence of the laws of his country, is a 
 loyal and good subject. 
 
 "(2.) To deny obedience to a king com- 
 manding anything against God's true worship 
 and religion, against the ancient and fundament- 
 al laws of the land, in endeavouring to perform 
 the same, is a good subject. 
 
 " (3.) Not to resist the lawful and royal power 
 of the king, to raise sedition or insurrection 
 
 against his person, or to set division between 
 the king and his good subjects, by rebellion, al- 
 though commanding things against conscience 
 in the exercise of religion, or against the rights 
 and privileges of the subject, but patiently for 
 the same to undergo his prince's displeasure, 
 whether it be to his imprisonment, confiscation 
 of goods, banishment, or any other punishment 
 whatsoever, without murmuring, grudging, or 
 reviling against his sovereign or his proceed- 
 ings, but submitting willingly and cheerfully 
 himself and his cause to Almighty God, is the 
 only sign of an obedient and loyal subject. 
 
 " I come now to the second means to know 
 the difference between a good subject and a 
 bad, by their obedience to the laws, statutes, 
 and ordinances made by the king, with the 
 whole consent of his Parliament. And in this 
 I observe a twofold subjection : in the particu- 
 lar members thereof dissenting from the general 
 votes of the whole Parliament ; and, secondly, 
 the whole state of the kingdom to a full Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 " First. I confess, if any particular member 
 of a Parliament, although his judgment and 
 vote be contrary, do not willingly submit to the 
 rest, he is an ill subject to the king and country. 
 
 " Secondly. To resist the ordinances of the 
 whole state of the kingdom, either by stirring 
 up a dislike in the hearts of his majesty's sub- 
 jects of the proceedings of Parliament ; to en- 
 deavour, by levying of arms, to compel the 
 king and Parliament to make such laws as 
 seem best to them ; to deny the power, author- 
 ity, and privileges of Parliament ; to cast asper- 
 sions upon the same and proceedings, thereby 
 inducing the king to think ill of the same, and 
 to be incensed against the same ; to procure 
 the untimely dissolution and breaking off of the 
 Parliament before all things be settled by the 
 same, for the safety and tranquillity both of 
 king and state, is an apparent sign of a traitor- 
 ous and disloyal subject against his king and 
 country. 
 
 " And thus, having troubled your patience in 
 showing the difference between true Protest- 
 ants and false subjects and traitors in a state 
 or kingdom, and the means how to discern 
 them, I humbly desire my actions may be com- 
 pared with either, both as I am a subject, 
 Protestant, and native in this country, and as I 
 am a member of this present and happy Parlia- 
 ment ; and as I shall be found guilty upon these 
 articles exhibited against myself and the other 
 gentlemen, either a bad or a good subject to 
 my gracious sovereign and native country, to 
 receive such sentence upon the same as by this 
 honourable House shall be conceived to agree 
 with law and justice." 
 
 Mr. Southey thinks* that this speech incul- 
 cates the "doctrine of passive obedience," and 
 Lord Nugent thinks it a very constitutional 
 speech. It is a matter of surprise that so emi- 
 nent a writer as Mr. Southey, and an intellect 
 so acute, should think it likely, or even possi- 
 ble, for such a man as he thinks Hampden to 
 have been (the fiercest of rebels and the most 
 insincere), placed in the circumstances under 
 which the above is said to have been spoken, 
 to deliver himself of such a " doctrine." What 
 
 Quarterly Review, before referred to.
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 1253 
 
 advantage was to be gained by it or, rather, 
 what advantage was not to be lostl On the 
 other hand, Lord Nugent has been wanting in 
 candour, and, taking the argument as he was 
 content to rest it, must be said to have been 
 worsted by his more experienced opponent.* 
 
 It occurred to neither of the disputants that 
 the passages in dispute may have been garbled 
 or incorrectly reported. Of this there cannot 
 be a single doubt. The only writer who copies 
 the speech is Doctor Nalson, whose slavish 
 propensities are well known, and whose " col- 
 lections" were published by Charles II. 's spe- 
 cial command ; yet even he cautiously intro- 
 duces it thus, " I find among the prints of that 
 time." The editors of the old Parliamentary 
 History, though with a strong Royalist ten- 
 dency, were more honest ; and they have re- 
 fused to admit the speech in its present state 
 into their work, on the express ground that it 
 " was judged, by some learned gentlemen, to 
 be surreptitious."! The outline is likely to 
 have been correct enough, and probably it was 
 this that furnished the interpolator with the 
 hint on which he worked. 
 
 The Buckinghamshire petition has been men- 
 tioned. It was brought up to London, seven 
 days after the attempt upon Hampden and Pym, 
 by upward of 4000 freeholders, who had ridden 
 up from their county, each with a copy of the 
 recent protestation of the Commons in his hat, 
 to show their devotedness to the Parliament, 
 and to Hampden, their beloved representative. 
 They complained of the " very being of Parlia- 
 ments endangered by a desperate and unex- 
 ampled breach of privilege ;" and concluded, 
 " in respect of that latter attempt upon the hon- 
 ourable House of Commons, we are now come 
 to offer our service to that end, and resolved 
 in their just defence to live and die." Subse- 
 quently a deputation of these bold brave men 
 carried a petition in defence of Hampden to the 
 king himself. A great effect was produced by 
 the timely demonstration. % 
 
 The war began, and Hampden was one of the 
 first in the field. He hastened to Buckingham- 
 shire, and " under the woody brows of his own 
 beauteous Chilterns," published the ordinance 
 to marshal the militia of his native county. He 
 
 * I refer at present to certain pamphlets which followed 
 the appearance of a review of the " Memorials" in the 
 Quarterly, and in which, I think, to almost every other ad- 
 vantage, Mr. Southey added the eminent one of temper, 
 t Parl. Hist., vol. .t., p. 169. 
 
 t Hence the Royalist falsehoods respecting- it have been 
 numerous. They are all imbodied in one of the political 
 lampoons of the day : 
 
 " Did I for this my county bring 1 
 To help their knight against their king, 
 
 And raise the first sedition 1 
 Though I the business did decline, 
 Yet I conceived the whole design, 
 And sent them their petition." 
 
 In the same generous spirit Hampden's visits to Scotland 
 are construed : 
 
 ' Did I for this bring in the Snot ? 
 (For 'tis no secret now) the plot 
 
 Was Say's and mine together. 
 Did I for this return again, 
 And spend a winter there in vain t 
 
 I went more to invite them hither. 
 " Though more our money than our cause 
 Their brotherly assistance draws, 
 
 My labour was not lost ; 
 At my return I brought you thence 
 Necessity, their strong pretence, 
 And this shall quit the cost." 
 
 was received with enthusiasm. The only per- 
 sons who fell from his side were some mem- 
 bers of his own family. This is ever one of 
 the greatest miseries of civil war, terrible as it 
 is for every kind of misery. In a curious 
 pamphlet of the day, a " Discovery of Mys- 
 teries," I find the following living and mournful 
 picture of England in her present extremity : 
 " A most unnatural war, the son against the 
 father, and the father against the son : the Earle 
 of Warwicke fighteth for the Parliament, and 
 my Lord Rich, his son, is with the king ; the 
 Earle of Dover is with the king, and my Lord 
 Rochford, his son, is with the Parliament : so 
 one brother against another, as the Earle of 
 Northumberland with the Parliament, and his 
 brother with the king; the Earle of Bedford 
 with the Parliament, and his brother with the 
 king ; Master Perpoint with the Parliament, 
 and the Earle of Newark with the king ; Dev- 
 ereux Farmer with the Parliament, and his 
 brother, Thomas Farmer, together with his 
 brother-in-law, my Lord Cockain, with the 
 king, and the like : and of cosens without num- 
 ber, the one part with the king, and the other 
 with the Parliament : and if they do this in 
 subtlety, to preserve their estate, I say it is a 
 wicked policie to undoe the kingdome, which 
 all wise men should consider." This is indeed 
 a fearful realization of the poet's fancy ! 
 
 But Hampden himself was the first, in this 
 great hour, to throw aside every relation save 
 those in which he stood to his country, and 
 upon the issue of the contest which had now 
 arrived he cheerfully ventured all. He spared 
 neither purse nor person. He subscribed 2000 
 to the wants of the Parliament, and accepted 
 the commission of a colonel. A passage from 
 one of Doctor Heylin's articles, however, pub- 
 lished in the Mercurius Aulicus on his death, 
 conveys a feeling of the time which was enter- 
 tained on both sides. " It was advertized this 
 day, that on the death of Mr. Hampden, whom 
 the lower House had joyned as a coadjutor with 
 the Earle of Essex, or rather placed as a superin- 
 tendant over him, to give them an account of his 
 proceedings, they had made choice of Sir Henry 
 Vane the younger to attend that service, who, 
 having had a good part of his breeding under the 
 holy ministers of New-England, was thought to 
 be provided of sufficient zeale not only to in- 
 flame his excellence's cold affections, but to 
 kindle a more fiery spirit of rebellion in his 
 wavering souldiers." Be his position what it 
 might, it is certain that he had not been many 
 days in the field before he showed himself a 
 thorough master of the military duties, and 
 " performed them on all occasions most punc- 
 tually."* The regiment of infantry with which 
 he entered the war was soon considered to be 
 one of the best in the service of the Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 " The raising of troops," says Lord Nugent, 
 " and the garrisoning and fortifying of towns, 
 proceeded with rapidity. The new leiies 
 were formed into regiments and brigades. Sir 
 Thomas Fairfax, who had been sent down to 
 assist Sir John Hotham, began, but with small 
 success, to collect a force which was destined 
 to make head against the Marquis of New- 
 castle in the north. On Sir William Waller, 
 
 Clarendon.
 
 354 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 who had the command at Exeter, devolved a 
 like charge in the west, where Sir Ralph Hop- 
 ton, Slanning, and Grenvil occupied the great- 
 er part of the country, and some of the small 
 seaports, for the king. Lord Brooke in War- 
 wickshire, Lord Say and his sons in Northamp- 
 tonshire, the Earl of Bedford in Bedfordshire, 
 Lord Kimbolton and Cromwell in Huntingdon 
 and Cambridgeshire, and Lord Wharton, Ar- 
 thur Goodwin, Mr. West, Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. 
 Tyrell, and Mr. Richard Grenvil the high sher- 
 iff, in Buckinghamshire ; Skippon, and Hollis, 
 and Stapleton in Middlesex ; and the sheriffs 
 of Essex, Surrey, and Berkshire in their re- 
 spective counties, formed the militia re-enforce- 
 ments for the army, which was placed under 
 the chief direction of the Earl of Essex. This 
 became soon the main army of the Parlia- 
 ment ; and, in the course of less than a month 
 after the raising of the king's standard, the Par- 
 liamentarian force throughout England amount- 
 ed to about 25,000 men. The whole was at the 
 disposal of the committee of public safety. The 
 divisions were generally placed under the com- 
 mand of such of the chiefs as had served in 
 the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, and a few 
 French and German engineers were engaged 
 to superintend the fortifications and the drilling 
 of the artillery. The brigades and single regi- 
 ments were raised and led by such of. the noble- 
 men and country gentlemen as were found 
 combining with their local influence, activity, 
 courage, and genius enough for military affairs 
 to be intrusted with commands. The regi- 
 ments of infantry, as their clothing became 
 more complete, assumed the colours of their 
 respective leaders generally such as had been 
 worn by the serving men of the families. Hol- 
 lis's were the London red-coats ; Lord Brooke's 
 the purple ; Hampden's the green-coats ; Lord 
 Say's and Lord Mandeville's the blue. The 
 orange, which had long been the colour of Lord 
 Essex's household, and now that of his body- 
 guard, was worn in a scarf over the armour of 
 all the officers of the Parliament army, as the 
 distinguishing symbol of their cause. Each 
 regiment also carried a small standard, or cor- 
 net, with, on one side, the device and motto 
 of its colonel, and, on the other, the watch- 
 word of the Parliament ' God with us.' The 
 Earl of Essex's bore the inscription, ' Cave, 
 adsum,' words not well chosen, as, in the 
 course of the wars, they sometimes afforded 
 occasion for jest among the Cavaliers, when 
 his regiment chanced to be seen in retreat, or 
 engaged in levying contributions, or in some 
 such other duties which were distasteful to the 
 parts of the country over which it was moving, 
 and which thus gave a somewhat whimsical air 
 to the warning."* Some of these mottoes were 
 better chosen and better justified. In the third 
 year of the war, the second son of the Earl of 
 Leicester, Algernon Sidney, inscribed his stand- 
 ard with the words, " Sanctus amor patria dat 
 animum ;" and the motto which was borne at 
 the head of Hampden's regiment resolutely in- 
 dicated its great leader's course, " Vestigia 
 nulla rctrorsum." 
 
 It appears, from the returns of Lord Essex's 
 army, that soon after the outbreak of the war, 
 
 * I have found several of these jests in ths Mercurius 
 Aulicus. 
 
 it must have consisted of, in the whole, nearly 
 15,000 infantry and 4500 horse. Of the former 
 there were twenty regiments : the lord-gen- 
 eral's body-guard, and the regiments of the 
 Earl of Peterborough, the Earl of Stamford, 
 Viscount Say, Viscount Rochford, Viscount St. 
 John, Lord Kimbolton, Lord Brooke, Lord Rob- 
 erts, Lord Wharton, John Hampden, Denzil 
 Hollis, Sir John Meyrick, Sir Henry Cholmley, 
 Sir William Constable, Sir William Fairfax, 
 Charles Essex, Thomas Grantham, Thomas 
 Ballard and William Bamfield. The cavalry 
 were in seventy-five troops. These were all 
 raised, as were many of the infantry regiments, 
 at the charge of their commanders. They were 
 the lord-general's life-guard of gentlemen, and 
 the troops of the Earls of Bedford, Peter- 
 borough, and Stamford, Viscounts Say, St. 
 John, and Fielding, Lords Brooke, Wharton, 
 Willoughby of Parham, Hastings, Grey of Gro- 
 by, Sir William Balfour, Sir William Waller, 
 Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Sir Walter Erie, Sir Faith- 
 ful Fortescue, Nathaniel, Francis, and John 
 Fiennes, Oliver Cromwell, Valentine Waugh- 
 ton, Henry Ireton, Arthur Goodwin, John Dai- 
 bier, Adrian Scroope, Thomas Hatcher, John 
 Hotham, Sir Robert Pye, Sir William Wray, 
 Sir John Saunders, John Alured, Edwyn San- 
 dys, John and Thomas Hammond, Alexander 
 Pym, Anthony and Henry Mildmay, James and 
 Thomas Temple, Arthur Evelyn, Robert Vi- 
 vers, Hercules Langrishe, William Pretty, 
 James Sheffield, John Gunter, Robert and 
 Francis Dowett, John Bird, Matthew Draper, 
 Henry Dimmocke, Horatio Carey, John Neale, 
 Edward Ayscough, John and Francis Thomp- 
 son, Edward Keighley, Alexander Douglas, 
 Thomas Lydcott, John Fleming, Richard Gren- 
 vil, Thomas Tyrell, John Hale, William Bal- 
 four, George Austin, Edward Wingate, Edward 
 Bainton, Charles Chichester, Walter Long, Ed- 
 ward West, William Anselm, Robert Kirle, and 
 Simon Rudgeley. Sir John Meyrick was, ac- 
 cording to the military phrase then in use, 
 sergeant-major-general of this army, the Earl 
 of Peterborough general of the ordnance, and 
 the Earl of Bedford of the horse. 
 
 It was not so easy to equip the men as to 
 raise them. Matchlocks, pikes, and poleaxes 
 supplied, however, the greater number of the 
 infantry ; and the cavalry were altogether bet- 
 ter provided. The steel cap and gorget, the 
 back and breast plates, the tassets descending 
 to the knees, the long sword, carbine, and pis- 
 tols and, occasionally, the long lances pre- 
 sented an unobjectionable setting out. The 
 completeness of the defences of Hazlerig's re- 
 giment won them the name of the "lobsters ;" 
 and that of " ironsides" has been immortally 
 appropriated by Cromwell's men. 
 
 Hampden's first muster of his levies was 
 made on the fatal field of Chalgrove, where he 
 afterward received his death wound. While 
 engaged on this his earliest military duty, he 
 illustrated the promptness and decision of his 
 character. On hearing that some of the king's 
 commissioners of array were in the neighbour- 
 hood, he suddenly, without dissolving the meet- 
 ing, withdrew a small detachment from it, sur- 
 prised the commissioners, and sent them prison- 
 ers to London. 
 
 The king had found himself, meanwhile, at
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 255 
 
 the head of about 10,000 foot, 1500 dragoons, 
 and 2000 ordinary horse. On first raising his 
 standard at Nottingham he had but a " ragged 
 array" of followers ; but, having gone back to 
 York, and traversed Derbyshire, Leicestershire, 
 and Nottinghamshire, commanding the attend- 
 ance of the trained bands, levying forced loans, 
 and gathering to his " array" all the lowest and 
 most dependant classes of the community, he 
 found himself, on halting at Shrewsbury, in 
 possession of the force I have named. It has 
 never been denied that, as opposed to the great 
 bulk of Charles's army, that of the Parliament 
 was infinitely more " substantial" and intelli- 
 gent, consisting of almost all the inferior gen- 
 try, freeholders, yeomen, and the sober and 
 wealthy inhabitants of towns ; in a word, of 
 men who had best reason to know the value 
 of those rights of liberty and property for which 
 they now prepared to shed their blood. On 
 the other hand, Charles had the Church, or, 
 rather, those still surviving influences which 
 constituted its power before Pym and Hamp- 
 den had razed the power itself to the dust ; he 
 had all the Roman Catholic party ; he had the 
 universities also ; and, on either wing, as it 
 were, of his army, he held a majority of the 
 nobility and the old gentry of England. Many 
 of the latter, indeed almost all, had joined him 
 from no other feeling than that subtle and del- 
 icate sense of honour which the term loyalty 
 implies, and out of the indescribable instinct of 
 which misplaced surely towards any but an 
 absolute sovereign they argued, that while 
 their voices were their own in the great Par- 
 liamentary struggle for the liberties and laws, 
 their swords were the king's alone. "I am 
 much unsatisfied with the proceedings here," 
 wrote Lord Robert Spencer to his wife from 
 the king's camp, in the first months of the war ; 
 " nor is there wanting daily handsome occasion 
 to retire, were it not for grinning honour. For, 
 let occasion be never so handsome, unless a 
 man were resolved to fight on the Parliament 
 side, it will be said, without doubt, that a man 
 is afraid to fight. If there could be an expedient 
 found to solve the punctilio of honour, I would not 
 continue here an hour." The writer's scruples 
 were speedily solved, for he fell fighting under 
 the royal standard. To the same class of ago- 
 nizing doubts, notwithstanding all the protest- 
 ing eloquence of Clarendon, belong those shrill 
 and sad accents wherewith Falkland so often 
 ingeminated the word peace, peace ! He was 
 not less weary of the times than of the position 
 in which he found himself, and he had his pas- 
 sionate prayer of being " soon out of" them 
 both. So, too, with Sir Edmund Verney, the 
 first standard-bearer to Charles. He disap- 
 proved of the cause in which he had engaged, 
 as Clarendon confesses ; but " he had eaten of 
 the king's bread," and honour bound him to the 
 service. He fell in the first battle. 
 
 But if " honour" was the bond of this section 
 of the king's party, the faster and firmer bond 
 of liberty held together the army of the Parlia- 
 liament, massing, in one compact array, all the 
 substantial yeomanry, the merchants, the men 
 of the towns, and a very large and formidable 
 minority of the peerage and landed gentry of 
 England. No doubts or scruples attended upon 
 this cause. It gave a common and elevated 
 
 object to the sympathies of all. It gave " life 
 in death" to all the owners of it and sufferere 
 for it. 
 
 The civil war had now fairly begun, and 
 much blood was shed in occasional skirmishes 
 on both sides. Hampden was in Northampton- 
 shire with a small brigade of infantry and some 
 guns, accompanied by his fellow-representative 
 for Buckinghamshire, Arthur Goodwin, and his 
 regiment of cavalry. News reached him that 
 Lord Brooke, who had been threatened with a 
 siege in his own castle, was suddenly very 
 close pressed in Warwickshire, and he instant- 
 ly hastened to his aid. Meanwhile the gallant 
 Brooke, after a noble and high-spirited tri- 
 umph,* had begun a march on Northampton- 
 shire, and Hampden's brigade met him at 
 Southam. A little army was thus formed 
 acting as the right wing to Essex and the 
 first strong division openly in action. Lord 
 Say, Lord Grey, Denzil Hollis, and Cholmley, 
 were in command along with Brooke and 
 Hampden. 
 
 In the middle of the night, the force of Lord 
 Northampton, much more considerable in num- 
 bers, approached within two miles of Sdutham, 
 and the drums beat to arms. " Upon hearing 
 whereof, the soldiers, possessed with joy that 
 their enemies, the Cavaliers, were so near, 
 gave a great shout, flinging up their hats and 
 clattering their arms till the town rang again ; 
 and, casting aside all desire of meat and lodg- 
 ings provided for them, went immediately into 
 the field adjoining to the town, ready for battle, 
 where they continued till the morning."! The 
 enemy appeared at daybreak on the Dunsmore 
 road and lanes adjoining. At eight o'clock the 
 fight began. Hampden, who had taken post 
 with his brigade on some rising ground, charged 
 first ; and, after a hot skirmish, the royal troops 
 gave way, and were pursued to the river. This 
 was the first serious skirmish of the war, and 
 Hampden was the first to charge in it. 
 
 Essex's movements were, meanwhile, waver- 
 ing and compromising ; and irrevocable mis- 
 chief might have been done, even thus early, 
 to the cause, but for the wonderful energy of 
 Hampden and Lord Brooke. The eloquence 
 of the latter nobleman's addresses to his sol- 
 diers pierced through the mailed bosoms of the 
 dullest among the troops, and inspired them 
 with an ever lively enthusiasm. " If the nobility 
 and bravery of the cause, 1 ' he told some raw 
 re-enforcements in the hall of his noble old for- 
 tress at Warwick, " be not sufficient to animate 
 cowards, and make even the meanest spirits 
 courageous, I know not what possibly can stir 
 up mortal men to put on undaunted. resolutions." 
 These young troops marched to the assistance 
 of the main army at Northampton, and were 
 the bravest there ! Hampden's activity and 
 unvyearied energy were surprising : now at the 
 headquarters of Essex ; no\v leading his brigade 
 in the general advance upon Worcester ; now 
 present at the committee of public safety in 
 London ; again, in a few days, at Aylesbury, 
 near which, supported by Denzil Hollis, he gave 
 sharp fight to a detachment of the enemy, re- 
 
 * See Nugent's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 224. A most in- 
 teresting passage. 
 
 t " A true and perfect relation," &c., quoted in Lord 
 Nugent's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 228.
 
 256 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 pulsed and pursued them to Oxford, and then 
 rejoined Essex. In every action or skirmish, 
 Hampden, perhaps too boldly, exposed his per- 
 son with such a daring intrepidity as, among 
 thousands of men, raised him to a conspicuous 
 mark above them all. 
 
 The first great pitched battle now approach- 
 ed. On a bright and cold morning, the 23d of 
 October, 1642, the King of England found him- 
 self, for the first time, opposite the thick and dark 
 masses of the army of the Parliament of Eng- 
 land. He was on the brow of a hill, and sep- 
 arated from his enemy by a plain called the 
 "Vale of the Red Horse," at Keynton Field, or 
 Edge Hill, in Warwickshire. He addressed his 
 officers in his tent eloquently and bravely : " If 
 this day shine prosperous unto us," said he, "we 
 shall all be happy in a glorious victory. Your 
 king is both your cause, your quarrel, and your 
 captain. The foe is in sight. Now show your- 
 selves no malignant parties, but with your swords 
 declare what courage and fidelity is within you. 
 I have written and declared that I intended 
 always to maintain and defend the Protestant 
 religion, the rights and privileges of Parliament, 
 and the liberty of the subject ; and now I must 
 prove rny words by the convincing argument 
 of the sword. Let Heaven show his power by 
 this day's victory, to declare me just, and as a 
 lawful, so a loving king to my subjects. The 
 hest encouragement I can give you is this, that, 
 come life or death, your king will bear you 
 company, and ever keep this field, this place, 
 and this day's service in his grateful remem- 
 brance." He then rode along the lines, clad in 
 steel armour, and wearing a black velvet man- 
 tle over it, on which glittered his brilliant star 
 and George. Never did Charles I. seem so 
 respectable as when about to shed the blood of 
 the bravest and most conscientious of his sub- 
 jects. 
 
 Old Lord Lindsey, his general-in-chief, dis- 
 gusted with the overbearing insolence of Prince 
 Rupert, acted as though only nominal com- 
 mander, and put himself at the head of his regi- 
 ment, with this fervent prayer, " Oh Lord ! 
 thou knowest how busy I must be this day. 
 If I forget Thee, do not thou forget me. March 
 on, boys !" When old Major-general Skippon, 
 some days after, was in a similar position, he 
 used language to the troops of the Parliament 
 which was as homely, and proved more effect- 
 ive. " Come, my boys, my brave boys, let us 
 pray heartily, and fight heartily. I will run the 
 same fortunes and hazards with you. Remem- 
 ber the cause is for God, and for the defence 
 of yourselves, your wives, and children. Come, 
 my honest, brave boys, pray heartily, and fight 
 heartily, and God will bless us." 
 
 The armies had confronted each other 
 10,000 on the side of the Commons, and 12,000 
 on that of the king from ten o'clock in the 
 morning, but the fight did not begin till two. 
 The Royalists would not leave their position. 
 The Parliamentarians were the first to advance ; 
 and the enemy then gallantly descending into 
 the plain, the battle soon hotly raged on both 
 sides. In the front, with each a pike in his 
 hand, Essex and Lindsey fought with heroic 
 gallantry. Suddenly Prince Rupert made a 
 desperate and impetuous charge, and broke the 
 left wing of the Parliamentarians, who imme- 
 
 diately fled. The braver regiments of the right 
 wing and centre held their ground, charged gal- 
 lantly in return, and took several of .the king's 
 guns. Rupert meanwhile pushed on after the 
 fugitives with his characteristic love of plunder, 
 even as far as Keynton itself, a distance of 
 three miles ; when two regiments, led by 
 Hampden, were seen hastening across the en- 
 closures to support the mangled squadrons of 
 flying horse. He had left Stratford-on-Avon 
 the night before, and pushed on with Gran- 
 tham's regiment, his own green-coats, and five 
 guns, which the men had dragged with difficulty 
 through the deep roads. He formed instantly, 
 and, opening fire on Rupert, obliged him to turn 
 in great confusion. Hampden could not follow. 
 
 The king's army were sorely pressed at the 
 time of Rupert's re-arrival among them, and, 
 night closing in, both parties left the field. Lord 
 Lindsey had fallen covered with wounds. Sir 
 Edmund Verney was also slain, and the royal 
 standard was takn and retaken. On the side 
 of the Parliament, two colonels, Charles Essex 
 and Lord St. John, perished ; and the entire 
 number of men left dead upon the field is said 
 to have been about 5000. Charles Pym be- 
 haved most gallantly. A Parliamentary soldier, 
 dying of his wounds, declared that his deepest 
 grief was having received his death from the 
 hand of his brother. He had recognised him 
 among the royal troops, and turned aside, but 
 not in time to avoid the fatal carbine, which 
 was impetuously discharged from the hand that 
 had never before been raised but in affection.* 
 Both sides claimed the victory. 
 
 Hampden joined Essex early on the follow- 
 ing morning, and implored him earnestly to 
 press forward, force the king's position, relieve 
 Banbury, and throw himself at once on the con- 
 tested line of the road to the capital. Essex 
 was timid and indecisive ; he marched, in pref- 
 erence, on Coventry, while the king, taking 
 Banbury in his way without resistance, march- 
 ed to Oxford, where he halted. 
 
 The next movement of Essex, after consid- 
 erable sluggishness, was upon Northampton, 
 Hampden and Arthur Goodwin leading the ad- 
 vanced guard. Lord Nugent has produced a 
 letter which during the inarch Hampden wrote 
 from Northampton to the lieutenants of Buck- 
 inghamshire to encourage them : 
 
 " To my noble friends, Colonel Bulstrode, Cap- 
 tain Grenvil, Captain Tyrell, Captain West, 
 or any of them. 
 
 "Gentlemen, The army is now at Nor- 
 thampton, moving every day nearer to you. 
 If you disband not, we may be a mutual succour 
 to each other ; but if you disperse, you make 
 yourselves and your country a prey. 
 
 " You shall hear daily from your servant, 
 
 "JoHN HAMPDEN. 
 "Northampton, Oct. 31." 
 
 " I wrote this enclosed letter yesterday, and 
 thought it would have come to you then, but 
 the messenger had occasion to stay till this 
 morning. We cannot be ready to march till 
 to-morrow, and then, I believe, we shall. I 
 desire you will be pleased to send to me again 
 as soon as you can, to the army, that we may 
 know what posture you are in, and then you 
 
 * D'Israeli's Commentaries, vol. v., p. 57.
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 257 
 
 will hear which way we go. You shall do me 
 a favour to certify me what you hear of the 
 king's forces, for I believe your intelligence is 
 better from Oxford and those parts than ours 
 can be. " Your humble servant, 
 
 " JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 "Northampton, Nov. 1, 1642." 
 
 Brentford, meanwhile, was occupied by Hol- 
 lis's regiment only. A numerous force of cav- 
 alry, with some pieces of artillery, under the 
 command of Rupert, unexpectedly fell upon 
 them. Essex was in the House of Lords when 
 the roaring of the cannon reached him. He 
 mounted horse instantly, and rode to the scene 
 of action, where he found the regiments of 
 Hampden and Lord Brooke already to the res- 
 cue, and the Royalists retiring, after having 
 done some serious mischief. Five times had 
 Hampden and Brooke charged the streets to 
 open passage for retreat to Hollis's brave and 
 suffering men, and five times were repulsed 
 by overwhelming numbers and with great car- 
 nage. 
 
 A re-enforcement arrived on the following 
 morning. Hampden proposed then to march 
 3000 men to Hounslow, and cut off the king's 
 retreat on Oxford, while Essex and the main 
 army attacked him in front. This was agreed 
 to ; but he had not proceeded a mile on his 
 gallant errand when he was overtaken by coun- 
 ter orders. Here was another great error. 
 Hampden was obliged to direct his march to 
 Reading. Clarendon himself admits, "There 
 had been, in the secret committee for the car- 
 rying on the war, forming those designs, and 
 administering to the expenses thereof, a long 
 debate, with great difference of opinion, wheth- 
 er they should not march directly with their 
 army to besiege Oxford, where the king and the 
 court was, rather than Reading ; and, if they 
 had taken that resolution, as Mr. Hampden, 
 and all they who desired still to strike at the root, 
 very earnestly insisted upon, without doubt 
 they had put the king's affairs into great con- 
 fusion ; for, besides that the town was not 
 tolerably fortified, nor the garrison well pro- 
 vided for, the court, and multitude of nobility, 
 and ladies, and gentry, with which it was in- 
 habited, bore any kind of alarum very ill."* 
 
 These words of Clarendon, " strike at the 
 root," explain the cause of these unhappy dif- 
 ferences. Essex remained unimpeached in 
 honour, but he never was for " striking at the 
 root." He had not, like Hampden, when he 
 drew his sword, cast away the scabbard. He 
 never saw himself near to a great victory that 
 he did not tremble ; in defeat and disaster alone 
 he stood erect and gallantly. 
 
 Hampden, mortified and sorrowful, sat down 
 with his forces before Reading. Some few 
 short months before he had brought home a 
 bride from that pleasant town ! This very 
 fact, coupled with a knowledge that the major- 
 ity of the inhabitants were really well affected 
 to the cause, probably guided him in his course 
 of only firing a few shots into the town, though 
 commanding a view of almost every street. 
 Colonel Lewis Kirke, the father of the infa- 
 mous Kirke, commanded the Royalist garrison 
 there ; and Colonel Urrie, so soon after a rene- 
 gade, seconded Hampden with a small body of 
 
 * Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vol. iv., p. 30, 40. 
 
 KB 
 
 cavalry. Kirke attempted several sallies, and 
 was repulsed with loss ; and at daybreak on 
 the third morning, Hampden and Urrie, judging 
 the garrison fatigued and dispirited, determined 
 to attempt the walls by assault. Accordingly, 
 advancing silently from the trenches with 400 
 picked men, Hampden, in the gray twilight of 
 the morning, passed the outer and second ditch, 
 and, mounting the rampart, threw himself into 
 the northernmost bastion. A desperate resist- 
 ance was made, and terrible slaughter accom- 
 panied it. Then Hampden, calling forward the 
 reserves, placed himself at the' head of a sec- 
 ond attack, and again, with fresh men strug- 
 gling up the walls, renewed the fight on the 
 breast of the main work. Kirke, upon this, 
 drew out the whole garrison, and the " conflict 
 came to push of pike," chief to chief, each at 
 the head of his party, and each cheering his 
 men by desperate achievement. Hampden, 
 however, overpowered by force, must have re- 
 tired, when Urrie, who had detached himself 
 to the right, pushed between the Cavaliers and 
 the town. The fire from the inhabitants at 
 once ceased ; and, after four hours' terrible 
 struggle, and 400 men of the garrison left dead 
 in the place, Kirke abandoned the defence and 
 escaped to Oxford. Hampden remained mas- 
 ter of Reading, of many stores, much baggage, 
 and a large number of prisoners.* 
 
 And so closed the first year of the war 
 brilliant successes, on a comparatively small 
 scale, by Hampden great opportunities lost by 
 Essex ! The king might be said to be victor, 
 because he ought to have been, and was not, 
 vanquished. 
 
 Meanwhile Hampden had become more than 
 ever dear to the popular party, and hateful to 
 the court at Oxford. The filth of the " Mercu- 
 rius Aulicus," poured out upon him by its reli- 
 gious editors, testified to both feelings. About 
 this time I find the following in that loyal pub- 
 lication : " It is advertized by some who have 
 beene curious in the observation, that Mr. 
 Hampden, one of the five members so much 
 talked of, hath had many great misfortunes 
 since the beginning of these present troubles,, 
 whereof he hath beene a principall mover, par- 
 ticularly that he hath buried since that time- 
 two of his daughters, one grandchild which he- 
 had by a daughter married to Sir Robert Pye 
 the younger, his owne eldest sonne and heir ; 
 there being two onely sonnes surviving, where- 
 of the one is said to be a cripple, and the other 
 a lunatike ; of which, whatever use may be- 
 made by others, 'tis not unfit but that the party 
 whom it most concerns would lay it close unto 
 his heart, and make such use thereof as the 
 sad case invites him to."t Anything more 
 
 * Lord Nugent's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 348. Kingdom's 
 Weekly Intelligencer. 
 
 t Mercurius Aulicus, 15th week. The same brutal wri- 
 ter observed, on the news of the patriot's early death: 
 " Saturday, June 24. This day we were advertized that 
 Master John Hampden (the principal member of the five) 
 was dead of those wounds he received on Sunday last. If 
 so, the reader may remember, that in the 15th weeke of 
 this ' MercurJus,' we told the world what faire warning 
 Master Hampden ' had received since the beginning of this 
 rebellion (whereof he was a chiefe incendiary), how he had 
 buried his sonne and heir and" his two daughters, two oneTy 
 sonnes surviving, whereof one was a cripple and the other 
 a lunatike,' which, though this desperate man was unwill- 
 ing to make use of, yet sure it ro-xy startle the rest of his 
 faction, especially if they consider that Chalgrove Field
 
 258 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 horrible than such an attack as this (supposing 
 it true) could scarcely be conceived. It was a 
 gross falsehood, with only so much truth as to 
 give bitter pain to its illustrious object. He 
 had indeed lost his eldest son, and his favourite 
 and beloved daughter, Mrs. Knightley. He 
 was seldom known to smile afterward. 
 
 Nothing, however not even such sorrows 
 could quench his indomitable activity. He was 
 now almost daily on the road between the ad- 
 vanced posts of the army and London, and was 
 frequently able to discharge, in the same day, 
 his double duties at the army and with Pym in 
 the public committee. The poet Denham, then 
 in the king's service, thus described it, at this 
 time, in one of the lampoons from which I have 
 already quoted : 
 
 " Have I so often passed between 
 Windsor and Westminster unseen, 
 
 And did myself divide, 
 To keep his excellence in awe, 
 And give the Parliament the law, 
 
 For they knew none beside ?" 
 
 Fortunately for Denham and his party, this 
 was not altogether true. Hampden was not 
 able to "keep his excellence in awe." His 
 excellency's timidity still forced him into every 
 kind of error ; and so manifest, especially to 
 the Royalists, was the superiority of Hampden, 
 that they attempted, with daring artfulness, to 
 sow dissensions in the troops of the enemy by 
 plain statements of a rivalry for the Parliament- 
 arian command. I find the following in the 
 "Mercurius Aulicus :" " It was this day report- 
 ed exceedinglie confidently, by some who came 
 from London lately, how it was noised in the 
 citie that the Earle of Essex was to leave the 
 place of generall unto Mr. Hampden, as one more 
 active, and so, by consequence, more capable 
 of the style of excellencie ; which, though it 
 proved not so in the event (as it is not likely), 
 yet shows it clearly what an ill opinion the 
 principall maintainers of this rebellion have of 
 this said earle, and with how little confidence 
 the common soldiers will be brought to spend 
 their lives under the colours and command of 
 such a generall, of whom they have so mani- 
 fested a distrust by their common talke, and 
 whom they have so publikely exposed to con- 
 tempt and scorn in abusive pictures." No 
 doubt it was from this authority that Anthony 
 Wood derived his statement of such an inten- 
 tion of placing Hampden in chief command 
 having been entertained at the commencement 
 of the war. No good authority ever existed 
 for it, happy as the issue might have been for 
 England. 
 
 On the occurrence and disclosure of the 
 Waller plot, in which a cousin of Hampden was 
 found dishonourably implicated, a base advan- 
 tage was taken of the name by the slavish 
 scribes at Oxford, to throw out the vilest in- 
 sinuations against Hampden's honesty and vir- 
 tue. I find this alluded to in one of the jour- 
 nals of the Parliament ; and the extract is 
 curious and valuable, since it supplies, what 
 has more than once been questioned, the real 
 relationship of Waller's fellow-conspirator to 
 
 (where he now received this mortal wound) was the self- 
 same place where he first mustered and drew up men in 
 armes to rebell against the king. But whether the life and 
 death of the Lord Brooke or Master Hampden be the better 
 lesson against treason and rebellion, let posteritie judge." 
 
 the patriot. "In this place, that I may not 
 exceed the length of my semanicall intelligence, 
 I should return again to speake somewhat more 
 of the discoverie of the plot which I made men- 
 tion of before ; the malevolents cannot endure 
 to heare of any at all, yet some would seeme to 
 admit of it upon condition that Coloncll Hampden 
 might be involved as a conspirator therein ; and, 
 therefore, hearing that one Hampden was in- 
 trusted about it, they have reported that it was 
 Colonell Hampden, or his brother, Mr. Richard 
 Hampden. And lest this report should breed 
 any mistake abroad, and so derogate from the 
 worth of these noble and faithfull gentlemen, I 
 will be bold to speake a word or two of their 
 pedigree, so farre onely as will cleare the mat- 
 ter. Mr. Alexander Hampden that is commit- 
 ted was sonne to Sir Edward Hampden of 
 Northamptonshire, and, travelling into the Low 
 Countries, became cross-bearer to the Queen 
 of Bohemia, and since the warres came over 
 into England, and remained in the king's armie 
 till hee was sent with a message to the Parlia- 
 ment, and before hee was returned back with 
 an answer the plot was discovered. It is true 
 they were brothers' children, and it is too fre- 
 quent, in these times especially, that those 
 which are neare of blood are one against an- 
 other."* 
 
 Meanwhile Hampden had just achieved one 
 of his most valuable services to the cause, in 
 forming with Pym that celebrated association 
 of counties to which Cromwell was afterward 
 chiefly indebted for his most brilliant successes. 
 At this time, suddenly, Lord Northampton at- 
 tacked his regiment, and was repulsed with 
 loss. The next affair he was engaged in the 
 assisting Grenvil to recover Brill Hill, a post of 
 great strength, between Aylesbury and Thame 
 was unsuccessful. " Mercurius Aulicus" 
 made much of this ; and, returning to the sub- 
 ject a second and third time, I find every week 
 some correction of an error he had fallen into 
 in describing the " businesse and successe" at 
 Brill. " For whereas, by the first intelligence 
 which was given from thence, it was advertized 
 that the forces brought before the towne were 
 conducted by Mr. Arthur Goodwin, and that 
 Captain Grenville, the last yeare's sheriff of 
 Buckinghamshire, had been killed in the enter- 
 prize ; it proved, on further information, that 
 the commander of the rebells was not Colonell 
 Goodwin, but one as goode as hee, per omnia, 
 viz., Mr. Hampden, the other of the two exceptcd in 
 his majestic 's pardon for the countie of Bucking- 
 ham; and that Grenville was not killed out- 
 right, but mortally wounded in the belly, so 
 that it was conceived he could hardly escape it." 
 
 The Royalists had now a series of successes : 
 Lord Wentworth, the young and gallant son of 
 the great Lord Strafford, distinguished himself; 
 and the noble and good Lord Brooke was slain 
 by a musket shot in the brain, fired from the 
 Cathedral tower of Litchfield, as he was direct- 
 ing the advance of a body of troops up a street 
 leading towards the close. This was an ir- 
 reparable loss ; and a loss more fatal still was 
 now near at hand. 
 
 Some serious discontents occurred about this 
 period in the regiments which held Reading, in 
 
 * King's Pamphlets, 117, 4to.
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 259 
 
 consequence of an ague breaking out in that 
 town. Hampden's regiment took part in them. 
 He hurried instantly from Westminster, where 
 he was at the time, and, by his prompt boldness 
 and frank courage, reduced the mutineers to 
 perfect discipline.* His spirit wearied, how- 
 ever, after some great enterprise, which Essex 
 dared not attempt. Deeply sorrowful, yet quiet 
 in obedience, as became the place he filled, he 
 waited on in hope. The soldiers are said, and 
 with much probability, to have now clamoured 
 for him as their leader; but the only notice 
 Hampden took of this was worthy of his noble 
 and generous mind. He placed himself in more 
 frequent communication with Essex, and seem- 
 ed to counsel him and promote his views. But 
 counsel from Hampden continued vain in that 
 quarter still ; vain as when, on four different 
 occasions after Edgehill, after Brentford, after 
 the attack on Reading, and now after the fall 
 of Reading its rejection had possibly baffled 
 the immediate and final decision of the war. 
 The time had now come when no more coun- 
 sel could be given, and none rejected more. 
 
 The renegade Urrie, thoroughly versed in 
 the country and the habits of the Parliament- 
 arian army, now planned the expedition which 
 ended in the eventful fight of Chalgrove. He 
 gave the treacherous information that two regi- 
 ments of the forc.es he had left lay exposed to 
 attack at Wickham. Prince Rupert, acting on 
 this, attacked those regiments unexpectedly 
 at Postcombe first, and then at Chinnor ; slew 
 or took them " to a man," committed infinite 
 cruelties, and marched back upon Oxford. 
 Hampden had, on the preceding day, strongly 
 represented to Essex the danger to which this 
 part of the line was exposed, and urged the ne- 
 cessity of strengthening it by calling in the re- 
 mote pickets from Wycombe. 
 
 It was now too late for this, but not too late, 
 in Hampden's active and resolute thought, to 
 prevent farther danger. " He had obtained in 
 early life," says Lord Nugent, " from the habits 
 of the chase, a thorough knowledge of the pass- 
 es of this country. It is intersected in the up- 
 per parts with woods, and deep, chalky hollows, 
 and in the vales with brooks and green lanes, 
 the only clear roads along the foot of the hills 
 from east to west, and these not very good, 
 being the two ancient Roman highways, called 
 the Upper and Lower Ickenild Way. Over this 
 district he had expected that some great opera- 
 tion would be attempted on the king's part, to 
 force the posts round Thame, and turn the 
 whole eastern flank of the army. To this neigh- 
 bourhood he had, the evening before, repaired, 
 and had lain that night in Wellington.? On the 
 first alarm of Rupert's irruption, he sent off a 
 trooper to the lord-general at Thame, to advise 
 moving a force of infantry and cavalry to Chis- 
 
 elhampton Bridge, the only point at which Ru- 
 pert could recross the river. Some of his 
 friends would have dissuaded him from adven- 
 turing his person with the cavalry on a service 
 which did not properly belong to him, wishing 
 him rather to leave it to those officers of lesser 
 ' note, under whose immediate command the 
 pickets were. But, wherever danger was, and 
 i hope of service to the cause, there Hampden 
 1 ever felt that his duty lay. He instantly mount- 
 ed, with a troop of Captain Sheffield's horse, 
 who volunteered to follow him ; and, being 
 joined by some of Gunter's dragoons, he en- 
 deavoured, by several charges, to harass and 
 ! impede the retreat, until Lord Essex should 
 have had time to make his dispositions at the 
 j river. Towards this point, however, Rupert 
 , hastened, through Tetsworth, his rear-guard 
 ! skirmishing the whole way. On Chalgrove 
 Field the prince overtook a regiment of his in- 
 i fantry ; and here, among the standing corn, 
 i which covered a plain of several hundred acres 
 (then, as now, unenclosed), he drew up in order 
 of battle. Gunter, now joining three troops of 
 horse and one of dragoons, who were advan- 
 cing from Easington and Thame over Colder 
 Hill, came down among the enclosures facing 
 the right of the prince's line, along a hedgerow 
 which still forms the boundary on that side of 
 Chalgrove Field. The prince, with his life- 
 guards and some dragoons, being in their front, 
 the fight began with several fierce charges. 
 And now, Colonel Neale and General Percy 
 coming up, with the prince's left wing on their 
 flank, Gunter was slain, and his party gave 
 way. Yet every moment they expected the 
 main body, with Lord Essex, to appear. Mean 
 while Hampden, with the two troops of Sheffield 
 and Cross, having come round the right of the 
 Cavaliers, advanced to rally and support the 
 beaten horse. Every effort was to be made to 
 keep Rupert hotly engaged till the re-enforce- 
 ments should arrive from Thame. Hampden 
 put himself at the head of the attack ; but, in. 
 the first charge, he received his death-wound. 
 He was struck in the shoulder with two car- 
 bine balls,* which, breaking the bone, entered 
 
 * Lord Nugent's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 412. Coatcs's 
 Papers, May 26. 
 
 t " It is traditionally said that a military chest of money 
 was left at the house of one Robert Parslow, where Hamp- 
 den lay that night, and that it was never called for after, 
 by which means Parslow was enabled to bequeath a liberal 
 legacy to the poor of that parish. On every anniversary of 
 his funeral, November 19th, a bell tolls in Watlington from 
 morning till sunset, and twenty poor men are provided with 
 coats. These particulars I derive from the intelligent Mr. 
 John Badcock, for forty years a resident at Pyrton and its 
 neighbourhood, but now of St. Helen's, who wrote in 1816 
 a very ingenious little history of VVatliugton." 
 
 * " On the king's part, in this action, were lost, besides 
 few common men, no officers of note, but some hurt : ou the 
 enemy's side, many of the best officers, more than in any 
 battle they fought ; and among them (which made tha 
 news of the rest less inquired after by the one, and less la- 
 mented by the other) Colonel Hampden, who was shot in, 
 the shoulder with a brace of pistol bullets, of which wound, 
 with very sharp pain, he died within ten days, to as great 
 a consternation of all that party as if the whole army had 
 been defeated and cut off." Clarendon's History of the Re- 
 bellion, vol. iv., p. 81, 82, restored text. In a second pas- 
 sage of this restored text, portions of which seem to have 
 been struck out by Clarendon himself, there is a second al- 
 lusion to the wounded, after which the writer proceeds : 
 " Of which Mr. Hampden was one, who would not stay that 
 morning till his own regiment came up, but put himself a 
 volunteer in the head of those troops who were upon their 
 march, and was the principal cause of their precipitation, 
 contrary to his natural temper, which, though full of cour- 
 age, was usually very wary; but now, carried on by his 
 fate, he would by no means expect the general's coming up, 
 and he was of that universal authority that no officer paused 
 in obeying him. And so in the first charge he received a 
 pistol shot in his shoulder, which broke the bone, and put 
 him to great torture ; and after he had endured it about 
 three weeks, or less time, he died, to the most universal 
 grief of the Parliament that they could have received from 
 any accident : and it equally increased the joy for the suc- 
 cess at Oxford, and very reasonably ; for the loss of a man, 
 which Would have been thought a full recompense for ft 
 considerable defeat, could not but be looked upon as a glo- 
 rious crowu of a victory." Is it possible, after this, to credit
 
 260 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 his body, and his arm hung powerless and 
 shattered by his side. Sheffield was severely 
 wounded, and fell into the hands of the enemy. 
 Overwhelmed by numbers, their best officers 
 killed or taken, the great leader of their hopes 
 and of their cause thus dying among them, and 
 the day absolutely lost, the Parliamentarians 
 no longer kept their ground. Essex came up 
 too late ; aad Rupert, though unable to pursue, 
 made good his retreat across the river to Ox- 
 ford." 
 
 Immediately after this melancholy day, " a 
 true relation" of the affair was published in 
 London. I present it, without abridgment, from 
 the king's collection of pamphlets. When it 
 appeared Hampden yet lived, and hope was en- 
 tertained of his recovery : 
 
 " Upon Monday last it was informed, by di- 
 vers letters, and severall persons that came 
 from the armie, to this effect, namely, That 
 on Saturday last, three or four troopes of the 
 king's forces having wheeled about from Ab- 
 ington to Wallingford, and from thence towards 
 Stoken Church, under the hills neare to Tets- 
 worth, they came unto a towne three miles 
 from Thame, called Chinner (at which place 
 the lord-generall, with his maine forces, con- 
 sisting, as it is credibly informed, of very neare 
 30,000 able fighting men, were quartered), it 
 being upon the edge of Buckinghamshire, at 
 which place were quartered about 400 of the 
 Parliament's forces, the greatest part where- 
 of were forces that lately came to assist his 
 excellencie in the Parliament's service, which 
 came out of Bedfordshire and Essex; and miss- 
 ing of the Parliament's scouts, they came to 
 the said towne, and gave a sudden assault 
 against the Parliament's forces there, and cut 
 off some of their sentinells, and entered the 
 towne, and, according to their barbarous and 
 destructive manner, fired the same in divers 
 places. But, before I proceed in the further 
 relation of this businesse, I may not forget the 
 valour and courage of the Parliament's forces 
 which were in this towne ; for they charged 
 the enemie with as much courage and resolu- 
 tion as could be expected or performed by men 
 being unexpectedly assaulted, and continued 
 fighting with them many houres. Upon this 
 assault of the enemie, an alarm was given at 
 the lord-generall's quarters at Thame, upon 
 which divers troopes of horse were designed to 
 sally forth upon this expedition ; and amongst 
 those colonells and commanders that were, at 
 an instant, willing to hazard their lives upon 
 this designe, Colonell Hampden (who is a gen- 
 tleman that hath never beene wanting to ad- 
 venture his life and fortunes for the goode and 
 welfare of his king and countrey) may not be 
 forgotten, who, finding of a goode troope of 
 horse (whose captaine was at that time will- 
 ing), desired to know whether they would be 
 commanded by him upon this designe ; where- 
 upon the officers and common souldiers freely 
 and unanimously consented, and proffered to 
 adventure their lives with this noble gentle- 
 man, and showed much cheerfulnesse that they 
 could have the honour to be led by so noble a 
 captaine. And so the said Colonell Hampden, 
 and some other colonells and captaines, came 
 
 the statement which has been made of Charles's affected 
 sympathy, and offer to send his own surgeon to Hampden ? 
 
 with a considerable partie of horse with all ex- 
 pedition, to assist the rest of their forces, which 
 as aforesaid were quartered at Chinner ; and 
 as soon as the Cavaliers perceived that some 
 of the lord-generall's forces were come in from 
 Thame, they presently fled from Chinner backe 
 againe towards Tetsworth, and were then pur- 
 sued by Colonell Hampden and the rest of the 
 lord-generall's forces that came upon this de- 
 signe about two miles, in which pursuit there 
 were many of the king's forces killed and ta- 
 ken prisoners. In which retreat this is ob- 
 servable, that the Cavaliers (as it appeared af- 
 terwards) had plotted, in a perfidious manner, 
 to have intrapped the Parliament's forces, and 
 to have killed or taken them all prisoners. 
 But it pleased God to prevent their plot ; for 
 in the way, Prince Rupert, who, with about 
 1000 horse, lay in ambush readie to fall upon 
 the Parliament's forces, as they were in pur- 
 suit of the first victory, appeared, and gave a 
 hot charge upon the Parliament's forces ; but, 
 although the Earle of Essex's forces were scarce 
 ten for one that were at this time in the battel, 
 yet they gave them a brave volly of shot, and 
 slew many of the enemie's forces as well at this 
 place, which was neare Tetsworth, as at Chin- 
 ner, and for some time, it being Sunday morn- 
 ing, held them fight without the losse of many 
 men ; but at last, the enemie having intelli- 
 gence that some regiments of foot were com- 
 ing from Thame of the lord-generall's forces, 
 they retreated towards Abington, and durst not 
 fight till they came in, for the foot forces are a 
 great amazement unto them. 
 
 " Having thus farre in a generall manner de- 
 clared the truthe of this businesse, it rests, in 
 the next place, that I enter into some particu- 
 lars concerning the same, for the better satis- 
 faction of the kingdome, whose expectation 
 thirsteth after the same. I dare not delude 
 with false and fabulous matter, and therefore 
 I shall (being the first relater hereof) omit un- 
 certaine reports, rather than committ that to 
 writing which hereafter may be questionable ; 
 and therefore I shall be more sparing therein, 
 and write onely those things which are authen- 
 tike ; which that I may doe, First, it is cer- 
 taine that Colonell Hampden, that noble and 
 valiant gentleman, received a shott with a bul- 
 let behind in the shoulder, which stuck be- 
 tween the bone and the flesh, but is since 
 drawne forth, and himself very cheerfull and 
 heartie, and is, through God's mercy, more 
 likely to be a badge of honour than any danger 
 of life. 
 
 " Serjt. Major Gunter, a gentn. of the Par- 
 liament's side, was slaine, and Captn. Buller 
 (as it is thought) taken prisoner : some other 
 prisoners were taken on the Parliament's side ; 
 but, in regard the particulars of the fight were 
 not knowne when the intelligence came from 
 the armie, I shall omit to particularize any more 
 of them. 
 
 " On the enemie's side was slaine Captn. 
 Legge (who was once taken prisoner by the 
 Parliament's forces, and made an escape) ; and 
 it is said that Col. Urrie, which was heretofore 
 imployed in the Parliamts. service, and was the 
 last weeke in London, is either killed or taken 
 prisoner. Thomas Howard is also taken pris- 
 oner by the Parliament's forces, with divers
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 261 
 
 other gent, of qualitie, besides common soul- 
 diers. 
 
 " The certaine number that were slaine on 
 either side I shall not at this time relate, for 
 that it was not knowne in the armie when 
 the post that brought this tidings came from 
 thence ; but it is reported that there was an 
 equal losse on both sides, there being 400 slaine 
 on both sides. 
 
 " A great part of the towne of Chinner was 
 burnt by the king's forces ; by which doings, 
 compared with what hath beene certified out 
 of other parts, we may see that killing, burn- 
 ing, and destroying of all that is deare to us, 
 is the religion, lawes, and propertie of the sub- 
 ject they seeke for." 
 
 Essex himself immediately wrote to the 
 speaker of the House of Commons ; and, anx- 
 ious to preserve the immediate records of this 
 memorably mournful event, I have extracted 
 this letter, dated the day after Hampden re- 
 ceived his wound, from the same sources : 
 
 " Sir, There being some of my horse that 
 had an encounter with the enemie yesterday, 
 being Sunday, I have thought fit to give the 
 House an account of the particulars of it, know- 
 ing howe apt many are to report things to our 
 disadvantage. 
 
 " About two of the clock on Sunday morn- 
 ing, the enemie, with about 1200 horse, and a 
 great bodie of dragoons, felle into a towne 
 called Porcham [Postcombe], where one troope 
 of horse (being Coll. Morley's) was quartered, 
 of which they took the greatest part, and from 
 thence went not farre to another village called 
 Chinner, where they beate up some of the new 
 Bedfordshire dragoons, and took some of them 
 prisoners, and three of their colours ; and some 
 of the officers behaving themselves very well, 
 and defending the houses wherein they were, 
 they set fire to the towne. These being out 
 quarters, the alarm came where Major Gunter 
 lay with three troopes, viz., his owne, Captaine 
 Sheffield's, and Captaine Crosse's, whom he 
 presently drew out, and marched towards the 
 enemie. Colonell Hampden being abroad with 
 Sir Samuel Luke, and onely one man, and see- 
 ing Major Gunter's forces, they did go along 
 with them. Col. Dalbier, the quartermaster- 
 generall, did likewise come to them. With 
 these they drew neare the enemie, and finding 
 them marching away, kept still upon the reare 
 for nearely five miles. In this time there 
 joyned with them Captaine Sander's troope, 
 and Captaine Buller, with fiftie commanded 
 men, which were sent to Chinner by Sir Philip 
 Stapleton (who had the watch here that night 
 at Thame), when he discovered the fire there, 
 to know the occasion of it ; he likewise sent 
 one troope of dragoons under the command of 
 Captn. Dundasse, who came up to them. There 
 were likewise some of Col. Melve's dragoons 
 that came to them. At length our men press- 
 ed them so neare, that, being in a large pas- 
 ture ground, they drew up, and notwithstand- 
 ing the inequalitie of the numbers, we having 
 not above 300 horse, our men charged them 
 very gallantly, and slew divers of them ; but 
 while they were in fight, the enemie, being so 
 very strong, kept a bodie of horse for his re- 
 serve, and with that bodie wheeled about and 
 charged our men in the reare, so that, being 
 
 incompassed and overborne with multitudes, 
 they broke and fled, though it was not very 
 farre ; for when I hearde that our men march- 
 ed in the reare of the enemie, I sent to Sir 
 Philip Stapleton, who presently marched to- 
 wards them with his regiment, and though he 
 came somewhat short of the skirmish, yet see- 
 ing our men retreat in that disorder, he stopt 
 them, caused them to draw into a bodie with 
 him, where they stood about an houre, where- 
 upon the enemie marched away. In this skir- 
 mish there were slaine fortie and five on both 
 sides, whereof the greater part were theirs. 
 
 " They carried off the bodies of divers per- 
 sons of qualitie. On our side Major Gunter 
 was killed, but some say he is prisoner, and so 
 hurt ; a man of much courage and fidelitie, his 
 bravery engaging him and his small partie too 
 farre. Col. Hampden put himselfe in Captaine 
 Crosse his troope, where he charged with much 
 courage, and was unfortunately shott through 
 the shoulder. Sir Samuel Luke thrice taken 
 prisoner, and fortunately rescued. Captn. Crosse 
 had his horse killed under him in the middest of 
 the enemie, and was mounted by one of his 
 owne men, who quitted his owne horse to save 
 his captaine. 
 
 " Captn. Buller was shott in the neck, who 
 showed very much resolution in this fight, ta- 
 king one prisoner after he was shott. Monsieur 
 Dalbier, with Captaine Bosa, and Captn. Ennis, 
 did likewise carry themselves very well. Wee 
 likewise lost two colours, Major Gunter's and 
 Captaine Sheffield's. No prisoners of qualitie 
 were taken by the enemie but Captn- Sheffield's 
 brother. Prince Rupert was there in person, 
 and the renegado Urrie. Wee took prisoner 
 one of the Earle of Berk's sonnes ; Captn. Gar- 
 diner, the late recorder's sonne of London ; and 
 Captn- Smith, with some others of qualitie, and 
 divers prisoners. 
 
 " Sir, this is the true relation of what passed 
 m this businesse. I rest 
 
 " Your assured friend, 
 
 "ESSEX. 
 " Thame, 19th of June, 1643." 
 
 The graphic touches of the following, taken 
 from one of the Parliament newspapers, will 
 complete the sad narrative : " In the late skir- 
 mish with the Cavaliers between Thame and 
 Oxford, my lord-generall's owne letter, in print, 
 expresses the particulars where five troopes of 
 the Parliament's forces charged fifteen troopes 
 of the enemie's, and did, with their pistols and 
 carbines, at the first charge, doe great execu- 
 tion ; but the enemie, when they begun to 
 close, having long rapiers and swords, a foot 
 and halfe longer than ordinary, did therewith 
 much annoy the Parliament souldiers, except 
 that great-spirited little Sir Samuel Luke, who 
 so guarded himselfe with his short sword that 
 he escaped without hurt, though thrice taken 
 prisoner, yet rescued, and those to whom he 
 was prisoner slaine. The third time he was 
 taken prisoner, one of his owne men, seeing 
 two lead away his master a-foot, with his car- 
 bine he killed one of them, and runne the other 
 through with his sword, and mounted Sir Sam- 
 uel upon one of their horses, and brought him 
 cleare off, for which his nobletnaster gave him 
 100, as he well deserved it. Colonell Hamp- 
 den and Sergeant-major Gunter_were hurt at
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the first charge, Colonell Urrie, that renegado, 
 crying, 'That's Hampden,' 'That's Gunter,' 
 ' That's Luke,' which made the enemie so fierce 
 upon our commanders. This false-hearted Ur- 
 rie, that hath so long served the Parliament 
 under pretence of affection, and hath beene 
 privy so much to the counsells of the armie, 
 communicating from time to time to the Cava- 
 liers at Oxford the designes of the Earle of 
 Essex, about three or four days after he runne 
 
 clergymen, he thought its doctrine in the great- 
 er part primitive and conformable to God's 
 word, as in Holy Scripture revealed." He was 
 attended by Dr. Giles, the rector of Chinner, 
 with whom he had lived in habits of close 
 friendship, and Dr. Spurstow, an independent 
 minister, the chaplain of his regiment. At 
 length, being well-nigh spent, and labouring for 
 breath, he turned himself to die in prayer. "O 
 Lord God of hosts," said he, "great is thy 
 
 away to Oxford, knowing the quarters of the I mercy, just and holy are thy dealings unto us 
 Parliament's armie, commanded a partie of the sinful men. Save me, Lord,_if it be thy good 
 Cavaliers, and so betrayed the Parliament's 
 forces in the said skirmish." 
 
 The Royalists soon received the welcome 
 news of this dreadful day. " One of the pris- 
 oners," says Lord Clarendon, " who had been 
 
 will, from the jaws of death. Pardon my man- 
 ifold transgressions. Lord, save my bleed- 
 
 ing country, 
 cial keeping. 
 
 Have these realms in thy spe- 
 Confound and level in the dust 
 
 those who would rob the people of their liberty 
 
 taken in the action, said 'that he was confident j and lawful prerogative. Let the king see his 
 Mr. Hampden was hurt, for he saw him ride j error, and turn the hearts of his wicked coun- 
 off the field before the action was done, which j sellers from the malice and wickedness of their 
 he never used to do, and with his head hanging j designs. Lord Jesu, receive my soul !" He 
 down, and resting his hands upon the neck of ! then mournfully uttered, " O Lord, save my 
 his horse,' by which he concluded he was hurt." ! country. O Lord, be merciful to .... "and 
 It is a tradition, Lord Nugent adds, in an affect- i here his speech failed him. He fell back in 
 ing passage of his Memorials, " that he was ! the bed and expired.* 
 
 seen first moving in the direction of his father- ! He was buried among the hills and woods of 
 in-law's (Simeon's) house at Pyrton. There the Chilterns. Many troops in the neighbour- 
 he bad in youth married the first wife of his ', hood followed the beloved body to its grave, in 
 love, and thither he would have gone to die. I the parish church adjoining his mansion. With 
 But Rupert's cavalry were covering the plain arms reversed, drums and ensigns muffled, and 
 between. Turning his horse, therefore, he heads uncovered, they marched with what re- 
 rode back across the grounds of Hazeley in his mained of the illustrious patriot to his last rest- 
 way to Thame. At the brook which divides ing-place, singing the 90th Psalm as they went, 
 the parishes he paused a while ; but it being and the 43d as they returned, 
 impossible for him, in his wounded state, to re- I The "Weekly Intelligencer" published an 
 mount, if he had alighted to turn his horse over, interesting article the week after his death, 
 he suddenly summoned his strength, clapped which is here subjoined: "The losse of Col- 
 spurs, and cleared the leap. In great pain, and onell Hampden goeth neare the hearte of every 
 almost fainting, he reached Thame, and was man that loves the goode of his king and coun- 
 conducted to the house of one Ezekiel Browne, i trey, and makes some conceive little content to be 
 where, his wounds being dressed, the surgeons ; at the armie nowe that he is gone. It offers me an 
 would, for a while, have given him hopes of opportunitie to present you with some more 
 life. But he felt that his hurt was mortal ; weekly intelligence, which I intend to continue, 
 and, indulging no weak expectations of recov- The memorie of this deceased colonell is such 
 ery, he occupied the few days that remained to ; that in no age to come but it will more and 
 him in dispatching letters of counsel to the ' more be had in honour and esteeme : a man so 
 Parliament in prosecution of his favourite plan, i religious, and of that prudence, judgement, tern- 
 While the irresolute and lazy spirit which had per, valour, and integritie, that he hath left few 
 directed the army in the field should continue his like behind him. His bitterest enemies 
 to preside in the council of war, Hampden had could never fasten any action of disrepute upon 
 reason to despair of the great forward move- him, but one (as they called it), which I con- 
 ment to which he had throughout looked for ceive was for his eternall honour, that he was 
 the success of the cause ; and now the re-en- too zealous a Christian (as by their pamphlets at 
 forcements which were pouring into Oxford Oxford appeares), which, if it be a sinne, then 
 from the north, and the weakened condition of of all sinnes in this world the Cavaliers are 
 the Parliament, made the issue of this more least guiltie of it. What man of this kingdome 
 doubtful. His last urgent advice was to con- j deserved more of the Commonwealth (when it 
 centrate the position of the army covering the ! was almost treason to say I will stand for my 
 London road, and provide well for the threat- libertie) than this gent, did, when he (alone> 
 ened safety of the metropolis, and thus to rouse i stood for the subject's libertie and propertie, 
 the troops from the mortifying remembrance ! choosing, rather than to pay 40*. to the preju- 
 of their late disasters to vigorous preparations, dice of the subject, to spend 1000 in the law- 
 
 which yet might lead, by a happier fortune, in 
 turn to a successful attack." 
 
 But, after nearly six days of cruel suffering, 
 his bodily powers no longer sufficed to pursue 
 or conclude the business of his earthly work. 
 About seven hours before his death he received 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, declaring 
 that " though he^ould not away with the gov- 
 ernance of the Church by bishops, and did ut- 
 terly abominate the scandalous lives of some 
 
 full defence thereof, viz., in the great intoller- 
 able tax of ship-money (in the times of peace, 
 when there was no need of it, but that the de- 
 signes of the times were to break the ice to 
 drive us under an arbitrary government) ; and 
 I appeale to the consciences of the malignants 
 
 * dough's Narration. [In the Ashmole Museum is a 
 locket of plain cornelian, which, it is said, Hampden wore 
 on his breast. On the silver rim these words are inscribed: 
 " Against my king I never fight, 
 But for my king and country's right." C.]
 
 JOHN HAMPDEN. 
 
 263 
 
 if they did not honour him then above all the J And in an article of the " Weekly Accompt," 
 subjects in the kingdome] Master Hoborne j written on the same sad occasion, some cir- 
 (though nowe through other respects of another j cumstances are added to our previous knowl- 
 minde) was then one of his chiefe champions ! edge of the patriot : " Speaking of the affaires 
 to pleade his and the kingdome's case ; for his I of Buckinghamshire, it puts me in remembrance 
 
 temper and prudence in the carriage of that 
 businesse he was admired of all men, and God 
 (contrary to the designes of man, and the 
 countenance of great lords and courtiers nowe 
 at Oxford, then present to awe the judges at 
 the time of the argument of that case) produced 
 goode effects to the kingdome, and damned 
 ship-money in the opinion of the people, what- 
 ever the opinion of some of the judges were. 
 Howe hath this gentleman carried himselfe 
 since this Parliament begun 1 Constant to de- 
 fend our religion and libertie, for which cause 
 alone (for no other cause yet appeares to the 
 world) he with four others was accused of high 
 treason by Master Herbert, first the queene's 
 attorney, then the king's, who, being afterwards 
 questioned for it in the presence of both houses 
 of Parliament, did publikely declare that though 
 he accused them of high treason, whereby their 
 lives lay at stake, their estates might become 
 forfeit, and their posteritie branded with infamy, 
 yet he had no more cause, proofe, or reason 
 to accuse Master Hampden, or any of the other 
 four members, than to accuse the child unborne ; 
 onely his master commanded him to do it, and 
 the king offered to pass a bill to cleare him 
 and them, though since refused ; and by his 
 last proclamation of the 16th of June instant to 
 dissolve this Parliament, passes by one of the 
 Jive members in the particular exception, not- 
 withstanding the said accusations. I will add 
 onely a worde more concerning him (though 
 too much of his worth cannot be said), that his 
 whole indeavours since the Parliament begun 
 was for the publike, not regarding his private 
 in any kinde. He wisely foresaw the designes 
 of the counsell about the king to introduce a 
 tyrannicall government, and thereby to set up 
 poperie, and was sensible of the corresponden- 
 cy of counsells in the distractions of the three 
 kingdomes (as both houses have voted) ; and 
 that, all former plots and designes against Scot- 
 land and this present Parliament failing, the 
 said counsells resolved on the bloodie rebellion 
 in Ireland, and the destroying this Parliament 
 by the sword, as their last refuge to bring to 
 pass their designes, which incouraged him time- 
 ly to contribute his advice to the kingdome to 
 be in a posture to defend themselves ; and least 
 it should be thought to oppose the king or to in- 
 jure him, these wordes have I seene in writing, 
 which upon an occasion he used in Parliament, 
 viz., ' Perish may that man and his posteritie 
 that will not deny himselfe in the greatest part 
 of his fortune (rather than the king shall want) 
 to make him both potent and beloved at home, 
 and terrible to his enemies abroad, if he will be 
 pleased.to leave those evill counsells about him, 
 and take the wholesome advice of his great 
 counsell the Parliament !' And with this duti- 
 full and loyall hearte to his prince, and indeavour 
 to bring him to his Parliament for his countrey's 
 goode, he sacrificed his life ; and said, before 
 he died, that if he had twentie lives, all should 
 goe this way, rather than the Gospell of our 
 salvation (nowe so much fought against) should 
 be trampled under foot." 
 
 of Master Hampden, that noble patriot of his 
 countrey, whose losse is infinitely lamented in 
 all places ; for it is well knowne to the whole 
 kingdome howe much he suffered for the goode 
 of his countrey, and that he endured for a long 
 time together (about sixteen yeares since) close 
 imprisonment in the Gatehouse about the loane 
 money, which indangered his life, and was a 
 very great meanes so to impaire his health that 
 he never after did looke like the same man he 
 was before. And did he not spend a great 
 summe of money out of his owne estate in de- 
 fence of the kingdome's right in that great case 
 of ship-money 7 And, to be briefe, as he was 
 indued with more than ordinary parts of wis- 
 dome, knowledge, and understanding, so was 
 he as carefull to improve and make a right use 
 of them, so that (like Zachary and Elizabeth) 
 he walked unblameable in all his conversation. 
 That very day which he received that fatall 
 wound he was just fiftie yeares of age. During 
 the time that he lived after, which was just a 
 weeke, he showed a wonderfull measure of pa- 
 tience and meaknesse, being full of divine sen- 
 tences, speaking as if he felt no pain ; saying 
 it was nothing but what he dayly expected, and 
 that he had long prepared against that time ; 
 and continued of perfect memorie, cheerful! 
 spirit, constant in the cause, and incouraging 
 others unto the last ; and departed without 
 feeling any pain at all, going out of a sweet 
 slumber into a quiet sleepe. He was carried 
 from Thame to Hampden, and interred in his 
 father's tomb." 
 
 These extracts from the now scarce and 
 valuable records of the time may be closed 
 with some lines from an " elegie," not utterly 
 unworthy of the theme, written by a friend and 
 " fellow-soldier" of Hampden. They imbody 
 a picture of the great soldier himself in the ex- 
 citement of battle. 
 
 " Though my malicious fate debarred my will 
 From waiting on your valour, when the shrill 
 And hastie trumpet bade your honour goe 
 With disadvantage 'gainst the subtle foe ; 
 When treacherie and odds, crowned with successe, 
 Did triumph over our unhappinesse : 
 Yet give me leave, Renowned Dust, to send 
 My gratefull muse in mourning to attend, 
 And strew some cypresse on your martial hoarse. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Was he not pious, valiant, wise, and just, 
 Loyall and temperate t Everything that must 
 Make up a perfect harmonie ? Yee know 
 His constant actions have declared him so. 
 
 * * 
 
 So was he truely valiant. J havt seene 
 Him i' the front of 's regiment in greene, 
 When death, about him did in ambush lye, 
 And whizzing shatt like shoieres of arrowts flye,. 
 Waving his coaq'ring steele, as if that he 
 From Mars had got the sole monopolie 
 Of never-failing courage : and so cheare 
 His fighting men ! 
 
 Farewell, beloved in Parliament and field, 
 Farewell, thy souldier's faithfull broken shield !" 
 
 And now, to complete the information which 
 has been collected in these pages concerning 
 one of the greatest men of the English history, 
 the character which Clarendon has drawn of 
 him in unfading colours may, without hesitar
 
 264 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 tion, be added. No one who has glanced 
 through this work can be at a loss to separate 
 the just from the unjust. 
 
 " He was a gentleman of a good family in 
 Buckinghamshire, born to a fair fortune, and 
 of a most civil and affable deportment. In his 
 entrance into the world he indulged to himself 
 all the license in sports, and exercise, and 
 company which was used by men of the most 
 jolly conversation. Afterward he retired to a 
 more reserved and melancholy society,* yet pre- 
 serving his own natural cheerfulness and vi- 
 vacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all 
 men ; though they who conversed nearly with 
 him found him growing into a dislike of the ec- 
 clesiastical government of the Church, yet 
 most believed it rather a dislike of some church- 
 men and of some introducements of theirs, 
 which he apprehended might disquiet the public 
 peace. He was rather of reputation in his own 
 country than of public discourse or fame in the 
 kingdom before the business of ship-money ; but 
 then he grew the argument of all tongues, ev- 
 ery man inquiring who and what he was, that 
 durst, at his own charge, support the liberty 
 and property of the kingdom, and rescue his 
 country, as he thought, from being made a 
 prey to the court. His carriage throughout 
 this agitation was with that rare temper and 
 modesty, that they who watched him most 
 narrowly to find some advantage against his 
 person, to make him less resolute in his cause, 
 were compelled to give him a just testimony, 
 and the judgment that was given against him 
 infinitely more advanced him than the service 
 for which it was given. When this Parliament 
 begun (being returned knight of the shire for 
 the county where he lived), the eyes of all men 
 were fixed on him as their patrice pater, and the 
 pilot that must steer the vessel through the 
 tempests and rocks which threatened it ; and 
 I am persuaded his power and interest at that 
 time were greater to do good or hurt than any 
 man's in the kingdom, or than any man in his 
 rank hath had in any time ; for his reputation 
 of honesty was universal, and his affections 
 seemed .so publicly guided, that no corrupt or 
 private ends could bias them. 
 
 " He was of that rare affability and temper 
 in debate, and of that seeming humility and 
 submission of judgment, as if he brought no 
 opinion of his own with him, but a desire of 
 information and instruction ; yet he had so 
 subtle a way of interrogating, and, under the 
 notion of doubts, insinuating his objections, 
 that he left his opinions with those from whom 
 he pretended to learn and receive them ; and 
 even with them who were able to preserve 
 themselves from his infusions, and discerned 
 those opinions to be fixed in him with which 
 they could not comply, he always left the char- 
 acter of an ingenuous and conscientious person. 
 He was, indeed, a very wise man, and of great 
 parts, and possessed with the most absolute 
 spirit of popularity that is. the most absolute 
 faculties to govern the people of any man I 
 ever knew. For the first vear of the Parlia- 
 
 * [This has been already alluded to, and probably refers 
 .to his devotion to legal pursuits. C.] 
 
 ment he seemed rather to moderate and soften 
 the violent and distempered humours than to 
 inflame them ; but wise and dispassioned men 
 plainly discerned that that moderation proceed- 
 ed from prudence, and observation that the 
 season was not ripe, rather than that he ap- 
 proved of the moderation ; and that he begat 
 many opinions and notions, the elucidation 
 whereof he committed to other men, so far dis- 
 guising his own designs that he seemed seldom 
 to wish more than was concluded ; and in many 
 gross conclusions, which would hereafter con- 
 tribute to designs not yet set on foot, when he 
 found them sufficiently backed by majority of 
 voices, he would withdraw himself before the 
 question, that he might seem not to consent to 
 so much visible unreasonableness, which pro- 
 duced as great a doubt in some, as it did appro- 
 bation in others, of his integrity. What combi- 
 nation soever had been originally with the 
 Scots for the invasion of England, and what 
 farther was entered into afterward in favour 
 of them, and to advance any alteration of the 
 government in Parliament, no man doubts was 
 at least with the privity of this gentleman. 
 
 " After he was among those members ac- 
 cused by the king of high treason, he was much 
 altered, his nature and carriage seeming much 
 fiercer than it did before. And without ques- 
 tion, when he first drew his sword, he threw 
 away the scabbard ; for he passionately op- 
 posed the overture made by the king for a 
 treaty from Nottingham, and as eminently any 
 expedients that might have produced any ac- 
 commodations in this that was at Oxford ; and 
 was principally relied on to prevent any infu- 
 sions which might be made into the Earl of 
 Essex towards peace, or to render them inef- 
 fectual if they were made, and was, indeed, 
 much more relied on by that party than the 
 general himself. In the first entrance into the 
 troubles, he undertook the command of a regi- 
 ment of foot, and performed the duty of a col- 
 onel on all occasions most punctually. He 
 was very temperate in diet, and a supreme 
 governor over all his passions and affections, 
 and had thereby a great power over other men's. 
 He was of an industry and vigilance not to be 
 tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and 
 of parts not to be imposed upon by the most 
 subtle or sharp, and of a personal courage equal 
 to his best parts, so that he was an enemy not 
 to be wished wherever he might have been 
 made a friend, and as much to be apprehended 
 where he was so as any man could deserve to 
 be, and therefore his death was no less con- 
 gratulated in the one party than it was condoled 
 in the other. In a word, what was said of 
 Cinna might well be applied to him : ' he had 
 a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, 
 and a hand to execute any mischief.' His 
 death,, therefore, seemed to be a great deliver- 
 ance to the nation." 
 
 In other words, the death of the noble and 
 fearless Hampden, while it plunged every hon- 
 est English heart into the depths of sorrow, 
 revived in the tyrant Charles and his slavish 
 ministers their hope of being able to trample 
 into the dust once more the laws and liberties 
 of England.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER. 1612-1662. 
 
 HENRY VANE, the eldest son of Sir Henry 
 Vane, of Hadlow, in Kent, was borne in the 
 year 1612. His family could trace itself back 
 to the earliest times of the English history.* 
 They sprang from Howel ap Vane, of Mon- 
 mouthshire, whose son, Griffith ap Howel 
 Vane, married Lettice, daughter of Bledwin ap 
 Kenwyn, lord of Powis. Six generations after 
 this mark the date of the battle of Poictiers, 
 where the then representative of the family, 
 Henry Vane, received knighthood on the field 
 as the reward of great bravery. After the lapse 
 of five more generations, one of the branches 
 of the family altered the name to Fane, which 
 was retained by the descendants of his second 
 son, while the issue of his fourth son, John, 
 who had inherited the manor of Hadlow, and 
 other estates in Kent and elsewhere, in con- 
 sequence of the eldest son dying without is- 
 sue, resumed in the second generation the old 
 name of Vane. The eldest son of this last- 
 named John was unwarily drawn into Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt's insurrection, but pardoned, 
 on the score of youth, by Mary, and afterward 
 elected to two of Elizabeth's Parliaments. 
 Henry Vane, the father of the subject of this 
 memoir, was his eldest grandson, and it was 
 by him the ancient name was resumed. 
 
 Sir Henry Vane the elder is described by 
 Clarendon as a busy and a bustling man, and a 
 rapid glance over the chief incidents of his life 
 will show the correctness of the description. 
 He was born in 1589, and received knighthood 
 from James I. in 1611. He travelled afterward 
 for three years, and mastered many foreign 
 languages. On his return to England, he was 
 elected to the Parliament of 1614 by the city 
 of Carlisle, and from this period, during many 
 years, exerted considerable influence in the 
 cabinets of James and Charles. James had 
 appointed him, soon after his entry into the 
 House of Commons, cofferer to the prince, who 
 continued him in the same office on his own 
 accession to the throne, and made him one of 
 his privy council. In the Parliaments of 1620 
 and 1625, he continued to sit for Carlisle ; and 
 he served in every subsequent Parliament to 
 the time of his death, having been elected for 
 Thetford in Norfolk, Wilton in Wiltshire, and 
 for the county of Kent. As a diplomatist, he 
 appears justly entitled to high praise ; in other 
 matters, it may not be unjust to use the words 
 of Clarendon, that he had "credit enough to 
 do his business in all places, and cared for no 
 man, otherwise than as he found it very con- 
 venient for himself."! In 1631 he had been 
 appointed ambassador extraordinary to renew 
 the treaty of friendship and confederacy with 
 Christian of Denmark, and also, in a similar 
 character, to conclude on a firm peace and al- 
 liance with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. 
 Both these treaties were of great importance 
 to the power and the commercial interests of 
 
 England, and he concluded both auspiciously. 
 He returned home in 1632, and in 1633 gave a 
 princely entertainment, at his castle of Raby, 
 to Charles, then on his way to Scotland to be 
 crowned, as he did again on a more fatal occa- 
 sion, in 1639, when the king was marching 
 with his melancholy " expedition to Scotland," 
 in which Sir Henry Vane himself had the com- 
 mand of a regiment. In the latter year he 
 was made comptroller of the household, and 
 some months after this appointment received 
 the highest seat in Charles's administration, 
 that of principal secretary of state. The latter 
 years of his life associate themselves with the 
 fortunes of his illustrious son. 
 
 The mother of the famous Sir Henry Vane 
 was Frances Darcy, of an old family in Essex. 
 She bad many other children, of whom the 
 second son, Sir George Vane, was knighted in 
 1640, and seated himself in retirement at Long 
 Melton, in the county of Durham, while Charles 
 distinguished himself as a diplomatist under 
 the Commonwealth, when envoy to Lisbon. 
 One of her daughters married Sir Thomas 
 Honeywood,* of Essex, a man of learning and 
 a good soldier ; another, Sir Francis Vincent, 
 of Surrey ; a third married Sir Thomas Liddel, 
 of Ravensworth, an ancestor of the present 
 Earl of Ravensworth ; while the eldest became 
 the wife of Sir Thomas Pelham, the ancestor 
 of those families which are now represented 
 by the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Chi- 
 chester, and Lord Yarborough. It may be 
 worth adding, that the present earldom of 
 Westmoreland is held by the lineal descend- 
 ant of that branch of the Vane family who re- 
 tained the assumed name of Fane, and that 
 the present Duke of Cleveland, William Harry 
 Vane, is the lineal descendant of the great 
 statesman whose life will occupy these pages. 
 A dukedom was given, in 1632, as the reward 
 of a disinterested advocacy of popular princi- 
 ples rewarded, in 1662, by a scaffold !f 
 
 Such were the brilliant auspices which ush- 
 ered Henry Vane into the world. The repre- 
 sentative of a long line of illustrious ancestors, 
 the immediate heir to great wealth, and, as it 
 were, to the favour of the princes whom his 
 father served, a broad and bright path stretch- 
 ed itself out before him, lighted by honours 
 and enjoyments, and leading to luxury and 
 power. 
 
 * See Wood's Fasti Oxoniensis, part ii., p. 167, ed. Blisa. 
 
 t It is scarcely necessary to say that allusion is here 
 made to William Harry Vane, baron Raby of Raby Castle, 
 and duke of Cleveland, known, before the accession of his 
 present titles, as the Earl of Darlington, and also as the 
 Marquis of Cleveland. He had an enormous interest at 
 stake in the existence of the rotten boroughs, and yet voted 
 in the House of Lords for their extinction on the memora- 
 ble 4lh of June, 1632, when that great measure of reform 
 was consummated which his illustrious ancestor the states- 
 man whose life is written in these pages had been the first 
 to propose to Parliament. He received his dukedom early 
 in the following year, with the addition of the very barony 
 of Raby, in appropriating which, two centuries before, Lord 
 Stratford had given such mortal offence to the elder Sir 
 Henry Vane. The authorities for the pedigree of the Vanes 
 will be found in the Biog. Brit., vol. vi., p. 3989 ; and in 
 Collins's Peerage, vol. iv., p. 290.
 
 266 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 He received his education at Westminster 
 school, under the care of Lambert Osbaldiston, 
 and was school-fellow with Arthur Hazlerig, 
 Thomas Scot, and others whom active partici- 
 pation in public affairs subsequently rendered 
 famous.* Here, yielding for a time to the im- 
 pulses of his youth and station, he entered 
 wildly into the gayeties of both, and they soon 
 showed him, by the light of sudden and awful 
 contrast, a fiery sincerity in his soul, which 
 had nothing in common with such things, but 
 marked its owner out for serious and great 
 achievements, and whispered to him, even 
 then, of the possible regeneration of mankind. 
 He shall describe the first dawning of this 
 change in his own words, as he described it in 
 after years to the multitudes who had assem- 
 bled to see him die : " I was born a gentle- 
 man ; had the education, temper, and spirit of 
 a gentleman, as well as others ; being, in my 
 youthful days, inclined to the vanities of this 
 world, and to that which they call good fellow- 
 ship, judging it to be the only means of accom- 
 plishing a gentleman. But, about the four- 
 teenth or fifteenth year of my age, which was 
 about thirty-four or five years since, God was 
 pleased to lay the foundation or groundwork 
 of repentance in me, for the bringing me home 
 to himself, by his wonderful rich and free grace, 
 revealing his Son in me, that, by the knowledge 
 of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
 he hath sent, I might, even while here in the 
 body, be made partaker of eternal life, in the 
 first fruits of it."t His father appears to have 
 remonstrated bitterly against his unworldly 
 change. " Yea," observes Sikes, " this change 
 and new steering of his course contracted en- 
 mity to him in his father's house." And in 
 the year after its occurrence he was sent as 
 a gentleman commoner to Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, where it is possible his father may 
 have hoped that in such a nursery of dissipa- 
 tion and fantastic forms the youth might be 
 
 * Wood's Ath. Ox., vol. iii., p. 578, ed. Bliss. 
 
 t Vane's speech on the scaffold, from a pamphlet " print- 
 ed in the year 1662." A very extraordinary publication of 
 the same year, to which I shall have very frequent, occasion 
 to refer, and which was written by one of Vane's associates, 
 thus described this change in his habits and way of life : 
 " He was born a gentleman. My next word is so much too 
 big for that, that it may hardly seem decorous to stand so 
 near it. He was a chosen vessel of Christ, separated (as 
 Paul) from his mother's womb, though not actually called 
 till 14 or 15 years' standing in the world ('twas longer ere 
 Paul was called) ; during which time, such was the com- 
 plexion and constitution of his spirit, through ignorance of 
 God and his ways, as rendered him acceptable company to 
 those they call good fellows (yet, at his worst, restrained 
 from that lewdness intemperance sometimes leads into, 
 which he hath been oft heard to thank God for), and so long 
 he found tolerable quarter amongst men. Then God did, 
 by some signal impressions and awakening dispensations, 
 startle him into a view of the danger of his condition. On 
 this, he and his former jolly company came presently to a 
 parting blow." The title-page of the very singular and val- 
 uable book from which the above extract is taken runs in 
 these words : " Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane, Knight ; 
 or, a short Narration of his earthly Pilgrimage, together 
 with a true Account of his purely Christian, peaceable, 
 ipiritual, Gospel Principles, Doctrine, Life, and Way of 
 worshipping God, for which he suffered Contradiction and 
 Reproach from all sorts of Sinners, and at last a violent 
 Death, June 14, Anno 1662. To which is added, his last 
 Exhortation to his Children, the Day before his death. 
 Printed in the Year 1662." The author was George Sikes, 
 a bachelor in divinity, and fellow of Magdalen, in Oxford, 
 where Vane studied, and, it may be supposed, their intima- 
 cy commenced. He was a thorough enthusiast, with all 
 the sincerity and faith, though without the knowledge and 
 various power, of Vane himself. 
 
 induced to abandon his untoward turn for se- 
 riousness and the realities. 
 
 Such a hope, if ever entertained, was doom- 
 ed to very decisive disappointment. " At about 
 sixteen years of age," says Anthony a Wood, 
 " he became a gentleman commoner of Magda- 
 len Hall, as his great creature, Henry Stubbe, 
 hath several times informed me ; but, when he 
 was to be matriculated as a member of the Uni- 
 versity, and so consequently take the oath of 
 allegiance and supremacy, he quitted his gown, 
 put on a cloak, and studied, notwithstanding, 
 for some time in the said hall." He then quit- 
 ted Oxford for the Continent, and, passing 
 through France, spent some time in Geneva,* 
 where his strong tendency to the dispute and 
 discussion of spiritual matters, it will readily 
 be supposed, found little check or hinderance. 
 He brought back with him to England, Claren- 
 don tells us, " a full prejudice and bitterness 
 against the Church, both against the form of 
 the government and the liturgy, which was 
 generally in great reverence, even with many 
 of those who were not friends to the other." 
 
 Great was the consternation, meanwhile, of 
 the now worthy comptroller of his majesty King 
 Charles's household, the elder Vane. The open 
 disaffection of his son in matters of religion 
 could be concealed no longer : useless had been 
 all threats and persuasions on that score ; still 
 more useless the endeavour to tame a yet 
 stronger tendency to Republicanism, by bring- 
 ing the youth within reach of the king. The 
 presence chamber of Chariest had no charms 
 for one to whom the house and heart of Pym 
 were open. A last effort was made, and with 
 a like result. The bishops took the matter in 
 hand. " It was suggested," says his friend 
 Sikes.t " by the bishops to the then king, con- 
 cerning him, ' that the heir of a considerable 
 family about his majesty was grown into dis- 
 like of the discipline and ceremonies of the 
 Church of England, and that his majesty might 
 do well to take some course about him.' On 
 this, the then Bishop of London took him to 
 task, who seemed to handle him gently in the 
 conference, but concluded harshly enough 
 against him in the close." Such a conference, 
 and such a close to it, may be well imagined. 
 The supreme self-confidence of Laud, lashing 
 itself into imperious and passionate wonder 
 against the calm and immovable reason of the 
 young Republican recusant, is precisely what 
 was likely to have been, and was also an exhi- 
 bition in no way likely to increase the Church's 
 claims to obedience or respect in the person of 
 her most eminent prelate. 
 
 These opening passages of the life of Vane 
 are decisive evidences of his greatness. What 
 
 * Clarendon, vol. i., p. 326, Oxford edition of 1826. 
 
 t A favourite story of the ribald Royalist prints against 
 young Vane had its origin in these efforts of his father to 
 conquer his popular and Republican tastes, by bringing him 
 into personal contact with the king. On one occasion, the 
 youth was left alone by his father (purposely, no doubt) in 
 the royal presence chamber, when Charles suddenly ap- 
 proaching, Vane as suddenly, resolute to avoid him, hid him- 
 self behind the arras. Charles, perceiving a motion in the 
 hangings, poked with the stick he always carried at that 
 part of the room, till Vane was obliged to come forth, and 
 " retired in confusion." This was an insult, say the self- 
 ishly judging Royalist writers, which the young Republican 
 never forgave. 
 
 t In the publication referred to above Life and Death of 
 Sir Henry Vane.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 267 
 
 he afterward became he had evidently willed j 
 already. To the mind of such a man, what is 
 Temptation, or what Chancel In no case 
 would they seem to have gone so nearly to 
 overrule and determine the destiny of a man 
 as in this case of the " son and heir" of the 
 favourite minister of Charles I. But the power 
 of Genius is the greatest power that the world 
 has tested yet, and this Vane had. Impelled 
 and sustained by it, he " waved and whistled 
 offten thousand strong and importunate tempta- 
 tions," and dashed the " dice-box of Chance" 
 from her jewelled hand. 
 
 While his father, ignorant what course to 
 hold with him, looked round in fear lest a hos- 
 tile position, maintained resolutely, might ulti- 
 mately weaken and embarrass his own influ- 
 ence at court, young Vane suddenly announced 
 his determination at once to leave his country, 
 and seek the liberty of conscience denied him 
 here in the new world that had risen beyond 
 the waters of the wide Atlantic. Shortly after, 
 the Rev. Mr. Garrard had a choice piece of 
 news to write to the lord-deputy of Ireland, 
 which he worded thus, with his usual gossiping 
 mixture of truth and falsehood : " Mr. Comp- 
 troller Sir Henry Vane's eldest son hath left his 
 father, his mother, his country, and that for- 
 tune which his father would have left him here, 
 and is, for conscience' sake, gone into New- 
 England, there to lead the rest of his days, 
 being about twenty years of age. He had ab- 
 stained two years from taking the sacrament 
 in England, because he could get nobody to ad- 
 minister it to him standing. He was bred up 
 at Leyden ; and I hear that Sir Nathaniel Rich 
 and Mr. Pym have done him much hurt in their 
 persuasions this way. God forgive them for it, 
 if they be guilty !"* 
 
 When, twenty-seven years having passed, 
 Sir Henry Vane addressed the English people 
 and posterity from a scaffold, he thus described, 
 in words never to be forgotten, the cause which 
 moved him to this voluntary exile : " Since my 
 early youth, through grace, I have been kept 
 steadfast, desiring to walk in all good conscience 
 towards God and towards man, according to the 
 best light and understanding God gave me. For 
 this, I was willing to turn my back upon my 
 estate ; expose myself to hazards in foreign 
 parts ; yea, nothing seemed difficult to me, so 
 I might preserve faith and a good conscience, 
 which I prefer before all things ; and do earnest- 
 ly persuade all people rather to suffer the high- 
 est contradictions from man, than disobey God 
 by contradicting the light of their own con- 
 science. In this it is I stand with so much 
 comfort and boldness before you all this day." 
 
 America then stood forward, to the imagina- 
 tions of the enthusiastic and the young, no less 
 than to the oppressed consciences of worn and 
 persecuted men, in the light of a promised land. 
 The progress of her colonization had excited 
 the utmost interest and curiosity throughout 
 Europe ; the fortunes of her first emigrants, 
 glimmering back into the world they had left 
 through the infinite wildernesses and over the 
 vast and dismal ocean which now divided them 
 from it, were strained after by their friends 
 with painful earnestness and wonder ; and, at 
 each successive ship that left with pilgrim pas- 
 
 * Stafford's Lettert, vol. i., p. 463. 
 
 sengers to her shores, the admiration and 
 amazement of men increased, that not of the 
 poor, the unfortunate, or the lowly were these 
 voluntary exiles, but rather, in the majority of 
 instances, the most refined and accomplished 
 examples of the civilization of the age. Not 
 alone the scholar and the philosopher, but the 
 wealthy, the high born, and the nobly bred, 
 were thus seen willingly abandoning the classic 
 quiet, the splendour, the refinement of their 
 homes, urged and sustained by those grand de- 
 signs and hopes which, having told them that 
 mankind were born for a better system of gov- 
 ernment and a purer shape of society than ex- 
 isted in the Old World, now pointed out to them 
 an opportunity of testing these exalted aspira- 
 tions in the new and strange lands which had 
 started up so suddenly beyond the vast and dis- 
 mal ocean. The work, thus begun by pure 
 philanthropists, was carried out to an extra- 
 ordinary extent by Laud's terrible system of 
 Church government ; and, for many months 
 before Vane so suddenly formed his resolution 
 of exile, successive multitudes of sufferers for 
 conscience' sake had been driven from their 
 native country to take refuge in New-England, 
 as the last home that was left for religion or 
 for liberty. 
 
 In glancing at the infancy of the American 
 colonies, even thus briefly, several considera- 
 tions of great interest suggest themselves as 
 to the peculiar forms and habits of society 
 which were of necessity incident to that early 
 state, and the intellectual influences which 
 again, as a matter of course, sprang out of 
 these forms. It will be a matter of importance 
 to follow them, as far as we may, in their 
 probable or possible effects upon the mind of 
 Vane. The extraordinary spectacle of two 
 extreme points of human progress brought back 
 into direct contact, which awaited his landing 
 on the American shores, could hardly be pre- 
 sented to such a mind without an effect scarce- 
 ly less extraordinary. There he had to see a 
 reunion of the city and the wilderness, a junc- 
 tion in the same men of the habits which belong 
 to the highest advances of refinement, and to 
 the most rude and primitive condition of hu- 
 manity. In log-houses he would have to seek, 
 not vainly, the most studiously polished man- 
 ners of civilization ; for " the same person 
 whose evenings were spent in the studies of 
 philosophy, learning, and religion, was engaged 
 during the day in the midst of the forest, or 
 floating in a bark canoe ;"* toiling in labours 
 which were the occupations of the rudest and 
 most barbarous ages, the employments of the 
 period when 
 
 " Nature first made man, 
 And wild in woods the noble savage ran." 
 
 Vane was not suffered to depart without 
 many peevish remonstrances from his father ; 
 but it is said the king interfered at last, and in- 
 timated a wish for the absence of the young 
 Republican. t 
 
 A characteristic circumstance awaited his 
 presence on board the passage-ship. The Pu- 
 ritans and Noncpnformists already assembled
 
 268 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 for the same distant voyage, instead of wel- 
 coming their illustrious fellow-exile, shrank 
 from him with coldness and suspicion. He was 
 the son of a minister of the king ; he had a 
 face that beamed with lustrous imagination ; 
 and he wore long hair ! " His honourable 
 birth," says his friend Sikes, "long hair, and 
 other circumstances of his person, rendered his 
 fellow-travellers jealous of him, as a spy to 
 betray their liberty, rather than any way like 
 to advantage their design." The old, vulgar, 
 and never-failing resource, when we can find 
 no better objection to a man ! Clarendon has 
 a remark of the same kind in his history : " Sir 
 Harry Vane had an unusual aspect, which, 
 though it might naturally proceed both from his 
 father and mother, neither of which were beau- 
 tiful persons, yet made men think there was 
 somewhat in him of extraordinary ; and his 
 whole life made good that imagination."* A 
 few short and pithy words out of Sikes's rhap- 
 sody furnish no bad result to that style of ob- 
 jection in the case of the Puritan voyagers : 
 " But he that they thought at first sight to have 
 too little of Christ for their company, did soon 
 after appear to have too much for them." 
 
 Vane landed at Boston, in New-England, in 
 1635, and was admitted to the freedom of Mas- 
 sachusetts on the 3d of March in the same year. 
 Whatever his first reception by the colonists 
 may have been, his character and his powers 
 very speedily attracted universal attention ; 
 and it became the theme of wonder and admi- 
 ration with them all, that such a man, so fitted 
 by his talents and his position to sway the des- 
 tinies of men in courts and palaces, should 
 " choose the better part" with the remote and 
 unfriended exiles of the obscure wildernesses 
 of Massachusetts. In 1636, after a very short 
 residence among them, and while he had not 
 yet completed his twenty-fourth year, " Mr. 
 Vane" was elected governor of the colony. 
 
 Clarendon describes the population of Mas- 
 sachusetts at this time, garbling truth with 
 falsehood, as " a mixture of all religions, which 
 disposed the professors to dislike the govern- 
 ment of the Church ; who were qualified by the 
 king's charter to choose their own government 
 and governors, under the obligation ' that every 
 man should take the oaths of allegiance and 
 supremacy,' which all the first planters did, 
 when they received their charter, before they 
 transported themselves from hence ; nor was 
 there, in many years after, the least scruple 
 among them of complying with those obliga- 
 tions : so far men were, in the infancy of their 
 schism, from refusing to take lawful oaths." 
 In the same passage of the history, Vane's 
 election and government are thus described : 
 " He was no sooner landed there but his parts 
 made him very quickly taken notice of; and 
 very probably his quality, being the eldest son 
 of a privy-counsellor, might give him some ad- 
 vantage, insomuch that, when the next season 
 came for the election of their magistrates, he 
 was chosen their governor, in which place he 
 had so ill fortune (his working and unquiet 
 fancy raising and infusing a thousand scruples 
 of conscience, which they had not brought over 
 with them, nor heard of before), that, he un- 
 satisfied with them, and they with him, he 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 326. 
 
 transported himself into England, having sowed 
 such seed of dissension there as grew up too 
 prosperously, and miserably divided the colony 
 into several factions, and divisions, and perse- 
 cutions of each other, which still continue, to 
 the great prejudice of that plantation ; insomuch 
 as some of them, upon the ground of their first 
 expedition, liberty of conscience, have with- 
 drawn themselves from their jurisdiction, and 
 obtained other charters from the king, by which, 
 in other forms of government, they have en- 
 larged their plantation, within new limits adja- 
 cent to the other."* Nor by Clarendon alone 
 has Vane's administration been thus spoken of, 
 but by writers of better faith and a nobler pur- 
 pose, whom it is difficult to imagine wilfully 
 lending themselves to the propagation of error, t 
 
 A simple detail of the short administration 
 of Vane, derived from various sources, all of 
 them above suspicion,:): will be the best answer 
 to statements of this kind. It is true that that 
 administration was in its duration brief and 
 stormy, and not successful in its result ; but 
 greatness, truth, and goodness are of more val- 
 ue than length of years, than quiet, or success. 
 
 Vane had many serious difficulties to contend 
 against, even before a single act of his govern- 
 ment was known. The principal persons in 
 the colony had been already gravely prejudiced 
 against him by the extraordinary enthusiasm, 
 he had called forth among the great and gen- 
 eral body of the settlers ; for there is no worse 
 crime than the power of awakening the enthu- 
 siasm of multitudes, in the eyes of those who 
 have no such power. The day on which he 
 assumed office saw a formidable party arrayed 
 against him, determined, on no better grounds 
 than this, to embarrass his government at ev- 
 ery step. The influences which operated at 
 that early time in the annals of Massachusetts, 
 and particularly disposed the people, always 
 prone to controversy, to be torn and divided 
 by the factions and intrigues which might be 
 set afloat in the young colony, were, of course, 
 favourable to the success of the design. 
 
 Nevertheless, in Vane's discharge of the first 
 and most ordinary duties of the station of chief 
 magistrate, he manifested a firmness, energy, 
 
 * History of the Rebellion, vol. i., p. 327, 328. 
 
 t See Mather, book iii., p. 77 ; Neale, vol. i., p. 144 ; and 
 the works of R. Baxter, passim. Mather has the following 
 remark : " Mr. Vane's election will remain a blemish to 
 their judgment who did elect him while New-Eng-land re- 
 mains a nation ; for, coming from England a young, unex- 
 perienced gentleman, by the industry of some who thought 
 to make a tool of him, he was elected governor ; and, before 
 he was scarce warm in his seat, fell in with the sectaries, 
 and sacrificed the peace of the state to them, leaving us a 
 caveat that all good men are not fit for government." Bax- 
 ter, in his life, after speaking of Vane in the thoughtless 
 phrase he too often adopted towards him, indulges the fol- 
 lowing utterly fictitious statement of his unpopularity in. 
 New-England : " He was fain to steal away by night, and 
 take shipping for England, before his year of government 
 was at an end." (Abridgment, p. 98.) The entire untruth 
 of this will be shown. 
 
 t Winthrop's History of New-England, the edition by 
 Savage ; Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers ; the 
 second series of an extensive American work of history, 
 called the " Massachusetts Historical Collections," and in- 
 cluding, in its 6th and 7th volumes, Hubbard's " General 
 History of New-England ;" and, lastly, a Life of Vane, as 
 " fourth governor of Massachusetts," by an eloquent and 
 accomplished American writer, Mr. Charles Wentworth 
 Upham, published a few years since in the course of a se- 
 ries of American biographies, and to which I feel most hap- 
 py in confessing several important obligations. His admira- 
 ble sketch of the Hutchinson controversy has been, in par- 
 ticular, a great assistance to me.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 369 
 
 and wisdom truly remarkable in one of his early 
 age and previous history. " He adapted him- 
 self," says Mr. Upham, "readily to his situa- 
 tion ; made himself acquainted with the inter- 
 ests and relations of the colony ; and concerted 
 the operations of the government, which, in 
 reference to the Indians, were particularly in- 
 teresting at that period, with promptitude, skill, 
 and effect." Men of great learning and old 
 experience surrounded him ; but in every 
 measure of resource or ready practical wisdom 
 he rose above them all ; while in the intricate 
 and profound discussions that occurred during 
 his administration, embracing as they did the 
 most perplexed questions of theological meta- 
 physics, he bore his part in a manner which at 
 once placed him on a level with the first divines 
 of that age, and well deserved the praise of 
 " wisdom and godliness," which his famous 
 competitor and successor in the government, 
 Winthrop, unreservedly bestowed upon him.* 
 
 The announcement of his election had been 
 received with immense enthusiasm by the peo- 
 ple ; and, to increase the demonstrations of 
 popular satisfaction, a salute was fired by the 
 shipping in the harbour. Fifteen large vessels 
 were at that time in port. Some few days af- 
 ter the firing of this salute, a deputation of the 
 leading men of the colony waited on Vane, and 
 represented to him that the presence of such a 
 large force of foreign vessels was in itself a 
 formidable and disagreeable circumstance in 
 the condition of a feeble settlement, which 
 could not rely on the sympathy of the mother- 
 country any more than it could upon the friend- 
 ship of other powers. Whatever the motives 
 for such a representation may have been, there 
 was justice in it, and this Vane acknowledged 
 at once. It was at least a matter of no doubt 
 with every reflecting person, that the influence 
 of the manners and habits of the officers and 
 men of these ships could not be other than in- 
 jurious to the morals and social condition of 
 the inhabitants of the town. 
 
 A prevention of the evils, therefore, that 
 might have sprung from such a source, was 
 the first act of the government of Vane. With- 
 in a week after his election, he took measures 
 to this end, which decidedly illustrate his tact 
 in affairs, and his " skill and success in mana- 
 ging men." He invited all the captains of the 
 ships to dine with him ; and, taking advantage 
 of the generous dispositions that are born of a 
 good dinner, laid the whole case before them. 
 The conversation is described to have been 
 conducted with infinite frankness and the friend- 
 liest spirit on both sides ; and the natural re- 
 sult was, that the captains consented, " readily 
 and cheerfully," to the agreement proposed by 
 Vane, and which ran thus : " First, that all in- 
 ward-bound vessels should come to anchor be- 
 low the fort, and wait for the governor's pass 
 before coming up to the town ; secondly, that, 
 before discharging their cargoes, their invoices 
 should in all cases be submitted to the inspec- 
 tion of the government ; and, thirdly, that none 
 of their own crews should ever be permitted to 
 remain on shore after sunset, except under ur- 
 gent necessity.! 
 
 * TJpham, p. 109. 
 
 t Winthrop's History of New-England, Savage's ed.,vol. 
 i., p. 187. TJpham's Life, p. 111. 
 
 The very next incident of Vane's govern- 
 ment furnishes a striking illustration of his 
 own character, no less than the character of 
 the men he had to deal with, and who were 
 necessarily associated with him in the govern- 
 ment. It was in itself of little intrinsic impor- 
 tance, but it afforded the first occasion of ac- 
 tive opposition to the young governor. 
 
 The mate of an English ship, called the Hec- 
 tor, then lying at anchor in Boston harbour, in 
 an excess of loyal indignation because the king's 
 colours were not displayed at the fort (which 
 was not then the custom), declared, one day, 
 on the deck of his vessel, and in the presence 
 of many of the inhabitants of the town, then 
 visiting her, that the colonists were all " trai- 
 tors and rebels." The expression was quickly 
 communicated from the ship and circulated 
 through the town : a violent excitement against 
 the mate was the immediate and very natural 
 consequence ; and so high did it run at last, 
 that it became necessary to take official cogni- 
 zance of the offence that had provoked it. 
 Vane accordingly sent for the captain of the 
 ship, and', after acquainting him with the affair, 
 despatched a marshal, accompanied by other of- 
 ficers of the law, to arrest the offender. The 
 crew, however,, refused to deliver up the mate 
 in the captain's absence, upon which the cap- 
 tain himself accompanied the marshal to the 
 vessel, when the mate was at once surrender- 
 ed, and made an ample and satisfactory apol- 
 ogy to the civil authorities. But, the dignity 
 of the colony vindicated, another care present- 
 ed itself to the scrupulous thoughts of Govern- 
 or Vane, scarcely less important than that call 
 ed forth by the insult so atoned for, since it in 
 volved what might possibly be the just and well 
 grounded feelings of conscientious men. 
 
 He had seen that some circumstances con 
 nected with the transaction I have just descri- 
 bed had been " taken very much to heart" by 
 the general body of officers of British vessels 
 in the port, and he now at once summoned 
 them to a conference with himself and the ma- 
 gistrates of the colony, in which he requested 
 a free expression of whatever had occurred to 
 them. They observed, in reply, with much 
 courtesy and temper, that it was more than 
 likely the circumstances of the recent dispute 
 might be made known to the authorities in 
 England, and represented there in such a man- 
 ner as to create a prejudice against the colony, 
 and bring its loyalty into suspicion ; and that, 
 therefore, as sincere friends of the colony, it 
 would be very agreeable to them could they te 
 enabled to say that they had seen the king's 
 colours flying in Boston. 
 
 For the captains a courteous and fair request, 
 but for the conscience-suffering, recusant Pu- 
 ritans a most distressing dilemma ! On the 
 one hand, it was clear, as Mr. Upham urges, 
 that for a colony, holding its very being under 
 a charter from the crown, to refuse to acknowl- 
 edge the king's sovereignty by displaying his 
 flag, and that, too, when it was requested for 
 the purpose of rescuing its loyalty from mis- 
 representation, would look like a very unrea- 
 sonable procedure, and almost seem to justify 
 the expressions for which the mate had been 
 humbled and punished.* But then, on the oth- 
 
 * American Biography, p. 113.
 
 270 
 
 BRITISH STATESMAN. 
 
 er hand, it would have filled the whole country 
 with horror had the flag been hoisted, for on 
 that flag was represented the PAPAL cross an 
 abomination no Puritan could bear ; and En- 
 dicott himself, one of the leading emigrants, 
 whose daring hand had before torn it from the 
 royal ensign,* was one of the board of magis- 
 trates who were so politely requested to hoist 
 that very ensign, cross and all ! 
 
 A lucky accident seemed to offer the hope 
 of escaping both horns of this dilemma ; they 
 could not hoist the king's flag, for there were 
 no such colours in the whole colony, t The 
 captains, unfortunately, had a resource at hand. 
 They offered to lend or give a set of the king's 
 colours to the colony to be displayed on the 
 occasion. Vane now saw that all chance of 
 evading the question was quite shut out, and 
 urged upon the magistrates the necessity of 
 meeting it fairly and openly. This reasonable 
 answer was accordingly returned : that al- 
 though they were fully persuaded that the 
 cross in the colours was idolatrous, yet, as the 
 fort belonged to the king, they were willing 
 that his own flag should fly there. 
 
 The conference thus closed, however, was 
 doomed to be reopened the following day with 
 greater violence. The case and its result had 
 been submitted in the evening to the consider- 
 ation of the clergy, a practice exacted from 
 the government on all disputed questions, and 
 the proceedings of Vane and the magistrates 
 did not meet their approbation. It was thought 
 a grave error to have sanctioned, upon any 
 terms whatever, the display of the king's flag, 
 that badge of Romish superstition, over Puritan 
 soil ; and the court was therefore again assem- 
 bled, and the captains summoned to appear next 
 morning, when the previous minute of the board 
 was reconsidered, and, after a stormy debate, a 
 majority of the magistrates voted to refuse 
 what they had granted the day before. Vane 
 now interfered with his authority as governor 
 of the colony ; and in a temperate but earnest 
 remonstrance, after vindicating the strength 
 and purity of his own religious faith, pointed 
 out to the assembled magistrates that that must 
 be a very far-fetched and excessive scruple, 
 not to say an absurd or capricious one, which 
 would induce them to refuse to recognise the 
 king's authority in his own dominions, on his 
 own fort, by a ceremony innocent in itself, and 
 
 * American Biography, p. 113. 
 
 t Mr. Upham remarks, upon the curious circumstance 
 that not a single royal ensign could be found in Massachu- 
 setts in 1636, that it indicates the substantial independence 
 of the colony at that early period. It did not attract the 
 notice, and was therefore out of the reach of the royal pow- 
 er ; and not merely of the royal power, but of the very in- 
 signia of that power. The people would not have anything 
 among them which would tend in the least degree to re- 
 mind them of the hierarchy or the throne. Mr. Upham adds : 
 " When, in the course of the present year (1834), a British 
 vessel of war arrived in the harbour of Salem, in Massa- 
 chusetts, and it was proposed, according to international 
 usage, to observe the civility of displaying from the vessel 
 the flag of the United States, and from the town the flag of 
 Great Britain, it was found necessary to borrow colours for 
 the occasion from the British vessel herself. This circum- 
 stance was noticed as indicating the absence of all relations 
 between the port of Salem and Great Britain at the time of 
 its occurrence. A similar indication was given, as just re- 
 lated, in 1636 ; and the inference is more than fanciful ; it 
 is just and obvious, that the actual connexion between the 
 colony of Massachusetts and the mother-country, at the be- 
 ginning, was scarcely greater than that of the town of Sa- 
 lem with England at the present day." 
 
 which was requested for the avowed purpose 
 of preserving peace and harmony, and prevent- 
 ing a misunderstanding between the colony and 
 the people of England, under circumstances 
 that would certainly be highly injurious, and, 
 it was possible, might become even ruinous to 
 the colony. The magistrates, with one excep- 
 tion, remained unmoved by this appeal ; the 
 jealousy of Vane, which had for some time 
 rankled in the breasts of the leading settlers, 
 had now found an outlet ; and even Winthrop, 
 the founder and patriarch of the colony, a man 
 of eminence and excellent dispositions, was in- 
 duced to place himself at the head of the ob- 
 stinate objectors. Upon this, Vane, supported 
 only by the magistrate alluded to, Mr. Dudley, 
 announced his determination to avail himself 
 of his privilege as governor, and, under a protest 
 against acknowledging the idolatrous sign upon 
 the flag, to display it from the fort on his own 
 personal responsibility and that of Mr. Dudley.* 
 
 This was the commencement of that hostil- 
 ity to the young governor which, availing it- 
 self not long after of the fury of a theological 
 controversy, ultimately brought his administra- 
 tion to a close. But will it now be doubted, in 
 these days of reason and toleration, which of 
 the parties were in the rights which course 
 was the fairest, the most just, the most en- 
 lightened 1 It appears to me, that by the light 
 which is thrown on Vane's character, even thus 
 early, by an incident of this sort, we may re- 
 duce to fine and eloquent sense many passages 
 in Sikes's tribute to his friend, which have 
 hitherto passed for absurd and incoherent rhap- 
 sodies. Two may be quoted here. 
 
 " His principles, light, and wisdom were such, 
 that he found the bare relation of his utmost 
 aims among his fellow-labourers would in all 
 probability so expose him to censure from all 
 parties and sizes of understanding, as would 
 disable him for doing anything at all. He 
 was therefore for small matters rather than 
 nothing, went hand and hand with them, step 
 by step, their own pace, as the light of the 
 times would permit. He was still for quitting 
 the more gross disorders in church and state, 
 corruptions in courts of judicature, popish and 
 superstitious forms in religion and ways of 
 worship, for what he found more refined and 
 tolerable. But he ever refused to fix his foot, 
 or take up his rest, in any form, company, or 
 way, where he found the main bulk of profess- 
 ors avowedly owning but such outward prin- 
 ciples of life and holiness as to him evidently 
 lay short of the glory, righteousness, and life 
 hid with Christ in God. He was still for press- 
 ing towards the mark. He was more for things 
 than persons, spirit than forms. This carriage 
 of his, all along in New-England and in Old, ex- 
 posed him as a mark for the arrow from almost 
 all sorts of people, rendering him a man of con- 
 tention with the whole earth. Yet was he all 
 along a true son of peace, a most industrious 
 and blessed peacemaker to the utmost of his 
 power, for the reconciling all sorts of conscientious 
 men, whatever variety of persuasion or form he 
 found them in, to one another and to Christ." 
 Refuting again, in another passage, the com- 
 mon report and " general reproach" that was 
 cast upon Vane, that " he was a man of con- 
 
 Savage's edition of Winthrop, i., 187. Upham's Life.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 tention from his youth up, wherever he came 
 or had to do, in New-England or in Old," Sikes 
 thus continues : " He was no humoursome, 
 conceited maintainer of any perverse or irra- 
 tional opinions, but a most quiet, calm, com- 
 posed speaker forth of the words of truth and 
 soberness at all seasons, upon all occasions, 
 and in all companies. He was full of conde- 
 scension and forbearance, hating nothing more 
 in his very natural temper than wrangling and 
 contention. He would keep silence even from 
 good (though his sorrow was stirred by it, and 
 the fire burned within while he was musing) in 
 case that either wicked or but shortsighted 
 good men were before him that he perceived 
 could not bear more spiritual and sublimated 
 truths. He became- all things to all men, that 
 he might by all means save some. His heart 
 was of a right scripture latitude ; stood fair 
 and open for any good, but no evil. All sorts 
 of conscientious inquirers after truth found a 
 friendly reception with him ; yea, he was in a 
 constant readiness to perform any warrantable ci- 
 vilities to all men. Anything that was good he 
 owned and cherished in the honest moral heathen, 
 legal Christian, or spiritual believer ; and he 
 sought opportunity by honest insinuations to 
 ' catch them with guile,' and lead them forward 
 into more excellent truths." 
 
 In such passages as these, a divinely beauti- 
 ful character is depicted, and one which the 
 reality will not be found to fall short of. 
 
 Vane's great influence with the people of the 
 colony enabled him for some time to withstand 
 effectually the hostility of its chiefs ; and we 
 find that early in July he started on a tour 
 through the towns on the northern and eastern 
 parts of the Bay, and made a public entrance 
 into Salem on the 9th of that month, amid ev- 
 ery demonstration of affection and enthusiasm. 
 Mr. Upham states that he sought upon the spot 
 in vain for any records of this great event, as 
 no doubt it was considered by the people of 
 that ancient town ; but in their absence he in- 
 dulges a picture of the scene, as fancy and 
 probability might delineate it.* Such a picture 
 would have little interest for the English read- 
 er, uninstructed in the distant locality, but the 
 simple idea which suggests itself to the mind 
 of the general character of a progress such as 
 this of Vane must have been, includes many 
 considerations of interest. We cannot refrain 
 from speculating on the effect likely to have 
 been produced on the extraordinary mind of 
 the chief actor in the pageant, as he moved 
 along the winding streets of a succession of 
 straggling quiet villages, then for the first time, 
 perhaps, alive and stirring with a great emo- 
 tion all eyes gazing and all hearts excited 
 as the son of the chief minister of the English 
 king, self-banished from a palace to a wilder- 
 ness, thus passed along, invested with all the 
 power that the dwellers in his chosen exile had 
 to give ; " old men and matrons, young women 
 and children of every age, thronging round the 
 door-stones and gathered at the windows," be- 
 fore which the procession pursued its line of 
 march ; while, through the slight breaks of the 
 surrounding woods, might be caught glimpses 
 of the neighbouring Indians, assembled at in- 
 tervals to watch the passing show, and gazing 
 
 * American Biography, p. 113-120. 
 
 at all its strangeness with an interest and won- 
 der but poorly concealed beneath the constrain- 
 ed and sullen silence which resented the white 
 men's intrusion. 
 
 Soon after Vane's return to Boston, the oc- 
 currences which led to what is called the Pe- 
 quot war commenced, of which it is only ne- 
 cessary to observe, that by the influence of 
 Vane, exerted in various ways, many of the 
 Indian tribes were withheld from joining in 
 hostilities against the English. In nothing 
 were Vane's wisdom and benevolence more 
 strikingly illustrated than in the course of jus- 
 tice and conciliation he invariably pursued to- 
 wards that noble race of men. We find that 
 on his invitation, on the 21st of October in this 
 year, the sachem of the Narragansetts came 
 to Boston, accompanied by two sons of Canon- 
 icus, Cutshamakin, another sachem, and twen- 
 ty other Indians, and that these gallant sons 
 of the forest were treated by Governor Vane 
 with marked kindness and attention. They 
 dined in the same room and at the same table 
 with himself, and after a long and friendly con- 
 ference, the result was a treaty of peace an<J" 
 amity with the English. When the object of 
 their visit was accomplished, they marched 
 back to their native wilds, having been attend- 
 ed to the borders of the town, at the order of 
 Governor Vane, by a file of soldiers, who were 
 instructed to give them at parting the salute of 
 a volley of musketry.* 
 
 Meanwhile, the religious controversy, to 
 which allusion has been made, raged to an ex- 
 traordinary extent, and assumed a more and 
 more serious aspect. Before proceeding to its 
 description, it may be as well to state, that in 
 the latter part of the summer letters had been 
 received from Vane's family in England, ur- 
 gently pressing his immediate return, and that 
 he had laid them before the council, with a re- 
 quest that he might be permitted to resign of- 
 fice. He discerned then, no doubt, to what the 
 religious controversy was fast tending. But 
 such obstacles appear to have been thrown in 
 his way, and especially by the remonstrances 
 of the Boston Church, of which he was a mem- 
 ber, that he abandoned his purpose, and con- 
 sented to remain in the government. 
 
 In describing that fierce religious dispute, the 
 Antinomian controversy, which was now sud- 
 denly seen raging with a passionate fury 
 throughout the colony, that swept away every 
 other interest from the feelings and thoughts 
 of the people, I shall chiefly avail myself of the 
 facts that have been collected with so much 
 knowledge and zeal by the American biogra- 
 pher of Vane.f The few writers who have al- 
 luded to it, with the single exception of the 
 latter, in despair of explaining the dispute, have 
 been fond of passing it over as an absurd and 
 unmeaning strife about words, altogether un- 
 worthy of the regard of posterity. It is very 
 true that, as the controversy grew hot, new 
 points were developed, new aspects of the 
 question presented, and new terms introduced, 
 so that, to a merely superficial observer,, the 
 
 * Savage's edition of Winthrop, i., 198. Upham's Life. 
 [.This is a model book for the biography of past days. Its 
 research, candour, and discrimination entitle it to general 
 confidence. Mr. Upham's book should be in the hand* of 
 every student of American and English history. C.] 
 
 t American Biography, p. 122, 140.
 
 272 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 whole affair might seem at last to have become 
 enveloped in impenetrable clouds of technical 
 phraseology and unintelligible distinctions. But 
 to the wise and studious inquirer it is scarcely 
 necessary to observe that there has seldom 
 been such a dispute merely about words, or 
 that men have not almost always meant some- 
 thing, and understood what they meant, in mat- 
 ters about which they have been, as in this 
 case, deeply and zealously affected. In the 
 case before us, Mr. Upham truly observes, 
 " principles of the highest consequence were 
 involved, much light was elicited, and a great 
 progress made by some of the parties in Chris- 
 tian knowledge ; and it is due to the fame of 
 our ancestors to rescue this controversy from 
 the charge of being a ridiculous and stupid war 
 of words, and to vindicate the claim it justly 
 presents to the character of a dignified and im- 
 portant discussion." It is more especially due 
 to the truth and intelligibility of the picture I 
 am anxious to present of the character and 
 intellect of Vane. 
 
 During his administration, Mrs. Anne Hutch- 
 fcson, a very remarkable and accomplished 
 woman, arrived from England, and became a 
 member of the Boston Church. Her husband 
 was a gentleman of respectable standing ; and 
 her brother-in-law, who accompanied her, Mr. 
 Wheelwright, bore a highly estimable charac- 
 ter as a Christian minister. " She was pos- 
 sessed of extraordinary talents, information, 
 and energy. Her mind was prone to indulge 
 in theological speculations, and the happiness 
 of her life consisted in religious exercises and 
 investigations. She was perfectly familiar with 
 the most abstruse speculations of the theology 
 of the day. In keenness of perception and 
 subtilty of reasoning she had no superiors, and 
 her gifts as a leader of devotional exercises 
 were equally rare and surprising." It was the 
 fortune of this singular woman to kindle a re- 
 ligious strife in the infant Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts, which has secured to her name 
 a lasting memory there, and rendered her the 
 heroine of a passage in the American history 
 as wonderful and tragical as any it contains. 
 
 It was the custom in Boston at the period of 
 her arrival for the brethren of the church to 
 meet every week for the purpose of impressing 
 still more deeply upon their minds the dis- 
 courses and other exercises of the previous Sun- 
 day. Following out this custom, Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson very soon instituted weekly religious 
 meetings for females ; and so attractive and 
 interesting did she make them, that almost all 
 the ladies in the place attended. The exerci- 
 ses were conducted and superintended by Mrs. 
 Hutchinson herself, and it soon followed, as a 
 matter of course, that she exerted a controll- 
 ing and almost irresistible influence upon the 
 whole community.* 
 
 The clergy of the colony, startled at first, 
 were not long in discovering the danger that 
 threatened them. Here was a power suddenly 
 brought to bear upon the religious feelings and 
 views of the people, irresponsible to them, whol- 
 ly beyond their control, and withdrawing from 
 their reach that very portion of society which 
 is always, perhaps, the chiefest source of such 
 authority and influence as theirs. Of the reli- 
 
 * Upham, p. 124. 
 
 gious opinions which prevailed generally among 
 these clergy, it will be enough to say that the 
 doctrines, as professed by the Reformed church- 
 es, were received with almost unanimous con- 
 sent by their order throughout New-England, 
 while they permitted themselves to regard with 
 very great jealousy and aversion the exercise 
 of free inquiry, whenever it in any way threat- 
 ened to lead to results different from their own. 
 Their views of Mrs. Hutchinson's particular 
 case were not likely to be propitiated by tho 
 very disagreeable comparisons, to say the least 
 of them, which her powers and talents were 
 likely to provoke among the people. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson, in her turn, was neither 
 wise nor considerate in the style and manner 
 she adopted. To say nothing of the somewhat 
 unbecoming position in which, as a woman, 
 she placed herself, it soon became obvious that 
 one of her great objects in these weekly audi- 
 ences was to utter disparaging criticisms upon 
 the discourses of the preceding Sunday or lec- 
 ture-day, to circulate imputations against the 
 learning and talents of the clergy, and even to 
 start suspicions respecting the soundness of 
 their preaching. Anything like moderation, 
 where a system of personality has been once 
 adopted, is a thing vainly looked for, and now 
 not a day passed which did not, in the matter 
 of these attacks, add to Mrs. Hutchinson's of- 
 fences and indiscretions, and tend to drive be- 
 yond all fair and reasonable ground the hos- 
 tilities of which she had become the object. 
 The ministers, the magistrates, all the leading 
 men in the colony, rose in array against her, 
 and, not confining their animosity to the point 
 on which she was in the wrong, and might easily 
 have been shown to be in the wrong ; not sat- 
 isfied with proceeding against her as a conten- 
 tious and busy calumniator and disturber of the 
 peace, they imputed to her grossly and openly 
 what was then considered the darkest crime 
 in the catalogue of depravity, and demanded 
 against her criminal penalties of the deepest 
 dye. She was a HERETIC, they said, and must 
 be crushed by the punishment due to heresy. 
 At this point Vane interfered the ever gallant 
 and generous defender of the rights of faith 
 and conscience and a sharp religious contro- 
 versy was soon fairly developed, which of 
 course led to crimination and recrimination, 
 "introduced innumerable questions of doubtful 
 disputation, and finally wrapped the whole 
 country in the raging and consuming flames of 
 a moral and religious conflagration."* 
 
 The real and substantial points at issue, in 
 the discussion of the truth or falsehood of her 
 doctrines, shall now be laid before the reader, 
 apart from the cloud of words and (not to speak 
 it irreverently) cant phrases which envelop- 
 ed them. Mrs. Hutchinson's opponents were 
 doubtless the aggrieved parties, and might as 
 surely have kept that vantage ground ; but they 
 surrendered it when they chose to impugn her 
 doctrines rather than her conduct ; and it is no 
 matter of difficulty to us, profiting by the dif- 
 fusion of the blessed principles of religious lib 
 erty and toleration, to determine on which side 
 of the controversy truth and justice lay. Vane 
 and Mrs. Hutchinson were far in advance of 
 their age. 
 
 * Upham, p. 127.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 273 
 
 One of her favourite topics ("whether se- 
 lected with a design, at the beginning, of di- 
 minishing the confidence of the people in 
 their ministers cannot now be determined"), on 
 which, in her weekly meetings, she dwelt very 
 often and very largely, was the proposition that 
 the existence of the real spirit of the Gospel in 
 the heart of a man, even if that man should 
 happen to be a minister of extraordinary gifts, 
 could not be inferred with certainty from the 
 outward displays of sanctity. She simply para- 
 phrased, in fact, the language of the apostle, 
 who hath told us that a man may speak with 
 the tongue of angels, and have the gift of 
 prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all 
 knowledge, and have all faith so as to remove 
 mountains, and bestow his goods to feed the 
 poor, and give his body to be burned, and still 
 be nothing in a religious and spiritual view. 
 The Saviour himself hath said that men may 
 prophesy and cast out devils, and do many 
 more wonderful works in his name, and be re- 
 jected and disowned by him at last. 
 
 But it was soon suspected, and it is to be 
 feared, says Mr. Upham, " upon too good 
 grounds, that Mrs. Hutchinson was aiming at 
 a particular object in dwelling so pointedly and 
 so much upon this proposition. And when it 
 once became a prevalent opinion that she was 
 actuated by personal designs, it can be easily 
 conceived how intolerably provoking her dis- 
 courses must have been. It was a period of 
 great formality and austerity in religion. The 
 outward manifestations of piety were much 
 greater than they have been since. Every 
 minister and every professor of religion was 
 expected to give evidence in his whole manner 
 of life, in his most familiar conversation, in his 
 movements, dress, countenance, and even in 
 the tones of his voice, that he was not of the 
 world. It followed of course it would have 
 been unjust had it not that the evidence thus 
 demanded by public opinion was very much re- 
 lied on by the people. The praise of holiness 
 and spirituality was freely and confidingly be- 
 stowed upon the sanctimonious and austere. 
 But Mrs. Hutchinson's doctrine cut up the 
 whole matter by the roots, destroyed the very 
 foundation upon'which her reputation had been 
 made to rest, poisoned the fountains of confi- 
 dence, and, in consequence of the personal and 
 satirical design imputed to her, had a direct 
 tendency to make men suspect of hypocrisy all 
 whom they had before been disposed to revere 
 for their piety." Most true is all this, and most 
 grave and difficult of answer must have been a 
 charge founded on improprieties of conduct 
 which were evidently fraught with mischief to 
 many of the best interests of the colony.* but 
 
 * In such a state of society as these colonies presented, it 
 was beyond everything expedient to impress the people with 
 an implicit veneration and respect for their ministers, and 
 this had beon done to a degree altogether unreasonable and 
 excessive, and far beyond the point to which it was really 
 and justly merited by that, on the whole, pious and excel- 
 lent class of men. To have gone against Mrs. Hutchinson 
 for disturbing, as it were, this necessary equilibrium in the 
 government, would have been the wise course, and, in the 
 main, impossible of resistance ; but the accusation of heresy, 
 on the other hand, raised up defenders of her doctrines ev- 
 erywhere throughout the colony, among people even who 
 understood them least, and carried agitation and division 
 into every church and family throughout the province. 
 Mr. Upborn gives the following extract from a pamphlet en- 
 titled " A short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the 
 
 MM 
 
 such a charge would not satisfy her unwise op- 
 ponents, who, eagerly seizing a remote and 
 very false pretext for the accusation of heresy, 
 prosecuted her for maintaining (to use the 
 formal terms in which the complaint was laid) 
 that " sanctijication is no evidence of justifica- 
 tion." 
 
 Never was the natural tendency of angry 
 disputants to push each other to extremes so 
 fully exemplified as on this occasion. From 
 the proposition that the outward expressions of 
 sanctity are not infallible evidences of the in- 
 
 Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines that infected the 
 Churches of New-England," and ascribed to a clergyman 
 (the Rev. Thomas Weld, of Roxbury) of great influence at 
 the time. It conveys some idea though, of course, a par- 
 tial one of the form in which the controversy was conduct- 
 ed, the origin of the difficulty, the charges alleged against 
 Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers, and the spirit of the 
 parties : " But the last and worst of all, which most sudden- 
 ly diffused the venom of these opinions into the very veins 
 and vitals of the people in the country, was Mistress Hutch- 
 inson's double weekly lecture, which she kept under a pre- 
 tence of repeating sermons, to which resorted sundry of 
 Boston and other towns about, to the number of fifty, sixty, 
 or eighty at once ; where, after she had repeated the sermon, 
 she would make her comment upon it, vent her mischiev- 
 ous opinions as she pleased, and wreathe the Scriptures to 
 her own purpose ; where the custom was for her scholars 
 to propound questions, and she (gravely sitting in the chair) 
 did make answers thereto. The great respect she had at 
 first in the hearts of all, and her profitable and sober car- 
 riage of matters for a time, made this her practice less sus- 
 pected by the godly magistrates and elders of the church 
 there, so that it was winked at for a time (though afterward 
 reproved by the Assembly and called into court) ; but it held 
 so long until she had spread her leaven so far, that, had not 
 Providence prevented, it had proved the canker of our peace 
 and ruin of our comfort. These opinions being thus spread, 
 and grown into their full ripeness and latitude, through the 
 nimbleness and activity of their fomenters, began now to lift 
 up their heads full high, to stare us in the face, and to con- 
 front all that opposed them ; and that which added vigour 
 and boldness to them was this, that now by this time they 
 had some of all sorts and quality, in all places, to defend 
 and patronize them ; some of the magistrates, some gentle- 
 men, some scholars and men of learning, some burgesses of 
 our General Court, some of our captains and soldiers, some 
 chief men in towns, and some men eminent for religion, 
 parts, and wit, so that wheresoever the case of the opinions 
 came in agitation, there wanted not patrons to stand up to 
 plead for them ; and if any of the opinionists were com- 
 plained of in the courts for their misdemeanors, or brought 
 before the churches for conviction or censure, still some or 
 other of that party would not only suspend giving their vote 
 against them, but would labour to justify them, to side with 
 them, and protest against any sentence that should pas* 
 upon them, and so be ready not only to harden the delin- 
 quent against ail means of conviction, but to raise a mutiny, 
 if the major part should carry it against them; so in town 
 meetings, military trainings, and all other societies, yea r 
 almost in every family, it was hard if that some or other 
 were not ready to rise up in defence of them, even as of the 
 apple of their own eye. Now, oh their boldness, pride, in- 
 solency, and alienations from their old and dearest friends ; 
 the disturbances, divisions, contentions they raised amen; 
 us, both in church and state ; and in families, setting di- 
 vision betwixt husband and wife ! Oh the sore censures 
 against all sorts that opposed them ; and the contempt they 
 cast upon our godly magistrates, churches, ministers, and 
 all that were set over them, when they stood in their way ! 
 Now the faithful ministers of Christ must have dung cast 
 upon their faces, and be no better than legal preachers,. 
 Bual's priests, popish factors, scribes, pharisees, and oppo- 
 sers of Christ himself! Now they must be pointed at, as it 
 were with the finger, and reproached by name. Such a 
 church-officer is an ignorant man, and knows not Christ ; 
 such a one is under a covenant of works ; such a pastor is a 
 proud man, and would make a good persecutor, &c. Now, 
 after our sermons were ended at our public lectures, you 
 might have seen half a dozen pistols discharged at the face 
 of the preacher (1 mean, so many objections made by the 
 opinionists in the open assembly against the doctrine deliv- 
 ered, if it suited not their new fancies), to the marvellous 
 weakening of holy truths delivered. Now you might have 
 seen many of the opinionists rising up, and contemptuously 
 turning their backs upon the faithful pastor of that church, 
 and going forth from the assembly when he began to pray 
 or preach." See also Baxter's Life, p. 74, and Somert't 
 Tracts, vii., 109.
 
 274 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ward residence of the Christian spirit, Mrs. 
 Hutchinson was driven to speak disparagingly 
 of external and visible morality, and her op- 
 ponents, on the other hand, to assign too high 
 a value to it ; until at last the two watchwords 
 or countersigns of the controversy became, in 
 theological phrase, a covenant of faith and a 
 covenant of works.* 
 
 Nor was this all. Mrs. Hutchinson availed 
 herself of some points of difference between 
 the two ministers of the Boston Church, Mr. 
 Cotton and Mr. Wilson ; and either because 
 there was a corresponding peculiarity in the 
 preaching, or by an adroit stroke of policy aim- 
 ed at securing the support of the most power- 
 ful minister in the colony, this ingenious and 
 extraordinary woman used to explain what her 
 distinguishing principle was, by saying that Mr. 
 Cotton preached a covenant of faith, but that 
 Mr. Wilson and the other ministers were under 
 a covenant of works. The result may be 
 easily imagined. Mr. Cotton, whether from a 
 motive of flattered vanity or sincere prefer- 
 ence, continued Mrs. Hutchinson's faithful and 
 zealous champion till she left the province, 
 while Mr. Wilson and the other ministers, not 
 caring to confine their rage within the bounds 
 of a decent or Christian propriety, went about 
 inflaming the people with the most dreadful in- 
 vectives against their antagonist, and impress- 
 ing upon them, in many instances not without 
 success, that such blows aimed at their minis- 
 ters inflicted a serious stain on the character 
 of their parishioners. 
 
 One other opinion fastened on Mrs. Hutchin- 
 eon in the course of the controversy, and this 
 the most important, as it was the most alarm- 
 ing to the faith of the churches, remains to be 
 explained. She was charged with entertaining 
 the doctrine that " the Holy Spirit dwells in 
 every believer." She held that by the expres- 
 sion Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, as used in the 
 Scriptures, is meant such an actual communi- 
 cation of the Spirit of God to the believer's 
 heart, that it becomes the abode of those sen- 
 timents of love, truth, purity, and piety, which 
 bear the impress of a divine source, and consti- 
 tute those who experience them sons of God, as 
 partakers of the divine nature, and one with 
 God, as the Saviour was one with him. As 
 this idea was sifted during the course of the 
 controversy, it became apparent that it would 
 necessarily end in the belief that the Holy 
 Spirit was not so much a divine pftrson as a di- 
 vine influence ; and the dread which was enter- 
 tained of such a consequence increased very 
 much the general impatience to bring the con- 
 troversy to a close as speedily as possible, by 
 putting down Mrs. Hutchinson with the strong 
 arm of law. Winthrop, in his journal, tells 
 us that " the question proceeded so far by dis- 
 putation (in writing, for the peace' sake of the 
 Church, which all were tender of), as at length 
 they could not find the person of the Holy 
 Ghost in Scripture, nor in the primitive churches 
 three hundred years after Christ."! 
 
 Mr. Upham very truly observes that it is im- 
 portant to connect this latter and more formi- 
 dable proposition with Mrs. Hutchinson's views 
 of the worth of outward expressions of sanctity. 
 
 * American Biography, p. 136. 
 
 t Savg'i edition of Winthrop, i., 206. 
 
 They seem to explain each other, and to inter- 
 pret jointly that elemental system of faith which 
 the modern term of Christianism will perhaps 
 best comprehend, and which, however unpalat- 
 able to a formal and sanctimonious condition 
 of society and manners, would provoke no hos- 
 tility from enlightened Christians now, of what- 
 ever denomination. Mrs. Hutchinson believed, 
 in fact, that it was the dwelling of the Holy 
 Spirit in the believer's heart that is, the pos- 
 session and exercise of the pure, and genuine, 
 and divine spirit of Christianity in the soul it- 
 self which constituted justification, or made a 
 person acceptable to God ; that the external 
 and formal indications of piety, or sanctification, 
 might appear where this inward spirit was not 
 experienced, and that, in such cases, they were 
 utterly worthless ; and, lastly, that the great 
 end of the religion revealed in the Scriptures 
 was not so much to make our conduct sancti- 
 monious, our outward deportment correct, or 
 to bring us under a covenant of works, as to 
 include us under a covenant of grace, by im- 
 parting to our souls the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 A discussion which embraced the truth or 
 falsehood of such doctrines as these could not 
 but be felt, of serious importance by a man of 
 Vane's pure mind and lofty character ; for, in 
 fact, considered thus, the questions at issue 
 embraced the primary and essential principles 
 of Christianity, and under one form or other, 
 have constituted the leading topics of investi- 
 gation and debate in every age of the Church, 
 from the gathering of the first general councils 
 in the primitive centuries up to the present hour. 
 It is useless to attempt to ridicule the " Hutch- 
 insonian or Antinomian discussion," or to ex- 
 press astonishment that "men of sense and 
 learning could ever have been engaged in it." 
 Many of the doctrines it implied were the ruling 
 principles of the life and the faith of Vane, and 
 it is by the affected contempt of such things 
 that his intellect and character have hitherto 
 suffered in the shortsighted estimation of our 
 historians. Let me pause for an instant to 
 prove this to the reader. 
 
 Sir Henry Vane the younger was, in the only 
 true and comprehensive sense of that word, a 
 Christian. A master of all the abstrusest 
 points of the science of religion, his intellect 
 and frame of mind were of that enlarged de- 
 scription, that, while he held his own views in 
 a high and spiritual sense, " he sought to im- 
 bibe truth from every system of faith and every 
 form of religion." " Christian faith was not to 
 him a mere intellectual and barren system of 
 speculative opinions ; not one article of faith 
 was permitted to be of that character in his 
 mind. But around every doctrine of Scripture 
 his noble genius, exuberant imagination, and 
 hallowed affections gathered a living and life- 
 giving spirit of warmth, and love, and energy." 
 He was a zealous man ; but knowledge regu- 
 lated his zeal, and charity tempered it. He 
 was called a fanatic, because he was the 
 most strenuous advocate that religious liberty 
 ever possessed. He was called a wild, un- 
 intelligible visionary, because through life he 
 never ceased to urge, with all the strength 
 of his passions and the subtlety of his intel- 
 lect, a UNIVERSAL TOLERATION Of S6CtS and 
 
 opinions. It was his profound and all-wise
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 275 
 
 maxim, whether in civil or religious polity, that 
 every one should be perfectly free, and every 
 one perfectly equal, in the eye of the law. All 
 exclusive privileges, whether of church or state, 
 he utterly abhorred ; and equally did he abhor 
 every form of bigotry or persecution, whether 
 " exercised by political or ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, by societies or individuals," while of all 
 these principles he emphatically proved the sin- 
 cerity by carrying them out into practice, 
 " without partiality or exception, even when 
 their operation was in favour of those whose 
 sentiments he most disliked ;" for, dreading 
 the power of the pope, great in that day, and 
 opposed to the Church of Rome, he yet flung 
 all his energies into the support of Catholic 
 emancipation, careless of the rage of his Prot- 
 estant contemporaries, and of the denunciations 
 of Richard Baxter himself: nor be it ever for- 
 gotten, that when John Biddle, the founder 
 of the denomination of Unitarian Christians 
 throughout England, was arraigned for publish- 
 ing his opinions, the younger Sir Harry Vane, 
 the enthusiastic champion of the Genevan Cal- 
 vinists, stepped forth in his defence, and la- 
 boured with untiring zeal to protect him from 
 the blind intolerance of the age.* To the last 
 hour of his life, as through all its changes and 
 vicissitudes, he maintained the same faith 
 which in her days of danger and persecution 
 threw its shield before Mrs. Hutchinson. 
 
 Observe the following description of the di- 
 visions and conflicting parties in Christendom, 
 which is quoted by Sikes from one of Vane's 
 religious essays : " There are many churches 
 in the world that make a profession of the name 
 of Christ, under several forms and denomina- 
 tions, according to the variety of judgments, 
 and interests of the rulers and members thereof. 
 There is a church called catholic or universal, 
 headed by the pope, who pretends to be Christ's 
 vicar. There are also national churches, head- 
 ed either by a civil magistrate, as the Church 
 of England, or by general assemblies, as the 
 Church of Scotland hath been, with other re- 
 formed churches. There are also particular, 
 independent congregational churches, distin- 
 guishing themselves into a variety of sects, 
 and diversity of judgments and opinions, as 
 well about the way and order of the word in 
 matters of worship, and the service of God, as 
 in what they hold fundamental in matters of 
 faith. These all make up one body as to the 
 owning and upholding a church in some out- 
 ward visible form, who, notwithstanding all 
 their differences, and pretestings against one 
 another, do generally agree together in one 
 mind as to the preferring of the church in name, 
 show, and outward order, before what it is in spirit 
 and truth, as it is the real and living body of 
 Christ. Hence it is that the true Church in- 
 deed, the very living, real, spiritual members 
 of Christ's body, have been for many hundred 
 years a dispersed, captivated people, under all 
 worldly powers, civil or ecclesiastical, and 
 
 * Upham's Life. Orme's Life of Baxter, i., 82. Toul- 
 min's Life of Biddle, 33 ; and see the 13th and 18th vol- 
 umes of that admirable periodical, the Monthly Repository, 
 p. 257 and 347, which now, under the accomplished man- 
 agement of Mr. Leigh Hunt, a writer of genius, and the 
 most Christian-hearted of men, sustains the reputation it 
 acquired under the editorship of one of the most eloquent 
 and philosophical writers of the day, the Rev. Mr. Fox. 
 
 never been suffered to use or enjoy a freedom 
 in their communion together, and in the purity 
 of God's service and worship, but are upon one 
 pretence or other restrained by human laws, 
 and suppressed as heretics, schismatics, fanat- 
 ics, and such as turn the world upside down ; 
 while those that have the repute and credit to 
 be the church or churches of Christ, under 
 some one of the forms and outward orders be- 
 fore mentioned, have the powers of the world 
 on their side, and are contending one with an- 
 other who shall be uppermost, and give the rule 
 of conformity in doctrine, worship, and church 
 order to all the rest, by compulsion and persecu- 
 tion ! But the days are now hastening apace 
 wherein the living members of Christ's body 
 shall be made manifest, in distinction from all 
 those that have the name to live but are dead."* 
 I have described this great statesman's faith 
 as thatof UNIVERSAL TOLERATION. Not to Chris- 
 tian sects and professors alone did he extend 
 his charity, but to men of all opinions and all 
 religions ; to the " honest moral heathen," as 
 we have seen his friend Sikes express it, no 
 less than to the "legal Christian." And he 
 did this because Christianity was with him a 
 spiritual religion, the vital essence of which 
 can live in the hearts of its followers alone. To 
 him the substance of true religion was moral 
 and spiritual excellence ; and, wherever he could 
 find that, wherever that appeared, whether in 
 the minds and characters of Gentiles or of 
 Jews, he recognised a fellow-Christian, al- 
 though its possessor lived in an age or country 
 which had not known or heard of the very 
 name of Christ. Men enrolled in the same 
 political struggle with himself would ask him. 
 the meaning of such latitudinarian backsliding, 
 and were answered by the startling but most 
 noble question, How dared he to exclude the 
 heathen from his charity, since in doing that 
 he might shut out those whom Christ, the great 
 head of the Church, would possibly, at the final 
 day, acknowledge and welcome as his own 1 
 Let the reader take to his heart the following 
 divine passage of the " Retired Man's Medita- 
 tions," a work which will be described here- 
 after : " But, indeed, this assertion is so far 
 from straitening or lessening the number of 
 those that are the true heirs of salvation, that 
 it rather discovers how they may lie hid, as 
 they did in Elijah's time, out of the observa- 
 tion of visible professors (AMONG THOSE THAT 
 THEY EXCLUDE AS HEATHENS), and be comprehcnd- 
 ed by Christ, their spiritual head, when as yet 
 they may not have their spiritual senses brought 
 forth into exercise, so as to apprehend him, but 
 may be babes in Christ, walking as men undis- 
 tinguished from the rest of the world ; and al- 
 though they may, in that respect, seem to be 
 men in the flesh, yet they may live according to 
 God in the spirit, and find acceptance in the be- 
 
 * In another passage of a similar kind the same faith re- 
 ceives emphatic illustration : " These keen concisioiiist*, 
 that cannot afford a good word for the true circumcision, 
 are eager about the outward circumstances of worship, time, 
 place, and the like. Christ reproves them in his answer to 
 the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well : ' neither in this 
 mountain, nor at Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father, 
 but in spirit and in truth.' Neither in this form nor that, 
 but excluded out of all synagogues has the true Church and 
 spouse of Christ been worshipping God this twelve hundred 
 years and upward, in a mourning, persecuted, wilderness 
 condition."
 
 276 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 loved one, while they themselves may either be 
 
 WITHOUT LAW, EXERCISING A CHASTE NATURAL 
 
 CONSCIENCE, or may be, under the law, believers 
 so zealous of the law as to fly in the face of 
 Paul himself for witnessing a higher light than 
 they have yet experience of or can bear."* 
 
 And as these principles guided him when his 
 life began, and through all the hard years of 
 his public struggles sustained him, so in the 
 hour of death they were his comfort and ref- 
 uge. " Whatever you do," he said to his chil- 
 dren, on their last interview with him in the 
 Tower, the evening before his execution, 
 "whatever you do, be not conformed to this 
 world in the spirit, way, principles, affections, 
 no, nor religion thereof. Amid the great va- 
 riety of churches and ways of worship that 
 this world abounds with, be not by any means 
 induced or forced to observe and become sub- 
 ject to the ordinances of man in things pertain- 
 ing unto God. Give unto God the things that 
 are God's. Give also unto Caesar the things 
 that are his. If he unlawfully require more, 
 do you lawfully refuse to obey him. Let him 
 then take his course ; wherein any deal proud- 
 ly, God will be above them. If one church 
 say, ' Lo, here is Christ ;' another, ' Lo, there !' 
 and the trumpet that's blown in both give but 
 an uncertain sound, look up to Christ himself 
 with the spouse in the Canticles, and say, ' O 
 thou, whom our souls do love, tell us where 
 thou feedest, and makest thy flock to rest at 
 Boon, under the scorching heat of man's per- 
 secuting wrath.' If rightly sought to and wait- 
 ed on, he will by his spirit infallibly direct you 
 to the true shepherds' tents ; to those spirit- 
 ual pastors and assemblies that walk in the 
 footsteps of his ancient flock, even in the faith, 
 spirit, and way of Abraham. . . And, as I would 
 have you to quit all false churches, whatever 
 curious dress, insinuating appearance, or re- 
 fined form they shine forth in, so much more 
 yet would I have you to loathe and depart from 
 all manner of profaneness and common de- 
 bauchery, whatever countenance or encourage- 
 ment it may have round about you in the land 
 of your nativity !"f Through the prison walls 
 that then encompassed Vane, the barbarous 
 dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers had al- 
 ready reached, even as it pierced the blind sol- 
 itude that compassed Milton round ! 
 
 Vane's advocacy of Mrs. Hutchinson, then, 
 was only in accordance with the principle 
 which governed every passage in his life ; it 
 was no " working and unquiet fancy," as Clar- 
 endon describes it, nor humour of " young in- 
 experience," as better friends to truth than 
 Clarendon have been induced to urge : it was 
 simply the result of those settled philosophical 
 convictions which, thus early developed, re- 
 mained with him his whole life after, that 
 forced Vane into the front rank of this religious 
 controversy, as the chief friend and supporter 
 of the remarkable woman with whom it ori- 
 ginated. He espoused her cause, and defended 
 her with all the warmth and enthusiasm of his 
 own character.:): 
 
 * Retired Man's Meditations, 4to, 213. 
 
 t I shall have to return to this affecting address, which 
 there is reason to suppose was taken down by Sikes at the 
 moment of its delivery. He appears to have been the only 
 person present besides the family of Vane. 
 
 t I need scarcely add, that, supposing his opinions had 
 
 So supported, and with the additional aid of 
 the Rev. Mr. Cotton's zeal, Mrs. Hutchinson 
 for a time held equal ground with her enemies ; 
 but as the contest proceeded, the proportion of 
 numbers turned out heavily against her. The 
 celebrated founder, father, and first governor 
 of the colony, Winthrop, conducted the oppo- 
 sition, and was supported with the hottest zeal 
 by Mr. Wilson and all the other ministers of 
 the country, by all the churches but that of 
 Boston, and by a considerable and very active 
 minority there. With every day that passed, 
 her position, including that of her supporters, 
 became more and more dangerous. She had 
 provoked, in all its most fearful fires, the odium 
 theologicum, and it burned with an equal fury 
 against all who dared to countenance or to tol- 
 erate the opinions she was charged with hold- 
 ing. 
 
 The crisis arrived at last. The day of the 
 annual election came round ; and the party al- 
 ways hostile to Vane, re-enforced in strength 
 and numbers by the party whose hostility he 
 had brought down in his support of Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson, all assembled, and massed themselves 
 together at the appointed place and time. A 
 terrible storm of excitement was the result. 
 Among other notable circumstances, the Rev. 
 Mr. Wilson clambered up into a tree, and ha- 
 rangued the electors in a speech which, as it is 
 described, could surely never have been en- 
 dured in those grave times, and in one of his 
 calling, except during the prevalence of a most 
 engrossing and almost maddening excitement. 
 The end was, that Winthrop was elected gov- 
 ernor, and Vane, and all Vane's friends, left out 
 of office. 
 
 The Boston people, ever devotedly attached 
 to Vane, at once declared their unmoved con- 
 fidence and faith in him by electing him, with 
 others of his most zealous friends, to represent 
 them in the general court. More passionate 
 than discreet, the Winthrop party in the As- 
 sembly pronounced the election void. The 
 people of Boston, spirited and independent then 
 as they have been ever since, with indignation 
 at such a gross outrage on their rights of suf- 
 frage, returned the same men back to the House 
 by a new election the very next day. The suc- 
 cessful party, meanwhile, once seated in the 
 colonial government, lost not a day in begin- 
 ning in fearful earnest to put down by main 
 force the Hutchinsonian heresy, and to cut off 
 
 been less in accordance, or even utterly at variance, with 
 her own, he would yet have been bound, by his theory of 
 non-interference in matters of religious belief, to take part 
 with her against her prosecutors. " He was always," says 
 his friend Sikes, "against the exercise of a coercive magis- 
 tratical power in religion and worship, because of the single 
 rule, power, and authority that Christ himself claims as his 
 peculiar prerogative in and over the hearts and consciences 
 of all men. How grossly inconcinnous must it needs ap- 
 pear even to the common reason of all mankind, that such 
 as take upon them to be magistrates and rulers, whether 
 the people will or no (as it often falls out), yea, or though 
 freely chosen, should give the rule to all others' conscience* 
 in point of religion, when they many times have no religion 
 at all in themselves, nor any other conscience but a dead or 
 seared one, hardened in the most brutish vilenesses that the 
 basest of men can be guilty of. But if the magistrate do 
 plausibly pretend to something of religion, what a change- 
 able thing will religion be at this rate ! as fickle as the ma- 
 gistrate's judgment, at least as his person, for the next ru- 
 ler may be of another persuasion ; as this nation hath expe- 
 rienced off and on, between popery and the Protestant pro- 
 fession, in Henry VIII., Edward VI., and in the two queens 
 Mary and Elizabeth."
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 877 
 
 forever all means of its farther growth. The 
 first step taken with this view was a startling 
 one no less than to prevent, by absolute 
 means, the introduction into the colony of per- 
 sons who were at all likely to favour Mrs. 
 Hutchinson or her doctrines. Many such per- 
 sons being expected to arrive from England 
 about that time, a law was passed which im- 
 posed a heavy penalty upon any person who 
 should receive into his house a stranger com- 
 ing with intent to reside, or let to such a one 
 a lot or habitation, without, in every instance, 
 obtaining particular permission of one of the 
 standing council, or two of the assistant ma- 
 gistrates ; and, by the same act, a large fine 
 was to be levied upon any town which should, 
 without such permission, allow strangers a 
 residence. 
 
 A grosser violation of the rights of the colo- 
 nists, considered in the abstract, could not be 
 imagined than under such a law as this. Vane 
 at once declared against its injustice and enor- 
 mity, and appealed to the people. The inhab- 
 itants of Boston, with whom his influence al- 
 ways bore its natural and fair proportion to 
 their own independence, took up the matter so 
 warmly, that they refused to meet Governor 
 Winthrop, after the usual customs of respect, 
 when he entered the town on his return from 
 the session of the Legislature ; and at last the 
 public mind generally, and in all parts of the 
 colony, showed so much discontent on the sub- 
 ject of the law, that Governor Winthrop was 
 driven to the necessity of a formal public ap- 
 peal in its behalf and his own. A warm con- 
 troversy ensued, in which Vane was his chief 
 and most formidable opponent. 
 
 This discussion is only to be alluded to here 
 in so far as it illustrates the character of Vane 
 as a statesman, so long misunderstood, and, 
 by writers of English history, so unjustly han- 
 dled. It is in proof, during its progress, that 
 he was the first to declare, at this early period 
 of his life, and at the greatest personal hazard, 
 that the theory on which New-England had 
 been planted and was proposed to be main- 
 tained was absolutely visionary and impracti- 
 cable. We shall find always, in the course of 
 this memoir, that he whose wildness and en- 
 thusiasm are the favourite topics of the his- 
 tory of the time, was, in strict truth, the most 
 clear-headed and the most practical of politi- 
 cians. He could never understand what was 
 meant, as applied to the case of New-England, 
 by a settlement of religious liberty in a pecu- 
 liar sense alone, and subject to conditions 
 which destroyed it in fact.* He held that they 
 
 * The best statement of the case in that view, and the 
 most enlightened defence of Winthrop's policy, are given 
 by Mr. Upham. We quote it in justice to both parties : " In 
 their own country they were oppressed and in various ways 
 afflicted in the exercise of their consciences, and in the ex- 
 pression and enjoyment of their own religious principles and 
 way of worship. They saw no prospect of a remedy, be- 
 cause it was then universally supposed that, in order to live 
 in peace and liberty, Christians must agree in sentiment 
 and speculation. Such an agreement was manifestly im- 
 possible in the Old World. They were therefore led to 
 conceive the plan of withdrawing from Christendom into a 
 wilderness beyond the ocean, where, without disturbing 
 others, they themselves might enjoy ' freedom to worship 
 God.' It did not occur to their imaginations that any, be- 
 sides those who sympathized with (hem in views and feel- 
 ing*, would voluntarily join them in encountering the perils 
 of the deep and the sufferings of a new settlement on a for- 
 eign and savage shore. It was their solemn and must sa- 
 
 who in a large society had contended for the 
 rights of conscience when they were them- 
 selves sufferers, could not, upon any pretext, 
 in a society however small, turn against oth- 
 ers, and, upon points of speculative difference, 
 violate their rights of conscience because they 
 had acquired the power and the opportunity to 
 do it. The result proved Vane to have been 
 right. He had hit the true principle of religious 
 liberty, which, in its great and comprehensive 
 wisdom, never dawned upon the minds of the 
 first planters of New-England ; and he was the 
 first English statesman to declare and to act 
 upon that principle up to its very fullest ex- 
 tent. He heralded the way for Milton, for 
 William Penn, for Locke, for the great Fox, 
 and for his noble kinsman (in our own time, 
 the most generous and constant asserter of the 
 rights of conscience) Lord Holland.* 
 
 A few extracts from Vane's answers to Win- 
 throp will satisfactorily establish this. The 
 latter having issued an elaborate " Defence of 
 an Order of Court made in the year 1637," ex- 
 plaining its " intent" and illustrating its " equi- 
 ty," Vane at once published a reply, under the 
 title of " A brief Answer to a certain Declara- 
 tion, made of the Intent and Equity of the Or- 
 der of Court, that none should be received to 
 inhabit within this Jurisdiction but such as 
 should be allowed by some of the Magistrates." 
 
 The introduction of Winthrop's argument 
 consisted of the following definition of a " corn- 
 
 ered purpose to rear up their children in the faith they 
 cherished ; and they rejoiced in having, as they thought, 
 devised a scheme of society, in which, far removed from all 
 who differed from them, they might enjoy their own insti- 
 tutions and profess their own principles, without giving or 
 suffering molestation, and free from all division or dissent. 
 But, without considering the difficulty of excluding persons 
 of discordant opinions coming from abroad, it was utterly in 
 vain to attempt to bring any system of education to bear 
 with such complete effect upon a whole people as to pre- 
 vent difference of opinion among their descendants. It was, 
 however, a beautiful vision, and, upon the whole, very 
 creditable to those who indulged it. While we cannot la- 
 ment that it failed of being realized, it is impossible not to 
 sympathize with our fathers in the disappointment they so 
 bitterly experienced, when, after all their sacrifices, and 
 toils, and privations, and sufferings, and before they had 
 got comfortably settled in their new abode, they discovered, 
 to their amazement, that they had not escaped the differen- 
 ces and dissensions which they so much dreaded. It seemed 
 hard that, after having left Christendom, country, and home 
 itself, and effected a lodgment in a far-off wilderness, where 
 their only hope was a peaceful harmony of opinion, beyond 
 the reach of oppression, and rescued from all temptation to 
 oppress it was indeed hard to be pursued and tormented 
 by those very disputes which they had sacrificed their very 
 all to avoid. It ought not to be wondered at, as a strange 
 or inconsistent thing, that they used every effort to drive 
 from their territory those who advocated discordant opin- 
 ions, and that they employed every device to prevent their 
 introduction. In so doing they did not violate, but, on the 
 contrary, fully acted out the principles upon which they 
 emigrated to America and planted the colony. The law to 
 which we have just referred [the law described in the text] 
 was but an expression of those principles, and indicated the 
 only probable policy by which they could be developed and 
 preserved." 
 
 * As this volume is passing through the press, Lord Hol- 
 land's signature again appears alone to one article of a pro- 
 test on the subject of religious liberty, which appears to me 
 to condense into a few words its most comprehensive prin- 
 ciples. His lordship protests against the municipal officers' 
 Declaration Bill (as he had ten years before protested 
 against the bill it proposed to remedy the defects of) be- 
 cause he "cannot directly or indirectly sanction the opinion 
 that any particular faith in matters of religion it necessary 
 to the proper discharge of duties purely political or tempo- 
 ral." A collection of Lord Holland's protests would be an 
 invaluable text-book of statesman-like reasoning, of pure 
 constitutional doctrine, and of the most generous and enno- 
 bling semimenti.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 mon weale or body politike," such as the col- 
 ony of Massachusetts was : " the consent of a 
 certain company of people to cohabit together 
 under one government, for their mutual safety 
 and welfare." To this, however, Vane deci- 
 sively interposes a mention of the restrictions 
 which limit so convenient a definition, and ren- 
 der it by no means so apt a plea for the arbi- 
 trary legislation of such a "government." He 
 reminds Winthrop that his definition is at the 
 best but a description of a commonwealth at 
 large, and not such a commonwealth as this 
 (as is pretended), which is not only CHRISTIAN, 
 but dependant upon the grant also of our sov- 
 ereign ; for so are the express words of that 
 order of court to which the whole country was 
 required to subscribe. " Now," he continues, 
 "if you will define a Christian commonwealth, 
 there must be included such a consent as is 
 according to God ; a subjecting to such a gov- 
 ernment as is according to Christ. And if you 
 will define a corporation incorporated by virtue 
 of the grant of our sovereign, it must be such a 
 consent as the grant requires and permits, and 
 in that manner and form as it prescribes, or 
 else it will be defective. The commonwealth 
 here described [in Winthrop's definition] may 
 be a company of Turkish pirates as well as 
 Christian professors, unless the consent and 
 government be better limited than it is in this 
 definition ; for sure it is that all pagans and 
 infidels, even the Indians here among us, may 
 come within this compass. And is this such a 
 body politic as ours 1 Our Commonwealth, we 
 fear, would be twice miserable, if Christ and 
 the king should be shut out so. Reasons ta- 
 ken from the nature of a commonwealth not 
 founded upon Christ, nor by his majesty's char- 
 ters, must needs fall to the ground, and fail 
 those that rely upon them. Members of a com- 
 monwealth may not seek out all means that may 
 conduce to the welfare of the body, but all lawful 
 and due means, according to the charter they 
 hold by, either from God or the king, or from 
 both ; nor may they keep out whatsoever may 
 appear to tend to their damage (for many things 
 appear which are not), but such as, upon right 
 and evident grounds, do so appear and are so 
 in truth." 
 
 Winthrop had insisted very strongly on the 
 following argument as decisive in his favour : 
 "The churches take liberty (as lawfully they 
 may) to receive or reject at their discretion ; 
 yea, particular towns make orders to such ef- 
 fect ; why, then, should the Commonwealth be 
 denied the like liberty, and the whole more re- 
 strained than any part 1" To this Vane replied, 
 in the true spirit of the great founder of Chris- 
 tianity : " Though the question be here conclu- 
 ded, yet it is far from being soundly proved ; 
 yea, in truth, we much wonder that any mem- 
 ber of a church should be ignorant of the false- 
 ness of the groundwork upon which this con- 
 clusion is built ; for, should churches have this 
 power, as you say they have, to receive or re- 
 ject at their discretion, they would quickly grow 
 corrupt enough. Churches have no liberty to re- 
 ceive or reject at their discretions, but at the dis- 
 cretion of Christ. Whatsoever is done in word 
 or deed, in church or commonwealth, must be 
 done in the name of the Lord Jesus. Neither 
 hath church nor commonwealth any other than 
 
 ministerial power from Christ, who is the head 
 of the Church, and the prince of the kings of 
 the earth. After that Cornelius and his com- 
 pany had received the Holy Ghost, whereby 
 the right which they had to the covenant was 
 evidenced, it is not now left to the discretion 
 of the Church whether they would admit them 
 thereunto or not. But can any man forbid them 
 water 1 saith Peter. He commanded them to 
 be baptized. There is the like reason of ad- 
 mission into churches. When Christ opens a 
 door to any, there's none may take liberty to 
 shut them out. In one word, there is no lib- 
 erty to be taken, neither in church nor com- 
 monwealth, but that which Christ gives, and is 
 according unto him." Carrying out these no- 
 ble and exalted views, Vane thus described 
 what ought to be, by statesmen, the 'proper 
 treatment of heretics : " As for scribes and 
 Pharisees, we will not plead for them ; let them 
 do it who walk in their ways ; nor for such as 
 are confirmed jn any way of error ; though all 
 such arc not to be denied cohabitation, but are to 
 be pitied and reformed. ISHMAEL SHALL DWELL 
 
 IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS BRETHREN." 
 
 Then, towards the conclusion of this very 
 striking pamphlet, he sums up his argument in 
 these words : " This law we judge to be most 
 wicked and sinful, and that for these reasons : 
 1. Because this law doth leave these weighty 
 matters of the Commonwealth, of receiving or 
 rejecting such as come over, to the approbation 
 of magistrates, and suspends these things upon 
 the judgment of man, whereas the judgment is 
 God's. This is made a groundwork of gross 
 popery. Priests and magistrates are to judge, 
 but it must be according to the law of God. 
 THAT LAW WHICH GIVES THAT, WITHOUT LIMITA- 
 TION, TO MAN WHICH IS PROPER TO GoD, CANNOT 
 
 BE JUST. 2. Because here is liberty given by 
 this law to expel and reject those which are 
 most eminent Christians, if they suit not with 
 the disposition of the magistrate ; whereby it 
 will come to pass that Christ and his members 
 will find much worse entertainment among us 
 than the Israelites did among the Egyptians 
 and Babylonians, than Abraham and Isaac did 
 among the Philistines, than Jacob among the 
 Shechemites ; yea, even than Lot among the 
 Sodomites. These all gave leave to God's people 
 to sit down among them, though they coukl not 
 claim such right as the king's subjects may. 
 Now that law, the execution whereof may 
 make us more cruel and tyrannical over God's 
 children than even these, must needs be most 
 wicked and sinful." 
 
 The profound and generous spirit of these 
 passages, the force and beauty of their scrip- 
 ture illustration, cannot be admired too highly. 
 But Winthrop, strongly supported by the most 
 powerful influences in the colony, was enabled 
 to hold his ground, and Vane, baffled in his best 
 hopes and purposes, resolved for England.* He 
 took his passage in August, 1637; not "fain 
 to steal away by night," as Baxter would have 
 it, but openly, nay, with marks of honour from 
 his friends, which even his enemies were obli- 
 
 * " He had not been long in New-England," says his 
 friend Sikes, " before he ripened into more knowledge and 
 experience of Christ than the churches there could bear the 
 testimony of. Even New-England could not bear all hia 
 words, though there were no king's court or king's chapel" 
 Then he returns for Old England."
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 279 
 
 ged to take part in, and accompanied by the 
 young Lord Ley, son and heir of the Earl of 
 Marlborough, who had come over a short time 
 before to see the country. A large concourse 
 of the people of Boston attended him, with ev- 
 ery form of affectionate respect, to the vessel's 
 side, which he ascended amid the strongest 
 demonstrations of Jove and esteem for his per- 
 son, and admiration for his character and ser- 
 vices. A parting salute was fired from the 
 town, and another from the castle ; and as he 
 sailed from the shores of New-England, he left 
 behind him a name which, as years went on, 
 became more and more endeared to the peo- 
 ple ; a name which is venerated there to this 
 day ; and gives a kind of religious interest to 
 the small house in Boston which is still point- 
 ed out as one of his places of residence with 
 an honourable gratitude and pride.* 
 
 Nor did Vane's interest in America, any more 
 than the better influences of his character and 
 name, pass away with his passage from her 
 shores. During the remainder of his life, 
 through all its power and all its suffering, he 
 forgot not her. By his aid, when governor of 
 Massachusetts, the famous Roger Williams had 
 succeeded in obtaining a deed of Rhode Island 
 from the native princes, and one of his first 
 acts after his return to England was to exert 
 himself to procure the first charter of that col- 
 ony. " It was not price and money," says that 
 most celebrated Puritan, "that could have pur- 
 chased Rhode Island, but it was obtained by 
 love that love and favour which that honoured 
 gentleman, Sir H. Vane, and myself had with 
 the great sachem Miantonomo, about the league 
 which I procured between the Massachusetts 
 English and the Narragansetts in the Pequot 
 war. This I mention, as the truly noble Sir 
 H. Vane had been so good an instrument in the 
 hand of God for rescuing this island from the 
 barbarians, as also for procuring and confirm- 
 ing the charter, that it may be recorded with 
 all thankfulness. "t And not in words alone 
 did Roger Williams exhibit his gratitude ; he 
 gave more solid and enduring proofs of it in 
 carrying out Vane's own great principles of re- 
 ligious liberty in the settlement of the colony 
 of Rhode Island, which soon presented, single 
 and alone, faithful among the faithless, the 
 grand example of Christian toleration in its 
 only complete and wise aspect, as applied not 
 only to Christians, but to all men, of whatever 
 religion or form of faith. Deep was the inter- 
 est Vane thenceforth took in that colony ; and 
 when, in long after years, at the very busiest 
 and most anxious period of his public life, he 
 had received reason to suspect that something 
 of a contentious and intolerant spirit was steal- 
 ing insensibly into the hearts of some of its ac- 
 tive leaders, he at once wrote them a letter 
 (dated the 8th of February, 1653), expressing 
 
 * Mr. Upham tells us that " Governor Vane's house stood, 
 as we are informed by Hutchinson (i., 55, note), on the side 
 of the hill above Queen-street," between the sites of the 
 houses of Mr. Jonathan Phillips and the late Mr. Gardiner 
 Greene. On his departure from America he presented the 
 estate to Mr. Cotton, in whose family he had resided, and 
 with whom he had formed a "great friendship," founded 
 upon sympathy of opinions and congeniality of spirit. It 
 has been supposed that Sir Henry Vane assisted Mr. Cotton 
 in preparing the "Abstract of the Laws of New-England," 
 published at London in 1641. Hist. Coll., v., 172, note. 
 
 t Mr. Upborn, Hist. Coll., ., 194, 2d series. 
 
 his regret at the intelligence, and urging them 
 to a more consistent practice of the great prin- 
 ciples upon which their society was founded. 
 An answer was drawn up by Roger Williams, 
 and signed by the principal people of Provi- 
 dence, which shows with what truly Christian 
 sentiments Sir Henry's friendly and faithful re- 
 monstrances were received. It concludes by 
 expressing the hope " that, when we are gone 
 and rotten, our posterity, and children after us, 
 shall read, in our town records, your pious and 
 favourable letters and loving kindness to us."* 
 In these after years he wrote to Winthrop 
 too, his old and active enemy, in the same spirit 
 as to those who had supported him. From the 
 high places of political influence and power, as 
 in his young and uninfluential days, he used the 
 same arguments to Winthrop to induce him to 
 save the country he presided over from the de- 
 structive effects of religious bigotry and intol- 
 erance. He wrote to himf entreating him to 
 
 * Hist. Coll., x., 20, note. 
 
 t This letter will be found in Hutchinson's Collections, 
 p. 137. I cannot refrain from adding here, while yet de- 
 tained on the subject, an admirable sketch, which is fur- 
 nished by Mr. Upham, of the closing passages of Mrs. 
 Hutchinson's life, after the departure of Vane. It cannot 
 fail to have a melancholy interest for those who are inter- 
 ested in the great statesman her fortunes connected her 
 with, and who, admiring, as they must, her genius, her 
 firmness, and perseverance, must deplore her sufferings, and 
 the bloody tragedy which brought those sufferings to a close. 
 After Vane's departure, the controversy he had taken part 
 in was, by the direct application of mere power, extin- 
 guished and extirpated. Mr. Wheelwright was banished, 
 and the same sentence was carried into execution against 
 Mrs. Hutchinson, after an examination and trial, in which 
 she exhibited the most extraordinary degree of talent, learn- 
 ing, skill, and fortitude. She at once removed after this 
 with her family to Rhode Island, where, under the protec- 
 tion of Roger Williams, her conduct did not incur reproach, 
 although she continued faithful to her principles ; nei- 
 ther did any injury or inconvenience, as Williams wrote 
 to Vane, result from her influence there. " How clearly," 
 justly pursues Mr. Upham, " does this illustrate the impor- 
 tant maxim, that no heresy need be regarded as dangerous 
 to the state when the state does not meddle with it ! Upon 
 the death of her husband she transferred her residence to 
 Long Island, where, in the year 1643, her sufferings and 
 persecutions were brought to an end in a manner so awful 
 and tragical as would have softened the hearts, we might 
 suppose, of the bitterest foes, and have buried forever all 
 feelings of anger and bigotry in one wide-spread and pro- 
 found sentiment of pity and sorrow. She and all her fami- 
 ly, consisting of sixteen persons, were murdered by the In- 
 dians, with the exception of one daughter, who was carried 
 into captivity. Such was the fate of Anne Hutchinson, one 
 of the most remarkable persons of her age and sex learned, 
 accomplished, and of an heroic spirit. Her genius was as 
 extraordinary as her history was strange and eventful. 
 Her abilities were equalled only by her misfortunes. With I 
 talents and graces which would have adorned and blessed 
 the private spheres, within which they ought to have been 
 confined, she aimed to occupy a more public position, and 
 to act upon a more conspicuous theatre ; and the conse- 
 quence was, that she was hated where she would otherwise 
 have been loved ; a torrent of prejudice and calumny was 
 made to pour over her; an entire community was thrown 
 into disorder and convulsions for years ; a most cruel perse- 
 cution drove her from the pale of civilization ; and she fell, 
 at last, beneath the bloody tomahawks of murderous sava- 
 ges. Immediately after her exile from Massachusetts, the 
 floodgates of slander were opened against her character. 
 Every species of abuse and defamation was resorted to, and 
 tales of calumny were put into circulation so extravagant, 
 disgusting, loathsome, and shocking, that nothing but the 
 blackest malignity could have fabricated, or the most infu- 
 riated and blinded bigotry have credited them. (Mather's 
 " Magnalia," book vii., c. iii., <) xi.) Every mouth seemed 
 to be open to asperse her, and every heart hardened against 
 her ; and when the news of her tragical death arrived, it 
 was readily believed and proclaimed that it was a judgment 
 of God upon her sinful heresies, and the people seemed al- 
 most to take satisfaction in reflecting upon the dreadful fate 
 which had befallen her in the distant wilderness to which 
 she had been driven by their intolerance. In contemplating 
 the furious and desperate virulence of the colonists towards
 
 280 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 exhort the Congregational churches in America 
 to exhibit such an example of the spirit of 
 peace, charity, and forbearance as would alone 
 tend to promote the great cause of Christian 
 liberty and truth in the older world. Winthrop 
 himself appears by this time to have become 
 sensible of the greatness, justice, and truth of 
 Vane's character ; and we find him, according- 
 ly, in speaking of a difficulty in which, in 1645, 
 some New-England men were involved in the 
 admiralty courts in London on account of their 
 connexion with certain proceedings of the gov- 
 ernment of Massachusetts, and which was of 
 such moment that the bonds they were required 
 to give amounted to four thousand pounds, 
 seizing the opportunity of doing honour to cer- 
 tain active and disinterested exertions of Sir 
 Henry Vane in their behalf, and adding that, 
 " although he might have taken occasion against 
 us for some dishonour which he apprehended 
 to have been unjustly put upon him here, yet 
 both now and at other times he hath showed 
 himself a true friend to New-England, and a 
 man of a noble and generous mind."* 
 
 Such is a faithful history of Vane's colonial 
 residence and administration ; and it may be 
 safely left thus to the impartial and just-mind- 
 ed to determine whether, far from depreciating 
 his powers as a public man, as hath been too 
 rashly concluded, it does not, on the contrary, 
 give additional interest and lustre to all that is 
 great, or noble, or wise in the history of his 
 life. He now appears upon a wider scene once 
 more, and Garrard thus writes to the lord-dep- 
 uty: "Henry Vane, the comptroller's eldest 
 son, who hath been governor in New-England 
 this last year, is come home ; whether he hath 
 left his former misgrounded opinions for which 
 he left us, I know not."t 
 
 Nor could the gossiping Garrard, with all his 
 zealous curiosity, ascertain for many months 
 any better knowledge on this point. Vane 
 lived in retirement for a considerable time after 
 his return. The interval not unfitly prepares 
 us, after the strange and turbulent scenes we 
 have just gone through, for that resolved and 
 deliberate strengthening of his purposes and 
 powers which, in hours of quiet retreat and 
 lofty study, we may suppose to have been now 
 his principal aim, and his noblest preparation 
 for that glorious career of suffering and of ser- 
 vice on which he was soon to enter in his na- 
 tive country. In this interval, too, " with his 
 father's approbation," he married Frances, the 
 daughter of Sir Christopher Wray, of Ashby, in 
 Lincolnshire. 
 
 Public affairs had meanwhile advanced to the 
 crisis which forced the king once more upon 
 the detested resource of a Parliament, in April, 
 1640, and in this Parliament, influenced secret- 
 ly, it is supposed, by Pym, " young Mr. Vane" 
 consented to sit. He was at once returned for 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson, we discern a striking illustration of the 
 destructive influences of bigotry and persecution upon all 
 the finer and more amiable sentiments of humanity. The 
 very virtues which are justly lauded in our fathers serve to 
 prove and demonstrate the lesson which it becomes us to 
 draw from this passage of their history. Indeed, no excel- 
 lence of nature or of principle, no strength or refinement 
 of character, is proof against the debasing power of intoler- 
 ance. To be bigoted ia to be cruel. To persecute another 
 is to barbarize one's self." 
 
 * Savage's Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 248. 
 
 t Strafford's Letters and Despatches, ii., 116. 
 
 the borough of Kingston-upon-Hull worthiest 
 predecessor, in the representation of that place, 
 to honest Andrew Marvel. 
 
 This step appears to have given great alarm 
 at court, both to his father and the king. Means 
 were at once taken to propitiate the possible 
 hostility of the young and resolute statesman. 
 " By his father's credit with the Earl of Nor- 
 thumberland, who was lord-high-admiral of Eng- 
 land," says Clarendon, " he was joined pres- 
 ently and jointly with Sir William Russel in 
 the office of treasurer of the navy (a place of 
 great trust and profit), which he equally shared 
 with the other."* His father's credit may in- 
 deed have had some share in this appointment, 
 but the manifest purpose for which that credit 
 had been called into request, and the eager 
 sanction the appointment received from the 
 king, were displayed in an additional honour 
 conferred on him two or three months after- 
 ward, when he received the dignity of knight- 
 hood from the hands of Charles. From this 
 time he generally passed by the title which he 
 has made so famous, Sir Harry Vane the young- 
 er, or the more formal one of Sir Henry Vane, 
 of Raby Castle, knight, t 
 
 Still no movement appeared on the part of the 
 newly-appointed minister of co-operation in the 
 principles of the government. He was frequent- 
 ly observed, on the contrary, in the society of 
 Pym and Hampden, and it is a remark of Clar- 
 endon that at this time " nothing was concealed 
 from him, though it is believed that he commu- 
 nicated his own thoughts to very few." He 
 was waiting his time, now very near. 
 
 In November, 1640, again elected for the 
 borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, Sir Henry Vane 
 the younger sat down at Westminster, a mem- 
 ber of the ever-memorable Long Parliament. 
 From that instant his course was plain, and 
 never swerved from. " In the beginning of the 
 great Parliament," says one who had watched 
 him well, the honest and able Ludlow, " he was 
 elected to serve his country among them, with- 
 out the least application on his part to that end ; 
 and in this station, he soon made appear how ca- 
 pable he was of managing great affairs, possess- 
 ing, in the highest perfection, a quick and ready 
 apprehension, a strong and tenacious memory, a 
 profound and penetrating judgment, a just and 
 noble eloquence, with an easy and graceful man- 
 ner of speaking. To these were added a sin- 
 gular zeal and affection for the good of the 
 Commonwealth, and a resolution and courage 
 not to be shaken or diverted from the public 
 service."}: Soon, indeed, were these great 
 characteristics made manifest. 
 
 * Vol. i., 328. t Anthony a Wood, iii., 579. 
 
 1 I may in this place subjoin what is said of his general 
 conduct henceforward, in the extraordinary " life" by Sikes. 
 " This worthy patriot was freely chosen, without any seek- 
 ing of his, to serve as a burgess for the town of Kingston- 
 npon-Hull, in that Parliament which sat down November 
 3, 1640. About thirteen years did he indefatigably labour 
 therein for his country's relief, against manifest oppressions 
 and public grievances that were upon it, and wellnigh tea 
 years more he hath patiently suffered, as either a useless 
 or pernicious person, because of his destructive constitution 
 to the peace and interest of tyranny. During the Long- 
 Parliament, he was usually so engaged for the public, in 
 the House and several committees, from early in the morning 
 till very late at night, thtt he had scarce any leisure to ent 
 his bread, converse with his nearest relations, or at all to 
 mind his family affairs. Were I indeed furnished with the 
 tongue of the learned, the pen of a ready writer, I should 
 think it advisable to let the usefulness and success of his
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 His conduct in the affair of Lord Stafford's 
 trial has been alluded to in a previous memoir.* 
 He furnished the most material evidence against 
 the earl. The circumstance may be stated 
 here in the words which, according to Claren- 
 don, were used by Pym, in describing it to the 
 House of Commons. " That, some months be- 
 fore the beginning of this Parliament, he had vis- 
 ited young Sir Henry Vane, eldest son to the 
 secretary, who was then newly recovered from 
 an ague ; that they being together, and condoling 
 the sad condition of the kingdom, by reason of the 
 many illegal taxes and pressures, Sir Harry 
 told him, if he would call upon him the next 
 day, he would show him somewhat that would 
 give him much trouble, and inform him what 
 counsels were like to be followed to the ruin 
 of the kingdom ; for that he had, in perusal of 
 some of his father's papers, accidentally met 
 with the result of the cabinet council upon the 
 dissolution of the last Parliament, which com- 
 prehended the resolutions then taken. The 
 next day he showed him a little paper of the 
 secretary's own writing, in which was contain- 
 ed the day of the month, and the results of sev- 
 eral discourses made by several counsellors, 
 with several hieroglyphics, which sufficiently 
 expressed the persons by whom those discour- 
 ses were made. The matter was of so tran- 
 scendent a nature, and the counsel so prodi- 
 gious with reference to the Commonwealth, 
 that he desired he might take a copy of it, 
 which the young gentleman would by no means 
 consent to, fearing it might prove prejudicial to 
 his father. But when he (Mr. Pym) informed 
 him that it was of extreme consequence to the 
 kingdom, and that a time might probably come 
 when the discovery of this might be a sovereign 
 means to preserve both church and state, he 
 was contented that Mr. Pym should take a copy 
 of it, which he did in the presence of Sir Henry 
 Vane, and, having examined it together, deliv- 
 ered the original again to Sir Henry Vane."t 
 
 This famous paper, it is scarcely necessary 
 to repeat in this place, contained old Vane's 
 notes of a council, at which Strafford had rec- 
 ommended the introduction of the Irish army to 
 reduce England to obedience. When they were 
 produced by Pym in Westminster Hall, an ex- 
 traordinary sensation was created, and the 
 
 public actings all along that Parliament, till forcibly dis- 
 solved, speak for themselves. That race of action being 
 run, not without much struggling, contradiction, and mis- 
 reports the while, he conies to his suffering scene. He was 
 for several years rejected, persecuted, and imprisoned by 
 his apostatized friends, that had gone to the house of God 
 in company with him, who at length, to complete their per- 
 secuting work upon him, delivered him up, to be hunted to 
 death by his professed foes, enemies of all righteousness, 
 God's and man's too." * Life of Strafford, p. 125. 
 
 t Clarendon's History, i., 399-400, Oxford ed. of 1826. 
 It is an extraordinary instance of Mr. D'Israeli's forgetful- 
 ness, where his violent partialities intrude, that in charac- 
 terizing the statement in the text as an artfully-turned par- 
 ty tale, got up to infer that there was " no premeditated 
 plot" in this case between the Vanes to revenge a family 
 hatred against Strafford (a charge which the Royalist wri- 
 ters are very fond of), he endeavours to cast doubt and re- 
 proach upon the allegations of the " severe indisposition" 
 of the younger Vane, and his alleged " reluctance" in suf- 
 fering Pym to take a copy, by saying that he can find no 
 authority for them excepting in Brodie's History of the 
 Brit'sh Empire ! " Mr. Brodie," remarks Mr. D'Israeli, " is 
 my sole authority for this statement !" Yet Clarendon must 
 have been turned over, page by page, sentence by sentence, 
 with infinite and most curious zeal by Mr. D'Israeli ! Clar- 
 endon is the very text on which the " commentaries" are 
 written. 
 
 NN 
 
 cause of Strafford was, for the first time, felt to 
 be hopeless. It is, perhaps, worth while adding 
 the sequel of the scene in the House of Com- 
 mons after Pym's announcement, always bear- 
 ing in mind that it rests on no better authority 
 than Clarendon's. Sir Henry Vane the younger, 
 he says, rose after Mr. Pym, corroborated his 
 statement, and added " that his father, being in 
 the North with the king the summer before, 
 had sent up his keys to his secretary, then at 
 Whitehall, and had written to him (his son) 
 that he should take from him those keys which 
 opened his boxes where his writings and evi- 
 dences of his land were, to the end that he 
 might cause an assurance to be perfected which 
 concerned his wife ; and that he having peru- 
 sed those evidences, and despatched what de- 
 pended thereupon, had the curiosity to desire 
 to see what was in a red velvet cabinet which 
 stood with the other boxes, and thereupon re- 
 quired the key of that cabinet from the secre- 
 tary, as if he still wanted somewhat towards 
 the business his father had directed ; and so, 
 having gotten that key, he found, among other 
 papers, that mentioned by Mr. Pym, which 
 made that impression in him, that he thought 
 himself bound in conscience to communicate it 
 to some person of better judgment than him- 
 self, who might be more able to prevent the 
 mischiefs that were threatened therein, and so 
 showed it to Mr. Pym, and being confirmed^y 
 him that the seasonable discovery thereof might 
 do no less than preserve the kingdom, had con- 
 sented that he should take a copy thereof, 
 which to his knowledge he had faithfully done, 
 and thereupon had laid the original in its prop- 
 er place again, in the red velvet cabinet. He 
 said he knew this discovery would prove little 
 less than his ruin in the good opinion of his 
 father ; but, having been provoked by the ten- 
 derness of his conscience towards his common 
 parent, his country, to trespass against his 
 natural father, he hoped he should find compas- 
 sion from that House, though he had little hopes 
 of pardon elsewhere." The elder Vane, who 
 had, throughout the whole of this scene, shown 
 extraordinary symptoms of pain and vexation, 
 now rose, remarked severely on the conduct 
 of his son, and added " that it was true, being 
 in the North with the king, and that unfortu- 
 nate son of his having married a virtuous gen- 
 tlewoman, daughter to a worthy member then 
 present, to whom there was somewhat in jus- 
 tice and honour due, which was not sufficient- 
 ly settled, he had sent his keys to his secretary, 
 not well knowing in what box the material 
 writings lay, and directed him to suffer his son 
 to look after those evidences which were 
 necessary; that by this occasion, it seemed, 
 those papers had been examined and perused 
 which had begot much of this trouble."* This 
 scene, adds Clarendon, whose object through- 
 out is to leave an impression that the elder 
 Vane had secretly supplied the papers to his 
 son for the mere purpose of revenging himself 
 of a private spleen against Strafford, " was so 
 well acted, with such passion and gestures be- 
 tween the father and the son, that many speech- 
 es were made in commendation of the con- 
 science, integrity, and merit of the young man, 
 and a motion made ' that the father might be 
 
 * Clarendon, i., 403, 404.
 
 282 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 enjoined by the House to be friends with his 
 son ;' but for some time there was, in public, a 
 great distance observed between them." The 
 distance which was observed between them is 
 spoken of by other writers, of better faith and 
 purer purpose than Clarendon, as the result of 
 sincere dissatisfaction on the part of the elder 
 Vane at the course to which his son had now 
 irrevocably pledged himself; and of the exact 
 truth of the details given in the preceding 
 speeches, no writer of authority has ventured 
 to express a doubt.* The only remaining mat- 
 ter that is in any way questionable may be safe- 
 ly left to the judgment of the reader whether 
 young Vane was strictly authorized in the step 
 he took, upon discovering, by the indulgence 
 of a pardonable curiosity, the memorable paper 
 in question. Not only, it appears to me, was 
 he fully justified in the course he followed, but 
 none other was open to him, save at the peril 
 of betraying the best interests of his country. 
 So it was considered then by the most rigidly 
 conscientious men,t and so all right-judging 
 men must consider it now. The truth of the 
 contents of that memorable paper is not dispu- 
 ted by Clarendon himself, and was confirmed 
 by the evidence of Northumberland and Bristol, 
 and even of Usher and Juxon.J 
 
 In every great measure of the Commons the 
 name of the younger Vane now prominently 
 appears ; and, pending the trial of Strafford, he 
 had carried up the impeachment^ which dis- 
 abled the power of Laud, the once terrible ene- 
 my of toleration. In all matters of religious 
 reform he more especially distinguished him- 
 self : he was one of the greatest supporters of 
 the famous " root and branch" petition against 
 prelacy ; in the committee of which Hyde was 
 chairman he spoke with masterly effect in fa- 
 vour of the bill against episcopal government ;|| 
 and when the famous Assembly of Divines as- 
 sembled at Westminster to deliberate on the 
 state of the Church and the interests of religion, 
 being requested by the House of Commons to 
 take upon himself the duty 6f one of its lay 
 members, he rendered himself conspicuously 
 eminent in the consultations of that most grave 
 and learned body,f not only by his theological 
 attainments, but by the singular subtlety and 
 skill with which he addressed them to the 
 loftier purposes of government ; and, in the 
 
 * Whitelocke, who was intimately acquainted with all the 
 circumstances, and by no means a violent enemy to Strafford, 
 or a violent friend to the Vanes, distinctly corroborates ev- 
 ery part of Pym's statement. " Secretary Vane being out 
 of town, sent a letter to his son, Sir Henry Vane the younger, 
 then in London, with the key of his study, for his son to 
 look in his cabinet for some papers there to send to his fa- 
 ther. The son looking over many papers, among them 
 alighted upon these notes, which being of so great concern- 
 ment to the public, and declaring so much against the Earl 
 of Strafford, he held himself bound in duty and conscience 
 to discover them. He showed them to Mr. Pym, who urged 
 him and prevailed with him that they might be made use 
 of in the evidence against the Earl of Strafford, as being 
 most material and of great consequence in relation to that 
 business." Memorials, April 12, 1641. 
 
 t The old covenanter Baillie describes young Vane's con- 
 duct throughout with fervent praise, and says his manner 
 was remarkable, and that of a most " gracious youth." 
 
 t See Hallam's Const. Hist., ii., 145 (note). 
 
 I) See Laud's Diary Rushworth's Collections, iii., 1087. 
 
 II The report which remains of this speech is obviously 
 imperfect and unsatisfactory, but is given, as it stands in 
 the pamphlets of the day, in the appendix (D) at the end of 
 this article. 
 
 IT Biog. Brit., art. Vane, vi., 3991 ; and see Scobell's Col- 
 lection of Acts, p. 43. 
 
 faith of those opinions which have already re- 
 ceived such striking illustration in these pages, 
 sought to impress upon his more sectarian col- 
 leagues the necessity of associating with the 
 popular principle in civil affairs, an extreme 
 and universal toleration of religious differences. 
 In this noble policy, by his powers of irresisti- 
 ble persuasion, he eventually won over some 
 of the most celebrated of these men.* 
 
 The progress of public affairs, up to the 
 erection of Charles's standard at Nottingham, 
 has been discussed in detail in the memoir of 
 Pym. The extraordinary legislative achieve- 
 ments that had already distinguished the hither- 
 to short existence of this immortal Parliament 
 shed no small portion of their lustre on the 
 name of the younger Vane. In the impeach- 
 ments which broke down the terrible power of 
 Strafford and of Laud, and which disabled for- 
 ever such men as Bishop Wren, Bishop Pierce, 
 Secretary Windebank, Lord-keeper Finch, and 
 the slavish judges of ship-money, their meaner 
 associates, young Vane had made his powers 
 conspicuous. In the triennial bill, the consti- 
 tutional settlement of taxation, the destruction 
 of despotic courts, the abolition of the king's 
 prerogative of dissolution, in all those potent 
 measures which, with a terrible hand, had 
 driven out from the English government " evil 
 counsellors, profligate judges, arrogant bishops, 
 and sycophant churchmen," young Vane had 
 gone hand in hand with the man from whom 
 he had received his first political lessons, and 
 on whose pure and lofty principles, on whose 
 long life devoted with unequalled fidelity and 
 virtue to the service of his country, he desired 
 to model his own. The period to Pym's exer- 
 tions was fast arriving, but they had found 
 their worthiest " supplement and completion" 
 in the younger Sir Harry Vane.t 
 
 When the final appeal to arms was made, he 
 surrendered the patent of office he held from 
 Charles, but he was reappointed treasurer of 
 
 * Clarendon (vol. v., p. 15, 16) speaks of the growing in- 
 fluence of the Independents in the Assembly of Divines. 
 
 t In the discussions respecting the command of the mi- 
 litia, which immediately led to the civil war, Vane showed, 
 remarkable activity and determination ; and a curious an- 
 ecdote is told by Echard (p. 527) on that head, which, with- 
 out vouching for its authenticity, it may be worth while to 
 subjoin. He took it, he says, " from an anonymous writer 
 of noted curiosity and reputation." It occurred on the oc- 
 casion of the last message from the Parliament respecting 
 the militia, delivered to the king at Theobalds, and to which 
 he returned the passionate and fiery answer which forbade 
 all farther accommodation. Young Vane was one of the 
 committee of the two Houses appointed to deliver the mes- 
 sage. The answer, says Echard, " being suddenly and with 
 unusual quickness spoken by the king, they were much 
 daunted ; and presently retired themselves to take into con- 
 sideration the terms of it, that, there might be no difference 
 in the reporting it to the several houses. As soon as the 
 committee was set, the Earl of Newport called out his 
 brother, the Earl of Warwick, to speak with him, who 
 speedily returned with this account from the Earl of New- 
 port, ' That the king was then too pressed to give a more 
 satisfactory answer ; but that he was confident they should 
 have such a one, if they would but defer their departure for 
 i small time.' To this the whole company seemed to assent 
 with much cheerfulness, when suddenly young Sir Henry 
 Vane, a dark enemy to all accommodation, declared himself 
 to wonder at it, and said, ' Is there any person here who 
 can undertake to know the Parliament's mind ; whether 
 this which we have, or that which is called a more satisfac- 
 tory answer, will be more pleasing to the Houses ? For my 
 part, I cannot ; and if there be any that can, let him speak.' 
 To this no man was so bold as to give an answer ; and so, 
 saving agreed upon their report, they departed ; which 
 shows how easily one subtle ill-disposed person may over- 
 throw it general good intention." (P. 527, 528.)
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 283 
 
 the navy by the Parliament ; and its duties, 
 which he had before transacted jointly with Sir 
 William Russel, were now committed to him 
 alone.* Sir Gilbert Gerard, the member for 
 Middlesex, was appointed at the same time 
 treasurer to the army. The orderly conduct 
 of the affairs of Parliament required these ap- 
 pointments ; and it is not one of the least mem- 
 orable characteristics of the time, that it was 
 only in such cases of absolute necessity that 
 any appointments by the Parliament were 
 made. Those particulars only were meddled 
 with that were indispensable to the objects 
 they had in view, and everything else was left 
 as it stood. 
 
 A memorable circumstance is to be noted in 
 connexion with this reappointment. The fees 
 of Vane's office were great in the time of peace, 
 but in war he had found them enormous. They 
 are stated by many writers to have been little 
 less than thirty thousand pounds per annum. t 
 Yet now, on surrendering the patent which he 
 had received for life from Charles I. (and for 
 the purpose of enabling him to do so, White- 
 locket tells us, the House passed an ordinance 
 at his own earnest request), he stipulated, in 
 regard to the great necessities of his country, 
 that a thousand a year should be secured to 
 the deputy who executed the ordinary routine 
 of the office (" an agent he had bred up to the 
 business"), and that the rest of its emoluments 
 should be paid in to the public treasury. From 
 this rare and most virtuous act of self-denial 
 we date the method of a fixed salary, which 
 was afterward continued in that office. Of its 
 author, who practised many more such actions,^ 
 most truly it has been remarked that he was 
 no less superior to the allurements of ambition ; 
 and it may perhaps be ascribed to the entire 
 absence of such views that another person in 
 the sequel (Cromwell), "fitted better for the 
 rude intercourse and the sordid dispositions of 
 the mass of mankind," got the start of him in 
 the political race. In goodness, in real great- 
 ness, Vane had the advantage still. 
 
 The severe reverses suffered by the Parlia- 
 ment during the second year of the civil war 
 are known to the reader.il Hampden slain, the 
 strength of Pym declining with almost every 
 hour, the train of disasters which had followed 
 each other upon the field everything seemed 
 to render it not impossible to the superficial 
 
 * Journals of August 8-10, 1642. 
 
 t See Biographia Britannica, vi., 3991 ; Ludlow's Me- 
 moirs, ii., Ill ; Collins's Peerage (art. Earl of Darlington), 
 v., 303. t Memorials, p. 232. 
 
 Q " In the beginning of that expensive war (as unwilling 
 to make a prey of his country's necessities), he resigned his 
 treasurership for the navy, causing the customary dues of 
 that office to be converted into a salary of a thousand per 
 annum. The bare poundage of all expenses that way, which 
 in times of peace came to about three thousand, would have 
 amounted to near twenty thousand by the year during the 
 war with Holland. Were his personal circumstances, and 
 the condition of his family affairs at that season and since, 
 well known, it would render this piece of self-denial the 
 more memorable. Some inconsiderable matter, without his 
 seeking, was allotted to him by the Parliament in lieu there- 
 of. He had also long before this, upon the self-denying or- 
 dinance (little observed by others), refunded five-and-twen- 
 ty hundred pounds for public uses, being the moiety of his 
 receptions in the said office from such time as the Parlia- 
 ment had made him sole treasurer, who, before the war, 
 was joined with another person." Such is the mention of 
 some of these acts nf true patriotism by Vane's intimate 
 friend, Sikes, who had the best opportunities of knowing all 
 the circumstances, and of appreciating the extent of the no- 
 ble self-denial. y See Life of Fym, p. 223-229. 
 
 observer that the Parliament might soon be 
 laid prostrate at the feet of the king. Yet let 
 it not be imagined that the men on whom the 
 chief conduct of affairs had now devolved, the 
 Vanes, the Cromwells, the Martens, the St. 
 Johns, ever for an instant seemed to dread 
 this, or lost even momentarily their presence 
 of mind, or any of the resources which depend 
 on that greatest endowment of statesmen. 
 They had a glorious faith in the cause they had 
 embarked in, and they knew the wonderful aid 
 which, in the very last resort, might still be re- 
 lied on in such a cause. The defence of the 
 liberties of a country is never to be despaired 
 of. Even at this time in question, when brill- 
 iant successes waited on Charles, the aston- 
 ishing power of the Parliamentarians appeared 
 to guaranty a certainty of ultimate victory on 
 their side. They would not be defeated. Bands 
 and regiments of armed men sprang up in suc- 
 cession as if out of the earth. " The fervour 
 and determination of the adherents of the 
 Parliament was so intense as to assume, in a 
 great degree, the features of gayety and hilarity. 
 The sentiments of the adverse party, arising 
 from an implicit veneration for monarchical in- 
 stitutions, or bent to take a prey, could not en- 
 ter into rivalship with the emotions of men, 
 and in some measure of women, engrossed in 
 the cause of their religion, and fighting for 
 everything that elevates the human heart, and 
 makes life worth the possessing." They shrank 
 abashed from the comparison. 
 
 For the immediate necessities of the hour, 
 however, one expedient, it was evident, must 
 now be adopted. Scotland had been hitherto 
 kept aloof from the English quarrel, in which 
 it was well known she sympathized (for it was 
 in its material features the same as that she 
 herself had been so recently and so success- 
 fully engaged in), and to which, indeed, she had 
 openly manifested no slight leaning. But up 
 to this time the pride and delicacy of the Eng- 
 lish patriots withheld them, for obvious rea- 
 sons, from claiming her assistance. Had it 
 been possible, they would still have desired to 
 engage no distant party in this great domestic 
 struggle ; but when the present unexpected 
 crisis arrived, which involved the possible de- 
 feat of the liberal cause in England, and, by 
 consequence, its imminent endangerment in the 
 neighbour countries, these considerations were 
 laid aside, and the chief leaders of the Parlia- 
 ment resolved upon an embassy to the North, 
 to bring the Scottish nation into the field. 
 
 The conduct of this embassy was a matter 
 of the highest difficulty and danger. The Scots 
 were known to be bigoted to their own per- 
 suasions of narrow and exclusive church gov- 
 ernment, while the greatest men of the English 
 Parliament had proclaimed the sacred maxim 
 that every man who worshipped God according 
 to the dictates of his conscience was entitled 
 to the protection of the state. But these men, 
 Vane, Cromwell, Marten, and St. John, though 
 the difficulties of the common cause had brought 
 them into the acknowledged position of leaders 
 and directors of affairs, were in a minority in 
 the House of Commons, and the party who 
 were their superiors in number wero as bigoted 
 to the most exclusive principles of Presbyteri- 
 anism as the Scots themselves. Denzil Hollia
 
 284 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 stood at the head of this inferior class of patri- 
 ots ; Glyn, the recorder of London, and May- 
 nard, were among its ablest supporters. Waller 
 and Massey in the army, Sir Philip Stapleton 
 and Sir John Clotworthy, ranged themselves 
 under the same banners ; and the celebrated 
 Prynne, and Clement Walker, his inseparable 
 and not less libellous associate, were " flaming 
 Presbyterians." The most eminent of the Par- 
 liamentary nobility, particularly Northumber- 
 land, Essex, and Manchester, belonged also to 
 this body ; while the London clergy, and the 
 metropolis itself, were almost entirely Presby- 
 terian. These things considered, there was, 
 indeed, great reason to apprehend that this 
 party, backed by the Scots, and supported with 
 a Scottish army, would be strong enough to 
 overpower the advocates of free conscience, 
 and " set up a tyranny not less to be deplored 
 than that of Laud and his hierarchy, which had 
 proved one of the main occasions of bringing 
 on the war."* Yet, opposing to all this danger 
 only their own high purposes and dauntless 
 courage, the smaller party of more consummate 
 statesmen were the first to propose the em- 
 bassy to Scotland. 
 
 " The idea of such an embassy," says Mr. 
 Godwin, " had been brought forward in the 
 lifetime of Hampden ; and on the 20th of July, 
 1643, the commissioners set out from London. 
 They were four ; and the man principally con- 
 fided in among them was Vane. He indeed 
 was the individual best qualified to succeed 
 Hampden as a counsellor in the arduous strug- 
 gle in which the nation was at this time en- 
 gaged. In subtlety of intellect and dexterity 
 of negotiation he was inferior to none ; and the 
 known disinterestedness of his character, and 
 his superiority to the vulgar temptations of 
 gain, gave him the greatest authority.''t It is 
 worth notice, that on the very same day on 
 which Vane set out for Scotland, St. John was 
 named to be added as a member to the com- 
 mittee of government, commonly called the 
 committee for the safety of the kingdom, and 
 this has suggested the idea that he was select- 
 ed as a person on whom Vane could peculiarly 
 depend. The shortsighted Presbyterians knew 
 not the formidable power insensibly making 
 head against them. 
 
 Clarendon, while he eulogizes Vane's genius 
 in describing this embassy, uses all his insidi- 
 ous artifice to blacken its motives and its char- 
 acter : " Sir Harry Vane," he says, " was one 
 of the commissioners, and therefore the others 
 need not be named, since he was all in any busi- 
 ness where others were joined with him. He was 
 indeed a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant 
 wit, a great understanding, which pierced into 
 and discerned the purposes of other men with 
 wonderful sagacity, while he had himself vul- 
 tum clausum, that no man could make a guess 
 of what he intended. He was of a temper not 
 to be moved, and of rare dissimulation, and 
 could comply when it was not seasonable to contra- 
 dict, without losing ground by the condescension ; 
 and if he were not superior to Mr. Hampden, 
 he was inferior to no other man in all mysteri- 
 ous artifices. There need no more be said of 
 his ability than that he was chosen to cozen 
 
 * Godwin's Hist, of Com., i., 176. 
 t Hist, of Com., i., 121. 
 
 and deceive a whole nation, who excel in craft 
 and cunning, which he did with notable preg- 
 nancy and dexterity, and prevailed with a peo- 
 ple, that could not otherwise be prevailed upon, 
 than by advancing their idol Presbytery, to 
 sacrifice their peace, their interest, and their 
 faith to the erecting a power and authority that 
 resolved to persecute Presbytery to an extir- 
 pation, and very near brought their purpose to 
 pass.* 
 
 A serious difficulty occurred in Vane's de- 
 parture from London. He was obliged, with 
 the other commissioners, to proceed for Scot- 
 land by sea, probably in consequence of the 
 defeat of Lord Fairfax, and the temporary as- 
 cendency of the Earl of Newcastle in the north 
 of England. He was dismissed in London on 
 the 20th of July, and did not reach Edinburgh 
 before the 9th of August following.t Thus for 
 twenty days he was perhaps out of the reach 
 of any intelligence respecting the affairs of the 
 Commonwealth. This was the most critical 
 period in the whole history of the war ; the 
 period in which there was, for the moment, the 
 greatest appearance that Charles would gain 
 decisively the advantage over the Parliament, 
 and be able effectually to extinguish the cause 
 of liberty in this country. Vane had sailed to 
 negotiate an aid for the English Legislature 
 engaged in hostilities against their prince, and 
 it was not certain that the first news that would 
 reach him when he entered the harbour of Leith 
 might not be that he had no constituents to 
 represent. In these anxious and critical cir- 
 cumstances, Mr. Godwin has speculated on 
 the character of his thoughts and resolutions. 
 " During this suspense," says that historian, 
 " he seems to have preserved all his serenity. 
 He did not believe that, judged as the cause of 
 Charles had been, and condemned by the most 
 sober and enlightened portion of the people of 
 England, it would be possible to put down the 
 spirit of liberty. He persuaded himself that, 
 even if the Cavaliers gained possession of the 
 metropolis and dispersed the Parliament, their 
 triumph would be short. And we may be very 
 sure that he was sustained through all by the 
 verdict of his conscience, and the holy zeal he 
 entertained for a cause which, as he believed, 
 comprised in it everything that was valuable to 
 the existence of man." 
 
 Immediately on his arrival in Edinburgh the 
 negotiation commenced, and what Vane seems 
 to have anticipated at once occurred. The 
 Scots offered their assistance heartily on the 
 sole condition of an adhesion to the Scottish 
 religious system on the part of England. Af- 
 ter many long and very warm debates, in which 
 Vane held to one firm policy from the first, a 
 solemn covenant was proposed, which Vane 
 insisted should be named " a solemn league and 
 covenant," while certain words were inserted 
 in it on his subsequent motion, to which he 
 also adhered with immovable constancy.} and 
 
 * Vol. iv., p. 292. 
 
 t Other accounts state the 7th. See Biog. Brit., vi., 
 3991 ; and Rushworth, v., 466. 
 
 J I subjoin an account of these debates from Echard, who 
 never gives authorities, and is therefore seldom to be relied 
 on. The spirit attempted to be fixed on Vane in the pres- 
 ent account is merely a paltry imitation of Clarendon ; but 
 the facts may be correct enough : " The main of it wa 
 managed by the superior cunning and artifice of Sir Henry
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 285 
 
 "which had the effect of leaving open to the 
 great party in England, to whose interests he 
 was devoted, that last liberty of conscience 
 which man should never surrender, and which 
 he had from the first resolved that nothing in 
 this agreement should exclusively withhold 
 them from. In the clause relating to the 
 " preservation of the king's person," he insert- 
 ed the words " in preservation of the laws of 
 the land and liberty of the subject ;"* and by 
 a simple phrase in the memorable article rela- 
 ting to religion, effected a saving retreat for 
 the supporters of a just toleration. 
 
 The treacherous intrigues of the Duke of 
 Hamilton were equally foiled on this remark- 
 able occasion by Vane. He and some of his 
 brother Royalists had secretly stimulated the 
 more enthusiastic Covenanters to stickle for 
 extreme conditions. They insisted, in conse- 
 quence, according to Clarendon, on a commit- 
 tee to be selected from the Parliament of both 
 kingdoms, to whom was to be intrusted the 
 conduct of the war : it was imagined that the 
 pride of the English nation would never sub- 
 scribe to this stipulation. The friends of Ham- 
 ilton were completely outwitted here, as on 
 every other point. Vane offered no objection, 
 secure in the harmlessness of such a stipula- 
 tion before the energy and power of his own 
 dauntless party, which he knew, as long as the 
 war lasted, would sustain itself in that place 
 of supremacy which in times of danger and 
 doubt is ever conceded to superior minds. 
 
 The famous article respecting religion ran in 
 these words : " That we shall sincerely, really, 
 and constantly, through the grace of God, en- 
 deavour, in our several places and callings, the 
 preservation of the Reformed religion in the 
 Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, dis- 
 cipline, and government, against our common 
 enemies ; the reformation of religion in the 
 kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, 
 worship, discipline, and government, ACCORD- 
 ING TO THE WORD OF GOD, and the example of 
 the best Reformed churches ; and we shall en- 
 deavour to bring the churches of God in the 
 three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and 
 uniformity in religion, confessing of faith, form 
 of church government, directory for worship, 
 and catechizing ; that we, and our posterity 
 after us, may as brethren live in faith and love, 
 and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst 
 of us. That we shall, in like manner, without 
 respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation 
 of popery, prelacy (that is, church government 
 by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and 
 commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, arch- 
 
 Vane, who, as Dr. Gamble tells us, was very earnest with 
 the Scots to have the whole called a league as well as a 
 covenant, and argued it almost all night, and at last carried 
 it. He held another debate about Church government, 
 which was to be according to the example of the best Re- 
 formed Churches ; he would have it only according to the 
 Word of God ; but after a great contest, they joined both, 
 and the last had the precedence. CVie of his companions af- 
 terward asking him the reason why he should put them to 
 so much trouble with such needless trifles, he told him, 'he 
 was mistaken, and did not see enough into that matter, for 
 a league showed it was between two nations, and might be 
 broken upon just reasons, but not a covenant. For the oth- 
 er, that Church government according to the Word of God, 
 by the difference of divines and expositors, would be long 
 enough before it be determined, for the learned held it 
 clearly for Episcopacy ; so that when all are agreed, we 
 may take in the Scotch Presbytery.' " P. 585. 
 * Ludlow's Memoirs, i., 79. 
 
 deacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers de- 
 pending on that hierarchy)." Vane, by this in- 
 troduction of " according to the Word of God," 
 left the interpretation of that word to the free 
 conscience of every man. On the 17th of Au- 
 gust the solemn league and covenant was voted 
 by the Legislature and the assembly of the 
 Church at Edinburgh. The king, in desperate 
 alarm, sent his commands to the Scotch people 
 not to take such a covenant. In reply, they 
 " humbly advised his majesty to take the cov- 
 enant himself."* 
 
 The surpassing service rendered by Vane on 
 this great occasion to the Parliamentary cause, 
 exposed him to a more violent hatred from the 
 Royalists than he had yet experienced, and 
 Clarendon has used every artifice to depreciate 
 his motives and his sincerity. In various pas- 
 sages of his history he adverts to the subject. 
 In the following, the truth is very evasively 
 stated : " Sir Harry Vane (who equally hated 
 Episcopacy and Presbytery, save that he wish- 
 ed the one abolished with much impatience, be- 
 lieving it much easier to keep the other from 
 being established, whatever they promised, 
 than to be rid of that which was settled in the 
 kingdom) carefully considered the covenant, 
 and after he had altered and changed many ex- 
 pressions in it, and made them doubtful enough 
 to bear many interpretations, he and his fellow- 
 commissioners signed the whole treaty ;" but 
 shortly after we have this distinct falsehood 
 deliberately given : " And he who contributed 
 most to it, the league and covenant, and, in 
 truth, was the principal contriver of it, and the 
 man by whom the committee in Scotland was 
 entirely and stupidly governed, Sir Harry Vane 
 the younger, was not afterward more known 
 to abhor the Covenant and the Presbyterians than 
 he was at that very time known to do, and 
 laughed at them then as much as ever he did 
 afterward." 
 
 Vane never " abhorred" the Covenant, though 
 he abhorred the paltry advantages and tyran- 
 nies which were afterward, under its sanction, 
 sought to be practised by the Presbyterians. 
 He held the league and covenant in its only 
 true and just acceptation, to be ever sacred a 
 mutual guaranty between two nations, that for 
 one great common object each should sustain 
 the rights of the other until perfect liberty had 
 been gained for both.f Till the very close of 
 his life he professed a devotion he had never 
 swerved from to all that was noble, and just, 
 and good in that memorable league, while he 
 never scrupled to record his impressive dissent 
 from the numerous and desperate endeavours 
 that were made by the Scots and the Presby- 
 terians to wrest it to "other ends than itself 
 warranted." " Nor will I deny," he said to his 
 judges in the course of his melancholy trial, 
 " nor will I deny but that, as to the manner of 
 the prosecution of the Covenant to other ends 
 than itself warrants, and with a rigid oppressive 
 spirit (to bring all dissenting minds and tender 
 consciences under one uniformity of church 
 discipline and government), it was utterly against 
 my judgment ; for I always esteemed it more 
 
 * Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 77. 
 
 t Henry Marten, it will be found, held the same opinion, 
 though in his case perhaps the opinion was pushed to the 
 extreme. See post, Life of Marten.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 agreeable to the Word of God, that the ends 
 and work declared in the Covenant should be 
 promoted in a spirit of love and forbearance 
 to differing judgments and consciences, that 
 thereby we might be approving ourselves in 
 doing that to others which we desire they 
 would do to us, and so, though upon different 
 principles, be found joint and faithful advancers 
 of the Reformation contained in the covenant, 
 both public and personal." Beautiful, indeed, 
 and conceived in the oply true Christian spirit, 
 is this definition of the Covenant in that di- 
 vine and tolerant faith it was projected and 
 signed by Vane. Some of the last words 
 spoken by him on the scaffold, and in which 
 he made a most touching allusion to the Mar- 
 quis of Argyle, show even more deeply that 
 among the last and strongest feelings left to 
 him in this world was the desire that, in refer- 
 ence to this great action of his life, he should 
 leave behind him an unstained name.* 
 
 Vane did not return to London after his 
 mission until October 26. t In the interval he 
 had formed a very great intimacy and confi- 
 dence with the Marquis of Argyle. Clarendon 
 has celebrated this friendship, and makes out 
 that their sudden attachment had its origin in 
 the strong sympathy felt by each for a like 
 depth and mystery of purpose he discovered in 
 the other. It is certain that a subtler or more 
 refined spirit than Argyle's existed only in the 
 breast of Vane, and though the Scottish states- 
 man was a stanch friend to Presbytery, yet he 
 and the great English leader had soon discover- 
 ed one point in which they fully agreed ; a re- 
 pugnance to half measures, an aversion to the 
 conducting the war in an irresolute and tem- 
 porizing spirit, and " a determination to push 
 the advantages obtained in the field as far as 
 they would go." 
 
 The solemn league and covenant remained 
 to be adopted in England. The Scottish form 
 of giving it authority was followed as far as 
 possible. It was referred by the two Houses 
 to the Assembly of Divines, which had com- 
 menced its sittings on the 1st of the prece- 
 ding July, being called together to be consulted 
 with by the Parliament for the purpose of set- 
 tling the government and form of worship of 
 the Church of England. This assembly, al- 
 ready referred to, consisted of 121 of the clergy ; 
 and a number of lay assessors were joined with 
 them, consisting of ten peers, and twenty mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons. All these 
 persons were named by the ordinance of the 
 two Houses of Parliament, which gave birth to 
 the assembly. The public taking of the Cove- 
 nant was solemnized on the 25th of September, 
 each member of either House attesting his ad- 
 
 * " My life, estate, and all, is not so dear to me as my 
 service to God, his cause, to the kingdom of Christ, and to 
 the future welfare of my country ; and I am taught accord- 
 ing to the example, as well as that most Christian saying, 
 of a noble person that lately died after this public manner 
 in Scotland : ' How much better is it to choose affliction and 
 the cross, than to sin or draw back from the service of the 
 living God into the ways of apostacy and perdition.' That 
 noble person, whose memory t honour, was with myself at 
 the beginning and making of the solemn league and cove- 
 nant, the matter of which, and the holy ends therein con- 
 tained, I fully assent unto, and have been as desirous to ob- 
 serve ; but the rigid way of prosecuting it, and the oppress- 
 ing uniformity that hath been endeavoured by it, I never 
 approved." Speech upon the scaffold. 
 
 t Commons' Journals. 
 
 herence by oath first, and then by subscribing 
 his name.* The name of Vane, subscribed im- 
 mediately on his return, appears upon the list 
 next to that of Cromwell.f 
 
 The results of this masterly effort of states- 
 manship were soon manifest. An army of 
 20,000 men was raised and marshalled in Scot- 
 land, and crossed the Tweed on the 19th of 
 January following, to act with the forces of the 
 Parliament. 
 
 The disastrous loss to the popular party of 
 the great services of Pym (the last of which 
 had been the introduction of the system of ex- 
 cise into this country,}: an idea borrowed from 
 the financial proceedings in Holland) had now 
 devolved upon Vane the chief conduct of civil 
 affairs. His energy was remarkable : in pub- 
 lic and in private, on the floor of the House and 
 in its committees, in council with the commit- 
 tees at Derby House, or in watchful earnest- 
 ness on the field of battle, Sir Harry Vane the 
 younger was acknowledged the foremost man 
 of the time. 
 
 At the opening of the campaign in 1644, 
 strengthened by the accession of the army from 
 Scotland, 14,000 men had been raised under the 
 Earl of Manchester, and his lieutenant-general 
 Cromwell, for the associated counties in the 
 eastern quarter of England. Upon these forces, 
 Vane, distrustful of the power, if not of the sin- 
 cerity of Essex, fixed hopes of the most san- 
 guine kind. We find him upon the scene of 
 action with Manchester in June, 1644, assisting 
 him with his advice, and urging movements of 
 policy which soon won for that division of the 
 army the peculiar confidence of the people. 
 Vane had already in his view an army of a 
 " new model." An interesting remark is made 
 by Mr. Godwin on the presence of the states- 
 man thus in the camp of Manchester. " It 
 gives," he says, " an additional quickness to 
 our feelings, in the midst of these warlike pro- 
 ceedings, to look into the camp of the Parlia- 
 mentarians, to draw back the canvass of their 
 tents, and contemplate the soldier and the 
 statesman, busied as they were in anticipating 
 the future, in providing for all occasions, and 
 endeavouring to place the mass of yet unform- 
 ed events under the guidance of human pru- 
 dence and intellect. In this camp, which was 
 now traversing Nottinghamshire and Lincoln- 
 shire, and proceeding to York, we might see, 
 among others, Manchester, deficient neither in 
 the qualities of a gentleman nor the valour of 
 a soldier, the most well-tempered and courte- 
 ous of mankind, firm in purpose, yet ever gen- 
 tle and conciliating in his manners ; Cromwell, 
 the future guide and oppressor of the Common- 
 wealth, daring everything, and accomplishing 
 whatever he dared to desire ; and Vane, ever 
 
 * Godwin, i., 181. Journals of Commons, Sept. 22. 
 Whiteloc-ke, p. 74. 
 
 t Rushworth, v., 480. Echard, p. 585. 
 
 t See Journals, May 17, 1643. Dugdale, View of the 
 Troubles, p. 120. Godwin, hi., 486. This circumstance 
 had escaped me when engaged on the life of that great 
 statesman. 
 
 $ Essex well knew this, and that the influence of Vans 
 was undermining his hold upon the Parliament. Clarendon 
 remarks (iv., 524-5), " The Lord Roberts, though inferior 
 in the army, had much greater credit in the Parliament 
 than the Earl of Essex ; and the earl did not think him very 
 kind to him, he being then in great conjunction with Sir 
 Harry Vane, whom of all men the earl hated, and looked 
 upon as an enemy."
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 287 
 
 profound in thought and sagacious in purpose, 
 desiring the true advantage and happiness of all 
 within the sphere of his influence, and embra- 
 cing in his capacious mind all the elements of 
 public safety and substantial improvement. 
 These men, now so cordially united, were in 
 no long time to be shaken asunder, each actu- 
 ated with different sentiments, each pursuing 
 an object which the other two regarded with 
 fixed disapprobation." 
 
 Vane seldom remained long from the seat of 
 government, however, for there his presence 
 was daily becoming more and more essential. 
 The Presbyterians, rallying with the better as- 
 pect of affairs in the field, once more showed 
 a formidable front of remonstrance and discon- 
 tent in the debates of the House of Commons. 
 He was not daunted by this ; he had already 
 looked greater dangers in the face on the eve 
 of the league and covenant, and yet dared to 
 proceed. He knew from the first the conse- 
 quences of that great measure which he would 
 sooner or later have to cope with, and he was 
 prepared for the struggle now. 
 
 The Presbyterians declared their resolution 
 to stand upon uniformity in church government. 
 Laud and his system had passed away, and 
 they now came forward with their own. The 
 excommunicating canons of diocesan Episco- 
 pacy had been driven out of England ; the pil- 
 lories of the Archbishop of Canterbury reeked 
 no more with human mutilations ; but now 
 came in the Presbyterians, not less exclusive 
 or intolerant, and impressed with no less hor- 
 ror of the blasphemy and perniciousness of 
 sects, than the former. Its chief distinctions 
 were the comparative moderation of its emolu- 
 ments, and the plainness of its garb. The 
 clergy of the Church of Scotland were habited 
 with something of the same unambitious sad- 
 ness as we see in paintings of the fathers of 
 the Inquisition. " But this," says the historian 
 of the Commonwealth, with earnest and im- 
 pressive eloquence, " is in certain respects a 
 disadvantage. He that lords it over me, and 
 would persuade me that he is not of the same- 
 ignoble kind as myself, ought, perhaps, to be 
 clad in robes, and covered with ermine and 
 gold. It is some mitigation of my sufferings. 
 I should be glad to be deluded and dazzled to 
 the last. It seems natural that human beings 
 should prefer, like the widow of Benares, to die 
 amid the clangour of trumpets, and the soft 
 breathing of recorders, to the perishing by the 
 deformed and withering blow of undisguised 
 cruelty." 
 
 And so might Vane have thought, and Crom- 
 well, and Milton ; for on that principle they 
 acted, in a resolute opposition to the Presby- 
 terian policy. It is a mistake, however, to 
 suppose that these great men were what is 
 called " Independents," or to be considered as 
 belonging in themselves merely to another 
 Christian sect ; for Vane himself, in matters 
 appertaining to religion, was indeed, what 
 Clarendon has striven to convert into a term 
 of reproach, "a man above ordinances." His 
 pure religious faith has already received illus- 
 tration in these pages the extraordinary inci- 
 dents of his early life must be supposed to have 
 acted with corresponding force upon his im- 
 agination and now, having risen with the dan- 
 
 gers of the time the most eminent statesman 
 of an age remarkable for greatness the ac- 
 knowledged leader of the English House of 
 Commons the sole forms of religious or intel- 
 lectual contest or controversy that he would 
 acknowledge were those in which the truth 
 bade fair to be separated from falsehood, and 
 in which a perfect and uncontrolled liberty of 
 disquisition might possibly some day, with 
 God's sanction, elevate men into the highest 
 and most sublime regions of pure and perfect 
 intellect into a station little lower than the 
 angels. 
 
 Nothing has been so misunderstood by even 
 the most liberal thinkers, nothing has been so 
 carefully avoided by the greatest admirers of 
 the younger Vane, as the nature of his peculiar 
 opinions in religion. But these shall not be 
 avoided here, and, if possible, not misunder- 
 stood. Nor is this an improper period for the 
 introduction of them, since, standing thus on 
 the threshold of the greatest events and exer- 
 tions of his political life, each may serve to il- 
 lustrate the other. 
 
 When he retired for a time from public life, 
 in disgust at the usurpation of Cromwell, he 
 occupied his leisure with religious and political 
 writing. In politics, he wrote with the clear 
 and impressive reason, the simple and master- 
 ly style, of a consummate statesman. In reli- 
 gion, he indulged occasionally those wild and 
 visionary thoughts which have seldom failed to 
 visit all strong and fervent spirits of the earth, 
 when they have flung themselves passionately 
 into the profounder questions of man's exist- 
 ence and destiny. In those moments his own 
 divinely elevated fancies assumed to him the 
 forms of " angels of light," and the very pres- 
 ence of Christ himself, " coming in the clouds," 
 was not far distant from his rapt and excited 
 vision. 
 
 In the Retired Man's Meditations he thus 
 speaks of the Fall of Man : " In this tree of 
 knowledge of good and evil, man had the sight 
 of himself, in the exercise of his natural life 
 and the operations appertaining unto him, as he 
 became a living soul ; in the well or evil use 
 whereof he might arrive unto the experience 
 of the supreme good held forth to him as the 
 end of his creation, the endless life that was to 
 follow ; or else he might come, by the forfeit- 
 ure of the present good he enjoyed, to know 
 the evil of a much worse condition than at first 
 he had ; for the avoiding of which, and to con- 
 tinue in a posture meet to receive the other, 
 God required him in the state of innocency to 
 abide in a waiting frame of spirit, as a sojourn- 
 er and stranger in the midst of his present en- 
 joyments in the earthly paradise, that so through 
 his patient forbearance from taking up his rest, 
 or terminating his delight in seen things, he 
 might preserve in himself an unengaged, un- 
 prejudiced spirit to what was yet behind of the 
 counsel of God to be communicated to him, as 
 to a more excellent attainment and inheritance 
 to be exhibited to him in the light of the ap- 
 proaching day of the Lord, the beamings forth 
 whereof, as considered in type, were already 
 present." 
 
 Here, it seems to me, is the expression of a 
 sense equally subtle and noble. The pause be- 
 fore the accession of all the divinity of intellect
 
 288 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 that the Creator had designed for man the 
 rest which was intended before its gradual ful- 
 filment the waiting frame of spirit the pa- 
 tient forbearance the unengaged, unpreju- 
 diced soul conceived in that divine sense of 
 Milton, 
 
 " God doth not need 
 
 Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state 
 Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest : 
 They also serve who only stand and wait" 
 
 all this, with the vision in the distance of a 
 " more excellent attainment and inheritance" 
 in the realization of all man's intellectual pow- 
 ers, expresses most surely a great imaginative 
 conception, which may be non-accordant with 
 a simpler faith, but is neither unintelligible nor 
 obscure. The fervent writer proceeds thus : 
 
 " Now man (being furnished with a reason- 
 able soul, and all the excellencies of its opera- 
 tions, with freedom of will to choose the good 
 and refuse the evil, honoured also with the 
 sovereignty over the creatures), in this fair 
 posture of preparation to receive more, was 
 nevertheless seduced, ensnared, and made a 
 prey of by Satan, sin, and death, to the render- 
 ing (as it were) abortive all that work which 
 was already passed upon him, and to the letting 
 in of sin and death, with the deserved curse 
 and wrath of God, through him, as through a 
 door, upon all his posterity. 
 
 " The occasion of this was twofold : first, 
 the present enjoyment of good from God under 
 the ministry of the first covenant, the fruit of 
 which, to the eye of flesh and blood even at its 
 best, was so glorious, and appeared so beauti- 
 ful and desirable, that man was easily persua- 
 ded that it was the best and highest attainment 
 he needed to look after ; and thereby, through 
 Satan's subtlety, rendered secure and negligent 
 as to the use of means given by God to carry 
 him on, pass him through, and conduct him out 
 of this his corruptible state, as from glory to 
 glory, into the power of an endless life (with- 
 out the intervening of sin), to the full and per- 
 fect securing of man's nature from all prevail- 
 ing power of sin's assaults forever, which was 
 not done by creation. 
 
 " The second occasion of man's fall was the 
 freedom of his will, wherein the judging and 
 desiring faculties of his mind were entirely 
 committed by God to his own free motion and 
 operation, upon the terms of the covenant he 
 was brought into with God, which was to be 
 dealt with according unto his works to be re- 
 warded with life or with death, as he should 
 rightly order or abuse this liberty of action, 
 with which God had invested him by way of 
 trial and probation. That man had such a 
 power of free will as this, 
 
 " First, the nature and tenor of the covenant 
 he was taken into doth demonstrate, which is 
 conditional in reference to the works of man ; 
 and God throughout deals with man under 
 that covenant according to his works, strongly 
 thereby asserting them to be man's own ; so 
 as the very reward which comes thereby is ac- 
 counted to him of debt, even the thing which 
 his own action (as left alone unto himself there- 
 in) hath brought upon him, and entitled him 
 unto. 
 
 "Secondly, without such a power of free 
 
 will, man's first estate could not have been 
 mutable, at least could never have changed 
 into corruption ; for if it had been necessary 
 to him to have stood, he could not have fallen ; 
 and if it had been necessary to him to fall, God 
 had thereby made himself the author of sin, 
 which could not be. 
 
 " That which Adam was forbidden was not 
 simply to forbear the use of his free will, but 
 the evil and unlawful use of it, as (through an 
 unwise discerning, and erroneous judging be- 
 tween the present temporary good which he 
 saw, and the future durable excellency of the 
 things unseen and but in hope) there did spring 
 up an inordinate coveting and desire in him af- 
 ter the retaining of the first, to the despising 
 and rejecting of the second." 
 
 What is the meaning of this rich vein of 
 spiritual argument and subtlety, divested of the 
 thin veil of theological phrase which is flung 
 around it, if it be not only another form of 
 those purest aspirations which should be the 
 glory of our nature, teaching us that there is a 
 something within us that was designed for no- 
 bler purposes and achievements than have fall- 
 en to it in this world, and that, having for a 
 time forfeited these blessings, still the liberty 
 of free will and independent action remains, 
 which, wisely directed, and regulated by the 
 higher uses and refinements even of our im- 
 perfect intellect, will in the end bring Christ 
 himself upon the earth, by raising the minds 
 and thoughts of men up to within the level of 
 his own 1 The reign of the saints Vane looked 
 for was the perfection of the intellect of man. 
 The de amendatione intellectus of Bacon might 
 have been construed by Clarendon into another 
 reign of saints of a similar description. For 
 this great purpose, with an ever present view 
 to that possible reign of wisdom upon earth, 
 keeping constantly before him the sense that 
 in the mission of Christ had been fulfilled the 
 gracious purpose of the Creator of offering to 
 man the redemption of his former shortsight- 
 edness and error, Sir Henry Vane passed his 
 life in one unending strife with what he be- 
 lieved to be the temporal and the spiritual en- 
 emy of man ; in the one case, to prevent the 
 subjection of his powers to that tyranny of bad 
 government which must deprave his will, and 
 in the other, to unloose his conscience from 
 those secular chains which must take from him 
 eventually the liberty of thought and action by 
 which only his spirit could aspire. This I be- 
 lieve to have been Vane's great theory these 
 the thoughts which, carried out into all their 
 various and richest forms 'by the beauty and 
 power of his genius, filled and stirred his mind 
 when he spoke of the coming of Christ upon 
 the earth, and his reign here in goodness and 
 in glory. 
 
 In the night before his death he prayed in 
 his prison with his children, and this was a 
 portion of his prayer : 
 
 " The day approaches in which thou wilt de- 
 cide this controversy, not by might nor by pow- 
 er, but by the spirit of the living God. The 
 spirit will make its own way, and run through 
 the whole earth. Then shall it be said, Where 
 is the fury of the oppressor 1 Who is he that 
 dares or can stand before the spirit of the 
 Lord, in the mouth of his witnesses 1 Arise,
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered. 
 Thy poor servant knows not how he shall be 
 carried forth by thee this day, but, blessed be 
 thy great name, that he hath whereof to speak 
 in this great cause. When I shall be gathered 
 to thee this day, then come thou in the min- 
 istry of thy holy angels that excel in strength. 
 We have seen enough of this world, and thou 
 seest we have enough of it. Let these my 
 friends, that are round about me, commit me 
 to the Lord, and let them be gathered into the 
 family of Abraham, the father of the faithful, 
 and become faithful witnesses of those prin- 
 ciples and truths that have been discovered to 
 them, that it may be known that a poor weak 
 prophet hath been among them, not by the 
 words of his mouth only, but by the voice of 
 his blood and death, which will speak when he 
 is gone." Here is the same lofty spirit, the 
 same hope of the tranquil elevation of intellect 
 in the world above the old influences of might 
 and power. 
 
 When his friends were weeping around him 
 on the morning of his execution, he bade them 
 have faith and patience, for that the realization 
 of all the Creator's promises held out for ful- 
 filment in the world would surely come, when 
 a sufficient number of the spirits of the just 
 should have ascended into heaven. " Weep 
 not," he said ; " I have not the least reluctancy 
 or struggling in my spirit against death. I de- 
 sire not to live ; but my will is resigned up to 
 God in all. Why are you troubled ? I am not. 
 You have need of faith and patience to follow 
 the Lord's call. This ought chiefly to be in our 
 eye, the bringing glory to our heavenly Father. 
 Surely God hath a glorious design to carry on 
 in the world, even the building up of David's 
 throne to all generations ; for he is completing 
 all his precious stones, making them heaven- 
 proof, and then laying them together in the 
 heavenly mansions, with the spirits of the just, 
 till it be a complete city. When the top stone 
 thereof is laid, then will he come in all his 
 glory." What is the groundwork of this noble 
 idea, but that which I have described to be his 
 pervading philosophical sense of the Messiah's 
 advent, the gradual perfection of the moral and 
 intellectual powers of mankind? 
 
 On the scaffold itself, these were among the 
 latest words of his prayer :* " Let thy servant 
 speak something on the behalf of the nation 
 wherein he hath lived. Lord, did. we not ex- 
 ceed other nations in our day 1 Great things 
 have been done by thee in the midst of us. 
 that thou wouldst look down in pity and com- 
 passion, and pardon the sins of this whole na- 
 tion, and lay them not to their charge ; show 
 them what is thy good and acceptable will, and 
 
 * Immediately before he prayed he had addressed the 
 people, and expressed to the same effect, but hy a stronger 
 paraphrase, this impression of the advent of a better day: 
 " I shall not desire in this place to take up much time, but 
 only, as my last words, leave this with you : ' That as the 
 present storm we now lie under, and the dark clouds that 
 yet hang over the Reformed churches of Christ, which are 
 coming thicker and thicker for a season, were not unforeseen 
 by me for many years passed, as some writings of mine de- 
 clare ; so the coming of Christ in these clouds, in order to a 
 speedy and sudden revival of his cause, and spreading his 
 kingdom over the face of the whole earth, is most clear to 
 the eye of my faith, even that faith in which I die, whereby 
 the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our 
 Lord and of his Christ. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Je- 
 sus." " 
 
 Oo 
 
 bring them into subjection thereunto. We 
 humbly pray thee, Lord, look down with 
 compassion upon this great and populous city ; 
 cleanse away the impurity, sinfulness, and de- 
 filemerfts thereof; cause their souls to delight 
 in thy word, that they may live. Let a spirit 
 of reformation and purity spring up in and 
 among them with power ; make them willing 
 to lay down all that is dear to them for thee, 
 that thou mayest give them a crown of life ; 
 that they may always desire and choose afflic- 
 tion, and to be exposed to the worst condition 
 and hardest circumstances that can be brought 
 upon them in this world, rather than sin against 
 him that hath loved them and bought them with 
 a price, that they might live to him in their 
 bodies and in their spirits." Again, in these 
 memorable and most touching words, the pas- 
 sionate yearning for that perfecting of his be- 
 loved country by the " spirit of reformation and 
 purity" surmounts every other emotion. 
 
 With such aids as these, and considering the 
 subject, so far as we may feel it practicable, in 
 a congenial spirit, we do not find much diffi- 
 culty in comprehending even Vane's theology ! 
 And this is what Baxter ridicules* Hume finds 
 " absolutely unintelligible," and " exhibiting no 
 traces of eloquence or common sense"t An- 
 thony Wood foams in the mouth at, when he 
 even mentions:): Bishop Burnet professes an 
 utter bewilderment about Clarendon, in va- 
 
 * The terms of Baxter's ridicule are worth giving. The 
 closing passage may perhaps divest it of its sting! "His 
 unhappiness lay in this, that his doctrines were so cloudily 
 formed and expressed that few could understand them, and 
 therefore he had few true disciples. The Lord Brooke was 
 slain before he had brought him to maturity. Mr. Sterryis 
 thought to be of his mind, as he was his intimate ; but he 
 hath not opened himself in writing, and was so famous for 
 obscurity in preaching (being, said Sir Benj. Rudyard, too 
 high for this world, and too low for the other), that he there- 
 by proved almost barren also, and vanity and sterility were 
 never more happily conjoined. Mr. Sprig is the chief of his 
 more open disciples (too well known by a book of his ser- 
 mons). This obscurity by some was imputed to his not un- 
 derstanding himself, but by others to design, because he 
 could speak plainly when he listed : the two courses in 
 which he had most success and spake most plainly were, his 
 earnest plea for universal liberty of conscience, and against 
 the magistrates' intermeddling with religion, and his teach- 
 ing his followers to revile the ministry, calling them ordi- 
 narily black coats, priests, and other names which then sa- 
 voured of reproach ; and those gentlemen that adhered t 
 the ministry, they said were priest-ridden." (Life, p. 75.) 
 The " earnest plea for universal liberty of conscience" I re- 
 gret to say I have not seen. No doubt it was one of the no- 
 blest of his works. 
 
 t This is Hume's deliberately recorded opinion. "This 
 man, so celebrated for his Parliamentary talents, and for his 
 capacity in business, has left some writings behind him. 
 They treat, all of them, of religious subjects, and are abso- 
 lutely unintelligible. No traces of eloquence or even of 
 common sense appear in them." 
 
 } A short specimen will serve: "In sum, he was the 
 Proteus of the times, a mere hotchpotch of religion, chief 
 ringleader of all the frantic sectarians, of a turbulent spirit 
 and working brain, of a strong composition of choler and 
 melancholy, an inventor not only of whimseys in religion, 
 but also of crotchets in the state (as his several models tes- 
 tify), and composed only of treason, ingratitude, and base- 
 ness." Ath. Ox., iii., 580. 
 
 (> His words are : " For though he set up a form of reli- 
 gion in a way of his own, yet it consisted rather in a with- 
 drawing from all other forms, than in any new or particular 
 opinions or forms ; from which he and his party were called. 
 Seekers, and seemed to wait for some new and clearer man- 
 ifestations. In these meetings he preached and prayed often 
 himself, but with so peculiar a darkness, that, though I have 
 sometimes taken pains to see if I could find out his meaning 
 in his works, yet I could never reach it. And since many 
 others have said the same, it may be reasanable to believe 
 that he hid somewhat that was a necessary key to the rest. 
 His friends told me he leaned to Origen's notion of a uni- 
 versal salvation of all, both of devils and the damned, and
 
 290 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 rious passages, studiously endeavours to mis- 
 represent or laugh at* and all modern writers, 
 with one single exception, t have either studi- 
 ously evaded, or spoken of with ingenuous pity 
 or a wholesale contempt. The candid critic 
 in the Spectator, who " had read Aristotle, and 
 found him not such a fool as he thought him," 
 showed greater ability and much more honesty 
 than these critics of Sir Henry Vane. 
 
 But this subject cannot be brought too dis- 
 tinctly before the reader in an endeavour to do 
 tardy justice to the memory of one of the great- 
 est men of our history. He will bear inquiry 
 best into the matters for which he has been the 
 most vehemently assailed. 
 
 The peculiar action of the will in Vane's ar- 
 gument upon the fall of man receives illustra- 
 tion from another passage in his writings upon 
 the relation of the will to all that is noblest in 
 man's soul. " The will only is truly man's 
 own, and the considerable part of the reason- 
 able soul. On it depend the issues of good or 
 evil, life or death. All the rest of a man, his 
 understanding, memory, imagination, may be 
 taken from him, altered, troubled by a thousand 
 accidents. But the will is so much in our own 
 power that it cannot be taken away, though its 
 action may be hindered. 'Tis our own till we 
 knowingly and freely give it away, which may 
 be. And he that hath once absolutely given 
 up his will to another is no more his own man. 
 He hath left himself nothing of his own. 'Tis 
 by the will we are good or evil, happy or un- 
 happy." 
 
 His enthusiasm was indeed highly and pas- 
 sionately wrought on many incidental points 
 of faith, but the character of his mind in all the 
 practical applications of those exalted views 
 was infinitely sober, subtle, well regulated, and 
 exact. No worldly failures in his own case 
 had the power of disheartening the great reli- 
 ance with which " to the mark" he still press- 
 
 to the doctrine of pre-existence." (Hist, of his own Time, 
 fol. 1724, i., 164.) 
 
 * " Vane was a man not to be described by any character 
 of religion, in which he had swallowed some of the fancies 
 and extravagances of every sect or faction, and was become 
 (which cannot be expressed by any other language than 
 was peculiar to that time) a man above ordinances, unlimit- 
 ed and unrestrained by any rules or bounds prescribed to 
 other men, by reason of his perfection. He was a perfect 
 enthusiast, and, without doubt, did believe himself inspired, 
 which so far corrupted his reason and understanding (which, 
 in all matters without the verge of religion, was inferior to 
 that of few men), that he did at some time believe he was 
 the person (!) deputed to reign over the saints upon earth 
 for a thousand years." (Hist, of Rebellion, vi., 373.) I 
 need not quote, as I might, fifty similar passages from his 
 history : in charity it is right to add, that in private inter- 
 course with his friends, even Clarendon could moderate 
 something of the inveterate hostility with which, to the 
 scaffold, he pursued Vane. In some remarks on " Cressy's 
 answer to Stillingfleet" (reported in the Biog. Brit.), he 
 thus speaks, with half candour, of one of his religious books : 
 " Which when I had read, and found nothing of his usual 
 -clearness and ratiocination in his discourse, in which he used 
 much to excel the best of the company he kept, and that the 
 style thereof was very much like that of Sancta Sophia, and 
 that in a crowd of very easy words the sense was too hard 
 to find out, I was of opinion that the subject-matter of it 
 was of so delicate a nature that it required another kind of 
 preparation of mind, and it may be another kind of diet, 
 than men are ordinarily supplied with." This is more true 
 than the writer intended, as applied to his own " prepara- 
 tion of mind," and that gross "diet" which withheld the 
 pampered chancellor from sympathy with such a spirit as 
 that of Sir Harry Vane. 
 
 t In an early number of the Westminster Review a very 
 able notice appeared under the title of " Vane and Bunyan," 
 which was written in the best spirit. 
 
 ed forward. " The goodness of any cause i 
 not merely to be judged by the events, wheth- 
 er visibly prosperous or unprosperous, but by 
 the righteousness of its principles ; nor is our 
 faith and patience to fail under the many fears, 
 doubts, wants, troubles, and power of adver- 
 saries in the passage to the recovery of our 
 long-lost freedom ; for it is the same cause with 
 that of the Israelites of old, of which we ought 
 not to be ashamed or distrustful." 
 
 And in another most wise and tender passage 
 of philosophy he speaks thus : 
 
 " Evils themselves, through the wise over- 
 ruling providence of God, have good fruits and 
 effects. The world would be extinguished and 
 perish if it were not changed, shaken, and dis- 
 composed by a variety and interchangeable 
 course of things, wisely ordered by God, the 
 best physician. This ought to satisfy every 
 honest and reasonable mind, and make it joy- 
 fully submit to the worst of changes, how 
 strange and wonderful soever they may seem, 
 since they are the works of God and nature, 
 and that which is a loss in one respect is a gain 
 in another. 
 
 " Let not a wise man disdain or ill resent 
 anything that shall happen to him. Let him 
 know those things that seem hurtful to him in 
 particular, pertain to the preservation of the 
 whole universe, and are of the nature of those 
 things that finish and fill up the course and 
 office of this world." 
 
 Of his views in regard to the necessity of 
 that preparation of man for his better and wiser 
 state, which has already been explained in a 
 former passage to imply in its results that di- 
 vine advent which his imagination took such 
 fervent delight in, the following most striking 
 passage from the Retired Man's Meditations 
 will afford a farther illustration and example : 
 
 " But there is a duty of the day, a genera- 
 tion-work, respecting the time and circum- 
 stances of action, in which the lot of our life 
 is cast, which calls upon us to use all lawful 
 and righteous means that are afforded by the 
 good hand of God, through the inward light 
 and knowledge he vouchsafes, and outward 
 providences and helps which he casts in, where- 
 by to make way for, and to be hasting unto, the 
 coming of that day of God wherein the old 
 heavens and earth shall be rolled away as gar- 
 ments, yea, with the works that are therein, be 
 burned up, and the new heavens and the new 
 earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, shall be 
 brought forth in their room. 
 
 " Our part is the same, therefore, in this, as 
 in the practice of other righteous duties apper- 
 taining to us, the perfection whereof we can- 
 not expect until the redemption of the body ; 
 and yet we are to be using all lawful means 
 and endeavours to come as near the primitive 
 pattern and rule as we can, in our whole prac- 
 tice throughout. 
 
 " So that when once we have well consider- 
 ed what rule Christ himself, if he were on 
 earth, would exercise over men in protecting 
 those that do well, and being a terror to evil 
 works, as also in distributing righteousness 
 equally and impartially unto all upon the 
 grounds of right and just (which every one, in 
 the measure of light they have attained, are 
 acquainted with, and do acknowledge for the
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 291 
 
 nite which they are willing to be concluded 
 under, as to all their outward concerns), we 
 ought in the way of Christ, and in the use of 
 all lawful means, to he as near this in our prac 
 tice as possible we may, in the rule over men 
 which we shall be either as principals or acces- 
 sories in setting up, holding ourselves obliged in 
 heartiness and freedom of mind to maintain. 
 
 In a previous memoir in this series I spoke 
 of the extraordinary influence which the trans- 
 lation of the Bible had exerted in the world. 
 To Vane it was, indeed, what Plato's " original 
 type" may have been to the enfeebled and rest- 
 less man of civilization, who wished, by such 
 a comparison, to ascertain his precise position 
 in the moral or intellectual scale. What he 
 knew of its own original language* gave addi- 
 tional strength to his passion for its study, and 
 in the leisure he could abstract from public af- 
 fairs it was seldom out of his hands. t It is no 
 
 * " Hebrew words were fitted to the things they signi- 
 fipd ; there was a certain connexion between things and 
 words. All other words, as they come less or more near to 
 the Hebrew, do more or less significantly represent the 
 things meant by them. The more any language recedes 
 from the Hebrew, the more it is confounded by human chan- 
 ges and additions, the more obscure and difficult means are 
 the words thereof for conveying the knowledge of things to 
 us. Homer and other Greek poets and philosophers set 
 themselves therefore to etymological learning, by reducing 
 the primitive words in other languages to their Hebrew 
 roots, and then the derivative to those principles. This 
 they laboured in, as the most notable means conducible to 
 the knowledge of things. Then Chrysippus, Demetrius, 
 and abundance of others, wrote books of etymology. Then 
 the Latins, receiving learning as well as the empire from 
 the Greeks, steer the same course, in order to etymological 
 discipline, as the choicest means to lead men into the knowl- 
 edge of things. Cato, Varro, and other ancient and famous 
 Latins, wrote many volumes to this purpose. Of later 
 times, on the same account, did Julius Csesar, Scaliger, 
 compose a hundred and tea books de originibus. Then Jo- 
 seph Scaliger, son of Julius, Lipsius, Casaubon, and many 
 others, steered the same course." Sikes's Thoughts of 
 Vane. 
 
 t Sikes thus describes one of Vane's domestic practices : 
 " The usual practice of this sufferer was to spend an hour 
 or two every evening with his family, or any other that were 
 providentially there, and as much both morning and even- 
 ing on the first day. He was of that truly bounteous, 
 princely, communicative spirit noted in the Spouse: rich in 
 good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, to 
 make manifest the favour of the knowledge of Christ, that 
 himself had deep and large experience of, in every place. 
 His gravity, purity, and chasteness of spirit were very ex- 
 emplary. He held out in the midst of all the late apostacies 
 and changes. He was steadfast and immovable, always 
 abounding in the work of the Lord, and his labour was not 
 in vain, as he well knew. So assiduous was he in continual 
 searching of the Scriptures, waiting upon the Lord in faith 
 and prayer for more full discoveries of his mind therein, 
 that it was said of him, put him where you will, if he may 
 have but a Bible, he is well enough ; as Jansen (of whom 
 the Jansenists in France) reckoned himself with Austin." 
 In a subsequent passage Sikes farther illustrates the beau- 
 tiful toleration of Vane, in describing his views of the insti- 
 tution of the Sabbath. They who so busily trouble them- 
 selves in legislating for " bitter observance" of that fay, and 
 would bestow upon mankind no portion of their care on any 
 other, may read the passage with great advantage : " He 
 accounted the Jewish Sabbath ceremonious and temporary, 
 ending upon the coming of the Son of Man, who was Lord 
 of the Sabbath day. And if he had thought that which is 
 commonly observed in the room thereof to be rather a ma- 
 gistratical institution among Christians in imitation of the 
 Jewish, than that which hath any clear appointment in the 
 Gospel, the apostle would not have him judged for it. ' One 
 man,' says he, ' esteems one day above another ; another 
 esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully per- 
 suaded in his own mind. He that regardeth a day, regard- 
 eth it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not the day to 
 the Lord, he doth not regard it.' This I can say, he usually 
 took the opportunity of spending more time in exercise and 
 prayer in his family, or other Christian meetings, on that 
 day than on any other. And will any yet say he was a 
 Sabbath-breaker ? If they do, see what company we may 
 find for him under that imputation." 
 
 matter of surprise that such a mind as his 
 should wander occasionally out of the rich 
 treasures of thought, fancy, imagination, and 
 feeling disclosed in that favourite study in their 
 highest and most passionate forms, into fancies 
 and speculations of its own on the various 
 wonders of those primeval days when inspired 
 teachers walked upon the earth, and angels are 
 recorded to have sat down with men. 
 
 Even in such speculations observe still the 
 pervading sense of what has been so variously 
 exhibited in passages already given. He speaks 
 of the creation, the nature, and the ministry of 
 angels : 
 
 " These in their creation are described by 
 the light which God made on the first day, Gen., 
 i., 3, 4, when he said, ' Let there be light, and 
 there was light ; and God saw the light, that it 
 was good ;' approving this first work of his 
 hands in the beginning of that day : and God, 
 by his dividing the light from the darkness, sig- 
 nified the heavenliness of their frame and con- 
 stitution, as they stand exalted and separate 
 in their beings from all sensual life, in the form 
 of invisible spirits, whereof the material heav- 
 ens in their creation are the first shadow ; 
 which are called, Prov., viii., 26, the highest 
 part of the dust of the world ;' as David also 
 (giving account of both their creations together), 
 Psalm civ., 2-4, saith, ' Who coverest thyself 
 with light as with a garment ; who stretchest 
 out the heavens like a curtain ; who layeth the 
 beams of his chambers in the waters ; who 
 maketh the clouds his chariots ; who walketh 
 upon the wings of the wind ; who maketh his 
 angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire ;' 
 in which posture and preparation, the Psalmist 
 describes the word as he proceeds to the rest 
 of the creation, vers. 5, 6, &c., intimating that 
 as man in his bodily state was made dust of the 
 ground, so the angels were made a flame of fire 
 in their natural constitution." 
 
 He follows this up in a passage of rapt poet- 
 ical fervour that would have been worthy of 
 Milton : 
 
 i( As thus they are this heavenly building, 
 they are the first heavens, the tabernacle and 
 clouds of heaven, or the air, for the daybreak 
 and glorious sun of God's first appearance to 
 run his race and finish his course in, whereby 
 to enlighten the ends of the earth, and all 
 things under heaven. These sons of this morn- 
 ing are the first light-bearers to the inhabitants 
 of the first world, and therein are covering 
 cherubs unto the Son in his own proper glory ; 
 and that they may be enabled to bear light, or 
 the similitude of Christ in his first appearance, 
 unto others, they are first the receivers of that 
 ight in themselves, in a spirituality of being 
 and form fitted and suited thereunto, which ac- 
 ommodates them with the exercise of senses 
 merely spiritual and inward, exceeding high, 
 ntuitive, and comprehensive : a manner of life, 
 shadowing out the divine life in the name of 
 the Father, whose voice is not heard at any 
 time, nor shape seen, but is like a consuming 
 ire, to burn up and slay whatever natural or- 
 an is conversant about it, or stands before the 
 >eams and rays of its most pure and invisible 
 glory." 
 
 And into the exercise of even such senses, 
 spiritual and inward, high, intuitive, and com-
 
 292 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 prehensive," it was the ardent hope of this 
 great lover of his fellow-men to see even them 
 one day conducted by the exercise of a purity 
 of intellect and righteousness of will. Such 
 also was the faith of Milton, expressed in later 
 years, when of men and angels the " winged 
 hierarch" spoke to Adam, as 
 
 " More refined, more spirituous and pure, 
 As nearer to Him placed ; or nearer tending, 
 Each in their several active spheres assign'd, 
 Till body up to spirit work, in bounds 
 Proportioned to each kind. So from the root 
 Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves 
 More airy, last the bright consummate flower 
 Spirits odorous breathes : flow'rs and their fruit, 
 Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed, 
 To vital spirits aspire, to animal, 
 To intellectual ; give both life and sense, 
 Fancy and understanding : whence the soul 
 Reason receives, and reason is her being, 
 Discursive, or intuitive ; discourse 
 Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, 
 Differing but in degree, of kind the same. 
 Wonder not, then, what God for you saw good 
 If I refuse not, but convert, as you, 
 To proper substance : time may come when men 
 With angels may participate, and find 
 No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare. . . . 
 To whom the patriarch of mankind replied : 
 O favourable spirit ! propitious guest ! 
 Well hast thou taught the way that might direct 
 Our knowledge, and the scale of nature set 
 From centre to circumference, whereon 
 In contemplation- of created things 
 My steps we may ascend tn God." 
 
 These illustrations of the religious writings 
 and speculations of Vane shall here be closed, 
 for the present, with some extracts that bring 
 us immediately back to the consideration of the 
 subject which first led to their introduction. 
 All Vane's enthusiasm, all his faith, only ren- 
 dered him unboundedly tolerant of creeds the 
 most opposed to his own.* In the "Retired 
 Man's Meditations," one of the most rigidly 
 theological of his works, the direct assertion 
 of perfect liberty of conscience is a pervading 
 doctrine throughout ; and he thus, in the chap- 
 ter on magistracy, defines what the authority 
 of a civil magistrate should be restricted to, as 
 opposed to the exclusive and intolerant policy 
 of the Presbyterians. 
 
 " When the Scripture saith that the rule of 
 magistracy is over men, we are to understand 
 by this term the proper sphere, bounds, and 
 limits of that office, which is not to intrude it- 
 self into the office and proper concerns of 
 Christ's inward government and rules in the 
 conscience, but is to content itself with the 
 outward man, and to intermeddle with the con- 
 cerns thereof in reference to the converse 
 which man ought to have with man, upon the 
 grounds of natural justice and right, in things 
 appertaining to this life. 
 
 " Magistracy, then, is the rule which God 
 hath ordained to be exercised over the outward 
 man, by man himself qualified thereunto, to act 
 in righteousness and in the fear of the Lord in 
 discharge of this his high and great trust ; and 
 so is an office merely respecting rule and gov- 
 ernment over men in their outward concerns, 
 
 ' " A man maybe orthodox and sound in his judgment as 
 to the principles of religion, and yet, wanting sincere love 
 to Christ and his people, may fall short of heaven ; and, on 
 the contrary, another Christian may err and mistake in many 
 points ; and yet, having sincere love to the truths of Christ, 
 according to that measure of light which God hath vouch- 
 safed unto him, he may be saved. Who art thou that judg- 
 est another man's servant'? to his own master he standeth 
 or falleth." This was ever his divine principle. 
 
 which is capable to be rightly used or not, ac- 
 cording as the persons intrusted therewith are 
 qualified and do exercise the same, the office 
 of itself being good, and the end for which it is 
 set up being according to God's ordinance and 
 institution for the ministering of punishment to 
 them that do ill, and encouragement and pro- 
 tection to them that do well. 
 
 " And men may lawfully arrive and attain 
 unto this office and dignity either in an ordi- 
 nary way, through the endeavours and free 
 choice of men, or extraordinarily, by the im- 
 mediate call of God himself to the exercise 
 thereof, making those that are to obey ' will- 
 ingly subject in that day of his power.' 
 
 " For the office itself, it is (as we have show- 
 ed), in God's institution, a rule that is set up 
 over the outward man in righteousness and in 
 the fear of the Lord, obliging the persons in- 
 trusted with this power to put forth righteous- 
 ness in all their actings that appertain to their 
 public charge." 
 
 He afterward, in pursuing the subject, reverts 
 to his old faith of the necessity of " working 
 up to God" by constant changes, and improve- 
 ments, and efforts to bring the institution to 
 purity and perfection. 
 
 " And as in this, the principle of natural 
 justice and right, in their highest improvement, 
 is to be their rule, so the fear of the Lord 
 should oblige them, in an humble dependency 
 upon him, and trembling posture of mind before 
 him, to be watchful in not suffering anything to 
 be done by them that may carry in it hinderance 
 or opposition to the breaking in of higher dis- 
 coveries upon them as to the very exercise of 
 the magistratical office, in the purity and perfec- 
 tion wherein it is promised to be brought forth 
 in the last days by Christ himself, unto which 
 they should always have willing and ready 
 minds to make way and to submit, so that, con- 
 sidered such as God requires it to be, it is man's 
 ruling over men in righteousness, and in the 
 true fear of the Lord. 
 
 " And this Christ, in his own person, as the 
 Son of Man, is perfectly qualified to do, whose 
 right also it is, having all power in heaven and 
 in earth put into his hands. And his saints, 
 when fitted by him to sit upon the throne of the 
 same glory with him, shall likewise be found 
 prepared to bring forth even magistracy itself 
 in its right exercise, exactly answering the end 
 for which it was set up by God." 
 
 Where this aim is not followed, he shows 
 the necessary tendency to corruption inherent 
 in the offices of magistracy ; and, as with a 
 prophecy of some of the magistrates in these 
 latter times, ends it thus : " We have already 
 considered magistracy as in its corrupted, de- 
 generated use : it is, in a manner, the throne 
 and seat of the beast, serving to promote and 
 advance the great design and interest of the 
 devil in the world, whereby it doth become part 
 of his kingdom, and hath its place and use in 
 the government that anti-Christ keeps up, to 
 the oppressing and keeping under the dear 
 saints and holy ones of the true and living 
 God." 
 
 The last extract, from the same chapter of 
 the Retired Man's Meditations, presents a view 
 of the grand object of his whole political life, in. 
 direct association with his religious creed. At
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 293 
 
 the period when this was written Cromwell 
 held the government. 
 
 " For if once the Lord be pleased so far to 
 
 interfere with their proceedings. Demanding 
 toleration on these grounds, they felt that they 
 were equally bound to concede and assert it 
 
 enlighten the minds of men in these nations, ! for others ; and they preferred to see a number 
 governors, and people, as to show them the of churches with different sentiments and insti- 
 good of magistracy, as it is in its primitive in- tutes within the same political community, to 
 stitution, and is held forth in promise to be re- the idea of remedying the evil and extermina- 
 stored in the last days, it will then be their de- ; ting error by means of exclusive regulations, 
 sire and delight to inquire and consider, in a and the menaces and severities of punishment.* 
 way of free debate and common consent, on To this illustrious sect belonged nearly the 
 behalf of the good people of these nations (who whole of the army of Manchester, 
 in all these great trials have stood faithful and ! Such was the force arrayed against the Pres- 
 unshaken as to the known cause they have byterians ; a force whose numerical weakness 
 been engaged in), how the rule over them may in the House of Commons and the Assembly 
 be brought nearest to its first institution and of Divinest was counterbalanced by its grow- 
 original pattern in the exercise and practice ing influence among the common people and 
 thereof among them (founded, as we have seen, in the army, and by the superior reason and 
 upon the principles of natural right and just, | power of its leaders. The great and manifold 
 and so exclusive to all private interest and per- struggles which ensued are not, therefore, to 
 sonal concern of any singulars that shall be be considered, what the historians have been 
 found to stand in competition with, or prefer- I fond of naming them, struggles between two 
 ence to, the good of the whole), and how that j sects. The " Independents," as the general 
 which is the ordinance and institution of God j body opposed to the Presbyterians suffered 
 may become also the ordinance and statute of themselves, for party convenience, to be call- 
 man, established in a free and natural way of ' ed, were, it is seen, manyt bound in union by 
 common consent, to the reuniting of all good a common love of liberty of speech and of reli- 
 men as one man in a happy union of their spirits, 
 prayers, and counsels to resist all common 
 
 danger and opposition which by devils or men 
 may be raised against them." 
 
 A wide gulf, then, it has been seen, separated 
 
 gion. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, 
 were one devoted singly and solely to half 
 
 measures of popular government, and to en- 
 tirely compulsory measures of religious intol- 
 erance ; for in the questions of religion at this 
 
 Vane from the Presbyterian party on many of period we never fail to see comprised the most 
 the most important questions of civil policy, valuable or the most dangerous maxims of civil 
 but on the side of toleration with him stood government. The House of Lords, and almost 
 also Cromwell, Marten, and St. John, such men ' all the men of great wealth on the side of the 
 as Whitelocke and Selden, and, indeed, the ma- Parliament, secretly or openly favoured the 
 
 jority of the lawyers, who held with the Eras- 
 tian doctrines. Milton, too, lent to that great 
 cause the astonishing force of his genius ; and 
 in furtherance of its virtuous objects of free- 
 
 Presbyterians, for the very reason that such 
 opinions in church government were most fa- 
 vourable to their own limited political views. 
 They were tired of the war, and anxious for a 
 
 dom of speech and of the press, which were j compromise. They also showed, on various 
 held to be the safest guarantees for a perfect occasions, an alarm lest the king should be 
 freedom of conscience, published at this period brought too low. " They did not desire an en- 
 his immortal " Areopagitica," and there antici- | tire victory. What they wished for was an 
 pated, in words of fire, the defeat of the sect j accommodation between the crown and the ar- 
 of Presbyterians : " Methinks I see in my mind j istocracy, in which each of them might secure 
 a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself, i certain favourite objects, and be enabled to die- 
 like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her tate to the nation." 
 
 invincible locks. Methinks I see her, as an Such was the state of parties at the close of 
 eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling ; the year 1644, when the reverses, still contin- 
 her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; ued, of the English Parliamentary forces, and 
 purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at J the presence of the army of the Covenant, 
 the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while 
 the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, 
 with those also that love the twilight, flutter 
 about, amazed at what she means, and in their 
 
 Apologetical Narration of the Independents. Godwin, 
 
 as in the House of Commons, so in this assembly, 
 the " Independent" members were by far the most able. 
 
 Two of the most considerable of their adversaries have giv- 
 en sketches of them, which will be thought authentic. 
 Clarendon says, " The Independents were more learned 
 and rational than the Presbyterians ; and though they had 
 
 envious gabble would prognosticate a year of 
 sects and schisms." 
 
 Lastly, with these great leaders were asso- 
 ciated the Sect of the Independents. These men ! not so great congregations of the common people, yet they 
 
 had arrived, by somewhat different means, at i infe fed and were followed by the most substantial and 
 
 *l,o * rpsnlt the. r,,,oc,t;n f K~f~ * i wealthy citizens, as well as by others of better condition." 
 
 And Baillie, one of the deputies from Scotland, sent to watch 
 over the interests of Presbyterianism in the Assembly, 4 re- 
 lates of them that " truly they speak much, and exceedingly 
 well." And elsewhere, "truly, if the cause were good, the 
 men have plenty of learning, wit, eloquence, and, above all, 
 
 the same result on the question of liberty 
 conscience. Their religious zeal was intense- 
 ly fervid, but they disapproved equally the Pres- 
 byterian and Episcopal systems. They held 
 that a church was a body of Christians assem- 
 bled in one place, appropriated for their wor- 
 
 ;riin ami that pvprv vuch horlv wae nnmnlpre ba Pt'st 8 . Millennanans, Fifth Monarchy men ; individuals 
 IMP, ana that every SUCH poay Vias complete , whoe venin these times did not borrow their creed from the 
 in Itself; that they had a right to draw Up the country in which they were born, but thought like citizens 
 rules by Which they thought proper to be regU- of the universe ; and sects, the very names of which have 
 latpd and that nn man nnt a mpmhpr nf thpir perished, all embarked in the sacred cause against Presby- 
 
 r terian usurpation, and a compulsory uniformity of religioui 
 
 assembly, and no body of men, was entitled to , worship and belief. 
 
 boldness and stiffness, to make it out." 
 
 i Among them Mr. Godwin justly counts Erastians, Ana-
 
 294 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 pressed hard against the great leaders of the 
 minority in the House of Commons.* Vane 
 called up Cromwell from the army, and with 
 many significant expressions, " a plea for ten- 
 der consciences" was presented at the same 
 time to the House of Lords, the House of Com- 
 mons, and the Assembly of Divines ; enforced 
 in the Commons with consummate power by 
 Vane, Cromwell, and Saint John ; in the House 
 of Lords by Lord Say ; and in the Assembly 
 by the leading ministers of the Independents. 
 This proved an alarming check to the Presby- 
 terians, who were driven, in consequence, to 
 consent to a sort of compromise, and to estab- 
 lish a " directory for public worship," which 
 left much to the will or the capacity of the min- 
 ister who practised under it. 
 
 Charles seems to have been much struck at 
 this time with the capacity and power exhibit- 
 ed by Vane, and entered into overtures of ne- 
 gotiation with him and Saint John. They hu- 
 moured them only that they might the better 
 acquaint themselves with the king's exact de- 
 sign, taking care, meanwhile, to communicate 
 everything that passed to the speaker, to a 
 committee of the House of Commons to which 
 they belonged, and to the Scots commissioners, 
 that their conduct might be free from suspicion. 
 But Essex, not knowing this, and getting some 
 hint of the matter, laid a complaint against 
 these two as traitors to the cause before the 
 House of Lords. They were, of course, most 
 honourably acquitted.! Essex himself, at the 
 same time, was thanked for his vigilance and 
 zeal. 
 
 The open and acknowledged treaty of Ux- 
 hridge followed, which need not be detailed in 
 these pages.J The names of Sir Henry Vane 
 the younger and Oliver Saint John we find to 
 have been added, by a special vote, to the com- 
 missioners for the Parliament. It is enough to 
 show the temper of the king in entering on this 
 treaty, to show that it was impossible success 
 
 * The spirit of the four Scotch commissioners deputed to 
 London to watch over the interests of the Covenant may be 
 gathered from the following : " We purpose," says Baillie, 
 one of the commissioners, "not to meddle in haste with a 
 point of such high consequence (the establishment of uni- 
 formity in church government), till it please God to advance 
 our army, which we expect will much assist our arguments." 
 
 t Journals, Jan. 17. Baillie, i., 426. Hist, of Com., i., 360. 
 
 $ Whitelocke, who was one of the commissioners, gives a 
 graphic sketch of this temporary reunion of the chief mem- 
 bers of the hostile parties (all Englishmen onr.e friends !) 
 on this mutual ground. " The commissioners for the treaty 
 on both parts met at Uxbridge, and had their several quar- 
 ters ; those for the Parliament and all their retinue on the 
 north side of the town, and those for the king on the south 
 side, and no intermixture of the one party or their attend- | 
 ants with the other ; the best inn of the one side was the | 
 rendezvous of the Parliament's commissioners, and the best ; 
 inn of the other side of the street was for the king's com- 
 missioners. The evening that they came to town, several : 
 visits passed between particular commissioners of either 
 party ; as Sir Edward Hyde came to visit Mr. Hollis and j 
 Mr. Whitelocke, the Lord Culpepper visited Sir Henry Vane, I 
 and others of the king's commissioners visited several of the 
 Parliament's commissioners, and had long discourses about j 
 the treaty, and to persuade one another to a compliance. 
 Mr. Whitelocke visited Sir Edward Hyde, and Mr. Palmer, 
 and Sir Richard Lane, and others, and several of the Par- 
 liament's commissioners visited d ivers of the king's commis- 
 sioners, and had discourses with them tending to the fur- 
 therance of the business of the treaty. The town was so ex- 
 ceeding full of company, that it was hard to get any quarter 
 except for the commissioners and their retinue ; and some 
 of the commissioners were forced to lie two of them in a 
 chamber together in field-beds, only upon a quilt, in that 
 cold weather, not coming into a bed during all the treaty." 
 (Jan. 29, 1644, p. 122.) 
 
 could have ever attended it. " As to my call- 
 ing those at London a Parliament," he wrote 
 I to the queen during the preliminaries for the 
 i negotiation, " if there had been two besides 
 myself of my opinion, I had not done it ; and 
 , the argument that prevailed with me was, that 
 the calling did nowise acknowledge them to be 
 a Parliament ; upon which condition and con- 
 struction I did it, and no otherwise ; and, ac- 
 cordingly, it is registered in the council books, 
 with the council's unanimous approbation." 
 Again he writes on a subsequent day : " I as- 
 sure thee that thou needest not doubt the issue 
 of this treaty ; for my commissioners are so 
 well chosen (though I say it), that they will 
 neither be threatened nor disputed from the 
 grounds I have given them ; which, upon my 
 word, are such as we had formerly determined 
 on." " Believe," he once more writes to Hen- 
 rietta, " that I have a little more wit than to 
 place confidence in the fidelity of perfidious 
 rebels." Upon the king the failure of that 
 treaty rested, and on the king's head at last 
 fell all the penalties of that invincible spirit of 
 treachery which nothing could cope with or 
 subdue, so long as a vestige of power or even 
 life remained to him so long as the narrowest 
 loophole was still left through which he could 
 yet catch a glimpse of the darling authority of 
 an absolute throne. 
 
 The opening of the campaign of 1645 was 
 rendered memorable by one of the most mas- 
 terly strokes of policy, emanating from Vane 
 and Cromwell, that had yet distinguished the 
 statesmanship of the times, and which proved 
 eventually, and that very soon, decisive of the 
 fate of the war. This was the self-denying 
 ordinance and the new model. It had been 
 obvious for a considerable time to Vane and 
 Cromwell, that Essex, Waller, and Manchester 
 himself, all evidently temporizing, and afraid 
 to look steadily at the result of one great and 
 uncompromised victory, must be removed from 
 their command, and the military system of the 
 Parliamentary forces completely renovated, be- 
 fore anything like a perfect success could be 
 looked for. Up to this time they had had suf- 
 ficient proof that " their victories, so gallantly 
 gotten, and in which they had so eminently ex- 
 perienced the favour of Heaven, had been of no 
 avail ;" that "a summer's triumph had proved 
 but a winter's story, and the game, however it 
 seemed well in autumn, was to be played over 
 again in the spring."* They felt not less, that 
 if things went on much longer thus, these very 
 leaders might possibly be made instruments in 
 the hands of the Presbyterians for the betrayal 
 of what they held to be the most valuable con- 
 ditions of their cause. The authorship of this 
 great remedy now resolved upon, which should 
 have the effect, without personal insult, of re- 
 moving these obnoxious men, and accompany- 
 ing with that removal a reorganization and re- 
 enforcement of the army, is ascribed by Clar- 
 endon to Vane. It was, no doubt, the result 
 of deep and anxious deliberation among all the 
 chief men of the Independents. 
 
 It was opened in the House of Commons on 
 the 9th of December, 1644. On that day the 
 House resolved itself into a committee to con- 
 sider of the sad condition of the kingdom in 
 * Rushworth, vi., 3, 4.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 295 
 
 reference to the intolerable burdens of the war, 
 and the little prospect there was of its being 
 speedily brought to a conclusion. In this com- 
 mittee there was a general silence for a good 
 space of time, one " looking upon another to 
 see who would break the ice,"* when it was 
 at last broken by Cromwell. " Without," he 
 said, " a more speedy, vigorous, and effectual 
 prosecution of the war, casting off all lingering 
 proceedings like soldiers of fortune beyond the 
 sea to spin out the war, we shall make the 
 kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of a 
 Parliament. For what do the enemy say 1 nay, 
 what do many say that were friends at the be- 
 ginning of the Parliament 1 Even this : that 
 the members of both Houses have got great 
 places and commands, and the sword into their 
 hands, and what by interest in Parliament, and 
 what by power in the army, will perpetually 
 continue themselves in grandeur, and not per- 
 mit the war speedily to end, lest their own 
 power should determine with it. This I speak 
 here to our own faces is but what others do 
 utter abroad behind our backs. I am far from 
 reflecting on any : I know the worth of those 
 commanders, members of both Houses, who 
 are yet in power." Cromwell then went on to 
 deprecate any investigation into the conduct 
 of the commanders. He especially recommend- 
 ed " to their prudence not to insist upon a com- 
 plaint as to the oversight of any commander- 
 in-chief upon any occasion whatsoever." He 
 observed that he was himself conscious of over- 
 sights, and well knew that they could scarcely 
 be avoided in military affairs. Therefore, wa- 
 ving a strict inquiry into the cause of these 
 things, he exhorted the committee to apply it- 
 self to some general remedy, " which, without 
 in any way countenancing the particular cen- 
 sure of individuals, might best in future shut 
 out those evils under which they were at pres- 
 ent suffering." The memorable debate which 
 followed is unfortunately not reported. It end- 
 ed, however, in a great discussion on the fol- 
 lowing resolution : " That no member of either 
 House of Parliament shall, during the war, en- 
 joy or execute any office or command, military 
 or civil, and that an ordinance be brought in 
 to that purpose." Vane, who had reserved 
 himself for this resolution, spoke at great length 
 upon it, and with even more than his usual elo- 
 quence, t Whitelocke, separating himself from 
 the party he generally acted with, was its chief 
 opponent. Hollis and the other heads of the 
 Presbyterians seconded him, but without effect. 
 Vane and Cromwell had selected the question 
 with a masterly judgment and foresight ; for 
 the errors in the conduct of the war had been 
 so apparent, that many of the Presbyterians 
 were obliged on this occasion to declare against 
 their chiefs. It does not appear, indeed, that 
 there was more than one division in the prog- 
 ress of the ordinance through the Commons, 
 but that involved its entire spirit ; when, on 
 the 17th of December, a proviso was offered to 
 be added, that the ordinance, and anything con- 
 tained' in it, should not extend to the Earl of 
 Essex, Lord-general. Upon this occasion the 
 
 * Rushworth, vi., 4. 
 
 t The report of the debate in Clarendon, including- Vane's 
 speech, is all a gross forgery. (See Hist, of Com., i., 
 395-398.) 
 
 numbers stood, for the clause, 93 ; against it, 
 100. The ordinance had been reported to the 
 House on the llth, was passed on the 19th, and 
 was carried up to the Lords on the 21st of De- 
 cember. 
 
 Every device was resorted to in that House 
 to defeat by delay what they were most reluc- 
 tant openly to propose. Three times the House 
 of Commons sent up messages, desiring expe- 
 dition, and representing that any delay in pass- 
 ing the ordinance would- be dangerous might 
 be destructive. A select committee was then 
 nominated by the Lords to consider of altera- 
 tions to be introduced, and it is not a little 
 characteristic that of the committee, consist- 
 ing of ten members, four peers, Essex, Man- 
 chester, Warwick, and Denbigh, were persons 
 to whose disadvantage the law would particu- 
 larly operate. A paper of reasons originated 
 in this committee against the substance of the 
 ordinance. In this paper it was observed, that 
 it deprives the peers of that honour which in 
 all ages had been given them, since they had 
 evermore been principally active, to the effu- 
 sion of their blood, and the hazard of their es- 
 tates and fortunes, in regaining and maintain- 
 ing the fundamental laws of the land, and the 
 rights and liberties of the subject ; nor was 
 there ever any battle fought for these ends 
 wherein the nobility were not employed in pla- 
 ces of chiefest trust and command. It was 
 added, that the proposed measure was by no 
 means equal to the lords and commons of Eng- 
 land, since, though some of the gentry and 
 commons were excepted as members of Par- 
 liament, yet that the rest might have liberty to 
 discharge their duty, whether in civil office or 
 the field, whereas the ordinance was proposed 
 to operate as a universal disqualification of the 
 whole hereditary nobility of the country. An- 
 other objection was, that the tendency of the 
 ordinance appeared to them to be such, that, 
 in attempting to put it in force, everything 
 would be thrown into confusion in the armies ; 
 and that, therefore, till the " new model" of 
 what was proposed to succeed was produced, 
 they were scarcely in a position to judge the 
 measure fairly. Finally, after repeated con- 
 ferences between the two Houses, the ordi- 
 nance was rejected by the Lords on the 13th 
 of January.* 
 
 The last-named objection was at once, with 
 masterly promptitude, laid hold of by the states- 
 men of the lower House, and the very day after 
 the delivery of the reasons from the Lords, the 
 committee of both kingdoms reported to the 
 Commons a new model for the constitution of 
 the army. This consent of the committee of 
 both kingdoms, including the four Scotch com- 
 missioners, is supposed to have been achieved 
 by Vane's mastery over the Marquis of Argyle, 
 who had just arrived in London. t It was an- 
 other decisive advance in influence secured for 
 the Independents. 
 
 On the 19th of January the scheme of the new 
 model was laid before the House of Commons, 
 and the names of the principal officers who 
 were to have command in this army were put 
 to the vote on the 21st. The three armies of 
 the Parliament were to be formed into one,, 
 consisting of 14,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and: 
 
 * Hist, of Com., i., 402, 403. t Clarendon. Godwin..
 
 206 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 1000 dragoons, under a general-in-chief, lieu- 
 tenant-general, major-general, thirty colonels, 
 and the due proportion of other officers. Sir 
 Thomas Fairfax was named general-in-chief, 
 and Skippon major-general. Among the colo- 
 nels appears the name of Algernon Sidney, and 
 other most eminent men. Among the inferior 
 officers were Ireton, Desborough, and Harri- 
 son. The name of the officer who was design- 
 ed for the second place in the command, and 
 the generalship of the cavalry, was kept in re- 
 serve, to be filled up, as it afterward appeared, 
 with the name of Cromwell. This scheme of 
 the new model passed the Lords on the 15th 
 of February, creating an army of 22,000 men, 
 to be principally draughted from the old armies. 
 A second " self-denying ordinance" was now 
 transmitted to the Lords. Great misconcep- 
 tion has arisen in consequence of the difference 
 between these two ordinances in a very ma- 
 terial point, though both called by the same 
 name. Mr. Godwin has briefly and impress- 
 ively stated the difference thus : " It has been 
 commonly imagined that the Independents, af- 
 ter having carried a measure so full of boasted 
 disinterestedness, acted a part directly contrary 
 to their professions, smuggled in one excep- 
 tion after another, Cromwell the first ; enrich- 
 ed themselves with the spoils of the nation ; 
 and silently and imperceptibly antiquated the 
 law which had, at the moment, been their 
 great instrument for defeating their adversaries 
 of the Presbyterian party. But this way of 
 stating the question is by no means exact. 
 The original ' self-denying ordinance,' as it was 
 called, directed that no member of either House 
 of Parliament should, during the present war, 
 hold any office, civil or military, such office 
 being conferred by the authority of both or 
 either of the Houses. This ordinance was de- 
 feated in the House of Lords by the machinations 
 of the Presbyterians, and never passed into a law. 
 A second ordinance, which was called by the 
 same name, was brought in a short time after, 
 and was attended with a more successful event. 
 The enactment of this ordinance was, that 
 every member of Parliament was hereby dis- 
 charged from whatever office, civil or military, 
 that had been conferred by the authority of Par- 
 liament. The former edict was prospective, 
 and had more of the ordinary character of a 
 law ; the second prescribed something imme- 
 diately to be done, and no more.* What was 
 the cause of the striking difference between the 
 first and the second ' self-denying ordinance,' 
 must be a matter purely of conjecture. It is 
 not improbable that some of the great leaders 
 of the Independent interest began, in this inter- 
 val, to suspect that the advantage of perma- 
 .nently separating the legislative character and 
 that of an officer, civil or military, was more 
 .specious than real. Besides, as their adver- 
 .saries had contrived to defeat their measure in 
 -.the upper House, they felt less delicacy to- 
 wards them, and constructed an edict which 
 .more, plainly pointed at the individual change in 
 ; the ; public service, which they held to be irn- 
 , mediately required. The new law, therefore, 
 was a temporary expedient, and the general 
 principle was left as before."t 
 
 * That is, it did not prevent the discharged officers from 
 recovering their offices again. t Hist, ol Com., ii., 41. 
 
 In the progress of this second measure 
 through the House of Commons, it is to be re- 
 marked, there appears to have been only one 
 | division, which occurred on the twenty-first of 
 January, when it was put to the vote whether 
 Fairfax should be nominated commander-in- 
 chief, and the numbers stood (on the question 
 whether the nomination should be then made), 
 for the affirmative, 101, for the negative, 69. 
 When the ordinance came back from the Lords, 
 however, a second division took place on an 
 amendment that had been introduced in that 
 House, purporting that the nomination of offi- 
 cers, which was vested in the commander- in- 
 chief, should be subject to the approbation of 
 the two Houses of Parliament ; and the num- 
 bers stood, for the affirmative, 82, for the nega- 
 tive, 63, the majority being with the Presby- 
 terians. This was not a point, however, of vital 
 importance with Vane and the Independents, 
 whose victory, in the achievement of the meas- 
 ure as it now stood, had been triumphantly 
 complete. 
 
 Essex, Manchester, Warwick, and Denbigh 
 had appeared in the House of Lords the day be- 
 fore the ordinance passed, and laid down their 
 commissions. Acknowledgments were made 
 by the Commons of their great and faithful 
 services, and pensions were voted to them. 
 
 The army was now in the hands of the Inde- 
 pendents. Its soldiers were nearly all members 
 of that communion. Unadorned by rank, un- 
 graced by any of the eminences of station, they 
 were filled with religious zeal and an irrepressi- 
 ble enthusiasm. Each man felt as if the cause 
 rested with him, each man had the sense that 
 he was qualified to be a teacher to others. 
 They were equally stimulated by the love of 
 liberty, and the love of that scheme of religious 
 faith which each man espoused. "They re- 
 spected themselves ; they believed that they 
 were in a state of grace ; and they were in- 
 capable of allowing themselves in anything un- 
 worthy of the high calling with which God had 
 honoured them. They were vessels of glory, 
 set apart for the purposes of heaven. As they 
 had these feelings and impulses in common 
 among them, so these feelings and impulses 
 served them as a bond of indissoluble union. 
 They advanced into the field chanting the 
 psalms contained in the Scriptures, and fought, 
 as they expressed it, with ' the sword of the 
 Lord and of Gideon.'"* 
 
 But then they were not lords, nor had seen 
 dozens of campaigns, and infinite was the 
 laughter and contempt they at first inspired. 
 It was not given to all to see with the subtle 
 and far-piercing glance of Vane or of Cromwell. 
 "Truly this army was no way glorious," ob- 
 serves May, " either in the dignity of its com- 
 manders or the antiquity of the soldiers. Never 
 did an army go forth to war who had less the 
 confidence of their own friends, or were more 
 the object of contempt to their enemies, and 
 yet who did more bravely deceive the expecta- 
 tions of them both." Their successes he as- 
 cribes, under God, to their moral and religious 
 as well as military discipline. " The usual 
 vices of camps," he adds, " were here restrain- 
 ed. The discipline was strict. No theft, no 
 wantonness, no oaths, no profane words, could 
 
 Godwin, i., 464.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 297 
 
 escape without the severest castigation, by 
 which it was brought to pass that in this camp, 
 as in a well-ordered city, passage was safe and 
 commerce free." To all this the king's army 
 offered a melancholy contrast, which set off 
 with still greater lustre the Parliamentarian 
 virtues. " The officers took pride in the prqf- 
 ligacy of their language and their lives ; and 
 the common soldiers were, out of the field, a j 
 disorderly and dissolute rabble."* What could 
 the king's superiority in numbers, or his many 
 other advantages, avail against this single cir- 
 cumstance alone 1 Most wisely had Vane and 
 Cromwell judged. The Royalists were doom- 
 ed to fall in the first great battle. 
 
 The single danger to be apprehended does 
 not seem to have hitherto in any way occurred 
 to Vane. To have suspected the virtue of the 
 great soldier of the cause he had most at heart, 
 to have doubted the reality of Cromwell's Re- 
 publican fervour and enthusiasm, would have 
 been equivalent to a surrender of the high faith 
 and hope which sustained him in the mighty 
 struggle he was engaged in. 
 
 The army of the new model marched reso- 
 lutely on against Charles. His headquarters 
 were at Oxford ; he had a preponderance in the 
 midland counties ; was master in almost the 
 whole of the western districts ; had power in 
 the north ; and was complete master of Wales. 
 In a few short weeks he was helpless ! The 
 new leaders in whom the power was vested 
 struck at once against Charles himself, and 
 kept him in pursuit. He had moved from Ox- 
 ford in a northern direction, with a view, it 
 is supposed, to co-operation with Montrose. 
 The Scottish army advancing to the south, im- 
 pelled by the English leaders, raised the siege 
 of Carlisle, and interposed to foil his plan. 
 Fairfax meanwhile had sat down before Oxford. 
 Charles, upon this, at once turned back, and 
 with considerable vigour and resolution as- 
 saulted the garrison of Leicester. Alarmed for 
 the safety of the eastern counties, Fairfax im- 
 mediately raised the siege of Oxford, and re- 
 sumed his pursuit of Charles, who had moved 
 from Leicester, fixed his headquarters at Daven- 
 try, and betaken himself to the pleasures of the 
 chase, while his soldiers ravaged and plundered 
 the neighbouring country. Fairfax gradually 
 and silently advanced, was joined by Crom- 
 well near Northampton, and they both together 
 took Charles by surprise near the fatal town 
 of Naseby. At eleven at night a council of war 
 was summoned in the Royalist camp ; and with 
 that careless and courageous gallantry which, 
 whatever their other vices may have been, al- 
 ways distinguished the aristocratic officers of 
 Charles's army, it was resolved, notwithstand- 
 ing their critical position, " not only to give, 
 but to advance and offer, battle." 
 
 The armies met at Naseby, upon a fallow 
 field about a mile in breadth. The king led his 
 centre in person, and found himself opposite to 
 Fairfax and Skippon. Rupert commanded on 
 the right, and (appointed at Cromwell's request, 
 and invested with rank for the occasion) Ireton 
 fronted him. Sir Marmaduke Langdale, on the 
 left, was opposed by Oliver Cromwell. The 
 word of the Cavaliers was "Queen Mary" 
 (Henrietta Maria) of the Parliamentarians, 
 
 * History from Mackintosh, v 363. 
 PP 
 
 " God our strength." The Royalists commen- 
 ced the battle by advancing at a quick step, 
 " with alacrity and resolution."* The van of 
 the Parliamentary centre was broken by the 
 charge, and the troops fell back upon the rear, 
 as they had been commanded, in such necessi- 
 ty, to do. Skippon was severely wounded by a 
 shot in the side, and Fairfax desired he would 
 leave the field ; but " the brave old man (says 
 Rushworth) answered, ' He would not stir so 
 long as a man would stand,' and kept the field 
 to the end of the battle." Fairfax now advan- 
 ced himself with a body of reserve, and the 
 battle raged anew. Not content to exercise 
 the functions of a captain, Fairfax grappled 
 personally with the foe, galloped through the 
 thickest of the fray, encouraged by dauntless 
 example the brave, and shamed the timid, if 
 any such were there. His helmet was beaten 
 to pieces, but he continued to ride about bare- 
 headed, and in this state happening to come up 
 with his body-guard, commanded by Colonel 
 Charles Doyley, the latter respectfully rebuked 
 him for thus hazarding his person, " wherein 
 lay the safety of the whole army and of the 
 good cause, to be riding bareheaded among the 
 showering bullets," at the same time offering 
 him his own helmet. Fairfax put it by, saying, 
 " 'Tis well enough, Charles."! 
 
 The battle, meanwhile, had assumed a terri- 
 ble aspect on either wing. Rupert began with 
 his usual impetuosity, and bore down his ad- 
 versaries in spite of the astonishing resistance 
 of Ireton ; while Ireton himself, wounded in the 
 thigh with a pike, in the face with a halbert, 
 having at the same time his horse killed under 
 him, was made prisoner, though he afterward 
 escaped back to the Parliamentarians. But 
 now, while Rupert pursued the flying horse of 
 the Parliament, and afterward vainly amused 
 himself with summoning their park of artillery, 
 Cromwell was deciding the fortune of the day 
 (according to his custom) on the right wing. 
 He attacked Sir Marmaduke Langdale, first 
 with a close fire of carbines, next at the sword's 
 point ; broke and routed his cavalry, and drove 
 them a mile from the field of battle, wholly be- 
 yond the possibility of farther concert with the 
 Royalist infantry ; then, with that consummate 
 prudence which outshone even his extraordi- 
 nary valour, the victorious Cromwell, unlike 
 the victorious Rupert, returned to the aid of his 
 struggling commander, and, falling on Charles's 
 weary infantry, put them to instant route. One 
 regiment alone preserved its order unbroken. 
 " One Royalist corps," says Rushworth, " stood 
 like a rock, and, though twice desperately 
 charged, would not move an inch." At last, 
 however, Fairfax, directing Doyley to make a 
 third charge in front, simultaneously attacked 
 them in the rear, pierced them in all directions, 
 and, slaying an ensign with his own hand, 
 seized the colours, and gave them to a common 
 soldier to hold. The soldier, unable to resist 
 the temptation, boasted among his comrades 
 that he had seized those colours himself, and 
 the boast went back to Fairfax. " Let him re- 
 tain the honour*" said that great general ; " I 
 have enough besides." 
 
 * Rushworth. Hist, from Mackintosh. 
 
 t Life of Fairfax, in Hartley Coleridge's Biographia Bo- 
 realis most interesting and charmingly-written book. 
 And Bee Whitelocke, June 14.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 The king behaved with his accustomed bra- 
 very. When he saw his infantry routed and 
 his affairs so desperate, he placed himself at 
 the head of what remained of his cavalry, and 
 implored them to stand the coming shock. 
 " One charge more," he cried, " and we re- 
 cover the day." It was vain ; they were not 
 in a condition to do it ; Rupert had joined them 
 too late ; they fled, and left Fairfax and Crom- 
 well masters of the field. Two thousand men 
 had been slain nearly an equal number on 
 both sides ; but Charles left behind him 5000 
 prisoners, of whom 1000 were officers, his 
 whole artillery, a hundred stand of colours, with 
 the standard royal, the king's baggage, with the 
 cabinet containing his private papers and cor- 
 respondence with the queen, the baggage of the 
 army, including the plunder of Leicester, the 
 royal coaches, the whole spoil of the camp 
 everything! The first civil war was decided 
 by that memorable day, and the disclosure of 
 all the treacheries and infidelities of the king's 
 correspondence* was a weapon in the hands of 
 the Independent leaders which, until the very 
 termination of the struggle, they used with ter- 
 rible effect. 
 
 Such was the first memorable result of Vane's 
 great policy in the matter of the self-denying 
 ordinance and the new model, and for that rea- 
 son this battle has been detailed. In the field 
 of civil polity, he was meanwhile pursuing other 
 objects of scarcely less importance. 
 
 He had now directed his attention to the 
 state of the representation in the House of 
 Commons. The civil war had necessarily pur- 
 ged that house of the Royalist members, and 
 also of others who had selected the policy of 
 temporizing or of observing a strict neutrality. 
 The war itself had been attended with memor- 
 able vicissitudes ; for, as we have seen, in the 
 winter of 1642, and in the autumn of 1643, ex- 
 pectations even ran strongly in favour of the 
 success of the royal party, and it was the nat- 
 ural consequence of these vicissitudes to cause 
 farther desertions. The precise number of the 
 House of Commons, according to the returns 
 in 1640, appears to have been 506. The high- 
 est numbers that are to be observed upon any 
 division occur on the 1st of March following, 
 and amount, taken together, to 383, including 
 the tellers.f About the time of the king's dec- 
 laration, after the war began, that only 80 of 
 the 500 commoners, and only 15 or 16 of the 
 100 peers remained, the divisions certainly ran 
 very low ; but this was accident, and " could 
 only be used to colour a party declaration." 
 On the 9th of February following, the numbers 
 rose as high as 201. We have seen that the 
 numbers were nearly as great upon a vote re- 
 specting the self-denying ordinance in Decem. 
 
 * It appeared, among other things, on the publication of 
 this correspondence, that at the Oxford treaty he had se- 
 cretly registered in the council book his protest that, in 
 calling the Lords and Commons at Westminster a Parlia- 
 ment, he did not acknowledge them as such ; that he looked 
 upon them as banded traitors, to whom he owed neither for- 
 giveness nor good faith ; that he termed his own followers, 
 of both Houses, assembled at Oxford, a "base," "muti- 
 nous," " mongrel Parliament ;" that he designed bringing 
 into England an army of Roman Catholics from Ireland, and 
 a foreign army under the Duke of Lorraine, a popish prince 
 contrary to his express and solemn word. History from 
 Mackintosh, vi., 2. And see Journals and Parliamentary 
 History, or the 5th vol. of the Harleian Miscellany. 
 
 t See Godwin's History, ii, 25, et seq. 
 
 ber, 1644. At the time of assembling the 
 mock, or, as Charles himself called it, the 
 "mongrel" Parliament at Oxford, on the 22d 
 of January in that year, the Commons ordered 
 a call of the House, which took place on the 
 same day that the king had fixed for his fol- 
 lowers at Oxford, and the numbers appear to 
 have been divided as follow : 280 members an- 
 swered to their names at Westminster ; 100 
 were excused, as being absent in the service 
 of Parliament in their several counties ; and 
 1 18 at Oxford signed the letter to Essex of the 
 27th of the same month, calling on him to in- 
 terpose for the restoration of peace. There 
 are, therefore, only eight individuals unaccount- 
 ed for in this computation.* 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to observe that one 
 of the conditions of the civil war was to impose 
 on the House of Commons itself the necessity, 
 unavoidable in such a state of revolution, of 
 declaring such persons as were most forward 
 to engage in hostilities against them disabled 
 from sitting thereafter in that Parliament ; and 
 in all the earlier instances, this vote of dis- 
 ability had been accompanied with the dnection 
 that a new writ should be issued for filling up 
 the place of the member thus declared incapa- 
 ble. But here the affair stopped. Agreeably 
 to the customary forms, the speaker issued his 
 warrant to the clerk of the crown in chancery 
 for the granting a new writ, to the originating 
 of which the great seal was necessary ; but the 
 lord-keeper had carried off the great seal to the 
 king at York in May, 1642, therefore the order 
 to the speaker had necessarily miscarried ; and 
 from this time the question of introducing new 
 members seems to have lain untouched until 
 the 30th of September, 1644. On that day it 
 was voted by the Commons that the House 
 should, on a future day that was specified, take 
 the subject into consideration. The actual de- 
 cision on the question, however, was from time 
 to time deferred, t and it was not till August of 
 the following year that any progress was made. 
 It was so managed that a petition was at that 
 time presented from the borough of Southwark, 
 praying that they might be authorized to elect 
 two fresh representatives in the room of the 
 first they had, one of whom was dead, and the 
 other disabled by a vote of the House. This 
 served as a signal for entering on a proceeding, 
 which had certainly, by Vane, Saint John, and 
 the other leaders of the Independents, been al- 
 ready determined on. On the 21st it was de- 
 cided by a majority of three that new writs 
 should be issued for Southwark, Bury St. Ed- 
 munds, and the cinque port of Hythe. This 
 beginning was speedily pursued : 146 new mem- 
 bers were introduced into the Parliament in the 
 remainder of the year 1645, and 89 in the course 
 of the following year. Among those at present 
 introduced, we find the most honest, virtuous, 
 and every way illustrious names of Fairfax, 
 Blake, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, Ireton, Skip- 
 pon, Massey, and Hutchinson.i 
 
 This, then, was another victory for the In- 
 dependents. The Presbyterians and the Scots 
 commissioners, however, disabled in a great 
 
 * See the Journals. Whitelocke, p. 80. Rush worth, Y., 
 573 ; and fiodwin, ii., 27 t Godwin, ii., 36. 
 
 t Ludlow, i., 169, 170 Godwin, ii., 41. Notitia Parlia- 
 mentaria.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 290 
 
 part by the turn events had taken since the new 
 modelling of the army, and astonished heyond 
 measure at the decisive victory of Naseby, be- 
 gan to see the necessity of resorting to some 
 expedient of rallying their strength, which, ju- 
 diciously managed, was still superior in num- 
 bers. While they bethought themselves of 
 what they must do, Cromwell's letter after the 
 battle of Naseby was read from the chair. 
 "Honest men," he wrote, "have served you 
 faithfully in this action. I beseech you, in the 
 name of God, not to discourage them. He that 
 ventures his life for the liberty of his country 
 should be left to trust God for the liberty of his 
 conscience." The old question again started 
 up ; the Presbyterians insisted on their claims 
 of an exclusive and intolerant church discipline ; 
 the Independents met them with all the force 
 of conscious reason, and the accession of that 
 reputation for it which recent military events 
 had given them. A second sort of accommo- 
 dation was effected, and the parties once more 
 rested for a while. 
 
 Charles, defeated and almost helpless, was 
 now at Oxford. He felt the necessity of taking 
 some step for personal safety ; he saw it was 
 impossible that another army could be got to- 
 gether, and was casting in his own mind the 
 relative advantages of throwing himself upon 
 London for a treaty, or of making the best of 
 his way to the Scottish army in the north. 
 Here the striking attitude taken by Vane and 
 the Independents appears to have affected him 
 once more, and he proposed to Ashburnham to 
 sound the Independents through Vane. Two 
 letters remain in the Clarendon state papers 
 addressed in the king's name by Ashburnham to 
 Sir Harry Vane the younger. In these he 
 pledges himself that, if Presbytery were insist- 
 ed on, he would join Vane and the Independ- 
 ents with all his powers in " rooting out that 
 tyrannical government." No answer on the 
 part of Vane has been found. It is likely that 
 he returned no answer.* It was impossible 
 that a mind so subtle and acute could have 
 brought itself to place confidence in the good 
 faith of such a proposal. In the Naseby dis- 
 closures it had been made manifest that profes- 
 sions and protestations cost Charles nothing ; 
 that he held everything fair that was done in 
 negotiating with an enemy ; that he never 
 talked of peace but with a crafty intention ; 
 " and that he never made a concession that he 
 was not at the time considering how he should 
 retract it." 
 
 The incident only testified to the strength of 
 Vane's influence and party. A passage from 
 Whitelocke's memorials of this period may be 
 quoted for the same purpose : under the dates 
 of October the 15th and 20th, he states, in one 
 instance, " I lived with," in another, " I dined 
 with, Sir Henry Vane, Mr. Solicitor (St. John), 
 and other grandees of that party, and was kind- 
 ly treated by them, as I used to be by the 
 other." The cautious lawyer, though voting 
 on questions of religious liberty with Vane and 
 St. John, had evidently never before committed 
 himself thus far. 
 
 The king's spirit of intrigue, however, was 
 
 * A misapprehension of the whole of this incident by Dr. 
 Lin gar J is ably pointed out and corrected in the History 
 from Mackintosh. 
 
 irresistible. His object was by some means 
 or other to force himself into London, where 
 he trusted his presence might work some kind 
 of miracle in support of his prostrate cause. 
 To this end he made the following extraordi- 
 nary proposal of a treaty : that he himself should 
 come to London with 300 followers, under the 
 assurance and security of the two Houses of 
 Parliament, the commissioners for Scotland, 
 the corporation of the metropolis, and the chief 
 commanders of the English and Scotch armies, 
 for forty days ; at the expiration of which he 
 should be free to repair, at his own choice, to 
 his garrison of Oxford, Worcester, or Newark. 
 In the same message he repeated his Uxbridge 
 proposition, that the military power should be 
 vested for three years in commissioners, to be 
 nominated half by himself and half by the Par- 
 liament, or in any other way that might be sat- 
 isfactory to both parties. To render the point 
 more intelligible, the king tendered in his mes- 
 sage the names of thirty persons for commis- 
 sioners, and among them were the names of 
 Vane, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Hollis. This 
 was the falsest proposal he had yet made, and 
 the Independent leaders at once detected its 
 falsehood. It was merely one of the old re- 
 sources to strive to place the Parliament, if 
 possible, in a false position. In the very midst 
 of the subsequent measures he took to advance 
 the same object, it was afterward found he had 
 written thus to Digby : " Now, for my own par- 
 ticular resolution, I am endeavouring to get to 
 London, so that the conditions may be such as 
 a gentleman may own, and that the rebels may 
 acknowledge me king, being not without hope 
 that I shall be able so to draw either the Pres- 
 byterians or Independents to side with me for 
 extirpating one the other, that I shall be really 
 king again. I will conclude with this assu- 
 rance, that whatsoever becomes of me, by the 
 grace of God, I will never forsake the Church, 
 my friends, nor my crown." 
 
 It would be tedious, and it is unnecessary, 
 to follow the course of events after this period 
 through the various changes which carried 
 Charles to the Scotch camp, which subsequent- 
 ly induced the Scots to surrender him to the 
 Parliament, and which ended in the violent 
 struggles between the Presbyterian and Inde- 
 pendent parties in the House of Commons, as 
 to the final disposal of his person and dignity, 
 and the new settlement of the government of 
 the kingdom. 
 
 Clarendon has two remarks in his history 
 which may be properly introduced here. He 
 observes of the discomfort of the Scotch com- 
 missioners after the decision of the first civil 
 war : " They had long had jealousy of Crom- 
 well and Sir Henry Vane, and all that party, 
 which they saw increased every day, and grew 
 powerful in the Parliament, in the council, and 
 in the city. Their sacred vow and covenant 
 was mentioned with less reverence and respect, 
 and the Independents, which comprehended 
 many sects in religion, spake publicly against 
 it, of which party Cromwell and Vane were 
 the leaders, with very many clergymen, who 
 were the most popular preachers, and who in 
 the Assembly of Divines had great authority ; 
 so that the Scots plainly perceived that, though 
 they had gone as far towards the destruction
 
 300 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of the Church of England as they desired, they 
 should never be able to establish their Presby- 
 terian government, without which they should 
 lose all their credit in their own country, and 
 all their interest in England."* And in a sub- 
 sequent passage of singular incorrectness he 
 adds : " The truth is, though that party was 
 most prevalent in the Parliament, and compre- 
 hended all the superior officers of the army 
 (the general only excepted, who thought him- 
 self a Presbyterian), yet there were only three 
 men, Vane, Cromwell, and Ireton, who govern- 
 ed and disposed all the rest according to their 
 sentiments ; and without doubt they had not 
 yet published their dark designs to many of 
 their own party, nor would their party at that 
 time have been so numerous and considerable 
 if they had known, or but imagined, that they 
 had entertained those thoughts of heart, which 
 they grew every day less tender to conceal, 
 and forward enough to discover.''! 
 
 Upon this, it is worth while to inquire what 
 these " dark designs" were that are here im- 
 puted to Vane. The lesson in politics which 
 his life illustrated and enforced cannot be stud- 
 ied too well, and it has never yet been exhibit- 
 ed in that most impressive form which it as- 
 sumes when, upon the great actions of his life, 
 the rarer political writings he left behind him 
 throw the light of their eloquence and wisdom. 
 
 The majority of historians speak of Vane as 
 a purely theoretical Republican, with great wis- 
 dom in the means he employed, but with the 
 utmost absurdity in the ends he aimed at : in 
 a word, the owner of a political faith not redu- 
 cible to this world, and only made up of wild- 
 ness and extravagant enthusiasm. Such are 
 the convenient opinions, with the help of which 
 disagreeable conclusions of another sort are 
 sought to be kept at distance ! 
 
 A theoretical Republican Vane was not, if it 
 is attempted to be shown by this that the mo- 
 tive of his public exertions was merely a pre- 
 conceived idea of the abstract excellence of 
 that form of civil society. What Vane sought 
 was good and popular government, extensive 
 representation, freedom of thought, freedom of 
 the press, and perfect liberty of conscience. 
 Because he could not find these under a mon- 
 archy, he became a Republican -, but under a 
 monarchy he would have been content with 
 these. Practical and protracted experience of 
 the utter impossibility of bringing Charles to 
 terms of good faith was the origin of Vane's 
 devotion to a republic. Having once embraced 
 that faith, he pursued it with all the earnest- 
 ness and enthusiasm of his character, but never 
 for a single instant lost sight of the practical 
 reasons out of which it had sprung up in his 
 mind, nor of the wise design of preserving all 
 its new institutions, in so far as possible, in 
 correspondence with the fundamental laws and 
 usages to which Englishmen had been for cen- 
 turies accustomed, and under which, in their 
 purer shapes, they had grown in virtue, in civ- 
 ilization, and in power. 
 
 In an Essay on Government, which was left 
 among his papers at his death, he lays down a 
 philosophical maxim which few will be bold 
 enough nowadays to dispute : " Ancient found- 
 ations, when once they become destructive to 
 
 * Vol. v., p. 15, 16. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 345. 
 
 those very ends for which they were first or- 
 dained, and prove hinderances to the good and 
 enjoyment of human societies, to the true wor- 
 ship of God. and the safety of the people, are 
 for their sakes, and upon the same reasons, 
 to be altered, for which they were first laid. 
 In the way of God's justice they may be sha- 
 ken and removed, in order to accomplish the 
 counsels of his will upon such a state, nation, 
 or kingdom, in order to his introducing a righ- 
 teous government of his own framing."* When 
 he stood in the court of King's Bench upon his 
 trial, he laid down another proposition, on 
 which, he said, all his actions had been ground- 
 ed, and he challenged the judges, with eloquent 
 and unanswerable subtlety, to contradict it if 
 they could. It was, that the very root and or- 
 igin of monarchical government in England was 
 the assent of the people through their repre- 
 sentatives, or, in other words, the so horrible 
 and terrifying Republican principle. 
 
 " However I have been misjudged and mis- 
 understood, I can truly affirm that in the whole 
 series of my actions, that which I have had in 
 my eye hath been to preserve the ancient well- 
 constituted government of England on its own 
 basis and primitive righteous foundations, most 
 learnedly stated by Fortescue in his book, made 
 in praise of the English laws. And I did ac- 
 count it the most likely means for the effecting 
 of this to preserve it at least in its root, what- 
 ever changes and alterations it might be ex- 
 posed unto in its branches, through the bluster- 
 ous and stormy times that have passed over us. 
 
 " This is no new doctrine in a kingdom ac- 
 quainted with political power, as Fortescue 
 shows ours is, describing it to be, in effect, the 
 common assent of the realm, the will of the 
 people or whole body of the kingdom, repre- 
 sented in Parliament ; nay, though this repre- 
 sentation, as hath fallen out, be restrained for 
 a season to the Commons' House in their sin- 
 gle actings, into which, as we have seen, when, 
 by the inordinate fire of the times, two of the 
 three estates have for a season been melted 
 down, they did but retire into their root, and 
 were not hereby in their right destroyed, but 
 rather preserved, though as to their exercise 
 laid for a while asleep, till the season came of 
 their revival and restoration." 
 
 Shortly before his death, while imprisoned in 
 one of the isles of Scilly, he made a more elab- 
 orate statement of his views on this point, and 
 of the justifications which he conceived the 
 people and their leaders to have had in their 
 attempts to alter the monarchical institutions. 
 This remarkable treatise was entitled " The 
 
 * In another passage he states, with unanswerable force, 
 " It was ordinary among the ancients, not only to change 
 their governors, but government also. If one race of kings 
 be lawfully deposed, they are not wronged by change of 
 government, and who else can be ? It is so natural and 
 fundamental a right in people to have and to use such a 
 liberty, that we may do well to consider whether they have 
 any right to give it out of their hands, unless it be lawful 
 to contradict the law of nature, the true end of all govern- 
 ment in human societies, turn their own reason out of doors, 
 and so turn beasts for their governors to ride on. That the 
 Jews, Greeks, and Romans, the wisest states in the world, 
 have over and over used this liberty of changing their gov- 
 ernment as they saw occasion, and that often with very good 
 success, is undeniable. Were it unlawful for a state in any 
 case to depose and remove kings, what titles have anymon- 
 archs now upon oath to their crowns, that are descended of 
 those who were elected into the room of such as the peopla 
 deposed?"
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 301 
 
 People's Case Stated." At the commence- 
 ment of it, he lays down, in language which 
 bears no evidence of wildness or impatience of 
 just restraint, the following rules : " The end 
 of all government being for the good and wel- 
 fare, and not for the destruction of the ruled, 
 God, who is the institutor of government, as he 
 is pleased to ordain the office of governors, in- 
 trusting them with power to command the just 
 and reasonable things which his own law com- 
 mands, that carry their own evidence to com- 
 mon reason and sense, at least that do not evi- 
 dently contradict it, so he grants a liberty to 
 the subjects, or those that by him are put un- 
 der the rule, to refuse all such commands as 
 are contrary to his law, or to the judgment of 
 common reason and sense, whose trial he al- 
 lows, by way of assent or dissent, before the 
 commands of the ruler shall be binding or put 
 in execution ; and this in a co-ordinacy of 
 power with just government, and as the due 
 balance thereof; /or," he adds, in words of 
 deepest truth and significance, " the original 
 impressions of just laws are in man's nature, and 
 very constitution of being:" 
 
 From the foregoing proposition, a condition 
 of government is then established thus : " God 
 doth allow and confer by the very law of nature, 
 upon the community or body of the people, that 
 are related to and concerned in the right of 
 government placed over them, the liberty, by 
 their common vote or suffrage duly given, to 
 be assenters or dissenters thereunto, and to 
 affirm and make stable, or disallow and render 
 ineffectual, what shall apparently be found by 
 them to be for the good or hurt of that society, 
 whose welfare, next under the justice of God's 
 commands and his glory, is the supreme lav/ 
 and very end of all subordinate governing 
 power. Sovereign power, then, comes from 
 God, as its proper root, but the restraint or en- 
 largement of it, in its execution over such a 
 body, is founded in the common consent of that 
 body. The office of chief ruler, or head over 
 any state, commonwealth, or kingdom, hath the 
 right of due obedience from the people insepar- 
 ably annexed to it. It is an office not only of 
 divine institution, but for the safety and pro-* 
 tection of the whole body or community, and 
 therefore justly and necessarily draws to it, and 
 engages their subjection." The logical force 
 of this passage is only equalled by its philo- 
 sophic sobriety. Subsequently he carries out 
 his premises into the following eloquent state- 
 ment of the proper source of the best form of 
 government, in which, it will be seen, the char- 
 acter of his religious opinions, as I have en- 
 deavoured to describe them, receives very stri- 
 king illustration. " The highest judgment and 
 will set up by God for angels and men, in their 
 particular beings, to hold proportion with, and bear 
 conformity unto (in the capacity of ruled, in re- 
 lation to their chief ruler), shines forth in the 
 person of Christ, the ingrafted Word ; and when, 
 by the agreement or common consent of a na- 
 tion or state, there is such a constitution and 
 form of administration pitched upon as in a 
 standing and ordinary way may derive and con- 
 vey the nearest and greatest likeness in human 
 laws, or acts of such a constitution, unto the 
 judgment and will of the supreme legislator, as 
 the rule and declared duty for every one in 
 
 that society to observe, it is thereby that gov- 
 ernment or supreme power comes to receive 
 being in a nation or state, and is brought into 
 exercise according to God's ordinance and di- 
 vine institution. So, then, it is not so much the 
 form of the administration as the thing administer- 
 ed, wherein the good or evil of government doth 
 consist ; that is to say, a greater likeness or un- 
 likeness unto the judgment and will of the high- 
 est Being, in all the acts or laws flowing from 
 the fundamental constitution of the govern- 
 ment." 
 
 The legal restraints placed for these objects 
 on the office of king are then clearly stated, 
 after which Vane adds : " The contrary here- 
 unto was the principle at bottom of the king's 
 cause, which he endeavoured to uphold and 
 maintain, in order to decline and lay aside the 
 legal restraints as aforesaid, which the gov- 
 ernment of England, by the fundamental Con- 
 stitution, is subjected unto, as to the exercise 
 and ministry of the royal office. From the ob- 
 servation and experience which the people of 
 England had, and made many years together, 
 by their representatives in Parliament, of a de- 
 sire in the king to shake off these legal re- 
 straints in the exercise of the regal power, and 
 on their having tried the best ways and means 
 that occurred to their understandings to pre- 
 vent the same, and to secure to themselves the 
 enjoyment of their just rights and liberty, they 
 at last pitched upon the desiring from the king 
 the continuance of the sitting of the Parlia- 
 ment called November 3, 1640, in such sort as 
 is expressed in that act, 17 Car., wherein it is 
 provided, ' that it shall not be discontinued or 
 dissolved but by act of Parliament.' " This act, 
 however, he proceeds to argue, did not in itself 
 dissolve their allegiance, or give the people 
 back their original right to erect a new govern- 
 ment, until after, all reasonable efforts failing, 
 war had been resorted to, and the decision 
 given : " Such appeal answered, and the issue 
 decided by battle, the people's delegates still 
 sitting, and keeping together in their collective 
 body, may of right, and according to reason, 
 refuse the readmission or new admission of the ex- 
 ercise of the former rulers, or any new rulers 
 again over the whole body, till there be receiv- 
 ed satisfaction for the former wrongs done, the 
 expense and hazard of the war, and security for 
 the time to come that the like be not committed 
 again. Until this be obtained, they are bound 
 in duty, in such manner as they judge most fit, 
 to provide for the present government of the 
 whole body, that the common weal receive no 
 detriment."* He admits the sacredness of an 
 oath of allegiance to a sovereign, and argues, 
 with great force and eloquence, that it is only 
 an utter abuse of the kingly trust that can re- 
 
 * In another work he expresses the same doctrine thus : 
 " All contrarient actings against the prince are not to be 
 accounted a resisting of the power, especially when the 
 whole state is concerned, and the business is managed by 
 public trustees, called and authorized by law, as conservers 
 of th state, and defenders of the public liberties and laws 
 thereof. In such a public capacity, to stand in the gap 
 when a breach is made, and hinder any charge or at- 
 tempt that would ruinate the state, is duty. In such case, 
 they ought to withstand and hinder the violent proceedings 
 of any, either by way of justice in a legal trial, or by force ; 
 for the prince is not master of the state, but only a guardian 
 and defender thereof from injuries and evil." Treatise on 
 Government.
 
 303 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 lieve the subject from it ; but he will be utterly 
 relieved in that case, he adds, " especially if, 
 together with such breach of trust, both parties 
 appeal to God, and put it upon the issue of bat- 
 tle, and God give the decision ; and in conse- 
 quence thereof, that original right be asserted, 
 and possession thereof had and held for some 
 years, and then not rightfully lost, but treacher- 
 ously betrayed and given up by those in whom no 
 power was rightfully placed." 
 
 These, then, are the " dark designs" of Vane : 
 this is the wild and visionary enthusiast ! He 
 sought to achieve for the English people, for us, 
 his posterity, the blessings of a government re- 
 sponsible to the governed, the basis of which 
 was to be security for person and property, 
 and perfect and uncontrollable freedom in all 
 matters appertaining to the conscience and in- 
 tellect. Failing of this object in that day under 
 a monarchical form, he struck for a republic. 
 This was his only crime the sum of his " dark 
 designs." 
 
 But, alas ! for one person among the good 
 citizens of London, at the close of the civil war, 
 who could think with Vane, there were fifty who 
 preferred to think, on these particular points, 
 with Clarendon. The Presbyterians had once 
 more rallied in this stronghold of their power. 
 They clamoured for a Presbyterian settlement. 
 They seemed to have altogether forgotten such 
 things as a reform of political institutions, or 
 an establishment of public rights and liberties. 
 A petition had been secretly got up by the 
 Presbyterians in the name of the city,* and was 
 now carried into Parliament, praying for strict 
 religious conformity, for subscription to the 
 Covenant, and for the dissolution of the army. 
 It was only preliminary to a more decisive 
 movement on the part of the Presbyterians. 
 The reduction of the army to a peace estab- 
 lishment was proposed in the House of Com- 
 mons on the 9th of February. The dismantling 
 of the garrisons in England and Wales, with the 
 exception of forty-five ; and the reduction of 
 the army, after draughts of horse and foot for 
 the service of Ireland, to about 5000 horse, to 
 maintain public tranquillity, and the force of in- 
 fantry required for the reserved garrisons, were 
 carried after earnest and long debate, in which 
 Vane used all his influence and eloquence 
 against the motion, and carried, too, without 
 due provision for arrears of pay. It was voted, 
 also, that no member of Parliament should have 
 a military command ; that there should be no 
 officer of higher rank than that of colonel, with 
 the exception of Fairfax ; and that every of- 
 ficer should take the Covenant, and conform 
 to the Presbyterian ordinance in religion : in 
 other words, all security for the triumphs that 
 had been won for the people were recklessly 
 voted away, and the people's bravest soldiers, 
 Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, 
 Skippon, Blake, and Hutchinson, were insolent- 
 
 * A very memorable counter-petition was subsequently 
 set afloat by the Independents, demanding some startling- 
 reforms, which exhibited revolution and Republicanism un- 
 masked. It remonstrated against the payment of tithes, the 
 hardships of enforced religious conformity, the insolent con- 
 tumely with which Presbyterians designated those who 
 would not conform to the Presbytery ; the mischief of the 
 House of Lords ; and was addressed to the supreme author- 
 ity of the nation in the Commons' House of Parliament. 
 Hist, from Mackintosh. 
 
 ly dismissed from their service. Fairfax him- 
 self was only retained on a division by 159 to 
 147. 
 
 Mr. Godwin has, at this passage of history, 
 given way to no inappropriate strain of melan- 
 choly enthusiasm. " Here," he says, " we have 
 a striking illustration of the uncertainty and 
 versatility of human affairs. Cromwell, Ireton, 
 St. John, and Vane were four of the ablest 
 statesmen that ever figured upon the theatre of 
 any nation. They were engaged to the meas- 
 ures they undertook by the strongest motives 
 that could animate and excite the heart of man. 
 They, and they only, had been principally con- 
 cerned in conducting an arduous war to a suc- 
 cessful termination. Other men had felt deeply 
 and fought nobly ; but it was they who created 
 the army by which the victory was secured. 
 Finding their influence not sufficiently triumph- 
 ant in the House of Commons, they had recur- 
 red to the admirable expedient of setting on 
 foot new elections for those places in England 
 which, in the lapse of years, and by the events 
 of a civil war, were found unrepresented ; and 
 this measure had, for a time, answered every 
 purpose to them that their fondest wishes could 
 have anticipated. Their adversaries were men 
 of ordinary capacities ; Hollis and Sir Philip 
 Stapleton, the nominal leaders of the Presby- 
 terians, would probably never have been heard 
 of in history had they lived in a more tranquil 
 period. Yet all these advantages possessed by 
 the heads of the Independent party proved 
 fleeting and illusory. The very circumstance 
 of the great success and superlative talents of 
 these men had a tendency to render them ob- 
 jects of jealousy to coarse and vulgar minds. 
 Hollis says, Though the greater part of the 
 new members came into the House with as 
 much prejudice as possible against us, yet, 
 when they came to sit there themselves, and 
 see with their own eyes the carriage of things, 
 this made them change their minds, and many 
 of them to confess and acknowledge that they 
 had been abused.' Such is the almost unavoid- 
 able course of things in modern times, and 
 among what is called a sober people. The men 
 of the last four centuries in civilized Europe 
 have been found capable of being strongly ex- 
 cited, and susceptible of a tone of fervour and 
 enthusiasm. But this is to them an unnatural 
 state, and they speedily subside into their con- 
 stitutional quietude. There are but few of us 
 that can even image to ourselves an excitement 
 and elevation that, as in the instances of Greece 
 and Rome, lasted for centuries. Talk to the 
 men of later times of sobriety and moderation, 
 and they will soon show that they prefer that 
 lore to the sublimer style of heroism and virtue, 
 of self-sacrifice and expansive affections. We 
 are sons of the fog and the mist. The damp 
 and flagging element in which we breathe be- 
 comes part of ourselves : we turn speculative 
 men and calculators : timorous prudence and 
 low circumspection fix their stamp on all we 
 do. ' Our charity begins at home,' and fixes 
 its attention emphatically on our own interests 
 or our own firesides. We dare not mount, at 
 least from the impulse of feeling, into an ethe- 
 real region, lest we should break our necks with 
 the fall. To men formed in this mould, the 
 representation of such persons as Hollis and
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 303 
 
 Stapleton, the moderate party,' as they loved 
 to denominate themselves, are almost sure to 
 prove irresistible."* 
 
 Vane's position was that of the greatest dif- 
 ficulty. He felt that he must now throw his 
 party upon the great body of the army for sup- 
 port, to a more absolute degree than he had 
 contemplated hitherto. It will be worth while, 
 before proceeding farther, to show what char- 
 acter of men these soldiers were. Whitelocke 
 describes thus the troops raised by Cromwell : 
 " He had a brave regiment of horse of his 
 countrymen, most of them freeholders and free- 
 holders' sons, and who, upon matter of con- 
 science, engaged in this quarrel ; and thus, being 
 well armed within by the satisfaction of their 
 own consciences, and without by good iron 
 arms, they would as one man stand firmly and 
 fight desperately." Baxter says of them in his 
 life : " At his first entrance into the wars he 
 had a special care to get religious men into his 
 troop : these were of greater understanding 
 than common soldiers, and therefore more ap- 
 prehensive of the importance and consequence 
 of the war ; and making, not money, but that 
 which they took for the public felicity, to be 
 their end, they were the more engaged to be 
 valiant. They therefore proved such that, as 
 far as I could learn, they never once ran away 
 before an enemy." The fiercely Royalist Bates, 
 in his " Elenchus Motuum," speaks of them 
 thus : " Cromwell invited all the honest men 
 (as he was pleased to call them) to take on with 
 him. Wherefore Independents, Anabaptists, 
 and the sink of fanatics, came flocking to him, 
 who, in the beginning, were unskilful both in 
 handling their arms and managing their horses. 
 But he used them daily to look after, feed, and 
 dress their horses, and, when it was needful, 
 to lie together with them on the ground. He 
 besides taught them to clean, and keep their 
 arms bright, and ready for service ; to choose 
 the best armour, and arm themselves to the 
 best advantage. Trained up in this kind of 
 military exercise, they excelled all their fellow- 
 soldiers in feats of war, and obtained more vic- 
 tories over their enemies." " And these men," 
 observes another Royalist, Sir Philip Warwick, 
 " habited more to spiritual pride than carnal 
 riot and intemperance, so consequently, having 
 been industrious and active in their former call- 
 ings and professions, where natural courage 
 wanted, zeal supplied its place. At first they 
 chose rather to die than fly ; and custom re- 
 moved the fear of danger." Of themselves, in 
 a petition to the Parliament, these men had 
 spoken thus : " We were not a mere mercenary 
 army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of a 
 state, but were called forth and conjured, by the 
 several declarations of Parliament, to the de- 
 fence of our own and the people's just rights 
 and liberties. To these ends in judgment and 
 conscience we took up arms ; and we are re- 
 solved to assert and vindicate these rights 
 against all arbitrary power, and all particular 
 parties and interests whatsoever."! And last- 
 
 * Godwin, Hist, of Com., ii., 218-221. 
 
 t In another petition, demanding payment of the arrears 
 attempted to be withheld by the Presbyterians, these men 
 say, " We hope that by being soldiers we have not lost the 
 capacity of subjects that in purchasing the freedom of our 
 brethren we have not lost our own." They assert the jus- 
 tice of their demand of the payment of arrears to themselves 
 
 ly, when it was proposed to disband these very 
 forces immediately after the restoration, Lord 
 Clarendon, who could speak the truth only 
 when the truth answered his purpose, spoke of 
 them and their exploits in these words : " His 
 majesty consents to the measure. Yet, let me 
 tell you, no other prince in Europe would be 
 willing to disband such an army ; an army to 
 which victory is entailed, and which, humanly 
 speaking, could hardly fail of conquest whither- 
 soever he should lead it ; an army whose order 
 and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, 
 whose courage and success, have made it fa- 
 mous and terrible over the world."* 
 
 It was no common army, this : it was a band 
 of men who had taken up arms for a great pub- 
 lic cause, and who had a right to some influ- 
 ence, and that not inconsiderable, in the right 
 direction of the victories won by their own val- 
 our for the security of their own homes. In 
 this view, it is certain that Vane now counte- 
 nanced the seizure of the king by Joyce, and 
 Fairfax's march to London for the purpose of 
 overawing the Presbyterians. Hitherto he had 
 no distrust of Cromwell. The exertions of that 
 great soldier in this crisis had been all Repub- 
 lican in their tendency, since in favouring, or 
 at least not resisting, the organization of the 
 agitators and other military councils, he was 
 raising up the very worst instrument of despo- 
 tism an armed and enthusiastic democracy. 
 
 The disgraceful London riots in favour of the 
 Presbyterians completed the sorry work set on 
 foot by that party, and determined Vane's last 
 scruples. He took the opportunity of removing 
 with several other members, and the speakers 
 of both Houses, to Fairfax's camp at Hounslow, 
 and as he afterward rode with that general 
 along the line of the troops, was hailed and 
 cheered with enthusiasm. A few days after, 
 Vane and Fairfax, the two speakers, with the 
 other seceding members, met at Holland House, 
 Kensington, and proceeded to Westminster, 
 where the Presbyterians, feeling themselves 
 once more defeated by a consummate stroke of 
 policy on the part of their adversaries, while a 
 melancholy and mischievous effort had been 
 made by themselves, were unprepared to offer 
 any farther present resistance. In Hyde Park 
 they received even the congratulations of the 
 lord-mayor and aldermen, and at Charing Cross 
 the common council stood ready to receive 
 them ! Colonel Hammond's regiment of foot, 
 and Rich's and Cromwell's regiment of horse, 
 led the procession, which was closed by Tom- 
 linson's regiment of horse. On the following 
 day the whole army, with its artillery, marched 
 through London, " but in so civil and orderly a 
 manner that not the least offence or prejudice 
 was expressed by them towards any man, either 
 in words, action, or gesture." The procession 
 had no sooner reached Palace Yard than Fair- 
 fax alighted and retired into a private house, 
 while the Lords and Commons proceeded to 
 their respective places of assembly. Manches- 
 ter and Lenthall took the chair in each House ; 
 and the proceedings commenced with a report 
 
 not as "mercenaries whose end was gain," but as men 
 " who had abandoned their estates, trades, callings, and 
 the contentments of a quiet life, for the perils and fatigues 
 of war in defence of the public liberty." 
 
 * In the History of the Commonwealth, ii., 152-155, the 
 reader will find this subject treated.
 
 304 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 from the commissioners of the Parliament, ap- 
 pointed to reside with the army (that in the 
 House of Commons was made by Vane), of the 
 transactions of the last preceding days. Fair- 
 fax was then successively introduced into each 
 House, and received their thanks for what he 
 had done. He was, at the same time, by their 
 joint vote, made Constable of the Tower of 
 London.* 
 
 The king's ill-judged flight from Hampton 
 Court once moVe altered the position of affairs. 
 The first treaty at the Isle of Wight, and the 
 treachery of Charles with the Scots commis- 
 sioners, will be more appropriately glanced at 
 in the memoir of Henry Marten. The day after 
 the Parliamentary commissioners returned, the 
 celebrated vote of non-addresses was passed, 
 equivalent to a resolution for the settlement of 
 the kingdom without farther recourse to the 
 king. The events which followed, and had the 
 effect of lifting up the Presbyterians once more ; 
 the riots in the various English counties, and 
 the advance and defeat of the Scotch army ; the 
 famous petitions and proposals of Fairfax and 
 his officers, will also have fitter illustration in 
 the notice of Marten's important participation 
 in these measures. Vane seems to have held 
 himself as much as possible in the position of 
 being able, at a crisis, to negotiate between the 
 Commons and the army, secure that his party 
 in the House would once more feel ascendency 
 and power upon the final crushing of the " sec- 
 ond civil war." 
 
 The personal treaty at the Isle of Wight was 
 now arranged ; Vane was appointed one of the 
 chief commissioners, and represented the In- 
 dependent or (now) Republican party. Hollis 
 and others represented the Presbyterians. Sev- 
 eral peers attached to the Parliament were also 
 present, and Charles was attended by forty-two 
 friends and advisers. The interviews and de- 
 bates were spun out from the 18th of Septem- 
 ber to the 27th of November, 1648. In the 
 course of them Charles showed much ability, 
 and Vane, who had, as he says, " believed him 
 to be a very weak person," took occasion to 
 acknowledge " that he had been deceived," for 
 that he had found him " a man of great parts 
 and abilities."! Such a feeling would be nat- 
 urally apt to overrate itself by comparison with 
 a previous unjust impression. 
 
 The result of the treaty was a concession of 
 the militia by Charles, with the secret reserva- 
 tion to retract it ;J but he afterward took his 
 stand upon two points : a claim for " the divine 
 institution of the bishops," and for indemnity 
 to all his friends. Hollis and the other Pres- 
 byterians implored him on their knees, with 
 tears in their eyes, to concede these also. He 
 refused. " The truth is," says Clarendon, de- 
 scribing the treaty, " there were among the 
 commissioners many who had been carried with 
 the violence of the stream, and would be glad 
 of those concessions which the king would very 
 cheerfully have granted, an act of indemnity 
 and oblivion being what they were principally 
 concerned in ; and of all the rest, who were 
 more passionate for the militia and against the 
 Church, there was no man, except Sir Harry 
 
 * Hist, of Com., ii., 386-7. Rushworth. Whitelocke. 
 t Sir Edward Walker, p. 312. 
 t Hist, from Mackintosh, vi., 105. 
 
 Vane, who did not desire that a peace might be 
 established by that treaty ; for as all the other 
 lords desired, in their own natures and affec- 
 tions, no more than that their transgressions 
 might never more be called to remembrance, so 
 the Lord Say himself (who was as proud of his 
 quality, and of being distinguished from other 
 men by his title, as any man alive) well foresaw 
 what would become of his peerage if the treaty 
 proved ineffectual, and the army should make 
 their own model of the government they would 
 submit to (as undoubtedly they resolved shortly 
 to do), and therefore he did all he could to work 
 upon the king to yield to what was proposed to 
 him, and afterward, upon the Parliament, to be 
 content with what his majesty had yielded." 
 It was well for the men who preferred their 
 titles to their country to argue thus, but the 
 younger Sir Henry Vane remained to the last, 
 " among the faithless, faithful." 
 
 Charles had again thought of escape and of 
 revenge when he rejected the kneeling and 
 weeping Presbyterians : the army now seized 
 his person once more, and closed his hopes on 
 that head forever. Meanwhile, a terrible re- 
 monstrance, calling for justice on him as " the 
 capital source of all grievances," had been car- 
 ried into the House of Commons, where the 
 Presbyterian majority, again mustering, strove 
 to parry it by successive remonstrances. The 
 army, upon this, sent in a more determined dec- 
 laration, that unless justice were suffered to 
 prevail, they would purge the House, and put a 
 stop to the treaty. At this crisis, the first of 
 December, 1648, the commissioners from the 
 Isle of Wight reported Charles's answers, and 
 Hollis moved that they should be declared sat- 
 isfactory. To the astonishment of Vane, Fien- 
 nes supported that motion, but the extract from 
 Clarendon respecting Fiennes's father, Lord 
 Say, explains the marvel.* The debate lasted 
 one day, and its farther consideration was ad- 
 journed to the next by a majority of 133 to 102. 
 Vane saw that the crisis he had striven so long 
 to avert had arrived at last, and he prepared 
 himself for one great and final effort to sur- 
 mount it. The speech he delivered on the re- 
 sumption of the debate on the second day is un- 
 fortunately only left to us in the equivocal 
 pages of Clarendon. That it must have been 
 very masterly, however, we can discern even 
 there, and we discern in it, also, the first frank 
 and resolute statement of the question as be- 
 tween monarchy and a republic. 
 
 " Young Sir Harry Vane," says Clarendon, 
 " had begun the debate with the highest inso- 
 lence and provocation, telling them ' that they 
 should that day know and discover who were 
 their friends and who were their foes, or, that 
 he might speak more plainly, who were the king's 
 party in the House and who were for the people ;' 
 and so proceeded with his usual grave bitter- 
 ness against the person of the king and the gov- 
 ernment that had been too long settled ; put 
 them in mind ' that they had been diverted from 
 their old settled resolution and declaration that 
 they would make no more addresses to the 
 king, after which the kingdom had been gov- 
 erned in great peace, and begun to taste the sweet 
 of that republican government which they had in- 
 
 * This was first pointed out in the History from Mackin- 
 tosh, in reply to the doubts of Godwin and Lingard.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 305 
 
 tended and begun to establish, when, by a com- 
 bination between the city of London and an ill- 
 affected party in Scotland, with some small, 
 contemptible insurrections in England, all which 
 were fomented by the city, the Houses had, by 
 clamour and noise, been induced and compelled 
 to reverse their former votes and resolution, 
 and enter into a personal treaty with the king, 
 with whom they had not been able to prevail, 
 notwithstanding the low condition he was in, 
 to give them any security ; but he had still re- 
 served a power in himself, or at least to his 
 posterity, to exercise as tyrannical a govern- 
 ment as he had done ; that all the insurrections 
 which had so terrified them were now totally 
 subdued, and the principal authors and abettors 
 of them in custody, and ready to be brought to 
 justice, if they pleased to direct and appoint it ; 
 that their enemies in Scotland were reduced, 
 and that kingdom entirely devoted to a firm and 
 good correspondence with their brethren, the 
 Parliament, of England, so that there was no- 
 thing wanting but their own consent and resolu- 
 tion to make themselves the happiest nation and 
 people in the world ; and to that purpose de- 
 sired that they might, without any more loss 
 of time, return to their former resolution of 
 making no more addresses to the king, but pro- 
 ceed to the settling the government without 
 him, and to the severe punishment of those who 
 had disturbed their peace and quiet, in such an 
 exemplary manner as might terrify all other 
 men for the future from making the like bold 
 attempts, which, he told them, they might see 
 would be most grateful to their army, which 
 had merited so much from them, by the re- 
 monstrance they had so lately published.' This 
 discourse appeared to be exceedingly disliked 
 by that kind of murmur which usually shows 
 how the House stands inclined, and by which 
 men make their judgments there of the success 
 that is like to be."* 
 
 Some members seconded Vane with a hearty 
 concurrence, among them Wroth, Wentworth, 
 and Prideaux. It was urged on the other side by 
 Prynne that the Parliament was overawed by 
 the army, and the question should be postponed. 
 Another adjournment took place, and the de- 
 bate was resumed next morning with increased 
 vehemence. Six Monarchists and twelve Re- 
 publicans are named as having spoken. The 
 Presbyterians, not venturing to persist in a 
 vote that the king's answers were satisfactory, 
 modified it into a resolution that they afforded 
 " a ground for the House to proceed to the set- 
 tlement of the peace of the kingdom." Prynne 
 delivered a speech of several hours in the af- 
 firmative, with, by his own account, wonder- 
 ful effect. It was carried on a division by a 
 majority of 140 to 104. The Lords readily con- 
 curred, and Vane's last hope of preventing a 
 grosser injustice was forever gone.t 
 
 The House was purged of the Presbyterian 
 majority on the following morning by Colonel 
 Pride. That proceeding will be found described 
 in the memoir of Marten. Vane alone, among 
 all the Independents and Republicans, refused 
 to share in a triumph obtained by such means. 
 He had held a high sense of the claims of the 
 army to be allowed to throw the Weight of their 
 
 * Vol. vi., p. 199-201. 
 
 t History from Mackintosh, vi., 109. 
 
