Title: The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660
Author: Masson, David, 1822-1907
Language: English
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THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON

Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary
History of His Time

by

DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of
Edinburgh

VOLUME V

1654-1660

London:
MacMillan and Co.

1877



CONTENTS.


BOOK I.

SEPTEMBER 1654-JUNE 1657.

HISTORY:--OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST
PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.


CHAP.
I. SECTION I. Oliver and his First Parliament: Sept. 3, 1654-Jan.
22, 1654-5.--Meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate:
Its Composition: Anti-Oliverians numerous in it: Their Four Days'
Debate in challenge of Cromwell's Powers: Debate stopped by Cromwell:
His Speech in the Painted Chamber: Secession of some from the
Parliament: Acquiescence of the rest by Adoption of _The
Recognition_: Spirit and Proceedings of the Parliament still
mainly Anti-Oliverian: Their Four Months' Work in Revision of the
Protectoral Constitution: Chief Debates in those Four Months:
Question of the Protector's Negatives: Other Incidental Work of the
Parliament: Question of Religious Toleration and of the Suppression
of Heresies and Blasphemies: Committee and Sub-Committee on this
Subject: Baxter's Participation: Tendency to a Limited Toleration
only, and Vote against the Protector's Prerogative of more: Case of
John Biddle, the Socinian.--Insufficiency now of our former Synopsis
of English Sects and Heresies: New Sects and Denominations: The
Fifth-Monarchy Men: The Ranters: The Muggletonians and other Stray
Fanatics: Bochmenists and other Mystics: The Quakers or Friends:
Account of George Fox, and Sketch of the History of the Quakers to
the year 1654.--Policy of the Parliament with their Bill for a New
Constitution: Parliament outwitted by Cromwell and dissolved: No
Result.

CHAP.
I. SECTION II. Between the Parliaments, or the Time of Arbitrariness:
Jan. 22, 1654-55--Sept. 17, 1656.--Avowed "Arbitrariness" of this
Stage of the Protectorate, and Reasons for it.--First Meeting of
Cromwell and his Council after the Dissolution: Major-General Overton
in Custody: Other Arrests: Suppression of a wide Republican
Conspiracy and of Royalist Risings in Yorkshire and the West: Revenue
Ordinance and Mr. Cony's Opposition at Law: Deference of Foreign
Governments: Blake in the Mediterranean: Massacre of the Piedmontese
Protestants: Details of the Story and of Cromwell's Proceedings in
consequence: Penn in the Spanish West Indies: His Repulse from
Hispaniola and Landing in Jamaica: Declaration of War with Spain and
Alliance with France: Scheme of the Government of England by
Major-Generals: List of them and Summary of their Police-System:
Decimation Tax on the Royalists, and other Measures _in
terrorem_: Consolidation of the London Newspaper Press:
Proceedings of the Commission of Ejectors and of the Commission of
Triers: View of Cromwell's Established Church of England, with
Enumeration of its various Components: Extent of Toleration outside
the Established Church: The Protector's Treatment of the Roman
Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and
the Jews: State of the English Universities and Schools under the
Protectorate: Cromwell's Patronage of Learning: List of English Men
of Letters alive in 1656, and Account of their Diverse Relations to
Cromwell: Poetical Panegyrics on him and his Protectorate.--New
Arrangements for the Government of Scotland: Lord Broghill's
Presidency there for Cromwell: General State of the Country:
Continued Struggle between the Resolutioners and the Protesters for
Kirk-Supremacy: Independency and Quakerism in Scotland: More Extreme
Anomalies there: Story of "Jock of Broad Scotland": Brisk Intercourse
between Scotland and London: Mission of Mr. James Sharp.--Ireland
from 1654 to 1656.--Glimpse of the Colonies.

CHAP.
I. SECTION III. Oliver and the First Session of his Second
Parliament: Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657.--Second Parliament of the
Protectorate called: Vane's _Healing Question_ and another
Anti-Oliverian Pamphlet: Precautions and Arrests: Meeting of the
Parliament: Its Composition: Summary of Cromwell's Opening Speech:
Exclusion of Ninety-three Anti-Oliverian Members: Decidedly Oliverian
Temper of the rest: Question of the Excluded Members: Their Protest:
Summary of the Proceedings of the Parliament for Five Months (Sept.
1656-Feb. 1656-7): Administration of Cromwell and his Council during
those Months: Approaches to Disagreement between Cromwell and the
Parliament in the _Case of James Nayler_ and on the Question of
Continuation of the Militia by Major-Generals: No Rupture.--The
Soxby-Sindercombe Plot.--Sir Christopher Pack's Motion for a New
Constitution (Feb. 23, 1656-7): Its Issue in the _Petition and
Advice_ and Offer of the Crown to Cromwell: Division of Public
Opinion on the Kingship Question: Opposition among the Army Officers:
Cromwell's Neutral Attitude: His Reception of the Offer: His long
Hesitations and several Speeches over the Affair: His Final Refusal
(May 8, 1657): Ludlow's Story of the Cause.--Harrison and the Fifth
Monarchy Men: Venner's Outbreak at Mile-End-Green.--Proposed New
Constitution of the _Petition and Advice_ retained in the form
of a Continued Protectorate: Supplements to the _Petition and
Advice_: Bills assented to by the Protector, June 9: Votes for the
Spanish War.--Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against
Spain: Dispatch of English Auxiliary Army, under Reynolds, for
Service in Flanders: Blake's Action in Santa Cruz Bay.--"_Killing
no Murder_": _Additional and Explanatory Petition and
Advice_: Abstract of the Articles of the New Constitution as
arranged by the two Documents: Cromwell's completed Assent to the New
Constitution, and his Assent to other Bills. June 26, 1657:
Inauguration of the Second Protectorate that day: Close of the First
Session of the Second Parliament.

CHAP.
II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the First Protectorate
continued: September 1654-June 1657.--SECTION I.: From September 1654
to January 1654-5, or Through Oliver's First Parliament.--Ulac's
Hague Edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_, with the _Fides
Publica_ of Morus annexed: Preface by Dr. Crantzius to the
Reprint: Ulac's own Preface of Self-Defence: Account of Morus's
_Fides Publica_, with Extracts: His Citation of Testimonies to
his Character: Testimony of Diodati of Geneva: Abrupt Ending of the
Book at this Point, with Ulac's Explanation of the
Cause.--Particulars of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Milton's Friend
Overton.--Three more Latin State-Letters by Milton for Oliver (Nos.
XLIX.-LI.): No State-Letters by Milton for the next Three Months:
Milton then busy on a Reply to the _Fides Publica_ of Morus.

CHAP.
II. SECTION II.: From January 1654-5 to September 1656, or Through
the Period of Arbitrariness.--Letter to Milton from Leo de Aitzema:
Milton's Reply: Letter to Ezekiel Spanheim at Geneva: Milton's
Genovese Recollections and Acquaintances: Two more of Milton's Latin
State-Letters (Nos. LII., LIII.): Small Amount of Milton's
Despatch-Writing for Cromwell hitherto.--Reduction of Official
Salaries, and Proposal to Reduce Milton's to £150 a Year: Actual
Commutation of his £288 a Year at Pleasure into £200 for Life: Orders
of the Protector and Council relating to the Piedmontese Massacre,
May 1655: Sudden Demand on Milton's Pen in that Business: His Letter
of Remonstrance from the Protector to the Duke of Savoy, with Ten
other Letters to Foreign States and Princes on the same Subject (Nos.
LIV.-LXIV.): His Sonnet on the Subject.--Publication of the
_Supplementum_ to More's _Fides Publica_: Account of the
_Supplementum_, with Extracts: Milton's Answer to the _Fides
Publica_ and the _Supplementum_ together in his _Pro Se
Defensio_, Aug. 1655: Account of that Book, with Specimens:
Milton's Disbelief in Morus's Denials of the Authorship of the
_Regii Sanguinis Clamor_: His Reasons, and his Reassertions of
the Charge in a Modified Form: His Notices of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac:
His Renewed Onslaughts on Morus: His Repetition of the Bontia
Accusation and others: His Examination of Morus's Printed
Testimonials: Ferocity of the Book to the last: Its Effects on
Morus.--Question of the Real Authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ and of the Amount of Morus's Concern in it: The Du Moulin
Family: Dr. Peter Du Moulin the Younger the Real Author of the
_Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, but Morus the Active Editor and the
Writer of the Dedicatory Epistle: Du Moulin's own Account of the
whole Affair: His close Contact with Milton all the while, and Dread
of being found out.--Calm in Milton's Life after the Cessation of the
Morus-Salmasius Controversy: Home-Life in Petty France: Dabblings of
the Two Nephews in Literature: John Phillips's _Satyr against
Hypocrites_: Frequent Visitors at Petty France: Marvell, Needham,
Cyriack Skinner, &c.: The Viscountess Ranelagh, Mr. Richard Jones,
and the Boyle Connexion: Dr. Peter Du Moulin in that Connexion:
Milton's Private Sonnet on his Blindness, his Two Sonnets to Cyriack
Skinner, and his Sonnet to young Lawrence: Explanation of these Four
Sonnets.--_Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_:
Thirteen more Latin State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos.
LXV.-LXXVII.), with Special Account of Count Bundt and the Swedish
Embassy in London: Count Bundt and Mr. Milton.--Increase of Light
Literature in London: Erotic Publications: John Phillips in Trouble
for such: Edward Phillips's London Edition of the Poems of Drummond
of Hawthornden: Milton's Cognisance of the same.--Henry Oldenburg
and Mr. Richard Jones at Oxford: Letters of Milton to Jones and
Oldenburg.--Thirteen more State-Letters of the Milton Series (Nos.
LXXVIII.-XC.): Importance of some of them.

CHAP.
II. SECTION III.: From September 1656 to June 1657, or Through the
First Session of Oliver's Second Parliament.--Another Letter from
Milton to Mr. Richard Jones: Departure of Lady Ranelagh for Ireland:
Letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach: Milton's Second Marriage: His
Second Wife, Katharine Woodcock: Letter to Emeric Bigot: Milton's
Library and the Byzantine Historians: M. Stoupe: Ten more
State-Letters by Milton for the Protector (Nos. XCI.-C.): Morland,
Meadows, Durie, Lockhart, and other Diplomatists of the Protector,
back in London: More Embassies and Dispatches over Land and Sea:
Milton Standing and Waiting: His Thoughts about the Protectorate
generally.



BOOK II.

JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658

HISTORY:--OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.

BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE.


CHAP.
I. Oliver's Second Protectorate: June 26, 1657-Sept. 3, 1658.--Regal
Forms and Ceremonial of the Second Protectorate: The Protector's
Family: The Privy Council: Retirement of Lambert: Death of Admiral
Blake: The French Alliance and Successes in Flanders: Siege and
Capture of Mardike: Other Foreign Relations of the Protectorate:
Special Envoys to Denmark, Sweden, and the United Provinces: Aims of
Cromwell's Diplomacy in Northern and Eastern Europe: Progress of his
English Church-Establishment: Controversy between John Goodwill and
Marchamont Needham: The Protector and the Quakers: Death of John
Lilburne: Death of Sexby: Marriage of the Duke of Buckingham to Mary
Fairfax: Marriages of Cromwell's Two Youngest Daughters: Preparations
for another Session of the Parliament: Writs for the Other House:
List of Cromwell's Peers.--Reassembling of the Parliament. Jan. 20,
1667-8: Cromwell's Opening Speech, with the Supplement by Fiennes:
Anti-Oliverian Spirit of the Commons: Their Opposition to the Other
House: Cromwell's Speech of Remonstrance: Perseverance of the Commons
in their Opposition: Cromwell's Last Speech and Dissolution of the
Parliament, Feb. 4, 1657-8.--State of the Government after the
Dissolution: The Dangers, and Cromwell's Dealings with them: His
Light Dealings with the Disaffected Commonwealth's Men: Threatened
Spanish Invasion from Flanders, and Ramifications of the Royalist
Conspiracy at Home: Arrests of Royalists, and Execution of Slingsby
and Hewit: The Conspiracy crushed: Death of Robert Rich: The Earl of
Warwick's Letter to Cromwell, and his Death: More Successes in
Flanders: Siege and Capture of Dunkirk: Splendid Exchanges of
Compliments between Cromwell and Louis XIV.: New Interference in
behalf of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Project of a Protestant
Council _De Propaganda Fide_: Prospects of the Church
Establishment: Desire of the Independents for a Confession of Faith:
Attendant Difficulties: Cromwell's Policy in the Affairs of the
Scottish Kirk: His Design for the Evangelization and Civilization of
the Highlands: His Grants to the Universities of Edinburgh and
Glasgow: His Council in Scotland: Monk at Dalkeith: Cromwell's
Intentions in the Cases of Biddle and James Nayler: Proposed New Act
for Restriction of the Press: Firmness and Grandeur of the
Protectorate in July 1658: Cromwell's Baronetcies and Knighthoods:
Willingness to call another Parliament: Death of Lady Claypole:
Cromwell's Illness and Last Days, with the Last Acts and Incidents of
his Protectorship.

CHAP.
II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the Second Protectorate.
--Milton still in Office: Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, with Milton's
Opinion of Sallust: Letters to Young Ranelagh and Henry Oldenburg at
Saumur: Morus in New Circumstances: Eleven more State-Letters of
Milton for the Protector (Nos. CI.-CXI.): Andrew Marvell brought in
as Assistant Foreign Secretary at last (Sept. 1657): John Dryden now
also in the Protector's Employment: Birth of Milton's Daughter by his
Second Wife: Six more State-Letters of Milton (Nos. CXII.-CXVII.):
Another Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, and another to Peter Heimbach:
Comment on the latter: Deaths of Milton's Second Wife and her Child:
His two Nephews, Edward and John Phillips, at this date: Milton's
last Sixteen State-Letters for Oliver Cromwell (Nos.
CXVIII.-CXXXIII), including Two to Charles Gustavus of Sweden, Two on
a New Alarm of a Persecution of the Piedmontese Protestants, and
Several to Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin: Importance of this last
Group of the State-Letters, and Review of the whole Series of
Milton's Performances for Cromwell: Last Diplomatic Incidents of the
Protectorate, and Andrew Marvell in connexion with them: Incidents of
Milton's Literary Life in this Period: Young Güntzer's
_Dissertatio_ and Young Kock's Phalæcians: Milton's Edition of
Raleigh's Cabinet Council: Resumption of the old Design of Paradise
Lost and actual Commencement of the Poem: Change from the Dramatic
Form to the Epic: Sonnet in Memory of his Deceased Wife.



BOOK III.

SEPTEMBER 1658--MAY 1660.

HISTORY:--THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY,
MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.

RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659.

THE ANARCHY:--

STAGE I.:--THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659--OCT. 13, 1659.

STAGE II.:--THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13,
1659--DEC. 26, 1659.

STAGE III.:--SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S
MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1859-60.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE
RESTORATION.

BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S
PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

CHAP.
I. FIRST SECTION. The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell: Sept. 3,
1858--May 25, 1659.--Proclamation of Richard: Hearty Response from
the Country and from Foreign Powers: Funeral of the late Protector:
Resolution for a New Parliament.--Difficulties in Prospect: List of
the most Conspicuous Props and Assessors of the New Protectorate:
Monk's Advice to Richard: Union of the Cromwellians against Charles
Stuart: Their Split among themselves into the Court or Dynastic Party
and the Army or Wallingford-House Party: Chiefs of the Two Parties:
Richard's Preference for the Court Party, and his Speech to the Army
Officers: Backing of the Army Party towards Republicanism or
Anti-Oliverianism: Henry Cromwell's Letter of Rebuke to Fleetwood:
Differences of the Two Parties as to Foreign Policy: The French
Alliance and the War with Spain: Relations to the King of
Sweden.--Meeting of Richard's Parliament (Jan. 27, 1658-9): The Two
Houses: Eminent Members of the Commons: Richard's Opening Speech:
Thurloe the Leader for Government in the Commons: Recognition of the
Protectorship and of the Other House, and General Triumph of the
Government Party: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the
Parliament.--Dissatisfaction of the Army Party: Their Closer
Connexion with the Republicans: New Convention of Officers at
Wallingford-House: Desborough's Speech; The Convention forbidden by
the Parliament and dissolved by Richard: Whitehall surrounded by the
Army, and Richard compelled to dissolve the Parliament.--Responsible
Position of Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, and the other Army
Chiefs: Bankrupt State of the Finances: Necessity for some kind of
Parliament: Phrenzy for "The Good Old Cause" and Demand for the
Restoration of the Rump: Acquiescence of the Army Chiefs: Lenthall's
Objections: First Fortnight of the Restored Rump: Lingering of
Richard in Whitehall: His Enforced Abdication.

CHAP.
I. SECOND SECTION. The Anarchy, Stage I.: or The Restored Rump: May
25, 1659-Oct. 13, 1659.--Number of the Restored Rumpers and List of
them: Council of State of the Restored Rump: Anomalous Character and
Position of the New Government: Momentary Chance of a Civil War
between the Cromwellians and the Rumpers: Chance averted by the
Acquiescence of the Leading Cromwellians: Behaviour of Richard
Cromwell, Monk, Henry Cromwell, Lockhart, and Thurloe, individually:
Baulked Cromwellianism becomes Potential Royalism: Energetic
Proceedings of the Restored Rump: Their Ecclesiastical Policy and
their Foreign Policy: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart at
the Scene of the Negotiations as Ambassador for the Rump: Remodelling
and Reofficering of the Army, Navy, and Militia: Confederacy of Old
and New Royalists for a Simultaneous Rising: Actual Rising under Sir
George Booth in Cheshire: Lambert sent to quell the Insurrection:
Peculiar Intrigues round Monk at Dalkeith: Sir George Booth's
Insurrection crushed: Exultation of the Rump and Action taken against
the Chief Insurgents and their Associates: Question of the future
Constitution of the Commonwealth: Chaos of Opinions and Proposals:
James Harrington and his Political Theories: The Harrington or Rota
Club: Discontents in the Army: Petition, and Proposals of the
Officers of Lambert's Brigade: Severe Notice of the same by the Rump:
Petition and Proposals of the General Council of Officers: Resolute
Answers of the Rump: Lambert, Desborough, and Seven other Officers,
cashiered: Lambert's Retaliation and Stoppage of the Parliament.

CHAP.
I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage II.: or The
Wallingford-House Interregnum: Oct. 13, 1659-Dec. 26, 1659.--The
Wallingford-House Government: Its _Committee of Safety_:
Behaviour of Ludlow and other Leading Republicans: Death of
Bradshaw.--Army--Arrangements of the New Government: Fleetwood,
Lambert, and Desborough, the Military Chiefs: Declared Championship
of the Rump by Monk in Scotland: Negotiations opened with Monk, and
Lambert sent north to oppose him: Monk's Mock Treaty with Lambert and
the Wallingford-House Government through Commissioners in London: His
Preparations meanwhile in Scotland: His Advance from Edinburgh to
Berwick: Monk's Army and Lambert's.--Foreign Relations of the
Wallingford-House Government: Treaty between France and Spain:
Lockhart: Charles II. at Fontarabia: Gradual Improvement of his
Chances in England.--Discussions of the Wallingford-House Government
as to the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: The Vane Party and
the Whitlocke Party in these Discussions: Johnstone of Warriston, the
Harringtonians, and Ludlow: Attempted Conclusions.--Monk at
Coldstream: Universal Whirl of Opinion in favour of him and the
Rump: Utter Discredit of the Wallingford-House Rule in London:
Vacillation and Collapse of Fleetwood: The Rump Restored a second
time.

CHAP.
I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage III.: or Second
Restoration of the Rump, with Monk's March from Scotland: Dec. 26,
1659-Feb. 21, 1659.--The Rump after its Second Restoration: New
Council of State: Penalties on Vane, Lambert, Desborough, and the
other Chiefs of the Wallingford-House Interregnum: Case of Ludlow:
New Army Remodelling: Abatement of Republican Fervency among the
Rumpers: Dispersion of Lambert's Force in the North: Monk's March
from Scotland: Stages and Incidents of the March: His Halt at St.
Alban's and Message thence to the Rump: His Nearer View of the
Situation: His Entry into London, Feb. 3, 1659-60: His Ambiguous
Speech to the Rump, Feb. 6: His Popularity in London: Pamphlets and
Letters during his March and on his Arrival: Prynne's pamphlets on
behalf of the Secluded Members: Tumult in the City: Tumult suppressed
by Monk as Servant of the Rump: His Popularity gone: Blunder
retrieved by Monk's Reconciliation with the City and Declaration
against the Rump: _Roasting of the Rump in London_, Feb. 11,
1659-60: Monk Master of the City and of the Rump too; Consultations
with the Secluded Members: Bill of the Rump for Enlarging itself by
New Elections; Bill set aside by the Reseating of the Secluded
Members: Reconstitution of the Long Parliament under Monk's
Dictatorship.

CHAP.
I. THIRD SECTION. Monk's Dictatorship, the Restored Long Parliament,
and the Drift to the Restoration: Feb. 21, 1659-60--April 25,
1660.--The Restored Long Parliament: New Council of State: Active Men
of the Parliament: Prynne, Arthur Annesley, and William Morrice:
Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament: Release of old Royalist
Prisoners: Lambert committed to the Tower: Rewards and Honours for
Monk: "Old George" in the City: Revival of the Solemn League and
Covenant, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and all the Apparatus
of a Strict Presbyterian Church-Establishment: Cautious Measures for
a Political Settlement: The Real Question evaded and handed over to
another Parliament: Calling of the Convention Parliament and
Arrangements for the Same: Difficulty about a House of Lords: How
obviated: Last Day of the Long Parliament, March 16, 1659-60: Scene
in the House.--Monk and the Council of State left in charge: Annesley
the Managing Colleague of Monk: New Militia Act carried out:
Discontents among Monk's Officers and Soldiers: The Restoration of
Charles still very dubious: Other Hopes and Proposals for the moment:
The Kingship privately offered to Monk by the Republicans: Offer
declined: Bursting of the Popular Torrent of Royalism at last, and
Enthusiastic Demands for the Recall of Charles: Elections to the
Convention Parliament going on meanwhile: Haste of hundreds to be
foremost in bidding Charles welcome: Admiral Montague and his Fleet
in the Thames: Direct Communications at last between Monk and
Charles: Greenville the Go-between: Removal of Charles and his Court
from Brussels to Breda: Greenville sent back from Breda with a
Commission for Monk and Six other Documents.--Broken-spiritedness of
the Republican Leaders, but formidable Residue of Republicanism in
the Army: Monk's Measures for Paralysing the same: Successful Device
of Charges; Montague's Fleet in Motion: Escape of Lambert from the
Tower: His Rendezvous in Northamptonshire: Gathering of a Wreck of
the Republicans round him: Dick Ingoldsby sent to crush him: The
Encounter near Daventry, April 22, 1660, and Recapture of Lambert:
Great Review of the London Militia, April 24, the day before the
Meeting of the Convention Parliament: Impatient longing for Charles:
Monk still impenetrable, and the Documents from Breda reserved.

CHAP.
II. FIRST SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through Richard's
Protectorate: Sept. 1658-May 1659.--Milton and Marvell still in the
Latin Secretaryship: Milton's first Five State-Letters for Richard
(Nos. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): New Edition of Milton's _Defensio
Prima_: Remarkable Postscript to that Edition: Six more
State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): Milton's
Relations to the Conflict of Parties round Richard and in Richard's
Parliament: His probable Career but for his Blindness: His continued
Cromwellianism in Politics, but with stronger private Reserves,
especially on the Question of an Established Church: His Reputation
that of a man of the Court-Party among the Protectoratists: His
_Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_: Account of
the Treatise, with Extracts: The Treatise more than a Plea for
Religious Toleration: Church-Disestablishment the Fundamental Idea:
The Treatise addressed to Richard's Parliament, and chiefly to Vane
and the Republicans there: No Effect from it: Milton's Four last
State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): His Private Epistle
to Jean Labadie, with Account of that Person: Milton in the month
between Richard's Dissolution of his Parliament and his formal
Abdication: His Two State-Letters for the Restored Rump (Nos.
CXLVIII.-CXLIX.)

CHAP.
II. SECOND SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the
Anarchy: May 1659--Feb. 1659-60.--_First Stage of the Anarchy, or
The Restored Rump_ (May--Oct. 1659):--Feelings and Position of
Milton in the new State of Things: His Satisfaction on the whole, and
the Reasons for it: Letter of Moses Wall to Milton: Renewed Agitation
against Tithes and Church Establishment: Votes on that Subject in the
Rump: Milton's _Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to
remove Hirelings out of the Church_: Account of the Pamphlet, with
Extracts: Its thorough-going Voluntaryism: Church-Disestablishment
demanded absolutely, without Compensation for Vested Interests: The
Appeal fruitless, and the Subject ignored by the Rump: Dispersion of
that Body by Lambert.--_Second Stage of the Anarchy, or The
Wallingford-House Interruption_ (Oct.-Dec. 1659):--Milton's
Thoughts on Lambert's coup d'etat in his _Letter to a Friend
concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth_: The Letter in the
main against Lambert and in Defence of the Rump: Its extraordinary
practical Proposal of a Government by two Permanent Central Bodies:
The Proposal compared with the actual Administration by the
_Committee of Safety_ and the Wallingford-House Council of
Officers: Milton still nominally in the Latin Secretaryship: Money
Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659, relating to Milton, Marvell, and
Eighty-four other Officials: No Trace of actual Service by Milton for
the new _Committee of Safety_: His Meditations through the
Treaty between the Wallingford-House Government and Monk in Scotland:
His Meditations through the Committee-Discussions as to the future
Model of Government; His Interest in this as now the Paramount
Question, and his Cognisance of the Models of Harrirgton and the Rota
Club: Whitlocke's new Constitution disappointing to Milton: Two more
Letters to Oldenburg and Young Ranelagh: Gossip from abroad in
connection with these Letters: Morns again, and the Council of French
Protestants at Londun: End of the Wallingford-House
Interruption.--_Third Stage of ike Anarchy, or The Second
Restoration of the Rump_ (Dec. 1659-Feb. 1659-60):--Milton's
Despondency at this Period: Abatement of his Faith in the Rump: His
Thoughts during the March of Monk from Scotland and after Monk's
Arrival in London: His Study of Monk near at hand and Mistrust of the
Omens: His Interest for a while in the Question of the
Preconstitution of the new Parliament promised by the Rump: His
Anxiety that it should be a Republican Parliament by mere
Self-enlargement of the Rump: His Preparation of a new Republican
Pamphlet: The Publication postponed by Monk's sudden Defection from
the Rump, the Roasting of the Rump in the City, and the Restoration
of the Secluded Members to their places in the Parliament: Milton's
Despondency complete.

CHAP.
II. THIRD SECTION. Milton through Monk's Dictatorship: Feb.
1659-60--May 1660.--First Edition of Milton's _Ready and Easy Way
to Establish a Free Commonwealth_: Account of the Pamphlet, with
Extracts: Vehement Republicanism of the Pamphlet, with its Prophetic
Warnings: Peculiar Central Idea of the Pamphlet, viz. the Project of
a Grand Council or Parliament to sit in Perpetuity, with a Council of
State for its Executive: Passages expounding this Idea: Additional
Suggestion of Local and County Councils or Committees: Daring
Peroration of the Pamphlet: Milton's Recapitulation of the Substance
of it in a short Private Letter to Monk entitled _Present Means and
Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth_: Wide Circulation of
Milton's Pamphlet: The Response by Monk and the Parliament of the
Secluded Members in their Proceedings of the next fortnight:
Dissolution of the Parliament after Arrangements for its Successor:
Royalist Squib predicting Milton's speedy Acquaintance with the
Hangman at Tyburn: Another Squib against Milton, called _The
Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book_: Specimens of this
Burlesque: Republican Appeal to Monk, called _Plain English_:
Reply to the same, with another attack on Milton: Popular Torrent of
Royalism during the forty days of Interval between the Parliament of
the Secluded Members and the Convention Parliament (March 16,
1659-60--April 25, 1660): Caution of Monk and the Council of State:
Dr. Matthew Griffith and his Royalist Sermon, _The Fear of God and
the King_: Griffith imprisoned for his Sermon, but forward
Republicans checked or punished at the same time: Needham discharged
from his Editorship and Milton from his Secretaryship: Resoluteness
of Milton in his Republicanism: His _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's
Sermon_: Second Edition of his _Ready and Easy Way to Establish
a Free Commonwealth_: Remarkable Additions and Enlargements in
this Edition: Specimens of these: Milton and Lambert the last
Republicans in the field: Roger L'Estrange's Pamphlet against Milton,
called _No Blind Guides_: Larger Attack on Milton by G. S.,
called _The Dignity of Kingship Asserted_: Quotations from that
Book; Meeting of the Convention Parliament, April 25, 1660: Delivery
by Greenville of the Six Royal Letters from Breda, April 28-May 1,
and Votes of both Houses for the Recall of Charles: Incidents of the
following Week: Mad impatience over the Three Kingdoms for the King's
Return: He and his Court at the Hague, preparing for the Voyage home:
Panic among the surviving Regicides and other prominent Republicans:
Flight of Needham to Holland and Absconding of Milton from his house
in Petty France: Last Sight of Milton in that house.

       *       *       *       *       *



BOOK I.

SEPTEMBER 1654--JUNE 1657.

HISTORY:--OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.

BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST
PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.



THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON,

WITH THE

HISTORY OF HIS TIME.

       *       *       *       *       *



CHAPTER I.

OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654-JUNE 26, 1657.


Oliver's First Protectorate extended over three years and six months
in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine
months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already
sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three
Sections, as follows:--

Section I:--_From Sept._ 3, 1654 _to Jan._ 22, 1654-5. This
Section, comprehending four months and a half, may be entitled OLIVER
AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT.

Section II:--_From Jan._ 22, 1654-5 _to Sept._ 17, 1656.
This Section, comprehending twenty months, may be entitled BETWEEN
THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS.

Section III:--_From Sept._ 17, 1656 _to June_ 26, 1657.
This Section, comprehending nine months, may be entitled OLIVER AND
THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT.

We map out the present chapter accordingly.



SECTION I.

OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT:
SEPT, 3, 1654-JAN. 22, 1654-5.

MEETING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE: ITS
COMPOSITION: ANTI-OLIVERIANS NUMEROUS IN IT: THEIR FOUR DAYS' DEBATE
IN CHALLENGE OF CROMWELL'S POWERS: DEBATE STOPPED BY CROMWELL: HIS
SPEECH IN THE PAINTED CHAMBER: SECESSION OF SOME FROM THE PARLIAMENT:
ACQUIESCENCE OF THE REST BY ADOPTION OF _THE RECOGNITION_:
SPIRIT AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT STILL MAINLY
ANTI-OLIVERIAN: THEIR FOUR MONTHS' WORK IN REVISION OF THE
PROTECTORAL CONSTITUTION: CHIEF DEBATES IN THOSE FOUR MONTHS:
QUESTION OF THE PROTECTOR'S NEGATIVES: OTHER INCIDENTAL WORK OF THE
PARLIAMENT: QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND OF THE SUPPRESSION
OF HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE ON THIS
SUBJECT: BAXTER'S PARTICIPATION: TENDENCY TO A LIMITED TOLERATION
ONLY, AND VOTE AGAINST THE PROTECTOR'S PREROGATIVE OF MORE: CASE OF
JOHN RIDDLE, THE SOCINIAN.--INSUFFICIENCY NOW OF OUR FORMER SYNOPSIS
OF ENGLISH SECTS AND HERESIES: NEW SECTS AND DENOMINATIONS: THE
FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: THE RANTERS: THE MUGGLETONIANS AND OTHER STRAY
FANATICS: BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS: THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:
ACCOUNT OF GEORGE FOX, AND SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS TO
THE YEAR 1654.--POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT WITH THEIR BILL FOR A NEW
CONSTITUTION: PARLIAMENT OUTWITTED BY CROMWELL AND DISSOLVED: NO
RESULT.

Before the 3rd of September, 1654, the day fixed by the
Constitutional Instrument for the meeting of the First Parliament of
the Protectorate, the 460 newly elected members, or the major part of
them, had flocked to Westminster. They were a gathering of the most
representative men of all the three nations that could be regarded as
in any sense adherents of the Commonwealth. All the Council of State,
except the Earl of Mulgrave and Lord Lisle, had been returned, some
of them by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe
had been returned; Cromwell's two sons, Richard and Henry, had been
returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen
holding posts in his Highness's household had been returned. Of the
old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the
Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there
were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great
Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary fame already were ex-Speaker
Lenthall, Whitlocke, Sir Walter Earle, Dennis Bond, Sir Henry Vane
_Senior_, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Scott, William Ashurst,
Sir James Harrington, John Carew, Robert Wallop, and Sir Thomas
Widdrington; and of Army or Navy men, of former Parliamentary
experience or not, there were Colonels Whalley, Robert Lilburne,
Barkstead, Harvey, Stapley, Purefoy, Admiral Blake, and
ex-Major-General Harrison. Some of these had been returned by two
constituencies. Bradshaw was a member, with two of the Judges, Hale
and Thorpe, and ex-Judge Glynne. Lawyers besides were not wanting;
and Dr. Owen, though a divine, represented Oxford University. One
missed chiefly, among old names, those of Sir Henry Vane
_Junior_, Henry Marten, Selden, Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow; but
there were many new faces. Among the thirty members sent from
Scotland were the Earl of Linlithgow, Sir Alexander Wedderburn,
Colonel William Lockhart, the Laird of Swinton, and the English
Colonels Okey and Read. Ireland had also returned military Englishmen
in Major-General Hardress Waller, Colonels Hewson, Sadler, Axtell,
Venables, and Jephson, with Lord Broghill, Sir Charles Coote, Sir
John Temple, Sir Robert King, and others, describable as Irish or
Anglo-Irish.[1]

[Footnote 1: Complete list gives in Parl. Hist, III. 1428-1433.]

The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell's "Fortunate Day,"
chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with
him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and
his opening speech was deferred till next day, On Monday,
accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in
the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much
that he liked. It was a political sermon, on "Israel's bringing-out
of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a
Place of Rest,"--Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role
in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the
English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what
it might lead to. Goodwill seems to have described with special
reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had
arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the
Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the
Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a
highly "conservative" speech. Glancing back to the Barebones
Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and
the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the
intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the
Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the
three nations, Then he withdrew. That same day they chose Lenthall
for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cromwell's Second Speech (Carlyle, III. 16-37); Commons
Journals of dates.]

Cromwell's hopes were blasted. The political division of the
population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN
IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last
denominations hardly separable by any clear line, Now, in this new
Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed
Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians
together formed a majority. They needed only to coalesce, and the
Parliament called by Oliver's own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian
Parliament. And this is what happened.

No sooner was the House constituted, with about 320 members present
out of the total 460, than it proposed for its first business what
was called "The Matter of the Government"; by which was meant a
review of that document of forty-two Articles, called the
_Government of the Commonwealth_, which was the constitutional
basis of the Protectorate. On Thursday, Sept. 7, accordingly, they
addressed themselves to the vital question of the whole document as
propounded in the first of the Articles. "Whether the House shall
approve that the Government shall be in one Single Person and a
Parliament": such was the debate that day in Grand Committee, after a
division on the previous question whether they should go into
Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted _No_, with
Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State)
for their tellers, but 141 had voted _Yea_, with Bradshaw and
Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried
by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House
to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of
the Commonwealth, already introduced somehow as a matter of fact,
should be continued. On this subject the House debated through the
rest of that sitting, and the whole of the next, and the next, and
the next,--i.e. till Monday, Sept 11. Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Scott
took the lead for the Republicans, not that they hoped to unseat
Cromwell, but that they wanted to assert the paramount authority of
Parliament, and convert the existing Protectorship into a derivative
from the House then sitting. Lawrence, Wolseley, Strickland, and
others of the Council of State, describable as the ministerial
members, maintained the existing constitution of the Protectorate,
and pointed out the dangers that would arise from plucking up a good
practical basis for mere reasons of theory. Matthew Hale interposed
at last with a middle motion, substantially embodying the Republican
view, but affirming the Protectorship at once, and reserving
qualification. All in all, there was great excitement, much
confusion, and an outbreak from some members of very violent language
about Cromwell.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates: Parl. Hist. III. 1445;
Godwin, IV. 116-125.]

What might have been the issue had a vote come on can only be
guessed. Things were not allowed to go that length. On Tuesday, Sept,
12, the members, going to the House, found the doors locked, soldiers
in and around Westminster Hall, and a summons from the Lord Protector
to meet him again in the Painted Chamber. Having assembled there,
they listened to Cromwell's "Third Speech." It is one of the most
powerful of all his speeches. It began with a long review of his life
in general and the steps by which he had recently been brought to the
Protectorship. It proceeded then to a recitation of what he called
"the witnesses" to his Government, or proofs of its validity--the
Witness _above_, or God's manifest Providence in leading him to
where he was; the Witness _within_, or his own consciousness of
integrity; and the Witnesses _without_, or testimonies of
confidence he had received from the Army, the Judges, the City of
London, other cities, counties and boroughs, and public bodies of all
sorts. "I believe," he said, "that, if the learnedest men in this
nation were called to show a precedent, equally clear, of a
Government so many ways approved of, they would not in all their
search, find it." Then, coming to the point, he asked what right the
present Parliament had to come after all those witnesses and
challenge his authority. Had they not been elected under writs issued
by him, in which writs it was expressly inserted, by regulation of
Article XII. of the Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate,
"That the persons elected shall not have power to alter the
Government as it is hereby settled in one Single Person and a
Parliament"? On this point he was very emphatic. "That _your_
judgments, who are persons sent from all parts of the nation under
the notion of approving this Government--for _you_ to disown or
not to own it; for _you_ to act with Parliamentary authority
especially in the disowning of it, contrary to the very fundamental
things, yea against the very root of this Establishment; to sit and
not own the Authority by which you sit:--is that which I believe
astonisheth more men than myself." A revision of the Constitution of
the Protectorate in _circumstantials_ he would not object to,
but the _fundamentals_ must be left untouched. And let those
hearing him be under no mistake as to his own resolution. "The wilful
throwing away of this Government, such as it is, so owned of God, so
approved by men, so witnessed to in the fundamentals of it as was
mentioned above, were a thing which,--and in reference not to
_my_ good, but to the good of these Nations and Posterity,--I
can sooner be willing to be rolled into my grave, and buried with
infamy, than I can give my consent unto." He had therefore called
them now that they might come to an understanding. There was a
written parchment in the lobby of the Parliament House to which he
requested the signatures of such as might see fit. The doors of the
Parliament House would then be open for all such, to proceed
thenceforth as a free Parliament in all things, subject to the single
condition expressed in that parchment. "You have an absolute
Legislative Power in all things that can possibly concern the good
and interest of the public; and I think you may make these Nations
happy by this settlement." With so much great work before them, with
the three nations looking on in hope, with foreign nations looking on
with wonder or worse feelings, had they not a great
responsibility?[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle's Cromwell, III. 37-61.]

Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and others, would not sign the document offered
them, which was a brief engagement "to be true and faithful to the
Lord Protector and the Commonwealth," and not to propose alteration
of the Government as "settled in a single Person and a Parliament."
The Parliament, therefore, lost these leaders; but within an hour
"The Recognition," as it came to be called, was signed by a hundred
members, and the number was raised to 140 before the day was over,
and ultimately to about 300. And so, with this goodly number, the
House went on. But the Anti-Oliverian leaven was still strong in it.
This appeared even in the immediate dealings of the House with the
Recognition itself. They first (Sept, 14) declared that it should not
be construed to comprehend the whole Constitutional Instrument of the
Protectorate, but only the main principle of the first Article; and
then (Sept. 18) they converted the Recognition into a resolution of
their own, requiring all members to sign it, Next, in order to get
rid of the stumbling-block of the First Article altogether, they
resolved (Sept. 19) that the Supreme Legislative authority was and
did reside in "One Person and the People assembled in Parliament,"
and also (Sept. 20) that Oliver Cromwell was and should he Lord
Protector for life, and that there should be Triennial Parliaments.
Thus free to advance through the rest of the Forty-two Articles at
their leisure, they made that thenceforward almost their sole work.
Through the rest of September, the whole of October, and part of
November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new
and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty
Articles instead of the Forty-two. A Bill for enacting this
Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and
the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for
amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these
amendments and others.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given and of Nov. 7, and
Godwin, IV, 130-132.]

In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting
divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the
House on November 10. In the first the question was whether the
Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200
votes to 60 that it should _not_. This was not strictly an
Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a
hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell's family, many of the undoubted
Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof
that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell. More
distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was
on a question of deep interest to Cromwell: viz. the amount of his
prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on
fundamentals. In his last speech he had himself indicated these
"fundamentals," which ought to be safe against attack even by
Parliament--one of them being Liberty of Conscience, another the
Control of the Militia as belonging to the Protector _in
conjunction with_ the Parliament, and a third the provision, that
every Parliament should sit but for a fixed period. In all other
matters he was content with a negative for twenty days only; but on
bills trenching on these fundamentals he required a negative
absolutely. The question had come to the vote in a very subtle form.
The motion of the Opposition was that Bills should become Law without
the Protector's consent after twenty days, "provided that such Bills
contain nothing in them contrary to such matters wherein the
Parliament shall think fit to give a negative to the Lord Protector,"
while the amendment of the Oliverians or Court-party altered the
wording into "wherein the Single Person and the Parliament shall
declare a negative to be in the Single Person," thus giving Cromwell
himself, and not the Parliament only, a right of deciding where a
negative should lie. On this question the Oliverians were beaten by
109 votes to 85, and the decision would probably have caused a
rupture had not the Opposition conceded a good deal when they went on
to settle the matters wherein Parliament _would_ grant the
Protector a negative.[1]

[Footnote 1: Journals of dates and Godwin, IV. 134-139.]

As we have said, almost the sole occupation of the Parliament was
this revision of the flooring on which itself and the Protectorate
stood. They did, however, some little pieces of work besides. They
undertook a revision of the Ordinances that had been passed by the
Protector and his Council, and also of the Acts of the Barebones
Parliament; and they proposed Bills of their own to supersede some of
these,--especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous
Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery. But of
all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to
have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in
efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the
natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was
charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul
of the Lord-Protector.

