Anonymous

THE COMMONWEALTH.

Proclamation of the Prince of Wales Forbidden—Decline of the Peerage—Ultimus Regum—Establishment of a Republican Government—Abolition of the House of Lords and the Monarchy—Council of State—The Oath Difficulty—The Engagement—Religious Toleration—Trials of Royalists—Discontent among the People—The Levellers—Activity of John Lilburne—Quelling the Mutiny in Whalley's Regiment—Lockyer's Funeral—Arrest of Lilburne—Spread of the Disaffection to other Regiments—Suppression of the Insurrection—Cromwell appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland—Royalist Movement in Scotland—Charles's Son proclaimed King—The Scottish Deputation at the Hague—Charles's Court—Assassination of Dr. Dorislaus—Affairs in Ireland—Cromwell's Campaign—Defeat and Death of Montrose—Cromwell in Scotland—Battle of Dunbar—Movements of Charles—His March into England—Battle of Worcester—Charles Escapes to France—Vigorous Government—Foreign Difficulties—Navigation Act—War with Holland—Contest between Parliament and the Army—Expulsion of the Rump—The Little Parliament—Cromwell made Protector.

The king being put to death, it was necessary that the Parliament should immediately determine what sort of government should succeed. Had they been disposed to continue the monarchy, and receive the eldest son of Charles, it was still necessary to take efficient means for obtaining from him, before admitting him to the throne, a recognition of all the rights for which they had striven with his father. The very day, therefore, of the king's execution, the House of Commons passed an Act, making it high treason for any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales, or any other person, king or chief magistrate of England or Ireland, without consent of Parliament; and copies of this were immediately despatched to all the sheriffs, to be proclaimed in the counties. That done, they proceeded gradually, but promptly, to develop and complete their design of adopting a Republican form of government.

The first step was to deal with the Lords. That body, or the miserable remnant thereof, still sat in the Upper House, and sent repeated messages to the Commons, to which they deigned no reply. The Lords, in fact, had become contemptible in the eyes of the whole community. They had sunk and trembled before the genius of the Commons. Though strongly inclined to stand by royalty, and though all their interests were bound up with it, though they had been created by royal fiat, and made all that they were by it, in honour, power, and estate, and though it required no great sagacity to perceive that they must fall with it, the king himself having repeatedly assured them that such would be the case, they had neither the policy nor the gratitude to hold together and maintain the fountain of their honour, nor the prescience to perceive their case when the Crown must fall, and make a merit of going over bodily to the conquering power. They had gone to pieces, some holding with one side, some with the other, some vacillating between both, changing and rechanging as the balance turned one way or the other. What was still worse, they had discovered no talent whatever on either side, with most rare exceptions, and these not remarkable, even where they had adopted a side and become partisans. Essex, Warwick, Holland, Hamilton, Newcastle, Northumberland, Ormond, and the rest, what had they done? Fairfax and Montrose, out of the whole body—and Montrose had personally been raised to it—had alone won great names. Fairfax, indeed, independent of Cromwell's hand and head, was respectable, but nothing more. The whole peerage had sunk into contemptible eclipse before the bold and vigorous genius of the Commoners. Without, therefore, deigning to answer their messages, on the 5th of February they began to discuss the question as to their retention or abolition, and the next day they voted, by a majority of forty-four to twenty-nine, that "the House of Peers in Parliament was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; that the privilege of peers, of being freed from arrest, should be declared null and void, but that they might be elected knights or burgesses for the Commons." Henry Marten moved that the word "dangerous" should be omitted, and the word "useless" only be retained; or if the word "dangerous" were retained, it should be only with "not" before it, for the peers were certainly not dangerous, but pitiably useless, and they had now come to see verified what Holles had told them, that if they would not heartily join in saving the nation, it would be saved without them. An Act to this effect was soon after brought in and passed.

On the day following (the 7th), the Commons proceeded to a more important question, and voted that it had been found by experience that the office of a king in this nation, and that to have the power thereof in any single person, was unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the nation, and therefore that it should be utterly abolished; and to that purpose an Act should be forthwith prepared. This was speedily followed by a vote, on the motion of Henry Marten, that the king's statues at the Royal Exchange and other places should be taken down, and on the places where they stood should be inscribed, "Exit Tyrannus, Regum ultimus, Anno Libertatis AngliÆ restitutÆ primo, A.D. 1648, January 30" (old style). There was, moreover, an elaborate declaration drawn up, to justify the changing of England into a Republic, translated into Latin, French, and Dutch, and addressed to foreign States. The custody of the new Great Seal was entrusted to three lawyers—namely, Whitelock, Keble, and Lisle; they were to hold it during good behaviour, and to be called Keepers of the Liberties of England, by authority of Parliament. The King's Bench was henceforth named the Upper Bench, and came to be called the Commons Bench, and Oliver St. John, who had done so much to bring about this revolution, was made Chief Justice.

The next great measure was to dissolve the Executive Council, which had sat at Derby House, and revive it in a more extended form as the Executive Council of State, to consist of forty-one members. Three-fourths of these had seats in the House, and several of the late peers—Mulgrave, Pembroke, Denbigh, Fairfax, Lisle, Grey of Groby, Salisbury, and Grey of Werke. The chief heads of the law and officers of the army were included. The principal names were, the late peers already mentioned, and Whitelock, St. John, Cromwell, Skippon, Hazelrig, Midmay, Vane, Marten, Bradshaw, Ludlow, and Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham. Milton, the great national poet, was appointed its secretary, and henceforth prepared its public acts, and employed his mighty talents in the defence of the measures of the Republican Government.

It was necessary to have an oath, and one was constructed which approved of the king's trial, of the vote against the Scots and their English associates, and of the abolition of monarchy and the House of Lords. But as this would not only exclude all conscientious Presbyterians, but called on the Lords to pass an act of censure on themselves, as well as on all to approve of Acts of Parliament in which they had no concern, Fairfax and some others refused to take it, and it had to be reduced to the undertaking "to be true and faithful to the Government established without king or House of Peers, and never to consent to their re-admission." This was called the "Engagement," and still was effective in excluding all Royalists, and such of the Presbyterian party as would not consent to violate their favourite Covenant. Of the twelve judges, ten had been appointed by the revolutionary party, and the whole of them had quietly continued their functions through the war against the king; yet six of these now resigned, probably having hoped to the last for an accommodation with the king, and not going in their minds the length of a commonwealth. The other six consented to hold their offices only on the condition that an Act of the Commons should guarantee the non-abolition of the fundamental laws of the kingdom.

With regard to the Church, as the present Government was decidedly in favour of ample toleration, it satisfied itself with making a slight modification of the existing Presbyterian power, and allowing it to remain, at the same time that it deprived its intolerant clergy of all temporal power whatever. No holders of religious opinions were to be molested, provided that they did not attack the fundamental principles of Christianity, and thus the Roman Catholics acquired more civil as well as religious liberty than they had enjoyed since the days of Queen Mary.

The army remained in the same able hands which had made it the finest army in Europe, and had won with it such wonderful victories. Fairfax still continued commander-in-chief, though he had held aloof from the king's trial, and the navy was put on a more efficient footing by removing the Earl of Warwick and appointing Blake, who had shown remarkable skill and courage on land, with Popham and Dean as admirals. These great changes were chiefly effected by the influence of Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, and Bradshaw, assisted by the talents of Vane, and the legal ability of St. John and Whitelock. They also introduced a Parliamentary measure, which essentially modified the character of the House. On the 1st of February they carried a vote that those who, on the 5th of December, assented to the vote that "the king's concessions were a sufficient ground to proceed to a settlement," should be incapable of sitting, but all others who should previously enter on the journal their dissent from that motion should be admissible. By this means they found the number of members raised to one hundred and fifty, and at the same time they were protected from a wearying opposition from the Presbyterian section.

They now proceeded to bring to trial such of the Royalist prisoners as had engaged in the last insurrection, whom they regarded as disturbers of the kingdom after it had once conquered the king, and might have proceeded to a settlement. They looked on them, in fact, as a species of rebels to the party in power. And yet that party was not constituted, even by its own formal enactments, as a fully recognised Government, till these trials were over. They terminated on the 6th of March, and the Republic was not formally passed till the 19th of that month, in these words: "Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament, and by the authority of the same, that the people of England, and of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be, a Commonwealth or Free State; and shall from henceforth be governed as a commonwealth and free state, by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute officers and ministers under them for the good of the people, and without any king or House of Lords."

Whilst this Act was preparing, the trials were going on: the votes for the sitting of the Council and the Commons were considered sufficient authority. The trials were probably hastened by the news that Charles II. had been proclaimed in Scotland, and that the Scots were raising an army to avenge the king's death, and "to punish the sectaries of England for the breach of the Covenant." The persons whom it was resolved to try, were the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, Lord Goring, lately created Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and Sir John Owen. The High Court appointed to try these prisoners consisted of fifty persons of both ex-Peers and Commons. The Duke of Hamilton pleaded that he was not within the jurisdiction of an English court, that he was a subject of Scotland, and a prisoner of war; but it was replied that he was also an English peer, as Earl of Cambridge, and it was proved that not only was his father naturalised as an English peer, but he himself had been called to sit as such, and had sat. The Earl of Holland was ill, and therefore made little defence, except pleading that he had free quarter given him when he was taken at St. Neots; but this was fully disproved. Lord Goring, or, as now called, the Earl of Norwich, had been a steady partisan of the king's, and had shown little lenity to the Parliamentarians; but he now conducted himself with great respect to the court, and seemed to leave himself in their hands. Lord Capel was one of the bravest and proudest of the Royalist generals. During his imprisonment he escaped from the Tower, but was betrayed by the boatmen with whom he crossed the Thames. He had expressed great indignation at the deaths of Lisle and Lucas, and had excited the resentment of Ireton by it. He now demanded to be tried by court martial, and declared that when Lisle and Lucas were adjudged to die, Fairfax had declared that all other lives should be spared, and had evidence to prove it, if he were allowed. Ireton, who really seems to have felt a stern resentment against the free-speaking general, denied that Fairfax had given any such promise, and that if he had, he had no right to supersede the authority of Parliament. He demanded that Fairfax should be sent for; but the court satisfied itself with sending to the general, who returned by letter a rather equivocating answer, saying that his promise only applied to a court martial, and not to any such court as Parliament might see fit to appoint. Bradshaw told Capel, who was not satisfied with this, that he was tried by such judges as Parliament thought proper to give him, and who had judged a better man than himself.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

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Sir John Owen, who was a gentleman of Wales, in the late outbreak had killed a sheriff. He pleaded quarter, and that he had only done what he thought his duty, in support of the king. As to killing the sheriff, the sheriff had risen against him with force, and was killed in the accident of war, which he might have avoided if he had stayed quietly at home. All five were condemned to lose their heads, the Earl of Holland as a double turncoat, and his conduct had certainly been anything but consistent and noble. Sir John Owen, on hearing the sentence, made a low bow and thanked the judges; and being asked why, he replied, that it was a very great honour for a poor gentleman of Wales to die like a lord, and he had not expected anything better than hanging. No sooner was the sentence passed, than the friends of Hamilton, Holland, and Capel, made great exertions to save their lives. The wives of Holland and Capel appeared at the bar, attended by long trains of females in mourning, to beg for their lives. Two days' respite was granted, and every effort, persuasion, and bribery was put in force. Hamilton had fewer friends than the rest, but it was urged that his death might occasion trouble with Scotland; but Cromwell knew that they had the interest of Argyll, and that Hamilton's being out of the way would strengthen that interest. The case of Holland occasioned a great debate. The Earl of Warwick, his brother, on one side urged his services to the Parliament for a long period—his enemies, his revolt from it on the other. Cromwell and Ireton were firmly against them, and the sentences of these three were confirmed. The votes regarding Goring were equal, and Lenthall, the Speaker, gave the casting vote in his favour, alleging that he formerly had done him an essential service. Sir John Owen, to the satisfaction of those who admired his frank and quaint humour, was also reprieved, and ultimately liberated. He had softened even the heart of Ireton, and greatly moved the good Colonel Hutchinson, and both spoke in his favour. Hamilton, Capel, and Holland, were beheaded in the Palace Yard on the 9th of March.