 QQ 
 
 opinions into the scale at a moment like the 
 present, and while the state was itself in pro- 
 cess of revolution ; he had done his best in aid- 
 ing them when on former occasions they had 
 subdued the strength of the Presbyterians by 
 the inspiration of a just terror ; but this forci- 
 ble exclusion of members, this absolute intro- 
 duction of the sword into the House of Com- 
 mons, the scene of his best exertions for the 
 people in the past, and the source of his best 
 hopes for the people in the future, appeared 
 fraught with a danger surpassing every other. 
 He took the resolution at once to retire from 
 public life. He could not oppose those with 
 whom he had hitherto acted in such close 
 union ; he knew not whether even now their 
 motives might not be as pure as he held their 
 conduct to be mistaken ; but* in any case, he 
 could never lend to the act of lawless force they 
 had committed the sanction of his character 
 and name. He retired to Raby,* and took no 
 farther part in public life till after the execu- 
 tion of the king.f 
 
 It is a profound proof of Vane's political sa- 
 gacity that he disapproved the policy of that 
 great act. Upon the question of its abstract 
 justice he never delivered an opinion. 
 
 He left his private retirement, and again 
 joined his old friends and associates^ on the 
 26th of February, 1649. He had been most 
 earnestly entreated to this step by Cromwell, 
 and, it is likely, accepted that entreaty as a 
 pledge of the purity of intention with which it 
 was designed to frame and carry out the gov- 
 ernment of the Commonwealth. Nor was the 
 request Cromwell's alone, though his still su- 
 perior influence with Vane was the instrument 
 to procure compliance. There was no leading 
 man of the party that did not hold the sanction,, 
 of the most eminent Republican statesman to 
 be the essential element of their new republic^ 
 or that would not have considered the outline 
 of proceedings sketched hitherto^ void and 
 
 * This castle had suffered in the wars, for the Royalists 
 made several attacks on it, in compliment, it might be sup- 
 posed, to its owner. Whitelocke describes one of them: 
 " The king's forces from Bolton Castle surprised Raby Cas- 
 tle, belonging to Sir Henry Vane, but were again; close 
 blocked up by forces raised by Sir George Vane." (July 7, 
 1645, p. 151.) 
 
 t The extraordinary incidents which filled up this inter- 
 val are detailed and discussed in the Life of Marten. 
 
 t The omission of all mention of Vane's father, the elder 
 Vane, still alive and: taking a feeble part in public affairs 
 with the men of the Commonwealth, must not surprise the 
 reader. He sank into a cipher beside the splendid talents 
 of his son. It is seldom that one family has borne twin, 
 names of eminence in it. But the truth was, that old Vane 
 was only fit for such service as he performed under Charles 
 he was barely tolerated among the Independents for his 
 son's sake. 
 
 I) All those proceedings are described in the Life of MaT- 
 ten. " The truth is, this honourable gentleman, having ab- 
 sented himself from the Parliament upon that great change 
 and alteration of a/fairs in the year 1648, Lieutenant-gen- 
 eral Cromwell, who sat upon the trial of the king, and en- 
 couraged the commissioners of the high court of justice to. 
 proceed to sentence, it being the general vote and desire of 
 the army that the king should be put to death, wa impor- 
 tunate with this gentleman, and used many arguments to 
 persuade him to sit again in Parliament and in the council: 
 of state, and did at length prevail with him to come in."' 
 So writes Vane's friend Stubbe, in his answer to the calum- 
 nies of Baxter.. Stubbe was one of the most eminent schol- 
 ars of that or any other period, and was indebted for th 
 first development of his talents to the regard and liberality 
 of Vane. Another passage in his vindication of Vane from 
 the attacks of Baxter is worth giving, us illustrating th 
 contempt with which one of the "best abused" men of his 
 time, which Vane certainly was, could afford, in the couV
 
 306 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 blank, had he refused to fill it up with the au- 
 thority of his presence, his counsel, his name ; 
 and yet, notwithstanding all this, it was with 
 much difficulty, and in the result of many argu- 
 ments, that Cromwell prevailed with him to 
 accede. He had been elected, long before his 
 consent was ascertained, among the first mem- 
 bers of the council of state, but he did not 
 present himself till the 26th of February, nine 
 days after all the council had been installed. 
 A difficulty then occurred. On the day on 
 which the instructions to the council of state had 
 been voted, an engagement was drawn up and 
 adopted, to be taken by each counsellor previ- 
 ously to his admission, the purport of which 
 was to express his approbation of all that had 
 been done in the king's trial, in the abolishing 
 of kingship, and the taking away the House of 
 Lords and this oath was now presented to 
 Vane. He refused to take it. He did not ap- 
 prove, he said, of what had been done in the 
 king's trial or the king's death. No compro- 
 mise could meet the difficulty. An entirely 
 new oath was eventually drawn up, for the 
 satisfaction of Sir Henry Vane.* 
 
 The first measure we find traces of, after 
 Vane's adhesion to the Commonwealth, is the 
 issue of several new writs to the House of 
 Commons. I may mention that, before his ad- 
 hesion, the first public act of the council of 
 state had been to recommend to Parliament to 
 vacate the appointment of the Earl of Warwick 
 (objectionable as a Presbyterian) to the office 
 of lord-admiral. A bill had, in consequence, 
 been brought in and passed, for repealing Lord 
 Warwick's ordinance, and vesting the power 
 of lord-admiral in the council of state. The 
 next day another act was made, appointing 
 Robert Blako, Edward Popham, and Richard 
 Dean to the command of the fleet, each of 
 whom afterward made his name familiar and 
 eminent on the seas. Finally, on the 12th of 
 March, a committee of three was named by the 
 council to carry on the affairs of the admiralty 
 
 dence of his character and virtue, to pass unnoticed all his 
 wretched slanderers. I may mention that one of the ten 
 thousand doggerel libels against him is preserved as a spe- 
 cimen in the Appendix (C) at the end of this article. " I 
 presume," says Stubbe to Baxter, "he looks upon it as be- 
 low him, and his great and weighty employments, to write 
 anything in his own vindication : he hath other business to 
 look after, and not to spend his time about the passionate 
 and rash scribblmgs of every biased and engaged person ; 
 and therefore I think it not amiss, having more leisure and 
 opportunity, not so much from any private or personal re- 
 spect which I bear to him, as my love to the Commonwealth 
 and public interest of these nations, which is owned and 
 asserted by him upon just and honest principles, to clear up 
 the innocency of that worthy knight, and to vindicate him, 
 though without his privity and knowledge, from your lies and 
 aspersions." 
 
 * In his speech on his trial he told this to his judges: 
 " When that great violation of privileges happened to the 
 Parliament, so as by force of arms several members thereof 
 were debarred coming into the House and keeping their 
 seats there, this made me forbear to come to the Parlia- 
 ment for the space of ten weeks, to wit, from the 3d of De- 
 cember, 1648, till towards the middle of February following, 
 or to meddle in any public transactions ; and during that 
 time the matter most obvious to exception, in way of alter- 
 ation of the government, did happen. I can, therefore, truly 
 say, that as I had neither consent nor vote, at first, in the 
 resolutions of the Houses, concerning the non-addresses to 
 his late majesty, so neither had I, in the least,, any consent 
 in, or approbation to, his death ; but, on the contrary., when 
 required by the Parliament to take an oath, to give my ap- 
 probation, ex post facto, to what was done, I utterly re- 
 fused, and would not accept of sitting in the council of state 
 npon those terms, but occasioned a new oath to be drawn 
 wherein that was omitted." 
 
 and navy, and Sir Henry Vane was placed at 
 their head : Wauton and Rowland Wilson were 
 the other members of the committee. Thus, 
 in the administrative genius, the vigour, and 
 the capacity of Vane in the heroic courage, 
 wonderful knowledge, and splendid virtues of 
 Blake was laid the foundation of a naval su- 
 premacy for England which she had not seen 
 since Elizabeth's days. 
 
 Bradshaw was elected president of the coun- 
 cil on the 10th of March. Three days latter, 
 Milton, the kinsman of Bradshaw, was made 
 secretary to the council for foreign tongues, 
 which office had been held by Weckerlin under 
 the committee of both kingdoms. " It is im- 
 possible," observes Mr. Godwin, " to consider 
 these appointments without great respect. 
 They laid the foundation for the illustrious 
 figure which was made by the Commonwealth 
 of England during the succeeding years. The 
 admirable state of the navy is in a great degree 
 to be ascribed to the superlative talents and 
 eminent public virtue of Vane. The naval com- 
 manders were such as can scarcely be equalled 
 in any age or country. The attachment of Mil- 
 ton is equivalent to volumes in commendation 
 of Bradshaw. The perfect friendship of these 
 three men, Milton, Bradshaw, and Vane, is, in 
 itself considered, a glory to the island that gave 
 them birth. The council, we are told, took up 
 a resolution that they would neither write to 
 other states, nor receive answers, but in the 
 tongue which was common to all, and fittest to 
 record great things, the subject of future his- 
 tory. And they fixed on Milton, the language 
 of whose state papers is full of energy and wis- 
 dom, and must have impressed foreign states 
 with a high opinion of the government from 
 which they came. The character of the great 
 poet of England frequently discovers itself in 
 these productions, without detracting in the 
 smallest degree from the graveness and sobriety 
 which the occasions and the rank of the nation 
 in whose name they were written demanded. 
 On the other hand, Milton, who felt as deeply 
 as any man that his proper destination was the 
 quiet and sequestered paths of literature, con- 
 ceived that he could not decline a public station 
 when the demand came to him from such men, 
 and was that he should devote himself to the 
 service of that scheme of a republic which above 
 all earthly things he loved."* 
 
 The next question that came to be consider- 
 ed in the council of state was, beyond every 
 other question, the most important and the 
 most difficult. It related to the dismission of 
 the present Parliament and the summoning of 
 another. No popular or representative gov- 
 ernment can be said to exist without success- 
 ive Parliaments, and the present House of 
 Commons had sat for a period unheard of in 
 our history, though fully warranted by the crit- 
 ical circumstances of the time. The passages 
 I have quoted from Vane's statement of the 
 " Case of the People," show most clearly, as it 
 appears to me, that the act declaring that this 
 Parliament could not be dissolved but by their 
 own consent, was the corner-stone of all their 
 public services, and of all the liberty that has 
 since existed in this island. The Legislature 
 that had been guided in their original measures 
 
 * HiitTof Com., in., 33.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 307 
 
 by Pym and Hampden, and that, after their 
 early decease, had been worthily, and in an 
 eminent degree in their spirit, conducted by 
 their successors, is perhaps, all things consid- 
 ered, " the most illustrious assembly whose 
 acts are recorded in the history of the world." 
 They had now completed all that originally 
 they undertook. "They had conquered the 
 determined enemy of Parliaments ; they had 
 finished the civil war ; they had destroyed des- 
 potism, for he that had grasped the sceptre was 
 no more, and his family, and even the idea of 
 government to be vested in the hands of a sin- 
 gle person, was publicly proscribed. All that 
 remained to complete their glory was for them 
 to put an end to their authority, and tranquilly 
 to deliver up their power into the hands of their 
 successors." 
 
 And this, as it appears to me, would not only 
 have completed their glory, but, in all human 
 probability, assured the Commonwealth's safe- 
 ty. In such peculiar cases, in the circumstan- 
 ces of such a change in the form of the govern- 
 ment accomplished, be it observed, and not mere- 
 ly struggling to its accomplishment, as we have 
 recently seen it more would have been gained 
 by trusting the people than by distrusting them.* 
 It is right, at the same time, to listen to what 
 the ablest advocates of the course they adopted 
 have to say in its favour. " Monarchy," says 
 Mr. Godwin, " was at an end ; the House of 
 Lords was extinguished ; it had been solemnly 
 decreed that the Commons of England in Par- 
 liament assembled were the supreme authority. 
 But all was yet in a state of convulsion and 
 uncertainty. The tempest might be said to be 
 over, but the atmosphere was loaded with 
 threatening clouds, and the waves swelled this 
 way and that with no unequivocal tokens of 
 uneasiness and turbulence. This was the task 
 that it fell to the present possessors of the le- 
 gislative power to perform : to produce that 
 calm, to adopt all those preliminary measures 
 which might enable the present Parliament 
 safely to deliver up the reins of political power 
 to the next. They had advanced far to this 
 end. They had erected a council of state, 
 which comprised in its body much of what was 
 most extraordinary in talents, and most un- 
 questionable in public spirit and disinterested 
 virtue, that was to be found in the nation."! 
 "The great statesmen," Mr. Godwin contin- 
 ues, " who guided the vessel of the Common- 
 wealth at this time had established a republic 
 without king or House of Lords, the only gov- 
 ernment in their opinion worthy of the alle- 
 giance and support of men arrived at the full 
 use of their understanding. They felt in them- 
 selves the talent and the energies to conduct 
 this government with success. They wished 
 to endow it with character, and gain for it re- 
 spect. Having shown their countrymen prac- 
 tically what a republic was, they proposed to 
 deliver it pure, and without reserve, into their 
 hands, to dispose of as they pleased. This was 
 their project. The present state of England 
 was of a memorable sort. The great mass of 
 the community, through all its orders, was now, 
 
 * Was it not proved afterward that this would have been 
 the correct course, by the independent and spirited tone as- 
 turned even in the Parliaments summoned by the usurper? 
 They are glanced at in the memoir of Marten. 
 
 t Hist, of Com., iii., 108. 
 
 particularly after the able and successful ad- 
 ministration of the Commonwealth in its first 
 six months, content to submit, at least for the 
 present, to the existing government. But prob- 
 ably not more than a third part of the nation 
 were sincere adherents to the Commonwealth's 
 men and the Independents ; the other two 
 thirds consisted of Royalists and Presbyterians. 
 Both of these, however disposed for a time to 
 rest on their arms, were but so much the more 
 exasperated against their successful rivals. 
 Both these latter parties were for a monarchy, 
 to be established in the line of the house of 
 Stuart. Both were averse to the endurance 
 of any religious system but their own. Stubbe, 
 the protege and intimate friend of Vane, says, 
 the supporters of intolerance were five parts in 
 seven of the inhabitants of England. The ob- 
 jects of Vane and Cromwell were the admin- 
 istration of a state without the intervention of 
 a sovereign and a court, and the free and full 
 toleration of all modes of religious worship and 
 opinion. They would have held themselves 
 criminal to all future ages if they supinely suf- 
 fered the present state of things and the pres- 
 ent operative principles to pass away, if they 
 could be preserved. Cromwell, and Ireton, and 
 Vane, and the rest, were intimately persuaded 
 that, by a judicious course of proceeding, these 
 advantages might be preserved. If things were 
 allowed to continue in their present state, and 
 if, by a skilful and judicious administration, the 
 Commonwealth came by just degrees to be re- 
 spected both abroad and at home, they believed 
 that many of those persons who now looked 
 upon it with an unkind and jealous eye would 
 become its warmest friends. They felt ia 
 themselves the ability and the virtue to effect 
 this great purpose. The Commonwealth was 
 now viewed with eyes askance and with feel- 
 ings of coldness, if not of aversion ; but when 
 once it was seen that this form of government 
 was pregnant with blessings innumerable, that 
 it afforded security, wealth, and a liberal treat- 
 ment to all in its own borders, and that it suc- 
 ceeded in putting down the hostility of Ireland 
 and Scotland, in impressing with awe Holland, 
 France, Spain, and the various nations of the 
 Continent, and in gaining for England a charac- 
 ter and a respect which she had never possess- 
 ed under any of her kings, they believed that 
 the whole of the people, in a manner, would 
 become Commonwealth's men, and would hold 
 embraced in the straitest bonds of affection a 
 government to which now they had little par- 
 tiality. They sanguinely anticipated that they 
 should effect all this ; and then how glorious 
 would be the consummation to convert their 
 countrymen to the cause of freedom by benefits 
 and honours, to instil into them the knowledge 
 of their true interests by the powerful criterion 
 of experience, and finally to deliver to them the 
 undiminished and inestimable privileges of free- 
 men, saying, " Exercise them boldly and with- 
 out fear, for you are worthy to possess them."* 
 Such, no doubt, was the process of reason- 
 ing with the purest and loftiest minded of those 
 men the Vanes, the Martens, the Sidneys, the 
 Ludlows, the Iretons, the Bradshaws : it may 
 well be disputed in the case of Cromwell ; but, 
 admitting all this, it would seem, nevertheless, 
 
 * Hist, of Com., ii., 118, 119.
 
 308 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to have been a grand mistake to suppose that 
 any lasting beneficial impression could have 
 been produced in the minds of the people by 
 merely administrative talents or glories, how- 
 ever great or triumphant. What the people 
 wanted in the new form of government to lay 
 its foundation deeper in their hearts, was what 
 Vane has- so ably pointed out in the political 
 writings I have quoted, new institutions found- 
 ed on the principles of the old. Granting the 
 truth of what Mr. Godwin urges, it amounts to 
 this, in fact, that the only present guarantee of 
 the new Commonwealth rested in the army. 
 Where, then, was the guarantee for the virtue 
 or fidelity of the army 1 To themselves alone, 
 or to men who had achieved influence over 
 them, were they accountable. Remarkable as 
 the circumstances were which widely distin- 
 guished them from the character of ordinary 
 soldiers, it is yet certain that, when they found 
 themselves the guardians of a Commonwealth 
 in which all things were unsettled, and in 
 which that very power which was more than 
 ever necessary, in such a state of government, 
 to hold together the elements of order and of 
 liberty the power and the authority of the 
 people was altogether excluded, the tempta- 
 tion was too great for men of much more than 
 ordinary virtue. " Qui gardera les gardiens ?" 
 There is much reason to believe, in my opin- 
 ion, that Vane was overruled upon this ques- 
 tion, and that he afterward, for that reason, 
 desponded of immediate success in the achieve- 
 ment of the great part of the Republican de- 
 sign.* Some of his speeches in Richard Crom- 
 well's Parliament will, I think, throw some light 
 on this, and an extract from his friend Sikes's 
 tribute may be urged in illustration of it ; but 
 these claim a place hereafter. One thing is 
 quite certain, that Vane exhibited a perpetual 
 uneasiness respecting the dissolution of the 
 Parliament ; was constantly mooting it in some 
 form or other ; and, as soon as he detected the 
 traitorous design of Cromwell, distinguished 
 himself by a memorable effort to secure those 
 
 * " This prophet or seer of God, in the midst of the great- 
 est successes in the late war, when the churches, Parlia- 
 ment, and army reckoned their work done, thought their 
 mountain so strong that they should never be moved, said 
 the bitterness of death and persecution is over, and that 
 nothing remained but (with those self-confident Corinthians) 
 to be reigning as kings, he discovered himself to be of an- 
 other spirit, with Paul he could not reign with them. 
 When they thus mused and spake, ' We shall sit as a queen, 
 we shall know no more sorrow,' he would be continually 
 foretelling the overflowing of the finer mystical Babylon by 
 the most grossly idolatrous Babylon, and the slaying of the 
 true witnesses of Christ between them both, as the conse- 
 quence of such inundation. Has not he had his share in 
 the accomplishment of his own prediction ? Have not they, 
 by their pride, apostacy, and treachery, been the occasion 
 of his and their own sufferings, who would not believe him 
 when he prophesied of such a suffering season. Have not 
 floods of Belial judges, counsellors, witnesses, jurors, sol- 
 diers of Belial, compassed him about 1 Did Scripture, law, 
 or reason signify anything with them ? So the waters went 
 over his soul ; they took away his life from the earth. Yea, 
 the rage and violence of brutish men followed him close at 
 the heels, to his very execution stroke. But however it was 
 with him as to a certain foresight of particular events, yet 
 that he could conjecture and spell out the most reserved 
 consults and secret drifts of foreign councils against us 
 (which they reckoned as tacita, concealed till executed), 
 the Hollander did experience to their cost." So says Sikes 
 in his extraordinary pamphlet, and, reduced to the ordinary 
 language, it seems to me to express something like the feel- 
 ing alluded to in the text. The closing allusion is to that 
 power immortalized by Milton as having been possessed to 
 an eminent degree by Vane of unfolding " the drift of hol- 
 low states hard to be ipelled." 
 
 rights for the people that had been so long, and, 
 as he then at last perceived, so fatally delayed. 
 
 The steps that were taken to strengthen the 
 present House may be shortly described. The 
 first of May is the day on which we trace the 
 earliest mention of the subject in the journals. 
 It was then determined that the business re- 
 specting due elections and equal representatives 
 should be taken into consideration on the third 
 day following. It was mentioned again on the 
 fourth and the fifth, and on the eleventh was 
 revived in the shape of a debate on the ques- 
 tion of putting a period to the present Parlia- 
 ment, which was referred to a grand commit- 
 tee, or committee of the whole House. This 
 question appears to have originated with Vane ; 
 he was chairman of all committees named re- 
 specting it. The committee of the whole House 
 sat on the fifteenth, and prepared a resolution, 
 which was immediately after voted by the 
 House, that, previously to the naming a cer- 
 tain time for the dissolution of Parliament, a 
 consideration should be had of the succession 
 of future Parliaments, and the regulating their 
 elections. This consideration was referred to 
 a committee, consisting of Vane, Ireton, Scot, 
 Nathaniel Rich, Algernon Sidney, and four oth- 
 ers, who were to present to the House heads 
 proper for their deliberation in determining on 
 the subject. They were directed to sit every 
 Monday and Friday. It is remarkable to no- 
 tice the frequent mention of the sittings of this 
 committee recorded in the journals, and the 
 never-failing presence of Vane. The tempora- 
 ry arrangement which dispensed with a disso- 
 lution for the present had not dispensed with 
 the sittings of this committee. 
 
 That temporary arrangement was at last ef- 
 fected thus : The exact numbers of the House 
 were first ascertained. It had been determined 
 by the act of the first of February that no per- 
 son should be admitted to sit and vote as a 
 member of the Legislature till he had declared 
 his dissent from the vote of the fifth of Decem- 
 ber, that the king's answers to the propositions 
 were a ground to proceed on for the settlement 
 of the kingdom. The number of those who on 
 that day voted for the negative was eighty- 
 three. But every member was now required 
 to enter his dissent ; and by a careful collation 
 of the journals, it appears that the number of 
 these, between the twentieth of December and 
 the thirtieth of June following, could not be less 
 than one hundred and fifty.* There were only 
 six writs issued during this period, and these 
 were in the room of members deceased. The 
 ninth of June may be considered as the day on 
 which the government first manifested its in- 
 tention of continuing the existence of the pres- 
 ent Parliament. On that day it was resolved 
 that such members of the House as had not sat 
 since the beginning of December should state 
 their cases by the last day of the present month 
 to the committee for absent members, which 
 if they neglected to do, writs should then issue 
 for new elections in the place of those who 
 should so neglect. The question of any far- 
 ther new writs in the room of members deceas- 
 ed appears to have been laid aside. 
 
 The first year of the Commonwealth closed 
 with Cromwell's reduction of the rebellion in 
 
 * Hist, of Com., HI., 121.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 309 
 
 Ireland after terrible slaughter, and with the 
 trial and acquittal of the notorious Lilhurne on 
 a charge of treason against the government. 
 
 Vane again took his seat in the second year's 
 council of state. The historian of the Com- 
 monwealth thus notices the gradual construc- 
 tion of the naval administration over which the 
 great statesman presided : " The committee of 
 the admiralty and navy was first named on the 
 12th of March, twenty-three days from the ori- 
 ginal instalment of the council of state, and 
 then onsisted of only three persons, Vane, 
 Valentine Wauton, and Alderman Rowland 
 Wilson. Two others, Jones and Scot, were 
 added in the course of the month, and two 
 more, Purefoy and Stapeley, on the 6th of 
 June. Vane was all along the principal person 
 in the care of the navy of England : when the 
 war broke out between the Dutch and the Eng- 
 lish, he and two or three more were appointed 
 commissioners to conduct it ; and to his activ- 
 ity and skill contemporary writers principally 
 ascribe the memorable success in which that 
 contest issued. The committee of the admi- 
 ralty in the second year were Vane, Wauton, 
 Jones, Scot, Purefoy, Stapeley, the Earl of 
 Salisbury, Lord Grey of Groby, Alexander Pop- 
 ham, and Robert Wallop." Alderman Rowland 
 Wilson (of whom Whitelocke says, " He was 
 a gentleman of excellent parts and great piety, 
 of a solid, sober temper and judgment, and very 
 honest and just in all his actions, beloved both 
 in the House, the city, and the army, and by all 
 that knew him, and his death as much lament- 
 ed") had died immediately before. 
 
 In the excellence of an administrative sys- 
 tem, nothing could surpass the arrangements 
 of the Commonwealth. They again renewed 
 this year five other committees in the council 
 of state for the ordnance, Ireland, private ex- 
 aminations, the laws, and negotiations with for- 
 eign powers. These committees all varied in 
 their amount, being from seven to ten or twelve 
 members each, and the same counsellor of state 
 being often on different committees.* Immense 
 advantages accrued from this methodical distri- 
 bution of the business of administration. The 
 council at large, whose order-books are pre- 
 served, assembled for the general affairs of 
 government, and to them, in the first instance, 
 were confided the powers of the state. But 
 these different committees, when they sat apart, 
 had their attention directed, without distrac- 
 tion, to the special business for which they had 
 been n-amed, and either prepared matters for 
 the guidance and decision of the council in gen- 
 eral, or, as appears from the articles of instruc- 
 tions to the council, being of a certain assigned 
 number, were authorized and empowered to 
 give directions immediately, as from them- 
 selves, in the departments consigned to their 
 care.t 
 
 Meanwhile young Charles Stuart was in the 
 field against the Commonwealth in Scotland, 
 and Fairfax had accepted the chief command 
 of the expedition against him, when his wife 
 
 * We find the name of Vane in almost all the various ad- 
 ministrative measures of the time. And it is interesting to 
 observe him engaged, among other things, on the measure 
 which had last occupied the great mind of Pym. " Re- 
 ferred," says one of VVhitelocke's notes, p. 392, " to a com- 
 mittee to prepare an act upon Sir Henry Vane's report 
 touching- the excise." t Hist, of Com., iii., 181. 
 
 prevailed with him to resign it. By this fatal 
 weakness Cromwell was left without a rival in 
 the absolute command of the army, and he at 
 once marched, "in glory and in joy," to his 
 great Scotch campaign. The battle of Wor- 
 cester afterward crowned his triumphs, and 
 settled, for the present, the safety of the Com- 
 monwealth from foreign foes. 
 
 But with the opening of this second campaign 
 by Cromwell,* Vane had manifested his suspi- 
 cion of her danger from a more terrible treason. 
 We observe it in the restless movements that 
 were again resumed in the House of Commons, 
 on the question of dissolution and a new House. 
 We have seen that on the 15th of May, 1649, 
 a committee had been appointed to take the 
 subject into consideration. It consisted of 
 Vane, Ireton, Scot, Algernon Sidney, and five 
 other persons, among whom Vane had placed 
 his father. Its first report, however, was not 
 brought in till the 9th of January of the follow- 
 ing year, some change having in the mean time 
 taken place in the members of which it was 
 constituted, and Ireton being on service in Ire- 
 land. On that day " Henry Vane the younger" 
 introduced it, and its first proposition appears 
 to have coincided with the suggestion of the 
 Agreement of the People, tendered by the gen- 
 eral council of the army twelve months before, 
 that the representation of the people of Eng- 
 land should consist of 400 members, though 
 with a distribution to the counties, and the 
 towns within them, somewhat different. It re- 
 ferred the succession of Parliaments, and the 
 qualifications of the electors and elected, to fu- 
 ture consideration, and recommended that all 
 members now sitting in Parliament should be 
 counted in the next Parliament as representa- 
 tives for the places for which they at present 
 sat. The first proposition, that the represent- 
 atives should be in number 400, was voted by 
 Parliament on the day that the report was 
 brought up. The rest was deferred ; and Vane 
 seems to have pressed with great anxiety for 
 its completion, but without effect. He had 
 consented to the provision for the continuance 
 of the present members in the House as in 
 some sort a necessary compromise in the ne- 
 cessities of the case, to enable the original 
 achievers and founders of the Commonwealth 
 to deliver into the hands of the new represent- 
 atives such a statement as they alone could 
 give of their motives and reasons for the late 
 memorable actions, and to report themselves, 
 no less than their cause, aright to the unsat- 
 isfied ; but still the dissolution was delayed. 
 
 * Mr. Godwin, always too partial to the motives of Crom- 
 well, 'lates his own suspicion of the intentions of the usurp- 
 er at a somewhat later date. " It was only," he observes, 
 "by slow degrees that he came to entertain those ambi- 
 tious thoughts that in the sequel proved fatal to his own 
 character and the welfare of his country. But they found 
 entrance ; and imperceptibly they proceeded to undermine 
 the pillars of integrity and honesty in his bosom He saw 
 himself without a competitor. He had no equal. He began 
 to disdain and despise those with whom he had hitherto 
 acted. Incomparably the man of the highest genius he now 
 met in the council-chamber at Whitehall was Sir Henry 
 Vane. But what was Vane ? He was wholly unfit to com- 
 mand an army. He did not possess that most glittering and 
 striking of human accomplishments, to look through whole 
 files and squadrons of athletic, well formed, and well armed 
 men, and inspire them at once with confidence, submission, 
 and awe, and make them move as if they had only one soul, 
 and march at his word unflinching, even to the cannou'i 
 mouth." iii., 218, 219.
 
 310 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Again the committee resumed its sittings, and 
 through this and the following year would seem 
 to have met upward of fifty times. Still no- 
 thing decisive was done. At last Vane pro- 
 cured the passing of a resolution that the sub- 
 ject should be again discussed in the House on 
 the 24th of September, 1651. 
 
 Cromwell had arrived meanwhile from the tri- 
 umphant field of Worcester, " brooding strange 
 thoughts by the way."* Finding matters in 
 the House of Commons brought to this crisis 
 by Vane, he seems at once to have decided on 
 practising one of his profoundest arts of decep- 
 tion. He professed broadly his concurrence in 
 the measure proposed, and announced his ear- 
 nest desire for a new Parliament and a popular 
 representation ! Whether Vane was in any 
 way moved by this to forego his suspicions, 
 does not with any certainty appear. 
 
 The debate took place on the day appointed, 
 and on the 25th the House voted, upon a divis- 
 ion, Cromwell and Scot being tellers for the 
 majority, that a bill should be brought in for 
 fixing a certain time for closing the present 
 Parliament and calling another ; and it was 
 referred to Saint John, Whitelocke, Lisle, Pri- 
 deaux, Say, Miles Corbet, and eight others, to 
 prepare the bill. Next day the names of Vane, 
 Cromwell, Marten, and Salway were added to 
 this committee ; and it was ordered that all 
 that came should have voices in their decisions. 
 On the 1st of October it was directed that this 
 committee should sit every afternoon till the 
 bill was ready. At the expiration of one week 
 the 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, which was ordered to sit daily from 
 the 14th to the 28th. The committee sat with 
 few interruptions till the 4th of November. On 
 that day it was directed that a new chairman 
 should take the chair ; and on the 12th it was 
 found necessary that the sergeant-at-arms 
 should go into Westminster Hall and summon 
 the members, as well judges as others, to at- 
 tend the House for the farther consideration 
 of the bill. On the 13th the House was desired 
 to examine the question, whether it be now a 
 convenient time to fix the period at which the 
 sittings of the present Parliament should cease ; 
 and on .the 14th it was decided that this was 
 a proper time. This decision was not adopted 
 without two divisions, the first of fifty to forty- 
 six, and the second of forty-nine to forty-seven ; 
 Cromwell and Saint John being in each instance 
 tellers for the majority. On the 18th it was 
 voted without a division that the period should 
 be the 3d of November, 1654.t 
 
 The conquest of Scotland now led to the in- 
 corporation of that country with the English 
 Legislature. A union was devised on large 
 and liberal terms, and the genius of Vane, ex- 
 erted with such effect in Scotland on a previous 
 most memorable occasion, was thought essen- 
 tial to .the successful achievement of the meas- 
 ure. He at once consented to proceed to Scot- 
 land as one of the commissioners for the settle- 
 ment of the union. It was a trying time for 
 
 * " That man would make himself our king !" said Hugh 
 Peters, who saw him on the road. 
 
 t I ascertain these various divisions from Godwin's His- 
 tory of the Com., p. 305, 306. 
 
 such a duty ; but his country never required 
 his services in vain. "It marks,' 1 says Mr. 
 Godwin, " the generous and unsuspicious mind 
 of Vane, who consented to go upon a journey 
 to Scotland for certainly not less than two 
 months, and to leave the military party with- 
 out his personal opposition during that term. 
 We may also infer from this fact the slow, de- 
 liberate, and cautious procedure of Cromwell. 
 Vane would scarcely have engaged in this 
 transaction, and have withdrawn himself for 
 so long a time from the metropolis, if Crom- 
 well and he had not been seemingly on terms 
 of friendship." 
 
 The instructions to the commissioners were 
 finally given on the 18th of December. They 
 reached Scotland in the course of the following 
 month, and opened their proceedings at Dal- 
 keith, six miles from Edinburgh. Their pur* 
 pose was to summon deputies from the differ- 
 ent shires and boroughs of Scotland to meet 
 them, and declare their assent to the proposed 
 union. They sat during the greater part of 
 January and the whole of February, and on the 
 1st of March they sent up Vane and another of 
 the commissioners to report to Parliament the 
 progress they had made, from whose statement 
 it appeared that twenty shires and thirty-five 
 boroughs had already assented to the union.* 
 In consequence of this report the act of union 
 was brought in, and read a first and a second 
 time on the 13th of April. In a very remarka- 
 ble speech in the Parliament of Richard Crom- 
 well (reported in the recently published Diary, 
 by Burton), in which Vane argued most sub- 
 tilely for the exclusion of the Scotch nominees 
 or members who would have turned the ma- 
 jority against the Republicans, he stated that 
 this act of union, in so far as it related to rep- 
 resentation, had never been duly perfected. I 
 insert the speech here, both as illustrative of 
 his share in this famous transaction, and of 
 those sound philosophical views of the neces- 
 sity of " laying foundations" in matters of gov- 
 ernment which we have been doomed to see 
 defeated in these first years of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 " This gentleman's discourse about the union 
 has called me up. I shall represent the true 
 state of that union. Admitting the premises 
 agreed by the whole House, I shall deny the 
 conclusion that it is right, convenient, or pos- 
 sible to admit them to a right, either in law or 
 fact, to sit here. 
 
 " Those that you sent to treat had their great 
 aim to settlement and peace, and to lay aside 
 all animosities. The difference arose about 
 imposing a king upon us. We conquered them, 
 and gave them the fruit of our conquest in ma- 
 king them free denizens with us." 
 
 He read the declaratory part, and acknowl- 
 edged that to be the union, and stated the prog- 
 ress of it. 
 
 " It is the interest of this nation to own and 
 countenance that union. None of my argu- 
 ments shall weaken it. The ordinance for 
 union relates to this declaration. It was thus 
 brought back again by your members from Scot- 
 land, that there should be one Parliament, by 
 successive representatives. This is your union, 
 and, when opened, none will deny it. To the 
 
 Godwin, Hist, of Com., in., 320.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 311 
 
 completing of this, accordingly, commissioners 
 attended the Parliament. We agreed then the 
 number to be thirty-five to represent Scotland. 
 The Parliament accepted the result from our 
 and their commissioners. A bill was prepared 
 to pass if that Parliament had not been broken 
 up. In that respect, the public faith of the na- 
 tion was much concerned to promote it. He 
 that will deny it, departs from the very cause 
 we have managed. 
 
 " It is to be confessed, the union was per- 
 fected in the time of last Parliament. It only 
 wanted the last hand, which should have chan- 
 ged the constitution of Parliament. There was 
 no foundation in law in the Long Parliament to 
 receive them from Scotland or Ireland till we 
 had settled our own Constitution. The com- 
 mittees that came from Scotland did not sit 
 here, but only treated with your committee. 
 
 " You must vary your own Constitution, as 
 well to make you fit to receive them as for 
 them to come, and therefore I moved that the 
 writs be read. It was the true meaning of the 
 petition and advice to distribute it so, by redu- 
 cing their own number, to give place for Scot- 
 land and Ireland. This the Long Parliament 
 were about to do, to reduce themselves from 
 500 to 400. This was not done that Parlia- 
 ment. I told you the reason. But this was 
 done, by the providence of God, by the instru- 
 ment of government a new Constitution, 
 which reduced our own Constitution suitable to 
 that for Scotland and Ireland and accordingly 
 the Parliament in 54 and 56 sat. This was re- 
 served to be done by the petition and advice, 
 but prevented also by the providence of God. 
 It was left to no person to declare it, but singly 
 as that Parliament should declare. That was 
 left imperfected. 
 
 '' It is one thing for us to be united and in- 
 corporated, another thing to be equally repre- 
 sented in Parliament by a right constitution. 
 There is a great difference. As soon as you 
 are a representative of that Commonwealth, 
 then must the thirty be called, and not before. 
 
 " There being a failure in the petition and 
 advice as to the distribution, they were fain to 
 have recourse to the common law and the old 
 statutes. There being no act of Parliament 
 for another distribution, they were forced to 
 call you as we left it in 1648. 
 
 " Now the single question is, whether, by the 
 Act of Union, any right was created to any one 
 ehire or borough of Scotland. If they send 
 them, you cannot receive them without over- 
 turning your own foundation. Your being thus 
 called upon the old bottom, when no law was 
 afoot to call Scotland or Ireland, your commis- 
 sion is clear ; otherwise they were brought 
 hither upon you, that if you will see it, you 
 may ; if you will not, you may let it pass. 
 
 " I think you are bound in duty and conveni- 
 ence to perfect this union, both as to the dis- 
 tribution and all other defects. 
 
 " I assert two things, which I would gladly 
 have answered : 1. That those gentlemen that 
 are chosen from those shires or boroughs have 
 no right to sit as members of the representa- 
 tive of England, either by statute, common law, 
 or agreement. 2. That there is no possibility 
 of receiving them till you agree, by act of Par- 
 liament, on the distribution, and other things. 
 
 To say the chief magistrate may do it is ex- 
 pressly against the petition and advice. He 
 cannot do it, it being neither in law, state, nor 
 in the commission. 
 
 " Durham had as much a possessory right ; 
 why was not his oath broken as well in that as 
 in this 1 Haply, he knew more what the peo- 
 ple of Durham would say when they were ap- 
 plied to. 
 
 " Honestly and uprightly make it your first bu- 
 siness to settle your own Constitution. It is said 
 you go slowly on. Whose is the fault 1 If no 
 new commission had been sent out, you might 
 have gone on to have done a great deal of 
 good. This is an imposing upon you. 
 
 " I would have this to be your first business 
 to lay foundations . Obstructions in the fount- 
 ain are dangerous : that body cannot live. 
 There is no remedy but to do that by law which 
 cannot possibly be done without it. The single 
 person may as well send one hundred as thirty, and 
 all for one place, and so rule your debates as he 
 pleases. This is the highest breach that can, 
 be. Where are you, or posterity, upon the account 
 of prudence ? You see how the state of your af- 
 fairs is abroad how the Swede is, since your 
 mighty debate. France and Spain are very likely 
 speedily to agree ! 
 
 " It is an ill time for any man to assume to 
 rule without a Parliament. In this juncture 
 of time, I believe the Protector does not know 
 the state of this business. If any counsel him 
 to the contrary, it will fall heavy upon them. 
 I hope you will not call it an excrementitious 
 formality : it is the very essence and being of 
 your privilege. 
 
 "Put the question, whether they have by 
 law a right to sit, and that they may withdraw. 
 If they do not, it is against the law of nature 
 and nations to deny it. If they have no right 
 by law to sit, none will insist upon it that they 
 ought to continue." 
 
 The commencement of hostilities with Hol- 
 land furnished a great occasion for the display 
 of the genius of Vane in affairs of government. 
 It had already shone forth in the pre-eminent 
 success of his naval administration in the mat- 
 ter of Prince Rupert's expedition, and left for- 
 eign nations, repeating the names of Vane and 
 Blake, to wonder wherein lay the secret of 
 English success, whether in the genius of the 
 council-chamber of the Commonwealth, or the 
 bravery of her sons upon the waves. 
 
 During a portion of the Dutch war, Vane was 
 not only at the head of naval affairs, but also 
 president of the council, and his exertions were 
 almost incredible.* When the war began, the 
 
 * " The next branch of his public usefulness, in a politi- 
 cal capacity, was his most happy dexterity at making; the 
 best of a war. Armies are to small purpose abroad unless 
 there be sage counsel at home. He heartily laboured to 
 prevent a war with Holland,. but the sons of Zerviah, a mil- 
 itary party (that too much turned war into a trade), were 
 too many for him in that point. He therefore set himself 
 to make the best of a war for his country's defence. In this 
 war, after some dubious tights (while the immediate care 
 of the fleet was in other. hands), he, with five others, wera 
 appointed by the Parliament to attend that affair. Here- 
 upon he became the happy and speedy contriver of that 
 successful fleet that did our work in a very critical season, 
 when the Hollander vapoured upon our seas, took prizes at 
 pleasure, hovered about our ports, and was ready to spoil 
 all. His report to the House as to the war-ships by him 
 recruited, ordered, and sent forth in so little time, to find 
 the enemy work, seemed a thing incredible." The forego- 
 ing is the testimony of Sikes, an unimpeachable witness.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Dutch were lords of the ocean. " They were 
 in the full vigour of their strength, and had nev- 
 er yet, by sea, felt the breath of a calamity. 
 They looked with contempt and impatience on 
 the proud style the Commonwealth had assu- 
 med. Our navy was comparatively nothing: 
 theirs covered the ocean with their sails." 
 Before the war had concluded, the united pow- 
 ers of Vane and Blake had nevertheless struck 
 down the pride of the United Provinces, and 
 conferred on their beloved country that glori- 
 ous title of mistress of the seas, which, to the 
 present day, she has so gloriously maintained. 
 
 A temporary reverse, which was deeply felt 
 at the time, only served to set off more brill- 
 iantly the subsequent exertions of Vane, and 
 the success which crowned them. Blake, with 
 only thirty-seven ships under his immediate 
 command, had encountered Van Tromp in the 
 Downs with a fleet of eighty sail, on the 29th 
 of November, 1652. The fleet of the English 
 admiral, imperfect as it was in number, was 
 not even in proper fighting order ; but it was 
 Blake's grand creed* that the English flag should 
 never decline the challenge of an enemy, what- 
 ever his advantages ; and the advice of his of- 
 ficers, it is said, coinciding with his own, de- 
 termined him to engage. The battle was fought 
 with the utmost gallantry on both sides for 
 about five hours, when night came on, and en- 
 abled Blake to abandon the fight and escape 
 into harbour with the loss of two ships, and 
 others in a shattered state. Blake's ship was 
 the most forward and fiercely engaged, and he 
 was himself wounded. t The victorious Dutch- 
 man, drunk with his triumph, afterward para- 
 ded his fleet up and down the English Channel, 
 with a broom fixed to his masthead, in derision 
 of having swept the English navy from the sea. 
 
 For this he was soon punished by the unpar- 
 alleled efforts of Vane. The difficulty was a 
 disastrous one at the moment, but his energies 
 rose to the occasion. On the 29th the battle 
 bad been fought. Not many days after, Vane 
 reported the navy estimates to the House, and 
 it was at once resolved that 40,000 per month 
 should be devoted to the navy. The next and 
 most difficult point was to raise the revenue to 
 meet such an appropriation ; but Vane's energy 
 and capacity surmounted it. He brought in a 
 bill, and had it at once read a first and second 
 time, to sell Windsor Park, Hampton Court, 
 Hyde Park, the Royal Park at Greenwich, En- 
 field Castle, and Somerset House, the proceeds 
 of the whole to be for the use of the navy. In 
 the beginning of February, Blake was put to 
 sea by Vane with eighty ships of war, and soon 
 fell in with Tromp, at the head of a squadron 
 of equal size, convoying 200 merchantmen. A 
 'battle commenced on the 18th of February, off 
 the Isle of Portland, which, for the weight of 
 .the armaments engaged, the determined bra- 
 very of the combatants, the length of time du- 
 ring which it lasted, and the brilliancy of its 
 .results, far transcended every previous naval 
 
 * Another noble article in Blake's creed may be recorded 
 "here, in contrast to the conduct of Cromwell. He was the 
 -etanchest of Republicans ; but it is recorded of him that, 
 on receiving the news of the dispersion of the Long Parlia- 
 ment, he at ouce issued an order to the men of the fleet 
 that their duty as seamen was to defend their country against 
 'foreign enemies, and not to meddle with political affairs. 
 
 t ilist. from Mackintosh, vi., 168. 
 
 action on record, and has never, perhaps, been 
 since surpassed. It was fought and renewed 
 through three successive days, and at the end 
 of the third day Blake conquered. He captured 
 or destroyed eleven ships of war and thirty 
 merchantmen, slew 2000 men, and took 1500 
 prisoners. His own ships suffered severe- 
 ly, but only one was sunk, and after her crew 
 had been brought away ; but his number slain 
 is stated as nearly equal to that of his enemy. 
 
 Thus splendidly did Vane and Blake close 
 the battles of that Republican Commonwealth 
 whose own termination was now near at hand. 
 Vane and Cromwell were at last on the eve of 
 an open rupture. 
 
 Before it is described, an interesting circum- 
 stance claims our notice. During the progress 
 of Vane's brilliant administration of the gov- 
 ernment, Milton had addressed to him his fa- 
 mous sonnet ; and at the same time, as if with 
 the view of composing those fatal differences 
 between them, which threatened the state with 
 calamity, by showing how the glories of each 
 might be celebrated by the same impartial pen, 
 the divine poet forwarded another and not less 
 famous sonnet to Cromwell. That to Vane 
 was first published in Sikes's book ; and it is a 
 singular circumstance that it escaped the no- 
 tice of the first editors of Milton, and was only 
 subsequently included in his poems. It had 
 been sent privately to Vane, who furnished the 
 copy to Sikes. I present it precisely as it was 
 first printed, and with the commentary I have 
 already referred to. 
 
 " The character of this deceased statesman," 
 says Sikes, " I shall exhibit to you in a paper 
 of verses, composed by a learned gentleman, 
 and sent him July 3, 1652. 
 
 ' VANE, young in years, but in sage council old, 
 Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
 The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repell'd 
 
 The fierce Eperiot, and the African bold. 
 
 ' Whether to settle peace or 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, 
 
 ' In all her equipage : besides to know 
 
 Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 
 What severs each, thou hast leam'd, which few have done, 
 The bounds of either sword to thee we owe ; 
 Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 
 In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.' 
 
 " The latter part of this sufferer's elegy in 
 the above mentioned verses concerns his skill 
 in distinguishing the two swords or powers, 
 civil and spiritual, and the setting right bounds 
 to each. He held that the magistrate ought to 
 keep within the proper sphere of civil jurisdic- 
 tion, and not intermeddle with men's conscien- 
 ces, by way of imposition and force, in matters 
 of religion and divine worship. In that healing 
 question for which he was wounded by the late 
 Protector (so called), he did sufficiently mani- 
 fest this to be as well the magistrates' true in- 
 terest as the people's just security. 'Tis ob- 
 served by More and others, on various ac- 
 counts, that the Roman emperors, owning and 
 incorporating Christianity with the laws of the 
 empire, strengthened the interest of the formal 
 Christian, and drove the true spiritual wor- 
 shipper into the wilderness. While magis- 
 trates pretend, and, it may be, verily think they 
 are doing Christ a high piece of service by 
 such fawning and formal compliance, they are
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 313 
 
 directly involved in the anti-Christian interes 
 for the persecuting of Christ in his true spirit 
 ual members. 
 
 " This lover of his nation, and asserter of 
 the just rights and liberties thereof unto his 
 death, was also for limiting the civil power 
 delegated by the people to their trustees in the 
 supreme court of Parliament, or to any magis 
 trates whatsoever. He held that there are 
 certain fundamental rights and liberties of the 
 nation, that carry such a universal and undeni- 
 able consonancy with the light of nature, right 
 reason, and the law of God, that they are in 
 nowise to be abrogated or altered, but preserv- 
 ed. What less than this can secure people's 
 lives, liberties, and birthrights, declared in 
 Magna Charta, and ratified by two-and-thirty 
 Parliaments since 1 Let but once this truth 
 be exploded and blown away, all the rights and 
 liberties of the nation will soon go after it, and 
 arbitrary domination and rapine may securely 
 triumph over all. Deny that there are any 
 fundamental irrepealable laws, and who can be 
 secure as to life, liberty, or estate 1 For if, by 
 an overruling stroke of abused prerogative, a 
 majority in Parliament can be procured that 
 will pull up all the ancient mischief by a new 
 law, make reason and duty treason, and that 
 postfactum too in this case, he that did things 
 most rational and justifiable by unrepealed or 
 irrepealable laws yesterday, may be condemned 
 by a law made post factum, and executed to- 
 morrow. By this means judges may be put 
 into a most unhappy capacity of justifying the 
 wicked and condemning the righteous, under 
 colour of Parliamentary authority ; in both 
 which things they are an abomination to the 
 Lord." 
 
 Vane was now using the same unparalleled 
 exertions he had made for Blake, to avert the 
 despotism of Cromwell. But Cromwell had 
 completed all his plans, and was more than pre- 
 pared for the opposition which " even his own 
 beloved Vane" (as Clarendon expresses it) was 
 organizing against him. It should be remark- 
 ed that his motives for instant procedure had 
 not been lessened by the measure Vane had in- 
 cluded in his recent administrative plans, of the 
 sale of Hampton Court, at that time in Crom- 
 well's trust. Vane had also, as soon as Blake 
 left for sea, procured a resolution of the House 
 of Commons, appointing the 3d of November, 
 1653 (instead of the 3d of November, 1654, be- 
 fore fixed on, as I have said), for the Parlia- 
 ment's dissolution. Roger Williams, Vane's 
 old friend of earlier years in his government 
 of New-England, was staying at this time in 
 Vane's country residence in Lincolnshire, and 
 we find him writing over to his friends of New- 
 England : " Here is great thoughts and prepar- 
 ations for a new Parliament. Some of our 
 friends are apt to think a new Parliament will 
 favour us and our cause more than this has 
 done."* 
 
 Up to this moment, therefore, Vane would 
 seem not to have despaired. Yet Cromwell's 
 plans had left him not a single possibility of 
 success. His instrument was the army, and 
 his immediate agents the Republican officers. 
 These officers had been first most thoroughly 
 deceived ; and the silly simplicity of their en- 
 
 * Baker's History of New-England, i., 287. 
 
 R 
 
 thusiasm appears to have deserved betrayal. 
 They professed, and indeed felt, almost all of 
 them, a rooted aversion to the government of a 
 single person. Cromwell, therefore, had first 
 to " convince them that Vane, and Bradshaw, 
 and Marten, the great apostles of the Repub- 
 lican school, and whom he had taught them be- 
 fore to look upon with implicit reverence, were 
 dishonest ;'' he had next to purge himself from 
 the imputation of personal motives, and every 
 alloy of the love of greatness and the love of 
 power. All this he did ; and, as Mr. Godwin 
 observes, " by degrees, by multiplied protesta- 
 tions of the purity of his views and a self-de- 
 nying temper, and by an apparent frankness, 
 and the manifestations of a fervent zeal, he 
 succeeded, and formed to himself a party as 
 strong and as completely moulded to his sug- 
 gestions and his will as the boldness of his pur- 
 poses required." 
 
 It appeared subsequently (and the circum- 
 stance may possibly explain some of the diffi- 
 culties of Vane's position in holding out the 
 existence of the old Parliament so long) that 
 Cromwell's plan had not always been that of a 
 violent dissolution, but that, as far back as the 
 preceding October, he had brought about vari- 
 ous meetings between the officers of the army 
 and certain members of the Parliament oppo- 
 sed to Vane, for the purpose of convincing the 
 latter of the necessity of putting a speedy end 
 to their sittings. There were ten or twelve 
 such meetings in all, and Cromwell's proposi- 
 tion appears to have been that, the Parliament 
 being dissolved, the government ad interim 
 should be intrusted in the hands of a small 
 number of persons of honour and integrity, and 
 whose characters should be well known to the 
 public. The number mentioned was forty. 
 They were to supersede the council of state, 
 and to consist of members of Parliament and 
 officers of the army.* The secret object of this 
 was to prepare the way for his own supremacy 
 or kingship, by removing every existing legis- 
 lative and executive body that had the appear- 
 ance of being founded upon the customs and 
 institutions of England. The proposed senate, 
 or council of forty, would have been moulded 
 in a manner agreeable to his wishes; or, at 
 worst, he depended upon having a majority 
 among them whom he could render subservient 
 to his purposes. And all this the military Re- 
 aublicans, saints of Democracy, and men of the 
 Fifth Monarchy simply and gravely listened to, 
 as auguring a blessed republic on the earth, 
 while to these very men the wise and practical 
 ounsels of Vane were denounced as visionary ! 
 
 " Cromwell," says the historian of the Com- 
 monwealth, " by calumnies, and the most in- 
 idious suggestions, succeeded in alienating the 
 major part of the army from the leaders of the 
 Parliament. His first topic was, that they were 
 talesmen who, without undergoing hardships 
 and being exposed to dangers themselves, were 
 willing to use the army as their tool, and felt 
 no genuine interest in its prosperity and happi- 
 ness. The next argument was, that these lazy 
 nen, these ' baleful, unclean birds, perched as 
 hey were at fortune's top,' divided all the good 
 hings and the emoluments of the state among 
 hem, totally insensible to the adversities and 
 
 * Parl. Hist., ., 158.
 
 314 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 privations which such a system inevitably en- 
 tailed upon men of greater merit than them- 
 selves. Vane he treated as an obscure vision- 
 ary, whose speculations no man could under- 
 stand, and who, while he pretended to superior 
 sanctity and patriotism, had no bowels of com- 
 passion for such as were not ready to engage 
 themselves, heart and soul, in his projects. 
 Others, agreeably to the austerity of the times, 
 he exclaimed against as men of loose morals, 
 and, therefore, unfit to be intrusted with the 
 public safety. 'His own professed object was 
 equality and a pure commonwealth, without a 
 kingor permanent chief magistrateof any kind." 
 
 All was now prepared for submission except 
 the unquenchable resolution of Vane. On the 
 20th of April, 1653, he hurried down to the 
 House of Commons, resolved to make a last 
 effort to sustain the Republic. By his exer- 
 tions within the last month, all the amendments 
 from his report on the dissolution bill had al- 
 ready been decided on in the successive sittings 
 of the House, and all that now remained was 
 the third reading, and that sanction of the Par- 
 liament which should give the bill the force of 
 a law. Vane, on his arrival in the House, at 
 once rose, and vehemently urged the necessity 
 of passing through these latter forms at once, 
 imploring them, for the most pressing reasons, 
 to hazard no farther delay. Upon this a debate 
 arose, for Cromwell had instructed his myrmi- 
 dons. Harrison spoke in remonstrance and ex- 
 postulation, and was answered more warmly 
 still. 
 
 Meanwhile Cromwell and his military cabal 
 were sitting in consultation at Whitehall. He 
 had dismissed many who happened to be mem- 
 bers of the House on the first announcement 
 of its sitting, but still remained himself with a 
 few others. At length Colonel Ingoldsby re- 
 appeared from the House in violent haste and 
 excitement, and told him that if he meant to do 
 anything, he had no time to lose.* Cromwell 
 hastily commanded a party of soldiers to be 
 inarched round to the House of Commons, and, 
 attended by Lambert and five or six other offi- 
 cers, at once proceeded there himself. Some 
 of the soldiers he stationed at the door and in 
 the lobby, and led some files of musketeers to 
 a situation just without the chamber where the 
 members were seated. t 
 
 " In plain black clothes, with gray worsted 
 stockings," Cromwell quietly made his appear- 
 ance on the floor of the House of Commons. 
 Vane was urging passionately the necessity of 
 proceeding to the last stage of the bill, with the 
 omission of immaterial forms, such as the cere- 
 mony of engrossing. Cromwell stood for a mo- 
 ment, and then " sat down, as he used to do in 
 an ordinary place." After a few minutes he 
 beckoned Harrison. " Now is the time," he 
 said ; " I must do it !" Harrison, doubtful, at 
 the instant, of the effect of what Vane was 
 urging, advised him to consider. " The work, 
 sir," he added, "is very great and dangerous." 
 "You say well," retorted Cromwell, hastily, 
 and " sat still for another quarter of an hour." 
 The question was now about to be put, when 
 Cromwell suddenly rose, " nut off his hat, and 
 spake." " At first," says Lord Leicester (on 
 
 * Whitelocke, 539 ; Perfect Politician, 168. 
 
 t Leicester's Journals, 192 ; Sidney Papers, by Blencowe. 
 
 the information, no doubt, of Algernon Sidney), 
 " and for a good while, he spake to the com- 
 mendation of the Parliament for their pains and 
 care of the public good; but afterward he chan- 
 ged his style, told them of their injustice, delays 
 of justice, self-interest, and other faults" in 
 other words, he poured out, according to the re- 
 ports of every one present, a vehement torrent 
 of invective. Vane rose to remonstrate, when 
 Cromwell, as if suddenly astonished himself at 
 the extraordinary part he was playing, stopped 
 and said, " You think, perhaps, that this is not 
 Parliamentary language I know it '." Then, 
 says Lord Leicester, "he put on his h at, went out 
 of his place, and walked up and down the stage 
 or floor in the midst of the House, with his hat 
 on his head, and chid them soundly, looking 
 sometimes, and pointing particularly upon some 
 persons, as Sir R. Whitelocke, one of the com- 
 missioners for the great seal, and Sir Henry 
 Vane, to whom he gave very sharp language, 
 though, he named them not, but by his gestures it 
 was well known he meant them." One person, 
 he said (aiming, Lord Leicester adds, at Vane), 
 " might have prevented all this, but he was a 
 juggler, and had not so much as common hon- 
 esty. The Lord had done with him, however, 
 and chosen honester and worthier instruments 
 for carrying on his work." All this he spake, 
 says Ludlow, "with so much passion and dis- 
 composure, as if he had been distracted." 
 Vane's voice was heard once more, and Sir 
 Peter Wentworth and Marten seconded him. 
 " Come, come," raved Cromwell, " I'll put an 
 end to your prating. You are no Parliament. 
 I'll put an end to your sitting. Begone ! Give 
 way to honester men." 
 
 The tyrant then stamped his foot very heav- 
 ily upon the floor, the door opened, and he was 
 surrounded by musketeers with their arms 
 ready. "Then the general," says Lord Lei- 
 cester, " pointing to the speaker in his chair, 
 said to Harrison, ' Fetch him down !' Harri- 
 son went to the speaker and spake to him to 
 come down, but the speaker sat still and said 
 nothing. ' Take him down !' said the general ; 
 then Harrison went and pulled the speaker by 
 the gown, and he came down. It happened 
 that day that Algernon Sidney sat next to the 
 speaker on the right hand. The general said 
 to Harrison, ' Put him out !' Harrison spake 
 to Sidney 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 
 (who commanded the general's own regiment 
 of foot) put their hands upon Sidney's shoul- 
 ders as if they would force him to go out. 
 Then he rose and went towards the door. 
 Then the general went to the table where the 
 mace lay, which used to be carried before the 
 speaker, and said, ' Take away these bawbles !' 
 So the soldiers took away the mace."* 
 
 Helpless in the midst of this extraordinary 
 scene, the members had meanwhile been grad- 
 ually withdrawing. As they passed Cromwell, 
 he addressed the leading men with passionate 
 bitterness. He accused Alderman Allen of 
 embezzlement, and Whitelocke of gross injus- 
 tice. He pointed to Challoner, and told his 
 soldiers he was a drunkard ; he called after Sir 
 Peter Wentworth that he was an adulterer; 
 
 * Leicester's Journals, p. 140, 141.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 315 
 
 and as his old friend Harry Marten passed him, 
 he asked if a whoremaster was fit to sit and 
 govern. Vane passed him among the last, and 
 as he did so, " said aloud, ' This is not honest ! 
 Yea, it is against morality and common hon- 
 esty !' " Cromwell stopped for an instant, as 
 if to recollect what vice he could charge his 
 great rival with, and then addressed to him, in 
 a loud but troubled voice, the memorable words, 
 " Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane ! the Lord 
 deliver me from Sir Harry Vane .'" He was now 
 master. He " seized on the records, snatched 
 the act of dissolution from the hand of the 
 clerk," commanded the doors to be locked, and 
 went away to Whitehall.* 
 
 When Cromwell arrived that day at White- 
 hall, he was the absolute dictator of three king- 
 doms : when Vane reached his own home, he 
 was once more a private man, with no author- 
 ity in the state, with little fortunet left from 
 what he had so generously devoted to his coun- 
 try, with no remaining influence in the world 
 save that of his genius and his virtue. Yet 
 who would have chosen between them 1 
 
 This memorable Long Parliament had many 
 glorious epitaphs written over it. * " It was 
 thus," says Ludlow, " that Cromwell contrived 
 to be rid of this Parliament, that had perform- 
 ed such great things, having subdued their en- 
 emies in England, Scotland, and Ireland ; es- 
 tablished the liberty of the people ; reduced the 
 kingdom of Portugal to such terms as they 
 thought fit to grant ; maintained a war against 
 the Dutch with that conduct and success, that 
 it seemed now drawing to a happy conclusion ; 
 recovered our reputation at sea ; secured our 
 trade, and provided a powerful fleet for the 
 service of the nation. And however the malice 
 of their enemies may endeavour to deprive them 
 of the glory which they justly merited, yet it 
 will appear to unprejudiced posterity that they 
 were a disinterested and impartial Parliament, 
 who, though they had the sovereign power of 
 the three nations in their hands for the space 
 of ten or twelve years, did not in all that time 
 give away among themselves so much as their 
 forces spent in three months." " Thus it 
 pleased God," says the cautious Whitelocke, 
 " that this assembly, famous through the world 
 
 * I have taken the various points in the foregoing account 
 from very many authorities, all of them of the highest ve- 
 racity. Whitelocke, Ludlow, Lord Leicester, The Perfect 
 Politician, The Parliamentary History, and the Journals of 
 the time. It will complete the curiosity and interest of the 
 narrative to subjoin the " official" account of the incident 
 published two or three days after in Cromwell's paper, the 
 Mercurius Politicus : " Westminster, April 20. The lord- 
 general delivered in Parliament divers reasons wherefore 
 a present period should be put to the sitting of this Parlia- 
 ment, and it was accordingly done, the speaker and the 
 members all departing. The grounds of which proceedings 
 will (it is probable) be shortly made public." 
 
 t This circumstance has already been glanced at. Vane's 
 estates had suffered in the civil war ; he had assisted the 
 public treasury with various large sums ; he had refunded 
 positive receipts from his office, and surrendered an income 
 of 30,000 a year ! In point of fact, he was now a poor 
 man he might have been the wealthiest of the wealthy. 
 But let us hear Sikes : " Such were his abilities for despatch 
 of a business if good, or hindering it if ill, that had his hand 
 been as open to receive as others to offer in that kind, he 
 might have treasured up silver as dust. Many hundreds 
 per annum have been offered to some about him in case they 
 could but prevail with him only not to appear against a pro- 
 posal. On the least intimation of such a thing to him, he 
 would conclude it to be some corrupt, self-interested de- 
 sign, and set himself more vigilantly and industriously to 
 oppose and quash it." 
 
 for its undertakings, actions, and successes, 
 having subdued all their enemies, were them- 
 selves overthrown and ruined by their own ser- 
 vants ; and those whom they had raised now 
 pulled down their masters : an example never 
 to be forgotten and scarcely to be paralleled in 
 any story, by which all persons may be instruct- 
 ed how uncertain and subject to change all 
 worldly affairs are, and how apt to fall when 
 we think them highest. All honest and pru- 
 dent indifferent men were highly distasted at 
 this unworthy action." "The Parliament," 
 observes the accomplished Mrs. Hutchinson, 
 " had now, by the blessing of God, restored 
 the Commonwealth to a happy and plentiful 
 condition ; and although the taxes were great, 
 the people were rich and able to pay them ; 
 they had some hundred thousand pounds in 
 their purse, and were free from enemies in 
 arms within and without, except the Dutch, 
 whom they had beaten, and brought to seek 
 peace upon honourable terms. And now they 
 fell, because they thought "it was time to de- 
 liver the people from their burdens, which 
 could not be but by disbanding unnecessary of- 
 ficers and soldiers." " When Van Tromp," 
 says Algernon Sidney, " set upon Blake in 
 Folkestone Bay, the Parliament had not above 
 thirteen ships against threescore, and 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 ; but, such 
 was the power of wisdom and integrity in those 
 that sat at the helm, and their diligence in 
 choosing men only for their merit was attend- 
 ed with such success, that in two years our 
 fleets grew to be as famous as our land-armies, 
 and the reputation and power of our nation 
 rose to a greater height than when we possess- 
 ed the better half of France, and had the kings 
 of France and Scotland for our prisoners." 
 And these tributes may be closed with the 
 words of one who had been a bitter and a 
 scornful enemy. " Thus, by their own mer- 
 cenary servants," exclaims Roger Coke, " and 
 not a sword drawn in their defence, fell the 
 haughty and victorious Rump, whose mighty 
 actions will scarcely find belief in future gener- 
 ations ; and, to say the truth, they were a race 
 of men most indefatigable and industrious in 
 business, always seeking for men fit for it, and 
 never preferring any for favour nor by impor- 
 tunity. You scarce ever heard of any revolt- 
 ing from them ; no murmur or complaint of 
 seamen or soldiers ; nor do I find that they 
 ever pressed any in all their wars. And as 
 they excelled in the management of civil af- 
 fairs, so it must be owned they exercised in 
 matteis ecclesiastic no such severities as either 
 the Covenanters, or others before them, did 
 upon such as dissented from them ; nor were 
 they less forward in reforming the abuses of 
 the common law." 
 
 It is right, before following Vane to his re- 
 tirement, to place the reader in possession of 
 the exact question between Cromwell and that 
 great statesman, which we have seen thus in- 
 solently silenced by the application of brute 
 force. This can only be done by stating the 
 provisions of the bill on which Vane was con- 
 tent to rest his case with the people and pos- 
 terity.
 
 S16 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 But this bill was never afterward found ! 
 Cromwell himself seized it from the hands of 
 the clerk, and no copy of it remains upon rec- 
 ord. By a careful examination of the journals, 
 however, I have gathered sufficient information 
 on the subject to leave no doubt of the general 
 provisions of the bill,* or of the nature of many 
 of its more important details. 
 
 I have already mentioned that Vane was the 
 author of the reports from the select commit- 
 tee presented at various intervals to the House. 
 Tracing these through the innumerable allu- 
 sions, and votes, and divisions recorded con- 
 cerning them in the journals, a tolerably com- 
 plete abstract of it may be made. The number 
 of representatives he fixed at 400. He recom- 
 mended the abolition of the right of voting in 
 the smallest boroughs, and proposed to throw 
 the members into the larger counties ; to give 
 seven members to London and the liberties 
 thereof; and to give members to all the larger 
 cities and towns in England theretofore unrep- 
 resented. He presented to them the following 
 list of the numbers of members to which he 
 thought the counties of England and Wales, 
 including the cities and boroughs within them, 
 fairly entitled ; and he left the particular dis- 
 tribution of members to each county, city, or 
 borough, to the " pleasure of the House."t 
 
 Bedfordshire, and all the pla- 
 ces within the sa'me . 6 
 Buckinghamshire, &c. . 9 
 
 Berkshire, &c 6 
 
 Cornwall, <fcc 10 
 
 Cumberland, <fcc. ... 4 
 Cambridgeshire,. &c. . . 8 
 
 Cheshire, <fcc 5 
 
 Derbyshire, <fec. ... 5 
 Devonshire , <fec. ... 20 
 Dorsetshire, <tc. ... 8 
 
 Durham, ic 4 
 
 Essex, &c 14 
 
 Gloucestershire, &c. . . 8 
 Hertfordshire, <tc. . . 6 
 Herefordshire, <fec. . . 6 
 Huntingdonshire, &c. . 4 
 
 Kent. <fcc 18 
 
 Leicestershire, Arc. . . 6 
 Lincolnshire, <tc. ... 15 
 Lancashire, <tc. ... 12 
 Middlesex, <fcc. (except 
 
 London) 6 
 
 London and the Liberties 
 
 thereof 7 
 
 Norfolk, <fec 14 
 
 Northamptonshire, <fec. . 8 
 Northumberland, <fec. . 8 
 
 Nottinghamshire, and all the 
 places within the same 6 
 Oxfordshire, &c. ... 6 
 Rutlandshire, &c. ... 2 
 Staffordshire, etc. . . 6 
 
 Salop, <kc 8 
 
 Surrey, <fec 7 
 
 Southamptonshire, &.C. . 13 
 
 Suffolk, <tc 16 
 
 Somersetshire, <tc. . . 14 
 
 Sussex, <fcc 14 
 
 Westmoreland, <fec. . . 3 
 
 Wiltshire, <fec 13 
 
 Warwickshire, &c. . . 7 
 Worcestershire, <Jcc. . . 7 
 
 Yorkshire, &c 24 
 
 Anglesey, &c 1 
 
 Brecknockshire, &c. . . 2 
 Cardiganshire, &c. . . 2 
 Carnarvonshire, <fec. . . 1 
 Denbighshire, &c. . . 2 
 
 Flintshire, <fec 1 
 
 Glamorganshire, <tc. . . 3 
 Merionethshire, <fec. . . 1 
 Monmouthshire, &c. . . 3 
 Montgomeryshire, <fcc. . 2 
 Pembrokeshire, <fec. . . 3 
 Radnorshire, Ac. ... 2 
 
 * Ludkro, in his Memoirs, supplies the following sketch, 
 which is corroborative of the accuracy of what is stated in 
 the text : " The act for putting a period to the Parliament 
 was still before a committee of the whole House, who had 
 made a considerable progress therein, having agreed upon a 
 more equal distribution of the power of election throughout 
 England. And whereas formerly some boroughs that had 
 scarce a house upon them chose two members to be their 
 representatives in Parliament (just as many as the greatest 
 cities in England, London only excepted), and the single 
 county of Cornwall elected forty-four, when Essex, and 
 other counties bearing as great a share in the payment of 
 taxes, sent no more than six or eight ; this unequal repre- 
 sentation of the people the Parliament resolved to correct, 
 and to permit only some of the principal cities and boroughs 
 to choose, and that, for the most part, but one representa- 
 tive, the city of London only excepted, which, on account of 
 the great proportion of their contributions and taxes, were 
 allowed to elect six. The rest of the 400, whereof the Par- 
 liament was to consist (betides those that tervedfor Ireland 
 and Scotland), were appointed to be chosen by the several 
 counties, in as near a proportion as was possible to the sums 
 charged upon them for the service of the state, and all men 
 admitted to be electors who were worth 200 in lands, 
 leases, or goods." ii., 435, 436. 
 
 t It is right to state that these details were published by 
 the present writer in some papers written during the dis- 
 
 With respect to qualification, he suggested 
 that the elective franchise in towns should be 
 exercised by all housekeepers of a certain rental 
 (which he left to the determination of the 
 House), and with an earnestness rendered re- 
 markable by events of our own day, while he 
 pressed the necessity of extending the fran- 
 chise in counties, he urged the danger of vest- 
 ing it in those tenants whose tenure of estate sub' 
 jected them to perpetual control. His plan was 
 to give the right of voting in counties to all 
 persons seised in an estate of freehold of lands, 
 tenements, or other profits of the clear yearly 
 value of~40*. ; all tenants in ancient demesne ; 
 customary tenants ; and all copyholders of any 
 estate of inheritance in possession, of the clear 
 yearly value of 5 ; all tenants for life of an- 
 cient demesne in possession, and all copyhold 
 and customary tenants for life in possession of 
 the clear yearly value of 5 ; all tenants in 
 actual possession for the term of one-and-twenty 
 years or more, in being, upon any lease granted, 
 determinable upon life or lives, of the clear 
 yearly value of 20 over and above the rent re- 
 served or chargeable thereon ; and all tenants, 
 for the term of one-and-ticcnty years or more, in 
 being, in possession of the clear yearly value 
 of 20 over and above any rent reserved or 
 chargeable thereon. 
 
 After explaining the various heads of his re- 
 port, Vane moved "that they be referred to a 
 grand committee of the House, to take into 
 consideration and to prepare a bill to be pre- 
 sented." The numerous sittings and delays 
 that followed have been already described, and 
 from the frequent divisions on the journals, 
 some notion may be gathered of the nature of 
 the points that came under sharpest discussion. 
 The disfranchising and enfranchising clauses 
 were debated at very considerable length, each 
 town and county being put separately. One or 
 two circumstances, taken almost at random 
 from the journals during 1652, will intimate a 
 startling resemblance between these debates 
 and those of a later period. Many divisions 
 are there recorded, which betoken hard strug- 
 gles for condemned boroughs ; and we find that 
 immediately after Plympton (so renowned in a 
 certain famous schedule A.) had been consign- 
 ed to destruction by a decisive division, the 
 claims of Queenborough (also in that notable 
 schedule) seem to have been stoutly debated ; 
 for, on a division, the numbers were equal, and 
 the half-convicted borough was suffered to con- 
 tinue in existence only by the casting vote of 
 the speaker. We may mention also that the 
 proposal for uniting East and W T est Loo, in or- 
 der to their sending one member, which was 
 offered to and rejected by the Parliament of 
 1831, had been entertained and accepted by the 
 Long Parliament. Of the enfranchising claus- 
 es, we might refer for a specimen to the min- 
 utes of one day's proceedings, which gave to 
 Arundel, Honiton, and Reigate (all in schedule 
 B.) the privilege of retaining one member, and 
 to Penryn and Bury (in schedules D. and E.) 
 the right of sending two members each. One 
 circumstance farther is worthy of notice in thus 
 slightly comparing the measures. The disas- 
 
 cussion of the Reform Bill in 1831, and afterward repub- 
 lished in the Times newspaper, then ably and earnestly adr 
 vocating that measure.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 317 
 
 irons system of dividing the counties was in 
 one instance, and in one instance only, adopted 
 by the statesmen of the Long Parliament. On 
 an amendment, and after long discussion, it 
 was resolved that the members for the county 
 of Yorkshire should be chosen separately, the 
 elections for each riding to be made distinct. 
 Here, however, in dividing a county already 
 parcelled out in separate districts, none of the 
 bad results so fairly to have been presumed, 
 and since so deeply felt, from a general division 
 of the counties, could be expected to accrue. 
 Lastly, I may mention, that when Vane propo- 
 sed to insert in the bill the county qualification 
 clause already described, Cromwell defeated 
 him in several divisions, and substituted a 200 
 qualification (real or personal) in its stead. 
 
 Thus are established the popular claims of 
 Sir Henry Vane the younger to the respect and 
 admiration of posterity, in this his last Parlia- 
 mentary struggle for the liberties of the Com- 
 monwealth. One striking circumstance more 
 in connexion with the subject should still be 
 noticed. When Cromwell called his second 
 and third Parliaments, he seems to have tried 
 the experiment of the principal provisions of 
 this famous bill. His " Instrument of Govern- 
 ment" directed that a Parliament should be 
 summoned once in every third year ; that all 
 petty boroughs should be suppressed, and that 
 the representation should be, as nearly as might 
 be, proportioned to the amount of taxation. It 
 fixed the number of English members at 400 ; 
 of these, 261 were to be county members, be- 
 sides six for London, two for the Isle of Ely, 
 two for the Isle of Wight, and two each for Ex- 
 eter, Plymouth, Colchester, Gloucester, Can- 
 terbury, Leicester, Lincoln, Westminster, Nor- 
 wich, Lynn, Yarmouth, Nottingham, Shrews- 
 bury, Bristol, Taunton, Ipswich, Bury St. Ed- 
 munds, Southwark, Coventry, New Sarum, 
 Worcester, and York. It gave one each to the 
 two Universities, and one each to all the towns 
 and boroughs that were thought worthy to be 
 represented, among which are Manchester, 
 Leeds, Halifax, &c., and it fixed the amount 
 of qualification at 200 of real or personal es- 
 tate. And what was the result! The compi- 
 lers of the Parliamentary History, no indiffer- 
 ent friends to the cause of the Royalists, say 
 that " this popular and equitable scheme had 
 filled the House of Commons with so great a 
 number of independent gentlemen of the best 
 families and estates in the kingdom, that he 
 (Cromwell) had no way to manage them but 
 by excluding either by fraud or force those who 
 were the true friends of the Constitution." 
 And he scrupled not to do so. He dissolved 
 the first of the new Parliaments because it pre- 
 sumed to discuss the question, whether the 
 government should be in a single person. He 
 endeavoured strenuously, but in vain, to pack 
 the second, by using various means to influence 
 the elections ; and failing in that, excluded a 
 hundred members by allowing none to enter 
 without a certificate from the council of state. 
 Such was the practical working of even an im- 
 perfect copy of Vane's scheme. 
 
 Whatever may be thought, then, of the mo- 
 tives or policy of that statesman in deferring 
 this measure, supposing, which is scarcely prob- 
 able, that the delay was not beyond his con- 
 
 trol, no doubt he fell gloriously in his unsuc- 
 cessful struggle to achieve it at last. He was 
 driven from the government of the Common- 
 wealth by a traitorous usurper because he pro- 
 posed to strengthen it with new institutions, 
 and replenish its languid veins with the vigor- 
 ous blood of the people. He carried with him 
 into his retirement that glorious consolation. 
 
 Some few days after the usurpation saw him 
 quietly settled at Raby Castle. Here, or at his 
 other seat of Belleau, in the county of Lincoln, 
 with his family around him, he resumed the 
 studies so inexpressibly dear to him, of learn- 
 ing, philosophy, and religion, and waited pa- 
 tiently for the firs.t fitting occasion of striking 
 another stroke for the GOOD OLD CAUSE. 
 
 Cromwell, meanwhile, drunk with power, 
 was setting at naught the advice of his wisest 
 counsellor. " Consider frequently," wrote Mil- 
 ton to him, with noblest eloquence, and some- 
 thing of poetic license, on his first assumption 
 of the power, " consider in thy inmost thoughts 
 how dear a pledge, from how dear a parent in- 
 trusted (the gift liberty, the giver thy country), 
 thou hast received into thy keeping. Revere 
 the hope that is entertained of thee, the confi- 
 dent expectation of England ; call to mind the 
 features and the wounds of all the brave men 
 who, under thy command, have contended for 
 this inestimable prize ; call to mind the ashes 
 and the image of those who fell in the bloody 
 strife ; respect the apprehension and the dis- 
 course that is held of us by foreign nations, 
 how much it is they look for in the recollec- 
 tion of our liberty, so bravely achieved, of our 
 Commonwealth, so gloriously constructed ; 
 which if it shall be in so short a time subvert- 
 ed, nothing can be imagined more shameful 
 and dishonourable ; last of all, revere thyself, 
 so deeply bound, that that liberty, in securing 
 which thou hast encountered such mighty hard- 
 ships, and faced such fearful perils, shall, while 
 in thy custody, neither be violated by thee, nor 
 any way broken in upon by others. Recollect 
 that thou thyself canst not be free unless we are 
 so ; for it is fitly so provided in the nature of 
 things, that he who conquers another's liberty, in 
 the very act loses his own ; he becomes, and just- 
 ly, the foremost slave. But, indeed, if thou, 
 the patron of our liberty, should undermine the 
 freedom which thou hadst but so lately built 
 up, this would prove not only deadly and de- 
 structive to thine own fame, but to the entire 
 and universal cause of religion- and virtue. 
 The very substance of piety and honour will 
 be seen to have evaporated, and the most sa- 
 cred ties and engagements will cease to have 
 any value with our posterity ; than which a 
 more grievous wound cannot be inflicted on 
 human interests and happiness, since the fall 
 of the first father of our race. Thou hast ta- 
 ken on thyself a task which will probe thee to 
 the very vitals, and disclose to the eyes of all 
 how much is thy courage, thy firmness, and 
 thy fortitude ; whether that piety, perseverance, 
 moderation, and justice really exist in thee, in 
 consideration of which we have believed that 
 God hath given thee the supreme dignity over 
 thy fellows. To govern three mighty states by 
 thy counsels ; to recall the people from their 
 corrupt institutions to a purer and a nobler dis- 
 cipline ; to extend thy thoughts and send out
 
 318 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 thy mind to our remotest shores ; to foresee 
 all, and provide for all ; to shrink from no la- 
 bour ; to trample under foot and tear to pieces 
 all the snares of pleasure, and all the entan- 
 gling seducements of wealth and power : these 
 are matters so arduous, that, in comparison of 
 them, the perils of war are but the sports of 
 children. These will winnow thy faculties, and 
 search thee to the very soul ; they require a 
 man sustained by a strength that is more than 
 human, and whose meditations and whose 
 thoughts shall be in perpetual commerce with 
 his Maker."* 
 
 Cromwell had now decisively shown that he 
 was not that man. He had already richly en- 
 titled himself to the doom he had stirred against 
 Charles the First ; for, like that unhappy prince, 
 he had abruptly closed three Parliaments in 
 succession because they threatened to thwart 
 his will. " The splendid trust of foreign victories 
 and supremacy which he had inherited from 
 Vane's administration of the Commonwealth 
 he indeed maintained, and the glories of his 
 foreign administration served to conceal or 
 patch over the ragged condition of his domes- 
 tic government. In that government existed 
 no single principle of stability. Plots and trea- 
 sons shook it in every month of its existence, 
 till at last, abandoning merely desultory acts of 
 despotism, he was driven to organize a system 
 of military inquisition (in his instructions to the 
 major-generals) that should have the effect of 
 superseding the conditions of civil government. 
 Having accomplished this, he bethought him of 
 getting together a more manageable Parlia- 
 ment, and began to consider it possible that the 
 nation, thoroughly discontented with military 
 despotism, might possibly not be indisposed to 
 listen to some compromise, involving the old 
 institutions of kingship. Nothing could be at- 
 tempted, at all events, without some shadow 
 or form of a Parliament. Old habits were much, 
 and the English people might still farther be de- 
 ceived by a prudent conciliation on that score. 
 Alas ! he was indeed teaching them all the while 
 an indifference to the liberty they had suffered 
 so much in achieving but not for himself the 
 melancholy advantage ! England was at this 
 time a scene of beggarly and disgraceful re- 
 hearsal for the grand farce of the 29th of May, 
 1660. 
 
 Cromwell's preparation for his present move 
 in the game was very characteristic ; he pub- 
 lished, on the 14th of March, 1656, a declara- 
 tion, calling upon the people to observe a gen- 
 eral fast, for the purpose of " applying them- 
 selves to the Lord to discover the Achan who 
 had so long obstructed the settlement of these 
 distracted kingdoms." He had fixed his gloat- 
 ing aspirations on a crown, and with admi- 
 rable originality he therefore expressed the 
 idea in this proclamation, that he and others 
 associated with him in the government desired 
 to humble themselves before God for their sins, 
 and earnestly longed for light that they might 
 discern their errors and faults, and therefore 
 that it became them, with a spirit of lowliness, 
 and mind open to conviction, to receive counsel 
 and direction, in whatever methods Providence 
 might adopt. 
 
 Sir Henry Vane had hitherto kept aloof from 
 
 * Defentio Secundapro Popalo Anglicano. 
 
 public affairs, engaged in the studies I have 
 named. In the interim he had published the 
 " Retired Man's Meditations" (a quarto volume 
 of 430 pages) already described and quoted from, 
 and other works illustrative of his views in re- 
 ligion and philosophy. With deep interest, in- 
 deed, he watched the proceedings of the usurp- 
 er,* but in all the conspiracies and consulta- 
 tions of the disaffected he peremptorily refused 
 to take part. Reason and public spirit were 
 Aw weapons, and he left every other to the sim- 
 ple "visionaries" and "enthusiasts" who, hav- 
 ing stripped the Commonwealth and her great- 
 est statesmen of their liberties to clothe Crom- 
 well with them, now conceived the noble proj- 
 ect of assassination by way of hastening that 
 saints' reign which their idol had once promised 
 them. The apples in that fool's paradise were 
 sour at last. 
 
 Now, however, Vane entered the field, after 
 his nobler fashion, against the dictator of the 
 Commonwealth. He wrote a political treatise, 
 which he entitled " A Healing Question pro- 
 pounded and resolved, upon Occasion of the late 
 public and seasonable Call to Humiliation, in 
 order to Love and Union among the honest 
 Party, and with a Desire to apply Balm to the 
 Wound before it become incurable. By Henry 
 Vane, Knight." In this treatise he enforced 
 his old doctrines of civil and religious liberty, 
 and added some theories and recommendations 
 concerning the construction of a civil govern- 
 ment, the result, no doubt, of quiet and philo- 
 sophical reflection on the occurrences of his 
 political life, which are in the last degree stri- 
 king and memorable. He here proposed, in 
 fact, for the first time in the records of history, 
 that expedient of organizing a government " on 
 certain fundamentals not to be dispensed with," 
 which was thought " visionary" and impracti- 
 cable by the world till the world learned to ven- 
 erate the name of Washington. 
 
 Vane begins with a statement of the question 
 thus : " The question propounded is, What pos- 
 sibility doth yet remain (all things considered) 
 of reconciling and uniting the dissenting judg- 
 ments of honest men within the three nations, 
 who still pretend to agree in the spirit, justice, 
 and reason of the same GOOD CAUSE, and what 
 is the means to effect this 1" Of that CAUSE he 
 proceeds to say, that surely it " hath still the 
 same goodness in it as ever, and is, or ought 
 to be, as much in the hearts of all good people 
 that have adhered to it ; it is not less to be val- 
 ued now than when neither blood nor treasure 
 were thought too dear to carry it out, and hold 
 it up from sinking; and hath the same omnipo- 
 tent God, whese great name is concerned in it, 
 as well as his people's outward safety and wel- 
 fare ; who knows also how to give a revival 
 to it when secondary instruments and visible 
 means fail or prove deceitful." And that the lat- 
 ter had been proved, the writer added signifi- 
 cantly, " It seemed as if God were pleased to 
 stand still, and be as a looker-on" during the 
 last three years, that is, during Cromwell's tyr- 
 anny. 
 
 * Clarendon not very accurately describes his conduct to 
 have been, that he " retired quietly to his house in the 
 country, poisoued the affections of his neighbours toward* 
 the government, and lost nothing of his credit with the peo- 
 ple, yet carried himself so warily that he did nothing to dis- 
 turb the peace of the nation, or to give Cromwell any ad- 
 vantage against him upon which to call him in question."
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 319 
 
 In a subsequent passage this is more dis- 
 tinctly stated, with all the dangers it was bring- 
 ing the nation into, thus : " In the management 
 of this war it pleased God, the righteous Judge 
 (who was appealed to in the controversy), so to 
 bless the counsel and forces of the persons 
 concerned and engaged in this cause, as in the 
 end to make them absolute and complete con- 
 querors over their common enemy ; and by this 
 means they had added unto the natural right 
 which was in them before (and so declared by 
 their representatives in Parliament assembled), 
 the right of conquest, for the strengthening of 
 their just claim to be governed by national 
 councils, and successive representatives of 
 their own election and setting up. This they 
 once thought they had been- in possession of, 
 when it was ratified, as it were, in the blood of 
 the last king. But of late a great interruption 
 having happened unto them in their former ex- 
 pectations, and, instead thereof, something rising 
 up that seems rather accommodated to the private 
 and selfish interest of a particular part (in com- 
 parison) than truly adequate to the common 
 good and concern of the whole body engaged 
 in this cause : hence it is that this compacted 
 body is now falling asunder into many dissenting 
 parts (a thing not unforeseen nor unhoped for 
 by the common enemy all along as their last 
 relief); and if these breaches be not timely 
 healed, and the offences (before they take too 
 deep root) removed, they will certainly work 
 more to the advantage of the common enemy 
 than any of their own unwearied endeavours 
 and dangerous contrivances in foreign parts put 
 altogether." 
 
 Enlarging next on the universal advantages 
 of liberty in civil and religious matters, Vane 
 goes on to develop the method by which he 
 thinks it might be secured to the people, and 
 therein suggests the idea of a FUNDAMENTAL 
 CONSTITUTION. He then directs the following 
 vigorous passage against Cromwell : " The of- 
 fence which causes such great thoughts of heart 
 among, the honest party (if it may be freely ex- 
 pressed, as sure it may, when the magistrate 
 himself professes he doth but desire and wait 
 for conviction therein), is, in short, this : that 
 when the right and privilege is returned, nay, 
 is restored by conquest unto the whole body 
 (that forfeited not their interest therein), of free- 
 ly disposing themselves in such a constitution 
 of righteous government as may best answer 
 the end held forth in this cause ; that, never- 
 theless, either through delay they should be 
 withheld as they are, or through design they 
 should come at last to be utterly denied the ex- 
 ercise of this their right, upon pretence that 
 they are not in a capacity as yet to use it, 
 which, indeed, hath some truth in it, if those 
 that are now in power, and have the command 
 of the arms, do not prepare all things requisite 
 thereunto, as they may, and, like faithful guar- 
 dians to the Commonwealth, admitted to be in 
 its nonage, they ought. But if the bringing of 
 true freedom into exercise among men, yea, so re- 
 fined a party of men, be impossible, why hath this 
 been concealed all this while 1 and why was it not 
 thought on before so muck blood was spilt, and 
 treasure spent 1 Surely such a thing as this was 
 judged real and practicable, not imaginary and 
 notional. Besides, why may it not suffice to 
 
 have been thus long delayed and withheld from 
 the whole body, at least as to its being brought 
 by them into exercise now at last 1 Surely the 
 longer it is withheld, the stronger jealousies do 
 increase, that it is intended to be assumed and 
 engrossed by a part only, to the leaving the 
 rest of the body (who, in all reason and justice, 
 ought to be equally participants with the other 
 in the right and benefit of the conquest, for as 
 much as the war was managed at the expense 
 and for the safety of the whole) in a condition 
 almost as much exposed, and subject to be im- 
 posed upon, as if they had been enemies and 
 conquered, not in any sense conquerors. If 
 ever such an unrighteous, unkind, and deceitful 
 dealing with brethren should happen, although it 
 might continue above the reach of question 
 from human judicature, yet can we think it pos- 
 sible it should escape and go unpunished by the 
 immediate hand of the righteous Judge of the 
 whole world, when he ariseth out of his place to 
 do right to the oppressed?" 
 
 After this wise, solemn, and searching re- 
 proof, Vane proceeds with masterly ingenuity 
 to present such a view of events and affairs as, 
 without any personal allusion, made it clear to 
 all eyes that the ambition of Cromwell was the 
 obstacle in the way of the establishment of a 
 just and free government ; that he was " the 
 Achan who obstructed the settlement of these 
 distracted kingdoms," and that, in preferring his 
 own aggrandizement to the common good, and 
 seizing an unlawful power, he had taken " of 
 the accursed thing." He then delineates, in a 
 passage ever deserving of remembrance, the 
 course of proceedings by which a CONSTITUTION 
 might be agreed upon and established, in rep- 
 aration of all these injuries. The method, the 
 reader will perceive, is exactly that which more 
 than a century after was adopted by Washing- 
 ton and his immortal associates. 
 
 " The most natural way for which would 
 seem to be by a general council, or CONVENTION 
 of faithful, honest, and discerning men, chosen 
 for that purpose by the free consent of the whole 
 body of adherents to this cause, in the several parts 
 of the nation, and observing the time and place 
 of meeting appointed to them (with other cir- 
 cumstances concerning their election), by order 
 from the present ruling power, but considered 
 as general of the army ; which convention is not 
 properly to exercise the legislative power, but only 
 to debate freely and agree upon the particulars, 
 that by way of FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS shall 
 be laid and inviolably observed, as the conditions 
 upon which the whole body so represented 
 doth consent to cast itself into a civil and poli- 
 tic incorporation, and under the visible form 
 and administration of government therein de- 
 clared, and to be by each individual member 
 of the body subscribed in testimony of his or 
 their particular consent given thereunto ; which 
 conditions so agreed (and among them an act 
 of oblivion for all) will be without danger of be- 
 ing broken or departed from, considering of 
 what it is they are the conditions, and the na- 
 ture of the convention wherein they are made, 
 which is of the people represented in their 
 highest state of sovereignty, as they have the 
 sword in their hands unsubjected unto the rules 
 of civil government, but what themselves, or- 
 derly assembled for that purpose, do think fit to
 
 320 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 make. And the sword, upon these conditions, 
 subjecting itself to the supreme judicature thus 
 to be set up, how suddenly might harmony, 
 righteousness, love, peace, and safety unto the 
 whole body follow hereupon, as the happy fruit 
 of such a settlement, if the Lord have any de- 
 light to be among us !" 
 
 More need not be given* to show the spirit 
 and philosophy of this great political treatise, 
 its sincere and serious admonition, its fearless 
 and vigorous exhortation, its moderate and re- 
 spectful tone. It was in all respects calculated 
 to work a great sensation ; and perhaps the 
 most striking circumstance connected with it 
 remains to be noticed. Its author, resolved to 
 maintain a perfect good faith even towards 
 Cromwell, transmitted to him privately, through 
 the hands of General Fleetwood, a copy\ before 
 its publication, not disregardful of even the faint 
 hope there, existed that Cromwell might be in- 
 duced to follow his advice, and adopt some 
 such course as he had proposed, in which event 
 the public feeling needed not, by its publication, 
 be exasperated unnecessarily ; but after the 
 lapse of a month it was returned without com- 
 ment, and Sir Henry immediately issued it from 
 the press, with a postscript, in which allusion 
 was made to the fact that it had previously 
 been communicated to Cromwell. It is more 
 than probable, however, that Fleetwood had 
 feared to provoke the usurper by it, and there- 
 fore purposely withheld it from him. 
 
 Vane at once published it. The writs for the 
 new Parliament came out at the same time, 
 and a great excitement arose in many quarters. 
 It was increased by the sudden appearance of 
 another pamphlet, which was attributed also, 
 though not on sufficiently good authority to 
 render it quite certain, J to " Sir Harry Vane." 
 It was called " England's Remembrancer," and 
 its tone was much more violent than that of 
 the Healing Question. Some of the Republi- 
 cans had been scrupling to act upon Cromwell's 
 writs, as it would be a recognition of his au- 
 thority. This pamphlet answered the objec- 
 tion by putting the case of a thief, who, having 
 kept one out of his house for a time, bids him 
 return to it. " Would any of you scruple to go 
 home because the thief had before exercised a 
 power to which he had no right]" "What," 
 said the author in conclusion, "shall I say more 
 to you, dear Christians and countrymen 1 Do 
 not the cries of the widows and the fatherless 
 speak 1 Do not your imprisoned friends speak 1 
 Do not your banished neighbours speak? Do 
 not your infringed rights speak 1 Do not your 
 invaded properties speak 1 Do not your af- 
 fronted representatives, who have been trod- 
 den upon with scorn, speak]" 
 
 Cromwell is recorded to have "trembled" at 
 last. He summoned Vane before the council. 
 The conduct adopted by Vane in consequence, 
 observes the historian of the Commonwealth, 
 " is entitled to particular notice. His high 
 spirit recoiled from the arbitrary proceeding of 
 being summoned, absolutely, and without cause 
 
 * The whole of the treatise will be found in the Appendix 
 (A) at the end of this article. The reader is particularly 
 referred to it. 
 
 t He stated this himself, without mentioning Fleetwood's 
 name, in a letter he wrote to the council on being questioned 
 before them. 
 
 t Thurloe' State Papers, T., 342. 
 
 shown, to appear before the council. He had 
 a short time before been second to no man in 
 the island, and, in reality, the principal director 
 of the councils of the Commonwealth. No 
 man was ever more deeply imbued with a Re- 
 publican spirit ; and his high rank and ample 
 fortune* had not exactly prepared him to be 
 commanded by any one. He had now spent 
 some years in retirement, and kept aloof from 
 all cabals and private consults and disquisitions 
 in political matters. His principal family seat 
 was Raby Castle, in the bishopric of Durham ; 
 but his more favourite residence appears to 
 have been at Belleau, in the county of Lincoln, 
 where this summons, dated on the 29th of July, 
 reached him on the 4th of August." 
 
 The summons was of the true despotic kind. 
 It was couched in the most unceremonious 
 form, without the word " Sir," or any term of 
 address at the beginning ; and the mandatory 
 clause was expressed simply in the phrase, 
 "you are to attend." 
 
 Thursday, the 12th of August, was the day 
 on which his presence was demanded before 
 the council ; but in a note to the president, he 
 stated that it would be impossible for him to be 
 in town till some days later. On the 14th he 
 sent a message signifying that he had that 
 evening arrived at his house at Charing Cross, 
 and was ready to appear when sent for. His 
 attendance was not required till the 21st ; and 
 he appears to have been merely questioned as 
 to the authorship of the tract entitled " A Heal- 
 ing Question," which he admitted to be his, and 
 was suffered to leave the council. An order 
 was then made in these words : " Sir Henry 
 Vane having this day appeared before the coun- 
 cil, and they having taken consideration of a 
 seditious book by him written and published, 
 entitled 'A Healing Question, &c.,' tending to 
 the disturbance of the present government and 
 the peace of the Commonwealth, ordered that, 
 if he shall not give good security in bond for 
 5000 by Thursday next [in the warrants of 
 September 4, entered in the council books, it 
 stands Tuesday], to do nothing to the prejudice 
 of the present government and the peace of 
 the Commonwealth, he shall stand commit- 
 ted.'^ Upon this order being sent to him, he 
 wrote for answer that he could on no account 
 comply with what was required, and by his 
 own act d& that which might blemish or bring 
 in question his innocence, and the goodness of 
 the cause for which he suffered. He farther 
 said, " I am well content to take this as a mark 
 of honour from those who sent it, and as the 
 recompense of my former services ;" and add- 
 ed, with a terrible significance, " I cannot but 
 observe in this proceeding with me how exactly 
 they tread in the steps of the late king, whose 
 design being to set the government free from 
 all restraint of laws as to our persons and 
 estates, and to render the monarchy absolute, 
 thought he could employ no better means to 
 effect it than by casting into obloquy and dis- 
 grace all those who desired to preserve the 
 laws and liberties of the nation." He con- 
 cluded thus : " It is with no small grief to be 
 
 * The recent death of his father had placed him in poa- 
 session of the family estates. 
 
 t " Proceeds of the Protector (so called) and Council 
 against Sir Henry Vane," p. 1-4.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 321 
 
 lamented that the evil and wretched principles 
 by which the late king aimed to work out hi 
 design should now revive and spring' up under th 
 hands of men professing godliness." 
 
 Cromwell appears to have been brought to ? 
 stand for some little while by this high resolu 
 tion and courage. Fourteen days were suffer 
 ed to elapse before a warrant was made out 
 directing the sergeant-at-arms to apprehen 
 Vane, and conduct him to the Isle of Wight 
 another was sent to the governor of the island 
 to receive him as a prisoner, and not to suffe 
 any one to speak to him but in the presence of 
 an officer.* 
 
 No public reason, it is to be observed, was 
 given for this step. The English people were 
 left to suppose, when they saw this great states- 
 man sent by the Protector's order to a dungeon 
 that he had committed some terrible crime. In 
 vain had Sir Henry declared himself a member 
 of the Long Parliament, which had never been 
 legally dissolved, and claimed the privilege of 
 security from personal arrest. He was seized 
 by Cromwell's officers, sent to the island on 
 the 9th of September, and committed to Caris- 
 brook Castle, the very prison in which Charles 
 I. had been confined during the last year of his 
 life. The remark of Mr. Godwin on this infa- 
 mous proceeding may fitly close the account 
 of it. 
 
 " Henry Cromwell describes Vane as one of 
 the most rotten members of the community.! 
 Such was not apparently the opinion of the Pro- 
 tector. He pays a high compliment to his vic- 
 tim, at the same time that he casts a burning 
 disgrace on his own government, when he fairly 
 states the tract in question as the sole ground 
 for taking the author into custody, and sending 
 him into confinement in the southernmost point 
 of England. It was clearly confessing that 
 they had no charge against him, that his con- 
 duct had been altogether irreproachable, and 
 that he was placed under restraint for an un- 
 limited time for having given his advice to his 
 countrymen and their governors at a most crit- 
 ical period, in a style of exemplary temperance 
 and sobriety. What must be the government 
 of a country when the first men in it are liable 
 to such treatment, and no other accusation is 
 pretended to be brought against them !" 
 
 But this " conscience doth make cowards of 
 us all," and the once brave and gallant Crom- 
 well, driven to the cowardice of this oppression 
 against Vane, as little dared to keep him long a 
 prisoner. He was released from Carisbrook on 
 the 31st of December, 1656. 
 
 The Parliament which had met meanwhile 
 will be hereafter (in the life of Marten; alluded 
 to. Conspiracies once again surrounded Crom- 
 well, and his anticipated crown was dashed 
 from his hands. The " Healing Question" was 
 read continually at private meetings,:): and dis- 
 content and danger lodged everywhere. The 
 Protector strove to hide his troubles in every 
 kind of fantastic resource, and to conceal pis- 
 tols always upon his person ; but both were 
 pretty well ascertained^ by this time, and he 
 had lost all pity, and sacrificed all esteem. 
 
 * " Order Book" of the council of state, 
 t Thurloe, iv., 509. t Il>., 185. 
 
 I) A curious incident which occurred on the 29th of Sep- 
 tember may illustrate the remark of the text. It is thus re- 
 
 Si 
 
 Still Vane remained to torture and be tortu- 
 red. His influence perceptible everywhere. 
 Cromwell, afraid to assault his liberty again, 
 resolved, if he could, to strip him of his prop- 
 erty, harass him by constant vexation, and thus 
 compel him at last to submit to his government. 
 With this view, measures were adopted to in- 
 volve his estates in the meshes of the law. 
 The attorney-general was employed to discover 
 or invent flaws in the titles by which they were 
 held. Bills were filed in the Exchequer, and 
 legal proceedings of various kinds were institu- 
 ted. At the same time, he was given to un- 
 derstand, that if he would support the govern- 
 ment, all these measures should be stopped. 
 In this way the whole power of Cromwell was 
 brought to bear upon him ; every art was used ; 
 and it was systematically and deliberately at- 
 tempted, by a kind of slow torture, to wring 
 from him his great fortune, and, by reducing 
 him to poverty, to humble and break his spirit 
 but to no purpose. Among the faithless he 
 was still found faithful : when all others proved 
 false, he stood by his principles and redeemed 
 his pledges. When hope had been driven from 
 the heart of every other Republican, he did not 
 despair or despond for a moment ; when the 
 name of liberty had become a proverb, a by- 
 word, a reproach throughout the world, and its 
 cause seemed utterly and forever lost, his alle- 
 giance never faltered, and his spirit was filled 
 with a "serene and undoubting confidence in 
 its final triumph, which neither prisons, nor 
 chains, nor the scaffold could shake or impair." 
 
 In the interval which now intervened before 
 the death of Cromwell, he appears to have writ- 
 ten various matters. On the appearance of 
 Harrington's " Oceana" he addressed a letter 
 to him, which was published, entitled, "A need- 
 ful Corrective or Balance in popular Govern- 
 ment." He also published a theological work, 
 entitled, " Of the Love of God, and Union with 
 
 od ;" and other learned treatises, chiefly on 
 joints of religion, were issued by him at this 
 ;ime. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell died on the anniversary of 
 lis great days of Worcester and Dunbar, the 
 3d of September, 1658, and writs for a Parlia- 
 ment were at once issued by the council of his 
 son and successor, Richard Cromwell, returna- 
 )le on the 27th of the following January. The- 
 )eople kept quiet and waited the issue. Upon, 
 his Parliament, it was understood, it would, 
 est to effect a settlement of the form of gov- 
 irnment,. and so far to determine the fortunes 
 if the nation. It was the natural consequence 
 if this impression that the election of its mem- 
 
 ated in Thurloe : " His highness, accompanied only by the 
 ecretary, and a few of his gentlemen and servants, went to 
 ake the air in Hyde Park, where he caused a few dishes 
 f meat to be brought, and trade his dinner ; after dinner 
 le thought took him to drive his own coach, to which there 
 were harnessed six fine horses, that had been sent him as a 
 resent by the Count of Oldenburgh. He accordingly put 
 'hurloe into the coach, and himself mounted the box. For 
 ome time he drove very well ; but by-and-by, using the 
 'hip a little too violently, the horses set off at full speed, 
 'he postillion, endeavouring to hold them in, was thrown ; 
 nd, soon after, Cromwell himself was precipitated from the 
 ox, and fell upon the pole, and from thence to'the ground, 
 [is foot got entangled with the harness, and he was so ear- 
 ned along a good way, during which a pistol went off in his 
 ocket [a proof that he was never without firearms]. At 
 ength his foot got clear, and he escaped, the couch passing 
 long without injuring him." He was confined with the 
 onsequeuces of the accident for two or three weeks.
 
 322 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 bers became the occasion of the highest possi- 
 ble interest throughout the country. By the 
 result of those elections, the struggle between 
 the two great parties would be brought to a de- 
 cision and a close. It is a proof of the fear 
 which shook the residents of Whitehall, that 
 the old and corrupt system of election was re- 
 stored by them on this occasion. 
 
 Farther, and in no less memorable proof of 
 their fear, they held it an object of paramount 
 importance to prevent the election of Sir Hen- 
 ry Vane to the ensuing Parliament, and resort- 
 ed to the most extraordinary and extreme meas- 
 ures to keep him out. He offered himself at 
 Kingston-upon-Hull, of which place he claimed, 
 as of right, to be considered the lawful repre- 
 sentative, having sat as such in the Long Par- 
 liament. His right was confirmed by the elec- 
 tors ; he was rechosen by a full majority of 
 their votes ; but the managers of the election, 
 being creatures of Richard Cromwell's party, 
 in defiance of justice and public sentiment, gave 
 the certificate of election to another. Vane was 
 determined not to be defeated by such means ; 
 he therefore proceeded to Bristol, entered a 
 canvass, and received a majority of the votes. 
 Here, also, the same bold and impudent out- 
 rage was committed by the officers ; and others 
 whose names stood below his on the poll-books 
 were declared to be elected. He still perseve- 
 red, and was finally returned from Whitechurch 
 in Hampshire. 
 
 On the 27th of January Vane once more took 
 his seat in the House of Commons. The ter- 
 ror his presence inspired among what was call- 
 ed the "court" party was only a little counter- 
 balanced by the " packed House" they had man- 
 aged to get together. They had named the 
 Scotch and Irish representatives, and com- 
 manded the votes of actual and expectant place- 
 men, for the most part lawyers, to the amount 
 of 170. There were, besides, about 100 Mod- 
 erates, Waiters upon Providence, and masked 
 Royalists. The number of Republicans to set 
 against all this were only 40, but they were 
 headed by Vane, and ranked among them the 
 names of Ludlow, Scot, and Bradshaw. There- 
 fore the " court" trembled still. 
 
 They soon found that they had good reason 
 for trembling. It was well understood among 
 the Republicans that the first proceeding would 
 be to confirm the government of Richard, and 
 to sanction the House of Peers which his fa- 
 ther had created. Vane had organized a small 
 but resolute opposition to these measures with 
 masterly power and skill. Their consultations 
 before entering the House were always held at 
 his residence at Charing Cross ; he managed 
 their debates in the House itself with the con- 
 summate genius of a popular leader, and was 
 supported with infinite resolution and energy 
 by Scot and Ludlow. The court party had, in- 
 deed, good reason to tremble. 
 
 His first great display against Richard Crom- 
 well was on the debate upon the question of a 
 recognition of his " undoubted" right, founded 
 on the " Petition and Advice" of the late Pro- 
 tector. On the 9th of February, 1659, having 
 reserved himself to a late day, after the usages 
 of the more eminent and influential Parliament- 
 ary speakers in all times, " Sir Harry Vane" 
 rose, and spoke thus. The speech includes 
 
 so many matters of importance, is so masterly 
 an evidence of Vane's power, and embraces 
 such an interesting sketch of his political expe- 
 riences, that the reader will wish it longer even 
 than it is. 
 
 " I know very well the great disadvantage 
 that any person suffers, that in this great and 
 grave assembly shall, at this time of day, offer 
 you anything. You have spent three days in 
 the debate, and it is not unsuitable to your wis- 
 dom to be yet on the threshold. The more time 
 you have taken, the more successful, probably, 
 it may be. 
 
 " That which called me up at this time was 
 what the last gentleman said, that is, to do 
 things with unity. At least we shall be at 
 greater unity, if not greater amity, by having 
 patience to hear one another, and admitting 
 the variety of reasons and judgments which 
 are offered by all men. Though a large field 
 has been led into, the thing is very short. Con- 
 sider what it is we are upon a protector in the 
 office of chief magistrate. But the office, of 
 right, is in yourselves. It is in your hands, 
 that you may have the honour of giving or not 
 giving, as best likes you. You may confer it, if 
 you please, for any law to the contrary brought 
 now into your House. I shall advise you to 
 this, as was moved : give not by wholesale, so as 
 to beg again by retail. To give will at any time 
 get you many friends. It therefore concerns 
 you in this business to have your eyes in your 
 heads, to look well about you, that it slip not 
 from you without considering what is your 
 right, and the right of the people. 
 
 "The wise providence of God has brought 
 things, in these our days, to the state of gov- 
 ernment as we now find it. I observe a varie- 
 ty of opinions as to what our state of govern- 
 ment is. Some conceive that it is in king, 
 Lords, and Commons ; that the principles of 
 old foundations yet remain entire, so that all 
 our evils, indeed, are imputed to our departure 
 from thence. 
 
 " It hath pleased God, by well-known step?, 
 to put a period, and to bring that government 
 to a dissolution. All the three Parliaments it> 
 the late king's time found the state of things 
 in slavery. I have had some experience since 
 the two Parliaments in 1640, and remember, 
 when the Parliament considered the state of 
 the nations, that they found them in a grand 
 thraldom of oppression and tyranny, endeav- 
 ouring to carry us up even into popery. God 
 made us see the state and condition we were 
 then in. The consideration of these things 
 would have made us make long sweeps to re- 
 dress it ; but Providence led us on step by step. 
 Therefore, having the legislative power, God 
 saw it good that we should change the govern- 
 ment ; but we found great difficulties in the work, 
 as most men were willing rather to sit down by 
 slavery than to buy themselves out of it at so great 
 a price. 
 
 " The first thing expected was, that justice 
 should be done upon delinquents, who had so 
 much the ear of that prince, that they told him 
 he had power enough to protect himself and 
 them too. He had the power of the militia. 
 These grievances brought us to consider where 
 the right of the militia lay ; and when we saw 
 it was in ourselves, we thought to make use
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 323 
 
 of it with moderation, choosing rather to use it 
 to reduce the king by fair means than other- 
 wise. 
 
 " So well satisfied was this House then with 
 the principles of that government, that there 
 was then a declaration drawn in favour of it. 
 I was one of that committee. / hear reflections 
 AS if I changed from that. I think it now my duty 
 to change with better reason. They did think fit 
 to publish that which was to preserve that an- 
 cient fabric of government, according to such 
 qualifications as might be for the public service. 
 I am well satisfied it was the clear intent of 
 their hearts. But this encouraged the king, 
 and brought it to that issue at last that he hard- 
 ened his heart, till it was resolved to make no 
 more addresses, but to bring him to judgment. 
 But, in the mean time, applications were made 
 to him, still imploring him to be reconciled ; 
 and nothing was wanting in the House, that, 
 if possible, he might have saved the govern- 
 ment, and himself with it ; but God would not 
 have it so. God knows best what that work 
 is which he is to bring forth. When all appli- 
 cations could not prevail, they thought fit to 
 bring the king to judgment ; thereby the state 
 of affairs was much altered. 
 
 " This House then thought fit to apply them- 
 selves to the Lords against the Scots' invasion, 
 and in the great case of justice upon the king. 
 The Lords refused both. In this juncture, they 
 were reduced to the necessity of doing that 
 which is now the foundation of that building upon 
 which you must stand if you expect to be prosper- 
 ous. When they came to look upon the delin- 
 quency of the king, and considered him as an 
 object of justice, it was declared by them that 
 the taking away of kingship was the only happy 
 way of returning to their own freedom. Their 
 meaning thereby was, that the original of all just 
 power was in the people, and was reserved wholly 
 to them, the representatives. 
 
 " When the Parliament, in questions as to 
 what was just and right, had gathered up all 
 into themselves, it was disputed in what way 
 the king should be tried. They counted them- 
 selves then prepared to grant out a commission 
 to try the king. I confess I was then exceedingly 
 to seek, in the clearness of my judgment, as to the 
 trial of the king. I was for six weeks absent from 
 my seat here, out of my tenderness of blood ; yet, 
 all power being thus in the people originally, I 
 myself was afterward in the business. 
 
 " The king upon his trial denies this power 
 to be in the Parliament : they try it, and they 
 seal it with the blood of the king. This action 
 of theirs was commanded by this House to be 
 recorded in all the courts of Westminster Hall, 
 and.in the Tower. If you be not now satisfied 
 with this business, you will put a strange con- 
 struction upon that action, and upon all that 
 has been done by the general and soldiers. If 
 you, here, will now doubt this right to be in you, 
 you draw the guilt upon the body of the whole na- 
 tion. You join issue with him upon that point. 
 It will be questioned whether that was an act of 
 justice or murder. 
 
 " Brought step by step unto your natural 
 right by an unavoidable necessity, that little 
 remnant of the Parliament were now the rep- 
 resentative of the nation, springing up from 
 another root. This had a more clear founda- 
 
 tion, being thus the supreme judicature, to 
 comprehend all government in itself. Whether 
 the death of the king caused not a dissolution 
 of that Parliament, as to that doing it then had, 
 and as it was taken to be, I know not : I leave 
 that to the long robe. 
 
 " It was then necessary, as the first act, to 
 have resort to the foundation of all just power, 
 and to create and establish a free state, to bring 
 the people out of bondage from all pretence of 
 superiority over them. It seemed plain to me 
 that all offices had their rise from the people, and 
 that all should be accountable to them. If this be 
 monstrous, then it is monstrous to be safe and ra- 
 tional, and to bear your own good. 
 
 "It is objected that this nation could not 
 bear that government ; but Holland bears it 
 against the power of Orange. They keep the 
 office of stallholder vacant to this day : so do 
 other places. This is a principle that we may 
 bear it, if we can bear our own liberties, or, that 
 if we have not the importance of the people of 
 Israel : unless, with the Israelites, we will re- 
 turn to Egypt, weary of our journey to Canaan. 
 
 " This being the case, we were declared a 
 free state. We were after tossed upon all those 
 billows that sunk us in the sands. Though we 
 miscarried then, though this free state was ship- 
 wrecked, yet you have got a liberty left to say 
 it is now again in your possession, else I am 
 mistaken. If it be so, I hope you will not part 
 with it but upon grounds of wisdom and fidelity. 
 If you were but arbitrating in the cause of a pri- 
 vate friend, you would make the best bargain for 
 him that you could: you would so do as not to 
 give aicay the right of him by whom you were in- 
 trusted but upon good grounds. That which you 
 give, give it freely on grounds of justice : un- 
 derstand well your terms. 
 
 " This brings me to the consideration of an- 
 other thing, which is, that the first government 
 being dissolved, another is brought into the 
 room. Though not perfect, yet it is said the 
 foundations are laid, upon which we may build 
 a superstructure of which we need not be 
 ashamed. Now, SHALL WE BE UNDER-BUILDERS 
 TO SUPREME STUART'! We have no need, no 
 obligation upon us to return to that old govern- 
 ment. I have a vote. 
 
 " For the covenant with the Scots, their in- 
 vasion did render that covenant invalid. They 
 would have repossessed a king and imposed 
 him upon this nation by virtue of that covenant 
 which they had broken. The Parliament show- 
 ed that their shackles were broken ; it did not 
 oblige any farther. That it was famous and 
 had power ! That was the Israelites' argu- 
 ment for worshipping the sun and moon. If 
 we return to an obligation by virtue of the cov- 
 enant, by the same reason we may return to 
 worship the sun and moon. I hope those shall 
 not sway here. 
 
 ' Lastly, at the dissolution of the Long Par- 
 liament, you lost your . possession, not your 
 right. The chief magistrate's place was assu- 
 med without a law. There was assumed with 
 it, not only the power of the crown on the 
 terms of former kings, which hath its founda- 
 tion and regulation by the laws, but the pos- 
 session was assumed You were then under 
 various forms of administration : some that 
 had not the characters of trust upon them ;
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 some too limited. Still, you were kept out of 
 possession. Parliaments have been called, and 
 as often broken. 
 
 " This ' Petition and Advice,' which is now 
 so much insisted upon, was never intended to 
 be the settled government, but only to be a pair 
 of stairs to ascend the throne ; a step to king, 
 Lords, and Commons. It pleases God to let 
 you see you have not been ill counselled to 
 wait upon him a first day, and a second, and a 
 third day, to see what he will hold out for your 
 peace and safety for asserting the liberties of 
 the people. This bill huddles up in wholesale 
 what you have fought for, and is hasted on lest 
 you should see it. 
 
 " We have now a ' Petition and Advice' that 
 comes in place of the ancient government, the 
 ' instrument,' and all other forms. Yet, if this 
 were the case, you are, notwithstanding the 
 Petition and Advice, in the clear, rightful pos- 
 session of this government, which cannot be 
 disposed of but by your consent. The old Pro- 
 tector thought it fit to have it given him from 
 you, and had it, by your pleasure, invested upon 
 him ; but, although it was acknowledged that 
 he had power to get it, yet he thought fit to 
 make it your free gift. It will not be denied 
 now. A presenting this office by that Parlia- 
 ment, and the open investiture of him in your 
 chair, prove it. Yet, as to this gift of yours, I 
 dare be bold to say, the thing given was hardly 
 understood. By giving of this office, they gave, 
 in the 16th article, the power of their own dis- 
 solution ! 
 
 " It being acknowledged to have been your 
 gift, let us consider what was given, and how 
 given. 
 
 " The gift was the executive power, the ru- 
 ling power : that is, the office of chief magis- 
 trate. All the Legislature was then in the peo- 
 ple. The Commonwealth would not put the 
 executive power out of their hands. For this 
 reason, they set up those shadows, the keepers 
 of the liberties of England, as an executive 
 power, to distinguish it from the Legislature. 
 This, then, was the thing given, and this the 
 Petition and Advice hath made a difficulty of 
 returning ! The power of the purse, indeed, is 
 left us, because they know not how to take it 
 from us. There is no dispute but you have a 
 right to open the people's purse, because kings 
 knew they could not well take it ; but the chief 
 magistrate ! they would not allow you that to 
 give ! 
 
 " Now this power and the office were given, 
 it seems, by the regulation of the Petition and 
 Advice ; the whole executive power of the late 
 king was all given, at one clap, to the late Pro- 
 tector for life. This being given to him, was 
 not given absolutely to any other for life. No- 
 thing was given him more, only the nomination 
 and declaration of a successor, which must be 
 according to law. So says the Petition and 
 Advice. This nomination must first appear be- 
 fore we can say this gentleman is the undoubt- 
 ed Protector. Had I thought this had been 
 said before, I should have spared both you and 
 myself. 
 
 " That which is now brought in, the bill of 
 recognition, takes it for granted that there is no 
 one in possession of the Protectorship ; for it 
 requires that you acknowledge his right and 
 
 title, not that we should acknowledge his per- 
 son, and then inquire what is this right and title. 
 It is hard we should be put upon that. Let us 
 know what this right and title is that we must 
 recognise. But it seems the Parliament that 
 made the petition and advice, they gave it, and 
 we must acknowledge it ! 
 
 " If he hath any right, it must be by one of 
 these three ways : 1 . Either by the grace of 
 God and by God's providence, that if he hath a 
 sword, he may take whatever is within the 
 reach of it, and thus maintain his right. 2. Or 
 as the son of the conqueror. He was, indeed, 
 a conqueror on your behalf, but never of your- 
 selves fit for you to recognise. 3. Or, lastly, 
 by the Petition and Advice. But that cannot 
 be urged until it doth appear that he hath it ac- 
 cording to that. Yet that is only a nomination, 
 which hath nothing of constitution until you 
 have made it. He must come to you for that. 
 I appeal, then, if this has not deserved three 
 days' debate. Deserves it not more to set nails 
 upon it 1 May it not deserve a grand commit- 
 tee, to convince one another in love and unity T 
 
 " Therefore I shall move that this bill may, 
 upon the whole matter, be committed to a grand 
 committee, where reason may prevail. 
 
 " It is not a sudden recognition, a sudden 
 obtaining of the first steps, that will direct us 
 fairly into the room. It must be on an un- 
 shaken foundation that you can ever hope to 
 maintain it against the old line. If you be mind- 
 ed to resort to the old government, you are not 
 many steps from the old family. 'THEY WILL BE 
 
 TOO HARD FOR YOU IF THAT GOVERNMENT BE RE- 
 STORED. 
 
 " Instead of the son of a conqueror by nature, 
 make him a son by adoption. Take him into your 
 own family, and make him such a one as the 
 great One shall direct you. When the army see 
 that they are yours, they will be PROTECTED by 
 you. 
 
 " I would have all names of sectaries laid 
 aside, and righteousness go forward. Let fees 
 and extortions be looked into, which make the 
 laws themselves your oppressors. -I have dis- 
 charged my conscience, and look on it as a 
 special testimony of God's providence that I 
 am here to speak this before you." 
 
 Vane's retirement had not impaired his pow- 
 ers ! It is impossible to imagine, from this out- 
 line, a speech more able in itself, or better 
 adapted to the purpose and position of the 
 speaker ; yet history still excludes such speech- 
 es from her consideration in treating of the 
 questions they refer to.* 
 
 The Republicans were beaten, however, upon 
 the extreme question, and, it being resolved to 
 have the government vested in a " single per- 
 son," Vane was driven to make the hardest 
 fight he could for an extreme limitation of his 
 power. On the 18th of February he addressed 
 the House on this point. 
 
 " I would have the nature of the thing open- 
 ed at little, that is to be the occasion of the 
 farther debate. I shall offer you my thoughts 
 preparatively. You are now bounding the chief 
 magistrate. 
 
 * This, and the other masterly efforts of Vane I shall 
 shortly quote, were published about ten years ago in " Bur- 
 ton's Diary," by Mr. Towill Rutt. They have cot been no- 
 ticed since.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 325 
 
 <( The office of chief magistrate hath some- 
 thing in it essential, and which must be invio- 
 lably kept for him for the necessary preserva- 
 tion of the good of the whole, and the adminis- 
 tration of justice. 
 
 " But it hath also something superfluous, and 
 very chargeable. Such as are : 1. A thing call- 
 ed kingly power, which implies the whole affair 
 of monarchy and prerogative, which are great 
 occasions of vain expenses and waste all the na- 
 tion over. Lay aside this state of kingly power, 
 and keep your chief magistrate. 2. The power 
 of the chief magistrate as to the negative voice. 
 The denying it by you to the chief magistrate 
 as by the law of the nation now set up is fit 
 and requisite. When all these things are in our 
 power, must we dispute it over again between the 
 people and the chief magistrate 1 
 
 " The chief magistrate pretends to a power, 
 not only of executing laws, but to enact laws ; 
 whereas it is the right of all to bind themselves, 
 and to make those laws by which they are to 
 be ruled. If corporations, or any society of 
 men, have a right to make by-laws, surely much 
 more hath this House, which is the representa- 
 tive of the body of the nation. If the interest 
 of the whole nation should lie at one man's- 
 door, it were worse than in the meanest cor- 
 poration, especially to serve a single person, or 
 the interest of a few courtiers or flatterers. 
 
 "Thus it should be, that he should not 
 deny what you find to be for your good. This 
 our laws have declared that the single person 
 ought to grant : leges quas vulgus elegerit. It 
 was urged by Lord Fiennes, who drew the dec- 
 laration, that it was undeniable that the king 
 should not deny laws. 
 
 " This, therefore, is of so great concernment, 
 agreeable to the law of nature and the consti- 
 tution of the nation. It was before though, 
 if it were not, it is now in your power. Great 
 weight was laid upon it in all propositions of 
 peace, and so much weight depends upon it as 
 in the proportion of restraining or binding of 
 power it ought to be a principal ingredient. 
 The chief magistrate may do well without it. 
 
 " On the other side, I would have him possess 
 all things needful to his acting for the people ; all 
 the power to draw in the public spirits of the nation 
 to a public interest ; but not power to do them or you 
 any hurt. This is to make him more like God him- 
 self, who can do none. Flatterers will tell him 
 otherwise ; but they that urish his safety and honour 
 will agree that he shall have power to do everything 
 that is good, and nothing that is hurtful. It is 
 therefore necessary so to bind him as he may grow 
 up with the public interest. 
 
 " It was offered that the militia and negative 
 voice be included in the vote of your chief 
 magistrate. Then it was answered that the 
 previous vote provided that nothing should be 
 binding. It was then allowed the reason. Why 
 is that reason denied now 1 That Parliament 
 that made the other House surely had the legis- 
 lative. They must either own that the legisla- 
 tive power was in that House, else nothing 
 passed to them. If it stand not on that Con- 
 stitution, then it must stand on the old Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 " I shall clear it that we are going to settle 
 that which is fallacious. It will strip you at 
 one time and at one breath. You make void 
 
 all your former expressions, which to me is as 
 clear as day. If they can do none of those 
 things till they have set up a co-ordinate power, 
 then you can pass nothing here, but must have 
 their concurrence. Pass this, and you will 
 have that brought in upon you from the other 
 House, that will confirm the single person in all 
 things that concern him, and so your own lib- 
 erties are left at loose. If you have a mind to 
 do aught for the people, do it clearly. Pronounce 
 your judgment, that the chief magistrate shall have 
 no negative upon the people assembled in Parlia- 
 ment. Do this, else I shall take it for granted 
 that you will have no fruit of your debate, and that 
 you intend nothing for the people." 
 
 The people still the people ! for them he 
 had struggled his whole life through, and still 
 his hopes and objects were fixed alone on them. 
 
 The next effort Vane made against Richard 
 was aimed at him through his administration. 
 On February 21, Secretary Thurloe moved the 
 order of the day for going into details connect- 
 ed with the war, and asked the immediate 
 sanction of the House to the preparation of 
 such shipping and forces as might be necessary 
 to promote the success of a mediation in the 
 affairs of the kings of Sweden and Denmark in 
 relation to the Baltic Sea, and to the command 
 of the Sound, wherein Sweden was to be as- 
 sisted by England, and Denmark by the Dutch. 
 Upon this proposition, very peremptorily urged, 
 Vane rose and said, 
 
 1( I am yet perplexed in my thoughts ; there- 
 fore I shall only mind you of the old order in Par- 
 liament. Upon such reports as this, or letters, or 
 messages from the king, we never looked upon 
 them the same day, but had a jealousy and suspi- 
 cion of some court design in them, to engage us in 
 such rash designs before we knew where we were. 
 
 " I do not say there is any such thing now, 
 but it looks like some such thing. I told you, 
 at first, that I feared matter of money was our 
 chief concern. I fear still the same thing is 
 now intended, in that we must not have leave 
 to sleep so much as one night upon it. We 
 must give a million of money by a side wind ! 
 Sure we must find out this money, and yet we 
 must not sleep upon it ! I dare not think of 
 the sad consequence of this, unless your wis- 
 doms will disintricate you in it. 
 
 " It hath been the great wisdom of princes, 
 that heretofore have had to do with the House 
 of Commons, who see not at first the sad con- 
 ;equences of things, to make a war, and then 
 presently to make a peace, and then put up the 
 money that was given them towards the pretended 
 war. I do not say such things are now, but I 
 desire we may sleep upon this at least forty- 
 eight hours. 
 
 ' I perceive many things are taken for grant- 
 ed, of which I am not yet fully satisfied : 1. 
 That the King of Denmark must be dispos- 
 sessed. 2. That we must fit ourselves to take 
 jossession of some part of it, like birds of prey. 
 3. That Holland is your enemy already. 
 
 " If it be our interest that Sweden should be 
 mperor of the Baltic Seas, I should be very 
 glad to understand how. 
 
 ' France may, perhaps, be willing to engage 
 us in this quarrel ; and when we are engaged, he 
 will be as fit to bridge over somebody else as any 
 other. I move for Thursday or Friday."
 
 326 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 The government were here assailed in a 
 weak point, and were at last obliged to give 
 way. Three days after Vane again spoke to 
 the same question, in answer to Thurloe. He 
 insisted on a series of gross errors that had 
 been committed, in promoting peace with Hol- 
 land instead of war, in stirring up war with 
 Spain instead of settling peace, and in flinging 
 English influence at the feet of the most de- 
 spotic minister of Europe, the Cardinal Mazarin. 
 
 " We are not yet at the bottom. Many con- 
 siderable things have been offered in the last 
 matter of fact by Mr. Secretary. 
 
 " What is declared is to me very satisfactory. 
 He assures us there is no engagement, nothing 
 of any private treaty between us and the Swede, 
 that he knows of. But may there not be an 
 underhand, secret treaty, that he knows not of? 
 I have heard something to that purpose, and 
 upon very good intelligence, that there is an 
 engagement. 
 
 " If the good providence of God had not in- 
 terrupted it, I believe the question had not now 
 been to have been decided by you. The fleet 
 should have gone long since, but it was pre- 
 vented ; and if it had gone, this debate had 
 been determined before this time. But I shall 
 not go upon that ground, but only upon the 
 grounds that are offered, and suit my discourse 
 to that. 
 
 " The coalition with that state, the Dutch, 
 if it had been well pursued, you had shut out 
 all correspondency with the Spanish interest. 
 
 " I am not able to see through it, nor to un- 
 derstand how the whole style of managing the 
 peace with Holland, and war with Spain, hath 
 been agreeable at all to the interest of the state, 
 but rather very much to the interest of a single 
 person. 
 
 " The interest then used, and the endeavour- 
 ing to bring the two nations to a coalition, 
 which had made a great progress, would have 
 drawn off the States wholly from the Spanish 
 interest, which now mingles much in their 
 counsels ; and if that had been then followed 
 home, it would have made that state at that 
 time wholly yours. If, when you sent ten 
 thousand men to Jamaica, where you have left 
 your dead men to your reproach, you had sent 
 the same fleet to the Sound and fallen upon 
 the Dutch, that would have done your business. 
 You might have been a great way in Germany, 
 and have made an emperor there yourself. 
 
 " That which increases my jealousy is, that 
 I see this affair all along managed but to sup- 
 port the interest of a single person, and not for the 
 public good, the people's interest. 
 
 " Our counsels have been mingled with 
 France, and taken from the cardinal, who goeth 
 upon the most tyrannical principles of govern- 
 ment in the world. The French put us upon 
 this remote design ; and out of that bow, I 
 doubt, comes this shaft, to be sent into the 
 Sound. Looks not this like a principle of Car- 
 dinal Mazarin, for your single person to get a 
 fleet into his hands 1 
 
 " I know no reason you have to send a fleet 
 indefinitely, implicitly upon this design. The 
 Swede is absolute possessor of both sides of 
 the Sound, and he will make sure of the pas- 
 sage too, if you do but assist him ; and when 
 he hath it, he must either give it you by new 
 
 treaty, or you must take it out of his hands by 
 force. 
 
 " When one half was in the Dane's handa, 
 and the other in the Swede's, it was then best 
 for us, for we might be as necessary to the 
 Dane as any other. And now France, when 
 they see an opportunity, can easily resent for- 
 mer injuries. This business is not fit to be so 
 openly debated ; it requires more secrecy. 
 
 " A twofold necessity has been thought of, 
 and is put upon you : 1. It is not to be delayed 
 till to-morrow. That will be too late. This is 
 the very nick of time, and they put it upon you 
 with so great necessity, that all other argu- 
 ments must receive no favour. 2. You must 
 transmit wholly to the disposal of your single 
 person to do what he pleases. There is nothing 
 lost in the preparations of the fleet. Your offi- 
 cers, I believe, are all commissioned upon that 
 presumption, that the militia is already in him. 
 Naught will satisfy unless the militia be grant- 
 ed in the single person within twenty-four hours. 
 
 "In answer to the objection: 1. The vote 
 will not seclude us, unless the disposal be in 
 the single person, and by that you give away 
 implicitly the power of the militia before you 
 have asserted your OWD right or taken it upon 
 yourselves. Oh ! but you make the single per- 
 son no other than a committee-man ! 
 
 " Yet, though loath to own it, lest you come to a 
 commonwealth again, so dangerous, not so much 
 as advice will be admitted ! 
 
 "2. And as you do not assert your right in 
 the militia, so you do not assert your interest, 
 or take that part of it that belongs to you in the 
 very business before you. You must have the 
 persons' names brought in to you to be ap- 
 proved. It is told you, you are not able here 
 to make or manage peace or war ! your com- 
 mander-in-chief must do it. I hope you will 
 express your interest as well as a declaration. 
 Assert the practice as well as the right of the 
 militia. Be assured of the faithfulness of the 
 Commonwealth ; first, of those persons that 
 you send. I hope you will have an able com- 
 mander, and one that hath given good testimo- 
 ny of his good affection towards you. 
 
 " 3. You must at one day give up all the in- 
 terest in the militia upon the necessity that is 
 urged upon you ; the necessity that it must be 
 done in this manner, and no other way. 
 
 " You have better methods ! 1. Assert your 
 militia to be in you. 2. Refer it to your com- 
 missioners to see that no delay be in it. 3. 
 Have your officers before you, and approve of 
 them. 4. Appoint a committee of your own to 
 advise about disposing of this to the most pub- 
 lic advantage." 
 
 This speech produced a very great effect. 
 Its last recommendations in especial were most 
 subtilely and effectively aimed. They revived 
 the old disputes between the Long Parliament 
 and Charles, which had so many significant as- 
 sociations connected with them, and brought 
 back in its full force the startling question he 
 had put to them in his previous speech of the 
 9th of February, " SHALL WE BE UNDER-BUILDERS 
 TO SUPREME STUART 1" Shall we lay the found- 
 ation of a system that must bring a " Charles 
 the Second" back to us sooner or later! 
 
 Some days after this, on the 1st of March, 
 1658, we accordingly find the old dispute upon
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 327 
 
 the source of Richard's power, the famou 
 " Petition and Advice" to bind the present Par 
 liament, and the propriety of admitting of the 
 title of the " other House" (as the miserable 
 assembly of Lords was contemptuously called; 
 again in discussion. Vane's speech ran thus . 
 " The more I consider this, the more difficul 
 ty I meet with. I have my eye upon the Peti 
 tion and Advice ; and if you consider how things 
 are left, upon the death of the late Protector 
 by that Petition and Advice, I am sure, unles 
 you shut your eyes, you may see that you are tht 
 undoubted legislative power of the nation, even ii 
 that Constitution by which you are called, and the 
 Protector himself proclaimed. 
 
 " 1. You know, when the Recognition was 
 pressed, how much it was urged that the Pro 
 lector should be made out to be so, according 
 to the Petition and Advice, namely, by due nom 
 ination, which hath never been done unto this 
 day. The declaration of his highness appears 
 not! 
 
 " Admit that he was duly nominated himself ; 
 yet there is no power in that Petition and Ad- 
 vice for this Protector to nominate another 
 House : and that power in him is defective, be- 
 cause it was singly given to the late Protector. 
 "I would have you first examine whether 
 those now sitting have any foundation, as now 
 called, by that law ; there will be no cause of 
 complaint against you by keeping to that rule. 
 " / understand not that objection that we are 
 sinew-shrunk and manacled, and cannot proceed ; 
 that we can effect nothing unless we transact 
 with these men. You have as much power to 
 make a House of Lords with the concurrence 
 of the Protector as the last Parliament had. 
 
 " I thought you would have gone to clear the 
 rights and liberties of the people, and to have 
 passed that between you and his highness, 
 without owning the other House. 
 
 " Sir, we have as much power as those that 
 made the Petition and Advice. It is but the 
 using of the just power. We are wandering and 
 cannot find the door, so great and wilful blind- 
 ness is upon us. It has pleased God to con- 
 found us in our debates, that we cannot, in a 
 third, come to a question, because we wander 
 from our Constitution. 
 
 " Cannot we despatch the business of this 
 Parliament, and leave the other House alone 
 till next Parliament 1 Why may it not be left 
 till then! Keep but true to the things you 
 have already. I know not how we are limited. 
 Discourse abroad says your vote is with them. 
 How it comes, I know not ! 
 
 " It will be told you next that a House of 
 Commons is unnecessary, and out of your ruins 
 the Seventy shall be built up ! Consider clear- 
 ly whether this House now sitting have any 
 foundation, by this calling, to sit upon the Pe- 
 tition and Advice. If they have not, I think 
 you are as fit to advise about calling them as 
 the council that called them." 
 
 Six days later, these questions assumed a 
 more serious shape, and a very long and ardu- 
 ous debate was taken on the question of recog- 
 nising this House of Lords, which Secretary 
 Thurloe, with amazing assurance, urged was 
 as much entitled to existence under the " Peti- 
 tion and Advice" as the House of Commons or 
 the protectorate. This called up Vane, who 
 
 gave way to greater passion, and even fierce- 
 ness of manner, than he had ever shown before. 
 The terrible intensity of every word in this 
 speech is truly astonishing. 
 
 " I am very sorry to trouble you so late. 
 Could I satisfy myself with these grounds that 
 have been offered, I should not trouble you. 
 
 " If you pass in the negative, all the power is 
 here. If the contrary, I dare say then all the pow- 
 er is gone hence. 
 
 " I conceive, in passing this in the negative, 
 you do bring all power into this House, but not 
 into that way of a commonwealth. 
 
 " When the power of king or House of Lords is 
 melted dmen into this House, it is in the people by 
 the law of nature and reason. Death, and tract 
 of time, may melt it and bring it down, but this 
 shall never die. Where is then the anarchy, the 
 sneaking oligarchy 1 
 
 " The representative body never dies, who- 
 ever die. Provision is made for it. By the 
 law of the land, they could have come together 
 if there had been no protector de facto. You 
 are ever thus. 
 
 " You have voted a protector de facto, and 
 put it in a way of a bill, to put it de jure, and I 
 hear no arguments now against it ! 
 
 The question is not now whether the Peti- 
 tion and Advice shall be a law, but whether it 
 shall be so far as it is argued to be a law ; or 
 whether it be not a lame law, to bring in king, 
 Lords, and Commons, insensibly. 
 
 " It was told you by Mr. Attorney, of the 
 duchy, that this was a restitution. But it is 
 not told you how the power came into the hands 
 of your old servants, that turned you out of 
 doors. 
 
 As to the Petition and Advice, they decla- 
 red here that it was made elsewhere ; and they 
 ave you no more than they thought Jit a mere 
 show ! 
 
 " A new family ; one peer in the room of anoth- 
 r ; and here's face about again ! 
 
 " Consider the fate of that king. I wonder to 
 icar arguments of force used. 
 
 " If you pass this, you pass all. The question 
 s as catching as that of the French king. 
 When I consider how comprehensive this 
 question is, I wonder how it should be thought 
 ,o pass in the affirmative. 
 
 1. You admit this ' House' to be a rightful 
 louse, upon the same rightful foot with your- 
 self. You admit them to be fit and meet per- 
 sons, and that this is for the good of the people. 
 2. You set up a means to perpetuate an arbitrary 
 ower over you, to lay yourselves aside, and makt 
 ou forever useless I may say odious forever ! 
 
 "You settle 130,000 per annum, such as 
 lever was done. You have granted the excise 
 nd customs forever, and farmed them in such 
 a way as to make the people cry out their gov- 
 rnors are very unnatural. The people would 
 lever part with customs. You can relieve no 
 rievances. 
 
 " Formerly you might have gone alone. Pos- 
 ession you see how far it goes. 
 
 " The sore is, they are afraid that you should 
 o alone to his highness and complain of his 
 neaking counsellors ! 
 
 " God is almighty ! 
 
 " Will not you trust him with the consequen- 
 es 1 He that has unsettled a monarchy of so many
 
 328 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 descents in peaceable times, and brought you to tf 
 top of your liberties, though he drive you back f( 
 a while into the wilderness, he will bring you baa 
 He is a wiser workman than to reject his ow 
 work. 
 
 " Go you on to advise with his highness 
 Advise him, in his tender years, of the mal-admin 
 istration ! I know no hinderance but you ma 
 transact with his highness alone, and agree o 
 another House' in the best way for the goo 
 of the nation." 
 
 The effect of this speech was so great, tha 
 upon an actual division of the English member 
 it is thought the Republicans must have won 
 the day. The Scotch and Irish nominees of th 
 crown once more turned the balance agains 
 them. 
 
 Against these nominees Vane now directec 
 his assaults. On the 9th of March he startled 
 the House by telling them that in present cir- 
 cumstances they were no House, and thai 
 " they had been out of order ever since they 
 sat." Upon a point of order he rose and said, 
 " I could not attend you yesterday in your 
 great debate. If I understand anything of or- 
 der, you have been out of order ever since you 
 sat. Till this was cleared, you ought to have 
 done naught but choose your speaker. 
 
 " It arises thus to me. As your question was 
 last Parliament whether you would keep out so 
 many members as that those that were in might 
 make the Petition and Advice, now the ques- 
 tion is whether you shall take in so many as 
 are not members that may confirm it. You pro- 
 pose to transact with those persons here that 
 have no foundation, that you may transact with 
 persons that have no law to be another House. 
 By this means you have subverted your own 
 foundation. Your wisdom will be concerned in 
 it to part with a prize in your hands that you 
 know not how to manage. Again, it must be 
 considered that they should withdraw while 
 this debate is afoot. Otherwise they will hang 
 upon you perpetually as a negative. As you 
 lay your foundation, so will the weight of it be. 
 You will look for peace, and have none. 
 
 " The vote for the single person passed with 
 the greatest unanimity that ever was. When 
 a man is asleep, he finds no hunger till he wake. 
 / doubt the people of England will be hungry when 
 they awake ! 
 
 " A greater imposition never was by a single 
 person upon a Parliament, to put 60 votes upon 
 you. By this means, it shall be brought upon 
 you insensibly to vote by Scotch and Irish mem- 
 bers, to enforce all your votes hereafter." 
 
 It is a remarkable proof of the surpassing in- 
 fluence of Vane and the party he chiefly repre- 
 sented in this House, that notwithstanding even 
 these nominees, and all the scandalous re- 
 sources which had been employed to influence 
 the elections, the Republicans actually managed 
 in the end to achieve a majority upon the omis- 
 sion of the word " undoubted" from the recog- 
 nition of the Protector's title. 
 
 The last speech I shall notice in Burton's 
 Diary of this Parliament attests Vane's impar- 
 tial justice and humanity. A petition had been 
 presented to the House on the part of seventy 
 persons, Royalist prisoners, who had some 
 _years before been sent to Barbadoes. It ap- 
 pears that when they arrived, after much ill- 
 
 treatment, at the place of their destination, they 
 were sold in the public market. It was alleged, 
 however, in answer to the petition, by some of 
 the Protector's party, that their slavery was 
 limited to five years, and that a distinction was 
 made in favour of their condition above that of 
 the negroes who worked in the cultivation 
 and preparation of sugar. These face-making 
 friends of liberty protested, besides, that these 
 men had basely resisted the cause of the right 
 faith, and deserved extreme punishment. Most 
 admirably did Vane answer them. A better re- 
 tort was never made, nor was ever the distinc- 
 tion between hostilities, public and private, or 
 between sincere enemies and false friends, 
 more exquisitely given. The allusion from 
 Lucretius, at the close, is in perfect keeping 
 with the whole. 
 
 I do not look on this business as a cavalier- 
 ish business, but as a matter that concerns the 
 liberty of the freeborn people of England. 
 
 " To be used in this barbarous manner, put 
 under hatches, to see no light till they came 
 thither, and sold there for 100 such was the 
 
 ase of this Thomas ! 
 
 " I am glad to hear the old cause so well resent' 
 ed ; that we have a sense and loathing of the tyran- 
 ny of the late king, and of all that tread in his 
 steps, to impose on liberty and property! As I 
 hould be glad to see any discouragement upon 
 .he Cavaliers, so I should be glad to see any dis- 
 couragement and indignation of yours against such 
 icrsons as tread in Charles Stuart's steps, who- 
 ever they be. The end of the major-generals 
 was good as to keeping down that party, but 
 he precedent was dangerous. 
 
 " Let us not be led away. Whenever the 
 ables turn, the same will be imposed upon your 
 >est men that is now designed to the worst. 
 There is a fallacy and subtlety on both hands. 
 
 would have you be as vigilant against that 
 arty as you can ; but if you find the liberty and 
 iroperty of the people of England thus violated, 
 ake occasion from these ill precedents to make 
 good laws. 
 
 " That which makes me hate the Cavaliers is 
 heir cause, and when I sec others hate their cause, 
 ' shall believe them that they hate their persons. 
 detest and abhor them as much as any. Let 
 s not have new Cavaliers and old. Let us 
 ate it in those that tread in their steps as well as 
 n themselves. Be not cozened by popularity on 
 tie one hand, in complaints of this nature, noron 
 tie other hand swallow up your liberties and 
 roperties. Do not that which is bonum only, 
 ut bone." 
 
 An extraordinary party, meanwhile, had been 
 ormed without the doors of the House. It 
 as supposed, by a large class of the more lib- 
 ral section of Cromwell's officers, that Vane's 
 bjects might at last prevail, such was the ir- 
 esistible power and energy with which, unsub- 
 ued and unrelaxing, he still urged them for- 
 ward. They now suddenly resolved upon the 
 olicy of hastening their achievement by forcing 
 dissolution of the present corrupt House ; and 
 
 petition had accordingly been prepared by 
 lese men, and was forwarded through the 
 ands of Fleetwood, the young Protector's 
 rother-in-law, and Desborough, his uncle, to 
 ichard, requesting him to dissolve the Parlia- 
 ment. Richard, in alarm, accordingly despatch-
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 329 
 
 ed the keeper of the seal, as he was bidden, to 
 dissolve the Houses ; but, having received infor- 
 mation of the design, the House of Commons 
 determined not to be dissolved, ordered their 
 doors to be closed, and the gentleman usher of 
 the black rod to be refused the permission of 
 entry. Some of the members abruptly quitted 
 the House. It was voted that the fugitives 
 should be called back, and that no member 
 should henceforth quit his place without leave. 
 The Protector's summons to attend him in the 
 House of Lords was not obeyed ; and while the 
 usher unsuccessfully pressed for admittance, it 
 is said* that Vane, resolved to use even this last 
 opportunity of bringing Richard into contempt, 
 rose, and addressed the speaker in these words : 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, Among all the people of the 
 universe, I know none who have shown so 
 much zeal for the liberty of their country as the 
 English at this time have done : they have, by 
 the help of divine Providence, overcome all ob- 
 stacles, and have made themselves free. We 
 have driven away the hereditary tyranny of 
 the house of Stuart, at the expense of much 
 blood and treasure, in hopes of enjoying hered- 
 itary liberty, after having shaken off the yoke 
 of kingship ; and there is not a man among us 
 who could have imagined that any person would 
 be so bold as to dare to attempt the ravishing 
 from us that freedom, which cost us so much 
 blood and so much labour. But so it happens, 
 I know not by what misfortune, we are fallen 
 into the error of those who poisoned the Em- 
 peror Titus to make room for Domitian, who 
 made away Augustus that they might have 
 Tiberius, and changed Claudius for Nero. ] 
 am sensible these examples are foreign from 
 my subject, since the Romans in those days 
 were buried in lewdness and luxury, whereas 
 the people of England are now renowned all 
 over the world for their great virtue and disci- 
 pline, and yet suffer an idiot without courage, 
 without sense, nay, without ambition, to have 
 dominion in a country of liberty ! One could 
 bear a little with Oliver Cromwell, though, con- 
 trary to his oath of fidelity to the Parliament, 
 contrary to his duty to the public, contrary to 
 the respect he owed that venerable body from 
 whom he received his authority, he usurped 
 the government. His merit was so extraordi- 
 nary, that our judgments, our passions, might 
 be blinded by it. He made his way to empire 
 by the most illustrious actions ; he had under 
 his command an army that had made him a 
 conqueror, and a people that had made him 
 their general. But as for Richard Cromwell 
 his son, who is he 1 what are his titles 1 We 
 have seen that he had a sword by his side ; but 
 did he ever draw it 1 And, what is of more 
 importance in this case, is he fit to get obedi- 
 ence from a mighty nation, who could never 
 make a footman obey him 1 Yet we must rec- 
 ognise this man as our king, under the style of 
 Protector ! a man without birth, without cour- 
 age, without conduct. For my part, I declare, 
 sir, it shall never be said that I made such a 
 man my master." 
 
 Richard Cromwell never appeared in public 
 again. The government continued for a short 
 
 * By the authors of the Biographia Brittanica, Oldmixon, 
 and others. The speech is not in Burton, because that di- 
 ary abruptly closes before the day in question. 
 
 TT 
 
 time to be administered in his name, but he 
 was himself " null and void." 
 
 After his formal abdication, which speedily 
 followed, an open coalition was announced be- 
 tween the Republicans and the more liberal 
 division of officers, by the leaders of the re- 
 spective parties, Vane and Fleetwood. The 
 result of this was the resuscitation of the fa- 
 mous Long Parliament, and the administration 
 of the government, for a short period, on Re- 
 publican principles. But for many reasons, 
 which need not be discussed here, the cause 
 was soon found hopeless. Upon the subse- 
 quent rupture between the Parliament and the 
 officers, Vane adhered to the latter, as the last 
 resource against Monk in favour of a republic, 
 accepted a commission,* and was ultimately, 
 when that inextinguishable Parliament revived 
 itself again, carried under arrest for it into his 
 seat in Lincolnshire. This adhesion to the 
 officers has nevertheless been truly called " one 
 of those acts which prove Vane a sagacious and 
 sound politician." He saw that the Common- 
 wealth could be saved only by union with the 
 army. He detected earlier than any other the 
 designs of Monk, but strove in vain to collect 
 materials for their overthrow. Hazlerig and 
 his silly associates of the Long Parliament were 
 meanwhile in process of cajolement to their 
 heart's content. Vane stayed at Belleau, now 
 confident of the worst ; and never at any time 
 had Oliver Cromwell's despotism struck him so 
 with anger or with shame, as when he now re- 
 flected on that state of indifference to liberty 
 into which it had brought his countrymen. 
 
 I will rapidly sketch the general features of 
 his conduct before his arrest, and then proceed 
 to the " Restoration." During his adhesion to 
 the officers, he was appointed one of the com- 
 mittee of safety, to whom the supreme and en- 
 tire power of the country was intrusted, until 
 Parliament could make farther arrangements. 
 The authority of this committee was to con- 
 tinue only for eight days. A council of state 
 was subsequently agreed upon, and on the 13th 
 of May he was nominated one of its members. 
 He was also, at that time, chairman of a com- 
 mittee of this council, to whom the whole mil- 
 itary and naval force of the country was com- 
 mitted, with power to make all appointments in 
 each branch of the service. Soon afterward a 
 special commission was formed to administer 
 the affairs of the admiralty, and he was placed 
 at its head. In September, 1659, he was made 
 president of the council, and continued to serve 
 in every important trust, as the leading mem- 
 ber of committees of safety, and other execu- 
 tive and legislative committees. Upon one of 
 the latter committees, he discharged his last 
 noble effort for the great cause his life had been 
 
 * This was made matter of charge against him on his 
 trial. He observed upon it thus : " That which remains of 
 farther charge yet to me is the business of a regiment, an 
 employment which I can in truth affirm mine own inclina- 
 tions, nature, and breeding little fitted me for, and which 
 was intended only as honorary and titular, with relation to 
 volunteers who, by their application to the council of state, 
 in a time of great commotions, did propound their own offi- 
 cers, and, without any seeking of mine, or my considering 
 any farther of it than as the use of my name, did, among 
 Others, nominate me for a colonel, which the council of state
 
 330 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 devoted to, by reporting a bill for the future 
 and permanent settlement of the government, 
 of which the following were the heads : 
 
 " 1. That the supreme power, delegated by 
 the people to their trustees, ought to be in some 
 fundamentals not dispensed with ;" that is, that 
 a CONSTITUTION ought to be drawn up and es- 
 tablished, specifying the principles by which 
 the successive " trustees," or representatives 
 assembled under it, should be guided and re- 
 strained in the conduct of the government, and 
 clearly stating those particulars in which they 
 would not be permitted to legislate or act. 2. 
 One point, which was to be determined and 
 fixed in this Constitution, so that no legislative 
 power should ever be able to alter or move it, 
 was this : " That it is destructive to the peo- 
 ple's liberties (to which, by God's blessing, they 
 are fully restored) to admit any earthly king, or 
 single person, to the legislative or executive 
 power over this nation." 3. The only other 
 principle reported as fundamental, and to be 
 placed at the very basis of the Constitution, 
 was this : " That the supreme power is not in- 
 trusted to the people's trustees, to erect mat- 
 ters of faith and worship, so as to exercise 
 compulsion therein." 
 
 Such services as these, however, were past 
 forever, for the people were now drunk with 
 the orgies of the " Restoration." Upon the 
 occurrence of this event, Vane left his seat in 
 Lincolnshire, and came up to a favourite resi- 
 dence he had at Hampstead, near London.* 
 He was not " conscious of having done any- 
 thing in relation to public affairs for which he 
 could not willingly and cheerfully suffer." He 
 had taken no share in the trial or death of 
 Charles I., and the new king had graciously 
 promised a wide and merciful indemnity. But 
 in the early part of July, 1660, he was arrested 
 at Hampstead and flung into the Tower. 
 
 Lord Clarendon was the author of this meas- 
 ure. A glance at the proceedings by which 
 Vane was excepted from the indemnity shows 
 it beyond the possibility of doubt. Long de- 
 bates, and many conferences between the two 
 Houses of Parliament, had taken place previ- 
 ously to the passing of that act. The House 
 of Commons proposed to subject to capital pun- 
 ishments those alone who had been immediately 
 concerned in the trial and execution of Charles 
 I., at the same time not exempting other offend- 
 ers from penalties and forfeitures. The king 
 himself, in a soeech addressed to the Lords on 
 the subject of the Act of Indemnity, assured 
 the House that he never had entertained a 
 thought of excepting any besides those imme- 
 diately concerned in the murder of his father, 
 and begged them not to exclude others from 
 the benefit of the act. This mercy and indul- 
 gence, the king said, would be the best way to 
 bring them to repentance, and the safest expe- 
 dient to prevent future mischief. The House 
 of Lords, however, urged the necessity of ex- 
 cluding Vane, and this was distinctly on Clar- 
 endon's suggestion. In one of the conferen- 
 ces, the " Lord-chancellor Hyde" advised the 
 exclusion of Vane as " a man of mischievous 
 activity." The Commons opposed this for some 
 time. At length, after three conferences, they 
 agreed to except him, on a suggestion from the 
 
 Ludlow, vol. iii., p. 111. 
 
 lord-chancellor that the two Houses should petition 
 the king to spare his life. A petition of the two 
 Houses was accordingly presented, praying the 
 king, on behalf of Sir Henry Vane, that if he 
 should be attainted, his execution might be re- 
 mitted. The king received the petition and 
 granted the request. Even Bishop Burnet ad- 
 mits the king gave a favourable answer, though 
 in general words. On his trial Vane pleaded 
 the royal promise in his defence, and the fact 
 of such a promise was not denied by the coun- 
 sel for the prosecution. The promise itself 
 was absolutely read in the court. 
 
 During these debates the illustrious prisoner 
 had been moved from prison to prison, and was 
 at length immured in a solitary castle on one 
 of the isles of Scilly. 
 
 Here he was deliberately kept till a more 
 pliant Parliament could be got together for the 
 purposes of his murder. It is not a harsh ex- 
 pression to use in this case. From the moment 
 of the restoration, Charles and his chancellor 
 had resolved upon the murder of Vane. They 
 procured his exception from the indemnity act 
 by a trick, and now waited till a House of Com- 
 mons, more slavish and more zealous for roy- 
 alty than that of the Convention Parliament, 
 could be set on to clamour for his death. 
 
 For two years, necessary to the completion 
 of this diabolical plan, he was kept a prisoner ; 
 and here, on Scilly, while waiting this slow ap- 
 proach of vengeance, in the solitary and dismal 
 recesses of a desolate castle, he lost neither his 
 lofty spirit nor his calm philosophy. Although 
 separated from his family and friends, and sev- 
 ered, as it were, from the earth itself, shut out 
 from the light of heaven and the intercourse of 
 man, hearing no sound but the dashing of the 
 ocean's waves against the foundation stones, 
 and the howling of its storms among the tur- 
 rets of his feudal prison, his soul was serene 
 and unruffled, the abode of peace and light. 
 Religion and philosophy, to whose service he 
 had devoted his great faculties and pure affec- 
 tions in the days of his ardent youth and glo- 
 rious manhood, when power and prosperity 
 were his lot, and the world was bright before 
 him, now came to solace, and cheer, and bless 
 him in the reverse of his earthly fortunes, and 
 when the dark clouds were gathering around 
 the close of his career. " Although," pursues 
 an eloquent writer, speaking of him at this pe- 
 riod, "to human eye all his efforts had failed, 
 and the cause of liberty was utterly lost and 
 undone, when even hope itself had fled from 
 every other breast, he did not despond. Not 
 a shadow of doubt passed over his spirit. His 
 confidence was founded upon a rock, and his 
 faith in the promises of God disclosed to his 
 clear and heaven-illumined vision the sure 
 prospect of the happy period when there would 
 be no more tyranny or oppression on the earth. 
 He felt that the hour of his final trial was rap- 
 idly approaching ; and, although there was a 
 constitutional delicacy and tenderness in his 
 nature, which had even made him so sensitive 
 to physical suffering as to lead his enemies to 
 charge him with a want of personal courage, 
 he contemplated death with a singular calmness 
 and complacency of spirit. And well he might ; 
 for when he looked back over his life, his mind 
 rested with a just satisfaction upon the faithful
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 331 
 
 and constant devotion of his talents to the 
 cause of God and his people ; and when he 
 turned towards the future, he contemplated, 
 with a glorious hope and blessed assurance, the 
 rewards in reserve for sincerity, benevolence, 
 and piety, in that world where the wicked 
 cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." 
 
 Some of the writings with which this im- 
 prisonment was thus dignified and solaced hap- 
 pily remain on record. It was here he wrote 
 the " People's Case Stated," which I have al- 
 ready fully described, and other religious works, 
 in accordance with the pure faith and the ele- 
 vated doctrine which have also received ample 
 illustration in these pages. Other fragments 
 of works remain, and are, many of them, of a 
 deeply touching character. He wrote of " Gov- 
 ernment," of" Religion,"of " Life," of" Death," 
 of " Friends," of " Enemies," with all the calm- 
 ness of an ancient philosopher, but in the deep- 
 est and most generous spirit of diviner Chris- 
 tianity. The GOOD OLD CAUSE was now appa- 
 rently lost forever. All its greatest friends 
 had sunk into the grave, or were wandering in 
 exile, or immured in dungeons, or perishing on 
 the scaffold. His own blood was, he well knew, 
 thirsted after by powerful enemies ; yet he con- 
 templated all things as he had ever contempla- 
 ted them ; he saw all the objects of his glorious 
 life as they had ever been present with him, 
 save only that now his hope was gone of him- 
 self surviving to witness their achievement. 
 
 " The people's cause, whom God after trial 
 hath declared free, is a righteous one, though 
 not so prudently and righteously managed as it 
 might and ought to have been. God's doom is 
 therefore justly executed upon us, with what 
 intent and jugglings soever it was prosecuted 
 by men." 
 
 In his Meditations on Death, he regarded 
 that event not only with cheerful fortitude, but 
 in the profoundest spirit of philosophy. 
 
 " Death is the inevitable law God and nature 
 have put upon us. Things certain should not 
 be feared, but expected. Things doubtful only 
 are to be feared. Death, instead of taking away 
 anything from us, gives us all, even the perfec- 
 tion of our natures ; sets us at liberty both from 
 our own bodily desires and others' domination ; 
 makes the servant free from his master. It 
 doth not bring us into darkness, but takes dark- 
 ness out of us, us out of darkness, and puts us 
 into marvellous light. Nothing perishes or is 
 dissolved by death but the veil and covering, 
 which is wont to be done away from all ripe 
 fruit. It brings us out of a dark dungeon, 
 through the crannies whereof our sight of light 
 is but weak and small, and brings us into an 
 open liberty, an estate of light and life, unveiled 
 and perpetual. It takes us out of that mortal- 
 ity which began in the womb of our mother, 
 and now ends to bring us into that life which 
 shall never end. This day, which thou fearest 
 as thy last, is thy birthday into eternity. 
 
 "Death holds a high place in the policy and 
 great commonwealth of the world. It is very 
 profitable for the succession and continuance 
 of the works of nature. 
 
 " The fading corruption and loss of this life 
 is the passage into a better. Death is no less 
 essential to us than to live or to be born. In 
 flying death thou flyest thyself: thy essence is 
 
 equally parted into these two, life and death. 
 It is the condition and law of thy creation. 
 Men are not sent into the world by God but 
 with purpose to go forth again ; which he that 
 is not willing to do, should not come in. 
 
 " The first day of thy birth bindeth thee and 
 sets thee in the way as well to death as to life. 
 To be unwilling therefore to die, is to be un- 
 willing to be a man, since to be a man is to be 
 mortal. It being therefore so serviceable to 
 nature and the institution of it, why should it 
 be feared or shunlted 1 Besides, it is necessary 
 and inevitable : we must do our best endeavour 
 in things that are not remediless, but ought to 
 grow resolute in things past remedy. 
 
 " It is most just, reasonable, and desirable to 
 arrive at that place towards which we are al- 
 ways walking. Why fearest thou to go whither 
 all the world goes 1 It is the part of a valiant 
 and generous mind to prefer some things before 
 life, as things for which a man should not doubt 
 nor fear to die. In such a case, however mat- 
 ters go, a man must more account thereof than 
 of his life. He must run his race with resolu- 
 tion, that he may perform things profitable and 
 exemplary. 
 
 " The contempt of death is that which pro- 
 duceth the boldest and most honourable ex- 
 ploits. He that fears not to die, fears nothing. 
 From hence have proceeded the commendable 
 resolutions and free speeches of virtue, uttered 
 by men of whom the world has not been wor- 
 thy."* 
 
 Of " Life" he had then instructed himself to 
 think as only the passage to a place where 
 knowledge and virtue would be better achieved 
 after the body was in the grave : 
 
 "There is a time to live and a time to die. 
 A good death is far better and more eligible 
 than an ill life. A wise man lives but so long 
 as his life is more worth than his death. The 
 longer life is not always the better. To what 
 end serves a long life ? Simply to live, breathe, 
 eat, drink, and see this world. What needs so 
 long a time for all this 1 Methinks we should 
 
 * Again, in another passage of this exquisite fragment, 
 he says, " True natural wisdom pursueth the learning and 
 practice of dying well, as the very end of life ; and, indeed, 
 he hath not spent his life ill that hath learned to die well. 
 It is the chiefest thing and duty of life. The knowledge o{ 
 dying is the knowledge of liberty, the state of true freedom, 
 the way to fear nothing, to live well, contentedly, and peace- 
 ably. Without this there is no more pleasure in life than 
 in tha fruition of that thing which a man feareth always to 
 lose. In order to which, we must above all endeavour that 
 our sins may die, and that we see them dead before our- 
 selves, which alone can give us boldness in the day of judg- 
 ment, and make us always ready and prepared for death. 
 Death is not to be feared and fled from, as it is by most, but 
 sweetly and patiently to be waited for, as a thing natural, 
 reasonable, and inevitable." 
 
 I cannot resist giving one extract more, in which we find 
 two thoughts expressed almost literally in Shakspeare's 
 words : " It is a good time to die, when to live is rather a 
 burden than a blessing, and there is more ill in life than 
 good. There are many things in life far worse than death, 
 in respect whereof we should rather die than live. The 
 more voluntary our death is, the more honourable. Life 
 may be taken away from every man by every man, but not 
 death. 
 
 " It is a great point of wisdom to know the right hour and 
 fit season to die. Many men have survived their own glory 
 That is the best death which is well recollected in itself, 
 quiet, solitary, and attendeth wholly to what at that time is 
 fittest. 
 
 " They that live by faith die daily. The life which faith 
 teaches works death. It leads up the mind to things not 
 seen, which are eternal, and takes it off, with its affection} 
 and desires, from things seen, which are temporary."
 
 332 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 soon be tired with the daily repetition of these 
 and the like vanities. Would we live long to 
 gain knowledge, experience, and virtue 1 This 
 seems an honest design, but is better to be had 
 other ways by good men, when their bodies are 
 in the grave." 
 
 In another most beautiful passage on this 
 subject, his peculiar religious faith is strikingly 
 shown : 
 
 "The knowledge, sight, and experience of 
 such a kind of subsisting and heavenly manner 
 of life that man is capable of, is the best pre- 
 parative and most powerful motive to leave the 
 body, and surcease the use of our earthly or- 
 gans. This, in effect, is all that bodily death, 
 rightly known and understood, doth impart : a 
 lawful surceasing the use and exercise of our 
 earthly organs, and our willing and cheerful re- 
 sorting to the use and exercise of that life with- 
 out the body, which man is capable to subsist 
 in when made perfect in spirit, an equal and as- 
 sociate with angels, under the power and order 
 of expressing what he inwardly conceives, as 
 they do. This made Paul look upon life in the 
 body, and life out of it, with no indifferent eye ; 
 as accounting the being at home in the body an 
 absence from the Lord ; and such a kind of ab- 
 sence from the body as death causes, to be that 
 which makes us most present with the Lord ; 
 which, therefore, he should be most willing unto, 
 and, with greatest longing after, desjre." 
 
 Towards the close of the second year of his 
 imprisonment, we ascertain the desperate ef- 
 forts his enemies were making to force on his 
 trial, in passages of a most affecting letter to 
 his wife. 
 
 " MY DEAR HEART," he begins, " the wind yet 
 continuing contrary, makes me desirous to be 
 as much in converse with thee (having this op- 
 portunity) as the providence of God will per- 
 mit, hoping these will come safe to your hand. 
 It is no small satisfaction to me, in these sharp 
 trials, to experience the truth of those Chris- 
 tian principles, which God, of his grace, hath 
 afforded you and me the knowledge, and im- 
 boldened us to make the profession of. Have 
 faith and hope, my dearest. God's arm is not 
 shortened ; doubtless great and precious prom- 
 ises are yet in store to be accomplished in and 
 upon believers here on earth, to the making of 
 Christ admired in them. And if we cannot 
 live in the power and actual possession of 
 them, yet if we die in the certain foresight and 
 embracing of them by faith, it will be our great 
 blessing. This dark night and black shade which 
 God hath drawn over his work in the midst of us, 
 may be, for aught we know, the ground-colour to 
 some beautiful piece that he is now exposing to the 
 light." Dwelling next upon the trials he had 
 been called to, with a view to the working out 
 of this most sublime image, he expresses the 
 good and holy influence which afflictions are 
 intended by Providence to exert upon the Chris- 
 tian aspects of man's character. " Nor would 
 I have it thought that I have already attained 
 the powerful practice of this holy duty and per- 
 fection ; but it is much in my desire, aim, and 
 hope. The difficult circumstances I am in, and 
 that I am still more and more every day cast 
 into, by God's wise-disposing providence, to 
 the sequestering me from the world, and with- 
 holding all sensible comforts from me, so much 
 
 as he doth, make me, in some sort, confident 
 it is for a good end, and that out of love and 
 faithfulness I am made to drink of this bitter 
 cup, the better to help forward that necessary 
 work in me, and upon me, wherein consists the 
 glorious liberty of the sons of God. 
 
 " If I may have and enjoy this, it would seem 
 a very little matter to me to be in outward 
 bonds, banishment, want, or any other afflic- 
 tions. Help me, then (in all your cares and 
 solicitudes about me), to what will further and 
 advance this work in me. The Lord grant me 
 and mine to be content, if he deny us to live of 
 our own, and will bring us to the daily bread 
 of his finding, which he will have us wait for, 
 fresh and fresh from his own table, without 
 knowing anything of it beforehand. Peradven- 
 ture there is a greater sweetness and blessing 
 in such a condition than we can imagine till we 
 have tried it. This may add to my help, even 
 our making little haste to get out of our troub- 
 les, patiently waiting till God's time come, 
 wherein he will open the prison doors, either 
 by death, or some other way, as he please, for 
 the magnifying his own great name, not suf- 
 fering us to be our own choosers in anything, 
 as hitherto hath been his way with us. 
 
 " And why should such a taking up sanctua- 
 ry in God, and desiring to continue a pilgrim 
 and solitary in this world, while I am in it, af- 
 ford still matter of jealousy, distrust, and rage, as 
 I see it doth to those who are unwilling that I 
 should be buried and lie quiet in my grave, where 
 I now am. They that press so earnestly to carry 
 on my trial, do little know what presence of God 
 may be afforded me in it and issue out of it, to the 
 magnifying of Christ in my body, by life or by death. 
 Nor can they, I am sure, imagine how much I de- 
 sire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which 
 of all things that can befall me I account best of 
 all. And till then, I desire to be made faithful in 
 my place and station, to make confession of 
 him before men, and not deny his name, if call- 
 ed forth to give a public testimony and witness 
 concerning him, and to be herein nothing terri- 
 fied. What, then, will the hurt be, that I can 
 or shall receive by the worst that man can do 
 unto me, who can but kill the body, and there- 
 by open my prison door, that I may ascend into 
 the pleasures that are at Christ's right hand 1 
 If the storm against us grow still higher and 
 higher, so as to strip us of all we have, the 
 earth is still the Lord's and the fulness thereof; 
 he hath a good storehouse for us to live upon. 
 God can, and (if he think fit) will chalk out 
 some way wherein he may appear by his prov- 
 idence to choose for us,, and not leave us to 
 our own choice ; and being contracted into that 
 small compass which he shall think fit to reduce 
 us unto, we may, perhaps, meet with as true 
 inward contentment, and see as great a mercy 
 in such a sequestration from the world, as if 
 we were in the greatest outward prosperity. 
 I know nothing that remains to us but, like a 
 tossed ship in a storm, to let ourselves be toss- 
 ed and driven with the winds, till He that can 
 make these storms to cease, and bring us into 
 a safe haven, do work out our deliverance for 
 us. I doubt not but you will accordingly en- 
 deavour to prepare for the worst." 
 
 In this letter, it will be seen, Vane's touching 
 design is not solely to prepare his wife and
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 333 
 
 family for his death, which he knew to be near, 
 but also to sustain and solace them in the pov- 
 erty to which they would be left, should hi 
 estates suffer the forfeitures of treason. Soon 
 after its date, which was March 7th, 1662, he 
 was removed from Scilly to the Tower of Lon- 
 don. The grand jury having found a bill against 
 him as " a false traitor," &c., he was arraigned 
 before the Court of King's Bench on the 2d of 
 June, 1662. 
 
 Vane was refused the assistance of counsel, 
 and stood alone on the floor of the court that 
 memorable day against the attorney-general,* 
 the solicitor-general, and four others of the 
 most eminent lawyers in the kingdom, among 
 whom were men that had been agents in the 
 affairs of the Commonwealth when Vane was 
 its most eminent chief ! He was not permitted 
 to see his indictment before it was now read, 
 or to have a copy of it afterward, and he had 
 been denied the benefit of legal advice or con- 
 sultation out of the court as well as in ; yet he 
 stood upon the floor of that court the most 
 cheerful and unmoved person there. 
 
 The indictment charged him with compassing 
 and imagining the death of Charles II., and con- 
 spiring to subvert the ancient frame of the 
 kingly government of the realm. The overt 
 acts laid in the indictment were, that the pris- 
 oner, in concert with other traitors, assembled 
 and consulted to destroy the king and the gov- 
 ernment, and to exclude the king from the ex- 
 ercise of his royal authority ; and that he took 
 upon himself the government of the forces of 
 the nation by sea and land, and appointed offi- 
 cers to hold command in an army raised against 
 the king ; and for the purpose of effecting his 
 design, did actually, in the county of Middlesex, 
 levy war against the king. 
 
 This indictment, at Vane's request, was read 
 over to him twice, in English ; he then desired 
 that it might be read over to him in Latin, but 
 this was refused. After taking some objections 
 to the indictment, the most important of which 
 was, that, as the offences charged in it were 
 committed in his capacity as a member of Par- 
 liament, or as acting under its commission, he 
 could only be held to answer for them before 
 Parliament itself, and not at the bar of any in- 
 ferior or other tribunal, the judges peremptorily 
 overruled them, and required him to answer to 
 the indictment " Guilty" or "Not Guilty." 
 
 Vane then urged, at great length, those rea- 
 sons which led him to decline to put himself on 
 trial by pleading to the indictment. Never 
 were undeniable reasons pressed with such 
 power and ability. He showed that it was im- 
 possible for him to have that equal and just trial 
 which was his right as an Englishman. He 
 argued that, contrary to all the authorities and 
 principles of English law which he cited, he was 
 
 * This was the eccentric Sir Geoffrey Palmer, of whom 
 Roger North gives a very graphic sketch. He was distin- 
 guished by his ability and masterly knowledge in his pro- 
 fession, and his wisdom and generosity are said to have been 
 incomparable. During all the troubles of the age, he lived 
 quiet in the Temple, a professed and known Cavalier ; and 
 no temptation of fear or profit could ever shake his principles 
 He had great business in conveyancing, and would not keep 
 a clerk who was not a, strict Cavalier. One of his clerks 
 was said to be so rigid that he would never write the word 
 Oliver with a great O, and the attorney-general himself 
 was reported to have purchased the manor of Charlton from 
 its resemblance to the name of his royal master. 
 
 arraigned before judges who, in another place, 
 had prejudged his case and recorded their votes 
 against him. He dwelt upon the months and 
 years that had been occupied in contriving and 
 collecting secret evidence to sustain the prose- 
 cution, while he had all the time been kept a 
 close prisoner.* He entered upon a particu- 
 lar examination of the specifications brought 
 against him, and showed that they were vague 
 and general, and such as did not bear against 
 him individually, but as a member of a Parlia- 
 ment to which he was lawfully elected, and in 
 which he had acted in concurrence with the 
 nation from time to time. In conclusion, he 
 addressed his judges in this nervous and solemn 
 strain : 
 
 " Unto this, unless some remedy be afforded 
 by the justice, candour, and favour of this 
 court, it may be better for the prisoner (for 
 aught he yet knows) to be immediately destroy- 
 ed by special command (if nothing else will sat- 
 isfy), without any form of law, as one to whom 
 quarter, after at least two years' cool blood, is 
 thought fit to be denied in relation to the late 
 wars. This may seem better than under a 
 colour and form of justice to pretend to give 
 him the benefit of the law and the king's courts, 
 whose part it is to set free the innocent, upon 
 an equal and indifferent trial had before them, 
 
 * "It is observable how early hard measure appeared 
 in the way wherein the prisoner became excepted out of the 
 Act of Indemnity, when the Commons, his proper judges, 
 declared him in their thoughts not fit to be endangered in 
 the point of life ; yet unto the judgment of the Lords (that 
 ought not to judge commoners unbrought before them by the 
 Commons, much less in opposite judgment to the Commons) 
 the Commons were necessitated to yield, lest otherwise the 
 Act of Indemnity to the whole nation should stop upon this 
 dispute ami essential difference between the two Houses ; a 
 competition easily overruled ; although, as it proves by the 
 sequel, that act of indemnity is like to become felo de se, or 
 a. destroyer of itself, if your lordships should conceive your- 
 selves at liberty, notwithstanding that act, not only to bring 
 anew into memory upon the stage the state of all the past 
 differences from first to last, but to try and judge the merit 
 of them in my person, and therein call in question the valid- 
 ity of that whole act, and make void the benefit intended by 
 it, in case the war undertaken and managed by both or ei- 
 ther of the houses of Parliament be judged unlawful, and 
 within the statute of 25 Edward HI. ; for this adjudges all 
 the people of England morally guilty of the evil of a sin and 
 offence against the law of nature, which once done, what- 
 ever promised indemnity be granted for the present, the evil 
 of the action remaineth upon record, not only to the infamy 
 of the whole people of England, but their future danger, 
 upon pretence that they have forfeited the very indemnity 
 granted. 
 
 " The length of time taken to search out matter against 
 the prisoner, and the undue practices and courses to find 
 out witnesses, do farther evidence how unlike the prisoner is 
 to have an equal and indifferent trial. He doubts not this 
 will appear in his two years' close imprisonment (six months 
 whereof was banishment), during which time he was never 
 so much as once examined, or had any question put to him 
 whereby he might conjecture wherefore he was committed 
 to prison, any farther than was expressed in the warrants 
 of commitment. Now these were so general that nothing 
 certain or particular could be gathered out of them. But 
 upon the received opinion that he was excepted out of the 
 Act of Indemnity, and, in the sense of both Houses, a great 
 delinquent, his estate was attempted to be inventoried, his 
 rentals demanded, his rents were actully seized in the ten- 
 ants' hands, and they forbidden to pay them. His very 
 courts were prohibited by officers of great personages, claim- 
 ing the grant of the estate, and threatening his officers from 
 doing their duty. By these kind of undue proceedings, the 
 prisoner had not wherewithal to maintain himself in prison, 
 and his debts, to the value of above 10,000, were undis- 
 charged, either principal or interest. The hopes of private 
 lucre and profit hereby was such in the tenants and other 
 persons sought out for far and near to be witnesses, that it 
 is no wonder at last something by way of charge comes to 
 be exhibited." The foregoing is from a paper he left be- 
 hind him in his prison, endorsed " Memorandums pleadable 
 on my arraignment."
 
 334 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 if their cause will bear it ; but it is very visible 
 beforehand that all possible means of defence 
 are taken and withheld from him, and laws are 
 made ex post facto to forejudge the merit of the 
 cause, the party being unheard. 
 
 " And when he hath said all this, that, as a 
 rational man, does occur to him, and is fit for 
 him to represent in all humility to the court, he 
 craves leave farther to add, that he stands at 
 this bar not only as a man, and a man clothed 
 with the privileges of the most sovereign court, 
 but as a Christian that hath faith and reliance 
 in God, through whose gracious and wise ap- 
 pointment he is brought into these circum- 
 stances, and unto this place at this time, whose 
 will he desires to be found resigned up into, as 
 well in what he now calls him to suffer, as in 
 what he hath called him formerly to act, for the 
 good of his country, and of the people of God 
 in it. Upon this bottom, he blesses the name 
 of his God, he is fearless, and knows the issue 
 will be good, whatever it prove. God's strength 
 may appear in the prisoner's weakness ; and 
 the more all things carry the face of certain 
 ruin and destruction unto all that is near and 
 dear to him in this world, the more will divine 
 deliverance and salvation appear, to the making 
 good of that Scripture, that he that is content 
 to lose his life in God s cause and way, shall 
 save it, and he that, instead thereof, goes about 
 to save his life upon undue terms, shall lose it. 
 
 " Far be it, therefore, from me to have know- 
 ingly, maliciously, or wittingly offended the law, 
 rightly understood and asserted, much less to 
 have done anything that is malum per se, or that 
 is morally evil. This is what I allow not, as I 
 am a man, and what I desire with steadfastness 
 to resist, as I am a Christian. If I can judge 
 anything of my own case, the true reason of 
 the present difficulties and straits I am in is 
 because I have desired to walk by a just and 
 righteous rule in all my actions, and not to 
 serve the lusts and passions of men, but rather 
 to die than wittingly and deliberately sin against 
 God and transgress his holy laws, or prefer my 
 own private interest before the good of the 
 whole community I relate unto, in the kingdom 
 where the lot of my residence is cast." 
 
 Before resuming his seat, Vane once more 
 claimed the benefit of council. The court told 
 him that if he would plead, and put himself on 
 the issue, he should then have counsel assign- 
 ed. After considerable urging, and with evi- 
 dent reluctance and distrust of the sincerity of 
 the court and its promise, he was prevailed 
 upon to comply, and to plead not guilty. He 
 was at once remanded to prison, and, four days 
 after, was brought up to trial. 
 
 Upon taking his place in the court, he claim- 
 ed the promise of his judges, and was told that 
 they would be his counsel ! So went on this 
 deliberate murder. Since the first promise was 
 made, Chief-justice Forster (who presided at 
 the trial) had been to Hampton Court and re- 
 ceived instructions. He and his associates 
 throughout were merely the instruments of the 
 murderers behind the scene, Charles and Clar- 
 endon. Chief-justice Forster had even been 
 overheard to say on the day of arraignment, 
 when the convincing arguments of the prisoner 
 had left the prosecuting officers without the 
 power of answering them, " Though we know 
 
 not what to say to him, we know what to do 
 with him." 
 
 The attorney-general, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, 
 now stated the nature of the overt acts charged 
 against the prisoner, and the particulars of the 
 proofs. " We shall prove," he said, " that the 
 prisoner sat with others in several councils, or 
 rather confederacies, encroached the govern- 
 ment, levied forces, appointed officers, and at 
 last levied open and actual war at the head of 
 a regiment ; and though he be chargeable for 
 any crime of treason since the beginning of the 
 late war, yet we shall confine the facts of which 
 we charge him to the reign of his present maj- 
 esty." The first piece of evidence was a war- 
 rant under the hand and seal of the prisoner, 
 directed to the officers of the navy, and com- 
 manding them to issue out stores for the ser- 
 vice of the government. The signature of the 
 prisoner was proved by two witnesses acquaint- 
 ed with the general character of his handwri- 
 ting. Several entries in the journals of the 
 House of Commons were then read. One of 
 them, dated the 1st of February, 1649, purport- 
 ed to be an order for establishing a council of 
 state. Another entry, of the date of the 13th 
 of February in the same year, contained in- 
 structions to the council of state, requiring them 
 to suppress the attempts of any who should 
 pretend title to the kingly government, from 
 the late king, or from his son, or from any other 
 person. The attorney-general insisted that the 
 former part of these instructions showed an in- 
 terest to destroy the person of the king, and 
 that the latter part showed an interest to de- 
 stroy the kingly government. It appeared from 
 another entry in the journals of the 14th of 
 February, 1649, that the prisoner had been 
 chosen a member of the council of state, and 
 had acted upon the instructions before men- 
 tioned, and usually sat in the council ; and that 
 he had also acted as treasurer of the navy. The 
 fact of his sitting as member in a committee of 
 council was also proved by witnesses. It was 
 farther proved that in 1651 he was appointed 
 president of the council of state, and as such 
 signed orders for military equipments. An- 
 other entry was read, dated 7th of May, 1659, 
 from which it appeared that a committee of 
 safety had been appointed for the care of the 
 Commonwealth, and that the prisoner was one 
 of its members, and, as such, had acted in con- 
 ference with foreign ambassadors, and nomina- 
 ted officers to commands in the army, and had 
 made several orders, and acted in various other 
 ways in the service of the Commonwealth. A 
 witness of the name of Marsh proved that the 
 prisoner proposed a new model of the govern- 
 ment, Whitelocke presiding in the chair ; and 
 that one of the particulars proposed was a reso- 
 lution declaring it destructive to the people's 
 liberty to admit any king into power. Another 
 witness stated that he believed Sir Henry Vane 
 had proposed this resolution to the chairman, 
 and affirmed positively that he gave reasons in 
 its support. A third proved that Sir Henry 
 Vane had been at the head of a company of 
 soldiers in Southwark.* 
 
 Such was the substance of the evidence in 
 support of the prosecution. Sir Henry Vane 
 was now called upon for his defence. He ar- 
 
 Phillips's State Trials.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 335 
 
 gued, first, in point oflaw, that the word " king," 
 in the statute of treasons, could only be under- 
 stood to mean a king regnant, one in the actual 
 possession of the crown, and not a king merely 
 such de jure, who is not in possession of the 
 throne ; that the Parliament was the only pow- 
 er regnant at the time alleged, consequently 
 that no treason could be committed against the 
 king. He was proceeding in this argument, 
 when the court observed that, previous to en- 
 tering into his defence in matters of law, it 
 would be proper for him to call witnesses, if he 
 had any. Upon this, he said that, not having 
 been informed of the nature of the charges, nor 
 of the evidence to be brought against him, he 
 had not been able to provide witnesses, and he 
 therefore desired process of the court to sum- 
 mon witnesses, and a farther time to answer 
 the charge ; but the court declared that such a 
 delay could not be allowed. Undaunted, he 
 then, with infinite learning and ability, grappled 
 with all the evidence against him, and justified 
 every particular of his conduct. The learning, 
 the eloquence, the lofty courage with which he 
 did this, will appear in the following masterly 
 passages : 
 
 " The causes that did happen to move his 
 late majesty to depart from his Parliament, and 
 continue for many years, not only at a distance 
 and in a disjunction from them, but at last in a 
 declared posture of enmity and war against 
 them, are so well known and fully stated in 
 print, not to say written in characters of blood on 
 both parts, that I shall only mention it, and re- 
 fer to it, 
 
 " This matter was not done in a corner. The 
 appeals were solemn, and the decision, by the 
 sword, was given by that God who, being the 
 judge of the whole world, does right, and cannot 
 do otherwise. 
 
 " By occasion of these unhappy differences, 
 thus happening, most great and unusual changes 
 and revolutions, like an irresistible torrent, did 
 break in upon us, not only to the disjointing 
 that Parliamentary assembly among themselves 
 (the head from the members, the co-ordinates 
 from each other, and the Houses within them- 
 selves), but to the creating such formed divis- 
 ions among the people, and to the producing 
 such a general state of confusion and disorder, 
 that hardly any were able to know their duty, 
 and with certainty to discern who were to com- 
 mand and who to obey. All things seemed to 
 be reduced, and in a manner resolved into their 
 first elements and principles. 
 
 " Nevertheless, as dark as such a state may 
 be, the law of England leaves not the subjects 
 thereof, as I humbly conceive, without some 
 glimpses of direction what to do, in the cleav- 
 ing to, and pursuing of which, I hope I shall 
 not be accounted nor judged an offender, or if 
 I am, I shall have the comfort and peace of my 
 actions to support me in and under my greatest 
 sufferings. 
 
 " The king is acknowledged to have two ca- 
 pacities in him : one a natural, as he is descend- 
 ed of the blood royal of the realm ; and the body 
 natural he hath in this capacity is of the crea- 
 tion of almighty God, and mortal : the other is 
 a politic capacity, in respect of which he is a 
 body politic or mystical, framed by the policy 
 of man, which is immortal and invisible. To 
 
 the king, in both these capacities conjoined, al- 
 legiance is due ; that is to say, to the natural 
 person of the king, accompanied with his politic 
 capacity, or the politic appropriated to the nat- 
 ural. 
 
 " The politic capacity of the king hath prop- 
 erly no body nor soul, for it is framed by the 
 policy of man. 
 
 " In all indictments of treason, when any one 
 does intend the death and destruction of the 
 king, it must needs be understood of his natu- 
 ral body, the other being immortal. The in- 
 dictment therefore concludes, contra legiantia 
 sua, debitum, against the duty of his allegiance, 
 so that allegiance is due to the natural body. 
 
 " Admitting, then, that thus by law allegiance 
 is due to the king (as before recited), yet it is 
 always to be presumed that it is to the king in 
 conjunction with the Parliament, the law, and 
 the kingdom, and not in disjunction from or 
 opposition to them ; and that while a Parlia- 
 ment is in being and cannot be dissolved but by 
 the consent of the three estates. 
 
 " This is therefore that which makes the mat- 
 ter in question a new case, that never before 
 happened in the kingdom, nor was possible to 
 happen, unless there had been a Parliament 
 constituted, as this was, unsubjected to ad- 
 journment, prorogation, or dissolution, by the 
 king's will. Where such a power is granted, 
 and the co-ordinates thereupon disagree and 
 fall out, such effects and consequents as these 
 that have happened will but too probably fol- 
 low ; and if either the law of nature or Eng- 
 land inform not in such case, it will be impos- 
 sible for the subjects to know their duty, when 
 that power and command which ought to flow 
 from three in conjunction comes to be exercised 
 by all or either of them, singly and apart, or by 
 two of them against one. 
 
 " When new and never-heard-of changes do 
 fall out in the kingdom, it is not like that the 
 known and written laws of the land should be 
 the exact rule, but the grounds and rules of jus- 
 tice, contained and declared in the law of nature, 
 are and ought to be a sanctuary in such cases, 
 even by the very common law of England ; for 
 thence originally spring the unerring rules that 
 are set by the divine and eternal law for rule 
 and subjection in all states and kingdoms." 
 
 In a subsequent passage of this immortal de- 
 fence he illustrated the emphatic differences 
 which separated his case from that of almost 
 every other, though he avowed the same devo- 
 tion to the good cause common to all who had 
 suffered for it, and proudly appealed to his vir- 
 tuous and unstained conduct in his days of 
 power. 
 
 " The resolutions and votes for changing the 
 government into a Commonwealth or free state 
 were passed some weeks before my return to 
 Parliament ; yet afterward, so far as I judg- 
 ed the same consonant to the principles and 
 grounds, declared in the laws of England, for 
 upholding that political power which hath given 
 the rise and introduction in this nation to mon- 
 archy itself, by the account of ancient writers, 
 I conceived it my duty, as the state of things 
 did then appear to me, notwithstanding the said 
 alteration made, to keep my station in Parlia- 
 ment, and to perform my allegiance therein to 
 king and kingdom, under the powers then reg-
 
 336 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 nant, upon my principles before declared, yield- 
 ing obedience to their authority and commands ; 
 and having received trust, in reference to the 
 safety and preservation of the kingdom, in those 
 times of imminent danger both within and with- 
 out, I did conscientiously hold myself obliged 
 to be true and faithful therein. This I did upon 
 a public account, not daring to quit my station 
 in Parliament by virtue of my first writ. Nor 
 was it for any private or gainful ends to profit 
 myself or enrich my relations. This may ap- 
 pear as well by the great debt I have contract- 
 ed, as by the destitute condition my many chil- 
 dren are in as to any provision made for them ; 
 and I do publicly challenge all persons whatso- 
 ever that can give information of any bribes or 
 covert ways used by me during the whole time 
 of my public acting. Therefore I hope it will be 
 evident to the consciences of the jury that what 
 I have done hath been upon principles of integ- 
 rity, honour, justice, reason, and conscience, 
 and not, as is suggested in the indictment, by 
 instigation of the devil, or want of the fear of 
 God. 
 
 " A second great change that happened upon 
 the constitution of the Parliament, and in them, 
 of the very kingdom itself and the laws there- 
 of, to the plucking up the liberties of it by the 
 very roots, and the introducing of an arbitrary 
 regal power, under the name of Protector, by 
 force and the law of the sword, was the usur- 
 pation of Cromwell, which I opposed from the 
 beginning to the end, to that degree of suffer- 
 ing, and with that constancy, that well near had 
 cost me not only the loss of my estate, but of 
 my very life, if he might have had his will, 
 which a higher than he hindered ; yet I did re- 
 main a prisoner, under great hardship, four 
 months, in an island, by his orders. 
 
 " Hereby that which I have asserted is most 
 undeniably evident, as to the true grounds and 
 ends of my actions all along, that were against 
 usurpation on the one hand, or such extraordi- 
 nary actings on the other as I doubted the laws 
 might not warrant or indemnify, unless I were 
 enforced thereunto by an overruling and inev- 
 itable necessity." 
 
 In conclusion, he put in these questions to 
 the court : 
 
 " 1. Whether the collective body of the Par- 
 liament can be impeached of high treason 1 
 
 " 2. Whether any person acting by authority 
 of Parliament can, so long as he acteth by that 
 authority, commit treason 1 
 
 " 3. Whether matters acted by that authority 
 can be called in question in an inferior court 1 
 
 " 4. Whether a king de jure, and out of pos- 
 session, can have treason committed against 
 him, he not being king de facto, and in actual 
 possession 1 And prayed it might be argued 
 by counsel. 
 
 " 5. Whether matters done in Southwark, in 
 another county, may be given in evidence to a 
 Middlesex jury V 
 
 All these masterly arguments to law and ap- 
 peals to simplest reason were of course una- 
 vailing. The court held that the Parliament 
 was determined and dissolved by the death of 
 Charles I. ; that the proceedings subsequent to 
 that event, though conducted in the name of 
 Parliament, were without any legal authority, 
 and absolutely void ; that Charles II. became 
 
 king de facto as well as de jure from the moment 
 of his father's death ; and that all acts done 
 with intent to exclude him from the exercise 
 of his kingly office were overt acts of high trea- 
 son. As to the objection respecting the coun- 
 ties, the court held that any overt act tending 
 to prove the compassing of the death of the 
 king might be given in evidence, in whatever 
 county that overt act had been committed. 
 
 Vane, resolute and undaunted, still prayed 
 the benefit of a bill of exceptions upon these 
 points ; but this the court refused, being of 
 opinion that the statute of Westminster 2, chap. 
 31, which allows of bills of exceptions, does 
 not apply to a criminal case, but only to actions 
 between party and party. He then proved, by 
 a few witnesses, the utter falsehood of much 
 of the crown evidence, and so closed his de- 
 fence. 
 
 The solicitor-general now rose, and made a 
 most brutal speech. He openly declared " that 
 the prisoner must be made a public sacrifice ;" 
 and, in allusion to his urgent demands for the 
 benefit of counsel, held this indecent language : 
 " What counsel, does he think, would dare to 
 speak for him in such a manifest case of trea- 
 son, unless he could call down the heads of his 
 fellow-traitors, Bradshaw or Cook, from the 
 top of Westminster Hall ]" When the solicitor 
 had ended, the court sent out the jury without 
 saying a word on the merits of the case, in 
 order that the effect of his harangue might not 
 be impaired, and he was even permitted to hold a 
 secret consultation with the foreman as they were 
 leaving the box. After an absence of half an 
 hour, the jury returned into court with a ver- 
 dict of guilty, and Vane was carried back to the 
 Tower. 
 
 Some friends visited him in his cell immedi- 
 ately after his return to it, and they were sur- 
 prised to find him in cheerful spirits. Although 
 he had been in court for more than ten hours, 
 without any refreshment, and engaged for a 
 large part of the time in the most earnest and 
 energetic efforts of argument and oratory, he 
 seemed, at the conclusion, to be clothed with 
 new strength and animation of soul. They 
 questioned him, and he explained the feeling 
 thus : " He had all along," he said, " foreseen 
 the prosecution which had then been consum- 
 mated. He knew that the offences to be char- 
 ged upon him would be such as would equally 
 involve the whole nation, and that, in defend- 
 ing himself, he might, therefore, be considered 
 as defending the liberty and life of every Eng- 
 lishman who had acted in the cause of the Com- 
 monwealth. He had been deeply impressed 
 with a sense of the obligation that rested upon 
 him to make a defence worthy of the importance 
 and magnitude of the occasion, and he had 
 formed the resolution to avail himself of every 
 security which the Constitution and laws of the 
 country had provided to protect the subject 
 against injustice and oppression. Actuated by 
 these views, he had refused to plead to the in- 
 dictment until he was assured he should have 
 the benefit of counsel. When, on the morning 
 of that day, he found that he had been deceived 
 and betrayed, and was without counsel to ad- 
 vise with him, aid him, and speak for him, and 
 that the great cause of liberty and right was 
 left for him alone to vindicate, he was oppress-
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 337 
 
 ed with a sense of his incompetency to do it 
 justice ; but in looking back, at the close of 
 the day, upon the defence he had been enabled 
 to make, his heart overflowed with devout grat- 
 itude and joy. He blessed the Lord that he 
 had been strengthened to maintain himself at 
 the post which Providence had assigned him ; 
 that arguments had been suggested to his mind ; 
 that he had not been left to overlook any means 
 of defence ; that his lips had been clothed with 
 more than their usual eloquence, and that, by 
 his gracious help, he had been enabled to dis- 
 charge, to his own entire satisfaction, the duty 
 he owed to his country and to the liberty of his 
 countrymen. He had spoken that day, as he 
 told the judges, ' not for his own sake only, but 
 for theirs and for posterity.' He had done his 
 best and his utmost for himself and for his fel- 
 low-men ; his conscience was discharged, his 
 obligations to society were fulfilled, and his 
 mind was therefore at peace with itself, at 
 peace with the world, and full of satisfaction, 
 comfort, and joy."* 
 
 The real murderers now appear upon the 
 scene. We are able to uplift the curtain which 
 has concealed them hitherto, and show them 
 to the execration of posterity. 
 
 The time had come for the redemption of 
 the king's solemn promise that he would remit 
 Vane's sentence should he be proved guilty. 
 Instead of interfering to redeem, he interfered 
 to whet the zeal of Clarendon. He thus wrote, 
 the day after the trial, to his pious chancellor : 
 
 " Hampton Court, Saturday, j 
 Two in the afternoon. j 
 
 " The relation that has been made to me of 
 Sir Henry Vane's carriage yesterday in the 
 Hall is the occasion of this letter, which, if I 
 am rightly informed, was so insolent as to jus- 
 tify all he had done, acknowledging no su- 
 preme power in England but a Parliament, and 
 many things to that purpose. You have had a 
 true account of all ; and if he has given new 
 occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dan- 
 gtrous a man to let live, if we can honestly put 
 him out of the way. Think of this, and give me 
 some account of it to-morrow, till when I have 
 no more to say to you. C. R." 
 
 On Wednesday, the llth of June, Vane was 
 brought up to receive his sentence. After the 
 usual formalities, he was called upon to answer 
 " whether he had anything to say why sentence 
 
 * I will subjoin a few details from Sikes : " On this day, 
 liberty being given to friends to visit him in the Tower, he 
 received them with very great cheerfulness and with a com- 
 posed frame of spirit, having wholly given up himself to the 
 will of God. It being told him by a friend that his death 
 would be a loss to the people of God, he answered, that 
 God would raise up other instruments to serve him and his 
 people." And as to the king's promise : " Upon friends 
 persuading him to make some submission to the king, and 
 to endeavour the obtaining of his life, he said, if the king 
 did not think himself more concerned for his honour and 
 word than he did for his life, he was very willing- they 
 should take it. ' Nay, I declare,' said he, ' that I value my 
 life less in a good cause than the king can do his promise. 
 I think 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.'" The following is extremely touching: " Mention be- 
 ing made to him of the cruel proceedings against him, 
 ' Alas !' said he, ' what ado they keep to make a poor crea- 
 ture like his Saviour!' In discourse he said, ' If the shed- 
 ding of my blood may prove an occasion of gathering to- 
 gether in one the dispersed interests and remnant of the 
 adherers to this cause, of whatever differing persuasions, I 
 should think ten thousand lives, if I had them, well spent 
 in such a service.' " 
 
 of dtath should not be passed upon him." Vane 
 rose upon this, " with an air which sufficiently 
 indicated that he not only had something, but 
 a good deal, to say, why sentence of death 
 should not be passed upon him." He com- 
 menced by observing that he had not yet heard 
 the indictment read in Latin, and he claimed it 
 as a right undeniable. This led to a sharp de- 
 bate between him and the judges and lawyers, 
 in which he finally prevailed. When the in- 
 dictment had been read in Latin, he next 
 claimed counsel to make exceptions to the in- 
 dictment, according to law. After much dis- 
 cussion this was overruled ; but he would not 
 relinquish his claim until the court had dis- 
 tinctly assumed the responsibility of refusing 
 it. The next thing he offered was a bill of 
 exceptions, which, in the want of counsel, he 
 had framed himself. It had been offered on 
 the day of his trial, and the judges had then 
 refused to sign it. He now showed that the 
 statute of Edward had never been repealed, 
 and he adduced passages from Sir Edward 
 Coke to prove that, if the justices should re- 
 fuse to sign a bill of exceptions, they might 
 be compelled by a writ to sign it, and other- 
 wise proceeded against. This bold measure 
 on the part of the prisoner confounded and 
 staggered the court. " The statute was ex- 
 plicit, the law clear, the right certain." But, 
 after much evasion and disputation, the court 
 refused to sign or receive it ; and on this point 
 also Vane would not relinquish his claim, until 
 the judges had, one by one, assumed the re- 
 sponsibility of the refusal. 
 
 The bill of exceptions prepared by Vane has 
 been preserved. It is a paper of great ability, 
 learning, and interest, setting forth all the par- 
 ticulars in which he had been unjustly used, 
 and the law violated in his person. In the 
 course of it, he mentions several interesting 
 circumstances, implying the baseness of Monk, 
 and other matters.* 
 
 * " On the day of my arraignment, an eminent person 
 was heard to say I had forfeited my head by what I said. 
 that day before ever 1 came to my defence. What that 
 should be I know not, except my saying in open court,. 
 ' sovereign power of Parliament,' which the attorney-gen- 
 eral wrote down, after he had promised at my request no 
 exception should be taken at words ; and whole volumes of 
 lawyers' books pass up and down the nation with that title, 
 'sovereign power of Parliament.' Six moderate men, that 
 were like to consider what they did before they would throw 
 away my life, were summoned to be of my petty jury, which 1 
 the king's counsel hearing, wrote a letter to one of the 
 sheriffs to unsummou them ; and a new list was made the 
 night immediately before the day of verdict, on purpose that 
 the prisoner might not have any knowledge of them till 
 presented to his view and choice in Westminster Hall. Yet 
 one of the forty-eight of this list (who said he would have 
 starved himself before he would have found Sir Henry Vane 
 guilty of treason) was never called, though he walked in,> 
 the hall all the while. And in that hurry of those that 
 compassed about, I being alone, stripped of all assistance, 
 Sir William Roberts foreman, and Sir Christopher Alxly, 
 were sworn by the court before I was aware ; so my chal- 
 lenging them might seem a personal disobliging and exas- 
 peration of them against me, after they were sworn and 
 fixed. The solicitor also had a long whisper with the fore- 
 man of the jury, in the court, before they went to verdict, 
 telling him the prisoner must be a sacrifice for the nation, 
 &c. ; suddenly after which I am here called to receive my 
 sentence. After the day of my trial, the judges went to 
 Hampton Court." 
 
 The foregoing is from a paper he had prepared in arrest 
 of judgment. This also is an extract from his most able and: 
 convincing argument on the law of treason : 
 
 " The law is made for the benefit and security of the sub- 
 ject, whom the law requires not to examine the right of 
 tovereignty. Nor is the danger less under one government
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Vane's next step was to request the reading 
 of the petition of the Parliament in favour of 
 his life, and the king's promise, in reply, not to 
 take it away. After much dispute he prevailed 
 on this point, and the proceedings in reference 
 to that petition were read in open court. He 
 then reminded the court, who had begun to 
 show signs of impatience under his searching 
 and effectual management of his cause, that 
 there were certain questions of law which must 
 be settled before sentence could be passed upon 
 him. He wished to argue them, by counsel if 
 permitted, if not in person, before their lord- 
 ships. He proceeded to instance them: " 1. 
 Whether a Parliament were accountable to any 
 inferior court. 2. Whether the king, being out 
 of possession " 
 
 The court suddenly broke in upon him at 
 this point, and, with considerable vehemence, 
 declared that " the king was never out of pos- 
 session." Sir Henry instantly replied, with 
 great coolness, that if the king was never out of 
 possession, the indictment against him must inev- 
 itably fall to the ground ; for the charge it alleged 
 was, " that he endeavoured to keep out his maj- 
 esty." 
 
 The judges now showed themselves highly 
 excited ; and Vane, after again demanding to 
 be heard in assigning his reasons for an arrest 
 of judgment, and after having exhausted the 
 various provisions of the English law in favour 
 of the security of the subject, desisted from all 
 farther attempts. As he folded up his papers, 
 he appealed from that tribunal to the righteous 
 judgment of God, who, he reminded his judges, 
 would judge them as well as him, and he con- 
 cluded by expressing his willingness to die upon 
 the testimony he had borne.* 
 
 As he uttered these last words, Sergeant 
 
 than another. The statute is, for securing the subjects from 
 all dormant titles, that they may safely pay their allegiance 
 when they receive protection, and that they may not be in 
 danger of being destroyed by two powers at the same time. 
 For that power which is supreme and de facto will be obeyed, 
 and make it treason to do otherwise, be it right or wrong 
 And if the subject be at the same time in danger of commit- 
 ting treason against the power de jure, then is he in a mis- 
 erable condition and state of unavoidable necessity, which 
 is provided against by the laws of the land. Otherwise, if 
 he be loyal to the king de jure, he shall be hanged by the 
 king de facto ; and if he be faithful to the king de facto, he 
 shall die by the king de jure, when he recovers possession. 
 .Against this it was that the statute of 11 Henry VII. was 
 provided, in the difference betwixt the two houses of York 
 .and Lancaster. My case is either the same with that, and 
 then I desire the benefit of that statute ; or else it is new, 
 and then I desire, as is provided 25 Edward III., that it be 
 .referred to the Parliament." 
 
 And lastly (one of these points respecting the indictment 
 'he subsequently, as I have said, achieved) : 
 
 " I have not been permitted to have a copy or sight of the 
 indictment, nor so much as to hear it read in Latin, which 
 is the original record of the court, and ought to be the 
 foundation of their whole proceeding with me. I often de- 
 sired these things of the court. I was put (after two years' 
 close imprisonment) to answer for my life to a long indict- 
 ment, read in English, which, whether it were rightly trans- 
 Jated, how should I know, that might not hear the original 
 irecord in Latin ? Counsel also, learned in the law, were 
 denied me, though pressed for by me again and again before 
 I pleaded. And had they been granted, what could they 
 have said as to defects of law in the indictment, unless 
 they might have had a copy of it beforehand ? My trial for 
 .life was huddled up. The jury, as was told me, must not 
 eat or drink till they had done their work: but why such 
 haste and precipitancy for a man's life, that is more than 
 meat or estate, when you can let civil causes about men's 
 estates depend many years t If an erroneous judgment be 
 passed in such matters, it is reversible ; but if innocent 
 blood be spilled, it cannot be gathered up again." 
 
 * Upham'a Life. 
 
 Keeling, who had manifested great passion du- 
 ring the trial, exclaimed, " So you may, sir, in 
 good time, by the grace of God." This lawyer 
 had been very abusive on several occasions, 
 and Vane had rebuked his rudeness. Once, for 
 instance, while the latter was reading a passage 
 from a volume of the statutes, Keeling, wish- 
 ing to look at the book, attempted rather rudely 
 to snatch it from his hands. Vane withheld 
 the volume, remarking, "When I employ you 
 as my counsel, sir, I will find you books." 
 
 I close the account of this most memorable 
 trial with one portion of the grand appeal which 
 Vane had taken occasion to make on this last 
 day, not to his judges, but to posterity. The 
 first has reference to the old charge of having 
 violated the Covenant. 
 
 " And in the asserting and adhering unto the 
 right of this highest sovereign, as stated in the 
 Covenant before mentioned, the Lords and 
 Commons jointly before the year 1648, and the 
 Commons alone afterward, to the very times 
 charged in the indictment, did manage the war 
 and late differences within these kingdoms. 
 And whatever defections did happen by apostates, 
 hypocrites, and time-serving worldlings, there was 
 a party among them that continued firm, sincere, 
 and chaste unto that cause to the last, and loved it 
 better than their very lives, of which number I am 
 not ashamed to profess myself to be ; not so much 
 admiring the form and words of the Covenant, 
 as the righteous and holy ends therein express- 
 ed, and the true sense and meaning thereof, 
 which I have reason to know. 
 
 " This general and public case of the king- 
 dom is so well known by the declarations and 
 actions that have passed on both sides, that I 
 need but name it, since this matter was not done 
 in a corner, but frequently contended for in the 
 high places of the field, and written even with 
 characters of blood. And out of the bowels of 
 these public differences and disputes doth my 
 particular case arise, for which I arn called into 
 question ; but, admitting it come to my lot to 
 stand single in the witness I am to give to this 
 glorious cause, and to be left alone, as in a sort 
 I am, yet, being upheld with the authority be- 
 fore asserted, and keeping myself in union and 
 conjunction therewith, I am not afraid to bear 
 my witness to it in this great presence, nor to 
 seal it with my blood, if called thereunto ; and 
 I am so far satisfied in my conscience and un- 
 derstanding, that it neither is nor can be trea- 
 son, either against the law of nature or the law 
 of the land, either malum per se or malum pro- 
 hibitum ; that, on the contrary, it was the duty 
 I owed to God the universal king, and to his 
 majesty that now is, and to the Church and 
 people of God in these nations, and to the in- 
 nocent blood of all that have been slain in this 
 quarrel. Nothing, it seems, will now serve, 
 unless by the condemnation passed upon my 
 person they be rendered to posterity murderers 
 and rebels, and that upon record in a court of 
 justice in Westminster Hall. And this would 
 inevitably have followed, if I had voluntarily 
 given up this cause without asserting their and 
 my innocency, by which I should have pulled 
 that blood upon my own head, which now I am 
 sure must lie at the door of others, and, in par- 
 ticular, of those that knowingly and precipi- 
 tately shall imbrue their hands in my innocent
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 339 
 
 Wood, under whatever form or pretext of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 " My lords, if I have been free and plain with 
 you in this matter, I beg your pardon ; for it 
 concerns me to be so, and something more than 
 ordinarily urgent, where both my estate and 
 life are in such imminent peril ; nay, more than 
 my life the concerns of thousands of lives are in 
 it, not only of those that are in their graves al- 
 ready, but of all posterity in time to come. Had 
 nothing been in it but the care to preserve my 
 own life, I needed not have stayed in England, 
 but might have taken my opportunity to have 
 withdrawn myself into foreign parts, to provide 
 for my own safety ; nor needed I to have been 
 put upon pleading, as now I am, for an arrest 
 of judgment, but might have watched upon ad- 
 vantages that were visible enough to me in the 
 managing of my trial, if I had consulted only the 
 preservation of my life or estate. 
 
 " No, my lords, I have otherwise /earned Christ 
 than to fear them that can but kill the body, and 
 have no more that they can do. I have also taken 
 notice, in the little reading that I have had of 
 history, how glorious the very heathens have 
 rendered their names to posterity in the con- 
 tempt they have showed of death (when the 
 laying down of their life has appeared to be 
 their duty), from the love which they have 
 owed to their country." 
 
 The appropriate answer of the judges was 
 judgment of death." They sentenced him to 
 execution on Tower Hill.* 
 
 The space between Wednesday and Satur- 
 day was granted to him wherein to prepare for 
 death. He passed it chiefly in exhortations and 
 prayers with his wife and children, who were 
 
 * It is worth subjoining here the opinions of two of the 
 most eminent of English lawyers on this infamous judg- 
 ment. " When," says Blackstone, " a usurper is in pos- 
 session, the subject is excused and justified in obeying and 
 giving him assistance ; otherwise, under a usurpation, no 
 man could be safe, if the lawful prince had a right to 
 hang him for obedience to the powers in being, as the 
 usurper would certainly do for disobedience. Nay, far- 
 ther, as the mass of the people are imperfect judges of title 
 (of which, in all cases, possession is primd facie evidence), 
 the law compels no man to yield obedience to that prince 
 whose right is, by want of possession, rendered uncertain 
 and disputable, till Providence shall think fit to interpose 
 in his favour, and decide the ambiguous claim ; and, there- 
 fore, till he is entitled to such allegiance by possession, no 
 treason can be committed against him." Mr. Justice Foster 
 takes- the same view of the statute, and maintains that when 
 the throne is full, any person out of possession, but claiming 
 title, be his pretensions what they may, is no king within 
 the statute of treason. " I am aware," he adds, " of the 
 judgment of the court of King's Bench in the case of Sir 
 Henry Vane : that King Charles II., though kept out of the 
 exercise of the kingly office, yet was still a king, both de 
 facto and de jure, and that all acts done to the keeping him 
 out were high treason." The case of Sir Henry Vane, he 
 then remarks, was u very singular case ; and he concludes 
 with these words, which are, in truth, conclusive on the 
 question : " I will therefore say nothing on the merits of 
 the question more than this, that the rule laid down by the 
 court involved in the guilt of treason every man in the king- 
 dom who had acted in a public situation under a govern 
 
 dictated." It is an historical fact, that Lord-chief-justice 
 Hale, when of high rank at the bar, took the engagement 
 " to be true to the Commonwealth of England without a 
 king or House of Lords." This, as Mr. Justice Foster re- 
 marks, was plainly, in the sense of those who imposed it, 
 an engagement for abolishing kingly government, or at least 
 for supporting the abolition of it ; and with regard to those 
 who took it, it might, upon the principles of Sir Henry 
 Vane's case, have been easily improved into on overt act of 
 treason against King Charles II. 
 
 allowed to remain with him.* At the hour of 
 midnight previous to the day of his execution, 
 the sheriff's chaplain came to his cell with the 
 warrant for his execution. He related the cir- 
 cumstance to his friends in the morning, and 
 said, " There was no dismalness at all in it. 
 After the receipt of the message I slept four 
 hours so soundly, that the Lord hath made it 
 sufficient for me ; and now I am going to sleep 
 my last, after which I shall need sleep no 
 more." Early that forenoon his wife, children, 
 and friends were all assembled in the prison. 
 Many and most impressive were his entreaties 
 to them all that they should not mourn for him. 
 
 " I know a day of deliverance for Sion will 
 come. Some may think the manner of it may 
 be as before, with confused noise of the war- 
 rior, and garments rolled in blood ; but I rather 
 think it will be with burning and fuel of fire. 
 The Lord will send a fire that shall burn in the 
 consciences of his enemies, a worm that shall 
 not die, and a fire that shall not go out. Man 
 they may fight against, but this they cannot fight 
 against. And why," said he, speaking before 
 all the company, " should we be frighted with 
 death 1 I bless the Lord I am so far from be- 
 ing affrighted with death, that I find it rather 
 shrink from me than I from it." Then, kissing 
 his children, he said, " The Lord bless you 
 he will be a better Father to you I must now 
 forget that ever I knew you. I can willingly 
 leave this place and outward enjoyments for 
 those I shall meet with hereafter in a better 
 country. I have made it my business to ac- 
 quaint myself with the society of heaven. Be 
 not you troubled, for I am going home to my 
 Father." 
 
 Subsequently he prayed with them ; and 
 these were passages of his prayer : 
 
 " I die in the certain faith and foresight that 
 this cause, shall have its resurrection in my death. 
 My blood will be the seed sown, by which this glo- 
 rious cause will spring up, which God will speed- 
 ily raise. Then, laying down this earthly tab- 
 ernacle is no more but throwing down the man- 
 tle, by which a double portion of the Spirit will 
 fall on the rest of God's people. And if by my 
 being offered up, the faith of many be confirm- 
 ed, and others convinced and brought to the 
 knowledge of the truth, how can I desire great- 
 er honour and matter of rejoicing 1 As for 
 that glorious cause, which God hath owned in 
 these nations and will own, in which so many 
 righteous souls have lost their lives, and so 
 many have been engaged by my countenance 
 and encouragement, shall I now give it up, and 
 so declare them all rebels and murderers 1 No, 
 I will never do it ; that precious blood shall 
 never lie at my door. As a testimony and seal 
 to the justness of that quarrel, I leave now my 
 life upon it, as a legacy to all the honest in- 
 
 * From his exhortations to his children I may take the 
 following : 
 
 " Live in the spirit and walk in the faith of our father 
 Abraham. Listen to the experiences of your father in this 
 dying hour and season of darkness, who can and doth here 
 give a good report of that heavenly and better country he is 
 now going to the more free and full enjoyment of. In the 
 midst of these his dark circumstances, his enjoyments and 
 refreshings from the presence of the Lord do more abound 
 than ever." " Regard not the reproaches that are fallen 
 on your father. Say or do men what they will, Abraham's 
 faith will find the blessing Abraham found, in whomsoever 
 it is."
 
 340 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 terest in these three nations. Ten thousand 
 deaths rather than defile my conscience, the 
 chastity and purity of which I value beyond all 
 this world ! I would not for ten thousand lives 
 part with this peace and satisfaction I have in 
 my own heart, both in holding to the purity of 
 my principles and to the righteousness of this 
 good cause, and to the assurance I have that 
 God is now fulfilling all these great and pre- 
 cious promises in order to what he is bringing 
 forth. Although I see it not, yet I die in the 
 faith and assured expectation of it." 
 
 Again : 
 
 "Thou hast promised that thou wilt be a 
 mouth to thy people in the hour of trial ; for 
 thou hast required us to forbear the preparatory 
 agitations of our own minds, because it is not 
 we that are to speak, but the Spirit of our heav- 
 enly Father that speaketh in us, in such sea- 
 sons. In what seasons more, Lord, than when 
 thou callest for the testimony of thy servants 
 to be writ in characters of blood 1 Show thy- 
 self in a poor weak worm, by enabling him to 
 stand against all the power of thy enemies. 
 There hath been a battle fought with garments 
 rolled in blood, in which (upon solemn appeals on 
 both sides) thou didst own thy servants, though, 
 through the spirit of hypocrisy and apostacy 
 that hath sprung up among us, these nations 
 have been thought unworthy any longer to en- 
 joy the fruits of that deliverance. THOU HAST 
 
 THEREFORE ANOTHER DAY OF DECISION YET TO 
 
 COME ! Such a battle is to begin, and be carri- 
 ed on by the faith of thy people ; yea, is in 
 some sort begun by the faith of thy poor ser- 
 vant, that is now going to seal thy cause with 
 his blood. Oh that this decision of thine may 
 remarkably show itself in thy servant at this 
 time, by his bold testimony while sealing it 
 with his blood ! We know not what interrup- 
 tions may attend thy servant ; but, Lord, let 
 thy power carry him in a holy triumph over all 
 difficulties." 
 
 He concluded thus : 
 
 " My hourglass is now turned up, the sand 
 runs out apace, and it is my happiness that 
 death doth not surprise me. It is grace and 
 love thou dost show thy poor servant, that thou 
 hastenest put his time, and lettest him see it 
 runs out with joy and peace. Little do my en- 
 emies know (as eager as they are to have me 
 gone). how soon their breaths may be drawn in 
 But let thy Servant see death shrink under him. 
 "What a glorious sight will this be, in the pres- 
 ence of many witnesses, to have death shrink 
 under him, which he acknowledgeth to be only 
 by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
 whom the bands of death could not hold down ! 
 Let that spirit enter into us that will set us 
 again upon our feet, and let us be led into that 
 way that the enemies may not know how to 
 deal with us. Oh, what abjuring- of light, what 
 treachery, what meanness of spirit has appeared 
 in this day ! What is the matter 1 Oh ! death 
 is the matter. Lord, strengthen the faith and 
 heart of thy poor servant to undergo this day's 
 work with joy and gladness, and bear it on the 
 heart and consciences of his friends that have 
 known and seen him, that they also may say, 
 the Lord is in him of a truth. Oh that thy ser- 
 vant could speak any blessing to these three 
 nations ! Let thy remnant be gathered to thee. 
 
 Prosper and relieve that poor handful that are 
 in prisons and bonds, that they may be raised 
 up and trample death under foot. Let my poor 
 family that is left desolate let my dear wife 
 and children be taken into thy care ; be thou a 
 husband, father, and master to them ; let the 
 spirit of those that love me be drawn out to- 
 wards them. Let a blessing be upon these 
 friends that are here at this time ; strengthen 
 them ; let them find love and grace in thine 
 eyes, and be increased with the increasings of 
 God t Show thyself a loving Father to us all, 
 and do for us abundantly above and beyond all 
 that we can ask or think, for Jesus Christ his 
 sake." 
 
 Sikes was present at the last scene of all, 
 and has described the triumphal progress (for 
 such it was) from the Tower to the scaffold. 
 
 " Then one of the sheriff's men came in and 
 told him there was no sled to come, but he was 
 to walk-on foot. 
 
 "Then Mr. Sheriff coming into the room, 
 was friendly saluted by him, and after a little 
 pause communicated a prohibition that he said 
 he had received, which was, that he must not 
 speak anything against his majesty or the gov- 
 ernment. His answer to this he himself re- 
 lates on the scaffold. He farther told Mr. Sher- 
 iff he was ready; but the sheriff said he was 
 not, nor could be this half hour yet. ' Then, 
 sir, it rests on you, not on me (said Sir Henry), 
 for I have been ready this half hour.' Then 
 the sheriff, at his request, promised him his ser- 
 vants should attend him on the scaffold and be 
 civilly dealt with, neither of which was per- 
 formed ; for (notwithstanding this promise) they 
 were beaten and kept off the scaffold, till he 
 said, ' What ! have I never a servant here 1' 
 
 " After this, one of the sheriff's men came 
 and told him there must be a sled ; to which 
 Sir Henry replied, ' Any way, how they please, 
 for I long to be at home, to be dissolved and to 
 be with Christ, which is best of all.' He went 
 very cheerfully and readily down the stairs 
 from his chamber, and seated himself on the 
 sled (friends and servants standing about him) ; 
 then he was forthwith drawn away towards 
 the scaffold. As he went, some in the Tower 
 (prisoners as well as others) spake to him, pray- 
 ing the Lord to go with him. And after he was 
 out of the Tower, from the tops of houses and out 
 of windows, the people used such means and ges- 
 tures as might best discover, at a distance, their re- 
 spects and love to him, crying aloud, 'The Lord 
 go with you ; the great God of heaven and 
 earth appear in you and for you ;' whereof he 
 took what notice he was capable in those cir- 
 cumstances, in a cheerful manner accepting 
 their respect, putting off his hat and bowing to 
 them. Being asked several times how he did 
 by some about him, he answered, ' Never bet- 
 ter in all my life.' Another replied, ' How 
 should he do ill that suffers for so glorious a 
 cause T To which a tall black man said, ' Many 
 suffered for a better cause.' ' And many for a 
 worse,' said Sir Henry; wishing 'that when 
 they came to seal their better cause,' as he call- 
 ed it, ' with their blood, as he was now going 
 to seal his, they might not find themselves de- 
 ceived. And as to this cause,' said he, * it hath 
 given life in death to all the owners of it, and suf- 
 ferers for it.'
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 341 
 
 " Being passed within the rails on Towe 
 Hill, there were many loud acclamations of th 
 people, crying out, ' The Lord Jesus go wit 
 your dear soul,' &c. One told him that wa 
 the most glorious seat he ever sat on. He an 
 swered, ' It is so indeed,' and rejoiced exceed 
 ingly. 
 
 " Being come to the scaffold, he cheerfullj 
 ascends; and being up, after the crowd on th 
 scaffold was broken in two pieces to make waj 
 for him, he showed himself to the people on th 
 front of the scaffold with that noble and Chris 
 tian-like deportment, that he rather seemed a 
 looker-on than the person concerned in the ex 
 ecution, insomuch that it was difficult to per 
 suade many of the people that he was the pris 
 oner. But when they knew that the gentleman 
 in the black suit and cloak, with a scarlet silk 
 waistcoat (the victorious colour) showing itself 
 at the breast, was the prisoner, they generallj 
 admired that noble and great presence he ap 
 peared with. ' How cheerful he is !' said some 
 4 He does not look like a dying man !' sai( 
 others ; with many like speeches, as astonishec 
 with that strange appearance he shined forth in 
 " Then, silence being commanded by the 
 sheriff, lifting up his hands and his eyes towards 
 Heaven, and afterward resting his hand on the 
 rails, and taking a very serious, composed, and 
 majestic view of the great multitude before and 
 around him, he spake." 
 
 His address was a vigorous statement of all 
 he had urged on his trial, and all the injustice 
 he had suffered. When he was describing the 
 conduct of the judges, however, in refusing to 
 seal his bill of exceptions, Sir John Robinson, 
 lieutenant of the Tower, who attended the exe- 
 cution for no other purpose than to prevent any 
 dangerous impression being made by the pris- 
 oner, interrupted him, saying, in a most furious 
 manner, which gave great dissatisfaction even 
 to the Loyalists who were present, " Sir, you 
 must not go on thus you must not rail at the 
 judges ; it is a lie, and I am here to testify that 
 it is a lie." Vane replied, " God will judge be- 
 tween you and me in this matter. I speak but 
 matter of fact, and cannot you bear that ? 'Tis 
 evident the judges have refused to sign my bill 
 of exceptions." The trumpeters were then or- 
 dered to approach nearer to the prisoner and 
 blow in his face, to prevent his being heard ; at 
 which Sir Henry, lifting up his hand, and then 
 laying it on his breast, said, " What mean you, 
 gentlemen 1 Is this your usage of me ? Did 
 you use all the rest so 1 I had even done (as 
 to that), could you have been patient ; but, see- 
 ing you cannot bear it, I shall only say this, 
 that, whereas the judges have refused to seal 
 that with their hands that they have done, I am 
 come to seal that with my blood that I have 
 done." 
 
 He then resumed his address to the people, 
 and proceeded to detail some of the circum- 
 stances of his life. Sikes's * report,' with its 
 interruptions, is too striking to be omitted. He 
 was himself present on the scaffold, and held 
 one of the " note books" referred to : 
 
 " ' Gentlemen, Fellow-countrymen, and Chris- 
 tians, When Mr. Sheriff came to me this morn- 
 ing, and told me he had received a command 
 from the king that I should say nothing reflect- 
 ing upon his majesty or the government, I an- 
 
 swered, I should confine and order my speech, 
 as near as I could, so as to be least offen- 
 sive, saving my faithfulness to the trust re- 
 posed in me, which I must ever discharge with 
 a good conscience unto death ; for I ever valued 
 a man according to his faithfulness to the trust re- 
 posed in him, even on his majesty's behalf, in the 
 late controversy. A nd if you dare trust my dis- 
 cretion, Mr. Sheriff, I shall do nothing but what 
 becomes a good Christian and an Englishman ; 
 and so I hope I shall be hereafter civilly dealt 
 with. 
 
 44 ' I stand here this day to resign up my spirit 
 into the hands of that God that gave it me. 
 Death is but a little word ; but 'tis a great work to 
 die. It is to be but once done ; and after this 
 cometh the judgment, even the judgment of the 
 great God, which it concerns us all to prepare 
 for. And by this act I do receive a discharge, 
 once for all, out of prison, even the prison of 
 the mortal body. In all respects wherein I have 
 been concerned and engaged as to the public, 
 my design hath been to accomplish good things 
 for these nations.' Then, lifting up his eyes 
 and spreading his hands, he said, 4 1 do here ap- 
 peal to the great God of heaven and all this as- 
 sembly, or any other persons, 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." 
 
 41 ' The cause was three times stated : 
 
 44 4 1. In the Remonstrance of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 ;< ' II. In the Covenant, the Solemn League 
 and Covenant ' 
 
 ;< Upon this the trumpets again sounded, the 
 sheriff catched at the paper in his hand, and 
 Sir John Robinson, who at first had acknowl- 
 edged that he had nothing to do there, wishing 
 the sheriff to see to it, yet found himself some- 
 thing to do now, furiously calling for the wri- 
 ter's books, and saying, ' He treats of rebellion, 
 and you write it.' Hereupon six note-books 
 were delivered up. 
 
 "The prisoner was very patient and com- 
 josed under all these injuries and soundings of 
 .he trumpets several times in his face, only 
 saying, ' 'Twas hard he might not be suffered 
 to speak ; but,' says he, ' my usage from man is 
 no harder than was my Lord and Master's ; 
 and all that will live his life this day must ex- 
 >ect hard dealing from the worldly spirit.' The 
 rumpets sounded again to hinder his being 
 heard. Then again Robinson and two or three 
 others endeavoured to snatch the paper out of 
 ir Henry's hand, but he kept it for a while, 
 now and then reading part of it ; afterward, 
 earing it in pieces, he delivered it to a friend 
 ehind him, who was presently forced to deliver 
 t to the sheriff. Then they put their hands into 
 'is pockets for papers, as was pretended, which 
 red great confusion and dissatisfaction to the 
 pectators, seeing a prisoner so strangely han- 
 led in his dying words. This was exceeding- 
 y remarkable, that in the midst of all this dis- 
 rder, the prisoner himself was observed to be 
 f the most constant composed spirit and coun- 
 nance, which he throughout so excellently 
 manifested, that a Royalist swore ' he died like 
 prince.' " 
 
 What the feelings of the people may have 
 een at this instant, an eloquent writer has at-
 
 343 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 tempted to describe. " As might have been 
 expected, and as the government had most 
 seriously apprehended, a great impression had 
 by this time been made by the prisoner upon 
 the vast multitude that surrounded him. The 
 people remembered his career of inflexible vir- 
 tue and patriotism. They had been roused to 
 indignation by the treatment he had received 
 at the hands of Cromwell and of the restored 
 monarch. His trial had revived the memory 
 of his services and sufferings. The fame of 
 his glorious defence had rung far and wide 
 through the city and nation. The enthusiasm 
 with which he had been welcomed by weeping 
 and admiring thousands as he passed from 
 prison to Tower Hill ; the sight of that noble 
 countenance ; the serene, and calm, and almost 
 divine composure of his deportment ; his visi- 
 ble triumph over the fear of death and the mal- 
 ice of his enemies all these influences, brought 
 at once to bear upon their minds, and concen- 
 trated and heightened by the powers of an elo- 
 quence that was the wonder of his contempora- 
 ries, had produced an effect which, it was evi- 
 dent, could not, with safety to the government, 
 be permitted to be wrought any higher." 
 
 Vane, meanwhile, had turned aside, and sim- 
 ply observing, " It is a bad cause which cannot 
 bear the words of a dying man," knelt upon the 
 scaffold, and for a few minutes busied himself 
 in prayer. Sikes resumes his description : 
 " Before the stroke, he spake to this effect : 
 ' I bless the Lord, who hath accounted me wor- 
 thy to suffer for his name. Blessed be the 
 Lord that I have kept a conscience void of of- 
 fence to this day. 1 bless the Lord I have not 
 deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer.' 
 But his very last words of all at the block were 
 as follows : ' Father, glorify thy servant in the 
 sight of men, that he may glorify thee in the 
 discharge of his duty to thee and to his coun- 
 try.' " 
 
 In an instant, as Vane stretched out his arms, 
 the executioner, at a single blow, discharged 
 his dreadful office ; and one of the greatest and 
 purest of men that ever walked the earth, to 
 adorn and elevate his kind, had left the world, 
 which was not worthy of him. 
 
 Sikes has a remark on the result of this infa- 
 mous murder, which is as striking as it is true : 
 " Cromwell's victories are swallowed up of 
 death : Vane has swallowed up death itself into 
 victory. Hevlet fall his mantle, left his body 
 behind him, that he had worn nine-and-forty 
 years, and is gone to keep his everlasting jubi- 
 
 lee in God's rest. It is all day with him now 
 no night or sorrow more no prisons or death. 
 He is gone from a place where so much as the 
 righteousness of man cannot be endured. He 
 is gone to a place where the righteousness of 
 God is the universal garb of all the inhabitants. 
 He is gone to that better city, the New Jerusa- 
 lem. He had served his generation in his mor- 
 tal body, done his work, and was glad to fall 
 asleep, and go look for his reward somewhere 
 else. You see what this ungrateful world has 
 afforded him for all his kindness reproach, 
 prisons, and death : he had need have other 
 returns somewhere. Great is his reward iu 
 heaven. 
 
 " Well ! they have done all they can do to 
 this lover of his country and the laws thereof. 
 But I would willingly have their understand- 
 ings disabused in one point. Let them not 
 think they have conquered him. They knew 
 him not. He judged his judges at the bar. He 
 triumphed over his executioners on the scaf- 
 fold, R. and the rest. Such a public execution 
 was more eligible than to have lingered out 
 some small time in a prison, as a condemned 
 person, liable to any arbitrary after-claps, on 
 any future motion or pretence of motion in our 
 troubled sea. He had more ease ; God more 
 glory ; the honest party of the nation and their 
 just cause more advantage ; and, why may I 
 not say, his most intimate friends and dearest 
 relations more comfort, in this way of his de- 
 liverance, once for all !" 
 
 That "just cause" was indeed once more el- 
 evated by the death of Vane, and his own sub- 
 lime hopes abundantly realized. The govern- 
 ment of Charles II. scarcely ever recovered the 
 shock his genius and his sufferings had given 
 them. Burnet says " that it was generally 
 thought the government had lost more than it 
 gained by his death." Pepys, a thorough-paced 
 Loyalist, witnessed the execution, and says that 
 the people regarded it as a " miracle," and that 
 it was a most impressive spectacle. He re- 
 marks farther, " that the king lost more by that 
 man's death than he will get again for a good 
 while ;" and expresses the opinion that it had 
 given the bishops a blow from which they would 
 never recover. 
 
 Vane's eldest son, who bore his name, and 
 had been reinstated in his inheritance and hon- 
 ours, was sworn into William's privy council 
 at that revolution of 1688 which banished for- 
 ever from England the detested family of the 
 Stuarts^
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE 
 
 LIFE OF SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER. 
 
 A. 
 
 A Heating Question propounded and resolved, upon Occasion 
 of the late public and seasonable Call to Humiliation, in 
 order to Love and Union among the honest Party, and with 
 a Desire to apply Balm to the \Vound before it become in- 
 curable. 
 
 THE question propounded is, What possibility doth yet 
 remain (all things considered) of reconciling and uniting the 
 dissenting judgments of honest men within the three na- 
 tions, who still pretend to agree in the spirit, justice, and 
 reason of the same good cause, and what is the means to 
 effect this? 
 
 Answ. If it be taken for granted (as, on the magistrate's 
 part, from the ground inviting the people of England and 
 Wales to a solemn day of fasting and humiliation, may not 
 be despaired of) that all the dissenting parties agree still in 
 the spirit and reason of the same righteous cause, the reso- 
 lution seems very clear in the affirmative ; arguing not only 
 for a possibility, but a great probability hereof; nay, a ne- 
 cessity daily approaching nearer and nearer to compel it, if 
 any or all of the dissenting parties intend or desire to be 
 safe from the danger of the common enemy, who is not out 
 of work, though at present much out of sight and observation. 
 The grounds of this are briefly these : First, the cause 
 hath still the same goodness in it as ever, and is, or ought 
 to be, as much in the hearts of all good people that have ad- 
 hered to it: it is not less to be valued now, than when nei- 
 ther blood nor treasure were thought too dear to carry it on, 
 and hold rt up from sinking ; and hath the same omnipotent 
 God, whose great name is concerned in it, as well as his 
 people's outward safety and welfare ; who knows, also, how 
 to give a revival to it when secondary instruments and vis- 
 ible means fail or prove deceitful. 
 
 Secondly, The persons concerned and engaged in this 
 cause are still the same as before, with the advantage of 
 being more tried, more inured to danger and hardship, and 
 more endeared to one another, by their various and great 
 experiences, as well of their own hearts as their fellow- 
 brethren. These are the same still in heart and desire after 
 the same thing, which is, that, being freed out of the hands 
 of their enemies, they may serve the Lord without fear, in 
 holiness and righteousness all the days of their life. 
 
 As they have had this great good finally in their aims (if 
 
 in the maintenance of a war, when all other means, first es- 
 sayed, proved ineffectual. In the management of this war, 
 it pleased God, the righteous Judge (who was appealed to 
 in the controversy), so to bless the counsel and forces of the 
 persons concerned and engaged in this cause, as in the end 
 to make them absolute and complete conquerors over their 
 common enemy ; and by this means they had added unto 
 the natural right which was in them before (and so declared 
 by their representatives in Parliament assembled), the right 
 of conquest, for the strengthening of their just claim to be 
 governed by national councils, and successive representa- 
 tives of their own election and setting up. This they once 
 thought they had been in possession of, when it was rati- 
 fied, as it were, in the blood of the last king. But of late a 
 great interruption having happened unto them in their for- 
 mer expectations, and, instead thereof, something rising up 
 that seems rather accommodated to the private and selfish in- 
 terest of a particular part (in comparison) than truly ade- 
 quate to the common good and concern of the whole body 
 engaged in this cause : hence it is that this compacted body 
 is now falling asunder into many dissenting parts (a thing 
 not unforeseen nor unhoped for by the common enemy all 
 along as their last relief) ; and if these breaches be not timely 
 healed, and the offences (before they take too deep root) re- 
 moved, they will certainly work more to the advantage of 
 the common enemy than any of their own unwearied endeav- 
 ours and dangerous contrivances in foreign parts put all to- 
 gether. 
 
 A serious discussion and sober enlarging upon these 
 grounds will quickly give an insight into the state of the 
 question, and naturally tend to a plain and familiar resolu- 
 tion thereof. 
 
 That which is first to be opened is the nature and good- 
 ness of the cause ; which, had it not carried in it its own evi- 
 
 dence, would scarce have found so many of the people of 
 God adherers to it within the three nations, contributing 
 either their counsels, their purses, their bodily pains, or 
 their affections and prayers, as a combined strength ; with- 
 out which, the military force alone would have been little 
 available to subdue the common enemy, and restore to this 
 whole body their just natural rights in civil things, and true 
 freedom in matters of conscience. 
 
 The two last-mentioned particulars, rightly stated, will 
 evidence sufficiently the nature and goodness of this cause. 
 
 For the first of these, that is to say, the natural right, 
 which the whole party of honest men adhering to this cause 
 are by success of their arms restored unto, fortified in, and 
 may claim as their undeniable privilege, that righteously 
 cannot be taken from them, nor they debarred from bringing 
 into exercise, it lies in this : 
 
 They are to have and enjoy the freedom (by way of duti- 
 ful compliance and condescension from all the parts and 
 members of this society) to set up meet persons in the place 
 of supreme judicature and authority among them, whereby 
 they may have the use and benefit of the choicest light and 
 wisdom of the nation that they are capable to call forth, for 
 the rule and government under which they will live ; and 
 through the orderly exercise of such measure of wisdom and 
 counsel as the Lord in this way shall please to give unto 
 them, to shape and form all subordinate actings and admin- 
 istrations of rule and government so as shall best answer the 
 public welfare and safety of the whole. 
 
 This, in substance, is the right and freedom contained in 
 the nature and goodness of the cause wherein the honest 
 party have been engaged ; for in this all the particulars of 
 our civil right and freedom are comprehended, conserved in, 
 and derived from their proper root ; in which, while they 
 grow, they will ever thrive, flourish, and increase ; where- 
 as, on the contrary, if there be never so many fair branchei 
 of liberty planted on the root of a private and selfish inter- 
 est, they will not long prosper, but must, within a little 
 time, wither and degenerate into the nature of that where- 
 into they are planted ; and hence, indeed, sprung the evil 
 of that government which rose in and with the Norman 
 Conquest. 
 
 The root and bottom upon which it stood was not public 
 interest, but the private lust and will of the conqueror, who 
 by force of arms did at first detain the right and freedom 
 which was and is due to the whole body of the people ; for 
 whose safety and good, government itself is ordained by 
 God, not for the particular benefit of the rulers, as a distinct 
 and private interest of their own ; which yet, for the most 
 part, is not only preferred before the common good, but up- 
 held in opposition thereunto. And as at first the conqueror 
 did, by violence and force, deny this freedom to the people, 
 which was their natural right and privilege, so he and his 
 successors all along lay as bars and impediments to the true 
 national interest and public good, in the very national coun- 
 cils and assemblies themselves, which were constituted m 
 such a manner as most served for the upholding of the pri- 
 vate interest of their families ; and this being challenged by 
 them as their prerogative, was found by the people assem- 
 bled in Parliament most unrighteous, burdensome, and de- 
 structive to their liberty. And when they once perceived 
 that by this engine all their just rights were like to be de- 
 stroyed especially (being backed, as it was, with the power 
 of the militia, which the late king, for that purpose, had 
 assumed into his hands, and would not, upon the people's 
 application to him in Parliament, part with into the hands 
 of that great council, who were best to be intrusted with the 
 nation's safety), this was the ground of the quarrel, upon a 
 civil account between the king and his party, and the whole 
 body of adherents to the cause of the people's true liberty ; 
 whereof this short touch hath been given, and shall suffice 
 for the opening of the first branch of this clause. 
 
 The second branch which remains briefly to be handled 
 is that which also upon the grounds of natural right is to be 
 laid claim unto, but distinguishes itself from the former as 
 it respects a more heavenly and excellent object wherein, 
 the freedom is to be exercised and enjoyed, that is to say, 
 matters of religion, or that concern the service and worship 
 of God. 
 
 Unto this freedom the nations of the world have right and 
 title by the purchase of Christ's blood, who, by virtue of his. 
 death and resurrection, is become the sole Lord and Ruler
 
 344 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in and over the conscience ; for to this end Christ died, rose, 
 and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of 
 the living, and that every one might give an account of him- 
 self, in all matters of God's worship, unto God and Christ 
 alone, as their own Master, unto whom they stand or fall in 
 judgment, and are not in these things to be oppressed, or 
 brought before the judgment-seats of men. For why shouldst 
 thou set at naught thy brother in matters of his faith and 
 conscience, and herein intrude into the proper office of 
 Christ, since we are all to stand at the judgment-seat of 
 Christ, whether governors or governed, and by his decision 
 only are capable of being declared with certainty to be in 
 the right or in the wrong ? 
 
 By virtue, then, of this supreme law, sealed and confirmed 
 in the blood of Christ unto all men (whose souls he chal- 
 lenges a propriety in, to bring under his inward rule in the 
 service and worship of God), it is that all magistrates are to 
 fear and forbear intermeddling with giving rule or imposing 
 in those matters. They are to content themselves with what 
 is plain in their commission, as ordained of God to be his 
 minister unto men for good, while they approve themselves 
 the doers of that which is good in the sight of men, and 
 whereof earthly and worldly judicatures are capable to make 
 a clear and perfect judgment : in which case the magistrate 
 is to be for praise and protection to them. In like manner, 
 he is to be a minister of terror and revenge to those that do 
 evil in matters of outward practice, converse, and dealings 
 in the things of this life between man and man, forthe cause 
 whereof the judicatures of men are appointed and set up. 
 But to exceed these limits, as it is not safe nor warrantable 
 for the magistrate (in that he who is higher than the high- 
 est, regards, and will show himself displeased at it), go 
 neither is it good for the people, who hereby are nourished 
 up in a biting, devouring, wrathful spirit one against an- 
 other, and are found transgressors of that royal law which 
 forbids us to do that unto another which we would not have 
 them do unto us, were we in their condition. 
 
 This freedom, then, is of high concern to be had and en- 
 joyed, as well for the magistrate's sake as for the people's 
 common good ; and it consists, as hath been said, in the 
 magistrate forbearing to put forth the power of rule and co- 
 ercion in things that God hath exempted out of his com- 
 mission : so that all care requisite for the people's obtaining 
 this may be exercised with great ease, if it be taken in its 
 proper season, and that this restraint he laid upon the su- 
 preme power before it be erected, as a fundamental consti- 
 tution, among others, upon which the free consent of the 
 people is given, to have the persons brought into the exer- 
 cise of supreme authority over them and on their behalf; 
 and if, besides, as a farther confirmation hereunto, it be ac- 
 knowledged the voluntary act of the ruling power, when 
 once brought into a capacity of acting legislatively, that 
 herein they are bound up, and judge it their duty so to be 
 (both in reference to God, the institutor of magistracy, and 
 in reference to the whole body by whom they are intrusted), 
 this great blessing will hereby be so well provided for that 
 we shall have no cause to fear, as it may be ordered. 
 
 By this means a great part of the outward exercise of anti- 
 Christian tyranny and bondage will be plucked up by the 
 Yery roots, which, till some such course be held in it, will 
 be always apt to renew and sprout out afresh, under some 
 new form or refined appearances, as by late years' experi- 
 ence we have been taught : for, since the fall of the bishops 
 and persecuting presbyteries, the same spirit is apt to arise 
 in the next sort of clergy that can get the ear of the magis- 
 trate, and pretend to the keeping and ruling the conscience 
 of the governors, although this spirit and practice hath been 
 all along decried by the faithful adherents to this cause as 
 a most sore oppression and insufferable yoke of bondage, 
 most unrighteously kept up overthe consciences of the peo- 
 ple, and therefore judged by them most needful to be taken 
 out of the way; and in this matter the present governors 
 have been willing very eminently to give their testimony in 
 their public declarations, however in practice there is much 
 of grievance yet found among us, though more, in probabil- 
 ity, from the officiousness of subordinate ministers than any 
 clear purpose or design of the chief in power. 
 
 Having thus showed what the true freedom is, in both the 
 branches of it, that shines forth in the righteous cause, 
 wherein the good people of these nations have so deeply en- 
 gaged, it will not be improper, in the next place, to consider 
 two particnlars more that give still farther light into the 
 matter in-question, as, first, the qualifications of the persons 
 that have adhered to this cause ; secondly, the capacity 
 wherein they have been found from time to time carrying 
 it on. 
 
 As to their qualification, they have, in the general, dis- 
 tinguished themselves and been made known by a forward- 
 ness to assist and own the public welfare and good of the 
 nation, for the attaining and preserving the just rights and 
 lilwrties thereof, asserted and witnessed unto in the true 
 stating of this cause, according to the two branches thereof 
 already spoken to. They have showed themselves, upon all 
 occasions, desirers and lovers of true freedom, either in civils 
 
 or in spirituals, or in both. To express their value thereof, 
 and faithfulness to the same, they have largely contributed, 
 in one kind or other, what was proper to each in his place 
 to do ; which actions of theirs, proceeding from hearts sin- 
 cerely affected to the cause, created in them a right to be 
 of an incorporation and society by themselves, under the name 
 of the good party, having been from the beginning unto this 
 day publicly and commonly so acknowledged, by way of dis- 
 tinction from all neuters, close and open enemies, and de- 
 ceitful friends or apostates. These, in order to the main- 
 taining of this cause, have stood by the army, in defence and 
 support thereof, against all opposition whatever, as those 
 that, by the growing light of these times, have been taught 
 and led forth in their experiences to look above and beyond 
 the letter, form, and outward circumstances of government, 
 into the inward reason and spirit thereof, herein only to fix 
 and terminate, to the leaving behind all empty shadows that 
 would obtrude themselves in the place of true freedom. 
 
 Secondly, as to the capacity wherein these persons, thus 
 qualified, have acted, it hath been very variable, and subject 
 to great changes : sometimes in one form, and sometimes in 
 another, and very seldom, if ever at all, so exactly and in 
 all points consonant to the rule of former laws and consti- 
 tutions of government as to be clearly and fully justified by 
 them any longer than the law of success and conquest did 
 uphold them who had the inward warrant of justice and 
 righteousness to encourage them in such their actings. 
 
 The utmost and last reserve, therefore, which they have 
 had, in case all other failed, hath been their military ca- 
 pacity, not only strictly taken for the standing army, but in 
 the largest sense, wherein the whole party may (with the 
 army, and under that military constitution and conduct 
 which, by the providence of God, they shall then be found 
 in) associate themselves in the best order they can for the 
 common defence and safety of the whole ; as not ignorant 
 that when once imbodied in this their military posture, in 
 such manner as by common consent shall be found requisite 
 for the safety of the body, they are most irresistible, abso- 
 lute, and comprehensive in their power, having that wherein 
 the substance of all government is contained, and under the 
 protection whereof, and safety that may be maintained there- 
 by, they can contrive and determine in what manner this 1 
 irresistible, absolute, and boundless power, unto which they 
 are now arrived in this their military capacity, shall have 
 just and due limits set unto it, and be drawn out in a meet 
 and orderly way of exercise for the commonweal and safety 
 of the whole body, under the rule and oversight of a supreme 
 judicature, unto the wisdom of whose laws and orders the 
 sword is to become most entirely subject and subservient ; 
 and this without the least cause of jealousy or unsafely, 
 either to the standing army, or any member thereof, or unto 
 the good people adhering to this cause, or any of them, since 
 the interest of both, by this mutual action of either, will be 
 so combined together in one (even in that wherein before 
 they were distinct), that all just cause of difference, fear, 
 animosity, emulation, jealousy, or the like, will be wholly- 
 abolished and removed. 
 
 For when once the whole body of the good people find that 
 the military interest and capacity is their own, and that 
 into which necessity at the last may bring the whole party 
 (whereof, of right, a place is to be reserved for them), and 
 that herein they are so far from being in subjection or sla- 
 very, that in this posture they are most properly sovereign, 
 and possess their right of natural sovereignty, they will 
 presently see a necessity of continuing ever one with their 
 army, raised and maintained by them for the promoting this 
 cause against the common enemy, who in his next attempt 
 will put for all with greater desperateness and rage than 
 ever. 
 
 Again, when once the standing army and their governors 
 shall also find that, by setting and keeping up themselves 
 in a divided interest from the rest of the body of honest men, 
 they withhold from themselves those contributions in all 
 voluntary and cheerful assistances, by the affections and 
 prayers, by the persons and purses of the good party, to the 
 weakening themselves thereby, as to any vigorous support 
 from them, in the times of most imminent danger (whereof 
 the late king had an experience, that will not suddenly be out 
 of memory, when he undertook the war, in the beginning of 
 these troubles, against the Scots, and was, in a manner, 
 therein deserted by all the good party in England), they 
 will then find (if they stay not till it be too late) that, by 
 espousing the interest of the people, in submitting them- 
 selves with their fellow-adherents to the cause, under the 
 rule, and authority of their own supreme judicature, they 
 lose not their power or sovereignty, but, becoming one civil 
 or politic incorporation with the whole party of honest men, 
 they do therein keep the sovereignty, as originally seated 
 in themselves, and part with it only but ns by deputation and 
 representation of themselves, when it is brought into an or- 
 derly way of exercise, by being put into the hands of per- 
 sons chosen and intrusted by themselves to that purpose. 
 
 By this mutual and happy transition, which may be made 
 between the party of honest men in the three nations virtu-
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 345 
 
 ally in arms, and those actually so now in power at the head 
 of the army, how suddenly would the union of the whole 
 body be consolidated, and made so firm as it will not need 
 to tear all the designs and attempts of the common enemy, 
 especially if herein (hey unite themselves in the first place 
 to the Lord, as willing to follow his providence, and observe 
 his will in the way and manner of bringing this to pass ! in 
 which case we shall not need to fear what all the gates of 
 hell are able to do in opposition thereunto. 
 
 It is not, then, the standing and being of the present array 
 and military forces in the three nations that is liable to ex- 
 ception of offence from any dissenting judgments at this 
 time among the honest, well-affected party. In and with 
 them, under God, stand the welfare and outward safety of 
 the whole body ; and to be enemies to them, or wish them 
 hurt, were to do it to themselves ; and, by trying such con- 
 clusions, to play the game of the common enemy, to the 
 utter ruin and destruction, not only of the true freedom 
 aimed at and contended for in the late wars, but of the very 
 persons themselves that have been in any sort active or em- 
 inent promoters thereof. 
 
 The army, considered as it is in the hands of an honest 
 and wise general, and sober, faithful officers, imbodied with 
 the rest of the party of honest men, and espousing still the 
 same cause, and acting in their primitive simplicity, humil- 
 ity, and trust, in reference to the welfare and safety of the 
 whole body, is the only justifiable and most advantageous 
 posture and capacity that the good party at present can find 
 themselves in, in order to the obtaining that true freedom 
 they have fought for, and possessing of it in the establish- 
 ment thereof upon the true basis and foundation, as hath 
 been showed, of right government. 
 
 That wherein the offence lies, and which causes such 
 great thoughts of heart among the honest party (if it may 
 be freely expressed, as sure it may, when the magistrate 
 himself professes he doth but desire and wait for conviction 
 therein), is, in short, this : 
 
 That when the right and privilege is returned, nay, is 
 restored by conquest unto the whole body (that forfeited not 
 their interest therein), of freely disposing themselves in such 
 a constitution of righteous government as may best answer 
 the ends held forth in this cause ; that, nevertheless, either 
 through delay they should be withheld as they are, or 
 through design they should come at last to be utterly denied 
 the exercise of this their right, upon pretence that they are 
 not in capacity as yet to use it, which, indeed, hath some 
 truth in it, if those that are now in power, and have the 
 command of the arms, do not prepare all things requisite 
 thereunto, as they may, and, like faithful guardians to the 
 Commonwealth, admitted to be in its nonage, they ought. 
 
 But if the bringing of true freedom into exercise among 
 men, yea, so refined a party of men, be impossible, why hath 
 this been concealed all this while * and why was it not 
 thought on before so much blood was spilt, and treasure 
 spent ! Surely such a thing as this was judged real and 
 practicable, not imaginary and notional. 
 
 Besides, why may it not suffice to have been thus long 
 delayed and withheld from the whole body, at least as to its 
 being brought by them into exercise now at last? Surely 
 the longer it is withheld, the stronger jealousies do increase, 
 that it is intended to be assumed and engrossed by a part 
 only, to the leaving the rest of the body (who, in all reason 
 and justice, ought to be equally participants with the other 
 in the right and benefit of the conquest, for as much as the 
 war was managed at the expense and for the safety of the 
 whole) in a condition almost as much exposed, and subject 
 to be imposed upon, as if they had been enemies and con- 
 quered, not in any sense conquerors. 
 
 If ever such an unrighteous, unkind, and deceitful deal- 
 ing with brethren should happen, although it might continue 
 above the reach of question from human judicature, yet can 
 we think it possible it should escape and go unpunished by 
 the immediate hand of the righteous Judge of the whole 
 world, when he ariseth out of his place to do right to the 
 oppressed ? 
 
 Nay, if, instead of favouring and promoting the people's 
 common good and welfare, self-interest and private gain 
 should evidently appear to be the things we have aimed at 
 all along; if those very tyrannical principles and anti- j 
 Christian relics, which God by us hath punished in our pre- 
 decessors, should again revive, spring up afresh, and show 
 themselves lodged also and retained in our bosoms, render- 
 ing us of the number of those that have forgot they were 
 purged from their old sins, and declaring us to be such as, 
 to please a covetous mind, do withhold from destruction that 
 which God hath designed to the curse of his vengeance : if 
 all those great advantages of serving the Lord's will and 
 design in procuring and advancing his people's true welfare 
 and outward safety, which (as the fruit of his blessing upon 
 our armies) have so miraculously fallen into our hands, shall 
 at last be wrested and misimproved to the enriching and 
 greatening of ourselves if these things should ever be found 
 among us (which the Lord in mercy forbid!), shall we need 
 to look any farther for the accursed thing ? will not our con- 
 
 Xx 
 
 sciences show us, from the light of the Word and Spirit of 
 God, how near a confonnity these actions would hold there- 
 with ? which sin (Josh., vii.) became a curse to the camp, 
 and withheld the Lord from being any more among them, 
 or going out with their forces. And did the action of Achan 
 import any more than these two things : First, he saved and 
 kept from destruction the goodly Babylonish garment, which 
 was devoted by God thereunto ; secondly, he brought not in 
 the fruit and gain of the conquest into the Lord's treasury, 
 but covetously went about to convert it to his own proper 
 use ? To do this is to take of the accursed thing, which 
 (Josh., vii.) all Israel was said to do in the sin of Achan, and 
 to have stolen and dissembled likewise, and put it among 
 their own stuff. This caused the anger of the Lord to kin- 
 dle against Israel, and made them unable to stand before 
 their enemies, but their hearts melted as water. And thus 
 far the Lord is concerned, if such an evil as this shall lie 
 hid in the midst of us. But to return to what we were upon 
 before. 
 
 The matter which is in question among the dissenting 
 parts of the whole body of honest men is not so trivial and 
 of such small consequence as some would make it. 'Tis, in 
 effect, the main and whole of the cause ; without which all 
 the freedom which the people have or can have is in com- 
 parison but shadow and in name only, and therefore can 
 never give that peace and satisfaction to the body which is 
 requisite unto a durable and solid settlement. This is that 
 which makes all sound and safe at the root, and gives the 
 right balance necessary to be held up between sovereignty 
 and subjection in the exercise of all righteous government ; 
 applying the use of the sword to the promoting and uphold- 
 ing the public safety and welfare of the whole body, in pref- 
 erence, and, if need be, in opposition unto any of the parts ; 
 while yet, by its equal and impartial administration in ref- 
 erence unto each, it doth withal maintain the whole body in 
 a most delightful harmony, welfare, and correspondency. 
 The sword never can, nor is it to be expected ever will do 
 this, while the sovereignty is admitted and placed any- 
 where else than in the whole body of the people that have 
 adhered to the cause, and by them be derived unto their 
 successive representatives, as the most equal and impartial 
 judicature for the effecting hereof. 
 
 Where there is, then, a righteous and good constitution 
 of government, there is, first, an orderly union of many un- 
 derstandings together, as the public and common supreme 
 judicature or visible sovereignty, set in a way of free and 
 orderly exercise, for the directing and applying the use of 
 the ruling power or the sword, to promote the interest and 
 common welfare of the whole, without any disturbance or 
 annoyance from within or from without ; and then, sec- 
 ondly, there is a like union and readiness of will in all the 
 individuals, in their private capacities, to execute and obey 
 (by all the power requisite, and that they are able to put 
 forth) those sovereign laws and orders issued out by their 
 own deputies and trustees. 
 
 A supreme judicature, thus made the representative of 
 the whole, is that which, we say, will most naturally care, 
 and most equally provide for the common good and safety. 
 Though by this it is not denied but that the supreme power, 
 when by free consent 'tis placed in a single person or in some 
 few persons, may be capable also to administer righteous 
 government ; at least, the body that gives this liberty, when 
 they need not, are to thank themselves if it prove otherwise. 
 But when this free and natural access unto government is 
 interrupted and declined, so as a liberty is taken by any par- 
 ticular member, or number of them, that are to be reputed 
 but a part in comparison of the whole, to assume and en- 
 gross the office of sovereign rule and power, and to impose 
 themselves as the competent public judge of the safety and 
 good of the whole, without their free and due consent, and 
 to lay claim unto this, as those that find themselves pos- 
 sessed of the sword (and that so advantageously as it can- 
 not be recovered again out of their hands without more ap- 
 parent danger and damage to the whole body than such at- 
 tempts are worth), this is that anarchy that is the first rise 
 and step to tyranny, and lays grounds of manifest confusion 
 and disorder, exposing the ruling power to the next hand 
 that on the next opportunity can lay hold on the sword, and 
 so, by a kind of necessity, introduces the highest imposition 
 and bondage upon the whole body, in compelling all the 
 parts, though never so much against the true public interest, 
 to serve and obey, as their sovereign rule and supreme au- 
 thority, the arbitrary will and judgment of those that bringf 
 themselves into rule by the power of the sword, in the right 
 only of a part that sets up itself in preference before, or at 
 least in competition with, the welfare of the whole. 
 
 And if this, which is so essential to the wellbeing and 
 right constitution of government, were once obtained, the 
 disputes about the form would not prove so difficult, nor find 
 such opposition, as to keeping the bone of contention and 
 disunion, with much danger to the whole ; for if, as the found- 
 ation of all, the sovereignty be acknowledged to reside ori- 
 ginally in the whole body of adherents to this cause (whose 
 natural and inherent right thereunto is of a far ancienter
 
 3i6 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 date than what is obtained by success of their arms, and so 
 cannot be abrogated even by conquest itself, if that were 
 the case), aud then if, in consequence hereof, a supreme ju- 
 dicature be set up and orderly constituted, as naturally 
 arising and resulting from the free choice and consent of 
 the whole body taken out from among themselves, as flesh 
 of their flosh and bone of their bone, of the same public spirit 
 and nature with themselves, and the main be by this means 
 secured, what could be propounded afterward as to the form 
 of administration that would much stick? 
 
 Would a standing council of state, settled for life, in ref- 
 erence to the safety of the Commonwealth, and for the main- 
 taining intercourse and commerce with foreign states, under 
 the inspection and oversight of the supreme judicature, but 
 of the same fundamental constitution with themselves 
 would this be disliked? admitting their orders were binding, 
 in the intervals of supreme national assemblies, so far only 
 as consonant to the settled laws of the Commonwealth, the 
 vacancy of any of which, by death or otherwise, might be 
 supplied by the vote of the major part of themselves : nay, 
 would there be any just exception to be taken if (besides 
 both these) it should be agreed (as another part of the fun- 
 damental constitution of the government) to place that branch 
 of sovereignty which chiefly respects the execution of laws 
 in a distinct office from that of the legislative power (and 
 yet subordinate to them and to the laws), capable to be in- 
 trusted into the hands of one single person, if need require, 
 or in a greater number, as the legislative power should think 
 fit : and, for the greater strength and honour unto this office, 
 that the execution of all laws and orders (that are binding) 
 may go forth in his or their name, and all disobedience there- 
 unto, or contempt thereof, be taken as done to the people's 
 sovereignty, whereof he or they bear the image or represent- 
 ation, subordinate to the legislative power, and at their will 
 to be kept up and continued in the hands of a single person 
 or more, as the experience of the future good or evil of it 
 shall require ? 
 
 Would such an office as this, thus stated, carry in it any 
 inconsistency with a free state ? Nay, if it be well consid- 
 ered, would it not rather be found of excellent use to the 
 wellbe ing of magistracy, founded upon this righteous bot- 
 tom, that such a lieutenancy of the people's sovereignty in 
 these three nations may always reside in some one or more 
 person, in whose administration that which is reward aud 
 punishment may shine forth ? 
 
 And if now it shall be objected that (notwithstanding all 
 these cautions), should onoe this sovereignty be acknowl- 
 edged to be in the diffused body of the people (though the 
 adherents to this cause, not only as their natural, but as 
 their acquired right by conquest), they would suddenly put 
 the use and exercise of the legislative power into such hands 
 as would, through their ill qualifiedness to the work, spoil 
 all by mill-administration thereof, and hereby lose the cause 
 instead of upholding and maintaining it, 
 
 The answer unto this is, first, that God, by his providence, 
 hath eased our minds much in this solicitude by the course 
 he hath already taken to fit and prepare a choice and se- 
 lected number of the people unto this work, that are tried 
 and refined by their inward and outward experiences in this 
 great quarrel, and the many changes they have passed 
 through ; in respect whereof well qualified persons are to 
 be found, if due care be but taken in the choice of them. 
 And if herein this people of the Lord shall be waiting upon 
 him for his guidance and presence with them, we may have 
 grounds and hope that God (whose name hath all along been 
 called upon in the maintaining of this cause) will pour out 
 so abundantly of his spirit upon his people attending on him 
 in righteous ways, and will also so move their hearts to 
 choose persons bearing his image into the magistracy, that 
 a more glorious product may spring up out of this than at 
 first we can expect, to the setting up of the Lord himself as 
 chief judge and lawgiver among us. And unto this the wis- 
 dom and honesty of the persons now in power may have an 
 opportunity eminently to come into discovery ; for in this 
 case, and upon the grounds already laid, the very persons 
 now in power are they unto whose lot it would fall to set 
 about this preparatory work, and by their orders and direc- 
 tions to dispose the whole body, and bring them into the 
 jneetest capacity to effect the same, the most natural way 
 for which would seem to be by a general council, or con- 
 vention of faithful, honest, and discerning men, chosen for 
 that purpose by the free consent of the whole body of ad- 
 herents to this cause in the several parts of the nations, and 
 observing the time and place of meeting appointed to them 
 (with other circumstances concerning their election) by or- 
 der from the present ruling power, but considered as gen- 
 eral of the army : 
 
 Which convention is not properly to exercise the legisla- 
 tive power, but only to debate freely, and agree upon the 
 particulars that by way of fundamental constitutions shall 
 be laiu and inviolably observed as the conditions upon which 
 the whole body so represented doth consent to cast itself 
 into a civil and politic incorporation, and under the visible 
 '"rin and administration of government therein declared, and 
 
 to be by each individual member of the body subscribed in 
 testimony of his or their particular consent given thereunto : 
 which conditions so agreed (and among them an Act of Ob- 
 livion for one) will be without danger of being broken or 
 departed from, considering of what it is they are the condi- 
 tions, and the nature of the convention wherein they are 
 made, which is of the people represented in their highest 
 state of sovereignty, as they have the sword in their hands 
 unsubjected unto the rules of civil government, but what 
 themselves orderly assembled for that purpose do think fit 
 to make. And the sword, upon these conditions, subjecting 
 itself to the supreme judicature thus to be set up, how sud- 
 denly might harmony, righteousness, love, peace, and safety 
 unto the whole body follow hereupon, as the happy fruit of 
 such a settlement, if the Lord have any delight to be among 
 
 And this once put in a way, and declared for by the gen- 
 eral and army (as that which they are clearly convinced, in 
 the sight of God, is their duty to bring about, and which 
 they engage accordingly to see done) how firmly and freely 
 would this oblige the hearts and persons, the counsels and 
 purses, the affections and prayers, with all that is in the 
 power of this whole party to do, in way of assistance and 
 strengthening the hands of those now in power, whatever 
 straits and difficulties they may meet with in the mainte- 
 nance of the public safety and peace ! 
 
 This, then, being the state of our present affairs and dif- 
 ferences, let it be acknowledged on all hands, and let all be 
 convinced that are concerned, that there is not only a pos- 
 sibility, but a probability, yea, a compelling necessity, of a 
 firm union in this great body, the setting of which in joint 
 and tune again, by a spirit of meekness and fear of the Lord, 
 is the work of the present day, aud will prove the only rem- 
 edy under God to uphold and carry on this blessed Cause and 
 work of the Lord in the three nations, that is already come 
 thus far onward in its progress to its desired and expected 
 end of bringing in Christ, the desire of all nations, as the 
 chief Ruler among us. 
 
 Now unto this reuniting work let there be a readiness in 
 all the dissenting parts from the highest to the lowest, by 
 cheerfully coming forth to one another in a spirit of self-de- 
 nial and love instead of war and wrath, and to cast down 
 themselves before the Lord, who is the father of all their 
 spirits, in self-abasement and humiliation, for the mutual 
 offence they have been in, for some time past, one unto an- 
 other, and great provocation unto God, and reproach unto 
 his most glorious name, who expected to have been served 
 by them with reverence and godly fear ; for our God is a 
 consuming fire. 
 
 And, as an inducement unto this, let us assure ourselves 
 the means of effecting it will not prove so difficult as other 
 things that have been brought about in the late war, if the 
 minds and spirits of all concerned were once well and duly 
 prepared hereunto by a kindly work of self-denial and self- 
 abasement, set home by the spirit of the Lord upon their 
 consciences, which, if he please, he may do we know not 
 how soon : nay, we shall behold with a discerning eye the 
 inside of that work which God hath been doing among us 
 the three years last past : it would seem chiefly to have 
 been his aim to bring his people into such a frame as this ; 
 for in this tract of time there hath been (as we may say) a 
 great silence in heaven, as if God were pleased to stand still 
 and be as a looker on, to see what his people would be in 
 their latter end, and what work they would make of it, if 
 left to their own wisdom and politic contrivances. And as 
 God hath had the silent part, so men, and that good men 
 too, have had the active and busy part, and have, like them- 
 selves, made a great sound and noise, like the shout of a 
 king in a mighty host ; which, while it hath been a sound 
 only and no more, hath not done much hurt as yet ; but the 
 fear and jealousy thereby caused hath put the whole body 
 out of frame, and made them apt to fall into great confusions 
 and disorder. 
 
 And if there be thus arisen a general dissent and disa- 
 greement of parts (which is not, nor ought to be, accounted 
 the less considerable because it lies hid and kept in under 
 a patient silence), why should there not be as general a cm.- 
 fession and acknowledgment of what each may find them- 
 selves overtaken in, and cannot but judge themselves faulty 
 for? this kind of vent being much better than to have it 
 break out in flames of a forward and untimely wrathful 
 spirit, which never works the righteousness of God, espe- 
 cially since what hath been done among us may probably 
 have been more the effect of temptation than the product of 
 any malicious design ; and this sort of temptation is very 
 common and incident to men in power (how good soever 
 they may be) to be overtaken in, and thereupon do sudden 
 unadvised actions, which the Lord pardons and overrules for 
 the best, evidently making appear that it is the work of the 
 weak and fleshly part, which his own people carry about 
 with them too much unsubdued ; and therefore the Lord 
 thinks fit, by this means, to show them the need of beinjf 
 beholden to their spiritual part to restore them again. ;ind 
 bring them into their right temper aud healthful constitution,.
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 347 
 
 And thus, while each dissenting part is aggravating upon 
 it self-faultmess and blame, and none excusing, but all con- 
 fessing they deserve, in one sort or other, reproof, if not be- 
 fore men, yet in God's sight, who knows how soon it may 
 please God to come into this broken, contrite, and self-de- 
 nying frame of spirit in the good people within the three na- 
 tions, and own them, thus truly humbled and abased, for his 
 temple and the place of his habitation and rest, wherein he 
 shall abide forever? of whom it may be said, God is in the 
 midst of her, she shall not be moved ; God shall help her, 
 and that right early, or with his morning appearance ; at 
 which time he will sit silent no longer, but Heaven will 
 speak again, and become active and powerful in the spirits 
 and hearts of honest men, and in the works of his provi- 
 dences, when either they go out to fight by sea or by land, 
 or remain in council and debates at home for the public weal, 
 and again hear the prayers of his people, and visibly own 
 them as a flock of holy men, as Jerusalem in her solemn 
 feasts : " I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of 
 Israel, saith the Lord, to do it for them : and then they shall 
 know that 1 the Lord their God am with them, and that they 
 are my people, and that ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, 
 are men that have showed yourselves weak, sinful men, and 
 I am your God, that have declared myself an all-wise and 
 powerful God, saith the Lord God." 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 READER, Upon the perusal of this discourse, thou wilt 
 quickly perceive that these two things are principally aimed 
 at in it by the author : First, to answer in some measure 
 that which is called for by those in power, when they pub- 
 licly profess they desire nothing more than conviction, and 
 to find out the hidden provocations which either have or yet 
 may bring forth the Lord against these nations, in the way 
 which at present they are in. 
 
 Secondly, to remove out of the minds and spirits of the 
 honest party, that still agree in the reason and justice of the 
 good old cause, all things of a private nature and selfish con- 
 cern (the tendency whereof serves but to foment and 
 strengthen wrath and divisions among them), and in place 
 thereof to set before them that common and public interest, 
 which, if with sincerity embraced, may be the means of not 
 only procuring a firm union among them, but also of con- 
 serving them herein. 
 
 In order to this, the author hath not been willing so much 
 to declare his own opinion, or deliver any positive conclu- 
 sions, as to discuss the business by way of question and 
 answer, and thereby make as near a conjecture as he can of 
 that wherein the several dissenting parts may with better 
 satisfaction meet together, and agree upon a safe and righ- 
 teous bottom., than to remain at the distance they do, to the 
 apparent advantage of the common enemy, the approaching 
 ruin of themselves, and needless hazard, if not loss, of the 
 cause they have been so deeply engaged in ; especially con- 
 sidering that, when once they shall be found beginning to 
 come forth to one another in such a condescending, self- 
 denying spirit, cleansed from the stain of hypocrisy and de- 
 ceit, they may be well assured that light will spring up 
 among them more and more unto a perfect day ; and then 
 those things which at present we have next in view, will 
 prove as shadows ready to flee away before the morning 
 brightness of Christ's heavenly appearance and second com- 
 ing, through which they will be heightened and improved 
 to their full maturity, to the bringing in that kingdom of his 
 that shall never be moved. 
 
 And because an essay hath been already made in a private 
 way to obtain the first thing, that is to say, conviction, which 
 chiefly is in the hand of the Lord to give, the same obliga- 
 tion lies upon the author, with respect to the second, for the 
 exposing of it as now it is unto public view, and therein 
 leaving it also with tha Lord for his blessing thereunto. 
 
 B. 
 
 The People's Case stated. 
 
 He in whom is the right of sovereign, and to give law, is 
 either so of himself, or in the right of another, that may de- 
 rive the same unto him ; which shows that there are two 
 sorts of sovereigns. 
 
 A sovereign in the first sense none is nor can be but God, 
 who is of himself most absolute ; and he that is first of all 
 others in the second sense is the man Christ Jesus, to whom 
 the power of sovereign, in the right of the Father, is com- 
 mitted, over all the works of God's hands. Christ exercised 
 the same in the capacity of David's root from before the be 
 vorld. H 
 
 personal union with the Word, David saw and acknowledg- 
 ed, Psal. ex.., I. Thus Christ may be called God's lieuten- 
 ant sovereign, or general vicegerent of his supremacy over 
 all in heaven and in earth. He therefore is the true univer- 
 sal king and root of all sovereign and just governing power, 
 whether in heaven or on earth. 
 
 His sovereignty is unquestionable and unaccountable, be- 
 cause of the perfection of his person, carrying in it an apti- 
 tude and sufficiency to govern, without possibility of error 
 or defect of any kind. Sovereign and governing power doth, 
 necessarily relate to subjects that are to be the ruled, and 
 subjects capable of such government ; therefore, when God 
 limself purposes within himself to be supreme legislator and 
 governor, he doth withal purpose the being and creation of 
 rath worlds, as the subject matter of his kingdom. He pro- 
 pounds to govern his subjects by and with their own consent 
 md good liking ; or without and against it, in the way of 
 lis revenging justice ; governing by laws, clearly stating 
 and ascertaining the duty or the offence, as also the rewards 
 and penalties. 
 
 Herein just government consists, or the justice of govern- 
 ment ; for he that rules over others must be just, and, in- 
 deed, should be seen to be so in all his commands ; so seen, 
 as to render the consciences of the ruled, and those whose 
 duty it is to obey, inexcusable before God and before men. 
 if they dissent or resist. 
 
 Inexcusable they are before God, because the matter com- 
 manded is the matter of God's law, and therefore just to be 
 obeyed. They are also inexcusable before men, that which 
 is required of them being generally acknowledged and af- 
 firmed (by those in whom the common consent of the sub- 
 jects is intrusted to that end) to be just and reasonable, and 
 therefore to be obeyed ; for the end of all government, being 
 for the good and welfare, and not for the destruction of th 
 ruled, God, who is the institutor of government, as he is 
 pleased to ordain the office of governors, intrusting them 
 with power to command the just and reasonable things which 
 his own law commands, that carry their own evidence to 
 common reason and sense, at least, that do not evidently 
 contradict it, so he grants a liberty to the subjects, or those 
 that by him are put under the rule, to refuse all such com- 
 mands as are contrary to his law, or to the judgment of com- 
 mon reason and sense, whose trial he allows, by way of as- 
 sent or dissent, before the commands of the ruler shall ba 
 binding or put in execution ; and this in a co-ordinacy of 
 power with just government, and as the due balance there- 
 of. The original impressions of just laws are in man's na- 
 ture and very constitution of being. Man hath the law in 
 his mind (or the superior and intellectual pan of him), con- 
 vincing and bringing that into obedience and subjection to 
 the law -of God, in Christ himself. He hath also that which 
 is a law in his members that are on the earth (or his earthly 
 and sensual part), whose power is co-ordinate with the oth- 
 er, but such, that if it be not gained into a harmony and 
 conjunction with its head, the spirit or mind of man, hath 
 ability to let and hinder his mind or ruling part from per- 
 forming and putting in execution that which is good, just, 
 fit, and to be acknowledged as the righteous dictates of the 
 mind, which ought to be the ruling power, or law to the 
 man : so, in the outward government over man, the second- 
 ary or co-ordinate power, concurring with that which is the 
 chief ruling power, is essential to just government, and is 
 acknowledged to be so by the fundamental constitution of 
 the government of England, as well as in the legal being 
 and constitution of Parliaments, whether that which hath 
 been usual and ordinary, according to the common law, or 
 that which of late hath been extraordinary, by express stat- 
 ute, for the continuance of the Parliament (17 Cor.), until 
 dissolved by act of Parliament : 
 
 For, together with the legal being which is given to regal 
 power and the prerogative of the crown, there is the legal 
 power and being reserved also unto that body, which is the 
 people's or kingdom's representative, who are the hands 
 wherein that which is called power politic is seated, and are 
 intrusted with giving or withholding the common consent of 
 the whole nation, according to the best of their understand- 
 ings, in all matters coming before them, and are to keep this 
 liberty inviolate and entire, against all invasions or encroach- 
 ments upon it whatsoever. 
 
 This second power, in the very writ of summons for call- 
 ing a Parliament, is declared to be of that nature, that what 
 the first doth without obtaining the consent and approbation 
 of the second, in Parliament, is not binding, but ineffectual, 
 and when the representative body of the kingdom (in and 
 with whom this power is intrusted, as the due and legal bal- 
 ance and boundary to the regal power, set and fixed by tlio 
 fundamental constitution) is made a standing court, and of 
 that continuance as not to be dissolvable but by its own con- 
 sent ; during such its continuance, it hath right to preserve 
 itself from all violent and undue dissolution, and to maintain 
 and defend its own just privileges, a chief of which is to 
 bind or loose the people, in all matters good or hurtful to 
 them, according to their best judgment and discretion. 
 
 In the exercise of this their trust, they are indemnified by 
 law, and no hurt ought to come unto them ; that governiiyg 
 power, which is originally in God, and flows at first from 
 him, as the sole and proper fountain thereof, is brought into 
 exercise among men, upon a differing and distinct account. 
 
 First, As it is a trust and right derived conditionally from 
 God to his officers and ministers (which therefore may be
 
 348 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 lost), who, being called by him, and in the course of his 
 providence, to the exercise of it, are to hold it of him the 
 universal King, and to own themselves, in the exercise 
 thereof, as his vicegerents, to cut off by the sword of justice 
 evil-doers, and to be a protection and encouragement to them 
 that do well. But, because it is part of God's call of any 
 person to this high trust to bring him into the possession and 
 free exercise thereof by the common consent of the body of 
 the people, where such sovereign power is set up, unless they 
 have forfeited this liberty ; therefore, 
 
 Secondly, God doth allow mid confer, by the very law of 
 nature, upon the community or body of the people that are 
 related to and concerned in the right of government placed 
 over them, the liberty, by their common vote or suffrage 
 duly given, to be assenters or dissenters thereunto, and to 
 affirm and make stable, or disallow and render ineffectual, 
 what shall apparently be found by them to be for the good 
 or hurt of that society, whose welfare, next under the justice 
 of God's commands and his glory, is the supreme law and 
 very end of all subordinate governing power. 
 
 Sovereign power, then, comes from God as its proper root, 
 but the restraint or enlargement of it, in its execution over 
 such or such a body, is founded in the common consent of 
 that body. 
 
 The office of chief ruler, or head over any state, common- 
 wealth, or kingdom, hath the right of due obedience from 
 the people inseparably annexed to it. It is an office, not only 
 of divine institution, but for the safety and protection of the 
 whole body or community, and therefore justly and neces- 
 sarily draws to it, and engages their subjection. 
 
 This office of the sovereign, according to the laws and fun- 
 damental constitution of the government of England, is min- 
 istered by the king in a twofold capacity as his will and 
 personal command is in conjunction and agreement with his 
 people in Parliament during the session thereof, or as it is 
 in conjunction and agreement with the law, the Parliament 
 not sitting. But his will and personal command single, in 
 disjunction and disagreement from the Parliament or the 
 laws, hath not the force of a law, saith Fortescue, and gives 
 the reason of it, because this is a limited monarchy, where 
 the king's power (as to the exercise of it) is only a power 
 politic. 
 
 The obedience, then, which from the subject is due to the 
 king, and which they are sworn to perform by the oath of 
 allegiance, is to him, in the ministry of the royal office, ac- 
 cording to the reason and intent of the fundamental compact 
 and Constitution, and according to his own oath, which is 
 to govern by law ; that is, to exercise his rule or royal com- 
 manding power in conjunction and agreement with the Par- 
 liament when sitting, and in conjunction and agreement with 
 the laws of the land, they not sitting. To exercise his power 
 otherwise is and hath been always judged a grievance to 
 the people, and a going against that which is the original 
 right and just liberty of the community, who are not to be 
 bound to such personal commands at will and pleasure, nor 
 compelled to yield obedience thereunto. 
 
 The contrary hereunto was the principle at bottom of the 
 king's cause, which he endeavoured to uphold and maintain, 
 in order to decline and lay aside the legal restraints as afore- 
 said, which the government of England, by the fundamental 
 constitution, is subjected unto, as to the exercise and min- 
 istry of the royal office. 
 
 From the observation and experience which the people of 
 England had, and made many years together, by their rep- 
 resentatives in Parliament, of a desire in the king to shake 
 off these legal restraints in the exercise of the regal power, 
 and on their having tried the best ways and means that oc- 
 curred to their understandings to prevent the same, and to 
 secure to themselves the enjoyment of their just rights and 
 liberty, they at last" pitched upon the desiring from the king 
 the continuance of the sitting of the Parliament called No- 
 vember 3d, 1640, in such sort as is expressed in that act, 17 
 Car., wherein it is provided that it shall not be discontinued 
 or dissolved but by act of Parliament. 
 
 This was judged by them the greatest security imaginable 
 for keeping the ministry of the royal office Within its due 
 bounds, and for quieting the people in the enjoyment of their 
 rights ; but experience hath showed that this yet could 
 not be done without a war, the worst and last of remedies. 
 For although their continuance as the representative body 
 of the kingdom, with the right to exercise the power arid 
 privileges inherent in and inseparable from that supreme 
 court and chief senate (whereof the king is head, both ma- 
 king but one person or politic body in law), yet they them- 
 selves, as well as the king, were bound by the fundamental 
 constitution or compact upon which the government was at 
 first built, containing the condition upon which the king ac- 
 cepted of the royal office, and on which the people granted 
 to him the tribute of their obedience and due allegiance. 
 This condition (as the laws and experience declare) is, that 
 the king shall exercise his office of rule over them according 
 to the laws, as hath been showed, and as he and his people 
 shall from time to time agree in common council in Parlia- 
 ment, for that end assembled. In respect hereof, the laws 
 
 go made are called the concords or agreements passed be- 
 tween the king and the subject, in the third part of Cook's 
 Institutes. 
 
 These agreements, then, are the standard unto the king's 
 rule and the people's obedience, signifying the justice of his 
 commands and the dueness of their allegiance. 
 
 But. the case so happening that tins conjunction and agree- 
 ment, which ought to be found between the personal will of 
 the king and representative will of the kingdom, failing, and 
 these two wills declaring themselves in contrariety and op- 
 position, both of them becoming standing powers, co-ordi- 
 nate and distinct parts of the supremacy, as the two chan- 
 nels wherein the supremacy is placed and appointed to run, 
 as to its exercise by the fundamental constitution, hence 
 sprang the war, each asserting and endeavouring to defend 
 and maintain their own part and right, which ought not to 
 be kept up in disjunction and contrariety, but in unity and 
 agreement each with other. These two parties, with their 
 adherents, in this case, may be, according to the law, con- 
 trarients one towards another, as the law affords an exam- 
 ple in the preamble of Cook's fourth part of his Institutes 
 (not properly traitors), being co-ordinate powers, parts of the 
 supremacy, that are the heads to each party, and, by conse- 
 quence, have a right of making a war, as their last appeal, 
 if they cannot otherwise agree. 
 
 Being once entered thus into a state of war and actual en- 
 mity, they do, as it were, become two nations, and cease to 
 be under the obligations they were in before ; for during this 
 state of war and enmity, the standing laws (in a sort) cease, 
 and a new way of rule each party forms to himself and his 
 adherents, as may best consist for each of their safeties and 
 preservations. 
 
 Upon this disjunction of the two wills, in the harmony and 
 agreement whereof the supremacy is placed, these follow- 
 ng queries do naturally arise : 
 
 First, To which or whether of these by law is the alle- 
 giance required as due is it to be yielded to the personal 
 will of the king single, in disjunction from the will of the 
 representative body of the kingdom, or to the will of the peo- 
 ple, in disjunction from the will of the king ? Or is it to the 
 personal will of the king, in conjunction with the laws, 
 though in opposition and contrariety to the will of the king- 
 dom's representative in Parliament assembled ? Or is it to 
 the will of the kingdom's representative, in conjunction with 
 the laws, though in opposition to the personal will of the 
 king? 
 
 The Second Querie is, In whose judgment in this case are 
 the people by law to acquiesce as to the declaring with whom 
 the laws are whether the personal judgment of the king 
 single, or the vote of the senate, that is, the kingdom's rep- 
 resentative body t 
 
 The Third Querie is, With whom will the laws be found 
 to go in this case, so rare, unusual, and never happening 
 before ; and who is the proper and competent judge 1 Also, 
 whether the laws be not perfectly silent, as never suppo- 
 sing such a case possible to happen, by reason that the pow- 
 er used by the one for dissolving the other never before suf- 
 fered the opposition to rise so high? 
 
 The Fourth Querie is. Whether he, in this case, that 
 keeps his station and place of trust, wherein God and the 
 law did set him, with care to demean himself according to 
 the best of his understanding, agreeably to the law and cus- 
 toms of Parliament, and pursuant to their votes and direc- 
 tions (so long as they sit and affirm themselves to be a Par- 
 liament), and uses his best endeavours in the exercise of 
 that public trust, that no detriment in the general come onto 
 the Commonwealth by the failure of justice, and the neces- 
 sary protection due from government, without any designing 
 or intending the subversion of the Constitution, but only the 
 securing more fully the people's liberties and just rights from 
 all future invasions and oppressions, be not so far from de- 
 serving to be judged criminal in respect of any law of God, 
 or man, that he ought rather to be affirmed one that hath 
 done his duty, even the next best that was left to him, or 
 possible for him to do in such a dark, stormy season, and 
 such difficult circumstances ? 
 
 As to the right of the cause itself, it ariseth out of the 
 matter of fact that hath happened, and, by the just and wise 
 providence of God, hath been suffered to state itself, in the 
 contest between the personal will and declared pleasure of 
 the king on the one hand, and the public will or vote of the 
 people in Parliament on the other, declaring itself either in 
 orders or ordinances of both Houses, or in the single act of 
 the House of Commons asserting itself a Parliament, upon 
 the grounds of the act 17 Car., providing against its disso- 
 lution. 
 
 This will appear with the more evidence and certainty by 
 considering wherein either part had a wrong cause, or did 
 or might do that which was not their duty ; taking the 
 measure of their duty from what as well the king as the 
 people's representative are obliged unto, by the fundamen- 
 tal constitution of the government, which binds them in 
 each of their capacities and distinct exercises of their trust
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 349 
 
 to intend and pursue the true good and welfare of the whole 
 body or community as their end. This, in effect, is to de- 
 tain the people in obedience and subjection to the law of God, 
 and to guide them in the ways of righteousness unto God's 
 well-pleasing, and to avoid falling out or disagreeing about 
 the way or means leading to that end. 
 
 Hence that party which in his or their actings was at the 
 greatest distance from, or opposition unto, this end, and wil- 
 fully and unnecessarily disagreed and divided from the other 
 in the ways and means that were most likely to attain this 
 end, they were assuredly in the fault, and had a wrong cause 
 to manage, under whatever name or face of authority it was 
 beaded and upheld. And such a wrong cause was capable 
 of being espoused and managed under the face of authority, 
 as might be pretended unto by either part ; for as the king, 
 insisting upon his prerogative, and the binding force which 
 his personal will and pleasure ought to have, though in dis- 
 tinction from and opposition to his Parliament, might de- 
 part from the end of government, answerable to his trust, 
 and yet urge his right to be obeyed, so the public will of the 
 people, exercised in and by the vote of their representative 
 in Parliament, asserting itself to be of a binding force also, 
 and to have the place of a law, though in distinction from 
 the king and laws also (as saith the king), whatever other- 
 wise by them is pretended, might also depart from the true 
 end of government answerable to their trust, and yet insist 
 upon their right to be obeyed and submitted unto, and, hav- 
 ing power in their hands, might unduly go about also to 
 compel obedience. It is not lawful either for king or Par- 
 liament to urge authority and compel obedience as of right 
 in any such cases, where, according to the law of nature, 
 the people are at liberty, and ought to have a freedom from 
 yielding obedience, as they are and ought to have when- 
 ever any would compel them to disobey God, or to do things 
 that evidently in the eye of reason and common sense are to 
 their hurt and destruction. Such things nature forbids the 
 doing of, having for that very purpose armed man with the 
 defensive weapon of refusing to consent and obey, as that 
 privilege whereby man is distinguished from a beast ; which 
 when he is deprived of he is made a beast, and brought into 
 a state of perfect servitude and bondage. 
 
 Such a state of servitude and bondage may by God's just 
 judgment be inflicted upon man for sin and the abuse of his 
 liberty, when by God restored. The liberty which man was 
 at first created in is that privilege and right which is allow- 
 ed to him by the law of nature, of not being compelled under 
 any pretence whatsoever to sin against God, or to go against 
 the true good and welfare of his own being that is to say, 
 of his inward or outward man but in both these cases to 
 have and to use his just liberty to dissent and refuse to obey. 
 
 For this every man hath that in himself which by God is 
 made a proper and competent judge ; for as to all sin against 
 God and the righteousness of his law, the light of conscience, 
 that is to say, the work of the law, in and upon the mind or 
 inward sense, and in conjunction with it, doth lighten every 
 one that Cometh into the world, accusing or excusing, if it 
 be but hearkened unto and kept awake. And for all such 
 actings as tend to the ruin and destruction of man in his out- 
 ward and bodily concerns, and as he is the object of ruagis- 
 tratical power and jurisdiction, every man hath a judgment 
 of common sense, or a way of discerning and being sensible 
 thereof, common to brute beasts, that take in their knowl- 
 edge by the door of their senses, but is much heightened and 
 ennobled in man by the personal union it is taken into with 
 his intellectual part and intuitive way of discerning things, 
 through the inward reflectings of the mind, compared with 
 the law of God. This inferior judgment in man, when it is 
 conjoined with and confirmed by the judgment of his supe- 
 rior part, is that which we call rational, or the dictates of 
 right reason, that man hath a natural right to adhere unto, 
 as the ordinary certain rule which is given him by God to 
 walk by, and against which he ought not to be compelled, 
 or be forced to depart from it by the mere will and power of 
 another, without better evidence ; that is, a higher, a great- 
 er, or more certain way of discerning. This, therefore, in 
 Scripture, is called man's judgment or man's day, in dis- 
 tinction from the Lord' s judgment and the Lord's day ; and 
 this is that in every individual man, which in the collective 
 body of the people, and meeting of head and members in 
 Parliament, is called the supreme authority, and is the pub- 
 lic reason and will of the whole kingdom, the going against 
 which is, in nature as well as by the law of nations, an of- 
 fence of the highest rank among men ; for it must be pre- 
 sumed that there is more of the wisdom and will of God in 
 that public suffrage of the whole nation, than of any private 
 person or lesser collective body whatsoever, not better qual- 
 ified and principled ; for man is made in God's image, or in 
 a likeness, in judgment and will, unto God himself, accord- 
 ing to the measure that in his nature he is proportioned and 
 made capable to be the receiver and bearer thereof. There- 
 fore it is that the resisting and opposing either of that judg- 
 ment or will which is in itself supreme, and the law to all 
 others (or which bears so much proportion and likeness to 
 the supreme will as is possible for a society and community 
 
 of men agreeing together for that end to contrive and set up 
 for an administration thereof unto them), is against the duty 
 of any member of that society, as well as it is against the 
 duty of the body of the whole society to oppose its judgment 
 and will to that of the supreme Lawgiver, their highest Sov- 
 ereign, God himself. 
 
 The highest judgment and will set up by God for angels 
 and men, in their particular beings, to hold proportion with 
 and bear conformity unto (in the capacity of ruled in rela- 
 tion to their chief ruler), shines forth in the person of Christ, 
 the ingrafted Word ; and when, by the agreement or com- 
 mon consent of a nation or state, there is such a constitution 
 and form of administration pitched upon as, in a standing 
 and ordinary way, may derive and convey the nearest and 
 greatest likeness in human laws, or acts of such a constitu- 
 tion, unto the judgment and will of the supreme Legislator, 
 as the rule and declared duty for every one in that society to 
 observe, it is thereby that government or supreme power 
 comes to receive being in a nation or state, and is brought 
 into exercise according to God's ordinance and divine insti- 
 tution. So, then, it is not so much the form of the admin- 
 istration as the thing administered wherein the good or evil 
 of government doth consist ; that is to say, a greater like- 
 ness or unlikeness unto judgment and will of the highest 
 Being in all the acts or laws flowing from the fundamental 
 constitution of the government. 
 
 Hence it is that common consent, lawfully and rightfully 
 given by the body of a nation, and intrusted with delegates 
 of their own free choice, to be exercised by them as their 
 representatives (as well for the welfare and good of the body 
 that trusts them, as to the honour and well- pleasing of God, 
 the supreme Legislator), is the principle and means, war- 
 ranted by the law of nature and nations, to give constitution 
 and admission to the exercise of government and supreme 
 authority over them and among them : agreeable hereunto, 
 we are to suppose that our ancestors in this kingdom did 
 proceed, when they constituted the government thereof, in 
 that form of administration which hath been- derived to us 
 in the course and channel of our customs and laws ; among 
 which, the law and customs in and of the Parliaments are to 
 be accounted as chief. For, 
 
 Hereby, First, The directive or legislative power (having 
 the right to state and give the rule for the governor's duty 
 and the subject's obedience) is continued in our laws, which 
 as well the king as people are under the observation of; 
 witness the coronation oath, and the oath of allegiance. 
 
 Secondly, The coercive or executive power is placed in one 
 person, under the name and style of a king, to be put forth, 
 not by his own single personal command, but by the signifi- 
 cation of his will and pleasure, as the will of the whole 
 state, in and by his courts of justice, and stated public coun- 
 sels and judicatures, agreed on for that purpose between him 
 and his people in their Parliamentary assemblies. 
 
 The will of the whole state, thus signified, the law itself 
 prefers before the personal will of the king, in distinction 
 from the law, and makes the one binding, the other not ; so 
 that the public will of the state, signified and declared by 
 the public suffrage and vote of the people or kingdom in Par- 
 liament assembled, is a legal and warrantable ground for 
 the subject's obedience in the things commanded by it, for 
 the good and welfare of the whole body, according to the 
 best understanding of such their representative body, by it 
 put forth during the time of its sitting. 
 
 The body with whom the delegated vote and public suf- 
 frage of the whole nation is intrusted being once assembled, 
 with power not to be dissolved but by their own consent, in 
 that capacity the highest vote and trust that can be is exer- 
 cised, and this, by authority of Parliament, unto ex officio, 
 or by way of office, are the keepers of the liberties of Eng- 
 land, or of the people, by the said authority, for which they 
 are accountable if they do not faithfully discharge that their 
 duty. This office of keeping the liberty, which by the law 
 of God and nature is due to the community or whole body 
 of the people, is, by way of trust, committed by themselves 
 to their own delegates, and in effect amounts unto this : 
 
 1. That they may of right keep out and refuse any to ex- 
 ercise rule and command over them except God himself, 
 who is the supreme and universal king and governor, or such 
 as shall agree in their actings to bear his image, which is to 
 be just, and show, for the warrant of their exercise of sov- 
 ereignty, both a likeness in judgment and will unto Him 
 who is wisdom and righteousness itself ; and the approbation 
 and common consent of the whole body, rationally reposing 
 that trust in them, from what is with visible and apparent 
 characters manifest to them, of an aptness and sufficiency 
 in them to give forth such public acts of government that 
 may bear the stamp of God's impression upon them in the 
 judgments they do and execute, especially being therein 
 helped with a national council of the people's own choosing 
 from time to time. 
 
 2. They may of right keep, hold, and restrain him or them 
 with whom the coercive or executive power is intrusted, 
 unto a punctual performance of duty, according to the fun- 
 damental constitution, the oath of the ruler, and the laws
 
 350 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of the land ; and if they shall refuse to be so held and re- 
 strained by the humble desires, advice, and common consent 
 in Parliament, and the people's delegates be invaded and 
 EtDempted upon by force to deter them from the faithful dis- 
 charge of this their duty, they may, in asserting their right, 
 and in a way of their own just defence, raise armies, put the 
 issue upon battle, and appeal unto God. 
 
 3. Such appeal answered, and the issue decided by battle, 
 the people's delegates still sitting, and keeping together in 
 their collective body, may of right, and according to reason, 
 refuse the readmission or new admission of the exercise of 
 the former rulers, or any new rulers again over the whole 
 body, till there be received satisfaction for the former wrongs 
 done, the expense and hazard of the war, and security for 
 the time to come, that the like be not committed again. 
 Until this be obtained, they are bound in duty, in such man- 
 lier as they judge most fit, to provide for the present govern- 
 ment of the whole body, that the commonweal receive no 
 detriment. 
 
 4. In this, which is the proper office of the people's dele- 
 gates, and concerns the keeping and defending the liberty 
 and right of the whole people and nation, they may and 
 ought, during their sitting, to exercise their own proper 
 power and authority, the exigencies of the kingdom requi- 
 ring it, although the other two estates, jointly instructed with 
 them in the exercise of the legislative authority, should de- 
 sert their station, or otherwise fail in the execution of their 
 trusts ; yea, or though many or most of their own members, 
 so long as a lawful quorum remains, shall either voluntarily 
 withdraw from them, or for just cause become excluded. In 
 this discharge of their trust for the common welfare and safe- 
 ty of the whole, their actings, though extraordinary and 
 contrarient to the right of the other two, cannot be treason- 
 able or criminal, though they may be tortuous and errone- 
 ous, seeing they are equals and co-ordinate in the exercise 
 of the legislative power, and have the right of their own 
 proper trust and office to discharge and defend, though their 
 fellow-trustees should fail in theirs ; nor can nor ought the 
 people, as adherents to their own delegates and representa- 
 tives, to be reputed criminal or blameworthy by the law. 
 
 In the exercise of one and the same legislative power, ac- 
 cording to the fundamental constitution of the government 
 of England, there are three distinct public votes allowed for 
 assent or dissent in all matters coming before them, the 
 agreement of which is essential and necessary to the pass- 
 ing of a law : the personal vote of the king ; the personal 
 votes of the Lords in a house or distinct body ; and the del- 
 egated vote and suffrage of the whole people in their repre- 
 sentative body, or the House of Commons. Unto each of 
 these appertains a distinct office and privilege proper to 
 them. 
 
 1. The regal office, and the prerogative thereof, to the 
 king. 
 
 2. The judicial office, to the Lords, as the highest judi- 
 cature and court of justice under the king, for the exercising 
 coercive power and punishing of malefactors. 
 
 3. The office of the keepers of the liberties and rights of 
 the people, as they are the whole nation incorporated under 
 one head, by their own free and common consent. 
 
 The regal office is the fountain of all coercive and execu- 
 tive power, pursuant to the rule set to the same by law, or 
 the agreement of the three estates in Parliament. 
 
 The rule which is set is that of immutable just and right, 
 according to which penalties are applicable and become due, 
 and is first stated and ascertained in the declared law of 
 God, which is the signification or making known by some 
 sign the will of the supreme Legislator, proceeding from a 
 perfect judgment and understanding, that is without all er- 
 ror or defect. 
 
 The will that flows from such a judgment is in its nature 
 legislative and binding, and of right to be obeyed for its own 
 sake, and the perfection it carries in it and with it in all its 
 actings. This will is declared by word or works, or both. 
 By word we are to understand either the immediate breath 
 and spirit of God's mouth or mind, or the inspiration of the 
 Almighty, ministered by the Holy Ghost, in and by some 
 creature as his vessel and instrument, through which the 
 Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were com- 
 posed. By works that declare God's will, we are to under- 
 stand the whole book of the creature, but more eminently 
 and especially the particular beings and natures of angels 
 and men, who bear the name and likeness of God in and 
 upon their"judgments and their wills ; their directing pow- 
 er, and their executive power of mind, which are essential 
 to their being, life, and motion. 
 
 When these direct and execute, in conjunction and har- 
 mony with God's judgment and will, made known in his law, 
 they do that which is right ; and by adhering and conform- 
 ing themselves unto this their certain and unerring guide, 
 do become guides and rulers unto others, and are the objects 
 of right choice, where rulers are wanting in church or state. 
 
 The rule, then, to all action of angels or men, is that 
 of moral or immutable just and right, which is stated and 
 declared in the will and law of God. The first and highest 
 
 imitation of this rule is the creature-being in the person of 
 Christ. The next is the bride, the Lamb's wife. The next 
 is the innumerable society of the holy angels. The next i* 
 the company of just men, fixed in their natural obedience 
 and duty through faith, manifesting itself, not only in their 
 spirits, but in their outward man, redeemed, even in this 
 world, from the body of corruption, as far as is here attain- 
 able. The power which is directive, and states and ascer- 
 tains the morality of the rule for obedience, is in the law of 
 God ; but the original, whence all just executive power 
 arises, which is magistratical and coercive, is from the will 
 or free gift of the people, who may either keep the power 
 in themselves, or give up their subjection into the hands and 
 will of another as their leader and guide, if they shall judge 
 that thereby they shall better answer the end of government, 
 to wit, the welfare and safety of the whole, than if they still 
 kept the power in themselves ; and when they part with it, 
 they may do it conditionally or absolutely ; and while they 
 keep it, they are bound to the right use of it. In this lib- 
 erty every man is created, and it is the privilege and just 
 right which is granted unto man by the supreme Lawgiver, 
 even by the law of nature under which man was made. 
 
 God himself leaves man to the free exercise of this his 
 liberty when he tenders to him his safety and immutability, 
 upon the well or ill use of this his liberty, allowing him the 
 choice either to be his own guide and self-ruler in the abil- 
 ity communicated to him to know and execute God's will, 
 and so to keep the liberty he is possessed of in giving away 
 his subjection or not, or else upon God's call and promise to 
 give up himself in way of subjection to God as his guide 
 and ruler, either absolutely or conditionally. To himself 
 he expects absolute subjection ; to all subordinate rulers, 
 conditional. 
 
 While man's subjection is his own, and in his own keep- 
 ing, unbestowed and ungiven out of himself, he is not, nor 
 cannot be, accountable by way of crime or offence against 
 his ruler and sovereign, but may do with his own what he 
 please, but. still at his peril if he use not this his liberty as 
 he should, to the end for which it is given him, which is by 
 voluntary and entire resignation to become an obedient sub- 
 ject unto Him who is the supreme Lawgiver and rightful 
 King, without possibility of change or defection. 
 
 Unto this right, and the lawful exercise and possession of 
 it, this nation did arrive by the good providence and gift of 
 God, in calling and assembling the Parliament, November 
 3d, 1640, and then continuing their session by an express 
 act (17 Car.), with power not to be dissolved but by their 
 own consent ; which was not so much the introducing of a 
 new law, as declaratory of what was law before, according' 
 to man's natural right, in which he was created, and of 
 which he was possessed by God, the sovereign Giver of all 
 things. 
 
 But the passing that said act of Parliament alone was not 
 that which restored the nation to their original right and 
 just natural liberty, but only put them in the capacity and 
 possibility of it. That which was wanted to make out to 
 the nation a clearness in having and obtaining this their 
 right, was the obligation they had put upon themselves and 
 their posterities to their present sovereign and his authority, 
 which in justice and by the oaths of allegiance they were 
 solemnly bound to, in the sight of God as well as of man ; 
 and therefore, unless by the abuse of that office of trust (to 
 that degree as on his part to break the fundamental compact 
 and constitution of government), they could not be set free 
 nor restored to their original right and first liberty, especial- 
 ly if, together with such breach of trust, both parties appeal 
 to God, and put it upon the issue of battle, and God give the 
 decision ; and in consequence thereof, that original right be 
 asserted, and possession thereof had and held for some years, 
 and then not rightfully lost, but treacherously betrayed and 
 given up by those in whom no power was rightfully placed 
 to give up the subjection of the nation again unto any what- 
 soever. 
 
 Unto which is to be added, that how and when the disso- 
 lution of the said Parliament, according to law, hath been 
 made, is yet unascertained, and not particularly declared ; 
 by reason whereof, and by what hath been before showed, 
 the state of the case on the subject's part is much altered 
 as to the matter of right, and the usurpation is now on the 
 other hand, there being, as is well known, two sorts of 
 usurpers : either such as have no right of consent at all unto 
 the rule they exercise over the subject, or such who, under 
 pretence of a right and title, do claim, not by consent, but 
 by conquest and power, or else hold themselves not obliged 
 to the fundamental compact and constitution of government, 
 but gain unduly from the subject, by advantages taken 
 through deceit and violence, that which is not their own 
 by law. 
 
 For a rational man to give up his reason and will unto the 
 judgment and will of another, without which no outward 
 coercive power can be, whose judgment and will is not per- 
 fectly and unchangeably good and right, is unwise and un- 
 safe, and by the law of nature forbidden ; and therefore all 
 such gift, made by rational men, must be conditional, either
 
 SIR HENRY VANE. 
 
 351 
 
 implied or explicit, to be followers of their rulers, so far as 
 they are followers of that good and right which is contained 
 in the law of the supreme Lawgiver, and no farther ; re- 
 serving to themselves, in case of such defection and decli- 
 ning of the ruler's actings from the rule, their primitive and 
 original freedom to resort unto, that so they may, in such 
 case, be as they were before they gave away their subjec- 
 tion unto the will of another ; and reserving also the power 
 to have this judged by a meet and competent judge, which 
 is the reason of the king and kingdom, declared by their rep- 
 resentatives in Parliament ; that is to say, the delegates of 
 the people in the House of Commons assembled, and the 
 commissioners on the king's behalf, by his own letters pat- 
 ent in the House of Peers ; which two concurring, do very 
 far bind the king, if not wholly. 
 
 And when these cannot agree, but break one from another, 
 the Commons in Parliament assembled are ex officio the 
 keepers of the liberties of the nation, and righteous possess- 
 ors and defenders of it against all usurpers and usurpations 
 whatsoever, by the laws of England. 
 
 C. 
 
 Vanity of Vanities, or Sir Henry Vane's Picture. 
 
 (To the Tune of the Jews' Corant.) 
 Have you not seen a Bartholomew baby, 
 A pageant of policy as fine as may be, 
 That's gone to be shown at the manor of Raby, 
 
 Which nobody can deny t 
 
 There was never such a prostitute sight, 
 That ere profaned this purer light, 
 A hocus pocus juggling knight, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 He was taken for a Delphic Tripus, 
 Quite another doubt-solving CEdipus, 
 But the Parliament made him a very quibus, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 His cunning state tricks and oracles, 
 His lying wonders and miracles, 
 Are turned at last into Parliament shackles, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 He sat late in the House so discontent, 
 With his arms folded and his brows bent, 
 Like Achitophel to the Parliament, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 * * * * 
 When first the English war began, 
 His father was a court trepan, 
 
 And rose to be a Parliament man, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 + * * * 
 
 The devil ne'er see such two Sir Harrys ; 
 Such a pest'lent pair nor near nor far is, 
 No, not at the Jesuits' Sorbon of Paris, 
 
 Which nobody can deny 
 
 * * * * 
 His dainty project of a select senate, 
 Is damned for a blasphemous tenet ; 
 
 'Twas found in the budget ('tis said) of monk Bennet, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 Of this state and kingdoms he is the bane, 
 He shall have the reward of Judas and Cain, 
 And 'twas he that overthrew Charles his wain, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 Should he sit where he did with his mischievous brain, 
 Or if any his counsels behind do remain, 
 The House may be called the labour in Vain, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 D. 
 
 Sir Henry Vane's Speech at a Committee for the Bill against 
 
 Episcopal Government, June 11, 1641. 
 
 Mr. Hyde sitting in the chair. 
 
 MASTER HYDE, The debate we are now upon is, wheth- 
 er the government by archbishops, bishops, chancellors, <fec., 
 should be taken away out of the Church and kingdom of 
 England; for the right stating whereof, we must remember 
 the vote which passed yesterday, not only by this com- 
 mittee, but the House, which was to this effect : That this 
 government hath been found, by long experience, to be a 
 great impediment to the perfect reformation and growth of 
 religion, and very prejudicial to the civil state. 
 
 So that, then, the question will lie thus before us : Wheth- 
 er a government, which long experience hath set so ill a 
 character' upon, importing danger, not only to our religion, 
 but the civil state, should be any longer continued among 
 us, or be utterly abolished ! 
 
 For my own part, I am of the opinion of those who con- 
 ceive that the strength of reason already set down in the 
 preamble to this bill by yesterday's vote is a necessary de- 
 cision of this question ; for one of the main ends for which 
 church government is set up is to advance and further the 
 perfect reformation and growth of religion, which we have 
 already voted this government doth contradict ; so that it is 
 destructive to the very end for which it should be, and is 
 most necessary and desirable ; in which respect, certainly, 
 we have cause enough to lay it aside, not only as useless, 
 in that it attains not its end, but as dangerous, in that it 
 destroys and contradicts it. 
 
 In the second place, we have voted it prejudicial to the 
 civil state, as having so powerful and ill an influence upon 
 our laws, the prerogative of the king, and liberties of the 
 subject, that it is like a spreading leprosy, which leaves 
 nothing untainted and uninfected which it comes near. 
 
 May we not, therefore, well say of this government, as 
 our Saviour, in the fifth of Matthew, speaks of salt (give me 
 leave upon this occasion to make use of Scripture, as well 
 as others have done in this debate), where it is said that salt 
 is good : " But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith 
 will you season it ? It is thenceforth good for nothing but 
 to be cast out, and trodden under foot of men." So church 
 government, in the general, is good, and that which is ne- 
 cessary, and which we all desire ; but when any particular 
 form of it hath once lost its savour, by being destructive to 
 its own ends, for which it is set up (as by our vote already 
 passed we say this hath), then surely, sir, we have no more, 
 to do but to cast it out, and endeavour, the best we can, to 
 provide ourselves a better. 
 
 But to this it hath been said that the government now in 
 question may be so amended and reformed, that it needs not 
 be pulled quite down or abolished, because it is conceived 
 it hath no original sin or evil in it ; or if it have, it is said, 
 regeneration will take that away. 
 
 Unto which I answer, I do consent that we should do with 
 this government as we are done by in regeneration, in which 
 all old things are to pass a way, and all things are to become 
 new ; and this we must do if we desire a perfect reforma- 
 tion and growth of our religion, or good to our civil state. 
 For the whole fabric of this building is so rotten and cor- 
 rupt, from the very foundation of it to the top, that if we 
 pull it not down now, it will fall about the ears of all those 
 that endeavour it within a very few years. 
 
 The universal rottenness or corruption of this government 
 will most evidently appear by a disquisition into these en- 
 suing particulars. 
 
 First, let us consider in what soil this root grows : Is it 
 not in the pope's paradise ? do not one and the same prin- 
 ciples and grounds- maintain the papacy, or universal bish- 
 op, as do our diocesan or metropolitan bishops ? All those 
 authorities which have been brought us out of the fathers 
 and antiquity, will they not as well, if not better, support 
 the popedom as the order of our bishops ? So, likewise, all 
 these arguments for its agreeableness to monarchy and cure 
 of schism, do they not much more strongly hold for the ac- 
 knowledgment of the pope than for our bishops ? And yet 
 have monarchies been ever a whit the more absolute for the 
 pope's universal monarchy, or their kingdoms less subject to 
 schisms and seditions ? Whatsoever other kingdoms have 
 been, I am sure our histories can tell us this kingdom hath 
 not ; and therefore we have cast him off long since, as he 
 is foreign, though we have not been without one in our own 
 bowels. For the difference between a metropolitan, or dio- 
 cesan, or universal bishop, is not of kinds, but of degrees ; 
 and a metropolitan or diocesan bishop is as ill able to per- 
 form the duty of a pastor to his diocese or province, as the 
 universal bishop is able to do it to the whole world ; for the 
 one cannot do but by deputies, and no more can the other ; 
 and therefore, since we all confess the grounds upon which 
 the papacy stands are rotten, how can we deny but these 
 that maintain our bishops are so too, since they are one and 
 the same ? 
 
 In the second place, let us consider by what hand this 
 root of episcopacy was planted, and how it came into the 
 Church. 
 
 It is no difficult matter to find this out ; for is not the very 
 spirit of this order a spirit of pride, exalting itself in the 
 temple of God over all that is called God ? First, exalting 
 itself above its fellow-presbyters, under the form of a bish- 
 op; then over its fellow-bishops, under the title of arch- 
 bishops ; and so still mounting over those of its own profes- 
 sion, till it come to be pope ; and then it sticks not to tread 
 upon the necks of princes, kings, and emperors, and trample 
 them under its feet. Also thus you may trace it from its 
 first rise, and discern by what spirit this order came into 
 the Church, and by what door, even by the back door of 
 pride and ambition, not by Christ Jesus. It is not a plant 
 which God's right hand hath planted, but is full of rotten- 
 ness and corruption ; that mystery of iniquity which hath 
 wrought thus long, and so fit to be plucked up, and removed 
 out of the way. 
 
 Thirdly, let us consider the very nature and quality of
 
 353 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 this tree or root in itself, whether it be good or corrupt in 
 its own nature : we all know where it is said, " A good tree 
 cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, nor a corrupt tree good 
 fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" 
 By its fruit, therefore, we shall be sure to know it ; and 
 according as the fruits of the government have been among 
 us, either in Church or Commonwealth, so let it stand or 
 Tall with us. 
 
 And of government in the Church : First, as itself came 
 in by the back door into the Church, and was brought in by 
 the spirit of anti-Christ, so itself hath been the back door 
 and inlet of all superstition and corruption into the worship 
 and doctrine of this Church, and the means of hastening us 
 buck again to Rome. For proof of this, I appeal to all our 
 knowledge in late years past, the memory whereof is so 
 fresh, I need enter into no particulars. 
 
 A second fruit of this government in the Church hath been 
 the displacing of the most godly and conscientious minis- 
 ters ; the vexing, punishing, and banishing out of the king- 
 dom the most religious of all sorts and conditions, that would 
 not comply with their superstitious inventions and ceremo- 
 nies ; in one word, the turning the edge and power of their 
 government against the very life and power of godliness, and 
 the favour and protection of it unto all profane, scandalous, 
 and superstitious persons that would uphold their party : 
 thousands of examples might be given of this, if it were not 
 most notorious. 
 
 A third fruit hath been schisms and fractions within our- 
 selves, and alienation from all the Reformed Churches 
 abroad. 
 
 And, lastly, the prodigious monster of the late canons, 
 whereby they had designed the whole nation to a perpetual 
 slavery and bondage to themselves and their superstitious 
 inventions. 
 
 These are the fruits of the government in the Church. 
 Now let us consider these in the civil state ; as, 
 
 1. The countenancing all illegal projects and proceedings, 
 by teaching in their pulpits the lawfulness of an arbitrary 
 power. 
 
 2. The overthrowing all process at common law that re- 
 flected never so little upon their courts. 
 
 3. The kindling a war between these two nations, and 
 blowing up the flame, as much as in them lay, by their coun- 
 sels, canons, and subsidies they granted to that end. 
 
 4. The plots, practices, and combinations during this Par- 
 liament, iu all which they seem to have been interested 
 more or less. 
 
 Thus have they not contented themselves with encroach- 
 ments upon our spiritual privileges, but have envied us our 
 civil freedom, desiring to make us grind iu their mill, as the 
 Philistines did Samson, and to put out both our eyes : O let 
 us be avenged of these Philistines for Qur two eyes ! 
 
 If, then, the tree be to l>e known by its fruits, I hope you 
 see by this time plainly the nature and quality of this tree. 
 
 In the last place, give me leave, for a close of all, to pre- 
 sent to your consideration the mischiefs which the contin- 
 uance of this government doth threaten us with, if by the 
 wisdom of this committee they be not prevented. 
 
 First, the danger our religion must ever be in, so long as 
 it is in the hands of such governors as can stand firmly in 
 nothing more than its ruin, and whose affinity with the 
 pope's hierarchy makes them more confident of the papists, 
 than the professors of the Reformed religion for their safety 
 and subsistence. 
 
 Secondly, the unhappy condition our civil state is in, while 
 the bishops have vote in the Lords' House, being there as 
 so many obstructions in our body politic to all good and 
 wholesome laws tending to salvation. 
 
 Thirdly, the improbability of settling any firm or durable 
 peace so long as the cause of the war yet continues, and the 
 bellows that blow up this flame. 
 
 Lastly, and that which I will assure you goes nearest to 
 my heart, is the check which we seem to give to Divine 
 Providence if we do not at this time pull down this govern- 
 ment. 
 
 For hath not this Parliament been called, continued, pre- 
 served, and secured by the immediate finger of God, as it 
 were, for this work ? Had we not else been swallowed up 
 in many inevitable dangers by the practices and designs of 
 these men and their party ? Hath not God left them to 
 themselves, as well in these things as in the evil adminis- 
 tration of their government, that he might lay them open 
 unto us, and lead us, as it were, by the hand, from the find- 
 ing them to be the causes of our evil, to discern that their 
 rooting up must be our only cure ? Let us not, then, halt 
 any longer between two opinions, but with one heart and 
 resolution give glory to God in complying with his provi- 
 dence, and with the good safety and peace of this church, 
 and state, which is by passing this bill we are now upon. 
 
 A Letter from a Person of Quality to a Relation of Sir Henry 
 Vane, about a Week after the Execution. 
 
 MADAM, If I do later than others give you an account of 
 the share I have in the loss of your generous kinsman, it is 
 because I would not rudely disturb the motions of so just a 
 sorrow ; but I hope that you are assured I have so real a con- 
 cern in all that relates to you, that it was not necessary, by 
 an early haste, to send you an information of it. I have, 
 madam, while I own a love to my country, a deep interest 
 in the public loss, which so many worthy persons lament. 
 The world is robbed of an unparalleled example of virtue and 
 piety. Hit great abilities made hit enemies persuade them- 
 selvet that all the revolutions in the last age were wrought 
 by his influence, as if the world were only moved by his en- 
 gine. In him they lodged all the dying hopes of his party. 
 There was no opportunity that he did not improve for the 
 advantage of his country. And when he was in his last and 
 much-deplored scene, he strove to make the people in love 
 with that freedom they had so lavishly and foolishly thrown 
 away. 
 
 He was great in all his actions, but to me he seemed great- 
 est in his sufferings, when his enemies seem to fear that he 
 alone should be able to acquaint them with a change of for- 
 tune. In his lowest condition, you have seen him the ter- 
 ror of a great prince, strengthened by many potent confed- 
 erates and armies ; you have seen him live in high estima- 
 tion and honour, and certainly he died with it. Men ar- 
 rive at honours by several ways. The martyrs, though they 
 wanted the glittering crowns the princes of those ages dis- 
 pensed, have rich ones in every just man's esteem. Virtue, 
 though unfortunate, shines in spite of all its enemies ; nor 
 is it in any power to deface those lasting monuments your 
 friend hath raised of his, in every heart that either knew 
 him, or held any intelligence with fame. But, madam, I 
 trespass too long upon your patience. This is a subject I 
 am apt to dwell on, because I can never say enough of it. 
 I shall now only desire you to make use of that fortitude 
 and virtue that raised your friend above the malice and 
 power of his enemies ; and do not, by an immoderate sor- 
 row, destroy that which was so dear to him yourself, but 
 live the lively representation of his virtue, the exercise of 
 which that made you always the admiration of 
 
 Your humble servant, &c. 
 
 The 22d Jane, 1662.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 1602-1680. 
 
 HENRY MARTEN, or, as he was more gener- 
 ally called, Harry Marten, was born in Oxford 
 (" particularly, as I conceive," says Anthony & 
 Wood, " in the parish of St. John Baptist, in a 
 house opposite to Merton College Church, then 
 lately built by Harry Sherburne, gentleman, and 
 possessed at the time of Harry's birth by Sir 
 Henry his father") in the year 1602. His father. 
 Sir Henry Marten, LL.D., was the most emi- 
 nent civilian of his time. Educated also at 
 Oxford, he had carried off all the honours of 
 the University, and, after leaving it, became 
 successively judge of the admiralty, and twice 
 dean of the arches, received knighthood, and 
 in 1624 the appointment of judge of the prerog- 
 ative. In the Parliament of 1628 he represent- 
 ed the University of Oxford, and in the Long 
 Parliament sat for the borough of St. Ives, in 
 Huntingdonshire. He acted generally with the 
 liberal party, but his temper was moderate, and 
 he strove to conciliate to the last. 
 
 Shortly after the birth of Harry Marten, we 
 find Sir Henry in London. " When a lad," said 
 one of the libellers of the famous Republican in 
 after years, " you lived in Aldersgate-street, 
 under the tuition of the then called ' blue-nosed 
 Romanist' your father, who was the best civil- 
 ian of our horizon, and a ' six-swinger,' as they 
 termed him ; he had but 40 per annum of his 
 own."* Whatever his condition was then, it 
 is quite certain that, some short time before 
 his death, which took place in 1641, he had pur- 
 chased " a fair estate, mostly lying in Berks," 
 which Anthony & Wood adds, " his ungodly son 
 Harry squandered away."t 
 
 Young Harry Marten was sent while yet in 
 his boyhood to a grammar-school in Oxford, 
 and afterward, in his fifteenth year, became a 
 gentleman commoner of University College ;t 
 " where," says the author of the Athenae, " and 
 in public, giving a manifestation of his preg- 
 nant parts," he had the degree of bachelor of 
 arts conferred upon him in the latter end of 
 1619. He then travelled for some time in 
 France, and at his return was prevailed on by 
 his father to consent to one of those marriages 
 of convenience which carry in their train all 
 kinds of misery and social wrong. " His father 
 found out a rich wife for him," says Aubrey, 
 "whom he married something unwillingly." 
 After the birth of a daughter they rarely met 
 again ; but it is a touching circumstance to 
 record, that in the last lonely years of his 
 wretched imprisonment, this wife and daughter 
 were the only persons in the world that seemed 
 to recollect his existence, or that, to his own 
 mind, gave him still some interest in life. 
 
 He offered himself for Parliament on the 
 
 * A letter prefixed to a libellous publication (by a reck- 
 less and notorious libertine named Gayton) called " Colonel 
 Harry Marten's Familiar Letters to his Lady of Delight." 
 IThere is also a small quarto with the date of 1685, entitled 
 "the Familiar Epistles of Col. Henry Martin, found in his 
 Mistress's Cabinet," second edition. It is impossible that 
 so much nonsense was ever penned by the colonel. C.] 
 
 t Ath. Ox., iii., 17. 
 
 t He was matriculated, according to the Oxford records, 
 on the 31st of October, 1617 : " Henricus Marten, Oxonien- 
 sis militis Jilius, annos natus 15." 
 
 Y Y 
 
 great election in April, 1640, to the electors for 
 the county of Berkshire. His name had already 
 become known as that of a man of eloquence 
 and wit, and as the adviser of some of the most 
 eminent public men of the time. He had con- 
 tracted friendships with Hyde (Lord Claren- 
 don), with Nathaniel Fiennes, with Hampden, 
 and with Pym. He had also, in 1639, spiritedly 
 refused to contribute a single sixpence towards 
 the maintenance of a war against his fellow- 
 countrymen in Scotland. These were his 
 claims, and an immense majority of the Berk- 
 shire electors at once cheerfully acknowledged 
 them. 
 
 Marten's life, up to this time, had been one 
 of extreme gayety. " He was a great lover of 
 pretty girls," says Aubrey, "to whom he was 
 so liberal, that he spent the greatest part of his* 
 estate." Men wondered at first, therefore, in 
 those times of solemnity and precision, when 
 they saw a man so free in living, and so liberal 
 in speech, admitted to the intimacy of the gra- 
 vest and most religious men of the age. They 
 had yet to learn, what to the penetrating glance 
 of the leaders of this Parliament had been al- 
 ready revealed, that under the condemned hab- 
 its of recklessness and dissipation lurked in 
 this case one of the most active and useful dis- 
 positions, one of the most frank, liberal, and 
 benevolent spirits in a word, one of the best 
 and most serviceable politicians that the coun- 
 try had produced. 
 
 Nor were they long in learning this. Marten 
 at once took an active part in the proceedings 
 of Parliament, and everybody saw that if he 
 was the wittiest and most pleasant, he was also 
 one of the most ardent and uncompromising of 
 the opponents of Charles. " He was a great 
 and faithful lover of his country," says Aubrey : 
 " his speeches were not long, but wondrous 
 poignant, pertinent, and witty. He was of an 
 incomparable wit for repartees ; not at all cov- 
 etous ; humble, not at all arrogant, as most of 
 them were ; a great observer of justice, and did 
 always, in the House, take the part of the op- 
 pressed."* The shafts he shot at Charles 
 struck deeper for the very reason that, in other 
 circumstances, might have turned them aside 
 comparatively harmless ; and the name of Har- 
 ry Marten, once a signal for laughter only, be- 
 came a terror in Whitehall. 
 
 In the short interval between the Parliaments 
 of April and November, Charles, ever childishly 
 forward in showing his resentments, found an 
 opportunity to insult this new and formidable 
 assailant. Marten happened to be walking in. 
 Hyde Park one day as his majesty's carriage 
 passed, when the king himself, speaking very 
 loud, and in the hearing of many people, applied 
 a gross expression to him. " Harry went away 
 patiently," says Aubrey, who relates the anec- 
 dote, " sed manebat alta mente repdstum. That 
 sarcasm raised the whole county of Berks 
 against him." In other words, Marten was re- 
 turned to the House of Commons by the elect- 
 ors of that county, on the summoning of the 
 
 Letters and Lives, ii., 435, 436.
 
 354 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 famous Parliament of 1640, with greater enthu- 
 siasm than before. 
 
 The rise of the Republican party in the House 
 of Commons has been described in the life of 
 Vane, and Marten's statesmanship has received 
 occasional illustration there. It was natural 
 that, in entering on a decisive course in the 
 House of Commons, he should choose his part 
 with the Independents, then laying with so 
 much energy and resolution the secret and solid 
 foundations of their power. He had most need, 
 his enemies said (and his friends need not deny 
 the imputation), of the divine principle of tol- 
 eration which distinguished that great party. 
 " Henry Marten," says Bishop Burnet, " was 
 all his life a most violent enemy to monarchy, 
 but all that he moved for was upon Roman and 
 Greek principles. He never entered into mat- 
 ters of religion." The charge the bishop would 
 imply in this passage is not a serious one. Vane 
 and Cromwell, penetrated with all the fervours 
 of a most earnest religious zeal, could see no 
 purer end of government than the laughing 
 Harry Marten proposed that of elevating in 
 the social scale every individual man in Eng- 
 land, until the time might come when no Eng- 
 lishman should have a master, and in every 
 corner of the island should be realized that 
 lofty and soaring spirit which made Rome, so 
 long as Rome remained uncorrupted and un- 
 poisoned, a mark for the admiration of all suc- 
 ceeding ages. " Some persons," Hume ob- 
 serves, in his character of this Parliament of 
 1640, " partial to the leaders who now defend- 
 ed public liberty, have ventured to put them in 
 the balance with the most illustrious charac- 
 ters of antiquity, and mention the names of 
 Pym, Hampden, Vane, as a just parallel to those 
 of Cato, Brutus, Cassius. Profound capacity, 
 indeed, undaunted courage, extensive enter- 
 prise in these particulars, perhaps, the Roman 
 do not much surpass the English patriots ; but 
 what a difference when the discourse, conduct, 
 conversation, and private as well as public be- 
 haviour of both are inspected ! Compare only 
 one circumstance, and consider its consequen- 
 ces. The leisure of those noble ancients was 
 totally employed in the study of Grecian elo- 
 quence and philosophy, in the cultivation of po- 
 lite letters and civilized society ; the whole 
 discourse and language of the moderns were 
 polluted with mysterious jargon, and full of the 
 lowest and most vulgar hypocrisy."* The 
 falsehood of the pretence on which this charge 
 was raised in the case of Pym and Vane has 
 been shown in the course of these biographies ; 
 but as against Marten, no such pretence could 
 even be attempted by his worst opponents. 
 Every one admitted him to be a man of real 
 wit, and of the most mirthful and jovial pro- 
 pensities " as far from a Puritan (to use Au- 
 brey's expression) as light from darkness." 
 Nor was his great learning ever questioned ; 
 for it was a perpetual theme of wonder with 
 people that he had found time for so many and 
 such various accomplishments, living the life 
 he had led. 
 
 Holding Republican opinions, it is the dis- 
 tinction of Harry Marten to have been the first 
 who is reported to have avowed them. This 
 is not said in praise of his wisdom, which on 
 
 * Hume's History, v., 260, 4to. 
 
 that point was perhaps questionable, but mere- 
 ly as a statement of a fact. The anecdote is 
 told in a very interesting way in a passage of 
 Clarendon's own life. 
 
 Hyde, Pym, Hampden, Marten, and Nathaniel 
 Fiennes had been dining together one day, du- 
 ring the progress of the Episcopacy Bill, at 
 Pym's lodgings in Westminster, when, after 
 dinner, " Nathaniel Fiennes asked Mr. Hyde 
 whether he would ride into the fields and take 
 a little air, it being a fine evening ; which the 
 other consenting to, they sent for their horses, 
 and riding together in the fields between West- 
 minster and Chelsea, Mr. Fiennes asked him 
 'what it was that inclined him to adhere so 
 passionately to the Church, which could not 
 possibly be supported.' He answered, that ' he 
 could have no other obligation than that of his 
 own conscience and his reason, that could 
 move with him, for he had no relation, or de- 
 pendance upon any churchman that could dis- 
 pose him to it ; that he could not conceive how 
 religion could be preserved without bishops, 
 nor how the government of the state could well 
 subsist if the government of the Church were 
 altered ;' and asked him what government they 
 meant to introduce in its place. To which he 
 (Fiennes) answered that 'there would be time 
 enough to think of that ; but assured him, and 
 wished him to remember what he said, that if 
 the king resolved to defend the bishops, it 
 would cost the kingdom much blood, and would 
 be the occasion of as sharp a war as had ever 
 been in England ; for that there was a great 
 number of good men who resolved to lose their 
 lives before they would ever submit to that gov- 
 ernment,' which," continues Hyde, "was the 
 first positive declaration he had ever heard 
 from any particular man of that party." This 
 is a good introduction to the anecdote of Mar- 
 ten, which follows immediately after. 
 
 " Within two days after this discourse from 
 Mr. Fiennes," pursues Clarendon, " Mr. Hyde, 
 walking between the Parliament House and 
 Westminster, in the churchyard met with Harry 
 Marten, with whom he lived very familiarly, and 
 speaking together about the proceedings of the 
 Houses, Marten told him that ' he (Hyde) would 
 undo himself by his adhering to the court ;' to 
 which he (Hyde) replied, that ' he had no rela- 
 tion to the court, and was only concerned to 
 maintain the government and preserve the law ;' 
 and then told him ' he could not conceive what 
 he (Marten) proposed to himself, for he did not 
 think him to be of the opinion or nature with 
 those men who governed the House ;' and asked 
 him ' what he thought of such and such men ;' 
 and he (Marten) very frankly answered that 
 ' he thought them knaves ; and that when they 
 had done as much as they intended to do, they 
 should be used as they had used others.' The 
 other pressed him then to say what he desired, 
 to which, after a little pause, he (Marten) very 
 roundly answered, ' I DO NOT THINK ONE MAN 
 WISE ENOUGH TO GOVERN us ALL,' which was the 
 first word he (Hyde) had ever heard any man 
 speak to that purpose ; and would, without 
 doubt, if it had been then communicated or at- 
 tempted, been the most abhorred by the whole 
 nation of any design that could be mentioned ; 
 and yet it appears it had even so early entered 
 into the hearts of some desperate persons, that
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 355 
 
 gentleman being at that lime possessed of a very 
 great fortune, and having great credit in his coun- 
 try."* 
 
 Taking all this with the proper allowances, 
 it would seem perfectly clear that Marten was 
 now and then too free of speech, nor sufficient- 
 ly accommodated his opinions to times and 
 places. Whatever the secret conclusions might 
 be to which Vane, and Ludlow, and Cromwell 
 had already in their own minds arrived, it was 
 surely most unwise to hazard any public dis- 
 cfosure of them before the general intellect and 
 moral feeling had become sufficiently ripe for 
 the attempt, or before the perfidy and bad faith 
 of Charles had received its utmost extent of 
 illustration among the great body of the people. 
 
 Clarendon's imputations on Marten's good 
 faith respecting his great political associates 
 have no warrant or authority. He was in all 
 things sincere to a fault, it might be added, were 
 it right to associate such a reproach with any 
 order of sincerity. In all the consultations of 
 the liberal leaders, and in all their most mem- 
 orable actions during 1640 and 1641, he took a 
 most prominent part ; and though the prudence 
 of his conduct and counsel was sometimes 
 brought in question, he never lost his influence 
 with the House, or the warmest friendship of 
 its leaders ; nor, it may be added, rarely failed 
 to be justified by the event, in what seemed to 
 more careful and cautious men the very height 
 even of his imprudence. In a curious pamphlet 
 by Dudley, third Lord North, then a member 
 of the House of Commons, this receives inci- 
 dental illustration in a passage which, though 
 not correct as a statement of facts, serves to 
 show the feeling of the House. " Businesses," 
 the writer observes, " were not always carried 
 on in the House according to the mind and in- 
 tended order of the leading persons ; for the 
 business of that protestation made in the year 
 1641 had been taken into consideration at a 
 private meeting of the grandees, and was then 
 concluded to be unseasonable. Yet Henry 
 Marten, being unsatisfied with their determina- 
 tion, moved it the next day in Parliament, and 
 found the House so disposed as a vote was 
 presently passed for a protestation, which was 
 afterward worded by a select committee, and 
 approved of in both Houses ; and to this the 
 leaders would not oppose themselves, though 
 they considered it improper at that time."t 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1642, when Charles had 
 retired from London, and was on the eve of set- 
 ting up his standard at Nottingham, Marten was 
 appointed one of those fifteen eminent and 
 trusted persons, lords and commoners, to whom 
 Parliament deputed the powers of a " commit- 
 tee of safety," " to take into consideration 
 whatever might concern the safety of the king- 
 dom, the defence of the Parliament, the preser- 
 vation of the peace of the kingdom, and the 
 opposing any force which might be raised against 
 the Parliament : this committee to meet when 
 and where they pleased." Such was the sim- 
 ple frame of the first executive government of 
 the Parliament ; the members receiving no in- 
 auguration no attendance given to them not 
 
 ,* Clarendon's Life, 41, 42, folio ed., 1759. 
 
 t From a curious and interesting pamphlet, called " A 
 Narrative of some Passages in or relating to the Long Par- 
 liament, by a Person of Honour." Horace Walpole states 
 the author to have been Dudley, the fourth Lord North. 
 
 even a stated place of meeting assigned. It is 
 a circumstance worthy of remark, that in all 
 the proceedings taken by the House of Com- 
 mons while the question of the king's suprem- 
 acy may be said to have been yet undecided, 
 nothing was done that was not wholly indis- 
 pensable ; while, in the creation of any new 
 powers or agencies of government, which the 
 vicissitudes of public affairs might render fugi- 
 tive ana ephemeral, we never fail to see that 
 their creators were most careful to give them 
 no incidents or inducements that might unne- 
 cessarily afford the members in whom they 
 were vested a temptation to protract their ex- 
 istence. 
 
 When the civil war began, and Charles is- 
 sued his proclamation against the members of 
 both Houses, Marten's name received the hon- 
 our of a special exception, in common with those 
 of Hampden and Pym, from the offer of kingly 
 pardon. This only redoubled his exertions in 
 the " committee of safety," and his zeal in dis- 
 charging its duties involved him in many per- 
 sonal contentionsof great warmth and passion.* 
 
 Among the earliest commissions of colonels 
 of horse granted by order of the Parliament, 
 we find the name of Harry Marten. His active, 
 light-hearted, and mercurial spirit, not content 
 with all the labours and duties imposed on him 
 in London, sought employment also at the 
 scene of war. The House of Commons, as an 
 additional proof of their confidence, bestowed 
 upon him the military governorship of Reading. 
 He was subsequently obliged to abandon this 
 city at the king's approach, t but under circum- 
 stances which left no imputation on his cour- 
 age. No imputations, such as too deservedly 
 fell on the virtuous and highly-gifted, but timid 
 Nathaniel Fiennes, for his unfortunate abandon- 
 ment of Bristol, sullied the name of Marten. 
 
 Elated by his temporary successes, Charles 
 again addressed his misguided Commons, tell- 
 ing them that " his quarrel was not against the 
 Parliament, but against particular men, who 
 first made the wounds, and would not now suf- 
 fer them to be healed, but made them deeper 
 and wider by continuing, fostering, and foment- 
 ing mistakes and jealousies betwixt body and 
 head, his majesty and his two Houses of Par- 
 liament ; which persons he would name, and 
 was ready to prove them guilty of high treason." 
 He then proceeded to name Pym, Hampden, 
 Marten, and Hollis as the chief traitors, and 
 desired that " they might be delivered into the 
 hands of justice, to be tried by then, peers, ac- 
 cording to the known laws of the land."}: 
 
 These gallant "traitors" were not relaxing 
 any of their exertions meanwhile, and Marten, 
 more successful as a civilian than a soldier, was 
 once more at Westminster, engaged in fierce 
 contests and disputes with the House of Lords. 
 To that House he never at any time affected 
 any attachment ; and, whenever it threatened 
 the slightest interruption to the proceedings of 
 the Commons, he prepared himself with some- 
 what ostentatious glee for an encounter with 
 their lordships. I find upon the journals of this 
 
 * See the case of the Earl of Northumberland, which led 
 to abortive proceedings between the two Houses. Purl. 
 Hist., xii., 238-240 ; and Clarendon's History, iv., 17-51. 
 
 t Clarendon, iii., 318. 
 