After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be
called incidental. It was part and parcel of their main work of
revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question
of Cromwell's negatives. Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument
of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of
preaching outside the Established Church to "such as profess faith in
Jesus Christ," and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as
one of the "fundamentals" he was bound to preserve. How did the
Parliament meet the difficulty? Very ingeniously. They said that the
phrase "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ" was a vague phrase,
requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into
a Committee for Religion, and this Committee having appointed a
working sub-Committee of about fourteen, the sub-Committee was
empowered to take steps for coming to a definition. Naturally enough,
in such a matter, the sub-Committee wanted clerical advice; and, each
member of the sub-Committee having nominated one divine, there was a
small Westminster Assembly over again to illuminate Parliament on the
dark subject. Dr. Owen and Dr. Goodwin were there, with Nye, Sidrach
Simpson, Stephen Marshall, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, and others. Mr.
Richard Baxter had the honour of being one, having been asked to
undertake the duty by Lord Breghill, when the venerable ex-Primate
Usher had declined it; and it is from Baxter that we have the fullest
account of the proceedings. When he came to town from Kidderminster,
he found the rest of the divines already busy in drawing up a list of
"fundamentals of faith," the profession of which was to be the
necessary title to the toleration promised. Knowing "how ticklish a
business the enumeration of fundamentals was," Baxter tried, he says,
to stop that method, and suggested that acceptance of the Creed, the
Lord's P[r]ayer, and the Decalogue would be a sufficient test. This
did not please the others; Baxter almost lost his character for
orthodoxy by his proposal; Dr. Owen, in particular, forgetful of his
own past, was now bull-mad for the "fundamentals." They were drawn
out at last, either sixteen or twenty of them in all, and handed to
Parliament through the sub-Committee. Thus illuminated, Parliament,
after a debate extending over six days (Dec. 4-15, 1654), discharged
its mind fully on the Toleration Question. They resolved that there
should certainly be a toleration for tender consciences outside the
Established Church, but that it should not extend to "Atheism,
Blasphemy, damnable Heresies to be particularly enumerated by this
Parliament, Popery, Prelacy, Licentiousness or Profaneness," nor yet
to "such as shall preach, print, or avowedly maintain anything
contrary to the fundamental principles of Doctrine held forth in the
public profession,"--said "fundamental principles" being the
"fundamentals" of Dr. Owen and his friends, so far as the House
should see fit to pass them. They were already in print, with the
Scriptural proofs, for the use of members, and the first of them
_was_ passed the same day. It was "That the Holy Scripture is
that rule of knowing God, and living unto Him, which whoso does not
believe cannot be saved." The others would come in time. Meanwhile it
was involved in the Resolution of the House that the Protector
himself should have no veto on any Bills for restraining or punishing
Atheists, Blasphemers, damnable Heretics, Papists, Prelatists, or
deniers of any of the forthcoming Christian fundamentals.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of days given; Neal, IV. 97-100;
Baxter's Life, 197-205. On this visit to town, Baxter had the
honour to preach before Cromwell, having never done so till then,
"save once long before when Cromwell was an inferior man among
other auditors." He had also the honour of two long interviews with
Cromwell, the first with one or two others present, the second in
full Council. They seem to have been reciprocally disagreeable. On
both occasions, according to Baxter, Cromwell talked enormously
for the most part "slowly" and "tediously" to Baxter's taste, but
with passionate outbreaks against the Parliament. On the second
occasion the topic was Liberty of Conscience, and what was being
done in the Subcommittee and by the Divines on the subject. Baxter
ventured to hint that he had put his views on paper and that it
might save time if his Highness would read them. "He received the
paper after, but I scarce believe that he ever read it; for I saw
that what he learned must be from himself--being more disposed to
speak many hours than to hear one, and little heeding what another
said when he had spoken himself." Cromwell had made up his mind
about Baxter long ago (Vol. III. p. 386), but had apparently now
given him another trial, on the faith of his reputed liberality on
the Toleration question. But Baxter did not gain upon him.]

As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject,
the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John
Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in
Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his
opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded
in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous
Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over
England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been
the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had
continued in power. At large since 1651, he had been living rather
quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the
press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian
congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government
since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The
orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of
Biddle's, called _A Two-fold Catechism_, published in 1654, had
given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been
arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the
House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views
which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in
the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr.
Biddle's body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of
January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from
his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same
time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The
punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on
their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 593-598; Commons Journals of dates.]

It was really of very great consequence to the Commonwealth of the
Protectorate what theory of Toleration should be adopted into its
Constitution, whether the Parliament's or Cromwell's. For the ferment
of religious and irreligious speculation of all kinds in the three
nations was now something prodigious, and there were widely diffused
denominations of dissent and heresy that had not been in existence
ten years before, when the Long Parliament and the Westminster
Assembly first discussed the Toleration Question. Our synopsis of the
English sects and Heresies of 1644 (Vol. III. 143-159) is not,
indeed, wholly out of date for 1654, but it would require extensions
and modifications to adjust it accurately to the latter year. There
had been the natural flux and reflux of ideas during the intervening
decade, the waning of some sects and singularities that had no deep
root, the interblending of others, and new bursts in the teeming
chaos. _Atheists_, Sceptics_, _Mortalists_ or _Materialists_,
_Anti-Scripturists_, _Anti-Trinitarians_ or _Socinians_, _Arians_,
_Anti-Sabbatarians_, _Seekers_, and _Divorcers_ or _Miltonists_: all
these terms were still in the vocabulary of the orthodox, describing
persons or bodies of persons of whose opinions the Civil Magistrate
was bound to take account. Sects, on the other hand, that had been on
the black list ten years ago had now been admitted to respectability.
_Baptists_ or _Anabaptists_, _Antinomians, _Brownists_, nay even
INDEPENDENTS generally, had been regarded in 1644 as dark and
dangerous schismatics; but now, save in the private colloquies or
controversial tracts of Presbyterians, no feeling of horror attached
to those names. INDEPENDENTS, indeed, were now the Lords of the
Commonwealth, and _Anabaptists_ and _Antinomians_ were in high
places, so that the most orthodox Presbyterians found themselves side
by side with them in private gatherings and committees. In the
Established Church of the Protectorate there was to be a
comprehension of Presbyterians, Independents, and such Baptists and
other really Evangelical Sectaries as might be willing; and,
accordingly, the question of mere Toleration outside the Established
Church no longer concerned the Evangelical sects lying immediately
beyond ordinary Independency. If, from objection to the principle of
an Establishment, they chose to remain outside, they would have
toleration there as a matter of course. To make up, however, for this
removal of so many of the old Sectaries from all practical interest
in the question on their own account, there were new religious
denominations of such strange ways and tendencies, such unknown
relations to anything hitherto recognised as Orthodoxy or as Heresy,
that the poor Civil Magistrate, or even the coolest Abstract
Tolerationist, in contemplating them, might well be puzzled. The
following is a list of the chief of these new Sects that had sprung
up since 1644:--

FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN:--At first sight this does not appear a new sect,
but merely a continuation of the old MILLENARIES or CHILIASTS (Vol.
III, pp. 152-153), who believed that the Personal Reign of Christ on
Earth for a thousand years was approaching. The change of name,
however, indicates greater precision in the belief, and also greater
intensity. According to the wild system of Universal Chronology then
in vogue, the past History of the World, on this side of the Flood,
had consisted of four great successive Empires or Monarchies--the
Assyrian, which ended B.C. 531; the Persian, which ended B.C. 331;
the Macedonian, or Greek Empire of Alexander, which was made to
stretch to B.C. 44; and the Roman, which had begun B.C. 44, with the
Accession of Augustus Cæsar, and which had included, though people
might not see how, all that had happened on the Earth since then. But
this last Monarchy was tottering, and a Fifth Universal Monarchy was
at hand. It was that foreshadowed in Rev. xx.: "And I saw an Angel
come down from Heaven, having the key of the Bottomless Pit and a
great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that great
serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand
years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set
a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the
thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed
a little season. And I saw Thrones, and they sat upon them, and
judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were
beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the worship of God, and
which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had
received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they
lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the
dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." This
prophecy was the property of all Christians, and might receive
different interpretations. The literal interpretation, favoured by
some theologians, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ
would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls
of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and
that in the glorious reign of Righteousness and the subjugation of
all Evil thus begun for a thousand years men then living, or the true
saints among them, might partake. This interpretation, though scouted
by the more rational theologians, had seized on many of the more
fervid English Independents and Sectaries, so that they had begun to
see, in the great events of their own time and land, the dazzling
edge of the near Millennium. The doctrine had caught the souls of
Harrison and other men of action, hitherto classed as Anabaptists or
Seekers. Now, so far there was no harm in it, nor could any of the
orthodox who rejected it for themselves dare to treat it as one of
the heresies to be restrained by the Civil Magistrate. Evidently,
however, there was a root of danger. What if the Fifth-Monarchy men
should make it part of their faith that the saints could accelerate
the Fifth Monarchy, and that it was their duty to do so? Then their
tenet might have strange practical effects upon English politics.
Already, in the time of the Barebones Parliament, there had been
warnings of this, the Fifth-Monarchy men there, or outside the
Parliament, having distinguished themselves by an ultra-Republicanism
which verged on Communism, and also by their zeal for pure
Voluntaryism in Religion and the abolition of a paid Ministry and all
express Church machinery. The fact had not escaped Cromwell, and in
his speech at the opening of the present Parliament he had taken
notice of it. In that very speech he had singled out for remark "the
mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy." It was a notion, he admitted,
held by many good and sincere men; nay it was a notion he honoured
and could find a high meaning in. "But for men, on this principle, to
betitle themselves that they are the only men to rule kingdoms,
govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property
and liberty and everything else,--upon such a pretension as this:
truly they had need to give clear manifestations of God's presence
with them, before wise men will receive or submit to their
conclusions." If they were notions only, he added, they were best
left alone; for "notions will hurt none but those who have them."
But, when the notions were turned into practice, and proposals were
made for abrogation of Property and Magistracy to smooth the way for
the Fifth Monarchy, then one must remember Jude's precept as to the
mode of dealing with the errors of good men. "Of some have
compassion," Jude had said, "making a difference; others save with
fear, pulling them out of the fire."[1]

[Footnote 1: Hearne's _Ductor Historicus_, 1714 (for the old
doctrine of the Four Monarchies); Thomason Pamphlets; Carlyle's
Cromwell, III. 24-27.--The Fifth Monarchy notion was by no means an
upstart oddity of thought among the English Puritans of the
seventeenth century. It was a tradition of the most scholarly thought
of mediæval theologians as to the duration and final collapse of the
existing Cosmos; and it may be traced in the older imaginative
literature of various European nations. Thus the Scottish Sir David
Lindsay's long poem entitled _Monarchy, or Ane Dialogue betwix
Experience and one Courtier of the Miserable Estate of the World_,
the date of which is 1553, is a moralized sketch of the whole
previous history of the world, according to the then accepted
doctrine of the Four past Secular Monarchies, with a glance around at
the Europe of Lindsay's own time as already certainly in the dregs of
"The Latter Days," and an anticipation, as if with assured personal
belief, of a glorious Fifth Monarchy, or miraculous reconstitution of
the whole Universe into a new Heaven and Earth, to begin probably
about the year 2000.]

RANTERS:--"These made it their business," says Baxter, "to set up the
Light of Nature under the name of _Christ in Man_, and to
dishonour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, and the present
Ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken
to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine
of Libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of
life. They taught, as the FAMILISTS, (see Vol. III. p. 152), that God
regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and
that to the pure all things are pure ... I have seen myself letters
written from Abington, where among both soldiers and people this
contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses and
blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and
this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their
Religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God."
The Ranters, in fact, seem to have been ANTINOMIANS (see Vol. III.
151-152) run mad, with touches from FAMILISM and SEEKERISM greatly
vulgarized. Of no sect do we hear more in the pamphlets and
newspapers between 1650 and 1655, though there are traces of them of
earlier date. The pamphlets about them generally take the form of
professed accounts of some of their meetings, with reports of their
profane discourses and the indecencies with which they were
accompanied. There are illustrative wood-cuts in some of the
pamphlets; and, on the whole, I fancy that some low printers and
booksellers made a trade on the public curiosity about the Ranters,
getting up pretended accounts of their meetings as a pretext for
prurient publications. There is plenty of testimony, however, besides
Baxter's word, that there was a real sect of the name pretty widely
spread in low neighbourhoods in towns, and holding meetings. Among
Ranters named in the pamphlets I have noticed a T. Shakespeare. "The
horrid villainies of the sect," says Baxter, "did not only speedily
extinguish it, but also did as much as ever anything did to disgrace
all sectaries, and to restore the credit of the ministry and the
sober unanimous Christians;" and this, or the transfusion of
Ranterism into equivalent phrenzies with other names, may account
for the fact that after a while the pamphlets about the Ranters cease
or become rare. Clearly, in the main, the regulation of such a sect,
so long as it did last, was a matter of police; and the only question
is whether there were any tenets mixed up with Ranterism, or held by
some roughly called Ranters, that were capable of being dissociated,
and that were in fact in some cases dissociated, from offences
against public decency. Exact data are deficient, and there were
probably varieties of Ranters theologically. Pantheism, or the
essential identity of God with the universe, and his indwelling in
every creature, angelic, human, brute, or inorganic, seems to have
been the belief of most Ranters that could manage to rise to a
metaphysics--with which belief was conjoined also a rejection of all
essential distinction between good and evil, and a rejection of all
Scripture as mere dead letter; but from a so-called "Carol of the
Ranters" I infer that Atheism, or at least Mortalism or Materialism
(see Vol. III. p. 156-157), had found refuge among some of the
varieties. Thus:--

 "They prate of God! Believe it, fellow-creature,
  There's no such bugbear: all was made by Nature.
  We know all came of nothing, and shall pass
  Into the same condition once it was
  By Nature's power, and that they grossly lie
  That say there's hope of immortality.
  Let them but tell us what a soul is: then
  We shall adhere to these mad brainsick men."[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter's Life, 76-77; and Thomason Pamphlets
_passim_. The pamphlet last quoted is in Vol. 485 (old
numbering). I have also used a quotation from another pamphlet in
Barclay's _Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth_ (1876), pp. 417-418.]

STRAY FANATICS: THE MUGGLETONIANS:--Sometimes confounded with the
Ranters, but really distinguishable, were some crazed men, whose
crazes had taken a religious turn, and whose extravagances became
contagious.--Such was a John Robins, first heard of about 1650, when
he went about, sometimes as God Almighty, sometimes as Adam raised
from the dead, with the power of raising others from the dead. He had
raised Cain and Judas, and other personages of Scripture, forgiving
their sins and blessing them; which personages, changed in character,
but remembering their former selves quite well, went about in
Robins's company and were seen and talked with by various people. He
could work miracles, and in dark rooms would exhibit himself
surrounded with angels, and fiery serpents, and shining lights, or
riding in the air. He had been sent to Bridewell, and his
supernatural powers had left him.--One heard next, in 1652, of two
associates, called John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton, who professed
to be "the two last Spiritual Witnesses (Rev. xi.) and alone true
Prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ, God alone blessed to all
eternity." They believed in a real man-shaped God, existing from all
eternity, who had come upon earth as Jesus Christ, leaving Moses and
Elijah to represent him in Heaven--also in the mortality of the soul
till the resurrection of the body; and their chief commission was to
denounce and curse all false prophets, and all who did not believe in
Reeves and Muggleton. They visited Robins in Bridewell and told
_him_ to stop his preaching under pain of eternal damnation; but
they favoured some eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers of
London with letters to the same effect. They dated their letters
"from Great Trinity Lane, at a Chandler's shop, against one Mr.
Millis, a brown baker, near Bow Lane End;" and the editor of
_Mercurius Politicus_, who had received one of their letters so
dated, had the curiosity to go to see them, with some friends of his,
in the end of August 1653. He found them "at the top of an old house
in a cockloft," and made a paragraph of them thus:--"They are said to
be a couple of tailors: but only one of them works, and that is
Muggleton; the other, they say, writes prophecies. We found two women
there whom they had convinced; whom we questioning, they said they
believed all. Besides there was an old country plain man of Essex,
who said he had been with them twice before; and, being asked whether
he were of the same opinion and did believe them, he answered, Truly
he could not tell what to say, but he was come to have some discourse
with them in private." Two mouths after this interview (Oct. 1653),
they were brought before the Lord Mayor and Recorder for their
letters to ministers, and sentenced to six months of imprisonment
each. But they were to be farther heard of in the world. Muggleton
indeed to as late as 1698, when he died at the age of ninety, leaving
a sect called THE MUGGLETONIANS, who are perhaps not extinct
yet.--Among those who attached themselves to Reeves and Muggleton was
a Thomas Tany, who called himself also "Theauro John," and professed
to be the Lord's High Priest. They would have nothing to do with him,
and put him on their excommunicated list. Whether because this preyed
on the poor man's mind or not, he was found in the lobby of the
Parliament House on Saturday, Dec. 30. 1654, with a drawn sword,
slashing at members, and knocking for admittance. The House, who were
then in the midst of their debate on the proper Limits of Toleration,
ordered him to be brought to the bar:--"Where," say the journals,
"being demanded by Mr. Speaker what his name was, answered'
_Theeror John_'; being asked why he came hither, saith, He fired
his tent, and the people were ready to stone him because he burnt the
Bible--which he acknowledgeth he did. Saith it is letters, not life.
And he drew his sword because the man jostled him at the door. Saith
he burnt the Bible because the people say it is the Word of God, and
it is not; it deceived _him_. And saith he burnt the sword and
pistols and Bibles because they are the Gods of England. He did it
not of himself; and, being asked who bid him do it, saith God.' And
thereupon was commanded to withdraw." He was sent into custody
immediately.--Stray fanatics like Robins, Reeves, Muggleton, and
Theauro John, seem to have been not uncommon through England.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 313-317; Mercurius Politicus, No. 167 (Aug.
18-25, 1653); Commons Journals, Dec. 30, 1654; Barclay's _Religious
Societies_, pp. 421-422.]

BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS:--Of the German Mystic Jacob Boehme
(1575-1624) there had been a _Life_ in English since 1644, with
a catalogue of his writings, and since then translations of some of
the writings themselves had appeared at intervals, mostly from the
shop of one publisher, Humphrey Blunden. The interest in "the
Teutonical Philosopher" thus excited had at length taken form in a
small sect of professed BOEHMENISTS, propounding the doctrine of the
Light of Nature, i.e. of a mystic intuitional revelation in the soul
itself of all true knowledge of divine and human things. Of this sect
Baxter says that they were "fewer in number," and seemed "to have
attained to greater meekness and conquest of passions," than the
other sects. The chief of them was Dr. Pordage, Rector of Bradfield,
in Berks, with his family. They held "visible and sensible communion
with angels" in the Rectory, on the very walls and windows of which
there appeared miraculous pictures and symbols; and the Doctor
himself, besides alarming people with such strange phrases as "the
fiery deity of Christ dwelling in the soul and mixing itself with our
flesh," was clearly unorthodox on many particular
points.[1]--Boehme's system included a mystical physics or cosmology
as well as a metaphysics or theosophy, and some of his English
followers seem to have allied themselves with the famous Astrologer
William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of
_Merlinus Anglicus_, had been appearing annually since 1644. But
indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or
quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable
issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the
other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political
predictions, had a boundless popularity, and were bringing him a good
income; he was the chief in his day of those fortune-telling and
spirit-auguring celebrities who hover all their lives between high
society and Bridewell. As he had adhered to the Parliamentarians and
made the stars speak for their cause, he had hitherto been pretty
safe; but the leading Presbyterian and Independent ministers, as we
have seen (ante IV, p. 392), had recently called upon Parliament to
put down his bastard science. Gataker had attacked "that grand
impostor Mr. William Lilly" in an express publication.[2]--Is it in a
spirit of mischief that Baxter names THE VANISTS, or disciples of Sir
Henry Vane the younger, as one of the recognised sects of this time?
That great Republican leader, it was known, with all his deep
practical astuteness and the perfect clearness and shrewdness of his
speeches and business-letters, carried in his head a mystic
Metaphysics of his own which he found it hard to express. It was a
something unique, including ideas from the Antinomians, the
Anabaptists, and the Seekers, he had been so much among, with
something also of the Fifth-Monarchy notion, and with the theory of
absolute Voluntaryism in Religion, but all these amalgamated with new
ingredients. Burnet tells us that, though he had taken pains to find
out Vane's meaning in his own books, he could never reach it, and
that, as many others had the same experience, it might be reasonable
to conclude that Vane had purposely kept back the key to his system.
Friends of Vane had told Burnet, however, that "he leaned to Origen's
notion of a universal salvation of all, both of devils and the
damned, and to the doctrine of pre-existence." Even when Cromwell
and Vane had been close friends, calling each other "Fountain" and
"Heron" in their private letters. Vane had been in possession of
such peculiar lights, or of others, beyond Cromwell's apprehension.
"Brother Fountain can guess at his brother's meaning," he had written
to Cromwell in Scotland August 2, 1651, with reference to some
troublesome on-goings in the Council of State during Cromwell's
absence, begging him not to believe ill-natured reports about
"Brother Heron" in connexion with them, and adding, "Be assured he
answers your heart's desire in all things, except he be esteemed even
by you in principles too high to fathom; which one day, I am
persuaded, will not be so thought by you, when, by increasing with
the increasings of God, you shall be brought to that sight and
enjoyment of God in Christ which passes knowledge." If this to
Cromwell, what to others? Three years had passed, and Vane was now in
compulsory retirement. His _Retired Man's Meditations_ had not
yet been published. Such Vanists, therefore, as there were in 1654
must have imbibed their knowledge of them from Sir Henry's
conversation or indirectly. Among these Baxter mentions Peter Sterry,
one of Cromwell's favourite preachers, and afterwards known as a
mystic on his own account. Of Sterry's preaching, already notoriously
obscure, Sir Benjamin Rudyard had said that "it was too high for this
world and too low for the other," and Baxter puns on the association
of Vane and Sterry, asking whether _Vanity_ and _Sterility_
had ever been more happily conjoined. But the sect of the VANISTS
existed perhaps mainly in Baxter's fancy.[3]

[Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers from 1644 to 1654; Baxter, 77-78;
Neal, IV. 112-113.]

[Footnote 2: Engl. Cycl. Art. _Lilly_; Stationers' Registers of
date June 10, 1653 (Gataker's Tract) and of other dates (Lilly's
Almanacks).]

[Footnote 3: Baxter, 74-76; Milton Papers by Nickolls, 78-79;
Wood's Ath. III, 578 et seq. and IV. 136-138.]

QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:--Who can think of the appearance of this sect in
English History without doing what the sect itself would forbid, and
reverently raising the hat? And yet in 1654 this was the very sect of
sects. It was about the Quakers that there had begun to be the most
violent excitement among the guardians of social order throughout the
British Islands.--It was then six or seven years since they had first
been heard of in any distinct way, and four since they had received
the name QUAKERS. A Derbyshire Justice of the Peace, it is said,
first invented that name for them, because they seemed to be fond of
the text Jer. v. 22, and had offended him by addressing it to himself
and a brother magistrate: "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye
not tremble at my presence?" But Robert Barclay's account of the
origin of the name in his _Apology for the Quakers_ (1675) is
probably more correct, though not inconsistent. He says it arose from
the fact that, in the early meetings of "The Children of the Light,"
as they first called themselves, violent physical agitations were not
unfrequent, and conversions were often signalized by that
accompaniment. There was often an "inward travail" in some one
present; "and from this inward travail, while the darkness seeks to
obscure the light, and the light breaks through the darkness, which
it will always do if the soul gives not its strength to the
darkness, there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that
will even work upon the outward man, so that often-times, through the
working thereof, the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans and
sighs and tears, even as the pangs of a woman in travail, will lay
hold of it: yea, and this not only as to one, but ... sometimes the
power of God will break forth into a whole meeting, and there will be
such an inward travail, while each is seeking to overcome the evil in
themselves, that by the strong contrary workings of these opposite
powers, like the going of two contrary tides, every individual will
be strongly exercised as in a day of battle, and thereby trembling
and a motion of body will be upon most, if not upon all, which, as
the power of Truth prevails, will from pangs and groans end with a
sweet sound of thanksgiving and praise. And from this the name of
_Quakers_, i.e. _Tremblers_, was first reproachfully cast
upon us; which though it be none of our choosing, yet in this respect
we are not ashamed of it, but have rather reason to rejoice
therefore, even that we are sensible of this power that hath
oftentimes laid hold of our adversaries, and made them yield to us,
and join with us, and confess to the Truth, before they had any
distinct and discursive knowledge of our doctrines."--The Quakers,
then, according to this eminent Apologist for them, _had_, from
the first, definite doctrines, which might be distinctly and
discursively known. What were they? They hardly amounted to any
express revolution of existing Theology. In no essential respect did
any of their recognised representatives impugn any of the doctrines
of Christianity as professed by other fervid Evangelical sects. The
Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, the natural sinfulness of men,
propitiation by Christ alone, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures--in these, and in other
cardinal tenets, they were at one with the main body of their
contemporary Christians. Though it was customary for a time to
confound them with the Ranters, they themselves repudiated the
connexion, and opposed the Ranters and their libertinism wherever
they met them. Wherein then lay the distinctive peculiarity of the
Quakers? It has been usual to say that it consisted in their doctrine
of the universality of the gift of the Spirit, and of the constant
inner light, and motion, and teaching of the Spirit in the soul of
each individual believer. This is not sufficient. That doctrine they
shared substantially with various other sects,--certainly with the
Boehmenists and other Continental Mystics, not to speak of the
English Antinomians and Seekers. Nay, in their first great practical
application of the doctrine they had been largely anticipated. If the
inner motion or manifestation of the Spirit in each mind, in
interpretation of the Bible or over and above the Bible, is the sole
true teaching of the Gospel, and if the manifestation cometh as the
Spirit listeth, and cannot be commanded, a regular Ministry of the
Word by a so-called Clergy is an absurdity, and a hired Ministry an
abomination! So said the Quakers. In reaching this conclusion,
however, they had only added themselves to masses of people, known as
Brownists, Seekers, and Anabaptists, who had already, by the same
route or by others, advanced to the standing-ground of absolute
Voluntaryism. What did distinguish the early Quakers seems to have
been, in the first place, the thorough form of their apprehension of
that doctrine of the Inner Light, or Immediate Revelation of the
Spirit, which they held in common with other sects, and, in the
second place, their courage and tenacity in carrying out the
practical inferences from that doctrine in every sentence of their
own speech and every hour of their own conduct. As to the form in
which they held the doctrine itself Barclay will be again our best
authority. "The testimony of the Spirit," he says, "is that alone by
which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can only be,
revealed; who, as by the moving of his own Spirit he converted the
Chaos of this world into that wonderful Order wherein it was in the
beginning, and created Man a living Soul to rule and govern it, so by
the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of
men, both Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles: which revelations of
God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams,
or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the
formal object of their faith and remain yet so to be,--since the
object of the Saints' faith is the same in all ages, though set forth
under divers administrations." This Inner Light of the Spirit,
seizing men and women at all times and places, and illuminating them
in the knowledge of God, was, Barclay elsewhere explains, something
altogether supernatural, something totally distinct from natural
Reason. "That Man, as he is a rational creature, hath Reason as a
natural faculty of his soul, we deny not; for this is a property
natural and essential to him, by which he can know and learn many
arts and sciences, beyond what any other animal can do by the mere
animal principle. Neither do we deny that by this rational principle
Man may apprehend in his brain, and in the notion, a knowledge of God
and spiritual things; yet, that not being the right organ, ... it
cannot profit him towards salvation, but rather hindereth." And what
of the use and value of the Scriptures? "From these revelations of
the Spirit of God to the saints have proceeded the Scriptures of
Truth, which contain (1) A faithful historical account of the actings
of God's people in divers ages, with many singular and remarkable
providences attending them; (2) A prophetical account of several
things, whereof some are already past and some yet to come; (3) A
full and ample account of all the chief principles of the doctrine of
Christ ... Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the
fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be
esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and Knowledge, nor yet the
adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Nevertheless, as that
which giveth a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation,
they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the
Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty." So
much for the _form_ of the central principle of Early Quakerism,
so far as it can be expressed logically. But it was in the resolute
application of the principle in practice that the Early Quakers made
themselves conspicuous. They were not Speculative Voluntaries,
waiting for the abolition of the National Church, and paying tithes
meanwhile. They were Separatists who would at once and in every way
assert their Separatism. They would pay no tithes; they called every
church "a steeple-house"; and they regarded every parson as the hired
performer in one of the steeple-houses. Then, in their own meetings
for mutual edification and worship, all their customs were in
accordance with their main principle. They had no fixed articles of
congregational creed, no prescribed forms of prayer, no ordinance of
baptism or of sacramental communion, no religious ceremony in
sanction of marriage, and no paid or appointed preachers. The
ministry was to be as the spirit moved; all equally might speak or be
silent, poor as well as rich, unlearned as well as learned, women as
well as men; if special teachers did spring up amongst them, it
should not be professionally, or to earn a salary. Yet, with all this
liberty among themselves, what unanimity in the moral purport of
their teachings! Their restless dissatisfaction with the Established
Church and with all known varieties of Dissent, their passion for a
full reception of Christ at the fountain-head, their searchings of
the Scriptures, their private raptures and meditations, their prayers
and consultations in public, had resulted in a simple re-issue of the
Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount. Quakerism, in its kernel,
was but the revived Christian morality of meekness, piety,
benevolence, purity, truthfulness, peacefulness, and passivity. There
were to be no oaths: Yea or Nay was to be enough. There were to be no
ceremonies of honour or courtesy-titles among men: the hat was to be
taken off to no one, and all were to be addressed in the singular, as
_Thou_ and _Thee_. War and physical violence were unlawful,
and therefore all fighting and the trade of a soldier. Injuries to
oneself were to be borne with patience, but there was to be the most
active energy in relieving the sufferings of others, and in seeking
out suffering where it lurked. The sick and those in prison were to
be visited, the insane and the outcast; and the wrongs and cruelties
of law, whether in death-sentences for mere offences against
property, or in brutal methods of prison-treatment, were to be
exposed and condemned. For the rest, the Friends were to walk
industriously and domestically through the world, honest in their
dealings, wearing a plain Puritan garb, and avoiding all vanities and
gaieties.--Had it been possible for such a sect to come into
existence by mere natural growth, or the unconcerted association of
like-minded persons in all parts of the country at once, even then,
one can see, there would have been irritation between it and the rest
of the community. The refusal to pay tithes, the refusal of oaths in
Courts of Law or anywhere else, the objection to war and to the trade
of a soldier, the _Theeing_ and _Thouing_ of all
indiscriminately, the keeping of the hat on in any presence, would
have occasioned constant feud between any little nucleus of Quakers
and the society round about it. But the sect had not formed itself by
any such quiet process of simultaneous grouping among people who had
somehow imbibed its tenets. It had come into being, and in fact had
shaped its tenets and become aware of them, through a previous
fervour of itinerant Propagandism such as had hardly been known since
the first Apostles and Christian missionaries had walked among the
heathen. The first Quaker, the man in whose dreamings by himself,
aided by scanty readings, the principles of the sect had been
evolved, and in whose conduct by himself for a year or two the sect
had practically originated, was the good, blunt, obstinate,
opaque-brained, ecstatic, Leicestershire shoemaker, George Fox, the
Boehme of England. From the year 1646, when he was two and twenty
years of age, the life of Fox had been an incessant tramp through the
towns and villages of the Midlands and the North, with preachings in
barns, in inns, in market-places, outside courts of justice, and
often inside the steeple-houses themselves, by way of interruption of
the regular ministers, or correction of their doctrine after the
hours of regular service. Extraordinary excitements had attended him
everywhere, paroxysms of delight in him with tears and tremblings,
outbreaks of rage against him with hootings and stonings. Again and
again he had been brought before justices and magistrates, to whose
presence indeed he naturally tended of his own accord for the purpose
of lecturing them on their duties, and to whom he was always writing
Biblical letters. He had been beaten and put in the stocks; he had
been in Derby jail and in several other prisons, charged with riot or
blasphemy; and in these prisons he had found work to his mind and had
sometimes converted his jailors. And so, by the year 1654, "the man
with the leather breeches," as he was called, had become a celebrity
throughout England, with scattered converts and adherents everywhere,
but voted a pest and terror by the public authorities, the regular
steeple-house clergy whether Presbyterian or Independent, and the
appointed preachers of all the old sects. By this time, however, he
was by no means the sole preacher of Quakerism. Every now and then
from among his converts there had started up one fitted to assist him
in the work of itinerant propagandism, and the number of such had
increased in 1654 to about sixty in all. Richard Farnsworth, James
Nayler, William Dewsbury, Thomas Aldam, John Audland, Francis
Howgill, Edward Burrough, Thomas Taylor, John Camm, Richard
Hubberthorn, Miles Halhead, James Parnel, Thomas Briggs, Robert
Widders, George Whitehead, Thomas Holmes, James Lancaster, Alexander
Parker, William Caton, and John Stubbs, of the one sex, with
Elizabeth Hooton, Anna Downer, Elizabeth Heavens, Elizabeth Fletcher,
Barbara Blaugden, Catherine Evans, and Sarah Cheevers, of the other
sex, were among the chief of these early Quaker preachers after Fox.
They had carried the doctrines into every part of England, and also
into Scotland and Ireland; some of them had even been moved to go to
the Continent. Wherever they went there was the same disturbance
round them as round Fox himself, and they had the same hard
treatment--imprisonment, duckings, whippings. It is necessary that
the reader should remember that in 1654 Quakerism was still in this
first stage of its diffusion by a vehement propagandism carried on by
some sixty itinerant preachers at war with established habits and
customs, and had not settled down into mere individual Quietism, with
associations of those who had been converted to its principles, and
could be content with their own local meetings. In the chief centres,
indeed, there were now fixed meetings for the resident Quakers, the
main meeting place for London being the Bull and Mouth in St.
Martin's-le-Grand; but Fox and most of his coadjutors were still
wandering about the country.--There was already an extensive
literature of Quakerism, consisting of printed letters and tracts by
Fox himself, Farnsworth, Nayler, Dewsbury, Howgill, and others, and
of invectives against the Quakers and their principles by
Presbyterians and Independents; and some of the letters of the
Quakers had been directly addressed to Cromwell. There had also, some
time in 1654, been one interview between the Lord Protector and Fox.
Colonel Hacker, having arrested Fox in Leicestershire, had sent him
up to London. Brought to Whitehall, one morning early, when the Lord
Protector was dressing, he had said, on entering, "Peace be on this
House!" and had then discoursed to the Protector at some length, the
Protector kindly listening, occasionally putting a question, and
several times acknowledging a remark of George's by saying it was
"very good," and "the truth." At parting, the Protector had taken
hold of his hand, and, with tears in his eyes, said "Come again to my
house! If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should
be nearer one to another. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my
own soul." Outside, the captain on guard, informing George that he
was free, had wanted him, by the Protector's orders, to stay and dine
with the household; but George had stoutly declined.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the People called Quakers_ (ed.
1834), I, I--136; Rules and Discipline of the Society of Friends
(1834), _Introduction_; Baxter, 77; Neal, IV. 31-41; Pamphlets
in Thomason Collection; Robert Barclay's _Apology for the
Quakers_ (ed. 1765), pp. 4, 48, 118, 309-310. This last is a
really able and impressive book--far the most reasoned exposition
even yet, I believe, of the principles of early Quakerism. Though
not written till twenty years after our present date, it was the
first accurate and articulate expression, I believe, of the
principles that had really, though rather confusedly, pervaded the
Quaker teachings and writings at that date.--There are many particles
of information about the early Quakers, and about other contemporary
English sects, in _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth_, published in 1878, the posthumous work of a second
Robert Barclay, two hundred years after the first. But the book,
though laborious, is very chaotic, and shows hardly any knowledge of
the time of which it mainly treats.]

Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as
for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the
Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his
brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament,
however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid
sooner than had been expected.

It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all
their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and
to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the
Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for
his assent. In particular they had postponed, as much as possible,
all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government. By
this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp. By the
instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve
them till they had sat five months,--which, by ordinary counting from
Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5. But, if they could
contrive that it should be Cromwell's interest not to dissolve them
then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while
longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had
themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament. To postpone
supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution
in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell's assent, to
wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as
possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of the Anti-Oliverians. The
Bill, it will be remembered, had passed the second reading on Dec.
23, had then gone into Committee for amendments, and had come back to
the House with these amendments. On the 10th of January, 1654-5, when
the Bill was almost ready to be engrossed, it was moved by the
Oliverians that there should be a conference about it with the
Protector; but the motion was lost by 107 votes to 95. Among various
subsequent divisions was one on the 16th on the question whether the
Bill should become Law even if the Lord Protector should refuse his
assent, and the Anti-Oliverians negatived the putting of the question
by eighty-six votes to fifty-five. The next day, after another
division, it was resolved thus: "That this Bill entitled _An Act
Declaring and Settling the Government of the Commonwealth_, &c.,
be engrossed in order to its presentment to the Lord Protector for
his consideration and assent," and that, if "the Lord Protector and
the Parliament shall not agree thereunto and to every Article
thereof, then the Bill shall be void and of none effect." Cromwell
having thus been shut up to accept all or none, the Bill passed the
third and conclusive reading on Friday, Jan. 19. Then all depended on
Cromwell, who would have twenty days to make up his mind. He had made
up his mind already, and did not mean to wait for the parchment. The
Bill included provisions striking, as he conceived, at the root of
his Protectorate, e.g. one for depriving him and the Council of State
of that power of interim legislation which they had hitherto
exercised with so much effect, and others withholding the negative he
thought his due on future Bills affecting fundamentals. He was,
besides, wholly disgusted with the spirit and conduct of the
Parliament. Accordingly, having bethought himself that, in the
payment of the soldiers and sailors, a month was construed as
twenty-eight days only, he let the Saturday and Sunday after the
third reading of the Bill pass quietly by, and then, on Monday the
22nd, having summoned the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber,
addressed them in what counts as the Fourth of his Speeches, told
them their time was up that day, and dissolved them. Their
Constitutional Bill of Sixty Articles disappeared with them; and they
had not, in all the five months, sent up a single Bill to Cromwell
for his assent.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 148-157; Carlyle,
III. 70-95.]



SECTION II.

BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS: JAN. 22,
1654-55--SEPT. 17, 1656.

AVOWED "ARBITRARINESS" OF THIS STAGE OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND REASONS
FOR IT.--FIRST MEETING OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL AFTER THE
DISSOLUTION: MAJOR-GENERAL OVERTON IN CUSTODY: OTHER ARRESTS:
SUPPRESSION OF A WIDE REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY AND OF ROYALIST RISINGS
IN YORKSHIRE AND THE WEST: REVENUE ORDINANCE AND MR. CONY'S
OPPOSITION AT LAW: DEFERENCE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS: BLAKE IN THE
MEDITERRANEAN: MASSACRE OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS: DETAILS OF
THE STORY AND OF CROMWELL'S PROCEEDINGS IN CONSEQUENCE: PENN IN THE
SPANISH WEST INDIES: HIS REPULSE FROM HISPANIOLA AND LANDING IN
JAMAICA: DECLARATION OF WAR WITH SPAIN AND ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE:
SCHEME OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND BY MAJOR-GENERALS: LIST OF THEM
AND SUMMARY OF THEIR POLICE-SYSTEM: DECIMATION TAX ON THE ROYALISTS,
AND OTHER MEASURES _IN TERROREM_: CONSOLIDATION OF THE LONDON
NEWSPAPER PRESS: PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMISSION OF EJECTORS AND OF THE
COMMISSION OF TRIERS: VIEW OF CROMWELL'S ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF
ENGLAND, WITH ENUMERATION OF ITS VARIOUS COMPONENTS: EXTENT OF
TOLERATION OUTSIDE THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: THE PROTECTOR'S TREATMENT
OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS, THE EPISCOPALIANS, THE ANTI-TRINITARIANS, THE
QUAKERS, AND THE JEWS: STATE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS
UNDER THE PROTECTORATE: CROMWELL'S PATRONAGE OF LEARNING: LIST OF
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS ALIVE IN 1656, AND ACCOUNT OF THEIR DIVERSE
RELATIONS TO CROMWELL: POETICAL PANEGYRICS ON HIM AND HIS
PROTECTORATE.--NEW ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND: LORD
BROGHILL'S PRESIDENCY THERE FOR CROMWELL: GENERAL STATE OF THE
COUNTRY: CONTINUED STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE RESOLUTIONERS AND THE
PROTESTERS FOR KIRK-SUPREMACY: INDEPENDENCY AND QUAKERISM IN
SCOTLAND: MORE EXTREME ANOMALIES THERE: STORY OF "JOCK OF BROAD
SCOTLAND": BRISK INTERCOURSE BETWEEN SCOTLAND AND LONDON: MISSION OF
MR. JAMES SHARP.--IRELAND FROM 1654 TO 1656.--GLIMPSE OF THE
COLONIES.


This long stretch of twenty months was to be another period of the
government of the Commonwealth by the Lord Protector and the Council
of State on their own responsibility and without a Parliament. In the
circumstances in which the late Parliament had left them, without
supplies and without a single concluded and authoritative enactment,
they could only fall back on the original Instrument of the
Protectorate, amending its defects by their own ingenuity as
exigencies occurred, with a suggestion now and then snatched, for the
sake of quasi-Parliamentary countenance, from the wreck of the late
Constitutional Bill. Hence a character of "arbitrariness" in
Cromwell's government throughout this period greater perhaps than in
any other of his whole Protectorate. For that, however, he was
prepared. At the first meeting of the Council after the Dissolution
of Parliament (Tuesday, Jan. 23, 1654-5) there were present, I find,
His Highness himself, and thirteen out of the eighteen Councillors,
viz.: Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Viscount Lisle,
Lambert, Desborough, Fiennes, Montague, Sydenham, Strickland, Sir
Charles Wolseley, Skippon, Jones, and Rous; and it was then "ordered
by his Highness and the Council that Friday next be set apart for
their seeking of God, and that Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Denn, and
Mr. Sterry, be desired then to give their assistance." In entering on
the new period of their Government, the Protector and the Council
thought a day of special prayer very fitting.[1]

[Footnote 1 Council Order Book of date.--Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,
having shown Anti-Oliverian tendencies in the late Parliament, did
not reappear in the Council after the Dissolution, and had
virtually ceased to be a member. Colonel Mackworth had died Dec.
26, 1654. The three other members not present at the meeting of
Jan. 23, 1664-5 were Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Richard
Mayor. Fleetwood was in Ireland; Pickering's absence was
accidental, and he was in his place very regularly afterwards;
Mayor did not attend steadily.]

In the Dissolution Speech Cromwell, rebuking the Parliament for their
inattention to what he considered their real duty, had compared them
to a tree under the shadow of which there had been a too thriving
growth of other vegetation. Interpreting the parable, he had
explained to them that there was at that moment a new and very
complex conspiracy against the Commonwealth, that the Levellers at
home had been in correspondence with the Cavaliers abroad, that their
plans were laid and their manifestos ready, that commissioners from
Charles Stuart had arrived and stores of arms and money had been
collected, and also (worst of all) that there had been tamperings
with the Army by Commonwealth men of higher note than the mere
Levellers. He did not believe, he said, that any then in Parliament
were in the Cavalier interest in the connexion, but he was not sure
that they were all perfectly clear of the connexion on all its sides.
At all events, he knew that their policy of starving the Army had
given the enemy their best opportunity. Fortunately, he had already
some of the chief home-conspirators in custody, and the Cavalier part
of the plot might explode when it liked.[1]

[Footnote 1: Speech IV (Carlyle, III 75-81.)]

The chief of those in custody when Cromwell spoke was the Republican
Major-General Overton. He had been under suspicion before, as we have
seen, but had cleared himself sufficiently to Cromwell, and had been
sent back to Scotland as second in command to Monk (Sept. 1654).
Since then, however, he had relapsed into the Anti-Oliverian mood,
and had become, it was believed, the head of the numerous
Anti-Oliverians or Republicans in Monk's Army, The proposal was to
seize Monk, make Overton the commander-in-chief, and march into
England, But, information having been received in time, there had
been the necessary arrests of the guilty officers (Dec. 1654). Most
of them had been kept in Edinburgh to be dealt with by Monk; but the
chiefs had been sent at once to London, and among them Overton, whose
arrest had taken place at Aberdeen. He was committed to the Tower
Jan. 16, 1654-5. The clue having thus been furnished, further
investigation had disclosed more. In concert with the Anti-Oliverian
movement in the Army of Scotland, and depending on that movement for
help, there had been plottings in England, in which Harrison, Colonel
Okey, Colonel Alured, Colonel Sexby, Adjutant-General Allen, Admiral
Lawson, Major John Wildman, Lord Grey of Groby, Carew, and even
Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Henry Marten, were, or were said to be, more
or less involved. The aim seems to have been a combination of the
Anabaptist Levellers with the more eminent Republicans,--the
Levellers, or some of them, quite willing to combine also with the
Royalists, and indeed in confidential negotiation with them. How the
scheme, or medley of schemes, would have turned out in the working,
was never to be known. It was frustrated by the arrest, in January
and February, of most of the suspected. The most important arrest was
that of Major Wildman, the undoubted chief of the Levelling section
of the conspiracy. When arrested in Wiltshire, he was found in the
act of dictating a "Declaration of the Free and Well-affected People
of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esq." He
was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle. Sexby, the most active man after
Wildman in the Levelling or Anabaptist section of the conspiracy,
escaped and went abroad. Adjutant-General Allen, and others less
deeply implicated, were dismissed from their posts in the Army.
Harrison was confined in the Isle of Portland, Carew in St. Mawes, in
Cornwall, and Lord Grey of Groby in Windsor Castle. None of all the
Republicans, higher or lower, it was remarked, suffered any
punishment beyond such seclusion or dismissal from the service.
Clemency on that side was always Cromwell's policy.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 158-165; Carlyle, III. 66-70 and 98-99;
Whitlocke, IV. 182-188 (Wildman's Proclamation); Life of Robert
Blair, 319.]