The Parliament was soon called on to defend itself against more dangerous enemies. The country was groaning under the exhaustion of the civil war. For seven years it had been bleeding at every pore; and now that the war had ceased, the people began to utter aloud their complaints, which, if uttered before, had been drowned in the din of conflict. There was everywhere a terrible outcry against the burden of taxation; and famine and pestilence—the sure successors of carnage and spoliation—were decimating the people. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers were daily perishing, and the magistrates of Cumberland deposed that thirty thousand families in that county had neither seed- nor bread-corn, nor the means of procuring either. What rendered this state of things the more dangerous, was the turbulence of the Levellers. The principles of Republicanism which had borne on the heads of the army, threatened in turn to overwhelm them in their progress amongst the soldiers. It is easier to set in motion revolutionary ideas, than to say to them, "Thus far shall ye go and no farther." In all revolutions, the class which initiates them wishes to stop at the point that is most convenient to itself; but other classes beyond this line are equally anxious, and have an equal claim to the benefit of levelling principles. It is only power which limits their diffusion. The power now had passed from the king and the lords, and had centred in the leaders of the army. It was not convenient or desirable for them that it should go farther. But the soldiers and the lower officers, with John Lilburne at their head, claimed a Republic in its more popular sense. They read in the Bible, and preached from it in the field, that God was no respecter of persons; that human rights were as universal as the human race. They saw that Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and a few others were the men who ruled in the Parliament, the Council, and the Army; and they conceived that they were no longer seeking the common rights of the community, but the aggrandisement of themselves. Colonel John Lilburne was pouring out pamphlet upon pamphlet, and disseminating them through the ranks and through the people—"England's New Chains Discovered," "The Hunting of the Foxes from Triploe Heath to Whitehall by Five Small Beagles." These foxes were Cromwell, Ireton, Fairfax, etc., who had suppressed the mutiny at Triploe Heath—and the five beagles those who had been made to ride the wooden horse for their insubordination, that is, set upon a sharp three-cornered wooden machine, with weights or muskets tied to their feet. News came to Parliament that one Everard, a soldier passing for a prophet, and Winstanley, another, with thirty more, were assembled on St. George's Hill, near Cobham, in Surrey, and were digging the ground and planting it with roots and beans. They said they should shortly be four thousand, and invited all to come and help them, promising them meat, drink, and clothes. Two troops of horse were sent to disperse them, of which they loudly complained, and Everard and Winstanley went to the general, and declared "that the liberties of the people were lost by the coming in of William the Conqueror, and that ever since, the people of God had lived under tyranny and oppression worse than our forefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance was at hand, and God would bring His people out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the earth. There had lately appeared to him [Everard] a vision, which bade him arise and dig and plough the earth, and receive the fruits thereof. He said that their intent was to restore the earth to its former condition; that, as God had promised to make the barren fruitful, so now what they did was to restore the ancient community of enjoying the fruits of the earth, to distribute them to the poor and needy; that they did not intend to break down pales and destroy enclosures, as was reported, but only to till the waste land, and make it fruitful for man; and that the time was coming when all men would willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this community of goods."

Lilburne had been engaged in the county of Durham, and to win him over, three thousand pounds were voted to him; but this did not move him for a moment. On his return, he appeared at the bar of the House with a petition against the form of the newly adopted constitution, which the officers had named, "The Agreement of the People," but which the people did not accept as their agreement. Lilburne protested against the provision that Parliament should only sit six months every two years, and that the Council should rule the other eighteen. This example was extensively followed, and the table of the House was quickly loaded with petitions demanding a new Parliament every year; a committee of the House to govern during the recess; no member of one Parliament to be a member of the next; the Self-denying Ordinance to be enforced; the term of every officer's commission in the army to be limited; the High Court of Justice and Council of State to be abolished as instruments of tyranny; all proceedings in the courts of law to be in English; lawyers reduced, and their fees too. Excise and customs they required to be abolished, and the lands of delinquents sold to remunerate the well affected. Religion was to be "reformed according to the mind of God;" tithes were to be abolished, conscience made free, and the incomes of ministers of the Gospel were to be fixed at one hundred and fifty pounds each, and raised by a rate on the parishioners.

There was much sound sense and gospel truth in these demands, but the day of their adoption was much nearer to the millennium than to 1649. It was resolved to send Cromwell to settle the disturbances in Ireland, but it was necessary to quash this communist insurrection first. Money was borrowed of the City, and after "a solemn seeking of God by prayer," lots were cast to see what regiments should go to Ireland. Fourteen of foot and fourteen of horse were selected by this mode. The officers expressed much readiness to go; the men refused. On the 26th of April there broke out a terrible mutiny in Whalley's regiment, at the Bull, in Bishopsgate. The men seized their colours from the cornet, and refused to march without many of the communist concessions. Fairfax and Cromwell hastened thither, seized fifteen of the mutineers, tried them on the spot by court martial, condemned five, and shot one in St. Paul's churchyard on the morrow. This was Lockyer, a trooper, a brave young fellow, who had served throughout the whole war, and was only yet three-and-twenty.

The death of this young man who was greatly beloved, roused all the soldiers and the working men and women of the City to a fearful degree. He was shot on Friday, amid the tears and execrations of thousands. On Monday his troop proceeded to bury him with military honours. Whitelock says, "About a hundred went before the corpse, five or six in a file, the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding a soldier's knell. Then the trooper's horse came, clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary, one half-stained in blood, and the sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed in rank and file; all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the rear. At the new church in Westminster, some thousands more, of the better sort, met them, who thought not fit to march through the City."

This was not a promising beginning for the generals, but they were not men to be put down. They arrested Lilburne and his five small beagles, who published, on the 1st of May, their "Agreement of the People," and clapped them in the Tower, and hastened down to Salisbury to quell the insurrection which had broken out in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts in the army. The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds, and Horton, all declared for the Lilburne "Agreement," and swore to stand by each other. At Banbury, a Captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred men, issued a manifesto called "England's Standard Advanced," demanding the completion of public freedom, vowing justice on the murderers of Lockyer, and threatening, if a hair of Lilburne's was touched, they would avenge it seventy-and-seven fold. Reynolds, the colonel of the regiment, attacked Thompson, put him to flight, and prevailed on the soldiers to lay down their arms; but another party of ten troops of horse, a thousand strong, under cornet Thompson, brother of the captain, marched out of Salisbury for Burford, increasing their numbers as they went. But Fairfax and Cromwell were marching rapidly after them. They came upon them in the night at Burford, took them all prisoners, and the next day, Thursday, the 17th of May, shot Cornet Thompson and two corporals in Burford churchyard. The rest were pardoned, and agreed to go to Ireland. A few days afterwards Captain Thompson was overtaken in a wood in Northamptonshire, and killed. The mutiny was at an end, if we except some local disturbances in Devon, Hants, and Somersetshire. Fairfax and Cromwell were received at Oxford in triumph, and feasted and complimented, being made doctors; and on the 7th of June a day of thanksgiving was held in London, with a great dinner at Grocers' Hall, given to the officers of the army and the leaders of Parliament, and another appointed for the whole kingdom on the 21st.

Cromwell had already been made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and on the 10th of July he set forth at five in the evening from London, by way of Windsor to Bristol. He set out in state approaching to royalty. He rode in a coach drawn by six Flanders mares, whitish greys, a number of carriages containing other officers following, attended by a life-guard of eighty men, the meanest of whom was a commander or esquire; many of them were colonels in rich uniforms, and the whole procession was attended by a resounding flourish of trumpets. But before following the farmer of Huntingdon, now risen to all but royal grandeur, we must notice the affairs of Scotland.

Though Argyll held the chief power in Scotland, and was on friendly terms with Cromwell, he could not prevent a strong public feeling showing itself on the approaching trial of the king. The Scots reproached themselves for giving up Charles to the English army, and considered that heavy disgrace would fall upon the country if the king should be put to death. They demanded, therefore, that a strong remonstrance should be sent to the Parliament of England, and Argyll was too timid or too cautious to oppose this. The Commissioners in London received and presented the remonstrance, but obtained no answer till after the execution of the king, and that which they did then receive was in most unceremonious terms. Forthwith the authorities in Edinburgh proclaimed Charles as king, and the Scottish Commissioners in London, protesting against the alteration of the Government into a Republic, and declaring themselves guiltless of the blood of the king, hastened to Gravesend, to quit the kingdom. But the Parliament, resenting this language as grossly libellous, and calculated to excite sedition, sent an officer to conduct them under guard to the frontiers of the kingdom.

Passing over this insult, the Scots in March despatched the Earl of Cassilis to the Hague, attended by four commissioners, to wait on Charles and invite him to Scotland. They found there the Earl of Lanark, now Duke of Hamilton by the execution of his brother, the Earls of Lauderdale, Callander, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth. Some of these were old Royalists, some of whom were called "Engagers," or of the party of Hamilton. The Court of Charles, small as it was, was rent by dissensions, and both the Engagers and the Commissioners under Cassilis joined in protesting against any junction with Montrose, whose cruelties to the Covenanters, they said, had been so great, that to unite with him would turn all Scotland against the king. They insisted on Charles taking the Covenant, but this Montrose and the old Royalists vehemently opposed, declaring that to do that would alienate both Catholics and Episcopalians, and exasperate the Independents to tenfold bitterness.

Whilst matters were in this unsatisfactory state, Dr. Dorislaus arrived as Ambassador from the English Parliament to the States of Holland. He was a native of that country, but had lived some time in England, had been a professor of Gresham College, and drew up the charge for Parliament against the king. That very evening, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the inn where he was at supper, and desiring those present not to alarm themselves, as they had no intention of hurting any one but the agent of the English rebels who had lately murdered their king, they dragged Dorislaus from the table, and one of them stabbed him with a dagger. Seeing him dead, they sheathed their swords, and walked quietly out of the house. They were known to be all Scotsmen and followers of Montrose; and Charles, seeing the mischief this base assassination would do his cause, and especially in Holland, prepared to quit the country. It was first proposed that he should go to Ireland, where Ormond was labouring in his favour, and where Rupert was off the coast with a fleet; but he changed his mind and went to Paris, to the queen, his mother. Before doing that, he sent Chancellor Hyde and Lord Cottington as envoys to Spain, to endeavour to move the king in his favour, and he returned an answer to the Scottish Commissioners, that though he was and always had been ready to grant them the freedom of their religion, he could not consent to bind himself to the Covenant. They admitted that he was their king, and therefore they ought to obey him, and not he them, and this obedience he must expect from the Committee of Estates, the Assembly of the Kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. With this resolute reply they departed in no very satisfied mood.

ASSASSINATION OF DR. DORISLAUS. (See p. 96.)

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The war in Ireland being now undertaken by Cromwell, we must give a brief retrospective glance at what had been passing there. Perhaps no country was ever so torn to pieces by different factions. The Catholics were divided amongst themselves: there were the Catholics of the Pale, and the Old Irish Catholics, part of whom followed the faction of Rinuccini, the Pope's Nuncio, who was at the head of the Council of Kilkenny, while others followed General Preston and Viscount Taaffe. The Irish Royalists—who consisted chiefly of Episcopalians—ranged themselves under the banner of Ormond. The approach of Cromwell warned them to suppress their various feuds and unite against the Parliament. To strengthen the Parliament force, Jones, the Governor of Dublin, and Monk, who commanded in Ulster, made overtures to Owen Roe O'Neil, the head of the Old Irish in Ulster. Ormond had arrived in Ireland, and Inchiquin and Preston, the leaders of the forces of the Irish Council, which had now repudiated the Pope's Nuncio, joined him; but O'Neil held back, not trusting Ormond, and he sent a messenger to Charles in France, offering to treat directly with him. But Ormond ordered the Earl of Castlehaven to attack O'Neil, which he did, and speedily reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy. Enraged at this whilst he was offering his services to the king, O'Neil listened to the proposals of Monk, who was himself hard pressed by the Scottish Royalists, and had been compelled to retire from Belfast to Dundalk. Monk supplied O'Neil with ammunition, and O'Neil undertook to cut off the communication between the Royalists in the north and Ormond in the south. Monk sent word of this arrangement, and the "grandees," as they were called, or members of the Great Council, entertained the plan in secret—publicly they dared not, for the followers of O'Neil were those Ulster Irish who had committed the horrible massacres of 1641. No sooner, however, did the rumour of this coalition become known, than the greatest excitement prevailed. The army and the people were filled with horror and indignation. They appealed to the solemn engagement of the army to avenge the blood of their fellow Protestants slaughtered by these savages; they reminded the Council and the Parliament of the invectives heaped by them on the late king for making peace with these blood-stained natives; and now they were expected to become the allies and associates of these very men. The Parliament saw how vain it was to strive against the feeling, and annulled the agreement. Hugh Peters harangued the public from the pulpit, excusing the Council on account of the real facts of the case having been concealed from them, and the whole weight of the transaction fell on Monk, who was just then in London, and who was assured that nothing but his past services saved him from the punishment of his indiscretion.