 ? Clarendon's Hist, of the Reb., iii., 618, restored text , 
 Appendix E.
 
 356 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 period a very grave complaint from the upper 
 to the lower House, respecting some certain 
 expressions used against the Lords in a con- 
 ference by Marten, " because they were not so 
 forward in passing ordinances for seizing the 
 estates of delinquents" as the Commons de- 
 sired them to be. The expressions were these : 
 " I have something to deliver to your lordships 
 in the behalf of the House of Commons. It is 
 true, my lords, there are some privileges be- 
 longing to the House of Peers, and others to 
 the House of Commons ; and this of raising 
 moneys you have ever solely attributed to them, 
 since your lordships have never refused to join 
 with them when they have brought up anything 
 that concerns the raising of money ; and there- 
 fore they expect you would not now refuse to 
 pass this ordinance, without giving them some 
 very good reasons for it." On turning to the 
 Parliamentary History, we see that " the Lords 
 debated this matter for some time, and after- 
 ward appointed a committee of ten lords to con- 
 sider of a fit way how to vindicate the privi- 
 lege of their House in this particular; but it is 
 probable this matter was dropped, as the for- 
 mer [a previous contest with Marten of the 
 same description], for we find nothing more of 
 it in the journals."* 
 
 Some few days after, however, the journals 
 present another dispute between the same par- 
 ties respecting " two young horses" which had 
 been taken out of the king's stables by a per- 
 son of the name of De Luke. " The Lords or- 
 dered the horses to be restored, and De Luke 
 to attend them to answer it. This man produ- 
 ced his warrant to the messenger from Mr. 
 Marten, and Mr. Marten himself refused to re- 
 turn the horses, saying, ' We have taken the 
 king's ships and forts, and may as well take his 
 horses, lest they might be employed against us ; 
 but, however,' he added, 'he would acquaint 
 the House of Commons therewith the next 
 morning, who would satisfy the Lords at a con- 
 ference.' This the Lords took very ill, and at 
 the conference they told the Commons that they 
 had resolved to write to the lord-general to re- 
 call Mr. Marten's commission ; but for himself 
 they had done nothing, in regard he was a mem- 
 ber of their House, adding that they did apply 
 themselves unto the Commons in all respect 
 and civility, and did look for reparation in this 
 business ; instead of which, the Commons, on 
 their return to the House, voted that Mr. Mar- 
 ten did well in not delivering the two horses till 
 he had made them acquainted with it ; that 
 these two horses should be kept by Mr. Marten 
 till this House gives farther order ; and that the 
 lord-general should be desired not to do any- 
 thing in the business concerning Mr. Marten 
 till he heard farther from that House."t The 
 dispute in this case is far from assuming a dig- 
 nified shape on either side, but its result surely 
 exhibits the great folly, considering the incapa- 
 city, of their lordships. " To so low an ebb," 
 is the pathetic remark of the compilers of the 
 Parliamentary History, " was the authority of 
 the House of Peers already reduced !" They 
 had themselves to thank for it. 
 
 An anecdote of Marten, said to belong to this 
 period, has been told by Doctor Peter Heylin.t 
 
 * Part. Hist-, xii., 240. t Ibid., xii., 251. 
 
 t In his History of the Presbyterians, 452, ed. 1672. 
 
 I present it with more than a doubt of its au- 
 thenticity, since no concurrent testimonies bear 
 it out, and it is in its character very improba- 
 ble. The Commons, according to Heylin's ac- 
 count, were always glad to avail themselves of 
 Harry Marten's great fertility of resource in de- 
 vising means of raising supplies during the dif- 
 ficulties that beset the opening of the war, and 
 gave him almost unlimited power to this end. 
 Secretly indulging, on one occasion, a particu- 
 lar malicious humour of his own, it occurred to 
 him that there would be no farther use for the 
 regalia, and that they might as well be sold for 
 what they would bring ; " whereupon," contin- 
 ues Heylin, " Marten, then member for Berks, 
 having commanded the sub-dean of Westmin- 
 ster to bring him to the place where the regalia 
 were kept, made himself master of the spoil ; 
 and having forced open a great iron chest, took 
 out the crown, the robes, the sword, the scep- 
 tre, belonging anciently to King Edward the 
 Confessor, and used by all our kings at their 
 inaugurations ; then, with a scorn greater than 
 his lusts and the rest of his vices, he openly 
 declares that there would be no farther use of 
 these toys and trifles, and in the folly of that 
 humour invests George Withers (an old Puri- 
 tan satirist*) in the royal habiliments, who, be- 
 ing thus crowned and royally arrayed (as right 
 well became him), first marched about the room 
 with a stately garb, and afterward, with a thou- 
 sand apish and ridiculous actions, exposed these 
 sacred ornaments to contempt and laughter." 
 In declining to admit the truth of this story, it 
 would be unjust to withhold from its learned 
 and very reverend author the praise of a skilful 
 invention and a quick perception of the ludi- 
 crous. 
 
 Marten's indulgence of his wit and humour 
 on all possible occasions, and his well-known 
 careless avowals of his preference for Republi- 
 can government, gave currency and plausibility 
 to such anecdotes. The latter characteristic, 
 indulged freely almost everywhere, at last heed- 
 lessly escaped him from his place in the House 
 of Commons. Such avowals must always wait 
 for their proper place and season, and in this 
 instance both were forgotten. 
 
 The incident occurred on the 16th of August, 
 1643. The pages which related it are torn 
 from the journals of the House, but White- 
 locke has supplied the omission in his Memori- 
 als.! It occurred in the course of a debate on 
 what were thought the scandalous expressions 
 of a work published by one Saltmarsh, a Puri- 
 tan minister, in which he urged, among other 
 things, that " all means should be used to keep 
 the king and his people from a sudden union ; 
 that the war ought to be cherished under the 
 notion of popery, as the surest means to en- 
 gage the people ; and that if the king would not 
 grant their demands, then to root him out and 
 the royal line, and to collate the crown upon 
 somebody else." Several members having 
 strongly condemned such advice, Marten sud- 
 denly rose, and said that " he saw no reason to 
 condemn Mr. Saltmarsh so strongly, and that it 
 were better one family should be destroyed than 
 many." This called up Sir Nevil Poole, who 
 moved that " Mr. Marten should explain what 
 one family he meant." Marten interrupted him 
 
 And a very fine old poet. 
 
 t Page 68, ed. 1682
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 357 
 
 with the remark that such a motion was need- 
 less, and boldly and bluntly answered, " The 
 king and his children !" Upon this there was 
 a storm in the House, and many of the mem- 
 bers urged loudly "against the lewdness of Mr. 
 Marten's life, and the height and danger of these 
 words, and spoke sharply against him." Pym, 
 then within a few short months of his death, 
 interfered on behalf of his friend, but at the 
 same time, on public grounds, condemned his 
 expressions. Marten was in the end expelled 
 the House, and committed to the Tower.* A 
 fortnight afterward he was " ordered to be forth- 
 with discharged, without paying any fees for 
 his imprisonment," but he did not, till after the 
 lapse of a year and a half, resume his seat in 
 the House. 
 
 Nevertheless, he continued unremittingly to 
 labour in the cause. His father had died two 
 years before, and left him in possession of prop- 
 erty to the amount of 3000 a year. From the 
 moment of his accession to it, he appears to 
 have indulged to excess his liberal tastes and 
 " elegant desires ;" the whole county of Berk- 
 shire rang with the festivities of the Vale of the 
 White Horse ;t and his personal courtesies to 
 all classes of men gave him unprecedented pop- 
 ularity there. After his expulsion from the 
 House of Commons he continued to hold his 
 colonel's commission, and was present in sev- 
 eral skirmishes and engagements. He also 
 contributed, I find, out of his own resources, 
 upward of 3000 to the Parliamentary com- 
 missioners for the maintenance of the war.J 
 During its progress, it may be added, he lost 
 estates to much larger amounts, and at its close 
 found himself in fortune a ruined man. That 
 ruin was ascribed (by slanderers who could 
 never forgive him the cheerful accomplish- 
 
 * The same occurrence is told with a difference in Lord 
 North's pamphlet : " Henry Marten," says his lordship, 
 " exalted in mind by various successes, adventured to cast 
 himself upon a rock, and thus it was : When it had been 
 some ways expressed in the House that the good and happi- 
 ness of this nation depended upon his majesty's safety, and 
 the continuance of the royal line, Henry Marten stood up 
 and affirmed it to he a mistake ; for (as he conceived) this 
 nation might be very happy though the royal line were ex- 
 tinct. Upon those words he was presently questioned, and 
 after some debate, voted out of the House." I may add a 
 characteristic anecdote of Pym from the same authority. 
 It shows that on an occasion somewhat similar to the pres- 
 ent, his address and skill were exerted with greater success 
 on the behalf of an injudicious friend. "The House had 
 newly received a message from his majesty, which was so 
 far from being satisfactory as many persons spoke against it 
 with much vehemence, and among the rest Sir Henry Lud- 
 low (father of the great Republican), who very resolutely 
 used these terms : ' He who sent this message is not worthy 
 to be King of England.' Upon saying this he was immedi- 
 ately interrupted, and the words that were spoke agreed 
 upon preparatory to a charge ; but before his withdrawing, 
 in order to a censure, Mr. Pym arose and said, ' That those 
 words contained nothing of dishonour to the king,' which 
 being found very strange, he thus cleared his meaning : 'If 
 these words be such as a fair conclusion is naturally dedu- 
 cible from them, then they cannot be evil in themselves. 
 Now that a fair conclusion naturally ariseth from them may 
 be proved by syllogism. He who sent this message is not 
 worthy to be King of England ; but King Charles is worthy 
 to be King of England, therefore King Charles sent not this 
 message. Now,' saith Mr. Pym, ' I leave it to judgment 
 whether or no this syllogism comprise anything in it worthy 
 of censure.' This argument was so ingenious as Sir Henry 
 Ludlow (with his ill meaning) came freely off without pun- 
 ishment." 
 
 t Where his principal mansion was situate. " Becket," 
 says Aubrey, " in the parish of Shrineham, was his chief 
 seate in the Vale of the White Horse, now Major Wild- 
 man'g where he was very hospitable and exceeding pop- 
 ular." J Whitelocke's Memorials, 385, ed. 1682. 
 
 ments with which he graced a great and seri- 
 ous cause) to other and less worthy reasons, 
 which these pages shall not be polluted by any 
 farther reference to. A memoir of his life, 
 composed as this has been with a scrupulous 
 attention to the truth, will be in itself the best 
 and most particular answer that can be given 
 to all such statements. 
 
 During Marten's absence from the House, 
 the self-denying ordinance was debated and 
 passed. Clarendon can say, nevertheless, that 
 Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten were 
 among those " who spoke more and warmer in 
 favour of the self-denying ordinance than those 
 spoke who opposed it." Marten did not re- 
 sume his place in the House of Commons till 
 nine months after that famous measure was 
 passed ;* and Nathaniel Fiennes was still in 
 France during its discussion, whither he had 
 retired in deep mortification at the affair of 
 Bristol. The truth is, that the whole of the 
 debate on this ordinance as reported in Claren- 
 don's History is an absolute and unmitigated 
 forgery, made for his own purposes by Claren- 
 don, and adopted in philosophical indolence by 
 Hume. How much history has been written 
 in this way ! 
 
 The resolution for Marten's reinstatement in 
 the House was passed on the 6th of January, 
 1645-G, and, Whitelocke says, "gave occasion 
 to some to believe that the House began to be 
 more averse from the king." It was certainly 
 a proof, among others, of the growing strength 
 of the quiet and wise party of the Independents, 
 and it is most gratifying to discover that it was 
 proposed by Vane. Dudley Lord North, in the 
 curious pamphlet already adverted to, describes 
 it thus : " It was conceived now that Henry 
 Marten might do good service as a member, 
 and so his restitution was moved for ; but an- 
 swer was soon made that he was a person dead 
 civilly, and could not be restored to life. Here- 
 upon young Sir Harry Vane (one of the ora- 
 cles of those times) arose and said, ' That the 
 matter was very easy to be effected, by expun- 
 ging out of the journal-book that order where- 
 by he had been cast out ; and that the House 
 was ever understood to be mistress of her own 
 orders.' This was found so ready a way as the 
 matter was presently determined ; and Henry 
 Marten, having notice, came into the House 
 again, disposed to do farther mischief." This 
 is simply an exaggerated account of a course 
 adopted to save Marten the necessity of a new 
 election. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the welcome 
 Harry Marten received on entering the House 
 once more. His wit had been the ornament 
 and relief of almost every debate ; his graceful 
 manner, and never-failing good-humour, had 
 been perforce made acceptable to the sourest 
 Puritan there ; and by his gallant and unflinch- 
 ing adherence to Republican principles, by the 
 respect his intellect and genius inspired, he had 
 bound himself in the fastest friendship to Crom- 
 well, to St. John, and to Vane. From the in- 
 stant he resumed his seat until his old friend's 
 traitorous usurpation on the Commonwealth, 
 his name appears most prominently in every 
 
 * See Whitelocke, 135 and 192. Also Journals of April 
 3, 1645, and January 6, 1645 (old style).
 
 358 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 transaction of importance,* and, above all, 
 when mercy is to be shown, or an act of lib- 
 eral and kind-hearted justice done, the name 
 of Henry Marten, and the record of his best 
 exertions, are sure to be found not wanting. 
 
 When John Lilburne's intemperance had de- 
 livered him over into the fangs of Prynne, Mar- 
 ten interfered in his behalf. When he after- 
 ward sought redress from the House of Com- 
 mons, it was Marten who moved his committee 
 and sat as its chairman. If it had been possi- 
 ble to have saved a man of such a temper, so 
 grossly fond of quarrel, so self-conceited of his 
 own honesty as to suppose he absorbed all of 
 it himself that had been left in the world, so 
 credulous and so suspicious, Marten would 
 have saved him. And when it was obvious at 
 the last that he must be left to his own wild 
 and irreclaimable courses, it was Marten's wit 
 which suggested that excuse for him which has 
 passed into a familiar saying. " This very 
 John Lilburne," says Rushworth, " after his 
 trial, persisted in writing many books against 
 those then in power and authority, and some 
 particular members thereof; insomuch as it 
 was said by Henry Marten in favour of him, 
 'That if there were none living but himself, 
 John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne 
 against John.' "t 
 
 Nor as his attachment to Cromwell with- 
 held him not from these kind-hearted efforts in 
 behalf of one who, but for a superabundance of 
 conceit and bile, might have been one of the 
 stanchest friends to the great cause, as he had 
 already proved one of its most courageous 
 soldiers did his friendship for Vane prevent 
 his protesting on many occasions against the 
 conduct of Vane's father. A good anecdote is 
 told by Aubrey on this point. Having spoken 
 somewhat sharply for some time against old 
 Vane, and seeing some marks of pain and vex- 
 ation on the countenance of his son, he suddenly 
 interposed, " But for young Sir Harry Vane " 
 Fifty voices interrupted him, " What have you 
 to say to young Sir Harry!" Marten quietly 
 sat down. From all parts of the House (the 
 members were in committee) the question again 
 broke out, " What to young Sir Harry 1" The 
 wit rose with very great gravity, and observed, 
 " Why, if young Sir Harry lives to be old, he 
 will be old Sir Harry F" and so, says Aubrey, 
 " sat down, and set the whole House a laughing, 
 aa he oftentimes did ;" and the invective against 
 old Vane was forgotten for that time, and some 
 mortification saved to young Sir Henry. 
 
 And not alone for men belonging to his own 
 party, and generally acting with it, were these 
 happy resources called in aid by Harry Marten. 
 " He did always," as Aubrey says in his char- 
 acter of him, " take in the House the part of 
 the oppressed," no matter what their politics. 
 The relation I am now about to give is taken 
 from a curious pamphlet, republished in Lord 
 Somers's tracts, and called, " A true and just 
 Account of what was transacted in the Com- 
 mons' House, when that House voted David 
 Jenkins, Esq., a Welsh Judge, and Sir Francis 
 
 * He was a great favourite with the citizens of London, 
 and spoke in the common hall very often. Some of these 
 speeches, as that concerning Sir William Waller, are to be 
 found among the pamphlets of the time, and are good speci- 
 mens of close reasoning and a most happy style. 
 
 t Rushworth, ii., 468. 
 
 Butler, to be guilty of High Treason against 
 themselves ; and likewise an Account of an 
 excellent Speech that the said Judge intended to 
 have spoken at the Place of his Execution, taken 
 from the Mouth and Notes of the said Sir Fran- 
 cis Butler." 
 
 This Judge Jenkins was justly famous in his 
 day as a fervent and intrepid Royalist. The 
 offence he was now brought before the Com- 
 mons to answer, among others, was that of 
 having, in 1642, in some Welsh counties, con- 
 demned to death persons charged with being in 
 arms against the king. On being conducted to 
 the bar with Butler, the latter knelt as he was 
 instructed, but the old judge peremptorily re- 
 fused to do so. In the reprimand which fol- 
 lowed, the speaker adverted in especial to this 
 mark of contumacy, as the greater fault in him, 
 " seeing he pretended to be knowing in the 
 laws of the land." The relation then proceeds : 
 " Sir Francis said during this speech of Len- 
 thall's, Judge Jenkins had prayed him softly not 
 to speak much ; so to let all their malice fall 
 on him only, since he was in years, and Sir 
 Francis but young in respect to him. And 
 when the speaker's speech was ended, Judge 
 Jenkins asked whether they would now give 
 him liberty to speak. ' Yes,' answered Len- 
 thall, ' so you be not very long.' ' No,' said the 
 judge, ' I will not trouble either myself or you 
 with many words. In your speech, Mr. Speak- 
 er, you said the House was offended at my 
 behaviour, in not making any obeisance to you 
 at my coming here, and this was the more won- 
 dered at, because I pretended to be knowing 
 in the laws of the land. In answer to which, 
 Mr. Speaker, I say, that I thank God I not only 
 pretend to be, but am knowing in the laws of 
 the land (having made it my study for these 
 five-and-forty years) ; and because I am so, 
 that was the reason of such my behaviour ; for 
 as long as you had the king's arms engraven on 
 your mace, and acted under his authority, had 
 I come here I would have bowed my body in 
 obedience to his writ and authority, by which 
 you were first called ; bat, Mr. Speaker, since 
 you and this House have renounced all your 
 duty and allegiance to your sovereign and nat- 
 ural liege lord the king, and are become a den 
 of thieves, should I bow myself in this house 
 of Rimmon, the Lord would not pardon me in 
 this thing.' " 
 
 The amazement and confusion excited by 
 this courageous burst broke forth on all sides. 
 " The whole House," says the narration, " fell 
 into such an uproar and confusion, that for half 
 an hour they could not be reduced into any 
 order, for sometimes ten, sometimes twenty, 
 would be speaking together ; but at length the 
 fury abated, and the House voted they were 
 both guilty of high treason (without any trial at 
 all), and should suffer as in cases condemned 
 for treason. So they called for the keeper of 
 Newgate, to know the usual days for execution 
 in such cases. He told them it was usually on 
 Wednesdays or Fridays ; and then was debated 
 whether it should be done on next Wednes- 
 day or Friday. Then stood up Harry Mar- 
 ten (the droll of that House), who had not 
 spoken before. He said he would not go about 
 to meddle in their vote, but as to the time of ex- 
 ecution he had something to say, especially as
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 to Judge Jenkins. ' Mr. Speaker,' says he, | 
 ' every one must believe that this old gentle- 
 man here is fully possessed in his head that 
 he is pro aris et focis mori that he shall die a 
 martyr for this cause ; for otherwise he never 
 would have provoked the House by such biting 
 expressions ; whereby it is apparent that if you 
 execute him, you do what he hopes for and desires, 
 and whose execution might have a great influence 
 upon the people, since not condemned by a jury : 
 wherefore my motion is, that this House would 
 suspend the day of execution, and in the mean time 
 force him to live in spite of his teeth;' which mo- 
 tion of his put the House into a fit of good- 
 humour, and they cried, ' Suspend the day of 
 execution.' So they were returned back to 
 Newgate." 
 
 Anything more exquisite than this, wiser in 
 fact, more benevolent or humane in purpose, 
 more happy in its turn of wit, is not even re- 
 corded among the sayings of Harry Marten. 
 The conclusion of the incident is well worth 
 giving, not less for its interest in itself, than as 
 a proof and confirmation of the sound sagacity 
 which guided Marten in his interference on this 
 as on every similar occasion of the wisdom 
 which was the undercurrent of his wit. 
 
 On their return to prison, Sir Francis Butler 
 " asked the judge whether he had not been too 
 hardy in his expressions to the House. ' Not 
 at all,' said he ; ' for things of a rebellious na- 
 ture have been so successful in this kingdom, 
 and have gotten such a head, that they will al- 
 most allure the weak loyal man to comply there- 
 with, if some vigorous and brave resistance is 
 not made against them, and to their faces ; and 
 this was the cause why I said such home things 
 to them yesterday. And although I have op- 
 posed rebels and traitors all my life hitherto, 
 yet I persuade myself that at the time of my 
 execution, on the day of my death, I shall be 
 like to Samson, and destroy more Philistines 
 than I ever did in all my life that is, confound 
 their rebellious assertions ; and in this thought 
 of mine I am so wrapped up, that I hope they 
 won't totally suspend my execution.' " 
 
 His companion's wonder may be conceived 
 by this time to have reached an intense pitch. 
 The brave old judge soon satisfied it : "I will 
 now," said the judge, " tell you all that I intend 
 to do and say at that time : first, I will eat much 
 liquerish and gingerbread, thereby to strengthen 
 my lungs, that I may extend my voice far and 
 near, for no doubt there will be great multitudes 
 at the place ; and then / will come with Bracton's 
 book hung upon my left shoulder, with the statutes 
 at large hung upon my right shoulder, and the 
 Bible with a riband put round my neck, and hang- 
 ing on my breast. Then I will tell the people 
 that I was brought there to die for being a 
 traitor ; and in the words of a dying man, I will 
 tell them that I wish that all the traitors in the 
 kingdom would come to my fate. But the 
 House of Commons, I will then tell them, never 
 thought me a traitor, else they would have tried 
 me for such, in a legal manner, by a jury, ac- 
 cording to the custom of this kingdom for a 
 thousand years. They have indeed debarred 
 me from my birthright, a trial by my peers, that 
 is, a jury ; but they knew, and that is it, that I 
 am not guilty according to law. But since they 
 will have me a traitor, right or wrong, I thought 
 
 it was just to bring my counsellors with me, for 
 they ought to be hanged as well as I, for they all 
 along advised me in what I have done. Then 
 shall I open Bracton to show them that the 
 supreme power is in the king,* the statute-book 
 to read the oath of allegiance, and the Bible to 
 show them their duties. All these were my civil 
 counsellors, and they must be hanged with me ! So 
 when they shall see me die," concluded the old 
 man, " thousands will inquire into these mat- 
 ters, and having found all I told them to be 
 true, they will come to loath and detest the 
 present tyranny." 
 
 Alas for this romantic project, not unlikely 
 to have proved a wise one ! The wit of Mar- 
 ten proved wiser still, and the imaginative old 
 judge was left merely to indulge in anticipa- 
 tions of his day of execution, which proved as 
 vain as they were fond. 
 
 The next service of humanity in which we 
 find Harry Marten's wit engaged was a service 
 to literature no less. He preserved the life of 
 the author of Gondibert. Taking advantage 
 of that misfortune of the poet, which the pleas- 
 ant doggerel of Suckling has commemorated 
 (no less than the questionable taste of the 
 poet's wife, in the portrait prefixed to her edi- 
 tion of his works) 
 
 " Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance 
 That he had got lately, traveling into France, 
 Modestly hoped the handsomeness of his muse 
 Might any deformity about him excuse 
 
 taking advantage of this, when the proposition 
 for his death was in agitation, Marten rose, and 
 infused mercy and good-humour into the House 
 by observing that really Will Davenant was 
 but a rotten and imperfect subject, and that sac- 
 rifices " by the Mosaic law" were always re- 
 quired to be pure and without blemish. The 
 question was deferred, and the ultimate inter- 
 position of Milton and Whitelocke completed 
 the act of mercy, t 
 
 Merciful and kind-hearted as Marten was, 
 however, no one had a firmer or more immove- 
 able temper when in his own view of the pub- 
 lic interests they seemed to demand its exer- 
 cise. He was the most violent and unyielding 
 of Republicans, the first to avow that faith, and 
 the first to pursue unflinching, and at all haz- 
 ards, the great object of its realization. After 
 the reverses of Charles had thrown him into 
 the power of the Parliament, Marten was the 
 resolute opponent of all accommodation that had' 
 for its basis the restoration of a limited mon- 
 archy ; and in the course of one of the debates 
 on this subject after the battle of Naseby 
 when one of the members had been urging on 
 the House the still surviving reverence of the 
 people for their monarch, as exemplified in the 
 account of the passage of Charles (under the 
 conduct of the Parliamentary commissioners) 
 from Newcastle to the palace of Holmby, 
 where, as was alleged, multitudes had thrown 
 
 * The fervid old gentleman still more fortified his friend 
 and his own purpose at this point by reading at full length 
 all the original passages from these authorities: it is not 
 necessary to give them here. 
 
 t Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. of Bodleian Letters, p. 308. 
 The first half of the third book of Gondibert was written 
 while in the prisons of the Commonwealth ; and he quitted 
 it thus imperfect, alleging, in ever-memorable and lofty 
 words, that " even in so worthy a design he should ask 
 leave to desist, when he was interrupted by so great an ex- 
 periment ai dying."
 
 360 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 themselves in his way, to show him their rev- 
 erence and their pity Marten observed that 
 he had heard of it ; that the majority of the 
 people had been afflicted with the king's evil, 
 and sought his majesty's touch to cure them ; 
 but he was very sure, for his own part, that a 
 touch of the great seal of the Parliament would 
 be found to possess precisely the same virtue, 
 and he added his preference for that. 
 
 In the long strife which followed between 
 the Independents and the Presbyterians, and in- 
 volved the fate of Charles and of the monarchy, 
 Marten was the most active and persevering 
 of the opponents of the king. He held that it 
 was impossible to treat with such perfidy, con- 
 stant insincerity, and bad faith as the whole of 
 Charles's public life had exhibited, and which 
 was now crowned by the disclosure of the con- 
 tents of the cabinet left on the field of Naseby. 
 He urged the immediate and firm settlement 
 of a new frame of government, without present 
 relation to the person of the king, or to ques- 
 tions that would be best disposed of afterward ; 
 and when, upon the refusal given by Charles to 
 the first propositions voted him by the influence 
 of the Presbyterians, the commissioners depu- 
 ted to treat having brought back that refusal 
 from the captive monarch, and received the 
 thanks of the House of Commons for the way 
 in which they had conducted themselves, Mar- 
 ten startled the majority of members present 
 by suddenly getting up and asking, " Nay, are 
 not our thanks rather due to the king, who has 
 rejected our offers 1 " He had not overrated 
 the importance of that rejection. The day that 
 succeeded was a day of stormy debate, and in 
 the midst of it Marten moved,* and Hazlerig 
 seconded, that no more addresses should be 
 made to the king ; that his person should be 
 demanded, and that Fairfax's army should 
 march into the North, to enforce the applica- 
 tion. " We know not," says Baillie, in a letter 
 written at the moment, " we know not at what 
 hour they will close their doors, and declare 
 the king fallen from his throne." 
 
 The Independents and Republicans had in- 
 deed the advantage now, and through many 
 difficulties and dangerous struggles (which they 
 surmounted with the true genius of statesmen, 
 by strength of character and elevation of aims) 
 they pursued it home. The last thing that re- 
 mained for them to subdue was the treachery 
 of the Sco'ttish people, or, rather, the treachery 
 of the Scots commissioners, supported by the 
 religious bigotry of the mass of the Scottish 
 people. In the questions which this involved, 
 Marten took part with an infinite zeal ; and 
 when the commissioners, in pursuance of their 
 plan, claimed the right of interference and dic- 
 tation in the terms of peace proposed at the 
 close of 1647 to the royal prisoner, a strain of 
 wit and eloquence, of the happiest ridicule as 
 of the most exquisite reasoning, was poured 
 out against them with irresistible effect by the 
 genius of Harry Marten. The readers will be 
 grateful for having this masterly production laid 
 before them, which is richly entitled to that 
 notice it would no doubt have received from 
 the historians, if it had happened to be made 
 up, not of wisdom and of wit, but of dulness 
 and falsehood. 
 
 * See Hollis, p. 58. 
 
 He begins in a very clear, startling, and de- 
 cisive tone ; the force of plain expression is, 
 indeed, strongly illustrated throughout, and 
 heightened not a little by occasional dashes of 
 humour. 
 
 " To RECTIFY, NOT TO UPBRAID YOU ! YOU 
 
 have, for divers years together, been very well 
 entreated by us of this nation, and that from a 
 willingness we ever had, as upon all occasions, 
 so particularly in your persons, to manifest the 
 brotherly respect we bear towards them who 
 sent you. Upon the same account, many for- 
 mer boldnesses and provocations of yours have 
 been winked at by the Parliament, as, I ana 
 confident, your last answer would likewise be, 
 did you not therein seem to have remained here so 
 long as to have quite forgotten why you came. 
 
 " You may therefore please to remember that 
 it was no part of your first business (whatever 
 supplemental commissions may have since been 
 procured for a farther exercise of our patience 
 since you came among us) to settle religion, 
 nor to make a peace in England ; so as all those 
 devout-like and amicable endeavours, for which 
 you think to be thanked, were not only intru- 
 sions into matters unconcerning you, but so 
 many diversions from performing, as you ought, 
 what was properly committed to you. 
 
 " As for our religion : since the zeal of your 
 countrymen would needs carry their care there- 
 of so far from home, methinks their divines, 
 now sitting with ours at Westminster, might 
 excuse your trouble in this particular, or at 
 least might teach you, by their practice, that 
 your advice therein to the Pailiament is to be 
 but an advice, and that an humble one. 
 
 " As for the other particular of peace : it is 
 true that, about three years ago, here were am- 
 bassadors from our neighbours of the Low 
 Countries, who, having found the king almost 
 weary of fighting, made use of their privilege, 
 and did his errand instead of their masters' ; 
 which was with big words to beg a peace. 
 After that, when the king's cause had nothing 
 left to lean upon but the treachery of our false 
 friends and servants, an ambassador from our 
 neighbours of France did, en passant, make a 
 certain overture of accord betwixt the crown 
 and the head ; but your employment here from 
 our neighbours of Scotland had so little rela- 
 tion to peace, that your only work was to join 
 counsels with a committee of ours in ordering 
 and disposing such auxiliary forces as that king- 
 dom should send into this for carrying on the 
 war. 
 
 " As to the delays you charge upon the Par- 
 liament, in that they answer your papers some- 
 times late, and sometimes not at all, yet re- 
 quire peremptory and speedy resolutions from 
 you, as if their dealings were unequal towards 
 you : I hope you will give over making such 
 constructions when you shall consider how 
 much more busines lies upon their hands than 
 upon yours, and how much slower progress the 
 same affairs must needs find in passing both 
 Houses than if they were to be despatched only 
 by four or five commissioners. Were not I 
 conscious to this truth, and to the abundant 
 civility they have always shown for you in their 
 undelayed reading, present referring, and de- 
 sire of complying with what you send them, so 
 far as might consist with their duty to this
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 361 
 
 Commonwealth, and that they want nothing 
 but time to say so, I should never have pre- 
 sumed to trust so great a cause upon the pat- 
 ronage of so rude a pen ; neither, indeed, is it 
 left there, my design being to let the world ima- 
 gine how strong a stream of justice runs on our 
 side, when I dare oppose the reasons of my single 
 lark against all the advantages of number, abilities, 
 and countenance that you can meet me with." 
 
 The reader needs not be told, after what I 
 have said in the life of Vane, that the positions 
 taken up by the Scots commissioners, backed 
 as they were, for the most part, by the Pres- 
 byterian party in England, rendered it neces- 
 sary that this decisive tone should be adopted 
 against them. The great party, of which Mar- 
 ten was so eminent a member, had, indeed, rea- 
 son to hate the Presbyterians nearly as much 
 as they hated the Royalists. What the Inde- 
 pendents had fought for through the whole of 
 the struggle with Charles, was liberty ; not lib- 
 erty in one sense only, but in a sense that 
 should pervade all things. The seven years 
 that had been passed in toil and battle would 
 indeed have been passed to little puroose in 
 their view, and all the miseries of ctvil war 
 been rushed into wickedly and in vain, were it 
 all now to end in the restoration of a perfidious 
 king, in the persecution or extirpation of sects, 
 and in the establishment of a form of govern- 
 ment in the Church not less exclusive and in- 
 tolerant than the old. These were the objects 
 now plainly driven at by the Scots commission- 
 ers ; and in these objects the Presbyterian party 
 in Parliament entirely sympathized, though the 
 character they had to lose as friends to political 
 freedom and the earliest instigators of the war 
 made them necessarily wary and cautious in 
 declaring their sympathy too boldly. Marten 
 takes advantage of the latter circumstance 
 throughout the whole of this paper with great 
 adroitness and skill. 
 
 The severity of the following passage is 
 much increased and strengthened by its happy 
 homeliness : 
 
 " For order's sake, I shall take the pains to set 
 the body of your discourse as upright as I may (its 
 prolixity and perplexity considered) upon two feet : 
 one is, the claim you make in behalf of the king- 
 dom of Scotland to the inspection of, and conjunc- 
 tion in, the matter of our laws and the condi- 
 tions of our peace ; the other, mistaking the first 
 for evinced, is your telling us what you think 
 fit, and what unfit, for us to establish in our 
 Church and state, and what way you conceive 
 most proper for obtaining of a peace betwixt 
 the king and us, together with the proofs where- 
 with you seek to fortify your several opinions. 
 " It would give your first foot too much 
 ground to hold dispute with you upon the sec- 
 ond ; therefore, since a man may see by your 
 forwardness in printing and publishing both 
 these and other your transactions with the 
 Houses, that your arguments, like the king's 
 in his messages, are not framed so much to satis- 
 fy the Parliament as to beget in the people a dis- 
 satisfaction towards the Parliament, I will, God 
 enabling me, take a time apart to undeceive 
 my countrymen concerning both the king and 
 you, by laying the hook as open as the bait in all 
 your lines ; and, for the present, apply myself 
 only to the showing you, that when you shall 
 Zz 
 
 have offered your counsel to the Parliament of 
 England (as for aught I know any one man may 
 do unto another) in matters concerning this 
 kingdom only, though the most wholesome 
 counsel that ever was or can be given, and the 
 Parliament shall not approve of it, nor have so 
 much as a conference upon it, it is no more man- 
 ners in you than it would be in the same number 
 of Spaniards, Indians, or of the most remote re- 
 gion of the earth, to press it again, to insist upon 
 it, and to proclaim your unsatisfaction in it." 
 
 The pretences of the Scots, and the serious 
 invasions they implied on the newly-achieved 
 freedom of England, are next ably exposed. 
 The introduction of the subject of the army is 
 aimed not less at the Parliamentary Presby- 
 terians. 
 
 " Let us, with your favour, consider your 
 pretences : you do not aim, as yourselves pro- 
 fess, at sharing in our rights, laws, nor liberties, 
 but in other matters, viz., such as either in 
 their own nature, or by compact, are common 
 to both kingdoms ; which I take the more no- 
 tice of, because one would suppose you to be 
 grown kinder now than you were the other day, 
 when you went about to make us believe that 
 nothing in our laws did properly belong to us 
 but the form and manner of proceeding therein, 
 the matter of them being held in common with 
 the kingdom of Scotland ; and therefore, and 
 for their possibility of containing something 
 prejudicial to that kingdom, to be revised by 
 you before they receive their perfection. 
 
 " But the truth is, you are still where you 
 were, only the people's ears are, by this time, 
 so habituated to the doctrines you frequently 
 sow among them those doctrines so improved 
 by your seminaries, who find their own inter- 
 est interwoven with yours, and the Parliament 
 seeming but a looker on that you persuade, 
 yourselves anything will pass that you shall set 
 your stamp on ; otherwise you would certainly 
 have been ashamed to disavow the busying 
 yourselves with our rights, laws, and liberties, 
 and, with the same breath, to dispute our rights, 
 correct our laws, and infringe our liberties. 
 
 " Nay, contrary to that moderate concession 
 of yours, you do, in this answer, intrench upon 
 the very form and manner of our bills and propo- 
 sitions ; and, as if the marshalling them, the put- 
 ting them into rank and file, were to be by your 
 order, you take upon you to appoint which of 
 our desires shall have the van, and which the 
 rear, in this expedition. 
 
 " And (which is the most pleasant part of the 
 story, if it would take, as truly such a thing might 
 have done, when you and we were first acquainted), 
 though the Parliament of England, as I told you 
 even now, would not order the motions of the 
 Scots army that served us in our country and 
 for our pay but by conjunction of councils with 
 commissioners of that kingdom, yet you (as you 
 could not forbear meddling with our army when 
 it was in modelling) so do in this paper continue 
 the office you put yourselves into, of disposing, 
 disbanding, dismembering, catechizing, and re- 
 viling this army of ours, the greatest bulwark, 
 under God, of our liberties, and which yet had 
 proved ineffectual if your councils had been follow- 
 ed or your importunities regarded. 
 
 " Since, then, your way of advising us is not 
 in a modest or submitting manner, but as if you
 
 363 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 meant to pin your advice upon us whether we 
 will or no, give me leave, I pray you, to exam- 
 ine qua fiducid, promising you faithfully for my 
 part that whensoever you shall bring the mat- 
 ters contested for within the rules of your own 
 setting down, that is, ' either in nature or by 
 covenant, or by treaty, to be of a mixed con- 
 cernment,' I will either not deny you a 'joint 
 interest' in them, or acknowledge myself to 
 have no more honour nor conscience in me 
 than he may be said to have who, being in- 
 trusted for his country, gives up their dearest 
 rights to the next stranger that demands them 
 without so much as arguing the point." 
 
 Great earnestness, zeal, and force are singu- 
 larly united in this remarkable paper with a 
 certain studied and cold tone of temperance, 
 and downright homeliness of manner. The al- 
 tered position of the Scots since the conclusion 
 of the war is exquisitely illustrated in the an- 
 swer to their first argument. 
 
 " Your arguments, by my computation, are 
 five, and, if I understand them, speak thus : 
 
 "AEG. 1. ' The same common interest upon 
 which Scotland was invited and engaged in the 
 war, ought to be continued (so I read you, and 
 not ' improved,' (hat being a wild expression, and 
 reaching neither you nor I know whither) in ma- 
 king the peace.' For answer thereunto, should 
 I admit it, the word ' invited' put you in mind 
 that your countrymen came not to the war be- 
 fore they were called : keep you the same 
 method in accedendo ad consilium, and we shall 
 still be friends. But I cannot subscribe to this 
 position, for I believe it was a duty that the 
 people of Scotland did owe unto themselves to 
 give us their assistance in the late war, though 
 they had not been invited ; yet doth it not fol- 
 low from thence that when the war is ended 
 (a* you often say it is, and yet most riddingly 
 take huge pains for peace) they are bound to 
 mingle with us in our councils, nor help us to 
 settle our own kingdom, which we think our- 
 selves able to settle well enough without them 
 at least without their prejudice, to whom a 
 good peace or a bad, so as it be a peace, is the 
 same thing : for instance, the law of this land 
 that gives me leave to pull down my -neighbour's 
 house when it is on fire, in order to the quenching 
 of it for the securing of my own, will not author- 
 ize me, against his will, to set my foot within his 
 threshold when the fire is out, even though I make 
 it my errand to direct him in the rebuilding of his 
 house, and pretend the teaching him so to contrive 
 his chimneys as may, in all probability, prevent, 
 for the future, a like loss to him, a like danger to 
 myself. 
 
 " ARG. 2. You demand the same conjunction 
 of interests to be given you that was had of 
 you. There I join issue with you, and profess, 
 that if ever the Parliament of England, or any 
 authority derived therefrom, did offer to put a 
 finger into the proper affairs of Scotland, or into 
 the government, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, 
 oT that kingdom, and being once required to de- 
 sist, did, notwithstanding, prosecute their title 
 of advising, volentibus nolenlibus, I shall readily, 
 BO far as in me lies, grant you to have a hand 
 with us in the managing of this kingdom and 
 the government thereof." 
 
 The next extract is of great importance, as 
 a protest on the part of a leader of the Inde- 
 
 pendents declaratory of the nature and force 
 of the obligation of the covenant. The passage 
 in itself is most masterly. It strengthens and 
 establishes, it will be seen, Vane's own view 
 of that league of which he was the author, and 
 which, were every other record of his life de- 
 stroyed, would yet permanently attest the great- 
 ness of his genius and the force of his charac- 
 ter. With what a careless yet noble simplicity 
 Marten describes the wise and tolerant faith 
 of the Independents ! 
 
 "ARG. 3. You affirm that the covenant en- 
 tered into betwixt us makes you copartners 
 with us in everything there mentioned ; by 
 which reckoning, neither this nation nor that 
 of Scotland hath any right, law, or liberty which 
 either can properly and distinctly call its own, 
 but both interests are jumbled together, and 
 the two kingdoms are not confederate, but in- 
 corporated. 
 
 " Concerning the Covenant, therefore, which 
 myself, among others, considering it first as well 
 as I could, have taken, I shall shortly give you 
 my sense in relation to the point before us : 
 
 " First, I do not conceive the parties to that 
 league intended thereby to be everlastingly 
 bound each to the other ; the grounds of stri- 
 king it being merely occasional, for the joining 
 in a war to suppress a common enemy ; ac- 
 cordingly, we did join ; the enemy is, if we be 
 wise, suppressed, and the war, as you say, end- 
 ed ; what should the Covenant do, but, like an al- 
 manac of the last year, show us rather what we 
 have already done than what we be now to do ? 
 
 " Secondly, What would it do were it re- 
 newed and made perpetual 1 Thus much it 
 saith, in my opinion, and no more : whensoever 
 you shall be violently hindered in the exercise 
 of that religion you had among you at the time 
 of the engagement, and shall require our as- 
 sistance, we must afford it you for the removal 
 of that violence. In like manner, whensoever 
 we shall be so hindered in the exercise of that 
 religion which we, according to that Covenant, 
 shall establish here, upon request to you made 
 for that effect, you are tied to assist us ; and 
 so throughout all the other clauses respectively 
 and equally ; carrying this along with you, we 
 are hereby obliged to the reciprocal defence of 
 one another, according to the declaration of 
 the party wronged in any of the particulars 
 there compromised, without being cavilled at, 
 or scrupled by the party invoked ; whether 
 your religion be the same it was, or ours the 
 same it should be ; whether the bounds of your 
 liberties or ours be not enlarged beyond their 
 then line ; whether your delinquents or ours be 
 justly so or no : for the native rights of both 
 people being the principal, if not the only thing 
 we looked on when we swore, we do not keep 
 our oath in preserving those rights if we do not 
 allow this master-right to each several people, 
 namely, to be sole judges within themselves, what 
 religion they will set up, what kind of laws they 
 will have, what size, what number of magistrates 
 they hold fit to execute those laws, and what offend- 
 ers to be tried by them. Hereupon you know 
 we did not inquire at all how orthodox your re- 
 ligion was before we vowed to maintain you in 
 it ; that is, in the quiet professing of it, not in the 
 theological truth of it, which last were a business 
 for a University perhaps, not for a kingdom, be-
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 363 
 
 ing well assured it was established by them who 
 had all the authority that is visible to choose 
 for themselves, and could not, without apparent 
 breach of order, and injury to fundamentals, be 
 disturbed in the exercise of what they had so 
 chosen. 
 
 " So far is the plain text of this Covenant 
 from confounding interests, that it clearly set- 
 tles and confirms them upon the several bases 
 where it found them. And it would not be un- 
 worthy of you to take heed lest this Covenant, 
 upon which you seem to set so high a rate, be 
 not as easily violated as slandered, since the 
 most deadly wars have been said at least to 
 begin with misunderstandings." 
 
 The rationale of the famous eighth article of 
 this treaty is now given, in a passage which, 
 for closeness of reasoning, familiar wit of illus- 
 tration, and a vigorous conciseness of style, is 
 quite worthy of Swift. The general case of 
 the Independents is here stated against all their 
 opponents, whether of England or Scotland, 
 with inimitable ease and clearness. 
 
 " ARG. 4. Your entitling yourselves to a cog- 
 nizance in the conditions of our peace, and, con- 
 sequently, in the matter of our laws, when they 
 relate to an agreement, as I confess the four bills 
 do which were sent, is grounded upon a very 
 great mistake of the eighth article in the treaty, 
 the words whereof are indeed very rightly reci- 
 ted by you, and the article itself so rational, so 
 ordinary, so necessary, in all wars joined in by 
 two states, that I do almost wonder as much 
 what need there was to have inserted it, as I 
 do how it is possible for you to mistake it. It 
 stands briefly thus : one of you (for the purpose), 
 and I (pardon, if you please, the familiarity of the 
 instance), have solemnly engaged ourselves each 
 to the other for our mutual aid against a third 
 person, because we conceived him too strong 
 for either of us single, or because one of us doubted 
 he might have drawn the other of us to his party 
 if not pre-engaged against him ; but whichsoever 
 of us was 1 first in the quarrel, or whatever was 
 the reason of the other's coming in, we are en- 
 gaged ; and, though there were no writings 
 drawn betwixt us, no terms expressed, were 
 not I the veriest skellum that ever looked man 
 in the face if I should shake hands with the 
 common adversary and leave you fighting 1 
 Against such a piece of baseness, supposing it 
 be like to be in nature, this article provides, 
 and says, that since these two kingdoms were 
 content to join in a war, which, without God's 
 great mercy, might have proved fatal to them 
 both, neither of them shall be suffered to make 
 its peace apart ; so as if the Parliament of 
 Scotland, upon consideration of reasons occur- 
 ring to themselves, should offer to readmit the 
 king into that kingdom, I say, not with honour, 
 freedom, and safety, but in peace, the Parlia- 
 ment of England might step in and forbid the 
 banns, telling them we are not satisfied that an 
 agreement should yet be made ; similiter, if 
 this Parliament would come to any peace with 
 him by bills or propositions, or by what other 
 name soever they call their plasters, you may, 
 being so authorized in name of that kingdom, 
 or the Parliament thereof, intervene and op- 
 pose, telling us that you, who are our fellow- 
 surgeons merely in lancing of the sore, are not 
 satisfied in the time for healing of it up ; but 
 
 for you to read a lecture to us upon our medi- 
 caments and their ingredients, to take measure 
 of wounds, and to prefer your measure before 
 that of our own taking, was never dreamed on 
 by the framers of this article. 
 
 " Here it may perhaps be demanded, though 
 not by you, whether, according to my sense of 
 the treaty, tying up both kingdoms to a consent 
 in the fiat, not in the qualisfuerit of peace, if one 
 should be obstinately bent to hang off", the other 
 be necessitated to welter evei lastingly in blood for 
 want of such a concurrence 1 I answer, yes, for 
 these reasons : 
 
 " First, A wise man will foresee inconveniences 
 before he makes his bargain, and an honest man 
 will stand to his bargain, notwithstanding all in- 
 conveniences. 
 
 " Secondly, There will be no great encour- 
 agement for any obstinacy of that kind when it 
 shall he remembered that the party obstructing 
 the peace must continue to join in the war, and 
 is liable to all the consequences thereof. 
 
 " Thirdly, There is another and a more nat- 
 ural way to peace and to the ending of a war 
 than by agreement, namely, by conquest. / 
 think he that plays out his set at tennis till he wins 
 it makes as sure an end of it, and more fair, than 
 he that throws up his racket when he wants but a 
 stroke of up, having no other way to rook those 
 of their money that bet on his side. If I am trust- 
 ed to follow a suit in law for friends concerned 
 therein, together with myself, and daub up a 
 rotten compromise with my adversary, my fel- 
 lows not consulted, but desiring the suit should 
 still go on, it is not fit they should be bound 
 thereby ; but if I continue to do my duty, and 
 bring the cause to a hearing, to a verdict 
 thereupon, and to judgment upon that, such 
 an end of the quarrel I hope I may make with- 
 out their leave, and, if the trial went with me, 
 certainly without their offence. 
 
 " To return to the nature of confederacies. 
 Is the war wherein we are joined an invasion 
 from without 1 Any one man of either side, 
 if he have strength enough, hath authority 
 enough to end it by repelling the invader. Is 
 it a rebellion from within 1 It were strange to 
 think that any law or engagement should hin- 
 der a single man from ending it, if he be able, 
 by suppressing of the rebels. The unworthy 
 friend in the fable, when his companion and he 
 met a bear in the wood, might have been allowed 
 to kill her himself, but he should not have sought 
 his safety in a tree without taking his friend along 
 with him. 
 
 " One thing more I shall add to justify the 
 reason of this eighth article, such as might, for 
 its clearness of being implied, have excused its 
 being listed among the rest. Never did any 
 people that joined in arms with a neighbour 
 nation patch up a peace apart with more dis- 
 honour to itself, than either of us should do if 
 we could imagine ourselves to be so vile ; for 
 the common enemy in this war is not a stran- 
 ger unto either kingdom, but the king of both ; 
 so as whichsoever of the two closeth with him 
 by itself, before consent that there shall be at 
 all a closure, doth not only withdraw from the 
 other those aids it should contribute, but of a 
 sworn brother becomes an open enemy. 
 
 " Here I must observe, that as you put an 
 interpretation upon this article which it will
 
 364 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 not. bear, and, from the power you have thereby 
 of hindering us from agreeing with the king at 
 all, would enable yourselves to pry into the 
 particulars of our agreement, so you do not on.ce 
 glance at the point which was the true, genuine 
 scope of the article : you do not protest against 
 our making peace with this man, and give such 
 reasons as Jehu did upon a less occasion : you 
 do not wonder what confidence we can repose in 
 him, after all this experience of him, and before so 
 much as a promise of any amendment from him : 
 you do not warn us, by the example of your coun- 
 trymen, what a broken reed we shall lean upon 
 when we make a pacification with him : you do 
 not remember us with what horror the Assem- 
 bly of your Church did look upon his mis- 
 doings, nor what sense both kingdoms had 
 (not of a reconcilement with him, but) of even 
 suffering him to come near the Parliament of 
 England until satisfaction were given for the 
 blood which he had then caused to be shed in 
 the three kingdoms. In fine, you do not say, 
 for you need not give us your reasons, that you 
 will make no peace with the king, therefore 
 we ought not ; but you do as bad as say that 
 you have made your peace already, and that 
 not only without our consent (in despite of the 
 article which you urge against us), but without 
 our privity ; that you are come to a degree be- 
 yond being friends with him, to be advocates 
 for him ; not in meditating that his submission 
 might be accepted, his crimes obliterated, and 
 their salary remitted, but in asserting the same 
 cause which we have been all this while con- 
 futing with our swords the same cause which, 
 what Englishman or Scotsman soever shall 
 endeavour to maintain in arms, is a declared 
 traitor to his country ; and if by his tongue or 
 pen, in that kingdom of the two where he is no 
 native, a manifest incendiary. But there will 
 be time enough to do your errand into Scotland 
 after I have proved England to be a noun sub- 
 stantive, against which you have the shadow of 
 one argument left still." 
 
 The same soundness and sagacity of view, 
 the same vigour of understanding, at once 
 original and practical, equal force and familiar- 
 ity of illustration, and alike plainness and 
 strength of style, are observable in his treat- 
 ment of the fifth and last argument of these 
 Scots commissioners. 
 
 " AEQ. 5. The strength of your last reason 
 is this : ' Our Parliament hath formerly com- 
 municated unto you the matter of their propo- 
 sitions and of their bills in order to peace, and 
 generally, indeed, whatever hath passed be- 
 twixt the king and us since the conjunction 
 of the two kingdoms against him ;' thereupon 
 you have offered us your advice concerning 
 the particulars so communicated, and we have 
 reconsidered them upon your advice, some- 
 times complying therewith, at other times 
 making it appear to you why we could not. 
 You say, ' That communication of councils we 
 would never have suffered, if we had not been 
 bound to it, which if we ever were, we still are.' 
 
 " Custom and constant usage, I acknowledge, 
 doth commonly obtain the name of law ; but 
 the late practice of some four or five years hath 
 not an aspect reverend enough to deserve the 
 name of custom. It is as old, you will say, as 
 a usage can be that is grounded upon a treaty 
 
 of the same age, and shall be sufficient to sig- 
 nify how the parties to the treaty did under- 
 stand their own meaning. I should not deny 
 this pretence of yours to be more than colour- 
 able, if you could prove that our transactions 
 with the king were imparted to you in relation 
 to that engagement ; nay, if I could not show 
 you upon what other ground we did, and that 
 we could not reasonably be imagined to do it 
 upon that. 
 
 " First. To prove what the Parliament had 
 in their intentions when they advised with you, 
 I believe you will not undertake ; especially this 
 being the first time, to my remembrance, that 
 this point came in question betwixt us. I shall 
 therefore endeavour to tell you, as near as I 
 can, having been an attentive witness to most 
 of their debates upon that subject, what it was 
 that moved them to give your challenge so 
 much probability of advantage as this amounts 
 unto : you ask that now without being answer- 
 ed, which you were not to have without asking. 
 You were so, and that from these two roots : 
 one was the extraordinary care the Parliament 
 had to omit no act, no circumstance of civility 
 towards you, which might express or preserve 
 the amity and correspondence betwixt them 
 and your masters, though they were not igno- 
 rant what extreme prejudice courteous and 
 good-natured men have often drawn upon them- 
 selves in their dealing with persons of a con- 
 trary disposition ; another was, since both king- 
 doms have been embarked in the same cause, 
 as men of war, and were afterward resolved 
 to trade for peace since the commodities of 
 both were to be stowed in the same bottom, 
 and bound for the same port, we thought it but 
 an ordinary piece of friendship for us, who could 
 make no markets when we should be arrived 
 without your allowance, to open and let you 
 see, before we launched, our several parcels 
 and instructions concerning what we would ex- 
 port and what bring home ; not that we meant 
 to consult you what kind of merchandise you 
 thought fittest for us to deal in (which, ques- 
 tionless, is better known at the Exchange than 
 at Edinburgh), nor to follow such advice there- 
 in as you should give us without asking, any 
 farther than we liked it (and so far the best mer- 
 chant in London is content to be ruled by the 
 swabber of his ship), but merely to the end you 
 might, if you pleased, from our example, and from 
 your approbation of the wares we were resolved to 
 deal in, furnish that kingdom whose factors you 
 were with merchandise of the same kind ; and for 
 evidence that the freedom we used towards you 
 was no otherwise understood by you ; you did 
 actually underwrite divers of our bills of lading in 
 these syllables, ' The like for the kingdom of Scot- 
 land.' 
 
 " It remains to be showed how little reason 
 there is you should fancy to yourselves such a 
 ground of the Parliament's former openness to 
 you as you strive to father upon them ; for, 
 first, if they had communicated their proposi- 
 tions to you, as conceiving the word agreement 
 in the eighth article to comprehend all the 
 preparations to, materials of, and circumstances 
 in, an agreement, they would not have adhered, 
 as many times they did, unto their own reso- 
 lutions, notwithstanding your reiterated dissat- 
 isfaction.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 365 
 
 " Again : If they had conceived themselves 
 bound to any such thing by this article, would 
 they not have thought the kingdom of Scotland 
 as much bound for their parts 1 Should we not 
 have been as diligent inspectors and castigators 
 of your propositions as you have made your- 
 selves of ours 1 
 
 " When you shall ask me (setting the point 
 of duty aside, and granting all that hath been 
 done by us in this kind to have been voluntary) 
 why we do not observe the same forwardness 
 in communicating our matters to you, the same 
 patience in expecting your concurrence with us, 
 and the same easiness of admitting your ha- 
 rangues and disputations among us, which you 
 have heretofore tasted at our hands, and how 
 we are become less friendly than we were 1 I 
 have this to say, there is some alteration in the 
 condition of affairs: so long as we needed the 
 assistance of your countrymen in the field, we 
 might have occasion to give you meetings at 
 Derby House, and now and then in the Painted 
 Chamber, it being likely that the kingdom of 
 Scotland might then have a fellow-feeling with 
 us for the wholesomeness or perniciousness of 
 your counsels ; whereas now, since we are able, 
 by God's blessing, to protect ourselves, we may 
 surely, with his holy direction, be sufficient to 
 teach ourselves how to go about our own busi- 
 ness, at least without your tutoring, who have 
 nothing in your consideration to look upon but 
 either your particular advantage, or that of the 
 kingdom whence you are ; and as there is some 
 alteration in affairs, so there is very much in 
 persons, I mean in yourselves, unless, being in- 
 deed the same at first which now we find you, 
 you only wanted an opportunity to appear ; but, 
 whether you be changed or discovered, what 
 Englishman soever shall peruse the papers that 
 you have shot into both Houses of Parliament, 
 especially into the House of Commons, these 
 last two years, but would as lief take advice 
 from the king as from you 1 And if a stranger 
 should read them, he would little suspect the 
 writers for friends or counsellors, but for plead- 
 ers, for expostulators, for seekers of a quarrel ; 
 and that (which is the most bitter weed in the 
 pot) in the behalf, not so much of them who did 
 employ you, as of him against whom you were 
 employed, and against whom, if you were Scots- 
 men, nature would teach you to employ your- 
 selves. 
 
 " By this time / hope you see we have greater 
 cause to repent that we have kept such thorns thus 
 long in our sides, than to return with the dog to the 
 same vomit, and with the lazy sow, scarce cleansed 
 of her former wallowing, to bemire ourselves again. 
 I bestow a little the more ink upon this point, 
 because I would prevent like claim hereafter, 
 and have it left to the liberty of this nation, next 
 time they shall be invaded or oppressed, though they 
 did once call in all their brethren of Scotland to 
 their aid, whether they will do so any more or no." 
 
 The bitter severity, the supreme scorn of 
 these masterly sentences, were long remember- 
 ed and referred to. An entire and perfect con- 
 tempt scorneth nicer phrase. The close of the 
 paper, so remarkable in every way, illustrates 
 with almost superior force the Republican fer- 
 vour of Marten's views, the various wit of his 
 illustrations, and the Republican plainness and 
 strength of his style. 
 
 " Having gone through your five arguments, 
 at the end of your dozen commandments (so I 
 call desires that must not be slighted on pain 
 of incurring the guilt of violating engagements, 
 and of such dangers as may ensue thereupon), 
 I observe one engine you use, whereon you lay 
 more weight than upon all you say besides : it 
 begins with a flourish of oratory, bespeaking a 
 fair interpretation of your meaning, though your 
 motion be to take the right eye out of every one of 
 our heads ; then you think to make your desires 
 legitimate with fathering them upon a kingdom, 
 and put us in mind how well that kingdom hath 
 deserved to reign over this ; for to the offering 
 of desires, as desires, there needs no merit, 
 sure ; but since your opinion (that the advan- 
 tages of honour lie all on that side, and that 
 obligations of this sort have not been as recip- 
 rocal between both nations as those of leagues 
 and treaties) will force my pen upon this sub- 
 ject, I shall let you know that somewhat may 
 be said, when modesty gives leave, on this side 
 too ; and yet all the kindnesses we have received 
 from Scotland shall, by my consent, not only be 
 paid for, but acknowledged ; and I can be con- 
 tent to believe that our neighbours did not 
 know how ill we were till we were almost past 
 cure, and therefore came slowly to us ; that 
 they did not know how well we were in a year 
 after we had nothing for them to do, and there- 
 fore went slowly from us ; only I would have it 
 confessed that the fire we talk of was of your 
 countrymen's kindling, began to burn at your 
 house, to be quenched at ours, and by our 
 hands. 
 
 " But admit this nation had been merely 
 passive in this war, and did owe their deliver- 
 ance out of the king's talons wholly to the Scots 
 nation : if the rescuer become a ravisher, if 
 they have protected their own prey, they have 
 merited only from themselves, and have their 
 reward in their own hands. What have we got- 
 ten by the bargain 1 What have we saved 1 What 
 have we not lost 1 For if once you come to fetch 
 away my liberty from me, I shall not ask you what 
 other thing you will leave me ; and the liberty of a 
 people governed by laws consists in living under 
 such laws as themselves, or those whom they depute 
 for that purpose, shall make choice of. To give 
 out orders is the part of a commander ; to give 
 laws, of a conqueror ; although our Norman did 
 not think fit so to exercise his right of con- 
 quest ; nay, our condition would be lower and 
 more contemptible if we should suffer you to 
 have your will of us in this particular, than if 
 we had let the king have his ; for, 
 
 " First, A king is but one master, and therefore 
 likely to sit lighter upon our shoulders than a whole 
 kingdom ; and if he should grow so heavy as can- 
 not well be borne, he may be sooner gotten off than 
 they. You shall see a Monsieur's horse go very 
 proudly under a single man, but to be charge en 
 croupe is that which nature made a mule for, if 
 nature made a mule at all. 
 
 '' Secondly, The king never pretended to the 
 framing and imposing of laws upon us, as you 
 do : he would have been content with such a 
 negative voice therein as we allow you in the 
 making of our peace with him. Did we fight 
 rather than afford him so much, though seem- 
 ingly derived unto him from his predecessors ; 
 and shall we tamely give you more give you
 
 368 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 that which your ancestors never yet durst ask 
 of ours 1 
 
 " Thirdly, It had been far more tolerable for 
 the king than for any foreign nation to have a 
 share in the making of our laws, because he 
 was likely to partake, and that largely, in the 
 benefit of them, if good ; in the inconveniences, 
 if bad ; which strangers are not ; nay, contra- 
 rily, it is matter of envy and jealousy betwixt 
 neighbours to see each other in a flourishing 
 estate : so as the proper end of laws being to 
 advance the people for whom they are made in 
 wealth and strength to the uttermost, they are 
 the most incompetent judges of those laws 
 in the world whose interest it is to hinder 
 that people from growing extremely rich or 
 strong. 
 
 " But what hath been already said, and by a 
 word or two of close, it will, I hope, appear, 
 that the claim you make to the voting with us 
 in the matter of our laws and the conditions 
 of our peace, as a thing whereunto we should 
 be obliged by agreement, is, 
 
 " 1. Mistaken in matter of fact, there being 
 no such engagement on either side. 
 
 " 2. Unreasonable, for the considerations 
 above mentioned, and for being destructive to 
 the very principles of property. 
 
 " 3. Unequal (notwithstanding the reciproca- 
 tion), more than Cyrus's childish judgment was, 
 in making the little boy change coats with the great 
 one, because his was long and the other short ; for 
 our coats are not only longer than yours, but as Jit 
 for us that do wear them as for you that would. 
 
 11 4. Unusual, there being no precedent for it 
 that I could ever read or hear of; and yet there 
 have been leagues betwixt states of a stricter 
 union than this betwixt us, as offensive and de- 
 fensive, ours only defensive. 
 
 " 5. Unsafe, for the keeping up of hedges, 
 boundaries, and distinctions (I mean real and 
 jurisdictive ones, not personal and titulary) is 
 a surer way to preserve peace among neigh- 
 bours than the throwing all open. And if every 
 man be not admitted wise enough to do his own 
 business, whoever hath the longest sword will 
 quickly be the wisest man, and disinherit all his 
 neighbours for fools. 
 
 "6. Impossible to be made good to you, if it 
 had been agreed ; for the Parliament itself, 
 from whom you claim, hath not, in my humble 
 opinion, authority enough to erect another au- 
 thority equal to itself. 
 
 " As for your exhortations to piety and loy- 
 alty, wherewith you conclude : when you have 
 a mind to offer sacrifice to your God and tribute 
 to your emperor (since the one will not be 
 mocked, and the other should not), you may do 
 well to do it of your own ; and to remember 
 
 THAT THE LATE UNNATURAL WAR, WITH ALL THE 
 CALAMITIES THAT HAVE ENSUED THEREON, TOOK 
 ITS RISE FROM UNNATURAL ENCROACHMENTS UPON 
 THE SEVERAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF TWO NA- 
 TIONS, RESOLVED, IT SEEMS, TO HOLD THEIR OWN 
 WITH THE HAZARD OF A WAR, AND ALL THE CA- 
 LAMITIES THAT CAN ENSUE THEREON." 
 
 The result of these exertions against the 
 Scots by Marten and his friends was to estab- 
 lish the irreparable breach so long desired, and 
 prepare the way for the last victory of the In- 
 dependents. The four bills imbodying the con- 
 ditions of treaty were sent to the king for his 
 
 assent.* The Scots commissioners arrived at 
 the Isle of Wight exactly one day later than 
 the commissioners of the Parliament, and with 
 much formality delivered to the king a protest 
 against the bills, but with the secret object of 
 pressing an alliance with Charles that should 
 put an end to the ascendency of Cromwell, of 
 Vane, and their bitter assailant Marten. The 
 weak and perfidious king rejected the bills of 
 the Parliament, and at the same instant signed 
 a secret treaty with the Scots, by which he 
 bound himself to renounce Episcopacy, and ac- 
 cept the Covenant in solemn Parliament of 
 both kingdoms. By this act he renounced also 
 forever the character which has so long and so 
 idly been ascribed to him, of the Church of 
 England's martyr. They who say he died for 
 the Church of England cannot say also that he 
 refused to set his hand to the surrender of it. 
 After the treaty the Scots left the Isle of Wight 
 to prepare for war with their brethren of Eng- 
 land, and the Parliamentary commissioners re- 
 turned to London with that news which Vane, 
 Cromwell, Marten, and Ireton were only wait- 
 ing for to induce them to begin their operations 
 at once for changing the form of government 
 of this country from a monarchy into a republic. 
 Marten drew up a resolution, which was sup- 
 ported with startling force by Ireton and Crom- 
 well in a short debate recorded by Clement 
 Walker, t The resolution declared " that they 
 would offer no farther addresses or applications 
 to the king ; that no addresses or applications 
 should be made by any one without leave of 
 the two Houses ; and that whoever contra- 
 vened this order should be liable to the penal- 
 ties of treason." After a violent speech from 
 Sir Thomas Wroth in support of the resolution, 
 according to Clement Walker, Ireton rose, and 
 spoke with calm but fatal moderation. He 
 said" that " the king had denied that protection 
 to the people which was the condition of obe- 
 dience to him ; that after long patience they 
 should now at last show themselves resolute ; 
 that they should not desert the brave men who 
 had fought for them beyond the possibility of 
 retreat or forgiveness, and who would never 
 forsake the Parliament unless the Parliament 
 first forsook them." After some farther de- 
 bate, Walker adds, " Cromwell brought up the 
 rear." It was time, he said, to answer the 
 public expectation, that they were able and re- 
 solved to govern and defend the kingdom by 
 
 * Clarendon has altogether misrepresented the nature of 
 these bills, and directly and unequivocally falsified the de- 
 scription of the last two of them. See Godwin's History of 
 the Commonwealth, ii , 474, note. 
 
 t Hist, of Independency, p. 70. Walker's account is 
 borne out by this very striking passage of a pamphlet by 
 May on the " Origin and Progress of the Second Civil War." 
 It is to be found in Masere's Select Tracts, vol. i., 108. "On 
 the third of January, the House of Commons debated of this 
 denial of the king : the dispute was sharp, vehement, and 
 high about the state and government of the Commonwealth ; 
 and many plain speeches made of the king's obstinate averse- 
 ness, and the people's too long patience. It was there af- 
 firmed that the king, by his denial, had denied his protec- 
 tion to the people of England, for which only subjection is 
 due from them ; that, one being taken away, the other falls 
 to the ground ; that it is very unjust and absurd that the 
 Parliament (having so often tried the king's affections) 
 should now betray to an implacable enemy both themselves 
 and all those friends who, in a most just cause, had valiantly 
 adventured their lives and fortunes ; that nothing was now 
 left for them to do but to take care for the safety of them- 
 selves and their friends, and settle the Commonwealth (since 
 otherwise it could not be) without the king.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 367 
 
 their own power, and teach the people that 
 they had nothing to hope from a man whose 
 heart God hardened in obstinacy. " Do not," 
 he concluded, " let the army think themselves 
 betrayed to the rage and malice of an irrecon- 
 cilable enemy, whom they have subdued for 
 your sake, from whom they should meet re- 
 venge and justice ; do not drive them to de- 
 spair, lest they seek safety by other means 
 than adhering to you, who will not stick to 
 yourselves ; and (laying his hand on his sword) 
 how destructive such a resolution in them would 
 be to you all, I tremble to think, and leave you 
 to judge." A division after this debate, in- 
 volving the principle of the resolution, was 
 carried by a majority of 141 to 92, and estab- 
 lished beyond question the power of the Inde- 
 pendent or (now) Republican party. The Lords, 
 after two days' delay, concurred with the Com- 
 mons, and a declaration from the Republican 
 officers attested with opportune force the gal- 
 lant devotion of the army. Charles's last rea- 
 sonable chance had now disappeared forever ! 
 
 In all the subsequent proceedings against him 
 Marten acted a foremost and distinguished part. 
 Relying on the good faith of Oliver Cromwell, 
 at this time the most intimate of his friends, he 
 assisted him to the utmost, in common with 
 the other Republicans, in strengthening the 
 civil influences and power of the army. Sup- 
 posing Cromwell to have already formed to 
 himself his secret projects of ambition, it must 
 nevertheless be admitted that the measures in 
 which Vane and Marten now co-operated with 
 him were not such as seemed likely to conduce 
 to a scheme of personal usurpation. These 
 measures had become absolutely necessary to 
 meet the determined and fierce hostility of two 
 great parties, the Presbyterians and the Royal- 
 ists (still strong even in their defeat, because 
 the known prejudices and habits of a great 
 majority of the English people in favour of a 
 monarchical executive secretly sustained some 
 of the weakest points of their cause) ; and 
 Vane and Marten could scarcely have supposed 
 that in promoting the organization of an armed 
 and enthusiastic democracy with a view to sur- 
 mount these potent obstacles, they were not 
 doing everything within their then limited 
 means to advance the cherished project of a 
 pure republic. But this question, so far as 
 Vane is concerned in it, has already been dis- 
 cussed. Marten's belief in Cromwell's sincerity 
 lasted longer than Vane's, not less, perhaps, 
 because of a less subtle and more relying tem- 
 per, than that he was, by reason of his com- 
 mission in the army, more mixed up with the 
 absolute personal interests of that great body. 
 
 When Fairfax began his ominous advance 
 upon London, after the famous rendezvous at 
 Newmarket, Marten joined him in his capacity 
 as colonel, and was understood not only to have 
 taken an active share in the various consulta- 
 tions of the officers, but to have assisted Ireton 
 in his famous papers and representations to the 
 House of Commons, drawn up on behalf of the 
 army. Let those who imagine such conduct 
 to have directly favoured the subsequent es- 
 tablishment of military despotism first under- 
 stand what these representations were. " We 
 are not," says the preamble of one of them, 
 " a mercenary army, hired to serve any arbi- 
 
 trary power of state, but called forth and con- 
 jured by the several declarations of Parliament 
 to the defence of our own and the people's just 
 rights and liberties ; and so we took up arms 
 in judgment and conscience to those ends, and 
 are resolved according to your first just de- 
 sires and declarations, and such principles as 
 we have received from your frequent informa- 
 tions and our own common sense concerning 
 these our fundamental rights and liberties to 
 assert and vindicate them against all arbitrary 
 power, violence, and oppression, and all par- 
 ticular interests and parties whatsoever." This 
 consideration should, indeed, never be lost 
 sight of in pronouncing upon the events of this 
 memorable crisis. When these men saw that 
 all they had fought and bled for in fields where 
 their courage and genius for command had re- 
 vived memories of the men of Cressy and 
 of Poictiers when they saw the dearly-won 
 liberty at last within their grasp, endangered 
 by the exclusive and intolerant views of the 
 Presbyterians, they merely stepped out of the 
 ranks wherein they had not fought for hire, but 
 for the interests of their children and their 
 homes, and, as citizens, threw their weight 
 into the scale of parties, with a demand that 
 those interests might not be sacrificed again to 
 the predominance of bigotry or intolerance, no 
 matter what the form they might assume. 
 
 A subsequent passage in the paper already 
 quoted will illustrate farther the exact sympa- 
 thy of Marten and the officers, up to this period 
 and beyond it, with the views of Vane and 
 with the purest doctrines of popular govern- 
 ment. " And because," they said, " the present 
 distribution of elections for Parliament mem- 
 bers is so very unequal, and the multitude of 
 burgesses for decayed or inconsiderable towns 
 (whose interest in the kingdom would in many 
 not exceed, or in others not equal, ordinary 
 villages) doth give too much and too evident 
 opportunity for men of power to frame parties 
 in Parliament to serve particular interests, and 
 thereby the common interest of the whole is 
 not so minded, or not so equally provided for, 
 we therefore farther desire, That some pro- 
 vision may be now made for such distribution 
 of elections for future Parliaments as may 
 stand with some rule of equality or proportion, 
 as near as may be, to render the Parliament a 
 more equal representative of the whole ; as, 
 for instance, that all counties, or divisions and 
 parts of the kingdom (involving inconsiderable 
 towns), may have a number of Parliament-men 
 allowed to their choice proportion ably to the 
 respective rates they bear in the common 
 charges and burdens of the kingdom, and not to 
 have more, or some other such like rule. And 
 thus a firm foundation being laid, in the author- 
 ity and constitution of Parliaments, for the 
 hopes at least of common and equal right and 
 freedom to ourselves and all the freeborn peo- 
 ple of this land, we shall, for our parts, freely 
 and cheerfully commit our stock or share of 
 interest in this kingdom into this common bot- 
 tom of Parliaments ; and though it may, for 
 our particulars, go ill with us in one voyage, 
 yet we shall thus hope, if right be with us, to 
 fare better in another." Two centuries were 
 allowed to pass, and a new settlement of the 
 Constitution and the crown was suffered to be
 
 368 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 made, before the simple, wise, and manly 
 claims of these Republican officers, headed by 
 the mild and modest Fairfax, the resolute 
 Cromwell, the pure and lofty-minded Ireton, 
 the witty, light-hearted, and so-called mercurial 
 Harry Marten, were conceded to the English 
 people ! 
 
 Some months after the date of this repre- 
 sentation from the army, when the Presby- 
 terians, assisted by some disturbances among 
 the people, and certain desperate intrigues on 
 the part of the king and the Cavaliers, had 
 rallied once again and held momentary sway in 
 the capital, another and a final body of " pro- 
 posals" was issued from the council of officers. 
 It had been prepared by Ireton and Marten. 
 Its sincerity has been doubted by shrewd and 
 well-judging writers, on the ground that these 
 men were too stanch Republicans to entertain 
 seriously any project that should have for its 
 basis the restoration of the king. This reason, 
 however, is scarcely admissible. Undoubtedly 
 Ireton and Marten were stanchest Republi- 
 cans ; Republicans in theory no less than prac- 
 tically convinced Republicans ; Republicans 
 because they held, with the better spirits of 
 Greece and Rome, that man in civil subjection 
 to his fellow-man is incapable of being all that 
 man in the abstract is qualified to be ; and Re- 
 publicans also, because of their practical expe- 
 rience of the utter insincerity, falsehood, and 
 perfidy of the present monarch ; but yet, ad- 
 mitting all this, it should not have withheld ! 
 them from negotiating, under the present dis- 
 tracted circumstances of the kingdom, a certain 
 and immediate purchase of liberty and good 
 government, on behalf and for the advantage 
 of the great mass of their fellow-citizens, even 
 at the sacrifice of the form and the name they 
 loved. And this was what they did in drawing 
 up these memorable proposals. They imbodied 
 under them the immortal design of what has 
 been called in modern days, " a monarchy sur- 
 rounded- with Republican institutions," or what 
 Montesquieu would have better called " a re- 
 public in disguise." 
 
 Had Charles accepted these proposals, and 
 with sincerity redeemed them, his throne and 
 his life would have been saved. He rejected 
 them with infatuated scorn,* and both were 
 lost. He placed secret reliance still upon the 
 divisions in the city and the Parliament, and, 
 clinging to his detested fondness for intrigue, 
 abandoned himself to the worst fate that await- 
 ed him. 
 
 Some extracts from these proposals will 
 startle the reader. They present a system of , 
 civil and religious reform so entire and perfect, 
 and condense, in a series of compact proposals, 
 
 * See Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley in Masere's Select 
 Tracts, i., p. 366-369. Mr. Hallam most justly remarks of 
 the general character of the proposal, that " the terms were 
 surely as good as Charles had any reason to hope. The se- 
 verities against his party were mitigated. The grand ob- 
 stacles to all accommodation, the Covenant and Presbyterian 
 establishment, were at onee.removed ; or, if some difficulty 
 might occur as to the latter, in consequence of the actual 
 possession of benefices by the Presbyterian clergy, it seemed 
 not absolutely insuperable ; for the changes projected in the 
 constitution of Parliament, they were not necessarily inju- 
 rious to the monarchy. That Parliament shall not be dis- 
 solved until it had sat a certain time, was so salutary a pro- 
 vision that the triennial act was hardly complete without it. 
 It is, however, probable, from the king's extreme tenacious- 
 ness of his prerogative, that those were the conditions that 
 he found it most difficult to endure." Const. Hist. i. 286 
 
 such a mass of philosophical legislation, as, 
 after a two centuries' march of intellect over 
 the English nation, her liberal ministers and 
 representatives are still only struggling to at- 
 tain to. In the very Parliament which now 
 sits at Westminster, the same propositions are 
 actually under discussion which formed the 
 major part of these proposals from the council 
 of officers drawn up by Ireton and Marten, and 
 laid upon the table of the House of Commons 
 at the close of 1649 by the younger Vane !* 
 
 The paper opens with a stipulation that the 
 " things hereafter proposed," having been pro- 
 vided for by the Long Parliament, that famous 
 assembly should be dissolved " within a year 
 at most." A plan for reform in the represent- 
 ation is then propounded thus : 
 
 1. " That Parliaments may biennially be call- 
 ed, and meet at a certain day, with such pro- 
 visions for the certainty thereof as in the late 
 act was made for triennial Parliaments, and 
 what farther or other provision shall be found 
 needful by the Parliament to reduce it to more 
 certainty ; and upon the passing of this, the said 
 act for triennial Parliaments to be repealed. 
 
 2. " Each biennial Parliament to sit one hun- 
 dred and twenty days certain, unless adjounicd or 
 dissolved sooner by their own consent ; afterward 
 to be adjournable or dissolvable by the king : 
 and no Parliament to sit past two hundred and 
 forty days from their first meeting, or some 
 other limited number of days now to be agreed 
 on ; upon the expiration whereof, each Parlia- 
 ment to dissolve of course, if not otherwise dis- 
 solved sooner. 
 
 3. " The king, upon advice of the council of 
 state, in the intervals betwixt biennial Parlia- 
 ments, to call a Parliament extraordinary, pro- 
 vided it meet above seventy days before the 
 next biennial day, and be dissolved at least 
 sixty days before the same, so as the course 
 of biennial elections may never be interrupted. 
 
 4. " That this Parliament and each succeed- 
 ing biennial Parliament, at or before adjourn- 
 ment or dissolution thereof, may appoint com- 
 mittees to continue during the interval, for such 
 purposes as are, in any of these proposals, re- 
 ferred to such committees. 
 
 5. " That the elections of the Commons for 
 succeeding Parliaments may be distributed to 
 all counties, or other parts or divisions of the 
 kingdom, according to some rule of equality or 
 proportion, so as all counties may have a num- 
 ber of Parliament members allowed to their 
 choice proportionable to the respective rates 
 they bear in the common charges and burdens 
 of the kingdom, or, according to some other 
 rule of equality or proportion, to render the 
 House of Commons, as near as may be, an 
 equal representative of the whole ; and in order 
 thereunto, that a present consideration be had 
 to take off the elections for burgesses for poor, 
 decayed, or inconsiderable towns, and to give 
 some present addition to the number of Parlia- 
 ment members for great counties that have now 
 less than their due proportion, to bring all, at 
 present as near as may be, to such a rule of 
 proportion as aforesaid. 
 
 6. " That effectual provision be made for future 
 freedom of elections and certainty of due returns. 
 
 7. " That the House of Commons alone have 
 
 * Parl. Hist., xvi., 210.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 3G 
 
 the power, from time to time, to set down far- 
 ther orders and rules for the ends expressed in 
 the two last preceding articles, so as to reduce 
 the election of members of that House to more 
 and more perfection of equality in the distri- 
 bution, freedom in the election, order in the 
 proceeding thereto, and certainty in the re- 
 turns ; which orders and rules, in that case, to 
 be as laws. 
 
 8. " That there be a liberty for entertaining 
 dissents in the House of Commons, with a pro- 
 vision that no member be censurable for aught 
 said or voted in the House, farther than to ex- 
 clusion from that trust, and that only by the 
 judgment of the House itself." 
 
 In the succeeding passages it is proposed 
 that the judicial power of both Houses should 
 be strictly limited and defined, and that the for- 
 mation and attributes of grand juries, the ma- 
 gistracy, and the sheriffs should be better and 
 more justly regulated. How little modern re- 
 formers have discovered ! how much less they 
 have achieved ! 
 
 9. " That the judicial power, or power affinal 
 judgment in the Lords and Commons, and their 
 power of exposition and application of law, without 
 farther appeal, may be cleared ; and that no 
 officer of justice, minister of state, or other 
 person adjudged by them, may be capable of 
 protection or pardon from the king without 
 their advice and consent. 
 
 10. " That the right and liberty of the Com- 
 mons of England may be cleared and vindicated 
 as to a due exemption from any judgment, trial, 
 or other proceeding against them by the House 
 of Peers, without the concurring judgment of 
 the House of Commons ; as also from any other 
 judgment, sentence, or proceeding against them 
 other than by their equals, or according to the 
 law of the land. 
 
 11. " The same act to provide that grand-jury- 
 men may be chosen by and for several parts or di- 
 visions of each county respectively, in some equal 
 way, and not remain, as now, at the discretion of 
 an under-sheriff, to be put on or off; and that such 
 grand-jurymen for their respective counties may, at 
 each assize, present the names of persons to be 
 made justices of peace, from time to time, as the 
 country hath need for any to be added to the com- 
 mission ; and at the summer assize to present the 
 names of three persons, out of whom, the king may 
 prick one to be sheriff for the next year." 
 
 This most masterly evidence of statesman- 
 like genius stipulates next, that the king's 
 power over the militia be subject to the advice 
 of Parliament, and a council for ten years ; that 
 the disqualifications for civil privilege, and com- 
 positions for estates incurred by delinquents 
 (adherents to the royal standard), should be 
 settled by a mitigated scale of remarkable mod- 
 eration and magnanimity ; and that for the lib- 
 erty, security, happiness, and peace of the king- 
 dom, there should be passed acts respectively 
 of confirmation, indemnity, and oblivion. Then 
 came the following noble conditions : 
 
 " An act to be passed to take away all co- 
 ercive power, authority, and jurisdiction of 
 bishops, and all other ecclesiastical officers 
 whatsoever, extending to any civil penalties 
 upon any ; and to repeal all laws whereby the 
 civil magistracy hath been or is bound, upon any 
 ecclesiastical censure, to proceed, ex officio, unto 
 
 ! any civil penalties against any persons so cen- 
 | sured. 
 
 " That there be a repeal of all acts or clauses 
 in any act enjoining the use of the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer, and imposing any penalties for 
 neglect thereof ; as also of all acts, or clauses 
 in any act, imposing any penalty for not coming 
 to church, or for meetings elsewhere for prayer 
 or other religious duties, exercises, or ordinan- 
 ces ; and some other provision to be made for dis- 
 covering of Papists and Popish recusants, and for 
 disabling of them, and of all Jesuits or priests, from 
 disturbing the state." 
 
 In other words, that tests, and penalties, and 
 obligations of force upon the conscience were 
 not the means. It is a pity that this valuable 
 discovery in morals and in legislation is so 
 grievously wanting of universal application, 
 even now ! The next propositions are these : 
 
 " That the taking of the Covenant be not en- 
 forced upon any, nor any penalties imposed upon 
 the refusers, whereby men might be constrain^ 
 ed to take it against their judgments or con- 
 sciences ; but all orders or ordinances tending 
 to that purpose to be repealed. 
 
 "That (the. things here before proposed be- 
 ing provided for settling and securing the rights, 
 liberties, peace, and safety of the kingdom) his 
 majesty's person, his queen, and royal issue, 
 may be restored to a condition of safety, hon- 
 our, and freedom in this nation, without dimi- 
 nution to their personal rights, or farther limi- 
 tation to the exercise of the legal power than 
 according to the particulars aforegoing." 
 
 A supplement of residuary matters followed, 
 which it was desired no time should be lost by 
 the Parliament in despatch of, since they would 
 tend, " in a special manner, to the welfare, ease, 
 and just satisfaction of the kingdom." Some 
 of these are striking to the last degree in their 
 application to the present day, to its wants and 
 claims. They begin by demanding " that the 
 just and necessary liberty of the people to rep- 
 resent their grievances and desires by way of 
 petition may be cleared and vindicated," and 
 that, " in pursuance of the same, the common 
 grievances of the people may be speedily con- 
 sidered of and effectually redressed." Several 
 are thus particularized, and the majority of 
 them still wait redress ! They ask, for in- 
 stance, that "the excise may be taken off from 
 such commodities whereon the poor people of the 
 land do ordinarily live, and a certain time to be 
 limited for taking off the whole." They de- 
 mand that "the oppressions and encroachments 
 of forest laws may be prevented for the future," 
 and that " all monopolies, old or new, and restraint* 
 to the freedom of trade, be taken off." They stip- 
 ulate next that " a course may be taken, and 
 commissioners appointed, to remedy and rectify 
 the inequality of rates, being upon several coun- 
 ties, and several parts of each county, in re- 
 spect of others, and to settle the proportions 
 for land-rales to more equality throughout the 
 kingdom ; in order to which, we shall offer 
 some farther particulars, which we hope may 
 be useful." And they require, in words of sad 
 and significant import at this time, that "the 
 present unequal^ troubleseme, and contentious tray 
 of ministers' maintenance by tithes be considered 
 of, and some remedy applied." They proceed to 
 claim, afterward, that simple reform of the law
 
 370 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in ordinary processes, which is wanted still, in 
 asking that " the rules and course of law, and 
 the officers of it. may be so reduced and reform- 
 ed, as that all suits and questions of right may be 
 more clear and certain in the issues, and not so te- 
 dious nor chargeable in the proceedings as now; 
 in order to which, we shall offer some farther 
 particulars hereafter." 
 
 I transcribe the demand which follows with 
 a mingled feeling of astonishment, of regret, 
 and shame. What miseries miseries more 
 frightful, because hidden from the universal 
 gaze, and borne in secrecy and silence have 
 since flowed from the injustice for which this 
 demand suggested a simple and effectual rem- 
 edy that very remedy which is at this moment, 
 with a melancholy and almost hopeless earnest- 
 ness, prayed for by the thousands of heart- 
 broken men who are the last victims to that ac- 
 cursed principle of the infamy of poverty which 
 is here condemned by the statesmen of the sev- 
 enteenth century, and which, with the passage 
 of two hundred years, has not yet ceased its 
 disgrace and reproach to the English character 
 and name. They require " that prisoners for 
 debt, or other debtors, who have estates to dis- 
 charge them, may not, by embracing imprisonment 
 or any other ways, have advantage to defraud their 
 creditors, but that the estates of all men may 
 be some way made liable to their debts (as well 
 as tradesmen are by commissions of bankrupt), 
 whether they be imprisoned for it or not ; and 
 that such prisoners for debt, who have not where- 
 with to pay, or at least do yield up what they have 
 to their creditors, may be freed from imprisonment, 
 or some way provided for, so as neither they nor] 
 their families may perish by their imprisonments." 
 The stipulations which succeed are dictated by 
 the same noble spirit of justice and humanity. 
 " Some provisions to be made that none may 
 be compelled, by penalties or otherwise, to an- 
 swer unto questions tending to the accusing of 
 themselves or their nearest relations in crimi- 
 nal causes, and no man's life to be taken away 
 under two witnesses. That consideration may 
 be had of all statutes, and the laws and cus- 
 toms of corporations, imposing any oaths, either 
 to repeal, or else to qualify and provide against 
 the same, so far as they may extend or be con- 
 strued to the molestation or ensnaring of reli- 
 gious and peaceable people merely for noncon- 
 formity in religion." 
 
 Such were the views and sentiments, and 
 such the genius for government, of the men who 
 now (to resume the narrative), upon another 
 temporary ascendency of the Presbyterians 
 after the vote of non-addresses upon seeing 
 the former solemn resolution of the House 
 mocked by the commencement of another per- 
 sonal treaty with the king upon a melancholy 
 conviction of the absolute insincerity and in- 
 veterate perfidy of Charles's friends, prepared 
 themselves for the last decisive steps that 
 should overthrow the English monarchy. Fair- 
 fax and his officers, in a body, presented a re- 
 monstrance to the House, calling for the im- 
 mediate breaking up of the treaty, and for jus- 
 tice on the king as the "capital source of all 
 grievances."* At about the same instant they 
 seized once more the person of the king, and 
 ^Colonel Harry Marten," Rushworth tells us,t 
 
 ~ Rush., vii., 1331. Parl. Hist.,xvT rVo 
 
 " went hence to Lieutenant-general Cromwell." 
 He left London suddenly and joined that leader, 
 still engaged against the Scots. His purpose, 
 no doubt, was to consult with him respecting the 
 menacing attitude taken by the Presbyterians. 
 After some days' absence, he returned to Lon- 
 don as suddenly as he had quitted it. 
 
 The Presbyterians had been warding off the 
 army remonstrance by successive adjourn- 
 ments. The remonstrance was now followed 
 up by the more startling announcement of the 
 resolve of the army " to purge the House," since 
 by that means only they could stop the treaty. 
 The Presbyterians, plucking up an unwonted 
 courage on the eve of their last defeat, at once 
 determined, by a division of 133 to 102, to go 
 into discussion of the treaty. In this discussion 
 Vane was defeated on his famous motion for a 
 return to the vote of non-addresses, after a 
 speech in which he stated the question openly 
 as between a monarchy and a republic, by a di- 
 vision of 140 to 104. There had been, accord- 
 ing to Prynne, upward of 340 members present 
 during this discussion ; but many, from age and 
 infirmity, had been unequal to the fatigue of 
 sitting through the whole day and night till nine 
 next morning, the period of the duration of the 
 adjourned debate. 
 
 Next morning (the army having advanced 
 meanwhile from Windsor upon London) the 
 city guard was withdrawn from Westminster 
 by its commander Skippon, and the posts were 
 occupied by three regiments under the com 
 mand of Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Hewson, 
 and Colonel Pride. The latter officer, with a 
 list in his hand, took his station at the door of 
 the House of Commons, and as the members 
 entered and were identified by the doorkeeper 
 and Lord Grey of Groby, who stood near Pride 
 for the purpose, arrested in succession, and 
 during a period of three days, the Presbyterian 
 majority, in all upward of a hundred and fifty 
 members, several of whom were afterward un- 
 conditionally restored. The little that need be 
 urged respecting this measure has been glanced 
 at in the Life of Vane. That great statesman 
 at once withdrew from a scene in which such 
 an outrage on the foundation of all that had 
 been done for the past seven years of war, and 
 of all that he yet hoped to do for the people 
 a popular and representative body had become 
 fatally necessary in the views of those with 
 whom he had heretofore acted. It is probable 
 he at once saw the mischievous purposes such 
 a precedent might suggest in the breast of Crom- 
 well a thought which does not seem to have 
 yet occurred to any of the other trusted leaders 
 of the Independents. Marten's faith in Crom- 
 well was certainly still undisturbed. 
 
 Cromwell arrived in London the second day 
 after the purge ; and it was Henry Marten, 
 who, having entered the House of Commons 
 with him that day, " arm in arm," afterward 
 rose from his place and moved that the speaker 
 should return him thanks for his great and 
 eminent services performed in the course of 
 the campaign.* This was done with acclama- 
 tion ; and the day after, the two Houses ad- 
 journed to the 12th of the then month, Decem- 
 1161^1648-9. 
 
 * Wood's Ath. Ox., iii., 1239. Journals. Clement Walk- 
 er, 34.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 371 
 
 Several meetings of the council of the army 
 took place in the interval of this adjournment, 
 at which the treatment of the king was of course 
 Warmly debated. " At this consultation of the 
 first commanders in the army," says a Royalist 
 writer, " Marten, as a colonel, attended, and 
 he cut the matter short by telling them ' they 
 should serve his majesty as the English did his 
 Scotch grandmother cut off his head.' This 
 horrid advice was adopted, and he was the first 
 to dispose of everything for the completion of 
 the villany." This must be taken with allow- 
 ance ; but it may be admitted that he was the 
 first to utter openly, at this great crisis, as he 
 had done on occasions less important, the 
 thoughts that lay lurking in the breasts of the 
 majority of his associates. 
 
 The first step against the life of the king at- 
 tempted in the House of Commons was taken 
 on the 23d of December, when, in the discus- 
 sion of one of the proposals of the army that 
 "justice should be done upon delinquents," 
 Charles the First was mentioned by name as the 
 capital delinquent, and a committee of thirty- 
 eight appointed to prepare charges against 
 him. The most prominent members of this 
 committee were Henry Marten and Thomas 
 Scot, the latter a man of genius and courage, 
 variously accomplished, a masterly orator, and 
 an ardent Republican. Widdrington and White- 
 Jocke, the keepers of the seal, were also on the 
 committee, but on being sent for on the second 
 or third day of its deliberations, they "went 
 out of town together, that they might have no 
 concern in the business." * 
 
 Another anecdote of Marten's share in these 
 deliberations rests also on Royalist authority. 
 A witness (Sir Purbeck Temple) swore against 
 him on his trial that he overheard from a place 
 of concealment one of the consultations pre- 
 vious to the king's trial, at which Cromwell 
 and Marten, and many others, were present, in 
 the course of which much doubt and anxiety 
 were expressed ; and he overheard Cromwell 
 ask the others, " ' I desire you to let us resolve 
 here what answer we shall give the king when 
 he comes before us ; for the first question that 
 he will ask us will be, By what authority and 
 commission do we try himl' to which none 
 answered presently ; then, after a little space, 
 Henry Marten, the prisoner at the bar, rose up 
 and said, ' In the name of the Commons and 
 Parliament assembled, and all the good people 
 of England/ which none contradicted." 
 
 Charles had meanwhile arrived at Windsor, 
 and on the 28th received an ominous order 
 from the council of war that he should no 
 longer be served by cupbearer or carver on 
 bended knee, and that the other ceremonials 
 of regal state had been ordered to be discon- 
 tinued. The end was now in view, and Charles 
 prepared to meet it with becoming firmness. 
 The last scene of all, once bounded with hope- 
 lessness, is no longer a difficult scene to act ; 
 and from this instant, in the heroic sufferings 
 of the man, we are only too much inclined to 
 forget the part he had played as king. "Is 
 there anything more contemptible," he asked 
 of his faithful Herbert, " than a despised 
 prince?" But over that character he threw a 
 
 * Whitelocke, Jourual of 26th of December. 
 
 pathetic lustre, which we seek for in vain 
 throughout his high and palmy days. 
 
 On the same ominous 28th of December, an 
 ordinance for the king's trial was carried into 
 the House of Commons. Some days before, 
 Marten, Ireton, and Ludlbw had been added to 
 the committee of executive government at 
 Derby House, and measures were now in prog- 
 ress there for the alteration of all the insignia 
 of government into symbols of a republic. 
 
 On the 1st of January, the committee of 
 thirty-eight, having sat and examined witness- 
 es, reported to the House of Commons a 
 charge against the king, beginning with the 
 terrible words, " That the said Charles Stuart, 
 being admitted King of England, and therein 
 trusted with a limited power to govern by and 
 according to the laws of the land, and not 
 otherwise ; and", by his trust, oath, and office, 
 being obliged to use the power committed to 
 him for the good and benefit of the people, and 
 for the preservation of their rights and liber- 
 ties ; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design 
 to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and 
 tyrannical power, to rule according to his will, 
 and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the 
 people ; yea, to take away and make void the 
 foundations thereof, and of all redress and 
 remedy of misgovernment, which, by the fun- 
 damental constitutions of this kingdom, were 
 reserved, on the people's behalf, in the right 
 and power of frequent and successive Parlia- 
 ments, or national meetings in council : he, the 
 said Charles Stuart, for accomplishing of such 
 his designs, and for the protecting of himself 
 and his adherents in his and their wicked prac- 
 tices to the same ends, hath traitorously and 
 maliciously levied war against the present Par- 
 liament and the people therein represented." 
 In support of this, various overt acts are re- 
 cited, including the battles of Edge Hill, New- 
 bury, and Naseby. 
 
 The ordinance and the charge were sent up 
 to the Lords on the 2d of January (with a reso- 
 lution from the Commons that it is treason for 
 the king to levy war against the Parliament 
 and kingdom), and at once unanimously reject- 
 ed. It is curious, however, that their lordships 
 at the same time " adjourned for a week,'* 
 which, in the circumstances of the country, 
 was tantamount to a declaration that they 
 would take no farther part in the conduct of its 
 affairs. In the light of an abdication the Com- 
 mons certainly seem to have considered it ; 
 for on the 3d of January Marten went up to 
 " examine the journal-book of the House of 
 Peers, to see how the business stood as to the 
 resolution and ordinance." On his return, the 
 ordinance was at once directed to be brought 
 in anew ; six lords and three judges before 
 named were ordered to be omitted, and an ad- 
 dition made of two sergeants, Bradshaw and 
 Nicholas. The ordinance, with these altera- 
 tions, was immediately read a first and second 
 time, and the resolution revoted of treason 
 against the king in the name of the Commons 
 only, it having before been voted with a blank 
 for the Lords. On the day following this, they 
 passed, with closed doors, these three moment- 
 ous resolutions : " That the Commons of Eng- 
 land, in Parliament assembled, do declare, 
 That the people are, under God, the original
 
 372 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of all just power ; and do also declare, That 
 the Commons of England, in Parliament as- 
 sembled, being chosen by representing the 
 people, have the supreme power in this nation ; 
 and do also declare, That whatsoever is enact- 
 ed or declared for law by the Commons in Par- 
 liament assembled, hath the force of a law ; 
 and all the people of this nation are concluded 
 thereby, although the consent and concurrence 
 of king or House of Peers be not had there- 
 unto." 
 
 On the 6th, the ordinance was read a third 
 time and passed. The number of commission- 
 ers named in it was 135.* Of these there were 
 Viscount Lisle, son to the Earl of Leicester ; 
 Lord Grey of Groby, son to the Earl of Stamford ; 
 Lord Monson, of the kingdom of Ireland ; Gen- 
 eral Lord- viscount Fairfax ; Lieutenant-gener- 
 al Cromwell, Major-general Skippon, Commis- 
 sary-general Ireton, Colonel Marten, and all 
 the colonels of the army ; with three sergeants- 
 at-law, John Bradshaw, Robert Nicholas, and 
 Francis Thorpe ; the speaker of the House of 
 Commons and five barristers, Alexander Rigby, 
 Roger Hill, Miles Corbet, John Lisle, and Will- 
 iam Say ; five aldermen of London, one knight 
 of the Bath, eleven baronets, and ten knights. 
 Of these commissioners, eighty-two were mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons.! The only 
 great name of the time absent from the list 
 was the name of Sir Henry Vane the younger.t 
 
 On the 8th of January, the commissioners 
 sat for the first time in the Painted Chamber 
 in Westminster Hall. Fifty-three were pres- 
 ent, including Fairfax, who never appeared 
 again. Counsel and the officers of the court 
 were nominated at this sitting ; due proclama- 
 tion was made in Westminster Hall by the ser- 
 geant-at-arms of the coming trial ; and a simi- 
 lar proclamation was demanded of the House 
 
 * In the original ordinance the names are said to have 
 been 150. If from this number we take away nine, and 
 then add two, the result ought to be 143. There were, 
 therefore, other omissions and variations. 
 
 t Of these 135, seventy-one was the largest number ever 
 present at the trial. Sixty-seven were present on the day 
 when sentence was pronounced. Forty-three only appeared 
 the next day, when the execution was ordered. Fifty-nine 
 signed the death-warrant. Some few of the commissioners 
 attended the preliminary meetings in the Painted Chamber, 
 but never sat as judges. From forty to fifty of the com- 
 missioners appear never to have taken any part in the pro- 
 ceedings, notwithstanding the summonses ordered by the 
 court, and the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms. 
 
 t The name of Algernon Sidney appears in it, but he only 
 attended the preliminary meetings in the Painted Chamber, 
 and never attended the court after the trial commenced. 
 His own allusion to the trial remains, and he is too distin- 
 guished a person to have his opinion omitted on an occasion 
 so memorable. He says, " I was at Penshurst when the 
 act for the king's trial passed, and, coming up to town, I 
 heard that my name was put in. I presently went to the 
 Painted Chamber, where those who were nominated for 
 judges were assembled. A debate was raised, and I posi- 
 tively opposed the proceeding. Cromwell using these formal 
 ' 
 
 hand in this business ;' and saying thus, I immediately left 
 them, and never returned. This is all that passed publicly. 
 I had indeed an intention, which is not very fit for a letter." 
 Blencowe, p. 237. It is not, perhaps, difficult to fix what 
 this intention was. Clarendon says that, among the more 
 violent party against the king, there were three opinions : 
 one was for deposing him, another for secret assassination, 
 and a third for bringing him to public trial as a malefactor. 
 It was the last of these opinions that Sidney states himself 
 to have opposed. The mode of secret assassination we well 
 know to have been most alien to his nature. There cannot 
 be a question but that, with Vane, he would have preferred 
 the deposition of Charles. 
 
 of Commons to be made at the old Exchange 
 and in Cheapside, which was made accordingly. 
 
 On the 9th of January, the report of the com- 
 mittee for the construction of a new great seal 
 was carried into the House of Commons by 
 Henry Marten.* It recommended that on the 
 one side there should be engraved the map of 
 England and Ireland, with the inscription, " the 
 Great Seal of England," and on the other, a 
 representation of the House of Commons, with 
 the inscription, " In the first year of freedom, 
 by God's blessing RESTORED." The instruc- 
 tions of the committee were at once adopted, 
 and the new seal ordered to be prepared with 
 all convenient despatch.! 
 
 Marten used on another and more memora- 
 ble occasion this word of remarkable import, 
 RESTORED. Mr. D'Israeli has related the anec- 
 dote in his ingenious memorials of Charles the 
 First,t and I subjoin it in his words : " In 
 drawing up the remonstrances of the army, 
 which changed the monarchy into a common- 
 wealth, this Sheridan of his day had said, ' RE- 
 STORED to its ancient government of Common- 
 wealth.' A member rose to reprimand, and to 
 wonder at the impudence of Harry Marten, as- 
 serting the antiquity of Commonwealth, of 
 which he had never before heard. The wit re- 
 joined by a whimsical illustration of the pro- 
 priety of the term, and the peculiar condition 
 of the man who had now heard it for the first 
 time. ' There was,' said Harry, ' a text which 
 had often troubled his spirit concerning the 
 man who was blind from his mother's womb, 
 but at length whose sight was restored to the 
 sight which he should have had.' The witticism 
 was keen, though almost as abstruse as the 
 antiquity of an English commonwealth." This 
 illustration was keen indeed, and by no means 
 so abstruse as Mr. D'Israeli supposes. 
 
 On the 10th the commissioners again met, 
 and chose the president of their court in the 
 person of John Bradshaw, sergeant-at-law and 
 chief justice of Chester. To preside on so ex- 
 
 * " To Mr. H. Marten," says one of the Royalist writers, 
 " was referred all the alterations in the public arms, in the 
 great seal, and the legends upon the money. It was singu- 
 
 ! lar that the cross made a part of the first. Upon the money 
 was a shield, bearing the cross of St. George, encircled with 
 a palm and olive-branch, inscribed, ' The Commonwealth of 
 
 i England ;' and on the reverse, ' God with us, 1648,' which 
 gave occasion to some to remark that God and the Common- 
 wealth were not on the same side." 
 
 t In Whitelocke's Memorials the vote is thus recorded: 
 " Votes that the present great seal shall be broken, and a 
 new one forthwith made ; and, in the mean time, all pro- 
 ceedings under the present great seal to be good till the new 
 one be confirmed. That the arms of England and of Ireland 
 shall be engraven on one side of the new great seal, w>ih 
 this inscription, ' the Great Seal of England.' That on the 
 other side of the seal shall be the sculpture, or map of the 
 House of Commons sitting, with these words engraven on 
 that side : ' In the first year of freedom, by God's blessing 
 restored, 1648.' This was, for the most part," adds White- 
 locke, " the fancy of Mr. Henry Marten, a noted member of 
 the House of Commons, more particularly the inscriptions." 
 It is, perhaps, worth adding, that on the very day of these 
 votes, Whitelocke and Widdrington, by mutual agreements, 
 made their appearance in the House, that they might not, 
 by inference, be included among the members who refused 
 all concern with the present government. Whitelocke, in 
 a very curious, and certainly ingenuous passage of his me- 
 morials, remarks: "January 12, we heard demurrers, fore- 
 noon and afternoon, in the queen's court : the counsel were 
 more peremptory and unsatisfied than ordinary, and used us 
 
 ' like declining officers." The next day he says, " Some told 
 us, for news, that new commissioners of the great seal were 
 to be appointed, Sergeants Bradshaw, Thorpe, and Nicholas. 
 This was supposed to be discourse only, as some would 
 
 1 havi it." t Vol. v., 428.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 373 
 
 traordinary an occasion, it is most justly ob- 
 served,* demanded from the man who was 
 appointed to the office great courage, great 
 presence of mind, sound judgment, a composed 
 and impressive carriage, and a character un- 
 stained with reproach or the imputation of any 
 vice. And such a man was Bradshaw. " Be- 
 ing of a distinguished family," says' Milton, in 
 his Defensio sccunda pro populo Anglicano,i " he 
 devoted the early part of his life to the study 
 of the laws of his country. Thence he became 
 an able and an eloquent pleader, and subse- 
 quently discharged all the duties of an uncor- 
 rupt judge. In temper neither gloomy nor se- 
 vere, but gentle and placid, he exercised in his 
 own house the rites of hospitality in an exem- 
 plary manner, and proved himself on all occa- 
 sions a faithful and unfailing friend. Ever ea- 
 ger to acknowledge merit, he assisted the de- 
 serving to the utmost of his power. Forward 
 at all times to publish the talents and worth of 
 others, he was always silent respecting his own. 
 No one more ready to forgive, he was yet im- 
 pressive and terrible when it fell to his lot to 
 pour shame on the enemies of his country. If 
 the cause of the oppressed was to be defended, 
 if the favour or the violence of the great was 
 to be withstood, it was impossible, in that case, 
 to find an advocate more intrepid or more elo- 
 quent, whom no threats, no terrors, and no re- 
 wards could seduce from the plain path of rec- 
 titude." 
 
 The counsel for the prosecution were next 
 fixed upon, and the choice fell on Steele, Coke, 
 Dr. Dorislaus, and Aske. Steele was named 
 
 * Godwin, Hist, of Com. 
 
 t Milton was Bradshaw's kinsman by the mother's side. 
 The whole of the original passage in which Bradshaw is 
 delineated is too noble and too appropriate for omission 
 here. " Est Joannes Bradscianus (quod nomen libertas ipsa, 
 quacunque gentium colitur, memorise sempiternse celebran- 
 dum commeiidavit), nobili familia, ut satis notum est, ortus ; 
 unde patriis legibus addiscendis, primam omnem as ta tern 
 aedulo impendit ; dein consultissimus cans-arum ac disertis- 
 sinius patronus, libertatis et populi vindex acerrimus, et 
 magriis reipublicse uegotiis est adhibitus, et incorrupt! judi- 
 cis munere aliquoties perfunctus. Tandem uti regis judicio 
 priesidere vellet, a senatu rogatus, provinciam sane pericu- 
 losissimam non recusavit. Attulerat enim ad legum scien- 
 tJam ingenium liberate, aninium excelsum, mores integros 
 ac nemini obnoxins ; unde illud munus oiuni prope exemplo 
 jnajus ac formidabilius, tot sicariorum pugionibus ac minis 
 petitus, ita constanter, ita graviter, tanta anirni cum prae- 
 i'iiitia ac dignitate gossit atque iiuplevit, ut ad hoc ipsum 
 opus, quod jam olim Deus edcndum in hoc populo mirabili 
 providentia decreverat, ab ipso numine designatus atque 
 factus videretur, et tyrannicidarum omnium gloriam tantum 
 superaveril, quanto est humanius, quaiito justius, ac majes- 
 ta:e plenius, tyrannum judtcare,quam injudicatum occidere. 
 AHo<jui nee tristis, nee severus, sed comis ac placidus, per- 
 sonain tamen qu&m susoepit tantam, squalls ubique sibi, ac 
 veluti .consul u<m unias anni, pari gravitate sustiuet: ut 
 non de tribunal! tantum, sed per omnem vitam judicare re- 
 gem diceres. In consiliis ac laboribus publicis maxime om- 
 nium indefessus, multisqne par uims; domi, si quis alius, 
 pro suis facultatibus hospitalis ac splendidus, amicus longe 
 fidelissimus, atque in oimii fortund certissimus, bene nie- 
 rentes quoscunque nemo citius aut libentius agnoscit, neque 
 niajorc benevolentia prosequitur; nunc pios, nunc doctos, 
 aut quavis ingenii laude cognitos, nunc militares etiam et 
 fortes viros ad inopiam redactor suis opibus sublevat ; iis si 
 non indigent, colit tamen libens atque amplectitur; alierias 
 iaudes perpetub pradicare, suas tacere, solitus ; hostium 
 quoque civilian!, si quis ad sanitatem redtit, quod experti 
 cunt plurimi, nemo ignoscentior. Qubd si causa oppress! 
 cujuspiam defendenda palam, si gratia aut vis potentiorum 
 oppuguanda, si in quenquam bene meritum, ingratitudo pub- 
 lica objurganda sit, turn quidem in illo viro, vel facundiam 
 vel cunsUntiam nemo desideret, non patronum, non amicum, 
 vel idoneum magis et intrepidam, vel disertiorem alium 
 quisquam sibi aptet; habet, quern non mine dimovere recto, 
 son nietus aut munera proposito bono atque offir.io, vultus- 
 >jue ac mentis firmissimo statu dejicere valeant." 
 
 attorney to the court, and Coke solicitor. 
 Steele being prevented from attending the court 
 by real or pretended sickness, the task princi- 
 pally fell upon Coke. It is somewhat singular, 
 as Mr. Godwin remarks, that this person, in his 
 travels in early life, trod almost exactly upon the 
 steps of Milton. At Rome he spoke so openly 
 against the corruptions of the Catholic Church, 
 that it was not judged safe for him to continue 
 any longer in that place ; and at Geneva he re- 
 sided some months in the house of Diodati, the 
 professor of theology, with whom Milton also 
 formed an intimate friendship. His skill as a 
 lawyer was acknowledged by his enemies ; and, 
 indeed, it is impossible to read the speech he 
 drew up for the trial without admiring its 
 strength and acuteness. 
 
 These awful preliminaries having been com- 
 pleted with that solemn publicity which befitted 
 such an occasion, the king was brought private- 
 ly from Windsor to St. James's^ and on the fol- 
 lowing morning* the 20th of January, 1649, con- 
 ducted by Colonel Harrison from St. James's 
 to Westminster. A scene awaited him there, 
 which called, and not in vain, for an exercise 
 of dignity and firmness unsurpassed in the his- 
 tory of kings. 
 
 Westminster Hall, fitted up as a " high court 
 of justice," received him. In the centre of the 
 court, on a crimson velvet chair, sat Bradshaw, 
 dressed in a scarlet robe, and covered by his 
 famous " broad-brimmed hat,"* with a desk 
 and velvet cushion before him, Say and Lisle 
 on each side of him, and the two clerks of the 
 court sitting below him at a table, covered with 
 a rich Turkey carpet, on which were laid the 
 sword of state and a mace. The rest of the 
 court, with their hats on, and, according to Rush- 
 worth, " in their best habits," took their seats 
 on side benches hung with scarlet. A numer- 
 ous guard of gentlemen carrying partisans di- 
 vided themselves on each side. Such was the 
 simple appearance in itself of this memorable 
 court. When its members had all taken their 
 seats, the great gates of the Hall were thrown 
 open, and the vast area below was at once fill- 
 ed with crowds of the English people, eager to 
 witness the astonishing spectacle of a monarch 
 brought to account for crimes committed in the 
 period of his delegated authority. This pres- 
 ence of the people was the grandest feature of 
 the scene. Surrounding galleries were also fill- 
 ed with spectators. 
 
 Charles entered, and advanced up the side 
 of the Hall next the Thames, from the house 
 of Sir Robert Cotton. He was attended by 
 Colonels Tomlinson and Hacker, by thirty two 
 officers holding partisans, and by his own ser- 
 vants. The sergeant-at-arms, with his mace, 
 received him and conducted him to the bar, 
 where a crimson velvet chair was placed for 
 him, facing the court. After a stern and stead- 
 fast gaze on the court, and on the people in the 
 galleries on each side of him, Charles placed 
 himself in the chair, and the moment after, as 
 if recollecting something, rose up and turned 
 about, looking down the vast hall, first on the 
 guards which were ranged on its left or west- 
 ern side, and then on the eager waving mul- 
 titude of the people which filled the space on 
 
 * This wa a thick, high-crowned beaver, lined with pla- 
 ted steel. It is to this day preserved at Oxford.
 
 374 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the right. No visible emotion escaped him ; 
 but as he turned again, his eye fell upon the es- 
 cutcheon which bore the newly-designed arms 
 of the Commonwealth, on each side of which 
 sat Oliver Cromwell and Henry Marten,* and 
 he sank into his seat. The guard attending 
 him divided on each side of the court, and the 
 servants who followed him to the bar stood on 
 the left of their master. 
 
 Bradshaw now addressed the king, and told 
 him that the Commons of England, assembled 
 in Parliament, being deeply sensible of the evils 
 and calamities which had been brought on the 
 nation, and the innocent blood that had been 
 spilled, and having fixed on him as the principal 
 author, had resolved to make inquisition for this 
 blood, and to bring him to trial and judgment ; 
 and had therefore constituted this court, before 
 which he was brought to hear his charge, after 
 which the court would proceed according to 
 justice. Coke, the solicitor, then delivered in, 
 in writing, the charge, which the clerk read. 
 The king endeavoured to interrupt the reading, 
 but the president commanded the clerk to go 
 on, and told Charles that if he had anything to 
 say after, the court would hear him. The 
 charge stated that he, the king, had been in- 
 trusted with a limited power to govern accord- 
 ing to law, being obliged to use that power for 
 the benefit of the people, and the preservation 
 of their rights and liberties ; but that he had 
 designed to erect in himself an unlimited power, 
 and to take away the remedy of misgovern- 
 ment, reserved in the fundamental Constitu- 
 tion, in the right and power of frequent and 
 successive Parliaments. It then proceeded to 
 enumerate the principal occasions on which, in 
 execution of his purpose of levying war on the 
 present Parliament, he had caused the blood 
 of many thousands of the free people of this 
 nation to be shed ; and it affirmed all these 
 purposes and this war to have been carried on 
 for the upholding a personal interest of will and 
 power, and a pretended prerogative to himself 
 and his family, against the public interest, and 
 common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the 
 people of this nation. The charge being read, 
 the president demanded Charles's answer. 
 
 During the reading Charles is said to have 
 smiled at the words " tyrant" and " traitor" 
 which occurred in the course of it ; but, two or 
 three minutes after, a trivial incident changed 
 the current of his thoughts, and gave him a 
 more awful sense of the situation in which he 
 stood. " In touching Coke gently on the shoul- 
 der with his cane, and bidding him ' Hold !' its 
 gold head dropped off, and he who was accus- 
 tomed to be served with eager anticipation and 
 slavish genuflexion, was left to take it up him- 
 self. This omen is said to have waked his 
 superstition. It was no less calculated to affect 
 him through his reason."t 
 
 He had rallied, however, before the demand 
 of Bradshaw for his answer, and replied to it 
 with great ability, and in a very grave and col- 
 lected manner. He observed that, not long 
 before, in the Isle of Wight, he had been en- 
 
 * D'Israeli, v., 429. 
 
 t History from Mackintosh, vi., 119 ; in which volume, I 
 may add, the principal incidents of the Commonwealth are 
 most ably, and in a philosophic spirit and temper, related 
 by the historian. 
 
 gaged in a treaty with both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, and that the treaty had been very near a 
 conclusion. He knew not, therefore, by what 
 authority he had been brought there, other 
 than the authority of thieves and robbers. He 
 saw no House of Lords in that court, and he 
 affirmed that a king also was necessary to con- 
 stitute a Parliament. He said that he had a 
 tmst committed to him by God, and derived to 
 him by old and lawful descent, and that he 
 would not betray it by answering to a new and 
 unlawful authority. He concluded that, when 
 he was satisfied of the authority by which he 
 was brought there to answer, he would proceed 
 farther. Bradshaw at once, and in a speech 
 of much subtlety, overruled the objection to the 
 competency of the court, and ordered the coun- 
 sel to proceed. 
 
 The second and third days of the trial were 
 consumed in similar discourses. The court 
 would not allow the authority by which they 
 sat there to be disputed, and the king desired 
 that he might give his reasons. This pro- 
 duced interruption and altercation. The presi- 
 dent informed him that the court was satisfied 
 of the authority by which they sat there, and 
 that they overruled his demurrer. They then 
 caused the king's contumacy to be recorded, by 
 which he refused to plead before them.* 
 
 The fourth and fifth days of the trial were 
 employed in hearing witnesses, the court hav- 
 ing determined that, though the king refused 
 to plead, they would proceed to this examina- 
 tion ex abundant* only, for the farther satisfac- 
 tion of themselves. The court sat during these 
 days in the Painted Chamber. On the sixth 
 day the commissioners were engaged in de- 
 termining and voting the sentence with which 
 the trial was to be completed. 
 
 The duty of " preparing the draught of a final 
 sentence, with a blank for the manner of death," 
 was now intrusted to Henry Marten (who had 
 attended every day of the trial), to Thomas 
 Scot, to Henry Ireton, to Harrison, Say, Lisle, 
 and Love. The next day (the 26th of January) 
 this sentence was engrossed at a private meet- 
 ing, and the 27th appointed for the last sitting 
 of the court. 
 
 On that memorable and most melancholy 
 day, the king was brought for the last time to 
 Westminster Hall. As he proceeded along the 
 passages to the court, some of the soldiers 
 and of the rabble set up a cry of " Justice !" 
 "Justice, and execution !" This, Mr. Godwin 
 justly remarks, exactly corresponds with the 
 spirit of the mutiny which took place in the 
 army in November, 1647. These men distrust- 
 ed the good faith of their leaders ; and, seeing 
 that six days had now passed without any con- 
 clusion, suspected, as the manner of rude and 
 ignorant men is, that there was some foul play 
 and treachery. One of the soldiers upon guard 
 said, " God bless you, sir." The king thanked 
 him ; but his officer struck him with his cane. 
 "The punishment," said Charles, "methinks, 
 exceeds the offence." The king, when he had 
 retired, asked Herbert, who attended him, 
 whether he had heard the cry for justice, who 
 answered he did, and wondered at it. " So did 
 not I," said Charles : " the cry was no doubt 
 
 * Godwin, ii., 673.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 375 
 
 given by their officers, for whom the soldiers 
 would do the like, were there occasion."* 
 
 Placed for the last time at the bar, Charles, 
 without waiting for the address of Bradshaw, 
 whose appearance betokened judgment, desired 
 of the court that, before an " ugly sentence" 
 was pronounced upon him, he might be heard 
 before the two Houses of Parliament, he having 
 something to suggest which nearly concerned 
 the peace and liberty of the kingdom. The 
 court would at once have rejected this proposal 
 (which was, in effect, tantamount to a demand 
 for the reversal of all that had been done, and 
 a revocation of the vote that had been passed, 
 declaring the people, under God, the original of 
 all just power, and that the Commons' House 
 in Parliament, as representing the people, were 
 the supreme power) but for the expressed dis- 
 satisfaction of Commissioner Downes, a timid 
 and insincere man, in consequence of which the 
 sitting was broken up, and the court retired to 
 deliberate in private. They returned in half an 
 hour with a unanimous refusal of the request. 
 
 It is supposed by many writers that Charles 
 purposed, in case they had assented, to resign 
 the crown in favour of his son ; but if so, it has 
 been fairly asked,* Why did he not make the 
 offer known in some other way 1 It would 
 have produced its effect as certainly if promul- 
 gated in any other mode, and would, at all 
 events, have bequeathed to posterity the full 
 knowledge " to what extremity he was willing 
 to advance for the welfare of his people, and to 
 save his country from the stain of regicide." 
 The supposition of that intention does scarcely, 
 in fact, seem probable. Charles had wedded 
 himself to his kingly office, and had now accus- 
 tomed himself to look on death as the seal that 
 should stamp their union and the fame of mar- 
 tyrdom indelibly and forever. His real purpose 
 in making the request must remain a secret, 
 equally with the well-considered motives of the 
 commissioners in refusing it. 
 
 Bradshaw now rose to pronounce the sen- 
 tence. " What sentence," he said, " the law 
 affirms to a tyrant, traitor, and public enemy, 
 that sentence you are now to hear read unto 
 you, and that is the sentence of the court. '' 
 The clerk then read it at large from a scroll of 
 vellum. After reciting the appointment and 
 purpose of the high court, the refusal of the king 
 to acknowledge it, and the charges proved upon 
 
 * Other and more brutal outrages, such as the soldiers 
 puffing the smoke of their tobacco in his face, have been re- 
 peated and reiterated in print, and are yet gross fabrica- 
 tions. (See Brodie, iv., 199, note.) Clarendon and War- 
 wick say that one or more of the soldiers gpit in Charles's 
 face. But both Clarendon and Warwick were at a distance 
 from the scene ; Herbert, who was constantly near the king, 
 says no such thing. Whitelocke also, an unexceptionable 
 witness, is silent. In Rushworth, p. 1425, we find the words 
 put into Charles'g mouth, on tho cry of the soldiers, " Poor 
 souls ! for a piece of money they would do as much for their 
 commanders." But it is not denied that several of the lat- 
 ter parts of Rushworth's Collections were tampered with 
 after his death, and before their publication. The words in 
 question are, in fact, copied from Sanderson, p. 1132. Mil- 
 ton (Defensio Secunda) has given himself the trouble to con- 
 tradict the tale, that one of the soldiers was destroyed for 
 saying God bless you, sir. The passion of succeeding times 
 was to run a parallel between the last days of Charles and 
 the crucifixion of Christ. " Suffering many things like to 
 Christ" is Sanderson's expression. [The 80th of January 
 is still regarded as a. fast-day in the English Church, and a 
 service for morning and.evening, in commemoration of KING 
 CHAULES THEMAOTYK, is to be found in the Prayer Book. 
 It has not yet been used on this side the Atlantic. C.J 
 
 t Godwin, Hist, of Commonwealth, ii., 677. 
 
 him, it concluded thus : " for all which treasons 
 and crimes, this court doth adjudge that he, the 
 said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, mur- 
 derer, and public enemy, shall be put to death 
 by severing his head from his body." Then 
 Bradshaw again rose and said, "The sentence 
 now read and published is the act, sentence, 
 judgment, and resolution of the whole court ;" 
 upon which, all the commissioners stood up by 
 way of declaring their assent. The unhappy 
 king now solicited permission to speak, but was 
 refused. The words which passed between him 
 and Bradshaw are worthy of record, as a most 
 pathetic consummation of the melancholy scene. 
 The fortitude and dignity which had sustained 
 Charles throughout appears at last to have 
 somewhat given way, but in its place we recog- 
 nise a human suffering and agony of heart to 
 the last degree affecting. " Will you hear me 
 a word, sir?" he asked. "Sir," replied Brad- 
 shaw, " you are not to be heard after the sen- 
 tence." " No, sir?" exclaimed the king. "No, 
 sir, by your favour," retorted the president. 
 " Guards, withdraw your prisoner." Charles 
 then exclaimed, with a touching struggle of 
 deep emotion, " I may speak after the sentence ! 
 By your favour, sir ! I may speak after the sen- 
 tence ! EVER ! By your favour " A stern 
 monosyllable from Bradshaw interrupted him, 
 " Hold !" and signs were given to the guards. 
 With passionate entreaty the king again in- 
 terfered. " The sentence, sir ! I say, sir, I 
 do " Again Bradshaw said " Hold !" and 
 the king was taken out of court as these words 
 broke from him : "I am not suffered to speak. 
 Expect what justice other people will have !" 
 
 In the short interval that remained to him, 
 every consolation of spiritual advisers, or of 
 the society of Friends, was granted by the gov- 
 ernors of the Commonwealth. He passed the 
 28th of January, which was Sunday, alone with 
 Doctor Juxon, engaged in exercises of devotion. 
 On the Monday he received the farewell visit 
 of his children. At this moment he might him- 
 self have said, with his old and betrayed friend 
 Strafford, " Put not your trust in princes !" 
 None of the princes of Europe had offered an 
 intercession in his favour. A republic alone, 
 that of the United Provinces, interposed with a 
 desire that his life might he spared.* 
 
 The warrant for his execution the " bloody 
 warrant," as history calls it had meanwhile 
 (on the 29th) been signed by the fifty-nine com- 
 missioners, who have by that act made their 
 names memorable forever, t A scene of an 
 
 Journals of Lords, Jan. 29 and Feb. 2 ; of Commons, 
 Jan. 29, 30. 
 
 t It was in these words : " Whereas Charles Stuart, king 
 of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted, and con- 
 demned of high treason and other high crimes ; and sen- 
 tence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by 
 this court, to be put to death by the severing of his head 
 from his body, of which sentence execution yet remaineth 
 to be done. These are, therefore, to will and require you 
 to see the said sentence executed in the open street, before 
 Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the 30th day of this in- 
 stant month of January, between the hours of ten in the 
 morning and five in the afternoon of the same day, with full 
 effect. And for so doing this shall be your sufficient war- 
 rant. And these are to require all officers, soldiers, and 
 others, the good people of this nat:uirof England, to be as- 
 sisting unto you in this service. 
 
 "To Col. Francis Hacker, Col. Huncks, and Lieut. -col. 
 Phray, and to every of them. 
 
 " Given under our hands and seals. 
 (Sealed and subscribed by) 
 
 "John Bradshaw, Thomas Grey, Oliver Cromwell, Ed-
 
 376 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 extraordinary character between Marten and 
 Cromwell is said to have occurred on the sign 
 ing of this warrant. As Cromwell advanced to 
 the table with the pen, he laughingly marked 
 Marten's face with the ink, and the same prac 
 tical jest was returned with interest by Marten 
 The anecdote rests on the authority of a de- 
 testable collection of slanders, " The Trials o 
 the Regicides ;" but I give it, because, on its 
 being sworn to at his trial, Marten himself 
 without denying it, simply remarked that the 
 circumstance did not imply malice. He hac 
 been pleading his utter want of malice against 
 the king personally in all he did, when the crown 
 counsel observed, " We shall prove against the 
 prisoner at the bar (because he would wipe ofl 
 malice) that he did this merrily, and was in 
 great sport at the time of the signing the war- 
 rant for the king's execution." " That does not 
 imply malice," remarked Marten. 
 
 An old servant of his, named Ewer, was upon 
 this put into the witness box, and the follow- 
 ing examination took place : " Counsel. Come, 
 sir, you are here upon your oath ; speak to my 
 lords and the jury ; you know the prisoner at 
 the bar very well ; you have sometimes served 
 him : were you present in the Painted Cham- 
 ber, January 29th, 1648, at the signing the war- 
 rant the parchment against the king 1" 
 " Ewer. The day I do not remember, but I was 
 in that chamber to attend a gentleman there ; 
 I followed that gentleman (looking at Mr. Mar- 
 ten) I followed that gentleman into that cham- 
 ber." " Lord-Chief-baron. After what gentle- 
 man 1" " Ewer. Mr. Marten. My lord, I was 
 pressing to come near, but I was put off by an 
 officer or soldier there ; I told him I was order- 
 ed to be by that gentleman. My lord, I did see 
 a pen in Mr. Cromwell's hand, and he marked 
 Mr. Marten in the face with it, and Mr. Marten 
 did the like to him ; but I did not see any one 
 set his hand, though I did see a parchment 
 there with a great many seals to it." 
 
 If the occurrence really took place, it is yet 
 unworthy of such a philosophical historian as 
 Hume to quote it as an evidence of barbarous 
 or " rustic" buffoonery.* No doubt, if Marten 
 and Cromwell did this, they did it as a despe- 
 rate momentary relief from over-excited nerves, 
 and because they felt more acutely than their 
 more sober brethren all that was involved in 
 the dark duty they were then engaged in. 
 Such " toys of desperation" commonly bubble 
 up from a deep-flowing stream below. Downes, 
 a weak man, is said to have been obliged to go 
 out into the speaker's chamber " to ease his 
 heart with tears." Marten and Cromwell were 
 not weak men, and it was not in tears, at such 
 
 ward Whaley, Michael Livesey, John Okey, John Danvers, 
 John Bourcher, Henry Ireton, Thomas Maleverer, John 
 Blackiston, John Hutchinson, William Goffe, Thomas Pride, 
 Peter Temple, Thomas Harrison, John Huson, Henry Smith, 
 Peregrine Pelham, Simon Meyn, Thomas Horton, John 
 Jones, John More, Hardress Waller, Gilbert Millington, 
 (George Fleetwood, John Alured, Robert Lilburn, William 
 Say, Anthony Stapely, Richard Deane, Robert Tichburne, 
 Humphrey Edwards, Daniel Blagrave, Owen Roe, William 
 Purefoy, Adrian Scroope, James Temple, Augustine Gar- 
 land, Edmund Ludlow, Henry Marten, Vincent Potter, 
 William Constable, Richard Ingoldsby, William Cawley, 
 John Barslead, Isaac Ewers, John Dixwell, Valentine Wai 
 ton, Gregory Norton, Thomas Chaloner, Thomas Wogan 
 John Ven, Gregory Clement, John Downs, Thomas Wayte, 
 Thomas Scot, John Carew, Miles Corbet." Rush., vii., 1420. 
 * Hume, Hist,, Y,, 75. 
 
 a time as this, that they could have eased their 
 hearts ! 
 
 The mournful and tragic scene that was en- 
 acted on the 30th of January, 1649, in the open 
 street fronting Whitehall,* is familiar to every 
 reader of history, and need not be described 
 here. Through the whole of that scene Charles 
 bore himself with a dignified composure, and 
 was to the last undisturbed, self-possessed, and 
 serene. He addressed the crowd from the 
 scaffold, forgave all his enemies, protested that 
 the war was not begun by him, declared that 
 the people's right was only to have their life 
 and goods their own, " a share in the govern- 
 ment being nothing pertaining to them," and 
 concluded with words which, perhaps, express- 
 ed a sincere delusion, that " he died the martyr 
 of the people." When his head fell, severed 
 by the executioner at one blow, " a dismal, uni- 
 versal groan issued from the crowd. 
 
 " He nothing common did, or mean, 
 Upon that memorable scene ; 
 
 But with his keener eye 
 
 The axe's edge did try : 
 Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, 
 To vindicate his helpless right : 
 
 But bowed his comely head 
 
 Down as upon a bed '." 
 
 So in a lew years after wrote a most generous 
 adversary, whose name is dear to every lover 
 of literature or of liberty, Andrew Marvel, and 
 in an ode to Oliver Cromwell himself! The 
 lapse of two centuries has confirmed the po- 
 et's praise. 
 
 In pronouncing upon this great event as a 
 mere act of statesmanship an opinion called 
 for in this memoir of one of the king's most 
 ardent and inflexible judges it needs no hesi- 
 tation to declare it at once a most melancholy 
 and disastrous error. The result proved that, 
 through long years of political sufferings and 
 distractions. But as surely as it was an error, 
 so surely was it committed in good faith com- 
 mitted as an awful act of justice, and to exhib- 
 it to the kings of the earth, and, through them, 
 ;o all succeeding generations of men, " a terri- 
 example." It cannot be denied by any just 
 and unbiased inquirer into history (for histories 
 are so written that it is not sufficient to read 
 them alone), that Charles I. had, " to a degree 
 which can scarcely be exceeded, conspired 
 against the liberty of his country."t It was to 
 this he died a martyr ; not to the Church or to 
 the people, but to his intense desire for abso- 
 ute power and authority. For this he laid 
 aside, for upward of twelve years, all use of 
 Parliaments ; for this, when driven to them 
 again, he negotiated for an army both in Eng- 
 and and in Scotland to overawe their sittings ; 
 "or this, he most daringly violated their most 
 sacred privileges, at last commenced war 
 against them, and for four years desolated 
 ~ngland with the blood of her bravest children. 
 Nor, when conquered, did he surrender the 
 desperate hope which was still sustained for 
 his. In every quarter he sought for the mate- 
 rials of a new war ; and at last, after an inter- 
 al of twenty months, " and from the depths 
 of his prison," he found them. Nor should it 
 
 * The scaffold was erected immediately before the Ban- 
 ueting House, now Whitehall Chapel, and Charles is said 
 o have entered upon the scaffold through the centre win* 
 ;ow of the latter building. 
 
 t Godwin, Hist, of Com., ii., 689.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 377 
 
 be forgotten that all hope of compromise at last 
 was rendered doubly vain by the most consum- 
 mate insincerity on the part of Charles : " He 
 could never be reconciled ; he coukl never be 
 disarmed ; he could never be convinced. His 
 was a war to the death, and therefore had the 
 utmost aggravation that can belong to a war 
 against the liberty of a nation."* Such was 
 the character and conduct of Charles I., and 
 herein the justification of the motives of his 
 judges. What farther is to be said on this 
 point shall be said in this memoir by themselves. 
 What can be better urged for those who held 
 that a simple deposition of. Charles was the 
 wiser course, has been said in the Life of Vane. 
 
 A distinction, however, has been made by 
 the historian of the Commonwealth, t which 
 should not be omitted here. Speaking of the 
 critical complexion of Parliamentary proceed- 
 ings at the time of the king's death, he ob- 
 serves, " In the beginning of the year the Inde- 
 pendents had had the superiority ; but their au- 
 thority, so far as depended on the number of 
 votes, hung by a thread. How long was that 
 state of things likely to continue 1 By what- 
 ever party they were displaced, they well knew 
 that the crime of sitting in judgment on Charles, 
 and signing the warrant for his execution, would 
 be visited with the severest vengeance.f They 
 knew that they held their lives in their hands. 
 When they gave judgment against the king, 
 they at the same time pronounced sentence on 
 themselves. They could not, with any securi- 
 ty, calculate on the impunity of eleven years 
 and four months, which they ultimately reaped. 
 But they had engaged in a great cause, and 
 they would not draw back. Their cause might 
 triumph forever ; but they could not be so in- 
 fatuated and so blind as not to perceive the 
 many probabilities there were that the business 
 would have a different issue. In that case they 
 consented to sacrifice their lives on the altar 
 of their country. But we must not be so un- 
 reasonable as to imagine that the judges who 
 sat on the life of the king were all men of hero- 
 ic resolution. There were certain men among 
 them by whom the business was planned ; 
 there were others who had no part in framing 
 the measure, but who willingly devoted them- 
 selves in the affair ; but there was also a por- 
 tion of the king's judges who co-operated from 
 timidity had no will to the business, but had 
 not the courage to refuse those by whom they 
 were pressed into it." 
 
 Upon the whole, the subject may be safely 
 left with the opinion of the greatest statesman 
 of modern times, and a high and unblemished 
 authority on all points of constitutional doc- 
 trine. " If," observes Charles James Fox, in 
 his " Fragment of History," " if we consider 
 this question of example in a more extended 
 view, and look to the general effect produced 
 upon the minds of men, it cannot be doubted 
 but the opportunity thus given to Charles to 
 display his firmness and piety has created more 
 respect for his memory than it could otherwise 
 have obtained. It has been thought dangerous 
 
 * Godwin, Hist, of the Com., ii., 689. t Mr. Godwin. 
 
 t Nor was this the only danger. Assassination must have 
 been present to their imaginations, as likely to have been 
 resorted to against them. Dorislaus and Rainsborough 
 were assassinated soon alter. (See Brodie, Brit. Emp., iv., 
 264 ; and Godwin, iv., 693.) 
 
 BIB 
 
 to the morals bf mankind, even in romance, to 
 make us sympathize with characters whose 
 general conduct is blameable ; but how much 
 greater must the effect be when, in real history, 
 our feelings are interested in favour of a mon- 
 arch with whom, to say the least, his subjects 
 were obliged to contend in arms for their 
 liberty I After all, however, notwithstanding 
 what the more reasonable part of mankind may 
 think upon this question, it is much to be 
 doubted whether this singular proceeding has 
 not, as much as any other circumstance, served 
 to raise the character of the English nation in the 
 opinion of Europe in general. The truth is, that 
 the guilt of the action that is to say, the taking 
 away of the life of the king is what most men 
 in the place of Cromwell and his associates 
 would have incurred ; what there is of splendour 
 and of magnanimity in it, I mean the publicity 
 and solemnity of the act, is what few would be ca~ 
 fable of displaying.' 1 '' 
 
 The business of the Commonwealth was now 
 resumed with quiet and resolved deliberation. 
 On the Commons' journals of the day of exe- 
 cution there is a remarkable entry : " Ordered, 
 That the common post be stayed until to-morrow 
 morning, 10 o'clock ;" but on the day following, 
 ordinary matters were proceeded with ; and on 
 the 1st of February the House of Lords sent a 
 message to the House of Commons, desiring a 
 conference on the new settlement. The Com- 
 mons allowed the messengers to wait at the 
 door without the slightest notice of them or of 
 their message. The patience of the messen- 
 gers was exhausted, but not that of the Lords, 
 who sent again and again, with as little suc- 
 cess.* At last 'the Commons took notice of 
 their existence indeed ! 
 
 On the 6th of February it was moved in the 
 House of Commons " that the House of Peers 
 in Parliament is useless, dangerous, and ought 
 to be abolished, and that an act be brought in 
 to that purpose." Upon this Mr. D'Israeli re- 
 marks,t " Harry Marten, as reckless in his wit 
 as in his life, with the same tolerant good- 
 humour which he had evinced on a former oc- 
 casion with Judge Jenkins, proposed an amend- 
 ment in favour of the Lords, that ' they were 
 useless, but not dangerous.' By this felicitous 
 humour, this Commonwealth-man had often 
 relieved the Royalists in their most critical 
 circumstances." Mr. D'Israeli here falls into 
 an unaccountable error. Marten's amendment 
 was merely as to the terms of the motion, and, 
 far from being "in favour" of the Lords, is 
 perhaps the most exquisite sarcasm that has 
 ever been levelled against them. His dislike 
 of that House was always, it has been shown, 
 most eagerly manifested, and the present op- 
 portunity was not to be resisted. Some graver 
 members having objected, he withdrew the 
 amendment ; and, on the subsequent division 
 of forty-four to twenty-nine, which took place 
 on the motion for the abolition, was one of the 
 tellers * for the majority against the Lords. 
 When the motion passed their lordships were 
 sitting. It was communicated to them ; they 
 heard prayers ; disposed of a rectory ; ad- 
 
 * History from Mackintosh, vi., 134. 
 
 t Commentaries, v., 418. 
 
 t Journals. Lord Grey of Groby was the other teller, 
 and for the minority the tellers were Colonels Purefoy and 
 Sydenham.
 
 378 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 journed to the next morning as if nothing had 
 happened, and did not sit again till the Res- 
 toration.* 
 
 A more memorable vote was passed next 
 day : " That kingship in this nation hath been 
 found by experience to be unnecessary, bur- 
 densome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, 
 and public interest of the people, and ought 
 therefore to be abolished." This was followed 
 up by Marten, who proposed that the king's 
 statues at the Old Royal Exchange and other 
 places should be taken down, and the following 
 inscriptions placed on the several sites : " Exit 
 Tyrannus Regum ultimus Anno libertatis An- 
 gli<z restitute primo Anno Domini 1648-9, Jan. 
 30." This was agreed to, and at once done. 
 Two acts in pursuance of the votes were pass- 
 ed ; and the House of Commons published a 
 declaration of its " late proceedings, and set- 
 tling the government in the way of a free state," 
 which was widely circulated in the English, 
 Latin, French, and Dutch languages. 
 
 In all these proceedings Marten was the most 
 prominent actor. He now introduced a bill 
 for the sale of the royal property in lands and 
 houses, of those trappings of royalty which are 
 called the regalia, of the king's furniture, jew- 
 els, paintings, and other works of art.t The 
 courts of France, Spain, the Spanish Nether- 
 lands, and Sweden, were the chief purchasers. 
 The indifference with which they looked on 
 while Charles was tried and executed, has been 
 contrasted reproachfully, and not unjustly, by 
 Royalists, with their avidity to possess his 
 spoils. $ And now the 9th of February was the 
 first day of term, or sitting in the courts of 
 law ; and this circumstance rendered it neces- 
 sary that certain preliminary steps should im- 
 mediately be taken. In these Marten also took 
 active part. Of the twelve judges, the two 
 chief justices, the chief baron, with Jermyn for 
 the King's Bench, Pheasant for the Common 
 Pleas, and Gates for the Exchequer, signified 
 their willingness to continue in the exercise 
 of their offices, provided the House of Commons 
 passed a declaration that they were resolved 
 to maintain the fundamental laws of the nation, 
 and passed an act for repealing the oaths of 
 allegiance and supremacy. This was accord- 
 ingly done without delay. One of the acts was 
 introduced by Marten. An oath well and truly 
 to serve the Parliament and people was then 
 substituted ; and, the name of King's Bench 
 being taken away, that of Upper Bench was 
 substituted in its place. The other six judges 
 declined taking commissions under the Com- 
 monwealth. The great seal was at the same 
 time brought into the House and broken in 
 pieces ; and a new seal being ready, and Wid- 
 drington declining to continue in office, it was 
 intrusted to Whitelocke, Sergeant Richard 
 Keble, and John Lisle. At the same time the 
 office of commissioner was rendered more im- 
 portant and honourable by its being enacted 
 that it should thenceforth be held by the tenure 
 quamdiu se bene gesserint.f) 
 
 The most important change remained to be 
 made the substitution of an executive council 
 
 * History from Mackintosh, vi., 134. 
 t Whitelocke, p. 403. 
 t History from Mackintosh, vi., 135. 
 4 Journal*, Feb. 8 and 9. 
 
 of state for the committee of government at 
 Derby House. To this end, five members of 
 the House of Commons were appointed as a 
 committee to select the names of forty persona 
 fit to compose this council, whose power was 
 to continue for one year. The five persons 
 were John Lisle, Cornelius Holland, Luke Rob- 
 inson, Thomas Scot, and Edmund Ludlow ; and 
 it has been remarked very truly that their ap- 
 pointment was an instance of " remarkable 
 delicacy," since certainly none of them had 
 yet been habitually concerned in the conduct 
 of public affairs, though two of them, Scot and 
 Ludlow, were known for their integrity, their 
 great devotion to the public welfare, and the 
 ardour of their Republican sentiments. 
 
 On the 17th of February the council of state 
 was installed. Henry Marten took his seat in 
 it with Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ludlow. 
 Vane's subsequent adhesion has been described. 
 Most truly does Mr. Godwin exclaim, " Never 
 did any governors enter upon their functions 
 under more formidable difficulties than the men 
 who now undertook to steer and direct the ves- 
 sel of the new Commonwealth. They were, 
 in a certain sense, a handful of men, with the 
 whole people of England against them.* Their 
 hold on the community was, by their religious 
 sentiments (those of the Independents), by the 
 rooted aversion of many to the late king and 
 his family, by the sincere terror that was felt 
 of the ascendency either of the Episcopal or 
 Presbyterian party, and the devout adherence 
 of a respectable set of men to the principle of 
 religious toleration. The character also of 
 the leaders did wonders. Scarcely has there 
 existed a body of more eminent statesmen 
 than Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, Marten, and 
 Vane." On the 10th of March, the council, 
 which had theretofore had a different praeses 
 for each day of sitting, appointed Bradshaw 
 their official president ; and, three days later, 
 Milton, Bradshaw's kinsman, was made secre- 
 tary to the council for foreign tongues an office 
 held by Weckerlin under the committee of both 
 kingdoms. 
 
 One of their first steps was to settle the re- 
 ligious government, which was not left to wild 
 theories, or merely loose and voluntary ar- 
 rangement. The Presbyterian form was main- 
 tained, but stripped of all coercive power and 
 temporal pretensions in short, restricted to 
 conferring licenses and ordination. A provis- 
 ion was made out of the tithes for the Epis- 
 copalian clergy, and there was a decided re- 
 laxation even towards Catholics. During the 
 debates on these important matters, Henry 
 Marten signalized himself by the first expres- 
 sion of opinions which should be remembered 
 to his lasting honour. He proposed the repeal 
 of the statute of banishment against the Jews.t 
 That community had been banished from Eng- 
 land in the year 1290 ; and from that time no 
 body of Jews, formed into a community, could 
 be found within our dominions. Now, after the 
 lapse of three hundred and fifty-nine years, it 
 was Henry Marten who proposed, in a noble 
 spirit of justice, to put an end to this proscrip- 
 
 * This must not be understood literally. The people 
 had trusted them in all their struggles against the king, but 
 for the experiment of a republic, now about to be tried, they 
 were merely unprepared. 
 
 t Wood's Ath. Oxon., iii., 1239.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 379 
 
 tion. He was unsuccessful, and the reform was 
 left for Cromwell to achieve in his day of abso- 
 lute power. But the eloquent praise which Mr. 
 Godwin bestows upon Cromwell for the act 
 should have been written of Marten. " It was 
 an enterprise worthy of his character. His com- 
 prehensive mind enabled him to take in all its 
 recommendations and all its advantages. The 
 liberality of his disposition, and his avowed at- 
 tachment to the cause of toleration, rendered 
 it an adventure becoming him to achieve. As 
 a man, he held that no human being should be 
 proscribed among his fellow-men for the acci- 
 dent of his birth ; as a Christian, who looked 
 forward in the faith of prophecy for the con- 
 version of these our elder brethren in the rejec- 
 tion of polytheism, he knew that kind treatment 
 and impartial justice supplied our best instru- 
 ment for subduing their prejudices ; and as a 
 statesman, he was aware how useful the Jews 
 might be made to the nation as the medium of 
 commerce, and to the government as the means 
 of correspondence, the communicators of valu- 
 able information, and the divulgers of secrets 
 with which it might be important for them to 
 be acquainted." 
 
 It has been with some justice reproached to 
 these great founders and fathers of the Com- 
 monwealth, that they failed at this time, with 
 all the power in their hands, to reform the rep- 
 resentation, the municipal institutions, and the 
 law, according to the admirable outline given 
 in the " Declaration of the Army" and the 
 " Agreement of the People," and to make this 
 the basis of the new settlement. The matter 
 has been discussed in the Life of Vane. The 
 only answer to the reproach is, that to have 
 dissolved Parliament at this crisis would have 
 been to expose the nation, very possibly, to the 
 return of kingship, with its power and passions, 
 and possibly with the bigot vengeance of the 
 Presbyterians in its train. The new rulers, 
 however, recruited the House by relaxation in 
 favour of excluded and retired members, and by 
 new writs to fill up vacancies.* 
 
 The difficulties which beset the young Com- 
 monwealth in relation to the question of a dis- 
 solution of the Parliament were great indeed. 
 In justice to the leading statesmen of the time, 
 they should never be lost sight of. " The gov- 
 ernment of the country," Mr. Godwin truly 
 says, " was at this time in a very artificial and 
 unnatural condition. The existing power and 
 organization rested in three bodies of men. 
 The council of war, who had purged the Par- 
 liament on the 6th of December ; the Parlia- 
 ment, or House of Commons, such as it re- 
 mained after that reduction of its members ; 
 and the council of state, which had been ap- 
 pointed by the mutual understanding and con- 
 cord of the other two. These three bodies of 
 men were in perfect harmony : the majority of 
 the House of Commons, since the event of the 
 6th of December, had espoused and approved 
 the ideas of the council of war ; and the council 
 of state, which was, in reality, a selection of 
 the ablest and fittest members from the other 
 two, was employed, with assiduity, sagacity, 
 and energy, in carrying on the executive gov- 
 ernment in a way corresponding with the de- 
 signs and conceptions of their creators. The 
 
 * History from Mackintosh, vi., 137. 
 
 whole of these, in their authority over the na- 
 tion and they retained for the present the ac- 
 quiescence or submission of the great body 
 of the people hung by a single thread. The 
 council of war and of state were arbitrary 
 combinations of men ; but the Parliament had 
 been chosen by the people. It is true, they 
 were reduced by the compulsory absence of 
 many of their members, and by other circum- 
 stances, to a small number, and were styled 
 by Lilburne, and other audacious and incon- 
 siderate men, a mock Parliament. Still they 
 bore the magic name, a Parliament : the laws 
 of England, by old prescription, were accus- 
 tomed to emanate from the Parliament of Eng- 
 land. Constituted as they were, they could 
 not be despised. The abilities of Cromwell, 
 Ireton, and Vane, countenanced by the virtues 
 of Fairfax, Ludlow, Bradshaw, and Scot, ne- 
 cessarily commanded respect. They had in 
 their service the professional talents of White- 
 locke, St. John, Rolle, and the gallant Blake. 
 They were recommended to public favour by 
 the wit of Marten and the literature of Milton. 
 They included in their council the Earls of 
 Pembroke, Salisbury, Denbigh, and Mulgrave, 
 with Viscount Lisle, son of the Earl of Leices- 
 ter, and brother to Algernon Sidney. Such 
 were the present House of Commons, such the 
 present administrative government." 
 
 The best argument used for the retention of 
 this government undisturbed for the present, 
 was, however, afterward used in a debate upon 
 the subject in the House of Commons by Henry 
 Marten himself, in a happy and apposite simile. 
 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 suc- 
 ceeded very happily." Applying this, he ob- 
 served, " Their Commonwealth was yet an in- 
 fant of a weak growth and a very tender con- 
 stitution ; 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 and vigour." To 
 which he added, " that they had another infant 
 too under their hands, the war with Holland, 
 which had thrived wonderfully under their con- 
 duct ; but he much doubted that it would be 
 quickly strangled if it were taken out of their 
 care who had hitherto governed it."* 
 
 But to describe the course of government, 
 and Marten's share in it in farther detail, would 
 be to retrace much of the ground already gone 
 over in the Memoir of Vane. It will be suffi- 
 cient to observe upon, and to sketch, a few of 
 the more personal points of his conduct merely. 
 
 Soon after the installation of the council of 
 state, the indefatigable and untameable Lilburne 
 began his agitations once more. He promoted 
 dissensions in the army ; abused Cromwell, 
 Fairfax, Marten, and all the leaders ; reanima- 
 ted the hopes of the Levellers ; and, in reward 
 for it all, was shut up once more in the Tower. 
 This had no effect, however ; for, while Crom- 
 well's terrible campaign against the Irish re- 
 
 * Clarendon, vii., 4, 5.
 
 380 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN'. 
 
 bellion was spreading slaughter and desolation 
 through that unhappy country, the fearless and 
 brawling John issued from his residence in the 
 Tower all manner of denunciations of the Par- 
 liament and council of state, as a " company of 
 pickpockets," " thieves," " robbers," " murder- 
 ers," and " brother beasts of Nebuchadnezzar 
 the tyrant ;" challenged them to a debate by 
 two champions on each side, and an umpire, 
 upon the issue of which he staked his life ; and 
 declared that if his challenge were not accepted 
 within five days, he should hold himself free 
 "to anatomize them publicly and privately." 
 Proceedings were again instituted against him, 
 but after they had advanced a little, the au- 
 dacity and obstinacy even of Lilburne were 
 shaken by domestic troubles, and he longed for 
 a short release from imprisonment. A most 
 eminent tribute is it to the fame of a generous 
 character, that the person at once thought of 
 by the demagogue as likely to procure him this 
 favour was Henry Marten. With wonderful 
 faith in the kind and forgiving temper of a man 
 he had always so heartily abused for having 
 often before befriended him, Lilburne wrote a 
 letter to Marten, stating that his son had died 
 of the smallpox the day before, and that his 
 wife and two other children were ill, and ex- 
 pressing his desire, under these circumstances, 
 that he might be allowed a few days' liberty to 
 visit them.* The next day Henry Marten 
 moved the House of Commons that he should 
 be liberated on security, which was granted. 
 Nor was this all ; for, on finding subsequently 
 that Lilburne's propertyt had been much har- 
 assed in the Star Chamber, and it had left him 
 miserably poor, Marten exerted himself success- 
 fully to satisfy him for what was due by a grant 
 of the dean and chapter's lands, at ten years' 
 purchase, t 
 
 But ever, as it has been shown, Marten was 
 on the humane side, excepting in the one mem- 
 orable instance, where a sense of duty commit- 
 ted violence on his kinder dispositions. A 
 Royalist writer^ relates an occurrence of this 
 time, on the bill having been passed in the House 
 of Commons " to punish the crimes of incest, 
 adultery, and fornication with death Mr. Hen- 
 ry Marten would not let it be carried, without 
 observing ' that the severity of the punishment 
 by this act being death, would cause these sins 
 to be more frequently committed, because peo- 
 ple would be more cautious in committing them 
 for fear of the punishment, and being undiscov- 
 ered, would be imboldened the more in the com- 
 mitment of them ;' and the following year, 
 chiefly by his procurement, it was abrogated." 
 
 The losses endured by Marten in the public 
 service, and the absolute pecuniary assistance 
 he had rendered to the popular cause in very 
 critical times, which have been already referred 
 to, were now taken into consideration by the 
 House of Commons. Bradshaw's case was 
 considered at the same time. The votes may 
 be related from Mr. Godwin's history. " They 
 resolved to settle on Bradshaw lands to the 
 amount of two thousand pounds per annum. 
 The act for that purpose was passed on the 15th 
 of August. And farther to compensate him for 
 
 * Preparative to Hue and Cry, 38. t Journals. 
 
 + Just Reproof, 6. Journals of the Commons, 
 t Mr. Noble. 
 
 the loss of a lucrative profession, it was resolv- 
 ed to bestow on him the office of chancellor of 
 the Duchy of Lancaster. It is reasonable to 
 infer from these measures that neither he nor 
 any other member enjoyed any salary in the 
 capacity of councillor of state. Bradshaw, by 
 his orfice, was in some measure the first man 
 in the nation. He was to receive foreign am- 
 bassadors, and to represent in his person, upon 
 occasions of public solemnity, the executive 
 government of the Commonwealth of England. 
 Another distinguished statesman, whose case 
 went hand in hand with that of Bradshaw, was 
 Henry Marten. He presented a petition to the 
 Parliament representing the arrears due to him 
 as a colonel in the army, and the losses he had 
 otherwise sustained in the service of the pub- 
 lic, as well as the sums of money disbursed by 
 him in that service. It was in consequence 
 resolved that lands to the amount of one thou- 
 sand pounds per annum should be settled on 
 him, and the act to that effect was passed on 
 the same day with the act in favour of Brad- 
 shaw. The provision not being found to reach 
 the value proposed, a supplemental act in behalf 
 of Marten was passed the 28th of September."* 
 Marten's regiment of horse was also establish- 
 ed for him. 
 
 In the second year of the Commonwealth 
 Marten had again been elected into the council 
 of state. At the close of this year he appears 
 to have strongly suspected Cromwell's designs. 
 It was time, indeed, that the more sagacious 
 Republicans should have begun to do so. The 
 double conquests of Ireland and of Scotland had 
 now universally established his influence over 
 the nation, and placed temptations within his 
 reach almost irresistible. Marten was the first 
 to throw out open hints of the possible conse- 
 quence. He used some memorable words in 
 the House of Commons, to the effect that " if 
 they were to be governed by a single person, 
 their last king would have been as proper a 
 gentleman for it as any in England, for he found 
 no fault with his person, but his office only."t 
 On another occasion he vented the same omin- 
 ous allusion in a sally of humour. Cromwell, 
 in the heat of some debate in the House of 
 Commons, called his old friend " Sir Harry 
 Marten ;" when, says Aubrey, with infinite 
 gravity, " Mr. Henry Marten rises and bows : 
 ' / thank your majesty ! I always thought, when 
 you were king, that I should be knighted.' "f 
 
 At about the date, too, of these disputes, we 
 find them alluded to in this outrageous way by 
 a Royalist newspaper : " Division in the army 
 grows great ; superiority is the thing looked 
 upon, and Cromwell thinks he deserves it best, 
 which Henry Marten is impatient to suffer ; 
 and Pryde, stepping between them, makes great 
 words to fly ; insomuch that Ruby Nose (Crom- 
 well) drew his dagger in the House on Satur- 
 day, and clapping it on the seat by him, ex- 
 pressed great anger against Harry and his lev- 
 elling crew." This, of course, is a preposter- 
 ous exaggeration, but it illustrates the fact of 
 the difference. 
 
 It was soon illustrated, however, much more 
 decidedly. In electing the council of state for 
 
 ~* Hist, of Com., iii., 185, 186. 
 
 t Wood's Ath. Ox., iii., 1240. Clement Walker, Hiit, 
 oflndep. t Bodleian Letters. 
 
 $ Mercurius Pragmaticus, March, 1650, 1651,
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 381 
 
 the third year a new mode of proceeding was 
 adopted. In the re-election of February, 1650, 
 the names of the preceding council were regu- 
 larly called over and put to the vote ; and, in 
 consequence, one having died in the interval, 
 thirty-seven were rechosen, and three only re- 
 jected. It had heen felt, and by Marten among 
 others, that this was giving to the executive 
 government too much the air of a standing 
 council. The Parliament had been, of neces- 
 sity, and was likely to continue for some time 
 to come, a fixed and unvaried body. For this 
 there were potent reasons, as it has already 
 been shown ; but there could be no such reason 
 for making the council of state permanent. It 
 had been decided in the beginning that this mem- 
 ber of the government should be a body holding 
 its office for twelve months only. " One of the 
 most essential features of a free state," as Mr. 
 Godwin justly remarks in relating these circum- 
 stances, " is rotation, and that those men who 
 are intrusted for the public good with high and 
 comprehensive powers should be subjected to 
 the purification of new and frequently-repeated 
 elections. All offices in such a state should, 
 as far as is practicable, be thrown open to all. 
 No man should be allowed to consider the pow- 
 ers he holds in trust for the nation a sinecure 
 and an inheritance. It is good that men qual- 
 ified for office should feel that at certain stated 
 intervals they are not unlikely to be invited to 
 accept it. It is good that a certain portion of 
 fresh and unworn understanding and enterprise, 
 not trained in the shackles of an unvaried rou- 
 tine, should from time to time be introduced 
 into the national councils." In accordance, it 
 may be fairly supposed, with some such reason- 
 ing as this, Parliament now decided that the 
 council of state for the ensuing year should con- 
 sist of forty-one persons, and that only twenty- 
 one of those who were now of the council should 
 be allowed to be re-elected. " The ablest and 
 most highly-endowed of the individuals," ob- 
 serves Mr. Godwin, " who were excluded by 
 the operation of this rule on the present occa- 
 sion, was Henry Marten." Mr. Godwin has 
 omitted to state, however, by whose exertions 
 he was excluded. It was the work of Oliver 
 Cromwell, now brooding over his projects of ab- 
 solute power.* 
 
 In the House of Commons, however, Marten 
 still remained. The power was not yet matured 
 for what Cromwell had in purpose there. In 
 the House of Commons, during the period of 
 his exclusion from the executive, Marten only 
 laboured the more, with all his wit, his elo- 
 quence, and his humanity, in behalf of the lib- 
 erties of the Commonwealth. He supported 
 Vane in the noble projects described in the 
 memoir of that great person, and pursued at 
 this time with an anxiety and zeal proportion- 
 ate to the chance there yet remained by an 
 infusion of new popular power into the House 
 of Commons, and an establishment of new and 
 strong institutions for freedom, on the basis of 
 the "Army Proposals" to save the country 
 from the usurpation that impended. 
 
 A few instances of the humour that he nev- 
 ertheless gave way to in the midst of the se- 
 ' rious debates of this period, may be recorded 
 here. 
 
 * Wood's Ath. Oxon., iii., 1840. 
 
 Having let fall some phrases in the course 
 of one of the discussions which gave offence to 
 a Puritan member, the latter suggested that it 
 would be well to have a motion to expel all 
 " profane and unsanctified persons" from the 
 House. Upon this, Marten gravely got up and 
 observed, " That he should take the liberty to 
 move, before the motion alluded to, that ' all 
 fools might be put out likewise,' and then," he 
 added, "the House might probably be found 
 thin enough." 
 
 Aubrey tells us that H. M. (as he usually 
 calls Marten) " was wont to sleep much in the 
 House," and afterward explains this by saying 
 that it was " dog-sleep," or, in other words, a 
 means resorted to on the occasion of any very 
 prosy oration from an alderman or a Puritan 
 to intimate his fatigue, and hint the propriety 
 either of liveliness or a conclusion on the part 
 of the speaker. On one of these occasions, 
 when Marten seems not only to have been 
 " sleeping," but nodding his head rather ve- 
 hemently, and breaking into occasional inter- 
 ruptions, "Alderman Atkins made a motion 
 that such scandalous members as slept, and 
 minded not the business of the House, should 
 be put out." H. M. starts up: "Mr. Speaker, 
 a motion has been made to turn out the nod- 
 ders ; I desire the noddees (noddies) may also 
 be turned out." Poor Alderman Atkins never 
 fairly recovered this. 
 
 On a different occasion, in referring to his 
 own case, then unsettled, and to some recent 
 and questionable appointments, he is said to 
 have observed, in a manner that provoked pe- 
 culiar laughter, " That he had seen, at last, the 
 Scripture fulfilled : ' Thou hast exalted the 
 humble and meek ; thou hast filled the empty 
 with good things, and the rich hast thou sent 
 empty away!' " 
 
 More serious matters now claim attention. 
 In the council of state installed for the fourth 
 year of the Commonwealth the name of Henry 
 Marten had again appeared, but whether the 
 opposition of Cromwell had relented or proved 
 ineffectual, does not appear ; most probably, 
 however, the latter, since in the election for 
 the fifth year he was again excluded, and it is 
 said by Cromwell's means. The victory of 
 Worcester had given the " crowning mercy" to 
 the general ; Fairfax's resignation had left him 
 alone in power with the army ; the death of 
 Ireton had removed the last restraint which 
 withheld his meditated assault on the liberties 
 of his country. The memorable scene of the 
 forcible dissolution of the Long Parliament 
 immediately followed, and on that day, already 
 described, Marten received the reproach of li- 
 centiousness and a dissolute life from his old 
 friend Cromwell. 
 
 The last scene of the council of state has 
 been described in such a strain of melancholy 
 enthusiasm by Mr. Godwin, that the passage 
 will be interesting here. From breaking up 
 the Parliament Cromwell had joined the coun- 
 cil of officers, and now, in the afternoon, at- 
 tended by Lambert and Harrison, repaired to 
 the council of state. Bradshaw was in the 
 chair. "It required," says Mr. Godwin, "a 
 man of his nerve, his deep sense of religion, 
 and his immoveable spirit, to discharge the du- 
 ties of that day. It must have been sufficiently
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 known what was about to happen ; and since 
 the fate of the Commonwealth could not be 
 averted, all that remained was that it should 
 so die as was most worthy of the days it had 
 lived. Cromwell was to be met and confronted 
 by a man who in his person should represent 
 the freedom and the majesty of the Republic, 
 which had now entered far into its fifth year ; 
 and amid all the heroes of that hour in England, 
 it is not too much to say that there was no other 
 person from whose lips the accidents of a dying 
 state, not unmeet to be numbered with ancient 
 Athens or Rome, could so worthily have been 
 pronounced. Perhaps no man was ever placed 
 in so illustrious a situation as that which Brad- 
 shaw occupied at this moment. He was to 
 face one, in that age, so far as related to an 
 ascendency over the minds of his fellow-crea- 
 tures either in war or in peace, the foremost 
 man in the world. By an extraordinary coin- 
 cidence, the same individual who had presided 
 at the trial of a legitimate king, and who had 
 pronounced sentence of death upon him for his 
 multiplied delinquencies against his people, 
 was now called upon from another chair to 
 address a usurper in the most critical moment 
 of his career, and to set before him, in firm 
 and impressive terms, the deed he had perpe- 
 trated and was now perpetrating. Cromwell 
 was backed by all his guards, and by an army 
 of the highest discipline, and the most un- 
 daunted and prosperous character. Bradshaw 
 appeared before him in the simple robe of in- 
 tegrity. The lord-general was the most reso- 
 lute of men, and who could least endure an 
 idle show of opposition. The parade of con- 
 tradiction and the pomp of declamation would 
 have been useless. A few words (a brief 
 and concentrated remonstrance) were enough. 
 They were uttered, and Cromwell ventured on 
 no reply. Abashed the traitor stood. Crom- 
 well, having entered the council-chamber, thus 
 addressed the members who were present : 
 ' 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 cannot but know what was done in 
 the morning, so take notice that the Parliament 
 is dissolved.' To this Bradshaw answered, 
 ' Sir, we have heard what you did at the House 
 in the morning, and before many hours all 
 England will hear it ; but, sir, you are mistaken 
 to think that the Parliament is dissolved, for 
 no power under heaven can dissolve them but 
 themselves ; therefore take you notice of that.' 
 With this protest the council rose and with- 
 drew." 
 
 It is unnecessary to pursue the subject of 
 Cromwell's usurpation on the Commonwealth ; 
 sufficient has been said in the Life of Vane. 
 Marten invariably refused to acknowledge his 
 authority, and was excluded from all the Par- 
 liaments that met under the Protectorate. We 
 find him at last in prison, and learn that he was 
 thrown there by the power of Cromwell ; but 
 for what reason, save on the general ground 
 of his great talents and still fearless Republi- 
 canism, does not distinctly appear. It is stated, 
 indeed,* that he had sometimes attended the 
 meetings of the discontented Republican offi- 
 cers, who joined with Wildman, Overton, and 
 *~By~Mr7Godwin, Hiit. of Com., iv. 
 
 others in their conspiracy against Cromwell ; 
 but no satisfactory proof of this is offered. 
 
 Yet, though Marten was kept from his place 
 by the strong arm of tyranny, there were not 
 wanting men, even in those Parliaments, to de- 
 clare his sentiments and vindicate the old cause. 
 At the very moment the usurper's power seem- 
 ed greatest, and he was on the eve of clutch- 
 ing the object of all his hopes and ambitious 
 toils, these men dashed it from him. In none 
 of his Parliaments not even in that composed 
 of his own nominees could he command a 
 majority ; the sentiment of liberty was still too 
 strong for him ; and thousands were found res- 
 olute enough to echo the remarkable words of 
 a speaker in the Parliament of 1654, that, " hav- 
 ing cut down tyranny in one person, they would 
 not see the nation enslaved by another, whose 
 right could be measured only by the length of 
 his sword." The leaders of these men were 
 Bradshaw and Scot, and most ably did they 
 represent the opinions and the hopes of Marten 
 and of Vane. Their speeches, Ludlow says, in 
 the Parliament, of 1654, " were very instru- 
 mental in opening the eyes of many young 
 members, who had never before heard the pub- 
 lie interest so clearly stated and asserted ; so 
 that the Commonwealth party increased every 
 day, and that of the sword lost ground propor- 
 tionally." Never did a splendid foreign ad- 
 ministration so effectually conceal the innate 
 rottenness of the entire domestic scheme and 
 policy as in the case of the government of 
 Cromwell. 
 
 It is much to be lamented that the speeches 
 referred to by Ludlow have perished ; but his- 
 tory has lately received a rich accession, which 
 in some sort compensates* the loss, from the 
 publication of Burton's admirable diary, by a 
 writer who is worthy in all respects to have 
 been associated with such a work, by his great 
 talents, his masterly research, his unaffected 
 simplicity and sincerity, and the disinterested 
 zeal which has distinguished a long life devoted 
 to the popular cause. We find in this diary Scot's 
 speeches in Oliver Cromwell's last Parliament, 
 and it is to these (unused hitherto in the his- 
 tories), and to the speeches of the same stanch 
 Republican in the Parliament that followed, 
 that the case of such a statesman as Marten, 
 in the judgment and trial of Charles I., must 
 be referred, for the satisfaction of those who 
 desire, after a lapse of two centuries, to sit in 
 judgment on the motives that prompted that 
 great event. Some extracts from these most 
 striking assertions of Republican statesman- 
 ship are therefore necessary here. 
 
 That Parliament met, pursuant to adjourn- 
 ment, on the 28th of January, 1657-1658. Two 
 changes had been made in the interim, in ac- 
 cordance with the famous " Petition and Ad- 
 vice" of the officers, namely, the readmission 
 of the greater portion of the excluded mem- 
 bers, and the creation of a miserable " House 
 of Lords." After three days' preliminary sit- 
 ting, a message " from the Lords" desired the 
 concurrence of the Commons in an address to 
 the Protector for a fast. The Commons pro- 
 
 * " Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq., member in the Parlia- 
 ments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, from 1656 to 1659. 
 Edited and illustrated with notes historical and biographical, 
 by JOHN TOWILL RUTT."
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 383 
 
 tested against the title would admit no other 
 than that of " the other House." It was even 
 maintained that the new House was not a co- 
 ordinate legislative assembly, but invested only 
 with certain functions of judicature.* To this 
 all Scot's arguments tended, and he resolutely 
 refused, on any other terms, to recognise Crom- 
 well's House of Lords. In vain they urged the 
 " Petition and Advice" against him. His great 
 speech on the occasion was a most masterly 
 effort, and, in a subtle vindication of the Re- 
 publican party, included a terrible assault on 
 the despotism of Cromwell. 
 
 Scot began by saying that the " ancientness" 
 of the institution of a House of Lords had no- 
 thing now to do with the question, for that that 
 House had " been justly cast out by their being 
 clogs upon passing of many good laws." He 
 proceeded to state : " The Scots, when the 
 king was at Carisbrooke Castle, invaded Eng- 
 land, not as brethren, but to impose a king upon 
 you. The Lords were then desired that they 
 would declare this invasion of the Scots enmity, 
 and as enemies to the nation, which, for affec- 
 tion to the king, they would not do. You 
 know afterward what happened. By the virtue 
 of two or three hundred thousand pounds the 
 Scots were persuaded to give over, and leave 
 their king at Carisbrooke Castle. After the 
 House of Commons had declared all this of non- 
 addresses and the like, yet the Lords voted ad- 
 dresses notwithstanding. The major part of 
 this House voted the like. The army foresaw 
 that their liberties were likely to be betrayed. I am 
 for trusting the people with their liberties as 
 soon as any ; but when they come to irregulari- 
 ties, and the major part grow corrupt, they must 
 be regulated by miracle, or otherwise perish. 
 The soldiers see their cause betrayed ; the city 
 and apprentices all discontented ; and if the 
 army had not then appeared, where had then our 
 cause been 1 
 
 " The Lords would not join in the trial of the 
 king. We must lay things bare and naked. We 
 were either to lay all that blood of ten years' war 
 upon ourselves, or upon some other object. We 
 called the King of England to our bar, and ar- 
 raigned him. He was, for his obstinacy and 
 guilt, condemned and executed ; and so let all 
 the enemies of God perish ! The House of Com- 
 mons had a good conscience in it. Upon this 
 the Lords' House adjourned and never again 
 met, and hereby came a farewell of all those 
 peers, and it was hoped the people of England 
 should never again have a negative upon them." 
 
 This is surely interesting. The orator next 
 proceeded, after some allusions to the argu- 
 ments of members of the House, to insinuate 
 bitter sarcasms against Cromwell : " I shall 
 now say," he exclaimed, " why they are not, 
 why they ought not to be, a House of Lords. 
 You have not called them so. In all your Pe- 
 tition and Advice you have not said a Word of 
 it. Oh, but you intended it, said he. It ap- 
 pears to me you never intended it, because you 
 never said it ; and it is reason enough for me to 
 say it. Once this House said king, and yet you 
 never said lords ; and if ever you had said it, it 
 would have been then. He (Cromwell) refused 
 it upon a pious account, and I hope he will still 
 do so. 
 
 * History from Mackintosh, vi., 237. 
 
 ' Shall I, that sat in a Parliament that brought 
 a king to the bar and to the block, not speak my 
 mind freely here? 
 
 " Those that now sit in that House that 
 would be lords, did they, or not, advise you to 
 make them lords 1 Let me argue in a dilemma. 
 Did they think to be lords 1 Then it was their 
 modesty. Did they not think to be lords 1 
 Then they voted like Englishmen ; just, entire, 
 like choosing the Roman general. I think you 
 have not yet meant to put a negative upon the 
 people of England. I suppose you would not 
 call them lords for tenderness of the conscien- 
 ces of the people of England. They are un- 
 der an engagement, and I hope you will be as 
 tender as you were to the point of a king ; and 
 you will not come under the crime of Jeroboam, 
 the son of Nebat, which caused Israel to sin. 
 
 " I come to show why you now should not 
 make a House ; I should say, a House of Lords. 
 I cry you mercy ! If there be a House of Lords, 
 it is more reason to call the old peerage ; and 
 there is not one of them there, as I am inform- 
 ed. But you cannot call them for impossibility. 
 You have not a quorum, not half a quorum, of 
 persons qualified. Those that be, fail in the 
 very formalis causa, estates and interest. An- 
 ciently the bishops, abbots, and lords, their ten- 
 ants, and relations, could engage half England. 
 The providence of God has so ordered it that Eng- 
 land is turned a commonwealth, and do what you 
 can, you cannot make it otherwise ; and if you join 
 any with them in the Legislature, it will not do 
 your work. 
 
 " The administrations of God's dealings are 
 against you. Is not God staining the glory and 
 pride of the world 1 Is there anything but a 
 commonwealth that flourishes 1 Venice against 
 the pride of the Ottoman family! All their 
 mountains are pulled down. God governs the 
 world as he governs his Church, by plain things 
 and low things. It was this that led your Long 
 Parliament the providence of God, that vir- 
 tue and honesty should govern the world not 
 that I am for a Fifth Monarchy." 
 
 In subsequent very striking passages, Scot 
 undertakes to show, not only that they should 
 not be considered a House of Lords, but that 
 they could not be so considered. " Why not, 
 thenl" he asks. "Why 1 because they are 
 but commoners, and were yesterday here. It 
 is not agreeable to the qualification of common- 
 ers. For aught that appears to you, they sit 
 as a part of the Commons in another place. 
 They have not the reason of the quality of lords. 
 They have not interest not the forty thou- 
 sandth part of England. Have they an inter- 
 est 1 Why, had they such an interest, why not 
 sit here 1 The interest follows the persons. 
 As they have none by sitting there, they loso 
 interest by it. The old nobility will not, do not 
 sit there. They lose that interest. You lose 
 the people of England by it. Thej were, by the 
 providence of God, set free from any negative. 
 Will they thank you if you bring such a nega- 
 tive upon them 1 The people that have bled for 
 you ! that have not gained by you, but you by 
 them ! What was fought for but to arrive at that 
 capacity to make their own laws 1 
 
 " The unhandsome posture you bring your- 
 selves into by it ! To stand here to that House, 
 not like a Parliament of England ! Consider
 
 384 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the consequences, that you charge not all th 
 blood upon the great Parliament. The bloo 
 that shut out a negative stands at your dooi 
 I have heard of some motion for a day of hu 
 miliation for this blood. Why, you should pu 
 on the king's head again, which was surely take 
 without his consent, and without the Lords' 1 too 
 Let not the people of England petition to hav 
 fetters upon them. Let it be your patience 
 and not your desires. It is not noble for th 
 people of England to seek this." 
 
 That expression, " let it be your patience 
 and not your desires," is of significant import 
 Scot's conclusion was worthy of the whole 
 speech. He took the possible answers to hi 
 objections in succession ; among them, the as 
 sertion that " they had been made" lords tha 
 they who had made them " another House,' 
 made them lords. " I will not say," remarkec 
 Scot on this, " but his highness has power ol 
 honour, but not to set up courts. / would at 
 soon be knighted under his sword in the camp, as 
 under any man that ever gave honour. The ar 
 gument is sophistry : you made them anothe: 
 House ; his highness made them lords ; there 
 fore they are a House of Lords. You have 
 settled them only as a high court of justice 
 but if you make them a co-ordinate power with 
 you, you give them the power of your purses 
 of peace and war, of making laws, and magis 
 trates to execute them. 
 
 " The people of Israel were governed by 
 themselves by the people. The people met 
 saith the text, and went to Hebron. The peo- 
 ple have power of all these things. God sub- 
 mits all his administrations to the people, with 
 reverence may I say it. God left to Adam to 
 name all creatures : God did not say this is a 
 lion, this is a bear ; but Adam gave names to 
 every creature. So he did to the woman, be- 
 cause a rib out of his side gave her a name. 
 This House is a rib out of your side. You 
 have given it a name. My motion is, that you 
 would not alter it !"* 
 
 Three days after, the same question being in 
 discussion among the members under another 
 form, submitted to them as to the " Commons" 
 by the " other House," Scot took occasion to 
 throw out a somewhat ominous hint of the 
 present resolution of the Republicans. After 
 impressing the necessity of returning an an- 
 swer to these quasi lordlings as to " the other 
 House," he went on to remark : " It is not 
 enough that they christen themselves, but they 
 christen you that you are ' Commons.' I am 
 not ashamed of the title, it being the greatest 
 honour under heaven to serve the people in the 
 meanest capacity in this House ; all power being 
 originally in the people. I observed this was 
 used as an argument the other day, that you 
 had received a message from them by that ti- 
 
 * It is worth subjoining, from a debate in the Parliament 
 of Richard Cromwell, Scot's deliberate opinion of Oliver's 
 administration. He was arguing against trusting the whole 
 power of war to Richard and his council : " I look upon his 
 father," said Scot, " as of much more experience and coun- 
 sel than himself; yet he was never so successful as when he 
 was a servant to the Commonwealth. What a dishonourable 
 peace he made, and what an unprofitable and dangerous 
 war. Was not the effect of the peace with Holland, and 
 the war with Spain, the most disadvantageous and deplora- 
 ble that ever were ? Therefore, if he that was a man qf 
 war and of counsel miscarried, why should I trust a single 
 person, the most unfit to refer it to ? Yet you do implicitly 
 commit the whole charge upon his highness." 
 
 tie. He that deceives me once, it is my fault if he 
 deceive me twice.. Modesty (it is Tertullian) may 
 bring a man to misery. The Greeks were de- 
 stroyed, many of them, because they could not 
 say no. They are at best but originally from 
 you." 
 
 The result of this plain speaking was anoth- 
 er dissolution by Cromwell. Hartlib, Milton's 
 correspondent, describing the necessity for this 
 step, after mentioning the danger to be appre- 
 hended from the Royalists, adds : " Besides, 
 there was another petition set on foot in the 
 city for a commonwealth, which would have 
 gathered like a snowball ; but by the resolute, 
 sudden dissolving of Parliament, both these 
 dangerous designs were mercifully prevented." 
 Mrs. Hutchinson herself says, that such had 
 been the influence of these sentiments of Vane, 
 Marten, and Scot upon the minds of men at 
 this period, that a third party was actually 
 " ready both with arms and men, when there 
 was opportunity, to have fallen in, with swords 
 in their hands, for the settlement of the rights 
 and liberties of the good people." 
 
 The resumption of power by the Republicans 
 on the death of Oliver Cromwell has been de- 
 scribed in the Life of Vane. It is necessary 
 here, however, in order to place on record the 
 only authentic vindication of the motives of the 
 Republican leaders in their execution of Charles 
 I. with a view to the establishment of a com- 
 monwealth, to resort once more to the speech- 
 es of Scot, Marten's intimate friend and asso- 
 ciate in those memorable actions. Most true 
 is what Mr. Godwin has remarked of the way 
 in which these men have to this day been re- 
 ferred to by a large class of writers, as though 
 they were raking out the records of a " New- 
 gate Calendar." Party rage began this ; indo- 
 lence has suffered it to continue ; and even Mr. 
 Godwin, admirable for many of the greatest 
 qualities of an historian, and, above all, admira- 
 ile for that pursuit of truth which is his unfail- 
 ing characteristic, has failed to quote these 
 only just statements of the real matters at is- 
 sue between the Royalists and the Republican 
 regicides. In reading even the imperfect rec- 
 ords of Scot's speeches which yet remain, we 
 find ourselves at once emerged from the foul 
 atmosphere of falsehood and exaggeration, as 
 of the meaner and baser sophistries, and breath- 
 ng the clear air of honest, fearless, conscien- 
 ious, and determined men. Whatever may 
 have been their errors in judgment, their ac- 
 ions, we must feel, belonged to the highest or- 
 der of just and honourable motive. It was the 
 ause the good old cause which they ventu- 
 ed everything to sustain. 
 
 Upon Thurloe's proposition, in Richard Crom- 
 well's first Parliament, for " recognising" the 
 ' undoubted" right of Richard as Protector, 
 cot spoke with Vane for the substitution of 
 he word " agnise" for recognise, and the total 
 mission of the phrase " undoubted." The de- 
 ate, as we have already seen in the Memoir of 
 lane, was taken on these points for the pur- 
 ose of trying the question of a pure republic 
 n the least offensive shape. The declared ob- 
 ct at the same time was the rejection of the 
 ill. Scot rose, after a speech of a very hot 
 resbyterian (Mr. Bulkley), in favour of Rich- 
 rd ; and after referring to the events which
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 385 
 
 first led' to the agitation of questions agains 
 monarchy in England naming the Stewarts a 
 " that family, that cursed family ! I may call i 
 so yet !" he proceeded to allude to the neces 
 sities which drove them to the execution o: 
 Charles. " Had he been quiet," he said, " af 
 ter he was delivered up to us hy the Scots 
 knowing him to be our king " A blank in the 
 diary occurs here, but it is not difficult to ima 
 gine what the close of the sentence woul 
 have been, when we find it followed thus: "Si 
 long as he was above ground, in view, then 
 were daily revoltings among the army, and ri 
 sings in all places ; creating us all mischief 
 more than a thousand kings could do us good 
 It icas impossible to continue him alive. I wist 
 all had heard the grounds of our resolutions in tha 
 particular. I would have had all our consult 
 ings in foro, as anything else was. It was re 
 sorted unto as the last refuge. The representa 
 lives, in their aggregate body, have power to 
 alter or change any government, being thus 
 conducted by Providence. The question was 
 whose [i. e., on whom] was that blood that 
 was shed 1 It could not be ours. Was it not 
 the king's, by keeping delinquents from punish- 
 ment, and raising armies 1 The vindictive jus 
 tice must have his sacrifice somewhere. Thi 
 king was called to a bar below, to answer for that 
 
 blood. WE DID NOT ASSASSINATE, OR DO IT IN 
 A CORNER. WE DID IT IN THE FACE OP GoD AND 
 
 OF ALL MEN. If this be not a precept, THE GOOD 
 OF THE WHOLE, I know not what is to pre- 
 serve the good cause, a defence to religion and 
 tender consciences. I will not patronise or jus- 
 tify all proceedings that then were." 
 
 This is a memorable passage. It was nol 
 the language of self-vindication only, but of 
 awful and impressive warning to all the gener- 
 ations of men that were to follow after the vi- 
 olent death of the ardent and honest speaker. 
 How poorly it has been often imitated in mod- 
 ern times ! 
 
 Scot now vindicated the intentions of the 
 Long Parliament on the eve of its dissolution, 
 and asserted the regrets which followed it, and 
 the respect due to its memory. " The Dutch 
 war came on. If it had pleased God and his 
 highness to have let that little power of a Par- 
 liament sit a little longer when Hannibal is 
 ad portas, something must be done extra leges 
 we intended to have gone off with a good sa- 
 vour, and provided for a succession of Parlia- 
 ments ; but we stayed to end the Dutch war. 
 We might have brought them to oneness with 
 us. Their ambassadors did desire a coalition. 
 This we might have done in four or five 
 months. We never bid fairer for being masters 
 of the whole world not that I desire to extend 
 our own bounds. We are well if we can pre- 
 serve peace at home. If you, be fain to fight 
 Holland over again, it is vain to conceal it. 
 That gentleman says the Parliament went out, 
 and no complaining in the streets, nor inquiry 
 after them. That is according to the company 
 men keep. Men suit the letter to their lips. 
 It is as men converse. I never met a zealous 
 assertor of that cause, but lamented it, to see 
 faith broken, and somewhat else. I will say no 
 more. It was as much bewailed as the instru- 
 ment of government. A petition, the day after 
 the Parliament was dissolved, from forty of the 
 C c c 
 
 chief officers, the aldermen of the city of Lon- 
 don, and many godly divines (except the rigid 
 Presbyters, too well-wishers to Mr. Love's 
 treason*), besought to have that Parliament 
 restored ; but the Protector, being resolved to 
 carry on his work, threatened, terrified, and 
 displaced them ; and who would, for such a 
 shattered thing, venture their all 1 You have 
 had five changes. This is the fifth, and yet the 
 people have not rest. It may be the people may 
 think of returning to that again, or it may be to 
 another government. The Romans continued 
 consuls 100 years. There were endeavours to 
 bring in kingship, and many lost their heads 
 for it. Brutus's own sons died under the axe, 
 rather than their father would suffer kingship. 
 Then came the decemviri, to collect the best 
 laws in all nations, still jussu populi ; to make 
 peace and war ; to make laws ; to make magis- 
 trates ; to frame twelve tables to be standing 
 laws. I would not hazard a hair of his present 
 highness's head. Yet I would trust no man with 
 more power than what is good for him and for 
 the people. / had rather have 100 per annum 
 clear, than 200 accountable. He is yet at the 
 door. If you think of a single person, I would 
 have him sooner than any man alive. Make 
 your body, and then jit your head if you please, 
 one head ; else we must debate all the limbs 
 over again, either in a grand co.mmittee, or by 
 twenty or thirty gentlemen. In the mean time, 
 lay this bill aside." 
 
 The question being again driven back upon 
 the words " agnise" and " undoubted,." Scot 
 took an opportunity to declare, with respect to 
 the latter phrase, that force was used to pass 
 the " Petition and Advice," and that he could 
 never recognise a title under it alone. He ob- 
 served, in some passages of remarkable consti- 
 tutional doctrine, that he might acknowledge 
 that person as chief magistrate ; but he added, 
 the word ' undoubted ' is a doubt with me. 
 The argument used against those that say fire 
 does not burn, is, put your fingers in. Were 
 not pikes at the door to keep us out 1 It was 
 proved. I cannot admit that a free Parliament. 
 The Petition and Advice was not pursued. If 
 the nomination appear not to you, you cannot 
 go upon that. The Parliament have suffered en- 
 tails upon the crown ; but this has been done before 
 'he judges and council, and publicly. This gov- 
 ernment is but de bene esse. The kingdom of 
 England was not always hereditary. Of twen- 
 y-five or twenty-six kings, fifteen or sixteen 
 of them came in by the choice of the Parlia- 
 ment, and not by descent ; among the rest. 
 King Stephen, Richard II., Edward I. The 
 ^'arliament has always power to make or empower 
 he chief magistrate, and they changed the gov- 
 rnment as often as they thought it good for the 
 eople. As to the instance, the last king, I 
 as at his coronation. At every corner, every 
 ociety was asked, Will you have this person 
 or your king 1 This implies a power of the 
 eople ; though he was king before, by succes- 
 ion. As to the oath made without doors, I 
 nd myself free here. You may remove the 
 hief magistrate, and make whom you please 
 o. In Henry VI. and Henry IV.'s time, the 
 lection was from the people." After some 
 
 * A Presbyterian minister tried and executed in 1051 for 
 reason against the Commonwealth.
 
 386 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 farther precedents of this sort, Scot, referring 
 to an argument used in the debate, that the 
 people had really acquiesced in the selection 
 of Richard, laid down in another form Vane's 
 principle of a convention of the people. " You 
 say you have a people that have declared this 
 honourable and very precious person, with the 
 acclamations of towns and villages. If the 
 whole body had done this in a collective aggregate 
 body, met in anyplace, you ought not to question it ; 
 but this is but from some parts, in their several 
 scattered bodies, I would have some persons 
 to withdraw and word a question, though it 
 would come better from another House than 
 from us, that are bargainers for the people. We 
 must consider as well what a man he may be. 
 A young lion's teeth and claws may grow. I 
 speak not of him, God knows ! Yet we are 
 not to trust too far. If we were assured that 
 through his life he would not err, no man can 
 tell who is to come after. Can you retrench 
 that power you are making for perpetuity 1 St. 
 Austin and Pelagius were born both in a day. 
 The antidote and poison were both of an age. 
 Make the provision for the safety of the people's 
 liberties, and your magistrate's power and prerog- 
 ative, contemporary. Let them be twins. Let 
 them justify one another. Let not one precede 
 the other. Whom would you have the Protector 
 thank for his power the people 1 the army 1 
 the council 1 Let him own YOU for it ! Amor 
 et delicicz populi Anglice, let him be so, when 
 made your creature, not ad extra. It is a hu- 
 man institution ; only own him as your author- 
 ity. The Parliament will be said to be either 
 fools or madmen, that know not what is fit for 
 them so well as another. Why should we think 
 ourselves more unfit to provide for ourselves, 
 and for our own good, than any other 1 If we 
 be so, let us set up the court of wards again, not 
 for our children, but for ourselves. Why may 
 not we be as well intrusted as any single per- 
 son 1 Who better judges than the heads of the 
 tribes 1 Name a committee to form a question 
 that may take in both. You will then despatch 
 more in an hour than you have done in all this 
 .time." 
 
 The omission of the word " undoubted" was 
 eventually agreed to. Scot again gave battle 
 on the question of the substitution of " agnise" 
 for "recognise." The famous Henry Neville 
 (the author of Plato Redivivus, and other works, 
 remarkable for their soundness of doctrine and 
 purity of style) had observed, that the word 
 " recognise" gave away the question, or that it 
 betokened slavery, and was answered by a re- 
 .rnark from Mr. Goodrick, that "we were not 
 slaves in Elizabeth's time, and it was the lan- 
 guage then," when Soot rose. " The grounds 
 -of the word ' recognise' then," he said, " and 
 in the times of Henry VIII. and Henry IV., 
 were different from ours. The reason for Hen- 
 ry IV.'s recognition was because Richard II. 
 was alive, and his competitor. It was in con- 
 tradiction to competitors only to distinguish 
 persons. An act of Parliament passed to legit- 
 imate Queen Elizabeth, because it was ques- 
 tioned whether she were fit to reign or no. 
 King James came from another kingdom and 
 another family. There was no recognition to 
 King Charles, and no need of it. He had no 
 competitor. I can deeognise Charles Stuart 
 
 and that family, but recognise I cannot. It 
 comprehends the merits of the question. We 
 must now speak, or ever hold our peace. It 
 was told that the great seal was sent for two 
 or three times, and either his highness was not 
 so well, or I know not what ; it was sent back 
 again. The privy council made him. I would 
 have him to be your creature, and he will be 
 more tender of your liberties and privileges. If 
 I recognise, I must be satisfied how he was de- 
 clared, according to the Petition and Advice. 
 We are not ingenuously dealt withal, for this is 
 but a wing of the debate, and the wing will be 
 out of your reach. If this pass, you will take 
 a little breath between that and caring for the 
 liberties of the people ; and then money must 
 be had for this Protector. I was saying I would 
 be a slave, but I would not either, till I needs 
 must. If I could have lived safely in any other 
 part, I would not have lived here. / would be 
 content it should be set upon my monument if it 
 were my last act, I own it* / wag one of the 
 king's judges. I hope it shall not be said of us, 
 as of the Romans once, homines, ad servitu- 
 tem parati .'" 
 
 It need not be repeated here, that Richard 
 Cromwell was soon driven from the Protector- 
 ate by Vane and Scot, and their gallant asso- 
 ciates, who, in Marten's absence from the 
 House, so resolutely maintained the opinions 
 they held in common. With the recall of the 
 Long Parliament after that event, Harry Mar- 
 ten once more took his seat in the House of 
 Commons. The intrigues of the traitor Monk 
 need not be detailed here ; it is sufficient to siy 
 that, before their consummation, they had been 
 seen through by the fine sense of Marten, and 
 ridiculed by his wit. While the protestations 
 of devotion to a commonwealth, made by that 
 " scoundrel of fortune," were duping Hazlerig 
 and the less reflecting Republicans ; while ho 
 " called God to witness that the asserting of a 
 commonwealth was the only intent of his heart," 
 and was believed, we have had occasion to no- 
 tice the subtle detection of the trick by Vane, 
 and the masterly though unsuccessful effort he 
 made to avert its consequences. We have now 
 to add, that Marten took occasion to say, in his 
 place in Parliament, that, although he doubted 
 not General Monk's real design was a common- 
 wealth, it yet befitted the House to consider 
 the very remarkable inaptitude of the means 
 he was providing for that object. " Why, sir,' 1 
 he continued, " he is like a person sent to make 
 a suit of clothes, who brings with him a budget 
 
 * It was Scot's last act to own this. When some of tlie 
 mean-spirited Presbyterians, who were among the Inst left 
 in the reassembled Long Parliament, before its final ilisptr- 
 sion by Monk, proposed that before the;? separated they 
 should bear their witness against the horrid murder of the 
 king, and the motion was followed l<y the protestation of 
 one of the members that he had neither hand nor heart in 
 that affair, Scot at once rose and said, " Though I know not 
 where to hide my head at this time, yet I dare not refuse to 
 own, that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in it." 
 This was his last word in Parliament. Before his judges 
 he manifested the same lofty and resolved temper, pleading 
 nothing but his privilege of Parliament, and the unques- 
 tionable character of the great office he had borne, as depu- 
 ted by the people to adjudge the king. The last words he 
 pronounced upon the scaffold were a blessing to God " that 
 of his free grace he had engaged him in a causo not to be 
 repented of / say in a cause not to be repented of '' Here 
 the sheriff interposed, and the executioner did his dreadful 
 office. This was indeed a CAUSE which, in Vane's immor- 
 tal words, "gave life in death to all the owners of it and 
 ufferers for it."
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 387 
 
 full of carpenter's tools ; and being told that 
 such things are not at all fit for the work he 
 has been desired to do, answers, ' Oh, it mat- 
 ters not ! I will do your work well enough, I 
 warrant you.' "* 
 
 Upon the Restoration, the name of Henry 
 Marten was " absolutely excepted, both as to 
 life and property," from the act miscalled of 
 oblivion and indemnity ; but he surrendered, 
 with, Scot and others, resolved to take his trial. 
 Trial, however, it should not be called, for all 
 the proceedings against the regicides were 
 made up of the bloodiest and most savage 
 cruelty, the basest falsehoods, the most shock- 
 ing perfidy. The first determination taken by 
 the treacherous lawyers who directed the pro- 
 ceedings was the settlement of six notable 
 rules, among which we find these : That the 
 indictment should be for compassing the death 
 of the late king, under the 25th of Edward III., 
 and that his death should be one of the overt 
 acts to prove the compassing ; that overt acts 
 not in the indictment might be given in evi- 
 dence ; that two witnesses should not be re- 
 quired to each particular overt act. As a far- 
 ther precaution, the commission was delayed 
 until the appointment of new sheriffs more sla- 
 vishly ready than their predecessors to pack a 
 jury. Bills were sent up and found against 
 twenty-nine persons, t and their trials began 
 before thirty-four commissioners,}: on the 9th 
 of October, 1660, at the Old Bailey. 
 
 * Ludlow. 
 
 t Marten, Waller (Sit H.), Harrison, Carew, Cook, Pe- 
 ters, Scot, Clement, Scroop, Jones, Hacker, Axtel, Heven- 
 iugham, Millington, Tiehborn, Roe, Kilburn, Harvey, Pen- 
 nington, Smith, Downs. Potter, Garland, Fleetwood, Meyn, 
 i. Tempte, P. Temple, Hewlet, and Waite. 
 
 t The commissioners who by these proceedings damned 
 themselves to fame were Sir Thomas Allen, lord-mayor of 
 London, Lord-chancellor Hyde, the Earl of Southampton, 
 the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Albemarle (Monk), the 
 Marquis of Ormond, the Earl of Lindsay, the Earl of Man- 
 chester, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Berkshire, the Earl 
 of Sandwich, the Lord Say and Sele, the Lord Roberts, the 
 Lord Finch, Mr.Denzil Hollis, Sir Frederic Cornwallis, Sir 
 Charles Berkeley, Mr. Secretary Nicholas, Mr. Secretary 
 Morrice, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Mr. Arthur Annesley, 
 Sir Orlando Bridgman, lord-chief-baron, Mr. Justice Forster, 
 Mr. Justice Mallet, Mr. Justice Hyde, Mr. Baron Atkins, 
 Mr. Justice Twisden, Mr. Justice Tyrrel, Mr. Baron Turner, 
 Sir Harbottle Grimston, Sir William Wild, recorder of Lon- 
 d"ii. Mr. Sergeant Brown, Mr. Sergeant Hale, and Mr. John 
 Hnwel. The prosecutors in behalf of the king- were Sir 
 Jeffery Palmer, attorney-general ; Sir Heneage Finch, so- 
 licit-T-general ; Sir Edward Turner, attorney to the Duke 
 of York ; Sergeant Keeling, Mr. Wadham Wyndham. A 
 great portion of these men, it has been well pointed out 
 (Hist, from Mackintosh), who thus sat as judges, were as 
 guilty of treason under the 26th Edward III. and the charge 
 of the chief-baron, as those whom they tried. The judge de- 
 clared it to be the law that " no authority, no single person 
 or community of men, nor the people collectively or repre- 
 sentatively, have any coercive power over the King of Eng- 
 land, "and that to imprison the king was "a horrid treason" 
 by two statutes of Parliament. But of these commissioners, 
 fifteen, according to Ludlow, had levied war against the 
 king by their votes in Parliament, or by force of arms in 
 the field, and several of them still sat in Parliament when 
 Charks for the first time became its prisoner at Holmby. 
 Lords Manchester and Say were excepted from a general 
 pardon in one of the proclamations of the late king. Hollis 
 at-ted the most violent part in Parliament, and in the civil 
 war, or, as it was now called, the rebellion, with the far- 
 ther disqualification for the ends of justice of bringing to 
 the trial of Independents and Republicans the vindictive 
 passions of a partisan and a Presbyterian. Monk, in sitting 
 as a commissioner, but finished the part played by him in 
 the recent transactions. The palm of transcendent infamy 
 may be given to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who, having 
 purchased his pardon by his perfidy, now sat as the judge 
 of men with whom he had sat in council, for whose safety, 
 to the touching of a hair of their head, he had bbund him- 
 
 I On the 10th of October, after some months 
 ' of imprisonment, Marten was placed at the bar 
 ! of the Old Bailey, and required to plead. " I 
 desire," he said, " the benefit of the act of ob- 
 livion " Here he was interrupted, and told 
 he must plead guilty or not guilty ; and that if 
 j he demanded the benefit of the act of oblivion, 
 i it was a confession of being guilty ! Upon this 
 i Marten resumed earnestly, " I humbly conceive 
 the act of indemnity" Again he was inter- 
 rupted coarsely, and told he must plead. The 
 following is a report of what followed, in which 
 Marten's quiet and resolute self-possession ap- 
 pears very striking. 
 
 " The Court. ' You must plead guilty or not 
 guilty.' Marten. " If I plead, I lose the benefit 
 of that act.' Court. You are totally excepted 
 out of the act.' Marten. ' If it were so I would 
 plead. My name is not in that act.' Court. 
 * Henry Marten is there.' Mr. Solicitor-general. 
 1 Surely he hath been kept a close prisoner in- 
 deed, if he hath not seen the Act of Indemnity. 
 Show it him.' Mr. Skelton opened the act. 
 Court. ' How is it written ]' Clerk. ' It is Hen- 
 ry Marten.' The act being shown him, he said, 
 ' HENRY MARTEN ; my name is not so it is 
 Harry Marten.' Court. 'The difference of the 
 sound is very little. You are known by that 
 name of Marten.' Marten. ' I humbly conceive 
 all penal statutes ought to be understood liter- 
 ally.' Clerk. 'Are you guilty or not guilty ?' 
 Marten. ' I am not Henry Marten.' The clerk 
 again asked him as before, and the court said, 
 ' Be advised ; the effect of this plea will be 
 judgment ;' and the solicitor-general cited some- 
 what parallel to this, in a case formerly of 
 Baxter, where the name was Bagster, with an 
 s, and adjudged all one, being the same sound. 
 The clerk then put the question to him again, 
 when, instead of answering, he said, ' My lord, 
 I desire counsel.* Theje will arise matter of 
 law as well as fact.' The court then told him, 
 ' You are indicted for treason for a malicious, 
 traitorous compassing and imagining the king's 
 death ; if you have anything of justification, 
 plead not guilty, and you shall be heard ; for 
 if it be justifiable, it is not treason. The rule 
 is, either you must plead guilty, and so confess, 
 or not guilty, and put yourself upon your trial ; 
 there is no medium.' Marten. ' May I give any- 
 thing in evidence before a verdict 1' Court. 
 ' Yes ; upon your trial you may give any evi- 
 dence that the law warrants to be lawful evi- 
 dence.' The clerk here again put the question 
 of guilty or not guilty ; and the court said, 
 ' Understand one thing, because I would not 
 have you mistaken ; you cannot give in evi- 
 dence the misnomer.' Marten. ' I submit, and 
 plead not guilty.' Clerk. ' How will you be 
 tried V Marten. 'By God and my country.' 
 Clerk. ' God send you a good deliverance.' " 
 
 The crown counsel then opened the case, 
 and observed that Marten had " both signed 
 and sealed the precept for summoning the court 
 and the warrant for execution," and that he 
 had sat every day, and " particularly the day 
 of sentence." Here Marten interrupted the 
 prosecutor, and said that he did not decline 
 
 self in the penalty of " damnation body and soul," and with 
 whom he might have ben tried as an accessary. (Vol. vi., 
 p. 342.) 
 
 * He had before demanded the assistance of counsel, and 
 been refuged.
 
 388 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 a confession so as to matter of fact, provided 
 the malice were set aside. He had, he said, 
 with others, judged Charles I. to death, but 
 neither " maliciously, murderously, nor traitor- 
 ously." The crown counsel here laughed, and 
 promised to prove malice very easily ; and the 
 lord-chief-baron informed the prisoner that 
 " there is malice implied by law malice in the 
 act itself. That," he continued, " which you 
 call malice that you had no particular inten- 
 tion or design against the king's person, but in 
 relation to the government that will not be 
 to this present business. If it should extenu- 
 ate anything, that would be between God and 
 your own soul ; but as to that which is alleged 
 in the indictment, maliciously, murderously, 
 and traitorously, they are the consequences of 
 law. If a man meet another in the street, and 
 run him through, in this case the law implies 
 malice ; though but to an ordinary watchman, 
 there is malice by the law in the fact ; if there 
 was no such expressed personal malice, yet the 
 fact done implies malice in law." The solicitor- 
 general now interfered, and showed the mean- 
 ness of his thoughts, and his incapacity for 
 judging the actions of great-souled men, by 
 this piece of vulgar pleasantry : " My lord, he 
 does think a man may sit upon the death of the 
 king, sentence him to death, sign a warrant for 
 his execution, meekly, innocently, charitably, and 
 honestly!" Marten answered to this quietly 
 and with dignity : " I shall not presume to 
 compare my knowledge in the law with that of 
 that learned gentleman ; but, according to that 
 poor understanding of the law of England that 
 I was capable of, there is no fact that he can 
 name that is a crime in itself, but as it is cir- 
 cumstantiated. Of killing a watchman, as your 
 lordship instanced, a watchman may be killed 
 in not doing his office, and yet no murder." 
 The lord-chief-baron retorted : " I instanced 
 that of a watchman, to show there may be a 
 malice by law, though not expressed ; though 
 a man kill a watchman, intending to kill another 
 man, in that case it is malice in law against 
 him ; so in this case, if you went to kill the 
 king when he was not doing his office, because 
 he was in prison, and you hindered him from 
 it, the law implies malice in this. It is true, 
 all actions are circumstantiated, but the killing 
 of the king is treason of all treasons." And 
 was reinforced by a sage remark of Mr. Justice 
 Forster : "If a Watchman be killed, it is mur- 
 der ; it is in contempt of magistracy of the 
 powers above : the law says that contempt 
 adds to the malice." The crown counsel now 
 stood up with a triumphant air, and told their 
 lordships : " We shall now prove against the 
 prisoner at the bar (because he would wipe off 
 malice) that he did this very merrily, and was 
 in great sport at the time of signing the war- 
 rant for the king's execution." " That," qui- 
 etly answered Marten, " does not imply mal- 
 ice." Ewer's evidence was then given, as al- 
 ready related.* 
 
 Sir Purbeck Temple was now called as a 
 witness, and the counsel asked him what he 
 knew " of that gentleman (the prisoner), in his 
 carriage of this business." Sir Purbeck Tem- 
 ple gave the following evidence in answer : 
 " My lords, I being present in town when that 
 
 * See ante, p. 376. 
 
 horrid murder was contrived against the late 
 king, there came some persons of honour, ser- 
 vants of the late king, to my father's house, Sir 
 Edward Partridge, to engage me to join with 
 them to attempt the king's escape. In order 
 whereunto, they told me nothing would tend 
 so much to his majesty's service as to endeav- 
 our to discover some parts of their counsels ; 
 for that it was resolved by Cromwell to have 
 the king tried at the high court of justice, as 
 they called it, the next day, and desired me 
 (if possible) to be there to discover their coun- 
 sels, whereby the king might have notice, and 
 those that were to attempt his escape. In 
 order whereunto, the next day, by giving money 
 to the officer of the Painted Chamber, I got in 
 by daylight in the lobby of the Lords' House. 
 I espied a hole in the wall under the hangings, 
 where I placed myself till the council came, 
 where they were contriving the manner of try- 
 ing the king when he should come before them. 
 After the manner of praying and private con- 
 sults among themselves, when their prayer 
 was over, there came news that the king was 
 landed at Sir Robert Cotton's stairs ; at which 
 Cromwell ran to a window, and, looking on the 
 king as he came up the garden, he returned as 
 white as the wall. Returning to the board, he 
 speaks to Bradshaw and Sir Henry Mildmay 
 how they and Sir William Brereton had con- 
 cluded on such a business ; then turning to the 
 hoard, said thus : ' My masters, he is come, he 
 is come, and now we are doing that great 
 work that the whole nation will be full of; 
 therefore I desire you to let us resolve here 
 what answer we shall give the king when he 
 comes before us, for the first question that he 
 will ask us will be, By what authority and 
 commission do we try him"!' To which none 
 answered presently. Then, after a little space, 
 Henry Marten, the prisoner at the bar, rose up 
 and said, ' In the name of the Commons and 
 Parliament assembled, and all the good people 
 of England,' which none contradicted ; so all 
 rose up, and then I saw every officer that 
 waited in the room sent out by Cromwell to 
 call away my lord such a one (whose name I 
 have forgot), who was in the Court of Wards 
 chamber, that he should send away the instru- 
 ment, which came not, and so they adjourned 
 themselves to Westminster Hall, going into 
 the Court of Wards themselves as they went 
 thither. When they came to the court in 
 Westminster Hall, I heard the king ask them 
 the very same question that Cromwell had said 
 to them." 
 
 The solicitor-general then addressed the jury, 
 interrupting the last witness, to desire them to 
 place the correct interpretation on what the 
 prisoner had said about want of malice. " You 
 see, gentlemen," he said, " the prisoner at the 
 bar confesses his hand to the warrant for exe- 
 cuting the king ; you see, by his servant, how 
 merry he was at the sport ; you see, by this 
 witness, how serious he was at it, and gave the 
 foundation of that advice upon which they all 
 proceeded ; and now, gentlemen, he says he did 
 it not traitorously. / humbly conceive he means 
 it was justifiable /" To this Marten, without any 
 emotion, observed to the chief-baron : "My lord, 
 the commission went in the name of the Com- 
 mons assembled in Parliament, and the good
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 389 
 
 people of England ; and what a matter is it for 
 one of the commissioners to say, Let it be acted 
 by the good people of England 1" To this the 
 solicitor retorted, " You know all good people 
 did abhor it. I am sorry to see so little repent- 
 ance," 
 
 Being called upon for his defence, Marten ad- 
 dressed the court in these words. The touch- 
 ing effect of their quiet earnestness is not less- 
 ened by the consideration they show to the 
 place and position in which the speaker now 
 stood. " My lord, I hope that which is urged 
 by the learned counsel will not have that im- 
 pression upon the court and jury that it seems 
 to have, that I am so obstinate in a thing so ap- 
 parently ill ; my lord, if it were possible for that 
 blood to be in the body again, and every drop 
 that was shed in the late wars, I could wish it 
 with all my heart ; but, my lord, I hope it is 
 lawful to offer in my own defence that which, 
 when I did it, I thought I might do. My lord, 
 there was the House of Commons, as I under- 
 stood it (perhaps your lordships think it was 
 not a House of Commons) ; then it was the 
 supreme authority of England : it was so re- 
 puted both at home and abroad. My lord, I 
 suppose he that gives obedience to the authority 
 in being de facto, whether de jure or no I think 
 he is of a peaceable disposition, and far from a 
 traitor. My lord, I think there was a statute 
 made in Henry VII. 's time, whereby it was 
 provided that whosoever was in arms for the 
 king de facto, he should be indemnified, though 
 that king de facto was not de jure ; and if su- 
 preme officers de facto can justify a war (the 
 most pernicious remedy that was ever adjudg- 
 ed by mankind, be the cause what it will), I 
 presume the supreme authority of England may 
 justify a judicature, though it be not an author- 
 ity de facto. My lord, if it be said that it is 
 but a third estate, and a small parcel of that 
 my lord, it was all that was extant. I have 
 heard lawyers say, that if there be commons ap- 
 purtenant to a tenement, and that tenement all burn- 
 ed down except a small stick, the commons belong 
 to that one small piece, as it did to the tenement 
 when all standing. My lord, I shall humbly of- 
 fer to consideration whether the king were the 
 king indeed such a one whose peace, crowns, 
 and dignities were concerned in public matters. 
 My lord, he was not in execution of his offices he 
 was a prisoner." Marten then made allusion to 
 King Charles II., and said that, so long as the 
 representative body of England " supported him, 
 he (Marten) should pay obedience to him." "Be- 
 sides, my lord," he concluded, " I do owe my 
 life to him, if I am acquitted for this. I do con- 
 fess / did adhere to the Parliament's army heartily. 
 My life is at his mercy; now if his grace be 
 pleased to grant it, I shall have a double obli- 
 gation to him." 
 
 The solicitor-general followed in aggravation 
 of the case. " My lord," he said, " this gentle- 
 man, the prisoner at the bar, hath entered into 
 a discourse, that I am afraid he must have an 
 answer in Parliament for it. He' hath owned 
 the king, but thinks his best title is the acknowl- 
 edgment of the people ; and he that hath that, 
 let him be who he will, hath the best title." 
 Marten here interrupted the solicitor with these 
 few words : " I have one word more, my lord. 
 I humbly desire that the jury would take notice, 
 
 that, though I am accused in the name of the 
 king, that if I be acquitted, the king is not cast. 
 It doth not concern the king that the prisoner 
 be condemned ; it concerns him that the pris- 
 oner be tried. It is as much to his interest, 
 crown, and dignity, that the innocent be acquit- 
 ted, as that the nocent be condemned." 
 
 The lord-chief-baron delivered his charge, in 
 which he took occasion to observe : " Marten 
 hath done that which looks forward more than 
 backward ; that is, to repentance of that which 
 is past, than obedience of that which is to come. 
 It is a trouble to repeat those things which ho 
 said himself, and truly, I hope in charity he 
 meant better than his words were." A verdict 
 of guilty was returned by the jury " after a lit- 
 tle consultation." 
 
 It has been said that Henry Marten sought to 
 save his life upon his trial by professions of re- 
 pentance and contrition. The reader has the 
 means of judging the utter falsehood of such a 
 charge. No late-found loyalty was his. His 
 conduct in that hour was what it had been his 
 whole life through easy, self-possessed, and 
 firm. He offered no uncalled-for offence to the 
 court, it is true, or to the powers once more in 
 possession of the kingdom. There was about 
 Harry Marten, in all circumstances, as there 
 generally is with men of wit or various accom- 
 plishment, that habitual grace, that continual 
 sense of the proprieties in manner, which no- 
 thing could interrupt, ever varying and adapt- 
 ing itself to all circumstances alike ; but when 
 he left the bar that day, after receiving sentence 
 (and he left it with a step that betokened a 
 light heart still, though a firm one), no one 
 entertained a doubt but that the next display 
 of his accomplishments and his courage would 
 be made upon a scaffold. 
 
 And yet his life was spared. Some of the 
 Royalists visited him in prison, and requested 
 him to petition Parliament for mercy. Bishop 
 Burnet says, upon this, that his " vices" had 
 procured him such friends. Mr. Disraeli says, 
 with greater truth, that the news of his im- 
 pending execution had roused the grateful me- 
 diation of the numerous friends of the opposite 
 party to his own, whom in his own days of 
 power " his facetious genius had so timely 
 served."* He acceded to their request, and 
 sent a petition to the two Houses. In this pe- 
 tition he observed, with the careless wit which 
 no misfortune could subdue, that he had sur- 
 rendered himself upon the Restoration in con- 
 sequence of the king's " declaration of Breda," 
 and that, " since he had never obeyed any royal 
 proclamation before this, he hoped that he 
 should not be hanged for taking the king's word 
 now." 
 
 On the discussion of the matter in the House 
 of Commons, a Royalist writerf tells us, " the 
 grave and sober members were generally for 
 having him pay his forfeited life ; but he had 
 many advocates in those who had partook of 
 the pleasures of his conviviality, both within 
 and without the House." Notwithstanding the 
 
 * Commentaries, vol. v., p. 418. The men of his own 
 party, with whom he had ever contracted friendships, ex- 
 hibited on all occasions a singular attachment to him ; and 
 Ludlow relates of his lather, Sir Henry Ludlow, that he be- 
 lieved his death was chiefly occasioned by his deep grief nt 
 the expulsion of Marten from the House ot Commons in 1643 
 
 t Noble. Echard.
 
 390 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 latter circumstance, however, the Commons 
 took no step upon the petition. The Lords af- 
 terward took it into consideration, and sum- 
 moned Marten before them. Here his conduct 
 was still as it had ever been. Worn with im- 
 prisonment, and distracted with hopes deferred 
 (for three months had now passed since his 
 sentence), he confessed no fault, extenuated no- 
 thing of that for which his life was sought in j 
 penalty, but, making a half-pleasant allusion to 
 the past, besought their lordships to give him 
 more time to live. We find from the Lords' 
 Journals (7th February, 1661) that "Mr. Mar- 
 ten being demanded what he could say for him- 
 self why the aforesaid act for his execution 
 should not pass," he replied, that his hope was 
 in the great mercy of their lordships, greater 
 here than it could be in any other case, since 
 "the honourable House of Commons, that he 
 did so idolize, had given him up to death, and 
 now this honourable House of Peers, which he 
 had so much opposed, especially in their power 
 of judicature, had suddenly been made the sanc- 
 tuary to flee to for life." Lord Falkland and 
 other peers spoke very warmly in his behalf, 
 and the sentence of death was remitted. Yet 
 the mercy, after all, was more than question- 
 able. He was ordered to be imprisoned for life. 
 
 A blank, then, suddenly falls here on the gay- 
 ety, the grace, the high purposes, the wit of 
 Harry Marten ! a blank even felt by the most 
 prejudiced advocates of the men it had been 
 the business of his life to oppose. " Such," 
 says one of them, " was the last sad doom of 
 this man, whose quickness of thought, elegance 
 of manners, vivacity, wit, and charming gayety 
 had often fascinated, not only the convivial 
 board, but the grave, austere, sour Republican 
 chiefs in the House of Commons, who so often 
 chose him their manager and director !"* 
 
 His first prison was the Tower ; he was af- 
 terward ordered to Windsor, from which Aubrey 
 says he was removed, " because he was an eie- 
 sore to majestic ;" his final place of imprison- 
 ment was the Castle of Chepstow, in Mon- 
 mouthshire. It would seem that this place 
 was selected with some view to a former and 
 prouder connexion with it, that might render 
 his present humiliation deeper, for Wood tells 
 us that at the period of his greatest influence 
 in the country, " the Welsh counties desired 
 Henry Marten for their commander-in-chief." 
 In Chepstow he lingered out twenty long years 
 of imprisonment. " For twenty years," ex- 
 claimed a great living writer, in his early days 
 of hope and of enthusiasm, standing in the very 
 room that had been occupied by the illustrious 
 prisoner, 
 
 " For twenty years, secluded from mankind, 
 Here MARTEN lingered. Often have these walls 
 Echo'd his footsteps, as with even tread 
 He paced around his prison ; not to him 
 Did nature's fair varieties exist ! 
 He never saw the sun's delightful beams, 
 Save when through yon high bars it pour'd a sad 
 
 * Even old Anthony i Wood, after exhausting every va- 
 riety of abuse on Marten, is obliged to finish with the fol- 
 lowing admissions, qualified a little at the close. " He was 
 a man of good natural parts, was a boon familiar, witty, and 
 quick with repartees, was exceeding happy in apt instances, 
 pertinent and very biting, so that his company being es- 
 teemed incomparable by many, would have been acceptable 
 to the greatest persons, only he would be drunk too soon, 
 and so put an end to all the mirth for the present." Ath. 
 Oxon., vol. hi., p. 1241. 
 
 And broken splendour. Dost thoa ask Tiis crime 1 
 
 He h:td rebeli'd against a king, and sat 
 
 In judgment on him for his ardent mind 
 
 Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth, 
 
 And peace and liberty. Wild dreams ! but such 
 
 As Plato loved ; such as, with holy zeal, 
 
 Our Milton worshipp'd. Bless'd hopes ! awhile 
 
 From man withheld, even to the latter days 
 
 When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd !"* 
 
 And through all the early, and, indeed, solitary 
 years of his imprisonment, those ardent hopes 
 and goodliest plans may well be thought to 
 have still remained, his refuge and sustainment. 
 He had other consolations in his misery, which 
 were named before. It brought back the long- 
 estranged affection of earlier days his wife's 
 sympathy, and his daughter's affectionate zeal. 
 His own estate confiscated by the crown, ev- 
 erything he could need in the narrow circuit of 
 his prison he received out of the jointure that 
 had been reserved to his wife on their mar- 
 riage ; and when, in the latter years of his im- 
 prisonment, the severities commemorated by 
 the poet had been in some respects relaxed, the 
 visits of his daughter relieved the loneliness 
 and infirmity of age. His wife had died some 
 little time before. t 
 
 One anecdote of Marten remains to be told. 
 It is the only anecdote we have of his impris- 
 onment, the single gleam which breaks through 
 the now impenetrable obscurity of those melan- 
 choly years, to reveal the man ; and with its aid 
 we see the man unchanged. He is firm, frank, 
 fearless as ever. He had been suffered, during 
 the last few years of his life, in consideration 
 of the harmlessness, no less than the infirmi- 
 ties, of his great age, to walk out of his prison 
 occasionally, under the strict conduct of a keep- 
 er, into the neighbouring village of St. Pierre. 
 A person of the name of Lewis lived here, and 
 when he saw him, would ask him into his house. 
 It grew into a habit at last ; and a visit to this 
 house, and a conversation with its owner, were 
 the old man's last remaining comforts. Some 
 unlucky day, however, this Lewis, who was a 
 slavish Royalist (as people who lived in the 
 neighbourhood of royal castles in those days 
 generally were), happened to ask his visiter if, 
 supposing the deed were to be done over again, 
 he would again sign the warrant for Charles 
 
 * This inscription for the apartment in which Marten was 
 confined was composed by ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D., when 
 he was the Laureate of Wat Tyler, and before he had the 
 remotest idea of Incoming the Laureate of George the 
 Fourth! GEORGE CANNING, the literary Robespierre of 
 his day, sharpened his axe to a razor's keenness for the ex- 
 ecution of the distinguished victim. The inscription of 
 Southey led Canning to compose the following unrivalled 
 parody: 
 
 Inscription for the door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. 
 Brovtnrigge, the 'Prentice-ride, was confined previous to 
 her Execution. 
 
 " For one long term, or e'er her trial came, 
 Here Brownrigge linger'd. Often have these cells 
 Echo'd her blasphemies, as with shrill voice 
 She scream'd for fresh Geneva. Not to her 
 Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy streets, 
 St. Giles', its. fair varieties expand, 
 Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart, she went 
 To execution. Dost thou ask her crime ? 
 She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death, 
 And hid them in the coal-hole for her mind 
 Shaped strictest place of discipline. Sage schemes, 
 Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine 
 Of the Orythian goddess he bade flog 
 The little Spartans ; such as erst chastised 
 Our Milton when at college. For this act 
 Did Brownrigge swing. Harsh laws ! but time shall com* 
 When France shall reign, and laws be all repeal'd !" 
 t Aubrey, Bodleian Letters. Ath. Oxon., vol. iii., p. 1243.
 
 HENRY MARTEN. 
 
 391 
 
 the First's execution. Marten told him " Yes ;" 
 and was never after received into the house of 
 Mr. Lewis.* The end, however, which he 
 must surely now have prayed for, was rapidly 
 approaching, and at last, in 1681, enfeebled with 
 the weight of seventy-eight years, and the suf- 
 ferings of a long imprisonment, against which 
 his strong natural health had wonderfully borne 
 him up, he was suddenly, while sitting at din- 
 ner, struck with apoplexy, and fell dead from 
 his chair. 
 
 A paper containing the following verses was 
 found in the room where he died.f They ap- 
 pear to have expressed the very latest of his 
 thoughts before death, and he had formed the 
 opening letters, it will be seen, into his own 
 
 * I have not the original authority for this anecdote near 
 me, but I transcribe one version of it from a French work 
 by the accomplished M. Guizot. " Henri Marten conserva 
 jusqu'di la fin de sa vie la mime opinion sur la mort du roi. 
 Un M. Lewis, habitant a Saint Pierre, aux environs de 
 Chepstow, le recevait souvent chezlui, lorsqu'il sortait avec 
 son garde. II lui demanda un jour si, dans le cas oula chose 
 serait 4 recommsncer, il signerait de noveau 1'ordre de l'6x- 
 6cution de son souverain, Marten repondit affirmativement ; 
 sur quoi M. Lewis cessa de la recevoir." M. Guizofi Notet 
 to Ludlmo. 
 
 t Wood's Ath. Oxoij., iii., 1242. Aubrey also mentions 
 this circumstance. 
 
 name an old, fantastic resource from the wea- 
 rying length of lonely hours. 
 
 " Here or elsewhere (all's one to you to me !), 
 
 Earth, air, or water gripes my ghostless dust, 
 None knowing when brave fire shall set it free. 
 Reader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust, 
 You'll gladly do and suffer what you must ! 
 " My life was worn with serving you and you, 
 And death is my reward, and welcome too : 
 Revenge destroying but itself; while I 
 To birds of prey leave my old cage, and fly : 
 Examples preach to th' eye care, then, mine says, 
 Not how you end, but how you spend your days." 
 
 Thus, to the Very last hour, a sense of the 
 great matters in which his early years had been 
 engaged was present with this eminent person, 
 and the last lesson he desired to leave to pos- 
 terity was in the spirit of those ancients on 
 whose actions he had modelled his own that 
 the most miserable or the most painful of deaths 
 was nothing in the memory of a well-spent life. 
 He had earned the glorious privilege of be- 
 queathing such a lesson, for never was a cause 
 more just or honourable, or in its result more 
 fraught with blessings, felt to the present hour, 
 than that which among the bravest of its advo- 
 cates exalting it by his generous purpose as 
 he graced it by his wit counts with pride the 
 name of HENRY MARTEN.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 1599-1658. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL was born at Huntingdon, 
 in the large Gothic house to which his father's 
 brewery was attached,* on the 25th of April, 
 1599.t The name he bore had not infrequent- 
 ly been heard of in English history, but it was 
 destined to become immortal in his person by 
 the deeds with which he connected it whether 
 for good or evil, these pages, undertaken in no 
 spirit of unjust detraction or of blind admira- 
 tion, may possibly help to determine. 
 
 Milton, in his " Defensio Secunda," thus al- 
 ludes to the family of Cromwell : " Est Olive- 
 rius Cromwellus genere nobili atque illustri or- 
 tua : nomen republica olim sub regibus bene 
 administrata clarum, religione simul orthodoxa 
 vel restituta turn primum apud nos vel stabilita 
 clarius."t The noble and illustrious race here 
 pointed at was that of Thomas Cromwell, earl 
 of Essex ; a man of humble birth, $ but who 
 
 * A friend of Cromwell's last biographer, Dr. Russell, 
 thus describes the building and its present state : " That it 
 was not," as stated by Mr. Noble, " out of the ruins of St. 
 John's Hospital that Mr. Robert Cromwell's mansion was 
 erected, is manifest from the fact that the said institution 
 is still existing and flourishing, and from its funds is sup- 
 ported the grammar-school of the town in which Oliver 
 himself was educated. As Cromwell's ancestor, Sir Rich- 
 ard, obtained a rich dowry of the old abbey possessions from 
 Henry VIII., it has been supposed that the house and lands 
 of the Augustine friars came into the family in this way. 
 But it is stated in the Valor Ecclesiasticus that they were 
 granted to Thomas Andern on the suppression of the monas- 
 teries ; and I ascertained, from an inspection of the ancient 
 wills, registered in the office of the Archdeacon of Hunting- 
 don, that the house was occupied as a brewery by a Mr. 
 Philip Clam before it came into the possession of Robert 
 Cromwell, the Protector's father. The latter must there- 
 fore have obtained the property by purchase ; and as his 
 fortune was but small, we find that he continued to carry 
 on the brewery formerly established on the premises. The 
 house was built of stone, with Gothic windows and pro- 
 jecting attics, and must have been one of the most consider- 
 able in the borough. It had extensive back premises, in 
 which the brewery was carried on, and a fine garden. In 
 the year 1810, the estate was purchased by James Rust, 
 Esq., whose extensive improvements have entirely obliter- 
 ated every trace of the Cromwell mansion. Previous to 
 this date, the chamber in which Oliver was born, and the 
 room under it, remained as they were at the time when that 
 event took place ; and an outbuilding, noticed by Noble, in 
 which Cromwell was said to have held forth to the Puri- 
 tans, was pointed out to strangers.'' [I regard Russell's 
 wprk as partaking strongly of the age of Charles II., and by 
 no means affording just views of the Protector. No man, 
 however, who wishes to obtain a just and comprehensive 
 view of this greatest of England's great men, will fail to 
 consult that admirable work just published by Carlyle, 
 " The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell." It un- 
 folds the sturdy heart of Cromwell, and, though he may 
 be denied a place in the collection of the great men whose 
 statues are to adorn the British Parliament House, this la- 
 bour of Carlyle's will disabuse the public mind, and en- 
 throne him in the grateful recollections of the lovers of lib- 
 erty. 
 
 I omit many notes which I had prepared to affix to this ar- 
 ticle, in consequence of the publication of this very satisfac- 
 tory work, lately issued by Messrs. Wiley <fc Putnam. C.] 
 
 t I can subjoin the entry of the parish register : " Olive- 
 rus filius Robert! Cromwell, gent., et Elizabeths uxoris 
 ejus, natus 25 die Aprilis, et baptizatus 29" ejusdem men- 
 sis, 1599. E registro ecclesise paroch. sti Johannis, infra 
 oppidum Huntingdon." 
 
 i Milton's Prose Works, by Birch, folio edition, vol. ii., 
 p. 344. " Oliver Cromwell was sprung from a noble and 
 illustrious family ; the name was formerly famous in the 
 state when well governed by kings ; more famous, at the 
 same time, for orthodox religion, then either first restored 
 or established among- us." 
 
 t> The reader need not be told that this was the famous 
 Thomas Cromwell of the Reformation rthe .son of Walter 
 
 had risen to be Henry VIII.'s prime minister 
 and vicar-general of England, and whose sister 
 had married into the family of Oliver's ances- 
 tors. The latter were Welsh, and bore the 
 name of Williams,* until Sir Richard Williams 
 the issue of this marriage between the sister 
 of Essex and Mr. Morgan Williams, " of Llan- 
 ishen in the county of Glamorgan" having 
 risen into favour and knighthood at Henry 
 VIII.'s court by his own gallant prowess and 
 the influence of his uncle, and having obtained, 
 among other extensive grants of nunneries and 
 monasteries at that time dissolved, the nunnery 
 of Hinchinbrook and the abbey of Ramsey, in 
 the county of Huntingdon, fixed his seat at the 
 former place, and assumed thenceforward the 
 name of Cromwell, in honour of the chief archi- 
 tect of his princely fortunes. 
 
 Thus from the chivalrous son of a Glamor- 
 ganshire squire the worldly power and splen- 
 dour of the family of the Cromwells took its 
 rise, as from the farmer son of a brewer of 
 Huntingdon it afterward dated its immortality. 
 This Richard Cromwell was one of the few 
 favourites and servants of Henry VIII. whom 
 he did not send to the scaffold ; and when, in 
 the old Chronicles of Stow.t we catch the dawn 
 
 Cromwell, a blacksmith of Putney who rose to power on 
 the wreck of Wolsey's fortunes, and fell suddenly down by 
 disregarding Wolsey's fate. Doubtless he was not free from 
 error, but his memory claims a larger share of our respect 
 than is generally due to such men. 
 
 * The pedigree of this family, from whom Oliver Crom- 
 well directly sprung, commences, according to the indus- 
 trious and satisfactory researches of Mr. Noble, with Glo- 
 thyan, lord of Powis, who, about the middle of the eleventh 
 century, married Morveth, the daughter and heiress of Ed- 
 win ap Tydwell, lord of Cardigan. William ap Yevan, the 
 representative of the family in the fifteenth century, was 
 first in tlve service of Caspar, duke of Bedford, Henry VIII.'s 
 uncle, and afterward in that of Henry himself. Morgan 
 Williams, or, rather, Morgan ap Williams (he gare up the 
 latter name in obedience to Henry VIII.'s policy of mingling 
 together, as much as possible, the English and Welsh names 
 and families), who married Essex's sister, was William ap 
 Yevan's son. [I am not quite willing to join Mr. Carlyle in 
 his contempt for Noble, who really has deserved the grati- 
 tude of posterity for his laborious researches. C.] 
 
 t Stow thus describes the tournament ; the incident at 
 its close is given in Fuller's Church History. Here are 
 Stow's words: "On May-day was a great triumph of just- 
 ing at Westminster, which justs had been proclaimed in 
 France, Flanders, Scotland, and Spain, for all commers that 
 would, against the challengers of England, which were Sir 
 John Dudley, Sir T. Seymour, Sir T. Poynings, Sir George 
 Carew, knights ; Anthony Kingston, and Richard Crom- 
 well, esquires: which said challengers came into the listes 
 that day, richly apparelled, and their horses tra;i'0tl all in 
 white, gentlemen riding afore them, apparelled all with 
 velvet and white sarsnet, and all their servants in white 
 doublets, and hosen cut all in the Burgonion fashion ; and 
 there came to just against them the said day, of defendants 
 forty-six, the Earl of Surry being the foremost ; Lord Will- 
 iame Howard, Lord Clinton, and Lord Cromwell, son and 
 heir to T. Cromwell, earle of Essex, and chamberlaine of 
 England, with other, which were all richly apparelled : 
 and that day Sir John Dudley was overthrown in the field, 
 by mischance of his horse, by one Andrew Breme ; never- 
 theless, he brake divers spears valiantly after that ; and af- 
 ter the said justs done, the said challengers rode to Durham 
 Place, where they kept open household, and feasted the 
 king and queen, with their ladies, and all the court. The 
 2d of May, Anthony Kingstone and Richard Cromwell were 
 made knights of the same place. The 3d of May, the said 
 challengers did tourney on horseback, with swords ; there 
 came against them twenty-nine defendants : Sir John Dud- 
 ley and the Earl of Surrey running first, which, the first
 
 CX // 
 
 t- T '/V//AV 7 
 
 *RPtR KND BROTHEBS NEW YOR
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 393 
 
 of his loyal fortunes, it is as though it gleamed 
 reproachfully down upon the terrible act which 
 laid the foundation of the mightier fortunes of 
 his great-grandson Oliver. On May-day, 1540, 
 a brilliant tournament at Westminster opens 
 its lists before us, in which Richard Cromwell 
 and others had proclaimed themselves to 
 France, Flanders, and Scotland the defenders 
 of the honour and rights of their English king. 
 Henry VIII. looks on, and when Sir Richard 
 Cromwell has struck down challenger after chal- 
 lenger with undaunted arm, forth from his deep 
 broad chest rolls out the royal laugh of Henry : 
 " Formerly thou wast my Dick, but hereafter 
 thou shall be my diamond." Then from the 
 finger of majesty drops a diamond ring, which 
 Sir Richard picks up and again presents to 
 Henry, who laughingly places it on his finger, 
 and bids him ever after bear such a one in the 
 fore gamb of the demi-lion in his crest ; and 
 such a ring did Oliver Cromwell wear there* 
 when he left his farm at Ely to bear more 
 formidable arms at the challenge of a king ! 
 
 The sudden and violent fall of Essex had no 
 disastrous effect on his kinsman's fortunes, 
 which shone brightly to the last. Enriched to 
 an almost unprecedented extent by the plunder 
 of the religious houses, he left to his son, 
 Henry Cromwell, the inheritance of a most 
 noble fortune. t Nor was this Henry less for- 
 
 course, lost their gauntlets, and that day Sir Richard Crom- 
 well overthrew M. Palmer in the field off his horse, to the 
 great honour of the challengers. The 5th of May, the said 
 challengers fought on foot, at the barriers, and against 
 thorn came thirty defendants, which fought valiantly, but 
 Sirjlichard Cromwell overthrew that day, at the barriers, 
 M. Culpepper in the field ; and the sixth of May the said 
 challengers brake up their household: in the which time 
 of their house-keeping they had not only feasted the king, 
 queen, ladies, and the whole court, as was aforesaid, but 
 on the Tuesday in the Rogation Weeke they feasted all the 
 knights and burgesses of the Common House in the Parlia- 
 ment ; and on the morrow after, they had the mayor of 
 London, the aldermen, and all their wives to dinner ; and 
 on the Friday they brake it up as is aforesaid." Sir Richard 
 and the five challengers had then each of them, as a reward 
 of their valour, 100 marks annually, with a house to live in, 
 to them and to their heirs forever, granted out of the mon- 
 astery of the friars of St. Francis, in Stamford, which was 
 dissolved October 8, 1538 ; and his majesty was the better 
 enabled to do this, as Sir Will. Weston, the last prior, 
 who had an annuity out of the monastery, died two days 
 after the justs. Fortunate king and fortunate knights, to 
 have a prior die so opportunely ! But to break a heart is 
 not a bad recipe for death at any time. 
 
 * See Noble's Protectoral House, vol. i., p. 11, and Ful- 
 ler's Church History. 
 
 t In his will (which is dated as early as June, 1545), it 
 appears, he styled himself by the alias Williams, a custom 
 observed by all the Cromwells up to and even past the time 
 of Oliver. An extract of this will, in which Sir Richard 
 describes himself as of " the privy chamber of the king," is 
 given by Mr. Noble. " He directs that his body shall be 
 buried in the place where he should die ; and devises his 
 estates in the counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Lincoln, 
 and Bedford, to his eldest sou Henry, with the sum of 500 
 to purchase him necessary furniture, when he shall come 
 of age : his estates in Glamorganshire he devises to his son 
 Francis (his only other son), and bequeaths 300 to each 
 of his nieces, Joan and Ann, daughters of his brother, Wal- 
 ter Cromwell ; and directs, that if Tho. Wingfield, then in 
 ward to him, should choose to marry either of them, he 
 shall have his wardship remitted to him, otherwise that the 
 same should be sold ; he also leaves three of his best great 
 horses to the king, and one other great horse to Lord Crom- 
 well, after the king has chosen : legacies are also left to 
 Sir John Williams, knt., and Sir Edw. North, kut., chan- 
 cellor of the court of augmentation, and to several other 
 persons, who seem to have been servants. Gab. Donne, 
 clerk; Andr. Judde, Will. Coke, Phil. Lenthall, and Rich. 
 Servin<fton, were appointed executors. This will was proved 
 Nov. 28th, 1546. Sir Richard," Mr. Noble adds, "must 
 have left a prodigious fortune to his family, by what he 
 possessed by descent, grants and purchases of church lauds, 
 
 DDD 
 
 tunate than his father. Elizabeth esteemed 
 him highly, knighted him in 1563, and in the 
 following year honoured him by a visit at his 
 family seat of Hinchinbrook, on her return from 
 the University of Cambridge. His memory 
 still lived in the neighbourhood of his estates 
 some century since, for he had associated it 
 with generous actions in the hearts of the poor 
 of the district, and, to the poor, long memories 
 for benefits belong. They called him in his 
 lifetime the Golden Knight, for he never entered 
 any of the towns or villages around him with- 
 out bestowing some money on the needy and 
 distressed ; and that honourable title survived 
 him.* He lived to a good old age, and left 
 behind him six sons and five daughters, of whom 
 the second daughter, Elizabeth, gave birth to 
 the patriot Hampden, and of whom the second 
 son, Robert, the meanest in fortune, was des- 
 tined to exert an influence on the destinies of 
 the world unapproached by the most illustrious 
 of his ancestors, or the most powerful of their 
 patron princes, for he was the father of Oliver 
 Cromwell. 
 
 Mr. Robert Cromwell, but for this memorable 
 circumstance, would have lived and died un- 
 known in Huntingdon, since his tastes were 
 humble as his fortunes.* He was sent, indeed, 
 to one of Elizabeth's Parliaments by the elec- 
 tors of that borough, but he appears to have 
 experienced only enough of that sort of public 
 life to conceive disgust to it, since all the duties 
 he afterward discharged were confined to his 
 native town, in which he served as one of the 
 bailiffs,^ sat as justice of the peace, and, when 
 
 and from the sums he must have acquired by filling very 
 lucrative employments, with the liberal donations of his 
 sovereign, King Henry VIII. This is evident from his pos- 
 sessions in Huntingdonshire, the annual amount of which, 
 at an easy rent, were worth at least 3000 perann. ; these 
 estates only, in Fuller's time, were, he says, valued by 
 some at 20,000, and by others at 30,000 annually, and 
 upward ; and from what these estates now let for, in and 
 near Ramsey and Huntingdon (which are only a part of 
 them), I should presume that Sir Richard's estates in that 
 county only would now bring in as large a revenue as any 
 peer at this time enjoys ; and yet it is evident that he had 
 considerable property in several other counties." 
 
 * See Noble's Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, vol. i., 
 p. 22. 
 
 t These fortunes are thus described by Noble : " Rob. 
 Cromwell, Esq., second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, knt., 
 had, by the will of his father, an estate in and near the 
 town of Huntingdon, consisting chiefly, if not wholly, of 
 possessions belonging formerly to the monastery of St. Mary 
 for Augustine friars, amounting, with the great tithes of 
 Hartford, to about 300 per ann." 
 
 t His name as bailiff is to be found at this day in the nave 
 of a church in Huntingdon. Dr. Russell's friend, before 
 referred to, says : " In the nave of St. Mary's Church, 
 Huntingdon, the following notice is to be seen on one of the 
 pillars : 
 
 ' Cromwell. 
 Turpin. 
 Bailiffs. 
 
 The church was not built till 1620, and Robert Crom- 
 well, the Protector's father, who must be the person here 
 meant, died in 1617. The inscription was probably made 
 by some curious person, after the name of Cromwell had 
 4 gathered all its fame,' and drawn public attention and in- 
 quiry to the ancestors of the Protector." That he took great 
 interest in the .concerns of his native county, and was con- 
 sulted respecting its improvements by its leading proprie- 
 tors', is, however, indisputable, from a passage in Sir Will- 
 iam Dugdale's History of the Fens, where his signature is 
 found attached to a certificate addressed to the privy coun- 
 cil in 1605, stating that the draining of the fens in North- 
 ampton, Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge (a work which 
 his son afterward resolutely opposed), was practicable, and 
 might bo accomplished " without peril to any haven or 
 county." In recommending this great improvement, he wa 
 joined by sixteen of the principal persons in the four con <.
 
 394 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 his family had outgrown his income, betook 
 himself to the occupation of a brewer. He had 
 married in early life Elizabeth, the daughter 
 of William Steward, of the city of Ely, an un- 
 doubted descendant of the royal family of the 
 Stuarts.* This lady had already been the wife 
 of "Will. Lynne, gent., son and heir-apparent 
 of John Lynne of Bassingborne, Esq.,"t when, 
 in the second year of her widowhood, with a 
 jointure of only 60 a year,} she married Mr. 
 Robert Cromwell. 
 
 Thus allied to a self-ennobled family on the 
 one hand, and on the other to royalty itself, 
 Mr. Robert Cromwell and his wife were never- 
 theless brewers of Huntingdon. It is strange, 
 indeed, that this should ever have been dispu- 
 ted, since not the remotest shade of doubt, and 
 as little of discredit, can possibly be thrown 
 upon the fact. The records of the purchase of 
 the brewery, and of its management, are in 
 existence still ; and from the unimpeachable 
 testimony of many witnesses, that of Roger 
 Coke may be selected, whose father, being 
 asked whether he knew the Protector, answer- 
 ed, " Yes, and his father too, when he kept his 
 brewhouse in Huntingdon." A contemporary 
 writer tells us something more : " Both Mr. 
 Cromwell and his wife were persons of great 
 worth, and no way inclined to disaffection, either 
 in their civil or religious principles, but remark- 
 able for living upon a small fortune with de- 
 cency, and maintaining a large family by their 
 frugal circumspection. "|| In subjoining the 
 statement of Sir William Dugdale, we may, 
 perhaps, discover the ridiculous pretence with 
 which the scrupulous asserters of Mr. Robert 
 Cromwell's " pure gentility" satisfy their ten- 
 der consciences, and lay the burden of the 
 brewery on his wife. " Robert Cromwell," 
 says Dugdale.T " though he was, by the coun- 
 tenance of his elder brother, Sir Oliver, made 
 a justice of the peace in Huntingdonshire, had 
 but a slender estate ; much of his support be- 
 ing a brewhouse in Huntingdon, chiefly man- 
 aged by his wife." The Royalist chronicler, 
 Heath,** is still more explicit on the latter point. 
 " The brewhouse," he says, " was kept in his 
 father's time, and managed by his mother and 
 his father's servants, without any concernment 
 of his father therein, the accounts being al- 
 ways given to the mistress, who, after her hus- 
 
 tles most immediately interested, and among them by his 
 brother Sir Oliver. * See Appendix A. 
 
 t The following inscription rests on a tombstone in the 
 Cathedral of Ely : " Hie iuhumatus jacet optima: spei ado- 
 lescens Gulielmus Lynne, generosus, filius & haeres appa- 
 rens Johannis Lyniie de Bassingborne in Co. Cantab. Arm. 
 qui quidem Gulielmus immatura morte peremptus in ipsius 
 .^Etate flore 27 agens Annum, 27 die Julij A.D. 1589, non 
 sine summo omnium dolore, ex hac Vita placide migravit ; 
 uniquam relinquens filiam Catherinam scilicet, quam etiam 
 17 die Martij sequeutis praepropera mors eadem Naturae lege 
 natam sustulit, simulque jam cum Patre aeterno fruiturgau- 
 dio Posuit amoris ergd moestissima illius Conjux Eliza- 
 betha filia Gulielrni Steward de Ely Armigeri." 
 
 t The smallness of this jointure (for the family fortune 
 that remained to the Stewards rested solely with her broth- 
 er. Sir Thomas, of whom mention will be made hereafter) 
 was a favourite subject of lampoon with the. Cavaliers up 
 to the period of his death. ' It is hoped," I find in one of 
 their scurrilous papers, " that now our enormous taxes will 
 be eased, as the Protector's highness, by the death of his 
 mother, is freed from her dowry, which amounted to the 
 prodigious sum of 60 annually." 
 
 $ See Detection, vol. ii., p. 57. I! Noble, vol. i., p. 84. 
 
 T See Short View of the Recent Troubles, p. 459. 
 
 ** In his Flagellum, p. 15. 
 
 band's death, did continue in the same employ- 
 ment and calling of a brewer, and thought it 
 no disparagement to sustain the estate and 
 port of a younger brother, as Mr. Robert Crom- 
 well was, by those lawful means ; however, 
 not so reputable as other gains and trades are 
 accounted." True, not so reputable as Mr. 
 Heath would have accounted the trade and 
 gain of a servile follower of courts, of a mean 
 flatterer of kings, of a base tool of incapable 
 favourites or ministers. Had Mr. Cromwell 
 been all this, and lent out his wife in further- 
 ance of the calling, loud should have been the 
 praises of the apostles of the Restoration ! 
 
 Scarcely less contemptible do they seem to 
 us, however, who foolishly imagine they exalt 
 the claims of Robert Cromwell's son, in making 
 out his father an idle "gentleman," and his 
 mother a laborious drudge. That the wife as- 
 sisted the husband in his pursuits is yet indis- 
 putable, as it was natural, for the fashion of 
 fine ladyism in a tradesman's wife had not then 
 " come up" in the world ; while of her own 
 more homely fashion, she proved the superior 
 advantage, when her husband's death had left 
 her the sole protectress of a young and numer- 
 ous family. An interesting person, indeed, 
 was this mother of Oliver Cromwell a woman 
 with the glorious faculty of self-help when oth- 
 er assistance failed her : ready for the demands 
 of fortune in its extremest adverse time of 
 spirit and energy equal to her mildness and pa- 
 tience ; who, with the labour of her own hands, 
 gave dowries to five daughters sufficient to 
 marry them into families as honourable, but 
 more wealthy than their own ; whose single 
 pride was honesty, and whose passion love ; 
 who preserved in the gorgeous palace at White- 
 hall the simple tastes that distinguished her in 
 the old brewery at Huntingdon ; whose only 
 care, amid all her splendours, was for the safe- 
 ty of her beloved son in his dangerous emi- 
 nence ; finally, whose closing wish, when that 
 anxious care had outworn her strength, accord- 
 ed with her whole modest and tender history, 
 for it implored a simple burial in some country 
 churchyard, rather than those ill-suited trap- 
 pings of state and ceremony wherewith she 
 feared, and with reason feared, that his high- 
 ness, the Lord Protector of England, would 
 have her carried to some royal tomb ! There 
 is a portrait of her at Hinchinbrook, which, if 
 that were possible, would increase the interest 
 she inspires and the respect she claims. The 
 mouth, so small and sweet, yet full and firm as 
 the mouth of a hero ; the large, melancholy 
 eyes ; the light, pretty hair ; the expression of 
 quiet affectionateness suffused over the face, 
 which is so modestly enveloped in a white sat- 
 in hood ; the simple beauty of the velvet car- 
 dinal she wears, and the richness of the small 
 jewel that clasps it, seem to present before 
 the gazer her living and breathing character.* 
 
 * Out of the profits of her trade," says a writer in the 
 Biographica Britannica, " and her own small jointure of sixty 
 pounds a year, she provided fortunes for her daughters, suf- 
 ficient to marry them into good families. The eldest was 
 the wife of Mr. John Desborough, afterward one of the 
 Protector's major-generals ; another married, first, Roger 
 Whetstone, Esq., and afterward Colonel John Jones, who 
 was executed for being one of the king's judges ; the third 
 espoused Colonel Valentine Walton, who died in exile ; the 
 fourth, Mrs. Robina Cromwell, married, first, Dr. Peter 
 French, and afterward Dr. John Wilkins, bishop of Chester,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 395 
 
 On the 25th of April, in the year 1599, this 
 excellent woman gave birth to Oliver Crom- 
 well. He was her second son, and the only 
 one of three who lived to manhood ; one of her 
 daughters had also died in youth, and the names 
 of the survivers were Elizabeth, Catharine, 
 Margaret, Anna, Jane, and Robina, who, with 
 Oliver, formed the family of Mr. Robert Crom- 
 well. 
 
 Four days after his birth, Oliver Cromwell 
 was baptized in the parish church of St. John's, 
 in his native place : his uncle, Sir Oliver, after 
 whom he was named,* standing for him at the 
 font. 
 
 Of his extreme youth, marvellous stories 
 were recollected in his days of power, not for 
 this, however, to be rejected, since what has 
 once been believed should in all future time be 
 matter of just concern. When Milton under- 
 took a history of England, he began it with a 
 large collection of traditional fables, because 
 he well knew that to whatever has been truly 
 believed, however false or fabulous, belong 
 some of the most sacred privileges of truth it- 
 self, and that the imagination can never be 
 strongly influenced without a corresponding and 
 enduring action upon the opinions and the char- 
 acter. The fables of biography may show us, 
 at all events, in what various ways the celeb- 
 rity of their object has wrought upon his coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 From the instant of his birth, according to 
 the traditions of Huntingdon, the peculiar des- 
 tiny which had marked the infant for its own 
 saved him from all meaner chances, t A non- 
 juror, who afterward purchased and inhabited 
 his father's house, used to assert this destiny 
 to have been nothing less than the devil ; and, 
 in proof of the connexion, would show, behind 
 the door of the room that Oliver was born in, 
 a curious figure of that personage wrought in 
 
 a famous preacher and a celebrated mathematician. It may 
 not be amiss to add, that an aunt of Cromwell's married 
 Francis Barrington, Esq. ; another aunt, John Hampden, 
 Esq., of Buckinghamshire, by whom she was mother to the 
 famous John Hampden ; a third aunt was the wife of Mr. 
 Whaley, and the mother of Colonel Whaley, in whose cus- 
 tody the king was while he remained at Hampton Court. 
 He had two other aunts, but of their marriages we have no 
 account." There are some errors and some omissions in 
 this account. The wife of Desborough was Jane, the fifth 
 daughter (the eldest, Elizabeth, dying unmarried) ; Catha- 
 rine, the second, married Jones ; Margaret, the third, mar- 
 ried Walton ; Anna, the fourth, who is omitted by the 
 writer, married John Sewster, of Wistow, in Huntingdon- 
 shire, Esq. ; and the sixth and youngest, Robina, married 
 as stated. [This article was written by Kipper, and is a 
 very satisfactory narrative ; perhaps it affords as clear a 
 representation of the Protector as can be found in the same 
 compass. C ] 
 
 * See Appendix D., Sir Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 t In the very curious little volume which I have already 
 had occasion to quote, Heath's Flagellum, it is made mat- 
 ter of reproach against nature that no portentous omens had 
 ushered the lad into the world. "Fate," he says, "when 
 it had decreed and ordained the unhappy birth of this famo- 
 so, by her most secret and hidden malice, brought him into 
 the world without any terrible remark of his portentous life, 
 neither comets, nor earthquakes, nor such like violences of 
 nature, ushering or accompanying him, to the declaring and 
 pointing out that the scourge of the English empire and 
 nation was now born. Thus also she did, by indiscernible 
 methods, train him up to the possession of the throne, and 
 as secretly and cunningly, after all his bloody and most ne- 
 farious actions, shift him out of it, and with a blast of her 
 spent fury turned him into his wished-for grave." The lat- 
 ter sentence is somewhat obscure, unless " the blast of her 
 spent fury" is taken to indicate the storm, which actually, 
 on the day of his death, unroofed the houses in London, 
 and tore up trees in the park*. 
 
 the hangings. On the same authority rests the 
 version of one of Oliver's escapes, wonderful as 
 Gulliver's at Brobdignag. " His grandfather, 
 Sir Henry Cromwell," so goes the story, " haV- 
 ing sent for him to Hinchinbrook, when an in- 
 fant in arms, a monkey took him from the cra- 
 dle, and ran with him upon the lead that cov- 
 ered the roofing of the house. Alarmed at the 
 danger Oliver was in, the family brought beds 
 to catch him upon, fearing the creature's drop- 
 ping him ; but the sagacious animal brought 
 the ' fortune of England' down in safety : so 
 narrow an escape had he, who was doomed to 
 be the conqueror and sovereign magistrate of 
 three mighty nations, from the paws of a mon- 
 key,"* The tradition which saves the daring 
 and reckless young lad from drowning by the 
 providential interference of the curate of Cun- 
 nington,t is, perhaps, better worthy of belief, 
 though it might be difficult to say so much of 
 the Royalist addition to the story, tagged on 
 after the Restoration that this same worthy 
 curate, at a future period, when kindly called 
 upon by Oliver, in a march at the head of his 
 troops through Huntingdon, and asked if he 
 recollected the service he had done, answer- 
 ed, " Yes, I do ; but I wish I had put you in, 
 rather than see you here in arms against your 
 king." 
 
 The child's temper, it seems admitted on all 
 hands, was wayward and violent,! and is said 
 to have broken out on one occasion, when he 
 was yet only five years old, with an ominous 
 forecast of times and deeds to come. The 
 anecdote is told by Noble. " They have a tra- 
 dition at Huntingdon," says that industrious 
 collector, "that when King Charles I., then 
 Duke of York, in his journey from Scotland to 
 London, in 1604, called, in his way, at Hinchin- 
 brook, the seat of Sir Oliver Cromwell, that 
 knight, to divert the young prince, sent for his 
 nephew Oliver, that he, with his own sons, 
 might play with his royal highness ; but they 
 had not been long together before Charles and 
 Oliver disagreed ; and as the former was then 
 as weakly as the latter was strong, it was no 
 wonder that the royal visitant was worsted ; 
 and Oliver, even at this age, so little regarded 
 dignity, that he made the royal blood flow in 
 copious streams from the prince's nose. This 
 was looked upon as a bad presage for that king 
 when the civil wars commenced. I give this 
 only as the report of the place : thus far is cer- 
 tain, that Hinchinbrook, as being near Hunting- 
 don, was generally one of the resting-places 
 when any of the royal family were going to or 
 returning from the north of England, or into or 
 from Scotland." An anecdote, which somehow 
 bears upon it the stamp and greatness of real- 
 ity ! If these boys ever met (and when King 
 James's frequent visits to Hinchinbrook are 
 borne in mind,$ it is difficult to suppose they 
 did not), what occurrence so likely as a quarrel, 
 and what result so plain as that the anecdote 
 tells us 1 The nervous, feeble, tottering infan- 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. Lort's MSS., quoted in Noble, vol. i., 
 p. 92. t Then a Mr. Johnson. 
 
 t " From his infancy," says Heath, " to his childhood, he 
 was of a cross and peevish disposition, which, being hu- 
 moured by the fondness of his mother, made that rough 
 and intractable temper more robust and outrageous in his 
 juvenile years, and adult and masterless at man's estate." 
 
 fr See Appendix D., Sir Oliver Cromwell.
 
 396 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 cy* of the shambling king's son, unequally 
 matched against the sturdy little limbs and da- 
 ring young soul of the man-child of the Hunting- 
 don brewer yet foolish obstinacy urging the 
 weakness of the one, and a reckless ambition 
 of superiority overcoming the kindness and gen- 
 erosity of the other. The curtain of the future 
 was surely for an instant upraised here ! 
 
 Nor here alone. More signal and direct 
 manifestations were avouched, if still stronger 
 and more widely-believed traditions are re- 
 ceived. Nor will they be rejected hastily by 
 such as care to penetrate beneath the surface 
 of the character which had lain, as it were, 
 wrapped up even in the very cradle of this 
 child. The supernatural, as it seems to the 
 vulgar, is not always what it seems. The nat- 
 ural, when denied for a time its proper vent, 
 will force itself into the light in many various 
 shapes, which assume a fearful aspect from 
 their intensity alone. The tame and common 
 medium of dull and feeble minds is not what 
 the world has distributed among all her sons. 
 Thoughts, as their sufferer has himself descri- 
 bed them, "like masterless hell-hounds," roar- 
 ed and bellowed round the cradle of Bunyan ; 
 round that of Vane the forms of angels of light 
 seemed to vision the everlasting reign of peace 
 which his virtuous labours would have realized ; 
 and now, round the bed of the youthful Crom- 
 well played an awful yet delicious dream of 
 personal aggrandizement and power. 
 
 He had laid himself down one day, it is said, 
 too fatigued with his youthful sports to hope for 
 sleep, when suddenly the curtains of his bed 
 were slowly withdrawn by a gigantic figure 
 which bore the aspect of a woman, and which, 
 gazing at him silently for a while, told him that 
 he should, before his death, be the greatest 
 man in England. He remembered when he 
 told the story and the recollection marked the 
 current of his thoughts that the figure had not 
 made mention of the word king. The tradition 
 of Huntingdon adds, that although the " folly 
 and wickedness" of such a notion was strongly 
 pointed out to him, the lad persisted in the as- 
 sertion of its truth, for which, " at the partic- 
 ular desire of his father,"' he was soundly 
 flogged by his schoolmaster. The flogging only 
 impressed the fact more deeply on the young 
 day-dreamer ; and betaking himself immedi- 
 ately to his Uncle Steward, t for the purpose 
 of unburdening himself once more respecting 
 it, he was told by that worthy kinsman of roy- 
 alty that it was il traitorous to entertain such 
 thoughts.":): 
 
 * It is unnecessary to inform the reader that in the in- 
 Fancy of Charles I. he was unable to stand firmly, owing to 
 the weakness and distortion of the legs which he had inher- 
 ited from his father, and that in his most vigorous manhood 
 the infirmity was never entirely corrected. Even in the 
 fine equestrian portrait by Vandyke, now at Hampton 
 Court, a curvature at the knee is distinctly visible. 
 
 t Sir Thomas Steward. See Appendix A. 
 
 t Mention of this matter is thus made in th Flagellum. 
 All the other accounts give the story as in the text. 
 " 'Twas at this time of his adolescency that he dreamed, or 
 a familiar rather instructed him and put it into his head, 
 that he should be king of England ; for it cannot be con- 
 ceived that now there should be any such near resemblance 
 of truth in dreams and divinations (besides, the confidence 
 with which he repeated it, and the difficulty to make him 
 forget the arrogant conceit and opinionated pride he had 
 of himself, seem to evince it was some impulse of a spirit), 
 since they had ceased long ago. However the vision came, 
 must certain it is, that his father was exceedingly troubled 
 
 This incident in Cromwell's youth was not 
 forgotten in his obscurity to be remembered 
 only in his eminence ; for Clarendon distinctly 
 tells us that " it was generally spoken of, even 
 from the beginning of the troubles, and when 
 he was not in a posture that promised such 
 exaltation." In the height of his glory, we 
 have also good authority for saying, Cromwell 
 himself mentioned it often ; and when the farce 
 of deliberation took place on the offer of the 
 crown to the Protector, it is remarked by Lord 
 Clarendon, that " they who were very near to 
 him said, that in this perplexity he revolved his 
 former dream or apparition, that had first in- 
 formed and promised him the high fortune to 
 which he was already arrived, and which was 
 generally spoken of, even from the beginning 
 of the troubles, and when he was not in a pos- 
 ture that promised such exaltation ; and that 
 he then observed that it had only declared that 
 he should be the greatest man in England, and 
 that he should be near to be king, which seemed 
 to imply that he should be only near, and never 
 actually attain, the crown." 
 
 Another incident, not, perhaps, unconnected 
 with the foregoing, and as singular, if less aw- 
 ful, connected the childhood of Cromwell with 
 the mighty future that awaited it. I shall de- 
 tail it in the words of the Royalist Heath,* be- 
 cause, of the many accounts that exist of this 
 happily undisputed anecdote, they appear to be 
 the most characteristic. " Now," observes that 
 writer, " to confirm a royal humour the more 
 in his ambitious and vain-glorious brain, it hap- 
 pened (as it was then generally the custome in 
 all great free-schools) that a play called ' The 
 Five Senses' was to be acted by the schollars 
 of this school,t and Oliver Cromwell, as a con- 
 fident youth, was named to act the part of Tac- 
 tus, the sense of feeling ; in the personation 
 of which, as he came out of the tyring-room 
 upon the stage, his head encircled with a chap- 
 let of lawrel, he stumbled at a crown, pur- 
 posely laid there, which, stooping down, he took 
 up, and crowned himself therewithal, adding, 
 beyond his cue, some majestical mighty words ; 
 and with this passage the event of his life held 
 good analogy and proportion, when he changed 
 the lawrel of his victories (in the late unnatu- 
 ral war) to all the power, authority, and splen- 
 dour that can be imagined within the compass 
 of a crown." 
 
 'The extemporization of the " mighty majes- 
 tical words" is an addition of the zealous nar- 
 rator : the reader will observe, when the scene 
 is before him, that the exact speeches of Tac- 
 tus are mighty and majestical enough to effect 
 the strange coincidences of the story without 
 other aid. The comedy is well known to the 
 lovers of old English dramatic literature by the 
 
 at it ; and having angerly rebuked him for the vanity, idle- 
 ness, and impudence thereof, and seeing him yet persist in 
 tha same presumption, caused Dr. Beard to whip him for 
 it ; which was done to no more purpose than the rest of his 
 chastisements, his scholar growing insolent and incorrigible 
 from those results and suasions within him, to which all 
 other dictates and instructions were useless, and as a dead 
 letter." 
 
 * The author of the Flagellum, which I have already 
 quoted the first biographer of Cromwell after the Restora- 
 tion. He was, I believe, the son of Charles l.'s cutler, an 
 exiled Loyalist, and was, moreover, a needy scribe, who 
 wrote pamphlets of all sorts to order, and corrected manu- 
 scripts for a maintenance. 
 
 t Huntingdon Free-school, where Oliver then was.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 397 
 
 name of Lingua, as a highly ingenious and 
 pleasant work, with more than the usual share 
 of that strong good sense which distinguishes 
 its otherwise fantastic author, Anthony Brew- 
 er.* It is in the nature of an allegory, cele- 
 brating the contention of the five senses for 
 the crown of superiority, and discussing the 
 pretensions of Lingua, or the tongue, to be ad- 
 mitted as a sixth sense ; ending, as far as the 
 latter is concerned, with the allotment of " the 
 sense of speaking" to women only. 
 
 Now let the reader imagine little Master Oli- 
 ver Cromwell entering, " his head encircled 
 with a chaplet of lawrel," and gazing up so 
 high above him as to be utterly unconscious 
 of the plotter at his side, and, till he stumbles 
 on it, of the crown at his feet. 
 
 "TACTUS. The blushing childhood of the 
 
 cheerful morn 
 
 Is almost grown a youth, and overclimbs 
 Yonder gilt eastern hills, about which time 
 Gustus most earnestly importuned me 
 To meet him hereabouts ; what cause I know 
 
 not. 
 MENDACIO. You shall do shortly, to your cost, 
 
 I hope. 
 TACT. Sure, by the sun, it should be nine 
 
 o'clock ! 
 MEN. What a star-gazer ! will you ne'er look 
 
 down 1 
 
 TACT. Clear is the sun, and the blue firma- 
 
 Methinks the heavens do smile [ ment : 
 
 [TACTUS sncezeth. 
 
 MEN. At thy mishap, 
 
 To look so high, and stumble in a trap ! 
 
 [TACTUS stumbleth at the robe and crown. 
 TACT. High thoughts have slippery feet ; I had 
 
 wellnigh fallen. 
 
 MEN. Well doth he fall that riseth with a fall. 
 TACT. What's this 1 
 
 MEN. ! are you taken ? 'tis in vain to strive. 
 TACT. How now ! 
 
 MEN. You'll be so entangled straight 
 TACT. A crown ! 
 
 MEN. that it will be hard 
 
 TACT. And a robe ! 
 
 MEN. to loose yourself! 
 
 TACT. A crown and robe ! 
 
 * It contains, among other striking things, that fine enu- 
 neration of the characteristics of different languages 
 ''The Chaldee wise, the Arabian physical," &c. given in 
 Charles Lamb's Specimens, and also the following masterly 
 discrimination of Tragedy and Comedy in all their orna- 
 ments and uses, which the reader will not object to my 
 quoting : 
 
 " These two, my lord, Comedies and Tragedies, 
 My fellows both, both twins, but so alike 
 As birth to death, wedding to funeral. 
 For this that rears himself in buskins quaint 
 Is pleasant at the first, proud in the midst, 
 Stately in all, and bitter death at end. 
 That in the pumps doth frown at first acquaintance, 
 Trouble in the midst, but at the end concludes, 
 Closing up all with a sweet catastrophe. 
 This grave and sad, distain'd with brinish tears: 
 That light and quick, with wrinkled laughter painted. 
 This deals with nobles, kings, and emperors, 
 Full of great hopes, great fears, great enterprises : 
 This other trades with men of mean condition, 
 His projects small, small hopes, and dangers little. 
 This gorgeous, broider'd with rich sentences : 
 That fair arid purllrd round with merriments. 
 Both vice detect and virtue beautify, 
 Uy being death's mirror, and life's looking-glass." 
 The comedy was first acted, we learn from the preface to 
 its first impression, at Cambridge, and next at this Hunt- 
 ingdon Free-school. 
 
 MEN. It had been fitter for you to have found 
 
 a fool's coat and a bauble hey ! hey ! 
 
 TACT. Jupiter ! Jupiter ! how came this here ! 
 
 MEN. O ! sir, Jupiter is making thunder ; he 
 
 hears you not ; here's one knows better. 
 
 TACT. 'Tis wond'rous rich : ha ! but sure it 
 
 is not so : ho ! 
 
 Do I not sleep, and dream of this good luck, ha 1 
 No, I am awake, and feel it now. 
 Whose should it be 1 [He takes it up. 
 
 MEN. Set up a si quis for it. 
 TACT. Mercury! all's mine own ; here's none 
 
 to cry half's mine. 
 MEN. When I am gone. [Exit. 
 
 TACTUS, alone, soliloquizeth. 
 TACT. Tactus, thy sneezing somewhat did 
 Was ever man so fortunate as I? [portend. 
 
 To break his shins at such a stumbling-block ! 
 Roses and bays pack hence : this crown and 
 My brows and body circles and invests ! [robe 
 How gallantly it fits me ! sure the slave 
 Measured my head that wrought this coronet. 
 They lie that say complexions cannot change ; 
 My blood's ennobled, and I am transformed 
 Unto the sacred temper of a king. 
 Methinks I hear my noble parasites 
 Styling me Caesar or great Alexander, 
 Licking my feet, and wond'ring where I got 
 This precious ointment. How my pace is mended! 
 How princely do I speak ! How sharp I threaten ! 
 Peasants, I'll curb your headstrong impudence, 
 And make you tremble when the Lion roars. 
 Ye earth-bred worms ! for a looking-glass ! 
 Poets will write whole volumes of this change : 
 Where's my attendants 1 Come hither, sirrahs, 
 Or by the wings of Hermes " [quickly, 
 
 It is not difficult to picture to the imagination 
 the strut of democratic contempt with which 
 the reckless young actor delivered some of 
 these lines : 
 
 " How my pace is mended ! 
 How princely do I speak ! How sharp I threaten !" 
 
 The whole scene is curious, and was, no doubt, 
 remembered with emotion in after years, when 
 state had indeed seemed to ennoble blood ; 
 when epithets of Caesar or Alexander were as 
 nothing in the mouths of parasites ; when the 
 clownish soldier had been mended into the 
 comely prince ; and the voice that sounded 
 sharp and untunable through the House of 
 Commons in 1640, sent forth accents at White- 
 hall, some very few years later, of the sweet- 
 est grace and majesty. 
 
 Such scanty records as may be now collected 
 of young Cromwell's school-days realize what 
 it does not tax the imagination to receive as a 
 not unfair impression of them. He was active 
 and resolute ; capable of tremendous study, 
 but by no means always inclined to it ; with a 
 vast quantity of youthful energy, which explo- 
 ded in vast varieties of youthful mischief; and, 
 finally, not at all improved by an unlimited sys- 
 tem of flogging adopted by his schoolmaster. 
 How easily, in such cases, are the lessons of 
 tyranny taught ; and, when they have failed to 
 subdue, how long and bitterly remembered ! 
 Dr. Beard, then at the head of the Huntingdon 
 free-school, had made himself notorious for his 
 severity,* even in that age of barbarous disci- 
 
 * The frontispiece to a well-known book of the time, 
 " The Theatre of God's Judgments," is said to be a portrait
 
 398 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 pline ; and in young Cromwell he seems to 
 have found a favourite object for its exercise. 
 A biographer, already quoted, describes these 
 school-days with characteristic force ; and, re- 
 membering the writer's prejudice, we have lit- 
 tle difficulty in separating false from true. 
 " From ABC discipline," he says, " and the 
 slighted governance of a mistress, his father re- 
 moved him to the tuition of Dr. Beard, school- 
 master of the free-school of that town, where 
 his book began to persecute him, and learning 
 to commence his great and irreconcilable ene- 
 my ; for his master, honestly and severely ob- 
 serving that and others his faults (which, like 
 weeds, sprung out of his rank and uncultivable 
 nature), did, by correction, hope to better his 
 manners, and with a diligent hand and careful 
 eye, to hinder the thick growth of those vices 
 which were so predominant and visible in him. 
 Yet, though herein he trespassed upon that re- 
 spect and lenity due and usual to children of his 
 birth and quality, he prevailed nothing against 
 his obstinate and perverse inclination. The 
 learning and civility he had, coming upon him 
 like Jits of enlhusiasme, now a hard student for a 
 week or two, and then a truant or otioso for twice 
 as many months- of no settled constancy. 
 
 " Amongst the rest of those ill qualities," 
 continues this impartial biographer, " which 
 fructuated in him at this age, he was very noto- 
 rious for robbing of orchards ; a puerile crime 
 and an ordinary trespass, but grown so scan- 
 dalous and injurious by the frequent spoyles 
 and damages of trees, breaking of hedges and 
 inclosures, committed by this apple-dragon, that 
 many solemn complaints were made, both to 
 his father and master, for redress thereof, which 
 missed not their satisfaction and expiation out of 
 his hide ; on which so much pains were lost 
 that that very offence ripened in him after- 
 wards to the throwing down of all boundaries 
 of law or conscience. From this he passed 
 into another more manly theft, the robbing of 
 dove-houses, stealing the young pidgeons, and eat- 
 ing and merchandizing of them, and that so pub- 
 liquely, that he became dreadfully suspect to 
 all the adjacent country." 
 
 Nor are his offences of youth limited by 
 charges of this kind. Other gross imputations 
 against his good taste and refinement such as 
 the boy-days of Louis XIV. were not altogether 
 free from received general acceptation before 
 his eminence, and were not altogether contra- 
 dicted by his occasional practices after it. The 
 diligent Mr. Noble thus supplies one of those 
 stories from various writers : " Sir Oliver was 
 a worthy knight, loved hospitality, and always 
 kept up old customs. Accordingly, at Christ- 
 mas, his doors were thrown open to all, who 
 were not only feasted, but entertained with 
 music, dancing, and the usual sports of the age 
 and place. Among the relations and friends 
 of Sir Oliver came his nephew and godson, by 
 invitation, to partake of the festivity of one of 
 those seasons; but he so far forgot himself, 
 that, to humour a depraved taste, he besmear- 
 ed his clothes and gloves with the most nau- 
 seous filth, and accosts the Master of Misrule 
 in the frequent turnings of a frisking dance, as 
 
 of this pain-inflicting pedagogue. It represents him with 
 rod in his hand, two scholars standing behind, aud As in 
 Prtescnti issuing from his mouth. 
 
 well as every other person that came in his 
 way, so that the company could scarce bear the 
 room. The Master of Misrule, discovering that 
 our young Oliver was the offender, seized, and 
 ordered him to undergo a severe ducking in a 
 pond adjoining to the house ; Sir Oliver, his 
 uncle, permitting the sentence to be carried 
 into full execution, as a punishment for his dirty 
 jehaviour. Perhaps I ought to apologize for 
 relating so filthy a tale ; but, as this was the 
 occasion of Oliver's losing his uncle's good 
 opinion, I thought its particular relation could 
 not be dispensed with."* There is possibly 
 great exaggeration in the story, but, in after 
 years, the Protector's turn for pleasantry was 
 now and then oddly developed, as we shall 
 have occasion to show ; and what, in those 
 youthful days, might have equally deserved a 
 ducking in a horsepond on a cold Christmas 
 night, was received as the greatest favour and 
 condescension by ladies of birth and breeding. 
 From the grammar-school of Huntingdon, on 
 the 23d of April, 1616, when Cromwell was 
 within two days of completing his seventeenth 
 year, he was entered a fellow-commoner of 
 Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, t and seems 
 to have carried all his school propensities, in 
 the most lively and flourishing state, along with 
 him to the University. "In his youth," says 
 Sir William Dugdale, " he was for some time 
 bred up in Cambridge, where he made no pro- 
 ficiency in any kind of learning ; but then and 
 afterwards sorting himself with drinking com- 
 panions, and the under sort of people (being of 
 a rough and blustering disposition), he had the 
 name of a ROYSTER amongst most that knew 
 him." This is borne out by Heath, who ac- 
 companies it with other details. "The rela- 
 tion of a father," he observes, " and one so 
 stcrne and strict an examiner of him (he being 
 in his nature of a difficult disposition and great 
 
 * The learned Dr. Bates, who attended the Protector in 
 his last illness, has given his authority to this incident 
 (Elenchi. Mot., pars, prima). And Heath, in his " Flagel- 
 lum," relates it thus : " By these lewd actions he had so 
 alienated the affections of his uncle aud godfather Sir Oli- 
 ver Cromwell, that he could not endure the sight of him, 
 having, in his own presence, in the great hall of his house, 
 where he magnificently treated King James at his assump- 
 tion to the crown of England, in a Christmas time (which 
 was always highly observed by him by feasting and keeping 
 open house), played this unhandsome and unseemly trick or 
 frolick, with the relation of which the reader will be pleased 
 to indulge me, because I have seen it raccounted by a wor- 
 thy and learned hand. It was Sir Oliver's custome in that 
 festival to entertain in his house a Master of Misrule, or 
 the Revels, to make mirth for the guests, and to direct the 
 dances and the music, and generally all manner of sports 
 and gambols ; this fellow Cromwell, having besmeared his 
 own clothes and hands with surreverence, accosts in the 
 midst of a frolicking dance, and so grimed him and others 
 upon every turn, that such a stink was raised, that the 
 spectators could hardly endure the room ; whereupon the 
 said Master of Misrule, perceiving the matter, caused him 
 to be laid hold on, and by his command to be thrown into a 
 pond adjoyning to the house, and there to be sous'd over 
 head and ears, and rinced of that filth and pollution sticking 
 to him ; which was accordingly executed, Sir Oliver suffer- 
 ing his nephew to undergo the punishment of his unman- 
 nerly folly." 
 
 t "The following is an extract from the register of Sidney 
 Sussex: "A festo Anunciationis, 1616. Oliverius Crom- 
 well Huntingdonieusis admissus ad commeatum Sociorum 
 Apriliovicessimotertio; Tutore Mr". Ricardo Huwlett." Be- 
 tween this entry, however, and the next, it is amusing to ob- 
 serve that there is crowded in, in a smaller hand or letter, 
 the underwritten character. "Hicfuitgrandis ille impostor, 
 carnifex perditissimus, <jui pientissirao rege Carolo Pnefa- 
 ria csede sublato, ipsum usurpavit thronum, et tria regna, 
 per 5 ferme annorum spatium, sub protectoris nomine iudo- 
 rnita tyrannide vexavit."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 399 
 
 spirit, and one that would have due distances ob- 
 served towards him from all persons, which begat 
 him reverence from the country people), kept 
 him in some awe and subjection till his trans- 
 lation to Cambridge, where he was placed in 
 Sidney College, more to satisfy his father's cu- 
 riosity and desire than out of any hopes of com- 
 pleating him in his studies, which never reach- 
 ed any good knowledge of the Latine tongue. 
 During his short residence here, where he was 
 more famous for his exercises in the fields than 
 in the schools (in which he never had the hon- 
 our of, because no worth and merit to, a de- 
 gree), being one of the chief match-makers and 
 players at foot-ball, cudgells, or any other boys- 
 terous sport or game, his father, Mr. Robert 
 Cromwell, died, leaving him to the scope of 
 his own inordinate and irregular will, swayed 
 by the bent of very violent and strong pas- 
 sions." It is significant of much to discover, 
 in these notices of Cromwell's boyish irreg- 
 ularities, that his father was as strict and stern 
 to the lad as his mother was affectionate and 
 indulging.* 
 
 There is no reason to question the irregular- 
 ities themselves. They are such as thousands 
 committed even in those times, and tens of 
 thousands have committed since, whom obscu- 
 rity in after life has dismissed, with all their 
 vices and all their virtues, to a happy oblivion. 
 It is worth while to observe, however, that the 
 supposition of Cromwell's having left the Uni- 
 versity only as wise, in point of learning, as he 
 went there, is by no means so credible. 
 
 Cromwell's learning in after years, which 
 there is no reason to doubt he acquired at this 
 time, was of a fair average character. His sin- 
 cere respect for men of greater learning, and 
 his anxious desire to elevate and promote the 
 claims of literature at all times, has never been 
 questioned save by the meanest and least scru- 
 pulous of his detractors. A good knowledge 
 of Latin it is quite certain he possessed, though 
 Bishop Burnet tells us of it with a sneer. " He 
 had no foreign language but the little Latin that 
 stuck to him from his education, which he spoke 
 very vitiously and scantily." The most learn- 
 ed of the ambassadors he received during the 
 Protectorate do not, on the other hand, seem 
 to have discovered these defects in his Latin. 
 Beveringe writes to Jongstall at the Hague,f 
 that " last Saturday I had a discourse with his 
 Excellency Cromwell above two hours, without 
 any body being present with us. His excel- 
 lency spoke his own language so distinctly that 
 I could answer him. He (Cromwell) answered 
 again in Latin." In various incidents of a sim- 
 ilar sort, related in the records of the Common- 
 wealth, it is difficult to discover any grounds 
 of truth for Burnet's reproach ; and it is worth 
 adding, that the Royalist friend of Waller, who 
 prefixed a life of the poet to the first edition of 
 his works, takes occasion to tell his readers 
 that " Cromwell loved, or affected to love, men 
 
 * Heath begins his narrative with a statement that " from 
 his infancy to his childhood he was of a cross and peevish 
 disposition, which being humoured by the fondness of his 
 mother, made that rough and intractable temper more robust 
 and outrageous in his juvenile years." [It may be well to 
 say that Heath was his first biographer, who has been gen- 
 erally copied as an authority, and the discreditable stories 
 affecting his early life are introduced by him. C.] 
 
 t 12th of August, 1653. 
 
 of wit : Mr. Waller frequently waited on him. 
 being his kinsman ; and, as he often declared 
 to me, observed him to be very well read in the 
 Greek and Roman story."* Other opportuni- 
 ties may occur for adverting to this subject ; 
 but there exists, in one of the ambassadorial 
 addresses to Cromwell, a passage of eloquence 
 bearing upon it, and now known to have pro- 
 ceeded from Milton's hand, which seems to me 
 to decide the question completely, and to say 
 all that need be said concerning it in the finest 
 possible manner. 
 
 Don Juan Roderiguez de SaaMeneses, Con- 
 de de Penaguaia, addressed to Cromwell in Lat- 
 in an idea of a perfect hero Milton having dis- 
 charged himself of a portion of his ever-lofty 
 admiration of Cromwell by composing it at the 
 request of that illustrious foreigner. Having 
 named various imaginary qualities, he proceed- 
 ed thus : " To these I added a study of letters, 
 by which nature should be cultivated, the mind 
 polished and subdued, and reason sharpened ; 
 yet this, in a person instructed for the Com- 
 monwealth, and trained up for political affairs, 
 / wished might be moderate; for as the art of 
 governing a commonwealth, for the most part, 
 is active and practical, it should rather consist 
 of counsel and prudence than of speculative and 
 theoretical knowledge and wisdom. It is ne- 
 cessary, therefore, for him who is brought up 
 to the art of ruling and commanding, to be tin- 
 ged indeed with a study of letters, which may rea- 
 sonably inform him, and banish ignorance and 
 unskilfulness from his mind, yet not to be so 
 deeply tutored as to comprehend them absolute- 
 ly and exactly in every point ; for I know not 
 by what means this thorough knowledge of the 
 sciences, at the same time that it sharpens the 
 intellect, dulls the soul, and interrupts its close 
 attention to the administration of public affairs : 
 perhaps because it wastes the spirits necessa- 
 ry for action, and, by gradually consuming them, 
 causes the mind, in proportion as it is deprived 
 of them, to grow languid. These applications 
 of the wit and mind are tender things ; they do 
 not fancy the sun and the crowd, but delight in 
 shade and retirement ; noise and business dis- 
 turb them ; they shrink up at the horror of arms, 
 and are even affrighted at the bawling of the 
 forum. Like noble and delicate maidens, they 
 
 * It is certain, too, that he had made it his care in life to 
 become master of a noble library. An authority exists for 
 saying this than which no better could be urged in the 
 life of the famous and most learned Dr. Manton. " When 
 Cromwell took on him the Protectorship, in the year 1653, 
 the very morning the ceremony was to be performed, a mes- 
 senger came to Dr. Manton to acquaint him that he must 
 immediately come to Whitehall : th doctor asked him the 
 occasion ; he told him he should know that when he came 
 there. The Protector himself, without any previous no- 
 tice, told him what he was to do, i. e., to pray upon that 
 occasion. The doctor laboured all he could to be excused, 
 and told him it was a work of that nature which required 
 some time to consider arid prepare for it. The Protector 
 replied that he knew he was not at a loss to perform the 
 service he expected from him, and opening his study door, 
 put him in with his hand, and bid him consider there, which 
 was not above half an hour. The doctor employed that 
 time in looking over his books, which he said was a noble 
 collection." Manton, as Dr. Harris emphatically says, teat 
 a judge. Let us add here, that in his days of power, Crom- 
 well showed an invariable regard and respect for the Alma 
 Hater of his boyhood. We find an order of his, dated July 
 1, 1652, directed to all officers and soldiers under his com- 
 mand, forbidding them to quarter any officer or soldier in 
 any of the colleges, halls, or other houses belonging to Cam- 
 bridge University, or to offer any injury or violence to any 
 of the students, or members of it ; and this at their peril.
 
 400 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 must rather be kept safe at home than brought 
 forth into engagements and perils ; wherefore 
 the most celebrated generals of antiquity have 
 so addicted themselves to the instructions of 
 their preceptors, as rather to adorn than to pro- 
 fess those studies ; they have applied themselves 
 just so much to them as might serve to nourish, 
 not to overwhelm, their minds. It was this 
 course that the hero Achilles held under Chiron 
 and Phoenix ; Alexander under Aristotle ; Epam- 
 inondas under Lysias ; Scipio under Pancetius. 
 And though Pericles among the Greeks, and 
 Julius Caesar among the Romans, may have 
 passed for scholars, yet certainly their praise 
 (whereof both obtained a very great share) is 
 comprised chiefly in their eloquence, which con- 
 sists more in force and nature than in art and 
 precept. For this reason it is delivered down 
 to us, that the one thundered when he spoke, 
 and that the other pronounced everything with 
 the same spirit he fought with. You, O most 
 excellent Cromwell ! have applied your mind to 
 the study of letters in this manner, copying ex- 
 actly what I had observed in these and other 
 famous captains of antiquity. You have gath- 
 ered up the literary dust at Cambridge, without 
 deepening the tracks of learning. You have gar- 
 nished your understanding with those arts 
 which become a liberal nature ; you have rub- 
 bed off the rust of your mind ; you have sharp- 
 ened the edge of your wit ; you have gained 
 such a character as not to be reckoned an ill schol- 
 ar, and fitted yourself, by the rudiments of the 
 sciences, to manage the highest offices of the 
 Commonwealth. You have given us, in fact, 
 such a specimen of your capacity, that you may 
 make it appear, if you were disposed to go on 
 in the pursuit of learning, how very able you 
 are to equal the greatest masters ; just as Ju- 
 lius Caesar did, whose steps you so nearly tread 
 in, according to the testimony of Cicero him- 
 self, that prince in every kind of learning. And 
 in conducting the Commonwealth, you have 
 chose to imitate that Caesar rather than Cicero, 
 by preferring the harsh, incessant, and labori- 
 ous employment of a general, to the delicate 
 and sedentary office of a senator. It did not be- 
 come that hand to wax soft in literary case, which 
 was to be inured to the use of arms, and hardened 
 with asperity ; that right hand to be wrapped up 
 in down among the nocturnal birds of Athens, by 
 which thunderbolts were soon after to be hurled 
 among the eagles which emulate the sun." 
 
 In June, 1617, Robert Cromwell died, and it 
 is probable, since his widow found herself 
 obliged to continue the brewery after his de- 
 cease, that a consideration of family circum- 
 stances (for the disagreement with Sir Oliver 
 appears to have still continued) withdrew her 
 son from the University immediately after- 
 ward. It is certain that, before half his college 
 term had expired, he returned to Huntingdon, 
 and was passed from thence to London, where, 
 in accordance with the almost universal prac- 
 tice with young men of any family in that age, 
 he was entered as a member of Lincoln's Inn.* 
 
 * His name does not appear now in the books of that so- 
 ciety, but his having entered of it was a fact notorious to 
 his contemporaries, and no doubt, therefore, the name was 
 erased in the new and base-born loyalties of the Restoration. 
 Anthony Wood tells us distinctly, "his father dying while 
 he was at Cambridge, he was taken home and sent to Lin- 
 coln's Inn to study the common law ; but making nothing 
 
 But, if the general tradition is trustworthy, he 
 now utterly rejected every habit of study ; car- 
 ried his practices of school and college to the 
 very highest pitch of dissolute recklessness ; 
 and, after some little time, returned to Hunting- 
 don a finished London rake, with a strong ten- 
 dency in his rakishness to the coarse and the 
 low. Heath's account of this cannot possibly 
 be omitted. 
 
 " It was not long after his father's death 
 ere Oliver, weary of the Muses, and that 
 strict course of life (though he gave latitude 
 enough to it in his wild salleys and flyings out), 
 abandoned the University, and returned home, 
 saluted with the name of young Mr. Cromwell, 
 now in the room and place of his father ; which 
 how he became, his uncontrouled debaucheries 
 did publickly declare. For drinking, wenching, 
 and the like outrages of licentious youth, none 
 so inflamed as this young Tarquin, who would 
 not be contraried in his lust, in the very strain 
 and to the excess of that regal ravisher. . . . 
 These pranks made his mother advise with her- 
 selfe and his friends what she should do with 
 him, to remove the scandal which had been cast 
 upon the family by his means ; and therefore 
 it was concluded to send him to one of the inns 
 of court, under pretence of his studying the 
 laws, where, among the mass of people in Lon- 
 don, and frequency of vices of all sorts, his 
 might pass in the throng without that particu- 
 lar neer reflection upon his relations, and at 
 worst the infamy should stick only on himself. 
 . . . Lincoln's Inn was the place pitched upon, 
 and thither Mr. Cromwell, in a suitable garb to 
 his fortunes, was sent, where but for a little 
 while he continued ; for the nature of the place, 
 and the studies there, were so far regretful be- 
 yond all his tedious apprentiship to the more 
 facile academick sciences, that he had a kind 
 of antipathy to his company and converse there, 
 and so spent his time in an inward spight, 
 which for that space superseded the enormous 
 extravagancy of former vitiousness his vices 
 having a certain kind of intermission, success- 
 ion, or transmigration, like a compleat revolu- 
 tion of wickedness into one another, so that few 
 of his feats were practised here. And it is some 
 kind of good luck for that honourable society 
 that he hath left so small and so innocent a me- 
 morial of his membership therein. . . . His next 
 traverse was back again into the country to his 
 mother, and there he fell to his old trade, and 
 frequented his old haunts, consumed his mon- 
 ey in tipling, and then run on score per force. 
 In his drink he used to be so quarrelsome as 
 few (unless as mad as himself) durst keep him 
 company. His chief weapon, in which he de- 
 lighted, and at which he fought several times 
 with tinkers, pedlers, and the like (who most 
 an end go armed therewith), was a quarter- 
 staff, in which he was so skilful that seldom did 
 any overmatch him. A boysterous discipline and 
 rudiment of his martial skill and valour, which 
 with so much fierceness he manifested after- 
 ward in the ensuing war ! . . . These and the 
 like strange, wild, and dishonest actions made 
 him everywhere a shame or a terrour, insomuch 
 that the alewivcs of Huntingdon and other places, 
 
 of it, he was sent for home by his mother, became a debau- 
 chee, and a boisterous and rude fellow." This is corrobo- 
 rated, too, by almost every contemporaneous record. 
 
 II. 
 
 101
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 401 
 
 when they saw him a coming, would use to cry ovt 
 to one another, ' Here comes young Cromwell ; shut 
 tip your dores :' for he made it no punctilio to 
 invite his roysters to a barrel of drink, and give 
 it them at the charge of his host, and in satis- 
 faction thereof either beat him, or break his 
 windows, if he offered any shew, or gave any 
 look or sign of refusal or discontent. . . . His 
 lustful wantonnesses were no less predominant 
 than the other unruly appetites of his mind, it 
 being now his rude custom to seize upon all 
 women he met in his way on the road, and per- 
 force ravish a kiss, or some lewder satisfaction 
 from them ; and if any resistance were made 
 by their company, then to vindicate and allay 
 this violence and heat of his blood with the let- 
 ting out of theirs, whose defence of their friend's 
 honour and chastity innocently ingaged them. 
 And the same riots was he guilty of against 
 any who would not give him the way, so that 
 he was a rebel in manners long before he was 
 a Belial in policy. ... I am loath to be too large 
 in such particulars, which may render me sus- 
 pect of belying him, out of prejudice or re- 
 venge ; but I have heard it confirmed so often 
 from knowing persons, and the stories made 
 use of by his party, who did thereby magnify 
 his conversion, making him thus dear and pre- 
 cious unto God, that I was obliged to mention 
 them. " 
 
 These coarse details are given here in the 
 persuasion that they may represent, making al- 
 lowance for the natural exaggeration of the 
 writer, the wild course and current of Crom- 
 well's irregular youth a youth how common 
 in that age, how common in every age, but 
 how seldom followed by those wonderful for- 
 tunes which have burned into these records of 
 this life things that are held of no account in 
 the lesser fortunes of meaner men, yet are in 
 truth less pardonable in them than here, where 
 they must be taken to express some portion of 
 that amazing energy of temperament which is 
 afterward destined to force out for itself a no- 
 bler outlet on a grander theatre of action. Nor 
 will the reflecting reader hold that even such 
 experiences, so wild and so unworthy, were al- 
 together without their use in the after-chances 
 of a career like Cromwell's, wherein power was 
 to be achieved by practising upon the weak- 
 ness, no less than by guiding the strength, of 
 all classes of the humanity around him. It is 
 said of him by a professed panegyrist, who 
 sought to explain, and not unsuccessfully, the 
 sort of life he led at this time in London, that 
 " he came to Lincoln's Inn, where he associa- 
 ted himself with those of the best rank and 
 quality, and the most ingenious persons ; for 
 though he were of a nature not adverse to study 
 and contemplation, yet he seemed rather addicted 
 to conversation, and the reading of men and their 
 several tempers, than to a continual poring upon 
 authors."* Men of a large soul have no need 
 
 reader. For instance, M. Gregorio Leti makes Cromwell 
 prodigy of learning at the University, exceedingly admired 
 by the bishops, a great favourite with King James. H 
 then sends him over to France upon hit travels, gives us 
 
 EBB 
 
 of all those studies that are necessary to the 
 education of other men. Nature offers herself 
 to be studied by them, without the spectacles 
 of books to read her by. They have only to 
 look inward, as Dryden finely says, and they 
 will observe her, in all her strength and all her 
 weakness, there. 
 
 There is only one incident in these early and 
 irregular practices which, if true, leaves a se- 
 rious stain on that portion of the life of Crom- 
 well. Sir William Dugdale originated it in his 
 " Short View of the Late Troubles,"* where 
 we find this remark : " By his exorbitances, at 
 last he so wasted his patrimony, that, having 
 attempted his uncle Steward t for a supply of 
 his wants, and finding that on a smooth way 
 of application to him he could not prevail, he 
 endeavoured, by colour of law, to lay hold of 
 his estate, representing him as a person not able 
 to govern it. But therein he failed." The dil- 
 igent researches of Mr. Noble, it must be ad- 
 mitted, seem to confirm this serious charge, 
 while they are more explicit in detailing the 
 grounds of it. From them it would seem that, 
 soon after his return to Huntingdon from Lon- 
 don, he " endeavoured to reinstate his fortune 
 by annexing the estate of his maternal uncle, 
 Sir Thomas Steward, to his own, even in the 
 lifetime of Sir Thomas. It was not unlikely 
 that he had asked of that gentleman a liberal 
 supply, and ' finding that by a smooth way of 
 application to him he could not prevail, he en- 
 deavoured to lay hold of his estate, representing 
 him as a person not able to govern it ;' which 
 he did by petitioning his majesty to grant him 
 a commission of lunacy ; but the king dismissed 
 the petition as ill founded." With a strong re- 
 luctance to entertain this story, I am neverthe- 
 less bound to subjoin what strikes me to be 
 farther evidence in support of it evidence 
 which some may even take to be incontrovert- 
 ible. Hacket, in his life of Archbishop Will- 
 iams (Scrinia Reserata), gives it as an eminent 
 proof of that wily bishop's penetration, that, at 
 the very outset of Cromwell's career, he thor- 
 oughly detected his character. In a council 
 held in 1645, Hacket represents Williams thus 
 speaking of Cromwell to the king: "I knew 
 him at Buckden, but never knew his religion, 
 being a common spokesman for sectaries, and 
 maintaining their part with stubbornness. He 
 never discoursed as if he were pleased with 
 your majesty and your officers, and, indeed, he 
 loves none that are more than his equals. 
 Your majesty did him but justice in refusing his 
 petition against Sir Thomas Steward of the Isle 
 of Ely; but he takes them all for his enemies 
 
 particular account of his gallantries, introduces him to an 
 a'udience of the French king, and an intimacy with Cardinal 
 Richelieu. Upon his return he assures us that Cromwell; 
 was highly in the good graces of Dr. Williams, bishop of 
 Lincoln, to whom he says he was nearly related ; and, what 
 is still more extraordinary than all this, Mr. Leti lets us 
 into the secret that the bishop had an amour with Crom- 
 well's wife ; and in the same ingenious style, and with 
 equally scrupulous attention to truth, he perseveres through 
 the whole work, assuring us that he wrote it during his 
 stay in England, and that he took care to be perfectly well 
 informed as to everything which he relates. It is bare 
 justice to Mr. Leti, however, to add, that he names the Earl 
 of Anglesea, the Earl of Aylesbury, and several other per- 
 sons of distinction, as the authors of the various matters he 
 acquaints us with, and it is just possible that' they were the 
 somewhat stupid but successful jokes of those distinguished, 
 persons. 
 * P. 459. t See Appendix.A,
 
 402 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 that would not let him undo his best friend, 
 and, above all that live, I think him the most 
 mindful of an injury. He talks openly that it 
 is fit some one should act more vigorously 
 against your forces, and bring your person into 
 the power of the Parliament. He hates the 
 Earl of Essex, because he says he is but half 
 an enemy to your majesty, and has done you 
 more favour than harm. His fortunes are bro- 
 ken, that it is impossible for him to subsist 
 (much less satisfy his ambition) but by your 
 majesty's bounty, or by the ruin of us all in 
 one common confusion. In short, every beast 
 has some evil properties, but Cromwell has the 
 properties of all evil beasts." 
 
 One consideration remains, involving a dif- 
 ferent and less injurious view of the charge it- 
 self. It is indisputable that this Sir Thomas 
 Steward, at his death, which occurred not 
 many years afterward, left the whole of his 
 fortune to his nephew to the young man at 
 whose hands he had suffered so recently such 
 a cruel and insulting wrong. Is it possible to 
 imagine that intercession on the part of rela- 
 tives, which is alleged to have brought this re- 
 sult about, would have sufficed in any way to 
 that end, if the old man had not now, in reality, 
 proved somewhat wavering in his wits. Giv- 
 ing Oliver Cromwell the advantage (to which 
 he is fairly entitled) of the doubt so started, it 
 is surely not difficult to imagine that, when he 
 petitioned the king to the effect stated by Dug- 
 dale and Noble, and apparently corroborated by 
 Archbishop Williams himself, he may really 
 have believed his kinsman to be labouring un- 
 der the malady alleged. 
 
 The time now arrived, however, when the 
 wild days were to close, and with them the im- 
 putations they gave birth to ; when higher pur- 
 poses and objects were to wake out of their 
 early sleep in Cromwell's heart, and thence- 
 forth sleep no more ; when his fellow-towns- 
 men were to ask with wonder among each 
 other how such a reformation could have risen, 
 
 " Since his addiction was to courses vain ; 
 His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow ; 
 His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports ; 
 And never noted in him any study, 
 Any retirement, any sequestration 
 From open haunts :" 
 
 and possibly some one, more intelligent and ac- 
 complished than the rest, was to answer in that 
 counter-quotation from the prince of poets and 
 philosophers, whose death should just then 
 iiave plunged the world in mourning, if the 
 world had known his value : 
 
 " The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, 
 And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
 Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality : 
 And so this man obscured his contemplation 
 Under the veil of wildness ; which, no doubt, 
 Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, 
 Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty." 
 
 "Whereat might the questioner have rejoined, 
 with the strongest confidence that he had in- 
 deed attained in this the secret of Cromwell's 
 mental progress, 
 
 " It must be so ; for miracles are ceased." 
 On the 22d of August, 1620, four months af- 
 ter the completion of his twenty-first year, 
 Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier, daugh- 
 ter of Sir James Bourchier, of Felsted, in Es- 
 sex, a kinswoman of the Hampdens, a woman 
 of high spirit, of an ancient and honourable 
 
 [ family, and whose irreproachable life and unob- 
 i trusive manners should indeed have protected 
 j her from the insults and obloquies of the time, 
 if any thing could have been held sacred from 
 them. The marriage took place at St. Giles's 
 Church, Cripplegate, London ; and three days 
 afterward, we discover from a deed still in ex- 
 istence, Cromwell (described in the document 
 as Oliver Cromwell, alias Williams, of Hun- 
 tingdon, Esq.) entered into a defeasance of stat- 
 ute staple to Thomas Morley, citizen and leath- 
 er-seller, of London, in 4000, conditioned 
 that he should, before the 20th of November 
 following, convey and assure unto Elizabeth 
 his wife, " for the term of her life, for her joint- 
 ure, all that parsonage house of Hartford, with 
 all the glebe lands and tythes," in the county 
 of Huntingdon.* It is interesting to find that, 
 some years afterward, when Cromwell's wants 
 appeared to require it, this amiable and excel- 
 lent woman surrendered this jointure, which, 
 with the fortune she had brought her husband, 
 is reported to have gone in satisfaction of the 
 debts contracted by early extravagance. 
 
 Nor, through all the wonderful changes she 
 was doomed to experience, did she ever lose 
 the simplicity and modesty of her youth. She 
 is said to have borne what f^w women can pa- 
 tiently bear, with only such complaints as the 
 most sweet and generous nature would give 
 utterance to and in this was more influenced 
 by love than restrained by awe.t Her hus- 
 band's elevation she rather endured than re- 
 joiced in ; for even the stern Ludlow, when 
 telling us that " he (the Protector) removed 
 
 * See Noble's "Memoirs of the Protectoral House." 
 t I have already ventured to say all that, perhaps, need 
 be said in a question of this kind in my Life of Straffbrd, 
 p. 88, 89, to which the reader is referred ; but one of the 
 notes in Noble's book bears too close a reference to this 
 subject to be omitted here ; and the writer was too candid 
 as well as industrious not to have a right to claim fair at- 
 tention to what he supposes himself to have had reason to 
 believe in a case of this kind. " The Protector Oliver," he 
 says, " though a great devotee, is known to have indulged 
 himself, after he arrived at power, with the company of la- 
 dies, and that not in the most innocent manner. Lady Dy- 
 sert, afterward Duchess of Lauderdale, and Mrs. Lambert, 
 have been frequently given as his mistresses. They were 
 ladies of very different accomplishments ; the former was 
 beautiful, witty, learned, and full of intrigue ; Mrs. Lam- 
 bert employed herself only in praying and singing hymns. 
 It was a court jest, that the Protector's instrument (of gov- 
 ernment) was found under my Lady Lambert's petticoat. 
 His acquaintance with the gay Lady Dysert gave such of- 
 fence to the godly, that he was obliged to decline his visits 
 to her; and it was thought that General Tollemache owed 
 his birth to Oliver; but there could no hurt arise in holding 
 heavenly meditation with Mrs. Lambert. Heath, in his 
 ' Flagellum,' says, Mrs. Lambert was a woman of good birth 
 and good parts, and of pleasing attractions, both for mind 
 and body. There is a history printed of a pretended natu- 
 ral son of the Protector's, but it is too marvellous to be true. 
 Probably, however, Oliver had natural children, one of 
 whom might be Dr. Millington, after whose name, in the 
 register of Strensham, in Worcestershire (the birthplace of 
 the humorous Butler), is, ' Query: was not he a bastard 
 of Oliver Cromwell?' and I am the more inclined to think 
 this true, because in the postscript of a letter from Ursula 
 Hornyhold, dated from London, Dec. 4, 1744, to a gentle- 
 man in the vicinity of that place, is, ' Did you ever hear it 
 said that Dr. Millington was illegitimate? Here has been 
 talk that Dr. Millington was a bastard of Oliver Cromwell.' 
 The scandal it would have given, had the Puritans known 
 of his amours, and the advantages the Cavaliers would have 
 made of it, would be sufficient reasons for his keeping mat- 
 ters of this kind from the eyes of the public. Besides, though 
 her highness was an obedient wife, she was not without 
 spirit and sensibility ; but, though she might know that she 
 had reason to suspect the Protector, we cannot suppose she 
 carried it to such unreasonable lengths as to be jealous of 
 Christina, queen of Sweden, as some pretend."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 403 
 
 from the Cockpit, which house the Parliament 
 had assigned to him, to take possession of 
 Whitehall, which he assigned to himself," adds, 
 that " his wife seemed at first unwilling to re- 
 move thither, though afterwards she became 
 better satisfied with her grandeur."* This 
 " satisfaction" will, perhaps, be more truly ex- 
 pressed in saying that, while the wife of Crom- 
 well had good sense enough to be contented 
 with an humble station, she had yet spirit and 
 dignity sufficient for the loftiest. " She was, 
 indeed," says an impartial witness, " an ex- 
 cellent housewife, and as capable of descend- 
 ing to the kitchen with propriety as she was of 
 acting in her exalted station with dignity. Cer- 
 tain it is, that she acted a much more prudent 
 part as protectress than Henrietta did as queen, 
 and that she educated her children with as 
 much ability as she governed her family with 
 address. Such a woman would, by a natural 
 transition, have filled a throne." This pleasing 
 picture of a virtuous and able woman's charac- 
 ter seems to me to be completed by the fact 
 her biographer should be proud to subjoin, that 
 she was the only one of the relatives of Crom- 
 well whose kinsmen received no place of profit 
 or emolument under the protectorate of Crom- 
 welLt 
 
 * " Ludlow's Memoirs." The Royalist writers, I may 
 observe, were so deficient in materials of accusation against 
 her, that they made as much as they could of an alleged 
 plainness of person ; and Cowley, meaning to ridicule this 
 in his " Cutter of Coleman-street," has put the following 
 into Cutter's mouth, as part of his description of his friend 
 Worm : " He would have been my Lady Protectress's poet : 
 he writ once a copy in praise of her beauty ; but her high- 
 ness gave for it but an old half-crown piece in gold, which 
 she had hoarded up before these troubles, and that discour- 
 aged him from any farther applications to court." The 
 portraits of Mrs. Cromwell now in existence give the lie to 
 this, nevertheless, and represent a pretty and comely per- 
 son, with just such an expression on the face as is borne 
 out by her quiet and unoffending character. 
 
 t The name of Bourchier appears in some of the ap- 
 pointments. Yet, in a MS. of the Suffolk gentry during 
 the usurpation, now existing in the handwriting of Sir John 
 Cullum, is to be found the following entry : " In 1055, 
 Bourchier, Esq., and Bourchier, gent., brothers of Oliver 
 Cromwell's wife, and sons of Sir Ja. Bourchier, knt., in the 
 parish of Whepsted, within about four miles of Bury. Sir 
 John found in the registers these items : ' Mr. James Bour- 
 chier buried the 15th of March, 1656 ; Mr. Henry Young 
 nnd Mrs. Susan Bourchier were married the 8th of April, 
 1656.' " No doubt, therefore, these were claimants for of- 
 fice, had their sister countenanced the claims. It will not, 
 perhaps, be out of place here to append a sketch of the few 
 incidents in the life of the Protectress, after her great hus- 
 band's death ; what other mention she receives in these 
 pages will be in the ordinary course of my narrative. On 
 the revival of the council of officers after Cromwell's death, 
 they showed themselves not insensible to her merit ; they 
 obliged the Parliament to make a suitable settlement upon 
 her, at a time when the Cromwellian interest was no more. 
 It was grateful in them, and honourable to her. " Perceiv- 
 ing the return of the king," however, Noble tells us, " would 
 take place, she conveyed a great quantity of gold, and some 
 of the best and most portable valuables belonging [as was 
 alleged, but by a fiction of royalty alonej to the royal fam- 
 ily, to a fruiterer's warehouse, near the sign of the Three 
 Cranes, in Thames-street, with an intention to export them 
 out of the kingdom ; but it being discovered, the council, 
 May 16, 1660, ordered persons to view them, who reported 
 that some pictures, and other things belonging to his maj- 
 esty, were found ; the remainder was attached in the cus- 
 tody of Lieutenant-general Cox ; and June 9 following, in- 
 formation was given to the House of Lords that she, her son 
 Richard, and Henry, Lord Herbert, had many deeds, evi- 
 dences, and writings belonging to the Lord-marquis of Wor- 
 cester [whose estates Cromwell had received from Parlia- 
 ment in payment of his military services], all of which they 
 were ordered to deliver up. She had, until about this 
 time, resided at the Cockpit and at Whitehall ; but, leaving 
 these places, she went from London and retired into Wales. 
 Mr. Granger says he was credibly informed that she was a 
 considerable time in Switzerland ; but probably she never 
 
 Such was the partner for life's journey whom 
 Cromwell had the good fortune to obtain, and 
 from his union with whom his useful life 
 began. He fixed his residence in his native 
 town of Huntingdon, and having reconciled all 
 old differences with his wealthy kinsmen the 
 Barringtons, the Hampdens, his uncle Sir Oli- 
 ver, and all whom his early courses had of- 
 fended he addressed himself to those studies 
 and pursuits which were to pave his way to 
 greatness. 
 
 Then was seen the same vehemence of tem- 
 per in the rigid duties of life which had so re- 
 cently transported its owner into the extremes 
 of pleasure. Cromwell's house became noto- 
 rious as the refuge of Nonconformist ministers, 
 or of such as suffered in any way for con- 
 science' sake : nor was he content with offer- 
 ing them this refuge merely ; he encouraged 
 th !m to opposition ; he stimulated his fellow- 
 townsmen to support them in it ; he attended 
 the Bishop of Lincoln in person (afterward the 
 famous Archbishop Williams) to press their 
 suits ; he preached for them ; he prayed with 
 them ;* he proclaimed in every place the wrongs 
 they were exposed to, and urged at every sea- 
 son, and by every allowable means, the neces- 
 sity of redress.f 
 
 was there. Finding that no inquiries were made after her, 
 she returned into England, and found an asylum in the 
 house of her son-in-law, Mr. Claypole, at Norborough, iu 
 Lincolnshire, where she continued unto her death, courting 
 obscurity. She had, as I have before mentioned, had the 
 tithes of Hartford settled upon her: these she gave up. 
 Oliver some years afterward gave her a grant of 2000 per 
 ann. ; but probably she never received any part of it, as it 
 was, I think, issuing out of estates which were given to him 
 by the Parliament, and belonged to the delinquent Loyal- 
 ists, who, at the Restoration, would naturally reclaim what 
 had been illegally and forcibly taken from them. The 
 8000 per ann., settled upon her by the Parliament, was 
 never paid to her, nor perhaps any part of it ; so that we 
 must suppose she had but trifling means to support herself 
 upon during her widowhood, and that arising chiefly from 
 
 ! the sale of those valuables that she retained after the Pro- 
 tector's death. She survived her husband seven years ; 
 and, dying at Norborough, was buried in a vault in the 
 chancel of that church, but no memorial whatever is to be 
 found to her memory." 
 * " His house," stys a writer in the " Biographica Britan- 
 
 i nica," " became the retreat of the persecuted Nonconformist 
 teachers ; and they show a building behind it which, they 
 
 i say, he erected for a chapel, where many of the disaffected 
 had their religious rites performed, and in which Mr. Crom- 
 well himself sometimes gave them some edifying sermons. 
 From his strenuousness in their cause, he was soon looked 
 upon as the head of that party in the county ; and he often 
 interested himself warmly in their behalf, by attending Dr. 
 Williams, bishop of Lincoln, and importunately desiring 
 some mitigation for such of the Nonconformist preachers as 
 had fallen into trouble, he regarding them as suffering per- 
 secution for conscience' sake." 
 
 t Having satisfied himself with the venerable divines of 
 the Church, says Heath, " he fell in with some of the pre- 
 ciser sort ; began to show himself at lectures, to entertain 
 such preachers at his house, to countenance that way, and 
 be very zealous in all meetings of such people, which then 
 befjan to be frequent and numerous, and to exercise with 
 them by praying and the like ; to estrange himself from those 
 his benefactors, and at last to appear a publique dissenter 
 from the discipline of the Church of England." The same 
 writer gives, in tho way of a sneer, a noble instance of the 
 truth and sincerity of Cromwell's new way of life. " And 
 now," he says, " he was grown (that is, he pretended to be) 
 so just, and of so scrupulous a conscience, that, having some 
 years before won 30 of one Mr. Gallon at play, meeting 
 him accidentally, he desired him to come home with him, 
 and to receive his money, telling him that he had got it by 
 indirect and unlawful means, and that it would be a sin in 
 him to detain it any longer ; and did really pay the gentle- 
 men the said 30 back again." Mr. Noble, too, in the 
 course of his zealous researches, discovered, in one of the 
 manuscripts submitted to him, a similar anecdote, which he 
 thus relates : " Dr. Hutton, in his MS. book, says that Oli- 
 ver won some money from Mr, Rob. Compton, a genteel lad,
 
 404 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Herein was shown, by this extraordinary 
 man, his aptitude for the great claims and 
 questions of the age. Of all the discontents 
 that then muttered at a distance of the coming 
 change ; of all the grievances that were push- 
 ing on the stumbling and shambling govern- 
 ment of the first Stuart to the inevitable preci- 
 pice awaiting it; of all the mighty motives 
 that were likely, while they stirred masses of 
 men to generous suffering and great action, to 
 consolidate in the end one tremendous party, 
 irresistible and unyielding for life or death, the 
 questions of religion and the conscience not 
 only stood the first, but might be said to hold 
 every other within their mighty embrace ; for 
 what the Church was then immortal language 
 has depicted, in describing all that aspired to 
 dignity in her service, from the curate to the 
 bishop, as 
 
 " Such as for their bellies' sake 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold. 
 Of other care they little reck'ning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast, 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
 Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 A sheep-hook ; or have learn'd aught else the least 
 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
 What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 
 And when they list, their lean and hashy songs 
 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw: 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
 But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread : 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 
 
 So great was the influence acquired by Crom- 
 well in his masterly seizure of such grievances 
 as these, that the chiefs of his fellow-towns- 
 men offered to return him for the borough in 
 the next Parliament that should be summoned. 
 The effort was made in 1625, and failed ; but 
 in 1628 Oliver Cromwell went up to Westmin- 
 ster, and took his seat in the third Parliament 
 of Charles I., as member for the borough of 
 Huntingdon.* 
 
 A question has been raised as to the nature 
 of his employment at Huntingdon in the inter- 
 val after his marriage, since there is little doubt 
 that his own private resources were insuffi- 
 cient to his support. It scarcely admits of a 
 doubt, as it seems to me, that he took an active 
 share in the business of his mother's brewery. 
 The universal attempts of the Royalists of his 
 day, both before and after the usurpation, to 
 cast ridicule upon his having once followed 
 
 son of a draper, or some such trade, in London ; and it be- 
 ing by unfair play, he was determined to repay it him, 
 which he did most opportunely, for the messenger founc 
 him at an ordinary, surrounded by bailiffs, so that he couk 
 not venture to leave the room ; but he satisfied the debt 
 which was 20, and took away with him 100." Sir Philij 
 Warwick, too, distinctly tells us that " he used a gooc 
 method upon his conversion, for he declared he was ready 
 to make restitution unto any man who would accuse him 
 or whom he could accuse himself to have wronged. To his 
 honour I speak this, for I think the public acknowledgments 
 men make of the public evils they have done to be the mosf 
 glorious trophies they can have assigned to them." 
 
 * An impression has prevailed that he sat in the 1625 
 Parliament as alleged by various writers, and even by the 
 plodding and curious Mr. Noble. A friend of one of his la 
 ter biographers, however, Dr. Russell, supplies the follow 
 ing decisive note on this point : " A few years since there 
 was 8 disputed election case in the borough, which was car 
 ried to a committee of the House, and it became necessary 
 that authenticated copies of the returns should be procure 
 from the originals in the town. I examined these, and foun 
 that Cromwell sat only once for Huntingdon, namely, in the 
 third Parliament of Charles I., as stated above. In the firs 
 Parliament of that monarch, the former members, Sir Hear) 
 St. John and Sir Henry Mainwaring, were returned." 
 
 he occupation of a brewer,* are surely enough 
 o raise a strong presumpton of the fact (how- 
 3ver justly the ridicule may be despised), in 
 he absence of any counter statement on the 
 )art of his friends or dependants. And there 
 s a passage in Milton's noble panegyric of him, 
 applying to a somewhat later period, which is 
 not without a certain strong bearing on the 
 [uestion : " Is matura jam atque firmata aetate, 
 [uam et privatus traduxit, nulla re magis quam 
 religionis cultu purioris, et integritate vjtae cog- 
 nitus, domi in occulto CREVERAT ; et ad summa 
 quaeque tempora fiduciam Deo fretam et ingen- 
 em animum tacito pectore aluerat." " Being 
 now arrived to a ripe and mature age, all which 
 time he spent as a private person, noted for 
 nothing so much as the culture of pure religion 
 and an integrity of life, he was GROWN rich at 
 home ; and enlarging his hopes with reliance in 
 3od for any the most exalted times, he nursed 
 lis great soul in silence." The expression 
 grown rich," in this magnificent passage, 
 seems undoubtedly to warrant the inference 
 that it was by some pursuit he had thus grown 
 rich, for it is well ascertained that at that time 
 tie had found out no easier method of achieving 
 wealth or substance, t 
 
 A family, too, had meanwhile grown up 
 around him. On the 13th of October, 1621, 
 fourteen months after his marriage, his first 
 son was baptized at St. John's Church, in Hun- 
 tingdon. He was named Robert, after his 
 grandfather, but died in his childhood. A sec- 
 ond son, named Oliver, was baptized in the 
 same church on the 6th of February, 1623, and 
 subsequently received his education at the Fel- 
 sted free grammar-school, in Essex, where he 
 had been placed by means of the influence of 
 his maternal grandfather (Sir James Bourchier) 
 
 * See Appendix C. A thousand other instances might 
 be given as in Hudibras, where the knight's dagger is 
 spoken of: 
 
 " It had been 'prentice to a brewer. 
 Where this and more it did endure , 
 But left the trade, as many more 
 Have lately done on the same score." 
 Again, in a description of the House of Commons 
 " 'Tis Noll's old brewhouse now, I swear, 
 
 The speaker's but his skinker. 
 Their members are like th' council of war, 
 
 Carmen, pedlers, tinkers." 
 
 And in another description of the Protector's court . 
 " Who, fickler than the city ruff, 
 Can change his brewer's coat to buff, 
 His dray-cart to a coach, the beast 
 Into two Flanders mares at least : 
 Nay, hath the art to murder kings, 
 Like David, only with his slings." 
 
 And, finally, for it is unnecessary to give more, in a song 
 called " The Sale of Religious Household Stuff:" 
 " And here are Old Noll's brewing vessels, 
 
 And here are his dray and his slings." 
 With prose writers such allusions are scarcely less abun- 
 dant. Walker, who wrote the " History of Independency," 
 and prophesied that Cromwell (then lieutenant-general to 
 Fairfax) would assume the supreme sway, added to his 
 prediction, " Then let all true faints and subjects cry out 
 with me, ' God save King Oliver and his brewing vessels.'" 
 And, speaking of Harry Parker, under the name of Ob- 
 servator, he notices his return from Hamborough, and that 
 " he is highly preferred to be a brewer's clerk (alias secre- 
 tary to Cromwell)." Cowley's " Cutter of Coleman-street" 
 has also an allusion to the business of Cromwell, when 
 Worm, in derision of Cutter's learning, is made to ask, 
 " What parts hast thou ? Hast thou scholarship enough to 
 make a brewer's clerk ?" 
 
 t See, for an argument in favour of this, Mr. Thomas 
 Cromwell's " Lifa and Times of Oliver Cromwell," p. 44.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 405 
 
 with the Earl of Warwick. At the breaking 
 out of .the civil war, this boy, then nineteen, 
 procured a commission by his father's interest, 
 and, when the strife had wellnigh closed, fell in 
 battle. His name, in touching allusion to that 
 death, was one of the last words that rose to 
 the Lord Protector's lips in this world.* 
 
 The first daughter born to Cromwell was 
 baptized at St. John's, in Huntingdon, on the 
 5th of August, 1624. She will find subsequent 
 mention in these pages for her uncompromising 
 spirit and love of freedom. She married the 
 famous Ireton ; and, after the death of that 
 most eminent soldier and statesman, took, as 
 her second husband, Lieutenant-general Charles 
 Fleetwood, in obedience, as was supposed, 
 rather to the Protector's earnest entreaty than 
 the selection of her own desire. Cromwell's 
 next child was his successor Richard, who was 
 born at Huntingdon on the 4th, and baptized 
 at St. John's on the 19th of October, 1626 ; 
 and this was followed, on the 20th of January, 
 1628, by the birth of Henry, afterward lord- 
 lieutenant of Ireland, who was baptized on the 
 29th of that month, in the Church of All Saints, 
 in Huntingdon. The education of both these 
 boys was finished, along with that of their eld- 
 est brother, at the Felsted school, where they 
 were taught by a man of well-known accom- 
 plishment, Mr. Holbeach ; and had the advan- 
 tage of the strict superintendence of their 
 grandfather, Sir James Bourchier. 
 
 A letter from Cromwell to one of his son 
 Richard's sponsors was found among some 
 Cambridge manuscripts a few years ago. It is 
 dated from Huntingdon on the 14th of October, 
 1626, and addressed to one of the tutors in St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, whose friendship 
 he had probably formed during his own stay at 
 the University. " Loving sir," the letter runs, 
 " make me so much your servant by being god- 
 father unto my child ; I would myself have 
 come over to have made a formall invitation, 
 but my occasions would not permit me ; and 
 therefore hold me in that excused. The day 
 of your trouble is Thursday next. Let me in- 
 treate your company on Wednesday. By this 
 time it appears I am more apt to encroch upon 
 you for new favours, than to show my thank- 
 fullness for the love I have already found ; but 
 I know your patience and your goodness can- 
 nott be exhausted by your friend and servant, 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. Hunt., this 14 October, 
 1626 to my approved good friend, Mr. Hen. 
 Downtell, at his chambers in St. John's College 
 theire." This short and simple letter is inter- 
 esting, because it is characteristic of Crom- 
 well's mind at the period ; and, notwithstand- 
 ing the subject it relates to, contains not a 
 cloudy or fanatic phrase. It shows, also, the 
 sort of connexion he continued to keep up with 
 Cambridge, and which, no doubt, was thus ear- 
 ly preparing the way for his subsequent repre- 
 sentation of that borough. 
 
 But it is time to return to the newly-elected 
 representative for Huntingdon, on his way to 
 take hig seat at Westminster, in the month of 
 March, 1628. Let us suppose that he and 
 Hampden entered the House together, at the 
 momentous opening of that famous Parliament 
 
 * This has not been noticed by any writer, but will ap- 
 pear in an extract of one of the Journals from the time. 
 
 two men already linked to each other by the 
 bonds of counsel and of friendship yet more 
 than by those of family, but presenting how 
 strange a contrast to each other in all things, 
 save the greatness of their genius ! The one 
 of exquisitely mild deportment, of ever civil 
 and affable manners, with a countenance that 
 at once expressed the dignity of his intellect 
 and the sweetness of his nature ; and even in 
 his dress, arranged with scrupulous nicety and 
 care, announcing the refinement of his mind ; 
 the other, a figure of no mean mark, but oh, 
 how unlike that ! His gait clownish, his dress 
 ill made and slovenly, his manners coarse and 
 abrupt, and his face such as men look on with 
 a vague feeling of admiration and dislike ! The 
 features cut, at it were, out of a piece of gnarl- 
 ed and knotty oak ; the nose large and red ; the 
 cheeks, coarse, warted, wrinkled, and sallow ; 
 the eyebrows huge and shaggy, but, glistening 
 from beneath them, eyes full of depth and mean- 
 ing, and, when turned to the gaze, piercing 
 through and through the gazer ; above these, 
 again, a noble forehead, whence, on either side, 
 an open flow of hair " round from his parted 
 forelock manly hangs," clustering ; and over 
 all, and pervading all, that undefinable aspect 
 of greatness alluded to by the poet,* when he 
 spoke of the face of Cromwell as one that 
 
 " Did imprint an awe, 
 And naturally all souls to his did bow, 
 \s wands of divination downward draw, 
 And point to beds where sovereign gold doth grow."t 
 
 * Dryden. 
 
 t Other opportunities will occur for adverting to Crom- 
 well's appearance, but I may here subjoin the chief author- 
 ities for the above slight sketch. First, let the reader turn 
 to the careful engraving, after Lely's portrait, prefixed to 
 this volume : the only portrait I ever met with, among the 
 hundreds that are in existence, which, to my mind, ex- 
 presses Cromwell. It represents him on the eve of his as- 
 sumption of the Protectorate ; and a story is told of Crom- 
 well's instructions to the " young man" who painted it, that 
 he was not to inflict any " nonsense" on the canvass, but 
 paint wrinkles, warts, and all. There is an air about it 
 (which we may suppose gathered there by the wonderful 
 events that had already declared themselves to the success- 
 ful soldier) of calm and unalterable superiority. The firm- 
 set lips, the fair, large front, the threatening brow and nose, 
 all " declare absolute rule ;" and yet to gaze upon it for a 
 time is to understand the worst libels of the Royalists. 
 Clarendon describes Cromwell as having something singu- 
 lar and ungracious in his look and appearance. The author 
 of Hudibras says, " Cromwell wants neither wardrobe nor 
 armour ; his face was naturally buff, and his skin inay fur- 
 nish you with a rusty coat of mail ; you would think he 
 had been christened in a lime-pit, and tanned alive." When 
 Major-general Massey was introduced into the presence- 
 chamber at the Hague, after his escape from England, im- 
 mediately after the execution of Charles I., the Marquis of 
 Montrose (who had seen Cromwell often in battle) asked 
 him, by way of drollery but a very misplaced drollery at 
 such a lime " how Oliver's nose did." Clement Walker 
 says, that when Cromwell ordered the soldiers to fire, in 
 the insurrection of the London apprentices, " his nose looked 
 as prodigiously upon you as a comet ;" and, speaking of the 
 government making treason no treason, he adds, that, should 
 the House vote that " Oliver's nose is a ruby, they would 
 expect you to swear it, and fight for it." These scurrilous 
 jests, which yet have a certain character of truth, might be 
 multiplied infinitely from the journals and records of the 
 time. The " Mercurius Pragmaticus" of January, 1648, 
 tells us, " Then Mr. Cromwell, to show that this was no 
 time to speak sense and reason, stood up, and the glow- 
 worm glistening in his beak, he began to spit fire ; and, as 
 the devil quoted Scripture against our Saviour, so did he 
 against his sovereign, and told the House, it is written, 
 ' Thou shalt not suffer a hypocrite to live ;' and what then, 
 I pray you, will become of himself?" The "Parliament 
 Porter" of the following August is not less complimentary : 
 " Nothing is heard now among the brethren but triumph 
 and fury, singing and mirth, for their happy success (thanks 
 to the devil first, and next to Noll Cromwell's nose) against 
 the Scots, whom they vaunt to have beaten to dust. Mon- 
 TO, one of the best soldiers in Christendom, u coming on.
 
 406 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Imagine, then, these two extraordinary men, 
 now for the first time together,* passing along 
 the crowded lobbies of that most famous as- 
 sembly Hampden greeting his friends as he 
 passes, stopping now and then, perhaps, to in- 
 troduce his country kinsman to the few whose 
 curiosity had mastered the first emotion in- 
 spired by the singular stranger, but pushing di- 
 rectly forward towards a knot of active and 
 eager faces that are clustered round a little 
 spot near the bar of the House, on the right of 
 the speaker's chair,t in the midst of which stand 
 Sir John Eliot, Sir Robert Philips, and Pym. 
 The crowd make way for Hampden ; the cen- 
 tral figures of that group receive him among 
 them with deference and gladness ; he introdu- 
 ces his cousin Cromwell; and, among the great 
 spirits whom that little spot contains, the clown- 
 ish figure, the awkward gait, the slovenly dress, 
 pass utterly unheeded, for, in his first few 
 words, they have discovered the fervour, and, 
 perhaps, suspected the greatness, of this acces- 
 sion to their cause. Pym is soon seen to draw 
 the new member for Huntingdon aside, and, 
 with a forecast of his favourite sphere of ac- 
 tion, initiates him into the case against Main- 
 waring.J 
 
 Meanwhile, let a passage from one of Dr. 
 South's sermons hint to us what may, at that in- 
 stant, have occupied the more vulgar thoughts of 
 the Royalist portion of the assembly. " Who," 
 said that zealous candidate for a bishopric, 
 " who that had beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly 
 fellow as Cromwell first entering the Parlia- 
 ment House, with a threadbare torn coat, and a 
 greasy hat (and perhaps neither of them paid 
 for), could have suspected that, in the course 
 of so few years, he should, by the murder of 
 one king, and the banishment of another, as- 
 cend the throne, be invested in the royal robes, 
 and want rfothing of the state of a king but the 
 changing of his hat into a crown 1" "Odds 
 fish, Lory !" exclaimed the laughing Charles, 
 when he heard this from the divine who had 
 panegyrized the living lord-protector, " Odds 
 fish, man ! your chaplain must be a bishop. 
 Put me in mind of him at the next vacancy." 
 
 with a powerful army to give Noll another field fight : he 
 will find hard play here, for these will not be laughed out 
 of their loyalty, nor frightened out of themselves with the 
 blazing of his beacon nose." Nor, in the " Mercurius 
 Elencticus" of the February following the king's execution, 
 is there any lack of characteristic forgery : " Sure Crom- 
 well intends to set up his trade of brewing again, for the 
 other day, being in the presence of the Duke of Gloucester, 
 he stroked him on the head, and, like a merciful protector, 
 said, ' Sirrah, what trade do you like best ? Would not a 
 shoemaker be a good trade fnr you, or a brewer? And for 
 that little gentlewoman, your sister (meaning the Lady 
 Elizabeth), if she will be ruled, I will provide her a hus- 
 band ; one of Colonel Pride's sons, or one of my own, if 
 either of them like her, or can love her.' The duke told 
 him that, 'being a king's son, he hoped the Parliament 
 would allow him some means out of his father's revenue to 
 maintain him like a gentleman, and not put him an appren- 
 tice like a slave.' Nose Al ty makes answer, ' Boy, you 
 
 must be apprentice, for all your father's revenue will not 
 make half satisfaction for the wrong he hath done the king- 
 dom ;' and so Nose went blowing out." This long note 
 may be closed by a short notice from the " Annual Regis- 
 ter," where an old lady sets down her recollections of Crom- 
 well, and says, among other things, that, when she saw 
 him, his face was very pale, and his nose a deep red. 
 
 * Nothing \B surely so probable, since Cromwell would 
 most likely, in any case, have come up to town with Hamp- 
 den, but, considering that this was his first session, must 
 almost of necessity have availed himself of the present in- 
 troduction of his influential cousin. 
 
 1 See Life of Pym, p. 212. t Ibid, p. 150. 
 
 Oh, glorious time for the Church ! Oh, golden 
 age for the profligate and the slave ! 
 
 Not so the days before us now : the month 
 of June has come, and Pym has risen, in this 
 third Parliament, the accuser of the royal chap- 
 lain, Mainwaring. The various assertions of 
 manly thought and elevated courage that rang 
 through the great assembly after that memora- 
 ble exposure have been celebrated in other por- 
 tions of this work. Mainwaring, given up by 
 Charles and by Laud, received severe judg- 
 ment. Cromwell sat silently, earnestly watch- 
 ing all, and patiently waiting all. 
 
 The House reassembled, smarting with the 
 gross events of the recess. A debate soon fol- 
 lowed ; and in the course of it were heard the 
 mild, yet potent accents of the voice of Hamp- 
 den, insinuating deadly objections under the 
 notion of modest doubts, and, almost insensi- 
 bly to themselves, influencing in his behalf the 
 most violent of his opponents. The charm of 
 that exquisite orator hangs yet over the House, 
 when it is suddenly dispelled by a harsh and 
 broken voice of astonishing fervour, whose un- 
 tunable but piercing tones announce to the Roy- 
 alists a foe to grapple with, and to the patriots 
 a strong arm of help : it is Cromwell. Among 
 other things, he accuses Dr. Alabaster of hav- 
 ing preached fiat popery at St. Paul's Cross ; 
 and more, that his diocesan, the Bishop of 
 Winchester, had ordered him to do it ! By 
 this same bishop's means, he adds, that Main- 
 waring, so nobly and justly punished here for 
 his sermons, has been recently recently, within 
 a month, preferred to a rich living. If these are 
 steps to Church preferments, what may we not 
 expect 1* 
 
 Cromwell resumed his seat, and was followed 
 by Sir Robert Philips, a veteran in debate, and 
 one of the acknowledged authorities of the 
 House, whose tone, in the few words he ad- 
 dressed to the speaker, bore evidence to the 
 striking effect which the new member had cre- 
 ated. Then followed the singular scene which 
 closed in the adoption of Pym's religious vow 
 the heaviest blow yet aimed at the Church 
 of Laud ; and then, the dissolution. 
 
 After that disastrous termination of this Par- 
 liament, Cromwell returned to Huntingdon, but 
 thenceforward kept himself in frequent inter- 
 course with Hampden and the celebrated St. 
 John, the latter of whom had married his un- 
 cle's eldest daughter.-f- He had now openly 
 chosen his part with that mighty body of able 
 and resolute men, who were pledged to the 
 death against a continuance of the old, the vile, 
 and irresponsible government of England ; and, 
 though having merely set his hand to the plough, 
 every idea and purpose of his mind seemed, in 
 that very instant, to have stretched forward to 
 some prospect of a harvest-time. Hampden's 
 vade mecum was "Davila's History of the Civil 
 Wars ;" Cromwell's was the already unceasing 
 thought of the great motives that might be in- 
 fused into mean men by the simple use of one 
 tremendous passion, in whose presence pleas- 
 ure should avail not, and suffering be as noth- 
 ing : a glorious and elevating thought of all the 
 possible vices and follies in even the basest, 
 
 * See Parl. Hist., vol. viii., p. 289. 
 t Elizabeth, daughter of Heury Cromwell, Esq., of Up 
 wood.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 407 
 
 the weakest, and the most low-born, which 
 might thus be entirely overmastered or subdu- 
 ed. In other words, Hampden studied how best 
 to manage an army; Cromwell, how best to 
 raise one. 
 
 From this time it was notorious he carried 
 religious exercises to an infinitely higher pitch 
 than he had yet attempted ; and now it was 
 that Sir Philip Warwiek was told by his physi- 
 cian, Dr. Simcott, of the splenetic man his pa- 
 tient was ; and how he had " phansyes about 
 the cross in that town ;" and how that he, the 
 doctor, had been " called up to him at midnight, 
 and such unseasonable hours," so very many 
 times, upon a " strong phansy, which made him 
 believe he was then dying." No doubt the good 
 Dr. Simcott knew about as much of the disease 
 his patient laboured under as the grave Sir 
 Philip Warwick himself. The thoughts that 
 shook Oliver Cromwell then were far beyond 
 the reaches of their souls ; it is possible, nay, 
 almost certain, that they were even " beyond 
 the reach" of the thinker's own ; for therein 
 consists, as our noblest philosopher has in a 
 single line defined it, the whole pain of hypo- 
 chondriacal metaphysics. Cromwell had al- 
 ready projected himself too far into the future. 
 
 And the process, thus commenced, seems to 
 have gone regularly on during the brief interval 
 he remained in Huntingdon. Had Shakspeare 
 personally undergone the precise disease, he 
 could not more finely have defined it, as by a 
 prophetic forecast, in Cromwell's case, than by 
 the description Polonius gives of Hamlet's suf- 
 fering. For the young prince, observes that 
 fine, politic specimen of the Burleigh school, 
 
 Fell into a sadness ; thence into a fast ; 
 Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness; 
 Thence to a lightness ; 
 
 and this was the very movement of hypochon- 
 driacal disease now traced in Cromwell. At 
 one time plunged in sorrow ; now still more 
 alarming the affectionate solicitude around him 
 by refusing support that nature cried for ; then 
 starting from his bed in the dead of night with 
 fits of painful watching ; troubled strangely af- 
 terward with " phansies about the cross" of 
 Huntingdon ; and then, after an interval, sud 
 denly plunging into fantastic shapes of mer- 
 riment, that showed most painful and danger- 
 ous of all : thus did Cromwell, according to the 
 traditions and records of the time, pass the 
 three years that followed his return to Hunting- 
 don from the Parliament of 1628. 
 
 At last (perhaps moved to it by some desire 
 to seek refuge in a change of scene) he resolv- 
 ed to leave that town. I should observe that, 
 some days after his return from his Parliament- 
 ary duties, he had been appointed, in conjunc- 
 tion with his old tutor, Dr. Beard, and one Rob- 
 ert Bernard, a justice of the peace, under the 
 new charter granted about that time to the 
 Huntingdon corporation ; but this appointment, 
 made with a probable view of softening the as- 
 perity of the late formidable member of Par- 
 liament, had grown irksome to him from cir- 
 cumstances recently named, and his discom- 
 forts were thought to have been increased by 
 the neighbourhood of his very violent Royalist 
 uncle, Sir Oliver, whose influence had already 
 rendered hopeless his re-election for Hunting- 
 don. 
 
 Be this as it may, there is no doubt that, in 
 1631, he prevailed with that uncle, his wife, 
 and his mother,* to concur with him in the 
 sale of certain lands and tithes of the family, 
 out of which his small patrimony was at pres- 
 ent derived. By this sale he realized 1800 ; 
 and having stocked a little farm at St. Ives 
 with the money, he at once, leaving his mother 
 at Huntingdon, in the midst of old associations 
 too dear to her to be resigned, removed to St. 
 Ives with his wife and children. 
 
 Nearly every local memorial of the residence 
 of the Cromwells at Huntingdon has perished. 
 The great old family are extinct ; their manor- 
 houses and lands have passed to other propri- 
 etors ; but, though no trace remains to tell of 
 the old knightly fortunes and splendours of the 
 chief representatives of the name, the memory 
 of the self-raised brewer has clung fast to the 
 soil even to fragments of it and will cling 
 there immortally. A portion of land near God- 
 manchester is still called Oliver Cromwell's 
 Swath ; and two acres in the manor of Bramp- 
 ton still bear the name of Oliver Cromwell's 
 Acres. 
 