Much sharper was Cromwell's method of dealing with the attempted
invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently. Hopes had
risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been
extensive. Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis
of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had
been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers
of the enterprise were already moving about in various English
counties. Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence
through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and
Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in
Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to
nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive
risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in
Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier
appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in
the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of
March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of
Charles's emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of
Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and
Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had
arrived and were in their beds. They were seized; and next morning
Wagstaff issued orders for hanging them, but was stopped in the act
by the remonstrances of Colonel John Penruddock and others. From
Salisbury, finding no encouragement among the citizens, the
insurgents moved westward till they reached South Molton in
Devonshire, where they were overtaken on the night of Wednesday,
March 14, by Captain Unton Crook. There was a brief street-fight,
ending in the defeat of the Royalists, and the capture of Penruddock
and about fifty more. Wagstaff escaped. Of the contemporary
insurgents in the north there had meanwhile escaped Malevrier and
also Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had come from abroad to head the
Royalist insurrection generally, had gone to the north, but had not
awaited the actual upshot. He lay concealed in London for a time,
and got to Cologne at last. In the trials which ensued those who
suffered capitally were Penruddock, beheaded at Exeter, a Captain
Hugh Grove and several others at other places in the West, and two or
three at York. Many of the inferior culprits, capitally convicted,
had their lives spared, but were sent in servitude to Barbadoes.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 824-827; Whitlocke, IV. 188; Godwin, IV.
167-169; Carlyle, III. 99-100.]

Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council
in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of
theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army
and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of £120,000
per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of
£90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and,
though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the
assessment for three months more at £60,000 per month, the Bill had
never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of
February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and
Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at £60,000 per month.
This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave
general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time
Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts
of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in
the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the
question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it
was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant
named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than
did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay
custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord
Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of
Parliament, he had been fined £500 by the Commissioners of Customs,
and had been committed to prison for non-payment. On a motion for a
writ of _habeas corpus_ his case came on for trial in May 1655.
Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded so
effectively that they were committed to the Tower for what was
called language destructive to the Government. Cony himself then went
on with the pleading, and so sturdily that Chief Justice Rolle was
non-plussed, and had to confess as much to Cromwell. It was only by
delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision
was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to
defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate. Similarly the
Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and
even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had
been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the
consciences of Lawyers and Judges. There were such remonstrances to
Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench. He
removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in
their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their
Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while
by Commissionerships of the Treasury. For all this "arbitrariness"
Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea
of absolute necessity. The very existence of his Protectorate was at
peril; and that meant, he declared, the existence of the
Commonwealth.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 174-183; Whitlocke, through April, May,
June, and July, 1655.]

For such "arbitrariness" in some of the Protector's home-proceedings
there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels
of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England
a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the
world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and
potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and
embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme
for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments
might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable
through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His
dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the
subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad.
Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was
still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Governor
of Dunkirk, had come to London to assist Cardenas in the negotiations
for Spain; but Mazarin was indefatigable in his offers, through M. de
Bordeaux and otherwise.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books _passim_; Guizot, II. 203.]

While the Parliament was still sitting, Cromwell had sent out two
fleets, one under the command of Blake (Oct. 1654), the other under
that of Penn (Dec. 1654). There was the utmost secrecy as to the
destination and objects of both, but the mystery did not last long
about Blake's. He had received instructions to go into the
Mediterranean, make calls there on all powers against which the
Commonwealth had claims, and bring them to account. Blake fulfilled
his mission with his usual precision and success. His first call of
any importance was on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formerly so much in
the good graces of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 483-485), but whom
Cromwell, after looking more into matters, had found culpable.
Blake's demands were for heavy money-damages on account of English
ships taken by Prince Rupert in 1650, and sold in Tuscan ports, and
also on account of English ships ordered out of Leghorn harbour in
March 1653, so that they fell into the hands of the Dutch. There was
the utmost consternation among the Tuscans, and the alarm extended
even to Rome, inasmuch as some of Rupert's prizes had been sold in
the Papal States. A disembarcation of the English heretics and even
their march to Rome did not seem impossible; and Tuscans and Romans
were greatly relieved when the Grand Duke paid £60,000 and the Pope
20,000 pistoles (£14,000), and Blake retired. His next call was at
Tunis, where there were accounts with the Dey. That Mussulman having
pointed to his forts, and dared Blake to do his worst, there was a
tremendous bombardment on the 3rd of April, 1655, reducing the forts
to ruins, followed by the burning of the Dey's entire war-squadron of
nine ships. This sufficed not only for Tunis, but also for Tripoli
and Algiers. All the Moorish powers of the African coast gave up
their English captives, and engaged that there should be no more
piracy upon English vessels. Malta, Venice, Toulon, Marseilles, and
various Spanish ports were then visited for one reason or another;
and in the autumn of 1655 Blake was still in the Mediterranean for
ulterior purposes, understood between him and Cromwell.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 186-198, with, documents in Appendix;
Godwin, IV. 187-188; Whitlocke. IV., 206-207.]

While Blake was in the Mediterranean, one Italian potentate did a
sudden act of infamy, which resounded through Europe, and for which
Cromwell would fain have clutched him by the throat in his own inland
capital. This was Carlo Emanuele II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of
Piedmont.

In the territories of this young prince, in the Piedmontese valleys
of Luserna, Perosa, and San Martino, on the east side of the Cottian
Alps, lived the remarkable people known as the Vaudois or Waldenses.
From time immemorial these obscure mountaineers, speaking a peculiar
Romance tongue of their own, had kept themselves distinct from the
Church of Rome, maintaining doctrines and forms of worship of such a
kind that, after the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as
primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through
the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation
into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had
penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for
their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they
had been before. They had experienced persecutions through their
whole history, and especially after the Reformation; but, on the
whole, the two last Dukes of Savoy, and also Christine, daughter of
Henry IV. of France, and Duchess-Regent through the minority of her
son, the present Duke, had protected them in their privileges, even
while extirpating Protestantism in the rest of the Piedmontese
dominions. Latterly, however, there had been a passion at Turin and
at Rome for their conversion to the Catholic faith, and priests had
been traversing their valleys for the purpose. The murder of one such
priest, and some open insults to the Catholic worship, about
Christmas 1654, are said to have occasioned what followed.

On the 25th of January, 1654-5, an edict was issued, under the
authority of the Duke of Savoy, "commanding and enjoining every head
of a family, with its members, of the pretended Reformed Religion, of
what rank, degree, or condition soever, none excepted, inhabiting and
possessing estates in the places of Luserna, Lucernetta, San
Giovanni, La Torre, Bubbiana, and Fenile, Campiglione,
Briccherassio, and San Secondo, within three days, to withdraw and
depart, and be, with their families, withdrawn, out of the said
places, and transported into the places and limits marked out for
toleration by his Royal Highness during his good pleasure, namely
Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna, Rorata, and the County of Bonetti, under
pain of death and confiscation of goods and houses, unless they gave
evidence within twenty days of having become Catholics." Furthermore
it was commanded that in every one even of the tolerated places there
should be regular celebration of the Holy Mass, and that there should
be no interference therewith, nor any dissuasion of any one from
turning a Catholic, also on pain of death. All the places named are
in the Valley of Luserna, and the object was a wholesale shifting of
the Protestants of that valley out of nine of its communes and their
concentration into five higher up. In vain were there remonstrances
at Turin from those immediately concerned. On the 17th of April,
1655, the Marquis di Pianezza entered the doomed region with a body
of troops, mainly Piedmontese, but with French and Irish among them.
There was resistance, fighting, burning, pillaging, flight to the
mountains, and chasing and murdering for eight days, Saturday, April
24, being the climax. The names of about three hundred of those
murdered individually are on record, with the ways of the deaths of
many of them. Women were ripped open, or carried about impaled on
spikes; men, women, and children, were flung from precipices, hacked,
tortured, roasted alive; the heads of some of the dead were boiled
and the brains eaten; there are forty printed pages, and twenty-six
ghastly engravings, by way of Protestant tradition of the ascertained
variety of the devilry. The massacre was chiefly in the Valley of
Luserna, but extended also into the other two valleys. The fugitives
were huddled in crowds high among the mountains, moaning and
starving; and not a few, women and infants especially, perished amid
the snows. On the 27th of April some of the remaining Protestant
pastors and others, gathered together somewhere, addressed a circular
letter to Protestants outside the Valleys, stating the hard case of
the survivors. "Our beautiful and flourishing churches," they said,
"are utterly lost, and that without remedy, unless God Almighty work
miracles for us. Their time is come, and our measure is full. O have
pity upon the desolations of Jerusalem, and be grieved for the
afflictions of poor Joseph! Shew the real effects of your
compassions, and let your bowels yearn for so many thousands of poor
souls who are reduced to a morsel of bread for following the Lamb
whithersoever he goes."[1]

[Footnote 1: Morland's History of the Evangelical Churches of the
Valleys of Piedmont, with a Relation of the Massacre (1658),
287-428; Guizot, II. 213-215.]

There was a shudder of abhorrence through Protestant Europe, but no
one was so much roused as Cromwell. In the interval between the Duke
of Savoy's edict and the Massacre he had been desirous that the
Vaudois should publicly appeal to him rather than to the Swiss; and,
when the news of the Massacre reached England, he avowed that it came
"as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been
concerned." On Thursday the 17th of May, and for many days more, the
business of the Savoy Protestants was the chief occupation of the
Council. Letters, all in Milton's Latin, but signed by the Lord
Protector in his own name, were despatched (May 25) to the Duke of
Savoy himself, to the French King, to the States General of the
United Provinces, to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, to the King of
Sweden, to the King of Denmark, and to Ragotski, Prince of
Transylvania. A day of humiliation was appointed for the Cities of
London and Westminster, and another for all England. A Committee was
appointed, consisting of all the Councillors, with Sir Christopher
Pack and other eminent citizens, and also some ministers, to organize
a general collection of money throughout England and Wales in behalf
of the suffering Vaudois. The collection, as arranged June 1, was to
take the form of a house-to-house visitation by the ministers and
churchwardens in every city, town, and parish on a particular Lord's
day, for the receipt of whatever sum each householder might freely
give, every such sum to be noted in presence of the donor, and the
aggregates, parish by parish, or city by city, to be remitted to the
treasurers in London, who were to enter them duly in a general
register. The subscription, which lagged for a time in some
districts, produced at length a total of £38,097 7_s._
3_d._--equal to about £137,000 now. Of this sum £2000 (equal to
about £7500 now) was Cromwell's own contribution, while London and
Westminster contributed £9384 6_s._ 11_d._, and the various
counties sums of various magnitudes, according to their size, wealth,
and zeal, from Devonshire at the head, with £1965 0_s._
3_d._, Yorkshire next, with £1786 14_s._ 5_d._, and
Essex next, with £1512 17_s._ 7_d._, down to Merionethshire
yielding £3 0_s._ 1_d._ from her eight parishes, and
Radnorshire £1 14_s._ 4_d._ from her seven. Cromwell's own
donation of £2000 went at once to Geneva for immediate use; and
£10,000 followed on the 10th of July, as the first instalment of the
general subscription. There were similar subscriptions, it ought to
be added, in other Protestant countries.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter from Thurloe to Pell at Geneva (Vaughan's
Protectorate, I. 158-159); Council Order Books, May 17, 18, 22, 23,
25, June 1 and July 8, 1655; Morland, 562-596. Morland gives an
interesting abstract of the Treasurer's Accounts of the Collection;
but the original accounts in a large folio book, entitled
_Committee for Piedmont_ &c., are in the Record Office. The
counties are arranged there alphabetically and the parishes
alphabetically under each county, with the sums which the
_parishes_ individually subscribed. Some parishes seem wholly
to have neglected the subscription, and there are blanks opposite
their names.]

At the time of the massacre Cromwell had two agents in Switzerland,
viz. Mr. JOHN PELL (Vol. IV. p. 449) and the ubiquitous JOHN DURIE.
They had been sent abroad early in 1654, to cultivate the friendly
intercourse already begun between the Evangelical Cantons and the
Commonwealth, and also to watch the progress of a struggle which had
just broken out between the Popish Cantons of the Confederacy and the
Evangelical Cantons. As the Evangelical Cantons were also astir
about the Vaudois, whose cause was so closely connected with their
own, the services of Pell and Durie were now available for that
business. Cromwell, however, had thought an express Commissioner
necessary, with instructions to negotiate directly with the Duke of
Savoy, and had selected for the purpose Mr, SAMUEL MORLAND, an able
and ingenious man, about thirty years of age, who had been with
Whitlocke in his Swedish Embassy, and had been taken into the Council
office on his return as assistant to Thurloe. On the 26th of May
Morland left London, carrying with him the letters addressed to Louis
XIV. and the Duke of Savoy. He was at La Fère in France on the 1st of
June, treating with the French King and Mazarin, and was able to
despatch thence a letter from the French King to Cromwell, expressing
willingness to do all that could be done for the Vaudois, and
explaining that he had already conveyed his views on the subject to
the Duke of Savoy. Thence Morland continued his journey to Rivoli,
near Turin, where he arrived on the 21st of June. He was received
most politely, was entertained and driven about both at Rivoli and at
Turin itself, and was admitted to a formal audience on or about the
24th. He there made a speech in Latin to the Duke, the Duchess-mother
being also present, and delivered Cromwell's letter, The speech was a
very bold one. He spared no detail of horror in his picture of the
massacre as he had authentically ascertained it, and added, "Were all
the Neros of all times and ages alive again (I would be understood to
say it with out any offence to your Highness, inasmuch as we believe
that none of these things was done by any fault of yours), they would
be ashamed at finding that they had contrived nothing that was not
even mild and humane in comparison. Meanwhile angels are
horrorstruck, mortals amazed!" The Duchess-mother, replying for her
son, could hardly avoid hinting that Mr. Morland had been rather
rude. She was, nevertheless, profuse in expressions of respect for
the Lord Protector, who had no doubt received very exaggerated
representations of what had happened, but at whose request she was
sure her son would willingly pardon his rebellious subjects and
restore them to their privileges. During the rest of Morland's stay
in Turin or its neighbourhood the object of the Duke's counsellors,
and also of the French minister, was to furnish him with what they
called a more correct account of the facts, and induce him to convey
to Cromwell a gentler view of the whole affair. Morland kept his own
counsel; but, having had a second audience, and received the Duke's
submissive but guarded answer to Cromwell, and also several other
papers, he left Turin on the 19th of July and proceeded, according to
his instructions, to Geneva.[1]

[Footnote 1: Morland, 563-583; and Letters between Pell and Thurloe
given in _Vaughan's Protectorate_.]

Meanwhile Cromwell, dissatisfied with the coolness of the French King
and Mazarin, and also with the shuffling and timidity of the Swiss
Cantons, had been taking the affair more and more into his own hands.
He had despatched, late in July, another Commissioner, Mr. GEORGE
DOWNING, to meet Morland at Geneva, help Morland to infuse some
energy into the Cantons, and then proceed with him to Turin to bring
matters to a definite issue. He had been inquiring also about the
fittest place for landing an invading force against the Duke, and had
thought of Nice or Villafranca. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean
was not forgotten. All which being known to Mazarin, that wily
statesman saw that no time was to be lost. While Mr. Downing was
still only on his way to Geneva through France, Mazarin had
instructed M. Servien, the French minister at Turin, to insist, in
the French King's name, on an immediate settlement of the Vaudois
business. The result was a _Patente di Gratia e Perdono_, or
"Patent of Grace and Pardon," granted by Charles Emanuel to the
Vaudois Protestants, Aug. 19, in terms of a Treaty at Pignerol, in
which the French Minister appeared as the real mediating party and
certain Envoys from the Swiss Cantons as more or less assenting. As
the Patent substantially retracted the Persecuting Edict and restored
the Vaudois to all their former privileges, nothing more was to be
done. Cromwell, it is true, did not conceal that he was disappointed.
He had looked forward to a Treaty at Turin in which his own envoys,
Morland and Downing, and D'Ommeren, as envoy from the United
Provinces, would have taken the leading part, and he somewhat
resented Mazarin's too rapid interference and the too easy compliance
of the envoys of the Cantons. The Treaty of Pignerol contained
conditions that might occasion farther trouble. Still, as things
were, he thought it best to acquiesce. Downing, who had arrived at
Geneva early in September, was at once recalled, leaving Morland and
Pell still there, to superintend the distribution of the English
subscription-money among the poor Vaudois, instalment after
instalment, as they arrived. The charitable work was to detain
Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was
the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of
Cromwell's mind to the day of his death.[1]

[Footnote 1: Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II. 220-225; Council Order
Book, July 17.]

Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the
Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced
by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise. It was now
some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture
with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the
world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed
orders to the West Indies under Penn's command. The instructions to
Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander
of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should
strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New
World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth. It
might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba,
or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American
mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual
conveyance across the Atlantic. Much discretion was left to Penn and
Venables, but on the whole St. Domingo, then called Hispaniola, was
indicated for a beginning. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean with
the other fleet had been timed for an assault on Spain at home when
the news should arrive of the disaster to her colonies.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 184-186; Godwin, IV. 180-194.]

Penn and Venables together were not equal to one Blake. They opened
their sealed instructions at Barbadoes, one of the two or three small
Islands of the West-Indies then possessed by the English, and, after
counsel and preparation, proceeded to Hispaniola. The fleet now
consisted of about sixty vessels, and there were about 9000 soldiers
on board, some of them veterans, but most of them recruits of bad
quality. They were off St. Domingo, the capital of the Island, on the
14th of April, 1655, and from that moment there was misunderstanding
and blundering. Penn, Venables, and the Chief Commissioner who had
been sent out with them, differed as to the proper landing point; the
wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill
and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first
by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot
among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo
were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of
Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality
from climate and bad food being also great, the enterprise on
Hispaniola was then abandoned; but, dreading a return to England with
nothing accomplished, Penn and Venables bethought themselves of
Jamaica. Here, where they arrived May 10, they were rather more
fortunate. The Spaniards, utterly unforewarned, deserted the coast,
and fled inland. There was no difficulty, therefore, in taking
nominal possession of the chief town, though even that was done in a
bungling manner. Then, leaving the Island in charge of a portion of
the troops, under Major-General Fortescue, with Vice-Admiral Goodson
to sail about it with a protecting squadron, Penn hastened back to
England, Venables quickly following him. They arrived in London,
within a few days of each other, early in September, and were at once
committed to the Tower for having returned without orders. The news
of the failure of their enterprise had preceded them, and Cromwell
was profoundly angry. A bilious illness which he had about this time
was attributed by the French ambassador Bordeaux to his brooding over
the West-Indian mischance. He was soon himself again, however, and
Penn and Venables had nothing to fear. They were released after a
few weeks. After all, Jamaica was better than nothing.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 195-203; Carlyle, III. 122-123; Guizot,
II. 226-231; Letters of Cromwell to Vice-Admiral Goodson and
Major-General Fortescue (Carlyle, III. 126-132).]

One result of the West Indian expedition was that the long-delayed
alliance with France was now a settled affair. Cardenas had his
pass-ports sent him, and on the 22nd of October, 1655, he left
England. The Court of Madrid had already recalled him, laid an
embargo on all English property in Spain, and conferred a Marquisate
and pension on the Governor of Hispaniola. On the 24th of October the
Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Cromwell and Louis XIV. was
finally signed; and within a few days afterwards there was out in
London an elaborate document entitled "_Scriptum Domini
Protectoris, ex consensu atque sententia Concilii sui editum, in quo
hujus Reipublica causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_"
("The Lord-Protector's Manifesto, published with the consent and
advice of his Council, in which the justice of the Cause of this
Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated"). Now,
accordingly, the Commonwealth entered on a new era of her history.
Cromwell and Mazarin were to be fast friends, and the Stuarts were to
have no help or countenance any more from the French crown; while, on
the other hand, there was to be war to the death between the
Commonwealth and Spain, war in the new world and war in the old, and
Spain was thus naturally to adopt the cause of Charles II., and
employ exiled English Royalism everywhere as one of her agencies,--Of
the consciousness of the Lord-Protector and the Council of this
increased complexity of the foreign relations of the Commonwealth in
consequence of the rupture with Spain there is a curious incidental
illustration. "That several volumes of the book called _The New
Atlas_ be bought for the use of the Council, and that the Globe
heretofore standing in the Council Chamber be again brought thither,"
had been one of the Council's instructions to Thurloe at their
meeting of Oct. 2. Thenceforth, doubtless, both the Globe and the
Atlas were to be much in request.--More important, however, than such
fixed apparatus in the Council Room was the moving instrumentality of
envoys and diplomatists in the chief European cities and capitals.
Above all, an able ambassador in Paris was now an absolute necessity.
Nor was the fit man wanting. Among the former Royalists of the
Presbyterian section that had become reconciled to the Commonwealth,
and attached to the Protector by strong personal loyalty, was the
Scottish WILLIAM LOCKHART, member for Lanarkshire in the late
Parliament. He had been trained to arms in France in his youth, and
had since then served as a Colonel among the Scots. In this capacity
he had been in Hamilton's Army of the Engagement, defeated by
Cromwell at Preston, and in David Leslie's subsequent Army for
Charles II., defeated at Dunbar. Having received some insults from
Charles, of such a kind that he had declared that "no King on earth
should use him in that manner," he had snapped his connexion with the
Stuarts before the Battle of Worcester; and for some time after that
battle he had lived moodily in Scotland, meditating a return to
France for military employment. A visit to London and an interview
with Cromwell had retained his talents for the service of the
Protectorate, and his affection for that service had been confirmed
by his marriage, in 1654, with Robina Sewster, the orphan niece of
the Protector. Altogether Cromwell had judged him to be the very man
to represent the Protectorate at Paris, and be even a match for
Mazarin. He was now thirty-four years of age. He was nominated to the
embassy in December 1655; but he did not go to his post till the
following April.--Hardly a less important appointment was that, in
January 1655-6, of young Edward Montague to be one of the Admirals of
the Fleet. Blake, who had been cruising off Cadiz, and on whom there
was the chief dependence for action against the Spaniards at sea, had
felt the responsibility too great, and had applied for a colleague.
Penn, being in disgrace, was out of the question; and Montague, then
a member of the Protector's Council, was chosen. He had been one of
Cromwell's favourites and disciples since the days of Marston Moor
and Naseby, when, though hardly out of his teens, he had
distinguished himself highly as a Parliamentary Colonel. Henceforth
the sea was to be his chief element; and, as Admiral or General at
sea, he was to become very famous.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV, 214-217 and 298-300; Guizot, II. 231-234;
Thomason copy of the Declaration against Spain, dated Nov. 9, 1655;
Council Order Books, Oct. 2, 1655; Article on Lockhart in Chambers's
Biographical Dictionary of Scotsmen; Carlyle, III. 309-310.]

It was just about this time of change and extension in the foreign
relations of the Commonwealth that the people of England and Wales
became aware that they were, and had been for some time, under an
entirely new system of home-government, called _Government by
Major-Generals_.

The difficulties of the home-government of the Protectorate were
great and peculiar. The power of the Lord-Protector and his Council
to pass ordinances had been called in question. Judges and lawyers
were not only pretty unanimous in the opinion that resistance to
payment of imposts not enacted by Parliamentary authority might be
made good at law, and that the Ordinance for Chancery Reform was also
legally invalid; they doubted even whether, in strict law, there
could be proceedings for the preservation of the public peace, by
courts and magistrates, under any Council ordinance about crimes and
treasons. All this Cromwell had been meditating. How was revenue to
be raised? How were Royalist and Anabaptist plottings to be
suppressed? How were police regulations about public manners and
morals to be enforced? How was the will of the Central Government at
Whitehall, in any matter whatsoever, to be transmitted to any spot in
the community and made really operative? Meditating these questions,
Cromwell, as he expressed it afterwards, "did find out a little poor
invention": "I say," he repeated, "there was a little thing
invented."[1] The little invention consisted in a formal
identification of the Protector's Chief Magistracy with his Headship
of the Army. He had resolved to map out England and Wales into
districts, and to plant in each district a trusty officer, with the
title of Major-General, who should be nominally in command of the
militia of that district, but should be really also the executive
there for the Central Government in all things. A beginning had been
made in the business as early as May 1655, when Desborough was
appointed Major-General of the Militia in the six southwestern
counties; and the districts had been all marked out and the
Major-Generals chosen in August. But there had been very great
secrecy about the scheme; and not till the 31st of October was there
official announcement of the new organization. Only about mid-winter,
1655-6, did people fully realise what it meant. The Major-Generalcies
then stood thus:--

[Footnote 1: Speech V. (Carlyle, III. 176).]

           Person.                               District.

  1. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON.     _London._

  2. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BARKSTEAD.     _Westminster and Middlesex._

  3. MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS KELSEY.      _Kent and Surrey._

  4. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM GOFFE.      _Sussex, Hants, and Berks._

  5. FLEETWOOD (with MAJOR-GENERAL     _Oxford, Bucks, Herts,_
     HEZEKIAH HAYNES as his deputy).   _Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,_
                                            _and Cambridge._

  6. MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD WHALLEY.     _Lincoln, Notts, Derby,_
                                            _Warwick, and Leicester._

  7. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM BUTLER.     _Northampton, Bedford,_
                                            _Hunts, and Rutland._

  8. MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES WORSLEY     _Chester, Lancaster, and_
     (succeeded by MAJOR-GENERAL            _Stafford._
     TOBIAS BRIDGES).

  9. LAMBERT (with MAJOR-GENERAL       _York, Durham, Cumberland_
     ROBERT TILBURNE and MAJOR-GENERAL _Westmorland,_
     CHARLES HOWARD as his deputies).       _and Northumberland._

  10. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN DESBOROUGH.   _Gloucester, Wilts, Dorset,_
                                            _Somerset, Devon, and_
                                            _Cornwall._

  11. MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES BERRY.       _Worcester, Hereford, Salop,_
                                            _and North Wales._

  12. MAJOR-GENERAL DAWKINS.           _Monmouthshire and_
                                            _South Wales._[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, as digested by Godwin, IV. 228-229.]

The powers intrusted to these Major-Generals and to their subordinate
officers in the several counties were all but universal. They were to
patrol the counties with horse and foot, but especially with horse.
They were to guard against robberies and tumults and to bring
criminals to punishment. They were to take charge of the public
morals, and see the laws put in force against drunkenness, blasphemy,
plays and interludes, profanation of the Lord's Day, and
disorderliness generally. They were to keep a register of all
disaffected persons, remove arms from their houses, note their
changes of residence, and take security for the good behaviour of
themselves, their families, and servants. All travellers and
strangers were bound to appear before them, and give an account of
themselves and their business. They were to arrest vagabonds and
persons with no visible means of living. Above all, they were to see
to the execution of a certain very severe and far-reaching measure
which the Protector and the Council had determined to adopt in
consequence of the late Royalist insurrection and conspiracy.

Either from information that had been received, or merely _in
terrorem_, there had, during the past summer and autumn, been
numerous arrests of persons of rank and wealth that had hitherto been
allowed to live quietly in their country mansions, on the
understanding that, though Royalists, they had ceased to be such, in
any active sense. The Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Lindsey, the
Earl of Newport, the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Rivers, the
Earl of Peterborough, Viscount Falkland, and Lords Lovelace, St.
John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, Lucas, and Willoughby of Parham, with
a great many commoners of distinction, had been thus arrested. There
was a general consternation among the peaceful Royalists throughout
the country. It looked as if their peacefulness was to be of no
avail, as if the Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2 was to be a dead
letter, as if Cromwell had suddenly changed his policy of universal
conciliation. In reality, Cromwell had no intention of reversing his
policy of universal conciliation; but he wanted to teach the lesson
that Royalist insurrections and conspiracies would fall heavily on
the Royalists themselves, and he wanted particularly, at that
moment, to make the Royalists pay the expenses of the police kept up
on their account. Under cover of the consternation caused by the
numerous arrests, he introduced, in fact, a _Decimation_ upon
the Royalists, i.e. an income tax of ten per cent, upon all Royalists
possessing estates in land of £100 a year and upwards or personal
property worth £1500. It was to be the main business of the
Major-Generals to assess this tax within their bounds, and to collect
it strictly and swiftly. It is astonishing with what ease they
succeeded. It seems to have been even a relief to the Royalists to
know definitely what their principles were to cost them, and to have
arrest or the dread of it commuted into a fixed money payment. As
soon as the tax was fairly in operation, all or most of those who had
been arrested were liberated, and subsequent arrests by the
Major-Generals themselves were only of vagabonds or suspicious
persons. The only appeal from the Major-Generals was to his Highness
himself and the Council.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, 223-242; Carlyle, III. 101.]

What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts,
what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the
direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all
England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At no time since the
beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general
decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see.
Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under
ban. Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of
weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more
closely looked after than they had been. But what shall we say about
this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:--"_Wednesday,
5th Sept._, 1655--At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his
Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever
do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or
intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State"? The effect of
the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to
be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of
newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was
reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz.
Needham's _Mercurius Politicus_, published on Thursdays, and
_The Public Intelligencer_, a more recent adventure, published
on Mondays. Just after the order, I note, the _Mercurius
Politicus_ enlarged its size somewhat, to match with the _Public
Intelligencer_, and in the first number of the new size
(Sept. 22-Oct. 4, 1655) the Editor speaks with great approbation of the
Order of Council "silencing the many pamphlets that have hitherto
presumed to come abroad." Needham seems now to have assumed the
editorship of both papers; and after the twenty-third number of the
_Intelligencer_ (March 3-10, 1655-6) the publisher of it, as
well as of the _Mercurius Politicus_, was Thomas Newcome. The
newspaper press of the Protectorate was thus pretty well consolidated
by Mr. Thurloe. There were two papers only, under one management, or
rather there was a single bi-weekly newspaper with alternative
names.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of 1655 and 1658 _passim; Merc.
Pol._ and _Public Intelligencer_ of dates given.]

It was part of the duty of the Major-Generals to assist, so far as
might still be necessary, in the execution of the Ordinance of Aug.
1654 for the ejection of scandalous and insufficient ministers and
schoolmasters (Vol. IV. p. 564 and p. 571), The County _Committees of
Ejectors_ under that Ordinance had already performed their
disagreeable work in part, but were still busy. On the whole, though
they turned out many, they seem not to have abused their powers. "I
must needs say," is Baxter's testimony, "that in all the counties
where I was acquainted, six to one at least, if not many more, that
were sequestered by the Committees were, by the oaths of witnesses,
proved insufficient or scandalous, or both--especially guilty of
drunkenness or swearing,--and those that, being able godly preachers,
were cast out for the war alone, as for their opinions' sake, were
comparatively very few. This, I know, will displease that party; but
this is true." Baxter admits, indeed, that there were cases in which
the Committees were swayed too much by mere political feeling, and
ejected men from their pulpits whom it would have been better to
retain. Other authorities assert the same more strongly, but rather
fail in the proof. The most notorious instance produced of a blunder
on the part of any of the Committees was in Berkshire. The Rector of
Childrey in this county was the learned orientalist Pocock, who had
lost his Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford for
refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, but still held the
Arabic lectureship there, because there was no one else who knew
Arabic sufficiently. Not liking his look, or not seeing what
Orientalism had to do with the Gospel, the rude Berkshire Committee
were on the point of turning him out of his Rectory, when Dr. Owen
interfered manfully and prevented the scandal. About the same time,
it is said, Thomas Fuller was in some trepidation about his living of
Waltham Abbey, in Essex, but acquitted himself before the Committee
handsomely.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter, 74; Wood's Ath. IV. 319; Godwin, IV. 40-41.]

Distinct from the County Committees of Ejectors, and forming the
other great constitutional power in Cromwell's Church-Establishment,
was the Central or London _Committee of the Thirty-eight Triers_
(Vol. IV. p. 571). It was their duty to examine "all candidates for
the public ministry," i.e. all persons presented to livings by the
patrons of the same, and pass only those that were fit. Baxter's
report of the work of these Triers, as done either by themselves in
conclave, or by Sub-commissioners for them in the counties, is the
more remarkable because he disowned the authority under which the
Triers acted and was in controversy with most of them. "Though their
authority was null," he says, "and though some few over-busy and
over-rigid Independents among them, were too severe against all that
were Arminians, and too particular in inquiring after evidences of
sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in
their admission of unlearned and erroneous men that favoured
Antinomianism or Anabaptism, yet, to give them their due, they did
abundance of good to the Church. They saved many a congregation from
ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers. That sort of men that intended
no more in the ministry than to say a sermon as readers say their
common prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the
people asleep with on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with
them to the ale-house and harden them in sin; and that sort of
ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as
men that never were acquainted with it; all those that used the
ministry but as a common trade to live by, and were never likely to
convert a soul:--all these they usually rejected, and in their stead
admitted of any that were able serious preachers, and lived a godly
life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that, though
they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents,
Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men, and Anabaptists, and against the
Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt
which they brought to the Church that many thousands of souls blessed
God for the faithful ministers whom they let in." Royalist writers
after the Restoration give, of course, a different picture.
"Ignorant, bold, canting fellows," they say, "laics, mechanics, and
pedlars," were brought into the Church by Cromwell's Triers. One may,
in the main, trust Baxter.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter, 72; Noal, IV. 102-109.]

Cromwell's Established Church of England and Wales may now be imaged
with tolerable accuracy. It contained two patches of completed
Presbyterian organization, one in London and the other in Lancashire.
The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial
Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two
districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire,
however, the system was in a languid state; and for the rest of the
country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire
too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle
of the Independency of Congregations. Each parish had, or was to
have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the
association of ministers among themselves for consultation or mutual
criticism was very much left to chance and discretion. Ministers and
deacons, however, did draw up Agreements and form voluntary
Associations in various counties, holding monthly or other periodical
meetings; and, as it was the rule in such associations not to meddle
with matters of Civil Government, they were countenanced by the
Protectorate. Baxter tells us much of the Association in
Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that
similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and
Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex.
These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for
the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers
belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter
himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the
stricter Presbyterians, who sighed for the perfect model, held aloof.
Perhaps the majority of the State-clergy all over the country
consisted of these two classes of Presbyterians baulked of their full
Presbyterianism,--the _Rigid Presbyterians_, who would accept
nothing short of the system as exemplified in London and Lancashire,
and the _Eclectics_ or _Quasi-Presbyterians_ grouped in
voluntary Associations. But among the State-clergy collectively there
were several other varieties. There were many of the old
_Church-of-England Rectors and Vicars_, still Prelatic in
sentiment, and, though obliged to disuse the Book of Common Prayer,
maintaining some sweet remnant of Anglicanism. Some of these, not of
the High Church school, did not scruple to join the
quasi-Presbyterian Associations that were liberal enough to admit
them; but most found more liberty in keeping by themselves. Then
there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various
Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of
Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore
did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church. The more
moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency
with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian
Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many. The
majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge
of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other,
if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of
all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the
difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely,
with the _Baptists_. How could preachers who rejected the rite
of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of
adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers
of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That
such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a
fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Pædobaptists, and
himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster
in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and
a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances.
Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than
that Anti-Pædobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to
Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he
elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this.
"Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church
of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Pædobaptists and
Anti-Pædobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister
be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and,
if he be a Pædobaptist, let not _them_ withdraw from _us_."
He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his
opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the
majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the
same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly
enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with
him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how
many places, this method of leaving Pædo-baptism an open question was
actually in operation in the Established Church of the Protectorate,
and whether Infant Baptism thus fell into complete abeyance in some
parishes where Anabaptists of eminence were settled, or whether the
Pædobaptist parishioners in such eases quietly avoided that result by
having their children baptized by other ministers, are points of some
obscurity. On the whole, the difficulty can have been felt but
exceptionally and here and there, for it was obviated on the great
scale by the fact that most of the real Anabaptists, preachers and
people alike, were Voluntaries, disowning the State-Church
altogether, and meeting only in separate congregations. Even for
such, however, in localities where they were pretty numerous, there
seems to have been a desire to make some provision. Thus on March 13,
1655-56, it was ordered by His Highness and the Council "that it be
referred to General Desborough, Major-General for the County of
Devon, to take care that the Church under the form of Baptism at
Exeter have such one of the public meeting-places assigned to them
for their place of worship as is best in repair, and may with most
conveniency be spared and set apart for that use." The Exeter
Baptists may have thought it not inconsistent with their principles
to accept so much of State favour. Not the public buildings, so much
as the Tithes and Lay Patronage with which they were connected, were
the abominations of the State-Church in the eyes of the Anabaptist
Voluntaries. For let it not be forgotten that Cromwell's ardent
passion for a Church-Establishment under his Protectorate had come
more and more to involve, in his reasonings, the preservation of the
Tithe-system and the continuance of lay Patronage. The legal patrons
of livings retained their right of nominating to vacancies; the
Triers only checked that right by examination of nominees and the
rejection of the unfit. Cromwell himself combined in his own person,
to a most extraordinary extent, the functions both of Patron and
Trier. "It is observable that, his Highness having near one half of
the livings in England, one way or other, in his own immediate
disposal by presentation, he seldom bestoweth one of them upon any
man whom himself doth not first examine and make trial of in person,
save only that, at such times as his great affairs happen to be more
urgent than ordinary, he useth to appoint some other to do it in his
behalf; which is so rare an example of piety that the like is not to
be found in the stories of Princes." We have not exaggerated, it will
be seen, Cromwell's personal anxiety about his Established Church.
That, indeed, is farther proved, in a very interesting manner, by
certain entries in the Order Books of his Council which become more
and more frequent in this middle section of his Protectorate. They
refer to "augmentations of ministers' stipends." Thus, in December
1655, there is an order for the augmentation of the stipends of
seventy-five ministers in different counties, all in one batch; and
succeeding entries in 1656 show the steady progress of the same work
by repeated orders for other augmentations, batch after batch.
Clearly Cromwell had resolved that there should be a systematic
increase of the salaries of the parochial clergy all over England,
beginning with those who needed it most. The details of the business
were managed by that body of "Trustees for maintenance of ministers"
which had been appointed by Ordinance in Sept. 1654 (Vol. IV. p.
564); but the final Orders for Augmentations came from the Protector
and Council, and there was no part of his work in which the Protector
seemed to have more pleasure.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter, 96-97 and 180-188; Wood's Ath. III. 1083;
Council Order Books of dates; Neal, IV. Chap. 3; Marchamont Needham's
Book against John Goodwin, entitled _The Great Accuser Cast
Down_, published in July 1657. The information about Cromwell's
practice in his patronage of livings is from the last. The book was
dedicated to Cromwell.]

But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church
which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was
faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the
fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may
be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory
of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or
twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then
adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still
upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however,
rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even
with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he
had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring
himself for the Civil Magistrate's Authority in matters of Religion,
he still cherished the extreme theory of Toleration as it might be
applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe,
he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody
whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself
most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his
difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other
unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like,
detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true
Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of
the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic
and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now,
indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a
Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven
was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the
Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the
present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and
Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently
published _A Second Beacon Fired_, in which they insidiously
tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and
State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading
Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly
adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian
magistrates" in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had
been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved
abundantly that the Protector's idea of Toleration would have been
voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing
definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from
Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with
their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the
nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending
directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws
and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1]

[Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The _Second
Beacon Fired_ was published in Oct. 1654 by six London
booksellers--Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas
Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell
and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics
chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John
Webster, and Feake. John Goodwin replied to the booksellers in _A
fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of
"The Second Beacon Fired_," published in Jan. 1654-5, and so
found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called _An
Apology for the Six Booksellers_.]

A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers,
nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by
Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the
most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There
were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes
and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts
and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would
publish one day _The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be
but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent
from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation_,
and George Fox would print the next day _The Unmasking and
Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true
light which comes from Christ Jesus_. Nor, of course, was there,
any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary
Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form
separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds
that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their
own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that
went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and
Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in
any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry
as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government
lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of
Dissenters from his Established Church--the Papists, the
Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and
the Jews.

(1) _The Papists._ Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's
government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them
to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is
as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had
passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations
upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin.
After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally
pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the
rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of
Protestants in Catholic countries. "Although I have this set home to
my spirit," Cromwell wrote in reply, "I may not (shall I tell you I
_cannot_?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my
affairs now stands, answer your call for Toleration. I say _I
cannot_, as to a public declaration of my sense in that point;
although I believe that under my government your Eminency, in behalf
of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour on men's
consciences, than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those
very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I
may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a
witness within me to the truth of what I affirm) made a difference;
and, as Jude speaks, 'plucked many out of the fire,'--the raging fire
of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences, and
encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And
herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and
some weights that press me down, to make a farther progress, and
discharge my promise to your Eminency in relation to that."[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 202-203. The letter is dated Dec. 26,
1656.]

(2) _The Episcopalians._ The question under this heading is not
about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as
to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church,
but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High
Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former
livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of
private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of
England. Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies
were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance.
It was published Nov. 24, 1655, under the title of _An Ordinance
for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth_, and it ordered that
after Jan. 1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as
chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of
the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately,
celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer,
under pain of being prosecuted. The Ordinance seems to have been
issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace
of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that
particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther
plottings. At all events, it was announced in the Ordinance itself
that there would be great delicacy in the application of it, so as to
favour such of the ejected as deserved tender treatment; and, in
fact, it was never applied or executed at all. No one was prosecuted
under it; and, though it was not recalled, it was understood that it
was suspended by the pleasure of his Highness, and that chaplains,
teachers, and preachers, of the Episcopal persuasion, might go on as
before, and reckon on all the toleration accorded to other
Dissenters. On this footing they did go on, ex-Bishops and future
Bishops among them, with increasing security; and gradually the
notion got abroad that the Protector began to have even a kindly
feeling for the "good old Church." Many Royalist authorities concur
to that effect. "The Protector," says one, "indulged the use of the
Common-Prayer in families and in private conventicles; and, though
the condition of the Church of England was but melancholy, yet it
cannot be denied that they had a great deal more favour and
indulgence than under the Parliament." Burnet, on the authority of
Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop Wilkins, who was the second husband of
Cromwell's youngest sister, adds a more startling statement. "Dr.
Wilkins told me," says Burnet, "he (Cromwell) often said to him
(Wilkins) no temporal government could have a sure support without a
national church that adhered to it, and he thought England was
capable of no constitution but Episcopacy; to which he told me he did
not doubt but Cromwell would have turned." Wilkins probably liked to
think this after he himself had turned; but it is hardly credible in
the form in which Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that
temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things,
which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the
Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as
a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the
Anabaptists. He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous
movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the
clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate
Episcopalians, as distinct from the High-Church Prelatists or
Laudians. Among others, Baxter was extremely zealous for such a
project; and his accounts of his correspondence about it with
ex-Bishop Brownrigg in 1655, and his conversations about it at the
same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting.
Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a
restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e. an
Episcopacy not professing to be _jure divino_, but only for
ecclesiastical conveniency,--the Bishops to be permanent Presidents
of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise
Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods. They were
willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider
the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other
matters of Anglican ceremonial. Enough all this to rouse the angry
souls of _Smectymnuus_, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch
Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution. But, as times
change, men change, and it is not impossible that Cromwell, the first
real mover of the Root-and-Branch Bill of 1641, may now, fifteen
years later, have looked speculatively sometimes at the old trunk in
the timberyard. It is certain that he treated with profound respect
the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have
been the most authoritative generally. Ex-Primate Usher had lived in
London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest
honour, pensioned at the rate of £400 a year, and holding also the
preachership to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Cromwell had shown him
every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions. He had
retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on
the 21st of March, 1655-6. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum
of £200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and
Council. Eight months after his death there was published from his
manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard,
that famous _Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical
Government_ which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol. II.
229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever
since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted
to Presbyterian forms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110;
Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656
(date of publication of Usher's _Reduction_); Wood's Fasti, I. 446.]