Whilst matters were in this position, and the Parliament was compelled to reject a very useful ally, Ormond marched to besiege Jones in Dublin. He advanced on both sides of the Liffey, and cast up works at Bogotrath, to cut off the pasturage of the horses of the Parliamentary force in Dublin. Jones, however, made a sally an hour before sunrise, and threw the enemy into such confusion that the whole army on the right bank of the river fled in headlong panic, leaving their artillery, ammunition, tents, and baggage. In vain did Ormond hasten to check the rout; his men followed the example. Two thousand prisoners were taken by Jones, of whom three hundred are said to have been slaughtered in cold blood. Such was the defeat, and such the inequality of the forces, that it cast great disgrace on the generalship of Ormond, and the Royalists made much talk about treason; but Charles himself would not listen to any such surmises: he hastened to send Ormond the Order of the Garter, and to assure him of his unshaken favour. The most exaggerated assertions were made of the forces of Ormond, and of the number of his men killed and taken. Ormond says that he had only eight thousand men; but Cromwell, no doubt from the assertions of Jones, states that the number was nineteen thousand against five thousand two hundred of Jones's, and that Jones killed four thousand on the spot, and took two thousand five hundred and seventeen prisoners, of whom three hundred were officers. The battle was fought at Rathmines on the 2nd of August, 1649, and contributed to quicken the movements of Cromwell, who was collecting forces for the passage at Milford Haven.

Cromwell, with twelve thousand veterans, sailed on the 13th of August, and arrived in Dublin with the first division on the 15th, Ireton following with the main body. He was received with acclamations by the people of Dublin, and made them a speech in the streets, which greatly pleased them. He then allowed his army a fortnight to refresh themselves after the voyage, before leading them to action. At this period, the only places left to the Parliament in Ireland were Dublin and Derry. On the 9th of September he bombarded Drogheda, and summoned it to surrender. The governor of the place was Sir Arthur Aston, who had about three thousand troops, foot and horse, commanded by Sir Edmund Varney, whose father was killed at Edge Hill. Aston, who had acquired the reputation of a brave and experienced officer, refused to surrender, and the storm commenced, and on the second day a breach was made. A thousand men entered by the breach, but were driven back by the garrison. On this Cromwell placed himself at the head of his men, and made a second assault. This time, after some hard fighting, they succeeded in getting possession of the entrenchments and of a church. According to Ormond, Carte, and others, Cromwell's officers then promised quarter to all who would surrender. "All his officers and soldiers," says Carte, "promising quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performing it as long as any place held out, which encouraged others to yield. But when they had done all in their power, and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word 'No quarter' went round, and the soldiers were, many of them, forced against their wills to kill their prisoners."

This has always been regarded as a great reproach to Cromwell. He himself, of course, does not confess that he broke his word, or forced his officers to break theirs; but he does something very like it. He asserts plainly, in his letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, that "our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of the action, 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." Some of them escaping to the church, he had it set fire to, and so burnt them in it; and he records the exclamations of one of them in the fire. The rest of the fugitives, as they were compelled to surrender, were either slaughtered, or, to use his own words, "their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes." He says that one thousand people were destroyed in the church that he fired. He adds that they "put to the sword the whole of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives; those that did are in safe custody for Barbadoes." This is, perhaps, the most awful confession that ever was made in cool blood, for these letters were written about a week after the assault, and by a man of such a thoroughly religious mind that he attributes the whole "to the Spirit of God;" says "this hath been a marvellous great mercy;" and prays that "all honest hearts may give the glory to God alone, to Whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." Cromwell endeavoured to justify this horrible massacre by the plea "that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future."

The butchery of Cromwell had not frightened men into surrendering their towns at his summons, and thereby preventing shedding of blood. In fact, great as were the merits of Cromwell, his barbarous mode of warfare in Ireland cannot be defended on any principles of reason, much less of Christianity or humanity. In England he had been noted for his merciful conduct in war, but in Ireland a deplorable fanaticism carried away both him and his army. They were now fighting against a Papist population, and deemed it a merit to destroy them. They confounded all Irishmen with the wild savages of Ulster, who had massacred the Protestants in 1641; and Cromwell, in his letters from Drogheda, plainly expresses this idea, calling the wholesale slaughter "a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood."

From Drogheda Cromwell returned to Dublin, and then marched on Wexford, taking and burning minor places by the way. On the 1st of October he summoned Wexford to surrender, and though the governor refused, the officer who commanded the castle traitorously yielded it. The soldiers then perceiving the enemy quit the walls of the town, scaled them with their ladders, and encountering the forces in the market-place, they made a stout resistance; but Cromwell informs the Parliament that they were eventually all put to the sword, "not many less than two thousand, and I believe not twenty of yours from first to last of the siege. The soldiers got a very good booty; and the inhabitants," he says, "were either so completely killed, or had run away, that it was a fine opportunity for honest people to go and plant themselves there." According to various historians, no distinction was made between the soldiers and the innocent inhabitants; three hundred women, who had crowded around the great cross, and were shrieking for protection to Heaven, were put to death with the same ruthless ferocity. Some authors do not restrict the numbers of the slain like Cromwell to two thousand, but reckon them at five thousand.

Ormond now calculated greatly on the aid of O'Neil to create a diversion in the north, and divide the attention and the forces of Cromwell, for that chieftain had begun to justify the treaty made with him through Monk, by compelling Montgomery to raise the siege of Londonderry, and rescuing Coote and his small army, the only force which the Parliament had in Ulster. But the cry in London against this alliance with the Irish Papist had done its work, and, after the victory of Rathmines, the Parliament refused to ratify the treaty made with O'Neil. Indignant at this breach of faith, he had listened to the offers of Ormond, and was on his march to join him at Kilkenny. O'Neil died at Clonacter, in Cavan, but his son took the command. By his assistance, the operations of Cromwell's generals were greatly retarded at that place, and at Duncannon and Waterford.

On the 17th of October, Cromwell sat down before Ross, and sent in a trumpeter, calling on the commander to surrender, with this extraordinary statement, "Since my coming into Ireland, I have this witness for myself, that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood;" which must have been read with wonder, after the recent news from Drogheda and Wexford. General Taaffe refused. There were one thousand soldiers in the place, and Ormond, Ardes, and Castlehaven, who were on the other side of the river, sent in fifteen hundred more. Yet on the 19th the town surrendered, the soldiers being allowed to march away. O'Neil had now joined Ormond at Kilkenny with two thousand horse and foot, and Inchiquin was in Munster. Soon after Cork and Youghal opened their gates, Admiral Blake co-operating by water. In the north, Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, took Coleraine by storm, and forming a junction with Colonel Venables, marched on Carrickfergus, which they soon after reduced. Cromwell marched from Ross to Waterford, his army having taken Inistioge, Thomastown, and Carrick. He appeared before Waterford on the 24th of November. Here, too, he received the news of the surrender of Kinsale and Bandon Bridge, but Waterford refused to surrender, and Cromwell was compelled to march away to Cork for winter quarters. His troops, however, took the fort of Passage near Waterford; but they lost Lieutenant-General Jones, the conqueror of Rathmines, by sickness at Dungarvan.

Cromwell did not rest long in winter quarters. By the 29th of January, 1650, he was in the field again, at the head of thirty thousand men. Whilst Major-General Ireton and Colonel Reynolds marched by Carrick into Kilkenny, Cromwell proceeded from Youghal over the Blackwater into Tipperary, various castles being taken by the way; they quartered themselves in Fethard and Cashel. On March 28th Cromwell succeeded in taking Kilkenny, whence he proceeded to Clonmel. In this campaign the Royalist generals accuse him of still perpetrating unnecessary cruelties, though they endeavoured to set him a different example. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the same to me, if any of mine should fall into his power. But he little valued my civility, for in a few days after he besieged Gouvan, and the soldiers mutinying and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the Governor Hammond and some other officers to be put to death." Cromwell avows this in one of his letters. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commissioned officers were shot to death; all but one, who, being very earnest to have the castle delivered, was pardoned." And this, he admits, was because they refused to surrender at his first summons. He seemed to consider a refusal to surrender at once and unconditionally, a deadly crime, and avenged it bloodily. On the other hand, Ormond, in one of his letters, says, "Rathfarnham was taken by our troops by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels' making use of a victory."

The Parliament, seeing the necessity of having their best general for the impending Scottish war, sent towards the end of April the President Bradshaw frigate, to bring over Cromwell from Ireland, and to leave Ireton, Lord Broghill, and the other generals to finish the war by the reduction of Clonmel, Waterford, Limerick, and a few lesser places. But Cromwell would not go till he had witnessed the fall of Clonmel. There Hugh O'Neil, the son of old Owen Roe O'Neil of Ulster, defended the place gallantly with twelve hundred men. The siege lasted from the 28th of March to the 8th of May. Whitelock says, "They found in Clonmel the stoutest enemy this army had met in Ireland, and there never was seen so hot a storm, of so long a continuance, and so gallantly defended, either in Ireland or England." The English troops had made a breach, and endeavoured to carry the town by storm in vain. On the 9th they stormed the breach a second time. "The fierce death-wrestle," says a letter from one of the besiegers, "lasted four hours," and Cromwell's men were driven back with great loss. But the ammunition of the besieged was exhausted, and they stole away in the night. The inhabitants, before this was discovered, sent out and made terms of surrender. On discovering the retreat of the enemy, pursuit was made, and two hundred men killed on the road. Oliver, however, kept his agreement with the inhabitants.

The siege of Clonmel finished, Cromwell set sail in the President Bradshaw, and landed at Bristol towards the end of May, where he was received with firing of guns and great acclamations for his exploits in Ireland. On the 31st of the month he approached Hounslow Heath, where he was met by the Lord-General Fairfax, and numbers of other officers and members of Parliament, besides crowds of other people. They conducted him to London, and on reaching Hyde Park Corner he was received by the discharge of artillery from Colonel Barkstead's regiment, there drawn up; and thus, with increasing crowds and acclamations, he was attended to the Cockpit near St. James's, a house which had been assigned to him, and where his family had been residing for some time. There the Lord Mayor and aldermen waited on him, to thank him for his services in Ireland. Thence, after rest and refreshment, he appeared in his place in Parliament, where he also received the thanks of the House. Some one remarking what crowds went out to see his triumph, Cromwell replied, "But if they had gone to see me hanged, how many more there would have been!"

Prince Charles, though invited to assume the crown of Scotland, was invited on such terms as would have afforded little hope to a man of much foresight. Those who were to support him were divided into two factions, which could no more mix than fire and water. The Covenanters, and the Royalists under Montrose, hated each other with an inextinguishable hatred. So far from mixing, they were sure to come to strife and bloodshed amongst themselves. If the Covenanters got the upper hand, as was pretty certain, he must abandon his most devoted followers, the Old Royalists and Engagers, and take the Covenant himself, thus giving up every party and principle that his father had fought for. He must take upon him a harsh and gloomy yoke, which must keep him not only apart from his Royalist and Episcopalian followers, but from his far more valuable kingdom of England, where the Independents and sectaries reigned, and which the Scottish Covenanters could not hope to conquer. But Charles was but a poor outcast and wanderer in a world the princes of which were tired of both him and his cause, and he was, therefore, compelled to make an effort, however hopeless, to recover his dominions by such means as offered. He therefore sent off Montrose to raise troops and material amongst the Northern Courts, and then to pass over and raise the Highlands, whilst he went to treat with the Covenanters at Breda.