 In the care of the St. Ives farm he now not 
 only sought employment for some portion of 
 the ill-subdued energy which always craved in 
 him for action, but also put to the proof the 
 value of those thoughts we have attributed to 
 him after the disastrous dissolution of 1628. 
 In the tenants that rented from him in the la- 
 
 * The industry of Mr. Noble furnishes us with an ab- 
 stract of the conveyance, which I shall give (as probably 
 interesting to the reader), premising that " the reason of 
 Sir Oliver and Mrs. Robert Cromwell joining in the deed is, 
 that the latter had a small jointure out of it, and that, with 
 reference to the former, Sir Henry Cromwell had merely 
 given or devised these premises to his son, Rob. Oliv., the 
 Protector's father, for a long term of years, as it was usual 
 anciently." The following is Mr. Noble's abstract and de- 
 scription of the property: "On the 7th of May, 1631, he 
 obtained that his uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell, alias Williams, 
 of Ramsey, in the county of Huntingdon, knt., bis mother, 
 Eliz. Williams, alias Cromwell, of Huntingdon, widow, 
 should join with himself and his wife (who are described, 
 Oliver Williams, alias Cromwell, of Huntingdon, Esq., and 
 Elizabeth, his now wife), to convey his estates in and near 
 Huntingdon, and at Hartford, to Richard Oakeley, of the 
 city of Westminster, in the county of Middlesex, Esq., and 
 Rich. Owen, also of the county of Middlesex, Esq. As it 
 may be very acceptable to many of my readers, especially 
 those of Huntingdon and its vicinity, I will give the parcels 
 as they stand in the deed, omitting only the general words. 
 All the capital messuage, called the Augustine Fryers, alias 
 Augustine Friers, within the borough or town of Hunting- 
 don, and the messuages, &c., belonging to it, and one close, 
 called the Dove-house close, and also all those three cot- 
 tages or tenements, with a malt-house, and a little close, by 
 estimation one acre, lying together in Huntingdon, afore- 
 said, theretofore of Edm. Goodwyns ; and also all those 
 seven leas of pasture, containing by estimation two acres, 
 called Toothill Leas, lying in Huntingdon ; and also all 
 those two acres and three roods of meadow, lying and being 
 in Brampton, in the said county of Huntingdon, in a mead- 
 ow there called Portholme ; and also all those two acres of 
 meadow, in Godmanchester, in the said county of Hunting- 
 don ; all the above premises are called either late, or now 
 or late, in the possession of the said Eliz. Cromwell, widow ; 
 and all other the lands and tenements of the said Eliz. Crom- 
 well, widow, Oliv. Cromwell, Esq., or either of them, in 
 Huntingdon, Godmanchester, or Brampton aforesaid, or any 
 of them. And also all the rectory and parsonage of Hart- 
 ford, in the said county, and the tithes both great and small 
 of the same, with all and singular the rights, members, and 
 appurtenances thereof, to the late dissolved priory or monas- 
 tery of the blessed Virgin Mary, in Huntingdon aforesaid, 
 heretofore belonging or appertaining, and being some time 
 parcel of the possessions thereof. The sum," Mr. Noble 
 adds, " that these estates were sold for was only 1600 ; 
 with this he did not think it beneath him to stock a grazing 
 farm at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, whither he weut 
 upon leaving the place of his birth."
 
 408 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 bourers that took service under him he sought 
 to sow the seeds of his after-troop of Ironsides. 
 He achieved an influence through the neigh- 
 bourhood all around him, unequalled for piety 
 and self-denying virtue. The greater part of 
 his time, even upon his farm, was passed in 
 devotional exercises, and expositions, and pray- 
 er. Who prays best will work best ; who 
 preaches best will fight best : all the famous 
 doctrines of his later and more celebrated years 
 were tried and tested on the little farm at St. 
 Ives. His servants were taught that, however 
 inferior to the lords of the earth they might be 
 in worldly circumstances, there were yet claims 
 of loftier concern in which they had equal share, 
 and in the right understanding of which their 
 humanity might exalt itself to the level of the 
 proudest. He did not drudge them from rising 
 to setting sun, as if they had been merely beasts 
 of burden ; he left them time, at intervals, to 
 ponder on the momentous fact that even they 
 had immortal souls. Before going to their 
 field-work in the morning they knelt down with 
 their master in the touching equality of prayer ; 
 in the evening they shared with him again the 
 comfort and exaltation of divine precepts, and 
 were taught the inexpressible value of the re- 
 ligion that is practical, and tends to elevate, 
 not to depress, the soul. 
 
 In St. Ives, to this day, significant memori- 
 als of Cromwell exist, which strangely and 
 deeply connect themselves, even at this dis- 
 tance of time, with those solemn scenes. A 
 vast number of swords are scattered round the 
 neighbourhood, bearing on their hilts the ini- 
 tials 0. C. They have descended from the 
 farmers and labourers of the times we are re- 
 tracing, to the possession of their present own- 
 ers ; for in 1641, when the sky foretold the 
 imminent storm, a large supply of swords was 
 sent to the district of St. Ives, marked with 
 those initials, for which, some few months af- 
 ter, the sum of 100 was voted to Cromwell, 
 in acknowledgment of the outlay and the zeal. 
 With the Bible he had before given them in one 
 hand, .and the sword he then gave them in the 
 other, those old tenants and labourers of St. 
 Ives afterward formed part of that immortal 
 phalanx which was never known to yield or be 
 beaten in battle.* 
 
 Meanwhile the farm itself was anything but 
 prosperous. It was probably, however, the last 
 part of Cromwell's care, and therefore the 
 sneers of the Royalist biographers and histori- 
 ans on this point fall harmlessly enough. " The 
 long prayers," writes Hume, " which he said 
 to his family in the morning, and again in the 
 afternoon, consumed his own time and that of 
 his ploughmen ; and he reserved no leisure for 
 the care of his temporal affairs. "t His health, 
 
 * We owe this curious fact respecting the swords to Mr. 
 Noble, who incidentally mentions the discovery, in some 
 doubt of their origin. Mr. Noble tells us, also, that, at the 
 time he wrote, a large barn which Cromwell built still went 
 by his name, and that the farmer who then rented the lands 
 which he occupied marked his sheep with the identical 
 irons which Oliver used, and which have upon them the 
 tetters O. C. 
 
 t The ingenious Mr. Heath also gives his usual scurril 
 version of these incidents, in Cromwell's History. " Bat 
 his estate still decaying, he betook himself at last to a farm, 
 being parcel of the royalty of St. Ives, where he intended to 
 husband it, and try what could be done by endeavour, since 
 nothing (as ye f .) succeeded by design ; and accordingly took 
 .servants, and bought him all utensils and materials, as 
 
 more than his temporal affairs, troubled him at 
 this time. The cold and damp air of St. Ives 
 never thoroughly agreed with him ; and his ap- 
 pearance almost every Sunday in the parish 
 church was long remembered and adverted to 
 by the inhabitants of that place, after his fame 
 had directed all eyes towards him, and made 
 him the argument of every tongue. They de- 
 scribed him walking up the aisle in an ill-ar- 
 ranged dress, and with a piece of red flannel* 
 fastened round his throat to protect him from 
 the frequent inflammations to which the sharp 
 cold and excessive moisture of the air had pain- 
 fully exposed him. 
 
 Other memories, too, Cromwell left behind 
 him among the people of St. Ives. More friend- 
 ly to the true religion than to its professed min- 
 isters in whose communion he nevertheless 
 seems up to this time to have remained he 
 was remembered as the friend of the poor or 
 the oppressed in conscience ; as a man of won- 
 derfully fervent piety, ever zealous to promote 
 good works and to reward good men. One of 
 his letters, written during his residence at St. 
 Ives, is fortunately preserved in the British Mu- 
 seum, and corroborates in all respects this re- 
 port of his character. It is addressed to his 
 " very lovinge friend Mr. Storie, at the sign of 
 the Dogg in the Royal Exchange, London." 
 The object of it appears to have been to secure 
 the continuance of " a man of goodnesse, and 
 Industrie, and abilitie every way," in a lecture- 
 ship which Mr. Storie and others had instituted 
 in St. Ives. Its spirit is that of a generous and 
 disinterested earnestness, and it is not without 
 its characteristic touches. 
 
 "MR. STORIE, Amongst the catalogue of 
 those good workes which your fellow-citycenes 
 and our countriemen have donn, this will not 
 be reckoned for the least, that they have pro- 
 vided for the feedinge of soules. Buildinge of 
 hospitals provides for men's bodyes ; to build 
 materiall temples is indyed a worke of pietye ; 
 butt they that procure spirituall food, they that 
 build up spirituall temples, they are the men 
 trulye charitable, trulye pious. Such a worke 
 as this was your erectinge the lecture in our 
 
 ploughs, carts, &c. ; and the better to prosper his own and 
 his men's labour, every morning, before they stirred out, the 
 family was called together to prayer, at which exercise, very 
 often, they continued so long, that it was nine of the clock 
 in the morning before they began their work ; which awk- 
 ward beginning of their labour sorted with a very sorry is- 
 sue ; for the effect of those prayers was, that the himU and 
 ploughmen, seeing the zeal of their master, which dispensed 
 with the profitable and most commodious part of the day 
 for their labour, thought they might borrow the other part 
 for their pleasure, and therefore commonly they went to 
 plough with a pack of cards in their pockets, anil having 
 turned up two or three furrows, set themselves down to 
 game till dinner-time, when they returned to the second 
 part of their devotion, and measured out a good part of the 
 afternoon with dinner, and a repetition of some market-lec- 
 ture that had been preached the day before. And that lit- 
 tle work that was done was done so negligently and by 
 halves, that scarce half a crop ever reared itself upon his 
 grounds, so that he was (after five years time) glad to aban- 
 don it, and get a friend of his to be the tenant for the re- 
 mainder of his time." 
 
 * " The clerk of the parish of St. Ives, who is a very in- 
 telligent old man, and much superior to his station (having 
 been bred an attorney), told me, that he had been informed 
 by old persons who knew Mr. Cromwell when he resided at 
 St. Ives, that he usually frequented divine service at church, 
 and that he generally came with a piece of red flannel round 
 his neck, as he was subject to an inflammation in his throat 
 It appears by Mereurius Elencticus that Olivor'sneck was 
 awry ; surely it was a disorder incident to heroes." Noble't 
 Memoirs of the Protectoral House.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 409 
 
 cuiitne, in the which you placed Dr. Welles, a 
 man of goodnesse, and Industrie, and abilitie 
 every way, not short of any I knowe in Eng- 
 land ; and I am perswaded that sithence his 
 cominge, the Lord by him hath wrought much 
 good amongst us. It only remains now that 
 he whoe first moved you to this, putt you for- 
 ward to the continewance thereof : it was the 
 Lord, and therefore to him lift we up our harts 
 that he would perfect it. And surely, Mr. Sto- 
 rie, it were a piteous thinge to see a lecture 
 fall in the handes of so manie able and godly 
 men, as I am perswaded the founders of this 
 are, in these times wherein we see they are 
 suppressed with too much hast and violence 
 by the enemies of God his truth ; far be it that 
 soe much guilt should sticke to your hands, who 
 live in a citye so renowned for the clere shi- 
 ninge light of the Gospell. You knowe, Mr. 
 Storie, to withdrawe the pay is to Ictt fall the lec- 
 ture, for whoe goeth to warfare at his own cost 1 I 
 beseech you, therefore, in the bowells of Christ 
 Jesus, putt it forward, and lett the good man have 
 his pay. The soules of God his children will 
 bless you for it ; and so shall I, and ever rest 
 your lovinge friend in the Lord, OLIVER CROM- 
 WELL. Commende my harty love," he adds in 
 a postscript, " to Mr. Busse, Mr. Beadley, and 
 my other good friends. I would have written 
 to Mr. Busse, but I was loath to trouble him 
 with a longe letter, and I feared I should not 
 receive an answer from him : from you I expect 
 one soe soon as conveniently you may. Vale." 
 This letter is dated "St. Ives, llth of Jan- 
 uary, 1635 ;" and in the following year he left 
 that place to take possession of a property of 
 some little value in and near Ely, which just 
 then fell to him by the will of his maternal un- 
 cle, Sir Thomas Steward.* In the month of 
 June, 1636, we find him domiciled at the glebe- 
 house, near St. Mary's Churchyard, in the city 
 of Ely. His property here, though respectable 
 in amount, was not very considerable, for it 
 consisted less of any extensive freehold or in- 
 dependent possession, than of long leases and 
 tithes held under the dean and chapter, whom 
 he found, however, not unwilling to accommo- 
 date his wishes, and so, as they may have fan- 
 cied, purchase his forbearance or esteem, by 
 renewing the greater part of his leases for one- 
 and-twenty years. t They appointed him, also, 
 
 * See antt, p. 402. 
 
 t " After a residence of between four and five years at 
 St. Ives, by the death of his maternal uncle, Sir Tho. Stew- 
 ard, in the beginning of Jan., 1635-6, without issue, he be- 
 came possessed of very considerable estates in and near Ely, 
 part of which consisted of a lease of land and tithes belong- 
 ing to the parishes of Trinity and St. Mary, in Ely, held 
 under the dean and chapter : this caused him to seat him- 
 self in that city. He resided in the glebe-house, near to 
 St. Mary's Churchyard, now occupied by Mr. Page, the pres- 
 ent lessee : he certainly had removed to Ely so early as 
 June 7, in that year, as he had then signed an acquittance 
 for 10 given by the Attorney-general Noy, and received 
 of the executors of Sir Tho. Steward. He was chosen, Aug. 
 30 in this year, a trustee in Parson's Charity, together with 
 the right reverend father in God, Fra. lord-bishop of Ely, 
 Will. Fuller, D.D., and dean of Ely, Anth. Page, of Ely, 
 gent., and Will. Austin, of Ely, yeoman ; and by the char- 
 ter of incorporation granted by King Charles I., Jan. 16, 
 1633, no one could be a feoffee unless he was actually an 
 inhabitant of that city. The dean and chapter of Ely, Oct. 
 20 following, renewed his lease for 21 years of the tithes of 
 the parishes of Trinity and St. Mary in that city. The dean 
 and chapter of Ely, Oct. 27, 1637, granted to him, jointly 
 with the bishop of that see, Will. March, John Goodricke, 
 Anth. Page, Esqrs., Henry Goodricke, and others, feoffees, 
 therein named, a lease of Denver's Hult, near Stuntney. 
 
 FTP 
 
 to the trusteeship of some important charities 
 in the city. 
 
 Here it was, however while living, as he 
 told his own Parliament in 1654, neither in any 
 considerable height, nor yet in obscurity* 
 that one of his worst hypochondriacal distem- 
 pers is reported to have seized him. It was 
 natural that it should have done so, even as 
 on those melancholy days we have described, 
 following the dissolution of the Parliament he 
 first sat in. The threatening thunder of the 
 impending political tempest was now again 
 heard along the sky, louder and more immi- 
 nent than ever. The outrages on the people 
 on life, on liberty, on conscience, on all that 
 gave life value, or could endear it even to its 
 native land those horrible outrages which had 
 now for nearly twelve long and dreary years 
 been endured, without an apparent prospect of 
 redress, were at last approaching their fearful 
 hour of consummation and retribution. All 
 this, in its minute detail, has already been de- 
 scribed^ and need not be repeated here. Now, 
 with the sure sense of what such events were 
 swiftly urging on, they must have struck with 
 their deepest force on Cromwell. His most 
 melancholy and distempered state of religious 
 metaphysics would as surely descend with 
 them. If he had horrible visions of the slit no- 
 ses, and earless heads, and bloody human muti- 
 lations going on in the pillories of Laud, be 
 sure that he had visions too, which pressed yet 
 more terribly upon him, of the oceans of blood 
 that lay between these days and the days of 
 liberty, and that were nevertheless to be passed, 
 amid the singing of psalms and expoundings of 
 prayer, without a thought for suffering or sor- 
 row. Cromwell's most intense manifestations 
 of religion, it is to be invariably observed, pre- 
 ceded his greatest resolves, and went hand in 
 hand with his greatest deeds. No wonder, 
 then, they pressed fearfully upon him in these 
 three years at Ely. No wonder, when he saw, 
 as he described it in after years,! thousands of 
 his " brethren forsake their native country to 
 seek their bread from strangers, or to live in 
 howling wildernesses," that he thought, with 
 flushed cheek and agitated heart, of those no- 
 ble uses of the most despised life he had taught 
 to his tenants and labourers at his little farm 
 at St. Ives, of the better and braver resource 
 that should have yet remained even to lowest 
 and most oppressed humanity. 
 
 I do not pause to tell the reader that the idea 
 of Cromwell himself having ever entertained 
 the notion of leaving England to seek a safer 
 lome in America is utterly incredible, and sup- 
 jorted by no worthy evidence. Elsewhere, in 
 ;hese lives, it has been refuted Such was 
 
 During the following year, there are several memorandum* 
 reserved respecting Parson's Charity, in which his name 
 s mentioned ; and Oct. 29 in this year, he received from 
 the dean and chapter of Ely two leases, one of Muilicourt 
 nanor, the other of Beele closes, each for 21 years." jYo- 
 >le's Memoirs of the Protectoral House. 
 
 * " I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any con- 
 siderable height, nor yet in obscurity." Words spoken to 
 his Parliament, Sept. 12, 1654. 
 t In Lives of Eliot and Pym. 
 J To the Parliament of 1654 in dissolving it. 
 $ See Life of Pym. The reader will recollect the inci- 
 dent referred to. Yet it way be as well to subjoin it, for 
 overs of the marvellous. "Lord Brooke, Lord Say and 
 5ele and his sons, Pym, and other distinguished men of the 
 anie sentiments, were about to remove to a settlement in
 
 410 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 not the cast of his mind or temper. To leave 
 England, where everything heaved with the 
 anticipation of such a future when the name 
 of Hampden filled all mouths, and his quiet at- 
 titude of immovable resolution during the great 
 trial of shipTmoney had made grateful all hearts 
 when the harvest of what had been sown by 
 suffering approached to be reaped in triumph 
 nay, when the very corn was ripe and only 
 waiting for the glancing sickle ! The bare 
 thought is of ridiculous unlikelihood. 
 
 In Thurloe's State Papers is presei ved a let- 
 ter of deep interest from Cromwell to his cous- 
 in, the wife of Oliver St. John, written at this 
 period from Ely. It is addressed to " My be- 
 loved Cozen Mrs. St. John, att Sir William 
 Mashamhie house called Dates in Essex," and 
 bears the date of " Ely, 13th of October, 1638." 
 It seems to me not only to point to the thought- 
 less past, but to cherish the hope of the great 
 and thoughtful future. 
 
 " DEERE COZEN, I thankfully acknowledge 
 your love in your kind remembrance of mee 
 upon this oportunitye. Alas, you doe too high- 
 lye prize my lines and my Companie. I may 
 bee ashamed to owne your expressions, con- 
 sideringe how unprofitable I am, and the meane 
 improvement of my tallent. Yett to honour my 
 God by declaringe what hee hath done for my 
 soule, in this I am confident, and I will bee soe. 
 Trulye then this I finde, that hee giveth springes 
 in a drye and barren wildernesse, where no 
 water is. I live (you know where) in Mesheck, 
 which they say signifies prolonginge ; in Kedar. 
 which signifieth blacknesse ; yet the Lord foi* 
 saketh mee not. Though hee doe prolonge, 
 yett he will (I trust) bringe mee to his Taber- 
 nacle, to his resting-place. My soule is with 
 the congregation of the first-borne, my body rests 
 in hope ; and if heere I may honour my God either 
 by doeinge or sufferinge, I shall be. most glad. 
 Trulye noe poore creture hath more cause to 
 putt forth himself e in the Cause of his God than I. 
 I have had plentifull wadges beforehand ; and 
 I am sure I shall never earne the least mite. 
 The Lord accept mee in his Sonn, and give 
 mee to walke in the light, and give us to walke 
 in the light, as hee is in the light. Hee it is 
 that inlighteneth our blacknesse, our darknesse. 
 / dare not say he hydeth his face from mee. He 
 giveth mee to see light in this light. One 
 beame in a darke place hath exceedinge much 
 refreshment in it ; blessed bee his name for 
 shininge upon soe dark a hart as mine. You 
 knowe what my manner of life hath bin. 0, I 
 lived in, and loved darknesse, and hated the light ; 
 I was a chicfe the chiefs, of Sinners. This is 
 true, I hated Godlinesse, yett God had mercy on 
 mee. the riches of his mercy ! praise him 
 for mee, pray for mee, that hee, whoe hath be- 
 
 New-England, where the name of Saybrooke, in honour of 
 the two noble leaders, had already been given to a township 
 in which they were expected. Eight vessels with emigrants 
 on board were ready to sail from the Thames, when the 
 king, by an order of council, forbade their departure, and 
 compelled the intended passengers to come on shore, fatally 
 for himself ; for among those passengers Hazlerig and Hamp- 
 den, and Cromwell, with all his family, had actually em- 
 barked. There are few facts in history which have so much 
 the appearance of fatality as this." I have shown the worth- 
 lessness of the authority on which this story rests ; and also, 
 if it depends on the actual occurrence of the ships' having 
 been stopped by an order of council, the patriots ought to 
 have left after all, for the embargo was speedily taken off 
 the ships, and they left with all their passengers. 
 
 gunn a good worke, would perfect it to the day 
 of Christ. Salute all my good friends in that 
 Family whereof you are yett a member. I am 
 much bound unto them for theyr love. I blesse 
 the Lord for them, and that my Sonn by theyr 
 procurement is soe well. Lett him have your 
 prayers, your Councell ; lett mee have them. 
 Salute your Husband and sister from mee. He 
 is not a man of his word ; hee promised to write 
 about Mr. Wrath of Epinge, butt as yett I re- 
 ceaved noe letters. Putt him in minde to doe 
 what with conveniency may bee donn for the 
 poore cozen I did sollicit him about. Once 
 more farewell ; the Lord bee with you : soe 
 prayeth your trulye lovinge Cozen, OLIVER 
 CROMWELL. . . . My wife's service and love 
 presented to all her friends." 
 
 This letter has been strangely remarked upon 
 by the only other biographer of Cromwell, who 
 quotes it thus : " It expresses," says Dr. Rus- 
 sell, " the strong feeling of remorse and self- 
 abasement with which he was then agitated. 
 Nor were his views of the future more cheer- 
 ful than his retrospect of the past. He brooded 
 over the evils which his diseased imagination 
 created, and saw no recovery for his affairs, 
 spiritual or temporal, in the distant perspective 
 which opened up before him." No recovery 
 for his affairs spiritual ! Why, the purpose of 
 the letter is to reflect back upon his dear cous- 
 in some portion of the spiritual light that had 
 then shone in so graciously upon himself. No 
 hope for his temporal affairs ! Why, his body, 
 he tells his correspondent, rests in hope ; he is 
 looking forward with gladness to some nearly 
 approaching time when he may possibly honour 
 his God " either by doeing or sufferinge ;" and 
 in the very next sentence to that, repeats the 
 idea which evidently occupies him so as almost 
 to exclude every other, of " putting himself 
 forth in the cause of his God." The tone of 
 the letter is any thing but despondent or cast 
 down. Even its reference to his early days 
 of dissolute wildness is rather made with a 
 joyous sense of a blessed change, than with a 
 still exacting or self-accusatory grudge. When 
 Cromwell wrote that letter he was rather think- 
 ing, be sure, of the Parliament that must be 
 summoned soon, and the place he was likely 
 to succeed in standing for, than with any re- 
 morseful or despondent dread of either tempo- 
 ral or spiritual thing. 
 
 Before proceeding to that great subject of all 
 his present thoughts, a slight allusion in the 
 letter should detain us briefly with his domes- 
 tic concerns. His son Richard was then stay- 
 ing at Sir William Masham's ; and truly it may 
 be supposed to have become a matter of some 
 moment with him now, to clear his house, 
 when he could, of a few of its numerous little 
 inmates, for his family had increased around 
 him. On the 2d of July, 1629, a second daugh- 
 ter had been christened at the old Huntingdon 
 church of St. John's. She was called Elizabeth, 
 after his mother, and will have mention in these 
 pages hereafter as the favourite daughter of 
 Cromwell. On the 8th of January, 1632, a boy, 
 born at St. Ives, had been baptized in the same 
 church of Huntingdon, and received the name 
 of James, after that of his maternal grandfather; 
 but some few days afterward he appears to 
 have died, and to have been buried there.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 411 
 
 Then, in February, 1637, the gentle Mary, so 
 handsome, and yet so like her father, afterward 
 wife to Earl Faulconberg, had been born in 
 Ely, and subsequently, as with the rest, bapti- 
 zed in Huntingdon. Lastly, Frances, the fourth 
 and youngest daughter, swiftly followed, and 
 was baptized on the 6th of December, 1638, at 
 St. Mary's Church in Ely. The motive for send- 
 ing all these children, except this last (when 
 some accident or illness, no doubt, intervened 
 to make her an exception), to receive baptism 
 in Huntingdon, must have been a kind defer- 
 ence to the wishes of their grandmother and to 
 her prejudice in favour of that place, since their 
 father had yet had no open quarrel or difference 
 with the churchmen of St. Ives or Ely.* This 
 supposition is farther borne out by a fact which 
 surprised Mr. Noble in the course of his research- 
 es, that the children of her daughters, the Wau- 
 tons, the Disbrowes, and the Sewsters, were also 
 nearly all of them brought for baptism to the same 
 old church in Huntingdon. She was equally fond 
 of, and interested in them all. It increases our 
 admiration for that true affection which, with 
 all its weakness and with all its strength, char- 
 acterized the noble-hearted mother of Oliver 
 Cromwell. 
 
 But his name recalls the thoughts with which 
 he was at this time eagerly watching the prog- 
 
 * The late good old Oliver Cromwell, Esquire, in his ter- 
 rifically stupid quarto about his great progenitor, is always 
 anxious to exhibit Cromwell, with a singular weakness, as 
 on the best possible terras to the last moment with Church 
 and aristocracy. " In the books of Record of a Charitable 
 Institution in Ely," he observes, " the members whereof 
 are styled Ely Feoffees, is the following entry, so late as 
 1641 (whereof the Writer has been permitted to take a Copy), 
 he then being an active member of the Long Parliament : 
 1 1641. Gave to divers poor people, in the presence of Mr. 
 Archdeacon and Mr. Oliver Cromwell, 16 14*.' This shows 
 that he had not then ceased to associate with the clergy of 
 the Establishment." Indeed, worthy old gentleman, it 
 proves nothing of the sort, but is merely a necessary act of 
 duty on the part of Cromwell, as one of the charitable trus- 
 tees as aforesaid. What would Mr. Cromwell make of this 
 anecdote told by Mr. Noble 1 "It will be proper to observe, 
 that Oliver was probably neither pleased with the clergy, 
 nor the manner that the Cathedral service was performed 
 in Ely; for in Jan., 1643-4, he wrote to the Rev. Will. 
 Hitch, the clergy-vicar, to desire he would desist using the 
 choir service, as unedifying and offensive ; but advised him 
 to catechize, read, and expound the Scriptures, and have 
 more frequent preaching than had been usual ; and this, for 
 fear the soldiers should tumultuously attempt a reforma- 
 tion ; subjoining, that he must answer it if he did not com- 
 ply ; which he not choosing to do, both the soldiers and the 
 rabble broke into the Cathedral during divine service, and 
 Oliver addressing himself to Mr. Hitch, said, 'I am a man 
 under authority, and am commanded to dismiss this assem- 
 bly.' Mr. Hitch made a pause ; when, finding that Oliver, 
 and the people with him, proceeded up to the communion 
 table, he began to discharge the office of his function ; at 
 which Cromwell returned with great displeasure, and lay- 
 ing his hand upon his sword, in a passion, bid the clergyman 
 leave off 'his fooling,' and come down ; and then drove the 
 whole congregation from the Cathedral." " There is also," 
 pursues old Mr. Cromwell, furnishing us with some little 
 facts connected with Cromwell's residence in Ely that may 
 be worth subjoining, " a Petition at Ely, addressed to Mat- 
 thew Wren, bishop of Ely, by the inhabitants of the Isle of 
 Ely, in the reigu of King Charles I., stating that Aldreth 
 was a great market for fat cattle, but that it had been dis- 
 continued in consequence of the decay of Aldreth bridge, 
 which should be kept in repair by the Earl of Suffolk as 
 lord of the manor of Haddenham. The object of this Peti- 
 tion is to request the Bishop to lay their case before the 
 King for redress. This Petition is signed by Cromwell and 
 many others. With these Records is also a letter of Crom- 
 well 8, of which the following is a copy : ' Mr. Hand, I 
 doubt not but I shall be as good as my word for your monie. 
 I desier you to deliver 40s. of the Town monie to this bearer, 
 to pay for the phisicke for Benson's Cure. If the Gentlemen 
 will not allow it at the tyme of account, keep this boat, and 
 I will pay it out of my own purse. Soe I rest, your loveinge 
 friend, OLIVER CROMWELL.' Sept. 13, 1638." 
 
 ress of events towards the now inevitable Long 
 Parliament. And now an occasion arose, 
 whereof he most skilfully availed himself, in 
 furtherance of these eager hopes and wishes. 
 
 The Earl of Bedford and other noblemen of 
 the day had, some seven or eight years before, 
 proposed a scheme for draining the extensive 
 fens which in those days covered some millions 
 of acres of the finest plains in the counties of 
 Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, and 
 Lincoln. The good work had now advanced 
 to a certain extent that part of it, in fact, 
 properly called the Bedford Level, and contain- 
 ing nearly 400,000 acres, had been completed 
 when it was found necessary to call in other 
 aid to the project, and a proposition was made 
 to the crown, offering a fair proportion of the 
 land for its countenance, assistance, and au- 
 thority in the completion of the whole. 
 
 Up to this point all had gone 011 well : the 
 scheme included in itself unquestionably a large 
 share of public advantage, and its chief project- 
 or was a nobleman of wide and deserved pop- 
 ularity ; but, from the instant of the royal in- 
 terference, all kinds of difficulties and conten- 
 tions were introduced. A parcel of court com- 
 missioners officers ever hateful in that day, 
 and with reason, to the wretched and oppressed 
 commonalty arrived in the districts, held 
 courts for the adjudication of claims connected 
 in any way with the property, decided all the 
 questions in the king's favour of course, and, 
 it is even said, proposed to dispute with Lord 
 Bedford and the other originators of the under- 
 taking their retention of 95,000 acres of the 
 land already recovered, in compensation of the 
 venture they had undergone.* Whether the 
 latter allegations are true or false, it is not 
 doubted that the occasion was at once seized 
 by the king's officers as an admirable one for 
 enriching the then most needy Exchequer, and 
 that, with this view, several acts of injustice 
 were threatened. 
 
 The common people began to murmur to 
 complain loudly to clamour for justice to 
 threaten in their turn. Meetings were held ; 
 and at one of them a powerful auxiliary sud- 
 denly appeared in the person of Oliver Crom- 
 well. From that instant the scheme became 
 thoroughly hopeless. With such desperate de- 
 termination he followed up his purpose so ac- 
 tively traversed the district and inflamed the 
 people everywhere so passionately described 
 the greedy claims of royalty, the gross exac- 
 tions of the commission, nay, the very ques- 
 tionable character of the improvement itself, 
 even could it have gone on unaccompanied by 
 incidents of tyranny to the small proprietors 
 insisting that their poor claims would be mere- 
 ly scorned in the new distribution of the prop- 
 erty reclaimed to the labouring peasants, that 
 all the profit and amusement they had derived 
 from commoning in those extensive wastes were 
 about to be snatched forever from them that, 
 before his almost single individual energy, 
 king, commissioners, noblemen-projectors, all 
 were forced to retire, and the great project, 
 even in the state it then was, fell to the ground. 
 
 This matter has been variously described; 
 but in the account just given, an attempt has 
 
 * Life and Times of Cromwell, by Thomas Cromwell, 
 p. 68.
 
 412 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 been made to reconcile the discrepancies that 
 have appeared in other descriptions of it. It 
 seems clear to me, from all the documents 
 that afford us information,* that the scheme 
 had proceeded, entirely unopposed by the peo- 
 ple, till, on the completion of the Bedford Lev- 
 el, the name and interest of the king became 
 involved in it ; that Cromwell then saw the ad- 
 vantage which might be taken of the popular 
 discontent awakened by the latter circumstance, 
 and availed himself of it accordingly ; that when 
 he moved in it first, it might merely have been 
 with a view to support and protect the threat- 
 ened rights of the popular nobleman who was 
 the chief projector, but that, in the course of 
 his opposition, he saw an irresistible opportuni- 
 ty of impressing with a sense of his influence 
 not only large masses of the small proprietors, 
 and of the lower orders of discontented men 
 whose rights and pleasures were now found to 
 be endangered by the scheme, but also of ex- 
 hibiting that influence to the country at large 
 in the defeat not only of king and commission- 
 ers, but of the entire scheme itself; and that, 
 before this temptation, every consideration of 
 the real utility and the many beneficial tenden- 
 cies of the undertaking involved, vanished al- 
 together. A pure motive of good may have 
 engaged him first, but it was certainly a mixed 
 motive of evil and good that shaped his ultimate 
 course. 
 
 Let the facts which I shall now state prove 
 this, if farther proof is wanted. In the year 
 1649 the Long Parliament passed an act for 
 " draining the great level of the Fens," and in 
 the preamble of that act it is stated, " that 
 whereas the said great level, by reason of fre- 
 quent overflowings of the rivers . . . has been 
 of small and uncertain profit, but (if drained) 
 may be improved and made profitable, and of 
 great advantage to the Commonwealth, and 
 the particular owners, &c. . . . And whereas 
 Francis, late Earl of Bedford, did undertake the 
 said work, and had 95,000 acres* parcel of the 
 said great level, decreed and set forth, in Octo- 
 ber, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the 
 late King Charles, in recompense thereof ; and 
 he and his participants, and their heirs and as- 
 
 * Even Sir P. Warwick's account, though for many rea- 
 sons coloured to the author's purpose, offers no violent con- 
 tradiction to it. He writes : " The Earl of Bedford, and 
 divers of the principal gentlemen, whose habitations con- 
 fined upon the fens, and who, in the heat of summer, saw 
 vast quantities of lands which the fresh waters overflowed in 
 the winter, lie dry and green, or drainable whether it was 
 public spirit or private advantage which led them thereunto, 
 a stranger cannot determine they make propositions unto 
 the king to issue out commissions of sewers to drain those 
 lands, and offer a proportion freely to be given to the crown 
 for its countenance and authority therein : and as all these 
 great and public works must necessarily concern multitudes 
 of persons, who will never think they have exact justice done 
 to them for that small pretence of right they have unto some 
 commons, so the commissioners, let them do what they can, 
 could never satisfy such a body of men. And now the king 
 is declared the principal undertaker for the draining ; and 
 by this time the vulgar are grown clamorous against these 
 first popular lords and undertakers, who had joined with the 
 king in the second undertaking, though they had much bet- 
 ter provisions for them than their interest was ever before ; 
 and the commissioners must by multitudes and clamours be 
 withstood ; and, as a head of this faction, Mr. Cromwell, in 
 the year 1639, at Huntingdon, appears, which made his ac- 
 tivity so well known to his friend and kinsman, Mr. Hamp- 
 den, that he gave a character of Cromwell of being an active 
 person, and one that would sit well at the mark." See, also, 
 Camden's Britannia, by Gibson, i., 469, 490 ; also Dugdale, 
 p. 460. 
 
 signs, have made a good progress therein, with 
 expense of great and vast sums of money ; but 
 by reason of some late interruptions, the works 
 there made have fallen into decay : be it there- 
 fore enacted and ordained, that William, now 
 Earl of Bedford, dec., in recompense of the afore- 
 said charge and adventure, and for bearing the 
 charge of draining, and maintaining the works 
 from time to time, shall have and enjoy the 
 said whole 95,000 acres." Now the chief ad- 
 vocate of this measure in the House was no 
 other than " Lieutenant-general Cromwell," 
 whose name afterward appears as a commis- 
 sioner " to hear, determine, order, adjudge, and 
 execute all such things as are prescribed by 
 this act." Circumstances had changed a little ! 
 It was not undeserving of praise in Cromwell, 
 however, to seek thus to repair* the temporary 
 obstruction he had offered to an undertaking of 
 general advantage, and in his former opposition 
 to which he had supposed himself sanctioned by 
 the consideration of higher objects and efforts 
 that then claimed the influence such opposition 
 gave him. 
 
 For his influence in all the districts around 
 Huntingdon and Ely was now indeed supreme. 
 The " Lord of the Fens" was the name the 
 common people worshipped him by.t Some of 
 the Parliamentary chiefs congratulated Hamp- 
 den on the great position of popularity his kins- 
 man had achieved, and suggested various pla- 
 ces he might offer himself for in the ensuing 
 Parliament, if, as was then generally supposed, 
 his uncle's influence was too strong for his suc- 
 cess in Huntingdon. He is indeed, returned 
 the sagacious Hampden, an active man, a man 
 " to sit well to the mark ;" for the other mat- 
 ter, he and bis kinsman had already taken 
 council. 
 
 The writs appeared, returnable in November, 
 1640, and Cromwell offered himself at once for 
 Cambridge. He was encountered by a formi- 
 dable opposition, headed by John Cleaveland, the 
 well-known poet, who was at that time a tutor 
 of St. John's, and a man of considerable influ- 
 ence, all of which he levelled in every possible 
 way against Cromwell. The contest was ob- 
 stinately fierce, and ended in Cromwell's return 
 at last, by the majority of a single vote. That 
 vote, exclaimed Cleaveland or at least his 
 friends affirm he exclaimed this " that vote, 
 that single vote, hath ruined both Church and 
 kingdom." 
 
 Cromwell remembered the disservice in after 
 years, and paid it back with interest by means 
 of his major-generals of the Protectorate. 
 Cleaveland was arrested by those worthies un- 
 der Haynes, and sent to prison in Yarmouth. 
 I cannot resist inserting here the reasons which 
 were given by them for this step, from the state 
 documents of the time. The first was, that he 
 lived in utter obscurity in the house of a Roy- 
 alist, very few persons in the neighbourhood 
 knowing that there was such a man resident 
 among them ! the second was, that he possessed 
 great abilities, and was able to do considerable 
 disservice ; and a third reason for his impris- 
 onment was, that he wore good clothes, though, 
 as he confessed, he had no estate but 20 per 
 
 * He passed another act for the same purpose on the 26th 
 of May, 1654, during his own Protectorate, 
 t Mercurius Aulicus, November 5, 1643.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 413 
 
 annum, allowed him by two gentlemen, and 30 
 by the person in whose house he resided, and 
 whom he assisted in his studies ! He would, 
 it is said, have been released, had he possessed 
 any property upon which the commissioners 
 could have fixed an assessment. 
 
 Yet Cleaveland had possibly the advantage 
 after all, for his good spirits never forsook him, 
 and there was light enough in his prison to ena- 
 ble him to write out that definition of a protect- 
 or, which not uncharacteristically illustrates, 
 as we shall find, some passages in Cromwell's 
 history. 
 
 " What's a Protector? He's a stately thing, 
 That apes it in the nonage of a king. 
 He's a brass farthing, stamped with a crown, 
 A tragic actor, Casar in a clown ! 
 A bladder blown with others' breath puffM full 
 Not the Penllus, but Perillus' Bull ! 
 jEsop's proud Ass vail'd in the Lion's skin, 
 An outward Saint lined with a Devil within. 
 An echo whence the royal sound doth come, 
 But just as a barrel head sounds like a drum. 
 Fantastic image of the royal head, 
 The Brewer's with the King's arms quartered. 
 He is a counterfeited piece, that shows 
 Charles his effigies with a copper nose. 
 In fine, he's one we must Protector call, 
 From whom the King of kings protect us all." 
 
 In November, 1640 that month never to be 
 named but with honour by the well-informed 
 student of English history this " Caesar in a 
 clown" once more entered the House of Com- 
 mons. The world-amazing scenes that follow- 
 ed up to the time when Charles, on an inauspi- 
 cious day of wind and storm, erected his stand- 
 ard at Nottingham, and proclaimed the chief 
 representatives of the English people to be a 
 parcel of rebels and robbers, have been already 
 placed before the reader in the lives of Pym, of 
 Hampden, and of Strafford. Such incidental 
 points only remain to be noticed here as may 
 serve in any way to illustrate the character of 
 Oliver Cromwell, before it blazed forth all over 
 the land in the splendour of military achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 The morning of the llth of November, 1640, 
 saw anxious crowds assembled in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Westminster. A great business 
 was afoot. Crowds of members poured into 
 the House from all quarters. Some, as Hyde 
 remarked, were observed to have sad and mel- 
 ancholy faces ; and others, as if flushed by a 
 stern and " unnatural" joy, to be " marvellous 
 elated" in step and aspect. Such was, indeed, 
 the natural difference between the men who saw 
 a crisis impending that would overtax their 
 strength, and the greater men, who, in the sure 
 terrors of the future, that were to be born ol 
 the miseries of the past, only recognised and 
 welcomed the stormy yet not impassable sea 
 which rolled between slavery and freedom. 
 Other thoughts, deeper in his heart of hearts, 
 lurking there even unknown to himself, may 
 have agitated Cromwell. His friends said, in 
 after years, that even now he would startle 
 them by sudden and gratuitous graspings of his 
 sword, and by fits of the same abrupt and im- 
 moderate laughter which were noted on the 
 eve of Worcester and Dunbar. 
 
 The members are now all within the House 
 and upon the crowd outside an anxious silence 
 has fallen, such as anticipates great events 
 Hour passes after hour, yet the door of the 
 Commons is still locked, and within may be 
 
 leard, by such as stand in the adjoining lob- 
 >y, not the confused and wrangling noise of 
 a various debate, but the single continuous 
 sound of one ominous voice, interrupted at in- 
 ervals, not by a broken cheer, but by a tre- 
 mendous shout of universal sympathy. Sud- 
 denly a stir is seen outside, the crowd grows 
 ight with uncovered heads, and the carriage 
 of the great lord-lieutenant of Ireland dashes 
 up to the House of Lords. 
 
 Ten minutes more have passed the door of 
 the Commons' House is abruptly thrown wide 
 open and forth issues Pym, followed by up- 
 ward of three hundred representatives of the 
 English people, in that day the first men of the 
 world in birth, in wealth, in talents. Their 
 great leader crosses to the House of Lords, and 
 ,he bar is in an instant filled with that immor- 
 tal crowd. 
 
 What, meanwhile, was the suspense lately 
 ndured by the meaner masses outside, to the 
 agitation which now heaved them to and fro, 
 ike the sullen waves of an advancing storm. 
 But the interval is happily shorter. It is closed 
 jy the appearance of Maxwell, the usher of 
 the House of Lords, at whose side staggers 
 Strafford himself a prisoner ! The storm 
 which had threatened fell into a frightful still- 
 ness. They make " through a world of staring 
 people," as old Baillie the Covenanter wrote to 
 his friends in Scotland, towards the carriage of 
 the Earl, " all gazing, no man capping to him, 
 before whom that morning the greatest of Eng- 
 land would have stood discovered." States- 
 manship had achieved its master-stroke. The 
 power of the greatest and proudest minister 
 that ever ruled a nation of the only minister 
 of genius that Charles I. possessed lay grov- 
 elling in the dust beneath the feet of the mean- 
 est person in that assembled populace. 
 
 An act worthy of the lofty praise of Milton. 
 Thus," says that great writer, having noticed 
 the high birth of this famous assembly, their 
 singular attainments, and their astonishing pub- 
 lic virtue in having for the most part passed 
 the ordeal, not only of courtly vengeance, but 
 of courtly temptation " thus, in the midst of 
 all disadvantages and disrespects, having given 
 proof of themselves to be better made and fra- 
 med by nature to the love and practice of vir- 
 tue than others, under the holiest precepts and 
 best examples, have been headstrong and prone 
 to vice ; and having, in all the trials of a firm, 
 ingrafted honesty, not oftener buckled in the 
 conflict than given every opposition the foil ; 
 this, moreover, was added, by favour from 
 heaven, as an ornament and happiness to their 
 virtue, that it should be neither obscure in the 
 opinion of men, nor eclipsed for want of matter 
 equal to illustrate itself; God and man consent- 
 ing, in joint approbation, to choose them out, as 
 worthiest above others, to be both the great re- 
 formers of the Church and the restorers of the 
 Commonwealth. Nor did they deceive that 
 expectation, which, with the eyes and desires 
 of their country, was fixed upon them ; for no 
 sooner did the force of so much united excel- 
 lence meet in one globe of brightness and effi- 
 cacy, but, encountering the dazzled resistance 
 of tyranny, they gave not over, though their ene- 
 mies were strong and subtle, till they had laid her 
 grovelling upon the fatal block : with one stroke
 
 414 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 winning again our lost liberties and charters, 
 which our forefathers, after so many battles, 
 could scarce maintain." 
 
 In that true master-stroke Oliver Cromwell 
 bore his part with the foremost men of the time. 
 He did not often speak in the House, but he 
 was full of action. In at least twenty out of 
 the forty committees that were appointed with- 
 in the first week to consider of various griev- 
 ances, we find his name. And he could speak, 
 too, as we have already seen, and when he 
 spoke, it was something much to the purpose. 
 
 " The first time I ever took notice of him," 
 writes the grave and trustworthy Royalist, Sir 
 Philip Warwick, " was in the beginning of the 
 Parliament held in November, 1640, when I 
 vainly thought myself a courtly young gentle- 
 man, for we courtiers valued ourselves much 
 upon our good clothes. I came into the House 
 one morning, well clad, and perceived a gentle- 
 man speaking, whom I knew not, very ordina- 
 rily apparelled ; for it was a plain cloth suit, 
 which seemed to have been made by an ill coun- 
 try tailor : his linen was plain, and not very 
 clean ; and I remember a speck or two of blood 
 upon his little band, which was not much larger 
 than his collar : his hat was without a hatband. 
 His stature was of a good size ; his sword stuck 
 close to his side ; his countenance swoln and 
 reddish ; his voice sharp and untunable ; and 
 his eloquence full of fervour for the subject-mat- 
 ter would not bear much of reason, it being in 
 behalf of a servant of Mr. Prynne's, who had 
 dispersed libels against the queen for her dan- 
 cing, and such like innocent and courtly sports ; 
 and he aggravated the imprisonment of this 
 man by the council-table unto that height, that 
 one would have believed the very government 
 itself had been in great danger by it. I sin- 
 cerely profess it lessened much my reverence 
 unto that great council, for he was very much 
 hearkened unto. And yet I lived to see this very 
 gentleman, whom, out of no ill-will to him, I 
 thus describe, by multiplied good successes, and 
 by real, but usurped power (having had a better 
 tailor, and more converse among good company), 
 in my own eye, when for six weeks together I 
 was a prisoner in his sergeant's hands, and 
 daily waited at Whitehall, appear of a great and 
 majestic deportment, and comely presence. Of 
 him, therefore, I will say no more, but that 
 verily 1 believe he was extraordinarily designed 
 for those extraordinary things which one while 
 most wickedly and facinorously he acted, and 
 at another so successfully and greatly per- 
 formed."* 
 
 * Warwick's Memoirs. Lord Clarendon, in his life, has 
 described similar earnestness, rudeness, and passionate 
 fervour on the part of Cromwell, in a private committee of 
 the House. The account, however, is not so credible as 
 Warwick's there are many errors in it which the reader 
 will at once perceive and it is deeply ting-ed with that 
 vanity and gross egotism which characterized Clarendon 
 not less than his wonderful talents : " Mr. Hyde," the pass- 
 age runs, "was often heard to mention one private com- 
 mittee, in which he was put accidentally into the chair, upon 
 an enclosure which had been made of great wastes, be- 
 longing to the queen's manors, without the consent of the 
 tenants, the benefit whereof had been given by the queen 
 to a servant of near trust, who forthwith sold the lands en- 
 closed to the Earl of Manchester, lord- privy- seal ; who, to- 
 gether with his son Mandevil, were now most concemed to 
 maintain the enclosure ; against which, as well as the in- 
 habitants of other manors, who claimed common in those 
 wastes, as the queen's tenants of the same, made loud com- 
 plaints, as a great oppression, carried upon them with a 
 
 It was not the tailor, good Sir Philip, who 
 had wrought any portion of this change. A 
 great man had achieved greatness, and had 
 fallen into its state with the ease of one who 
 merely assumes his natural place in the human 
 family. The genius which could achieve Crom- 
 well's aims included in itself all the faculties, 
 tempers, and tastes which they might require 
 to establish or assert them.* At present, in- 
 deed, all these were in tumult and confusion. 
 His mind was as yet the chaos only, from which 
 order and majesty were to spring. But there, 
 even then visible to penetrating minds, their 
 great elements lay heaped, massed, crowded 
 together. 
 
 As Hampden left the House on the day Sir 
 Philip Warwick witnessed what he has descri- 
 bed so well, Lord Digby, who had himself in 
 that Parliament just entered public life, was 
 seen to hurry after him, " Pray, Mr. Hampden," 
 he asked, overtaking the patriot as he descend- 
 ed the stairs, " pray, Mr. Hampden, who is that 
 man that sloven who spoke just now? for I 
 see he is on our side, by his speaking so warm- 
 ly." Hampden answered, in ever-memorable 
 language, " That sloven whom you see before 
 you hath no ornament in his speech ; that sloven, 
 I say, if we should ever come to a breach with 
 the king, which God forbid ! in such a case, 
 I say, that sloven will be the greatest man in 
 England." 
 
 Yet the " breach with the king" was approach- 
 ing fast ! Strafford had expiated on the scaf- 
 fold his mighty guilt, and the wretched master 
 who had deserted him was now on all sides 
 himself deserted. 
 
 Ominous questions then passed between men, 
 and strangers asked of each other what was 
 
 very high hand, and supported by power. The committee 
 sat in the queen's court ; and Oliver Cromwell being one of 
 them, appeared much concerned to countenance the peti- 
 tioners, who were numerous, together with their witnesses ; 
 the Lord Mandevil being likewise present as a party, and by 
 the direction of the committee, sitting covered. Cromwell 
 (who had never before been heard to speak in the House 
 of Commons) ordered the witnesses and petitioners in the 
 method of the proceeding, and seconded and enlarged upon 
 what they said with great passion ; and the witnesses and 
 persons concerned, who were a very rude kind of people, in- 
 terrupted the council and witnesses on the other side with 
 great clamour when they said anything that did not please 
 them, so that Mr. Hyde (whose office it was to oblige men 
 of all sorts to keep order) was compelled to use some sharp 
 reproofs and some threats to reduce them to such a temper 
 that the business might be quietly heard. Cromwell, in 
 great fury, reproached the chairman for being partial, and 
 that he discountenanced the witnesses by threatening them ; 
 the other appealed to the committee, who justified him, and 
 declared that he behaved as he ought to do ; which more 
 inflamed him who was already too much angry. When, 
 upon any mention of matter of fact, or the proceeding be- 
 fore and at the enclosure, the Lord Mandevil desired to be 
 heard, and with great modesty related what had been done, 
 or explained what had been said, Mr. Cromwell did answer 
 and reply upon him with so much indecency and rudeness, 
 and in language so contrary and offensive, that every man 
 would have thought, that as their natures and their man- 
 ners were as opposite as it is possible, so their interest 
 could never have been the same. In the end, his whole 
 carriage was so tempestuous, and his behaviour so insolent, 
 that the chairman found himself obliged to reprehend him, 
 and to tell him if he proceeded in the same manner he 
 would presently adjourn the committee, and the next morn- 
 ing complain to the House of him, which he never forgave, 
 and took all occasions afterward to pursue him with the ut- 
 most malice and revenge to his death." 
 
 * Even Clarendon himself spoke thus of him in after 
 years: "As he grew into place and authority, his parts 
 seemed to be raised, as if he had concealed his faculties till 
 he had occasion to use them ; and when he was to act the 
 part of a great man, he did it without any indecency, not- 
 withstanding the want of custom."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 415 
 
 likely next to happen. Sir Philip Warwick, 
 walking with Sir Thomas Chicheley into the 
 House, met Cromwell unexpectedly, and, una- 
 ble to .resist an impulse which prompted him 
 at the moment, went up to him and desired 
 honestly to know what the real objects of his 
 party were. " I can tell you, sirs," answered 
 Cromwell, abruptly, as he passed on, " I can 
 tell you what I would not have, if I cannot what 
 I would." The words, no doubt, in truth ex- 
 pressed at that particular time the condition of 
 the speaker's mind, but this perhaps, I would 
 add, less from the real uncertainty that then 
 prevailed there than from the control exerted 
 over it by men of wisdom as great as his own, 
 and of experience more enlarged in Parliaments, 
 whose plans were of a different cast, and had 
 already taken shape and substance. 
 
 Pym and Hampden, I firmly believe, had it in 
 their design from the first to rest contented with 
 a strong and decided limitation of the monarch- 
 ical government : not with such a settlement 
 as that of 1688, but with one wherein the pop- 
 ular substance should have had place no less 
 than the popular form, and in securing which 
 they would have taken care to recognise, by 
 something better than a quibble, those rights 
 and privileges of the people that were the 
 source of all to be attempted and the object of 
 all to be achieved, at once the means and the 
 end of every constitutional settlement. In the 
 life of Pym I have accordingly offered some rea- 
 son for supposing that when Charles had en- 
 tered the field of civil war, and his hopeless in- 
 sincerity left any ultimate arrangement with 
 himself almost as hopeless, these great leaders 
 cast their thoughts towards Charles Louis, the 
 young prince-elector of the Palatinate a wan- 
 derer from his kingdom by the tyrannical en- 
 croachment of Austria the elder brother of 
 Prince Rupert, and the next heir to the Eng- 
 lish crown in case the family of Charles I. were 
 set aside. I afterward found that the conclu- 
 sion I then arrived at had been anticipated by 
 one of Bishop Warburton's most acute notes on 
 Clarendon. 
 
 Since the publication of that memoir, howev- 
 er, Lord Nugent has intrusted me with the loan 
 of some valuable family papers, hitherto unpub- 
 lished, with a courteous permission to make all 
 necessary use of them. Among them are sev- 
 eral letters from this young prince to his moth- 
 er the sister of Charles I., the beautiful and 
 unhappy Queen of Bohemia, " the eclipse and 
 glory of her kind."* Some extracts may be 
 valuable here, and will not be thought uninter- 
 esting, since they illustrate, in some striking 
 points, the character and events of the time. 
 
 The prince not only lived with his uncle at 
 this time, but, according to Clarendon, enjoyed 
 a pension from him of" twelve thousand pounds 
 sterling yearly." This pension may have been 
 nominally due, but it seems certain, from some 
 of the letters which I shall quote, that it was 
 not regularly paid. That Charles treated his 
 nephew with extreme kindness is, however, in- 
 disputable ; what Henrietta's conduct towards 
 him may have been admits, perhaps, of some 
 doubt. From Whitehall " this if of May, 1641," 
 he thus writes in the course of one of his letters 
 to the Queen of Bohemia : 
 
 Sir Henry Wotton. 
 
 " I did not writte to y r Maf by the last post, 
 not knowing whether the same might not be 
 stopped as the former was, whereof I doubt 
 but by this y r Mtf doth know the occasion, wh 
 uf h my L d of Stafford's death hath putt the queene 
 in an ill humour.* In this the king hath shewed 
 himselfe a good master & a good Christian, & 
 att last a good king, for the day afore he should 
 give the howses of parlament an answer con- 
 cerning the Bill of Attainder against the Earll 
 of Strafford, the bishops, after a whole daye's 
 debate, had much to doe to perswade him that 
 he might give way unto it w'h a safe conscience, 
 because the judges did declare, upon the voting 
 of the two houses of the fact, that it was trea- 
 son, though the king could not be satisfied of it 
 in his conscience, & that w'hall the people stood 
 upon it w'h such violence, that he would have 
 putt himselfe & his in a great danger by deny- 
 ing execution. Therefore, att last, the king 
 protested att the councell table, that if his per- 
 sone were onely in danger, he would gladly 
 venture it to save L d Strafford's life ; butt see- 
 inge his wife, children, & all his kingdome were 
 concerned in it, he was forced to give way 
 unto it ; w c h he did not expresse without teares. 
 This bearer will tell y r Ma 1 * the circumstance 
 of my L d of Strafford's execution, for he sayth 
 he was close by. What passed since in par- 
 lament, y r Ma'y will understand from others ; 
 that of greatest note is, that w'h the Bill of 
 my L d of Strafford, the king passed another, 
 that the parlament should not be adjourned 
 nor broken w'hout the consent of the two how- 
 ses. Concerning the king's manifest, my frends 
 advise me to stay as yet some few dayes w'h 
 it untill the Scotts treaty come to an end, butt 
 they assure me w'hall that it shall not want ap- 
 plause in the howses. The king intends to make a 
 posting journey for Scottland, as he doth declare 
 openly, butt whether it will hold, God knoweth, since 
 resolutions are apt to be changed aft this court." 
 
 The prince's .definition of a good master, a 
 good Christian, and a good king, is scarcely sat- 
 isfactory. The letter offers some proof, how- 
 ever, of an implied intercourse held even thus 
 early with the popular leaders. The next let- 
 ter I shall quote (dated " this 28th of July, 
 1641") still farther confirms this, and presents 
 some characteristic points besides. Its open- 
 ing sketch of the widowed Lady Strafford is ex- 
 tremely touching. 
 
 " I have done y r Ma tis comaunds to my Lady 
 Strafford, who did expresse a great deal of hum- 
 bio devotion to y r service, & to be very sensi- 
 ble of the favour you did her ; She hath promis- 
 ed me to send Mrs. Kirch's picture inameled to y' 
 Ma'y. If I gett it soone enough I will send it 
 by this bearer. She also desired me to make 
 hir humble excuse to you, that she doth not write 
 to y Maty because this great affliction hath made 
 a shaking in her limbs, soe that she is not able to 
 rule a penn. By my former y r Ma ty hath under- 
 stood how the queen's journey was broken, & 
 by Cave the change of the L d Chamberlaine. 
 It was a thing my L d of Essex did not att all sue 
 for, 4- would not have accepted it, butt that he saw 
 the king was resolved the other should not keepe it, 
 & that if he had refused that also, after soe 
 many other things wh were put upon him, the 
 
 * This seems to dispose altogether of Bishop Burnet's 
 assertion of the queen's indifference to that act.
 
 416 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 I 
 
 World might have thought that the high hand he 
 carried in parlament was not soe much for to main- 
 taine the liberties of the subjects as out of a spleene 
 to the court. He [L d Essex] hath done what y 
 Ma'y desired in y ra of the ijj. of July in the house 
 of peeres, <f by Mr. Hambden in the howse of 
 commons, & is alwayes very forward in any- 
 thing that concernes y r Ma l - v & y re . There hath 
 offered itselfe an oportunity w c h doth discover 
 how much y r Ma^ is bound to M r Treasurer 
 Vane, w c h you may see if you compare the print- 
 ed order of the howse of commons concerning 
 the manifest, wth the written coppie w c h was 
 sent you, for in that is left out THE QUEENE of 
 BOHEMIA by his expresse order to Weckerlin, 
 though it was inserted in this when it was read 
 publiquely by the speaker afore the king ; Ma- 
 dame, I could not indure this insolent, ungrate- 
 full, & base trick of his, butt have complained of 
 it to some of the howse of commons <$ my L d of 
 Essex, w'hout naming Vane, but onely desiring 
 them to question the printer, & then it will be 
 scene from whence it came ; it was Vane also 
 that pressed me most about the ceremonies w'h 
 the Prince of Orange, & I doubt not butt he did 
 as much w l h the king. I shall know to-day or 
 to-morrow what will become of it. Just now 
 my L d of Essex told me that he moved it in the 
 howse of the peeres, & that the printer is to come 
 to-morrow to the barre to answer for it. S r 
 Henry Vane puts it from himselfe upon the 
 king, when I spoke to the king in it & argued 
 it w l h him, as that it did not att all ingage him 
 that it was only an honnour w c h the 2 how- 
 ses intended to y r Ma^ : he said nothing else, 
 butt that since it was printed it could not be al- 
 tered. S r Tom Beringhton was going to speake 
 of it in the howse, & S r Raph Hopton, butt some 
 other businesse that came betweene hinder'd 
 it, & afterwards they were spoken to by Vaire 
 & L d Say not to meddle in it, butt what they 
 have done since I doe not know." 
 
 There cannot be a doubt, from the tone and 
 style of these extracts, that the writer was 
 playing a double game at this moment between 
 the court and the people's party. It is observ- 
 able as much in his hatred to old Vane and the 
 queen's set of courtiers, as in his more distinct 
 assertions. Another letter is written from 
 "Newmarket, this 10th of March, 1642. "while 
 staying there with the king, after the attempted 
 arrest of the five members (when the prince- 
 elector, it will be recollected, accompanied his 
 uncle to the House) had led to the ill-fated 
 flight from London. This letter paints a mis- 
 erable picture, and is here printed entire. 
 
 "MADAME, I have done what y r Ma'* did 
 therein comaund me towards the king, who 
 tooke it very well, & sayd, / doubt not butt my 
 wife <f my sister will be very good f rends. As for 
 my brother Rupert's imployment in the Irish 
 warres, the king is enough inclined to it, butt I 
 beleeve the parlament will imploy none there butt 
 those that they may be sure of. I shall speake w'h 
 some of them about it, either for him or br. Maurice. 
 This last I thinke might w'h honnour have a reg- 
 iment under Lesly, butt to be under any other 
 odd or sencelesse officer, as some are propo- 
 sed, I shall not advise it. ... The L ds Pembroke, 
 Holland, Dunsmow, Seymor, & 8 of the howse 
 of commons, have presented the king yesterday 
 w l h a new declaration from both bowses to 
 
 shew the causes of theyr feares & jealousies, 
 & againe to presse the king to putt the militia 
 into their hands, & to come nearer unto them, 
 for to give the lesse cause of feare, & that it 
 would make a clearer understanding betweene 
 him & his people ; & if his Ma l >' did refuse this, 
 they would be forced to publish the said decla- 
 ration, and take the militia into their hands of 
 themselves. This is the effect of it, for the 
 thing itselfe hath not beene suffered to be print- 
 ed, nor any coppies to be taken as yett ; butt 
 now I doubt not butt it will be published, because 
 I heare the king's answear this morning con- 
 cerning the militia was a plaine deniall, and 
 concerning his coming nearer to London, that 
 he would doe it when the parlament would give 
 him cause for it, butt would not farther ex- 
 plaine himselfe upon this last. I doubt not butt 
 the weeke wee shall remouve from hence, butt 
 whither, God hwwes ! Some say to Yorke, oth- 
 ers to Norwich (w c h I cannot beleeve), others 
 into Scottland ; in the mean time 1 have noe 
 monie, <$ if I had not pawned my diamond garter 
 (for the plate was pawned already) for a hundred 
 pound, I could not have got monie for to have gone 
 this journey, for the comissioners of the treas- 
 ury could give me none ; butt they cf- some of 
 the howse of commons have assured me to mouve 
 the howse for some present supply for me. Thus 
 businesse goe heere, & I rest y Ma Us most hum- 
 ble and obedient sonn and servant, 
 
 " CHARLES L." 
 
 Here indeed was a change, sudden as it was 
 miserable, yet pursuing in the order of a natu- 
 ral effect a miserable cause foregone. For the 
 first twelve years of the reign of Charles, the 
 people had never dared to call their property 
 their own ; scarcely a new morning ever rose 
 on an English family that was not dreaded as 
 the usher of some new oppression ; new faces 
 were never seen in town or village that did not 
 inspire the terror of some new exaction, in sup- 
 port of the ever-craving and ever-impoverished 
 Exchequer. These frightful scenes have al- 
 ready been minutely detailed by the writer of 
 these pages. And what is the unfailing answer 
 urged by the apologists of the court 1 that its 
 wants were for the state, and that all its per- 
 sonal expenses were singularly moderate and 
 economical. This poor answer has been as 
 often refuted, yet scarcely a new record of the 
 time is opened by the historical inquirer which 
 does not make the refutation even more com- 
 plete. A most striking instance of this has 
 very recently appeared. Several interesting 
 extracts from the " Pell Records" have been 
 made public by a gentleman in the service of 
 the government, Mr. Devon, in the shape of 
 " issues of the Exchequer" in various reigns. 
 Nothing could more vividly illustrate the spirit 
 of the several courts the superstition of one, 
 the public spirit and usefulness of another, the 
 brilliant and lavish gayety of a third. The pub- 
 lication was unfortunately discontinued on the 
 eve of oui admission to the Exchequer of 
 Charles I. and II., but a sufficient quantity of 
 the materials collected in. these reigns has nev- 
 ertheless been given to the public in another 
 form : and what do we discover in those of 
 Charles 1. 1 Profusion of the most reckless 
 sort squandered on mere personal vanities. 
 While the people were starving while the
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 417 
 
 terrors of the Spanish Inquisition were more 
 than realized by the GENERAL FORCED LOAN in- 
 quisitors, let the reader observe the entries, 
 during a short eighteen months of the time, 
 made for the purchase of jewelry alone, and 
 wonder, if he can, at the retribution which fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 " On the 25th of March, 1626, there is an or- 
 der to pay Sir John Eyre 2000, ' the price of 
 a diamond of the weight of twelve carrates,' 
 given by his late majesty to the French ambas- 
 sador. On the 17th of April, to John Aston, 
 his majesty's goldsmith, 110, in part of 3053, 
 6s. U. [on the 26th of July, 1628, this debt 
 had increased, or another been incurred, to the 
 amount of 6866 16*. OJrf.], for gold and silver 
 plate bought for his majesty's use, and for 
 chains of gold, medals, and other things given 
 to ambassadors. On the 19th of May, 200 to 
 the Duke of Buckingham ' for a chain of gold 
 provided by his majesty's direction, and sent 
 by his majesty as a present to a Dutch captain.' 
 On the 25th of May, to ' the Lady Theodocia 
 Dudley, wife to Edward lord Dudley, 500, in 
 part of 1700, due unto her for a ricfi diamond, 
 sold and delivered for his majesty's use.' On 
 the 3d of June, to Dame Elizabeth Moreton, 
 widow of Sir Albert Moreton, ' the sum of 800, 
 in part of 2000, in full satisfaction of and for a 
 fair diamond ring, bought by his majesty of her, 
 and bestowed upon the ambassador lately em- 
 ployed from the King of Sweden ; as also the 
 sum of 400, in full satisfaction of and for a 
 fair jewel, set with many diamonds, bought of 
 her, and bestowed upon the ambassador lately 
 employed from the Elector of Brandenburg.' 
 On the 20th of September, ' to Sir Maurice Ab- 
 bott, 2000, in part of 4000, in full payment 
 and satisfaction of the sum of 8000, due to 
 him for a diamond cut in fassets, and set in a 
 collett,' for his majesty's use ; the remaining 
 4000 ' to be paid out of the money of the sec- 
 ond payment of the portion of his majesty's 
 dearest consort.' On the 29th of December, to 
 Henry Garway, Esq., 2000, for 'one large, 
 thick table diamond, set in a collett of gold, 
 which he sold and delivered to his majesty.' 
 On the 16th of January, to the Earl of Pem- 
 broke, late lord-chamberlain, 6400, in full of 
 8400, ' for sundry jewels, disposed of by him 
 for his majesty's service, according to such di- 
 rections as he hath received from his majesty.' 
 On the 12th of June, 1627, to Robert Hooke, 
 goldsmith, 900, ' for a garter and two Georges, 
 which his majesty hath sent to the Prince of 
 Orange.' On the 28th of August, to Charles 
 Herbert 1000, 'for a fair George, set full of 
 diamonds, lately sold unto his majesty.' On 
 the third of September, to Sir Maurice Abbott, 
 4000, in further payment of the 8000 due for 
 the diamond cut in fassets, and set in a collett, 
 before mentioned ; and on the 4th of Septem- 
 ber 2000 in full payment. On the 6th of Oc- 
 tober, to Philip Jacobson, 300, ' for a diamond 
 hatband, bought of him by his majesty;' and a 
 further sum of 100, in full of 2100, for a jew- 
 el, bought of him by his majesty, the same be- 
 ing a picture case of gold, set with seven great 
 and fourteen small diamonds, cut in fassets ;' 
 and on the same day, to Edward Sewster, 
 goldsmith, 1500, being 'the price of a ring, 
 with a fair table diamond,' 'which his majesty 
 Goo 
 
 did bestow upon his majesty's clear consort 
 Queen Mary's bishop ;' and to Philip Jacohson, 
 jeweller, 3480, ' due unto him for jewels, by 
 him delivered for his late majesty's service, and 
 for a George set with diamonds, and for a dia- 
 mond set in a ring of gold, likewise delivered 
 for his said late majesty's service, and for one 
 great jewel bought of him by his majesty.' 
 And on the 27th of October, to the Earl of 
 Pembroke, 400, in part of 2000, residue of 
 the sum of 10,000, in full satisfaction of a 
 ring, bought by his majesty of the Earl of Hol- 
 land, and of other jewels, bought of Philip Ja- 
 cobson, jeweller, and a jewel, bought of William 
 Rogers, goldsmith, amounting in the whole to 
 the sum of 10,400.' The following entry, 
 though of a later date, has reference to jewels 
 bought during this period : ' By order, 1st of 
 July, 1628, to Henry Ellowes, 1300, for a 
 bracelet which his majesty bought of him, and 
 bestowed upon his dearest consort the queen, 
 for a new-year's gift, at Xmas, 1626.' "* 
 The imagination of the poet was not a fiction ! 
 
 " Ay, there they are, 
 Nobles and sons of nobles, patentees," 
 Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm, 
 On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows. 
 Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, 
 Here it the pride that breaks the desolate heart. 
 These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, 
 Who toil not, neither do they spin unless 
 It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. 
 Here is the surfeit which to them who earn 
 The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves 
 The tithe that will support them till they crawl 
 Back to its cold, hard bosom. Here is health 
 Follow'd by grim disease, glory by shame, 
 Waste by lean famine, wealth by squalid want, 
 And England's sin by England's punishment. 
 
 The punishment followed hard indeed. Our 
 next extract from these letters exhibits the 
 writer's royal uncle not only a beggar, but a 
 prisoner. I print the letters out of their order 
 in time, because it is of importance, in regard 
 to the connexion I believe to have been once 
 meditated by the popular leaders with this young 
 prince, to complete the view which is presented 
 of him in these valuable and very interesting 
 documents. 
 
 But first let the reader observe this passage 
 from Clarendon. It refers to the latter part of 
 the year 1643. "The arrival of the prince- 
 elector at London," says the noble historian, 
 " was now no less the discourse of all tongues 
 than the death of Mr. Pym. He had been in 
 England before the troubles, and received and 
 cherished by the king with great demonstration 
 of grace and kindness, and supplied with a pen- 
 sion of twelve thousand pounds sterling yearly. 
 When the king left London, he attended his 
 majesty to York, and resided there with him 
 till the differences grew so high that his majesty 
 found it necessary to resolve to raise an army 
 for his defence. Then, on a sudden, without 
 giving the king many days' notice of his reso- 
 lution, that prince-elector left the court; and taking 
 the opportunity of an ordinary vessel, embarked 
 himself for Holland, to the wonder of all men, 
 who thought it an unseasonable declaration of 
 his fear at least of the Parliament, and his de- 
 sire of being well esteemed by them, when it was 
 evident they esteemed not the king as they 
 should. And this was the more spoken of, 
 when it was afterward known that the Parlia- 
 
 The Athenaeum, No. 573.
 
 418 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ment expressed a good sense of his having 
 deserted the king, and imputed it to his con- 
 science, that he knew of some such designs of 
 his majesty as he could not comply with.'' At this 
 time, after many loud discourses of his coming 
 (which were derived to Oxford, as somewhat 
 that might have an influence upon his majesty's 
 counsels, there being then several whispers of some 
 high proceedings they intended against the king), 
 he arrived at London, and was received with 
 ceremony ; lodged in Whitehall, and order taken 
 for the payment of that pension which had been 
 formerly assigned to him by his majesty ; and 
 a particular direction given by both Houses 
 'that he should be admitted to sit in the As- 
 sembly of Divines,' where, after he had taken 
 the covenants, he was contented to be often 
 present : of all which the king took no other 
 notice than sometimes to express that he was 
 sorry, on his nephew's behalf, that he thought 
 fit to declare such a compliance." 
 
 Whatever the prince's hopes were, however, 
 all events now took an inauspicious turn re- 
 specting them. Pym and Hampden the lead- 
 ers of what might be called the Constitutional 
 party of the Parliament, and the controllers of 
 the Parliament itself so long as they lived 
 were now no more, Lord Essex was powerless, 
 and their successors in influence were declared 
 Republicans. Not that the hopes of the young 
 prince ever perished altogether till the section 
 of Presbyterians who still continued to encour- 
 age them had also undergone most merited po- 
 litical death : they were still, it will be seen, 
 retained ; and from the style and character of 
 the extracts which I now give in support of this, 
 another and a not ungrateful fact appears that 
 the English people lost little by losing any closer 
 connexion with this prince-elector. His feel- 
 ings seem to have been really mean and sordid 
 as his wants. He here details an interview, 
 interesting, yet very painful in its character, 
 with his now imprisoned and deserted uncle. 
 The letter is dated from Whitehall, the 12th of 
 Nov-ember, 1647 : 
 
 " MADAME, I waitted all the last weeke on 
 the king my uncle att Hampton Court, whither 
 I intend to return on Munday next, since there 
 is very few w l h him, & there is a rumour of his 
 remouvall, though I cannot give much credit to 
 it, untill the army receive some satisfaction 
 for their pay, w*hout w c h they will hardly goe 
 farre from the citty or par! 1 . His Ma*> upon oc- 
 casion doth still blame the way I have bin in 
 all this while, & I doe deffend it as the only 
 shelter I have, when my publique businesse & 
 my person have received soe many neglects (I 
 will not say worse) att court, <k by those that 
 had relation to him, & noe lesse by himselfe 
 since the queene hath had any hand in busi- 
 nesse ; butt 1 entred upon noe particulars, butt 
 wished that, whatsoever opinion he had of me, 
 he might in a happy aggreement w'h his parl'. be 
 reestablished, wherein I could not butt also 
 comprehend the safety of my friends, & leave 
 what concernes myselfe to the venture. Ma- 
 dame, I would not have renewed that sore of 
 his ill usage of me since the queene hath had 
 power w'h him, butt that he urged me to it, in 
 saying / should rather have lived upon bread and 
 u-atcr than have complyd w'h the parl c , w c h he s d I 
 did to have only one chickin more in my dish (w c h 
 
 was his phrase, & I doe guesse who made ue 
 of it in another occasion afore this warre be- 
 gunne), and that he would have thought it a dcs- 
 seign more icorthy his neveu if I had sonne about 
 to have taken his crowne from his head ; w'h, & 
 such like expressions, would have mooved a 
 sainct; neither doe I know of any butt our Sav- 
 iour that would have ruined himselfe for those 
 that hate one. The king used me else civily 
 & w'h enough kindnesse (att least in appear- 
 ance), neither seemed he displeased att the 
 freedome I used in replying to him, w^h I did 
 w'h all the respect I could conceive, if it were 
 otherwayes I should hope to heare of it by y r 
 Ma ty . As I am writing of this, I am told that 
 divers coming from Hampton Court this morn- 
 ing say that the king is gone from thence this 
 night, & that six horses were heard in the night 
 gallopping over Kingstone Bridge, w c h is sup- 
 posed to have beene his Ma'*, & that it was 
 not against his will, since there was noe bussell 
 att all heard in the night, & it is likely his Ma'* 
 went away afore the guards were sett, w l h 
 used to be about 9 of the clock att night, yes- 
 terday having been his writing day, in w h he 
 little came abroad, & soone retired after sup- 
 per. Afore I close this I shall acquaint y r Ma'? 
 w'h what I doe farthe r heare concerning his 
 Ma'*. . . I heare since that S r John Cooke, one 
 of the com" w'h the king hath made relation to 
 the howse of peeres of hislVIa tis departure yes- 
 ternight about seven of the clock through the 
 garden alone, having left two letters upon the 
 table in his bed-chamber, one to the comis- 
 sioners, & another to Coll. Whaley that guard- 
 ed him, giving them thankes for their civilities 
 towards him, desiring the com" to present such 
 papers as he had left there to the parl 1 (the con- 
 tents whereof I do not yett know), & desires 
 Coll. Whaley to give his saddle horses to the 
 D. of Yorke. This is all what for the present 
 I can acquaint y r Ma'>' concerning this busi- 
 nesse, not doubting butt you will heare more 
 particulars from others, since I have not beene 
 abroad to day, in w c h & for ever I rest y Ma 1 " 
 most humble & obedient sonn & servant, 
 
 " CHARLES." 
 
 In a 'subsequent letter to his mother,* dated 
 from the same place six months later, he refers 
 in the same tone of indifferent concern to the 
 "cloud the king lies under ;" observes that it is 
 " more unusuall for kings $ queenes ever to con- 
 fesse themselves to be in the wrong, than for suck 
 smaler potentates as myselfe ;" protests that he is 
 " not to ansicear for all the proceedings of a dis- 
 tempered state ;" and adds : " as for my credit 
 w'h the parlament, I beleeve y r Ma'*' nor any 
 bodie else ever heard me brag" of it, though I 
 thinke myself as well used by them as their pres- 
 ent condition <$ the state of a fair es doth pcrnutt ; 
 neither doe I know (considering w'hall how 
 much those that are nearest to me are against 
 them) all this time where I should be better, 
 for I would rather be beholding to those who 
 
 * His royal cousins are in other letters a frequent sub- 
 ject of remark between the prince and his mother. In one, 
 dated from Somerset House, the 20th of Oct., 1648, is the 
 following : " I beleeve your MaW would nott be of my L I 
 Stafford's opinion if you saw the Duke of Gloster, for my 
 brother Edward had ever a round face from his youth, & 
 the Duke of Glocesterhath a long one allready : <fc his eyes, 
 though browne yet, in my opinion are of another shape than 
 my s<l brothers, but indeed he hath hjs fatt cheekes, as most 
 children of that age have."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 419 
 
 never have disobliged me (to whom I have some 
 relation) for my maintenance, than to France, 
 or any others that have wronged me." 
 
 Finally, in a letter written within a month of 
 his uncle's execution, and when that terrible 
 course of policy was well known to have been 
 decided on, this prince writes to his mother, 
 the sister of Charles I., in this cold, unfeeling 
 strain : " You did not faile in your judgement 
 of the treaty w'h the king, though I beleeve y 
 Ma'y nor noebody else could have imagined the 
 issue thereof altogether soe ill, as there is suf- 
 ficient cause to feare it will prouve. Many that 
 were well wishers to it did ever apprehend that 
 the king's too long husbanding his concessions, 
 and losse of oportunity, would produce those effects 
 that are followed, & God knowes where they will 
 end, for w cU those that have had or have still 
 the manadging of those great affaires are to an- 
 swear ; others that are butt remotely concern- 
 ed in the effects thereof, cannot be blamed if they 
 doe not intermeddle ; neither is it in their power 
 to mend any thing ; For it hath been seen in 
 all governments that strength will still preraile, 
 be it right or wrong." 
 
 And so our candidate-king waited quietly by 
 till the execution of his uncle, and then he found 
 that other objects were entertained by its pro- 
 moters, which could fairly dispense at last with 
 his presence altogether. Certainly Cromwell 
 had better claims than Charles Louis ! 
 
 That extraordinary man to resume the his- 
 tory of his fortunes has spoken little in the 
 House of late, but since the death of Strafford 
 he has even increased in fervid activity. The 
 remonstrance is now on foot in the House of 
 Commons, and he is one of its most ardent pro- 
 moters ; for with every act of policy that had 
 in view the separation of the moderate from the 
 decided party, his excitement and zeal increas- 
 ed. And, even thus early in his public career, 
 we can observe that affectation of indifference 
 to objects on which he had set his soul, which 
 he converted in after life into one great means 
 of achieving them. 
 
 Thus Clarendon, speaking of the remon- 
 strance, tells us, " They [the leading men in the 
 House of Commons] promised themselves they 
 should easily carry it : so that the day it was 
 to be resumed, they entertained the House all 
 the morning with other debates, and towards 
 noon called for the remonstrance ; and it being 
 urged by some that it was too late to enter 
 upon it, with much difficulty they consented 
 that it should be entered upon next morning at 
 nine of the clock ; and every clause should be 
 debated ; for they would not have the House 
 resolved into a committee, which they believed 
 would spend too much time. Oliver Cromwell 
 asked the Lord Falkland why he would not have 
 it put off, for that day would quickly have deter- 
 mined it. He answered, there would not have 
 been time enough, for sure it would take some 
 debate. The other replied, A very sorry one : 
 they supposing, by the computation they had 
 made, that very few would oppose it. But he 
 quickly found he was mistaken." 
 
 It is not possible to suppose that Cromwell 
 could have believed this, even if he said it, since 
 none knew better than Pym, Hampden. and 
 himself, that one of the great objects of the re- 
 monstrance was to act as a touchstone of par- 
 
 ties both in the House of Commons and through- 
 out the nation. Clarendon's addition to the 
 story, also, is utterly incredible, unless it is to be 
 taken as another evidence of Cromwell's wily 
 deceit, which it is difficult to take in that light, 
 seeing so little motive for it. For the debate 
 having been renewed the following day, and 
 having ended in the stormy scene so vividly de- 
 scribed by Sir Philip Warwick" (at three of 
 the clock in the morning, when [by a majority 
 of eleven] they voted it, I thought we had all 
 sat in the valley of the shadow of death ; for 
 we, like Joab's and Abner's young men, had 
 catched at each other's locks, and sheathed our 
 swords in each other's bowels, had not the sa- 
 gacity and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by 
 a short speech, prevented it, and led us to de- 
 fer our angry debate until the next morning)" 
 the noble historian tells us, " that as the mem- 
 bers at that late hour were hurrying out of the 
 House, the Lord Falkland asked Oliver Crom- 
 well whether there had been a debate. To 
 which he answered, he would take his word an- 
 other time ; and whispered him in the ear, with 
 some asseveration, that if the remonstrance 
 had been rejected, he would have sold all he had 
 the next morning, and never have seen England 
 more ; and he knew there were many other hon- 
 est men of the same resolution. So near," 
 adds Clarendon, " was the poor kingdom at that 
 time to its deliverance." The story, if taken 
 as a piece of sincerity on the part of Cromwell, 
 is not to be believed for an instant. That, as 
 I have before remarked, was not his temper. 
 It was not his temper to despair of any achieve- 
 ment on which he had fixed his determination 
 and his hopes, so long as life, and his good 
 strong arm, remained to him. 
 
 Civil war became inevitable, and it is char- 
 acteristic of Cromwell that he was the first man 
 absolutely in the field. Acting under no regu- 
 lar commission, he performed some pieces of 
 daring and important service in his native dis- 
 tricts. When the later declaration by the king* 
 respecting the question of the militia had left 
 no doubt of the speedy unfurling of the royal 
 standard, he suddenly left London for the old 
 vicinity of Huntingdon, whither a supply of 
 arms* sent at his own private charge, had prece- 
 ded him, and where a large body of dauntless 
 men awaited him, inspired to the coming con- 
 flict by no mercenary or mean motives, but by 
 the great old lessons they had learned under 
 the farmer of Ely and St. Ives. His striking 
 determination, too, at this period, to venture 
 every thing on the result of the contest, is far- 
 ther shown by his having recklessly devoted 
 large sums out of his dwindled private patri- 
 mony to the promotion of public designs. He 
 had given 500 to the fund raised by Parlia- 
 ment for assistance to crush the Irish rebellion ; 
 he had purchased the weapons I have else- 
 where named ;* and when, some few months 
 
 * Given in the Life of Pym. 
 
 t The following are extracts from the journals of the 
 House: "Whereas Mr. Cromwell hath sent down arms 
 into the county of Cambridge for the defence of that coun- 
 ty ; it is this day ordered that Sir Dudley North shall forth- 
 with pay to Mr. Cromwell 100, which he hath received 
 from Mr. Crane, late high-sheriff of the county of Cam- 
 bridge ; which said 100 the said Mr. Crane had remain- 
 ing in his hands for coat and conduct money." " Ordered, 
 that Mr. Cromwell do move the lord-lieutenant for the 
 county of Cambridge to grant his deputation to some of the
 
 420 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 later, a difficulty arose respecting some hired 
 wagons provided to put Lord Manchester's 
 army in motion against the king, he at once got 
 rid of the difficulty by paying out of his own 
 purse 100 for the hire. 
 
 Having arrived and picked out his men a 
 solid foundation for his famous regiment of 
 Ironsides he appears at once to have bent his 
 chief exertions to the organization of some 
 system among the chief popular men of the dis- 
 trict, whereby they might have the inhabitants 
 immediately trained to military service, the 
 eastern counties associated for mutual defence, 
 and the movements of the Royalists watched 
 with unsparing vigilance. In the Commons' 
 Journals of a very little later date, an order is 
 observed, that " Mr. Cromwell do move the 
 lord-lieutenant for the county of Cambridge to 
 grant his deputation to some of the inhabitants 
 of the town of Cambridge to train and exercise 
 the inhabitants of that town." 
 
 And a more obvious piece of daring service 
 more important it could not be while the royal 
 standard still remained unfurled, commemo- 
 rated Cromwell's resolved zeal. Taking along 
 with him his brother-in-law Valentine Wauton 
 (member for the county of Huntingdon), he suc- 
 ceeded in stopping the plate of the University 
 of Cambridge, a spoil of inestimable value, which 
 was then on the point of being sent to the king, 
 to be melted down for the purposes of the war.* 
 We find from the Journals, that on the 15th of 
 August, 1642, Sir Philip Stapleton gave an ac- 
 count in the lower House, from the committee 
 for the defence of the kingdom, that " Mr. 
 Cromwell, in Cambridgeshire, had seized the 
 magazine in the castle of Cambridge, and had 
 hindered the carrying of the plate from that 
 university." And on the 18th of August, we 
 find from the same authorities, a committee 
 was appointed to prepare an order for the " in- 
 demnity of Mr. Cromwell and Mr. Walton, and 
 those that have or shall assist them in the stop- 
 ping of the plate that was going from Cambridge 
 to York."t 
 
 Nor, in these first decisive movements, did 
 Cromwell forget his uncle Sir Oliver's powers 
 of mischief and aptitude to use them. He 
 marched over to Ramsey, found his uncle at 
 home, and having treated him personally with 
 
 inhabitants of the town of Cambridge to train and exercise 
 the inhabitants. of that town. 1642." 
 
 * Various accounts have been given of this transaction, 
 which, though disputed in various ways, is correctly stated 
 in the text ; but perhaps the most comical version is that 
 which follows, from, a* tract entitled " Querela Cantabrigi- 
 ensis," in which certainly, while the writer disputes the 
 seizure of the plate, he concedes a seizure of a different 
 sort, as prompt and more amusing. " Master Cromwell, 
 burgess for the town of Cambridge, and then newly turned 
 a man of war, was sent down, as himself confessed, by his 
 masters above, at the invitation of his masters below, to 
 gather what strength he could, and stop all passages, that 
 no plate might be sent ; but his designs being frustrated, 
 and-' his character as an active, subtle man thereby some- 
 what shaken, he hath ever since bent himself to work what 
 revenge and mischief he could against us. In pursuit 
 whereof, before that month was expired, down he comes 
 again, in a terrible manner, with what forces he. could draw 
 together, and surrounds divers colleges while we were at 
 our devotion in our several chapels, taking away prisoners 
 several doctors of divinity, heads of colleges, and these he 
 carries with him to London in triumph." 
 
 t See, also, May's History of the Long Parliament, 3d 
 book, p. 79. The booty must have been very large indeed, 
 since we find that the particular pieces sent from St. John's 
 College alone amounted to 2065J ounces. See Berwick's 
 Life, p. 24. 
 
 every demonstration of studied kindness am! 
 respect, resolvedly took from him all his means 
 of at that instant assisting the king. The scene 
 must have been strange on both sides, but it 
 illustrates in Cromwell, with singular force, one 
 of the most remarkable qualities of his char- 
 acter. The reader will require nothing more 
 to assist his imagination in the matter, after he 
 has read the delightfully characteristic version 
 of the anecdote given by Sir Philip Warwick. 
 " While I was about Huntingdon," he says, 
 " visiting old Sir Oliver Cromwell, his uncle 
 and godfather, at his house at Ramsey, he told 
 me this story of his successful nephew and 
 godson : that he visited him with a good strong 
 party of horse, and that he had asked him his 
 blessing, and that the few hours he was there he 
 would not keep on his hat in his presence ; but, at 
 the same time, he not only disarmed, but plunder' 
 ed him, for he took away all his plate." 
 
 At last the king took the field, and the regu- 
 lar levies commenced on both sides, as they 
 have been described in the memoirs of Pym 
 and Hampden. It only remains here to notice, 
 in particular detail, the practical result of all 
 those great thoughts which I have heretofore 
 shown in the course of partial realization at the 
 various stages of Cromwell's history in the 
 final organization of that immortal troop of 
 horse, which became the after wonder and ad- 
 miration of the world. Had his history closed 
 with the raising and disciplining of these men, 
 it would have left a sufficient warrant of his 
 greatness to posterity. 
 
 Having accepted the commission under Es- 
 sex of a colonel of a cavalry regiment, he pro- 
 ceeded to enrol a body of a thousand men. 
 And on this point let us first quote the cele- 
 brated Baxter's words : " I think," says that 
 generally well-intentioned person, " that, hav- 
 ing been a prodigal in his youth, and afterward 
 changed to a zealous religiousness, he meant 
 honestly in the main, and was pious and con- 
 scionable in the main course of his life, till 
 prosperity and success corrupted him; that at his 
 first entrance into the wars, being but a cap- 
 tain of horse, he had a special care to get reli- 
 gious men into his troop : these men were of 
 greater understanding than common soldiers, and 
 therefore were more apprehensive of the im- 
 portance and consequence of the wars ; and 
 making not money, but that which they took for the 
 public felicity, to be their end, they were the more 
 engaged to be valiant ; for he that maketh 
 money his end, doth esteem his life above his 
 pay, and therefore is like enough to save it by 
 flight when danger comes, if possibly he ran ; 
 but he that maketh the felicity of church and 
 state his end, esteemeth it above his life, and 
 therefore will the sooner lay down his life for 
 it. And men of parts and understanding know 
 how to manage their business, and know that 
 flying is the surest way to death, and that 
 standing to it is the likeliest way to escape ; 
 there being many usually that fall in the flight 
 for one that falleth in valiant fight. These 
 things it's probable that Cromwell understood, 
 ~and that none would be such engaged valiant 
 men as the religious ; but yet I conjecture, that 
 at his first choosing such men into his troop, it was 
 the very esteem and lore of religious men that 
 principally moved him, and the avoiding of those
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 421 
 
 disorders, mutinies, plunderings, and grievances 
 of the country, which debosht men in armies 
 are commonly guilty of: by this means he in- 
 deed sped better than he expected. Aires, 
 Desborough, Berry, Evanson, and the rest of 
 that troop did prove so valiant, that, as far as 
 I could learn, they never once ran away before an 
 enemy. Hereupon he got a commission to take 
 some care of the associated counties, where he 
 brought this troop into a double regiment of 
 fourteen full troops ; and all these as full of re- 
 ligious men as he could get : these having more 
 than ordinary wit and resolution, had more than 
 ordinary success." In this passage the writer 
 touches on a question of some interest in al- 
 luding to the first motives that are likely to 
 have prompted Cromwell in the selection of 
 such men as these. There cannot be a doubt, 
 I think, as it has been the purpose of these 
 pages hitherto to illustrate, that the religious 
 tendencies were seized by his genius first as a 
 means rather than an end ; yet it might have 
 been in his thoughts as strongly that the end 
 to be achieved was that of the best interests 
 of religion no less. 
 
 Nor will the reader who has accompanied 
 me thus far suppose that this Republican cap- 
 tain held religion to be the sole necessary ac- 
 complishment of a soldier. While he held, in- 
 deed, that bravery unaccompanied by lofty mo- 
 tives was a mere brutisn. faculty, he held as 
 strongly that the noblest and least mercenary 
 motives required yet the most faithful disci- 
 pline. His regiment is thus described by White- 
 locke. " He had a brave regiment of horse of 
 his countrymen, most of them freeholders and 
 freeholders' sons, who upon matter of con- 
 science engaged in this quarrel, and under Crom- 
 well. And thus, being well armed within by the 
 satisfaction of their own consciences, and without 
 by good iron arms, they would as one man charge 
 firmly and fight desperately." A political ene- 
 my to Cromwell writes still more strongly of 
 the excellence of his military discipline. " His 
 men," says the writer, " who, in the beginning, 
 were unskilful both in handling their arms and 
 managing their horses, by diligence and indus- 
 try became excellent soldiers ; for Cromwell 
 used them daily to look after, feed, and dress 
 their horses, and, when it was needful, to lie to- 
 gether with them on the ground ; and, besides, 
 taught them to dean and keep their arms bright, 
 and have them ready for service ; to choose 
 the best armour, and to arm themselves to the 
 best advantage. Trained up in this kind of 
 military exercise, they excelled all their fellow- 
 soldiers in feats of war, and obtained more vic- 
 tories over their enemies."* 
 
 But the most striking and characteristic evi- 
 dence on these minor points of discipline re- 
 mains to be quoted from a still more inveterate 
 enemy. " Cromwell," says Heath,t " well 
 knowing the nature of the quarrel (which was 
 
 * " Hi autem initio nee arma tractandi nee equog gnari, 
 diligentii solertiaque bellatores acerrirai evaserunt ; equis 
 etenim curandis, nutriendis ac detergendis indies assuefacti 
 sunt, et si opus foret simul humicubando; arma insuper 
 polire, nitida et usui expedita servare, loriras optimas in- 
 duere, seque csetero armaturae genere communire condoce- 
 fecerat eos Cromwellius. Atque hoc exercitit mihtaris 
 geuere, prae reliquis commilitonum omnibus emicufire vir- 
 tute bellica, pleuresque ab hoste palmas reportftruiit." 
 Bate's Elenchi, &c., part ii., p. 270. 
 
 t Flagrellum, p. 31-33. 
 
 pretended for religion), resolved and advised 
 that there were no men so likely to oppose the 
 conquering gallantry of those gentlemen on the 
 king's side as such who were or should be en- 
 gaged upon account of conscience and zeal, 
 which would spirit them with the same mag- 
 nanimous fortitude, and make them also to en- 
 dure the difficulties and hardships of the war 
 with a more pertinacious constancy, as having 
 bodies better able, and minds more finely sub- 
 limed upon that score, pro aris et focis, than 
 the mixed and most rascally herd of loose and 
 vicious people. But yet, prudently considering 
 that in so long an interval and vacancy of war, 
 from which this nation had been blessed, the 
 most forwardest Hotspurs on the account of 
 zeal might quale and shrink at the noise of the 
 battel, and their spiritual proud courage abate 
 at the encounter, and never dene a Cavalier 
 again after one dismal alarum and fright of a 
 discomfiture, he would first proee and try his 
 troopers how they could endure a sudden terrour, 
 and by that grow hardy to the constancy of 
 danger (as eagles certifie themselves of the gen- 
 uine race of their young ones by their experi- 
 encing how they can outstare and brave the 
 sun, and imitate them with a bold and passive 
 fortitude, the hardy rudiments of their fighting, 
 predatory life) ; for as he relied on one hand 
 upon their religious resolution and spiritual val- 
 our, so did he not reject the arm of flesh, which 
 should actuate those inward impulses, and by 
 a just temprament of both to a true metal, conduct 
 and manage their sober and well-governed bra- 
 very to an assurance of success and victory ; 
 and such whose hearts failed, he resolved to dis- 
 mount them, and give their horses to more courage- 
 ous riders. This he did by a stratagen upon the 
 first muster of his troop ; when having privily 
 placed twelve men in an ambuscado (it being neer 
 some of the king's garrisons), upon a signal or 
 the appointed time, the said ambush, with a trump- 
 et sounding a charge, galloped furiously to the 
 body, out of which some 20 instantly fled out of 
 fear and dismay, and were glad the forfeiture 
 was so cheap and easie, and, ashamed of their 
 childish and disgraceful deserting of their sta- 
 tion and colours, had not the confidence to re- 
 quest their continuance in his service, or deny 
 or scruple the rendring their horses to them who 
 should fight the Lord's battel in their stead." 
 
 Some shades there are in the account I have 
 next to quote of this remarkable regiment, but 
 it has also characteristic touches of happiest 
 truth which may not be denied. " All Crom- 
 well's men," says Sir Philip, " had either natu- 
 rally the fanatic humour, or soon imbibed it. 
 A herd of this sort of men being by him drawn 
 together, he himself, like Mohammed, having 
 transports of fancy, and, withal, a crafty un- 
 derstanding, knowing that natural principles, 
 though not morally good, will conduce to the 
 attainment of natural and politic ends, made 
 use of the zeal and credulity of those persons ; 
 teaching them, as they too readily taught them- 
 selves, that they engaged for God when he led 
 them against the king ; and where this opinion 
 met with a natural courage, it made them the 
 bolder, and too often the crueller ; for it was such 
 a sort of men as killed brave young Cavendish 
 and many others, after quarter given, in cold 
 blood. And these men, habituated more to spir-
 
 422 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 itual pride than carnal riot or intemperance, so, 
 consequently, having been industrious and ac- 
 tive in their former callings and professions, 
 where natural courage wanted, zeal supplied 
 its place ; and at first they chose rather to die than 
 fly ; and custom removed fear of danger ; and af- 
 terward, finding the sweet of good pay and of 
 opulent plunder and preferment, the lucrative 
 part made gain seem to them a natural member of 
 godliness."* 
 
 Finally, and most interesting evidence of all, 
 Cromwell himself, in one of his conferences 
 during the Protectorate, thus described, in 
 memorable and characteristic words, his own 
 proceedings at the present period of his history. 
 " I was," he said, " a person that from my first 
 employment was suddenly preferred and lifted 
 up from lesser trusts to greater, from my first 
 being a captain of a troop of horse ; and I did 
 labour (as well as I could) to discharge my 
 trust ; and God blessed me as it pleased him ; 
 and I did truly and plainly, and then, in a way 
 of foolish simplicity (as it was judged by very 
 great and wise men, and good men too), de- 
 sired to make my instruments to help me in 
 this work ; and I will deal plainly with you. I 
 had a very worthy friend then, and he was a very 
 noble person, and I know his memory was very 
 grateful to all, Mr. John Hampdcn. At my first 
 going out into this engagement (I saw), their 
 men were beaten at every hand; I did, indeed, 
 and desired him that he would make some ad- 
 ditions to my Lord Essex's army of some new 
 regiments ; and I told him I would be service- 
 able to him in bringing such men as I thought 
 had a spirit that would do something in the 
 work. This is very true that I tell you ; God 
 knows I lye not.- 'Your troops,' said I, 'are 
 most of them old, decayed serving-men and tap- 
 sters, and such kind of fellows ;' and said I, ' their 
 troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons, and 
 persons of quality : do you think that the spirits of 
 such base and mean fellows will be ever able to en- 
 counter gentlemen, that have honour, and courage, 
 and resolution in them ?' Truly, I presented him 
 
 * Not disputing these shrewd hints by Sir Philip War- 
 wick, the evidence of an eyewitness may be quoted here, 
 in support of the continued mildness, modesty, religion, and 
 goodness of Cromwell's special regiments : " Quicquid effu- 
 ciunt in te dementes Olivari, nauci non facio, religiosissi- 
 mum imperatorem, religionis mediis in exercitibus defen- 
 sorem, protectorem, propagatorem, nemo nisi laudum tuarum 
 supra modum invidus hie reperitur, qui te non suspexerit, 
 admiratus fuerit, observantia summa non coluerit. Enini 
 vero ubinara terrarum lam religiosus visus est imperator, 
 tamque religiosus exercitus? Miratus ego sum, varias An- 
 glise provincias tune pro negotiormn meorum, vel principis 
 met Serenissimi Duds Gveldrice Conilis Hccrmvnda neces- 
 sitate peragrans, easqui militibus tuis refertas, ita quietas, 
 tranquillas, pacatas, quasi ne uuus quidem in illis miles 
 esset, sic addictas pietati, quasi monachorum non militum 
 legiones in pagis ipsarum disperse degerent. Ita certa 
 singulis diebus turn fundendis Deo precibus, turn audiendis 
 dei prsconiis, erant assignata tempora, milites ipsos adeb 
 modestos, nihilque nisi Deum, pietatem, roligionem, virtu- 
 tern respirantes, ut ingenue fatear cum stupore non raedi- 
 ocri s;epe suspexi. Atque ne putet hie aliquis velle me 
 Wandiri, oleum Olivario divendere, vel in illius aures instil- 
 lare, testem Deum adhibeo, quod stepissime priesidiarios 
 Olivarii, modA supra diet* militea adiens, nevel invereouu- 
 dum verbulum unquam ab ullius ex illis ore perceperim, 
 jusjurandumque nullum, sfd meram humauitatRm, urbaut- 
 tatem, pietatem, verecundiam, modestiam animadverterim. 
 Unde nequaquam in Olivarii militibus locum habere potest 
 quod de omnibus aliis jampridem decantatum est, 
 
 Nulla fides pietasque viris qui castra sequuntur; 
 sed de illis dicendum potius est, 
 
 Multa fides pietasqui viris qui castra sequuntur." 
 
 in this manner conscientiously, and truly I did 
 tell him, you must get men of a spirit ; and take 
 it not ill what I say (I know you will not) of a 
 spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen 
 will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still. 
 I told him so ; I did truly. He was a wise and 
 worthy person, and he did think that I talked a 
 good notion, but an impracticable one ; truly I told 
 him I could do somewhat in it ; I did so ; and 
 truly I must needs say that to you (impart it to 
 what you please), I raised such men as had the 
 fear of God before them, and made some con- 
 science of what they did ; and from that day 
 forward, I must say to you, they were never 
 beaten, and wherever they were engaged against the 
 enemy, they beat continually; and truly this is 
 matter of praise to God ; and it hath some in- 
 struction in it, to own men that are religious 
 and godly, and so many of them as are peace- 
 ably, and honestly, and quietly disposed to live 
 reithin government,* as will be subject to those 
 Gospel rules of obeying magistrates, and living 
 under authority. I reckon no godliness with- 
 out this circle ; but without this spirit, let it 
 pretend what it will, it is diabolical, it is devil- 
 ish, it is from diabolical spirits, from the height 
 of Jotham's wickedness." 
 
 And now, in leading forth into the field these 
 thousand warriors, Oliver Cromwell gave them 
 their last instruction in a piece of fiery sincer- 
 ity, which, better than the cold hypocrisy he 
 had equally at command, availed him for his 
 present purposes. He told them that he would 
 not seek to perplex them (since other officers he 
 had heard instructed their troops in the nice 
 legal fictions of their civil superiors in Parlia- 
 ment) with any such phrases as fighting for 
 king and Parliament :t it was for the Parliament 
 alone they were now marching into military 
 service ; for himself, he declared, that if he met 
 King Charles in the body of the enemy, he 
 would as soon discharge his pistol upon him as 
 upon any private man ; and for any soldier 
 present, therefore, who was troubled with a 
 conscience that might not let him do the like, 
 he advised him even now to quit the service 
 he was engaged in. A terrible shout of de- 
 termined zeal announced no deserter on thai 
 score, and on marched Cromwell and his Iron- 
 sidesthen the seed, and soon after the flower, 
 of that astonishing army, which evea Lord 
 Clarendon could describe as one to which vic- 
 tory was entailed, and which, humanly speak- 
 ing, could hardly fail of conquest whithersoever 
 led ; an army whose order and discipline, 
 
 * This was said, the reader will rscollcct, under the Pro- 
 tectorate, in a conference on the advantages of monarchy. 
 
 t A few months later he is said, on the authority of a 
 Royalist journal of the time, the " Mercurius Politicus," to 
 have used a very different style. When the associated 
 counties, says the writer, were threatened by Lord Capel, 
 Cromwell invited the principal gentry in Essex, Suffolk, 
 Norfolk, Cambridge, and Hertford to a conference, whero 
 he urged upon them the propriety of uniting all the forces 
 they could raise, in order to repulse the common enemy. 
 " He entreated them to consider seriously how acceptable a 
 servico they should render to the king by keeping five whole 
 counties in his obedience ; and concluded by drawing their 
 attention to the honours and other rewards which they 
 might justly expect from his majesty, in return for so signal 
 a proof of their loyalty !" " Such excellent arts hare they," 
 he continues, " to abuse the people, and make them think 
 they do good service to the king, when they endeavour ta 
 destroy him." It will he observed that here Cromw.ell was 
 dealing with the gentry not the commonalty of t,h.e- Par* 
 Uameutary force.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 423 
 
 whose sobriety and manners, whose courage 
 and success, made it famous and terrible all 
 over the world. " On went Noll Cromwell," 
 said the reckless Royalist Marchmont Need- 
 ham " forth went Noll in the might of his 
 spirit, with his swords and Bibles, and with all 
 his train of disciples ; every one of whom is as 
 a David, a man of war and a prophet ; gifted 
 men all, that have resolved to their work better 
 than any of the sons of Levi, and are rushing 
 through England with their two-edged swords 
 and Bibles, to convert the Gentiles." 
 
 Cromwell styles himself a captain of a troop 
 in the characteristic piece of autobiography 
 quoted in these descriptions of his men, but I 
 cannot discover that he ever held such a com- 
 mission under Essex. It possibly refers merely 
 to the period of his first daring excursions be- 
 fore the king's standard was in the field, and 
 which, without any regular commission, he 
 seems to have pursued also some few days 
 after, for one of his exploits before all the Parlia- 
 mentary commissions of array had been issued 
 was to seize the person of Sir Thomas Conisby, 
 high sheriff of the county of Herts, who had 
 come to St. Alban's on the market-day for the 
 purpose of proclaiming the Earl of Essex, and : 
 all who should he his followers, traitors. The 
 self-important, knight had arrived in the market- 
 place, and gravely unfolded his momentous 
 proclamation, when suddenly he was pounced 
 upon by Cromwell and his troop, and carried off 
 a captive to London. Then it was Cromwell 
 received his colonel's commission, with an in- 
 struction to increase his followers to a regiment j 
 of a thousand men ; and how he did this the 
 reader has seen. 
 
 Meanwhile, the commissions of array are out 
 on all sides, and every town, every village, every 
 hamlet in England is a muster-place for armed 
 men, who are to fight against their own coun- 
 trymen, their friends, perhaps their kindred. 
 The causes which suddenly raised up for the 
 king a larger levy of partisans and soldiers than 
 could possibly have been anticipated by the Par- 
 liament, have been already placed before the 
 reader.* " I thought," says the enthusiastic 
 and honest Ludlow, in describing his adhesion 
 to the army of Essex, t " I thought the justice 
 of that cause I had engaged in to be so evident, 
 that I could not imagine it to he attended with 
 much difficulty ; for though I supposed that 
 many of the clergy, who had been the principal 
 
 * la the Life of Hampden. 
 
 t " Soon after my engagement in this cause, 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 consulting, it was re- 
 solved by us to assemble as many young gentlemen of th 
 Inns of Court, of which we then were, and others, as shoul 
 be found disposed to this service, in order to be instructe 
 
 ild 
 icted 
 
 military affairs to instruct us in the use of arms, and for 
 dime time we frequently met to exercise at the Artillery 
 Ground in London. And being 1 informed that the Parlia- 
 ment had resolved to raise a life-guard fur the Earl of Es- 
 sex, to consist of a hundred gentlemen, under the command 
 of Sir Philip Stapleton, a member of Parliament, most of 
 our company entered themselves therein, and made up the 
 greatest part of the said guard ; among whom were Mr. 
 Richard Fiennes, Mr. Charles Fleetwood. afterward lieu- 
 tenant-general. Major-general Harrison, Colonel Nathaniel 
 Rich, Colonel Thomlinson, Colonel Twisleton, Colonel Bos- 
 well, Major Whitby, and myself, with divers others." Lud- 
 low's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 42. 
 
 authors of our miseries, together with some cf 
 the courtiers, and such as absolutely depended 
 on the king for their subsistence, as also some 
 foreigners, would adhere to him, yet I could 
 not think that many of the people, who had 
 been long oppressed with heavy burdens, and 
 now, with great difficulty, had obtained a Par- 
 liament, composed of such persons as were 
 willing to run all hazards to procure a lasting 
 settlement for the nation, would be either such 
 enemies to themselves, or so ungrateful to those 
 they had trusted, as not to stand by them to 
 the utmost of their power ; at least (though 
 some might not have so much resolution and 
 courage as to venture all with them, yet), that 
 they would not be so treacherous and unworthy 
 as to strengthen the hands of the enemy against 
 those who had the laws of God, nature, and 
 reason, as well as those of the land, of their 
 side." But not the common people alone, 
 whom many causes may be supposed to have 
 influenced, deserted, at this trying hour, the 
 Parliament which had risen to assert their 
 rights of property, of labour, and of conscience : 
 men of rank, who had hitherto acted firmly and 
 resolutely against the king, now fairly deserted 
 the principles they had avowed, and went over 
 to the royal banner. Nothing but that subtle 
 and delicate sense of honour, which the term 
 loyalty implies, could have actuated these men 
 to such a course. It was no love for Charles 
 or for his cause : but that " grinning honour" 
 stood in the way, they had fought against both. 
 Their voices had been their own in the struggle 
 for liberty and law, but their swords were the 
 king's alone. " I would not continue here an 
 hour," wrote Lord Robert Spencer from the 
 royal camp to his wife, " if there could be an 
 expedient found to solve the punctilio of hon- 
 our." And thousands were agitated hy the 
 same melancholy reflection, till the welcome 
 death they sought in battle solved every punc- 
 tilio at last. Had such men as these seen the 
 crown of England "on a hedge-stake," they 
 would have remained to the death beside it. 
 
 A man of this sort, for instance, was Sir 
 Bevill Grenville, who, when the king's affairs 
 were in miserable plight at the first from the 
 difficulty of collecting men, suddenly declared 
 himself for Charles, published a commission of 
 array, raised troops, and occupied a line of 
 posts in the western counties. " I go," he 
 said, " with joy and comfort, to venture my 
 life in as good a cause, and in as good compa- 
 ny, as ever Englishman did ; and I do take God 
 to witness, if I were to choose a death, it would 
 be no other than this." Here there appeared no 
 " grinning" doubts, but they existed notwith- 
 standing. In Grenville they took the shape of 
 that sort of melancholy foreboding touching his 
 own fate, which also so strongly affected Falk- 
 land. In his active exertions in the field, in the 
 more general business of the strife, in fierce and 
 passionate resolution against the foe, Grenville 
 yielded to none. Here he had no doubts, no 
 scruples, nothing that stood in the way of ser- 
 vice. Deeper in his heart of hearts the meianT 
 choly lay. 
 
 Among the manuscripts intrusted to me by 
 Lord Nugent, I have found some interesting 
 letters before and during the first year of the 
 war, written to his wife "to his best frLend,
 
 424 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the Lady Grace Grenville" by this gallant 
 man. I shall quote one, dated from Bodmyn, 
 the 12th of October, 1642, which illustrates a 
 striking difference between the levy of the 
 common troops for the king's service, and such 
 levies as we have noticed in the case of Crom- 
 well. It illustrates, too, the change which 
 these distressing times could work in the gen- 
 tlest natures. The mild and gentlemanly Gren- 
 ville now threatens his neighbours and his ten- 
 ants, and flings out insulting epithets against 
 his old friend and associate, the Earl of Essex. 
 
 LOVE, I will detaine Sym. Cottle 
 noe longer, nor can he bring you much more 
 newes than I sent you yesterday. Wee found 
 men enough at the place appointed well arm'd, 
 & for my part I am impatient (as all my honest 
 frends else are) that wee did not march pres- 
 ently, to fetch those traitors out of their neast at 
 Lanceston, or fire them in it, butt som of our 
 faynter bretheren have prevailed soe farr w th 
 the sherriff as there is a conference agreed on 
 this day between 6 of a side, to see if they 
 can compose matters. But we will march on 
 neverthelesse, to be before hand if they agree 
 not. My neighbours did ill that they came not out, 
 $ are punishable by the lawe in a high degree ; <f 
 though I will doe the best I can to save some of the 
 honester sort, yet others shall smart. They were 
 not in this to have comands from me ; it is a 
 legall course w ch the sherriff is directed to by 
 the statute, & he is the comander in the buis- 
 nes, and not the collonells, butt he may take to 
 his assistance whom he pleases. My neigh- 
 bours did perchance looke to heare from me, 
 <f if wee proceed I shall expect they should yett 
 come forth, or they shall suffer, & they shall have 
 farther direction from me. The gallant Prince 
 Rupert goes on gloriously in his uncle's ser- 
 vice ; he hath given another blow to the eni- 
 my greater than the former, & hath well nye 
 cutt off all their cavallry w th his ; soe as the 
 great cuckhold is forced to shutt himself up w' h his 
 foote w th in the icalls of Worcester, & not being 
 able to keepe the field, witherward the king is 
 moving w th his army to give the last blow, be- 
 ing able to barre him from all reliefe, and his 
 army is mightily encreased. Cottle hath a 
 note. Publish it to y r frends. I have sent it 
 already to my Cos. Gary. I hope wee shall 
 shortly see good daies againe. My 'noble frend 
 the brave Wilmott had a shrewd wound, & the 
 prince himselfe slightly hurt, butt they killed 
 2000 of the enimy w th little losse. Your owne 
 " B. GRENVILLE." 
 
 What a change from a few years before, 
 when bonds of love no less than sympathy con- 
 nected the writer with men of thoughts as lof- 
 ty, and hearts as generous, and fame as pure as 
 his own, but for whom -he cannot find better 
 words now than traitor or than cuckold ! How 
 different from the days when his only care was 
 for the domestic charities he is now forced to 
 thrust aside ; when the sanctities of social life 
 occupied the thoughts that are now only bent 
 on the tragic scenes of civil strife, on plunder- 
 ed towns, on flaming' villages, on ravaged home- 
 steads. The reader will not, perhaps, object 
 to my introducing here, from the same valuable 
 manuscripts, a picture of Sir Bevill Grenville, 
 as he was, in one of his letters of .that former 
 
 time, to the same " best friend, Mrs. Grace 
 Grenville." Such touching memorials, illustra- 
 ting so vividly the changes of the period, be- 
 long peculiarly to a personal history of the time, 
 arid are used too scantily to be withheld when 
 found. The matter of these letters contrasts 
 not more strongly than their appearance : that 
 which has been quoted, so worn and soiled as 
 though it had travelled across a wide country 
 in some trooper's pocket ; these, almost as 
 fresh and clean as letters written yesterday. 
 The date of the first is London, May 18, 1626; 
 that of the second only two days later. 
 
 "Mv DEAREST, Since myne by Stanburie I 
 have receaved yrs by my Co : Trevillian's man, 
 wherin you say you have not heard from me, 
 w ch I wonder at, for surely I have written often 
 unto you, both by way of Exeter and otherwise. 
 Butt you doe much amaze me to tell me you 
 are soe much distress'd for want of a midwife ; 
 for God's sake be sure to have one under hand, 
 whatever it cost, and you cannot excuse your 
 fault in neglecting it soe long. Howsoever, 
 have myne Abbott by, if all else faille ; shee, I 
 hope, will doe her best, & I assure myselfe can 
 doe well enough. There is little hope of hav- 
 ing any of the Plate home as yett, butt all that 
 can be don shall be. I am glad you have fetcht 
 some of the Timber, to keepe Allen aworke ; for 
 I desire the worke should goe on w th all pos- 
 sible speed. If my co : Arundell be at Efford 
 when you have Child, it will be verrie fitting 
 shee should be a God-mother too ; therefore, 
 though it be a boy, intreat both her & my sis- 
 ter too ; it is no more than wee have don for- 
 merly. My bro. Hen : is the man, whether it 
 be boy or girl ; 4" I hope S r Jo : Eliot shall be 
 there too if it be a boy, though the King hath 
 lately sent him to the Tower for some wordes spo- 
 ken in the Parlm' ; but wee are all resolv'd to have 
 him out againe, or will proceed in noe busincsse ; 
 & if y* Child chance to be borne before my com- 
 ing downe, stay the Christning till wee can 
 heare from one another. I will write shortly 
 to you againe ; in the mean time, doe rest y r 
 owne BEVILL GRENVILLE. . . . Reme'ber my du- 
 ty to y mother, & forgett me not to my sister." 
 Again : " MY DEAREST, How all the things, 
 that at severall times I have & shall send to 
 you from hence, will nowe come unto you, I 
 knowe not, because they are to passe thorough 
 so many hands ; butt I will hope the best. I 
 have this weeke sent you a boxe of .... Sweet 
 Meats, ass many sortes & the best I can gett, 
 saving only apricots, whereof there are butt one 
 pound, & those not verrie good, though the best 
 y l can be gotten too ; there were fewe or none 
 don the last yeare, because of the sicknes, & 
 that makes the scarsety. The note of perticu- 
 lars is heerinclosed, wanting only one boxe of 
 the Quidiniock, w ch I have eaten. I hope my 
 Lady be now w th you, therfore reme'ber my 
 duty to her. Wee have S r Jo : Eliot at liberty 
 againe ; the House was never quiet till the King 
 released him. If God send us a boye, I have a 
 good minde to have him called John, for my 
 poore brother John's sake ; if it be a Girle, 
 Grace. But I would faine perswade myselfo 
 that I could be there at it, though I am now in 
 some doubt, & therfore will heartely pray for 
 you, if I canot be present. Keepe my aunts 
 and my sister by any meanes with you, & re-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 4-25 
 
 member me to them. Soe I hasteley comend 
 you to God, resting your own ever 
 
 " SEVILLE GRENVILE." 
 
 Since the levying of his regiment, Cromwell 
 has, meanwhile, already greatly distinguished 
 himself. His first service \vas sudden and 
 complete as his seizure of the unlucky Sir 
 Thomas Conisby. Having received intelli- 
 gence of a meeting of gentlemen of the king's 
 party at Lowestoft in Suffolk, for the purpose 
 of concerting means for making a stand in that 
 quarter, he came upon them by surprise, and 
 made the whole body, consisting of about thir- 
 ty persons of opulence and distinction, his pris- 
 oners. It was mentioned in the journals of 
 the day as " the best piece of service that hath 
 been done for a long time."* The historian of 
 the Parliament, May, tells us that the ammu- 
 nition and engines of war secured on this oc- 
 casion by Cromwell were "enough to have serv- 
 ed a considerable force." And certain it was, 
 pursues that historian, that " if Cromwell had 
 not surprised them in the nick of time, it had 
 proved a matter of great danger to the coun- 
 try ; for within one day after, as many more 
 knights and gentlemen that were listed before, 
 would have met at the same place." 
 
 The first pitched battle between Charles and 
 his subjects has been described in the life of 
 Hampden. But while these early occurrences 
 of the war left every one doubtful to which side 
 success had fallen, the resolute cavalry of 
 Cromwell were achieving remarkable and un- 
 questioned advantages in every direction of 
 their march. t At the head of twelve troops, 
 their colonel had penetrated into Lincolnshire, 
 disarming the disaffected as he passed, taking 
 Stamford and Burleigh House by his way, and 
 scattering all opposition before him. Not far 
 from Grantham they were met by double their 
 number a flying corps of cavalry belonging to 
 a light army levied by young General Caven- 
 dish, and with which he strove to recover Lin- 
 colnshire to the king. Cromwell's men, though 
 many of them harassed and fatigued, stood 
 firm ; and the front they presented, few in num- 
 bers as they were, would seem to have been 
 not at all inviting to the enemy, for the firing 
 on both sides for upward of half an hour ap- 
 pears to have been confined to the skirmishers 
 that covered each line, till at last Cromwell 
 himself gave the word, and his men advanced 
 
 * " By letters from Suffolk of the 15th present, it was in- 
 formed that on Tuesday last, Colonel Cromwell, with about 
 1000 horse, having notice of a great confederacy held 
 amongst the malignants at a town called Lowestoft, in that 
 county, being a place of great consequence, came upon 
 them unawares, and gained the town with small difficulty 
 and no shot ; took prisoners Sir Thomas Barker and his 
 brother Sir John Pettus, Mr. Thomas Knevet, two of the 
 younger Catlings, Captain Hammond, Mr. Corey, Mr. Tur- 
 vill, Mr. Preston, and about twenty others of good worth. 
 This was the best piece of service that hath been done for a 
 lonjj time, for both the counties will now be freed of their 
 fears of the malignants. There were also taken in the said 
 town divers clergymen of the confederacy, good store of 
 ammunition, excellent saddles, great store of pistols, pow- 
 der, shot, and other engines for war, sufficient for a great 
 force. This hath set the whole country right, so that now 
 they are all up in aims, and would feign be inaction for the 
 Parliament." Per/. Diur., 18th Mar.. 1642. 
 
 t " And now," writes Mrs. Hutchinson, " were all the 
 countreyes iu England noe longer idle spectators, but sev- 
 erall stages, whereon the tragedie of the civill warre was 
 acted ; except the easterne association, where Mr. Oliver 
 Cromwell, by his diligence, prevented the designes of the 
 rojall party." 
 
 HHH 
 
 with an irresistible shock. The result may be 
 described in the letter which Cromwell ad- 
 dressed to the speaker the instant after the 
 event : " God hath given us this evening a glo- 
 rious victory over our enemies. They were, as 
 wee are informed, one-and-twentie colours of 
 horse troops, and three or foure of dragoons. 
 It was late in the evening when wee drew out. 
 They came and faced us within two miles of the 
 town. Soe soon as wee had the alarum, wee 
 drew out our forces, consisting of about twelve 
 troops, whereof some of them soe poore and 
 broken that you shall seldome have seen worse ; 
 with this handfull it pleased God to cast the 
 scale ; for after wee had stood, a little above 
 musket shot the one body from the other, and 
 the dragoons having fired on both sides for the 
 space of halfe an houre or more, they not ad- 
 vancing towards us, wee agreed to charge 
 them, and advancing the body after many shots 
 on both sides, came with our troops a pretty 
 round trot, they standing firme to receive us, 
 and our men charging fiercely upon them, they 
 were immediately routed and ran all away, and 
 wee had the execution of them two or three 
 miles. I believe some of our souldiers did kill 
 two or three men a pece. Wee have also got- 
 ten some of their officers and some of their 
 colours ; butt what the number of dead is, or 
 what the prisoners, for the present wee have 
 not time to inquire into."* 
 
 Cromwell's 'next important service was the 
 relief of Gainsborough, which, having been ta- 
 ken by Lord Willoughby, and garrisoned with. 
 Parliamentary soldiers, would have surrender- 
 ed before the army of Lord Newcastle, return- 
 ing victorious from Atherton Moor, but for the 
 interposition of Cromwell, who, with sudden 
 and astonishing bravery, threw himself and his 
 regiment between the town and the first divis- 
 ion of the advancing Royalist force, commanded 
 by Lord Newcastle's brother, young General 
 Cavendish. It was a fearful position. On the 
 summit of an acclivity before them were ran- 
 ged numbers in the proportion of at least three 
 to one, while along the base of the hill ran a 
 lofty fence, accessible only through a single 
 gateway. On this quarter the enemy poured a 
 heavy fire ; yet Cromwell, having himself reso- 
 lutely and safely passed, filed his men through, 
 inspired by his own courage to deeds of as lofty 
 daring, formed them as they passed, section by 
 section, and then at once made a furious charge 
 up hill, which overbore the enemy as much by 
 the wonder the act inspired as by any real 
 shock of arms. The major part of the Royal- 
 ists fled in broken confusion. Cromwell, still 
 holding his men together, plunged back on that 
 part of the enemy which alone had been able 
 to stand, drove them pellmell into a bog, and 
 there, it is melancholy to be obliged to add, 
 butchered them, including poor Cavendish him- 
 self without mercy. It was the first great ad- 
 vantage these resolute soldiers had gained : 
 their leader had inspired them to it by daring 
 which might well have carried them beyond the 
 common limits of soldierly forbearance, and it 
 is charitable to suppose that this act was com- 
 mitted at a time when they were scarcely re- 
 sponsible agents.t 
 
 * Perfect Diurnal, 25th of May, 1643. 
 
 t The Perfect Diurnal writes of the result : " Gen. Cav-
 
 426 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 This achievement, Whitelocke tells us, was 
 " the beginning of Cromwell's great fortunes, 
 and now he began to appear in the world." It 
 was the beginning, too, of his close and extra- 
 ordinary intimacy with Ireton. This famous 
 man was at the time a captain in " Col. Thorn- 
 haugh's regiment ;" but hearing of Cromwell's 
 brave intentions in this matter, solicited leave 
 to join him in the enterprise, and a lasting bond 
 of friendship was thereafter sealed between 
 them. Cromwell had perhaps the most sur- 
 prising faculty in selecting his friends or agents 
 of any man that ever played a great part in the 
 world ; and it might possibly be taken as in 
 some sort an evidence of the purity of his 
 present motives that he now selected Ireton. 
 Eleven years the junior of Cromwell, this gal- 
 lant and virtuous man had been bred to the 
 bar, and had distinguished himself thus early 
 by the projection of various legal and constitu- 
 tional reforms of a very striking and philosoph- 
 ical character. His opinions, however, were 
 all Republican, and his integrity so stern and 
 uncompromising,* that no worldly motives or 
 advantages ever changed or modified those con- 
 victions of his mind. Nor did military services 
 ever transport him out of philosophical or med- 
 itative habits, since he was able with amazing 
 facility, as Hume has with a misplaced sneer 
 observed, " to graft the soldier on the lawyer, 
 the statesman on the saint." Three years after 
 the relief of Gainsborough, this 'excellent per- 
 son married Cromwell's eldest daughter, Bridg- 
 et, then in her twenty-first year, having, in- 
 stantly upon the former action, Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son tells us, " quite left Colonel Thornhaugh's 
 regiment," to join that of the greater colonel 
 whose conduct and genius had "charmed him." 
 
 These individual successes, meanwhile, avail- 
 ed little against serious reverses lately under- 
 gone by the Parliament. Even after relieving 
 Gainsborough, Cromwell was obliged to draw 
 off towards Boston, which he did in masterly 
 order, slowly retreating before the overwhelm- 
 ing force of the main body of Newcastle's army, 
 yet presenting at every step of his retreat " a 
 bold front to his pursuers, and appearing to in- 
 vite rather than shun an encounter." New- 
 castle, however, marched; straight on to Gains- 
 borough, recovered that place, and made him- 
 self master of Lincoln. 
 
 In the west it was, however, that the king's 
 forces were at this time chiefly successful. 
 The letter already quoted from the Grenville 
 manuscripts referred to some of these success- 
 es ; and the fight of Bradock Down, where Sir 
 Ralph Hopton commanded the royal troops, was 
 
 endish, and another person of note, much like to Gen. King, 
 one colonel, lieutenant-colonel, sergeant-major, and a cap- 
 tain, with above 100 others, were found dead upon the place, 
 near upon twice as many killed in the pursuit, and prison- 
 ers above 150. Upon their retreat they relieved the town 
 with powder and other provisions ; after which they jkir- 
 mished with a new supply of Newcastle's army that came 
 against them, brought off* their foot, which was engaged 
 with great disadvantage, and made a fair retreat into the- 
 town, with little loss." 
 
 * Ludlow says of him. in after years, that "when he 
 heard of a bill brought into Parliament in his absence, to 
 settle upon him two thousand a year in land, in his charac- 
 ter of lord-deputy of Ireland, he expressed his displeasure, 
 and said they had many just debts, which he wished they 
 would pay before they made such presents ; that, for their 
 land, he had no need of it, and therefore would not have 
 it." 
 
 a decided victory. In this Grenville greatly 
 distinguished himself, and the rout of the Par- 
 liamentarians was complete. Shortly after, 
 however, I find from these manuscripts, Gren- 
 ville wrote from Okehampton to " his best 
 friend" thus: "DEARE LOVE, I will write a 
 hasty line by my cos. Parker. Wee march'd 
 w th some foote and horse from Plimpton to pre- 
 vent the enimy from gathering power at Tavis- 
 tock, where he forbare to come for feare of us. 
 Wee then marcht to Okehampton to finde him, 
 wee being sure they were there w th 5000 men, 
 butt they ran away before wee came. There 
 were sent some horse and dragoons to Chag- 
 ford to pursue them in the night, butt for want 
 of good foote, & the approach to the towne be- 
 ing very hard, our men were forct to retire againe 
 after they were in, cf- one losse wee have sustained 
 that is unvalluable, to wilt, SIDNEY GODOJ.PHIN is 
 slaine in the attempt, who was as gallant a gent. 
 as the world had. I have time for no more. 
 Y M ever, B. GRENVILE." 
 
 Godolphin* was indeed a loss ; and it is more- 
 over clear from the tone of the letter, that the 
 western Parliamentary men were rallying once 
 more. They had, in fact, been elevated by the 
 news of assistance providing for them by the 
 Parliament, and Sir Ralph Hopton now foolishly 
 offered siege to the unimportant garrison of 
 Plymouth, dividing his army for that purpose, 
 instead of concentrating it on one point towards 
 Tavistock, to clear the country to the eastward, 
 where the Parliamentarians were collecting 
 strength. The latter had been the advice of 
 Grenville, whose next communications to his 
 wife, crumpled, soiled, and torn as his fortunes, 
 are accordingly most melancholy and despond- 
 ing. The first is dated from Plympton, and 
 presents several characteristic points. 
 
 " MY DEARE LOVE, Y r great care & good af- 
 fection, as they are very remarkable, soe they 
 
 * Of this accomplished man, Clarendon speaks in a pass- 
 age of his own life, which should not be omitted here : 
 " There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in 
 so little room ; so large an understanding and so unrestrained 
 a fancy in so very small a body ; so that the Lord Falkland 
 used to say merrily, that he thought it was a great ingre- 
 dient into his friendship for Mr. Godolphin that he was 
 pleased to be found in his company, where he was the 
 properer man ; and it may be, the very remarkableness of 
 his little person made the sharpness of his wit and the com- 
 posed quickness of his judgment and understanding the 
 more notable.. He had spent some years in France and in 
 the Low Countries, and accompanied the Earl of Leicester 
 in his ambassage into Denmark, before he resolved to be 
 quiet, and attend some promotion in the court, where his 
 excellent disposition and manners, and extraordinary quali- 
 fications, made him very acceptable. Though everybody 
 loved his company very well, yet he- loved very much to be 
 alone, being in his constitution inclined somewhat lomelan 
 cholv, and to retirement amongst his books ; and was so 
 far from being active, that he was contented to be re- 
 proached by his friends with laziness ; and was of so nice 
 and tender a composition, that a little rain or wind would 
 disorder him, and divert him from any short journey he had 
 most willingly proposed to himself; insomuch as when he 
 rid abroad with those in whose company he most delighted, 
 if the wind chanced to be in his face, he would (after a little 
 pleasant murmuring) suddenly turn his horse and go home : 
 yet the civil war no sooner began (the first approaches to- 
 wards which he discovered as soon as any man, by the pro- 
 ceedings in Parliament, where he was a member, and op- 
 posed with great indignation) than he put himself into the 
 first troops which were raised in the west for the king, and 
 bore the uneasiness and fatigue of winter marches with an 
 exemplar courage and alacrity, until, by too brave a pursuit 
 of the enemy into an obscure village in Devonshire, he was 
 shot with a musket, with which (without sayiag any word 
 more than, O God, I am hurt) he fell dead from his horse, 
 to the excessive grief of his friends, who were all that 
 knew him, and the irreparable damage of the public."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 427 
 
 deserve my best thankes, & I could wish that 
 the subject w ch you bestowe them upon could 
 better requite you. I shall returne your Mes- 
 senger w lh butt little certainty concerning our pres- 
 ent Condition. Our Army lyes still in severall 
 quarters. S r Ra. Hopton, w th my Lo : Mohun, 
 is upon the north side of Plimouth vt^ two 
 Regim* ; Collo : Ashbourn : S r Js : Bark : & I, 
 are on the east side w th two Regim 1 ", & S' Ni : 
 Glan : with Jack Trevan : & their two Regim", 
 were sent the last weeke to Modbury, to pos- 
 sesse that quarter before the enimy came, be- 
 ing the richest part of this Countrey, whence 
 most of our provision and victualls does come. 
 If it were taken from us, wee might be starv'd 
 in our quarters. Modbury lyes 6 miles to the 
 Eastward of us, & now the Enimy w th all the 
 power y c they can gather of those that wee dis- 
 persed at Okeham : & Chag : & other aydes 
 advanc'd w th in two mile of ou .... at Modbu : 
 they are many thousand as the report goes, and 
 wee are like to have speedy worke. Wee have 
 sent more ayde to them both of horse and foote. 
 Gud speed us well. Plirnouth is still supplied 
 w" 1 men & all sorts of provision by sea, w cl1 wee 
 cannot hinder, & therfore, for my part, I see 
 no hope of taking it. Soe now the most danger 
 that hangs over the Kg's side is in these parts, for 
 he hath had great successe in those parts where 
 he is. Cissiter, w ch Prince Rupert tooke, hath 
 drawne in all Glocestershire. The Citties of 
 Glocester & Bristoll do offer to render them- 
 selves w^out force, & they are places of great 
 importance. The Earle of Newcastle hath 
 given the Parl 18 power a great defeate in York- 
 shire. The Queene is cominge w"> good Ayde 
 to the King. The Parl : did attempt to force 
 severall quarters where the Kg's Army lay, &, 
 were beaten off w th great losse to themselves 
 in all places. Wee have advertizm 1 : that some 
 ayde is coming from his Ma tie to us, butt it is 
 soe slowe as wee shall need it before wee see it. 
 But God's will be done ; I am satisfied I canot 
 expire in a better cause. I have given some di- 
 rections to Jack for his study ; pray cause him 
 to putt them in execution, & to make some ex- 
 ercise in verse or prose every day. Intreat my 
 Cos. ... & Bar : Geal : to take a little paines 
 with him. I have releas'd the Prisoners that 
 Bar : Geal : wrote for. Lett Cap : Stanb : know, 
 it is all one to me whither he goe by Byd : or 
 Pads : soe he make haste : & now to conclude, 
 I beseech you take care of y r health ; I have 
 nothing soe much in my prayers. Y r Phisition 
 Jennings is turned a Traytor w jA the rest, wherby 
 he hath lost my love, 3? I am doubtfull to trust you 
 w' h him. Present my humble duety & thanks 
 to y r moth r ; & I beseech God to blesse y r young 
 people. I rest y owne ever, SEVILLE GKEN- 
 VILE. . . . My new cap is a little too straight. . . . 
 I know not what forme of a Certifficate it is 
 that Jo : Geal : desires, butt if he will send it to 
 me drawne, I will gett it sign'd." 
 
 At last Hopton abandoned the siege of Ply- 
 mouth, and joined his forces once more at Ta- 
 Tistock. Grenville immediately after writes 
 thus to the Lady Grace : " DEARE LOVE, There 
 have been some changes since I wrote last ; 
 wee have raised our seige of Plimouth, w cl> , for 
 my part, I never expected could have been success- 
 full, yet in submission to better judgm 18 I gave 
 way, & wee are now at Tavistock, united againe j 
 
 in one boddy. The party of ours w<* was at 
 Modbury' indur'd a cruell assault for 12 huwers 
 against many thousand men, & kill'd many of 
 them, w th the losse of fewe and some hurt, butt 
 ours at last were forced to retire to Plimpton for 
 want of Amunition, having spent all their stock. 
 Wee are still threatned, butt I hope God's favour 
 will not forsake vs. Y r Neighbour of Gouldon, 
 I heare, is one of the dead at Modbury, <$ will 
 not now plunder y r Countrey if it be true. If my 
 Soldier Hugh Ching continue sick, pray lett 
 there be care had of him, & lett him not want 
 what you can helpe him. Bidd Tom Ansley 
 have speeiall care of the busines I have now 
 writt to him. Give my duety to y r mother, & 
 I beseech God to keepe and blesse you all, <$ 
 if it be his will to send us a happie meeting, so 
 prayeth y r faithfull BEVILLE GKENVILE. ... I 
 have sent home some peare grafts ; lett them 
 be carefully grafted, some by Brute & some by 
 Jo. Skiner. I beseech you make Jack to pursue 
 the directions I have given him. ... I did send 
 home some Peare grafts from Truroe about 
 Michaelmas ; lett them be carefully grafted 
 also, & note w cl1 is one & w cb the other." 
 
 The happy meeting prayed for in this touch- 
 ing letter was doomed never to take place. 
 After some important successes gained by 
 Hopton, Waller entered the western counties 
 with a small but well-appointed army, and 
 fought the disputed battle of Lansdowne, the 
 result of which, let the victory be disputed as it 
 may, certainly was to leave the Parliamentary 
 general quartered that night in Bath, at the 
 foot of the contested hill, while Hopton was 
 borne off the field with heavy wounds, his army 
 retreating at the same time towards Oxford, 
 and leaving behind them, among the dead bodies 
 of their chief officers, that of the brave and 
 honourable Sir Bevill Grenville. A very short 
 time elapsed, however, before the Royalists 
 rallied, and in an action near Devizes totally 
 routed and dispersed the army of Sir William 
 Waller. 
 
 Waller, on his return to London, mortified, 
 deserted, and defeated, was yet received with 
 honour, " as if," says Clarendon, with wonder, 
 " he had brought the king prisoner with him." 
 Yet here admiration would be better timed than 
 wonder. The feeling that inspired the Parlia- 
 ment in such a policy was that of the Roman 
 Senate in congratulating the general who was 
 defeated at Cannae, that he had not despaired 
 of his country. It was only by such noble and 
 elevated disregard of all petty jealousies that 
 these great statesmen held their forces togeth- 
 er, and subdued the jealousies of their chiefs, 
 till fortune flung upon their side once more the 
 chances of battle. 
 
 Never was the cause of the Parliament in 
 such danger as now. The divisions and jeal- 
 ousies that had sprung up ; the fatal imbecility 
 and suspected treachery of Essex ; the crown- 
 ing disaster of the death of Hampden, with the 
 yet unshrinking decision and fortitude of Pym, 
 applied with success to the healing even of 
 such wounds as these, have already been placed 
 before the reader by the writer of this memoir.* 
 In the life of Vane, the masterly act of states- 
 manship resolved on at this time has also been 
 commemorated. The commissioners for the 
 * In the Live* of Pym and Hampden.
 
 428 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Solemn League and Covenant were now set- 
 tling their great act in Edinburgh. 
 
 Exertions were not, meanwhile, wanting in 
 England, while the Scottish supply was waited 
 for. May, the historian of the Long Parlia- 
 ment, has described in a memorable passage the 
 resolution shown by the Londoners when their 
 great stronghold was threatened. " London," 
 he says, " was at this time unfortified ; nor 
 could she, if the enemy, then master of the 
 field, had come upon her, have opposed any 
 walls but such as those old Sparta used, the 
 hearts of her courageous citizens. But now 
 was begun the large intrenchment, which en- 
 compassed not only the city, but the suburbs 
 on every side, containing about twelve miles in 
 circuit. That great work was by many hands 
 completed in a short time, it being then the prac- 
 tice for thousands to go out every day to dig, all 
 professions, trades, and occupations talcing their 
 turns ; not the inferior tradesmen only, but gentle- 
 men of the best quality, knights, and ladies, for 
 the Encouragement of others, resorted to the works 
 daily, not as spectators, but assisfers, carrying 
 themselves spades, mattocks, and other suitable im- 
 plements, so that it became a pleasant spectacle 
 at London to see them going out in such order 
 and numbers, with drums beating before them, 
 which put life into the drooping people, being 
 taken for a happy omen, that in so low a condi- 
 tion they yet seemed not to despair." The cause 
 was one which admitted not of despair, which, 
 in the words of one of its noblest advocates, 
 gave life in death to all the owners of it and all 
 the sufferers for it. 
 
 Essex, with his army re-enforced and his 
 jealousies compromised, was now active in the 
 field once more ; while jealousies, worse than 
 any that had affected the Parliament's success, 
 ravaged the victorious forces of the king. 
 Charles's original commander in chief, Lord 
 Lindsey, had fallen in the Edgehill fight, and 
 the chief command had then been given to the 
 king's nephew, Prince Rupert, a young man 
 only twenty-three years of age, brave, but rash, 
 impetuous, and with all the headstrong and 
 plundering propensities of a mere soldier of for- 
 tune. He received the appointment of gener- 
 al of the Royal horse, with a fatal clause in his 
 commission, exempting him from receiving any 
 orders but from Charles himself. The first ef- 
 fect of this was disastrous in the extreme ; for 
 if the high-spirited and chivalrous Newcastle 
 had joined Charles and Rupert in the south af- 
 ter the victory of Atherton Moor, instead of 
 marching back to the north to avoid the morti- 
 fication of receiving orders and perhaps inso- 
 lence from Rupert, the result might have been 
 hard to tell. In the same way, Prince Maurice 
 a youth of only twenty-two, with all the bad 
 qualities of his brother Rupert, and none of his 
 talent harassed Hertford, whose lieutenant- 
 general in the command of the west he was, so 
 as to render almost of no avail Fiennes' ill-fa- 
 ted surrender of Bristol. And now, instead of 
 co-operating upon one great point, Charles was 
 at Gloucester, and Newcastle sat down before 
 Hull. 
 
 To Gloucester, therefore, Essex directed a 
 movement with his re-enforced army, and so 
 well did he perform it that the sound of his 
 cannon was Charles's first .announcement of 
 
 his approach. The Royalists broke up in some 
 confusion, and retired with the view of dispu- 
 ting the London road. Essex relieved and sup- 
 plied Gloucester, and, anxious to avoid a battle 
 with the king's superior cavalry, resolved to 
 manoeuvre his way back to London. He first 
 marched to Tewkesbury, where he lay five days, 
 and made demonstrations as if he had intended 
 to proceed northward to Worcester. But, by 
 a forced march during the night, he reached 
 Cirencester, obtaining the double advantage of 
 passing unmolested through an open country, 
 and of surprising a convoy of provisions which 
 lay in that town, where he also took upward of 
 400 prisoners. Having marched hence into 
 Wiltshire, and now advancing towards the Au- 
 burn hills with the view of proceeding through 
 an enclosed country to Newbury, Prince Ru- 
 pert suddenly molested him with some divis- 
 ions of horse, and in a skirmish some short dis- 
 tance from Hungerford nearly 2000 men were 
 killed or wounded. In this skirmish an inci- 
 dent occurred, so characteristic yet so little 
 known, that the reader will excuse its inser- 
 tion from a rare tract entitled the " Life and 
 Death of Robert Earl of Essex," by an officer 
 who served under him. " Our horse," he says, 
 " here made a great impression upon the queen's 
 regiment of horse, and charged them again and 
 again, and cut in pieces many of her life-guard. 
 In this service the Marquis of Vivile was taken 
 prisoner : it seems he would not be knoicn who he 
 was ; but endeavouring to rescue himself from a, 
 lieutenant that took him prisoner, and thereupon, 
 having his head almost cloven asunder with a pole- 
 axe, he acknowledged himself, in the last words he 
 spoke, which were, Vous VOYEZ UN GRAND MAR- 
 QUIS MOURANT ! that is, you see a great marquis 
 dying. His dead body was carried to Hunger- 
 ford by the lord-general's command. It had 
 not been long there, when the king did send a 
 trumpet to his excellency, conceiving that the 
 marquis had been wounded only and taken pris- 
 oner, and desired that his chirurgeons and doc- 
 tors might have free access unto him for his 
 recovery. His excellency certified the trumpet 
 that he was dead, and returned his body to the 
 king, to receive those funeral rites as his maj- 
 esty would give it. Some say that his body 
 was ransomed for 300 pieces of gold." 
 
 Essex arrived at Newbury at last, but, to his 
 surprise, found that Charles and the Royalist 
 army had been there two hours before him. An 
 action was unavoidable now, and Essex met the 
 crisis gallantly. He accepted the king's chal- 
 lenge for battle on the morning of the follow- 
 ing day. 
 
 "All that night," says the officer I have just 
 quoted, in a fine description, which appears in 
 none of the histories, and therefore may be 
 welcomed by the reader here, "all that night 
 our army lay in the fields, impatient of the 
 sloth of darkness, and wishing for the morning's 
 light, to exercise their valour ; and the rather, 
 because the king had sent a challenge over 
 night to the lord-general to give him battle the 
 next morning. A great part of the enemy's 
 army continued also in the field, incapable of 
 sleep, their enemy being so nigh ; and, sometimes 
 looking on the ground, they thought upon the mel- 
 ancholy element of which they were composed, and 
 to which they must return ; and sometimes looking
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 429 
 
 up, they observed the silent marches of the stars, 
 and the moving scene of heaven. The day no 
 sooner did appear, but they were marshalled 
 into order, and advanced to the brow of the 
 hill ; and not long after, the ordnance was 
 planted, and the whole body of their horse and 
 foot stood in battalia. The officers and command- 
 ers of their foot did many of them leave off their 
 doublets, and with daring resolution did bring on 
 their men ; and, as if they came rather to triumph 
 than to fight, they, in their shirts, did lead them up 
 to the battle. The first that gave the charge 
 was the most noble Lord Roberts, whose ac- 
 tions speak him higher than our epithets. He 
 performed it with great resolution, and by his 
 own example showed excellent demonstrations 
 of valour to his regiment. The cavalry of the 
 enemy performed also their charge most brave- 
 ly, and gave in with a mighty impression upon 
 him. A prepared body of our army made haste 
 to relieve him. Upon this, two regiments of the 
 king's horse, with a fierce charge, saluted the 
 blue regiment of the London trained-bands, who 
 gallantly discharged upon them, and did beat 
 them back ; but they, being no whit daunted at it, 
 wheeled about, and on a sudden charged them. 
 Our mnsketeers did again discharge, and that 
 with so much violence and success, that they 
 sent them now, not wheeling, but reeling from 
 them ; and yet, for all that, they made a third 
 assault, and coming in full squadrons, they did 
 the utmost of their endeavour to break through 
 our ranks ; but a cloud of bullets came at once 
 so thick from our muskets, and made such a 
 havoc among them, both of men and horse, that 
 in a fear, full of confused speed, they did fly 
 before us, and did no more adventure upon so 
 warm a service 
 
 " In the mean time, Sir Philip Stapleton per- 
 formed excellent service with the lord-general's 
 regiment of horse, and five times together did 
 charge the enemy ; but, above all, the renown 
 and glory of this day is most justly due unto 
 the resolution and conduct of our general ; for, 
 before the battle was begun, he did ride from ono 
 regiment to another, and did inflame them with 
 courage, and perceiving in them all an eager 
 desire to battle with their enemies, he collected 
 to himself a sure presage of victory to come. 
 I have heard, that when, in the heat and tem- 
 pest of the fight, some friends of his did advise 
 him to leave off his white hat, because it ren- 
 dered him an object too remarkable to the ene- 
 my : No, replied the earl, it is not the hat, but the 
 heart. The hat is not capable either of fear or 
 honour. He himself, being foremost in person, 
 did lead up the city regiment, and when a vast 
 body of the enemy's horse had given so violent 
 a charge that they had broken quite through it, 
 he quickly rallied his men together, and with 
 undaunted courage did lead them up the hill. 
 In his way he did beat the infantry of the king 
 from hedge to hedge, and did so scatter 
 them, that hardly any of the enemy's foot ap- 
 peared at that present to him to keep together 
 in a body. After six hours' long fight, with 
 the assistance of his horse, he gained those ad- 
 vantages which the enemy possessed in the 
 morning, which were the hill, the hedges, and 
 the river. 
 
 " In the mean time, a party of the enemy's 
 horse, in a great body, wheeled about, and about 
 
 three quarters of a mile below the hill they did 
 fall upon the rear of our army, where our car- 
 riages were placed ; to relieve which, his ex- 
 cellency sent a selected party from the hill to 
 assist their friends, who were deeply engaged 
 in the fight. These forces marching down the 
 hill, did meet a regiment of horse of the ene- 
 my's, who in their hats had branches of fur z and 
 broom, which our army did that day wear, for dis- 
 tinction sake, to be known by one another from 
 their adversaries, and they cried out to our men, 
 Friends, friends ; but they being discovered to 
 be enemies, our men gave fire upon them, and 
 having some horse to second the execution, 
 they did force them farther from them. Our 
 men being now marched to the bottom of the 
 hill, they increased the courage of their friends, 
 and after a sharp conflict they forced the king's 
 horse to fly with remarkable loss, having left 
 the ground strewed with the carcasses of their 
 horses and riders. 
 
 " And now his excellency, having planted his 
 ordnance on the top of the hill, did thunder 
 against the enemy where he found their num- 
 bers to be thickest, and the king's ordnance 
 (being yet on the same hill) did play with the 
 like fury against the forces of his excellency. 
 The cannon on each side did dispute with one 
 another, as if the battle was but new begun. 
 The trained-bands of the city of London en- 
 dured the chiefest heat of the day, and had the 
 honour to win it ; for, being now upon the 
 brow of the hill, they lay not only open to the 
 horse, but the cannon of the enemy ; yet they 
 stood undaunted, and conquerors against all ; and, 
 like a grove of pines in a day of wind and tempest, 
 they only moved their heads or arms, but kept their 
 footing- sure, unless, by an improvement of 
 honour, they advanced forward to pursue their 
 advantage on their enemies. 
 
 " Although the night did now draw on, yet 
 neither of the armies did draw ofF. The ene- 
 my's horse, in a great body, did stand on the 
 farthest side of the hill, and the broken re- 
 mainders of their foot behind them ; and having 
 made some pillage, about the middle of the 
 night they drew off their ordnance, and re- 
 treated unto Newbury. On the next morning, 
 his excellency, being absolute master of the field, 
 did marshal again his soldiers into order to receive 
 the enemy, if he had any stomach to the field, and 
 to that purpose discharged a piece of ordnance ; 
 but no enemy appearing, he marched towards 
 Reading. The loss which the king's forces re- 
 ceived in this memorable battle is remarkable 
 for, besides the multitudes that were carried 
 away in carts, there were divers found that 
 were buried in pits and ditches. There were 
 many personages of note and honour slain, as 
 the Earl of Carnarvon, the Earl of Sunderland, 
 the Lord of Falkland, more famous for his pen 
 than for his sword, Colonel Morgan, Lieuten- 
 ant-colonel Fielding, Mr. Strode, and others : 
 there were hurt the Lord Andover, Sir Charles 
 Lucas, Colonel Charles Gerard, Colonel Ewers, 
 the Earl of Carlisle, the Earl of Peterborough, 
 Lieutenant-colonel George Lisle, Sir John Rus- 
 sell, Mr. Edward Sackville, Mr. Henry Howard, 
 Mr. George Porter, Mr. Progers, Col. Darcy, 
 Lieutenant-colonel Edward Villars, and many 
 more of note and eminence, whose names are 
 unknown unto us. ... On the Parliament side,
 
 430 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 there were slain, Colonel Tucker, Captain 
 George Massey, and Captain Hunt, and not any 
 more of quality that I can learn." 
 
 In this very striking and beautiful description 
 are presented all the more memorahle charac- 
 teristics of this fatal civil strife. We see the 
 daring and impetuous dash of the Royalists, 
 touched with something of unnecessary brava- 
 do, and met by the steady and immovable de- 
 termination of the Parliamentarians. In vain, 
 yet in vain, and again in vain, the impetuous 
 Rupert dashes on the rampart of invincible 
 pikes held by the raw recruits of London : men 
 as Lord Clarendon observes in speaking of this 
 action, " of whose inexperience of danger, or 
 any kind of service beyond the easy practice 
 of their postures in the artillery garden, men 
 had, till then, too cheap an estimation. 1 '* We 
 have before us, too, the most terrible feature 
 of all, in those expedients to distinguish friends 
 and foes, which had become so fearfully neces- 
 sary among men whose faces were familiar as 
 those of brother to brother, who owned the 
 same country, who spoke the same language. 
 The result of the battle has been disputed, but 
 surely they must be supposed to have been the 
 victors who gained possession of the town, and 
 were suffered to proceed next morning, unmo- 
 lested, on their march to London. 
 
 This fight of Newbury cannot be left without 
 a word to the eminent men who fell there. 
 Four earls perished on that field, and of them 
 were the youthful and beloved Sunderland, 
 and the travelled and accomplished Carnarvon. 
 But the loss to the Royalist party most deeply 
 deplored "a loss which no time would suffer 
 to be forgotten, and no success or good fortune 
 could repair" was that of Charles's secretary 
 of state, Lord Falkland ; a person, exclaims 
 Lord Clarendon, in all the fervour of a true af- 
 fection, "of such prodigious learning and knowl- 
 edge, of such inimitable sweetness and delight 
 in conversation, of so obliging a humanity and 
 goodness to mankind, and of that primitive sim- 
 plicity and integrity of life, that, if there were 
 no other brand upon this odious and accursed 
 civil war than that single loss, it must be most 
 
 infamous and execrable to all posterity 
 
 He was a great cherisher," his friend contin- 
 ues, " of wit and fancy and good parts in any 
 man ; and if he found them clouded with pov- 
 erty or want, a most liberal and bountiful pa- 
 tron towards them, even above his fortune. . . . 
 His house being within ten miles of Oxford, he 
 contracted familiarity and friendship with the 
 most polite and accurate men of that Univer- 
 sity, who found such an immenseness of wit 
 and such a solidity of judgment in him ; so in- 
 finite a fancy, bound in by a most logical rati- 
 ocination ; such a vast knowledge that he was 
 not ignorant in any thing, yet such an excess- 
 ive humility as if he had known nothing, that 
 they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, 
 as in a college situated in a purer air ; so that 
 his house was a university in a less volume, 
 whither they came not so much for repose as 
 study, and to examine and refine those grosser 
 
 * His lordship adds that " they behaved themselves to 
 wonder" standing as a bulwark and rampire to defend the 
 rest enduring without a shock the charges of Rupert and 
 his choicest horse, " who could make no impression on their 
 stand of pikes, but was forced to wheel about." Vol. iv., 
 p. 236. 
 
 propositions which laziness and consent made 
 current in vulgar conversation. . . . From the 
 entrance into this unnatural war, his natural 
 cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a 
 kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole 
 upon him which he had never been used to. ... 
 He who had been so exactly unreserved and 
 affable to all men, that his face and counte- 
 nance was always present, and vacant to his 
 company, and held any cloudiness and less 
 pleasantness of the visage a kind of rudeness 
 or incivility, became, on a sudden, less com- 
 municable, and thence very sad, pale, and ex- 
 ceedingly affected with the spleen. In his 
 clothes and habit, which he had intended be- 
 fore always with more neatness, and industry, 
 and expense than is usual to so great a mind, 
 he was now not only incurious, but too negli- 
 gent ; and in his reception of suitors, and the 
 necessary or casual addresses to his place, so 
 quick, and sharp, and severe, that there wanted 
 not some men (who were strangers to his na- 
 ture and disposition) who believed him proud 
 and imperious, from which no mortal man was 
 ever more free. . . . When there was any over- 
 ture or hope of peace, he would be more erect 
 and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to 
 press any thing which he thought might pro- 
 mote it ; and silting among his friends, often, 
 after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would, 
 with a, shriek and sad acr.cnt, ingeminate the. word 
 PEACE, PEACE, and would passionately profess 
 ' that the very agony of the war, and the view 
 of the calamities and desolation the kingdom 
 did and must endure, took his sleep from him, 
 and would shortly break his heart.' ... In the 
 morning before the battle, as always upon ac- 
 tion, he was very cheerful, and put himself into 
 the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, 
 who was then advancing upon the enemy, who 
 had lined the hedges on both sides with mus- 
 keteers, from whence he was shot with a mus- 
 ket in the lower part of his belly, and in the 
 instant falling from his horse, his body was not 
 found till the next morning ; till when, there 
 was some hope he might have been a prisoner, 
 though his nearest friends, who knew his tem- 
 per, received small comfort from that imagina- 
 tion. Thus fell that incomparable young man, 
 in the four-ajid-thirtieth year of his age, having 
 so much despatched the business of life that 
 the oldest rarely attain to that immense knowl- 
 edge, and the youngest enter not into the world 
 with more innocence : whosoever leads such a 
 life, need not care upon how short warning it 
 be taken from him."* In the presence of such 
 
 * Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vol. iv., p. 240- 
 257. From Lord Clarendon's life, I take a most graphic 
 and singular description, little known, of Lord Falkland's 
 person : " With those advantages, he had one great disad- 
 vantage (which in the first entrance into the world is at- 
 tended with too much prejudice) in his person and presence, 
 which was in no degree attractive or promising : his stature 
 was low, and smaller than most men; his motinn not grace- 
 ful, and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had some- 
 what in it of simplicity ; and his voice the worst of the three, 
 and so untuned, that instead of reconciling, it offended the 
 ear, so that nobody would have expected music from that 
 tongue ; and sure no man was less beholden to nature for 
 its recommendation into the world, but then no man sooner, 
 or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice ; 
 that little person and small stature was quickly found to con- 
 tain a great heart, a courage so keen, and a nature so fear- 
 less, that no composition of the strongest limbs, and most 
 harmonious and proportioned presence and strength, ever 
 more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise, it beijoj
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 431 
 
 a eulogium, which in itself renders its object 
 sacred, the faults or errors of Lord Falkland 
 may not be remembered. Whitelocke and 
 Rushworth have detailed in a similar strain 
 the circumstances of his death. On the morn- 
 ing of the fight, they tell us, he called for a 
 clean shirt, and told his friends gayly that if he 
 were slain in the battle, they should not find his 
 body in foul linen. In answer to their serious 
 and passionate entreaty to him not to engage, 
 " as not being a military man," he more seri- 
 ously and with an air of inexpressible sadness 
 replied that he was weary of his country's mis- 
 ery, and " did believe he should be out of it ere 
 night." 
 
 During these eventful occurrences Cromwell 
 remained in Lincolnshire, and performed so 
 many signal acts of service in that and the 
 neighbouring counties, that the Commons or- 
 dered a levy of an additional 2000 men* to be 
 
 his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adven- 
 tures ; and that untuned tongue and voice easily discovered 
 itself to be supplied and governed by a mind and under- 
 standing so excellent, that the wit and weight of all he 
 said carried another kind of lustre and admiration in it, and 
 even another kind of acceptation from the persons present, 
 than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise it- 
 self, or is usually attended with ; and his disposition and 
 nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in 
 courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could 
 not but admire and love him. ... In a short time after he 
 had possession of the estate his grandfather had left him, 
 and before he was of age, he committed a fault against his 
 father, in marrying a young lady whom he passionately lov- 
 ed, without any considerable portion. . . . He seemed to 
 have his estate in trust for all worthy persons who stood in 
 want of supplies and encouragement, as Hen Jonson, and 
 many others of that lime, whose fortunes required, and whose 
 spirits made them superior to, ordinary obligations ; which 
 yet they were contented to receive from HIM, because his 
 bounties were so generously distributed, and so much with- 
 out vanity and ostentation, that except from those few per- 
 sons from whom he sometimes received the characters of fit 
 objects for his benefits, or whom he intrusted for the more 
 secret deriving them to them, he did all he could that the 
 persons themselves who received them should not know 
 from what fountain they flowed; and when that could not 
 be concealed, he sustained any acknowledgment from the 
 persons obliged with so much trouble and bashfulness, that 
 they might well perceive that he was even ashamed of the 
 little he had given, and to receive so large a recompense 
 from it." Nor can I conclude this note without other stri- 
 king ;uid characteristic anecdotes from the history. "He 
 wus so ill a dissembler of his dislike and disinclination to ill 
 men, that it was not possible for such not to disceni it. 
 There was once, in the House of Commons, such a declared 
 acceptation of the good service an eminent member had done 
 to them, and, as they said, to the whole kingdom, that it 
 was moved, he bein<f present, ' that the speaker might, in 
 the name of the whole House, give hitn thanks; and then, 
 that every member might, as a testimony of his particular 
 acknowledgment, stir or move his hat towards him:' the 
 which (though not ordered), when very many did, the Lord 
 Falkland (who believed the service itself not to be of that 
 moment, and that an honourable and generous person woulc] 
 not have stooped toil for any recompense), instead of mov- 
 ing his hat, stretched both his arms out and clasped his hands 
 together upon the crown of his hat, and held it close down to 
 his head, that all men might see how odious that flattery 
 was to him, and the very approbation of the person, though 
 at that time most popular. ... At the leaguer before 
 Gloucester, when his friends passionately reprehended hin 
 for exposing his person unnecessarily to danger (as he de 
 lighted to visit the trenches and nearest approaches, and t 
 discover what the enemy did), as being so much beside thi 
 duty of his place that it might be understood against it, he 
 would say merrily, ' that his office could not take away the 
 privileges of his age, and that a secretary in war might be 
 present at the greatest secret of danger ;' but withal allege( 
 seriously, ' that it concerned him to be more active in enter- 
 prises of hazard than any other men, that all might see tha 
 his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity 
 or fear to adventure his own person.' " 
 
 * We find by a journal of the day that this new levy wa 
 at once placed under his peculiar discipline : " Now all tin 
 Lincolnshire forces are joined with Colonel Cromwell, Go< 
 grant they manage the business they go about better tha 
 it was at Newark in their former action. As for Colon< 
 
 placed under his command, and he was joined 
 with Manchester (formerly Lord Kimbolton, but 
 now raised to the peerage by his father's death) 
 in the command of the six associated counties 
 of Norfork, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Hunting- 
 don, and Hertford. The ill-advised separation 
 of Newcastle and the king, among other disas- 
 trous effects of the royal cause, of course open- 
 d Manchester's passage from London to Lin- 
 ;olnshire, where, with upward of 7000 infantry, 
 ie at once joined Cromwell. At the same mo- 
 ment, Newcastle's advance against Hull releas- 
 ed Sir Thomas Fairfax and his horse of no 
 ervice in a beleaguered town and Cromwell 
 vas also joined in Lincolnshire by that already 
 amous as modest soldier. It was now ver- 
 ing to the close of the fighting season of 1643. 
 On the 9th of October the junction was effect- 
 d at Boston, and on the llth, the command 
 >eing nominally Manchester's,, but in reality 
 Cromwell's, the campaign began. 
 
 On marching against Hull, Lord Newcastle, 
 n addition to strong garrisons left in Lincoln 
 and Gainsborough, had committed the royal 
 )osts of the county to a brave and veteran of- 
 icer, Sir John Henderson, who earnestly desi- 
 red and eagerly watched for an opportunity to 
 measure swords with Cromwell. The oppor- 
 tunity occurred on the 12th, when, by a capital 
 manoeuvre, Henderson came up with Fairfax, 
 romwell, and their cavalry at Waisby field, 
 near Horncastle, while Manchester was yet 
 with his infantry a long day's march in the rear, 
 and threatened destruction to them with a force 
 almost thrice as numerous as their own. 
 Cromwell paused for a moment, drew up his 
 men, and resolved to give battle. " Come," 
 said the gallant Fairfax, with inspiration scarce- 
 ly second to his own, " let us fall on ! I never 
 prospered better than when I fought against the 
 enemy three or four to one."* 
 
 Then was seen the secret of Cromwell's ex- 
 traordinary influence over his determined Iron- 
 sides. In an instant he circulated through, 
 their ranks the watchword TRUTH and PEACE 
 gave out a psalm, which the officers and men 
 at once, as the Greek soldiers took up their 
 song of freedom, uplifted with united voices, 
 and then rushed, on Cromwell's word to charge 
 in the name of the MOST HIGH, on the aston- 
 ished enemy. A volley struck them in mid- 
 charge, but did little execution : they clapped 
 spurs to their horses with more furious zeal, 
 and receiving another volley as they fell upon 
 the advancing Royalist column, it struck down 
 the horse of Cromwell. His rider was in fright- 
 
 Cromwell, he hath 2000 more brave men, well disciplined. 
 No man swears but he pays his twelve pence ; if he be 
 drunk, he is set in the stocks, or worse; if one calls the 
 other Roundhead, he is cashiered : insomuch that the coun- 
 tries where they corne leap for joy of them, and come in 
 and join with them. How happy were it if all the forces 
 were thus disciplined. Some say that the Lord Gray and 
 Sir John Gell will join with them : they could not do a bet- 
 ter work than to go and relieve that thrice noble and valiant 
 Lord Fairfax, whose condition in Leeds is such as it wants 
 relief." Spec. Pas., May 9-16, 1643. 
 
 * The Scottish Dove, Oct. 13-20, 1643. The same jour- 
 nal closes its account thus: "There were slain in the pur- 
 suit (which was full six miles) about 600 ; and many 
 drowned in the chase: 114 were found dead in the water 
 and mires the next day : there was also about 700 or 800 
 taken prisoners, and 18 colours at the least; these were 
 brought in the first night : also their wagons : many more 
 colours, it is like, were lost in the chase ; the horse and 
 arms that were taken were more than the men doubled."
 
 433 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ful danger for a while, and as he rose from the 
 ground was again struck down by the hand (as 
 it was thought) of Sir Ingram Hopton. For 
 some moments he lay unconscious among the 
 slain. Again recovering, he seized a " sorry 
 horse" from one of his troopers, and joined the 
 hand to hand meUe, with terrible fierceness. 
 The Royalists, broken, astonished, and dismay- 
 ed, had never recovered the first shock. They 
 now gave way in all directions, and did not 
 stop their flight till, after suffering terrible 
 slaughter, they had reached the gates of Lin- 
 coln.* 
 
 This engagement had a striking effect. It 
 closed the disastrous campaign of 1643 with a 
 gleam of brightest hope for the Parliamentary 
 cause. It so startled Charles that he is re- 
 ported to have exclaimed to his friends, " I 
 would that some would do me the good for- 
 tune to bring Qromwell to me, alive or dead!" 
 It moved Newcastle from his position, for, as 
 soon as he heard of it, having also, just before, 
 suffered from a gallant sortie out of Hull, con- 
 ducted by Fairfax's father, he raised the siege 
 and disposed his forces into winter-quarters. 
 
 Not so Cromwell and Manchester. They had 
 yet some work to do. Castles and fortified 
 towns were taken by them, money raised, Roy- 
 alists kept in check, garrisons strengthened, 
 and the entire borders of the eastern associa- 
 tion placed in a state of security. Not till all 
 this had been completely done, and the in- 
 creasing severity of the weather left no oppor- 
 tunity for such exertions farther, were their 
 forces disposed for the winter. 
 
 Yet not even this put a stop, however tem- 
 porary, to the exertions of Cromwell. Under 
 a commission from the Parliament, he was ap- 
 pointed lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Ely 
 ("with the like power of levying money there for 
 his forces as the Earl of Manchester had in the 
 associated counties"), and he chiefly employed 
 the winter in raising funds, by means allowable 
 or otherwise, from the colleges in Cambridge 
 and the cathedrals of Peterborough! and Ely, 
 for the purposes of the ensuing campaign. 
 
 * Ludlow's account will be found to bear out this descrip- 
 tion. " At the words ' Truth and Peace,' Cromwell's ' thir- 
 ty-seven troops of horse and dragoons,' " he observes, " him- 
 self at their head, advanced, singing psalms ; reserving 
 their charge, however, until Sir John Henderson's ' eighty- 
 seven,' who were seen coming down upon them, had fired ; 
 for these latter," says Ludlow, " hearing that Col. Crom- 
 well was drawn out with the horse, made haste to engage 
 him before the foot could march up." 
 
 t The Royalist Mercurius Aulicus tells us that in " Cam- 
 bridge the Lord Grey of Warke and Master Cromwell did 
 the last week deal very earnestly with the heads of colleges 
 to lend 6000 for the public use, and that the motion not 
 being hearkened to, they kept them all in custody till mid- 
 night, except Dr. Brownrigge, the bishop of Exeter, and 
 Dr. Love ; that the said heads being advised to assemble 
 the next day about it, and refusing to do so, were called to 
 the Lord Grey's lodging, and being asked the reason of their 
 refusal, made answer by the Bishop of Exeter, whom they 
 nad chosen for their speaker, that they had before consult- 
 ed the whole University, who had resolved that they could 
 not comply with their desires in that particular, as being 
 directly against their consciences ; that Cromwell, when he 
 found them stick to their resolution, said to a friend of his 
 who was then in the place, they would have been content 
 with a 1000 or less for the present turn ; not that so little 
 money could have done them good, but that the people 
 might have thought that one of the two universities had 
 been on their side. And it was also certified, that when 
 they failed to get money by that means, in a fair and volun- 
 tary way, they took by violence from the bursars of diverse 
 colleges such moneys as were already brought in unto them, 
 and from the tenants of such colleges as dwelt near at hand, 
 
 His exertions in Cambridge, however, had 
 ! another and more important object in addition 
 j to this. The tendencies of both universities, 
 j it is almost needless to say, were of the strong- 
 est possible kind towards the cause of Charles, 
 since the cause of the Church was supposed to 
 | be identified with his person. Their means of 
 j disseminating those opinions were also great, 
 ; and their influence, in proportion, of a kind and 
 degree which it was most necessary, if possi- 
 ble, to reduce. Oxford was in the power of the 
 Royalists, and therefore out of the question, 
 but Cambridge was happily in that part of the 
 kingdom where the military strength of the 
 Parliament lay. Cromwell accordingly, to pre- 
 pare the way for the changes contemplated, gar- 
 risoned the town, and when, some short time 
 after, Manchester visited the University with 
 the Parliament's commission for effecting its 
 reform, Cromwell was his chief adviser and 
 agent in all that was done. Matters had chan- 
 ged a little now since the wild days of his stu- 
 dentship there ! 
 
 The reform may be briefly described. It be- 
 gan by a recognition and confirmation of the 
 foundation and revenues of the University, in 
 the shape of an order issued by the two Houses, 
 and declaring that whereas doubts had been 
 suggested, upon the ordinance for the seques- 
 tration of the estates of delinquents, whether 
 the estates of the different bodies in that Uni- 
 versity came within the operation of the ordi- 
 nance the meaning of Parliament was, that 
 these estates and revenues should be in no wise 
 sequestrable, but that the sequestration should 
 fall merely upon the individual who had been 
 pronounced delinquent, and that no longer than 
 during the time that he would otherwise have 
 received or enjoyed those revenues. Another 
 ordinance was then passed, empowering the 
 Earl of Manchester to appoint committees, who 
 were entitled to call before them all provosts, 
 masters, fellows, and students of the Universi- 
 ty, and to hear complaints against such as were 
 scandalous in their lives, ill affected to the Par- 
 liament, fomenters of the present unnatural 
 war, or who had deserted the ordinary places 
 of their residence, and to examine witnesses in 
 support of these complaints. The committees 
 were to make their report to the sergeant-ma- 
 jor-general, who had power to eject such as he 
 should judge unfit for their offices, and to put 
 in their places persons whom he should nomi- 
 nate, and who should be approved by the As- 
 sembly of Divines sitting at Westminster. 
 
 Accordingly, immediately on Manchester's 
 arrival, he issued his warrants to the different 
 colleges and halls in the University forthwith 
 to send to him their statutes, with the names 
 
 such moneys as they had in readiness to pay their rents ; 
 and well we know what they were counted in the former 
 times, when law and justice were in fashion, who, when a 
 man refused to deliver his purse, used to take it from him. 
 . . . It was advertised," says a subsequent number of the 
 journal quoted above, " this day from Peterborough that 
 Colonel Cromwell had bestowed a visit upon that little city, 
 and put them to the charge of his entertainment, plunder- 
 ing a great part thereof to discharge the reckoning ; and 
 further, that in pursuance of the thorough reformation, he 
 did most miserably deface the Cathedral Church, breakdown 
 the organs, and destroy the glass windows, committing many 
 outrages on the house of God, which were not acted by the 
 Goths in the sack of Rome, and are most commonly for- 
 borne by the Turks wheii they possess themselves by force 
 of a Christian city."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 433 
 
 of Iheir members, and to certify to him who 
 were present and who absent, with the express 
 time of their discontinuance. Two days later, 
 he sent to the officers of the different colleges, 
 requiring them to appear before him within a 
 certain limited time, to answer such inquiries 
 as he or his commissioners might judge fit to 
 make. Three days after this stipulated period 
 the great reform took place, and is thus descri- 
 bed by Mr. Godwin : " The number of the col- 
 leges was sixteen, and of these, the heads of 
 six were allowed, and gave their consent, to 
 retain their former stations. Ten new heads 
 of colleges were appointed, and these appear 
 to have been selected with great propriety and 
 judgment. Twoof them were Benjamin Which- 
 cote and Ralph Cudworth, men of unquestion- 
 able literary eminence, but particularly the lat- 
 ter, qualified to do honour to any seminary for 
 education in the world. Another was Thomas 
 Young, the preceptor and friend of Milton. The 
 remainder, though their names are not so fa- 
 miliar to our ears, were men of great learning, 
 high respectability, and tmblemished life. A 
 few days later, sixty-five fellows were ejected 
 from the different colleges, and their places 
 filled by others, nominated by Manchester, and 
 approved by the Assembly of Divines. The 
 ordinance of Parliament empowered the ser- 
 geant-major-general to dispose of a fifth part of 
 all the estates or revenues he should sequester 
 for the benefit of the relatives of the persons 
 ejected." 
 
 The tremendous campaign of 1644 now be- 
 gan. On the 19th of January, 1644, 20,000 
 Scotchmen, for the most part veteran soldiers 
 and under the guidance of experienced officers, 
 crossed the Tweed to co-operate with the Par- 
 liamentary forces. Such was the opportune 
 fruit borne by that solemn League and Cove- 
 nant which the genius of Vane had achieved.* 
 Charles, meanwhile, had made truce with the 
 rebels! in Ireland, and thousands at this time 
 joining the royal standard from that ill-fated 
 country, enlarged and exasperated the now in- 
 curable and deadly division between Charles 
 and his more determined subjects. 
 
 The forces of the Parliament were at the 
 opening of this campaign distributed in four 
 great divisions. Essex and Waller had each 
 10,000 men for the midland counties and the 
 west : under Manchester and Cromwell (who 
 now held the superior commission of lieutenant- 
 general), 14,000 men, chiefly of Cromwell's in- 
 vincible model, were enrolled for the associated 
 counties of the east ; and Fairfax and his father 
 were ordered to co-operate with the Scots. 
 
 * See Life of Vane, p. 283-266. 
 
 t Mr. Godwin hag selected, from Wood, an anecdote of 
 the king singularly illustrative of his feelings on the subject 
 of Ireland. It appears that a manuscript copy was found, 
 after the battle of Naseby, of Sir Edward Walker's Dis- 
 courses of the events of the civil war, in which, among sev- 
 eral corrections in the king's own handwriting, it was ob- 
 served that in one place, where the writer had occasion to 
 ipeak of these insurgents, and had styled them " rebels," 
 the king had drawn his pen through the word "rebels," 
 and had substituted the term " Irish" in its stead. In re- 
 ality, Charles felt an unconquerable repugnance to the 
 classing the Catholics of Ireland with the men who in Eng- 
 land and Scotland had sought to curtail his prerogatives. 
 The Catholics, however he might disapprove nf much of 
 their conduct, he still regarded as hi friends, and still ex- 
 pected (which was realized at last) that they would furnish 
 an army to support his claims against hi* rebel subjects in 
 England. 
 
 Ill 
 
 harles, on the other hand, held a force of 
 10,000 at Oxford, and in the north, under New- 
 castle, a force of 14,000. Ireland poured him 
 forth auxiliaries also as from an inexhaustible 
 
 e, and in various quarters of the land garri- 
 sons and flying bands supplied him at his need. 
 With the obstinate weakness of his character, 
 tiowever, while the rising genius of such men 
 as Cromwell and Fairfax threatened an oppo- 
 sition in which even numbers should be as 
 nothing, he named for his commander-in-chief, 
 in the teeth of much remonstrance, Ruthven, a 
 Scot, now created Earl of Brentford, of whom 
 Lord Clarendon says, " he was much decayed 
 in his parts, which had never been vigorous, 
 being now dozed with the custom of immod- 
 erate drinking. He was illiterate to the great- 
 est degree that can be imagined, and very deaf; 
 a man of few words, but who usually delivered 
 that at his opinion which he foresaw would be grate- 
 ful to the king." Herein was the secret of his 
 appointment. 
 
 Fairfax made the first movement of the cam- 
 paign in marching from Lincolnshire, through 
 the depths of a terrible winter, against Lord 
 Byron, who, with an army of Irish, was then 
 besieging Nantwich in Cheshire. Here Byron 
 was routed with severe loss ; of the 3000 foot 
 he commanded, only 1000 having escaped death 
 or capture. Fairfax was deficient in horse, 
 and thereby the enemy's horse escaped. The 
 notorious George Monk was taken prisoner in 
 this action, and after some imprisonment in the 
 Tower, entered the Parliament's service, be- 
 came an active and influential general, and in 
 the end the vile and appropriate instrument of 
 the Restoration. 
 
 Answering the orders of the Parliament, 
 Fairfax now marched back to Yorkshire, joined 
 his father Lord Fairfax, with whom he defeated 
 at Selby the Royalist governor of York, Colonel 
 Bellasis, who had striven to interpose between 
 the junction, and, once more master of the mid- 
 land Yorkshire districts, prepared to march to 
 the relief of the army of the Covenant. The 
 latter, under the command of Lord Levan, were 
 at this time much distressed in Northumberland 
 by the force of the Marquis of Newcastle ; they 
 had crossed the Tyne, vainly threatened the 
 town of Newcastle, and, as much harassed by 
 want of provisions and forage as by the enemy's 
 constant skirmishes and the weather, continu- 
 ed in face of the marquis's army without ven- 
 turing to advance against him. 
 
 At this critical moment, when some resolu- 
 tion on the part of the Royalist chief might 
 have put a sudden and premature period to our 
 old friends of the Covenant, Fairfax's victory 
 at Selby created a panic at York, and the Mar- 
 quis of Newcastle, at the earnest entreaty of 
 his friends in that city (now so fearfully ex- 
 posed), fell back on York, and opened for his 
 enemies their most desired position. Fairfax 
 and Leven met with their forces at Wetherby 
 on the 20th of April, and at once proceeded to 
 invest York, into which the marquis had retired 
 with his Cavaliers. And now, by a most op- 
 portune movement, Manchester and Cromwell' 
 (young Vane at this time travelled with them), 
 joined their splendid forces to those of the be- 
 siegers, broke off at once an armistice into 
 which Newcastle, seriously alarmed for hia
 
 434 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 safety, had contrived to inveigle Fairfax, and 
 pushed their combined batteries against York 
 with all necessary vigour. The attack of a 
 town in those days, however, was not the mat- 
 ter of science it has since become ; the forces, 
 combined as they were, were yet insufficient 
 for any regular investment of such a wide ex- 
 tent of walls divided by a river; and the siege 
 of York was nothing more than an irregular 
 blockade, diversified with furious sorties, and 
 now and then some desperate assaults on the 
 outworks. 
 
 Meanwhile the movements of the midland 
 and western forces claim our attention. Essex 
 and Waller, with their 20,000 men, had march- 
 ed against Charles in two divisions, with the 
 intention of shutting him up in Oxford. His 
 situation became even more critical than that 
 of Newcastle at York. The Isis was crossed 
 by Waller, the Charwell by Essex, and the two 
 armies seemed to hold in the forces of Charles, 
 to be driven at will within the walls of the city. 
 
 In this extremity it was that one of the very 
 ablest manoeuvres of the whole war was ac- 
 complished by this unfortunate prince. A body 
 of foot, with cannon, was ordered out at the 
 south entrance of the city, as if for Abingdon, 
 lor the purpose of drawing Waller's attention 
 on that side ; and then the king, with all the 
 cavalry, and 2500 chosen foot, quitted Oxford 
 in silence at the north gate as soon as night 
 set in on the 3d of June, and, marching between 
 the two armies of the enemy, arrived at Han- 
 borough by daybreak of the 4th, and in the af- 
 ternoon halted for a short time at Burford. By 
 quick and secret marches thus he arrived at 
 Worcester, and from Worcester at Bewdley. 
 
 While at Tickenhall (then called Ticknill), 
 near Bewdley, news reached him from York of 
 the dangerous position of the Marquis of New- 
 castle, who had written that he could not hold 
 out more than six weeks or two months with- 
 out being relieved. The fate of the city and 
 its besieged then at once struck Charles to be 
 the imminent crisis of his cause, since, suppo- 
 sing York surrendered, or the army of New- 
 castle were beaten or dispersed, Essex and 
 Waller, already strong enough for him in the 
 south and west, would become altogether irre- 
 sistible by the accession of the northern armies. 
 Flinging aside, therefore, his first project of ef- 
 fecting an ultimate and speedy junction in the 
 south with Rupert (whose impetuosity had just 
 effected some daring successes and diversions 
 in Cheshire and Lancashire), and thus, at least, 
 securing the probable safety of the midland 
 counties, he at once sat down and wrote the 
 following letter (dated Ticknill, 14 June, 1644) 
 to his aephew. I copy it from the original, 
 among the papers with which the kindness of 
 Lord Nugent has intrusted me.* The writing 
 is shaken and unsteady. The hand of the wri- 
 ter, almost,always unusually firm and beautiful, 
 had been unable to hold its precision in that 
 anxious and fatiguing moment. The letter 
 presents a singular contrast in this respect to 
 a short note to Rupert in the same collection, 
 written from Newport, with extreme beauty 
 
 and most exquisite firmness, within a few 
 months of his execution.* 
 
 " NEPUEU, First I must congratulat with you 
 for your good successes, asseuring you that the 
 things themselfes ar noe more welcome to me 
 than that you ar the meanes : I know the im- 
 portance of the supplying you with powder, for 
 vv ch I have taken all possible wais, having sent 
 both to Ireland & Bristow ; as from Oxford, 
 this bearer is well satisfied that it is impossible 
 to have att present ; butt if he tell you that I 
 may spare them from hence, I leave you to 
 judge, having butt 36 left ; butt what I can gett 
 from Bristow (of w ch there is not much cer- 
 taintie, it being threatened to be besieged) you 
 shall have. . . . Butt now I must give you the 
 trew stat of my affaires, w cb , if their condition 
 be such as enforses me to give you more pcr- 
 emptorie cnrnands than I would willingly doe, you 
 must not take it ill. If Yorke be lust, I shall cs- 
 tecme my Croicne little lessc, unlesse supported 
 by your suddaine Marche to me, & a Miraculous 
 Conquest in the South, before the effects of the 
 Northeren power can be found heere ; butt if 
 Yorke be relived, you beate the Rebelles 
 Armies of bothe Kingdomes w dl ar before it, 
 then, butt olhciwais not, I may possiblce make a 
 shift (upon the defensive) to spinn out tyme unti/l 
 you come to assist me : Wherefor / comand 4- 
 conjure you, by the deicly 4" affection tef H I know 
 you bcare me, that (all new enterpryses laide 
 asyde) you imalialcly march (according to your 
 first intention) with all your force to the rclife of 
 Yorke ; butt if that be eather lost, or have fried 
 themselfes from the beseigers, or that, for want 
 of powder, you cannot undertake that worke, 
 that you imediately march, with your whole 
 slrenth, directly to Woster, to assist me & my 
 Army, without w c ii, or your having relived Yorke 
 by beating the Scots, all the Successes yurt can af- 
 terwards have most iftjallibly will be uselcsse unto 
 me. You may belive that nothing butt an ex- 
 treame necessety could make me wryte thus 
 unto you ; wherfor, in this case, I can no wayes 
 dout of your punctuall complyance with your 
 louing Oncle & most faithful frend, CHARLES R. 
 ... I comanded this bearer to speake to you 
 concerning Vavisor." 
 
 This letter, no doubt, completely vindicates 
 Rupert in the course he adopted or. receiving 
 it, though it does not excuse his haughty pride 
 in concealing the fact of his having received 
 such a letter.* But I am anticipating. When 
 
 * It was, however, in a slightly incorrect state, printed 
 from some copy taken at the time (and preserved among Sir 
 Edward Nicholas's manuscripts) in the Evelyn Memoirs a 
 few years ago. 
 
 * The mere, style and manner of writing to his nephew 
 in this note is also very touching, li is written on small 
 note paper, and looks as if it had undergone much trouble 
 and many adventures before it reached its destination : 
 
 " Newport, Saterday : 28 of Oct., 1648. DEAREST NE- 
 PUEU, For want of a cypher, I have chosen this most 
 | trusty messenger, Will. I.ysle, to acquaint you with a busi- 
 ness wd> is of great importance for my service ; for w'> I 
 have comanded him todesyre, in my name, both your advise 
 & assistance ; of wh^' 1 , knowing your affection to me, 1 am 
 soe confident, that I will say nc.e more, but only todesyre you 
 to give full credit to this bearer ; <fe to give him a quick 
 dispach for his sake who is your loving Oncle and most 
 faithfull friend, CHARIES R." 
 
 t In the absence of this evidence of his own complete ex- 
 culpation, he has been made the subject of attack by almost 
 every Royalist historian, for the unfortunate result of Mars- 
 ton Moor. Clarendon thus alludes to him and Newcastle : 
 " The times afterward grew so bad, and the king's affairs 
 succeeded so ill, that there was noopportunily to call either 
 of those two great persons to account for what they had 
 done or what they had left undone. Nor did either of thew 
 ever think fit to make any particular relation of the ground. > 
 of their proceeding, or the causes of their misadventures
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 435 
 
 his uncle's commands reached him, he made at 
 once for York. Some time before, he had re- 
 lieved Newark, taken Stockport, Bolton, and 
 Liverpool, and raised the siege of Latham 
 House, after its gallant defence by the famous 
 Countess of Derby. He was therefore moved 
 with the elation of a victor, added to his natu- 
 ral rashness. He look with him some newly- 
 arrived Irish regiments, picked up Newcastle's 
 cavalry by the way, captured several posts as 
 he went along, and penetrated into Yorkshire. 
 
 During the progress of this march the king 
 was executing another admirable movement. 
 Essex and Waller look for granted that his pre- 
 vious forced march must be for Liverpool to 
 join Rupert, and therefore Waller threw him- 
 self at once between Charles and Shrewsbury 
 to intercept his passage. Essex, in the mean 
 time, having the greater ordnance and the heav- 
 ier carriages, felt these quick marches to be 
 too much for his men, and, setting out for the 
 west, left Waller to harass Charles. This was 
 the very object the king had sought to accom- 
 plish the two armies were separated. He at 
 once hastened back to Oxford by marches as 
 quick as those of his masterly egress from it ; 
 and Waller, smarting with the additional de- 
 ceit thus practised on him, again returned to 
 the banks of the Charwell, and, somewhat 
 hotly and indiscreetly offering battle there, was 
 defeated with considerable loss. 
 
 Rupert was now wiUiia sight of York with 
 an army of 20,000 men. The besiegers broke 
 up on his approach, and after an attempt to in- 
 tercept him, which was well conducted by Fair- 
 fax, but which Rupert evaded by fetching a mas- 
 terly compass with his army, they withdrew to 
 Hessey Moor. Here, in a council of war, a 
 difference of opinion arose the Scots were for 
 retreating, the English for fighting and by 
 some considerations that do not appear, the 
 council for retreat prevailed for a time (amid 
 jealousies which already shook the confederacy 
 to the centre, and warned Cromwell and Fair- 
 fax of what they had next to do !), and they fell 
 back on Tadcaster. 
 
 A discussion as painful, but with results 
 more fatal, was at the same instant going on 
 within the walls of York. What the chivalrous 
 and somewhat fantastic* marquis had dreaded, 
 was now at hand. The young, rough, proud, 
 
 by way of excuse to the king, or for their own vindication. 
 Prince Rupert, only io hit friends, and after the murder of 
 the king, produced a letter in the king's oten hand, which he 
 received when he was upon his march from Lancashire to- 
 wards York, in which his majesty said ' that his affairs 
 were in so very ill a state, that it would not be enough, 
 though his highness raised the siege from Y or k, if he had 
 not likewise beaten the Scotch army ;' which he understood 
 to amount to no less than a peremptory order to fight, ' upon 
 what disadvantage soever ;' and added, ' tha.t the Disadvan- 
 tage was so great, the enemy being so much superior in 
 number, it was no wonder he lost the day.' But as the 
 king't letter would, not bear that sense, so the greatest cause 
 of the misfortune was the precipitate entering upon the 
 battle as soon as the enemy drew; off, and without consult- 
 ing; at all with the Marquis of Newcastle and his officers, 
 who must needs know more of the enemy, and, consequent^ 
 ly, how they were best to be dealt with, than his highness 
 could do." The noble histotian had evidently neither seen 
 the letter in the text, nor been correctly informed of its 
 contents. 
 
 * Somewhat fantastic in some things, certainly, but not 
 deserving of Warburton's nickname, " the fantastic virtuoso 
 on horseback." See what a lovely character his. noble- 
 hearted duchess (Charles Lamb's favourite '.) left of him in 
 one of her pleasant folios. 
 
 overbearing, fiery Rupert was in contact with 
 the ceremonious, courteous, refined, and high- 
 minded Newcastle ; and a quarrel directly fol- 
 lowed. Newcastle had wisely counselled de- 
 lay ; pointed out the advantage already gained 
 by the prince's arrival alone ; described the dif- 
 ferences which he had reason to suspect al- 
 ready distracted the councils of the enemy, and 
 the enormous benefit of merely leaving their 
 dissensions to ripen ; and closed with an ear- 
 nest entreaty to Rupert, that, having thrown 
 merely a fresh supply of men and provisions 
 into York, he would at once march back to the 
 king's assistance at Oxford. Rupert, in an- 
 swer, pleaded orders from the king, which (be- 
 ing too haughty to produce them) Newcastle is 
 supposed to have disbelieved ; but, more strong- 
 ly than on these orders, the prince stood out 
 on his own conviction of the necessity of some 
 daring achievement that should " disperse and 
 annihilate 1 ' the enemy. Newcastle smiled in 
 scorn, but submitted. Some of his friends im- 
 plored him not to take part in the battle, since 
 it seemed his command was taken from him ; 
 to which he answered that, happen what would, 
 he would not shun fight, for he had no other 
 ambition than to live and die a loyal subject.* 
 
 On Marston Moor the rival armies met. The 
 Parliamentarians were in retreat on the Tad- 
 caster Road, when a cloud of Rupert's horse 
 threatened their rear. Orders ran along the 
 lino at once to countermand the march ; the 
 troops of the van were recalled, and a position 
 taken up for battle as favourable as the time 
 allowed. So many contradictory statements 
 have been published of the memorable fight 
 which followed, that it requires no little care 
 to present it fairly and intelligibly to the reader. 
 
 Across a portion of the Parliamentary front 
 ran a broad and deep drain. To the right the 
 ground was broken, and intrenched, as it were, 
 with natural fences and lanes, though far be- 
 yond the flank was the open moor. To the 
 left the ground was entirely barren, unencum- 
 bered, and unprotected, terminating also in the 
 moor. In the centre Lords Fairfax and Leven 
 formed, with a reserve of horse for the second 
 line of infantry : on either wing (an advanta- 
 geous position, it will be at once observed) the 
 cavalry was brought up and planted. Sir Thom- 
 as Fairfax held the right, Cromwell and Man- 
 chester the left. 
 
 Rupert gazed at a distance while these thick 
 and dark masses were forming before him. 
 His customary haste had far outstripped his 
 own glittering thousands behind, but they now 
 came rapidly up and formed at his command. 
 At the drain he planted four infantry brigades, 
 supporting them with Goring's horse against 
 the enemy's left ; he disposed with great skill 
 large masses of troops against the right of the 
 combined armies,- and took up a position there 
 with his own cavalry opposite the horse of 
 Fairfax. 
 
 And now, on the 2d of July, 1643, gazing 
 with silent and inveterate determination at each 
 other, these 46,000 subjects of one king stood 
 upon Marston Moor, eight miles from a city 
 wherein every boom of the distant cannon 
 would strike upon the inhabitants as the death- 
 knell of a friend or brother. The lines of the 
 
 * The Life of Ncwcaitle, p. 47.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Parliamentarians had begun to form as early 
 as ten in the morning ; the Royalist prepara- 
 tions were complete at five o'clock in the after- 
 noon : it was now within a quarter of seven, 
 yet there still stood those formidable armies, 
 each awaiting from the other, with a silent and 
 awful suspense, the signal of battle. 
 
 A stir was seen at last in the dark quarter of 
 Manchester's and Cromwell's Independents, 
 and a part of their infantry moved upon the 
 drain. Secure from behind the ditch, Rupert's 
 musketeers at once poured out upon this advan- 
 cing column a heavy and murderous fire, and 
 it was in vain the Parliamentarians attempted 
 to form under the plunging batteries directed 
 against them simultaneously from the rear. 
 At that moment was seen the genius of Crom- 
 well. With a passionate exclamation to his 
 Ironsides, he ordered them to sweep round the 
 ditch to their right, clear the broken ground, 
 and fall in with himself upon the cavalry of 
 the dissolute Goring. The movement occupied 
 some time, and fearful slaughter was mean- 
 while suffered by Manchester's infantry ; but, 
 having once emerged, these inveterate Repub- 
 licans stood, for an instant, to receive, like a 
 rock, the onset of Goring's horse, and then, 
 " like a rock tumbled from its basis by an earth- 
 quake," rolled back upon them. Nothing could 
 withstand that astonishing charge. The Cava- 
 liers who survived offered no farther resist- 
 ance, but wheeled off to join the horse of Ru- 
 pert. Cromwell and hie men next struck the 
 guns and sabred the artillerymen beside them, 
 and then, with as much leisurely order as at 
 
 parade, rode towards the drain, 
 was deserted as they advanced. 
 
 Every place 
 One spot of 
 
 ground only still held upon it, for an instant, 
 the Marquis of Newcastle's unflinching regi- 
 ment of old tenants and retainers, and was 
 covered the instant after with an "unbroken 
 line" of honourable dead. Their victory was 
 complete., and the right wing of the Royalists 
 irrecoverably broken. 
 
 Rupert and his cavalry had meanwhile ob- 
 tained as great a victory on the left. The en- 
 cumbered ground on which Fairfax stood was 
 most unfavourable to an advancing movement. 
 Rupert accordingly stood keenly by till he saw 
 the Parliamentary forees stagger under the 
 heavy charges poured apon them as they emer- 
 ged in narrow columns through ditches and 
 lanes, and then, with his characteristic impet- 
 uosity, charged, overthrew, routed, and dispers- 
 ed both foot and cavalry, with tremendous 
 slaughter. 
 
 The after meeting of the two victors decided 
 the day. While the centres were unsteadily 
 engaged, Cromwell, who had held his triumph- 
 ant Ironsides steadily in hand, and checked 
 their pursuit in the very nick of time, ordered 
 them suddenly to face round and wheel upon 
 their centre to the left. Rupert had given a 
 similar order to his conquering cavalry to wheel 
 round on their centre to the right ; and now, 
 with a shock more terrible than any of this ter- 
 rible day, these desperate leaders, each suppo- 
 sing himself the victor, dashed each in front ol 
 a victorious foe ! Cromwell received a wound 
 in the neck, and the alarm for his safety gave 
 a slight appearance of momentary unsteadines 
 even to his gallant Ironsides ; but they rallied 
 
 with redoubled fury, and in conjunction with 
 Lesly, an accomplished Scotch officer, who led 
 up at the moment a brilliant attack, fairly swept 
 Rupert off the field.* 
 
 It was now ten o'clock, and by the melancholy 
 dusk which enveloped the moor might be seen 
 
 This description is founded on a careful perusal of the 
 various accounts of the time. 1 subjoin a few points in 
 illustration or addition, from the gazettes of the day : 
 There was a great ditch between the enemy and us, 
 hich ran along the front of the battle, only between the 
 Earl of Manchester's foot and the enemy there was a plain. 
 In this ditch the enemy had placed four brigades of their 
 best foot, which, upon the advance of our battle, were forced 
 to give ground. The right wing of our foot had several 
 misfortunes, for betwixt them and the enemy there was no 
 passage but at a narrow lane, where they could not march 
 ibove three or four in front ; upon the one side of the lane 
 was a ditch, and on the other a hedge, both whereof were 
 lined with musketeers, notwithstanding Sir Thomas Fair- 
 fax charged gallantly, but the enemy keeping themselves in 
 a body, and receiving them by threes and fours, as they 
 inarched out of the lane ; and (by what mistake 1 know not) 
 Sir Thomas Fairfax, his new-levied regiments being in the 
 van, they wheeled about, and being hotly pursued by the 
 enemy, came back upon the Lord Fairfax's foot and the re- 
 serve of the Scottish foot, broke them wholly, and trod the 
 
 most part of them under foot. 
 
 Lieut.-gen. Cromwell 
 
 charged Prince Rupert's horse with exceeding great reso- 
 lution, and maintained his charge with no less valonr. 
 Gen. -major Lesly charged the Earl of Newcastle's brigade 
 of White Coats, and cut them wholly off, forty excepted, 
 who were taken prisoners ; and after them charged a brig- 
 ade of Green Coats, whereof they cut off a great number, 
 and put the rest tothe rout ; which service being performed, 
 he charged the enemy's horse (with whom Lient. -general 
 Cromwell was engaged) upon the flank, and in a rery short 
 space the enemy's whole cavalry was routed, on whom our 
 fore troops did execution to the walls of York, bat our body 
 of horse kept their ground. Lieut. -gen. Cromwell and 
 Major-gen. Lesly being joined, and receiving advertisement 
 that our fnot were engaged with the enemy's horse and foot, 
 marched to their assistance, and met with the enemy's 
 horse (being retreated upon the repulse they had from the 
 Scottish foot) at the same place of disadvantage where they 
 had routed onr horse formerly ; and, indeed, their success 
 was answerable, if not much worse, for we routed them 
 wholly, killed and took their chief officers, and most part of 
 their standards. After which we set upon the rear of their 
 foot, and with the assistance of our main battle, which all 
 this time stood firm, we put them wholly to the rout, killed 
 many, and took their officers and colours, and by this time 
 we had no enemy in the field. We took all their ordnance, 
 being in number 25, near 130 barrels of powder, besides 
 what was blown up by the common soldiers, above a hun- 
 dred colours, and 10,000 arms, besides two wagons of car- 
 bines and pistols of spare arms. There were killed upon 
 the place 3000, whereof, upon a judicious view of the dead 
 bodies, two parts appeared to be gentlemen and officers. 
 There were 1500 prisoners taken, whereof Sir Charles Lu- 
 cas, lieut.-gen. of the Earl of Newcastle's horse. Major-gen. 
 Porter, and Major-gen. Tillier, besides divers colonels, lieu- 
 tenant-colonels, and majors. The loss upon our part, bless- 
 ed be God, is not great, being only one lieutenant-colonel, 
 some few captains, and not 300 common soldiers." ( 
 
 Brit., 6 July. 1644.) 
 
 ' The battle being begun, at taa 
 
 first some of our horse were put into disorder, but rallying 
 again, we fell on with our whole body, killed and took their 
 chief officers, and took most part of their standards and col- 
 ours, 25 pieces of ordnance, near 130 ban-els of powder, 
 10,000 arms, two wagons of carbines and pistols, killed 3000, 
 and 1500 prisoners taken." (Per/. Diur., 9 July, 1644.) . . . 
 . . . " It will not be amiss, therefore, to insert something 
 which came not before now to our knowledge, which is, that 
 there were slain of the enemy's side the Lord Carew, son 
 to the Earl of Monmouth, Sir William Lampton, Davenant 
 the poet, and many others also ; that the councils of the 
 prince and others designed the most valiant of the popish 
 party to encounter the wing commanded by Lieut.-gen. 
 Cromwell ; and, in particular, Prince Rupert had designed 
 certain troops of horse, all Irish and all papists, to give the 
 first charge to that brigade or party in which Col Cromwell 
 was ; and that they did confidently believe there was not a 
 man of them but would die ratherthan fly ; but they missed 
 their expectations, for many of them being slain in the place, 
 the rest fled." (Port. Scout, 18 July, 1644.) . . . "Col. 
 Cromwell finding the passages strait, and musketeers lining 
 the hedges, thought it not fit to advance any farther after 
 the prince, but is returned to York with his horse, not 
 worn to skin and bone, but only breathed a little." (Port 
 Scout, 19 July, 1644.)
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 437 
 
 a fearful sight. Five thousand dead bodies of 
 Englishmen lay heaped upon that fatal ground. 
 The distinctions which separated in life these 
 sons of a common country seemed trifling now ! 
 The plumed helmet embraced the strong steel 
 cap as they rolled on the heath together, and 
 the loose love-lock of the careless Cavalier lay 
 drenched in the dark blood of the enthusiastic 
 Republican. 
 
 But it is not with such thoughts the victors 
 trouble themselves now. They have achieved 
 the greatest conquest of the war, and the whole 
 of the northern counties of England are open 
 to the Parliament's sway. The headstrong 
 Rupert has received a memorable lesson, and 
 retreats in calamity and disgrace towards Ches- 
 ter. The Marquis of Newcastle, weary of a 
 strife never suited to his taste, but hateful to 
 him now, crosses the sea an exile.* Fifteen 
 hundred prisoners remain with Manchester, 
 Fairfax, Leven, and Cromwell ; the valuable 
 ordnance of the vanquished ; artillery, small 
 arms, tents, baggage, and military chest, all has 
 been left in their victorious hands. 
 
 Nearly half of his entire kingdom was now 
 hopelessly lost to Charles I. Was it possible 
 he should ever be able to recover it? The 
 question was one which no doubt rose again 
 and again in the breast of Cromwell, as he lay 
 in his tent the night after this memorable bat- 
 tle. By one of two means he might recover 
 
 * He remained abroad till the Restoration. I subjoin 
 portions of Clarendon's character of htm, which, if not fair 
 in all things, is in all things graphic and amusing : " It was 
 a greater wonder that he sustained the vexation and fatigue 
 of war so long, than that he broke from it with so little cir- 
 cumspection. He was a very fine gentleman, active and 
 full of courage, and most accomplished in those qualities of 
 horsemanship, dancing, and fencing, which accompany a 
 good breeding, in which his delight was. Besides that, he 
 was amorous in poetry and music, in which he indulged the 
 greatest part of his time ; and nothing could have tempted 
 him out of those paths of pleasure which he enjoyed in a 
 full and ample fortune, but honour and ambition to serve 
 the king when he saw him in distress, and abandoned by 
 most of those who were in the highest degree obliged to him 
 and by him. He loved monarchy, as it was the foundation 
 and support of his own greatness ; and the Church, as it 
 was well constituted fur the splendour and security of the 
 crown ; and religion, as it cherished and maintained that 
 order and oliedience that was necessary to both ; without 
 any other passion for the particular opinions which were 
 grown up in it, and distinguished it into parties, than as he 
 detested whatsoever was like to disturb the public peace. 
 He had a particular reverence for the person of the king, 
 and the more extraordinary devotion for that of the prince, 
 as he had had the honour to be trusted with his education 
 as his governor. ... He liked the pomp and absolute au- 
 thority of a general well, and preserved the dignity of it to 
 the full ; and for the discharge of the outward state, and 
 circumstances of it, in acts of courtesy, affability, bounty, 
 and generosity, he abounded ; which in the infancy of a 
 war became him, and made him. for some time, very accept- 
 able to men of all conditions. But the substantial part, and 
 fatigue of a general, he did not in any degree understand 
 (being utterly unacquainted with war), nor could submit to 
 it, but referred all matters of that nature to the discretion 
 of his lieutenant-general, King, who, no doubt, was an 
 officer of great experience and ability, yet, being- a Scotch- 
 man, was in that conjuncture upon more disadvantage than 
 he would have been if the general himself had been more 
 intent upon his command. In all actions of the field he was 
 still present, and never absent in any battle ; in all which 
 he gave instance* of an invincible courage and fearlessness 
 in danger; in which the exposing himself notoriously did 
 sometimes change the fortune of the day, when his troops 
 begun to give ground. Such articles of action were no 
 sooner over, than he retired to his delightful company, mu- 
 sic, or his softer pleasures, to all which ha was so indul- 
 gent, and to his ease, that he would not be interrupted upon 
 what occasion soever, insomuch as he sometimes denied 
 admission to the chiefest officers of the army, even to Gen- 
 eral King himself, for two days together, from whence 
 many inconveniences fell out." 
 
 all. The succession of necessary victories to 
 achieve it by force could hardly be hoped for ; 
 but there was such a thing as treachery ; such 
 a thing as success afraid of the slight shadow 
 it cast before its mighty shape ; such a thing as 
 imbecility, worse than treachery as bigotry, 
 worse than all ; and unless these vile forces 
 could be conquered, of what avail had been all 
 other victories of what avail would be all the 
 sufferings, and sacrifices, and triumphs yet to 
 come? No doubt these thoughts, far more 
 than the fatigues and anxieties of the day, or 
 the wound he had received in the last decisive 
 charge, made that night a sleepless night for 
 Cromwell. 
 
 The wound, however, was certainly slight, 
 since it neither prevented his second rally for 
 the final charge, nor withheld him from dis- 
 charging a sacred office of friendship to one of 
 his brothers-in-law, by communicating, in the 
 following letter (dated July 5, 1644), the mel- 
 ancholy tidings of a son's death. How well it 
 is adapted to its purpose ! The exaltation of 
 the victory which opens the letter, and which, 
 in those days of public enthusiasm, might pos- 
 sibly assist in alleviating even such a private 
 sorrow then the affectionate praise of the 
 dead, which so tenderly embalms his memory. 
 It is strange that such letters as these have not 
 before enriched the records of Crom well's 
 character or history. 
 
 "DEERE SIR, It's our duty to sympathyze 
 in all mercies ; that wee praise the Lorde to- 
 gether, in Chastisements or Tryalls, that soe 
 wee may sorrowe together. Truely England, 
 and the Church of God, hath had a great fa- 
 vour from the Lorde in this great Victorie given 
 unto us, such as the like never was since this 
 War begunn. It had all the evidences of an 
 absolute Victorie obtained by the Lord's bless- 
 
 Wee 
 The 
 
 lefte Winge which I commanded, being our owne 
 horse, saving a few Scottes in our reere, beat 
 all the Prince's Horse. God made them as stub- 
 ble to our Sords. Wee. charged their regiments of 
 /note with our horse, and routed all wee charged. 
 The particulars I cannot relate now ; butt I be- 
 lieve of twenty thousand, the Prince hath not 
 four thousand left. Give Glory, all the Glory 
 to God. . .Sir, God hath taken away your eldest 
 Sonn by a Cannon Shott. It brake his legge. 
 Wee were necessitated to have it cutt off, 
 
 whereof he died Sir, you knowe my tryalls 
 
 this way, butt the Lorde supported me with this, 
 that the Lorde tooke him into the happiness wee 
 all pant after and live for. There is your pre- 
 cious Child, full of Glory, to knowe sinn nor sor- 
 row any more. He was a gallant younge man, 
 exceedinge gracious. God give you his comfort. 
 Before his death he was soe full of comfort, 
 that to Frank Russell and myselfe he could not 
 expresse it, it was soe great above his paine. 
 This he sayd to us. Indeed it was admirable. 
 A little after he sayd, one thinge lay upon his 
 spiritt ; I asked him what that was ; he told 
 me that it was that God had not suffered him 
 to be noe more the executioner of his Enimies. 
 At this fall, his horse beinge killed with the bul- 
 lett, and, as I am informed, three horses more, 
 I am told he bid them open to the right and left, 
 that he might tee the rogues run. Truely he was 
 
 inge upon the Godly partie principally. 
 never charged but wee routed the enimic.
 
 438 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 exceedingly beloved in the Army of all that knew 
 him. Butt few knew him ; for he was a pre- 
 cious younge man, fitt for God. You have cause 
 to blesse the Lord. He is a glorious Sainct in 
 Heaven, wherein you ought exceedingly to re- 
 joyce. Lett this drinke up your sorrowe. See- 
 inge theise are not fayned words to comfort 
 you ; butt the thinge is soe real and undoubt- 
 ed a truth. You may doe all thinges by the 
 strength of Christ. Seeke that, and you shall 
 easily beare your tryall. Lett this pnblique 
 mercy to the Church of God make you to for- 
 gett your private sorrowe. The Lord be your 
 strength ; soe. prayes Your truely faythfull and 
 Lovinge Brother, OLIVER CROMWELL. . . . My 
 love to your daughter and my Cozen Perceval, 
 sister Desbrowe, and all friends with you." 
 
 In the life of Vane, the rise of the Independ- 
 ents, as a great civil power in the state, has 
 been minutely detailed. Its influence in the 
 army is included in the simple fact that its sim- 
 ple, tolerant, and enlarged views of liberty 
 were shared by Cromwell's troops. At this 
 moment its disputes with the Presbyterians 
 were rife in London. The services rendered 
 by the army of Scots had strengthened the 
 Presbyterian claims. The formidable mass of 
 the Assembly of Divines seconded them with 
 Laud-like zeal.* With appalling vehemence, a 
 bigoted uniformity in Church government was 
 pressed for, and a restriction of what was call- 
 ed the licentiousness of the press in its open- 
 ing freedom of thought. In vain the immortal 
 voice of Milton was heard in his famous " Are- 
 opagitica" in vain, that is, so far as the as- 
 sembly to which it was addressed moved to an- 
 swer the appeal ; but not in vain on at least 
 one of the victors of Marston Moor. 
 
 Nor were the threatenings from London all 
 that might be considered formidable. In the 
 aristocratic leaders of the army itself, elements 
 of danger existed more fearful still. They had 
 already more than once shown an indisposi- 
 tion to look steadily in the face that triumph- 
 ant result of the war which the Cromwells, 
 Vanes, and Fairfaxes were now bent upon 
 achieving ; and in the tent of almost every offi- 
 cer pitched on that northern moor were jeal- 
 ousies, discussions, and heartburnings that, 
 even in such an hour of present victory, augur- 
 ed a gloomy close. In the southern and west- 
 ern counties what was meanwhile the condi- 
 tion of affairs 1 
 
 At Copredy Bridge, we have seen, Waller 
 
 * To recall the reader's attention to the crisis already 
 described in Vane's Memoir, it may be only necessary to 
 remind him that at this time the Presbyterians infinitely 
 outnumbered their opponents in the Assembly : a great 
 
 e genera consen o e cos naton. e cotts 
 Parliament and General Assembly had entered into the re 
 
 mmssoners e commssoners o e cotts ara- 
 ment arrived on the 5th of February) to watch that the 
 League should be executed in the strictest construction 
 which their party put upon it, by establishing an entire 
 uniformity of church g-overnment. A Scots army of more 
 than twenty thousand men had entered England in the 
 commencement of the year ; and one of the Scottish divines 
 sent up on the occasion very frankly acknowledged, "We 
 purpose not to meddle in haste with a point of so high con- 
 sequence, till it please God to advance our army, which we 
 expect will much assist our arguments." Godwin's Com- 
 
 monwealth. 
 
 had sustained defeat by Charles, who after- 
 ward, pursuing his successes, turned upon Es- 
 sex, and, by a series of masterly military man- 
 oeuvres, cooped him up in Cornwall. That 
 well-intentioned but fretful general had, like a 
 spoiled child, moved into the west in jealousy 
 of Waller. The west was Charles's strong- 
 hold. The principle of this has been admirably 
 explained by the Royalist historian, Walker, 
 whose history had the honour to be corrected 
 and interlined by the king. It is a principle 
 which in some sort explains, too, the character 
 of the war. *' The gentry of this country," he 
 remarks, " retain their old possessions, their 
 old tenants, and expect from them their ancient 
 reverence and obedience. And, give me leave 
 to say, if many of the nobility and gentry of 
 this unhappy kingdom had not fallen from the 
 lustre, virtue, and honour of their ancestors, 
 and by their luxury been necessitated to manu- 
 mise their villains, but had paid that awfnl rev- 
 erence to the majesty and greatness of their 
 sovereign as they ought, they might have ex- 
 pected the same proportionably from their in- 
 feriors and tenants ; and, instead of having 
 them their companions, or, rather, masters (as 
 they now are), they might have had them their 
 servants ; and then I believe this war, which, 
 under pretence of religion and liberties, is to 
 introduce heresy in doctrine, parity in condi- 
 tions, and to destroy the king, nobility, and 
 gentry, in probability had not been." 
 
 Essex, cooped up in the west, expected re- 
 lief from Waller, but Waller felt no inclination 
 to move to the relief of Essex. Such was the 
 present condition of the Parliamentary army 
 and its chiefs '. The men, meanwhile, burning 
 to fight, could neither fight nor escape. In this 
 state of things, Charles wrote to Essex with 
 his own hand, and told him that the season was 
 now arrived when he had it in his power to re- 
 deem his country and the crown, and to confer 
 the highest obligation on his king. He pro- 
 posed a frank negotiation, and that they should 
 join their two armies without delay. He con- 
 cluded with engaging that " word of a king" he 
 was fated to engage and break so often, that 
 he would confer unequivocal marks of his es- 
 teem on both him and his army, and remain 
 ever their faithful friend. Essex, without a 
 moment's hesitation, rejected the offer. He 
 was weak, but not a traitor. In a former day 
 of triumph he had hesitated, but in his adver- 
 sity he stood firm. He enclosed Charles's let- 
 ter to the Parliament, and thus concluded his 
 letter. " If succour comes not speedily, we 
 shall be put to great extremity. If we were in 
 a country where we could force the enemy to 
 fight, it would be some comfort ; but this place 
 consists so much of passes, that he who can 
 subsist longest must have the better of it ; 
 which is a great grief to me, who have the 
 command of so many gallant men." No suc- 
 cour arrived ; but some days after this letter, 
 he managed, by a well-directed movement, to 
 pass his horse between two divisions of the 
 royal army ; he himself then took sea for Ply- 
 mouth ; and his main army surrendered on 
 condition of delivering up their arms, and of 
 being passed to the ports of their nearest 
 friends. Thus, as was remarked, " the king 
 obtained what he stood extremely in need of ;
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 439 
 
 and the Parliament, having preserved the men, 
 lost what they could easily repair." 
 
 The Commons met their unsuccessful gen- 
 eral, too, with their usual high-minded policy. 
 They assured him that the Parliament's good 
 affections to his person, and opinion of his fidel- 
 ity and merit, were no wise lessened by this 
 reverse, and that they resolved not to be want- 
 ing in their best endeavours for repairing the 
 loss they had sustained, and placing such a 
 force under his command as might best con- 
 duce to the successful termination of the war. 
 To this end they actively moved accordingly. 
 His army was reassembled in the neighbourhood 
 of Portsmouth and Southampton. Waller was 
 directed to co-operate with it, and the conquer- 
 ors of Marston Moor were summoned to the 
 same service. 
 
 York had surrendered, and Manchester, with 
 Cromwell, at once obeyed this summons. The 
 Scots army were in Northumberland, where 
 the town of Newcastle subsequently surrender- 
 ed. Manchester and Cromwell, Essex and 
 Waller, marched against the king. Cromwell 
 commanded the horse. 
 
 The royal position was a strong one a for- 
 midable alignement in and about the town of 
 Newbury, where Falkland had fallen the year 
 before. To this spot the king, whose genius 
 appears to have fitted him for such manoeuvres 
 in war, had conducted his march out of Corn- 
 wall with consummate skill, relieving by the way 
 the garrisons of Basing House, Banbury, and 
 Dennington Castle. The River Kennett pro- 
 tected him here on one flank, the guns of Den- 
 nington Castle covered him in some sort on the 
 other, and his front was strengthened by throw- 
 ing up a breastwork, and by occupying in force 
 several villas and gardens " which extended 
 conveniently beyond the town."* One house 
 in especial, called Doleman's house, stood in 
 good position, notwithstanding its being expo- 
 sed to a raking fire on all sides, since it was a 
 little in advance of the breastwork and of a 
 row of lesser houses. This house was filled 
 with troops ; the gardens attached to it were 
 strengthened by thick embankments ; skirmish- 
 ers swarmed among all the neighbouring hedges 
 and ditches ; artillery threatened from every 
 mound about. But, with all these advantages, 
 there was one assailable point, which none bet- 
 ter than Cromwell knew how to seize. Within 
 distance of a musket-shot in the enemy's front 
 stood a fatal hill, behind which, secure and un- 
 discovered, columns of attack had every facility 
 to form. The open meadows, again, between 
 the castle and the town, were sadly exposed, 
 and the reserve, which should have supported 
 the scattered infantry, was every way deficient. 
 The more serious fight began on the 27th of 
 October. During the two previous days a smart 
 cannonading had been kept up, from the hill on 
 one side and the town on the other. Little ef- 
 fect, however, was produced, till towards the 
 evening of the 26th, when the Royalists trans- 
 ported a couple of cannon across the river, and 
 enfiladed the line of the Parliamentarians as far 
 as a bend in the eminence exposed it, doing 
 
 * See vol. i., p. 245, of Lives of Eminent Military Com- 
 manders in this series : a work I may be allowed to refer to 
 as a very able one, since 1 have enjoyed the advantage of 
 many of its suggestions. 
 
 dreadful damage to Ludlow's regiment of cav- 
 alry. The night passed in awful uncertainty 
 of the morrow. Then, on that morrow of the 
 27th, the genius of Cromwell poured down the 
 fatal hill. Two heavy columns suddenly ap- 
 jeared upon its summit and descended, while 
 along the whole line one tremendous cannon- 
 ade distracted attention from the spot where 
 the terrible blow was about to fall. The col- 
 umns as suddenly divided ; one fell upon the 
 open space between Dennington and the town, 
 and with the shattering speed of lightning 
 pierced and routed the line of the Cavaliers, 
 some of whom rushed within the works at Den- 
 nington, while the others fell back in precipitate 
 confusion on the town. Cromwell and his Iron- 
 sides weie here. The other column had paused 
 an instant, but now apparently urged by that 
 astonishing success to venture a desperate ac- 
 tion, fell upon the quarter of Doleman's house, 
 [n an instant every spot around was covered 
 with dead Republicans. Party after party clear- 
 id the hedges and ditches, even the garden 
 wall, nay, to the very lawn of the house ; but 
 there such as escaped so far the deadly shot 
 of the concealed musketeers struck them down. 
 The contest lasted four hours in this quarter, 
 and the loss was terrible. It would have been 
 annihilation but for the heroic devotion of Lud- 
 low's cavalry, who moved forward and consent- 
 ed to sacrifice themselves to cover the retro- 
 gression. 
 
 It was a moonlight night which followed, and 
 anxious thoughts occupied both camps of the 
 desperate strife that must decide the morrow. 
 Suddenly the penetrating and sleepless eye of 
 Cromwell saw the Royalists move. It was so. 
 Charles, having utterly lost his left position, 
 had despaired of the poor chance that remained 
 to him in face of such a foe. His army were 
 now busy, in that moonlight, conveying into 
 the castle, by a circuitous route, their guns and 
 heavy stores, while behind, battalion after bat- 
 talion was noiselessly quitting its ground, and 
 marching off as silently in the direction of Ox- 
 ford. Over and over again Cromwell entreated 
 Manchester to suffer him to execute a forward 
 movement with his cavalry : at that critical 
 moment he would have prostrated Charles. 
 Manchester refused. A show was made next 
 morning of pursuit, but of course without effect : 
 Charles, with all his materiel and prisoners, had 
 effected a clear escape. Nor was this all. 
 While the castle of Dennington remained un- 
 molested amid the dreadful dissensions which 
 after this event raged through the Parliament- 
 arian camp, the king, having been re-enforced 
 by Rupert, and an excellent troop of horse, re- 
 turned twelve days after, assumed the offensive 
 in the face of his now inactive conquerors, car- 
 ried off all his cannon and heavy stores from 
 out of the castle, coolly and uninterruptedly fell 
 back again, and marched unmolested into Ox- 
 ford. 
 
 So disastrously closed that campaign in which 
 the victory of Marston Moor had been won. 
 The army of Essex and Manchester went into 
 winter cantonments in and about Reading. 
 Cromwell, bent upon resolute changes, repaired 
 to London. 
 
 All was now lost, he clearly saw, without a 
 rapidly decisive movement, and he sought
 
 440 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 counsel and co-operation from the genius of 
 the younger Vane. His faith in the Earl of 
 Manchester had been shaken before the affair 
 of Dennington ; even under the walls of York, 
 the intrigues of an extremely paltry person, a 
 Scot and Presbyterian of the name of Craw- 
 ford, who had been passed from the Scotch 
 host to a major-generalship in Manchester's 
 army,* had been suffered to prevail against him. 
 Manchester, though on the whole an amiable, 
 generous, and honest man, was in truth a very 
 weak one, and when he found himself on the 
 eve of great results, such as stimulated a man 
 like Cromwell only to deeds of greater daring, 
 was struck with hesitation, fear, irresolution. 
 Hence, in those moments, Crawford offered 
 more agreeable advice than Cromwell, and the 
 end had been, in short, to place even the wretch- 
 ed and fawning major-general in that position 
 of confidence with Manchester which once be- 
 longed only to the great and gallant leader of 
 the Ironsides. 
 
 But, secure in the hearts of those men no 
 less than in their strength, Cromwell had now 
 resolved to venture a decisive stroke against 
 the Presbyterian councils and their favourers, 
 no matter of what degree, in the Parliamentary 
 army. He had, before the affair of Denning- 
 ton, suddenly shown himself in London from 
 York, and by a masterly piece of policy, already 
 illustrated in the life of Vane, had, with the 
 help of that statesman, moved and carried a 
 Tote in the House of Commons, that the Com- 
 mittee of Lords and Commons appointed to 
 treat with the commissioners from Scotland, 
 and the committee of the Assembly, should 
 take into consideration the differences in opin- 
 ion of the members of the Assembly in point of 
 Church government, and endeavour a union if 
 it were possible ; and, in case that could not be 
 done, that they should essay to find out some 
 methods by which tender consciences, who could 
 not in all things submit to the common rule which 
 might be established, might be borne with, consist- 
 ently with Scripture and the public peace, that 
 so the proceedings of the Assembly might not 
 
 * The name of Crawford is rendered in some degree 
 memorable from the circumstance of his being the true and 
 original authority for fastening OB Cromwell the imputation 
 of cowardice ! The accusation is given at large in Hollis'i 
 Memoirs, and turns on the assertion that Cromwell, with 
 his body of horse, stood still without making any charge, 
 while the battle of Marston Moor was deciding, and that, 
 when they did advance, Cromwell was no longer among 
 them ! ! The reader has seen, in a faithful account of the 
 battle, what imputation could rest for this monstrous charge. 
 It requires no other notice than a word of scorn. Why, 
 Cromwell's enemies, Royalist and Republican, admit that 
 his astonishing bravery won that battle ! Warwick says 
 that he and his Ironsides " mowed down" the enemy " like 
 a meadow ;" and Mrs. Hutchinson says in her account that 
 the day had been " lost, but that Cromwell, with five thou- 
 sand men which he commanded, routed Prince Rupert, re- 
 stored the other routed Parliamentarians, and gained the 
 most compleate victory that had been obtained in the whole 
 warre." Very characteristic of Hollis, and the mean, poor 
 nature of the man, is his notice of the matter. Observe 
 how he seems to have delighted in the recital : " I have 
 teveral times heard it from Crawford's own mouth, and 1 
 think I shall not be mistaken if I say Cromwell himself 
 has heard it from him, for he once said it aloud in West- 
 minster Hall, when Cromwell passed by him, with a design 
 5ie might hear him." A corporal or colonel of the name of 
 Dalbier was Crawford's seconder. The matter is really 
 *caroely worth laughing at. " How," exclaims Horace 
 "Walpoie, " how a judicatory in the Temple of Fame would 
 laugh at such witnesses as Major-general Crawford and a 
 (Colonel Dalbier ! Caesar and Cromwell are not amenable 
 i c*f oyer and tormiuer.'' 
 
 be so much retarded. This was the first start- 
 ling exhibition of the legislative influence of the 
 Independents. 
 
 Cromwell and Vane were now in London to- 
 gether, devising the great scheme by which fu- 
 ture victories should not be surrendered as 
 soon as gotten, but made serviceable to some 
 decisive end ; by which the summer's triumph 
 should become something more than the mere 
 winter's story, and the lives of gallant men be 
 no longer wasted in vain. They consulted, in 
 a word, how best to rid the army of men who 
 had shown a miserable nnfitness for the posts 
 they held ; who had, besides, peculiar personal 
 motives for checking its career at some pohrt 
 short of a final victory ; and who, thinking lib- 
 erty a good thing, could not forget that they 
 had privileges of their own, and that monarchy 
 had honours of its own, which were good things 
 also. 
 
 Here, it is to be observed, the best friends of 
 freedom had at this time perfect faith in Crom- 
 well. Ireton bore him the most entire affec- 
 tion ; young Lndlow looked up to him with im- 
 plicit zeal and admiration ; Marten laughed with, 
 him and loved him ; Vane was to him as a broth- 
 er. Yet on all these men not a breath of sus- 
 picion in the matter of political sincerity rests 
 not a stain. Fairfax, again, though a weak 
 man, was the very soul of sincerity and honour ; 
 and the honesty of Milton was unimpeachable 
 as his genius. By what means, then, shall we 
 suppose that Cromwell deceived these men? 
 for he deceived them all. Was he sincere 
 now, and only tempted from sincerity in after 
 years by the temptation of too large a power 
 suddenly sprung up within his hands? or was 
 he from the first a deliberate and grand impos- 
 tor? The difficulty which a friend of the prin- 
 ciples of freedom and just government (which 
 throughout sincerely actuated such men as 
 Vane) has to encounter in deckling on the char- 
 acter of Cromwell, is this that up to the vic- 
 tories of Worcester and Dunbar, it would be 
 difficult to say in what respect he had sinned 
 against those very principles, of which, on the 
 sudden, he then declared himself the most de- 
 liberate foe. Was he, in truth, that compound 
 he seemed to be of profound policy, and of the 
 most wild and undisciplined rashness ? When 
 he went down to Westminster to play the mil- 
 itary tyrant over the Assembly which had giv- 
 en him power and assisted even him to great- 
 ness, did he really "not think to hare done 
 that 1" Was his tyranny the deliberate plot of 
 a life the rash impulse of a repented hour, or 
 the result of sincerely wild and ungovernable 
 fancies, which had rendered him at last, in his 
 own mind, a selected instrument of destiny 1 
 
 A better opportunity thaa this to which we 
 have arrived will probably not exist for offering 
 some materials to the reader on which be may 
 revolve these questions. We stand OB the eve 
 of the origin of Cromwell's greatness and influ- 
 ence as a politician, and to seek in any way to 
 unfold intelligibly the means by which he hence- 
 forward trode steadily on to the Protectorate, 
 it will be necessary to bring events together 
 which, in the ordinary course of narrative, long^ 
 years would separate, but the combination of 
 which is yet most necessary to a right under- 
 standing of each or of all.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 441 
 
 " What can be more extraordinary," says the 
 poet Cowley, " than that a person of mean birth, 
 no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which 
 have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, 
 raised men to the highest dignities, should have 
 the courage to attempt, and the happiness to 
 succeed in, so improbable a design as the de- 
 struction of one of the most ancient and most 
 solidly-founded monarchies upon earth ; that he 
 should have the power or boldness to put his 
 prince and master to an open and infamous 
 death ; to banish that numerous and strongly- 
 allied family ; to do all this under the name 
 and wages of a Parliament ; to trample upon 
 them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out 
 of doors when he grew weary of them ; to raise 
 up a new and unheard-of monster out of their 
 ashes ; to stifle that in the very infancy, and 
 to setup himself above all things that ever were 
 called sovereign in England ; to oppress all his 
 enemies by arms, and all his friends afterward 
 by artifice ; to serve all parties patiently for a 
 while, and to command them victoriously at last ; 
 to overrun each corner of the three nations, 
 and overcome with equal facility both the rich- 
 es of the south and the poverty of the north ; 
 to be pleased and courted by all foreign princes, 
 and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; 
 to call together Parliaments with a word of his 
 pen, and scatter them again with the breath of 
 his mouth ; to be humbly and daily petitioned 
 that he would please to be hired at the rate of 
 two millions a year, to be the master of those 
 that hired him before to be their servant ; to 
 have the estates and lives of three kingdoms 
 as much at his disposal as was the little inher- 
 itance of his father, and to be as noble and lib- 
 eral in the spending of them ; and, lastly (for 
 there is no end of all the particulars of his glo- 
 ry), to bequeath all these with one word to his 
 posterity ; to die with pence at home and triumph 
 abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with 
 more than regal solemnity ; and to leave a 
 name behind him not to be extinguished but 
 with the whole world, which, as it is not too 
 little for his praises, so might have been too 
 for his conquests, if the short line of his human 
 life could have been stretched out to the extent 
 of his immortal designs'!" 
 
 This is magnificent, but most untrue. The 
 very expression that he served all parties pa- 
 tiently for a while, implies that others, and not 
 himself, laid the most solid foundations of his 
 power. And this was true. What has accu- ' 
 mulated round the memory of Cromwell such 
 an image of vastness in the power he wielded, 
 was not simply his own greatness, but the great- ! 
 ness of the men to whose victories of states- ! 
 manship he had succeeded. This should never 
 be lost sight of. Cromwell was associated with ! 
 a band of the most accomplished statesmen the 
 world has known, and to swell those individual ' 
 glories which were already, for one man, aston- 
 ishing enough, he appropriated theirs. To say j 
 this, it will be alleged, is merely to transfer ad- 
 miration or praise from one set of characteris- 
 tics to another : true ; but not less should that 
 be done. We may possibly find some diminu- 
 tion in the quality of praise that is due. 
 
 The first great point in Cromwell's character 
 and history dates back to Huntingdon and St. 
 Ives. It was there, as we have seen, he began 
 KKK 
 
 the organization of that wonderful body of men 
 which was the glorious agent by which he as- 
 serted liberty, and the fatal instrument with 
 I which he inflicted her mortal wound. He made 
 ' his soldiers moral and sober ; he gave them the 
 I elevation of religion, and that nervous strength 
 j of mind which a knowledge of the value of 
 freedom teaches ; inspired by his lessons, they 
 trampled on all thought of danger in the grand- 
 er thought of liberty ; and then he created 
 himself their despot. We have scarcely fairly 
 grappled with Cromwell's greatness, before 
 what seems to an honest and generous mind 
 his meanness and his vice intrude themselves 
 forcibly upon us. 
 
 In another passage of his " Vision," the poet 
 Cowley thus speaks of Cromwell. " If craft be 
 wisdom, and dissimulation wit (assisted both 
 and improved with hypocrisies and perjuries), 
 I must not deny him to have been singular in 
 I both ; but so gross was the manner in which 
 he made use of them, that as wise men ought 
 not to have believed him at first, so no man 
 was fool enough to believe him at last ; neither 
 did any man seem to do it, but those who thought 
 they gained as much by that dissembling as he did 
 by his. His very actings of godliness grew at 
 last as ridiculous, as if a player, by putting on 
 a gown, should think he represented excellent- 
 ly a woman, though his beard at the same time 
 were seen by all the spectators. If you ask 
 I me why they did not hiss, and explode him off 
 | the stage, I can only answer, that they durst 
 not do so, because the actors and doorkeepers 
 were too strong for the company. I must con- 
 fess that by these arts (how grossly soever man- 
 aged, as by hypocritical praying and silly preach- 
 ing; by unmanly tears and whinings, by falsehoods 
 and perjuries even diabolical) he had at first the 
 good fortune (as men call it, that is, the ill for- 
 tune) to attain his ends, but it was because his 
 ends were so unreasonable that no human wisdom 
 could foresee them, which made them who had 
 to do with him believe that he was rather a 
 well-meaning and deluded bigot than a crafty 
 and malicious impostor." 
 
 Cowley's division of the men whom Crom- 
 well deceived into two classes is a striking and 
 important consideration. There were men, he 
 says, who suffered themselves to be deceived 
 by him in his latter years, because the deceit 
 at the same time answered their own ends ; 
 and there were " wise men," whom he de- 
 ceived in earlier life, because of their utter ig- 
 norance of his objects, and their then belief in 
 his sincerity. The consideration of the craft 
 and dissimulation charged upon him will there- 
 fore imply, in relation to this passage, the oth- 
 er and equally important consideration of the 
 possibility of his having been, in many cases of 
 the latter sort of men, really and sincerely him- 
 self the victim of the delusion he practised upon 
 them. For the first-named class of dupes, they 
 may be surrendered, without scruple, to what- 
 ever imputations rest upon them. , 
 
 The first thing to be noted in Cromwell as a 
 striking aid towards the belief of his sincerity, 
 was a certain extraordinary fluxional faculty of 
 tears with which his constitution was happily 
 endowed. " Had not his highness," says the 
 author of the terrible pamphlet entitled " Kill- 
 ing no Murder," " had a faculty to be fluent in.
 
 442 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 his tears and eloquent in his execrations ; had 
 he not had spongie eyes and a supple con- 
 science ; and besides, to do with people of 
 great faith, but little wit, his courage and the 
 rest of his moral virtues, with the help of his 
 janizaries, had never been able so far to ad- 
 vance him out of the reach of justice that we 
 should have need to call for any other hand to 
 remove him but that of the hangman. . . . He 
 hath found, indeed, that in godliness there is 
 great gain ; and that preaching and praying, 
 well managed, will obtain other kingdoms as 
 well as that of heaven. His, indeed, have been 
 pious arms ; for he hath conquered most by 
 those of the Church by prayers and tears. But 
 the truth is, were it not for our honour to be 
 governed by one that can manage both the spir- 
 itual and temporal sword, and, Roman like, to 
 have our emperor our high priest, we might 
 have had preaching at a much cheaper rate, and 
 it would have cost us but our tithes, which now 
 costs us all." 
 
 One scene will be perhaps enough to show 
 this faculty in action. Bishop Burnet relates 
 it on the authority of Sir Harbottle Grimston. 
 It dates at the time of the purge, when he first 
 showed that disregard of the representative 
 privileges which was only excusable in consid- 
 eration of the quasi rebellion into which the 
 Presbyterians had cast the kingdom ; a con- 
 sideration satisfactory even to Ludlow and Ire- 
 ton, and which prevented the opposition, though 
 it did not secure the co-operation, of Vane. 
 " When," says Burnet, " the House of Com- 
 mons and the army were quarrelling, at a meet- 
 ing of the officers it was proposed to purge the 
 army better, that they might know whom to 
 depend on. Cromwell upon that said, he was 
 sure of the army ; but there was another body 
 that had more need of purging (naming the 
 House of Commons), and he thought the army 
 only could do that. Two officers that were 
 present brought an account of this to Grimston, 
 who carried them with him to the lobby of the 
 House of Commons, they being resolved to jus- 
 tify it to the House. There was another de- 
 bate then on foot ; but Grimston diverted it, 
 and said he had a matter of privilege of the 
 highest sort to lay before them : it was about 
 the being and freedom of the House. So he 
 charged Cromwell with the design of putting a 
 force on the House. He had his witnesses at 
 the door, and desired they might be examined. 
 They were brought to the bar, and justified all 
 that they had said to him, and gave a full rela- 
 tion of all that had passed at their meetings. 
 When they withdrew, Cromwell fell down on 
 his knees, and made a solemn prayer to God, 
 attesting his innocence, and his zeal for the 
 service of the House : he submitted himself to 
 the providence of God, who, it seems, thought 
 fit to exercise him with calumny and slander, 
 but he submitted his cause to him. This he did 
 with great vehemence and with many tears. After 
 this strange and bold preamble, he made so long 
 a speech, justifying both himself and the rest 
 of the officers, except a few that seemed in- 
 clined to return back to Egypt, that he wearied 
 out the House, and wrought, so much on his 
 party, that what the witnesses had said was so 
 little believed, that, had it been moved, Grim- 
 aton thought that both he [Grimston] and they 
 
 would have been sent to the Tower. But wheth- 
 er their guilt made them modest, or that they 
 had no mind to have the matter much talked 
 of, they let it fall, and there was no strength 
 in the other side to carry it farther. To com- 
 plete the scene, as soon as ever Cromwell got 
 out of the House, he resolved to trust himself 
 no more among them, but went to the army, 
 and in a few days he brought them up, and 
 forced a great many from the House." It is 
 strange that such a scene as this should have 
 occurred and left no trace of itself on the jour- 
 nals of the House. It is yet borne out by oth- 
 er events of that period. 
 
 This, indeed, is the time from which the ex- 
 traordinary powers of duplicity in the man were 
 gradually developed, and it is surprising that 
 the means he must have declared with so little 
 scruple to his Republican friends should not 
 have put them on theit guard more clearly as 
 to the character, or, at least, possible tendency 
 of his individual designs. But we are to take 
 into consideration, at the same time, that the 
 contest then going on between the Presbyteri- 
 ans and Independents was a matter of life and 
 death, and that the struggle for existence is a 
 question which, during its progress, is apt to 
 exclude every other. Certain it is that there 
 was Cromwell, at this period in the confidence 
 of men the most sincere, acting with an insin- 
 cerity as desperate as it was subtle ; now in 
 the country with the agitators of the army, 
 whose rise and objects have been described in 
 my last volume ; now at Westminster on the 
 benches of the House of Commons, he played 
 off with unceasing and wonderful dexterity the 
 power and claims of the one against the influ- 
 ence and position of the other. There is a 
 passage in Hollis's Memoirs which gives us a 
 lively idea of the rapidity of movement required 
 in such a game. The first ground of mutiny 
 with the agitators, it will be recollected, was 
 the announced determination of the Presbyte- 
 rian majority to reduce the power of the army 
 by draughting off sundry regiments to Ireland. 
 Hollis positively declares that it was Cromwell 
 who upon this set the agitators in motion, 
 though he concealed himself so artfully in the 
 back ground, and employed instruments so sin- 
 gularly and well adapted to his purpose, that, 
 according to other Presbyterian writers, not 
 even Fairfax suspected his second in command 
 of in any way favouring the acts of insubordi- 
 nation which no discipline could now suppress. 
 In his memoirs, indeed, Fairfax afterward de- 
 clared, with a reference not to be mistaken, that 
 the success of his army in 1646 "was soon 
 clouded with abominable hypocrisy and deceit, 
 even in those men who had been instrumental 
 in bringing the war to a conclusion. Here was 
 the vertical point on which the army's reputa- 
 tion and honour turned into a reproach and 
 scandal. Here the power of the army I once 
 had was usurped by the agitators, the forerun- 
 ners of confusion and anarchy." 
 
 This is the passage from Hollis : " In the 
 mean while disclaiming it [the mutiny], bla- 
 ming the soldiers at that distance (as Crom- 
 well did openly in the House, protesting, for 
 his part, he would stick to the Parliament), un- 
 der-hand he sent them encouragements and di- 
 rections ; for nothing was done there but by
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 443 
 
 advice and countenance from London, where 
 the whole business was so laid, the rehellion 
 resolved upon, and the officers that were in 
 town so deeply engaged, that when the full 
 time was come for putting things in execution, 
 my friend Cromwell, who had been sent down 
 by the Parliament to do good offices, was come 
 up again without doing any ; and he who had 
 made those solemn protestations, with some 
 great imprecations on himself if he failed in his 
 performance, did, notwithstanding, privily con- 
 vey thence his goods (which many of the Inde- 
 pendents did likewise, leaving city and Parlia- 
 ment as marked out for destruction), and then, 
 without leave of the House (after some mem- 
 bers missing him, and fearing him gone, had 
 moved to have him sent for ; whereupon he 
 being, as it seems, not yet gone, and having no- 
 tice of it, came and showed himself a little in the 
 House,), did steal away that evening, I may say 
 run away post down to the army, and presently 
 join in the subscription of a rebellious letter." 
 Nor did any of the difficulties into which such 
 duplicity cast him find him ever unprepared. 
 Between all the suspicions of the Presbyterians, 
 and all the headlong precipitancy of the agita- 
 tors, Cromwell stood immovable and still tri- 
 umphant in his stratagems. When Skippon, 
 for instance, who had received the mutinous 
 letter of the agitators,* suddenly (for he knew 
 nothing of Cromwell's intrigues) produced it in 
 the House, and being asked from whom he re- 
 ceived it, answered, from three men of no com- 
 mand in the army, who were, he believed, at the 
 door of the House, their names Edward Sexby, 
 William Allen, and Thomas Shepperd, great ex- 
 citement instantly followed. Some were for vo- 
 ting the letter seditious, and at once committing 
 the messengers to prison ; some were para- 
 lyzed by alarm, and threw hesitation on that 
 course. In the midst of much confusion, 
 Cromwell at last arose, and brought forward 
 what has been called his master-piece of dis- 
 simulation. He solemnly protested that to his 
 knowledge the army was greatly misunderstood 
 and calumniated. They willingly put them- 
 selves into the hands of the national represent- 
 ative, and would conform to anything Parlia- 
 ment should please to ordain. If the House of 
 Commons commanded them to disband, they 
 would obey without a murmur, and pile up their 
 arms at the door of that assembly. For himself, 
 he entreated them to accept his assurance of 
 his entire submission and obedience. He sup- 
 plicated them, therefore, to bear in mind the 
 long services, and the pure and entire loyalty 
 
 * The purport of this letter was to complain of the treat- 
 ment the army had lately experienced, and in particular, 
 that they had heen proclaimed enemies. They said, they 
 knew well how to deal with adversaries with swords in 
 their hands, but that the foes with whom they had now to 
 encounter were far mure dangerous, being protected by per- 
 sons intrusted with the government of the kingdom. They 
 designated them as men who had lately tasted of sovereign- 
 ty, and, being lifted above their ordinary sphere of servants, 
 Bought to become masters, and were degenerating into ty- 
 rants. Lastly, they plainly said, that, however cordially 
 otherwise they were disposed to the expedition of Ireland, 
 they must express themselves averse to that service until 
 their desires were granted, and the just rights and liberties 
 of the subject were vindicated and maintained. In partic- 
 ular, they complained of the want of a legal indemnity for 
 what they had done in the prosecution of the war, and that 
 the Irish expedition, in the shape in which it was now pro- 
 posed, was nothing less than a plan for ruining the army 
 uud breaking it to pieces. Godwin. 
 
 I of that meritorious body, and to do nothing re- 
 | specting them in anger, or under false and mis- 
 | taken notions of resentment. The craft suc- 
 ceeded. The wiliest of the Presbyterians were 
 disarmed of their suspicions, the most fearful 
 relieved from their alarms. Cromwell was im- 
 plored to go down and compromise matters 
 with the agitators : he went down and fostered 
 the mutiny. 
 
 Clarendon confirms these evidences of the 
 dark power of intrigue in Cromwell. He tells 
 us that he was moved to the highest pitch of 
 grief and anger whenever any intelligence was 
 received from the mutinous regiments. He 
 wept bitterly ; he lamented the misfortunes of 
 his country ; and he advised the most violent 
 measures for checking the insubordination of 
 the troops. At the same time, he called heav- 
 en and earth to witness that his devoted at- 
 tachment to the Parliament had rendered him 
 so odious to the army, that his life, while among 
 them, was in the utmost danger. The duplici- 
 ty could not, however, go on continually ; it 
 was not Cromwell's purpose that it should. It 
 was discovered, and the Presbyterians arran- 
 ged a plot they thought as subtle, to have their 
 deceiver moved into the Tower. But his af- 
 fairs were ripe at last for action. He left Lon- 
 don suddenly ; was received by the great body 
 of the army with acclamations ; suppressed a 
 really dangerous mutiny that threatened for the 
 instant to thwart his plans, by riding up in the 
 face of the mutineers, selecting twelve of the 
 ringleaders, and shooting one on the instant ; 
 brought up some regiments afterward within 
 reach of Westminster, purged the Parliament, 
 and seized the king. 
 
 The imminent danger threatened by the 
 Presbyterians to all those best interests of lib- 
 erty for which so much blood had been shed, 
 supplied Cromwell's excuse for even such du- 
 plicity as this in the breasts of the friends of 
 liberty. Nor should it be lost sight of, in re- 
 gard to them, that they may well have supposed 
 the organization of an armed and enthusiastic 
 democracy like this of the agitators, the last 
 thing in the world thai could have favoured the 
 ultimate design of a tyrannical usurpation. Is 
 such a consideration sufficient to cast a doubt 
 on even the existence of such a design at this 
 stage of Cromwell's career 1 
 
 Ludlow would answer in the negative, and 
 offer evidence of the present existence of the 
 design. " Walking one day," he says, about 
 this time, " with Lieutenant-general Cromwell 
 in Sir Robert Cotton's garden, he inveighed 
 bitterly against them (the Commons), saying, 
 I in a familiar way to me, ' If thy father were 
 : alive, he would let some of them hear what they 
 | deserved ;' adding farther, ' that it was a mis- 
 erable thing to serve a Parliament, to whom, 
 let a man be never so faithful, if one pragmat- 
 ical fellow rise up and asperse him, he shall 
 ! never wipe it off; whereas,' said he, 'when 
 one serves under a general, he may do as much 
 service, and yet be free from all envy and 
 blame.' This text, together with the comment 
 which his after actions put upon it, hath since 
 persuaded me that he had already conceived the 
 design of destroying the civil authority and setting 
 up of himself , and that he took that opportunity 
 to feel my pulse, whether I were a fit instru-
 
 444 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ment to be employed by him to those ends. 
 But having replied to his discourse that we 
 ought to perform the duty of our stations, and 
 trust God with our honour, power, and all that 
 is dear to us, not permitting any such consid- 
 erations to discourage us from the prosecution 
 of our duty, I never heard anything more from 
 him upon that point." Again, in reference to 
 Cromwell's affected negotiations with the king, 
 his entertainment of Charles's proposal to give 
 him the garter and the earldom of Essex, and 
 his consequent seeming hostility to the course 
 of bringing him to trial, as proposed by the 
 Commonwealth's army men, Ludlow speaks 
 in a subsequent passage of a dialogue which 
 also occurred about this time. " Lieutenant- 
 general Cromwell, who had made it his usual 
 practice to gratify enemies, even by the op- 
 pression of those who were by principle his 
 friends, began again to court the Common- 
 wealth party, inviting some of them to confer 
 with him at his chamber ; with which acquaint- 
 ing me, the next time he came to the House of 
 Commons I took the freedom to tell him that 
 he knew how to cajole and give them good words 
 when he had occasion to make use of them ; where- 
 at, breaking out into a rage, he said, they were 
 a proud sort of people, and only considerable in 
 their own conceits. But when, on tumults at- 
 tending the petitions from Surrey, Essex, and 
 Kent, the preparations in Scotland and the ri- 
 sing at Pembroke, he perceived the clouds to 
 gather on every side, he complained to me, as 
 we were walking in the Palace Yard, of the un- 
 happiness of his condition, having made the 
 greatest part of the nation his enemies by adhering 
 to a just cause ; but that which he pretended to 
 be his greatest trouble was, that many who 
 were engaged in the same cause with him had 
 entertained a jealousy and suspicion of him, which 
 he assured me was a great discouragement to 
 him, asking my advice what method was best 
 for him to take. 1 could not but acknowledge 
 that he had many enemies for the sake of the 
 cause in which he stood engaged, and also that 
 many who were friends to that cause had conceived 
 suspicions of him; but I observed to him that 
 he could never oblige the former without be- 
 traying that cause wherein he was engaged, 
 which if he should do, upon the account of an 
 empty title, riches, or any other advantages, how 
 those contracts would be kept with him wat un~ 
 certain ; but most certain it was, that his name 
 would be abominated by all good men, and his 
 memory abhorred by posterity. On the other 
 side, if he persisted in the prosecution of our 
 just intentions, it was the most probable way 
 to subdue his enemies, to rectify the mistakes 
 of those who had conceived a jealousy of him, 
 and to convince his friends of his integrity ; 
 that if he should fall in the attempt, yet his loss 
 would be lamented by all good men, and his 
 name be transmitted to future ages with hon- 
 our." If Ludlow's strong indignation after the 
 event had occurred did not deceive him in all 
 this, Cromwell certainly held his after designs 
 even now, and was even now suspected of 
 holding them. 
 
 The meeting which Ludlow alludes to in the 
 latter quotation I have made soon after took 
 place. Before it, however, Cromwell, then on 
 the eve of starting from. London to quell the 
 
 | second civil war, invited to dinner a number of 
 : the leading men of the Independents, and such 
 j of the Presbyterians as he was yet on terms 
 ! with, for it was shortly before the purge, and 
 ! strove hard to ascertain, during a personal con- 
 ' ference, the points upon which they differed, 
 I and whether there were any common ground 
 | whereon they could meet to accomplish a hearty 
 reconciliation. This at least, according to Lud- 
 I low, was the pretext under which he called 
 i them together ; but the real object, he insinu- 
 ates, was only to obtain such information as 
 I might enable him to direct his course with safe- 
 ty and success through the difficulties with 
 which recent events had surrounded him. 
 Whatever the object, however, it signally fail- 
 ed. The differences offered no chance of rec- 
 onciliation or submission. He next brought 
 about the other conference alluded to by Lud- 
 low, consisting of the grandees, as they were 
 called, of the House and army, on the one hand, 
 and of a deputation of the Republicans on the 
 other. At this conference, Ludlow proceeds 
 to tell us, " the grandees, of whom Lieutenant- 
 general Cromwell was the head, kept themselves 
 i I'M the clouds, and would not declare their judg- 
 ; ments either for a monarchical, aristocratical, 
 or democratical government, maintaining that 
 
 any of them might be good in themselves or for us, 
 I according as Providence should direct us. The 
 | Commonwealth's-men 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, with divers more texts of Scripture to 
 the same effect ; and that it was no way con- 
 ducing to the interests of this nation, was en- 
 deavoured to be proved by the infinite mischiefs 
 and oppressions we had suffered under it and 
 
 by it : that, indeed, our ancestors had consent- 
 i ed 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 dissolv- 
 
 i ed our allegiance ; protection and obedience 
 being reciprocal : that, having appealed to the 
 
 I sword for the decision of things in dispute, and 
 thereby caused the effusion of a deluge of the 
 people's blood, it seemed to be a duty incum- 
 bent upon the representatives of the people to 
 call him to an account for the same, more es- 
 pecially since the controversy was determined 
 by the same means which he had chosen, and 
 then to proceed to the establishment of an equal 
 commonwealth, founded upon the consent of 
 the people, and providing for the rights and lib- 
 erties of all men, that we might have the hearts 
 and hands of the nation to support it, as being 
 most just, and in all respects most conducing 
 to the happiness and prosperity thereof. Not- 
 withstanding what was said, Lieutenant-gen- 
 eral Cromwell, not for want of conviction, but 
 in hopes of making a better bargain with an- 
 other party, professed himself unresolved ; and 
 having learned what he could of the principles 
 and inclinations of those present at the confer- 
 ence, 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
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 445 
 
 the desirableness of what was proposed, but 
 not of the feasibleness of it ; thereby, as I sup- 
 pose, designing to encourage me to hope that 
 he was willing to join with us, though unwill- 
 ing to publish his opinion, lest the grandees 
 should be informed of it, to whom, I presume, 
 he professed himself to be of another judg- 
 ment." 
 
 The extraordinary action incidentally men- 
 tioned by Ludlow shows better than any of the 
 zealous Republican's suspicions what was go- 
 ing on in the mind of Cromwell. No doubt he 
 flung the cushion at Ludlow's head, either be- 
 cause of something passing at the instant in 
 his own heart which required relief, or of some- 
 thing he might have incautiously uttered that 
 required diversion. It was not mere idle buf- 
 foonery here ; of that we may be quite sure. 
 Another action, however, which was noted 
 shortly after this, is not so easily explicable. 
 While the conquered and deserted king lay a 
 prisoner at the inhospitable castle of Caris- 
 hrooke, Cromwell flung himself upon one of 
 Charles's rich beds at Whitehall, and in that 
 posture so managed a series of conferences 
 with the subtlest lawyers of the day, as to in- 
 duce them to lend their countenance and co- 
 operation in a great degree to the new plan of 
 government in meditation, although they had 
 hesitated before to attend even their Parlia- 
 mentary duties. This would seem to have 
 been a piece of mean and low-thoughted osten- 
 tation, unless it could be shown it was design- 
 ed, which is just possible, to strike at a weak 
 point in the learned but commonplace minds of 
 the grave lawyers in council. 
 
 Thus practising upon each set of men in turn, 
 and selecting from each new accessions of pow- 
 er and influence thus waiting, with wily pa- 
 tience, to divert from the favourable current 
 of each man's thoughts something that would 
 serve to swell that ocean of power on which 
 he hoped to sail to sovereignty, is it possible to 
 view in any other light than that of a deliberate 
 usurper the character of Cromwell] Let us 
 not fail to observe and admire the greatness of 
 his genius, and the wonderful advantages which, 
 in his way to usurpation, he no doubt effected 
 for his country. Had he left them in that shape 
 they first assumed, no gratification or affection 
 too largely given could have been bestowed on 
 his immortal name. But is it possible, in the 
 midst of all these evidences, to suppose, with 
 Mr. Godwin, that his purposes were honest 
 still ? 
 
 Ludlow's evidence, however, is not yet com- 
 plete. That which I have now to quote is in- 
 deed the most important part of it, since it 
 throws some question over his former asser- 
 tions as to the suspicion with which Cromwell 
 was viewed by the friends of liberty, even be- 
 fore the death of the king. The time of the 
 following extract is on the return of Cromwell 
 from his government, or rather his slaughter, in 
 Ireland, when he was anxious that Ludlow 
 should be despatched into service there, and 
 when Fairfax's suicidal announcement of his 
 resignation of the chief command was just open- 
 ing the way to a consummation of all the wild- 
 est hopes or purposes entertained by Cromwell. 
 Nevertheless, that subtle chief affected a de- 
 sire for the continuance of Fairfax. " Lieuten- 
 
 ant-general Cromwell," says Ludlow, " pressed 
 that, notwithstanding the unwillingness of the 
 Lord Fairfax to command upon this occasion, 
 they would yet continue him to be general of 
 the army ; professing for himself that he would 
 rather choose to serve under him in his post, than 
 to command the greatest army in Europe. But 
 the council of slate not approving that advice, 
 appointed a committee of some of themselves 
 to confer farther with the general in order to 
 his satisfaction. This committee was appoint- 
 ed upon the motion of the lieutenant-general, 
 who acted his part so to the life that I really 
 thought him in earnest, which obliged me to step 
 to him as he was withdrawing with the rest of 
 the committee out of the council chamber, and 
 to desire him that he would not, in compliment and 
 humility, obstruct the service of the nation by his 
 refusal ; but the consequence made it sufficient- 
 ly evident that he had no such intention. The 
 committee having spent some time in debate 
 with the Lord Fairfax without any success, re- 
 turned to the council of state, whereupon they 
 ordered the report of this affair to be made to 
 the Parliament ; which being done, and some 
 of the general's friends informing them that, 
 though he had showed some unwillingness to 
 be employed in this expedition himself, yet be- 
 ing more unwilling to hinder the undertaking of 
 it by another, he had sent his secretary, who 
 attended at the door, to surrender his commis- 
 sion, if they thought fit to receive it. The sec- 
 retary was called in, and delivered the commis- 
 sion, which the Parliament having received, 
 they proceeded to settle an annual revenue of 
 5000 upon the Lord Fairfax, in consideration 
 of his former services, and then voted Lieu- 
 tenant-general Cromwell to be captain-general 
 of all their land forces, ordering a commission 
 forthwith to be drawn up to that effect, and re- 
 ferred to the council of state to hasten the 
 preparations for the northern expedition. A 
 little after, as I sat in the House near General 
 Cromwell, he told me that, having observed an 
 alteration in my looks and carriage towards 
 him, he apprehended that I entertained some sus- 
 picions of him ; and that, being persuaded of the 
 tendency of the designs of us both to the ad- 
 vancement of the public service, he desired 
 that a meeting might be appointed, wherein 
 with freedom we might discover the grounds of 
 our mistakes and misapprehensions, and create 
 a good understanding between us for the fu- 
 ture. I answered, that he discovered in me what 
 I had never perceived in myself; and that, if I 
 troubled him not so frequently as formerly, it 
 was either because I was conscious of that 
 weight of business that lay upon him, or that I 
 had nothing to importune him withal upon my 
 own or any other account ; yet since he was 
 pleased to do me the honour to desire a free 
 conversation with me, I assured him of my 
 readiness therein ; whereupon we resolved to 
 meet that afternoon in the council of state, and 
 from thence to withdraw to a private room, 
 which we did accordingly in the queen's guard- 
 chamber, where he endeavoured to persuade me 
 of the necessity incumbent upon him to do sev- 
 eral things that appeared extraordinary in the 
 judgment of some men, who, in opposition to 
 him, took such courses as would bring ruin 
 upon themselves, as well as him and the public
 
 446 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 cause, affirming his intentions to be directed 
 entirely to the good of the people, and profess- 
 ing his readiness to sacrifice his life in their 
 service. I freely acknowledged my former dis- 
 satisfaction with him and the rest of the army 
 when they were in treaty with the king, whom 
 I looked upon as the only obstruction to the 
 settlement of the nation, and with their actions 
 at the rendezvous at Ware, where they shot a 
 soldier to death, and imprisoned divers others 
 upon the account of that treaty, which I con- 
 ceived to have been done without authority and 
 for sinister ends ; yet, since they had manifest- 
 ed themselves convinced of those errors, and 
 declared their adherence to the commonwealth, 
 though too partial a hand was carried both by 
 the Parliament and themselves in the distribu- 
 tion of preferments and gratuities, and too much 
 severity exercised against some who had for- 
 merly been their friends, and, as I hoped, would 
 be so still, with other things that I could not 
 entirely approve, I was contented patiently to 
 wait for the accomplishment of those good 
 things which I expected, till they had overcome 
 the difficulties they now laboured under, and 
 suppressed their enemies that appeared both 
 abroad and at home against them, hoping that 
 then their principles and interest should lead 
 them to do what was most agreeable to the 
 constitution of a commonwealth and the good 
 of mankind. He owned my dissatisfaction with 
 the army while they were in treaty with the 
 king to be founded upon good reasons, and ex- 
 cused the execution done upon the soldier at 
 the rendezvous as absolutely necessary to keep 
 things from falling into confusion, which must 
 have ensued upon that division if it had not 
 been timely prevented. He professed to desire 
 nothing more than that the government of the na- 
 tion might be settled in a free and equal common- 
 wealth, acknowledging that there was no other 
 probable means to keep out the old family and 
 government from returning upon us ; declaring 
 that he looked upon the design of the Lord in 
 this day to be the freeing of his people from ev-. 
 ery burden, and that he was now accomplishing 
 what was prophesied in the \\QthPsalm; from 
 the consideration of which, he was often en- 
 couraged to attend the effecting those ends, 
 spending at least an hour in the exposition of that 
 psalm." 
 
 And so Ludlow, satisfied, or at least unable 
 to express distrust of the honesty of Cromwell, 
 went off to Ireland. It will not do to judge 
 those friends of freedom too hastily who still 
 held to the side of this man ! Then, having 
 completed the conquests of the Commonwealth 
 having freed himself of Ludlow's presence, 
 and Ireton being removed by death, nothing 
 stood in the way of the daring adventurer save 
 the enthusiastic democracy of the army and its 
 fiercely Republican officers. Yet this would 
 have sufficed to check no ordinary man ! Crom- 
 well knew, however, that if he could propitiate 
 the officers up to a certain point, he was sure 
 of the great body of the army, and with this he 
 could effect all. The army was now the first 
 power of the state. It had become the result 
 of their masterly discipline, as it must be in ev- 
 ery army, being, in fact, the very condition of 
 military existence to acknowledge and look up 
 to a great controlling chief. To place himself, 
 
 therefore, in the position of receiving this, in a 
 political sense, from the first power of the state, 
 was to become himself the first man of the 
 state. The transition was easy to a throne ; 
 that is, he thought so. The circle of his rea- 
 soning was now vvellnigh complete : the work 
 begun at St. Ives promised a successful issue. 
 
 But then those Republican enthusiasts ! A 
 different mode was necessary here from that 
 which had succeeded hitherto with Ludlow, 
 and in part with Vane. His own enthusiasm 
 must be called into play: an enthusiasm he 
 possessed to such an extent as to qualify it 
 fairly for all the effects of a real inspiration. 
 Upon this, then, the question may occur, as to 
 whether he had ever laboured in fact, in mat- 
 ters of religion, under a sincere self-delusion. 
 " Though now," says our honest and zealous 
 Ludlow, he eagerly coveted his own advance- 
 ment, he thought it not convenient yet to un- 
 mask himself, but rather to make higher pretences 
 to honesty than ever he had done before, there- 
 by to engage Major-general Harrison, Colonel 
 Rich, and their party to himself. To this end, 
 he took all occasions in their presence to as- 
 perse 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 con- 
 vinced 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 industri- 
 ously publish that they were so in love with their 
 seats that they would use all means to perpet- 
 uate themselves. These and other calumnies 
 he had with so much art insinuated into the be- 
 lief of many honest and well-meaning people, 
 that they began to wish him prosperity in his 
 undertaking. Divers of the clergy, from their 
 pulpits, began to prophesy the destruction of the 
 Parliament, 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 
 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 permitting him to go into Ireland with a 
 character and conditions suitable to his merit, 
 will be contented with nothing less than their 
 dissolution ; of the other, Major-general Harri- 
 son 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 do that which he and all hon- 
 est men will have cause to repent. Thus," adds 
 Ludlow, " 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." 
 
 The mention of Harrison subsequently draws 
 from the Republican memorialist the following 
 singular statement : " I went afterward (during 
 Cromwell's usurpation) to make him a visit ; 
 and having told him that I was very desirous 
 to be informed by him of the reasons that moved
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 447 
 
 him to join with Cromwell in the interruption 
 of the civil authority, he answered that he had 
 done it because he was fully persuaded they had 
 not a heart to do any more good for the Lord and 
 his people. Then, said I, are you not now con- 
 vinced of your error in entertaining such 
 thoughts, especially 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. . . . His second reason for joining with 
 Cromwell was because he pretended to love 
 and favour a sort of men who acted upon higher 
 principles than those of civil liberty. I replied, 
 that I thought him mistaken in that also, since 
 it had not appeared that he ever approved of 
 any persons or things farther than he might 
 make them subservient to his own ambitious 
 designs. . . . The major-general then cited a 
 passage of the Prophet Daniel, where it is said 
 that the saints shall take the kingdom and possess 
 it. To which he added another to the same 
 effect, that the kingdom shall not be left to another 
 people I answered, 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 I conceived, if they should presume to take 
 it before it was given, they would, at the best, 
 be guilty of doing evil that good might come 
 from it." 
 
 The reign of the saints, then, was the ground 
 Cromwell took with these men. And did he 
 believe a word of it] It is worth considering. 
 
 " I had much discourse on this head," says 
 Bishop Burnet, " with one who knew Cromwell 
 well and all that set of men, and asked him 
 how they could excuse all the prevarications 
 and other ill things of which they were visibly 
 guilty in the conduct of their affairs. He told 
 me they believed there were great, occasions in 
 which some men were called to great services, and 
 in the doing of which they were excused, from the 
 common rules of morality : such were the prac- 
 tices of Ehud and Jael, Samson and David ; 
 and by this they fancied they had a privilege 
 from observing the standing rules. It is very 
 obvious how far this principle may be carried, 
 and how all justice and mercy may be laid aside 
 on this pretence by every bold enthusiast." 
 True : and it does not seem that Cromwell is 
 unfairly charged in this, or his dupes unfairly 
 represented. Some, indeed, suspected him ; 
 and it is related, that on the eve of this great 
 scheme, from which the present illustrations 
 of his character are derived his project of 
 thrusting out the Long Parliament by the sol- 
 diery, and so flinging down the final obstacle to 
 usurpation Major Streater declared openly 
 that he was sure " the general designed to set 
 up for himself." To this the enthusiastic Har- 
 rison rejoined, that he did not believe it, but 
 that " the general's aim was only to make way 
 for the kingdom of Jesus." " Unless Jesus 
 comes very suddenly, then," replied Streater, 
 ' he will come too late." 
 
 For even the Streater party, however, Crom- 
 well had his resources. It would seem that up 
 to the very time when he was driving out the 
 members, and the council of officers sat in sus- 
 pense at Whitehall, several of them had, in re- 
 ality, no notion of what was going on, until 
 
 Cromwell suddenly reappeared among them 
 flushed and agitated with an extreme excite- 
 ment, the keys of the House of Commons in 
 liis pocket, the " bawble" of its authority care- 
 lessly flung into an anteroom, Vane's celebrated 
 act as carefully concealed told them all that 
 be had done ; and added, that he did not think 
 to have done it, but, " perceiving the Spirit of 
 God so strong upon me, I could, no longer consult 
 flesh and blood." It would be within the bounds 
 of probability that Cromwell had for an instant 
 for an instant only actually experienced 
 this emotion. While on the point of being 
 tempted to believe it, the sequel of the scene 
 checks every such temptation. Some of the 
 recusant officers, having recovered their first 
 wonder and uncertainty, went with a strong 
 and decisive remonstrance to Cromwell, re- 
 quired an explanation of his extraordinary pro- 
 ceedings, and told him he was apparently pro- 
 viding ruin and confusion for the best interests 
 of all. Upon this, we are informed, he stilled 
 their murmurs with an assurance that he would 
 do much more good to the country than could 
 ever be expected from the Parliament ; and 
 made so many professions of patriotic feeling, that 
 they resolved to wait the course of events rather 
 than come to a downright quarrel with him, be- 
 fore his intentions could be fully known. Colonel 
 Okey, however, suspecting that the end would 
 be bad, as the means were so hypocritical, 
 asked Desborough what could be passing in the 
 mind of Cromwell when he praised the Parlia- 
 ment so highly to the council of officers, and yet 
 proceeded almost immediately afterward to 
 eject them with so much scorn and contempt. 
 The other replied, "That if ever the general 
 drolled in his life, he had drolled then." 
 
 Yet are there considerations still, connected 
 with Cromwell's claims to be considered in many 
 points a sincere enthusiast, which cannot be 
 omitted in an inquiry of this kind. Do not let 
 the character and tendency of the great age in 
 which he lived be forgotten or treated lightly. 
 It was, indeed, an age of wonders, in which 
 majesty had been thrown prostrate and poverty 
 exalted in which wonderful declarations had 
 seemed to issue from Heaven itself in favour 
 of the cause he had engaged in. It is by sup- 
 posing some such assurance as this pervading 
 himself and his army that their singular mixture 
 of real pride and apparent self-abasement meets 
 with its best solution. What was a king in the 
 presence of the King of kings] What was 
 temporary suffering in the hope of eternal bliss ] 
 What even the/orm of a despotism over the 
 disordered land, if it was merely to open out a 
 passage to immortal freedom for God's own 
 people ? 
 
 In a very striking letter to the governor of 
 the Castle of Edinburgh, dated September the 
 9th, 1650, Cromwell thus wrote: "We have 
 said in our papers with what hearts and upon 
 what account we came [into Scotland] ; and 
 the Lord hath heard us, though you would not, 
 upon as solemn an appeal as any experience 
 can parallel. And although they [the Scots] 
 seem to comfort themselves with being the 
 sons of Jacob, from whom (they say) God hath 
 hid his face for a time, yet it's no wonder, 
 when the Lord hath lift up his hand so eminent- 
 ly against a family, as he hath done so often
 
 448 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 against this [the Stuart], and men will not see 
 his hand, if the Lord hide his face from such, 
 putting them to shame, both for it and their 
 hatred at his people, as it is this day. When 
 they purely trust to the sword of the spirit, 
 which is the word of God ; which is powerful 
 to bring down strong holds, and every imagina- 
 tion that exalts itself: which alone is able to 
 square and Jit the stones for the new Jerusalem, 
 then, and not before, and by that means and 
 no other, shall Jerusalem (which is to be the 
 praise of the whole earth), the city of the Lord, 
 be built, the Sion of the Holy One of Israel." 
 In reply to this, the governor wrote to the Eng- 
 lish chief that the Scotch ministers directed 
 him to say " that they had not so learned Christ 
 as to hang the equity of their cause upon 
 events." Cromwell at once answered, " In 
 answer to the witness of God upon our solemn 
 appeal, you say you have not so learned Christ 
 to hang the equity of your cause upon events. 
 We could wish blindness hath not been upon 
 your eyes to all those marvellous dispensations 
 which God hath wrought lately in England. 
 But did not you solemnly appeal and pray 1 Did 
 not we do so too 1 And ought not you and we 
 to think with fear and trembling of the hand of 
 the great God in this mighty and strange ap- 
 pearance of his ! But can you slightly call it an 
 event ! Were not both yours and our expecta- 
 tions renewed from time to time, while we 
 waited upon God, to see which way he would 
 manifest himself upon our appeals 1 And shall 
 we, after all these our prayers, fastings, tears, 
 expectations, and solemn appeals, call these 
 bare events ? The Lord pity you. Surely we 
 fear, because it hath been a merciful and gra- 
 cious deliverance to us. I beseech you, in the 
 bowels of Christ, search after the mind of the 
 Lord in it towards you, and we shall help you 
 by our prayers that you may find it out, for yet 
 (if we know our hearts at all) our bowels do in 
 Christ Jesus yearn after the godly in Scotland." 
 This looks like earnestness and sincerity. In 
 the very same correspondence, however, there 
 is something that contradicts it a little. Crom- 
 well having invited, with an air of noble toler- 
 ance, the Presbyterian ministers, who had ta- 
 ken refuge in the castle, to resume their du- 
 ties in the various chapels of the city, the gov- 
 ernor intimates, in answer, that those reverend { 
 gentlemen have not been able to conquer some 
 alarm of the preaching cuirassiers of the Eng- 
 lish army, and that " they are ready to be spent 
 in their Master's service, and to refuse no suffer- 
 ing," yet, "finding nothing exprest in yours 
 whereupon to build any security for their per- 
 sons," they "are resolved to reserve themselves 
 for better times, and to wait upon Him who 
 hath hidden his face for a while from the sons 
 of Jacob." To this, with something of an in- 
 considerate plainness, the impetuous English 
 general, deserting his Bible phraseology, at 
 once rejoins : " The kindness offered to the 
 ministers with you was done with ingenuity, 
 thinking it might have met with the like ; but 
 I am satisfied to tell those with you, that if their 
 Master's service (as they call it) were chiefly in ' 
 their eye, imagination of suffering would not [ 
 have caused such a return, much less the prac- 
 tice by our party (as they are pleased to say), 
 upon the ministers of Christ in England, have 
 
 been an argument of personal prosecution. The 
 ministers in England are supported, and have 
 liberty to preach the Gospel, though not to raile, 
 nor under pretence thereof to overtop the civil pow- 
 er, or debase it as they please.'" This certainly 
 looks amazingly like a sudden burst of laughter 
 at the mutual affectation of phrase kept up by 
 our biblical professors. It calls to mind the 
 merry meeting of the brother -augurs in the 
 streets of Rome. 
 
 But now let us observe, from other sources, 
 what sort of style was adopted towards Crom- 
 well by indifferent persons whom he had obli- 
 ged, or who hoped for favours from him. They 
 may suggest the sort of deliberate plan or sys- 
 tem which his enthusiasm and religious repute 
 served to or assumed. A Mr. Walter Cradock 
 thus writes to the lord-general : " My heart is 
 readie to burst oft in the weeke, not with jeal- 
 ousies, swellings, suspitions, or querulousness, 
 as perhaps you may be tempted to think, but 
 with a flood of affections, a conjunction of love, 
 joy, delight, and earnest desire to salute you with 
 a few unfeigned lines; all which, by three or 
 four considerations or, it may be, temptations 
 are damm'd up, as having no vent but in 
 prayer and praises, which sometimes I make my 
 businesse in a ditch, wood, or under a hay-mow, in 
 your behalfe. I pray believe not any that shall 
 say that you are lesse beloved, honoured, or 
 remembered by the Welsh saints than ever you 
 were, or any man is. Let not, I beseech you, 
 your catholique projects (though otherwise fun- 
 damentally good) seem to excuse your con- 
 science for letting slip any particular present 
 opportunity to serve the least saint. That re- 
 nowned auncient saint, Mr. Rice Williams, of 
 Newport, being one who hath served the state 
 in many places, but not gained a penny there- 
 from, is pitched upon by the saints here a year 
 agoe for that place of registering deeds ; your fa- 
 vourable assistance is much desired therein by 
 the godly of this country, in whose names I sa- 
 lute you in the Lord." And in another letter, 
 a female friend of Mr. Cradock, Mrs. Mary 
 Netheway, thus opens a budget of prayers and 
 praises to the great lord-general. " Dere and 
 honnoured sur in the Lord, Having travelled 
 with the pepel of God in spretual labore, and 
 haveing now bine a letel refreshed with God's 
 renewed power and presents amongs the gold- 
 en candelsticks, I have med bould to writ this 
 few lynes to you, wherin I desier to bless God 
 for his marsy to your poore soule, that was so much 
 compost about with gret temtalions. This is one 
 thing I desier of you, to demolish thos monstres 
 wich arr set up as ornaments in Privy - garden. 
 Truly, sur, we stand on the sea of glase : O 
 that we may have the harps of God in our hands, 
 and may be in readiness when our Lord shall 
 apear, for his apearing is near. Blessed is he 
 that is sealed, and hath oyle in his vessel. Re- 
 member me to dere Mr. Cradock." 
 
 In such letters as these we may behold Crom- 
 well in his intercourse with the humblest. They 
 are all his equals. He shares their temptations, 
 and humiliates himself to their own vilest con- 
 dition. The imagination pictures him passing 
 from tent to tent among his soldiers, with a 
 prayer for one, a jest for another, equality and 
 brotherhood for all. 
 
 And having thus exhibited what some may
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 449 
 
 consider the meaner uses of his enthusiasm, 
 observe it next on a grander theatre. Bishop 
 Burnet, speaking of the straits to which he was 
 reduced on the eve of the battle of Dunbar, pro- 
 ceeds thus : " The Scots drew near Cromwell, 
 who, being pressed by them, retired towards 
 Dunbar, where his ships and provisions lay. 
 The Scots followed him, and were posted on a 
 hill about a mile from thence, where there was 
 no attacking them. Cromwell was then in great 
 distress, and looked on himself as undone. There 
 was no marching towards Berwick, the ground 
 was too narrow ; nor could he come back into 
 the country without being separated from his 
 ships and starving his army. The least evil 
 seemed to be to kill his horses, and put his 
 army on board, and sail back to Newcastle, 
 which, in the disposition that England was in 
 at that time, would have been all their destruc- 
 tion, for it would have occasioned a universal 
 insurrection for the king. They had not above 
 three days' forage for their horses : so Crom- 
 well called his officers to a day of seeking the 
 Lord, in their style. He loved to talk much of 
 that matter all his life long afterward : he said 
 he felt such an enlargement of heart in prayer, 
 and such quiet upon it, that he bade all about 
 him take heart, for God had certainly heard them, 
 and would appear for them. After prayer, they 
 walked in the Earl of Roxburgh's gardens, that 
 lay under the hill, and by prospective glasses 
 
 Glorie of a resurrection which will answear all. 
 . . . Sir, I must thankfully confesse your favour 
 in your last letter. I see I am not forgotten ; 
 and truely, to be kept in your remembrance is 
 very great satisfaction to me, for I can say in 
 the simplicitie of my harte, I putt a high and 
 true valew upon your love, which when Iforgett, 
 I shall cease to be a gratefull and an honest man. 
 I most humblie begg my service may be pre- 
 sented to your Ladie, to whome I wish all hap- 
 pinesse and establishment in the truth. Sir, 
 my prayers are for you, as becomes your ex- 
 cellencie's most humble servant, OLIVER CROM- 
 WELL. . . . Sir, Mr. Rushworth will write to you 
 about the quarteringe and the letter lately sent 
 you, and therefore I forbeare." 
 
 To the Lord Wharton, a year after the fore- 
 going date, we find him writing, less sensibly, 
 indeed, than to the sensible Fairfax, but in a 
 tone of still more striking humility and even 
 passionate self-abasement. " MY LORDE, You 
 knowe how untoward I am at this businessc of 
 writinge ; yett a word. ... I beseeche the Lorde 
 make us sensible of this great mercie heere, 
 
 which surelie was much more than the 
 
 House expresseth. I trust (. . . . the goodnesse 
 of our God) time and oportunitie to speak of 
 it with you face to face. When wee thinke of 
 our God, what are wee ! Oh ! his mercie to 
 the whole societie of Saincts, despised, jeered 
 saincts ! Lett them mocke on. Would wee 
 
 discerned a great motion in the Scottish camp ; were all saincts ; the best of us are (Godknowes) 
 upon which Cromwell suddenly said, ' God is de- poore weake saincts, yett saincts ; if not sheepe, 
 livering them into our hands ; they are coming : yett lambes, and must be fedd. Wee have daylie 
 down to us.' " That battle will be described bread, and shall have it, in despite of all eni- 
 
 hereafter, and another act of sudden enthusiasm 
 noted, which had, even more than this, the as- 
 pect of real inspiration. 
 
 Nor was it on great public occasions, or to 
 
 mies. There's enough in our Father's house, 
 and he disparseth it as our eyes .... behinde, 
 
 then wee can 
 
 wee for him. I thinke 
 
 thorough theise outward mercies (as we call 
 
 public persons, or to the common soldiers of , them), fayth, patience, love, hope, all are exer- 
 his army, or to the mere private tools of his in- cised and perfected, yea, Christ formed, and 
 trigues, that this remarkable intercourse of en- ! growes to a perfect man within us. I knowe 
 thusiasm restricted itself in Cromwell. I shall ! not how well to distinguish ; the difference is 
 
 hereafter show it, the same in kind, though in 
 a less degree, among the most intimate mem- 
 bers of his family; and to the officers with 
 whom his daily life was passed, and to whom 
 
 only in the subject : to a worldly man they are 
 outward ; to a Saint, Christian : but I dispute 
 not, my lorde, I rejoyce in your perticular mer- 
 cie. I hope that is soe to you ; if soe, it shall 
 
 he could have scarcely written aught with ! not hurt you, not make you plott or shift for 
 which that daily life corresponded not, he held ! the younge baron to make him great. You will 
 the same enthusiastic tone. Some of these say, he is God's to dispose of, and guide for, 
 letters I am able to produce. To the mild and : and there you will leave him. My love to the 
 sensible Fairfax, shortly after an illness which deare little ladie, better than the child. The 
 had moved the sympathy and concern of the Lorde blesse you both. My love and service to 
 latter, he thus writes on the 7th of March, 1647: all friends high and low; if you will, my Lorde 
 
 " SIR, It hath pleased God to raise me out and Ladie Moulgrave and Will. Hill. I am 
 
 of a dangerous sicknesse ; and I doe most will- j truely your faythfull friend and humblest ser- 
 ingly acknowledge that the Lord hath (in this vant, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 Visitation) exercised the bowells of a Father Three years afterward, when he had con- 
 towards me. I receaved in myselfe the sen- quered at Worcester, and was on the very eve 
 tence of death, that I might learn to trust in | of his usurpation, he thus, in preparation for 
 Him that rayseth from the dead, and have noe | the latter event, writes to his "esteemed friend 
 confidence in the flesh. It's a blessed thinge j Mr. Cotton, pastor at Boston," one of the early 
 to dye daylie : for what is there in this Worlde j and famous ministers of New-England. This 
 to be accounted of the best Men according toe ' letter offers the most striking illustration that 
 the flesh, and thinges are lighter than vanitie. j could be found of certain eminent peculiarities 
 I finde this onely good : to love the Lorde, and , which lay at the very root of all the strength 
 his poore despised people; to doe for them, | and all the weakness of his character. " WOR- 
 and to be readie to suffer with them ; and he ' THY SIR AND MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND, I receaved 
 that is found worthy of this hath obteyned great yours a few days sithence ; it was wellcome 
 favour from the Lorde ; and he that is estab- j to me, because signed by you, whome I love 
 lished in this shall (beinge conformed to Christ and honour in the Lorde ; butt more to see some 
 and the reste of the bodie) participate in the of the same grounds of our actinges stirrings 
 L L L
 
 450 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in you, that have in us to quiet us in our worke, 
 and support us therein, which hath had great- 
 est difficultie in our engagement with Scotland, 
 by reason wee have had to doe with some whoe 
 were (I verilie thinke) godly, butt through weak- 
 nesse and the subtiltie of Sathan, involved in 
 interest against the Lord and his people. With 
 what tendernesse wee have proceeded with 
 such, and that in sinceritie, our papers (which 
 I suppose you have seen) will in part manifest, 
 and I give you some comfortable assu- 
 rance of. The Lorde hath marvelously appear- 
 ed even against them. And now againe, when 
 all the power was devolved into the Scottish 
 Kinge and the malignant partie, they invadinge 
 England, the Lorde rayned upon them such 
 snares as the enclosed will shew, only the nar- 
 rative is short in this, that of their whole armie 
 when the narrative was framed, not five of 
 their whole armie returned. Surely, S r , the 
 Lorde is greatly to be feared, as to be praised. 
 Wee need your prayers in this as much as ever : 
 how shall wee behave ourselves after such mer- 
 cies 1 What is the Lord a doeinge 1 What proph- 
 esies are now fulfillinge 1 Who is a God like ', 
 ours 1 To knowe his will, to doe his will, are | 
 both of him. ... I tooke this libertie from busi- 
 nesse to salute you thus in a word. Truely I 
 am ready to serve you, and the rest of our 
 brethren and the churches with you. I am a 
 poore weake creature, and not worthy the name 
 of a worme, yett accepted to serve the Lord 
 and his people. Indeed, my dear friend, between 
 you and me, you knowe not me ; my weaknesses, 
 my inordinate passions, my unskilfulnesse, and . 
 every way unfitnesse to my worke ; yell, yett, the 
 Lord, whoe will have mercie on whome he will, does 
 as you see. Pray for me : salute all Christian 
 friends, though unknown. I rest your affec- 
 tionate friend to serve you, O. CROMWELL." 
 In the year 1646, after his mere military ex- 
 ertions had for a time been closed by the vic- 
 tory of Naseby, and his thoughts were busied 
 with the important question of the person of 
 the king, and all the strange and even fearful 
 considerations it may well be supposed to have 
 involved, we find him writing in a somewhat 
 similar strain to his eldest daughter, whose Re- 
 publican tendencies, cherished and strengthen- 
 ed by her husband Ireton, had even thus early 
 declared themselves. The letter (which is da- 
 ted the 25th of October, and addressed to " hys 
 beloved daughter Bridget Ireton, at Cornbury, 
 the General's quarters") contains several char- 
 acteristic points, and not least among them is 
 that sort of appeal to her from the defection of 
 his younger daughter Elizabeth, who had Roy- 
 alist tastes and predilections, and whose very 
 weakness in that point seems, by a process of 
 love not difficult to follow, to have endeared 
 her even more than her other sisters to this al- 
 ways affectionate father. " DEERE DAUGHTER, 
 I write not to thy husband, partly to avoid 
 trouble, for one line of mine begilts many of his, 
 which I doubt makes him sitt up loo late ; partly 
 because I am myselfe indisposed at this tyme, 
 havinge some other considerations. Your 
 friends at Ely are well : your sister Claypole 
 is (I trust in mercie) exercised with some perplex- 
 ed thoughts. She sees her owne vanitie and car- 
 nal minde. Bewaillinge it, she seekes after (as 
 I hope alsoe) that w ch will satisfie. And thus 
 
 to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next a 
 finder, and such an one shall every faythfull 
 humble seeker be at the end. Happie seeker, 
 happie finder. Whoe ever tasted that the Lord 
 is gracious, without some sence of self-vanitie 
 and badnesse? Whoe ever tasted that gra- 
 ciousnesse of his, and could goe lesse in desier, 
 and lesse than pressinge after full enjoyment * 
 Deere harte, presse on ; lett not hnsband, lett 
 not anythinge, coole thy affections after Christ. 
 I hope he will be an occasion to enflame them. 
 That w ch is best worthy of love in thy husband 
 is that of the image of Christ hebeares. Looke 
 on that, and love it best, and all the rest for 
 that. I pray for thee and him ; doe so for me. 
 My service and deere affections to the Generall 
 and Generallesse. I hearc she is very kind to 
 thee ; it adds to all nther obligations. My love to 
 all. I am thy deere Father, 
 
 "O. CROMWELL." 
 
 The view which these letters present to us 
 will be completed by two extracts from the 
 letters of two very influential men of the time, 
 unlike each other in all things save this, that 
 both were zealous Republicans. They bear 
 date at the commencement of the Worcester 
 campaign. Even so late as this Cromwell had 
 sustained appearances with the stern and in- 
 flexible Bradshaw ; even in his present glory 
 and power he had chiefly impressed the enthu- 
 siastic Harrison with the sense of his humility, 
 and his desire to bear the burden of his great- 
 ness only by help of that comfort and grace 
 which the meanest might share along with him. 
 "My dear lord," exhorts Harrison, "lett wait- 
 ing upon Jehovah bee the greatest and most 
 considerable business yow have every daie ; 
 reckon itt soe more than to eate, sleepe, or 
 councell together. Run aside sometimes from 
 your companie, and gett a word with the Lord. 
 Why should not yow have three or four precious 
 soules allwaies standing att your elbow, with whom 
 yow might now and then turne into a corner. I 
 have found refreshment and mercie in such a 
 waie. Ah, the Lord of compassion owne, pittie 
 your burdens, care for yow, stand by and re- 
 fresh your harte each moment. I would I could 
 in anie kind doc yow good ; my harte is with yow, 
 and my poore praiers to my God for yme. The 
 Allmightie Father carrie yow in his very bo- 
 some, and deliver yow (if itt bee his will) from 
 touching a very haire of anie for whom Jesus 
 hath bled. I expect a very gracious returne in 
 this particular." 
 
 The more sober and manly tone of Brad- 
 shaw's letter yet intimates the strongest faith 
 in the sincerity of Cromwell, and his just claim, 
 to assistance in his great work from the very 
 hand of God : " MY LORD, By the hands of 
 this trustie bearer, accept, I pray you, of this 
 paper remembrance and salutation from him 
 who both upon the publique and his owne pry- 
 vate account is verie much your dettor, and 
 with other your poore friends here prayes for 
 and adores the manifestation of God's gracious 
 presence with you in all your weyghty affaires ; 
 which, as they are undertaken in z'iale to God's 
 glory and his people's good, will, thioughcontyn- 
 uance of the same dy vine presence and mercy, be 
 crowned with answerable successe ; and who- 
 soever belongs to God in the nation where you 
 are, will in the close of all have cause to say
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 451 
 
 periissemus nisi periissemus. In the mean tyme, 
 God can and will tame those stubborn spirits, 
 and convince them of their hypocrysy who 
 create you all this trouble, ami give a mercifull 
 testimony to the sinceritie of his poo re servants 
 hearts who have appealed unto him. . . . My 
 Lord, I forbeare particularizing things here 
 only this, God is gracious to us in dyscovery o 
 many of our enemies' desygnes (which thereby 
 have proved abortive), and delyvering their 
 coonceHs in a good measure into our hands ; 
 and in watching over the common safetie, there 
 is much acknowledgement due to the indefati- 
 gable industry of M. Generall Harrison, your 
 faithfull servant and substitute in that worke 
 here. Your Lordship will shortly heare ol 
 some numbers of godly persons in a regimental! 
 forme here in London, whose example will be 
 followed by others of like good mynd in Nor- 
 wich, Kent, and other places, who have sent for 
 Commissions to us for that purpose, and our 
 resolution is they shall not want incouragement. 
 .... My Lord, I will trespasse no further upon 
 your tyme. The Lord of Hosts be with you ; 
 the God of Jacob be your refuge. The hum- 
 blest of your welwillers, fryends, and servants, 
 
 "Jo. BRADSHAWE." 
 
 Is it possible, however, the reader will ask, 
 to penetrate into the habits of Cromwell, such 
 as they were, apart from the restraint imposed 
 on them by letters, over which, however free 
 or familiar the object to which they were ad- 
 dressed, the character of the age could not but 
 cast, as it were insensibly and as a matter of 
 course, its own air of elevation and enthusi- 
 asm ? Can we view Cromwell in his own 
 home, or the homes of his friends, in the free- 
 dom and the abandonment of social intercourse 1 
 If we might see him there, perhaps these strange 
 discordances would in some sort vanish, and 
 expose to view the natural man beneath them. 
 The reader shall see him there, in so far as 
 those private scenes or familiar habits have 
 been happily handed down to us. 
 
 Whitelocke, in his " Memorials," relates the 
 following anecdote. " From the council of 
 state Cromwell and his son Ireton went home 
 with me to supper, where they were very cheerful, 
 and seemed extremely well pleased. We dis- 
 coursed together till twelve o'clock at night, 
 and they told me wonderful observations of God's 
 providence in the affairs of the war, and in the 
 business of the army's coming to London, and 
 seizing the members of the House, in all which 
 were miraculous passages." We find an air of 
 reality and sincerity, at last, about this little 
 supper. Here was the cheerful spirit of the 
 men. unclouded by strange delusions or fanatic 
 professions, and yet, slyly, though perhaps sin- 
 cerely, lurking beneath it the materials for both. 
 In the next anecdote the picture is not so 
 favourable, yet natural withal, and not, on the 
 whole, unpleasing. 1 take it from the Life of 
 Waller, written by the poet's intimate friend. 
 " Mr. Waller," he says, speaking of his intimacy 
 with Cromwell, who was, as formerly stated, 
 his kinsman by marriage, " often took notice, 
 that in the midst of their discourse a servant 
 has come in to tell them such and such attend- 
 ed, upon which Cromwell would rise and stop 
 them, talking at the door, where he could over- 
 hear them say, The Lord will reveal, The Lord 
 
 will help, and several such expressions ; which, 
 when he returned to Mr. Waller, he excused, 
 saying, Cousin Waller, / must talk to these men 
 after their own way ; and would then go on where 
 they led off. This created in Mr. Waller an 
 opinion that he secretly despised those whom 
 he seemed to court." The opinion was surely 
 a non sequitur. We may respect a man sincere- 
 ly, whose style of speaking or of thinking we 
 may yet as sincerely differ from. Were this 
 anecdote unaccompanied with other evidence 
 to show an unworthy condescension in Crom- 
 well to the use of a like style of speaking for 
 wicked and unworthy ends, it might stand 
 merely as an excellent and sufficing proof of 
 the courtesy and gentility of his spirit. The 
 worst imputation in the anecdote, however, has 
 been confirmed, on the authority of a friend of 
 Oliver St. John, by an anonymous writer of 
 repute. " The enthusiasm of Cromwell," says 
 the author of a " Political History of the Age," 
 " was entirely assumed and politic. Oliver St. 
 John declared that Cromwell, being one day at 
 table with his friends, and looking for the cork 
 of a bottle of Champagne which he had opened, 
 on being informed that some person attended 
 for admittance to see him, Tell him,' says 
 Cromwell, ' we are in search of the holy spirit.' " 
 If this was really said, it must have been in 
 an incautious moment indeed, or for some hys- 
 terical relief from irritating or painful thought 
 as the cushion supplied which he flung at Lud- 
 low. In the general affairs of his household, 
 in so far as religion and religious observances 
 were concerned, he was strict, and even, in 
 some cases, exacting. An unimpeachable wit- 
 ness, Calamy, in his Life of Howe, has the fol- 
 lowing statement. " I had heard from several 
 (and it had been confirmed to me by Mr. Jeremy 
 White, who lived at Whitehall at the very same 
 time with Mr. Howe) that the notion of a par- 
 ticular faith in prayer prevailed much in Crom- 
 well's court, and that it was a common opinion 
 among them, that such as were in a special man- 
 ner favoured of God, when they offered up 
 prayers and supplications to him for his mercies, 
 either for themselves or others, often had such 
 impressions made on their minds and spirits by a 
 divine hand, as signified to them, not only in 
 the general, that their prayers would be heard 
 and graciously answered, but that the particular 
 mercies that were sought for would be certainly 
 bestowed, nay, and sometimes also intimated to 
 them in what way and manner they would be 
 afforded ; and pointed out to them future events 
 beforehand, which in reality is the same as in- 
 spiration. Having heard of mischief done by 
 the prevalence of this notion, I took the oppor- 
 unity that offered, when there was nothing to 
 linder the utmost freedom, to inquire of Mr. 
 rlowe what he had known about this matter, 
 and what were his apprehensions concerning 
 t. He told me the prevalence of the notion 
 hat I mentioned at Whitehall, at the time when 
 IB lived there, was too notorious to be called in 
 mestion, and that not a little pains was taken 
 o cultivate and support it ; and that he once 
 icard a sermon there (from a person of note), 
 he avowed design of which was to maintain 
 and defend it. He said he was so fully con- 
 inced of the ill tendency of such a principle, 
 hat after the hearing this sermon, he thought
 
 452 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 himself bound in conscience, when it came next 
 to his turn to preach before Cromwell, to set him- 
 self industriously to oppose it, and to beat down 
 that spiritual pride and confidence which such 
 fancied impulses and impressions were apt to 
 produce and cherish. He told me he observed, 
 that while he was in the pulpit, Cromwell heara 
 him with great attention, but would sometimes knit 
 his brows and discover great uneasiness. When 
 the sermon was over, he told me a person of 
 distinction came to him, and asked him if he 
 knew what he had done, and signified it to him 
 as his apprehension that Cromwell would be 
 so incensed upon that discourse, that he would 
 find it very difficult ever to make his peace with 
 him, or secure his favour for the future. Mr. 
 Howe replied that he had but discharged his 
 conscience, and could leave the event with God. 
 He told me he afterward observed Cromwell was 
 cooler in his carriage to him than before, and some- 
 times thought he would have spoken to him of 
 the matter, but he never did, and rather chose 
 to forbear." 
 
 The wilderness of doubt which every inqui- 
 rer into the life or character of this extraordi- 
 nary man (however deeply his researches en- 
 able him, as he supposes, to penetrate beneath 
 the surface) must yet find himself in, at the 
 last, in regard to many of his motives and his 
 aims, does not seem to receive any clew even 
 from this striking and well-authenticated de- 
 tail. Cromwell still appears in it rather as the 
 politic than the fanatic person. 
 
 The very selection of his chaplains seems to 
 countenance the notion that with him religion 
 was rather a matter of policy than persuasion, 
 and a matter, therefore, over which he prefer- 
 red to have such placed in authority as he could 
 himself in turn influence or rule. Thus he was 
 ill at ease with Howe. His favourites were 
 Hugh Peters, who savoured much of a mad- 
 man ;* Sterry, who appears to have been half 
 madman and half fool ; John Goodwin, who 
 looked forward to the millennium ; Thomas 
 Goodwin, who raved about the five points ; and 
 Jeremy White but a little anecdote connected 
 with Cromwell will show what Jeremy White 
 was. 
 
 Oldmixon relates it, and if, with others that 
 need not be repeated here, it is received with 
 belief, there can be little doubt that Cromwell, 
 in engaging White as his chaplain, secured in 
 him also a buffoon gratis. The Lady Frances, 
 one of the parties to the anecdote, was the 
 youngest and most beautiful of Cromwell's 
 daughters, and had been set apart by the gos- 
 sip of Europe for the queen of Charles II., be- 
 ing thus destined, it was said, to serve as the 
 bond of union between the decaying Common- 
 wealth and the renewing royalty of England. 
 Charles II. had found a rival, however, in Mr. 
 Jeremy White. " One of the Protector's domes- 
 tic chaplains," says the historian of the Stuarts, 
 "Mr. Jeremy White, a sprightly man, and a top 
 wit of his court, was so ambitious as to make 
 
 * This reverend person sent a huge dog to Sweden with 
 Whitelocke, by way of a present to Queen Christina. See 
 Appendix F. : an article to which the reader's attention -is 
 asked, as it introduces, from a rare work by Lord White- 
 locke, a series of dialogues illustrative of striking points in 
 Cromwell's character, and of the interest or opinion inspired 
 by the various scenes of his history, as well as of the Eng- 
 lish civil wars, in the greatest foreign minister of the time. 
 
 his addresses to Lady Frances, the Protector's 
 youngest daughter. The young lady did not 
 disencourage him ; and this piece of innocent 
 gallantry, in such a court, cou'd not be carried 
 on without spies. Oliver was told of it, and 
 he was much concerned at it, obliging the per- 
 son who told him to be on the watch ; and if 
 he could give him any substantial proof, he 
 should be well rewarded, and White severely 
 punish'd. The spy follow'd the matter so close, 
 that he hunted Jerry White, as he was gener- 
 ally termed, to the lady's chamber, and ran im- 
 mediately to the Protector with this news. Oli- 
 ver, in a rage, hasten'd thither himself, and go- 
 ing in hastily, found Jerry on his knees, kissing 
 the lady's hand, or having just kiss'd it. Crom- 
 well, in a fury, ask'd what was the meaning of 
 that posture before his daughter Frank. White, 
 with a great deal of 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 ; 1 was 
 therefore humbly praying her ladyship to inter- 
 cede for me.' The Protector, turning to the 
 young woman, cry'd, 'What's the meaning of 
 this, hussy 1 Why do you refuse the honour 
 Mr. White wou'd do you T He is my friend, 
 and I expect you shou'd treat him as such.' 
 My lady's woman, who desired nothing more, 
 with a very low courtesy reply'd, If Mr. White 
 intends me that honour, I shall not be against 
 him.' Say'st thou so, my lass !' cry'd Crom- 
 well ; ' call Goodwyn ; this business shall be 
 done presently, before I go out of the room.' 
 Mr. White was gone too far to go back. The 
 parson came. Jerry and my lady's woman 
 were marry 'd in presence of the Protector, 
 who gave her 500 for her portion ; and that, 
 with the money she had sav'd before, made Mr. 
 White easy in his circumstances, except in one 
 thing, which was, that he never lov'd his wife, 
 nor she him, tho' they liv'd together near fifty 
 years afterward. I knew them both, and heard 
 this story told when Mrs. White was present, who 
 did not contradict it, but own'd there was something 
 in it." 
 
 Supposing the religions pretensions to have 
 been very much a matter of assumption with 
 Cromwell, it would seem at once to explain the 
 source of his remarkable fondness for buffoonery. 
 It had become a necessary relief from the pain 
 of so much insincerity, to fling himself, when 
 he could, headlong into the other extreme. He 
 kept four buffoons at Whitehall, and generally, 
 when inclined to sport, made himself, a fifth. 
 Here was the reality of his nature vindicating 
 itself somehow ! Dr. Hutton has preserved the 
 record* of a very remarkable scene of this sort. 
 " At the marriage of the Lady Frances Crom- 
 well," he says, "to Mr. Rich, the grandson and 
 leir of the Earl of Warwick, the Protector, 
 whose mind at that moment was far from being at 
 ease, amused himself by throwing about the 
 sack-posset among the ladies to spoil their 
 clothes, which they took as a favour, as also 
 wet sweetmeats ; and daubed all the stools 
 where they were to sit with wet sweetmeats ; 
 and put off Rich's wig, and would have thrown it 
 'nto the fire, but did not, yet he sat upon it. An 
 old formal courtier, Sir Thomas Billingsley, that 
 was gentleman usher to the Queen of Dohe- 
 
 Harleian Miscellany.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 453 
 
 mia, was entertained amongst them, and he 
 danced before them with his cloak and sword, 
 and one of the four of the Protector's buffoons made 
 his lip black like a beard, whereat the knight drew 
 his knife, missing very little of killing the fel- 
 low." 
 
 A scene not unlike this the merriment of a 
 mind "ill at ease" plunging recklessly into a 
 thoughtless coarseness is described in a Roy- 
 alist pamphlet, entitled " The Court and Kitch- 
 en of Mrs. Joan Cromwell." The reader will 
 make allowance, however, for the scurrilous 
 tone of the writer. " His feasts were none of 
 the liberallest, and far from magnificence ; even 
 those two he gave the French ambassador and 
 the Parliament in 1656, upon their gratulation 
 of his Syndercombe deliverance, which last 
 amounted not to above 1000, and she [the 
 Protectress] saved 200 of it in the banquet. 
 For a big-bellied woman, a spectator near Crom- 
 well's table, upon the serving thereof with 
 sweetmeats, desiring a few dry candies of ap- 
 ricocks, Colonel Pride, sitting at the same, in- 
 stantly threw into her apron a conserve of wet, 
 with both his hands, and stained it all over ; 
 when, as if that had been the sign, Oliver catch- 
 es up his napkin, and throws it at Pride, he at him 
 again, while all the table were engaged in the 
 scuffle, the noise whereof made the members 
 rise before the sweetmeats were set down, and, 
 believing dinner was done, go to this pastime of 
 gambols, and be spectators of his highnesse's frol- 
 icks. Were it worth a description, I could give 
 the reader a just and particular account of 
 that Ahab festival, as it was solemnized in the 
 banquetting-house of Whitehall." 
 
 The story of Ludlow and the cushion has 
 been told ; that of Marten and Cromwell, on 
 the eve of the king's execution, is given in the 
 life of that statesman. It is also on record, 
 that when Hugh Peters urged the execution of 
 Charles from the pulpit, Cromwell suddenly 
 burst into a loud laugh, to the scandal of all 
 present, and was only excused on the score of 
 an " infirmity." Waller's friend, whom I have 
 before quoted, tells us : "Mr. Waller lived most- 
 ly at Beaconsfield, where his mother dwelt in 
 her widowhood, and often entertained Oliver 
 Cromwell there during his usurpation, he being 
 related to her. But, notwithstanding her rela- 
 tion to the usurper and Colonel Hampden, she 
 was a Royalist in her principles ; and when 
 Oliver visited her at Beaconsfield, she would 
 frankly tell him how his pretensions would end. 
 The usurper used merrily to throw a napkin at 
 her in return, and said he would not enter into fur- 
 ther disputes with his aunt for so he used to 
 call her, though not quite so nearly related." 
 Cowley, in his " Vision," too, speaks of his 
 " flinging of cushions and playing at snowballs 
 with his servants" as a thing of familiar report.* 
 
 * The entire passage in the " Vision," where these words 
 occur, i well worth subjoining: "This man was wanton 
 and merry, unwittily and ungracefully merry, with our suf- 
 ferings ; 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. 
 [Clarendon mentions the same coarse jest.] 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. This month he assembles a 
 Parliament, and professes himself, with bumble tears, to be 
 
 But the most extraordinary evidence that 
 exists of the extent to which these propensities 
 were occasionally carried, is given by the learn- 
 ed Doctor Bates. " Minores ductores," says 
 that writer, who was Cromwell's physician, 
 " congiariis frequentius devincire, nonnunquain 
 in media cibatione, fame nondum pacata gre- 
 garios milites pulsatis tympanis intromittere ut 
 semesas raptarent reliquias. Robustos ac vere 
 militares nocivis & validis exercitiis tractare, 
 veluti pruna candente nonnunquam ocreis in- 
 jecta, vel culcitris hinc inde in capita vibratis. 
 Semel autem praeludiis hujusmodi probe lassos 
 &. risu laxatos praefectos ad cordis apertionem 
 provocavit ; eoque modo ab incautis elicuit ar- 
 cana quaedam, quae perpetuis tenebris optabant 
 postmodum involuta ; dum ipse, sententias om- 
 nium scrutatus, celaret suam." " He would or- 
 der (that is) great feasts for the inferior officers, 
 and whilst they were feeding, and before they 
 had satisfied their hunger, cause the drums to 
 beat, and let in the private soldiers to fall on, and 
 snatch away the half-eaten dishes. The robust 
 and sturdy soldiers he loved to divert with vi- 
 olent and hazardous exercises, as by making 
 them sometimes throw a burning coal into one 
 another's boots, or cushions at one another' 1 s heads. 
 When the officers had sufficiently laughed, and 
 tired themselves with these preludes, he would 
 wheedle them to open their hearts freely, and 
 by that means he drew some secrets from the 
 unwary which afterward they wished might 
 have been wrapped up in everlasting darkness, 
 while he, in the mean time, pumping the opin- 
 ion of all others, concealed his own." 
 
 I close these notices of Cromwell's more fa- 
 miliar habits with two anecdotes of a pleasant- 
 er kind, related in Whitelocke's Memorials. 
 The first refers to Cromwell and Ireton. " As 
 they," says the lord-commissioner, " went home 
 from my house, their coach was stopped and 
 they examined by the guards, to whom they 
 told their names ; but the captain of the guards 
 would not believe them, and threatened to car- 
 ry these two great officers to the court of guard. 
 Ireton grew a little angry, but Cromwell was cheer- 
 ful with the soldiers, gave them twenty shillings, 
 and. commended them and their captain for doing 
 their duty." Again Whitelocke tells us : " The 
 
 only their servant and their minister ; the next month he 
 swears by the living God that he will turn them out of 
 doors, and he does so, in his princely way nf threatening, 
 bidding them turn the buckles of their girdles behind them. 
 The representative of a whole nay, of three whole nations, 
 was in his esteem so contemptible a meeting, that he thought 
 the affronting and expelling of them to be a thing of so lit- 
 tle consequence as not to deserve that he should advise with 
 any mortal man about it. What shall we call this bold- 
 ness or brutishness, rashness or phrensy ? There is no 
 name can come up to it, and therefore we must leave it 
 without one. Now a Parliament must be chosen in the new 
 manner, next time in the old form, but all cashiered still 
 after the newest mode. Now he will govern by major- 
 generals, now by one House, now by another House, now 
 by no House ; now the freak takes him, and he makes sev- 
 enty peers of the land at one clap (extempore, and stans 
 pede in uno) ; and, to manifest the absolute power of the 
 potter, he chose not only the worst clay he could find, but 
 picks up even the dirt and mire, to form out of it his vessels 
 of honour. It was said anciently of Fortune, that when 
 she had a mind to be merry and to divert herself, she was 
 wont to raise up such kind of people to the highest digni- 
 ties. This son of Fortune, Cromwell, who was himself one 
 of the primest of her jests, found out the true hautgoust of 
 this pleasure, and rejoiced in the extravagance of his ways 
 as the fullest demonstration of his uncontrollable sover- 
 eignty. Good God! what have we seen? and what have 
 we suffered ?"
 
 454 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Protector often advised about this [the Petition 
 and Advice] and other great businesses with 
 the Lord Broghill, Pierrepoint, myself, Sir 
 Charles Wolseley, and Thurloe, and would be 
 shut up three or four hours together in private 
 discourse, and none were admitted to come in 
 to him ; he would sometimes be very cheerful 
 with us, and laying aside his greatness, he 
 would be exceeding familiar with us, and by 
 way of diversion, would make verses with us, and 
 every one must try his fancy ; he commonly call"d 
 
 curse that lay in his nature deeper than them 
 all, and, when they sought to identify them- 
 selves with settled and lasting projects, that 
 at once dispersed them to the winds 1 
 
 That curse was his WANT OF TRUTH, and 
 could only have been implanted in such a na- 
 ture by some early scheme of the fatal ambition 
 which he realized in later life. " Explica atque 
 excute intelligentiam tuam," says the great 
 Roman philosopher ; " ut videas, quse sit in ea 
 species, forma, et notio viri boni. Cadit ergo 
 
 for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now in virum bonum mentiri cmolumenti sui ctiusci, 
 and then take tobacco himself; then he would fall \ criminari praripere, fallere 7 Nihil profecto mi- 
 
 again to his serious and great business, and ad- 
 vise with us in those affairs ; and this he did 
 often with us, and our counsel was accepted 
 and followed by him in most of his greatest af- 
 fairs." 
 
 The writer of these pages has no favourite 
 
 mis. Est ergo ulla res tanti, aut commodum 
 ullum tarn expetendum, ut viri boni et splendo- 
 rem et nomen amittas 1 Quid est, quod afferre 
 tantum utilitas ista, quse dicitur, possit, quan- 
 tum auferre, si boni viri nomen eripuerit, fidem 
 justitiamque detraxeritl" Oh no, nothing can 
 
 theory to establish out of his records of the life | supply its place ; " utility" or profit without it 
 
 of Cromwell : it is simply his aim to attempt 
 to arrive at as fair and impartial a ground for 
 judgment as the circumstances "will enable him 
 to attain. Therefore, standing at the threshold 
 of that astonishing person's political greatness, 
 he has thought it advisable to present to the 
 reader thus, from every various quarter, the 
 possible means and resources by the use of 
 which he achieved it in the end. Out of these 
 the reader will possibly have already formed 
 his own judgment ; yet let it for the present be 
 suspended, till the progress of Cromwell's life 
 has advanced some years with the light of these 
 researches and inquiries cast upon it. Thus 
 much, meanwhile, the writer may be allowed 
 to say, in vindication of the somewhat unusual 
 
 have never yet made out their case in this 
 world. The discovery of its absence here WES 
 fatal at once. The parties who had in turn 
 trusted, and been in tarn betrayed, fled all from 
 Cromwell's side at last, and left him alone ; 
 and the vast designs he had hoped to leave per- 
 manently impressed upon the genius of the 
 English people and the character of the Eng- 
 lish Constitution, sunk with him into his grave. 
 But not these alone. He dragged there, too, 
 in so far as it was possible for him to do so 
 for a good as well as great thought, once born 
 in the world, can never wholly die the more 
 virtuous and more able designs of the yet im- 
 mortal statesmen he supplanted, and left the 
 path altogether clear for the base, the wicked, 
 
 course he has taken, that the notion which i the licentious slavery of the restored monarch 
 seems to be held by many eminent writers, that who succeeded him. 
 
 Cromwell was, after all, perhaps, only the in- 
 strument of Fate, working its own wild will in 
 
 Still must some portion of the reality of that 
 enthusiasm with which he wrought his unwor- 
 
 the wild and changing humours of the army, is ' thiest aims be permitted to remain with him. 
 one which, however feasible in the main, could j On his death-bed, we shall see, it shone snd- 
 only have been arrived at by the course hith- denly forth, when all the insincerity and the 
 erto taken in the multitudinous accounts that ' trick of life and its designs had passed forever. 
 exist of him, of judging by itself each separate I Then broke forth that almost fierce sincerity 
 incident of his extraordinary career in its sin- j and belief of inspiration with which his first ex- 
 gle shape as it arose. This seemed to be pro- \ ertions in the Republican cause began, and 
 ductive of much error. He was too great a i which, if grosser objects had not crossed it, 
 man, intellectually, to have worked without a ! would probably have realized the greatest ca- 
 plan, and yet was deficient in the element of I reer for Cromwell that had ever been flung 
 moral greatness, which would, in itself, have [ open to mortal man. It is by leaving with him 
 withheld him from the plan he assumed. View- j a portion of this true enthusiasm, even in his 
 ed in his separate qualities, a greater man has j works of greatest insincerity ; it is by suppo- 
 probably never lived ; a man with more emi- sing l h at one so accomplished in deluding oth- 
 nent abilities for statesmanship ; a more mas- ers, might also, and that most deeply, have de- 
 terly soldier, judging him by the age in which ! luded himself, that the extraordinary incon- 
 he lived, and the objects he accomplished ; a sistencies which have been noted in him wifl 
 person more wonderfully gifted in all the attri- find their sole solution at the last. With this, 
 butes of subtlest thought, and of an intellect ! these suggestions towards his character may 
 the most piercing and profound. The moral now be left, for the resumption of the story of 
 elevation, too, of his courage should be admit- : his fortunes. The difficulties th;it stood in the 
 ted by all, since in the days of his greatest dan- ; wa y of a direct and simple narration of the lat- 
 ger, when assassins beset him round his bed ter, as they shaped their course from the open- 
 and at his board, he gave way to no base thought ing of his political influence in the matter of 
 of mere personal fear. His eminent and thought- ' the self-denying ordinance, have now been in a 
 ful sagacity has never been disputed, nor the ! measure dispersed, and the reader may follow 
 vastness of his comprehension, nor the marvel- ! " the g reat P oints of their track dearly and 
 
 lous intrepidity of his purposes, nor the inex- 
 haustible expedients and powers of his mind. 
 Is it possible to suppose, then, that all these 
 amazing faculties failed in their mission on 
 
 uninterruptedly. 
 
 At the pause in our narrative Cromwell was 
 left in consultation with Vane. Shortly after- 
 earth for they did fail without some rooted [ ward, namely, on the 23d of November, the
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 455 
 
 House of Commons professed itself greatly dis- 
 contented with the affair of Dennington Castle, 
 and made an order that on the following Mon- 
 day, Waller and Cromwell, two of the principal 
 officers who were members of that House, 
 should declare their whole knowledge and in- 
 formation respecting the late proceedings of 
 the conjoined armies. What was the sum of 
 Waller's declaration does not appear ; but 
 Cromwell at once seized the occasion to bring 
 all matters in dispute between himself and the 
 Earl of Manchester to a decision, in which oth- 
 er matters, not less important, would not less 
 be involved. 
 
 He at once rose from his place, therefore, 
 and alleged, according to Rushworth, that Man- 
 chester had always been backward to engage- 
 ments in battle, and against ending the war 
 with the sword, and had been the advocate of 
 suck a peace to which a victory in the field would 
 have been an obstacle ; that, since the taking of 
 York (as if he thought the king was now low 
 enough, and the Parliament too high), he had 
 declined and shifted off whatever tended to 
 further advantage upon the enemy, and espe- 
 cially at Dennington Castle ; " for here," pur- 
 sued Cromwell, " I showed him evidently how 
 this success might be obtained, and only desired 
 leave, with my own brigade of horse, to charge the 
 Icing's army in their retreat, leaving it in the 
 earl's choice, if he thought proper, to remain neu- 
 tral with the rest of his forces ; but, notwith- 
 standing my importunity, he positively refused 
 his consent, and gave no other reason but that, 
 if we met with a defeat, there was an end of 
 our pretensions : we should all be rebels and 
 traitors, and be executed and forfeited by law." 
 In continuation of his charges, Cromwell then 
 added, that, before his conjunction with the oth- 
 er armies, he had drawn his army into, and de- 
 tained it in, such situations as were favourable 
 to the enemy's designs, against many com- 
 mands of the committee of both kingdoms, and 
 with contempt and vilifying of those commands; 
 and since, sometimes against the council of 
 war, and sometimes deluding the council, had 
 neglected one opportunity with pretence of an- 
 other, and that again of a third, and at last per- 
 suading them that it was better not to fight at 
 all. In the details of his statement, White- 
 locke observes, Cromwell seemed (but cautious- 
 ly enough) to lay more blame upon the officers 
 of Essex's army than upon any other. He 
 adds, that Cromwell's narrative " gave great 
 satisfaction to the assembly to which it was 
 addressed." 
 
 Lord Manchester himself rose in the House 
 of Lords the day after, and observed to their 
 lordships that he had lately been in employment 
 in the armies, and that certain proceedings of 
 those armies had elsewhere been made a sub- 
 ject of censure : he therefore begged the House 
 would appoint a day on which he might give an 
 account of those transactions. The House at 
 once acceded, and fixed the next day but one. 
 
 Manchester's narrative, delivered on the lat- 
 ter day, is said to have been fabricated by the 
 united (and ever most worthily united) pens of 
 Skeldon Crawford and Denzil Hollis. No 
 doubt, however, there was a foundation of truth 
 in it, or the earl would not have been prevailed 
 upon to sign it. In some moment of greater 
 
 faith in Manchester's political creed than the 
 result warranted, Cromwell had spoken out 
 rather too plainly ; and in after annoyance with 
 his generals after intrigues, had as inconsid- 
 erately given way to rage. Perhaps there was 
 no inoonsiderateness, however, either in the 
 one or the other, for the charge, involving both, 
 did no harm to Cromwell in the English army 
 or with the English people ! 
 
 It was to this effect. He first accused 
 Cromwell, by his tardiness and disaffection, of 
 being more than any other person the cause 
 that the king had carried off his ordnance from 
 Dennington Castle without molestation. This 
 was tantamount to saying that Cromwell's ser- 
 vices not having been taken when they could 
 avail, they were, when utterly useless, only 
 tardily offered. Not contented, however, with 
 thus defending himself, Manchester added a 
 separate statement of certain speeches of Crom- 
 well, of deep concern to the peerage of Eng- 
 land, and to the good understanding subsisting 
 between England and Scotland. The sum of 
 these speeches appears to have been, that it 
 would never be well with England till the Earl 
 of Manchester was made plain Mr. Montague ;* 
 that the Scots had crossed the Tweed for no 
 other purpose than to establish Presbyterianism, 
 and that in that cause he would as soon draw his 
 sword against them as against the king ; and 
 lastly, that it was his purpose to form an army 
 of sectaries, which might dictate to both king 
 and Parliament such conditions as they should 
 think proper. t Manchester delivered both 
 these narratives in writing to the House on the 
 2d of December, and a formidable party appear- 
 ed to be getting up to defend them. Essex 
 suddenly arrived in London after his Cornish 
 exploits, and attended several days to his " du- 
 ty" in the House of Lords. 
 
 Meanwhile, measures of a stronger kind 
 were in contemplation against Cromwell, in 
 other places than in the House of Lords. 
 These are graphically related by Whitelocke : 
 "One evening very late," he tells us, "Maynard 
 and I were sent for by the lord-general to Es- 
 sex House, and there was no excuse to be ad- 
 mitted, nor did we know beforehand the occa- 
 sion of our being sent for : when we came to 
 Essex House, we were brought to the lord- 
 general, and with him were the Scots commis- 
 sioners, Mr. Hollis, Sir Philip Stapylton, Sir 
 John Meyrick, and divers others of his special 
 friends. After compliments, and that all were 
 set down in council, the lord-general, in general 
 terms having mentioned his having sent for 
 them on important business, desired the lord- 
 chancellor of Scotland to enter into the detail, 
 which he did in the following manner : ' Master 
 Maynard and Master Whitlock, I can assure 
 you of the great opinion both my brethren and 
 myself have of your worth and abilities, else 
 we should not have desired this meeting with 
 you ; and since it is his excellency's pleasure 
 
 * These are the earl's words: " I knew the lieutenant- 
 general to be a man of very deep designs ; and he has even, 
 ventured to tell me, that it never would be well with Eng- 
 land till I were Mr. Montague, and there were ne'er a lord 
 or peer in the kingdom." 
 
 t That advice was given thus: "My lord, if you will 
 stick firm to honest men, you shall soon find yourself at the 
 head of an army which shall give law to both king and 
 Parliament."
 
 456 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 that I should acquaint you with the matter upon 
 whilke your counsel is desired, I shall obey his 
 commands, and briefly recite the business to 
 you. You ken very weel that Lieutenant-gen- 
 eral Cromwell is no friend of ours, and since 
 the advance of our army into England, he hath 
 used all underhand and cunning means to take 
 off from our honour and merit in this kingdom : 
 an evil requital of all our hazards and services ; 
 but so it is, and we are nevertheless fully sat- 
 isfied of the affections and gratitude of the gude 
 people of this nation in the general. It is 
 thought requisite for us, and for the carrying 
 on of the cause of the twa kingdoms, that this 
 obstacle or remora may be removed out of the way, 
 whom we foresee will otherwise be no small 
 impediment to us, and the gude design we have 
 undertaken. He not only is no friend to us and 
 the government of our Church, but he is also no 
 well-wilier to his excellency, whom you and we 
 all have cause to love and honour ; and if he 
 be permitted to go on in his ways, it may, I 
 fear, endanger the whole business ; therefore 
 we are to advise of some course to be taken 
 for prevention of that mischief. You ken very 
 weel the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms, and 
 the union by the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 and if any be an incendiary between the twa na- 
 tions, how is he to be proceeded against 1 now the 
 matter is, wherein we desire your opinions, 
 what you tak the meaning of this word incen- 
 diary to be, and whether Lieutenant-general Crom- 
 well be not sicke an incendiary as is meant there- 
 by, and whilke way wud be best to tak to pro- 
 ceed against him, if he be proved to be sicke an 
 incendiary, and that will clcpe his wings from 
 soaring to the prejudice of our cause. Now 
 you may ken that by our law in Scotland we 
 clepe him an incendiary wha kindleth coals of 
 contention, and raiseth differences in the state 
 to the publick damage, and he is tanquam pub- 
 licus hostis patriie ; whether your law be the 
 same or not, you ken best who are mickle 
 learned therein, and therefore, with the favour 
 of his excellency, we desire your judgments in 
 these points.' Whitelocke, in answer, having 
 been also desired by Essex to deliver his opin- 
 ion, observed, ' that the sense of the word in- 
 cendiary was the same in both nations ; but 
 whether Cromwell was one, depended on 
 proofs ; if proofs were wanting, he was none ; 
 if such were at hand, he might be proceeded 
 against in Parliament.' " After farther advice 
 on the necessity of having solid grounds for 
 going upon any such charge, the cautious law- 
 yer added : " Next, as to the person of him 
 who is to be accused as an incendiary, it will 
 be fit, in my humble opinion, to consider his 
 present condition, and parts, and interest in the 
 Parliament (wherein Mr. Maynard and myself, 
 by our constant attendance in the House of 
 Commons, are the more capable to give an ac- 
 count to your lordships), and for his interest in 
 the army, some honourable persons here pres- 
 ent, his excellency's officers, are best able to 
 inform your lordships. / take Lieutenant-gen- 
 eral Cromwell to be a gentleman of quick and sub- 
 tle parts, and one who hath, especially of late, 
 gained no small interest in the House of Commons, 
 nor is wanting of friends in the House of Peers, 
 nor of abilities in himself to manage his own part, 
 or defence, to the best advantage. If this be so, 
 
 my lords, it will be more requisite to be well 
 prepared against him before he be brought upon 
 the stage, lest the issue of the business be not 
 answerable to your expectations." Maynard 
 having concurred in this opinion, the affair was 
 brought to a stand, and nothing came of it, 
 " though Mr. Hollis, and Sir Philip Stapylton, 
 and some others, spake smartly to the business, 
 and mentioned some particular passages, and 
 words of Cromwell's, tending to prove him to 
 be an incendiary ; and they did not apprehend 
 his interest in the House of Commons to be so 
 much as was supposed ; and they would will- 
 ingly have been upon the accusation of him. . 
 . . I had some cause to believe," Whitelocke 
 concludes. " that at this debate, some who 
 were present were false brethren, and informed 
 Cromwell of all that passed among us, and after 
 that Cromwell, though he took no notice of any 
 particular passages at that time, yet he seemed 
 more kind to me and Mr. Maynard than he had 
 been formerly, and carried on his design more 
 actively of making way for his own advance- 
 ment." 
 
 Such was the perilous condition of affairs 
 among the principal leaders of the Parliament- 
 ary armies at the close of the year 1644, when, 
 to the amazement and dismay of the Presby- 
 terians, the project of the Self-denying Ordi- 
 nance was, on the 9th of December, suddenly 
 brought forward in the House of Commons. 
 The circumstances attending this have been 
 minutely detailed in the life of Vane, and it 
 only remains to exhibit Cromwell as he ap- 
 peared in public connexion with them. 
 
 The House having resolved itself into a com- 
 mittee to consider of the sad condition of the 
 kingdom, in reference to the intolerable bur- 
 dens of the war, and the little prospect there 
 was of its being speedily brought to a conclu- 
 sion, there was " a general silence for a good 
 space of time," when Cromwell rose to address 
 them. His speech, even in the faint records 
 now alone preserved of it, appears to have 
 been masterly in the extreme. He began by 
 observing that " it was now a time to speak, or 
 forever to hold the tongue ; the important oc- 
 casion being no less than to save a nation out 
 of a bleeding, nay, almost dying condition, 
 which the long continuance of the war had al- 
 ready brought it into ; so that, without a more 
 speedy, vigorous, and effectual prosecution of the 
 war, casting off all lingering proceedings, like 
 soldiers of fortune beyond sea, to spin out a 
 war, we shall make the kingdom weary of us, 
 and hate the name of a Parliament. For what," 
 continued Cromwell, "do the enemy say 1 Nay, 
 what do many say that were friends at the be- 
 ginning of the Parliament 1 Even this, that the 
 members of both Houses have got places and 
 commands, and the sword into their hands ; 
 and, what by interest in Parliament, and what 
 by power in the army, will perpetually continue 
 themselves in grandeur, and not permit the 
 war speedily to end, lest their own power 
 should determine with it. This I speak here to 
 our own faces, it is but what others do utter abroad 
 behind our backs. I am far from reflecting on 
 any. I know the worth of those commanders, 
 members of both Houses, who are yet in pow- 
 er ; but if I may speak my conscience, without 
 reflection upon any, I do conceive, if the army
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 457 
 
 be not put into another method, and the war 
 more vigorously prosecuted, the people can 
 bear the war no longer, and will enforce you 
 to a dishonourable peace. But this," added 
 Cromwell, with consummate wisdom, " I would 
 recommend to your prudence, not to insist upon 
 any complaint or oversight of any commander-in- 
 chief, upon any occasion whatsoever ; for as I 
 must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, 
 so I know they can rarely be avoided in mili- 
 tary affairs ; therefore, waving a strict inquiry 
 into the causes of these things, let us apply 
 ourselves to the remedy which is most neces- 
 sary. And I hope we have such true English 
 hearts and zealous affections towards the gen- 
 eral weal of our mother-country, as no mem- 
 bers of either House will scruple to deny them- 
 selves and their own private interests for the 
 public good, nor account it to be a dishonour 
 done to them, whatever the Parliament shall 
 resolve upon in this weighty matter." Subse- 
 quently, on the same question, Cromwell took 
 an occasion to enforce his views, and reply to 
 the difficulties urged against them yet more 
 strongly. " The Parliament had," he said, 
 " done very wisely, in the entrance into the 
 war, to engage many members of their own in 
 the most dangerous parts of it, that the nation 
 might see that they did not intend to embark 
 them in perils of war, while themselves sat 
 securely at home out of gunshot, but would 
 march with them where the danger most 
 threatened ; and those honourable persons, 
 who had exposed themselves this way, had 
 merited so much of their country, that their 
 memories should be held in perpetual venera- 
 tion ; and whatsoever should be well done af- 
 ter them, would be always imputed to their 
 example ; but God had so blessed their army, 
 that there had grown up with it, and under it, 
 very many excellent officers, who were fit for 
 much greater charges than they were now 
 possessed of; and he desired them not to be 
 terrified with an imagination, that if the high- 
 est offices were vacant, they would not be able 
 to put as fit men into them ; for, besides that 
 it was not good to put so much trust in any arm 
 of flesh as to think such a cause as this de- 
 pended upon any one man, he did take upon 
 him to assure them that they had officers in their 
 army who were fit to be generals in any enterprise 
 in Christendom." For himself, he added, he 
 was quite ready to lay down his commission 
 of command in the army, since there was noth- 
 ing he so anxiously desired as that " an ordi- 
 nance might be prepared, by which it might be 
 made unlawful for any member of either House 
 of Parliament to hold any office or command 
 in the army, or any place or employment of 
 profit in the state." He concluded with an 
 enlargement upon " the vices and corruptions 
 which were gotten into the army ; the profane- 
 ness, and impiety, and absence of all religion ; 
 the drinking and gaming, and all manner of 
 license and laziness;" and said plainly, "that 
 till the whole army were new modelled, and gov- 
 erned under a stricter discipline, they must not 
 expect any notable success in anything they went 
 about." 
 
 The progress of this measure its defeat by 
 the Lords and the introduction of a second 
 measure with a similar object, but a less exten- 
 
 M M H 
 
 sive range, has been described in Vane's me- 
 moir. The first ordinance forbade any member 
 of either House of Parliament from bearing any 
 office, civil or military, during the war. The 
 second did not carry its prospect into the fu- 
 ture, but contented itself with merely dischar- 
 ging members of Parliament from the offices 
 they now held. This variation has been sup- 
 posed to have had reference to Cromwell, as 
 the law thus modified did not expressly forbid 
 the reappointment of officers so discharged. It 
 subsequently admitted into the House a body 
 of able and determined Republicans the Lud- 
 lows, Iretons, Sidneys, and Blakes, even be- 
 fore the effect of the purge had required an in- 
 fusion of new blood into that quarter on the 
 formation of the Commonwealth. Exceptions 
 were also voted, as in the first Self-denying 
 Ordinance, in favour of the commissioners of 
 the great seal, the commissioners of the ad- 
 miralty and navy, and of the revenue. This 
 ordinance passed into a law on the 3d of April ; 
 and the day before its introduction into the 
 Upper House, Essex, Manchester, and Denbigh 
 presented themselves in their places, and re- 
 signed their commissions. 
 
 The " new model" had meanwhile passed 
 the Lower House. It proposed that the mili- 
 tary force should consist of 7600 horse and 
 14,400 infantry, and be placed under the com- 
 mand of Sir Thomas Fairfax as lord-general, 
 assisted by Skippon in the quality of major- 
 general. Its arrangements had not been com- 
 pleted without much difficulty. Three armies 
 of 10,000 men each were reduced to one army 
 of 22,000. This could not be done without 
 considerable derangements of detail ; a number 
 of officers were withdrawn from the service, 
 because they were members of Parliament ; a 
 number, probably greater, were dismissed, be- 
 cause one army did not require so many as 
 three before had required. The men dismissed 
 were selected chiefly as dissolute or least de- 
 serving men. The soldiers were draughted 
 out of old regiments into new ; every thing, in 
 a manner, was changed. This could not be 
 without exciting singular discontents, and the 
 dismissed officers got up a party called Refor- 
 mados. 
 
 One circumstance, however, in the project 
 of the new model, provoked remark beyond 
 every other. The lord-general was named,* 
 and a man better qualified than Fairfax, not 
 less by his singular military talents than by the 
 circumstance (which even in the new model 
 had its weight, since it propitiated the preju- 
 dices of some, and offended the feelings of 
 none) of his immediate connexion with an old 
 aristocratic family, could not be found. A 
 major-general was named also Skippon, an 
 excellent and faithful soldier. Twenty-four 
 colonels were also specified, in the charge of 
 as many regiments. But a blank was left for 
 
 * I may add, that under this new model Sir Thomas Fair- 
 fax was not only appointed commander-in-chief, but also 
 invested with the power of nominating all the officers under 
 him, and with the execution of martial law. No mention 
 is made of the king's authority, nor is any clause for the 
 preservation of his person inserted in the ordinance; but 
 the general is directed to " lead his armies against all and 
 singular enemies, rebels, traitors, and other like offenders, 
 and every of their adherents, and with them to fight ; and 
 them to invade, resist, repress, subdue, pursue, slay, kill, 
 and put in execution of death, by all ways and means."
 
 458 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the name of the new lieutenant-general. That 
 the blank was left for the after insertion of the 
 name of Cromwell, no one can reasonably 
 doubt. Happy had it been, in all human prob- 
 ability, for the Commonwealth if the blank had 
 never been filled, supposing Cromwell's genius 
 still to have remained in aid and counsel of the 
 cause ; but the fatal result he aimed at was not 
 dreamed of then, and to have surrendered the 
 services of the hero of Marston Moor, at such 
 a crisis as the present, would have been to 
 throw an irrecoverable damp over this new and 
 grand undertaking which his genius had in- 
 spired, and only his genius, it was thought, 
 could conduct to a glorious issue. 
 
 The question of Cromwell's own sincerity in 
 proposing to resign his command under the 
 measure is surely not worth discussing. It 
 seems quite certain that he never contemplated 
 the possibility of his being called on however 
 ready he might profess himself to answer the 
 call in such a case to do any such thing. It 
 is not worth disguising the fact, that this or- 
 dinance was adopted less from its direct and 
 professed tendency, than from the collateral 
 and overpowering advantages that were to ac- 
 crue from it in the removal of the aristocratic 
 commanders, and in the reorganization, on the 
 plan of Cromwell's own regiments, of the en- 
 tire body of the army. Yet the observations 
 of two able, and, on such a question, impartial 
 historians, should not be withheld. Mr. Brodie 
 argues that Cromwell, when he proposed the 
 Self-denying Ordinance, must have acted from 
 disinterested motives, both because he was 
 himself to be subject to the operation of the 
 new law, and also because, if it had passed 
 when he first brought it forward, as he was not 
 at the moment engaged in any military em- 
 ployment, he could not have found a pretext 
 for continuing in the army. It was as late as 
 the 27th of February, this historian remarks, 
 that he was ordered by the Parliament, which 
 he had till then attended, to join Sir William 
 Waller (who had moved into the west), that he 
 might assist him in carrying relief to Melcombe, 
 as well as prevent levies from being made in 
 that neighbourhood for the service of the king ; 
 hence, had the Self-denying Ordinance and that 
 for the new model been passed as soon as was 
 expected, both these officers, before the date 
 just mentioned, must have been deprived of 
 their commands, and even rendered incapable 
 of any similar appointment. The conclusion 
 which Mr. Brodie would draw is of course 
 this : that in subsequently acting merely on suc- 
 cessive indulgences of leave from the House, 
 Cromwell obeyed an unforeseen difficulty from 
 which he could not escape. Dr. Lingard ar- 
 gues in the same strain, to the effect that his 
 continuation in the command was caused by a 
 succession of events which he could not pos- 
 sibly have foreseen, and could not in honour 
 escape from. " He had been sent," says that 
 historian, " with Waller to oppose the progress 
 of the Royalists in the west : on his return he 
 was ordered to prevent the junction of the royal 
 cavalry with their forces under the king, and 
 he then received a commission to protect the 
 associated counties from insult. While he 
 was employed in this service, the term ap- 
 pointed by the ordinance approached ; but Fair- 
 
 fax expressed his unwillingness to part with 
 so experienced an officer at such a crisis, and 
 the two Houses consented that he should re- 
 main forty days longer with the army. Before 
 they expired, the great battle of Naseby had 
 been fought : in consequence of the victory, the 
 ordinance was suspended three months in his 
 favour, and ever afterward the same indul- 
 gence was reiterated as often as it became ne- 
 cessary. 
 
 Be this as it may, "on the 10th of June, 
 1645," according to the journals of the House 
 of Commons, a letter was read in the Commons 
 from Sir Thomas Fairfax, and divers of the 
 chief officers of his army, dated at Sherrington 
 two days before, " desiring that Lieutenant- 
 general Cromwell might command the horse in 
 chief in Sir Thomas Fairfax his army." Where- 
 upon it was resolved that Sir Thomas Fairfax 
 be desired, if he thinks fit, " to appoint Lieu- 
 tenant-general Cromwell to command the horse 
 under Sir Thomas Fairfax as lieutenant-gen- 
 eral, during such time as this House shall please 
 to dispense with his attendance ; and that Sir 
 Thomas Widdrington prepare a letter to be 
 signed by Mr. Speaker, and forthwith sent to 
 Sir Thomas Fairfax, to acquaint him of this 
 vote." 
 
 Fairfax's letter ran in these words. " Upon 
 serious consideration how the horse of this 
 army may be managed to the best advantage of 
 the publique, which are at present without any 
 generall officer to command them, though as 
 considerable a body as any you have had since 
 the beginning of these unhappy troubles, we 
 have taken the boldnes humbly to desire that 
 this House would be pleased to appoint Lieut.- 
 gen. Cromwell to this service, while this hon. 
 House shall think fit to spare him from his at- 
 tendance in Parliament ; the generall esteem and 
 affection which he hath both with the officers and 
 souldiers of this whole army, his own personall 
 worth and ability for the employment, his great 
 care, diligence, courage, and faithfulnesse in the 
 services you have already employed him, with the 
 constant presence and blessing of God that have 
 accompanied him, make us look upon it as the 
 duty we owe to you and the publique, to make 
 it our humble and earnest suite (if it may seem 
 good to you) to appoint him unto this employ- 
 ment, which shall be received by us with that 
 thankfulness and acknowledgment of your fa- 
 vour which may best expresse how sensible we 
 are of so great an obligation, and how much 
 devoted to your and the kingdome's service."* 
 
 The new model had meanwhile been pro- 
 ceeding under Cromwell's direction. The men 
 who composed it belonged chiefly to the Inde- 
 pendents, and were selected after the rules 
 Cromwell had originally laid down. The char- 
 acter of this army, so constituted, has been in 
 other portions of this work placed before the 
 reader. They were, perhaps, the most remark- 
 able men who had ever, in any nation, taken 
 up arms for liberty. Each individual soldier 
 marched into battle with the sense of a glorious 
 martyrdom in case of death, and of divine se- 
 lection in case of life and triumph. One hand 
 
 * Merc. Brit., June 9 to 16, 1645. " This desire," adds 
 the journalist, was " assented to with all readiness by the 
 House of Commons, and no doubt but he is exercising tha 
 office already."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 459 
 
 held the Bible, the other the sword. For them 
 death had ceased his terrors, and by one over- 
 powering emotion, the sense of pain, of suffer- 
 ing, or fatigue had been in them completely 
 subdued. Not one of them but was a " vessel 
 of glory," set apart for the purposes of heaven. 
 And these soul-elevating thoughts, which gave 
 them a common hope of glory, gave them, too, 
 the united resolution to achieve it. No differ- 
 ences or jealousies struck between them on the 
 eve of a day of battle. Each man's voice rose 
 to heaven with that of his comrade in the same 
 words of hymn and praise : their united swords 
 were as one sword, "the sword of the Lord 
 and of Gideon." 
 
 Charles at this time was master of nearly 
 the whole of the west of England, had a pre- 
 ponderance in the midland counties, held power 
 even in the north, and was complete master of 
 Wales. In a few short weeks he knew not 
 where to turn ! 
 