(3) _Anti-Trinitarians._ The crucial test of Cromwell's
Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as
regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr.
John Biddle. The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far
fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that
Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped
and he had been set at liberty (March 1655). But it was only to get
into fresh trouble. The orthodox in London were determined that he
should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd
of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, "in the new
meeting-house at Paul's, commonly called Captain Chillingdon's church
meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about
500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus
Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to
proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday." Cromwell himself was
present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the
Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague,
Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland. What were they to
do? They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all
such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they
referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous. The
affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was
committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came
on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648.
Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal
objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term. Meanwhile
London was greatly agitated. The Presbyterians and the orthodox
generally were eager for Biddle's conviction; but a very considerable
number of persons, including not only Biddle's own followers and
free-thinkers of other sorts, but also some Independent and Baptist
ministers, whose orthodoxy was beyond suspicion, bestirred themselves
in his behalf. Pamphlets appeared in that interest, one entitled
_The Spirit of Persecution again broken loose against Mr. John
Biddle_, and a numerously signed petition was addressed to
Cromwell, requesting his merciful interference. The Petition, as we
learn from _Mercurius Politicus_, was very badly managed. "The
persons who presented a petition some few days since to his Highness
on the behalf of Biddle," says that paper under date Sept. 28, "came
this day in expectation of an answer. They had access, and divers
godly ministers were present. And, the Petition being read in the
hearing of divers of those under whose countenance it was presented,
many of them disowned it, as being altered both in the matter and
title of it since they signed it, and so looked upon it as a forged
thing, wherein both his Highness and they were greatly abused, and
desired that the original which they signed might be produced; which
Mr. Ives and some others of the contrivers and presenters of it were
not able to do, nor had they anything to say in excuse of so foul a
miscarriage. Whereupon they were dismissed, his Highness having
opened to them the evil of such a practice [tampering with petitions
after they had been signed], as also how inconsistent it was for
_them_, who professed to be members of the Churches of Christ
and to worship him with the worship due to God, to give any
countenance to one who reproached themselves and all the Christian
Churches in the world as being guilty of idolatry: showing that, if
it be true which Mr. Biddle holds, to wit that our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship him with
the worship due to God are idolaters. His Highness showed moreover
that the maintainers of this opinion of Mr. Biddle's are guilty of
great blasphemy against Christ, who is God equal with the Father; and
he referred it to them to consider whether any who loved the Lord
Jesus Christ in sincerity could give any countenance to such a person
as he is." But, while the petitioners were thus dismissed with a
severe lecture, Cromwell had made up his mind to save Mr. Biddle. On
the 5th of October it was resolved by the Council that he should be
removed to the Isle of Scilly and there shut up; and Cromwell's
warrant to that effect was at once issued. In no other way could the
trial have been quashed, and it was the kindest thing that could have
been done for Biddle in the circumstances. He lived comfortably
enough in his seclusion in the distant Island for the next two years
and a half, receiving an allowance of a hundred crowns _per
annum_ from Cromwell, and employing his leisure in the deep study
of the Apocalypse and the preparation of a treatise against the
Doctrine of the Fifth Monarchy.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 3 and Oct. 5, 1655; _Merc.
Pol._ Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Wood's Ath. III. 599-601; Thomason
Catalogue (Tracts for and against Biddle).]

(4) _The Quakers._ There was immense difficulty with this new
sect--from the fact, as has been already explained, that they had not
settled down into mere local groups of individuals, asking toleration
for themselves, but were still in open war with all other sects, all
other forms of ministry, and prosecuting the war everywhere by
itinerant propagandism. George Fox himself and the best of his
followers seem by this time indeed to have given up the method of
actually interrupting the regular service in the steeple-houses in
order to preach Quakerism; but they were constantly tending to the
steeple-houses for the purpose of prophesying there, as was the
custom in country-places, after the regular service was over. Thus,
as well as by their conflicts with parsons of every sect wherever
they met them, and their rebukings of iniquity on highways and in
market-places, not to speak of their obstinate refusals to pay tithes
in their own parishes, they were continually getting into the hands
of justices of the peace and the assize-judges. Take as one example
of their treatment in superior courts the appearance of William
Dewsbury and other Quakers before Judge Atkins at Northampton after
they had been half a year in Northampton jail.--Seeing them at the
bar with their hats on, the Judge told the jailor he had a good mind
to fine him ten pounds for bringing prisoners into the Court in that
fashion, and ordered the hats to be removed by the jailor's man.
Then, after some preliminary parley, "What is thy name?" said the
Judge to Dewsbury, who had made himself spokesman for all. "Unknown
to the World," said Dewsbury. "Let us hear what that name is that the
World knows not," said the Judge goodhumouredly. "It is," quoth
Dewsbury, "known in the light, and none can know it but he that hath
it; but the name the world knows me by is William Dewsbury." Then to
the question of the Judge, "What countryman art thou?" the reply was,
"Of the Land of Canaan." The Judge remarked that Canaan was far off.
"Nay," answered Dewsbury, "for all that dwell in God are in the holy
city, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from Heaven, where the soul
is in rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom the
union is with the Father of Light." The Judge admitted that to be
very true, but asked Dewsbury whether, being an Englishman, he was
ashamed of that more prosaic fact. "Nay," said Dewsbury, "I am free
to declare that my natural birth was in Yorkshire, nine miles from
York towards Hull." The Judge then said, "You pretend to be
extraordinary men, and to have an extraordinary knowledge of God."
Dewsbury replied, "We witness the work of regeneration to be an
extraordinary work, wrought in us by the Spirit of God." The
conversation then turned on their preaching itinerancy, and
abstinence from all ordinary callings, the Judge remarking that even
the Apostles had worked with their hands. Dewsbury admitted that some
of the Apostles had been fishermen, and Paul a tent-maker, but
asserted that, "when they were called to the ministry of Christ, they
left their callings to follow Christ whither he led them by his
Spirit," and that he and his fellow-prisoners had but done the same.
The end of the colloquy was that the Judge, with every wish to be
lenient, could not make up his mind to discharge the prisoners. "I
see by your carriage," he said, "that what my brother Hale did at the
last assizes, in requiring bond for your good behaviour, he might
justly do it, for you are against magistrates and ministers"; and
they were remitted to Northampton jail accordingly.--If judges like
Hale and Atkins had to act thus, one may imagine how the poor Quakers
fared in the hands of inferior and rougher functionaries. Fines and
imprisonment for vagrancy, contempt of court, or non-payment of
tithes, were the ordinary discipline for all; but there were cases
here and there of whipping by the hangman, and other more ferocious
cruelties. For among the Quakers themselves there were varieties of
milder and wilder, less provoking and more provoking. The Quakerism
of men like Fox and Dewsbury was, at worst, but an obdurate and
irritating eccentricity, in comparison, for example, with the
Quakerism run mad of James Nayler. This enthusiast, once
quarter-master in a horse troop under Lambert, and regarded as "a man
of excellent natural parts," had for three or four years kept himself
within bounds, and been known only as one of the most eminent
preachers of the ordinary Gospel of the Quakers and a prolific writer
of Quaker tracts. But, having come to London in 1655, he had been
unbalanced by the adulation of some Quaker women, with a Martha
Simmons for their chief. "Fear and doubting then entered him," say
the Quaker records, "so that he came to be clouded in his
understanding, bewildered, and at a loss in his judgment, and became
estranged from his best friends, because they did not approve his
conduct." In other words, he became stark mad, and set up for
himself, as "The Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the Fairest
among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went
into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following
him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the
Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was
Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of
epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among
those reputed to belong to it. "One while," says Baxter, "divers of
them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as
a prophetical act: some of them have famished and drowned themselves
in melancholy;" and he adds, more especially, as his own experience
in Kidderminster, "I seldom preached a lecture, but going and coming
I was railed at by a Quaker in the market-place in the way, and
frequently in the congregation bawled at by the names of Hireling,
Deceiver, False Prophet, Dog, and such like language." The
Protector's own chapel in Whitehall was not safe. On April 13, 1656,
"being the Lord's day," says the _Public Intelligencer_ for that
week, "a certain Quaker came into the chapel in sermon time, and in a
very audacious manner disturbed the preacher, so that he was fain to
be silent a while, till the fellow was taken away. His Highness,
being present, did after sermon give order for the sending him to a
justice of peace, to be dealt with according to law."--Naturally, the
whole sect suffered for these indecencies and extravagances of some
of its members, and the very name _Quakerism_ became a synonym
for all that was intolerable. The belief had got abroad, moreover,
that "subtle and dangerous heads," Jesuits and others, had begun to
"creep in among them," to turn Quakerism to political account, and
"drive on designs of disturbance." Altogether the Protector and
Council were sorely tried. Their policy seems, on the whole, to have
been to let Quakerism run its course of public obloquy, and get into
jail, or even to the whipping-post _ad libitum_, for offences
against the peace, but at the same time to instruct the
Major-Generals privately to be as discreet as possible, making
differences between the sorts of Quakers, and especially letting none
of them come to harm for their mere beliefs. "Making a difference,"
as by the injunction in Jude's epistle, was, as we know, Cromwell's
own great rule in all cases where complete toleration was impossible,
and he does not seem to have been able to do more for the Quakers. He
had not, however, forgotten his interview with their chief, and may
have been interested in knowing more especially what had become of
_him_.--Fox, after much wandering in the West without serious
mishap, had fallen among Philistines in Cornwall early in 1656, and
had been arrested, with two companions, for spreading papers and for
general vagrancy and contumacy. He had been in Launceston prison for
some weeks, when Chief Justice Glynne came to hold the assizes in
those parts. There had been the usual encounter between the Judge and
the Quakers on the eternal question of the hats. "Where had they hats
at all, from Moses to Daniel?" said the Chief Justice, rather rashly,
meaning to laugh at the notion that Scripture could be brought to
bear on the question in any way whatever. "Thou mayest read in the
third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into
the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats,
their hose, and _their hats on_." Glynne, though he had lost his
joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing
among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on
the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and his
friends to Launceston prison. There, however, as they would not any
longer pay the jailor the seven shillings a week he demanded for the
board of each, they were put into the most horrible hole in the place
and treated abominably. They were in this predicament when Cromwell
heard of them. "While G. Fox was still in prison, one of his friends
went to Oliver Cromwell, and offered himself, body for body, to lie
in prison in his stead, if he would take him and let G. Fox go at
liberty. But Cromwell said he could not do it, for it was contrary to
law; and, turning to those of his Council, 'Which of you,' quoth he,
'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?'" An order
was sent by Cromwell to the Governor of Pendennis Castle to enquire
meantime into the treatment of the Launceston prisoners, and their
release followed after a little while. It was noted also, in proof of
his personal kindness towards the Quakers, that, though he received
letters from some of them violently abusive of himself and his
government, he never showed any anger on that account.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sewel's History of the Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 137-173;
Baxter, 77 and 180; _Public Intelligencer_ of April 14-21,
1656; Council Order Book, Feb. 6, 1655-6.]

(5)_The Jews._ A very interesting incident of Cromwell's
Protectorate was his attempt to obtain an open toleration for the
Jews in England. Since the year 1290, when they had been banished in
a body out of the kingdom under Edward I., there had been only
isolated and furtive instances of visits to England or residence in
England by persons of the proscribed race. Of late, however, a
certain Manasseh Ben Israel, an able and earnest Portuguese Jew,
settled in Amsterdam as a physician, had conceived the idea that, in
the new age of liberty and other great things in England, there might
be a permission for the Jews to return and live and trade freely. He
had opened negotiations by letter, first with the Rump and then with
the Barebones Parliament, but had at length come over to London to
deal directly with the Protector. "_To his Highness the Lord
Protector, &c. the Humble Addresses of Manasseh Ben Israel, Divine
and Doctor of Physic, in behalf of the Jewish Nation_," were in
print on the 5th of November, 1655; and they were formally before the
Council on the 13th, his Highness present in person. The petition was
for a general protection of such Jews as might come to reside in
England, with liberty of trade, freedom for their worship, the
possession of a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in London, and
a revocation of all statutes contrary to such privileges. Cromwell
was thoroughly in favour of the proposal and let the fact be known;
but, as it was necessary to proceed with caution, the matter was
referred to a conference between the Council and twenty-eight persons
outside of it, fourteen of whom were clergymen (Owen, Thomas Goodwin,
Nye, Cudworth, Hugh Peters, Sterry, &c.), and the rest lawyers (St.
John, Glynne, Steele, &c.), or city merchants (Lord Mayor Dethicke,
Aldermen Pack and Tichbourne, &c.) There were four meetings of this
Conference at Whitehall in December, Cromwell himself taking part. "I
never heard a man speak so well," says an auditor of his speech at
one of the meetings. On the whole, however, the Conference could not
agree with his Highness. Some of the city-men objected, on commercial
grounds, to the admission of the Jews; and the clergy were against it
almost to a man, partly on the authority of Scripture texts, partly
from fear of the effects of the importation into London of the new
sect of Judaism. The Conference was discontinued; and, though the
good Rabbi lingered on in London till April 1656, nothing could be
done. Prejudice in the religious world was too strong. Nevertheless
the Protector found means of giving effect to his own views. Not only
did he mark his respect for Manasseh Ben Israel by a pension of £100
a year, to be paid him in Amsterdam; he admitted so many Jews, one by
one, by private dispensation, that there was soon a little colony of
them in London, with a synagogue to suit, and a piece of ground at
Stepney leased for a cemetery. In effect, the readmission of the Jews
into England dates from Cromwell's Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ Nov. 1-8, 1655; Council Order Book,
Nov. 13; Godwin, IV. 243-251; Carlyle, III. 136, note. Prynne opposed
the Readmission of the Jews in a pamphlet, in two parts, called _A
Short Demurrer to the Jews' long discontinued Remitter_ (March
1656); and Durie published, in the form of a letter to Hartlib, _A
Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a
Christian Commonwealth_ (June 27, 1656). I have not seen Durie's
letter; but Mr. Crossley (_Worthington's Diary_, I. 83, note)
reports it as moderately favourable to the Jewish claim. The letter
is dated, he says, from Cassel, Jan. 8, 1655-6.]

Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell
seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and
privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and
education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a
special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate's
powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly
for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more
thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists
and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the
abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but
also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and
all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so
signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in
Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and
exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for
education should find any countenance from _his_ Protectorate.
Nor did it.

The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long
before Cromwell's accession to the supreme power--Cambridge in
1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III.
92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of
Pembroke (IV. 51-52). The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in
complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of
the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge
Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been
Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected
to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke's death.
His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by
this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various
ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers
to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his
native University of Cambridge also within his grasp. He availed
himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both,
and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and
privileges.--To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too
much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had
appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol. IV. p. 565), a
new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine
disputes, &c. The result was that the two Universities were now in
better and quieter working order than they had been since the first
stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War. Each
reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of
colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors. In Oxford there
was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently
Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John
Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr.
Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr.
Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the
mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the
Professors. Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr.
Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr.
Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry
More, and others now less remembered. And under the discipline and
teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a
generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of
learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit
also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and
appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the
century. Even Clarendon admits as much. It was a wonder to him to
find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the
University of Oxford, that the "several tyrannical governments
mutually succeeding each other" through so many previous years had
not so affected the place but that it still "yielded a harvest of
extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning." He
attributed this to the inherent virtues of the academic soil itself,
which could choke bad seeds, cherish the good, and even defy
barrenness by finding its own seeds; but it may be more reasonable to
suppose that the superintendence of the Universities under the
"tyrannical governments," and especially under Cromwell's as the
latest of them, had not been barbaric.--The University Commissioners,
it may be added, had authority to inspect Westminster School, Eton,
Winchester, and Merchant Taylors'. But, indeed, there seems hardly to
have been a foundation for learning anywhere in England that was not,
in one way or another, brought under Cromwell's eye. In his inquiries
after moneys that might still be recoverable out of the wreck of the
old ecclesiastical revenues one can see that, next to the increase
and better sustenance of his Established Ministry, additions to the
endowed scholastic machinery of the country were always in his mind.
It is clear indeed that one of those characteristics of conservatism
by which Cromwell intended that his government should be
distinguished from the preceding Governments of the Revolution was
greater care of the surviving educational institutions of England and
Wales, with the resuscitation of some that had fallen into decay. The
money-difficulties were great, and less could be accomplished than he
desired; but, apart from what may have been done for the refreshment
of the older foundations, it is memorable that Cromwell was able to
give effect to at least one very considerable design of English
University extension. A College in Durham, expressly for the benefit
of the North of England, with a Provostship, four Professorships, and
tutorships and fellowships to match, was one of the creations of the
Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti Oxon. from 1654 onwards; Orme's Life of
John Owen, 175-187; Clarendon, 623; Godwin, IV. 102-104 and 595;
Neal, IV. 121-123; with references to Worthington's Diary by
Crossley, and Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of
England_.]

While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the
Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the
encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men
individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were
always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly
friendly.

Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov.
20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the
following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already,
or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were
alive at the midpoint of Oliver's Protectorate, and could and did
then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as
his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his
implacable and exiled enemies. We divide the list into groups
according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656;
but the names within each group are arranged in the order of
seniority:[1]--

[Footnote 1: There may be errors and omissions in the list; but,
having taken some pains, I will risk it as it stands.]

  ADHERENTS MORE OR LESS CORDIAL.

  George Wither (_ætat_ 68).
  John Goodwin (_ætat_ 63).
  Edmund Calamy (_ætat_ 56).
  Thomas Goodwin (_ætat_ 56).
  John Lightfoot (_ætat_ 54).
  Edmund Waller (_ætat_ 51).
  John Rushworth (_ætat_ 49).
  Milton (_ætat_ 48).
  Benjamin Whichcote (_ætat_ 46).
  James Harrington (_ætat_ 45).
  Henry More (_ætat_ 42).
  John Wilkins (_ætat_ 42).
  John Owen (_ætat_ 40).
  John Wallis (_ætat_ 40).
  Ralph Cudworth (_ætat_ 39).
  Algernon Sidney (_ætat_ 39).
  Marchamont Needham (_ætat_ 36).
  Andrew Marvell (_ætat_ 36).
  Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (_ætat_ 35).
  William Petty (_ætat_ 33).
  Thomas Stanley (_ætat_ 31).
  John Aubrey (_ætat_ 30).
  Robert Boyle (_ætat_ 29).
  John Bunyan (_ætat_ 28).
  Sir William Temple (_ætat_ 27).
  John Tillotson (_ætat_ 26).
  John Howe (_ætat_ 26).
  Edward Phillips (_ætat_ 26).
  John Phillips (_ætat_ 25).
  John Dryden (_ætat_ 25).
  Henry Stubbe (_ætat_ 25).
  John Locke (_ætat_ 24).
  Samuel Pepys (_ætat_ 24).
  Edward Stillingfleet (_ætat_ 21).

  SUBJECTS BY COMPULSION.

  Ex-Bishop Hall (died Sept. 8, 1656, _ætat_ 82).
  John Hales (died May 19, 1656, _ætat_ 72).
  Robert Sanderson (_ætat_ 69).
  Thomas Hobbes (_ætat_ 68).
  Robert Herrick (_ætat_ 65).
  John Hacket (_ætat_ 64).
  Izaak Walton (_ætat_ 63).
  James Shirley (_ætat_ 62).
  James Howell (_ætat_ 62).
  Gilbert Sheldon (_ætat_ 58).
  William Prynne (_ætat_ 56).
  Brian Walton (_ætat_ 56).
  Peter Heylin (_ætat_ 56).
  Jasper Mayne (_ætat_ 52).
  Thomas Fuller (_ætat_ 52).
  Edward Pocock (_ætat_ 52).
  Sir William Davenant (_ætat_ 51).
  Thomas Browne of Norwich (_ætat_ 51).
  William Dugdale (_ætat_ 51).
  Henry Hammond (_ætat_ 51).
  Richard Fanshawe (_ætat_ 48).
  Aston Cockayne (_ætat_ 48).
  Samuel Butler (_ætat_ 44).
  Jeremy Taylor (_ætat_ 43).
  John Cleveland (_ætat_ 43).
  John Pearson (_ætat_ 43).
  John Birkenhead (_ætat_ 41).
  John Denham (_ætat_ 41).
  Richard Baxter (_ætat_ 41).
  Roger L'Estrange (_ætat_ 40).
  Abraham Cowley (_ætat_ 38).
  John Evelyn (_ætat_ 36).
  Isaac Barrow (_ætat_ 26).
  Anthony Wood (_ætat_ 25).
  Robert South (_ætat_ 23).

  ACTIVE ENEMIES IN EXILE.

  John Bramhall (_ætat_ 63).
  George Morley (_ætat_ 58).
  John Earle (_ætat_ 55).
  Sir Kenelm Digby (_ætat_ 53).
  Sir Edward Hyde (_ætat_ 48).
  Thomas Killigrew (_ætat_ 45).
  George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (_ætat_ 29).

The relations of Cromwell to such persons varied, of course, with
their attitudes towards himself and his government.

The theologian among his adherents to whom he seems to have been
drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. "Sir, you
are a person I must be acquainted with," he had said to Owen in
Fairfax's garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April
1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;[1] and so, from
being merely minister of Coggeshall in Essex, Owen had become
Cromwell's friend and chaplain in Ireland, and had still, through his
subsequent promotions, ending with the Deanery of Christ Church and
the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford, been much about Cromwell and much
trusted by him. Perhaps the only difference now between them was that
Owen's theory of Toleration was less broad than Cromwell's. Next to
Owen among the divines of the Commonwealth, the Protector seems to
have retained his liking for Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and for such other
fervid or Evangelical Independents as Caryl, Sterry, Hugh Peters, and
Nicholas Lockyer, with a gradual tendency to John Howe, the youngest
of his chaplains. For the veteran free-lance and Arminian John
Goodwin, a keen critic now of Cromwell's Commission of Triers and of
other parts of his Church-policy, his liking must have been less; but
Goodwin's merits were fairly appreciated, and he had at least perfect
liberty to conduct his congregation as he pleased and to publish his
pamphlets. So, on the other hand, eminent Presbyterian divines like
Calamy, accommodated amply in Cromwell's Established Church, had all
freedom and respect.--As to his dealings with non-clerical men of
letters friendly to his government, we know a good deal already.
Milton, of whose relations to the Protectorate we shall have to speak
more at large, was his Latin Secretary; Needham was his journalist;
Marvell was in his private employment and was looking for something
more public. Still younger men were growing up, in the Universities
or just out of them, regarding the Protectorate as now the settled
order of things, in which they must pass their future lives.
Cudworth, recently promoted from the mastership of Clare College,
Cambridge, to that of Milton's old College of Christ's, had been
asked by the Protector to recommend to him any very promising young
Cambridge men he might discover;[2] and, doubtless, there had been a
similar request to Owen of Oxford. Dryden, still at Cambridge, though
now twenty-five years of age, and already, by his father's death, a
small Northamptonshire squire of £40 a year, was looking forward, we
shall find, as his family connexions with the Parliamentarians and
the Commonwealth made natural, to a life in London under the great
Protector's shadow.

[Footnote 1: Orme's Life of Owen (1820), p. 113.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Cudworth, as cited by Godwin, IV. 596.]

All that could be expected by divines and scholars ranking in our
second category, i.e. as subjects of the Protectorate by mere
compulsion, and known to be strongly disaffected to it, was
protection and safety on condition of remaining quiet. This they did
receive. For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of
Nov. 24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican
clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and
tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding
them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had
been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics.
That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been _in
terrorem_ at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter.
The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which
he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him
into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of
whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the
old Anglicans. That case was exceptional. Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end
of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering
his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather
than suffering anything more of the kind. Peter Heylin was in similar
circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful. Jeremy Taylor
alternated between the Earl of Carbery's seat, called "the Golden
Grove," in Caernarvonshire, near which he taught a school, and the
society of his friend John Evelyn, in London or at Sayes Court in
Surrey,--tending on the whole to London, where he resumed preaching,
and, after a brief arrest and some little questioning, was left
unmolested. Hammond was mainly at Sir John Packington's in
Worcestershire; Sanderson and Fuller were actually in parochial
livings, the one in Lincolnshire, the other in Essex; and Pocock was
in a Professorship. Sorely vexed as such men were, and poorer in the
world's goods than they had been, this was the time of the greatest
literary productiveness of some of them. Old Bishop Hall had not
ceased to write, but was to leave trifles of his last days to be
published after the Restoration as "Shakings of the Olive Tree"; and
works, or tracts and sermons, by Sanderson, Heylin, Hammond, Fuller,
and Jeremy Taylor, some of them of a highly Episcopal tenor, were
among the publications of the Protectorate. Fuller's _Church
History of Britain_, one of the best and most lightsome books in
our language, was published in 1655-6. Brian Walton's great Polyglott
had not yet been carried farther than the third volume; but the
Protector had continued to that scholar the material furtherance in
his arduous work which had been yielded first by the Rump Government,
apparently on some solicitation by Milton (Vol. IV. pp. 446, 447);
and the work, when it did appear complete in six volumes folio, in
1657, was to contain handsome acknowledgment by Walton of this
generosity. Of the incessant literary activity of the Presbyterian
Baxter through the Protectorate we need say nothing. It is more
remarkable that there was no interruption of William Prynne's
interminable series of pamphlets on all sorts of public questions,
and often violently against the Government. For the rest, where were
the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Clevelands, and the other old
Royalist wits and satirists of the lighter sort? Keeping schools,
most of them, or living with friends in the country, and now and then
sending out, as before, some light thing in print. Samuel Butler, a
secretary or the like in private families, was yet unknown to fame,
but was taking notes and sure to print them some day; and the two
most placid and imperturbable men in all England were Browne of
Norwich and Izaak Walton. Browne, all his best known writings
published long ago, but appearing in new editions, was contented now
with attending his patients; and, when Izaak Walton was not in his
house in Clerkenwell (to which neighbourhood he seems to have removed
after giving up his shop in Chancery Lane), he was away on some
fishing ramble. His _Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man's
Recreation_ had appeared in May 1653, and a second edition of it
was just out.[1]

[Footnote 1: Details in this paragraph are from various sources: e.g.
Wood's; 'Ath. and Fasti and Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy under
the several names, Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of
England_, Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual by Bohn, and the
Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets. See also, for Jeremy Taylor,
Evelyn's _Diary and Correspondence_, about date 1855-6. Evelyn
was greatly concerned about Cromwell's ordinance for suppressing
preaching and schoolmastering by the Anglican clergy, and about its
probable results for Taylor in particular. See one of his letters to
Taylor (pp. 593-4, ed. 1870).]

The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the
Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships
of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed,
comparatively small. This arose from the fact that some who had been
in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train
of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a
restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join
themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell's
"subjects by compulsion." Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir
William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience,
may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though _he_
had never gone into exile, but had remained in England, taking the
risks.--HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the
bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central
connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment in 1646 to
be tutor to young Charles, had been obliged to leave that connexion,
ostensibly at least, in 1651 or 1652. The occasion is said to have
been the publication of his _Leviathan_. That famous book of
1651, like its two predecessors of 1650, _Human Nature_ and
_De Corpore Politico_, he had found it convenient to publish in
London, where the Commonwealth authorities do not seem to have made
the least objection. But by this time Hobbes's infidelity, or
Atheism, or Hobbism, or whatever it was, had become a dreadful
notoriety in the world; and, when Hobbes presented a fine copy of his
great book to Charles II., that pious young prince had been
instructed by the Royalist divines about him that it would not do to
countenance either Mr. Hobbes or his books any longer. Charles
retained privately all his own real regard for his old tutor, and
Hobbes perfectly understood that; but the hint had been taken. Back
in England at last, and permitted to live in the house of his old
pupil and patron, the Earl of Devonshire, where his only annoyance
was the society of the Earl's chaplain, Jasper Mayne, he had found
the Protectorate comfortable enough for all his purposes, and had
been publishing new books under it, including his pungent
disputations with ex-Bishop Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity and
with Wallis of Oxford on Mathematics.[1]--Hobbes's friend DAVENANT
had for some time been less lucky. _His_ return to England had
been involuntary. He had been captured at sea in 1650 on his way to
Virginia (Vol. IV. p. 193), had been a prisoner in the Isle of Wight
and in the Tower and in danger of trial for his life, and had been
released only by strong intercession in his favour, in which Milton
is thought to have helped. This result, however, had reconciled him,
and Davenant too had become one of the subjects of the Protectorate.
Nay he had struck out an ingenious mode of livelihood for himself
under Cromwell, somewhat in his old line of business. "At that time,"
says Wood, "tragedies and comedies being esteemed very scandalous by
the Presbyterians, and therefore by them silenced, he contrived a way
to set up an Italian Opera, to be performed by declamations and
music; and, that they might be performed with all decency,
seemliness, and without rudeness and profaneness, John Maynard,
serjeant-at-law, and several sufficient citizens, were engagers. This
Italian Opera began in Rutland House in Charter-house yard, May 23,
1656, and was afterwards transferred to the Cockpit in Drury Lane."
Cromwell's own fondness for music may have prompted him to this
relaxation, in Davenants favour, of the old theatre-closing Ordinance
of September 1642. At all events, money was coming in for Davenant,
and he was not very unhappy.[2]--The Satirist JOHN CLEVELAND, as we
have said, had never gone into exile. This was the more remarkable
because, through the Civil War, he had adhered to the King's cause
most tenaciously, not only in official employment for it, but also
serving it by the circulation of squibs and satires very offensive to
the Parliamentarians, and to the Scots in particular. Through the
Commonwealth, however, and also into the Protectorate, he _had_
lived on in England, in obscurity and with risks, latterly somewhere
in or about Norfolk, as tutor or quasi-tutor to a gentleman, on £30 a
year. By ill luck, in Nov. 1655, just when the police of the
Major-Generals was coming into operation, he had been apprehended, on
his way to Newark, by the vigilance of Major-General Haynes, and
committed to prison in Yarmouth, There seems to have been no definite
charge, other than that he was "the poet Cleveland" and was a
questionable kind of vagrant. He had been in prison for some months
when it occurred to him to address a letter to the Protector himself.
"May it please your Highness," it began, "Rulers within the circle of
their government have a claim to that which is said of the Deity:
they have their centre everywhere and their circumference nowhere, It
is in this confidence that I address your Highness, as knowing no
place in the nation is so remote as not to share in the ubiquity of
your care, no prison so close as to shut me up from the partaking of
your influence." After explaining that he had been and still was a
Royalist, but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about
ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you
graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me
out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you
more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant
with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The
appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity was successful. Cleveland was
released, came to London, and lived by his wits there till his death
in May 1658.[3]--A much later returner from among the Royalist
exiles than either Hobbes or Davenant was the poet COWLEY. His return
was late in 1655 or early in 1656, and seems to have been attended
with some mystery. He had been for years at Paris or St. Germains, in
the household of Lord Jermyn, acting as secretary to his Lordship and
to Queen Henrietta Maria, deciphering the secret letters that came to
them, and therefore at the very heart of the intrigues for Charles
II. Yet, after a temporary imprisonment, security in £1000 had been
accepted in his behalf, and he had been allowed to remain in London.
The story afterwards by his Royalist friends was that he had come
over, by understanding with Jermyn and the ex-Queen, to watch affairs
in their interest and send them intelligence, and that, the better to
disguise the design, he pretended compliance with the existing
powers, meaning to obtain the degree of M.D. from Oxford, and set up
cautiously as a medical practitioner. It is very unlikely that such a
dangerous game could have been safely tried under eyes like
Thurloe's; and the fact seems to be that Cowley was honestly tired of
exile and willing to comply, in a manly way, for the sake of life
once more at home. One of his first acts after his return was to
publish his Collected Poems in a volume of four parts. They appeared,
on or about April 1656, from the shop of Humphrey Moseley, the
publisher of Milton's Poems ten years before, and still always
dealing, as then, in the finer literature. In a preface to the book
Cowley distinctly avowed his intention to accept the inevitable,
treat the controversy as at length determined against the Stuarts by
the unaccountable will of God, and no longer persist in the
ridiculous business of weaving laurels for the conquered. He
announced at the same time that he had not only excluded from the
volume all his pieces of this last kind, but had even burnt the
manuscripts. In a copy of the book presented by him to the Bodleian
Library at Oxford there is a "Pindarique Ode" in his own hand, dated
June 26, 1656, breathing the same sentiment. The book is supposed to
be addressing the great Library; and, after congratulating itself on
being admitted into such a glorious company without deserts of its
own, but by mere predestination, it is made to say:--

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 1207-1212, and 972.]

[Footnote 2: Wood's Ath. III. 805-806. In Davenant's works (pp.
341-359 of folio edition of 1673) will be found, by those who are
curious, a copy of _"The First Day's Entertainment at Rutland House
by Declamations and Musick: after the manner of the Ancients."_ It
strikes one as very proper and very heavy, but it may have been a
godsend to the Londoners after their long deprivation of theatrical
entertainments. The music was partly by Henry Lawes.]

[Footnote 3: _Cromwelliana_, 154; Wood's Fasti, I. 499; Godwin,
IV. 240-241. There is a MS. copy of Cleveland's letter among the
Thomason large quartos. It is dated "Oct. 1657;" but that, I imagine,
is an error.]

  "Ah! that my author had been tied, like me,
  To such a place and such a company,
  Instead of several countries, several men,
    And business which the Muses hate!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 209-213; Johnson's Lives of the Poets,
with Cunningham's Notes (1854), I. 7-12. Cowley did receive the M.D.
degree at Oxford, Dec. 2, 1657, and did remain in England through the
rest of Cromwell's Protectorate; and, though the Royalists welcomed
him back after Cromwell's death, his compliance was to be remembered
against him.]

As the Muses were returning to England in full number, and ceasing to
be so Stuartist as they had been, it was natural that there should be
express celebrations of the Protectorate in their name. There had
been dedications of books to Cromwell, and applauses of him in prose
and verse, from the time of his first great successes as a
Parliamentary General; and such things had been increasing since,
till they defied enumeration. In the Protectorate they swarmed.
Matchless still among the tributes in verse was Milton's single
Sonnet of May 1652, "_Cromwell, our chief of men_," and Milton
had written no more to or about Cromwell in the metrical form since
the Protectorate had begun, but had contented himself with adding to
his former prose tributes in various pamphlets that most splendid and
subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his
_Defensio Secunda_. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we
remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there
were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his
marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility,
had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of
military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood
calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely
an exaggeration), two Oliverian poems, one called _The Protector: A
Poem briefly illustrating the Supereminency of that Dignity,_ the
other _A Rapture occasioned by the late miraculous Deliverance of
his Highness the Lord Protector from a desperate danger_.[1] In
stronger and more compact style, though still rather rough, Andrew
Marvell, in the same year, had added to his former praises of
Cromwell a poem of 400 lines, published in a broad-sheet, with the
title _The First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness
the Lord Protector_. It began:--

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 762-772.]

  "Like the vain curlings of the watery maze
  Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
  So man, declining always, disappears
  In the weak circles of increasing years,
  And his short tumults of themselves compose,
  While flowing Time above his head does close.
  Cromwell alone with greater vigour runs,
  Sun-like, the stages of succeeding suns;
  And still the day which he doth next restore
  Is the just wonder of the day before.
  Cromwell alone doth with new lustre spring,
  And shines the jewel of the yearly ring;
  'Tis he the force of scattered Time contracts,
  And in one year the work of ages acts."[1]

[Footnote 1: Marvell's Works, edited by Dr. Grosart, I. 169-170.]

But the most far-blazoned eulogy at the time, and the smoothest to
read now, was one in forty-seven stanzas, which appeared May 31,
1655, with the title _A Panegyric to my Lord Protector of the
present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation,
by E. W., Esq._ The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud
for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his
wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of
versifying. Here are four of the stanzas:--

  "Your drooping country, torn by civil hate,
  Restored by you, is made a glorious state,
  The seat of Empire, where the Irish come,
  And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.

  "The sea's our own; and now all nations greet,
  With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
  Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
  Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

  "Heaven, that hath placed this Island to give law
  To balance Europe and its states to awe,
  In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,--
  The greatest Leader and the greatest Isle ....

  "Had you some ages past this race of glory
  Run, with amazement we should read your story;
  But living virtue, all achievements past,
  Meets envy still to grapple with at last."[1]

[Footnote 1: Waller's Poems: date of this from Thomason's Catalogue.]

Waller's verses, if nothing else, would suggest that we ought to know
something more, at this point, of the state of Scotland, Ireland, and
even the Colonies, under Cromwell's Protectorate.

SCOTLAND.

After August 1654, when the Glencairn-Middleton insurrection had been
suppressed (Vol. IV, p. 532), the administration of Scotland had been
again for some time wholly in the hands of Monk, as the
Commander-in-chief there, with assistance from the four resident
English Judges and minor officials. Cromwell and his Council in
London, however, had been thinking of a more regular method for the
Government of Scotland; and, at length, in the end of July 1655, the
following was the arrangement:

I. CIVIL ESTABLISHMENT.

COUNCIL, SITTING IN EDINBURGH.

_President of Council_ (£2000 a year): Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill.

  General Monk.
  Major-General Charles Howard.
  Colonel Adrian Scroope.
  Colonel Cooper.
  Colonel Nathaniel Whetham.
  Colonel William Lockhart (soon afterwards Sir William, and Ambassador to
      France).
  John Swinton, Laird of Swinton (afterwards Sir John).
  Samuel Desborough, Esq. (brother of the Regicide).

_Chief Clerk to the Council_ (£300 a year): Emanuel Downing.

SUPREME COMMISSIONERS OF JUSTICE (in lieu of the Old Scotch Court of
Session):--This was a body of Seven Judges; four of whom were
English--George Smith, Edward Moseley, William Lawrence, and Henry
Goodyere (the last two in the places of two of the original four of
1652),--but three of them native Scots, accustomed to Scottish law
and practice. These native Judges had been added for some time
already, and there had been, and were to be, changes of the persons;
but one hears most of Lockhart, Swinton, Sir James Learmont,
Alexander Pearson, and Andrew Ker. At hand, and helping much, though
no longer now the great man he had been in Scotland, was Sir
Archibald Johnstone of Warriston.

STATE OFFICERS:--Most of the state-offices of the old Scottish
constitution were still kept up, but were held, of course, by the new
Councillors and Judges. The _Keepership of the Great Seal_ was
given to Desborough; the _Signet_ or _Privy Seal_, with the
fees of the old _Secretaryship_, to Lockhart; the _Clerk
Registership_ to Judge Smith; &c.

TRUSTEES OF FORFEITED AND SEQUESTRATED ESTATES:--Under this name, by
the Ordinance of April 12, 1654 (Vol. IV. pp. 561-562), there was a
body of seven persons, about half of them English, looking after the
rents and revenues of those numerous Scottish nobles and lairds the
punishment of whom, for past delinquency, by total or partial seizing
of their estates, had been one of the necessary incidents of the
Conquest (Vol. IV. pp. 559-561).

II. MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, General George Monk (head-quarters Dalkeith),
with Major-General Howard, Colonels Cooper, Scroope, and Whetham, and
other Colonels and inferior officers, under him. The total force of
horse and foot in Scotland may have been about 7000 or 8000. It was
distributed over the country in forts and garrisons, the chief being
those of Edinburgh, Leith, Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee, Perth,
Aberdeen, Dunnottar, Burntisland, Linlithgow, Dumbarton, Ayr,
Dunstaffnage, and Inverness. Everywhere the English soldiers acted as
a police, and their officers superseded, or were conjoined with, the
native magistrates and sheriffs in the local courts.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of the English Council July 26, 1655,
containing letter from "Oliver P." to Monk, announcing the new
establishment; _Perfect Proceedings_, No. 307, publishing for
the Londoners, under date July 27, the names of his Highness's new
Council for Scotland; Baillie's Letters, III. 249-250; Godwin, IV.
462-3.]

Under this government Scotland was now very tranquil and tolerably
prosperous. True, almost all the old poppy-heads or thistle-heads,
the native nobles and notables, were gone. Those of them who had been
taken at Worcester, or had been sent out of Scotland as prisoners
about the same time by Monk, were still, for the most part, in
durance in England; others were in foreign exile; the few that
remained in Scotland, such as Argyle, Loudoun, Lothian, the Marquis
of Douglas, and his son Angus, were out of sight in their
country-houses, utterly broken by private debts or fines and
forfeitures, and in very low esteem. Then, among many Scots of good
status throughout the community, there were complaints and
grumblings on account of the taxes for the support of the English
Army, or on account of loss of posts and chances by the admission of
Englishmen to the same, or by the promotion of such other Scots as
the English saw fit to favour, Incidents of this kind, much noted at
the time, had been the ejection of some Professors from the
Universities by the English Visitors in 1653, and the appointments
by the same visitors of men of their own choice to University
posts--e.g. Mr. Robert Leighton, minister of Newbattle, to the
Principalship of Edinburgh University, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie to
that of the University of Glasgow. But even Baillie, whose complaints
on such grounds had been bitter in 1654, and to whom the appointment
of Gillespie to the Glasgow Principal-ship had been a particular
private grievance, was in better spirits before 1656. Glasgow, he
then reports, was flourishing. "Through God's mercy, our town, in its
proportion, thrives above all the land. The Word of God is well loved
and regarded; albeit not as it ought and we desire, yet in no town of
our land better. Our people has much more trade in comparison than
any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and
fairness." Burnet's account is that the whole country partook of this
growing prosperity, which he attributes to the excellent police of
the English, the trading they introduced, and the money they put in
circulation. "A man may ride over all Scotland with a switch in his
hand and a hundred pounds in his pocket, which he could not have done
these five hundred years," was Mr. Samuel Desborough's summary
account afterwards of the state of the country which he had helped to
administer under the Protectorate; and Cromwell's own reference to
the subject is even more interesting and precise. Acknowledging that
the Scots had suffered much, and were in fact "a very ruined nation,"
yet what had befallen them had introduced, he hinted, a very
desirable change in the constitution of Scottish society. It had
enfranchised and encouraged the middle and lower classes. "The
_meaner_ sort in Scotland," he said, "love us well, and are
likely to come into as thriving a condition as when they were under
their own great lords, who made them work for their living no better
than the peasants of France;" and "The _middle_ sort of people,"
he added, "do grow up there into such a substance as makes their
lives comfortable, if not better than they were before." Of course,
in neither of these classes, any more than from among the
dispossessed nobles and lairds, can the sentiment of Scottish
nationality and the pain of its abolition have been extinct. Yet one
notices, towards the end of 1656, a soothing even in that respect.
The Scots, all but universally, by that time, had acquired the habit
of speaking deferentially of "His Highness" or "His Highness the Lord
Protector"; correspondence with Charles II. had entirely ceased; the
Edinburgh barristers had returned to the bar; and the Scottish
clergy, pretty generally, left off praying for Charles publicly. Lord
Broghill's admirable management had helped much to this
reconciliation. "If men of my Lord Broghill's parts and temper be
long among us," wrote Baillie, "they will make the present Government
more beloved than some men wish. From our public praying for the King
Broghill's courtesies, more than his threats, brought off our leading
men." Baillie himself had yielded that point at last.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 236-321 (including letters to Spang, July
19, 1654, Dec. 31, 1655, and Sept. 1, 1656); Burnet (ed. 1823), I.
104-105; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, II. 249; Carlyle,
III. 342-3 (Cromwell's Speech XVII.).]