GREAT SEAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

Montrose was strongly suspected of having headed the party who assassinated Dorislaus, a very bad beginning, assassination being the fitting business of thieves, and not of heroes. The fame of Montrose, nevertheless, gave him a good reception in Denmark and other Courts, and he is said to have raised an army of twelve thousand men, and embarked these, and much ammunition and artillery, at Gottenburg, under Lord Kinnoul, in the autumn. The equinoctial gales appeared to have scattered this force in all directions, dashing several of the ships on the rocks, so that Kinnoul landed in October at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, with only eighty officers, and about one hundred common men. Montrose followed with five hundred more, and having received the Order of the Garter from Charles as a token of his favour, he once more raised his banner in the Highlands, bearing on it a painting of the late king decapitated, and the words, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord!" But the Highlanders had been taught caution by the repeated failures of the Royalists, and the chastisements they had received from the stern Covenanters; they stood aloof, and in vain did Montrose march through Caithness and Sutherland, calling on the natives to rise and defend the king before the Covenanters could sell him to the English, as they had done his father. This was a fatal proclamation, for whilst it failed to raise the Highlands, it added to the already deep detestation of him in the Lowlands, where his proclamation was burnt by the common hangman.

The Covenanters did not merely burn his proclamation, they despatched a force of four thousand men against him. Colonel Strachan came almost upon him in Corbiesdale, in Ross-shire, and calling his men around him under the shelter of the high moorland broom, he informed them that God had given "the rebel and apostate Montrose, and the viperous brood of Satan, the accursed of God and the Kirk," into their hands. He gave out a psalm, which they sang, and then he dispersed them in successive companies, the whole not amounting to four hundred men, the main army being with David Leslie at Brechin. As soon as Strachan's handful of men came in sight of Montrose's levies, they were attacked by his cavalry, but scarcely were they engaged, when a second, and then a third detachment appeared. On perceiving this, Montrose believed the whole army of Leslie was marching up, and he ordered his infantry to fall back and screen themselves amongst the brushwood. But first his horse and then the whole of his men were thrown into confusion. His standard-bearer and several of his officers were slain. The foreign mercenaries demanded quarter and received it, the rest made their escape as well as they could. Montrose had his horse killed under him, and though he got another horse, and swam across a rapid river, he was compelled to fly in such haste, that he left behind him the Star and Garter with which he had been so newly invested, his sword, and his cloak. He again made for the mountains of Sutherland with Kinnoul, both disguised as peasants. Kinnoul soon sank with fatigue, and was left behind and perished. Montrose at length reached the house of Macleod of Assynt, who had formerly served under him; but this base man sold him to the Covenanters for four hundred bolls of meal. This treason was soon avenged by the neighbouring Highlanders, who ravaged the lands of Assynt; but the Scottish Parliament recompensed the traitor with twenty thousand pounds Scots, to be raised on the Royalists of Caithness and Orkney. The Orkneys, as well as the Isles of Man, Scilly, Jersey, the colony of Virginia, and the islands of the Caribbean Sea, long held out for the royal cause.

Montrose was at once conveyed to Edinburgh, where he arrived on the 18th of May; and having been carried bareheaded through the city in an open cart, and exposed to the insults and execrations of the mob, he was condemned as a traitor, and hanged on the 21st of May on a gibbet thirty feet high, his head being fixed on a spike in the capital, and his limbs sent for exposure in different towns. Such was the ignominious end of the gallant but sanguinary Montrose. But if the conduct of his enemies was ungenerous, what was that of his prince? No sooner did Charles hear of his defeat, than fearing that his rising might injure him with the Covenanters, he sent to the Parliament, protesting that he had never authorised him to draw the sword; nay, that he had done it contrary to the royal commands. Thus early did this worthless man display the meanness of his character, and practise the wretched maxims of the Stuart doctrine of kingcraft.

Charles had now complied with the demands of the Scottish Parliament, agreeing to take the Covenant, never to tolerate the Catholic religion in any part of his dominions, not even in Ireland, where the Catholics were a majority; to govern entirely by the authority of Parliament, and in religious matters by that of the Kirk. Thus did this man, for the sake of regaining the throne of one of his kingdoms, bind himself to destroy the religion of which he was at heart a believer, and to maintain a creed that he abhorred and despised. He landed in June in the Frith of Cromarty, and a court was established for him at Falkland, and nine thousand pounds sterling were allowed for its expenditure monthly.

But the pious Scots were speedily scandalised at the debauched habits of their royal puppet. He had delayed the expedition for some weeks, because he could not tear himself from his mistress, Mrs. Barlow, and now he came surrounded by a very dissipated crew—Buckingham, Wilmot, and others, whom nothing could induce him to part with, though many others were forbidden the Court.

Whilst these things were taking place in Scotland, in London as active measures were on foot for putting to flight this Covenanting king. On the 14th of June the Commons again appointed Fairfax Commander-in-Chief, and Cromwell Lieutenant-General. Fairfax, so far from favouring the invasion of Scotland, strongly argued against it, as a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant. Fairfax's wife is said to have been resolute against his taking up arms against the second Charles. She had sufficiently shown her spirit—that of a Vere, of the martial house of Vere—on his father's trial; and now Fairfax, not only strongly influenced by his wife, but belonging to the Presbyterian party, resigned his command, and retired to his estates in Yorkshire. It was in vain that a deputation, consisting of Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelock, and St. John, waited on him at Whitehall, opening their meeting with prayer. Fairfax stood firm, and on the 26th, two days afterwards, the Parliament appointed Cromwell Commander-in-Chief, in his place. On the 29th, only three days subsequently, Cromwell set out for the north. He had Lambert as Major-General, Whalley as Commissary-General, Pride, Overton, Monk, and Hodgson, as colonels of regiments. The Scottish Parliament had appointed the Earl of Leven generalissimo, but only nominally so out of honour, for he was now old and infirm. David Leslie was the real commander. The Scottish army was ordered to amount to sixty thousand men, and it was to lay waste all the country between Berwick and Edinburgh, to prevent the English from obtaining supplies. To frighten the country people away from the English army, it was rumoured that every male between sixteen and sixty would have their right hands cut off, and the women's breasts be bored through with red-hot irons.

DEATH OF THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH.

Carisbrooke Castle, Sept. 8th, 1650.

After the Painting by C. W. Cope, R.A.

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Cromwell passed the Tweed at Berwick on the 22nd of July, with a force of sixteen thousand men. They found the country desolate and deserted, except by a number of women, who on their knees implored mercy, and were set by the officers to bake and brew for the soldiers. That night the beacon fires of Scotland were lighted, and the English army encamped at Mordington, where they lay three days, and then marched to Dunbar, and thence to Musselburgh. They found the Scottish army under Leslie posted between Edinburgh and Leith, and well defended by batteries and entrenchments. Nothing could induce the wary Scottish commander to quit his vantage ground, and the country afforded no supplies to the English army; but their fleet followed them along the coast, and furnished them with provisions.

For a month Cromwell found it impossible to draw the Scottish general out of his strong position. He sometimes marched up close to his lines to tempt him to come to action, but it was in vain, and he did not think it prudent to attack him in his formidable position, which must have cost him an awful number of men even if he carried it.

The weather being very wet he fell back upon Musselburgh, the enemy then making a sally, and harassing his rear, and wounding General Lambert. Cromwell and the Scottish Assembly, as well as Cromwell and General Leslie, who lay in the ground now occupied by the New Town of Edinburgh, had a voluminous correspondence, in which they quoted much Scripture, and each declared himself the favoured or justified of heaven. The Scots reproached Cromwell and his party with breaking the League and Covenant, and Cromwell retorted on them, that though they pretended to covenant and fight against Malignants, they had entered into agreement with the head and centre of the Malignants himself, which he said he could not understand. Cromwell, leaving a force to invest Dunbar, which was said to suffer extreme famine, being cooped by the English both on land and sea, about the 13th of August shifted his camp to the Pentland Hills to the west of Edinburgh, in order to cut off Leslie's supplies.

Whilst lying there the young king himself made a visit to the army at Leith, where he was received by the soldiers with acclamations; but the Assembly of the Kirk was soon scandalised by the drunkenness and profanity which his presence brought into the camp, and set on foot an inquiry, the result of which was that eighty officers, with many of their men, were dismissed that they might not contaminate the rest of the army. They also required Charles to sign a declaration to his subjects in his three kingdoms, informing them that he lamented the troubles which had been brought on the realm by the resistance of his father to the Solemn League and Covenant, and by the idolatry of his mother; that for himself he had subscribed the Covenant with all his heart, and would have no friends or enemies but the friends or enemies of the Covenant; that he repented making a peace with the Papists of Ireland, and now declared it null and void; that he detested all popery, prelacy, idolatry, and heresy; and finally, that he would accord to a free Parliament of England the propositions agreed upon by the Commissioners of the two kingdoms, and would settle the English Church according to the plan organised by the Westminster Assembly of divines.

Never was so flagrant a set of falsehoods forced on a reluctant soul! Charles read the declaration with indignation, and declared that he would sacrifice everything rather than thus cast reproach on his parents and their supporters, who had suffered so much on their behalf, or belie his own sentiments. But he was soon convinced that he must see his cause totally abandoned if he did not comply, and at the end of three days he signed with tears and shame the humiliating document. The exulting Kirk then proclaimed a certain victory from heaven over "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army."

And truly, affairs appeared very likely to come to such a conclusion. Cromwell found it difficult to feed his army; the weather continued stormy and wet, and his soldiers suffered extremely from fevers and other illness from exposure to the weather. Cromwell made a sudden march in the direction of Stirling, as though he intended to cut off that town from communication with the capital. This set Leslie in motion; he hastily sent forward his forces, and the vanguards came to skirmishing, but could not engage in complete battle on account of the boggy ground between them. Cromwell as suddenly retreated, and firing his huts on the Pentlands, withdrew towards Dunbar. This effectually roused the Scots; they knew his distress from sickness and lack of supplies, and they thought he meant now to escape into England. To prevent that, and to make themselves masters of the whole English army, as they now confidently expected, they marched rapidly along the feet of the Lammermuir Hills, and Leslie managed to outstrip him, and hem him in between Dunbar and Doon Hill. A deep ravine called Cockburnspath, or, as Oliver pronounced it, Copper's Path, about forty feet deep and as many wide, with a rivulet running through it, lay between Oliver and the Scottish army, which was posted on Doon Hill. On Oliver's right lay Belhaven Bay, on his left Broxmouth House, at the mouth of a brook, and where there is a path southward. Leslie had secured the passes of Cockburnspath, and imagined that he had Cromwell and his army secure from Sunday night to Tuesday morning, the 3rd of September. But on Monday afternoon, Cromwell observed Leslie moving his right wing down into the plain towards Broxmouth House, evidently intending to secure that pass also; but Cromwell at once espied his advantage. He could attack and cut off this right wing, whilst the main body of Leslie's army, penned between the brook and the hills, could not manoeuvre to help it. On observing this, Cromwell exclaimed to Lambert, "The Lord hath delivered us!" and arrangements were made to attack the right wing of Leslie at three o'clock in the morning. Leslie had twenty-three thousand men—Cromwell about half as many; but by a vigorous, unexpected attack on this right wing, after three hours of hard fighting, the Scots were thrown into confusion, and Cromwell exclaimed, "They run! I profess they run!" In fact, the horse of the Scots dashed frantically away over and through their own foot, and there was a wild flight in all directions. Three thousand slain lay on the spot, the Scots army was in wild rout, and as the sun just then rose over St. Abb's Head and the sea, Oliver exclaimed to his soldiers, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!" "The Lord-General," says Hodgson, "made a halt till the horse could gather for the chase, and sang the 117th Psalm." Then the pursuit was made as far as Haddington. Ten thousand prisoners were taken, with all the baggage, artillery, and ammunition of the enemy. A thousand men were slain in the pursuit. By nine o'clock in the morning, David Leslie, the general, was in Edinburgh, old Lord Leven reached it by two, and what a city! The general complained that the preachers had occasioned the disaster; they would not let him rest till he descended from his height to attack the enemy on a disadvantageous ground. The ministers, though all their prophecies of victory were falsified, had yet plenty of other reasons for it. They published a "Short Declaration and Warning," in which they enumerated no less than thirteen causes for this terrible overthrow—the general wickedness of the country, the especial wickedness of the king's house, and the number of Malignants amongst the king's followers, and so forth. Cromwell told them plainly in letters addressed to them, that they had been punished for taking up a family that the Lord had so eminently lifted up His hand against, and for pretending to cry down Malignants, and yet receiving and setting up the head of them all. He advanced to Edinburgh, where he closely blockaded the castle, which was soon compelled to surrender.