 On the failure of the treaty of Uxbridge the 
 campaign of 1645 had commenced in earnest, 
 and Cromwell had already, in virtue of his first 
 dispensation from the House of Commons, and 
 before he received his commission under Fair- 
 fax, performed some important services in it. 
 The first was his interception of a body of 
 troops at Islip Bridge, proceeding from the west 
 towards Oxford, with the intention, it was 
 thought, of re-enforcing the king, and of en- 
 abling him to march with his artillery against 
 some of the garrisons held by the Parliamentary 
 forces on the banks of the Severn. Having 
 received secret intelligence of this, Cromwell 
 at once put himself at the head of a few chosen 
 squadrons, attacked and defeated the Royalists 
 with great slaughter, took several prisoners, 
 and made himself master of a standard which 
 the queen had recently presented to her own 
 regiment. Happening, too, at this time, to be 
 in the neighbourhood of Blessingdon House, 
 then a fortified place commanded by Colonel 
 Windebank, Cromwell suddenly made an as- 
 sault upon it while a number of ladies were 
 within its walls on a visit to the governor's 
 young wife. The terror of the women com- 
 pelled the colonel to listen to terms, and finally 
 to surrender the garrison, for which imbecility 
 he was soon afterward tried by a court-martial 
 at Oxford, and condemned to be shot. Nor 
 was the energetic soldier less successful in a 
 skirmish with Sir William Vaughan in the same 
 vicinity, whom, with the greater part of his 
 infantry, he is reported to have taken prisoner. 
 In truth, wherever he led the way, victory fol- 
 lowed. A reverse his regiment met with about 
 this time was suffered in his absence. He 
 had temporarily left his command on a mission 
 of some importance, when Goring, ordered to 
 that service by the king, executed a sudden and 
 masterly movement against a portion of his 
 troops, fell upon them while crossing the Isis, 
 near Woodstock, and routed them with some 
 loss and much confusion. This enabled the 
 king and Rupert to join their forces ; and hav- 
 ing done so, they marched in a northerly di- 
 rection. 
 
 Cromwell suspected his design, and commu 
 nicated with the House of Commons. Orders 
 were at once transmitted to the Scottish army, 
 then before Carlisle. They raised the siege, 
 
 advanced to the south, intercepted Charles, and 
 foiled his plan. The policy resolved on at the 
 constitution of the new model, and openly de- 
 clared by Cromwell, was to strike at the king, 
 and keep him constantly in pursuit Fairfax, 
 in the mean while, had sat down before Oxford. 
 Charles suddenly turned back, with great vigour 
 and resolution surprised and assaulted Leices- 
 ter, and carried it the very same day he sat 
 down before it. The garrison, to the amount 
 of 1500 men, immediately surrendered them- 
 selves prisoners, and the town was given up 
 to all the horrors of a place taken by storm, ag- 
 gravated by the extreme licentiousness that 
 then prevailed among the royal troops, who, as 
 if in daring defiance and scorn of the men of 
 the new model, had now become infinitely more 
 reckless and dissolute than before.* 
 
 Fairfax, never accustomed to rely solely 
 upon himself, began now to feel serious alarm 
 for the safety of the eastern counties, mingled 
 with a responsibility too heavy for himself to 
 bear. He wrote to the House of Commons, as 
 we have seen, to solicit the appointment and 
 co-operation of Cromwell ; then, having raised 
 the siege of Oxford, he directed a pursuit 
 against Charles, who had moved from Leices- 
 ter, fixed his headquarters at Daventry, and 
 there, while his soldiers ravaged and plundered 
 the adjoining country, betaken himself to the 
 pleasures of the chase. As Fairfax pursued 
 his silent march, he received from London the 
 welcome vote for which he had written, and 
 without an instant's delay, thus wrote to Crom- 
 well : " SIR, You will find, by the enclosed 
 vote of the House of Commons, a liberty given 
 me to appoint you lieutenant-general of the 
 horse of this army, during such time as that 
 House shall be pleased to dispense with your 
 attendance. You cannot expect but that I 
 should make use of so good an advantage, as 
 I apprehend this to be, to the public good, and 
 therefore I desire you to make speedy repair to 
 this army, and give order that the troops of 
 horse you had from hence, and what other 
 horse or dragoons can be spared from the at- 
 tendance of your foot in their coming up r march 
 hither with convenient speed ; and as for any 
 other forces you have there, I shall not need 
 to desire you to dispose of them as you shall 
 find most for the public advantage, which we 
 here apprehend to be, that they march towards 
 us by the way of Bedford. We are now quar- 
 tered at Wilton, two miles from Northampton, 
 the enemy still at Daventry. Our intelligence 
 is, that they intend to move on Friday, but 
 which way we cannot yet tell. There are, as 
 we hear, more horse than foot, and make their 
 horse their confidence : ours shall be in God. 
 I pray all possible haste towards your affection- 
 ate friend to serve you, THOMAS FAIRFAX." 
 This letter bore the date of the llth of June. 
 With astonishing promptitude, Cromwell, who 
 had evidently not been taken unawares by his 
 commission, drew together about 6000 chosen 
 horse, marched after Fairfax, and on the even- 
 ing of the 13th of June, came up with him at 
 
 * Charles was evidently much elated by these successes. 
 In a letter of June the 9th, he writes to the queen : " I may 
 (without being much too sanguine) affirm that, since this 
 rebellion, my affairs were never in so fair and hopeful a 
 way "King Charles'* Works, Letters, No. 37.
 
 '460 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Northampton, where he lay within six miles of 
 Charles. 
 
 The presence of Cromwell at once carried 
 life and energy into the camp of Fairfax. He 
 found the general still uncertain of the move- 
 ments of the king, and, without hesitation, sug- 
 gested the propriety of sending out a detach- 
 ment of horse to ascertain the exact position 
 of the Royalists, and to attack their rear should 
 they persist in retiring from the scene of ac- 
 tion. Cromwell, resolved to bring on a battle, 
 intrusted this service to Ireton, on whom he 
 could best rely, and who well justified his selec- 
 tion. 
 
 The night had scarcely fallen, when Ireton 
 moved silently out with a choice party of men, 
 charged and drove in the king's outposts, and 
 brought back with him several prisoners, from 
 whom all necessary intelligence as to the num- 
 ber and disposition of the enemy was immedi- 
 ately obtained. Cromwell, in great excite- 
 ment, declared for a " decisive action" on the 
 morrow. Fairfax acquiesced, and about an 
 hour before dawn on the morning of the 14th of 
 June, thQ whole army formed, and in deep si- 
 lence and admirable order began its march. 
 
 A strange and agitated scene had meanwhile 
 been acting in the camp of Charles. Ireton's 
 assault upon the outposts spread alarm with the 
 rapidity of wildfire ; officers, summoned out of 
 their beds to attend a council of war, were seen 
 hurrying towards the king's tent in abrupt ex- 
 citement and disordered dress, and after an 
 hour's consultation, the whole camp was order- 
 ed into motion. With that careless and char- 
 acteristic gallantry which, whatever their other 
 failings, never failed the Cavaliers, the officers 
 had resolved, notwithstanding their critical po- 
 sition, not only to risk, but to advance and of- 
 fer battle.* 
 
 This resolution taken, the army was at once 
 drawn up on a rising ground about a mile south 
 from Harborough, a position of a most advan- 
 tageous nature both for the foot, cavalry, and 
 ordnance. The main body of the infantry, 
 amounting to about 25,000, was put under the 
 command of Lord Ashley ; the right wing of 
 horse, being somewhat less numerous, was led 
 by Prince Rupert ; while the left wing, consist- 
 ing of cavalry from the northern counties, and 
 of some detachments from Newark, in all not 
 exceeding 1600, was intrusted to the charge 
 of Sir Marmaduke Langdale. In the reserve 
 were the king's life-guards, commanded by the 
 Earl of Lindsey, Prince Rupert's regiment of 
 foot, and the royal horse-guards, under Lord 
 Bernard Stuart, recently created Earl of Litch- 
 field. Here, after remaining in order of battle 
 till eight o'clock (still the busy and fatal morn- 
 ing of the 14th of June !), Charles began to 
 doubt the intelligence on which they had mo- 
 ved, when suddenly Prince Rupert, who had 
 dashed forward with his characteristic impetu- 
 osity upward of two miles in front of his men 
 to ascertain the intentions of Fairfax, galloped 
 back, and sent word throughout the line that 
 the enemy were about to turn their backs, and 
 
 * The rule of avoiding repetition of the same events in 
 these biographies has been throughout carefully observed. 
 It was necessary to transgress it in this instance, however, 
 gince the battle of Naseby, as described in the Life of Vane, 
 was merely general, and had no relation to the pecial ser- 
 vices of Cromwell. 
 
 that one fierce attack in pursuit would utterly 
 disperse them. The word was given ; Charles 
 put his army in motion ; and, relinquishing the 
 favourable ground he had originally occupied, 
 led his battalions into the plain, or fallow field, 
 about a mile in breadth, which separated Har- 
 borough from a village called Naseby. 
 
 Here, with no thought of retreat, the men of 
 the new model had been drawn up by their 
 great leaders. Here, at dawn in the morning, 
 having sung a psalm in praise of their God, 
 they had sat down composedly and in rank with 
 their arms in their hands. Some few troops 
 merely had been set in motion by Cromwell, 
 and miserably had Rupert, self-deceived, de- 
 ceived his unfortunate master ! 
 
 The position, a remarkably strong one, had 
 been selected by Cromwell, who, being satisfied 
 early in the march (from catching a glimpse of 
 a corps of Rupert's cavalry in motion) that the 
 king had doubled back on his pursuers, and de- 
 termined to give rather than receive battle, sug- 
 gested to Fairfax the fallow field near Naseby. 
 Along the ridge of a gentle eminence the men 
 were drawn up, the infantry in the centre, the 
 cavalry on either flank, and some twenty pieces 
 of artillery so well planted as to cover every 
 avenue of approach. Fairfax and Skippon com- 
 manded the main battle, Cromwell took the 
 right wing, and at his request, Fairfax gave 
 Ireton upon the field the rank of commissary- 
 general, and the command of the horse on the 
 left. The forces were nearly equal, and might 
 amount altogether to about 36,000 men. 
 
 Rupert began the battle, and charged Ireton 
 with such furious force that even the astonish- 
 ing resistance of that lion-like soldier opposed 
 the shock in vain. Again and again he strove 
 to rally his men, but Rupert hewed down every 
 thing before him. At the head of the last few 
 troops who had kept their ground, Ireton then 
 threw himself, with the terrible courage of 
 despair, on a body of the royal infantry ; 
 their pikes pierced him in the face and thigh, 
 he fell senseless from his horse, was taken 
 prisoner, and only in the subsequent rout re- 
 covered by his friends. His division was now 
 utterly dispersed, and Rupert, regardless, after 
 his impetuous fashion, of the fate of the main 
 body of the men engaged, rushed on after the 
 fugitives, drove them through their reserves 
 with the gay excitement that belonged to the 
 hunting-field rather than the collected resolu- 
 tion and foresight necessary in such a moment- 
 ous battle, and having reached the enemy's 
 cannon and baggage in the rear, only turned 
 round his jaded horsemen when they had lost 
 all farther opportunity of service. 
 
 Fairfax, meanwhile, maintained in the cen- 
 tre an unequal fight. Abandoning the privile- 
 ges of a captain, he grappled personally with 
 the foe, galloped through the thickest of the 
 fray, and, his helmet having been beaten to pie- 
 ces, still, bareheaded as he was, flamed resolu- 
 tion and courage everywhere among his men, 
 when the colonel of his body-guard, Charles 
 D'Oyley, threw himself before him with his own 
 helmet, entreating him not to hazard unduly so 
 rich a life. " 'Tis well enough, Charles," said 
 Fairfax, putting the proffered helmet by.* 
 
 * Whitelocke. This is possibly the same anecdote on 
 which the author of the " Flagellum" has got up a joke
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 461 
 
 But, with total rout upon the left wing, and 
 fearful uncertainty in the centre, Cromwell and 
 hie Ironsides now singly decided the battle. 
 Langdale had charged after Rupert's example, 
 but might as well have charged against a rock. 
 Recoiling from the steady shock of that iron 
 wall, Cromwell charged him in his turn, first 
 with a heavy fire of carbines, next at the sword's 
 point, routed the whole of his cavalry, sent 
 three squadrons after them to prevent their 
 rallying, and with the remaining four, which he 
 had held steadily in hand, wheeled furiously 
 round, and with loosened rein and spur in his 
 horse's flanks, led them on with overpowering 
 shock against the weary infantry engaged with 
 Fairfax. Not for an instant could the Royalists 
 resist that fell attack. They wavered, gave 
 way, were cut through and through, and fled in 
 all directions. One regiment alone preserved 
 its ground, and scarcely a man of it survived to 
 tell his courageous story. 
 
 Charles behaved with the bravery which nev- 
 er deserted him in war. At the head of the 
 cavalry that remained joined in the instant by 
 Rupert's weary stragglers he implored them 
 to follow their king, and stand the coming shock. 
 A terrible conviction of his hopeless ruin no 
 doubt then flashed upon him. " One charge 
 more," he exclaimed, " and we recover the 
 day." It was too late ; Rupert's cavalry were 
 already worn out by their chase, and the rest 
 had been panic-struck by the charge of the 
 Ironsides. Never was rout so triumphantly 
 complete. Two thousand men were left dead 
 upon the field. The Royalists who were made 
 prisoners were five thousand foot and three 
 thousand horse. There were also captured the 
 whole of Charles's artillery, eight thousand 
 stand of arms, above one hundred pair of col- 
 ours, the royal standard, the king's cabinet of 
 letters, his coaches, and the whole spoil of his 
 camp.* 
 
 against Cromwell. "A commander of the king's," says 
 that ingenious writer, " knowing Cromwell, advanced 
 smartly from the head of his troops to exchange a bullet 
 singly with him, and was with the like gallantry encoun- 
 tered by him, both sides forbearing to come in, till, their 
 pistols being discharged, the cavalier, with a slanting back- 
 blow of a broadsword, luckily cut the riband which tied his 
 murrion, and with a draw threw it off his head, and now 
 ready to repeat his stroke, his party came in and rescued 
 him, and one of them alighting, threw up his headpiece into 
 his saddle, which Oliver hastily catching, as being affright- 
 ed with the chance, clapped it the wrong way on his head, 
 and so fought with it the rest of the day." 
 
 * It may interest the reader to give the first account 6f 
 this memorable battle, which was published in the journals 
 of the time. The supplementary notices, too, from other 
 journals, are curious and interesting : " It hath pleased 
 God to engage our men with the enemy in a pitched battle 
 (as was then expected). We marched from Naseby early 
 on Saturday morning, June the 14th, and hearing the king's 
 army was near, we drew up into a body a mile or two from 
 Naseby, expecting to be engaged with the king, whose 
 horse suddenly after faced us till their foot drew up into 
 battalia. There never was such rejoicing and courageous 
 expressions used by soldiers as was then on both sides, both 
 seeming willing to put an end to these differences. After 
 we had recommended ourselves to the Almighty's protec- 
 tion, and gave the word (which was, on our tide, God is our 
 strength; on the king's side, Queen Mary), our warning 
 piece shot off, upon which Prince Rupert, who then com- 
 manded the right wing of the king's horse, rode with a full 
 career up towards our men, but went back. Our forlorn 
 hope and theirs in the mean time met, and played very hot 
 one upon the other, each seeking to gain the hill and wind, 
 which was, at length, equally divided betwixt both parties. 
 One of the Dutch princes (which we all suppose to be Ru- 
 pert) led up their right wing, and put our left to a shame- 
 ful retreat, though I confess two things may somewhat ex- 
 
 The first civil war was decided by this victo- 
 ry ; and so, it is evident, Cromwell at once 
 perceived, for nothing could equal his excite- 
 ment after the day was won. He led the pur- 
 suit for upward of twelve miles, returned to 
 Harborough (Haverbrowe it was then called), 
 and, before taking rest or refreshment after 
 toils that would have worn down the strength 
 of a score of ordinary men, took up his pen and 
 wrote news of the victory to the speaker of the 
 House of Commons. The letter of the second 
 officer in command reached Parliament a day 
 before the letter of the lord-general. The cir- 
 cumstance created some sensation, and no 
 doubt Cromwell intended that it should. The 
 news which was to dismay the Presbyterians 
 more than intelligence of a defeat would have 
 dismayed them, the victory which was to el- 
 evate Vane and the Independents into enthu- 
 siastic strength and joy, should fitly issue first 
 from him. And how the letter is written 
 with what an ill-subdued effort from exultation 
 in what curt regal sentences with what res- 
 olute purpose against his political adversaries 
 in the House ! It is addressed to the speaker, 
 and bears date from " Haverbrowe, June the 
 14th, 1645. 
 
 " SIR, Being commanded by you to this ser- 
 vice, I think myself bound to acquainte you 
 with the good hand of God towards you and 
 us. Wee marched yesterday after the kinge, 
 whoe went before us from Daventree to Hav- 
 erbroue, and quartered about six miles from him. 
 
 cuse them: First, the king's men had some marks to know 
 each other by in the fight, and so they knew them not till 
 they were upon them ; secondly, in that they were new 
 raised men out of the associated counties, better armed 
 than hearted. Prince Rupert charged on them with such 
 gallantry (as few in the army ever saw the like), and beat 
 them down the hill to the very train, where Col. Bartlett's 
 regiment and the firelocks that guarded the train beat them 
 from it, and won the ground our horse had lost with as 
 much resolution as the enemy gained it. In the meaa 
 while, the general who commanded the body of foot behaved 
 himself very courageously in the front of the army ; and 
 Major-general Skippon, who is wounded in the side, but 
 hopes of recovery, fell upon the enemy's foot ; Lieut. -gen. 
 Cromwell charging before them, with his horse broke into 
 the king's body, routed them, seized upon all their train 
 and cannon, took 4000 foot and horse prisoners, their stand- 
 ard, ensigns, 70 carriages, 12 pieces of ordnance, two of 
 them being demy-cannon, took the king's own wagons, and 
 in one of them a cabinet of letters, supposed to be of great 
 consequence. Four hundred of their men slain in the field, 
 besides many others, which were found dead in the way, 
 and 7000 arms. Lieut.-gen. Cromwell pursued them to Lei- 
 cester-towns-end, and still remains near it. On our side, 
 we lost at most not above 100 men, whereof one Col. Fran- 
 cis, and two captains ; all which, as near as I can guess, 
 was done in the space of an hour and a half." Extract from 
 a Letter, signed Henry Maud, Harborough, June 15. Week- 
 ly Account, June 11 to 18, 1645. ..." A list of the pris- 
 oners, ordnance, ammunition, <fec., taken by Sir Thomas 
 Fairfax, near Naseby, the 14th of June, 1645. 4000 pris- 
 oners, 600 slain, 4 colonels, 7 lieut.-colonels, 12 majors, 60 
 captains, 8000 arms, 40 barrels of powder, 12 pieces of ord- 
 nance, 200 carriages, 4 coaches, 2 sumpters, one of the 
 king's, the other Prince Rupert's ; all the king's plate, and 
 good store of money. Ordered, that the messenger that 
 brought the first intelligence from the general shall have 
 40 ; that a messenger from Lieut.-gen. Cromwell shall have 
 20." Weekly Account, June 11 to 18, 1645. . . . "Or- 
 dered, that Lieut.-general Cromwell continue with the ar- 
 my three months after the 50 days assigned him are ex- 
 pired. / cannot believe that any will repine at so necessary 
 an order." Merc. Brit., June 16 to 23, 1645. . . . "We 
 hear Cromwell's sometime regiment are grown wiser, if it 
 may be so called, for having helped to beat the enemy out 
 of the field ; they did not, as at Marston Moor, leave them 
 that fovght least to get most, but fell upon the good booty a* 
 well as others : some had jewels, others diamond rings, oth- 
 ers gold, some were content with silver, good apparel, horses, 
 and what else they could get." Mod. Intel., 19 to 26, 1645.
 
 462 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 This day wee marched towards him. He drew 
 out to meet us. Both armies engaged. Wee, 
 after three howers fight, very doubtful!, at last 
 routed his armie ; killed and tooke about 5000, 
 very many officers, butt of what quallitie wee 
 yett know not. Wee took also about 200 car- 
 rag all he had, and all hisgunnes, beinge 12 in 
 number, whereof 2 were demie-cannon, 2 de- 
 mie culveringes, and (I thinke) the rest sacers. 
 Wee pursued enemie from 3 miles short of 
 
 Ha to nine beyond, even to sight of Lei- 
 
 ces , whither the kinge fled. Sir, this is 
 
 none other butt the hand of God, and to him 
 alone belongs the glorie, wherein none are to 
 share with him. The general served you with 
 all faithfulnesse and honour ; and the best com- 
 mendations I can give him is, that I d say he 
 attributes all to God, and would rather peiish 
 than assume to himselfe ; which is an honest 
 and a thrivinge way, and yett as much for brave- 
 ry may be given to him in this action as to a 
 man. Honest men served you faiihfully in this 
 action. Sir, they are trustie. I besceche you, in 
 the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish 
 this action may begett thankfulnesse and hu- 
 militie in all that are concerned in it. He that 
 venters life for the libertie of his countrie, I wish 
 he trust God for the libertie of his conscience, and 
 you for the libertie he fights for. In this he rests 
 whoe is your most humble servant, 
 
 " OLIVER CROMWELL."* 
 But not in the affairs of battle does the writer 
 rest till all his work is done. After Naseby he 
 overspread the land with his victorious forces, 
 as with a devastating torrent. Leicester was 
 immediately retaken ; Taunton, besieged by 
 the dissolute Goring and defended by the valiant 
 Blake, was relieved ; Goring himself was beat- 
 en, and obliged to retreat to Bridgewater. Here 
 the prudence, not less than the valour, of Crom- 
 well, shone forth most eminently. An advanced 
 party of horse, with inconsiderate rashness, 
 rushed forward to charge the enemy, when, 
 with consummate presence of mind, he checked 
 them until the whole of the cavalry had come 
 up, and then putting himself at their head, at- 
 tacked the Royalists with such vigour and suc- 
 cess, that nearly their whole body of foot be- 
 came his prisoners, while he captured also the 
 greater part of their ordnance. From this he 
 pushed on against the town itself, which he car- 
 ried by storm against a heavy garrison. While 
 engaged in this gallant work, be had a very nar- 
 row escape from a musket-ball of the enemy.f 
 
 * This letter is taken from the MS. in the British Muse- 
 um. As a matter of course, Cromwell's power was visibly 
 impressed on the people more strongly than ever by the 
 circiinistanr.es of this victory. On the 16th of June, the 
 very day the news of their great success reached Parlia- 
 ment, it was resolved that his services should be continued 
 in the army under Sir Thomas Fairfax during the pleasure 
 of both Houses. The Lords restricted it to three months. 
 On the 8th of August, this dispensation was renewed for 
 four months longer ; and on the 23d of January following, 
 it was extended to six months additional. After this there 
 were no more resolutions about Cromwell's absence from 
 the lower House. He took it for granted that he had leave ; 
 " no one offered to move for recalling him ; and he soon at- 
 tained so great a power, that no one with safety could have 
 dared to make such a motion." 
 
 t "On Friday last, Lieut.-gen. Cromwell, with some of 
 his officers, made within twice pistol-shot of Bridgewater, 
 to view the town ; where, making some stay upon a dig- 
 course, the enemy shot a brace of musket bullets, which 
 killed a cornet of his regiment near him, but the lieut.-gen. 
 was preserved." Merc. Civ., July 10 to 17, 1645. 
 
 Nothing at this period could exceed his vigi- 
 lance. With every energy apparently taxed 
 by the war, he yet held a careful watch equally 
 on friends and foes, and such as professed 
 themselves to be neither the one nor the other. 
 A kind of third army had recently sprung up in 
 the western counties, calling themselves club- 
 men, ostensibly with the purpose to defend 
 themselves from the rapine and violence of the 
 Royalists, but whose operations were found to 
 be, in reality, as oppressive to the peacefully 
 disposed as those of the Cavaliers had ever 
 been. It was the peculiar interest of the Par- 
 liament at this moment to seem equally and 
 eminently regardful of the comfort and welfare 
 of all, and this escaped not Cromwell. By a 
 masterly union of moderation and firmness he 
 at once dispersed these club-men, and thus, in 
 an animated letter to his general in chief (dated 
 August 4, 1645), described the action : " SIR, 
 I marched this morninge towards Shaftsburie ; 
 in my way I found a partie of club-men gather- 
 ed together, about two miles of this side of the 
 towne towards you, and one Mr. Newman in 
 the head of them, whoe was one of those that 
 did attend you at Dorchester with Mr. Hollis : 
 I sent to them to knowe the cause of their 
 meetinge ; Mr. Newman came to me, and told 
 me that the club-men in Dorset and Wilts, to 
 the number of ten thousand, were to meet about 
 their men which were taken away at Shafts- 
 burie, and that their intendment was to secure 
 themselves from plunderinge. To the first, I 
 told them, that although noe account was due 
 to them, yett I knew the men were taken by 
 your authoritie to be tried judicially for raisinge 
 a third partie in the kingdome, and if they should 
 be found guiltie, they must suffer accordinge to 
 the nature of their offence ; if innocent, I as- 
 sured them you would acquit them. Upon this 
 they said, if they have deserved punishment, 
 they would not have anythinge to doe with 
 them, and soe were quieted as to that point. . . . 
 For the other, I assured them that it was your 
 great care not to suffer them in the least to be 
 plundered, and that they should defend them- 
 selves from violence, and bring to your armie 
 such as did them any wrong, where they should 
 be punished with all severitie ; upon this, very 
 quietlie and peaceably they marched away to 
 their houses, being very well satisfied and con- 
 tented. Wee marched on to Shaftsburie, where 
 wee heard a great bodie of them was drawn 
 together about Hamilton Hill, where indeed 
 neer two thousand were gathered ; I sent a 
 forlorne hope of about fifty horse, whoe com- 
 ming very civilie to them, they fired upon them, 
 and they desiringe some of them to come to me, 
 were refused with disdain. They were drawn 
 into one of the old Camps, upon a very high 
 Hill. I sent one Mr. Lee to them, to certifie 
 the peaceableness of my intentions, and to de- 
 sire them to peaceableness, and to submit to 
 the Parliament ; they refused, and fired at us. 
 I sent him a second time, to lett them know 
 that if they would lay downe their Armes, noe 
 wrong should be done them. They still (through 
 the animation of their leaders, and especially 
 two vile Ministers) refused. I commanded 
 your Captain-Lieutenant to draw up to them, 
 to be in readinesse to charge, and if upon his 
 fallings on they would lay downe armes, to
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 463 
 
 accept them, and spare them. When wee came 
 neer, they refused his offer, and lett flie at him ; 
 killed about two of his men, and at least foure 
 horses. The passage, not to be for above three 
 abreast, kept them out, whereupon Major De- 
 burgh wheeled about, got in the rear of them, 
 beat them from the work, and did some small 
 execution upon them I believe, killed not 
 twelve of them, butt cutt very many and have 
 taken about 300, many of which are poor sillie 
 creatures, whom if you please to lett me send home, 
 they promise to be very du-tifull for time to come, 
 and will be hanged before they come out againc. 
 The ringleaders which we have I intend to 
 bring to you: they had taken divers of the Par- 
 liament Souldiers Prisoners, besides Col. Fines 
 his Men, and used them most barbarouslie, 
 bragginge they hoped to see my Lord Hoptons 
 that he is to command them. They expected 
 from Wilts great store, and gave out they meant 
 to raise the siege at Sherburne when they were 
 all mett. Wee have gotten great store of their 
 armes, and they carried few or none home. 
 Wee quarter about ten miles off, and purpose 
 to draw our quarters neer to you to-morrow. 
 Your most humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL." 
 After this Sherburne Castle surrendered, and 
 before we have time to admire the bravery and 
 rapidity of the movement which effected it, the 
 lieutenant-general has sat down before Bristol, 
 in company with Fairfax, whom he advises to 
 storm a place of such importance, if other 
 methods are not of speedy avail. Prince Ru- 
 pert, who held it with about 5000 horse and 
 foot, had declared that nothing should induce 
 him to surrender, unless, as he had reason to 
 fear, the inhabitants proved disaffected. Crom- 
 well's counsel having been suddenly taken, 
 however, by Fairfax, the attack was made with 
 so much fury, that, though Rupert repelled it 
 for a while, he feared to run the hazard of a 
 second assault, and delivered up the city, and 
 with it a large proportion of the king's mag- 
 azines and warlike stores.* 
 
 * Cromwell's graphic account of this siege is given in the 
 journals of the time : " A letter from Lieut. -gen. Cromwell 
 to the Parliament, dated at Bristol, the 14th of September, 
 was to this effect : That about one of the clock in the 
 morning, Thursday, the llth instant, Sir Thomas Fairfax 
 stormed the city. The general's signal when to fall on 
 was the burning straw, U|>on which the men went on with 
 great resolution, and very presently recovered the. line, 
 making way for the horse to enter. Col. Montague and 
 Col. Pickering, who stormed at Lawford's Gate, where was 
 a double work well filled with men and cannon, presently 
 entered, and with great resolution beat the enemy from 
 their works, and possessed their cannon without any con- 
 siderable loss, and laid down the bridges for the horse to 
 enter. Major Uesborough commanded the horse, who very 
 gallantly seconded the foot ; then our foot advanced to the 
 city walls; there they possessed the great gate against the 
 Castle Street, wherein were put 100 men, who made it 
 good. Sir Hardress Waller, witli his and the general's 
 regiment, with no less resolution, entered on the other side 
 of Lawford's Gate towards Avon River, and put themselves 
 into an immediate conjunction with the rest of the brigade. 
 During this, Col. Rainsborough and Col. Hammond attempt- 
 ed Prior's Hill Fort and the line downward towards Froume, 
 Col. Birch and the major-general's regiment being to storm 
 towards Froorne River. Col. Hammond possessed the line 
 immediately, and beat the enemy from it, and made way 
 for our horse to enter. Cul. Rainsborough, who h:id the 
 hardest task of all at Prior Fort, attempted it, and fought 
 very near three hours for it ; and, indeed, there was great 
 despair of carrying the place, it being exceeding high, a 
 ladder of thirty rounds scarce reaching to the top thereof; 
 but his resolution was such that he would not give it over. 
 The enemy had four pieces of cannon upon it, which they 
 played with round and case shot upon our men. His Lieut.- 
 col. Bowen and others were two hours at push of pike, 
 
 Here, during the parley which preceded the 
 capitulation, Cromwell, with Fairfax, again had 
 a marvellous escape from the enemy. They 
 were sitting together on the top of Prior's Hill 
 Fort (which had been taken in the storming at- 
 tempt), when a piece of ordnance in the castle 
 being directed against that point, the ball gra- 
 zed the fort within two hands' breadth of them, 
 without doing the slightest injury to either. 
 These were incidents Cromwell well knew how 
 to turn to account, and the word therefore soon 
 ran along the camp of the besiegers that none 
 but an atheist could doubt that such a capture, 
 attended with circumstances so remarkable, 
 must have been the work of the Lord. So also 
 he wrote to the speaker : " It may be thought 
 that some praises are due to these gallant men, 
 of whose valour so much mention is made. 
 Their humble suit to you, and all that have an 
 interest in this blessing, is, that in the remem- 
 brances of God's praises they may be forgotten. 
 It is their joy that they are instruments of 
 God's glory and their country's good ; it is their 
 honour that God vouchsafes to use them. Sir, 
 they that have been employed in this service 
 know that faith and prayer obtained this city for 
 you ; I do not say ours only, but of the people 
 of God with you, and all England over, who 
 have wrestled with God for a blessing in this 
 very thing. Our desires are, that God may be 
 glorified by the same spirit of faith, by which 
 we ask all our sufficiency, and having received 
 it. it's meet that he have all the praise."* 
 
 Round every portion of this country, like a 
 tempest, he now swept with his victorious army. 
 Passing from Bristol to Devizes, he summoned 
 that town to surrender. " Win it and wear it," 
 was the answer of Sir Charles Lloyd, the gov- 
 ernor. Cromwell did both. The place was 
 carried by assault, and the greatest moderation 
 shown towards its gallant defenders. After 
 this he stormed Berkeley Castle, and threw 
 himself before Winchester, which surrendered 
 by capitulation. t And now, so severely strict 
 
 standing upon the pallisadoes, but nevertheless they could 
 not enter. Col. Hammond being entered the line, Capt. 
 Ireton, with a forlorn of Col. Birch's regiment, interposed 
 with his horse between the enemy's horse, and Col. Ham- 
 mond received a shot with two pistol bullets, which broke 
 his arm, but the entrance of Col. Hammond did storm the 
 fort on that part which was inward ; by which meant. Col. 
 Riinsborough and Col. Hammond's men entered the fort, 
 and immediately put to the sword almost all in it. And as 
 this was the place of most difficulty, so of most loss to us on 
 that siile, and of very great honour to the undertaker. Be- 
 ing thus far possessed of the enemy's works, the town was 
 fired in three places by the enemy, wh;ch we could not put 
 out, which began to be a great trouble to the general and 
 all his officers, that so famous a city should be wasted ; but, 
 whilst they were viewing that sad spectacle, the prince 
 sent a trumpet to the general, desiring a treaty for the sur- 
 render, and so the fire was quenched, and articles agreed 
 on, as you have formerly heard." Merc. Vivid., Sept. 17-20, 
 1045. ' 
 
 * In the Kingdom's Weekly Intelligencer we find the 
 following, which strikingly illustrates the use and value of 
 such letters as this : " On the Lord's day, Sept. 21, accord- 
 ing to order of Parliament, Lieut.-gen. Cromwell's letter 
 of the taking of Bristol was read in several congregations 
 about London, and thanks returned to Almighty God for the 
 admirable and wonderful reducing of that city. The letter 
 of that renowned commander is well worth observation, and 
 especially these pious and self-denying expressions therein 
 are very remarkable." 
 
 t A characteristic incident of this surrender is thus no- 
 ticed in one of the journals : " We this day received intel- 
 ligence that Lieut. -gen. Cromwell was come before Win- 
 chester with a resolution not to depart from it until he had 
 reduced both town and castle to the obedience of the Par- 
 liament. The city made some opposition, contrary to his
 
 464 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 was Cromwell in exacting compliance from his castle was well manned with 680 horse and 
 own army with its articles, that, when infor- foot, there beinge neer 200 Gentlemen, Officers, 
 mation was laid before him by the vanquished ; and their Servants ; well victualled with 15,000 
 that some of his soldiers had plundered them 1 wait of Cheese, very great store of wheat and 
 on leaving the city, contrary to the terms grant- j beer, near 20 barrels of powder, 7 peeces of 
 ed them, he ordered the offenders to be tried by ! Cannon ; the workes were exceedinge good and 
 
 court-martial, at which they were sentenced to 
 death ; whereupon he directed the unfortunate 
 men, who were six in number, to cast lots for 
 the first sufferer, and, after his execution, sent 
 the remaining five, with a suitable explanation 
 of the matter, to Sir Thomas Glenham, gov- 
 ernor of Oxford, requesting him to deal with 
 them as he thought fit : a piece of conduct 
 which so charmed the Royalist officer, that he 
 immediately returned the men to Cromwell, 
 with a grateful compliment and expressions of 
 much respect.* 
 
 In his account of the surrender of this city, 
 again Cromwell wrote in his old and service- 
 able strain. " SIR," he said, " I came to Win- 
 chester on the Lord's day, the 28th of Septem- 
 ber, with Col. Pickering, commandinge his 
 own, Col. Montague's, and Sir Hardresse Wal- 
 ler's Regiments ; after some dispute with the 
 Governour, wee entered the towne. I sum- 
 moned the Castle, was denyed ; whereupon 
 wee fell to prepare batteries, which wee could 
 not perfect (some of our Gunnes beinge out of 
 
 strong. It is very likely it would have cost 
 much blood to have gained it by storme ; wee 
 have not lost 12 men. This is repeated to you, 
 that God may have all the praise, for it is all 
 his due. Sir, I rest your most humble Servant, 
 
 "OLIVER CROMWELL." 
 After Winchester, Basing fell before him. 
 This was the seat of the Marquis of Winches- 
 ter, one of the castellated mansions of those 
 days which had been thought impregnable, hav- 
 ing been previously assaulted in vain by Colonels 
 Norton and Harvey and Sir William Waller. To 
 Cromwell, however, " who never failed in any 
 enterprise he undertook," even Basing surren- 
 dered, and with its master, the marquis himself, 
 became his own. As soon as he had ascer- 
 tained his complete success, he thus graphical- 
 ly described it (in a letter dated Basingstoke, 
 14th October, 1645) to the speaker : " SIR, I 
 thanke God I can give you a good account ol 
 Bazinge. After our Batteries were placed, wee 
 setled the several! posts for the storme ; Col. 
 Dalbeire was to be on the north side of the 
 
 Order) untill Friday followinge. Our batterie | House next the Grange ; Col. Pickering on his 
 was six gunnes, which beinge finished, after j left hande, and Sir Hardresse Waller's and 
 
 one fireinge round, I sent him a second Sum- 
 mons for a treaty, which they refused, where- 
 upon wee went on with our Worke, and made 
 a breach in the Wall neer the Blacke Tower, 
 which after about 200 shot wee thought storm- 
 able, and purposed on Munday morninge to at- 
 tempt it. On Sunday night, about ten of the 
 Clocke, the Governour beat a parley, desiringe 
 to treat. I agreed unto it, and sent Col. Ham- 
 mond and Major Harrison in to him, whoe 
 agreed upon these enclosed Articles. Sir, this 
 is the addition of another mercie ; you see God 
 is not weary in doinge you good. I confesse, 
 sir, his favour to you is as visible, when he 
 comes by his power upon the hearts of your 
 Enimies, makinge them quitt places of strength 
 to you, as when he gives courage to your Soul- 
 diers to attempt hard thinges. His goodnesse 
 in this is much to be acknowledged ; for the 
 
 expectation ; but, having fire 1 the bridge, he quickly found 
 a means to enter the city and subdue it. We hear that he 
 did send unto the Bishop of Winchester, and offered him a 
 guard to secure his person, but the bishop, flying into the 
 castle, refused the courtesy. Afterward, the castle being 
 begun to be battered by two pieces of ordnance, he sent to 
 the lieut.-gen., giving him thanks for the great favour of- 
 fered to him, and being now more sensible what it was, he 
 desired the enjoyment of it; to whom the wise lieut.-gen. 
 replied, that since he made not use of the courtesy, but wil- 
 fully did run away from it, he must partake of the same con- 
 dition as the others who are with him in the castle, and if he 
 were taken, he must expect to be used as a prisoner of war." 
 Diary or ex. Jour., Oct. 2-29, 1645. 
 
 * A mistake in regard to the place was committed re- 
 specting this incident in the newspaper notices of it : 
 " Cromwell inclines to move no faster than his brigade : he 
 went from Blandford to Cerne the 22d. At Blandford he 
 had a council of war, at which was condemned six troopers 
 to die : one was the next morning (to whose lot it fell) to be 
 hanged in the head of the army ; the other five are to be 
 sent to the enemy, with a protestation against a detestation 
 of the fact from the Gen. Excellency : when they come 
 there, they may do their pleasure with them. Their of- 
 fences were the violation of a convoy, wherein the Lord 
 Ogle suffered, and likewise of the articles at Langford ; yet 
 the goods were restored to the owners." Mod. Int.. Oct. 
 23-30, 1645. 
 
 Col. Montague's regiments next him. Wee 
 stormed this morninge after six of the Clocke. 
 The signall for fallinge on was the fireinge 
 foure of our Cannon, which being done, our 
 men fell on with great resolution and cheerful- 
 nesse. Wee tooke the two houses without any 
 considerable losse to ourselves. Col. Pickering 
 stormed the new House, passed through, and 
 got the gate of the old House, whereupon they 
 summoned a parley, which our men would not 
 heare. In the mean time, Col. Montague's and 
 Sir Hardresse Waller's Regiments assaulted the 
 strongest worke, where the enimy kept his Court 
 of Guard, wh ich with great resolution they recov- 
 ered, beating the enimy from a whole culverin, 
 and from that worke : which havinge done, they 
 drew their ladders after them, and got over an- 
 
 could enter. In this Sir Hardresse Waner, 
 performinge his duty with honour and dilligence, 
 was shott on the arme, butt not dangerous ; 
 wee have had little losse ; many of the enimies 
 our men put to the Sword, and some officers 
 of quallitie. Most of the rest wee have Prison- 
 ers, amongst which the Marquisse, and Sir 
 Robert Peake, with divers other Officers, whom 
 I have ordered to be sent up to you. Wee 
 have taken about ten peeces of Ordnance, with 
 much Ammunition, and our Souldiers a good 
 encouragement. I humblie offer to you to 
 have this place utterly slighted, for these fol- 
 lowinge reasons : It will aske about eight hun- 
 dred men to manage it ; it is no frontier ; the 
 Country is poore about it ; the place exceedingly 
 ruined by our batteries and morter pieces, and a 
 fire which, fell upon the place since our takings it. 
 If you please to take the garizon at Farnham, 
 some out of Chichester, and a good part of the 
 foot which were here under Dalbeire, and make 
 a strong quarter at Newberry with three or 
 foure troupes of horse, I dare be confident it
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 465 
 
 would not only be a curb to Dennington, but a 
 security and a frontier to all these parts, inas- 
 much as Newbery lyes upon the River, and 
 will prevent any incurtion from Dennington, 
 Wallingford, or Farringdon into these parts, 
 and by lyinge there, will make the trade most 
 secure betweene Bristol and London for all car- 
 riages ; and I believe the Gentlemen of Sussex 
 and Hampshire will with more cheerfulnesse 
 contribute to maintaine a garizon on the fron- 
 tier than in their Bowells, which will have lesse 
 safety in it. Sir, I hope not to delay, butt 
 inarch towards the west to-morrow, and to be 
 as diligent as I may in my expedition thither. 
 I must speake my Judgement to you, that if you 
 intend to have your worke carried on, Recruits 
 of foote must be had, and a course taken to pay 
 your Armie, else believe me, Sir, it may not be 
 able to answear the worke you have for it to 
 doe. I intrusted Col. Hammond to wait upon 
 you, whoe was taken by a mistake whilst wee 
 lay before this Garizon, whome God safely de- 
 livered to us to our great joy, but to his losse 
 of almost all he had, which the Enimy tooke 
 from him. The Lorde grant that these mercies 
 may be acknowledged with all thankfulnesse. 
 God exceedingly abounds in his goodnesse to us, 
 and wilt not be weary until righteousnesse and 
 peace meet, and that he hath brought forth a glo- 
 rious worke for the happinesse of this poore king- 
 dome; wherein desires to serve God and you 
 with a faithfull hand, your most humble servant, 
 " OLIVER CROMWELL." 
 
 Still victoriously sweeping on, the irresistible 
 commander of horse next set himself down 
 before Langford House, near Salisbury, which 
 at the first summons surrendered to him. Post- 
 ing then beyond Exeter, he fought Lord Went- 
 worth at Bovey Tracy, and took from him 500 
 prisoners, horse and foot, with six standards, 
 of which one was the king's. Next, uniting 
 with Fairfax, they in conjunction took Dart- 
 mouth by storm, and defeated Lord Hopton, 
 after a very gallant resistance, at Torrington ; 
 whence, pursuing the last remains of the Roy- 
 alist army into Cornwall, mutiny and licentious- 
 ness did the work of victory, their commander 
 being obliged to break them up, with the ex- 
 ception of a few who retired with him into 
 Pendinnis Castle. Prince Charles, from whom 
 Lord Hopton's forlorn charge had been dele- 
 gated, had previously fled for safety, with sev- 
 eral noblemen of his party, to the isles of Scil- 
 ly. Sir Jacob Astley held the king's last re- 
 maining force of 3000 cavalry. But Sir Jacob 
 also being defeated and made a prisoner, there 
 remained not an enemy to the Parliament in 
 the open field. " Now," said Astley, when his 
 captors carried him off to their headquarters, 
 " you have done your work, and may go to 
 play ; unless [but how prophetical was the 
 reservation !] you choose to fall out among your- 
 selves." 
 
 Charles had meanwhile, hopeless of another 
 rally before these astonishing successes, shut 
 himself up in Oxford. But even against Oxford 
 itself was the triumphant army of the west, 
 under Fairfax and Cromwell, now approaching. 
 The unhappy king, in his misery, saw only one 
 resource. With clipped beard and in the dis- 
 guise of his attendant's groom, he escaped out 
 of Oxford at three o'clock in a sharp morning 
 
 N N N 
 
 of spring, and took his way to the Scottish 
 camp. 
 
 Cromwell had meanwhile been received in 
 London with extraordinary honours. The in- 
 stant he entered the House the members rose 
 and welcomed him, and the speaker, in their 
 name, after an elaborate eulogium, delivered 
 " the hearty thanks of the House for his great 
 and many services." But the gratitude of Par- 
 liament was not confined to such demonstra- 
 tions of their confidence and esteem. In the 
 latter end of the year 1645, an annuity of 2500 
 appears to have been granted to Cromwell and 
 his family for the services which he had per- 
 formed to the public ; and soon afterward it 
 was ordered by the House of Commons, " that 
 all the lands of the Earl of Worcester, Lord 
 Herbert, and Sir John Somerset, his sons, in 
 the county of Southampton, be settled upon 
 Lieutenant-general Cromwell and his heirs, to 
 be accounted as part of the 2500 per annum 
 formerly appointed him by this House." To 
 secure the full return of the stipulated income, 
 it was further ordered, on the 31st of January, 
 1646, "that Mr. Lisle do bring in an ordinance 
 for the full granting unto and settling upon Lieu- 
 tenant-gen. Cromwell and his heirs the manors 
 of Abberston and Itchell, with the rights, mem- 
 bers, and appurtenances thereof, in the county 
 of Southampton, being the lands of John, lord- 
 marquis of Winchester, a delinquent that hath 
 been in arms against the Parliament, and a 
 papist." 
 
 Oliver St. John's letter, communicating to 
 his great kinsman these accessions to his for- 
 tune, is too characteristic of what the writer 
 must have known to be pleasing to Cromwell 
 to be omitted here. " Deere sir," he wrote, 
 " I have herewithall sente you the order of the 
 House of Commons for settlinge 2500 per an- 
 num upon you and your heires, and the ordi- 
 nance of Parliament in pursuance thereof, in 
 part, whereby the landes therein mentioned, 
 being all the landes of the Earle of Worcester 
 in that county, are settled upon you. I have 
 likewise sent you a rent-roll of the quit-rents. 
 The manors consist most of old rents. There 
 are the advowsons. I am told by Col. Norton 
 and Mr. W r heeler, whoe knowe the landes, that 
 they are accounted 100 per annum. . . . len- 
 deavoured to passe this for the present, rather than 
 to have stayed longer to make up the whole. Your 
 patent was speedily prepared, and is this day 
 passed the great seal. I have not sente it downe, 
 but will keepe it for you, until I receive your 
 direction to whome to deliver it. The charges 
 of passing the ordinances to the clerkes, and 
 of the scale, my clerke of the patents hath sat- 
 isfied ; you shall hereafter knowe what they 
 come to. I delivered a copy of the ordinance 
 to Mr. Lisle, to send it to the committee of 
 sequestrations, whoe hath, together with a let- 
 ter to them, desyred that the sequestrators 
 take care that noe wrong bee done to the 
 landes. That which principally moved mee to 
 it was because I heard there were goodly woods, 
 and tho' much had been formerly cutt, that for 
 the future a stop might be made. By the ordi- 
 nance sent you, you will be auctorized to send 
 some bayliffe of your owne to husband the 
 landes to your best advantage, which would 
 bee done speedilie. There is another order
 
 466 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 of the House for preparing^ an ordinance for a 
 goodly house and other landes in Hampshire, 
 of the Marquisse of Winchester's. Wee had 
 thought to have had them in the ordinance already 
 passed, but by absence of some, when I brought in 
 the other, that fayled. Perhaps it is better as it 
 is, and that the addition might have stayed this. 
 You know to whome the marquisse hath rela- 
 tion ;* and in regard that our commission for 
 the scale ends with this month, I desyred rather 
 for the presente to passe this, than to hazard 
 the delay. Mr. Lisle was ordered to hring in 
 the other ordinance : it is not yet done. Sir, 
 Mr. Wallop, Mr. Lisle, Sir Thomas Gcrmaync, 
 have been real friends to you in this businessc, 
 and heartilie desire to hare you seated, if possible, 
 in their countric. Remember by the next to 
 take notice hereof by letter unto them." The 
 patent alluded to in this letter by St. John is 
 no doubt explained by a previous resolution 
 of the House, dated the 1st of December, 1645, 
 and to be found in these words on the jour- 
 nals : " Resolved, that the title and dignity of 
 a baron of the kingdom of England, with all 
 rights, privileges, pre-emfnencies, and prece- 
 dencies to the said title and dignity belonging 
 or appertaining, be conferred and settled on 
 Lieutenant-general Oliver CromweH, and the 
 heirs male of his body ; and that his majesty 
 be desired in these propositions (for a piece) to 
 grant and confer the said title and dignity upon 
 him, and the heirs male of his body according- 
 ly ; and that it be referred to the former com- 
 mittee to consider of a fit way and manner for 
 the perfecting thereof." 
 
 It does not fall within my purpose here to de- 
 scribe the long, the intricate, and not very in- 
 teresting struggles which now took place be- 
 tween the Presbyterians and Independents for 
 the custody of the person of the king, after the 
 Scots had delivered him up once more into the 
 power of the English commissioners. The civ- 
 il strength of the Independents increased by 
 the elections of Ireton, Ludlow, Sidney, Skip- 
 pon, Hutchinson, and Blake the wily advan- 
 tage taken by Cromwell in the organization of 
 the agitators the scenes at Ware, and the 
 seizure of the king by force, have already re- 
 ceived incidental notice in the discussion of 
 Cromwell's character and resources. 
 
 It will be sufficient to observe that, while 
 Cromwell and Fairfax held Charles at Hampton 
 Court, a vast variety of negotiations were open- 
 ed with Cromwell by the king, and in the man- 
 agement of all he acted with the close counsel 
 and assistance of his son-in-law Ireton. That 
 a treaty was entered into by Charles with these 
 generals having for its basis his reinstatement 
 on the throne, his surrender of his chief friends, 
 his concession of every popular right, his wide 
 and universal toleration in all matters of con- 
 science, with, among other incidental condi- 
 tions, the earldom of Essex, the garter, and the 
 government of Ireland for Cromwell is not 
 disputed by any one ; whether with any sin- 
 cere purpose on the part of Cromwell, admits 
 of most serious question ; whether with any on 
 the part of Charles, certainly admits of none. 
 Here, as in all matters where what he suppo- 
 sed the prerogatives of his crown came in ques- 
 
 tion, Charles was hopelessly insincere. Mrs. 
 Hutchinson would have us suppose that Crom- 
 well and Ireton acted throughout in good faith, 
 and were only turned against the king at last 
 by the discovery of bad faith in him. "To 
 speak the truth," she says, " of all, Cromwell 
 was at this period so uncorruptly faithful to his 
 trust and to the people's interest, that he could 
 not be drawn into the practice of his own usu- 
 al and natural dissimulations in this occasion. 
 His son-in-law Ireton, that was as faithful as 
 he, was not so fully of the opinion (till he found 
 the contrary) but that the king might be man- 
 aged to comply with the public good of his peo- 
 ple after he could no longer uphold his own vi- 
 olent will - r but upon some discourses, the king 
 ' uttering these words to him, ' I shall play my 
 game as well as I can,' Ireton replied, ' If your 
 majesty have a game to play, you must give us 
 also the liberty to play ours.' " This would 
 lead us to conclude, however, that Cromwell 
 had never very favourably listened to the pro- 
 posed treaty. 
 
 Ominous symptoms of distrust in both Crom- 
 well and Ireton were speedily detected by the 
 king's attendants. li Being commanded," says 
 Ashburnham, " by his majesty to desire from 
 Cromwell and Ireton that hee might remoove 
 Stoake to one of his owne houses, they told 
 mee (with verie severe countenances) hee 
 should go if hee pleased to Oatlands ; but that 
 they had mett with sufficient proof that the 
 king had not only abetted and fomented the dif- 
 ferences betweene them and their enemies, by 
 commanding all his partie to take conditions 
 under the (then) Parliament and citty, but that 
 likewise hee had (at that instant) a treatie with 
 the Scots, when hee made greatest profession 
 to close with them ; for the justification of 
 which, they affirmed that they had both his and 
 the queene's letters to make it good, which 
 were greate allaycs to their thoughts of serveing 
 him, and did verie much justifie the generall mis- 
 fortune hee lived under of haceing the reputation 
 of little faith in his dealings." And again, Ash- 
 burnham (whose intercourse with both Crora- 
 well and the king was more free and unreserv- 
 ed than that of the other royal attendant Berke- 
 | ley) teHs us, that Cromwell, after the rejection 
 j of the proposals, professed himself still favour- 
 ' able to the king's restoration, but became more 
 | reserved and private, and that " he and Ireton 
 withdrew themselves by degrees from the free- 
 dom of their wonted discourses of his majesty's 
 recovery." 
 
 Those proposals* noble, and liberal, and 
 tolerant as they were have been amply de- 
 scribed and illustrated in the memoir of Mar- 
 
 * Winchester had married the half-sister of the Earl of 
 Essex. 
 
 pn> 
 " the 
 
 dren. The Dukes of York and Gloucester, aged respect- 
 ively fourteen and seven, and the Princess Elizabeth,! we !vo 
 years, met their father at Maidstone, and passed two days 
 with him at Caversham. " The interview was so affecting 
 that Cromwell, who was present, is said to hare shed tears 
 in describing it, and to have declared his conversion to the 
 most implicit faith in the goodness of the king." Crom- 
 well's tears, as we have seen, were on every occasion ready 
 and serviceable, and it is not possible to suppuse real emo- 
 tion here. Our masterly painter, Maclise, has hit the truer 
 thought in his noble expression, upon the face of Cromwell, 
 of bold and resolute sagacity, touched with a forecast of the 
 future, in his recent fine treatment of this extraordinary 
 see ue.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 467 
 
 ten. After their rejection, no doubt Cromwell 
 and Iretoa felt the pressure of the army. From 
 the memoirs of Berkeley, indeed, we distinctly 
 learn that now the lieutenant-general absolute- 
 ly affected to consider himself in danger, and 
 requested that Berkely and Ashburnham would 
 not repair so frequently and with so little dis- 
 guise to his quarters. He still, indeed, declared 
 his undiminished anxiety for an adjustment of 
 all differences, imprecating on himself and his 
 posterity the vengeance of heaven if he were 
 not sincere in his endeavours to serve the king 
 in that particular, but, at the same time, did 
 not conceal his apprehensions in regard to the 
 inconstancy of the army. Our former remarks 
 on the character of the future lord-protector 
 may possibly, in some sort, explain these ap- 
 parent crafts and subtleties. 
 
 But now a decisive movement approached, 
 which is thus curiously accounted for in the 
 memoir prefixed to the State Letters of Orrery, 
 better known by the name of Lord Broghill. It 
 is a truly remarkable piece of secret history. 
 " One time, particularly," says the writer, " in 
 the year 1649, when Lord Broghill was riding, 
 with Cromwell on one side of him, and Ireton 
 on the other, at the head of their army, they 
 fell into discourse about the late king's death. 
 Cromwell declared, that if the king had follow- 
 ed his own mind, and had had trusty servants 
 about him, he had fooled them all. And fur- 
 ther said, that once they had a mind to have 
 closed with him ; but, upon something that hap- 
 4 pened, they fell off from their design again. 
 My lord, finding Cromwell and Ireton in good 
 humour* and no other person being within hear- 
 ing, asked them if he might be so bold as to de- 
 sire an account* 1st. Why they once would have 
 closed w.th the king! and, 2dly. Why they did 
 not ! Cromwell very freely told him he would 
 satisfy him in both his queries. The reason, 
 says he, why we would once have closed with 
 the king, was this : we found that the Scots 
 and the Presbyterians began to be more pow- 
 erful than we ; and if they had made up mat- 
 ters with the king, we should have been left 
 in the lurch ; therefore, we thought it best to 
 prevent them, by offering first to come in upon 
 any reasonable conditions. But while we were 
 busied with these thoughts, there came a let- 
 ter from one of our spies, who was of the 
 kite's bedchamber, which acquainted us that 
 on that day our doom was decreed ; that he 
 could not possibly tell what it was, but we 
 might find it out if we could intercept a let- 
 ter from the king to the queen, wherein he de- 
 clared what he would do. The letter, he said, 
 was sewed up in the skirt of a saddle, and 
 the bearer of it would come with the saddle 
 upon his head, about ten o'clock that night, to 
 the Blue Boar inn in Holborn, for there he was 
 to take horse and go to Dover with it. This 
 messenger knew nothing of the letter in the 
 saddle, but some persons in Dover did. We 
 were at Windsor when we received the letter ; 
 and immediately upon the receipt of it, Ireton 
 and I resolved to take one trusty fellow with 
 us, and with troopers' habits to go to the inn 
 in Holborn, which accordingly we did, and set 
 our man at the gate of the inn, where the wick- 
 et only was open, to let people in and out. Our 
 man was to give us notice when a person came 
 
 there with a saddle, while we, in the disguise 
 of common troopers, called for cans of beer, and 
 continued drinking till about ten o'clock: the sen- 
 tinel at the gate then gave notice that the man 
 with the saddle was come in. Upon this we 
 immediately rose, and, as the man was leading 
 out his horse saddled, came up to him with 
 drawn swords, and told him we were there to 
 search all that went in and out ; but as he look- 
 ed like an honest man, we would only search 
 his saddle, and so dismiss him. Upon that we 
 ungirt the saddle, and carried it into the stall 
 where we had been drinking, and left the horse- 
 man with our sentinel ; then, ripping up one of 
 the skirts of the saddle, we there found the 
 letter of which we had been informed ; and 
 having got it into our hands, we delivered the 
 saddle again to the man, telling him he was an 
 honest man, and oidding him go about his bu- 
 siness. The man, not knowing what had been 
 done, went away to Dover. As soon as we 
 had the letter we opened it, in which we found 
 the king had acquainted the queen that he was 
 now courted by both factions, the Scotch Pres- 
 byterians and the army, and which bid fairest 
 for him should have him ; but he thought he 
 should close with the Scots sooner than the 
 other, &c. Upon this, added Cromwell, we 
 took horse and went to Windsor ; and, finding 
 we were not likely to have any tolerable terms 
 from the king, we immediately, from that time 
 forward, resolved his ruin." 
 
 This fatal letter, which, if this account is be- 
 lieved, may be said to have decided Charles's 
 fate, is thus curiously described to us by the 
 author of a work called Richardsoniana. " Lord 
 Bolingbroke," he says, "told us [Mr. Pope, 
 Lord Marchmont, and himself] that Lord Oxford 
 had often told him that he had seen, and had in 
 his hands, an original letter that King Charles 
 I. wrote to the queen, in answer to one of hers 
 that had been intercepted, and then forwarded 
 to him, wherein she had reproached him for 
 having made those villains too great conces- 
 sions (viz., that Cromwell should be lord-lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland for life without account ; that 
 that kingdom should be in the hands of the 
 party, with an army there kept which should 
 know no head but the lieutenant ; that Crom- 
 well should have a garter, &c.). That in this 
 letter of the king's it was said that she should 
 leave him to manage, who was better informed 
 of all circumstances than she could be ; but 
 she might be entirely easy as to whatever con- 
 cessions he should make them, for that he 
 should know in due time how to deal with the 
 rogues, who, instead of a silken garter, should 
 be fitted with a hempen cord. So the letter 
 ended : which answer, as they waited for, so 
 they intercepted accordingly ; and it determin- 
 ed his fate. This letter Lord Oxford said he 
 had offered 500 for." 
 
 Whatever the actuating motives may have 
 been and perhaps, after all that has been said, 
 the reader will have little difficulty in forming 
 his conclusions of them it is certain that af- 
 fairs now took a gloomy turn for the king. In- 
 fluenced by their own despair of Charles, or 
 by the formidable attitude of the agitators (en- 
 couraged secretly, however, in their commence- 
 ment by Cromwell), the great lieutenant-general 
 and his son-in-law embarked with the extreme
 
 468 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Republicanism of the army. Ashburnham has 
 noted it down as a memorable circumstance, 
 that at this time it was that Cromwelf dis- 
 coursed earnestly and elaborately with Colonel 
 Rich of the happiness which would be the lot of 
 the people of England with such a government 
 as the Netherland States-General and no doubt 
 with such a protector, or Prince of Orange, as 
 Lieutenant-general Cromwell himself could 
 have furnished ! 
 
 Charles's last fatal step was his flight to 
 Carisbrooke. But let him not be censured too 
 harshly for this, since there is strong ground 
 for supposing that Cromwell secretly instigated 
 him to a movement of some kind. There is no 
 doubt the flight was made in consequence of a 
 letter he received, hinting that his life was in 
 danger from the army agitators ; and that Crom- 
 well had written to the officer in command at 
 Hampton Court, is manifest from what trans- 
 pired during the examination of the latter at the 
 bar of the House of Commons. Addressing 
 the speaker, Colonel Whaley says, "You de- 
 mand of me what that letter was that I showed 
 the king the day he went away. The letter I 
 shall show you ; but, with your leave, I shall 
 first acquaint you with the author, and the 
 ground of my showing it to the king. The 
 author is Lieutenant-general Cromwell ; the 
 ground of my showing it was this : the letter 
 intimates some murderous design, or at least 
 some fear of it, against his majesty. When I 
 read the letter, I was much astonished, ab- 
 horring that such a thing should be done, or so 
 much as thought of by any that bear the name 
 of Christians. When I had shown the letter 
 to his majesty, I told him I was sent to safe- 
 guard him, and not to murther him ; I wished 
 him to be confident no such thing should be 
 done ; I would first die at his feet in his de- 
 fence ; and therefore I showed it to him, that 
 he might be assured, though menacing speech- 
 es came frequently to his ear, our general offi- 
 cers abhorred so bloody and so villanous an act." 
 
 While this is admitted, however, let us add, 
 that there is no reason for supposing Hammond 
 in any way suborned by Cromwell or Ireton to 
 the part he played with his royal prisoner, 
 though when they found their kinsman in pos- 
 session of such a prize, is seems certain they 
 resolved to make the best of it. Ashburnham 
 has given a very curious letter from Cromwell 
 to " Colonel Robert Hammond," evidently de- 
 signed to overweigh some objections entertain- 
 ed by the latter to the justice of any resistance 
 on the part of the army to the power of the ma- 
 jority in Parliament. The wily lieutenant- 
 general resorts to his stronghold of providence 
 and the providential, and justifies such a re- 
 sistance in a particular case. " Was there 
 not," he asks, " a little of this [the providential] 
 when Robert Hammond, through dissatisfac- 
 tion too, desired retirement from the army, and 
 thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight]" He 
 proceeds: "You say 'God had appointed au- 
 thorities among the nations, to which active or 
 passive obedience is to be yielded. This re- 
 sides in England in the Parliament. Therefore, 
 active or passive, &e.' Authorities and powers 
 are the ordinance of God. This or that species 
 is of human institution, and limited, some with 
 larger, others with stricter bonds, each one ac- 
 
 cording to its constitution. I do not, therefore, 
 think the authorities may do any thing, and yet ' 
 such obedience due ; but all agree, there are 
 cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so, 
 your ground fails, and so likewise the infer- 
 ence. Indeed, dear Robin, not to multiply 
 words, the query is, whether ours be such a 
 easel This ingenuously is the true question. 
 To this I shall say nothing, though I could say 
 very much ; but only desire thee to see what 
 thou findest in thy own heart as to two or three 
 plain considerations : 1st, Whether salus populi 
 be a sound position 1 2dly, Whether, in the way 
 in hand, really and before the Lord, before 
 whom conscience must stand, this be provided 
 for ; or the whole fruit of the war like to be 
 frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it 
 was, and worse 1 And this contrary to engage- 
 ments, declarations, implicit covenants with 
 those who ventured their lives upon those cov- 
 enants and engagements, without whom, per- 
 haps, in equity, relaxation ought not to be. 
 3dly. Whether this army be not a lawful power, 
 called by God to oppose and fight against the 
 king upon some stated grounds ; and being in 
 power to such ends, may not oppose one name of 
 authority for those ends as well as another, the 
 outward authority that called them not by their 
 power making the quarrel lawful, but it being so 
 in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justi- 
 fied in foro humano." 
 
 Dear Robin's scruples, however, were likely 
 to be better satisfied by a succeeding letter, 
 announcing glorious news, and every way most 
 characteristic of the writer. " DEEREST ROBIN, 
 Now (blessed be God) I can write, and thou 
 receave freely. I never in my life sawe more 
 deepe sense, and less will to shewe it unchris- 
 tianly, than in that w ch thou diddest write to us 
 at Windsor, and though in the middest of thy 
 tentation, w ch indeed (by what wee understood 
 of it) was a great one, and occasioned the great- 
 er by the letter the generall sent thee, of w ch 
 thou wast not mistaken when thou diddest chal- 
 lenge me to be the penner. How good has God 
 beene to dispose all to mercie ; and although it 
 was trouble for the present, yett Glorie is come 
 out of it, for w ch wee praise the Lorde with thee 
 and for thee ; and truely the carriage has beene 
 | such as occasions much honour to -the name of 
 j God and to religion. Goe on in the strength 
 1 of the Lord, and the Lorde be still with tlee. 
 j But (deere Robin) this businesse hath been (I 
 trust) a mightie providence to this poore King- 
 dome, and to us all. The House of Comons is 
 very sensible of the K> s dealings, and of our 
 Brethrens, in this late transaction. You should 
 ' doe well (if you have anythinge that may discover 
 ! juglinge) to search it out and lett us knowe it ; 
 it may be of admirable use at this time, because 
 wee shall (I hope) instantly goe upon businesses 
 in relation to them, tendingeto prevent danger. 
 The House of Comons has this day voted as 
 follows : First, that they will make noe more 
 addresses to the K. 2dly. None shall applie to 
 him w th out leave of the two Houses, upon paine 
 of beinge guiltie of high treason. 3dly. They 
 will receive nothinge from the Kinge, nor shall 
 any other bringe anythinge to them from him, 
 nor receave anythinge from the Kinge. Lastly, 
 the Members of both Houses, who were of the 
 Committee of both Kingdomes, are established
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 469 
 
 in all that power in themselves for England 
 and Ireland w ch they had to act with both King- 
 domes, and Sr. John Evelin of Wilts is added 
 in the roome of Mr. Recorder, and Rath. F. 
 Fiennis in the roome of Sir Phillip Stapleton, 
 and my Lorde of Kent in the roome of the Earl 
 of Essex. / think it good you take notice of this, 
 the sooner the better. . . . Lett us knowe how it's 
 with you in point of strength, and what you 
 neede from us : some of us thinke the Kinge 
 well with you, and that it concerns us to keep 
 that Island in great securitie, because of the French, 
 &C. And if soe, where can the kinge be better 1 
 If you have more force, you will suer of full 
 provision for them. The Lorde blesse thee : 
 pray for thy deere friend and servant, 
 
 <( O. CROMWELL." 
 
 The debate referred to here had been a mo- 
 mentous one indeed, declaring openly the pur- 
 pose of a republic, and the fate that impended 
 over the king. Ireton spoke with a calm and 
 deadly resolution. He said, " The king had 
 denied the protection to the people which was 
 the condition of obedience to him ; that, after 
 long patience, they should now, at last, show 
 themselves resolute ; that they should not de- 
 sert the brave men the many thousand godly 
 men who had fought for them beyond all pos- 
 sibility of retreat or forgiveness, and who would 
 never forsake the Parliament, unless the Par- 
 liament first forsook them." " After some 
 farther debate," says the author who has re- 
 corded these speeches, " Cromwell brought up 
 the rear. ' It was time,' he said, ' to answer 
 the public expectatipn, that they were able and 
 resolved to govern and defend the kingdom by their 
 own power, and teach the people they had nothing 
 to hope from a man whose heart God hardened in 
 obstinacy.' 1 ' Do not,' said he, after giving a 
 flattering character of the army, whose valour 
 and godliness he extolled in the highest degree, 
 let the army think themselves betrayed to the 
 rage and malice of an irreconcilable enemy, 
 whom they have subdued for your sake, from 
 whom they should meet revenge and justice ; 
 do not drive them to despair, lest they seek 
 safety by other means than adhering to you, 
 who will not stick to yourselves ; and (laying 
 his hand on his sword) how destructive such a 
 resolution in them will be to you all, I tremble 
 to think, and leave you to judge.' " 
 
 The resolutions for holding no more treaties 
 with the king in other words, for establishing 
 a republic in England passed by a majority 
 of 141 to 92. 
 
 The immediate effect of this outside the 
 House was startling, and considerable agitation 
 appeared in various quarters. An alarming 
 tumult in the city, in which the apprentices 
 forced the guard, and ventured to engage the 
 military under the command of the general, 
 was quickly followed by simijar disturbances in 
 Norwich, Canterbury, Exeter, and several other 
 places. At the same time, petitions from dif- 
 ferent public bodies poured into the two Houses, 
 all concurring in the same prayer, that the 
 army should be disbanded, and the king brought 
 back. Even now some project of a despotism 
 seemed dreaded.. Cromwell and his friends ; 
 aware that it would not be in their power to 
 control the city while their forces were em- 
 ployed in the field, withdrew their opposition 
 
 in the lower chamber so far as to permit the 
 Presbyterian party to carry a vote that no 
 change should be made in the fundameetal 
 government of the realm by king, Lords, and 
 Commons ; and on this ground the citizens de- 
 clared themselves engaged to live and to die 
 with the Parliament.* 
 
 The " men of Kent," under Hales and Gor- 
 ing, had, meanwhile, encouraged by these city 
 tumults, flown to arms, and engaged the troops 
 commanded by Fairfax and Major-general Skip- 
 pon. They were defeated, but the resolution 
 with which they fought at Maidstone startled 
 Cromwell into personal exertion once again 
 on the field of battle. The Welsh had, at the 
 same time, assembled under the banners of 
 their chiefs ; and Colonel Poyer, the governor 
 of Pembroke Castle, an officer in the service 
 of the Parliament, joined by Colonels Lang- 
 home and Powell, had proclaimed Charles, 
 and defied his enemies. 
 
 Several towns followed the example with 
 which they were thus supplied, and in some 
 skirmishes which followed, the advantage was 
 on the side of the Royalists ; but the approach 
 of Cromwell at the head of a few regiments of 
 veterans crushed the hopes of the insurgents. 
 Having driven them within their walls, the 
 lieutenant-general immediately invested Pem- 
 broke, resolved to carry the fortress in his 
 usual manner by a spirited assault. His men, 
 cheered by the presence of their invincible 
 leader, and inflamed by the fanatical discourses 
 of Hugh Peters, " dashed into the ditch, as- 
 cended the ramparts, and were about to throw 
 themselves upon the garrison," whom they 
 had hoped to find unprepared, when, on a sud- 
 den, they were attacked with the utmost fury, 
 and, after a sanguinary conflict amid the dark- 
 ness and confusion of night, compelled to re- 
 turn to their camp considerably diminished in 
 number. For two months the castle held out, 
 and then surrendered under circumstances 
 which left no hope of mercy. Yet Cromwell 
 was not unmerciful. Langhorne, Poyer, and 
 Powell were condemned to death as traitors. 
 After several months' imprisonment, it was or- 
 dered that one only, to be determined by lot, 
 should suffer. The lot fell upon Poyer, and he 
 was executed. 
 
 Cromwell's amazingly watchful activity at 
 this time may be well illustrated by a letter 
 of his (in the British Museum), addressed to 
 some officers in the Welsh counties. It tells 
 its own story : " I send," he says, " this en- 
 closed by itselfe. because it's of greater mo- 
 ment. The other you may communicate to 
 Mr. Rumsey as far as you thinke fitt, and I 
 have written. I would not have him or other 
 honest men be discouraged that I thinke it not 
 fitt at present to enter into contests ; it will be 
 good to yeeild a little for publique advantage, 
 and truely that is my end, wherein I desire you 
 to satisfie them. ... I have sent, as my letter 
 mentions, to have you remove out of Breck- 
 noksheire, indeed into that part of Glamorgan- 
 sheire w ch lyeth next Munmouthsheire, for this 
 end. . . Wee have plaine discoveries that Sir 
 Trevor Williams, of Langevie, about two miles 
 from Uske, in the countie of Munmouth, was 
 
 * Lingard, vol. z.
 
 470 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 very deepe in the plott of betrayinge Chep- 
 stowe Castle, soe that wee are out of doubt of 
 liis^uiltinesse thereof. . . I doe hereby author- 
 ize you to seize him, as also the high sherifTe 
 of Munmouth, Mr. Morgan, whoe was in the 
 same plott. . . But because Sir Trevor Williams 
 is the more dangerous man by farr, I would 
 have you to seize him first, and the other will 
 easilie be had. To the end you may not be 
 frustrated, and that you be not deceaved, I 
 thinke fitt to give you some caracters of the 
 man, and some intimations how thinges stand. 
 He is a man (as I am informed) full of craft 
 and subtiltie, very bould and resolute, hath a 
 house at Langevie well stored with armes, 
 and very stronge, his neighbours about him 
 very malignant and much for him, whoe are 
 apt to rescue him if apprehended, much more 
 to discover anythinge wh ch may prevent it. 
 He is full of iealosie, partly out of guilt, butt 
 much more because he doubts some that were 
 in the businesse have discovered him, which 
 indeed they hare, and alsoe because he knowes 
 that his servant is brought hither, and a minis- 
 ter to be examined here, whoe are able to dis- 
 cover the whole plott. If you should march 
 directly into that countie and neer him, it's 
 odds he either fortefies his house, or gives you 
 the slip, soe alsoe if you should goe to his 
 house and not finde him there, or if you attempt 
 to take him and misse to effect it, or if you 
 make any knowen enquirie after him, it will be 
 discovered. . . Wherefore to the first you have a 
 faire pretence of goinge out of Brecknoksheire 
 to quarter about Newport and Carleon, which 
 is not above 4 or 5 miles from his house. You 
 may send to Col. Herbert, whose house lyeth 
 in Munmouthsheire, whoe will certainlie ac- 
 quainte you where he is. You are alsoe to 
 send to Capt. Nicolas, whoe is at Chepstowe, 
 to require him to assiste you if he should gett 
 into his house, and stand upon his guard. Sam 
 Jones, whoe is quarterm* to Col. Herbert's 
 troupe, will be very assistinge to you if you 
 send to him to meete you at your quarters, 
 both by lettinge you knowe where he is, and 
 alsoe in all matters of intelligence. If theire 
 shall be neede, Capt. Burge his troupe, now 
 quarteringe in Glamorgansheire, shall be di- 
 rected to receaye orders from you. You per- 
 ceave by all this that wee are (it may be) a lit- 
 tle too much sollicitous in this businesse ; it's 
 our fault ; and, indeed, such a temper causeth ! 
 us often to overact businesse, wherefore with- | 
 out more adoe wee leave it to you, and you to [ 
 the guidance of God herein, and rest yours, i 
 O. CROMWELL. . . If you seize him, bring &lett ; 
 him be brought with a strong guard to me. If j 
 Capt. Nicolas should light on him at Chep- | 
 stowe, doe you strengthen him with a good \ 
 guard to bring him. . . If you seize his person, ! 
 disarme his house, butt lett not his armes be 
 imbeziled. ... If you need Capt. Burge his i 
 troupe, it quarters betweene Newport and Car- ! 
 diffe." 
 
 Then followed the Presbyterian invasion by ] 
 the Covenanters' army of the Scots, and the , 
 regular commencement of the second civil war. ! 
 Cromwell, advised of this, at once put his forces 
 in motion to join Lambert in the north, and 
 give the Covenanters battle. He did this, it , 
 may be supposed, with especial zeal, and the i 
 
 [battle of Preston, fought August 17th, 1648, 
 threw both kingdoms into the hands of the Re- 
 publicans. The Scots, " who found some dif- 
 ficulty in comprehending that Cromwell was 
 not still in Wales" (with such rapidity had he 
 approached), even by this their decisive over- 
 throw in Lancashire, were commanded by Duke 
 Hamilton ; the English, who sided with them, 
 by the same Sir Marmaduke Langdale whom 
 Cromwell had beaten at Naseby. Their armies 
 together numbered 21,000 ; the force under 
 Cromwell, including Lambert's, which had ef- 
 fected a junction with him on his approach, did 
 not in all, according to Whitelocke, exceed 
 8600. Nothing but the event could have justi- 
 fied the instant assault of the Royalists with 
 this vast disparity of force. But the bigotry of 
 the Scots gave Cromwell an advantage which, 
 he had no doubt well calculated on : " their 
 sectarian hatred of the Cavalier army, not- 
 withstanding their engagement in the same 
 cause, leading them to withhold their support 
 from their English allies, when the latter were 
 separately attacked ;"* and their own perfect 
 overthrow justly and most retributively follow- 
 ed. As to the north countrymen under Sir 
 Marmaduke Langdale, Cromwell confessed that 
 never had he seen foot fight so desperately as 
 they. But nothing could withstand the furi- 
 ous charges of Cromwell and his old gallant 
 Ironsides. Two thousand men were slain in 
 the battle, and as many prisoners taken by the 
 Republicans (including the Duke of Hamilton 
 himself, the leader of the confederates) as ex- 
 ceeded in number their own entire army. 
 
 On the 20th of August, Cromwell wrote to 
 the speaker of the House of Commons a most 
 striking despatch of this battle. " After the 
 conjunction of that party," he begins, " which 
 I brought with me out of Wales with the north- 
 ern forces about Knaresborough and Wetherby, 
 hearing that the enemy was advanced with 
 their army into Lancashire, we came the 6th 
 instant to Hodder Bridge, over Kibble, where 
 we had a council of war, and upon advertise- 
 ment the enemy intended southward, and since 
 
 * This is alleged in various authorities. Tl*e rage of tho 
 Cavaliers knew no bounds, as may be seen in the following 
 extract from the Parliament Porter: "Nothing is heard 
 now among the brethren bat triumph and joy, singing and 
 mirth, for their happy success (thanks i the devil first, and 
 next to Noll Cromwell's nose) against the Scots, whom they 
 vaunt they have beaten to dust. The truth is, even Duke 
 Hamilton himself was corrupted with money : why else did 
 he deliver 5000 foot and 2000 horse unto the commund of 
 Major-gen. Baily, a sworn servant nf the Kirkxten of Scot- 
 load, who surrendered them all up into the hands of Crom- 
 well, without striking one stroke? The truth is, the Scots 
 army is totally routed (so great are our sins, and so fierce 
 is the wrath of the Almighty against us). Duke Hamilton 
 being besieged in the town of Uttoxeter, was forced to yield 
 himself and the small handful with him ; and as if the devil 
 had got to himself th sole sway of mundane affairs, the 
 most valiant and heroic knight, Sir Marmaduke, was un- 
 luckily surprised, with some other worthy Loyalists, as 
 they were sitting in ablind alehouse, where they supposed 
 themselves secure, and carried prisoners to Nottingham 
 Castle. But Monro, one of the best soldiers in Christen- 
 dom, is coming on with a powerful army, to give Noll Crom- 
 well another field fight. He hath sent to the esiates of 
 Scotland, imploring them for a recruit both of men and 
 money, which they have ordered him : the renowned Earl 
 of Callender, with some troops of horse, is escaped to him, 
 with whom he hath united his remnant : if Cromuell can 
 shatter this army also, he will prove himself one of the most 
 fortunate villains that ever acted mischief. He will find 
 hard play here, for these will not be laughed out of their 
 loyalty, nor frightened out nf themselves with the blazing 
 of his beacon nosc. n Pftrl. Port., Aug. 28 to S*pt. 4, 164IJ.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 471 
 
 confirmed that they resolved for London itself, 
 and information that the Irish forces, under 
 Monro, lately come out of Ireland, which con- 
 sisted of 1200 horse and 1500 foot, were on 
 their march towards Lancaster, to join with 
 them, it was thought that to engage the ene- 
 my to fight was our business, and accordingly 
 we marched over the bridge that night, and 
 quartered the whole army in the fields. Next 
 morning we marched towards Preston, having 
 intelligence that the enemy was drawing to- 
 gether thereabouts from all his out-quarters. 
 We drew out a forlorn of about 200 horse and 400 
 foot : these gallantly engaged the enemy's scouts 
 and outguards until we had opportunity to bring 
 up our u-hole army. So soon as our foot and 
 horse were come up, we resolved that night to 
 engage them if we could, and therefore advan- 
 cing with our forlorns, and putting the rest of 
 the army into as good a posture as the ground 
 would bear (which was totally inconvenient for 
 our horse, being all enclosure, and miry ground), 
 we pressed upon them through a lane, forced them 
 from their ground after four hours' dispute, until 
 we came to the town, into which four troops of 
 my regiment first entered, and being well second- 
 ed by Col. Harrison's regiment, charged the 
 enemy in the town, and cleared the streets. 
 At the last the enemy was put into disorder, 
 many men slain, many prisoners taken ; the 
 duke, with most of the Scots horse and foot, 
 retreated over the bridge, where, after a very 
 hot dispute betwixt the Lancashire regiments, 
 part of my lord-general 's and them being at push 
 of pike, they were beaten from the bridge, and 
 our horse and foot following them, killed many, 
 and took divers prisoners, and we possessed 
 the bridge over Darwent, and a few houses 
 there ; the enemy being drawn up within mus- 
 ket shot of us, where we lay that night, we not 
 being able to attempt further upon the enemy, 
 the night preventing us. In tliis posture did 
 the enemy and we lie the most part of that 
 night. Upon our entering the town, many of 
 the enemy's horse fled towards Lancaster, in 
 the chase of whom went divers of our horse, 
 who pursued them near ten miles, and had ex- 
 ecution of them, and took about 500 horse, and 
 many prisoners. We possessed in the fight 
 very much of the enemy's ammunition. I be- 
 lieve they lost 4 or 5000 arms ; the number 
 of slain we judge to he about 1000 ; the prison- 
 ers we took were about 4000. In the night 
 they marched away 7 or 8000 foot, and about 
 4000 horse ; we followed them with about 3000 
 foot, and about 2500 horse and dragoons ; and 
 in this prosecution, that worthy gentleman, 
 Col. Thornhaugh, pressing too boldly, was slain, 
 being run into the body, and thigh, and head by 
 the enemy's lancers. Our horse still prosecu- 
 ted the enemy, killing and taking divers all the 
 way ; but by that time our army was come up, 
 they recovered Wiggon, before we could at- 
 tempt anything upon them. We lay that night 
 in the field, close by the enemy, being very dirty 
 and weary, where we had some skirmishing, 
 &c. We took Major-general Van Uruske, 
 Col. Hurrey, and Lieut. -col. Ennis. The next 
 morning the enemy marched towards Warring- 
 ton, made a stand at a pass near Winwick ; we 
 held them in some dispute until our army was 
 come up, they maintaining the pass with great 
 
 resolution for many hours, but our men, by the 
 blessing of God, charged very home upon them, 
 beat them from their standing, where we killed 
 about 1000 of them, and took (as we believe) 
 about 2000 prisoners, and prosecuted them 
 home to Warrington town, where they possess- 
 ed the bridge. As soon as we came thither, I 
 received a message from Lieut.-gen. Baily, de- 
 siring some capitulation, to which I yielded ; 
 gave him these terms : That he should sur- 
 render himself, and all his officers, and prison- 
 ers of war, with all his arms, and ammunition, 
 and horses, upon quarter for life, which accord- 
 ingly is done. Here we took about 4000 com- 
 plete arms, and as many prisoners, and thus 
 you have their infantry ruined. The duke is 
 marched with his remaining horse, which are 
 about 3000, towards Namptvvhich, where the 
 gentlemen of the country have taken about 500 
 of them ; the country will scarce suffer any of 
 my men to pass, but bring them in and kill di- 
 vers, as they light upon them. I have sent 
 post to my Lord Grey, to Sir Henry Cholmeley, 
 and Sir Edward Roads, to gather all together 
 with speed for their prosecution. Monro is 
 about Cumberland, with the horse that ran 
 away, and his Irish horse and foot, but I have 
 left a considerable strength I hope to make re- 
 sistance till we can come up to them. Thus 
 you have the narrative of the particulars of the 
 success. / could hardly tell how to say less, 
 there being so much of God, and I was not willing' 
 to say more, lest there should seem to be anything 
 of man. Only give me leave to add one word, 
 showing the disparity of the forces on both 
 sides, that so you may see, and all the world 
 acknowledge, the great hand of God in this 
 business. The Scots army could not be less 
 than 12,000 foot, well armed, and 5000 horse ; 
 Langdale not less than 2500 foot and 1500 
 horse ; in all, 21,000. Ours, in all, about 8600. 
 And by computation, about 2000 of the enemy 
 slain, betwixt 8000 and 9000 prisoners, besides 
 what are lurking in hedges and private places, 
 which the country daily bring in or destroy !" 
 The force, precision, and graphic beauty of this 
 description could not possibly be excelled. 
 
 And now Cromwell, following up his blow, 
 marched on for Scotland* to extinguish all tra- 
 
 * On the eve of marching from Berwick, he wrote again 
 to the House : "A letter was this day read in the House 
 from Lieut.-gen. Cromwell, out of Scotland, the most ma- 
 terial part we will give you as followeth : ' Upon Friday, 
 Sept. 29, came an order from the Earl of Lanerick, and di- 
 vers Lords of his partie, requiringe the Governour of Ber- 
 wick to marche out of the Town, which accordingly he did 
 on Saturday, Sept. 30, at which time I entered, havinge 
 placed a garizon there for your use. The Governour would 
 faiue have capitulated for the English, but wee havinge 
 this advantage upon him, would not hear of it.soe that they 
 are submitted to your mercie, and are under the considera- 
 tion of Sir Arthur Haslerigge, whoe (I believe) will give 
 you a good accompt of them, and whoe hath already turned 
 out the malignant Major, and putt an honest man in his 
 roome. I have also receaved an Order for Carlisle, and 
 have sent Col. Bright, with Horse and Foot, to receave it ; 
 Sir Andrew Car and Col. Scot beinge gone with him to re- 
 quire an observance of the Order, there haviuge beene a 
 treaty and an agreement betwixt the two parties in Scot- 
 land to disband all forces, except fifteen hundred horse and 
 foot, under the Eurl of Leven, which are to be kept to see 
 all remaininge forces disbanded : and havinge some other 
 thinge to desire from the Committee of estates at Edinburgh 
 for your service, I am myselfr. going thitherward this day, 
 and soe soon as 1 shall be able to give you a further Accompt 
 thereof, I shall doe it. In the mean time, I make it my de- 
 sire that the Garizon of Berwick (into which I have placed 
 a Regiment of foot, and shall be attended alsoe by a Regi-
 
 472 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ces of Hamilton's party, and on his march pre- 
 served such remarkable discipline, that never, 
 according to the Scotch, had they " seen such 
 a civil people in all their days." Better evi- 
 dence of this, however, will not be asked than 
 what is offered by the following truly admirable 
 proclamation : " Whereas wee are marchinge 
 with the Parliament's Armie into the Kingdome 
 of Scotland, in pursuance of the remaininge part 
 of the Enimy whoe lately invaded the Kingdome 
 of England, and for the recoverie of the Gari- 
 zons of Berwick and Carlisle, these are to de- 
 clare, that if any officer or souldicr under my 
 Command shall take, or demand any monie, or 
 shall violently take any horses, goods, or victua.ll 
 without Order, or shall abuse the People in any 
 sort, He shall be tryed by a Councell of War, 
 and the said person so offendinge shall be pun- 
 ished accordinge to the Articles of War, made 
 for the Government of the Armie in the King- 
 dome of England, which is death. Each Colo- 
 nel, or other chiefe Officer in every Regiment, 
 is to transcribe the Copie of this, and to cause 
 the same to be delivered to each Captain of his 
 regiment ; and every said Captain of each re- 
 spective troupe and companie is to publish the 
 same to his Troupe or Companie, and to take a 
 strict course that nothinge be done contrary 
 hereunto. Given under my hand, this 20th 
 Sept., 1638. CROMWELL." 
 
 Arrived at Edinburgh, the victorious general 
 
 who held a commission of captain in the regi- 
 ment of horse commanded by Harrison. This 
 young man appears to have possessed, with 
 Henry, the greatest share of his father's re- 
 spect and confidence all his children had his 
 love and was remembered by him in his dy- 
 ing hour, when his mind seemed wandering for 
 the Protectorate's successor. 
 
 Richard was now Cromwell's eldest son. 
 He was not in the army, though he accepted a 
 nominal commission under the Protectorate. 
 If it is within the limit of probability that the 
 triumphant soldier meditated, even thus early, 
 any seizure of the supreme power, it must have 
 added to his grief in losing the first-born of his 
 children, to reflect that his heir now was an 
 idle youth, given to somewhat dissolute gaye- 
 ties, suspected, moreover, of Royalist prejudi- 
 ces, and without a particle of vigour or firm- 
 ness about him. 
 
 A negotiation for the marriage of Richard 
 with the daughter of a Mr. Major (the repre- 
 sentative of an old and wealthy family of Hamp- 
 shire, and himself high sheriff of that county 
 in 1640) had been broken off, for some unex- 
 plained reason, before the campaign of the sec- 
 ond civil war, resumed after its close, again 
 broken off on a question of pecuniary settle- 
 ment, and again, within a year of the present 
 time, renewed. I have found Cromwell's own 
 letters relating to it, and they exhibit this ex- 
 
 was received with enthusiasm, and even called j traordinary man in so striking and characteris- 
 " the deliverer of the kirk." He conferred tic an attitude among his family, that it is dif- 
 with commissioners, had visits from the pro- j ficult to understand why they should hitherto 
 vost and Scottish nobles, and received gorgeous ] have been so strangely neglected by his biog- 
 
 entertainments at the public cost. General 
 Leven, the Lord Argyle, and several other no- 
 blemen, invited him and his suite to a sumptu- 
 ous banquet in the castle just before his depar- 
 ture ; and, adds Whitelocke, when he left the 
 
 raphers. 
 
 The first of these letters is dated on the 26th 
 of February, 1647, and addressed to a friend, 
 " idle Dick Norton," a colonel in his army, and 
 a man evidently endeared to him by many af- 
 
 place, the majestic fortress saluted him with j fectionate ties, notwithstanding idleness and 
 
 its great guns, and numerous lords convoyed 
 him beyond the city precincts. 
 
 Cromwell's return to the capital settled the 
 fate of Charles. Yet he had not returned with- 
 
 apparently reckless habits. " DEERE NORTON, 
 I have sent my sonn over to thee, beinge 
 willinge to answear Providence, and although 
 I confesse / have had an offer of a very great 
 
 out one frightful dash of gloom pervading all proposition from a father of his daughter, yett 
 his glory. In one of the closing skirmishes of \ truely I rather encline to this in my thoughts, 
 the campaign he had lost his eldest son, Oliver,* . because, though the other be very farr greater, yett 
 
 I see different tycs, and not that assurance of god- 
 
 ment of Horse) may be provided for, and that Sir Arthur ' linesse, yett indeed faimesse. I COnfeSSC that 
 Haslerigge may receive commands to supplie it with guns which IS tould me COnceminge the estate of 
 and ammunition Irom Newcastle, and be otherwise enabled , . .IT i r 
 
 by you to furnish this Garizon with all other necessaries, Mr. M. is more than I can looke for as thmges 
 
 accordinge as a place of that importance will require. De- ! HOW Stand. ... If God please to bring it about, 
 siringe that these mercies may begett trust and thankful- j t ne consideration of pietie in the parents, and 
 
 Tnt oah G em^sl!^ U and 0r the SSf^fiSS^ ! su f h P e ^ the gentlewoman in that respect, 
 dome, I rest your most humble Servant, o. CROMWELL, make the busmesse to me a great mercie, con- 
 Berwick, 2d October, 1648.' "Perf. Diur., Oct. 9-16, 1648. cerning w ch I desier to waite upon God. ... I 
 
 * " This young man," says Noble, in his Memoirs of the onnfidpnt of thv Invp anH Hptsipr t hino-ps mav 
 
 Protectorai House, "was, at the breaking out of the civil ; * m continent oi tny love, ana desier thinges may 
 
 war, about nineteen, soon after which, by his father's in- , be Carried With pnvacie. 1 he Lorde doe his 
 
 terest, he procured a commission in the Parliament army ; | 
 
 and it is certain that this Oliver was a captain eo early as j in Col. Harrison's regiment ; both, says Lilburne, raw and 
 April, 1643, for a soldier going to burn a MS. relating to . unexperienced soldiers. It is well known that Rich., his 
 the antiquities of Peterborough, where the soldiers, under : then second son, was not designed for the sword, but the 
 his father, were making great devastation, especially in the , bar, and had no commission in the army until long after his 
 painted glass in the Cathedral, at which the elder Oliver father had been declared Protector, so that the sons of Oli- 
 
 assisted, Mr. Hustin redeemed the MS. for ten shillings, 
 and persuaded the soldier to write the following acknowl- 
 edgment : ' I pray let this scripture book alone, for he hath 
 
 ver then in the army must be this gentleman and Henry 
 his brother : but it is observable that Henry, who certainly 
 was captain of the life-guard, is mentioned first. Scarce 
 
 paid me for it ; and therefore I would desire you to let it j any author notices this son Oliver at all, and none, that I 
 alone, by me Henry Topclyffe, souldier under Captain I know of, has given us any account of what became of him.. 
 Cromwell, Colonel Cromwell's son, therefore I pray let it He was killed in July, 1648, in attempting to repulse the 
 alone, Henry Topclyffe, April 22, 1C43.' As a further Scotch army that invaded England under the Duke of Ham- 
 proof of this, Lilburne, the factious, accuses Oliver, his ilton, at which time Col. Harrison was wounded : the latter 
 father, in 1647, with having several relations in the army ; circumstance clearly evinces that it was him who was 
 and among others, two of his own sons, one a captain of the ' killed, as he is just above mentioned as being a captain in 
 general's life-guard, the other a captain of a. troop of hotse i Harrison's regiment."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 473 
 
 will, that's best, to \v ch submittinge, I rest your 
 humble servant, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 This refers to the opening of the negotiation. 
 Mr. Major appears to have broken it off, how- 
 ever, for some secret reason of objection. A 
 year after overtures began again, " Mr. Robin- 
 son, a preacher at Southampton," having been 
 apparently selected for the purpose, either by 
 the still love-sick Richard, or by the second 
 and wiser thoughts of Mr. Major himself. To 
 Mr. Robinson, Cromwell thus writes on the 1st 
 of February, 1648. 
 
 " S B , I thanke you for your kinde letter. As 
 to the businesse you mention, I desire to use 
 this plainnesse with you. When the last over- 
 ture was betweene me and Mr. Major, by the 
 mediation of Coll. Norton, after the meetinge 
 I had with Mr. Major at Farnham, I desired the 
 Coll. (findinge, as I thought, some scruples and 
 hesitation in Mr. Major) to knowe of him wheth- 
 er his minde was free to the thinge or not. 
 Coll. Norton gave me this accompt, that Mr. 
 Major, by reason of some matters as they then 
 stood, was not very free thereunto, whereupon 
 I did acquiesce, submittinge to the providence 
 of God. Upon your revivinge of the businesse 
 to me, & your letter, I thinke fitt to returne 
 you this answear, & to say in plainnesse of 
 spirit to you, That upon your testimonie of the 
 gentlewoman's worth & the common reporte 
 of the pietie of the familie, I shall be willinge 
 to entertaine the renewinge of the motion upon 
 such considerations as maybe to mutuall satis- 
 faction, only I thinke that a speedie resolution 
 will be very convenient to both parties. The 
 Lorde direct all to his glory. I desier your 
 prayers therein, and rest your very affection- 
 ate friend, 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 And eleven days after, I find the following 
 letter written to Mr. Major himself, describing 
 passages of the interval. " S B , I receaved 
 some intimations formerly, & by the last re- 
 turne from Southampton a letter from Mr. Rob- 
 inson, concerninge the revivinge the last yeare's 
 motion touchinge my sonn and your daughter. 
 Mr. Robinson was alsoe pleased to send inclo- 
 sed in his a letter from you to him, bearinge 
 date the 5 tL of this instant February, wherein I 
 finde your willingnesse to entertaine any good 
 meanes for the compleatinge of that businesse. 
 From whence I take encouragement to send 
 my sonn to wayte upon you, & by him to lett 
 you knowe that my desiers are (if Providence 
 soe dispose) very full & free to the thinge, if 
 upon an interview theire prove alsoe a freedom 
 in the younge persons thereunto. What h'bertie 
 you will give heerein I wholly submit to you. 
 I thought fitt, in my letter to Mr. Robinson, to 
 mention somewhat of expedition, because indeed 
 I knowe not how soone I may be called into thefeild, 
 or other occasions may remove me from hence, 
 havinge for the present some libertie of stay in 
 London. The Lord direct all to his glorie. I 
 rest, S r , y r very humble servant, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 Again, to his " very worthie friend" Mr. Ma- 
 jor, on the 26th of February, the lieutenant-gen- 
 eral writes yet more characteristically. " S B , 
 I receaved yours by Mr. Stapleton, together 
 with an account of the kinde reception & the 
 many civilities afforded them, especially to my 
 sonn in the libertie given him to waite upon 
 your worthie daughter, the report of whose 
 oo 
 
 vertue and godlinesse has soe great a place in 
 my harte that I thinke fitt not to neglect any- 
 thinge on my parte which may conduce to con- 
 summate a close of the businesse, if God please 
 to dispose the younge ones' hartes thereunto, 
 & other suitable orderinge affaires towards 
 mutuall satisfaction appeare in the dispensation 
 of Providence. For which purpose, and to the 
 end matters may be brought to as neer an issue 
 as they are capable of (not being at libertie, by 
 reason of publique occasions, to waite upon you, 
 nor, as I understand, your health permittinge), 
 I thought fitt to send this gentleman, Mr. Sta- 
 pleton, instructed with my minde to see how 
 neer wee may come to an understandinge one 
 of another therein ; & although I could have 
 wished the consideration of thinges had beene 
 between us two, it beinge of soe neer concerne- 
 ment, yet Providence for the present not allow- 
 inge, I desier you to give him credence on my 
 behalfe. S r , all thinges which yourselfe & I 
 had in conference at Farnham doe not occur to 
 my memorie thorough multiplicitie of businesse 
 interveninge, I hope I shall, with a very free 
 harte, testifie my readinesse to that which may 
 be expected from me. I have noe more at 
 present, butt desiringe the Lorde to order this 
 affair to his glory & the comfort of his servants, 
 I rest, S r , your humble servant, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 Negotiations thicken, and Cromwell appears 
 somewhat shrewd and calculating, and con- 
 veniently forgetful, in his next missive, dated 
 the 8th of March, 1648, to his " worthie friend" 
 Mr. Major. 
 
 " S, Yours I have receaved, & have given 
 further instructions to this bearer, Mr. Staple- 
 ton, to treate with you about the businesse in 
 agitation betweene your daughter and my sonn. 
 I am ingag'd to you for all your civilities, & 
 respects already manifested. I trust there will 
 he a right understandinge betweene us and a 
 good conclusion ; and though I cannot particu- 
 larly remember the thinges spoken off at Farn- 
 ham, to which your letter seemes to referre me, 
 yett I doubt not butt I have sent the offer of 
 such thinges now, which will give mutuall sat- 
 isfaction to us both. My attendance upon pub- 
 lique affairs will not give me leave to come 
 downe unto yotr myselfe. I have sent unto 
 you this gentleman with my mind. I salute 
 M. Major, though unknowne, with the rest of 
 your family. I commit you, with the progresse 
 of the businesse, to the Lorde, and rest, S r , your 
 assured friend to serve you, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 The next letter, after an interval of eight 
 days, is a long one, and shows that the lieu- 
 tenant-general arranged a marriage for his son 
 as he would have manoeuvred a battle for the 
 Commonwealth. It is scrawled over, in what 
 seems to be Mr. Major's handwriting, " L. G. 
 Cromwell's letter of exceptions," and truly very 
 formidable exceptions they are, and put with 
 an air of probably unconscious egotism, as 
 though his conveniences should, as a matter of 
 course, be paramount. 
 
 " S B , I receaved your paper by the handes 
 of Mr. Stapleton. I desier your leave to returne 
 my dissatisfaction therewith. I shall not neede 
 to premise how much I have desired (I hope 
 upon the best groundes) to match with you ; 
 the same desier still continues in me, if Provi- 
 dence see it fitt. Butt I may not be soe much
 
 474 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 wantinge to myselfe nor familie as not to have 
 some equalitie of consideration towards it. 7 
 have two younge daughters to bestows, if God give 
 them life and oportunitie.* Accordinge to your 
 offer, I have nothinge for them, nothinge at all 
 in hand. If my sonn dye, what consideration 
 is there to me '.' And yett a jouncture parted 
 with, if she dye there is little, if you have an 
 heire male then butt 3000 without tyme as- 
 sertained. Butt for theise thinges, I douht not 
 butt one interview betweene you and myselfe 
 they might be accomodated to mutual satis- 
 faction, and in relation to theise I thinke wee 
 should hardlie part, or have many wordes, soe 
 much doe I desier a closure with you. Butt, to 
 cleale freely with you, the setlinge of the manor 
 of Hursley, as you propose, it stickes soe much 
 with me, that either I understand you not, or 
 else it much failes my expectation. As you 
 offer it here is 400 per annum charged upon 
 it. For the 150 to your ladie for a life as 
 jouncture I stick not at that, butt the 250 per 
 annum until Mr. Ludlow's lease expires, the 
 tenure wherof I knowe not, and soe much of 
 the 250 per annum as exceeds that lease in 
 annual valew for some time alsoe after the ex- 
 piration of the s d lease, gives such a maime to 
 the manor of Hursley as indeed renders the rest 
 of the manor very inconsiderable. S r , if I con- 
 cur to denie myselfe in point of present monies, 
 as alsoe in the other thinges mentioned as afore- 
 said. I may and I doe expect the manor of 
 Hursley to be setled without any charge upon 
 it after your decease, savinge your ladie's 
 jouncture of 150 per annum, which if you 
 should thinke fitt to increase I should not stand 
 upon it. Your own estate is best known to 
 you ; but surelie your personall estate beinge 
 free for you to dispose, will, with some small 
 matter of addition, begett a neernesse of equal- 
 litie, if I heare well from others ; and if the dif- 
 ference in that were not very considerable, I 
 should not insist upon it. What you demand 
 of me is very high in all pointes. I am willinge 
 to settle as you desier in everythinge, savinge 
 for present maintenance 400 per annum. 
 300 per annum I would have somewhat free 
 to be thanked by them for. The 300 per an- 
 num of my ould land, for a jolmcture after my 
 wife's decease, I shall settle, and in the mean 
 time, out of other landes at your election, and 
 truely, S r , if that be not good, nor will any landes 
 I doubt. I doe not much distrust your princi- 
 ples in other thinges have acted you towards 
 confidence. You demand, in case my sonn 
 have. none issue male, butt only daughters, then 
 the lands in Hantsheire, Munrnouth, and Glou- 
 cestersheire to descend to the daughters, or 
 3000 apeice. The first would be most une- 
 quall, the latter is too high. They will be well 
 provided for by beinge inheritrixes to their 
 mother, and I am willinge to 2000 apeice to 
 be charged upon those landes. S r , I cannot 
 butt with very many thankes acknowledge your 
 good opinion of me and of my sonn, as alsoe 
 your great civilities towards him, and your 
 daughter's good respects (whose goodnesse, 
 though known to me only at such a distance 
 by the report of others) I much valew, and, in- 
 deed, that causeth me soe cheerfully to denie 
 
 * His second daughter, Elizabeth, had recently married 
 Claypule, a man of Royalist prepossessions. 
 
 myselfe as I doe in the point of monies, and 
 soe willinglie to complie in other thinges. Butt 
 if I should not insist as before, I should in a 
 greater measure denie both my owne reason 
 and the advise of my friends than were meete ; 
 which I may not doe. Indeed, S r , / have not 
 closed with a farr greater offer of estate, butt rath- 
 er chose to fix heere. I hope I have not beene 
 wanting to Providence in this. I have made 
 myselfe plaine to you, desiringe you will make 
 my sonn the messenger of your pleasure and 
 resolution herein as speedilie as with conve- 
 niency you may. I take leave, and rest, your 
 affectionate servant, 0. CROMWELL. I desier 
 my service may be presented to your ladie and 
 daughters." 
 
 The interview followed, Mr. Major no douht 
 supposing that anything would be preferable to 
 letters of this sort. The interview seems to 
 have been only partially satisfactory, however, 
 and in the next letter of the series, to his friend 
 Norton, there is a curious allusion to some 
 personal objections to himself which Mr. Major 
 would appear to have urged. The date of this 
 is the 28th of March, 1648. 
 
 " DKERE DICK, It had beene a favour indeed 
 to have mett you heere at Farnham, butt I 
 heare you are a man of great businesse ! . . . 
 Therefore I say noc more. If it be a favour to 
 the House of Comons to enjoy you, what is 
 it to me ? Butt, in good earnest, when wi . . . 
 you and your brother Russell be a lit ... hon- 
 est, and attend your charge surelie so ... ex- 
 pect it, especially the good fellowes wh . . . chose 
 you ... I have mett w th M r - Major ; we spent 
 two or 3 bowers together last night. I per- 
 ceave the gentleman is very wise and honest, 
 aTid, indeed, much to be valewed. Some thinges 
 of common fame did a little sticke. I gladlie heard 
 his doubts, and gave such answear as was next at 
 hand, I beleive to some satisfaction. Neverthe- 
 lesse, I exceedingly liked the gentleman's plain- 
 ne.sse and free dealinge w' H me. I knowe God has 
 beene above all ill reports, and will in his own 
 time vindicate me. I have noe cause to complaine. 
 I see nothinge butt that this particular busi- 
 nesse betweene him and me may goe on. The 
 Lorde's will be donn. For newes out of the 
 north there is little, only the Mai. partie is pre- 
 vailinge in the Par lnt of S. They are earnest 
 for a warr ; the ministers oppose, as yett. . . . 
 Mr. Marshall is returned, whoe says soe ; and 
 soe doe many of our letters. Their great com- 
 mittee of dangers have 2 malig. for one right. 
 It's sayd they have voted an armie of 40,000 in 
 Par lat : soe some of yesterday's letters. Butt 
 I account my newes ill bestowed, because upon 
 an idle person. . . I shall take speedy course in 
 the businesse concerninge my tenants, for w ch 
 thankes, my service to your ladie, I am really 
 your affectionate servant, 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 A second letter to Norton, dated the 3d of 
 April, 1648, put a second period to these labo- 
 rious negotiations. A supplementary inter- 
 view, less successful than the first, is here de- 
 scribed, with various points of an extremely in- 
 teresting kind. Never, surely, did the ministers 
 of a crowned head look so carefully about them 
 in diplomatizing an affair of marriage. There 
 is again in this letter a tone of strong personal 
 exaction, of which the writer might or might 
 not have been conscious. " DEERE NORTON, I
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 475 
 
 could not in my last give you a perfect accompt 
 of what passed betweene me and Mr. M., be- 
 cause wee were to have a conclusion of our 
 speed that morninge after I wrote my letter to 
 you, which wee had, and havinge had a full in- 
 terview of one another's mindes, wee parted 
 with this, that both would consider with our re- 
 lations, and accordinge to satisfactions given 
 there, acquaint each other with our mindes. . . 
 I cannot tell how better to doe it, to receave 
 or give satisfaction, than by you, whoe (as I 
 remember) in your last sayd that if thinges did 
 stick betweene us, you would use your endeav- 
 our towards a close. . . The thinges insisted 
 upon were theise (as I take it). Mr. Major de- 
 sired 400 p. annum of inheritance lyinge in 
 Cambridgesheire and Norfolk, to be praesently 
 setled, and to be for maintenance, wherein I 
 desired to be advised by my wife. . . I offered 
 the land in Hampshire for present maintenance, 
 w th , I dare say, with copses and ordinarie fells, 
 will be communibus annis 500 p. annum, be- 
 sides 500 per annum in tenant's handes hold- 
 inge butt for one life, and about 300 p. ann., 
 some for two lives, some for three lives. Butt 
 as to this, if the latter be not liked of, I shall 
 be willing a farther conference he had in the 
 first. . . In point of jouncture I shall give satis- 
 faction. And as to the settlement of landes 
 given me by the Par 1 " 1 , satisfaction to be given 
 in like manner, accordinge as wee discoursed. . . 
 Jn what else was demanded of me, I am will- 
 ing (so farr as I remember any demand was) 
 to give satisfaction. . . Only I havinge beene 
 informed by Mr. Robinson that Mr. Major did 
 upon a former match offer to settle the manor 
 wherein he lived, and to give 2000 in monie, 
 I did insist upon that, and doe desire it may 
 not be with difficultie. The monie I shall necdc 
 for my two little wenches, and therby I shall free 
 my sonn from bcinge charged with them. Mr. 
 Major parts w th nothing in praesent but that 
 monie, savinge their board, w ch I shoulde not 
 be.unWillinge to give them to enjoy the comfort 
 of thcirc societie, w dl it's reason he smarte for, if 
 he will robb me altogether of them. Truely the 
 land to be settled, both what the Par lnt gives 
 me and my owne, is very little lesse than 
 3000 per annum, all thinges considered, if I be 
 rightly informed. And a lawyer of Lincoln's 
 Inn havinge searched all the Marquisse of Wor- 
 cester's writinges w d > were taken at Ragland 
 and sent for by the Par lnt , and this gentleman 
 appointed by the committee to search the sayd 
 writinges, assures me there is noe scruple con- 
 cerninge the title ; and it soc fell out that this 
 gentleman whoe searched was my owne lawyer, 
 a very godly, able man, and my deere friend, w c/l 
 I reckon noe small mcrcie. He is also possest of 
 the writinges for me. . . I thought fitt to give 
 you this account, desiringe you to make such 
 use of it as God shall direct you, and I doubt 
 not butt you will doe the part of a friend be- 
 tweene two friends. I account myselfe one, 
 and I have heard you say Mr. Major was en- 
 tirely soe to you. What the good pleasure of 
 God is I shall waite ; there is onely rest. Pre- 
 sent my service to your ladie, to Mr. Major, et. 
 I rest your affectionate servant, O. CROMWELL. 
 I desier you to carrie this businesse with all 
 privacie. I beseeche you to doe soe, as you 
 love me. Let me entreat you not to lose a day 
 
 herein, that I may knowe Mr. Major's minde, 
 for I thinke I may be at leisure for a weeke to 
 attende this businesse to give and take satis- 
 faction, from w ch , perhaps, I may be shutt up 
 afterwards by employment. I knowe thou art an 
 idle fellowe, butt prithee neglect me not now. De- 
 lay may be very inconvenient to me. I much 
 relie upon you. Lett me heare from you in two 
 or 3 days. I confesse the principall considera- 
 tion as to me is the absolute settlement of the 
 manor where he lives, w ch he would doe butt 
 conditionally in case he prove to have noe sonn, 
 and but 3000 in case he have a sonn. Butt 
 as to this I hope farther reason may worke him 
 to more." 
 
 But now, on the return from the second civil 
 war, the young people appear to have lost none 
 of their liking for each other, and Mr. Major 
 has opened negotiations once more. Cromwell 
 answers on the 25th of March, 1649, and though 
 his words are fair, not less distressingly minute 
 than ever does Mr. Major find him in the reali- 
 ties. " S a , You will pardon the brevitie of 
 theise lines ; the haste I am in by reason of bu- 
 sinesses occasions it. To testifie the earnest 
 desier I have to see a happy period to this 
 treatie betweene us, I give you to understand 
 that I agree to 150 pr. annum out of the 300 
 pr. annum of my ould land for your daughter's 
 jouncture over the 150 where you please. . . 
 400 pr. annum for present maintenance where 
 you shall choose, either in Hantsheire, Glouces- 
 ter, or Munmouthsheire. . . . Those landes set- 
 led upon my sonn and his heires male by your 
 daughter, and in case of daughters only 2000 
 apeice charged upon those landes. . . . 400 per 
 annum free to raise portions for my two daugh- 
 ters. I expect the manor of Hursley to he set- 
 led upon your eldest daughter and her heires, 
 the heires of her bodie. . . . Your ladie a jounc- 
 ture of 150 per annum out of it. ... For com- 
 pensation to your younger daughter, I agree to 
 leave it in your power, after your decease, to 
 charge it with as much as will buye in the lease 
 of the Farme at Allington by a just computa- 
 tion. ... I expect, soe long as they live with 
 you, their diet as you expressed, or, in case of 
 voluntarie partinge, 150 pr. annum ; 3000 
 in case you have a sonn, to be payed in two 
 yeares next follovvinge. ... In case your daugh- 
 ter die without issue, 1000 within six months. 
 S r , if this satisfie, I desier a speedie resolution; 
 I should the rather desier soe, because of what 
 your kinsman can satisfie you in. The Lorde 
 blesse you and your familie, to whome I desier 
 my affections and service may be presented. 
 I rest your humble servant, 
 
 " 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 On the 28th, Mr. Major solicits an alteration 
 in one point. On the 30th Cromwell refuses it. 
 " S H , I receaved yours of the 28 th instant. I 
 desier the matter of compensation may be as 
 in my last to you ; you propose another way, 
 which truely seemes to me very inconvenient. 
 I have agreed to all other thinges as you take 
 me (and that rightly), repeating particulars in 
 your paper. The Lorde dispose this great bu- 
 sinesse (great betweene you <$ me) for good. 
 You mention to send by the post on Tuesday. 
 I shall speede thinges heere as I may ; I am de- 
 signed for Ireland, which will be speedie. I 
 should be very glad to see thinges setled before
 
 476 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 I goe, if the Lorde will. My service to all your 
 familie. I rest, sir, your affectionate 
 
 "OLIVER CROMWELL." 
 
 Some hope for the poor young lovers appears 
 at last, and they do not seern, from this pretty 
 allusion in the lord-lieutenant's letter (for Crom- 
 well was now lord-lieutenant of Ireland), to 
 have been quite tired out with waitinge for it. 
 The date is April the 6th, 1649. " S", I re- 
 ceaved your papers enclosed in your letter, al- 
 though I knowe not howe to make soe good 
 use of them as otherwise might have beene to 
 have saved expence of tyme, if the arrest of 
 your lawyer had not fallen out at this time. I 
 conceave a draught to your satisfaction by your 
 owne lawyer would have saved much time, 
 which to me is precious. I hope you will send 
 some up perfectlie instructed. I shall endeav- 
 our to speed what is to be donn on my part, 
 not knowing how soone I may be sent downe 
 towards my charge for Ireland. And I hope to 
 perform punctually with you. S r , my sonn had 
 a great desier to come down & waite upon 
 your daughter. I perceave he minds that more 
 than to attend businesses heere. I should be glad 
 to see him setled and all thinges finished be- 
 fore I goe. I trust not to be wantinge therein. 
 The Lorde direct all our hartes into his good 
 pleasure. I rest, S r , your affectionate servant, 
 O. CROMWELL. . . . My service to your ladie & 
 family." 
 
 Most characteristically, however, does one 
 letter of exception more close this very singu- 
 lar series. It is addressed to Mr. Major, nine 
 days later than the last. " S B , Your kinsman 
 Mr. Barton and myselfe repayringe to our coun- 
 cell for the perfectinge this businesse soe much 
 concerninge us, did upon Saturday, this 15 th of 
 April, drawe our councell to a meetinge, where- 
 upon consideration had of my letter to your- 
 selfe expressinge my consent to particulars 
 which Mr. Barton brought to your councell, 
 Mr. Hales of Lincoln's Inn. Upon the read- 
 inge that which expresseth the way of your 
 setlinge Hursley, your kinsman expressed a 
 sence of yours contrarie to the paper under my 
 hand, as alsoe to that under your hand of the 
 28 th of March, which was the same with mine 
 as to that perticular, and I knowe riothinge of 
 doubt in that which / am to doe, butt doe agree 
 it all to your kinsman his satisfaction. Nor is 
 there much materiall difference save in this, 
 wherein both my paper sent by you to your 
 councell and yours of the 28 th doe in all literall 
 and all equitable construction agree, viz., to 
 settle an estate in fee simple upon your daugh- 
 ter after your decease, which Mr. Barton af- 
 firmes not to be your meaninge, although he 
 has not (as to me) formerlie made this any ob- 
 jection, nor can the words beare it, nor have I 
 anythinge more considerable in levve of what I 
 part with than this. And I have appealed to 
 yours or any councell in England whether it be 
 not just and equal that I insist thereupon. And 
 this misunderstandinge (if it be yours as it is 
 your kinsman's) putt a stop to the businesse, 
 so that our councell could not proceed untill 
 your pleasure herein were known, wherefore 
 it was thought fitt to desier Mr. Barton to have 
 recourse to you to knowe your minde, he al- 
 ledginge he had noe authoritie to understand 
 that expression soe, butt the contrarie, which 
 
 was thought not a little strange even by your 
 own councell. I confesse I did apprehend wee 
 should be incident to mistakes, treatinge at 
 such a distance, although I may take the bold- 
 nesse to say there is nothinge expected from 
 me, butt I agree it to your kinsman's sense to a 
 tittle. S r , I desired to knowe what commission 
 your kinsman had to helpe this doubt by an ex- 
 pedient, who denied to have any, butt did thinke 
 it were better for you to part with some monie, 
 and keepe the power in your owne handes as to 
 the lande, to dispose thereof as you should see 
 cause. Wherupon an overture was made, and 
 himselfe and your councell desired to draw it 
 up ; the effect whereof this enclosed paper con- 
 teynes ; and although I should not like change 
 of agreements, yett to shew how much I de- 
 sier the perfectinge of this businesse, if you 
 like thereof (though this be farr the worse bar- 
 gain), I shall submitt thereunto : your councell 
 thinkinge that thinges may be setled this way 
 with more clearnesse & lesse intricasie. There 
 is mention made of 900 pr. annum to be re- 
 served, butt it comes to butt about 800. My 
 landes in Glamorgansheire being butt little 
 above 400 pr. annum, and the 400 pr. an- 
 num out of my manor in Gloucester & Mun- 
 mouthsheire. I wish a cleere understandinge 
 may be betweene us. Truely I would not will- 
 inglie mistake, desiringe to waite upon Provi- 
 dence in this businesse. I rest, S r , your affec- 
 tionate friend & servant, O. CROMWELL 
 
 I de-sier my service may be presented to your 
 ladie & daughters." 
 
 Very probably Mr. Major now conceded every- 
 thing without farther dispute, for in a fortnight 
 after, on the 1st of May, 1649, Richard Crom- 
 well was married to Dorothy Major, in Hursley 
 Church, Hampshire. She was a modest, un- 
 obtrusive, kind-hearted woman, and bore her 
 husband nine children.* 
 
 The reader might suppose, from the charac- 
 ter of these most elaborate arrangements, that 
 Cromwell had been a " family man," with much 
 time on his hands, and no business save what 
 he couid ingeniously, and with much pains, 
 fashion out of his private affairs to attend to. 
 Yet, in the interval comprised by these letters, 
 what mighty events he had created and con- 
 trolled ! 
 
 The trial and execution of Charles I., with 
 
 * In article B.of the Appendix I have sketched the lir.sal 
 descendants of Cromwell to the present time. Of Richard's 
 wife Mr. Noble observes: "It is extraordinary that we 
 know so little of her, considering that she was, at one time, 
 the second person in the kingdom : there is every reason to 
 suppose that she was scarce ever at court during Oliver's 
 Protectorate. She felt the reverse of fortune in the most 
 poignant manner, and wanted the comforts of the clergy to 
 reconcile her to what she judged the greatest misfortune. 
 Among all the illiberal things that were levelled against 
 the protectorate house of Cromwell, her character is almost 
 the only one that scandal has left untouched ; she never (it 
 is most reasonable to think) saw her husband after he re- 
 tired to France in 1660; she died Jan. 5, 1675-6, in the 
 forty-ninth year of her age, and was buried in the chancel 
 of Ilursley Church. The only character of her that I have 
 ever met with is that given by Mr. John Maidstone, who 
 says, 'she was a prudent, godly, practical Christian.' She 
 was certainly once at court during the government of her 
 father-in-law, from the following item in Mr. Major, her 
 father's memorandum-book, still preserved : ' 1657, May 21, 
 Daughter Cromwell went to London,' but as she had a child 
 baptized at Hursley in September following, her stay must 
 have been short ; and from an item of her father's discard- 
 ed reeve, it appears, she was at Whitehall when her hus- 
 band lost his power, after which she retired to ' Hursley 
 Lodge, and lived upon her own lands.' "
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 477 
 
 all their attendant circumstances, and their 
 vast result in the establishment of the Com- 
 monwealth, have been treated in the life of 
 Henry Marten. Cromwell did not appear more 
 openly in them than any of the other statesmen 
 or officers perhaps he was even less seen in 
 them than any but it was well known that the 
 majority of the men concerned in the deed con- 
 fessed to his extraordinary influence and con- 
 trol, while he, in his turn, if Bishop Burnet may 
 be believed, was not without his controller also. 
 " Ireton," says the bishop, " was the person 
 that drove it on, for Cromwell was all the 
 while in some suspense about it. Ireton had 
 the principles and the temper of a Cassius in 
 him : he stuck at nothing that might have turn- 
 ed England to a commonwealth." The scur- 
 rilous falsehoods of the period, contained in 
 that disgusting book which goes by the name 
 of " The Trials of the Regicides," are scouted 
 now by all well-informed persons, but two anec- 
 dotes of the time personally relating to Crom- 
 well may properly find a place here. 
 
 " I know nothing in particular," says Bishop 
 Burnet, " of the sequel of the war, nor of all 
 the confusions that happened till the murder of 
 King Charles the First : only one passage I had 
 from Lieutenant-general Drummond, afterward 
 Lord Strathallan. He served on the king's 
 side ; but he had many friends among those 
 who were for the Covenant : so the king's affairs 
 being now ruined, he was recommended to 
 Cromwell, being then in a treaty with the 
 Spanish ambassador, who was negotiating for 
 some regiments to be levied and sent over from 
 Scotland to Flanders. He happened to be with 
 Cromwell when the commissioners sent from Scot- 
 land to protest against the putting' the king to 
 death came to argue the matter with him. Crom- 
 well bade Drummond stay and hear the confer- 
 ence, which he did. They began in a heavy, 
 languid style, to lay, indeed, great load on the 
 king ; but they still insisted on that clause in 
 the Covenant by which they swore they would 
 be faithful in the preservation of his majesty's 
 person. With this they showed upon what 
 terms Scotland, as well as the two Houses, had 
 engaged in the war, and what solemn declara- 
 tions of their zeal and duty to the king they all 
 along published ; which would now appear, to 
 the scandal and reproach of the Christian name, 
 to have been false pretences, if, when the king 
 was in their power, they should proceed to ex- 
 tremities. Upon this, Cromwell entered into a 
 long discourse on the nature of the regal power, 
 according to the principles of Mariana and Bu- 
 chanan : he thought a breach of trust in a king 
 ought to be punished more than any other 
 crime whatsoever : he said, as to their cove- 
 nant, they swore to the preservation of the 
 king's person in defence of the true religion ; if, 
 then, it appeared that the settlement of the true 
 religion was obstructed by the king, so that 
 they could not come at it but by putting him 
 out of the way, then their oath could not bind 
 them to the preserving him any longer. He 
 said also, their covenant did bind them to bring 
 all malignants, incendiaries, and enemies to 
 the cause to condign punishment ; and was not 
 this to be executed impartially 1 What were 
 all those on whom public justice had been done, 
 especially those who suffered for joining with 
 
 Montrose, but small offenders, acting by com- 
 mission from the king, who was, therefore, the 
 principal, and so the most guilty 1 Drummond 
 said, Cromwell had plainly the better of them at 
 their own weapon and upon their own principles. 
 At this time Presbytery was at its height in 
 Scotland." 
 
 The other anecdote has reference to a cousin 
 of Cromwell's, who, on the eve of Charles I.'s 
 execution, was commissioned to grant any con- 
 ditions which the lieutenant-general might de- 
 mand, if he would consent to preserve the life 
 of Charles. Colonel John Cromwell is said to 
 have been encouraged to undertake this mis- 
 sion by the recollection of an assurance given 
 to him some time before by his great cousin, 
 that he would rather draw his sword in favour 
 of the king than allow the Republicans to make 
 any attempt on his person. Upon his arrival 
 in the metropolis, however, he found that his 
 kinsman had shut himself up so closely in his 
 chamber, and issued such strict orders that no 
 one should be admitted to him, that it was not 
 without some difficulty he obtained an inter- 
 view. The envoy having performed his mis- 
 sion with undaunted zeal and earnestness, 
 Cromwell, says Heath, fell to his old shifts, 
 telling him that it was not he, but the army, 
 who were about to inflict justice on the king ; 
 that it is true he did once use such words as 
 those which the colonel had repeated, but times 
 were now altered, and Providence seemed to 
 dispose things otherwise. He added, that he 
 had prayed and fasted for the king, but no re- 
 turn that way was yet made to him. Upon 
 this the visiter fastened the door, which till 
 then had continued open, and going close up to 
 Cromwell, said, " Cousin, it is no time to dally 
 with words in this matter ; look you here" 
 showing his credentials, and a carte blanche 
 with which he had been supplied " it is in 
 your power not only to make yourself, but your 
 posterity, family, and relations, happy and hon- 
 ourable forever : otherwise, as they have chan- 
 ged their name before from Williams to Crom- 
 well, so now they must be forced to change it 
 again ; for this fact will bring such an igno- 
 miny upon the whole generation of them, that 
 no time will be able to wipe it away." Here 
 Cromwell seemed to be shaken in his resolu- 
 tion, and to ponder on the communication 
 which had just been made to him. After a lit- 
 tle space, he replied, " Cousin, I desire you 
 will give me till night to consider of it ; and do 
 you go to your inn, but go not to bed till you 
 hear from me : I will confer and consider far- 
 ther about the business." The colonel did so ; 
 and about one o'clock a messenger came to 
 him, and told him he might go to bed, and ex- 
 pect no other answer to carry to the prince ; 
 for the council of officers had been seeking God, 
 as Cromwell himself had also done, and it was 
 resolved by them all that the king must die. 
 
 The execution followed. Some have said 
 that Cromwell was praying when the axe fell, 
 and some that he was indulging an ill-consid- 
 ered act of buffoonery. It is hard to say which 
 was most likely. It seems to be confessed, 
 however, that he sought from the guard to whom 
 the body was intrusted permission to view it 
 as it lay. Bowtell, a private soldier, who stood 
 by at the time, said " that Cromwell could not
 
 478 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 open the coffin with his staff, but, taking the j 
 other's sword, effected it with the hilt of it." 
 He then stood and gazed at it steadily, till, 
 Dowtell asking him what government they 
 should have now, he said hastily, turning round, 
 " The same that then was ;" and turning again 
 to the body of the king, calmly observed, that 
 it appeared sound and well made for a long life. 
 
 The Commonwealth had scarcely been es- 
 tablished, and the Levellers, with Lilburne, 
 temporarily quelled by Cromwell, when the 
 council of state offered him the lord-lieuten- 
 ancy of Ireland. The affairs of that kingdom 
 were now in such a miserable condition of re- 
 bellion and disorder, that in no services but his 
 could they entertain the slightest hope of re- 
 trieving them. Ormond had proclaimed Charles 
 II., and that prince was about to start for Dublin. 
 
 Cromwell was prepared for the offer, yet on 
 presenting himself in the House of Commons 
 to accept his new office, affected surprise at 
 the nomination, and made his acknowledgments 
 with much hesitation and perplexity. He spoke 
 of his great unworthiness, and even of his ina- 
 bility to undertake so weighty a charge ; but 
 yet he professed " that the difficulty which ap- 
 peared in the expedition was his chief motive 
 for engaging in it ;" and that, though he could 
 hardly expect to prevail over the rebels, he 
 hoped, nevertheless, to preserve to the Com- 
 monwealth some footing in that kingdom. We 
 have it farther, on the authority of Whitelocke 
 and the Journals, that when the appointment 
 was offered to Cromwell, he hesitated, and re- 
 quested that two officers from each corps might 
 meet him at Whitehall, and seek the Lord in 
 prayer. After a delay of two weeks, he con- 
 descended to submit his shoulders to the bur- 
 den, because he had learned it was the will of 
 Heaven. 
 
 He next made his demand for men and means. 
 He asked from the House 12,000 horse and 
 foot, selected by himself from those veterans 
 whom he had taught to conquer every enemy ; 
 a plentiful supply of provisions and ammuni- 
 tion ; and a military chest containing 100,000 
 in ready money. He received, in the name of 
 outfit, 3000 ; 10 a day as general while he 
 remained in England ; and 2000 per quarter 
 in Ireland, besides his pay in his new office. 
 He demanded also that Ireton should accom- 
 pany him with the second command. His title 
 was Lord-lieutenant-general and General Gov- 
 ernor of Ireland. 
 
 In the morning of the 10th of July, a large 
 number of his friends were assembled at White- 
 hall, and three ministers invoked a blessing on 
 his banners, as about to fight the battle of the 
 Lord against the blinded Roman Catholics of 
 Ireland. These functionaries were succeeded 
 by three officers, Goffe, Harrison, and Crom- 
 well himself, who expounded the Scriptures 
 " excellently well, and pertinently to the occa- 
 sion." This strange scene over, the lieutenant- 
 general mounted his splendid carriage, drawn 
 by " six Flanders mares of whitish gray." He 
 was accompanied by the great officers of state 
 and of the army. His life-guard, consisting of 
 eighty young men, all of quality, and several of 
 them holding commissions as majors and col- 
 onels, surprised the spectators by their splendid 
 uniforms and gallant bearing. The streets of 
 
 the metropolis resounded, as he drove towards 
 Windsor, with the acclamations of the populace 
 and the clangour of military music.* 
 
 He was met at Bristol with great pomp and 
 ceremony, but found time, when the fatigue of 
 his reception was over, to write a very delight- 
 ful letter to the father of Richard's wife, with 
 whom, by the arrangement of the marriage, the 
 young couple were now domiciled. "LOVINGE 
 BROTHER, I receaved your Letter by Major 
 Longe, and doe in answear thereunto accord- 
 inge to my best understandinge, with a due con- 
 sideration of those Gentlemen whoe have ah id the 
 brunt of the service. I am very glad {o heare of 
 your welfare, and that our Children have soe 
 good leizure to make a journie to eate cherries. 
 It's very excuseable in my daughter ; / hope she 
 may have a very good pretence for it. I assure 
 you, S r , I wish her very well, and I believe she 
 knowes it. I pray you tell her from me, / ex- 
 pect she writes often to me, by which I shall un- 
 derstand how all your Familie doth, and she 
 will be kept in some exercise. I have deliver- 
 ed my sonn up to you, and I hope you will 
 councell him. He will necde it. And, indeed, 
 I believe he likes well what you say, and will 
 be advised by you. / wish he may be serious ; 
 the times requier it. I hope my Sister is in 
 health, to whome I desire my very heartie af- 
 fections and service may be presented, as also 
 to my Cozen Ann,t to whome I wish a good hus- 
 band. I desier my affections may be presented 
 to all your Familie, to which I wish a blessinge 
 from the Lorde. I hope I shall have your pray- 
 ers in the businesse to which I am called. My 
 Wife, I trust, will be with you before it be longe, 
 in her way towards Bristoll. S r , discompose not 
 your thoughts nor estate for what you are to pay 
 me. . . . Lett me knowe wherein I may complye 
 with your occasions and minde, and be confi- 
 dent you will finde me to you as your owne harte. 
 Wishinge your prosperitie and contentment 
 very sincerelie, with the remembrance of my 
 love I rest your affectionate brother and servant, 
 " 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 In this letter (dated July 19th, 1649) begin a 
 series of entreaties respecting Richard, which 
 may afford curious matter for consideration. 
 Under ordinary circumstances, it was some- 
 what too late to have set this married young 
 gentleman to his studies again, yet if a certain 
 new necessity had risen in Cromwell's mind, it 
 was even now not yet too late, for at least an 
 effort, to infuse some spirit, and energy, and 
 knowledge into the mind of Richard Cromwell, 
 At all events, it was worth the trial A year 
 
 * Whitelocke. An extract from a journal of the day is 
 very graphic: "This evening (July 10), about five of the 
 clock, the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland began his journey by 
 the way of Windsor and so to Bristol. He went forth in 
 that state and equipage as the like hath hardly been seen, 
 himself in a coach with six gallant Flanders mares, whitish 
 gray, divers coaches accompanying him, and very many 
 great officers of the army ; his life-guard consisting of eighty 
 gallant men, the meanest whereof a commander or esquire 
 in stately habit, with trumpets sounding almost to the 
 shaking of Charing Cross had it been now standing. Of his 
 life-guard many are colonels, and believe it, it's such a 
 guard as is hardly to be paralleled in the world : and now 
 have at you, my Lord of Ormond ; you will have men of 
 gallantry to encounter, who to overcome will be honour 
 sufficient, and .to be beaten by them will be no great blem- 
 ish to their reputation ; if you say, C^sar or nothing : they 
 say, a republic or nothing. The lord-lieutenant's colourt 
 are white." Mod. Intel, July 5-12, 1649. 
 
 t Mrs. Richard Cromwell's youngest sister.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 479 
 
 ago, Oliver would have succeeded to whatever 
 trusts he might have it in his power to bequeath ; 
 but now, in the ordinary course of things, it 
 must be Richard. And what a trust he might 
 possibly have to bequeath to him ! 
 
 Among Lord Nugent's manuscripts, I have 
 found a letter written just before his entrance 
 into Dublin to this same Mr. Major. It suggests 
 these considerations again, with more shape 
 and likelihood. How striking is that passage, 
 wherein, having implored his brother-in-law to 
 lay down certain rules of study for his son, he 
 adds, that " these fit for public services for which 
 a man is born." The letter is dated " the 13th 
 of August, 1649, from aboard the John," and 
 runs thus : " I could not satisfie myselfe to omit 
 this oportunitie by my Sonn of writinge to you, 
 especially there beinge soe late and great an 
 occasion of acquaintinge you with the happy 
 newes I receaved from L nt . Gen 1 . Jones yester- 
 day. The Marquisse of Ormond besieged Dub- 
 lin with 19,000 men or therabouts. 7000 Scotts 
 and 3000 more were cominge to that worke. 
 Jones issued out of Dublin w th 4000 foote and 
 1200 horse, routed his whole armie, killed about 
 4000 upon the place, and tooke 2517 Prisoners, 
 aboue 300 Officers, some of great quallitie. 
 This is an astonishinge mercie, soe great and 
 seasonable, as indeed wee are like Item that 
 dreamed. What can wee say 1 The Lorde fill 
 our souls with thankfullnesse that our mouths 
 may be full of his praise, and our lines too, and 
 graunt wee neuer forgett his goodnesse to vs. 
 Theise thinges seeme to strengthen our faith 
 and loue against more difficult times. S r , pray 
 for me, that I may walke worthy of the Lorde 
 in all that He hath called me vnto. I have com- 
 mitted my Sonn to you ; pray give him advise : 
 I envie him not his contents, butt I feare he\ 
 should te swallowed vp of them. I would have j 
 him minde arid understand businesse, reade a little 
 historic, studie the mathematicks and cosmografie ; 
 thcise are good w' 1 ' subordination to the (hinges of 
 God ; better than idlenesse, or more outward world- 
 ly contents ; theise jilt for publick services for uf^ 
 a man is borne. Pardon this trouble ; I am thus 
 bould, because I knowe you loue me as indeed 
 I doe you and yours. My loue to my deere Sis- 
 ter, and my Cozen Ann your Daughter, and all 
 friends. I rest, S r , youre louinge Brother, 0. 
 CROMWELL. Aug. 13th, 1649, from aboard the 
 John. S r , I desire you not to discomodate your- 
 selfe because of the monie due to me ; lett not 
 that trouble you ; your welfare is as mine, and 
 therfore lett me knowe from time to time what 
 will convenience you in any forbearance ; I 
 shall answear you in it, and be readie to accom- 
 odate you, and therfore doe your other busi- 
 nesse ; lett not this hinder." 
 
 The same packet, too, which conveyed that 
 letter, conveyed anotherwith the same date to 
 " his beloved daughter Dorothy Cromwell at 
 Hursley," eminently characteristic of the wri* 
 tcr. " MY DEERE DAUGHTER, Your letter was 
 very welcome to me. I like to see anythinge 
 from your hande, because indeed I sticke not to 
 saye 7 doe intyrelie love you, and therfore I hope 
 a word of advise will not be unwelcome nor 
 unacceptable to thee. I desier you both to 
 make it above all thinges your businesse to 
 seeke the Lorde, to be frequently callinge upon 
 him that He would manifest himselfe to you in 
 
 his Sonn, and be listninge what returnes He 
 makes to you, for He will be speakinge in your 
 eare and in your harte, if you attend thereun- 
 to. 1 desire you to provoke your Husband like- 
 wise thereunto. As for the pleasures of this 
 life and outward businesse, lett that be upon 
 the by. Be above all these thinges by faith in 
 Christ, and then you shall have the true use 
 and comfort of them, and not otherwise. I 
 have much satisfaction in hope your spirit is 
 this way sett, and I desier you may growe in 
 grace and in the knowledge of our Lorde and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ, and that I may heare 
 thereof. The Lorde is very neer, w ch wee see 
 by his wonderfull workes ; and therfore He 
 lookes fhat wee of this generation draw neer 
 him. This late great mercie of Ireland is a 
 great manifestation thereof. Your Husband 
 will acquaint you with it. Wee should be much 
 stirred up in our spirits to thankfullnesse. Wee 
 much need the spirit of Christ to enable us to 
 praise God for so admirable a mercie. The 
 Lorde bless thee, my deere daughter. I rest 
 
 thy lovinge father, 0. CROMWELL I heare 
 
 thou didst lately miscarrie ; prithee take heede of 
 a coach by all meanes ; borrow thy father's nagg 
 when thou intendest to goe abroad.''' 
 
 Of the same character, and suggestive of 
 the same thoughts, is a note to Mr. Major, 
 written exactly three months afterward, but 
 which, as it completes my collection of his pri- 
 vate letters from Ireland, may be inserted, 
 though somewhat prematurely, here. " DEERE 
 BROTHER, I am not often at leizure, nor now, 
 to salute my friendes, yett unwillinglie to lose 
 this oportunitie, I take it ouely to lett you 
 knowe that you and your familie are often in 
 my prayers. I wish the younge ones well, 
 though they vouchsafe not to write to me. As for 
 Dick, I doe not much expect it from him, know- 
 inge his idlcncsse ; butt I am angry with my 
 daughter as a promise breaker. Pray you tell 
 her soe ; butt I hope she will redeeme her- 
 selfe. ... It has pleased the Lorde to give us 
 (since the takinge of Wexford and Rosse) a 
 good interest in Munster by the access of Cork 
 and Youghall, which are both submitted. Their 
 Commissioners are now with me. Diverse 
 other lesser garizons are come in alsoe. The 
 Lorde is wonderful in these thinges ; it's his 
 hand alone does them. O that all the praise 
 might be ascribed to Him. I have been crazie 
 in my health, butt the Lorde is pleased to sus- 
 tain me. I begg your prayers ; I desier you 
 to call upon my Sonn to minde the thinges of 
 God more and more ; Alas ! what profit is there 
 in the thinges of this Worlde T except they be. 
 enjoyed in Christ, they are snares. I wish he 
 may enjoy his Wife soe, and she him ; I wish 
 I may enjoy them both soe. My service to my 
 deere Sister, Cozen Ann, my blessinge to my 
 Children, and love to my Cozen Barton and the 
 rest. Sir, I am your affectionate Brother and 
 Servant, 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 On the 15th of August Cromwell reached 
 Dublin. He allowed his men two weeks to 
 prepare for the labours of the campaign. Three 
 fourths of the island acknowledged at this time 
 Ormond's sway. In the course of the cam- 
 paign of the past year, he had reduced Droghe- 
 da, Dundalk, Newry, Carlingford, and Trim, 
 and had expelled Monk out of Ireland. Dublin
 
 480 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the capital, and Derry in the north, held out 
 against him alone. For his first object of at- 
 tack, Cromwell selected Drogheda. 
 
 Ormond had placed it in a good state of de- 
 fence, and furnished it with a garrison of two 
 or three thousand of his best troops. On the 
 3d of September Cromwell had completed his 
 batteries. On the 10th, he sent in a summons 
 to the governor to surrender. It was rejected. 
 The next day he effected a breach, and set 
 about taking the place by storm. This was on 
 the 10th of September. Twice Cromwell's 
 forces mounted the breach, and twice they 
 were repelled. Observing this, he led himself 
 the third assault, and was victorious. The 
 enemy had thrown up three intrenchments 
 within the walls. They defended every inch 
 of ground, and fought bravely and desperately 
 at the corner of every street. The blood re- 
 coils from the horror that remains to be told. 
 The reader would disbelieve it, unless he heard 
 it, as it were, from Cromwell's own lips. 
 
 Let him take it, then, from them. After de- 
 scribing, in a despatch written on the spot, the 
 desperate resistance of the enemy, admitting 
 that " through the advantages of the place, and 
 the courage God was pleased to give the de- 
 fenders, our men were forced to retreat quite 
 out of the breach, not without some consid- 
 erable loss," he adds that his veterans were 
 induced to make a second attempt, "wherein," 
 says he, " God was pleased to animate them 
 so that they got ground of the enemy, and by 
 the goodness of God forced him to quit his in- 
 trenchments, and after a very hot dispute, the 
 enemy having both horse and foot, and we foot 
 only within the walls, the enemy gave ground, 
 and our men became masters." Then he adds, 
 having effected a passage for his cavalry into 
 the town, " the enemy retreated, divers into 
 the Mill Mount, a place very strong and of dif- 
 ficult access, being exceeding high, having a 
 good graft, and strongly palisadoed ; the gov- 
 ernor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers consid- 
 erable officers being there, our men getting up 
 to them, were ordered by me to put them all to 
 the sword ; and indeed, being in the heat, of ac- 
 tion, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms 
 in the town, and I think that night they put to the 
 sword about two thousand men. Divers of the 
 officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge 
 into the other part of the town, where about 
 one hundred of them possessed St. Peter's 
 Church steeple, some the west gate, and others 
 a strong round tower next the gate, called St. 
 Sunday these being summoned to yield to 
 mercy, refused ; whereupon I ordered the stee- 
 ple of St. Peter's Church to be fired. The next 
 day the other two towers were summoned, in 
 one of which was about six or seven score, but 
 they refused to yield themselves ; and we, 
 knowing that hunger must compel them, set 
 only good guards to secure them from running 
 away, till their stomachs were come down. 
 From one of the said towers, notwithstanding 
 their condition, they killed and wounded some 
 of our men ; when they submitted, their officers 
 were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of 
 the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for the 
 Barbadocs ; the soldiers in the other tower were 
 all spared, as to their lives only, and shipped 
 likewise for the Barbadoes. I believe all the friars 
 
 were knocked on the head promiscuously but two, 
 the one of which was Father Peter Taaf, broth- 
 er to the Lord Taaf, whom the soldiers took the 
 next day and made an end of; the other was ta- 
 ken in the round tower, under the repute of 
 lieutenant, and when he understood that the 
 officers in that town had no quarter, he con- 
 fessed he was a friar, but that did not save him." 
 
 In a subsequent passage of the same de- 
 spatch, he offers, in apparent extenuation of 
 this horrible deed, the fact that the barbarous 
 wretches whom he put to the sword had im- 
 brued their hands in much innocent blood, al- 
 luding to the massacres which disgraced the 
 insurrection of 1641. But had infants or wom- 
 en done this? for infants and women perished 
 now in Drogheda. Nor is it true that the de- 
 fenders of Drogheda were chiefly Irish. Lud- 
 low, on the contrary, assures us that, when 
 Cromwell arrived at Dublin, the Royalists "put 
 most of their army into their garrisons, having 
 placed three or four thousand of the best of 
 their men, being mostly English, in the town of 
 Tredagh [so Drogheda was then called], and 
 made Sir Arthur Ashton governor thereof." 
 The same author mentions, that when the place 
 was taken, " the slaughter continued all that 
 day and the next, which extraordinary severity, I 
 presume, was used to discourage others from ma- 
 king opposition." 
 
 This was the real secret of Cromwell's pres- 
 ent policy. It had no relation to the future con- 
 dition of Ireland as a civil state, but purely and 
 solely to a matter of convenience of his own. 
 He wished to reduce the country with all pos- 
 sible despatch, avoid unnecessary delays and 
 trouble, and get back as soon as he could to 
 his great designs in England. 
 
 In a subsequent letter on the same subject, 
 indeed, he confesses this. " I am persuaded," 
 he says, " that this is a righteous judgment of 
 God upon these barbarous wretches wiio have 
 imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, 
 and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood, 
 for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds 
 to such actions, which otherwise cannot but 
 work remorse and regret. And now give me 
 leave to say how it comes to pass that this 
 work is wrought. It was set upon some of our 
 hearts that a great thing should be done, not 
 by power or might, but by the Spirit of God ; and 
 is it not clearly that, which caused your men to 
 storm so courageously 1 It was the Spirit of 
 God who gave your men courage and took it 
 away again, and gave the enemy courage and 
 took it away again, and gave your men courage 
 again, and therewith this happy success ; and 
 therefore it is good that God alone have all the 
 glory." Well had it been for Cromwell and his 
 fame if of such deeds as these he could have 
 handed over from himself the glory ! 
 
 His anticipations were well founded as to the 
 result. He passed on from town to castle in a 
 species of grim and bloody triumph, each and 
 all opening their gates before him. At last he 
 reached Wexford, and here opposition having 
 been made, another deluge of blood* was offer- 
 
 * The same rule precisely was followed here as at Drog- 
 heda. No distinction was made between the armed soldier 
 and the defenceless townsman. Even women were put to 
 the edge of the sword. Three hundred of the latter flocked 
 round the great cross which' stood in the street, hoping that 
 Christian soldiers would be so far softened by sight of that
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 481 
 
 ed up to the convenience of the governor, and 
 the barbarous anti-Catholic passions of his sol- 
 diers. In his despatch he reckons that there 
 were lost of the enemy not many less than 
 2000, while of the besiegers not twenty were 
 killed. "This," he adds, "is not without cause 
 deeply set to our hearts, we having intended 
 better to this place than so great a ruin." From 
 Wexford he passed to Rosse, which surrender- 
 ed to him after three days.* Cork, "Kinsale, 
 and Youghal had surrendered to his officers. 
 On the 24th of November he set himself down 
 before Waterford, but on the eighth day found 
 himself obliged to break up the siege. He was 
 more successful at Dungarvan ; but at this 
 place had the misfortune to lose by sudden 
 sickness his lieutenant-general, Michael Jones, 
 to whom Ireton, with admirable modesty, had 
 given way on observing his greater knowledge 
 of the country and the service. The manner 
 in which Cromwell expresses himself on this 
 occasion is worthy of record. " The noble 
 lieutenant-general, whose finger, to our knowl- 
 edge, never ached in all these expeditions, fell sick, 
 upon a cold taken in our late wet march and 
 ill accommodation, and went to Dungarvan, 
 where, struggling some four or five days with 
 a fever, he died, having run his course with so 
 much honour, courage, and fidelity, as his ac- 
 tions better speak than my pen. What Eng- 
 land lost hereby is above me to speak ; I am 
 sure I lost a noble friend and companion in la- 
 bours. You see how God mingles out the cup 
 to us." 
 
 Cromwell did not enter winter-quarters in 
 Ireland till late, and he left them early. At the 
 end of January he reopened the campaign. Its 
 horrors have no interest, and can teach no les- 
 son. Suffice it to say, that Fethard, Callen, 
 Gowran, and Kilkenny surrendered in quick 
 succession. His last undertaking was against 
 Clonmel, and here he met with a gallant re- 
 sistance, t Eager, however, to return to Eng- 
 land, he listened to a parley, granted an hon- 
 ourable capitulation, appointed Ireton lord-dep- 
 uty, and sailed for England. 
 
 Some extracts from Cromwell's despatches 
 will fitly close this brief sketch of this terrible 
 Irish government. They are, in the main, mas- 
 terly documents, and should not be lost sight 
 of in any attempt to illustrate his character. 
 
 He thus describes the march from Dublin to 
 Wexford : " The army marched from Dublin 
 
 emblem of mercy as to spare the lives of unresisting wom- 
 en ; but the victors, enraged at such superstition, and re- 
 garding it, perhaps, as a proof that they were Roman Cath- 
 olics, and therefore fit objects of military fury, rushed for- 
 ward and put them all to death. 
 
 * A circumstance claims our notice in the terms of this 
 surrender, which proves how thoroughly Cromwell had 
 now entered into rehearsal for the Protectorate. He con- 
 sented to give up the town on condition of being permitted 
 to march out with the honours of war, and to assure the 
 inhabitants that their private property would be respected. 
 An attempt was made to secure the free exercise ,i( religion 
 on the usual plea of liberty of conscience. Cromwell re- 
 plied, " I meddle not with any man's conscience, but if by 
 liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the mass, 
 I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, 
 where the Parliament of England have power, that will not 
 be allowed of." 
 
 t An eminent commander, who assisted in the action, 
 reported : " We found in Clonmel the stoutest enemy that 
 our army has encountered in Ireland ; and it is my opinion, 
 and that of many more, that no storm of so long continu- 
 ance, and so gallanfly contended, has been seen in these 
 wars, either in England or Ireland." 
 
 PPP 
 
 about the 23d of September, into the county of 
 Wicklow, where the enemy had a garrison 
 about fourteen miles from Dublin, called Kill- 
 ingkerick, which they quitting, a company of 
 the army was put therein. From thence the 
 army marched through almost a desolated coun- 
 try, until it came to a passage over the River 
 Doro, about a mile above the castle of Arklow, 
 the first seat and honour of the Marquis of Or- 
 mond's family, which he had strongly fortified, 
 but was, upon the approach of the army, quit- 
 ted. Herein we left another company of foot. 
 From thence the army marched towards Wex- 
 ford, where in the way was a strong and large 
 castle, at a town called Limerick, the ancient 
 seat of the Esmonds, where the enemy had a 
 strong garrison, which they burned and quitted 
 the day before our corning thither. From thence 
 we marched towards Ferns, an episcopal seat, 
 where was a castle, to which I sent Col. Rey- 
 nolds with a party to summon it, which accord- 
 ingly he did, and it was surrendered to him ; 
 where we hawing put a company, advanced the 
 army to a passage over the River Slaney, which, 
 runs down to Wexford, and that night marched 
 into the fields of a village called Eniscorfy, be- 
 longing to Mr. Robert Wallop, where was a 
 strong castle very well manned and provided 
 for by the enemy, and close under it a very fair 
 house belonging to the same worthy person. 
 A monastery of Franciscan Friars, the consid- 
 erables! in all Ireland, run away the night be- 
 fore we came. We summoned the castle, and 
 they refused to yield at the first, but upon bet- 
 ter consideration they were willing to deliver 
 the place to us, which accordingly they did, 
 leaving their guns, arms, ammunition, and pro- 
 visions behind them." 
 
 The siege and massacre of Wexford are giv- 
 en under his strong and rough hand, thus. Af- 
 ter repeating the demand for surrender and 
 the governor's refusal, the despatch proceeds : 
 " While these papers were passing between us, 
 I sent the lieut.-gen. with a party of dragoons, 
 horse and foot, to endeavour to reduce their 
 fort, which lay at the mouth of their harbour, 
 about ten miles distant from us, to which he 
 sent a troop of dragoons ; but the enemy quit 
 their fort, leaving behind them about seven 
 great guns, betook themselves by the help of 
 their boat to a frigate of 12 guns lying in the 
 harbour, within cannon shot of the fort. The 
 dragoons possessed the fort, and some seamen 
 belonging to your fleet coming happily in at the 
 same time, they bent their guns at the frigate, 
 and she immediately yielded to mercy, both 
 herself, the soldiers that had been in the fort, 
 and the seamen that manned her ; and while 
 our men were in her, the town, not knowing 
 what had happened, sent another vessel to her, 
 which our men also took. The governor of the 
 town having obtained from me a safe-conduct 
 for the four persons (mentioned in one of the 
 papers) to come and treat with me about the 
 surrender of the town, I expected they should 
 have done so ; but instead thereof, the Earl of 
 Castlehaven brought to their relief on the north 
 side of the river about five hundred foot, which 
 occasioned their refusal to send out any to treat, 
 and caused me to revoke my safe-conduct, not 
 thinking it fit to leave it for them to make use 
 of it when they pleased. Our cannon being
 
 482 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 landed, and we having removed all our quarters 
 to the southeast end of the town, near the cas- 
 tle, it was generally agreed that we should bend 
 the whole strength of our artillery upon the 
 castle, being persuaded that if we got the cas- 
 tle, the town would easily follow. Upon Thurs- 
 day the 1 1th instant (our batteries being finished 
 the night before) we began to play betimes in 
 the morning, and having spent near a hundred 
 shot, the governor's stomach came down, and 
 he sent to me to give leave for four persons in- 
 trusted by him to come unto me, and offer terms 
 of surrender, which I condescending to, two 
 field officers, with an alderman of the town, and 
 the captain of the castle, brought out the prop- 
 ositions enclosed, which for their abominable- 
 ness, manifesting also the impudency of the 
 men, I thought fit to present to your view, to- 
 gether with my answer, which, indeed, had no 
 effect ; for while I was preparing of it, study- 
 ing to preserve the town from plunder, that it 
 might be of the more use to you and your army, 
 the captain, who was one of the Commission- 
 ers, being fairly treated, yielded up the castle to 
 us ; upon the top of which our men no sooner 
 appeared, but the enemy quitted the walls of the 
 town, which our men perceiving, ran violently 
 upon the town with their ladders, and stormed 
 it ; and when they were come into the market- 
 place, the enemy making a stiff resistance, our 
 forces brake them, and then put all to the sword 
 that came in their may. Two boatfuls of the ene- 
 my attempting to escape, being overpressed with 
 numbers, sunk, whereby were drowned near three 
 hundred of them. I believe in all there was lost 
 of the enemy not many less than two thousand, 
 and I believe not twenty of yours killed from first 
 to last of the siege ; and indeed it hath not with- 
 out cause been deeply set upon our hearts, that 
 we intending better to this place than so great 
 a ruin, hoping the town might be of more use to 
 you and your army, yet God would not have it so, 
 but by an unexpected providence, in his righte- 
 ous justice, brought a just judgment upon them, 
 causing them to become a prey to the soldier, 
 who in their piracies had made preys of so 
 many families, and made with their bloods to 
 answer the cruelties which they had exercised 
 upon the lives of divers poor Protestants, two 
 of which I have been lately acquainted with. 
 About seven or eight score poor Protestants 
 were by them put into an old vessel, which be- 
 ing, as some say, bulged by them, the vessel 
 sunk, and they were all presently drowned in 
 the harbour. The other was thus : they put 
 divers poor Protestants into a chapel, which 
 since they have used for a mass house, and in 
 which one or more of their priests were now 
 killed, where they were famished to death. . . . 
 The soldiers got a very good booty in this place, 
 and had they had opportunity to carry their 
 goods over the river while we besieged it, it 
 would have been much more. I could have 
 wished, for their own good and the good of the 
 garrison, they had been more moderate. Some 
 things which were not easily portable we hope 
 we shall make use of to your behoof. There 
 are great quantities of iron, hides, tallow, salt, 
 pipe and barrel staves, which are under com- 
 missioner's hands to be secured. We believe 
 there are near a hundred cannon in the fort, 
 and elsewhere in and about the town : here is 
 
 likewise some very good shipping ; here arc 
 three vessels, one of them of 34 guns, which a 
 week's time would fit to sea ; there is another 
 of about 20 guns, very near ready likewise ; 
 and one other frigate of 20 guns, upon the 
 stocks, made for sailing, which is built up to 
 the uppermost deck ; for her handsomeness 
 sake, I have appointed the workmen to finish 
 her, here, being materials to do it, if you or the 
 council of state shall approve thereof The 
 frigate also taken by the fort is a most excellent 
 vessel for sailing, besides divers other ships 
 and vessels in the harbour. This town is now 
 so in your power, that the former inhabitants, 
 I believe scarce one in twenty, can challenge 
 any property in their houses. Most of them 
 are run away, and many of them killed in this 
 service ; and it were to be wished that an honest 
 people would come and plant here, where are very 
 good houses and other accommodations fitted to 
 their hands, and may by your favour be made of 
 encouragement to them ; as also a scat of good 
 trade, both inward and outward, and of marvellous 
 great advantage in the point of the herring and 
 other fishing. The town is pleasantly seated 
 and strong, having a rampart of earth within 
 the wall near fifteen foot thick. Thus it hath 
 pleased God to give into your hands this other 
 mercy, for which, as for all, we pray, God may 
 have all the glory. Indeed, your instruments 
 are poor and weak, and can do nothing but 
 through believing, and that is the gift of God 
 also." 
 
 In that despatch we see some glimpses of 
 Cromwell's wiser policy ; but the mind revolts 
 from the price at which he would have pur- 
 chased the advantages of such a scheme. In 
 the following he describes very forcibly the rare 
 occurrence of an incidental engagement with 
 the enemy. " Wee havinge left diverse sicke 
 men, both horse and foote, at Dublin, hearinge 
 many of them were recovered, sent them orders 
 to march up to us, which accordinglie they did. 
 Cominge to Arckloe on Munday, the first of this 
 instant, being about 350 horse and about 800 
 foote, the enimy hearinge of them (through the 
 great advantage they have in point of intelli- 
 gence), drew together a bodie of horse and 
 foote, neer 3000, which Inchequeen command- 
 ed. There went alsoe with this party Sir 
 Tho 8 Armstrong, Col. Trevor, and most of their 
 great Rantors. Wee sent 15 or 16 Troupes to 
 their rescue neer eight houres too late. It 
 pleased God wee sent them worde by a neerer 
 way, to march close, and be circumspect, and 
 to make what haste they could to Wexford, by 
 the Seaside. They had marched neer 18 miles, 
 and were come within 7 miles of Wexford (the 
 foote beinge miserablie wearied), when the Eni- 
 my gave the scouts of the rear guarde an alar- 
 um ; whereupon they immediatelie drew up in 
 the best order they could upon the sands, the 
 sea on the one hand, and the rocks on the oth- 
 er, where the enimy made a very furious charge, 
 overbearinge our horse with their numbers 
 (which, as some of their Prisoners confesse, 
 was 1500 of their best horse), and forcinge them 
 in some disorder backe to the foote. Our foote 
 stood, forbearinge their firinge till the enimy 
 was come almost within pistoll shot, and then 
 lett fly very full in the faces of them, whereby 
 some of them began to tumble, the rest run-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 483 
 
 ninge off in a very great disorder, and faced not 
 about untill they got above musket shot off. 
 Upon this our horse tooke incouragement, 
 drawinge up againe, bringinge up some foote 
 to flanke them. And a Gentleman of ours, 
 that had charged through before, beinge amongst 
 them undiscerned, havinge put his signall into 
 his hat, as they did, tooke his oportunitie and 
 came off, lettinge our men knowe that fhe eni- 
 my was in great, confusion and disorder, and 
 that if they could attempt another Charge, he 
 was confident good might he done on them. It 
 pleased God to give our Men courage ; they 
 advanced, and fallinge upon the enimy, totally 
 routed them, took two colours and diverse 
 Prisoners, and killed diverse upon the place 
 and in the pursuite. I doe not heare that wee 
 have two Men killed, and butt one mortally 
 wounded, and not five that are taken prison- 
 ers." 
 
 In a subsequent letter, having described oth- 
 er overwhelming successes, the lord - lieuten- 
 ant, who had probably, at the instant, a strong 
 conception upon him of the purposes for which 
 he already panted to be in England, subjoins 
 these extraordinary reflections : " Sir, what can 
 be said in these things 1 Is it an arme of flesh 
 that hath done these things 1 Is it the wis- 
 dorne, and councell, or strength of men] It is 
 Che Ltirde oncly. God will curse that man and 
 his house that dares to thinke otherwise. Sir, 
 you see the worke is done by a divine leadinge. 
 God gctls into the hartcs of men, and perswades 
 them to come unto you. I tell you a consider- 
 able part of your armie is Jitter for an hospital 
 than the field : if the enimy did not know it, I 
 should have held it impolilicke to liave writ this ; 
 they knowe it, yett they knowe not what to doe. I 
 Lumblie begg leave to offer a word or two. I 
 begg of those that are faithfull that they give 
 Glorie to God. I wish it may have influence 
 upon the hartes and spirits of all those that are 
 now in place of government, in the greatest 
 trust, that they may all in harte draw neer to 
 God, givinge him glorie by holinesse of life and 
 conversation ; that these unspeakable mercies 
 may teach dissentinge Brethren on all sides to 
 agree, at least in praisinge God. And if the 
 Father of the Familie be so kinde, why should 
 there be such jarringes and harte-burninges 
 amongst the Children t And if it will not be 
 received that these are the seales of God's ap- 
 probation of your great change of Government, 
 which indeed was noc more yours than these victo- 
 ries and successes are ours, yett lett them with us 
 say (even the most unsatisfied harte amongst 
 them) that both are the righteous judgements 
 and injghtie workes of God ; that he hath pull- 
 ed the mightie from his seat, who calls to an 
 account innocent blood ; that he thus breakes 
 the enimies of his Church in pieces ; and lett 
 them not be sullen, butt praise the Lorde, and 
 thinke of us as they please, and wee shall be 
 satisfied ; and pray for them, and waite upon 
 our God ; and wee hope wee shall seeke the 
 welfare and peace of our native country; and 
 the Lorde give them hartes to doe soe too. In- 
 deed, Sir, I was constrained in my Bowells to 
 write this much." 
 
 Our last extract shall be taken from a very 
 elaborate despatch, descriptive of some of the 
 later incidents in the campaign : " I marched 
 
 from Roghill Castle over the Shewer with very 
 much difficultie, and from thence to Fethard, 
 almost in the harte of the county of Tipperary, 
 where was a garizon of the enimy. The towne 
 is most pleasantlie seated, havinge a very good 
 wall with round and square bulwarks, after the 
 old manner of fortifications. Wee came thiih- 
 er in the night, and indeed were very much dis- 
 tressed by sore and tempestuous wind and raine. 
 After a long marche, wee knew not well how 
 to dispose of ourselves, but findinge an old ab- 
 bey in the suburbs, and some cabbins, and poore 
 houses, wee got into them, and had oportuni- 
 tie to send them a summons. They shott at my 
 Trumpet, and would not listen to him for an 
 hour's space ; butt havinge some officers in our 
 partie which they knewe, I sent them, to lett 
 them knowe I was there with a good part of 
 the armie. We shott not a shott at them, butt 
 they were very angry, and fired very earnest- 
 lie upon us, tellinge us that it was not a time of 
 night to send a summons ; butt yett, in the end, 
 the governor was willinge to send out two com- 
 missioners, I think rather to see whether there 
 was a force sufficient to force him than to any 
 other end. After almost a whole night spent 
 in treatie, the towne was delivered to me the 
 next morninge upon terras which wee usually 
 call honourable, which I was the willinger to 
 give, because I had little above 200 foote, and 
 neither ladders nor gunnes, nor anythinge else 
 to force them that night. There beinge about 
 seventeen companies of the Ulster foote in 
 Cashel, above five miles from thence, they quit 
 it in some disorder, and the sovereigne and the 
 aldermen since sent to me a petition, desiringe 
 that I would protect them, which I have also 
 made a quarter. From thence I marched to- 
 wards Callen, hearinge that Col. Reynolds was 
 there with the partie before mentioned. When 
 I came thither I found he had fallen upon the 
 enimy's horse and routed them, beinge about 
 100, with his forlorne, took my Lorde of Osso- 
 ry's capt.-lieutenant, and another lieutenant of 
 horse, prisoners ; and one of those who betray- 
 ed our garizon of Eniscorfy, whom we hanged. 
 The enimy had possessed three castles in the 
 towne, one of them belonginge to one Butler, 
 very considerable ; the other two had about 
 100 or 120 men in them, which he attempted, 
 and they refusingc conditions seasonably offer- 
 ed, were put all to the sword. Indeed, some 
 of your souldiers did attempt very notably in 
 this service ; I doe not hear there were 6 men 
 of ours lost. Butler's castle was delivered upon 
 conditions for all to march away, leavinge their 
 armes behinde them, wherein I have placed a 
 companie of foote and a troupe of horse, under 
 the command of my Lorde Colvil, the place be- 
 inge six miles from Kilkenny. From hence 
 Col. Reynolds was sent with his regiment to 
 remove a garizon of the enimy's from Knock- 
 tofer (beinge the way of our communication to 
 Rosse), which accordinglie he did. Wee march- 
 ed back with the rest of the body to Fethard 
 and Cashel, where wee are now quartered, hav- 
 inge good plentie both of horse meat and man's 
 meat for a time ; and beinge indeed, wee may 
 say, even almost in the harte and bowells of 
 the enimy, ready to attempt what God shall 
 next direct. And blessed be his name onely for 
 this good successe ; and for this, that wee doe
 
 484 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 not finde that our men are at all considerably 
 sicke upon this expedition, though indeed it 
 hath been very blustering weather. 
 
 " I had almost forgot one businesse. The 
 major-general was very desirous to gaine a 
 passe over the Shevver, where, indeed, wee had 
 none butt by boat, or when the weather served ; 
 wherefore, on Saturday in the eveninge, he 
 marched with a partie of horse and foote to 
 Arsinom, where was a bridge, and at the foote 
 of it a stronge castle, which he, about four 
 o'clocke the next morning, attempted, killed 
 about thirteen of the enimy's outguard, lost butt 
 two men, and eight or ten wounded. The en- 
 imy yeelded the place to him, and wee are pos- 
 sessed of it, beinge a very considerable passe, 
 and the nearest to our passe at Cappoquin over 
 the Black Water, whither wee can bringe gunnes, 
 ammunition, or other thinges from Youghall by 
 water, and over this passe to the armie. The 
 countie of Tipperary have submitted to 1500 
 a month contribution, although they have six 
 or seven of the enimy's garizons yet upon them. 
 . . . Sir, I desier the charge of England as to 
 this w r ar may be abated as much as may be, 
 and as wee knowe you doe desier out of your 
 care to the Commonwealth ; butt if you expect 
 your worke to be done (if the marchinge armie 
 be not constantly paid, and the course taken 
 that hath been humbly represented), indeed it 
 will not be for the thrift of England, as far as 
 England is concerned in the speedie reduction of 
 Ireland. The monie we raise upon the coun- 
 ties maintains the garizon forces, and hardlie 
 that ; if the active force be not maintained, and 
 all contingencies defrayed, how can you expect 
 butt to have a lingeringe businesse of it 1 Sure- 
 lie we desier not to spend a shillinge of your 
 treasurie wherein our consciences do not prompt 
 us. Wee serve you, wee are willinge to be out 
 of our trade of war, and shall hasten (by God's 
 assistance and grace) to the end of our worke, 
 as the labourer doth to be at his rest. This 
 makes us bolde to be earnest with you for neces- 
 sarie supplies ; that of monie is one ; and there 
 be some other thinges which indeed I doe not 
 thinlte for your service to speak of publique- 
 ly, which I shall humbly represent to the coun- 
 eell of state, wherewith I desier wee may be 
 accomodated. Sir, the Lorde, who doth all 
 these thinges, gives hopes of a speedie is- 
 sue to this businesse, and I am persuaded will 
 graciously appear in it ; and truely there is no 
 feare of the strength and combination of eni- 
 mies round about, nor of slanderous tongues at 
 home : God hath hitherto fenced you against 
 all those, to wonder and amazement ; they are 
 tokens of your prosperitie and successe : onely 
 it will be good for you, and us that serve you, 
 to fear the Lorde, to fear unbeleef, self seekinge, 
 confidence in an arm of flesh, and opinion of 
 any instruments that they are other than as 
 dry bones." 
 
 Cromwell is now in England once more. On 
 his arrival, the last obstacle to his mighty 
 hopes were removed by Fairfax's ill-fated sur- 
 render of the command of the army ; he was 
 appointed general in chief, and at the same in- 
 stant directed to proceed to Scotland to reduce 
 rebellion there. 
 
 Now again was seen a singular change in his 
 manner, such as has been noticed in the course 
 
 of this work at various momentous periods of 
 his history. The consummation of all his 
 hopes and aims was at last approaching. I 
 have already observed upon the alterations of 
 look and manner noticed by Ludlow. Others 
 noticed them with deeper sympathy than that 
 enthusiastic Republican, and listened, as to one 
 indeed inspired, when he stated his conviction 
 that it was the design of the Lord, in their days, 
 to deliver his people from every burden, and 
 that he was now bringing to pass what was 
 prophesied in the hundred and tenth psalm ; 
 from the consideration of which, he was often 
 encouraged to promote by himself the accom- 
 plishment of those ends which were indicated 
 by the finger of Providence. It was to this 
 psalm Ludlow listened impatiently. But ima- 
 gine Harrison and Cromwell expounding these 
 passages together ! " The Lord at thy right 
 hand shall strike through kings in the day of 
 his wrath. ... He shall fill the places with the 
 dead bodies ; he shall wound the heads over 
 many countries. . . . The Lord shall send the 
 rod of thy strength out of his Zion ; rule thou in 
 the midst of thine enemies. . . . The people shall 
 be willing in the day of thy power ; thou art a 
 priest forever /" 
 
 On the 23d of July, Cromwell entered Scot- 
 land with 11,000 horse and foot, commanded 
 under him by Generals Fleetwood, Lambert, 
 and Whaley, Colonels Pride, Overton, and 
 Monk. He found before him "solitude and 
 devastation." The Scotch clergy had descri- 
 bed the English as monsters, delighting in the 
 murder or mutilation of women and children ; 
 and the peasantry having destroyed what they 
 must have left, fled with whatever they could 
 remove. Cromwell's proclamations and severe 
 discipline soon readjusted their notions, and 
 they either returned to their habitations or 
 waited his approach.* 
 
 The enemy made the first attack with a 
 party of 800 horse on the headquarters near 
 Musselburgh. After some sharp fighting, these 
 were repulsed with much loss. " The enemy 
 came on," said Cromwell, in a despatch to the 
 president of the council, " with a great deal of 
 resolution, beat in our guards, and put a regi- 
 ment of horse in some disorder ; but our men 
 speedily taking the alarm, charged the enemy, 
 routed them, took many prisoners, killed a great 
 many of them, and did execution within a 
 quarter of a mile of Edinburgh. Indeed this is 
 a sweet beginning of your business, or rather 
 of the Lord's, and I believe it is not very satis- 
 factory to the enemy, especially to the Kirk 
 party : and I trust this work, which is the 
 Lord's, will prosper in the hands of hj^ ser- 
 vants." 
 
 David Leslie, a gallant and highly-accom- 
 plished soldier, was the commander-in-chief of 
 the Scottish army. No man of that day, per- 
 haps, could have been so well matched against 
 Cromwell. This the latter general soon felt 
 and acknowledged. Leslie, in a strong posi- 
 tion between Edinburgh and Leith, and with an 
 army double that of Cromwell, harassed him, 
 withdrew from the districts attempted on his 
 march all possibility of procuring corn or cattle 
 for his soldiery, and, in fact, by a series of skil- 
 ful movements, obliged him at last to fall back 
 
 History from Mackintosh, vol. vi., p. 148.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 485 
 
 upon Dunbar. A variety of movements suc- 
 ceeded this, the object of which, on the part of 
 Cromwell, was to bring on a battle, which 
 Leslie had resolved, if possible, to avoid, while 
 he meanwhile protected Edinburgh and destroy- 
 ed Cromwell's resources. At one place, where 
 the small river Leith separated the camps, the 
 English pushed on their lines with the intention 
 of making an attack. The word given out was 
 *' Rise, Lord !" The body of foot advanced 
 within 300 yards, when they discovered such a 
 bog on both their wings of horse that they 
 could not pass over. " Thus," says Hodgson, 
 who was there, " by this very unexpected hand 
 of Providence were we prevented, and had only 
 liberty to play with our cannon that evening 
 and part of the next morning, which did good 
 execution, as we believe, upon them. We had 
 very strange and remarkable deliverances from 
 theirs, though they played very hard upon us, 
 and that with much art ; but the Lord suffered 
 them not to do us much hurt , we had not 
 slain and wounded above five-and-twenty men." 
 Cromwell was present in person on this occa- 
 sion. He even headed the advanced party, 
 and approached so near to the Scottish lines 
 that one of the enemy fired a carbine at him 
 with the view of checking his progress. Crom- 
 well, upon this, shouted out in sport to the 
 trooper, " that if he were one of his soldiers, 
 he would cashier him for discharging his piece 
 at such a distance." The man, who had for- 
 merly served in England under Lieutenant- 
 general Lesley, instantly recognised the leader 
 of the Ironsides, and spread the information 
 that the officer at whom he had aimed was no 
 other than Cromwell himself, whom he had 
 often seen in company with Lord Leven when 
 the army was in Yorkshire.* 
 
 Again Cromwell retreated to Musselburgh, 
 and had nearly approached that place, when a 
 body of Leslie's cavalry fell upon his rear, and 
 left him only a narrow outlet of escape. " By 
 the time," wrote Cromwell, " we had got the 
 van-brigade of our horse, and our foot and train 
 into their quarters, the enemy was marched 
 with that expedition, that they fell upon the 
 rear forlorn of our horse, and put it in some 
 disorder ; and, indeed, had like to have engaged 
 our rear-brigade of horse with their whole army, 
 had not the Lord, by his providence, put a cloud 
 over the moon, thereby giving us an opportunity 
 to draw off those horse to the rest of the army, 
 which accordingly was done without any loss." 
 
 Leslie, thus far, had achieved an unquestion- 
 able success. Cromwell, again defeated in his 
 great object of the campaign, once more fell 
 back upon Dunbar, which he entered on the 
 1st of September. 
 
 Nothing, under the circumstances, could have 
 been more dangerous than this position. Dun- 
 bar, a seaport town, lies in a valley surrounded 
 on three sides by an amphitheatre of hills, in 
 which there are two narrow openings, one on 
 the north, the other on the south, where the 
 road passes from Berwick to Edinburgh. Of 
 these hills, as well as of both the passes, the 
 Scots were in actual possession ; and the labour 
 of a few hours would have sufficed to throw up 
 such works as, with their superior numbers, 
 might have defied the utmost exertions of their 
 
 Dr. Rustell's able Life of Cromwell. 
 
 enemies.* Instead of this, however, Leslie 
 yielded, as it is said, to the fanaticism of the 
 ministers in his camp, who, being apprehensive 
 lest the sectaries should escape from their 
 hands, are said to have compelled the general 
 to descend from the high ground of which he 
 had taken possession, in order to intercept their 
 retreat along the coast. Cromwell himself, in 
 his after despatch, justifies this statement. " I 
 hear," he wrote, " that when the enemy march- 
 ed last up to us, the ministers pressed their 
 army to interpose between us and home, the 
 chief officers desiring rather that we should 
 have way made, though it were by a golden 
 bridge ; but the clergy's counsel prevailed, to 
 their no great comfort, through the goodness 
 of God." 
 
 While these fatal counsels were being urged 
 in the Scottish camp, Cromwell, in deep anx- 
 iety, had his men all under arms, ready to take 
 advantage of the slightest move in Leslie's po- 
 sition. His own feelings at the moment he has 
 himself described : " Their [the Scots] whole 
 army was in march after us ; and, indeed, our 
 drawing back in this mannner, with the addi- 
 tion of three new regiments added to them, did 
 much heighten their confidence, if not presump- 
 tion and arrogancy. The enemy that night we 
 perceived gathered towards the hills, labouring 
 to make a perfect interposition between us and 
 Berwick (having in his posture a great advan- 
 tage, through his better knowledge of the coun- 
 try), which he effected by sending a considera- 
 ble party to the strait pass at Copperspath, 
 where ten men to hinder are belter than forty to 
 make their way. And truly this was an exigent 
 to us, whereby the enemy reproached us with 
 that condition the Parliament's army was in 
 when it made its hard conditions with the king 
 in Cornwall. By some reports that have come 
 to us, they had disposed of us and of their busi- 
 ness, in sufficient revenge and wrath towards 
 our persons, and had swallowed up the poor in- 
 terest of England, believing that their army 
 and their king would have marched to London 
 without any interruption, it being told us, we 
 know not how truly, by a prisoner we took the 
 night before the fight, that their king was very 
 suddenly to come among them, with those 
 English they allowed to be about him. But in 
 what they were thus lifted up, the Lord was 
 above them. The enemy lying in the posture 
 before mentioned, having those advantages, we 
 lay very near him, being sensible of our disadvan- 
 tages, having some weakness of flesh, but yet con- 
 solation and, support from the Lord himself to our 
 poor weak faith, wherein I believe not a few among 
 us shared, that because of their numbers, because 
 of their advantages, because of their confidence, be- 
 cause of our weakness, because of our strait, WE 
 WEEE IN THE MOUNT, and in the mount the Lord 
 would be seen, and that he would Jind out a way of 
 deliverance and salvation for us ; and, indeed, we 
 had our consolations and our hopes." 
 
 On the night of the 2d Cromwell held a coun- 
 cil of war. Here various schemes were urged, 
 which showed the extremity more than aught 
 else could. The propriety of embarking the 
 foot, and striving to force a passage for the 
 horse, was debated ; but the wind being bois- 
 terous, and the surf running high, the project 
 
 * Lives of Eminent Commanders, vol. i,, p. 282.
 
 486 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 was pronounced altogether inadmissible. It 
 was next suggested, as a sort of forlorn hope, 
 that a strong reconnoissance should be pushed, 
 a little before dawn, in the direction of the 
 right, and that according to the result of this 
 movement future operations should be guided. 
 This masterly thought was of course the sug- 
 gestion of Cromwell. He had, in the course 
 of the afternoon, observed the Scottish gener- 
 al bring his main strength of horse and artillery 
 towards his right wing, and, with the wonder- 
 ful foresight that almost justified the inspira- 
 tion attributed to him, he at once anticipated 
 some false movement hy which they might be 
 able to " attempt" the enemy. We could not 
 well imagine," he wrote, " but that the enemy 
 intended to attempt upon us, or to place them- 
 selves in a more exact condition of interposi- 
 tion. Major-general Lambert and myself com- 
 ing to the Earl of Roxburgh's house and ob- 
 serving this posture, I told him I thought it did 
 give us an opportunity and advantage to at- 
 tempt upon the enemy, to which he immediate- 
 ly replied that he had thought to have said the 
 same thing to me : so that it pleased the Lord 
 to set this apprehension upon our hearts at the 
 same moment. We called for Colonel Monk, 
 and showed him the thing ; and, coming to our 
 quarters at night, and demonstrating our appre- 
 hensions to some of the colonels, they also 
 cheerfully concurred." 
 
 At three o'clock on the morning of the 3d of 
 September, Cromwell was examining closely 
 with his glass every quarter of the enemy's po- 
 sition, with a view to the resolution he had 
 taken. Suddenly he saw a column in motion 
 down the southern pass, and, at the instant, 
 tossing his arms in the air, exclaimed, with 
 phrensied joy, "THE LORD HATH DELIVERED 
 
 THEM INTO OUR HANDS !" 
 
 He gave the word to his men, and the ar- 
 mies met midway between the hills and the 
 sea, not far from Roxburgh House. The word 
 issued by Leslie was the " Covenant ;" that on 
 the side of the Parliamentarians was " the 
 Lord of Hosts." The conflict, which began 
 with the horse, was obstinate and bloody a ; 
 fierce and terrible dispute at the point of the ! 
 sword. The first division of the English foot I 
 was overpowered and driven back, when Crom- j 
 well ordered up his own regiment, under Lieu- j 
 tenant-colonel Gofle, who made their way i 
 against all opposition. " At the point of pike," 
 wrote Cromwell, proudly, " they did repel the 
 stoutest regiment the enemy had there, merely 
 with the courage the Lord was pleased to give, 
 which proved a great amazement to the residue 
 of their foot." The cavalry followed up this 
 advantage, charged the infantry, who were al- 
 ready outflanked and deprived of their usual 
 support, and carried confusion into the whole 
 line. Hodgson says, " One of the Scots bri- 
 gades of foot would not yield, though at point 
 of pike and butt-end of the musket, until a troop 
 of our horse charged from the one end to the 
 other of them, and so left them to the mercy of 
 the foot." In truth, after the right wing was 
 broken, the Scots, to use the language of the 
 same writer, " routed one another," and fell 
 into the most shameful disorder.* The cause of 
 this was obvious enough. Their superiority of 
 
 Russell's Life of Cromwell. 
 
 numbers was now changed from a gain to a 
 grievous loss. Their front once broken, the 
 fugitives, in rushing over the uneven ground, 
 trampled down the men that would in other cir- 
 cumstances have supported them. 
 
 A thick fog had hitherto enveloped the scene 
 of action. It was just before the moment of vic- 
 tory that the sun suddenly appeared upon the 
 sea, and the voice of Cromwell was heard in the 
 accent and with the manner of one indeed in- 
 spired inspired by the thought of a triumph so 
 mighty and resistless " Now L.ET THE LORD 
 
 ARISE, AND HIS ENEMIES SHALL BE SCATTERED!"* 
 
 At this, a shout broke forth from the English 
 soldiers which seemed to rend the sky, and the 
 rout of the enemy was complete and frightful. 
 "The horse," says Hodgson, " fled what way 
 they could get ; ours pursued towards Hadding- 
 ton ; and the general made a halt, and sung the 
 hundred and seventeenth psalm ; and by the time 
 they had done, their party was increased and 
 advancing ; the Scots ran, and were no more 
 heard of that fight. The commander of our 
 army was busy in securing prisoners, and the 
 whole bag and baggage ; and afterward we re- 
 turned to bless God in our tents like Issachar, 
 for the great salvation afforded to us that day." 
 
 Cromwell, in his despatch, written the day 
 after the fight, estimated the amount of killed 
 on the part of his antagonists at 3000. The 
 prisoners were rated at 10,000 ; while the 
 whole baggage and train, all the artillery, 
 amounting to thirty guns, 200 colours, with 
 15,000 stand of arms, which fell into the hands 
 of the English, contributed to attest the extent 
 of their triumph. Cromwell boasted also that 
 his soldiers had the "chace and execution" of 
 the fugitives near eight miles ; and there is lit- 
 tle doubt that more men were slain in the flight 
 than in the brief struggle of the battle. This 
 despatch partook of the extraordinary excite- 
 ment of the writer after this memorable battle, 
 and closed with a sort of spiritual admonition 
 to the Parliament, well calculated to advance 
 his aims. " May it please you,'' he said, " to 
 give me the leave of a few words : it is easy 
 to say the Lord hath done this : it would do 
 you good to see and hear our poor foot go up 
 and down making their boast of God. But, sir, 
 it is in your hands, and by these eminent mer- 
 cies God puts it more into your hands, to give 
 glory to him, to improve your power and his 
 blessings to his praise. We that serve you beg 
 of you not to own us, but God alone ; we pray you 
 own his people more and more, for they are the 
 chariots and horsemen of Israel. Disown 
 yourselves, but own your authority, and im- 
 prove it to curb the proud and the insolent, such 
 as would disturb the tranquillity of England, 
 though under what specious pretences soever. 
 Relieve the oppressed, hear the groans of poor pris- 
 oners in England ; be pleased to reform the abuses 
 
 * This anecdote is told by Captain Hodgson. The Eng- 
 lish cavalry had charged and shaken the Scots, when " the 
 general himself conies in the rear of our regiment, and 
 commands to incline to the left, that is, to take more ground 
 to be clear of all bodies : and we did so ; and horse and foot 
 were engaged all over the field, and the Scots all in con- 
 fusion. And the sun appearing upon the sea, I heard Noll 
 say, ' Now let God arise, and his enemies shall be scat- 
 tered ;' and he following us, as we slowly marched, I heard 
 him say, '1 profess they run;' and there was the Scots 
 army all in disorder and 'running, both right wing awl left, 
 aud main buttle."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 487 
 
 of all professions ; and if there be any one that 
 makr.s many poor to make a few rich, that suits not 
 a commonwealth. Since we came into Scotland, 
 it hath been our desire and longing to have 
 avoided blood in this business, by reason that 
 God hath a people here fearing his name, though 
 deceived : and to that end have we offered 
 much love unto such in the bowels of Christ, 
 and concerning the truth of our hearts therein 
 have we appealed unto the Lord. The minis- 
 ters of Scotland have hindered the passage of 
 these things to the hearts of those to whom we 
 intended them ; and now we hear that not only 
 the deceived people, but some of the ministers, 
 are also fallen in the battle. This is the great 
 hand of the Lord, and worthy of the considera- 
 tion of all those who, taking into their hands the 
 instruments of a foolish shepherd, to wit, med- 
 dling with worldly policies and mixtures of 
 earthly power, to set up that which they call 
 the kingdom of Christ which is neither it, nor 
 if it were, would such means be found effectual 
 to that end neglect or trust not to the word 
 of God, the sword of the spirit, which is alone 
 powerful and able for the setting up of that 
 kingdom ; and when trusted to, will be found 
 effectually able for that end, and will also do it. 
 This is humbly offered for their sakes, who 
 have lately too much turned aside, that they 
 might return again to preach Jesus Christ ac- 
 cording to the simplicity of the Gospel, and 
 then, no doubt, they will discover and find your 
 protection and encouragement." 
 
 It was in a different and more pleasing spirit 
 he wrote, on the same day as to the Parlia- 
 ment, to his " lovinge brother Richard Major 
 at Hursley." " DEERE BROTHER, Havinge 
 soe good an occasion as the impartinge soe 
 great a mercie as the Lorde hath voutchsafed 
 unto us in Scotland, I would not omitt the im- 
 partinge thereof to you, though I be full of 
 businesse. Upon Wednesd. wee fought the 
 Scottish Armie. They were in number, ac- 
 cordinge to all computation, above twentie 
 thousand, wee hardly eleven thousand, hav- 
 inge great sicknesses upon our Armie. After 
 much appealinge to God, the fight lasted above 
 an hower. Wee killed (as most thinke) three 
 thousand, tooke neer ten thousand prisoners, 
 all their traine, about thirtie gunnes, great and 
 smale, besides bullett, match, and powder, very 
 considerable officers, about two hundred col- 
 ours, above ten thousand armes. Lost not 
 thirtie men. This is the Lorde's doinge, and 
 it is marvelous in our eyes. Good S r , give God 
 all the glorie ; stir up all yours, and all about 
 you, to doe soe : pray for your affectionate 
 
 Brother, O. CROMWELL I desier my love 
 
 may be presented to my deere sister and to all 
 your familie. I pray tell Doll I doe not forget 
 her nor her little bratt. She writes very cunning- 
 lie and comple mentally to me ; I expect a letter 
 of plaine dealinge from her. She is too modest 
 to tell me whether she bretd.es or not. I wish a 
 hlessinge upon her and her husband. The 
 Lord make them fruitfull in all that's good. 
 They are at leizure to write often, butt indeed they 
 are both idle and worthic of blame." 
 
 Nor should the opportunity be lost of pre- 
 senting here, in connexion with Cromwell's 
 greatest triumph, and on the eve of his great- 
 est crime, some farther evidence from these 
 
 private sources of his gentle and affectionate 
 relations with the members of his family. 
 
 Shortly after the battle, his wife wrote to 
 him thus. The allusions to the great officers 
 of state whom she fears he is about to estrange 
 himself from, possess much interest, and the 
 entire wording of the letter is in accordance 
 with the writer's modest and amiable history. 
 "Mv DEARIST, I wonder you should blame 
 me for writing noe oftnir, when I have sent thre 
 for one. I canenot but think they are mis- 
 carid. Truly if I knog my one hart, I should 
 ase soune neglect myself ase to ... the least 
 thought towards you. In doing of it, I must 
 doe it to myself. But when I do writ, my dear, 
 I seldome have any satisfactore answer, which, 
 makse me think my writling is slitcd, as well it 
 mae ; but yctt I cannot but think your love coverse 
 my weaknisis and infi.rm.etcs. I should rejoyse 
 to hear your desire in seeing mee, but I desire 
 to submit to the providens of God, howping the 
 Lord, houe hath separated us, and hath oftune 
 brought us together agane, will in heis good 
 time bring us agane, to the praise of his name. 
 Truly my lif is but half a lif in your abseince 
 did not the Lord make it up in heimself, which 
 I must acknoleg to the prase of heis grace. / 
 would you would think to writ sometimes to your 
 deare frend me Lord Chef Justes, of hom I have 
 oftune put you in mind : and truly, my deare, if 
 you would think of what I put you in mind of 
 sume, it might be of ase much purpose ase others, 
 writling sumetimes a letter to the President, and 
 sumetimes to the Speikcr. Indeid, my deare, you 
 cannot think the rong you doe yourself in the 
 whant of a letter, though it wer but seldome. 
 I pray think of, and soe rest yours in all faith- 
 fulnise, ELIZABETH CROMWELL." 
 
 The same tender and gentle tone pervades 
 Cromwell's letters to her. " MY DEEREST, I 
 could not satisfie myselfe to omitt this poast, 
 although I have not much to write, yett indeed. 
 I love to write to my deere, who is very much in 
 my harte. It joys me to heare thy soule pros- 
 pereth ; the Lorde increase his favours to thee 
 more and more. The great good thy soule can 
 wish is that the Lorde lift upon thee the light 
 of his Countenance, which is better than life. 
 The Lorde blesse all thy good councell and 
 example to those about thee, and heare all thy 
 prayers, and accept thee alwayes. I am glad 
 to heare thy Sonn and Daughter ar with thee. 
 / hope thou wilt have some good oportunitie of 
 good advise to him. Present my duty to my 
 mother, my love to all the Familie. Still pray 
 for thine, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 Other letters belong also to this date, which, 
 while they let in light upon the kindest and 
 most private corner of Cromwell's heart, bring 
 out into still more distinct shape the suggestion 
 I have ventured concerning his son. The first 
 is to Richard himself. 
 
 " DICK CROMWELL, I take your letters kind- 
 lie. / like expressions when they come plainlie 
 from the hartc, and are not strayned nor affected. 
 I am perswaded it's the Lorde's mercie to 
 place you where you ar ; I wish you may owne 
 it and be thankefull, fulfillinge all relations to 
 the Glorie of God. Seeke the Lorde and his 
 face continually; lett this be the businesse of 
 your life and strength. And lett all thinges be 
 subservient and in order to this. You cannot
 
 488 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 find, nor behold the face of God butt in Christ, 
 therfore labour to knowe God in Christ, w cl > 
 the Scripture makes to be the sum of all, even 
 life externall. Because the true knowledge is not 
 literati or speculative, butt inward, transforminge 
 the minde to it, its unitinge to, and participa- 
 tinge of the Divine nature (2 Pet., i., 4). It's 
 such a knowledge as Paul speakes of (Philip., 
 iii., 8, 9, 10). How little of this knowledge of 
 Christ is there amongst us ! My weake prayers 
 shall be for you. Take heede of an unactive vaine 
 spirit. Recreate yourself io' A S r Walter Raugh- 
 leye's Historic ; it's a bodie of historic, and will 
 add muck more to your understandinge than frag- 
 ments of storie. Intend to understand the es- 
 tate I have setled : it's your concernment to 
 knowe it all, and how it stands. I have hereto- 
 fore suffered much by too much trustinge others. 
 I know my Brother Major will be helpfull to 
 you in all this. You will thinke (perhaps) I need 
 not advise you to love your Wife. The Lorde 
 teach you how to doe it, or else it will be done 
 illfavouredly. Though Marriage be noe institu- 
 ted Sacrament, yett where the undcfiled bed is, and 
 love, this Union aptly resembles Christ and his 
 Church. If you can truely love your Wife, 
 what doeth Christ beare to his Church and ev- 
 ery poore soule therein, whoe gave himselfe for 
 it and to it. Comend me to your Wife : tell 
 her I entyrely love her, and rejoyce in the good- 
 nesse of the Lorde to her. I wish her every 
 way fruitfull. I thanke her for her lovinge let- 
 ter. I have presented my love to my Sister 
 and Cozen Ann, etc., in my letter to my Broth- 
 er Major. I would not have him alter his af- 
 faires because of my debt. My purse is as his ; 
 my present thoughts are butt to lodge such a sum 
 for my two little gyrl.es : it's in his hand as well 
 as anywhere. I shall not be wantinge to ac- 
 comodate him to his minde. I would not have 
 him sollicitous. Dick, the Lorde blesse you 
 every way. I rest, your loving Father, 
 
 " O. CROMWELL." 
 
 To Mr. Major he again writes in the old 
 mingled strain. " DEERE BROTHER, The ex- 
 ceedinge croude of businesse I had at London 
 is the best excuse I can make for my silence 
 this way. Indeed, Sir, my harte beareth me 
 witnesse, I want noe affection to you or yours ; 
 you are all often in my poore prayers. I should 
 be glad to heare how the little bratt doth. I could 
 chide both father and mother for theire neglects of 
 me : I knowe my sonn is idle, butt I had better 
 thoughts of Doll ; I doubt now her husband hath 
 spoyled her ^ I pray tell her soe from me. If I 
 had as good leisure as they, I should write some- 
 times. If my daughter be breedinge, I will ex- 
 cuse her, butt not for her nurserie ; the Lorde 
 blesse them. I hope you give my Sonn good 
 councell ; I believe he needes it. He is in the 
 dangerous time of his age, and it's a very vaine 
 worlde. how good it is to close with Christ 
 betimes ; there is nothinge else worth the look- 
 ing after. I beseech you call upon him. I hope 
 you will discharge my dutie and your owne 
 love : you see how I am employed. I neede 
 pittye. / knowe what Ifeele. Great place and 
 businesse in the worlde is not worth the look- 
 inge after : I should have no comfort in mine 
 butt that my hope is in the Lorde's presence. 
 .7 have not sought these thinges ; truely I have 
 bccnc called to them by the Lorde, and therfore 
 
 am not without some good assurance that he 
 will inable his poore worme and weake servant 
 to doe his will and to fulfill my generation. In 
 this I begg your prayers : desiringe to be lov- 
 inglie remembred to my deere Sister, to our 
 Sonn and Daughter, my Cozen Ann, and the 
 good familie. I rest your affectionate brother, 
 
 " 0. CROMWELL." 
 
 The last I shall quote, however, is the most 
 striking and earnest of all. " DEERE BROTHER, 
 I was glad to receave a letter from you, for 
 indeed anythinge that cornes from you is very 
 wellcome to me. I believe your expectation of 
 my sonn's cominge is deferred. I wish he may 
 see a happie deliverie of his wife first, for whom 
 I frequently pray. ... I heare rny sonn hath ex- 
 ceeded his allowance, and is in debt ; truely I 
 cannot comend him therein, wisdom requi- 
 ringe his livinge within compasse, and callings 
 for it at his handes. And in my judgement, the 
 reputation arisinge from thence would have been 
 more real honour than what is attained the other 
 way. I believe vaine men will speake well of 
 him that does ill. / desicr to be understood that 
 I grudge him not laudable recreations, nor an hon- 
 ourable carriage of himselfe in them, nor it any 
 matter of charge like to fall to my share a stick 
 with me. Truely I can finde in my harte to al- 
 low him not only a sufficiency, butt more for his 
 good; butt if pleasure and self-satisfaction be 
 made the businesse of a mail's life, soe much 
 cost layed out upon it, soe much time spent in 
 it, as rather answers appetite than the will of 
 God, or is comely before his Saints, I scruple 
 to feed this humour, and God forbid that his be- 
 inge my sonn should be his allowance to lire 
 not pleasinglie to onr heavenlie Father, who 
 hath raised me out of the dust to what I am. I 
 desier your faithfulnesse (he being alsoe your 
 concernment as well as mine) to advise him to 
 approve himselfe to the Lorde in his course of 
 life, and to search his statutes for a rule to con- 
 science, and to seeke grace from Christ to en- 
 able him to walke therein. This hath life in 
 it, and will come to somewhat. What is a 
 poore creature without this? This will not 
 abridge of lawfull pleasures, but teach snch an 
 use of them as will have the peace of a good 
 conscience goinge alonge with it. S r , I write 
 what is in my harte ; I pray you comunicate 
 my mind herein to my sonn, and be his Re- 
 membrancer in these thinges. Truely I love 
 him ; he is deerc to me ; soe is his Wife ; and for 
 their sakes doe I thus write. They shall not want 
 comfort nor incouragement from me, so far as I 
 may afford it ; butt indeed I cannot thinke I doe 
 well to feede a voluptuous humour in my sonn, if 
 he should make pleasures the businesse of his life 
 in a time when some precious saincts are bleed- 
 inge and breathinge out their last for the good and 
 safetie of the rest. Memorable is the speech of 
 Urijah to David, 2 Chron., xi., 11. ... S r , I be- 
 seech you believe I heare say not this to save 
 my pvrse, for I shall willinglie doe what is con- 
 venient to satisfie his occasions as I have op- 
 ortunitie ; butt as I pray he may not walke in 
 a course not pleasinge to the Lorde, so thinke 
 it lyeth upon me to give him (in love) the best 
 Councell I may, and knowe not how better to 
 conveigh it to him than by soe good a hand as 
 yours. . . . S r , I pray you acquaint him with 
 these thoughts of mine, and remember my love
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 489 
 
 to my daughter, for whose sake I shall be in- 
 duced to doe any reasonable thinge. I pray 
 for her happie deliverance frequently and ear- 
 nestly. ... I am sorry to heare my baylie in 
 Hantshire should doe to my sonn as is intima- 
 ted by your letter. I assure you I shall not al- 
 lowe any such thinge. If there be any suspi- 
 tion of his abuse of the woode, I desier jt may 
 be looked after and inquired into, that soe if 
 thinges appear true he may be removed, al- 
 though indeed I must needs say he had the re- 
 port of a godlie man by diverse that knewe 
 him when I placed him there. . . . Sir, I desier 
 my hartie affection may be presented to my 
 Sister, my Cozen Ann and her husband,* though 
 unknovvne. ... I praise the Lorde I have ob- 
 teyned much rnercie in respect of my health ; 
 the Lorde give me a truely thankfull harte. I 
 desier your prayers, and rest your very affec- 
 tionate brother and servant, 0. CROMWELL." 
 After the victory of Dunbar Cromwell occu- 
 pied Glasgow and Edinburgh (in which latter 
 city the castle soon submitted), and spent the 
 winter in polemical discussions, in correspond- 
 ence with various ministers, in regulating the 
 affairs of the army, in reducing certain small 
 fortresses on the shores of the Pirth, and in at- 
 tempts to gain over to his cause the more vio- 
 lent members of the Scottish assembly. Mean- 
 while the Parliament poured honours and fa- 
 vours on him, and I observe a letter, with one 
 or two interesting touches in it, wherein he re- 
 plies to their application that he would suffer 
 an artist to take a sketch of his head for a med- 
 al in honour of his last victory. The modest 
 request the general sends back was not, it 
 would seem, granted, since the Dunbar medal 
 by the artist in question presents a very fine 
 face of Cromwell. " GENTI,., It was not a 
 little wonder to me to see that you should send 
 Mr. Symonds so great a journie about a busi- 
 nesse importinge so little, as far as it relates to 
 me ; wheras, if my poore opinion may not be 
 rejected by you, I have to offer to that w ch I 
 thinke the most noble end to witt, the cora- 
 memoracon of that great mercie at Dunbar, 
 and the gratuitie to the Armie that it might 
 better be expressed upon the meddallby engra- 
 vinge, as on the one side the Parliam 1 (w cb I 
 heare was intended and will do singularly well), 
 soe on the other side an Armie, w th this inscrip- 
 tion over the head of it, ' The Lord of Hosts,' 
 w ch was o r word that day. Wherfore, if I may 
 begg it as a favour from you, I most earnestly 
 beseech you, if I may doe it w th out offence, that 
 it may be soe ; and if you thinke not fitt to have 
 it as I offer, you may alter it as you see cause ; 
 only I doe thinke I may truely say it will be very 
 thankfully acknowledged by me if you will spare 
 the hacinge my effigies in it. . . . The gentleman's 
 paynes and trouble hither have been very great ; 
 and I shall make it my second suite unto you, 
 that you will please to conferr upon him that 
 imploym 1 in yo r service w ch Nicholas Briott had 
 before him. Indeed, the man is ingenious, and 
 worthie of inc.ouragem'. I may not presume 
 much, butt if at my request and for my sake 
 he may obteyn this favour, I shall put it upon 
 the accompt of my obligacons, w ch are not a 
 
 * John Dunch, Esq., of Pusey, in Berkshire ; where the 
 original of this letter was fuund and transcribed by Horace 
 Walpole. 
 
 QQQ 
 
 few, and I hope shall be found readie gratefully 
 to acknowledge, and to approve myselfe, Gentl., 
 Yo r most reall serv't, O. CROMWELL." 
 
 With the advance of winter an attack of ague 
 seized Cromwell, but after severe suffering he 
 rallied, and in time for that ill-judged move- 
 ment of the young king of Scots which brought 
 on the battle of Worcester. 
 
 The Presbyterian army, restored to a nu- 
 merous and most effective force, now held a 
 strong position near Stirling. Charles II. com- 
 manded it in person. Taught by the fatal ex- 
 perience of Dunbar, however, they kept acting 
 on the defensive, and could not be drawn from 
 their well-selected ground. As a last effort 
 with this view, Cromwell, with singular daring, 
 transported his army into Fife, and proceeded 
 towards Perth, which he captured after a siege 
 of two days. The stratagem succeeded in one 
 sense, but, besides moving the Scots from their 
 stronghold, it had also induced Charles to adopt 
 the plan of marching into England. It is said 
 that in this he yielded to the advice of his Eng- 
 lish followers, who overruled the more prudent 
 Argyle, looked with contempt upon the Parlia- 
 ment, and counted upon the numerical majority 
 of the English nation as unquestionably in his 
 favour. On the 31st of July he broke up his 
 camp near the Torwood, and on the 6th of 
 August reached Carlisle. 
 
 Cromwell was engaged in the superintend- 
 ence of a new citadel by means of which he de- 
 signed to hold Perth in subjection, when the 
 news reached him of the movement of the 
 Presbyterians and the king. His spirit rose to 
 that crisis with a renewal of the excitement 
 which men noted in him at Dunbar. He wrote 
 at once to London to give all necessary courage 
 and confidence to the council and citizens. 
 After informing them of the meditated invasion 
 hanging over them, he observed that it " wa3 
 not out of choice on our part ;" and did not con- 
 ceal his fear that it would trouble some men's 
 thoughts, and occasion some inconvenience. 
 But, he adds, " this is our comfort, that in sim- 
 plicitie of harte as to God, wee have done to 
 the best of our judgements, knowing that, if 
 some issue were not putt to this businesse, it 
 would occasion another winter's war, to the 
 ruin of your soldiery, for whom the Scotts are 
 too hard in respect of enduring the winter dif- 
 ficulties of this countrie, and have been under 
 the endless expense of the treasurie of England 
 in prosecuting this war. It may be supposed 
 wee might have kept the enimy from this by 
 interposinge between him and England, which 
 truely I believe wee might ; but how to remove 
 him out of this place without doinge what we have 
 done, unlesse wee had a comanding armie on 
 both sides of the River of Forth, is not clear to 
 us, or how to answer the inconveniences afore 
 mentioned, wee understand not." He then en- 
 treats that the council of state would collect 
 what forces they could without loss of time, to 
 give the enemy some check until he should be 
 able to overtake them. Meantime, he sent 
 Lambert at the head of the cavalry, who, upon 
 joining with Harrison, whose forces were at 
 Newcastle, was ordered to advance through the 
 western parts of Northumberland, to intercept 
 the Scots in their progress through Lancashire, 
 to watch their motions, straiten their quarters,
 
 490 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 impede their progress in every way, but not to 
 risk a battle. 
 
 Charles, meanwhile, with but sorry success, 
 had pushed on by Kendal and Preston to War- 
 rington, where, at the bridge, he received a 
 momentary check from Lambert and Harrison. 
 He still forced his way, summoned Shrewsbury 
 in passing, but without effect, and at last made 
 for Worcester, where he was proclaimed, ac- 
 cording to Clarendon, King of England, Scot- 
 land, France, and Ireland. 
 
 London, anticipating his entry almost every 
 hour, gave way to fearful alarms. Even Brad- 
 shaw himself, it is said, lion-hearted as he was, 
 could not, among his private friends, conceal 
 his fears. Some raged against Cromwell, and 
 uttered deep suspicions of his fidelity. No one 
 could understand his intentions, nor where he 
 was, nor why he had allowed an enemy to en- 
 ter the land, when there were no troops to op- 
 pose them. Both the city and the country, 
 says Mrs. Hutchinson (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 Common- 
 wealth's safety. Some could not hide very pale 
 and unmanly fears, and were in such distrac- 
 tion of spirit as much disturbed their counsels. 
 
 Yet truly there was little need. The genius 
 of Cromwell had already saved them. He had 
 collected a tremendous force nearly 30,000 
 men and on the 28th of August had them all 
 in position within two miles of Worcester. 
 The Presbyterian force was greatly inferior, 
 but the almost impregnable site of the city of 
 Worcester was an ample set-off against that 
 circumstance. 
 
 Built along the right bank of the Severn, it 
 defied immediate assault, and Charles's officers 
 had of course done their best to increase its al- 
 ready splendid resources of resistance and de- 
 fence. Cromwell found the bridges broken 
 above and below ; every boat removed ; not 
 even a punt to be seen ; and in the extensive 
 line of fires above, saw how strongly the heights 
 of the place were occupied. But not for a mo- 
 ment did he hesitate. Inspired by the genius 
 which had served him so often, and never failed 
 him yet, he took the sudden and daring resolve 
 of throwing his army astride upon two rivers 
 of forcing at their higher transits a passage 
 across both the Severn and the Team and of 
 coming down at once upon the enemy from the 
 eastern and western heights overlooking Wor- 
 cester ! 
 
 The preparations for this daring exploit were 
 completed on the 2d of September; for Crom- 
 well had, moreover, determined to fight this 
 decisive battle for the possession of three dis- 
 puted kingdoms on what he called his FORTU- 
 NATE DAY his day of Dunbar. Skirmishes 
 meanwhile took place between the outposts on 
 both sides of the river, and, before the morning 
 of the 3d, a desperate struggle had passed at 
 the half-broken Upton Bridge, between Lambert 
 and its gallant defender Massey. Lambert car- 
 ried it at last, repaired the broken arch, and 
 conducted across 10,000 men, who took their 
 ground along the course of the Team. 
 
 It was now the morning of the 3d. The 
 Presbyterians had the day before, in alarm at 
 Lambert's movement, destroyed every bridge 
 
 upon that river. Yet Cromwell not caring to 
 husband life at any time, and still less now, 
 when his superior numbers gave him so many 
 lives to play with sent out an order to Fleet- 
 wood to force, at any loss, his detached corps 
 across the Team. Cromwell, at the same mo- 
 ment, threw a bridge of boats over the Severn 
 at Bunshill, near the confluence of the two riv- 
 ers, and restored the communication that had 
 been partially cut off. A hot fire near Powick 
 so sudden were these movements was the 
 first thing that attracted the attention of 
 Charles, who, from one of the towers of the 
 Cathedral, was examining the positions of the 
 enemy ; when, finding that an attack was begun 
 in that quarter, he instantly despatched a re- 
 enforcement of horse and foot to the spot, and 
 gave instructions to the commanding officer to 
 prevent, if possible, the formation of the bridge. 
 But a similar addition had been made to the 
 detachment under Fleetwood, who again out- 
 numbered his opponents, and pressed them 
 with great vivacity towards Worcester. " The 
 Scots, in the hope that, by occupying so large 
 a force, they might afford to their countrymen 
 on the other side of the Severn an opportunity 
 of breaking the regiments under Cromwell, 
 maintained the most obstinate resistance." 
 They disputed every inch of ground which pre- 
 sented the slightest advantage ; fought from 
 hedge to hedge ; and frequently charged with 
 the pike, to check the advance of the enemy. 
 
 For an instant this rolled the tide of battle 
 back towards the Team ; but fresh battalion 
 after battalion arrived to the support of Fleet- 
 wood, who then bore the Scots by fair force of 
 numbers even across the bridge. 
 
 Cromwell was meanwhile deciding the battle 
 under the walls of the town ; and here, or on 
 both sides of the river, from two o'clock in the 
 morning till nightfall, had this terrible contest 
 raged with unceasing fury. The main body of 
 the enemy's infantry had advanced out of the city 
 against the renowned chief of the Ironsides, and 
 the conflict upon one spot in this quarter, Crom- 
 well wrote in his despatch, lasted three hours. 
 It was closed by the veteran regiment which 
 had so often closed the battles of the Parliament, 
 and which now, for the last time, advanced at 
 the word of Cromwell. The victory was com- 
 plete gloriously complete, as the lord-general 
 exultingly wrote, and " gained after as stiff a 
 contest for many hours including both sides 
 of the river" as he had ever seen. The fort 
 having been summoned, and Colonel Drum- 
 mond still refusing to surrender it, it was car- 
 ried, in all the wild triumph of the victory, by 
 a furious storm, wherein fifteen hundred men 
 were put to the sword. Charles, flying through 
 the streets in piteous despair, in vain attempted 
 to rally his troops, and finding they would no 
 longer move, is said to have cried out, with a 
 burst of passionate tears, " Then shoot me 
 dead, rather than let me live to see the sad con- 
 sequences of this day !" A crown had vanish- 
 ed from his grasp. 
 
 On another man who still stood upon that 
 field a crown was now descending. He stood 
 there, some time after the day was won, in a 
 state of uncontrollable emotion ; then calling 
 Fleetwood and Lambert to his side, he told 
 them, with a fit of boisterous laughter, that he
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 491 
 
 would knight them, as heroes of old were knight- 
 ed (he did not say by kings), on the field where 
 they had achieved their glory. The excitement 
 subdued, he retired to his tent, and there, at 
 " 10 o'clock at night," " weary and scarce able 
 to write," he yet wrote to the Parliament of 
 England these memorable words: " The dimen- 
 sions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, 
 for aught I know, a crowning mercy." 
 A CROWNING MERCY indeed! 
 
 AFTER the defeat of Worcester, it is remark- 
 ed by Lord Clarendon, all the royal and loyal 
 party lay grovelling and prostrate, under deso- 
 late apprehensions.* A glance at the position 
 of the Republican leaders will show that never 
 were such apprehensions so justly grounded or 
 so little overcharged. 
 
 Resistance to the great design of a republic 
 was now at an end in England, Ireland, and 
 Scotland. In England, the avowed hostility of 
 the Levellers had become as harmless as the 
 secret machinations of the Loyalists. In Ire- 
 land, submission and solitude had been substi- 
 tuted, by an awful and unsparing hand, for tur- 
 bulence and rebellion. In Scotland, the sturdi- 
 est Presbyterian had at last surrendered to the 
 victorious soldiers of Independency even the 
 sectarian loveliness and supremacy of his dar- 
 ling kirk. Scarcely a spot of British ground 
 remained on which, in right of a triumphant 
 conquest, the banner of the English Common- 
 wealth did not stand firmly planted. 
 
 Nor had its champions won less consideration 
 for it in distant lands. Through every country 
 in Europe they had proclaimed their purpose, 
 and vanquished enemies on all sides bore tes- 
 timony to their power. The proud Don John 
 of Portugal lay like the humblest vassal at the 
 feet of Blake ; the haughty insolence of Spain 
 had crawled into subservient alliance ; the 
 Dutch had surrendered their cherished title of 
 sovereigns of the sea ; and, held down by the 
 vigour and genius of our Republican statesmen, 
 the remaining potentates of Europe " stood still 
 with aweful eye." 
 
 But at the very root of such vast strength 
 there lurked a mortal weakness. The govern- 
 ment under which these results had been achiev- 
 ed, and by which alone the frame of things was 
 now kept together, was avowedly a provisional 
 government. It rested on no direct authority 
 from the people. The men who were at the 
 head of affairs had, by sublime talents and un- 
 conquerable energy, placed themselves there ; 
 but in continuing to hold to office by no other 
 bond, they seemed to confess that the people 
 were against them. Daring and resolute in all 
 things else, they fell short of their own high 
 souls in this. It was because in other things 
 they held their personal safety to be risked 
 alone, while in this they saw some peril to that 
 grand design by which, as they fondly hoped, 
 they were destined to secure the happiness of 
 unborn generations of their countrymen. We 
 alone, they reasoned, to whom this glorious re- 
 public owes its birth, are fit to watch over its 
 tender years. Our duty cannot be done till we 
 have taught England the practical blessings of 
 the new system we have wrought. Under a 
 
 History, vol. vi., p. 557. 
 
 republic she shall find herself greater than under 
 any of her kings. Wealthy and secure, re- 
 spected and honoured, she will recognise the 
 value and the potency of the government we 
 have formed ; and, by her gratitude well repaid, 
 we may then with safety deliver back into the 
 hands of the people the authority we have wield- 
 ed throughout for their benefit alone. 
 
 The reasoning, up to a certain point, must 
 possibly be conceded as just, and worthy of the 
 men.* There cannot be a doubt, that at the 
 day when the axe descended on the neck of 
 Charles I., a majority of the people were still 
 strongly attached to the forms of monarchical 
 government. But on the other side were a 
 most formidable minority, comprising within 
 itself the greatest amount of energy, genius, 
 and moral force that had yet been exhibited 
 upon the stage of public affairs in England. To 
 elevate the whole nation to that standard was 
 a design at once grand and simple, worthy of 
 the age, and of the deeds already done in it ; 
 for, be it kept in mind, Republicanism was of 
 recent growth even in the breasts of these 
 founders of the new republic. The most in- 
 fluential of them had not played the lofty part 
 they did from any preconceived notion of the 
 abstract excellence of that form of civil society. 
 It has been abundantly shown in this work that 
 what such men as VANE sought was popular 
 and good government, embracing extensive rep- 
 resentation, security for person and property, 
 freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and 
 entire liberty of conscience. It was only be- 
 cause they could not find these under a mon- 
 archy that they became Republicans ; but un- 
 der a monarchy they would have been con- 
 tent with these. From the head of no Jupiter 
 sprang the armed republic of England, but even 
 from the weak and faithless head of her own 
 Charles Stuart. Practical and most protracted 
 experience of the utter impossibility of bring- 
 ing that monarch to terms of good faith, destroy- 
 ed, in the breasts of a formidable minority of 
 the nation, all farther faith in monarchy itself. 
 It only remained, by means as powerful, to wean 
 the rest from that old allegiance and long-de- 
 scended love, by exhibiting to them in enlarged 
 prosperity, safety, and honour, the superior 
 forces that were inherent in the Republican 
 form. Hence it came to be urged, as no less a 
 matter of necessity than duty, to hold fast by 
 the act which Englishmen who have read the 
 history of their country aright know to be the 
 corner-stone of all the freedom that now exists 
 in it, and which declared the Parliament that 
 assembled in 1640 indissoluble save by its own 
 consent. By such a course only, in the midst 
 of the clouds that hung over the minds of men 
 after the memorable action of the 30th of Jan- 
 uary, was it felt that even the common frame 
 of society could be held together. Only so 
 could the chance, however distant, of another 
 trial of the family of Stuart, be averted from 
 the land which they had cursed so heavily. By 
 this alone could that calm be cast upon the 
 troubled waters out of which order and happi- 
 ness must ever rise. But it was a course which 
 
 * I have already treated this subject in the "Life of 
 Vane," with less consideration, probably, for the part that 
 statesman took in it, than I have felt it only due to the 
 general body of Republicans to concede in this place.
 
 492 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in any case carried along with it one most per- 
 emptory condition. Justified by necessity alone, 
 the limits of necessity sternly bound it in. The 
 day that saw it no longer essential to safety, 
 saw it the most fatal instrument of danger. 
 
 That day had now, at least, arrived. The 
 first act of the statesmen of Westminster, after 
 the Worcester victory, should have been the 
 passing of their bill for an amended representa- 
 tion, and the dissolution of the Parliament in 
 which they sat. In the restless anxiety of the 
 thoughtful Vane, which followed close upon 
 that event, might be detected the fear that 
 there had already been a delay too long. No 
 merely administrative glory, however great and 
 brilliant, can be expected to produce a lasting 
 beneficial impression on the minds or the con- 
 dition of a people. The government of the new 
 form had now brought to a successful issue its 
 struggle for existence : scattered or prostrate 
 enemies on all sides bore witness to the solid 
 foundations it had laid. The next, the great- 
 est, and most serviceable stone of the super- 
 structure, should have been a fearless appeal 
 to the people. More was to be gained, as 
 events will show hereafter, by trusting than by 
 distrusting them. They had now, moreover, 
 the indisputable right to demand what such a 
 course was only the first step to new political 
 institutions, such as Vane's later experience 
 inculcated, to be founded on the principles of 
 the old, and in which should be kept, as far as 
 it was possible, the spirit of those fundamental 
 laws and usages to which they had been for 
 centuries accustomed, and under which, in 
 their purer shapes, they had grown in civiliza- 
 tion and in virtue. Assuming, on the other 
 hand, the injustice of such demands, and the 
 inexpediency of granting them, what was the 
 single security left to the new commonwealth, 
 even in the midst of all its triumphs 1 Nothing 
 but the sword that had struck for them ; noth- 
 ing but the force which, obedient to an impulse 
 from without, might as readily answer to a bid- 
 ding from within. Here lurked the danger that 
 was mightiest, because least seen. The ser- 
 pent that had the deadliest sting for the new 
 commonwealth lay coiled and cherished within 
 its own bosom. Every man in that army, which 
 now rested, after its loftiest and last triumph, 
 within a few days' march of London, should 
 have been made, in his very first hour of con- 
 sciousness of victory, to feel that his sword had 
 at length become useless, for that higher duties 
 awaited its gallant owner. The great invita- 
 tion of citizenship should have pierced like a 
 trumpet into every tent : You have won the priv- 
 ileges of freemen. Come now, and actively parti- 
 cipate in them ! 
 
 The course of events to which our narrative 
 turns will present, towards the just apprecia- 
 tion of the various great questions involved in 
 this momentous subject, a series of sad, though 
 salutary illustrations. 
 
 Within a few hours after the news from 
 Worcester reached London, soul-stirring de- 
 spatches from Cromwell were read from the 
 speaker's chair to the assembled Commons, 
 and from every chapel in the vast city to its 
 crowded and excited congregation. " We beat 
 the enemy," they said, " from hedge to hedge, 
 till we beat them into Worcester. The dispute 
 
 | was long and very near at hand, and often at 
 ! push of pike from one defence to another . . . 
 We fought in the streets of the town together 
 for three hours' space ; but in the end we beat 
 the enemy totally. . . We pursued him to his 
 royal fort, which we took, and have beaten in- 
 deed his whole army. . . When we took his fort, 
 we turned his own guns upon him . . . This hath 
 been a very glorious mercy, and as stiff a con- 
 test for four or five hours as ever I have seen. 
 Both your old forces, and those new raised, 
 have behaved themselves with very great cour- 
 | age ; and He that made them come out, made 
 them willing to fight for you. . . We have seven 
 thousand prisoners, many of them officers and 
 noblemen of quality. . . If this provoke those 
 that are concerned in it to thankfulness, and 
 the Parliament to do the will of Him who had 
 done his will for it and for the nation whose 
 good pleasure is to establish the nation and the 
 change of the government, by making the peo- 
 ple so willing to the defence thereof, and so 
 signally to bless the endeavours of your ser- 
 vants in this late great work I am bold hum- 
 bly to beg that all thoughts may tend to the pro- 
 moting of His honour who hath wrought so 
 great salvation ; and that the fatness of these 
 continued mercies may not occasion pride and 
 wantonness, as formerly the like hath done to 
 a chosen nation, but that the fear of the Lord, 
 even for his mercies, may keep an authority 
 and a people so prospered and blessed, and 
 witnessed unto, humble and faithful, and that 
 justice and righteousness, mercy and truth, 
 may flow from you as a thankful return to our 
 gracious God."* 
 
 The earnest and loud amens which these 
 characteristic phrases and adjurings drew forth 
 from crowded congregations of the faithful, 
 were echoed along the less crowded benches 
 of the Commons ; and well had it been for the 
 members assembled there, as in all probability 
 for posterity to come, if upon such fervent 
 thanks, so simply and honestly given to their 
 great general, they had been content to rest 
 their gratitude to him (already laden as he was 
 with more worldly testimonies of the richness 
 of their bounty), and on the instant proceeded 
 to offer to the Providence that had again bless- 
 ed with victory the cause which engaged his 
 arms, the fittest and most "thankful return" 
 which free men could make, by inviting their 
 fellow-countrymen to partake of the blessings 
 so triumphantly won, and by fixing on the broad 
 and strong basis of popular consent, sympathy, 
 and regard, their new fabric of Republican gov- 
 ernment. For the servants of that govern- 
 ment, it should have been enough in any case 
 to know that they had done their duty, and de- 
 served well of their country. Anything beyond 
 this could indeed serve the purposes of " pride 
 
 * From a newspaper of the time. Sev. Proc. in Parlia- 
 ment, Sept. 4th to Sept. llth. This last despatch was de- 
 livered to the House by Major Cobbet, a man of much spirit 
 and resolution, who produced with it a collar of SS., be- 
 longing to young Charles, and his garter, both which he 
 had taken in the royal tent. A characteristic postscript at 
 the close of the despatch he bore, evidenced at once Crom- 
 well's regard for the interests of his officers, and the legiti- 
 mate means by which he achieved influence with them. 
 " Your officers," it ran, " behaved themselves with much 
 honour in this service ; and the person who is the bearer 
 hereof was equal in the performance of his duty to most 
 that served you that day." An estate of a hundred a year 
 was on this voted to Cobbet.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 493 
 
 and wantonness" alone. The writer, whose 
 duty it is to record the proceedings of the time, 
 can only mention the vote of the House at this 
 memorable crisis with a feeling of reluctance 
 akin to shame. 
 
 To the Lord-general Cromwell an estate in 
 land of four thousand a year was voted,* and 
 a royal residence, the palace of Hampton Court, 
 was ordered to be prepared for his future abode. 
 Nor these alone. The honour of the chancel- 
 lorship of the University of Oxford was at the 
 same time conferred upon him ; and a deputa- 
 tion of four of the first members of the govern- 
 ment of that government which should have 
 held its least powerful member of higher digni- 
 ty and account than its most successful soldier- 
 servant were appointed to meet and congrat- 
 ulate the lord-general at Aylesbury, on his way 
 to the capital, with every form of honour and 
 subservience. By the same votes, a series of 
 estates, descending in value from 2000 to 
 300 a year, were voted respectively to Ireton, 
 Lambert, Monk, Whaley, Okey, and Alured.* 
 
 The instructions given to the commissioners 
 of congratulation complete this unworthy pic- 
 ture. Whitelock and Lisle, the lord-keepers 
 of the seal ; Oliver St. John, chief-justice of 
 England ; and Sir Gilbert Pickering, a coun- 
 celler of state, having been named for the ser- 
 vice, were thus addressed from the speaker's 
 chair :f " You are, in the name of Parliament, 
 to congratulate his lordship's^ good recovery of 
 health after his dangerous sickness, and to take 
 notice of his unwearied labours and pains in 
 the late expedition into Scotland for the ser- 
 vice of this Commonwealth ; of his diligence 
 in prosecution of the enemy when he fled into 
 England ; of the great hardships and hazards 
 he hath exposed himself to, and particularly at 
 the late fight at Worcester ; of the prudent and 
 faithful managing and conducting throughout 
 this great and important affair, which the Lord 
 from heaven hath so signally blessed, and crown- 
 ed with so complete and glorious an issue : of 
 all which you are to make known to his lord- 
 ship that the Parliament hath thought fit by you 
 to certify their good acceptance and great sat- 
 isfaction therein, and for the same you are to 
 return, in the name of the Parliament and Com- 
 mon wealth of England, their most hearty thanks, 
 as also to the rest of the officers and soldiers, 
 for their great and gallant services done to the 
 Commonwealth. You are likewise to let his 
 lordship know, that since, by the great blessing 
 of God upon his lordship's and the army's en- 
 deavours, the enemy is so totally defeated, and 
 the state of affairs, as well in England as in 
 
 * Ludlow urges, in extenuation of this vote, that the 
 present income, in addition to his old grant of 2500 a year, 
 was meant to keep Cromwell steady (a difficult matter, re- 
 quiring heavy ballast) in obligation to his duty, or to 
 "leave him without excuse if he should depart from it" 
 (vol. i. , p. 371). If this was the motive, it adds to the short- 
 sightedness of the entire proceeding. History and human 
 nature, to say nothing of common justice to the common 
 people, should have dictated a different method. 
 
 t To Ireton, two thousand a year was voted ; Lambert 
 had a thousand a year j Monk and Whaley, five hundred ; 
 Okey, three hundred ; and Alured, two. In the following 
 year, Harrison received five hundred a year; Lord Grey of 
 Groby, a thousand ; Reynolds, five hundred ; and Joice, a 
 aundred. Journals. 
 
 t The vote bears date the 9th Sept., 1651-2. 
 
 t) Cromwell, as 1 have before stated, held a patent of 
 peerage, though he never availed himself of it. The pres- 
 ent title was one of courtesy. 
 
 Scotland, such as may very well dispense with 
 his lordship's continuance in the field, they do 
 desire his lordship, for the better settlement of 
 his health, to take such rest and repose as he 
 shall find most requisite and conducing there- 
 unto ; and for that purpose, to make his repair 
 to and residence at or within some few miles 
 of this place, whereby also 'he Parliament may 
 have the assistance of his presence in the great 
 and important consultations for the farther set- 
 tlement of this commonwealth which they are 
 now upon."* In farther testimony of a thank- 
 ful acceptance by the government of the great 
 and faithful services performed by the lord-gen- 
 eral, the commissioners had to acquaint him 
 that an act had been passed, not only to do hon- 
 our to this victory of Worcester on one special 
 and early day throughout the three kingdoms,! 
 but also to appoint an annual commemoration 
 of the victory on the 3d of September " for all 
 time to come."f 
 
 The triumphant soldier for whom all these 
 honours were designed was meanwhile in slow 
 progress with his army towards London. The 
 excitement of the battle was still strong upon 
 him. " That Cromwell," said Hugh Peters,* 
 
 * Journals ; and see Parliamentary Hist., vol. xx., p. 48. 
 
 t To render this practicable everywhere on the same day, 
 
 the 24th of September was named. Journal}. 
 
 e o eptemer was name. ourna}. 
 
 t The treatment of the Royalists captured in this great 
 battle deserves mention. Among the prisoners were the 
 
 ue o amon ; e ars o ery, auerae 
 Cleveland ; Sir Timothy Featherstonehaugh, Gen. Massey, 
 Captain Benbow, and the mayor and sheriff of Worcester 
 Derby. Featherstonehaugh, and Benbow were tried by court- 
 martial at Chester, and suffered in October. Benbow was 
 
 bleeding wounds, had led the distracted Charles, after thi 
 fatal fight, to the outlet of escape he won ; and when the 
 axe descended, prayers were on his lips for God's blessing 1 
 to his king, to his wife (the famous countess in " Peveril of 
 the Peak"), his " dear Mall, and Ned, and Billy" the chil- 
 ren who were left to mourn him. His scaffold bad been 
 rected in his own town of Bolton-le-Moors. Of his fellow- 
 prisoners, so selected as above, I may add brief mention. 
 Nine days after the victory, the Duke of Hamilton died of 
 his wounds. Massey and Middleton escaped from the Tow- 
 er, and reached France. Lauderdale was kept in prison 
 till the Restoration; and Rothes was not liberated till the 
 
 the exceptions in Cromwell's Act of Oblivion for Scotland 
 in 1654. The first-named earl, however, was suffered to 
 go to the Continent. This detail is, on the whole, most 
 favourable to the spirit of clemency and forbearance which 
 generally distinguished the government of the Common- 
 wealth; and however much we may deplore what seems a 
 partial and unjust severity in the first cases referred to, it 
 is only fair to presume (in the absence of any of the details 
 of their court-martials) that a special reason existed for it. 
 I grieve to have to state that the spirit of mercy is by no 
 means equally apparent in the treatment of the inferior 
 prisoners. The greater part of the common soldiers taken 
 were sent to the Plantations, and fifteen hundred were 
 granted to the Guinea merchants, and employed to work in 
 the mines of Africa. This had been the policy of Crom- 
 well in Ireland, and he followed it up in like manner at 
 
 . 
 tectorate shared the same fate. 
 
 s> At this time Cromwell's chaplain. See Ludlow, vol. ii., 
 p. 447.
 
 494 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " would make himself KING." That such was 
 the great conception with which the mind of 
 Cromwell heaved at last, no reasonable doubt 
 can be entertained. Whether, till now, such 
 sovereign aspirations had descended on him 
 whether, before this period, his vast position as 
 the chief director of one of the mightiest move- 
 ments the world had known, contented him 
 is perhaps a problem forever hopeless of en- 
 tire solution. There is one thing certain, that 
 it contented him no longer. The great prize 
 hung glittering within his reach the tempta- 
 tion of it had entered his soul and the only 
 restraint or check that could have been laid on 
 his power of seizing it was already wellnigh 
 neutralized by the statesmen at Whitehall. At 
 the head of thousands of armed men, whose 
 zeal had been always guided to victory by his 
 genius who looked up to him with implicit 
 faith and unbounded admiration, and by whom 
 his ears were saluted with loftier and more rev- 
 erent adulation* than ever charmed the sense 
 of a descendant of a hundred kings he was 
 now on his way to where more than the hon- 
 ours of royalty itself awaited him : the splen- 
 dours of a regal palace, the subservience of the 
 mightiest in the land, the thanks and blessings 
 of the low. It ceases to be a matter of won- 
 der that he should have shown unusual exulta- 
 tion ; that in his steps were uncontrollable 
 buoyancy and eagerness of anticipation ; that 
 the "golden round'' which at last played visi- 
 bly above his brows, should have betrayed him 
 into forgetfulness of his profounder habits of 
 concealment and self-control ; and that his Re- 
 publican chaplain, watching all signs and por- 
 tents as he moved along, should have exclaim- 
 ed to wondering companions, " That man would 
 make himself our KING !"t 
 
 The Parliamentary commissioners met the 
 conqueror at a short distance from Aylesbury. 
 His excitement had been brought under some 
 subduement ; but yet the air of courtesy and 
 condescension with which he received these 
 carriers of honours had a regal stamp upon it. 
 "VVhitelocke has himself unconsciously de- 
 scribed it. On the llth of September, he tells 
 us in his " Memorials,'':): " the four members 
 went from Aylesbury on the way the general 
 was to come, and met him, and delivered their 
 message to him from the Parliament. The 
 general received them with all kindness and 
 respect, and after salutations and ceremonials 
 past, he rode with them 'cross the fields, where 
 Mr. Winwood's hawks met them ; and the gen- 
 eral, with them and many officers, went a little 
 out of the way a hawking, and came that night 
 to Aylesbury. There they had much discourse 
 
 * Despatches from the general officers conclude after this 
 fashion : " We humbly lay ourselves with these thoughts, 
 in this emergency, at your excellency's feet." The minis- 
 ters of Newcastle make their humble addresses to his 
 "godly wisdom," and submit their "suits to God and his 
 excellency." Petitioners from different counties solicit him 
 to mediate for them to the Parliament, "because God had 
 not put the sword in his hand iu vain." 
 
 t Ludlow distinctly tells us that, among other actions 
 denoting his treacherous purpose at this period, instead of 
 acknowledging the services of those who came from all parts 
 to assist against the common enemy, though he knew they 
 had deserved as much honour as himself and the standing 
 army, " he frowned upon them," and the very next day af- 
 ter the fight, dismissed and sent them home, well knowing 
 that an experienced militia was more likely to obstruct than 
 to second him in his ambitious designs t P. 448. 
 
 (and my Lord-chief-justice St. John more than 
 all the rest*) with the general, and they sup- 
 ped together. The general gave to each of 
 them that were sent to him a horse and two Scots 
 prisoners, for a present and token of his thank- 
 ful reception of the Parliament's respect to 
 him in sending them to meet and congratu- 
 late him." Our grave memorialist adds, that 
 his horse was a very handsome, gallant young 
 nag of good breed, and one of his prisoners 
 a gentleman of quality. He gave their lib- 
 erty to both prisoners, and passes to return to 
 Scotland. 
 
 The day following this the lord-general en- 
 tered London. " He came," says Whitelocke, 
 " in great solemnity and triumph, accompanied 
 with the four commissioners of Parliament, 
 many chief officers of the army, and others of 
 quality. There met him in the fields the speak- 
 er of Parliament, the lord-president, and many 
 members of Parliament and of the council of 
 state ; the lord-mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen 
 of London ; the militia, and many thousand 
 others of quality. There was a great guard of 
 soldiers, horse and foot, and multitudes of peo- 
 ple in the fields and in the streets. He was 
 entertained all the way as he passed to his 
 house with volleys of great and small shot, and 
 loud acclamations and shouts of the people."! 
 All which, observes Ludlow in his memoirs, 
 tended not a little to heighten the spirit of this 
 haughty gentleman. 
 
 Heightened his spirit might be ; but he had 
 again, with inimitable craft and skill, assumed 
 the old garb of sanctity and patience. His de- 
 sign was complete and safely planned, but the 
 machinery for its action was not ready yet. 
 Accordingly, in these triumphant passages of 
 his entry into the capital, we learn from White- 
 locke that " he carried himself with great affa- 
 bility and seeming humility, and, in all his dis- 
 courses about the business of Worcester, would 
 seldom mention anything of himself, but of the 
 gallantry of the officers and soldiers, and gave 
 (as was due) all the glory of the action unto 
 God." 
 
 In the same apparently unselfish spirit, but 
 in reality shaped and fashioned for his most 
 selfish ends, was the conduct of this crafty 
 soldier on taking his seat in Parliament for the 
 first time after his return. It is marked in a 
 memorable note by Whitelocke, referring to the 
 16th of September. " Cromwell sat in the 
 House, and the speaker made a speech to him, 
 and gave him the thanks of the House for his 
 great services. . . . Cromwell and most of the 
 members of Parliament, and divers command- 
 ers of the army, were feasted by the lord-may- 
 or in London. . . . The Parliament resumed the 
 debate touching- a new representative. t" This 
 " new representative," the reader need not be 
 told,$ was the act which was to put a period to 
 the sittings of this famous assembly, and to call 
 
 * St. John, it is unnecessary 1o remind the reader, was 
 Cromwell's kinsman, and deeper in his confidence than any 
 other man of the time. 
 
 t A journalist of the time (Nouvelles Ordinaires de Lon- 
 dres, published in French, by authority of the council of 
 state) adds, that it was at Acton the speaker and the au- 
 thorities swelled the conqueror's train ; and that it was in 
 a " coach of state" that Cromwell entered the city, where 
 he " was received with alt possible acclamations of joy." 
 
 t Memorials, p. 485. 
 
 $ See Life of Vane, p. 309.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 495 
 
 together a new Parliament, on the improved 
 basis of an extended and popular suffrage. 
 
 Cromwell, in resuming his Parliamentary du- 
 ties by a revival of this debate, at once fixed 
 public attention on the weak point of the pres- 
 ent government, and diverted it from any sus- 
 picion of his own designs. The wily blow had 
 been in some sort warded off by the previous ! 
 movements of Vane ;* but it fell heavily still. 
 There was another measure which he forced ! 
 upon the House, with a like dishonest aim, and j 
 which finds mention by Whitelocke in the rec- 
 ord of the same day's proceedings : " Debate 
 of an act of oblivion and general pardon, with 
 some expedients for satisfaction of the soldiery 
 and the ease of the people."! In other words, 
 the all-powerful conqueror, out of the first ex- 
 citement of gratitude in the midst of which he 
 stood, forced from the reluctant statesmen their | 
 assent to a resolution of amnesty so wide, that 
 it almost struck at the root of the Common- 
 wealth. $ It was, in effect, resolved, that all 
 political offences committed before the battle 
 of Worcester should be forgiven, with the ex- 
 ception of certain cases, which seemed to de- 
 mand the visitation of public justice : a decis- 
 ion which, though it implied a gross injustice 
 to those who had already been mulcted heavily, 
 relieved the Royalists from all apprehension of 
 farther penalties. Cromwell, in this, served a 
 twofold purpose. He largely increased the 
 number of his personal friends, and, taking ad- 
 vantage of the opposition of the chief members 
 of the government, he was able to increase the 
 number of their personal enemies. Proscrip- 
 tion and confiscation are at al! times admirable 
 charges to build a prejudice upon. It was not 
 the least of his incidental advantages, more- 
 over, that he considerably weakened the re- 
 sources of the Republican exchequer. 
 
 At this crisis, too, it was, that a higher than 
 human power gave still greater impulse and 
 practical efficacy to his vast design. On the 
 8th of December the fatal news reached Lon- 
 don of the sudden death of the gallant and vir- 
 tuous Ireton. It snapped the last bond which 
 could, in the last extremity, have bound Crom- 
 well to his duty, or imposed restraint on his 
 parricide ambition. Mrs. Hutchinson tells us, 
 that on the very eve of this calamity, "Ireton 
 had determined to come over to England, in 
 order to divert Cromwell from his destructive 
 course." Whatever truth or error there may 
 be in this assertion, it indicates at least the in- 
 flexible sentiments of this famous person. His 
 last public action in regard to the Common- 
 wealth was worthy of his entire life. When 
 the vote was transmitted to him, immediately 
 after the Worcester victory, by which he re- 
 ceived an estate of two thousand a year, he 
 
 * See the detail of them in the Memoir of Vane, where 
 the present subject is treated at much greater length. 
 
 t Memorials, p. 485. 
 
 t They assented, Ludlow observes, "the Parliament be- 
 ing unwilling to deny Cromwell anything for which there 
 was the least colour of reason." Vol. ii., p. 448. 
 
 4 Whitelocke says of him that he was " very stiff in his 
 ways and purposes ;" a quality our supple lawyer could 
 scarcely understand or appreciate the value of. ""lie was," 
 he ymiceeiis, "of good abilities for council as well as action, 
 and made much use of his pen. . . Cromwell had a great 
 opinion of him, and no man could prevail so much, or order 
 him so far, as Ireton could. . . He was stout in the field, 
 and wary and prudent in his counsel, and exceedingly for- 
 ward as to the business of a commonwealth." 
 
 alone, of all whom such grants enriched, refu- 
 sed acceptance. In the spirit of the antique 
 days of Roman virtue,* he answered to the Par- 
 liament that their gift was unacceptable to him. 
 " They had many just debts," he added, " which 
 he desired they would pay before they made 
 any such presents ; that he had no need of their 
 land, and therefore would not have it ; and that 
 he should be more contented to see them doing 
 the service of the nation than so liberal in dis- 
 posing of the public treasure."! His death, 
 Whitelocke afterward tells us, struck a sadness 
 into Cromwell. This may well be doubted. 
 The first momentary grief which such tidings 
 must have caused, appears to have been ab- 
 sorbed at once in those projects of ambition 
 from which the single remaining check had 
 been thus suddenly and opportunely snatched 
 away. His next thought, after the mournful ti- 
 dings, was not of grief, but glory. The body of 
 Ireton was ordered in deference to the wish- 
 es of "the lord-general and of some of his re- 
 lations," who, according to Ludlow, " were not 
 ignorant of his vast designs now on foot" to 
 he brought over to England, and to be laid, af- 
 ter a magnificent funeral at the public charge, 
 among the tombs of kings, in the Abbey of 
 Westminster. And, detailing this, Ludlow ex- 
 claims, with affectionate and high-souled enthu- 
 siasm, that if the great deceased could have 
 foreseen what was thus done, he would cer- 
 tainly have made it his desire that his body 
 might have found a grave where his soul left 
 it, so much did he despise those pompous and 
 expensive vanities, having erected for himself 
 a more glorious monument in the hearts of 
 good men by his affection to his country, his 
 abilities of mind, his impartial justice, his dili- 
 gence in the public service, and his other vir- 
 tues, which were a far greater honour to his 
 memory than a dormitory among the ashes of 
 kings. 
 
 But if any doubt remained that grief at this 
 event held no supremacy in the breast of Crom- 
 well, and that the event itself did not rather 
 clear the great path before him, it is set at rest 
 by a remarkable incident, which dates on the 
 second day after the news reached London. On 
 the 10th of December, Cromwell summoned 
 and held a meeting at the speaker's house, of 
 those friends, military and civil, who were sup- 
 posed to be well affected towards his own po- 
 litical views. The two or three honest men 
 who attended must have been startled at the 
 question first propounded there, but the major- 
 ity of the meeting had few natural emotions to 
 thrust in the way of anything that either hon- 
 esty or dishonesty might propose. They were 
 lawyers chiefly ; and Whitelocke, one of them, 
 has happily left on record some detail of what 
 passed. 
 
 The ground which Cromwell took in address- 
 ing these assembled gentlemen was, " that now 
 the old king being dead, and his son being de- 
 feated, he held it necessary to come to a set- 
 tlement of the nation," and, in order thereunto, 
 " he had requested this meeting, that they to- 
 
 * Bishop Burnet likened him to Cassius. 
 
 t Biog. Britt., 3109. Ludlow adds, " And truly I believe 
 he was in earnest ; for as he was always careful to husband 
 those things that belonged to the state to the best advan- 
 tage, so was he most liberal in employing his owu purse 
 and person in the public service." Memoirs, vol. i., p. 371.
 
 496 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 gether might consider and advise what was fit 
 to be done, and presented to the Parliament." 
 By what pretension, it may be asked, could a 
 servant of the Republic thus presume to call 
 its stability in question 1 It is clear that, in the 
 mere act of doing it, he was guilty of treason 
 to the government then existing, and of which 
 he was himself a member. Whitelocke tells 
 us that a " great many" were at the meeting 
 ..." divers members of Parliament, and some 
 chief officers of the army." But Bradshaw 
 would not attend, nor Vane, nor Marten, nor 
 Scot, nor Blake, nor Harrington. Ludlow, by 
 the wily craft of Cromwell, was in a sort of 
 honourable banishment in Ireland, and what 
 once was the soul of Ireton lay a senseless clod 
 on that distant shore. The meeting was obvi- 
 ously summoned in defiance of the council of 
 the Commonwealth ; only the lawyers who be- 
 longed to it, and who would as readily belong 
 to anything else, attended. It is clear that all 
 who were emphatically called the statesmen 
 held aloof from it ; and it would be an instance 
 of their forgetfulness of duty, at once mar- 
 vellous and irreconcilable with their previous 
 character and actions, to have suffered such a 
 meeting to go on, presuming that they knew its 
 object, were it not a proof more certain still, 
 that in a sudden and general, and now, for the 
 first time, visible and declared defection of the 
 army from their cause, they had lost all pres- 
 ent power of prevention. To the PEOPLE re- 
 mained their last appeal, and this they had now 
 resolved to make ; too late, alas ! for present 
 success, but not too late for a lesson to poster- 
 ity. 
 
 The speaker of the House of Commons open- 
 ed the conference. " My lord," he said, ad- 
 dressing Cromwell, " this company were very 
 ready to attend your excellency, and the busi- 
 ness you are pleased to propound to us is very 
 necessary to be considered. God hath given 
 marvellous success to our forces under your 
 command ; and if we do not improve these 
 mercies to some settlement, such as may be to 
 God's honour and the good of this Common- 
 wealth, we shall be very much blameworthy." 
 Hereupon, one of the few honest men who were 
 present, but who was not more honest than 
 gullible, Major-general Harrison, interposed a 
 few words, which are enough to express the 
 delusions already widely spread among the Re- 
 publican officers as to the possibility of erecting 
 a democracy of saints on the ruins of civil au- 
 thority.* " I think," he remarked, " that which 
 my lord-general hath propounded is to advise 
 as to a settlement both of our civil and spiritual 
 liberties, and so that the mercies which the Lord 
 hath given unto us may not be cast away. 
 How this may be done is the great question." 
 And now much might have arisen from this of 
 a very awkward bearing on the designs of 
 Cromwell, had it not been for the lucky inter- 
 position of that most grave and accomplished 
 lawyer, the Lord-commissioner Whitelocke. 
 " It is a great question, indeed," he observes, 
 " and not suddenly to be resolved ; yet it were 
 pity that a meeting of so many able and worthy 
 
 persons as I see here should be fruitless. 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 ab- 
 solute republic, or with any mixture of monarchy ?" 
 This was, to use a homely expression, hitting 
 the nail on the right head, and accordingly, with 
 equal force and promptitude, Cromwell follow- 
 ed up the blow. "My Lord-commissioner 
 Whitelocke," he exclaimed, " hath put us upon 
 the right point. It is, indeed, my meaning that 
 we should consider whether a republic, or a 
 mixed monarchical government, will be best to 
 be settled ; and," he added, with that careless 
 air which so often veiled the profoundest work- 
 ings of ambition in him, "if anything monarchi- 
 cal, then in whom that power shall be placed ?" 
 
 The discussion thus fairly launched, the 
 various speakers embarked in it without farther 
 hesitation. Sir Thomas Widdrington (who 
 was in so far honestly disposed to monarchy 
 that he had resigned the commission of the 
 great seal upon the passing of that memorable 
 vote* which should have brought these ingeni- 
 ous gentlemen debaters within the penalties of 
 treason) at once, with much candour a great 
 deal too much for Cromwell thus tendered his 
 opinion : " I think a mixed monarchical gov- 
 ernment will be most suitable to the laws and 
 people of the nation ; and if anything monarchi- 
 cal, I suppose we shall hold it most just to place 
 that power in one of the sons of the late king." 
 Cromwell betraying some uneasiness at this, 
 his friend Colonel Fleetwood, who afterward 
 married the widow of Ireton, and was a man 
 of reasonable, but not very strong inclinations 
 to a republic, advanced to his relief, and again 
 generalized the discussion after this vague fash- 
 ion : " I think that the question whether an ab- 
 solute republic or a mixed monarchy is best to 
 be settled in this nation will not be very easy 
 to be determined." Upon this, the lord-chief- 
 justice, Oliver Saint John, offered a remark of 
 much general force and no particular applica- 
 tion, which was all the better for his great 
 cousin and confidant Cromwell : " It will be 
 found," he said, " that the government of this 
 nation, without something of monarchical power, 
 will be very difficult to be so settled as not to 
 shake the foundation of our laws and the liber- 
 ties of the people." The speaker chimed in 
 with this : " It will breed a strange confusion," 
 he remarked, " to settle a government of this 
 ' nation without something of a monarchy." He 
 had scarcely made the remark, however, when 
 a thoroughly honest man, of short-sighted zeal, 
 but most sincere purpose, turned round to St. 
 John, and put this startling question : " I be- 
 seech you, my lord, why may not this, as well 
 as other nations, be governed in the way of a 
 republic?" The Lord-commissioner White- 
 locke made reply to it : " The laws of England 
 are so interwoven with the power and practice 
 of monarchy, that to settle a government with- 
 out something of monarchy would make so 
 great an alteration in the proceedings of our 
 laws, that you have scarce time to rectify, nor 
 can we well foresee, the inconveniences which 
 
 * Harrison's faith in Cromwell was (and the other Re- 
 publican enthusiasts in the army shared it), that he " pre- 
 tended to love and favour a sort of men mho acted upon high- 
 tr principles than those of civil liberty." 
 
 * " THAT THE OFFICE OF KINO IN THIS NATION, OR TO 
 HAVE THE POWER IN A SINGLE PERSON, IS UNNECESSARY, 
 BURDENSOME, AND DANGEROUS TO THE LIBERTY, SAFE- 
 TY, AND PUBLIC INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 497 
 
 will arise thereby." Most shallow, learned, 
 and lawyer-like reply ! 
 
 The only other man who seems to have 
 spoken with an appearance of honesty, rose 
 after it had been delivered, and frankly observ- 
 ed that it was unintelligible to him. " I do 
 not," added Colonel Whaley, "well understand 
 matters of law, but it seems to me the best way 
 not to have anything of monarchical power in the 
 settlement of our government ; and if we should 
 resolve upon any, whom have we to pitch upon 1 
 The king's eldest son hath been in arms against 
 us, and his second son is likewise our enemy." 
 If Whaley here intended, however (for his close 
 relationship to Cromwell and his subsequent 
 crawling subservience to him cannot fail to in- 
 duce suspicion), merely to narrow the question 
 of a kingly successor to some great man taken 
 from the people as it is clear that Cromwell 
 throughout the meeting desired Widdrington 
 foiled the attempt by this earnest and honest 
 proposition : " But the late king's third son, 
 the Duke of Gloucester, is still among us, and 
 too young to have been in arms against us, or 
 infected with the principles of our enemies." 
 Whitelocke, upon this, as if to shift the ques- 
 tion once more to some point of general disa- 
 greement, and so relieve the uneasiness of 
 Cromwell, revived one of the old proposals. 
 " There may," he said, " be a day given for the 
 king's eldest son, or for the Duke of York, his 
 brother, to come into the Parliament, and, upon 
 such terms as shall be thought fit and agreeable, 
 both to our civil and spiritual liberties, a settle- 
 ment may be made with them." 
 
 Cromwell, however, who had been restless 
 and dissatisfied as these latter views were ur- 
 ged, here interposed with a statement of some 
 force and brevity, and obviously designed to 
 wind up the conference. " That" he said, in 
 reference to Whitelocke's last remark, " will be 
 a business of more than ordinary difficulty ; but 
 really, I think, if it may be done with safety 
 and preservation of our rights, both as English- 
 men and Christians, THAT A SETTLEMENT WITH 
 
 SOMEWHAT OF MONARCHICAL POWER IN IT WOULD 
 BE VERY EFFECTUAL." 
 
 The memorialist concludes his account by 
 saying that " much other discourse was by 
 divers gentlemen then present held upon other 
 points, and too large to be here inserted. Gen- 
 erally, the soldiers were against anything of 
 monarchy, though every one of them was a 
 monarch in his own regiment or company ; the 
 lawyers were generally for a mixed monarchical 
 government, and many were for the Duke of 
 Gloucester to be made king ; but Cromwell still 
 put off that debate, and came off to some other point ; 
 and in conclusion, after a long debate, the com- 
 pany parted without coming to any result at 
 all ; only Cromwell discovered by this meeting 
 the inclinations of the persons that spake, for which 
 hejished, and made use of what he then discerned." 
 But, if words bear any meaning, he had also, 
 while doing this, revealed his own inclinations. 
 No man who attended that meeting could there- 
 after doubt that he was for a " settlement with 
 somewhat of monarchical power in it." 
 
 The guardians of the Republic had not been 
 idle meanwhile. On the 18th of the preceding 
 month,* after a long and severe struggle, the 
 
 * See Parl. Hist., vol. n., p. 78. 
 RR R 
 
 details of which have found a more appropriate 
 place in another portion of this work,* a bill 
 was passed to limit the duration of the Parlia- 
 ment then sitting at Westminster to the 3d of 
 November, 1654. Numerous and close divis- 
 ions attested the energy and excitement of both 
 parties in the House at this memorable crisis. 
 Each alternately triumphed. Cromwell pro- 
 fessed to have achieved his desire by forcing on 
 the House a defined period for its dissolution ; 
 the statesmen had most assuredly achieved 
 theirs in accompanying the act with a proviso, 
 that, for a certain period at least, the new elec- 
 tions should not interfere with the right of the 
 present members to retain their privileges and 
 seats. This was made the bitterest charge 
 against them afterward, and Cromwell relied 
 upon it for the main justification of his subse- 
 quent disgraceful dissolution of them. But they 
 were entitled, as events well proved, to have 
 reasoned on the matter as they did. The first 
 occasion for trusting the people having been 
 lost, it became a duty of deep and deliberate 
 caution how best to select or shape the second. 
 The suspected intrigues of Cromwell and his 
 orBcers the half-declared discontents which 
 pervaded the great body of the army the birth 
 of the venomous reptiles that had only started 
 into power from the warmth of the bosoms 
 against which they now traitorously turned 
 these warned the founders and guardians of 
 the Commonwealth that, the first opportunity 
 of entire faith in the people having been lost, 
 the second had not yet arrived. Marten's simile 
 here came again to their aid.f When " Moses 
 was found upon the river, and brought to Pha- 
 raoh's daughter, she took care that the mother 
 might be found out, to Whose care he might be 
 committed to be nursed. . . . Their common- 
 wealth 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 in 
 any other hands until it had obtained more years 
 and vigour." Arguing from this, they held, that 
 to leave the cradle of the Republic unwatched 
 by some stanch and reliable friends, at a time 
 when the sword flashed danger above it, and 
 safety was not altogether discernible in the 
 features or attitude of the great mass of the 
 people, would be a danger to its life and growth 
 little short of the treason that threatened it 
 more openly. In all this Vane does' not seem 
 to have thoroughly concurred. He would now 
 have acted in manly reparation of what he felt 
 to have been the first error of the fathers of 
 the Commonwealth, and would have trusted 
 with a faith that was honourable to his high 
 spirit and pure soul to the beneficial result of 
 some general convention of the people or of 
 the people's just representatives. Beyond a 
 doubt he was overruled ; but whether wisely 
 or not, in the present instance, admits of ques- 
 tion, since every day that had passed since the 
 Worcester victory had served to accumulate 
 greater dangers and difficulties around the 
 paths and policy of the statesmen. The bill 
 they passed instead was at least a generous and 
 (if the expression is allowed) a fearless com- 
 promise. Reserving for the councils of the 
 
 Life of Vane. 
 
 t See Life of Marten, p. 379.
 
 493 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Commonwealth the wisdom and experience of I 
 the men who had framed them first, it threw, 
 at the same time, into the hands of the people 
 the power of sending into the House a large 
 majority of their own. The lofty motives and 
 services of its leading advocates should be a 
 warrant for the justice of all else which they 
 designed to accomplish hy it ; and in proof of 
 these lofty motives, little is necessary to the 
 readers of this work beyond a mention of their 
 names. Besides Vane, there were Bradshaw, 
 Marten, Harrington, Scot, Sidney, Hazlerig, 
 Neville, and Blake. On the opposite side were 
 ranged Cromwell, all his military myrmidons, 
 and a decided majority of the lawyers. 
 
 The next grand question taken up by the 
 statesmen struck at the root of Cromwell's pow- 
 er. This was a reduction of the army. Never 
 had the number of men in arms r under the direc- 
 tion of the English government, been so great 
 as at the period of the battle of Worcester.* 
 The number of the land forces amounted to up- 
 ward of fifty thousand men, and the monthly as- 
 sessment necessary for their support amounted 
 to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. With- 
 in six days after the battle of Worcester, Vane 
 had commenced the agitation of this question, 
 on a motion that Parliament should instantly 
 take into consideration how to decrease the 
 charge of the Commonwealth ; and within a 
 few weeks he had, to a certain extent, achiev- 
 ed his point. The forces were then diminished, 
 we find, by upward of a fourth, and the amount 
 of assessment stood at ninety thousand pounds. 
 Five months passed, and the subject was again 
 in discussion. It appears, however, to have 
 been brought to a temporary pause by a letter 
 from Cromwell to the speaker, the mention of 
 which, without any detail of its contents, is to 
 be found in the journals of the time. With 
 the lapse of two months more, we find the ques- 
 tion once more revived ; and on the 12th of 
 August, 1652, there is a resolution on the jour- 
 nals that it be referred to the council of state 
 to give an account, with all convenient speed, 
 of the former vote respecting the retrenchment 
 of the forces. 
 
 * Exclusively of the forces on actual service in Ireland, 
 Cromwell had at this time under his command thirty regi- 
 ments of horse, one of dragoons, and eighteen of foot, 
 which, computing by the standard of February, 1648, 
 amounted to 10,440 horse and 24,000 foot : they certainly 
 rather exceeded than fell short of this number. The insti- 
 tution of the militia had fallen into disuse during the civil 
 war, the militia regiments having been merged in the regu- 
 lars. This institution had been handed down to us from 
 our Saxon ancestors, and consisted of a certain number of 
 the inhabitants of every county, chosen by lot for three 
 years, officered by the lord-lieutenant, the deputy lieuten- 
 ants, and principal landholders, who were exercised for a 
 few days in each year, and were not compellable to march 
 out of their own counties, except in cases of invasion or re- 
 bellion. On the ceasing of the civil war, this institution 
 was revived by an act of the llth of July, 1650, and again 
 of the 28th of January, 1651. Each of these acts was in 
 force for six months, and the last appears to have been suf- 
 fered to expire. In contemplation, however, of the Scottish 
 invasion, 3000 horse and 1000 dragoons, for six months, 
 were voted to be added to the forces in lieu of the militia on 
 the 8th of April ; and 4000 foot, for three months, on the 
 1st of August. On the 12th, intelligence of an actual inva- 
 sion being received, an act passed through all its stages in 
 that one day, for reviving and renewing the expired act 
 concerning the militia, to continue in force till the 1st of 
 December ; and it appears that the regiments of militia, 
 being everywhere in arms, hindered the king's friends from 
 assembling to support him. Three regiments of volunteers 
 were also raised, to be employed on the present emergence. 
 Godwin' t History. 
 
 This seems to have decided Cromwell. 
 Upon one burning purpose he instantly concen- 
 trated all his energies and all his power. He 
 declared open war upon the Parliament. He 
 harangued his officers on the infirmities and 
 self-seekings of its leading members. His own 
 object, he declared, was equality, and a pure 
 commonwealth, without a king, or permanent 
 chief magistrate of any kind. He had sought 
 the Lord, and divine symbols of grace had been 
 manifested to him ! Their present governors 
 were lazy, baleful, unclean men : ungrateful to 
 the army, which had perilled all for them ; in- 
 sensible to their God, who had Himself decla- 
 red for England ! The kingdom of Christ was 
 near, if the saints would only strike for it ! 
 The same excitement which had descended on 
 him at the eves of Worcester and Dunbar, 
 promised him now no less a victory. 
 
 On the 12th of August the very day on 
 which, as I have stated, the fatal subject of 
 military retrenchment was resumed in the 
 House of Commons a council of officers was 
 held at Whitehall.* On the 13th of August, a 
 petition was presented to the Parliament by 
 them, which no longerf limited its view to their 
 own particular concerns, but comprehended a 
 general survey of the affairs of the nation, 
 and dictated, as from master to servant, what 
 would be best and most wisely done. 
 
 This petition is of too much importance in 
 every sense to be omitted here. It began with 
 stating that, having had divers meetings to seek 
 the Lord, and to speak of the great things God 
 had done for the Commonwealth, it had been 
 set on their hearts as their duty to offer such 
 things on behalf of their country as in their 
 judgments and consciences might tend to its 
 peace and well-being. In pursuance of this 
 design, they therefore had, with one consent, 
 thought fit humbly to present to the House the 
 following particulars, desiring they might be ta- 
 ken into early and serious consideration. First, 
 that speedy and effectual means might be taken 
 for the propagation of the Gospel ; that profane, 
 scandalous, and ignorant ministers might be 
 ejected, and men approved for godliness and 
 gifts encouraged ; that a convenient mainte- 
 nance might be provided for them ; and the une- 
 qual, troublesome, and contentious way of tithes 
 be taken away. Secondly, that a speedy and ef- 
 fectual course might be pursued for the regula- 
 tion of law, in matter, form, and administration, 
 in all particulars in which it was needlessly 
 vexatious, or burdensome to the people : for 
 this purpose, they recommended that the re- 
 sults already agreed on by the committee ap- 
 pointed for that end might be without delay ta- 
 ken into consideration, and that the committee 
 might be encouraged to proceed. Thirdly, 
 
 * Several Proceedings, No. 151. 
 
 t Journals. Whitelocke, p. 516. I should mention, that 
 on the 27th of the preceding January a petition had been 
 presented from the council of war to the Parliament, a thing 
 of ill example from officers with swords in their hands. 
 But this related merely to arrears due to the army in Scot- 
 land. It was referred to the committee of Parliament for 
 military affairs ; and, by their recommendation, a bill was 
 passed on tho 7th of April, directing the application of 
 150,000 to the discharge of those arrears. And, while on 
 this subject, I may mention here, that in the following 
 month Cromwell declined the prolongation of his commis- 
 sion of lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and that, on the 9th of 
 July, Fleetwood was appointed to the chief command of the 
 forces in that country.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 499 
 
 that a speedy and effectual course might be ta- 
 ken, by act of Parliament or otherwise, that 
 such as were profane, scandalous, or disaffect- 
 ed in all places of authority and public trust, 
 might be removed, and their places filled with 
 men of good public affections and blameless 
 lives, it being the desire of all good men that 
 the magistrates, and such as have public trust, 
 might be men of truth, fearing God, and hating 
 covetousness. Fourthly, that a committee 
 might be appointed in each county to redress 
 the abuses of the excise. Fifthly, that such as 
 had freely lent on the public faith, or deeply 
 suffered for their constant and good affections 
 to the public, might he considered, and a way 
 found out to give them satisfaction ; and, first 
 of all, the poorer sort, who were not able to 
 subsist without it ; and this to be chiefly re- 
 garded, before any more of the revenue should 
 be given to particular persons. The sixth and 
 
 that instant in the consideration of the House. 
 The officers here would separate themselves 
 from the common mass of popular petitioners. 
 They set themselves up as a party in the state. 
 They put forward their petition as a leader of 
 opposition in Parliament puts forth an anti- 
 ministerial resolution. Nor is it difficult to de- 
 tect in it that anxiety for the predominance of 
 " higher principles than those of civil liberty" 
 in the councils of the state, which Harrison af- 
 terward avowed to Ludlow had been the staple 
 of Cromwell's eloquence and persuasion at the 
 meetings of the military enthusiasts. 
 
 It was carried into the House by a deputa- 
 tion of six, every one of whom was Cromwell's 
 creature : Commissary-general Whaley, Colo- 
 nels Hacker, Barkstead, Okey, and Goffe, and 
 Lieutenant-colonel Worsley. The authorities 
 of the House received it with a prudent respect 
 and consideration, which did not restrain, in 
 
 seventh articles related to the arrears of the various quarters, the expression of widely dif- 
 soldier, and the articles of war granted to the | ferent views. " Many," according to the sober 
 
 enemy, which were by all means to be made 
 good. Eighthly, that the whole revenue of the 
 state might be brought into one treasury, and 
 the account of receipts and disbursements be 
 published yearly or half yearly. Ninthly, that, 
 in regard of the present great affairs of the Par- 
 liament, a committee might be appointed of 
 persons not members, to consider of the charge 
 and inconvenience that arose to the Common- 
 wealth from monopolies, pluralities of places 
 and profits, unnecessary places, and large sal- 
 aries. Tenthly, that a way might be consider- 
 ed of for a thorough and effectual suppressing 
 of all vagabonds arid common beggars, by set- 
 ting to work such as were capable, and provi- 
 ding for the subsistence of such as through age 
 and decrepitude were unable to relieve them- 
 selves. Eleventhly, that effectual provision 
 might be made that such as had served the Par- 
 liament in the late wars should not be bereaved 
 of the fruits of their industry by the exclusive 
 nature of several corporations. Twelfthly, that, 
 for the public satisfaction of the good people of 
 this nation, speedy consideration might be had 
 of such qualifications for future and successive 
 Parliaments as should tend to the election only 
 of such as were pious, and faithful to the inter- 
 ests of the Commonwealth.* 
 
 Insincerity and selfishness are most apparent 
 in this petition. It bears very impressively 
 upon it, in all its main features, the character 
 of the source from which it issued. It is not 
 that the requests urged in it are unjust, but 
 that they are partial, and leave unsolicited, save 
 by the most general phrase, those claims which 
 only two months before had been urged in de- 
 tail upon Parliament by thousands of the com- 
 mon people,t and which were known to be at 
 
 * This is taken from Several Proceedings, No. 151 ; and 
 see Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iii., p. 421. 
 
 t In a most striking document which I find among the 
 records of the time. Far different was this prayer from that 
 of the discontented officers. It was " signed by many thou- 
 sands," and began by setting forth, the " miseries of the 
 war," which they had cheerfully endured, in the hope that 
 " their rights and the fundamental laws (formerly corrupted 
 by the king, with his instruments, the clergy, lawyers, and 
 statesmen) would be restored, as was promised, by the Par- 
 liament and army." The first section then asks for the res- 
 toration of the " old law of the land" in all matters of at- 
 tachment and trial, and that "whatsoever hath been done 
 contrary thereunto, by committees, courts martial, high 
 courts of justice, or the like, may be abolished." The sec- 
 
 Whitelocke, who, it is to be observed, gener- 
 ally limits his disapproval of Cromwell's acts 
 to the mere desire that he had chosen other 
 methods of advancing them, " many were un- 
 satisfied with this petition, looking upon it as 
 improper, if not arrogant, from the officers of 
 the army to the Parliament their masters ; and 
 
 ond solicits the jury trials in every case ; and the third, 
 that " no man be compelled by oath to answer against him- 
 self." The fourth requires, what is, after upward of two 
 centuries, only feebly advancing in the House of Commons 
 of our own day, the establishment of county courts. The 
 words employed are memorable : " That all suits may be de- 
 termined without appeal, by a prefixed time, in the hundred, 
 or county courts by juries ; and no more tedious travelling 
 to London ; nor vexation, and consumption of men's estates, 
 by the chancery and other courts of Westminster ; nor fur- 
 ther attendance upon committees ; nor long imprisonments ; 
 that malefactors may have speedy trials ; that bail may not 
 be denied where it ought to be taken ; that food and neces- 
 saries may be provided for prisoners at the common charge, 
 and no fees taken by jailers ; that all proceedings in law 
 may be free from the parties to the officers." The fifth sec- 
 tion remonstrates against various inequalities and absurdi- 
 ties in punishments and in the administration of law ; and 
 the sixth and seventh run in these memorable words : 
 " That none be questioned or molested for matter of con- 
 science or religion, the grounds of implacable trouble, and 
 the very spawn of tyranny and superstition ; and that tithes 
 sprung from the same root and tending to the same ends, 
 and to the obstruction of tillage and industry, may also 
 cease, and no enforced maintenance imposed in the place 
 thereof ; and that copyholds and the like, and the Court of 
 Wards, and unjust descents to the eldest son only, the prin- 
 cipal remaining badges of the Norman Conquest, and main 
 support of regal tyranny, may be taken away." Nor are 
 the closing passages of this remarkable document less wor- 
 thy of most attentive consideration. They express, with 
 condensed wisdom and force, many of the worst grievances 
 under which, to the shame of all the Parliaments that have 
 since sat at Westminster be it spoken, the common people 
 of England labour still, and the wiser and more prudent of 
 their representatives still vainly struggle for. " That there 
 be no imprisonment for debt" requires the eighth section, 
 " but all estates be made liable to make satisfaction, NOR 
 THE RICH TURN PRISONS INTO PLACES OF PROTECTION." 
 
 The ninth and tenth solicit thus : " That none be pressed 
 for war, the power of countries being sufficient to suppress 
 all insurrections and foreign invasions. That TRADE BE 
 FREE, and exempt from monopolies, and disburdening cus- 
 toms, excise, and all charges ; and all public moneys to be 
 equally raised." The last three sections are in these 
 words: "That all sheriffs, justices, coroners, constables, 
 and the like, be annually chosen by those of the place ; that 
 all laws contrary to these fundamentals be repealed ; that 
 Parliaments or common councils of England may be re- 
 turned to the old course to be annually elected ; and satis- 
 faction given to the nation in point of accounts ; and the 
 public faith satisfied ; arrears of soldiers paid ; juries duly 
 chosen ; registers appointed to ascertain all mortgages ami 
 sale of lands ; care taken of the poor, and waste places as- 
 signed for them ; the printing presset set at liberty."
 
 500 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Cromwell was advised* to stop this way of their 
 petitioning by the officers of the army, with 
 their swords in their hands, lest in lime it may 
 come too home to himself. But he seemed to 
 slight, or, rather, to have some design by it, in 
 order to which he put them to prepare the way 
 for him." Waiving all sense of any such pos- 
 sible projects or designs, the authorities of the 
 House acted with greater dignity. They re- 
 solved to refer the petition to a committee con- 
 sisting of Cromwell himself, Whitelocke, Lisle, 
 the Earl of Pembroke, Marten, Scot, Harrison, 
 and twenty-five other members, who were di- 
 rected to inquire how many of the particulars in 
 the petition were already under consideration ; how 
 far they had been proceeded in ; and whether 
 any new powers were necessary to enable the 
 persons commissioned to proceed more effect- 
 ually ; and to report accordingly. The speaker 
 also, by the direction of the House, gave thanks 
 to the petitioners, both for their good affections 
 formerly displayed, and their care of the public 
 expressed on the present occasion : and so 
 ended the first act of the war between the Par- 
 liament and the army, leaving with the states- 
 men, beyond a possibility of doubt, the praise 
 of superior generalship. 
 
 Not for this did Cromwell relax in his efforts. 
 It is, however, an indisputable test of the vio- 
 lent, gratuitous, and most unjust character of 
 the deed he had resolved, that we find every 
 step in his course towards it beset with diffi- 
 culties which in no other object of his life he had 
 encountered, and which, if Parliament had been 
 brave enough a little earlier to have placed con- 
 fidence in the people, he would have found al- 
 together insurmountable. It is not thus that 
 historians have generally written thi-s history, 
 or the details might scarcely have claimed a 
 place here. The poor Rump, according to 
 them, was merely contemptible. One kick, 
 however careless or feeble, was the sufficient 
 warrant for its disappearance, its dispersion, 
 its death, its utter and final oblivion ! 
 
 The first step taken in the House after the 
 business of the military petition had reference 
 to the bill for the dissolution of the Parliament, 
 and the provision for future Parliaments in 
 succession. A report was made by Vane from 
 the committee to whom it had been intrusted, 
 and the result was a dissolution of the grand 
 committee, or committee of the whole House, 
 which had sat on the bill at intervals for the 
 last eleven months, and the sending back the 
 measure itself to be perfected to the committee 
 from whom they received the present report. 
 The tendency of this was to simplify future 
 proceedings on this important subject, and to 
 bring them as speedily as possible to a close. 
 And hardly was it done, before the question of 
 military retrenchments again reared its formi- 
 dable head. Vane and his friends rightly judg- 
 ed, in thus striking through the army, power- 
 ful as it was, for support in the sympathies of 
 the people. It at least, if too late now for more 
 immediate advantage, unfitted them for Crom- 
 well's tyranny. On no subject did they feel 
 with the statesmen so strongly as on this. 
 And with reason ! Taxes had ground them to 
 the earth, and without some instant diminu- 
 tion of the military establishments, it was 
 
 * By Whitelocke himself! 
 
 ' vain even to talk of a fit remission of their 
 burdens. 
 
 It marks still the doubt, the anxiety, the fear 
 of Cromwell, that the next step he took in his 
 great game argues a new distrust of the ma- 
 chinery he had been so long providing to work 
 the designs of his ambition with. His project 
 of usurpation upon the supreme power is un- 
 swerving throughout ; but the extreme agita- 
 tion with which, from side to side, he seeks 
 differing means of achieving it, betrays the ut- 
 ter falsehood of the pretence of public acqui- 
 escence and desire to which tie afterward at- 
 tempted to resort. At one instant we behold 
 him trying the temper of the swords of his vet- 
 eran Ironsides, at another exploring the quality 
 of mettle that lurked beneath the gowns and 
 wigs of the lawyers of the state. 
 
 Thus the incident which awaits us now is a 
 conference that passed between Cromwell and 
 the Lord-commissioner Whitelocke. They met, 
 by accident or design, on the evening of the 8th 
 
 '. of November, in the present year, in a retired 
 part of St. James's Park. The lord-general, on 
 seeing the lord-commissioner, " saluted him 
 with more than ordinary courtesy, and desired 
 him to walk aside with him, that they might 
 have some private discourse together." This 
 private discourse Whitelocke set down in his 
 diary, and after the Restoration it was given 
 to the world. 
 
 "My Lord Whitelocke," Cromwell began, 
 " I know your faithfulness and engagement in 
 the same good cause with myself and the rest 
 of our friends, and I know your ability in judg- 
 ment, and your particular friendship and affec- 
 tion for me ; indeed, I am sufficiently satisfied 
 in these things, and therefore I desire to advise 
 with you in the main and most important affairs 
 relating to our present condition. ... I have 
 cause to be, and am, without the least scruple 
 of your faithfulness ; and I know your kind- 
 ness to me your old friend, and your abilities 
 to serve the Commonwealth ; and there are 
 enough besides me that can testify it. And I 
 believe our engagements for this Common- 
 wealth have been and are as deep as most 
 men's ; and there never was more need of ad- 
 vice, and solid, hearty counsel, than the present 
 state of our affairs doth require." 
 
 To this invitation for " solid, hearty counsel" 
 in the specious name of the good cause, the pru- 
 
 ' dent lawyer responded in general terms of cau- 
 tion, and then added, " The goodnessof your own 
 
 j nature and personal knowledge of me will keep 
 you from any jealousy of my faithfulness." To 
 this Cromwell, with many protestations of belief 
 
 I and trust, discreetly rejoined. " I wish there 
 was no more ground of suspicion of others than 
 of you. I can trust you with my life, and the 
 most secret matters relating to our business ; 
 and to that end I have now desired a little pri- 
 vate discourse with you ; and really, my lord, 
 there is very great cause for us to consider the 
 dangerous condition we are all in, and how to 
 make good our station, to improve the mercies 
 and successes which God hath given us, and 
 not to be fooled out of them again, nor to be bro- 
 ken in pieces by our particular jarrings and an- 
 imosities one against another, but to unite our 
 counsels, and hands, and hearts, to make good 
 what we have so dearly bought, with so much
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 501 
 
 hazard, blood, and treasure ; and that, the Lori 
 having given us an entire conquest over ou 
 enemies, we should not now hazard all again 
 by our private janglings, and bring those mis 
 chiefs upon ourselves which our enemies coul 
 never do." 
 
 The lord-commissioner, flattered by this cor 
 dial look of confidence, appears to have shown 
 an instant disposition to enter into the heart o 
 the business. " My lord," he said, " I look upon 
 our present danger as greater than ever it was 
 in the field, and (as your excellency truly ob 
 serves) our proneness to destroy ourselves 
 when our enemies could not do it. It is no 
 strange thing for a gallant army as yours is, af 
 ter full conquest of their enemies, to grow into 
 factions and ambitious designs." " I have 
 used," interposed Cromwell, " and shall use 
 the utmost of my poor endeavours to keep them 
 all in order and obedience." " Your excellen- 
 cy," admitted Whitelocke, courteously, "hath 
 done it hitherto even to admiration." 
 
 Taking advantage of this, the lord-genera' 
 proceeded to observe with much fervour, and a 
 marvellous lack of shame, on the discontents 
 he had himself cherished, for his own purposes, 
 in the military councils. " Truly," he said, 
 first answering to the lord-commissioner's com- 
 pliment, " God hath blessed me in it exceed- 
 ingly, and I hope will do so still. Your lord- 
 ship hath observed most truly the inclinations 
 of the officers of the army to particular factions, 
 and to murmurings that they are not rewarded 
 according to their deserts ; that others, who 
 have adventured least, have gained most ; and 
 they have neither profit, nor preferment, nor 
 place in government, which others hold, who 
 have undergone no hardships nor hazards for 
 the Commonwealth ; and herein they have 
 too much of truth ; yet their insolency is very 
 great, and their influence upon the private sol- 
 diers works them to the like discontent and 
 murmurings. Then, as for the members of 
 Parliament, the army begins to have a strange dis- 
 taste against them, and I wish there were not too 
 much cause for it ; and really their pride, ambi- 
 tion, and self-seeking, engrossing all places of hon- 
 our and profit to themselves and their friends, 
 and their daily breaking forth into new and vi- 
 olent parties and factions ; their delays of bu- 
 siness, and designs to perpetuate themselves, 
 and to continue the power in their own hands ; 
 their meddling in private matters between par- 
 ty and party, contrary to the institution of Par- 
 liaments, and their unjustness and partiality in 
 these matters, and the scandalous lives of some 
 of the chief of them these things, my lord, do 
 give too much ground for people to open their 
 mouths against them, and to dislike them. Nor 
 can they be kept within the bounds of justice, 
 law, or reason, they themselves being the su- 
 preme power of the nation, liable to no account 
 to any, nor to be controlled or regulated by any 
 other power, there being none superior, or co- 
 ordinate with them : so that, unless there be some 
 authority and power so full and so high as to re- 
 strain and keep things in better order, and that may 
 lie a check to these exorbitances, it will be impossi- 
 ble, in human reason, to prevent our ruin." 
 
 But the wily lawyer was not to be caught so 
 fast. He admitted much, but kept more in re- 
 serve. " I confess," he said, " the danger we 
 
 are all in by these extravagances and inordi- 
 nate powers is more than, I doubt, is generally 
 apprehended. ... As to the members of Parlia- 
 ment, I confess the greatest difficulty lies there ; 
 your commission being from them, and they be- 
 ing acknowledged the supreme power of the 
 nation, subject to no control, nor allowing any 
 appeal from them. Yet I am sure your excellen- 
 cy will not look upon them as generally depraved ; 
 too many of them are much to blame in those 
 things you have mentioned, and many unfit 
 things have passed among them ; but I hope 
 well of the major part of them, when great matters 
 come to a decision." Cromwell, upon this, with 
 well-painted passion, made the show of an earn- 
 est appeal to his lawyer - friend. "My lord, 
 my lord, there is little hopes of a settlement to 
 be made by them really there is not ; but a 
 great deal of fear that they will destroy again 
 what the Lord hath done graciously for them 
 and us. We all forget God, and God will forget 
 us, and give us up to confusion ; and these men 
 will help it on, if they be suffered to proceed in 
 their ways. Some course must be thought on to 
 curb and restrain them, or we shall be ruined by 
 them." Whitelocke quietly remarked to this, 
 " We ourselves have acknowledged them the 
 supreme power, and taken our commissions 
 and authority in the highest concernments from 
 them ; and how to curb them, after this, it will 
 be hard to find out a way for it." 
 
 This was the very point to which the ener- 
 getic captain desired to bring his learned and 
 most meditative associate. Flinging offall far- 
 ther reserve, he frankly, boldly, and abruptly 
 asked, " WHAT IF A MAV SHOULD TAKE UPON HIM 
 
 TO BE KINOl" 
 
 This question, be it observed, was addressed 
 to one who stood high in the confidence of the 
 leaders of the Republic, and who himself, in- 
 deed, was one of its chief administrators. But 
 no shadow of anger or remonstrance fell upon 
 the treasonable thought. Most quiet and civil 
 was the lord-commissioner's reply : "I think that 
 remedy would be worse than the disease." Crom- 
 well subjoined quickly, " Why do you think so 1" 
 
 In his answer, most memorable for that, the 
 thorough-paced master of law and stratagem 
 soothed the excitement of the great soldier by 
 pointing out to him all he MIGHT do, while he 
 affected to advise him as to what should not be 
 done. He " settled" on the instant a " draught" 
 of the Protectorate ! " As to your own person, 
 the title of king would be of no advantage, be- 
 ause you have the full kingly power in you al- 
 ready concerning the militia, as you are gener- 
 al. As to the nomination of civil officers, those 
 whom you think fittest are seldom refused ; and 
 although you have no negative vote in the pass- 
 ng of laws, yet what you dislike will not easily 
 )e carried ; and the taxes are already settled, 
 and in your power to dispose the money raised. 
 And as to foreign affairs, though the ceremoni- 
 al application be made to the Parliament, yet 
 he expectation of good or bad success in it is 
 rom your excellency, and particular solicita- 
 ions of foreign ministers are made to you only ; 
 so that I apprehend, indeed, less envy, and dan- 
 ger, and pomp, but not less power, and real op- 
 >ortunities of doing good, in your being gener- 
 1, than would be if you had assumed the title 
 fking."
 
 502 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 It is clear that the only sensible difference 
 between the interlocutors in this famous dia- 
 logue was one of time. Whitelocke's protec- 
 torate would scarcely have been so sudden. But 
 such a difference was more than enough for 
 Cromwell. His active share in the conference 
 ended at this point ; and in all that followed he 
 was simply unrolling, for self-guidance on mi- 
 nor matters, the entire map of the lord-com- 
 missioner's plan. 
 
 First meeting him with his own weapons, he 
 fathomed the lawyer's view of the popular feel- 
 ing of the nation. " I have heard," said Crom- 
 well, " some of your profession observe, that 
 he who is actually king, whether by election or 
 descent, yet being once king, all acts done by 
 him as king are as lawful and justifiable as by 
 any king who hath the crown by inheritance 
 from his forefathers ; and that, by an act of 
 Parliament in Henry the Seventh's time, it is 
 safer for those who act under a king, be his ti- 
 tle what it will, than for those who act under 
 any other power. And surely the power of a 
 king is so great and high, and so universally un- 
 derstood and reverenced by the people of this na- 
 tion, that the title of it might not only indemni- 
 fy, in a great measure, those that act under it, 
 but likewise be of great use and advantage, in 
 such times as these, to curb the insolence of 
 those whom the present powers cannot control, 
 or, at least, are the persons themselves who 
 are thus insolent." Whitelocke, in answering 
 this, more plainly insinuated his doubts as to 
 time. "I agree in the general with what you 
 are pleased to observe as to this title of king ; 
 but whether for your excellency to take this 
 title upon you as things now are, will be for the 
 good and advantage either of yourself and 
 friends, or of the Commonwealth, I do very 
 much doubt, notwithstanding that act of Par- 
 liament, 11 Hen. VII., which will be little re- 
 garded, or observed to us by our enemies, if they 
 should come to get the upper hand of us." 
 
 Upon this the lord - general fairly asked, 
 " What do you apprehend would be the danger 
 of taking this title 1" And Whitelocke as fair- 
 ly answered, " The danger, I think, would be 
 this : One of the main points of controversy be- 
 twixt us and our adversaries is, whether the 
 government of this .nation shall be established 
 in monarchy, or in a free state or common- 
 wealth. And most of our friends have engaged 
 with us upon the hopes of having the govern- 
 ment settled in a free state ; and to effect that, 
 have undergone all their hazards and difficul- 
 ties, they being persuaded, though I think much 
 mistaken, that under the government of a com- 
 monwealth they shall enjoy more liberty and 
 right, both as to their spiritual and civil con- 
 cernments, than they shall under a monarchy, 
 the pressures and dislike whereof are so fresh 
 in their memories and sufferings. Now, if 
 your excellency should take upon you the title 
 of king, this state of your cause will be there- 
 by wholly determined, and monarchy establish- 
 ed in your person ; and the question will be no 
 more, whether our government shall be by a 
 monarch or by a free state, hut whether Crom- 
 well or Stuart shall be our king and monarch. 
 And that question, whereinbefore so great par- 
 ties of the nation w-ere engaged, and which was 
 universal, will by this means become, in effect, a 
 
 private controversy only. Before it was national, 
 What kind of government we should have 1 Now 
 it will become particular, Who shall be our govern- 
 or, whether of the family of the Stuarts, or of the 
 family of the Cromicells 1 Thus the state of 
 our controversy 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 ; your 
 hands will be weakened, your interests strait- 
 ened, and your cause in apparent danger to be 
 ruined." 
 
 Here, however, all semblance of sincerity or 
 fairness seems to vanish from the worthy lord- 
 commissioner, and we are irresistibly called 
 upon to remember the significant fact that the 
 conference was not published till after the Res- 
 toration. A slight preliminary interchange of 
 compliment and courtesy first claims record. 
 It ran thus : 
 
 "CROMWELL. I confess you speak reason in this; 
 but what other things can you propound that 
 may obviate the present dangers and difficul- 
 ties wherein we are all engaged 1 WHITE- 
 LOCKE. It will be the greateat difficulty to find 
 out such an expedient. I have had many things 
 in my private thoughts upon this business, some 
 of which, perhaps, are not fit or safe for me to 
 communicate. CROMWELL. I pray, my lord, what 
 are they 1 You may trust me with them ; there 
 shall no prejudice come to you by any private 
 discourse betwixt us. I shall never betray my 
 friend ; you may be as free with me as with. 
 your own heart, and shall never suffer by it. 
 WHITELOCKE. I make no scruple to put my life 
 and fortune into your excellency's hand ; and 
 so I shall, if I impart these fancies to you, which 
 are weak, and perhaps may prove offensive to 
 your excellency ; therefore my best way will 
 be to smother them. CROMWELL. Nay, I prithee, 
 my Lorde Whitelocke, let me know them : be 
 they what they will, they cannot be offensive 
 to me, but I shall take it kindly from you ; there- 
 fore, I pray, do not conceal those thoughts of 
 yours from your faithful friend. WHITELOCKE. 
 Your excellency honours me with a title far 
 above me ; and since you are pleased to com- 
 mand it, I shall discover to you my thoughts 
 herein, and humbly desire you not to take in 
 ill part what I shall say to you. CROMWELL. 
 Indeed I shall not ; but I shall take it, as I said, 
 very kindly from you. WHITELOCKE. Give me 
 leave, then, first to consider your excellency's 
 condition. You are environed with secret en- 
 emies. Upon your subduing of the public en- 
 emy, the officers of your army account them- 
 selves all victors, and to have had an equal share 
 in the conquest with you. The success which 
 God hath given us hath not a little elated their 
 minds ; and many of them are busy and of tur- 
 bulent spirits, and are not without their designs 
 how they may dismount your excellency, and 
 some of themselves get up into the saddle ; how 
 they may bring you down, and set up them- 
 selves. They want not counsel and encourage- 
 ment herein ; it may be from some members of 
 the Parliament, who may be jealous of your 
 power and greatness, lest you should grow too 
 high for them, and in time overmaster them ; 
 and they will plot to bring you down first, or to 
 clip your wings. CROMWELL. I thank you that 
 you so fully consider my condition ; it is a tes-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 503 
 
 timony of your love to me, and care of me, and 
 you have rightly considered it ; and I may say, 
 without vanity, that in my condition yours is 
 involved, and all our friends ; and those that 
 plot my ruin will hardly bear your continuance 
 in any condition worthy of you. Besides this, 
 the cause itself may possibly receive some dis- 
 advantage by the strugglings and contentions 
 among ourselves. But what, -sir, are your 
 thoughts for prevention of those mischiefs that 
 hang over our heads 1" 
 
 Those thoughts are then recorded thus ; and 
 when they first saw the light, Charles II. had 
 pardoned the safe rebellion of Whitelocke, and 
 was revelling and rejoicing on his pensioned 
 throne. " Pardon me, sir, in the next place, a 
 little to consider the condition of the King of 
 Scots. This prince being now by your valour, 
 and the success which God hath given to the 
 Parliament, and to the army under your com- 
 mand, reduced to a very low condition, both he, 
 and all about him, cannot but be very inclinable to 
 hearken to any terms whereby their lost hopes may 
 be revived of his being restored to the crown, and 
 they to their fortunes and native country. By a 
 private treaty with him you may secure yourself, 
 and your friends and their fortunes ; you may make 
 yourself and your posterity as great and perma- 
 nent, to all human probability, as ever any subject 
 was, and provide for your friends ; you may put 
 such limits to monarchical power as will se- 
 cure our spiritual and civil liberties, and you 
 may secure the cause in which we are all en- 
 gaged ; and this may be effectually done by 
 having the power of the militia continued in 
 yourself, and whom you shall agree upon after 
 you. I propound, therefore, for you excellency 
 to send to the King of Scots, and to have a pri- 
 vate treaty with him for this purpose ; and I 
 beseech you to pardon what I have said upon 
 the occasion. It is out of my affection and 
 service to your excellency and to all honest 
 men ; and I humbly pray you not to have any 
 jealousy thereupon of my approved faithfulness 
 to your excellency and to this Commonwealth." 
 
 If anything like this were really said, there 
 is much pleasant contempt in the tone of Crom- 
 well's reply ! " I have not," he remarked, " I 
 assure you, the least distrust of your faithful- 
 ness and friendship to me, and to the cause of 
 this Commonwealth, and I think you have much 
 reason for what you propound ; but it is a mat- 
 ter of so high importance and difficulty, that it 
 deserves more time of consideration and de- 
 bate than is at present allowed us. We shall 
 therefore take a further time to discourse of it." 
 "And with this," adds our memorialist, "the 
 general brake off, and went to other company, 
 and so into Whitehall, seeming, by his coun- 
 tenance and carriage, displeased with what had 
 been said ; yet he never objected it against Mr. 
 Whitelocke in any public meeting afterward; 
 only his carriage towards him, from that time, 
 was altered, and his advising with him not so 
 frequent and intimate as before ; and it was 
 not long after that he found an occasion, by an 
 honourable employment, to send him out of the 
 way (as some of his nearest relations, particu- 
 larly his daughter Claypole, confessed), that he 
 might be no obstacle or impediment to his am- 
 bitious designs." 
 
 Making every due concession to Whitelocke's 
 
 amusing self-conceit, and to Lady Claypole's 
 womanly good- humour in flattering it, it is in- 
 cumbent upon us to state our strong impres- 
 sion that Cromwell never at any time proposed 
 to himself the unnecessary trouble of erecting 
 the pliant lord-commissioner into anything like 
 an obstacle or impediment, and also to subjoin 
 the fact that the " honourable employment" for 
 sending our state lawyer " out of the way"* 
 was not even thought of, till, by a most atro- 
 cious act of usurpation, Cromwell had not only 
 declared his ambitious designs, but proved the 
 innocent helplessness of any obstacle that 
 Whitelocke could possibly oppose to them. It 
 was merely to prevent the intrusion of need- 
 less and impertinent forms into the detailed 
 project of the Protectorate that, on the eve of 
 the regular instalment of that mode of despo- 
 tism, the Swedish embassyt was devised for 
 the meddling man of law. Of the conference 
 itself, it is only needful to remark farther, that 
 it was chiefly useful to Cromwell in proving the 
 aid of Whitelocke useless. He turned back to 
 his military council. 
 
 Lambert's influence he had already won over 
 to his project ; a vain and weak man, influential 
 with the army, and not ill inclined towards the 
 civil authorities, till the craft of Cromwell 
 worked his vanity and revolt against them, and 
 his very ambition into aid towards himself. 
 For Ireton's office, which was voted to Lam- 
 bert on the death of that virtuous soldier, hav- 
 ing been subsequently deprived of its accom- 
 panying title of lord-deputy (an omission render- 
 ed necessary by Cromwell's own intimation 
 that he desired no longer to continue in his 
 own person the rank of lord-lieutenantj), Lam- 
 
 * Another person of somewhat greater importance was 
 also, within three months of this time, sent out of the way 
 by Cromwell's influence. Henry, duke of Gloucester, and 
 the Princess Elizabeth, children of Charles I., were in Eng- 
 land at their father's death. The council of the Common- 
 wealth had proposed, in 1650, to send the duke to his broth- 
 er in Scotland, and the princess to her sister in Holland, 
 allowing a thousand a year to each quamdiu se bene gessc- 
 rint. (See Journals, July 24 and Sept. 11 in that year.) 
 But on the 8th of Sept. Elizabeth suddenly died, and the 
 young brother remained under the charge of the governor 
 of Carisbrook till wjthin three months of the period I am 
 now describing. Then it was that Cromwell advised the 
 young 1 prince's tutor, Lovel, whom Clarendon speaks of 
 highly, to ask permission from the government for his safe 
 removal to his sister, the Princess of Orange. This the 
 high-minded Republicans granted at once, and accompanied 
 the concession with the sum of 500 to defray the expense 
 of his voyage, and the promise of an annual stipend if he 
 would not join the rebellious scheme of his elder brothers. 
 This act of magnanimity, not a singular act with these 
 high-souled men, has been commonly attributed to the in- 
 fluence of Cromwell, who thus sought to remove a rival 
 from his path. Perhaps it may, in one sense, have been so ; 
 for Widdrington and the lawyers, it will be recollected, had 
 urged the claims of this youthful Henry Stuart to the 
 throne, under a new settlement, as the only member of the 
 royal family unspotted with the blood of Englishmen. Not 
 the less, however, was the concession to such a request evi- 
 dence of high generosity on the part of the then rulers of 
 the state. And not the less, let me add, is it a proof how 
 the greatest men are dwarfed by mean and unworthy de- 
 signs, when we behold the powerful Cromwell, the veteran 
 of a hundred victories, reduced to the wretched need of 
 recognising a rival in a powerless lad of twelve yeurs old ! 
 
 t See Appendix E., CROMWELL AND CHRISTINA. 
 
 t The title of general-in-chief of all the forces there was 
 substituted. The " lord-deputy," in consequence, became 
 " lieutenant-general" merely. Ludlow thus adverts to the 
 new appointment. After observing on Cromwell's reluc- 
 tance to continue Aim in the military command of Ireland, 
 in consequence of " 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," he adds, " and therefore, sines
 
 504 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 bert's vanity was easily moved to believe that 
 an empty title, omitted for the purpose of avoid- 
 ing a practical absurdity, was omitted for the 
 purpose of slighting him. He rejected the ap- 
 pointment in disgust.* More easily still was 
 his ambition played with, since the lord-general 
 threw out obscure hints of the necessity that 
 would arise of fixing some order of succession 
 in case of any recasting of the supreme power ; 
 and who so fit to succeed the first man of the 
 army as he who was indisputably the second It 
 
 Major-general Lambert refused to go over with any charac- 
 ter less than that of deputy, he resolved by any means to 
 place Lieutenant-general Fleetwood at the head of affairs 
 in Ireland ; by which conduct he procured two great advan- 
 tages to himself, thereby putting the army in Ireland into 
 the hands of a person secured to his interest by the mar- 
 riage of his daughter, and, drawing Major-general Lambert 
 into an enmity towards the Parliament, prepared him to 
 join with him in opposition to them, when he should find it 
 convenient to put his design in execution." 
 
 * Mrs. Hutchinson, in her memoirs, gives the following 
 account of this transaction, and of an incident of Royalist 
 report, which is mentioned in my next paragraph. The ac- 
 count is only correct in the general impression it conveys. 
 " After the death of Ireton," says Mrs. Hutchinson, " Lam- 
 bert was voted deputy of Ireland, and Commander-in-chief 
 there, who, being at that- time in the north, was exceedingly 
 elevated with the honour, and courted all Fairfax's old com- 
 manders, and' other gentlemen, who, upon his promises of 
 preferment, quitted their places, and many of them came to 
 London and made him up there a very proud train, which 
 still exalted him, so that too soon he put on the prince, im- 
 mediately laying out 5000 for his own particular equi- 
 page, and looking upon all the Parliament men, who had 
 conferred this honour upon him, as underlings, and scarce 
 worth the great man's nod. This untimely declaration of 
 his pride gave great offence to the Parliament, who, having 
 only given him a commission for six months for his deputy- 
 ship, made a vote that, after the expiration of that time, the 
 presidency of the civil and military power of that nation 
 should no more be in his nor any one man's hands again. 
 This vote was upon Cromwell's procurement, who hereby 
 designed to make way for his new son-in-law, Col. Fleet- 
 wood, who had married the widow of the late deputy, Ire- 
 ton. 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 had precedency of the relict of the dead 
 prince, so she put my Lady Ireton, below, who, notwith- 
 standing her piety and humility, was a little grieved at the 
 affront. Col. 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 immediately accept- 
 ed by the lady and her father, who designed thus to restore 
 his daughter to the honour she was fallen from. His plot 
 took as himself could wish ; for Lambert, who saw himself 
 thus cut off from half his exaltation, sent, the House an in- 
 solent message, ' that if they found him so unworthy of the 
 honour they had given him as so soon to repent it, he would 
 not retard their remedy for six months, but was ready to 
 surrender their commission before he entered into his of- 
 fice.' They took him at his word, and made Fleetwood 
 deputy, and Ludlow commander of the horse ; whereupon 
 Lambert, with a heart full of spite, malice, and revenge, 
 retreated to his palace at Wimbledon, and sat there watch- 
 ing an opportunity to destroy the Parliament. Cromwell, 
 although he chiefly wrought this business in the House, yet 
 flattered with Lambert, and having another reach of ambi- 
 tion in his breast, helped to inflame Lambert against those 
 of the Parliament who were not his creatures, and to cast 
 the odium of his disgrace upon them, and profess his own 
 clearness in it, ami pity of him, that should be drawn into 
 such an inconvenience as the charge of putting himself into 
 equipage,, and the loss of all that provision ; which Crom- 
 well, pretending generosity, took all upon his own account, 
 and delivered him of the debt." 
 
 t I may quote on this point a. curious passage from the 
 Flagellum : ' Major-general Lambert, nevertheless, did con- 
 cur with him (Cromwell) in every particular, the whole de- 
 sign being secretly imparted to him, and he promised, as a 
 reward for his assistance, the succession to the supreme 
 power. This intimacy of Lambert was of a long standing, 
 ever since Preston fight, and was cemented the faster by 
 that complacency Oliver took in his wife, a woman of good 
 birth and parts, and of pleasing attractions both for mind 
 uud body. The voice of the people was, that she was more I 
 familiar with him than the honour of her sex would allow, | 
 and that she had some extraordinary kindnesses for him ' 
 which, she had not for. her husband; and that, being the j 
 
 The result of this intrigue was beneficial in 
 another shape. Cromwell had designed the 
 command in Ireland for an instrument of his 
 own, Charles Fleetwood, to whom he at this 
 time also induced his daughter Bridget, who 
 had not yet put off her mourning for Ireton, to 
 consent to give her hand. The Royalist wri- 
 ters have a story about this marriage which 
 may be worth mentioning, though it is refuted 
 by the proofs already offered in this work of the 
 high spirit and masculine good sense of Crom- 
 well's eldest daughter. They say that Charles 
 Fleetwood one day met Bridget Ireton in tears, 
 and on inquiring the cause, found she was giving 
 way to a fit of feminine spleen in consequence 
 of having just before been forced to give way 
 to the wife of Lambert, in St. James's Park. 
 They were both at this instant in mourning, 
 one for a wife, the other for a husband. An 
 offer of the widower's hand was made and ac- 
 cepted on the spot, and the widow found her- 
 self speedily restored to precedency as the 
 wife of the Lieutenant-general of Ireland ! The 
 story is amusing, but not credible. The wife 
 of Ireton might possibly have consented to sac- 
 rifice her affections to the state policy of her 
 father, but she would not have betrayed a mind 
 of superior virtue and character to the miser- 
 able satisfaction of her own wounded vanity. 
 
 But now the contest between the chiefs of 
 the Commonwealth and their too powerful ser- 
 vant, though in full career towards its memor- 
 able and miserable close, received temporary 
 check in two directions. On the one hand, dis- 
 sension reared its head suddenly in the minds 
 of Cromwell's military cabal ; while, on the 
 other, the grand position assumed by the Re- 
 publican leaders in closing their war with the 
 Dutch seems to have suspended for a brief 
 space, whether in prudence or in awe, even the 
 sacrilegious purposes of Cromwell himself. 
 
 Both events are marked beyond a doubt in a 
 Royalist production of the time, and they re- 
 flect considerations of the utmost importance 
 and interest on the view of the last days of the 
 English Commonwealth, which is here sought 
 to be impartially conveyed. The first, descrip- 
 tive of the meetings and dissensions of the 
 military cabal, is thus given. The writer, be 
 it recollected, contemplating both parties in the 
 struggle with equal hatred, may here lay claim 
 to some of the best privileges of impartiality. 
 " Every other day almost, more fasts, or some 
 such religious exercise, was managed by^Crom- 
 well and Harrison, who promoted the proposals 
 for a new representative, in order to the per- 
 sonal reign of Christ, and that therefore it was 
 high time the government was placed in the 
 hands of his saints, for all the glorious prophe- 
 cies thereof were now ready to be fulfilled ; and 
 this was cried up as the doctrine of the times. 
 Cromwell seemed to be of the same judgment, 
 and of that millenary principle, designing (as he 
 said) nothing of those mutations of govern- 
 ment which were agitating but in tendency to 
 that great revolution ; so that he had absolutely 
 fooled Harrison into a confidence of his good 
 intentions, and that he aimed not at his own 
 
 medium of reciprocation of intelligence between them, she 
 did communicate all her husband's designs, and conceal 
 some of the others ; though she needed not to have been so 
 squeamish or reserved, for one whose depths were never 
 fathomed or discovered to any mortal, Ireton excepted."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 605 
 
 greatness ; and thereupon all the party Harri- 
 son could make, which was Feaks's, Rogers's, 
 and Sympson's congregations, were impatient 
 to have the Parliament ousted, and their fine 
 module to take place, wherein righteousness and 
 holiness should be exalted in the kingdoms of 
 the world. And now the Tqrk and the Pope 
 were horribly threatened, and Oliver looked 
 upon as the great instrument that should con- 
 found anti-Christ. But, though most of the 
 officers were thus bewitched and besotted, yet 
 a great many of them had just and strong suspi- 
 cions what his dissolution of the Parliament 
 would end in, and therefore secret consuha 
 tions were held how to oppose these practices 
 upon the Parliament, in whose authority conserved 
 and secured, they were so wise as to think them- 
 selves safe and defended from the after-claps of 
 the rebellion. Among the rest, several officers 
 of note came voluntarily out of Ireland (as some 
 out of Scotland), who had, by their general 
 fasts, perceived the drift of their general, to 
 withstand him, and publicly protest against the 
 conduct of this business, as directly tending to 
 the overthrow and undoing all, for which so 
 much blood had been spilled, and giving up the 
 most glorious cause in the world to its van- 
 quished enemies Noll's own argument. ... Of 
 those that thus opposed him, Colonel Venables, 
 scout-master General Downing, and Major 
 Streater, were the most eminent, who to that 
 purpose, as above said, came out of Ireland ; 
 but Colonel Venables was soon wrought upon ; 
 and Mr. Downing offering to speak against it 
 in the council of officers, and getting upon the 
 table for better audience, was bid to come 
 down by Cromwell, asking him what he did 
 there. Only Colonel Streater persisted in his 
 resolution of giving reasons against it, and be- 
 ing flamm'd by Harrison with Christ's personal 
 reign, and that he was assured the lord-general 
 sought not himself, but that King Jesus might 
 take the sceptre, he presently replied that 
 Christ must come before Christmas, or else he 
 would come too late. For this opportune op- 
 position, and ten queries then published by him 
 in the army, he was afterward committed to 
 the Gate House, and looked upon by Cromwell 
 as his mortal enemy." 
 
 On the other, and, to our present purpose, 
 the more important matter of consideration ad- 
 verted to, the Royalist writer uses language 
 even stronger and more significant. Having 
 spoken of the last great effort of the Dutch to 
 recover the supremacy of the sea, he proceeds 
 to characterize it as a grave stumbling-block 
 to the designs of Cromwell. " It was a haz- 
 ardous enterprise," he says, "to be fighting 
 with two commonwealths together, and to 
 which his confidence and resolution could not 
 raise him, without a surer interest in the people 
 who were to undergo his tyranny. This now 
 reprieved the members from his decree of dis- 
 solution, while they had tried the fortune of 
 war with the Dutch, and had put things into 
 such a posture and certainty that no home altera- 
 tion could discompose or disorder it, the treasury 
 for the support of the war being now a filling, 
 a naval force rigging and equipping, and the 
 honour and glory of the nation engaged and con- 
 cerned."* 
 
 * Flagellum, by Heath. 
 
 S S 8 
 
 It would be difficult to bear better testimony 
 than this to a statesmanlike fitness for power 
 in the men who at present held it, or to a gross 
 falsehood in the pretence on which it was so 
 soon to be wrested from them. And they 
 fully justified these demands upon their last 
 exertions. With unexampled capacity and en- 
 ergy they refilled the drained exchequer, re- 
 fitted their naval power, sent Blake to sea with 
 the noblest squadron he had yet commanded, 
 and finally shattered to pieces the last resour- 
 ces of the Dutch. Again, therefore, but for 
 the last time now, had this great administrative 
 genius averted mortal danger from the Com- 
 monwealth. Men's homes were safe, the hon- 
 our of the Republic safe, and every enemy to 
 England beaten back with ignominy to his own 
 shore. " We never," said an illustrious agent 
 in the work,* as he proudly recalled the history 
 of the despised Rump under Richard Crom- 
 well's Protectorate, " we never bid fairer to be 
 masters of the whole world." From the high- 
 est point of elevation indeed were they doomed 
 to hasten to their setting ; in its ripest season 
 was the pear fated to be plucked by Cromwell ; 
 and (least merited of all !) the fame which his- 
 tory should surely have awarded, in some sort, 
 to the men beneath the light and warmth of 
 whose genius it had attained so full a richness, 
 she exclusively bestowed, without reserve or 
 stint, on the successful usurper ! 
 
 Very ominous warnings were thickening 
 around him when he ventured his final move. 
 In renovating the exchequer for the war, Vane 
 had proposed a sale of the estate of Hampton 
 Court, then held in trust by the great soldier ;t 
 and the first act of the same statesman, after 
 Blake was fairly at sea, and while the contest 
 was of course undecided, had been to procure 
 a vote from the House, appointing the 3d of 
 November, 1653, instead of that day in the year 
 1654, for the dissolution of Parliament. What, 
 indeed, were the exact views and prospects to 
 which that true friend of freedom still clung in 
 hope, even so late as this, may be gathered 
 without much difficulty from what Roger Will- 
 iams, a stanch Republican, and his associate 
 of early years in the government of New-Eng- 
 land (who was now staying at our English 
 statesman's country residence in Lincolnshire), 
 wrote to his transatlantic friends. " Here," he 
 says, " is great thoughts and preparations for a 
 new Parliament. Some of our friends are apt 
 to think a new Parliament will favour us and 
 our cause." Certain it was that the time had 
 now arrived for Cromwell's usurpation, if it 
 was to arrive ever. Each day that passed over 
 the statesmen in their new and well-won safety 
 from foreign attack, promised to be laden with 
 events that must tend to establish far more de- 
 cisively than ever their internal power. 
 
 It is very curious, and highly instructive, to 
 note down exact dates at the various points in 
 
 * Thomas Scot. See Life of Marten, p. 385. 
 
 t Ludlow thus speaks of " two ways" by which Vane and 
 his associates sought to " countermine" Cromwell. " First, 
 by balancing his interest in the army with that of the fleet, 
 procuring an order from the Parliament, by reason of the 
 importance of the war with the Dutch, to send some regi- 
 ments of the army to strengthen the fleet ; and, secondly, 
 by recommending, as an easy way to raise money in that 
 emergency, the sale of Hampton Court and other places, 
 that were esteemed as baits to tempt some ambitious man 
 to ascend the throne." Vol. ii., p. 451.
 
 506 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 this famous struggle. For example, in the 
 memorials of even the cautious and Cromwell- 
 serving Whitelocke, we find that the same note 
 which records the last great victory of Blake 
 and the " Parliament's forces at sea," contains 
 also these significant allusions to Cromwell and 
 his officers: "And they 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 censur- 
 ing the members of Parliament for injustice 
 and delay of business, and for seeking to pro- 
 long 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 op- 
 probrium must have been sharp indeed which 
 startled even this considerate and compliant 
 lawyer into so decided a sense of it. In the 
 next record of his diary he thus proceeds : 
 " The drift of Cromwell and his officers was to 
 put an end to this Parliament, which many 
 wondered at, and sought to dissuade him from, 
 upon all opportunities, as far as was thought 
 convenient, and that they might not appear de- 
 sirous to continue their own powers and sitting 
 in Parliament, whereof they had cause to be suffi- 
 ciently weary." 
 
 In this passage Whitelocke seems to me to 
 describe, with sufficient accuracy, one of those 
 great sources of danger to a political cause 
 which seldom rise to the surface of history, but 
 which evidently now beset with very formidable 
 obstructions that strenuous and determined 
 policy by which the statesmen struggled to 
 maintain their ground. All great parties, since 
 the world began, have had to complain of their 
 too moderate or over-sensitive men ; men over- 
 stocked W 7 ith delicacies ; who are more apt to 
 regulate their course by the derision of oppo- 
 nents than by the approval of conscience or of 
 friend ; who will shape hostility according to 
 the convenience of the party to whom they are 
 hostile ; and who are, above all things, fond to 
 talk of being weary of the burden their own 
 virtues or their own party may have imposed 
 upon them. We now behold such, by the help 
 of Whitelocke, among the members of the 
 House who supported Vane ; and can we doubt 
 that that statesman, w r ho would have thought 
 it treason to his country to consult the conve- 
 nience of her enemies, and have sunk lifeless 
 in his place before he indulged the luxury of 
 being " weary" in her service can we doubt 
 that he suffered, far more than by the worst 
 difficulties, dangers, or toils of the cause, from 
 the holyday sensibilities and delicate indifference 
 of such gentlemen as these 1 It matters seldom 
 that they happen to be few. The example goes 
 forth to the great body of the people, who find 
 it hard to discriminate, in such circumstances, 
 between service and betrayal. 
 
 More treacherous enemies, at the same time, 
 beset Vane and his party, even among the civil 
 members of that House for whose independence 
 they were now perilling all that makes life dear 
 
 to man. Whitelocke describes them also, in 
 the same passage of apparent self-reference 
 already quoted. "Neither," he continues, as 
 if to excuse the views of the moderate men, 
 " neither could it clearly be foreseen that the 
 design of Cromwell and his officers was to rout 
 the present power, and so set up themselves ; 
 against the which they were advised, as pull- 
 ing down the foundation of their own interest 
 and power, and the way to weaken themselves, 
 and to hazard both their cause and persons. 
 Yet still they seemed zealous, upon their com- 
 mon pretensions of 'right,' and 'justice,' and 
 ' public liberty,' to put a period to this Parlia- 
 ment, and that if the Parliament would not short- 
 ly do it themselves, that then the soldiers must do 
 it. Some who earnestly declared their judg- 
 ment against this, as 'the most dangerous and 
 the most ungrateful thing that could be prac- 
 tised,' by this freedom gained no favour with 
 Cromwell and his officers. But there wanted 
 not some Parliament men, perhaps to flatter 
 with them, who soothed them in this unhand- 
 some design, and were complotting with them 
 to ruin themselves, as by the consequence will 
 appear." 
 
 One of Cromwell's falsest pretences is shad- 
 owed forth in this extract, but it is a pretence 
 which has unhappily passed into history, and 
 claims, therefore, serious disproof. This, it 
 may be here remarked, is the first time that 
 the testimonies of living witnesses as to these 
 memorable occurrences have been brought 
 face to face ; and it is not an ungratifying cir- 
 cumstance to note what a perfect agreement 
 there is as to all the main considerations they 
 suggest, in the relations of men of such differ- 
 ent parties, writing at such different times, and 
 only alike in the fact of having themselves wit- 
 nessed what they thus record. The result will 
 show, among other things, that the only rea- 
 sonable pretext by which history has attempted 
 to justify the usurpation of Cromwell is based 
 upon a falsehood. 
 
 The question of dissolution is stated by 
 Whitelocke to have been urged by the soldiers 
 as of " right," " justice," and " public liberty," 
 and to have left a reasonable alternative to 
 those friends of freedom who had not lost faith 
 in that sacred thing. " You must put a period 
 to this Parliament," urge the soldiers. " If, 
 however, you do not shortly do this yourselves, 
 then the soldiers must do it." Now it is quite 
 true that this tone was for a time adopted in 
 the councils of Cromwell, but only for such a 
 time as might render feasible a subsequent 
 mean perversion of the truth to the English 
 people. Ludlow states some singular facts on 
 this head. While Cromwell, he says, was 
 " making the most solemn professions of fidel- 
 ity 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 undertake they should 
 do it, he privately engaged the officers of the 
 army to draw up a petition to the Parliament, 
 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, while the officers were forming and de- 
 bating, the general having, it seems, for that time 
 altered his counsels, sent Colonel Desborough,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 507 
 
 one of his instruments, to the council of offi- 
 cers, who told them they were a sort of men 
 whom nothing could satisfy ; that the Parlia- 
 ment were more ready to do any good than 
 they to desire it ; that they ought to rely upon 
 their word and promise to dissolve themselves 
 by the time prefixed ; and that to petition them 
 to put tneir 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 while Des- 
 borough was speaking, seconded him ; to which 
 some of the officers took the liberty to reply 
 that they had the same opinion of the Parlia- 
 ment 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." 
 
 Quite true it was that it had once been, for 
 good reasons, according to the desires of those 
 who now, for better reasons, spoke against it. 
 In such curious details we behold each fluctu- 
 ation of the struggle ; for at this moment, the 
 very crisis of all, Vane had baffled Cromwell 
 upon his own ground and with his own weap- 
 ons, and it was nothing more nor less than a 
 sudden discovery of that circumstance which 
 " altered the counsels of the general." Lud- 
 low describes what Vane had done in a general 
 remark on the sudden change in the policy of 
 the Parliament. " Now, perceiving to what 
 kind of excesses the madness of the army was 
 like to carry them, the Parliament resolved to 
 leave as a legacy to the people the government 
 of a commonwealth by their 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 Parliament, to whom they were to 
 give an account of their conduct and management. 
 To this end they resolved, without any farther 
 delay, to pass the act for their own dissolution." 
 Vane had within the last few days, in fact, by 
 his own individual and almost unaided exer- 
 tions, hastened to its latter stages the memora- 
 ble bill for a " new representative." Thus, as 
 the sharp crisis approached, there appeared 
 even an activity and energy that could cope 
 with Cromwell's own. Silently but resolutely 
 Vane had achieved the major part of the amend- 
 ments recommended in his own report,* and 
 little now remained save the final sanction of 
 the House to give to the measure the force of 
 law. Cromwell then, for the first time, while 
 in absolute triumphal progress on the strongest 
 position of the war he had engaged in, looked 
 up and saw it in firm possession of the enemy. 
 
 The aspect of the contest between the Par- 
 liament and their general changes from this in- 
 stant. It loses, on the side of Cromwell, every 
 element, or even pretence, of fairness. It at 
 once became evident that the musket could ar- 
 bitrate it only, and even Cromwell's most plau- 
 sible craft was unmasked suddenly into a bare 
 image of tyranny and force. Up to this point 
 he had a certain hollow case to rest upon with 
 the people, and was at least going forward to 
 his aim with a stealthier step and the help of 
 
 * See Life of Vane, p. 314-317. 
 
 a less startling falsehood. The very circum- 
 stances which had justified to the statesmen 
 even their share in the existence of that popu- 
 lar discontent, now spread in various directions 
 (and which clamoured in its less scrupulous 
 quarters of the " despotism" of many), would 
 have served to justify, in some sort also, Crom- 
 well's subtle measures for the substitution of a 
 despotism of one. All that was now at an end. 
 Truth took its stand on one side, falsehood 
 fronted it on the other, and the most moment- 
 ous interests of humanity, present and future, 
 trembled in the impending issue. Religion and 
 liberty, the right of action and of thought, hon- 
 ours won upon earth, deliverances vouchsafed 
 from heaven all that had rendered the English 
 people a praise and wonder to the earth during 
 their contest with their king, were now com- 
 mitted in this struggle for the existence of rep- 
 resentation in our country. The example of 
 the rulers of England had, during all that time, 
 been the life of virtue in her people. It was by 
 the Eliots, the Pyms, the Hampdens, and the 
 Vanes, that an enlightening influence, as from 
 heaven itself, had pierced into the humblest 
 and remotest corners of the land. To blight 
 this as suddenly as it had risen, and to promote 
 a second growth of ignorance and of slavery, 
 only less bad because less enduring than the 
 first, it was simply necessary to exhibit once 
 more in the high places of England that very 
 oppression, coercion, and arbitrary rule from 
 which she had been freed so lately. And this 
 was the miserable work which Cromwell had 
 now in hand, and for which he was content to 
 peril greater and purer fame than had fallen 
 within the grasp of Englishman before him. 
 
 The first thing to be noted in the closing 
 scenes of the struggle, so far as we are able to 
 penetrate the obscurity which unhappily has 
 veiled them too long, is the fierce contempt ex- 
 hibited by Cromwell for the popular pretences 
 on which he rested first. As soon as he saw 
 that Vane had resolved to test them, he flung 
 them scornfully to the wind. In the life of 
 Henry Neville, for example, a virtuous and ex- 
 emplary man, a scene of this exact time 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 con- 
 science to be determined by their advice. 
 Among these was the leading Mr. Calamy, who 
 very boldly opposed Mr. Cromwell's project, 
 and offered to prove it both unlawful and im- 
 practicable. 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 im- 
 practicable?' 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 ?' "* The next scene, with the 
 same moral, took place on a different theatre, 
 with actors somewhat different, and is told by an 
 anti-Republican of uncompromising fierceness. 
 "The next scene of this applauded comedy," 
 he writes, so characterizing a tragedy fraught 
 with the lives of thousands of living men, and 
 with the liberties of unborn millions, " was laid 
 * Life of Henry Neville, p. 35.
 
 508 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 at the Cockpit by Whitehall, where Cromwell, 
 concealing the nurnherof the heast in his apoc- 
 alypse, declared to his council of officers ' that 
 if they should trust the people in an election of a 
 new Parliament according to the old Constitu- 
 tion, it would be a tempting of God ; and that 
 his confidence. was, that God did intend to save 
 and deliver this nation by few, as he had done 
 in former times ; and that five or six men, and 
 some few more, setting themselves to the work, 
 might do more in one day than the Parliament 
 had or would do in a hundred, as far as he 
 could perceive ; and that such unbiased men 
 were like to be the only.instruments of the peo- 
 ple's happiness.' " 
 
 Not succeeding with this proposal, it is to be 
 presumed, to the extent of his desire, we find 
 it somewhat enlarged and modified in the next 
 council held ; for the chosen few, who were 
 to be heaven-selected for supreme power, are 
 there suddenly extended to the significant num- 
 ber of forty. This was the revival of a project 
 which had occupied the mind of Cromwell pre- 
 viously.* Its plain object was to pave as 
 smooth a way to tyranny as possible, by first 
 removing every existing legislative and execu- 
 tive body that had the appearance of being 
 founded upon English institutions, or in any 
 way based on English customs. To that end 
 the design was admirably shaped. The Parlia- 
 ment having been dissolved, the sovereign 
 power of government was to be placed for a 
 time in commission, consisting of forty persons, 
 chosen from the defunct House of Commons, 
 the council of state, and the army. The mere 
 proposed constitution of this body exhibits the 
 kind of difficulties that Cromwell had to en- 
 counter in every stage of these extraordinary 
 intrigues, and is in itself an implied refutation 
 of the historical slander which treats the whole 
 body of statesmen, the council of the Common- 
 wealth, and the poor Rump of their once great 
 House, with measureless scorn. Supposing the 
 proposition sincere or insincere, which would 
 have composed out of these various elements 
 the new Council of Forty for England, it car- 
 ries with it, not the less, an undoubted conces- 
 sion to the claims of the subsisting government 
 for no little consideration at even the hands 
 of those who had thus resolved its downfall. 
 The people were obviously to be induced to 
 believe that members of that famous House 
 which had conducted the contest to its suc- 
 cessful close were still to govern them ; that 
 power was yet to remain with at least the 
 heads of that great body which, as council of 
 the state, had established the Commonwealth 
 in the respect of surrounding nations. Crom- 
 well was at the same time quite safe in making 
 such a project the basis of his tyranny. It was 
 a sop for all parties, and a satisfaction for none. 
 The Harrisons and Okeys, who looked for a 
 reign of saints, saw, in near prospect already, 
 the mystic number of those sacred rulers ; 
 the Streaters, Lamberts, and Salways viewed 
 with much complacency themselves in power, 
 and their own peculiar crotchets in advanced 
 realization ; the moderate and indifferent men, 
 the waiters upon Providence and upon Crom- 
 well, were content with it, as they would have 
 been contented with anything that promised 
 
 * See Life of Vane, p. 313. 
 
 them as much ease with as little responsibility ; 
 and the only prominent dissenter or objector 
 would seem to have been Whitelocke himself, 
 who, in his secret and subtle love for all that 
 was old, venerable, or like law, saw little good 
 in forty, and much virtue in one. But Crom- 
 well could have eased his mind on that score 
 with an exercise of little candour. Secretly 
 laughing down these various hopes, he stood 
 triumphant in the security of his own. His 
 creatures, he knew, or creatures he could mould 
 into his, should pack that convenient council ; 
 and for the result, what would be easier or 
 more natural than a " manifestation of Provi- 
 dence 1" 
 
 The grand preliminary difficulty was the 
 mode in which the first step was to be achieved 
 the dissolution of the Parliament. A section 
 of the officers, backed by a section of the law- 
 yers, argued that this should be the voluntary 
 act of the House itself; but Vane had baffled 
 this, so far as it could have tended to serve 
 the views of Cromwell, by provisions* with 
 which he had accompanied the act of dissolu- 
 tion, securing to the people a new and enlarged 
 system of representation, and enlisting on the 
 side of liberal and popular government their 
 best sympathies and most enduring affections. 
 The other and larger section of negotiators, or 
 conspirators (for here there can be little choice 
 between the words), were in favour of a com- 
 pulsory dissolution, but never seem to have 
 contemplated the extreme of that desperate 
 course which was already working darkly in 
 Cromwell's mind. As yet, darkly ; but never, 
 through his whole career, had the mind of that 
 extraordinary person appeared wrapped in what 
 looked like a helpless or chaotic confusion, that 
 there did not lie coiled and hidden beneath it 
 more energy and quick-sighted resolve, more 
 rigid and straightforward determination, a pur- 
 pose more sharply shaped, and readier to start 
 into instant life and action, than have ever yet 
 shone forth in guise the most nimble, or with 
 an address the most accomplished. And what 
 he now gazed at, in that internal mind of his, 
 calmly and resolvedly involving, as it did, not 
 only an act without precedent in nations, but 
 the very existence of rights, thereafter to be 
 sports for children, which had once been watch- 
 words of the greatest fight for liberty yet fought 
 in the world he at the same time as coolly 
 designed to prepare in some sort the minds of 
 the common people for, by the use of his fa- 
 vourite engine of fanaticism. The suddenness 
 of the shock to be apprehended in some would 
 thus at least be broken. 
 
 Ludlow is the evidence on this point. At 
 this time, he says, " divers of the clergy, from 
 their pulpits, began to prophesy the destruction 
 of the Parliament, 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 Quarter- 
 master-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 in- 
 jury the Parliament did him, in not permitting 
 him to go into Ireland with a character and 
 
 * See Life of Vaue, p. 316, 317.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 509 
 
 conditions suitable to his merit, will be con- 
 tented 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.' " 
 
 The final scene in this extraordinary and 
 most memorable series of intrigues against 
 liberty, carried on by men who had fought for 
 the fame of her best and bravest champions, 
 now draws nigh. On the 19th of April, 1653, 
 the traitorous council, framed by Cromwell, 
 held their famous and last meeting. About 
 twenty members of Parliament are said to have 
 been present, of the character already attrib- 
 uted to these gentlemen " negotiators." The 
 proposition offered by Cromwell's creatures 
 has been already described, and will farther 
 appear in a celebrated note taken at the time 
 by Whitelocke (who was present), of the oc- 
 currences of the meeting. 
 
 " Yesterday," says the lord-commissioner, 
 writing on the fatal 20th of April, " there hav- 
 ing been a great meeting, at Cromwell's lodg- 
 ings in Whitehall, of Parliament-men and sev- 
 eral officers of the army, sent to by Cromwell 
 to be there, and a large discourse and debate 
 having been among them touching some expe- 
 dient to be found out for the present carrying 
 on of the government of the Commonwealth, 
 and putting a period to this present Parliament, 
 it was offered by divers as a most dangerous 
 thing to dissolve the present Parliament, and 
 to set up any other government, and that it 
 wouldn either be warrantable in conscience nor 
 wisdom so to do ; yet none of them expressed 
 themselves so freely to that purpose as Sir 
 Thomas Widdrington and Whitelocke then did. 
 Of the other opinion, as to putting an end forth- 
 with to this Parliament, St. John was one of 
 the chief, and many more with him ; and gen- 
 erally all the officers of the army, who stuck 
 close in this likewise to their general ; and the 
 better to make way for themselves, and their 
 ambitious design of advancing them to the civil 
 government as well as they were in the mili- 
 tary power, they and their party declared their 
 opinions ' that it was necessary the same should 
 be done one way or other, and the members of 
 Parliament not permitted to prolong their own 
 power :' at which expression Cromwell seemed 
 to reprove some of them ; and this conference 
 lasted till late at night, when Widdrington and 
 Whitelocke went home weary, and troubled to 
 see the indiscretion and ingratitude of those 
 men, and the way they designed to ruin them- 
 selves." 
 
 The reader will have an opportunity of con- 
 trasting this account with that which Crom- 
 well subsequently gave of the same transaction, 
 and in the course of which he grounded a com- 
 plaint of insincerity against Whitelocke and his 
 friends, on the alleged circumstance of their 
 having left the meeting on this famous night 
 with an express understanding that the leaders 
 of the House of Commons would suspend all 
 farther proceedings on the act for dissolution 
 and a new representative till the result of the 
 conference of next day. But if Whitelocke 
 gave such a pledge, which his entire silence on 
 
 that head renders at least doubtful, he did so 
 without authority, and in the absence of any 
 means of redeeming it. The course which 
 Vane held at present had been deliberately cho- 
 sen by that determined man, and it would have 
 demanded a more than human power to induce 
 him, for any consideration left upon the earth, 
 to peril by another hour's delay the popular 
 claim to popular rights delayed already to the 
 endangerment of liberty. The whole of the 
 19th of April, so spent, as we have seen, at 
 Whitehall, in consultation between the lawyers, 
 temporizers, and traitors,* was passed by Vane 
 at Westminster, in resolute amendment of the 
 details of the bill which was at once to close 
 the existence of the greatest Parliament that 
 had ever sat within the walls of the old chapel 
 of St. Stephen's, and to call into life through- 
 out England the greatest amount of represent- 
 ative freedom that had yet been enjoyed by her 
 people : and never, surely, did sun rise on a 
 loftier or more honourable strength of purpose 
 in the breast of any man, than that which, ear- 
 ly on the morning on the 20th of April, sus- 
 tained Sir Henry Vane as he passed into the 
 House of Commons to strike his last blow for 
 the sacred cause to which, from earliest youth, 
 and in resistance to all temptations, his life had 
 been devoted with a touching constancy. The 
 same hour of the same ever-memorable morn- 
 ing saw Whitelocke and his friends on their 
 way to Cromwell's house. 
 
 Therefore, proceeds the memorialist, in con- 
 tinuation of the passage already quoted, " these 
 came early again this morning, according to ap- 
 pointment, to Cromwell's lodging, where there 
 were but few Parliament-men and a few offii 
 cers of the army. A point was again stirred, 
 which had been debated the last night, ' Wheth- 
 er forty persons, or about that number of Par- 
 liament-men and officers of the army, should 
 be nominated by the Parliament, and empow- 
 ered for the managing the affairs of the Com- 
 monwealth till a new Parliament should meet, 
 and so the present Parliament to be forthwith 
 dissolved.' Whitelocke 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 am- 
 bitious to be of this number and council, and 
 to be invested with this exorbitant power in 
 them. Cromwell being informed during this 
 debate that the Parliament was sitting, and 
 that it was hoped they would put a period to 
 themselves, which would be the most honoura- 
 ble dissolution for them, hereupon he broke off 
 the meeting, and the members of the Parlia- 
 ment left him at his lodging and went to the 
 House." 
 
 Vane, Marten, Algernon Sidney, and others 
 of the chief men had been there some time, and 
 
 The only sincere (however wrong-headed) Republican, 
 of whose attendance at these councils I can find any evi- 
 dence, is Sir Arthur Hazlerig. That he did so is clear 
 from a manuscript report of a speech delivered by him in 
 Richard Cromwell's Parliament. " 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 testimo- 
 ny against it. I told them the work they went about was 
 accursed. I told them it was impossible to devolve this 
 trust."
 
 510 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 had succeeded in forcing to its final stage the 
 act for the new representative. Some of Crom- 
 well's creatures had also shown themselves 
 early in their places, with a view to watch the 
 proceedings for him, and to interpose the forms 
 of the House, if necessary, for the purpose of 
 giving time and room to his designs. Thus, 
 when Vane rose to urge the necessity of pass- 
 ing the bill into a law at once, one of these 
 convenient gentlemen was despatched, as we 
 have seen, to interrupt the debate at Crom- 
 well's lodgings ; while another, no less than 
 Major-general Harrison himself, rose with the 
 dignified purpose of talking against time, and 
 " most sweetly and humbly" conjured the mem- 
 bers assembled to pause before they took so im- 
 portant a step as that which Vane recommend- 
 ed. The warmth and earnestness of Vane's 
 reply were the signal for a second messenger 
 to Cromwell, and Ingoldsby was observed to 
 leave the House in some haste and excitement. 
 
 The Cromwell section of officers were still 
 in consultation with Cromwell himself at the 
 lodging of the lord-general. The first news of 
 the morning had " broken off" what might be 
 called the negotiatory part of the meeting ; but 
 the military cabal had resumed their private 
 councils, when Ingoldsby's sudden appearance 
 in the room, with the excitement upon him of 
 the great scene he had left, again interrupted 
 their discussions. " If you mean to do any- 
 thing decisive," he exclaimed to Cromwell, 
 " you have no time to lose." Cromwell rose 
 hastily, commanded a party of soldiers to be 
 marched round to the House of Commons, and 
 left the room without another word. Lam- 
 bert and " five or six" of the more determined 
 officers followed him. The rest remained sit- 
 ting where they were, in wonder, uncertainty, 
 and dread. 
 
 Cromwell made no pause till he stood before 
 the door of the House of Commons. Here he 
 planted a body of soldiers, stationed another in 
 the lobby, and led round some files of muske- 
 teers to a position without the chamber where 
 the members were seated. His manner, at 
 this momentous instant, was observed to be 
 calm, and his very dress was noted for its peace- 
 ful contrast to his purposes. Vane had again 
 risen, and was speaking on the dissolution bill 
 in a passionate strain, when he quietly appear- 
 ed at the door, "clad in plain black clothes, 
 with gray worsted stockings,"* quite unattend- 
 ed and alone. About a hundred members were 
 at this time present.f He stood for a moment 
 on the spot at which he entered, and then " sat 
 down as he used to do in an ordinary place." 
 Here he was instantly joined by his kinsman 
 Saint John, to whom he said, with inexpressi- 
 ble humility of manner, that " he was come to 
 do that which grieved him to the very soul, and 
 that he had earnestly, with tears, prayed to God 
 against : nay, that he had rather be torn in pie- 
 ces than do it ; but there was a necessity laid 
 upon him therein, in order to the glory of God 
 and the good of the nation." Saint John an- 
 swered that " he knew not what he meant ; but 
 did pray that what it was which must be done 
 might have a happy issue for the general good." 
 With this, that crafty lawyer went back to his 
 
 * Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 139. 
 t Ludlow, vol. ii., p. 455. 
 
 own seat, to wait the issue of all those dark in- 
 trigues in which he had himself played so prom- 
 inent a part. 
 
 Vane still held on unflinchingly to his great 
 purpose. He urged, with increased earnest- 
 ness, the necessity of proceeding at once to 
 the last stage of the bill, and with that view 
 adjured them to dispense with even the cere- 
 mony of engrossing, and other immaterial 
 forms. Cromwell, at this, beckoned Harrison. 
 "Now is the time," he said to that enthusiast ; 
 "I must do it !" Harrison's answer would im- 
 ply that he knew the meditated outrage,* but 
 felt the force of the eloquence of Vane. " The 
 work, sir," he said, after advising him to con- 
 sider, "is very great and dangerous." "You 
 say well," hastily retorted Cromwell, and " sat 
 still for another quarter of an hour." It would 
 then seem that Vane had succeeded in his pur- 
 pose, for the speaker had actually risen to put 
 the question,! when Cromwell started up, " put 
 off his^ hat," and began to speak. " At first," 
 Lord Leicester tells us, " and for a good while, 
 he spoke in commendation of the Parliament 
 for their pains and care of the public good ; but 
 afterward he changed his style ; told them of 
 their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, 
 and other faults ;" charging them, according to 
 Ludlow, with " not having a heart to do any- 
 thing for the public good," and accusing them 
 " of an intention to perpetuate themselves in 
 power, had they not been forced to the passing 
 of this act, which he affirmed they designed 
 never to observe." But, he added, with a vio- 
 lent and harsh abruptness, " Your time is come ! 
 The Lord has done with you ! He has chosen 
 other instruments for the carrying on His work 
 that are more worthy." All this seemed no- 
 thing less than inspiration to his fanatical fol- 
 lowers. They marked the extraordinary chan- 
 ges in his voice and manner as new births of 
 Providence within him, and exclaimed that it 
 was the Lord had taken him by the hand, and 
 set him on to do that thing. Plainer men saw 
 the tyrant only, the slave within the grasp of 
 tyrannous ambition. " He spoke," says Lud- 
 low, " with so much passion and discomposure 
 of mind, as if he had been distracted." 
 
 Meanwhile Vane had risen, Wentworth and 
 Marten too, " but he would suffer none to speak 
 but himself."! At the same time, as if himself 
 astonished at the unprecedented part he was 
 playing, he cried out to those who had risen, 
 " You think, perhaps, that this is not Parlia- 
 mentary language; I know it." In spite oJ'all 
 resistance, however, the voice of Sir Peter 
 Wentworth, who stood up by the side of Vane, 
 forced itself at last upon the House. He de- 
 
 * It was believed at the time that Sir Gilbert Pickering, 
 and some few other members (out of those that had attend- 
 ed the Whitehall councils), were also acquainted with what 
 Cromwell purposed. It is certain, according to the author 
 of the Flagellum, that Sir Gilbert was privy to it, since 
 " he had held consultation the night before with him, and 
 was up armed in his chamber till the very time." 
 
 t Ludlow, Lord Leicester (who received his information 
 from Algernon Sidney), and Sir Arthur Hazlerig (who was 
 present) agree on this point. " We were labouring here in 
 the House," says Hazlerig, in that speech in Richard Crom- 
 well's Parliament to which I have already adverted, " on 
 an act to put an end to that Parliament, and to call another. 
 I desired the passing of it with all my soul. The question 
 was putting for it, when our general stood up and stopped 
 the Question, and called in his lieutenant, with two files of 
 musketeers, with their hats on their heads, and their guns 
 leaden with bullets." Whitelocke, p 529.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 511 
 
 clared that this was indeed " the first time that 
 he had ever 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, and whom, by their unpre- 
 cedented bounty, they had made what he was."* 
 Whether these words really transported Crom- 
 well, on the instant, beyond the bounds of even 
 his self-command, or merely rendered necessa- 
 ry a farther display of what his deluded follow- 
 ers might take to be genuine inspiration, the 
 reader will best judge from what actually fol- 
 lowed, as an honest eyewitness has delivered 
 it to us. 
 
 Cromwell instantly thrust his hat down upon 
 his head, sprang from his seat into the centre 
 of the floor of the House, and shouted out, 
 " Come, come, I'll put an end to your prating." 
 Then, adds Lord Leicester, on the relation of 
 Algernon Sidney, " he walked up and down the 
 stage or floor in the midst of the House, with 
 his hat on his head, and chid the members 
 soundly, looking sometimes, and pointing par- 
 ticularly, upon some persons, as Sir B. White- 
 locke, one of the commissioners for. the great 
 seal, and Sir Henry Vane, to whom he gave 
 very sharp language, though he named them not, 
 but by his gestures it was well known he meant 
 them." But even while he raved and chafed in 
 this desperate fashion (" walking up and down," 
 Ludlow tells us, 'Mike a madman, and kicking 
 the ground with his feet"), Vane succeeded in 
 making himself heard once more. At this 
 Cromwell stopped and called Vane by his name. 
 "You," he said, "might have prevented this 
 extraordinary course ; but you are a juggler, 
 and have not so much as common honesty."t 
 " I have been forced to this," he continued. 
 " I have sought the Lord, night and day, that 
 he would rather slay me than put me upon the 
 doing of this work. But now begone. You are 
 no Parliament. I say, you are no Parliament ! 
 I'll put an end to your sitting. Begone ! Give 
 way to honester men."t Stamping his foot, as 
 he spoke thus, very heavily on the floor, the 
 door was flung open suddenly, and he stood in 
 the midst of " five or six files of musketeers," 
 with their arms ready ! 
 
 In that moment perished, for a time, the 
 rights in whose name twelve years of the mis- 
 eries of civil war had been unrepiningly en- 
 countered, " making vain and viler than dirt 
 the blood of so many faithful and valiant Eng- 
 lishmen, who had left their countrymen in this 
 liberty of Parliament, bought with their lives." 
 It is needless to say that resistance, to any suc- 
 cessful end, was idle ; yet not without such re- 
 sistance as might serve to enter their immortal 
 protest with posterity did these lion-hearted 
 Republicans leave the scene (now degraded and 
 profaned) of their yet glorious and undying tri- 
 umphs. " Then the general," pursues Lord 
 Leicester, " pointing to the speaker in his chair, 
 said to Harrison, ' Fetch him down.' Harrison 
 went to the speaker, and spoke to him to come 
 down ; but the speaker sat still and said nothing. 
 ' Take him down !' said the general ; then Har- 
 rison went and pulled the speaker by the gown, 
 
 * Ludlow, vol. ii., p. 456; and see Lin 
 vol. ii., p. 171. t * ;->''>*'" '" 
 
 , II., p. 1/1. T J 
 
 Perfect Politician, p. 169. 
 
 ; and see Lingard's History, 
 Leicester's Journal, p. 141. 
 
 HI 
 
 and he came down.* It happened that day that 
 Algernon Sidney sat next to the speaker on the 
 right hand. The general said to Harrison, ' Put 
 him out !' Harrison spake to Sidney to go out ; 
 hut he said he would not go out, and sat still. 
 The general said again, ' Put him out !' Then 
 Harrison and Worsley (who commanded the 
 general's own regiment of foot) put their hands 
 upon Sidney's shoulders, as if they would force 
 him to go out. Then he rose and went to- 
 wards the door. Then the general went to the 
 table where the mace lay, which used to be car- 
 ried before the speaker, and said, ' Take away 
 these bawbles !' so the soldiers took away the 
 mace." 
 