Raging yet among the Scottish clergy, and dividing the Scottish
community so far as the clergy had influence, was the controversy
between the _Resolutioners_ and the _Remonstrants_ or
_Protesters_ (Vol. IV. pp. 201-214, 281-284, 288-289, and 361).
By a law of political life, every community, at every time, must have
_some_ polarizing controversy; and this was Scotland's through
the whole period of her absorption in the English Commonwealth and
Protectorate. The Protesters were the Whigs, and the Resolutioners
the Tories, of Scotland through that time; and the strife between the
parties was all the fiercer because, Scottish autonomy being lost, it
was the only native strife left for Scotsmen, and they were battened
down to it, as an indulgence among themselves, by a larger and
unconcerned rule overhead. General Assemblies of the Kirk being no
longer allowed, it had to be conducted in Provincial Synods and
Presbyteries only, or in sermons and pamphlets of mutual reproach.
The exasperation was great; Church-censures and threats of such
passed and repassed; all attempts at agreement failed; the best
friends were parted. Leaders among the majority, or Resolutioner
clergy, were Mr. Robert Douglas of Edinburgh, who had preached the
coronation sermon of Charles II. at Scone, Mr. James Sharp of Crail
(these two back for some time from the imprisonment in London to
which Monk had sent them in 1651: Vol. IV. 296), Mr. James Wood of
St. Andrews, old Mr. David Dickson, now Professor of Divinity in
Edinburgh, and our perpetual friend Baillie. The minority, or
Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of
Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow
University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of
St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their
best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr.
Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. James Durham of Glasgow,
negociated between the two sides; and Mr. Robert Leighton, in his
Edinburgh Principalship, looked on with saintly and philosophic
indifference. He hoped that, while so many brethren "preached to the
times," one brother might be allowed "to preach on eternity" and that
the differences on earth would "make heaven the sweeter." In fact,
however, the controversy was not merely a theoretical one. Not only
was it involved whether the two last General Assemblies, of 1651 and
1652, swayed as they had been by the Resolutioners, should be
recognised and their acts held valid, and what should be the spirit
and constitution of the Kirk in future: present interests were also
involved. It had been to the Protesters that Cromwell had turned with
greatest liking and hope, both on political grounds and from
spiritual sympathy, when he was fighting in Scotland; and, since the
beginning of his Protectorate, _they_ had been most in favour.
Early in 1654 three of their number, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, Mr. John
Livingston, and Mr. John Menzies, had been summoned to London to
advise the Protector; they had been there two or three months; and
the effects of their advice had been visible in an ordinance about
vacant Kirk-livings very favourable to the Protesters, and generally
in a continued inclination towards the Protesters in the proceedings
of the English Government in Scotland. The ministers and others
ejected by Cromwell's visitors had been mostly of the Resolutioner
species; and one of Baillie's complaints is that Protesters, whether
fit or not, were put into vacant livings by the English, and that
only Scotsmen of that colour were conjoined with the English in the
executive and the judicatories. Till 1656 all this had been very
natural. The dregs of Stuartism, and consequent antipathy to the
Protectorate, had persisted till then most visibly among the
Resolutioners.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, _ut supra_; Life of Robert Blair, 313
_et seq._; Wodrow's Introduction to his _History_ (1721);
Beattie's _Church of Scotland during the Commonwealth_ (1842),
Chap. III.]

Though the Protesters were originally what we have called
super-ultra-Presbyterians, it was not surprising that some of them
had moved into Independency. There certainly were some Independents
among the Scottish parish clergy at this time, especially about
Aberdeen; and the Independents apart from the National Church had
become numerous. But mere Independency now, or even Anabaptism, was
nothing very shocking in Scotland; it was the increase of newer
sectaries that alarmed the clergy. Quakerism had found its way into
Scotland; so that there were now, we are told by a contemporary,
"great numbers of that damnable sect of the Quakers, who, being
deluded by Satan, drew away many to their profession, both men and
women." As in England, Quaker preachers went about disturbing the
regular service in churches, or denouncing every form of ministry but
their own to open-air congregations, and often with physical
convulsions and fits of insane phrenzy. The Church-courts and the
civil authorities were much exercised by the innovation, and had
begun action against the sect, the rather because many of the common
people, in their weariness of the strife among their own clergy,
"resetted" the Quaker preachers and said they "got as much good of
them as of anybody else."[1]

[Footnote 1: The quotations are from Chambers's _Dom. Annals of
Scotland_, II. 232-234.]

Not an importation like Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth,
was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in
England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her
fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. "There is
much witchery up and down our land," wrote Baillie: "the English be
but too sparing to try it, but some they execute." Against crimes of
other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and
nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to
find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland,
consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But,
indeed, very strange _isms_ of quite another sort, and of which mere
modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time
incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all
the exercise of Presbyterian discipline, all the seeming distribution
of the population universally into Resolutioners and Protesters, with
interspersed Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other vehement
Christians. Bead, from the Scottish correspondence of Needham's
_Mercurius Politicus_, in the number for June 26-July 3, 1656, the
following account of one of the cases that had come before Judge
Smith and Judge Lawrence in their Dumfriesshire circuit of the
previous May:--

  "Alexander Agnew, commonly called Jock of Broad Scotland,"
  [apparently an itinerant beggar, or Edie Ochiltree, of
  Dumfriesshire] was tried on this indictment.--"_First_, the said
  Alexander, being desired to go to church, answered 'Hang God: God
  was hanged long since; what had _he_ to do with God? he had nothing
  to do with God'. _Secondly_, He answered he was nothing in God's
  common; God gave him nothing, and he was no more obliged to God
  than to the Devil; and God was very greedy. _Thirdly_, When he was
  desired to seek anything in God's name, he said he would never seek
  anything for God's sake, and that it was neither God nor the Devil
  that gave the fruits of the land: the wives of the country gave
  _him_ his meat. _Fourthly_, Being asked how many persons were in
  the Godhead, answered there was only one person in the Godhead, who
  made all; but, for Christ, he was not God, because he was made, and
  came into the world after it was made, and died as other men, being
  nothing but a mere man. _Sixthly_, He declared that he knew not
  whether God or the Devil had the greater power; but he thought the
  Devil had the greatest; and 'When I die,' said he, 'let God and the
  Devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.'
  _Seventhly_, He denied there was a Holy Ghost, or knew there was a
  Spirit, and denied he was a sinner or needed mercy. _Eighthly_, He
  denied he was a sinner, and [said] that he scorned to seek God's
  mercy. _Ninthly_, He ordinarily mocked all exercise of God's
  worship and convocation in His name, in derision saying 'Pray you
  to your God, and I will pray to mine when I think time.' And, when
  he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, 'Take
  a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them,
  and take your breakfast off them.' To others he said, 'I will give
  you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone
  of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.'
  To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the
  ground by him, he said, 'If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry
  to God before he give it me again.' To others he said, 'Take a
  bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye
  will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.'
  _Tenthly_, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he
  answered he had never had any profession, nor never would--he had
  never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God
  nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from
  Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to
  speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he
  would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such
  things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that
  there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of
  God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but,
  for the second person of the Trinity, he had been the second person
  of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that
  he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.--And these aforesaid
  blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently
  and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the
  entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through
  the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor
  of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death
  mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all
  rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.--Which indictment
  being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew,
  called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one
  voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries,
  their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy
  mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained
  him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in
  the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for
  the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while
  [till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat."

The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by
journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.[1] Not only were Lauderdale,
Eglinton, Marischal, David Leslie, and a number of the other
distinguished Scottish prisoners of 1651, still detained in London,
in more or less strict custody, with their wives and retainers near
them; but many Scots whose proper residence was in Scotland were
coming to London, on visits of some length, for their own or for
public business. Among these, late in 1655, was Lockhart,--to be
converted, as we know, into the Protector's ambassador to the Court
of France. The eccentric ex-Judge Scot of Scotstarvet had already
been in London, petitioning for the remission or reduction of his
fine of £1500 for former delinquency, and succeeding completely at
last, "in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he
hath done to the Commonwealth." The Earl of Lothian was in London,
painfully prosecuting petitions for the recovery of certain lost
family-properties. But the most remarkable apparition was that of the
Marquis of Argyle. He came to London in September, 1655, and he seems
to have remained there for a long while. What had brought him up was
also a suit with the Protector and the Council for reparation of some
portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems
to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. "Came to
visit me." says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court,
in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, "the old Marquis of Argyle.
Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me.
_Note_: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for
owls." It had been his characteristic mistake through life.[2]

[Footnote 1: In the London _Public Intelligencer_ for April
12-19, 1658, among other advertisements of stage-coaches starting
from "the George Inn, without Aldersgate," is one of a fortnightly
stage-coach for Edinburgh, the fare £4. Something of the sort may
have been running already.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of the Protectorate through 1655
and 1656; _Mere. Pol._ for Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Evelyn's
_Diary_ (ed. 1870), p. 248. In the Council Order Books, under
date Sept. 11, 1656, is minuted an order that, in terms of an Act of
the Estates of Scotland of March 16, 1649, the Marquis of Argyle
shall, from and after Nov. 10, 1657, have half the excise of wines
and strong waters in Scotland, but not exceeding £3000 in any one
year, until he is satisfied of a debt of £145,400 Scots due to him by
Scotland on public grounds.]

Any influence which the Marquis could now have with the Protector in
matters of Scottish Government must have been small; but it was
understood that, such as it was, it would be on the side of the Kirk
party of the Protesters. And this had become of some consequence. In
and through 1656, if not earlier, it had become obvious that the
inclinations of the Protector to that party had been considerably
shaken. The change was attributed partly to Lord President Broghill.
Almost from his first coming to Scotland, this nobleman had found it
desirable to win over the Resolutioners. "The President Broghill,"
says Baillie, "is reported by all to be a man exceeding wise and
moderate, and by profession a Presbyterian: he has gained more on the
affections of the people than all the English that ever were among
us. He has been very civil to Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickson, and is
very intime with Mr. James Sharp. By this means we [the
Resolutioners] have an equal hearing in all we have ado with the
Council. Yet their way is exceeding longsome, and all must be done
first at London." So far as Broghill's communications with London
might serve, the Resolutioners, therefore, might count on him as
their friend. And by this time he had reasons to show. Had he not
succeeded, where the stern Monk had failed, in inducing the
Resolutioner clergy to give up public praying for King Charles and
otherwise to conform; and was it not on this ground that Monk was
believed still to befriend the Protesters? But perhaps it hardly
needed Broghill's representations to induce Cromwell to reconsider
his Scottish policy in regard to the Kirk. That same Conservatism
which had been gaining on him in the English department of his
Protectorate, leading him rather to discourage extreme men while
tolerating them, had begun to affect his views of Kirk parties in
Scotland. The Resolutioners were numerically the larger party: if
they would be reconciled, might they not be his most massive support
in North Britain? It is possible that the institution of the new
Scottish Council under Broghill's Presidency may have been the result
of such thoughts, and that Broghill thus only took a course indicated
for him by Cromwell. At all events, various relaxations of former
orders, about admission to vacant livings and the like, had already
been made in favour of the Resolutioners; and, in and from 1656, it
was noted that extreme men in Scotland too were not to his Highness's
taste, and that, contrary to what might have been expected from his
former relations to Scottish Presbyterianism, his aim now was to
rebuild a good and solid Established Church in Scotland mainly on the
native Presbyterian principle, though under control, and to leave
extravagant spirits, including even those too forward for
Independency among the Scots, to the mere benefits of an outside
toleration. It was not his way to proceed hurriedly, however; and, as
the Protesters were religiously the men most to his liking, and must
by all means be kept within the Kirk, an agreement between them and
the Resolutioners was a political necessity. To this end he had
again, more than once recently, requested some of the leaders of both
parties to come to London for consultation, as Gillespie, Livingston,
and Menzies, for the Protesters, had done before. Appeals to the
Civil Power in ecclesiastical matters being against the Presbyterian
theory which the parties professed in common, that suggestion had not
been taken, notwithstanding the precedent, and the parties had
persisted in their war of mutual invective in Scotland, each getting
what it could by private dealings with the Council there,--the
Resolutioners through Broghill and the Protesters through Monk. But
that could not last for ever; and, in August 1656, strict
Presbyterian theory had been so far waived by both parties that both
had resolved on direct appeal to his Highness in London. The
Resolutioners had the start. They had picked out as their fittest
single emissary Mr. James Sharp of Crail, then forty-three years of
age, already well acquainted with London by his former compulsory
stay there, and with the advantage now of intimacy with Broghill. His
Instructions, signed by three of the leading Resolutioners, were
ready on the 23rd of August. They were substantially that he should
clear the Resolutioners with the Protector from the
misrepresentations of the Protesters, paint the Protesters in return
as mainly hot young spirits and disturbers, and obtain from his
Highness a restoration of Presbyterian use and wont through the whole
Kirk, with preponderance to the Resolutioners, though not with a
General Assembly till times were more quiet. _Per contra_, the
Protesters had drawn out certain propositions to be submitted to
Cromwell. They asked for a Commission for the plantation of kirks, to
be appointed by his authority and to consist of those he might think
fit, to administer the revenues of the Kirk according to the Acts of
Assemblies and the laws of the land prior to 1651, the fatal year of
the "Resolutions." They asked also for a Commission of Visitation,
one half to be elected by the Resolutioners and one half by the
Protesters, to have the power of "planting and purging" in parishes
and of composing differences in Synods and Presbyteries. For urging
these propositions a deputation to Cromwell had been thought of, and
actually appointed. As it was postponed, however, Sharp was to be in
London first by himself. Hence some importance for the Protesters in
any counterweight there might be in Argyle's presence there already.
[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, Letters to Spang, in 1655 and 1656, as already
cited, with III. 568-573 for Instructions to Sharp and Propositions
of the Protesters; Life of Robert Blair, 325-329.]

No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp's mission than
the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year,
a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one
of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that
controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the
University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but
had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of
which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to
Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London
captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an
interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been
sooner acquainted, and saying he had "fallen in love" with Fuller's
books and was longing for his _Church History_. This was not the
only sign of Baillie's mellower temper by this time towards the
Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had
not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose
Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other
hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters,
however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie's interest in Mr.
Sharp's mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous,
Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he
was to correspond with Sharp himself. "I pray God help you and guide
you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain
personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars," is the
memorable ending of the first letter that Sharp in London was to
receive from Baillie.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 234-335; with Mr. Laing's Life of
Baillie.]


IRELAND.

There had been little of novelty in Ireland for some time after the
proclamation of the Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 551). Fleetwood, with
the full title of "Lord Deputy" since Sept. 1654, had conducted the
Government, as well as he could, with a Council of assessors,
consisting, after that date, of Miles Corbet, Robert Goodwin, Colonel
Matthew Tomlinson, and Colonel Robert Hammond. This last, so brought
into the Protector's service after long retirement, died at Dublin in
July 1655. Ludlow still kept aloof, disowning the Protectorate,
though remaining in Ireland with his old military commission. Left
very much to themselves, Fleetwood and his Council had carried out,
as far as possible, the Acts for the Settlement of the country passed
or proposed by the Rump in 1652, but not pushing too severely the
great business which the Rump had schemed out, of a general and
gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics within the single province
of Connaught. In the nature of things, that business, or indeed any
actual prevention of the exercise of the Catholic Religion wherever
Roman Catholics abounded, was impracticable. It was enough, in the
Lord Protector's view, that the land lay quiet, the Roman Catholics
and their faithful priests not stirring too publicly, the English
soldiery keeping all under sufficient pressure, and English and
Scottish colonization shooting in here and there, with Protestant
preaching and Protestant farming in its track. On the whole,
Fleetwood's Lord-Deputyship, if not eventful, was far from unpopular.
[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 447-449.]

It had occurred to Cromwell, however, that more could be done in
Ireland, and that his son-in-law Fleetwood was perhaps not
sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently Oliverian, for the purpose.
Accordingly, about the same time that Fleetwood had been raised to
the Lord-Deputyship, Cromwell's second son, Henry, had been appointed
Major-General of the Irish Army. The good impression he had made in
his former mission to Ireland (Vol. IV. p. 551) justified the
appointment. Not till the middle of 1655, however, did he arrive in
Ireland. His reception then was enthusiastic, and was followed by the
sudden recall of Fleetwood to London, professedly for a visit only,
but really not to return. The title of Lord-Deputy of Ireland was
still to be Fleetwood's for the full term of his original
appointment; but he was to be occupied by the duties of his English
Major-Generalship and his membership of Oliver's Council at home, and
the actual government of Ireland was thenceforth in the hands of
Henry Cromwell. The young Governor, whose wife had accompanied him,
held a kind of Court in Dublin, with Fleetwood's Councillors about
him, or others in their stead, and a number of new Judges. The
diverse tempers of these advisers, among whom were some Anabaptists
or Anti-Oliverians, and his own doubts as to some of the instructions
that reached him from his father, made his position a very difficult
one; but, though very anxious and sensitive, he managed admirably. In
particular, it was observed that, in matters of religion, he had all
his father's liberality. It was "against his conscience," he said,
"to bear hard upon any merely on account of a different judgment." He
conciliated the Presbyterian clergy in a remarkable manner; the
Royalists liked him; he would not quarrel with the Anabaptists; and
he was as moderate as possible towards the Roman Catholics.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 449-458; _Milton Papers_ by Nickolls,
187-138; Carlyle, III. 108-109, and 133-140 (Letters from Cromwell to
his son Harry).]

One of Henry Cromwell's difficulties would have been Ludlow, had that
uncompromising Republican remained in Ireland. From that he was
relieved. In January 1655 Fleetwood had been ordered by the Protector
to make Ludlow give up his commission; and, as Ludlow questioned the
legality of the demand, he had arranged with Fleetwood to go and
settle the matter with the Protector himself. The Protector seeming
to prefer that Ludlow should stay where he was, and having sent
orders to that effect, Fleetwood was himself In England, and Henry
Cromwell was in his place in Dublin, and still there seemed no chance
of leave for Ludlow to cross the Channel. At length, without distinct
leave, but trusting to a written engagement Fleetwood had given him,
he ventured on the passage; and on Dec. 12, 1655, after the
experience of a most stormy sea, he had that of a more stormy
interview with the Protector and some of his Council at Whitehall.
Cromwell rated him roundly for his past behaviour generally and for
his return without leave, and demanded his _parole_ of
submission to the established Government for the future. Some kind of
_parole_ Ludlow was willing to give, declaring that he saw no
immediate chance of a subversion of the Government and knew of no
design for that end, but refusing to tie his hands "if Providence
_should_ offer an occasion." With that Cromwell, who had begun
to "carry himself more calmly" towards the end of the interview, was
obliged to be content. He became quite civil to Ludlow, saying he
"wished him as well as he did any of his Council," and desiring him
to make "choice of some place to live in where he might have good
air." Ludlow retired into Essex[1].

[Footnote 1: Ludlow's Memoirs, 481-557; Carlyle, III. 136.]

THE COLONIES.

With the exception of a factory of the London East India Company,
which had been established at _Surat_ on the west coast of
Hindostan in 1612, and a settlement on the _Gambia_ on the
western coast of Africa, dating from 1631, all the considerable
Colonies of England in 1656 were American:--I. NEW ENGLAND. The four
chief New England Colonies, _Plymouth_, _Massachusetts_,
_Connecticut_, and _New Haven_, confederated since 1643,
together with the outlying Plantations of _Providence_ and
_Rhode-Island_, &c., still belonged politically to the
mother-country; and through Cromwell's Protectorate, as before, the
connexion had been signified by references of various subjects to the
Home-Government, discussions of these by that Government, and orders
and advices transmitted in return. In the main, however, the Colonies
remained independent, each with its annually elected Governor, and
the Confederacy with its annually elected Board of Commissioners
besides; and, while professing high admiration of Cromwell and
approval generally of his rule, they were not troubled with questions
of rule seriously affecting their own interests. The war with the
Dutch did for some time involve them in inconveniences with their
Dutch neighbours; but their dissensions were chiefly with each other,
or domestically within each colony. The harsh proceedings in
Massachusetts and elsewhere against Baptists and other Sectaries gave
some colour to Roger Williams's assertion that, in the matter of
religious toleration, New England was becoming old while Old England
was becoming new; and, as soon as Quakerism had broken out in New
England and Quakers had appeared there (1656), it became evident that
there would be even less mercy for that sect in New England than on
the other side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, with their zealous
Puritanism, their energy and industry, and the abilities of their
Bradfords, Bradstreets, Winslows, Winthrops, Standishes, Endicotts,
Hayneses, Hopkinses, Newmans, Williamses, and other prominent
governors or assistant-governors, the Confederacy and the Plantations
went on prosperously towards their ultimate, though yet unforeseen,
destiny in the formation of the United States. Cromwell, indeed, had
a scheme which would have stopped that issue. He had a scheme for
fetching all the Puritans of New England back and planting them
splendidly in Ireland. Communications on the subject had passed as
early as 1651, when Ireland had been just reconquered; but naturally
without effect. The New Englanders were not then too numerous perhaps
to have been transported to Ireland bodily; but, as one of their
historians says, "they had taken root." Their increase, however, for
more than a century thenceforward was to be mainly within themselves,
for new arrivals from England had become scarce.[1] II. OTHER
COLONIES AND SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. These too went on very
much at their own will, though not quite unnoticed. _Virginia_,
dating from 1608, and _Maryland_, dating from 1634, continued to
be the favourite colonies for Royalist settlers, Anglican or Roman
Catholic; but there had been recent additions of English Puritans,
and of transported Scottish prisoners of war, to the population of
Virginia, and the connexions with the mother-country had remained
unbroken. There were commercial regulations about both Colonies by
the English Council, and grants of passes to them. Canada and the
other regions about the St. Lawrence, the possession of which had
been contested by the English and the French in the reign of Charles
I, had lapsed long ago into the hands of the French; but Major
Sedgwick had wrested back for Cromwell, in 1654, the peninsula then
called _Acadie_, but now _Nova Scotia_, being part of the
territory that had been granted under that name by Charles to his
Scottish Secretary, the Earl of Stirling, and had been colonised by
Scots, to some extent, from 1625 onwards. Off the mainland,
Newfoundland, which had contained an English fishing population for
at least twenty years, was not neglected; and, beyond the bounds of
any of the North-American Colonies or Plantations that were
definitely named and recognised, there may have been stragglers
knowing themselves to be subjects of the Protectorate.[2] III. THE
WEST INDIES. The _Bermudas_ or _Summer Islands_ had been
English since 1612, and had now a considerable population of opulent
settlers, attracted by their beauty and the salubrity of the climate;
_Barbadoes_, English since 1605, and with a population of more
than 50,000, had been a refuge of Royalists, but had been taken for
the Commonwealth in 1652, and had been much used of late for the
reception of banished prisoners; such other Islands of the Lesser
Antilles as _Antigua_, _Nevis_, _Montserrat_, and the
_Virgin Islands_, together with _The Bahamas_, to the north
of Cuba, had been colonised in the late reign; and _Jamaica_ had
been Cromwell's own conquest from the Spaniards, by Penn's blunder,
in 1655. The war with Spain had given new importance to those West
India possessions of the Protectorate. They had become war-stations
for ships, with considerable armed forces on some of them; and some
of Cromwell's best officers had been sent out, or were to be sent
out, to command in them. Of them all Jamaica was Cromwell's pet
island. He had resolved to keep it and do his best with it. The
charge of it had been given to a commission consisting of Admiral
Goodson, Major-General Fortescue, Major-General Sedgwick (the
recaptor of Nova Scotia from the French), and Daniel Serle, Governor
of Barbadoes; and Fortescue and Sedgwick, and others in succession,
were to die at their posts there. To have the rich island colonised
at once with the right material was the Protector's great anxiety;
and his first thoughts on that subject, as soon as he had learnt that
the Island was his, had issued in a most serious modification of his
former offer to the New Englanders. As they had refused to come back
and colonise Ireland, would they not accept Jamaica? "He did
apprehend the people of New England had as clear a call to transport
themselves thence to Jamaica as they had had from England to New
England, in order to the bettering of their outward condition;"
besides which, their removal thither would have a "tendency to the
overthrow of the Man of Sin." They should be transported free of
cost; they should have lands rent-free for seven years, and after
that at a penny an acre; they should be free from customs, excise,
or any tax for four years; they should have the most liberal
constitution that could be framed: only his Highness would keep the
right of appointing the successive Governors and their Assistants.
The answer of the Massachusetts people, when it did arrive, was
evasive. They spoke of the reported unhealthiness of Jamaica, and
they assured Ms Highness of their admiration, their gratitude, and
their prayers. The answer had not been received at the date we have
reached (Sept. 1656), and the Protector still cherished his idea. As
it proved, the New Englanders were to remain New Englanders, and
Jamaica was to be colonised slowly and with less select material.[3]

[Footnote 1: Palfrey's Hist. of New England, II. 304-415, and
especially 388-390.]

[Footnote 2: Various minutes in Council Order Books from 1649
onwards; Carlyle, III, Appendix, 442-443.]

[Footnote 3: Mills's _Colonial Constitutions_ (1856), 124-133,
Introd. XXXIV. et seq.; Carlyle, III. 124-133; Palfrey's _New
England_, II. 390-393.]



SECTION III.

OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OP HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT: SEPT. 17,
1656-JUNE 26, 1657.

SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE CALLED: VANE'S _HEALING
QUESTION_ AND ANOTHER ANTI-OLIVERIAN PAMPHLET: PRECAUTIONS AND
ARRESTS: MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT: ITS COMPOSITION: SUMMARY OF
CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH: EXCLUSION OF NINETY-THREE ANTI-OLIVERIAN
MEMBERS: DECIDEDLY OLIVERIAN TEMPER OF THE REST: QUESTION OF THE
EXCLUDED MEMBERS: THEIR PROTEST: SUMMARY OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE
PARLIAMENT FOR FIVE MONTHS (SEPT. 1656-FEB. 1656-7): ADMINISTRATION
OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL DURING THOSE MONTHS: APPROACHES TO
DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN CROMWELL AND THE PARLIAMENT IN THE CASE OF JAMES
NAYLER AND ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUATION OF THE MILITIA BY
MAJOR-GENERALS: NO RUPTURE.--THE SEXBY-SINDERCOMBE PLOT.--SIR
CHRISTOPHER PACK'S MOTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION (FEB. 23, 1656-7):
ITS ISSUE IN THE _PETITION AND ADVICE_ AND OFFER OF THE CROWN TO
CROMWELL: DIVISION OF PUBLIC OPINION ON THE KINGSHIP QUESTION:
OPPOSITION AMONG THE ARMY OFFICERS: CROMWELL'S NEUTRAL ATTITUDE: HIS
RECEPTION OF THE OFFER: HIS LONG HESITATIONS AND SEVERAL SPEECHES
OVER THE AFFAIR: HIS FINAL REFUSAL (MAY 8, 1657): LUDLOW'S STORY OF
THE CAUSE.--HARRISON AND THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: VENNER'S OUTBREAK AT
MILE-END-GREEN.--PROPOSED NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE _PETITION AND
ADVICE_ RETAINED IN THE FORM OF A CONTINUED PROTECTORATE:
SUPPLEMENTS TO THE _PETITION AND ADVICE_: BILLS ASSENTED TO BY
THE PROTECTOR, JUNE 9: VOTES FOR THE SPANISH WAR,--TREATY OFFENSIVE
AND DEFENSIVE WITH FRANCE AGAINST SPAIN: DISPATCH OF ENGLISH
AUXILIARY ARMY, UNDER REYNOLDS, FOR SERVICE IN FLANDERS: BLAKE'S
ACTION IN SANTA CRUZ BAY.--_"KILLING--NO MURDER"_: ADDITIONAL
AND EXPLANATORY PETITION AND ADVICE: ABSTRACT OF THE ARTICLES OP THE
NEW CONSTITUTION AS ARRANGED BY THE TWO DOCUMENTS: CROMWELL'S
COMPLETED ASSENT TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND HIS ASSENT TO OTHER
BILLS, JUNE 26, 1657: INAUGURATION OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE THAT
DAY: CLOSE OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SECOND PARLIAMENT.


Willing to relieve his government, if possible, from the character of
"arbitrariness" it had so long borne, Cromwell had at last resolved
on calling another Parliament. The matter had been secretly
deliberated in Council in May and June 1656, and the writs were out
on July 10. There had ensued, throughout England, Scotland, and
Ireland, a great bustle of elections, the Major-Generals in England
and the Councils in Scotland and Ireland exerting themselves to
secure the return of Oliverians, and the Protector and his Council by
no means easy as to the result. Two recent Republican pamphlets had
caused agitation. One, which had been called forth by a Proclamation
of a General East a month or two before, was by Sir Henry Vane, and
was entitled _A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved._ It
was temperate enough, approving of the government in some respects,
and even suggesting the continuance of some kind of sovereignty in a
single person, but containing censures of the "great interruption" of
popular liberties, and appeals to the people to do their part. The
other and later pamphlet (Aug. 1), directly intended to bear on the
Elections, was called _England's Remembrancer,_ and was
virtually a call on all to use their votes so as to return a
Parliament that should unseat Oliver. The author of this second
pamphlet evaded detection; but Vane was brought to task for his. He
was summoned to London from his seat of Belleau in Lincolnshire,
July 29; by an order of Aug. 21 he was required to give security in
£5000 that he would do nothing "to prejudice the present government";
and, on his refusal, there issued a warrant, signed by Henry
Lawrence, as President of the Council, for his committal to King
Charles's old prison, Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. About
the same time, precautions were taken with Bradshaw, Harrison,
Ludlow, Lawson, Rich, Okey, Alured, and others. Bradshaw was
suspended for a week or two from his Chief-Justiceship of Chester;
Harrison was sent to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; Rich to Windsor;
security in £5000 was exacted from Ludlow, or rather arranged for him
by Cromwell; and the others were variously under guard. Nor did
leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament,
a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John
Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still
there. All this new "arbitrariness" for the moment was for the
purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books through July, Aug. and Sept. 1656;
Godwin, IV. 261-277; Ludlow, 568-573; Catalogue of Thomason
Pamphlets.]

It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was
attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon
from Dr. Owen. Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales
were the Protector's eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge
University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other
members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon,
Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and
Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and
most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry,
Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne).
Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were
Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne,
Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig,
Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir
Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now
Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,--this last long an
absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the
shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were
Englishmen: e.g. President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel
Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the
physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk's brother-in-law) for Ross,
Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews,
&c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart,
Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay. Ireland
had returned, among _her_ thirty (who were nearly all
Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles
Coote, and several Colonels.[1]--Not a few of the chief members had
been returned by more than one constituency: e.g. Lord Broghill, for
Cork as well as for Edinburgh. Several of those returned cannot have
been expected to give attendance, at least at first. Thus, Admirals
Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and
Portugal. But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and
Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with
him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge. Ambassador
Lockhart also had come over, or was coming.

[Footnote 1: List of the members returned for the Second Parliament
of the Protectorate in _Part. Hist._ III. 1479-1484.]

There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen's
opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to
business.

One was the Lord Protector's opening speech in the Painted Chamber,
now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series. It was very long,
of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter. The pervading
topic was the war with Spain. This was justified, with approving
references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the
subject, entitled _Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c._
(Milton's?), and with vehement expressions of his Highness's personal
abhorrence of Spain and her policy. He represented her and her
allies and dependents as the anti-English and anti-Christian Hydra of
the world, while France, though Roman Catholic too, stood apart from
all the other Catholic powers in not being under the Pope's lash and
so able to be fair and reasonable. He urged the most energetic
prosecution of the war that had been begun. But with the Spanish war
he connected the dangers to England from the Royalist risings and
conspiracies of the last two years, announcing moreover that he had
now full intelligence of a compact between Spain and Charles II., a
force of 7000 or 8000 Spaniards ready at Bruges in consequence, and
other forces promised by Popish princes, clients of Spain. There were
English agents of the alliance at work, he said, and one miscreant in
particular who had been an Anabaptist Colonel; and, necessarily, all
schemes and conspiracies against the present government would drift
into the Hispano-Stuartist interest. He acquitted some of the
opponents of his government, calling themselves "Commonwealth's men"
and "Fifth Monarchy men," from any intention of that conjunction; but
so it would happen. His arrests of some such had been necessary for
the public safety. He knew his system of Major-Generalships was much
criticised, and thought arbitrary; but that had been necessary too,
and a most useful invention. He had called this Parliament with a
hope of united constitutional action with them for the future, and
would recommend, in the domestic programme, under the general head of
"Reformation," certain great matters to their care. There was the
Sustentation of the Church and the Universities; there was
Reformation of Manners; and there was the still needed Reformation of
the Laws. On the Church-question he avowed, more strongly than ever
before, his desire to uphold and perpetuate an Established Church.
"For my part," he said, "I should think I were very treacherous if I
took away Tithes, till I see the Legislative Power settle maintenance
to Ministers another way." He knew that some of the ministers
themselves would prefer some other form of State-provision; but, on
the whole, believing that some distinct State-maintenance of the
Clergy, whether by tithes or otherwise, was "the root of visible
profession." he adjured the Parliament not to swerve from that. He
expounded also his principle of comprehending Presbyterians,
Independents, Baptists, and all earnest Evangelical men amicably in
the Established Church, with small concern about their differences
from each, other, and expressed his especial satisfaction that the
Presbyterians had at length come round to this view, and given up
much of their old Anti-Toleration tenet. "I confess I look at that
as the blessedest thing which hath been since the adventuring upon
this government." Towards the end of the speech there was just a hint
that he stood on his Protectorship for life, and regarded that as a
fundamental, not to be called in question. "I say, Look up to God:
have peace among yourselves. Know assuredly that, if I have an
interest, I am by the voice of the People the Supreme Magistrate,
and, it may be, do know somewhat that might satisfy my conscience, if
I stood in doubt. But it is a union, really it is a union, between
you and me; and, both of us united in faith and love to Jesus Christ,
and to His peculiar Interest in the world,-_that_ must ground
this work. And in that, if I have any peculiar interest which is
personal to myself, which is not subservient to the public end, it
were not an extravagant thing for me to curse myself, because I know
God will curse me if I have." After quoting the 85th Psalm, he
dismissed them to choose their Speaker.[1]

[Footnote 1: Speech V.; Carlyle, III. 159-196.]

Then, however, there was the second intervention. It was in the lobby
of the House. Some persons, acting for the Clerk of the Commonwealth
in Chancery, stood there, with tickets certifying that such and such
members had been duly returned and also "_approved by his
Highness's Council";_ the doors of the House were guarded by
soldiers; and none but those for whom the tickets had been made out
were allowed to enter. About ninety-three found themselves thus
excluded; among whom, were Hasilrig, Scott, Irby, Sir Harbottle
Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Maynard, four of the six members
for the city of London, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. The residue,
who had received tickets, proceeded to constitute the House, and
unanimously elected Sir Thomas Widdrington, Sergeant at Law and one
of the Commissioners of the Treasury, for their Speaker. Almost the
only other business that day was to thank Dr. Owen for his sermon,
and order it to be printed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept. 17, 1656; and Parl. Hist. III.
1484-1487.]

The next day there was read in the House a letter to the Speaker,
signed by a number of the excluded, informing him of the fact and
desiring to be admitted. Through that and the two following sittings,
an inquiry into the circumstances of the exclusion formed part of the
proceedings. The Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, being
required to attend, did at last present himself, and explained that
he had but obeyed orders. He had received a letter from Mr. Jessop,
the Clerk of the Council, ordering him to deliver tickets only to
such of the persons elected as should be certified to him as approved
by the Council; and he had acted accordingly. With some reluctance,
he produced the letter; and the House then resolved to ask the
Council for their reasons for excluding so many members. These were
given, on the 20th, by Fiennes for the Council. They were to the
effect that Article XXI. of the constituting Instrument of the
Protectorate, called _The Government of the Commonwealth_ (Vol.
IV. pp. 542-544), required the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery,
for the first three Parliaments of the Protectorate, to report to the
Council what persons had been returned, and empowered the Council to
admit those duly qualified and to exclude others, and also that, by
another clause in the same Instrument (Art. XVII.), it was required
that the persons elected should be "of known integrity, fearing God,
and of good conversation." All which being undeniable, it was
resolved by the House, after debate, Sept. 22, by a majority of 125
to twenty-nine, to refer the excluded to the Council itself for any
farther satisfaction they wanted, and meanwhile "to proceed with the
great affairs of the nation." The House, _without_ the excluded,
it will be seen, was decidedly Oliverian in the main. The excluded,
or some of them, took their revenge by printing and distributing a
Protest or Remonstrance addressed to the Nation, with the names of
all the ninety-three attached, those of Hasilrig and Scott first. It
was a document of extreme vehemence, denouncing the Protector as an
armed tyrant and all who had abetted him in his last act as capital
enemies to the Commonwealth, and disowning beforehand, as null and
void, all that the truncated Parliament might do. Cromwell took no
notice whatever of this Remonstrance. By one more stroke of
"arbitrariness," bolder than any before, but allowed, he might plead,
by the Instrument of his Protectorate, he had fashioned for himself a
Second Parliament, likely to be more to his mind than his First.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept, 18-22, 1656; Whitlocke, IV.
274-280 (where the Remonstrance of the Excluded is given in full);
Ludlow, 579-580.]

So it proved. Some of the excluded having been admitted after all,
and new elections having been made in cases where members had been
returned by two or more constituencies, the House went on for the
first five months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7) with a pretty steady
working attendance of about 220 at the maximum--which implies that,
besides the excluded, there must have been a large number of
absentees or very lax attenders. During these five months a large
amount of miscellaneous business was done, with occasional divisions,
but no vital disagreement within the House, or between it and the
Protector. There was an Act for renouncing and disavowing Charles II,
over again, and an Act for the safety of the Lord Protector's person
and government, both made law, by Cromwell's assent, Oct. 27. There
was a vote of approbation of the war with Spain, with votes of means
for carrying it on. There were Bills, more formal than before, for
adjusting and completing the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland
with the Commonwealth. There were Committees of all sorts for
maturing these and other Bills. Among the grand Committees was one
for Religion. There were votes of reward to various persons for past
services. The better observance of the Lord's Day was one of the
subjects of discussion. Amid the minor or more private business one
notes a great many _naturalizings_ of foreigners resident in
England, or of persons of English descent born abroad or otherwise
requiring to be naturalized. Theodore Haak and his family, Dr. Lewis
Du Moulin, a number of Lawrences and Carews, and a daughter of the
poet Waller, are among the scores included in such Naturalization
Bills. Through all this, hardly a week, of course, without an order
to Dr. Owen, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Caryl, Nye, Sterry, Manton, or some
other leading divine, to preach a special sermon, with thanks after
for his "great pains," and generally a request that the sermon should
be printed. On the whole, Speaker Widdrington had no light post.
Indeed, in January 1656-7, the House, perceiving him to be very ill
and weak, insisted on his taking leave of absence, and appointed
Whitlocke as his substitute. Whitlocke acted as pro-Speaker, he tells
us, from January 27 to Feb. 18, with great acceptance and rapid
despatch of business. On the last of these days, however,
Widdrington, though at the risk of his life, reappeared and resumed
duty. A fee of £5, it seems, was due to the Speaker from every person
naturalized by bill, and all such fees would have gone to Whitlocke
had Widdrington remained absent. The loss to Whitlocke was made up
handsomely by the House in a vote of £2000, besides repayment of £500
he had expended over his allowance in his Swedish embassy, and thanks
for his many eminent services.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals over period and for dates named;
Whitlocke, IV. 280-286.]

About a fortnight after the Parliament had met (Oct. 2), there had
come splendid news from Blake and Montague. A Spanish fleet from the
West Indies, with the ex-Viceroy of Peru and his family on board, and
a vast treasure of silver, had been attacked in Cadiz bay by six
English frigates under the command of Captain Stayner. Two of the
ships had been taken, two burnt and sunk (the ex-Viceroy, his wife,
and eldest daughter, perishing most tragically in the flames), and
there had been a great capture of silver. The rejoicing in London was
great, and it was renewed a month afterwards by the actual arrival
of the silver from Portsmouth, a long train of waggon-loads through
the open streets, on its way to the Mint, Admiral Montague himself
had come with it. He was in the House Nov. 4, welcomed with thanks
and applauses to his place for a while among the legislators.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and Godwin, IV,
300-303.]

Legislative work being back in the hands of a Parliament, the
Protector and his Council had confined themselves meanwhile to
matters of administration, war, and diplomacy. Vane had been released
from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight by order of Council, Dec.
11, and permitted to return to Lincolnshire; and there had been other
relaxations of the severities attending the opening of the
Parliament. There had been an order of Council (Oct. 2) for the
release of imprisoned Quakers at Exeter, Dorchester, Colchester, and
other places, with instructions to the Major-Generals in the
respective districts to see the order carried out and the fines of
the poor people discharged. The business of the Piedmontese
Protestants still occupied the Council, and there were letters to
various foreign powers. Of new diplomatic arrangements of the
Protector about this time, and through the whole session of the
Parliament, account will be more conveniently taken hereafter; but
Ambassador Lockhart's temporary presence in London, and his frequent
colloquies with the Protector over French affairs, Spanish affairs,
the movements of Charles II abroad, a rumoured dissension between
Charles II. and his brother the Duke of York, and Mazarin's astute
intimacy with all, are worthy of remark even now. It was on Dec. 10,
1656, that Lockhart received from his Highness the honour of
knighthood at Whitehall; and on Feb. 3, 1656-7, it was settled by his
Highness and the Council that Lockhart's allowance thenceforward in
his Embassy should be £100 a week, i.e, about £18,000 a year in
present value. Lockhart's real post being in Paris, his attendance in
Parliament can have been but brief. His fellow-Scotsman, Swinton of
Swinton, also gave but brief attendance. The Protector had taken the
opportunity of Swinton's visit to London to show him special
attention, and to promote in the Council certain very substantial
recognitions of his adhesion to the Commonwealth when other Scots
abhorred it, and of his good services in Scotland to it and the
Protectorate since. But, as his proper place was in Edinburgh, it was
ordered, Dec. 25, 1656, that he, and his fellow-members of the
Scottish Council, Major-General Charles Howard and Colonel Adrian
Scroope, should return thither. This was the more necessary because
Lord Broghill did not mean to return to Scotland, the air of which
did not suit him, but preferred employment for the future either in
England or in his native Ireland. Broghill's Presidency in Scotland
had now, indeed, virtually ceased, and the administration there, with
the difficult steering between the Resolutioners and the Protesters
of the Kirk, had been left to Monk and the rest. Nay, as we know, the
hearing of that vital Scottish question had been transferred to
London. Sharp, who had come to London in Broghill's train as agent
for the Resolutioners, "presently got access to the Protector" and
"was well liked of and accepted." But the Marquis of Argyle had
weight enough yet to stop any concession to him till the other party
had been heard. Accordingly, in October, 1656, a Mr. James Simson,
minister of Airth, had been sent up by the Protesters, to be
followed, more effectively, in January, by Mr. James Guthrie himself,
Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, and three elders, of whom one was
Warriston. There had been a conference and debate between Sharp and
these Protesters before Cromwell, three of his Council being present,
and Owen, Lockyer, Manton, and Ashe attending as representative
English divines; but his Highness had not yet made up his mind. The
rumour in Scotland was that Sharp was likely to succeed, and that he
had driven Warriston and Gillespie very hard in the Conference, and
contrived, in particular, to make Warriston, in self-defence, betray
some awkward secrets. One finds, however, that Principal Gillespie
was invited to preach twice before the Parliament, and thanked for
his sermons, and that he had influence enough to move in the Council
a suit in the interests of the University of Glasgow. Though Sharp,
as Baillie advised him, was "supping with a long spoon," Cromwell
had probably taken estimate of him.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates given, and of others (e.g.
Nov. 4 and Dec. 2, 1656, and Jan. 12 and Feb. 12, 1656-7); _Merc.
Pol._ No. 340 (Dec. 11-18, 1656); Life of Robert Blair, 329-331;
Baillie, III. 328-341.]