As for Charles II., he was rather delighted than otherwise with the defeat of his fanatic friends at Dunbar. He was grown most thoroughly tired of imperious dictation and morose religion, and he took the opportunity to steal away to join Murray, Huntly, Atholl, and the Royalists in the Highlands. On the afternoon of the 4th of October, on pretence of hawking, he rode out of Perth, and dashed away for the braes of Angus. After galloping forty miles he came to a wretched hovel at a place called Clova, where he had nothing but a turf pillow to sleep on. There he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery—for Argyll had been speedily apprised of his flight—and finding that two regiments of horse were at hand, Charles knew that escape was hopeless, and so he returned. But "the Start," which Charles's elopement was called, had opened the eyes of the Covenanters to the danger of pressing him too far. They now considerably relaxed their vigour towards him, admitted him to their deliberations in Council, and they thus induced him to prevail on Atholl, Middleton, and the Highland forces to disband.

DUNBAR.

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Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the West, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the Committee of Estates, by Colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigtown, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the Clerk Register of Parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the Kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the Kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough Malignant. They drew up a Remonstrance of the Western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing his old veneration for the Covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the Reverend Zachary Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their Remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by Parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, agreeing with neither one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The Western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the Covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the Remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.

On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or rather was led, in procession, by his partisans to the church at Scone, and there solemnly crowned. There, on his knees, he swore to maintain the Covenant, to establish Presbyterianism, and embrace it himself, to establish it in his other dominions as soon as he recovered them. Argyll then placed the crown on his head, and Douglas, the minister, read him a severe lecture on the calamities which had followed the apostacy of his grandfather and father, and on his being a king only by compact with his people. But the fall of the Western army had weakened the rigid Presbyterian party. Argyll saw his influence decline, that of the Hamiltons in the ascendant, and numbers of the old Royalists pouring in to join the army. Charles's force soon displayed the singular spectacle of Leslie and Middleton in united command, and the army, swelled by the Royalists, was increased to twenty thousand men. Having fortified the passes of the Forth, the king thus awaited the movements of Cromwell. But the lord-general, during the spring, was suffering so much from the ague, that he contemplated returning home. In May, however, he grew better, and advanced towards Stirling. Whilst he occupied the attention of Charles and his army by his manoeuvres in that quarter, he directed Lambert to make an attempt upon Fife, which succeeded, and Cromwell, crossing the Forth, advanced to support him. The royal army quickly evacuated Perth, after a sharp action, in which about eight hundred men on each side fell, and the Parliament colours were hoisted on the walls of that city.

If Cromwell's movement had been rapid and successful, he was now in his turn astonished by one as extraordinary on the part of the Prince. Charles saw that all the south of Scotland and a great part of England was clear of the enemy, and he at once announced his determination to march towards London. On the 31st of July his army was actually in motion, and Argyll, denouncing the enterprise as inevitably ruinous, resigned his commission and retired to Inverary.

On discovering Charles's object, Cromwell put the forces to remain in Scotland under the command of General Monk, sent Lambert from Fife to follow the royal army with three thousand cavalry, and wrote to Harrison in Newcastle to advance and harass the flank of Charles's army. He himself, on the 7th of August, commenced his march after it with ten thousand men.

Charles advanced at a rapid rate, and he had crossed the Mersey before Lambert and Harrison had formed a junction near Warrington, and attempted to draw him into a battle on Knutsford Heath. But Charles continued his hasty march till he reached Worcester, where he was received with loud acclamations by the mayor and corporation, and by a number of county gentlemen, who had been confined there on suspicion of their disaffection, but were now liberated. But such had been the sudden appearance of Charles, that no expectation of it, and therefore no preparation for it, had been made by the Royalists; and the bigoted ministers attending his army sternly refused all who offered to join them, whether Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics, because they had not taken the Covenant. It was in vain that Charles gave orders to the contrary, and sent forward General Massey to receive and bring into order these volunteers; the Committee of the Kirk rejected them, whilst Cromwell's forces on their march were growing by continual reinforcements, especially of the county militias. Colonel Robert Lilburne met with a party of Charles's forces under the Earl of Derby, between Chorley and Wigan, and defeated them, killing the Lord Widdrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and Colonels Boynton, Trollope, and Throgmorton. Derby himself was wounded, but escaped.

Charles issued a proclamation for all his male subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his standard on the 26th of August; but on that day he found that the whole of his forces amounted to only twelve thousand men, whilst Cromwell, who arrived two days after, was at the head of at least thirty thousand. On the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell determined to attack the royal army. Lambert, overnight, crossed the Severn at Upton, with ten thousand men, and the next morning Cromwell and Fleetwood, with the two other divisions of the army, crossed, Cromwell the Severn, and Fleetwood the Teme. Charles, who had been watching their progress from the tower of the cathedral, descended and attacked Fleetwood before he had effected his passage; but Cromwell was soon up to the assistance of his general, and after a stout battle, first in the meadows, and then in the streets of the city, the forces of Charles were completely beaten. Charles fought with undaunted bravery, and endeavoured to rally his soldiers for a last effort, but they flung down their weapons and surrendered. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to fly, and save his life. Three thousand of the Royalists were slain, and six or seven thousand made prisoners, including a considerable number of noblemen—the Duke of Hamilton, but mortally wounded, the Earls of Rothes, Derby, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale, Lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison, and the Generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Talbot, and others, escaped with many adventures.

It was an overthrow complete, and most astonishing to both conquered and conquerors. Cromwell, in his letter to the Parliament, styled it "a crowning mercy." The Earl of Derby and seven others of the prisoners suffered death as traitors and rebels to the Commonwealth. Derby offered the Isle of Man for his ransom, but his letter was read by Lenthall to the House too late, and he was executed at Bolton, in Lancashire.

As for Charles himself, the romance of his escape has been celebrated in many narratives. After being concealed for some days at White-ladies and Boscobel, two solitary houses in Shropshire, and passing a day in the boughs of an oak, he made his way in various disguises, and by the assistance of different loyal friends, to Brighton, whence he passed in a collier over to FÉcamp in Normandy, but this was not till the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle of Worcester.

On the 12th of September Cromwell arrived in town; Bulstrode, Whitelock, and three other gentlemen had been sent down to meet him and conduct him to London. They met him near Aylesbury, and they all joined a hawking party by the way. At Aylesbury they passed the night. Oliver was very affable, and presented to each of the commissioners a horse taken in the battle and a couple of Scottish prisoners. At Acton, the Speaker of the Commons, the Lord President, and many other members of Parliament and of the Council, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs, and crowds of other people, met him, and congratulated him on his splendid victory and his successes in Scotland. The Recorder, in his address, said he was destined to "bind kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron." In London he was received with immense shoutings and acclamations. Parliament voted that the 3rd of September should be kept ever after as a holiday, in memory of his victory; and, in addition to twenty-five thousand pounds a year already granted in land, they settled on him another forty thousand pounds a year in land.

Thus the royal party was for a time broken and put down. In Ireland Cromwell had left his son-in-law Ireton as his deputy, who went on with a strong hand crushing all opposition. The Roman Catholic party growing weary of Ormond, he had resigned his lord-deputyship, and Clanricarde had succeeded him. Still the Catholic party was divided in itself, and Ormond, and after him Clanricarde, entered into a treaty with the Duke of Lorraine, who agreed to send an army to Ireland to put down the Parliament, on condition that he should be declared Protector-royal of Ireland, with all the rights pertaining to the office; an office, in fact, never before heard of. The Irish Royalists obtained, however, at different times, twenty thousand pounds from Lorraine, and his agents were still negotiating for his protectorship, when the defeat of Charles at Worcester showed Lorraine the folly of his hopes. Disappointed in this expectation of assistance from abroad, the Irish Royalists found themselves vigorously attacked by Ireton. In June he invested Limerick, and on the 27th of October it surrendered. Ireton tried and put to death seven of the leaders of the party. The court-martial refused to condemn the brave O'Neil, though Ireton urged his death for his stubborn defence of Clonmel. When Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, was condemned, he exclaimed to Ireton, "I appeal to the tribunal of God, and summon thee to meet me at that bar." These words were deemed prophetic, and were remembered with wonder when, about a month afterwards, Ireton fell ill of fever and died (Nov. 15, 1651).

Cromwell appointed General Lambert his deputy in Ireland. The appointment was cancelled before Lambert could pass over to that country, as it is said, through the management of Ireton's widow, Cromwell's daughter Bridget. The handsome wife of Lambert had refused—her husband being now Lord-Deputy—to give precedence to Mrs. Ireton in St. James's Park, where they met one day. Mrs. Ireton took offence, and prevailed on her father to revoke the appointment, and give it to Fleetwood, whom she soon after married, and so Lambert returned to Ireland in his former position. It is believed that Lambert never forgave the affront, though Cromwell endeavoured to soothe him, and made him compensation in money; for he was found to be one of the first to oppose Richard Cromwell after his father's death, and depose him from the protectorate. Ludlow and three others were joined with Fleetwood, so far as the civil administration of Ireland was concerned, and they were ordered to levy sufficient money for the payment of the forces, not exceeding forty thousand pounds a month; and to exclude Papists from all places of trust, from practising as barristers, or teaching in any kind of school. Thus the bulk of the natives were deprived of all participation in the affairs of their own country, and, what was worse, might be imprisoned or removed from one part of the country at the will of these dictators.

CROMWELL ON HIS WAY TO LONDON AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER. (See p. 107.)

In Scotland Monk carried matters with the same high hand. On the 14th of August he compelled Stirling to surrender, and sent off the royal robes, part of the regalia, and the National Records to London. He then commenced the siege of Dundee, and whilst it was progressing he sent Colonels Alured and Morgan to Alyth in Angus, where he surprised the two Committees of the Estates and the Kirk, with many other noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of three hundred, amongst them poor old Leslie, Earl of Leven, met on Royalist affairs, and sent them after the regalia to England. On the 1st of September Monk stormed Dundee, and gave up the town to the plunder and violence of the soldiery. There were said to be eight hundred soldiers and inhabitants killed, of whom three hundred were women and children. The place had been considered so safe that many people had sent their property there for security, and this and the ships in the harbour all fell into the hands of the conquerors. They are said to have got two hundred thousand pounds in booty, and perpetrated the most unheard-of atrocities. The fate of Dundee induced Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews to open their gates. The Earl of Huntly and Lord Balcarres submitted, and scarcely any noblemen of note, except Argyll, held out; and he did so merely for the purpose of making good terms with the Parliament.

The most vigorous means were adopted to keep the country in check. Military stations were appointed throughout the Highlands, and sites fixed upon for the erection of strong forts at Ayr, Leith, Perth, and Inverness. The property and estates of the Crown were declared forfeited to Parliament, as well as the lands of all who had taken arms under the Duke of Hamilton or the king against England. English judges were sent to go the circuits, assisted by Scottish ones, and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year were voted for the maintenance of the army in Scotland, which was raised to twenty thousand men. These were galling measures for the Scots, who had hoped to subject England again to the king, but they were far from the most humiliating. Vane, St. John, and six other commissioners were appointed to settle a plan for the incorporation of Scotland with England. They met at Dalkeith, and summoned the representatives of the counties and the burghs to assemble and consult with them on the matter. The ministers thundered from their pulpits against a union, and especially against putting the Kirk under the power of the State; but twenty-eight out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs complied, and sent up twenty-one deputies to sit with the Parliamentary commissioners at Westminster, to settle the terms of the union. The power of the English Parliament, or rather of the army, was now so supreme, that both in Scotland and Ireland resistance was vain.