 While this extraordinary scene of violence 
 proceeded thus, the majority of the members 
 had gradually withdrawn ; and now, as the 
 more eminent men, who had waited to the last, 
 moved slowly towards the door, through files 
 of musketeers drawn up on either side, they 
 received to the last, in passionate insults from 
 Cromwell, the tribute which their defence of 
 the Commonwealth had well merited from the 
 lips of its destroyer. Nicknames were flung in 
 the face of each. Challoner was pointed to as 
 a drunkard ;t Sir Peter Wentworth was accu- 
 sed of adultery ; Alderman Allen of public em- 
 bezzlements ; even poor Whitelocke of gross 
 injustice ; and as the lord-general's old friend, 
 Harry Marten, passed, he was asked if a whore- 
 master was fit to sit and govern.! Among the 
 latest of all came Vane ; and as he came, he 
 once again protested " in a loud voice" against 
 the fatal scene which had been acted. "This 
 is not honest," he said. "Yea, it is against 
 morality and common honesty." At that in- 
 stant, it is possible Cromwell felt some shame. 
 He paused, as though to rally himself with the 
 recollection of some personal or private vice 
 he might fling against his great rival, but when 
 he spoke, his harsh voice had a troubled tone, 
 and he merely uttered the few words that have 
 become so memorable, " Sir Harry Vane, Sir 
 Harry Vane ! the Lord deliver me from Sir Har- 
 ry Vane /" No vice would stick, even as a lie, 
 against the virtue and simplicity of the most 
 spotless statesman in our annals. Vane passed 
 on, and no nickname followed him. 
 
 Cromwell was now virtually lord of England, 
 and stood with a heavier and more daring foot 
 upon her neck than had ever been placed there 
 by any of her kings. " He seized," says Lud- 
 low, " on the records that were in the House 
 
 * Lenthall was by no means a man of gallantry or hero- 
 ism. On many occasions, indeed, he showed himself defi- 
 cient in the most ordinary spirit ; hut there were two inci- 
 dents in his life, when the very extent of the outrage com- 
 mitted on the authority with which he was invested seems 
 to have positively lifted him far above the strain of common 
 men. These incidents were Charles's attempted arrest of 
 the five members, and Cromwell's present and greater 
 crime. Sir Arthur Hazlerig corroborates the account of the 
 text in his speech already quoted. " The speaker," he said, 
 " a stout man, was not willing to go. lie was so noble, 
 that he frowned, and said he would not go out of the chair 
 till he was plucked out, which was quickly done, without 
 much compliment, by two soldiers." Ludlow also tells us, 
 that when Harrison went up to move the speaker from his 
 chair, Lenthall at once told him " that he would not coins 
 down unless he were forced. 'Sir,' said Harrison, ' I will 
 lend you my hand ;' and thereupon, putting his hand with- 
 in his, the speaker came down." One matter of considera- 
 tion should, however, not be omitted : Lenthall had good 
 reason to expect being brought to a severe account, if he 
 had not shown resistance thus. t Drysdale, p. 405 
 
 t Perfect Politician, p. 168.
 
 512 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and at Mr. Scobell's ;* 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."! 
 
 The officers he had left were still sitting to- 
 gether when Cromwell reappeared, flushed and 
 excited as they had always seen him after vic- 
 tory, and, flinging on the table before them 
 the key of the House of Commons (the " baw- 
 ble" had been tossed into the outer room), told 
 them all that he had done. " When I went 
 there," he added, " I did not think to have done 
 this ; but, perceiving the spirit of God so strong 
 upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood." 
 Yet even in that cabal there were found some 
 voices to question the justice of an act, no 
 matter by what pretence defended, of unparal- 
 leled and awful outrage. Colonel Okey and 
 others, it would seem, spoke out in condem- 
 nation of it, " conceiving that the way they 
 were now going tended to ruin and confusion. 
 To these, having not yet taken off his mask, 
 but pretending to more honesty and self-denial 
 than ever, he professed himself resolved to do 
 much more good, and with more expedition, 
 than could be expected from the Parliament, 
 which professions from him put most of them 
 to silence, and moved them to a resolution of 
 waiting for a farther discovery of his design 
 before they would proceed to a breach and di- 
 vision from him. But Colonel Okey, being 
 jealous that the end would be bad, because the 
 means were such as made them justly suspect- 
 ed of hypocrisy, inquired of Col. Desborough 
 what his meaning was, to give such high com- 
 mendations to the Parliament when he endeav- 
 oured 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 thcn."$ It is a pity that, in proportion 
 
 * At that time clerk of the House. 
 
 t Unable to omit this remarkable scene in a memoir of 
 Cromwell, I have endeavoured to justify its repetition (in 
 transgression of a rule, which has been strictly observed in 
 this series of biographies) by certain new elements of char- 
 acter and interest that have occurred to me since the notice 
 of Vane was written. A curious circumstance may be 
 added, illustrative of the stern and undying spirit of the 
 leaders of this famous Long Parliament. Treating Crom- 
 well's act of violence as though it had never disgraced our 
 annals, that Parliament, entitled, if any ever was, to boast 
 itself indestructible, resuscitated itself, as the reader 
 knows, on the death of Cromwell ; and, in looking over the 
 journals of the 7th of January, 1659, I find this character- 
 istic passage : " Whereas this House do find an entry in 
 the Journal Book of the 20th of April, 1653, in these words, 
 ' This day his excellency the lord-general dissolved this 
 Parliament;' which was done without consent of Parlia- 
 ment ; which this House doth accordingly declare to be a 
 forgery ; and do order Mr. Scobell to be sent for to the bar 
 to answer it." From other minutes in the same journal, I 
 find farther that Mr. Scobell appeared before the House 
 duly to answer this offence, and that the obnoxious entry 
 having been shown him, he was asked who made it. He 
 acknowledged upon this that it was his own handwriting, 
 and that he did it without the direction of any person what- 
 ever. The House immediately ordered the entry to be ex- 
 punged out of the journals, and referred it to a committee 
 to consider " whether the then late act of indemnity ex- 
 tended to pardon that offence, and report their opinion of it 
 to the House." I find nothing more of it, however ; mat- 
 ters of greater moment had meanwhile occurred for consid- 
 eration ! 
 
 t Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 460. The memorialist 
 (who then held command in Ireland) adds, "We who were 
 in. Ireland, being not so well informed of these clandestine 
 
 as these Republican officers admitted glimmer- 
 ings of conscience or fair intention into their 
 plans, they seem to have lost altogether what 
 could alone effectually serve them in the pecu- 
 liar policy they favoured their craft and cun- 
 ning. It is wonderful to contemplate the sim- 
 plicity they exhibit ; amusing it might be, no 
 less, were it not for the serious mischief it in- 
 flicted on our country. 
 
 A far different scene, however, from that 
 which he encountered at the military cabal, 
 awaited Cromwell at the council of state. In 
 the afternoon of this still eventful day, the tri- 
 umphant usurper, attended by Lambert and 
 Harrison, entered the chamber of the council. 
 The famous Bradshaw had that morning taken 
 his seat on his fresh election to the presidency, 
 and it thus fitly devolved upon him, from whose 
 lips had issued the sentence which doomed a 
 legitimate king to death for crimes committed 
 against the people, to rebuke a traitorous 
 usurper upon the threshold of his ill-gotten 
 power. Cromwell broke the silence which fol- 
 lowed his sudden appearance in the chamber : 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " 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 morning, so take no- 
 tice that the Parliament is dissolved." To this 
 Bradshaw rose and at once replied : " Sir, we 
 have heard what you did at the House in the 
 morning, and before many hours all England 
 will hear it. But, sir, you are mistaken to 
 think that the Parliament is dissolved, for no 
 power under heaven can dissolve them but 
 themselves : therefore take you notice of that." 
 With these words fell the Commonwealth of 
 England, leaving behind it a memory which is 
 immortal, and results that are destined to live 
 and bear fruit forever. Each member present 
 in council at once rose and withdrew, Scot, 
 Hazlerig, and Love briefly and emphatically 
 repeating, as they went, the solemn protest of 
 Bradshaw.* Cromwell made no reply. 
 
 At early dawn of the 21st of April, a large 
 placard was seen pasted on the door of the 
 House of Commons " This house to be let, un~ 
 furnished" the work of some Royalist wit of 
 the preceding night, after orgies which had no 
 doubt worthily celebrated the downfall of the 
 only sufficient or lasting barrier between Eng- 
 land and the Stuarts.t On the morning of 
 the same day a sort of government gazette 
 was issued from Whitehall to the following 
 effect: "The lord-general delivered yesterday 
 in Parliament divers reasons wherefore a present 
 period should be put to the sitting of this Parlia- 
 ment, and it was accordingly done, the speaker 
 and the members all departing ; the grounds 
 of which proceedings will ('tis probable) be 
 
 practices, and no less confident that the principles of some 
 men who joined in this attempt were directed to the good, 
 of the nation ; and that, though some might be such arrant 
 knaves as to have other designs, yet, trusting that an impos- 
 sibility of accomplishing the same would oblige them to fall 
 in with the public interest, and not to be so very foolish to 
 attempt the setting up for themselves though we could 
 not but have some doubts of the ill consequences of these 
 things, yet thought ourselves, by the rules of charity, obliged 
 to hope the best, and therefore continued to act in our places 
 and stations as before." * Ludlow, vol. ii., p. 461. 
 
 t For the rejoicings of Charles Stuart himself, see Eve- 
 lyn's Correspondence, vol. ii., p. 215.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 513 
 
 shortly made public." In speedy redemption 
 of this pledge, a declaration of the " grounds 
 and reasons for dissolving the Parliament," in 
 the name of the lord-general and his council 
 of officers, came forth, in English and French, 
 on the 22d of April. 
 
 It is due to candour and to truth, wherein 
 will be always found a solid vindication of the 
 Commonwealth against its betrayer, to give 
 the essential part of this declaration, and of 
 what other defence Cromwell may have sought 
 to place on record, in the dread of a verdict by 
 posterity against his action of the 20th of April. 
 To bring such a document as this declaration, 
 for example, to the light of the truth which is 
 here attempted to be cast, for the first time, 
 into every corner of these strange transactions, 
 is to unravel at once its cunning and false pre- 
 tences. And much more than this will neces- 
 sarily receive illustration from any careful en- 
 deavour to show in detail what various influ- 
 ences were in action at that time upon the peo- 
 ple ; what miserable self-delusions or wretched 
 vanities held spellbound even Cromwell's agents 
 in his tyrannous work ; and for what consider- 
 ations of dignity, prudence, or superior and un- 
 selfish care for the general safety, the baffled 
 and slandered statesmen were content to " bide 
 their time." 
 
 The declaration opens with a well-devised 
 allusion to the grounds which had first moved 
 the undersigned officers to take up arms, and 
 engage their lives and all that was dear to 
 them in the cause ; to the various and signal 
 dispensations through which Divine Providence 
 had led them ; and to the witness the Lord 
 himself had borne to their unwearied efforts. 
 They have been necessitated, they then with 
 apparent frankness state, " for the defence of 
 the same cause they first asserted, to have re- 
 course unto extraordinary actions," which they 
 thus proceed to describe and defend. 
 
 " After it had pleased God not only to re- 
 duce Ireland and give in Scotland, but so mar- 
 vellously to appear for his people at Worcester 
 that these nations were reduced to a great de- 
 gree of peace and England to perfect quiet, and 
 thereby the Parliament had opportunity to give 
 the people the harvest of their labour, blood, 
 and treasure, and to settle a due liberty both in 
 reference to civil and spiritual things, whereunto 
 they were obliged by their duty, their engage- 
 ments, as also the great and wonderful things 
 which God had wrought for them, it was a 
 matter of much grief to the good and well-af- 
 fected of the land to observe the little progress 
 which was made therein, who thereupon ap- 
 plied to the army, expecting redress by their 
 means ; notwithstanding which, the army, be- 
 ing unwilling to meddle with the civil authority 
 in matters so properly appertaining to it, it was 
 agreed that his excellency, and officers of the 
 army which were members of Parliament, 
 should be desired to move the Parliament to 
 proceed vigorously in performing what was 
 amiss in government, and to the settling of the 
 Commonwealth upon a foundation of justice and 
 righteousness ; which having done, we hoped 
 that the Parliament would seasonably have an- 
 swered our expectation. But finding (to our 
 grief) delays therein, we renewed our desires 
 in an humble petition to them, which was pre- 
 TTT 
 
 sented in August last ; and although they at 
 that time, signifying their good acceptance 
 thereof, returned us thanks, and referred the 
 particulars thereof to a committee of the House, 
 yet no considerable effect was produced, nor 
 any such progress made as might imply their 
 real intentions to accomplish what was peti- 
 tioned for ; but, on the contrary, there more 
 and more appeared among them an aversion to 
 the things themselves, with much bitterness and 
 opposition to the people of God, and his Spirit 
 acting in them ; which grew so prevalent, that 
 those persons of honour and integrity among them 
 who had eminently appeared for God and the pub- 
 lic good both before and throughout this war, were 
 rendered of no farther use in Parliament, than, by 
 meeting with a corrupt party, to give them coun- 
 tenance 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 themselves against having, a new rep- 
 resentative ; and when they saw themselves 
 necessitated to take that bill into consideration, 
 they resolved to make use of it to recruit the House 
 icith persons of the same spirit and temper, there- 
 by to perpetuate their own sitting, which intention 
 divers of the activest among them did mani- 
 fest, labouring to persuade others to a consent 
 therein : and the better to effect this, divers pe- 
 titions, preparing from several counties for the 
 continuance of this Parliament, were encouraged, 
 if not set on foot, by many of them. 
 
 " For obviating of these evils, the officers of 
 the army obtained several meetings with some 
 of the Parliament to considerwhat fittingmeans 
 and remedy might be applied to prevent the 
 same ; but such endeavours proving altogether 
 ineffectual, it became most evident to the army, 
 as they doubt not it also is to all considering per- 
 sons, that this Parliament, through the corrup- 
 tion of some, the jealousy of others, the non- 
 attendance and negligence of many, would 
 never answer those ends which God, his people, 
 and the whole nation expected from them, but 
 that this cause, which the Lord hath so greatly 
 blessed, and bore witness to, should languish 
 under their hands, and by degrees be wholly 
 lost, and the lives, liberties, and comforts of 
 his people delivered into their enemies' hands. 
 
 "All which being sadly and seriously con- 
 sidered by the honest people of this nation, as well 
 as by the army, and wisdom and direction being 
 sought from the Lord, it seemed to be a duty in- 
 cumbent upon us, who had seen so much of 
 the power and presence of God going along 
 with us, to consider of some more effectual 
 means to secure the cause which the good peo- 
 ple of this Commonwealth had been so long 
 engaged in, and to establish righteousness and 
 peace in these nations. 
 
 " After much debate, it was judged necessa- 
 ry, and agreed upon, that the supreme authority 
 should be by the Parliament devolved upon known 
 persons men fearing God and of approved in- 
 tegrity and the government of the Common- 
 wealth committed unto them for a time, as the 
 most hopeful way to encourage and countenance 
 all God's people, reform the laws, and administer 
 justice impartially ; hoping thereby the people may 
 forget monarchy, and, understanding their true 
 election of successive Parliaments, may have the
 
 514 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 government settled upon a true basis, without haz- 
 ard to this glorious cause, or necessitating to keep 
 up armies for the. defence of the same. And being 
 still resolved to use all means possible to avoid 
 extraordinary courses, we prevailed with about 
 twenty members of Parliament to give us a 
 conference, with whom we freely and plainly 
 debated the necessity and justness of our pro- 
 posals on that behalf, and did evidence that 
 those, and not the act under their considera- 
 tion, would most probably bring forth some- 
 thing answerable to that work, the foundation 
 whereof God himself hath laid, and is now carry- 
 ing on in the world ; the which, notwithstanding, 
 found no acceptance ; but instead thereof, it 
 was offered, that the way was to continue still 
 this present Parliament, as being that from 
 which we might reasonably expect all good 
 things ; and this, being vehemently insisted 
 upon, did much confirm us in our apprehen- 
 sions, that not any love to a representative, but 
 the making use thereof to recruit and so per- 
 petuate themselves, was their aim. 
 
 "They being plainly dealt with about this, 
 and told that neither the nation, the honest in- 
 terest, nor we ourselves would be deluded by 
 such dealings, they did agree to meet again the 
 next day in the afternoon for mutual satisfac- 
 tion, it being consented to by the members 
 present, that endeavours should be used that no- 
 thing in the mean time should be done in Par- 
 liament that might exclude or frustrate the 
 proposals before mentioned. 
 
 " Notwithstanding this, the next morning 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 con- 
 summating the said act, whereby our aforesaid 
 proposals would have been rendered void, and 
 the way of bringing them into a fair and full 
 debate of Parliament obstructed; for preventing 
 thereof, and all the sad and evil consequences 
 which must, upon the grounds aforesaid, have 
 ensued, and whereby, at one blow, the interest 
 of all honest men, and of this glorious cause, 
 had been in danger to be laid in the dust, and 
 these nations embroiled in new troubles, at a 
 time when our enemies abroad are watching 
 all advantages against us, and some of them 
 actually engaged in war with us, we have been 
 necessitated, though with much reluctance, to put 
 an end to this Parliament ; which yet we have 
 done (we hope) out of an honest heart, preferring 
 this cause above our names, lives, families, or in- 
 terests, how dear soever, with clear intention and 
 real purposes of heart to call to the government 
 persons of approved fidelity and honesty, believing 
 that, as no wise men will expect to gather 
 grapes of thorns, so good men will hope that, 
 if persons so qualified be chosen, the fruits of 
 a just and righteous reformation, so long prayed 
 and wished for, will, by the blessing of God, 
 be in due time obtained, to the refreshing of all 
 those good hearts who have been panting after 
 these things. 
 
 " Much more might have been said," the 
 declaration proceeded, " if it had been our desire 
 to justify ourselves by aspersing others, and raking 
 into the misgovernment of affairs ; but we shall 
 
 conclude with this : that as we have been led 
 by necessity and Providence to act as we have 
 done, even beyond and above our own thoughts 
 and desires, so we shall, and do, in that part 
 of this great work which is behind, put our- 
 selves wholly upon the Lord for a blessing, 
 professing we look not to stand one day with- 
 out his support, much less to bring to pass all 
 the things mentioned and desired without his 
 assistance ; and therefore do solemnly desire 
 and expect that all men, as they would not pro- 
 voke the Lord to their own destruction, should 
 wait for such issue as He should bring forthi. and 
 to follow their business with peaceable spirits, 
 wherein we promise them protection^, by his- 
 assistance. 
 
 "And for those who profess their fear and : 
 love to the name of God, .that, seeing in great 
 measure for their sakes, and for righteousness' 
 sake, we have taken our lives in our hands to do 
 these things, they VTOuld be constant with the 
 Lord day and night on our behalf, that we may 
 obtain grace from him ; and seeing we have 
 made so often mention of his name, that we 
 may not do the least dishonour thereunto 
 which, indeed, would be our confusion, and a 
 stain to the whole profession of godliness we 
 beseech them also to live in all humility, meek- 
 ness, righteousness, and love one towards an- 
 other and towards all men, that so they may 
 put to silence the ignorance of the foolish who 
 falsely accuse them, and to know that the late 
 great and glorious dispensations, wherein the 
 Lord hath so wonderfully appeared in bringing 
 forth these things by the travail and blood of 
 his children, ought to oblige them so to walk in 
 the wisdom and love of Christ as may cause 
 others to honour their holy profession, because 
 they see Christ to be in them of a truth." 
 
 With these words the declaration closed : 
 "We do farther purpose, before it be long, 
 more particularly to show the grounds of our pro- 
 ceedmgs, and the reasons of this late great ac- 
 tion and change, which in this we have but hint- 
 ed at. And we do lastly declare, that all judges, 
 ; sheriffs, justices of the peace, mayors, baliffs, 
 j committees, and commissioners, and all other 
 civil officers and public ministers whatsoever, 
 within this Commonwealth or any part thereof, 
 do proceed in their respective places and offi- 
 ces ; and all persons whatsoever are to give 
 obedience to them, as fully as when the Parlia- 
 ment was sitting."* 
 
 After an unholy act, there is nothing so nat- 
 ural as holy profession. Through no gaps 
 have spiritual ebullitions of this sort vented 
 themselves so freely as thru'igh those of un- 
 righteousness. In the whole of this declara- 
 tion there is nothing tangible or substantial ; it 
 is profession throughout ; and in professing too 
 much, as these officers are made to do, they 
 : declare a conscious deficiency. What they al- 
 lege respecting the purpose of the statesmen 
 not to dissolve of their own accord, is flatly 
 disproved by the scenes of debate and council 
 , which preceded, and were even interrupted by, 
 the outrage of the 20th of April ; and this con- 
 i tradiction is indeed so fit/grant, that in a later 
 part of the declaration it is not nought to be 
 concealed, but an attempt is raudu to compro- 
 
 * Copied from the original edi'ior in the British Museum 
 published by Hills and BrewsU r, prnuers to the army.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 515 
 
 mise it by an assertion that when they dis- 
 covered that sudden change of the policy of the 
 statesmen, they had good reason to " appre- 
 hend" that its aim was not " any love to a new 
 representative, but the making use thereof to 
 recruit and so perpetuate themselves." The 
 disingenuous sophism carries its own refutation 
 with it. Not by its result in that sense was 
 such a measure to be tested, but by the just- 
 ness and fairness of its own provisions. Would 
 these officers have dared to publish a copy of 
 the bill in question 1 Cromwell had seized the 
 only one in existence (it had not been printed, 
 or even engrossed) on the day of the dissolu- 
 tion ; had carried it himself, under his cloak, to 
 his own house at Whitehall, and was never af- 
 terward known to refer to it in any way. An 
 attempt has already been made in this work, 
 however, to recover the substance of its main 
 provisions,* which there is every reason to be- 
 lieve, as I shall hereafter show, were tried and 
 found too popular in the issue of writs for cer- 
 tain Parliaments of the Protectorate. Too 
 popular for the purposes of despotism they 
 might be expected to have proved. They im- 
 bodied, in truth, a fair, a reasonable, a perfectly 
 honest appeal to the intelligent classes of the 
 people. The measure was worthy of such a 
 statesman as Sir Henry Vane, and was, in all 
 respects, what he might fearlessly have rested 
 his case upon with the people and with pos- 
 terity. The officers expose, unconsciously, 
 their weakness and insecurity alone, when they 
 confess that the result of such a measure 
 would have been to restore the statesmen to 
 power with additional strength for the realiza- 
 tion of their wise purposes. These hundred 
 and thirty men were at once to be re-enforced 
 by three hundred and thirty supporters, who 
 should speak, not their sentiments only, but 
 also those of the people ! 
 
 What else is said in this declaration and de- 
 fence 1 A few things, which may be well to 
 remember. It is declared that the new gov- 
 ernment had been specially called into exist- 
 ence in order to "settle the Commonwealth on 
 a foundation of justice and righteousness ;" 
 that the people of God, and his Spirit acting in 
 them, were to be the main agents of the work; 
 that a new interest of that kind had arisen, 
 which the nation was now to look to chiefly, 
 namely, that of the people of God in question, 
 or, in other words, the honest people, the hon- 
 est interest ; that, in accordance with this, per- 
 sons of that class, and of approved fidelity and 
 honesty, would instantly be called into the 
 government. In short, it is plainly sought to 
 be conveyed that the reign of saints was about 
 to begin ; and, to do them justice, some of the 
 officers believed in the delusion which the rest 
 thus skilfully practised. It is deserving of re- 
 mark, also, that the very statesmen who on 
 the day of dissolution had been covered with 
 foulest epithets of insult, are here in shame ad- 
 mitted to be persons of honour and integrity, 
 who had eminently appeared for God and the 
 public good both before and throughout the 
 war. Be it remembered, too, that the declara- 
 tion confesses the existence of considerable 
 sympathy with the last Parliament in the minds 
 of the people (though it would imply its having 
 
 *~See~Life of "Vane, p. 316, 317. 
 
 been unfairly obtained), and plainly dreads the 
 outbreak of more. It refers uneasily to divers 
 petitions from several counties for the Parlia- 
 ment's continuance, and finds it needful to im- 
 plore " all men," as they would not provoke the 
 Lord to their own destruction, to wait patient- 
 ly for such issue as He should bring forth, and 
 to follow their business meanwhile with peace- 
 able spirits. Finally, the authors of this dec- 
 laration, as if in betrayal of even their own 
 sense of the inadequacy of all the reasons they 
 had attempted for the late mischievous outrage, 
 declare it to be their purpose, "before it be 
 long," to show more particularly the grounds 
 of their proceedings, and the reasons of the 
 late great action and change. 
 
 And it was not long, it may be confessed a 
 day or two only had elapsed when a second 
 declaration appeared accordingly. It was brief, 
 however ; contained nothing that had not been 
 said in even greater detail in the first ;* was 
 merely a compromise for additional delay ; and 
 may fairly be taken to imply a farther doubt, on 
 the part of Cromwell and his officers,, of the 
 quiet or patience of the people in the new and 
 strange order of things. It was followed by a 
 third and more memorable declaration, which 
 appeared significantly in the name of "Oliver 
 Cromwell, captain-general," only. This was 
 published on the last day of April ; was com- 
 prised in about twenty lines ; and stated, that 
 whereas it had been promised, in the declara- 
 tion of the 22d, that persons of approved fidelity 
 and honesty should be called from the several parts 
 of the Commonwealth to the supreme authority, it 
 now appeared that some time must necessarily 
 elapse before such an assembly could be brought to- 
 gether. It was therefore judged proper, to pre- 
 vent the mischief and inconveniences which 
 might in the mean time arise to the Common- 
 wealth, that a council of state should be con- 
 stituted, to take care of and superintend the 
 peace, safety, and present management of pub- 
 lic affairs, f. 
 
 It is a very remarkable circumstance, how- 
 ever, as the reader will at once perceive, if he 
 glances a page or two back, that no such pledge 
 as this, which plainly implies a Parliament, had 
 been given in the declaration of the 22d. The 
 words there used were, that it was the inten- 
 tion "to call' to the government persons of ap- 
 proved fidelity and honesty." The only infer- 
 ence undoubtedly was that of an election of a 
 council of state, and most certainly not of any 
 " assembly'* from "several parts of the Com- 
 monwealth." Whence, then, had arisen this 
 so sudden change ? Whence could it possibly 
 have arisen, but from some paramount neces- 
 sity, as suddenly made apparent in the nation, 
 and which declared to Cromwell the expedien- 
 cy of rendering that military council of his 
 somewhat more palatable to the people, even 
 separated and distracted as they were, by a 
 certain show of civil countenance and concur- 
 rence 1 Such facts as these, and the consider- 
 ations they carry with them, are of singular 
 importance towards a due estimate of this mo- 
 mentous crisis. It was clearly by steps the 
 
 * It would be useless to quote it here, as there is not a 
 single new point in it. It may be found in Several Pro- 
 ceedings, No. 187, British Museum Library. 
 
 t Moderate Publisher, 131. Perfect Politician, 173 
 Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iii., p. 520.
 
 516 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 most gradual our Cromwell was mounting his 
 throne. From the body of the king, he had 
 stepped upon the ruins of the Parliament of 
 statesmen ; and from the carcass of a second 
 Parliament of saints, he proposed to vault into 
 the Protector's throne. 
 
 It is instructive to know that any instant 
 declaration of his despotic purpose, after his 
 action of the 20th of April, might still have 
 been fatal to the scheme. It argues much for 
 the germs of good that were in the people yet, 
 deluded as they had been by their enemies, 
 mistaken by their friends, and now on the eve 
 of a consummation of delusion and mistake at 
 once fatal and never to be redeemed. We see 
 that they had been accustomed to associate for 
 so many years their security and rights with 
 the great thought of Parliament, that its very 
 name was to prove a sufficient veil to hide from 
 them the darkest designs ; and a merest shad- 
 ow and pretence of its great significance to all 
 that was held valuable in England was to en- 
 able Cromwell to pass for something less than 
 the usurper his precipitate deed of the 20th was 
 calculated to declare him, and indeed to wipe 
 out no small or indifferent portion of the very 
 crime of that deed, forced on him, as it was, be- 
 fore his plans were ripe, by the intrepid and self- 
 possessed resolution of Vane and his friends. 
 Sympathies were thus to be divided between 
 the old and new Parliaments ; the expectation 
 of the new birth would greatly suspend any 
 violent workings of judgment against the old 
 murder ; the troublesome honesty of the few 
 officers who might happen to stick to the saints' 
 reign would be more easily dealt with ; and, 
 finally, explanations might be much better giv- 
 en to an assembly of that description, and 
 through them to the country, by some speech 
 which the captain-general could at once deliv- 
 er, on his own ground, supported by the pres- 
 tige of his name and influence, and without 
 control from any possible quarter, than any 
 such farther declaration as had been promised 
 from the military council could in any case 
 supply. 
 
 And in this way, it happened accordingly, 
 such explanations were actually given. They 
 shall be noticed in this place, because, though 
 they do not thus occur in order of time, the 
 subject to which they relate is under discussion 
 here, and could never be disposed of in any de- 
 gree fairly or conclusively without listening to 
 all that Cromwell himself, coolly and cautious- 
 ly meditating the matter, may at any time, or 
 under any circumstances, have either divulged 
 or sought to conceal respecting it. 
 
 After various striking allusions (which will 
 more properly find insertion in another place) 
 to the commencement of the war, following its 
 progress up to the settlement of the govern- 
 ment in "the name, at least, of a common- 
 wealth," and specially developing what he called 
 " God's mercies" in it, the captain-general thus 
 proceeded : " I shall now begin a little to re- 
 member you of the passages that have been 
 transacted since Worcester fight ; whence 
 coming with my fellow-officers and soldiers, we 
 expected and had some reasonable confidence 
 that our expectations should not be frustrated 
 that the authority that then was, having such 
 a history to look back unto, such a God that 
 
 appeared for them so eminently, so visibly, that 
 even our enemies many times confessed that 
 God himself was engaged against them, or they 
 should never have been brought so low, nor 
 disappointed in every undertaking for that 
 may be said, by the way, had we miscarried but 
 once, where had we been ? I say, we did think, 
 and had some reasonable confidence, that, com- 
 ing up then, the mercies that God had showed, 
 the expectations that were in the hearts of all 
 good men, would have prompted those that 
 were in authority to have done those good 
 things which might, by honest men, have been 
 judged a return fit for such a God and worthy 
 of such mercies, and, indeed, a discharge of 
 duty to those for whom all these mercies have 
 been showed, that is, the interest of the three 
 nations the true interest of the three nations. 
 
 " And if I should now labour to be particular 
 in enumerating some businesses that have been 
 transacted from that time till the dissolution 
 of the late Parliament, indeed I should be upon 
 a theme that would be very troublesome to my- 
 self; for I must say for myself and fellow-offi- 
 cers, we have rather desired and studied heal- 
 ing, than to rake into sores and look backward, 
 to render things in those colours that would 
 not be very well pleasing to any good eye to 
 look upon. Only this we must say, for our own 
 exoneration, and as thereby laying some found- 
 ation for the making evident the necessity and 
 duty that was incumbent upon us to make this last 
 great change, I think it will not be amiss to offer 
 a word or two in that, not taking pleasure to 
 rake into the business, were there not some 
 kind of necessity so to do. 
 
 "Indeed we may say, without commending 
 ourselves I mean myself, and those gentlemen 
 that have been engaged in the military affairs 
 that, upon our return, we came fully bent in 
 our hearts and thoughts to desire and use all 
 fair and lawful means we could to have had the 
 nation to reap the fruit of all that blood and 
 treasure that had been expended in this cause; 
 and we have had many desires and thirstings 
 in our spirits to find out ways and means where- 
 in we might any ways be instrumental to help 
 it forward; and we were very tender, for a 
 long time, so much as to petition, till August 
 last or thereabouts ; we never offered to peti- 
 tion ; but some of our then members, and oth- 
 ers, having good acquaintance and relation to 
 divers members of the Parliament, we did, from 
 time to time, solicit that which we thought (if 
 there had been nobody to prompt them, nobody 
 to call upon them) would have been listened to, 
 out of ingenuity and integrity in them, that had 
 opportunity to have answered our expectations ; 
 and truly, when we saw nothing would be done, 
 we did, as we thought, according to our duty, 
 remind them by a petition which petition I sup- 
 pose the most of you have seen which we de- 
 livered either in July or August last : what ef- 
 fect that had is likewise very well known. The 
 truth is, we had no return at all that was satis- 
 faction for us, but a few words given us. The 
 businesses petitioned for, most of them, we 
 were told, were under consideration ; and those 
 that were not had Very little or no considera- 
 tion at all." 
 
 Up to this point nothing is to be observed but 
 a vague repetition of the declaration of the of-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 517 
 
 ficers on the 22d of April. Some remarkable 
 passages follow, however, in which much that 
 is most worthy of attention will be found. 
 Pretences of the dissatisfaction of the people, 
 "in every corner of the land," are set forth ; 
 the meetings of the cabal of soldiers and mod- 
 erate or dishonest members are craftily descri- 
 bed as of authority from the Parliament ; the 
 principle of the bill prepared by Vane is ac- 
 knowledged to be just, though a want of " in- 
 tegrity and caution" is alleged against its de- 
 tails ; the absolute intention of the Parliament 
 to dissolve themselves is not sought to be de- 
 nied ; and the whole is wrapped up in a cloud 
 of words, implying communications with " the 
 Lord," which is certainly well adapted to mys- 
 tify whatever glimmerings or professions of 
 substantial or honest meaning might, without 
 it, have hoped to settle upon the minds of the 
 assembly. It is worth remark, moreover, that 
 the motives of reserving these explanations to 
 such an occasion is fairly avowed. 
 
 " Finding the people dissatisfied in every cor- 
 ner of the nation, and bringing home to our doors 
 the non-performance of those things that had 
 beea promised, and were of due to be perform- 
 ed, we did think ourselves concerned ; we en- 
 deavoured, as became honest men, to keep up 
 the reputation of honest men in the world, and 
 therefore we had, divers times, endeavoured to 
 obtain a meeting with divers members of Par- 
 liament ; and truly we did not begin this till 
 October last, and in those meetings did, in all 
 faithfulness and sincerity, beseech them that 
 they would be mindful of their duty to God and 
 man, and of the discharge of their trust to God 
 and man. I believe these gentlemen that are 
 many of them here can tell that we had, at the 
 least, ten or twelve meetings, most humbly begging 
 and beseeching them that, of their own accords, they 
 would da those good things that had been promised, 
 that so it might appear they did not do them by any 
 suggestion from the army, but of their own inge- 
 nuity, so tender were wt to preserve them in the 
 reputation and opinion of the people to the uttermost. 
 And having had many of those meetings, and 
 declaring plainly that the issue would be the 
 judgment and displeasure of God against them, 
 the dissatisfaction of the people, and the put- 
 ting things into a confusion, yet how little we 
 did prevail we well know, and, we believe, is 
 not unknown to you. At the last, when we 
 saw, indeed, that things would not be laid to 
 heart, we had a serious consideration among 
 ourselves what other way to have recourse 
 unto ; and when, indeed, we came to those close 
 considerations, they began to take the act of 
 the new representative to heart, and seemed 
 exceeding willing to put it on ; the which, had 
 it been done, or would it have been done with that 
 integrity, with that caution, that would have saved 
 this cause and the interest we have been so long en- 
 gaged in, there could nothing have happened to our 
 judgmcnti more welcome than that would have been ; 
 but finding plainly that the intendment of it was 
 not to give the people that right of choice, al- 
 though it had been but a ceding right, or the 
 seeming to give the people that choice, intend- 
 ed and designed to recruit the House, the better to 
 perpetuate themselves. And truly divers of us, 
 being spoken to to that end that we should give 
 way to it, a thing to which we had a perpetual 
 
 aversion, which we did abominate the thoughts 
 of, we always declared our judgments against 
 it, and our dissatisfaction ; but yet they would 
 not hear of a representative before it lay three 
 years before them, without proceeding with one 
 line considerably in it. They that could not 
 endure to hear of it, then, when we came to our 
 close considerations, then, instead of protracting, 
 they did make as much preposterous haste on the 
 other hand, and ran into that extremity ; and find- 
 ing that this spirit was not according to God, 
 and that the whole weight of this cause, which 
 must needs have been very dear unto us, who 
 have so often adventured our lives for it, and 
 we believe is so to you when we saw plainly 
 that there was not so much consideration how 
 to assert it or to provide security for it, and, 
 indeed, to cross those that they reckoned the 
 most troublesome people they had to deal with, 
 which was the army, which by this time was 
 sufficiently their displeasure when we saw 
 this, truly, that had power in our hands, to let 
 the business go to such an issue as this was to 
 throw back the cause into the hands of them we first 
 fought with, we came to this first conclusion 
 among ourselves, that if we had been fought 
 out of it, necessity would have taught us pa- 
 tience ; but to be taken from us so unworthily, 
 we should be rendered the worst people in the 
 world, and should become traitors both to God 
 and man ; and when God had laid this to our 
 hearts, and that we found the interest of his 
 people was grown cheap, and not laid to heart, 
 and, if we came to competition of things, the 
 cause even among themselves would even, al- 
 most in everything, go to the ground, this did 
 add more consideration to us, that there was a 
 duty incumbent upon us ; and truly I speak it 
 in the presence of some that are here, that were 
 at the close consultations I may say, as before 
 the Lord, the thinking of an act of violence was, 
 to us, worse than any engagement that ever we were 
 in yet, and worse to us than the utmost hazard of 
 our lives that could be ; so unwilling were we, so 
 tender were we, so desirous were we, if it were pos- 
 sible, that these men might have quit their places 
 with honour. And, truly, this I am the longer 
 upon, because it hath been, in our hearts and 
 consciences, our justification, and hath never yet 
 been imparted thorough to the nation; and we had 
 rather begin with you to do it than to have done 
 it before ; and do think, indeed, that these transac- 
 tions be more proper for a verbal communication 
 than to have put it into writing. I doubt, whoso- 
 ever had put it on would have been tempted to have 
 dipped his pen in anger and wrath; but affairs 
 being at this posture, that we saw plainly and 
 evidently, in some critical things, that the cause 
 of the people of God was a despised thing, 
 truly then we did believe that the hands of other 
 men must be the hands that must be trusted 
 with it ; and then we thought it high time for 
 us to look about us, and to be sensible of our 
 duty." 
 
 This extraordinary narrative, or "justifica- 
 tion," not until now " imparted thorough to the 
 nation," is afterward continued in a still more 
 singular, involved, and wellnigh incomprehen- 
 sible style. The entire passage demands quota- 
 tion, since it is a fair test of the essential char- 
 acter of the justification itself, that it was found 
 necessary to multiply into such a rhapsody of
 
 518 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 words the few bare pretences on which alone it 
 rests. How widely different from the state 
 documents under the hand of Cromwell that 
 have elsewhere been quoted in this work, when 
 truth clothes him in her own language, and 
 better sustained by that simple and homely in- 
 spiration within his soul, than by any tawdry 
 affectation of those superior judgments, or 
 "births of providence," which are never called 
 in but in aid of miserable pretence, or to prop 
 up shattered conviction his arguments are as 
 clear and bright to the eyes of men, as to their 
 minds they are solid, masterly, convincing ! 
 There is a memorable lesson to be read in this 
 contrast alone. 
 
 In continuation of the assertions already 
 given, Cromwell thus went on : " If I should 
 take up your time to tell you what instances 
 we have to satisfy our judgments and con- 
 sciences that these things were not vain ima- 
 ginations and things that were petitioned for, 
 but that fell within the compass of our certain 
 knowledge and sense should I repeat these 
 things to you, I should do that which I would 
 avoid, to rake into these things too much ; only 
 this : if anybody were in competition for any 
 place of real and signal trust, how hard and diffi- 
 cult a thing it was to get anything to be carried 
 without making parties without things, in- 
 deed, unworthy of a Parliament 1 And when 
 things must be carried so in a supreme author- 
 ity, indeed, I think it is not as it ought to be ; 
 but when it came to other trials, in that case 
 of Wales,* which I must confess, for my own 
 part, I set myself upon if I should inform 
 you what discountenance that business of the 
 poor people of God there had, who had watch- 
 ings over them, men like so many wolves ready to 
 catch, the lamb as soon as it was brought out into 
 the world! how signally they threw that busi- 
 ness under foot, to the discountenancing of the 
 honest people there, and to the countenancing of 
 the malignant party of this Commonwealth ! I 
 need but say it was so ; many have felt, by sad 
 experience, it was so, who will better impart 
 that business to you ; which, for myself and 
 fellow-officers, I think it was as perfect a trial 
 of our spirits as anything ; it being known to 
 many of us that God kindles a seed there, in- 
 deed, hardly to be paralleled since the primitive 
 times. I would this had been all the instan- 
 ces ; but finding which way their spirits went, 
 and finding that good was never intended to the 
 people of God I mean, ichen I say so, that large 
 comprehension of them under the several forms of 
 godliness in this nation when I saw that ten- 
 derness was forgotten to them all (though it 
 was very true that, by their hands and means, 
 through the blessing of God, they sat where 
 they did), and affairs, not to speak it boasting- 
 ly, had been instrumentally brought to that is- 
 sue they were brought to by the hands of those 
 
 * I cannot exactly make out the allusion here ; but it 
 seems to have been some complaint of too impartial an ad- 
 ministration of the law in Wales (impartiality, at this time, 
 is generally well defined by the expression of countenancing 
 the malignant party), since one of the first acts of Cromwell, 
 before the summoning of this saintly Parliament, had been 
 to suspend (by the affected authority of the new council of 
 state) four judges of South Wales Eltonhead, Norbury, 
 Powel, and Clerke, and to appoint two new judges, Corbet 
 and Hag-git, for that district. An extraordinary stretch of 
 power, indeed, in a government that did not even arrogate 
 to itself the shadow of a final or sufficient authority ! 
 
 poor creatures, we thought this an evil reqn> 
 tal. I will not say they were at the uttermost 
 pitch of reformation, although I could say that 
 one thing, the regulation of the law, so much 
 groaned under in that posture it now is in, 
 there were many words spoken for it, yet we 
 know many months together was not time 
 enough to pass over one word called incum- 
 brances ; I say, finding that this was the spirit 
 and complexion of them, that though these 
 were faults for which no man should have dared 
 to lift his hand, simply for faults and failings, 
 when yet we saw their intendment was to perpetu- 
 ate themselves and men of this spirit, for some 
 had it from their own mouths, from their own 
 designs, who could not endure to hear of being 
 dissolved this was a high breach of trust ; if 
 they had been a Parliament never violated, sit- 
 ting as free and as clear as ever any sat in 
 England, yet, if they would go about to perpet- 
 uate themselves, we did think this so great a 
 breach of trust as greater could not be. And 
 we did not go by guess in this ; and to be out 
 of doubt in it, we did (having that conference 
 among ourselves whereof we gave account) de- 
 sire once more, the night before the dissolution, 
 and it had been in our desires some two or 
 three days before, that we might speak with 
 some of the principal persons of the House, 
 that we might, with ingenuity, open our ears 
 to them, to the end we might be either convin- 
 ced of the ground of their principles and inten- 
 tions to the good of the nation, or, if we could 
 not be convinced, they would hear our offer or 
 expedient to prevent this mischief; and, in- 
 deed, we could not prevail for two or three days 
 till the night before the dissolution. There is a 
 touch of this in that our declaration : we had 
 often desired it. At that time vie attained it, 
 there were above twenty of them who were members, 
 not of the least consideration for interest and abil- 
 ity, with whom we desired to discourse those 
 things, and had discourse with them ; and it 
 pleased the gentlemen-officers ol the army to 
 desire me to offer their sense to them, and, in- 
 deed, it was shortly carried thus. We told 
 them that the reason of our desire to wait upon 
 them was, that we might know from them what 
 security lay in the way of their proceeding so 
 hastily with their representative, wherein they 
 had made a few qualifications, such as they 
 were ; and how the whole business should be 
 executed we had no account of; and we de- 
 sired them they would be pleased, and we 
 thought we had an interest in our lives, estates, 
 and families, as well as the worst people of the 
 nation, and that we might be bold to ask satis- 
 faction in that ; and if they did proceed in hon- 
 est ways, as might be safe to the nation, we 
 might acquiesce therein. When we pressed 
 them to give satisfaction in this, the answer 
 was made that nothing could be good to the nation 
 but the continuance of this Parliament. We won- 
 dered that we should have such a return ; we 
 said little to that ; but, seeing they would not 
 give us that which might satisfy us that their 
 way was honest and safe, they would give us 
 leave to make our objections. 
 
 " We did tell them that we thought that way 
 they were going in would be impracticable : we 
 could not tell them how it would be brought to 
 pass to send out an act of Parliament into the
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 519 
 
 country, to have qualifications in an act to be 
 the rules of electors and elected, and not to 
 know who should execute this. Desired to know 
 whether the next Parliament were not like to be all 
 Presbyters 1 Whether those qualifications would 
 hinder them, or neuters! And though it be 
 our desire to value and esteem persons of that 
 judgment, only they having been as we know, 
 having deserted this cause and interest upon 
 the king's account, and upon that closure be- 
 tween them and the neighbour nation, we do 
 think we must profess we had as good have de- 
 livered up our cause into the hands of any as 
 into the hands of interested and biased men ; 
 for it is one thing to live friendly and brotherly, to 
 bear with, and love, a person of another judgment 
 in religion, another thing to have any so far set 
 into the saddle upon that account as it should be in 
 them to have all the rest of their brethren at mercy. 
 Having had this discourse, making these ob- 
 jections of bringing in neuters, or such as 
 should impose upon their brethren, or such as 
 had given testimony to the king's party, and 
 objecting to the danger of it in drawing the 
 concourse of all people to arraign every indi- 
 vidual person which indeed did fall obviously 
 in, and the issue would certainly have been the 
 putting it into the hands of men that had little 
 affection to this cause, the answer again was 
 made, and it was confessed by some, that these 
 objections did lie ; but answer teas made by a 
 very eminent person, at the same time as before, 
 that nothing would save the nation but the contin- 
 uance of this Parliament. This being so, we 
 humbly proposed an expedient of ours, which 
 was, indeed, to desire, that the government be- 
 ing in that condition it was, and things being 
 under so much ill sense abroad, and so likely to 
 come to confusion in every respect if it went 
 on so we desired they would devolve the trust 
 over to persons of honour and integrity, that were 
 well known, men well affected to religion and the 
 interest of the nation, which we told them, and 
 was confessed, had been no new thing when 
 these nations had been under the like hurly- 
 burly and distractions ; and it was confessed by 
 them it had been no new thing. We had been 
 at labour to get precedents to convince them 
 of it, and we told them these things we offer- 
 ed out of that deep sense we had of the good 
 of the nation and the cause of Christ ; and 
 were answered to that, nothing would save the 
 nation but the continuance of the Parliament, 
 although they would not say they would perpetuate 
 it, at that time least of all. 
 
 " But, finding their endeavours did directly 
 tend to it, they gave us this answer, that the 
 things we had offered were of a tender and 
 very weighty consideration. They did make ob- 
 jections how we should raise money, and some 
 other objections. We told them that that we 
 offered as an expedient, because we thought 
 better than that for which no reason was or 
 thought would be given. We desired them to 
 lay the thing seriously to heart. They told us 
 they would take consideration of these things 
 till the morning that they would sleep upon 
 them ; and I think tha there was scarce any 
 day that there sat above fifty, or fifty-two, or 
 fifty-three. At the parting, two or three of the 
 chief ones the very chiefest of them did tell us 
 that they would endeavour the -suspending the pro- 
 
 ceedings of the representative the next day till they 
 had a further conference; and we did acquiesce, 
 and had hope, if our expedient would take up 
 a loving debate, the next day we should have 
 some such issue of our debate as would have 
 given a satisfaction to all. They went away 
 late at night ; and the next morning, we consider- 
 ing how to order that which we had to offer to them, 
 when they were to meet in the evening, word was 
 brought they were proceeding with a representative 
 with all the eagerness they could : we did not be- 
 lieve persons of such quality could do it. A second 
 and third messenger told us they had almost fin- 
 ished it, and had brought it to that issue with that 
 haste that had never been known before ; leaving 
 out the things that did necessarily relate to due 
 qualifications, as we have heard since ; resolved to 
 make it a paper bill, not to engross it, that they 
 might make the quicker despatch of it, thtis to have 
 thrown all the liberties of the nation into the hands 
 that never bled for it : upon this account, we thought 
 it our duty nol to suffer it, and upon this the House 
 was dissolved."* 
 
 In all this fanfaronade of words, it appears 
 to me that there are only two substantial state- 
 ments worthy of special remark beyond those 
 adverted to already. The first is, that a dispo- 
 sition against the farther existence of the Par- 
 liament had been manifested in u every corner 
 of the land ;" and the second, that, if they had 
 been permitted to pass the act of self-dissolu- 
 tion, its immediate result would have been to 
 " throw all the liberties of the nation into the 
 hands that never had hied for it," by return- 
 ing a majority of Presbyterians to recruit the 
 forces of the old members. In other words, 
 the statesmen were to be recruited by the help 
 of their bitterest foes. The lion was to lie 
 down with the fox. The Independent and the 
 Presbyterian were to rush into sudden embrace. 
 The thick, the sordid, and uahealthy atmosphere 
 of arrogant and intolerant bigotry was to melt 
 suddenly into the clear and generous air of per- 
 fect religious freedom. Ridiculous as such pre- 
 tences are for everything that is devoid of 
 truth must, some time or other, become a thing 
 ridiculous history has not chosen to reject 
 them. 
 
 Both are sanctioned, for example, by one of 
 the ablest, and (taking all things into consider- 
 ation) the most impartial of modern historians. 
 Doctor Lingard tells us that this Long Parlia- 
 ment " fell without a struggle or a groan, un- 
 pitied and uaregretted.f The members slunk 
 
 * I have copied these passages from the original edition, 
 which is thus entitled : "The Lord-general's Speech, de- 
 livered in the council-chamber upon the 4th of July, 1653, 
 to the persons then assembled and intrusted with the su- 
 preme authority of the nation. This is a true copy, pub- 
 lished for information and to prevent mistakes." It has the 
 date of 1654. 
 
 t Mr. Hallam has done still greater injustice (in Const. 
 Hist., vol. ii., p. 324-5) to these celebrated men. "The 
 Parliament," he takes occasion to say, in one passage, " in 
 its present wreck, contained few leaders of superior ability." 
 Why, it contained Vane, Scot, Algernon Sidney, Plenties, 
 Blake, Ludlow, Brndshaw, Marten, Harrington, Neville, 
 Whitelocke, Hazlerig ! all the leaders that had ever sat in 
 it to the advantage of their own fame or of the public good, 
 save the great dead, Pym and Hampden. Cromwell, too, 
 Oliver St. John, and the chief of the army officers, were 
 member* still, though traitors. If Mr. Hallam would imply 
 that the Long Parliament lost its character and virtue when 
 it lost the crafty Hyde, the venomous Prynne, the mean 
 and arrogant Hollis, the nervous and fearful Rudyard, and 
 all those other men whose names have happily perished, 
 but whose votes declare then of the same poor aud pitiful
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 away to their homes, where they sought by sub- 
 mission to purchase the forbearance of their 
 new master ; and their partisans, if partisans 
 they had, reserved themselves in silence for a 
 day of retribution, which came not before Crom- 
 well slept in his grave." It is a pity that in 
 such a history should be copied the mere ribald 
 slander of the time. " The news of this Luci- 
 ferian fall," says a contemporary libel, " was 
 quietly spread throughout the city, and from 
 thence into the kingdom, being related and re- 
 ceived with all imaginable gladness, while the 
 members slunk away, muttering to themselves 
 the affront they had received, and laying their 
 heads together how to retrieve themselves ; for 
 loth they were to suffer this violence, or ac- 
 knowledge their dissolution, which they would by 
 no means hear of. But, whatever they fancied 
 to the contrary, raving at this boldness and au- 
 daciousness of their servant, as they styled Crom- 
 well, he minded it not, but went on in his work." 
 The manifest contradiction in all this need not 
 be remarked upon. Their righteous and brave 
 denial of the legality of the act that had dis- 
 persed them is not compatible with the coward- 
 ly slinking away ; the alleged submission to 
 their new master is flatly disproved by their 
 open and loud " raving" against the audacious- 
 ness and boldness of their old servant. What, 
 then, was the simple fact 1 In what regard did 
 their memory really stand, after their dispersion, 
 with the people they had served so well 1 
 
 Cromwell has charged upon them the popu- 
 lar hatred and indifference, and a desire to 
 strengthen themselves by the help of Presbyte- 
 rianism. It most fortunately happens that an 
 answer on both these charges is left to us, from 
 the lips of one who sealed his truthfulness with 
 his blood. Thomas Scot, who was Vane's 
 equal in virtue, and only second to him in in- 
 tellect, and whose last utterance, before he sur- 
 rendered his neck to the executioner, was a 
 blessing to God that he had "devoted his life 
 to a cause that was not to be repented of,"* 
 spoke these words in the first Parliament of 
 Richard Cromwell.t Mr. Bulkeley, a fierce 
 Presbyterian, had repeated Cromwell's first 
 charge of the popular indifference, characteri- 
 zing the government of the Commonwealth as 
 " a monster" that was suddenly dissolved, 
 " without either coroner or inquest upon it ;" 
 when Scot answered him thus : " That gentle- 
 man says the Parliament went out, and no com- 
 plaining in the streets, no inquiry after them. 
 That is according to the company men keep. Men 
 suit the letter to their lips. It is as men con- 
 verse. I never met a zealous asserter of that 
 cause, but lamented it, to see faith broken, and 
 somewhat else. I will say no more. It was 
 as much bewailed as the instrument of government. 
 A petition, the day after the Parliament was 
 
 stamp, then only what he says is intelligible, and will re- 
 ceive the consideration due to it. He proceeds to call the 
 statesmen " the creatures of military force :" an ill-consid- 
 ered and unwise phrase to apply to the men who alone gave 
 efficacy to that force, who were its authors to all good 
 ends, who pointed the road to victory, and who consolidated 
 its advantages when gained. " Their claim to a legal au- 
 thority," Mr. Ilallum continues, "and to the name of repre- 
 sentatives of a people who rejected and abhorred them, was 
 perfectly impudent." Of the probable truth of such a deci- 
 sive assertion, founded as it is on pure surmise, the reader 
 will perhaps receive some means of judging, if he reads a 
 few pages onward. * See Life jf Marten, p. 386. 
 
 t Reported in the Diary of Thomas Burtou. 
 
 dissolved, from forty of the chief officers, the al- 
 dermen of the city of London, and many godly 
 divines (except the rigid Presbyters, too well wish- 
 ers to Mr. Love's treason), besought to have that 
 Parliament restored. But the Protector, being 
 resolved to carry on his work, threatened, terri- 
 fied, and displaced them : and who would, for such 
 a shattered thing, venture their all ? You have 
 had five changes this is the fifth ; and yet the 
 people have not rest." 
 
 Rest rest : there is much in that word 
 which is significant at all times ; nor, since the 
 world began, have greater sacrifices been made 
 for freedom by the conscientious and the bold, 
 than have been made for rest by even the vir- 
 tuous and the well-intentioned. It is scarcely 
 unnatural that it should be so. Political strug- 
 gles of a great character are for the future rath- 
 er than the present, as the petty squabbles of 
 party politicians are for the present and never 
 for the future. The people who have suffered 
 most in these great struggles are precisely those 
 who reap the least, and who have the fewest 
 resources of imagination against a failure in the 
 realities. They have fought and bled, they have 
 toiled, suffered, been plundered and taxed, and, 
 after twelve years of the horrors of a war of 
 brother against brother, and homestead against 
 homestead, they discover that they are, in all 
 worldly advantages, to appearance where they 
 first began. They know not of the seed they 
 have planted for posterity ; they see not long 
 lines of their children's children better and hap- 
 pier for them ; they know only that bread is as 
 dear as it was, that the state has its exactions 
 still ; and that, though they have won the free- 
 dom to follow the dictates of their conscience, 
 and worship their Maker as they please though 
 they have pushed from before their daily path 
 the public robber, the rack, the pestilential jail 
 yet life is not to them less laden with toil, 
 or redeemed by comfort or rest. The wages 
 of the earth have become even more niggard 
 than they were by the claims of these long 
 years of contest the tithe for their fair sup- 
 port less freely yielded from its " cold, hard 
 bosom." The enthusiasm which first sustain- 
 ed them, too, has gradually worn itself down ; 
 and they are suddenly made sensible of wretch- 
 ed discords and divisions, where they should 
 still have been able to recognise a bond of 
 union, one and indivisible, between every act- 
 or or sufferer in the cause. These things should 
 be remembered in judging what is called the 
 fickleness of the people, and then it may be 
 freely and fairly admitted that they did not sup- 
 port the statesmen by all the means that were 
 in their power. In other words, they made no 
 demonstration for them. They could scarcely 
 be expected to know the importance of all that 
 was at stake. It is not till we have retired to 
 a distance from the actual scene of such a po- 
 litical conflict as this was, that the men and 
 things engaged in it assume their due propor- 
 tions. Not till then is the good that has been 
 bravely done estimated in connexion with the 
 difficulty of doing it, or the tyranny that has 
 been strangely suffered in connexion with the 
 plausible pretences it was based on. 
 
 And in speaking of the people in these terms, 
 let me be understood to include, not only the 
 lower orders of men in the labouring districts
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 521 
 
 and the towns, but the smaller tenants and 
 householders, the industrious workmen, the 
 penniless students, even the Levellers and the 
 Diggers* all who had borne arms or supplied 
 materials, or in action or patience suffered, in 
 behalf of the Parliament against the king. To 
 all of these, in a greater or less degree, it must 
 have occurred to undergo what I have descri- 
 bed. The enthusiast saw too great a pref- 
 erence for civil over spiritual freedom ; there 
 was too much protection for property to please 
 the Leveller ; too great a latitude for con- 
 science to please the bigot ; and, of all to be 
 most regretted, an unwise dread of the power 
 and purposes of the bad, had worked to the dis- 
 advantage and dissatisfaction of the good and 
 well-intentioned. None could have estimated 
 rightly the position of the statesmen during the 
 difficulties that beset the Commonwealth in its 
 early years ; few could be other than unjust in 
 a natural resentment of the continued reser- 
 vation of those rights of citizenship and priv- 
 ileges of representation which had been won 
 as worthily as they seemed to be undeservedly 
 withheld. And hence it was. that when a new 
 party had risen, with these words ever on their 
 lips, and -with still loftier promises there for 
 sudden and sublime realization, it was found 
 too late to redress the errors of the old. The 
 force of habit in those sections of the people I 
 have named, who still continued to bear arms 
 under Cromwell's command, induced an in- 
 stinctive reverence for his movements strong- 
 er than any that could be set up against them. 
 His voice was the trumpet that preceded vic- 
 tory to them, and to follow any other would be 
 to challenge disaster or defeat. Others there 
 were among those classes, some Anabaptists, 
 some Fifth Monarchy-men, some Levellers 
 even,t in sincere delusion as to the wonderful 
 
 things to be done in the reign of sanctity upon 
 earth, in the person of Harrison and his friends. 
 
 * These Diggers (not a very large, but a very curious 
 sect, and very expressive of the hope and the despondency 
 of this strange and memorable time) were something in the 
 nature of the Spcncean philosophers, who made themselves 
 notorious some twenty years since. The names of two of 
 their leaders have come down to us, Gerrard Winstanley 
 and Everard. Winstanley wrote numerous tracts in sup- 
 port of their tenets ; and from these we learn that their 
 principles were, that God gave all things in common, and 
 that every man has a right to the fruits of the earth. They 
 professed an intention not to disturb any one in his posses- 
 sions ; but they asserted that the time was come when the 
 whole world would shortly espouse their principles. They 
 made their appearance at St. George's Hill, near Walton, 
 in Surry, Winstanley and Everard being at their head, with 
 about thirty followers ; and, resorting to an open common, 
 they began to dig the earth, and deposite in it seeds and 
 roots. They were not. however, permitted to proceed in 
 this very innocent and primitive occupation ; for, alas ! 
 Fairfax sent two troops of horse to disperse them, who de- 
 stroyed some of their implements and tools, and conducted 
 a few of the more obstinate and petulant of themselves to 
 prison. See Whitelocke, Pamphlets by Winstanley. Cause 
 of the Diggers, $. Godwin, vol. ii., p. 82. 
 
 t There were undoubtedly some sincere men among the 
 Levellers, though they were more rare in this than in any 
 other section or party of the time. Nearly all of them par- 
 took, in a greater or less degree, of the violent, self-willed, 
 and intemperate character of their leader, John Lilburne, 
 who was a Cobbett without his intellect : altogether a most 
 rain, vulgar, and irrational person. Confusion was his 
 panacea for everything. At once the most credulous and 
 the most suspicious of men, he fancied that all the honesty 
 left in the world had suddenly taken up its abode in the 
 breast of John Lilburne, and his atrocious and abominable 
 detraction was accordingly poured out in never-ceasing suc- 
 cession upon every party in the state. He could live only 
 in the heated and disordered air of abuse and quarrel. 
 Even stronger than his self-love was his love of this, and 
 hence arose that famous saying of the great wit of the Com- 
 monwealth, that, if only he were left upon the earth, John 
 
 Uuu 
 
 would quarrel with Lilburne, and Lilburne with John. 
 Every act of kindness shown him in his life (see the Memoir 
 of Marten, p. 358 and p. 380) was only the signal for a 
 pouring down of fresh abuse on the indiscreet generosity 
 that performed it. Even when he had received compensa- 
 tion for his sufferings in the Star Chjmber, he at once 
 turned fiercely round on the men who gave it, as if, in ta- 
 king from him the privilege of being considered an ill-used 
 person, they had abridged his means of livelihood. This 
 was the style of his conduct throughout his life. His 
 whole being was made up of violent, selfish passions, the 
 nature of which, and, indeed, the general temperament of 
 the man, may be gathered from a short passage in his pam- 
 phlet called " A Just Reproof to Haberdashers' Hall," oue 
 of those thousand paper trumpets through which he was 
 continually pouring the bad breath of his ridiculous self- 
 conceit. He had some supposed claim on Hazlerig for 
 money, and thus (in 1651) refers to it. " Meeting Mr. Pear- 
 son at the' George, in Channel Row, I told him, if his mas- 
 ter thought to keep my money while I sued him at law, it 
 was a vain thought ; for he was too great for me to encoun- 
 ter him that way, and I had neither money nor time to 
 spend upon him : therefore I entreated him, as he loved Sir 
 Arthur's life and welfare, to say to him that I wore a good 
 dagger by my right side, and a good rapier by my left side, 
 and if within eight days he did not send me all my money, 
 and give me some rational satisfaction, let him look to him- 
 self; for after that day, wherever I met him, I would pay 
 him for all together, though I were cut into a thousand 
 pieces on the very place." That such a man could have 
 any sincere political object in view is not for an instant con- 
 ceivable. He merely sought about, in some day's new fit 
 of wilful discontent, for mean jealousies and violent passions 
 among the lower sections of the army, and had little diffi- 
 culty in finding them. The mutinies which followed, and 
 which, though always promptly suppressed, have given the 
 Levellers (for such was the name assumed by these Lil- 
 burne factions, though they disclaimed any levelling designs 
 on property) a place in history, had never any defined ob- 
 ject, unless the promotion of disorder and confusion can be 
 so designated. It is quite impossible to discern at any time 
 a steady purpose in Lilburne, save that at all times he would 
 seem to have looked with a keen eye to his own profit and 
 loss. It is equally clear that his intemperate followers de- 
 rived all their importance from the great stock of which 
 they were the paltry offshoot, or, rather, refuse the army, 
 on the theretofore unsullied brightness of whose military 
 discipline they cast an unexpected stain. Still, as in every 
 movement of this kind during a period of general unrest, 
 honest men were deluded into their body, and to these allu- 
 sion is made in the text. So far as the object of such can 
 j be ascertained, through the extraordinary clouds of selfish 
 i pretension that envelop all Lilburne's writings, it would 
 : seem to have been much of the same sort as that of Harri- 
 I son and the Anabaptists, or Fifth Monarchy-men, making 
 I allowance for the religious peculiarities of the latter. They 
 demanded annual Parliaments, and a sort of universal rep- 
 1 resentation of the " universal elect" among the people. 
 1 They held, not only that Christianity forbade the rule of a 
 ! single person on the earth, but that it was irreconcilable 
 with many civil institutions which Vane and the statesmen 
 considered to be essential to the liberties of England. They 
 desired an almost entire alteration of the common law, and 
 , were clamorous for the total abolition of tithes, and, indeed, 
 i of all regular stipends to the ministry. The chief men 
 | among the more honest were Thomas Prince, Richard Over- 
 ton, and William Walwyn ; and it is a very curious and 
 ! memorable circumstance, that in certain writings of the last 
 two men, which are to be found among the pamphlets of the 
 ', time, decided avowals ol disbelief (almost the only instances 
 1 of such, perhaps, in these pious days) are to be found. 
 ! Overton, for example, wrote a tract, entitled " Man's Mor- 
 tality ; or, a Treatise proving Man (quatenus animal ration- 
 ale) a Compound wholly Mortal." His proofs are drawn 
 from reason and Scripture ; and his ostensible doctrine is, 
 that "condemnation in hell is not properly, but remotely, 
 the reward of Adam's fall, and is the wages of infidelity, or 
 unbelief in Christ, as salvation is of belief;" and that the 
 whole human species, to whom the Christian faith has not 
 been proposed, are merely mortal. But, as the purpose of 
 his entire treatise is to establish man's mortality, and the 
 immortality of those to whom Christianity is proposed is 
 dismissed in a few lines, it is not unreasonable to conclude, 
 with a writer who notices the subject, that this is intro- 
 duced only as a palliation, to take off the general odium to 
 which the author might otherwise have been exposed, and 
 also to retain the particular influence with those Levellers 
 and mutineers which to an infidel or scoffer would have 
 been indignantly refused. Walwyn did not publish his pe- 
 culiar sentiments himself, but they were placarded for him 
 in " Walwyn's Wiles, or the Manifestators Manifested."
 
 522 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Moderate Royalists there were, too, even in 
 these popular divisions, who had gone out upon 
 the question of a limited monarchy ; who had re- 
 mained constant to that throughout ; and who, 
 in fact, turned the scale of the entire popula- 
 tion in decided favour of a monarchical sys- 
 tem. Then there were the indifferent, and the 
 restless, and the conceited men, who were in 
 favour of themselves chiefly, and the five senses 
 that composed them, and to whom anything 
 new, which could gratify one of these, had a 
 merit at once admirable and indescribable. For 
 all such, five years of a commonwealth were 
 quite enough of one thing. These are the men 
 that play the fashionable host in politics ; who 
 " slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 
 but with his arms outstretched, as he would 
 fly, grasps in the comer."* Finally and be 
 they still and ever remembered with peculiar 
 honour, as they were remembered by Vane 
 when he addressed the crowd who surrounded 
 his scaffold, in words which all England, as 
 England then was, should have blushed to hear 
 there were men who, " whatever defections 
 did happen by apostates, hypocrites, and time- 
 serving worldlings, continued firm, sincere, 
 and chaste unto the cause to the last, and loved 
 it better than their very lives." Of such were 
 the men just named by Scot, as threatened, 
 terrified, displaced, oppressed by Cromwell, and 
 trampled on by his creatures, for their love to 
 that "shattered thing," the self-governed Com- 
 monwealth of England. 
 
 That the effect produced on all these sec- 
 tions of men by the forcible dispersion of the 
 Long Parliament and the government of states- 
 men was most fatal and disastrous, there can- 
 not be a reasonable doubt. The bond which 
 had hitherto held such various elements to- 
 gether was by that act violently broken. Men 
 might disagree on every variety of minor mat- 
 ter which did not compromise the virtue and 
 good faith of the leaders under whose banners 
 they had fought, and by whose example they 
 had conquered. So long as these remained 
 entire, a great common agreement, for the sake 
 of a cause in which all had already staked so 
 much in common, could neither be hopeless, 
 nor even distant far. But this potent charm 
 once gone, all else went with it. There lay 
 the crime of Cromwell, still more than in his 
 disregard of truth, or of his own so solemnly 
 sworn assertions. Whatever for twelve mem- 
 orable years had been thought sacred, he made 
 profane ; whatever men had begun to think 
 most durable, he scattered to the winds. While 
 Vane was struggling to seize advantage of the 
 dawn of a better day, which had more or less 
 arisen to the minds of all his countrymen, and 
 use it to the elevation of each in the social 
 and intellectual scale, Cromwell only worked 
 in the night that still hung about the dawn, and, 
 by studying old prejudices and habits not yet 
 past, sought first to elevate himself upon a 
 
 * Of these, it is needless to say, after the preceding 
 note, John Lilburne is the great and most restless type. 
 Baffled and banished, in, the plenitude of the power of the 
 Parliament, he opened a negotiation in Holland with Charles 
 Stuart; in the midst of it, suddenly made aware of the 
 dispersion of the Parliament by Cromwell, he reappeared 
 in London to attempt conciliation with the usurper. It was 
 very vain, as we shall see, but not the less significant of 
 the man and his faction. 
 
 ! throne. What Vane proposed to have done, in 
 I general amelioration of the minds and habits 
 of Englishmen, was flung back for an indefinite 
 and almost hopeless time by the act of the 20th 
 of April ; what Cromwell resolved to achieve 
 for himself was half accomplished by that act 
 alone. Let this determine its character. The 
 people throughout the country saw suddenly 
 the most venerated and illustrious names in the 
 land covered with ribaldry and insult; and they 
 beheld the grave assembly which had built up 
 the Commonwealth, which had scourged its 
 enemies into the dust, and held its false friends 
 cowering and crouching down that assembly, 
 so learned, so valiant, and so powerful, under 
 which the English people at least enjoyed what 
 liberties they then had, and from which they 
 would have patiently waited still, in expecta- 
 tion of new and unknown blessings they be- 
 held it one day receiving homage, in the name 
 of a free people, from ambassadors of princes, 
 and in the next they saw it hooted out of its 
 place, in the name of jugglers, drunkards, 
 adulterers, and cheats, by the muskets of its 
 own servant. The moral effect of that deed 
 was never to be recalled. Honour was a pre- 
 tence, piety a pretence, and the substance of all 
 things good evaporated into air. It would oc- 
 cur to few among the ordinary masses of the 
 people to ask the reason or the justice. Enough 
 for them that what had been was no more. It 
 would least of all occur to the state of society 
 or of parties I have attempted to describe, to 
 cling for support, in this common want or com- 
 mon sorrow, to faith in the still superior virtue 
 of the cause, under the very name and pretence 
 of which these strange outrages had been com- 
 mitted. It had been tried already, and found 
 wanting. It had held together for upward of 
 twelve years, and through every kind of doubt, 
 defection, toil, dread, and triumph, the soul of 
 the Parliament and the struggle, bound as with 
 links of adament ; and now, in one little in- 
 stant, these had broken like a rope of sand. 
 Nothing of a permanent or substantial charac- 
 ter could ever hope thereafter to belong to it. 
 It no longer implied a solid truth, against which 
 the giddy factions, the minor differences and 
 divisions of the hour, might dash themselves in 
 vain ; it held forth nothing now that was de- 
 fined or certain ; there was never more to be 
 included in it a general and common object 
 which all might pursue ; no longer a quiet ha- 
 ven which, through what different passages 
 soever, all could still hope to reach ; it was 
 resolved suddenly into no more than one of 
 the indifferent chances or casualties of the 
 world, and had become a trick for the luckiest 
 man to make the most of, a stake for the best 
 gambler to win. And meanwhile, in the vari- 
 ous uncertainties of the present, what offered 
 most fairly would be of course most greedily 
 taken ; whatever looked like rest, or held up 
 convenience of any kind, would doubtless gath- 
 er round it for the time the parties who were 
 capable of greatest zeal, and had the largest 
 amount of activity in them. Cromwell and his 
 reign of saints were worth a trial. 
 
 Such, then, with the masses of the people at 
 large, was the position of the statesmen after 
 the action of the 20th of April, 1653. In the 
 midst of neither hatred nor contempt they fell,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 523 
 
 but in general wonder, some indifference, and 
 some sorrow. They did not slink away to 
 their homes, nor by undignified submission pur- 
 chase safety or forbearance. They were con- 
 tent to retire, indeed, without empty brawling, 
 or a vain show of braggart passion. They had 
 left deeds behind them which, though but im- 
 perfectly developed as yet in direct action upon 
 the personal comforts of the people, were the 
 immortal seed of all the blessings of liberty, 
 personal and political, which that people have 
 since enjoyed. With such deeds on record, 
 never to be denied or undone, they required no 
 other defence ; and, wisely satisfied to wait till 
 the bubble of this saint's reign had burst, and 
 the apples of its fools' paradise had turned to 
 their inevitable and most bitter sour, they of- 
 fered none. 
 
 They found generous defenders, notwith- 
 standing, whose voices ought to have utterance 
 here, in connexion with the actions they com- 
 memorated. For it is surely just that, by a 
 fair exhibition of the case of this dispersed and 
 insulted body of statesmen, the claims of Crom- 
 well and the Protectorate should be tested and 
 understood. Necessity was a favourite plea 
 with the partisans of Cromwell ; it can thus 
 only be made apparent whether that necessity 
 existed. Granting that the government of the 
 Long Parliament was as anomalous and un- 
 authorized as that of the Protectorate confess- 
 edly was, the important question remains of the 
 relative superiority of either in regard to bene- 
 fits conferred, or proposed to be conferred, upon 
 the people governed. This is a question which 
 admits of one mode of solution only. The 
 measures that were in either case pursued, 
 recommended, or adopted, must be impartially 
 judged together by their tendencies and results. 
 A present glance at the past rule of the states- 
 men will be the only fair and sufficient light 
 that can guide us through the Protectorate. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson thus generally describes 
 the condition of the Commonwealth on the eve 
 of its fall. The whole passage is worth con- 
 sideration, though it includes some points de- 
 scribed already. It is the evidence of as gentle 
 and brave-hearted a woman as ever suffered 
 for truth or love. " The Parliament," she says, 
 " had now, by the blessing of God, restored the 
 Commonwealth to such a happy, rich, and plenti- 
 ful condition as it was not so flourishing before 
 the war ; and although the taxes that were paid 
 were great, yet the people were rich and able to pay 
 them: they (the Parliament) were in a way of 
 paying all the soldiers' arrears, had some hundred 
 thousand pounds in their purses, and were free 
 from enemies in arms within and without, except the 
 Dutch, whom they had beaten, and brought to seek 
 peace upon honourable terms to the English ; and 
 now they thought it was time to sweeten the peo- 
 ple, and deliver them from their burdens. This 
 could not be but by disbanding the unnecessary 
 officers and soldiers ; and, when things were 
 thus settled, they had prepared a bill to put a 
 period to their own sitting, and provide for new 
 successors. But when the great officers un- 
 derstood that they were to resign their honours, 
 and no more triumph in the burdens of the 
 people, they easily induced the inferior officers 
 and soldiers to set up for themselves with 
 them ; and, while these things were passing, 
 
 Cromwell, with an armed force, assisted by 
 Lambert and Harrison, came into the House 
 and dissolved the Parliament, pulling out the 
 members, foaming and raging, and calling them 
 undeserved and base names ; and when the 
 speaker refused to come out of his chair, Har- 
 rison plucked him out. These gentlemen, hav- 
 ing done this, took to themselves the adminis- 
 tration of all things : and a few slaves of the 
 House consulted with them, and would have truck- 
 led under them, but not many. Meanwhile they 
 and their soldiers could no way palliate their 
 rebellion but by making false criminations of the 
 Parliament-men, as that they meant to perpetu- 
 ate themselves in honour and office, that they 
 had gotten vast estates, and perverted justice 
 for gain, and were imposing upon men for con- 
 science, and a thousand such like things, which 
 time manifested to be false, and truth retorted all 
 upon themselves that they had injuriously cast at 
 the others."* Mrs. Hutchinson has here con- 
 siderably underrated, as will be shown here- 
 after, the financial resources of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Edmund Ludlow, a witness whose interest in 
 the matters he describes, great as it was, was 
 not too great for his honesty, and whose au- 
 thority has been sanctioned by even his bitter- 
 est adversaries, thus, at a distance from the 
 scene of the dispersion of his old associates, 
 described and mourned them. A Parliament, 
 he calls them, " that had performed such great 
 things, having subdued their enemies in England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland ; established the liberty of 
 the people ; reduced the kingdom of Portugal to 
 such terms as they thought Jit to grant ; maintain- 
 ed a war against the Dutch with that conduct and 
 success that it seemed now drawing to a happy 
 conclusion ; recovered our reputation at sea ; secured 
 our trade ; and provided a powerful fleet for the 
 service of the nation : and however the malice of 
 their enemies may endeavour to deprive them 
 of the glory which they justly merited, yet it 
 will appear to unprejudiced posterity that they 
 were a disinterested and impartial Parliament, 
 who, though they had the sovereign power of 
 the three nations in their hands for the space 
 of ten or twelve years, did not in all that time 
 give away among themselves so much as their 
 forces spent in three months no, not so much as 
 they spent in one from the time that the Par- 
 liament consisted hut of one House, and the 
 government was formed into a common wealth. 
 To which ought to be added, that after so many 
 toils and hazards, so much trouble and loss for 
 the public good, they were not unwilling to put 
 an end to their power, and to content them- 
 selves with an equal share with the others for 
 the whole reward of their labours. "t 
 
 In like manner, the sincere and gallant Sid- 
 ney set apart, in his noble discourses of gov- 
 ernment, a niche for the government of the 
 Commonwealth. " When Van Tromp," he says, 
 in his high strain of chivalrous pride " when 
 Van Tromp set upon Blake in Folkestone Bay, 
 the Parliament had not above thirteen ships 
 against threescore, and not a man that had 
 ever seen any other fight at sea than between 
 
 * Life <>r Colonel Hutchinson, vol. ii., p. 197, 198. 
 
 t Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. fi., p. 452, 453. Portions of 
 gome of these " Epitaphs" on the Parliament have been 
 given in the Life of Vane; but the present statement of 
 them, in a less mutilated shape, seemed necessary here.
 
 524 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 a merchant ship and a pirate, to oppose the 
 best captain in the world, attended with many 
 others in valour and experience not much in- 
 ferior to him. Many other difficulties were ob- 
 served in the unsettled state : few ships, want 
 of money, several factions, and some who, to 
 advance particular interests, betrayed the public. 
 But, such was the power of wisdom and in- 
 tegrity in those that sat at the helm, and their 
 diligence in choosing men only for their merit 
 was blessed with such success, that in two 
 years our fleets grew to be as famous as our 
 land armies ; the reputation and power of our 
 nation rose to a greater height than when we 
 possessed the better half of France, and the 
 kings of Fance and Scotland were our prison- 
 ers. All the states, kings, and potentates of Eu- 
 rope 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 invade Italy with a hundred thousand 
 men."* 
 
 Nor is the tone of even the cautious White- 
 locke less enthusiastic than this. Writing 
 with Cromwell's personal influence strong upon 
 him, and with the additional restraint of an of- 
 ficial relation to Cromwell, he yet writes in 
 these words. " Thus was this great Parlia- 
 ment, which had done so great things, wholly 
 at this time routed by those whom they had 
 set up, and that took their commissions and 
 authority from them ; nor could they in the 
 least justify any action they had done, or one 
 drop of blood they had spilled, but by this au- 
 thority. Yet now the servants rose against 
 their masters, and most ungratefully and disin- 
 genuously, as well as rashly and imprudently, 
 they dissolved that power by which themselves 
 were created officers and soldiers ; and now they 
 took what they designed, all power into their 
 own hands. All honest and prudent indifferent 
 men were highly distasted at this unworthy action, 
 which occasioned much rejoicing in the king's 
 party. t . . . Thus it pleased God," he continues, 
 ' that this assembly, famous through the world 
 for its undertakings, actions, and successes, 
 having subdued all their enemies, were them- 
 selves overthrown and ruined by their own ser- 
 vants, and those whom they had raised now 
 pulled down their masters : an example never 
 to be forgotten, and scarcely to be paralleled 
 in any story, by which all persons may be in- 
 structed how uncertain and subject to change 
 all worldly affairs are ; how apt to fall when 
 we think them highest ; and how God makes 
 use of strange and unexpected means to bring 
 his purposes to pass."t 
 
 At a distance, too, from the scene of their 
 great exertions, and uninfluenced by any of the 
 passions which mingled with them, the politi- 
 
 * Algernon Sidney on Government, cap. ii., sect. 28. 
 
 t This is farther corroborated by even a member of the 
 Lord Protector's household, and one of his enthusiastic 
 partisans. Mr. John Maidstone (whose very striking letter 
 to a friend, descriptive of the popular struggles from their 
 commencement to the eve of the Restoration, will be found 
 in Appendix A.) remarks upon the dissolution thus : " Great 
 dissatisfaction sprung from this action, and such as is not 
 yet forgotten among good men." In another part of the 
 same interesting sketch he observes, emphatically, that the 
 English people of that day were wont "to deify their repre- 
 tentatives." 
 
 t Memorials, p. 529, 530. 
 
 cian who was thought wisest of his age with- 
 held not his approbation and esteem. Basnage 
 tells us, in his "Annals of the United Prov- 
 inces," that the famous Swedish chancellor, 
 Oxenstierne, "blamed, indeed, the extreme bar- 
 barity commitied on the person of the late 
 King of England, but commended and admired 
 almost every part of the plan of that great de- 
 sign which Parliament had formed." It was a 
 design, Oxenstierne added, " that had been con- 
 ducted with distinguished prudence, and those 
 who then governed in England acted upon such 
 principles of policy as were founded in truth 
 and experience."* 
 
 Nor should the testimony of an accomplished 
 foreign writer be omitted in this record. " The 
 new Republic," says the Abbe Raynal, in his 
 " History of the Parliament of England," " pro- 
 cured England a tranquillity which it no longer 
 hoped for, and gave it a lustre which it had not 
 had for several centuries. It had just been 
 agitated by a most violent tempest, and now 
 all was calm ; it had thought itself on the brink 
 of ruin, and was now in condition to give law. 
 It is melancholy, for the honour of virtue, that 
 one of the best and greatest spectacles which 
 the annals of nations present should be the 
 work of rebellion. Everything appeared won- 
 derful in this revolution. The Royalists con- 
 formed to a kind of government ill adapted to 
 their tempers, and disapproved by their con- 
 sciences. The grandees, accustomed to the 
 part of legislators, remained quietly in the rank 
 of private subjects. The Irish and Scots, who 
 had taken up arms, the first from an attachment 
 to their kings, the other to efface the horror of 
 their treachery, were unhappily subdued. The 
 Dutch, who had taken the advantage of the 
 calamities of England to usurp the empire of 
 the seas, were humbled. France and Spain, 
 who had been always rivals, always enemies, 
 meanly courted the friendship of the usurpers. 
 The sovereigns who ought to have united to 
 revenge an outrage to which all kings were ex- 
 posed, either through fear or interest applaud- 
 ed the injustice. All Europe debased itself, 
 was silent, or admired." 
 
 Finally, even their enemies were awed from 
 insult into praise, in the presence of that gi- 
 gantic memory their actions left behind them. 
 Roger Coke not only lays aside his customary 
 bitterness and scorn, but adopts a striking tone 
 of just and reverential respect. "Thus,"t he 
 says, " by their own mercenary servants, and 
 not a sword drawn in their defence, fell the 
 haughty and victorious Rump, whose mighty ac- 
 tions will scarcely find belief in future generations ; 
 and, to say the truth, they were a race of men 
 most indefatigable and industrious in business, al- 
 ways seeking for men Jit for it, and never prefer- 
 ring any for favour nor by importunity. You 
 scarce ever heard of any revolting from them ; 
 no murmur or complaint of seamen or soldiers ; 
 nor do I find that they ever pressed any in all their 
 wars. And as they excelled in the manage- 
 
 * This is mentioned by M. Chanat, both in the appendix 
 to Keysler's Travels, and in Basnage's book. See Puffen- 
 dorf's observations on the resolution of the last Swedish 
 diet, <fec., in the appendix to Keysler's Travels, vol. iv., 
 p. 51, and Basnage's Annals of the United Provinces, vol. i., 
 p. 243. See also Harris's Life of Cromwell, p. 31fi. 
 
 t Detection of the Court and State of England, vol. ii., 
 p. 30.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 525 
 
 ment of civil affairs, so it must be owned they 
 exercised in matters ecclesiastic no such se- 
 verities as either the Covenanters or others 
 before them did, upon such as dissented from 
 them ; nor were they less forward in reforming 
 the abuses of the common law." 
 
 And now a brief sketch of the measures by 
 which these statesmen made themselves so fa- 
 mous will show how well they merited even 
 this lofty praise. 
 
 Finance was necessarily a subject which 
 largely employed their attention and taxed their 
 powers, in consequence of the unceasing wars, 
 by land or sea, in which the Commonwealth 
 was engaged. The chief sources of revenue 
 were five : the excise ; the customs ; the sale 
 of fee-farm rents,* of the lands of the crown, 
 and of those belonging to the bishops, deans, 
 and chapters ; the sequestration and forfeiture 
 of the estates of delinquents ; and, finally, the 
 postoffice. For the establishment of the latter 
 we are indebted to Edmund Prideaux,t who 
 held the office of attorney-general to the Com- 
 monwealth at the period of its destruction. 
 We first observe him chairman of a committee 
 for considering what rates should be set upon 
 inland letters ; then, by an ordinance passed 
 shortly before the death of the king, we find 
 him created postmaster-general ; and, finally, 
 we see, by a report on the journals of the 
 House, dated the 21st of March, 1650, that he 
 had established a weekly conveyance of letters 
 into all parts of the nation, and kept up a reg- 
 ular intercourse of packets between England 
 and Ireland. 
 
 The introduction of the system of excise by 
 Pym has been referred to in this work. It was 
 borrowed from the financial proceedings of 
 Holland, and worked with most consummate 
 skill during the wars with that Republic. And 
 here I am tempted to borrow from the historian 
 of the Commonwealth} the only intelligible def- 
 inition of excise that has occurred to my read- 
 ing. Excise, it may be stated on that authori- 
 ty, is a tax upon the manufacture of a commod- 
 ity, paid by the manufacturer ; also on the im- 
 portation of goods, upon which, if manufactured 
 at home, an excise duty would be required, an 
 equivalent sum in that case being demanded 
 from the importer. The retailer of excisable 
 commodities has likewise, in many cases, to 
 pay for an annual license. It is a tax, for 
 many reasons, well adapted for popular impo- 
 sition. It differs from the duty denominated 
 customs in this, that the latter, being paid upon 
 the exportation or importation of commodities, 
 will often fall on the raw material, whereas the 
 former is only collected upon a commodity 
 ready for sale to the consumer. It is therefore 
 peculiarly distinguished by its being imposed at 
 the latest practicable period, and is in that 
 sense the most economical of all taxes. The 
 earlier any impost is paid, the heavier it falls 
 upon the consumer in the end, since every 
 trader through whose hands the commodity 
 passes must have a profit, not only upon the 
 
 * The clear annual income from this source amounted to 
 77,000; and we find that, in January, 1651, 25,300 of 
 this income had been sold Cor 225,650. Lingard, vol. ii., 
 p. 176. 
 
 t The youngest son of Sir Edmund Prideaux of Devon- 
 shire, created a baronet by James I. Prince's Worthies of 
 Devon, p. 508. t Godwin, vol. iii., p. 489. 
 
 raw material, and his own labour and time, but 
 also upon the tax itself, which is paid by him 
 long before he is remunerated by the consumer. 
 Notwithstanding which, it has been observed, 
 that the duties earliest paid are least felt by the 
 people, the merchant being sensible that they 
 do not eventually and in the last result fall upon 
 him, and the consumer being induced to con- 
 found them with the intrinsic price of the com- 
 modity. But this very circumstance renders 
 customs, and duties imposed on the raw ma- 
 terial, taxes for slaves ; and an excise, or a 
 duty on goods already prepared for consump- 
 tion, a tax for men who feel that what they 
 pay for is a substantial benefit to themselves. 
 When men are contending for their liberties 
 and everything that is dear to them, they are 
 prepared to make great sacrifices ; and such a 
 people, as Montesquieu says, will frequently 
 take on themselves, of voluntary choice, im- 
 posts more severe than the most arbitrary 
 prince would dare to lay on his subjects. An- 
 other objection that is frequently made to the 
 duty of excise is the severity of its collection, 
 since it is found necessary to give to its offi- 
 cers a power of entering into and searching the 
 houses of those who deal in the commodities 
 on which it is laid, at any hour of the day, and 
 sometimes of the night. But this objection 
 is of the game description as the preceding. 
 " Undoubtedly," Mr. Godwin proceeds, " a soft- 
 er and more forbearing mode of treatment may 
 be attained in a mixed than in a Republican 
 government. In the former the individual is 
 more considered ; in the latter, the public. He 
 who is not contented to sacrifice, in a certain 
 degree, his individuality, and some of his in- 
 dulgences, to the well-being of the whole, is 
 not yet sufficiently prepared to become a citizen 
 under the purest and noblest kind of political 
 administration."* 
 
 Great financial ability, it is obvious, was the 
 first condition of success in the vast struggle. 
 Without that, the entire amount of other genius 
 developed in military or civil matters would 
 have been little better than useless and un- 
 profitable. In the various deliberations that 
 arose on a subject so important, it was impos- 
 sible that its furtherance by means of seques- 
 tration could be in any way avoided ; and 
 this is a part of the policy of these statesmen 
 which is most frequently remembered to their 
 disadvantage.! Let it be fairly looked at, and 
 
 * Mr. Godwin intimates that the substance of this pass- 
 age was communicated to him by his friend Booth, the 
 mathematician. It will be curious to subjoin Blackstone's 
 definition of excise, adopted in all the encyclopaedias, as a 
 puzzle for the reader's ingenuity. " Excise," he says, " is 
 an inland imposition, paid sometimes upon the consumption 
 of the commodity, or frequently upon the retail sale, which 
 is the last stage before the consumption." Com., book 1, 
 cap. viii. 
 
 t This, and another favourite charge, already indignant- 
 ly repelled by the great authorities I have quoted, namely, 
 that of a desire they always manifested of filling their own 
 pockets, and enriching their poor estates with the wealth 
 of others : a charge which might be dismissed with silent 
 contempt, if silent contempt were at any time a serviceable 
 thing. It rests on lists published by the sour and disap- 
 pointed Presbyterian, Clement Walker, subsequently im- 
 bodied in a tract against the " Rump" (published in the 
 auspicious era of the Restoration, and entitled the " Mys- 
 tery of the Good Old Cause Unfolded"), and finally adopted 
 by such historians as Clarendon and Hume. Walker's 
 lists were called " Lists of Names of Members of the House 
 of Commons, annexing to each such sums of money, offices, 
 and lands as they had given to themselves for service done
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 it is far from that of which they or their friends 
 should be ashamed. 
 
 They enacted, at the commencement of the 
 war, a seizure of the revenues of the estates of 
 such as openly appeared in arms against them, 
 or voluntarily contributed to the support of the 
 king's forces ; and this was an act, all the cir- 
 cumstances considered, justified by the de- 
 mands of the time. The only fair ground of 
 objection to it must surely rest on the mode in 
 which it was carried into effect, and on the 
 strict and virtuous application of the funds so 
 raised. These, indeed, are the chief points of 
 attack selected by the enemy. Hollis boldly 
 affirms that the style of proceeding under the 
 sequestration committees was like that of Ahab 
 in the case of Naboth's vineyard, which cov- 
 eting, and not being able otherwise to obtain, 
 he " suborned certain men, sons of Belial, to 
 bear witness against Naboth, saying, Thou 
 didst blaspheme God and the king,' and thus 
 destroyed the proprietor, and got possession of 
 the property." To which Clement Walker 
 adds, " You may as easily find charity in hell 
 as justice in any committee ; so that, where 
 the king hath taken down one Star Chamber, 
 the Parliament hath set up a hundred." It 
 stamps the character of these scurril libels* 
 
 and to he done against the king and kingdom." Mr. God- 
 win has pointed out, in his distinctions between the two 
 self-denying ordinances (see Life of Vane, p. 296), the gross 
 mistake, or more properly, falsehood, on which these lists 
 were made out. Their compiler's object was to collect a 
 list of the names of such as held offices, as he says, " con- 
 trary to the Self-denying Ordinance." Now it has already 
 appeared that there were two self-denying ordinances ; and 
 it has been the artifice of the enemies of the Common- 
 wealth's-meu to confound these two together. The first 
 ordinance forbade any member of either House of Parlia- 
 ment from bearing any office, civil or military, during the 
 war. This ordinance was proposed in the House of Com- 
 mons on the 9th of December, 1644, and was rejected by 
 the Lords on the 13th of January following. A second self- 
 denying ordinance was then brought in, and passed into a 
 law on the 3d of April, 1645. This was essentially a tem- 
 porary measure, and extended no farther than the discharg- 
 ing members of either House of Parliament from the offices 
 they then held, without so much as forbidding their reap- 
 pointment. The question wjth Clement Walker and his 
 fellows was, whether the members of the House of Com- 
 mons were not bound in delicacy to. conform to the law 
 which they had passed and the Lords had rejected. This 
 idea, however, was set aside, not covertly and clandestine- 
 ly, but in the most open manner. When it was deter- 
 mined, in the autumn of 1645, tu recruit the House of Com- 
 mons by issuing writs for new elections in the room of those 
 members who had deserted their seats by adhering to the 
 king, Fairfax, Blake, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, Ireton, 
 Skippon, Massey, and Hutchinson, some of the most con- 
 siderable officers in the army, were among the persons re- 
 turned to occupy the vacant seats. Walker's list, there- 
 fore, which forms the most considerable part of that in the 
 " Mystery of the Good Old Cause," contains names which 
 can by no construction be considered as those of corrupt 
 placemen. Twenty-one persons are put down, merely be- 
 cause they were at one and the same time members of Par- 
 liament and colonels in the army. Blake, D'ean,.and Rains- 
 borough appear for no reason but because they were admi- 
 rals. Algernon Sidney, and six others, because they were 
 the commanders of garrisons ; Strickland, because he was 
 an ambassador ; and Sir William Armine, because he was 
 a commissioner in Scotland. It was expressly provided by 
 the second self-denying ordinance that the commissioners 
 of the great seal, and the commissioners of the admiralty, 
 navy, and revenue, should not even be disturbed in their 
 places; yet their names swell the list. It includes some 
 of the most notorious Presbyterians, Hollis, Sir John Mey- 
 rick, and Sir William Waller. It includes Hampden. 
 Finally, it is worth notice, in completion of the false pre- 
 tences on which this charge against the statesmen was 
 grounded, that the lists which furnish the chief material 
 of slander were drawn up and published before the triumph 
 of the Independents and the death of the king. 
 
 * In another passage of his memoirs, Hollis says, " Now 
 I appeal to all men who they were that had the hand in 
 
 when we state simply, without any other com- 
 ment, that these men, Hollis and Clement 
 Walker, were among the chief authors of the 
 system of sequestration, and only clamoured 
 against it thus when baffled spleen, disappoint- 
 ed ambition, and hatred against the men who 
 had triumphantly finished the work which they 
 had basely deserted, drove them to seek shel- 
 ter once more under the monster-covering gab- 
 ardine of royalty. 
 
 The first measure on the subject was passed 
 in the shape of an ordinance, in March, 1643, 
 when committees of sequestration were ap- 
 pointed in the counties, cities, and different 
 places of England, to conduct the business in a 
 regular and orderly manner. Two thirds of 
 the revenues of all Roman Catholics were, by 
 the same ordinance, included in the sequestra- 
 tion. And upon the construction and conduct 
 of these committees for the various counties, 
 and whether their manner of proceeding was 
 in truth " regular and orderly," the question 
 would seem to turn. 
 
 Of their general character, some idea may 
 be formed by a few of the chief names that are 
 to be found in all of them. Lord Fairfax, for 
 example ; his son, Sir Thomas, the great gen- 
 eral ; the resolute, but most just Pym ; the 
 virtuous Hampden ; the witty and good-hu- 
 moured Marten ; the gallant Blake ; the mild, 
 and, by his own showing, the mercy-loving 
 Hollis (!) ; the formal and scrupulous White- 
 locke ; Widdrington, Stapleton, Gerard, and 
 others of position as high, and of motives as 
 unquestioned. Of their manner of proceeding, 
 it also happens most fortunately that we have 
 evidence yet more decisive. Their absolute 
 records, supposed for some time to have been 
 lost, have of late been most happily recovered, 
 and are deposited in the State-paper Office. 
 They consist of several hundred volumes, which 
 exhibit not merely the names of the delinquents 
 and Catholics through the kingdom, with the 
 particulars and value of their respective prop- 
 erties, hut also the nature of the acts of de- 
 Ifnquency severally charged against them, by 
 which each person was brought within the 
 scope of some or other of the provisions of the 
 several ordinances. To these are added the 
 grounds upon which the alleged delinquents 
 ask to be admitted to compound (for all those 
 in whose case there were any mitigating cir- 
 cumstances were allowed to pay a fine for their 
 indiscretions, instead of losing their entire rev- 
 enue); the depositions of witnesses examined 
 as to the truth of these statements ; and the 
 reasons for indemnity or allowances in respect 
 to particular items offered by the different claim- 
 ants, together with the entire proceedings upon 
 each man's forfeiture or composition. It is not 
 thus, the historian of the Commonwealth may 
 well observe, that acts of wanton spoliation and 
 violence are conducted. He adds, with good 
 reason, that however severe was the execution 
 of these ordinances of sequestration, all was 
 
 making all those penal ordinances, to severe for sequestra- 
 tions, so high for compositions, so ensnaring and bloody for 
 making new treasons, and little things to be capital crimes ; 
 that no man almost was safe, free from question, and few 
 or none were questioned but were sure to be destroyed. 
 What committees were set up ! That of Haberdasher*' 
 Hall, to pill and poll men, even fetching in some members 
 of the House to whom they had a displeasure, and generally 
 all men who bad crossed or opposed them in anything '."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 527 
 
 proceeded in regularly, with the forms of jus- 
 tice, and under sanction of the venerable name 
 of law.* The right of appeal was given to 
 every one who found himself aggrieved ; a 
 right perpetually exercised, and therefore, we 
 may be well assured, not nugatory or fruitless. 
 All the money raised under these ordinances 
 was strictly required to be paid into the hands 
 of the treasurers at Guildhall, from whence it 
 was again issued for the pay and subsistence 
 of the army, and for such other uses as the 
 Parliament should direct. With these state- 
 ments the whole subject may be confidently 
 left to an honest and impartial judgment.* 
 
 Passing from the subject of finance to those 
 higher questions which involve the freedom and 
 independence of man, the claims of these fa- 
 mous statesmen to eternal gratitude and hon- 
 our become apparent indeed. They settled, 
 upon a basis never to be disputed more, the 
 right of every Englishman, in all grades of life, 
 to his writ of habeas corpus; by the exercise of 
 which, if on any pretence cast into prison, he 
 could demand to be brought before the judges 
 of the land, to ascertain the cause of his im- 
 prisonment ; if with any charge of crime accu- 
 sed, he could insist that the accusation against 
 him should be put into the way of trial with all 
 convenient speed ; or, supposing no satisfactory 
 answer were given in either case, he had then 
 the great privilege of insisting upon his right 
 to immediate liberation. t 
 
 Scarcely less important than this was their 
 settlement of the tenure by which the judges 
 arbiters of law between man and man, of jus- 
 tice between sovereign and subject should in 
 all time tO'Come hold their solemn office. The 
 condition of the old and corrupt system, durante 
 bene placito, was overthrown by the introduc- 
 tion of letters patent, with the stipulation of 
 quamdiu se bene gesserint. The working of the 
 old system, thus beneficially changed forever, 
 is aptly described by Neal in his " History of 
 the Puritans." "The judges," he says, "were 
 generally of a stamp, that, instead of upholding 
 the law as the defence and security of the sub- 
 jects' privileges, they set it aside on every little 
 occasion, distinguishing between a rule of law 
 and a rule of government. They held their 
 places during the king's pleasure ; and when 
 the prerogative was to be stretched in any par- 
 ticular instance, Laud would send for their opin- 
 ions beforehand, to give the greater sanction 
 to the proceedings of the council and the Star 
 Chamber, by whom they were often put in 
 mind that, if they did not do the king's busi- 
 
 * Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iii., p. 495, 496. 
 
 t The only act in these confiscations which seems to me 
 to deserve any part of the extreme censure applied to them 
 was the sale of the Earl of Craven's estate. Though the 
 earl had been out of England during the war, his estate 
 was sold, on the ground of his having had personal corre- 
 spondence with Charles Stuart abroad. This was an inde- 
 fensible action ; but it is just to remember that this was an 
 action not only undefended, but strenuously opposed, by 
 many of the most virtuous and eminent members of the 
 House. The division was a singularly narrow one ; the 
 majority which carried the confiscation and sale was two 
 only, and Vane, always on the side of kindness and human- 
 ity, was teller for the minority. Hazlerig (who appears for 
 the majority), and the less considerate politicians of the 
 House, unwisely and unjustly, but there is no reason to 
 believe dishonestly, carried their point thus closely against 
 him. See Journals, 22d of June, 1652. 
 
 t This habeas corpus enactment formed the main part of 
 the act for taking away the Star Chamber. 
 
 ness to satisfaction, they would be remo- 
 ved."* 
 
 With the destruction of that infamous pow- 
 er, a memorable lesson was taught forever. 
 One of the judges, who had debased himself by 
 trampling law and justice under his feet, was 
 publicly dragged from the bench he had degra- 
 ded, and, still clad in his soiled and spotted er- 
 mine, was taken through the open streets to 
 prison. t And as with lawyers who had over- 
 thrown law, so also with bishops who had cor- 
 rupted religion. All ranks, including royalty 
 itself, were made amenable to Truth, and bow- 
 ed perforce before it. The crown was for all 
 time to come restrained from arbitrary taxation ; 
 all irregular or despotic practices against prop- 
 erty or freedom were abolished ;| every state 
 criminal, unjust monopolist, fraudulent paten- 
 tee, were unshrinkingly struck down ; and in 
 the bill for triennial Parliaments, and other 
 measures, which were afterward lost for a time 
 in the unexpected results of the war, the shat- 
 tered fabric of the old constitution of limited 
 monarchy was consolidated and restored. 
 
 The next great act to be specially commem- 
 orated has been described by Blackstone as "a 
 greater acquisition to the civil property of the 
 kingdom than even Magna Charta itself,"^ 
 This was the abolition of the Court of Wards, 
 and of all those tenures which were the subject 
 of its jurisdiction. Wardship was a part of 
 the old feudal system. All landed property, 
 according to that system, began with the king. 
 He distributed his domains among his feudal 
 tenants, or, in other words, the officers of his 
 army, and they, in return, were obliged to serve 
 him in his wars with a stipulated number of 
 followers. But in this obligation it was im- 
 plied that the tenant in chief should be capable 
 of military service. There were two cases 
 where this could not happen : first, where the 
 heir was a female, or, secondly, was a minor. 
 It became, therefore, the established law under 
 this system, that the king could dispose of the 
 female heir in marriage as he pleased, and that 
 he received the whole produce of the estate 
 during a minority. It is easy to see how this 
 prerogative would be abused. " It was intend- 
 ed merely to prevent the damage the king might 
 sustain by the loss of the stipulated military 
 service. It grew into a resource by which he 
 might feed the rapacity of his hungry courtiers. 
 To an idle and insinuating favourite he had 
 the undisputed prerogative of giving a great 
 heiress in marriage ; or to an individual of that 
 character he might give the wardship of a mi- 
 nor, in consequence of which the receiver en- 
 tered into absolute possession of the produce 
 of aa estate, with no other duty in return than 
 that he must provide in some way for the sub- 
 sistence and education of the heir."|| And as 
 the uses of the Court of Wards had grown into 
 
 * Book ii., cap. iii. 
 
 t This was Sir Robert Berkeley. See Whitelocke, 
 p. 39 ; the Life of Pym, p. 179k. 
 
 t The act they passed against impressment elicits the 
 unqualified praise of Hallam (Const. Hist., vol. ii., p. 137), 
 and the famous enactment in their tonnage and poundage 
 bill is well known ; " that it is and halh been the ancient 
 right of the subjects of this realm, that no subsidy, custom, 
 impost, or other charge whatsoever, ought, or may be laid 
 or imposed upon any merchandise exported or imported by 
 subjects, denizens, or aliens, without common consent in 
 Parliament." $ Commentaries, book ii., cap. v. 
 
 II Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iii., p. 500.
 
 528 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 such gross abuse, so the military services them- 
 selves, out of which it rose, had long, as the 
 feudal system gradually declined, been com- 
 pounded and exchanged for a different species 
 of payment, though still under the same name 
 and pretence, and rendered sources of cruelty, 
 tyranny, and oppression, in every kind of shape. 
 
 Both enormities were struck down together 
 by the leaders of the Long Parliament. A res- 
 olution of the House, dated the 24th of Febru- 
 ary, 1646, declared that the Court of Wards, 
 and all tenures by homage and knight's service, 
 with all fines, licenses, seizures, pardons for 
 alienation, and other charges arising from such 
 tenures, should from that day be taken away. 
 Cromwell found this resolution on the journals 
 in the Protectorate, and prudently turned it 
 into a regular act of Parliament, which, with 
 additional clauses, was re-enacted after the Res- 
 toration. Blackstone remarks, of the various 
 benefits conferred by this law, that, in its indi- 
 rect operation, " it opened a wider door to the 
 power of bequeathing property generally than 
 had previously subsisted. By a statute of 
 Henry VIII., all persons were empowered to 
 bequeath two thirds of their lands held in feu- 
 dal tenure, and the whole of such as were not 
 subjected to such services ; and the present 
 law, abolishing all such tenures, gave, by con- 
 sequence, an unlimited power to the possessor 
 of landed property, under certain restrictions, 
 to dispose of the whole by will as he pleased."* 
 
 Their noble efforts in the great cause of re- 
 ligious toleration claim grateful mention next. 
 They first established in the policy of the state 
 that greatest human privilege, that every man 
 should be free to worship God according to the 
 dictates of his conscience. Enactments fol- 
 lowed as a natural consequence, that, whenev- 
 er a certain number of men agreed to worship 
 their Maker after a given mode, they should 
 consider themselves at liberty to choose their 
 own preacher and officers to their churches, 
 and to arrange, without interference or moles- 
 tation, all their selected ceremonies and forms. 
 
 Mr. Godwin has selected from the Journals 
 of the House of Commons! the chief legislative 
 provisions on this subject. The most remark- 
 able appears to have been an act of the 27th 
 of September, 1650, which repealed various 
 acts of Elizabeth, whose professed object had 
 been to establish throughout England a uniform- 
 ity of religious faith and worship. The chief 
 of these acts were, 1 Elizabeth, chapter 2, com- 
 monly called the Act of Uniformity ; and 23 
 Elizabeth, chapter l.and 35 Elizabeth, chapter 
 1, each of them entitled "An Act for retaining 
 the Queen's Subjects in their due Obedience." 
 The last of these is the most memorable. It 
 ordains, among other things, that whoever 
 shall be convicted before a magistrate of ab- 
 senting himself (or herself) from the Establish- 
 ed Church for one month shall be detained in 
 prison till he conforms ; or, if after three months 
 he persists in his nonconformity, shall be re- 
 quired to abjure the realm of England, and 
 shall transport himself out of the country ac- 
 cordingly ; or, lastly, if he refuses to abjure, 
 or, abjuring, does not transport himself, or, 
 having departed the realm, shall return, shall 
 
 be adjudged a felon, and shall suffer according- 
 ly. All these gross provisions disappeared be- 
 fore the wiser and more humane policy of the 
 Independent leaders of our great Parliament, 
 who provided a full toleration* for every form 
 of religion, with the exception of prelacy, ne- 
 cessarily excluded by its political tendencies, 
 and popery, which Vane and a few others had, 
 however, struggled hard to procure the tolera- 
 tion of also.t 
 
 The limits they imposed to this system of 
 toleration will scarcely find favour in many 
 eyes ; but it is just to give them here, with the 
 remark, that various circumstances of the time 
 had rendered them wellnigh needful. A bill 
 was passed in 1651 with a view to correct cer- 
 tain extravagances in the professors of reli- 
 gion. There was a sect who had taken to 
 themselves the name of Ranters. The Parlia- 
 ment appointed a committee to consider of the 
 suppression of the " obscene, licentious, and 
 impious practices" used by these persons. A 
 law was, in consequence, made for the " pun- 
 ishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and exe- 
 crable opinions." The crimes condemned by 
 this act are, for any person, not under the in- 
 fluence of sickness or distraction, to affirm of 
 him or her self, or of any other mere creature, 
 that he is God ; or that the acts of unclean- 
 ness and the like are not forbidden by God ; or 
 that lying, stealing, and fraud, or murder, adul- 
 tery, fornication, sodomy, drunkenness, profane 
 swearing, and lascivious talk, are in their own 
 nature as holy and righteous as the duties of 
 prayer, preaching, or thanksgiving ; or that 
 there is no such thing as unrighteousness and 
 sin, but as a man or woman judges thereof. 
 
 * Blackstone, book ii., c. 23. Godwin, vol. iii., p. 503. 
 t Vol. iii., p. 504. 
 
 * This toleration, of course, did not interfere with the 
 revenues of the Church, out of which every minister, duly 
 appointed to a living, received the income thereto belonging. 
 
 t Dr. Lingurd mentions a. petition from Catholic recu- 
 sants, presented to the House on the 30th of June, 1652, in 
 which they solicit such indulgence "as might be thought 
 consistent with the public peace, and their comfortable sub- 
 sistence in their native country." The petition, says Lin- 
 gard, " was read ; Sir Harry Vane spoke in its favour ; but 
 the House was deaf to the voice of reason and humanity." 
 Vane's equally generous and gallant, but more successful 
 exertions in behalf of Diddle, the father of English Unitari- 
 ans, have been related in this work ; but Mr. Godwin has a 
 remark on the motives of the men who opposed Vane on 
 these points which should not, in fairness, be omitted. 
 Speaking of the circumstance of Biddle, after his first re- 
 lease, being again committed by an order signed " John 
 Bradshaw, " he thus proceeds: "We are told that Biddle 
 was recalled, and once more committed to custody by an 
 order from Bradshaw, whom Biddle's biographer designates 
 as his mortal enemy. What is the precise truth on the 
 subject I have not been able to discover. If he were com- 
 mitted by a warrant from Bradshaw, it is very probable that 
 this statesman signed it officially only, as president of the 
 council. But I have not been able to trace such a warrant 
 in the order books. If it were in any respect the personal 
 act of Bradshaw, however much we may regret that he 
 should have differed in this particular from his illustrious 
 coadjutor, Vane, who had 'learned to know both spiritual 
 power and civil, what each means, what severs each, which 
 few have done,' yet it is but just that we should distinguish 
 between one species of persecutor and another. The Epis- 
 copalians and the Presbyterians persecuted, having for their 
 object religious uniformity, and being determined, to the 
 extent of their power, that only one creed should be known 
 through the land. Bradshaw, if he were a persecutor, 
 certainly agreed with his brother Independents in a free al- 
 lowance of varieties of religious opinion, and had no wish 
 to enslave the energies of mind to a vain effort after uni- 
 formity, but had the weakness to be shocked at what he 
 thought blasphemous opinions, and to hold it his duty by the 
 civil arm to counteract so dire a contagion." Biddle was 
 finally set free in February, 1652. I have elsewhere urged 
 what fairly rests in extenuation of the non-tolerance of po- 
 pery, in the memoirs of Eliot and Pym.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 529 
 
 The punishment of these crimes is, for the first 
 offence, six months' imprisonment ; and for any 
 subsequent conviction, to abjure the dominions 
 of the Commonwealth ; and, in case of return, 
 to suffer death as a felon. The only qualifica- 
 tion of the severity is, that the party shall be 
 indicted within six months of his having com- 
 mitted the alleged offence :* a provision which 
 serves well to show the still prevailing sense 
 of equity and fairness which presided over what 
 would seem the harshest measures of these 
 statesmen. 
 
 Their acts of toleration in matters of religion 
 were at the same time accompanied with a de- 
 clared resolution, adopted from one of the army 
 petitions, that, while they were favourable to 
 liberty of conscience, they did not desire that 
 the least indulgence should be shown to licen- 
 tiousness or profaneness ; and, accordingly, a 
 bill was brought in, in the beginning of 1651, 
 and shortly after passed into a law, for the sup- 
 pression of incest, adultery, and fornication. 
 The punishment of the two former, an excep- 
 tion being made of the case of a woman whose 
 husband should have been three years absent 
 (adultery in this act is understood to relate to 
 woman in the state of marriage), was ordered 
 to be death ; and the punishment of fornication 
 was three months' imprisonment. Every keep- 
 er of a brothel was also made liable, for the 
 first offence, to be whipped and branded, and 
 for the second, to suffer death as a felon. t 
 When these acts were passed, however, Vane 
 and Marten both predicted, in opposition to 
 them, that the severity of the punishment would 
 defeat the purpose of the law : a prediction 
 confirmed so fully, that, in consequence of Mar- 
 ten's continued agitation of the subject, the se- 
 verities were afterward relaxed. 
 
 And be it not forgotten, in this detail, that 
 measures of law reform, to a very large and 
 various extent, were in deliberation at the pe- 
 riod of Cromwell's act of tyranny. They had 
 passed, on the 8th of November, 1651, a mem- 
 orable measure, which was understood to be 
 only the forerunner of several others,! that the 
 books of law already written and in force should 
 be translated into English ; that all law-books 
 in future should be written in English ; and that 
 all law proceedings should be conducted in the 
 English language. II What would have follow- 
 ed in. furtherance of their great design on this 
 
 * Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iii., p. 507, 508. 
 
 t Godwin, vol. iii., p. 506. 
 
 t See Journals of May 10, November 22, 1651. White- 
 locke, p. 460. Lingard's History, vol. xi., p. 175. 
 
 <l The exact terms of the resolution were, " That all re- 
 port books of the resolution of judges, and other books of 
 the law of England, shall be translated into the English 
 tongue ; and all writs, processes, and returns thereof, 
 pleadings, rules, orders, indictments, injunctions, certifi- 
 cates, patents, and all acts, deeds, and proceedings what- 
 soever, shall be only in the English tongue, in the ordinary 
 usual hand, and not in court hand." 
 
 II On this question (which, before it was carried, pro- 
 voked a " very long and smart debate ;" in which debate, 
 we are likewise told, many " spoke in derogation and dis- 
 honour of law," and the necessity of its reform, White- 
 locke delivered a speech on the origin and character of the 
 English laws, vindicating their Saxon birth from the re- 
 proach of having been imposed upon the land by William 
 the Norman, which, for its singularly argumentative char- 
 acter and wouderful minuteness of research, must always 
 be considered a stupendous monument of antiquarian and 
 legal learning. He concluded thus the entire speech may 
 be found in his own memorials, p. 460-465 : " But, Mr. 
 Speaker, if I have been tedious, 1 humbly ask your pardon ; 
 
 Xxi 
 
 I head (frequently declared, in emphatic phrase), 
 ' to make the law more simple, and, by means 
 of a better promulgation, to abridge its powers 
 of ensnaring the people who were called on to 
 obey it, was checked by their forcible disper- 
 sion, to be again resumed, indeed, as we shall 
 see, by the next assemblage of men who sat in 
 their House, but only to be again arrested by a 
 second dispersion of legislators, who refused 
 to be made the direct tools of tyranny. 
 
 Finally, it becomes us to speak of the strict- 
 ly administrative genius of these statesmen, 
 dispersed by Cromwell and his muskets as idle 
 and incapable ! unclean birds, that had, by in- 
 solent success, been unfairly perched upon For- 
 tune's top ! slugs, that preyed upon the vitals 
 of the Commonwealth ! 
 
 History, even as history is commonly writ- 
 ten, has not dared to dispute that, during the 
 whole period of their supremacy, they upheld 
 with unceasing dignity and spirit the national 
 honour. They made the arms of England the 
 terror of the world abroad, as they had made 
 the engines of their government the terror of 
 enemies at home ; and it was from them, and 
 from them alone, that Cromwell inherited the 
 respect and awe of the whole Continent of 
 Europe. They had declared that they would 
 not rest till they had vindicated and asserted 
 the ancient right of their country to the sov- 
 
 and have the more hopes to obtain it from so many worthy 
 English gentlemen, when that which I have said was chiefly 
 in vindication of their own native laws, unto which I held 
 myself the more obliged by the duty of my profession ; and 
 I account it an honour to me to be a lawyer. As to the de- 
 bate and matter of the act now before you, I have delivered 
 no opinion against it ; nor do I think it reasonable that the 
 generality of the people of England should, by an implicit 
 faith, depend upon the knowledge of others in that which 
 concerns them most of all. It was the Romish policy to 
 keep them in ignorance of matters pertaining to their soul's 
 health ; let them not be in ignorance of matters pertaining 
 to their bodies, estates, and all their worldly comfort. It is 
 not unreasonable that the law should be in that language 
 which may best b understood by those whose lives and 
 fortunes are subject to it, and are to be governed by it. 
 Moses read all the laws openly before the people in their 
 mother tongue. God directed him to write it, and to ex- 
 pound it to the people in their own native language, that 
 what concerned their lives, liberties, and estates might be 
 made known unto them in the most perspicuous way. The 
 laws of the Eastern nations were in their proper tongue ; 
 the laws at Constantinople were in Greek ; at Rome, in 
 Latin ; in France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and 
 other nations, their laws are published in their native idiom. 
 ' For our own country, there is no man that can read the 
 Saxon character but may find the laws of your ancestors 
 yet extant in the English tongue. Duke William himself 
 i commanded the laws to be proclaimed in English, that none 
 l might pretend ignorance of them. It was the judgment of 
 the Parliament, 36 Edward III., that pleadings should be in 
 English; and in the reigns of those kings, when our stat- 
 utes were enrolled in French and English, yet then the 
 sheriffs in their several counties were to proclaim them in 
 English. I shall conclude with a complaint of what I have 
 met with abroad from some military persons ; nothing but 
 scoffs and invectives against our law, and threats to take it 
 away ; but the la'w is above the reach of those weapons, 
 which, at one time or another, will return upon those that 
 use them. Solid arguments, strong reasons, and authori- 
 ties, are more fit for confutation of any error, and satisfac- 
 tion of different judgments. When the emperor took a 
 bishop in complete armour in a battle, he sent the armour 
 to the pope with this word, Hccccine sunt vestes flii tui ? 
 BO may I say to those gentlemen abroad as to their railings, 
 j taunts, and threats against the law, Hceccine sunt arguments 
 horum antinomianorum ? They will be found of no force, 
 but recoiling arms. Nor is it ingenuous or prudent for 
 Englishmen to deprave their birthright the laws of their 
 own country. But to return to the matter in debate : I can 
 I find neither strangeness, nor foresee great inconvenience, 
 j by passing this act ; and therefore, if the House shall think 
 I fit to have the question put for the cassing of it I am ready 
 [ to give my affirmative."
 
 530 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ereignty of the seas ; nor did they rest till it 
 was done. They sought even to interest the 
 commonest people in this proud achievement, 
 and with that view circulated, by thousands, a 
 translation, made at their expense and sug- 
 gestion, of Selden's Mare Clausum, scu. Domin- 
 io Maris.* This alone would declare them no 
 ordinary or selfish men. They were the au- 
 thors, too, be it remembered, of the famous 
 navigation act.t afterward passed into our stat- 
 ute-books as one of the grandest sources of 
 England's unrivalled commercial greatness, and 
 only recently abandoned for those more philo- 
 sophical views of trade it was chiefly instru- 
 mental in producing. They projected also, and 
 went far towards accomplishing, the union be- 
 tween Scotland and England. J They placed 
 
 * Marchmont Needham was the translator, and the hook 
 was puhlished, by special command, in November, 1652. 
 In an admirable dedication to the " Parliament of the Com- 
 monwealth of England," the translator, after observing that 
 " it is a gallant sight to see the sword and pen in victorious 
 equipage together ; for this subdues the souls of men by 
 reason, that only their bodies by force," thus spiritedly pro- 
 ceeds : "What true English heart will not swell when it 
 shall be made clear and evident (as in this book) that the 
 sovereignty of the seas, flowing about this island, hath, in 
 all times whereof there remains any written testimony, both 
 before the old Roman invasion and since, under everv revo- 
 lution down to the present age, been held and acknowledged 
 by all the world as an inseparable appendant of the British 
 empire; and that, by virtue thereof, the kings of England 
 successively have had the sovereign guard of the seas ; that 
 they have imposed taxes and tributes upon all ships passing 
 and fishing therein ; that they have obstructed and opened 
 the passage thereof to strangers at their own pleasure, and 
 done all other things that may testify an absolute sea domin- 
 ion what English heart, I say, can consider these things, 
 together with the late actings of the Netherlnnders, set 
 forth in your public declaration, and not be inflamed with 
 an indignation answerable to their insolence, that these 
 people, raised out of the dust at first into a state of liberty, 
 and at length to a high degree of power and felicity by the 
 arms and benevolence of England that they who, in times 
 past, durst never enter our seas to touch a herring, without 
 license first obtained by petition from the Governor of Scar- 
 borough Oastle, should now presume to invade them with 
 armed fleets, and, by a most unjust war, bid defiance to the 
 united powers of these three nations ?" 
 
 t The preamble to this act (passed on the 9th of October, 
 1651 ) was short, but most expressive. It runs thus : " For 
 the increase of the shipping and encouragement of the navi- 
 gation of this nation, which, under the good providence and 
 protection of God, is so great a means of the welfare and 
 safety of this Commonwealth, be it enacted." Dr. Harris 
 gives the following summary, from Sr.obell's collections, of 
 the clauses in this famous act. They are, " that no goods 
 shall be imported from Asia, Africa, or America, but in 
 English ships, under the penalty of forfeiture of the said 
 goods and ships ; nor from any part of Europe, except in 
 such vessels as belong to the people of that country of which 
 the goods are the growth or manufacture, under the like 
 penalty ; that no salt fish, whale-fins, or oi! should be im- 
 ported, but what were caught or made by the people of 
 England ; nor no salt fish to be exported, or carried from 
 one port to another in this nation, but in English vessels, 
 under the like penalty ; but commodities from the Levant 
 seas, the East Indies, the ports of Spain or Portugal, might 
 be imported from the usual ports or places of trading used 
 heretofore, though the said commodities were not the very 
 growth of the said places. The act did not extend to bull- 
 ion or prize goods, nor to silk or silk wares, brought by land 
 from Italy to Ostend, Amsterdam, Newport, Rotterdam, 
 Middleburgh, provided the owners and proprietors, being 
 of the English Commonwealth, first made oath by them- 
 selves, or other credible witnesses, that the goods were 
 bought with the proceed of English commodities, sold either 
 for money or in barter." It is worth adding what Sir Josias 
 Child says of the act in his celebrated work on trade. 
 " The act of navigation," he remarks, " deserves to be 
 called our charta maritima. . . For my own part," he adds, 
 " I am of opinion that, in relation to trade, shipping, profit, 
 and power, it is one of the choicest and most prudent acts 
 that ever was made in England, and without which we had 
 not now been owners of one half of the shipping, nor trade, 
 nor employed one half of the seamen which we do at pres- 
 ent." 
 
 t The proceedings toward* accomplishing this great de- 
 
 in their service men of the greatest genius, in 
 various departments of the state, that, since 
 their day, have been produced by our nation ; 
 they patronized, without ceasing, literature and 
 learned men ; they declared, on assuming pow- 
 er, that they would neither write to other states, 
 nor receive answers, but in the tongue which 
 was common to all countries, and fittest to re- 
 cord great things, the subject of future history. 
 They first employed, in the service of England, 
 the thoughts and the pen of Milton, even in that 
 day the greatest of her living children ; they 
 presented a thousand pounds to him on the pub- 
 lication of his " Answer to Salmasius ;" they 
 appointed him Latin secretary to the Common- 
 wealth ; they gave him the means of entertain- 
 ing foreign ministers on their arrival in Eng- 
 land, and of welcoming first at his own table, 
 though at the public charge, the visits of emi- 
 nent strangers who brought with them the rep- 
 utation of wisdom or of learning.* They show- 
 ed, in like manner, true respect for whatever 
 had a good and legitimate object : they enrich- 
 ed the universities, and having voted a resolu- 
 tion against the principle of tithes, they placed 
 upon a most equal and commendable footing 
 the revenues of the clergy of the state.t Cer- 
 
 sign have been partially described in the life of Vane. I 
 will give here, however, a curious passage from the wri- 
 tings of Dr. Gumble respecting it, because it bears emphatic 
 testimony to the eminent merits of the statesmen (though 
 it gives an odd reason for them), and is surely most valua- 
 ble when the time at which it was written, and the gross 
 prejudices of the writer, are all taken into account. " The 
 English pretended Commonwealth," he says, " having re- 
 duced the whole nation of Scotland and Ireland, they hav- 
 ing a great calm of peace and tranquillity, they fell upon a 
 project (though practised by usurpers, and men who had 
 great fears, because of their great crimes, and of much care 
 and diligence, because of their future danger to be brought 
 to condign punishment) to unite all the three nations into 
 one government, and to meet in one Parliament, a work 
 which they did effect by the present advantages of conquest, 
 and by a pretended consent of some elected deputies : this 
 union being a work which King James, of blessed memory, 
 set on foot, and renewed by our gracious sovereign King 
 Charles II. (whom God direct to the conclusion) ; an affair 
 that would as much tend to the peace and public security 
 of all the three nations as any other design that can be 
 imagined." 
 
 * Toland says, on this point, that Milton "was allowed 
 a weekly table by the Parliament for the entertainment of 
 foreign ministers, especially such as came from Protestant 
 states, and for the learned, which allowance was afterward 
 continued by Cromwell." 
 
 t The bishops, it is known, were at an early period ex- 
 cluded from the House of Lords ; but it was not till Octo- 
 ber 9th, 1646, that, an ordinance of both Houses abolished 
 their office, and settled their lands and possessions upon 
 trustees, for the use of the Commonwealth. A second ordi- 
 nance, bearing date the 3d of October, 1648. ordered "the 
 trustees to give warrants to the treasurers for the issuing 
 out and paying of the rents and revenues of parsonages, im- 
 propriate tithes, oblations, obventions, pensions, portions of 
 tithes, parsonages, and vicarages, as have been or shall be 
 received by the said treasurers, and have not otherwise 
 been disposed of for the maintenance of ministers, to such 
 person or persons respectively to whom the said rents and 
 revenues have been or shall be ordered or assigned by the 
 committee for plundered ministers, for augmentation of 
 maintenance for officiating in any church or chapel in Eng- 
 land and Wales." This was the last enactment on the 
 subject previous to the Commonwealth. We observe, how- 
 ever, that on the 30th of April, 1649, an act was passed 
 " for the abolishing of deans and chapters, canons, prebends, 
 and other officers and titles, of or belonging to any cathe- 
 dral or collegiate church or chapel within England or 
 Wales." The plea put forth in the preamble to this bill 
 was the very sufficient one of necessity nor, indeed, a plea 
 at all unreasonable, when all the circumstances are con- 
 sidered. " Having seriously weighed," say its enactors, 
 " the necessity of raising a present supply of money for the 
 present safety of this Commonwealth, and finding that their 
 other securities are not satisfactory to lenders, nor sufficient 
 to raise so considerable a sum as will be necessary for the
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 531 
 
 tain it is, moreover, that in all they applied 
 themselves to (their object in all, even when 
 mistaken most, being still the advancement of 
 the welfare of England), they distinguished 
 themselves by indefatigable perseverance and 
 unwearying toil.* And then, to crown and con- 
 summate the fame of these lasting things, which 
 shall surely be held supreme above their tem- 
 porary errors, they were on the point of giv- 
 ing a just charter of representative franchise to 
 the great body of the nation, when they fell be- 
 neath the violence of Cromwell. 
 
 Was that fall merited 1 Does the plea of ne- 
 cessity hold good ! Had these men rendered 
 themselves suddenly incapable of the trust of 
 government they had held so long, by insolent 
 
 saul service, are necessitated to sell the lands of the deans 
 and chapters, for the paying of public debts, and for the 
 raising of 300,000 for the present supply of the pressing 
 necessities of the Commonwealth, do enact," &c. These 
 lands, it should be mentioned at the same time, notwith- 
 standing the urgent necessity, were not to be sold under 
 twelve years' purchase, though the lands of the bishops had 
 been allowed to be sold for ten ; not a bad price, considering 
 the high interest of money, at this time about eight per 
 cent., and recollecting the possibility, also, of the lands be- 
 ing one time or other reclaimed by their former possessors. 
 I now come to the equal and sufficient revenues alluded to 
 in the text. Out of the lands thus appointed to be sold, a 
 subsequent act of the 8th of June, 1649, excepted expressly 
 "all tithes appropriate, oblations, obventions, portions of 
 tithes appropriate, of or belonging to the archbishops, bish- 
 ops, deans, and deans and chapters, all which, together 
 with 2'l,000 yearly rent, formerly belonging to the crown 
 of England, the Commwns thought fit to be settled for a 
 competent maintenance of preaching ministers, where it 
 was wanting, in England and Wales." This competent 
 maintenance was 100 a year, equally awarded to the state 
 preachers. Nothing, at the same time, was taken from the 
 rectories, which, whatever their revenue might be, were 
 preserved eutire. This system, founded on justice and 
 common sense, worked admirably ; uor, it may be safely 
 added, will any church, whether voluntary or of the state, 
 work to the satisfaction of its ministers, or of the people it 
 should be designed to benefit, till it is taken from the temp- 
 tation of too much wealth on the one hand, and the degra- 
 dation of too much poverty on the other. What 1 have said 
 iu the text on the subject of the universities claims a con- 
 cluding word. One of the enactments supplementary to the 
 foregoing ordered, " That the trustees, in whose, hands the 
 dean and chapter lands were vested for the use of the pub- 
 lic, shall, from time to time, pay out of the above-mentioned 
 20,000, 2000 yearly, for the increase of the maintenance 
 of the masterships of colleges, in both universities, where 
 maintenance is wanting, regard being to be had unto the 
 number of houses of learning in each university that are 
 fit to have an increase of maintenance ; and to make an as- 
 (ignment of maintenance unto them accordingly, provided 
 it do not exceed 100 per annum to any on of them." 
 Nor was this bounty ill rewarded. The names of Cud- 
 worth, Whichcott, Wilkins, and many others, bear witness 
 to the quality of intellect the universities of the Common- 
 wealth produced ; men who educated and gave to the world 
 the Tillotsons and Barrows. As to the general patronage 
 bestowed by the statesmen on literature and learned men, 
 it is only needful to add to the names of Milton, Needham, 
 and others, those of Marvel and the two Parkers. I had 
 wellnigh forgotten to state, too, that on the 18th of June, 
 1651, a committee appointed by these accomplished and truly 
 "liberal" statesmen reported in favour of the endowment of 
 a third university in Durham, out of the overgrown wealth 
 of the chapter lands. The project, we shall see, was re- 
 vived in the Protectorate. Even Mr. Hallam {generally 
 unjust, I regret to say, to these great men) can say of this 
 that it " was a design of great importance to education and 
 literature in this country." 
 
 * Not long after the first meeting of this famous assem- 
 bly of men, we find that above forty committees were ap- 
 pointed to investigate and prepare so many different sub- 
 jects for the consideration of the House of Commons ; and 
 as these committees, upon an average, consisted of twenty 
 persons, and sometimes of double that number, almost 
 every member must be supposed to have been upon some 
 committee, and the same member was often upon several. 
 The House usually sat in the morning, the committees in 
 the evening. The larger committees had a power of ap- 
 pointing sub-committees of their own body, either for expe- 
 dition, or for a more accurate examination of the subjects 
 that came before them. 
 
 assertions of undue power, and selfish prefer- 
 ! ences of their own ends before the welfare and 
 j the good of England, when Cromwell, speak- 
 ing the voice of the people, doomed them to 
 dispersion and contempt, as an expiation of 
 j their sin 1 Their actions are now before the 
 reader ; their errors have not been concealed ; 
 | and by the result of both, let them be finally 
 and fairly judged. It is our duty at present to 
 follow Cromwell's fortunes in the new scenes 
 opened to his vast ambition. Means will thus 
 be offered in abundance of determining how far 
 the result justified the outrage of the 20th of 
 April, and whether its author then executed the 
 righteous sentence of the nation, or merely 
 practised on its weakness and divisions. With 
 all the strange indifference, or, rather, as it may 
 be better termed, the suspense between anger 
 and hope, by which that outrage seemed to have 
 half received the popular sanction, there was 
 yet enough of the elements of good incur coun- 
 trymen to render it needful that still under the 
 show and by the pretences of Parliamentary 
 authority should despotism effect its crafty 
 march upon them. But this is anticipating 
 what will soon reveal itself, in a political les- 
 son of no indifferent value. It will speedily be 
 manifest whether the reign of saints was a more 
 practicable thing than the reign of statesmen, 
 and whether the last was indeed a failure, since 
 the first achieved success. It will also be made 
 evident under which anomalous authority the 
 Parliament or the Protectorate the people of 
 England enjoyed most freedom. Let the palm 
 be given to that which only has deserved best, 
 when some proof is offered that under it the 
 people were better governed ; that by its means 
 our England had increased in wealth at home 
 and honour abroad ; that vice was trampled un- 
 der foot ; that property was protected ; that 
 personal and political liberty were enjoyed ; 
 and, in one word, that this authority, which 
 claims to be remembered with our greatest re- 
 spect, had discountenanced all possible revival 
 of servile thoughts and Royalist vices in the new 
 Republic, and promoted only the growth of pop- 
 ular intelligence, of sobriety, and virtue. 
 
 Be it, then, once more remembered, before 
 proceeding to these means of final judgment, 
 that Cromwell, by a peculiar combination of 
 circumstances, most rare in the history of 
 usurpers, had been able to overthrow the gov- 
 ernment of the Commonwealth, not in its hour 
 of weakness or decay, but at what seemed to 
 be the "highest point of all its glory." The 
 Dutch were virtually subdued ;* the Portuguese 
 and the Danes had humbled themselves to Eng- 
 land ; and with all the other powers of Europe 
 
 * So completely were many parties at a loss to fathom 
 the first inducement of Cromwell to assault the Parliament 
 at such an hour, that a story became very current at the 
 time, that, immediately after Blake's last victory over the 
 I Dutch, the great loss of the latter had " so sensibly affected 
 i the states of Holland and West Friezland, that they de- 
 spatched letters to the English Parliament to endeavour, 
 after some means, for putting an end to this cruel war. 
 This negotiation had no effect, though it was particularly 
 promoted by General Cromwell himself, who was very de- 
 sirous to have a peace concluded. The states had offered 
 to acknowledge the English sovereignty of the British seas, 
 and to pay 300,000 to the English Commonwealth ; but, 
 finding this was not likely to succeed, they applied them- 
 selves (as we are told) more directly to General Cromwell, 
 promising him vast sums if he would venture to depose and 
 dissolve the Parliament." This is tld in a life of the Lord 
 Protector not at all inimical to Cromwell.
 
 532 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 the leaders of the Commonwealth were at 
 peace. They were in sole possession of the 
 Spanish trade, and were gradually, though 
 slowly, diminishing the burdens of the people. 
 They had given safety, at least, to each man's 
 home, and commerce was once more lifting up 
 its head throughout the country. On the day of 
 their dissolution there were upward of 500,000 
 in the public treasury, and the value of 700,000 
 in the magazines ; their power at sea was giv- 
 ing law to the world, and they had refused 
 900,000 a year for the customs and excise.* 
 Finally, they had then resolved to submit their 
 stewardship to the judgment of the nation ; to 
 test, by new institutions, the capacity of the 
 people for Republican government ; and to 
 stand or fall by the result. Bishop Warburton, 
 in a few celebrated words, has stated the mat- 
 ter as we may now be well content to leave it. 
 " Cromwell," he says, " seemeth to be distin- 
 guished in the most eminent manner, with re- 
 gard to his abilities, from all other great and 
 wicked men who have overturned the liberties 
 of their country. The times in which others 
 succeeded in this attempt were such as saw the 
 spirit of liberty suppressed and stifled by a gen- 
 eral luxury and venality ; but Cromwell sub- 
 dued his country when this spirit was at its 
 height, by a successful struggle against court 
 oppression, and while it was conducted and 
 supported by A SET OF THE GREATEST GENIUSES 
 
 FOR GOVERNMENT THE WORLD EVER SAW EMBARK- 
 ED TOGETHER IN ONE COMMON CAUSE." 
 
 It only remains that the names of these 
 statesmen should be placed on record beside 
 this mention of their deed*. A list of them was 
 published, as they reassembled after the death 
 of Cromwell, and to this, which follows, I have 
 added such as declined to reassume their seats, 
 or had perished in the interval. It may be held, 
 therefore, very nearly complete ; and embra- 
 cing, as it does, the most eminent of the men 
 who assembled on the 3d of November, 1640, 
 
 * Biog. Brit., art. Cromwell, ed. Kippis, vol. iv., p. 525. 
 The History of Mrs. Macauley. The author of " The 
 World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell" (published in 1668) 
 distinctly says, that the prosperity of trade " appeared by 
 the great sums offered them for the customs and excise, 
 900,000 a year being refused. The riches of the nation 
 showed itself in the high value that land and all our native 
 commodities bore, which are the certain marks- of opulency. ' 
 Our honour was made known to all the world by a conquer- : 
 ing navy, which had brought the proud Hollanders upon ! 
 their knees, to beg peace of us upon our own conditions, 
 keeping all other nations in awe. And, besides these ad- j 
 vantages, the public stock was 500,000 in ready money ; 
 the value of 700,000 in stores ; and the whole army in ad- I 
 vance, some four, and none under two months ; so that, though 
 there might be a debt of near 5000 upon the kingdom, he 
 met with above twice the value in lieu of it." This tract ' 
 was written by Slingsby Bethel, and carries considerable I 
 authority with it. He was the son of Sir Walter Bethel, by j 
 a sister of the sturdy and celebrated Cavalier, Sir Henry 
 Slingsby, who expiated on the scaffold his love for monar- 
 chy. Bethel, who was sheriff of London in 1680, played a 
 conspicuous part in the agitations of the Popish Plot and i 
 the Exclusion Bill ; and, as a stanch partisan of Shaftes- 
 bury and Monmouth, fell under the terrible lash of Dryden. 
 He is the Shimei of " Absalom and Achitophel." 
 "When two or three were gathered to declaim 
 Against the monarch of Jerusalem, 
 Shimei was always in the midst of them ; 
 And, if they cursed the king when he was by, 
 Would rather curse than break good company. 
 
 " If any leisure time he had from power, 
 Because 'tis sin to misemploy an hour 
 His business was, by writing, to persuade 
 That kings were useless, and a clog to trade." 
 
 and all who held their seats between the 30th 
 of January, 1649, and the 20th of April, 1653, 
 the reader has thus before him, recollecting the 
 immortal memories of Eliot, Pym, and Hamp- 
 den, and making needful allowance for the in- 
 different or the traitorous among them, the 
 great authors of all the legislative triumphs this 
 work has recorded, and, indeed, of all the es- 
 sential political liberty that our country has en- 
 joyed. 
 
 William Lenthall, speaker. Earl of Salis- 
 j bury. Philip earl of Pembroke. Philip lord- 
 viscount Lisle. Edward lord Howard of Es- 
 cricke. Thomas lord Halifax. William lord 
 1 Monson. Oliver St. John, lord-chief-justice. 
 i John Wild, lord-chief-baron. Lord-commiss. 
 ! John Lisle. Lord-commiss. Bulstrode White- 
 ! locke. Oliver Cromwell, lord-general. Henry 
 I Ireton, lieutenant-general. Lieutenant-general 
 ! Fleetwood. Lieutenant-general Ludlow. Ma- 
 | jor-general Skippon. Sir Arthur Hazlerig. Sir 
 Henry Vane. Sir Thomas Wroth. Sir Thomas 
 Walsingham. Sir Henry Mildmay. Sir Mi- 
 ; chael Livesey. Sir Robert Goodwin. Sir John 
 Trevor. Sir William Brereton. Sir Thomas 
 Widdrington. Sir Richard Lucy. Sir Francis 
 Russel. Sir John Lenthall. Sir William Ar- 
 mine. Sir William Strickland. Sir John Bour- 
 chier. Sir Gilbert Pickering. Sir Peter Went- 
 worth. Sir James Harrington. Edmund Pri- 
 deaux, attorney-general. Roger Hill, sergeant- 
 at-law. Erasmus Earle, sergeant-at-law. Rob- 
 ert Blake. John Jones. James Challoner. 
 John Moyle. Thomas Crompton. Christopher 
 Martin. Henry Smith. Miles Corbet. Michael 
 Oldsworth. Carew Raleigh. Edward How- 
 ard. John Gurdon. John Fielder. John Fry. 
 Thomas Atkin. John Hutchinson. Edmund 
 Dunch. Thomas Pury, Sen. Thomas Chal- 
 loner. William Leman. Edmund Harvey. 
 Henry Marten. Benjamin Weston. William 
 Heveningham. John Barker. George Thom- 
 son. Luke Robinson. Gilbert Millington. Au- 
 gustine Garland. Henry Neville. Robert An- 
 drew. Thomas Lister. Peter Brook. John 
 Trenchard. Nathaniel Rich. Nicholas Gould. 
 Algernon Sidney. John Lowry. William Say. 
 John Selden. Edward Neville. John Wastell. 
 Henry Darley. Francis Lassels. William Pure- 
 foy. Nicholas Letchmere. Thomas Allen. 
 John Dormer. Francis Rouse. William Caw- 
 ley. John Nut. Richard Ingoldsby. Corne- 
 lius Holland. Edmund Wilde. John Corbet. 
 James Ash. John Goodwin. Richard Sawley. 
 Herbert Morley. James Nelthorp. Robert 
 Brewster. John Dixwell. Thomas Harrison. 
 John Downs. John Anlaby. Simon Meyne. 
 Thomas Scot. George Fleetwood. Thomas 
 Pury, Jun. William Eyre. Thomas Boone. 
 Edmund West. Robert Reynolds. William 
 White. Richard Darley. John Carew. Au- 
 gustine Skinner. John Dove. Thomas Birch. 
 Nicholas Love. Philip Smith. Valentine Wau- 
 ton. Alexander Popham. Robert Cecil. Isaac 
 Pennington. John Fag. William Hay. Na- 
 thaniel Hallowes. Thomas Wayte. Henry 
 Arthington. Walter Strickland. John Pyne. 
 Thomas Mackworth. Gervas Pigot. Francis 
 Thorp. Robert Bennet. Robert Nicholas. 
 Richard Norton. John Stevens. Peter Tem- 
 ple. James Temple. John Weaver. Thomas 
 Wogan. Brampton Gurdon. Robert Wallop.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 533 
 
 William Sydenham. John Bingham. Philip 
 Jones. John Palmer. William Ellis. 
 
 Cromwell had been some days engaged in 
 the establishment of the council of state before 
 he described it to the nation in his declaration 
 of the 30th of April.* It was not an easy mat- 
 ter to establish, for all his officers thought them- 
 selves entitled to have an opinion concerning it, 
 and it was his policy, for the present, to seem 
 to give them their way. The discussions that 
 ensued were, accordingly, highly characteristic. 
 
 Lambert, and a few of the more worldly of 
 these gentlemen, proposed that it should con- 
 sist of ten members ; Harrison, and a section 
 of his party, were for the number of seventy, 
 after the model of the Jewish Sanhedrin ; Okey, 
 and others of the saints, were for thirteen, in 
 imitation of Christ and his twelve apostles. 
 The last scheme, embracing at once the scrip- 
 tural and convenient, was favoured for this and 
 other peculiar reasons by Cromwell, and ulti- 
 mately adopted. On the 29th of April they had 
 taken their seats, for the first time, as rulers 
 of the Commonwealth. With Cromwell were 
 associated eight officers of high rankf and four 
 civilians. t The last would thus seem to have 
 been thrown in as a convenient screen alone ; 
 for this council of state, so constituted, was to 
 all intents and purposes a military council. 
 
 It will scarcely be believed, notwithstanding, 
 that a desperate attempt was made to secure, 
 in the position of one of the civilians, the name 
 and authority of Sir Henry Vane. Idle effort ! 
 but not less zealously made ; for none knew 
 better than Cromwell 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 be- 
 fore 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 submission. From his house 
 in Lincolnshire, to which he had at once re- 
 tired after the 20th of April, 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 heav- 
 en."$ Heartily Cromwell wished him there 
 who can doubt ! 
 
 Decidedly warlike, however, as the new 
 
 * See ante, p. 515. A curious letter, of a few days later 
 date, shows the suspicious already begun to be entertained 
 as to his purpose*. " This declaration," says the writer, 
 " is in his own name, and signed by himself, Oliver Crom- 
 well, which shewct what henceforward he aimti att." 'L'kur- 
 loe't State Papert, vol. i., p. 240. 
 
 t These were Lambert, Harrison, Desborough, Thomlin- 
 son, Bennet, Sydenham, Stapely, and another whose name 
 I cannot precisely ascertain, in the confusion of the addi- 
 tions subsequently made, ami of the second council of state 
 so soon afterward appointed. I take him, however, to have 
 been Colonel Philip Jones. 
 
 i These were, Strickland, late ambassador to the United 
 Provinces; Sir Gilbert Pickering, John Carew,auil Samuel 
 Moyer. A new president was weekly chosen, Lambert 
 being the first, Pickering the second, and Harrison the 
 third. 
 
 4 See an intercepted letter of Mr. T. Robinson to Mr. 
 Stoneham, at the Hague, in Thurloe's Slate Papers, vol. i., 
 f. 265. 
 
 council of state was in its construction, the old 
 council of officers held, not the less, to their 
 existence as a quasi-authoritative body, of 
 which the lord-general, Cromwell himself, was 
 the natural and most authoritative mouthpiece. 
 Under no lack of governors, therefore, did Eng- 
 land labour after the dispersion of her states- 
 men. A fortnight had not elapsed after that 
 event before acts of the highest authority were 
 seen to emanate, with equal force and poten- 
 cy, from three several executive powers. Eng- 
 lishmen were now called on to obey the coun- 
 cil of state, now to submit to the council ot 
 officers ; in one day they were to receive, with 
 deference, the law of the Lord-general Crom- 
 well, speaking on behalf of the officers, and in 
 the next they were to welcome the orders of 
 the Lord-president Cromwell, as the mouthpiece 
 of the state.* 
 
 Such, however, were the trifling peculiari- 
 ties that might well precede a reign of saints, 
 and men waited in hope accordingly. Scarce- 
 ly a day passed that did not bring to the coun- 
 cil its " humble and thankful congratulation 
 from some that fear the Lord," in anticipation 
 of the great things they were to do, and not 
 seldom a mission or address of the following 
 fashion reached the devout hands of the lord- 
 general or the lord-president, Oliver Cromwell. 
 " After so many throes and pangs severe 
 contests between the powers of the world and 
 the interest of Christ we conceive the great and 
 long-desired reformation is near the birth. We 
 bless the God of Heaven, who hath called you 
 forth and led you on, not only in the high pla- 
 ces of the field, making you a terror to the en- 
 emy, but aBo (among those mighty ones whom 
 God hath left) to the dissolving of the late Par- 
 liament. O my lord, what are you, that you 
 should be the instrument to translate the na- 
 tion from oppression to liberty, from the hands 
 of corrupt persons to the saints ? And who are 
 we, that we should live to see these days which 
 our fathers longed to see, and reap the harvest 
 of their hopes 1 To be low in our own eyes, 
 when God lifteth us, is a true testimony of 
 humility and uprightness. No action of ser- 
 vice or honour ever swelled the bosom of 
 Christ ; him, we believe, you make your pat- 
 tern. Let the high praises of God be in our 
 mouths, and the generations to come tell of 
 his wonders. Let the improvement of this 
 opportunity be your care and our prayer, that 
 you may follow the Lamb whithersoever he 
 goeth, and we attend you with our persons, 
 
 * See Whitelocke, p. 530-533. Among other acts done, 
 judges were displaced, appointed, superseded ; new treasury 
 and admiralty commissioners were named ; even the month- 
 ly assessment (so clamoured against in the time of the 
 statesmen !) of 120,000 was renewed for an additional 
 half year ; and all these various powers assumed by author- 
 ities as various. (See Leicester's Journal, p. 142. Merc. 
 Pol., No. 157.) The chief civil offices had in the main gone 
 forward without intermission, in obedience to the order 
 contained in the declaration of officers. (See ante, p. 514.) 
 It is amusing to mark Whitelocke's manner of shuffling 
 over, in his Memorials, the fact of his first adhesion to this 
 anomalous and most unlawyer-like state of things. Allu- 
 ding to the appearance of this declaration, and of the more 
 particular passage to which I have referred, he says, " The 
 commissioners did not proceed in the business of the great 
 seal till after this declaration ; and then,* considering that 
 they had their authority from the Parliament, they did pro- 
 ceed." This " Parliament" must have been the Parliament 
 remotely and mysteriously alluded to in the declaration at 
 likely, probable, impossible to be gammoned !
 
 534 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 petitions, purses, lives, and all that is dear to 
 us."* 
 
 The Royalists had a somewhat different 
 mode of regarding the recent occurrences 
 more sensible as a matter of reasoning, but 
 still mistaken in point of fact, or, rather, in 
 point of time. They wrote exultingly to every 
 quarter of the Continent that their great ene- 
 mies were gone, that the regicide Parliament 
 was no more, that a " notable crisis" was at 
 hand ; they revelled in the thought of " the 
 noble confusion" Cromwell had made ;t they 
 said that their cause, low as it was, should 
 spring back higher than ever ; in plain and pro- 
 phetic terms, they told the personal friends of 
 Stuart that he should have his throne again ; 
 and all these things they mixed as freely as 
 their draughts, in ribald songs at their Royalist 
 taverns. 
 
 "Some think that Cromwell with Charles is agreed, 
 
 And say 'twere good policy if it were so. 
 Lest the Hollander, French, the Dane, and the Swede, 
 
 Do bring him again whether he will or no. 
 " And now I would gladly conclude my song 
 With a prayer, as ballads are wont to do ; 
 'But yet I'll forbear, for I think, ere 't be long, 
 We may have a king and a Parliament too.''i 
 
 The only man in the midst of these strange j 
 doings who already knew their result as thor- 
 oughly as he coolly and determinedly contem- 
 plated it, was Cromwell himself. It is a sin- 
 gular proof of the complete self-possession with 
 which he had long been quietly providing for 
 the movement he had resolved sooner or later 
 to make, that he sent confidentially to the great 
 rival of Mazarin, in the very instant of the 
 brief triumph which preceded the fall of that 
 statesman, to bespeak his interest and friend- j 
 ship. I find the following note in the Memoirs j 
 of the Cardinal de Retz. He had been on | 
 some certain night to negotiate a money loan 
 for Charles Stuart, who was then in Paris, 
 and thus relates the evening's adventures. " It ; 
 is remarkable that the same night, as I was 
 going home, I met one Tilney, an Englishman, 
 whom I had formerly known at Rome, who 
 told me that Vere, a great Parliamentarian and 
 a favourite of Cromwell, was arrived at Paris, 
 and had orders to see me. I was a little per- 
 plexed ; however, I thought it would be im- 
 proper to refuse him an interview. He gave 
 me a letter from Cromwell, in the nature of 
 credentials, importing that the sentiments I had 
 discovered in the defence of public liberty add- 
 ed to my reputation, and had induced him to 
 enter into the strictest friendship with me. It 
 was a most civil, complaisant letter, and I an- 
 swered it with a great deal of respect, but in 
 such a manner as became a true Catholic and 
 an honest Frenchman." 
 
 But yet, as surely as his designs were held, 
 did this extraordinary man contrive, among his 
 own partisans, to throw every kind of doubt and 
 uncertainty over them. A memorable instance 
 at this period is related by Edmund Ludlow. 
 Among the deluded agents in the dispersion of 
 the Parliament, Major Salway has been men- 
 tioned. He appears to have been too self-willed 
 for introduction among the new council, and 
 
 yet too influential with some sections of the 
 army to be passed over without a certain show 
 of deference and conciliation. To him, there- 
 fore, Cromwell had sent shortly after the fall of 
 the Commonwealth, and Salway, " with his 
 friend Mr. John Carew," at once obeyed the invi- 
 tation. Then Cromwell, according to the report 
 of Ludlow, complained to them of " the great 
 weight of affairs that by this means was fallen 
 upon him, affirming that the thoughts of the 
 consequence thereof made him to tremble, and 
 therefore desired them to free him from the 
 temptations that might be laid before him, and 
 to that end to go immediately to the Chief- 
 justice St. John, and Mr. Selden, and some 
 others, and endeavour to persuade them to 
 draw up some instrument of government that 
 might put the power out of his hands." To this 
 Major Salway at once answered with dignity 
 and spirit, yet, at the same time, no recorded 
 distrust of Cromwell, " The way, sir, to free 
 you from this temptation, is for you not to look 
 upon yours-clf to be under it, but to rest persua- 
 ded that the power of this nation if in the good 
 people of England, as formerly it was." Good 
 advice, but by no means so acceptable in the 
 quarter addressed as the pretences which had 
 scattered the statesmen might have led poor 
 Salway to suppose ! Yet it was advice which 
 Cromwell no doubt received with all gracious 
 profession, since it confirmed in one conve- 
 nient sense, if not in the speaker's own, a de- 
 termination which already existed in the lord- 
 general's mind, and by a well-devised realiza- 
 tion of which he hoped to settle the "popular 
 representative" and the "reign of saints" to- 
 gether, in a prescription that should serve for 
 both. Salway, there is little reason to doubt, 
 was sent away perfectly contented. 
 
 Meanwhile everything was working in public 
 as Cromwell could have best desired. The 
 frame of affairs seemed to be breaking asunder. 
 Each day brought fresh rumours to agitate and 
 confuse the public ; each day was the birth of 
 a new project that was to glorify and exalt, or 
 of some design that was sure to betray, the 
 people. Now one excited group met another, 
 and exchanged beliefs that Cromwell had offer- 
 ed to recall the royal family on condition that 
 Charles should marry one of his daughters ;* 
 then might be seen, next day, a knot of disturb- 
 ed and threatening men, who were telling each 
 other that Cromwell intended himself to ascend 
 the throne, and that the insignia for his coro- 
 nation were actually prepared ; finally, aloof 
 
 * I take the following from a curious letter in Thurloo 
 (vol. i., p. 254), dated at the close of May, 1653 : such ex- 
 tracts might be given in abundance : " I expected some 
 news in the letters concerning the King of Scots, which 
 was strongly reported here a fortnight or three weeks ago 
 to be gone for Holland ; and now the fresh reports are, that 
 it's lowly spoken in the court that he is to marry one of 
 Cromwell's daughters, so to be brought again to his three 
 lost crowns. This is also muttered here, but not believed, 
 Cromwell professing himself a constant enemy to monarchs, 
 and that the height of his ambition is to te a -vassal of the 
 Commonwealth, although it's thought by many he is at his 
 wit's end, not content with what he hath got, nor knowing 
 how to get absolute hold of the sceptre, or to content all, the 
 soldiers being much divided by their several interests. It 
 is said again, he hath sent for all the soldiers to come up ; 
 and what will be done when they come (if indeed they da 
 come), 1 cannot divine. Our city is earnest, either to have 
 tht old Parliament brought to sit again, or to have a neut 
 one. Cromwell will never yield to the first, but rather 
 punish the motioneis ; what he will do to the second^ tint 
 must show."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 535 
 
 from all these, excited enthusiasts gathered to- 
 gether in various quarters of the city, to pre- 
 dict a speedy advent for those halcyon days 
 which would at last fulfil God's promises to 
 man. In one street signatures were solicited 
 to a petition for the re-establishment of the an- 
 cient Constitution ; in another, for a pure re- 
 public, with the government of successive Par- 
 liaments ; in a third, for welcome to that " Lamb 
 of the Lord," which had exhibited itself in the 
 new military councils. All this was to have 
 been expected in the state of society and of 
 parties already described. Some addresses de- 
 clared the conviction of their subscribers that 
 the late dissolution was a crime, some that it 
 was a blessing ; some were for having the 
 statesmen back, some were rather impatient, 
 and not very implicit, about the assembling of 
 the saints. From the country, too, various ru- 
 mours arrived in quick and startling succession. 
 Here there was " gathering of hands" for the 
 fallen Commonwealth, there for the rising king ;* 
 and only one thing reigned alike everywhere, 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF CONFUSION. 
 
 And thus arose the instrument of Cromwell's 
 vast design ! " Sure," wrote Hyde from Paris 
 a few weeks later, " sure the confusion is very 
 high in England, and you must declare for Crom- 
 well, that his single influence may compose 
 these distractions, which the multitude cannot 
 do." It is good to make our giants first, since 
 it is certain that we kill them then more easily. 
 
 The time had certainly arrived, if not for that 
 of a declaration in behalf of Cromwell, at least 
 for his own trial of the last grand cheat he had 
 been so long preparing. It was observed for 
 some weeks that he had never seemed to wear 
 such gracious aspects of humility and godliness 
 as at this peculiar time ; his prayers had pecu- 
 liar relish in them, and a most extraordinary 
 fervour ; his preachings were also very frequent 
 in the council ; and it was the report of men 
 more immediately about his person in confiden- 
 tial relations, that he had certainly, of late, re- 
 ceived absolute communications from the Holy 
 Spirit.! 
 
 * I refrain from overlaying the text with details on these 
 matters, which might be multiplied to an interminable ex- 
 tent. I give another curious letter, however, which bears 
 upon the subject generally, and sufficiently illustrates the 
 view I have given of the state of society : it is to be found 
 in Thnrloe, vol. i., p. 249, 250: "We talk merrily of a pe- 
 tition coming out of Surrey for making their general king. 
 The foolish, senseless, stupid citizens were so sottish as to 
 petition their lord-general to have at least some who were 
 thought good men of the Parliament to sit again ; but he 
 gave them an answer no ways to their desire. He intends 
 to be king in effect, though loth to take upon him the title. 
 The apparition of the city's petition was seen a fortnight 
 ago in several places of this town ; but it soon vanished in 
 the thoughts of wise men. The council often are at a non- 
 plus, for they know not what to do ; they have added three 
 more to their number. The general's picture was set up at 
 the Exchange, with verses under it, tending much to his 
 honour: it was brought to him by the lord-mayor, toAo, it 
 is thought, was the contriver of the setting of it up. White- 
 locke declareth that the Parliament is not dissolved, and 
 there is a gathering of hands to that purpose. On the other 
 side, there is a gathering of hands for a king. This is both 
 in town and country. Essex and Buckinghamshire are 
 sending a petition for a king. Thus things stand in a great 
 confusion. As things stand now, we know not what to 
 think or say. The time was, when the challenging of five 
 members was cried out upon for an unheard-of breach of 
 privilege of Parliament ; but afterward the impeaching of 
 eleven members was a greater, and made a mighty noise 
 among the Presbyterians. What think you now of turning 
 them all out of doors ?" 
 
 t The assertion is thought worthy of grave contradiction 
 
 The secret of these spiritual throes and hear- 
 ings made its appearance in due course. It 
 had been immediately preceded by eight days' 
 close consultation between Cromwell and his 
 military divan : a circumstance duly noted with 
 all kinds of lofty and indistinct surmises by the 
 Whitehall newspapers,* and for the result of 
 
 by one of Cromwell's common-sense partisans : M. de Bor- 
 deaux, for example, the French resident in England, and 
 for many reasons well affected to Cromwell, thus writes to 
 Monsieur de Brienne, the French secretary of state : " Les 
 bruits, qu'on fait courir du general [Cromwell] ne sont pas 
 vrais ; if affecte bien une grande pi6t6, mais par vine par- 
 ticuliere communication avec le St. Esprit ; et n'est par si 
 foib'ie, que de se laisser pnndre par des flateries. Je scais 
 que 1'ainb. de Portugal lui en aiant fait sur ce changement, 
 il en fait raillerie." An extract from a Royalist pamphlet 
 of the day will show, however, the peculiar interests that 
 now subsisted between this Frenchman and Cromwell. 
 Alluding to the addresses which were got up after the fall 
 of the Parliament "to strengthen the hands of this dictator 
 in carrying on the work of Sion," it thus proceeds : " He 
 was also complimented by the French ambassador Bor- 
 deaux, who had made applications to the Parliament, but 
 was doubtful of effecting his errand with those highest and 
 mightiest states who were grown formidable not only to the 
 Dutch, but to his master, who willingly courted them to 
 prevent their closing with his rebels of Bordeaux ; only Oli- 
 ver, as we have seen, valued them no more than scoundrels 
 or rake-shames, nor would give ear to any more enemies of 
 monarchy." A vice in the foreign policy of the Protectorate 
 is here glanced at. 
 
 * It is needless to observe that the breathless interest 
 with which intelligence of each new incident or circum- 
 stance of the war was looked for, had greatly tended to the 
 increase of newspapers, both in numbers and influence. 
 About twelve were now regularly published, all of them 
 weekly newspapers, besides those occasional assaults on the 
 popular party which came out in the shape of Royalist 
 journals. On Monday appeared the Perfect Diurnal, and 
 the Moderate Intelligencer; on Tuesday, Several Proceed- 
 ings in Parliament, a publication of authority ; the Weekly 
 Intelligencer, and the Faithful Post ; on Wednesday, Mer- 
 curius Democritus, and the Perfect Account ; on Thursday, 
 Several Proceedings in State Affairs, a publication of some 
 authority, and Mercurius Politicus. a sort of state gazette ; 
 and on Friday, the Moderate Publisher, the Faithful Post, 
 by a different publisher from that of Tuesday, and the 
 Faithful Scout. There was no newspaper on Saturday, 
 probably because that would have been considered as too 
 nearly trenching on the Lord's Day. Among the various 
 writers whose names have come down to ns, that of Mareh- 
 mont Needham, the editor of the Mercurius Politicus, best 
 deserves mention. He had written against the liberal cause 
 in the commencement of the war, yet the statesmen not 
 only pardoned him this, but extended to his undoubted tal- 
 ents the patronage they loved to bestow universally on lit- 
 erature and learned men. Eventually he " was induced to 
 become an advocate for them and liberty." He was a wri- 
 ter worth gaining. This is his character by Anthony & 
 Wood: "His Mercurius Politicus, which came out by au- 
 thority, and flew every week into all parts of the nation for 
 more than ten years, had very great influence upqn num- 
 bers of inconsiderable persons, such as have a strong pre- 
 sumption that all must needs be true that is in print. He 
 was the Goliath of the Philistians, the great champion of 
 the late usurper, whose pen, in comparison of others, was 
 like a weaver's beam. And certainly he that will or can 
 peruse those his intelligences called Merc. Politici, will 
 judge that, had the devil himself (the father of all lies) been, 
 in this Goliath's office, he could not have exceeded him ; as 
 bavin? with profound malice calumniated his sovereign, with 
 scurrility abused the nobility, with impudence blasphemed 
 the Church and members thereof, and with industry pois- 
 oned the people with dangerous principles." The reader 
 will know how to translate this into an admission of Need- 
 ham's great talents, and his power of making them avail- 
 able. He may still wish tn judge for himself, however, as 
 to the quality of the newspaper-writing in that age, and I 
 therefore subjoin a passage fnm the 108lh number of " Mer- 
 curius Politicus," on what are called "Reasons of State :" 
 " The regulation of affairs by reason of state, not the strict 
 rule of honesty, has been an epidemical one. But, for fear 
 1 be mistaken," continues he, " you are to understand, that 
 by reason of state here we do not condemn the equitable re- 
 sult of prudence and right reason for upon determinations 
 of this nature depends the safety of all slates and princes 
 but thnt reason of state which flows from a corrupt principle 
 to an indirect end ; that reason of state which is the states- 
 man's reason, or, rather, his will and lust, when he admits 
 ambition to be a reason preferment, power, profit, revenge,
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 which all parties in the metropolis appear to 
 have waited with an extreme intensity of in- 
 terest. It was early in June when its disclo- 
 sure appeared, and it announced a Parliament. 
 A Parliament ! That name which a short month 
 past was said to have become hateful to the 
 English people, was now confessed to be the 
 one feasible mode of inducing satisfaction and 
 content. A Parliament of statesmen ! Some 
 hearts, it might be, leaped high again with the 
 generous hope, which in generous nature sur- 
 vives distrust and fear, and saw the men of the 
 army powerless, and the Commonwealth re- 
 stored. A Parliament of saints ! At that rapt 
 announcement, enthusiasts who walked the city 
 with their faces too much fixed on heaven to 
 see ordinary wants or human fears, beheld the 
 prayed for movements in the clouds that were 
 to sweep away forever iniquity and sorrow, but 
 were, alas ! struck blind to movements reviving 
 on the earth, which, in a few brief years, would 
 sweep themselves away with a most triumphant 
 scorn. 
 
 A Parliament of saints it was indeed to be ! 
 The ignorant and enthusiast still believed ; the 
 poor were obliged to hope, since it was some- 
 thing still to cling to ; the statesmen grieved 
 or smiled ; the indifferent calculated chances ; 
 while the irreverent exultation of the Royalists 
 scattered questions along the streets, to ask if 
 the image of him who rode into Jerusalem upon 
 an ass's foal were any more than a type of the 
 new deliverer, who was about to ride into his 
 throne upon the backs of a hundred and twenty 
 asses, selected out of several counties for the 
 especial purpose.* 
 
 But were the people to return these saints 1 
 Were the asses to be of popular selection 1 The 
 pretences urged against the statesmen would 
 surely, at least, be permitted to survive so far. 
 It would be hardly credible, that within a month 
 of the violent destruction of a Parliament on 
 the plea that it had refused to place faith in the 
 people, its destroyers should take on themselves 
 to call another Parliament together without 
 even the semblance of a popular appeal. And 
 yet this was what was now done, as any other 
 thing equally monstrous might have been done 
 
 and opportunity, to be reasons sufficient to put him upon 
 any design or action that may tend to present advantage, 
 though contrary to the law of God, or the law of common 
 honesty and of nations. Reason of state is the most sover- 
 eign command and the most important counsellor. Reason 
 of state is the card and compass of the ship. Reason of 
 state is many times the religion of a state the law, the life 
 of a state ; that which answers all objections and quarrels 
 about mal-government ; that which wages war, imposes 
 taxes, cuts off offenders, pardons offenders, sends and treats 
 ambassadors. It can say and unsay ; do and undo ; balk 
 the common road, make high-ways to become by-ways, and 
 the farthest about to become- the nearest cut. If a difficult 
 knot come to be untied, which neither the divine by Scrip- 
 ture, nor lawyer by case or precedent can untie, then reason 
 of state, or an hundred ways more which idiots, know not, 
 dissolve it. This is that great empress which the Italians 
 call Raggione di Stato ; it can rant as a soldier, compliment 
 as a monsieur, trick it as a juggler, strut it as r, statesman, 
 and is as changeable as the moon in the variety of her ap- 
 pearances." This is admirable satire, expressed with ad- 
 mirable correctness and ease. I should not omit to add that 
 one of the ablest works produced by Needham was written 
 at the request of the Parliamentary leaders, and thus enti- 
 tled : "The Case of the Commonwealth of England stated, 
 with a Discourse of the Excellencie of a Free State above 
 a Kingly Government.'' I shall have an opportunity of re- 
 turning to this work. 
 
 * Lord Somers's Tracts by Scott, vol. vii., p. 97. Placards 
 containing such sneers as these were dropped in various 
 places throughout the city. 
 
 in that condition of affairs. When men have 
 been induced, no matter by what disunion or 
 distraction, to countenance one great falsehood, 
 they have then surrendered the privileges with 
 the protection of truth. A lie can only gener- 
 ate a lie, and he who has acknowledged the pa- 
 rent, dares not deny or reject the offspring. 
 The first result of the pernicious fraud which 
 perverts the intellect is the habitual indifference 
 or insincerity which debases and corrupts the 
 heart. 
 
 The new Parliament was to be summoned 
 on principles unheard of in all time before. 
 The qualification of its members was to be 
 sanctity of principles and holiness of life, and 
 their election was to proceed, heaven-directed, 
 from the choice of the council of officers. 
 With this view, ministers in various parts of 
 the country, on whom the council could rely, 
 had been directed to take the sense of the 
 " Congregational churches" in their several 
 counties, and to send up to the lord-general 
 and his officers returns containing the names 
 of persons " able, loving truth, fearing God, 
 and hating covetousness," whom they judged 
 " qualified to manage a trust in the ensuing 
 government."* Out of these, with the assist- 
 ance of various names selected for their own 
 more immediate ends, the council of officers, 
 in the presence of the lord-general, t now pro- 
 ceeded to select a convention of 139 repre- 
 
 * 1 subjoin from Thurloe a specimen of one of these Con- 
 gregational documents. " Letter from the people of Bed- 
 fordshire to the Lord-general Cromwell and the council of 
 the army. May it please your lordship and the rest of the 
 council of the army, We (we trust), the servants of Jesus 
 Christ, inhabitants in the county of Bedford, having fresh 
 upon our hearts the sad oppressions we have (a long while) 
 groaned under from the late Parliament, and now eyeing 
 and owning (through grace) the good hand of God in this 
 great turn of providence, being persuaded it is from the 
 Lord that you should be instruments in his hand at such a 
 time as this, for the electing of such persons who may go in 
 and out before his people in righteousness, and govern these 
 nations in judgment, we having sought the Lord for you, 
 and hoping that God will still do great things by you, under- 
 standing that it is in your hearts (through the Lord's as- 
 sistance) to establish an authority, consisting of men able, 
 loving truth, fearing God, and hating covetousuess ; and we 
 having had some experience of men with us, we have judged 
 it our duty to God, to you, and to the rest of his people, 
 humbly to present two men, viz., Nathaniel Taylor and 
 John Croke, now justices of peace in our county, whom we 
 judge in the Lord qualified to manage a trust in the ensuing 
 government. All which we humbly refer to your serious 
 considerations, and subscribe our names, this 13th day of 
 May, 1653." A memorandum of the " Dutch deputies in 
 England," dated the 12th of August, 1653, states that the 
 new council, " by the direction and the name of the Lord- 
 general Cromwell, against the 4th of July, 1653, have sum- 
 moned a new representation of 120 English, five Scotch, 
 and five Irish commissioners, out of the respective counties 
 and a few towns ; who, upon the letter of the said general, 
 after a foregoing communication with the ministers of the 
 Independent party, which are spread through all England 
 under the name of the gathered churches, and do keep a 
 mutual correspondence, were chosen, and have appeared 
 here." It is worthy of remark, at the same time, that the 
 lord-general and his council exercised their own right of 
 choice at all times when it happened to differ from their 
 Congregational advisers ; and that, for example, though 
 Nathaniel Taylor in the above recommendation was "call- 
 ed," John Croke was not. "Edward Cater" was sum- 
 moned in his Ktead. 
 
 t It is a singular circumstance, that what was called the 
 council of state took no authoritative share in this proceed- 
 ing, and, accordingly, no notice of the subject is to be found 
 in their order book": it was solely the work of Cromwell 
 and his officers. A characteristic circumstance should also 
 be noted. Major Salway, though not a member of the mil- 
 itary council, was present at these meetings, invited there 
 by Cromwell, who thus, by an extreme appearance of con- 
 fidence and favour, disarmed the suspicions of a gentleman 
 equally credulous and troublesome.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 537 
 
 sentatives, divided thus : for England, 122 ; for 
 Wales six ; six for Ireland ; and five for Scot- 
 land ; and to all these, summonses were at 
 once sent out. 
 
 The form of the summons was as extraordi- 
 nary as its origin. It was issued in the sole 
 name of Oliver Cromwell, as though in these 
 two words already lodged the sovereign au- 
 thority of England ; and it ran thus : " Foras- 
 much as, upon the dissolution of the late Par- 
 liament, it became necessary that the peace, 
 safety, and government of this Commonwealth 
 should be provided for ; and in order thereunto, 
 divers persons fearing God, and of approved 
 fidelity and honesty, are by myself, with the ad- 
 vice of my council of officers, nominated, to 
 whom the charge of trust of so weighty affairs 
 is to be committed ; and having good assurance 
 of your love to, and courage for, God and the 
 interest of this cause, and of the good people 
 of this Commonwealth, I, Oliver Cromwell, cap- 
 tain-general and commander-in-chief of all the 
 armies and forces raised and to be raised with- 
 in this Commonwealth, do hereby summon and 
 
 require you, , Esquire (being one of the 
 
 persons nominated), personally to be and ap- 
 pear at the council-chamber at Whitehall, with- 
 in the city of Westminster, upon the 4th day 
 of July next ensuing the date hereof, then and 
 there to take upon you the said trust, unto 
 which you are hereby called and appointed to 
 serve as a member for the county (or city) of 
 
 . And hereof you are not to fail. Given 
 
 under my hand and seal, the 6th day of June, 
 1653. OLIVER CROMWELL."* 
 
 Nor did any fail excepting two. Two men 
 only refused to answer to the summons. The 
 rest, in wonder or enthusiasm, obeyed. It is 
 indeed recorded of the majority that they took 
 the very extraordinary manner of their election 
 as a sufficient proof that the call was from 
 heaven !f This was natural enough, since men 
 who have been fed with prodigies once, will 
 feed themselves with prodigies still ; nor is a 
 falsehood itself more self-productive than a 
 miracle : and thus did everything work to the 
 usurper's wish. Temporal and spiritual pride 
 went hand in hand to the work, trusting each 
 to the blindness of the other, and both resolved 
 to get what they could, of their respective yet 
 most opposite desires, out of the " mysterious 
 knack," as one of the Royalist papers not in- 
 aptly called it, " of a new, unheard-of legisla- 
 tive authority, who, by the name of men of in- 
 
 * Lord Somers's Tracts, vol. vi., p. 247. 
 
 t The author of "An Exact Relation of the Proceedings 
 and Transactions of the late Parliament, their beginning 
 and ending ; by a Member" (printed in the year 1654, and 
 to be found in Somers's Tracts, vol. vi., p. 266), tells us, 
 "It is very observable, that of all that were chosen and 
 summoned to appear for the end aforesaid, being 140 per- 
 sons, there were but two that refused the call and work, so 
 unanimous a concurrence was there found as to the service, 
 though they knew well their call was not according to an- 
 cient formality and the way of the nation. There seemed 
 to be two reasons wherein there was satisfaction : first, 
 that Divine Providence had cast it on them, without their 
 teeking in the least ; secondly, the necessity, as the case 
 of the Commonwealth stood, of having some to act and 
 carry on affairs in way of government till there might be an 
 attainer to a better way of settlement, by the choice of tht 
 good people of this nation, which was not to be denied to be 
 their just and dearly-purchased liberty." The last passage 
 proves that a certain set of men in this Parliament had been 
 able to combine a conscientious sense and care of public 
 liberty with even the rapt and excited phrensies of religious 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 YYY 
 
 tegrity and fidelity to the cause of God, were 
 by a bare summons from Oliver called to the 
 settlement of the state that was, to be stir- 
 rups or footsteps to the throne whereon Crom- 
 well should tread."* 
 
 Faithful to the day appointed in the sum- 
 mons, these wonderfully-selected, able, truth- 
 loving, God-fearing, covetousness-hating, and 
 Cromwell-obeying men, presented themselves 
 on the 4th of July, 1653, at the council-chamber 
 in Whitehall. A more extraordinary assem- 
 blage had assuredly never been seen within the 
 walls of any place of power. Mean men were 
 among them, and for this they have been flung 
 aside in the mass as a set of ignorant mechan- 
 ics and adventurers, low born, low bred, illiter- 
 ate, and vile ; indifferent and reckless men were 
 among them, and for this they have been scorn- 
 ed and branded by history as hypocrites and 
 madmen, t Yet were they none of these. De- 
 
 * It will be worth quoting another Royalist comment of 
 the time on the present proceedings, more especially as it 
 contains a curious illustration of the origin of the slanders 
 against the quality and condition of the men who composed 
 this conventien. "As for news here, we have none but 
 good, for the lord-general goes on like himself, a conqueror 
 and a king, as it is hoped he will shortly be ; for there is a 
 privy seal made, a sword with three crowns upon it, to 
 borrow moneys with it. And it is told me by some that 
 I know in Whitehall, that there is brought in there a 
 royal crown and a sceptre ; and I wish him as much joy 
 with it as you do, or can do. His excellency and his privy 
 council, which consist of as many Christ and his apostles, 
 all godly men, have made two acts lately, equal to the 
 former acts of Parliament : the one for the continuance of 
 our monthly tax ; the other for the convening of a new rep- 
 resentative at Whitehall, on purpose, as is expected, to 
 crown his excellency. They are elected out of all counties, 
 but not by the counties of England, but by the special ap- 
 pointment of him and his council ; and his warrant to them 
 runs thus : ' I and my council do will and command you to 
 appear at Whitehall,' <fec. ; and I assure you we shall have 
 a blessed government, for though all the elected are mean 
 men, yet they are godly men, and the most of them gifted 
 men, fit to govern both in Church and government. By the 
 next I shall give you their names. In the mean time, take 
 the names of some good and gracious, elected for West- 
 minster and London: Air. Squib, some time clerk to Sir 
 Edward Powel ; another, a leather-seller, over Ram Alley, 
 in Fleet-street, a very ram, a man well known to your bed- 
 fellow ; another, a scrivener in St. Thomas Apostle's, a pure 
 apostle, Mr. Colbume by name ; another, an aqua vita: man, 
 near Aldgate, to furnish the state with a dram out of the 
 bottle to comfort their hearts." The " leather-seller" re- 
 ferred to here was the notorious Barbone, and it is singular 
 that there is no such attempt to play the same trick with 
 his name on the part of this scurrilous Royalist as our grave 
 historians have since played. 
 
 t " Much the major part of them," Lord Clarendon tells 
 us, " consisted of inferior persons of no quality or name, 
 artificers of the meanest trades, known only by their gifts 
 in praying and preaching, which was now practised by all 
 degrees of men, but scholars, throughout the kingdom. In 
 which number, that there may be a better judgment made 
 of the rest, it will not be amiss to name one, from whom 
 that Parliament itself was afterward denominated, who 
 was Praise-God (that was his Christian name) Barebone, a 
 leather-seller in Fleet-street ; from whom, he being an emi- 
 nent speaker in it, it was afterward called Praise-God Bare- 
 bone's Parliament. In a word, they were a pack of weak, 
 senseless fellows, fit only to bring the name and reputation 
 of Parliaments lower than it was yet." Another contem- 
 porary styles them, " A set of men for the most part of such 
 mean and ignoble extraction, that so far were they from, be- 
 ing taken notice of by their shires, each of whom. (but two 
 or three) represented, that they were scarce known in the 
 very towns wherein they were born, or afterward inhabited, 
 till the excise, then committees for sequestration, and the 
 war in the respective counties, made them infamously 
 known. The rest were of Cromwell's partisans in the Par- 
 liament and high Court of Justice." Whitelocke remarks, 
 however, "That many of this assembly being persons of 
 fortune and knowledge, it was much wondered by some that 
 they would at this summons, and from such hands, take 
 upon them the supreme authority of this nation, consider- 
 ing how little authority Cromwell and his officers had to 
 give it, or these gentlemen to take it." It may be worth
 
 538 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 scribe them, as such an assemblage claims to 
 he described, by the general characteristics of 
 the great majority of its members and let 
 laughter still flow freely as it will at the mon- 
 strous origin of their authority, and the ludi- 
 crous pretences of their sanctity, the more 
 grave and the more respectful will be our men- 
 tion of the personal qualities of the men. They 
 were earnest and sincere. They had great 
 truth of purpose, unquestionable good faith, and 
 a zeal that set life and labour at naught in the 
 service to which they had been called. They 
 believed much, and they acted as men who be- 
 lieved. They wildly thought themselves, in- 
 deed, the heralds of a new and glorious era of 
 unearthly happiness to earth, and of immortal 
 peace and good-will to mortal men ; but to this 
 service of overheated imaginations they brought 
 the aid of judgment, upon various and most es- 
 sential things, at once sober, correct, and prac- 
 tical, which should for itself alone command 
 the admiration and respect of all reasoning or 
 reflecting persons. Finally, they were men of 
 no common worldly esteem. " It was much 
 wondered at by some," says Whitelocke, " that 
 these gentlemen, many of them being persons 
 of fortune and knowledge, would, at this sum- 
 mons and from these hands, take upon them 
 the supreme authority of the nation." There 
 were many more things wonderful which 
 Whitelocke's philosophy preferred to leave un- 
 dreamed of, though it might, perchance, have 
 explained them. It was possibly much won- 
 dered at by some, for example, that such gen- 
 tlemen as these, many of them being persons 
 of knowledge, would have been called upon, un- 
 der a summons from such hands, to assume 
 the supreme authority of the nation ; yet none 
 knew better than Whitelocke and his class 
 what Cromwell's objects were, and none better 
 than they could have told how even such men as 
 these would be made the instruments to advance 
 them. This will speedily become manifest. 
 
 Thus, then, assembled in this Whitehall coun- 
 cil-chamber the celebrated Barebone's Parlia- 
 ment : a title by which grave historians, taking 
 advantage of the lucky accident of the name 
 of one of its members, have sought to make it 
 ridiculous in history. A cheap thing is ridicule ; 
 and a most precious instrument of unprincipled 
 power, the facility of coining nicknames ! The 
 ingenious device of changing Barhone into 
 Barebone, and the constant repetition of the 
 latter word in its most ridiculous sense, have 
 been successful in persuading historical read- 
 ers for nearly two centuries that this assem- 
 blage of men, wealthy, high born, wise, as 
 many of them were, was little better, to all 
 sensible or rational purposes, than an assem- 
 blage of literal bare bones* might have been ! 
 
 subjoining 1 , also, the character of the members of this cou- 
 Tention from Ludlow, who tells us, " That many of the 
 members of this assembly had manifested a good affection 
 to the public cause ; but some there were among them who 
 were brought in as spies and trepanne.rs ; and though they 
 had been always of the contrary party, made the highest 
 pretensions to honesty and the service of the nation. This 
 assembly, therefore, being composed, for the most part, of 
 honest and well-meaning 1 persons (who, having good inten- 
 tions, were less ready to suspect the evil designs of others), 
 thought themselves in full possession of the power and au- 
 thority of the nation, and therefore proceeded to the making 
 of laws relating to the public." 
 
 * Voltaire gravely translates Barbone's name into os de- 
 eiarne ! 
 
 so true it is that men are not made less con- 
 temptible because their nickname happens to 
 he nonsense. It is all the better for revealing 
 no shadow of the qualities they may have, 
 whether vile or great, since it only flings the 
 more insignificance over them in expressing, as 
 it were, a very abstraction of the contemptible. 
 The return of Praise-God Barbonet as one of 
 the members for the city of London hath had 
 truly a portentous influence on the memory of 
 this Parliament ! 
 
 Besides Barbone, however, it will become us 
 to recollect in this narrative that Henry Crom- 
 well, a man of no insignificance any way, was 
 summoned ; that the whole of what was called 
 the council of stale, with the exception of the 
 
 * Mr. Godwin (in the Hist, of the Commonwealth, vol. iii., 
 p. 524) first exposed the trick of this altered name, and, on 
 the authority of four undisputed contemporary lists of this 
 Parliament, published by the council of the state, wrote it 
 Barbone. He suggested, at the same time, as to the Chris- 
 tian prefix, that it was scarcely more fanatical than Deoda- 
 tus, a name to be found in the records of most of the coun- 
 tries of Europe. He might have said more for the name it- 
 self, which is capable of the classic translation of Timothe- 
 us. It would be scarcely necessary to refer to the number- 
 less vulgar slanders and ridiculous fictions that have sprung 
 out of this notorious name, but that it too well expresses 
 the spirit in which the history of these times has (until of 
 late) been written, to be altogether omitted. For example, 
 one historian talks of " Praise-God Barebone" having had 
 two brothers, the Christian name of the first of whom was 
 Christ came into the world to save, and of the second, If 
 Christ had not died, thouhadst been damned. He introduces 
 his anecdote with the suspicious words, " / have been in- 
 formed that there were three brothers," and adds, that 
 " some people, tired of the long name of the younger broth- 
 er, are said to have omitted the former part of the sentence, 
 and to have called him familiarly Damned Barebone." An- 
 other writer, according to Mr. Godwin, the Reverend James 
 Brome, in a book of Travels over England, Scotland, and 
 Wales, second edition, 1707, has endeavoured to render the 
 satire more complete by giving the names of a "jury re- 
 tunied in the county of Sussex, in the late rebellious, troub- 
 lesome times, as follows (p. 279) : Accepted Trevor, of] 
 Norsham ; Redeemed Compton, of Battel ; Faint-not Hewet, 
 of Heathfield ; Make-peace Heaton, of Hare ; God-reward 
 Smart, of Tisehurst ; Stand-fast-on-high Stringer, of Crow- 
 hurst ; Earth Adams, of Warbleton ; Called Lower, of the 
 same; Kill-sin Pimple, of With am ; Return Spelman, of 
 Waiting; Be-faithful Joiner, of Britling; Fly-debate Rob- 
 erts, of the same ; Fight-the-good-Jight-of-faith White, of 
 Einer; More-fruit Fowler, of East Hodley ; Hope-far Bend- 
 ing, of the same ; Graceful Harding, of Lewes; Weep-not 
 Billing, of the same ; Meek Brewer, of Okeham." It is re- 
 ally scarcely credible that this list should have been copied 
 into Hume's History of England: so it is, however, and 
 Dr. Zachary Grey had previously given it the authority of 
 his name, if his name had been capable of bearing author- 
 ity in matters which involved hatred to the Puritans. Un- 
 blinded by such hatred, these men would have been the first 
 to see that this notable list was a mere piece of mauvaise 
 pleasanterie. If any doubt remained about it, however, it 
 fortunately happens, from Mr. Godwin's researches, that 
 the Rev. James Brome (the original reporter) has furnished 
 a sufficiently satisfactory clew to the whole, by premising 
 to this list of the Sussex jury that it was given him " by the 
 same worthy hand" that had supplied him with the names 
 of the Huntingdon jury in a preceding page. The story of 
 the Huntingdon jury runs thus : " The following is the 
 copy of a jury taken before Judge Doddridge at the assizes 
 holden in this place, July, 1619, which is the more remark- 
 able, because the surnames of some of the inhabitants would 
 seem to make them at first sight persons of very great re- 
 nown and quality (p. 56): Maximilian King, of Poseland ; 
 Henry Prince, of Godmanchestcr ; George Duke, of Somers- 
 ham ; William Marquess, of Slukeley ; Edmund Earl, of 
 Hartford ; Richard Baron, of Bythorn ; Stephen Pope, of 
 Newton ; Stephen Cardinal, of Kimbolton ; Humphrey 
 Bishop, of Bugden ; Robert Lord, of Waseley ; Robert 
 Knight, of Winwick ; William Abbot, of Stukeley ; Robert 
 Baron, of St. Neot'g ; William Dean, of Old Weston ; John 
 Archdeacon, of Paxton ; Peter Esguire, of Easton ; Edward 
 Friar, of Ellington ; Henry Monk, of Stukeley : George 
 Gentleman, of Spaldech ; George Priest, of Graffan ; Rich- 
 ard Deacon, of Catworth ; Thomas Yeoman, of Barham." 
 It is altogether a joke, the reader perceives, aud, what is 
 worse, by no means a good one !
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 four general officers and Colonel Thomlinson, 
 appeared ; and that among the names of influ- 
 ence and consideration which were to be found 
 among them were those of Viscount Lisle ; 
 George lord Eure ; Major Salway ; Lockhart, 
 afterward French ambassador ; Montague, af- 
 terward Earl of Sandwich ; Howard, afterward 
 Earl of Carlisle ; Sir Robert King, of Dublin ; 
 Sir Charles Wolseley, of Oxfordshire ; Sir Will- 
 iam Brownlow, of Lincolnshire ; Sir William 
 Roberts, of Middlesex ; Sir James Hope, of 
 Hopetown ; and Colonels Duckenfield, Bennet, 
 Fenwick, Barton, Sydenham, Bingham, Law- 
 rence, Blount, Kenrick, West, Danvers, Jones, 
 Pyne, Norton, Clark, James, and Hutchinson ; 
 with Majors Saunders and Horseman, Captain 
 Stone, and others that had served with singu- 
 lar credit in the war. The illustrious name of 
 Robert Blake appeared also in the list, with 
 eleven others, including Francis Rouse, the pro- 
 vost of Eton College, who had sat with him in 
 the Long Parliament itself* 
 
 Two names remain to be mentioned, whose 
 appearance may now be held to have been tru- 
 ly ominous of the crisis to which the public 
 cause was approaching fast, and of the strange 
 and sad prospects that were in wait for liber- 
 ty. These were George Monk, and Anthony 
 Ashley Cooper the "scoundrel of fortune" 
 who restored Charles II., and the renegade who 
 sat in judgment on the judges of Charles I. 
 From this period both date their fortunes. Monk 
 had already been selected by Cromwell to su- 
 persede Blake in the naval command ; and 
 Cooper, whose " venal wit" had hiterto been 
 aptly used for royalty, now recognised the pe- 
 riod of his great advancement come, and set 
 that wit to work to profit by it. 
 
 " He cast himself into the saint-like mould, 
 Groan'cl, sigh'd, and pray'd, while godliness was gain, 
 The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train !" 
 
 No surer mark can we find of the present as- 
 pect of affairs than in the rise of such men as 
 these. They determine, with an almost uner- 
 ring accuracy, from the distance at which we 
 regard them, the character of the crisis which 
 suddenly gave them power. England had be- 
 come little better than a wide theatre for the 
 struggle of selfish passions. With no para- 
 mount principle to bind men together with 
 no ties of acknowledged allegiance to restrain 
 them, the intrepid and the bold ; the men who 
 had sufficient daring to execute what they had 
 craft enough to plan ; the unscrupulous and the 
 restless ; the souls for close designs and crook- 
 ed counsels, for storm, for confusion, for any- 
 thing but calm all these would naturally start 
 above the surface. We see the types of such men 
 in George Monk and Anthony Ashley Cooper. 
 We see the demoralizing action on the people, 
 in the state to which they had been brought, and 
 can discern, " as in a map, the end of all." 
 Policy measured by passion ; rules of govern- 
 ment, various as the various temperaments of 
 men, set up each day ; plots and conspiracies, 
 unheard of during the sway of the statesmen, 
 hatched each night ; but George Monk still 
 faithful to George Monk, Anthony Cooper losing 
 
 * These were Lisle, Pickering, Christopher Martin, 
 Francis Rouse, Harrison, George Fleetwood, Carew Strick- 
 land, Richard Norton, Sydenham, and Jones. 
 
 no love for Anthony Cooper, and at no great 
 distance from the sad scene, the brutal and 
 wicked orgies of the Restoration ! He who 
 now cants for tyranny under Cromwell with 
 pious breath, will soon practise it under Charles 
 II. with iron heel.* 
 
 The 4th of July was a very sultry day, and 
 the council-chamber at Whitehall was of mod- 
 erate dimensions, but upward of 130 of the 
 " elect" legislators had on that day assembled 
 in that place, to receive into their own hands the 
 supreme authority of the nation ; and, " seat- 
 ed round the room on chairs," waited for the 
 entrance of the lord-general and his officers. 
 After a brief delay, Cromwell appeared, follow- 
 ed by the chiefs of his military council. Every 
 one present at once rose and uncovered, t Upon 
 this, Cromwell also removed his hat, and, ad- 
 vancing up the room to the " middle window," 
 took his station there with a considerable body 
 of his officers on either hand, and, " leaning 
 upon the back of a chair, with his own back to 
 the window, "J proceeded to address that re- 
 markable meeting in a speech of profoundest 
 art. It occupied upward of an hour in deliv- 
 
 * Not to acquaint the reader with a satire which he has 
 no doubt admired, but to place on record a noble delineation 
 of the kind of qualities which were now, as in a hot-bed, 
 nursed in England, I subjoin the character of Shaftesbury 
 from Dryden's great hand : 
 
 " Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
 A name to all succeeding ages cursed. 
 For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
 Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit. 
 Restless, unfix'd in principles and place, 
 In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 
 A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
 Fretted the pigmy body to decay, 
 And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
 A daring pilot in extremity ; 
 
 Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, 
 He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit, 
 Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
 Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide . 
 Else why should he, with wealth and honour bless'd, 
 Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ! 
 Punish a body which he could not please, 
 Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
 And all to leave what with his toil he won. 
 To that unfeather'd, two-legged thing, a son ; 
 Got while his soul did huddled notions try, 
 And born a shapeless lump like anarchy. 
 In friendship false, implacable in hate, 
 Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. 
 To compass this the triple bond he broke, 
 The pillars of the public safety shook. 
 And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke : 
 Then seized with fear, yet still affecting fame t 
 Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name. 
 So easy still it proves in factious times, 
 With public zeal to cancel private crimes. 
 How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, 
 Where none can sin against the people's will ! 
 Where crowds can wink, arid no offence be known, 
 Since in another's guilt they find their own '. 
 Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge ; 
 The statesmen we abhor, but praise the judge. 
 In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin 
 With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean ; 
 Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress ; 
 Swift of despatch, and easy of access. 
 Oh ! had he been content to serve the crown, 
 With virtues only proper to the gown, 
 Or had the rankness of the soil been freed 
 From cockle, that oppress'd the noble seed, 
 David for him his tuneful harp had strung, 
 And heaven had wanted one immortal song ! 
 But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, 
 And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land. 
 Achitophel, grown weary to possess 
 A lawful fame and lazy happiness, 
 Disdain'd the golden fruit to gather free, 
 And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree." 
 t Lord Leicester's Journals, p. 147. t Ibid.
 
 540 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ery, and is said* to have been pronounced in so 
 excellent a manner " as sufficiently manifested 
 that as the lord-general himself was thor- 
 oughly persuaded the Spirit of God acted in 
 him and by him." The convention had by this 
 time resumed their seats, but Cromwell and 
 his officers still stood. 
 
 He began by observing that no doubt the sum- 
 mons they had all received would have explain- 
 ed to them the cause of their being in that room ; 
 he had, however, something more " significant" 
 than that summons to offer them now, in the 
 shape of "an instrument drawn up by the con- 
 sent and advice of the principal officers of the 
 army." " And," he added, " we have some- 
 what likewise farther to say to you for our own 
 exoneration, and we hope it may be somewhat 
 farther to your satisfaction ; and, therefore, 
 seeing you sit here somewhat uneasy, by rea- 
 son of the scantness of the room and the heat 
 of the weather, I shall contract myself with re- 
 spect to that." This was merely one of those 
 pleasant promises which orators often make 
 and seldom keep. His very next sentence con- 
 fessed what a long story he had resolved to tell. 
 
 " I have not thought it amiss a little to mind 
 you of that series of providences wherein the 
 Lord hitherto hath dispensed wonderful things 
 to these nations, from the beginning of our 
 troubles to this very day. If I should look much 
 backward, we might remember the state of 
 affairs as they were before the short, and that 
 which was the last Parliament. In what a pos- 
 ture the things of this nation stood, doth so 
 well, I presume, occur to all your memories 
 and knowledges, that I shall not need to look 
 so far backward, nor yet to the beginning of 
 those hostile actions that passed between the 
 king that was and the then Parliament ; and, 
 indeed, should I begin this labour, the things 
 that would fall necessarily before you would 
 rather be fit for a history than- for a discourse 
 at this present. 
 
 " But thus far we may look back. You very 
 well know, after divers turnings of affairs, it 
 pleased God, much about the midst of this war, 
 to winnow, as I may so say, the forces of this 
 nation, and to put them into the hands of men 
 of other principles than those that did engage 
 at first. By what strange providences that also 
 was brought about, would ask more time than 
 is allotted me to remember you of. Indeed, 
 there are stories that do recite those transac- 
 tions, and give narratives of matter of fact. 
 But those things wherein the life and power of 
 them lay ; those strange windings and turnings 
 of Providence ; those very great appearances 
 of God, in crossing and thwarting the designs 
 of men, that he might raise up a poor and a con- 
 temptible company of men, neither versed in 
 military affairs nor having much natural pro- 
 pensity to them even through the owning of a 
 principle of godliness, of religion, which, so 
 soon as it came to be owned, the state of af- 
 fairs put upon that foot of account how God 
 blessed them, and all undertaking?, by the ri- 
 sing of that most improbable, despicable, con- 
 temptible means for that we must forever own 
 you very well know. 
 
 " What the several successes have been is 
 
 * By Camngton, one of his biographers. (Life of Crom- 
 well, p. 151.) 
 
 not fit to mention at this time neither, though 
 I must confess I thought to have enlarged my- 
 self upon this subject, forasmuch as the con- 
 sidering the works of God and the operation of 
 his hands is a principal part of our duty, and a 
 great encouragement to the strengthening of our 
 hands, and of our faith for that which is behind. 
 And then, having given us those marvellous 
 dispensations among other ends for that was 
 a most principal end as to us, in this revolu- 
 tion of affairs and issues of those successes God 
 was pleased to give this nation and the author- 
 ity that then stood, were very great things 
 brought about besides those dints that were 
 upon those nations and places where they were 
 carried on, even in the civil affairs, to the bring- 
 ing offenders to justice, even the greatest to the 
 bringing the state of this government to the name, 
 at least, of a commonwealth to the searching and 
 sifting of all places and persons the king re- 
 moved, and brought to justice, and many great 
 ones with him ; the House of Peers laid aside ; 
 the House of Commons, the representatives of 
 the people of England, itself winnowed, sifted 
 and brought to a handful you may very well 
 remember !" 
 
 Having thus obscurely reminded them of 
 what they very clearly remembered, the lord- 
 general went on to characterize the year 1648, 
 more especially, as the " most memorable that 
 ever this nation saw," by reason of " so many 
 insurrections, invasions, secret designs, open 
 and public attempts, quashed in so short a time 
 by the very signal appearances of God himself." 
 He then briefly referred to the defection of the 
 Presbyterians, and their treasonable attempts 
 to treat with the king, "whereby we should 
 have put into his hands all that cause and in- 
 terest we had opposed, and have had nothing 
 secured to us but a little piece of paper." He 
 next, in a strain of enthusiasm, recalled " what 
 God wrought in Ireland and Scotland, until the 
 Lord had finished all farther trouble upon the 
 matter by the marvellous salvation wrought at 
 Worcester." And then followed that elaborate 
 and worthless attempt to vindicate the disper- 
 sion of the Long Parliament which has been 
 elsewhere quoted,* and by which the speaker 
 could scarcely himself have hoped to mystify the 
 apprehensions of his hearers. t 
 
 * See ante, p. 516 to p. 519. 
 
 t Twelve, as I have already mentioned, had been them- 
 selves members of the Long Parliament, but nearly all of 
 these were tools of Cromwell. The nobler occupation of 
 Vane, and others of the chief men of that still great though 
 broken body, has been already glanced at in these pages. 
 A passage from Mrs. Hutchinson's delightful memoirs will 
 more distinctly describe the generous thoughts that sup- 
 ported them in their unmerited exile from power. Speak- 
 ing of her husband, she says, he was travelling up from 
 his country business, " when news met him upon the road, 
 near London, that Cromwell had broken the Parliament. 
 Notwithstanding, he went on, and found divers of the mem- 
 bers there, resolved to submit to this providence of God, 
 and to wait till he should clear their integrity, and to dis- 
 prove those people who had taxed them of ambition, by sit- 
 ting still, when they had friends enough in the army, city, 
 and country to have disputed the matter, and probably van- 
 quished these usurpers. They thought that if they should 
 vex the land by war among themselves, the late subdued ene- 
 mies, Royalists and Presbyterians, would have an opportu- 
 nity to prevail on their dissensions, to the ruin of both ; if 
 these should govern well, and righteously, and moderately, 
 they should enjoy the benefit of their good government, and 
 would not envy them the honourable toil ; if they did other- 
 wise, they should be ready to assist and vindicate thtir op~ 
 pressed country when the ungrateful people were made sen- 
 tible of their true champions and protectors. Col. Hutch
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 541 
 
 Passing from this subject with the manner of 
 one who had discharged an irksome and pain- 
 ful task, his tone suddenly changed. He ad- 
 dressed himself more directly to the individu- 
 als so strangely assembled before him, and de- 
 clared his persuasion that they were men who 
 knew the Lord. He congratulated them on 
 their sudden call, and told them to be proud 
 that it had not been of their own seeking. 
 " Now do you know," he continued, " that what 
 hath been done in the dissolution of that Par- 
 liament was as necessary to be done as the 
 preservation of this cause ; and that necessity, 
 that led us to do that, hath brought us to this 
 issue of exercising an extraordinary way and 
 course to draw yourselves together upon this 
 account that you are men who know the Lord, 
 and have made observations of his marvellous 
 dispensations, and may be trusted with this 
 cause. It remains for I shall not acquaint 
 you farther with what relates to your taking 
 upon you this great business, that being con- 
 tained in this paper in my hand, which I do 
 offer presently to you to read having done 
 that which we thought to have done upon this 
 ground of necessity, which we know was not 
 feigned necessity, but real and true, to the end 
 the government might not be at a loss, to the 
 end we might manifest to the world the single- 
 ness of our hearts, and integrity, who did those 
 things, not to grasp after the power ourselves, to 
 keep it in a military hand, no, not for a day, but, 
 as far as God enables us with strength and ability, 
 to put it into the hands that might be called from 
 several parts of the nation this necessity I say, 
 and we hope may say for ourselves, this integ- 
 rity, of labouring to divest the sword of the 
 power and authority, in the civil administration 
 of it, hath been that that hath moved us to con- 
 clude of this course ; and having done that, we 
 think we cannot, with the discharge of our con- 
 sciences, but offer somewhat unto you, as I 
 said before, for our own exoneration, it having 
 been the practice of others who have voluntari- 
 ly and out of sense of duty divested themselves, 
 and devolved the government into the hands of 
 others it having been the practice, where such 
 things have been done, and very consonant to 
 reason, together with the authority, to lay a 
 charge in such a way as we hope we do, and to 
 press to the duty, which we have a word or 
 two to offer to you. Truly God hath called you 
 to this work by, I think, as wonderful provi- 
 dences as ever passed upon the sons of men in 
 so short a time. And truly I think, taking the 
 
 inson, in his own particular, was very glad of this release 
 from that employment, which he managed with fidelity and 
 uprightness, but not only without delight, but with a great 
 deal of trouble and expense, in the contest for truth and 
 righteousness upon all occasions." Nor can I refrain from 
 giving another extract from the same charming book, which 
 will show what the nature of Colonel Hutchinson's country 
 occupations were. " He carefully attended," his wife says, 
 in a passage which describes as well the country residences 
 of Vane and Scot, " to the administration of justice in the 
 country, and to the putting in execution of those whole- 
 Borne laws and statutes of the land provided for the orderly 
 regulation of the people. And it was wonderful how, in a 
 short space, he reformed several abuses and customary 
 neglects in that part of the country where he lived, which 
 being a rich, fruitful vale, drew abundance of vagrant peo- 
 ple to come and exercise the idle trade of wandering and 
 begging ; but he took such courses that there was very sud- 
 denly not a beggar left in the country, and all the poor in 
 every town so- maintained and provided for as they never 
 were so liberally maintained and relieved before nor since." 
 
 arguments of necessity (for the government 
 must not fall) take the appearances of the will 
 of God in this thing I am sure you would have 
 been loth it should have been resigned into the 
 hands of wicked men and enemies. I am sure 
 God would not have it so. It comes, there- 
 fore, to you by way of necessity ; it comes to 
 you by the way of the wise providence of God, 
 though through weak hands ; and therefore I 
 think, it coming through our hands, though such 
 as we are, it may not be taken ill if we offer to 
 you something as to the discharge of that trust 
 which is incumbent upon you. And although 
 I seem to speak that which may have the face 
 of a charge, it is a very humble one ; and he 
 that speaks it means to be a servant to you who 
 are called to the exercise of the supreme au- 
 thority to discharge that which he conceives 
 is his duty, in his own and his fellows' names, 
 to you, who will, I hope, take it in good part. 
 And truly I shall not hold you long in that, be- 
 cause I hope it is written in your hearts to ap- 
 prove yourselves to God ; only this scripture I 
 shall remember to you, which hath been much 
 upon my spirit : Hosea, xi., ver. 12 : 'Yet Ju- 
 dah ruleth with God, and is faithful among the 
 saints.' It is said before, 'Ephraim did com- 
 pass God about with lies, and Israel with de- 
 ceit.' How God hath been compassed about 
 with fastings, and thanksgivings, and other ex- 
 ercises and transactions, I think we have all to 
 lament. Why, truly, you are called by God to 
 rule with him and for him, and you are called 
 to be faithful with the saints, who have been 
 somewhat instrumental to your call ! 'He that 
 ruleth over men,' the Scripture saith, 'he must 
 be just, ruling in the fear of God.' " 
 
 One very cool inference may be detected in 
 the midst of all this enthusiastic heat. It is 
 clear that, in so emphatically divesting the 
 sword of all power and authority, he meant it 
 to go forth to the world that, in the event of 
 any unexpected dissolution of the present " su- 
 preme authority," it would be impossible for 
 the " council of officers" again to consider it- 
 self competent to provide for the weal and hap- 
 piness of the nation. Some new government 
 must then be formed, of a nature till then un- 
 tried. He had himself appeared in the council- 
 chamber that day to separate the sword forever 
 from the retention of power over the state, and 
 to profess that his fellow-officers as well as 
 himself were thenceforward only servants to an 
 authority more supreme. 
 
 Proceeding to that " humble charge," which 
 now included all the duty that he and those 
 officers, servants of the state, had to offer to its 
 governors, he enforced the great advice, which 
 still and always, in his worst temper, as in his 
 most worthy, declared the greatness of his 
 mind. He would pray, he said, that they might 
 " exercise the judgment of mercy and truth," 
 and still be " faithful to the saints," however 
 those saints might differ respecting forms of 
 worship. "It is better," he continued, "to 
 pray for you, than to counsel you in that, that 
 you may exercise the judgment of mercy and 
 truth ! I say it is better for you to do it than 
 to advrse you ; better to ask wisdom from heav- 
 en for you, which I am confident many thou- 
 sands of saints do this day, and have done, and 
 will do, through the permission of God, and his
 
 542 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 assistance to advise you ! Only, truly, I thought 
 of a scripture likewise, that seems to be but a 
 scripture of common application to every man 
 as a Christian, wherein he is counselled to ask 
 wisdom ; and he is told what is that wisdom 
 that is from above : 'it is pure, peaceable, gen- 
 tle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, 
 without partiality, without hypocrisy.' And my 
 thoughts ran thus upon this, that the executing 
 of the judgment of truth, for that is the judg- 
 ment that you must have wisdom from above 
 for, and that is pure, and that will teach you to j 
 execute the judgment of truth ; then, if God 
 give you hearts to be easy to be entreated, to 
 be peaceable spirits, to be full of good fruits, 
 bearing good fruits to the nation, to men as 
 men, to the people of God, to all in their sev- 
 eral stations this wisdom will teach you to 
 execute the judgment of mercy and truth ; and 
 I have little more to say to this ; I shall rather 
 bend my prayers for you in that behalf (as I said 
 before), and I know many others do also. Tru- 
 ly, the judgment of truth will teach you to be 
 as just towards an unbeliever as towards a be- 
 liever ; and it is our duty to be so. / confess, 
 I have often said it foolishly, if I would miscarry, 
 I would rather do it to a believer than to an unbe- 
 liever ; perhaps it is a paradox ; but let us take 
 heed of doing it to either, exercising injustice to 
 cither. If God rill our heart with such a spirit 
 as Moses and Paul had, which was not only a 
 spirit for the believers among the people of 
 God, but for the whole people (he would have 
 died for them ; and so Paul to his countrymen 
 according to the flesh, he would have died for 
 them), truly, this will help us to execute the 
 judgment of truth, and mercy also.' 
 
 In the same truly beneficent spirit, however 
 confusedly expressed, of religious toleration 
 that first and most sacred principle of civil gov- 
 ernment Cromwell added this earnest and 
 touching exhortation : " I hope, whatever oth- 
 ers may think, it ought to be to us all matter 
 of rejoicing, that as one person, our Saviour, 
 was touched with our infirmities, that he might 
 be pitiful, I do think this assembly, thus called, 
 is very much touched with the common infirm- 
 ity of the saints ; and I hope that will teach 
 you to pity others, that so saints of one sort 
 may not be our interest, but that we may have 
 respect unto all, though of different judgments ; 
 and if I did seem to speak anything that might 
 seem to reflect upon those of the Presbyterian 
 judgment, I think, if you have not an interest 
 of love for them, you will hardly answer this 
 faithfulness to his saints. I confess, in my pil- 
 grimage, and some exercises I have had abroad, 
 I did read that scripture often, in Isaiah, xli., 
 19, when God gave me and some of my fellows 
 what he would do there and elsewhere, which 
 he performed for us ; and what would he do 1 
 To what end? 'That he might plant in the 
 wilderness the cedar, and the shittah-tree, and 
 the myrtle-tree, and the palm-tree together.' 
 To what end 1 ' That they might know, and 
 consider, and understand together that the 
 hand of the Lord hath done this ;' and that the 
 Lord hath created it ; that he wrought all salva- 
 tion and deliverance, which he hath wrought, 
 for the good of the whole flock ; therefore I 
 beseech you (but I think I need not), have a 
 care of the whole flock ; love all the sheep, love 
 
 the lambs all ; and tender all, and cherish all, 
 and countenance all, in all things that are good ; 
 and if the poorest Christian, the most mistaken 
 Christian, should desire to live peaceably and qui- 
 etly under you, soberly and humbly desire to lead 
 a life in godliness and honesty, let him. be protect- 
 ed! . . I think I need as little advise you con- 
 cerning the propagation of the Gospel, and en- 
 couraging such ministers and such a ministry 
 as are faithful in the land, upon whom the true 
 character is ; men that have truly received the 
 spirit for such a use ; which Christians will be 
 well able to discern, and do ; men that have 
 received gifts from him that ascended on high, 
 and led captivity captive, for the work before 
 mentioned. And truly the apostle, Romans, xii , 
 when he hath summoned up all the mercies of 
 God, and the goodness of God, and hath dis- 
 coursed of the foundations of the Gospel, and 
 of the several things that are the subject of his 
 discourse, in the eleven first chapters ; after he 
 hath besought them to offer up their souls and 
 bodies a living sacrifice to God, he beseecheth 
 them not to esteem more highly of themselves 
 than they ought ; but that they would be hum- 
 ble, and sober-minded, and not stretch them- 
 selves beyond their line, but they would have a 
 care to those that had received gifts to the uses 
 there mentioned. I speak not it is far from 
 my heart for a ministry, deriving itself through 
 the papacy, and pretending to that which is so 
 much insisted upon to be succession. The true 
 succession is through the spirit, given in that 
 measure that the spirit is given ; and that is a 
 right succession. But I need not discourse of 
 these things to you ; I am persuaded you are 
 taught of God in a greater measure than my- 
 self in those things ; indeed, I have but one 
 word more to say, and that is (though in that, 
 perhaps, I shall show my weakness), it is by 
 way of encouragement to you to go on in this 
 work." 
 
 But most striking and characteristic of all 
 were the closing passages of this extraordinary 
 address, where, kindling into an apparent pas- 
 sion of enthusiastic fervour, Cromwell spoke 
 as if Futurity had suddenly revealed her secrets 
 to his soul. The only war in England hereaf- 
 ter, he exclaimed, should be that of the Lamb 
 against his enemies ! To the very threshold 
 of the door, to the edge of the promises and 
 prophecies, they had come at last ! Out of the 
 depths of the sea God was about to bring home 
 his people even the very Jews themselves he 
 would bring home to their station out of the 
 isles of the sea ! And all this was to be the 
 work of the men he saw before him, who had 
 probably never seen each other's faces till that 
 day, but who had answered a divine and mirac- 
 ulous call who had owned Jesus Christ, and 
 whom Jesus Christ had owned ! No man liv- 
 ing would have thought, three little months be- 
 fore, to have seen such a company taking upon 
 them the supreme authority ! But they had 
 been called with a high call, and would do all 
 that the good English people wished to bring 
 them to their liberties ! I subjoin in detail these 
 singular passages. They express, to its utter- 
 most depths, the character of Cromwell, in its 
 most startling phases of profound artifice and 
 profounder self-delusion. No one, with a knowl- 
 edge of the result that followed on so fast, can
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 543 
 
 fail to discover in them the violent self-seeker, 
 alternately quieting his nerves and encouraging 
 his passions with a selfish religious creed, but 
 yielding, in the same instant, to just so much 
 of sincere delusion as the faith in his own im- 
 mense power was likely to generate in such a 
 man, and to just so much of real enthusiasm as 
 can never be wholly separated, even in its 
 falsest phrensies, from a mind of that peculiar 
 order. Still be it kept in view, that through all, 
 whether true or false, there yet sprang up his 
 own advantage and advancement. There was 
 no danger to him in revealing a false futurity, 
 since by his own side he held fast the key of 
 the true one ; but how dangerous to those elect 
 legislators, that they should be made responsi- 
 ble for blessings, over the generation of which 
 they were soon to have no control, and that the 
 people, to whom they were to give a new life 
 of power and love, should speedily be fated to 
 discover them incapable of common self-exist- 
 ence ! In that mean position they were placed 
 by these rhapsodies from Cromwell, to which 
 they listened this day, no doubt, in unsuspect- 
 ing gratitude. 
 
 " / confess I never looked to see such a day as 
 this, it may be nor you, when Jesus Christ shall 
 be owned, as he is this day and in this world. Je- 
 sus Christ is owned this day by you all, and 
 you own him by your willingness in appearing 
 here ; and you manifest this (as far as poor 
 creatures can) to be a day of the power of Christ 
 by your willingness. I know you remember 
 that scripture in Psalm ex., 3. The people 
 shall be willing in the day of thy power. God 
 doth manifest it to be a day of the power of 
 Jesus Christ ! 
 
 " Having through so much blood, and so 
 many trials as have been upon these nations, 
 made this to be one of the greatest issues there- 
 of, to have a people called to the supreme au- 
 thority upon such an avowed account, God hath 
 owned his Son by this ; and you, by your will- 
 ingness, do own Jesus Christ ; and therefore, 
 for my part, / confess I did never look to see such 
 a sight. Perhaps you are not known by face one 
 to another; but we must tell you this, that in- 
 deed we have not allowed ourselves in the 
 choice of one person in whom we had not this 
 good hope that there was faith in Jesus Christ, 
 and love unto all his saints and people. And 
 thus God hath owned you in the face and eyes 
 of the world ; and thus, by your coming hither, 
 you have owned him, as it is in Isaiah, xliii., 
 21. It is a high expression, and look to your 
 own hearts whether now or hereafter God shall 
 apply it to you. ' This people,' saith he, ' I have 
 formed for myself, that they might show forth 
 my praise.' It is a memorable place, and, I 
 hope, not unfitly applied ; God apply it to each 
 of your hearts. I shall not descant upon the 
 words ; they are plain. You are as like the 
 forming of God as ever people were. If any man 
 should ask you one by one, and should tender a 
 book to you, you would dare to swear that nei- 
 ther directly nor indirectly did you seek to 
 come hither. You have been passive in com- 
 ing hither, in being called hither, and that is an 
 active word ' This people I have formed.' 
 Consider the circumstances by which you are 
 called together ; through what difficulties, 
 through what strivings, through what blood, 
 
 you are come hither. Neither you nor I, nor no 
 man living, three months ago, had a thought to 
 have seen such a company, taking upon them, or, 
 rather, being called to the supreme authority, and 
 therefore know now your call ! 
 
 " Indeed I think, as it may be truly said, that 
 never was a supreme authority, consisting of 
 so numerous a body as you are, which, I be- 
 lieve, are above one hundred and forty, ever in 
 such a way of owning God and being owned by 
 him, and therefore I say also, never a people 
 formed for such a purpose (so called), if it were 
 time to compare your standing with those that have 
 been called by the suffrages of the people. Who 
 can tell how soon God may FIT THE PEOPLE for 
 such a thing, and who would desire anything more 
 in the world but that it might be so? I would all 
 the Lord's people were prophets I would they 
 were Jit to be called, and FIT TO CALL ; and it is the 
 longing of our hearts to see them once men the in- 
 terest of Jesus Christ. And give me leave to 
 say, if I know anything in the world, what is 
 there more like to win the people to the in- 
 terest and love of God nay, what a duty will 
 lie upon you, to have your conversation such 
 as that they may love you, that they may see 
 you lay out your time and spirits for them 1 It 
 not this the most likely way to bring them to their 
 liberties 1 And do you not, by this, put it upon 
 God to find the time and the season for it, by 
 pouring forth his spirit ; at least by convincing 
 them that, as men fearing God have fought 
 them out of their thraldom and bondage under 
 the royal power, so men fearing God rule them 
 in the fear of God, and take care to administer 
 good unto them 1 But this is some digression. 
 / say, own your call, for indeed it is marvellous, 
 and it is of God, and it hath been unprojected, un- 
 thought of by you and us ; and that hath been 
 the way God hath dealt with us all along, to 
 keep things from our eyes, that what we have 
 acted we have seen nothing before us, which 
 also is a witness, in some measure, to our in- 
 tegrity. / say, you are called with a high call ! 
 And why should you be afraid to say or think 
 that this way may be the door to usher in things 
 that God hath promised and prophesied of, and to 
 set the hearts of his people to wail fur and expect 1 
 We know who they are that shall war with the 
 Lamb against his enemies. They shall be a 
 people, called, chosen, and faithful ; and in the 
 military way (we must speak it without flat- 
 tery), I believe you know it, he hath acted with, 
 them and for them, and now in the civil power 
 and authority ; and these are not ill prognosti- 
 cations for that good we wait for. Indeed, I do 
 think something is at the door ; we are at the 
 threshold ; and therefore it becomes us to lift 
 up our heads, and to encourage ourselves in 
 the Lord ; and we have some of us thought it 
 our duty to endeavour this way, not vainly 
 looking on that prophecy in Daniel, ' And the 
 kingdom shall not be delivered to another peo- 
 ple.' Truly God hath wrought it into your 
 hands by his owning, and blessing, and calling 
 out a military power ; God hath persuaded their 
 hearts to be instrumental in calling you, and 
 this hath been set upon our hearts, and upon 
 all the faithful in the land ; it may be that it is 
 not our duty to deliver it over to any other peo- 
 ple, and that scripture may be fulfilling now to 
 us. But I may be beyond my line.
 
 644 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " But I thank God I have my hopes exercised 
 in these things, and so I am persuaded are yours 
 Truly, seeing that these things are so, that you 
 are at the edge of the promises and prophecies 
 at least, if there were neither promise for this 
 nor prophecy, you are coveting the best things, 
 endeavouring after the best things ; and, as I 
 have said elsewhere, if I were to choose the 
 meanest officer in the army or Commonwealth, 
 I would choose a godly man that hath princi- 
 ples, especially where trust is to be committed, 
 because I know where to have a man that hath 
 principles. I believe if any man of you should 
 choose a servant, you would do so ; and I would 
 all our magistrates were so chosen, that there 
 may be some effects of this. It is our duty to 
 choose men that fear the Lord, to praise the 
 Lord, yea, such as the Lord forms for himself, 
 and he expects not praises from others. This 
 being so, puts me in mind of another scripture, 
 Psal. Ixviii., which indeed is a glorious proph- 
 ecy, and I am persuaded of the Gospel, or it 
 may be of the Jews ; also there it is prophesied, 
 ' He will bring his people again out of the depths 
 of the sea, as once he led Israel through the Red 
 Sea ;' and it may be, some do think God is 
 bringing the Jews home to their station from 
 the isles of the sea ! Surely, when God sets 
 up the glory of the Gospel-church, it shall be 
 gathering people out of deep waters, out of the 
 multitude of waters ! such are his people, drawn 
 out of the multitudes of the nations and people 
 of the world ! And that psalm will be very glo- 
 rious in many other parts of it, ' When he gave 
 the word, great was the company of them that 
 published it. Kings of the armies did fly apace, 
 and she that tarried at home divided the spoil. 
 And, although ye have lain among the pots, yet 
 shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with 
 silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.' And, 
 indeed, the triumph of that psalm is exceeding 
 high and great, and God is accomplishing it ! 
 and the close of it closeth with my heart, and 
 I am persuaded will with yours also ! God 
 shakes hills and mountains, and they reel; and 
 God hath a hill too, and his hill is as the hill of 
 Bashan, and the chariots of God are twenty thou- 
 sand of angels, and God will dwell upon this hill 
 forever.' " 
 
 Relapsing into his ordinary manner, the lord- 
 general added these words : " Truly I am sorry 
 that I have troubled you, in such a place of heat 
 as this is, so long ; all that I have to say in mine 
 own name, and in the names of my fellow-offi- 
 cers, who have joined with me in this work, is, 
 that we shall commend you to the grace of 
 God and to the guidance of his Spirit ; having 
 thus far served you, or, rather, our Lord Jesus 
 Christ in it, we are, as we hope, and shall be, 
 ready in our stations, according as the provi- 
 dence of God shall lead us, to be subservient to 
 the work of God, and the authority which, we 
 reckon, God hath set over us. And although 
 we have no formal thing to present you with, 
 to which the hands and outward visible ex- 
 pressions of the hearts of the officers of the 
 three nations are set, yet we may say for them, 
 and we may also, with confidence, for our breth- 
 ren at sea, with whom, neither in Scotland, nor 
 Ireland, nor at sea, hath any artifice been used 
 to persuade their approbations to this work ; 
 yet we can say that their consent and affections 
 
 hath flowed in to us from all parts beyond our 
 expectations ; and we are confident we may 
 say with all confidence that we have had their 
 approbations and full consent, unsought indeed 
 to the other work, so that you have their hearts 
 and affections in this ; and not only they, but 
 we have very many papers from the churches 
 of God throughout the nation, wonderfully both 
 approving what hath been done in removing 
 obstacles, and approving what we have done 
 in this very thing. And, having said this, I 
 shall trouble you no more ; but if you will be 
 pleased that this instrument may be read, which 
 I have signed by the advice of the council of 
 officers, we shall then leave you to your own 
 thoughts and to the guidance of God, to order 
 and dispose of yourselves for further meetings 
 as you shall see cause." 
 
 Having thus closed this memorable address, 
 this " grave, Christian, and seasonable speech," 
 as his contemporary historian* terms it, he 
 placed upon the table a formal instrument, en- 
 grossed on parchment, and bearing his hand 
 and seal, by which, with the advice of his coun- 
 cil of officers, he developed and intrusted the 
 supreme authority and government of the Com- 
 monwealth into the hands of the persons there 
 met, and declared that they were to be acknowl- 
 edged for that authority, to whom all persons 
 within this nation should yield obedience and 
 subjection ; that they were to sit till the 3d of 
 November, 1654 ; and that, three months be- 
 fore that time, they should make choice of oth- 
 er persons to succeed them, who were not to 
 sit longer than twelve months, and were then 
 to determine respecting the succession of the 
 government.! 
 
 And now, to all outward appearance, Crom- 
 well stood in the proud position of one who, 
 having virtually held the supreme government 
 of England for upward of six weeks, had freely 
 surrendered it from himself forever, and intrust- 
 ed it to a convention of able, faithful, high-spir- 
 ited, and holy men, with whom were to rest, 
 not only the appointment of their successors 
 in power, but the entire disposal of his own 
 poor services, due, as from a private man, to 
 the supreme governors of his country. His 
 
 * Carrington. 
 
 t It is a remarkable circumstance that this Instrument of 
 Government, of the date of the 4th of July, 1653, is nowhere 
 to be found in the state records of the time. It has per- 
 ished with the act for dissolving the Long Parliament and 
 providing a new representative. The following, however, 
 is the official description of the instrument, in the Mercurius 
 Politicus. After a brief sketch of Cromwell's speech, the 
 writer says, " Which being ended, his lordship produced 
 an instrument under his own hand and seal, whereby he did, 
 with the advice of his officers, devolve and intrust the su- 
 preme authority and government of this Commonwealth 
 into the hands of the persons there met ; who, or any forty 
 of them, are to be held and acknowledged the supreme au- 
 thority of the nation ; unto whom all persons within the 
 same, and the territories thereunto belonging, are to yield 
 obedience and subjection. And they are not to sit longer 
 than the 3d of November, 1654. Three months before their 
 dissolution, they are to make choice of other persons to suc- 
 ceed them, who are not to sit longer than a twelvemonth ; 
 but it is left to them to take care for a succession in govern- 
 ment : which instrument being delivered to the persons 
 aforesaid, his lordship commended them to the grace of 
 God." Mr. Godwin not unfairly suggests it as an artifice 
 of Cromwell, that while the authority of this assembly 
 stood on so precarious a footing, he ostentatiously gave 
 them an existence of sixteen months, adding twelve months 
 more for their successors, that he might thus render their 
 imbecility more apparent, and excite in his countrymen an 
 inxious wish for a government more stable, and that should 
 command a greater degree of respect at home and abroad.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 545 
 
 resignation had been accompanied with all the fence of advowsons and of tithes ; the officers 
 
 would have good reason to tremble for the se- 
 curity of their recent endowments ; and what 
 protection would all these think of in their hour 
 of alarm, if not of that which he could afford 
 them ? He knew himself their sole refuge. 
 Thus would vanish the last solid resistance to 
 his daring project and he had found far more 
 conscientious resistance to it, even among his 
 
 forms that could declare it final and irrevoca- 
 ble. A fixed term was named for the existence 
 of the present authority, and in the nomination 
 of their successors he had reserved no person- 
 al control. Nay, more : a majority of those 
 into whose hands he had just placed the Instru- 
 ment of Government were men, as the result 
 soon after proved, of whom his personal knowl- 
 
 edge was little, and his means of personal in- own relatives and creatures, than he had been 
 fluence or control still less. Finally, he had j at all prepared for and he might ascend the 
 not reserved to himself a seat in their councils, | chair of the Protectorate as indeed the saviour 
 nor cared to stipulate that even his officers of the state, the protector of her interests, the 
 
 should sit there. He had submitted in all things, 
 and exacted in nothing. As lord-general of the 
 army, he remained, indeed, servant to the slate. 
 In a political sense, he was nothing more than 
 the brewer's son of Huntingdon. 
 
 Yet, if the majority present had only thought 
 more of earth and less of heaven, it might have 
 been manifest to all that Cromwell stood in that 
 room on the threshold of his most ambitious 
 designs, that his golden dream was wellnigh 
 out, and that the glittering bawble he had so 
 long set his heart upon was at last settling it- 
 self upon his head. There had been something 
 in his manner, while he offered all these hum- 
 ble sacrifices, which half betrayed the secret of 
 his soul. As his fancy kindled into the later 
 and more passionate raptures of the exhorta- 
 tion, a characteristic incident was noted, which 
 Lord Leicester has recorded in his journal. 
 " He grew very hot," his lordship writes, " and 
 put off his cloak, and gave it to one of the col- 
 onels, who took it, and held it like a servant. 
 This was done as the king would sometimes do 
 in great assemblies, but no man else." 
 
 The colonels, indeed, knew it all every man 
 who had been nominated by Cromwell himself 
 to that convention knew it and each had his 
 part to play. A still larger body of honest men 
 remained, and honest and enthusiastic as they 
 were, they too had their parts to play. The in- 
 struments of Cromwell's ambition were as oft- 
 en sincere as false. His favourite policy was 
 to win open trust, and pay it back with secret 
 treachery. But such trust is most frequent in 
 the true, and it was accordingly yet more by 
 means of the honest than of the base that he 
 strode into his throne. Here was a majority 
 of honest and not unwise fanatics. He could 
 rely upon their mode of action. He knew that 
 they would conduct their proceedings as if the 
 Divinity himself had, indeed, called them to 
 their office. He had nothing of stratagem to 
 fear from them. He knew that with himself they 
 would keep the faith of honest men, if not of 
 politic ones. He had in any case provided, be- 
 sides, a secret current of counteraction against 
 them in a formidable minority of their own body 
 a safety-valve in the moment of danger, which 
 with his own hand he could shut or open. Their 
 first legislative efforts, he was well aware, 
 would raise formidable discontents in the peo- 
 ple against them ; the divine call he had impo- 
 sed upon them was a death-warrant to class- 
 interests, which would at once range them- 
 selves in fierce opposition ; the lawyers, from 
 the commonest scrivener up to the Lord-com- 
 missioner Whitelocke, would be called to arms 
 for their fees ; the ecclesiastical ministry and 
 their patrons would be summoned forth in de- 
 Z z z 
 
 sole apparent refuge of her civil and religious 
 institutions, the composer of her quarrels and 
 confusion, the harbinger of order and of peace. 
 A nd this was the grave cheat of the 4th of July, 
 1653. 
 
 When Cromwell and his officers had left the 
 room, it was merely voted that the Convention 
 should meet on the following morning at eight 
 o'clock, in the old Parliament House at West- 
 minster. There and then they met according- 
 ly, and devoted the greater part of the day to 
 prayers.* " And the service," one of the body 
 relates to us, " was performed by the members 
 among themselves, eight or ten speaking in 
 prayer to God, and some briefly from the word ; 
 much of the presence of Christ and his Spirit 
 appearing that day, to the great gladding of the 
 hearts of many ; some affirming they never en- 
 joyed so much of the spirit and presence of 
 Christ in any of the meetings and exercises of 
 religion in all their lives as they did that day."t 
 
 After this auspicious commencement of their 
 legislative duties, they elected a speaker in the 
 person of Mr. Francis Rouse, a Devonshire man, 
 of very good fortune, and provost of Eton Col- 
 lege. They then separated for that day. 
 
 The record of the second day's proceedings 
 has a more business-like aspect. After prayer, 
 much more brief, which, according to the au- 
 thor of the " Exact Relation," " was daily per- 
 formed by one member or other, as they were 
 found free to perform it, they proceeded to call 
 over the House; read and laid up the instru- 
 ment of their empowering ; chose a clerk,t and 
 after a sergeant-at-arms ; and chose a commit- 
 tee to consider what offices and attendants were 
 necessary to be taken in, and to consider of the 
 fees and salaries of such as should be employ- 
 ed ; which, accordingly, was done and confirm- 
 ed by the House." Their next action tended to 
 show the correctness of the judgment formed 
 by Cromwell. They sent a deputation, headed 
 by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, to invite the 
 lord-general himself,^ the three major-generals, 
 Harrison, Desborough, and Lambert, with Col- 
 onel Thomlinson, to assist in their deliberations 
 as members of the House. This invitation was 
 of course graciously accepted. 
 
 On the following day they voted that all ad- 
 
 * This fervent religious exercise lasted from eight o'clock 
 in the morning till seven o'clock in the evening. The Dutch, 
 delegates then in London, however, carnal self-seekers as 
 they were, transmitted to their Republic no other note of 
 the prayers preferred than that one member prayed for a 
 peace with tho high and mighty states, their constituents. 
 
 t Exact Relation. 
 
 t Scobell was continued in this office, and Birkhead 
 elected sergeant-at-arms. 
 
 i> They renewed to the lord-general also the offer of the 
 palace of Hampton Court, in exchange for his house at 
 Newhall.
 
 546 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 dresses should be made to them under the name 
 of " the Parliament of the Commonwealth of 
 England." This passed by a division of sixty- 
 five to forty-six. Their next movement of im- 
 portance was the appointment of a new coun- 
 cil of state, which they resolved should consist 
 of thirty-one members. They left the old thir- 
 teen untouched, adding eighteen more. The 
 mere names in this council would suffice to re- 
 pel the favourite imputations of slander against 
 its framers, since they made no effort to thrust 
 members into it who had not already some pub- 
 lic consideration or importance.* Two days 
 after its appointment, another entire sitting of 
 the House was devoted to prayer, " which ac- 
 cordingly," the "Exact Relation" tells us, " was 
 done by the members, principally by such as 
 had not done service before, when also the lord- 
 general was present, and it was a very com- 
 fortable day." The practice after this period 
 seems to have been very regularly observed, 
 that, as soon as about twelve members were 
 met, they began with prayer, and so continued 
 praying, one after another, till a sufficient num- 
 ber had assembled to make up a House, when 
 the speaker took the chair. 
 
 A special prayer-day, that is, a day entirely 
 devoted to prayer, had generally a special ob- 
 ject. Thus we find among the proceedings 
 that on the 12th, "the House having spent the 
 day before in prayer to God for his counsel and 
 direction in their affairs, a committee was ap- 
 pointed to draw up a declaration, to invite the 
 people of this Commonwealth to seek unto the 
 Lord for the same blessing." This paper soon 
 after appeaied, and was sent round, for imme- 
 diate promulgation, to all the various sheriffs 
 and civil officers throughout England. Great 
 care is taken in it to abstain from reflection or 
 remark on the conduct or the dissolution of the 
 late Parliament, and no other reference is made 
 to the summons by which they had themselves 
 assembled than in the simple statement, that, 
 being in an extraordinary manner called togeth- 
 er, and required to assume the supreme gov- 
 ernment, they had judged it meet and requisite 
 to take upon themselves the charge assigned. 
 They farther remark, that though, " compassed 
 about," as they were, "with much weakness 
 and human frailty," they were tender of press- 
 ing covenants and engagements on the people, 
 yet they expected and believed that all peace- 
 able and good citizens would conduct them- 
 selves suitably to the protection they looked 
 for from the present authority. They were 
 ample in expressing their purpose to proceed 
 in all things as might best conduce to the good 
 of all, and in declaring the watchfulness they 
 would in every respect exercise. We will be 
 as tender, they said, " of the lives, estates, lib- 
 
 .Lawrence ; Colonel Kichard Norton ; r/d 
 
 Charles Howard ; Alderman Tichborn ; . ~. .,. , 
 
 Hugh Courteuey ; Thomas St. Nicholas ; Dennis Hollister ; 
 Audrew Broughton ; John Williams. 
 
 erties, just rights and properties of all others, 
 as we are of ourselves and our posterities, whom 
 we expect still to be governed by successive 
 Parliaments." Some remarkable passages fol- 
 lowed. They revealed, though in language of 
 noble elevation, that statesmanship was to be 
 attended hereafter with certain mysterious and 
 extravagant results, which men could nevei 
 have dreamed of until then. They fairly pro- 
 claimed the approaching advent of a reign of 
 saints. They marked themselves out, in the 
 midst of much honesty, and not a little of the 
 true sense of government's wisest functions, 
 as at once the instruments and the victims of 
 Cromwell. Lest the people should think too 
 highly of the means they were about to display 
 of conferring happiness and order on the land, 
 they declared at the very outset that the ulti- 
 mate end they had in view was one which was 
 utterly unattainable. But in no mean or vul- 
 gar strain was this done in nothing of the de- 
 based spirit of fanaticism which has been attrib- 
 uted to them but in language which was wor- 
 thy of even the sublime source from which they 
 sought its inspiration, and with a simplicity of 
 soul which, while it too surely disclosed the 
 sincerity of their own delusions, spoke not less 
 surely for the proportionate success of Crom- 
 well's scheme. 
 
 After calling the attention of the people to the 
 great works recently done in England, " which 
 have much filled all our enemies with amaze- 
 ment and our friends with admiration," they 
 thus proceed : " Yet we cannot but acknowl- 
 edge that we are not yet at rest, nor can be- 
 lieve we have yet enjoyed or seen enough to 
 accomplish the ends of God, or satisfy the 
 thoughts of men for that vast expense of blood 
 and treasure, which could not have been en- 
 dured with any patience but in hope that, at 
 length, those bitter pangs and throes would 
 make some way for that long-expected birth of 
 peace, freedom, and happiness, both to the 
 souls and bodies of the Lord's people ; and al- 
 though we do not see it fully brought forth, yet 
 we do not despair but in God's due time it shall 
 be so ; and the dark black clouds of the night 
 shall fly before the bright morning star, and the 
 shakings of heaven and earth make way for the 
 desire of all nations ! Nay, there are many 
 things which make us hope the time is near at 
 hand. We see the clouds begin to scatter, and the 
 dark shadows fly away ! streams of light appear, 
 and the day is surely dawned !" 
 
 Pursuing this through other scriptural allu- 
 sions, they added, with a noble fervour, "And 
 as we believe the Lord hath never yet stepped 
 back, or withdrawn his mighty arm after he 
 had gone so far and done so much, and had 
 made his people willing and desirous still to 
 follow him, so, we also hope, his great and 
 free goodness will not forsake his people here, 
 or suffer them to forsake him, or to deal false- 
 ly with him in his cause, till he hath accom- 
 plished his great works, and brought about his 
 great ends, whose gifts and callings are with- 
 out repentance ! Is the Lord's hand shorten- 
 ed, that he cannot save 1 Is he a man, that he 
 should turn, repent, withdraw, or look back] 
 Shall he bring to the birth, and shall he not give 
 strength enough to bring forth \ He is the same 
 God, and changeth, not ; and if this be of God,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 547 
 
 it shall stand ; and let every one take heed of 
 fighting against God. This is all we say. If 
 it be from God, let him prosper and bless it ; 
 but if not, let it fall, though we fall before it." 
 In the same spirit of exalted humility and 
 
 faith they thus concluded, 
 please the Lord," they said, 
 
 However it shall 
 1 to do by us or to 
 
 important questions were referred to as many 
 committees. Two of these committees, for the 
 affairs of Ireland and Scotland, had ben named 
 on the ninth, but they were now organized 
 afresh, with some trifling alterations, and the 
 names of Cromwell and Lambert inserted in 
 the first, which had before stood only in the 
 second. The other committees were for the 
 law, the army, the revenue, petitions, trade 
 and corporations, the poor and commissions of the 
 peace, public debts and frauds, prisons, and the 
 advancement of learning: The names of Crom- 
 well and Lambert were in none of these. Sir 
 Anthony Ashley Cooper was the first person 
 named on the committee of the law. He was 
 also on the committee for the advancement of 
 learning. Barbone, represented by all the his- 
 tories to have been so active and forward in 
 everything, that he was, in fact, the "all in all" 
 of the assembly, was only of the committee for 
 petitions. A committee on the great subject of 
 tithes had been named on the day preceding. 
 The committees varied in the number of their 
 members from twelve to nineteen.* 
 
 Leaving them for a while to their memora- 
 ble duties, it is right that we should now record 
 the incidents which marked the interval be- 
 tween the issue of the writs and their meeting 
 
 and that all nations may turn their swords and \ in obedience to them, while the military coun- 
 spears into ploughshares and pruning-hooks ! that cil still held supreme power. These councils, 
 the wolf may feed with the lamb, and that the earth as we already have had occasion to state, di- 
 le full of the knowledge of God as waters cover the j vided among themselves and their great chief 
 sea ! that upon every house or assembly may be a ' all the necessary acts of government. They 
 cloud by day, and a pillar ofjire by night, as is j appointed a committee of five to finish the treaty 
 promised, and was of old upon the tabernacle ! that begun by the statesmen with the Portuguese 
 every one may be holy, and the pots, nay, the bells \ ambassador, Don Pantaleon Sa. To the same 
 upon the horses, may be holiness to the Lord ! and j committee it was referred to consider of the 
 
 deal with us, yet we humbly desire that our- 
 selves and all the people of God may be stiM 
 faithful and fervent with him, wrestling in pray- 
 ers and supplications till he shall fully raise up 
 his o\vn tabernacle, and build his temple with 
 his own spirit, which he hath promised to pour 
 upon all flesh ! and raise up governors after 
 his own heart, and teachers after his own will, 
 to make exactors peace, and officers righteous- 
 ness ! that he may overcome the evil of the 
 world with his goodness, and fill the whole earth 
 with his glory ! that his will may be done on 
 earth as now in heaven ! that righteousness 
 may spring out of the earth, and may dwell 
 here, and righteousness and peace may kiss each 
 other ! that all his people may have one lip, one 
 heart, one consent, and one shoulder to bow 
 down and worship him ! that the envy of Judah 
 and Ephraim may be taken away, and that they 
 may be one of the same fold with one shepherd ! 
 that all wars may cease to the ends of the earth, 
 
 that in peace and joy we may all wait, expect, 
 
 treaty with the resident from France, M. de 
 
 and long for his glorious coming, who is King Bordeaux. The agent of the Duke of Tus- 
 of kings and Lord of lords, our hope and righ- cany was met by another committe*, similarly 
 teousness ; who is still to ride on prosperous- 1 appointed. But the main occurrences of the 
 ly, conquering and to conquer, till he hath sub- j time were their reception of, and their negoti- 
 dued all his enemies, and at length come to de- ] ation with, the ambassadors of the United Prov- 
 liver up the kingdom to his Father, that God j inces, who came, after a new battle of the 3d 
 may reign, and be all in all." I of June, to solicit peace, and their conduct on 
 
 The day after the issue of this extraordinary j the sudden return of John Lilburne.f 
 address was famous for the first movement in One of the noblest of the legacies left by the 
 the House against tithes that grand and pri- Long Parliament to their destroyer was the 
 mary source of contention, which stood in the i great and well-appointed fleet by which they 
 way of the universal peace they promised. For j had already, in all essential respects, broken the 
 several successive days the discussion on the strength of the Dutch, and one of Cromwell's 
 subject was continued, but without any fixed j first acts of power was the substitution of Monk 
 result,* and the matter was at last referred to ! for Blake in its chief command.}: Distrusting 
 a special committee. The law and its griev- i the stanch Republicanism of Blake, he obvious- 
 ances wore doomed next, and, in entire reali- j ly apprehended some hostile movement from 
 zation of all that was anticipated by Cromwell, 
 the work of provoking class-hostilities went in- 
 def-d bravely on. 
 
 On onvj da/ alone, the 20th of July, eleven 
 
 ' Tbv a jthnr of the " Exact Relation" describes what 
 the chief dif.er'noe was, and marks also the wise and sober 
 
 him when he should hear of the deed that had 
 
 * The author of the " Exact Relation" says, " Then the 
 House was methodized into several committees, for the bet- 
 ter despatch of business, so as none might be idle, but all 
 employed in public service. Besides the council of state, 
 six or seven committees were chosen and set to work the 
 committee for the army, the committee for prisons and pris- 
 
 judr.mejt vhich relieved evau the wildest projects of these , oners, the committee for regulating the law, the committee 
 
 si.gu.ar msn. " Whereas all the House, for the most 
 liar*., v-jre sensible that tithe was a grievance fit to be re- 
 njjveJ, t!,e difference was, some would not give way to the 
 
 for justices and for the poor, the committee for public debts, 
 the committee for the Scots and Irish affairs, the committee 
 for petitions which committees sat daily, and took great 
 
 ren ovt of ,t till some other thing were provided to be set in pains, morning and evening, almost every day in the week, 
 
 ruom of it [this was precisely the state of the question 
 on '.he dissolution of the Long Parliament] ; others would 
 Lave it removed as a grievance in the first place, and then 
 to make provision as God should direct. In the debate, 
 difference was made betwixt impropriators and that which 
 
 to despatch business, and make things ready for the House ; 
 and many things were fitted and prepared." 
 
 t See ante, notes to p. 521, 522. 
 
 $ Clarendon thus describes the three admirals. " Blake, 
 a man well known, but not thought entirely enough dtvoted 
 
 was otherwise ; and all seemed "free and willing that im- i to' Cromwell; Monk, 'whom he called out of Scotland as his 
 propriators should be satisfied the value; and therefore, own creature; and Dean, a mere seaman, grown from a 
 upon the choosing of a committee for tithes, ouly that of common mariner to the reputation of a bold and excellent 
 incumbents was to be considered of." J officer "
 
 548 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 been done. Yet had that great commander, in 
 the course he really took, administered to Crom- 
 well and his creatures an ever-memorable les- 
 son. As soon as the news of the forcible dis- 
 persion of his friends and associates reached 
 him, he directed an order to be issued through- 
 out the fleet, that " it was not the business of 
 seamen to mind state affairs, but to keep for- 
 eigners from fooling us."* There, as in every 
 other action of the life of Blake, spoke out the 
 heroic spirit which moved, in later but not such 
 glorious years, the passionate love and admi- 
 ration of the English people at the mention of 
 the name of Nelson. Monk was already on his 
 way to assume supreme command, but Blake 
 not less cheerfully submitted to command under 
 him. 
 
 News of greater promise, or received with 
 greater rapture, than that which told of the dis- 
 solution of the formidable Parliament of states- 
 men, was never heard in the Dutch Common- 
 wealth. They seem to have beheld already 
 England at their feet. Resolved, at all events, 
 to make a strenuous effort to bring her there, 
 they at once renewed their shattered fleets ; 
 and Van Tromp having safely convoyed the 
 outward-bound trade of Holland, returned im- 
 mediately with a force of a hundred sail to seek 
 the English on their own coasts. He was ac- 
 companied by De Ruyter, De Witt, and Evert- 
 sens. 
 
 Monk, assisted by Dean, Penn, and Lawson, 
 met the Dutch admiral off the North Foreland 
 with about an equal number of ships. The ac- 
 tion began on the 2d of June, and lasted for two 
 entire days. On the night of the first, it was 
 found 'that the Dutch had lost two sail ; but for 
 this superiority the English had paid a heavy 
 price in the death of their great admiral, Dean. 
 Struck, at the very commencement of the ac- 
 tion, by a chain shot from the Dutch vice-ad- 
 miral's ship, he fell lifeless at the feet of Monk. 
 He was a man so worshipped by the seamen, 
 from the midst of whom he sprung, that the 
 knowledge of his fate at such a time might have 
 turned the fortune of the fight. But the cool 
 sagacity of Monk did not desert him. Quietly 
 unfastening the cloak he wore, he dropped it 
 over the dead body, and went on with the issue 
 of his orders as though Dean had merely turn- 
 ed aside. The English seamen, unconscious 
 of the fall of their beloved commander, fought 
 with their accustomed gallantry ; and before 
 the dawn of the morning of the third, Blake's ar- 
 rival, with eighteen ships, placed the issue be- 
 yond farther doubt. Van Tromp fought on that 
 day with the most determined courage ; but 
 Blake's arrival acted as a panic to his fleet ; 
 his orders were disobeyed ; several of his cap- 
 tains fled in confusion from the superior fire of 
 their opponents ;t and he was ultimately obli- 
 ged to seek shelter within the Wielinngs, and 
 along the shallow coast of Zealand. Eleven 
 of his ships had been captured, eight sunk, and 
 two blown up with gunpowder ; 1300 of his 
 men had been left behind him as prisoners, and 
 in proportion, on his side, were the killed and 
 
 * Lives, English and Foreign, vol. ii., p. 109. 
 
 t It would seem, from the letters in Thurloe, that the 
 English fought at the distance of half cannon shot till the 
 enemy fell into confusion, and began to fly, when, their dis- 
 abled ships were surrounded and captured by the English 
 
 wounded. The English loss was slight in com- 
 parison. 
 
 Cromwell received this news, which arrived 
 in London before the meeting of the Conven- 
 tion, with transports of rapture. It was not 
 his victory it was the victory of the govern- 
 ment he had overthrown* of the statesmen he 
 had pursued with ridicule and insult : it was 
 more especially the result of those exertions of 
 Vane which had drawn down his signal hatred 
 on that statesmant but it was an occurrence 
 of superior good fortune, of which none knew 
 better to avail themselves than he ; and in ev- 
 ery quarter of the country he ordered it to be 
 proclaimed as a sudden manifestation of the 
 Lord, an " answer to the faith and prayer of 
 God's people." His council issued at the same 
 time, on his suggestion, a declaration of extra- 
 ordinary fervour, in which the whole people of 
 England were called uponj to set apart a day 
 of public thanksgiving to the Almighty for such 
 singular mercies. We shall conclude our ex- 
 hortation, they said, with that of David : " O 
 give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for 
 his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed 
 of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed 
 from the hand of the enemy. O give thanks 
 unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy en- 
 dureth forever. Let Israel now say that his 
 mercy endureth forever. Let the house of 
 Aaron now say that his mercy endureth forev- 
 er. Let them now, that fear the Lord, say, 
 that his mercy endureth forever. give thanks 
 unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy en- 
 dureth forever." As the people heard such, 
 thanks proclaimed by order of the sheriffs in 
 every English county, they might well indeed 
 suspend all anger or impatience at the recent 
 extraordinary change in wondering expectancy 
 of a coming reign of sanctities and blessings ! 
 
 On the 22d of June, twenty days after the 
 victory, ambassadors from Holland arrived in 
 London to negotiate for peace. Cromwell, still 
 the holder of supreme power, received them 
 coldly. On the 24th, the body of Admiral Dean 
 arrived in the Thames, and Cromwell issued 
 orders for its conveyance into London with ev- 
 ery possible demonstration of gratitude, affec- 
 tion, and honour. A long line of mourning 
 barges filled the river from Greenwich to West- 
 minster Bridge, and as the body passed, all the 
 ships upon the Thames, answered by minute 
 guns from the Tower, offered it respect and 
 reverence. In the evening of the same day it 
 received state-burial, by torchlight, in the Abbey 
 of Westminster ; and Cromwell, " with all the 
 officers -of the army and navy then in town," 
 attended as chief mourners. Thus early in his 
 
 * This is not denied 'by impartial historians. " The 
 fleet," says Dr. Lingard, " owed its success to the exertions 
 of the government which Cromwell had overturned." 
 
 t Such, for example, as the proposed sale of Hampton 
 Court, during Vane's remarkable exertions towards the 
 preparation of this great fleet. It remains undeniable, and 
 to the immortal honour of that eminent politician, that the 
 greatest glories of our unrivalled English navy dale from 
 the naval administration over which Vane presided. 
 
 t The admirers and partisans of Cromwell were very busy 
 on the appearance of this declaration in pointing to it as a 
 
 has the following remark concerning it : " It took the more," 
 he says, " with many people, because it was not a command, 
 and imposing upon men, but only an invitation of them to 
 keep a day of public thanksgiving."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 549 
 
 reign of power did this remarkable man dem- 
 onstrate a rare administrative capacity. His 
 unexampled honours to the memory of a com- 
 mander so beloved, who had sprang from among 
 the common sailors, and was venerated in an 
 especial manner by all classes of the people, 
 won for himself no little sympathy and grati- 
 tude : his repulsive treatment of the Dutch am- 
 bassadors propitiated the general pride. 
 
 Some circumstances connected with this 
 Dutch embassy should not be omitted. As soon 
 as Blake's great victory off the Isle of Portland 
 became known in Holland, a general importu- 
 nity had risen for peace, not less in the mer- 
 chant classes than among the common people. 
 Ambassadors for the management of a treaty 
 were accordingly named. With the dissolution 
 of the Long Parliament, however, and the ti- 
 dings of hope it carried to all the enemies of 
 England, hope revived in Holland also,* and 
 the embassy was temporarily suspended. Again 
 these anticipations fell when it was seen that 
 Blake and the seamen had not deserted the 
 new government, but accepted service under 
 Monk ; and again the Dutch implored their 
 States for peace. It was accordingly resolved 
 that the ambassadors formerly named should 
 proceed to discharge their mission ; but before 
 they arrived in London, Van Tromp had pro- 
 voked Monk to engage, with the disastrous re- 
 sult I have described ; and, instead of present- 
 ing themselves on their arrival as men who 
 might reasonably, from the chief of a new gov- 
 ernment, demand a fair and honourable peace, 
 they appeared in the pitiful posture of suppli- 
 ants, who deprecated fiercer rage than they 
 had experienced yet, from a more triumphantly 
 victorious conqueror. It is, under these cir- 
 cumstances, right to keep in mind that the pres- 
 ence of these pacific negotiators from the proud 
 government of the United Provinces was a con- 
 fession of the invincible capacity and energy of 
 the statesmen of the Long Parliament, and not, 
 as it has been esteemed, a tribute to the in- 
 stant supremacy of Cromwell. When the lord- 
 general seized the power of the state, he may 
 be said to have inherited a well-appointed navy 
 of upward of 100 sail, and the fruits of one of 
 the noblest maritime victories on record : yet, 
 when Van Tromp first appeared in the Channel, 
 the committee of the Admiralty had only twen- 
 ty sail in the Downs. AH else had followed, 
 with sundry victories in its course, from the 
 exertions of Blake and Vane. 
 
 Cromwell, surrounded by his military coun- 
 cil, received the Dutch delegates with a haugh- 
 ty pride. Their first proposition was, that, 
 pending the present negotiation, all hostilities 
 should cease. This he peremptorily refused. 
 Their next had relation to what they termed 
 the exorbitant demands formerly made by the 
 Long Parliament, when St. John was ambassa- 
 dor at the Hague,! and some abatement of 
 
 * Whitelocke adduces various letters to prove that " the 
 Dutch much rejoiced at the dissolving of the Parliament, 
 hoping for some disabling of the English fleet thereby ; but, 
 being disappointed thereof, the common people were earnest 
 for a peace with England." 
 
 t This was before the victory of Worcester in 1651. 
 The embassy was admirably discharged by St. John, who, 
 as soon as he saw a disposition in the States to trifle with 
 England, threw up his mission in these memorable words : 
 " I perceive," he said to the States-General, " that you are 
 waiting the issue of our war with the Scotch ; and gome 
 
 which, they contended, must form the basis of 
 any new treaty. This proposition met with no 
 better fate than the first. Cromwell refused to 
 stir one jot from the ground taken up by his 
 predecessors. Three weeks passed fruitlessly 
 thus : the Dutchmen, in despair, demanded their 
 passports, and would have gone at once, had 
 not Cromwell condescended, for special purpo- 
 ses he had privately in view, to cajole and hu- 
 mour them : now he would chide them re- 
 proachfully for their impatience, and now, with 
 tears in his eyes, for their carelessness of the 
 miseries of war! The Convention meanwhile 
 assembled, and it then favoured his purposes 
 to represent himself as their servant merely, 
 and the humble representative of a supremer 
 power in the state. Two months at least pass- 
 ed in continual agitation of new proposals, and 
 the transient glitter of new hopes, when he an- 
 nounced to them, on the behalf of " the Parlia- 
 ment of the Commonwealth," at an audience 
 they had claimed from its new council of state, 
 that England would waive her claim of pecuni- 
 ary compensation from Holland, provided Van 
 Tromp were for a while removed from the com- 
 mand of their fleet, in acknowledgment of his 
 having been the aggressor ; and provided, also, 
 the States would consent to the incorporation 
 of the two countries into one great maritime 
 power, to be equally undei the same govern- 
 ment, consisting of individuals chosen out of 
 both.* The last condition proved, as it was 
 probably intended, a stumbling-block to the 
 Dutch negotiation. It was a subject not em- 
 braced in their instructions. Ultimately, three 
 of their number left London for the Hague, to 
 procure larger powers : Beverningk, the repre- 
 sentative of the States of Holland, alone re- 
 mained. 
 
 But it was now the close of July, and exact- 
 ly two days before the departure of the Dutch- 
 men, another battle had been fought at sea, and 
 another victory won for England. During the 
 whole of the negotiations I have described, Van 
 Tromp and De Witt had exerted themselves 
 with unrelaxing zeal to retrieve their last dis- 
 grace, knowing well how little chance there is 
 of honourable peace after ill- fought war. Tromp 
 complained of the insubordination of his offi- 
 cers, and De Witt of the inadequacy of his 
 ships. Tromp even threatened to withdraw 
 from the command, while De Witt is recorded 
 to have addressed, after this fashion, both the 
 States-General and the States of Holland : " I 
 am here before my sovereigns : of what use is 
 it to dissemble 1 the English are our masters 
 at sea, and things must so remain till we have 
 ships built on a different scale."t To both the 
 admirals a most respectful attention was at 
 once paid. Full power was given to Van Tromp 
 
 members of our Parliament advised that we should first fin- 
 ish that business as we soon shall and then expect your 
 envoys on our shores. I thought better of you, and have 
 misjudged ; but trust me you will soon repent your rejection 
 of tke offers which we have made you." The statesmen kept 
 their words. The equipment of a noble fleet, and the pass- 
 ing of the Navigation Act, were the immediate results of 
 St. John's abrupt return. 
 
 * A vast number of papers will be found in Thurloe hav- 
 ing reference to these negotiations. See, for example, in 
 the first volume only, p. 268, 284, 302, 308, 315, 316, 340, 
 362, 370, 672, 381, 382, 394, 401. And see, for the best 
 popular statement of these results, Dr. Lingard's History, 
 vol. ii., p. 219-223. 
 
 t Thurloe, vol. i., p. 341 ; Le Clerc, vol. ii., p. 333, 334.
 
 550 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to place and displace his officers at pleasure ;* 
 deputies were specially sent from the civil gov- 
 ernment to every crew in the service, exhort- 
 ing and entreating them to make a last effort 
 for their country, and promising them extraor- 
 dinary advantages and rewards ; while in the 
 Dutch dockyards De Witt's orders reigned su- 
 preme. Unexpected success, in one sense, fol- 
 lowed. Towards the end of July, Tromp was 
 enabled to sail from the harbours of Zealand 
 with about eighty ships, and De Witt had twen- 
 ty-five more in readiness in the Texel, with 
 which he afterward joined his chief. But the 
 Dutchmen had lost the habit of victory. 
 
 Monk and Blake had for eight weeks blocka- 
 ded the entrance of the Texel, when, on the 
 evening of the 29th of July, near the coast of 
 Holland, they cleared for a decisive action with 
 Van Tromp and De Witt. On that evening 
 Monk issued a memorable and most character- 
 istic order through his ships, which were in 
 number about equal to the Dutch force. He 
 had found by experience, he said, that the ta- 
 king the ships of the enemy consumed much 
 precious time, while the sending the ships so 
 taken into a place of security necessitated the 
 detaching other vessels from the fleet to con- 
 duct them, and so weakened his force. He 
 therefore gave positive instructions to the cap- 
 tains that 7io English ship should surrender to the 
 enemy, and that they should accept no surrender of 
 the vessels against which they fought. Their bu- 
 siness was not to take ships, but to sink and de- 
 stroy to the extent of their power.! Another 
 circumstance, not less sagacious or cold-blood- 
 ed, was observed in his conduct this famous 
 evening. He sent out a sudden order to trans- 
 pose the captains of the merchant-men which 
 had been placed by him in the battle. In the 
 former engagement, he had found that they 
 committed themselves somewhat too cautious- 
 ly, out of tenderness they had to the freight 
 which belonged to their owners !J 
 
 The first evening's encounter was character- 
 ized by nothing decisive. The squally winds 
 of the succeeding day prevented battle. The 
 sun of the third, which was Sunday, the 31st 
 of July, set in terrible streaks of blood. Its most 
 illustrious victim was Van Tromp. " While he 
 very signally," says Clarendon, " performed the 
 office of a brave and bold commander, he was 
 shot with a musket bullet into the heart, of 
 which he fell dead without speaking a word. 
 This blow broke the courage of the rest." Af- 
 ter the fall of Van Tromp, the victory was in- 
 deed no longer doubtful. The Dutch at once 
 wavered, in a short time fled, and pursuit last- 
 ed beyond midnight. $ On the English side, 
 though few ships were lost, the loss of men 
 
 * Thurloe, vol. i., p. 325. 
 
 t Gamble's Life of Monk, p. 62. } Heath, p. 348. 
 
 $ During the continuance of this pursuit on the evening 
 of the battle, Monk sent off a despatch to the lord- president 
 of the council of state, dated from " on board the Resolu- 
 tion, off Camperdown," which, on its arrival in London, 
 was received and read with much excitement in the House 
 of Commons. Its description of the closing days was high- 
 ly characteristic of Monk, and will give the reader a vivid 
 picture of the scene. Having mentioned the result of the 
 lirst day's encounter, he thus continues: " Yesterday little 
 was done as to an engagement, both fleets finding it work 
 enough to get off from the lee-shore, having the wind at 
 W.N.W., blowing hard, with thick and dirty weather, 
 which was the worst for us, being on an enemy's country. 
 This morning, it being fair weather and little wind, both 
 
 was found to be considerable. Six captains 
 and 500 sailors were killed, and six captains 
 and 800 sailors wounded. A more terrible is- 
 sue had befallen the Dutch. Nearly thirty of 
 their ships were burned or sunk, and among 
 them that of Vice-admiral Evertsens, who was 
 himself made prisoner. Their loss of life was 
 proportionately fearful, and 1200 of their seamen 
 were carried into England as a trophy of the 
 battle, having been taken as they escaped from 
 the wrecks in their boats, or picked up as they 
 were swimming in the sea.* But heavier news 
 than that of all these losses to the people of 
 Holland was the death of their famous Van 
 Tromp.t 
 
 fleets prepared for a second engagement, the enemy bear- 
 ing in upon us, having the wind of us. To this time the 
 Lord seemed to encourage tht enemy, by laying the scales, 
 as it were, in a balance, so that neither could tell which 
 had the better ; bat good was the Lord unto us, who knew 
 the best time for manifestation of his own glory, in appear- 
 ing for his own people, though unworthy of so great a mer- 
 cy ; for, about seven in the morning, the great ships from 
 the Texel, being twenty-five in number [De Win's fleet], 
 having made a conjunction with them the day before, there 
 began a very hot dispute with them, which so continued till 
 one in the afternoon, the enemy having the wind of us all 
 the while, whereby he had the opportunity of taking all ad- 
 vantages ; yet truly may we say, great was the Lord, and 
 marvellous, worthy to be praised for his glorious appear- 
 ance on our behalf; for by this time the Lord had so daunt- 
 ed their spirits, that they began to bear away from us, ma- 
 king all the sail they could with the remainder of their 
 fleet, being not above sixty of their whole number ; for, so 
 far as 1 can gather, there cannot be less than thirty or forty 
 sunk, taken, and destroyed. We are now in pursuit with 
 some of our best sailing frigates, bring almost ap with some 
 of their sterrtmost ; and our expectations still are great, that 
 the Lord will perfect the work thus far begun and carried 
 on, which I hope will be to the glory of his grace in us, as 
 well as without us. The enemy had nine flag-ships when 
 he first engaged, and now but one left, and Tramp's tied to 
 the topmast, as far as I can discern. But I saw two of 
 our own fired by the enemy's fire-ships, whereof one was 
 the Oak, whose men were most of them saved ; the other a 
 fire-ship. In the fight, the Resolution, with the Worcester 
 frigate,, led the English fleet in a desperate and gallant 
 charge, through the whole Dutch fleet. Van Tramp's top- 
 mast was shot down, which he would have set up again, but 
 could not, and so was fain to put his flag upon his ne.ar 
 masts. Those of the Dutch, that are got into the Texel, 
 are much shattered ; Tramp's vice-admiral sunk by his 
 side." It is clear that Monk had not at this period become 
 aware of the first source, as well as the greatest incident, 
 of his victory the death of Tromp. A brief letter from 
 him arrived to announce it the next day. 
 
 * Several Proceedings. Heath, p. 348. 
 
 t Lord Clarendon tells us, that " on the Hollanders' part, 
 between twenty and thirty of their ships of war were fired 
 or sunk, and above 1000 prisoners taken. The victory cost 
 the English dear too ; for 400 common men and eight, cap- 
 tains were slain outright, and above 700 common men and 
 five captains wounded. But they lost only one ship, which 
 was burned ; and two or three more, though carried home, 
 were disabled for farther service. The most sensible part 
 of the loss to the Dutch was the death of their admiral, 
 Van Tromp, who, in respect of his maritime experience, 
 and the frequent actions he had been engaged in, might 
 very well be reckoned among the most eminent commanders 
 at sea of that age, and to whose memory his country is far- 
 ther indebted th.an they have yet acknowledged." Yet the 
 States had given him a splendid triumphal funeral, and 
 struck a medal to his memory. Ludlow thus describes, in 
 his memoirs, the engagement of the last day. " Though 
 many of our men were sick of the scurvy, and the Dutch 
 had fire-ships, of which w^ had none, the wind also entire- 
 ly favouring them, yet did the fight continue with equal 
 balance till two or three in the afternoon, about which time 
 their admiral, Van Tromp, was killed with a musket ball, 
 as he walked upon the deck with his sword drawn. This 
 so discouraged the enemy, that they made all the haste they 
 could away towards the Texel, and were pursued with that 
 diligence by ours, that the ship of Cornelius Evertsen was 
 sunk, with about thirty more, as we were informed by the 
 prisoners taken or saved from perishing. The victory was 
 great, but cost us dear ; for we lost eight of our brave cap- 
 tains, whose names were, Graves, Peacock, Taylor, Crisp, 
 Newman, Cox, Owen, and Chapman, with about 400 men. 
 We hud also about 700 wounded, and among them five com* 
 manders, yet we lost but one ship in this fight."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 551 
 
 The Parliament vied with Cromwell and the 
 council of state in showering honours and re- 
 wards on the victorious English admirals. A 
 grand dinner was given in the city of London 
 to celebrate their return, at which Cromwell 
 was requested to invest them with sundry gold 
 chains and medals, which had been voted in 
 commemoration of their exploits. Nor did this 
 Parliament vent its gratitude in mere partial 
 and unsubstantial honours : they gave orders, 
 we ascertain from the papers of the time, " for 
 taking care of necessaries for the relief of the 
 sick and maimed seamen and soldiers. They also 
 resolved that a convenient house should be provi- 
 ded in or near Dover, Deal, or Sandwich, for their 
 accommodation ; that one moiety of all the hos- 
 pitals for sick throughout England be reserved 
 for the service of the navy ; and that provision 
 be made for the wives and children of the captains 
 and sailors slain in this engagement, who were also 
 admitted to make prolate of their husbands' and 
 fathers' wills, without payment of any fees." 
 
 But the case of Lilburne claims brief mention 
 before the striking course of Parliamentary pol- 
 icy is resumed.* Banished from England for 
 life in 1652, he had taken refuge in Holland, 
 allied himself to the Royalists there,! and made 
 formal proposals to them for the destruction of 
 the Long Parliament and the then council of 
 state, and for the murder of Cromwell, all of 
 which he undertook to accomplish in sixmonths, 
 on the payment often thousand pounds.f His 
 
 * A passage from the " Exact Relation" may yet be sub- 
 joined, descriptive of matters already partly referred to, and 
 which will not require farther statement. " By this time 
 (the opening of August) many matters were fitted and pre- 
 pared by the committees, who made their daily reports. 
 The council of state having 1 the pre-eminence to be first 
 heard, divers things were offered by them, some of which 
 had been considered of by them in the interval of Parlia- 
 ment. Many things passed, and were despatched, of what 
 they reported, and which other committees did likewise re- 
 port, which spent not a little time. Business came on so 
 fast from committees, which did cause striving which should 
 be fi rst heard, and in uch time lost thereby. There were many 
 particular things ordered and despatched by the House, 
 as 'The relieving: the sufferings of many by fires in many 
 parts of the nation ; some their grievences redressed ; some 
 their petitions and desires granted ; some obstructions i-n all 
 their purchases removed by the House.' The business of 
 providing moneys (all other things ever giving way to that) 
 occasioned expense of much time, and great debate of ways 
 and means to that end. The fights at sea coming to knowl- 
 edge by letters ; the reading of them ; the acknowledging 1 
 God's goodness, arid praising his holy name ; the taking 
 care to provide for the sick and maimed ; the relieving the 
 widows of such whose husbands were slain; the honouring 1 
 with rewards the chieftains and commanders ; with the be- 
 stowing several sums of money on the widows and children 
 of such captains as were slain in the fight, in consideration 
 of their loss of such husbands and fathers; all which were 
 things just and honourable, but not done without expense 
 of time. The despatch of ambassadors to foreign parts, as 
 to Turkey and to Sweden, their letters of credence, and 
 commissions signed and sealed, the receipt.of letters from 
 Switzerland and other free states, the reading of them and 
 returning answers, may be reckoned into the expense of 
 time. The council of state chose a second time by the box 
 or glass, where every one put in his paper of names, and 
 those that had most votes carried it, spent more time than 
 one whole day." 
 
 t This is not denied even by himself. According to his 
 own " Defensive Declaration," he entered into familiar in- 
 tercourse with the Duke of Buckingham, Sir John Cole- 
 peper, Sir Ralph Hopton (distinguished followers of Charles 
 the Fust, and who had been created peers by him in 1644), 
 Bishop Bramhall, and other eminent Royalists. 
 
 t When asked how he proposed tojeffect all this, he re- 
 plied, by papers that he wnuld print in Amsterdam, and 
 send over and get dispersed by his agents in England. He 
 affirmed that he had a numerous party in his native coun- 
 try, and that the majority of the army would easily be 
 brought over to his views. It is fair to add that Lilburne 
 has denied this part of the charges. His character and 
 
 proposals, made in the autumn of 1652, were 
 rejected, after some deliberation ; yet he re- 
 mained in Holland, where, on the 3d of May, 
 1053, the news of the dispersion of the states- 
 men reached him. Seeing the opportunity for 
 disorder, he wrote at once and offered his alle- 
 giance to Cromwell, with the prayer that he 
 might be allowed to return to England, to call 
 to account the deceased authority that had ban- 
 ished him. The letter was loaded with abuse 
 of the Parliamentary leaders especially of 
 Scot, whom it styled secretary of state and 
 with quiet hints of conciliation and respect for 
 Cromwell, but unavailingly. The lord-general 
 avoided double-edged tools, and had profited by 
 his old experience of Lilburne. The letter pass- 
 ed unanswered. 
 
 Lilburne then resolved on the daring step of 
 an unsanctioned return to England. He sup- 
 posed himself safe in the disorders and uncer- 
 tainties of the time. The Duke of Bucking- 
 ham is said to have accompanied him as far as 
 Calais ;* and it is certain that the council of 
 state had received information, which left them 
 little doubt of the desperate intentions with 
 which he came. He arrived in the middle of 
 June, was arrested the day after his arrival at 
 a lodging in Little Moorfields, and shortly after 
 committed to Newgate. The determination 
 had at once been taken by Cromwell to send 
 him to trial on the act which banished him, and 
 which affixed to his unpermitted return the pen- 
 alty of death. It was a case, moreover, where- 
 in he thought he might safely trust a jury. The 
 only matter submitted to their decision would 
 be the simple proof of identity, since the felony 
 was clearly established and declared. Thus 
 would he, at the same instant, not only drive 
 from his path a troublesome demagogue, hut in 
 all probability, by his very means of doing it, 
 win the popular sympathies and regards. The 
 result was another proof of his miscalculation. 
 Nor of that only. It furnished decided evidence 
 of that general condition of confusion and in- 
 certitude which was the follower of his act of 
 usurpation. 
 
 habits, however, are a formidable support to it; and the 
 informations, perfectly agreeing as to the facts, are sworn 
 to by four persons, Isaac Berkenhead, Captain John Titus, 
 Captain John Bartlett, and Richard foot. In the evidence 
 of the latter person some curious circumstances arc stated. 
 Describing the interval between the despatch of Lilburne's 
 first letter to Cromwell and his subsequent departure in de- 
 fiance of permission, Foot illustrated it by the following 
 scene. " On Sunday, the 29th of May, Lilburn and Jamot 
 being at a tavern called the Conserge, with one Captain, 
 Whittington and Colonel Layton, both of the king's party 
 here in England, and two merchants, one of the company 
 asked him what he would say if this pass came not ; he said 
 that, 'if my pass come not, and I find that it is Cromwell 
 that hinders it, as it must be> for it lies in his power, I will 
 either kill him myself, or send one to do it." Then one of 
 the merchants asked him how he could do such a thing with 
 conscience : he answered, ' Tell me not of conscience in, 
 this case, for if that I am banished without law, conscience, 
 or equity, and deprived of my natural air to breathe in, 
 which is every man's birthright (with such like expressions),. 
 I may justly right myself if 1 can- If I would take a hare 
 or a deer, 1 ought to give him fair play, because thy are- 
 beasts of game ; but if a fox or wolf, I may use what device- 
 I can to kill him; so if Cromwell keep himself above the 
 law, that I cannot have my right by the law, I may kill him 
 how I can.' Then presently his letters came, and 1 after he 
 had read them, and saw his pass was not come, he said, ' I 
 am resolved to have one fling more at Cromwell.' Further 
 he said, that ' Cromwell hath been an atheist these seven, 
 years, and that his design is and hath been lo make himself 
 king.' " 
 * Thurloe, vol. i., p. 306. Several Informations, p. 18.
 
 552 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 As soon as Lilburne discovered the resolute 
 front opposed to him, he took up his own old 
 positions with all his accustomed obstinacy.* 
 He set to work his friends to petition, and his 
 own wits to baffle by all kinds of technical ob- 
 jection the legal proceedings already instituted. 
 His first endeavour was to obtain a respite of 
 the trial till the meeting of the Convention that 
 had beem summoned, and in this he succeeded. 
 Cromwell was not unwilling to share with them 
 the responsibility of some portion of what he 
 had resolved to do. Within four or five days 
 of their meeting, petitions were accordingly 
 poured in upon the Parliament petitions from 
 Lilburne himself petitions from Lilburne's wife 
 petitions from Lilburne's native county pe- 
 titions from London apprentices, who thought 
 Lilburne a great man. It is instructive to know 
 how much may be done, or, rather, how much 
 always seems to be done, by one active person, 
 during the inaction of everybody else. Sever- 
 al discussions arose on these petitions, and 
 many divisionst were taken. " Some members 
 of the House," according to the author of the 
 " Exact Relation," " earnestly moving to> have 
 had his trial suspended, and the act called in 
 question by which he was banished and made 
 a felon, that the merit of the cause might be 
 looked into ; which they professed, again and 
 again, they did not do so much in favour of Mr. 
 Lilburne, as in the right of themselves and their 
 posterities, and all Englishmen, which they 
 judged highly concerned therein ; but other gen- 
 tlemen of note being very opposite, nothing 
 came of the whole but expense of time." The 
 real fact was, that the evidence of Lilburne's 
 intentions, laid before the various members by 
 the council of state, was, at last, too strong to 
 be resisted.! His intrigues with the Royalists 
 
 * See note, anti, p. 521, 522. 
 
 t Thurloe, vol. i., p. 387. 
 
 t An amusing passage, from the examination of Captain 
 Titus, will describe in detail a part of Lilburne's interview 
 with the Duke of Buckingham in Holland. Independent 
 of the entire corroboration it received from others, nothing 
 can more exactly or characteristically express the style and 
 manner of " free-born John :" ' This examinant farther 
 saith, that at this same time the said Lilburne proposed to 
 the said duke, that if he, the said duke, could but procure 
 him 10,000, he, the said Lilburne, would have a piece of 
 him nailed upon every post in Bruges, if he, the said Lil- 
 burne, did not overthrow and destroy those damnable vil- 
 lains in England; 'I mean,.' said he, the said Lilburne, 
 ' the Lord-general Cromwell, the Parliament, and that mon- 
 strous council of state.' To which the said duke replied, 
 ' I pray you, sir, let me hear which way you will do this.' 
 The said Lilburne replied, ' My lord, I'll tell you how : first 
 I'll set my press on work (for which purpose I have bought 
 one with letter at Amsterdam, which cost me thirty pounds), 
 and then I'll send my papers over into England, which by 
 jny agents shall be spread all over the nation, and by my 
 agents (for I have enough) my papers shall be brought into 
 the army there (where I have double interest) ; and now 
 every trooper begins to understand his own privilege, and 
 so soon as these papers are spread, they'l fly in the faces of 
 their officers, so that, with the help of my particular inter- 
 est, the soldiery shall do all themselves, and I'll do nothing 
 but sit in my chair and use my pen.' To which the duke 
 replied, ' Sir, you may observe that in all your attempts the 
 general outwitted you, and broke your business in the bud ; 
 besides, you may see, that on all occasions the soldiery hath 
 been obedient unto his officer, so discreetly hath the gen- 
 eral ordered his army.' ' Why, then,' saith the said Lil- 
 burne, ' I perceive you take the general for a wise man.' 
 ' Yes,' said the duke ; ' let the world read his stories, and 
 they'l find him so.' ' No,' said the said Lilburne, ' I know 
 him to be otherwise, for heretofore all his business was 
 managed by Ireton, and is since by others ; and for the gen- 
 eral himself, he is as false a perfidious false-hearted rogue 
 as ewer lived in the world. And I know no reason why I 
 should not vie with Cromwell, since 1 had once as great a 
 
 had become too clear, and his intemperate style 
 of abuse through all the proceedings had weak- 
 ened what little sympathy remained for him. 
 Parliament refused to interfere, and his trial 
 was ordered to proceed. He was arraigned at 
 the sessions in the middle of July, on the capi- 
 tal charge of having violated the statute of his 
 banishment. 
 
 But to this statute he refused to plead ; and 
 for five successive days, with all the genuine 
 accomplishments of a first-rate demagogue, he 
 kept prosecutors and judges* at bay. He left 
 not an inch of ground unfought ; and at every 
 turn in the case, covered every one opposed to 
 him, not excepting the judges themselves, with 
 charges of rascality and tyranny. First, he de- 
 manded counsel : that point was at once con- 
 ceded, and, among others, he named Glyn, 
 Maynard, and Hale, of whom Maynard, who 
 lived to dabble in the blood of the regicides, took 
 up his case with a real and very hearty zeal. 
 Three days of the trial had meanwhile been ex- 
 hausted. On the fourth, returning to the charge 
 with renewed vivacity, Lilburne tended a bill 
 of exceptions.f The court refused it unless 
 signed by counsel, and gave him till evening to 
 repair the defect. But the majority of the coun- 
 sel he had named were out of town, and his 
 friends only narrowly achieved the good fortune 
 of finding Maynard, who was himself on the 
 point of setting out when they arrived. He 
 signed the bill at once, and procured the signa- 
 ture of Norbury, a Welsh judge, who had re- 
 cently been dismissed by Cromwell. The crafty 
 lawyer sent, at the same time, a message to 
 Lilburne of still greater value than his signa- 
 ture : he would baffle his judges most effective- 
 ly, he told him, if he insisted on his oyer : a 
 specification under the great seal of the statute 
 on which he was tried, of the judgment of ban- 
 ishment given against him, and of the crime or 
 crimes on which that judgment was founded. 
 
 Lilburne received this hint with becoming 
 gratitude, and on the sixth day of the proceed- 
 ings formally demanded his oycr. Maynard's 
 anticipations proved correct. The court knew 
 not how to refuse the request, since it was 
 claimed as of right and necessary to defence ; 
 
 power as he had, and greater too, and am as good a gentle- 
 man, and of as good a family.' " 
 
 * Chief-baron Wild presided, assisted on the bench by 
 the Lord-commissioner Keble, Judge Warburton, the Re- 
 corder Steele, and, by some strange and unintelligible com- 
 promise with decency and justice, Attorney-general Pri- 
 deaux. 
 
 t These exceptions were, first, that it did not appear on 
 the face of the act that it was an act of the Parliament of 
 the Commonwealth of England, or the Parli-^ueut sitting 
 at Westminster, and might as well be an act of a Parlia- 
 ment in Naples, or any other country. Secondly, it did 
 not appear that" there was any judgment given upon which 
 the sentence was founded. Before a judgment there must 
 be indictment, presentment, or information ; the party ac- 
 cused must appear, or must be outlawed for not appearing ; 
 he must either confess or plead ; all of which circumstan- 
 ces were wanting, the least of them being enough to anni- 
 hilate the proceeding. Thirdly, the act spoke of his not 
 being allowed to remain in England, Scotland, or Ireland, 
 after twenty days, but the vote of the House upon which 
 the act was bottomed specified thirty days. Fourthly, the 
 indictment now preferred against him was against John 
 Lilburue, gentleman, while the act of banishment was 
 against Lieutenant-colonel Lilburne ; no proof being ren- 
 dered that he was the person named in the act. lie denied 
 that he had been a lieutenant-colonel at the time of passing 
 the act. There were several persons in England whose 
 names and designation were John Lilburne, gentleman, and 
 they might as well hang any one of these, as- hong him, 
 under this apt.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 553 
 
 and assuredly they knew still less how to grant 
 it, since no record of the charge or judgment was 
 known to exist. They granted a specification 
 of the act, and adjournment to the next ses- 
 sions. 
 
 The proceedings were resumed in the middle 
 of August by two days' argument on Lilburne's 
 exceptions, and his right to the oyer. He con- 
 sented to plead at last, under threat from the 
 court that they would enter up judgment 
 against him as contumacious. A jury was em- 
 panelled to try him on the 18th of August, and 
 the trial lasted three days. The court was 
 crowded within and without by the city appren- 
 tices, of whom Lilburne was the hero ; some 
 hundreds of them were said to have provided 
 themselves with arms for his rescue if he should 
 chance to be condemned ; and threatening pa- 
 pers were dropped about in various directions 
 (printed, no doubt, at the demagogue's own 
 printing press !), to declare that if Lilburne per- 
 ished, twenty thousand Englishmen would per- 
 ish with him ! Cromwell unwisely elevated 
 these circumstances into an importance they 
 could never themselves have claimed for the 
 great mass of the people were in truth look- 
 ing indifferently on by taking measures to 
 strengthen and encourage the court. Two com- 
 panies of soldiers were posted in the immedi- 
 ate vicinity ; three regiments of infantry, and 
 one of cavalry, were quartered in the city ; and 
 a considerable force without the gates received 
 orders to march towards London. 
 
 The details of the trial itself, which lasted 
 three days, have not been preserved. It is only 
 known that the counsel for the prosecution re- 
 stricted themselves to bare evidence of the pris- 
 oner's identity with the Lilburne named in the 
 act of banishment ; that the court charged the 
 jury, in the same strain, that they had nothing 
 lo do but with the act of Parliament in ques- 
 tion ; and that Lilburne himself made a long 
 and passionate speech, in which, among a vast 
 variety of topics of argument and abuse, the 
 chief were these : he denied the legal authority 
 of the late Parliament to banish him, because 
 it had in law expired with the death of the king, 
 and because in no circumstances can a House 
 of Commons assume the functions of a court 
 of justice ; he urged upon the jury, with elabo- 
 rate vehemence, that they were judges of the 
 law as well as of the fact ; he maintained that 
 they could not possibly, if they had any regard 
 to justice or the peace of their own conscien- 
 ces, adjudge a man to death for a thing not 
 done or proved, but merely because other men 
 had ordered certain words to be written down 
 on paper or parchment ;* he finally adjured them 
 to remember that an act of Parliament which 
 was evidently unjust was essentially void, and 
 that jurymen who pronounced according to it, 
 and not according to their oaths, would have 
 
 * The original judgment against Lilburne was, no doubt, 
 only defensible, on the ground of an elemental danger to 
 society and government both at that time in a state of 
 revolution and transition which the ordinary law and 
 usage were incompetent to meet. He was condemned in a 
 heavy fine, with banishment for life, on the ground of a 
 breach of privilege. It is well to recollect that a previous 
 vote of a precisely similar description against Lord Howard, 
 of Esrricke, and Captain Wenday Oxford, had been called 
 by Lilburne (in his Just Reproof, <kc.) " a gallant piece of 
 justice." Still Vane and Marten strenuously opposed his 
 banishment. 
 
 4 A 
 
 one day a heavy reckoning to answer. It was 
 late in the night of the third day of the trial 
 when the jury returned their verdict, and the 
 shout of the apprentices in celebration of Lil- 
 burne's acquittal rang clamorously up White- 
 hall* to the residence of Cromwell. 
 
 I have thus glanced at this close of the way- 
 ward career of Lilburne, because in the marked 
 distinction which separates it from his previous 
 trials, a striking characteristic of the time may 
 be noted. The plain and simple point involved 
 in the present instance was the identity of Lil- 
 burne with the victim of the act of banishment. 
 But with whom had that act of banishment 
 originated, of which Cromwell now sought so 
 vigorous an enforcement 1 It was peculiarly 
 the work of the statesmen, whose authority, 
 within the last four mouths, Cromwell had him- 
 self destroyed, and whose motives he had brand- 
 ed with the vilest and most insulting imputa- 
 tions. The act of banishment was, in fact, no 
 other than a special assertion of that authority, 
 no other than a terrible resentment of Lil- 
 burne's reckless disregard of its injunctions. 
 But with the substance the shadow perished ; 
 doubts arose between the justice and the thief; 
 the question of identity became a question of 
 indifference ; and in the same proportion as 
 Cromwell might be held to represent the au- 
 thority by which he claimed the forfeit life of 
 Lilburne, did the shouts of the apprentices of 
 London represent the voice of the English peo- 
 ple. The true England was silent as the true 
 statesmen. Yet Cromwell was troubled when 
 those shouts reached him in Whitehall. It is 
 the unhappy consequence of a great man's play- 
 ing a mean part, that mean men may become 
 suddenly, though for a brief space, respected 
 and respectable. A lion in the skin of an ass 
 gives propriety and elevation to an ass in his 
 own skin. 
 
 Within a few days after the result of Lil- 
 burne's trial, measures for the establishment of 
 a high court of justice were pressed forward in 
 Parliament by Cromwell's partisans, for every 
 instant, to them, seemed teeming with a new 
 Lilburne. The time groaned, meanwhile, with 
 much heavier dangers. The real indifference, 
 languor, and incertitude of the people made 
 themselves known in a more formidable shape. 
 
 * A few words will suffice to close Lilburne's career. 
 The result of an examination of the judges and jurymen be- 
 fore the council of state ; of the evidence of a certified copy 
 of certain opprobrious expressions used by Lilburne in his 
 defence ; and, finally, of additional proof of his Royalist 
 intrigues, was an order from the Parliament that, notwith- 
 standing his acquittal, he should be confined in the Tower; 
 and that no obedience should be paid to any writ of habeas 
 corpus issued, from the Court of Upper Bench in bis behalf. 
 These measures were loudly complained of by sensible and 
 well-judging people, who had taken no interest in Lilburne, 
 and stoutly resisted also by a minority in the Parliament. 
 They were carried by the plea of state necessity. It was 
 afterward supposed that Lilburne would be brought to trial 
 for treason, with other conspirators, before a high court of 
 justice, but he was at length sent a prisoner by Cromwell 
 to Elizabeth Castle, in the Isle of Jersey. Here he de- 
 ported himself with the greatest contumacy. He -vas final- 
 ly, as we are told, being 1 far gone in a consumption, liber- 
 ated from confinement, and only turned out to die, which 
 event occurred in August, 1657, at the age of thirty-nine. 
 It is characteristic of all his life that he is recorded to have 
 died in the faith of a Quaker '. For various circumstances 
 connected with these latter incidents of his most unprofit- 
 able life, see Thurloe, vol. i., p. 321, 367, 368, 3ti9, 429, 430, 
 435, 441, 442. 451, 453. See, also, State Trials, vol. v., 
 p. 415-450; Whitelocke, passim; and the Journals of the 
 Commons, under dates already mentioned in the text.
 
 554 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 It had been a memorable incident in the histo- 
 ry of the statesmen, that, after the death of the 
 king, though there had been wars with the Roy- 
 alists of Scotland and Ireland, and insurrections 
 of that party when England was invaded by the 
 enemy, no intestine commotion ever shook 
 their power or weakened their general author- 
 ity with the people. The argument of White- 
 locke will also be in the reader's recollection.* 
 Protesting with real or feigned sincerity against 
 the dissolution of the Parliamentary govern- 
 ment, he observed with admirable foresight, 
 " The question will then 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 thus that question, wherein- 
 before so great parties of the nation were en- 
 gaged, and which was universal, will by this 
 means become, in effect, a private controversy 
 only. Before it was national, What kind of 
 government we should have] Now it will be- 
 come particular, Who shall be our governor, 
 whether of the family of the Stuarts, or of the 
 family of the Cromwells T Thus the state of 
 our controversy 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 ; 
 your hands will be weakened, your interest 
 straitened, and your cause in apparent danger 
 to be ruined." Substantially this time had now 
 arrived, and its arrival made itself known in a 
 series of Royalist conspiracies. 
 
 Its first herald, as we have seen, was Lil- 
 burne's arrival, under the tender escort, as far 
 as Calais, of his grace the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham. Then followed his acquittal. Then arose 
 mysterious talk throughout London of secret 
 correspondence and designs, and several per- 
 sons of consideration were sent to the Tower, t 
 Then, within some days after, we meet with 
 accounts of ten or twelve colonels having been 
 apprehended on the charge of having come over 
 from abroad with a design to raise men in sev- 
 eral places for the service of Charles Stuart. 
 And at last a formal report of various conspira- 
 cies was presented to the Parliament by the 
 council of state, with a view to expedite the 
 proposed establishment of a high court of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 Cromwell saw in all this the worst disadvan- 
 tages of an incomplete act of usurpation, unac- 
 companied by any of the strength or awe that 
 would follow its final assertion. He began to 
 look forward impatiently over the heads of his 
 " faithful Commons." In a letter I have found 
 to his son-in-law Fleetwood, who was now in 
 Ireland with his wife, the significant humility, 
 the discontented sanctity, the obscure anticipa- 
 tion, point directly at the Protector's chair. It 
 is dated the 22d of August, 1653, and runs in 
 these words : " DEERE CHARLES, Although 1 
 doe not soe often (as is desired by me) acquaint 
 you howe it is with me, yett I doubt not of your 
 prayers in my behalfe that in all thinges I may 
 walke as becometh the Gospell. Trudy I nev- 
 er more needed all kelps from my Christian friends 
 than nowe. Fayne would I have my service ac- 
 cepted of the saincts (if the Lorde will) ; butt it is 
 not soe. Beinge of different judgments, and of 
 
 * See ante, p. 502. 
 
 t See Thurloe, vol. i., p. 441, 442, 453. 
 
 each sort, most seckinge to propagate their owne, 
 that spirit of kindnesse that is to them all is hard- 
 ly accepted of any. I hope I can say it, my life 
 has heene a willinge sacrifice, and I hope is, for 
 them all. Yett it much falls out as when the 
 two Hebrews were rebuked, you know upon 
 whom they turned their displeasure ; butt the 
 Lorde is wise, and will, I trust, make manifest 
 that I am no enimy. Oh how easy is mercie to 
 be abused ! Perswade friends with you to be 
 very sober. If the day of the Lorde be so neer (as 
 some say), how should our moderation appeare ! 
 If every one (instead of contending e) would justifie 
 his forme by love and meeknesse, wisdorne would 
 be justified by her children. Butt alas ! I am in 
 my tentation ready to say, ' Oh, would I had 
 winges like a dove, then would I,' &c. ; butt 
 this, I feare, is my hast. I blesse the Lorde I 
 have somewhat keepes me alive, some sparkes 
 of the light of his countenance, and some sin- 
 ceritie above man's judgement. Excuse me 
 thus unbowellinge myselfe to you ; pray for 
 me, and desire my friends to doe soe alsoe. My 
 love to thy deere wife, whom indeed I entyerly 
 love, both naturally, and upon the best account ; 
 and my blessinge(if it be worth anythinge)upon 
 thy little babe. Sr. George Ascough havinge 
 occasions with you, desired my letters to you 
 on his behalfe ; if he come or send, I pray you 
 show him what favour you can. Indeed, his 
 services have been considerable for the state, 
 and I doubt he hath not been answered with 
 suitable respect. Therefore again I desier you, 
 and the commissioners, to take him into a very 
 perticular care, and helpe him soe farr as jus- 
 tice and reason will any wayes afforde. Re- 
 member my heartie affections to all the officers. 
 The Lorde bless you all, soe prayeth your true- 
 ly lovinge father, O. CROMWELL. . . . All heere 
 love you, and are in health, your children and 
 all." 
 
 Another circumstance of the same date in- 
 dicates the movement in Cromwell's mind. 
 Whitelocke was suddenly sent off from London 
 in the character of ambassador extraordinary 
 to the Swedish queen Christina. No formida- 
 ble opposition was thus removed, but many 
 troublesome and annoying scruples. In vain 
 poor Whitelocke struggled and objected ; in vain 
 he sought the aid and counsel of wife, of friends, 
 of tenants. "There's no use in resisting the 
 GREAT MAN," said one of the latter, " an ancient, 
 sober, discreet, and faithful servant to White- 
 locke and his father above forty years." White- 
 locke rejoined that he was not " bound to obey" 
 Cromwell. " I am deceived," said the shrewd 
 old servant, " if he will not be obeyed in what 
 he hath a mind to." " I am not under his com- 
 mand," retorted Whitelocke ; " what can he do 
 to me!" "What can he do!" exclaimed the 
 experienced William Cooke ; "what can he 
 not do ! Don't we' all see he does what he list ! 
 We poor countrymen are forced to obey him 
 to our cost ; and if he have a mind to punish 
 us or you, it's an old proverb that it's an easy 
 thing to find a staff to beat a dog ; and I would 
 not have you to anger him, lest you bring dan- 
 ger, and trouble too, upon you and your family 
 and state : that's the truth on't."* 
 
 * For an ample uccount of these conferences, and of 
 Whitelocke's interviews with Christina herself, imbodying 
 many striking illustrations of Cromwell's character, see 
 Appendix E., CBOMWELL AND CHKISTI.NA.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 555 
 
 The " Parliament of saints" had meanwhile 
 been working to Cromwell's wish. Their meas- 
 ures of general polity and reform now claim 
 from us a fair recital, and will be found, indeed, 
 well worthy of it. 
 
 Be it first observed that they began their du- 
 ties by establishing in all matters appertaining 
 to the state a system of the most rigid econo- 
 my. They revised the regulation of the ex- 
 cise ; they simplified and improved the consti- 
 tution of the treasury, by reducing into one the 
 several receipts of the revenue ; they abolish- 
 ed unnecessary offices, and reduced exorbitant 
 salaries ; they subjected to a most rigorous 
 scrutiny the various public accounts, and gave 
 new facilities to the sale of the lands now con- 
 sidered as national property. In all these things, 
 as in others I will shortly name, the spirit of 
 the Long Parliament had survived the disper- 
 sion of its members ; in the fanaticism of lan- 
 guage and occasional extravagance of argu- 
 ment by which the truth and advantages of 
 such a course of policy were obscured in the 
 Convention, we must at once, in fairness, rec- 
 ognise the original vice of its origin. It should 
 never have been expected that anything could 
 supply that grave defect in the minds of the 
 more sensible English people. 
 
 Thus deficient in the only solid support they 
 could hope to rest on, they had at once com- 
 menced their quarrel with the formidable class 
 interests, and with the army first. It had been 
 with visible reluctance that they voted the 
 monthly tax of 120,000 for the support of the 
 military and naval establishments. They were, 
 indeed, careful not to complain of the amount ; 
 their objections were pointed against the nature 
 of the tax, and the inequality of the assess- 
 ments ; but this pretext could not hide their 
 real object from the jealousy of their adversa- 
 ries ; and their leaders were openly charged 
 with seeking to reduce the number of the army, 
 that they might lessen the influence of the lord- 
 general.* 
 
 Their war with the lawyers was more dar- 
 ingly and openly conducted. Among the first 
 acts they passed were those for taking away 
 fines on bills, declarations, and original writs, 
 and for the redress of delays and mischiefs ari- 
 sing out of writs of error. They passed, at the 
 same time, an act respecting marriages, which, 
 with several others, was sanctioned by their 
 successors in 1656, and which declared that 
 they should in all cases be preceded by publica- 
 tion of banns in church, or in the market-place 
 on market-day ; and a certificate being grant- 
 ed of such publication, together with the ex- 
 ception made, if any, that the ceremony should 
 then take place before some justice of the peace 
 within the county. This measure, which was 
 strongly opposed by the clergy as well as the 
 lawyers,! they accompanied with acts for the 
 
 * Exact Relation, p. 10. Thurloe, i., p. 755. Dr. Lin- 
 gard, vol. ii., p. 193. 
 
 t A considerable time, the authors of the Parliamentary 
 History tell us, was taken up in agitation of it. Ou the 
 25th of August it passed the House on the question, and 
 was ordered to be printed and published. ' This extraor- 
 dinary act entirely took marriages out of the hands of the 
 clergy, and put it into those of the justice of the peace. . . 
 A very remarkable clause, add the compilers of the Par). 
 History, was proposed to be added upon the third reading, 
 but passed in the negative. It was this : That if any per- 
 011 then married, or to be married according to this act, 
 
 registration of marriages, and also of births and 
 burials. They prepared and introduced other 
 bills, with less success in passing them. Among 
 them were, for example, an attempt to consti- 
 tute by enactment a public committee for advance 
 of trade ; a new system of workhouses, and provis- 
 ion fur the. poor ; and many admirable remedies 
 for making the law more expeditious and less 
 chargeable.* 
 
 Their next offence to the lawyers was not 
 less a boon and blessing to the people, in an- 
 swer to whose repeated prayers and entreatiest 
 
 should make proof, by one or more credible witness upon 
 oath, that either the husband or wife had committed the 
 detestable sin of adultery during such marriage, then the 
 said parties might be divorced by the sentence of three jus- 
 tices of the peace.' " 
 
 * The author of the Exact Relation tells us that " about 
 three days were spent in passing the excise rates, particu- 
 larly, by vote. The old and new drapery, hats, caps, and 
 tobacco-pipes, were by vote exempted from the duty of ex- 
 cise. The bill following, iu order of the rates, was very 
 large, of about eighty sheets of paper ; spent one whole day 
 in the hearing of it read ; and there appeared so many 
 snares and difficulties in it as to trade, as was judged no way 
 fit to be put on a people that expected freedom at the price 
 of their blood and treasure, by them spent in the late war ; 
 whereupon it was by a general consent waived and laid 
 aside. There were divers bills prepared by several com- 
 mittees, some of which were read in the House, and others 
 offered to have them read, but other business hindered ; 
 as, ' A bill for constituting a committee for advance of 
 trade ;' ' A bill for workhouses, and providing for the poor;' 
 ' Divers bills for regulation of the law, and making it less 
 chargeable to the poor, and more expeditious.'" 
 
 t I subjoin a striking extract from a petition against the 
 system of imprisonment for debt, printed in the journals of 
 the time. It is entitled the " humble petition of all the 
 prisoners for debt within the several (both national and 
 private) tyrannical dens of cruelty, called prisons, jails, 
 counters, holes, and dungeons in this land." It opens with 
 a laudation of the members of the Convention, as " the 
 Lord's faithful ones," who had been called to restore Eng- 
 land's fundamental laws, rights, and liberties. It proceeds : 
 "In assurance of your speedy accomplishment of this so 
 great good work, to God's glory, your country's happiness, 
 and your own eternal fame to posterity, we are encouraged 
 to show, though not unknown unto you, that the law of God 
 is a law of mercy, peace, and preservation to the people, 
 and not of strife, rigour, and destruction, as it is at this 
 present time, in and by the chargeable, dilatory, and deceit- 
 ful practice thereof; witness the numerous actions charged 
 on men ; vexatious and chargeable arrests, and dragging 
 of men and women like dogs into holes and dungeons ; false 
 and endless imprisonment ; the frequent commitments to 
 prison, by the judges and justices, upon trivial matters ; 
 unjust decrees ; false reports of masters in chancery ; ille- 
 gal outlawries ; delay <>i justice ; and, by the extraordinary 
 charges in law and protraction of time, disheartening honest 
 men from suing for their just debts and rights ; together, 
 also, with the most cruel usage and unreasonable exactions 
 of bailiffs, sergeants, and jailers, to the utter ruin arid de- 
 struction of thousands of families in the land ; so as now, 
 by the diabolically invented practices of the judges and 
 lawyers, the law is become sharper than a two-edged 
 sword, dividing the life from the body ; working an endless 
 separation between a man and his wife, children, and 
 friends ; deprivation of liberty and calling, and a total ruin 
 of estate, to the great prejudice of this Commonwealth in 
 general, but to the satisfaction of cruel, revengeful persons, 
 and enrichment of lawyers and their dependants in partic- 
 ular. . . That restraint of men and women's persons in jail 
 pays no debt, but defrauds the creditor, feeds the lawyers 
 and jailers, and murders the debtors, witness the many thou- 
 S'lnds that have thus perished miserably, as the jailer's bonks, 
 coroner's records, and committory rolls do testify. . . That 
 imprisonment for debt is contrary to the law of God, to rea- 
 son, justice, and charity, and l the law of this land, as ap- 
 peareth by several statutes. The premises piously consid- 
 ered, your poor still enslaved brethren therefore humbly 
 pray, that you may speedily break off this cruel, sinful yoke 
 by the powerful rule of righteousness, justice, and mercy ; 
 that there may be no more arresting nor imprisonment for 
 debt.'" The close of the petition suggested a provision 
 in the stead of imprisonment not less just than humane 
 that "all able debtors might be, in somo short time, en- 
 forced to satisfy their creditors out of the two-third parts 
 of their estates, either in lands or goods ; the other third 
 part to be resolved to themselves for their support and edu 
 cation of their children."
 
 556 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 it was granted by these reformers. A bill was to the party injured, and to be set on the pillo- 
 introduced " for relief of creditors and poor ry. And in case of the death of a prisoner be- 
 prisoners for debt," the immediate operation of j fore his debts were paid, they were empowered 
 which, besides its effects throughout the Eng- to sell his estate for payment thereof. And 
 lish provinces, was to release upward of 300 though prisoners enlarged by this act were not 
 
 distressed men who were confined in different 
 prisons in and near London alone. A brief 
 sketch of its provisions will illustrate the judi- 
 cious and equable temper in which these " fa- 
 
 liable to be arrested for debts due before, yet 
 their estates were to remain subject to their 
 creditors' satisfaction. Lastly, these commis- 
 sioners were not to be responsible for their 
 
 natics" approached a subject which involved so conduct but to Parliament ; and in case of any 
 many nice and difficult questions of property difficulty, wherein they might apprehend they 
 
 and humanity. 
 
 Seventeen commissioners were appointed to 
 act as judges in the case of prisoners " in the 
 Upper Bench prison, the Fleet, the Gatehouse 
 in Westminster, the Counter in Surrey, or pris- 
 on in Whitechapel," with power to examine, 
 and determine in a summary way, concerning 
 the causes of such persons' imprisonment, their 
 escapes and their estates, and to act as com- 
 missioners of bankrupts. They were to be al- 
 lowed twopence in the pound out of the money 
 arising by the sale of such prisoners' estates, 
 for the charges of them and their clerks. A 
 
 had not sufficient power for the relief of just 
 creditors or poor prisoners, they were to certi- 
 fy the same to the House, with their opinion 
 what farther provision was necessary to be 
 made. 
 
 The four great votes which followed these 
 measures sealed the fate of their unconscious 
 originators. Before I proceed to describe them, 
 it will be interesting to place on record a com- 
 plete list of the enactments of general govern- 
 ment and policy which were passed by the Con- 
 vention. They imbody, in connexion with the 
 four votes in question, the last effort made to 
 
 certain number of persons were also appointed gather up the fruits of the struggle it has been 
 
 to act in the same capacity for each county in 
 
 the purpose of this work to record, in anything 
 
 like a permanent result or legislative action on 
 the people. Different scenes await us after 
 
 England and Wales, with an allowance of six- 
 pence in the pound. Prisoners not paying their 
 
 debts in six months were to be deemed bank- j these have passed. Scenes of mingled shame 
 rupts ; and in case of settlement of any part of and glory ; the administration of a despotism 
 a prisoner's estate in trust for himself or any at once brilliant and mean ; the oppressions it 
 
 other person, after the debt contracted or judg- 
 ment obtained, these commissioners were em- 
 powered to sell the estate, and to fine any oth- 
 er person aiding or assisting in such fraud. 
 Persons not able to pay such fine were to be ad- 
 judged to the pillory or workhouse. Prisoners 
 able to pay their debts, and refusing so to do, 
 were, if these commissioners thought fit, to be 
 ordered to close imprisonment. The estates 
 of any person for whose debts another should 
 be imprisoned, were to be sold as fully as the 
 estate of the prisoner himself ; and where a 
 prisoner made an escape, his estate not being 
 sufficient to discharge his debts, the jailer and 
 his security were to make good the deficiency. 
 In the case of prisoners, however, against whom 
 there had not been any declarations filed, these 
 commissioners were to discharge them, and to 
 give them damages for such vexatious impris- 
 onment. In order to prevent prisoners, unable 
 to pay their debts or fines, from perishing in 
 prison, through the cruelty or obstinacy of any 
 obdurate creditor, the commissioners were em- 
 powered to discharge, abate, or give respite of 
 time to any such prisoner, according as the cir- 
 cumstances of the case might require, and to 
 remove to the workhouse or house of correc- 
 
 practised, the temporary honours it achieved, 
 the few vain benefits it bestowed, the partial 
 but glorious resistance it overcame, the serious 
 and solemn lesson it taught to posterity ; but 
 none of those higher aims which belong to the 
 higher provinces of statesmanship, and by which 
 alone may be connected and consolidated the 
 interests and the happiness of men in distant 
 ages. 
 
 The list, compiled from the imperfect jour- 
 nals of the House, and the relation of one of its 
 members, who adopts the signature of " L. D.," 
 may be given thus : First. " An act for the 
 committee of the army, and treasurers of war." 
 Second. " An act for constituting commission- 
 ers for ordering and managing the admiralty 
 
 and the navy." Third, 
 the Court of Admiralty." 
 
 An act for settling 
 Much time," we are 
 
 told, " spent in fixing on judges." Fourth. 
 "An act for taking away fines on original writs," 
 which, L. D. adds, " was, as some knowing 
 gentlemen of worth in the House affirmed, to 
 the saving of the people of this Commonwealth 
 120,000 per annum, only 10,000 or 12,000 
 thereof coming to the state." Fifth. " An act 
 touching the several receipts of the revenue 
 and treasuries of the Commonwealth, and the 
 
 tion any obstinate prisoner, who should be found j bringing them into one treasury." Sixth. " An 
 to keep in prison through his own wilful default, ; act for marriages, and the registering of them ; 
 or to have run into debt by a vicious course of I as also births and burials." " Much time," 
 
 life. They were also authorized to examine 
 into the case of persons who had fraudulently 
 got out of jail by means of former acts for re- 
 lief of insolvent debtors, and to recommit them. 
 They were to inquire into the abuse of charities 
 
 subjoins our relator, "spent in the debate about 
 marriages, there being many niceties and diffi- 
 cult cases relating to that subject." Seventh. 
 " An act for the more speedy bringing in of the 
 arrears of the excise, and settling commission- 
 
 given to prisoners, and to award punishment ers to that end." Eighth. "An act concerning 
 for it; to make orders for selling wholesome ; the planters of tobacco in Gloucestershire and else- 
 provisions to the prisoners at a reasonable price; | where." Ninth. "An act to continue the re- 
 and to cause a table of moderate fees to be ceipts of the excise till the 29th of December 
 hung up in every prison, the transgressor of j last." Tenth. " An act, additional and explan- 
 \vhich in any particular was to forfeit fourfold ; atory, for the sale of the remaining fee-farm
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 557 
 
 rents, and finishing the whole business." Elev- 
 enth. " An act for settling Ireland, and making 
 it a part of the Commonwealth, and satisfying the 
 adventurers and soldiers with lands ;'' which act, 
 we are told, " being very large and compre- 
 hensive, took many days' debate before it could 
 be passed as a law." Twelfth. " An act for 
 the relief of creditors and poor prisoners." 
 " The fruit of it," L. D. observes, with a justi- 
 fiable pride, " hath shown the worth of it, 300 
 poor starving souls having been freed thereby 
 in and about London : a law so just and hon- 
 ourable as England hath few better ; which 
 passed not without serious debate." Thir- 
 teenth. " An act for accounts, and clearing pub- 
 lic debts, and for the discovery of fraud, and 
 concealment of anything due to the Common- 
 wealth." Fourteenth. " An act for empower- 
 ing the committee of the army to state and de- 
 termine the accounts of all soldiers and others 
 employed by them, for moneys by them re- 
 ceived from the 26th of March, 1647, until the 
 25th of July, 1653." Fifteenth. "An act for 
 redress of delays and mischiefs arising by writs 
 of error, and writs of false judgment, in several 
 cases." Sixteenth. " An act for repealing of a 
 branch of an act of the late Parliament, intituled 
 'An act for subscribing the engagement,'" 
 which was made, L. D. quietly adds, " to the 
 ease and profit of the people, and to the loss of 
 the lawyers.'' 1 Seventeenth. " An act for the 
 regulating the making of stuffs in the county 
 of Norwich and Norfolk." Eighteenth. " An 
 act for a high court of justice." Upon this, 
 L. D.'s remark is characteristic : " It cost," he 
 says, " indeed but one day's time, the reading, ' 
 debate, and passing for a law, by reason of the | 
 great haste some gentlemen made, pretending i 
 great danger to themselves and the Common- ; 
 wealth, so as no reasons could prevail to have , 
 it recommitted, as some desired ; or that the ; 
 acts for treasons might be read which the com- 1 
 missioners were to proceed upon, as others 
 moved to have them ; nor yet that the bill ' 
 might be engrossed, being to be a law that 
 concerned life, for then it could not have passed 
 till the next day, when some that were perceived 
 that day absent (being praying at the Blackfriars') 
 might be present, and hinder, as it is likely to be 
 feared, the passing of it ; which had they done, ! 
 they had saved much the credit of the council, i 
 for to wise men it seemed a very weak piece. I 
 And experience hath ^thanks be to God) shown j 
 there was -not that sudden danger as some 
 gentlemen suggested, who did not let to say j 
 (in answer to those that would have had it en- 
 grossed against the next morning) ' that they ] 
 knew not but by that time they might have | 
 their throats cut.' " In explanation of this, i 
 the case of Lilburne need only be recalled, j 
 Nineteenth. " An act for deofforistation and 
 improvement of the forests, and of the honours, 
 manors, lands, and tenements within the limits 
 and perambulations of the same, heretofore 
 belonging to the king, queen, and prince." 
 This was, we are told, " a very large act, and 
 comprehensive in the particulars, wherein the 
 old farmers of the custom-house, that lent the 
 old king money to make war with the Scots, 
 were admitted to have their old debts made 
 public faith, to double on, to the sum of two 
 hundred seventy -cix thousand pounds, to the 
 
 end to be sure to have money against the 
 spring. It was complied with ; and some very 
 eminent and wise gentlemen made others be- 
 lieve there was no question but the money 
 would be provided ready against the times ; 
 other members of less note [no doubt our 
 present informant] told the House what they 
 thought, even as it is come to pass." Twen- 
 tieth. " An act confirming the purchasers of 
 Sir John Stowel's lands, what they had pur- 
 chased of the state." Twenty-first. "An act 
 for an assessment at the rate of one hundred 
 and twenty thousand pounds a month, for six 
 months, for the maintenance of the armies and 
 navy of this Commonwealth."* Twenty-sec- 
 ond. " An act for continuing the privileges 
 and jurisdiction of the county of Lancaster." 
 Twenty-third. " An act touching idiots and luna- 
 tics." Twenty-fourth. "An act for enabling 
 commissioners of Parliament for compounding 
 with delinquents to dispose of two parts of the 
 lands and estates of recusants, for the benefit 
 of the Commonwealth." This act, we again 
 learn from L. D., " cost much time in the de- 
 bate of it ; for that some gentlemen fearing it 
 amounted to the toleration of popery, did 
 strongly oppose it, and caused it to be so mod- 
 elized as that it was never like to attain the 
 end aimed at, as some then declared ; of which 
 experience now can best declare and speak." 
 Twenty-fifth. " A second act for the constitu- 
 ting commissioners for ordering and managing 
 of the Admiralty and navy." Twenty-sixth. 
 
 * " This," says the author of the Exact Relation (the 
 curious pamphlet 1 have already quoted), " was a very 
 large act, and took up many days in the debate and passing 
 of it. there being a desire, if possible it might have been, to 
 have abated something of that turn, and that it might be laid 
 equally. Many votes passed, and very sharp debates, by 
 reason of the great inequality that was evident in the lay- 
 ing of the tax, some countries bearing beyond their propor- 
 tion, and some much less, which made the burden more 
 grievous than otherwise it would be. When, after many 
 days spent in the modelizing of the bill, and it came to be 
 passed, some gentlemen gave their reasons why they could 
 not give their yea to pass it for a law, for the unrighteous- 
 ness that was in it (and something else), which had been 
 laid forth in the debate : the great inequality betwixt 
 country and country, city and city, hundred and hundred; 
 and so of particular estates, some paying but two or three 
 shillings in the pound, and others four and five, yea, some 
 ten or twelve shillings for their real estate, besides what 
 they paid for their personal ; some of London passionately 
 complained of being overrated, they paying 8000 a month, 
 the fifteenth part of the whole assessment of the Common- 
 wealth, when, as they with great confidence affirmed, they 
 were not the fortieth part of the Commonwealth in value, 
 as their case now was. The act engrossed, and the ques- 
 
 ameiuled against the next day. A gentleman that first 
 moved to have the House give up that morning they were 
 dissolved, made this one of his reasons why he could sit no 
 longer with his fellows, because of their dealing so disin- 
 genuously with, the army, some other gentleman having 
 spoken to the same account ; but as to this, those that gave 
 their noes against the then passing of the bill upon the ac- 
 count before, can say, they never were in arms against the 
 Parliament and army, nor were ever in Oxford, or any other 
 garrison that stood in opposition to them. And for their 
 constant cordial affection to them, they may safely say, 
 without boasting, they have been but a very little behind 
 them that have been the highest and best affected in the 
 nation, whatever those gentlemen please to say. To endeav- 
 our to have the assessment equally laid and borne tended 
 much to the army's good rather than hurt, whereby they 
 might continue to enjoy the love and affection of the people 
 unto them." So began, as I have already observed, the 
 quarrels and contentions, which in the four concluding 
 votes received their final consummation. The writer of this 
 passage seems to have taken a decided part himself.
 
 558 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 " An act for the better and more effectual discov- 
 ery of thieves and highwaymen.'" We have to 
 add, in concluding the list, that " there was also 
 a bill brought in and read, and debated, for the 
 uniting of Scotland to the Commonwealth of Eng- 
 land, as a part of it, with equal privileges, which 
 spent two or three days' debate in a grand 
 committee of the House, before it was ordered 
 to be engrossed, being a thing of very great 
 weight and concernment : being engrossed, it 
 lay ready on the table to be read and passed ; 
 but the Highlanders putting the country into 
 distemper, it was not put to be passed for a 
 law while the House continued."* 
 
 * It is scarcely worth while nowadays to refute the 
 calumnies which Lord Clarendon so notoriously indulged 
 against his opponents; but after this list, it may amuse the 
 reader to hear the noble historian coolly observe that 
 " these men who took upon themselves the supreme author- 
 ity of the nation, and continued to act in that capacity near 
 six months, to the amazement and even mirth of the people, 
 never entered upon any grave or serious debate that might 
 tend to any settlement, but generally expressed great sharp- 
 ness and animosity against the clergy, and against all learn- 
 ing, out of which they thought the clergy had grown, and 
 still would grow. They looked upon the function itself to 
 be anti-Christian, the persons to be burdensome to the peo- 
 ple, and the requiring and paying of tithes to be absolute 
 Judaism, and so thought fit that they should be abolished 
 together. And that there might not, for the time to come, 
 be any race of people who might revive these pretences, 
 they proposed that all lands belonging to the universities, 
 and colleges in those universities, might be sold, and that 
 the money arising thereby should be disposed of for the 
 public service, and to ease the people from the payment of 
 taxes and contributions." It is unnecessary to observe that 
 no shadow of any such motion or proposal relating to the 
 universities was ever made in the House. The only attempt 
 that carried even the smallest tendency that way was the 
 scheme for abolishing of tithes. " And this project," as we 
 are assured by a member, "was so far from being intended 
 to the prejudice of the parochial clergy, that the design was 
 only to take away the manner of maintenance by tithes as 
 unequal, burdensome, and being the occasion of litigious 
 law-suits ; and that a bill was offered, on the day of the 
 Parliament's resignation, for rendering the revenues of the 
 clergy more certain and equal, by reducing benefices of 
 200 a year and upward, and advancing those of a smaller 
 income, and also for making a provision for the widows and 
 children of ministers; but that this equitable proposal was 
 refused a reading, and that therefore the charge against 
 one part of the House, of an intent to destroy the ministry, 
 was a groundless reproach, cast upon those who endeavoured 
 only to take off oppressions and grievances." The truth of 
 this assertion is the less liable to be controverted, after the 
 statement already proved in this work that the Long Par- 
 liament, when they abolished episcopacy, and sold the tem- 
 poral revenues of the bishops, deans, and chapters, &c., 
 made an express reserve of all their impropriatioiis, which 
 were to be applied to the increase of the revenues of the 
 parochial clergy and heads of colleges. The same reserve 
 of impropriations was made in the act passed by this Con- 
 vention for enabling delinquents to compound for their es- 
 tates. In connexion with these calumnies, it is only fair to 
 add what is said on the subject by the author of the Exact 
 Relation. "The House," he observes, "was at least not 
 altogether idle, nor at a stand in their work, so as there 
 was no need to have them dissolved on that score ; indeed, 
 much more might have been done and proceeded in, if there 
 had not. been something that did let. The two great griev- 
 ances of the law and tithes had such friends in the House, 
 as that, when either of those things came into debate, the 
 House was as divided into two parts : the one very indulgent, 
 still pleading and making defence in their behalf; the other 
 endeavouring the redress of them. Great counsels agree 
 not in all things presently : yet is that no good ground of 
 their dissolution. That the House was not idle, nor at a 
 stand, nor in an inc.-ipacity to do the work of the nation, 
 though so divided as aforesaid, may, besides what appear- 
 eth already, be farther taken knowledge of by these ensuing 
 votes which follow. There were four great votes that 
 passed in the time of the sitting of the House, which some 
 interests were much displeased at, and they passed not with- 
 out great debate. First, a vote for abolishing and taking 
 away the Court of Chancery ; 2dly, a vote for a new body or 
 model of the law ; 3dly, a vote to take away the power of 
 patrons to make presentations ; 4thly, that innocent nega- 
 tive vote of not agreeing with the report of the committee 
 for tithes, touching what they reported, as the best way to 
 
 The first of the four famous votes which 
 alone remain to be mentioned was a declara- 
 tion that the Court of Chancery should be to- 
 tally taken away and abolished. In almost 
 every recent petition of the people to the su- 
 preme authority of the nation, complaints had 
 been made of the Court of Chancery ; of its 
 dilatory proceedings ; of the enormous expense 
 which it entailed on its suitors ; and of the 
 suspicious nature of its decisions, so liable to 
 be influenced by the personal partialities and 
 interests of the judge. At last this " little 
 Parliament" grappled with the mighty evil ! 
 The debate, which was filled with interest and 
 excitement, lasted two days.* The enemies 
 of the court mustered all their force against it, 
 and, on the main question, the resistance of its 
 friends was feeble. It was beyond a doubt, the 
 movers of the vote affirmed, the greatest griev- 
 ance of the nation. For dilatoriness, charge- 
 ableness, and a faculty of bleeding the people 
 in the purse- vein, even to their utter perishing 
 and undoing, it might compare with, if not 
 surpass, any court in the world. It was confi- 
 dently asserted by persons of great weight that 
 there were depending in that court 23,000 caus- 
 es, some of which had been going on for five, 
 ten, twenty, and thirty years ! that there had 
 been spent therein thousands of pounds, to the 
 ruin, nay, utter undoing, of many families ! 
 that no ship (that is, cause) almost sailed in 
 the sea of the law, but, first or last, it put into 
 that port, where it suffered so much loss that 
 the remedy was worse than the disease ; that 
 what w 7 as ordered in it one day was contra- 
 dicted the next, so that in some causes there 
 had been 500 orders or more ; and that, at last, 
 when the purses of clients began to be emptied, 
 and their spirits a little cooled, then, by a ref- 
 erence to some gentleman in the country, the 
 cause came to be suddenly ended ! In one 
 word, that the Court of Chancery was no better 
 than " a mystery of wickedness and a standing 
 chcat."^ The friends of the court, in apparent 
 inability to weaken the popular strength of 
 these arguments, reserved themselves for the 
 more difficult question of detail ; and, after a 
 brief and ineffectual resistance, suffered the 
 Court of Chancery to be " voted down."t 
 
 Then arose that question of detail how to 
 give to the vote the shape and efficacy of law 
 how, in other words, to dispose of the causes 
 actually pending in the court, and to substitute 
 a less objectionable tribunal in its place. It 
 was referred to the committee on law affairs, 
 hut the first bill they prepared was rejected. 
 Its provisions were deemed inadequate to the 
 proper arrangement of what should be done, 
 after the court was abolished, respecting caus- 
 es actually before it. A second bill underwent 
 the same fate. A third was judged by the au- 
 thors of the vote to have had too much of the 
 lawyers themselves in its concoction, and the 
 
 eject scandalous, prophane, and ignorant ministers, <tc., 
 on which presently followed the dissolution of the House." 
 
 * Whitelocke's Memorials. 
 
 t The debate is so described in the Exact Relation, p. 12. 
 
 j " How did good people rejoice," says a writer of the 
 time, " when they heard of that vote, and how sad and sor- 
 rowful were the lawyers and clerks for the fear of the IOSB 
 of their great Diana, may be remembered, with their great 
 joy in making bonfires and drinking sack when they were 
 delivered from their fears by the dissolution of the late 
 Parliament !''
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 559 
 
 " remedies it prescribed were imagined worse 
 than the disease." It was, without hesitation, 
 rejected. Term now approached ; and the 
 members who had taken foremost part against 
 the lawyers and " their great Diana," reso- 
 lutely put forth a bill to suspend all chancery 
 proceedings for one month, till an effectual 
 provision could be made to meet every diffi- 
 culty. To this, however, the lawyers and 
 their partisans offered the most determined 
 resistance they had yet ventured to make. 
 Cromwell openly assisted them ;* and, taking 
 advantage of the absence of some of their more 
 strenuous adversaries from town, they man- 
 aged to fling the measure out.t Exasperated 
 to conduct as extreme, the reformers in turn 
 collected all the power they could command in 
 the House, brought up their absent members, 
 prepared themselves for a final rally against 
 what they termed the " nuisance of the nation," 
 and within a few days presented a fourth bill ! 
 In this, the defects of all the previous attempts, 
 and particularly of the first bill, were remedied, 
 provision being made in it, in particular, for a 
 proper conclusion to suits now in hand, as well 
 as for the termination of such causes as were 
 ordinarily brought into chancery, so that they 
 should be decided in a short time, and for the 
 most part at an expense of thirty or forty shil- 
 lings ! All opposition to this bill was over- 
 borne. It was read twice in one day, and 
 committed, and would most certainly have 
 passed, had not subsequent proceedings been 
 cut short by the dissolution of the Parliament. 
 But the Court of Chancery was only one stall 
 in the Augean stable of the law, and in this 
 little Parliament had the very soul of a Her- j 
 cules sprang forth against all such impurities 
 of the time. Their second great vote to be 
 recorded was for a general revision and new 
 modelling of the whole body of the law. That 
 design, which the greatest jurists and philoso- 
 phers of our country, from Bacon to Bentham, 
 have won fame by merely propounding and j 
 shaping forth in theory, has alone been boldly 
 and practically grappled with by this so-called j 
 mean and ignorant assembly ! What, they 
 asked, made up the law 1 A voluminous col- j 
 lection of statutes, many of them almost un- 
 known, and many inapplicable in existing cir- 
 cumstances ; the dicta of judges, perhaps ig- 
 norant, frequently partial and interested ; the ! 
 reports of cases, but so contradictory, that they j 
 were regularly marshalled in hosts against j 
 each other ; and the usages of particular dis- 
 tricts, only to be ascertained through the treach- ! 
 erous memories of the most aged of the inhab- 
 
 * Godwin, vol. iii.. p. 572. 
 
 t When Cromwell, however, had fairly settled himself 
 in power, he did not scruple, in the year following, to act 
 upon the vote he thus opposed ! lu 1655 he issued an ordi- 
 nance, consisting of sixty-seven articles, " for the better 
 regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the High Court of 
 Chancery." The commissioners of the great seal, Wid- 
 drington and Whitelocke, with Lenthal, the master of the 
 rolls, informed him by letter, on its appearance, that they 
 had sought the Lord, but did not find themselves free to 
 act according to the ordinance. But, alas for them ! the 
 slightest good-will from the people had become more impor- 
 tant to the Lord Protector than the most potent sanction of 
 the lawyers ; and therefore Cromwell, without the smallest 
 delay or scruple, took the seals from the first two, and gave 
 them to Fiennes and Lisle. Lenthal opportunely overcame 
 his scruples, and remained in office. See Scobell, p. 324, 
 for the ordinance. 
 
 itants. Englishmen had a right to know the 
 laws by which they were to be governed ; it 
 was easy to collect from the present system 
 all that was really useful ; to improve it by 
 necessary additions ; and to comprise the 
 whole within the shape and compass of a sin- 
 gle reasonably-sized volume. A debate was 
 accordingly held, which lasted, in the midst of 
 very great excitement and a furious opposition, 
 for two days. The result was a vote to ex- 
 press the necessity of the measure, and to 
 refer its details to the committee already ap- 
 pointed, of whom, as I have said, Anthony 
 Ashley Cooper, afterward lord-high-chancellor 
 of England, was a chief member. The com- 
 mittee began with crimes treason in the first 
 place, and secondly murder. The plan was, 
 that this " new body of law," when formed by 
 the committee, was to undergo the patient re- 
 vision of the House, and, as they should see 
 cause, to be in each of its parts adopted or 
 rejected. 
 
 Meanwhile the opposition was tremendous, 
 and every inch of ground without and within, 
 the House was fought indeed desperately, and 
 with all the basest expedients of faction. The 
 first point laid hold of after the vote was an er- 
 ror of the clerk of the House in wording it. 
 " The clerk," says the author of the Exact Re- 
 lation, " in drawing up the question, put the 
 word body instead of model, which some mem- 
 bers, for the passing of the vote before and af- 
 ter, desired to have altered ; but others, lovers 
 of the law as now it is, opposed the alteration of 
 the word, being very angry at the vote ; and so 
 it went as it was, with some seeming disad- 
 vantage by means of the word body, which some 
 of those aforesaid, being angry, would need fan- 
 cy, and accordingly reported, as if it were in- 
 tended to destroy the law, and take away the laws 
 we had been fighting for all this while as our birth- 
 right and inheritance ; and such a noise was 
 made about it, that made many believe that the 
 House was model ized of monsters rather than 
 men of reason and judgment." The writer adds 
 that, notwithstanding, "there were very sober 
 and moderate gentlemen in the account of all 
 men, that concurred heartily in this vote, and 
 upon whom little blemish will stick." And no 
 doubt, being such, these hard words did not 
 much affect them, since all reformers must wear 
 that epithet of monsters till they transfer it 
 finally to the abuses they have resolved to over- 
 throw. 
 
 Cromwell assisted, with all his energy, the 
 outcry raised against the vote, and, strength- 
 ened by his authority, there arose from out of 
 the courts and purlieus of Westminster such a 
 multitudinous and tumultuous clamour of voi- 
 ces and of pens, that the like had not been heard 
 before, to " protect from ruin the venerable 
 fabric of English jurisprudence." The pre- 
 sumption of these ignorant and fanatical legis- 
 lators was ridiculed by every device of false- 
 hood ; the desigli was ascribed to them of sub- 
 stituting the law of Moses for the law of the 
 land ; and the people were earnestly conjured 
 to unite in defence of their " birthright and in- 
 heritance," for the preservation of which so 
 many miseries had been endured and so much 
 blood had been shed. This charge of an inten- 
 tion to overthrow all custom and common sense
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 in favour of the law of Moses was afterward 
 frequently insisted on by Cromwell. It rested 
 altogether on a single expression used in the 
 debate, that neither the infliction of the punish- 
 ment of death for theft, nor the sparing the 
 lives of men for murder, under the notion and 
 name of manslaughter, ought to be sanctioned 
 in the new code, because no such things were 
 to be found in the " law of God" or the sanc- 
 tion of " right reason." 
 
 But a vindication of the purpose and neces- 
 sity of this vote, and of the intentions of its 
 originators, has been left on record by one of 
 themselves, and possesses too much interest 
 and value to be here omitted. The main grounds 
 for it, he tells us, as rested upon in the debate, 
 were the " intricacy, uncertainty, and incon- 
 gruity of the laws as now they are. First," he 
 continues, "that whereas the laws ought to be 
 easy, plain, and short, so that they who were to be 
 subject to them, and have benefit by them, might 
 be able to know and understand them in some 
 good measure, they are now so voluminous, and 
 thereby intricate and uncertain, dark and con- 
 cealed, as few are able to come to the knowl- 
 edge of them. Those of the profession of the 
 law differ, in very many cases, what the law is, 
 and are of several opinions about this thing and 
 the other ; and then how should others, though 
 highly concerned, be able to understand them, 
 and their interest therein contained, there be- 
 ing so many law-books of great bulk, so many 
 old musty records, reports, and book-cases, as 
 that, after the time spent in school-learning', the 
 rest of the time of the flower of a man's years would 
 be little enough to read them over and peruse them; 
 and besides, those records and book-cases are 
 very ill guides or lights to go by, for who know- 
 eth the circumstances that did attend them, 
 which often alter the whole case 1 Who know- 
 eth whether, in those cases, bribery did not 
 make the judgment ; or the powerfulness of 
 some great man ; or the love or hatred of the 
 judge ; or the negligence or corruption of the 
 advocate 1 And, besides, in those law cases, 
 some precedents are directly contrary to others ; 
 and an advocate or counsel allegeth one case 
 or report, and another another ; and then the 
 judge followeth which he pleaseth. How ar- 
 bitrary is the law in this case ! And at what 
 uncertainty are the great interests and proper- 
 ties of men ! . . . Besides, how various are the 
 customs which, notwithstanding, pass for law ! 
 usually unknown but to some old man of the 
 place, which, though it be ever so unrighteous 
 and unreasonable, time out of mind carries it. 
 How bulky and voluminous are the statute- 
 books ! and of so great a price that few are able 
 to buy them ; and so large that few can spare time 
 to read them, to know their right, and how they are 
 concerned in them ; and yet they must be judged, 
 and stand or fall by them. And many times some 
 musty statute, of a hundred years old and more 
 imprinted, is found and made use of by some 
 crafty lawyer, to the undoing of an honest man 
 that meant no hurt, nor knew anything at all of 
 the danger." 
 
 The wisdom and humanity of these argu- 
 ments are surely not to be disputed. The wri- 
 ter afterward goes on to describe the measures 
 adopted in realization of them. " Upon some- 
 thing," he says, " held forth to this effect, the 
 
 vote was first carried for a new body or model 
 of the law ; and a committee chosen to that 
 end, who met often, and had the help of some 
 gentlemen of worth, that had deserved well of 
 their country, being true patriots ; who liked 
 well the thing, as very useful and desirable ; it 
 being not a destroying of the law, or putting it 
 down, as some scandalously reported, but a re- 
 ducing the wholesome, just, and good . laws into a 
 body, from them that are useless and out of date ; 
 such as concerned the bishops and Holy Church, 
 so called, and were made in favour of kings, 
 and the lusts of great men, of which there are very 
 many. If the law of God be eyed, and right 
 reason looked into in all, there be some laws 
 that are contrary to both, as the putting men to 
 death for theft, the sparing the lives of men for 
 murder, under the notion and name of manslaugh- 
 ter a term and distinction not found in the 
 righteous law of God; and that unreasonable 
 law, that if a wagon or cart, &c., driven by the 
 owner or some other, with never so much care, 
 fall and kill any person, the owner, though it 
 were his own son or servant, that could no way 
 help it, shall lose his horse and wagon by the 
 profane and superstitious name of deodand ; 
 and the owners of the goods shall lose them 
 also upon the same account, though they were 
 as innocent as Abel. Other instances might 
 also be given. The way the committee took 
 in order to their work, which must needs be 
 elaborate, was, by reducing the several laws to 
 their proper heads to which they did belong, and so 
 modelizing or imbodying of them; taking knowl- 
 edge of the nature of them, and what the law 
 of God said in the case, and how agreeable to 
 right reason they were ; likewise how propor- 
 tionable the punishment was to the offence or crime ; 
 and wherein there seemed anything either de- 
 ficient or excessive, to offer a supply and rem- 
 edy, in order to rectifying the whole. The 
 committee began with criminals. Treason be- 
 ing the highest, they considered the kinds there- 
 of; what was meet to be adjudged treason in 
 a free commonwealth, and what was meet to 
 be the punishment of grand and petty treason- 
 Then they proceeded to murder, the kinds of 
 it, and what was to be so adjudged, and the 
 punishment thereof. The like they intended 
 concerning theft, and, after, to have ascertain- 
 ed and secured property ; as also the executive 
 part of the law, so as a person should not need 
 to part with one property to secure and keep 
 another, as now it is ; persons being forced to 
 lose the property of their cow to keep the prop- 
 erty of their horse, or one parcel of land to pre- 
 serve and keep another. This body of law, 
 when modelized, was to be reported to the 
 House to be considered of, and passed by them 
 as they should see cause : a work in itself great, 
 and of high esteem with many, for the good 
 fruit and benefit that would arise from it ; by 
 which means the huge volumes of the law 
 would come to be reduced into the bigness of 
 a pocket-book, as it is proportionably in New- 
 England and elsewhere. A thing of so great 
 worth and benefit as England is not yet worthy 
 of, nor likely in a short time to be so blessed 
 as to enjoy. And this being the true end and 
 endeavour of those members that laboured in 
 that committee, it is submitted to every godly 
 and rational man in the nation, whether, as is
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 IPvX 
 
 most falsely and wickedly reported and charged 
 upon persons acting in so much love to their 
 country, their endeavours tended to destroy the 
 whole laws, and pulling them up by the roots." 
 
 The appeal will be honestly answered at last, 
 even though deferred till now. Nor are there 
 many rational men among us who, while they 
 offer their hearty sympathy to the honourable 
 motives and exertions of this writer and his as- 
 sociates, will not also avow, in shame and re- 
 gret, that the design they had thus commenced 
 two hundred years ago was indeed a thing of 
 so great worth and benefit that England is not 
 yet worthy of it, nor likely in a short time to be 
 so blessed as to enjoy it ! 
 
 The soldiers and lawyers having thus been 
 thoroughly roused by the first two of these fa- 
 mous votes, it was reserved for the remaining 
 two to provoke the parsons and the patrons of 
 livings. The third great vote, for example, in- 
 volved the subject of presentations to benefices. 
 It assaulted " Satan himself" in his " strong- 
 hold" of advowsons. Nothing could certainly 
 be more adverse to that religious spirit call it 
 fervent or fanatical, seek it among Independents 
 or Presbyterians now in undoubted prevalence 
 with a majority of the English people, than these 
 rights of presentation and advowson, where in 
 the first case the possessor of a certain proper- 
 ty claimed the power of naming the priest of 
 the parish where his property lay, and in the 
 second (as the term is used in ordinary accep- 
 tation), for a given sum of money disposed of 
 that right to another, against the first vacancy 
 that should occur. It was, the originators of 
 this vote contended, contrary to reason that 
 any private individual should possess the pow- 
 er of imposing a spiritual guide upon his neigh- 
 bours, and therefore they argued that presenta- 
 tions should be abolished, and the choice of the 
 minister be vested in the body of the parish- 
 ioners, who might thus have the power, in se- 
 lecting a preacher that was to lead them in 
 the ways of eternal life, to secure one whose 
 modes of thinking coincided with their own, 
 and whose temper, general carnage, and habits 
 of life were agreeable to them. Meanwhile, the 
 question had deeply interested and aroused vast 
 numbers of patrons of livings and influential 
 men of that class, who sought against Parlia- 
 mentary oppression the " protection" of the 
 lord-general ; and an earnest stand was accord- 
 ingly made in their favour. The vote was car- 
 ried, however, on the 17th of November, that 
 the right of presentation to benefices should be 
 taken away, and the people in the several par- 
 ishes be authorized to choose their own instruc- 
 tors. A bill to that effect was at the same time 
 ordered to be brought in. 
 