One matter In which there had been an approach to disagreement
between the Parliament and the Protector was the famous _Case of
James Nayler;_--Quakerism and its extravagancies were irritating
the sober part of the nation unspeakably, and this maddest of all the
Quakers, on account of the outrageous "blasphemies" of his recent
Song-of-Simon procession through the west of England--repeated at
Bristol after his release from Exeter jail--had been selected by
Parliament for an example. On the 31st of October, 1856, a large
committee was appointed on his case; and on the 5th of December,
Nayler and others having been brought prisoners to London meanwhile,
the report of the Committee was made, and there began a debate on the
case, which was protracted through ten sittings, Nayler himself
brought once or twice to the bar. It was easily resolved that he had
been "guilty of horrid blasphemy" and was a "grand impostor and great
seducer of the people": the difficult question was as to his
punishment. On the 16th of December it was carried but by ninety-six
votes to eighty-two that it should _not_ be death, and, after
some faint farther argument on the side of mercy, this was the
sentence: "That James Nayler be set on the pillory, with his head in
the pillory, in the New Palace, Westminster, during the space of two
hours, on Thursday next, and shall be whipped by the hangman through
the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, there
likewise to be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, for
the space of two hours, between the hours of eleven and one on
Saturday next--in each of the said places wearing a paper containing
an inscription of his crimes: and that at the Old Exchange his tongue
shall be bored through with a hot iron; and that he be there also
stigmatized in the forehead with the letter B: And that he be
afterwards sent to Bristol, and conveyed into and through the said
city on a horse bare-ridged, with his face backwards, and there also
publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither: And that
from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and there
restrained from the society of all people, and kept to hard labour,
till he be released by Parliament, and during that time be debarred
from the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief but what he
earns by his daily labour." Though petitions for clemency had already
been presented to Parliament by some very orthodox people, the first
part of this atrocious sentence was duly executed Dec. 18. Then came
more earnest petitions both to Parliament and the Protector, with the
effect of a respite of the next part from the 20th to the 27th;
between which dates this letter from the Protector was read in the
House: "O.P. Right Trusty and Well-beloved, We greet you well. Having
taken notice of a judgment lately given by yourselves against one
James Nayler, Although we detest and abhor the giving or occasioning
the least countenance to persons of such opinions and practices, or
who are guilty of the crimes commonly imputed to the said person:
Yet, We, being intrusted in the present Government on behalf of the
People of these Nations, and _not knowing how far such Proceeding,
entered into wholly without Us, may extend in the consequence of
it_, Do desire that the House will let Us know the grounds and
reasons whereupon they have proceeded." Two things are here to be
perceived. One is that Cromwell did not approve of the course taken
with Nayler. The other, and more important, is that he regarded this
action of the House, without his consent, as an intrenchment on that
part of his prerogative which concerned Toleration. He thought
himself, by the constitution of his Protectorate, entrusted with a
certain guardianship of this principle, even against Parliament; and
he did not know how far Nayler's case might be made a precedent for
religious persecutions. What may have been the exact reply to
Cromwell from the House we do not know; but the House was not in a
mood to spare Nayler. He had not satisfied the clergymen sent to
confer with him. Accordingly, on the 27th, a motion to respite him
for another week having been lost by 113 to 59, the second part of
his punishment was inflicted to the letter; after which he was
removed to Bristol to receive the rest. All that one can say is that,
though Cromwell was far from pleased with the business, and even
thought it a horrible one, he did not feel that he could at that time
make it the occasion of an actual quarrel with the Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Carlyle III, 213-215; Sewel's
_History of the People called Quakers_ (ed. 1834) I. 179-207.]

Another matter in which a disagreement might have been feared between
Cromwell and his Parliament was that of _The
Major-Generalships._ This "invention" of Cromwell's for the police
of England and Wales generally, and specially for the collection of
the Decimation or Militia Tax from the Royalists, had been so
successful that he had congratulated himself on It in his opening
speech to the Parliament. He, doubtless, desired that Parliament
should adopt and continue it. On the 7th of January, 1656-7,
accordingly, there was read for the first time "a Bill for the
continuing and assessing of a Tax for the paying and maintaining of
the Militia forces in England and Wales," i.e. for prolonging
Cromwell's Decimation Tax of 1655, and virtually the whole machinery
of the Major-Generalships. That there would be serious opposition in
the House had been foreseen since Dec. 25, when there had been two
divisions on the question of leave to bring in the Bill, and leave
had been obtained only by eighty-eight votes to sixty-three. Among
the opponents were Whitlocke and the other lawyers, all those indeed
who wanted to terminate the time of "arbitrariness," and objected to
a tax now on old political delinquents as contrary to the
Parliamentary Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2. On the other hand, the
Bill was strongly supported by Lambert. Fiennes, Lisle, Pickering,
Sydenham, other members of Council, and the Major-Generals
themselves. It was, in fact, a Government Bill, Nevertheless, after a
protracted debate of six days, the second reading of the Bill was
negatived Jan. 29 by 121 to 78, and the Bill absolutely rejected by
124 to 88. Cromwell himself had helped to bring about this result.
Much as he liked his "invention," he had perceived, in the course of
the debate, that it must be given up; and he had given hints to that
effect. The House, in short, had understood that they were left to
their own free will. And so the Major-Generalships disappeared, the
police of the country reverted to the ordinary magistracy, and
Cromwell was to trust to Parliament for necessary supplies in more
regular ways.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 327-331.]

What drew the Parliament and the Protector more closely together
about this time was the explosion of a new plot against the
Protector's life. At the centre of the plot was that "wretched
creature, an apostate from religion and all honesty," of whom
Cromwell had spoken in his opening speech as going between Charles
II. and the King of Spain, and negotiating for a Spanish invasion of
England. In other words, he was Edward Sexby, once a stout trooper
and agitator in the Parliamentarian army (Vol. III. p. 534),
afterwards Captain and even Colonel in the same, but since then one
of the fiercest Anabaptist malcontents. He had been in the Wildman
plot of Feb. 1654-5, but had then escaped abroad; and since then his
occupation had been as described by Cromwell,--now in Flanders, now
in Madrid, shuttling alliance between Spain and the Stuarts. But,
though a Spanish invasion of England to restore the Stuarts was his
great game, an assassination of Cromwell anyhow, whether without a
Spanish invasion or in anticipation of it, was nearest to his heart.
Actually he had been in London just before the meeting of the
Parliament, trying to arrange for such "fiddling things"--so Cromwell
had called them--as shooting him in the Park or blowing him up in his
chamber at Whitehall. Before Thurloe had traces of him, he had again
decamped to Flanders; but he had left a substitute in Miles
Sindercombe, an old leveller and mutineer of 1647, but since then a
quarter-master in Monk's Army in Scotland, and dismissed for his
complicity in the Overton project. Sexby had left Sindercombe £1600;
and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with
Cromwell's guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots
at Cromwell's coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying
gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall. He had
been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8,
and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to
extinguish a slow-match that was to explode a mass of blazing
chemicals at midnight. All Whitehall having been roused, the
Protector with the rest, information led at once to Sindercombe. He
was arrested in his lodging, and sent to the Tower; and, his trial
having followed, Feb. 9, he was convicted on evidence given by
accomplices, and doomed to execution on the 14th. In the night
preceding he was found dead in his bed, having poisoned himself. He
had left intimation that he was under no concern about his immortal
soul, having passed out of any form of religion recognising such an
entity, and become a Materialist or Soul-sleeper. Meanwhile his plot
had raised a ferment of new loyalty round the Protector. On the 19th
of January, when Thurloe made a formal disclosure to the House of all
the particulars of the plot, a general thanksgiving throughout
England, Scotland, and Ireland, was ordered, and it was resolved that
the whole House should wait upon his Highness "to congratulate with
his Highness on this great mercy and deliverance." The interview was
on January the 23rd, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, when
Speaker Widdrington made the address for the House, and Cromwell
replied in a most affectionate speech (_Speech_ VI.). The
thanksgiving was on Feb. 20; on which day Principal Gillespie of
Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special
sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was
wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had
been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and
instrumental, in the part of the Palace called the Cockpit.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 18;
Carlyle, III. 204-211; Godwin, IV. 331-333; _Merc. Pol._ No.
349 (Feb. 12-19, 1656-7); Whitlocke, IV. 286; Parl. Hist. III. 1490.]

Three days after the great dinner in Whitehall, i.e. on Monday, Feb.
23, 1656-7, there was an incident in the House which turned all the
future proceedings of this Second Parliament of the Protectorate into
a new channel. It is thus entered in the Journals:--

  " ... Sir Christopher Pack [Ex-Mayor of London, knighted by
  Cromwell, Sept. 25, 1655, and now one of the members for the City]
  presented a Paper to the House, declaring it was somewhat come to
  his hand tending to the Settlement of the Nation and of Liberty and
  Property, and prayed it might be received and read; and, it being
  much controverted whether the same should be read without farther
  opening [preliminary explanation] thereof, the Question being
  propounded _That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be
  further opened by him before it is read,_ and the Question being
  put _That this Question be now put,_ it passed in the Negative. The
  Question being propounded _That this Paper, offered by Sir
  Christopher Pack, be now read,_ and the Question being put _That
  that Question be now put,_ the House was divided. The Noes went
  forth:--Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Robinson, Tellers for the Noes--with
  the Noes 54; Sir Charles Wolseley, Colonel Fitzjames, Tellers for
  the Yeas--with the Yeas 144. So it passed in the Affirmative. And,
  the main Question being put, it was Resolved _That this Paper,
  offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read._ The said Paper was
  read accordingly, and was entitled 'The Humble Address and
  Remonstrance of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, now assembled
  in the Parliament of this Commonwealth.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.]

The debate on the Paper was protracted to the evening "a candle"
having been ordered in for the purpose; and it was then adjourned to
the next day. In fact, for the next four months, or through the whole
remainder of the session, the House was to continue the debate, or
questions arising out of it, and to do little else. For, on the 24th
of February, it was resolved by a majority of 100 to 44 (Lambert and
Strickland tellers for the _Minority_) that the paper should be
taken up and discussed in its successive parts, "beginning at the
first Article after the Preamble;" and, though an attempt was made
next day to throw the subject into Grand Committee, that was defeated
by 118 to 63. In evidence of the momentousness of the occasion, a
whole Parliamentary day was set apart for "seeking the Lord" upon it,
with prayers and sermons by Dr. Owen and others; and, when the House
met again after that ceremonial (Feb. 28), it was resolved that no
vote passed on any part of the Paper should be binding till all
should be completed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.]

Sir Christopher Pack's paper of Feb. 23, 1656-7, entitled _The
Humble Address and Remonstrance, &c._, was nothing less than a
proposed address by Parliament to the Protector, asking him to concur
with the Parliament in a total recast of the existing Constitution.
It had been privately considered and prepared by several persons, and
Whitlocke had been requested to introduce it, "Not liking--several
things in it," he had declined to do so; but, Sir Christopher having
volunteered, Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne and others, were to back
him. Indeed, all the Oliverians were to back him. Or, rather, there
was to grow out of the business, according as the Oliverians were
more hearty or less hearty in their cooperation, a new distinction of
that body into _Thorough Oliverians_ and _Distressed
Oliverians_ or _Contrariants_. Why this should have been the
case will appear if we quote the First Article of the proposed
Address after the Preamble. It ran thus: "That your Highness will be
pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of KING
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and
Territories thereunto belonging, and exercise thereof, to hold and
enjoy the same, with the rights and privileges and prerogatives
justly, legally, and rightfully, belonging thereunto: That your
Highness will be pleased, during your life-time, to appoint and
declare the person who shall, immediately after your death, succeed
you in the Government of these Nations." The rest of the Address was
to correspond. Thus Article II. proposed a return to the system of
two Houses of Parliament, and generally the tenor was towards royal
institutions. On the other hand, the regality proposed was to be
strictly constitutional. There was to be an end to all arbitrary
power. There were to be free and full Parliaments once in three years
at farthest; there was to be no violent interference in future with
the process of Parliament, no exclusion of any persons that had been
duly returned by the constituencies; and his Highness and Council
were not to make ordinances by their own authority, but all laws, and
changes or abrogations of laws, were to be by Act of Parliament.
Oliver was to be King, if he chose, and a King with very large
powers; but he was to keep within Statute.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 286 and 289; Commons Journals of March
2, 3, and 24, 1656-7, and March 25, 1657 (whence I have recovered
the original wording of Article I. of the Address).]

On March 2 and 3 the First Article of the Address was debated, with
the result that it was agreed to _postpone_ any vote on the
first and most important part of the Article, offering Oliver the
Kingship, but with the passing of the second part, offering him,
whether it should be as King or not, the power of nominating his
successor. A motion for postponing the vote on this part also was
lost by 120 to 63. Then, on the 5th, Article II., proposing
Parliaments of _two Houses_, was discussed, and adopted without a
division; after which there were discussions and adoptions of the
remaining proposals, day after day, with occasional divisions about
the wording, till March 24. On that day, the House, their survey of
the document being tolerably complete, went back on the
_postponed_ clause of the First Article, involving the
all-important question of the offer of the Kingship. Through two
sittings that day, and again on March 25 (New Year's Day, 1657),
there was a very anxious and earnest debate with closed doors, the
opposition trying to stave off the final vote by two motions for
adjournment. These having failed, the final vote was taken (March
25); when, by a majority of 123 to 62, the Kingship clause was
carried in this amended form: "That your Highness will be pleased to
assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of King of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and
Territories thereunto belonging, and to exercise the same according
to the laws of these Nations." Then, it seemed, all was over, except
verbal revision of the entire address. Next day (March 26) it was
referred to a Committee, with Chief Justice Glynne for Chairman, to
perform this--i.e. to "consider of the title, preamble, and
conclusion, and read over the whole, and consider the coherence, and
make it perfect." All which having been done that same day, and the
House having given some last touches, the document was ready to be
engrossed for presentation to Cromwell. By recommendation of the
Committee, the title had been changed from _Address and
Remonstrance_ into _Petition and Advice_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and between March 5 and March
25.]

Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through
the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious
vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the
introduction of Sir Christopher Pack's paper and the conversion of
the same into the _Petition and Advice_, with the distinct offer
of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the
affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even
horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had
hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate.
Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military
opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals,
and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their
motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion
of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a
Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have
to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still
lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to
a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It
had been some of the Oliverian Army-men in Parliament, at all events,
that had first resisted Pack's motion. Ludlow's story is that they
very nearly laid violent hands on Pack when he produced his paper;
and the divisions in the Commons Journals exhibit Lambert and various
Colonels, with Strickland, as among the chief obstructors of the
_Petition and Advice_ in its passage through the House.
Strickland, it will be remembered, was an eminent member of the
Protector's own Council; and, as far as one can gather, several
others of that body, besides Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and
Strickland--perhaps half of the whole number of those now habitually
attending the Council--were opposed to the Kingship. On the other
hand, the more enthusiastic Oliverians of the Council, those most
attached to Cromwell personally, e.g. Sir Charles Wolseley, appear to
have been acquiescent, or even zealous for the Kingship; and there
were at least some military Oliverians, out of the Council, of the
same mind. In the final vote of March 25, carrying the offer of
Kingship, the tellers for the majority were Sir John Reynolds
(Tipperary and Waterford), and Major-General Charles Howard
(Cumberland), while those for the minority were Major-General Butler
(Northamptonshire), and Colonel Salmon (Dumfries Burghs).
Undoubtedly, however, the chief managers of the _Petition and
Advice_ in the House from the first had been Whitlocke, Glynne,
and others of the lawyers, with Lord Broghill. The lawyers had been
long anxious for a constitutional Kingship: nothing else, they
thought, could restore the proper machinery of Law and State, and
make things safe. Accordingly, out of doors, in the whole civilian
class, and largely also among the more conservative citizens, the
idea of Oliver's Kingship was far from unwelcome. The Presbyterians
generally, it is believed, were very favourable to it, their
dispositions towards Cromwell having changed greatly of late; nor of
the old Presbyterian Royalists were all averse. There were Royalists
now who were not Stuartists, who wanted a king on grounds of general
principle and expediency, but were not resolute that he should be
Charles II. only. The real combination of elements against Oliver's
Kingship consisted, therefore, of the unyielding old Royalists of the
Stuart adhesion, regarding the elevation of the usurping "brewer" to
the throne as abomination upon abomination, the Army Oliverians or
Lambert and Fleetwood men, interested in the preservation of the
existing Protectorate, and the passionate Republicans and Levellers,
who had not yet condoned even the Protectorate, and whom the
prospect of King and House of Lords over again, with all their
belongings, made positively frantic.

How far Cromwell had been aware beforehand of such a project as that
of Sir Christopher Pack's paper may be a question. That he had let it
be known for some time that he was not disinclined to a revision and
enlargement of the constitution of the original Protectorate may be
fairly assumed; but that he had concocted Pack's project and arranged
for bringing it on (which is Ludlow's representation, and, of course,
that of all the Histories) is very unlikely. The project, as in
Pack's paper, and as agreed upon by Whitlocke, Glynne, and other
lawyers and Parliament men, was by no means, in all its parts, such a
project as Cromwell himself would have originated. To the Kingship he
may have had no objection, and we have his own word afterwards that
he favoured the idea of a Second House of Parliament; but there were
accompanying provisions not so satisfactory. What he had hitherto
valued in his Protectorate was the place and scope given to his own
supreme personality, his power to judge what was best and to carry it
through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and
Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere
euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British
Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore
have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public
interests, or for his own comfort, he could put himself in new
shackles for the mere name of King. What, for example, of the
proposed restitution of the ninety-and-odd excluded members to the
present Parliament? How could he get on after that? In short, there
was so much in Pack's paper suggestive of new and difficult questions
as to the futurity of Cromwell, his real influence in affairs, if he
exchanged the Protectorship for Kingship, that the paper, or the
exact project it embodied, cannot have been of Cromwell's devising.
There are subsequent events in proof of the fact.

On the 27th of February, the fourth day after the introduction of
Pack's paper, and the very day of the Fast appointed by the House
prior to consideration of it in detail, Cromwell had been waited on
by a hundred officers, headed by the alarmed Major-Generals,
imploring him not to allow the thing to go farther. His reply was
that, though he then specifically heard of the whole project for the
first time, he could by no means share their instantaneous alarm.
Kingship was nothing in itself, at best "a mere feather in a man's
hat"; but it need be no bugbear, and at least ought to be no new
thing to _them_. Had they not offered it to him at the
institution of the Protectorate, though the title of Protector had
been then preferred? Under that title he had been often a mere drudge
of the Army, constrained to things not to his own liking. For the
rest, were there not reasons for amending, in other respects, the
constitution of the Protectorate? Had it not broken down in several
matters, and were there not deficiencies in it? If there had been a
Second House of Parliament, for example, would there have been that
indiscreet decision in the case of James Nayler, a decision that
might extend farther than Nayler, and leave no man safe?--Thus, with
the distinct information that Cromwell would not interfere with
Pack's project in its course through the House, had the Officers been
dismissed. It was probably in consequence of their remonstrance with
Cromwell, however, that the vote on the Kingship clause of the First
Article had been postponed from the 2nd of March to the 25th. The
delay had been useful. Though Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the
mass of the military men, still remained "contrariants," not a few of
them had been shaken by Cromwell's arguments, or at least by his
judgment. If _he_, whom it was their habit to trust, was
prepared to take the Kingship, and saw reasons for it, why should
they stand out? So, before the vote did come on, Major-Generals
Berry, Goffe, and Whalley, with others, had ceased to oppose, and the
Kingship clause, reserved to the last, as the keystone of the
otherwise completed arch, had been carried, as we have seen, by
two-thirds of the House.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 349-353; Carlyle, III. 217.]

It was on Tuesday, March 31, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall,
that Speaker Widdrington, attended by the whole House, and by all the
high State-officers, formally presented to Cromwell, after a long
speech, the _Petition and Advice_, engrossed on vellum. The
understanding, by vote of the House, was that his Highness must
accept the whole, and that otherwise no part would be binding.
Cromwell's answer, in language very calm and somewhat sad
(_Speech_ VII.), was one of thanks, with a request for time to
consider. On the 3rd of April, a Committee of the House, appointed by
his request, waited on him for farther answer. It was still one of
thanks: e.g. "I should be very brutish did I not acknowledge the
exceeding high honour and respect you have had for me in this Paper";
but it was in effect a refusal, on the ground that, being shut up to
accept all or none, he could not see his way to accept (_Speech_
VIII.). Notwithstanding this answer, which could hardly be construed
as final, the House next day resolved, after two divisions, to adhere
to their _Petition and Advice_, and to make new application to
the Protector. On the previous question the division was
seventy-seven to sixty-five, Major-Generals Howard and Jephson
telling for the majority, and Major-General Whalley and Colonel
Talbot for the minority; on the main question there was a majority of
seventy-eight, with Admiral Montague and Sir John Hobart for tellers,
against sixty-five, told by General Desborough and Colonel Hewson. A
Committee having then prepared a brief paper representing to his
Highness the serious obligation he was under in such a matter, there
was a second Conference of the whole House with his Highness (April
8). His reply to Widdrington then (_Speech_ IX.) did not
withdraw his former refusal, but signified willingness to receive
farther information and counsel. To give such information and
counsel, and In fact to reason out the matter thoroughly with
Cromwell, the House then appointed a large Committee of
_ninety-nine_, composed in the main, one must fancy, of members
who were now eager for the Kingship, or at least had ceased to
object. Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne, Fiennes, Lenthall, Lord
Commissioner Lisle, Sir Charles Wolseley, and Thurloe, were to be the
most active members of this Committee; but it included also Admiral
Montague, Generals Howard, Jephson, Whalley, Pack, Goffe, and Berry,
with Sydenham, Rous, the Scotch Earl of Tweeddale, the Lord Provost
of Edinburgh, the poet Waller, and even Strickland. The Committee was
appointed April 9, and the House was to await the issue.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 218-228 (with Cromwell's _Speeches_
VII., VIII., and IX.); Commons Journals of dates.]

It seemed as if it would never be reached. The Conferences of the
Committee with Cromwell between April 11 to May 8, their reasonings
with him to induce him to accept the Kingship, his reasonings in
reply in the four speeches now numbered X.-XIII. of the Cromwell
series, his doubts, delays, avoidances of several meetings, and
constant adjournments of his final answer, make a story of great
interest in the study of Cromwell's character, not without remarkable
flashes of light on past transactions, and on Cromwell's theory of
his Protectorship and of Government in general. Speech XIII., in
particular, which is by far the longest, and which was addressed to
the Committee on April 21, is full of instruction. Having in his
previous speeches dealt chiefly with the subject of the Kingship, and
stated such various objections to the kingly title as the bad
associations with it, the blasting as if for ever which it had
received from God's Providence in England, and the antipathy to it of
many good men, he here took up the rest of the _Petition and
Advice_. Approving, on the whole, of the spirit and contents of
the document, and especially of the apparent rejection in it of that
notion of perpetually-sitting Single-House Parliaments which he
considered the most fatal fallacy in politics, and persistence in
which by the Rump had left him no option but to dissolve that body
forcibly and assume the Dictatorship, he yet found serious defects in
some of the Articles, and want of precision on this point and that.
His criticisms of this kind were masterly examples of his breadth of
thought, his foresight, and his practical sagacity, and made an
immediate impression. For, at this stage of the proceedings, the
belief being that he would ultimately accept the Kingship, the House,
whose sittings had been little more than nominal during the great
Whitehall Conferences, applied itself vigorously, by deliberations in
Committee and exchanges of papers with the Protector, to such
amendments of the _Petition and Advice_ as he had indicated. On
April 30 sufficient intimation of such amendments was ready, and the
former Committee of Ninety-nine were required to let his Highness
know the same and ask him to appoint a time for his positive answer.
For another week, notwithstanding two appointments for the purpose,
all was still in suspense. During that week we are to suppose
Cromwell either in perplexed solitary meditation, or shut up in those
confidential meetings with a few of the most zealous promoters of the
Kingship which Whitlocke describes. "The Protector," says Whitlocke,
"often advised about this and other great businesses with the Lord
Broghill, Pierrepoint, myself, Sir Charles Wolseley and Thurloe, and
would be shut up three or four hours together in private discourse,
and none were admitted to come in to him. He would sometimes be very
cheerful with us, and, laying aside his greatness, he would be
exceeding familiar with us, and by way of diversion would make verses
with us, and every one must try his fancy. He commonly called for
tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco
himself: then he would fall again to his serious and great business."
At length, on Friday, May 8, the Parliament, assembled once more in
the Banqueting House, did receive their positive answer. It was in a
brief speech (Speech _XIV._) ending "I cannot undertake this
Government with the title of King; and that is mine Answer to this
great and weighty business."[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 280-301 (with Speeches X.--XIV.); Commons
Journals of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 289-290.]

The story in Ludlow is that to the last moment Cromwell had meant to
accept, and that his sudden and unexpected refusal was occasioned by
a bold stroke of the Army-men. Having invited himself to dine at
Desborough's, says Ludlow, he had taken Fleetwood with him, and had
begun "to droll with them about monarchy," and ask them why sensible
men like them should make so much of the affair, and refuse to please
the children by permitting them to have "their rattle." Fleetwood and
Desborough still remaining grave, he had called them "a couple of
scrupulous fellows," and left them. Next day (May 6) he had sent a
message to the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber next morning;
and, casually encountering Desborough again, he had told Desborough
what he intended. That same day Desborough had told Pride, whereupon
that resolute colonel had surprised Desborongh by saying he would
prevent it still. Going to Dr. Owen on the instant, Pride had made
him draft an Officers' Petition to the House. It was to the effect
that the petitioners, having "hazarded their lives against monarchy,"
and being "still ready to do so," observed with pain the "great
endeavours to bring the nation again under their old servitude," and
begged the House not to allow a title to be pressed upon their
General which would be destructive to himself and the Commonwealth.
To this petition Pride had obtained the signatures of two Colonels,
seven Lieutenant-Colonels, eight Majors, and sixteen Captains, not
members of the House; and Cromwell, learning what was in progress,
had sent for Fleetwood, and scolded him for allowing such a thing,
the rather as Fleetwood must know "his resolution not to accept the
crown without the consent of the Army." The appointment with the
House in the Painted Chamber for the 7th was changed, however, into
that in the Banqueting House on the 8th, the latter place, as the
more familiar, being fitter for the negative answer he now meant to
give.--Ludlow's story, though he cites Desborough as his chief
informant, is not perfectly credible in all its details; but the
Commons Journals do show that the meeting originally appointed by
Cromwell on the 6th for the Painted Chamber on the 7th was put off to
the 8th, and then held in the Banqueting House, and also that there
was an Officers' Petition in the interim. It was brought to the doors
of the House, by "divers officers of the Army," on the 8th, just as
the House was adjourning to the Banqueting House; and the Journals
only record that the officers were admitted, and that, a Colonel
Mason having presented the Petition in their name and his own, they
withdrew. The rest is guess; but two main facts cannot be doubted.
One is that Cromwell's great, if not sole, reason at last for
refusing the Crown was his knowledge of the persistent opposition of
a great number of the Army men. The other is that he remembered
afterwards who had been the chief _Contrariants_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 586-591; Commons Journals of dates. There had
been public pamphlets against the Kingship: e.g. one by Samuel
Chidley, addressed to the Parliament, and called "Reasons against
choosing the Protector to be King."]

While the great question of the Kingship had been in progress there
had been a detection of a conspiracy of the Fifth-Monarchy Men.

Ever since the abortive ending of the Barebones Parliament these
enthusiasts had been recognisable as a class of enemies of the
Protectorate distinct from the ordinary and cooler Republicans. While
Vane and Bradshaw might represent the Republicans or Commonwealth's
men generally, the head of the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans was
Harrison. The Harrisonian Republic, the impassioned dream of this
really great-hearted soldier, was the coming Reign of Christ on
Earth, and the trampling down, in anticipation of that reign, of all
dignities, institutions, ministries, and magistracies, that might be
inconsistent with it. In the Barebones Parliament, where the
Fifth-Monarchy Men had been numerous, and where Harrison had led
them, they had gone far, as we know, in conjunction with the
Anabaptists, in a practical attempt to convert Cromwell's interim
Dictatorship, with Cromwell's assent or acquiescence, into a
beginning of the great new era. They had voted down Tithes,
Church-Establishments, and all their connexions, and only the
steadiness of Rons, Sydenham, and the other sober spirits, in making
that vote the occasion of a resurrender of all power into Cromwell's
hands, had prevented the consequences. And so, Cromwell's
Protectorate having come in where Harrison wanted to keep a vacuum
for the Fifth Monarchy, and that Protectorate having not only
conserved Tithes and an Established Church, but professed them to be
parts of its very basis, Harrison had abjured Cromwell for ever.
"Those who had been to me as the apple of my eye," said Harrison
afterwards, "when they had turned aside, said to me, Sit thou on my
right hand; but I loathed it." Through the Protectorate, accordingly,
Harrison, dismissed from the Army, had been living as a suspected
person, with great powers of harm; and, three or four times, when
there were Republican risings, or threatenings of such, it had been
thought necessary to question him, or put him under temporary arrest.
The last occasion had been just before the opening of the present
Parliament, when he was arrested with Vane, Rich, and others, and had
the distinction of being sent as far off as Pendennis Castle in
Cornwall, while Vane was sent only to the Isle of Wight, and Rich
only to Windsor. The imprisonments, however, being merely
precautionary, had been but short; and, at the time of the proposal
of the Kingship to Cromwell, Harrison, as well as the others, was
again at liberty.

That Harrison had ever practically implicated himself in any attempt
to upset the Protectorate by force hardly appears from the evidence.
He was an experienced soldier, and, with all his fervid notions of a
Fifth Monarchy, too massive a man to stir without calculation. All
that can be said is that he was an avowed enemy of Cromwell's rule,
that he was looked up to by all the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans, and
that he held himself free to act should there be fit opportunity. But
there were Harrisonians of a lower grade than Harrison. Especially in
London, since the winter of 1655, there had been a kind of society of
Fifth-Monarchy Men, holding small meetings in five places, only one
man in each meeting knowing who belonged to the others, but the five
connecting links forming a central Committee for management and
propagandism. It must have been from this Committee, I suppose, that
there emanated, in Sept. 1656, a pamphlet called "_The Banner of
Truth displayed, or a Testimony for Christ and against Antichrist:
being the substance of several consultations holden and kept by a
certain number of Christians who are waiting for the visible
appearance of Christ's Kingdom in and over the World, and residing in
and about the City of London_." Probably as yet these humble
Fifth-Monarchy Men had not gone beyond private aspirations. At all
events, Thurloe, though aware of their existence, had not thought
them worth notice. But Sindercombe's Plot of Feb. 1656-7, and the
subsequent proposal of the Kingship for Cromwell, had excited them
prodigiously, and they had been longing for action, and looking about
for leaders. Harrison was their chief hope, and they had applied to
him, but also to other Republicans who were not specially
Fifth-Monarchy Men, such as Rich, Lawson, and Okey. What
encouragement they had or thought they had from such men one does not
know; but they had fixed Thursday, April 9, the very day of the
appointment of the great Committee of Ninety-nine to deal with
Cromwell about the Kingship, for an experimental rendezvous and
standard-raising on Mile-End-Green. This being known to Thurloe, a
horse-troop or two finished the affair by the capture of about twenty
of them at Shoreditch, ready to ride to Mile-End-Green, and also by
the capture at Mile-End-Green itself of their intended standard, some
arms, and a quantity of Fifth-Monarchy books and manifestos. Five or
six of the captured, among whom was Thomas Venner, a wine-cooper, the
real soul of the conspiracy, were imprisoned in the Tower, and the
rest elsewhere; but, in accordance with Cromwell's lenient custom in
such cases, there was no trial, or other public notice of the affair,
beyond a report about it by Thurloe to the House (April 11).
Harrison, however, was again arrested, with Rich, Lawson, and Major
Danvers; and amongst those taken was a Mr. Arthur Squib, who had been
in the Barebones Parliament, and one of Harrison's chief followers
there. Squib's connexion with Venner in the present wretched
conspiracy seems to have been much closer than Harrison's.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 372-375; Carlyle, III. 228-229; Thomason
Catalogue of Pamphlets; Commons Journals, April 11, 1657; Thurloe, I.
289.]

Cromwell had used the Venner outbreak to point a moral in one or two
of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at
Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto _Who shall
rouse him up?;_ and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one
called _A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of
the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the
Beast and the False Prophet_. It was a fierce diatribe against
Cromwell, with a scheme for the government of the Commonwealth on
Fifth-Monarchy principles after his overthrow. The supreme authority
was to be the Lord Jesus Christ; but there was to be an annually
elected Sanhedrim or Supreme Council to represent Him, and to
administer Biblical Law, and no other, with inferior elected judges
for towns and counties. The Bible being the sole Law, a formal
Legislature would be unnecessary; and all other magistracy besides
the Sanhedrim and the Judgeships was to be abolished, and also, of
course, all State ministry of Religion. Now, to Cromwell, who had
read the Tract, all this furnished excellent illustration of the kind
he wanted. Always frankly admitting that it might be said he had
"griped at the government of the nations without a legal assent," he
had never ceased to declare that this had been a sheer necessity for
the nations themselves. But the _Standard set up_ of the
Fifth-Monarchy insurgents of Mile-End-Green had enabled him to return
to the topic with reference specifically to the Barebones Parliament
and the transition thence to the Protectorate. That wild pamphlet, he
had told his auditors, in Speech XII. (April 20), was by one who had
been "a leading person" in the Barebones Parliament (Harrison or
Squib?); and in Speech XIII. (April 21) he had dwelt on the fact
again more at large, revealing a story, as he said, of his "own
weakness and folly." The Barebones Parliament had been one of his own
choosing; he had filled it with "men of our own judgment, who had
fought in the wars, and were all of a piece upon that account." This
he had done in his "simplicity," expecting the best results. But, as
it had happened, there was a band of men in that Parliament driving
even then for nothing but the principles of this wretched
Fifth-Monarchy manifesto, the abolition of Church and Magistracy, and
a trial of a fantastic government by the Law of Moses. Major-General
Harrison and Mr. Squib had been the leaders of this band, with the
Anabaptist minister Mr. Feak as their confidant out of doors; and
what they did from day to day in the Parliament had been concocted in
private meetings in Mr. Squib's house. "This was so _de facto:_
I know it to be true." Had he not done well in accepting the
Protectorate at such a moment, and so saving the Commonwealth from
the delirium of which they had just seen a new spurt at
Mile-End-Green?[1]

[Footnote 1: I have taken the account of the _Standard Set Up_
from Godwin, IV. 375-378, not having seen it myself. The passages
in Cromwell's speeches referring to it will be found in Carlyle,
III, 260, and 276-277.]

After the Protector's refusal of the Kingship the House proceeded to
adjust the new constitution they had prepared in the _Petition and
Advice_ to that unavoidable fact. Not much was necessary. It was
only necessary to re-shape the key-stone, by removing the word "King"
from the first clause of the First Article and retaining the word
"Protector": all the rest would hold good. Accordingly, after some
days of debate, it was finally agreed, May 22, that the former first
clause of the First Article should be cancelled, and this
substituted: "That your Highness will be pleased, by and under the
name and style of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto
belonging, to hold and exercise the office of Chief Magistrate of
these Nations, and to govern according to this _Petition and
Advice_ in all things therein contained, and in all other things
according to the Laws of these Nations, and not otherwise." The
remaining clause of the First Article, empowering Cromwell to appoint
his immediate successor, was left untouched, as well as all the
subsequent Articles. To the whole of the _Petition and Advice_,
so arranged, Cromwell solemnly gave his assent in the Painted
Chamber, May 25, addressing the House in a short speech, in which he
expressed his thorough confidence in them in respect to those
explanations or modifications of the document which they had promised
in order to meet the objections he had taken the liberty of making.
He did not doubt there would be "a perfecting of those things."[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. The speech of Cromwell in
assenting to the _Petition and Advice_, May 25, 1657, had been
accidentally omitted in the earlier editions of Carlyle's
_Cromwell;_ but it was given in the Appendix to the edition of
1657. It may stand as Speech XIV*. in the numbering.]

The "perfecting of those things" occupied a good deal of time. What
was necessary was to cast the resolutions already come to in
supplement to the _Petition and Advice_, or those that might yet
suggest themselves, into a valid legal form; and it was agreed, June
4, that, except in as far as it might be well to pass express Bills
on specific matters, the best way would be to frame and submit to his
Highness a _Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and
Advice_. The due framing of this, and the preparation of the
necessary Bills, were to be work for three weeks more.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date, and afterwards.]

Meanwhile, in evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this
point, notwithstanding the great business of the _Petition and
Advice_ and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in
legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed,
but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body.
On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, "some of the public, and
the others of a more private, concernment," were presented to his
Highness by the whole House, assembled in the Painted Chamber, the
Speaker, "after a short and pithy speech," offering them as some
grapes preceding the full vintage, and his Highness ratifying all by
his assent.--Among these was one very comprehensive Act with this
preamble: "Whereas, since the 20th of April, 1653, in the great
exigences and necessities of these nations, divers Acts and
Ordinances have been made without the consent of the People assembled
in Parliament--which is not according to the fundamental laws of the
nations and the rights of the People, and is not for the future to be
drawn into example--yet, the actings thereupon tending to the
settlement of the estates of several persons and families and the
peace and quiet of the nations: Be it enacted by his Highness the
Lord Protector and this present Parliament," &c. What is enacted is
that about a hundred Acts and Ordinances, all duly enumerated, out
of those made by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 or by Oliver and
his Council after the establishment of the Protectorate in Dec. 1656,
together with all acts and ordinances of the same touching customs
and excise, shall by this Act be confirmed and made good, either
wholly and absolutely (which is the case with nearly all) or with
specified modifications--"all other Acts and Ordinances, and every
branch and clause therein contained, not confirmed by these presents,
which have been made or passed between the 20th day of April 1653 and
the 17th day of September 1656" to be absolutely null and void. In
other words, the House had been revising long and carefully the Acts
of the Barebones Parliament and the arbitrary Ordinances of Oliver
and his Council from Dec. 1653 onwards, with a view to adopt all that
might stand and to give them new constitutional sanction. Among the
Acts of the Barebones Parliament so confirmed and continued was their
famous Act for the forms and ceremonial of Marriage and for the
Registration of Births and Burials (Vol. IV. p. 511), except only the
clause therein declaring any other marriages than as these prescribed
to be illegal. Of Cromwell's own Ordinances from Dec. 1653 onwards
all were preserved that, I suppose, he really cared for. Thus, of his
_eighty-two_ first public Ordinances, passed between Dec. 1653
and the meeting of his First Parliament Sept. 3, 1654,
_thirty-six_ were expressly confirmed; which, as most of the
rest were Excise or Customs Ordinances or Orders for temporary
occasion, means that substantially all his legislation on his
entering on the Protectorate was to remain in force. More
particularly, I may note that Nos. 7, 16, 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 50, 54,
58, 60, 66, 67, 69, 71, 81, and 82, in our List of his first
eighty-two Public Ordinances (Vol. IV. pp. 558-565) were among those
confirmed. These included his Ordinances against Cockfights and
Duels, his Ordinance for Reform of the Court of Chancery, his various
Ordinances for the incorporation and management of Scotland, and his
various Church-Establishment Ordinances for England and Wales, with
his two commissions of Triers and Ejectors. Among contemporary
ordinances of his also confirmed, over and above those in the main
list of Eighty-two, were that for setting up Lectures in Scotland,
that in favour of Glasgow University, and that for the better support
of the Universities of Scotland--this last, however, limited to the
Universities alone by the omission of what related to "the
encouragement of public preachers" (Vol. IV. p. 565: footnote). The
most noticeable Ordinances of Cromwell's _not_ confirmed are
those relating to Treasons--No. 8 in the List of Eighty-two, and its
appendages Nos. 12 and 49. Altogether, the Parliament had handsomely
cleared Cromwell in respect of his Interim Dictatorship and what was
past of his Protectorate, and he had every reason to be satisfied.
But, besides this all-comprehensive Act of retrospection, several of
the other Acts presented for his assent at the same time must have
been very much to his mind.--There was an Act for settling lands in
Scotland upon General Monk, with similar Acts for settling lands in
Ireland on Fleetwood, Dr. Owen, Sir Hardress Waller, and other
persons of desert; there were several Naturalization Bills in favour
of a great number of foreigners and English aliens; there was "An Act
for limiting and settling the prices of Wines"; and there was "An Act
against Vagrants, and wandering, idle, dissolute Persons." Most
welcome to Cromwell, and drawing from him a few words of special
acknowledgment after his assent to all the Bills (_Speech XV._),
were "Two Bills for an Assessment towards the defraying of the charge
of the Spanish war and other occasions of the Commonwealth." One was
for £60,000 a month from England for the three months ending June 24;
the other for an assessment of £20,000 from Ireland for the same
three months. These were instalments of a lump sum of £400,000, which
the House had voted as long ago as Jan. 30, 1656-7, for the carrying
on of the Spanish war, and the remainder of which was to be raised in
other ways. The House had already before it a general Bill for the
continued assessment of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for Army and
Navy purposes, beyond the period specified; but that Bill had not
yet passed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Scobell's Acts and Ordinances
of 1656, given in mass in his book, Part II. p. 371 et seq. See
especially there, pp. 389-395.]

Army and Navy purposes, and the carrying on of the Spanish War:
these, through all the bustle of the Kingship question, had still
been the deepest things in Cromwell's mind. His alliance with France,
settled so far by the Treaty of Peace and Commerce dated Oct. 24,
1655, but much imperilled since by Mazarin's dexterity in evasion and
his occasional oscillations towards Spain, had at length, by
Lockhart's exertions, been converted into a great Treaty "offensive
and defensive," signed at Paris, March 23rd, 1656-7, and ratified by
Louis XIV. April 30, and by Cromwell himself May 4, 1657. By this
treaty it was provided that there should be joint action against
Spain, by sea and land, for the reduction and capture of Gravelines,
Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the three coast-towns of Spanish Flanders
adjoining the French territories on the north-east. Gravelines, if
taken, was to belong to France ultimately, but, if taken first, was
to be held by the English till Mardyke and Dunkirk were taken--which
two towns were to belong permanently to England, only with
stipulation of inviolability of Roman Catholic worship for the
inhabitants, and of no further English encroachments on Flanders. For
the joint-enterprise France was to supply 20,000 men, and Cromwell an
auxiliary army of 6000 foot (half at the expense of France), besides
a fleet for coast-service. A secret article of the Treaty was that
neither power should make separate peace with the Spanish Crown for
the space of one year from the date of the Treaty.[1]--Cromwell had
lost no time in fulfilling his part of the engagement. To command the
auxiliary English army in Flanders he had selected Sir John Reynolds,
who had served ably heretofore in Ireland, and was now, as we have
seen, member for Tipperary and Waterford in the present Parliament,
and a strong Oliverian. His commission was dated April 25; and by
May 14 he and his 6000 English foot had all been landed at Boulogne.
They were thought the most splendid body of soldiers in Europe, and
were admired and complimented by Louis XIV., who went purposely, with
Lockhart, to review them. The promised fleet of cooperation was to be
under the command of young Admiral Montague, who was still, however,
detained in England.[2]--Meanwhile Blake, in his wider command off
the coasts of Spain itself, or wherever in the Atlantic there could
be a dash at the Spaniard, had added one more to the series of his
naval exploits. To intercept a rich Spanish fleet from Mexico, he had
gone to the Canary Isles; he had found the fleet there, sixteen ships
in all, impregnably ensconced, as it was thought, in the fortified
bay of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe; and, after a council of war, in which
it was agreed that, though the ships could not be taken, they might
be destroyed, he had ventured that tremendous feat April 20, with the
most extraordinary success. He had emerged from Santa Cruz Bay, after
eleven hours of connonading and fighting, all but undamaged himself,
but leaving not a ship of the Spanish fleet extant, and every fort in
ruins. Not till May 28 did the news reach London; but on that day
Thurloe presented a narrative of the glorious action to the House,
who forthwith ordered a special thanksgiving, and a jewel worth £500
to Blake. On the 10th of June the jewel was sent, with a letter of
honour from the Protector, and instructions to leave fourteen of his
ships off Cadiz, and return home himself with the rest of his
fleet.[3]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 540-542. But see Guizot's _Cromwell and
the English Commonwealth_, II. 377 (Engl. Transl. 1854), with
Latin Text of the Treaty itself in Appendix to same volume.]