The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, has prevented our noticing the transactions of the Commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now recount these. Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles II. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was entrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the enclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the King of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the Republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to Cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The King of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the Republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The King of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the Commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one between the Commonwealth and the Courts of the Continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the Parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and therefore he employed three friars, who accompanied him and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half a dozen Royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some Royalists had done to Dorislaus, the Parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these Cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no objection to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and so escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the Royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a Protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a Republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English Commonwealth, but the circumstances of the Court prevented the spread of this feeling. The Stadtholder, William II., had married the Princess Royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charleses. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the Duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league between the family of the Stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the Stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large Republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the Stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English Parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the Stadtholder's Court of the English Parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great Republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the Stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the Parliament, to an audience. But on the 6th of November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and on the 14th of that month his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became King of England. The infancy of the Stadtholder now encouraged the Republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the commencement of 1651, determined to send ambassadors to the States, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. But no good was done. There were numbers of English Royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous that they were become proud and insolent, and had come to regard the English Parliament, through the misrepresentation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty States-General. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the Royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity.

The Parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the States-General made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong in his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English Parliament received them with a cool haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European States, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. Parliament passed a Navigation Act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English vessels, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible Act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been lightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English Court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up between the two maritime nations. The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced—Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt. The English Parliament, on their part, ordered their admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flag in the narrow seas as had been paid to that of the king. They also demanded indemnification for the losses sustained in the East Indies from the Dutch, and insisted on the stipulated contribution of the tenth herring from the Dutch fishermen in the British seas.

It was impossible, under such circumstances, that hostilities should be long deferred. Commodore Young was the first to call on the convoy of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen to salute the British flag. They refused, and Young attacked them so smartly that in the end they complied. In a few days Van Tromp, who was a zealous partisan of Orange, and therefore of the house of Stuart, appeared in the Downs with two-and-forty sail. To Commodore Bourne, whom he found there, he disclaimed any hostile intentions, but pleaded the loss of several anchors and cables for putting in; but the next day, being the 19th of May, he encountered Blake off Dover, and that commander, though he had only twenty ships, demanded that Van Tromp should do homage to his flag. Van Tromp refused, and sailed right on till he came nearly opposite Blake, when the English admiral fired a gun three successive times at the Dutch admiral's flag. Van Tromp returned the compliment by firing a broadside into Blake's ship; and the two fleets were instantly engaged, and a desperate battle was fought from three in the afternoon till darkness separated them. The English had taken two ships, one of which, on account of the damage done it, was allowed to sink.

There was much dispute between the two countries which was the aggressor; but it appears the most probable fact that Van Tromp sought an occasion to resist the demand of lowering the Dutch flag to the English one, and found an admiral as prepared to assert that superiority as he was to dispute it.

The English Parliament immediately issued strict orders to all its commodores to pursue and destroy all the ships of the Dutch fleet that they could find on the seas; and in the space of a month they took or burnt seventy sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war. The Dutch protested that the battle had not been sought by them, and proposed inquiry, and the punishment of whichever of the commanders should be proved the aggressor; but the Parliament replied that it was satisfied that the States were bent on usurping the rights of England on the seas, and on destroying the fleets, which were the walls and bulwarks of the nation, and therefore that it was necessary to stand on the defensive. The States sent De Pauw to reiterate the assurances of their peaceful intentions, and to urge the court of inquiry; but the Parliament was now as high as the States had been before, and insisted on reparation and security. De Pauw demanded what these terms meant, and was answered, full compensation for all the expense that the Commonwealth had been put to by the hostile preparations of the States, and a confederation for the mutual protection of the two nations. De Pauw knew that the first of these terms would be declined, and took his leave. On the 19th of July the Parliament proclaimed war against the States.

The Dutch were by no means afraid of the war, though they dreaded the destruction of their trade which it would occasion. They had acquired a great reputation as a naval people, and the sailors were eager to encounter the English, and revenge their defeat upon them. Van Tromp once more appeared with seventy sail of the line, and boasted that he would sweep the English from the face of the ocean. The Vice-Admiral Sir George Ayscough (or Ayscue), had just returned victorious from the reduction of Barbadoes, and was left in charge of the Channel whilst Blake went northward, in quest of the squadron which protected the Dutch fishermen. Van Tromp could not come up with Ayscough, owing to a change of wind; he, therefore, went northward after Blake, who had captured the Dutch squadron, and made the fishermen pay the tenth herring, but a storm dispersed Van Tromp's fleet, several of his ships falling into the hands of the English. When he again returned to port, he was received with great indignation by the people, who had expected wonders from him, and in his mortification he resigned.

De Ruyter was advanced into his post, and put to sea in charge of a merchant fleet, and in return fell in with Ayscough off Plymouth, who broke through his line, but was not followed up vigorously by the captains of the other vessels, and the Dutch ships escaped. Ayscough was superseded, the Parliament suspecting him of a royal tendency.

De Ruyter joined De Witt, and attacked Blake, who had under him Admirals Bourne and Penn, and a fierce engagement took place, which lasted the whole of the 28th of September. The next morning the Dutch were seen bearing away for their own coasts, several of their vessels having gone down, and one of them being taken. Blake gave chase as far as Goree, but could not pursue them amongst the shoals and sandbanks, where the small vessels of the Dutch had taken refuge. Wherever English and Dutch ships now met, there was battle. There was an affray between them in the Mediterranean, where Van Galen, with a greatly superior force, attacked and defeated Captain Baily, but was himself slain; the King of Denmark also joined the Dutch with five ships, laid an embargo on English merchandise in the Baltic, and closed the Sound against them. There were, moreover, numerous vessels under the French flag cruising about in quest of merchantmen.

As winter, however, approached, Blake, supposing the campaign would cease till spring, dispersed a number of his vessels to different ports, and was lying in the Downs with only thirty-seven sail, when he was surprised by a fleet of eighty men-of-war, and ten fire-ships. It was Van Tromp, whom the States had again prevailed on to take the command, and who came vehement for the recovery of his tarnished reputation. Blake's stout heart refused to shrink from even so unequal a contest; and he fought the whole Dutch fleet with true English bulldogism, from ten in the morning till six in the evening, when the increasing darkness led to a cessation of hostilities on both sides. Blake took advantage of the night to get up the Thames as far as the quaint fishing village of Leigh. He had managed to blow up a Dutch ship, disable two others, and to do much damage generally to the Dutch fleet; but he had lost five ships himself. Van Tromp and De Ruyter sailed to and fro at the mouth of the river, and along the coast from the North Foreland to the Isle of Wight, in triumph, and then convoyed home the Dutch and French fleets. There was huge rejoicing in Holland over the great English admiral, which, considering the immense inequality of the fleets, was really an honour to Blake, for it showed how they esteemed his genius and courage. The whole of Holland was full of bravado at blocking up the Thames, and forcing the English to an ignominious peace. Van Tromp was so elated, that he stuck a besom at his masthead, intimating that he would sweep the English from off the seas.

The English Parliament, during the winter, made strenuous efforts to wipe out this reverse. They refitted and put in order all their ships, ordered two regiments of infantry to be ready to embark as marines, raised the wages of the seamen, ordered their families to be maintained during their absence on service, and increased the rate of prize money. They sent for Monk from Scotland, and joined him and Dean in command with Blake.

The Dutch navy was estimated at this period at a hundred and fifty sail, and was flushed with success; but Blake was resolved to take down their pride, and lay ready for the first opportunity. This occurred on the 18th of February, 1653. Van Tromp appeared sailing up the Channel with seventy-two ships of war and thirty armed traders, convoying a homeward-bound merchant fleet of three hundred sail. His orders were, having seen the merchantmen safe home, to return and blockade the Thames. Blake saved him the trouble, by issuing from port with eighty men-of-war, and posting himself across the Channel. Van Tromp signalled the merchant fleet under his convoy to take care of themselves, and the battle between him and Blake commenced with fury. The action took place not far from Cape La Hogue, on the coast of France. Blake and Dean, who were both on board the Triumph, led the way, and their ship received seven hundred shots in her hull. The battle lasted the whole day, in which the Dutch had six ships taken or sunk, the English losing none, but Blake was severely wounded.

The next day the fight was renewed off Weymouth as fiercely as before, and was continued all day, and at intervals through the night; and on the third day the conflict still raged till four o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind carrying the contending fleets towards the shallow waters between Boulogne and Calais, Van Tromp, with his lesser ships, escaped from the English, and pursued his course homewards, carrying the merchant fleet safely there. In the three days' fight the Dutch, according to their own account, had lost nine men-of-war and twenty-four merchantmen; according to the English account, eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen. They had two thousand men killed, and fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English had only one ship sunk, though many of their vessels were greatly damaged, and their loss of killed and wounded was very severe. But they had decidedly beaten the enemy, and the excitement in Holland, on the return of the crest-fallen though valiant boaster Van Tromp, was universal. It was now the turn of the English sailors to boast, who declared that they had paid off the Dutch for Amboyna. But the defeat of their navy was nothing in comparison to the general mischief done to their trade and merchant shipping. Their fisheries employed one hundred thousand persons: these were entirely stopped; the Channel was now closed to their fleet, and in the Baltic the English committed continual ravages on their traders. Altogether, they had now lost sixteen hundred ships, and they once more condescended to seek for accommodation with the English Parliament, which, however, treated them with haughty indifference; and it was, therefore, with great satisfaction that they now beheld the change which took place in England.

The Reformers of various shades and creeds had at first been combined by the one great feeling of rescuing the country from the absolute principles of the Stuarts. They had fought bravely side by side for this great object; but in proportion as they succeeded, the differences between themselves became more apparent. The Presbyterians, Scots and English, were bent on fixing their religious opinions on the country as despotically as the Catholics and Episcopalians had done before them. But here they found themselves opposed by the Independents, who had notions of religious freedom far beyond the Presbyterians, and were not inclined to yield their freedom to any other party whatever. Their religious notions naturally disposed them towards the same equalising system in the State, and as the chiefs of the army were of this denomination, they soon found themselves in a condition to dictate to the parliament. Pride's Purge left Parliament almost purely independent, and it and the army worked harmoniously till the sweeping victories of Cromwell created a jealousy of his power. This power was the more supreme because circumstances had dispersed the other leading generals into distant scenes of action. Monk and Lambert were in Scotland till Monk was called to the fleet, Fleetwood was in Ireland, Ireton was dead. The Long Parliament, or the remnant of it, called the Rump, ably as it had conducted affairs, was daily decreasing in numbers, and dreaded to renew itself by election, because it felt certain that anything like a free election would return an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and that they would thus commit an act of felo de se.

At no period did what is called the Commonwealth of England present any of the elements of what we conceive by a republic, that is, by a government of the free representatives of the people. Had the people been allowed to send their representatives, there would have been a considerable number of Catholics, a much greater number of Episcopalians, and both of these sections Royalists. There would have been an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and a very moderate one of Independents. The Government was, therefore, speedily converted into an oligarchy, at the head of which were the generals of the army, and some few of the leaders of Parliament. The army, by Pride's Purge, reduced the Parliament to a junto, by turning out forcibly the majority of the representatives of the people, and the time was now fast approaching when it must resolve itself into a military dictatorship.

Cromwell had long been accused by his own party of aiming at the possession of the supreme power. At what time such ideas began to dawn in his mind is uncertain; but as he felt himself rising above all his contemporaries by the energy and the comprehensive character of his mind, there is no doubt that he secretly indulged them. Ludlow, Whitelock, Hutchinson, and others, felt that such was the spirit growing in him; and many of those who had most admired his genius fell away from him, and openly denounced his ambitious intentions as they became more obvious. The excellent Colonel Hutchinson and Sir Henry Vane charged him with the ruin of the Commonwealth. But Cromwell must have long felt that nothing but a military power could maintain the ascendency of those principles which he and his fellow Independents entertained and held sacred. The world was not prepared for them. The roots of royalty were too deeply struck into the heart of the nation by centuries of its existence, to be torn out by the follies and tyrannies of one family. But if a free Parliament, which it had been the proud boast of the Reformers to be the sole seat of the national power, could not exist; if the sitting body calling itself a Parliament could not even add to its members without endangering its own existence either from itself or from the jealousy of the army—what could exist? Clearly nothing but a dictatorship, and the strongest man must come uppermost. That strongest man was without a question Cromwell.