 The last and most fatal of all the votes in- 
 volved the much- vexed question of tithes, and 
 was somewhat strangely brought, as by a " side 
 wind," before the House. The result of a 
 " large debate" at the commencement of the 
 session had been an understanding or agree- 
 ment that tithes ought to be abolished, and 
 that in their stead a compensation should be 
 made to the impropriators, and a decent main- 
 tenance provided for the clergy. We have 
 seen, accordingly, that one of the committees 
 which were named for the discussion and ar- 
 rangement of many of the most important 
 4B 
 
 questions of public policy was chosen to ex- 
 amine into tithes, with a special instruction to 
 inquire into the alleged sacredness of the prop- 
 erty which was thus constituted. Great were 
 the fluctuations and vicissitudes of the Parlia- 
 ment during the subsequent months ; and it 
 was not till the 2d of December that the com- 
 mittee made its report ; nor is it supposed, in- 
 deed, that the report would even then have 
 been presented, but with the hope of arresting, 
 in some sort, the farther agitation of the ques- 
 tion of advowsons. The report was entitled 
 " respecting the method of rejecting scanda- 
 lous, and settling godly ministers ;" but its 
 chief article was a distinct opinion of the com- 
 mittee appended to it as a sort of second sec- 
 tion, that incumbents, rectors, and impropria- 
 tors had a property in tithes. This report 
 provoked a most earnest and singular debate 
 of five days,* and when the question was put 
 
 * The author of the " Exact Relation" gives a detailed 
 description, which is as correct as it is vivid, of the circum- 
 stances of this debate, and of the real bearing of this cele- 
 brated vote. "The fourth vote," he says, "whereupon 
 followed the dissolution of the Parliament, was that harm- 
 less negative of not complying with the report of the com- 
 mittee, touching what they offered as the best way to eject 
 ignorant, profane, and scandalous ministers, and encoura- 
 ging them that are good, <fec. ; of which two things, and so 
 an end of this discourse : first, of the proceed to it, and in 
 the debate of it, and then that which followed after it, till 
 the House was dissolved. The proceed was shortly this : 
 after the aforesaid vote had passed, and some of the gentle 
 men of the House were in readiness to offer the bill, the 
 committee for tithes, to counterwork and keep that off, as 
 some thought, did on Monday morning offer this report, and 
 many were for the taking of it on ; others were against the 
 meddling with it at that time ; some moving to have the 
 bill taken in concerning presentations, some to fall on things 
 of more present concernment, as the bill for uniting Scot- 
 land to England. Reasons were offered on every side, and 
 after one o'clock the House rose, and nothing fastened on. 
 The next morning, those that were for the report to be 
 taken in the day before moved again, and the other not op- 
 posing, it was taken in, but not without being put to the 
 vote whether the House would take it in, which was car- 
 ried in the affirmative ; and so the debate began, and con- 
 tinued day after day, till after one o'clock each day, the 
 speaker being aged, and not able to sit longer. The debate 
 was managed day by day with very great seriousness, many 
 arguments, and scriptures being alleged. The House being 
 evenly poised, and great attendance been given by the mem- 
 bers, waiting the time of the vote ; and though any member 
 might, by the rules of the House, have spoken every day as 
 long as the debate continued, yet such was the modesty 
 showed, that hardly any on all the five days spake twice ; 
 very littlo of heat or passion being showed all that time; only 
 one gentleman or two that were for the report, seeing them- 
 selves and their party so engaged, flew out a little, com- 
 plaining of the expense of time, to have given a check to 
 the going on of the debate. But the orders of the House 
 being called for by some of the other side of the speaker, 
 he declared it to be the right of every one to be heard, and 
 that the question could not be put so long as any would 
 speak to it ; withal, those gentlemen were told of their 
 restlessness to take on the debate, and how they wanted 
 patience to wait the issue of if. After three or four days, 
 a member that was against the report offered an expedient, 
 but was not accepted. At last, on Saturday, towards noon, 
 the question drew near, as did also the end of the Parlia- 
 ment ; some members that were against the report having 
 not spoken, and essaying to speak, were persuaded to for- 
 bear, who only gathered the issue and result of the whole, 
 and left it to the House ; which was, whether, upon the 
 whole, this which is in the report was the best expedient 
 for that end ? which some on the other side, that were for 
 the report, perceiving the stress of the question put there, 
 moved that the word 'best' might be put out; but it was 
 not admitted, having been in the report all the time of the 
 debate ; so about one of the clock the vote passed, and upon 
 dividing the House was carried in the negative. A debate 
 of that nature and length, in so great a council, hardly ever 
 passed with such soberness, and little heat or passion. The 
 business was in statu quo as to any one's being either bet- 
 ter or worse ; the report was laid aside, for that the first 
 part of it, whereon the other part depended, was rejected ; 
 to wit, that the best way to eject ignorant, profane, and
 
 562 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 on the first section as to an entertainment of 
 the mode of settling godly ministers, though 
 the committee, assisted in all respects by 
 Cromwell, had mustered the whole force of 
 the Independents in its favour, it was rejected 
 on the 10th of December by a majorily of two. 
 The numbers were fifty-six to fifty-four. The 
 second part, respecting the property in tithes, 
 was in reality not put to the vote at all ; its 
 fate was held to be included in that of the 
 former ; and it was at once, with the rapidity 
 of lightning, circulated, through London, that 
 Parliament had voted the abolition of tithes, 
 and with them of the ministry, which derived 
 its maintenance from tithes ! 
 
 The time had arrived for the master-stroke 
 of Cromwell.* Every power in the land that 
 could make itself felt above the general indif- 
 ference of the people was now in arms against 
 the only body which stood between him and 
 absolute rule. The compact between Crom- 
 well and these various powers was thoroughly 
 
 scandalous ministers, and to encourage them that are good, 
 was by sending certain commissioners empowered to do it, 
 as at full length hath been put forth in print already. 
 There was, at the passing of this vote, 115 members, 
 whereof 54 were the affirmative, and 56 for the negative, 
 and two gentlemen, tellers for each side, and the speaker, 
 which make up that number." 
 
 * I should observe, that besides the scenes of Parliament 
 that had paved the way for it, other causes had worked as 
 strongly. On every Monday during the session, Feakes 
 and Powell, two Anabaptist preachers, had delivered week- 
 ly lectures to numerous audiences at Blackfriar's. They 
 certainly appear to have been eloquent enthusiasts, com- 
 missioned, as they fancied, by God himself, and regardless 
 of earthly control. They introduced into their sermons 
 most of the subjects discussed in Parliament, and advocated 
 the principles of their sect with a force and extravagance 
 which had powerfully advanced the object of Cromwell and 
 his council ; because, in investing with their fanatical and 
 fantastical phrases the various measures of the Convention, 
 they managed to conceal very effectually from the under- 
 standings of common men their really temperate wisdom 
 and correct bearing on the true interests of the people. 
 Their favourite topic was the Dutch war. God, they main- 
 tained, had given Holland into the hands of the English ; it 
 was to be the landing-place of the saints, whence they 
 
 should proceed to pluck the w of Babylon from her 
 
 chair, and to establish the kingdom of Christ on the Conti- 
 nent ; and they threatened with every kind of temporal and 
 everlasting wo the man who should advise peace on any 
 other terms than the incorporation of the United Provinces 
 with the Commonwealth of England. When it was sus- 
 pected, for example, that Cromwell had receded from this 
 demand, their indignation stripped the pope of many of 
 those titles " with which," as Dr. Lingard observes, "he 
 had so long been honoured by the Protestant churches, and 
 the lord-general was publiciy declared to be the beast in 
 the Apocalypse, the old dragon, and the man of sin." Un- 
 willing even to appear to evade the liberty of religious 
 meetings, Cromwell had for some time borne these insults 
 with an air of indifference ; at last he summoned the two 
 preachers before himself and the council ; but the " heralds 
 of the Lord of Hosts quailed not before the servants of an 
 earthly commonwealth ;" they returned rebuke for rebuke, 
 charged Cromwell with an unjustifiable assumption of 
 power, and departed from the conference unpunished and 
 unabashed. By the common and generally indifferent pub- 
 lic, as a matter of course, these sermons at Blackfriar's 
 were considered as strictly and entirely explanatory of the 
 views and principles of the reformers in the House, and the 
 poor reformers suffered accordingly. Their enemies multi- 
 plied daily ; ridicule and abuse were poured upon them 
 from every quarter, and " it became evident to all but them- 
 selves that the hour of their fall was rapidly approaching." 
 In illustration of Messrs. Feakes and Powell's style of 
 preaching, it will only be necessary to quote the mention 
 of the sermons on one occasion, by Beverningk, the Dutch 
 ambassador, who went out of curiosity to hear them. It is 
 given in Thurloe, vol. i., p. 442. " The scope and inten- 
 tion," he says, " is to preach down governments, and to stir 
 up the people against the united Netherlands. Being then 
 in the assembly of the saints, I heard one prayer, two ser- 
 mons ; but, good God '. lehat cruel, and abominable, and 
 most horrid trumpets of fire, murder, and flame !" 
 
 understood. The sacrifices to be made on the 
 one hand, the " protection" to be given on the 
 other, were as thoroughly prepared. 
 
 The day after the vote against the report on 
 tithes happened to be Sunday. Cromwell 
 passed it in his own house, in secret consul- 
 tation with his friends ; and the result of this 
 consultation appeared early on the morning of 
 the day following. On Monday, the 12th of 
 December, a considerable number of members 
 in the interest of Cromwell were observed to 
 enter the House of Commons at an unusually 
 early hour. Old Francis Rouse, the speaker, 
 arrived some minutes after them, and a House 
 was at once formed. No question of superior 
 interest had been entered for discussion that 
 day, and the number of the extreme party of 
 reformers who happened to be present was 
 singularly few. When, however, Cromwell's 
 men were observed to enter in such unusual 
 strength, suspicions arose, and messengers 
 were despatched by the reformers for re-en- 
 forcements against them. 
 
 They had scarcely left the House prayers 
 were briefly said when Colonel Sydenham 
 rose to address the speaker. He must take 
 leave, he said, to unburden himself of some 
 things that had long lain upon his heart. He 
 had to speak, not of matters relating to the 
 well-being of the Commonwealth, but that 
 were inseparable from its very existence. He 
 proceeded to load the measures of the Parlia- 
 ment, and particularly of a majority of its mem- 
 bers, with the most monstrous charges and 
 accusations. He said that they aimed at no 
 less than destroying the clergy, the law, and 
 the property of the subject. Their purpose 
 was to take away the law of the land, and the 
 birthrights of Englishmen, for which all had 
 so long been contending with their blood, and 
 to substitute in their room a code, modelled on 
 the law of Moses, and which was adapted only 
 for the nation of the Jews. In the heat of a 
 preposterous fervour, they had even laid the 
 axe to the root of the Christian ministry, al- 
 leging that it was Babylonish, and that it was 
 anti-Christ. They were the enemies of all in- 
 tellectual cultivation and all learning.* He 
 noticed a motion which had been made by some 
 member, that the great officers of the army 
 should be treated with to serve without pay 
 for one year, and another suggestion that had 
 been offered, in the progress of the bill of as- 
 sessment for six months for the maintenance 
 of the army and navy, that the bill should be 
 laid aside till a plan had been arranged for a 
 more equal taxation of the subject : symptoms, 
 he added, which, in no equivocal manner, indi- 
 cated a deep-laid design in some for the total 
 dissolution of the army.t In these circum- 
 stances, he said that he could no longer satisfy 
 
 * How little has the style of abuse, in matters apper- 
 taining to reform of law or church, changed with the pas- 
 sage of two centuries ! Is there an Exeter Hall declaimer 
 against education who might not adopt this argument of 
 Sydenham as a text of faith? Is there a party man of re- 
 ligion, above the rank of curate or rector, who does not 
 think the love of tithes synonymous with the love of learn- 
 ing T 
 
 t But Sydenham himself confessed that this was a mere 
 single and unsupported idea of a single member of the 
 House, taken up by no one after it was broached, dying as 
 soon as born ; and therefore his argument was ridiculous, 
 save as a mere party weapon "a stick to beat a dogge."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 563 
 
 himself to sit in that House ; and he moved | 
 that the continuance of this Parliament, as now 
 constituted, would not be for the good of the 
 Commonwealth, and that therefore it was 
 requisite that the House, in a body, should re- 
 pair to the lord-general, to deliver back into 
 his hands the powers which they had received 
 from him. His motion was seconded by Sir 
 Charles Wolseley. 
 
 One of the most eloquent of the reformers 
 (his name has not been preserved by the re- 
 porter of his speech) then rose and earnestly 
 protested against the motion. He defended 
 the character of the Parliament so unnaturally 
 deserted by its own members ; he challenged 
 every statement made by Sydenham on the 
 question of tithes. What had been proposed, 
 he said, was so far from being intended to the 
 prejudice of the parochial clergy, that its ex- 
 press object was to render the revenues of the 
 clergy more certain and equal, by reducing 
 beneh'ces of 200 a year and upward, by in- 
 creasing those of smaller income, and also by 
 making a provision for the widows and children 
 of ministers. As the Long Parliament, when 
 they abolished Episcopacy, and sold the tem- 
 poral revenues of the bishops, deans, and chap- 
 ters, made an express reserve* of all impro- 
 priations, which were to be applied to increase 
 the revenues of the parochial clergy and the 
 universities, so had a precisely similar reserve 
 been made by the present assembly in their 
 act for enabling delinquents to compound for 
 their estates. He then enumerated the various 
 measures conducive to the public advantage 
 that were in progress, and extolled in the 
 highest terms the disinterestedness and dili- 
 gence of the Parliament and its committees. 
 He protested, in conclusion, with passionate 
 earnestness, against a measure fraught with 
 such incalculable calamity as the dispersion of 
 that Parliament would prove. Several other 
 reformers followed on the same side with equal 
 warmth, and the debate promised to be of con- 
 siderable duration. Other reformers, who had 
 been sent for, were now also fast arriving, and 
 the issue seemed at the least doubtful. The 
 number of Cromwell's partisans might be about 
 forty ; the reformers had by this time mustered 
 between thirty and thirty-five.* 
 
 * This is according to the double evidence of the author 
 of the Exact Relation and of the New Narrative of the Dis- 
 solution. A letter from one of the members to his brother, 
 contained in Thurloe, gives the same number to the Crom- 
 well party, and says, that when the latter had left, only 
 twenty-seven reformers stayed behind. The other eight, 
 no doubt, felt that any farther resistance would be idle. .1 
 subjoin this letter, from Bussy Mansel to Edward Pritchard, 
 which derives its interest from the fact of its writer having- 
 been present. " Since I writ ray last to you, and some 
 days before, wee were about a report from the committee 
 of tieths, about sending commissioners to the several cir- 
 cuits to cast out all that they judged to be unfit to be min- 
 isters, and to put in all they judged to be fit upon the last 
 day of the weeke. This power und its appurtenances came 
 to the question, and it was carried in the negative. Here- 
 upon those gentlemen that were for the report came sooner 
 than their usual hower upon Munday to the House, and 
 there spoke of the unlikelihood of doing good, and instanced 
 in several things that they judged evill that was don, and 
 therefore desired that they would goe, and returne that 
 power they had from whence they received it ; and there- 
 upon about forty, and the speaker, went to the general!, and 
 did accordingly. Twenty-seven stayed in the House a lit- 
 tle time speaking to one another ; and going to speak to the 
 Lord in prayer, Col. Goffe and Lieut.-col. White came into 
 the House, and desired them that were there to come out. 
 Some answered that they were there by a call from the 
 
 All doubt, however, was suddenly ended by 
 the extraordinary conduct of the speaker, 
 Francis Rouse, who had become one of Crom- 
 well's most thorough-going tools. Acting on 
 an evidently preconcerted plan, he suddenly 
 rose and left the chair. The sergeant took up 
 the mace and carried it before him as he quitted 
 the hall ; even the clerk rose and went out at 
 the same instant ; while as many members as 
 were favourable to the motion followed, and 
 repaired at once to Whitehall, to demand ad- 
 mission to Cromwell. Some few reformers 
 left also, in hopelessness and disgust. Twenty- 
 seven of the more fervent and enthusiastic 
 remained, gazing on each other in wonder at 
 what had passed, insufficient in numbers to 
 make a House, and without a speaker had 
 they been so inclined. Harrison appears to 
 have been one of these, as well as one of the 
 orators in the debate that had preceded. They 
 continued thus for some time, in helpless con- 
 sultation as to what was to be done, and had 
 just proposed to fall to prayers, when two offi- 
 cers, Colonel Goffe and Major White,* sudden- 
 ly entered, and requested them to withdraw. 
 Harrison demanded by what warrant, and Ma- 
 jor White called in a file of musketeers. No 
 farther resistance was offered ; the House was 
 expeditiously cleared, and the keys left with 
 the guard. 
 
 The speaker, meanwhile, preceded by the 
 mace, and followed by Sydenham and his party, 
 walked through the streets to Cromwell's resi- 
 dence at Whitehall. Some few members, who 
 were on their way to the House, joined him, 
 in curiosity, as he passed ; some few, in fear. 
 Having arrived at Whitehall, they withdrew 
 into one of the apartments, and placed a few 
 hurried lines on paper expressive of the resig- 
 nation of their power into Cromwell's hands. 
 This was as hastily engrossed by the clerk, 
 subscribed by the speaker and his followers, 
 
 generall, and would not come out by their desire, unless 
 they had a command from him. They returned noe answer, 
 but went out and fetched two files of musquetiers, and did 
 as good as force them out, amongst whom I was an un- 
 worthy one." 
 
 * A vulgar piece of pleasantry, on the part of this Major 
 White, has been suffered to creep into history. He is said 
 to have asked, on his entrance, ' What they did there !" 
 to have been answered by Harrison, " That they were seek- 
 ing the Lord;" and to have rejoined, "Then you may go 
 elsewhere, for to my knowledge he has not been here for 
 several years post." The anecdote rests on the authority 
 of a piece of Royalist scurrility, in which the circumstance 
 of the dissolution is described after this fashion: " In the 
 mean time, Rouse, the speaker, with the mace before him 
 (and his followers), came to Whitehall, and there resigned 
 the instrument he gave them, by which they were consti- 
 tuted a Parliament, and gave them likewise to understand 
 how they had left their fallows. Their surrendnry was 
 kindly received by Oliver, and they thanked for the pnins 
 they had taken in the service of the Commonwealth, how- 
 ever he and they had miss'd.of their intentions of the good 
 should thereby have come to the Commonwealth, which a 
 strange spirit an4 perverse principle in some of the mem- 
 bers had solely hindered ; and as to them yet sitting in the 
 Parliament House, he despatched away Lieutenant-colonel 
 White, a confident of his, to dislodge them, who according- 
 ly, with a guard of red-coats, came thither, and entering 
 the House, demanded them, in the name of the general, to 
 depart, for the Parliament was dissolved ; who, replying to 
 the contrary, and tilling him they were upon business, and 
 ought not thus to be disturbed, he asked, ' What business ?' 
 They answered, ' We are seeking of God.' ' Pugh !' saith 
 he, is that all 1 That's to no purpose, for God hath not 
 been within these walls these twelve years ;' and so fairly 
 compelled them out, muttering with the same wrath and 
 sorrowful looks back as those that had sat thirty times the 
 same term, and could have almost pleaded prescription."
 
 BRITISH STATESMExN. 
 
 and tendered by them to Cromwell, who at 
 once put on a well-painted air of surprise, as- 
 severated that he was not prepared for such 
 an offer, and protested that he could not load 
 himself with so heavy and serious a burden.* 
 But his reluctance yielded at last to the remon- 
 strances and entreaties of Lambert and the 
 officers, and the instrument was laid in a 
 chamber of the palace for the convenience of 
 such members as had not yet subscribed their 
 names. 
 
 It lay there three days, and, though only sign- 
 ed at first by Sydenham's party, it is said to 
 have exhibited, at the close of the third day, 
 very nearly eighty names a majority of the 
 whole assembly ; nor do I find any distinct au- 
 thority that questions this. In what way these 
 signatures were obtained, or whether they were 
 in all respects genuine, is a matter scarcely 
 worth discussion. The existence of the Con- 
 vention sprang out of cheat and delusion ; and 
 though its career was elevated into respect by 
 the unlooked-for gravity of its counsels and the 
 wise determination of its measures, its abrupt 
 
 and iniquitous end was nothing more than the 
 natural consummation of its monstrous origin. 
 Some of the members, it is said, were induced 
 to yield their signatures to the solicitations of 
 the friends of Cromwell ; some to fear, and a 
 reluctance to incur the displeasure of the pow- 
 erful ; several, according to one of their own 
 members, because certain of their companions 
 and allies had done it already ; several, happy 
 that they might so be rid of a troublesome and 
 thankless employment ; and several, because 
 they would not expose themselves to the charge 
 of ambition, and an overweening love of digni 
 ty and power.* Thus was a majority at last 
 obtained, and within a few hours afterward 
 came forth the new constitution of government, 
 in which Oliver Cromwell openly stood su- 
 preme. 
 
 On Friday, the 16th of December, 1653 an 
 ominous day the lord-general set out in his 
 carriage, at about one in the afternoon, from 
 his own residence to Westminster Hall, through 
 two lines of soldiery, composed of five regi- 
 ments of foot and three of horse. When he 
 
 * It seems hardly credible that such hypocrisy as this 
 could have been attempted ; but Cromwell had now lost, in 
 matters of this kind, all sense of ingenuousness or shame. 
 His tools and creatures would seem to believe anything, for 
 the pleasure, in being duped, of duping others in turn ; and 
 he himself would seem ready to say or do anything at all 
 times, only to show his power of doing or saying it. He 
 had the deliberate effrontery, for example, to repeat the 
 present farce of falsehood to the first Parliament of the 
 Protectorate, whom he assured, in the most solemn manner, 
 " that he was so far from having any hand iu the project, 
 that he was an absolute stranger to the design, till the 
 speaker, with the major part of the House, came to him 
 with the instrument of their resignation." It was in the 
 same speech, I may add, that he used the characteristic 
 expression, " I have appealed to God before you already ; I 
 know that it is a tender thing to make appeals to God." I 
 do not insult the common sense of the reader by affecting 
 to inquire into the possibility of sincere self-delusion here. 
 Setting aside the plain course of his policy, from the first 
 moment of the existence of this Parliament to his last delib- 
 eration with his officers before its fall, will any rational 
 person believe that a file of musketeers could be marched 
 into the House of Parliament, the members turned out, and 
 the door of the House locked, without the knowledge of the 
 lord-general ? I subjoin an extract from Ludlow, in cor- 
 roboration of the views already urged in the text. " The 
 perfidious Cromwell having forgot his most solemn profes- 
 sions and former vows, as well as the blood and treasure 
 that had been spent in this contest, thought it high time to 
 take off the mask, and resolved to sacrifice all our victories 
 and deliverances to his pride and ambition, under colour of 
 taking upon him the office, as it were, of a high constable, 
 in order to keep the peace of the nation, and to restrain men 
 from cutting one another's throats. One difficulty yet re- 
 mained to obstruct his design, and that was the Convention, 
 which he had assembled and invested with power, as well 
 as earnestly solicited to reform the law, and reduce the 
 clergy to a more evangelical constitution ; and having suf- 
 ficiently alarmed those interests, and shown them their 
 danger from the Convention, he informs thnm farther that 
 they cannot be ignorant of the confusion that all things are 
 brought into by the immoderate zeal of those in authority, 
 and to what extremities matters might be reduced if per- 
 mitted to go on possibly, said he, to the utter extirpation 
 of law and Gospel from among us ; and therefore advised 
 that they would join their interests to his, in order to pre- 
 vent this inundation. His proposition was readily embraced 
 by the corrupt part of the lawyers and clergy, and so he 
 became their protector, and they the humble supporters of 
 his tyranny. But that his usurpation might seem less hor- 
 rid, he so contrived it, by his instruments, that some of the 
 Convention must openly manifest their disapprobation of 
 their own proceedings, and under divers specious pretences 
 put a period to their sitting. When the instrument of res- 
 ignation was brought to Cromwell, 'tis said he lifted up 
 his eyes with astonishment, and with no less seeming mod- 
 esty refused to receive it ; but at length, through the im- 
 portunity of Major-general Lambert and others, represent- 
 ing to him that the welfare of the nation absolutely required 
 his acceptance of the Parliament's resignation, he thought 
 fit to comply with their request." 
 
 * Exact Relation. There are some other points of detail 
 in the account of the writer of the Exact Relation, which 
 make it worth while to subjoin the description of the whole 
 scene of the dissolution in his own words : " The speaker, 
 forgetting the duty of his place, though he was earnestly 
 called unto to keep the chair, he left it ; and the sergeant, 
 as if he had been of council, took up the mace and carried 
 it before him, though he was spoken unto to the contrary, ai 
 in like manner did the chief clerks ; and thus, in an irrup- 
 tious way going out of the House without any adjournment 
 or vote, left sitting thirty or thirty-five members in the 
 House. Whether those that so went away were a greater, 
 or lesser number, as is more likely, it is hard to be deter- 
 mined, though it be thought by some there were not sev- 
 enty so early in the House. Those that went out of the 
 House, going towards Whitehall, met some coming to 
 the House, who, seeing them go in that manner, thought 
 they had adjourned thither, and so went along with them : 
 others they sent for up and down, where they could find 
 them, to come to them to the House chamber, where they 
 were. Those in the House immediately betook themselves 
 to consider what they had to do, being so deserted of their 
 fellows ; and telling over their number, they found them- 
 selves but thirty-four or thirty-five, which could not make 
 a House, forty being the least number that might act in a 
 Parliamentary way. As they were going to consider among 
 themselves, a colonel and lieutenant-colonel entered the 
 House, and desired them to depart. The members desired 
 them to withdraw, for that they, as members of Parliament, 
 had warrant to be there ; and if they had warrant to put 
 them out, they wished them to show it ; but not many words 
 passed ; they went back and opened the doors, and brought 
 in the soldiers with their muskets, and then the gentlemen 
 rose and went out, which was done before the other were 
 halfway at Whitehall ; and some so put out of the House 
 went after to Whitehall, to see what they were doing, and 
 found them in the House chamber, preparing a writing of 
 surrender of their power back into his hands from whom 
 they had received it. If they had been his council, and not 
 legislators or a Parliament, much might have been in it ; it 
 was three or four lines written in four or six several papers, 
 that so the gentlemen might more easily read and see what 
 it was ; which, when the clerk engrossed on parchment, 
 then they signed it by subscribing their names, as many as 
 would ; first the speaker, and then others, according to their 
 quality. It may be wondered at that, so great a power 
 should be passed by so low and little an instrument. Some 
 gentlemen went three or four days after, and set their hands 
 to it. They that subscribed it did it on several grounds 
 and reasons : some did it knowingly to dissolve the House, 
 before dissolved by the soldiers, and their disorderly going 
 away, whick they had plotted and resolved before ; some 
 because some eminent persons of their party did it before 
 them, expecting- by that means to have been rid of some of 
 the other party at the least, and they to have continued in 
 power without them, wherein they were deceived, and not 
 a little vexed ; some therein looked no farther than at their 
 own quiet, and to be rid of a troublesome employment ; some, 
 that they might not be thought lovers of power and dignity ; 
 and some, out of weakness and fear of the loss of some 
 worldly enjoyment, which they have sufficiently repented 
 and been sorry for since."
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 565 
 
 arrived at the door of the Hall, a procession 
 formed, of persons who there awaited him, and 
 wonderfully complete were the various arrange- 
 ments for an event, of the possibility of which 
 the chief actor, only three days before, had sol- 
 emnly asseverated his utter and hopeless igno- 
 rance ! The aldermen entered first, then the 
 judges, the commissioners of the great seal 
 (Keble and Lisle), and the lord-mayor. Be- 
 hind these were the two councils, of state and 
 the army. They ascended to the court of 
 chancery, where a chair of state with a cush- 
 ion had been placed on a rich carpet, and here 
 arranged themselves Keble on the right hand 
 of the chair, and Lisle on the left ; the judges 
 on both sides ; the lord-mayor and aldermen on 
 the right, and the members of the two councils 
 on the left. It was a brilliant scene : the robes 
 of the civilians blended with the full dress equip- 
 ments of the soldiers in a most imposing pic- 
 ture, and excitement stirred on every face. 
 
 Cromwell entered, and every person in the 
 hall uncovered. He advanced, and took his 
 place next the Lord-commissioner Lisle. He 
 was plainly dressed a secret artifice of pride. 
 He wore neither robes nor uniform, but a sim- 
 ple suit and cloak of black velvet, with long 
 boots, and a broad gold band round his hat. As 
 soon as he had taken his position, Lambert ad- 
 vanced from the circle and addressed him. He 
 declared the dissolution of the late Parliament ; 
 observed that the exigency of the time required 
 a strong and stable government ; and prayed 
 his excellency, in the name of the army and the 
 three nations, to accept the office of Protector 
 of the Commonwealth, or chief magistrate, un- 
 der a new Constitution, which had been pre- 
 pared by the council of the army and sanction- 
 ed by the principal officers of state.* 
 
 * There can be scarcely a doubt that this assertion was 
 only part of the entire delusion, and that the form as well 
 as details of the new Constitution had been, in fact, the 
 entire suggestion and arrangement of Cromwell himself. 
 Ludlow says, in the sole account preserved of its origin or 
 authorship, that it had been in deliberation for upward of 
 two months before this memorable day, and many other 
 circumstances stronjly corroborate this most probable as- 
 sertion. Not the least striking of these, I may add, is the 
 fact (which I have established in the Life of Vane) that the 
 best provisions in this " instrument," relating to the estab- 
 lishment of new constituencies, are bodily taken out of the 
 famous reform act of Vane, which Cromwell brought away 
 with him under his cloak, uncopicd and unengrossed on the 
 fatal 20th of April. Another remarkable fact which tends 
 to prove it is, that when the idea of a new Instrument of 
 Government was first submitted to Cromwell in private, 
 the title appropriated to the chief magistrate in the first 
 article would seem to have been that of king. To this 
 Cromwell at once objected. No doubt he wished to receive 
 the offer from a less questionable authority, and had secret- 
 ly resolved, also, that the minds of the people and of his 
 own partisans should be better prepared, before he ven- 
 tured on a step so hazardous. The Dutch ambassador (see 
 Thurloe, vol. i., p. 644) seems to have received a confused 
 statement of this circumstance ; for he says that it was 
 Cromwell's first project to he declared king, and that he 
 only desisted because of the reluctance of his officers. The 
 contrary would decidedly appear (if we may trust an au- 
 thority by no means indisputable) from a speech of Crom- 
 well to the body of 100 officers, who waited on him in Feb- 
 ruary, 1657, to remonstrate against the title of king. He 
 plainly tells them that they had on the former occasion of- 
 fered him the title, and that he had refused it. (MSS. Ad- 
 ditions to Avscough, appended by Mr. Rutt to Burton's Di- 
 ary. And Bates, in his Elenchus Motuum, part ii., p. 166, 
 observes on the occasion, "Yet Cromwell would not accept 
 of the government by the title of kin?, though he was per- 
 suaded to it by many,") The obscure statement of the offi- 
 cial account is merely that "the Parliament having sur- 
 rendered its powers into the hands of the lord-general, 
 from whom it bad received tbpm, he called a council of the 
 
 Lambert, as he concluded, turned to one of 
 the clerks of the council, Jessop, and ordered 
 him to read aloud the act or instrument in which 
 this new Constitution was imbodied. The read- 
 ing of this act, entitled "the Government of 
 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belong- 
 ing," occupied upward of half an hour. It was 
 a document of unquestionable ability, as even 
 the brief abstract which may be admitted here 
 will show. 
 
 Its first and most essential article was, that 
 the supreme legislative authority should be in, 
 one person, and the people in Parliament as- 
 sembled ; and that the style of that person 
 should be Lord Protector. It proceeded, that 
 the Protector should be assisted with a coun- 
 cil, of not fewer than thirteen, nor more than 
 twenty-one persons ;* that all writs, processes, 
 commissions, and grants should run in his name ; 
 and that from him should be derived all magis- 
 tracy and honours ; that he should order the 
 militia and forces both by sea and land, and 
 with his council should have the power of war 
 
 principal officers of the army, and advised with other per- 
 sons of interest in the nation, who, after three days seeking 
 God and consulting on the subject, concluded upon the form 
 of the government of the Commonwealth. (Declaration of 
 the Lord Erotector." Perfect Diurnal, Dec. 19. Weekly 
 Intelligencer, Dec. 20.) This council is said to have been 
 opened by the lord-general with a most excellent, wise, 
 
 loliows: "Alter," ne says, "a rew uays, a council or neiu- 
 olficers was summoned, where Major-general Lambert hav- 
 ing rehearsed the several steps and degrees by which things 
 had been brought to the present state wherein they were, 
 and pressed the necessity incumbent upon the army to pro- 
 vide something in the room of what was lately taken away, 
 presented to them a paper intituled ' An Instrument of Gov- 
 ernment,' which he read in his place. Some of the officers 
 being convinced that the contents of this instrument tended 
 to the sacrificing all our labours to the lust and ambition 
 of a single person, began to declare their unwillingness to 
 concur in it. But they were interrupted by the major-gen- 
 eral, and informed that it was not now to be disputed 
 whether this should be the form of government or not, for 
 that was already resolved, if having been under considera- 
 tion for two months past; neither was it brought before 
 them with any other intention than to give them permission 
 to offer any amendments they should think fit, with a prom- 
 ise they should be taken into consideration. The council 
 of officers, perceiving to what terms they were restrained, 
 proposed that it might be declared in this instrument that 
 the general of the army should, after this first time, lie held 
 incapable of being Protector (for that was the title given by 
 this instrument to the chief magistrate, though some were 
 laid to have moved that it might be king), that none of the 
 relations of the last Protector should be chosen at the next 
 succeeding election, and that a general council of all the 
 commission officers who were about the town should be 
 summoned to consider thereof. To these propositions they 
 could obtain no other answer than that they should be of- 
 fered to the .general, which was the title they yet gave to 
 Cromwell. At the next meeting of the officers it was not 
 thought fit to consult with them at all ; but they were 
 openly told by Major-general Lambert that the general 
 would take care of managing the civil government ; and 
 then, having required them to repair to their respective 
 charges, where their troops and companies lay, that they 
 might preserve the public peace, he dismissed them." 
 
 * By observing the first council appointed by the new 
 Protector under this institute, we may fairly make out 
 Cromwell's chief creatures and most favourite advisers 
 through all the recent extraordinary scenes. Of the twelve 
 original counsellors named by him in the preceding April, 
 six were preserved, Lambert, Desborough, Strickland, Syd- 
 enham, Philip Jones, and Sir Gilbert Pickering ; and six 
 omitted, Harrison, Tomlinson, Stapeley, Carew, Moyer, and 
 Bennet. To the six preserved were added seven from 
 among those who had been named by the Parliament on 
 their meeting, Lord Lisle, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir 
 Charles Wolseley, Fleetwood, Montague, Richard Major, 
 and Henry Lawrence. To these counsellors were now first 
 added by Cromwell, Major-general Skippon, and Francis 
 Rouse, the late speaker.
 
 566 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and peace ; that no law should be altered, sus- 
 pended, abrogated, or repealed, but by the au- 
 thority of Parliament ; and that a Parliament 
 should be summoned in every third year. It 
 directed that the summons to Parliament should 
 be by writ under the great seal, and that, if the 
 Protector should neglect to order these writs, 
 the keeper or keepers of the seal should issue 
 them on their own authority, under pain of 
 high treason. Also, in case of similar neglect 
 in these officers, the sheriffs of the counties 
 were to proceed in the election in the same 
 manner as if the writs had been issued, under 
 the like penalty. Each Parliament was to sit 
 five months ; and if an intermediate Parliament 
 was called by the Lord Protector, it was not to 
 be prorogued or dissolved within three months, 
 unless by its own consent. In case of war with 
 any foreign state, a Parliament was to be sum- 
 moned immediately. The institute determined 
 that every person possessing an estate, real or 
 personal, to the value of two hundred pounds, 
 should have a vote at the election of members 
 of Parliament, excepting such as had been con- 
 cerned in the war against the Parliament or in 
 the rebellion in Ireland. It ordered, that all 
 bills passed by the Parliament should be pre- 
 sented to the Lord Protector for his assent, and 
 if he did not assent within twenty days, the 
 Parliament might declare his neglect, and the 
 bills should then become law notwithstanding. 
 The army was limited not to exceed ten thou- 
 sand horse and twenty thousand foot. It was 
 also directed, in an article which disclosed the 
 secret and naked despotism which lurked be- 
 neath it all, that, till the meeting of the first 
 triennial Parliament in September, 1654, the 
 Protector and, council might have power to raise 
 money for the public defence, and to make such j 
 laws and ordinances as the welfare of the nation [ 
 should require. No member could be removed 
 from the council but for corruption, or such oth- 
 er miscarriage as should be judged by a commit- 
 tee from the Parliament and the council, togeth- 
 er with the keeper or keepers of the seal ; the 
 removal during the intervals of Parliament to j 
 be made by the council itself, with the consent ; 
 of the Protector. The institute farther ordered 
 that the keeper or keepers of the seal, the treas- 
 urer, the admiral, the chief justices of the two 
 benches, and the chief governors of Scotland 
 and Ireland, should be nominated by Parlia- 
 ment, and in the intervals of Parliament by the 
 Protector and council ; that, as soon as might 
 be, a provision should be made for the main- 
 tenance of the clergy, less subject to scruple 
 and contention, and more certain, than the way 
 of tithes ; and that no person should be com- 
 pelled to conform to the Established Church ; 
 nor should any be restrained, but all protected, 
 in the profession and exercise of his religion, 
 with an exception of the adherents of popery 
 and prelacy. It was one article in the Institute 
 of Government, that Oliver Cromwell should be 
 declared Lord Protector for life, and that, in 
 case of his demise, the council of state should 
 assemble to the number of not fewer than thir- 
 teen, and immediately elect his successor. This 
 clause was generally supposed to have been in- 
 serted to conciliate Lambert, and to feed him 
 with the hope of being second lord protector. 
 It was altered in the subsequent Petition and 
 
 Advice, and the power surrendered to Crom- 
 well. The plan for the future representation 
 of the people was, as I have already endeav- 
 oured to show, in all its essentials, copied from 
 the celebrated act which was on the point of 
 passing into a law on that fatal twentieth of 
 the preceding April. The representatives for 
 England were to be four hundred. All petty 
 boroughs where there was scarcely a single 
 house were suppressed, and the representation, 
 as nearly as might be, proportioned to the 
 amount of taxation. Of these, 251 were to be 
 county members, besides six for London, two 
 for the Isle of Ely, two for the Isle of Wight, 
 and two each for Exeter, Plymouth, York, Col- 
 chester, Gloucester, Canterbury, Leicester, Lin- 
 coln, Westminster, Norwich, Lynn, Yarmouth, 
 Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Taunton, Bristol, Ips- 
 wich, Bury, Southwark, Coventry, Worcester, 
 and Salisbury, one each for the two uniTersi- 
 ties, and one each for all the towns and bor- 
 oughs that were thought proper to be repre- 
 sented, among which Manchester is named. In 
 addition to these, there were to be 30 repre- 
 sentatives for Scotland, and 30 for Ireland ; the 
 distribution of the counties, cities, and places 
 represented, and the number of their represent- 
 atives respectively, being to be determined by 
 the Lord Protector and his council previously 
 to issuing the writs. 
 
 When the reading had closed, Lisle turned 
 to Cromwell to administer to him his oath as 
 Lord Protector of the Commonwealth ; but even 
 at this instant the habit of dissimulation pre- 
 vailed over every other, and scruples appeared, 
 and a wonderful humility and a most touching 
 reluctance, which only gave way at last to an 
 assent more touching still, in its seeming sac- 
 rifice of every selfish wish to the interests of 
 his country ! Then, raising his right hand and 
 his eyes to heaven with great solemnity, Crom- 
 well swore to observe, and cause to be observ- 
 ed, all the articles of the Instrument ; and Lam- 
 bert, falling on his knees, offered to the Lord 
 Protector a civic sword in the scabbard, which 
 he accepted, laying aside his own, to denote 
 that he meant to govern by constitutional, and 
 not by military authority ! He then seated him- 
 self in the chair of state provided for him ; put 
 on his hat while the rest still stood uncovered ; 
 received the great seal from the commissioners, 
 the sword of state from the lord-mayor, formally 
 delivering them back again ; and, having exer- 
 cised these acts of sovereign authority, return- 
 ed in procession to his carriage, and drove back 
 to his palace at Whitehall with the state and 
 majesty of a king. 
 
 In the evening of the same day proclamation 
 was made in every quarter of London accom- 
 panied by all the ceremonies that had hitherto 
 been used on the accession of a new monarch 
 of the establishment of a new government by 
 means of a chief magistrate and triennial Par- 
 liaments ; and the people were called upon to 
 offer their allegiance and obedience in all things 
 to 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL, 
 LORD PROTECTOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 Cromwell's first act was to revive the forms 
 of monarchy. He issued new patents to the 
 judges, as on the occasion of a succession to
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 567 
 
 the crown * He then completed the arrange- 
 ments of his council, as named in the Instru- 
 
 * It appears from the order-hooks and law records that 
 the first law-term of the year commenced on the 23d of 
 January ; and, accordingly, four days before, a fresh patent 
 was issued to Rolle, chief justice of the upper, and Atkins, 
 one of the puisne judges of the common bench ; on the first 
 day of term, a similar patent was granted to St. John, 
 chief justice of the common bench ; and before the end of 
 the month, patents were made out to Aske, a puisne judge 
 of the upper bench, and Thorpe, a baron of the Exchequer. 
 At the same time, Matthew Hale (I borrow many of these 
 details from Mr. Godwin's Researches) was made a judge 
 of the common bench, and Robert Nicholas, who had pre- 
 viously been a judge in the upper bench, was added to 
 Thorpe in the Exchequer. Wild, who had been made 
 chief baron in the year before the king's death, was desirous 
 of being continued in his office, but could not obtain that 
 favour from the Protector. Shortly after these appoint- 
 ments, a list was formed of twelve persons to hold the as- 
 sizes at the principal towns of England for the spring cir- 
 cuit. Secret instructions were at the same time given to 
 such as the new Protector could rely on, that they were 
 " to take especial care to extend all favour and kindness to 
 the Cavalier party." (Ludlow, vol. ii., p. 489.) Rolle and 
 Glyn were named for the western circuit, St. John and 
 Atkins for the Oxford, Aske and Richard Newdigate for 
 the home, Thorpe and Richard Pepys for the midland, 
 Nicholas and William Conyers for the Norfolk, and Hale 
 and Hugh Windham for the northern. Five of these per- 
 sons, Glyn, Newdigate, Pepys, Conyers, and Windham, had 
 not received patents as judges, and must therefore have 
 officiated merely pro ftac vice. Hale, Pepys, Newdigate, 
 and Windham were called to the degree of sergeant at this 
 time, together with Steele, the recorder, Maynard, Thomas 
 Fletcher, and Thomas Twisden. Glyn and Conyers had 
 been made sergeants in August, 1648. The names of Glyn 
 and Maynard are emphatic proofs that these wily men an- 
 ticipated a brilliant prospect for their detestable principles 
 under this reign of Cromwell. Attorney-general Prideaux 
 had a fresh patent from the Protector (docket-book of the 
 Crown Office), January 23, 1654, and William Ellis was 
 made solicitor-general (ibid.), May 24. The appointment 
 of St. John is curious when we recall his own defence of 
 himself under Charles the Second, and instead of corrobo- 
 rating that defence, would go to prove an extreme interest 
 and confidence reposed in him by Cromwell. " It is said 
 that I was the dark lantern and privy counsellor in setting 
 up and managing affairs in the late Oliver Protector's time. 
 This wholly denied, and the contrary true, and many wit- 
 nesses of my manifesting my dislike. In October I fell sick 
 so dangerously, that from that time till the end of May my 
 friends expected death ; I think in December or January he 
 was set up, when I was at the worst." But I have already 
 given abundant proofs of St. John's servile assistance to 
 his great relation in all his worst designs. I cannot suffer 
 the more honourable name of MATTHEW HALE to pass 
 even in a note without giving (from Burnet's History of his 
 own Time) two memorable instances of the way in which 
 he discharged the functions of that office, to which it is one 
 of the greatest merits of Cromwell to have appointed him. 
 " Nut long," says the bishop, " after he was made a judge, 
 when he went the circuit, a trial was brought before him 
 at Lincoln concerning the murder of one of the townsmen, 
 who had been of the king's party, and was killed by a sol- 
 dier of the garrison there. He was in the fields with a 
 fowling-piece on his shoulder, which the soldier seeing, he 
 came to him, and said it was contrary to an order which 
 the Protector had made, that none who had been of the 
 king's party should carry arms, and so he would have 
 forced it from him ; but as the other did not regard the or- 
 der, so being stronger than the soldier, he threw him down, 
 and having beat him, he left him. The soldier went into 
 the town, and told one of his fellow-soldiers how he had 
 been used, and got him to go with him, and lie in wait for 
 the man, that he might be revenged on him. They both 
 watched his coming to town, and one of them went to him 
 to demand his gun, which he refusing, the soldier struck at 
 him, and as they were struggling, the other came behind, 
 and ran his sword into hi body, of which he presently 
 died. It was in the time of the assizes, go they were both 
 tried. Against the one there was no evidence of forethought 
 felony, so he was only found guilty of manslaughter, and 
 burned on the hand ; but the other was found guilly of mur- 
 der ; and though Colonel Whalay, that commanded the 
 garrison, came into the court, and urged that the man was 
 killed for disobeying the Protector's orders, and that the 
 soldier was but doing his duty, yet the judge regarded both 
 his reasons and threateuingii very little, and therefore he 
 not only gave sentence against him, but ordered the execu- 
 tion to be so suddenly done that it might not be possible to 
 procure a reprieve., which he believed would have been ob- 
 ti-aed if there had been time enough granted for it. An- 
 
 1 ment of Government, in the mode best fitted 
 to promote his aims.* Colonel Henry Law- 
 rence was nominated president for a month, 
 reappointed at its expiration till farther orders, 
 and, in fact, retained the office during the whole 
 of the Protectorate. Thurloe, a man of thor- 
 ough fitness for the work, was named secreta- 
 ry to the council, or, as he is frequently styled, 
 secretary of state ; and Walter Frost, the sec- 
 retary under the Commonwealth, was appoint- 
 ed to an office which was called treasurer for 
 the council's contingencies. Philip Meadows 
 was chosen secretary for the Latin tongue, the 
 office held under the statesmen by Milton ; and 
 Milton's name was entered in the order-book 
 along with these, but unaccompanied with any 
 specification of salary, or of the business in 
 which he was to be employed. t 
 
 other occasion was given him of showing both his justice 
 and courage, when he was in another circuit. He under- 
 stood that the Protector had ordered a jury to be returned 
 for a trial in which he was more than ordinarily concerned. 
 Upon this information he examined the sheriff about it, 
 who knew nothing of it, for he said he referred nil such, 
 things to the under sheriff; and having next asked the 
 under sheriff concerning it, he found the jury had been re- 
 turned by order from Cromwell ; upon which he showed 
 the statute, that all juries ought to be returned by the 
 sheriff or his lawful officer ; and this not being done accord- 
 ing to law, he dismissed the jury, and would not try the 
 cause ; upon which the Protector was highly displeased 
 with him, and at his return from the circuit, told him in 
 anger he was not fit to be a judge ; to which all the answer 
 he made was, that it was very true.'' 
 
 * The following is the list, as published officially, of the 
 i names of the councillors: Philip Viscount Lisle; Charles 
 Fleetwood ; John Lambert ; Edward Montague ; John Des- 
 borough ; Walter Strickland ; Henry Lawrence ; Sir Gil- 
 bert Pickering, Bart. ; Sir Charles Wolseley, Bart. : Sir 
 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. ; William Sydenham : Philip 
 Jones ; Richard Major ; Francis Rouse ; Philip Skippon. 
 To these were added, February 7, 1654. Humphrey Mack- 
 worth ; April 27, Nathaniel Fiennes ; and June 30, Ed- 
 mund Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave. The salary of each 
 counsellor was i'1000 per annum. (See Thurloe, vol. iii., 
 p. 581.) One of the first orders issued was, that the coun- 
 cil should sit on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thurs- 
 day, in the morning, and on Friday both morning and after- 
 noon, and not at other times without special direction from 
 the Lord Protector. The sittings were to commence at 
 nine, and not to continue after one ; and each member who 
 did not appear at nine, and was absent without reasonable 
 excuse, was to forfeit two shillings and sixpence. 
 
 t Mr. Godwin has directed special attention to the con- 
 stitution of this council. The members, he would have us 
 recollect, were named in the Act of Government, which 
 was always represented by Cromwell himself as of such 
 paramount authority, that even the Parliament itself was 
 not entitled to call it in question. No one of them could 
 be displaced but for corruption or other miscarriage in his 
 trust ; and in that case the Parliament was to appoint seven, 
 of its members, and the council six, who, together with the 
 lord-chancellor, lord-keeper, or commissioners of the great 
 seal for the time being, should have power to hear and de- 
 termine such corruption or miscarriage, and to award and 
 inflict such punishment as the nature of the offence might 
 deserve, which punishment should not be pardoned or re- 
 mitted by the Lord Protector : the major part of the council, 
 with the consent of the Protector, being authorized, in the 
 intervals of Parliament, to suspend any of their number till 
 the accusation against him could be heard and examined in 
 the manner prescribed. The counsellors appointed by the 
 act were fifteen ; and the Protector, with the advice of his 
 council, might increase their number to twenty-one ; but, 
 in case of death or other removal, the Parliament was to 
 nominate six candidates for the vacant place, out of which 
 the council might name two, between whom the Protector 
 was to elect the successor. All this may be quite true, and 
 such a boon was naturally enough given at first setting out 
 to the restiff and selfish officers, who were to believe that 
 the new form nf government was as much an aristocracy or 
 oligarchy as a monarchy. But Cromwell was not long iu 
 teaching them their mistake. He only waited to be more 
 firmly planted in his chair, and then did not scruple to pro- 
 ceed in the most important matters without an order of 
 council, and, as it should seem, without even consulting his 
 assessors of state.
 
 568 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 While the council arrangements proceeded, 
 the most extravagant rumours became rife in 
 London. The new Protector had already been 
 secretly crowned ; Lambert was commander- 
 in-chief and a duke, Oliver St. John lord-treas- 
 urer, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper lord-chan- 
 cellor, and Lord Say chamberlain of the house- 
 hold.* The peerage of England was to be re- 
 stored ; the various lords were to repair imme- 
 diately to London, and submit to the new gov- 
 ernment ; plays and players were to " go up" 
 again, and all was to jog merrily on once more 
 in the old road.t This was a little too fast for 
 Cromwell. He went to work in a more gradual 
 way. His next actions were directed, indeed, 
 to that most miserable result, but though they 
 argued more than the power of monarchy, they 
 were as yet content to fall somewhat short of 
 its forms. He proceeded to exhibit in practice 
 that monstrous clause in the act of his author- 
 ity which gave, before the assembling of Par- 
 liament, absolute legislative as well as execu- 
 tive power to him and his council. 
 
 One of his first ordinances was, in a manner, 
 to abolish the Commonwealth he had been 
 called in to protect. It publicly repealed the ' 
 memorable engagement imposed on the English 
 people by the statesmen, to be true and faithful | 
 to the Commonwealth of England, as then es- ! 
 tablished, without king or House of Lords. 
 A second ordinance significantly declared the 
 new offences that were to be taken and ad- 
 judged for treason. These were, to compass 
 or imagine the death of the Lord Protector ; to j 
 raise forces against the present government ; 
 to deny that the Protector and the people as- 
 sembled in Parliament are the supreme au- 
 thority of the nation, or that the exercise of j 
 the chief magistracy is centred in him ; to af- 
 firm that the government is tyrannical, usurped, ; 
 or illegal, or that there is any Parliament now in j 
 being- ; and, finally, the effort to proclaim, or in 
 any wise to promote, any of the posterity of | 
 the late king to be king or chief magistrate of ', 
 England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the 
 dominions thereunto belonging. 
 
 Other ordinances, either of this or a some- i 
 what later date, may also claim mention here. 
 Various duties and imposts, as those of excise, ! 
 were continued for a certain term, and one of i 
 
 * Thurloe's papers give a variety of rumours of this kind, j 
 
 t " His highnes is not yet come to Whitehall ; 200,000 ; 
 is setled upon him yerely ; he is choosing officers of state. 
 It is thought that the lords will be sent for to attend him at 
 court, to acknowledge and submitt to the government ; and 
 wee heare that playes are gotinge vp agame, and that 
 thinges had beene comings to the old rode." Thurloe, vol. 
 ii., p. 8. 
 
 i It provokes only laughter and contempt when we ob- 
 serve, from the order-book of the Protector and his council, . 
 that when they passed bills, the forms were exactly copied I 
 that were used in the two Houses of Parliament ! Every 
 bill is read twice ; then referred to a committee, which 
 committee ordinarily consists of three persons, of whom two 
 are a quorum ; afterward read a third time ^ and lastly pre- , 
 vented to the Protector as the advice of the council, and by i 
 him passed for a law, and ordered to be printed and pub- 
 lished. Yet Ihe council, when full, only amounted to four- 
 teen, as Fleet wood continued in Ireland. What a mean 
 and base inculcation of hypocrisy is here ! 
 
 $ I may mention that Ashley Cooper had made an unsuc- 
 cessful effort to effect this in the Barbone Parliament. On 
 the 20th of October, 1633, a bill was brought into that Par- 
 liament from a committee, and presented by Sir Anthony 
 Ashley Cooper, for annulling the engagement, but was re- 
 jected. An act for taking away one of the penalties on 
 non-subscribers was, with some difficulty, substituletl. in its 
 room. 
 
 two acts which had been brought to their last 
 stage of completion by the statesmen of the 
 Long Parliament now received the efficacy of 
 law. Among these were the ordinance of union 
 between England and Scotland, and that of 
 grace and oblivion to the people of Scotland,* 
 which formed its proper companion. The 
 same course was adopted also with regard to 
 a few acts of the little Parliament, as in that 
 which brought the public revenue into the 
 treasury ; and that which was designed to 
 compromise the question of chancery reform 
 by simplifying the process of the court, and 
 reducing its expenses.! Two ordinances pass- 
 ed at the same time for the distribution of per- 
 sons to be chosen to serve in Parliament for 
 Scotland and Ireland ; one for commissioners 
 to approve of public preachers ; and one for the 
 ejection of scandalous, ignorant, and insuffi- 
 cient ministers. 
 
 The latter ordinances had been in some sort 
 clamoured for by sections of the people, and 
 were wily instances of Cromwell's power of 
 coercing, while he seemed to be most freely 
 giving way. A slight description of them will 
 show of what good they were capable, and of 
 how much monstrous evil. The commission- 
 ers under that for the approval of preachers 
 were thirty-eight, nine of whom were laymen, 
 and the rest divines. At their head was Crom- 
 well's convenient old friend and counsellor, 
 Francis Rouse, the provost of Eton. With 
 him, among others, were associated Owen, 
 Goodwin, Caryl, and Lockyer, Cromwell's fa- 
 vourite preachers ; Hugh Peters, Philip Nye, 
 Peter Sterry, Marshal, Manton, and Major- 
 general Goffe. They were empowered to ex- 
 amine the qualifications of such as should be 
 named to benefices, as well as of such as had 
 been presented since a certain recent date. 
 The ordinance for ejecting scandalous and ig- 
 norant ministers was, however, infinitely more 
 extensive, and projected a thorough purgation 
 of the Church Establishment of insufficient and 
 unworthy clergy, at whatever period they might 
 have been inducted into their livings. It ap- 
 pointed commissioners, from fifteen to thirty 
 in each county,:): to carry the ordinance into 
 execution ; to hear complaints against all cler- 
 gy ; and to deprive such as should be proved 
 guilty of maintaining the principles condemned 
 in the act against atheistical, blasphemous, and 
 execrable opinions ; or of profane cursing and 
 swearing, and perjury ; or of adultery, forni- 
 cation, drunkenness, common haunting of tav- 
 erns and alehouses, and frequent playing at 
 
 * From this grace were excepted nine earls, two vis- 
 counts, and five barons. t See ante, p. 555, aud p. 559. 
 
 i From those commissioners, at the same time, though 
 the majority were tools of Cromwell, it was found impossi- 
 ble to exclude various men, the most distinguished in their 
 counties, who had opposed the usurpation of Cromwell. I 
 find, among other names, those of Lord Fairfax, Lord Whar- 
 ton, Lord Say, Samuel Browne, Thomas Scot. Sir Arthur 
 Hazlerig, Sir Robert Harley, and Robert Blake, together 
 with those of most of the members of the council, Henry 
 Lawrence, Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Sir Charles 
 Wolseley, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lambert, Skippon, 
 Sydenham, and Major. The names of Richard lord Crom- 
 well and Henry lord Cromwell, sons of the Protector, were 
 also in the commission. The ordinance named eight or ten 
 clergy besides for every county, who were to be joined to 
 the lay commissioners in all questions of ignorance and in- 
 sufficiency. The principal of these was Owen. The cele- 
 brated Richard Baxter, the Presbyterian, was bkewise iu- 
 ciuded.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 569 
 
 cards or dice ; also to incapacitate such as 
 should publicly and profanely scoff at the pro- 
 fession or professors of religion and godliness, 
 or should encourage and countenance Whit- 
 sun - ales, wakes, morris-dances, May - poles, 
 and stage plays ; such as should hold or main- 
 tain popish doctrines, or frequently and pub- 
 licly read the Book of Common Prayer, or 
 should have declared by writing, preaching, or 
 otherwise, their disaffection to the present 
 government ; and such as should be non-resi- 
 dent, or should be accounted negligent, and 
 omit the duties of praying and preaching. 
 These ordinances worked as Cromwell wished. 
 Some good was done by them, and much evil. 
 Among the most- celebrated men who suffered 
 under them, and were with difficulty restored, 
 may be named the most learned man of the 
 day, Pocock, the Oxford professor of Hebrew 
 and Arabic ; and Fuller, the famous Church 
 historian.* 
 
 By such means, before the possibility of in- 
 terference on the part of any Parliament, Crom- 
 well proceeded to settle himself firmly in his 
 new seat of power. He had not been careless, 
 meanwhile, of his old enthusiasts for a vision- 
 ary republic, his foremost friends and dupes of 
 the saints' reign. Within a few days after his 
 inauguration, he sent to ask Harrison if he 
 would own, and act under, the new power ; 
 and, on that honest fanatic's refusal, his major- 
 general's commission was at once stripped 
 from him. Messrs. Christopher Feakes and 
 Vavasor Powellt shared a similar fate. At the 
 first Blackfriars' meeting after the 16th of De- 
 cember, these headlong zealots had devoted 
 special denunciations against Cromwell, calling 
 him, by name, a perjured villain, and desiring 
 that, if any of his friends were present, they 
 would go to him, and tell him in their name 
 that his reign would be short, and his end 
 more tragical than that of the great tyrant, the 
 last Lord Protector of England. \ The message 
 was delivered, and as promptly answered. 
 
 * I quote from a letter of Oliver to Secretary Thurloe 
 (vol. viii., p. 281). "There are," he writes, "in Berkshire 
 some few men of mean quality and condition, rash, heady, 
 enemies of tithes, who are commissioners for the ejecting 
 of ministers. These alone sit and act, and are at this time 
 casting out, on slight and trivial pretences, very worthy 
 men ; one in especial they intend the next week to eject, 
 whose name is Pocock, a man of as unblameable conver- 
 sation as any that I know living, of repute for learning 
 throughout the whole world, being the professor of Hebrew 
 and Arabic in our University ; so that they do exceedingly 
 exasperate all men, and provoke them to the height." Nor 
 was Owen content with making this complaint. He went 
 before the commissioners themselves, took three eminent 
 divines with him (Wilkins, Wallis, and Ward, afterward 
 Bishop of Salisbury), and expostulated with so much 
 warmth, indignation, and success, that Pocock was resto- 
 red. The case of Fuller was of the same character, and is 
 told thus by his biographer. He received sudden notice 
 that he should be cited before the commissioners, and in 
 this emergency applied to his friend, Johu Howe, chaplain 
 to Cromwell, and one of the most eloquent writers of his 
 time, to know how he should conduct himself. " You must 
 have observed," said Fuller, "that I am a pretty corpulent 
 man, and I am to go through a passage that is very strait ; 
 I beg that you will be so kind as to give me a shove, and 
 help me through." Howe accordingly suggested to him 
 the most suitable advice ; and when the commissioners 
 came to propose the question, which formed the pith of their 
 examinations, " Whether he had at any time experienced a 
 work of grace on his soul ?" Fuller replied, " That he could 
 appeal to the Great Searcher of hearts that he had on all 
 occasions made conscience of his very thoughts ;" with 
 which answer the commissioners expressed themselves sat- 
 isfied, t See nnte, p. 562. } Richard III. 
 
 40 
 
 Feakes and Powell were flung into the Tower 
 first, and afterward sent prisoners to Windsor 
 Castle. One of their colleagues, named Symp- 
 son, imprisoned at the same time, was only re- 
 leased on making submission. Harrison was 
 also sent, by peremptory mandate from the 
 council board, into a watched retirement in his 
 native county of Stafford. 
 
 The same vigorous measures were pursued 
 in every quarter where there was reason to 
 fear resistance. Cromwell everywhere trans- 
 ferred the chief army commands to men in 
 whom he could best confide, and quartered 
 troops most effectively against the various 
 chances of insurrection. As an additional se- 
 curity, he sent his son Henry into Ireland, and 
 Monk into Scotland, to deal upon the spot with 
 any sudden defections. 
 
 Henry Cromwell had inherited the largest 
 share of his father's genius dispensed to his 
 children. He had risen rapidly to the rank of 
 a colonel, by purely honourable service in the 
 Irish campaign ; acquitted himself with great 
 ability in the " little" Parliament ; and was 
 generally supposed to have no mean share in 
 his father's confidence and counsel. A special 
 part of his instructions on the present mission 
 appears to have been, to observe in the various 
 counties through which he travelled from Lon- 
 don to Holyhead, as well as in Ireland, how 
 the people, and Che army in particular, stood af- 
 fected to the present government.* When he 
 arrived in Dublin, he found Fleetwood in some 
 anxiety and alarm ; and but for his sudden ap- 
 pearance, the enthusiasm with which he was 
 received, and the courteous address, singular 
 skilfulness, and admirable good sense with 
 which he treated all parties he found, it is 
 more than doubtful whether the Protectorate 
 could have been quietly established there. 
 When, about a month before, it had been put 
 to the vote, at a meeting of the commissioners 
 of government, with three or four principal 
 officers of the army, whether they should pro- 
 ceed without delay to proclaim the Lord Pro- 
 tector, it was only carried in the affirmative by 
 a single voice. t From that time, Ludlow in- 
 forms us in his memoirs, he entirely withdrew 
 himself from the civil government, and contin- 
 ued to act in his military capacity alone.t 
 
 * Several Proceedings, p. 149, 162. 
 
 t Ludlow 's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 482. 
 
 t Yet Henry Cromwell produced even a considerable ef- 
 fect on this sturdy Republican. Their interview, as re- 
 corded by himself, has various very interesting points in it, 
 characteristic of the artifices of the Lord Protector, and also 
 of the honest and sincere distinctions that were wisely 
 drawn by such men as Ludlow between the power of the 
 sword before and after the death of Charles the First. " He 
 sent," says Ludlow, " his second sou, Col. Henry Cromwell, 
 into Ireland, to feel the pulse of the officers there touching 
 his coming over to command in that nation, where he ar- 
 rive'], attended only by one servant ; and landing near my 
 country house, I sent him my coach to receive him, and to 
 bring him thither, where he stayed till Lieut. -gen. Fleet- 
 wood, with several officers, came with coaches to conduct 
 him to Dublin. Having made what observations he could 
 of persons and things in Ireland, he resolved upon his re- 
 turn ; of which having given me advice, I desired him to 
 take my house in his way, and to that end dined with him 
 on the day of his departure, at the lieutenant-general's in 
 the castle. After dinner, we went together to my house 
 at Monctown, where, after a short collation, walking in the 
 garden, I acquainted him with the grounds of my dissatis- 
 faction with the present state of affairs in England, which 
 I assured him was no sort personal, but would be the same 
 were my own father alive and in the place of his. He told 
 me that his father looked upon me to be dissatisfied, upon *
 
 570 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Everything was quiet, however, and promised 
 to continue so, when Henry Cromwell, after a 
 sojourn of three weeks, returned to England. 
 
 Monk's mission to Scotland was not less suc- 
 cessful. He vanquished the Royalist move- 
 ment under Middleton ; removed Robert Lil- 
 burne, an honest Republican, from his com- 
 mand ; superseded three anti-Protectorate zeal- 
 ots, Okey, Overton, and Alured ; and adminis- 
 tered correction to the regiments of Harrison 
 and Pride, at this time quartered in Scotland, 
 though their leaders were in the south. Over- 
 ton was Milton's friend, and the great poet, 
 though personally attached to Cromwell, was 
 so far from deserting him in his disgrace, that 
 he selected that very time for the offer of his 
 most affectionate tribute. " Te Overtone," 
 wrote the generous Milton, dragging his name 
 into a mention of Cromwell's council to which 
 Overton did not belong, " mihi multis abhinc 
 annis, et studiorum similitudine, et morum su- 
 avitate, concordia plusquam fraterna conjurvc- 
 tissime ; te Marstonensi praelio illo memorabili, 
 pulso sinistro cornu nostro, respectantes in fuga 
 duces stantem curn tuo pedite, et hostium im- 
 petus propulsantem inter densas untrinque ca?- 
 des vidre ; Scotico deinde bello, ut primum 
 Cromwelli auspiciis, tuo marte occupata Fifaj 
 littora, et patefactus ultra Sterlinium aditus est ; 
 te Scoti occidentals, te Boreales humanissi- 
 inum hostem, te Arcades extremae domitorem 
 fatentur." 
 
 Cromwell had, meanwhile, a comparatively 
 
 dittinct account from most men in the three nations, and 
 thereupon affirmed that he knew it to be his resolution to 
 carry himself with all tenderness towards me. I told him I 
 ought to have so much charity for his father to believe that 
 he apprehended his late- undertaking to have been abso- 
 lutely necessary, being well assured that he was not so 
 weak a man to decline his former station, wherein his 
 power was as great, and his wealth as much, as any ra- 
 tional man could wish, to procure to himself nothing but 
 envy and trouble. I supposed he would have agreed with 
 me in these sentiments; but he, instead of that, acknowl- 
 edged the ambition of his father in these words : ' You that 
 are here may think he had power, but they made a very kick- 
 shaw of kirn at I^ondon.' I replied that if it were so, they 
 did ill ; for he had deserved much from them. Then I pro- 
 ceeded to acquaint him with my resolution not to act in my 
 civil employment, and my expectation not to be permitted 
 to continue in my military command ; to which he answer- 
 ed, that he was confident I should receive no interruption 
 therein. I told him I could not foresee what his father 
 would do, but inclined to think that no other man in his 
 case would permit it. To this I added, that the reason of 
 my drawing a sword in this war was to remove those ob- 
 structions that the civil magistrate met with in the dis- 
 charge of his duty, which being now accomplished, I could 
 not but think that all things ought for the future to run in 
 their proper and genuine channel ; for as this extraordinary 
 remedy is not to be used till the ordinary fail to work its 
 proper effect, so ought it to be continued no longer than the 
 necessity of using it subsists ; whether as this they called I 
 a government had no other means to preserve itself but ' 
 such as were violent, which not being natural, could not be 
 lasting. ' Would you, then,' said he, ' have the sword laid 
 down? I cannot but think you believe it to be as much 
 your interest to have it kept up as any man !' / confessed \ 
 1 had been of that opinion while I was persuaded there was 
 a necestity for it, which seemed to me to be note over. I ac- 
 counted it to be much more my interest to >ee it well laid 
 down, there being a vast difference between using the sword 
 to restore the people to their rights and privileges, and the 
 keeping it up for the robbing and despoiling them of the 
 same. But company coming in, and the time for his going 
 on board approaching, we could not be permitted to con- 
 tinue our discourse ; so, after we had taken leave of each 
 other, he departed from Ireland, and upon his arrival at 
 Chester, was attended by many of the late king's party, and 
 among others by Col. Molson, who inquiring of him how 
 he left affairs in Ireland, he answered, very well, only that 
 tome who were in love with their power must be removed," 
 Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 490-492. 
 
 easy task at home, for the chief portion of the 
 people in and near London were still content 
 to wait in a kind of patient indifference what 
 the future would bring forth.* The Presbyte- 
 rians, who always numbered thickly in the city, 
 he had in some sort conciliated by placing cer- 
 tain members of their body on his commFssion 
 for the approval of preachers, and Bishop Bur- 
 net tells us all that we need farther know con- 
 cerning the bargain by which this sordid set 
 consented to be duped. " As for the Presby- 
 terians," says the bishop, indulging, in his usu- 
 al coarse fashion, at once the falsehood and 
 the truth, " they were so apprehensive of the 
 fury of the Commonwealth party, thai they 
 thought it a deliverance to be rescued out of their 
 hands ; many of the Republicans began to pro- 
 fess deism ; and almost all of them were for 
 destroying all clergymen, and for breaking ev- 
 erything that looked like the union of a nation- 
 al church. They were for pulling down the 
 churches, for discharging the tithes, and for 
 leaving religion free, as they called it, without 
 either encouragement or restraint. Cromwell 
 assured the Presbyterians he would maintain 
 a public ministry with all due encouragement ; 
 and he joined them in a commission with some 
 Independents, to be the triers of all those who 
 were to be admitted to benefices. These dis- 
 posed also of all the churches that were in the 
 gift of the crown, of the bishops, and of the 
 cathedral churches : so this softened them." 
 
 More respectable dupes of a different class 
 were represented by John Goodwin, who, with 
 an infinite and almost boundless trust in the 
 lord-generalship, was troubled with thick-com- 
 ing fancies about the Protectorate, and feared 
 it might one day intercept the Millennium. Bish- 
 op Burnet has still more aptly described Crom- 
 well's masterly manner of cajoling John Good- 
 win. He it was, the bishop tells us, " who first 
 brought in Arminianism among the sectaries, 
 for he was for liberty of all sorts. Cromwell 
 hated that doctrine ; for his beloved notion was, 
 that once a child of God was always a child of 
 God. Now he had led a very strict life for 
 above eight years together before the war ; so 
 he comforted himself much with his reflections 
 on that time, and on the certainty of perseve- 
 rance. But none of the preachers were so thor- 
 ough-paced for him, as to temporal matters, as 
 Goodwin was ; for he not only justified the put- 
 ting the king to death, but magnified it as the 
 most glorious action men were capable of. He 
 filled all people with such expectation of a glo- 
 rious thousand years speedily to begin, that it 
 looked like a madness possessing them. It was 
 no easy thing for Cromwell to satisfy those, 
 
 * The peculiar feelings which lay at the bottom of this 
 indifference, or patience, have been thus described by an 
 actor in the events of the time : "Tliat which disposed the 
 minds of the people to abstain from a present protestation 
 against this government, besides the agony of the late confu- 
 sions, and the astonishment upon the new wonderful altera- 
 tion, was, that it was but temporary, and that limited to a 
 very short time ; a free Parliament was to be called within 
 so many months, which was entirely to consider and settle 
 the government of the kingdom, and to remove all those 
 obstructions which hinder the peace and happiness of the 
 nation, and to restore it to that tranquillity and quiet it had 
 been so long deprived of; and the Protector was sworn to 
 a due observation of all those articles which he had him- 
 self prescribed for his own rules and bounds, and therefore 
 the more Hope that he would be contented to be limited by 
 them." Letter from a member of the late 1'arliamtnt to one 
 of Ms highness's council.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 571 
 
 when he took the power into his own hands ; 
 since that looked like a step to kingship, which 
 Goodwin had long represented as the great anti- 
 Christ that hindered Christ being set on his throne. 
 To these he said, and, as some have told me, 
 with many tears, that he would rather have ta- 
 ken a shepherd's staff than the Protectorship, 
 since nothing was more contrary to his genius 
 than a show of greatness ; but he saw it was 
 necessary at that time to keep the nation from 
 falling into extreme disorder, and from becom- 
 ing open to the common enemy, and therefore 
 he only stepped in between the living and the 
 dead, as he phrased it, in that interval, till God 
 should direct them on what bottom they ought 
 to settle ; and he assured them that then he 
 would surrender the heavy load lying upon him 
 with a joy equal to the sorrow with which he 
 was affected while under that show of dignity. 
 To men of this stamp he would enter into the terms 
 of their old equality, shutting the door, and making 
 them sit down, covered, by htm, to let them see how 
 little he valued those distances that for form sake 
 he was bound to keep up with others. These dis- 
 courses commonly ended in a long prayer." 
 
 With Royalists, again, Cromwell held a dif- 
 ferent way, concerning which the bishop is 
 able to proffer some information also. In pro- 
 portion as a single life seemed alone to stand 
 between them and power, he knew that assas- 
 sination would become more and more their 
 policy.* He declared, therefore, in quarters 
 from which he was aware it would speedily be 
 repeated in their places of chief resort, " he de- 
 clared," according to the bishop, " often and 
 openly, that in a war it was necessary to re- 
 turn upon any side all the violent things that 
 any of the one side did to the other. This was 
 done for preventing greater mischief, and for 
 bringing men to fair war ; therefore, he said, 
 assassinations were such detestable things, that 
 he would never begin them ; but if any of the 
 king's party should endeavour to assassinate 
 him, and fail in it, he would make an assassin- 
 ating war of it, and destroy the whole family : 
 and he pretended he had instruments to exe- 
 cute it, whensoever he should give order for 
 it. The terror of this was a better security to 
 him than his guards." 
 
 To such of the Royalists, at the same time, 
 as in any way proffered him allegiance, he had 
 nothing but courtesy and favour, while from 
 such as were at all detected in plots against 
 his government or person, he would not con- 
 sent to avert the law's heaviest arm. He had 
 judged rightly in ascribing the first place in Roy- 
 alist hopes and resolves to schemes of assas- 
 sination. Within a brief space after the dec- 
 larations recorded by Burnet, a project of this 
 kind, unparalleled for its shameless atrocity, had 
 been set on foot in Paris. 
 
 In Paris Charles Stuart still lived, in the 
 mimic state of a king, with his Lord-keeper 
 
 * He had, in point of fact, already hod experience of this. 
 Within a fortnight of his inauguration a plot came before 
 his council. The conspirators were all Royalists. It was 
 a wild and foolish scheme, hut its groundwork was sup- 
 posed to be the feasibility of assassinating Cromwell as he 
 went into the city. Eleven of the plotters were arrested 
 at a tavern in the Old Bailey, the most distinguished of 
 whom were a Mr. Thomas Button and a son of Bunce, who 
 was one of the four aldermen impeached by the Independ- 
 ents in 1617, and was now in exile with Charles Stuart. 
 The" were sent to the Tower, and kept imprisoned there. 
 
 Ormond, his Chancellor of the Exchequer Hyde, 
 his privy councillors and officers of household. 
 It will naturally be supposed that Hyde had a 
 sinecure in his office. This pitiful court was 
 in truth in a villanous condition of beggary. A 
 clean shirt was a rarity, and a good dinner a 
 thing long remembered.* Surrounded by such 
 sordid wants, Charles Stuart yet spent his 
 monthly allowance of six thousand francs from 
 the French king with a profligate and reckless 
 profusion while it lasted, in which no beggar 
 j or pensioner has before or since excelled him. 
 But suddenly the rise of the Protectorate of 
 the renewed government by a single person 
 shed rays of unaccustomed hope upon his rag- 
 ged courtiers, and he was induced to turn aside 
 for a time from the embraces of Lucy Walters, 
 to listen to the lively project of a general mus- 
 ter of murderers from Ormond and Hyde. 
 
 In a short space, a proclamation had obtain- 
 ed extensive circulation through private chan- 
 nels in Paris and London, which began thus : 
 " By the king, Charles the Second, by the grace 
 of God, King of England, Scotland, France, and 
 Ireland, defender of the faith, to all our good and 
 loving subjects, peace and prosperity. Where- 
 as a certain mechanic fellow, by name Oliver 
 Cromwell, hath, by most wicked and accursed 
 ways and means, against all laws, both divine 
 and human, most tyrannically and traitorously 
 usurped the supreme power over our said king- 
 doms. . . . these are in our name to give free- 
 dom and liberty to any man whomsoever, with- 
 in any of our three kingdoms, by pistol, sword, 
 or poison, or by any other ways or means what- 
 soever, to destroy the life of the said Oliver 
 Cromwell, wherein they will do an act accepta- 
 ble to God and good men." The proclamation 
 farther promised, "in the faith of a Christian 
 king," to the perpetrators and his heirs, a re- 
 ward of five hundred pounds a year forever, 
 and the honour of knighthood ; and " if he is 
 a soldier, the office of a colonel, with such oth- 
 er honourable employment as may render him 
 capable of attaining to farther preferment cor- 
 responding to his merit."! Copies of this in- 
 famous proclamation, which has been attribu- 
 ted, $ on excellent authority, to the ready pen 
 of Sir Edward Hyde, were speedily, as 1 have 
 said, and very largely circulated ; but solemn 
 secrecy was at the same time preserved, and 
 they were, of course, communicated to none 
 but those from whom good faith, perhaps en- 
 gagement in the purposed enterprise, was 
 thought beyond question sure. 
 
 But what is good faith among assassins ! 
 Cromwell had already began a system of espi- 
 onage, which kept in nearly every Royalist or 
 fanatic circle " a servant feed." The very 
 
 * There is not a particle of exaggeration in this. " I do 
 not know," says one of them (Clarendon's State Papers, 
 vol. in., p. 174), in a letter dated the 27th of June, 1653, 
 " I do not know that any man is yet dead for want of bread, 
 which really I wonder at. I am sure the king owes for all 
 he hath eaten since April, and I am not acquainted with 
 one snrvant of his who hath a pistole in his pocket. Fw* 
 or six of us eat together one meal a day for a pistole a week ; 
 but all of us owe, for God knows how many weeks, to the 
 poor woman that feeds us." In another letter, of the date 
 of the 3d of April, 1634, we find this passage : " I want 
 shoes and shirts, and the Marquis of Ormond is in no better 
 condition. What help, then, can we give our friends !" 
 Many similar proofs might be quoted. 
 
 t Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 24S-9. 
 
 i See Godwin's Commonwealth, vol. iv.
 
 572 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 agents whom Charles Stuart employed were 
 most frequently the men who betrayed his se- 
 crets ;* the assassins on whose daggers he 
 most relied were generally men who seduced 
 his wretched adherents into imaginary plots, 
 that by opportune discovery they might curry 
 favour with the Lord Protector. A man of this 
 class was a Major Henshaw. On the appear- 
 ance of the proclamation he repaired to Paris, 
 in company with an enthusiastic young Royal- 
 ist named Gerard. t Here a conspiracy was 
 organized, and Gerard and Henshaw returned 
 to England to complete it. The Lord Protec- 
 tor was to be murdered on the road as he pass- 
 ed from Whitehall to Hampton Court the 
 guards at the former place were to be sudden- 
 ly disarmed the town surprised and Charles 
 II. proclaimed. In this plot a number of men 
 engaged, and it was given in evidence on 
 the trial that Cromwell received notice of the 
 design but a few hours before it was to have 
 been executed, and was only able to render it 
 abortive by crossing the water at Putney, and 
 thus avoiding the ambuscade. But this was 
 merely to conceal the treachery of Henshaw, 
 who, having disclosed everything in time to the 
 council, suddenly vanished from the whole af- 
 fair, and was seen in it no more.J The truth 
 was, that the chief conspirators were taken the 
 night before the appointed day ; some of them, 
 as Gerard, were dragged out of their beds to 
 prison ; and a variety of others, on little or no 
 pretence whatever, were seized in the charac- 
 ter of accessories. 
 
 A high court of justice was instantly erected 
 by ordinance, and the three leading conspira- 
 tors, Gerard, Vowel, and Fox, were at once 
 placed upon their trial. II Fox pleaded guilty, 
 in furtherance of a secret arrangement, to cor- 
 roborate in that way the secret evidence of 
 Henshaw, and earned and obtained his pardon. 
 Vowel and Gerard defended themselves gal- 
 lantly, but unavailingly.H" A scaffold was now 
 
 * The same system followed Charles closely when he 
 left France for Cologne. On one occasion the letters were 
 opened at the postofiice, and a despatch was found from a 
 retainer in Charles's service, named Manning, to Thurloe. 
 Being questioned before Charles, Manning confessed that 
 he received an ample maintenance from the Protector, but 
 defended himself on the ground that he was careful to 
 communicate nothing but what was false. That his plea 
 was true, appeared from his despatch, which was filled with 
 a detailed account of a fictitious debate in the council ; but 
 even the falsehoods which he had sent to England had oc- 
 casioned the arrest and imprisonment of several Royalists, 
 and Manning was shot as a traitor at Duynwald, in the 
 territory of the Duke of Neuburg. Lingard's England, 
 vol. ii. Clar., iii., 563-9. Whitelocke, 633. Thurloe, iv., 
 293. 
 
 t Colonel John Gerard, only twenty-two years of age, 
 first cousin to Charles Gerard, created a baron by Charles 
 the First, in 1645, anJ afterward, in 1679, made Earl of 
 Marclesfield. 
 
 t It was pretended on the part of the prosecution that he 
 had escaped. Thurloe discloses to us, however, that he 
 was safe in the Tower. 
 
 t) Cromwell appears to have merely seized the occasion 
 as a good one for taking some eminent persons into custody, 
 among whom were Sir Gilbert Gerard, brother to the colo- 
 nel, the Earl of Oxford, Sir Richard Willis, and the two 
 Ashburnhams ; done upon the poorest pretence of suspect- 
 ing that they were concerned in the conspiracy. The pris- 
 oners altogether exceeded forty in number. 
 
 II Commissioner Lisle sat as its president. The other 
 judges were Aske and Nicholas of the upper bench, Atkins 
 of the Exchequer, Steele recorder, seven aldermen, and 
 twenty other persons. 
 
 IT Vowel's first demand was a more equitable form of trial 
 a trial by jury of peers, according to the sixth article of 
 the Government of the Commonwealth. The court an- 
 
 ! erected still more rapidly than the high court of 
 justice, and Vowel died upon it with the glorying 
 sense of martyrdom ; and Gerard, after avow- 
 als of enthusiastic royalty, mingled with protes- 
 tations not less earnest that the murder of the 
 | Lord Protector formed no part of what he meant 
 to have done, perished there also.* 
 
 But a still more memorable act of justice was 
 performed an hour later on the same scaffold, 
 which struck still wider terror into the enemies 
 of authority in England. Among the brilliant 
 legacies of foreign supremacy left to Cromwell 
 by the statesmen were the adjusted prelimina- 
 ries of a treaty between the Commonwealth 
 and the Portuguese. These, however, during 
 the recent changes of state authority, had not 
 yet been signed, though circumstances! had 
 only increased a desire to have them ratified 
 on the part of the Lisbon court. Meanwhile, 
 an extraordinary incident had occurred to the 
 Portuguese embassy. About a fortnight before 
 the dispersion of the little Parliament, a sud- 
 den dispute, as if by some strange fatality, 
 arose in the new Exchange in the Strand, be 
 tween Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to the Por- 
 tuguese ambassador, and this very Gerard, 
 whose execution we have just witnessed. A 
 scuffle followed, but the combatants were sep- 
 arated. The next evening, however, Pantaleon 
 repaired to the same place with a body of arm- 
 ed companions, and assaulted and killed a per- 
 son named Green way, quite unconcerned in ihe 
 dispute, whom he mistook for Gerard. His pur- 
 pose, as he believed, being effected, he took 
 refuge in the house of the ambassador ; but 
 that minister, after having in vain pleaded his 
 privilege, was obliged to surrender the assassin 
 and his accomplices, who were at once com- 
 mitted to Newgate. Their trial followed with- 
 in a few months after Cromwell's elevation, 
 amid unprecedented excitement in behalf of 
 the accused on the part of foreign courts and 
 their ministers, and on the part of the London, 
 populace against them.} Pantaleon was con- 
 
 swered that they were his peers, and that he might see 
 that the individuals on the bench exceeded twelve in num- 
 ber ! Glyn affirmed, moreover, that the ordinance, though 
 made only by the Protector and council, was undoubtedly 
 in force till the Parliament should repeal it. He added 
 that, in the old law of treason, king signified merely supreme 
 governor, that it had been so construed in the case of a 
 queen, and that it equally extended to a Lord Protector. 
 
 * Nor did Cromwell's retaliation on Charles and his as- 
 sassins close here. He ordered a " True Account of the 
 late Bloody Conspiracy" to be published as by special au- 
 thority, in which Charles Stuart is expressly described as 
 a man bedabbled in all the blood that had been shed in 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, and naturally a nullilidian 
 in all points of civil honesty, as well as religion. " His de- 
 meanour, therefore," the writer adds. " being well weighed, 
 we need say little concerning his faith, as supposing not 
 many will fall in love with him for that, which he seems 
 not much to love ; but if we consider his education, and his 
 alliances with relations and dependancies upon foreign 
 papists, we may easily conclude what religion he is of, if 
 any : so that, whether we call to mind the fate and wretch- 
 edness of his family, or his own personal qualifications, we 
 conceive it hardly imaginable that an}' pious, honest, and 
 sober-minded man would contribute so much as a thought, 
 much less embroil his country in blood, for the restoring so 
 blood-guilty, perfidious, and infamous a house and person." 
 
 t It was supposed that Cromwell already contemplated 
 hostilities against Spain, a prospect hailed with natural 
 delight by the enemies of that power. 
 
 t One of the foreign ministers distinctly declares that 
 Pautaleon was sacrificed to the clamours of the people. 
 But had he, or had he not, committed the murder ? His 
 friends said it was a mistake an accident a matter of self- 
 defence ; but the friends of murderers are fond of that argu- 
 ment. On the trial it was pleaded for Pantaleon, 1st. That
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 573 
 
 demned with four of his accomplices, and though 
 three of the latter were pardoned,* no influence 
 or argument, no threat or inducement, could 
 prevail with Cromwell in favour of the chief 
 offender. To demonstrate still more openly to 
 the world of Europe the fearlessness and pow- 
 er of the new authority in England, he so ar- 
 ranged that the morning of the day appointed 
 for the execution of Pantaleon should he fixed 
 for the final settlement of the Portuguese treaty. 
 Within a few hours after the ambassador had 
 signed that treaty,! his brother's head fell for 
 the crime of murder upon a public scaffold 
 the same scaffold on which had perished, one 
 hour before, that very Gerard, in connexion 
 with whom the crime may be said to have be- 
 gun amid the approving shouts of an immense 
 crowd, who had gathered to witness the scene 
 of terrible retribution. $ 
 
 The statesmen had already taught habits of re- 
 spect and fear to the foreign powers of Europe, 
 and Cromwell thus early showed that he would 
 improve upon that lesson. It is certain that 
 the wily Mazarin, then prime minister of France, 
 had been induced at its commencement to fa- 
 vour Gerard's plot in Paris,^ and that one of 
 
 he was an ambassador, and therefore answerable to no one 
 but his master ; and, 2d. That he was a person attached to 
 the embassy, and therefore covered by the privilege of his 
 principal. But the instrument which he produced in proof 
 of the first allegation was no more than a written promise 
 that he should succeed his brother in office ; and in reply 
 to the second, it was maintained that the privilege of an 
 ambassador, whatever it might be, was personal, and did 
 not extend to the individuals in his suite. At the bar, after 
 several refusals, he was induced, by the threat of the peine 
 forte et dure, to plead no euilty ; and his demand of coun- 
 sel, on account of his ignorance of English law, was re- 
 jected on the ground that the court was " of counsel equal 
 to the prisoner and the Commonwealth." 
 
 * The fourth was Pantaleon's immediate retainer, who 
 was proved to have been foremost in the deed. He was 
 hanged at Tyburn on the day of his master's execution. 
 
 t I can adduce an eminent authority in praise of this 
 treaty, which was, as I have said, the work of the states- 
 men. No less a person than Lord-chancellor Hyde, in his 
 speech to both Houses, May 8, 1661, culls it " in very many 
 respects the most advantageous treaty to this nation that 
 ever was entered into with any prince or people." And 
 again, in the same speech, he says, "Every article in it 
 but one [a liberty given to Portugal to make levies of ten 
 thousand men for their service] was entirely for the benefit 
 of this nation, for the extraordinary advancement of trade, 
 for the good of religion, and for the honour of the crown." 
 Lives of the Lord-chancellors, vol. ii., p. 172. 
 
 I I grieve to have to subjoin that, by an execution of a 
 different kind some short time before, Cromwell had sought, 
 and not unsuccessfully, to propitiate the Presbyterians. I 
 was not acquainted with the circumstances till I saw them 
 described in Dr. Lingard's History. Colonel Worsley had 
 apprehended in his bed a Catholic clergyman of the name 
 of Southworth, who, thirty-seven years before, had been 
 convicted at Lancaster, and sent into banishment. The 
 old man (he had passed his seventy-second year), at his ar- 
 raignment, pleaded that he had taken orders in the Church 
 of Rome, but teas innocent of any treason. The recorder 
 advised him to withdraw his plea, and gave him four hours 
 for consideration. But Southworth still simply owned that 
 he was a Catholic and in orders. Judgment of death was 
 pronounced ; and Cromwell, notwithstanding the urgent 
 solicitations of the French and Spanish ambassadors, re- 
 solved that he should suffer. It was not that the new Pro- 
 tector approved of sanguinary punishments in matters of 
 religion, but that he had no objection to purchase ihe good 
 will of the fierce, sordid Presbyterians by shedding the 
 blood of a priest. Whether it were through curiosity or 
 respect, two hundred carriages and a crowd of horsemen 
 followed the hurdle on which Southworth was drawn to 
 the place of execution. On the scaffold he spoke with sat- 
 isfaction of the manner of his death, hut at the same time 
 pointed out the inconsistency of the men who pretended to 
 nave taken up arms for liberty of conscience, arid yet shed 
 the blood of those who differed from them in religious opin- 
 ions. He suffered the usual punishment of traitors. Lin- 
 gard,-vul. ii., p. 211, 212. 
 
 This wag in his doubt as to the real condition of things 
 
 his confidential emissaries, De Baas, had fa- 
 voured it in London ; but the execution of Ge- 
 rard, and the as ignominious return of De Baas, 
 convinced the cardinal of his error, and no- 
 thing hereafter checked the servile desire of fa- 
 vour with which "all the kings of the earth 
 prostrated themselves before this idol."* Am- 
 bassadors and envoys from most of the princes 
 of Europe crowded to the court of the Protec- 
 torate, and the anterooms of its palace were 
 filled with their hopes and fears. In receiving 
 them he abridged no jot of the state of a sov- 
 ereign. He had now removed all his familyt 
 including his aged and excellent mother, who 
 passed her few remaining days and nights in 
 continual alarm for her dear son's safety ; his 
 wife, " who seemed at first unwilling to re- 
 move thither, though afterward she became bet- 
 ter satisfied with her grandeur ;"t and his fa- 
 vourite daughter Claypole, whom, though mar- 
 ried, he could not bear to see separated from 
 his side ; his gentle and even handsome like- 
 ness of himself, Mary ; and his mirthful young- 
 est Frances from their old apartments in the 
 Cockpit, to share the splendours of his palace 
 at Whitehall. The latter had been newly fur- 
 nished for their reception in a most costly and 
 magnificent style ; and in the banqueting-room 
 was placed a chair of state on a platform, rais- 
 ed by three steps above the floor. Here the 
 Protector stood to receive the ambassadors. 
 They were instructed to make three reveren- 
 
 in England a doubt for which even the crafty Italian may 
 be well excused. The Royalists told him, it would seem, 
 and naturally enough, that nothing could be more precari- 
 ous and uncertain than the government of the Protector; 
 that he was almost without friends ; that the Anabaptists 
 had deserted him ; that the Republicans hated him ; and 
 that even the army was divided respecting him ; while, on 
 the other hand, the bulk of the English nation, the old 
 Royalists, and the Presbyterians, looked with earnest im- 
 patience for the restoration of the house of Stuart. Maza- 
 rin, startled at last into some belief of this, despatched an 
 emissary named De Baas, ostensibly to assist Bordeaux in 
 his negotiations for a treaty, but in reality to confer with 
 the Gerard conspirators, to inquire out the malecontents, 
 and, if he found the schemes that were in contemplation 
 feasible, to favour them to the extent of his power. But 
 all this, as soon as conceived by Mazarin, was known to 
 Cromwell, and shortly after De Baas's arrival in London, 
 Cromwell sent for him, confronted him with one of the 
 conspirators, and having- heard him fully in his own vindi- 
 cation, overwhelmed him with indignation, his employer 
 with scorn, and so dismissed him. Bordeaux, at the same 
 time, lost no favour ; he had not known anything of the 
 plots, but continued admirably affected to the Protector. 
 
 * \Vicquelin, Ambassador and his Functions, p. 17. 
 
 t It is very strange, that about the only really illiberal 
 passage to be found in Mrs. Hutchinson's delightful memoirs 
 has relation to Cromwell's family. Had the woman's jeal- 
 ousy against woman of which as little as ever lodged in 
 heart may confidently be attributed to Lucy Hutchinson 
 anything to do with this ? This is her remark : " His wife 
 and children were setting up for principality, which suited 
 no better with any of them than scarlet on the ape ; only, 
 to speak the truth of himself, he had much natural great- 
 ness, and well became the place he hadusurped. His daugh- 
 ter Fleetwood was humbled, and not exalted with these 
 things ; but the rest were insolent fools. Claypole, who 
 married his daughter, and his son Henry, were two de- 
 bauched, ungodly Cavaliers. Richard was a peasant in his 
 nature, yet gentle and virtuous, but became not greatness. 
 His court was full of sin and vanity, and the more abomina- 
 ble, because they had not yet quite cast away the name of 
 God, hut profaned it by taking it in vain upon them. True 
 religion was now almost lost even among the religious party, 
 and hypocrisy became an epidemical disease, to the sad grief 
 of Col. Hutchinson, and all true-hearted Christians and 
 Englishmen. " There is great power, and a most melan- 
 choly truth, in the last observation. I may subjoin, from a 
 minute in the council-book, that the quarterly expenditure 
 of tho Protector's household amounted to 35,000. See 
 entry of March 14, 1655. 
 
 t Ludlow, vol. ii., p. 488.
 
 574 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ces, one at the entrance, the second in the mid- 
 way, and the third at the lower step, to each of 
 which Cromwell answered hy a slight inclina- 
 tion of the head. When they had delivered 
 their speeches, and received the reply of the 
 Protector, the same ceremonial was repeated 
 at their departure. On one occasion he was 
 requested to permit the gentlemen attached to 
 the embassy to kiss his hand ; but he advanced 
 to the upper step, bowed to each in succession, 
 waved his hand, and withdrew.* 
 
 This was that kind of regal state which even 
 the most discontented of the English people 
 could best endure to see assumed by Cromwell. 
 In the glory of their common country they for- 
 got their own gravest and most fatal dissen- 
 sions. Whatever quarrels they had among 
 each other, they always kept cordial agreement 
 in this that foreigners should not fool them 
 It became, therefore, matter of common re- 
 joicing, that here the Lord Protector went hand 
 and heart with Leveller, with Anabaptist, with 
 Presbyterian, with Republican. They saw him 
 often claim, indeed, far more than the common 
 exactions of old regal ceremony for the honour 
 of his Commonwealth ; and the more he exact- 
 ed, the more they rejoiced. In the complaints 
 of insulted ministers they might have even 
 heard their poet's lines reversed 
 
 " This is a Turkish, not an English court : 
 An Amurath an Amu rath succeeds, 
 Not Harry Harry" 
 
 and would still have thought themselves only 
 the more exalted. This it was, beyond a doubt, 
 which made many well-intentioned men too 
 prone to pardon the sins of Cromwell's domes- 
 tic rule ; and there was in it a mixture of good 
 and evil, though in such circumstances the evil 
 greatly preponderated. When we rejoice in 
 the feeling of what looks like tyranny practised 
 against another country than ours, we may be- 
 gin to doubt the perfect freedom of our own. 
 The one is little better than a secret set-off 
 against the other. It is the effort to conceal a 
 degrading truth by the glare of a miserable 
 vanity. The John Goodwins, who were allow- 
 ed to wear their hats in Cromwell's presence, 
 and, as it were, to " hob and nob" with my 
 Lord Protector, were for that reason better 
 contented to go home slaves. So an insult to 
 Portugal, or a kick to Spain, was found, in the 
 end, the most consolatory prescription for a 
 new wound to liberty at home ; and though it 
 was quite true that Cromwell realized his boast 
 of making the name of an Englishman as great 
 with foreign countries " as ever that of a Ro- 
 man had been," not less certain and melancholy 
 must be our addition, that he branded upon the 
 name of an Englishman a stamp of domestic 
 slavery as debased as ever in its worst days 
 that of a Roman suffered. 
 
 Bishop Burnet only describes the excellent 
 and just side of this English feeling when he 
 observes, in the history of his times, that 
 " Cromwell's maintaining the honour of the na- 
 tion in all foreign countries gratified the vanity 
 which is very natural to Englishmen ; of which 
 he was so careful, that though he was not a 
 ' crowned head, yet his ambassadors had all the 
 
 * See Lingard, vol. ii., p. 217 ; the Clarendon Papers, 
 rol. iii., p. 240 ; and various passages in the first volume 
 of Thurloe. 
 
 respect paid them which our kings' ambassa- 
 dors ever had. He said the dignity of the 
 crown was upon the account of the nation, of 
 which the king was only the representative 
 head ; so the nation being still the same, he 
 would have the same regard paid to his min- 
 isters."* There cannot be a doubt that the 
 only pleasing part of the writer's duty who 
 would fairly describe the Protectorate must be- 
 gin and end with his description of such passa- 
 ges in its foreign policy. 
 
 And yet it must not be admitted that, in the 
 treaty of peace with the Dutch, which was now 
 signed, after a ten months' tedious negotiation, 
 Cromwell secured those great advantages 
 which the statesmen had proposed by their 
 large expenditure of blood and treasure. The 
 reverse is, indeed, the fact. There cannot be 
 a question that the lofty pretensions set forth 
 by the statesmen in their conduct of the war 
 were silently abandoned in this treaty : and 
 Cromwell's motives were obvious and pressing. 
 Monk, after ceasing to become his creature, 
 explained them in the remark, that it was " a 
 base treachery in Cromwell to make a sudden 
 peace with the Dutch, and betray all the ad- 
 vantages of the war, that he might go up to the 
 throne with more peace and satisfaction." Peace 
 had at the moment become necessary for the 
 consolidation of the new authority, and it is ob- 
 vious, from the nature of the concessions Crom- 
 well claimed in lieu of those surrendered, that 
 the mere selfish thought of his own convenience 
 and safety actuated the settlement of the terms 
 of it. They made no mention of indemnity for 
 the past, or security for the future ; of the in- 
 corporation of the two states ; of the claim of 
 search; of the tenth herring; or even of the 
 exclusion of the Prince of Orange from the of- 
 fice of stadtholder. To these conditions the 
 pride of the states had refused to submit ; and 
 Cromwell was content to accept two other ar- 
 ticles, which, while they appeared equally to 
 affect the two nations, were in reality directed 
 against the Stuart family and its adherents.* 
 
 * In the same passage the bishop goes on to relate a most 
 amusing and characteristic anecdote. Still speaking of 
 Cromwell, he adds, " The States of Holland were in such 
 dread of him, that they took care to give him no sort of 
 umbrage ; and when at any time the king or his brothers 
 came to see their sister, the princess royal, within a day 
 or two after they used to send a deputation to let them 
 know that Cromwell had required of the States that they 
 should give them no harbour. King Charles, when he was 
 seeking for colours for the war with the Dutch in the year 
 1672, urged it for one, that they suffered some of his rebels 
 to live in their provinces. Borel, then their ambassador, 
 answered, that it was a maxim of long standing among 
 them, not to inquire upon what account strangers came to 
 live in their country, hut to receive them all, unless they 
 had been concerned in conspiracies against the persons of 
 princes. The king told him, upon that, how they had 
 used both himself and his brother. Borel, in great simpli- 
 city, answered, ' Ha ! sire, c'etoit uue autre chose : Crom- 
 well 6toit un grand homme, et il se faisoit craindre et par 
 terre et par mer.' This was very rough. The king's an- 
 swer was, ' Je me ferai craindre aussi a mon tour :' but he 
 was scarce as good as his word." 
 
 t Lingard, vol. ii., p. 224. In one of the abandoned arti- 
 cles of the treaty Cromwell had already betrayed his mo- 
 tives, which were, as far as possible, to distress his rival, 
 Charles Stuart, by stripping him of all hope of foreign sup- 
 port. From the Prince of Orange, so nearly allied to ths 
 royal family, Cromwell had little to fear during his minor- 
 ity; and, to render him incapable of benefiting the royal 
 cause in his more mature age, he attempted to exclude him 
 by the treaty from succeeding to those high offices which 
 might almost be considered as hereditary in his family. 
 The determined refusal of the States induced him to with-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 575 
 
 It was stipulated that neither commonwealth 
 should harbour or aid the enemies, rebels, or ex- 
 iles of the other ; but that either, being previous- 
 ly required, should order such enemies, rebels, 
 or exiles to leave its territory, under the penalty 
 of death, before the expiration of twenty -eight 
 days. The main provisions of the treaty belong 
 to history, and I need only here relate the other 
 article to which I have referred. This was, that 
 the same respect which had been paid to the flag 
 of the king should be paid to that of the Com- 
 monwealth. The Dutch did not object, and the 
 majority of the English people, not so thorough- 
 ly understanding the points surrendered as 
 this which they had achieved, were loud in 
 their rejoicings at this close of so long and ter- 
 rible a war. 
 
 Peace was proclaimed with great solemnity, 
 and " that same day, at night," says one of the 
 Dutch ambassadors, Jongestall, in an interest- 
 ing despatch to Frederic of Nassau, the "guns 
 went off at the Tower, and aboard the ships 
 three times, and bonfires made, according to 
 the customs of the country, before Whitehall, 
 and up and down the city. We did the like on 
 the back side of our house, towards the river, 
 and burned near eighty pitch barrels, and we 
 had trumpeters and others to play all the while. 
 The river was so full of boats that there was 
 hardly any water to be seen ; at the same time, 
 several lords and ladies of quality came to sec us, 
 whom we treated. In sum, all things were 
 done here in great solemnity. Yesterday, at 
 noon, we were invited to dinner to his royal 
 highness the Lord Protector, where we were 
 nobly entertained. Mr. Strickland and the mas- 
 ter of the ceremonies came to fetch us in two 
 coaches of his highness, about half an hour 
 past one, and brought us to Whitehall, where 
 twelve trumpeters were ready sounding against our 
 coming. My Lady Nieuport and my wife were 
 brought to his highness presently, the one by 
 Mr. Strickland, and the other by the master of 
 the ceremonies, who received us with great 
 demonstrations of amity. After we stayed a 
 little we were conducted into another room, 
 where we found a table ready covered. His 
 highness sat on one side of it, ALONE ; my Lord 
 Beverningk, Nieuport, and myself, at the upper 
 end ; and the Lord-president Lawrence, and 
 others, next us. There was in the same room 
 another table covered for other lords of the 
 council and others. At the table of my Lady 
 Protectrice dined my Lady Nieuport, my wife, 
 my Lady Lambert, my Lord Protector's daugh- 
 ter, and mine. The music played all the while 
 we were at dinner. The Lord Protector had us 
 into another room, where the Lady Protectrice 
 and others came to us, where we had also music 
 and voices, and a psalm sung, which his highness 
 gave us, and told us that it was yet the best paper 
 
 draw the demand ; but he still intrigued, through the 
 agency of Beverningk, with the leaders of the Louvestein 
 faction, and obtained a secret article, by which the States 
 of Holland and West Friesland promised never to elect the 
 Prince of Orange for their stadtholder, nor suffer him to 
 have the chief command of the army and navy. But the 
 secret transpired ; the other States highly resented this 
 clandestine negotiation ; complaints and remonstrances were 
 answered by apologies and vindications ; an open schism 
 was declared between the provinces, and every day added 
 to the exasperation of the two parties. The ultimate result 
 was decidedly to strengthen the claims of the young Prince 
 of Orange, and to baffle Cromwell. 
 
 that had been exchanged between us. And from 
 thence we were had into a gallery next the 
 river, where we walked with his highness about 
 half an hour, and then took our leaves, and 
 were conducted back again to our houses, after 
 the same manner as we were brought. My 
 Lord Protector showed a great deal of kindness 
 to my wife and daughter in particular." This is 
 certainly a pleasing picture of Cromwell's cour- 
 teous habits, and the at once dignified and 
 graceful conduct of his household. 
 
 Nor did the muses refuse to give their aid to 
 the dinners, the trumpets, and the pitch-bar- 
 rels, in celebration of this peace. Cambridge 
 and Oxford combined their choicest flowers of 
 Greek and Latin verse into one rich garland 
 for the brow of the Protector. The Cambridge 
 vice-chancellor, Seaman, led the way ; Arrow- 
 smith, Tuckery, and Horton, men who were 
 famous then ; Whichcote and Cudworth, men 
 famous still, followed after him.* The elder 
 and more venerable school of Oxford supplied 
 names and tributes more memorable still. Doc- 
 tor Owen, Doctor Zouch, Professor Harmer, 
 Doctor Bathurst, Leonard Lichfield, and Doc- 
 tor Busby, joined one chorus of praise to Crom- 
 well for his deeds in war and peace, and his 
 generous patronage of learning. t It proved a 
 good rehearsal for Charles II. Then a more 
 modest voice from a greater than these, John 
 Locke, at that time an accomplished student 
 of Oxford, arose to dignify the theme. t Pass- 
 ing them with this allusion merely, I have been 
 unable to pass one name which occurs towards 
 the close of the list, subscribed to verses which 
 transcend all the rest in a vile extravagance of 
 praise. " Tu Dux," exclaims this fervent flat- 
 terer, in very pitiful phrases, 
 
 ". . Tu dux pariter Terra Domitorq ; profundi, 
 Componant laudes cuncta elemenla tuas. 
 Cui mens alta subest pelagoq ; profundior ipso, 
 Cujus fama sonat, quam procul unda sonat. 
 
 Tu poteras solus motos componere fluctus, 
 Solus Neptunum sub tua vincla dare. 
 Magna simul fortis vicisti et multa : Trophsis 
 I i mare, sic pariter cedit arena tuis. 
 Nomine pacifico gestas insignia pacis, 
 Blandaq ; per titulos serpit Oliva tuos ;". 
 
 and the flatterer was Doctor South, who after- 
 ward earned a bishopric by calling Cromwell a 
 bankrupt beggarly fellow, of threadbare coat 
 and greasy hat ! 
 
 * Other names of eminence in their day are also found 
 among the authors of the Cambridge tributes, which were 
 published with the title of " Oliva Pacis. Ad Illustrissi- 
 mum Celsissimumque Oliverum, Reipub. Angliifi, Scotiae, 
 et Hiberni,e Dominum Protectorem ; de Pace cum Faedera- 
 tii Belgis feliciter sancita, Carmen Cantabrigiense." 
 
 t The Oxford men styled their effusions thus: " Musa- 
 rum Oxoniensium 'EAAIO<I>OP1'A. Sive, ob Fosdera, Au- 
 spiciis Serenissimi Oliveri Reipub. Ang. Scot, et Hiber. 
 Domini Protectoris, inter Rempub. Britannicam et Ordmes 
 Foederatos Belgii FiEliciter Stabilita, Geutis Togatse ad 
 vada Isidis Celeusina Metricum." 
 
 t The reader may be interested to see this early poetical 
 effusion of the young philosopher and lover of toleration 
 and liberty. Here it is : 
 
 "Pax regit Augusti, quem vicit Julius orbem : 
 
 Ille sago factus clarior, ille toga. 
 
 Ilns sua Roma vocat magnos et numina credit, 
 
 Hie quod sit mundi victor, et ille quies. 
 
 Tu helium et pacem populis des, unus utrisq ; 
 
 Major es ; ipse orbem vinris, et ipse regis. 
 
 Non hoininem 6 ccelo missum Te credimus ; unus 
 
 Sic poteras binos qui superare deos !" 
 
 i> In another discourse he called him " a lively picture 
 of Jeroboam," and had the impudence to say of the leading 
 ecclesiastics of the University in Cromwell's time (the time
 
 576 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 But the new Lord Protector of England had 
 a nobler congratulation, and in better Latin, 
 addressed to him at this period, with a name 
 attached to it, which, though humble then, and 
 kept down by the pressure of the world, has 
 now risen higher than his own, or than that 
 whole world itself, into the clearer region of 
 immortality. Milton published his " Defensio 
 Secunda," and thus addressed him. The Lat- 
 in is noble, but it translates into still nobler 
 English. 
 
 " Consider frequently," said this wise but too 
 partial counsellor, " in thy inmost thoughts, 
 how dear a pledge, from how dear a parent 
 recommended and intrusted (the gift liberty, 
 the giver thy country), thou hast received into 
 thy keeping. Revere the hope that is enter- 
 tained of thee, the confident expectation of 
 England ; call to mind the features and the 
 wounds of all the brave men who under thy 
 command have contended for this inestimable 
 prize ; call to mind the ashes and the image of 
 those who fell in the bloody strife ; respect the 
 apprehension and the discourse that is held of 
 us by foreign nations, how much it is they look 
 for in the recollection of our liberty so bravely 
 achieved, of our Commonwealth so gloriously 
 constructed ; which if it shall be in so short a 
 time subverted, nothing can be imagined more 
 shameful and dishonourable: last of all, REVERE 
 THYSELF, so deeply bound, that that liberty, in 
 securing which thou hast encountered such 
 mighty hardships, and faced such fearful perils, 
 shall, while in thy custody, neither be violated 
 by thee, nor any way broken in upon by others. 
 Recollect that thou thyself canst not be free un- 
 less we are so ; for it is fitly so provided in the 
 nature of things, that he who conquers another's 
 liberty, in the very act loses his own ; he becomes, 
 and justly, the foremost slave. But. indeed, if 
 he, the patron of our liberty, and (if I may so 
 speak) its tutelar divinity if he, of whom we 
 have held that no mortal was ever more just, 
 more saintlike and unspotted, should undermine 
 the freedom which he had but so lately built 
 up, this would prove not only deadly and de- 
 structive 'to his own fame, but to the entire and 
 universal cause of religion and virtue. The very j 
 substance of piety and honour will be seen to 
 have evaporated, and the most sacred ties and 
 engagements will cease to have any value with ! 
 our posterity, than which a more grievous 
 wound could not be inflicted on human inter- 
 ests and happiness since the fall of the first fa- ' 
 ther of our race. Thou hast taken on thyself 
 a task which will probe thee to the very vitals, 
 and disclose to the eyes of all how much is thy 
 courage, thy firmness, and thy fortitude; wheth- I 
 er that piety, perseverance, moderation, and jus- 1 
 tice really exist in thee, in consideration of which 
 we have believed that God hath given thee the 
 supreme dignity over thy fellows. To govern 
 three mighty states by thy counsels, to recall 
 the people from their corrupt institutions to a 
 purer and nobler discipline, to extend thy 
 thoughts and send out thy mind to our remo- 
 
 when this poem was printed), that " Latin was with them 
 a mortal crime, and Greek, instead of being owned for the 
 language of the Holy Ghost (as in the New Testament it is), 
 was looked upon as the sin against it ; so that, in a word, 
 they had all the confusions of Babel among them without 
 the diversity of tongues." 
 
 test shores, to foresee all and to provide for 
 all, to shrink from no labour, to trample under 
 foot and tear to pieces all the snares of pleas- 
 ure, and all the entangling seducements of 
 wealth and power these are matters so ardu- 
 ous, that in comparison of them the perils of war 
 are but the sports of children. These will win- 
 now thy faculties, and search thee to the very 
 soul ; they require a man sustained by a 
 strength that is more than human, and whose 
 meditations and whose thoughts shall be in 
 perpetual commerce with his Maker." 
 
 Admitting the premises on which this coun- 
 sel is founded, as freely as though under the 
 immediate influence and persuasiveness of 
 Cromwell himself, to which alone, on the sa- 
 cred lips of such a man as Milton, they are 
 fairly attributable, the time now approaches in 
 which a test will be applied to it, and to the 
 faith it rests upon, at once final and irrevoca- 
 ble. The Instrument of Government had fix- 
 ed the 3d of December for the meeting of the 
 first Parliament of the Protectorate, but in the 
 writs now issued Cromwell inserted the 3d of 
 September instead. That was his FORTUNATE 
 DAY, his day of Dunbar and Worcester ; and 
 with a sense of how much good fortune he 
 needed in the battle he was about to fight, he 
 selected the 3d of September for his first meet- 
 ing with this formidable enemy ! 
 
 Meanwhile Whitelocke returned from Sweden 
 with the ratification of a most favourable treaty 
 of commerce between England and that coun- 
 try, and a prohibition of protection and favour 
 to the enemies of either. It detached Sweden 
 from the interest of France, and engaged it to 
 maintain the liberty of trade in the Baltic 
 against Denmark, which was in the interest of 
 Holland. The news of Christina's extraordi- 
 nary resignation of her crown followed hard 
 upon his return, but her successor, Charles X., 
 at once confirmed the treaty.* This was no 
 
 * Whitelocke has given so interesting and graphic a 
 mention of Cromwell's style of receiving the ambassador 
 who brought the confirmation and assent of Charles the 
 Tenth, that the reader will thank me for inserting it here. 
 " His (the ambassador's) people," says the memorialist, 
 " went all bare, two and two before him in order, according 
 to their qualities; the best men last; the master of the 
 ceremonies next before him ; I on his right hand, and Strick- 
 land on his left hand. They made a handsome show in this 
 equipage, and so went up to the council chamber, where 
 the ambassador reposed himself about a quarter of an hour, 
 and then word being brought that the Protector was ready 
 in the Banqueting House, he came down into the court 
 aijain, and in the same order they went up into the Ban- 
 queting House. Whitehall court was full of soldiers in good 
 order, the stairs and doors were kept by the Protector's 
 guards in their livery coats, with halbens; the rooms and 
 passages in very handsome order ; the Banqueting House 
 was richly hung with arras, multitudes of gentlemen in it, 
 and of ladies in the galleries. The ambassador's people 
 were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within 
 the rails in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon 
 a foot-pace and carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of 
 state behind him, and divers of his council and servants 
 about him. The master of the ceremonies went before the 
 ambassador on the left side ; the ambassador in the middle, 
 betwixt me and Strickland, went up in the open lane of the 
 room. As soon as they came within the room, at the lower 
 end of the lane, they put off their hats : the ambassador a 
 little while after the rest ; and when he was uncovered, the 
 Protector also put off his hat, and answered the ambassa- 
 dor's three salutations in his coming up to him, and on the 
 foot-pace they saluted each other as usually friends do ; and 
 when the Protector put on his hat, the ambassador put on, 
 his as soon as the other. After a little pause, the ambas- 
 sador put off his hat, and began to speak, and then put it on 
 again ; and whensoever in his speech he named the king 
 his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England, he 
 moved his hat, especially if he mentioned anything of God,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 577 
 
 sooner done than the King of Denmark hasten- 
 ed to conciliate Cromwell also, and entered at 
 once into a treaty that the English traders 
 should pay no other customs or dues than the 
 Dutch, and that thus they should be enabled to 
 import on the same terms those naval stores 
 which before, on account of the heavy duties, 
 they had been content to buy at second-hand 
 of the Dutch. Thus had the Lord Protector 
 already signed four treaties favourable to Eng- 
 land, on the part of four great countries to which 
 she had been opposed, while France and Spain, 
 held to have been the two proudest nations of 
 the earth, inveterate foes to each other, were 
 struggling in a mean rivalry as to which should 
 first obtain his favour. 
 
 " Each knew that side must conquer lie would own, 
 And for him fiercely, as for empire, strove." 
 
 It is yet singular to observe, in one of his 
 private letters of the time, that he puts on to 
 his most confidential associates an appearance 
 of infinite humility, a regret for his poverty of 
 resources, and a reluctance to provoke too 
 much of the attention of men to his personal 
 and private doings. It is an answer to a re- 
 quest from the father of Richard Cromwell's 
 wife, apparently a request for co-operation in 
 some design of bestowing a new establishment 
 on Richard and his wife, becoming their new- 
 rank as eldest son and daughter to the Lord 
 Protector. But the Lord Protector is still the 
 lord-general, and shows equal caution and care. 
 " DBERE BROTHER, I receaved your lovinge 
 letter, for which I thanke you ; and surely were 
 it fitt to proceed in that husinesse, you should 
 not in the least have beene putt upon anythinge 
 butt the trouble, for indeed the land in Essex, 
 with, some monie in my hand, and some other rem- 
 nants, should have gone towards it. Butt in- 
 deed I am so unwillinge to be a Seeker after 
 the World, havinge had so much favour from 
 the Lorde in givinge me so much without seek- 
 inge, and soe unwillinge that Men should think 
 me soe, which they will though you only ap- 
 peare in it (for they will by one meanes or other 
 knowe it), that indeed I dare not meddle, nor 
 proceed therin. Thus I have tould you my 
 
 or the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low ; 
 and the Protector still answered him in the like postures 
 of civility. Trie ambassador spoke in the Swedish language, 
 and after he had done, being but short, his secretary did 
 interpret it in Latin. After his interpreter had donft, the 
 Protector stood still a pretty while, and putting off his hat 
 to the amlmssndor, with a carriage full of gravity and state, 
 he answered him in English," This simultaneous compli- 
 ment to the language of each country, unusual in these 
 conferences, was thought highly striking at the time, and a 
 new proof of Cromwell's affection and respect for Sweden. 
 From another source, I present the speech of our Lord 
 Protector, at once simple, direct, and happily turned. It 
 is about the briefest and best specimen on record of Crom- 
 well's eloquence in the Protectorate. " My lord ambassa- 
 dor, I have great reason to acknowledge with thankfulness 
 the respects and good affection of the king your master to- 
 wards this Commonwealth, and towards myself in particu- 
 lar, whereof I shall always retain a very grateful memory, 
 and shall be ready upon all occasions to manifest the high 
 sense and value I have of his majesty's friendship and alli- 
 ance. My lord, you are very welcome into England, and 
 during your abode here, you shall find all due regard and 
 respect to be given to your person, and to the business about 
 which yon come. I am very willing to enter into a nearer 
 and more strict alliance and friendship with the King of 
 Swedland, as that which in my judgment will tend much 
 to the honour and commodity of both nations, and to the 
 general advantage of the Protestant interest. I shall nomi- 
 nate some persons to meet and treat with your lordship 
 upon such particulars as you shall communicate to them." 
 
 4D 
 
 plain thoughts. My heartie love I present to 
 you and my Sister, and my blessingc and lore to 
 deere Doll and the little one, with love to all. I 
 rest your lovinge brother, OLIVER, P."* 
 
 Such letters may prove to us what things 
 widely separate and apart were the private and 
 public professions of this extraordinary man. 
 In public he was clearly to be held as merely 
 the organ of a higher power. Nothing was 
 done by his " seekinge" there. It was God who 
 spoke out in him ; who elevated men or de- 
 pressed them ; who " rained snares" upon his 
 enemies or ble.ssings on his friends ; who made 
 him, Oliver Cromwell, a prince, whether he 
 would or no, and was alone responsible for it ! 
 
 " For yet dominion was not hit design, 
 
 We owe that blessing not to him, but heaven, 
 Which to fair acts unsought rewards did join ; 
 Rewards, that less to him than us were given. "t 
 
 In private it was another matter. It became 
 him to reflect on his humility there, and do no- 
 thing that should provoke the remarks of men. 
 He was dust, and would return to dust ; and in 
 relation to that melancholy element which mere- 
 ly composed himself, had only to be patient and 
 suffer. It was the extreme rebound from this 
 state of feeling which gave birth to his worst 
 actions. God had taken him by the hand and 
 given him permission to walk, when, " to show 
 how he could walk, he strode. "$ Every new 
 
 * Tt is addressed, " For my lovinge brother, Richard Ma 
 jor, Esq., at Horsley, in Hampsheire." t Dtyden-. 
 
 t This is the expression of Walter Savage Landor, who 
 says finer things, in better English, than any other writer 
 of our time. It will be the honour and happiness of a suc- 
 ceeding agE to discover the priceless value of his books. 
 lie has made allusions to Cromwell very lately, and though 
 far from agreeing in all his remarks, they should find inser- 
 tion not the less in every notice of our English Lord Pro- 
 tector. " Cromwell," says Mr. LandoT, " was destitute of 
 all those elegances which adorned the Roman dictator, but 
 he alone possessed in an equal degree all those which ensure 
 the constancy of fortune. . . And was Cromwell, then, sin- 
 cere and pure? Certainly not : but he began in sincerity ; 
 and he believed to the last that every accession of power 
 was an especial manifestation of God's mercy. Fanaticism 
 hath always drawn to herself such conclusions from the 
 Bible. Power made him less pious, but more confident. 
 God had taken him by the hand at first, and had now let 
 him walk by himself. To skow how he could walk, he 
 strode. Religion, in the exercise of power, is more arbi trnry, 
 more intolerant, and more cruel than moriarchy ; and the 
 sordid arrogance of Presbyterianism succeeded to the splen- 
 did tytanny of Episcopacy. The crosier of Laud was un- 
 broken: those who had been the first in cursing it, seized 
 and exercised it ; it was to fall in pieces under the sword 
 'of Cromwell. To kirn alone are we indebted for the estab- 
 lishment of religious liberty. If a Vane and a Milton have 
 acknowledged the obligation, how feeble were the voices of 
 j all men living if the voices of all men living were raised 
 \ against it. Cromwell did indeed shed blood, but the blood 
 | he shed was solely for his country, although without it he 
 j never would have risen to the Protectorate." Mr. Landor, 
 then, contrasting Cromwell with Napoleon, thus proceeds : 
 j "A king should never be struck unless in a vital part 
 Cromwell, with many scruples, committed not this mistake : 
 Bonaparte, with none, committed it. The shadow of Crom- 
 well's name overawed the most confident and haughty. He 
 intimidated Holland, he humiliated Spain, and he twisted 
 the supple Mazarin, the ruler of France, about his finger. 
 All those nations had then attained the summit of their 
 prosperity ; all were unfriendly to the rising power of Eng- 
 land ; all trembled at the authority of that single man, who 
 coerced at oncn her aristocracy, her priesthood, and her 
 factions. No agent of equal potency and equal moderation 
 had appeared upon earth before. He walked into a den of 
 lions, and scourged them growling out: Bonaparte was 
 pushed into a menagerie of monkeys, and fainted at their 
 grimaces. . . Rudeness, falsehood, malignity, and revenge, 
 have belonged in common to many great conquerors, but 
 never to one great man. CromWell had indulged in the 
 least vile of these ; but on his assumption of power, he rec- 
 ollected that he was a gentleman. No burst of rage, no 
 rally of ribaldry, no expression of contemptuousnoss, was 
 ever heard from the Lord Protector. He could subdue, or
 
 578 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 accession to his power was, in other words, a 
 new manifestation of God's mercy, and the very 
 extravagance of his ways at last became only 
 the fullest demonstration of his and of God's 
 uncontrollable sovereignty ! It is not hard to 
 say what term we should apply to this, in any 
 other case than that of Cromwell. Meanwhile, 
 we see the disadvantages under which it placed 
 his immediate associates, relatives, dependants, 
 and followers, who had the man they knew in 
 private to contrast with the man the public 
 knew. 
 
 Between the issue of the writs and the meet- 
 ing of Parliament, the Lord Protector was en- 
 tertained in the city. Attended by his council, 
 the principal officers of the army, and many 
 persons of quality, he paraded in the midst of 
 his life-guards from Whitehall to Temple Bar. 
 Here the lord-mayor and aldermen were wait- 
 ing for him, when the former, advancing to his 
 coach, presented the city sword. This being 
 returned, the recorder, in an inflated city speech, 
 pronounced the compliments which are usually 
 paid to sovereigns, to " which learned harangue 
 the Lord Protector returned for answer ' that 
 he was greatly obliged to the city of London 
 for this and all former testimonies of respect ;' 
 and then, mounting his horse of state, rode in 
 a kind of triumph through the principal streets, 
 the several companies, in their livery gowns, 
 being placed on each side thereof, in scaffolds 
 erected for that purpose ; the lord-mayor car- 
 rying the sword bareheaded before him to Gro- 
 cers' Hall, where a most magnificent entertain- 
 ment was provided. After dinner his highness 
 knighted the lord-mayor, and made him a pres- 
 ent of his own sword from his side, which was 
 the first instance of the Protector's assuming 
 this piece of regal grandeur. The bells rang 
 all the day ; the Tower guns were fired at 
 his highness's taking leave of the city ; and, 
 about seven in the evening, he and his attend- 
 ants returned back to Whitehall in their coach- 
 es."* Ludlow has a striking remark, in his me- 
 moirs, on the result of this city visit. The ex- 
 hibition, he says, was contrived to let the world 
 see how good a "correspondence" prevailed 
 between the Protector and the capital, but 
 among discerning men it had a contrary effect. 
 It was perceived to be an act of force rather 
 than of choice. This appeared in the great 
 silence and little respect that was given to the 
 Lord Protector in his passage through the 
 streets, although he, to invite such respect, 
 rode bareheaded the greatest part of the way. 
 
 oof*te. or spell-bind the master-spirits of his age; but 
 it i a genius of a fur different order that is to seize and hold 
 firfority : it must be such a genius as Shakspeare's or Mil- 
 tow*. No sooner was Cromwell in his grave than all he 
 had won for himself and his country vanished. If we must 
 admire the successful, however brief and hollow the advan- 
 tages of their success, our admiration is not due to those 
 whose resources were almost inexhaustible, and which 
 nothing but profligate imprudence could exhaust, but to 
 those who. resisted great forces with small means, such as 
 Kosciuskoand Hofer, Hannibal and Sertorius, Alexanderand 
 Cffisar, Charles of Sweden and Frederic of Prussia. Above 
 all these, and above all princes, stands high Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, one of whose armies, in tho space of six weeks, had 
 seen the estuary of the Elbe and the steeples of Vienna ; 
 another, if a fever had not wasted it on the Lake of Como, 
 would, within less time, have chanted Luther's hymn in 
 St. Peter's. . . Signal as were Cromwell's earlier services 
 to his country," ends Mr. Landor, with a terrible and indis- 
 putable truth, "he lived a hypocrite, and died a traitor." 
 * Parliamentary History, vol. xx., p. 274. 
 
 " Some of his creatures had placed themselves 
 at the entrance of Cheapside, and began to shout ; 
 yet it took not at all with the people." The 
 people had not, in truth, in any way recovered 
 their indifference, notwithstanding all the ef- 
 forts of the last twelve months to propitiate and 
 excite them. It remained to be seen what a 
 Parliament would do. 
 
 At last arrived the eventful 3d of September. 
 It happened to be Sunday, but Cromwell still 
 adhered to his resolve that the new members 
 returned to serve in Parliament should meet 
 that day. Many things were strong in him, but 
 none so strong, with all his earnest submission 
 to the hand of God in human affairs, as a su- 
 perstitious sense of destiny and fortune. Up- 
 ward of three hundred representatives of the 
 people met accordingly, on Sunday afternoon, 
 in the abbey church of Westminster, and thence 
 repaired to the House of Commons at about 
 four o'clock. Here a message was sent, that 
 the Lord Protector awaited them in the Painted 
 Chamber, where he had arrived by water from 
 Whitehall. Thither they went accordingly to 
 his high-ness, who, " standing bare, upon a ped- 
 estal erected for that purpose," told them that, 
 having met, he desired rhey would now adjourn, 
 since he had things to communicate to them 
 " not so fit to be delivered that day," and would, 
 if they so pleased, meet them on the morning 
 of the day following, in the abbey church of 
 Westminster. The members bowed obedience, 
 returned to their House, and formally adjourn- 
 ed.* 
 
 It must have heavily taxed Cromwell's faith 
 in his fortunate day to withhold from sad fore- 
 bodings as he returned that evening to his pal- 
 ace. He could have little hope from those 
 three hundred English representatives, among 
 whom he had seen 1 steadily gazing upon himv 
 as he spoke in the Painted Chamber, the well- 
 remembered faces of Scot, of Hazlerig, and 
 Bradshaw ! Still Vane was not among them,f 
 nor Harry Marten, nor Algernon Sidney, nor 
 Edmund Ludlow. There was in that no indif- 
 ferent consolation. He had also succeeded in 
 his efforts to exclude some few of the more 
 fierce Republican officers, for all the power of 
 his government had been put forth to influence 
 the elections ; and, not content with this, the va- 
 rious returns had been officially examined by a 
 committee of his council, under pretext of see- 
 ing that the provisions of the " Instrument" were 
 observed. It was this pretext which sufficed 
 to exclude Major Wildman, Lord Grey of Gro- 
 by, and a few others, while Harrison and the 
 more violent Anabaptists were again placed un- 
 der positive restraint. He had also secured the 
 election of all his council, his principal officers, 
 and his household, excepting the Lord-viscount 
 Lisle. His sons Richard and Henry were re- 
 turned, and Fairfax and Blake. Many of the 
 nobility had been rejected, but the Earl of Stam- 
 ford, the Earl of Salisbury, and a few others, 
 had secured seats. Judges Hale and Thorpe, 
 Sergeant Glyn, and the Oxford vice-chancellor 
 Owen, sat also in this celebrated assembly, 
 than which no authoritative body, with greater
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 579 
 
 claims to respect and attention, had sat down 
 in England since November, 1640. Returned, 
 for the most part, under a fair working of many 
 admirable provisions out of Vane's reform bill, 
 it represented, beyond a doubt, the sense of at 
 least one large and most respectable portion of 
 the influential English people. The small bor- 
 oughs, the places most exposed to influence 
 and corruption, had been disfranchised. Of the 
 four hundred members of which the Parliament 
 consisted, two hundred and fifty-one had been 
 chosen by the counties, and the rest by London 
 and the more considerable corporations. The 
 meanest of the people, too, had been excluded 
 from the elective franchise, a property of two 
 hundred pounds having been required to qualify 
 any one to vote. One most considerable limit- 
 ation had, indeed, been placed on all this free- 
 dom, which was, that the plan of electing the 
 sixty members who were to represent Scotland 
 and Ireland not being thoroughly fixed, they 
 were in a particular degree subject to the influ- 
 ence of the court. In addition to this, it is only 
 needful to observe, that all persons who had in 
 any way aided and assisted in the civil war 
 against the Parliament, together with their sons, 
 were disqualified to vote. The Lord Protector 
 had at least no pretence to say that out of fac- 
 tious hatred to all authority save their own, 
 Royalists, Republicans, and Presbyterians had, 
 for once, consented to act together. 
 
 At ten o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 
 4th of September, Cromwell proceeded in great 
 state from Whitehall to the Abbey of Westmin- 
 ster. He was preceded by two troops of life- 
 guards ; then rode some hundreds of gentlemen 
 and officers, bareheaded, and in splendid appar- 
 el ; immediately before the state carriage walk- 
 ed the pages and lackeys of the Protector in 
 rich liveries, and on each side a captain of the 
 guard ; behind it came Claypole, master of the 
 horse, leading a charger magnificently capari- 
 soned ; and Claypole was followed by the great 
 officers of state and the members of the coun- 
 cil. All eyes were fixed on Cromwell himself, 
 a striking and proud contrast to the gorgeous 
 parade of the procession. He was dressed in 
 a plain suit, after the simple fashion of a coun- 
 try gentleman ; but he wore his hat, while Lam- 
 bert, who occupied the opposite seat of the car- 
 riage, sat splendidly attired, and bareheaded. 
 After sermon, all the members hurried over to 
 the Painted Chamber, and seated themselves 
 uncovered, on benches ranged around the walls. 
 The Lord Protector then entered, and took his 
 place in the chair of state, from which he soon 
 afterward rose, removed his hat, and addressed 
 the assembly in a speech which lasted three 
 hours. 
 
 This speech was at once artful and able : 
 very forcibly and simply expressed where he 
 had any case to lodge against the policy of his 
 adversaries ; most involved, obscure, and vil- 
 lanously verbose where he affected to disclose 
 his own purposes : it was profound in its va- 
 rious points of craft and dissimulation ; pious 
 and fervently enthusiastic to the saints ; mod- 
 est and lowly to the Republicans. 
 
 He began by telling them that they were met 
 on the greatest occasion their country had ever 
 witnessed. He dwelt on those evils with which 
 England had lately been menaced ; he craftily 
 
 referred to the dangerous principles of the Lev- 
 ellers, striking, as he said, at the root of all 
 property ; and, safe in the sympathy of his au- 
 dience on that head, he denounced the wild 
 spirit of the various sects of Fifth Monarchy 
 men, which, he asseverated, aimed at directly 
 extirpating the very existence of the clerical 
 order, on the pretence that it was Babylonish 
 and anti-Christian. Alluding, then, with a cold 
 and deliberate hypocrisy, to the proceedings of 
 the Barbone Convention, he asserted that proj- 
 ects and conspiracies had been extensively 
 formed among its members for the subversion 
 of all those laws which had been produced by 
 the revolution of property and the manners of 
 our ancestors, and for substituting in their 
 stead the law of Moses. He next, with a view 
 to propitiate the Independents and Republicans 
 who listened to him, threw out subtle allusions 
 to the difference between liberty of conscience 
 as that convention would have established it, 
 to the overthrow of all government and, minis- 
 try, and the liberty of conscience he would sub- 
 stitute in its stead. " Such considerations and 
 pretensions," he observed, " of liberty of con- 
 science and liberty of subjects, two as glorious 
 things to be contended for as any God has giv- 
 en us ; yet both these also abused for the patro- 
 nising of villanies, in so much as that it hath 
 been an ordinary thing to say, and in dispute to 
 affirm, that it was not in the magistrate's power ; 
 he had nothing to do with it ; not so much as the 
 printing a Bible in the nation for the use of the 
 people, lest it be imposed on the consciences of men ; 
 for they must receive the same traditionally 
 and implicitly from the power of the magistrate, 
 if thus received. The aforementioned abomi- 
 nations did thus swell to this height among us. 
 The axe was thus laid to the root of the ministry : 
 it was anti-Christian it was Babylonish. It 
 suffered under such a judgment, that the truth 
 of it is, as the extremity was great on that, I 
 wish it prove not so on this hand. The ex- 
 tremity was, that no man having a good testi- 
 mony, having received gifts from Christ, might 
 preach, if not ordained. So now, many on the 
 other hand affirm, that he who is ordained hath 
 a nullity or anti-Christianism stamped upon his 
 calling, so that he ought not to preach, or not 
 be heard. I wish it may not too justly be said 
 that there was severity and sharpness yea, 
 too much of an imposing spirit in matters of 
 conscience ; a spirit unchristian enough in any 
 times, most unfit for these ; denying liberty to 
 those who have earned it with their blood who 
 have gained civil liberty, and religious also, for 
 those who would thus impose upon them." 
 
 In a still more artful passage of most accom- 
 plished dissimulation, Cromwell managed to 
 associate the Fifth Monarchy men with the 
 practices of the Jesuits, attributing to the lat- 
 ter much of the confusion that had risen. " No- 
 tions," he said, " will hurt none but them that 
 have them ; but when they come to such prac- 
 tices as to tell us that liberty and property are 
 not the badges of the kingdom of Christ, and 
 tell us that, instead of regulating laws, laws are 
 to be abrogated, indeed subverted, and perhaps 
 would bring in the Judaical law instead of our 
 known laws settled among us this is worthy 
 of every magistrate's consideration, especially 
 where every stone is turned to bring confusion
 
 580 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 While these things were in the midst of us, and 
 the nation rent and torn, in spirit and principle, 
 from one end to another, after this sort and 
 manner I have now told you, family against 
 family, husband against wife, parents against 
 children, and nothing in the hearts and minds 
 of men but overturn, overturn, overturn' (a 
 Scripture phrase very much abused, and applied 
 to justify unpeaceable practices by all men of 
 discontented spirits), the common adversary in 
 the mean time sleeps not ; and our adversaries, 
 in civil and spiritual respects, did take advan- 
 tage of these divisions and distractions, and did 
 practise accordingly in the three nations. We 
 know very well that emissaries of the Jesuits never 
 came in those swarms as they have done since these 
 things were set on foot.'" 
 
 He then resumed his general view of affairs. 
 To add to our miseries, he said, we had been 
 at war with all our neighbours. Contest with 
 Holland had absorbed all the pecuniary re- 
 sources, while a commercial war with France 
 and Portugal cramped the industry of the na- 
 tion. He bade them contrast this picture with 
 the existing state of things. At last, every- 
 thing having been driven to the worst, and a 
 remedy having become indispensable, that rem- 
 edy had been found ; namely, the government 
 which was instituted in the preceding Decem- 
 ber. That government had effected a happy 
 peace with all Protestant states, with Holland, 
 with Sweden, and with Denmark, and so had 
 relieved us from an accumulation of ruinous 
 expenses, and opened many salutary channels 
 for our trade. A treaty had been signed with 
 Portugal, also, which would place the British 
 trader beyond the reach of the Inquisition, and 
 another was in progress with the ambassador 
 of the French monarch. Nor had the govern- 
 ment been inattentive to internal advantages : 
 they had made considerable progress in a plan 
 for the reformation of the law, which would in 
 due time be laid before Parliament ; they had 
 placed the administration of justice in the 
 hands of men of known integrity and ability ; 
 they had reformed the Court of Chancery ; 
 they had taken proper measures for establish- 
 ing the clerical functions in men of piety, sober- 
 ness, morality, and learning, and " a stop had 
 been put to that heady way, for every man who 
 pleased to become a preacher." A passage 
 from this portion of the speech will show the 
 simplicity and plainness with which Cromwell 
 expressed himself on the few occasions when 
 he dared to do so. 
 
 " It hath," he said, speaking still of h : -s gov- 
 ernment, "had some things in desire, and it 
 hath done some things actually. It hath de- 
 sired to reform the laws I say, to reform 
 them ; and, for that end, it hath called together 
 persons (without reflection) of as great ability 
 and as great integrity as are in these nations, 
 to consider how the laws might be made plain 
 and short, and less chargeable to the people ; 
 how to lessen expense for the good of the na- 
 tion ; and those things are in preparation, and 
 bills prepared, which in due time, I make no 
 question, will be tendered to you. There hath 
 been care taken to put the administration of the 
 laws into the hands of just men men of the 
 most known integrity and ability. . . The Chan- 
 cery hath been reformed, and, I hope, to the 
 
 just satisfaction of all good men ; and, for the 
 things depending there, which made the burden 
 and work of the honourable persons intrusted 
 in those services beyond their ability, it hath 
 referred many of them to those places where 
 Englishmen love to have their rights tried, the 
 courts of law at Westminster." 
 
 The last assertion made by the Lord Pro- 
 tector on behalf of his authority on this mem- 
 orable occasion was afterward remembered to 
 his bitter disadvantage. Not the least, he said, 
 did it rank in their claims to public gratitude 
 that they had been instrumental in bringing to- 
 gether this free Parliament. They had thus 
 brought the three nations by hasty strides to- 
 wards the land of promise ; it was for that Par- 
 liament to introduce them into it. The pros- 
 pect was bright before them ; let them not look 
 back to the onions and fleshpots of Egypt. He 
 entreated of the persons there assembled to put 
 the top-stone to the work which they had so 
 auspiciously begun, and make the nation happy. 
 He said that their task was that of composing 
 all understandings and jealousies, and he pro- 
 fessed to them that, if this meeting did not 
 prove healing, he was at a loss to decide what 
 was next most advisable to be done. He spoke 
 not as their lord, he protested, but as their fel- 
 low-servant their fellow-labourer with them 
 in the same good work, and would, therefore, 
 detain them no longer, but desire them to re- 
 pair to their own House and choose their speak- 
 j er. This elaborate speech, we are told by its 
 ' reporter, was followed by tokens of satisfac- 
 tion, and hums of approbation, from various 
 parts of the assembly. 
 
 The approbation lasted but a little time, 
 however ; for when, on the return of the mem- 
 bers to their own House, the court officers 
 rose and proposed Lenthal as the speaker, the 
 opposition immediately named a rival candi- 
 date in the formidable person of Bradshaw. 
 They did not care, however, to press the elec- 
 tion to the vote. They did not so much object 
 to Lenthal, as they desired to show the inde- 
 pendent and free spirit with which they had 
 there assembled : so Lenthal was elected ; the 
 one party glad, because they had secured in him 
 a timid and time-serving tool ; the other not 
 sorry, because in him they saw a remnant of 
 their old Long Parliament, and could even sup- 
 pose his present election one step towards a 
 revival of the great assembly in which he had 
 so long presided. But no one of the court 
 party dared propose to offer him, according to 
 ancient custom, to the acceptance of the chief 
 magistrate, and so, in the presence of this Par- 
 liament, for the first time since his inaugura- 
 tion, tumbled down the Lord Protector's claim 
 to all the privileges of royalty. 
 
 A more significant movement followed. On 
 the second day, Bradshaw, to the amazement 
 and alarm of the court, moved that they should 
 form themselves into a committee of the whole 
 House, to deliberate on the question whether 
 the House should approve of the system of 
 government by a single person and a Parlia- 
 ment. A fierce debate followed, in which it 
 was repeatedly asked why the members of the 
 Long Parliament then present should not re- 
 sume the authority of which they had been il- 
 legally deprived by force, and by what right
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 581 
 
 but that of the sword, one man presumed to 
 "command his commanders;" and, ultimately, 
 the motion was carried by a majority of Jive. 
 Cromwell's excitement became extreme. He 
 was but little composed by the assurance that 
 many of those who voted in the majority had 
 not objected to the authority of the Protector, 
 but to the source from which it emanated a 
 written instrument, the author of which was 
 unknown ; and rather wished it to be settled on 
 him by act of Parliament.* 
 
 Bradshaw and his friends, meanwhile, moved 
 forward unflinchingly. For four successive 
 days, the 7th, the 8th, the 9th, and the llth of 
 September, the committee remained in discus- 
 sion on this question ; the debates were in the 
 highest degree animated ; and the House sat 
 late each day. Bradshaw, Hazlerig, and Scot 
 eminently, on all these days, distinguished 
 themselves, and, Ludlow informs us, " were 
 very instrumental in opening the eyes of many 
 young members, who had never before heard 
 the public interest so clearly stated and assert- 
 ed, so that the Commonwealth party increased 
 every day, and that of the sword lost ground 
 proportionally." One " noble gentleman," we 
 farther ascertain, made a speech, in which he 
 said that the snares that were laid to entrap 
 the liberties of the people were such as it was 
 impossible to mistake ; but that, for his own 
 part, as God had made him instrumental in cut- 
 ting down tyranny in one person, so he could 
 not endure to see the nation's rights ready to 
 be shackled by another, whose claim to the 
 government could be measured no otherwise 
 than by the length of his sword. 
 
 The arguments on both sides in this very fa- 
 mous discussion have been happily preserved for 
 us in the rough heads of Goddard's diary.t and 
 may be briefly arranged and summed up thus. 
 The Protector's party insisted that the govern- 
 ment of the Commonwealth was to be admitted 
 entire, such as it had been established in the 
 preceding December; and the other party as- 
 serted the paramount authority of the Parlia- 
 ment, and that nothing was to be admitted as 
 of validity that had not the sanction of the na- 
 tional representatives. The court retorted, 
 under the instructions of their master, that, 
 since it had been approved by the people, the 
 only real source of power, it could not be sub- 
 ject to revision by the representatives of the 
 people ! Not so, rejoined even the most mod- 
 erate members in opposition. Waving the 
 question of ascendency, and Cromwell's title to 
 assume it, they still objected to the language 
 of the Instrument, and said that, instead of 
 affirming that " the supreme legislative author- 
 ity shall be in one person, and the people as- 
 sembled in Parliament," it ought to be, " in the 
 Parliament of the people of England, and a sin- 
 gle person qualified with such instructions as 
 that assembly should authorize." Upon this 
 the court fled from the "right" and took up 
 the " expedient." They obscurely threatened. 
 With whatever fair speeches, they said, the 
 Protector had opened the Parliament, it could 
 not be expected that he would divest himself 
 of his authority, and that it would therefore be 
 their wisdom cheerfully to yield what it was 
 
 * Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 606. 
 
 t See the Burton Diary Introduction. 
 
 not in their power to withhold. They added, 
 that the co-ordinate power of legislation given 
 him by the Instrument was merely a negative 
 pro tempore, extending to a term of twenty days 
 only ; and that a milder prerogative than this 
 it was impossible to devise. They dwelt with 
 emphatical commendation upon the article 
 which limited the sitting of Parliament to a 
 period of five months, and indulged in terms 
 of bitter reproach against that feature of the 
 government of the Long Parliament, in which 
 they had shown themselves disposed to prolong 
 their authority without limitation. Such a 
 usurpation should be carefully provided against 
 in future !* 
 
 While the argument rested thus, Judge 
 Matthew Hale went down to the House on the 
 fourth day to endeavour to effect a compro- 
 mise.t He proposed that the legislative authori- 
 ty should be affirmed to be in the Parliament 
 of the people of England, and a single person 
 qualified with such instructions as that assem- 
 bly should authorize in the manner suggested 
 by the Republicans. But, to render this pal- 
 atable to the executive magistrate, and prac- 
 ticable under the circumstances, he recom- 
 mended that the military power for the present 
 should be unequivocally given to the Protector ; 
 and, to avoid the perpetuity of Parliament, arid 
 other exorbitances in their claims of suprem- 
 acy, that that officer should be allowed such, 
 a co-ordination as might serve for a check in 
 those points. 
 
 The conduct of the Republicans at this cri- 
 sis deserves especial attention : it is their final 
 and ample vindication from the favourite char- 
 ges with which history is so rife against them. 
 They had chosen, on the issue of writs for this 
 Parliament, to depart from the sterner princi- 
 ple of their great associate, Sir Henry Vane 
 who refused even to answer to the authority of 
 the Protectorate as a thing under which no 
 good could be achieved for liberty and to of- 
 fer themselves for selection by the people. The 
 electors of Buckinghamshire at once returned 
 Scot ; those of Cheshire, Bradshaw ; those of 
 Newcastle on Tyne, Sir Arthur Hazlerig ; and 
 those of Durham, Robert Lilburne. These 
 were all large and eminent constituencies, and 
 altogether by such indeed were the chief por- 
 tion of the Republicans returned. Having ta- 
 ken this step, they resolved to work it out fair- 
 ly to its results. They showed themselves 
 neither headlong nor pragmatical, but able and 
 most practical politicians. Waiving their sense 
 of the superior force and virtue of a republic, 
 they conceded the argument of the court that 
 power might be delegated profitably to a single 
 person. But if this is so, they said, we must 
 control his resources for mischief, and make 
 him indeed the servant of the people and the 
 laws. We are not here now for the support of 
 our own visionary theories, but we stand for 
 the substance of solid justice, and we will have 
 it. Fair play to the Protectorate must imply 
 fair play to the people, or it is based upon a 
 lie. We will make any concessions on that 
 principle, in the faith that so long as the pop- 
 ular voice is heard, and its influence acknowl- 
 
 * Godwin, vol. iv., p. 118. 
 
 t This was first disclosed in Goddard's Diary (introduc- 
 tion to Burton's) ; and see also Godwin, vol. iv., p. 119, 120.
 
 582 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 edged, the people will eventually be able to 
 right themselves and their cause. They agreed 
 to the compromise proposed by Hale, and 
 stripped off the last pretence from Cromwell. 
 The course now taken by the Lord Protector 
 sets the final stamp of reprobation on his po- 
 litical career. 
 
 On the morning of the 12th of September, 
 having on the previous evening rejected Hale's 
 proposition with scorn, he commanded Lenthal 
 to attend him in Whitehall with the mace ; he 
 at the same time ordered Harrison, whose par- 
 tisans were in motion for the Parliament, to be 
 again taken into close custody ;* he sent for 
 the lord -mayor, and despatched three regi- 
 ments to occupy the principal posts in the city ; 
 he ordered the doors of the House in which the 
 Parliament had assembled since its meeting 
 to be locked, and filled the avenues in Palace 
 Yard and Scotland Yard with four companies 
 of foot. At eight o'clock all this had been done ! 
 The members in succession repaired to the 
 place of their sitting, but found themselves ex- 
 cluded, and were told that the Protector would 
 speedily arrive at the Painted Chamber, where 
 he proposed to receive them. 
 
 Here he received them accordingly; and 
 laying aside at once his modesty and his mys- 
 ticism, addressed them in a vigorous speech. 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " it is not long since I 
 met you in this place, upon an occasion which 
 gave much more content and comfort than this 
 doth. That which I have to say to you now 
 will need no preamble to let me into my dis- 
 course, for the occasion of this meeting is plain 
 enough. I could have wished, with all my 
 heart, there had been no cause for it. At that 
 meeting I did acquaint you what the first rise 
 was of this government which hath called you 
 hither, and in the authority of which you came 
 hither. Among other things that I told you of 
 then, I said you were a free Parliament ; and 
 so you are, while you own the government and au- 
 thority that called you hither ; for certainly that 
 word implied a reciprocation, or implied nothing at 
 all. Indeed, there was a reciprocation implied 
 and expressed, and I think your actions and 
 carriages ought to be suitable ; but I see it will 
 be necessary for me now a little to magnify my 
 office, which I have not been apt to do. I have 
 been of this mind, I have been always of this 
 mind, since first I entered upon it, that if God 
 will not bear it up, let it sink. But if a duty 
 be incumbent upon me to bear my testimony 
 unto it (which in modesty I have hitherto for- 
 borne), I am in some measure now necessita- 
 ted thereunto, and therefore that will be the 
 prologue to my discourse." 
 
 He now proceeded to declare frankly, as the 
 grounds on which he made this most extraor- 
 dinary claim of reciprocation, that his calling 
 was from God, his testimony from the people, 
 and that no one but God and the people should 
 ever take his office from him. It was not of 
 his seeking : God knew that it was his utmost 
 ambition to lead the life of a country gentle- 
 man ; but imperious circumstances had im- 
 posed it upon him. I cannot forbear to quote 
 these extraordinary passages, in which he rap- 
 idly, and in language of very passionate clear- 
 ness, reviewed the circumstances of his life, 
 * He was released after a week's detention. 
 
 and pushed to its very uttermost extreme what 
 seems to have been the most fatal doctrine of 
 his whole career : that since God had chosen 
 him to be the successful champion of his holy 
 cause, the very honour of the divinity himself 
 had become identified with his own personal 
 advancement, and, safe in his first condition of 
 grace, any falsehood or hypocrisy would be par- 
 doned him for the sake of the ulterior advan- 
 tages which, by their means, he would achieve. 
 There is possibly some distinction from ordi- 
 nary and mean falsehood in this, so far as a 
 pollution of the mind and heart is implied in it, 
 but there is no distinction in its wicked results 
 upon the world. It is entitled to consideration 
 as a metaphysical subtlety, and in some ex- 
 planation of the fact that Oliver Cromwell is 
 very nearly, if not quite, a solitary specimen 
 of a great man who was not also a true one. 
 
 " I called not myself to this place I say 
 again, I called not myself to this place ; of that 
 God is witness; and I have many witnesses 
 who, I do believe, could readily lay down their 
 lives to bear witness to the truth of that that 
 is to say, that I called not myself to this place; 
 and being in it, I bear not witness to myself, 
 but God and the people of these nations have 
 borne testimony to it also. If my calling be 
 from God, and my testimony from the people, 
 God and the people shall take it from me, else 
 I will not part with it. I should be false to 
 the trust that God hath placed in me, and to 
 the interest of the people of these nations, 
 if I should. That I called not myself to this 
 place, is my first assertion. That I bear not 
 witness to myself, but have many witnesses, 
 is my second. These are the two things 1 
 shall take the liberty to speak more fully to you 
 | of. To make plain and clear that which I have 
 said, I must take the liberty to look back. / 
 was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any 
 considerable height, nor yet in obscurity. I have 
 been called to several employments in the na- 
 tion to serve in Parliament ; and, because I 
 would not be over-tedious, I did endeavour to 
 discharge the duty of an honest man in those 
 services, to God and his people's interest, and 
 of the Commonwealth, having, when time was, 
 a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, 
 and some evidences thereof. I resolve not to 
 recite the times, and occasions, and opportu- 
 nities that have been appointed me by God to 
 serve him in, nor the presence and blessings of 
 God then bearing testimony to me. Having 
 had some occasions to see (together with my 
 brethren and countrymen) a happy period put 
 to our sharp wars and contests with the then 
 common enemy, / hoped, in a private capacity, 
 to have reaped the fruit and benefit, together 
 with my brethren, of our hard labours and haz- 
 ards ; to wit, the enjoyment of peace and liberty, 
 and the privileges of a Christian and of a man, in 
 some equality with others, according as it should 
 please the Lord to dispense unto me. And 
 when, I say, God had put an end to our wars 
 at least, brought them to a very hopeful issue, 
 very near an end after Worcester fight, I 
 came up to London to pay my service and 
 duty to the Parliament that then sat ; and ho- 
 ping that all minds would have been disposed 
 1 to answer that which seemed to be the mind 
 I of God, viz., to give peace and rest to his peo-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 583 
 
 pie, and especially to those who had bled more 
 than others in the carrying on of the military 
 affairs, I was much disappointed of my expec- 
 tation, for the issue did not prove so. What- 
 ever may be boasted or misrepresented, it was 
 not so, not so. I can say, in the simplicity of 
 my soul, I love not, I love not (I declined it in 
 my former speech), I say, I love not to rake 
 into sores, or to discover nakednesses ; that 
 which I drive at is this : I say to you, / hoped 
 to have had leave to have retired to a private life : 
 I begged to be dismissed of my charge ; I begged 
 it again and again ; and God be judge between me 
 and alt men if I lie in this matter. That I lie 
 not in matter of fact, is known to very many ; 
 but wbether I tell a lie in my heart, as labour- 
 ing to represent to you that which was not 
 upon my heart, I say the Lord be judge ! let 
 uncharitable men, that measure others by them- 
 selves, judge as they please. As to the mat- 
 ter of fact, I say it is true. As to the ingenui- 
 ty and integrity of my heart in that desire, I 
 do appeal, as before, upon the truth of that 
 also. But I could not obtain what my soul 
 longed for ; and the plain truth is, I did after- 
 ward apprehend that some did think (my judg- 
 ment not suiting with theirs) that it could not 
 well be. But this, I say to you, was between God 
 and my soul between me and that assembly. 
 
 " / confess I am in some strait to say what I 
 could say, and what is true of what then fol- 
 lowed. I pressed the Parliament, as a mem- 
 ber, to period themselves, once, and again, and 
 again, and ten, nay, twenty times over. I told 
 them (for I knew it better than any one man in 
 the Parliament could know it, because of my 
 manner of life, which was to run up and down the 
 nation, and so might see and know the temper 
 and spirits of all men, the best of men) that the 
 nation loathed their sitting: I knew it; and, so 
 far as I could discern, when they were dissolv- 
 ed, there was not so much as the barking of a 
 dog, or any general and visible repining at it. 
 You are not a few here present that can assert 
 this as well as myself; and that there was high 
 cause for their dissolution, is most evident, not 
 only in regard there was a just fear of that 
 Parliament's perpetuating themselves, but be- 
 cause it was their design ; and had not their 
 heels been trod upon by importunities from 
 abroad, even to threats, 7 believe there would 
 never have been thoughts of rising, or of going out 
 of that room, to the world's end ! I myself was 
 sounded, and by no mean persons tempted, and 
 addresses were made to me to that very end, 
 that it might have been thus perpetuated : that 
 the vacant places might be supplied by new 
 elections, and so continue from generation to 
 generation. I have declined, I have declined 
 very much, to open these things to you ; yet, 
 having proceeded thus far, I must tell you, that 
 poor men, under this arbitrary power, were 
 driven like flocks of sheep, by forty in a morn- 
 ing, to the confiscation of goods and estates, 
 without any man being able to give a reason 
 that two of them had deserved to forfeit a shil- 
 ling. I tell you the truth, and my soul ; and 
 many persons whose faces I see in this place 
 were exceedingly grieved at these things, and 
 knew not which way to help it but by their 
 mournings, and giving their negatives when 
 occasions served. I have given you but a taste 
 
 of miscarriages. I am confident you have had 
 opportunities to hear much more of them, for 
 nothing is more obvious. 'Tis true this will 
 be said, that there was a remedy to put an end 
 to this perpetual Parliament endeavoured, by 
 having a future representative. How it was 
 gotten, and by what importunities that was 
 obtained, and how unwillingly yielded unto, is 
 well known. What was this remedy 1 It was 
 a seeming willingness to have successive Par- 
 liaments. What was that succession 1 It was, 
 that when one Parliament had left their seat, 
 another was to sit down immediately in the 
 room thereof, without any caution to avoid that 
 which was the danger, viz., perpetuating of the 
 same Parliaments ; which is a sore now that 
 will ever be running, so long as men are am- 
 bitious and troublesome, if a due remedy be net 
 found. So, then, what was the business 1 It 
 was a conversion from a Parliament that should 
 have been, and was perpetual, to a legislative 
 power always sitting ; and so the liberties, and 
 interests, and lives of people, not judged by any 
 certain known laws and power, but by an arbi- 
 trary power, which is incident and necessary 
 to Parliaments ; by an arbitrary power, I say, 
 to make men's estates liable to confiscation, 
 and their persons to imprisonments ; some- 
 times by laws made after the fact committed , 
 often by taking the judgment, both in capital 
 and criminal things, to themselves, who, in 
 former times, were not known to exercise such 
 a judicature." 
 
 And thus, he now proceeded to assert, as the 
 Long Parliament brought their dissolution upon 
 themselves by despotism, so the little Parlia- 
 ment by imbecility. On each occasion, he add- 
 ed, he had found himself invested in absolute 
 power with the military, and through them over 
 the three nations. He described what they 
 proposed to do at the dissolution of the Bar- 
 bone Convention, and then continued thus : " I 
 denied it again and again, as God and those 
 persons know : not complimentingly, as they 
 also know, and as God knows. I confess, after 
 many arguments, and after the letting of me 
 know that I did not receive anything that put 
 me into any higher capacity than I was in be- 
 fore ; but that it limited me, and bound my 
 hands to act nothing to the prejudice of these 
 nations without consent of a council, until the 
 Parliament, and then limited by the Parliament, 
 as the Act of Government expresseth ; I did 
 accept it. I might repeat this again to you, if 
 it were needful ; but I think I need not. I was 
 arbitrary in power, having the armies in the three 
 nations under my command ; and truly not very 
 ill-beloved by them, nor very ill-beloved then by the 
 people, by the good people ; and I believe I should 
 have been more beloved if they had known the 
 truth, as things were before God and in them- 
 selves, and before divers of those gentlemen 
 whom I but now mentioned unto you." But 
 this arbitrary power, he continued, he always 
 desired to be freed from ; and if he had acqui- 
 esced in the " Instrument" of the Protectorate, 
 it was because it made the Parliament a check 
 on the Protector, and the Protector on the Par- 
 liament ! " The next thing I promised you, 
 wherein I hope I shall not be so long (though I 
 am sure this occasion does require plainness 
 and freedom), is, that I brought not myself into
 
 584 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 this condition, as in my own apprehension I did 
 not ;* and that I did not, the things being true 
 which I have told you, I submit it to your judg- 
 ment, and there shall I leave it, let God do 
 what he pleaseth. The other things, I say, 
 that I am to speak to you of, are, that / have 
 not, nor do not bear witness to myself. I am 
 far from alluding to Him that said so ; yet 
 truth concerning a member of his He will own, 
 though men do not. But I think, if I mistake 
 not, / have a cloud of witnesses : I think so, let 
 men be asfroward as they will. I have witness 
 within, without, and above." 
 
 These witnesses he then summoned forth in 
 order. He had, he said, God for a witness 
 above, and his own conscience for a witness 
 within. Then, for his " cloud of witnesses" 
 without, he had all those who attended when 
 he took the oath of fidelity to the " Instru- 
 ment ;" he had the officers in the army in the 
 three nations, who testified their approbation 
 by their signatures ; the city of London, which 
 feasted him ; the counties, cities, and boroughs, 
 that had sent him addresses ; the judges, ma- 
 gistrates, and sheriffs, who acted by his com- 
 mission ; and the very men who now stood be- 
 fore him, for they came there in obedience to 
 his writ, and under the express condition that 
 " the persons so chosen should not have power 
 to change the government as settled in one 
 single person and the Parliament." He averred 
 to them, finally,, that he would not dispute that 
 they were ' a free Parliament ;" free to deliber- 
 ate for the general welfare ; but added, that 
 there were some things fundamental, from 
 which they were not at liberty to depart. 
 These were four : the government by a single 
 
 * I have quoted this passage that I may subjoin in a note 
 the admirable and most powerful remarks that are made 
 with evident reference to it by the poet Cowley, in his fa- 
 mous Vision : " Are we then," asks Cowley supposing 
 Cromwell's assertion believed that he had become, by his 
 office in the army, arbitrary in power " are we so unhappy 
 as to be conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily 
 rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? Did we fur- 
 nish him with arms only to draw and try vpon our enemies, 
 and keep them forever sheathed in the bowels of his friends 1 
 Did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might 
 become slaves to our servant 1 The right of conquest can 
 only be exercised upon those against whom the war is de- 
 clared and the victory obtained ; so that no whole nation 
 ean be suid to be conquered but by a foreign force. la all 
 civil wars, men are so far from stating the quarrel against 
 their country, that they do it only against a person or party 
 which they really believe, or at least pretend, .to be perni- 
 cious to it ; neither can there be any just cause for the de- 
 struction of a' part of the body, but when it is done for the 
 preservation and safety of the whole. 'Tis our country that 
 raises men in the quarrel, our country that arms, our coun- 
 try that pays them, our country that authorizes the under- 
 taking, .and that distinguishes it from rapine and, murder. 
 Lastly, 'tis our.- country that directs and commands the 
 army, and is indeed their, general ; so that to say in civil 
 wart that the prevailing party conquers their country, is to 
 toy the country cqnjucrs itself ;. ami if the general. only of 
 that party be the conqueror, i he army by which he is made 
 no i* no lees conquered than the army which is beaten, and 
 lave as little reason to triumph in that victory, by which 
 they lose both their honour and liberty; so that if Crom- 
 well conquered any party, it was only that against which 
 he was sent ; and what that was must appear by his com- 
 mission." As powerfully and conclusively, though in sup- 
 port of unsound views, does the vigorous hand of Cowley 
 shatter the pretences which Cromwell founds throughout 
 this speech, on the circumstance of authority having fallen 
 *o pieces, when he was requested to reunite it. "The gov- 
 Brnmnnt was broke : who broke it ! It was dissolved : who 
 dissolved it? It was extinguished: who was it but Crom~ 
 well, who not only put out the light, but cast away even 
 the very snuff of it? As if a man should murder a whole 
 family, and then possess himself of the whole house, because 
 *\ii better that he,, than that only rats, should live there !" 
 
 person and a Parliament ; that Parliaments 
 should be successive, and not attempt to make 
 themselves perpetual ; liberty of conscience, 
 and the vesting of the power of the sword and 
 of the militia in the single person and the Par- 
 liament. And here he paused for an instant, 
 with a remark on one of these fundamentals, 
 only to show the more clear-sighted of his list- 
 eners, though in reality designed to throw dust 
 in their eyes, what little chance there was, in his 
 thorough knowledge of what was right, that 
 he would ever, by any mistake, diverge into it. 
 " Is not liberty of conscience in religion a fun- 
 damental 1 So long as there is liberty of con- 
 science for the supreme magistrate to exercise 
 his conscience in erecting what form of church 
 government he is satisfied he should set up, 
 why should he not give it to others ? Liberty 
 of conscience is a natural right ; and he that would 
 have it, ought to give it, having liberty to settle 
 what he likes for the public. Indeed, that hath 
 been one of the vanities of our contest. Every 
 sect saith, Oh ! give me liberty. But give him it, 
 and, to his power, he will not yield it to anybody 
 else. Where is our ingenuity ! Truly that is 
 a thing ought to be very reciprocal." 
 
 These fundamentals, he added in conclusion, 
 he had thought so plain, that he had not con- 
 ceived it necessary that he should require of 
 the members the owning of their call, and the 
 authority which had brought them together, 
 previously to their entering the place of their 
 deliberations. But they had obliged him to 
 come to another conclusion ; and he had ac- 
 cordingly put a stop to their entrance into the 
 Parliament House, and caused a recognition of 
 the government to be prepared, which it would be 
 necessary for every member to sign in the lobby 
 before he would be allowed to advance farther. 
 The recognition was a simple engagement to be 
 true and faithful to the Lord Protector and Com- 
 monwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and 
 not to consent to an alteration of the government, 
 as it was settled in one person and a Parliament. 
 
 The members left the Painted Chamber con- 
 fusedly, and again repaired to the door of their 
 own House. They found a guard of soldiers 
 stationed there, and on a table in the adjoining 
 lobby a parchment lying for signatures. An 
 officer of the army had been appointed to take 
 their subscriptions ; and, one by one, as they 
 conformed themselves to this requisition, they 
 were to be allowed to enter. Lenthal, the 
 speaker, at once advanced and signed. Brad- 
 shaw, Scot, and Hazlerig, with an indignant 
 protest of defiance and scorn, turned their backs 
 on the degrading scene, and were followed by 
 about a hundred men. The rest, either on the 
 spot, or after some days' inducement from the 
 army and the court, consented to sign the rec- 
 ognition. These amounted to nearly three 
 hundred. Subsequent events showed, how- 
 ever, that they had signed it with a mental res- 
 ervation. 
 
 This Parliament now loses its claim to our 
 respect, but, as the reader will find, not alto- 
 gether to our interest. Before it resumed its 
 deliberations, an ominous occurrence had be- 
 fallen Cromwell. Among the presents he had 
 received from foreign princes were six hand- 
 some gray Friesland coach-horses, from the 
 Duke of Oldenburgh. The humour took him
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 585 
 
 one day to dine with Thurloe under the shade 
 of the park, and afterward to try, with his own 
 hand, the mettle of these horses, " not doubt- 
 ing," observes Ludlow, with bitter sarcasm, 
 " but the three pair of animals he was about to 
 drive would prove as tame as the three nations 
 which were ridden by him." The result was 
 curious, and will be best related in the language 
 of the time. 
 
 The Dutch ambassadors thus write to their 
 States- General : " After the sending away of 
 our letters of last Friday, we were acquainted 
 the next morning, which we heard nothing of 
 the night before, that about that time a mis- 
 chance happened to the Lord Protector, which 
 might have been, in all likelihood, very fatal 
 unto him, if God had not wonderfully preserved 
 him. As we are informed, the manner of it 
 was thus : his highness, only accompanied with 
 Secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentle- 
 men and servants, went to take the air in Hyde 
 Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be 
 brought, where he made his dinner, and afterward 
 had a desire to drive the coach himself, having 
 put only the secretary into it, being those six 
 horses which the Earl of Oldenburgh had pre- 
 sented unto his highness, who drove pretty 
 handsomely for some time ; but at last, provo- 
 king those horses too much with the whip, they grew 
 unruly, and ran so fast that the postillion could 
 not hold them in, whereby his highness was 
 flung out of the coach-box upon the pole, upon 
 which he lay with his body, and afterward fell 
 upon the ground. His foot getting hold in the 
 tackling, he was carried away a good while in 
 that posture, during which a pistol went off in 
 his pocket ; but at last he got his foot clear, and 
 so came to escape, the coach passing away 
 without hurting him. He was presently brought 
 home, and let blood ; and, after some rest ta- 
 ken, he is now pretty well again. The secre- 
 tary, being hurt on his ankle with leaping out 
 of the coach, hath been forced to keep his cham- 
 ber hitherto, and been unfit for any business ; 
 so that we have not been able to further or ex- 
 pedite any business this week." 
 
 A second description, from another of the 
 ambassadors now waiting in London the pleas- 
 ure of the Lord Protector, shows the suspicion 
 of falsehood which had begun to attach to what- 
 ever Thurloe and the Lord Protector were con- 
 cerned in ! "I have not yet anything to write 
 unto you of my negotiation. It was referred 
 six days ago, under pretence of an accident hap- 
 pened to the Lord Protector and the secretary 
 of state, in a promenade, wherein the first took 
 the place of his coachman ; and, his horses 
 running away with him, he was flung out of 
 the box among the horses ; and, if his shoe 
 had not broken or slipped off, the misfortune 
 had been entire. He got off only with some 
 bruises, and was likewise no ways hurt with a 
 pistol that went off in his pocket. During this 
 disorder the secretary of state sat in the coach, 
 who, endeavouring to get out, sprained his 
 foot, which was all the harm that happened to 
 him. Both of them do not forbear to keep their 
 beds, nor to busy themselves also. 1 ' A third am- 
 bassador seems infected with the same myste- 
 rious doubts. " No doubt you have heard of 
 the accident happened to the Protector, who, 
 being in the park in his coach, got up into the 
 4E 
 
 I box ; and, his horses being unruly, they flung 
 him out of his throne, and he had like to have 
 been racked alive. This doth afford matter of 
 speculation to some, and discourses to others. His 
 enemies speak him to be very ill, and his friends, 
 in health." 
 
 Finally, a mention of the circumstance in two 
 letters of Paris Royalists to Charles's court 
 shows the bitter hopes it had awakened there. 
 One prophesies that as the new Protector's 
 first fall had been from a coach, so his second 
 would be from a cart ! And a second writes 
 more moderately thus : " We hear of a misfor- 
 tune befallen the Lord Protector for playing 
 the coachman. He had better have sat in his 
 chair in the Painted Chamber to govern tho 
 Parliament, which is more pliable to his pleas- 
 ure, than in the coach-box to govern his coaeh- 
 horses, which have more courage to put him 
 out of the box than the three hundred members 
 of Parliament have to put him out of his chair. 
 ' Est malum omen, et ah animalibus forsan dis- 
 cent exemplum ; qui sedit, videat ne cadat.' "* 
 
 To the general mass of the English people 
 this accident neither taught a jest nor a proph- 
 ecy, but revealed a fact of melancholy signifi- 
 cance. The explosion of the pistol in Crom- 
 well's pocket betrayed the dangers which beset 
 him in the midst of all his glory the haunting 
 sense of insecurity which follows inordinate 
 ambition. t In the incident itself, too, they 
 might have seen at once the headlong desire to 
 purchase relief from overburdened thoughts, 
 and the fantastical tricks he would play to as- 
 sume the mere power of doing anything. Crom- 
 well had now forfeited all old claims to envy. 
 
 Even his broken Parliament the Parliament 
 he had forced under the muskets of his soldier)^ 
 the fragment of the free assembly he had wel- 
 comed on his fortunate day had found strength 
 to turn once more against him. If it showed 
 in this, as his partisans asserted, the meanness 
 of the worm, it at least showed no less its des- 
 perate vitality ! The first thing it did on reas- 
 sembling was to come to a resolution that the 
 " recognition" did not comprehend the whole of 
 the instrument of the 16th of December, but , 
 simply the government of the Commonwealth 
 hy a single person and successive Parliaments. 
 Then, a few days after, with a somewhat ab- 
 surd attempt to maintain what they called the 
 dignity of the House, they converted the whole 
 of Cromwell's base transaction into a proceed- 
 
 * These various letters will be found in the second vol- 
 ume of Thurloe, p. 652, 653, 674, <fec. The court newspa- 
 pers never alluded lo the accident. 
 
 t At a subsequent date I find one of the numberless spiel 
 employed by Thurloe thus writing to that wily secretary. 
 He is describing one of the Presbyterian plots against the 
 Protector. " He told me a story, which, if you were a 
 fowler, might be of some use to you. We two, discoursing 
 concerning the murthering of his highnes, and I urging the 
 difficulty of it, he told me it was true, indeed, he wore a 
 private coat, as he was informed by a Presbiterian minister; 
 but they had a way to peirce it, which was this : To take 
 some graines of pepper (white the best), and steep them 
 twenty-four hours in the strongest aqua vitse, and then mix 
 three or four graines with the powder, wherewith n pisu.ll 
 is charged ; and that pistoll will carry levell twice as far 
 as before, and therefore, by consequence, peirce twice as 
 deep. This minister preached before his highnes at Hamp- 
 ton Court ; and, being invited to heare his highnes exer- 
 cise, he asked the boy, that waited on him in his chamber 
 for accommodation, what was the reason his hihues did 
 sweat so much. The boy answered, that he had a close 
 coat under his other clothes, which was the reason his 
 highnes did sweat so much." Thurlor, vol. i., p. 708.
 
 586 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ing of their own, coming to a resolution that 
 " all persons who shall be returned to serve in 
 this Parliament shall, before they are admitted 
 to sit, subscribe the recognition of govern- 
 ment !" Next we find them in committee vo- 
 ting that the supreme legislative authority 
 should reside in a Lord Protector and Parlia- 
 ment ; and, the day following, with a most ri- 
 diculous affectation of independence, that Crom- 
 well should be the Protector. Then, having 
 determined that essential point, they proceeded 
 to analyze the instrument itself, article by ar- 
 ticle, and occupied themselves in committee on 
 this business to the 8th of November ! One 
 day they had the important question to vote 
 whether the Protectorship was to be hereditary, 
 or for life only, and in what manner, and by 
 what authority, a new Protector was to he 
 named ; on another day, whether any law could 
 be made, or tax imposed, for the future, ex- 
 cept in Parliament, and in what hands the pow- 
 er of declaring war and making peace was to 
 be vested ! The former question, I should add, 
 had originated chiefly in the accident just de- 
 scribed, and which naturally led to a consider- 
 ation of the probable consequences of the death 
 of Cromwell. 
 
 The court party first started the point, and 
 Cromwell had so managed to cajole Lambert 
 with some secret understanding, as is suppo- 
 sed, for a special exception or reservation in 
 his favour, that on the morning of the day ap- 
 pointed for the debate, when all the court de- 
 pendants had mustered their utmost force, to 
 the amazement of every one, who supposed it 
 the secret aim of Lambert to strike for the 
 Protectorate on Cromwell's death, that officer 
 rose, and having detailed in a long and elabo- 
 rate speech the miseries of an elective, and 
 the merits of an hereditary succession, moved 
 that the office of Protector should be limited 
 to the family of Oliver Cromwell, according to 
 the known law of inheritance. A long and very 
 vivid debate followed, and closed, to the alarm 
 and confusion of the court, in a division of two 
 hundred for the elective chief magistracy, and 
 only sixty for the hereditary. It was resolved, 
 at the same time, that, on the death of the Pro- 
 lector, his successor should be chosen by the 
 Parliament, if it were sitting, and by the coun- 
 cil in the absence of Parliament. 
 
 It is clear that Cromwell, the instant after 
 this vote, took the resolution on which he act- 
 ed some three months later. He showed no 
 sign of impatience or interference, smiled when 
 the vote was officially communicated to him, 
 and said that the Parliament should proceed. 
 
 They proceeded accordingly. Cromwell had 
 insisted, the reader will recollect, on four fun- 
 damentals, and required that on these a final 
 negative on the acts of the Legislature should 
 be reserved to him ; on all others, his power, 
 under his own instrument of government, ex- 
 tended no farther than to suspend for twenty 
 days their decrees from being acknowledged as 
 law. The article concerning these negatives 
 was the next matter taken up, and upon a 
 point which, in its result at least, seemed to 
 realize a farce of much ado about nothing. The 
 opposition party insisted that the hills upon 
 which the Protector should be entitled to this 
 prerogative should be of a sort, containing in 
 
 them something "contrary to such matters 
 wherein the Parliament shall think fit to give 
 a negative to the Protector." The court party 
 urged as an amendment that the words should 
 be, " contrary to such matters wherein the 
 single person and the Parliament shall declare 
 a negative to be in the single person."* The 
 debate was ardently conducted on both sides, 
 and closed with a majority on the side of the 
 opposition, the numbers being 109 to 85. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the apparent distress 
 of the court party in the House at this vote.t 
 It had, they swore, as far as a vote could do it, 
 deposed the executive magistrate from his of- 
 fice. Lord Broghill declared it was so mortal 
 a wound to the government, that he would will- 
 ingly have redeemed it with a pound of his 
 blood. Then followed dark threats about the 
 necessity of a dissolution, and at these the ma- 
 jority quailed. Next day the amendment of the 
 court party was carried without a division ! 
 and, most ridiculous to add, three days after, 
 the negatives were taken into farther consid- 
 eration ; the friends of the Protector were twice 
 left in a minority upon questions of the same 
 import as in the former instance ; and again, 
 on the day following these, a second amend- 
 ment was carried, reversing a second time the 
 obnoxious vote. 
 
 Their subsequent proceedings, which had 
 about as much dignity and as much annoyance 
 in them, may be briefly described. t Having 
 brought their discussions on the Act of Settle- 
 ment to a close at last, it was moved by the 
 court party that, before the Act of Settlement 
 was engrossed, a conference should be had 
 with the Protector on the subject ; but it was 
 carried against them by a majority of 107 to 95. 
 Then, with a new start of courage, they voted 
 that this bill should he a law, without needing 
 the Protector's consent. Next day, however, 
 they became convinced that they had gone too 
 far, and directed that it should be engrossed, in 
 order to its being presented to him for his con- 
 sideration and consent. As a sort of set-off to 
 this, it was at the same time decided, that un- 
 less the Protector and Parliament should agree 
 to the whole and every part of the bill, it should 
 be void and of no effect. 
 
 Void and of no effect the Protector had al- 
 ready resolved it should be ! He only waited 
 a good opportunity for the movement he had 
 already projected, and it soon came. 
 
 Having passed various resolutions in revision 
 of the ordinances promulgated before they met 
 having canvassed in a most troublesome spir- 
 it sundry arrangements of the executive hav- 
 ing interfered with several assessments which 
 had been thought by Cromwell essential to the 
 public service, they manifested a decidedly res- 
 
 * Godwin, vol. ii., p. 137. 
 
 t It may be explained, in some sort, by keeping in mind 
 the doctrine of Cromwell himself, that he was, whatever 
 concessions he might consent to make, solely and exclu- 
 sively the fountain of all the government that existed, and 
 that the Parliament derived its privileges from him and 
 his writ. Taken in this sense, the otherwise very fine dis- 
 tinction between the negative " which the Parliament 
 might think fit to give," and that " which the single person 
 and the Parliament should declare to be already in exist- 
 ence," becomes clear enough. 
 
 t In the midst of them, it may be worth while to men- 
 tion, the death of the famous Selden created much interest 
 among those who recollected and appreciated his noble ser- 
 vices to the cause.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 587 
 
 uft spirit in the matter of supplies. This was 
 the opportunity for which Cromwell alone had 
 waited. He summoned the House once more 
 to meet him in the Painted Chamber. This 
 was on the 22d of January, and not till twelve 
 days later could the term of five months' ex- 
 istence, secured to the Parliament under the 
 Protectorate, possibly expire. The members 
 went up to the Painted Chamber, therefore, in 
 the natural expectation of an angry remon- 
 strance, but the still paramount security, that 
 till the 3d of February, at least, they should 
 remain a Parliament. 
 
 Cromwell, having saluted them with an ex- 
 pression of displeasure and contempt, at once 
 began his address, which was conceived in the 
 most masterly and subtle spirit of praise and 
 flattery to the people, and of scorn and defiance 
 to them. " GENTLEMEN, I perceive you are 
 here as the House of Parliament, by your 
 speaker, whom I see here, and by your faces, 
 which are, in a great measure, known to me. 
 When I first met you in this room, it was, to 
 my apprehension, the hopefullest day that ever 
 mine eyes saw, as to considerations of this 
 world ; for I did look at (as wrapped up in you, 
 together with myself) the hopes and the hap- 
 piness of (though not the greatest, yet a very 
 great, and) the best people in the world ; and 
 truly and unfeignedly I thought so : a people ! 
 that have the highest and the clearest profes- j 
 sion among them of the greatest glory, viz., re- ' 
 ligion ; a people that have been, like other na- ' 
 tions, sometimes up and sometimes down in ! 
 our honour in the world, but yet never so low ! 
 but we might measure with other nations ; a ' 
 people that have had a stamp upon them from ' 
 God ! God having, as it were, summed up all J 
 our former glory and honour, in the things that ' 
 are of glory to nations, in an epitome, within | 
 these ten or twelve years last past, so that we : 
 knew one another at home, and are well known ' 
 abroad." 
 
 What, he then asked, had they done as a ! 
 Parliament 1 He never had played, he never ! 
 would play, the orator, and therefore, he would 
 tell them frankly, they had done nothing. For ! 
 five months they had passed no bill, had made 
 no address, had held no communication with ] 
 him. As far as concerned them, he had no- '< 
 thing to do but to pray that God would en- 
 lighten their minds, and give a blessing to their 
 labours. But had they then done nothing 1 
 Yes : they had encouraged the Cavaliers to plot 
 against the Commonwealth, and the Levellers 
 to intrigue with the Cavaliers. By their dis- 
 sensions they had aided the fanatics to throw 
 the nation into confusion, and by the slowness 
 of their proceedings had compelled the soldiers 
 to live at free quarters on the country. The 
 result he thus forcibly and eloquently described. 
 
 "There be some trees that will not grow 
 under the shadow of other trees ; there be 
 some that choose (a man may say so by way 
 of illusion) to thrive under the shadow of oth- 
 er trees. I will tell you what hath thriven I 
 will not say what you have cherished under 
 your shadow ; that were too hard. Instead of 
 peace and settlement, instead of mercy and 
 truth being brought together, righteousness 
 and peace kissing each other, by reconciling 
 the honest people of these nations, and settling 
 
 the woful distempers that are among us, which 
 had been glorious things, and worthy of Chris- 
 tians to have proposed weeds and nettles, 
 briers and thorns, have thriven under your 
 shadow. Dissettlement and division, discon- 
 tent and dissatisfaction, together with real dan- 
 gers to the whole, have been more multiplied 
 within those five months of your sitting than in 
 some years before. Foundations have been 
 also laid for the future renewing the troubles 
 of these nations, by all the enemies of it abroad 
 and at home. Let not these words seem too 
 sharp, for they are true as any mathematical 
 demonstrations are or can be. I say, the ene- 
 mies of the peace of these nations, abroad and 
 at home ; the discontented humours through- 
 out these nations, which I think no man will 
 grudge to call by that name, or to make to al- 
 lude to briers and thorns they have nourished 
 themselves under your shadow." 
 
 He next referred to the question of the Pro- 
 tectorship, and said they supposed, no doubt, 
 that he had sought to make it hereditary. With 
 unblushing effrontery, and a faith in his pow- 
 ers of delusion, which constituted in itself a 
 perfect miracle, he told them that this was not 
 true ! 
 
 " I will not presage what you have been 
 about or doing in all this time, nor do Hove to 
 make conjectures-; but I must tell you this, 
 that as I undertake this government in the sim- 
 plicity of my heart, and as before God, and to 
 do the part of an honest man, and to be true 
 to the interest which, in my conscience, is clear 
 to many of you (though it is not always under- 
 stood what God in his wisdom may hide from 
 us as to peace and settlement), so I can say that 
 no particular interest, either of myself, estate, 
 honour, or family, are, or have been, prevalent 
 with me to this undertaking ; for if you had, 
 upon the old government, offered to me this 
 one, this one thing (I speak as thus advised, 
 and before God, as having been to this day of 
 this opinion ; and this hath been my constant 
 judgment, well known to many that hear me 
 speak) if this one thing had been inserted 
 ! this one thing, that the government should 
 | have been placed in my family hereditarily, I 
 \ would have rejected it ! and I could have done 
 
 no other, according to my present conscience 
 ' and light. I will tell you my reason, though I 
 | cannot tell what God will do with me, nor you, 
 ' nor the nation, for throwing away precious op- 
 portunities committed to us. This hath been 
 
 I my principle, and I liked it when this govern- 
 ! ment came first to be proposed to me, that it 
 puts us off that hereditary way ; well looking 
 that as God had declared what government he 
 had delivered over to the Jews, and placed it 
 
 upon such persons as had been instrumental 
 for the conduct and deliverance of his people, 
 and considering that promise in Isaiah, that 
 
 i God would give rulers as at the first, and judg- 
 es as at the beginning, I did not know but that 
 God might begin ; and though at present with 
 a most unworthy person, yet, as to the future, 
 it might be, after that manner ; and I thought 
 this might usher it in. I am speaking as to 
 my judgment against making it hereditary ; to 
 have men chosen for their love to God, and to 
 truth and justice, and not to have it hereditary ; 
 
 , for as it is in Ecclesiastes, who knoweth wheth-
 
 588 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 er he may beget a fool or a wise man, honest or 
 not' Whatever they be, they must come in 
 on that account, because the government is 
 made a patrimony." 
 
 The motive for these desperate assertions 
 was to enable him, after that day's action, to 
 keep a fair appearance before the country, and 
 their sole justification was the end he hoped 
 one day to accomplish in behalf of God and 
 God's people. Hence he did not scruple to add, 
 in an expression I may not venture to charac- 
 terize, that he spoke in the fear of the Lord 
 who would not be mocked, and with the satis- 
 faction that his conscience did not belie his as- 
 sertion. The different revolutions which had 
 happened, he then observed, were attributed to 
 his cunning. How blind were men, who would 
 not see the hand of Providence in its merciful 
 dispensations ! men, who even ridiculed as vis- 
 ions of enthusiasm, observations " made by the 
 quickening and teaching Spirit !" After this, he 
 went at once to the object for which he had 
 summoned the members before them, and to 
 the amazement of his hearers, deliberately ar- 
 gued on the consequences of an immediate dis- 
 solution of their authority ! 
 
 It might be thought, forsooth, that without 
 the aid of Parliament, the Protectorate could 
 not raise money. He knew better. "I did 
 think, also, for myself, that I am like to meet 
 with difficulties ; and that this nation will not, 
 as it is fit it should not, be deluded with pre- 
 texts of necessity in that great business of rais- 
 ing of money ; and were it not that I can 
 make some dilemmas, upon which to resolve 
 some things of my conscience, judgment, and 
 actions, I should sink at the very prospect of 
 my encounters. Some of them are general, 
 some are more special. Supposing this cause 
 or this business must be carried on, it is eitiier 
 of God or of man ; if it be of man, I would I 
 had never touched it with a finger. If I had 
 not had a hope fixed in me that this cause and 
 this business is of God, I would many years 
 ago have run from it ; if it he of God, he will 
 bear it up ; if it be of man, it will tumble, as 
 everything that hath been of man since the 
 world began hath done. And what are all our his- 
 tories, and other traditions of actions in former 
 times, but God manifesting himself, that he 
 hath shaken, and tumbled down, and trampled 
 upon, everything that he hath not planted ! 
 And as this is, so the all-wise God deal with it. 
 If this be of human structure and invention, 
 and if it be an old plotting and contrivance to 
 bring things to this issue, and that they are not 
 the births of Providence, then they will tum- 
 ble ; but if the Lord take pleasure in England, 
 and if he will do us good, he is able to bear us 
 up. Let the difficulties be whatsoever they 
 will, we shall, in his strength, be able to en- 
 counter with them ; and, bless God, I have been 
 inured to difficulties, and I never found God fail- 
 ing when I trusted in him : I can laugh and sing 
 in my heart when I speak of these things to you', 
 or elsewhere. And though some may think it is 
 a hard thing, without Parliamentary authority, 
 to raise money upon this nation, yet I have an- 
 other argument to the good people of this na- 
 tion, if they would be safe and have no better 
 principle, whether they prefer the having of 
 their will, though it be their destruction, rather 
 
 than comply with things of NECESSITY ? That 
 will excuse me ; but I should wrong my native 
 country to suppose this." 
 
 Necessity that was his plea ; and if it were 
 answered that the necessity was of his own 
 creation, he should answer, No, it was of God ! 
 It was the consequence of God's pro-cidcnce ! No 
 marvel was it, he added, if men who lived on 
 their masses and service-books, their dead and 
 carnal worship, were strangers to the works of 
 God ; but for those who had been instructed 
 by the Spirit of God, to adopt the same lan- 
 guage, and say that men were the cause of these 
 things, when God had done them this, this, he 
 solemnly warned them, was more than the Lord 
 would bear ! But now he had simply to com- 
 municate his determination. They had sat 
 long enough, he thought, for the benefit of Eng- 
 land, and now, therefore, he declared them dis- 
 solved ! 
 
 For everything but this his listeners were 
 prepared. They claimed their term of five 
 months by the Lord Protector's own law. They 
 were answered that that term was meant to he 
 counted as in the arrangements of military ser- 
 vice, by calendar and not lunar months ; and 
 that, as the soldiers were paid, so should their 
 existence be measured out. They had no re- 
 ply to make to this deliberate artifice, but at 
 once to go sullenly to their several homes, and 
 leave their country once again to the absolute 
 despotism of Cromwell. 
 
 And an absolute despotism he at once es- 
 tablished. The opportune and most natural 
 occurrence of several conspiracies against him 
 | after this third dissolution, formed what he 
 ! thought would seem to be a sufficient motive, 
 and most certainly prove a more than sufficient 
 defence ! 
 
 The conspiracies exploded from two differ- 
 i ent quarters, the Republican sections of the 
 : army, and the Royalists of the northern and 
 western counties. The first embraced projects 
 for the surprisal of Cromwell's person, and for 
 the seizure of the Castle of Edinburgh, of Hull, 
 Portsmouth, and other places of strength. But 
 spies, paid by Thurloe, were in every regiment ; 
 and no movement occurred that was not pre- 
 viously known to Crmnwell. All officers ot 
 doubtful fidelity were at once dismissed ; ev- 
 ery regiment was purged of its questionable 
 men ; Colonel Wildman was surprised in the 
 very act of dictating to his secretary a declara- 
 tion against the government of a most hostile 
 1 and inflammatory tendency ; and Lord Grey of 
 Groby, Colonels Alured, Overton, and others, 
 j were arrested, of whom some remained long 
 I in severe and infamous confinement, while 
 others were permitted to go at large on giving 
 security for their peaceable behaviour. The 
 tyrant did not yet dare to bring to the scaffold 
 ' his old associates of Naseby and Marston 
 Moor. 
 
 The Royalist plot, though more extensive, 
 proved to be still more harmless. It was head- 
 ed by Wilmot, just then created Earl of Ro- 
 chester, Sir Henry Slingsby, Sir Richard Ma- 
 leverer, and Colonel Penruddock ; and, after a 
 moment's occupation of Salisbury, was dis- 
 persed by a captain with only a few companies ' 
 of infantry. The mass of the people were still, 
 as I have before described them, indifferent.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 It is, at the same time, recorded of the inhab- 
 itants of Salisbury, in particular, that they were 
 disgusted with the brutal purpose of the Roy- 
 alists (during the momentary occupation) to 
 hang the judges of assize whom they surprised 
 in the town. Of the prisoners, the most dis- 
 tinguished were executed, though they had sur- 
 rendered the town under regular articles of 
 war. The remainder were sold for slaves to 
 Barbadoes, a favourite policy with Cromwell, 
 pursued first in his Irish campaigns, and car- 
 ried on through the whole of the Protectorate.* 
 
 And now followed a regular and elaborate 
 project of despotism, deliberately planned and 
 resolutely executed. It was heralded by a few 
 precautionary measures, which served to pre- 
 pare the way for it. These were to forbid all 
 ejected and sequestered clergymen of the 
 Church of England to teach as schoolmasters 
 or tutors, or to preach or use the church service 
 as ministers either in public or private ; to order 
 all priests belonging to the Church of Rome to 
 quit the kingdom under pain of death ; to banish 
 all Cavaliers and Catholics to the distance of 
 twenty miles from the metropolis ; to prohibit 
 the publication in print of any news or intel- 
 ligence without permission from the secretary 
 of state ;t and to place in confinement most of 
 the nobility and principal gentry in England, 
 till they could produce bail for their good be- 
 haviour and future appearance ! Among the 
 first who were apprehended were the Earl of 
 Newport ; Lord Willoughby, of Parham, broth- 
 er-in-law of Whitelocke ; and Geoffry Palmer, 
 at once one of the most eminent and eccentric 
 of the Royalist lawyers still residing in En- 
 gland, and whom the Restoration afterward re- 
 vived. They were committed to the Tower. 
 The Earl of Lindsey and Lord Lovelace were I 
 imprisoned at Banbury. Then followed the ar- j 
 rest of the Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of j 
 Northampton, Viscount Falkland, the Lords 
 St. John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, and Lucas, 
 and above fifty commoners. The names of 
 Earl Rivers and the Earl of Peterborough were 
 subsequently added. 
 
 AH this occurred within a few weeks, and 
 was specially and openly designed by Cromwell 
 to break the spirits of men, and to prepare 
 them for what he had in reserve ; for against j 
 the majority of the Royalists arrested thus, he ' 
 did not scruple to confess afterward that he j 
 had no specific charge to make. The first part 
 of the great despotic scheme followed rapidly, 
 
 * The following sad and significant extract is from a Paris 
 letter of this date : " Here is nothing more now, but many 
 Irish come from Ireland daily, into the service of Prince 
 Cond6, with the most sad stories of the English usage to 
 the natives that ever I heard of: parents taken from their 
 wives and children, and sent into the English plantations ; 
 the children starve in wildernesses, and some knocked to 
 death. If all be true, it cannot be the Protector will leave 
 it impune." Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 160. 
 
 t Up to this time, as has been already stated, there were 
 eight weekly newspapers, the majority in favour of the gov- 
 ernment, but two of them, in a certain degree, hostile to the 
 measures now pursued. " They expressed their opposition, 
 however," as Mr. Godwin very properly remarks, " for the 
 most part in a very subdued style, and had by no means 
 lately broken out into great intemperance." After this or- 
 dinance, which destroyed what remained of the liberty of 
 the press, only the Mercurius Politicus, by Marchn-.ont 
 Needham, and a new one now started, called the Public 
 Intelligencer, by the same writer, appear to have been pub- 
 lished. It is, indeed, not easy to conceive a measure of a 
 more infamous character. 
 
 in the shape of an ordinance, solely levelled 
 against the adherents of the Stuarts. It de- 
 clared that " all who had ever borne arms for 
 the king, or declared themselves to be of the 
 royal party, should be decimated ; that is, pay 
 a tenth part of all the income or estate which 
 they had left, to support the charge which the 
 Commonwealth was put to by the unquietness 
 of their temper, and the just cause of jealousy 
 which they had administered." This was an 
 infamous violation of every provision in the Act 
 of Oblivion, passed with Cromwell's own most 
 strenuous assistance by the statesmen, and an 
 outrage upon every larger provision of natural 
 equity or justice. But it was only the begin 
 ning of an end more terrible. 
 
 This declared itself, within a few weeks after, 
 by a most comprehensive completion of the 
 scheme of tyranny. While brooding over it, 
 and all the desperate cruelty and injustice it 
 involved, the Lord Protector found it necessary 
 to vent what he fancied was the real lowliness 
 and submissiveness of his honest and affec- 
 tionate heart, to his son-in-law Fleetwood. He 
 sent him, accordingly, to his government in Ire- 
 land, the following most characteristic letter . 
 " DEERE CHARLES, I write not often. At once 
 I desier thee to knowe I most dearly love thee, 
 and indeed my harte is plaine to thee as thy 
 harte can well desier ; lett nothinge shake thee 
 in this. The wretched jealosies that are amongst 
 us, and the spirit of calumny, turn all into gall 
 and wormwood. My harte is for the people of 
 God ; that the Lorde knows, and I trust will (in 
 due time) manifest ; yett thence are my wounds, 
 which, though it grieves me, yett (through the 
 Grace of God) doth not discourage me totally. 
 Many good men are repininge at everythinge, 
 though indeed very many good, well satisfied 
 and satisfyinge daily. The will of the Lorde 
 will bring forth good in due time. . . It's report- 
 ed that you are to be sent for, and Harry to be 
 Deputy, which truely never entred into my harte. 
 The Lorde knows, my desier was for him and his 
 Brother to have lived private lives in the Country ; 
 and Harry knows this very well, and how dif- 
 ficultly I was perswaded to give him his Co- 
 mission for his present place. This I say was 
 from a simple and sincere harte. The noyse of 
 my beinge crowned, <fc., are like malUioits fig- 
 ments. . . . Use this bearer, Mr. Brewster, kind- 
 ly ; lett him be nere you ; indeed, he is a very 
 holy, able man ; trust me you will find him soe. 
 He was a bosome Friend of Mr. Tillinghurst ; 
 ask him of him ; you will thereby know Mr. 
 Tillinghurst's spirit. This Gentleman brought 
 him to me a little before he died, and Mr. 
 Cradock, Mr. Throughton, a Godly Minister, 
 beinge by, with himselfe, who cried shame. 
 Deere Charles, my deere love to thee and to 
 my deere Biddie, who is a joy to my harte, for 
 what I hear of the Lorde in her. Bid her be 
 cheerfull and rejoyce in the Lorde once and 
 again ; if she knows the Covenant thoroughly, 
 she cannot butt doe ; for that transaction is, 
 without her, sure and stedfast between the 
 Father and the Mediator in his Blood ; there- 
 fore leaninge upon the Sonn, or lookinge to him, 
 thirstinge after him, imbracinge him, wee are 
 his seed, and the covenant is sure to all the 
 seed ; the compact is for the seed ; God is 
 bound in faithfulness to Christ, and in him to
 
 590 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 us. The covenant is without us a transac- 1 one. And I am of y r opinion that Trev r and 
 tion between God and Christ look up to it ! Col. Mervin are very dangerous persons, and 
 God ingageth in it to pardon us, to write his : may be made the heads of a new Rebellion ; 
 .aw on our heart, to plant his fear, that wee and therefore I would have you move the 
 shall never depart from him. Wee under all Councell that they be secured in some very safe 
 our sins and infirmities can dayly offer a per- | place, and the farther out of their own Counties 
 feet Christ, add thus wee have peace, and safe- the better. I comend you to the Lorde, and 
 ty, and apprehension of love, from a Father in ! rest your aff 1 father, OLIVER, P." 
 
 Covenant, who cannot deny himselfe : and true- j The ex-governor Fleetwood meanwhile pre- 
 ly in this is all my Salvation, and this helps me sented himself, with Desborough, as ready tools 
 to bear my great burthens. . . . If you ha.vea.mind for the Protector's purpose in his great despotic 
 to come over with your deere Wife, <fc., take your \ plan. He laid the base of it in the already sub- 
 best oportunilie for the good of the publique and \ sisting old English militia arrangements. It 
 
 your own convenience. The Lorde bless you all. 
 Pray for me, that the Lorde would direct and 
 keep me his servant. I bless the Lorde I am 
 
 was feasible, by their means, he saw, to divide 
 England and Wales, with little trouble, into ten 
 or twelve districts, and to place over the militia 
 
 not rny own, butt my condition to flesh and blood \ of each of these districts an officer with the 
 
 is very hard. Pray for me ; I do for you all ; 
 comend me to all friends. I rest, your lovinge 
 Father, OLIVER, P." 
 
 Fleetwood accepted the invitation, came over 
 to London, and never returned to his Irish gov- 
 ernment. His wily father-in-law had merely 
 wished to see him, to effect, by his powers of 
 persuasion, what Fleetwood would have re- 
 
 name of major-general. This plan was carried 
 on with the utmost secrecy for more than two 
 months, and only openly declared when ripe for 
 execution. It was then announced, by a vote 
 of the Protector's council, that the command 
 of militia, in ten districts that were named, 
 should be intrusted to Fleetwood, Desborongh, 
 Lambert, Whaley, Goffe, Skippon. Colonel 
 
 sented with scorn and indignation if attempted James Berry, Colonel Thomas Kelsey, Colonel 
 in any other way. The real truth was, that j William Boteler, and Major Charles Worsley. 
 Cromwell had already positively resolved that To these were afterward added Barkstead, lieu- 
 his son Henry should be Irish deputy an office | tenant of the Tower, and Admiral Daw kins. 
 for which Fleetwood had proved himself in- The districts were, by another vote, apportion- 
 capable and shortly after Fleetwood's return, 
 
 Henry proceeded to Ireland ! 
 
 The consummate ability with which he there 
 administered the government of the Protector- 
 
 ed in detail. Fleetwood had the counties of 
 Oxford, Bucks, Hertford, Norfolk, Suffolk, Es- 
 sex, and Cambridge, being permitted to appoint 
 Colonel Henry Haines as his deputy for the 
 
 ate is not a subject for discussion in these I last four. Lambert, having received the north 
 pages. As I shall not again return to it, how- j of England into his charge, was allowed, as a 
 ever, it may be as well to show, in a private still greater man than Fleetwood, to appoint 
 
 letter from the Protector to his son, the rela- 
 tion of assistance and advice which from this 
 period till Oliver's death subsisted between 
 
 Colonel Richard Lilburne for the counties of 
 York and Durham, and Colonel Charles How- 
 ard, afterward Earl of Carlisle, for Cumber- 
 
 them. Shortly after his departure, the follow- j land, Westmorland, and Northumberland. His 
 ing letter was despatched to him. It refers to own name was merely reserved to give orna- 
 
 the disaffected, and imbodies excellent advice 
 " moderation and love" to Ludlow and the 
 Republicans, caution and detention in the case 
 of Mervin and the Royalists. 
 
 " SONN, I have seen y r letter writt unto M r 
 Secretary Thurloe, and doe finde thereby that 
 
 ment and dignity to the affair. Whaley had the 
 command of the militia of the counties of Lin- 
 coln, Nottingham, Derby, Warwick, and Lei- 
 cester ; Goffe, of Sussex, Hants, and Berks ; 
 Skippon, of London ; Berry, of Worcester, 
 Hereford, Salop, and North Wales ; Kelsey, of 
 
 you are very apprehensive of the carriage of j Kent and Surrey ; Boteler, of Northampton, 
 
 some persons with you towards yo r self and the 
 publique affaires. I doe believe there may be 
 some perticular persons who are not very well 
 pleased w th the present condition of thinges, 
 and may be apt to show their discontents as 
 they have oportunitie ; but this should not make 
 too great impressions in you. Time and pa- 
 tience may worke them to a better frame of 
 spirit, and bring them to see that w ch for the 
 present seemes to be hid from them ; especially 
 if they shall see yo 1 ' moderation and love towards 
 them, whilst they are found in other ways towards 
 you ; which I earnestly desier you to studie and 
 endeavour all that lyes in you, whereof both 
 you and I too shall have the comfort, whatso- 
 
 ever the issue and event thereof be. 
 
 For 
 
 what you write of more help, I have long en- 
 deavoured it, and shall not be wantinge to send 
 you some further addition to the Councell, as 
 soone as Men can be found out who are Jilt for y' 
 trust. I am alsoe thinkinge of sendinge over 
 to you a fitt person icho may comand the north of 
 Ireland, w ch I believe stands in great need of 
 
 Bedford, Huntingdon, and Rutland ; Worsley, 
 of Chester, Lancaster, and Stafford ; Barkstead, 
 of Westminster and Sliddlesex ; and Dawkins, 
 of Monmouthshire and South Wales. 
 
 And what were the ostensible duties of these 
 formidable major-generals'? I will first give 
 the substance of their official instructions, and 
 then exhibit their powers in action. They 
 were, according to the former,* first, to en- 
 deavour to suppress all tumults, insurrections, 
 rebellions, and all other unlawful assemblies ; 
 and for this purpose, to draw together their 
 forces and troops, and march them to such 
 places as they should judge convenient. Sec- 
 ondly, to take care and give orders that all pa- 
 pists, and others who had been in arms against 
 the Parliament, as well as all who were found 
 dangerous to the peace of the nation, should be 
 deprived of their arms, which should be secured 
 in some neighbouring garrison, or otherwise 
 
 The paper was officially published as 
 als 
 
 Instructions 
 
 and orders to the major-generals for preserving the peace 
 of the Commonwealth " See Godwin, vol. iv.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 591 
 
 disposed of. Thirdly, every master of a family, 
 or householder, who was considered as dis- 
 affected, was to be required to give security, 
 by his bond, for the good behaviour of all his 
 menial servants, the servants being liable to be 
 called to appear before the major-general, or 
 his deputy, at such time and place as either 
 should appoint. Fourthly, an office of register 
 was to be set up in London, where the names 
 of all persons thus giving security were to be 
 entered, together with their residence ; and as 
 often as they changed their abode, this was 
 also to be punctually recorded, and the notice 
 communicated to the major-general of each dis- 
 trict, as the case might require. Fifthly, every 
 person, whether foreigner or otherwise, who 
 came from beyond sea, was required, within 
 twenty-four hours after his landing, to appear 
 before the person whom the major-general of 
 the district should appoint in the different ports 
 for that purpose, to deliver his name, and an 
 account of the place from whence he came and 
 to which he intended to go ; as also, if he came 
 to London, to appear before the registrar there, 
 and give an account of his lodging and his pur- 
 pose ; all his removals from place to place being 
 to be reciprocally communicated between the re- 
 gistrar in London, and the major-generals in the 
 different districts. Sixthly, the major-generals 
 were to take an account of what had been- done 
 in execution of the ordinance against insuffi- 
 cient and scandalous ministers and school- 
 masters, to the end that no disaffected persons 
 might be allowed in public teaching, or in the 
 education of youth. To these were added cer- 
 tain articles, with which the instructions were 
 concluded, as to high roads and robberies ; the 
 execution of the laws against drunkenness and 
 blasphemy, and gaming-houses, and houses of 
 ill fame, as well as respecting idle and loose 
 persons, who had no visible means of subsist- 
 ence ; and they granted not only the power to 
 apprehend thieves and robbers, but also to per- 
 mit no horse-races, cock-fightings, bear-baiting, 
 or stage-plays, within the several counties. 
 
 Such was the tenour of the instructions, as 
 openly published in the papers of the time, and 
 designed to convey the idea, as far as it was 
 possible, of a kind of general rural police and 
 civil regulation. Appended to the commission 
 of each, however, were these ominous words, 
 with Cromwell's signature : "And you are to 
 observe and follow such directions as you shall 
 from time to time receive from ourself." The 
 most essential portion of their instructions was, 
 in truth, altogether secret ; and in their subse- 
 quent correspondence with the government, as 
 we find it in Thurloe, can we alone discover the 
 whole extent and object of this atrocious des- 
 potism. 
 
 There we ascertain the plan of assessment 
 by means of these tools of tyranny, and the par- 
 ties on whom it was imposed. They were em- 
 powered to summon before them any persons 
 whom they should consider as disaffected to the 
 government, or who had no calling or visible 
 means of subsistence, and require them to give 
 an account of themselves and their property, 
 which they then assessed to the state. They 
 were at the same time authorized to receive in- 
 formation from any other quarters, and by that 
 means to correct any attempted misrepresen- 
 
 tations of principles. Any disobedience to the 
 major-generals made the offender liable to im- 
 prisonment at the pleasure of the Protector and 
 council. The Royalists, terrified at the exten- 
 sive arrests and imprisonments which took 
 place among their brethren, and awed by the 
 j military preparations which were made to sub- 
 due resistance, appear, from all the accounts 
 that are preserved, to have promptly obeyed 
 the summons of these armed justices, and for 
 the most part yielded quietly to assessments 
 which were imposed upon them. There was, 
 indeed, no hope of redress in any case. The 
 sole appeal was reserved to the Protector in 
 council, and all privilege or appeal to the laws 
 was forever barred and stopped. The major- 
 generals, therefore, summoned whomsoever 
 they pleased to appear before them as delin- 
 quents ; and it was fatal to slight their com- 
 mands. They inquired into every man's es- 
 tate and income, and assessed it to a tenth of 
 its annual value ; if any one endeavoured to 
 clear himself of delinquency, they assumed the 
 privilege of pronouncing upon the validity of 
 his defence. They sent whom they pleased to 
 prison, and confined them where they pleased ; 
 and it has been remarked by Mr. Godwin, as 
 one of the general characteristics of Cromwell's 
 government, that those who were judged to be 
 disaffected never succeeded in their endeavours 
 to be set at large in due course of law.* 
 
 But one or two individual cases will at once 
 express the general iniquity. Worsley, for ex- 
 ample, thus writes to Thurloe from Stafford : 
 " Yesterday we had a meeting at this town, 
 and I have made a good progress in our busi- 
 ness. We have assessed diverse, and the rest must 
 expect it with all speed. I hope we shall pay our 
 county troop out of what we have done already, 
 and provide you a considerable sum fur other uses. 
 We have sent out warrants to give notice to 
 the whole county of our day of meeting, when 
 we shall sit upon the ordinance for the ejecting 
 of scandalous ministers. We have disarmed 
 the disaffected in this county. We shall fall of 
 snapping- some of our old blades that will not let 
 us be quiet. We have found an estate of Pen- 
 ruddock's that was executed, and have ordered 
 it to be sequestrated. I hope shortly to give 
 you a good account of the rest of the counties." 
 Desborough writes in equal spirits with his in- 
 famous work. " Yesterday we proceeded upon 
 taxing seven or eight of this county, among 
 whom was Sir James Thynn, who was at first 
 a little averse, and did plead as much innocen- 
 cy as my Lord Seymour hath done ; but at last, 
 having no refuge, ions constrained to comply ; and 
 I think of those eight that we have already dealt 
 withal, the sum will amount to six or seven hundred 
 pounds per annum. There are four more to ap- 
 pear this morning, and then I intend for Bland- 
 ford, to attend the Dorsetshire gentlemen, and 
 so to Marlborough, where there are twenty 
 more to be summoned." 
 
 The case of Cleaveland, the Royalist poet, 
 has been already referred to in this work, t He 
 had offended Cromwell in early years, and was 
 one of the first victims to the power of the ma- 
 jor-generals in Norwich Cleaveland was a man 
 of masterly talents, and one of the most popu- 
 
 * See Godwin, vol. iv., p. 236, et sea. 
 t See anti, p. 412.
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 lar writers of his time. His works had passed 
 ten editions in about twenty years. He was 
 now living in great poverty, but yet cheerfully 
 submitting to the reverses that had fallen on 
 him only in common with the cause to which 
 his talents had been devoted. He was plotting 
 against no one, harming no one, not even li- 
 belling any one ; and yet we find in Thurloe's 
 papers the following abominable despatch, with 
 the signature of Haynes and the other commis- 
 sioners. In " observance to the orders of his 
 highness and council sent unto us, we have 
 this day sent to the garrison of Yarmouth one 
 John Cleaveland, of Norwich, late judge-advo- 
 cate at Newark, whom we have deemed to be 
 comprised within the second head. The rea- 
 sons of judgment are, 1. He confesseth that 
 about a year since he came from London to the 
 city of Norwich, and giveth no account of any bu- 
 siness he hath there, only he pretends that Edward 
 Cooke, Esquire, makcth use of him to help him. in 
 his studies. 2. Mr. Cleaveland confesseth that 
 he hath lived in the said Mr. Cooke's house 
 ever since he came to the said city, and that 
 he but seldom went into the city, and never but 
 once into the country ; indeed, his privacy hath 
 been such, that none or but few save papists and 
 Cavaliers did know that there was any such per- 
 son resident in these parts. 3. For that the place 
 of the said Mr. Cleaveland his abode, viz., the 
 said Mr. Cooke's, is a family of notorious dis- 
 order, and where papists, delinquents, and oth- 
 er disaffected persons of the late king's party 
 do often resort more than to any family in the 
 said city or county of Norfolk, as is commonly 
 reported. 4. Mr. Cleaveland liveth in a genteel 
 garb ; yet he confesseth that he hath no estate but 
 .20 per annum, allowed by two gentlemen, and 
 30 per annum by the said Mr. Cooke. 5. Mr. 
 Cleaveland is a person of great abilities, and so 
 able to do the greater disservice ; all which we 
 humbly submit." 
 
 At about the same period, Jeremy Taylor, a 
 more illustrious name, suffered the fate of 
 Cleaveland for his talents, his poverty, and his 
 attachment to royalty. He was flung into pris- 
 on at Chepstow Castle, in the county of Mon- 
 mouth. With these cases may close our de- 
 scription, since they will serve to express many 
 hundred others of equal or superior iniquity. 
 
 To this condition, then, England was now re- 
 duced. After the gallantest fight for liberty 
 that had ever been fought by any nation in the 
 world, she found herself trampled under foot 
 by a military despot. All the vices of old king- 
 ly rule were nothing to what was now imposed 
 upon her. Some restraint had still been kept 
 on the worst of her preceding sovereigns ; now 
 she found herself hopeless and helpless, her 
 faith in all that she once held noblest broken, 
 and her spirits unequal to any farther struggle. 
 Besides this, there was stealing upon her, in 
 gradual but certain progress, a vile hypocrisy 
 and habit of falsehood, which even good men 
 found it necessary to sanction and endure, that 
 some semblance of the mere pretences of a bet- 
 ter nature might still be left to them, were it 
 only to redeem the name of their sad degrada- 
 tion. Let royalty revisit them as speedily as 
 it would, it could bring nothing back for which 
 they might not gladly exchange all that they 
 now endured. What was the innocent and 
 
 partial tax of ship-money to an all but universal 
 decimation 1 What were agonies and mutila- 
 tions by the Star Chamber to wholesale mur- 
 ders and executions by high courts of justice'? 
 What was an open profligacy worse than a se- 
 cret lie 1 What the arrest of five members of 
 the House of Commons to the utter violation 
 and destruction of every privilege Parliament 
 possessed, and even of the very form and name 
 of its rights and its immunities'! The true 
 cause of the death of Charles I. was his resist- 
 ance to the sacred principle of popular repre- 
 sentation. He laid down his head upon the block 
 j because he broke violently, and in succession, 
 ! three English Parliaments. Oliver Cromwell 
 had now merited, far more richly, that self- 
 same doom, for he had committed, in circum- 
 stances of greater atrocity, the self-same sin. 
 But Charles was weak, and Cromwell strong ; 
 and the people had undergone that worst and 
 most sad recoil from a virtuous and quick-spir- 
 ited enthusiasm, to the debasing sense of fail- 
 ure, depression, and indifference. Even this 
 last, however, had more hope in it than anoth- 
 er sense to which they were now and then 
 roused to give way. This was when they ad- 
 mired their tyrant. Vilest degradation of all 
 was that ! He flung some foreign victory among 
 them as a rattle or a toy, and the whimpering 
 ceased, and they recollected what a great man 
 their Lord Protector was, and sent up an ill- 
 sung song of praise ! 
 
 " The sea's our own '. and now all nations greet, 
 With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet : 
 Our power extends as far as winds can blow, 
 Or swelling sails upon the globe may go." 
 
 There may have been some consolation in the 
 fact that the sea was their own, but it would 
 have been a much superior advantage to have 
 had their souls their own. A bad thing becomes 
 worse when covered or gilded thus ; and far 
 better is it to keep the mean and imbecile ra- 
 pacity of a Stuart to its naked and natural mean- 
 ness, than suffer it to be overshadowed or adorn- 
 ed by the gorgeous tyranny of a Tudor. 
 
 I turn, with no feeling of relief or pride, to 
 such brief mention as may become this work, 
 of the foreign policy of the Protectorate. France 
 and Spain had continued for some time to rival 
 each other in their mean prostration before the 
 power of Cromwell,* that power which he had 
 inherited from the foreign victories of the states- 
 men, and which had thrown into his hands the 
 balance of Europe. The first question started 
 in these negotiations was the manner in which 
 Cromwell should be addressed. No objection 
 was offered by Spain to the regal claims of the 
 Lord Protector, but France showed a slight 
 
 * So monstrous did this become, that ft gave occasion to 
 the most ribald jests in every other part of Europe. The 
 Dn'tch absolutely struck a medal with the bust of Cromwell 
 and liis titles on one side, Britannia on the other, Cromwell 
 thrusting his head in her bosom, with the opposite part of 
 his person ludicrously exposed ; while, as the Spanish am- 
 bassador stoops to offer it homage, the French ambassador 
 holds him by the arm, and says, " Get you back! the hon- 
 our belongs to the king my master!" This medal is still 
 preserved in many Dutch cabinets. Even in Paris pictures 
 were circulated, wherein the English Lord Protector was 
 sitting in an attitude the most ludicrously gross, with the^ 
 King of Spain on the one side, arid the King of France on 
 the other, offering him paper. And Mazarin received still 
 graver reproaches. See advice to him at the end of the 
 Memoirs of De Retz. [The reader will be much amused 
 by consulting Kippis's Biographia Britannica, rol. iv., 
 p. 401, at note DD. C.]
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 593 
 
 restiffhess. Louis's first letter was addressed 
 " To his most serene highness, Oliver, Lord 
 Protector, &c., &c." This was rejected. Then 
 " Mon Cousin" was offered. This also was re- 
 fused. The ordinary address hetween sover- 
 eigns, " To our Dear Brother Oliver, &c.," was 
 at last formally demanded. " What !" said 
 Louis to Mazarin, " shall I call such a fellow 
 my brother 1" " Ay !" rejoined the crafty Ital- 
 ian, " or your father, to gain your ends." Louis 
 then submitted.* 
 
 And it must be confessed, though not for 
 that immediate reason, he gained his ends.t 
 
 * Many letters will be found in Thurloe, referring to this 
 diplomatic dispute. I may quote one or two. De Bordeaux 
 (the ambassador) thus opens the subject to De Brienne, the 
 French secretary of stale : " J'ai receu lesdeux lettres que 
 vous m'avez fait 1'honneur de m'ecrir les 21 et 25 du mois 
 passe, avec celle du roi, dans lesquelles je vois qu'il plait a 
 S. M. me confier la negotiation du trail6 entre la France et 
 1'Angleterre, avec la quality d'ambassadeur. J'ai demand^ 
 audience au secretaire du conseil, sous pretexte de lui en 
 faire part, afin de descouvrir avec quels termes Monsieur le 
 Protecteur disereroit que S. M. le traitast. II ne voulut 
 point s'expliquer autre.ment, si non que son altesse aroit 
 I'autorite souveraine, et aussi grande que les rois, et que 
 c'etoit a nous d'en user comme nous jugerions a propot. 
 Depuis cette conversation un hommc, qui se mf le d'inlrigue, 
 m'est venu trouver, et m'a voulu faire entendre, que le 
 terme de frere seroit bien agreable. J'ai donne ordre d 
 mon secretaire, si 1'on lui temoigne desirer le litre de 
 frere, qu'il responde de soi-mme, que les pouvoirs ra'ont 
 6te envoiez, 4 fin d'avoir un pretexte pour me dispenser de 
 donner cette q indite. Toutes les resolutions d'ici dans les 
 rencontres de la moindre importance se prennent avec grand 
 secret, et la politique est de surprendre." Thurloe, vol. ii., 
 p. 106. In a subsequent letter he says, " J'infere que S. A. 
 n'esl pas contents de ce que je ne suis pas qualifie ambas- 
 sadeur pres d'elle, and de n'etre pas traite de fre're le mal- 
 tre des ceremonies ayant adverti 1'ambassadeur de Portugal 
 de lui donner ce litre." Thurlor, vol. ii., p. 143. A Paris 
 letter to London shows that the matter was generally dis- 
 cussed and talked, of. "The cardinal said yesterday that 
 your Protector is angry that the King of France called him 
 not mon frere, brother. He rallied much upon it, and de- 
 manded whether his father was ever in France ? I hope 
 our Protector will make him sing another song before sum- 
 mer be past." Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 159. The Protector did 
 make him sing another song, though he seems, by the fol- 
 lowing extract, to have consented in one interval to a com- 
 promise : " Vous trouverez bon que je vous i-claircisse du 
 double que je croiois avoir leve par quelqu'une de mes pre- 
 cedentes touchant la suscription des lett.res du roy a M. le 
 Protecteur. II a refuse le litre de cousin, et s'est contente, 
 dans loutes les deux depfiches de celui, de Monsieur le Pro- 
 tecteur de la Republique d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse, et Irlande. 
 Celui de frere eut ete bien plus agreable." Thurloe, vol. 
 ii., p. 228. Shortly after, the more agreeable " brother" 
 was demanded and conceded. 
 
 t Slingsby Bethel, in his World's Mistake in Oliver 
 Cromwell, makes this part of his foreign policy a grave 
 charge of objection to him, and has been followed by Hume 
 and others. " Cromwell," he says, "contrary to our inter- 
 est, made an unjust war with Spain, and an impolitic league 
 with France, bringing the first Ihereby under, and making 
 the latter loo great for, Christendom, and by that means 
 broke the balance betwixt the two crowns of Spain and 
 France, which his predecessors, the Long Parliament, had 
 always wisely preserved. In this dishonest war with Spain, 
 he pretended and endeavoured to impose a belief on the 
 world that he had nothing in his eye but the advancement 
 of the Proteslant cause and ihe honour of the nation ; but 
 hi pretences were either fraudulent, or he was ignorant in 
 foreign affairs (as I am apt to think that he was not guilty 
 of too much knowledge in them) ; for he that had known 
 anything of the temper of the popish prelacy and the French 
 court policies, could not but see that the way to increase or 
 preserve the Reformed interest in France was by rendering 
 the Protestants of necessary use to their king ; for, thai 
 longer than they were so, they could not be free from per- 
 secution, and that the way to render them so was by keep- 
 ing the balance betwixt Spain and France even, as that 
 which would consequently make them useful to their king ; 
 but by overthrowing the balance in his war with Spain, and 
 joining with France, he freed the French king from his 
 fears of Spain, enabled him to subdue all faclions al home, 
 and thereby lo bring himself inlo a condition of not stand- 
 ing in need of any of them ; and from thence hath proceed- 
 ed the persecution that hath since been, and still is, in that 
 
 4F 
 
 Cromwell, after a protracted negotiation, ab- 
 ruptly broke with the Spanish envoy, Don 
 Alonzo Cardenas, who demanded and obtained 
 his passports. Don Alonzo's bait had been the 
 reconquest of Calais ; Mazarin's, the counter 
 temptation of the capture of Dunkirk. It is 
 scarcely probable that Cromwell much cared 
 for either. But it was more convenient to 
 him, and to the safety of his personal power, 
 to be on good terms with so near a neighbour 
 as France, who had already, to oblige him, dis- 
 missed from Paris his rival Charles Stuart. 
 And in the colonial possessions of Spain in the 
 New World, he saw an opportunity to make 
 large accessions to the maritime power of Eng- 
 land ; at the same moment, to dazzle and dis- 
 tract his oppressed countrymen by brilliant epi- 
 sodes of distant conquests, and get convenient- 
 ly dismissed upon that service officers whose 
 influence and whose principles he feared. The 
 illustrious Blake was the chief of these. 
 
 His first demonstration of his policy was ac- 
 cordingly to equip and send out two large ar- 
 maments, one under Pen and Venables, the 
 
 nation against the Reformed there ; so that Oliver, instead 
 of advancing the Reformed interest, hath, by an error in his 
 politics, been the author of destroying it. The honour and 
 advantage he propounded to this nation in his pulling down 
 of Spain, had as ill a foundation ; for if true, as was said, 
 that we were lo have had Ostend and Newport, as well as 
 Dunkirk (when we could get them), they bore no propor- 
 tion, in any kind, to all Ihe rest of the King of Spain's Eu- 
 ropean dominions, which must necessarily have fallen to the 
 French king's share, because of their joining and nearness 
 to him, and remoteness from us ; and the increasing the 
 greatness of so near a neighbour must have increased our 
 future dangers." But all this was surely to have anticipated 
 a litlle too rapidly the power and conquests of Louis the 
 Fourteenlh, and the maturity of our William the Third. 
 Lord Bolingbroke followed up the charge. " Cromwell ei- 
 ther did not discern," says he, "this turn of the balance of 
 power [from Spain to France], or, discerning it, he was in- 
 duced, by reasons of private interest, to act against the 
 general interest of Europe. Cromwell joined with France 
 against Spain ; and though he got Jamaica and Dunkirk, 
 he drove the Spaniards into a necessity of making a peace 
 with France, that has dislurbed Ihe peace of the world al- 
 most fourscore years, and the consequences of which have 
 wellnifh beggared in our times the nation he enslaved m 
 his. There is a tradition I have heard il from persons 
 who lived in those days, and I believe it came from Thur- 
 loe that Cromwell was in treaty with Spain, and ready to 
 turn his arms against France, when he died. If this fact 
 was certain, as little as I honour his memory, I should have 
 some regret that he died so soon. But, whatever his in- 
 lenlions were, we must charge the Pyrenean treaty, and 
 the falal consequences of il, in great measure to his ac- 
 count. The Spaniards abhorred the thought of marrying 
 their Infanta to Louis the Fourteenlh. It was on this point 
 thai they broke the negotiation Lionne had begun ; and if 
 they resumed it afterward, and offered the marriage they 
 had before rejected, Cromwell's league with France was a 
 principal inducement to this alleralion of their resolution." 
 But I may close this note wilh a subtle remark of Bishop 
 Warburton, who, in hilling much closer to the truth, un- 
 consciously exposes, at Ihe same lime, what was undoubt- 
 edly the vice of the Proteclor's foreign as well as domestic 
 policy, namely, the pursuit of temporary expedienls of ihe 
 brilliant and dashing sort, ralher than general principles 
 of the sober and enduring. Thus says the bishop: " Some 
 modern politicians have affected to think contemptuously 
 of Cromwell's capacity, as if he knew not that true pol- 
 icy required lhat he should have thrown himself inlo Ihe 
 lighler balance, which was that of Spain ; or as if he 
 did not know which was become the lighter. But this is 
 talking as if Cromwell had been a lawful hereditary mon- 
 arch, whom true policy would have Ihus directed. But true 
 policy required that the usurper should first take care of him- 
 self, before he busied himself in adjusting Ihe balance of 
 Europe. Now France, by ils vicinily, was the most dan- 
 gerous power to disoblige, as well as by the near relation- 
 ship of the two royal families of France and England ; so 
 that, though Cromwell gave out that which of the two 
 states would give most for his friendship should have it, in 
 order to raise the price, he was certainly determined in 
 himself that France should have it."
 
 594 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 other in command of Blake, with the professed 
 purpose of restoring the natural dominion of 
 England on the sea, but whose real and secret 
 destination was to invade the American colo- 
 nies, and surprise the Plate fleet of Spain, till 
 then supposed by all men to be, and to be held, 
 the most faithful ally of the Commonwealth.* 
 The bait took, and the most extraordinary ex- 
 citement and pleasure was produced in various 
 quarters of England. Preachers declared from 
 their pulpits that the Protector intended to de- 
 stroy Babylon ; nothing less than the pope was, 
 abroad, avowed to be his quarry ; and Innocent 
 X., expecting to be attacked in Rome, ordered 
 fortifications to be built round the Church of 
 our Lady of Loretto, the rich offerings in which 
 were presumed to be the chief object of the 
 heretic adventure ! 
 
 Meanwhile Pen's fleet, carrying upward of 
 4000 soldiers, had arrived at Barbadoes, where 
 they were instructed to open their sealed or- 
 ders ; and, opening them, there found instruc- 
 tions to take at once Cuba and Hispaniola. 
 Re-enforcements of upward of GOOO additional 
 troops awaited them for that purpose, and they 
 instantly set forth. They had scarcely landed 
 at Hispaniola, however, when they fell into an 
 ambuscade, and were obliged to re-embark de- 
 feated. They made a subsequent descent on 
 the island of Jamaica with better success. 
 This great gain was yet held insufficient to 
 balance the first defeat ; and on the return of 
 Pen and Venables, they were both committed 
 to the Tower. 
 
 I may pause for an instant here to notice a 
 sound example of Cromwell's far-seeing saga- 
 city. Though men scouted in that day the ac- 
 quisition of Jamaica, he saw its value in itself, 
 and its importance in relation to future attempts 
 on the continent of America. Exerting the in- 
 human power of a despot occasionally, as hur- 
 ricanes and other horrors, necessary for the 
 purification of the world he ordered his son 
 Henry to seize on a thousand young girls in 
 Ireland, and send them over to Jamaica, t for 
 the purpose of increasing population there. A 
 year later, and while the Italian Sagredo was 
 in London, he issued an order that all females 
 of disorderly lives should be arrested and ship- 
 ped for Barbadoes for the like purpose. Twelve 
 hundred were accordingly sent in three ships. 
 
 * It afterward appeared to have been argued by Crom- 
 well in his council, to justify the measure, that since 
 America was not named in the treaties of 1604 and 1630, 
 hostilities in America would be no infraction of those trea- 
 ties (!!); that the Spaniards had committed depredations 
 on the English commerce in the West Indies, and were 
 consequently liable to reprisals ; that they had gained pos- 
 session of these countries by force, against the will of the 
 natives, and might, therefore, be justly dispossessed by 
 force ; and, lastly, that the conquest of these transatlantic 
 territories would contribute to spread the light of the Gos- 
 pel among the Indians, and to cramp the resources of po- 
 pery in Europe. These were but shallow pretexts for con- 
 cealment of more substantial personal aims. 
 
 t I quote from Henry Cromwell's answer to Thurloe : 
 " Sir, I understand by your last letter that the transpor- 
 tation of a thousand Irish girles, and the like number of 
 boyes, is resolved on by the councell, but as touchinge 
 what you write for the charges you will be at to putt them 
 in an equipage fitt to be sent (havinge advised with some 
 persons heer), I know not well what answer to return you 
 to it ; hut it's thought most adviseable to provide their 
 clothes for them in London, which we thinke you may doe 
 better and at cheaper rates than wee can heer. Wee shall 
 have, upon the receipt of his highness his pleasure, the 
 number you propound, and more if you tbjuk fitt." Thur- 
 loe, vol. iv., p. 87. 
 
 "Ho veduto prima," says Sagredo, "del mio 
 partire piu squadre di soldati andar per Londra 
 cercandro donne di allegra vita, imbarcandone 
 1200 sopra tre vascelli per tragittarle all' isola, 
 a fine di far propagazione."* 
 
 This subject may now be left with the fol- 
 lowing most able and characteristic letter from 
 Cromwell to Major-general Fortescue, whom 
 Venables had left in command of the newly- 
 won island, in which the Lord Protector forci- 
 bly explains his views of the proper policy for 
 security and improvement of the conquest. 
 
 " Sir, You will herewith receive instruc- 
 tions for the better carryinge on of your buis- 
 nes, which is not of small account here, al- 
 though our discouragements have been many, 
 for which we desier to humble ourselves before 
 the Lorde, who hath sorely chastened us. I 
 doe commend, in the midst of others' miscar- 
 riages, your constancy and faithfulnesse to your 
 trust, in everywhere you are, and takinge care 
 of a company of poore sheepe left by their 
 shepherds ; and be assured, that as that which 
 you have done hath been good in itself, and be- 
 cominge an honest man, soe it hath a very good 
 savour here with all good Christians and all 
 true Englishmen, and will not be forgotten by me, 
 as oportunitie shall serve. I hope you have long 
 before this time received that good supplye 
 which went from hence in July last, whereby 
 you will perceive that you have not been for- 
 gotten heer. I hope alsoe the ships sent for 
 New England are before this time with you ; 
 and lett me tell you as an incouragement to 
 you and those with you to improve the utmost 
 diligence, and to excite your courage iu this 
 buisnes, though not to occasion any negligence 
 in presentinge that affair, nor to give occasion 
 to slacken any improvement of what the place 
 may afford that you will be followed with 
 what necessary supplyes, as well for comforta- 
 ble subsistance as for your security against the 
 Spaniard, this place may afford or you want. 
 And therefore study first your securitie by forti- 
 fyinge; and although you have not monies for 
 the present wherewith to doe it in such quan- 
 tities as were to be wished, yet your case be- 
 inge as that of a rnarchinge army, wherein every 
 soldier, out of principles of nature, and accordinge 
 to the practice of all discipline, ought to be at the 
 pains to secure the common quarter, wee hope no 
 man among you will be soe wantinge to him- 
 self, consideringe food is provided for you, as 
 not to be willinge to help to the uttermost 
 therein ; and therefore I require you and all 
 with you, for the safetie of the whole, that this 
 be made your principal intention. The doinge 
 of this will require that you be verie careful not 
 to scatter till you have begun a securitie in some 
 one place. Next I desier you that you would 
 consider how to form such a body of good horse 
 as may, if the Spaniard should attempt upon 
 you at the next cominge into the Indies with 
 his gallions, be in a readiness to march to hin- 
 der his landinge, who will hardly land upon a 
 body of horse ; and if he shall land, be in a posture 
 to keep the provisions of the country from him, or 
 him from the provisions, if he shall endeavour to 
 march towards you. Wee trust wee shall fur- 
 nish you with bridles, saddles, and horse-shoes, 
 and other thinges necessary for that worke, 
 
 A manuscript quuted by Dr. Lingard, vol. ii., p. 260.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 595 
 
 desiringe you to the uttermost to improve what 
 you have already of those sorts. Should it be 
 knovvne that you had 500 horse well appointed, 
 ready to march upon all occasions in that island, 
 even that alone might deterre the Spaniard 
 from attempting anythinge upon you. Wee 
 have sent commissioners and instructions into 
 New England to trye what people may be drawn 
 thence. Wee have done the like to the Eng- 
 lish windward islands, and both in England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland you will have what men and 
 women wee. can welt transport. Wee thinke, and 
 it is much designed amongst us, to strive with 
 the Spaniard for the mastery of all those seas ; 
 and therefore wee could hartilie wish that the 
 island of Providence were in our hands againe, 
 believinge that it lyes so advantagiously in ref- 
 erence to the Mayne, and especially for the hin- 
 drance of the Peru trade and Cartagena, that 
 you would not only have great advantage there- 
 by of intelligence and surprize, hut even blocke 
 up the same. It is discoursed here, that if the 
 Spaniard doe attempt you, it is most likely it 
 will be on the east end of the island, towards 
 Cuba ; as also Cuba upon Cuba is a place easily 
 attempted, and hath in it a very rich copper mine. 
 It would be good for the first, as you have op- 
 ortunitie, to informe yourself, and if there be 
 need, to make a good worke thereupon, to pre- 
 vent them ; and for the other, and all thinges 
 of that kinde, wee must leave them to your 
 judgement upon the place, to doe therein as 
 you shall see cause. To conclude, as wee 
 have cause to be humbled for the reproof God 
 gave us at St. Domingo upon the account of our 
 owne sins, as well as others, soe truly upon the 
 reports brought hither to us of the extreame 
 avarice, pride, and confidence, disorders and 
 debauchedness, profaneness and wickedness, 
 commonly practised amongst the army, wee- 
 can not onlie bewail the same, butt desier that 
 all with you may doe soe, and that a very spe- 
 cial regard may be had soe to governe for time 
 to come as that all manner of vice may be 
 thoroughly discountenanced and severely pun- 
 ished, and that such a frame of government 
 may be exercised, that virtue and godlinesse 
 may receive due encouragement." 
 
 Meanwhile Blake had triumphantly swept 
 the Mediterranean, cleared that sea of pirates, 
 and successively chastised the deys of Algiers, 
 Tunis, and Tripoli. He forced from the Grand- 
 duke of Tuscany a compensation for having 
 some years before countenanced in his port the 
 sale of unlawful English prizes by Prince Ru- 
 pert, and was able to send home, as reparation 
 to the English owners whose goods had been 
 thus sold by his permission, the sum of 60,000 
 in sixteen vessels. The Republic of Genoa 
 thanked the Protector by a special embassy 
 for having thus afforded protection and safety 
 to maritime commerce ; the Vaivode of Tran- 
 sylvania solicited his aid against the Turks ; 
 the King of Poland requested his succour 
 against the growing power of Russia ; and the 
 canton of Zurich appealed to him as the nat- 
 ural guardian of Protestant states. 
 
 This was followed by other triumphs imme- 
 diately connected with Cromwell's hypocritical j 
 pretences, and therefore of the greater service 
 to him.* It would not be becoming in this 
 
 * [It is by 110 means proved that Cromwell was a hypo- 
 
 work to enter into any detail of the massacre 
 of the Vaudois in the valleys of Piedmont, or 
 of that general feeling of sympathy aroused in 
 England, and forever impressed on history by 
 the sublime voice of Milton. 
 
 "Avenge, O Lord ! thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones 
 Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
 Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
 When all our fathers worship'd stocks and stones, 
 forget not ! in thy book record their groans 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redouble to the hills, and they 
 To heaven !" 
 
 Cromwell saw at once what a noble policy it 
 would be to avenge these moans, and he did it 
 in a manner which was worthy of the justice 
 and sacredness of the cause: Milton conducted 
 the negotiation. He refused to sign the French 
 treaty with Mazarin, long and painfully pro- 
 tracted as it had been, till he had received what 
 he quietly termed the " opinion" of Louis on the 
 subject of the troubles in Piedmont. In vain 
 Bordeaux remonstrated against this new pre- 
 text for delay ; in vain maintained that the 
 question bore no relation to the matter of the 
 treaty ; in vain protested that the King of 
 France would never interfere with the internal 
 administration of an independent state ; and 
 still more vainly held that the Duke of Savoy 
 had as good a right to make laws for his Prot- 
 estant subjects as the English government for 
 the Catholics of the three kingdoms, and that 
 the Vaudois were in reality rebels who had 
 justly incurred the resentmeat of their sov- 
 ereign. Cromwell stood unmoved. Bordeaux 
 applied for an audience to take leave ; still the 
 Lord Protector abated no jot of his demand. 
 The perplexity was ended by sudden intelli- 
 gence that the Duke of Savoy, at the request of 
 the King of France, had granted an amnesty to 
 the Vaudois, and confirmed all their ancient 
 privileges ; that the boon had been, gratefully 
 received ; and that the natives of the valleys, 
 Protestants and Catholics, had met, embraced 
 each other with tears, and sworn to live in per- 
 petual amity together. 
 
 Projects respecting the Jews occupied at this 
 period also the mind of Cromwell, but of which 
 it will not be necessary to say more in this 
 work than that, having appointed an assembly 
 of men of various professions, divines, lawyers, 
 and merchants, to take into consideration the 
 expediency of permitting them to trade in Eng- 
 land (leave for which had been supplicated by 
 Manasseh Ben Israel, one of their chief rabbis), 
 the general prejudices were discovered to be 
 as yet too strong against that people to allow 
 of their obtaining the liberty desired, or other 
 privileges which Cromwell would gladly have 
 granted them.* 
 
 crite, and certainly his interference on behalf of the perse- 
 cuted Piedmontese affords no evidence. This interference 
 was in keeping with his religious life and entire character. 
 C.] 
 
 * Thurloe thus writes to Henry Cromwell : " Wee have 
 had very many disputations concerninge the admittance of 
 the Jewes to dwell in this Commonwealth, they havinge 
 made an earnest desire to his highnesse to be admitted, 
 whereupon he hath beene pleased to advise with some of 
 the judges, merchants, and divines. The point of con- 
 science hath beene only controverted yet, viz., whether it 
 be lawful! to admitt the Jewes now out of England to re- 
 turne againe into it. The divines doe vejy much differ in 
 their judgements about it, some beingc for their admittance 
 upon fittinge cautious, others are in expresse termes against
 
 596 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 The treaty with France was signed shortly 
 after the submission of Savoy. It was drawn 
 up in Latin ; and on its being observed that 
 Louis styled himself Rex Gallice, since there 
 was no longer an English king to claim the 
 silly title, Cromwell objected, insisted on Rex 
 Gallorum, and Mazarin at length complied. 
 The chief conditions of this treaty were, that 
 France should indemnify English merchants 
 for injuries to their commerce ; that the con- 
 quest of Dunkirk should be made for England 
 by their joint forces; and that Charles II., his 
 family, and his court, should be forever exclu- 
 ded from the French territory. Of the Stuarts, 
 the Duke of York only was then in France ; 
 and Cromwell, at the request of Mazarin, con- 
 sented to his being, allowed to remain there.* 
 The duke repaid Cromwell for this concession 
 by sending his brother, within a few days after, 
 a deliberate proposition for the murder of the 
 Lord Protector, accompanied by the last court 
 burlesque. The letter was caught by the ever- 
 watchful Thurloe. 
 
 "There is a proposition has been made to 
 me which is too long to put in a letter ; so that 
 I will, as short as I can, lett you know the 
 heads of them. There are fower Roman Cath- 
 olikes that have bound themselves in a solemn oath 
 to kill Cromwell, and then to raise all the Cath- 
 olikes in the Citty and the Army, which they 
 pretend to be a number so considerable as may 
 give a rise for your recovery, they beinge all 
 warn'd to be ready for somethings that is to be 
 done, without knowinge what it is. They de- 
 mand ten thousand livres in hand ; and when the 
 businesse is ended, some recompence for them- 
 selves ackording to their severall qualities, and the 
 same liberty for Catholikes in England as the 
 Protestants have in France. I thought noil jit 
 to reject this proposition, butt to acquainte you 
 with it, becaus the first parte of the desine 
 seems to me to be better layd and resolved on 
 than any I have knoicen of that kind; and for the 
 defects of the second, it may be supply'd by 
 some desines you may have to join to it. If 
 you approve of it, one of the fower, intrusted by 
 the rest, will repaire to you, his charges being 
 borne, and give you a full account of the whole 
 matter. In .the .mean time, he desires, in his 
 owne name and theirs, that you would lett butt 
 one or two, whome you most trust, know it, 
 and enjoyne them .secrecy. This is all I can 
 say of it at this time. I have not much more 
 to say at present, theire beinge no certaine 
 newse of the treaty with Cromwell, though it 
 is much reported that it is agreed on, though 
 not sign'd. For my owne businesse, my Lord 
 Jermine, who comes now from speaking with the 
 
 it upon any termes whatsoever. The like difference I finde 
 in the councell, and soe amongst all Christians abroad. 
 The matter is debated with great candour and ingenuitie, 
 and without any heat. What the issue thereof will be I 
 am not able to tell you, butt am apt lo thinke that nothinge 
 will be done therein." Thurloe, vol. iv., p. 321. 
 
 * Lockhart was sent ambassador to France, where he 
 was treated with peculiar favour. A Paris letter of a later 
 date may describe this: ' They do caress here the Lord 
 Protector very much ; also Colonel Lockhart was well dis- 
 missed. The lord-cardinal presented to him four exceed- 
 ing fine horses, for the saddle, for the Lord Protector. The 
 said Colonel Lockhart told me himself he never saw such 
 fine horses, and that the lord his master would be mightily 
 pleased with them. He told me likewise that this court 
 had given him good content in all things, so that he went 
 from hence very well satisfied, and thinks to return hither 
 again shortly." Thurloe, vol. v., p. 655. 
 
 Cardinal!, will give you an account of it, soe 
 that I need not trouble you with it, or the oth- 
 er newes of this place ; only this, that it is soe 
 hot weiher, that I have been a swiming this after- 
 none, and never found the Water warmer. I send 
 you some songs of the last ballet t inclosed with the 
 Gazette burlesque. This is all I have to trouble 
 you with at present." 
 
 Spain had now, of course, taken measures 
 of extreme hostility, and had even sanctioned 
 a most unnatural plot against the person of 
 the English Protector, in connexion with a 
 fierce Fifth-Monarchy Republican, Colonel Sex- 
 by, and the exiled Charles Stuart. The war 
 between the two nations, however, proceeded 
 languidly, without much sympathy on the part 
 of the people generally, and with the decided 
 opposition of the London merchants, whose 
 trade it so seriously interfered with. One inci- 
 dent then suddenly occurred to give to it a tem- 
 porary brilliancy. Blake (whose stern Repub- 
 licanism always kept Cromwell in fear) had 
 been joined in the command by Montague, and 
 sent in second pursuit of the Spanish Plate fleet. 
 Without military force, however, they found 
 they could not strike the necessary blow at 
 Cadiz or Gibraltar, and therefore, abandoning 
 the attempt, they sailed to Lisbon ; completed 
 the old treaty by forcing from Don John a stip- 
 ulated payment of 50,000 ; returned to Ca- 
 diz ; passed the Straits ; insulted the Spaniards 
 in Malaga, the Moors in Sallee ; and after a 
 fruitless cruise of more than two months, 
 anchored a second time in the Tagus. Here it 
 most opportunely and fortunately happened 
 that one of their captains, Stayner, with a 
 squadron of frigates, fell in with a Spanish 
 fleet of eight sail from America. Of these he 
 destroyed four and captured two, one of which 
 was laden with golden ingots and other treas- 
 ure. Montague was at once sent home with 
 the prize, valued in his despatch at 200,000. 
 The Protectorate prints raised the amount to 
 two millions ; and the friends of Cromwell 
 hailed the event " as a renewed testimony of 
 God's presence, and some witness of his ac- 
 ceptance of the engagement against Spain." 
 To his more servile flatterers it suggested 
 what they knew would be far more welcome to 
 the Lord Protector. " And now," said Waller, 
 
 " Returns victorious Montague, 
 With laurels in his hand, and half Peru. 
 Let the brave generals divide that bough, 
 Our great Protector hath such wreaths enough ; 
 His conquering head has no more room for bays, 
 Then let it be as the glad nation prays ; 
 Let the rich ore be forthwith melted down. 
 And the state fixed, by making him A CROWN ; 
 With ermine clad, and purple, let him hold 
 A royal sceptre, made of Spanish gold." 
 
 The same thought was already working in 
 the brain of Cromwell, and might have worked 
 more profitably there had there been more of this 
 Spanish gold. But the truth was, that his treas- 
 ury, notwithstanding these grateful supplies, 
 notwithstanding all his infamous extortions, 
 was at this instant wellnigh exhausted. The 
 equipments of the various fleets had run it out, 
 and, having been forced into contests for the 
 right of levying taxes with some few spirited 
 individuals* in his own courts of law, even he 
 durst not exercise his power of levying while 
 
 * Besides Cony, Sir Peter Wentworth and others had 
 resisted hit assessments in the country.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL 
 
 597 
 
 the question was still under judgment. The 
 most famous case of this sort was that of a 
 merchant named Cony, who narrowly escaped 
 the glory of another Hampden. He refused 
 the payment of certain custom duties, on the 
 ground of their not being levied by authority of 
 Parliament ; referred to the opposition of Rolls, 
 Valentine, and Chambers, in a similar case, to 
 Charles I., and recalled to the memory of Crom- 
 well his own expression in the Long Parlia- 
 ment, " that the subject who submits to an il- 
 legal impost is more the enemy of his country 
 than the tyrant who imposes it." Cromwell 
 answered this by committing him to prison for 
 contempt. He claimed his writ of habeas cor- 
 pus, and retained three of the most eminent 
 lawyers at the bar, Maynard, Twisden, and 
 Wadharu Windham, to plead it for him. They 
 did so, and are said to have urged such argu- 
 ments, and enforced them with such vigour, 
 that, if ceded to, they would have shaken the 
 Protectorate to its base. Maynard and his fel- 
 low-pleaders were accordingly, the day after 
 these arguments, sent to the Tower, on the 
 charge of having held language destructive to 
 the existing government. 
 
 But the case did not end here. The day fol- 
 lowing, Cony, unsupported by counsel, present- 
 ed himself at the bar of the Upper Bench, and 
 urged his own cause with so much power, that 
 Rolle, who presided in the court, was either 
 moved very far towards conviction, or suffered 
 very heavily from sharne. He delayed the case 
 for a term on some formal pretence, gave in 
 his resignation in the interim, and was at once 
 succeeded by Glyn in the chair of the chief-jus- 
 tice. Maynard, Twisden, and Windham, on 
 their submission, were discharged from con- 
 finement ; and Cony was prevailed upon, by 
 some secret means, which must forever dis- 
 honour a memory that had so nearly become 
 illustrious, to bring his cause no more before 
 the court. 
 
 Cromwell was still left, however, in a most 
 difficult position ; a position from which the 
 name and the forms of some Parliamentary au- 
 thority could alone, he saw at last, by any pos- 
 sibility rescue him. So hard he found it, even 
 with such resources as he had called into ex- 
 istence, to subdue utterly a nation which had 
 once been free. Writs were issued for a Par- 
 liament to meet on the 17th of December, 1656. 
 
 Before I proceed to sketch the incidents of 
 that Parliament, it may be interesting to supply 
 from the page of Lord Clarendon's history a 
 view of the power and position of Cromwell, as 
 it now appeared to the view of the Royalists. 
 It marks an emphatic lesson in the life of the 
 Lord Protector, that with all this show of in- 
 fluence and glory, which cannot be altogether 
 in fairness disputed, his real resources should 
 have been to the last degree mean, crippled, 
 and low. There was, indeed, a ghastly skele- 
 ton under the painted face. 
 
 " After he was confirmed and invested Pro- 
 tector by the humble Petition and Advice, he 
 consulted with very few upon any action of im- 
 portance, rw>r communicated any enterprise he 
 resolved upon with more than those who were 
 to have principal parts in the execution of it ; 
 nor with them sooner than was absolutely ne- 
 cessary. What he once resolved, in which he 
 
 was not rash, he would not be dissuaded from, 
 nor endure any contradiction of his power and 
 authority, but extorted obedience from them 
 who were not willing to yield it. 
 
 "When he had laid some very extraordinary 
 j tax upon the city, one Cony, an eminent fanat- 
 ic, and one who had heretofore served him very 
 notably, positively refused to pay his part, and 
 loudly dissuaded others from submitting to it, 
 ' as an imposition notoriously against the law 
 and the property of the subject, which all hon- 
 est men were bound to defend.' Cromwell 
 sent for him, and cajoled him with the memory 
 of ' the old kindness and friendship that had 
 been between them ; and that, of all men, he 
 did not expect this opposition from him, in a 
 matter that was so necessary for the good of 
 the Commonwealth.' But it was always his 
 fortune to meet with the most rude and obsti- 
 nate behaviour from those who had formerly 
 been absolutely governed by him ; and they com- 
 monly put him in mind of some expressions and 
 sayings of his own in cases of the like nature : 
 so this man remembered him how great an en- 
 emy he had expressed himself to such grievan- 
 ces, and had declared ' that all who submitted 
 to them, and paid illegal taxes, were more to 
 blame, and greater enemies to their country, 
 than they who had imposed them ; and that the 
 tyranny of princes could never be grievous but 
 by the tameness and stupidity of the people.' 
 When Cromwell saw that he could not convert 
 him, he told him that ' he had a will as stubborn 
 as his, and he would try which of them two 
 should be master.' Thereupon, with some 
 terms of reproach and contempt, he committed 
 the man to prison ; whose courage was nothing 
 j abated by it, but, as soon as the term came, he 
 brought his habeas corpus in the King's Bench, 
 which they then called the Upper Bench. 
 Maynard, who was of counsel with the prison- 
 er, demanded his liberty with great confidence, 
 both upon the illegality of the commitment, and 
 the illegality of the imposition, as being laid 
 without any lawful authority. The judges 
 could not maintain or defend either, and enough 
 declared what their sentence would be ; and 
 therefore the Protector's attorney required a 
 farther delay, to answer what had been urged. 
 Before that day Maynard was committed to the 
 Tower for presuming to question or make 
 doubt of his authority, and the judges were 
 sent for and severely reprehended for suffering 
 that license. When they, with all humility, 
 mentioned the law and Magna Charta, Crom- 
 well told them, 'their magna f . . . . should not 
 control his actions, which he knew were for 
 the safety of the Commonwealth.' He asked 
 them, 'Who made them judges! Whether 
 they had any authority to sit there but what he 
 gave them? and, if his authority were at an 
 end, they knew well enough what would be- 
 come of themselves, and therefore advised them 
 to be more tender of that which could only pre- 
 serve them,' and so dismissed them with cau- 
 tion that they should not suffer the lawyers ' to 
 prate what it would not become them to hear.' 
 " Thus he subdued a spirit that had been often 
 troublesome to the most sovereign power, and 
 made Westminster Hall as obedient and sub- 
 servient to his commands as any of the rest of 
 his quarters. In all other matters, which did
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 not concern the life of his jurisdiction, he 
 seemed to have great reverence for the law, 
 rarely interposing between party and party. 
 As he proceeded with this kind of indignation 
 and haughtiness with those who were refracto- 
 ry, and dared to civilly contend with his great- 
 ness, so towards all who complied with his 
 good pleasure and courted his protection, he 
 used a wonderful generosity and hounty. 
 
 "To reduce three nations, which perfectly 
 hated him, to an entire obedience to all his dic- 
 tates ; to awe and govern those nations by an 
 army that was undevoted to him and wished 
 his ruin, was an instance of a very prodigious 
 address. But his greatness at home was but a 
 shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was 
 hard to discover which feared him most, France, 
 Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friend- 
 ship was current at the value he put upon it. 
 As they did all sacrifice their honour and their 
 interest to his pleasure, so there is nothing he 
 could have demanded that either of them would 
 have denied him ; to manifest which there 
 needs only two instances : the first is, when 
 those of the Valley of Lucerne had unwarily re- 
 belled against the Duke of Savoy, which gave 
 occasion to the pope, and the neighbour princes 
 of Italy, to call and solicit for their extirpation, 
 and their prince positively resolved upon it. 
 Cromwell sent his agent to the Duke of Savoy, 
 a prince with whom he had no correspondence 
 or commerce, and so engaged the cardinal, and 
 even terrified the pope himself, without so much 
 as doing any grace to the English Roman Cath- 
 olics (nothing being more usual than his saying 
 ' that his ships in the Mediterranean should vis- 
 it Civita Vecchia, and that the sound of his 
 cannon should be heard in Rome'), that the 
 Duke of Savoy thought it necessary to restore 
 all that he had taken from them, and did renew 
 all those privileges they had formerly enjoyed 
 and newly forfeited. 
 
 " The other instance of his authority was yet 
 greater and more incredible. In the city of 
 Nismes, which is one of the fairest in the prov- 
 ince of Languedoc, and where those of the re- 
 ligion do most abound, there was a great fac- 
 tion at that season, when consuls, who are the 
 chief magistrates, were to be chosen. Those 
 of the Reformed religion had the confidence to 
 set up one of themselves for that magistracy, 
 which they of the Roman religion resolved to 
 oppose with all their power. The dissension 
 between them made so much noise, that the in- 
 tendant of the province, who is the supreme 
 minister in all civil affairs throughout the whole 
 province, went thither to prevent any disorder 
 that might happen. When the day of election 
 came, those of the Reformed religion possessed 
 themselves, with many armed men, of the town- 
 house, where the election was to be made. The 
 magistrates sent to know what their meaning 
 was ; to which they answered, ' They were there 
 to give their voices for the choice of the new 
 consuls, and to be sure that the election should 
 be fairly made.' The bishop of the city, the in- 
 tendaut of the province, with all the officers of 
 the Church, and the present magistrates of the 
 town, went together in their robes to be pres- 
 ent at the election, without any suspicion that 
 there would be any force used. When they 
 came near the gate of the town-house, which 
 
 was shut, and they supposed would be opened 
 when they came, they within poured out a vol- 
 ley of musket-shot upon them, by which the 
 dean of the church, and two or three of the 
 magistrates of the town, were killed upon the 
 place, and very many others wounded, where- 
 of some died shortly after. In this confusion, 
 the magistrates put themselves into as good a 
 posture to defend themselves as they could, 
 without any purpose of offending the other 
 till they should be better provided ; in order 
 to which, they sent an express to the court, 
 with a plain relation of the whole matter of 
 fact, ' and that there appeared to be no manner 
 of combination with those of the Reformed re- 
 ligion in other places of the province, but that 
 it was an insolence in those of the place, upon 
 the presumption of their great numbers, which 
 were little inferior to those of the Catholics.' 
 The court was glad of the occasion, and resolv- 
 ed that this provocation, in which other places 
 were not involved, and which nobody could ex- 
 cuse, should warrant all kind of severity in that 
 city, even to the pulling down their temples, 
 and expelling many of them forever out of the 
 city ; which, with the execution and forfeiture 
 of many of the principal persons, would be a 
 general mortification to all of the religion in 
 France, with whom they were heartily offended ; 
 and a part of the army was forthwith ordered 
 to march towards Nismes, to see this executed 
 with the utmost rigour. 
 
 " Those of the religion in the town were 
 quickly sensible into what condition they had 
 brought themselves, and sent, with all possible 
 submission, to the magistrates to excuse them- 
 selves, and to impute what had been done to 
 the rashness of particular men, who had no or- 
 der for what they did. The magistrates an- 
 swered ' that they were glad they were sensi- 
 ble of their miscarriage, but they could say noth- 
 ing upon the subject till the king's pleasure 
 should be known, to whom they had sent a full 
 relation of all that had passed.' The others 
 very well knew what the king's pleasure would 
 be, and forthwith sent an express, one Moulins, 
 a Scotchman, who had lived many years in that 
 place and in Montpellier, to Cromwell, to de- 
 sire his protection and interposition. The ex- 
 press made so much haste, and found so good 
 a reception the first hour he came, that Crom- 
 well, after he had received the whole account, 
 bade him 'refresh himself after so long a jour- 
 ney, and he would take such care of his busi- 
 ness that, by the time he came to Paris, he 
 should find it despatched ;' and that night sent 
 away another messenger to his ambassador 
 Lockhart, who, by the time Moulins came thith- 
 er, had so far prevailed with the cardinal, that 
 orders were sent to stop the troops which were 
 upon their march towards Nismes ; and, with- 
 in a few days after, Moulins returned with a 
 full pardon and amnesty from the king, under 
 the great seal of France, so fully confirmed with 
 all circumstances that there was never farther 
 mention made of it, but all things passed as if 
 there had never been any such thing, so that 
 nobody can wonder that his memory remains 
 still in those parts, and with those people, in 
 great veneration. 
 
 " He would never suffer himself to be denied 
 anything he ever asked of the cardinal, alleging
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 599 
 
 'that the people would not be otherwise satis- 
 fied,' which the cardinal bore very heavily, and 
 complained of to those with whom he would be 
 free. One day he visited Madame Turenne, 
 and when he took his leave of her, she, accord- 
 ing to her custom, besought him to continue 
 gracious to the churches ; whereupon the car- 
 dinal told her ' that he knew not how to behave 
 himself: if he advised the king to punish and 
 suppress their insolence, Cromwell threatened 
 him to join with the Spaniard ; and if he show- 
 ed any favour to them, at Rome they accounted 
 him a heretic." 
 
 The excitement at the election for the Par- 
 liament now summoned exceeded that of any 
 previous occasion. It has been described in 
 this work,* and requires very brief allusion 
 here. Vane reappeared upon the agitated scene 
 by the publication of his " Healing Question." 
 He was summoned before the council, and com- 
 mitted to Carisbrook. Bradshaw, Ludlow, and 
 Rich were also, on various pretences, arrested. 
 Bradshaw was removed from his office of chief- 
 justice of Chester ; Rich was incarcerated in 
 Windsor Castle ; and Ludlow, after some de- 
 tention, discharged on his reluctant concession 
 of bail.t Colonel Okey and Vice-admiral Law- 
 
 * In the Memoir of Vane. 
 
 t Ludlow has characteristically described his interview 
 with Cromwell and his military satellites on this occasion : 
 "The next. Wednesday after my arrival, about eight in the 
 evening, Cromwell sent a gentleman, one Mr. Tenwick, to 
 let me know that he would speak with me. I found him in 
 his bedchamber at Whitehall, and with him Major-general 
 Lambert, Col. Sydenham, Mr. Walter Strickland, Col. Mon- 
 tague, and soon after came in Lieutenant-general Fleet- 
 wood. . . He asked me wherefore I would not engage not 
 to act against the present government, felling me that if 
 Nero were in power, it would be my duty to submit. To 
 which I replied, that I was ready to submit, and could truly 
 say that I knew not of any design against him. But, said I, 
 if Providence open a way, and give an opportunity of ap- 
 pearing in behalf of the people, I cannot consent to tie niy 
 own hands beforehand, and oblige myself not to lay hold on 
 it. However, said he, it is not reasonable to suffer one that 
 I distrust to come within my house till he assure me he will 
 do me no mischief. I told him I was not accustomed to go 
 to any house unless I expected to be welcome ; neither had 
 I come hither but upon a message from him; and that I 
 desired nothing but a little liberty to breathe in the air, to 
 which I conceived I had an equal right with other men. . . 
 Then beginning to carry himself more calmly, he said that 
 he had been always ready to do me what good offices he 
 could, and that he wished me as well as he did any one of 
 his council, desiring me to make choice of some place to be 
 in where I might have good air. I assured him that my 
 dissatisfactions were not grounded upon any animosity 
 against his person, and that, if my own father were alive 
 and in his place, they would, I doubted not, be altogether 
 as great. He acknowledged that I had always carried my- 
 self fairly and openly to him, and protested that he had 
 never given me just cause to act otherwise. . . Major-gen- 
 eral Lambert then desired to know from me why I could 
 nut own this as a lawful government. Because, said I, it 
 seems to me to be in substance a re-establishment of that 
 which we all engaged against, and had with a great ex- 
 pense of blood and treasure abolished. What then, said he, 
 would you account to be a sufficient warrant for you to act 
 against the present authority ? I answered, when I might 
 rationally hope to be supported by an authority equal or 
 superior to this, and could be persuaded '.hat the said au- 
 thority would employ iti power for the good of mankind. 
 But who shall be judge of that? said he ; fur all are ready 
 to say that they do so, and we ourselves think we use the 
 l>est of our endeavours to that end. I replied that if they 
 did so, their crime was the leis, because every man stands 
 obliged to govern himself by the light of his own reason, 
 which rule, with the assistance of God, I was determined 
 to observe. Cul. Sydenham said we might be mistaken in 
 judging that to be a power giving us a just and rational call 
 to act, v hich may not be so. I told him that we ought to 
 be very careful and circumspect in that particular, and at 
 least he assured of very probable grounds to believe the 
 power under which we engage to be sufficiently able to 
 protect us in our undertaking, otherwise I should account 
 
 rence were also arrested, and Harrison was 
 sent, with a strong escort, into Pendennis Cas- 
 tle in Cornwall. The chiefs of the Royalists 
 who had shown the smallest activity were at 
 the same time flung into the Tower. But all 
 was in vain : the returns showed Cromwell and 
 his council the bitter truth, that the constituen- 
 cies had once more decided against him. Among 
 the members were Scot and Hazlerig ; Sir An- 
 thony Ashley Cooper, who had quarrelled with 
 the Protector, and resigned his seat in the coun- 
 cil ; Maynard, who had resisted him in the case 
 of Cony ; Thorpe, one of the judges who had 
 resigned his authority ; Chaloner, Chute, Pop- 
 ham, and other decided Republicans ; Sir Hen- 
 ry Milding, and Lord Salisbury. Cromwell took 
 the desperate resolution at once of excluding 
 these and others. The Instrument of Govern- 
 ment vested in the council the power of verify- 
 ing the regularity of the elections ; and Crom- 
 well, extending it into a right to cancel the re- 
 turns, however regular, at his mere personal 
 discretion, supplied a list of nearly a hundred 
 members immediately obnoxious to him, and 
 including all those I have named, to be exclu- 
 ded for " immorality" or "delinquency !" 
 
 Unconscious of this, the new Parliament met 
 the Protector on the 17th, in the Painted Cham- 
 ber, when he addressed them in a long, obscure, 
 but most artful speech. It was clear from the 
 first that his sole object was to procure money ; 
 and with this view he sought to excite their 
 alarm and to interest their religious antipathies. 
 He enumerated the enemies of the nation. The 
 first was the Spaniard, the natural adversary 
 of England, because he was the slave of the 
 pope, a child of darkness, and consequently hos- 
 tile to the light ; blinded by superstition, and 
 anxious to put down the things of God ; one 
 with whom it was impossible to be at peace, 
 and to whom, in relation to this country, might 
 be applied the words of Scripture, " I will put 
 enmity between thy seed and her seed." There 
 was also Charles Stuart, who, with the aid of 
 the Spaniard and the Duke of Nieuburg, had 
 raised a formidable army for the invasion of 
 the island. There were the Papists and Cav- 
 aliers, who had already risen, and were again 
 ready to rise, in favour of Charles Stuart. He 
 mentioned a plot for surprising himself, as he 
 lay in his bed at Whitehall, and another for 
 blowing up the apartment in which he slept, but 
 expressed himself respecting them with con- 
 tempt. He next assailed the Levellers, who 
 had sent an agent to the court of Madrid (Col- 
 onel Sexby), and the Fifth-Monarchy men, who 
 sought a union with the Levellers against him, 
 " a reconciliation between Herod and Pilate, 
 that Christ might be put to death." He after- 
 ward eulogized the good effects which had aris- 
 en from his appointment of the major-generals, 
 which, he said, had been greatly successful, 
 first, in suppressing vice and profligacy, and 
 next, in establishing an unusual internal tran- 
 quillity ! He was earnest in recommending 
 the toleration of all conscientious Christians, 
 Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, how- 
 ever they might differ in inferior matters ; ap- 
 
 myself not only guilty of my own blood, but also, in some 
 measure, of the ruin and destruction of all those that I 1 
 should induce to engage with me, though, the causa were 
 never so just.''
 
 600 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 plauded the measures that had been adopted [ land. Upon this account, and upon this ground 
 for removing scandalous ministers ; urged the | of necessity, when we saw what game they 
 public maintenance of a preaching ministry by I were upon, and knew individual persons, and 
 tithes, or some less exceptionable method ; and j of the greatest rank, not a few, engaged in this 
 a reform of the law, particularly of the criminal: business (I knew one man that laid down his 
 law, comprehending a reduction of the number j life for it, and by letters intercepted, which 
 of offences to which capital punishment was j made it as clear as the day), we did think it 
 awarded. He referred to the prisoners detain- our duty to make them that were in the corn- 
 ed in the Isle of Wight, Cornwall, and other bination of men, as evident as anything in the 
 places, and said that their detention had been i world, equally to bear that share of the Charge, 
 found necessary for the public safety. He then one with another, for the raising of the forces 
 came to the subject of remedies, and, after much j that were so necessary to defend us against 
 circumlocution, he at last stated them to be ! those designs. And truly, if any man be angry 
 to prosecute the war abroad, and strengthen i at it, / am plain, and shall use an homely expres- 
 the hands of the government at home ; to lose sion, Let him turn the Buckle of his Girdle behind 
 no time in questions of inferior moment or less Aim. If this were to be done again, I would do 
 urgent necessity, but to inquire into the state ' it. . . . How the Major-Generals have behaved 
 of the revenue, and to raise ample supplies. In j themselves in that Work ] I hope they are men, 
 conclusion, he explained the eighty-fifth psalm, as to their persons, of known integrity and 
 exclaiming, "If pope, and Spaniard, and devil,! fidelity, and Men that have freely adventured 
 and all set themselves against us, though they | their blood and lives for that Good Cause (if it 
 should compass us about like bees, yet in the J be thought so, and it was well stated, against all 
 name of the Lord we shall destroy them. The j the humours and fancies of men). And truly, Eng- 
 Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is land doth yet receive one day more of length- 
 
 our refuge." 
 But, having explained the purpose of this 
 
 ening out its tranquillity by that occasion. . . . 
 " You see where your war is : it is with the 
 
 most remarkable harangue, which to an ordina- Spaniard. You have peace with all nations, or 
 ry reader would not by any means appear upon the most of them, Swede, Dane, Dutch. At 
 its surface, I will present a few of the more | present, I say it is well it is at present so ; and 
 striking passages it contained. They possess so with Portugal, France, the Mediterranean 
 additional interest from the circumstance of the Sea both those states, both Christian and pro- 
 speech not having found a place in the compi- fane the Mahometans, you have peace with 
 lation of our Parliamentary histories. They j them all. Only with Spain, I say, you have a 
 are in many points expressed with startling | difference, you have a war. I pray consider it. 
 force and boldness, in others with unusual oh- ! Do I come to tell you that I would tie you to 
 scurity, a kind of unfathomable effort of signifi- this war 1 No. As you shall find your spirits 
 cance. It is especially curious to mark, how- and reasons grounded in what hath been said, 
 ever, with what dexterity the few peculiar mer- so let you & me join in the prosecution of that 
 its of his government are brought up to the sur- War, as we are satisfied, and as the cause 
 face, to the depression and concealment, not t will appear to our consciences in the sight of 
 only of their own notorious abuse, but of the j t-he Lord ; but if you can come to prosecute it, 
 fearful accessaries by which even their best use i prosecute it vigorously, or do not do it at all. 
 
 was perverted into tyranny. They need no in- 
 troduction, after the general abstract I have 
 given of the purpose of the speaker. 
 
 I have had Petitions, and acknowledg- 
 ments, and professions from whole counties, 
 as from Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and other 
 
 " Truly when this insurrection was, & we counties ; acknowledgments that they do but 
 saw it, in all the roots and grounds of it, we ! desire they may have liberty and protection in 
 did find out a little from invention, which 1 1 the worshipping of God according to their own 
 hear has been much regretted. I say, there ' Judgments, for the purging of their congrega- 
 was a little thing invented, which was the erect- '' tions, and the labouring to attain more purity 
 ing of your Major-Generals to have a little tn-' of faith and repentance ; that in their outward 
 spection upon the people, thus divided, thus discon- ' profession they will not strain themselves be- 
 tented, thus dissatisfied, in divers interests, by yond their own line. I have had those ; I have 
 the Popish party the Lord Taffe and others ; them to show ; and I confess, I look at that as 
 the most, consisting of natural Irish Rebels, the blessedest thing which hath been since the 
 and all those Men you have fought against in adventuring upon this Government, that these 
 Ireland, and expulsed from thence, as having times produce. . . . For my part, I should think 
 had a hand in that bloody massacre of those ! I were very treacherous if I should take away 
 that were under his power : they should have tithes till I see the legislative power to settle main- 
 joined in this excellent business of insurrec-! tenance to them another way; but whoever they 
 tion. And, upon such rising as that was, truly, ! be that shall contend to destroy them, that doth 
 I think, if ever anything was justifiable to ne-| as really cut their throats, as it is a drift to 
 cessity, and honest in every respect, this was ; take them away before a way of preparation or 
 and I could as soon venture my life with it asj other maintenance be had. Truly, I think all 
 anything I ever undertook. We did find out such practices and proceedings should be dis- 
 I mean myself and the Council that if there countenanced. I have heard it from as gra- 
 were need to have greater forces to carry on cious a Minister as any is in England I have 
 this work, it was a most righteous thing to put ' had it professed that it would be a far greater 
 the charge upon that party which was the : satisfaction to them to have it another way, if the 
 cause of it, and if there be any Man that hath j State will provide it. . . . 
 
 a face looking averse to this, I dare pronounce " In my conscience it was a shame to be a 
 him to be a man against the interest of Eng- [ Christian within these fifteen, sixteen, or seven-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 601 
 
 teen years in this nation, either in Cssar's 
 house or elsewhere. It was a shame, it was a 
 reproach to a Man ; and the badge of Puritan 
 was put upon it. We would keep up the Nobility 
 and Gentry ; and the way to keep them up is, not 
 to suffer them to be Patronizers, nor Countenanccrs 
 of debauchery or disorders. And you will here- 
 hy be as Labourers in the Work ; and a Man 
 may tell us plainly as can be what becomes us, 
 by our indifferency or lukewarmness, under I 
 know not what weak pretensions, if it lives in 
 us. Therefore, I say, if it be in the General, 
 it is a thing, I am confident, that the liberty 
 and prosperity of this nation depends upon ref- 
 ormation. Make it a shame to see men to be 
 bold in sin and profaneness, and God will bless 
 you. You will be a blessing to the nation ; 
 and by this, be more Repairers of breaches than 
 anything in the World. Truly, these things 
 do respect the souls of Men, and the spirits 
 which are the Men. The mind is the Man. If 
 that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat ; 
 if not, I would very fain see what difference 
 there is betwixt him and a beast. He hath only 
 some activity to do some more mischief. . . . 
 
 "There are some things which respect the 
 Estates of men, and there is one general grievance 
 in the Nation : it is the law. Not that the laws 
 are a grievance, but there are laws that are a 
 grievance, and the great grievance lies in the exe- 
 cution and administration. I think I may say it, 
 / have as eminent Judges in this land as have been 
 had, or that the Nation has had for these many 
 years. . . . Truly I could be particular as to the 
 executive part, to the administration, but that 
 would trouble you. But the truth of it is, there 
 are wicked and abominable laws, that will be 
 in your power to alter. To hang a man for 6s. 
 3d. ! I know not what ! To hang for a trifle, 
 and pardon murder, it is the ministration of the 
 laic, through the ill framing of it. I have known, 
 in my experience, abominable murders quitted, and j 
 seen Men lose their lives for petty matters ! This 
 is a thing that God will reckon for, and I wish 
 it may not lie upon this nation a day longer 
 than you have an opportunity to give a remedy, 
 and I hope I shall cheerfully join with you in it. 
 This hath been a great grief to many honest 
 hearts and conscientious people, and I hope it 
 is in all your Hearts to rectify it. ... 
 
 " I say it again, the endeavours have been, 
 by those that have been appointed, by those 
 that have been Major-Generals, I can repeat 
 them with comfort, that it hath been effectual 
 for the preservation of your peace. It hath 
 been more effectual towards the discountenan- 
 cing of vice and settling religion, than anything 
 done these fifty years. / will abide it, notwith- 
 standing the envy and slander of foolish men. But 
 I say there hath been a design ! I confess I speak 
 that to you with a little vchcmcncy. But you had 
 not that peace two months together. I profess, I 
 believe it as much as ever I did anything in the 
 World, and how instrumental they have been 
 to your peace, and for your preservation, by 
 such means, which we say was necessity, than 
 from all instituted things in the world. . . . If you 
 would make Laws against the things that God 
 may dispose, to meet with everything that may 
 happen, why, then, make a law in the face of 
 God, and tell God you will meet his dispensa- 
 tions, and you will stay things, whether he 
 4G 
 
 will or no. But if you make laws of good gov- 
 ernment, that Men may know how to obey and 
 do, for Government, you may make laws that 
 have frailty and weakness, ay, and good laws 
 observed ; but if nothing should be done but what 
 is according to law, the throat of the nation may tie 
 cut till we send for some to make a law. There- 
 fore, certainly, it is a pitiful, beastly notion to 
 
 think, THAT THOUGH IT BE FOR ORDINARY GOT- 
 ERNMENT TO LIVE BY LAW AND RULE, YET Yet 
 
 to be clamoured at, and blattered at ! When mat- 
 ters of necessity come, inviolably, then what ex- 
 traordinary remedies may not be applied ? Who 
 can be so pitiful a person 1 . . . I must say, I do 
 not know one action, no, not one, but it hath 
 been in order to the peace and safety of the 
 nation ; and the keeping of some in Prison hath 
 been upon such clear and just grounds, that no 
 Man can except against it. I know there are 
 some imprisoned in the Isle of Wight, Corn- 
 wall, and elsewhere, and the cause of their im- 
 prisonment was, they were all found acting 
 things that tended to the disturbance of the 
 peace of the nation. . . . 
 
 " I beseech you, do not dispute of unneces- 
 sary and unprofitable things, that may divert 
 you from carrying on so glorious a work as 
 this is. I think every objection that ariseth is 
 not to be answered, nor have I time for it. I 
 say, look up to God ; have peace amongst 
 yourselves. Know assuredly, that if I have 
 interest, / am by the voice of the people the Su- 
 preme Magistrate, and, it may be, know somewhat, 
 that may satisfy my conscience if I stood in doubt. 
 But it is a union, really it is a union, between you 
 and me, and both of us united in faith and love 
 to Jesus Christ, and to his peculiar interest in 
 the World, that must ground this work ; and 
 in that, if I have any peculiar interest that is 
 personal to myself, that is not subservient to 
 the public end, it were no extravagant thing for 
 me to curse myself, because I know God will 
 curse me, if I have." 
 
 When the Lord Protector had closed, the 
 members returned to their own House, where 
 they found the door guarded by soldiers, with 
 orders to admit none but such as were provi- 
 ded with a certificate of the approbation of the 
 council, signed by the clerk of the Common- 
 wealth. Upward of a hundred members were 
 thus, to their amazement and indignation, at 
 once excluded. The rest entered, and elected 
 Widdrington as their speaker. The first busi- 
 ness urged on the following day was that of 
 the excluded members They had, the pre- 
 vious evening, drawn up and signed a letter of 
 remonstrance, addressed to the speaker, who 
 read it to the House. It set forth that they 
 whose names were subscribed, having been 
 duly returned to serve with them in Parlia- 
 ment, were kept back in the lobby by soldiers ; 
 and they now demanded admission to discharge 
 their trust. Upon the reading of this letter, a 
 motion of adjournment was negatived by a ma- 
 jority of 115 to 80; a resolution that the driven 
 out members be referred for redress to the 
 council, and that the House do proceed with 
 the great affairs of the nation, was carried by a 
 majority of 125 to 29. Upon this, several mem- 
 bers, to show their disapprobation, voluntarily 
 seceded, and those who had been driven out 
 by force published an appeal to the people ol
 
 602 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 England, which showed, in the eloquent lan- 
 guage of just indignation, for what excellent 
 reasons such men had been excluded from the 
 subservient and servile business for which the 
 tyrant of England had summoned what he called 
 a Parliament. It is more the business of this 
 work to supply the substance of that noble ap- 
 peal, than to trace the repulsive track of the 
 mean and spiritless members who continued 
 to crawl before the feet of their master and 
 lord. 
 
 It stated and it bore the signature of a hun- 
 dred educated and wealthy Englishmen that 
 when our ancestors in Parliament had found 
 oppression and tyranny too strong for them to 
 subdue, they had often made their protesta- 
 tions, and forewarned the people of their dan- 
 ger. The remonstrators referred particularly 
 to a protestation of the third Parliament of the 
 late king (March, 1629), in which they had de- 
 clared, that whoever should advise him to levy 
 tonnage and poundage, not being granted by 
 Parliament, should be accounted a capital ene- 
 my ; and whoever paid the tax, a betrayer of 
 the liberties of England. They go on to say, 
 that the rumour has doubtless gone through the 
 nation, that a considerable number of the mem- 
 bers, chosen by the people to represent them in 
 Parliament, have, by force of arms, been ex- 
 cluded from the place of their sitting ; but they 
 express their fear that the slavery, rapines, 
 cruelties, murders, and confusion comprehend- 
 ed in that one horrid fact have not been so 
 sensibly discerned, and so much laid to heart, 
 as the case required ; and they doubt not but, 
 as the manner of the man had been, that the name 
 of God and religion, and formal fasts and prayers, 
 will be made use of to colour over the blackness of 
 the deed. 
 
 They proceed, therefore, to remonstrate, 
 that, by the fundamental rights of the nation, 
 the people ought not to be bound by any laws 
 but such as have been freely consented to by 
 their deputies in Parliament, and that by pre- 
 serving this principle, the good people of England 
 have, beyond the memory of any record, retained 
 their estates, their families, and their lives, which 
 had else been destroyed at the will of every tyrant. 
 They add, that the Parliaments of England, 
 consisting of the people's chosen deputies, have 
 always been, and ought to be, the ordainers 
 and creators of dignities, offices, and authori- 
 ties within this nation, and have of right exer- 
 cised the power of disposing even of the kingly 
 office, and of enlarging or restraining the king- 
 ly power ; and have questioned, censured, and 
 judged even the persons of our kings them- 
 selves, who have acknowledged their power to 
 be only intrusted to them for the nation's wel- 
 fare. English kings had feared the people's 
 complaints in Parliament, well aware that it 
 was their custom to choose for their deputies 
 the most known champions for their liberties ; 
 and none of the kings, in their highest attempts 
 at tyranny, had ever dared to throw aside by 
 force as many of the chosen members as they 
 thought would not serve their ends, till the 
 time of the present Protector. But, they ob- 
 serve, the chief magistrate now in office de- 
 clares that his proclamations shall have the 
 force of laws, and takes upon himself to be above 
 the people of England, and to censure the whole 
 
 or any part, by no other rule than his own 
 pleasure. Doubtless, if he had conquered the 
 nation, he yet could not but know that the 
 right of the people's deputies in Parliament 
 would remain good against him, as against a 
 public enemy, unless, by some agreement with 
 the people in Parliament, he were admitted to 
 some sort of governing power ; nor could he 
 be discharged from the character of a public 
 enemy by any agreement with a part of the 
 people's deputies, while he shut out another 
 part. 
 
 These gallant and high-spirited men con- 
 clude, therefore, with protesting, first, that 
 whoever had advised or assisted the Protector 
 in excluding a part of the people's deputies, 
 was a capital enemy of the Commonwealth ; 
 and they quote the instance of Judge Tresilian, 
 under Richard II., who was executed at Ty- 
 burn for advising the king to dissolve the Par- 
 liament. Secondly, that all such members as 
 should sit, act, and vote in the name of a Par- 
 liament, while other legal members were shut 
 out, were to be accounted betrayers of the liber- 
 ties of England, and adherents to the capital ene- 
 mies of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Nor did these at all belie the description. 
 They had at once passed a resolution declara- 
 tory of the justice and policy of the war against 
 Spain, and two acts, by one of which were an- 
 nulled all claims of Charles Stuart and his fam- 
 ily to the crown, while by the other additional 
 safeguards were provided for the person of 
 their chief governor, Oliver Cromwell. With 
 the same unanimity a supply of 400,000 had 
 been voted ; but when the means of raising 
 the money came under consideration, a great 
 diversity of opinion prevailed, and upon this 
 question even these poor tools of the Protec- 
 torate did not dare to commit themselves with 
 the country, subdued and distracted as it was 
 beneath the hope of effectual resistance. Some 
 proposed to inquire into the conduct of the 
 treasury ; some to adopt improvements in the 
 collection of the revenue ; others recommend- 
 ed an augmentation of the excise ; and others 
 a more economical system of expenditure. In 
 the discussion of these questions and of pri- 
 vate bills, week after week, and month after 
 month, were most unprofitably consumed ; 
 though the time limited by the Instrument was 
 passed, still the money-bill had made no prog- 
 r6ss; and, to add to the impatience of Crom- 
 well who, though he had an important mat- 
 ter of his own to engage him meanwhile, still 
 showed himself impatient they commenced a 
 series of infamous cruelties and tortures against 
 Fox, Naylor, Biddle, the Quakers, the Unita- 
 rians, the Muggletonians, and other strange re- 
 ligious sects that had recently started up. 
 
 All this, however, while it added to the Pro- 
 tector's impatience, was secretly advancing his 
 design, which, with his more private creatures, 
 had been in discussion and deliberation ever 
 since this Parliament assembled. This was 
 no less than the expediency of venturing on a 
 revival of kingship, ana assuming for himself 
 the crown. The strongest effect he was yet 
 called on to encounter had been wrought against 
 the Protectorate by the gallant remonstrance 
 he had just provoked : everywhere around him 
 were symptoms of dissolution and change,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 603 
 
 which it would speedily require some bold and 
 novel course of policy to gather up for even 
 common safety ; his major-generals were ha- 
 ted universally ; the system he had hoped to 
 establish was confessedly a failure ; that very 
 system, however, had prepared the way for 
 any change as some relief ; and some change 
 there must be, sooner or later, since all the 
 designs he held once, in connexion with the 
 Protectorate, had either been thwarted or had 
 utterly failed. He now saw, in addition, that 
 the Presbyterian and sectarian measures of this 
 Parliament repulsive to the general body of 
 the people would give him for the moment a 
 fictitious consideration for superior wisdom and 
 gentleness. Having satisfied himself, in any 
 case, that now was the fit time to strike the 
 blow, he suffered not the delay of another 
 instant. 
 
 The first idea he had was to seize the occa- 
 sion of propitiating the people, still more than in 
 a disapproval of the sectarian cruelties of the 
 Parliament, by effecting a dissolution of the 
 powers of the major-generals ! He, therefore, 
 who had called that body into existence who, 
 at the opening of the Parliament, had been elo- 
 quent in their praise he who had declared 
 that, after his experience of their utility, " if 
 the thing were undone, he would do it again" 
 he now not only abandoned them himself, 
 but instructed those over whom he had the 
 greatest influence in the House, to conduct the 
 opposition against them ! He overreached him- 
 self in this, as he afterward discovered, most 
 egregiously. 
 
 The subject was opened in the House on the 
 question of the legal confirmation of the ma- 
 jor-generals, according to a previous wily 
 scheme, by the Protectors son-in-law Clay- 
 pole, who said he did but start the game, and 
 must leave it to others more experienced than 
 he to follow in the chase. He should, there- 
 fore, only say, that to violate the Act of Ob- 
 livion, as the major-generals and their instruc- 
 tions had invariably done, was a proceeding 
 that should not have his approbation. He had 
 believed that, in the situation in which the na- 
 tion then stood, the commission and measures 
 of the major-generals were necessary, and they 
 ought, therefore, to be indemnified ; but to turn 
 such proceedings into a law was an affair of a 
 very different sort ; nor could he admit that 
 the authority which had been given to these 
 officers was fit any longer to be continued. 
 The debate which followed was unusually long 
 and obstinate. It continued for ten successive 
 days. Lambert and the major-generals were 
 strenuous in supporting the measure, and Brog- 
 hill, another close creature of Cromwell's, as 
 strenuously opposed it, and spoke for the in- 
 stant dispersion of the major-generals. So did 
 Whitelocke. At length the Protector's desire 
 was even more directly declared. In one of 
 the later debates, a lively youth, Colonel Hen- 
 ry Cromwell, grandson of old Sir Oliver Crom- 
 well, and, of course, nephew to the Protector, 
 rose, after Boteler, one of the major-generals, 
 had finished his speech in favour of the bill, 
 and replied with great smartness. He ob- 
 served, that the last speaker, as well as sev- 
 eral that had gone before him, had argued that, 
 because some of the Cavaliers had done amiss, 
 
 all ought to be punished. " By the same rule," 
 said this stripling, " I may infer that, because 
 some of the major-generals have done ill, of 
 which I offer to produce proofs, all of them 
 ought to be visited with the censure of this 
 House." Major-general Kelsey, who probably 
 held himself to be particularly aimed at, imme- 
 diately called the speaker to order, and insist- 
 ed that he should name the persons whom he 
 charged as offenders. The colonel declared 
 his entire readiness to do so, and that he sec- 
 onded the proposition of the major-general. 
 It was, however, determined to put off this 
 question till the end of the debate, that the main 
 business might not be interrupted. A similar 
 scene passed with another member on the fol- 
 lowing morning, when the major-generals were 
 flattered with comparisons to a set of Turkish 
 bashaws. 
 
 Meanwhile' it was intimated to young Crom- 
 well that he should repent the attack he had 
 made, and that he would find the Protector, his 
 kinsman, greatly offended with his forwardness. 
 The colonel, we are told, thus rebuked, imme- 
 diately repaired to his highness, and avowed 
 what he had said, holding forth documents in 
 his hands to justify his assertions. Cromwell, 
 in return, reproached him, between jest and 
 earnest, with the rashness of his conduct ; and, 
 at the close of the interview, pulled off a rich 
 scarlet cloak he happened to wear, and present- 
 ed it, with his gloves, to the youth. The next 
 day Henry Cromwell came down to the House, 
 wearing these tokens of his triumph, to the 
 great satisfaction and delight of some, to the 
 trouble of others,* and to the special mortifica- 
 tion of the major-generals, who, by the deser- 
 tion of Cromwell, found themselves subsequent- 
 ly exposed to actions at law for the exercise 
 of those powers which they had accepted in 
 obedience to his command. The result of the 
 debate was to disallow their authority by a ma- 
 jority of 124 to 88. Lambert and Cromwell 
 never afterward spoke to each other. 
 
 The explosion of the Sexby and Syndercotnbe 
 plot against Cromwell's life now happened so 
 opportunely in furtherance of Cromwell's de- 
 signs, that it became the general belief after- 
 ward that it had been purposely forced on by 
 Thurloe's spies. A casual mention of the pol- 
 icy of re-establishing "kingship" followed im- 
 mediately in the House, and was succeeded by 
 a more deliberate and explicit recommendation 
 of it from Mr. Ashe, who, in a brief discussion 
 on the Syndercombe plot, and measures for the 
 greater safety of his highness's person, re- 
 marked boldly, " I would have something else 
 added, which, in my opinion, would tend very 
 much to the preservation of himself and us, and 
 to the quieting of all the designs of our ene- 
 mies that his highness would be pleased to 
 take upon him the government according to 
 the ancient Constitution, so that the hopes of 
 our enemies and their plots would be at an end." 
 
 This suggestion was made on the 19th of 
 January, 1657, and seems to have been tolera- 
 bly well received by several of the members. 
 One of them, indeed, remarked, that he did not 
 know what was meant by the " ancient Con- 
 stitution," if it were not the interest of Charles 
 Stuart, whom he hoped that they did not intend 
 ""Godwin, voiriv., p. 329^30T~Thurloe,\al. vi., p. SOT
 
 604 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to call back again. He had no wish that Crom- 
 well should be appointed the viceroy of the ex- 
 iled king, or any such thing. But another, Mr. 
 Robinson, replied, that it was not a matter of 
 merriment : on the contrary, it was one which 
 ought to be seriously weighed. " When," said 
 he, " men pull down their houses that are ru- 
 inous, they try a while by setting up shrouds ; 
 but, finding them drop in, they build their hou- 
 ses again. I cannot propound a better expe- 
 dient for the preservation both of his highness 
 and the people, than by establishing the gov- 
 ernment upon the old and tried foundation, as 
 was moved to you by a grave and well-expe- 
 rienced person." Still there was some start- 
 ling resistance. One of the orators exclaimed, 
 " Will you make the Protector the greatest hyp- 
 ocrite in the world]" Yet most serviceable 
 had the hint and its preliminary skirmish prov- 
 ed, since it marked the relative quarters of fa- 
 vour and opposition. 
 
 The next incidents in the comedy were an 
 address of congratulation to Cromwell on his 
 escape from assassination, and his own prince- 
 ly entertainment to the various members given 
 at Whitehall. As soon as ever they reassem- 
 bled, the grand scheme was fairly broached. 
 Whitelocke had been asked to do it, but warily 
 refused. He readily promised, at the same 
 time, to support it with all his power. 
 
 The day was the 23d of February, and as 
 soon as the members were seated, Sir Christo- 
 pher Pack, an alderman, and representative of 
 London, who had been lord-mayor,* called the 
 attention of the House to the unsettled state of 
 the nation ; suggested that, as the best remedy, 
 " the Lord Protector might be desired to as- 
 sume the title of KING, as the best known and 
 most agreeable kind of government to the Eng- 
 lish ;" and proposed that a bill which he held in 
 his hand should be read. So extraordinary was 
 the sensation when the word KING declared it- 
 self at last, that many members rose simulta- 
 neously from their seats, and poor Pack was 
 violently borne down to the bar ;t but, on the 
 restoration of order, he found himself support- 
 ed by Broghill, Whitelocke, and Glyn, and, 
 with them, by the whole body of the lawyers 
 and the dependants of the court. The paper 
 was ultimately read, after a division on that 
 question, in which the party of the Protector 
 gained a triumph, carrying with them a major- 
 ity of 144 to 54. It was entitled, " An humble 
 Address and Remonstrance." It protested 
 against the existing form of government, which 
 depended for security on the odious institution 
 of major-generals ; and it provided, in a series 
 of eighteen articles, that the Protector should 
 assume a higher title, and govern, as had been 
 done in times past, with the advice of two 
 Houses of Parliament. After some resolute 
 opposition from the Republican officers, among 
 whom Lambert, Desborough, and Fleetwood 
 made themselves most prominent, a motion 
 that it should be discussed paragraph by para- 
 graph was carried by 100 to 44. Successive 
 debates at once began. 
 
 * And is accused, I may subjoin, in Heath's Chronicle, 
 with the guilt of embezzling a charitable fund of which he 
 was commissioner, and with having earned his pardon from 
 Cromwell by the present service. He was afterward made 
 one of his lords '. t Ludluw. 
 
 The opposition of Fleetwood and Desborough 
 occasioned great surprise, but it was account- 
 ed for by their natural timidity, and still more, 
 perhaps, by Cromwell's desertion of them in 
 their unpopular and ill-requited service of ma- 
 jor-generalship. Lambert's resistance was lit- 
 tle wondered at, since Pack's proposition would 
 have raised a lasting barrier between his own 
 notorious ambition, and the means which, with 
 a special promise, as it was said, of assistance 
 from Cromwell himself, he still looked for 
 achieving it. The fact of such an important 
 matter having been put forth without either co 
 operation or consent from such men as these 
 the most essential members of Cromwell's own 
 council shows not only a most passionate de- 
 sire for it in the breast of the Lord Protector, 
 but proves that (as the proceedings on the ma- 
 jor-generals had led men to suspect) many of 
 the most weighty consultations of the govern- 
 ment of the Protectorate were not held in the 
 council chamber. 
 
 The great author of the plot at the same time 
 professed utter ignorance and unconcern about 
 it ! Strengthened by the opposition of such men 
 as Lambert and Fleetwood, it would seem that 
 on the second or third day of the debate, which 
 was regularly continued on each section of the- 
 proposed bill, one hundred of the inferior officers 
 waited on the Protector, to entreat him that ho 
 would not listen to the idea of administering the 
 executive government under the proposed new 
 title, suggesting that it would not be pleasing 
 to the army, nor to the godly and pious mem- 
 bers of the community ; that it would be haz- 
 ardous to his own person, and dangerous to the 
 nation ; and was calculated, in the result, to 
 make way for the restoration of the exiled fam- 
 ily. In answer to this, while he affected to 
 ridicule or be careless of the title of kingship, 
 he yet disclosed the deep purpose of his soul : 
 he retorted back upon these soldiers many of 
 the vilest passages of their own policy ; he di- 
 rected their attention to the sort of Parliament 
 that had assembled, and asked them if there 
 ought not to be, in the government they had 
 themselves erected, more liberty of control. 
 There was a time when they felt no objection 
 to the title of king, for the army had offered it 
 to him with the original Instrument of Govern- 
 ment. He had rejected it then, and had no 
 greater love for it now. He had always been 
 the " drudge" of the officers, had done the work 
 which they imposed on him, and had sacrificed 
 his opinion to theirs. If the present Parlia- 
 ment had been called, it was in opposition to 
 his individual judgment ; if the bill which prov- 
 ed so injurious to the major-generals had been 
 brought into the House, it was contrary to his 
 advice. But the officers had overrated their 
 own strength ; the country called for an end to 
 all arbitrary proceedings ; the punishment of 
 Naylor proved the necessity of a check on the 
 judicial proceedings of the Parliament, and 
 that check could only be procured by investing 
 the Protector with additional authority ! This 
 speech, however, which has only been recov- 
 ered within the last eight years, is so remark- 
 able, that I here present it to the reader as it 
 stands in the diary of one who was present. 
 
 " His highness returned answer presently to 
 this effect : that the first man that told him of
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 605 
 
 it was he, the mouth of the officers then present 
 (meaning Colonel Mills) ; that, for his part, he 
 had never been at any cabal about the same 
 (hinting, by that, the frequent cabals that were 
 against kingship by certain officers). He said, 
 the time was when they boggled not at the 
 word (king), for the Instrument by which the 
 government now stands was presented to his 
 highness with the title (king) in it, as some 
 there present could witness, pointing at a prin- 
 cipal officer, then in his eye, and he refused to 
 accept of the title. But how it comes to pass 
 that they now startle at that title, they best 
 know. That, for his part, he loved the title, a 
 feather in a hat, as little as they did. That they 
 had made him their drudge upon all occasions : 
 to dissolve the Long Parliament, who had con- 
 tracted evil enough by long sitting ; to call a 
 Parliament, or convention of their naming, who 
 met ; and what did they 1 Fly at liberty and 
 property ! insomuch as if one man had twelve 
 cows, they held another that wanted cows 
 ought to take share with his neighbour ! Who 
 could have said anything was their own if they 
 had gone on ! After their dissolution, how 
 was I pressed by you (said he) for the rooting 
 out of the ministry ; nay, rather than fail, to 
 starve them out ! A Parliament was after- 
 ward called ; they sat five months : it is true, 
 we hardly heard of them in all that time. They [ 
 took the Instrument into debate, and they must >, 
 needs be dissolved; and yet stood not the Instru- | 
 ment in need of mending 1 Was not the case j 
 hard with me, to be put upon to swear to that which 
 was so hard to be kept 1 Some time after that, 
 you thought it was necessary to have major- ' 
 generals, and the first rise to that motion \ 
 (which was the late general insurrections) was j 
 justifiable ; and you, major-generals, did your ' 
 parts well. You might have gone on. Who bid 
 you to go to the House with a bill, and there receive ( 
 a foil 1 After you had exercised this power a 
 while, impatient were you till a Parliament was 
 called. I gave my vote against it, but you J 
 [were] confident, by your own strength and 
 interest, to get men chosen to your heart's de- 
 sire. How you have failed therein, and how much 
 the country hath been disobliged, is well known. 
 That it is time to come to a settlement, and lay 
 aside arbitrary proceedings, so unacceptable to the 
 nation; and by the proceedings of this Parlia- 
 ment, you see they stand in need of a check, or 
 balancing power [meaning the House of Lords, ' 
 or a house so constituted], for the case of James ! 
 Naylor might happen to be your own case. By | 
 their judicial power they fall upon life and 
 member, and doth the Instrument enable me to 
 control it ?''* 
 
 * Sloane MSS. Additions to Ascough. It is now ap- 
 pended to the Diary of Banton. One of Cromwell's most 
 remarkable accomplishments in the art of dissimulation 
 was this power he had, as in the present speech, of accom- 
 modating his craft, whether of cajolery, expostulation, or 
 threat, to the various manners and nicest habits of thinking 
 of his various victims or dupes. Thus, too, when even the 
 young Quaker must denounce to him the iniquity of war 
 and its upholders, he would be answered with, " It is very 
 good ; it is truth : if THOU and I were but an hour of a day 
 together, we should be nearer one to the other." I am re- 
 minded of this anecdote by its quotation in the last volume 
 of the " History of the Colonization of the United States, 
 by George Bancroft ;" a work of the deepest interest to any 
 student of the times to which these memoirs have been de- 
 voted, and executed in a manner, whether its style or opin- 
 ions are regarded, that must elevate in general esteem the 
 national literature of America. 
 
 This extraordinary harangue, in which we 
 may discover the Lord Protector's most pecu- 
 liar and striking mode of dealing with his old 
 brethren in arms, was in a great degree suc- 
 cessful. Several of the officers at once " dis- 
 covered a leaning" to the recommendation of 
 their old general. In conclusion, an arrange- 
 ment was made, in pursuance of which the 
 measure was allowed to proceed. It was 
 agreed that the question of the title under 
 which the executive government was to be ex- 
 ercised should be postponed till the last, and 
 that the Parliament should come to vote that 
 no provision in the bill should be regarded as 
 binding till the whole had been gone through. 
 In return for these concessions on the part of 
 the Protector, the officers consented that that 
 particular proposition should pass in virtue of 
 which the present chief magistrate should be 
 authorized to name his successor, and the other 
 also, which was in favour of the Parliament 
 consisting of two Houses. The issue of this 
 conference confirmed Cromwell in his resolu- 
 tion of pursuing his purpose to the last. 
 
 The officers fulfilled their pledge, and their 
 part of the compact was executed to the letter. 
 The first article of the remonstrance consisted 
 of two propositions : the first, praying that 
 Cromwell would hold the office of chief magis- 
 trate with the title of king ; the second, that 
 he would please, during his lifetime, to name 
 the person who should succeed him. The first 
 was postponed ; the second was immediately 
 adopted. The second article was, that there 
 should be Parliaments once in three years at 
 farthest, to consist of two Houses, constituted 
 in such a manner as should hereafter be agreed 
 on and declared. This was voted without a 
 division. The third article prescribed that the 
 ancient and undoubted privileges of Parliament 
 should be preserved and maintained, and that 
 the chief magistrate should not break or inter- 
 rupt them, nor suffer them to be broken or in- 
 terrupted ; and, in particular, that those per- 
 sons who were legally chosen to represent the 
 people in Parliament should not be excluded 
 from sitting but by the judgment and consent 
 of that house of which they were members. 
 This was in a like manner voted, and imposed 
 the necessity on Cromwell, if he continued the 
 present House of Commons under the act, to 
 restore the excluded Republicans. The fourth 
 article related to the qualifications, either in 
 point of loyalty, or of religion and morality, 
 which should be required of members of the 
 House of Commons, and to the number and 
 distribution of members of which that House 
 should consist. The fifth article directed that 
 the members of the other House should be in 
 number not fewer than forty, nor more than 
 seventy ; that they should be named by the 
 chief magistrate, and approved by Parliament ; 
 and that, upon the decease of any one of them, 
 no new member should be admitted to sit but 
 by the consent of the house of which he was to 
 be a member. The sixth article ordered that 
 no new law should be made, nor old one altered, 
 suspended, or repealed, but by consent of Par- 
 liament. The seventh article directed that 
 there should be an annual revenue of one mill- 
 ion for the maintenance of the army and navy, 
 and of three hundred thousand pounds for the
 
 606 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 support of government ; that this should not be 
 altered but by consent of Parliament ; that such 
 other temporary supplies should be granted as 
 the Commons might judge necessary ; that there 
 should be no land-tax ; and that no charge or 
 impost should be laid on the people but by con- 
 sent of Parliament. The eighth article related 
 to the privy council. The ninth article direct- 
 ed that the great officers of state should be ap 
 proved by Parliament. The tenth and eleventh 
 articles related to religion and toleration, and 
 provided that no persons who acknowledged the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, and the Scriptures to 
 be the word of God, should be molested in the 
 freedom of their worship. This liberty was 
 not to be extended to popery and prelacy 
 There were seven other articles of less im- 
 portance, on minor matters of detail. All were 
 passed. 
 
 The grand article was then discussed, and 
 after two days' debate was carried, that Crom- 
 well should be desired to take on him the gov- 
 ernment with the title of KINO. The numbers 
 were 123 to 62. The day following this, it was 
 resolved to change the title of this Instrument 
 from Address and Remonstrance to that of Pe- 
 tition and Advice ; and it was farther determin- 
 ed that, unless the Lord Protector should be 
 satisfied to give his unreserved consent to the 
 whole, no part of the Instrument should be 
 deemed to be of force. 
 
 They now took it up to Cromwell in a body, 
 and to their amazement were received with 
 doubts, and uncertainties, and most delicate 
 scruples. Widdrington, as speaker, address- 
 ed him in a long speech in commendation of 
 the measure, after which the " Petition and 
 Advice" was read by the clerk of the House. 
 In reply, the Protector observed, that of all 
 the things that had befallen him in his public 
 life, the present offer struck him as being of 
 the greatest magnitude, and most worthy of 
 deliberation; and he therefore demanded from 
 them some short time, to ask counsel of God 
 and of his own heart, lest his answer should 
 savour more of the flesh, proceed from lust, 
 arise from arguments of self, than from those 
 momentous considerations by which he desired 
 to be governed on such an occasion. The 
 time was granted. Three days after, Crom- 
 well addressed a letter to the speaker, request- 
 ing to be attended by a commitiee of the House, 
 which accordingly waited upon him the next 
 day at Whitehall. To them he explained him- 
 self in faint and unwilling terms, saying that he 
 had not been able to find it his duty to God 
 and the Parliament to undertake the proposed 
 charge under the title assigned. His partisans 
 immediately understood the secret of his dis- 
 claimer, and moved that the House adhere to 
 the Petition and Advice they had presented. 
 This resolution was carried immediately after 
 the report of Cromwell's declining the honour 
 intended him. With this vote, they presented 
 themselves once more on the following day, and 
 received this formal answer. 
 
 " That no man could put a greater value than 
 he did, and always should do, upon the desires 
 and advice of the Parliament, readily acknowl- 
 edging that it was the advice of the Parliament 
 of these three nations. 
 " That he looked upon the things advised to, 
 
 in the general notion of them, as tending to the 
 settlement of the chiefest things that could fall 
 into the hearts of men to desire or endeavour 
 after ; and this, at such a time, when the na- 
 tion was big with expectation of anything that 
 might add to their better being ; and, therefore, 
 that he must needs put a very high esteem 
 upon, and have a very reverend opinion of, any- 
 thing that came from them; and that so he 
 hath had of that Instrument presented to him, 
 as he had already expressed himself; and that 
 what he expressed had been from an honest 
 heart towards the Parliament and public, which 
 (he said) he spake not to compliment them, 
 being past all consideration of that kind, seeing 
 both himself and the Parliament must be real 
 now, if ever. 
 
 " That in this business they laid a burden 
 upon a man conscious of his own infirmities 
 and disabilities, and therefore he hoped that 
 it would be no evil in him to measure their ad- 
 vice and his own infirmities, seeing these would 
 have some influence upon conscience ; con- 
 science in him that receives talents, to know 
 how he might answer the trust of them ; that 
 he hath had, and still hath, such a conscience ; 
 and therefore, that when he thought he had had 
 an opportunity, lately, to make an answer, he 
 made that answer, being a person that had been 
 before, and then, and since, lifting up his heart to 
 God, to know what might be his duty at such a 
 time as this, and upon such an occasion and 
 i trial as this was to him. 
 
 " That he knew great place, great authority, 
 to he a great burden, and that he knew a man 
 who was convinced, in his conscience, that 
 nothing less would enable him to the discharge 
 of it than assistance from above ; and that it 
 concerned such a person, so convinced and so 
 persuaded, to be right with the Lord in such an 
 undertaking ; and that if he undertook anything 
 not in faith, he might serve them in his own 
 unbelief, and so be the unprofitablest servant 
 that ever a people or a nation had. 
 
 " That he desired leave, therefore, to ask 
 counsel, being ready to render a reason of his 
 own apprehension, which, haply, might be 
 overswayed by better apprehensions : that as 
 to the point of liberty, he acknowledged they 
 had made provisions for it, both spiritual and 
 civil the greatest provision that ever was 
 made ; that himself desired liberty to vent his 
 own doubts, and his own fears and scruples, 
 though haply, in such cases as these were, 
 the world had judged that a man's conscience 
 ought to know no scruple ; but that his did, 
 and that he durst not dissemble ; and therefore 
 they who were knowing in the ground of their 
 own actions would best be able to measure ad- 
 vice to others. 
 
 " That there were many things in that In- 
 strument besides that one of the name and title 
 of king, which required much information as to 
 his judgment ; and that it was they, and none 
 but they, that could capacitate him to receive 
 satisfaction in them ; that otherwise he must 
 say he was not informed, and so not acted, as 
 he knew they intended he should be, and as 
 every man in the nation should be. 
 
 " That he could not tell what other return to 
 make to them than this, that he was ready to 
 give them a reason if they would capacitate
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 607 
 
 him to give it, and themselves to receive it, 
 and to do that in the other things, if they would 
 inform him a little more particularly than the vote 
 passed yesterday, and now read to him ; and 
 that he hoped, when he understood the grounds 
 of those things, the whole being not so much 
 for their good and his own as for the good of the 
 nation, there would be no doubt but that they 
 might, even in those particulars, find out such 
 things as might answer their duty, his own, 
 and all their duties, to those whom they both 
 served. 
 
 " That this was what, with a great deal of 
 affection, honour, and respect, he offered then 
 unto them." 
 
 The information he here asked it was at once 
 resolved should be granted. A committee of 
 the House was named for conference, and to 
 solve the apparent doubts of the Protector. 
 This committee consisted of ninety-nine per- 
 sons who had voted for the title of king, or 
 were known to be favourable in that essential 
 point to the tenour of the Petition and Advice. 
 The list included Whaley, Goffe, and Berry, 
 from among the major generals ; and the name 
 of Waller, who first, as we have seen, publicly 
 suggested the thing, is very properly to be found 
 there too. The speakers in the conference 
 were Glyn, Whitelocke, Fiennes, Lisle, Lenthal, 
 Colonel Jones, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Rich- 
 ard Onslow, and Lord Broghill. The tenour 
 of their arguments, which were inordinately 
 lengthy, and in which Cromwell himself was 
 perhaps the most lengthy and the most able of 
 all, may be thus given. 
 
 Cromwell proposed to argue the question on 
 the ground of expedience. If the power were 
 the same under a Protector, where, he asked, 
 could be the use of a king? The title would 
 offend men who, by their former services, had 
 earned the right to have even their prejudices 
 respected. Neither was he sure that the re- 
 establishment of royalty might not be a falling 
 off from that cause in which they had engaged, 
 and from that Providence by which they had 
 been so marvellously supported. It was true 
 that the Scripture sanctioned the dignity of 
 king, but to the testimony of Scripture might 
 be opposed " the visible hand of God," who, in 
 the lale contest, " had eradicated kingship." It 
 was gravely replied that Protector was a new, 
 king an ancient title ; the first had no definite 
 meaning, the latter was interwoven with all 
 our laws and institutions ; the powers of the 
 one were unknown and liable to alteration, 
 those of the other ascertained and limited by 
 the law of custom and the statute law. The 
 abolition of royalty did not originally enter into the 
 contemplation of Parliament the objection was 
 to the person, not to the office it was afterward 
 effected by a portion only of the representative 
 body ; whereas, its restoration was now sought 
 by a greater authority the whole Parliament 
 of the three kingdoms ! That restoration was 
 indeed necessary, both for his security and 
 theirs, as by law all the acts of a king in pos- 
 session, but only of a king, were good and val- 
 id. Some there were who pretended that king 
 and chief magistrate were synonymous ; but no 
 one had yet ventured to substitute one word 
 for the other in the Scriptures, where so many 
 covenants, promises, and precepts are annexed 
 
 to the title of king. Neither could the " risible 
 hand of God" be alleged in the present case ; 
 for the visible hand of God had eradicated the 
 government by a single person as clearly as 
 that by a king. Cromwell promised to give due 
 attention to these arguments ; to his confidential 
 friends he owned that his objections were removed ; 
 and, at the same time, to enlighten the igno- 
 rance of the public, he ordered a report of the 
 conferences to be published.* 
 
 Several days had meanwhile passed, and yet 
 Cromwell still deferred his final and public de- 
 cision. For the first time, perhaps, 4n his life, 
 he did not dare to seize what lay within his 
 reach, and was the first and foremost object of 
 his desire. The resolute withdrawal of Lam- 
 bert he had been prepared for, and would not 
 care to have contested, but the continued aver- 
 sion of Fleetwood and Desborough to his grand 
 design held him fairly at bay. He employed 
 the interval with many of these recusant officers 
 in all his profoundest, his most careless, his 
 most deliberate arts, of laughter, of serious ar- 
 gument, of obscure intimidation, and of most 
 accomplished cajolery. He mixed up with ex- 
 quisite skill in the various efforts certain cas- 
 ual but powerful arguments deduced from an- 
 other extensive conspiracy against his life and 
 present power, in which Harrison, Venner, and 
 the Fifth-Monarchy men had been just engaged. 
 Whitelocke has related to us the style of these 
 strange scenes in a curious passage of his me- 
 morials. "The Protector," he says, "often 
 advised about this and other great businesses, 
 with Lord Broghill, Pierrepoint, Sir Charles 
 Wolseley, Thurloe, and myself, and would be 
 very cheerful with us, and laying aside his 
 greatness, would be exceeding familiar with us, 
 and, by way of diversion, would make verses with 
 us ; and every one must try his fancy. He would 
 commonly call for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and 
 now and then would take tobacco himself. Then 
 he would fall again to his serious and great busi- 
 ness, and advise with us in those affairs ; and this 
 he did often with us." 
 
 A not less characteristic passage from the 
 memoirs of Ludlow will show the nature of his 
 attempts to overthrow, or moderate, or thrust 
 aside, the scruples of Fleetwood and Desbor- 
 ough. "Knowing that Lieut. -general Fleet- 
 wood and Colonel Desborough were particu- 
 larly averse to it, he invited himself to dine per- 
 sonally with the colonel, and carried the lieuten- 
 ant-general with him, where he began to droll 
 with them about monarchy, and speaking slight- 
 ly of it, said it was but a feather in a man's cap, 
 and therefore wondered that men would not please 
 the children, and permit them to enjoy their rattle. 
 But he received from them, as Colonel Des- 
 borough since told me, such an answer as was 
 not at all suitable to his expectations or desires ; 
 for they assured him that there was more in 
 this matter than he perceived ; that those who 
 put him upon it were no enemies to Charles 
 Stuart ; and that, if he accepted of it, he would 
 infallibly draw ruin on himself and friends. 
 
 * Published they accordingly were, in a very thick vol- 
 ume, out of which Dr. Lingard has conveyed the abstract I 
 have availed myself of in the text. The book was called 
 " Monarchy asserted to be the roost ancient and legal form 
 of government." At the close of the third day's confer- 
 ence, the Protector declared, both to Whitelocke and others, 
 that his scruples were entirely over.
 
 608 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Having thus sounded their inclinations, that he 
 might conclude in the manner he had begun, he 
 told them they were a couple of scrupulous fel- 
 lows, and so departed. The next day he sent 
 a message to the House to require their attend- 
 ance in the Painted Chamber the next morning, 
 designing, as all men believed, there to declare 
 his acceptation of the crown ;* but in the mean 
 time meeting with Colonel Desborough in the 
 great walk of the Park, and acquainting him 
 with his resolution, the colonel made answer 
 that he then gave up the cause, and Cromwell's 
 family also, for lost ; adding, that though he 
 was resolved never to act against him, yet he 
 would not act for him after that time ; so, af- 
 ter some other discourse upon the same sub- 
 ject, Desborough went home, and there found 
 Colonel Pride, whom Cromwell had knighted 
 with a fagot stick ; and having imparted to him 
 the design of Cromwell to accept the crown, 
 Pride answered, 'He shall not.' 'Why?' said 
 the colonel; 'how wilt thou hinder it?' To 
 which Pride replied, ' Get me a petition drawn, 
 and I will prevent it.' Whereupon they both 
 went to Dr. Owen, and having acquainted him 
 with what had happened, they persuaded him 
 to draw a petition according to their desires 
 While this was doing, Cromwell, having re- 
 flected on his discourse with Colonel Desbor- 
 ough, and being informed that Lambert and di- 
 vers other officers were dissatisfied with his 
 design, sent a message to put off the meet- 
 ing in the Painted Chamber, and to desire that 
 the House would send a committee to confer 
 with him about the great business that was 
 then depending, intending thereby to gain time, 
 in which he might be fitting the officers for his 
 design. But the House being risen before his 
 message arrived, and so out of a capacity to 
 appoint any to come to him, the old committee 
 that had been formerly appointed to that end 
 thought fit, by virtue of their general instruc- 
 tions, to wait on him to know his pleasure. 
 Accordingly they came to Whitehall, where they 
 attended about two hours, and then a Barbary horse 
 being brought into the garden for him to see, gave 
 him an occasion to pass through the room where the 
 committee was attending. As he icas passing by 
 without taking the least notice of them, one of the 
 messengers put him in mind that they had at- 
 tended very long, which he slightly excusing, 
 told them that he thought the Houses, being 
 risen before his message came to them, had 
 
 * This is confirmed by very many authorities. White- 
 locke states explicitly that the Protector was satisfied in 
 his private judgment that it was expedient for him to assume 
 the name and authority of king; but, he adds, " by solici- 
 tation of the Commonwealth's men, and fearing a mutiny 
 and defection of a great body of the army in case he should 
 take that title and office, his mind changed ; and many of 
 the officers of the army gave out high threatenings against 
 him if he should do it." The same view of the case is 
 given in a letter, dated at Whitehall, on the 27th of April, 
 and addressed by Sir Francis Russel to his son-in-law, the 
 Lord Henry Cromwell. " I do in this (letter) desire to take 
 leave of your lordship, for my next is likely to be to the 
 Duke of York. Your father begins to come out of the 
 clouds, and it appears to us that he will take the kingly 
 power upon him. That great noise which was made about 
 this business not long since is almost over, and I cannot 
 think there will be the least combustion about it. This 
 day I have had some discourse with your father about this 
 great business. He is very cheerful, and his troubled 
 thoughts seem to be over. I was told the other day by 
 Colonel Pride, that I was for a king, because I hoped that 
 the next would be Henry's turn." Many other letters from 
 Thurloe to Henry express the same thing. 
 
 not empowered any persons to him. It was 
 answered that they came to him upon the gen- 
 eral instructions which they had formerly re- 
 ceived from the House ; upon which he' told 
 them he would send to them some other time." 
 
 Beneath these careless delays and apparent- 
 ly indifferent movements of Cromwell, there 
 then lay, could the truth have been unfolded, a 
 bitter agony of pride and mortification of heart 
 beyond any that his worst enemy or victim 
 could have desired to see working within him. 
 A mean and spiritless slave to the vilest pas- 
 sions of overwrought ambition, he stood there 
 within sight of the glittering bawble* for which 
 he had perilled so much, and yet dared not af- 
 fect to see it, but would stand gazing on his 
 Barbary horse, or talk of a toy, or sneer about 
 a rattle, or laugh at a feather in a man's cap, 
 or do anything to cover the fever of that imbe- 
 cile passion, incapable of its own desire, which 
 raged in his heart. So to the last he trifled ; 
 and at the last, the Republican officers, taking 
 courage from his cowardice, ventured one bold 
 step, and dashed down his hopes forever. 
 
 On the very morning of the occurrence Lud- 
 low has last described, Desborough rose in his 
 place, and announced that certain officers of 
 the army attended with a petition. The House 
 voted their admission to the bar, and it was 
 presented by Colonel Mason. Cromwell's ma- 
 jority were prepared for a petition in favour of 
 his views. To their surprise and consterna- 
 tion, it set forth, " that the petitioners had haz- 
 arded their lives against monarchy, and were 
 still ready to do so ; that they observed some 
 men endeavouring to bring the nation under 
 the old servitude, by pressing their general to 
 take upon him the title of king ; that they hum- 
 bly desired the House would continue steady 
 to the good old cause, in defence of which they 
 (the petitioners), for their parts, were ready to 
 lay down their lives." 
 
 The good old cause ! When Cromwell heard 
 this, he felt that his hope was gone, and made 
 what merit he could to surrender it with some 
 show of dignity. At once sending for Fleet- 
 wood, he expressed much surprise at his not 
 preventing the presentation of such a petition, 
 especially as, he said, he must know the crown 
 would never have been accepted by him against the 
 inclinations of the army ; and he therefore de- 
 sired him to hasten to the House, and prevent 
 any proceedings upon the petition. This office 
 Fleetwood readily undertook, and without dif- 
 ficulty convinced the members of the impropri- 
 ety of considering the prayer of the officers un- 
 til they had received the Protector's answer. 
 A message then arrived from Cromwell, desi- 
 ring the members, instead of repairing to the 
 Painted Chamber, to meet him in the Banquet- 
 ing House. They did so ; and there, on the 
 12th of May, 1657, this comedy a farce it might 
 be better called, save for its length closed with 
 a speech of " much embarrassment" from Crom- 
 well, in which he said many things with a reach 
 of hypocrisy that might well embarrass even 
 him.t This is that memorable speech. 
 
 * Nor, it was said, did this exist in imagination only ! 
 Welwood asserts that a crown was actually made and 
 brought to Whitehall. 
 
 t l)r. Johnson, in his Life of Waller, asserts that " Crom- 
 well, after a long conference with a deputation of Parlia- 
 ment that was sent to invite him to the crown, refused it,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 609 
 
 "MR. SPEAKER, I come hither to answer 
 that which was in your last paper to the com- 
 mittee you sent to me, which was in relation 
 to the desires which were offered to me by the 
 House in what they called their Petition. 
 
 " I confess that business hath put the House, 
 the Parliament, to a great deal of trouble, and 
 spent much time. 
 
 " I am very sorry for that ! It hath cost me 
 some, and some thoughts ; and because I have 
 been the unhappy occasion of the expense of 
 so much time, I shall spend little of it now. 
 
 " I have, the best I can, resolved the whole 
 business in my thoughts ; and I have said so 
 much already in testimony to the whole, that 
 I think I shall not need to repeat anything that 
 I have said. . I think it is a government that, 
 in the aims of it, seeks the settling the nation 
 on a good foot, in relation to civil rights and 
 liberties, which are the rights of the nation ; 
 and I hope I shall never be found to be one of 
 them that shall go about to rob the nation of 
 those rights, but serve them what I can to the 
 attaining of them. : 
 
 " It is also exceeding well provided there, for 
 the safety and security of honest men, in that 
 great, natural, and religious liberty, which is lib- 
 erty of conscience. These are the great funda- 
 mentals ; and I must bear my testimony to 
 them, as I have and shall do still, so long as 
 God lets me live in this world, that the inten- 
 tions and the things are very honourable and 
 honest, and the product worthy of a Parliament : 
 I have only had the unhappiness, both in my 
 conferences with your committees, and in the 
 best thoughts I could take to myself, not to be 
 convinced of the necessity of that thing that 
 hath been so often insisted on by you to wit, 
 the title of king, as in itself so necessary as it 
 seems to be apprehended by you. 
 
 " And yet I do, with all honour and respect 
 to the judgment of a Parliament, testify that 
 (cateris paribus) no private judgment is to lie in 
 the balance with the judgment of Parliament ; 
 but, in things that respect particular persons, 
 every man that is to give an account to God of 
 his actions must in some measure be able to 
 prove his own work, and to have an approba- 
 tion in his own conscience of that that he is to 
 do, or to forbear ; and .while you are granting 
 others their liberties, surely you will not deny 
 me this, it being not only a liberty, but a duty 
 (and such a duty as I cannot, without sinning, 
 forbear), to examine in my own heart, and 
 thoughts, and judgment, in every work which 
 I am to set my hand to, or to appear in or for. 
 
 " I must confess, therefore, that though I do 
 acknowledge all the other, yet I must be a lit- 
 tle confident in this. That what with the cir- 
 cumstances that accompany human actions, 
 whether they be circumstances of times or per- 
 sons, or whether circumstances that relate to 
 the whole, or private, or particular circum- 
 stances, that compass any person that is to 
 render an account of his own actions, I have 
 truly thought, and do still think, that if I should, 
 at the best, do anything on this account to an- 
 swer your expectation, at the best I should do 
 it doubtingly ; and, certainly, what is so is not 
 of faith ; and whatsoever is not so, whatsoever 
 
 but is said to have fainted in his coach when he parted 
 from them." I cannot find any authority for this, 
 
 4H 
 
 is not of faith, is sin to him that doth it, wheth- 
 er it be with relation to the substance of the 
 action about which the consideration is con- 
 versant, or whether to circumstances about it 
 which make all indifferent actions good or evil : 
 I say circumstances ; and truly I mean good or 
 evil to him that doth it. 
 
 " I, lying under this consideration, think it 
 my duty, only I could have wished I had done 
 it sooner, for the sake of the House, who hath 
 laid so infinite obligations on me I wish I had 
 done it sooner, for your sake, and saving time 
 and trouble, and, indeed, for the committee's 
 sake, to whom I must acknowledge publicly I 
 have been unreasonably troublesome I say I 
 could have wished I had given it sooner ; but 
 truly this is my answer, that (although I think 
 the government doth consist of very excellent 
 parts, in all but in that one thing, the title, as 
 to me) I should not be an honest man if I 
 should not tell you that I cannot accept of the 
 government, nor undertake the trouble and 
 charge of it. I have a little more experiment- 
 ed than everybody what troubles and difficulties 
 do befall men under such trusts and in such 
 undertakings. I say I am persuaded to return 
 this answer to you, that I cannot undertake 
 the government with the title of king ; and 
 that is my answer to this great and weighty 
 business." 
 
 All that could now be achieved was to pass 
 the Petition and Advice without the title of 
 king. This was done, and, with a few other 
 unimportant amendments, received the Pro- 
 tector's sanction. The House at the same 
 time adjourned for six months, to allow the 
 Lord Protector opportunity for the formation 
 of the other House, constituted by this new act. 
 A new and solemn inauguration followed. On 
 a platform, raised at the upper end of West- 
 minster Hall, and in front of a magnificent 
 chair of state, stood the Protector, while the 
 speaker, with his assistants, invested him with 
 a purple mantle lined with ermine, presented 
 to him a Bible superbly gilt and embossed, girt 
 a sword by his side, and placed a sceptre of 
 massive gold in his hand. As soon as the oath 
 had been administered, Manton, his chaplain, 
 pronounced a long and fervent prayer for a 
 blessing on the Protector, the Parliament, and 
 the people. Rising from prayer, Cromwell 
 seated himself on the right ; at some distance 
 sat the French, on the left the Dutch ambassa- 
 dor ; on one side stood the Earl of Warwick, 
 with the sword of the Commonwealth ; on the 
 other, the lord-mayor, with that of the city ; 
 and behind arranged themselves the members 
 of the Protector's family, the lords of the coun- 
 cil, and Lisle, Whitelocke, and Montague, each 
 of the three bearing a drawn sword. At a sig- 
 nal given, the trumpets sounded, the heralds 
 proclaimed the style of the new sovereign, and 
 the spectators shouted, " Long live his high- 
 ness ! God save the Lord Protector !" He 
 rose immediately, bowed to the ambassadors, 
 and walked in state through the Hall to his 
 carriage.* 
 
 * Dr. Lingard, from Whitelocke's Memorials. But a de- 
 tailed account, with many points of vivacity and interest, 
 will be seen in Appendix K. I have also given, from the 
 same official hand (Appendix L.), the account (with some 
 interpolations inserted after the Restoration) of the Lord 
 Protector's funeral.
 
 610 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 From this ceremony, apparently so grand 
 and so imposing, may be dated Cromwell's 
 downfall. He had failed, and the sole charm 
 which seemed to have sustained him hitherto 
 perished in those words. He had declared, in 
 a manner not to be mistaken, that he thought 
 monarchy the best form of government, and 
 yet he was not suffered to become that, mon- 
 arch. He held the chair of another. Many of 
 his oldest friends, and fellow-comrades too, had 
 withdrawn from his side, and he had to look 
 for the familiar faces of Naseby, Dunbar, Mars- 
 ton Moor, and Worcester, in the ranks of men 
 who were banded against his life, or more 
 bitter contemplation had entered an immortal 
 judgment with posterity against his fame. His 
 mother, whom he deeply venerated, had per- 
 ished some short time before, unable to live in 
 her continual terror that his life would be ta- 
 ken by assassins.* His most beloved daughter 
 Claypole is said to have already estranged her- 
 self from his side, where he would have al- 
 ways had her present, on account of the attach- 
 ment she bore to truth, not less than to many 
 of his political enemies. His son Richard, to 
 whom he desired to leave the power for which 
 he had sacrificed so many blessings, was inca- 
 pable, he feared too well, to hold it for a day. 
 Nor did it seem that he could hope to leave it, 
 for such a feeble hand, better organized than it 
 already was, for his own health was known to 
 be declining. The prospect before this great 
 and most mistaken man, after his second most 
 gorgeous inauguration, was a dreary one in- 
 deed. Had the old story of his enemies been 
 true, it could scarcely have left to him fewer 
 hopes of redemption f 
 
 Yet he made a rally in his foreign adminis- 
 tration, where his genius, which had there a 
 theatre for its exercise unencumbered with his 
 follies or his crimes, still shone supreme.* The 
 
 * Ludlow tells us that " his mother, who, by reason of 
 her great age, was not so easily flattered with temptations, 
 very much mistrusted the issue of affairs, and would be 
 often afraid, when she heard the noise of a musket, that 
 her son was shot, being exceedingly dissatisfied unless she 
 might see him once a day at least ; but she, shortly after 
 dying, left him the possession of what she held in jointure, 
 which was reported not to exceed sixty pounds by year, 
 though he out of the public purse expended much more at 
 her interment in the abbey at Westminster, and, among 
 other needless ceremonies, caused many hundred torches to 
 be carried with the hearse, though she was buried by day- 
 light." Instead of this, she had prayed of her sou a humble 
 village burial-place. 
 
 t Echard builds up this most ridiculous story from the 
 romantic fictions of Clement Walker anil others, which is 
 yet worth quoting, to show the feeling which was encour- 
 aged respecting Cromwell until within the last century. 
 " We have a strange story in the last part of the History 
 of Independency, which the author says he received from 
 a person of quality, viz., ' It was believ'd, and that not with- 
 out some good cause, that Cromwell, the same morning that 
 he defeated the king's army at Worcester, had conference 
 personally with the devil, with whom he made a contract, 
 that to have his will then, and in all things else for seven 
 years from that day, he should, at the expiration of the said 
 years, have him at his command, to do at his pleasure, both 
 with his soul and body.' This is also related in other 
 printed books ; but we have receiv'd a more full account, 
 never yet published, which is here inserted as a thing more 
 wonderful than probable, and therefore more for the diver- 
 sion than satisfaction of the reader. It is a relation or nar- 
 rative of a valiant officer call'd Lindsey, an intimate friend 
 of Cromwell's, the first captain of his regiment, and there- 
 fore commonly call'd Colonel Lindsey, which is to this ef- 
 fect: On the 3d of September, in the morning, Cromwell 
 took this officer to a wood-side, not far from the army, and 
 bid him alight and follow him into that wood, and to take 
 particular notice of what he saw and heard. After they 
 had both alighted and secur'd their horses, and walked 
 some small way into the wood, Lindsey began to turn pale, 
 and to be seiz'd with horror from some unknown cause, 
 upon which Cromwell ask'd him how he did, or how he felt 
 himself. He answer'd, that he was in such a trembling and 
 consternation, that he never felt the like in all the conflicts 
 
 and battels he had been engag'd in ; but whether it pro- 
 ceed'd from the gloominess of the place, or the temperament 
 of his body, he knew not. ' How now !' said Cromwell ; 
 ' what ! troubl'd with vapours ? Come forwards, man !' 
 They had not gone above twenty yards, before Lindsey on 
 a sudden stood still, and cry'd out, by all that's good, he 
 was seiz'd with such unaccountable terror and astonish- 
 ment, that it was impossible for him to stir one step further 
 Upon which Cromwell call'd him faint-hearted fool, and bid 
 him stand there and observe, or be witness ; and then ad- 
 vancing to some distance from him, he rnet with a grave 
 elderly man, with a roll of parchment in his hand, who de- 
 liver'd it to Cromwell, who eagerly perus'd it. Lindsey, a 
 little recover'd from his fear, heard several loud words be- 
 tween them ; particularly Cromwell said, ' This is but for 
 seven years ; I wns to have had it for one-and-twenty, and 
 it must and bhall be so.' The other told him positively it 
 cou'd not be for above seven ; upon which Cromwell cry'd 
 with great fierceness it shou'd, however, be for fourteen 
 years. But the other peremptorily declar'd 'it could not 
 possibly be for any longer time ; and if he would not take it 
 so, there were others who would accept of it.' Upon which 
 Cromwell at last took the parchment, and returning to 
 Lindsey with great joy in his countenance, he cry'd, ' Now, 
 Lindsey, the battel is our own ! I long to be engag'd.' 
 Returning out of the wood, they rode to the army, Crom- 
 well with a resolution to engage as soon as possible, and 
 the other with a design of leaving the army as soon, After 
 the first charge. Lindsey deserted his post, and rode away, 
 with all possible speed, day and night, till he came into the 
 county of Norfolk, to the house of an intimate friend, one 
 Mr. Thorowgood, minister of the parish of Grimstone. 
 Cromwell, as soon as he miss'd him, sent all ways after 
 him, with a promise of a great reward to any that shou'd 
 brinar him alive or dead.' Thus far the narrative of Liml- 
 sey himself; but something further is to be remember'd, to 
 compleat and confirm the story. When Mr. Thorowgood 
 saw his friend Lindsey come into his yard, his horse and 
 himself just tired, in a' sort of maze, said, ' How now, colo- 
 nel ! we hear there is like to he a battel shortly. What ! 
 fled from your colours ?' ' A batte) !' said the other ; ' yes, 
 there has been a battel, and I am sure the king is beaten ; 
 but if ever I strike a stroak for Cromwell, may I perish 
 eternally ; for I am sure he has made a league with the 
 devil, and the devil will have him in due time.' Then de- 
 siring his protection from Cromwell's inquisitors, he went 
 in, and related the whole story, and all the circumstances, 
 concluding with these remarkable words : ' That Cromwell 
 would certainly dye that day seven years that the liaitel 
 was fought.' The strangeness of the relation caus'd Mr. 
 Thorowpood to order his son John, then about twelve years 
 of age, to write it in full length in his common-place book, 
 and to take it from Lindsey's own mouth. This common- 
 place book, and likewise the same story, written in other 
 books, I am assur'd is still preserv'd in the family of the 
 Thorowgoods, but how far Lindsey is to be believ'd. and 
 how far the story is to be accounted incredible, is left, to 
 the reader's faith and judgment, and not to any determina- 
 tion of our own." Echard's .History of England, p. 601. 
 I will subjoin to this a piece of admirable wit and satire, 
 fir which it is even worth while to preserve such a slory. 
 Dr. Nettieton, an accomplished physician of the last cen- 
 tury, was in company one day wiih several gentlemen, one 
 of whom was laying great stress on the popular account I 
 have just quoted, even then rifa with well-educated per- 
 sons, of Cromwell's selling himself to the devil before the 
 battle of Worcester, affirming that the bargain was intend- 
 ed to be for twenty-one years, but that the devil had put a 
 trick upon Oliver by changing the 21 into 12; and then, 
 turning hastily to the doctor, the gentleman asked him, 
 "What could be the devil's motive for so doing ?'' The 
 doctor answered, " That he could not tell what was his mo- 
 tive, unless he was in a hurry about the Restoration." 
 
 * Mr. Wallace gives, in his most able history of England, 
 the following anecdote of this date, in illustration of the 
 ascendant of Cromwell over Mazarin : " An English mer- 
 chant vessel was unjustly confiscated on the coast of France, 
 and the owner, an honest Quaker, applied to Cromwell for 
 redress. The Protector asking him whether he would 
 make a journey to Paris with a letter, was answered in the 
 affirmative, and despatched the Quaker with a letter to 
 Cardinal Mazarin, demanding redress within three days, at 
 the expiration of which he peremptorily ordered the Quaker 
 to return. He obeyed, and presented himself to Cromwell. 
 'Well, friend, hast thou thy money?' said the Protector. 
 The Quaker said, No.' Cromwell desired him to take no 
 farther trouble, as he should take the matter into his own 
 hands. He accordingly seized and sold the first two French,
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 611 
 
 details belong to general history ; but I may be 
 allowed to glance so far at them as to state that 
 Mardyke was now delivered to him under a 
 new and larger treaty with Mazarin, as a secu- 
 rity for Dunkirk, and that, on the subsequent 
 meeting of the troops of the two nations at the 
 siege, Louis XIV. made a journey expressly to 
 see those of Cromwell. It is farther recorded 
 that Lockhart paid him this compliment at the 
 review that Cromwell had enjoined both offi- 
 cers and soldiers to display the same zeal in 
 ihe service of the French king as in his own ; 
 and that Louis replied, he was transported to 
 receive so noble a testimony of the affection of 
 a prince, whom he had always considered as the 
 greatest and happiest in Europe. Anticipating 
 the events of a few months later, I may add 
 that, after the surrender of Dunkirk to Lock- 
 hart and an English garrison, Louis XIV. and 
 the cardinal having taken up their quarters at 
 Calais, Cromwell seized the occasion to send 
 Lord Faulconberg, his son-in-law, with a splen- 
 did equipage and a numerous retinue, to com- 
 pliment the king on his near approach to the 
 shores of Britain. Here Fauteonberg was en- 
 tertained with every possible distinction. Louis 
 not only received him uncovered at his public 
 audiences, but also at a private visit, which 
 he requested from the Protector's son-in-law, 
 when they talked for two hours in the garden. 
 The cardinal was equally ceremonious. He 
 came from his apartment to meet thre ambas- 
 sador, and, after an hour's discourse, conduct- 
 ed him again to his carriage, a condescension 
 be was accustomed to dispense with, not only 
 to all others, but to the king himself. After a 
 stay of five days, Faulconberg left, charged with 
 all honour and affection for the great Protector 
 from Mazarin and Louis. 
 
 I leave this redeeming subject of foreign pol- 
 icy with two rare and memorable missives. The 
 first is a remonstrance to the Grand Seignior, 
 respecting the unjust surprisal of an English 
 ship. 
 
 " Oliver, by the grace of God Lord Protector 
 of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, and the dominions and territories 
 thereto belonging, to the high and mighty em- 
 peror, Sultan Mahomet Han, chief lord and com- 
 mander of the Mussulman kmgdome, sole and 
 supreme monarch of the Eastern empire, greet- 
 ing. . . . Most high and mighty prince. . . . We 
 doubt not but you have found by yourowne ex- 
 perience, as well as by information of such as 
 have bin of councell with your royall predeces- 
 sors, that the amity and traffique soe long contin- 
 ued betweene both nations hath bin of great ad- 
 vantage and benefit in many respects ; to the 
 disturbance whereof we should be very unwill- 
 ing that any occasion should be offered on our 
 part, who desire nothing more than a contin- 
 uance and increase of that friendship which hath 
 bin established. But it falleth out that the same 
 
 sauor, wno suumiuea 10 mis very summary proceeding." 
 1 cannot transcribe this passage from the history by Mr. 
 'Wallace, without an expression of deep and heartfelt regret 
 J-t the melancholy event which has removed so suddenly 
 from among us that excellent person, in whom the public 
 have lost a writer of very great and various accomplish- 
 ments, and his more intimate friends an adviser and com- 
 panion whose place they will vainly seek to supply. 
 
 hath bin too frequently interrupted by such as 
 exercise pyracy and spoile at sea, who, though 
 they are enemies to all entercowrse and civill 
 society, and dishonorable to princes and states, 
 yet find places of re.tr eate. and succor in some part 
 of your dominions. An instance whereof (to 
 omit many others) appeareth in the late surpri- 
 zall of an English ship called the Resolution, 
 which being laden with cloth, tynne, lead, and 
 money (to the value of two hundred thousand 
 dollars), and bound for your owne port of Scan- 
 derone, was yet in her passage (nere Candy) 
 assaulted by seaven ships of Tripoly (part of 
 your Majesty's fleetes, and then actually in your 
 service), and by them carried to Rhodes, an- 
 other of your majesty's ports, where we are in 
 formed the captaine bassa hath bin soe farr from 
 disowning the action, that he hath, in scorne 
 and contempt of the capitulation, secured the 
 ship and goods, as also the master, mariners, 
 and passengers, who had not a ragg left to cov- 
 er them ; which barbarous act, soe repugnant to 
 the emperiall capitulations (which ought to be 
 held inviolate), soe injurious to trade, and soe dis- 
 honorable to your majesty, we cannot pass over 
 without a due consideration and representation to 
 you, as a manifest breach of peace ; and therefore 
 we doe presume soe much of your wisdome and 
 justice, that you will not only command a to- 
 tall and compleate restitution to be made of the 
 ship, goods, and money, and releasement of the 
 men, but also for your owne honor take course 
 for suppressing those pyrates, and prohibiting 
 their retreate into places, and receiving favour 
 and succor from persons under your obedience, 
 as also for punishing such as countenance or 
 abett them, and for a generall redres-s of all for- 
 mer injuries too commonly practiced on our peo- 
 ple, both to our dishonor and their irreparable 
 loss. In all which we have given order to our 
 ambassador residing at your high port to in- 
 forme you more particularly, desiring to under- 
 stand your resolution herein, that upon knowl- 
 edge thereof we may take such course as shall be 
 agreeable to justice and to the good of our people, 
 whom we are bound to protect in their lawfull cours- 
 es of trade. And soe we wish you health and 
 true felicity. Given at our pallace at West- 
 minster, this llth day of the moneth of August, 
 1657." 
 