[Footnote 2: Godwin, IV. 542-543; Commons Journals of May 5, 1657
(leave to Reynolds to go on the service).]

[Footnote 3: Commons Journals, May 28 and 29, 1657; Godwin, IV.
418-420; Carlyle, III. 264 and 304-305.]

"_Killing no Murder: briefly discoursed, in Three Questions, by
William Allen:_" such was the title of a pamphlet in secret
circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity. It
began with a letter "To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell," in this
strain: "To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the
people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you
in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to
the world you are likely to leave it ... To hasten this great good is
the chief end of my writing this paper." There follows, accordingly,
a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember
their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell. "We wish we
had rather endured thee, O Charles," it says, "than have been
condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of
slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the
condition of the slave." Sindercombe is spoken of as "a brave man,"
of as "great a mind" as any of the old Romans. At the end there is
this postscript: "Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of
paper on this subject, if I escape the Tyrant's hands, although he
gets in the interim the crown upon his head, which he hath underhand
put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof." This
would imply that, though not in circulation till June, the pamphlet
had been written while the Kingship question was in suspense, i.e,
before May 8. The name "William Allen" on the title-page was, of
course, assumed. The pamphlet, hardly any one now doubts, was by
Edward Sexby, the Stuartist arch-conspirator, then moving between
England and the continent, and known to have been the real principal
of Sindercombe's plot. Actually, when the pamphlet appeared, the
desperate man was again in England, despite Thurloe's police. The
pamphlet was greedily sought after, and much talked of. The sale was,
of course, dangerous. A copy could not be had under five
shillings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copy of _Killing no Murder_ (first edition, much
rarer than a second and enlarged edition of 1659) among the Thomason
Pamphlets, with the date "June 1657" marked on it: Wood's Ath. IV.
624-5; Godwin, IV. 388-390 (where the pamphlet is assumed to have
been out "early in May"); Carlyle, III, 67. After the Restoration,
Sexby being then dead, the pamphlet was claimed by another.--An
answer to _Killing no Murder_, under the title _Killing is
Murder_, appeared Sept. 21, 1657. It was by a Michael Hawke, of
the Middle Temple.]

People were still talking of _Killing no Murder_ when the First
Protectorate came to a close. We have now only to take account of the
circumstances of that event, and of the differences there were to be,
constitutionally, between the First Protectorate and the Second.

On the 25th of June, 1657, all the details of the _Humble
Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice_ having been at
length settled by the House, that supplement to the original
_Petition and Advice_ was also ready for his Highness's assent.
The two documents together, to be known comprehensively as _The
Petition and Advice_, were to supersede the more military
Instrument, called _The Government of the Commonwealth_, to
which Cromwell had sworn in Dec. 1653, at his first installation, and
were to be the charter of his new and constitutionalized
Protectorate. The Articles of this new Constitution were seventeen in
all, and deserve some attention:--Article I., as we know, confirmed
Cromwell's Protectorship and empowered him to choose his
successor.--Article II. provided for the calling of Parliaments of
Two Houses once in three years at furthest.--Article III. stipulated
for all Parliamentary privileges and the non-exclusion of any of the
duly elected members except by judgment of the House of which they
might be members.--Article IV., which was much the longest,
determined the classes of persons who should be disqualified from
being elected or voting in elections. _Universally_, all Roman
Catholics were to be excluded, and all who had abetted the Irish
Rebellion. Farther, in _England_, were to be excluded all who
had been engaged in any war against Parliament since Jan. I, 1641-2,
unless they had afterwards given "signal testimony" of their good
affections, and all who, since the establishment of the Protectorate,
had been engaged in any plot or insurrection against _it_. In
_Scotland_ were to be excluded all who had been in arms against
the Parliament of England or against that of Scotland before April 1,
1648 (old _Malignants_ and _Montrosists_), except such as
had afterwards given "signal testimony," &c., and also all who, since
April 1, 1648, had been in arms against the English Parliament or the
Commonwealth (the _Hamiltonians_ of 1648, and the _Scottish
Royalists of all varieties_ who had fought for Charles II. in
1650-51), except such as had since March 1, 1651-2, "lived
peaceably"--but with the supplementary proviso, required by his
Highness, that, while "having lived peaceably" since Worcester would
suffice for the miscellaneous Royalists of 1650-51, who were indeed
nearly the whole population of Scotland, the less pardonable
_Hamiltonians_ of 1648 would have to pass much stricter tests.
In _Ireland_, though Protestants generally were to be qualified,
there was to be like caution in admitting such as, though faithful
before March 1, 1649-50, had afterwards opposed the Commonwealth or
the Protector. These disqualifications affected both voting and
eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible
were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers
in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics,
all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers,
and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to
marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age
of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good
conversation," were to be eligible. One farther exception had been
made in the original _Petition and Advice_; to wit, all in holy
orders, all ministers or public preachers. "There may be some of us,
it may be, who have been a little guilty of that, who would be loath
to be excluded from sitting in Parliament," Cromwell had said
laughingly while commenting on this clause; and it had accordingly
been defined as excluding only regular pastors of congregations. He
had procured an important modification of another clause of the same
Article. It had been proposed that the business of examining who had
been duly elected, and the power of suspending members till the House
itself should decide, should be vested in a body of forty-one
commissioners to be appointed by Parliament; but, Cromwell having
pointed out that this would be a clumsy process, and that the
commissioners themselves might be "uncertain persons," and might
"keep out good men," it was agreed that the judgment of the House
itself, with a fine of £1000 on every unqualified person that might
take his seat, would fully answer the purpose.--Article V. related to
the Second House of Parliament, called simply "the other House." It
was to consist of not more than seventy nor fewer than forty persons,
qualified as by the last Article, to be nominated by the Protector
and approved by the Commons House, twenty-one to be a quorum, and no
proxies allowed. Vacancies were to be filled up by nominations by the
Protector, approved by the House itself. The powers of the House were
also defined. They were to try no criminal cases whatsoever, unless
on an impeachment sent up from the Commons, and only certain
specified kinds of civil cases. All their final determinations were
to be by the House itself, and not by delegates or
Committees.--Article VI. ruled that all other particulars concerning
"the calling and holding of Parliaments" should be by law and
statute, and that there should be no legislation, or suspension, or
abrogation of law, but by Act of Parliament.--Article VII. guaranteed
a yearly revenue of £1,300,000, whereof £1,000,000 to be for the Army
and Navy, and the remaining £300,000 for the support of the
Government, the sums not to be altered without the consent of
Parliament, and no part of them to be raised by a land-tax. There
might also be "temporary supplies" over and above, to be voted by the
Commons; but on no account was his Highness to impose any tax, or
require any contribution, by his own authority. By Cromwell's request
it was added that his expenditure of the Army and Navy money should
be with the advice of his Council, and that accounts should be
rendered to Parliament.--Article VIII. settled that his Highness's
Privy Council should consist of not more than twenty-one persons,
seven a quorum, to be approved by both Houses, and to be irremovable
but by the consent of Parliament, though in the intervals of
Parliament any of them might be suspended by the Protector. It was
asked that the Government should always be with the advice of the
Council, and stipulated that, after Cromwell's death, all
appointments to the Commandership-in-chief, or to Generalships at
land or sea, should be by the future Protectors with consent of the
Council.--Article IX. required that the Lord Chancellor, or Lord
Keeper, or Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Lord Treasurer
or Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, the Judges, and all the great
State-officers in England, Scotland, or Ireland, should, in cases of
future appointment by the Protector and his Council, be approved by
Parliament.--Article X. congratulated the Protector on his
Established Church, and begged him to punish, according to law, all
open revilers of the same.--Article XI. related to Religion and
Toleration. The Protestant Faith, as contained in the Old and New
Testaments, and as yet to be formulated in a Confession of Faith to
be agreed upon between his Highness and the Parliament, was to be the
professed public Religion, and to be universally respected as such;
but all believers in the Trinity and in the divine authority of the
Scriptures, though they might dissent otherwise in doctrine, worship,
or discipline from the Established Church, were to be protected in
the exercise of their own religion and worship,--this liberty not to
extend to Popery, Prelacy, or the countenancing of blasphemous
publications. Ministers and Preachers agreeing in "matters of faith"
with "the public profession," though differing in "matters of worship
and discipline," were not to be excluded from the Established Church
by that difference, but might have "the public maintenance appointed
for the ministry" and promotion and employment in the Church
according to their abilities. None but those whose difference
extended to matters of faith need remain outside the Established
Church. Dissenters from the Established Church, if sufficiently right
in the faith, were to have equal admission with others to all civil
trusts and appointments, subject only to any disqualification for
civil office attached to the ministerial profession. His Highness was
requested to agree to the repeal of all laws inconsistent with these
provisions.--Article XII. required that all past Acts for
disestablishing or disendowing the old Prelatic Church, and
appropriating the revenues of the same, should hold good.--Article
XIII. required that Old Malignants, and other such classes of persons
as those disqualified for Parliament in Article IV., should be
excluded also from other public trusts.--Article XIV. stipulated that
nothing in the _Petition and Advice_ should be construed as
implying the dissolution of the present Parliament before such time
as his Highness should independently think fit.--Article XV. provided
that the _Petition and Advice_ should not be construed as
repealing or annulling any Laws or Ordinances already in force, not
distinctly incompatible with itself.--Article XVI. protected in a
similar way all writs, commissions, grants, law-processes, &c.,
issued and in operation already, even though the wording should seem
a little past date.--Article XVII. and Last requested his Highness to
be pleased to take an oath of office. A form of such oath appeared in
the _Additional Petition and Advice_, with another form of oath
for his Highness's Councillors in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and
a third for the members of either House of Parliament. This last,
besides a promise to uphold and promote the true Protestant Religion,
contained a special promise of fidelity to the Lord Protector and his
Government. Farther, by the same _Additional Petition and
Advice_, the Lord Protector was requested and empowered to issue
writs calling qualified persons to the other House in convenient time
before the next session of Parliament, and such persons were
empowered to meet and constitute the other House at the time and
place appointed without requiring farther approbation from the
present Single House.[1]

[Footnote 1: The original Petition and Advice is given in full in
Scobell (378-383), Whitlocke (IV. 292-301), and in Parl. Hist.
(III. 1502-1511); the Additional Petition and Advice in Scobell
450-452, and Whitlocke, IV. 306-310. But see also Cromwell's Speech
XIII. with Mr. Carlyle's elucidations (Carlyle, III. 279 et seq.)]

Friday, June 26, 1657, was the last day of the present Single House,
and a day of high ceremonial in London. The House, having met as
usual in the morning, and transacted some overstanding business, rose
about two o'clock to meet his Highness in the Painted Chamber. There,
with the words "The Lord Protector doth consent," the _Additional
Petition and Advice_, and therefore the whole new Constitution of
the Protectorate, as just described, became law, and assent was given
also to a number of Bills that had passed the House since the 9th.
Among these was an "Act for convicting, discovering, and repressing
of Popish Recusants," an "Act for the Better Observation of the
Lord's Day," and an "Act for punishing such persons as live at high
rates and have no visible estate, profession, or calling, answerable
thereto." There were also two Money Bills for temporary supplies:
viz. one for raising £15,000 from Scotland, to go along with the
£180,000 from England, and the £20,000 from Ireland, voted for the
three months just ended, and another general and prospective one,
assessing England at £35,000 a month, Scotland at £6000 a month, and
Ireland at £9000 a month, for the next three years. All these assents
having been received, there was an adjournment to Westminster Hall
for the solemn installation of his Highness in his Second
Protectorate.--The Hall had been magnificently prepared, and
contained a vast assemblage. The members of the House, the Judges in
their robes, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their robes, and other
dignitaries, were ranged in the midst round, a canopied chair of
state. It was the royal chair of Scotland, with the mystic
coronation-stone underneath it, brought for the purpose from the
Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured
Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible,
a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine.
His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great
state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch
Ambassador, and "divers of the nobility and other persons of great
quality," stood, beside the chair under the canopy. The Speaker,
assisted by the Earl of Warwick, Whitlocke, and others, then attired
his Highness in the purple velvet robe; after which he delivered to
him the richly-gilt Bible, girt him with the sword, and put the gold
sceptre into his hand. His Highness then swore the oath of office,
administered to him by the Speaker, After that, the Speaker addressed
him in a well-turned speech. "You have no new name," he said, "but a
new date now added to the old name: the 16th of December is now
changed into the 26th of June." He explained that the robe, the
Bible, the sword, and the sceptre were presents to his Highness from
the Parliament, and dwelt poetically on the significance of each.
"What a comely and glorious sight," he concluded, "it is to behold a
Lord Protector in a purple robe, with a sceptre in his hand, a sword
of justice girt about him, and his eyes fixed upon the Bible! Long
may you prosperously enjoy them all, to your own comfort, and the
comfort of the people of these three Nations!" His Highness still
standing, Mr. Manton offered up a prayer. Then, the assemblage giving
several great shouts, and the trumpets sounding, his Highness sat
down in the chair, still holding the sceptre. Then a herald stood up
aloft, and signalled for three trumpet-blasts, at the end of which,
by authority of Parliament, he proclaimed the Protector. There were
new trumpet-blasts, loud hurrahs through the Hall, and cries of "God
save the Lord Protector." Once more there was proclamation, and once
more a burst of applauses. Then, all being ended, his Highness, with
his robe borne up by several young persons of rank, passed with his
retinue from the Hall by the great gate, where his coach was in
waiting. And so, with the Earl of Warwick seated opposite to him in
the coach, his son Richard and Whitlocke on one side, and Viscount
Lisle and Admiral Montague on the other, he was driven through the
crowd to Whitehall, surrounded by his life-guards, and followed by
the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries in their coaches.--There was a
brief sitting of the House after the Installation. It was agreed to
recommend to his Highness to "encourage Christian endeavours for
uniting the Protestant Churches abroad," and also to recommend to him
to take some effectual course "for reforming the government of the
Inns of Court, and likewise for placing of godly and able ministers
there"; and it was ordered that the Acts passed by the House should
be printed collectively, and that every member should have a copy.
Then, according to one of the Acts to which his Highness had that day
assented, the House adjourned itself for seven months, i.e. to Jan.
20, 1657-8.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of June 26, 1657; Parl. Hist. III.
1514-1518 (Reprint of the authorized contemporary account of the
Installation-Ceremony, which had a frontispiece by Hollar);
Whitlocke, IV. 303-305; Guizot's Cromwell, II. 337-339 (where some of
the particulars of the Installation seem to be from French
eye-witnesses).]



CHAPTER II.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE
CONTINUED: SEPTEMBER 1654--JUNE 1657.

For more than reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to
divide this Chapter of Milton's Biography into Sections corresponding
with those of Oliver's Continued Protectorate in the preceding
Chapter.

SECTION I: FROM SEPTEMBER 1654 TO JANUARY 1654-5, OR THROUGH OLIVER'S
FIRST PARLIAMENT.

ULAC'S HAGUE EDITION OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO SECUNDA_, WITH THE
_FIDES PUBLICA_ OF MORUS ANNEXED: PREFACE BY DR. CRANTZIUS TO
THE REPRINT: ULAC'S OWN PREFACE OF SELF-DEFENCE: ACCOUNT OF MORUS'S
_FIDES PUBLICA_, WITH EXTRACTS: HIS CITATION OF TESTIMONIES TO
HIS CHARACTER: TESTIMONY OF DIODATI OF GENEVA: ABRUPT ENDING OF THE
BOOK AT THIS POINT, WITH ULAC'S EXPLANATION OF THE
CAUSE.--PARTICULARS OF THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF MILTON'S
FRIEND OVERTON.--THREE MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR OLIVER
(NOS. XLIX.--LI.): NO STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE NEXT THREE
MONTHS: MILTON THEN BUSY ON A REPLY TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ OF
MORUS.


In October 1654 there was out at the Hague, from Ulac's press, a
volume in two parts, with this title: "_Joannis Miltoni Defensio
Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum, cujus titulus
'Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.' Accessit
Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ, Sacrarumque Litterarum Professoris,
Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni, Scurræ. Hagæ-Comitum,
ex Typographia Adriani Ulac_, MDCLIV." ("John Milton's Second
Defence for the English People in reply to an infamous Book entitled
'Cry of the King's Blood against the English Parricides.' To which is
added A Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman, and Professor
of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton,
Buffoon. Printed at the Hague by Adrian Ulac, 1654.") The reprint of
Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ fills 128 pages of the volume;
More's appended _Fides Publica_, or Public Testimony, in reply,
is in larger type and fills 129 pages separately numbered. Morus,
after all, it will be seen, had been obliged to acquiesce in Ulac's
arrangement (Vol. IV. p. 634). Instead of trying vainly any longer to
suppress Milton's book on the Continent, he had exerted himself to
the utmost in preparing a Reply to it, to go forth with that reprint
of it for the foreign market which Ulac had been pushing through the
press and would not keep back.

Although Milton complains that Ulac's edition of his book for the
foreign market was not only a piracy, but also slovenly in itself,
with printer's errors vitiating the sense and arrangement in some
cases,[1] it was substantially a reprint of the original. Its
interest for us, therefore, lies wholly in the preliminary matter.
This consists of a short Preface headed "_Lectori_" ("To the
Reader") and signed "GEORGIUS CRANTZIUS, _S.S. Theol. D._," and
a longer statement headed "_Typographus pro Se-ipso_" ("The
Printer in his own behalf") and signed "A. ULACQ."

[Footnote 1: Pro Se Def. (1655).]

The Rev. Dr. Crantzius, who does not give his exact address, writes
in an authoritative clerical manner. Though in bad health, he says,
he cannot refrain from penning a few lines, to say how much he is
shocked at the length to which personalities in controversy are
going. He really thinks Governments ought to interfere to put such
things down. Readers will find in the following book of Milton's a
lamentable specimen. He knows nothing of Milton himself; but Milton's
writings show him to be a man of a most damnable disposition, and
Salmasius had once shown him (Dr. Crantzius) an English book of
Milton's propounding the blasphemy "that the doctrine of the Gospel,
and of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning Divorce is devilish." Dr.
Crantzius had known Salmasius very well; and O what a man _he_
was! Nothing amiss in him, except perhaps a hasty temper, and too
great subjection to a peculiar connubial fate! There was a posthumous
book of Salmasius against Milton; and, should it ever appear, Milton
would feel that even the dead could bite. Dr. Crantzius had seen a
portion of it; and, "Good Heavens! what a blackguard is Milton, if
Salmasius may be trusted." Dr. Crantzius had known Morus both at
Geneva and in Holland. He was certainly a man often at feud with
enemies and rivals, and giving them too great opportunities by his
irascibility and freedom of speech. But he was a man of high
aspirations; and the late Rev. Dr. Spanheim had once told Dr.
Crantzius that Morus's only fault was that he was _altier_, as
the French say, i.e. haughty. As for Milton's special accusations
against Morus, Dr. Crantzius knew them for a certainty to be false.
Even after the Bontia scandal had got abroad and the lawsuit of Morus
with the Salmasian household was running its course, Dr. Crantzius
had heard Salmasius, who was not in the habit of praising people,
speak highly of Morus. Salmasius had admitted at the same time that
his wife had injured Morus, though he could not afford to destroy his
"domestic peace" by opposing her in the matter. On the Bontia affair
specifically, Salmasius's express words, not only to Dr. Crantzius,
but to others whom he names, had been, "If Morus is guilty, then I am
the pimp, and my wife the procuress." As to the sequel of the case
Dr. Crantzius is ignorant; and he furnishes Ulac with this preface to
the Book only in the interests of truth. But what a quarrelsome
fellow Milton must be, who had not kept his hands off even the
"innocent printer"!

The "innocent printer's" own preface to the Reprint shows him to have
been a very shrewd person indeed. He keeps his temper better than any
of them. Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the
_Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Who the real author of the book was he
did not even yet know. All he knew was that some one, who wanted to
be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after
some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the
book to press. Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to
us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers
to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make.
He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at
the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his
friends in their resentment of _his_ part in the matter. It was
for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with
both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for
either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory
Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things
every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_
in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will
as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds,
a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of
Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's
business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of
himself inserted in Milton's book.--Ulac then quotes the substance of
Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London,
then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac
has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London
bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher
of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It is all a
tissue of lies, however, and Ulac will meet it by a sketch of his own
life since he first dealt in books. This takes him twenty-six years
back. It was at that time that, being in Holland, which is his native
country, and having till then not been in trade at all, he received
from England a copy of the _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ of the
famous mathematician Henry Briggs [published 1624]. Greatly
enamoured with this work and with the whole new science of
Logarithms, and observing that Briggs had given the Logarithms for
numbers only from 1 to 20,000, and then from 90,000 to 100,000, he
had set himself to fill up the gap by finding the Logarithms for
numbers from 20,000 to 90,000, and had had the satisfaction, in an
incredibly short space of time, of bringing out the result [in an
extended edition of Briggs's book published at Gouda, 1628]. Briggs
and the English mathematicians were highly gratified, and Ulac was
asked to publish also Briggs's _Trigonometria Britannica_. This
also he had done [at Gouda in 1633, Briggs having died in 1630, and
left the work in charge of his friend Henry Gellibrand]; after which
he had engaged in the heavy labour of converting into Logarithms the
Sines and Tangents to a Radius of 10,000,000,000 given in the _Opus
Palatinum_, and had issued the same under the title
_Trigonometria Artificialis_. These labours of Ulac's were not
unknown to the mathematical world; and it was somewhat surprising
that Milton had not heard of them, especially as, in his sketch of
his own life in the _Defensio Secunda_, he professed his
interest in Mathematics, and spoke of his visits to London from
Horton for the purpose of picking up any novelties in that science.
At any rate, it was zeal for the dissemination of the mathematical
books above-mentioned that had turned Ulac into a printer and
bookseller. In that capacity he certainly had been in London, trading
in books generally, and he had been in difficulties there, though not
of a kind discreditable to himself. After he had been some years in
London, trading peaceably, some London booksellers, jealous for their
monopoly, had conspired against him, and tried to obtain an order
from Archbishop Laud for the confiscation of his whole stock in
trade. Through the kind offices of Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, this
had been prevented, and he had been empowered to sell off his
existing stock. Nay, a little while afterwards, he had had a
prospect, through the Royal Printers, of a full trading licence from
the Archbishop, on condition of his buying from them copies of two
heavy works they had printed by the Archbishop's desire--viz.
_Theophylact on St. Paul's Epistles_ and the _Catena of the
Greek Fathers on Job_. He had actually obtained such a licence for
two years, and had hopes of its renewal, when the Civil War broke
out. On that account only, and not in any disgrace, as Milton said,
he had, after having been about ten years in all in London,
transferred himself to Paris.[1] He had been there about six years,
dealing honestly, and publishing important theological and other
books, the titles of some of which he gives; but here also he had
been the victim of trade jealousy. He had found it impossible to get
on in Paris, though it was utterly false that he dared not now show
his face there. He _had_ shown his face there, since he had
returned to his native Holland and made the Hague his head-quarters;
and he could show his face there again without any inconvenience.
Meanwhile he was in the Hague, comfortable enough; and his character
there might easily be ascertained.--To return to Milton's present
book. Though Ulac had reprinted it, he had done so in doubt whether,
now that there was peace between the United Provinces and the
Protector, such irritating books between the two nations ought not to
be mutually suppressed. His own leanings had always been rather to
the English Parliamentarians than to the Royalists, and hence he had
been disposed to think well of Milton. Though he cannot think so well
of him now, he will not retaliate by any abuse of Milton. "If Milton
is acknowledged in his own country to be a good man, let him be glad
of it; but I hear that many Englishmen who know him are of another
opinion. I would decide nothing on mere rumour; nay, if I had
ascertained anything scandalous about him with positive certainty, I
should think it better to hold my tongue than to blazon it about
publicly." How strange, however, that Milton had fallen foul of Morus
at such a violent rate! Had he not been told two years ago, through
Hartlib, that Morus was not the author of the book for which he made
him suffer? It was the more inexcusable inasmuch as in the _Joannis
Philippi, Angli, Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi Cujusdam_--which
work Milton had superintended, if he had not written it--there had
been the same mistake of attributing a work to the wrong person. It
would be for Morus himself, however, to take cognisance of that.

[Footnote 1: Long ago, foreseeing the interest I should have in ULAC,
I made notes in the State-Paper Office of some documents appertaining
to him when he was a Bookseller in London. They do not quite
correspond with Ulac's account of his reasons for leaving London. The
documents, here arranged in what seems to be their chronological
order, are as follows:--(1) Petition of Ulac, undated, to Sir John
Lambe, Dean of the Arches, that he would intercede with Laud in
Ulac's favour. His two years' licence for importing hooks is now
almost expired; but many of the Greek books he had bought from the
Royal Printers are still on his hands unsold, besides the whole
impression of a _Vita Christi_ which he had also bought from
them after the London stationers would not look at it. It would be a
great thing for him therefore to have his licence extended for a
time; and, if this favour is obtained from his Grace, he promises to
do all he can for the importation of learned Greek and Latin books of
the kind his Grace likes. (2) Humble Petition to Laud by Richard
Whittaker, Humphrey Robinson, George Thomason, and other London
Booksellers, dated April 15, 1640, representing to his Grace that,
contrary to decree in Star-Chamber, "one Adrian Ulacke, a Hollander,
hath now lately imported and landed at the Custom House divers bales
or packs of books, printed beyond seas, with purpose to vent them in
this kingdom," and praying for the attachment of the said bales and
the apprehension of Ulac. (3) Of the same date, Laud's order, or
suggestion to the Lord Treasurer to join him in an order, to attach
the goods in the Custom House accordingly. (4) Humble Petition of
Ulac to Juxon, Bishop of London, of date April 1640, explaining the
transaction for which he is in trouble. He had gone to Paris "upon
the 5th of Dec. last," and had there sold a great many copies of
_Theophylact on Paul's Epistles_, the _Catena Patrum Græcorum
in Jobum_, Bishop Montague's _De Vita Christi_, _Spelman's
British Councils_, &c., at the same time buying a number of books
to be imported into England. Although these last had been sent off
from Paris before January, "yet, by want of ships and winds, they
could come no sooner"--i.e. not till after the 13th of April, 1640,
when his two years' licence for importing had expired. He humbly
beseeches Juxon that he may be allowed to "receive and dispose of the
said books so sent freely without any trouble." (5) A note of Laud's,
written by his secretary, but signed by himself, as follows:--"Had
not the Petitioner offended in a high matter against the State in
transporting bullion of the kingdom, I should have been willing to
have given time as is here [i.e. in the last document] expressed.
However, I desire Sir John Lambe to consider of his Petition, and do
further therein as he shall find to be just and fitting, unless he
find that the sentence in the Star-Chamber hath disabled him.--W.
CANT. _Apr._ 21, 1640." (6) Humble Petition, undated, of Ulac,
now "prisoner in the Fleet," to Sir John Lambe. The prisoner "was, the
24th of May last, censured by the Lords in the High Court of
Star-Chamber in £1000 to his Majesty and imprisonment." He is in very
great straits, owing above £500 to his Majesty's Printers for books,
"much hindered by the deadness of trading," and by the return of many
books on his hands. He is "a stranger, without any friends," and
unless the fine of £1000 is mitigated "to a very low rate," he will
be in "utter ruin and misery." He therefore prays Lambe's good word
with Laud.--My only doubt is whether the document I have put here as
No. 6, ought not to _precede_ the others: i.e. whether Ulac's
offence in the matter of the "bullion," with his fine and
imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of
books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him.
All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0.
when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet
overtaken them.]

And now for More's own _Fides Publica_ or Public Testimony for
Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it
impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the
author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic
pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that
he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being,
and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy--placed
there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery,
outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still
the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair,
however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:--

  "If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which
  you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to
  me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I
  should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most
  foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild,
  designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will
  fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such
  that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely
  known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of
  falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole
  consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is
  what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the
  indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to
  expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved;
  not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you,
  for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and
  this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have
  assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm,
  and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or
  whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those
  good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and,
  with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what
  wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other
  people's malicious humour. Choose which you please. I pray God
  Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf
  that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may
  suggest to me a true and modest oration, utterly free from all
  lying and obscenity,--that is, very unlike yours."

On the point of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_
Morus is emphatic enough. He declares over and over again that
_he_ was not the author, and he declares that Milton knew this
perfectly well,--might have known it for two years, but had beyond
all doubt known it before he had published the _Defensio
Secunda_. We shall bring together the passages that refer to this
subject:--

  I neither wrote it, nor ever pretended to have done so,--this I
  here solemnly declare, and make God my witness,--nor did I
  contribute anything to the writing of it.... The real author is
  alive and well, unknown to me by face, but very well known to
  several good men, on the strength of whose joint knowledge of the
  fact I challenge with righteous detestation the public lie which
  wriggles everywhere through your whole book.... Let the author
  answer for himself: I neither take up his quarrel, nor thrust my
  sickle into his corn.... But I wish the anonymous author would come
  forth some time or other openly in his own name.... What then would
  Milton think? He might have reason to fame and detest the light of
  life, being manifestly convicted of lying before the world. He
  might say, indeed, "I had not thought of it: I have been under a
  mistake" ... But what if I prove by clear evidence that you knew
  well enough already that the author of this book was another
  person, not I? ... [Morus then goes on to say that Milton might
  have learnt the fact in various ways, even from a comparison of the
  style of the book with that of Morus's acknowledged writings; but
  he lays stress chiefly on the information actually sent to Milton
  in 1652 by Ulac, and on the subsequent communications to him,
  through Durie and the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, before the
  _Defensio Secunda_ had left the press] ... Will you hear a
  word of truth? You had certainly learnt the fact, and cannot for
  two whole years have been ignorant of it. But, as you perceived it
  would not suit your convenience to vent your spleen against an
  anonymous opponent, that is a nobody, and some definite person must
  be pitched upon as an adversary to bear your rage expressly, no one
  else seemed to you more opportune than I as an object of calumny,
  whether because you heard that I had many enemies, though (what
  proves their savageness) without any cause, who would hold up both
  thumbs in applause of your jocosities, or because you knew that, by
  the arts of a Juno, I was involved in a lawsuit, more troublesome
  in reality than dangerous, and you did not believe that I should
  be, as I have been, the winner before all the tribunals.... Your
  book once written, Morus must of necessity stand for your opponent,
  or Milton, the Defender of the People, would have done nothing in
  two years! He would have lost all the laborious compilation of his
  days and nights, all his punnings upon my name, all his sarcasms on
  my sacred office and profession.... For, if you had taken out of
  your book all the reproaches thrown at me, how little would there
  have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your
  "People"! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had
  almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your
  "gardens of Alcinous and Adonis," of your little story about
  "Hortensius"; what of the "syca_more_," what of "Pyramus and
  Thisbe," what of the "Mulberry tree"? [All these are phrases in
  Milton's book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to
  the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in
  Geneva or in Leyden. The name _Morus_, which means "mulberry
  tree" and "fool" in Latin and Greek, and may be taken also for
  "Moor" or "Ethiop," and in still other meanings, had yielded to the
  Dutch wits, as well as to Milton, no end of metaphors and punning
  etymologies in their squibs against the poor man] ... The real
  author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ neither lives among the
  Dutch,--is not "stabled" among them, to use your own
  expression--nor has he, I believe, anything in common with them ...
  Vehemently and almost tragically you complain that I have upbraided
  you with your blindness. I can positively affirm that I did not
  know till I read it in your own book that you had lost your
  eyesight. For, if anything occurred to me that might seem to look
  that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is
  "_Nam, si quid fortè se dabat quod eò spectare videretur, ad
  animum referebam_"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness
  who did not know that you were blind,--with personal deformity who
  believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having
  seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems
  [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ...
  Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have
  never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have
  done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published,
  and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall
  you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some
  _Sermons_ of mine are in men's hands; my books _On Grace and
  Free Will_ are to be had; there are in print my _Exercitations
  on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God_, which I know
  have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,--as well as
  my _Apology for Calvin_, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of
  Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly
  honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I
  would put against a thousand Miltons. With God's help others will
  appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back,
  while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these,
  including _Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis_: the list
  closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works,
  and not his French Sermons].

Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here
are two specimens:

  MILTON'S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:--"Do not think, obscurely
  though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in
  this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond
  the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you
  invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a
  person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about
  _you_; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more
  worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate
  by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame
  lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain--what I
  for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hardly, bring my mind
  to credit--that there is a man living among Christians who, being
  himself a concrete of every form of outrageous iniquity, could so
  censure others?"

  MILTON'S PRODIGIOUS SELF-ESTEEM:--"All which has so elated you that
  you would be reckoned next after the very first man in England, and
  sometimes put yourself higher than the supreme Cromwell himself;
  whom you name familiarly, without giving him any title of rank,
  whom you lecture under the guise of praising him, to whom you
  dictate laws, assign boundaries to his rights, prescribe duties,
  suggest counsels, and even hold out threats if he shall not behave
  accordingly. You grant him arms and rule; you claim genius and the
  gown for yourself. '_He only is to be called great_,' you say,
  '_who has either done great things_'--Cromwell, to
  wit!---'_or teaches great things_'--Milton on Divorce, to
  wit!--'_or writes of them worthily_'--the same twice-great
  Milton, I suppose, in his Defence of the English People!"

How does Morus proceed in the main business of clearing his own
character from Milton's charges? His plan was to produce a dated and
authenticated series of testimonials from others, extending over the
period of his life which had been attacked, and to interweave these
with explanations and an autobiographic memoir. He has reached the
eightieth page of his book before he properly begins this enterprise.
He gives first a testimonial from the Genevan Church, dated Jan. 25,
1648, and signed by seventeen ministers, of whom Diodati is one; then
another from the Genevan Senate or Town Council, dated Jan. 26, 1648;
then two more, one from the Church again, and one from the Senate
again, both dated April 1648; then, among others, a special
testimonial from Diodati, in the form of a long letter to Salmasius,
dated "Geneva, 9th May, 1648." Diodati's testimonial, which is given
both in French and in Latin, is the most interesting in itself, and
will represent the others. "As to his morals," says Diodati, writing
of Morus to Salmasius, "I can speak from intimate knowledge, and do
so with, strict conscientiousness. His natural disposition is good
and without deceit or reservation, frank and noble, such as ought to
put him in very harmonious relations with all persons of honour and
virtue, of whatsoever condition,--quick and very sensible to
indignities, but easily coming to himself again: not one to provoke
others, but yet one who has terrible spurs for his own defence. I
have hardly seen any who have done themselves credit by attacking
him. _Conscia virtus_, and you may add what belongs to the
_genus irritabile vatum_, make him well armed against his
assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from
all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a degree suitable to his
profession."

Suddenly, just when we have read this, and seen Morus self-described
as far as to the year 1648, when he was about to leave Geneva for
Holland, the book comes to a dead stop. Diodati's letter ends on page
129; and when we turn over the leaf we find a Latin note from Ulac,
headed "_The Printer to the Reader_" and expressed as follows:--

  "Our labours towards finishing this Treatise had come to this
  point, when lo! M. Morus, who had been staying for some time here
  at the Hague with the intention of completing it, called away by I
  know not what occasion to France, and with a favourable wind
  hastening his journey, was prevented from bringing all to an end,
  and so gratifying with every possible speed the desire of many
  curious persons to read both Treatises at once, Milton's and
  More's. What to do I was for some days uncertain; but some
  gentlemen, not of small condition, at length persuaded me that I
  should not defer longer the publication of what of his I had
  already in print,--alleging that the remaining and still wanting
  testimonies of eminent men, and of the Senates and Churches of
  Middleburg, Amsterdam, &c., given for the vindication of M. Morus,
  and which were here to have been subjoined, might be afterwards
  printed separately when they reached me. Wishing to comply with
  their request, and my own inclination too, I now therefore do
  publish, Reader, what I am confident will please your curiosity, if
  not in full measure, at least a good deal. Let whosoever desires to
  see the sequel expect it as soon as possible."

Was there ever such an unfortunate as Morus? Everything everywhere
seems to go wrong with him. Here, at the Hague, having absented
himself from Amsterdam for the purpose, he has been writing his
Defence of Himself against Milton, doing it cleverly and in a way
likely to make some impression, when, suddenly, for some reason
unknown even to his printer, he is obliged to break off for a journey
into France, just as he was approaching the heart of his subject. Had
he absconded? This seems actually to have been the construction,
abroad. "Morus is gone into France," writes a Hague correspondent of
Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; "it is believed that he has a calling, _et
quidem a Castris_, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They
love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they
do not desire that he should come to visit the daughters of condition
as he was used to do. He promised Ulac to finish his Apology; but he
went away without taking his leave of him: so that you see that Ulac
hath finished abrupt." Morus, as we shall find, did finish the book;
but the _Fides Publica_, as it was first circulated in Holland
towards the end of 1654, and as it first reached Milton, was the book
abruptly broken off as above, at page 130, with the testimonials and
the autobiography coming no farther down than the year 1648, when
Morus had not yet left Geneva.

In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus's _Fides Publica_
in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should
reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted
by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has
already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of
the incident belong to Milton's biography.

Overton's former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made
up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654,
to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in
his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his
desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had
gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his
head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special
charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen.
Meanwhile, as Oliver's First Parliament had been incessantly opposing
him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the
anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the
country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in
Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and
secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with
some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if
Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to
depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England
under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, and
the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if
indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents
of Charles II. It may be a question how far Overton himself was a
party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his
former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at
Aberdeen. "I bless the Lord," he writes mysteriously from that town,
Dec. 26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend--"I
bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much
remembered) so far as I am able in everything. I know right well you
and others do it much for me; and, pray, dear Sir, do it still. Heave
me up upon the wings of your prayers to Him who is a God hearing
prayers and granting requests. Entreat Him to enable me to stand to
his Truth; which I shall not do if He deject or forsake me." This
letter, as well as several letters _to_ Overton, had been
intercepted by Monk's vigilance; and hardly had it been written when
Overton was arrested by Monk's orders, and brought to Leith. At Leith
his papers were searched, and there was found in his letter-case
this copy of verses in his own hand:--

  "A Protector! What's that? 'Tis a stately thing
  That confesseth itself but the ape of a King;
  A tragical Cæsar acted by a clown,
  Or a brass farthing stamped with a kind of crown;
  A bauble that shines, a loud cry without wool;
  Not Perillus nor Phalaris, but the bull;
  The echo of Monarchy till it come;
  The butt-end of a barrel in the shape of a drum;
  A counterfeit piece that woodenly shows;
  A golden effigies with a copper nose;
  The fantastic shadow of a sovereign head;
  The arms-royal reversed, and disloyal instead;
  In fine, he is one we may Protector call,--
  From whom the King of Kings protect us all!"

With this piece of doggrel, the intercepted letters, and the other
informations, Overton was shipped off by Monk from Leith to London on
the 4th of January, 1654-5; and on the 16th of that month he was
committed to the Tower. Thence the next day he wrote a long letter to
a private friend, in which he enumerates the charges against him, and
replies to them one by one. He denies that he has broken trust with
the Protector; he denies that he is a Leveller; and, what pleases us
best of all, he denies the authorship of the doggrel lines just
quoted. His exact words about these may be given. "But, say some, you
made a copy of scandalous verses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his
Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must
acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called _The Character of a
Protector_; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my
remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were
taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time
by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished
my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen
them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath
done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import
and abuse." It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still
credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the
author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political
import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have
retained our faith in Milton's character of Overton--"you, Overton,
bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than
brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our
tastes, and the sweetness of your manners"? Still to have copied and
kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning;
and, Thurloe's investigations having made it credible otherwise that
Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a
general rising against the Protector's Government, there was an end
to the promising career of Milton's friend under the Protectorate. He
remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the
3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, "Mrs. Anne Overton," had liberty
from the Council "to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she
shall so think fit."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book,
July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached,
had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he
leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton's own (_Hist. of
Commonwealth_, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin
in this, as in most things else.--That Overton's disaffection was
very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his
suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact
that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in
Hyde's hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or
meant to be sent, by Charles II. to Overton. The substance of the
letter, as in Mr. Macray's abstract of it for the Calendar of the
Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:--"_The King to Col.
Ov[erton]._ Has received such information of his affection that he
does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all
their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have
wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his
power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is
very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal
instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he or his family
shall wish they shall receive, and what he shall promise to any of
his friends who may concur with him shall be made good." If this
letter was among those found among Overton's papers at Leith (which
is not very likely), little wonder that Cromwell would not trust
him at large a second time.]

At the date of Overton's imprisonment the Protector was making up his
mind to dismiss his troublesome First Parliament after his four
months and a half of experience of its temper; and six days after
that date he did dismiss it, to its own surprise, before it had sent
him up a single Bill. How many Latin letters had Overton's friend
Milton written for the Protector in his official capacity during the
four months and a half of that troublesome Parliament? So far as the
records show, only three. They were as follows:--

  (XLIX.) "To THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, LUIS MENDEZ DE HARO,"
  _Sept._ 4, 1654:[1]--The Spanish Prime Minister, Luis de Haro,
  had recently, in the Protector's apparent indecision between the
  Spanish alliance and the French alliance, resolved to try to secure
  him for Spain by sending over a new Ambassador, to supersede
  Cardenas, or to co-operate with him. He had announced the same in
  letters to Cromwell; who now thanks him, professes his desire to be
  in friendship with Spain, and promises every attention to the new
  Ambassador when he may arrive, Cromwell pays a compliment to the
  minister himself. "To have your affection and approbation," he
  says, "who by your worth and prudence have acquired such authority
  with the King of Spain that you preside, with a mind to match, over
  the greatest affairs of that kingdom, ought truly to be a pleasure
  to me corresponding with my apprehension of the honour I shall have
  from the good opinion of a man of excellence." Milton is dexterous
  in wording his documents.

[Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is
given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month
only is given).]

  (L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, _Oct.
  25_, 1654:--There has come to be a conflict between the City of
  Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of
  that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic,
  Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented
  this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton's friend, Henry
  Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell's good offices with the
  Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He
  has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and
  he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the
  powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire
  than that "the whole Protestant denomination should at length
  coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord."

  (LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 28, 1654:--As
  announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write
  on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great
  Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental
  Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between
  Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How
  dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in
  league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each
  other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the
  present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring
  about a permanent reconciliation.

These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two
months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver
found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there
is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct.
26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the
date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this
idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months,
leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he
was then engaged on a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_ in the
imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we
have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion
of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in
his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his
_Defensio Secunda_ in reply to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_
had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by
him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not
finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may
have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in
reply to the _Fides Publica_ of Morus should count also to the
credit of Milton's official services, even though it must necessarily
be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its
predecessors. But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged
man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on
Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked.



SECTION II: FROM JANUARY 1654-5 TO SEPTEMBER 1656, OR THROUGH THE
PERIOD OF ARBITRARINESS.

LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON'S REPLY: LETTER TO
EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON'S GENEVESE RECOLLECTIONS AND
ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON'S LATIN STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII.,
LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON'S DESPATCH-WRITING FOR CROMWELL
HITHERTO.--REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE
MILTON'S TO £150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION OF HIS £288 A YEAR AT
PLEASURE INTO £200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR AND COUNCIL
RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655: SUDDEN DEMAND ON
MILTON'S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE
PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS TO FOREIGN
STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS. LIV.--LXIV.): HIS SONNET
ON THE SUBJECT.--PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM TO MORE'S _FIDES
PUBLICA_: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH EXTRACTS: MILTON'S
ANSWER TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM TOGETHER IN
HIS _PRO SE DEFENSIO_, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT OF THAT BOOK, WITH
SPECIMENS: MILTON'S DISBELIEF IN MORUS'S DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF
THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_: HIS REASONS, AND HIS REASSERTIONS
OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND
ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS REPETITION OF THE BONTIA
ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS'S PRINTED
TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST: ITS EFFECTS ON
MORUS.--QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS
CLAMOR_ AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS'S CONCERN IN IT: THE DU MOULIN
FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE
_REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE EDITOR AND THE
WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE
WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL THE WHILE, AND DREAD
OF BEING FOUND OUT.--CALM IN MILTON'S LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE
MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF
THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS'S _SATYR AGAINST
HYPOCRITES_: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE: MARVELL, NEEDHAM,
CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH, MR. RICHARD JONES,
AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN IN THAT CONNEXION:
MILTON'S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK
SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION OF THESE FOUR
SONNETS.--_SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS CONTRA HISPANOS_:
THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS.
LXV.--LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH
EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.--INCREASE OF LIGHT
LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS: JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE
FOR SUCH: EDWARD PHILLIPS'S LONDON EDITION OF THE POEMS OF DRUMMOND
OF HAWTHORNDEN: MILTON'S COGNISANCE OF THE SAME.--HENRY OLDENBURG AND
MR. RICHARD JONES AT OXFORD: LETTERS OF MILTON TO JONES AND
OLDENBURG.--THIRTEEN MORE STATE-LETTERS OF THE MILTON SERIES (NOS.
LXXVIII.--XC.): IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THEM.