As early as 1649 two Bills had been brought in to settle questions urgently demanded by the people, an act for a general amnesty, and for the termination of the present Parliament. On his return from the battle of Worcester, Cromwell reminded Parliament that these essential measures had not been completed. He carried the amnesty, so that all acts of hostility against the present Government previous to the battle of Worcester were pardoned, and the Royalists relieved from the fear of fresh forfeitures. The termination of Parliament was fixed for the 3rd of November, 1654, and the interval of three years was to be zealously employed in framing a scheme for the election of a new Parliament on the safest principles. At the same time Cromwell was living at Whitehall, in the house of the beheaded king, and with almost the state and power of a sovereign. He summoned, therefore, the council of the army, and discussed amongst them what they deemed necessary to be done.

In this council it was agitated as to the best form of government for England, whether a pure republic, or a government with something of monarchy in it. The officers were for a republic, the lawyers for a limited monarchy. Cromwell agreed that the government must have something of monarchy in it, and asked who they would choose if that were decided? The lawyers said Charles Stuart, or if they found him too much bent on power, his brother the Duke of Gloucester. There can be little doubt but that this was a feeler on the part of Cromwell, and as he was never likely to acquiesce in the restoration of a family which they had put down at so much cost, it would have the effect of causing him to proceed with caution. He had ascertained that the army was opposed to a king; the lawyers thought of no king but one from the old royal line. These were facts to be pondered.

Meanwhile the Parliament, without proceeding to lay a platform for its successor, evidenced a jealousy of the ascendency of the army; it voted a reduction of one-fourth of the army, and of the monthly assessment for its support from one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to ninety thousand pounds. In June, 1652, it proposed a fresh reduction, but this was opposed by the military council, and in August the officers appeared at the bar of the House with a petition, calling the attention of the Parliament to the great question of the qualifications of future parliaments, to reform of the law and religious abuses, to the dismissal of disaffected and scandalous persons from office, to the arrears due to the army, and to reform of malpractices in the Excise and the Treasury.

The contest between the army and the Parliament was evidently growing every day more active. The Commons had no desire to lay down their authority and, to retain their existence, even showed a leaning towards introducing a number of Presbyterians under the name of "Neuters." To such a project the army was never likely to assent, and Cromwell proposed, in the council at Whitehall, that Parliament should be at once dissolved, and a national council of forty persons, with himself at their head, should conduct affairs till a new Parliament could be called on established principles. The opinion, however, was that such a proceeding would be dangerous, and the authority of the council be looked upon as unwarrantable.

Whilst these matters were in agitation, Whitelock says that Cromwell, on the 8th of November, 1652, desired a private interview with him, and in this urged the necessity of taking prompt and efficient measures for securing the great objects for which they had fought, and which he termed the mercies and successes which God had conferred on the nation. He inveighed warmly against the Parliament, and declared that the army began to entertain a strange distaste to it; adding that he wished there were not too much reason for it. "And really," he continued, "their pride, their self-seeking, their engrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends; their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions; their delays of business, and designs to perpetuate themselves, and to continue the power in their own hands; their meddling in private matters between party and party, contrary to the institution of Parliament; their injustice and partiality in these matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them, do give much ground for people to open their mouths against them, and to dislike them." He concluded by insisting on the necessity of some controlling power over them to check these extravagances, or else nothing could prevent the ruin of the Commonwealth.

Whitelock admitted the truth of most of this, but defended the Parliament generally, and reminded Cromwell that it was the Parliament which had granted them their authority, and to Cromwell even his commission, and that it would be hard for them, under those circumstances, to curb their power.

But Cromwell broke out—"We all forget God, and God will forget us. God will give us up to confusion, and these men will help it on if they be suffered to proceed in their ways." And then, after some further talk, he suddenly observed, "What if a man should take upon him to be king?" Whitelock saw plainly enough what Oliver was thinking of, and replied as if he had directly asked whether he should assume that office himself. He told him that it would not do, and that he was much better off, and more influential as he was. "As to your person," he observed, "the title of king would be of no advantage, because you have the full kingly power already concerning the militia." He reminded him that in the appointment of civil offices, though he had no formal veto, his will was as much consulted as if he had, and so in all other departments, domestic and foreign. Moreover, he now had the power without the envy and danger which the pomp and circumstance of a king would bring.

Cromwell still argued the point; contending that though a man usurped the title without royal descent, yet the possession of the crown was declared by an Act of Henry VII. to make a good title, and to indemnify the reigning king and all his ministers for their acts. Whitelock replied that, let their enemies once get the better of them, all such bills and indemnifications would be little regarded; and that to assume the crown would at once convert the quarrel into one not between the king and the nation, but between Charles Stuart and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell admitted this, but asked what other course he could propose. Whitelock said that of making a good bargain with Charles, who was now down, and might be treated with just on what terms they pleased; or if they thought him too confirmed in his opinions, there was the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester. Cromwell did not appear pleased with this suggestion; in fact, he had resolved to seize the chief power in some shape himself—and even had he not, he had too much common sense to agree to admit any one of the deposed family again to the throne, which would be to put their necks in the certain noose of royal vengeance. The death of Charles I. could never be forgiven. From this time, Whitelock says, though he made no accusation against Cromwell, yet "his carriage towards me from that time was altered, and his advising with me not so frequent and intimate as before."

Cromwell again, however, broached the subject amongst the officers and members of the Council—St. John, Lenthall the Speaker, Desborough, Harrison, Fleetwood, and Whalley, not in so direct a manner, but as that "a settlement, with something of the monarchical in it, would be very effectual." It does not appear that the project was very unanimously received by them, but they were agreed that a new representation must take place, and no "Neuters" should be admitted. Cromwell said emphatically, "Never shall any of that judgment who have deserted the cause be admitted to power." On the 19th of April the debate on this subject was continued very warmly till midnight, and they separated, to continue the discussion on the next day. Most of the officers had argued that the Parliament must be dissolved "one way or another;" but the Parliament men and lawyers, amongst them Whitelock and Widdrington, contended that a hasty dissolution would be dangerous, and Cromwell appeared to lean towards the moderate view. But scarcely had they met the next morning, and found a strange absence of the members of Parliament, and an almost equal absence of officers, when Colonel Ingoldsby hastened in and informed them that the Commons were hard at work pushing forward their Bill for increasing their own numbers by the introduction of Neuters; and that it was evident that they meant to hurry it through the House before the Council could be informed of their attempt. Vane and others, well aware of Cromwell's design, were thus exerting themselves to defeat it.

At this news Cromwell instantly ordered a file of musketeers to attend him, and hastened to the House of Commons, attended by Lambert, Harrison, and some other officers. He left the soldiers in the lobby of the House, and entering, went straight to his seat, where he sat for some time listening to the debate. He first spoke to St. John, telling him that he was come for a purpose which grieved him to the very soul, and that he had sought the Lord with tears not to impose it upon him; but there was a necessity, and that the glory of God and the good of the nation required it. He then beckoned Harrison to him, and said that he judged that the Parliament was ripe for dissolution. Harrison, who was a Fifth-Monarchy man, and had been only with much persuasion brought over to this design, replied, "Sir, the work is very great and dangerous; I desire you seriously to consider before you engage in it." "You say well," answered the general, and sat yet about a quarter of an hour longer. But when the question was about to be put, he said to Harrison, "This is the time; I must do it;" and starting up, he took off his hat, and began speaking. At first he spoke of the question before the House, and commended the Parliament for much that it had done, and well he might; for whatever its present corruption, it had nobly supported him and the fleet and army in putting down all their enemies, and raising the nation in the eyes of foreigners far beyond its reputation for the last century. But soon he came round to the corruption and self-seeking of the members, accusing them of being at that moment engaged in the very work of bringing in the Presbyterians to destroy all that they had suffered so much to accomplish. Sir Harry Vane and Peter Wentworth ventured to call him to order, declaring that that was strange and unparliamentary language from a servant of the House, and one that they had so much honoured. "I know it," replied Cromwell; then stepping forward into the middle of the floor, and putting on his hat, and walking to and fro, casting angry glances at different members, he exclaimed, "I tell you, you are no Parliament. I will put an end to your prating. For shame! get you gone! Give place to honest men; to men who will more faithfully discharge their trust. You are no longer a Parliament. The Lord has done with you. He has chosen other instruments for carrying on His work."

With that he stamped upon the floor, and the soldiers appearing at the door, he bade Harrison bring them in. The musketeers instantly surrounded him, and laying his hand on the mace, he said, "What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away," and he handed it to a soldier. Then looking at Lenthall the Speaker, he said to Harrison, "Fetch him down!" Lenthall declared that he would not move from his proper post unless he was forced out of it. "Sir," said Harrison, "I will lend you a hand," and taking hold of him, he brought him down, and he walked out of the House. Algernon Sydney, then but a young member, happened to sit next to the Speaker, and Cromwell said, "Put him out!" Sydney, like the Speaker, refused to move, but Cromwell reiterated the command, "Put him out!" and Harrison and Worsley, the lieutenant-colonel of Cromwell's regiment of Ironsides, laying each a hand on his shoulder, the young patriot did not wait for the ignominy of being dragged from his seat, but rose and followed the Speaker. Cromwell then went on weeding out the members, with epithets of high reproach to each of them. Alderman Allen bade him pause and send out the soldiers, and that all might yet be well; but Cromwell only replied, "It is you that have forced me upon this. I have sought the Lord day and night that He would rather slay me than put me upon this work." He then charged the alderman with embezzlement, as treasurer to the army; and taking first one and then another by the cloak, he said to Challoner, "Thou art a drunkard!" To Wentworth, "Thou art an adulterer!" To Martin, "Thou art a still more lewd character!" Vane, as he was forced past him, exclaimed, "This is not honest; yea, it is against morality and common honesty." "O, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane!" exclaimed Cromwell, "the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" Thus he saw the House cleared, no one daring to raise a hand against him, though, says Whitelock, "many wore swords, and would sometimes brag high." When all were gone, Cromwell locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. He then returned to Whitehall, and told the Council of officers, who yet remained sitting, what he had done. "When I went to the House," he said, "I did not think to do this, but perceiving the spirit of the Lord strong upon me, I resolved no longer to consult flesh and blood."

Such was the manner in which the last vestige of representative government was swept away by Cromwell. Charles I. roused the fiery indignation of Parliament, and of all England, as a violater of the privileges of Parliament, by entering the House to seize five members who had offended him. Cromwell, who had been one of the first to resist and to avenge this deed, now marched in his soldiers and turned out the whole Parliament, about fifty members, with impunity. "They went away so quietly," said Cromwell, "that not a dog barked at their going." Such is the difference between a private man with a victorious army at his back, and one who, though with the name of a king, has lost a nation's confidence by his want of moral honesty. The act of Cromwell was the death of all constitutional life whatever, it was in opposition to all parties but the army; yet no man dared assume the attitude of a patriot; the military Dictatorship was accomplished (April 20, 1653).

Cromwell's whole excuse was necessity; that without his seizure of the supreme power, the Commonwealth could not exist. It ceased to exist by his very deed, and if he saved the faint form of a republic, it was only for five years. As we have seen the great example to the nations of the responsibility of kings, we have now to see an equally significant one of the impossibility of maintaining long any form of government that is not based on the mature opinion and attachment of the people. Republicanism was not the faith of England in the seventeenth century, and therefore neither the despotism of Charles could create a republic with any permanence in it, nor the strenuous grasp of Cromwell maintain it beyond the term of his own existence.

On the afternoon of this celebrated coup d'État, Cromwell proceeded to Derby House, accompanied by Harrison and Lambert, where the Council was still sitting, and thus addressed the members:—"Gentlemen, if you are here met 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 at the House this morning, so take notice that the Parliament is dissolved." Bradshaw, who was presiding, said that they knew, and that all England would soon know; but that if he thought that the Parliament was dissolved, he was mistaken, "for that no power under Heaven could dissolve them, except themselves. Therefore take you notice of that." Sir Arthur Haselrig and others supported this protest, and then the Council withdrew.