 The second is addressed,, with the date of 
 the same day, to the high and excellent lord, 
 the Vizier Azem. " Oliver, by the grace of God 
 Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Eng- 
 land, Scotland,, and Ireland, and the dominions 
 and territories thereto belonging, to the high 
 and excellent lord, the Vizier Azem. . . . High 
 and excellent lord. ... As we have now done 
 to the Grand Seignor your lord and master, soe 
 doe we also to you, complaine of an act of vi- 
 olence and injustice exercised towards divers 
 merchants of this Commonwealth, interested 
 in an English ship called the Resolution, which 
 being laden with cloth, tynne, and money, and 
 bound for the Grand Seignor's owne port of 
 Scanderone, in a peaceable course of trading, 
 was (notwithstanding) in her way (nere Candy) 
 assaulted by seaven Tripoly men of warr actu- 
 ally ingaged in the Grand Seignor's service, and 
 by them carried to Rhodes, where the captaine 
 bassa hath secured the ship and her lading, and 
 imprisoned the master, mariners, and passen-
 
 612 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 gers, being in number forty-five persons ; which 
 act, soe contrary to the emperiall capitulations, 
 and to the very essence of commerce, being an 
 absolute breach of the peace between both na- 
 tions, we cannot but judge will be held very 
 dishonorable to the Grand Seignor, and accord- 
 ingly to be resented by him, even to the severe 
 punishment of the captaine bassa, who soe read- 
 ily owned the action, and of those others, en- 
 emies of humane society, who are guilty of an 
 attempt soe foule and disgracefull to a monarch 
 pretending justice. And we shall not doubt but, 
 as an intimation of his justice, he will command 
 compleate restitution of ship and goods, and 
 releasement of the persons, otherwise you must 
 shortly expect a ruine and dissolution of all trade, 
 besides the confusion and danger that may grow to 
 your owne state ; and therefore we presume you 
 will (though for noe other respect than your 
 owne interest and safety) be instrumentall to 
 procure reparation in this particular, and an ut- 
 ter extirpation of those sea rovers, that soe 
 peace and the effects thereof, which have bin 
 found soe advantageous to both nations, may 
 be preserved, to the mutual good of each. In 
 all which we desire you to give care and cred- 
 it to our ambassador there, and to procure such 
 speedy answere and return e from his emperiall 
 majesty as may stand with equity and with the 
 continuance of that amity which hath bin set- 
 led between both nations, and which we shall 
 not willingly give the least occasion .to disturbe 
 without some great provocation. Given at our 
 pallace at Westminster, this llth day of the 
 moneth of August, in the yeare 1657." 
 
 Lord Faulconberg, I have intimated, was now 
 the son-in-law of Cromwell. He had married 
 the Lady Mary Cromwell some short period 
 after the prorogation of the Parliament. Some 
 few days earlier, the Protector's youngest 
 daughter, Lady Frances,* had been also mar- 
 
 * This is the lady of whom is told a singularly well-at- 
 tested story of a proposal of marriage from Charles the 
 Second. It is related by Morrice, chaplain to Lord Brog- 
 hill, in his life of that nobleman, and by Burnet (History 
 of his Own Times), who states that he had it from Brog- 
 hill's lips. It runs thus, being said to belong to the year 
 1653. the period ia which Cromwell had ull power in his 
 own hands, and before he had openly assumed the office of 
 chief magistrate. Lord Broghill was the author of the prop- 
 osition. Having, as we are told, opportunities, by a secret 
 correspondence with some about the king, he sounded 
 Charles's inclinations, as to how he would feel respecting 
 a proposition to restore him to his hereditary dominions by 
 means of such a marriage. The royal exile received the 
 proposition with avidity. Its author next stated it to the 
 mother and daughter. Neither of them showed any aver- 
 sion to the suggestion. Having succeeded thus far, the next 
 business was to break the proposal to Cromwell himself. 
 This Broghill took an opportunity of doing in the following 
 manner : Being one day returned from the city, and wait- 
 ing upon Cromwell in his closet, one of the first questions 
 with which he was accosted was, whether there was any 
 news ? " In truth there is," said Broghill, " and very ' 
 strange news." " What is it ?" " It is in everybody's \ 
 mouth," answered the courtier; "but I dare not mention 
 it to your excellency, lest you should be offended." Crom- ! 
 well told him to speak out. To which Broghill rejoined, 
 "All the news in the city is, that you are going to inarry ' 
 your daughter Frances to the Pretender." The general ' 
 was struck with the suggestion, and paced up and down the | 
 room two or three times in silence. " And what do people 
 say to the tale ?" " I assure you it is received with decided 
 approbation by the majority. Consider, sir, that by it you 
 would extricate yourself from your present precarious situ- 
 ation, would become father-in-law to a prince who would 
 owe everything to your interference, might. retain the com- 
 mand of the army, and would, in all probability, become 
 progenitor to a race of kings." " No," said Cromwell, af- 
 ter a pause, " it is impossible: he would never forgive me 
 the death of his father." 
 
 ried, and her bridegroom was another member 
 of the old aristocracy, Mr. Rich, grandson of 
 the Earl of Warwick.* In thus effecting these 
 alliances, Cromwell betrayed the melancholy 
 weakness with which his life was doomed to 
 close. Deprived of the title of king, he had 
 fixed his affections on the creation of the other 
 House, granted him by the Petition and Ad- 
 vice. It occupied all his thoughts, and was 
 clung to, till his life had passed, with, for such 
 a man, a kind of imbecile fondness. These 
 noble alliances, it is admitted by his friends and 
 courtiers, were designed to aid him in the 
 scheme. 
 
 The marriage of Lady Frances with Mr. 
 Richt would seem to have been a love-match 
 too. I ascertain this from a curious letter 
 written by her sister Mary to Henry Cromwell, 
 and which proves also that somewhat similar 
 difficulties to those which so long obstructed 
 Richard's marriage with Miss Major}: had oc- 
 curred here also. Not the less does it prove 
 the Lord Protector's fatherly affection stronger 
 than any politic consideration, and illustrate 
 generally the close ties of love which, in the 
 midst of all their grandeur, still held this family 
 together. 
 
 * For the extraordinary festivities at this marriage, see 
 ante, p. 452; see also Appendix H., COURT CIRCULAR. 
 
 t Mr. Rich died a few months after the marriage ; and I 
 may quote a letter from his venerable grandfather to Crom- 
 well, in fairness and justice to the every-way honourable 
 testimony it bears to the latter. " My pen and my heart 
 were ever your lordship's servants; now they are become 
 your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obli- 
 gations, and much less discharge it, for your reasonable 
 and sympathizing letters, which (because the value they 
 derive from so worthy a hand) express such faithful affec- 
 tions, and administer such Christian advice, as renders 
 them beyond measure welcome and dear to me ; and although 
 my heaviness and distraction of thoughts persuade me rather 
 to peruse those excellent lines than to answer them, and to 
 take relief from them rather than make a return to them, 
 yet I must not be so indulgent to mine own sorrows as to 
 lose this opportunity of being thankful to your lordship for 
 so great a favour. My lord, I dare not be insensible of that 
 hand which hath laid a very sharp and awaking affliction 
 upon me ; but we may not be so presumptuous as to make 
 choice of our own rod, or so much as in thought to detract 
 from or diminish the justice, and wisdom, and goodness of 
 God, in those hard events which must all stand inviolable, 
 when millions of such worms as I am are gone to dust. I 
 must needs say, I have lost a dear and comfortable relation, 
 one in whom I had much determined my affections and 
 lodged my hopes, are now rebuked and withered by a hasty 
 and early death ; but my property in him was inferior to 
 his who hath taken him, and I must rest my heart in his 
 proceedings, making it my care and suit that those evils 
 which cannot be averted may be sanctified. In order to 
 which I desire, from this one sad instance, to argue the 
 whole world of vanity and variableness. Alas ! what a 
 staff of reed are these things, which have no stay in them- 
 selves, and therefore can give none to us. They witness 
 their own impotency, and themselves admonish us to pitch 
 our rest above this sphere of changeable mortality, and 
 to cast anchor in heaven, while we can find no hold at all 
 on earth. Assuredly he that will have and hold a right 
 tranquillity must found it in a sweet fruition of God, which 
 whosoever wants may be secure, but cannot be quiet. My 
 lord, all thu is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, 
 which gives such ease to my oppressed mind, that I can 
 scarce forbid my pen being tedious. Only it remembers 
 your lordship's many weighty and noble employments, 
 which, together with your prudent, heroic, and honourable 
 managery of them, I do here congratulate, as well as my 
 grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own ; 
 yours is a whole country's yea, three kingdoms; for 
 which you justly possess interest and renown with wise 
 and good men ; virtue is a thousand escutcheons. Go on, 
 my lord, go on happily, to love religion, to exemplify it. 
 May your lordship long continue an instrument of use, a 
 pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory ! This is the 
 inward and affectionate prayer of, my lord, your lordship's 
 moit affectionate servant, WARWICK." 
 t See ante, p. 472, et teg.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 613 
 
 " Deare Brother, Your kind leters do so 
 much engag ray hart towards you, that I can 
 never tell how to expres in writing the tru af- 
 fection and value I have of you, who, truly, I 
 think, non that knows you but you may justly 
 claim it from. I must confes myself in a great 
 fault in the omiteing of writing to you and your 
 deare wif so long a tim ; but I suppos you canot 
 be ignorant of the reason, which truly has ben 
 the only caus, which is this bisnes of my sester 
 Franses and mr. Rich. Truly I can truly say 
 it, for thes thre months, I think our famyly, and 
 myself in perticular, have ben in the gratest 
 confusion and troble as ever poor famyly can 
 be in ; the Lord tell us his ... in it, and setel 
 us, and mak us what he would hav us to be. I 
 suppos you hard of the breaking of the bisnes, 
 and according to your deser in your last leter, 
 as well as I can, I will give you a full account 
 of it, which is thes. After a quarter of a yeor's 
 admitons, my father and my lord Warwick be- 
 gon to tret about the estate ; and it sems my 
 lord did ofer that that my father expected. I 
 ned not nam perticulars, for I suppos you may 
 hav had it from beter hands ; but, if I may say 
 the truth, I think it was not so much estat as som 
 private rcsons that my father discovered to non but 
 my sester Franses and his own famyly, which 
 was a dislik to the young person, which he had 
 from som reports of his being a visions man, 
 given to play, and such lik things, which ofis was 
 done by some that had a mind to brak of the 
 match. My sester hearing these things, wos 
 resolvd to know the truth of it ; and truly, dued 
 find all the reports to be fals that wer raisd of 
 him ; and to tell you the truth, they wer so much 
 engagd in affection before this, that she could not 
 thenk of breaking of it of; so that my sester en- 
 gagd me and all the frinds she had, who truly 
 wer very few, to spek in her behalf to my fa- 
 ther, which we deid, but could not be hard to 
 any purpos ; only this, my father promised, that 
 if he wer satisfyed as to the report, the estat shold 
 not brak it of, which she was satisfyed with. 
 But after this ther was a second trety, and my 
 lord Warwick desered my father to nam what 
 it was he demanded more, and to his utmost 
 he would satisfy him ; so my father, upon this, 
 mad new propositions, which my lord Warwick 
 has answered as much as he can ; but it seems 
 there is fiv hundred pounds a yeor in my lord 
 Riche's hands which he has power to sell, and 
 ther are some people that persuad his highnes 
 that it would be desonerable for him to con- 
 clud of it without thes fiv hundred pounds a 
 yeor be setled upon mr. Rich after his father's 
 deth, and my lord Rich having no esteem at all 
 of his son, becos he is not so bad as himself, 
 will not agre to it ; and thes people, upon this, 
 persuad my father it would be a desoner to him 
 to yald upon thes terms it would shew that 
 he wos mad a fool on by my lord Riche ; which 
 the truth is, how it should be, I cant understand, 
 nor very few els ; and truly, I must tell you 
 privatelie, that they ar so far engagd as the match 
 canot be brok of. She acquainted non of her frends 
 with her resolution when she did it, Deare broth- 
 er, this is as far as I can tell the stat of the 
 bisnes. The Lord derect them what to do ; 
 and all I think ought to beg of God to pardon 
 her in her dowing of this thing, which I must 
 say truly she was put upon by the of 
 
 things. Deare, let me beg my excuses to my 
 sester for not writing my best respects to her. 
 Pardon this troble, and belev me, that I shall 
 ever striv to approv myself, deare brother, 
 your affectionate sester and servant, 
 
 " MARY CROMWELL." 
 
 This Lady Mary would seem to have been 
 the family counsellor and referee in all their 
 casual misunderstandings with each other. It 
 is somewhat interesting to find her, at a little 
 earlier date, remonstrating with this same 
 great and able brother Henry in a tone which 
 would appear to countenance Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son's worst scandal against him. "DEARE 
 BROTHER, I canot be any longer without beg- 
 ing an excus for my so long silens. You canot 
 but hear of my sester's ilnes, which inded has 
 ben the only caus of it. You might justly tak 
 it ill otherwis, and think ther wer want of that 
 afection I owe unto you. Inded, deare broth- 
 er, it was a grat deal of truble to me to think 
 I should giv you any ocation to think amis of 
 me ; for I can truly say it, you are very deare 
 to me, and it is a grat truble to me to think of 
 the destans we ar from on another, and would 
 be mor if I ded not think you ar doing the 
 Lord's sarvis ; and truly that ought to satisfy 
 us, for whil we ar hear, we canot expect but 
 that we must be seprated. Deare Brother, the 
 Lord direct you in his ways, and kep your hart 
 clos unto himself; and I am sur therin you will 
 hav tru comfort, and that that will last when all 
 this world shall pass away. I canot but giv 
 you some item of won that is with you, which 
 is so much feared by your frinds that lov you, 
 is som deshonor to you and my deare sester, 
 if you hav not a grat car ; for it is reported 
 hear that she ruls much in your family ; and 
 truly it is feared she is a descountenanser of 
 the godly people. Therfor, deare brother, tak 
 it not ill that I giv you an item of her ; for 
 truly, if I did not dearly lov you both and your 
 oner, I would not giv you notis of her. Ther- 
 for I hope you will not tak it ill that I hav delt 
 thus planly with you. I supos you know who it 
 is I mean ; therfor I deser to be excused for not 
 naming of her. I deser not to he sen in it, and 
 therfor deser you that you would not tak the 
 lest notis of my writing to you about it, becos 
 I was deser'd not to spek of it ; nor should I, 
 but that I know you will not tak it amis from 
 your poor sester that lovs you. Deare Broth- 
 er, I tak my leev to rest. Your Sister and 
 Servant, MARY CROMWELL. . . . Her Highnes 
 deseres to hav her love to you and my Sester, 
 and my Sester Franke her respects to you 
 both." 
 
 Our attention is now called to the last great 
 public action of the life of the Lord Protector 
 Cromwell. On the 28th of January, 1658, the 
 prorogued Parliament reassembled, with its re- 
 enforcement (by stipulation of the Petition and 
 Advice) of upward of a hundred of the exclu- 
 ded Republicans, and its addition of the other 
 House. This other House consisted of sixty- 
 one members, and comprised his two sons, 
 Richard and Henry, eight peers of royal crea- 
 tion, several members of his council, some 
 gentlemen of fortune and family, with a due 
 proportion of lawyers and officers, and a very 
 scanty sprinkling of persons known to be dis- 
 affected to his government. Of the ancient
 
 614 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 peers, two only attended, the Lords Eure and 
 Faulconberg ; Lords Warwick, Manchester, 
 Miilgrave, and Wharton did not appear. Even 
 old Warwick, who was, as we have seen, Crom- 
 well's very good friend, declared that "he could 
 not sit in the same assembly with Colonel Hew- 
 son, who had been a shoemaker, and Colonel 
 Pride, who had been a drayman ; but had they 
 driven no worse trade," adds Ludlow, "I know 
 not why any good man should refuse to act 
 with them." They had, however, driven a 
 worse trade ; and they only now assembled as 
 members of a new nobility, to be covered, in 
 conjunction with their creator, with contempt 
 and scorn. Whitelocke, I should add, was also 
 one of these lords, with Lisle, Glyn, Widdring- 
 ton, Desborough, Jones, Fleetwood, Claypole, 
 and others of that class.* Old Francis Rouse 
 had been rewarded with one of the sinecure ti- 
 tles for his services in the days of Barbone, 
 and the ex- Lord-mayor Pack had become as 
 real a Lord Pack as Cromwell could make him. 
 Our old friend Lenthall, too, received a writ of 
 summons, which is said to have delighted him 
 so much that the coach in which he rode 
 through the Strand next day could hardly con- 
 tain him. Men might well grieve when they 
 saw the illustrious name of Hampden in such a 
 list, and think it pity that he should not have 
 " inherited his father's noble principles, though 
 he doth his lands." The sturdy name of Hazle- 
 rig was also there, but only that his formidable 
 opposition in the lower House might be cut 
 off. He contemptuously refused to obey the 
 writ, and presented himself, with his old friend 
 Scot, among the commoners, who had taken 
 their station in what was now called the House 
 of Lords, to witness and to ridicule that new 
 and miserable imitation of the ancient forms of . 
 monarchy ! 
 
 Called by the " usher of the black rod," they 
 had found his highness the Lord Protector 
 seated under a canopy of state. His speech 
 began with the ancient address : " My lords, 
 and gentlemen of the House of Commons." It 
 was short, a circumstance he prayed them to 
 excuse in consequence of the state of his health, 
 but full of piety ; and after an exposition of the 
 eighty-fifth Psalm, he referred his two Houses 
 for other particulars to Fiennes, his lord-keep- 
 er, who, in a long and tedious harangue, praised 
 and defended the new institutions under which 
 they had met. 
 
 A few words will describe the brief career 
 of this wretched absurdity. Scot and Hazle- 
 rig, backed by a formidable majority, whom 
 they influenced by their eloquence and talents, 
 flatly refused to acknowledge the new House j 
 as a House of Lords. They asked who had 
 made its members lords, and who had the priv- 
 ilege of restoring the authority of the ancient 
 peerage. The reply that the Protector had | 
 called them lords, and that it was the object 
 of the Petition and Advice to re-establish the 
 second estate, was no reply for Scot or Hazle- 
 rig. Whenever the Lords sent a message to 
 the Commons, the latter refused to give an an- 
 swer until they had determined by what name 
 they were to address the others, and to what 
 
 * See Appendix I. for some curious extracts from the 
 many descriptions that were published of them at the time, 
 for the pleasure of the iudiguaut people who despised them. 
 
 extent they were to admit their right to inter- 
 fere with the deliberations of a body to whom 
 they, in fact, owed their existence. Were 
 they to have the privileges of the ancient peer- 
 age 1 Were they to be empowered to nega- 
 tive the acts of that House to which they 
 owed their existence T Was it to be borne 
 that the children should assume the superiori- 
 ty over their parents 1 that the nominees of 
 the Protector should control the representa- 
 tives of the people, the depositaries of the su- 
 preme power of the nation T The idea was 
 scouted with a hiss whenever it was broached 
 anew. 
 
 Cromwell, in an unprecedented state of an- 
 ger and excitement, went to the House to re- 
 monstrate. The character of his address may 
 be judged from one of its opening passages. 
 " I look on this to be the great duty of my place, 
 at being set on a watch-tower, to see what may be 
 for the good of these nations, and what may be 
 for the preventing of evil, that so, by the ad- 
 vice of so great and wise a Council as this is 
 (that hath in it the life and spirit of these na- 
 tions), that Good may be attained, and that evil 
 (whatever it is) may be obviated. We shall 
 hardly set our shoulders to this work, unless it 
 shall please God to work some conviction upon 
 our hearts that there is need of our most seri- 
 ous and best Counsels at such a time as this 
 is. ... 7 have not prepared any such matter and 
 rule of speech to deliver myself unto you as perhaps 
 might have been more fitter for me to have done, 
 and more serviceable for you to understand me in, 
 but shall only speak plainly and honestly to you, 
 out of such Conceptions as it hath pleased God to 
 set upon me. . . . We have not been now four 
 years and upward in this Government, to be 
 totally ignorant of the things that may be of the 
 greatest concernment to us. Your dangers 
 (for that is the head of my speech), they are 
 either with respect had to affairs abroad and 
 their difficulties, or to affairs at home and their 
 difficulties. . . . You come, as I may say so 
 now, in the end of as great difficulties and 
 straits as, I think, ever nation was engaged in. 
 . . . I had in my thoughts to have made this the 
 method of my speech : to wit, to have let you 
 see the things that hazard your being and your 
 well-being ; but when I came seriously to con- 
 sider better of it, I thought (as your affairs 
 stand) that all things would resolve themselves 
 into very being. You are not a nation, you will 
 not be a nation, if God strengthen you not to 
 meet with these evils that are upon us." 
 
 He then proceeded to lecture them on the 
 benefit the necessity of unanimity. Let them 
 look abroad. The Papists threatened to swal- 
 low up all the Protestants of Europe. England 
 was the only stay, the last hope of religion. 
 Let them look at liome. The Cavaliers and 
 the Levellers were combined to overthrow the 
 Constitution ; Charles Stuart was preparing an 
 invasion, and the Dutch had ungratefully sold 
 him certain vessels for that purpose. Dissen- 
 sion would inevitably draw down ruin on them- 
 selves, their liberties, and their religion. For 
 himself, he called God, angels, and men to wit- 
 ness that he sought not the office he held. It 
 was forced upon him ; but he had sworn to exe- 
 cute its duties, and he would perform what 
 he had sworn, by preserving to every class
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 615 
 
 of men their just rights, whether civil or reli- 
 gious. 
 
 These gross falsehoods had now also spent 
 out their day. No one among the Republicans 
 cared for them one jot. Accordingly, when he 
 had left the chamber, over and over again were 
 messages renewed " from the Lords to the 
 Commons," and as often received by the latter 
 with the contemptuous intimation that " that 
 House would return an answer by messengers 
 of their own." Instead of returning the prom- 
 ised answers, however, they spent their whole 
 time in debating what title and what rights 
 ought to belong to the " other House," and 
 whether, indeed, they deserved to have rights 
 or title at all. 
 
 Cromwell seems to have been goaded by the 
 nature of this opposition its contempt, its 
 carelessness, its quiet and collected defiance 
 into a state approaching to insanity.* His 
 health, as he himself told the House some days 
 before, had evidently broken much. Nothing 
 now remained to his distempered thoughts but 
 a dissolution ; and, having taken that resolve, 
 he rushed, with the headlong phrensy of a man 
 who dares not pause to think what he must do, 
 to put it into instant execution. He would not 
 wait for his carri ge. He suddenly snatched 
 up his hat, waved to half a dozen of his guards 
 to follow him, flung himself into a hackney- 
 coach he saw standing near Whitehall, and 
 drove to the door of his " House of Lords." 
 His appearance when he entered bespoke the 
 concern of his son-in-law Fleetwood, who hast- 
 ily ran up to him. Cromwell told him abrupt- 
 ly what he had come to do. Fleetwood tried 
 to dissuade him ; but " he clapped," continues 
 Ludlow, from whom I take this account, "his 
 hand on his breast, and swore by the living God 
 he would do it." He sent the usher of the 
 black rod to summon the Commons to attend 
 him in the House of Lords. They were still 
 engaged in discussing the title of the " other 
 House" when the usher appeared, and they ad- 
 journed the question to their return, uncon- 
 scious of what awaited them. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell then delivered, to the last 
 assemblage of men he was doomed to meet 
 within those walls, his last speech. It was 
 brief and passionate, but with a touch of occa- 
 sional humility, which may here, at least, in 
 the circumstances of miserable failure that sur- 
 rounded him, he taken as most sincere. They 
 are proportionately touching. 
 
 " 1 had very comfortable expectations that 
 God would make the meeting of this Parlia- 
 ment a blessing ; and the Lord be my witness, 
 I desired the carrying on the affairs of the na- 
 tion to these ends : the blessing which I mean, 
 and which we ever climbed at, was mercy, 
 truth, righteousness, and peace, which I desire 
 may be improved. . . . 
 
 " That which brought me into the capacity 
 I now stand in was the Petition and Advice 
 given me by yocu who, in reference to the an- 
 cient Constitution, did draw me to accept of 
 the place of Protector. There is not a man liv- 
 ing can say I sought it no, not a man, nor wom- 
 an treading upon English ground ; but, contem- 
 
 * "Something happening that morning that put the 
 Protector into a rage and passion near unto madness, as 
 those at Whitehall can witness." Second Narrative, p. 8. 
 
 plating the sad condition of these nations, re- 
 lieved from an intestine war unto a six or seven 
 years' peace, I did think the nation happy there- 
 in. But to be petitioned thereunto, and advised 
 by you to undertake such a government a 
 burden too heavy for any creature and this to 
 be done by the House that then had the legis- 
 lative capacity, I did look that the same men 
 that made the frame should make it good unto 
 me. / can say, in the presence of God, in com- 
 parison of whom we are but like poor creeping ants 
 upon the earth, I would have been glad to have liv- 
 ed under my wood side, to have kept a flock of 
 sheep, rather than undertook such a government as 
 this is ! but, undertaking it by the advice and 
 petition of you, I did look that you that had of- 
 fered it unto me should make it good. 
 
 " I did tell you at a conference concerning 
 it, that I would not undertake it unless there 
 might be some other persons that might inter- 
 pose between me and the House of Commons, 
 who then had the power, to prevent tumultuary 
 and popular spirits ; and it was granted I should 
 name another House. I named it of men that 
 shall meet you wheresoever you go, and shake 
 hands with you, and tell you it is not titles, nor 
 lords, nor party that they value, but a Christian 
 and an English interest ; men of your own rank 
 and quality, who will not only be a balance 
 unto you, but to themselves, while you love 
 England and religion. 
 
 " Having proceeded upon these terms, and 
 finding such a spirit as is too much predominant, 
 everything being too high or too low when vir- 
 tue, honesty, piety, and justice are omitted, I 
 thought I had been doing that which was my 
 duty, and thought it would have satisfied you ; 
 but if everything must be too high or too low, 
 you are not to be satisfied. 
 
 "Again, I would not have accepted of the gov- 
 ernment unless I knew there would be a just ac- 
 cord between the governor and the governed ; 
 unless they would take an oath to make good 
 what the Parliament's Petition and Advice ad- 
 vised me unto. Upon that I took an oath, and 
 they took another oath upon their part answer- 
 able to mine ; and did not every one know upon 
 1 what condition they swore 1 God knows, I 
 1 took it upon the conditions expressed in the 
 Government ; and I did think we had been upon 
 a foundation and upon a bottom, and thereupon 
 1 I thought myself bound to take it, and to be ad- 
 ' vised by the two Houses of Parliament ; and 
 ! we standing unsettled till we were arrived at 
 I that, the consequences would necessarily have 
 : been confusion if that had not been settled. 
 Yet there are not constituted hereditary lords 
 j nor hereditary kings, the power consisting in 
 [ the two Houses and myself. I do not say that 
 was the meaning of your oath to you ; that 
 were to go against my own principles to enter 
 j upon another man's conscience. God will judge 
 \ between me and you : if there had been in you any 
 intention of settlement, you would have settled 
 upon this basis, and have offered your judg- 
 '' ment and opinion. 
 
 " God is my witness, I speak it ; it is evi- 
 dent to all the world and people living, that a 
 new business hath been seeking in the army 
 against this actual settlement made by your 
 consent. I do not speak to these gentlemen, or 
 lords [pointing to his right hand], or whatsoever
 
 616 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 you will call them I speak not this to them, but 
 to you. You advised me to run into this place, 
 to be in a capacity by your advice ; yet, instead 
 of owning a thing taken for granted, some must 
 have I know what; and you have not only dis- 
 jointed yourselves, but the whole nation, which 
 is in likelihood of running into more confusion 
 in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have 
 sat, than it hath been from the rising of the 
 last session to this day, through the intention 
 of devising a Commonwealth again, that some 
 of the people might be the men that might rule 
 all ; and they are endeavouring to engage the 
 army to carry that thing. And hath that man 
 been true to this nation, whosoever he be, es- 
 pecially that hath taken an oath, thus to pre- 
 varicate 1 These designs have been among 
 the army, to break and divide us. I speak 
 this in the presence of some of the army, that 
 these things have not been according to God 
 nor according to truth, pretend what you will. 
 These things tend to nothing else but the play- 
 ing the King of Scots' game, if I may so call 
 him ; and I think myself bound, before God, to 
 do what I can to prevent that. 
 
 " That which I told you in the Banqueting 
 House was true, that there were preparations 
 of force to invade us ; God is my witness, it 
 hath been confirmed to me since within a day, 
 that the King of Scots hath an army at the 
 water side ready to be shipped for England. I 
 have it from those who have been eye-witness- 
 es of it ; and while it is doing, there are en- 
 deavours from some, who are not far from this j 
 place, to stir up the people of this town into a I 
 tumulting what if I said into a rebellion 1 And 
 I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if ] 
 God assist me. It hath been not only your en- j 
 deavour to pervert the army while you have ' 
 been sitting, and to draw them to state the i 
 question about a commonwealth, but some of 
 you have been listing of persons, by commis- ! 
 sion of Charles Stuart, to join with any insur- 
 rection that may be made : and what is like to 
 come upon this, the enemy being ready to in- 
 vade us, but even present blood and confu- 
 sion t And if this be so, I do assign to this 
 cause your not assenting to what you did in- 
 vite me to by the Petition and Advice, as that 
 which might be the settlement of the nation ; 
 and if this be the end of your sitting, and this 
 be your carriage, I think it high time that an 
 end be put unto your sitting, and I do dissolve 
 this Parliament ; and let God judge between me 
 and you." 
 
 At this last solemn appeal, Scot called out 
 aloud, AMEN ! and was echoed, with a sad sig- 
 nificance, by other members that surrounded 
 him. Can there be a doubt for whom the judg- 
 ment has passed 1 
 
 A flock of sheep by a wood side would in- 
 deed have been a preferable fortune to the 
 thoughts with which Cromwell must that day 
 have returned to Whitehall. Every political 
 expedient he had tried in his domestic govern- 
 ment of England had failed. His treasury was 
 empty ; and he had just broken, with violence, 
 the only resource that could safely have replen- 
 ished it. His English army was five months 
 in arrear, and his Irish seven. Petitions were 
 on foot in the city and elsewhere against what 
 was left to him of his power, and he stood in 
 
 the very midst of muskets and daggers that 
 were aimed against his life. Killing had been 
 declared No Murder against him ; and a pam- 
 phlet with that terrible title, circulated in Eng- 
 land within the last two months by thousands, 
 had imbittered days and nights with the un- 
 certain sense that each moment was to prove 
 his last. For several nights, indeed, preceding 
 that very day, he had made the round of the 
 posts at Whitehall in person, for even his own 
 body-guard he could trust no longer. " The 
 Protector's own muster-roll," said that awful 
 writing, which seemed to face him continual- 
 ly, "contains the names of those who aspire 
 to the honour of delivering their country ; his 
 highness is not secure at his table or in his 
 bed ; death is at his heels wherever he moves ; 
 and though his head reaches the clouds, he 
 shall perish like his own dung, and they that 
 have seen him shall exclaim, Where is he ?" 
 
 Melancholy duties awaited him next day. 
 With this haunting sense of danger, which now 
 pressed in upon him to the exclusion of nearly 
 every other thought, he was obliged to cashier 
 many of the favourite officers in his own fa- 
 vourite regiment. " I that had served him," 
 says Colonel Hacker, a brave and single-heart- 
 ed soldier, " fourteen years, ever since he was 
 captain of a troop of horse till he came to this 
 power, and had commanded a regiment seven 
 years without any trial or appeal with the 
 breath of his nostrils I was ousted, and lost not 
 only my place, but a dear friend to boot. Five 
 captains under my command, all of integrity, 
 courage, and valour, were ousted with me, be- 
 cause they could not say that that was a House 
 of Lords." 
 
 Still no greater safety was achieved. The 
 flood that was so soon to bear him down rolled 
 heavily and uninterruptedly on. It would be 
 idle to attempt to describe the conspiracies that 
 surrounded him, even the more terrible be- 
 cause he knew them all.* The system of es- 
 pionage that had been organized by Thurloe 
 was by far the most extraordinary that had 
 been known in those days, or perhaps in later; 
 and it was said that even Thurloe knew not all 
 that the Lord Protector knew.t The letters 
 
 * Some little relief there is in an occurrence the Marquis 
 of Ormond was engaged in. The marquis came secretly to 
 London during the sitting of Parliament, passed three weeks 
 in conspiring with the Royalists, and intriguing with the 
 Republicans, and returned unmolested to Charles II., then 
 at Bruges. But Cromwell was fully apprized of his pres- 
 ence and his proceedings. He asked Broghill whether he 
 was aware of the presence of an old friend. Broghill asked 
 who it was ; he was told by Cromwell it was the Marquis 
 of Ormond, and professed his entire ignorance of the fact. 
 " I know it well," said Cromwell ; " and I will tell you 
 where he is, in order that you may save your old acquaint- 
 ance." No one had greater magnanimity than Cromwell, 
 where the question was one of a purely personal kind. 
 
 t From many rumoured scenes and incidents by which I 
 might illustrate the popular notion of this formidable secre- 
 tary, and his still more formidable chief, I present the fol- 
 lowing : " Thurloe was wont to tell that he was command- 
 ed by Cromwell to go at a certain hour to Gray's Inn. and 
 at such a place deliver a bill of 20,000 to a man he shou'd 
 find walking m such a habit and posture as he dcscnb'd 
 him, which accordingly Thurloe did, and never knew to 
 the day of his death either the person or the occasion. At 
 another time, the Protector coming late at night into 
 Thurloe's office, which he kept in the last staircase in Lin- 
 coln's Inn, towards Holborn, that has a way down into the 
 garden, made on purpose for Cromwell's coming to him un- 
 observ'd, the Protector began to discourse with his secre- 
 tary about an affajr of the last importance ; but seeing 
 Moteland, one of the clerks, afterward- Sir Samuel Mor
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 617 
 
 that were interchanged between the members 
 of his family were expressions of alarm at a 
 most dear father or husband's imminent dan- 
 ger, or of congratulation at his marvellous es- 
 cape. I present to the reader perhaps one of 
 the last letters, if not the last, that the Lady 
 Elizabeth ever wrote. It is to her sister-in- 
 law, the wife of Henry Cromwell, and bears 
 the date of the 12th of June. 
 
 " DEARE SISTER, I must beg your pardon 
 that I doe not right to you soe oft ase I would 
 doe ; but, in earnist, I have bin soe extremely 
 sickly of late, that it has made mee unfit for 
 anything, thoye thare is nothing that can plese 
 mee more than wherein I maye expres my true 
 lofe and respekt to you ; which I am suer non 
 has more resen than myself, both for your for- 
 mer fafers, and the cens you have of anything 
 which arises to mee of happnes. I will aisuer 
 you, nothing of that can bee to mee, wherein I 
 have not power to express how really I lofe 
 and honnor you. Truly, the Lord has bin very 
 gratius to us, in doeing for us abofe whot we 
 could exspekt ; and now has shod himself more 
 extraordinary in delevering my father out of 
 the hands of his enymise, which wee have all 
 reson to bee sensible of in a very pertikellar 
 manner ; for sertingly not ondly his famely 
 would have bin ruined, but in all probabilliyti 
 the hoi nation would have bin invold in blood. 
 The Lord grant it maye never bee forgot by 
 us, but that it may cose us to depend upon 
 him, from horn wee have reseved all good, and 
 that it may cose us to se the mutablenes of 
 thise things, and to yuse them accordingly ; I 
 am suer wee have nede to bage that sperrit 
 from God. Hary is vary well ; I hope you will 
 se him this sommer. Truly, thare is nothing 
 I desier more than to enjoy you with us. I 
 wis you may laye your grat bely here. I bag 
 my true afficktion to your letel wons. Deare 
 sister, I am your most afficktineate sister and 
 servant, E. CLAYPOLE." 
 
 The plot referred to by Lady Elizabeth was 
 what is called the Slingsby and Hewet plot ; and 
 to avert the fate of Hewet, an Episcopal clergy- 
 man, whose ministry she was attached to, even 
 this favourite and best -beloved daughter of 
 Cromwell exerted herself in vain. Both Slings- 
 by and Hewet perished on the scaffold. The 
 health of the Lady Elizabeth, which was al- 
 ways delicate, and had been of late extremely 
 so, seemed after this incident to wear still fast- 
 er away ; but whether that incident was at all 
 connected with its more rapid decline, may be 
 doubted. Be that as it may, it was at least 
 watched with a more than father's anxiety by 
 Cromwell. Even during all the disputes and 
 anxieties that beset him at the opening of his 
 last Parliament, nothing set aside that private 
 sorrow. I find in one of Thurloe's letters this 
 
 land, was in the office, whom he had not seen before, tho' 
 he pretended to be asleep upon his desk, and fearing he 
 might have overheard them, he drew out a dagger which 
 he always carried under his coat, and was going to dispatch 
 Moreland on the spot, if Thurloe had not, with great in- 
 treaties, prevail'd upon him to desist, assuring him More- 
 land had sat up two nights together, and was certainly fast 
 asleep. Probably this incident gave rise to the fictions of 
 Moreland and Henshaw, and Morelaud and Willis ; but no 
 question Moreland did betray his master, when he found 
 things were like to lake another turn, and, indeed, I never 
 heard much of his integrity or merit." Oldmixon's Historv, 
 p. 424. 
 
 passage : " His highnesse, findinge he can have 
 noe advise from those he most expected it from, 
 sayth he will take his owne resolutions, and 
 that he cannot any longer satisfye himselfe to 
 sitt still, and make himselfe guilty of the losse 
 of all the honest partye, and of the nation it- 
 selfe ; and truly I have long wished that his 
 highnesse would proceed accordinge to his owne 
 satisfaction, and not soe much consider others, 
 who truly are to be indulged in everything but 
 where the beinge of the nation is concerned. 
 His highnesse is now at Hampton Court, and will 
 continue therefor some tyme, as well for his own 
 health as to be neare my Lady Elizabeth, who hath 
 beene of late very daungerously ill, but now is some- 
 what better." 
 
 But the sorrows and anxieties of both father 
 and daughter were now, happily for them, hast- 
 ening to a rapid close. Public necessities press- 
 ed fearfully on the Protector. He had contract- 
 ed enormous debts ; his exchequer was fre- 
 quently drained to the last shilling ; and his 
 ministers were compelled " to go a begging," 
 as Thurloe tells us, for the temporary loan of a 
 few thousand pounds, with the cheerless anti- 
 cipation of a refusal. There, too, was the army, 
 the greater part of which he had quartered in 
 the neighbourhood of the metropolis, as his chief 
 his only support against his enemies ; and 
 while the soldiers were comfortably clothed and 
 fed, he might, perhaps, with confidence rely on 
 their attachment ; but now that their pay was 
 in arrear, might not discontent induce them to 
 listen to the suggestions of those officers who 
 sought to subvert his power 1* He had once 
 imposed taxes by his own authority : he dared 
 not attempt it now. He strove to get up a loan 
 in the city : the merchants, impoverished by the 
 failure of their Spanish trade, eluded all his ef- 
 forts. Thurloe himself gave way to despair at 
 last. It was only, he said, when he looked up 
 to heaven that he discovered a gleam of hope, 
 in the persuasion that the God who had be- 
 friended Cromwell through life would not de- 
 sert him at its close. Thurloe should have 
 rather wished that life to close as it was. It 
 could be stretched out no longer with profit or 
 with honour. If the Lord Protector had indeed 
 a FORTUNATE DAY, it became his friends to an- 
 ticipate with no ungenerous hope that that might 
 be his DEATH DAY. His errors were irretrieva- 
 ble. He could not then recall the " game of 
 the King of Scots," which he had played so 
 well. His arts were utterly exhausted ; and 
 what but mischief could there be in the farther 
 retention of a life that was powerless and value- 
 less without them 1 
 
 A Parliament was nevertheless thought of 
 once more ! Urged by Thurloe's entreaties, he 
 appointed a committee to consider of the means 
 of defeating the Republicans. The committee 
 sat and deliberated, and deliberated and sat, but 
 nothing very ingenious did they hit upon ; and 
 Cromwell's last public action was to dissolve 
 them. Thurloe lifted hands and eyes to heav- 
 en, and said no more. Cromwell redoubled his 
 precautions for personal safety. He multiplied 
 every means of defence he had. As if appre- 
 hensive of some attack upon his palace, he se- 
 lected from different regiments of cavalry a 
 hundred and sixty " brave fellows," in whom 
 * Lingard, vol. ii., p. 347.
 
 618 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 he could repose the utmost confidence, and to 
 whom he gave the pay and appointments of of- 
 ficers. He divided them into eight troops of 
 twenty men each, and directed that two of these 
 bodies, in rotation, should always be on duty 
 near his person. He wore a coat of mail, or 
 steel shirt, as it was called, under his clothes ; 
 he carried loaded pistols in his pockets ; he 
 sought to remain in privacy; and, when he 
 found it necessary to give audience, he " stern- 
 ly watched the eyes and gestures of those who 
 addressed him." He was careful that his own 
 motions should not be known beforehand. His 
 carriage was filled with attendants ; a numer- 
 ous escort accompanied him ; and he proceed- 
 ed at full speed, " frequently diverging from 
 the road to the right or left, and generally re- 
 turning by a different route." In his palace he 
 often inspected the nightly watch ; changed his 
 bedchamber ; and was careful that, besides the 
 principal door, there should be some other j 
 egress for the facility of escape. And this was 
 the Cromwell who had almost singly turned the 
 enemy's line at Marston Moor the Cromwell 
 of Naseby, of Worcester, of Newbury, of Dun- 
 bar ! But what spirit can fight against shad- 
 ows those most terrible shadows that spring 
 up from the grave of virtue 1 This hero pass- 
 ed his nights in a state of feverish anxiety ; 
 sleep had fled from his pillow ; and for more 
 than a year before his death, the absence of rest 
 is always found assigned as either the cause 
 which produced, or the circumstances which 
 aggravated, his numerous ailments.* 
 
 But now they were all forgotten in the sud- 
 den and most dangerous relapse of his dearest 
 daughter. It was announced to him that she 
 was dying. Public affairs, private dangers, his 
 own bodily pains all were thrust aside for the 
 greater love and the more unselfish sorrow, 
 and he hurried to Hampton Court to watch by 
 her bedside her slightest wish ; to alleviate, or 
 console, or share her dying thoughts and suf- 
 ferings. The Lord Protector of three great 
 kingdoms became the protector of his child 
 alone ; and that deathbed, if it had its dark 
 pangs of grief, had surely its tender rays of 
 sunshine too. Such griefs to such a man must 
 have brought back with them some of nature's 
 kindest memories. 
 
 On the 4th of August the Lady Elizabeth 
 Claypole died, and on the 17th Thurloe wrote 
 to Henry Cromwell. Having described " my 
 Lady Elizabeth's funeral," the secretary thus 
 proceeded: "Your lordship is a very sensible 
 judge how great an affliction this was to both 
 their highnesses, and how sadd a familye she 
 left behinde her, which saddness was truly very 
 much increased by the sicknesse of his high- 
 nesse, who at the same time lay very ill of the 
 gout, and other distempers, contracted by the long 
 sicknesse of my Lady Elizabeth, which made great 
 imprcssione upon him ; arid since that, wheither 
 it were the retiringe of the gout out of his foot 
 into his body, or from some other cause, I am 
 not able to say, he hath beene very daungerous- 
 ly sicke, the violence whereof lasted 4 or 5 
 days ; but, blessed be God, he is now reasona- 
 ble well recovered, and this day he went abroad 
 for an houre, and findes himselfe much refresh- 
 ed by it, soe that this recovery of his highnesse 
 * Lingard, vol. ii., p. 350. 
 
 doth much allay the sorrow for my Lady Eliza- 
 beth's death. Your excellencye will easily ima- 
 gine what an alarume his highnesse's sicknesse 
 gave us, beinge in the posture wee are now in." 
 
 A slow fever, however, still lurked about the 
 Lord Protector, and on the 24th he was again 
 confined to his room. The fever was pro- 
 nounced to be a bastard tertian. One of his 
 physicians, as they stood in his chamber that 
 day, whispered to another that his pulse was 
 intermittent. The words caught the ears of the 
 great soldier : he turned pale ; a cold perspira- 
 tion covered his face ; and, requesting to be 
 placed in bed, he executed his private will. 
 The next morning he had recovered his usual 
 composure ; and, when he received the visit of 
 his physician, ordering all to quit the room but 
 his wife, whom he held by the hand, he said to 
 the physician, " Do not think that I shall die ; I 
 am sure that I shall not." Then, observing the 
 surprise which these words excited, he contin- 
 ued, " Don't think that I am mad ; I tell you the 
 truth ; I know it from better authority than any 
 which you can have from Galen or Hippocrates. 
 It is the answer of God himself to our prayers ; 
 not to mine alone, but to those of others, who 
 have a more intimate interest in him than I 
 have."* The same communication was made 
 to Thurloe, and to the different members of the 
 Protector's family ; nor did it fail to obtain 
 credit among men who believed that " in other 
 instances he had been favoured with similar 
 assurances, and they had never deceived him." 
 Hence his chaplain, Goodwin, exclaimed, " 
 Lord, we pray not for his recovery that thou 
 hast granted already : what we now beg is his 
 speedy recovery."! 
 
 All of them seem to have forgotten (and him- 
 self, alas ! the first) that nine days later would 
 
 be his FORTUNATE DAY. 
 
 Having been moved for change of air to 
 Whitehall till the palace of St. James's could 
 be prepared for him, his strength rapidly wast- 
 ed, and his fever became a double tertian. On 
 the 25th of August Thurloe thus wrote to 
 Henry Cromwell : " May it please your excel- 
 lencye, I gave you some account by Doctor 
 Worth of His Highnesse's condition, as it then 
 was ; but least he should delay his journey, or 
 miscarry in it, I thought it necessary to send 
 this expresse, to the end your excellencye may 
 fully understand how it is with his Highnesse. 
 
 * Bates's Elenchi, pars secunda, p. 215. I subjoin the 
 original passage: "Post prandium autem acceilentihus ad 
 eum quinque qnos habebat medicis, quidara ex tactu pulsuni 
 interniisisse pronunciat: quo, audito ille subito consterna- 
 lus ore pallet, sudatiunculas patitur, et fer6 deliquium, ju- 
 b^tque se ad lectulum deportari ; atque ibi cardiacis refo- 
 cillatus, supremum condidit testamentum, sed de rebus 
 privatis et domesticis. Mane summo, cum unus e cteterit 
 visitatum veniret, percontatur, quare vultus ei adeo tnstis. 
 Oumqiie respimderet, ita oportere, si cui vitie ac salutis 
 ejus pondus ineuniberet; Vos (inqnit) medici me creditis 
 intermoriturum : dein cseteris arnotis (uxorem manu com- 
 plectens) ita hunc atfatur. Tiln pronuncio, non esse mihi 
 hoc morho inoriendum ; hujus enim certus sum. Et quia 
 intention aspcctantem oculo ad ista verba ccrneret, Tu me 
 (inquit) n credas insanire ; ver'ia veritatis eloquor, cerli- 
 oribus innixus q'larn vobis Galanus aut Hippocrates vester 
 s<i|.peditat rationibus. Dens ipse hoc resnonsum precibus 
 dedit non mcis unius, venim et eorum quihus arctius cum 
 illo commerciuin et major familiaritas. Pergite alacres, 
 exoussa penitus a vultu tristitia. meque instar servuli trac- 
 tate. Pollere vobis licet prndentia rerum ; plus tamen va- 
 let natura quam medici simulomnes ; De us autem naturam 
 longiori superat intervallo." 
 
 t Lingard, vol. ii., p. 353.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 619 
 
 This is the 13th day since his Ague took him, 
 havinge been sicke a fortnight before of a gen- 
 erall distemper of body. It continued a good 
 while to be a tertian ague, and the burninge 
 fitts very violent. Upon Saterday it fell to a 
 double tertian, havinge two fitts in 24 houres, 
 one upon the heeles of another, which doe ex- 
 treamely weaken him, and endaunger his life. 
 And truly since Saterday morninge he hath 
 scarce beene perfectly out of his fitts. The 
 Doctors are yett hopefull that he may struggle 
 through it, though their hopes are mingled with 
 much feare. But truly wee have cause to put 
 our hope in the Lord, and to expect mercy 
 from him in this case, he havinge stirred up the 
 saints to pray for him in all places. Never was 
 there a greater stocke of prayers goinge for any 
 man than is now goinge for him ; and truly 
 there is a generall consternation upon the spir- 
 its of all men, good and bad, fearinge what 
 may be the event of it, should it please God to 
 take his highnesse at this tyme : and God hav- 
 inge prepared the heart to pray, I trust he will 
 enclyne his eare to heare. And that which is 
 some ground of hope is, that the Lorde, as in 
 some former occasions, hath given to himselfe 
 a perticular assurance that he shall yett live to 
 serve him, and to carry on the worke he hath put 
 into his handes. ... I doe not yett finde that 
 there are any great stirringes yett upon this 
 occasion, though the Cavaliers doe begin to 
 listen after it, and hope their day is cominge, 
 or indeed come, if his Highnesse dye. And 
 truly, my Lord, wee have cause to feare that it may 
 goe very ill with us if the Lord should take away 
 his Highnesse in this conjuncture. Not that I 
 thinke Charles Stewart's interest is soe great, 
 or his partye soe powerfull in themselves ; but 
 I feare our own divisions, which may be great 
 enough if his Highnesse should not settle and 
 fix his successor before he dyes, which truly I 
 beleeve he hath not yett done. He did by him- 
 selfe declare one in a paper before he was in- 
 stalled by the Parliament, and sealed it up in 
 the forme of a letter, directinge it to me, but 
 kept both the name of the person and the paper 
 to himselfe. After he fell sicke at Hampton 
 Court, he sent Mr. John Barrington to London 
 for it, tellinge 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. And in this condition matters stand, his 
 highnesse havinge beene too ill to be troubled 
 with a buisnesse of this importance. This day 
 he hath had some discourse about it, but his 
 illnesse disenabled him to conclude it fully ; 
 and if it should please the Lord not to give 
 him tyme to settle his succession before his 
 death, the judgement would be the soarer, and 
 our condition the more daungerous ; but I trust 
 he will have compassion on us, and not leave 
 us as a prey to our enemies, or to one another. 
 All persons here are very reserved as to what 
 they will doe in case his Highnesse should not 
 declare his Successor before he dyes, not beinge 
 willinge to enterteyne any discourse of it, either 
 because it is a matter too grievous to be thought 
 of, or because they would not discover any 
 oppinion which might crosse his highnesse's 
 thoughts in his life tyme. And this, my Lord, 
 is the whole account I am able to give your 
 Lordship of this sadd buisnesse, which I am 
 
 sure will occasion much trouble and sorrow to 
 you ; but I could not omit my duty, judginge 
 it absolutely necessary that your Excellency 
 should understand all that passes or falls out 
 upon this subject, that you may the better 
 knowe how to direct your prayers and coun- 
 sells, and stirre up others alsoe to pray for his 
 highnesse and three nations in this day of dis- 
 tresse. And as anythinge further occurs (which 
 I beseech the Lord may be for good) I shall 
 suddenly despatch it away to you, and be ready 
 to answer such Commands as your Excellencye 
 shall lay upon me, beinge Your Excellencye's 
 most humble, faithful], and obedient servant, 
 Jo. THURLOE. Whitehall, 30 Aug., 1658, 9 
 o'clock at night. . . . The Kinge of Sweden and 
 the Kinge of Dennimark are againe in open 
 hostillity ; the Kinge of Sweden landed an army 
 upon his island of Zealand, and is like to pos- 
 sesse himselfe of his Capitall Citty, Copen- 
 hagen, and the Sound. The cause of this new 
 quarrel I cannot now acquaint your excellencye, 
 beinge not informed myselfe. . . . That about 
 the Succession is an absolute secret : I beseech 
 your Excellency e keepe it soe." 
 
 This despatch suggests thoughts with which 
 this work has nothing now to do. The final 
 scene approached fast. On the second of Sep- 
 tember, Cromwell, who had been delirious, had 
 a lucid interval of some duration. He called 
 on one of his chaplains to read a certain text 
 to him out of the Bible. They read what he 
 directed from St. Paul to the Philippians : " Not 
 that I speak in respect of want ; for I have 
 learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to 
 be content. I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengthened) me. Notwithstanding, 
 ye have well done that ye did communicate 
 with my affliction." As this fell upon his ear, 
 he murmured brokenly forth these inexpressi- 
 bly touching words. " This scripture did once 
 
 save my life when my eldest son died, 
 
 which went as a dagger to my heart . . . indeed it 
 did."* 
 
 Then, as they stood around his bed, he sud- 
 denly lifted himself up, and, with what energy 
 remained, " Tell me," said he to Sterry, one of 
 his chaplains, " is it possible to fall from grace ?" 
 "It is not possible," replied the minister. "Then," 
 exclaimed the dying man, " / am safe ; for I 
 know that I was once in grace." So, reassuring 
 himself even then with the most fatal doctrine 
 of his life, he turned round and prayed, not for 
 himself, but for God's people. t " Lord," he 
 said, " although I am a miserable and wretched 
 creature, I am in covenant with thee through 
 grace, and I may, I will come to thee for thy 
 people. Thou hast made me (though very un- 
 worthy) a mean instrument to do them some 
 good and thee service ; and many of them have 
 set too high a value upon me, though others 
 
 * Collection of Passages concerning his late Highness in 
 Time of his Sickness, p. 12. The author was Underwood, 
 groom of the bedchamber, and was present at the scene. 
 
 t [Respecting his alleged beloved notion of final perseve- 
 rance, that once a child of God always so, and his supposed 
 question whether a man could fall from grace, and the sup- 
 posed answers of Goodwin and Sterry, such a conversation 
 might or might not pass, but is conceived to mean no more 
 than Cromwell's belief of the doctrine of predestination and 
 election, which many wise and good persons of the then 
 and present times, both in and out of the Church, have be- 
 lieved and do believe to be contained in the Articles of the 
 English Church, See Memoirs of the Protector, vol. ii., 
 p. 409.-C.]
 
 620 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 wish and would be glad of my death ; but, Lord, 
 however thou dost dispose of me, continue and 
 go on to do good for them ; give them con- 
 sistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual 
 love, and go on to deliver them ; and with the 
 work of reformation ; and make the name of 
 Christ glorious in the world ; teach those who 
 look too much upon thy instruments to depend 
 more upon thyself; pardon such as desire to 
 trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for 
 they are thy people too ; and pardon the folly 
 of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's 
 sake, and give us a good night, if it be thy 
 pleasure." 
 
 He went into a kind of stupor after this, but 
 revived a little as the night closed in, and be- 
 gan to murmur half-audible words. An eye- 
 witness* describes the affecting scene : " ' Tru- 
 ly God is good ; indeed he is . . . be will not ' 
 There his speech failed him ; but, as I appre- 
 hended, it was, ' He will not leave me.' This 
 saying that God was good he frequently used 
 all along, and would speak it with much cheer- 
 fulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his 
 pain. Again he said, ' I would be willing to 
 live to be further serviceable to God and his 
 people, but my work is done ; yet God will be 
 with his people.' He was very restless most part 
 of the night, speaking often to himself; and there 
 being something to drink offered him, he was 
 desired to take the same, and endeavour to 
 sleep ; unto which he answered, ' It is not my 
 design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to 
 make what haste I can to be gone.' " 
 
 The morning of the next day dawned from a 
 sky of terrible storm. It was the 3d of Sep- 
 tember. Cromwell had relapsed into a state 
 of utter insensibility, but he lived until four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, when, unconscious 
 still, he breathed heavily, and his chaplains 
 looking closely into the bed, found that his 
 great spirit had passed away.t All the at- 
 tendants who were present, and who had lost 
 at that instant one of the kindest, the gentlest, 
 and most affectionate of masters, wept and 
 groaned aloud. " Cease to weep," exclaimed 
 the enthusiastic and most confident Sterry ; 
 "you have more reason to rejoice. He was 
 your protector here ; he will prove a still more 
 powerful protector, now that he is with Christ 
 at the right hand of the Father !" 
 
 Thurloe at once announced the event to 
 Henry Cromwell in this earnest and mournful 
 despatch : " May it please your excellencye, I 
 did by an expresse upon Munday give your ex- 
 cellencye an account of his highnesse's sick- 
 nesse and the daunger he was in ; since that, 
 it hath pleased God to put an end to his dayes. 
 He died yesterday, about four of the clocke in 
 the afternoone. I am not able to speake or 
 write. This stroake is soe scare, soe unex- 
 pected, the providence of God in it soe stu- 
 pendious, consideringe the person that is fall- 
 en, the tyme and season wherein God tooke 
 him away, with other circumstances, I can 
 doe nothinge but put my mouthe in the dust, 
 and say, ' It is the Lord !' And though his 
 wayes be not always knowne, yet they are 
 
 I always righteous, and wee must submitt to his 
 will, and resigne up ourselves to him with all 
 our concernements. . . . His highnesse was 
 pleased before his death to declare my Lord 
 Richard successor. He did it upon Munday ; 
 and the Lord hath soe ordered it, that the coun- 
 cell and army hath received him with all man- 
 ner of affection. He is this day proclaymed ; 
 and hitherto there seems a great face of peace : 
 the Lord continue it ! ... It is not to be sayd 
 what affection the army and all people shew to 
 his late highnesse ; his name is already precious. 
 Never was there any man soe pray'd for as he 
 was during his sicknesse solemne assemblies 
 meetinge every day to beseech the Lord for 
 the continuance of his life soe that he is gone 
 to heaven, embalmed with the teares of his 
 people, and upon the winges of the prayers of 
 the saints. He lived desired and dyed lament- 
 ed, everybody bemoaninge themselves, and 
 sayinge, 'A great man is fallen in Israel!' The 
 Lord double his spirit upon his successor and 
 upon your excellencye, that you both may be 
 famous in your generation, and be helped by 
 God, with one heart and shoulder, to carry on 
 that worke, the foundation whereof your most 
 renowned father layed, and for which posteri- 
 tie will blesse him ! The councell hath given 
 your excellencye an account of what is done 
 as to the proclayminge his highnes-se your 
 brother. I only herewith send the voet of the 
 councell ; and, though I know not ichat will be 
 my portion or condition here, yett I shall alvvayes 
 be your excellencye's most humble and obe- 
 dient servant, Jo. THURLOE." . . . His high- 
 nesse (Richard) intends to send a gentleman 
 to your excellencye in the beginninge of the 
 next weeke, to let you understand fully the 
 state of all thinges here and of your, family, 
 and commanded me to desire you to excuse his 
 not writinge by this messenger. The truth is, 
 his highnesse's death is soe soare a stroake 
 unto him, and he is soe sensible of it, that he 
 is in noe condition to write or doe yett. Here 
 is a sadd family on all hands : the Lord sup- 
 port them !" 
 
 The great storm of the night of the 2d of 
 September, 1658, reached to the coasts of the 
 Mediterranean. It was such a night in Lon- 
 don as had rarely been passed by dwellers in 
 crowded streets. Trees were torn from their 
 roots in the park, chimneys blown down, and 
 houses unroofed in the city. The various ac- 
 counts which writers as various have handed 
 down to us, would seem to realize the night of 
 Duncan's murder. 
 
 " As they say, 
 
 Lamcntings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death 
 And prophesying, with accents terrible, 
 Of dire combustion, and confused events, 
 New hatch'd to the woful time. The obscure bird 
 Clamour'd the live-long night." 
 
 It was, indeed, a night which prophesied a wo- 
 ful time to England, but to Cromwell it proved 
 a night of happiness. It ushered in for him, 
 far more surely than at Worcester or Dunbar, 
 
 his FORTUNATE DAY.* 
 
 * Underwood. 
 
 t [A most touching account of the death-scene is con- 
 ained in the closing pages of Carlyle's second volume, 
 ). 406-12.-C.] 
 
 * [Since this work has been in press, the production of 
 Monsieur Guizot on Charles I. and Cromwell has appeared. 
 It is marked by great ability. It will be consulted by all 
 who are interested in the character of the Lord Protector. 
 It is published by the Messrs. Appleton, New- York. C.J
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 LIFE OF CROMWELL. 
 
 A. 
 
 THE industry of Mr. Noble has finally settled the point 
 of Oliver Cromwell's relationship to Charles I. by the moth- 
 er's side. The result may be shortly stated thus. He car- 
 ries back the lineage of William Steward, Esq., the father 
 of Mrs. Robert Cromwell, to Alexander, the lord-high- 
 steward of Scotland, from whose third son, Andrew, he 
 proves him to have sprung. John Steward, the grandson 
 of this Andrew, had accompanied the suite of the young 
 
 prince James of Scotland, when, on his way to France, to 
 avoid his uncle's ambition, he was driven on the English 
 coast, and detained prisoner by Henry IV. More fortunate 
 than his royal master, John Steward became one of the 
 English king's favourites ; received knighthood from him at 
 a tournament held at Smithfield in the tenth year of his 
 reign, and thenceforward settled in England. The pedigree, 
 connecting him and his descendants with royalty, stands 
 thus : 
 
 ALEXANDER, LORD-HIGH-STEWARD OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 James, lord high-steward of Scotland. 
 
 Walter, lord high-steward = Marjory, 
 
 sister and heiress of David II., 
 
 king of Scotland. 
 
 Robert II., king of Scotland. 
 Robert III. 
 James I. 
 
 James II. 
 
 I 
 James III. 
 
 James IV. 
 
 James V. 
 
 I 
 Queen Mary. 
 
 James VI. and I. of England. 
 CHARLES I. 
 
 It may be mentioned 
 here, that the lord-high 
 steward's second son, 
 John, gave birth to the 
 noble family of Lennox, 
 which was subsequent- 
 ly " ingrafted into the 
 royal stem" by the ill- 
 omened marriage of 
 Lord Darnley with 
 Mary Stuart. 
 
 Andrew Steward, Esq. 
 
 Sir Alexander Steward. 
 [This knight was surnamed the Fierce. In 
 the presence of Charles VI. of France, he en- 
 countered a furious lion with his sword ; and 
 that breaking, seized a stick, and with it killed 
 the enraged creature. For this feat the de- 
 lighted monarch gave him an instant addition 
 to his arms a lion rampant gules, over 
 all a bend reguled or.] 
 
 Sir John Steward. 
 [The English settler. Knighted by Henry IV.] 
 
 Sir John Steward. 
 [Knighted by Henry V.] 
 
 Thomas Steward, Esq. 
 
 Richard Steward, Esq. 
 Archibald Steward, Esq. 
 Archibald Steward, Esq. 
 
 William Steward, Esq. 
 
 Elizabeth Steward = Robert Cromwell, Esq. 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 From this, the reader will observe, Charles I. and Crom- 
 well's mother were eighth cousins ; James I. and Oliver 
 himself ninth cousins ; Oliver and Charles I. ninth cousins 
 one remove ; and the Protector Richard, Oliver's second 
 son, tenth cousin to the ill-fated English king. Mr. Noble 
 has not failed to direct attention to the fact, that " the 
 royal line so constantly marrying at a very early age, had 
 got one descent of the younger branch, from whom Mrs. 
 Cromwell, Oliver's mother, derived her birth ; a thing very 
 common, owing to a cause too obvious to be mentioned." 
 
 These details, I may add, were not so satisfactorily made 
 out during the life of the Protector as they have since been. 
 His mother's modest character forbade such assumptions on 
 her part, and he was himself too proud of his self-achieved 
 authority to set up the miserable shadow of a fantastic fam- 
 ily claim, which, if it established any thing, should have 
 bespoken pity for the kinsman he had sent to the block. 
 His more servile admirers and dependants, however, did 
 not fail to press for him his hereditary pretensions on the 
 royal score ; but the way in which they urged it showed on 
 how obscure a tradition it rested then. One " H. Dauben- 
 ny" published, the year after Cromwell's death, a duodecimo 
 volume of 300 pages, entitled " Historic and Policie Re- 
 viewed, in the Heroic Transactions of his Most Serene High- 
 nesse, Oliver, late Lord-Protector, from his Cradle to his 
 Tomb : declaring his steps to princely perfection ; as they 
 are drawn in lively parallels to the ascents of the great 
 patriarch Moses, in thirty degrees to the height of Honour." 
 In which Mosaic parallel we find this remark : " I cannot 
 say his late highnesse was extracted from so priestly a fam- 
 ily [as Moses], but altogether as princely, being lineally de- 
 scended from the loynes of our most ancient linttish princei, 
 
 Sir Thomas Steward. 
 [The only brother of Mrs. Robert 
 Cromwell, knighted by King James 
 I., at Windsor, in 1604. He left his 
 fortune to his illustrious nephew.] 
 and ty'd in near alliances to the blood of our later kings, as 
 by that thrice noble family of the Harringtons, and divers 
 others ; which to make a petigree of would take up more 
 paper than we intend for our volume, and make me appear 
 more a herald than an historian. Nay, indeed, should I but 
 go about to prove his highnesse's most illustrious house no- 
 ble, I should commit a sacriledge in the temple of honour, 
 and onely violate his most glorious family with a more sol- 
 emn infamy. His highnesse is unquestionably known to 
 have descended from such a stem of princely antecessors, 
 that whole ages, which waste rocks and wear out elements, 
 have never altered to lessen, but rather advance, the hon- 
 our of his great house. He was derived from such a family, 
 that we may better say of it than what was of the other, ex 
 qua ntsc.it aliquid mediocre nasci, from whence nothing or- 
 dinary can proceed ; as is likewise made notoriously evident 
 in those other most eminent persons of honour, now living, 
 who are blest with a share of his incomparable blood ; who 
 have spread their glory abroad, so well as at home, and 
 built themselves such trophies, in the hearts of their very 
 enemies, that eternity itself must celebrate ; so no time 
 can ever be able to demolish, or reduce into oblivion. And 
 that I may not be thought to flatter so great a truth, 1 will 
 be bold to hasten, and abruptly conclude this first point of 
 our Mosaical parallel, with saying onely, that this sublime 
 person, his late most serene highnesse, our second, as the 
 first great Moses, came into the world like a princely pearl, 
 and made it appear, by the quality of his orient, that if na- 
 ture pleased to equal his birth to the best of noblemen upon 
 earth, he would equal his virtues to his extraction ; as we 
 shall see more plainly, when we mount a little higher upon 
 our Mosaical ascents and parallels."
 
 622 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 B. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 I 
 
 Had nine children, of whom only two sons and three daughters survived him. One daughter and two 
 sons (Robert and James) died in extreme youth ; his second son, Oliver, a captain in the service of the 
 Parliament, fell in battle in July, 1648. The following table enumerates only the families of the male 
 descendants, of whom such as had male issue continuing the name are enclosed in lines: 
 
 ~~~~ ~ ~ 
 
 Richard, Protector. 
 
 Left nine children ; two were sons, 
 
 but both died bachelors. 
 
 I Henry, lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 
 Born in 1627; died in 1674. 
 
 Oliver. 
 
 Frances. 
 
 I I I I 
 
 Richard. William. Elizabeth. Elizabeth. 
 
 [Henry. Born in 1658; died in 171 1.| 
 ~~ 
 
 Oliver. Benjamin. Henry. William. Richard. 
 
 Henry. 
 
 i I 
 
 Oliver. Mary. 
 
 Hannah. 
 
 [Thomas. Burn in 1699; died in 1748.| 
 
 By his first Wife. By his second Wife. 
 
 Henry. 
 
 1 
 Thomas. 
 
 1 1 
 Elizabeth. Ann. 
 
 Thomas. Richard. Elizabeth. Susan. Hannah, 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, Esq., of Cheshuut Park ; born in 1742, and died on 31st 
 of May, 1821. A very worthy old gentleman, but author of a portentously 
 stupid book in vindication of his great namesake and progenitor. 
 
 
 A son. A son. 
 
 Both died in 
 extreme youth. 
 
 C. 
 
 The Protecting Brewer. 
 A brewer may be a burgess grave, 
 And carry the mattei so fine and so brave, 
 That he the better may play the knave, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 A brewer may be a Parliament-man, 
 For there the knavery first began. 
 And brew most cunning plots he can, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 A brewer may put on a Nabal face, 
 And march to the wars with such a grace, 
 That he may get a captain's place, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 A brewer may speak so wondrous well, 
 That he may rise (strange things to tell), 
 And so be made a colonel, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 A brewer may make his foes to flee, 
 And raise his fortunes so that he 
 Lieutenant-general may be, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 A brewer may be all in all, 
 And raise his powers both great and small, 
 That he may be a lord-general, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 A brewer may be like a fox in a cub, 
 And leach a lecture out of a tub, 
 And give the wicked world a rub, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 A brewer by his excise and rate 
 
 Will promise his army he knows not what, 
 
 And set upon the college gate, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 Methinks I hear one say to me, 
 Pray why may not a brewer be 
 Lord-chancellor o' th' University ? 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 A brewer may be as bold as Hector, 
 When he had drank his cup of nectar; 
 And a brewer may be a lord- protector, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 Elizabeth Olivera ; married to T. A. 
 
 Russell, Esq , by whom she has had 
 
 a numerous family. 
 
 Now here remains the strangest thing, 
 How this brewer about his liquor did bring 
 To be an emperor, or a king. 
 
 Which nobody can deny, 
 A brewer may do what he will, 
 And rob the Church and State, to sell 
 His soul unto the d 1 in h 11, 
 
 Which nobody can deny. 
 
 D. 
 SIR OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 SIR OLIVER CROMWELL, a wealthy and respectable old 
 knight, and a stanch Cavalier, claims some notice from the 
 biographer of his illustrious nephew. He had succeeded to 
 the enormous estates of Sir Henry, and chiefly resided, of 
 course, at the splendid family seat of Hinchiubrook. " Sir 
 Oliver Cromwell," says Noble, "eldest son and heir of Sir 
 Henry, was a most popular and beloved character in his 
 own county of Huntingdon, for which he was returned one 
 of the members in the Parliaments called in the 31st, 35th, 
 39th, and 43d years of (he reign of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 had the honour to receive knighthood from her majesty in 
 1598, in which year he was sheriff of the counties of Hunt- 
 ingdon and Cambridge." 
 
 Immediately after the latter date, some enormous acces- 
 sions appear to have fallen into his rent-rolls ; but Sir Oliver 
 was a true Cavalier, fond of the present, careless of the 
 future, and with every new accession of fortune more reck- 
 lessly profuse of the old. His love of display was carried at 
 all times to ridiculous excess ; but it was not till the death 
 of Elizabeth that the brilliant thought of his life occurred 
 to him, namely, that, as the new king must pass through 
 Huntingdon in his journey from Edinburgh to London, it 
 would reflect eternal glory on the Cromwells if a magnifi- 
 cent entertainment at Hinchinbrook awaited the passage of 
 the new sovereign ! Poor Sir Oliver little knew what other 
 and different glories an infant Oliver was then providing for 
 the Cromwells what other and different entertainments for 
 that Scotch dynasty of English kings ! 
 
 The knight's duteous invitation having been accepted by 
 royalty, it became his next care to show off as much as pos- 
 sible the family claims of the Cromwells, and so, according 
 to Noble, " he hastily made such improvements in his house 
 as he judged most proper; and Rt this time he built that 
 very elegant bow window to the dining-room, in which are
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 623 
 
 two shields of arms of his family impaling, the one his first, as they are alluded to in the life of his nephew. " He was 
 the other his second lady's, painted upon the glass, with not,' 1 says the cautious Mr. Noble, "an idle spectator in the 
 many quartering^," and surrounded by a prodigious number i dreadful civil war which the tyranny of King Charles I. and 
 of other shields Oromwellian. All preparations complete, the ambition of the popular leaders of the House of Cofn- 
 
 King James arrived at Hinchinbrook on the 27th of April, 
 1603, Lord Southampton carrying before him the sword 
 which the mayor of Huntingdon had offered to the new 
 sovereign. Sir Oliver received James at the gate of the 
 
 freat court, and conducted him up a walk, that then imme- 
 iately led to the principal entrance of the house. 
 
 mons had involved this nation in ; but remembering the 
 many obligations he and his ancestors lay under to the 
 crown, he determined to support the royal cause-. For this 
 purpose, he not only (at a very heavy expense) raised men, 
 and gave large sums of money, but obliged his sons to take 
 up arms, and go with the royal army ; and he wus of great- 
 
 Ills majesty," we learn from various accounts, " here ' er use to his majesty than any person in that part of the 
 
 met with a more magnificent reception than he had ever 
 done since his leaving his paternal kingdom, both for the 
 plenty ami variety of the meats and wines. It is inconceiv- 
 
 kingdom, by which he rendered himself particularly obnox- 
 ious to the Parliament." 
 
 Of his nephew's visit to him at Ramsey mention is else- 
 
 able with what pleasure the English received the king: all where made. No claim or favour of relationship, no consid- 
 
 strove to please, every one to see the new sovereign, who 
 was to unite two jarring and valiant kingdoms, and to be the 
 common monarch of both. Sir Oliver gratified them to the 
 full. His doors were thrown wide open to receive all that 
 chose to pay their respects to the new king, or even to see 
 
 e ration for his sinking and nearly squandered fortunes, could 
 avail to move his faith. " Nothing." pursues our authority, 
 " was able to shake Sir Oliver's loyalty ; he supported the 
 royal party to the last ; for which, like many others, he was 
 sentenced to have all his estates, both real and personal.se- 
 
 him ; und each individual was welcomed with the choicest ' questered ; but they were saved through the interposition, 
 viands and most costly wines: even the populace had free ' and for the sake of his nephew Oliver, then lieutenant-gen- 
 access to the cellars during the whole of his majesty's stay, j eral ; and the Parliament, April 17, 1648. took off the se- 
 While the king was at Hinchinbrook, he received the heads ; questration, in which he is styled ' Sir Oliver Cromwell, of 
 of the University of Cambridge in their robes, to congratu- j Ramsey Moore, in the county of Huntingdon, Knight of the 
 late him upon his accession to the English throne, which Bath.' During the whole of the usurpation, as well by the 
 they did in a long Latin oration. His majesty remained Commonwealth as under the government of his relation Ol- 
 with Sir Oliver until he had breakfasted on April 29. At iver, he followed the example of the grandee Loyalists in 
 his leaving Hinchinbrook, he was pleased to express the ob- courting privacy and retirement ; and it is pretty singular 
 ligations he had received from him and his lady ; In the for- that the colours which he and his sons took from the Parlia- 
 mer he said at parting, as he passed through the court, in ment forces continued displayed in Ramsey Church during 
 his broad Scotch manner, ' Morry mon, thou hast treated the whole of the Grand Rebellion, and remained there uu- 
 me better than any one since I left Edenburgh ;' and it is til within these fifty years. This fortitude in not courting 
 more than probable, than ever that prince was entertained the favour of the Protector is the more observable and praise- 
 before or after ; for it is said, Sir Oliver at this time gave worthy, as from the repeated losses he had sustained from 
 the greatest feast that had been given to a king by a subject, his loyalty, his numerous family, and want of economy in 
 His loyalty and regard to his prince seems almost unbound- j both himself and his sons, the evening of his life was ren- 
 ed ; for when his majesty left Hinchinbrook, he was pre- , dered very disagreeable upon pecuniary accounts, he dying 
 sented by him with many things of great value ; among oth- oppressed with a load of debts, although he had parted not 
 ers, a large, elegant, wrought standing cup of gold, goodly i only with most of his estates in Huntingdonshire (to whom 
 horses, deep-mouthed hounds, divers hawks of excellent I know not), but of his other valuable manors, since none 
 wing ; and. at the remove, gave fifty pounds among the royal of these came to his heirs, to whom it is reasonable to con- 
 officers. So many and such great proofs of attachment, and jecture he resigned up the whole of what he had left : for 
 those in a manner peculiarly agreeable to the taste of the in the decree of chancery for dividing the fens, passed in 
 prince, gained his regard, which he took an early opportu- 1652, his name is not mentioned ; and his eldest son and 
 nity of expressing, by creating him, with fifty-nine others, I heir-apparent is called lord of the manor of Ramsey, of which 
 a knight of the Bath, prior to his coronation. This cere- he was actual owner at that time. His death happened 
 muny was performed on Sunday, July 24, following ; upon ! Aug. 28, 1655, in the ninety-third year of his age : he was 
 which day he, with the other gentlemen designed for that buried the same night (to prevent, it is said, his body be- 
 honour, rode in state from St. James's to the court, and so, ing seized by his creditors) in the Church of Ramsey ; but 
 with their esquires and pages, about the tiltyard, and from there is no memorial of him or of his family, nor does there 
 thence to St. James's Park, where, alighting from their seem ever to have been any in that church ; but, upon 
 horses, and going in a body to the presence-gallery, they sounding-, I discovered that there is a vault just entering 
 received their knighthood from his majesty." into the chancel, where the Cromwells are said to be bu- 
 
 Happy Sir Oliver-! We hardly recover breath after this , ried." 
 description to glance rapidly at his remaining fortunes. Fuller sketches, in his own quaint style, the character ot 
 
 He was, we find, a conspicuous member of the House of i Sir Oliver as one of the worthies of Huntingdonshire, and 
 Commons from 1604 to IfilO, and also in 1614, 1623, and tells us he is remarkable to posterity on a fourfold account: 
 1624, during which years he is perhaps oftener named upon " First, for his hospitality, and prodigious entertainment of 
 committees than any other man. He is always a stanch King James and his court ; secondly, for his upright deal- 
 courtier, and once or twice styled Queen Anne's attorney in ings in bargain and sale with all chapmen, so that no man 
 the journals of the House ; but he did not hold that place whosoever that purchased land of him was put to the charge 
 long, probably not many months. It is probable that ha of three pence to make his title ; yet he sold excellent pen- 
 succeeded Sir Lawrence Tanfield in the office in or about j nyworths, insomuch that Sir John Leaman (once lonl-may- 
 the year 1604. On the 10th of May, 1605, he, with others, j or of London), who bought the fair manor of Warboise, in 
 signed a certificate to the privy council, that the work of j this county, of him, affirmed, that it was the cheapest land 
 draining the fens in Lincolnshire, fec., was feasible, and ! that ever he bought, and yet the dearest that ever Sir Oli 
 without any peril to any haven or county. In this letter ! ver Cromwell sold ; thirdly, for his loyalty, always behold- 
 
 Robeit joined him ; and in 1606 he was named in the act or 
 bill for draining of the fens ; and was one of the adventurers 
 
 ng the usurpation and tyranny of his nephew, godson, and 
 namesake with hatred and contempt ; lastly, for his vivaci- 
 
 who subscribed towards planting and cultivating Virginia, j ty, who survived to be the oldest knight who was a gentle- 
 His majesty. King James I., we also find, gave Sir Oliver, man, seeing Sir George Dalston, younger in years (yet still 
 in 1608, 6000 for his relinquishing a grant of 200, issu- alive), was knighted some days before him." 
 ing yearly out of the royal lands, given to him as a free gift; j It will be only necessary to add that Sir Oliver married 
 and the family records tell us, that on May 2, 1622, he gave J twice : first, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Bromley, 
 a grant in fee of certain lands in the manor of Warbovs to j lord-chancellor of England, upon whom was settled Ramsey, 
 hisson and heir Henry, outof his affectiontohim, and for his , Warboys, Hinchinbrook, Higney, Broughton alias Brone- 
 better maintenance and living: the seizen was witnessed by ' ton, and Little Raveley. After her death he married, July 
 Sir Phil. Cromwell and others. Meanwhile, we may add, he i 7, 1601 (at Baberham, in Cambridgeshire, the place of her 
 had made enormous gaps in his fortune by his gorgeous ; late husband's residence), Ann, daughter of Bfidius Hooft- 
 style of living, and the royal entertainments he persisted in j man, a gentleman of Antwerp, and widow of Sir Horatio 
 giving at intervals to_the king, which he continued even af- { Palavicini, a noble Genoese. Upon this latter lady he set- 
 tled the manors uf Ramsey, Heigmongrove, Bury, Upwood, 
 nd Wistow Meers, except the rectories in each of them, 
 
 ter the accession of Charles to the throne. 
 
 Sir Oliver, Mr. Noble tells us, " was in no less favour with 
 King Charles I. than he had been with the late sovereign ; 
 his name occurs in a committee in the first Parliament of 
 this reign ; Aug. 1-2 in this year, and Feb. 23 following, he 
 is named, among others, in a special commission directed to 
 them, for ' rulinge, governinge, demiseing, and disposeing 
 of our assessisnane, and customary lands within our dutchie 
 of Cornwall ;' he was also named one in the commission of 
 peace by King Charles I. in 1625, and for the loan-money 
 for the county of Huntingdon in the following year." 
 
 It is not necessary here to pursue his fortunes in detail, 
 
 and the parishes called the old and new parishes, and the 
 lands lying in those parishes, viz., Ramsey and the Chase, 
 and the ground called Wychwood. She died at Hinchin- 
 brook, and was buried at All Saints' Church, in Hunting- 
 don, April 26, 1626. By Lady Elizabeth Sir Oliver had 
 six children, and by Lady Ann four.
 
 624 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 E. 
 CROMWELL AND CHRISTINA. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 AFTER the dissolution of the Long Parliament, and on 
 the eve of the seizure of the Protectorate, Cromwell resolv- 
 ed to send Whitelocke as ambassador extraordinary to Swe- 
 den, to arrange a treaty with Queen Christina. Viscount 
 Lisle, the other lord-commissioner of the great seal, had 
 been named for the office, but Lisle's presence promised to 
 prove as available to Cromwell in the designs he now held, 
 as the absence of the cautious and circumspect Whitelocke, 
 who had, as in every other great event of the time, objected 
 to the dissolution of the Parliament before it occurred, and 
 acquiesced in it afterward. Whitelocke, therefore, he was 
 determined should go ; and his conduct in achieving his 
 point was eminently characteristic. 
 
 Whitelocke had grave reasons for declining the service, 
 nd many long and tearful conversations passed with his 
 wife (the third who had helped to increase his family), in 
 which those reasons are earnestly given. The voyage was 
 a danger the repulsive climate of Sweden was a danger 
 the health of Lady Whitelocke, then on the eve of confine- 
 ment, an imminent danger; but worst and most dangerous 
 of all had it been to disobey the lord-general. His wife, 
 
 would thinke herselfe flighted by ttt : and she is a lady of 
 great honour, and stands much uppon ceremonies." 
 
 Poor Whitelocke, somewhat softened against his will, yet 
 found strength enough to renew his importunities of release 
 on the ground of various incapacities he alleged himself to 
 labour under. "The councell," retorted Cromwell, con- 
 cealing his own private and determined will under a torrent 
 of persuasion and entreaty, " the councell have pitched up- 
 pon you unanimously, as the fittest man in the nation for 
 this service ; we know your abilities, having long conversed 
 with you ; we know you have languages, and have travel- 
 led, and understand the interest of Christendome ; and I 
 have known you in the army, to endure hardships, and to be 
 healthful and strong, and of mettle, discretion, and parts 
 most fitt for this imployment : you are so indeed ; really, no 
 man is so fitt for it as you are. We know you to be a gen- 
 tleman of a good family, related to persons of honour ; and 
 your present office of commissioner of the scale will make 
 you the more acceptable to her. I doe earnestly desire you 
 to undertake it ; wherein you will doe an act of great merit 
 
 one 
 ac- 
 
 and advantage to the Commonwealth, as great as any 
 member of it can performe, and which will be as well 
 cepted by them. The biiisnes is very honourable, and ex- 
 ceeding likely to have good successe. Her publique minis- 
 ters heer have already agreed uppon most of the material! 
 
 with a woman's ready wit, endeavoured, by a sort of half- j a "d maine points of the buisnes ; if it had not been such an 
 deserved compliment, to infuse some spirit of resistance into ! employment, we would not have putt you uppon if, the 
 
 him: "The lord-general means no good to you," she said, 
 " hut would be rid of you." " Why," answered White- 
 locke, " should he desire to be rid of me, when I may be 
 serviceable to him heer ?" The wife readily retorted : 
 "Though you are serviceable in some things, yet you are 
 not thorough-paced for them in all things, which they would 
 
 buisnes of trade, and of the funds, and touching the Dutch, 
 are such as there cannot be any of greater consequence." 
 
 With the little spirit remaining to him, Whitelocke in- 
 terposed once more the condition of his wife for at least a 
 little delay. ' I know," replied Cromwell, " my lady is a 
 ' woman, and a religious woman, and will be contented 
 
 , 
 
 have you to doe ; you refused to act in the great business ; ; to suffer a little absence of her husband for the publique 
 you opposed the breaking of the Parliament, and other un- I? 00 *! > an ^ f. r 'he time of the year, really the life of the 
 
 just things."* " But what further designes," afterward 
 asks the simple lawyer, " can he have ? He exercises more 
 power than any king of England ever had or claymed.'' " His 
 ambition," answers his wife, " is higher than we can ima- 
 gine ; and you have often declared yourself for the law and 
 rights of the people, which, if they stand in his way, he will 
 lay them, or you, or anything aside." Similar language to 
 
 buisnes consists in the despatch of it att this time ; the 
 Dutch are tampering with the queen, butt she holds them 
 off, expecting to hear from us." The interview ended with 
 the grant of a week's consideration to the ambassador mal- 
 gre lui. 
 
 At the week's end, Whitelocke again presented himself 
 at the chamber of the lord-general again to implore of him 
 
 locke and his father above forty years." This old country- i eral obstinately resumed, " I know your education, travayle, 
 man advised his master to go, because the " GREAT MAN," i anu< language, and experience have fitted you for it ; you 
 
 as he calls Cromwell, desires him to go. Whitelocke re- 
 joins, that that is true ; but he is not " bound to obey" Crom- 
 well. "I am deceived," says the shrewd old servant, " if 
 he will not be obeyed in what he hath a mind to." " I am 
 not under his command," retorts Whitelocke ; " what can 
 he doe to me 1" " What can he doe !" exclaims the expe- 
 rienced William Cooke ; " what can he not doe? Don't we 
 all see he does what he list? We poor countrymen are 
 forced to obey him to our cost ; and if he have a mind to 
 punish us or you, it's an old proverbe that it is an easie 
 thing to find a staffe to beat a dogge ; and I would not have 
 you to anger him lest you bring daunger, and trouble too, 
 upon you and your family and state : that's the truth 
 on't." 
 
 Let us next view Whitelocke in conversation with the 
 lord-general. He had received a very simple and short 
 note, signed by Cromwell and Pickering (as of the council 
 of state), but "all written with Cromwell's own hand," in- 
 timating- the office he was expected to discharge. Next 
 morning he called on Pickering, told his wife's condition, 
 and his reluctance to leave England, and implored his inter- 
 cession with the lord-general. Together they proceeded to 
 the latter, and Whitelocke made his appeal. " I am very 
 sorry," quietly remarked Cromwell, " that the letter came 
 no sooner to you." " I confess," interposed Sir Gilbert 
 Pickering, ' it was my fault." " Sir Gilbert," characteris- 
 tically resumed Cromwell, " would needs write a very fine 
 tetter ; and when he had done, did not like it himselfe. / 
 then took the pen and ink, and straightway wrote that letter 
 to you. And the business is of exceeding great importance 
 to the Commonwealth, as any can be ; that it is : and there 
 is no prince or state in Christendome, with whom there is 
 any probability for us to have a friendship, butt only the 
 Queen of Sweden. She hath sent severall times to us, butt 
 we have returned no ambassy to her, only a letter by a 
 young gentleman. She expects an ambassador from us ; 
 and if we should not send a man of eminency to her, she 
 
 * Here, no doubt, allusion is made to the execution of Charles ; and 
 the remark which Whitelocke instantly makes in the original dialogue 
 betrays a simple point in his character, and leaves it in much doubt 
 whether his only motive in opposing that great deed was not simply to 
 facilitate a courtship. " Had I not done so," lie remarks, "you and I 
 had not met together." Laily Whitelocke loses no time in corrobora- 
 ting this. "It was the first thing I inquired of you," she gravely ivjoins ; 
 ' my first husband nor you were engaged; if you had, I should not 
 cd to you. I believe you lost by it much of the gener- 
 
 al's favoui 
 might be i 
 
 and he would take this 
 > hindrance to his further designs.' 
 
 to lay you aside, that you 
 
 know the affayres of Christendome as well as most men, and 
 of England as well as any man, and can give as good an ac- 
 count of them. I think no man can serve his countrey more 
 than you may herein ; indeed I think so ; and therefore I 
 make it my particular suit and earnest request to you to un- 
 dertake it. and I hope you will show a little regard to me in 
 it ; and I assure you that you shall have no cause to repent 
 it." Wonderful indeed was Cromwell's power of persua- 
 sion ! but the uxorious Whitelocke hesitated still. " My 
 lord, I am very ready to testify my duety to your excellency ; 
 I acknowledge your many favours to me, and myselfe an 
 officer under your command, and to owe you obedience. 
 Butt your excellency will not expect it from me in that 
 wherin I am not capable to serve you ; and therefore I make 
 it my most humble suit to be excused from this service." 
 Humble but vain ! " For your abilities," Cromwell reitera- 
 ted, as though Whitelocke had not meanwhile spoken, ' I 
 am satisfied ; I know no man so fitt for it as yourself? ; and 
 if you should decline it (as I hope you will not), the Com- 
 monwealth would suffer extremely by it, your own profes- 
 sion might suffer likewise, and the Protestant interest would 
 suffer by it. Indeed, you cannot be excused. The hearts of 
 all the good people in this nation (!) are set uppon it, to have 
 you undertake this service ; and if you should waive it, be- 
 ing thus, and att such a time when your going may be the 
 most likely means to settle our buisnes with the Dutch and 
 Danes, and all matters of trade (and none, I say again, can 
 doe it better than you), the Commonwealth would be att an 
 extreame prejudice by your refusal!. Butt I hope you will 
 hearken to my request, and lett me prev&yle with you to 
 undertake it : neither you nor yours, I hope, shall ever have 
 any cause to wish you had not done it." 
 
 Whitelocke wavers sensibly at last, and observes cau- 
 tiously and inquiringly, " My lord, when a man is out of 
 sight, he is out of mind. Though your excellency be just 
 and honourable, yett your greater affayres calling you off, 
 those to whom matters of correspondence and supplyes must 
 be referred will perhaps forget one who is afarre of, and not 
 be so sensible of extremities in a foreign countrey as those 
 who suffer under them." " I will engage to take," at once 
 answered Cromwell, " particular care of those matters my- 
 selfe, and that you shall neither want supplyes, nor any 
 thing that is fitt for you : you shall be sett out with as much 
 honour as ever any ambassador was from England. I shall 
 hold mvselfe particularly obliged to you if you will under- 
 take it, and will stick as close to you as yoi.r skin is to your 
 flesh. You shall want nothing either for your honour and
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 625 
 
 equipage, or for power and trust to be reposed in you, or for 
 correspondence and supplyes when you are abroade : I prom- 
 ise you, my lord, you shall not ; I will make it my buisnes to 
 see it done. The Parlement and councell, as well as my- 
 selfe, will take it very well and thankfully from you to ac- 
 cept of this unployment ; and all people, especially the good 
 people of the nation, will be much satisfyed with it ; and 
 therefore, my lord, I make it againe my earnest request to 
 you to accept this honourable imployment." 
 
 A pause now followed, and Whitelocke consented to go. 
 Then, in proportion to his quiet determination to take no 
 refusal, was the abundance of Cromwell's protestations of 
 gratitude at not having received one ! Nothing can more 
 strikingly illustrate the man. " My lord, I doe most heart- 
 ily thanke you for accepting the imployment, whereby you 
 have, testified a very great respect and favour to me, and af- 
 fection to the Commonwealth, which will be very well taken 
 by them. And I assure you, that it is so gratefull to me, 
 who, uppon my particular request, have prevayled with you, 
 that I shall never forgett this favour, but endeavour to re- 
 quite it to you and yours. Really, my lord, I shall. And I 
 will acquaint the councell with it, that we may deire fur- 
 ther conference with you." 
 
 Happily does this interview end with Whitelocke's remark 
 of himself, that " he went away well pleased ;" nor was his 
 pleasure diminished by a messenger from Cromwell, who 
 
 arrived a few days after at his house in Chelsea 
 well sent one of his gentlemen with a present to Whitelocke 
 a sword, and a payre of spurres, richly inlaid with gould, 
 of a noble work and fashion." All the care he had now was 
 to quiet his wife as well as he could, and to this end he ex- 
 erted himself with reasonable success. 
 
 The interview of leave took place on the 30th of October, 
 1653. Cromwell repeated all his assurances to him with 
 redoubled earnestness, gave him various hints of policy and 
 conduct in the management of the treaty and its objects, and 
 granted him every request he asked of personal favour. 
 Whitelocke then finally implored him never to "give credit 
 to whisperings, or officious words, or letters of pickthanks 
 behind my backe." " I shall not easily give beliefe," Crom- 
 well assured him," to such backbiters. I hate them. And 
 what I shall be informed of jour actions abroade will hardly 
 create in me an ill opinion of them before I be certifyedfrom 
 yourselfe." ' It may be your excellency will heare," pur- 
 
 sued the wily lawy 
 
 y be y 
 r, " th 
 
 t I am great with some cavaliers 
 
 when I am abroade, and that I make much of them ; and 
 truely that may well be. / love a civility to all, especially 
 to persons of condition, though enemies ; and have ever 
 used it, and perhaps may use it more than ordinary when I 
 am abroade, and to those of the king's party ; and by them 
 I may be the better inabled to secure myselfe, and to under- 
 stand their designs, which will be no disadvantage to your af- 
 fayres ; nor shall I ever betray those, or any persons by whom 
 I am trusted." " / thinke such a carryage towards them," 
 earnestly answered Cromwell, " will be prudent, and jilt for 
 you to use ; and it will never occasion in me, nor I hope in 
 any other sober men, the least jealousy of your faithfullness, 
 butt it may tend to your security and to the good of your 
 buisnes." " I have butt one thing more," concluded the 
 ambassador, " to trouble your excellency with ; that is, my 
 humble thanks for all your favours, and particularly for the 
 noble present I received from your hand." " I pray, my 
 lord," answered the lord-general, kindly, " doe not speake 
 of so poore a thing ; if there were opportunity for me to doe 
 honour to your lordship, I assure you that very few should 
 goe before you." 
 
 It will have been observed throughout these interviews, 
 that, though Cromwell was still, to all appearance, only a 
 private individual, with no other charge than as lord-general 
 of the army and a member of the council of state, his au- 
 thority and power were already single and absolute, in fact. 
 His earnest anxiety for this treaty with Sweden was not, 
 let us add, assumed, though many of his protestations to 
 Whitelocke were. The importance of Sweden, in the great 
 division of the European governments into Catholic and 
 Protestant, as the most considerable of the Protestant mon- 
 archies, whose alliance the Republic claimed, need not be 
 pointed out to the well-informed historical reader; and the 
 motive to a perfect alliance with Sweden had been strongly 
 increased by the sympathies awakened in Cromwell's mind, 
 when the frank and masculine spirit of the young queen 
 who then held the Swedish throne stood out boldly from the 
 other feeble and vacillating crowned heads of Europe, and 
 at once, with daring resolution, acknowledged the English 
 Republic. 
 
 Christina, queen of Sweden, was now not twenty-seven 
 years old. She was the daughter of a hero, Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, and had inherited the spirit of a hero. Her eccen- 
 tricities are matter of history. Among them for in a crown- 
 ed head this is an eccentricity indeed should be named, 
 first, her passionate encouragement of literature and learn- 
 ed men, inspired, it should be added, by her own great tal- 
 ents and acknowledged learning. When the great work 
 against the leaders of the English Commonwealth, written 
 by Sahuasius, at the suggestion of Charles the Second's 
 4 K 
 
 court, had been finished, that famous controversialist went, 
 for his best reward, to the court of Christina. He was re- 
 ceived there with the greatest distinction. The cold climate 
 of Stockholm, however, proved too much for his health, and 
 the young queen herself is said to have spent hours with 
 him alone by his bedside, and to have performed for him all 
 the functions which are necessary to a valetudinarian. Fa- 
 tally for Salmasius, however, Milton's " Defensio" reached 
 Stockholm in the very midst of these ultra courtesies from, 
 royalty. Christina read the immortal treatise of the Eng- 
 lish writer "devoured it," as was said, and proclaimed 
 everywhere in the circles of b/er capital that glory should 
 belong to the name of Milton. Salmasius could not but hear 
 this, and yet the queen was " too humane and considerate 
 to reverse the treatment with which she had honoured him." 
 The delicacy of the defeated scholar then rose equal to her 
 own. He proposed, for his health's sake, removal to a mild- 
 er climate, and Christina dismissed him with honour. 
 
 For the court of this queen it was that Whitelocke, on the 
 5th of November, 1653, with a magnificent suite of officers 
 and attendants, set sail as ambassador to the English Com- 
 monwealth. And at this court it was that several delight- 
 ful scenes and dialogues occurred, which not only illustrate 
 the character and influence of the great subject of this me- 
 moir in a novel and interesting manner, but also disclose, 
 better than any records else, the more sterling as well as 
 ' Crom- charming aspects of the character of Christina. Whitelocke 
 arrived in Stockholm only a few months before she aston- 
 ished Europe by the resignation of her crown, at a time when 
 no one disputed it, and all her people loved her. 
 
 WHITELOCKE FIRST SEES CHRISTINA IN HER MAGNIF- 
 ICENT PALACE, AND IS NOT AFRAID. 
 
 As soon as he came within this roome, he putt off his halt. 
 
 and then the queen putt off her cappe, after the fashion of 
 men, and came two or three steppes forward uppon th 
 
 Toot carpet. This, and her being covered, and rising from 
 
 ner seate, caused Whitelocke to know her to be the queen, 
 which otherwise had not bin easy to be discerned : her habit 
 being of plaine gray stuffe, her petticote reached to the 
 
 ground ; over that a jackett, such as men weare, of the same 
 stuffe, reaching to her knees ; on her left side, tyed with 
 crimson ribbon, she wore the Jewell of the order of Amaran- 
 ta ; her cuffes ruffled a la ftnode ; no gorgett or band, butt a 
 blacke scarffe about her neck, tyed before with a blacke rib- 
 bon, as soldiers and marriners sometimes use to weare ; her 
 hayre was breaded, and hung loose uppon her head ; she 
 wore a blacke velvet cappe lined with sables, and turned up, 
 after the fashion of the countrey, which she used to putt off 
 and on as men doe their haltes. Her countenance was 
 sprightly, but somewhat pale ; she had much of majesty in 
 her demeanour, and though her person were of the smaller 
 size, yett her mienne and carryage was very noble. [Here 
 Whitelocke describes his kissing her hand, " which cere- 
 mony all ambassadors used to this queen," and other mat- 
 ters.] The queene was very attentive whilst he spake, and 
 comming up close to him, by her looks and gestures (as was 
 supposed) would have daunted him ; but those who have 
 bin conversant in the late great affayres in England are not 
 so soon as others appalled with the presence of a young lady 
 and her servants. 
 
 CHRISTINA TELLS WHITELOCKE, AT THEIR FIRST PRI- 
 VATE INTERVIEW, HER OPINION OF CROMWELL, AND 
 INQUIRES IF IT IS REALLY TRUE THAT HE PRAYS 
 AND PREACHES. 
 
 WH. [ The queen having read his Latin instructions.'} I 
 see your majesty understands the Latin perfectly, and will 
 find heer sufficient authority given me for this buisnes. 
 
 Qu. I have Latin enough to serve my turne, and the au- 
 thority given to you is very full. Uppon what perticularg 
 will the Parlement thinke fitt to ground the alliance between 
 the two nations ? 
 
 WH. If your majesty please, I shall present you with the 
 perticulars in writing, in French or Latin, as you shall 
 command. 
 
 Qu. It will be best in Latin, because I shall take advice 
 in it. 
 
 WH. I shall doe it as your majesty directs. 
 
 Qu. Your generall is one of the gallantest men in the 
 world ; never were such things done as by the English in yottr 
 late war. Your generall hath done the greatest things af any 
 man in the world ; the Prince of Condi is next to him, butt 
 short of him. I have as great a respect and honour for your 
 generall as for any man alive ; and I pray, left him know at 
 much from me. 
 
 WH. My generall is indeed a very brave man ; his actions 
 show it ; and I shall not fayle to signify to him the great 
 honour of your majesty's respects to him ; and I assure your 
 majesty, he hath as high honour for you as for any prince in 
 Christendome. 
 
 Qu. I have bin told that many officers of your army will 
 themselves pray and preach to their soldiers ; is that true 1 
 WH. Yes, madame, it is very true. When ther ennemies 
 are swearing, or debauching, or pillaging, the officers and
 
 626 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 soldiers of the Parlement's army use to be encouraging and 
 exhorting one another out of the Word of God, and praying 
 together to the Lord of Hosts for his blessing to be with 
 them ; who hath showed his approbation of this military 
 preaching by the successes he hath given them. 
 
 Qu. That's well. Doe you use to doe soe too? 
 
 WH. Yes ; uppon some occasions, in my own family ; and 
 thinke it as proper for me, being the master of it, to admon- 
 ish and speake to my people when there is cause, as to be 
 beholding to another to doe -it for me, which sometimes 
 brings the chaplein into more credit than his lord. 
 
 Qu. Doth your generall and other great officers doe so? 
 
 WH. Yes, madame, very often, and very well. Neverthe- 
 less, they maintain chapleins and ministers in their houses 
 and regiments ; and such as are godly and worthy ministers 
 have as much respect, and as good provision in England, as 
 in any place of Christendome. Yet 'tis the opinion of many 
 good men with us, that a long cassake, with a silke girdle, 
 and a great beard, do not make a learned or good preacher, 
 without gifts of the Spirit of God and labouring in his vine- 
 yard ; and whosoever studies the Holy Scripture, and is en- 
 abled to doe good to the souls of others, and indeavours the 
 game, is nowhere forbidden by that Word, nor is it blame- 
 able. The officers and soldiers of the Parlernent held it not 
 unlawful!, when they carryed their lives in their hands, and 
 were going to adventure them in the high places of the 
 field, to incourage one another out of His Word who com- 
 mands over all ; and this had more weight and impression 
 with it than any other word could have, and was never de- 
 nyed to be made use of butt by the popish prelates, who by 
 no meanes would admit lay people (as they call them) to 
 gather from thence that instruction and comfort which can 
 nowhere else be found. 
 
 Qu. Alethinks you preach very well, and have now made a 
 good sermon. I assure you I like it very well. 
 
 WH. Madame, I shall account it a great happiness if any 
 of my words may please you. 
 
 Qu. Indeed, sir, these words of yours doe very much please 
 me ; and I shall be glad to hear you oftener on this strayne. 
 Butt 1 pray tell me, where did your generall, and you his offi- 
 cers, learne this way of praying and preaching yourselves ? 
 
 WH. We learnt it from a neer friend of your majesty, 
 whose memory all the Protestant interest hath cause to 
 honour. 
 
 Qu. My friend ! Who was that ? 
 
 WH. It was your father, the great king Gustavus Adolphus, 
 who, uppou his first landing in Germany (as many then 
 present have testifyed), did himselfe, in person, uppon the 
 shoare, on his knees, give thanks to God for his safe land- 
 ing, and before his soldiers himselfe prayed to God for his 
 blessing upon that undertaking ; and he' would frequently 
 exhort his people out of God's Word ; and God testifyed his 
 great liking thereof by the wonderful successes he was 
 pleased to vouchsafe to that gallant king. 
 
 CHRISTINA, STRUCK BY WHITELOCKE'S PRUDENCE IN A 
 LONG CONFERENCE OF STATE, BECOMETH CONFIDEN- 
 TIAL AT ITS CLOSE. 
 
 Qu. You speake very fully and truly of the interest of 
 the several! princes and states of Europe. I doe extreamly 
 like the bnisnes, and will prepare a memoire of some propo- 
 salls concerning it, and give it to you to send into England ; 
 butt speed, and vigour, and secrecy are requisite heerin. 
 And I must injoyne you to acquainte nobody with this dis- 
 course, butt only your generall Cromwell, whose word I thall 
 relye uppon : butt I would not have this matter made knowne 
 to any other whatsoever ; and I desire you not to speake of 
 it to any of my own ministers, nor of anything else relating 
 to your negotiation, butt what I shall give way unto. 
 
 WH. Madame, I shall faithfully obey your majesty's 
 commaunds, and not reveale any tittle of these matters 
 without your permission. 
 
 Qu. Have you heard in England that I was to marry the 
 King of Scotts ? 
 
 WH. It hath bin reported so in England, and that let- 
 ters have passed between your majesty and him for that 
 purpose ; and that your majesty had a good affection for the 
 King of Scotts. 
 
 Qu. I confesse that letters have past between us; butt 
 this I will assure you, that I will not marry that king : he is 
 a young man, and in a condition sad enough ; though I re- 
 spect him very much, yett 1 shall never marry him, you may 
 be well assured. Butt I shall tell you, under secrecy, that 
 the King of Scotts lately sent a letter to the Prince Palatin, 
 my cousen, and with it the order of a Knight of the Garter 
 to the prince ; butt the messenger had the witt to bring it 
 first to me ; and when I saw it and had read the letter, I 
 threw it into the fire, and would not suffer the George to be 
 delivered to my cousen. 
 
 WHITELOCKE'S DEVICE IN WRITING PRIVATELY TO CROM- 
 WELL ; ALSO HIS DEVICE IN DELIVERING PRESENTS 
 FROM MR. HUGH PETERS TO CHRISTINA. 
 
 WH. I leave with my generall, or with the secretary of 
 the couucell, two glasses of water, which I make : with the 
 
 one of the waters I write my letters, having two like glas- 
 es of waters with myselfe. The letter thus written no man 
 can possibly reade, no more than if it were written with 
 fayre wafer ; butt wash over this letter with the water in 
 the other glasse, and it turns it to blacke, and just as if it 
 had bin written with inke. 
 
 Qu. That is a curious way indeed : and have you of those 
 waters heer ? 
 
 WH. Yes, madame, I make them myselfe, and have left 
 one of them with my generall ; so that no creature can reade 
 his or my letters without them. 
 
 Qu. What huge dogge is this? 
 
 WH. It is an English mastiffe, which I brought with me, 
 and it seems is broke loose and followed ine even to this 
 place. 
 
 Qu. Is he gentle and well conditioned ? 
 
 WH. The more courage they have, the more gentle they 
 are ; this is both. Your majesty may stroake him. 
 
 Qu. I have heard of the fierceness of these dogges.; this 
 is very gentle. 
 
 WH. They are very gentle, unlesse provoked, and of a 
 generous kind ; no creature hath more mettle or faithfull- 
 nesse than they have. 
 
 Qu. Is it your dogge 7 
 
 W,H. I cannot tell ; some of my people told me that one 
 Mr. Peters sent it for a present to the queen. 
 
 Qu. Who is that Mr. Peters? 
 
 WH. A minister, and great servant to the Parlement. 
 
 Qu. That Mr. Peters sent me a letter 1 
 
 WH. He is a great admirer of your majesty ; butt to pre- 
 sume to send a letter, or a dogge, for a present to a queen, 
 / thought above him, and notfitt to be named to your majesty. 
 
 Qu. I have many letters from private persons : his letter 
 and the dogge doe belong to me, and are my goods ; and I will 
 have them. 
 
 WH. Your majesty commands in chiefe, and all ought to 
 obey you, and so will I ; not only as to the letter and dogge, 
 but likewise as to another part of his present, a great Eng- 
 lish cheese of his countrey making. 
 
 Qu. / doe kindly accept them from him ; and see that you 
 send my goods to me. 
 
 WH. I will not fayle to obey your majesty. 
 
 The queen was pleased to take notice herselfe, and to 
 promise to give order for supply, of some accommodations 
 which were heer wanting to Whitelocke and his company ; 
 and so they parted in much drollerye 
 
 CHRISTINA INTERESTS HERSELF IN THE DOMESTIC AF- 
 FAIRS OF CROMWELL PROPHESIETH HIS DESIRE TO 
 BE KINO, SIMPLE LORD-GENERAL AS HE IS AND 
 STARTLETH WHITELOCKE WITH SOME DELICATE QUES- 
 TIONS, AS ALSO WITH A PIECE OF PLAIN SPEAKING 
 
 Qu. Hath your generall a wife and children ? 
 
 WH. He hath a wife and five children. 
 
 Qu. What family were he and his wife of? 
 
 WH. He was of the family of a baron,* and his wife the 
 like from Bourchiers. 
 
 Qu. Of what parts are his children ? 
 
 WH. His two sons and three daughters are ail of good 
 parts and liberal! education. 
 
 Qu. Some unworthy mention and mistakes have been 
 made to me of them. 
 
 WH. Your majesty knows that to be frequent ; butt from 
 me you shall have nothing butt truth. 
 
 Qu. Much of the story of your generall hath some para- 
 lell with that of my ancestor, Gustavus the First, who, from 
 a private gentleman of a noble family, was advanced to the 
 title of Marshall of Sweden, because he had risen up and 
 rescued his country from the bondage and oppression which 
 the King of Denmarke had putt upon them, and expelled 
 that king; and for his reward, he was att last elected King 
 of Sweden ; and / believe that your generall will be King of 
 England in conclusion. 
 
 WH. Pardon me, madame, that cannot be, because Eng- 
 land is resolved into a Commonwealth ; and my generall 
 hath already sufficient power and greatness, as generall of 
 all their forces both by sea and land, which may content 
 him. 
 
 Qu. Resolve what you will, I believe HE resolves to be 
 king ; and hardly can any power or greatness be called suf- 
 ficient, when the nature of man is so prone (as in these 
 dayes) to all ambition. 
 
 WH. I find no such nature in my generall. (!) 
 
 Qu. It may easily be concealed till an opportunity serve , 
 and then it will show itselfe. 
 
 WH. All are mortal! men, subject to affections. 
 
 Qu. How many wives have you had? 
 
 WH. I have had three wives. 
 
 Qu. Have you had children by all of them ? 
 
 WH. Yes, by every one of them. 
 
 This and knighthood were often confused in that da}.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 627 
 
 Qu. Par Dieu, BOUS tstes incorrigible !* 
 
 WK. Madame, I have bin a true servant to your sexe ; 
 nd as it was my duety to be kind to my wives, so I count it 
 niy happiness, and riches, and strength to have many chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Qu. You have done well ; and if children doe prove well, 
 it is no small nor usuall blessing. 
 
 [Much more discourse her majesty moved of private mat- 
 ters, whereby she made experiment if the truth would be 
 told her ; it appearing that the particulars were known to 
 her before, and that she had good intelligence. She was 
 pleased with some earnestness to say], 
 
 Qu. You are hypocrites and dissemblers. 
 
 WH. For myselfe, I can have little of design (especially 
 in your couutrey) to dissemble ; I always hated hypocrisy 
 as a thing unworthy a Christian or a gentleman ; and my 
 generall hath not bin charged with that odious crime. 
 
 Qu. I do not meane either your generall or yourselfe ; 
 butt / thinke that in England there are many who make pro- 
 fession of more holyness than is in them, hoping for advan- 
 tage by it. 
 
 THE WISE OXENSTIKRNE INTERESTED IN CROMWELL. 
 
 At this meeting the chancellor inquired much of White- 
 locke concerning Cromwell's age, health, children, family, 
 temper, <fcc., and sayd that Cromwell was one of the gal- 
 lantest men that this age had brought forth, and the thinges 
 which he had done argued as much courage and wisdome 
 in him as any actions that the world had seen for many 
 years. In which discourse Whitelocke did not omit to doe 
 right to the generall and to the Parlement, and informed the 
 chancellor fully of their courses, actions, councells, and 
 successes. 
 
 MEWS OF CROMWELL'S USURPATION KEA.CHETH 
 STOCKHOLM. 
 
 Qu. Par Dieu, I beare the same respect, and more, to 
 your generall and to you than 1 did before ; and I had rath- 
 er have to doe with one than with many. 
 
 WH. I may very well believe it ; and returne thanks to 
 your majesty for the continuance of your respects to Eng- 
 land, and to my generall, and to his servant ; your majesty 
 understands he hath a new title, butt his power was not 
 meane before. 
 
 Qu. It was very great before, and I thinke it greater 
 now, and therefore better for England, butt subject to envy ; 
 and / tell you, under secrecy, that my chancellor would for- 
 merly have bin so in Sweden when I was young, but could not 
 attaine it; butt if he was my enemy, yell I should say that 
 he is a wise and a gallant man ; and if your generall were 
 the greatest enemy I have, ye.tt I should give him his due, 
 that he is a wise and brave man, and hath done the greatest 
 things of any man alive. I much desire his friendship, and 
 am heartily glad of his present condition. 
 
 CHRISTINA'S OPINION OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND HER 
 WISE ADVICE. 
 
 Qu. Sir, you are welcome still to me ; and, if possible, 
 more than before the change. 
 
 WH. Madame, it is your goodness and favour to a gen- 
 tleman, a stranger in your country, who truly honours your 
 majesty ; and you are pleased to show much respect to my 
 generall. 
 
 Qu. Your generall is a gallant man, and you are fitt to 
 serve any prince in Christendome. 
 
 WH. I may without vanity thinke the better of him, and 
 of myselfe, because of your majesty's judgement. 
 
 Qu. My judgement is, that your affayres in England are 
 much amended, and better established, by this change than 
 before. 
 
 WH. We hope that our God will give us a settlement ; 
 and we have found much of his favour therein already, and 
 doubt not of the continuance thereof to us. 
 
 Qu. Is your new government by a Protector different 
 from what it was before as to monarchy, or is the alteration 
 in all points ? 
 
 WH. The government is to be the same as formerly, by 
 successive representatives of the people in Parlement ; only 
 the Protector is the head or chiefe magistrate of the Com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 Qu. He is a gallant man; and I pray letthim know that 
 no person hath a greater esteem and respect for him than I 
 have. 
 
 WH. I presume, then, that his letters to your majesty 
 will not be unwellcome ? 
 
 Qu. They shall be most wellcome to me. 
 
 WH. I then present these new credentialls to your maj- 
 esty from his highnes my lord-protector. 
 
 * So Charles II. thought, in * ban mot he seems to hare borrowed 
 from the naive Christina. It is related of him that, when the obsenui- 
 ous Whitelocke waited on his majesty at the Restoration to beg his 
 pardon for all he had transacted against him, Charles laughed and said, 
 1 Go, go, good Whitelocke, go and live in the country, and take care 
 of your wife and ona-aud-tlurty children \"Biof. Brit., vii, 4231. 
 
 Qu. What is the reason that the Protector's name ispntt 
 first in the letters? 
 
 WH. The Protector's name, signed by himselfe, is at the 
 bottome of the letter ; and the naming of him first is be- 
 cause he writes to your majesty, and is the constant forme 
 in England used to all other princes and states. 
 
 Qu. If it be used to other princes, I am satisfyed, and ex- 
 pect no other. What is the substance of your new govern- 
 ment ? 
 
 WH. I shall shew your majesty the instrument of our 
 new government, whereof a copy is sent me ; and I shall 
 reade such parts of it to your majesty in French as may 
 satisfy you. 
 
 [Then Whitelocke read unto the queen some parts of the 
 Instrument of Government ; and when he came to the title, 
 she sayd], 
 
 Qu. Why is the title protector, when the power is kingly ? 
 
 WH. I cannot satisfy your majesty of the reasons of this 
 title, being att so great a distance from the inventors of it. 
 
 Qu. Neia titles, with sovereign power, proved prejudiciall 
 to the state of Rome. 
 
 WH. One of your majesty's ancestors was not permitted 
 to keep the title of Marshall of Sweden. 
 
 Qu. He was afterwards king, and that will be next for 
 yo-ur protector. . 
 
 WH. That will not be so consonant to our commonwealth 
 as it was to your crown. 
 
 Qu. It is an honour to our nation that you have looked 
 into the story of it. 
 
 WH. It is the duety of an ambassador to study the history 
 of that crown to which he is imployed. 
 
 Qu. It becomes you well ; butt why is your new govern- 
 ment so severe against the Roman Catholiques ? 
 
 WH. It is not more severe against them than it was for- 
 merly, and in some things lesse. 
 
 Qu. Methinkes that you, who stand so much for liberty, 
 should allow it to them, as well as to others, in a tolleration 
 of them. 
 
 WH. Their principles are held contrary to the peace of 
 the nation, and therefore they are not tollerated the pub- 
 lique exercise of those principles: they hold your majesty's 
 profession and ours to be heretical!, and a forreign power to 
 be above you and above our commonwealth. 
 
 Qu. Those among them who understand themselves are of 
 another opinion, and it is pitty they should be persecuted 
 for their conscience sake. 
 
 WH. We are not for persecution in any point of con- 
 science i butt we expect a submission to the civil magis- 
 trate, and nothing to be done to the disturbance of our 
 peace. 
 
 Qu. That is fitt to be preserved with all care. Is your 
 protector sacred as other kings are ? 
 
 WH. He is not anointed and crowned: those ceremonies 
 were not used to him. 
 
 Qu. His power is the same with that of king, and why 
 should not his title have been the same '.' 
 
 WH. It is the power which makes the title, and not the 
 title the power ; our protector thinkes he hath enough of 
 both. 
 
 Qu. He is hardly a mortall man then ; butt he hath brought 
 his buisnes notably to passe, and hath done great things. 1 
 give you my hand for it that I have a great value for him. 
 
 THE SWEDISH CHANCELLOR OXENSTIERNE DISCUSSETH 
 
 CROMWELL'S USURPATION WITH WHITELOCKE SOME 
 
 HOME TRUTHS EVADED BY THE LAWYEB-AMBASSADOR. 
 
 CHAN. I doe like your settlement the better, because the 
 power of the Protector is limited by your lawe; there re- 
 maines nothing for him now to do butt to gett him a back 
 and breast of steele. 
 
 WH. Without limitation in the power of a chiefe magis- 
 trate, it will be hard to distinguish him from a tyrant ; butt 
 what meaneth my father by a back and breast of steele ? 
 
 CHAN. I meane the confirmation of his being Protector to 
 be made by your Parlement, which will be his best and 
 greatest strength. 
 
 WH. For your farther satisfaction of the settlednes of 
 government, I have caused the writing or instrument agreed 
 uppon in our last change to be translated into Latin, that 
 you may peruse it. 
 
 CHAN. Is the Protector and the people bound to an ob- 
 servation of this instrument? 
 
 WH. This is agreed uppon as to the rule of government, 
 to oblige both the people to obey it, and the Protector to 
 govern according to it. 
 
 CHAN. From whom is this power derived, and given to tht 
 Protector ? and who had power to ordaine it to be binding to 
 the people ? 
 
 WH. The Parlement, then sitting, found the peace of 
 the Commonwealth in danger to be againe disturbed, and 
 the many divisions in the nation hardly to be cured ; they 
 thereupon judged it the best and most expedient way, to 
 prevent the mischiefs threatened, to make choise of a head 
 of the Commonwealth, and the generall to be the fittest and 
 worthiest person for that office and trust ; and therefore-
 
 628 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 they, by a solemn writing, did resigne their power and au- [ 
 thority into the hands of the generall, and desired him to 
 accept of the government as chiefe magistrate, under the j 
 title of Protector; (! !) and to this, the officers and soldiers 
 of the armies and navies, the magistrates of London, the | 
 principal! judges of England, and divers noblemen, gentle- | 
 men, and persons of quality and faithfulnesse to the common 
 interest and peace of the nation, did assent, and were pres- 
 ent in a solemne meeting, where he was sworne to observe 
 this instrument ; and the people generally, by their accla- 
 mations, testifyed their agreement therunto. (! ! !) 
 
 CHAN. This seems to be an election by the sicord, and 
 prevayling party of the nation ; and such precedents in other 
 countryes have proved daungerous and not durable. 
 
 WH. God hath thus ordered it ; and I heare there is a 
 generall acquiescence and submission to it, (.'.') and the su- 
 preame law of salus populi seemed to require this change : 
 and though he were the generall that is chosen to be the 
 head, yett the soldiers were not sole, butt joint actors in this 
 designation. 
 
 CHAN. Such military elections of the Roman emperors, 
 and in other nations, proved fatall to the publique peace and 
 liberty. 
 
 WH. I hope this may prove a means for the conservation 
 of our peace and freedome. 
 
 CHAN. Doe you hold this to be an election, or rather a 
 military imposition, of your chiefe governor? 
 
 WH. It is certainly a very generall agreement of persons 
 in power and authority, and of principall interest in the na- 
 tion, to sett up this government, and therefore may be hoped 
 to continue as firnm as those elections of kings by a few 
 great men only, which was used in yours and the neighbour 
 countryes by the senators. 
 
 CHAN. Those elections by the senators, formerly made, 
 raysed great factions, and occasioned much civill war and 
 misery ; therefore our Bicksdagh judged it necessary to al- 
 ter that course of elections of our kings, and to settle the 
 crown in an hereditary succession, which proves more peace- 
 full and prosperous than those elections. 
 
 WH. This was a great change, yett forreign treatyes 
 were still kept with you. ,1 was borne under hereditary 
 lungs, and do not disprove of that government ; yett I hope 
 our commonwealth, as now constituted, will also nourish, 
 and afford liberty and advantage to the people under it, and 
 be as fixed as any other ; and if you (my noble father) have 
 as good an opinion thereof as I have, our treaty will have 
 the better issue. 
 
 CHAN. The great doubt will be of the permanency ther- 
 of, you being so much subject to changes; and then, how 
 will our treatyes be observed ? 
 
 WH. I suppose that the treatyes which you made with 
 other states in the names of your elective kings doe yett re- 
 maine good, and are observed in the time of your hereditary 
 queen. I come not to treate with you concerning the inter- 
 est of my generall, now Protector, but concerning the in- 
 terest of England, and on the behalfe of the Commonwealth 
 and people of England to treate with the crown of Sweden, 
 and on the behalfe of the people of Sweden; and whether 
 the head of either people be called king or queen, or pro- 
 tector, and the nation be called a commonwealth or a king- 
 dome, yett the people's interest is the same, and of equall 
 force att one time or another. 
 
 CHAN. Son, I am satisfyed with your reasons, and con- 
 vinced that we may safely proceed in a treaty with you. 
 
 CHRISTINA AND HER LADIES AT WHITELOCKE'8 MAY-DAT 
 
 ENTERTAINMENT. 
 
 Her majesty, to expresse her contentment in this colla- 
 tion, was full of pleasantnes and gaity of spirit, both in sup- 
 per-time and afterwards : among other frollickes, she com- 
 manded Whitelocke to teache her ladyes the English salu- 
 tation ; which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, 
 and Whitelocke most readily. 
 
 WHITELOCKE STANDETH UP FOR THE HONOUR OF 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 [The master of the ceremonies came to Whitelocke from 
 the queen, to desire his company this evening att a masque ; 
 and they had this discourse] : 
 
 WH. Present my thankes to her majesty, and tell her I 
 will waite upon her. 
 
 MR. What would your excellence expect in matter of 
 precedence, as in case you should meet with any other am- 
 bassador att the masque ? 
 
 WH. I shall expect that which belongs to me as ambas- 
 sador from the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland ; and I know no other ambassador now in this court 
 besides myselfe, except the ambassador of the King of Den- 
 marke, who I suppose hath no thoughts of precedence be- 
 fore the English ambassador, who is resolved not to give it 
 him if he should expect it. 
 
 MR. Perhaps it may be insisted on, that he of Denmarke 
 is not ambassador to the Protector, a new name, and not 
 tacree. 
 
 WH. Whosoever shall insist on that distinction will be 
 
 mistaken ; and I understand no difference of power between 
 king and protector, or anointed or not anointed ; and am- 
 bassadors are the same publique ministers to a protector or 
 commonwealth, as to a prince or sultan. 
 
 MR. There hath always been a difference observed be- 
 tween the publique ministers of kings aud of common wealths 
 or princes of inferior titles. 
 
 WH. The title of Protector (as to a sovereign title) hath 
 not yett bin determined in the world as to superiority or 
 inferiority to other titles ; butt I am sure that the nation of 
 England hath ever bin determined superior to that of Den- 
 marke. I represent the nations of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland, aud the Protector, who is chiefe of them ; and 
 the honour of these nations ought to be in the same consid- 
 eration now as it hath bin formerly; and I must not suffer 
 any diminution of that honour by my person to please any 
 whatsoever. 
 
 MR. I shall propose an expedient to you, that you may 
 take your places as you come ; he who comes first, the first 
 place, and he who comes last the lower place. 
 
 WH. I shall hardly take a place below the Danish am- 
 bassador, though I come into the roome after him. 
 
 MR. Butt when you come into the roome, and find the 
 Danish ambassador sett, you cannot help it, though he have 
 the upper place. 
 
 WH. I shall endeavour to help it, rather than sit below 
 the Danish ambassador. 
 
 MR. I presume you will not use force in the queen's 
 presence. 
 
 WH. Master, it is impossible for me, if it were in the 
 presence of all the queens and kings in Christendome, to 
 forbeare to use any means to hinder the dishonour of my 
 nation in my person. 
 
 MR. I believe the Danish ambassador would not be so 
 high as you are. 
 
 WH. There is no reason why he should : he knows his 
 nation never pretended to have the precedence of England ; 
 and you, being master of the ceremonies, cannot be ignorant 
 of it. 
 
 MR. I confesse your nation alwayes had the precedence 
 of Denmarke when you were under a king. 
 
 WH. I should never give it from them, though they were 
 under a constable. 
 
 MR. If you insist uppon it, the Danish ambassador must 
 be uninvited againe, for I perceive that you two must not 
 meet. 
 
 WH. I suppose the gentleman would not expect prece- 
 dence of me. 
 
 MR. I can assure you he doth. 
 
 WH. I can assure you he shall never have it, if I can help 
 it; butt I pray, master, tell me whether her majesty takes 
 notice of this question of precedence, or did she wish to con- 
 ferre with me about it ? 
 
 MR. The queen commandeth me to speake with you about 
 it, hoping that the question might be so composed that she 
 might have the company of you both att her intertainment. 
 WH. I shall stay att home rather than interrupt her maj- 
 esty's pleasure, which I should doe by meeting the Danish 
 ambassador, to whom I shall not give precedence, uulesse 
 he be stronger than I. 
 
 MR. The queen makes this masque chiefly for your ex- 
 cellence's intertainment, therefore you must not be absent, 
 butt rather the Danish ambassador must be uninvited ; and 
 I shall presently goe about it. 
 
 [In the evening, according to the invitation from the 
 queen, Whitelocke went to court to the masque, where he 
 did not find the Danish ambassador ; butt some of the court 
 tooke notice of the discourse which had bin between the 
 master of the ceremonies and Whitelocke, touching prece- 
 dence, and they all approved Whitelocke's resolution, and 
 told him that the queen highly commended him for it, and 
 said that he was a stout and faithfull servant to the Protec- 
 tor and to his nation, and that she should love him the bet- 
 er for it ; nor was the contest the lesse pleasing, because 
 with the Dane in Sweden.] 
 
 WHITELOCKE DANCETH WITH CHRISTINA A CURIOUS 
 REMARK AFTERWARD. 
 
 [After they had done dauncing, and Whitelocke had 
 waited uppon the queen to her chayre of state, she sayd to 
 him], 
 
 Qu. ParDieu ! these Hollanders are lying fellows. 
 
 WH. I wonder how the Hollanders should come into your 
 mind uppon such an occasion as this is, who are not usually 
 thought uppon in such solemnities, nor much acquainted 
 with them. 
 
 Qu. 1 will tell you all. The Hollanders reported to me a 
 great while since, that all the noblesse of England nitre of 
 the king's party, and none butt mechanicks of the Parlemenl 
 party, and not a gentleman among them; now I thought to 
 trye you, and to shame you if you could not daunce ; butt 
 I see that you are a gentleman, and have been bred a gen- 
 tleman ; and that makes me say the Hollanders nre lying- 
 fellows, to report that there was not a gentleman of the
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 629 
 
 Parlement's party, when I see by you chiefly, and by many 
 of your company, that you are gentlemen. 
 
 WH. Truely, niadame, in this they told a great untrueth 
 to your majesty, as I believe they have done in several! 
 other particulars ; I doe confesse that the greatest part of 
 our tiul.ility and gentry were of the king's party, butt many 
 of them likewise were of the Parlement's party : and I, who 
 am sent to waite uppon your majesty, can (without vanity) 
 derive to rayselfe an antient pedigree of a gentleman. 
 
 THE CHANCELLOR OXENSTIERNE TRANSMITTETH ADVICE 
 TO CROMWELL BY HIS AMBASSADOR, WHICH THE AM- 
 BASSADOR FORGETTKTH TO DELIVEK. 
 
 CHAN. 1 shall advise you, att your returne home, to putt 
 the Protector in mind of some particulars, which iu my 
 judgement require his speciall care. 
 
 WH. I shall faithfully doe it, and I know they will be re- 
 ceived with much the more regard, comming from you ; and 
 I pray doe me the favour to lett me know them. 
 
 CHAN. I would councell the Protector to take heed of 
 those daungerous opinions, in matters of religion, which 
 dayly increase among you, and, if not prevented and curbed, 
 will cause new troubles; they never resting till themselves 
 may domineer in chiefe. 
 
 WH. Will not the best way to curb them be to slight 
 them, and so they will fall of themselves ? 
 
 CHAN. I doubt they have taken too much roote to fall so 
 easily ; butt if they be not countenanced with preferrements, 
 they will the sooner wither and decay. 
 
 WH. That will surely lessen them. 
 
 CHAN. The Protector must also be carefull to provide 
 money and imployment for his soldiers, else he will hardly 
 keep them in order. 
 
 WH. That is very requisite ; and for money there is good 
 provision already made. 
 
 CHAN. He must likewise be watchfull of the king's par- 
 ty, who will be buisy att worke, especially uppon the new 
 duingc. 
 
 WH. The care thereof is the life of our affayres, and his 
 highnes is most vigilant. 
 
 CHAN. It behoves him to be so, for they that could not 
 vanquish him by armes, will indeavour to doe it by craft, 
 and treachery* of your own party, which you must looke to. 
 
 WH. He hath good intelligence of their plotts. 
 
 CHAN. It will also be prudence in him to lett the people 
 see that he intends not to rule them with an iron scepter, 
 nor to govern them by an arm}', butt to give them such a 
 liberty and injoyment of the benejltt of their lames, that the 
 continuance of his government may become their interest, and 
 that they may have no cause to desire a change ; else, 
 though they mnst beare the yoake for a time, yett as soon 
 as they meet with an opportunity they will shake it off 
 againe. 
 
 WH. This is councell proper to come from such a mind 
 and judgement as yours is, and I shall not fayle to report it 
 to his highnes ; and your excellence hath rightly stated the 
 disposition of my countrymen, who love peace and liberty, 
 and will hardly brooke slavery longer than they are forced 
 to it by necessity ; and the best way to govern them is, to 
 Jett them injoy their lawes and rights, which will rule them 
 better than an iron scepter. 
 
 CHAN. It is the disposition of all generous and free peo- 
 ple, as the English are, whom I truely respect, and him that 
 is their head, that gallant person, the Protector. 
 
 A YOUTHFUL QUEEN, PROSPEROUS AS SHE IS BELOVED, 
 GEOWS TIRED OF STATE AND RESIGNS HER CROWN 
 THE LORD-AMBASSADOR WHITELOCKE's WONDERMENT 
 HE RECOLLECTS THAT CROMWELL ONCE INTENDED 
 TO RETIRE. 
 
 lAfter this discourse, she drew her stoole close to White- 
 locke, and this discourse passed :] 
 
 Qu. I shall surprise you with something which I intend 
 to communicate to you ; butt it must be under secrecy. 
 
 WH. Madame, we, that have bin versed in the affayres 
 of England, doe not use to be surprized with the discourse 
 of a young lady ; whatsoever your majesty shall thinke fitt 
 to impart to me, and commaund to be under secrecy, (hall be 
 faithfully obeyed by me. 
 
 Qu. I have great confidence of your honour and judge- 
 ment, and therefore, though you are a stranger, I shall ac- 
 quaint you with a buisnes of the greatest consequence to 
 me in the world, and which I have not communicated to 
 any creature ; nor would I have you tell any one of it, no, 
 not your generall, till you come to see him ; and in this 
 buisnes I desire your councell. 
 
 WH. Your majesty doth me in this the greatest honour 
 imaginable, and your confidence in me I shall not (through 
 the help of God) deceive in the least measure, nor relate to 
 any person (except my generall) what you shall impart to 
 me ; and wherin your majesty shall judge my councell 
 worthy your receiving, I shall give it you with all sincerity, 
 and according to the best of my poore capacity. 
 
 * lien <ud by tbe chancellor w another word for just discontent 
 
 Qu. Sir, this it is: I have it in my thoughts and resolu- 
 tion to quitt the crowne of Sweden, and to retire myselfe 
 unto a private life, as much more suitable to my content- 
 ment than the great cares and troubles attending uppon the 
 government of my kingdome : and what think you of this 
 resolution ? 
 
 WH. I am sorry to heare your majesty calle it a resolution ; 
 and if any thing would surprise a man, to heare such a res- 
 olution from a lady of your parts, power, and judgement, 
 would doe it ; butt I suppose your majesty is pleased only 
 to drolle with your humble servant. 
 
 Qu. I speake to you the trueth of my intentions ; and had 
 it not bin for your comming hither, which caused me to de- 
 ferre that resolution, probably it might have bill done before 
 this time. 
 
 WH. I beseech your majesty deferre that resolution still, 
 or rather wholly exclude it from your thoughts, as unfitt 
 to receive any intertainment in your royall breast; and 
 give me your pardon if I speake my poore opinion with all 
 duety and plainness to you, since you are pleased to require 
 it : can any reason enter into a mind, so full of reason as 
 yours is, to cause such a resolution from your majesty? 
 
 Qu. I take your plainnes in very good part, and desire 
 you to use freedome with me in this matter. The reasons 
 which conduct me to such a resolution are, because I am a 
 woman, and therefore the more unfitt to govern, and subject 
 to the greater inconveniences ; that the heavy cares of gov- 
 ernment doe outweigh the glories and pleasures of it, and 
 are not to be unbraced in comparison of that contentment 
 which a private retirement brings with it. 
 
 WH. As I am a stranger, I have an advantage to speake 
 the more freely to your majesty, especially in this great 
 buisnes : and as I am one who have bin acquainted with a 
 retired life, I can judge of that; butt as to the cares of a 
 crowne, none butt those that weare it can judge of them ; 
 only this I can say, that the higher your station is, the 
 more opportunity you have of doing service to God, and 
 good to the worlde. 
 
 Qu. I desire that more service to God, and more good to 
 the world may be done, than I, being a woman, am capable 
 to perforate ; and as soon as I can settle some affayres for 
 the good and advantage of my people, I think I may, with- 
 out scandall, quitt myselfe of my continuall cares, and injoy 
 the pleasure of a privacy and retirement. 
 
 WH. Butt, madame, you that injoy the kingdome by right 
 of descent, you that have the full affections and obedience 
 of all sorts of your subjects, why should you be discouraged 
 to continue the reines in your own hands ? How can you 
 forsake those who testify so much love to you and liking of 
 your government ? 
 
 Qu. It is my love to the people which causeth me to 
 thinke of providing a better governor for them than a poor 
 woman can be, and it is somewhat of love to myselfe, to 
 please my own fancy, by my private retirement. 
 
 WH. Madame, God hath called you to this eminent place 
 | and power of queen : doe not act contrary to this call, and 
 disable yourselfe from doing Him service, for which end we 
 are all heer ; and your majesty, as queen, hath farre greater 
 opportunities than you can have as a private person, to bring 
 honour to Him. 
 
 I Qu. If another person who may succeed me have capaci- 
 ty and better opportunity, by reason of his sexe and parts, 
 to doe God and his countrey service than I can have, then 
 my quitting the government and putting it into better hands 
 doth fully answear this objection. 
 
 WH. I confesse my ignorance of better hands than your 
 owne in which the government may be placed. 
 
 Qu. My cousen, the Prince Palatin, is a person of excel- 
 lent parts and abilities for government, besides his valour 
 and knowledge in military affayres : him I have caused to 
 be declared my successor : it was I only that did it. Per- 
 haps you may have heard of the passages between him and 
 me ; butt I am resolved never to marry. It will be much 
 more for the advantage of the people that the crown be on 
 his head than on mine ; none fitter than he for it. 
 
 WH. I doe believe his royall highnes to be a person of 
 exceeding great honour and abilities for government: you 
 have caused him to be declared your successor, and it will 
 be no injury to him to stay his time ; I am sure it may be 
 to your majesty to be perswaded (perhaps designedly) to 
 give up your right to him whilest you live and ought to in- 
 joy it. 
 
 Qu. It is no designe, butt my owne voluntary act, and he 
 being more active and fitt for the government than I am, 
 the sooner he is putt into it the better. 
 
 WH. The better for him indeed. With your majesty's 
 leave, I shall tell you a story of an old English gentleman, 
 who had an active young man to his son, that perswaded 
 the father to give up the management of the estate to the 
 son, who could make greater advantage by it than his father 
 did: he consented, writings were prepared, and friends 
 melt to see the agreement executed to quitt all to the son, 
 reserving only a pension to the father. Whilest this was 
 doing, the father (as is much used) was taking tobacco in 
 the better roome, the parlour, where his rheum caused him
 
 630 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to pitt much, which offended the son ; and because there 
 was much company, he desired his father to take the tobacco 
 in the kitchen, and to spitt there, which he obeyed. All 
 things being ready, the son calls his father to come and 
 aeale the writings : the father sayd his mind was changed : 
 the son wondered att it, and asking the reason, the wise old 
 man said the reason was, because he was resolved to spitt 
 in the parlour as long as he lived ; and so I hope will a wise 
 young lady.(!) 
 
 Qu. Your story is very apt to our purpose, and the appli- 
 cation proper, to keep the crowne uppon my head as long 
 as 1 live : butt to be quitt of it, rather than to keep it, / 
 shall think to be to spitt in Ihe parlour. 
 
 WH. What your majesty likes best is best to you ; butt 
 doe you not thinke that Charles V. had as great hopes of 
 contentment by his abdication as your majesty hath, and 
 yett repented it the same day he did it. 
 
 Qu. That was by reason of his son's unworthines ; butt 
 many other princes have happily, and with all contentment, 
 retired themselves to a private condition ; and I am confi- 
 dent that my cousen, the prince, will see that I shall be j 
 duely paid what I reserve for my owne maintenance. 
 
 WH. Madame, left me humbly advise you, if any such 
 thing should be (as I hope it will not), to reserve that coun- 
 trey in your possession out of which your reserved revenue 
 shall be issued ; for when money is to be paid out of a 
 prince's treasury, it is not alwayes ready and certaine. 
 
 Qu. The Prince Palatin is full of justice and honour : butt 
 I like your counsel! well, and shall follow it, and advise fur- 
 ther with you in it. 
 
 WH. Madame, I shall be alwayes ready to serve yon in 
 any of your commaunds, butt more unwillingly in this than 
 any other. Suppose, madame (as the worst must be cast), 
 that by some exigencyes or troubles, your lessened revenue 
 should not be answered and payd, to supply your own oc- 
 casions ; you that have bin mistris of the whole revenue of 
 this crowne, and of so noble and bountiful! a heart as you 
 have, how can you beare the abridging of it, or, it may be, 
 the necessary supplyes for yourselfe and servants to be 
 wanting to your quality ? 
 
 Qu. In case of such exigencyes, notwithstanding my 
 quality, I am content myselfe with very little ; and for ser- 
 vants, with a lacquey and a chambermaid. 
 
 WH. This is good philosophy, butt hard to practice. Give 
 me leave, madame, to make another objection : you now are 
 queen and sovereigne lady of all the nations subject to your 
 crowne and person, whose word the stoutest and greatest 
 among them doe obey, and strive to cringe to you : butt 
 when you shall hare divested yourselfe of all power, the 
 same persons who now fawue nppon you will be then apt 
 to putt affronts and scornes uppon you ; and how can your 
 generous and royall spirit bronke them, and to be despised 
 by those whom you have raysed and so much obliged ? 
 
 Qu. 1 looke uppon such thinges as these as the course of 
 this world, and shall expect such scornes, and be prepared 
 to contemne them. 
 
 WH. These answears are strong arguments of yonr ex- 
 cellent temper and fitnes to continue in your power and 
 government ; and such resolutions will advance your majes- 
 ty above any earthly crowne. Such a spirit as this showes ' 
 how much you are above other women, and most men in 
 the world, and, as such a woman, you have the more ad- 
 vantage for government ; and without disparagement to the 
 prince, not inferior to him, or any other man, to have the 
 trust of it. 
 
 Qu. What opinion have they in England of the Prince 
 Falatin ! 
 
 WH. They have a very honourable opinion of him, butt 
 have not heard so much of him as of your majesty, of whom 
 is great discourse, full of respect and honour to your person 
 and to your government, 
 
 Qu. I hope I shall testify my respects to your common- 
 wealth in the buisnes of the treaty between us, and that it 
 shall be brought to a good issue, and give satisfaction to us 
 both. 
 
 WH. That doth wholly rest in your majesty's power, to 
 whom I hope to have the favour to offer my reasons in any 
 points wherein there is a difference of opinion between your 
 chancellor and me ; and I shall much depend uppon your 
 majesty's judgement and good inclinations to my superiors. 
 
 Qu. 1 shall not be wanting in my expressions thereof, and 
 doe hope that the Protector will afford me his assistance for 
 the gaining of a good occasion and place for my intended 
 retirement. 
 
 WH. You will find his highnes full of civility and re- 
 spects and readines to serve your majesty. 
 
 Qu. I shall never desire any thing but what may stand 
 with the good of both nations ; and what doe you judge the 
 best means to procure free navigation through the Sundt ? 
 
 WH. I know no other means butt force, the King of Den- 
 marke denying it. 
 
 Qu. That is the way indeed ; butt what shall then be 
 done with the castles uppon the Sundt, and the King of 
 Denmarke's land there ? 
 WH. If it shall please God to give a blessing to the do- 
 
 signe, the castles must either be razed, or they and 1 tn* 
 island putt into good hands, such as both may trust. 
 
 Qu. That is to the purpose; but doe you thinke that 
 England will assist to that end 1 
 
 WH. 1 thinke they will, uppon such reasonable condi- 
 tions as shall be accorded ; butt, in such actions, ^peedy 
 and vigorous prosecution is necessary. The spring' should 
 not be lost, against which time preparations are to be made, 
 and your majesty must be pleased to give me your proposals 
 for that buisnes ; nor is the present treaty uppon my arti- 
 cles to be delayed, they being the foundation of the whole 
 designe. 
 
 Qu. You may assure yourselfe that the alliance between 
 the two nations is as good as concluded, and will be done ; 
 and I will give you iny proposals concerning the Sundt: 
 and if Zeland could be taken from the Dane, and the Pro- 
 tector agree to my living there, it should be the place of 
 my retirement ; I would quitt the crowue of Sweden and re- 
 tire there. 
 
 WH Your majesty wonld have the worst part of the bar- 
 gain ; I hope you would then bestow uppon your servant 
 the commaund of one of the castles there. 
 
 Qu. With all my heart ; butt I believe you doe butt 
 drolle. I will promise you more, that if this buisnes bo 
 brought to effect, I shall be willing, if England will con- 
 sent to it, that you shall have the commaund of nil the isl- 
 and, and of all such Swedish and English forces as shall be 
 placed there ; and I should not be willing to pott that trust 
 into the hand of any other stranger whatsoever, so much 
 confidence I have of your worth and honour. 
 
 WH. Your majesty is pleased to putt an exceeding great 
 obligation uppun me, and I hope (by the assistance of God) 
 I should approve my faithfullness in any trust reposed in 
 me. I believe my lord- protector would as soon putt this 
 great trust in me as in any other of his servants, and I shall 
 acquaint his highnes with what your majesty mentions. 
 
 Qu. I pray Ooe soe ; and I shall give you my proposals. 
 
 WH. This discourse putts me in mind of a passage uf my 
 general) before I came out of England : he told me he had a 
 mind to quitt his charge, and presently followed an addition 
 of honour to him : the like may be to your majesty, though 
 not in title, yet in good successes. 
 
 Qu. All the addition I desire is to be lesse than I am, by 
 a private retirement. 
 WHITELOCKE RETURNED HE RECOUNTS TO CROMWELL, 
 
 LORD-PROTECTOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH, THE AD- 
 VENTURES OF HIS EMBASSY TO CHISIST1NA- THE LORD- 
 
 PROTECTOB'S REMARKS THEREON. 
 
 [Whitelocke came to Whitehall about nine o'clock this 
 morning,* where he visited Mr. Secretary Thurloe, who 
 brought him to the Protector ; and he received Whitelocke 
 with great demonstration of affection, and carryed him into 
 his cabbinett, where they were together about an hower, 
 and had this among other discourses :] 
 
 PRO. How have you enjoyed yonr health in your long 
 journey, both by sea and land ; and how could you indure 
 those hardships you were putt unto in that barren and cold 
 countrey ? 
 
 WH. Indeed, sir, I have injured many hardships for an 
 old crazy carcas as mine is ; butt God was pleased to shew 
 much mercy to me in my support under them, and vouch- 
 safing me competent health and strength to indure them. 
 
 PRO. I have heard of yourquarters and lodging in strawe, 
 and of your diett in your journey : we were nut so hardly 
 nor so often putt to it in our service in the army. 
 
 WH. Both my company and myselfe did cheerfully in- 
 dure all our hardships and wants, being in the service of 
 our God and of our countrey. 
 
 PRO. That was also our support in OUT hardships in the 
 army ; and it is the best support ; indeed it is : and you 
 found it so in the very great preservations you have had 
 from daungers. 
 
 WH. Your highnes hath had great experience of the 
 goodnes of God lo you ; and the same hand hath appeared 
 wonderfully in the preservation of my company and my- 
 self from many imminent and great daungers both by sea 
 and land. 
 
 PRO. The greatest of all others, I heare, was in your re- 
 turn home uppon our coast. 
 
 WH. That indeed, sir, was very miraculous. 
 
 PRO. I am flail to see you safe and well after it. 
 
 WH. I have cause to blesse God with all thankefulnes for 
 it as long as I live. 
 
 PRO. 1 pray, my lord, tell me the particulars of that great 
 deliverance. 
 
 [Theruppon Whitelocke gave a particular account of the 
 passages of that wonderfull preservation : then the Pro* 
 lector said], 
 
 PRO. Really these passages are full of wonder and mercy; 
 and I have cause to join with you in acknowledgement of 
 the goodnes of the Lord hesrin. 
 
 WH. Your highnes testifyes a true senee thereof, and 
 your favour to your servant. 
 
 Monday, July llio 3d, 1654.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 631 
 
 PKO. I hope I shall never forgett the one or the other ; 
 indeed, I hope I shall not: butt, [ pray, tell me, is the 
 queen a lady of such rare parts as is reported of her? 
 
 WH. Truely, sir, she is a lady excellently qualified, of 
 rare abilities of mind, perfect in many languages, and most 
 sorts of learning, especially history, and, beyond compare 
 with any person whom I have knowne, understanding the 
 affayres and interest of all the states and princes of Chris- 
 tendonie. 
 
 PRO. That is very much : butt what are her principles 
 in matters of religion ? 
 
 WH. They are not such as I could wish they were ; they 
 are too much inclined to the manner of that countrey, and 
 to some perswasions from men not well inclined to those 
 matters, who have had too much power with her. 
 
 PRO. That is a great deale of pitty ; indeed, I have heard 
 of some passages of her, not well relishing with those that 
 feare God ; and this is too general! an evill among those 
 people, who are not so well principled in matters of religion 
 as were to be wished. 
 
 WH. That is too true ; butt many sober men and good 
 Christians among them doe hope, that in time there may be 
 a reformation of those things ; and I took the boldnes to 
 putt the queen and the present king in mind of the duety 
 incumbent uppon them in that buisnes ; and this I did with 
 becoming freedome, and it was well taken. 
 
 PRO. 1 thinke you did very well to informe them of that 
 great duety, which now lyes uppon the king; and did he 
 give care to it? 
 
 WH. Yes, truely, sir, and told me that he did acknowl- 
 edge it to be his duely, which he resolved to pursue as op- 
 portunity could be had of it ; butt he said, it must be done 
 by degrees with a boisterous people, so long accustomed to 
 the contrary ; and the like answear I had from the Arch- 
 bishop of Ubsale, and from the chancellor, when I spake to 
 them uppou the same subject, which I did plainly. 
 
 PRO. 1 am glad you did so. Is the archbishop a man of 
 good abilities? 
 
 WH. He is a very reverend person, learned, and seems 
 yery pious. 
 
 PRO. The chancellor is the great wise man 1 
 
 WH. He is the wisest man that ever I conversed with 
 ABROADE, (!) and his abilities are fully answerable to the 
 report of him. 
 
 PRO. What cnaracter do you give of the present king ? 
 
 WH. I had the honour divers times to be with his majesty, 
 who did that extraordinary honour to me as to visit me att 
 my house : he is a person of great worth, honour, and abil- 
 ities, and not inferior to any in courage and military con- 
 duct. 
 
 PRO. That was an exceeding high favour to come to you 
 in person. 
 
 WH. He never did the lixe to any publique minister; 
 butt this, and all other honour done to me, was butt to testi- 
 fy their respects to your highnes, the which, indeed, was 
 very great, both there and where I past in Germany. 
 
 PRO. I am obliged to them for their very great civility. 
 
 WH. Both the queen, and the king, and his brother, and 
 the archbishop, and the chancellor, and most of the gran- 
 dees, gave testimony of very great respect to your highnes, 
 and that not only by their words, butt by their actions like- 
 wise. 
 
 PRO. I shall be ready to acknowledge their respects uppon 
 any occasion. 
 
 WH. The like respects were testifyed to your highnes in 
 Germany, especially by the town of Hambourgh, where I in- 
 deavoured, in your highnes's name, to conh'rme the privi- 
 ledges of the English merchants, who, with your resident 
 there, showed much kindness to me and my company. 
 
 PRO. I shall heartily thanke them for it. Is the court of 
 Sweden gallant and full of resort to it 7 
 
 WH. They are extreame gallant for their r.loathes ; and 
 for company, most of the nobility, and the civill and military 
 officers, make their constant residence where the court is, 
 and many repayre thither on fill occasions. 
 
 PRO. /* their administration of justice speedy and have 
 they many law-suits? 
 
 WH. They have justice in a speedier way than with us, 
 butt more arbitrary, and fewer causes, in regard that the 
 boores dare not contend with their lords, and they have butt 
 fevi contracts, because they have butt little trade ; and there 
 ir smalle use of conveyances or questions of titles, because 
 tne law distributes every man's estate after his death among 
 his children, which they cannot alter, and therefore have 
 the fewer contentions. 
 
 PRO. That is like our gavel-kind. 
 
 WH. It is the same thing ; and in many perticulars of 
 our lawes, in cases of private right and of the publique 
 government (especially in their Parlements), there is a 
 strange resemblance between their law and ours. 
 
 PRO. Perhaps ours might, some of them, be brought from 
 thence ? 
 
 WH. Doubtless they were, when the Goths and Saxons, 
 and those northerne people, planted themselves heer 
 
 PRO. You met with a barren countrey, and very coldo ? 
 
 WH. The remoter parts of it from the court are extream* 
 barren ; butt alt Stockholme and Upsale, and most of the 
 great townes, they have store of provisions : butt fatt beef* 
 and mutton in the winter time is not so plentiful! with them 
 as in the countryes more southerly ; and their hott weather 
 in summer as much exceeds ours, as their colde doth in 
 winter. 
 
 PRO. That is somewhat troublesome to indure ; butt hovr 
 could you passe over their very long winter nights ? 
 
 WH. I kept my people together, and in action and recrea- 
 tion ; by having musick in my house, and incovraging that 
 and the exercise of dauncing, which held them by the ears 
 and eyes, and gave them diversion without any offence. 
 And I caused the gentlemen to have disputations in Latin, 
 and declamations upon words which I gave them. 
 
 PRO. Those were very good diversions, and made your 
 house a little academy. 
 
 WH. I thought these little recreations better than gaming 
 for money, or going forth to places of debauchery. 
 
 PRO. It was much better ; and I am glad you had so good 
 an issue of your treaty. 
 
 WH. I blesse God for it, and shall be ready to give your 
 highnes a particular account of it when you shall appoint a 
 time for it. 
 
 PRO. I thinke that Thursday next, in the morning, will 
 be a good time for you to come to the councell, and to make 
 your report of the transactions of your negotiations ; and 
 you and I must have many discourses upon these argu- 
 ments. 
 
 WH. I shall attend your highnes and the councell. 
 
 The treaty thus successfully concluded by Whitelocke is 
 matter of history, and.will find mention in the notice of the 
 Protectorate. It was a treaty of commerce between the two 
 countries, and a prohibition of protection and favour to the 
 enemies of either. 
 
 It is pleasant to be able to close these interesting scenes 
 with a happy piece of gallantry on the part of Cromwell. 
 Soon after VVhitelocke's return, he sent over his portrait to 
 Queen Christina, inscribed with a Latin epigram, fur which, 
 the hand of Milton had been right cheerfully employed, and 
 which ran to this effect. " Virgin, powerful in war, queea 
 ot the frozen north, bright star of the pole, you see what 
 furrows the toils of the field have traced in my brow, while, 
 already old in appearance, I still retain the energies of a 
 soldier, and pursue the untried paths of fate, executing the 
 heroic behests of that country with whose welfare I am in- 
 trusted. Yet to you I willingly smooth the sternness of my 
 feature ; nor shall the royal Christina find that I at all 
 times regard the possessor of a throne with severity."* 
 
 This portrait, I should add, was seen a century afterward 
 at the court of Stockholm by one of the ambassadors to that 
 court, Isaac Le Heup, Esq., who described it to several 
 gentlemen in this country. It was by Walker, and repre- 
 sented Cromwell in his warrior garb, but (in delicate com- 
 pliment to Christina) with a double gold chain (her gift) 
 hanging down his neck to his breast, and pendent from it 
 three crowns, with, below them, a white pearl. These 
 were the arms of Sweden, which, with the gold chain, and 
 a private missive from Christina, imagined in her wildest 
 and most fantastic humour, were said to have rapidly fol- 
 lowed Whitelocke to England. The missive was to the ef- 
 fect that, supposing a marriage practicable, she should not 
 hesitate, in Cromwell's favour, to forego her objections to 
 the drudgery of it, since she thought it possible that be- 
 tween them they might get a race of Alexanders. Our no- 
 tices of Cromwell and Christina may not inaptly dose with, 
 this characteristic incident, which the grave reader will 
 not indignantly reject altogether as a piece of wild romance, 
 until he shall have read the following extract of a " letter 
 of intelligence" from one .of Thurloe's most trustworthy 
 spies stationed at the Hague, and who thus conveys what 
 was the gossip of almost every court at the time : 
 
 " Voiis doubles, si la Hollande soil cordialeinent enclin6 
 a la paix ; mais icy on a plus de sujet de doubter, si leg 
 
 * The original runs thus: 
 
 " Bellipotens virgo, septem regina trionum, 
 Christina, Arctoi fucida Stella poli! 
 
 . laide rugao, 
 
 u ujue f-eucA, m uiis impiger, ora tero : 
 Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor 
 
 As 
 
 Exequor et populi fortta jussa manu. 
 t tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra; 
 Nee aunt hi vultus regibus usque truces." 
 Of which, should the reader desire to see an indifferent poetical traat- 
 latioti, be bas it from Toland : 
 
 " Bright martial maid, queen of the frozen zone! 
 The northern pole supports thy shining throne : 
 Behold what furrows age and steel can plow ; 
 The hHmet's weight onpress'd thi wrinkled brow. 
 Through fate's untrodden paths I move; my band* 
 Still act my freeborn people's bold commands: 
 Yet this stern shade to you submits his frowns; 
 Hor are these looks always severe to crowm. 1 *
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Cromwell 
 
 Anglois ou 130 soyent ventablement enclins a la paix. Les 
 Orange party Royalists Cromwell 
 
 145 and 146 icy soustiennent fort et ferme, que 130 af- 
 
 Scotland 
 
 fecte le droit de 138. L'on en raille, disant que 1'effigie de 
 Queen of Sweden Cromwell 
 
 141 pend en sa cbambre : que la femme de 130 eu soil ja- 
 
 Cromwell 
 loux auroit dit 130 voudroit bien, que je fusse morte; cars 
 
 Queen of Sweden, 
 alors aussy tost il espousera cette 141." 
 
 A Neit Ballad to the Tune of Cock-LorreU. 
 WILL you hear a strange thing ne'er heard of before, 
 
 A ballad without any lies : 
 A Parliament that is turn'd out of door, 
 
 And a council of state likewise 1 
 Brave Oliver came to the House like a sprite, 
 
 His fiery look struck the speaker dumb : 
 " You must be gone hence," quoth he ; " by this light, 
 
 Do y' intend to sit here till doomsday come ?" 
 With that the speaker look'd pale for fear, 
 
 As if he had been with the nightmare rid, 
 In so much that some did think that were there 
 
 That he ev'n did as the alderman did. 
 But Oliver, though he be doctor of law, 
 
 Yet seem'd to play the physician here, 
 Whose physic so wrought in the speaker's maw, 
 
 That it gave him a stool instead of his chair. 
 Sir Arthur thought Oliver wond'rous bold, 
 
 I mean that knight that was one of the five, 
 For he was loth to lose his freehold ; 
 
 But needs must he go whom the devil doth drive. 
 And gone he is for the north country, 
 
 In hope thereabout to make some stir ; 
 But in the mean time pray take it from me, 
 
 Brave Arthur must yield to brave Oliver. 
 Harry Martin wonder'd to see such a thing 
 
 Done by a knight of such high degree, 
 An art which he couldn't expect from a king, 
 
 Much less from such a John Dorie as he. 
 But Oliver, laying his hand on his sword, 
 
 Upbraided him with his adultery. 
 Then Martin gave him never a word, 
 
 But humbly thank'd his majesty. 
 Allen the coppersmith was in great fear, 
 
 He did us much harm since the war begun, 
 A broken cit was he many a year, 
 
 And now he's a broken Parliament-man. 
 Bold Oliver told him what he had been, 
 
 And him a cheating knave did call. 
 Which put him into a fit of the spleen, 
 
 For now he must give an account for all. 
 It went to the heart of Sir Harry Vane 
 
 To think what a terrible fall he should have, 
 For he that did once in the Parliament reign 
 
 Was call'd, as I hear, a dissembling knave. 
 Bradshaw, that president, bold as a pope, 
 
 Who loves upon kings and princes to trample ; 
 Now the House is dissolved, I cannot but hope 
 
 To see such a president made an example. 
 Now room for the speaker without the mace, 
 
 And room for the rest of the rabble rout : 
 My masters, methinks it's a pitiful case, 
 
 Like the snuff of a candle thus to go out. 
 Some like this change, and some like it not ; 
 
 For they say they are sure it was done in due season : 
 Some say it was the Jesuits' plot, 
 
 Because it resembled the gunpowder treason. 
 Some think that Cromwell with Charles is agreed, 
 
 And say 'twere good policy if it were so, 
 Lest the Hollander, French, the Dane, and the Swede, 
 
 Do bring him in whether he will or no.. 
 And now I would gladly conclude my song 
 
 With a prayer, as ballads are wont to do ; 
 But yet I'll forbear, for I think, ere 't be long, 
 
 We may have a king and a Parliament too. 
 July 13, 1653. 
 
 G. 
 
 A Sketch of the Civil Wars to the Protectorate of Richard 
 Cromwell, in a Letter from Maidstone, of Oliver's House- 
 hold, to John Winthrop, Esq., Governor of the Colony of 
 Connecticut in New-England. 
 SIR, YOUK kinde remembrance of mee in Mr. Hooke's 
 
 letter covered mee with noe small shame, that I have neg- 
 
 lected a person of soe signal worth, as all reportes I meet 
 with present you in, especially wlien it is attended with 
 the consideration of the obligations your father's memorie 
 hath left upon me. 
 
 Yet may I not be soe injurious to myselfe as to acknowl- 
 edge that the long omission of writing to you proceeded 
 from forgetfulnesse. The frequent discourse I have made 
 of yourselfe and honoured father have created testimony 
 sufficient to vindicate mee from such ingratitude. But the 
 perpetual hurry of distressing affaires, wherein for some 
 yeares I have been exercised, deprived mee of gaining a fit 
 opportunity of conveying letters. And this is briefly and 
 truely the cause of soe long an intermission. Fur mee now 
 to present you with a relation of the unheard-of dealing of 
 God towardes his people in thes nations, is not my designe ; 
 partly because I believe you have heard much of it, but 
 principally because such a worke would better become a 
 voluminous chronicle than a short epistle. For it would 
 weary the winge of an eagle to measure out the wayes 
 wherein God hath walked, with all the turnings and iu- 
 tricacys that are found in them. The quarrel, at first com- 
 menced betwixt king and Parliament, was grounded upon 
 a civil foundation : the king accusing them of invading his 
 prerogative, and the House charging him with the breach 
 of their priviledges, and consequently the invassalaging the 
 people represented by them. When this argument had for 
 some time been agitated by as hot and bloody a war as this 
 latter age hath seen, it fell at last to be managed (on the 
 Parliament side) by instruments religiously principled, in 
 whose hand it received so many evident testimonies of God's 
 extraordinary presence and conduct, that in conclusion a 
 period was put to it, the king made a prisoner, and all his 
 expectation of rescue utterly defeated and cut off. While 
 the matter stood in this posture, great debates, solicitous 
 consultations and cabals are held, in order to settlement ; 
 for thes transactions (according to the constant product of 
 all such things) had created factions and divisions betwixt 
 persons of equal worth in point of parts, and (as themselves 
 thought) of ballancing merit, to receive the reward of soe 
 great and hazardous an undertaking as they had gone 
 thorow. The parties instantly divyded themselves (or 
 rather did appeare divyded, for they h;id been soe before) 
 under the heades of Presbitery and Independency. The 
 former had the advantage in number, the ministry gener- 
 ally adhereing to them ; the latter in having been the active 
 instrument by whose valour and conduct the king was 
 brought from a pallace to a prison, and thereby were pos- 
 sest of the militarie power of the nation ; by helpe whereof, 
 and having many friendes in the House of Commons against 
 the minde of the major part, they first secluded them, and 
 then set aside the House of Lords ; and by a co-operation 
 with the House of Commons then sitting (whom they owned 
 as the supreame power of the nation), the king was brought 
 to tryall before an high court of justice (consisting of mem- 
 bers of Parliament, officers of the army, and others), and 
 proceeded against to execution. 
 
 This art was highly displeasing to many, who with equal 
 zeal and forwardness had assisted in the war, insomuch 
 that the difference which the king's party put between 
 them that fought with him and thos that take away his life, 
 they exprest in this proverb: that the Presbiterians held 
 him by the hayr, till Independants cut off his head. Yet 
 have the former struggled hard ever since to doe something 
 that might render them under a better character as to their 
 covenant and loyalty to the king. The peace of the nation 
 being thus settled, and the king's family and offspring de- 
 parted into forreign places, his eldest son, the Prince of 
 Wales, travelled into the Netherlands, where (after somn 
 short time) application was made to him by the most sere- 
 ous and prudent party of Scotland (amongst whom 1 know 
 some to be as choyce men as most I have been acquainted 
 with for wisedome and true holynesse, for soe it becomes 
 mee to judge), who presented to him the consideration of 
 the stupendous judgments of God upon him and his father's 
 house, and prest upon him the sence of it, endeavouring to 
 reduce him to Scotland, in order to restore him to his do- 
 minions, upon hope that he might be instrumental to hon- 
 our God, and re-establish publique peace. To this he gave 
 very fayre returns, and in a short time shipt himself for 
 Scotland, and arrived there, where he was honourably en- 
 tertained by that which is called the Kirk party, and is, 
 indeed, the religious party of that nation: by them he was 
 crowned King of Scotland, and soe brought into a capacity 
 of action. 
 
 The Kirk party had now the command of him and the 
 nation ; but another party had a greater roome in his heart, 
 having been constant to his father when the other had 
 raysed war against him. Thes divyded under two heades, 
 called Resolutioners and Protesters. 
 
 The Parliament of England by this time grew awakened, 
 foreseeing that this whole action was calculated to the per- 
 fect capacity of Scotland, imposing a king upon England, 
 of which they were evinced by more than probahle argu- 
 ments ; to obviat which they resolve to send a potent army, 
 under the command of General Cromwell (the Lord Fair-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 633 
 
 fax refusing that service, upon the influence of Presbiterians, 
 as was sayd), that Scotland might be rendered the seat of 
 war, and soe made less able to annoy England. This accord- 
 ingly was done ; an invasion made from England ; Scotland 
 put into armes to resist it, whereby they wearied and wasted 
 the English army, and forced it (in a miserable condition) 
 to retreat for England, had they not, at Dunbar, out of pure 
 necessity, inforced an ingagement to their own destruction ; 
 for the defeat then given to the Scotch army was as signal 
 as any thing in the whole war. The advantage of number 
 and men fit for fight was very great, but that which is most 
 observable is the quality of the persons ; for Presbiterie be- 
 ing the golden ball that day, I am credibly informed that 
 thousands lost their lives for it (after many meetings, de- 
 bates, and appeales to God betwixt our English officers and 
 them), of as holy, praying people as this island or the world 
 affoardes. 
 
 The Lord-general Cromwell was a person of too great ac- 
 tivity and sagacity to lose the advantage of such a victory, 
 and therefore marcht his army to Edenburgh, and possest 
 himselfe of that place, lay'd siege to the strong castle in it, 
 and distrest it till it submitted, being soe situated as not to 
 be enter'd by onslaught, nor undermined, by reason of the 
 rocke on which it is built. There he spent the winter, but 
 was not idle, for in that time many strong places became 
 subject to him : by this means the young king had opportu- 
 nity to fall in with his beloved party called the Resolution- 
 ers. His interest likewise wrought here in England, caried 
 on by the Presbiterian party ; and in this quarrel, honest 
 Mr. Love, who doubtless was a godly man, though indis- 
 creet, lost his heade, and many of his brethren were iu- 
 dangered, being deteined prisoners till General Cromwell 
 came home and procured their release. But before that, 
 his continuance in Scotland was a time of great action, 
 wherein he soe distressed the king, as he inforced him to 
 march with all the force he could make for England ; but 
 being close pursued by the English horse, under the com- 
 mand of General Lambert (a prudent, valiant commander, 
 and a man of gallant conduct), and resisted by force raysed 
 in England, he was compelled to make a halt at Worcester 
 city, till the lord-general, with a body of the army, ad- 
 vanced thither, and after a short time totally defeated his 
 army, himselfe escaping very hardly, and afterwardes (with 
 great difficulty) conveyed himselfe beyond the seas. The 
 idea of the stocke of honour which General Cromwell came 
 invested with to London, after this crowning victorie (su- 
 peradded to what God had before cloathed him with, not 
 onely by his achievements in England, but those in Scot- 
 land, which 1 pretermitted, because, being grounded on 
 thos barbarous massacres, the habitable world sounded with 
 the noise of them), will in my silence present itself to your 
 imagination. He had not long continued here before it was 
 strongly imprest upon him by tbos to whom he had no rea- 
 son to be utterly incredulous, and strengthened by his own 
 observation, that the persons then called the Parliament of 
 the Commonwealth of England, as from whom he had de- 
 rived his authority, and by virtue whereof he had fought 
 soe many holy men in Scotland into their graves, were not 
 such as were spirited to carry the good interest to an end, 
 wherein he and they had jeopardied all that was of concern 
 to them in this world ; and I wish cordially that there had 
 not been too great a ground for thos allegations. The re- 
 Kult of them, after many debates betwixt the members then 
 sitting and the general, with some who joyued with him, 
 was the dissolution of that Parliament by a military force, 
 since called by a softer word, interruption. Great dissatis- 
 faction sprung from this action, and such as is not yet for- 
 gotten amongst good men ; for let the reasons and end be , 
 never so good upon which the general acted this part, yet, | 
 say they, 'twas high breach of trust in him to overthrow 
 that authority, in defence of winch God had appeared, and 
 made him soe significant an instrument ; yet factum valet, 
 say others, who were not well satisfyed neither ; and now 
 care is used to settle fluctuating Britain. 
 
 In order to which, the lord-general, by his authority 
 (which was but military), summons one hundred persons 
 out of all parts of the nation (with competent indifferency 
 and equalety) to represent the nation, and invests them with 
 legislative authority. They meet and accept it, assume the 
 title of Parliament, and sit in the House of Commons, and 
 inact sundry lawes ; but in a short time made it appear to 
 all considering and unprejudiced men that they were huic 
 negotio impares, non iA>slante their godlinesse ; of which 
 the mure judicious of them being sensible, contrived the 
 niatter soe as to dissolve themselves by an act of their owne, 
 and resolve their authority, whence they first derived it, 
 upon the general. It was not long before he was advised 
 to assume the government of this nation in his single capa- 
 city, limited with such restrictions as were drawne up in 
 an instrument of government framed to that purpose. This 
 he accepted of, and (being by it with due ceremonie in 
 Westminster Hall inaugurated) he assumed it accordingly. 
 According to one of the articles in it, he summoned a House 
 of Commons at Westminster the September following, of 
 which House I had the honour to be a member. The House. 
 4L 
 
 consisting of many disobliged persons [some upon the king's 
 account, and others upon a pretence of right to sit upon the 
 former foundation, as not being legally, though forceably 
 dissolved ; and others judging that the powers given by the 
 instrument of government to the Protector were too large, 
 professing- that though they were willing to trust him, yet 
 they would not trust his successors with soe large a juris- 
 diction], fell into high animosities, and after five months 
 spent in framing another instrument instead of the former 
 [which they sayd they could not swallow without chewing], 
 they were by the Protector dissolved. 
 
 This was ungrateful! to English spirits, who deify their 
 representatives; but the Protector's parts and interest en- 
 abled him to stemme this tyde. Yet the weight of govern- 
 ment incumbing too heavily upon him, before many years 
 passed he summoned another Parliament, and his experience 
 guided him to concur with them in a new instrument to 
 governe by. In it they would have changed his title, and 
 made him king, and I thinke he had closed with them in it, 
 not out of lust to that title [I am persuaded], but out of an 
 apprehension that it would have secured [in a better way] 
 the nation's settlement ; but the party to whom the Pro- 
 tector ever professed to owe himself [being the generallity 
 of his standing friends] rose so high in opposition to it [by- 
 reason of the scandal that thereby would fall upon his per- 
 son and profession], as it diverted him, and occasioned him 
 to take investiture in his government, though from them, yet 
 under his former title of Protector. 
 
 As in former cases, this found acceptance with many, but 
 was dissatisfactory to a greater number. 
 
 The instrument of government made in this Parliament, 
 and to which the Protector tooke his oath, was called the 
 humble Petition and Advice. 
 
 In it provision was made for another House of Parliament 
 instead of the old Lords, that this might be 2. screen or bal- 
 lance betwixt the Protector and Commons, as the former 
 Lords had been betwixt the king and them. 
 
 Thes to consist of seventy persons, all at first to be norm 
 nated by the Protector, and after as any one dyed, a new 
 one to be nominated by him and his successors, and assented 
 to by themselves, or without that consent not to sit : twenty 
 of them was a quorum. It was noe small taske for the Pro- 
 tector to finde idoneous men for this place, because the fu- 
 ture security of the honest interest seemed [under God] to 
 be layd up in them ; for by a mortal generation [if they were 
 well chosen at first], like foundationals in the gathering of 
 a church, they would propagate their owne kinde when the 
 single person could not, and the Commons [who represented 
 the nation] would not, having iu them, for the most part, 
 the spirit of thos they represent, which hath little affinity 
 with or respect to the cause of God. And indeed, to speake 
 freely, soe barren was the island of persons of quality spir- 
 ited for such a service, as they were not to be found, ac- 
 cording to that of the apostle, 1 Cor., i., 26 : " Yee see your 
 calling, not many wise, nor noble," <fec. This forced him 
 to make it up of men of meane ranke, and consequently of 
 Jesse interest, and upon tryall too light for ballance, too thin 
 for a screen, and upon the point ineffectual to answer the 
 designe, being made a scorn by the nobility and gentry, and 
 generallity of the people ; the House of Commons contin- 
 ually spurning at their power, and spending large debates 
 in -controverting their title, till at length the Protector [find- 
 ing the distempers which grew in his government, and the 
 dangers of the publique peace thereby] dissolved the Par- 
 liament, and soe silenced that controversy for that time. 
 And that was the last that sat during his life.Ae being com- 
 pelled to wrestle with the difficulties of his place, soe well as 
 he could, without Parliamentary assistance, and in it met 
 with soe great a burthen, as [/ doubt not to say] it dranke 
 up his spirits, of which his natural constitution yeelded a 
 vast stocke, and brought him to his grave ; his interment 
 being the seed-time of his glory, and England's calamity. 
 Before I passe further, pardon mee in troubling you with 
 the character of his person, which, by reason of my near- 
 nesse to him, I had opportunity well to observe. 
 
 His body was well compact and strong, his stature under 
 6 foote [I believe about two inches], his head so shaped as 
 you might see it a storehouse and shop both of avast treas- 
 ury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fyery, as I have 
 known, but the flame of it kept downe for the most part, or 
 soon allayed with thos moral indowments he had. He was 
 naturally compassionate towards objects in distrense, even 
 to an effeminate measure ; though God had made him a 
 heart wherein was left little roorne fur any fear but what 
 was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, 
 yet did he exceed in tendernesse towards sufferers. A. 
 larger soul, I thinke, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay 
 than his was. 1 doe believe, if his story were impartially 
 transmitted, and the unprejudiced world well possest with 
 it, she would adde him to her nine worthies, and make up 
 that number a decemviri. He lived and dyed in comforta- 
 ble communion with God, as judicious persons neer him, 
 well observed. He was that Mordecai that sought the wel- 
 fare of his people, and spake peace to his seed ; yet were 
 his temptations such as it appeared frequently that he that
 
 634 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 hath grace enough for many men may have too little for 
 hirnselfe ; the treasure he had being but in an earthen ves- 
 sel, and that equally defiled with original sin, as any other 
 man's nature is. He left successor in the Protectorship his 
 eldest son, a worthy person indeed, of an obliging nature 
 and religious disposition, giving great respect to the best of 
 persons, both ministers and others, and having to his lady a 
 prudent, godly, practical Christian. His entrance into the 
 government was with general satisfaction, having accepta- 
 tion with all sorts of people, and addresses from them, im- 
 porting s<: much. It was an amazing consideration to mee 
 fwho, out of the experience I had of the spirits of people, 
 did fear confusion would be famous Oliver's successor] to 
 see my fears soe confuted, though, alas ! the sin of Eng- 
 land soon shewed that they were not vaine fears ; for in a 
 short time some achings in the army appeared, tending to 
 devest the Protector of the power of it. This bred some 
 jealousy and unkindnesse betwixt him and the officers of it ; 
 but it was allayed, and things looked fayre again. About 
 this time writs were sent out to summons a Parliament, 
 which accordingly sat down in March following. The 
 power of the Protector and that of the other House was in- 
 stantly controverted in the House of Commons, which 
 House consisted of a tripartite interest, viz., the Protec- 
 tor's, the Commonwealth's [as it was soe called by some, 
 though groundlessly enough], and Charles the King of 
 Scots ; each party striving to carry an end their own de- 
 sign, syding one whyle with one, another whyle with an- 
 other obstructed settlement, and acted nothing but what 
 tended to leave religion and sobriety naked of protection. 
 The vigilant army observed this, and disposed themselves 
 to prevent this growing evil: in order to it, keep general 
 councells, publish remonstrances, and make addresses. 
 The Parliament, fearing the co-ordinacy [at least] of a 
 military power with the civil, forbid the meetings of the 
 army. The army resent this soe ill, as by a violent im- 
 pression they prevayle with the Protector to dissolve the 
 Parliament. This he did animo tarn reluctanti, that he 
 could not conceal his repentance of it, but it breake out 
 upon all occations. The army, observing it, reflected on 
 him as a person true to the civil interest, and not fixed to 
 them ; and the officers, keeping general councells, in a few 
 days resolve to depose him, and restore the members of 
 Parliament dissolved by the first Protector, in the year 53, 
 to the exercise of their government again, in order [as they 
 ridiculously stiled it] to the settling of a commonwealth. 
 The nation resented this act of the army exceedingly ill, 
 the godly party being generally much dissatisfyed with it, 
 in regard the persons brought together were for the most 
 part disobliging to anything of reason or sobriety, soe that 
 they inslaved the people to the lusts of a few men, as it 
 soon appeared from this the officers of the army and all in 
 civil power derived their authority, and they seemed to 
 have brought all under perfect subjection. But their de- 
 portment waxed too swelling for the army to bear long ; 
 for upon an insurrection raysed in the west by Sir George 
 Booth, a secluded member, in behalf of a free Parliament, 
 forces were sent against him under General Lambert, by 
 whom Sir George was soone reduced and made a prisoner. 
 This so elevated the ruling men in Parliament, as they be- 
 gan to increase the thicknesse of their fingers. The army, 
 fearing they would not rest till they had brought them to 
 Rehoboam's scantling, make complaint to them by way of 
 remonstrance, out of which egg a bird sprang, that made 
 new division, or, rather, renewed the old betwixt them, till 
 it came to another interruption. This put us into so great 
 distemper, as one regiment marcht against another, some 
 for the Parliament, others against them, and drew up near 
 Westminster Hall, even to push of pike, but God in mercy 
 kept them from ingaging, soe that noe blood was spilt. 
 The House, thus disturbed, used its interest to redintigrate 
 its power : members meet in private cabals about it. They 
 send into Scotland to General Monke, who was placed there 
 by the old Protector, commander-in-chiefe of the force of 
 that nation. To him they complaine of the breach of trust 
 by the army here, and by them of the violence offered to 
 Parliament. This Monke resents ill, and declares for the 
 Parliament against the array. The army in England meet 
 in councell ; they choose the Lord Fleetwood captain-gen- 
 eral of all the forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland ; 
 send letters to Monke for accommodation ; appoint a com- 
 mittee of safety for the publique peace, made up of many 
 chief officers of the army, and others of the best qnalety 
 they could get ; declare a resolution to call a new Parlia- 
 ment ; appoynt a committee to draw a platforme of govern- 
 ment for the three nations. Whyle this was acting, the 
 nations grew into a flame, greatly bating any government 
 introduced by the sword ; loe the officers of the army, and 
 committee of safety, and all begun to draw heavily, and in 
 a few weeki, by the revolt of the soldiery, which began first 
 at Portsmouth, was seconded by the fleet, and generally 
 falne m with by the private soldiers, their wheeles fell off, 
 and left them on the ground. The members of Parliament 
 returned to sit, all the officers that were looked upon as 
 having a hand in their interruption set aside, though to 
 
 other things indemnifyed. Thus far was Jotham's parabla 
 in the case of Abimelech and the men of Shechem realized 
 in this matter also. General Monke advances now to Lon- 
 don, and is there honourably entertained : he is invited into 
 London, courted and careeced there, upon hope he would 
 introduce the King of Scots, whose interest grew all this 
 whyle, and the generality of the people exprest intentnesse 
 upon it, abuse the Parliament, and affront (to violence) the 
 speaker at his lodgings, and the members walking in the 
 streets. 
 
 In this interim the House dismisses Sir Henry Vane from 
 sitting in it, as a person that had not been constant to Par- 
 liament priviledges ; and Major Salaway, a person of great 
 parts, and Sir Henry Vane's second in most things, with 
 some others who acted in the committee of safety. Yet 
 were they greatly prest by declarations from the people, 
 who, though they were pleased with the dishonour put 
 on Sir Henry Vane [he being unhappy in lying under the 
 most catholique prejudice of any man I know], yet, partly 
 dissatisfyed with the seclution of the members of 48, and 
 partly thirsting after their libertyes in free Parliament, 
 were restless and impetuous. 
 
 General Monke is now earnestly applyed to by the great- 
 est part of the citizens of London, and the members of Par- 
 liament, who were secluded in the year 48, to restore them 
 to the exercise of theire trust. In that capacity, after 
 some debate of some of the then sitting members concern- 
 ing this matter, without further consent obtained from the 
 then sitting members, and without their privity, they were 
 by the general brought into the House. They sat not three 
 weekes before they by act of Parliament dissolved them- 
 selves, and made provision for a succeeding Parliament, 
 which is to sit down the 25th day of the next month. In 
 this time they made sundry acts : one about the ministry, 
 to the advantage of Presbiterie ; another, in which they 
 settled a militia distinct from that of the army, put. into 
 such commissioners' hands, for the most part, as are for the 
 king's interest. They likewise settled a councell of state, 
 consisting of one- and- thirty very prudent and sober men, 
 and of good interest as to civil concernments. 
 
 But to draw to a period, and trouble you no longer with 
 this discourse : the interest of religion lyes dreadfully on 
 the dust ; for the eminent professors of it having atchieved 
 formerly great victories in the war, and thereby great 
 power in the army, made use of it to make variety of chan- 
 ges in the government ; and every of thos changes hazard- 
 ous and pernicious, and dissatisfactory in one considerable 
 respect or other. 
 
 They were all charged upon the principles of the au- 
 thours of them, who, being Congregational men, have not 
 only made men of that persuasion cheape, but rendered them 
 odeous to the generallity of the nation ; and that the rather, 
 because General Fleetwood, who married the Protector's 
 daughter, and the Lord Desborow, who married his sister, 
 were principal instruments [as is apprehended, though I 
 thinke not truely of Fleetwood] in overthrowing the family 
 from which they had their preferment and so many signal 
 kindnesses. It is not to be exprest what reproach it brought 
 upon profession of religion by this meanes, and what a 
 foundation layd to persecute it out of England, if that 
 party prevayles ; for demonstration is made by experience, 
 that professors were not more troublesome and factious in 
 times of peace, before the wars of England began, and the 
 great instruments of them, than they have been imperious, 
 self-seeking, trust-breaking, and covenant-violating since 
 they were invested with power. And whyther this scandal 
 will goe, or what the effects of it will be, the Lord knows ; 
 but to be sure, as Solomon says, he that breaks a hedge, a 
 serpent will byte him ; and this is fulfilled upon them, who 
 have been the greatest hedge-breakers that I have known. 
 And as there is a woe pronounced to the world by our Sav- 
 iour because of offences, soe there is a redundant woe to 
 them by whom thos offences come. 
 
 I have cause to beleeve that you have met with most of 
 what I have here communicated to you, in a better dresse, 
 from some other hand ; if soe, 1 entreat the pardon of your 
 stomake for my crambe bis coctum. I also entreat your 
 advice by the next opportunity, concerning friendes here, 
 what incouragement persons may have, if tymes press them, 
 to transport their families into New-England, with some 
 general directions of doeing to the best advantage. 
 
 I doe promise myselfe this fruit of my writing, that as it 
 may renue our intercourse, and kindle the former coales of 
 love, soe it will provoke you with greatest fervency to lay 
 the sad stale of our affaires here before the Lord, whose 
 name is greatly ingaged in them ; for the rage of the ene- 
 my is swelled to an intollerable height, and his mouth set 
 against the heavens. God hath great cause now to feare 
 the enemy and the avenger. And this is our last refuge, 
 for we have forfited all to the utmost. I pray present me 
 to my cousin your wife, under the character of a person 
 ready, though unable to serve her. Accept of the like 
 tender from, sir, your real servant and unworthy kinsman, 
 
 Jo. MAIDSTO.NE. 
 Westminster, March 24. 1659.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 635 
 
 If you shall give yourselfe the trouble at any time of 
 honouring mee with a letter, you may please to direct it to 
 Pond House, at Boxted, in Essex, where my father lived : 
 it is three miles from Colchester. 
 
 These for his honourable friend and kinsman, John 
 Wiuthorpe, Esq., govemour of the collonie of Con- 
 nectacut, in New-England. 
 
 H. 
 
 Specimens of the Court Circular in Cromweffs Protectorate. 
 
 " Nov. 11. This day the most illustrious lady, the Lady 
 Frances Cromwell, youngest daughter of his highness the 
 Lord Protector, was married to the most noble gentleman, 
 Mr. Robert Rich, son of the Lord Rich, grandchild of the 
 Earl of Warwick, and of the Countess Dowager of Devon- 
 shire, in the presence of their highnesses, and of his grand- 
 father and father, and the said countess, with many other 
 persons of high honour and quality. The solemnities of the 
 happy nuptials were continued and ended with much hon- 
 our." .Were. Pol, Nov. 5 to 12, 1657. 
 
 " JVoti. 19. Yesterday afternoon, his highness went to 
 Hampton Court, and this day the most illustrious lady, the 
 Lady Mary Cromwell, third daughter of his highness the 
 Lord Protector, was there married to the most noble lord, 
 the Lord Faulconbridge,in the presence of their highnesses, 
 and many noble persons. Friday, 20. Their highnesses, 
 with the said lord and lady, returned from Hampton Court." 
 Merc. Pol., Nov. 19 to 26, 1657. 
 
 I. 
 
 Some Extracts from a Description of Cromwell's Lords. 
 
 RICHARD CROMWELL, eldest son of the Protector (so 
 called), a person of great worth and merit, and well skilled 
 in hawking, hunting, horse-racing, with other sports and 
 pastimes ; one whose undertakings, hazards, and services 
 for the cause cannot well be numbered or set forth, unless 
 the drinking of King Charles's, or, as is so commonly spo- 
 ken, his father's landlord's health; whose abilities in pray- 
 ing and preaching, and love to the sectaries, being much 
 like his cousin Dick Ingoldsby's, and being so very likely 
 to be his father's successor, and to- inherit his nuble virtues, 
 in being the light of the eyes, and breath of the nostrils of 
 the old heathenish popish laws and customs of the nation, 
 especially among the learned, the University of Oxford 
 have therefore thought fit, he being also no very good 
 scholar, to choose him their chancellor. 
 
 Henry Lawrence, a gentleman of a courtly breed and a 
 good trencher-man, who, when the bishops ruffled in their 
 pride and tyranny, went over to Holland, afterward came 
 back, and became a member of the Long Parliament ; fell 
 off at the beheading the late king and change of the gov- 
 ernment, for which the Protector, then lieutenant-general, 
 with great zeal declared, " That a neutral spirit was more 
 to be abhorred than a Cavalier spirit, and that such men as 
 he were not fit to be used in such a day as that, when God 
 was cutting down kingship root and branch;" yet came in 
 play again, upon design, in the Little Parliament, and con- 
 tributed much to the dissolving of them, as also setting up 
 the Protector, and settling the Instrument of Government 
 and a single person, affirming, " That other foundation 
 could no man lay." For which worthy services, and as a 
 snare or bait to win over, or at least quiet the baptized peo- 
 ple, himself being under that ordinance, he was made and 
 continued president of the Protector's council, where he 
 hath signed many an arbitrary and illegal warrant for the 
 carrying of honest, faithful men to prisons and exile with- 
 out cause, unless their not apostatizing with them from 
 just and honest principles. His merits are great and many, 
 being every way thorough-paced, and a great adorer of 
 kingship ; so as he deserveth, no doubt, and is every way 
 fit, to be taken out of the Parliament, to have the third 
 place of honour, and negative voice in the other House 
 over the people of these lands. 
 
 Colonel Desborough, a gentleman or yeoman of about 
 sixty or seventy pounds per annum at the beginning of the 
 wars, who, being allied to the Protector by marriage of his 
 sister, he cast away his spade and took a sword, and rose 
 with him in the wars, and in like manner, upon the princi- 
 ples of justice and freedom, advanced his interest very 
 much ; if he were not of the Long Parliament, he was of 
 the little one, which he helped to break. Being grown 
 considerable, he cast away the principles by which he rose, 
 and took on principles of violence and tyranny, and helped 
 to set up the Protector, for which he was made one of his 
 council, and one of the generals at sea, and hath a princely 
 command at land, being major-general of divers counties in 
 the west, as also one of the lords of the Cinque Ports. 
 
 Lord-viscount Lisle, eldest son of the Earl of Leicester, 
 was of the Long Parliament to the last, and at the change 
 of government, and making laws of treason against a single 
 person's rule, and, no question, concurred with the rest 
 therein ; he was also of the Little Parliament, and of all 
 
 the Parliaments since ; was all along of the Protector*! 
 council, and was never to seek ; who having learned so 
 much by changing with every change, and keeping still 
 like his father-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, and Pete 
 Sterry, on that side which hath proved trump, nothing 
 need farther be said of his fitness, being such a man of 
 principles, to be taken out of the Parliament to have a set- 
 tled negative voice in the other House over all the good 
 people of these lands, he being a lord of the old stamp al- 
 ready, and, in time, so likely to become a peer. 
 
 Sir Gilbert Pickering, knight of the old stamp, and of a 
 considerable revenue in Northamptonshire, one of the Long 
 Parliament, and a great stickler in the change of the gov- 
 ernment from kingly to that of a commonwealth ; helped to 
 make those laws of treason against kingship; hath also- 
 changed with all changes that have been since ; he was one 
 of the Little Parliament, and helped to break it, as also of 
 all the Parliaments since ; is one of the Protector's council ; 
 and, as if he had been pinned to his sleeve, was never to 
 seek ; is become high-steward of Westminster ; and, being 
 so finical, sprue*, and like an old courtier, is made lord- 
 chamberlain of the Protector's household or court, so that 
 ho may well be counted fit and worthy to be taken out of 
 the House to have a negative voice in the other House, 
 though he helped to destroy it in the king and Lords. 
 There are more besides him, that make themselves trans- 
 gressors, by building again the things which they once de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 Walter Strickland, some time agent or ambassador to tho 
 Dutch in the Low Countries from the Long Parliament, 
 and a good friend of theirs, at length became a member of 
 that Parliament ; was also of the Little Parliament, which 
 he helped to break ; was of the Parliament since, and is 
 now of the Protector's council. He is one that can serve a 
 commonwealth, and also a prince, so he may serve himself 
 and his own ends by it ; who, having so greatly profited by 
 attending the Hogan Mogans, and become so expert in the 
 ceremony postures, and thereby so apt like an ape, with his 
 brother Sir Gilbert and the president, to imitate or act the 
 part of an old courtier in the new court, was made captain- 
 general of the Protector's magpye, or gray-coated foot-guard 
 in Whitehall, as the Earl of Holland formerly to the king; 
 who, being every way of such worth and merits, no ques- 
 tion can be made or exception had against his fitness to be 
 taken out of the Parliament to exercise a negative voice in 
 the other House over the people of this Commonwealth. 
 
 Sir Charles Ousely, a gentleman who came something 
 late into play on this side, being converted from a Cavalier 
 in a good hour. He became one of the Little Parliament, 
 which he helped to break, and to set the Protector on the 
 throne ; for which worthy service, he was, as he well de- 
 served, taken in to be one of his council ; was also of the 
 Parliaments since ; a man of constancy and certainty in his 
 principles much like the wind ; and, although he hath done 
 nothing for the cause whereby to merit, yet is he counted 
 of that worth as to be every way fit to be taken out of the 
 Parliament to have a negative voice in the other House 
 over such as have done most and merited highest in the 
 cause, the Protector and his fellow-negative men excepted, 
 and over all the Commonwealth besides. 
 
 Mr. Rouse, one of the Long Parliament, and by them 
 made provost or master of Eton College ; he abode in that 
 Parliament, and helped to change the government into a 
 commonwealth, and to destroy the negative voice in the 
 king and Lords ; was also of the Little Parliament, and 
 their speaker ; who, when the good things came to be done* 
 which were formerly declared, and for not doing of which 
 the old Parliament was pretendedly dissolved, being an old 
 bottle, and so not fit to bear that new wine, without put- 
 ting it to the question, left the chair, and went with his 
 fellow old bottles to Whitehall, to surrender their power to 
 the general, which he as speaker, and they by signing a 
 parchment or paper, pretended to do. The colourable 
 foundation for this apostacy, upon the monarchical founda- 
 tion being thus laid, and the general himself, as Protector, 
 seated thereon, he became one of his council, good old 
 man, and well he deserved it, for he ventured hard. He 
 was also of the Parliaments since, and, being an aged, ven- 
 erable man, all exceptions set aside, may be counted wor- 
 thy to be taken out of the House to have a negative voice 
 in the other House over all that shall question him for 
 what he hath done, and over all the people of these lands 
 besides, though he would not suffer it in the king and 
 Lords. 
 
 Colonel Sydenham, a gentleman of not very much per 
 annum at the beginning of the wars, was made governor 
 of Malcomb Regis, in the west ; became one of the Long 
 Parliament, and hath augmented his revenue to some pur- 
 pose ; he helped, no question, to change the government, 
 and make those laws of treason against kingship ; was also 
 of the Little Parliament, and ot those that were since 
 one also of the Protector's council, hath a princely com 
 mand in the Isle of Wight, is nne of the commissioners a. 
 the treasury, by all which he is growa very great ami conr 
 siderable.
 
 636 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Colonel Montague, a gentleman of Huntingdonshire, of a 
 fair estate, a colonel formerly in the association army under 
 the Earl of Manchester, where he for some time appeared, 
 while Colonel Pickering lived, to be a sectary, and for lay- 
 men's preaching, as also a lover of the rights and freedoms 
 of the people, rather than of the principle he now acts by; 
 but, that honest colonel dying, some other things also com- 
 ing between, he became of another mind. He gave off 
 being a soldier about the time of the new model, it is likely 
 upon the same account with Colonel Russell ; did not great- 
 ly approve of beheading the king, or change of the govern- 
 ment, or the army's last march into Scotland, as the Pro- 
 tector, then general, may witness ; yet, after the war WHS 
 ended at Worcester, and the old Parliament dissolved, he 
 was taken in, though no change appearing from what he 
 was before, to be of the Little Parliament, which he helped 
 to break, and to set up monarchy anew iu the Protector, 
 which he designedly was called to do; for which worthy 
 service he was made one of the council, a commissioner of 
 the treasury, and one of the generals at sea. He was of 
 the Parliaments since ; all which considered, none need 
 question his fitness to be a lord, and to be taken out of the 
 House to have a negative voice in the other House, not only 
 over the treasury and seamen, but all the good people of 
 these lands besides. 
 
 Commissioner Lisle, some time a counsellor in the Tem- 
 ple ; one of the Long Parliament, where he improved his 
 interest to purpose, and bought state lands good cheap; 
 afterward became a commissioner of the great seal, and 
 helped in Parliament to change the government from kingly 
 to Parliamentary, or of a commonwealth ; changed again to 
 kingly, or of a single person ; and did swear the Protector 
 at his first installing chief magistrate, to the hazard of his 
 neck, contrary to four acts of Parliament, which he helped 
 to make, with others, that make it treason so to do. He 
 hath lately retired for sanctuary into Mr. Howe's church, 
 and is still commissioner of the seal ; and being so very 
 considerable in worth and merit, is also fit to be taken out 
 of the House to have a negative voice in the other House 
 over the good people, and all such who shall any way ques- 
 tion him. He is since made president of the high court, so 
 called, of justice. 
 
 Treas 
 For, i 
 
 ;ver prospers : what's the reason ? 
 it prospers, none dare call it treasc 
 
 Chief-justice Glyn, some time a counsellor at law, and 
 steward of the court at Westminster, formerly one of the 
 Long Parliament, and that helped to bait the Earl of Straf- 
 ford and bring him to the block, was recorder of London, 
 and one of the eleven members impeached by the army of 
 treason, and by that Parliament committed to the Tower ; 
 the Protector, through apostacy, assuming the government, 
 took him up and made him a judge, and, finding him so fit 
 for his turn, did also make him chief-justice of England; 
 so that, of a little man, he is grown up into preat bulk and 
 interest, and of complying principles to the life ; who, being 
 so very useful to advance and uphold the Protector's great 
 negative voice, is thereby questionless, in his sense, fit to 
 be taken out of the House, and to have a negative voice 
 himself in the other House, not only over the people, but 
 over the law he is to be chief judge of, and in a capacity to 
 hinder that no good law, for the future, be made for the ease 
 of the people, or to hurt of the lawyers' trade. 
 
 Bulstrode Whitelocke, formerly a counsellor at law, one 
 of the Long Parliament, profited there, and advanced his 
 interest very greatly; became one of the commissioners of 
 the great seal, one that helped to change the government, 
 and make laws against a single person's rule. In the time 
 of the Little Parliament, he went ambassador to Sweden 
 in great state; that Parliament being dissolved, he agitated 
 there for the Protector, then came over ; and, when some 
 alteration and pretended reformation was made in the 
 chancery, he stood off from being any longer a commission- 
 er of the seal, and became one of the supervisors of the 
 treasury at one thousand pounds per annum salary. He is 
 one who is guided more by policy than by conscience, and 
 being, on that account, the more fit for the Protector's ser- 
 vice, there is no question to be made of his worth and merit 
 to be taken out of the House to have a negative voice in the 
 other House over the people there, though he helped to put 
 it down in the king and Lords. 
 
 Mr. Claypole, son of Mr. Claypole in Northamptonshire, 
 now Lord Claypole. He long since married the Protector's 
 daughter; a person, whose qualifications not answering 
 those honest principles, formerly so pretended to, of putting 
 none but godly men into places of trust, was a long time 
 kept out ; but, since the apostacy from those principles, as 
 also the practice brake in, and his father-in-law (the head 
 thereof) came to be Protector, he was then judged good 
 enough for that dispensation, and so taken in to be master 
 of his horse, as Uuke Hamilton to the king. Much need 
 not be said of him ; his relation, as son-in-law to the Pro- 
 tector, is sufficient to bespeak him .every way fit to be ta- 
 ken out of the House and made a lord ; and, having so 
 
 ! long time had a negative voice over his wife, Spring Gar- 
 den, the ducks, deer, horses, and asses in James's Park, ia 
 the better skilled how to exercise it again in the other 
 House over the good people of these nations, without any 
 gainsaying or dispute. 
 
 Colonel Pride, then Sir Thomas, now Lord Pride, some 
 time an honest brewer in London, went out a captain upon 
 the account of the cause, fought on, and in time became a 
 colonel ; did good service in England and Scotland, for 
 which he was well rewarded by the Parliament ; with 
 cheap debentures of his soldiers and others, he bought good 
 lands at easy rates ; gave the Long Parliament a purge, 
 fought against the king and his negative voice, and was 
 against the negative voice of his brethren, the lords spirit- 
 ual and temporal, being unwilling to have any in the land ; 
 but hath now changed his mind and principles with the 
 times, and will fight for a negative voice in the Protector, 
 and also have one himself, and be a lord, for he is a knight 
 of the new order already, and grown very bulky and con- 
 siderable. It is hard to say how the people will like it. 
 However, his worth and merits, rightly measured, will, no 
 question, render him fit to be taken out of the House to be 
 one of the other House, and to have a negative voice, not 
 only over the bears, but all the people of these lands, 
 though he did formerly so oppose and fight against it ; and 
 the noble lawyers will be glad of his company and friend- 
 ship, for there is now no fear of his hanging up their gowns 
 by the Scottish colours in Westminster Hall, as he former- 
 ly so greatly boasted and threalened to do. 
 
 Colonel Hewson, then Sir John, now Lord Hewson, some 
 time an honest shoemaker or cobbler iu London, went out a 
 captain upon the account of the cause, was very zealous, 
 fought on stoutly, and in time became a colonel ; did good 
 service both in England and Ireland ; was made governor 
 of Dublin, became one of the Little Parliament, and of all 
 the Parliaments since ; a knight also of the new stamp. The 
 world being so well amended with him, and the sole so 
 well stitcned to the upper leather, having gotten so con- 
 siderable an interest and means, he may well be counted 
 fit to be taken out of the House to b,e a lord, and to have a 
 negative voice in the other House, over all of the gentle 
 craft, and cordwainers company in London, if they please. 
 But, though he be so considerable, and of such merit in the 
 Protector's, as also in his own esteem, not only to be a 
 knight, but also a lord, yet it will hardly pass for current 
 with the good people of these lands if being so far beyond 
 the last; neither will they think him fit (saving the Pro- 
 tector's pleasure) to have a negative voice over them, though 
 he formerly fought so stiffly against it in the king and Lords, 
 in order to set them free. 
 
 Colonel Barkstead, then Sir John, now Lord Barkstead, 
 some time a goldsmith in the Strand of no great rank, went 
 out a captain to Windsor Castle, was some time governor 
 of Reading, got at length to be a colonel, then made lieu- 
 tenant of the Tower by the old Parliament. The Protector 
 (so called), finding him fit for his turn, continued him there, 
 and also made him major-general of Middlesex in the deci- 
 mating business, and assistant to Major-general Skippon in 
 London. He is one to the life to fulfil the Protector's de- 
 sires, whether right or wrong, for he will dispute no com- 
 mands, nor make the least demur, but, in an officious way, 
 will rather do more than his share. His principles for all 
 arbitrary things whatsoever being so very thorough, let 
 friends or foes come to his den, they come not amiss, so he 
 gets by it ; yea, rather than fail, he will send out his 
 armed men to break open other men's houses, and seize 
 their persons, and bring them to his jail, and then, at his 
 pleasure, turn them out. He hath erected a principality in 
 the Tower, and made laws of his own, and executes them, 
 in a martial way, over all comers, so that he hath great 
 command, and makes men know his power. He was of the 
 lattei Parliaments ; is one of the commissioners, like the 
 bishop's pander's in the king's days, for suppressing truth 
 in the printing presses, an oppression once the army so 
 greatly complained of; is, for sanctuary, gotten in to be a 
 member of Mr. Griffith's church ; is also knighted after 
 the new order, and, the better to carry on the Protector's 
 interest among the ear-bored slavish citizens, is lately be- 
 come an alderman, so that he hath advanced his interest 
 and revenue to purpose. His titles and capacities, embla- 
 zoned, will sufficiently argue his worth and merits, and 
 speak him out fully to be a man of the times, and every 
 way deserving to lie yet greater, and, Haman-like, to be set 
 higher: allwhichconsidered.it would seem a wrong not 
 to have taken him out of the House, and made him a lord 
 of the other House. 
 
 Colonel Ingoldsby, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, al- 
 lied to the Protector. He betook himself to the wars on 
 the right side, as it happened, and in time became a colo- 
 nel. A gentleman of courage and valour, but not very 
 famous for any great exploits, unless for beating the honest 
 innkeeper of Aylesbury in Whitehall, for which the Pro- 
 tector committed him to the Tower, but was soon released 
 No great friend of the sectaries (so called), or the cause of
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 637 
 
 freedom then fought for, as several of his then and now 
 officers and soldiers can witness ; and, although it be well 
 known, and commonly reported, that he can neither pray 
 nor preach, yet, complying so kindly with new court, and 
 being in his principles of kingship, as also a colonel of 
 horse, and the Protector's kinsman, he may well be reck- 
 oned fit to be taken out of the House and made a lord. 
 
 Colonel Whaley, formerly a woollen draper, a petty mer- 
 chant in London, whose shop being out of sorts, and his 
 cash empty, not having wherewithal to satisfy his-creditors, 
 he fled into Scotland for refuge till the wars began ; then 
 took on him to be a soldier, whereby he hath profited 
 greatly ; was no great zealot for the cause, but, happening 
 on the right side, he kept there, and at length was made 
 commissary-general of the horse. He was of these latter 
 Parliaments, and, being so very useful and complying to 
 promote the Protector's designs, was made major-general 
 of two or three companies. He is for a king, or protector, 
 or what you will, so it be liked at court ; is, with his little 
 brother Glyn, grown a great man, and very considerable, 
 and wiser, as the Protector saith, than Major-general Lam- 
 bert ; who having, with his fellow-lords, Claypole and 
 Howard, so excellent a spirit of government over his wife 
 and family, being also a member of Thomas Goodwin's 
 church, no question need be made of his merit of being 
 every way fit to be a lord, and to be taken out of the House 
 to have a negative voice in the other House over the peo- 
 ple, for that he " never, as he saith, fought against any 
 such thing as a negative voice." 
 
 Colonel Goffe, now Lord Goffe that would be, some time 
 Colonel Vaughan's brother's apprentice (a sailer in Lon- 
 don), whose time being near or newly out, betook himself 
 to be a soldier instead of setting up his trade ; went out a 
 quartermaster of foot, and continued in the wars till he 
 forgot what he fought for; in time became a colonel, and, 
 in the outward appearance, very zealous and frequent in 
 praying, preaching, and pressing for righteousness and free- 
 dom, and highly esteemed in the army on that account, 
 when honesty was in fashion j yet having, at the same 
 time, like his general, an evil tincture of that spirit that 
 loved and sought after the favour and praise of man more 
 than that of God (as, by woful experience in both of them, 
 hath since appeared), he could not further believe or perse- 
 vere upon that account, but by degrees fell off. And this 
 was he who, with Colonel White, brought musketeers, and 
 turned the honest members, left behind in the Little Par- 
 liament, out of the House. Complying thus kindly with 
 the Protector's designs and interest, he was made major- 
 general of Hampshire and Sussex ; was of the late Parlia- 
 ment ; hath advanced his interest greatly, and is in so 
 great esteem and favour at court, that he is judged the only 
 fit man to have Major-general Lambert's place and command 
 as major-general of the army ; and, having so far advanced, 
 is in a fair way- to the Protectorship hereafter, if he be not 
 served as Lambert was. He, being so very considerable a 
 person, and of such great worth, there is no question of his 
 deserts and fitness to be taken out of the House to be a lord, 
 and to have a negative voice in the other House ; the 
 rather, for that he " never, in all his life, as he saith, 
 fought against any such thing as a single person or a nega- 
 tive voice, but only to put down Charles and set up Oliver," 
 and hath his end. 
 
 Colonel Berry. His original was from the iron-works, as 
 a clerk or overseer ; betook himself to the wars on the Par- 
 liament side ; profited greatly in his undertaking, and ad- 
 vanced his interest very far ; who, though he wore not the 
 jester's coat, yet, being so ready to act his part and please 
 his general, in time he became a colonel of horse in the 
 army, afterward a major-general of divers counties, a com- 
 mand fit for a prince, wherein he might learn to lord it in 
 an arbitrary way beforehand at his pleasure. 
 
 Colonel Cooper, some time a shopkeeper, or salter, in 
 Southwark, a member of Thomas Goodwin's church, one 
 formerly of very high principles for common justice and 
 freedom, like his brother Tichborn. The army, then in 
 Scotland, sending into England for faithful, praying men 
 to make officers of, the honest people in the borough rec- 
 ommended him to the general in order to have a command 
 who accordingly went down, but left his principles behind 
 him, and espoused others ; was made colonel at the first 
 dash, and, though he began late, yet hath so well improved 
 his interest, that he hath already gotten as many hundreds 
 per annum as he had hundred pounds when he left his 
 trade. He hath a regiment of foot in Scotland, and another 
 in Ireland, where he is major-general of the North, in 
 Venable's room, and governor of Carrickfergus, so as he is 
 in a very hopeful way to be a great man indeed. 
 
 Alderman Pack, then Sir Christopher, now Lord Pack. 
 His rise formerly was by dealing in cloth ; near the begin- 
 ning of the Long Parliament was made an alderman : was 
 then very discreet, and meddled little, more like a neuter 
 or close malignant than a zealot for the cause; was a com- 
 missioner of the customs, alo sheriff and lord-mayor of 
 London, next after Alderman Viner. The Protector taking 
 ou liiui the governaiuiit, the sunshine of the new court 
 
 pleased him, and brought him in full compliance. He was 
 one of the last Parliament, and zealous to re-establish king- 
 ship in the person of the Protector, and judged the only 
 meet man to bring the petition into the House, praying him 
 to accept of and take it upon him, which, though he then 
 refused, yet, as is reported, hath since repented his then 
 refusal. 
 
 Alderman Tichborn, then Sir Robert, knight of the new 
 stamp, now Lord Tichborn. At the beginning of the Long 
 Parliament, when a great spirit was stirring for liberty and 
 juslice, many worthy petitions and complaints were made 
 against patentees, the bishops, and the Earl of Strafford. 
 He being the son of a citizen, and young, fell in and es 
 poused the good cause and principles then on foot, and; 
 thereby became very popular, and was greatly cried up by 
 the good people of the city, <fec. His rise was first in tha 
 military way, where he soon became a colonel, and by th 
 Parliament made lieutenant of the Tower of London ; and, 
 though he was a colonel, yet never went out to fight, but 
 became an alderman very timely, and then soon began to 
 cool and lose his former zeal and principles, and left off 
 preaching, as his pastor, Mr. Lockyer, did the church, to 
 his brother George Cockain. He was afterward sheriff and 
 lord-mayor in his turn ; was also of the committees for the 
 sale of state lands, whereby he advanced his interest and 
 revenue considerably. Out of zeal to the public, he offered 
 the Parliament to serve them freely as a commissioner of 
 the customs, whereby he supplanted another, and planted 
 himself in his room, and then, with the rest of his brethren, 
 petitioned the committee of the navy for a salary, and had 
 it ; notwithstanding he was so well rewarded for his pains, 
 after he had pretended to serve them for nothing, yet, with 
 his brother. Colonel Harvey, and Captain Langham, came 
 off bluely in the end. He was of the Little Parliament, 
 and helped to dissolve it ; one of the late Parliament also. 
 He hath, by degrees, sadly lost his principles, and forgotten 
 the good old cause, and espoused and taken up another ; 
 being so very officious for the new court interest, and such 
 a stickler for them, he is become a great favourite ; it is 
 not hard to read his change, it being in so great letters. 
 All things considered, he is, no question, fit to be called 
 Lord Tichborn. 
 
 Sir Francis Russel, knight baronet of the old stamp, a 
 gentleman of Cambridgeshire, of a considerable revenue. 
 In the beginning of the wars was first for the king, then 
 for the Parliament, and a colonel of foot under the Earl of 
 Manchester ; a man, like William Sedgwick, high flown, 
 but not serious or substantial in his principles. He con- 
 tinued in his command till the new model, then took offence, 
 and fell off or was laid aside by them ; no great zealot in 
 the cause, therefore not judged honest, serious, or wise 
 enough to be of the Little Parliament, yet was of these lat- 
 ter Parliaments : is also chamberlain of Chester, at about 
 500 per annum. He married his eldest daughter to Henry 
 Cromwell, second son of the Protector, then colonel of 
 horse, now lord-deputy, so called, of Ireland ; another to 
 Colonel Reynolds, a new knight, and general of the English 
 army in France, under Cardinal Mazarin, since, with Col- 
 onel White and others, cast away coming from Mardike. 
 There is no question but his principles are for kingship and 
 the new court, being so greatly concerned therein ; where- 
 fore it were graat pity if he should not also be taken out of 
 the House to be a lord of the other House, his son-in-law 
 being so great a lord, and have a negative voice over Cam- 
 bridgeshire, and all the people of these lands besides. 
 
 Sir William Strickland, knight of the old stamp, a gen- 
 tleman of Yorkshire, and brother to Walter Strickland ; 
 was of the Parliament a long time, but hath now, it seems, 
 forgotten the cause of fighting with, and cutting off the 
 late king's head, and suppressing the Lords their House, 
 and negative voice. He was of these latter Parliaments, 
 and of good compliance, no question, with the new court, 
 and settling the Protector anew in all those things for 
 which the king was cut off; wherefore he is fit, no doubt, 
 to be taken out of the House and made a lord ; the rather, 
 for that his younger brother, Walter, is so great a lord, 
 and by whom, in all likelihood, he will be steered to use 
 his negative voice in the other House over Yorkshire, and 
 the people of these lands, to the interest of the court. 
 
 Sir Richard Onslow, knight of the old stamp, a gentle- 
 man of Surrey, of good parts, and a considerable revenue. 
 He was of the Long Parliament, and with much ado, 
 through his policy, steered his course between the two 
 rocks of king and Parliament, and weathered some sore 
 storms. Was not his man taken in his company, by the 
 guard of Southwark. with commissions of array in his 
 pocket from the king, and scurrilous songs against the 
 Roundheads ? Yet, by his interest, rode it out till Colonel 
 Pride came with his purge, then suffered loss, and came no 
 more in play till about Worcester fight ; when, by the help 
 of some friends in Parliament, he was empowered to raise, 
 and lead as colonel, a regiment of Surrey-men against the 
 Scots and their king, but came too late to fight, it being 
 over. Being popular in Surrey, he was of the latter Par- 
 liaments, is fully for kingship, and was never otherwise,.
 
 638 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 and stickled much among the seventy kinglings to that end ; 
 and, seeing he cannot have young Charles, old Oliver will 
 serve his turn, so he have one ; so that he is very fit to be 
 Lord Onslow, and to be taken out of the House to have a 
 negative voice in the other House over Surrey, if they 
 please, and all the people of these lands besides, whether 
 they please or not. 
 
 Mr. John Fiennes, son of the Lord Say, and brother to 
 Commissioner Fiennes; brought in, it is likely, for one 
 upon his score, is, in a kind, such a one as they call a sec- 
 tary, but no great stickler ; therefore, not being redeemed 
 from the fear and favour of man, will, it is probable, follow 
 his brother, who is, as it is thought, much steered by old 
 subtlety, his father, that lies in his den, as Thurlot by his 
 Mr. St. John, and will say No with the rest when any- 
 thing opposes the interest of the new court, their power, 
 and greatness, and may therefore pass for one to be a lord. 
 
 Sir John Hubbard, knight baronet of the old stamp, a 
 gentleman of Norfolk, of a considerable estate, part whereof 
 came lately to him by the death of a kinsman. He was of 
 these latter Parliaments, but not of the former ; had med- 
 dled very little, if at all, in throwing down kingship, but 
 hath stickled very much in helping to re-establish and build 
 it up again ; and a great stickler among the late kinglings, 
 who petitioned the Protector to be king. His principles 
 being so right for kingship and tyranny, he is in great fa- 
 vour at court, as well as Dick Ingoldsby, and, no question, 
 deserves to be a lord. 
 
 Sir Thomas Honeywood, knight of the old stamp, a gen- 
 tleman of Essex, of a considerable revenue. He was a com- 
 mittee-man in the time of the Long Parliament, and also a 
 military man, and led, as colonel, a regiment of Essex-men 
 to the fight at Worcester ; came in good time, and fought 
 well against kingship and tyranny in the house of the Stew- 
 arts ; was of the last Parliament. He is not so wise as Sol- 
 omon, or so substantial and thorough in his principles for 
 righteousness and freedom as Job (chap, xxix.), but rather 
 soft in his spirit, and too easy, like a nose of wax, to be 
 turned on that side where the greatest strength is. Being, 
 therefore, of so hopeful principles for the new court interest, 
 and so likely to comply with their will and pleasure, uo 
 doubt need be made of his fitness to be a lord. 
 
 Mr. Hampden, now Lord Hampden, a young gentleman 
 of Buckinghamshire, son of the late Colonel Hampden, that 
 noble patriot and defender of the rights and liberties of the 
 English nation, of famous memory, never to be forgotten, 
 for withstanding the king in the case of ship-money ; being- 
 also one of the five impeached members which the said king 
 endeavoured to have pulled out of the Parliament, where- 
 upon followed such feud, war, and shedding of blood. This 
 young gentleman, Mr. Hampden, was the last of sixty-two, 
 which were added singly by the Protector, after the choice 
 of sixty together ; it is very likely that Colonel Ingoldsby, 
 or some other friend at court, got a cardinal's hat for him, 
 thereby to settle and secure him to the interest of the new 
 court, and wholly take him off from the thoughts of ever 
 following his father's steps, or inheriting his noble virtues ; 
 as likewise, that the honest men in Buckinghamshire, and 
 all others that are lovers of freedom and justice, that 
 cleaved so cordially to, and went so cheerfully along with 
 his father in the beginning of the late war, might be out of 
 all hopes of him, and give him over for lost to the good old 
 cause, and inheriting his father's noble spirit and princi- 
 ples, though he doth his lands. He was of the latter Par- 
 liament, and found right, saving in the design upon which 
 he was made a lord after the rest, and the Protector's 
 pleasure. It is very hard to say how fit he is to be a lord, 
 and how well a negative voice over the good people of this 
 laud, and his father's friends in particular, will become 
 the ion of such a father, and how well the aforesaid good 
 people, now called sectaries, will like of it ; but, seeing it 
 is as it is, let him pass for one as tit to be taken out of the 
 House, with the rest, to have a negative voice, and let him 
 exercise it in the other House over the good paoole for a 
 season. 
 
 K. 
 
 Procession, with ceremony of the Investiture and Installa- 
 tion of His Highness Oliver Cromwell, as by the Parlia- 
 ment appointed to be performed in Westminster Hall, on 
 June 26, 1657, written by me, Edmund Prestwick, of the 
 city of London, an eye and ear witness to all that passed 
 on this glorious occasion. Nou> set forth by me, John 
 Prestaick, Esq. 
 
 IN Westminster Hall, at the upper or south end thereof, 
 there was built an ascent, whereon was placed the chair of 
 Scotland, brought for this purpose out of Westminster Ab- 
 bey, and here set under a prince-like canopy of state. Be- 
 fore his highness, and below him, was set a table covered 
 with pink-coloured velvet of Genoa, fringed with fringe of 
 gold. On this table, besides the Bible, sword, and sceptre 
 of the Commonwealth, were pens, ink, paper, sand, wax, 
 
 Before this table, on a chair, sat Sir Thomas Widdrinf- 
 ton, the speaker to his highness and the Parliament. At 
 some distance were seats built scaffold-wise, like a theatrum, 
 where, on both sides, sat the members of his highness's 
 Parliament, and below were places for the aldermen of Lon- 
 don and the like. 
 
 After all things were thus ordered, the Protector came 
 forth out of the council-room adjoining to the Lords' House, 
 and in the order following proceeded into the Hall : 
 
 First went his highness's gentlemen, two and two. 
 
 A herald. Q 
 
 Aldermen of London, two and two. 
 
 A herald. 
 
 Edmund Prideaux, his highness's attorney-general. 
 The judges following of both benches. 
 
 John Glyn, lord-chief-justice. 
 Peter Warburton and Richard Nudigate. 
 
 Justices of the Upper Bench. 
 
 Barons of his highness's Exchequer. 
 
 Robert Nicholas. 
 
 John Parker. 
 
 Roger Hill. 
 
 Norroy king-at-arms. 
 
 Commissioners of the Treasury. 
 
 Commissioners of the Great Seal of the Commonwealth, and 
 
 their officers, viz. : 
 Commissioner Nathaniel lord Fiennes, carrying the Great 
 
 Seal. 
 
 Commissioner John lord Lisle. 
 William Lenthal, master of the Rolls. 
 
 Officers attending, viz. : 
 
 Henry Middleton, sergeant-at-arrus. 
 
 Mr. Brown and Mr. Dove. 
 
 Garter king-at-arms. 
 Before the Protector came, first, 
 
 Robert earl of Warwick, with the sword of the Common- 
 wealth, bare-headed, on the right hand ; and on 
 the left, the lord-mayor. Tichborn, carrying the 
 sword of the city of London, bare-headed. 
 
 His highness, OLIVER CROMWELL, 
 
 richly dressed, habited with a costly mantle of estate, lined 
 with ermines, and girt with a sword of great value ; his 
 highness's train supported by three generals, bare- 
 headed, and armed with drawn swords. 
 Close to his highness followed the members or lords of 
 the other House, i. e.. House of Lords, in order, two and two. 
 In like manner, in order, two and two, were the mem- 
 bers of the Parliament, as knights of the counties, citizens 
 of the cities, and burgesses of the boroughs and towns, and 
 barons of the Cinque Ports, of the Commonwealth of Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Ireland ; of which first came those of 
 England, the county of Middlesex, and the northern coun- 
 ties leading the way, as Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northum- 
 berland, and so in like manner. 
 
 Besides these were many persons of distinction, and no 
 small number of Scotch and Irish nobles. 
 
 INSTALLATION OF HIS HIGHNESS. 
 
 The Protector, with loud acclamation, was enthroned, 
 being seated in the chair of state ; on the left hand thereof 
 stood the lord-mayor, Tirhborn. and the Dutch ambassador ; 
 the French ambassador, and Robert earl of Warwick, on 
 the right. 
 
 Behind the Protector stood his son, Lord Richard Crom- 
 well; Charles lord Fleetwood, lieutenant-general of the 
 army ; John lord Claypole, master of the horse to his high- 
 ness ; and the privy council, of whom, as of the nobility, 
 were the Earl of Manchester, Lord Wharton, and Lord 
 Mulgrave, the rest being very much their inferiors. Upon 
 a lower descent stood the Lord-viscount Lisle, Lords Mon- 
 tague and Whitelocke, with drawn swords. 
 
 The heralds, in the name of his highness and the Com- 
 monwealth, commanding silence, then the speaker (Sir 
 Thomas Widdrington), in the name of the Parliament, pre- 
 sented to his highness, Oliver Cromwell, a rich and costly 
 robe of purple velvet, lined with ermines ; a Bible, orna- 
 mented with bosses and clasps, richly gilt ; a rich and cost- 
 ly sword ; and a sceptre of massy gold. At the delivery of 
 these things, the speaker made a short comment upon them, 
 and on the ceremonies thereof, which he addressed to the 
 Protector, dividing them into four parts, viz. : 
 
 " First, the robe of purple ; this is an emblem of magis- 
 tracy, and imports righteousness and justice. When you 
 have put on this vestment, I may say you are a gownman. 
 This rolie is of a mixed colour, to show the mixture of 
 justice and mercy. Indeed, a magistrate must have two 
 hands, plectentem el amplectentem, to cherish and to punish. 
 
 " Second, the Bible is a book that contains the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, in which you have the happiness to be well versed. 
 This Book of Life consists of two Testaments, the Old and 
 New. The first shows Christum velatum ; the second, 
 Christum revelatum : Christ veiled and revealed. It is a 
 book of books, and doth contain both precepts and examples 
 for good government.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 639 
 
 " Third, here is a sceptre, not unlike a staff, for you to 
 be a staff to the weak and poor. It is of ancient use in 
 this kind. It is said in Scripture that ' the sceptre shall 
 not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his 
 feet, until Shilo come, and unto him shall the gathering of 
 the people be :' ! ! It was of the like use in other king- 
 doms. Homer, the Greek poet, calls kings and princes 
 sceptre-bearers. 
 
 " Fourth, the last is a sword ; not a military, but a civil 
 sword. It is a sword rather of defence than offence ; not to 
 defend yourself only, but your people also. If I might pre- 
 sume to fix a motto upon this sword, as the valiant Lord 
 Talbot had upon his, it should be thus : Ego sum Domini 
 Protectoris^ad protegendum Populum meum ; I am the Lord 
 Protector's, to protect my people." 
 
 This comment or speech being ended, the speaker, Sir 
 Thomas Widdrington, took the Bible, and gave the Protec- 
 tor his oath. 
 
 After the administration of the oath, Mr. Manton, who 
 for this purpose was appointed, made and delivered a 
 prayr, wherein he recommended the Protector, Parliament, 
 council, the forces by land and sea, government and people 
 of the three nations, to the protection of God ; which being 
 ended, the heralds, by loud sound of trumpet, proclaimed 
 his highness, Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, Scot- 
 laud, and Ireland, and the dominions and territories there- 
 unto belonging, commanding and requiring all persons to 
 yield him due obedience. Then did the trumpets again 
 sound, and the people with loud shouts cried, " Long live 
 his highness ! long live his highness ! long live his high- 
 ness ! huzza, huzza, huzza !" 
 
 Silence being commanded, and his highness being re- 
 spectfully saluted, he rose from the chair of state, and de- 
 scending, proceeded as follow?, himself leading the way. 
 The Protector ; 
 
 His train carried up by the Lord Sherard, Warwick's 
 
 nephew, and Lord Roberts, his eldest son. 
 
 After followed those who had before murched in the first of 
 
 the procession ; the Protector and these returning HI 
 
 the same posture to the great gate or entrance 
 
 of the Hall, without which was a state 
 
 coach to receive his highness. 
 
 The Protector being now seated in his coach ; with him, 
 sitting opposite at one end, was Robert earl of Warwick, 
 Lord Richard Cromwell, his son, and Bulstrode lord White- 
 locke, in one, and Philip lord-viscount Lisle and Lord Mon- 
 tague in the other boot, with swords drawn; and the Lord 
 Claypole, master of the horse, led a horse of honour in rich 
 caparisons to Whitehall. The members, two and two, pro- 
 ceeded to the Parliament House, where they prorogued 
 their sitting to the 20th of January. 
 
 At night were great proclaimings of joy and gladness, 
 both in London, Westminster, and the surrounding towns, 
 villages, and hamlets. On this occasion, for his highness 
 and the Parliament, were ensigns armorial of their power; 
 which signs or tokens of honour were commanded to be en- 
 graven and cut on seals for the sealing and stamping all 
 public writings. 
 
 The great seal of the Commonwealth was a largo circle, 
 having thereon the Protector bareheaded, mounted on 
 mareback, attired in a short coat or jacket of mail, over 
 which was a military sash, placed over his right shoulder 
 and under his left arm, tied behind ; pendent to his left 
 side, a large and broad sword, his right hand grasping the 
 head of a truncheon, which he holds before him, one end 
 resting on the pommel of the saddle, his left hand holding 
 the bridle. Behind, on the space on the sinister side, and 
 near the top, was a civic shield, with four quarters : the 
 first and fourth, with the cross of St. George, for England ; 
 2d, the saltier, or cross of St. Andrew, for Scotland ; and, 
 third, the harp of King David, for Ireland. On the margin 
 of this side the seal, these words, Olivarivs. Dei. Gra. Reip. 
 Anglia. Scotia, et Hibernia. S[C. Protector. On the other 
 side of the broad seal, the like arms as that for proclama- 
 tions, as before described, only with this difference, the 
 mantling lamberquin'd with four doublings or folds : on the 
 margin of this side, Magnvm. Sigillvm. Reipvb. Anglia. 
 Scotia, et Hibernia. 
 
 i.. 
 
 The Death, Funeral Order, and Procession of His Highness 
 the Most Serene and Most Illustrious Oliver Cromwell, 
 late Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories 
 thereunto belonging. The whole of this faithfully copied 
 from the MS. of the Rev. John Preitieick, Fellow of All 
 Sou/*' College, Oxford. 
 
 His highness's first illness was at Hampton Court, where 
 he sickened of a bastard tertian, of which he grew very ill, 
 insomuch that after a week's time his disease began to 
 show very desperate symptoms, whereupon he \ms removed 
 to Whitehall, Westminster, near London, where his chap- 
 lains, and others of his family, kept private meetings and 
 
 fastings for his recovery. Continuing in this condition, his 
 highness died on Friday, the third of September, at three 
 of the clock in the afternoon, in the year of our Lord one 
 thousand six hundred and fifty-eight. His body, presently 
 after his expiration, was washed and laid out ; and being 
 opened, was embalmed, and wrapped in a eere cloth six 
 double, and put into an inner sheet of lead, enclosed in an 
 elegant coffin of the choicest wood. Owing to the disease 
 he died of, which, by-the-by, appeared to be that of poison, 
 his body, although thus bound up and laid in the coffin, 
 swelled and bursted, from whence came such filth, that 
 raised such a deadly and noisome stink, that it was found 
 prudent to bury him immediately, which was done in as 
 private a manner as possible. For the solemnization of the 
 funeral, no less than the sum of sixty thousands pounds 
 was allotted to defray the expense. 
 
 The corpse being thus quickly buried, by reason of the 
 great stench thereof, a rich coffin of state was, on the 26th 
 of September, about ten at night, privately removed from 
 Whitehall, in a mourning hearse, attended by his domestic 
 servants, to Somerset House, in the Strand, where it re- 
 mained in privute for some days, till all things were pre- 
 pared for public view ; which being accomplished, the effi- 
 gy of his highness was, with great state and magnificence, 
 exposed openly, multitudes daily crowding to see this glo- 
 rious but mournful sight, which appeared in the order fol- 
 lowing. 
 
 FUNERAL ORDER. 
 
 First. The first room where the spectators entered was 
 wholly hung and covered with black ; and at the upper end 
 of this room was placed a cloth and chair of state. 
 
 In the like manner of the first room were two others, 
 namely, the second and third, all having funeral escutch- 
 eons very thick upon the walls ; and gnards of partisans 
 were placed in each room for people to pass through. 
 
 The fourth room was completely hung with black velvet, 
 the ceiling being of the same. Ilere lay the effigy of his 
 highness, with a large canopy of black velvet fringed, 
 which hung over it. The effigy was of wax, fashioned like 
 the Protector, and placed lying upon its back: it was ap- 
 parelled in a rich and costly suit of velvet, robed in a little 
 robe of purple velvet, laced with a rich gold lace, furred 
 with ermine. Upon the kirtle was a large robe of purple 
 velvet, laced and furred as the former, with strings and 
 tassels of gold. The kirtle was girt with a rich embroi- 
 dered belt, wherein was a sword richly gilt, and hatched 
 with gold, which hung by the side of this effigy. In the 
 right hand was a sceptre ; in the left, a globe. Upon his 
 head was placed a purple velvet cap, furred with ermines 
 suitable to the robes. Behind the head was placed a rich 
 chair of tissued gold, whereon was placed an imperial 
 crown, which lay high, that the people might behold it. 
 
 BED OF STATE. 
 
 The bed of state whereon he lay was covered with a 
 large pall of black velvet, under which was a Holland 
 sheet, borne up by six stools covered with cloth of gold. 
 About the bed was placed a complete suit of arms ; and at 
 the feet of the effigy stood his crest. This bed had fixed 
 about it an ascent of two steps. A little from thence stood 
 eight silver candlesticks about five feet high, with white 
 wax tapers standing in them of three feet long. All these 
 things were environed with rails and balusters, four square, 
 covered with velvet ; at each corner whereof there was 
 erected an upright pillar, which bore on their tops lions 
 and dragons, who held in their paws streamers crowned. 
 On both sides of the bed were set up, in sockets, four great 
 standards of the Protector's arms, with banners and banrols 
 in war, painted upon taffeta. About the bed stood men in 
 mourning, holding in their hands black wands, and also 
 standing bareheaded ; and without the rails stood others, 
 in like manner, whose office it was to receive people in, 
 and turn them out again. 
 
 When this public wake or funeral had been kept for 
 many weeks together, so that all strangers, &c., had seen 
 it fully, then did the following change take place, and the 
 whole scene became altered. The effigies being removed 
 into another inner room, it was there set up, placed upon 
 an ascent, under a cloth of state, being vested as it was be- 
 fore lying, only now his purple velvet was changed for a 
 crown. In the same manner (as formerly) were men wait- 
 ing upon him bareheaded. In this manner he continued 
 until the 23d of November, which day was appointed to 
 carry him with all solemnity to Westminster Abbey. 
 THE FUNERAL PROCESSION 
 
 This great funeral was performed with very great maj- 
 esty, in this manner following. All things being in readi- 
 ness, the waxen effigies of the Protector, with a crown on 
 his head, a sword by his side, a globe and sceptre in his 
 hands, was taken down from his standings, and laid in an 
 open chariot, covered all over with black velvet. The 
 streets, from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey, were 
 guarded by soldiers, placed without a railing, and clad in. 
 new red coats, with black buttons, with their ensigns
 
 640 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 wrapped in cypress. These made a lane, to keep off spec- 
 tators from crowding the procession. 
 
 The PROCEEDING to the Funeral of the most noble and 
 puissant Oliver, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions am 
 territories thereunto belonging, from Somerset House in 
 the Strand, unto the Abbey Church of Westminster, on 
 Thursday, the 23d of November, 1658. 
 Colonel Biscoe, knight marshal, on horseback, with his 
 
 black truncheon, tipped at both ends with gold. 
 Richard Gerald, deputy marshal, on horseback, with his 
 
 black truncheon, tipped with silver. 
 
 Marshal's men, 13, on horseback, with the knight marshal 
 Two conductors of the poor men of Westminster, with 
 
 black staves. 
 Poor men of Westminster, two and two, in mourning gowns 
 
 and hoods. 
 
 Two conductors more, with black staves. 
 
 Poor men in gowns, two and two, in number 82. 
 
 Two conductors more, with black staves, in cloaks. 
 
 Servants to gentlemen, esquires, knights, baronets, two 
 
 and two. 
 
 Two porters of the pate, with their staves. 
 
 Six drums, with the arms of Ireland. 
 
 Six trumpets, with banners of Ireland. 
 
 The standard of Ireland, borne by Colunel Le Hunt and 
 
 Major Crooke, close mourners. 
 
 One in a cloak, to bear up the train of the standard. 
 
 A horse, covered with black cloth, adorned with plumes, 
 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 
 same, led by Mr. Tenant, equerry, in a clciak, and a groom 
 
 in a coat to attend and lead away the horse. 
 
 Inferior servants. 
 The household kitchen, 8 ; his highness's kitchen, 7 ; hall- 
 place, 5; scullery, 1. 
 
 Door-keepers. James's Park Committee of the Army. 
 Committee of the Admiralty. The Compting-house. Un- 
 der-keepers of parks, 2 ; watermen, 28 ; Richard Nutt, 
 master of the barge ; fire-makers, 5 ; pastry, 2 ; larder, 2 ; 
 pantry, 1 ; buttery, 5 ; great beer-cellar, 1 ; wine-cellar, 1 ; 
 privy cellar, 2 ; bake-house, 4 ; porters, 2 ; ale-brewers ; 
 cooper; under-groomsof the chamber, 5 ; inferior waiters 
 at the cofferer's table, 2 ; inferior waiters at the comp- 
 troller's table, 3. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the arms of Scotland. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The standard of Scotland, borne by Major Dawboroon and 
 
 Major Babington. Assistant close mourners. 
 
 One iu a cloak, to bear up the train of the standard. 
 
 A horse, covered with black cloth, adorned with plumes, 
 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 
 same, led by Mr. Bergawny, an equerry, in a cloak, and a 
 
 groom in a coat to attend, &c. 
 Inferior officers of the lord-mayor, 70. 
 
 Marshal's men, 6. 
 Servants relating to the surveyor's office, 12. 
 
 Servants in his highness's wardrobe, 4. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the standard of the 
 
 Dragon. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 
 The standard of the Dragon, borne by Colonel Goodrick ; 
 
 and Major Cambridge, assistant. Close mourners. 
 
 One in a cloak, to bear the train of the standard. 
 
 A horse, covered with black cloth, adorned with plumes, 
 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 
 same, led by Mr. Wilcocks, equerry, in a cloak, and a groom 
 
 in a coat to attend, &c. 
 
 Officers of better sort. Scullery, 3 ; larder, 1 ; hall- 
 place, 2 ; deputy-sewer, 1 ; kitchen, 1 ; slaughter-house, 1 ; 
 spicery, 1 ; cellar. 1 ; ale-brewers, 2 ; falconers, 2 ; hunts- 
 man ; key-keeper ; gardeners, 3 ; park-keepers, 8 ; bird- 
 keeper ; chapel-keepers, 4. 
 
 Messengers of the committee of the army, 4 ; of the com- 
 mittee of the Admiralty, 2. 
 Keepers of the Council Chamber and privy lodgings, 5 ; 
 
 messengers of the Council Chamber, 15. 
 Sergeant De.ndy's men, 3 ; grooms of the chamber, 7 ; 
 waiters on the cofferer's table, 2 ; chafe-wax and sealer of 
 the Chancery, 2 ; tally-cutter; usher of the hall ; usher of 
 
 the Council Chamber ; butler to the comptroller. 
 Household kitchen, 3 cooks ; his highness's kitchen, 1 
 cook ; gunsmith, shoemaker, hatter, tailor, upholsterer, 
 measurers of cloth, 3 ; master carpenter, master joiner, 
 
 master carver, master mason. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the standard of England. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The standard of the Lion of England, borne by Major Creed 
 
 and Major Grove ; close mourners. 
 
 One in a cloak, to bear up the train of the standard. 
 
 A horse, covered with black cloth, adorned with plumes, 
 
 garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the same, 
 
 led by Mr. Wallen, equerry, in a cloak, and a groom in a 
 
 coat to attend, <tc. 
 
 Gentlemen, attendants on public ministers. 
 Barons', viscounts', earls' servants. 
 
 Gentlemen, attendants upon ambassadors. 
 
 Clerks iu the surveyor's office, 2 ; the wardrobe, 2. 
 
 Under-clerks to the commissioners of the Admiralty, 2 
 
 Clerk of the accounts of the army. 
 
 Clerk for the affairs of the ordnanre. 
 
 Clerk of the commissioners of the navy 
 
 Clerk to the committee of the army. 
 
 Mr. Malin's clerks, 2. 
 Clerks under the clerks of the council, 10. 
 
 Cash-keeper. 
 
 Printers, Mr. Henry Hill, Mr. John Field. 
 Gentlemen that wait at the comptroller's table 
 
 Officers of the lord-mayor, in gowns. 
 
 Young men, 6 ; yeomen of tne water-side, 4 ; sergeants 
 
 of the chamber, 3 ; carvers, 3 ; esquires, belonging to the 
 
 lord-mayor, 4 ; water-bailiff; common crier ; common hunt ; 
 
 sword-bearer. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the Guidon. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The Guidon, borne by Major Knight and Sir John Black- 
 
 amore. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes, 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 same, led by Mr. Bagg and Mr. Nelson, two equerries, in 
 
 cloaks, and one groom in a coat to attend, &c. 
 The poor knights of Windsor, Mr. Richard Pratt, Cap- 
 tain Fanshaw, Cornet Stephens, Captain Beale, Lieuten- 
 ant Parker, Cornet Oliner, Lieutenant Mayns, Major Wai- 
 linger, Lieutenant Bankes, Mr. Grosvciior, Captain Roe, 
 Colonel Herbert, Mr. Day, Captain Cooper, Major Leven- 
 thorp, David Hatfield, Captain Burges, Mr. Gary, Colonel 
 
 W.hichcote. 
 
 Two lads brought up to music. 
 
 Musicians. Mr. John Rogers, Mr. Thomas Mallard, Mr. 
 William Howe, Mr. David Mell, Mr. Thomas Blagrave, Mr. 
 William Gregory, Mr. Richard Hudson, Mr. Hinckston, 
 
 master of the Music. 
 
 Apothecaries. Mr. Webb, Mr. Phelps, Mr. William Bag- 
 hurst. 
 
 Chirurgeons. Mr. Fothergail, Mr. Trapham, Mr. Harris. 
 Her highness's butler. 
 His highuess's butler. 
 
 Pantry, 2; great beer-cellar, 1 ; privy cellar, 1 ; scullery, 
 1 ; wood-yard, 2 ; pastry, 2 ; caterer, 1 ; bake-house, 2 ; lar- 
 der, 3; slaughter-house, 1. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the White Lion. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The banner of the Lion, borne by ColonelPretty and Colonel 
 
 Gibbon. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes, 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 same, led by two equerries in cloaks, and a groom in a coat 
 
 to attend, Arc. 
 
 Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Head bailiff of Westminster, Mr. Jenkin. 
 
 Merchant of timber to his highness. 
 
 Clerk of the surveys. 
 Assistant to the keeper of the wardrobe. 
 
 Mewes-keeper. 
 Clerks of the stables, the aviary, the spicery, wine-cellar. 
 
 Purveyor of wine. 
 
 Clerks of the household kitchen. His highness's kitchen, 2. 
 
 Master of Westminster School, Mr. Busby. 
 
 Usher of the Exchequer, Mr. Bowyer. 
 
 Deputy-chamberlain of the Exchequer. 
 
 Mr. Edward Faulconbridge and Mr. Scipio le Squire. 
 
 Clerk for approbation of ministers, Mr. John Nye, Jun. 
 
 Solicitor of the Admiralty, Mr. Dorislaus. 
 Solicitor of the treasury, Mr. William Swan. 
 
 Secretary of the army, Captain Kingdom. 
 Secretary to the general at sea, Mr. Richard Creed. 
 Secretary to the commissioners of the Admiralty, Mr. Black- 
 borne. 
 
 Marshal of the Admiralty, Solomon Smith. 
 His highness's proctor in the Admiralty Court, Mr. David 
 
 Bud. 
 Secretary to the lords commissioners of the treasury, M* 
 
 Sherwin. 
 
 Secretary to the lords-keepers, Mr. Dove. 
 
 Register of the Admiralty, Mr. Rushworth. 
 
 Master shipwrights, Mr. John Taylor, Mr. Christopher Pett, 
 
 Mr. Tippett. 
 Masters' attendants, Mr. Thomas Scott, Mr. Charles Thoro 
 
 good, Mr. William Badley, Mr. Thomas Arkonstall. 
 
 Officers of the Ordnance, Mr. Billers, Major Browne, Mr. 
 
 Lewis Audley, Mr. John Faulkner, Mr. Wollaston, Mr. 
 
 Elias Palmer. 
 
 Officers of the Mint, Mr. Thomas Symond, chief graver , 
 r. James Hoar, clerk for his highness ; Mr. John Rey- 
 nolds, under assay-master ; Mr. Thomas Birch, weigher and 
 eller; Mr. Richard Pitt, surveyor and clerk of the irons 
 Hr. Samuel Bartlett, assay-master; Mr. Thomas Barnar- 
 diston, comptroller; Doctor Aaron Gurdon, master of the 
 
 Mint. 
 Clerk of the papers, Mr. Ambrose Randolph.
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 641 
 
 Surveyor of the works, Mr. Embree. 
 Keeper of the wardrobe at Whitehall, Mr. Clement Kin 
 
 nersley. 
 
 The Post-house, Mr. Clarke. 
 Tellers of the Exchequer, Mr. Nicholas Bragg, Mr. Georgi 
 
 Downing, Mr. Christopher Lyster, Mr. John Stone. 
 Auditors of the revenue of his highness's Exchequer, Mr 
 William Hill, Mr. Augustin Wingfield, Mr. Henry Broad 
 Mr. John Brokett, Mr. John Edwards, Mr. Richard Sadler 
 
 Auditor of the impress, Mr. Bartholomew Beale. 
 Counsel attending the lords commissioners of the treasury 
 
 Mr. Brereton, Mr. Manby. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the arms of the Union. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The banner of Union, borne by Colonel Grosvenor am 
 
 Colonel Ashfield. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes 
 and garnished with a cheyeroii, and escutcheons of the 
 same, led by two equerries in cloaks, and a groom in a coa 
 
 to attend, &c. 
 
 Officers of the fleet, Captains Ming, Newburg, Nixon 
 Howard, Earning, Robert Sanders, Eustace Smith, Rober 
 Blague, Whithorne Whetstone, Tittman, Blague, With' 
 eridge, Poole, John Copping, Lambert, Anthony Young 
 Harinan, Clark, Cuttavie. Judge-advocate Fowler, Sii 
 
 Richard Stainer, Captain Stoaks. 
 
 Officers of the army, Mr. Nathaniel Eldred, commissa- 
 ry of provisions in Scotland ; Mr. Simon White, apotheca- 
 ry ; Mr. Rossington, chirurgeon ; Mr. Samuel Barron, phy 
 siciau in Scotland ; Mr. Knight, commissary of ammuni 
 tion; Mr. Thomas Margetts, deputy advocate; Mr. Malin 
 
 chief secretary to the army. 
 Captains of horse and foot, Captains Henry Creer, Henry 
 
 Creer, Jun. 
 Commissioners for regulation of the excise, Mr. Adam 
 
 Bains, Mr. Price, Mr. Bockett, Mr. John Stone. 
 Committee of the navy, Mr. Henry Hatsell, Mr. George 
 Paler, Mr. Peter Pett, Major Nathaniel Bourne, Mr. Rich- 
 ard Hutchensou, Mr. Wright, Mr. Willoughby, Major Rob- 
 ert Thomson. 
 
 Commissioners of the army, Mr. John Phillips, Mr. John 
 Hildesley, Mr. Gervais Bennett, Mr. Richard Lucy. 
 Mr. Pierce, lecturer of Margaret's. 
 Mr. Sangar, minister of Martin's. 
 Ministers of Westminster, Mr. John Rowe, Mr. Seth Wood. 
 Commissioners for approbation of public preachers, Mr. 
 Holbeach, Mr. John Turner, Mr. Daniel Dyke, Mr. Samuei 
 Fairclough, Mr. John Tombes, Mr. Samuel Slater, Mr. 
 William Greenhill, Mr. Joseph Caryl, Mr. William Jessey, 
 Mr. George Griffith, Mr. Thomas Valentine, Mr. Walter 
 Cradock, Mr. William Cooper, Mr. Thomas Manton, Mr. 
 Philip Nye, Mr. Thankful Owen, Dr. Horton, Dr. Arrow- 
 smith, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. Tuckney, Dr. John Owen. 
 Chaplains at Whitehall, Mr. White, Mr. Sterry, Mr. Hooke, 
 
 Mr. Howe, Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Peters. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the arms of Ireland. 
 
 Three trnmpets, with banners of the same. 
 The banner of Ireland, borne by Colonel Clarke and Colonel 
 
 Salmon. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes, 
 and garnished with a cheverou, and escutcheons of the same, 
 led by two equerries, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ireland, in cloaks, 
 
 and a groom in a coat to attend <tc. 
 Treasurer of the contingencies, Mr. Gaulter Frost. 
 
 Council's solicitor, Mr. Beck. 
 
 Secretaries of the French and Latin tongues, Mr. Dra- 
 don, Mr. Marvel, Mr. Sterry, Mr. John Milton, Mr. Hart- 
 
 libbe, Sen. 
 Clerki of the signet, Mr. Samuel Moreland, Mr. James 
 
 Nutley. 
 Clerk* of the Privy-seal, Mr. Richard Whitehead, Mr. 
 
 Miles Fleetwood. 
 
 Clerk of the Council, Mr. Jessop. 
 
 Clerk of the House of Commons, Mr. Smith. 
 
 Clerk of the House of Lords, Mr. Scobell. 
 Clerk of the Commonwealth, formerly clerk of the crown, 
 
 Mr. Nathaniel Taylor. 
 His highness's gentlemen. 
 
 Majors John Chamberlain, William Farley, Nathaniel 
 Cadwell, John Hill, Eaton, Robert Swallow, Holmes, Creed, 
 John Pittman, Nicholas Andrews, John Grime, Peter Crisp, 
 
 Abraham Holmes, Craufield, Greenleaf, Elleatson. 
 Lieutenant-colonels John Miller, Richard Mope, Henry 
 Flower, William Stile, Francis Allen, Dennis Pepper, Will- 
 iam Cough, John Pierson, John Needier, Stevenson, John 
 
 Clawberry, Arthur Young, Clement Keen. 
 
 Adjutant-general for Scotland, Jeremiah Smith. 
 
 Adjutants-general for England, Captain John Melthorpe, 
 
 Major George Sedasene. 
 
 Doctors of physic. Dr. Clarke, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Prujean, 
 
 Dr. Simcotts, Dr. Bates, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Outburst. 
 
 Advocate-general for Ireland, Dr. Cartwright. 
 
 His highness's advocate, Dr. Walter Walker. 
 
 Clerk comptroller, Mr. Ewer. 
 Clerk of the green cloth, Mr. Harrington. 
 
 4 M 
 
 r, Steward of the lands, Mr. Waterhouse. 
 
 Cofferer, Mr. Maidstone. 
 
 Head officers of the army. Lieutenant-colonel Elton, of 
 foot, to the lord-general. Treasurers of the army, Captains 
 Blackwell, Dean, Colonels Smith, Barry, Bridges, Rogers 
 William Mitchell, Fitch ; Dr. William Staines, commis- 
 sary-general of musters. 
 
 Chief officers of the fleet. Rear-admiral Bourne, Vice-Ad- 
 miral Goodson. 
 Knights bachelors. 
 Three drums, with escutcheons of the arms of Scotland. 
 
 Three trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The banner of Scotland, borne by Lord Berry and Lord 
 
 Cooper. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes, 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 same, led by two equerries in cloaks, and a groom in a coat 
 
 to attend, &c. 
 
 The chief officers and aldermen of London. Solicitor, 
 auditor, remembrancer, comptroller, town clerk, common 
 sergeant, chamberlain, judge of the Sheriff's Court, record- 
 er, SirLislebone Long; Aldermen, 20. 
 Attorney-general of South Wales, Mr. Jones. 
 Judges of South and North Wales. Mr. Corbett, Mr. 
 Hagatt, Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Foxwist, Mr. Hoskins, Ser- 
 geant Seys, Sergeant Barnard. 
 
 Masters of the Chancery, 9. 
 Mr. Pell, Mr. Bradshaw, Major-general Jephson. 
 His highness's learned counsel. Attorney of the duchy, 
 Mr. Nicholas Lechmere ; Solicitor-general, Sir William 
 Ellis : Attorney-general, Sir Edmund Prideaux ; His high- 
 ness's sergeants, Sergeant Maynard, Sergeant Earle. 
 Judges of the Admiralty. Colonel Charles George Cock, 
 
 Dr. Godolphin. 
 Masters of requests. Mr. Francis Bacon, Mr. Nathaniel 
 
 Bacon. 
 Gentlemen of the bedchamber. Mr. Charles Harvey, Mr. 
 
 Underwood. 
 Master of the ceremonies, Sir Oliver Fleming. 
 
 Chief-justice of Chester, Lord Bradshaw. 
 Barons of the Exchequer, Richard Tomlins, John Parker, 
 
 Roger Hill, Edmund Nicholas. 
 
 Judges of both benches, Hugh Wyndham, Edward At- 
 kins, Peter Warburton, Matthew Hale, Richard New- 
 
 digate. 
 Lord-chief-baron, Sir Thomas Widdrington. 
 
 Lord-mayor of London, Sir John Ireton. 
 Four drums, with escutcheons of the banner of England. 
 
 Four trumpets, with banners of the same. 
 The banner of England, borne by Lords Toinlinson and 
 
 Hewson. 
 
 A horse, covered with black velvet, adorned with plumes, 
 and garnished with a cheveron, and escutcheons of the 
 same, led by two equerries in cloaks, and a groom to at- 
 tend, &c. 
 
 Relations. Lord Dunch, Sir Robert Pye, Jnn., Thomas 
 Bouchier, John Bouchier, Esquires, John Dunch, Esq., 
 Captain Fox, Thomas Cromwell, Esq., Captain Whetstone, 
 Mr. Philip Loo, Mr. Edward Fleming, Mr. Edward Hooper, 
 Mr. Edmund Phillips, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Thomas Crom- 
 well, Mr. Hughes, Captain Hierome Ingoldsby, Captain 
 Ingoldsby, Mr. John Whaley, Mr. Henry Whaley, Major 
 
 Horseman. 
 Public ministers of foreign states, commonwealths, princes, 
 
 and kings. 
 The Black Rod. 
 
 Colonel Willonghby, gentlemen usher of the House of 
 Peers, in a cloak, with an usher on his right hand, bare- 
 headed. 
 Sir. Secretary Thurloe, one of his highness's privy council. 
 
 Peers. 
 
 William lord Goffe, Edmund lord Thomas, John lord 
 tlughson, John lord Barkstead, Robert lord Tichborn, 
 Christopher lord Pack, Archibald lord Johnson, William 
 lord Roberts, Thomas lord Honeywood, William lord Lock- 
 lart, Alexander lord Popham, William lord Strickland, 
 Richard lord Onslow, Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Philip lord 
 Jones, comptroller of his highness's household, Francis lord 
 Rouse, Philip lord Skippon, Charles lord Wolseley, Will- 
 am Steel, lord-chamberlain of Ireland, William lord Len- 
 :hall, master of the Rolls, John lord Glyn, chief-justice of 
 ;he Upper Bench, George Monke, general in Scotland, Ed- 
 ward lord Montague, Lord John Disbrowe, Roger lord 
 Sroghill, George lord Enre, William lord viscount Say and 
 Sele, Earl of Cassilis, Edward earl of Manchester, Henry 
 ord Lawrence, president of the council: all their trains 
 
 borne. 
 
 [tie seal-bearer, supported by a gentleman usher, bare- 
 headed, and a sergeant-at-arms, Sergeant Middle ton. 
 Phe lords-commissioners of the Great Seal, John lord Lisle, 
 
 Nathaniel lord Fiennes : trains borne. 
 
 Ambassadors of foreign states, princes, and kings. 
 
 Six drums, with escutcheons of the Commonwealth of 
 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, <tr. 
 Six trumpets, with banners of the same.
 
 642 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 Sergeants-at-arms, Birkhead, Dendy. 
 Rouge Dragon, poursuivant-at-arms. 
 
 The great banner, borne by John lord Fiennes, Francis 
 lord Ruisel, George lord Fleet-wood, close mourners : their 
 
 trains borne. 
 
 Cheval de Deuil, 
 
 or the chief horse of mourning, covered with black velvet, 
 
 same, led by two equerries in cloaks, and a groom in a coat 
 
 to attend, &c 
 Helm and crest, spurs, Lancaster. Gnuntlet, York. Target, 
 
 Somerset. Sword, Norroy king of arms. 
 
 Coat of arms. Clarencieux king of arms, supported on 
 
 each side by a gentleman usher, bareheaded. 
 
 adorned with plumes, and garnished with a cheveron of the 
 
 Gent 
 
 The lord-chamberlain, in close mourning, with his staff: 
 
 his tram borne. 
 
 Piece* of armour. 
 
 2 
 
 
 o. Pieces of armour. 
 
 rt 
 
 a S 
 
 1 
 
 
 V 
 
 B A 
 
 SJ Backs. 
 
 
 
 5 Gauntlett*. 
 
 g 3 
 
 cq-n 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 P sr 
 
 
 
 
 "o 
 
 
 M 3 Vambrace and 
 
 a, 
 
 THE BODY. 
 
 Brest. 
 
 
 ~3 a poaldron sinister. 
 
 
 
 g 3 Vambrace and 
 
 s" 
 
 g. 3 
 
 S S 
 a o 4 Gorgett*. 
 
 i 
 
 
 g pould dextra. 
 M 4 Helm and plume. 
 
 * ST 
 
 Garter principal king of arms ; on each side a gentleman 
 
 usher, bareheaded. 
 
 Charles lord Fleetwood, chief mourner. 
 Philip lord-riscount Lisle, Lord-viscount Faulconberg, 
 supporters to the chief mourner, their trains borne. Chief 
 mourner'* train borne by Luke Skippon, Fiennes, Samuel 
 Disbrowe, James Disbrowe, Gilbert Pickering, Esquires. 
 Assistants to the chief mourner, fourteen in number. 
 Horse of honour, ornamented in very rich trappings, em- 
 broidered on crimson velvet, and adorned with white, red, 
 and yellow plumes, led by the master of the horse ; equer- 
 ries and grooms to attend. 
 The Guard of Halberdiers, two and two 
 Gentlemen porters of the Tower, warders of the Tower. 
 The effigy in this manner being brought to the west 
 gate of the Abbey Church of Westminster, it was taken 
 from the chariot by ten gentlemen, who carried it to the 
 east end of the church, and there placed with the wax effi- 
 gies of the Protector, in a most magnificent structure, built 
 in the same form as one before had been on the like occasion 
 for King James, but much more stately and expensive, as 
 the expenses attending the funeral amounted to upward of 
 siity thousand pounds. 
 
 This funeral procession was the last ceremony of honour 
 to the most serene and most illustrious OLIVER CROM- 
 WELL, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belong- 
 ing ; to whom less could not be performed, to the memory of 
 him to whom posterity will pay (when Envy is laid asleep 
 by Time) more honour than I am able to express. But, 
 alas ! how true are the words of the wise king, " Vanity of 
 vanities, all is vanity ;" seeing that, after all this funeral 
 pomp and grandeur, his dead body was lastly, by the coun- 
 el of these men whom his power had raised to greatness 
 
 Inscription over the Bed of State. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL, 
 Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland ; 
 
 Born at Huntingdon, 
 Of the name of Williams, of Glamorgan, and by 
 
 King Henry VIII. changed into Cromwell ; 
 
 Was educated in Cambridge, afterward of Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 At the beginning of the wars, captain of a troop of 
 
 horse, raised at his own charge ; 
 And bv the Parliament made commander-in-chief. 
 
 He reduced Ireland and South Wales, 
 Overthrew Duke Hamilton's army, the Kirk's army, 
 
 at Dunbar ; 
 
 Reduced all Scotland ; 
 
 Defeated Charles Stuart's army at Worcester. 
 
 He had two sons, 
 
 Lord Richard, Protector in his father's room, 
 Lord Henry, now lord-deputy of Ireland ; 
 
 And four daughters, 
 Lady Bridget, first married Lord Ireton, afterward 
 
 Lieutenant-general Fleetwood ; 
 
 Lady Elizabeth, married Lord (Maypole ; 
 
 Ladv Mary, married Lord-viscount Faulconberg ; 
 
 Lady Frances, married the Honourable Robert Rich, 
 
 Grandchild to the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick. 
 
 He was declared Lord Protector of England, 
 
 Scotland and Ireland, Dec. 16, 1653 ; 
 
 Died Septembers, 1658, after fourteen days' sickness, of 
 
 An ague, with great assurance and serenity of mind, 
 
 Peaceably in hi* bed. 
 
 Natus April 15, 1599. 
 
 Dunkirk, in Flanders, surrendered to him, June 20, 
 1658.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABBOT, archbishop of Canterbury, page 139. 
 
 Acton, sheriff of London, 31. 
 
 Archy, the famous jester of Charles I., 161. 
 
 B. 
 
 Baas, De, 573. 
 
 Bacon, Lord-chancellor, 138. 
 
 Baltimore, Lord, his letter to the Earl of Strafford, 68. 
 
 Barbone, 547. 
 
 Barebone's Parliament, list of the members of, 538. Com- 
 mittees appointed by, 547. Their measures of reform, 555. 
 
 Bates, a Turkish merchant, his case, 58. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, his account of Cromwell's troops, 420. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir Richard, his letter to Strafford, 65. 
 
 "Bedford Level," 411. 
 
 Bellasis, Henry, 78. 
 
 Berkeley, Sir Robert, 179. 
 
 Blake, Admiral, 312. His successes, 595. Sent in pursuit 
 of the Spanish Plate fleet, 596. 
 
 Bordeaux, M. de, French ambassador, 535, 547. 
 
 Boston, controversy of the Autinomians at, 271. 
 
 Bonchier, Sir James, 402. 
 
 Bouchier, Elizabeth, her marriage with Oliver Cromwell, 
 402. Her character, 403. 
 
 Bradshaw appointed president of the Council of State, 306. 
 Chosen president of the Court of Commissioners, 372. 
 His character, 373. His address to Charles I. on his 
 trial, 374. Pronounces sentence on Charles I., 375. 
 Amount of lands settled on him by the government, 380. 
 His answer to Cromwell on the latter coming to dissolve 
 the executive council, 382. His motion whether the 
 House should approve of the system of government by a 
 single person and a Parliament, 580. 
 
 Brooke, Lord, his address to his soldiers, 256. His death, 258. 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, II. Impeachment of, 14. Com- 
 mands an expedition for the relief of Rochelle, 19. A 
 remonstrance voted against certain of his proceedings, 
 28. Assassination of, 29. 
 
 Burnet, Bishop, extract from, 422. 
 
 Butler, Sir Francis, 358. 
 
 Byron, Lord, besieges Nantwich in Cheshire, 433. 
 
 C. 
 
 Calvert, Sir George, 64, 142. 
 
 Cambridge College, 432. 
 
 Carleton, Sir Dudley, vice-chancellor to Charles I., his 
 memorable expostulation to the House of Commons, 16. 
 
 Carlile, Lucy Percy, Countess of, her character, 203. Par- 
 ticipates in Curing's army plot, 204. 
 
 Carlisle, siege of, 4s9. 
 
 Chambers, Richard, 155. 
 
 Clialgrcive Field, battle of, 259. 
 
 Charles I., his first Parliament, 5. Dissolves the. Parlia- 
 ment, 9. His insolent message to the House of Commons 
 concerning Buckingham, 13. His rage on hearing of 
 Eliot's speech against Buckingham, 15. His " new coun- 
 cils," 16. Executes a forced loan, 17. His famous third 
 Parliament, 19. Attempts to get hold of the subsidies, 20. 
 His message to the House of Commons, threatening to 
 end the session, 22. His answer to the Petition of Rights, 
 23. His message to the House, acquainting them that 
 the session would end in six days, 27. His speech to the 
 Commons, 28. Measures adopted towards him by the 
 House of Commons, 28. His speech on proroguing Par- 
 liament, 29. Dissolves the Parliament, 34. His letter to 
 the Earl of Strafford during his imprisonment, 124. His 
 letter to the Lords on the condemnation of Strafford, 128. 
 The duties of tonnage and poundage rigorously extorted 
 by him, 155. Dissolves the Parliament, 174. His imbe- 
 cile measures, 176. His perfidy, 182. His cold and la- 
 conic remark on hearing of the Irish rebellion, 206. The 
 grand remonstrance presented to him at Hampton Court, 
 209. His entrance into the House of Commons to accuse 
 Pym and the four other members of high treason, 213. 
 Enters the city in search of these five members, 214. 
 His speech denouncing Sir John a traitor, 219. De- 
 nounces the militia ordinance as illegal, 221. Erects his 
 standard at Nottingham, 222. His address to his officers 
 at the battle of Edgo Hill, 256. His spirit of intrigue, 
 318. Signs a secret treaty with the Scots commission- 
 ers, 366. Charges brought against him, 371. His trial, 
 374. His last appearance in Westminster Hall, 374. 
 His execution, 376. His character, 376, 438, 459, 461 , 469. 
 
 Charles II., 489, 571. 
 
 Clare, Lord, his letter to Lord Strafford, 66. 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, extracts from his works, 183, 208, 443. 
 
 Claypole, son-in-law of Cromwell, proposes the question on 
 the legal confirmation of the major-generals, 603. 
 
 Cleaveland, John, opposes Cromwell in the election for 
 Cambridge, 412. His imprisonment, 412. His definition 
 of Protector, 413. 
 
 Clifford, Lord, 68. 
 
 Coke, Solicitor, counsel for the prosecution of Charles I., 374. 
 
 Conisby, Sir Thomas, 423. 
 
 Cony, a merchant, his case, 597. 
 
 Cooke, Secretary, 12. 
 
 Cottiugton, Lord, his letter to the Earl of Strafford, 79. 
 
 Cotton, Mr., minister of the Boston church, 274. 
 
 Cowley, the poet, extract from his " Vision," 441 
 
 Cowell, Dr., 58. 
 
 Crew, Mr., 174. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, ancestry of, 392. His parents, 394. 
 Character of his mother, 394. Anecdotes of his child- 
 hood, 396. His school days, 397. Enters Cambridge 
 College, 398. Milton's address to him, 399. Death of 
 his father, 400. Enters Lincoln's Inn, 400. His irregu- 
 larities, 400. His marriage, 402. Character of his wife, 
 403. Attaches himself to the Non-conformists, 403. Re- 
 turned member of Parliament for Huntingdon, 404. His 
 letter to Mr. Downtell, inviting him to stand sponsor for 
 his child, 405. His first entrance into Westminster Hall 
 description of his person, 405. His religious exercises, 
 407. Appointed justice of peace for Huntingdon, 407. 
 Removes to St. Ives, 407. His influence, 408. His letter 
 to Mr. Storie, 408. Removes to Ely, 409. His letter to 
 Mrs. St. John, 410. Takes part in the question on the 
 Bedford Level, 411. Returned member for Cambridge, 
 412. Takes part in the debate on the "Remonstrance,'' 
 419. His exertions for forming his famous regiment of 
 Ironsides, 420. Accepts the commission of colonel of a 
 troop, 420. His military discipline, 421. His address to 
 his soldiers, 422 His victory at Grantham, 425. De- 
 feats Colonel Cavendish at Gainsborough, 425. His first 
 acquaintance with Ireton, 426. Appointed Lieutenant- 
 governor of the Isle of Ely, 432. His letter to his broth- 
 er-in-law after the battle of Marston Moor, 437. His de- 
 feat at Dennington, 439. His letter to the Governor of 
 Edinburgh Castle, 447. His letter to Lord Wharton, 449. 
 His letter to Bridget Ireton, 450. Anecdotes of him, 451. 
 Appointed lieutenant-general of horse. 459. His letter 
 to the Speaker of the House of Commons after the battle 
 of Naseby, 461. Defeats Goring at Taunton, 462. His 
 action with the Clubmen, 462. His account of the siege 
 of Bristol, 463. His letter giving an account of the siege 
 of Basing, 464. Takes Langford House, 465. Fights 
 Lord Wentworth at Bovey Tracy, 465. His strict mili- 
 tary honour, 465. 2500 a year settled on him by Par- 
 liament, 465. His letter to Colonel Robert Hammond, 
 
 468. His measure to hinder the reduction of the army, 
 
 469. Marches into Wales, and reduces Pembroke, 469. 
 His bold and successful measures with the disaffected 
 portion of his troops, 469. His letter to the Speaker of 
 the House of Commons, after the battle of Preston, 470. 
 Marches into Scotland, 471. His reception in Edinburgh, 
 472. Negotiates a marriage for his son Richard with the 
 daughter of Mr. Major, 472. Anecdotes of him at the 
 time of the execution of Charles I., 477. Made Lord- 
 lieutenant of Ireland, 478. His letters to Mr. Major from 
 Bristol, 478. Arrives in Dublin, 479. Takes Drogheda, 
 480. Invests Wexford, 481. Breaks up the siege of 
 Waterford, 481. Re-opens the campaign, 461. Takes 
 Clonmel, 481. Appoints Ireton deputy, and sails for 
 England, 481. Appointed general-in-chief of the army, 
 484. Defeats the Scots at Musselburgh, 484. Gains the 
 victory of Dunbar, 486. Occupies Glasgow and Edin- 
 burgh, 489. Attacked with ague, 489. Gains the vic- 
 tory of Worcester, 490. His exultation, 491 . 4000 a 
 year voted to him, and a royal residence ordered to be 
 prepared for him, 493. Commissioners sent to congratu- 
 late him on his arrival at Aylesbury, 493. Takes his 
 seat in Parliament, 493. Forces the House to pass a 
 bill of amnesty, 495. Holds a meeting at the speaker's 
 house, 495. Whitelocke's account of this conference, 496. 
 Holds a council of officers at Whitehall to petition against 
 military retrenchment, 498. His conference with Lord- 
 commissioner Whitelocke whether he should take the 
 title of king, 500. Description of the meetings and di-
 
 644 
 
 BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 tensions ofhis military cabal, 504. Proposes the " Coun- 
 cil of Forty," 508. Enters Westminster with his sol- 
 diers, and forcibly dissolves the Parliament, 510. His 
 address to the House, 510. His address to the Council 
 of State, 512. His " Declaration of the grounds and rea- 
 IOBS for dissolving the Parliament," 513. Establishes a 
 new Council of Slate, 533. Form of the summons issued 
 for the Barebones Parliament, 537. His memorable ad- 
 dress to his first Parliament, 540. A deputation sent to 
 him from Parliament to become one of their members, 545. 
 His transport on hearing of the victory of the English 
 fleet over the Dutch, 548. His repulsive treatment of 
 the Dutch ambassadors, 549. His gratitude to the Eng- 
 lish admirals, 551. His measures for establishing a high 
 court of justice, 553. His letter to his son-in-law Fleet- 
 wood, 554. Opposes the vote for abolishing the Court of 
 Chancery, 559. Receives the resignation of Parliament, 
 564. Solemnly inaugurated, in Westminster Hall, Lord 
 Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Ireland, and 
 Scotland, 566. Revives the forms of monarchy, 566. 
 His various ordinances, 568. Conciliates the Presbytery, 
 570. Cajoles the Arminians, 570. His manner of treat- 
 ing with the Royalists, 571. Plot for his assassination, 
 572. Erects a high court of justice for the trial of the 
 leading conspirators, 572. The regal state which he as- 
 sumes, 573. His treaty with the Dutch, 574. Congrat- 
 ulatory addresses presented to him, 575. An entertain- 
 ment given to him in the city, 578. His speech on the 
 opening of Parliament, 579. His excitement on the de- 
 bate on Bradshaw's motion, 581. His remonstrance with 
 the House of Commons on their refusing to acknowledge 
 the House of Lords, 582. His address to the members 
 who waited on him in the Painted Chamber, 582.' An 
 ominous occurrence befalls him, 584. Summons the 
 Parliament to meet him in the Painted Chamber, 587. 
 His address to them, 587. His instructions to the major- 
 generals, 590. Equips and sends an army for the inva- 
 sion of the American colonies, 594. His sagacity, 594. 
 His letter to Major-general Fortesque, 594. Signs a 
 treaty with France, 595. His projects concerning the 
 Jews, 595. Summons another Parliament, 597. His in- 
 terview with his military satellites, 599. His address to 
 the members of the new Parliament, 599. Disannuls the 
 title of Charles Stuart, 602. Provides additional safe- 
 guards for his person, 602. His measures to conciliate 
 the people, 603. The Sexby and Syndercombe plot 
 against his life, 603. His answer to the officers that 
 waited on him, entreating him not to accept the title of 
 king, 604. Refuses to take the title of king, 606. His 
 memorable speech refusing to take the title of king, 609. 
 Solemnly inaugurated Lord Protector for life, with power 
 to name his successor, 609. His remonstrance to the 
 Grand Seignor respecting the unjust surprisal of an Eng- 
 lish ship, 611. Establishes a House of Peers, 613. For- 
 cibly dissolves the House of Commons, 616. His fears 
 for his personal safety, 616. His domestic sorrows, 617. 
 Redoubles his precautions for his personal safely, 617. 
 His grief for the death of his daughter, Lady Elizabeth 
 Claypole, 618. His death, 620. 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, birth of, 405. Proclaimed Lord Pro- 
 tector, 620. 
 
 Cromwell, Colonel Henry, nephew to the Protector, 603. 
 
 Cromwell, Henry, sou of the Protector, 569. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dean, Admiral, 548. 
 
 Dering, Sir Edward, 221. 
 
 De Witt, Admiral, his address to the States-General of 
 Holland, 549. 
 
 Digges, Sir Dudley, 14. 
 
 " Discovery of Mysteries," 253. 
 
 D'Israeli, Mr., 3, 11. 
 
 Down, Bradock, battle of, 426. 
 
 Dunbar, battle of, 486. 
 
 Dutch War, the, 311. 
 
 E. 
 
 Edge Hill, battle of, 256. 
 
 Echard, Archdeacon, 1. Extracts from his history, 4. 
 
 Eliot, Sir John, his descent, 1. His birth, 1. His quarrel 
 with Mr. Moyle, 1. His letters to Mr. Movie, 2. Be- 
 comes a barrister, 3. Visits the Continent, 3. Returns 
 home, 3. Made Vice-admiral of Devonshire, 4. Re- 
 ceives the honour of knighthood, 4. His letter to the 
 Duke of Buckingham, 5. Returned member for the 
 Borough of Newport, 6. His first speech, 6. Again re- 
 turned for Newport, 9. His motion on the adjournment 
 of Parliament to Oxford, 10. His public honesty illus- 
 trated, 11. His address to the House of Commons to 
 prevent farther supplies to the French king, 12. Ap- 
 pointed one of the secret managers to prepare an im- 
 peachment of Buckingham, 12. Returned member for 
 Cornwall, 13. His speech in the House of Commons, 6th 
 of February, 1626, 13. His speech on the impeachment 
 of the Duke of Buckingham, 14. Committed to the 
 Tower, 15. His reappearance ni the House of Commons, 
 
 to answer the charges brought against him, 16. Cleared 
 from every imputation, 16. His imprisonment in the 
 Gatehouse, 18. His release and return for Cornwall, 19. 
 His rebuke of Secretary Cooke, 20. His speech on the 
 proposed shortness of the session, 22. His speech on the 
 king's answer to the Petition of Rights, 24. His protest, 
 27. His letter to Sir Robert Cotton, 29. His reply to 
 Sir Robert Philips, on the seizure of the goods of Mr. 
 Holies, 30. His speech on the alteration of the Articles 
 of Religion, 31. His remonstrance concerning tonnage 
 and poundage, 33. His speech against the Bishop of 
 Winchester and Lord-treasurer Weston, 33. Summoned 
 before the council table, 34. His committal, 34. His 
 rigorous imprisonment, 35. His letter to Hampden, 36. 
 His letters to his sons, 36. His letter to Sir Oliver Luke 
 complaining of his imprisonment, 38. His letter to his 
 kinsman Knightley, 38. His letter to Hampden on his 
 illness, 38. His letter to Hampden complaining of in- 
 creasing restrictions, 39. Hit likeness to Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, 39. His portrait, 40. His death, 41. Philo- 
 sophical treatise written by him during his imprison- 
 ment, 43. 
 
 England, ecclesiastical constitutinn of, 185. 
 
 Essex, Earl of, his letter to the Speaker of the House of 
 Commons after the battle of Chalgrove, 261. Extract 
 from his Life, 428. 
 
 Ewer, his evidence, 376. 
 
 Exeter, Earl of, his letter to Lord Strafford, 90. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fairfax made Constable of the Tower, 304. His victory at 
 Selby, 433. Appointed lord-general of the army, 457. 
 
 Falkland, Lord, 82. 
 
 Faulconberg, Lord, 611. 
 
 Feakes, Mr. Christopher, 569 
 
 Fitz-Geoffry, Charles, dedicates his sermon on the death of 
 Lady Rous to Pym, 135. 
 
 Fleetwood, his marriage with Bridget Ireton, 504. His 
 opposition to Sir Christopher Pack's motion, 604. 
 
 Forster, Chief Justice, 334. 
 
 Foulis, Sir David, deputy-lieutenant and member of tha 
 Council of York, 78. Information exhibited in the Star 
 Chamber against him by the Earl of Strafford, 78. Sen- 
 tence of the court on him and his son, 79. 
 
 Fox, James Charles, extracts from his " Fragment of His- 
 tory," 377. 
 
 G. 
 
 Garrard, Mr., extracts from his letters, 155, 158. 
 
 Gerard, Colonel, execution of, 572. 
 
 Godwin, Mr., extracts from his History of the Common- 
 wealth, 296, 307. 
 
 Goodwin, Arthur, 256. 
 
 Greenwood, Mr., tutor to the Earl of Strafford, 55. 
 
 Grenville, Sir Bevill, declares himself for Charles, 423. 
 Publishes a commission of array, 423. His correspond- 
 ence with his wife, 424, 427. 
 
 Grey, Lord, of Groby, 588. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hale, Judge Matthew, 581. 
 
 Hampden, John, his birth, 241. Early education of, 241. 
 Enters Oxford College, 242. His marriage, 242. Takes 
 his seat as member for Grampound, 242. His memorable 
 words on refusing the loan to Charles 1., 243. Returned 
 member for Wendover, 243. Associated with Pym, St. 
 John, Selden, and Coke, on the Committee of Bills, 243. 
 His letters to Eliot concerning the children of the latter, 
 
 244. His letter to Richard Eliot, 245. His letter to 
 Eliot containing his criticism on the " Monarchy of Man," 
 
 245. Death of his wife, 247. Signs the protest against 
 ship-money, 247. Description of his residence at Hamp- 
 den, 248. Clarendon's account of him, 248. Declines 
 pleading for Archbishop Williams, 249. His second mar- 
 riage, 249. Clarendon's statement of his real opinions 
 on the anti-episcopal measure, 251. His speech on the 
 impeachment of the five members, 251. Returns to Buck- 
 inghamshire, 253. Publishes an ordinance to martial the 
 militia, 253. Accepts the commission of colonel, 253. 
 Musters his levies on the field of Chalgrove, 254. En- 
 gaged in the battle of Reading, 257. His domestic sor- 
 rows, 257. Receives his death wound at the battle of 
 Chalgrove, 259. Lord Nugent's account of him, 262. 
 His death, 262. Clarendon's character of him, 264. 
 
 Haughton, Lord, 68. 
 
 Henderson, Sir John, 431. 
 
 Henrietta, Queen, 199. 
 
 Herbert, Attorney-general, 210. 
 
 Heylin, Dr., 253. 
 
 Hollis, Denzil, his letters to Wentworth, 69. His scheme 
 
 for the preservation of the Earl of Strafford, 128. 
 Hotham, Sir John, 174. 
 Hutchinson, Mrs., her character, 272. Her controversy 
 
 with the Colony of Massachusetts, 272. Accused of 
 
 heresy, 272. Her doctrines, 273, 523.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 645 
 
 I. 
 
 Independents, the, 293. 
 
 Ingram, Sir Arthur, his letter to the Earl of Stratford, 66. 
 
 Ireland, the Court of High Commission introduced into, 100. 
 
 A mint erected in, 104. The linen trade first established 
 
 in, 105. 
 Ireton, his character, 426. His attack on the outposts of 
 
 Charles, 460. His death, 495. His funeral, 495. 
 Isle of Wight, treaty of, 304. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jamaica, taking of, by Pen, 594. 
 
 James I. remonstrates with Parliament on the impeach- 
 ment of Lord Middleton, 9. His first interview with his 
 English counsellors, 56. His impositions on imports and 
 exports, 58. Refuses to abolish purveyance, 58. An 
 amusing anecdote of him, 64. His letter to the Speaker 
 of the House of Commons, on receiving a copy of the 
 "Remonstrance," 140. Assembles his privy council at 
 Whitehall, 143. Dissolves the Parliament by proclama- 
 tion, 143. 
 
 Jenkins, Judge, accused of high treason against the House 
 of Commons, 358. His answer to the speaker, 358. His 
 intended speech at the place of execution, 359. 
 
 Jongestall, Dutch ambassador, his interesting despatch to 
 Frederic of Nassau, 575. 
 
 Kirke, Colonel, 257. 
 
 K. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lambert, Colonel, rejects the appointment of Governor of 
 Ireland unaccompanied by the title of lord-deputy, 503. 
 His opposition to Sir Christopher Pack's motion, 604. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, his celebrated schedule of ecclesiastics, 
 10. His letter to Wentworth on his marriage, 88. His 
 levities, 89. His personal appearance, 89. His letter to 
 the Earl of Exeter, 89. His letter to Lord Strafford on 
 the general affairs of church and state, 99. Accused of 
 high treason, 179; and committed to the Tower, 179. 
 
 Lawrence, Colonel Henry, president of the council under 
 the protectorate, 567. 
 
 Leicester, Earl of, his account of Cromwell dissolving the 
 Long Parliament, 314. 
 
 Lenthall elected speaker, 580. 
 
 Leslie, David, commander-in-chiefof the Scottish army, his 
 success over Cromwell at Dunbar, 484. 
 
 Lilburne, John, 358. Promotes dissension in the army 
 Committed to the Tower, 379. Banishment of, 551. His 
 proposal for the murder of Cromwell and destruction of 
 the council of state, 551. His letter to Cromwell offering 
 nis allegiance, 551. Committed to Newgate, 551. Ar- 
 raigned on the capital charge of violating the statute of 
 his banishment, 552. His trial and acquittal, 553. 
 
 Lindsey, Lord, 256. 
 
 Ludlow, extracts from, concerning the designs of Cromwell, 
 443, 445, 523. 
 
 Loftus, Sir Adam, 93, 114. 
 
 London, hackney-coaches first introduced into, 156. 
 
 Louis, Charles, Prince, elector of the palatinate His cor- 
 respondence with his mother, 415. 
 
 Luusford, Colonel, 209. 
 
 M. 
 
 Manchester, Earl of, 455. 
 
 Mainwaring, Dr., his case, 150. His sentence, 154. 
 
 Marshall, Dr., his sermon on the death of Pym, 231. 
 
 Marston Moor, battle of, 435. 
 
 Marten, Henry, his birth and parentage, 353. His marriage, 
 353. Returned member for Berkshire, 353. Anecdote of 
 him, 353. Another anecdote of him, 354. Appointed one 
 of the " Committee of Safety," 355. Made Governor of 
 Reading, 355. Anecdote of him, 356. Expelled the 
 House and committed to the Tower, 357. His reinstate- 
 ment, 358. Anecdote of him, 358. His successful inter- 
 ference in behalf of Judge Jenkins, 358. Preserves the 
 life of the author of Gondibert, 359. His answer to the 
 Scotch Commissioners, 360. Draws up a resolution de- 
 claring " that they would offer no farther addresses or 
 applications to the king," 366. Joins Fairfax in hi* ca- 
 pacity of colonel Assists Ireton in his famous papers and 
 representations to the House of Commons, 267, 268. 
 Takes part iu the deliberation against the king, 371. 
 Carries the report of the committee into the House of 
 Commons for the construction of a new great seal, 372. 
 Anecdote of him, 372. Associated with others in prepa- 
 ring the "draught" for the penal sentence against King 
 Charles, 374. An extraordinary scene between him and 
 Cromwell on the signing of the warrant for Charles's ex- 
 ecution, 376. Takei a prominent part in the debate for 
 the abolition of kingship, 378. Takes his seat in the 
 Council of State, 378. Proposes the repeal of the statute 
 of banishment against the Jews, 378. His interference 
 
 in behalf of John Lilburne, 360. Amount of property 
 settled on him in consequence of the losses he sustained 
 in the public service, 380. His suspicions of Cromwell'* 
 designs, 380. Excluded from the Council of State, 381 . 
 A few instances of his humour, 381. His trial at the 
 Old Bailey, 387. His address to the Court, 389. Sum- 
 moned before the Lords, 390. His sentence, 390. Hi* 
 imprisonment, 390. Anecdote of him, 390. His death, 
 391. 
 
 Mason, Colonel, with other officers, presents a petition to 
 Parliament against Cromwell taking the title of king, 
 608. 
 
 Meadows, Philip, secretary for the Latin tongue, 567. 
 
 Mercurius Aulicus, 223. 
 
 Mercurius Britannicus, 223. 
 
 Milton, his letter to Cromwell, 317. Made secretary to the 
 council for foreign tongues, 378. Ill* congratulatory ad- 
 dress to Cromwell on the conclusion of peace with the 
 Dutch, 576. Conduct* the negotiations with the Duke 
 of Savoy, 596. 
 
 Monk, Admiral, replaces Blake in the command of the navy, 
 547. Issues a memorable and characteristic order through, 
 bis ships, 550. Gains a decisive victory over the Dutch, 
 550. His mission to Scotland, 570. 
 
 Montague. Dr., his case, 145. 
 
 Montjoy, Lord, 82. 
 
 Mountnorris, Lord, vice-treasurer of Ireland, 86. Accused 
 of an attempt to stir up mutiny, 108. A charge brought 
 against him by the Earl of Stratford His trial, 108. His 
 sentence, 108. Intercession of hi* wife, 108. His par- 
 don, 109. 
 
 Muggletonians, 602. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nalson, Dr., 253. 
 Naseby, battle of, 297. 
 
 Neal, extract from his " History of the Puritans," 527. 
 Newbury, battle of, 428. 
 Newcastle, Marquis of, 437. 
 Newport, Lord, 215. 
 Nicholas, Sir Edward, his letter to the king at the time of 
 
 Goring's army plot, 204. His letter to the king detailing 
 
 the attempts on Pym's life, 207. 
 
 P. 
 
 Pack, Sir Christopher, 604. 
 
 Palmer, Sir Geoffrey, 334. 
 
 Pantaleon Sa, Don, 547. 
 
 Pautaleon, trial and execution of, 573. 
 
 " Parliament of Saints," 555. 
 
 Parsons, Sir William, 93. 
 
 "Pell Records," 416. 
 
 Pen commands a fleet for the invasion of the American col- 
 onies, 593, 594. His defeat, 594. 
 
 Pennyman, William, intrusted with the care of Lord Straf- 
 ford's children, 80. 
 
 Philips, Sir Robert, his capture and imprisonment, 143. 
 
 Focock, professor of Hebrew and Arabic, 569. 
 
 Port Eliot, 1. 
 
 Pory, his letter to Sir Robert Puckering, giving an account 
 of the proceedings of Sir John Eliot to obtain his liberty, 
 40. 
 
 Powell, Vavasor, 569. 
 
 Poynings, Sir Edward, 82. 
 
 Pride, Colonel, 370, 608. 
 
 Prideaux, Mr., his bill for yearly Parliaments, 183. 
 
 Prideaux, Sir Edmund, 525. 
 
 Presbyterians, 293. 
 
 Preston, battle of, 470. 
 
 Pym, John, his birth, 135. His descent, 135. His mar- 
 riage Death of his wife, 135. Returned member for 
 Calne, 137. Deputed, with eleven others, to bring the 
 declaration and petition of the Commons to the king at 
 Newmarket, 141. Returned member for Tavistock, 144. 
 Hi* proceedings against Dr. Montague, 145. His speech 
 on the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, 146. 
 His imprisonment and release, 148. His exertions during 
 the progress of the Petition of Rights, 149. His speech 
 in the case of Dr. Mainwaring, 150. Takes part in the 
 debate on Arminianism, 154. His acute feeling on th 
 desertion of Wentworth, 154. Appointed leader in th 
 House of Commons, 162. Petitioning Parliament first or- 
 ganized as a system by him, 163. The bearer of an ad- 
 dress from the Commons to the Lords His memorable 
 words, 173. Hi* correspondence with the Scotch Com- 
 missioner*, 175. Presents a petition for a Parliament to 
 the king at York, 176. Anecdote of him, 177. His speech 
 on the impeachment of Lord Stratford, 177. Appears at 
 the bar of the House of Lords to accuse Lord Stratford, 
 179. His view* reupecting church government, 180. His 
 speech on presenting the articles of impeachment against 
 the Earl of Stratford, 183. Extracts from his speeches on 
 the trial of Lord Stratford, 185, 168, 192. Chosen by the 
 Commons to justify the impeachment of Laud, 195. Ko-
 
 646 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 marks on his frequent recurrence to the phraseology of 
 Scripture, 198. Disclosures made by his committee of 
 conspiracies against the Parliament and people, 199. His 
 speech on delivering a charge against Lord Dighy, 201. 
 Conducts a conference with the Lords " concerning the 
 security of the kingdom and Parliament," 205. Counsels 
 the re introduction of the bill against the bishops, 205. 
 His personal danger, 207. Presents the grand remon- 
 strance, 208. Resolutions proposed by him to the House 
 of Lords on the king's answer to the bill for raising sol- 
 diers by impressment, 209. His address to the speaker 
 of the House of Commons on the articles of impeach incut, 
 211. Petition and defence drawn up by his friends, 214. 
 His triumphant return to the House of Commons, 215. 
 His speech on presenting the London petition to the House 
 of Lords, 215. His motion for disposing of the militia, 
 221. His speech in the case of Sir Edward Bering, 221. 
 His address to the authorities at Guildhall, 223. His 
 speech on the manifesto of Charles I., 225. His speech 
 on Waller's Plot (vide Appendix), 227. Impeaches the 
 queen, 227. His " declaration and vindication" (vide Ap- 
 pendix), 228. His illness, 228. His death, 229. Respect 
 shown to his memory by the House of Commons, 230. His 
 family and estates, 232. 
 
 R. 
 
 Radcliffe, Sir George, 87. Extract from his Essay, 90. 
 
 Raynal, Abbe, extract from his " History of the Parliament 
 of England," 524. 
 
 Reading, battle of, 257. 
 
 Retz, Cardinal, extract from his Memoirs, 534. 
 
 Rich, Mr., 612. 
 
 Richelieu, Cardinal, 30. 
 
 Rolles, John, 30. 
 
 Rouse, Lady Philippa, mother of Pym, 135. 
 
 Rupert, Prince, 428. Takes Stockport, Bolton, and Liver- 
 pool, and raises the siege of Latham House 435. Re- 
 treat after the battle of Marston Moor, 437. 
 
 Rush-worth, 213. 
 
 Ruthven, Earl of Brentford, 433. 
 
 S. 
 
 St. John, Oliver, 465. 
 
 Sandys, Sir Edwyn, 140. 
 
 Savile, Sir George, 61. 
 
 Savile, Sir John, 61. 
 
 Scot, his speech refusing to recognise Cromwell's House of 
 Lords, 383. 
 
 Scotland, union of, with England, 310. 
 
 Selden, 530. 
 
 " Self-denying Ordinance," 456, 457. 
 
 Sexby, Colonel, 596. 
 
 Sheffield, Lord, president of the north, his letter to Elles- 
 mere, 61. 
 
 Skippon, Major-general, 215, 256. 
 
 Slingsbyand Hewet, plot of, 617. 
 
 Stratford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of, 55. His birth, 55. 
 Ancestry of, 55. Education of, 55. Obtains the honour 
 of knighthood, 55. His marriage, 56. Returned as a 
 member for Yorkshire, 59. His letter to Mr. Greenwood, 
 60. Appointed to the office of custos rotulorum for the 
 West Riding, 61. His letter to his brother-in-law, Lord 
 Clifford, alluding to Parliaments, 63. His letter to Sir 
 Edward Conway in behalf of his brother Michael, 63. 
 His letter to Sir George Calvert, 64. Deprived of his 
 office of custos rotulorum, 67. His letter to Sir William 
 Weston,67. Receives the privy seal, 68. Committed to 
 the Marshalsea, 69. Removed to Uartford in Kent, 69. 
 His speeches on the discussion of the general question of 
 grievances, 69. Created baron of Wentworth, 69. His 
 letter to his nephew, Sir W. Savile, 72. His letters to 
 Thomas Gower and other friends on his election of knight 
 ef the shire of York, 73. His letter to Sir Thomas Fair- 
 fax, 74. Created viscount and president of the north, 76. 
 Claims for himself the most absolute reverence and re- 
 spect as the representative of royalty, 78. His letter to 
 Lord Cottington concerning the trial of Sir David Foulis, 
 79. Death of his second wife, 80. His letter to Sir Ed- 
 ward Stanhope, 80. Intrigues against him, 81. His let- 
 ter to Weston, 81. Appointed governor of Ireland, 83. 
 His despatches from York, 83. Arrives in London, 84. 
 His letter to the lords justices of Ireland, 84. His stipu- 
 lations, 85. His supplementary private propositions, 85. 
 His letter to Lord Mountnorris. 87. His third marriage, 
 88. Arrives in Dublin, 92. His first despatch, 92. His 
 letter to the lord-marshal, 93. His privy council, 93. His 
 elaborate despatch to the secretary for the consideration 
 of the king, 95. Issues writs for a Parliament to be held 
 in Dublin, 96. His speech to the privy council, 96. His 
 first speech in the Irish House of Commons, 97. His man- 
 agement of the convocation of the clergy, 98. His ac- 
 count of the proceedings in the Irish House of Lords, Q8. 
 Introduces the Court of High Commission into Ireland, 100. 
 Success of his measures for reducing the people of Ire- 
 
 land to conformity in religion, 102. Presses a personal 
 suit on the king, 102. His care of the army, 103. His 
 increasing reputation, 103. His objections to take the 
 office of lord-treasurer, 104. His struggles to rescue the 
 trade of Ireland from restrictions and monopolies, 104. 
 His project for establishing the linen trnde in Ireland, 105. 
 His letter to Mr. Greenwood respecting his estates in 
 Wentworth Woodhouse, 105. Reduces Connaught, 107. 
 Opposition which he meets with, 107. The enmity which 
 he provokes by his prosecution of Lord Monntnorris, 109. 
 Appears at the English court Details the measures by 
 which he consolidated the government of Ireland, 109. 
 His letter from York to the king, 110. Again entreats 
 for an earldom, and is again refused. 111. Returns to 
 Ireland, 111. His financial measures, 111. His letter to 
 the king on the conduct of Lord Holland, 112. His castle 
 at Naas, 112. Magnificence of his mode of living, 113. 
 His private habits, 113. His advice concerning the com- 
 motions in Scotland, 114. Puts down the commotions of 
 the Scotch settlers in Ulster, 114. His despatches on tho 
 "Antrim negotiations," 115. His letter to Lady Clare 
 when sending her his daughters, 115. Arrives in England, 
 117. Declares for a war with Scotland, 117. Invested 
 with the dignity of Earl of Strafford, 117. And Lord- 
 lieutenant of Ireland, 117. His letter to the king previous 
 to his return to England, 118. Extract from his despatch, 
 relating an extraordinary incident which occurred on his 
 journey, 118. His letter to Windebanke, 119. Arrives 
 in London, 120. Takes his seat in the House of Lords, 
 120. Commands an expedition against the- Scots, 120. 
 Intrigues against him-, 120. His success against the 
 Scots, 120. His impeachment, 121. His arrest, 121. 
 His letter to Lady Strafford, 121. Summary of the char- 
 ges brought against him, 122. His address to the Lords, 
 124. His trial, 125. His personal defence, 125. Bill of 
 attainder passed against him, 127. His letter of final in- 
 structions to his sun, 130. His execution, 131. 
 
 " Strafford Papers," 59. 
 
 Sydenhum, Colonel, 563 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 592. 
 
 Temple, Sir Peter, 247. 
 
 Temple, Sir Purbeck, 388. 
 
 Thurloe, secretary of state, his letters to Henry Cromwell, 
 giving an account of the illness and death of Oliver Crom- 
 well, 620. 
 
 Tromp, Van, 312, 550. 
 
 Ume, Colonel, 257, 259. 
 Uxbridge, treaty of, 294. 
 
 U. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vane, Henry, the elder, 265. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, the younger, his birth, 2fi5. His parent- 
 age, 265. Early education of, 266. Enters Magdalen 
 College, Oxford, 266. His disaffection in matters of re- 
 ligion, 266. Causes which moved him to a voluntary 
 exile, 267. Characteristic circumstances which awaited 
 him on board the passage ship, 267. Arrives at Boston, 
 267. Made governor of Massachusetts, 268. His admin- 
 istration, 268. The incidents which led to the hostilities 
 against him, 269. Passages from Sykes attributed to 
 him, 270. His influence with the people of the colony, 
 271. His entrance into Salem, 271. His return to Bos- 
 ton, 271. His religions essays, 275. Advocates the cause 
 of Mrs. Hutchinson, 276. His answer to Winthrop, 277. 
 Departs from America, 278. His marriage, 280. Re- 
 turned member for Kingston-upon-Huli, 280. United 
 with Sir William Russell as treasurer of the navy, 280. 
 His evidence against the Earl of Strafford, 281. Dis- 
 tinguishes himself in all matters of religious reform, 282. 
 Appointed sole treasurer of the navy, 263. His embassy 
 to Scotland, 284. Foils the treacherous intrigues of the 
 Duke of Hamilton, 285. Signs the Solemn League and 
 Covenant proposed to be adopted in England, 286. Ex- 
 tract from his work entitled the " Retired Man's Medita- 
 tions," 287. His definition of what a civil magistrate's 
 authority should be restricted to, 292. His policy in the 
 natter of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model, 
 294. His essay on government, 300. His treatise, " The 
 People's Case stated," 300. Appointed one of the chief 
 commissioners to represent the Republican party at the 
 treaty in the Isle of Wright, 304, His speech on the 
 question of a Monarchy or a Republic, 304. HIS retire- 
 ment to Raby Castle, 05. Refuses to take the oath pre- 
 sented to him bv the Parliament of the Commonwealth, 
 306. Placed at" the head of the affairs of the army and 
 navy, 306. His uneasiness respecting the dissolution of 
 the first Parliament of the Commonwealth, 308. H is ad- 
 ministration of the naval affairs, 309. His speech for the 
 exclusion of Scotch nominees, 310. His unparalleled ef-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 647 
 
 forts to increase the navy, 312. Milton's famous sonnet 
 to him, 312. His exertions to avert the despotism of 
 Cromwell, 313. His last effort to sustain the Republic, 
 315. Provisions of the bill on which he and Cromwell 
 disagreed, 316. Retires to Raby Castle, 317. His polit- 
 ical treatise, entitled " A Healing Question," 318. " Eng- 
 land's Remembrancer" ascribed to him, 320. Summoned 
 before the council, 320. His answer to the order issued 
 against him, 320. His arrest and imprisonment, 321. 
 His liberation, 321. Returned member for Whitechurch 
 in Hampshire, in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, 322. 
 His speech on the debate upon the question of a recogni- 
 tion of Richard Cromwell, 322. His speech on the prop- 
 osition of Secretary Thurloe on going into details connect- 
 ed with the war, 325. His speech on the petition of the 
 Barbadoes prisoners, 326. Heads of his bill for the set- 
 tlement of government, 330. His imprisonment in one of 
 the isles of Scilly, 330. His meditations on death, 331. 
 His letter to his wife, 332. His removal to the Tower, 
 333. His arraignment, 333. His address to his judges, 
 333. His trial, 334. His appeal on the last day of his 
 trial, 339. His exhortations and prayers previous to his 
 
 execution, 339. His address to the people, 341. Hi ex- 
 ecution, 342. 
 Vaudois, massacre, the, 595. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waisby Field, battle of, 431. 
 Waller's plot, 226. 
 Warwick, Earl of, 306. 
 Warwick, Sir Philip, 414, 425. 
 " Weekly Accompt," 363. 
 " Weekly Intelligencer," 362. 
 Weslon, Lord-treasurer, 30, 103. 
 
 Whitelocke, his description of the troops raised by Crom- 
 well, 303. His embassy to the Queen of Sweden, 554, 576. 
 Wildman, Colonel, 588. 
 Williams, Archbishop of York, 138, 209. 
 Wilson, Mr., minister of the Boston church, 274. 
 Winthrop, Governor of Boston, 276. 
 Worcester, battle of, 490. 
 
 York, siege of, 433, 439. 
 
 Y. 
 
 THE END.
 
 VALUABLE NEW AND STANDARD WORKS 
 
 IN THE SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS OF LITERATURE, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 ri-n 
 Inf 
 
 AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC ECONOMY, ETC, 
 
 ARMSTRONG'S TREATISE ON AGRICULTURE: ed- 
 ited by HIT EL, 50 cents. 
 
 BEECHER'S DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 75 cents. 
 
 -- HOUSEKEEPER'S RECEIPT-BOOK. 
 
 BUEL'S FARMER'S INSTRUCTOR, $1 00. 
 
 CHAPTAL'S CHEMISTRY APPLIED TO AGRICUL- 
 TURE, 50 cents. 
 
 GARDNER'S FARMER'S DICTIONARY, Engravings. 
 
 GAYLORD AND TUCKER'S AMERICAN HUSBAND- 
 KY, $1 00. 
 
 KITCHENER'S COOK'S ORACLE AND HOUSE- 
 KEEPER'S MANUAL, 88 cents. 
 
 MORRELL'S AMERICAN SHEPHERD, 75 cents. 
 
 COCK'S AMERICAN POULTRY-BOOK, 35 cents. 
 
 PARKES'S DOMESTIC DUTIES, FOR MARRIED 
 LADIES, 75 cents. 
 
 SMITH'S MODERN AMERICAN COOKERY. 40 cents. 
 
 WEBSTER AND PARKES'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF 
 DOMESTIC ECONOMY, Nearly 1000 Engravings, Muslin, 
 $3 50 ; Sheep extra, $3 75. 
 
 BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 
 
 ABERCROMBIE'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS, 38cts. 
 
 BAIRD'S VIEW OF RELIGION IN AMERICA, 63 cts. 
 
 BARNES'S NOTES ON THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 Tola., each volume sold separately, 75 cents. 
 QUESTIONS on the above, 6 vols., each 15 cents. 
 
 BELL'S MECHANISM OF THE HAND, 60 cents 
 
 BLAIR'S SERMONS, $! 50. 
 
 BONNECHOSE'S HISTORY OF THE EARLY RE- 
 FORMERS, 40 cents. 
 
 B6OK OF COMMON PRAYER, corrected Standard Edi- 
 tion, in about 30 varieties of size and binding. 
 
 BROWN'S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, $1 75. 
 
 POCKET CONCORDANCE TO THE BI- 
 
 BLK, 38 cents. 
 
 BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, 75 cents. 
 
 BUTLER'S ANALOGY OF NATURAL AND RE- 
 VEALED RELIGION, 35 cents. 
 
 CHALMERS ON THE POWER, WISDOM, AND 
 GOODNESS OK GOD IN THE CREATION, 60 cents. 
 
 CHURCH INDEPENDENT OF THE STATE, 90 cents. 
 
 COLTON ON THE RELIGIOUS STATE OF THE 
 COUNTRY, 60 cents. 
 
 COMFORTER (THE); OR, CONSOLATIONS FOR 
 MOURNERS, 45 cents. 
 
 DAYS (THE) OF QUEEN MARY, 20 cents. 
 
 DICK'S SIDEREAL HEAVENS, 45 cents. 
 
 CELESTIAL SCENERY, 45 cents. 
 
 PWIGHT'S THEOLOGY EXPLAINED AND DE- 
 FENDED, $6 00. 
 
 GLEIG'S HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, 2 vols., 80 cents. 
 
 HALL'S COMPLETE WORKS, 4 vols., $6 00. 
 
 IIAWKS'S HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT EPIS- 
 COPAL CHURCH IN VIRGINIA, $1 75. 
 
 HOLY COAT (THE) OF TREVES, 38 cents. 
 
 HUNTER'S BIOGRAPHY OF THE PATRIARCHS, 
 THE SAVIOUR, etc., $1 75. 
 
 ILLUMINATED AND PICTORIAL BIBLE, 1600 Plates. 
 
 JARVIS'S CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE 
 CHURCH, $3 00. 
 
 JAY'S COMPLETE WORKS, 3 vols., $5 00. 
 
 KEITH'S LAND OF ISRAEL, $1 25. 
 
 , DEMONSTRATION OF CHRISTIANITY, 
 
 $138. 
 
 KEITH ON THE PROPHECIES, 60 cents. 
 LE BAS'S LIFE OF W1CLIF, 50 cents. 
 
 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER.fl 00. 
 
 M'lLVAINE'S EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, $1 00. 
 M'lLVAINE ON THE DANGERS OF THE CHURCH, 
 
 10 cents. 
 
 MILMAN'S HISTORY OF THE JEWS, 3 vols., $1 20. 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, $1 80. 
 
 MOSHEIM'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, by MOB- 
 DOCK, $7 50. 
 The same Work, by MACLAINE, $3 50. 
 
 NEAL'S HISTORY OF THE PURITANS, 2 vols., $3 50. 
 
 PALEY'S EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 38 cents. 
 
 NATURAL THEOLOGY : edited by BROUGH- 
 AM, 90 cents. 
 
 PARKER'S INVITATIONS TO TRUE HAPPINESS, 
 38 cents. 
 
 PISE'S LETTERS TO ADA, 45 cents. 
 
 PRIDEAUX'S CONNECTION OF THE OLD AND 
 NEW TESTAMENTS, $3 75. 
 
 PROTESTANT JESUITISM, by a Protest-jut, 90 cents. 
 
 SANDFORD'S HELP TO FAITH, 75 cents. 
 
 SAURIN'S SERMONS: edited by Bp. HENSHAW, $375. 
 
 SCOTT'S LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION, $1 00. 
 
 SHOBERL'S HISTORY OF THE PERSECUTIONS 
 OF POPERY, SO cents. 
 
 SHUTTLEWORTH'S CONSISTENCY OF REVEL A- 
 
 SMEDLEY's' REFORMED RELIGION IN FRANCE, 
 $1 40. 
 
 SMITH ON THE HEART DELINEATED, 45 cents. 
 
 STONE'S MYSTERIES OPENED, $1 00. 
 
 SUFFERINGS (THE) OF CHRIST, by a Layman, $1 00. 
 
 SUMMERFIELD'S SERMONS, $1 75. 
 
 TURNER'S ESSAY ON THE DISCOURSE AT CA- 
 PERNAUM, 75 cents. 
 
 TURNER'S SACRED HISTORY OF THE WORLD 
 3 vols., $1 35. 
 
 UNCLE PHILIP'S EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 
 35 cents. 
 
 WADDINGTON'S CHURCH HISTORY, $1 75. 
 
 WHEWELL'S ASTRONOMY AND GENERAL PHYS- 
 ics, 50 cents. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 APOSTLES AND EARLY MARTYRS OF THE 
 CHURCH, 25 cents. 
 
 BARROW'S LIFE OF PETER THE GREAT, 45 cents. 
 
 BANGS'S LIFE OF JAMES ARMIN1US, D.D.,50 cents. 
 
 BELKNAP'S AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY, 3 vols., $1 35. 
 
 BELL'S LIFE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 85 cents. 
 
 BONAPARTE (LuciEN), MEMOIRS OF, 30 cents. 
 
 BREWSTER'S LIFE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON, 45 cts. 
 
 LIVES OF GALILEO, TYCHO BRA- 
 HE. <t<-.. 45 cants. 
 
 BURR (AAjlON), PRIVATE JOURNAL OF, $4 50. 
 
 BUSH'S L1FK OF MOHAMMED, 4.5 cents. 
 
 CALIIOUN'S LIFE AND SPEECHES, fl 13. 
 
 CAMP ELL'S LIFE OF MRS. SIDDONS, 70 cents. 
 
 COBBETT'S LIFE OF GENERAL JACKSON, 40 cents. 
 
 COOLEY'S LIFE OF HAYNES: edited by SPRAOUE, 
 90 csuts. 
 
 CORNWALL'S LIFE OF JEDMWD KEAN, 65 cents. 
 
 COURT (THE) AND CAMP OF BONAPARTE, 45 cents. 
 
 COWELL'S (JoE) LIFE, by HIMSELF. 20 cents. 
 
 CROCKETT, SKETCHES OF THE LIFE OF, 50 conU. 
 
 CROLY'S LIFE OF GEORGE IV., 45 cents. 
 
 CUNNINGHAM'S LIVES OF EMINENT PAINTERS. 
 $2 10. 
 
 D'ABRANTES (DUCHESS), MEMOIRS OF, $1 38. 
 
 DAVIS'S MEMOIRS OF AARON BURR, $3 80. 
 
 DISTINGUISHED MEN OF MODERN TIMES, 90 eta 
 
 DISTINGUISHED FEMALES (Lives OF), 35 cents. 
 
 DOVER'S LIFE OF FREDERIC THE GREAT, 90 centt 
 
 DREW, LIFE OF, by hit SON, 75 cents. 
 
 DWIGHT'S LIVES OF THE SIGNERS OF THE DEC- 
 LARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 90 cents. 
 
 FENELON'S ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS, 45 cents. 
 
 FORSTER'S CELEBRATED STATESMEN OF THE 
 ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 FORSYTH'S LIFE OF DR. PROUDFIT, 75 cants. 
 
 FRANKLIN, LIFE OF, by HIMSELF, 2 vol., 90 cents^ 
 
 GALT'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON, 40 cents. 
 
 GLASS'S LIFE OF WASHINGTON ; in Latin. $1 IS. 
 
 GODWIN'S LIVES or THE NECROMANCERS, 65 cu.
 
 STANDARD WORKS IN THE SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS OP LITERATURE, 
 
 HEAD'S LIFE OF BRUCE, the African Traveler, 45 cts. ' 
 HOGG'S ANECDOTES OF SIR W. SCOTT, 60 cents. 
 HOLDICH'S LIFE OF REV. DR. W. FISK, $2 00. 
 HOLMES'S LIFE OF MOZART, 50 cents. 
 HORNE'S NEW SPIRIT OF THE AGE, 25 cents. 
 HUNTER'S SACRED BIOGRAPHY, $1 75. 
 IRVING'S LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 90 cents. 
 JAMES'S LIFE OF CHARLEMAGNE, 45 cents. 
 JAMESON'S MEMOIRS OF CELEBRATED FEMALE 
 
 SOVEREIGNS, feO cents. 
 JAY'S (JOHN) LIFE, by his SON, $5 00. 
 JOHNSON'S LIFE, AND SELECT WORKS, 90 cents. 
 KENDALL'S LIFE OF GENERAL JACKSON. 
 LEE'S LIFE OF BARON CUVIER. 50 cents. 
 LE BAS'S LIFE OF WICLIF, 50 cents. 
 
 LIFE OF CRANMER, 2 vols., $1 00. 
 
 LOCKHART'S LIFE OF NAPOLEON, 90 cenu. 
 MACKENZIE'S LIFE OF PAUL JONES, fl 00. 
 
 LIFE OF COM. O. H. PERRY, 90 cents. 
 
 MEMES'S MEMOIRS OF JOSEPHINE, 45 cents. 
 M'GUIRE'S OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF 
 
 WASHINGTON, $1 13. 
 MOORE'S LIFE, LETTERS, <kc., OF BYRON, $2 75. 
 
 LIFE OF LORD E. FITZGERALD, $1 00. 
 
 NAVIGATORS (EARLY), LIVES OF. 45 cents. 
 PARK'S (MuNOO) LIFE AND TRAVELS, 45 cents. 
 PAULDING'S LIFE OF WASHINGTON, 90 cents. 
 PELLICO'S (Sitvio) IMPRISONMENTS, 50 cents. 
 
 PLUTARCH'S LIVES : by LANOHORNE, 1 vol., $2 00. 
 The same Work in 4 vols., $3 50. 
 
 RENWICK'S LIFE OF DE WITT CLINTON, 45 cents. 
 
 LIVES OF JAY AND HAMILTON, 45 cts. 
 
 ROBERTS'S LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 
 HANNAH MORE, $1 50. 
 
 RUSSELL'S LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 90 cents. 
 
 SCOTT'S LIFE OF LUTHER, $1 00. 
 
 SEDGWICK'S LIFE AND LETTERS OF W. LIVING- 
 STON, $2 00. 
 
 SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF LORD NELSON, 45 cents. 
 
 SPARKS'S AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY, 10 vols., $ 7 50 
 The Volumes sold separately, if desired. 
 
 STEWART'S ADVENTURES IN CAPTURING MUR 
 HELL, 90 cents. 
 
 STILLING'S (HEINRICH) AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 20 cents 
 
 STONE'S LIFE OF BRANT, THE INDIAN CHIEF, 90 cts. 
 
 LIFE OF MATTHIAS THE IMPOSTOR, 
 
 63 cents. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S LIVES OF CELEBRATED TRAVEL- 
 ERS, $1 25. 
 
 TAYLOR'S " RECORDS OF MY LIFE," $1 50. 
 
 THATCHER'S BIOGRAPHY OF DISTINGUISHED 
 INDIANS, 90 cents. 
 
 TYLER'S (JOHN) LIFE AND SPEECHES, 40 cents. 
 
 WILLIAMS'S ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 45 cents. 
 
 WILSON'S LIVES OF ECCENTRIC AND WONDER- 
 FUL CHARACTERS, $1 90. 
 
 HISTORY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
 ALISON'S EUROPE FROM 1789 TO 1815, $5 00. 
 
 BONNECHOSE'S HISTORY OF THE REFORMERS 
 BEFORE LUTHER, 40 cents. 
 
 SUCRE'S RUINS OF ANCIENT CITIES, 90 cents. 
 
 BULWER'S ATHENS, ITS RISE AND FALL, $1 20. 
 
 BUNNER'S HISTORY OF LOUISIANA TO THE 
 PRESENT TIME, 45 cents. 
 
 CAESAR'S COMMENTARIES, 90 cents. 
 
 CRICHTON'S HISTORY OF ARABIA, 90 cents. 
 
 CRICHTON AND WHEATON'S DENMARK, NOR- 
 WAY, AMD SWEDEN, 90 cents. 
 
 CROWE'S HISTORY OF FRANCE, 3 vols., $1 75. 
 
 DAVIS'S HISTORY OF CHINA, 90 cents. 
 
 DUNHAM'S SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, $2 50. 
 
 DUNLAP'S STATE OF NEW- VORK, 90 cents. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN THEA- 
 TRE, $1 75. 
 
 DWIGHT'S HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT, 45 cents. 
 
 FERGUSON'S ROMAN REPUBLIC, 45 cents. 
 
 FLETCHER'S HISTORY OF POLAND, 45 cents. 
 
 FLORIAN'S MOORS IN SPAIN, 45 cents. 
 
 PHASER'S MESOPOTAMIA AND ASSYRIANS cents. 
 
 HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE AC- 
 COUNT OF PERSIA, 45 cents. 
 
 GIBBON'S ROME, with Notes, by MILMAN, $5 00. 
 
 GOLDSMITH'S ROME : abridged, 45 cents. 
 
 GREECE: abridged, 45 cents. 
 
 GRANT'S NESTORIANS ; OR, LOST TRIBES, $1 00. 
 
 GRATTAN'S NETHERLANDS TO THE REVOLU- 
 TION or 1830, 60 cents. 
 
 BALE'S UNITED STATES TO 1817, 2 vola., 90 cents. 
 
 HALLAM'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENC- 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 $200. 
 
 LITERATURE OF EUROPE, $3 75. 
 
 HAWKS'S P. E. CHURCH IN VIRGINIA, $1 75. 
 HENRY'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 90 cents. 
 HERODOTUS'S GENERAL HISTORY, $1 35. 
 HOWITT'S PRIESTCRAFT IN ALL AGES, 60 cents. 
 ICELAND, GREENLAND, AND THE FAROE 1SL- 
 
 JAMES''S CHIVALRY AND THE CRUSADES, 45 cts. 
 
 JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE, 45 cents. 
 
 JARVIS'S CHRONOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION TO 
 CHURCH HISTORY, $3 00. 
 
 KEIGHTLEY'S ENGLAND TO 1839, 5 vols., $2 25. 
 
 LANMAN'S STATE OF MICHIGAN, 45 cents. 
 
 LIVY'S ROME: translated by BAKER, 5 vols., $2 25. 
 
 LOSSING'S HISTORY OF THE FINE ARTS, 45 cents. 
 
 MACKINTOSH'S ENGLAND TO THE 17th CENTU- 
 RY, $1 50. 
 
 MICHELET'S ELEMENTS OF MODERN HISTORY, 
 
 MILMAN'S HISTORY OF THE JEWS, 3 vols., $1 20. 
 MOSHEIM'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: MAC- 
 
 LAINE'S Edition, $3 50. 
 
 MURDOCK'S Edition of the same Work, $7 50. 
 MURRAY'S HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF BRITISH 
 
 AMERICA, 90 cents. 
 HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF BRITISH 
 
 INDIA, 91 35. 
 
 NEAL'S HISTORY OF THE PURITANS, $3 50. 
 PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, TO THE 
 
 REIGN OF GEORGE HI., profusely Illustrated. 
 PRESCOTT'S CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 3 vols., $6 00. 
 
 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA, f 6 00. 
 
 PRIDEAUX'S CONNEXION OF THE OLD AND 
 
 NEW TESTAMENTS, $3 75. 
 ROBERTSON'S HISTORICAL WORKS, Maps, $5 00. 
 
 REIGN OF CHARLES V., $1 75. 
 
 SCOTLAND AND ANCIENT INDIA. 
 
 SI 75. 
 
 HISTORY OF AMERICA, $1 75. 
 
 CHARLES V. : abridged, 45 cents. 
 
 AMERICA: abridged, 45 cents. 
 
 ROBINS'S TALES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY, 
 
 3 vols., $1 00. 
 ROLLIN'S ANCIENT HISTORY, WITH A LIFE OF 
 
 THE AUTHOR, $3 75. 
 
 RUSSELL AND JONES'S MODERN EUROPE, $3 00 
 RUSSELL'S HISTORY OF EGYPT, 45 cents. 
 
 NUBIA AND ABYSSINIA, 45 cents. 
 
 BARBARY STATES, 45 cents. 
 
 RUSSELL'S POLYNESIA, 45 cents. 
 
 PALESTINE, 45 cents. 
 
 SALE'S JOURNAL OF DISASTERS IN AFGHAN 
 
 TAN, 10 cents. 
 
 SALLUST'S HISTORY : translated by ROSE, 40 cents. 
 SCOTT'S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND, 2 vols., $1 20. 
 
 HISTORY OF DEMONOLOGY, 40 cents. 
 
 SCOTT'S LUTHERAN REFORMATION, $1 00. 
 SEGUR'S HISTORY OF NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN 
 
 CAMPAIGN, 90 cents. 
 
 SFORZOSPS HISTORY OF ITALY, 45 cents. 
 SISMONDI'S ITALIAN REPUBLICS, 60 cents. 
 SMEDLEY'S SKETCHES FROM VENETIAN HIS- 
 TORY, 90 cents. 
 SMITH'S HISTORY OF FESTIVALS, GAMES, <tc., 
 
 45 rents. 
 
 SMITH'S HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 45 cents. 
 SPALDING'S ITALY AND THE ITALIAN ISLANDS, 
 
 $1 35. 
 STONE'S BORDER WARS OF THE AMERICAN 
 
 REVOLUTION, 90 cents. 
 SWITZERLAND, HISTORY OF, 60 cents. 
 TAYLOR'S HISTORY OF IRELAND, 90 cents. 
 THATCHER'S HISTORY OF THE BOSTON TEA- 
 PARTY, 63 cents. 
 TALES OF THE AMERICAN REVO- 
 
 I.UTION, 35 cents. 
 THIRLWALL'S HISTORY OF GREECE, $3 50. 
 THUCYDIDES' GENERAL HISTORY : translated by 
 
 SMITH, 90 cents. 
 TURNER'S SACRED HISTORY OF THE WORLD, 
 
 $1 35. 
 
 TYTLER'S UNIVERSAL HISTORY, 6 vols., $2 70. 
 UNCLE PHILIP'S HISTORY OF VIRGINIA, 35 cents. 
 
 , HISTORY OF NEW- YORK, 70 cts. 
 
 LOST GREENLAND, 35 cents 
 
 NEW-HAMPSH1RE, 70 cents 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, 70 cents. 
 
 XENOPHON'S HISTORY: translated by SPELMAH 
 
 65 cents.
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
 COLLEGE AND SCHOOL BOOKS. 
 
 ANTIION'S LATIN LESSONS, 90 cents. 
 
 LATIN PROSE COMPOSITION, 90 cents. 
 
 LATIN PROSODY AND METRE, 90 cents. 
 
 LATIN VERSIFICATION. 90 cents. 
 
 ZUMPT'S LATIN GRAMMAR, 90 cents. 
 
 COMMENTARIES OF CAESAR, $1 40. 
 
 ^ENEID OF VIRGIL, $2 00. 
 
 GEORGICS, &c., OF VIRGIL. 
 
 CICERO'S SELECT ORATIONS, $1 20. 
 
 SALLUST. With English Notes, 88 cents. 
 
 HORACE. With English Notes, $1 75. 
 
 FIRST GREEK LESSONS, 90 cents. 
 
 GREEK PROSE COMPOSITION, 90 cents. 
 
 GREEK PROSODY AND METRE, 90 cts. 
 
 GREEK GRAMMAR, 90 cents. 
 
 NEW GREEK GRAMMAR, 90 cents. 
 
 HOMER. With English Notes, $1 50. 
 
 GREEK READER, FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 OF JACOBS, $1 75. 
 
 ANABASIS OF XENOPHON. 
 
 GREEK AND ENGLISH LEXICON. 
 
 ANTHON'S CLASSICAL DICTIONARY, $4 75. 
 
 SMITH'S DICTIONARY OF GREEK AND 
 
 ROMAN ANTIQUITIES, $4 75. 
 
 SMITH'S DICTIONARY OF ANTIQUI- 
 TIES : abridged. 
 
 BENNETT'S SYSTEM OF BOOK-KEEPING, $1 50. 
 
 BOUCHARLAT'S ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON 
 MECHANICS, $2 25. 
 
 BOYD'S ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC, 50 cents. 
 
 CAMPBELL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RHETORIC, $1 25, 
 
 I CLARK'S ELEMENTS OF ALGEBRA, &c., $1 00. 
 EDWARDS'S BOOK-KEEPER'S ATLAS. $2 00. 
 GRISCOM'S ANIMAL MECHANISM AND PHYSIOL- 
 
 oov, 45 cents. 
 
 HAZEN'S PROFESSIONS AND TRADES, 75 cents 
 HEMPEL'S GERMAN GRAMMAR. 91 75. 
 HENRY'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 90 cents. 
 KANE'S ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY, $2 00. 
 LEE'S ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY, 50 cents. 
 LEWIS'S PLATONIC THEOLOGY, <fec., $1 50. 
 MAURY'S PRINCIPLES OF ELOQUENCE, 50 cents. 
 MORSE'S NEW SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY FOR 
 
 SCHOOLS, 50 cents. 
 NOEL AND CHAPSAL'S NEW SYSTEM OF FRENCH 
 
 GRAMMAR, 75 cents. 
 
 PARKER'S AIDS TO ENGLISH COMPOSITION, $1 00. 
 POTTER'S POLITICAL ECONOMY, <fec., 50 cents. 
 PROUDFIT'S PLAUTUS, "THE CAPTIVES." With 
 
 English Notes, 38 cents. 
 RENWICK'S PRACTICAL MECHANICS, 90 cents 
 
 ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY, 75 cents. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSO- 
 
 PHY, 75 cents. 
 SCHMUCKER'S MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, $1 00. 
 UPHAM'S TREATISE ON THE WILL, $1 25 
 
 MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 2 vols., $2 50. 
 
 ABRIDGMENT OF MENTAL PHILOSO- 
 
 PHY, $1 25. 
 
 %* Many other works in extensive use as text-books in 
 schools may be found under the other heads of this catalogue. 
 
 ESSAYISTS, BELLES-LETTRES, EDUCATION, ETC. 
 
 ADDISON'S COMPLETE WORKS, 3 vols., $5 00. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR, 
 
 S vols., ISmo, 90 cents. 
 
 BACON AND LOCKE'S ESSAYS, 45 cents. 
 
 BROUGHAM'S PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF 
 SCIENCE, 45 cents. 
 
 SUCRE'S BEAUTIES AND SUBLIMITIES OF NA- 
 TURE, 45 cents. 
 
 BURKE'S COMPLETE WORKS, 3 vols., $5 00. 
 
 WISDOM AND GENIUS ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BY EXTRACTS FROM HIS WRITINGS. 
 
 BURKE ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL, 75 cts. 
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON, AND 
 OTHER WRITINGS, $1 75. 
 
 CICERO'S OFFICES, ORATIONS, AND CATO AND 
 L.ELIUS, $1 25. 
 
 COLERIDGE'S LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, AND 
 RECOLLECTIONS, 65 cents. 
 
 . , SPECIMENS OF THE TABLE-TALK 
 
 OF, 12mo, 70 cents. 
 
 COMBE'S PHYSIOLOGY APPLIED TO HEALTH 
 AND MENTAL EDUCATION, 45 cents. 
 
 DICK ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY BY 
 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE, 18mo, 45 cents. 
 
 DEMOSTHENES' ORATIONS ; translated by Leland, 
 2 vols.. 85 centi. 
 
 DRYDEN'S COMPLETE WORKS, $3 75. 
 
 DUTY (THE) OF AMERICAN WOMEN TO THEIR 
 COUNTRY, 38 cents. 
 
 EDGEWORTH'S TREATISE ON PRACTICAL EDU- 
 CATION, 12mo, 85 cents. 
 
 FAMILY INSTRUCTOR; OR, DUTIES OF DOMES- 
 TIC LIFE, 45 cents. 
 
 GRAVES'S WOMAN IN AMERICA, 45 cents. 
 
 IIORNE'S NEW SPIRIT OF THE AGE. With 7 Por- 
 traits, $1 50. 
 
 JOHNSON'S TREATISE ON LANGUAGE, $1 75. 
 
 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN, 45 cents. 
 
 LAMB'S ESSAYS OF ELIA, LETTERS, POEMS, <fcc., 
 $200. 
 
 MACKENZIE'S COMPLETE WORKS, $1 25. 
 
 MARTINEAU. HOW TO OBSERVE, 43 cents. 
 
 MATHEWS'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS, $1 00. 
 
 MAURY'S PRINCIPLES OF ELOQUENCE, 45 cents. 
 
 MONTGOMERY'S LECTURES ON POETRY AND 
 LITERATURE, 45 cents. 
 
 MORE'S COMPLETE WORKS, 7 vols., $6 50. 
 The same Work, in 1 vol., $2 50. 
 
 MUDIE'S GUIDE TO THE OBSERVATION OF NA- 
 TURE, 18mo, 45 cents. 
 
 NEELE'S LITERARY REMAINS. $1 00. 
 
 NOTT'S COUNSELS TO THE YOUNG, 50 cents. 
 
 POTTER AND EMERSON'S SCHOOL AND THE 
 SCHOOLMASTER, $1 00. 
 
 PRESCOTT'S BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MIS- 
 CELLANIES, $200. 
 
 PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICUL- 
 TIES, 90 cents. 
 
 SANDS'S WRITINGS, 2 vols. 8vo, $3 75. 
 
 SEDGWICK'S MEANS AND ENDS, 45 cents. 
 
 SIGOURNEY'S LETTERS TO YOUNG LADIES, 9C cts. 
 LETTERS TO MOTHERS, 90 cents. 
 
 SMITH'S PLAN OF INSTRUCTION AND HISTORY 
 OF EDUCATION, 45 cents. 
 
 SOUTHEY. THE DOCTOR, <fec., 45 cents. 
 
 VERPLANCK'S DISCOURSES ON AMERICAN HIS- 
 TORY, 60 cents. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF LIBERAL STUD- 
 IES, 25 cents. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF MORAL CAUSES, 
 
 WIRT'S LETTERS OF THE BRITISH SPY,60centi 
 
 NATURAL SCIENCE, ETC. 
 
 BLL. THE HAND, ITS MECHANISM, &c., 60 cents. 
 BIRDS. NATURAL HISTORY OF, 45 cents. 
 BRANDE'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SCIENCE AND 
 
 ART, $4 00. 
 BREWSTER'S LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC, 
 
 DANIELL'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF NATURAL PHI- 
 LOSOPHY, 69 cents. 
 
 DICK'S PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY, 50 cents. 
 
 DRAPER'S TREATISE ON THE CHEMICAL OR- 
 GANIZATION OF PLANTS, $2 50. 
 
 ELEPHANT (THE). NATURAL HISTORY OF, 45 cts. 
 
 EULER'S LETTERS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 GOOD'S S BOOK OF NATURE, $1 25. 
 
 HASWELL'S ENGINEERS' AND MECHANICS' POCK- 
 
 ET-BOOK, $1 50. 
 
 HERSCHEL'S DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY OF 
 NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 60 cents. 
 
 HIGOINS'S PHYSICAL CONDITION AND PHENOM- 
 ENA OF THE EARTH, 45 cents. 
 
 HUMBOLDT'S COSMOS ; A SURVEY OF TIK PHYS 
 ICAL HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 INSECTS. NATURAL HISTORY OF, 90 cents. 
 
 MOSELEY'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF MECHANICS 
 edited by RENWICR, 45 cents. 
 
 QUADRUPEDS. NATURAL HISTORY OF, 45 cents. 
 
 UNCLE PHILIP'S AMERICAN FOREST, 35 cents. 
 
 TOOLS AND TRADES AMONG 
 
 ANIMALS, 35 cents. 
 TEGETABLE SUBSTANCES USED FOR FOOD, 45 cts. 
 WHITE'S NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 
 
 With Plates, 45 cents. 
 WYATT'S MANUAL OF CONCHOLOGY, $3 75.
 
 4 STANDARD WORKS IN THE SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS OP LITERATURE. 
 
 MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE, RHETORIC, ETC. 
 
 ABERCROMBIE ON THE MORAL FEELINGS, 40 cts. 
 ON THE INTELLECTUAL POW- 
 
 ALISON OX THE NATURE AND PRINCIPLES OF 
 
 TASTE, 75 cents. 
 
 BURKE ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL, 75 cts. 
 COMBE'S CONSTITUTION OF MAN, 45 cents. 
 DENDY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY, 45 cents. 
 DYMOND'S PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY, $1 38. 
 MARTINEAU'S LETTERS ON MESMERISM, 5 centi. 
 
 MILL'S SYSTEM OF LOGIC, RATIOCINAT1VE AND 
 INDUCTIVE, $2 00. 
 
 SEERESS (THE) OF PREVORST, 20 cents. 
 
 TOWNSHEND'S FACTS IN MESMERISM, 75 cents. 
 
 UNCLE SAM'S RECOMMENDATIONS OF PHRE- 
 NOLOOT, 45 cents. 
 
 UPHAM'S IMPERFECT AND DISORDERED MEN- 
 TAL ACTION, 45 cents-. 
 
 WHEWELL'S ELEMENTS OF MORALITY, INCLUD- 
 ING POLITY, $1 00. 
 
 VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, 
 
 ANTHON'S TREVES, THE VALLEY OF THE 
 
 MEUSE, <tc., 75 cents. 
 BARROW'S PITCAIRN'S ISLAND AND MUTINY 
 
 OF THE SHIP BOUNTY, 45 cents. 
 BUCKINGHAM'S TRAVELS IN AMERICA, $3 50. ' 
 CHANGE FOR THE AMERICAN NOTES, 10 cents. 
 CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE, FROM 
 
 MAGELLAN TO COOK, 45 cents. 
 COKE'S TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 NOVA SCOTIA, AND CANADA, 75 cents. 
 COLTON'S FOUR YEARS IN GREAT BRITAIN, 90 cts. 
 COOK'S VOYAGES ROUND THE WORLD. With a 
 
 Sketch of his Life, 38 cents. 
 
 DANAIS TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, 45 cents. 
 DAVENPORT'S PERILOUS ADVENTURE BY LAND 
 
 AND SEA, 45 cents. 
 
 DE KAY'S SKETCHES OF TURKEY IN 1831-2, $2 00. 
 DICKENS'S AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL 
 
 CIRCULATION, 10 cents. 
 DRAKE, CAVENDISH, ANDDAMPIER. LIVES AND 
 
 VOYAGES OF., 45 cents. 
 DURBUN'S TRAVELS IN EUROPE, 2 vols., 92 00. 
 
 TRAVELS IN THE EAST, 2 vols., 92 00. 
 
 ELLIS'S POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, 4 vols., 92 50. 
 EMERSON'S LETTERS FROM THE AEGEAN, 75 cts. 
 FEATHERSTONHAUGH'S EXCURSIONS IN THE 
 
 SLAVE STATES, &c., 20 cents. 
 FIDLER'S OBSERVATIONS ON PROFESSIONS, &c., 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, 60 cents. 
 FISK'S TRAVELS IN EUROPE. With Plates, $3 25. 
 FLAGG'S TRAVELS IN THE FAR WEST, $1 50. 
 GREEN'S TEXIAN EXPEDITION AGAINST MIER. 
 
 Plates, 92 00. 
 HAIGHT'S LETTERS FROM THE OLD WORLD, 
 
 2 vols., $1 75. 
 
 HEAD'S HOME TOUR THROUGH THE MANUFAC- 
 TURING DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND, $1 13. 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF BRUCE THE 
 
 AFRICAN TRAVELER, 45 cents. 
 HOFFMAN'S WINTER IN THE WEST, 91 50. 
 HUMBOLDT'S TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN 
 
 SOUTH AMERICA, &c., 45 cents. 
 HUMPHREY'S TOUR IN GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, 
 
 AND BELGIUM, 91 75. 
 KVGRAHAM'S SOUTHWEST, 91 50. 
 JACOBS'S SCENES, INCIDENTS, AND ADVEN- 
 
 TURES IN THE PACIFIC, 91 25. 
 
 JAMESON'S DISCOVERIES AND ADVENTURES IN 
 
 AFRICA, 45 cents. 
 JAMESON'S VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME 
 
 AND ABROAD, 91 00. 
 KAY'S TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN CAFFRA- 
 
 KENDALL'S EXPEDITION TO SANTA FE, TEXAS, 
 
 &c.. 2 vols., 92 50. 
 KOHL'S SKETCHES OF DUBLIN AND OTHER 
 
 PARTS of IRELAND, 10 cents. 
 LANDER'S JOURNAL OF TRAVELS IN AFRICA, 2 
 
 vols., 90 cents. 
 LATROBE'S RAMBLES IN MEXICO, 12rao, 65 cents. 
 
 RAMBLES IN NORTH AMERICA. 91 10. 
 
 LESLIE'S, &c., DISCOVERIES AND ADVENTURES 
 
 iti THE POLAR SEA*, 45 cents. 
 LE\\.'S AND CLARK'S TRAVELS BEYOND THE 
 
 ROCKY MOUNTAINS, 90 cents. 
 
 MACKENZIE'S YEAR IN SPAIN, 2 vols., $2 25. 
 
 SPAIN REVISITED, 2 vols., 91 75. 
 
 AMERICAN IN ENGLAND, $1 50. 
 
 MILLER'S CONDITION OF GREECE, 38 cents. 
 MORGAN'S FRANCE IN 1829 AND 1830, 70 cents. 
 MORRELL'S FOUR VOYAGES TO THE SOUTH 
 
 SEA, 91 50. 
 MORRELL'S VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH SEA IN 
 
 1829 AND 1830, 63 cents. 
 MOTT'S EUROPE AND THE EAST, 91 90. 
 NEW ORLEANS AS I FOUND IT, 20 cents. 
 OLIN'S TRAVELS IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETR^EA, 
 
 AND THE HOLY LAND, 9250. 
 OWEN'S VOYAGES TO AFRICA, ARABIA, AND 
 
 MADAGASCAR, 91 13. 
 PARK'S TRAVELS IN AFRICA AND ACCOUNT OF 
 
 HIS DEATH, 45 cents. 
 PARRY'S VOYAGES TOWARD THE NORTH POLE, 
 
 90 cents. 
 
 PERILS OF THE SEA ; OR, AFFECTING DISASTERS 
 
 UPON THE DEEP, 35 cents. 
 
 PHELPS'S YOUNG TRAVELER FROM OHIO, 35 ct*. 
 POLO'S LIFE AND TRAVELS, 45 cents. 
 PORTER'S LETTERS FROM CONSTANTINOPLE, 
 
 91 50. 
 
 PUCKLER MUSKAU. TUTTI FRUTTI, 50 cents. 
 REED AND MATHESON'S VISIT TO THE AMERI- 
 CAN CHURCHES, 91 30. 
 REYNOLDS'S VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC ROUND 
 
 THE WORLD. $3 25. 
 LETTERS ON THE EXPLORING EX- 
 
 PEDITION, 91 50. 
 ROBERTS'S EMBASSY TO THE COURTS OF SIAM, 
 
 COCHIN-CHINA, A-c., 91 75. 
 SARGENT'S AMERICAN ADVENTURE BY LAND 
 
 AND SEA, 90 cents. 
 SIEBOLD'S MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE 
 
 JAPANESE, 45 cents. 
 
 SEDGWICK'S LETTERS FROM ABROAD TO KIN- 
 DRED AT HOME, 9' 90. 
 STEPHENS'S INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN CENTRAL 
 
 AMERICA, 95 00. 
 
 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN YUCA- 
 TAN, $5 00. 
 
 INCIDENTS or TRAVEL IN GREECE, 
 
 TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND, $1 75. 
 
 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, 
 
 ARABIA PETR.EA, &o., 91 75. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S LIVES OF CELEBRATED TRAVEL- 
 ERS, 91 25. 
 TASISTRO'S TBAVILS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES, 
 
 91 50. 
 THINGS AS THEY ARE IN THE MIDDLE AND 
 
 SOUTHERN STATES. 75 cents. 
 TROLLOPE'S PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. 
 
 Plates, 91 50. 
 TYTLER'S DISCOVERIES ON THE NORTHERN 
 
 COASTS OF AMERICA, 45 cents. 
 UNCLE PHILIP'S WHALE FISHERY AND POLAR 
 
 SEAS, 70 cents. 
 VOYAGES ROUND THE WORLD SINCE THE DEATH 
 
 OF CAPTAIN COOK, 45 cents. 
 WOLFF'S MISSION TO BOKHARA, $2 00. 
 WRANGELL'S EXPEDITION TO SIBERIA, POLAR 
 
 SEAS, Ac., 45 cents. 
 
 DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS. 
 
 ANTHON'S CLASSICAL DICTIONARY, 9* 75. 
 
 GREEK AND ENGLISH LEXICON. 
 
 DICTIONARY OF GREEK AND ROMAN 
 
 ANTIQUITIES, by Smith, 34 75. 
 
 ^ Same wnrk, abridged for Schonls. 
 
 BRANDE'S DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE, LITERA- 
 TURE. AND ART, 94 00. 
 
 BROWN'S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, 91 75. 
 
 COBB'S MINIATURE LEXICON OF THE ENGLISH 
 LANGUAGE, 50 ceiiU. 
 
 COOPER'S DICTIONARY OF SURGERY, 93 88. 
 COPLAND'S DICTIONARY OF MEDICINE. 
 CRABB'S ENGLISH SYNONYMES, 92 38. 
 GARDNER'S FARMER'S DICTIONARY, $1 50. 
 HOOPER'S MEDICAL DICTIONARY, 93 00. 
 M-CULI.OCH'S GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL, 
 
 AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY, 96 50. 
 WEBSTER'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY, 93 50. 
 WEBSJER'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF DOMESTIC 
 
 ECunoMY, $3 75.
 
 27472