Cromwell and his party immediately held a council as to what steps were to be taken, and on the 22nd they issued a declaration in the name of the Lord-General and his council of officers, ordering all authorities to continue their functions as before; and in return, addresses of confidence arrived from generals and admirals. On the 6th of June Oliver, in his own name as Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of all the armies and forces, issued a summons to one hundred and forty persons to meet and constitute a Parliament. Six were also summoned from Wales, six from Ireland, and five from Scotland. On the 4th of July about one hundred and twenty of these persons, of Cromwell's own selection—persons, according to his summons, "fearing God, and of approved fidelity and honesty"—met in the Council-chamber at Whitehall. Many of these were gentlemen of good repute and abilities—some of them were nobles, others of noble families—as Colonel Montague, Colonel Howard, and Anthony Ashley Cooper. Others, however, were of little worldly standing, but had been selected on account of their religious zeal and character. Amongst them was one Barbon, a leatherseller in Fleet Street, who had acquired the cognomen of Praise-God, and whose name being purposely misspelled became Praise-God Barebone, and the Royalist wits of the time, therefore, dubbed the Parliament Barebone's Parliament.

The more common appellation of this singular Parliament was "The Little Parliament." Cromwell opened their session with a very long and extraordinary speech, in which he gave a history of the past contest with the monarchy, and the mercies with which they had been crowned at Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, and other places; of the backslidings of the Long Parliament, and the "necessity" to remove it and call this assembly. He quoted a vast quantity of Scripture, and told them that they were called of God to introduce practical religion into State affairs; and he then delivered into their hands an instrument, consigning to them the supreme power in the State till the 3rd of September, 1654, three months previous to which date they were to elect their successors, who were to sit only for a year, and in turn elect their successors.

This resignation of the supreme power once in his hands, has been described by historians as a gross piece of hypocrisy, used to avoid the odium of seizing for himself the power of the Parliament, which he had forcibly dissolved. Whether that were the case or not, it certainly was a prudent policy, and a safe one, for he knew very well that he possessed supreme power as head of the army, and could, if necessary, dismiss this Parliament as he had done the former one. In their character of pietists or saints, as they were called, this Parliament opened its session by electing Francis Rouse their Speaker, and by exercises of devotion, which continued from eight in the morning till six at night. Thirteen of the most gifted members preached and prayed in succession, and they adjourned, declaring that they had never enjoyed so much of the spirit and presence of Christ in any meetings for worship as they had done that day. It was moved the next morning that they "should go on seeking the Lord" that day too, but this was overruled, and Monday, the 11th, was fixed for that purpose. They then voted themselves the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, invited Cromwell and four of his staff to sit as members amongst them, and on the 9th of July re-appointed the Council of State, amongst whom we find the names of Colonel Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the uncle of the poet Dryden, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Viscount Lisle, brother of Algernon Sydney, Sir Ashley Cooper, and other names of equal note; and however they might be ridiculed on account of their religion, they soon showed that they were conscientious and independent men. The strongest proof of this was that they did not shrink from opposing the power and interests of Cromwell, who had selected them. Scarcely were they met, when they were appealed to to decide upon the case of John Lilburne, who, on the dissolution of the Long Parliament, petitioned Cromwell to allow him to return from his banishment. Cromwell gave no reply, but independent John took the liberty of appearing in London. He was at once seized and committed to Newgate. Lilburne, supported by his friends, petitioned the House to hear and decide the case, though it was the proper business of a jury. They might now have gratified their patron, whom Lilburne had continually assailed as a "robber," a "usurper," and a "murderer;" but they declined to interfere, and left him to the ordinary criminal court. There Lilburne so ably defended himself that he was acquitted; but he was again seized on the plea of libellous and seditious language used on his trial, and the House could then no longer refuse, at the instigation of the Council, to imprison him. Being removed from the Tower to Elizabeth Castle, in Jersey, and thence to Dover Castle, he there became a convert to the principles of George Fox, a remarkable end for so fiery and democratic a character. The Parliament lost no time in proceeding to assert that divine commission, which Cromwell, in his opening speech, had attributed to their call through him. They declared that they were appointed by the Lord, and would have greatly alarmed Cromwell had he not taken care to include amongst them a sufficient number of his staunch adherents. But they excited the same alarm in a variety of other classes. They set to work resolutely in cutting down the expenditure of the Government; they abolished all unnecessary offices; they revised the regulations of the Excise; reformed the constitution of the Treasury; reduced exorbitant salaries, and examined thoroughly the public accounts; they adopted measures for the sale of the confiscated lands, and enacted rules for the better registration of births, deaths, and marriages. They went further; they made marriage by a civil magistrate valid, and, indeed, necessary for the enjoyment of the civil effects of marriage. Marriage by a clergyman was left optional still.

They next attacked the unequal and oppressive modes of raising the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month for the maintenance of the army; the assessments in some cases amounting to two, in others, to ten shillings in the pound. From taxation they proceeded to law, and prepared a Bill to abolish the Court of Chancery, in which the abuses and delays had been a constant source of complaint in petitions to Parliament for years. But they were not content with destroying the Court of Chancery, they set about a general reform of the laws. They contended that every Englishman should understand the laws of his country, and that by a proper digest they might be reduced to the compass of a pocket volume. They, in fact, anticipated Napoleon in his Code, and appointed a committee to make the necessary revision, and to weed the real and useful statutes out of the chaotic mass of contradictory, obsolete, and unjust laws which overlaid them; the dicta of judges in many cases superseded and prevented the original enactments, so that men's lives and properties were at the mercy, not of the decrees of Parliament, but the opinions of individuals. It may be imagined what a consternation this daring innovation excited throughout Westminster Hall, and all the dusky, cobwebby cells of the lawyers. A terrible cry was raised that a set of ignorant men were about to destroy the whole noble system of British jurisprudence, and to introduce instead the law of Moses!

TOKEN OF THE COMMONWEALTH (COPPER).

But the projects of these radical Reformers were cut short by the universal outcry from lawyers, churchmen, officials, and a host of interested classes. They were represented as a set of mad fanatics, who in Parliament were endeavouring to carry out the wild doctrines which the Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy men were preaching out of doors. Borne down by public opinion, Cromwell was compelled to dissolve them, in fact to resume the supreme power which he had committed to them. Accordingly, on the 12th of December, Cromwell's friends mustered in full strength, and Colonel Sydenham moved that, as the proceedings of Parliament were regarded as calculated to overturn almost every interest in the country, they could not proceed, and that they should restore their authority to the hands whence they had received it. The motion was vehemently opposed, but the Independents had adopted their plan. The mover declared that he would no longer sit in an assembly which must be rendered abortive by general opposition. He therefore rose: the Speaker, who was one of the party, rose too, and the Independents, forming a procession, proceeded to Whitehall, and resigned their commission into the hands of Cromwell. The staunch dissentients remained and engaged in prayer, in which act two officers, Goffe and White, sent to close the House, found them. White asked them what they did there. They replied, "We are seeking the Lord." "Then," said he, rudely, "you may go somewhere else, for to my certain knowledge, the Lord has not been here these many years."

Cromwell affected to receive with reluctance the onerous charge of the supreme power and responsibility; but the officers urged its necessity, and the document being soon signed by eighty members, he acceded to it. The council of officers and ministers decided that it was necessary to have "a commonwealth in a single person;" and a new constitution was drawn up; and on the 16th of December Cromwell, dressed in a suit and cloak of black velvet, with long boots and a broad gold band round his hat, proceeded in his carriage from Whitehall to the Court of Chancery. The way was lined by files of soldiers, consisting of five regiments of foot and three of horse. A long procession followed, including the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and City officers, the two Commissioners of the Great Seal, the judges, the councillors of State and of the army. On reaching the Court of Chancery, Cromwell took his place before a chair of State, which had been placed on a rich carpet, the Commissioners of the Great Seal standing on his right and left, the judges ranging themselves behind, and the civil and military officers disposing of themselves on each hand. Lambert then stepped forward and addressed the Lord-General. He spoke of the dissolution of Parliament, and of the necessity of a strong Government, not liable to be paralysed by contending opinions; and he prayed the Lord-General, in the name of the army and of the official authorities of the three kingdoms, to accept the office of Lord-Protector of the Commonwealth, and to govern it for the public good by a constitution already drawn up. Cromwell assented, and thereupon Jessop, a clerk of the council, read what was called "The Instrument of Government," consisting of forty-two articles. The chief of these were, that the legislative power should be invested in the Lord-Protector and the Parliament; but chiefly in the Parliament, for every Act passed by them was to become law at the end of twenty days, though the Protector should refuse it his consent. Parliament should not be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent, for five months; and there was to be a new Parliament called within three years of the dissolution of the last. The members of the Parliament were adopted from a plan by Vane, brought forward during the Long Parliament—namely, three hundred and forty members for England and Wales, thirty for Scotland, and thirty for Ireland. The members were to be chosen chiefly from the counties, and no papist, Malignant, or any one who had borne arms against the Parliament, was admissible. In the Protector resided the power of making war or peace with the consent of the Council; he held the disposal of the militia, and of the regular forces and the navy, the appointment of all public offices with the approbation of Parliament, or during the recess of Parliament with that of the Council, subject to the after-approval of Parliament; but he could make no law, nor impose taxes without consent of Parliament. The civil list was fixed at two hundred thousand pounds, and a revenue for the army capable of maintaining thirty thousand men, with such a navy as the Lord-Protector should deem necessary. The elective franchise extended to persons possessed of property worth two hundred pounds, and sixty members of Parliament should constitute a quorum. All persons professing faith in Jesus Christ were to enjoy the exercise of their religion except papists, prelatists, or such as taught doctrines subversive of morality. Cromwell was named Lord-Protector for life, and his successor was to be elected by the Council, and no member of the family of the late king, or any of his line, should be capable of election. A Council was specially named by the Instrument, to consist of Philip, Lord Viscount Lisle, brother of Algernon Sydney; Fleetwood; Lambert; Sir Gilbert Pickering; Sir Charles Wolseley; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper; Edward Montague; John Desborough, brother-in-law of Cromwell; Walter Strickland; Henry Lawrence; William Sydenham; Philip Jones; Richard Mayor, father-in-law of Richard Cromwell; Francis Rouse; Philip Skipton, or any seven of them, with power in the Protector, and a majority of the Council, to add to their number. Thurloe, the historian, was secretary of the Council, and Milton Latin secretary.

This Instrument being ready, Cromwell swore solemnly to observe it, and to cause it to be observed; and then Lambert, kneeling, offered the Protector a civic sword in the scabbard, which he took, laying aside his own, as indicating that he thenceforward would govern by the new constitution, and not by military authority. He then seated himself, covered, in the chair of State, all besides standing uncovered; he then received from the Commissioners the Great Seal, and from the Lord Mayor the sword and cap of maintenance, which he immediately returned to them. On this the court rose, and the Lord-Protector returned in state to Whitehall, the Lord Mayor bearing the sword before him, amid the shouting of the soldiers and the firing of cannon. The next day, the 17th of December, the Lord-Protector was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in Westminster and in the City, and thus had the successful general, the quondam farmer of Huntingdon, arrived at the seat of supreme power, at the seat of a long line of famous kings, though not with the name of king, to which many suspected him of aspiring. Yet even without the royal dignity, he soon found the position anything but an enviable one, for he was surrounded by hosts of men still vowed to his destruction and the restoration of the monarchy; and amongst those who had fought side by side with him towards this august eminence, were many who regarded his assumption of it as a crime, to be expiated only by his death. Though there is no reason to believe that the bulk of the nation was otherwise than satisfied with the change, his supporters were lukewarm while his enemies were ardent. There was no disguising the fact that until Parliament met his government was one of naked absolutism. The Protector forthwith established a body of "Triers" who proceeded to examine the religious beliefs of candidates for vacant benefices, and promptly presented them if the result of the examination was satisfactory. Before we proceed, however, to notice his struggles with his secret or avowed enemies, and with his new Parliament, we must notice what had been doing meanwhile in the war with Holland, which had still been raging.