Oliver had just entered on his period of Arbitrariness, or Government
without a Parliament, when Milton received the following letter in
Latin from Leo de Aitzema, or Lieuwe van Aitzema, formerly known to
him as agent for Hamburg and the Hanse Towns in London, but now
residing at the Hague in the same capacity (IV. 378-379). Aitzema, we
may now mention, was a Frieslander by birth, eight years older than
Milton, and is remembered still, it is said, for a voluminous and
valuable _History of the United Provinces_, consisting of a
great collection of documents, with commentaries by himself in
Dutch.[1] This had not yet been published.

[Footnote 1: See Article _Aitzema_ in Bayle's Dictionary.]

  "To the honourable and highly esteemed Mr. John Milton, Secretary
  to the Council of State, London.

  "Partly because Morus, in his book, has made some aspersions on you
  for your English Book on Divorce, partly because many have been
  inquiring eagerly about the arguments with which you support your
  opinion, I have, most honoured and esteemed Sir, given your little
  work entire to a friend of mine to be translated into Dutch, with a
  desire to have it printed soon. Not knowing, however, whether you
  would like anything corrected therein or added, I take the liberty
  to give you this notice, and to request you to let me know your
  mind on the subject. Best wishes and greetings from

  "Your very obedient

  "LEO AITZEMA[1]

  "Hague: Jan. 29, 1654-5."

[Footnote 1: Communicated by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British
Museum, and published by the late Rev. John Mitford in Appendix to
Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's Edition of Milton's Works
(1851).]

Milton's answer, rather unusually for him, was immediate.

  TO LEO VAN AITZEMA.

  It is very gratifying to me that you retain the same amount of
  recollection of me as you very politely showed of good will by once
  and again visiting me while you resided among us. As regards the
  Book on Divorce which you tell me you have given to some one to be
  turned into Dutch, I would rather you had given it to be turned
  into Latin. For my experience in those books of mine has now been
  that the vulgar still receive according to their wont opinions not
  already common. I wrote a good while ago, I may mention, _three_
  treatises on the subject:--the first, in two books, in which _The
  Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ (for that is the title of the
  book) is contained at large; a second, which is called
  _Tetrachordon_, and in which the four chief passages of Scripture
  concerning that doctrine are explicated; the third called
  _Colasterion_, in which answer is made to a certain sciolist. [The
  _Bucer Tract_ omitted in the enumeration.] Which of these Treatises
  you have given to be translated, or what edition, I do not know:
  the first of them was twice issued, and was much enlarged in the
  second edition. Should you not have been made aware of this
  already, or should I understand that you desire anything else on my
  part, such as sending you the more correct edition or the rest of
  the Treatises, I shall attend to the matter carefully and with
  pleasure. For there is not anything at present that I should wish
  changed in them or added. Therefore, should you keep to your
  intention, I earnestly hope for myself a faithful translator, and
  for you all prosperity.

  Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 16.]

The next letter, written in the following month, also connects
itself, but still more closely, with the Morus controversy. It is
addressed to Ezekiel Spanheim, the eldest son of that Frederick
Spanheim, by birth a German, of whom we have heard as Professor of
Theology successively at Geneva (1631-1642) and at Leyden
(1642-1649). This elder Spanheim, it will be remembered, had been
implicated in the opposition to Morus in both places--the story being
that he had contracted a bad opinion of Morus during his
colleagueship with him in Geneva, and that, when Salmasius, partly to
spite Spanheim, of whose popularity at Leyden he was jealous, had
negotiated for bringing Morus to Holland, Spanheim "moved heaven and
earth to prevent his coming." It is added that Spanheim's death (May
1649) was caused by the news that Morus was on his way, and that he
had said on his death-bed that "Salmasius had killed him and Morus
had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the
assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the
only fault in Morus was that he was _altier_, or self-confident.
That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its
last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was
hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son,
Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this
Ezekiel Spanheim was to attain to even greater celebrity than his
father, and his varied career in different parts of Europe was not to
close till 1710. At present he was only in his twenty-fifth year,
and was living at Geneva, where he had been born, and whither he had
returned from Leyden in 1651, to accept a kind of honorary
Professorship that had been offered him, in compliment partly to his
father's memory, partly to his own extraordinary promise. As one who
had lived the first thirteen years of his age in Geneva, and the next
nine in Leyden (1642-1651), and who was now back in Geneva, he had
been amply and closely on the track of Morus; and how little he liked
him will now appear:--

[Footnote 1: Bayle, both in Article _Spanheim_ and in Article
_Morus_.]

  TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.

  I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has
  reached me little less than three months after date. There is
  clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for,
  though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive
  that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off
  nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from
  this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your
  kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk
  deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty
  to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse
  for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do
  a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done
  immediately.

  You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me
  expressed in the beginning of your letter--to wit, that I am not
  likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could
  you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by
  thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner
  or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your
  being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by
  your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact
  that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to
  have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy,
  and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that
  it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against
  a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very
  letter, part of which, with the author's name not mentioned, I have
  not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of
  evidence in my forthcoming _Defensio_ [in reply to More's
  _Fides Publica_]. This book, as soon as it is published, I
  will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I
  may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me,
  meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover
  to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in
  Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most
  conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure
  you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I
  particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.

  Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.]

In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his
recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on
his way home from Italy. The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his
friend Charles, was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most,
and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim had then
been in the same city, and Morus too, and the present Ezekiel
Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth year, and others, still alive, who
had then known Morus, and had since that time had him in view. Milton
had certainly not then himself seen Morus, though he must have heard
of him; but it is possible he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and
may now, in writing to Spanheim's son, have remembered the fact. In
any case there were links of acquaintanceship still connecting Milton
with Geneva and its gossip. The "Calandrini," for example, who is
mentioned in Milton's letter, and who may be identified with a
Genevese merchant named "Jean Louis Calandrin," heard of in Thurloe's
correspondence, must in some way have been known to Milton
personally, and interested in serving him.[1] It had been in in
consequence of a suggestion of this Calandrini, "acting-with his
usual courtesy," that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when
Morus's fragmentary _Fides Publica_ was just out or nearly so,
addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him some additional
information about the Genevese portion of Morus's career. The letter
had not readied Milton till the end of December or the beginning of
January 1654-5; and for nearly three months after that he had left it
unacknowledged. That he had been moved to acknowledge it at last was,
doubtless, as his letter itself suggests, and as we shall see yet
more precisely, because he had then nearly ready his Reply to the
_Fides Publica_, and had used Spanheim's information there, only
suppressing the name of his informant. But that Milton had already
had no lack of private informants about Morus's career, whether in
Geneva or in Holland, has appeared abundantly. The
Hartlib-Durie-Haak-Oldenburg connexion about him in London was a
perfect sponge for all kinds of gossip from, abroad. We hear now,
however, of another person in particular who may have supplied Milton
with his earlier information as to the Genevese part of Morus's life,
A family long of note in Geneva had been that of the Turretins,
originally from Italy, and indeed from Lucca, whence they had been
driven, as the Diodatis had been, by their Protestantism, One of this
family, Benedict Turretin, born in Geneva, had been a distinguished
Theology Professor there, and at his death in 1631 had left at least
two sons. One of these, Francis Turretin, born at Geneva in 1623,
had, after the usual wanderings of Continental scholars in those
days, just returned to Geneva (1653), and settled there in what may
be called the family-business, i.e. the profession of Theology. In
this he was to attain extraordinary celebrity, his _Institutio
Theologiæ Elencticæ_ ranking to this day among Calvinistic
Theologians as a master-work of its kind. Well, this Francis
Turretin, rising into fame at Geneva, just as Ezekiel Spanheim was,
and seeing Spanheim daily, had, it seems from Milton's letter, a
brother in London, on intimate terms with Milton; and Milton's
proposition to young Spanheim was that they should correspond in
future through the two Turretins. Who would have thought to find the
future author of the _Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ_ used by
Milton for postal purposes? Is it not clear too that the London
Turretin must have been one of Milton's informants about Morus's
reasons for leaving Geneva? Respectability everywhere, at our present
date at least, seems adverse to Morus.[2]

[Footnote 1: For mention of Jean Louis Calandrin, the Genevese
merchant, see Letters between Pell and Thurloe in _Vaughan's
Protectorate_ (I. 302, 308, 354). He died at Geneva, in Feb.
1655-6, about a year after this mention of him by Milton. It is
possible he may have been a relative of a "Cæsar Calandrinus"
mentioned by Wood as one of the many foreigners who had studied at
Exeter College, Oxford, during the Rectorship of Dr. Prideaux
(1612-1641), and who was afterwards "a Puritanical Theologist,"
intimate with Usher, a Rector in Essex, and finally minister of the
parish of Peter le Poor in London, where he died in 1665, leaving a
son named John. Wood speaks of him as a German (Wood, Ath. III. 269,
and Fasti, I. 393-4); but the name is evidently Italian. Indeed I
find that there had been an intermarriage in Italy between the
Diodati family and a family of Calandrinis, bringing some of the
Calandrinis also to Geneva about the year 1575. (Reprint, for
private circulation, of a Paper on the Italian ancestry of Mr.
William Diodate of New Haven, U.S., read before the New Haven
Colony Historical Society, June 28, 1875, by Edward E. Salisbury,
p. 13). By the kindness of Colonel Chester, whose genealogical
researches are all-inclusive, I have a copy of the will of the
above-named Cæsar Calandrini of St. Peter le Poor, London. It is
dated Aug. 4, 1665, when he was "three score and ten," and mentions
two sons, Lewis and John, two daughters living, one of them married
to a Giles Archer, and grandchildren by these children, besides
nephews and nieces of the names of Papillon and Burlamachi. The son
"John" in this will proved it in October 1665, and cannot have been
the Calandrini of Milton's letter; but that Calandrini may have
been of the same connexion.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle, Art. _Francois Turretin_.]

Busy over his reply to the _Fides Publica_, Milton had stretched
his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only
through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted
in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section.
Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a
total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing. In April
1655, however, as if his reply to the _Fides Publica_ were then
off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or
nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin
State-letters, as follows:--

  (LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, _April_ 4, 1655[1]:--This
  Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected
  with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been
  mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very
  stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his
  interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French,
  Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had
  such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed
  faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and
  declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to
  promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important,
  the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince
  to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.--The
  Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much
  in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as
  mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action--a condescension
  which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says,
  to go on.

[Footnote 1: No. 32 in Skinner Transcript (which gives the exact
date); also in Printed Collection and in Phillips.]

  (LIII.) To ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD of AUSTRIA, GOVERNOR OF THE SPANISH
  NETHERLANDS (_undated_):--Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman,
  has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at
  Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent
  from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in
  pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was
  that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree
  of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law,
  neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor
  could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court
  to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is
  requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it
  is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an
  action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the
  country where the cause of the action first arose. "The justice of
  the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for
  fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your
  attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss
  the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that
  you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all
  times most ready."[1]

[Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated
"Aug. 1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such
a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655,
when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point
by conjecture only, and may be wrong.]

In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the
sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of
personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months
and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments
were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his
period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the
help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin
State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by
him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the
Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV.
pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine
Letters, with the completion and publication of his _Defensio
Secunda_, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's _Fides
Publica_, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office
and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in
Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his
salary of £288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had
himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that
passage of his _Defensio Secunda_ in which he spoke of the kind
indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in
full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his
disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and
some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling
among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name
to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship
for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to
statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the
very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his
Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see
ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order
Books under date April 17, 1655.

  _Tuesday, April_ 17, 1655:--Present the Lord President
  Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague,
  Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering,
  Major-General Skippon.

  "The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the
  Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the
  Establishment of the Council's Contingencies.

  "_Ordered:_--

  "That the salary of £400 _per annum_ granted to MR. GUALTER
  FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to
  £300 _per annum_, and be continued to be paid after that
  proportion till further order.

  "That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of £288, &c.,
  formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to £150
  _per annum_, and paid to him during his life out of his
  Highness's Exchequer.

  "That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid
  out of the Council's Contingencies,--that is to say £45 12_s._
  6_d._ _per annum_ to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter
  Frost's assistant,--_per annum_ to Mr. John Hall,--_per
  annum_ to Mr. Marchamont Needham,--_per annum_ to Mr.
  George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,--_per annum_ for
  the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of
  Ambassadors], and--_per annum_ to M. René Angler,--be for the
  future retrenched and taken away.

  "That some convenient rooms at Somerset House be set apart for the
  entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors upon their address to his
  Highness.

  "That it be referred to Mr. Secretary Thurloe to put that part of
  the Intelligence [from abroad] which is managed by M. René Augier
  into the common charge of Intelligence, and to order it for the
  future by M, Augier or otherwise, as he shall see most for the
  Commonwealth's service.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council
  that several warrants be issued under the great seal for
  authorizing and requiring the Commissioners of his Highness's
  Treasury to pay, by quarterly payments, at the receipt of his
  Highness's Exchequer, to the several officers, clerks, and other
  persons after-named, according to the proportions allowed them for
  their salary in respect of their several respective offices and
  employments during their continuance or till his Highness or the
  Council shall give other order: that is to say:--

  "To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:--For his own office,
  after the proportion of £800 _per annum_; for the office of
  Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate
  of £200 per annum; for the salaries of--clerks attending his
  [Thurloe's] office at 6_s._ 8_d._ _per diem_, a
  piece (which together amount to----); for the salaries of eleven
  messengers at 5_s._ _per diem_, apiece (which together
  amount to £1003 15_s._): amounting in the whole to ----

  "To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the
  Council, or to either of them:--For their own offices, viz. Mr.
  Scobell £500 _per annum_, Mr. Jessop £500 _per annum_;
  for the salaries of--clerks attending their office at 6_s._
  8_d._ _per diem_ (which together amount to ----):
  amounting in the whole to ----

  "To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:--For
  his own office after the proportion of £365 _per annum_; for
  the salaries of his _ten_ deputies at 3_s._ 4_d._
  _per diem_ a piece (which together amount to £608 6_s._
  8_d._); amounting in the whole to £973 6 8

  "To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:--For himself and
  his assistants at 13_s._ _per diem_, (being £237 5_s_, _per
  annum_); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of
  the Council Chamber, at 4_s. per diem_ (being £73 _per
  annum_); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the
  clerks, at 2_s. per diem_ (being £36 10_s. per annum_):
  amounting in the whole to £346 15 0

  "The first payment of the said several and respective sums
  before-mentioned to commence from the 1st of April instant.

  "To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness's barge:--For his own
  office after £80 _per annum;_ for Thomas Washborne, his
  assistant, for his salary, after £20 _per annum;_ for the
  salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at £4
  _per annum_ to each (amounting together to £100 _per
  annum_): amounting in the whole to £200 _per ann._

  "The same to commence from 25th March, 1655."

Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain
salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped
altogether, including Needham's subsidy or pension for his
journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite
of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and
Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from £365 a
year to £500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment
only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council's
business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea.
It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto
into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now
"Secretary of State"; but it will be observed that the department of
Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from
abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that
Meadows, with the designation of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue,"
ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as
"Clerks to the Council," though under Thurloe too, are now important
enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or
Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of
Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable
as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs.
Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are
henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as
Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies, but by warrants to the
Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite
sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included.

Milton's case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was
certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from £288
18_s._ 6_d._ a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to
£150 a year--i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are
disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton's
allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,--made
equal, say, to Thurloe's. Records must stand as they are, however,
and must be construed coolly. Milton's £288 a year for _his_
lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in
fair proportion to the elder Frost's £600 a year, or Thurloe's £800,
for _their_ more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton
had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried
officer had been required in consequence, was there anything
extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the
fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if
now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a
salary of over £1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six
years of service, and an extra officer at £700 a year had been for
some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being
a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary
services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or
retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was
exactly the course proposed in Milton's case. The reduction from £288
to £150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the
proposition; for, whereas the £288 a year had been at the Council's
pleasure, it was now proposed that the £150 a year should be for
life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable
salary of £288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies,
into a life-pension of £150 a year, payable out of the Protector's
Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a
terminable salary of over £1000 a year were converted into a
life-pension of between £500 and £600. On studying the document, I
have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that
moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous
_Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary_, into which his connexion
with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting
him, as _Ex-Secretary_ Milton, a perfectly free and
highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty
France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to
retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced
salary of £150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the
title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of
£200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official
symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's _Latin Secretaryship
Extraordinary_ or _Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary_ may
have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general
_Secretaryship of State_, and he may have desired that Milton
should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete
to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.

The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to
be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I
find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of £100 a year,
which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and
take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary,
sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and
precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence
and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much
out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five
weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to
Frost to pay Needham £50, "being for half a year's salary due unto
him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and
the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to
the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our
present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of
Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary
of £150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must,
therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council,
or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the
several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and
Jessop from £365 a year to £500 a year each must, indeed, have been
made good,--for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship
to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of £500 a year.[3] But, on
the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed
in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were _not_
confirmed, or were confirmed only _partially_. Frost is found
afterwards distinctly in receipt of £365 a year,[4] The actual
reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from £400 to £300, as had
been proposed, but only from £400 to £365, or back to what his salary
had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the
end of the Protectorate in receipt of £200 a year, and not of £150
only, as had been proposed In the Order.[5] The inference must be,
therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of
the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction,
but diminishing considerably the proposed _amount_ of the
reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification
was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the
matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of
the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from
those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham,
there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in
Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to
be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that
it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active
employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment
he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the
arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that
his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to
£200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality
in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted;
and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by
saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to
superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of £150 a year, the
proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as
before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the
reduced salary of £200 a year instead of his original £288.

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.]

[Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid.]

As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and
that Milton's retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a
loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been
made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous
of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week
of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese
Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards
for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council
was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that
dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council
relating to it:--

  _Thursday, May_ 17, 1655:--Present: HIS HIGHNESS THE LORD
  PROTECTOR, Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel
  Fiennes, Lord Lambert, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, Lord
  Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Montague, Colonel
  Jones, General Desborough, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley,
  Mr. Strickland. _Ordered_, "That it be referred to the Earl of
  Mulgrave, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Mr. Rous, and Colonel Jones, or
  any--of them to consider of the Petition [a Petition from London
  ministers and others], and also of the papers of intelligence
  already come touching the Protestants under the Duke of Savoy, and
  such other intelligence as shall come to Mr. Secretary Thurloe, and
  to offer to the Council what they shall think fit, as well
  _touching writing of letters_, collections, or otherwise, in
  order to their relief ... That it be referred to Colonel Fiennes,
  Mr. Strickland, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe,
  to prepare the draft of a letter to the French King upon this day's
  debate touching the Protestants suffering in the Dukedom of Savoy,
  and to bring in the same to-morrow morning."

  _Friday, May_ 18:--At a second, or afternoon sitting
  (_present_: Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General
  Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones,
  Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), "Colonel Fiennes reports from
  the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the
  draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of
  France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which,
  after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to
  his Highness as the advice of the Council."

  _Tuesday, May_ 22:--_Present_: Lord President Lawrence,
  Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones,
  General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount
  Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert. "The Latin draft of a
  Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his
  Territory was this day read. _Ordered_, That it be offered to
  his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will
  please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said
  Duke."

  _Wednesday, May_ 23:--"Colonel Fiennes reports from the
  Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to
  the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of
  Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the
  other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant
  Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed.
  _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord
  Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send
  the said letters in his Highness's name to the said States-General
  and the Cantons respectively."

Though Milton's name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he,
and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the
Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular
letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the
occasion. The following is a list of them:--

  (LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--This Letter
  may be translated entire. It is superscribed "OLIVER, Protector of
  the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince,
  EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting "; and it is
  worded as follows:--"Most Serene Prince,--Letters have reached us
  from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places
  bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the
  subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion
  were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three
  days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their
  habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of
  all their estates, unless they should give security that,
  abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days
  embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as
  suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be
  revoked, and that they might be taken into their ancient favour and
  restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors,
  yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly,
  threw others into chains, and drove the rest into the deserts and
  snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced
  to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon
  perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us,
  we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that
  sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and
  compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by
  common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by
  an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we
  should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or
  the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same
  religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over
  this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert
  ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their
  rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we
  most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will
  bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors
  and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to
  their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they
  performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who
  has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over
  Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they
  had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and
  faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal
  Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers
  in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer
  to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter
  either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may
  have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the
  Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods,
  ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and
  ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their
  troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done
  a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and
  comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will
  have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed
  Religion,--ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your
  kindness and clemency to those poor people as the fruit of our
  solicitation. Which will moreover tie us to the performance of all
  good offices in return, and lay the firmest foundations not only
  for the establishment but even for the increase of the relationship
  and friendship between this Commonwealth and your Dominion. Nor do
  we less promise this to ourselves from your justice and moderation.
  We beg Almighty God to bend your mind and thoughts in this
  direction, and we heartily pray for you and for your people peace
  and truth and prosperity in all your affairs."[2]--The bearer of
  this letter to the Duke, as we know, was Mr. Samuel Morland, who
  had been selected as the Protector's special Commissioner for the
  purpose. He left London on the 26th of May. He took with him, also,
  a copy of the Latin speech which he was to deliver to the Duke in
  presenting the letter. As there is much probability that this Latin
  speech is also in part of Milton's composition, and as it is in
  even a bolder and more indignant strain than the letter, it may be
  well to translate it too:--"Your Serene and Royal Highnesses [the
  Duke and his mother both addressed?],--The Most Serene Lord,
  Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and
  Ireland, has sent me to your Royal Highnesses; whom he salutes very
  heartily, and to whom, with a very high affection and peculiar
  regard for your Serenities, he wishes a long life and reign, and a
  prosperous issue of all your affairs, amid the applauses and
  respect of your people. And this is due to you, whether in
  consideration of the excellent character and royal descent of your
  Highnesses, and the great expectation of the world from so many
  eminent good qualities, or in recollection, after reference to
  records, of the ancient friendship of our Kings with the Royal
  house of Savoy. Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not
  very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most
  Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your
  Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian
  name, on what is really a great mission.--The ancient legend is
  that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When,
  however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway
  he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling
  as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds
  of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called
  wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is
  comprehended--their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall
  be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers,
  to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now
  irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause
  pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of
  England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests
  and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy
  to these your very poor and most outcast subjects--those, I mean,
  who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your
  dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants.
  For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of
  your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been
  partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and
  driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering,
  with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and
  destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots
  and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this
  transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present
  reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was
  not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere,
  torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and
  hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and
  persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and
  some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of
  others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard
  of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times
  and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at
  having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels
  are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be
  astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the
  shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek
  the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away
  this stain!--But it is not for me to relate these things in order
  as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most
  Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will
  understand better from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to
  deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due
  respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope,
  grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most
  gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business
  deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also
  restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal
  Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many
  thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and
  me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger
  of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your
  exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal
  Highnesses for evermore."[3]

[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record
Office (Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, p. 15) and in the copy
actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)--the phrase in
both being "_Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii_, 25
_Maii_, _anno_ 1654." In the Skinner Transcript, however,
the dating is "_Westmonsterio, May_ 10, 1655;" which again is
changed into "_Alba Aula, May_ 1655," i.e. "Whitehall, May 1655"
(month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.]

[Footnote 2: There are one or two slight verbal differences between
Milton's original draft, here translated, and the official copy as
actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland. Thus, in
the first sentence, instead of _"Redditæ sunt nobis e Geneva,
necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestræ
finitimis, literæ,"_ the official copy has simply _"Redditæ
sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestæ finitimis literæ."_]

[Footnote 3: I have translated the speech from the official Latin
draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr.
Hamilton, _Milton Papers_, pp. 18-20. Mr. Hamilton has no doubt
that the composition is Milton's. He founds his opinion partly on the
style, and partly on the fact that the draft is "written in the same
hand as the other official copies of Milton's letters." I agree with
Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond
controversy. The style is generally like Milton's; there are phrases
repeated from Milton's Latin elsewhere--e.g. "_montesque nivibus
coopertos_," repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and
"_totius nominis Italici studiosissimum_" which almost repeats
the "_toiius Græci nominis ... cultor_" of the second Letter to
Philaras; and there are also phrases identical with some used in
Milton's other letters on the subject of the Massacre which have yet
to be noted in this list. On the other hand, there are passages and
expressions in the Speech that strike one as hardly Miltonic, while
the purport in some places would favour the idea that Morland wrote
the speech himself. What seems to negative this idea most strongly,
and therefore to point most distinctly to Milton as the author, is
the existence of the MS. official copy in the Record Office. The
speech, that copy proves, must have been prepared before Morland left
London, and must have been taken with him. For that it cannot have
been merely deposited in the State Paper Office afterwards, as a
record of what he did say at Turin, is proved by the fact that his
actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an
English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with
the draft-copy, differs in some particulars. In the actual speech the
plural, "Your Royal Highnesses," is changed into the singular, "Your
Royal Highness," for address to the Duke only, though the
Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland
to the Son of Croesus is entirely omitted; and there are other verbal
changes, apparently suggested by Morland's closer information as he
approached Turin, or by his sense of fitness at the moment--in
illustration of which the reader may compare the very strong passage
about "the Neros of all times and ages" as we have just rendered it
from the draft with the same passage as we have previously rendered
it from Morland's actual speech (ante p. 42). But, if Morland took
the speech with him, unless he wrote it himself and had it approved
before his departure, who so likely to have furnished it as Milton?
All in all, that is the most probable conclusion; and anything
un-Miltonic in the speech may be accounted for by supposing that,
though the Latin was Milton's, the substance was not entirely his.
Morland, though he does not say in his book that the speech was
furnished him, does not positively claim it as his own. He, at all
events, used the liberty of deviating from the original draft.]

  (LV.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May 25,
  1655_[1]:--His Highness in this letter recapitulates the facts
  at some length, and expresses his conviction that the Cantons, so
  much nearer the scene of the horrors, are already duly roused. He
  informs them that he has written to the Duke of Savoy and hopes the
  intercession may have effect; but adds, "If, however, he should
  determine otherwise, we are prepared to exchange counsels with you
  on the subject of the means by which we may be able most
  effectively to relieve, re-establish, and save from certain and
  undeserved ruin, an innocent people oppressed and tormented by so
  many injuries, they being also our dearest brothers in Christ."[2]

[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy as dispatched, and as
printed in Morland's book, pp. 581-562; but draft dated
"_Westmonasterio, May 19, 1655_" in the Skinner Transcript, the
Printed Collection, and Phillips.]

[Footnote 2: One of the phrases in this letter about the poor
Piedmontese Protestants is "_nunc sine tare, sine teoto, ... per
monies desertos atque nives, cum conjugibus ac liberis, miserrime
vagantur_." The phrase occurs almost verbatim in Morland's speech
to the Duke of Savoy--"_sine lare, sine tecto ... cum suis
conjugibus ac liberis vagari_."]

  (LVI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 25,
  1655:--To the same effect as the last, _mutatis mutandis_.
  What sovereign can be more ready to stir in such a cause than his
  Swedish majesty, the successor of those who have been champions of
  the Protestantism of Europe? Gladly will the Protector form a
  league with him and with other powers to do whatever may be
  necessary.

  (LVII.) TO THE KING OF DENMARK, May 25, 1655:[1]--An appeal in the
  same strain to his Danish Majesty: phraseology varied a little, But
  matter the same.

[Footnote 1: This and the last both so dated in official copy as
printed in Morland's book, pp. 554-557; dated only "May 1655" in
Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips.]

  (LVIII.) TO LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE, May 25, 1655:[1]--The story
  recapitulated for the benefit of his French Majesty, with the
  addition that it is reported that some troops of his Majesty had
  assisted the Piedmontese soldiery in the attack on the Vaudois.
  This the Protector can hardly believe: it would be so much against
  that policy of Toleration which the Kings of France have found
  essential for the peace of their own dominions. The Protector
  cannot doubt, at all events, that his Majesty will use his powerful
  influence with the Duke of Savoy to induce him at once, as far as
  may be possible, to repair the outrageous wrong already done.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is omitted in the Printed Collection and in
Phillips; but it is given in the Skinner Transcript (No. 38 there),
and Mr. Hamilton has printed it in his Milton Papers (p. 2). It had
already been printed in Morland's book (pp. 564-565).]

  (LIX.) TO THE MOST EMINENT LORD, CARDINAL MAZARIN, _May_ 25,
  1625:[1]--Not content with writing to Louis XIV., Cromwell
  addressed also the great French Minister. After mentioning the
  dreadful occasion, the letter proceeds--"There is clearly nothing
  which has obtained for the French nation greater esteem with all
  their neighbours professing the Reformed Religion than the liberty
  and privileges permitted and granted to Protestants by edicts and
  public acts. It is for this reason chiefly, though for others as
  well, that this Commonwealth has sought for the friendship and
  alliance of the French to a greater degree than before. For the
  settlement of this there have now for a good while been dealings
  here with the King's Ambassador, and his Treaty is now almost
  brought to a conclusion. Moreover, the singular benignity and
  moderation of your Eminence, always manifest hitherto in the most
  important transactions of the Kingdom relating to the French
  Protestants, causes me to hope much from your own prudence and
  magnanimity."

[Footnote 1: Utterly undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips,
and quite misplaced in both; properly dated "May 25, 1655" in Skinner
Transcript.]

  (LX.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_ 25,
  1655:[1]--To the same effect as the letters to the Swiss Cantons
  and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, but with emphatic expression
  of his Highness's peculiar confidence In the Dutch Republic in such
  a crisis. He offers in the close to act in concert with the
  States-General and other Protestant powers for any interference
  that may be necessary.

[Footnote 1: So dated in official copy, as printed in Morland's
book, pp. 558-560; but undated in Printed Collection and in
Phillips, and dated "_West., Junii_--1655" in Skinner
Transcript (No. 41 there). This last is a mistake; for Thurloe
speaks of the letter as already written May 25 (Thurloe to Pell,
_Vaughan's Protectorate_, I. 185). The official copy, as given
in Morland, differs somewhat from Milton's draft. "_Ego_" for
Cromwell, in one sentence, is changed into "_Nos;_" and the
closing words of the draft, "_et is demum, sentiet orthodoxnon
injurias atque miserias tam graves non posse nos negligere_" are
omitted in the official copy, possibly as too strong. These may be
among the amendments made in Council, May 23.]

  (LXI.) TO THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA, _May_,
  1655:[1]--Transylvania, now included in the Austrian Empire, was
  then an independent Principality of Eastern Europe, in precarious
  and variable relations with Austria, Poland, Russia, and the
  Ottoman Empire. The population, a mixture of Wallachs, Magyars.
  Germans, and Slavs, was largely Protestant; and the present Prince,
  George Ragotzki, was an energetic supporter of the Protestant
  interest in that part of Europe, and a man generally of much
  political and military activity. He had written, it appears, to
  Cromwell on the 16th of November, 1654, and had sent an Envoy to
  England with the letter. It had expressed his earnest desire for
  friendship and alliance with the Protector, and for co-operation
  with him in the defence of the Reformed Religion. Cromwell now
  acknowledges the letter and embassy, with high compliments to the
  Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so
  much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is
  not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had
  mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on
  the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy's example may
  spread?

[Footnote 1: Dated so in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and
Phillips--with the addition "Westminster" in the first, and
"Whitehall" in the two last: no copy given in Morland's book.]

  (LXII.) TO THE CITY OF GENEVA, _June_ 8, 1655:--This letter
  announces the collection in progress in England for the relief of
  the Piedmontese Protestants. It will take some time to complete the
  collection; but meanwhile the first instalment of £2000 [Cromwell's
  personal contribution] is remitted for immediate use. His Highness
  is quite sure that the City authorities of Geneva will cheerfully
  take charge of the money, and see it distributed among those most
  in need. A postscript bids the Genevese expect £1500 of the sum
  through Gerard Hensch of Paris, and the remaining £500 through Mr.
  Stoupe, a well known travelling agent of Cromwell and Thurloe.

  (LXIII.) TO THE KING OF FRANCE, _July_ 29, 1655:--The
  Protector here acknowledges an answer received to his previous
  letter of May 25. [The answer had been delivered to Morland early
  in June, when he was on his way through Paris, and transmitted by
  him to the Protector. A translation of it is given in Morland's
  book, pp. 566-567.] He is glad to be confirmed in his belief that
  the French officers who lent their troops to assist the Piedmontese
  soldiery in that bloody business did so without his Majesty's order
  and against his will--glad also to learn that these officers have
  been rebuked, and that his Majesty has, of his own accord,
  remonstrated with the Duke of Savoy, and advised him to stop his
  persecution of the Vaudois. As no effect has yet been produced
  however, [Morland has by this time delivered his speech at Turin,
  and reported the dubious answer given by the Duke of Savoy: ante
  pp. 42-43], the Protector is now despatching a special envoy [i.e.
  Mr. George Downing] to Turin, to make farther remonstrances. This
  envoy will pass through Paris, and his mission will have the
  greater chance of success if his Majesty will take the opportunity
  of again impressing his views upon the Duke. By so doing, by
  punishing those French officers who employed his Majesty's troops
  so disgracefully, and by sheltering such of the poor Vaudois as may
  have sought refuge in France, his Majesty will earn the respect of
  other Powers, and will strengthen the loyalty of his own Protestant
  subjects.

  (LXIV.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _July_ 29, 1655:--This is a
  special note, accompanying the foregoing letter, and introducing
  and recommending Mr. Downing to his Eminence.

Besides these official documents for Cromwell on the Piedmontese
business, there came from Milton his memorable Sonnet on the same,
expressing his own feelings, and Cromwell's too, with less restraint.
It may have been in private circulation at the Protector's Court at
the date of the last two of the ten letters:

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

  Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
    Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
    Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
    When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
  Forget not: in thy book record their groans
    Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
    Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
    Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
  The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
    To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
    O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
  The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
    A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
    Early may fly the Babylonian woe.[1]

[Footnote 1: If Morland's speech at Turin was of Milton's
composition, as we have found probable, the contrast between one
phrase in that speech and the opening of this Sonnet is curious. "Do
not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity," says
the Speech; "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints," says the
Sonnet.]

From the Piedmontese Massacre we have now to revert to Morus. His
_Fides Publica_, in reply to Milton's _Defensio Secunda_, had
been published in an incomplete state, as we have seen, by Ulac at
the Hague in August or September 1654; and Milton had a rejoinder to
this publication ready or nearly ready, as we have also seen, by the
end of March 1655. The reason why this Rejoinder had not already
appeared has now to be stated.

One of Morus's reasons for hurrying into France so unexpectedly, and
leaving his unfinished book in Ulac's hands, seems to have been the
chance of a professorship or pastorship there that would enable him
to quit Holland permanently, and settle at length in his own country.
"Some speak of calling Morus, against whom Mr. Milton writes so
sharply, to be Professor of Divinity at Nismes; but most men say it
will ruin that church," is a piece of Parisian news sent by Pell to
Thurloe in a letter from Zurich dated Oct. 28, 1654;[1] and, with
that prospect, or some other, Morus seems to have remained in France
for some time after that date. When copies of his incomplete _Fides
Publica_ reached him there, he may not have thanked Ulac for
issuing the book in such a state without leave given. All the more,
however, he must have felt himself obliged to complete the book.
Accordingly he did, from France, forward the rest of the MS. to Ulac,
with the result of the appearance at last from Ulac's press of a
supplementary volume with this title: "_Alexandri Mori,
Ecclesiastæ et Sacrarum Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei
Publicæ contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum, Typis
Adriani Ulacq, 1655._" ("Supplement to the Public Testimony of
Alexander Morus, Churchman and Professor of Sacred Literature, in
reply to the Calumnies of John Milton. Hague: Printed by Adrian
Ulac, 1655.") Ulac prefixes, under the heading "_The Printer to the
Reader_," a brief explanatory Preface. "You have here, good Reader,"
he says, "the missing remainder of the edition of a Treatise which we
lately printed and published under the title _Aleaxandri Mori Fides
Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni_. This remainder that
Reverend gentleman has sent me from France. Of the whole matter judge
as may seem fair and just to you. Let it suffice for me to have
satisfied your curiosity. Farewell." It must have been this
_Supplementum_ of Morus, reaching London perhaps in April 1655,
or perhaps during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese
massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton's already written
Rejoinder to the imperfect _Fides Publica_. He would notice this
"Supplement" as well as the volume already published, and so have
done with Morus altogether.

[Footnote 1: Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 73; where "Mr. Miton"
appears as "Mr. Hulton."]

Morus's _Supplementum_ consists of 105 pages, added to the
original _Fides Publica_, but numbered onwards from the last
page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one
volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently
dated. The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which
the _Fides Publica_, broke off. Referring to the testimony borne
to his character in the venerable Diodati's Letter from Geneva to
Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton's mention
of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to
Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus:

  "This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by
  your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in
  the number of those who are vituperated by you. Would he
  _were_ alive! How he would beat back your pride, not indeed
  with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt! How he
  would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all
  in one! How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with
  holy loathing, spit upon it! '_With him_,' you say, '_I had
  daily society at Geneva_.' But what did you learn from him? What
  of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance?
  Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your
  country whom he commended on the score of either learning or
  goodness. Of _you_ we never heard a syllable from him."

Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at
Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he
proceeds to quote other Testimonials, either in French or in Latin.
Four more are still from former Swiss friends:--viz. an extract from
another letter of Diodati, addressed to M. L'Empereur; a letter from
M. Sartoris to Salmasius, dated Geneva, April 5, 1648; a testimonial
from the lawyer Gothofridius, dated Geneva, May 24, 1648; and a
subsequent letter from the same, dated Basel, April 23, 1651. All are
very complimentary. Passing then to his life in Holland after leaving
Switzerland, Morus continues the series of his testimonials. We have
first, in French or Latin, or both, a letter from the Church at
Middleburg to the Church at Geneva, dated Nov. 2, 1649, an extract
from a letter of the Synod of the Walloon Churches of the United
Provinces to the Pastors and Professors of Geneva, dated May 6, 1650,
and a testimonial from the Church of Middleburg, on the occasion of
sending M. Morus as deputy to the said Synod, dated April 19, 1650.
More documents of the same kind follow, chiefly for the purpose of
disproving the assertion that M. Morus had been condemned and ejected
by the Middleburg Church. They include an extract from the Acts of
the Consistory of the Walloon Church of Middleburg, dated July 10,
1652, a testimonial from the Middleburg Church of the same date, and
an extract from the Articles of the Synod of the Walloon Churches
held at Groede, Aug. 21-23, 1652. Having thus brought himself, with
ample testimonials of character, to the date of his removal from the
Middleburg Church to the Professorship in Amsterdam, he takes up more
expressly the _Accusatio de Bontid_ or Bontia scandal. He gives
what he calls the true and exact version of that story, with those
details about Madame de Saumaise and her quarrel with him on Bontia's
account which have already appeared in our narrative. He lays stress
on the fact that it was himself that had instituted the law-process,
and persevered in it to the end; and he dwells at some length on the
successful issue of the case both in the Walloon Synod and in the
Supreme Court of Holland. He has evidence, he says, that Salmasius,
to his dying day, spoke in high terms of him, and admitted that
Madame de Saumaise was in the wrong. "This statement has been made,"
he says, "not solely in reply to your insolence, but also out of
regard for the weakness and ignorance of those at a distance who have
imbibed the venom of the calumny and heard of the spiteful revenge to
which I was subject, but not of the unusual sequel of its judicial
discomfiture. All of whom, but especially my friends and countrymen,
amid whom there has happened to me the same that happened to Basil
among _his_ neighbours, I request and beseech by all that is
sacred not rashly to credit mere report, much less the letters which
my adversaries have sent hither and thither through all nations,
especially after they perceived that they were driven from all their
defences at home, judging that they would more easily invest their
lie with belief and authority in distant parts. Fair critics, I doubt
not, will at least suspend their judgment, and not incline to either
side, until there shall have reached them a just narrative of the
facts, truly and freely written by a friend, the publication of which
has hitherto been kept back at my desire." Three additional
testimonials are then appended to show that his reputation had not
suffered in Amsterdam on account of the Saumaise-Bontia scandal, and
especially that the rumour that he had been suspended from
ministerial functions there was utterly untrue. These Amsterdam
testimonials, as being the latest in date, and the most important in
Morus's favour, may be given in abstract:--

  _From the Magistrates of Amsterdam, July 11, 1654_:--"Whereas
  the Reverend and very learned Mr. Alexander Morus, Professor of
  Sacred History in our illustrious School, has complained to us that
  one John Milton, in a lately published book, has attacked his
  reputation with atrocious calumnies, and has added moreover that
  the Magistrates of Amsterdam have interdicted him the pulpit, and
  that only his Professorship of Greek remains,... We, &c.,
  testify." What they testify is that, since Morus had come to
  Amsterdam, "not only had he done nothing which could afford ground
  for such calumnies, or was unworthy of a Christian and Theologian,"
  but he had also discharged the duties of his Professorship with
  extraordinary learning, eloquence and acceptance. So far,
  therefore, were the Magistrates from censuring M. Morus that, on
  the contrary, they were ready still, on any occasion, to afford him
  all the protection and show him all the good will in their power.
  The certificate is sealed with the City seal, and signed by "N.
  Nicolai," the City clerk.

  _From the Amsterdam Church (about same date)_:--Three Pastors
  of this Church--Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas
  de la Bassecour--certify, "in the name of the whole convocation of
  the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam," that Morus discharges his
  Professorship with high credit; also "that, as regards his life and
  conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to
  be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an
  Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary,
  they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has
  delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly
  orthodox,--which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged
  kind had been known to his brethren (_quod heud factum fuisset si
  hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset_)."

  _From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29,
  1654_:--To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances
  of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been
  very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. "We
  think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from
  nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable
  accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue." Signed, for the
  Curators, by "C. de Graef" and "Simon van Hoorne."

After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his
charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies,
and saying that "one favourable nod from any one of the persons
concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand
Miltons to all eternity," Morus corrects Milton's mistake as to the
nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but
of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer
in one's lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he _had_
been a Professor of Greek--in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty
years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton's facetiousness on the
subject of Greek, and his puns on _Morus_ in Greek, was he
ashamed of the fact. "For all learning whatever is Greek, so that
whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must
necessarily be a sciolist." And here he detects the reason of
Milton's incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently
most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his
anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might
be a fair Latinist--not immaculate in Latin either, as he might hear
some time or other from Salmasius himself, though that was a secret
yet--he knew that he could never snatch away from Salmasius the palm
of the highest, i.e. of Greek, scholarship. Morus does not claim for
himself the title of a perfect classic; he is content with his
present position and its duties. Admirable lessons in life are to be
obtained from the study of Church History. Of these not the least is
the verification of the words in the Gospel, "Woe unto you when all
men shall speak well of you." What calumnies had been borne by
Jerome, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and others of the best of
men! With such examples before one, why should an insignificant
person, like the writer, conscious too of many faults and weaknesses,
take calumny too much to heart? This pathetic strain, attained
towards the close of the book, is maintained most skilfully in the
peroration.

  "But, if credit enough is not given to my own solemn affirmation,
  nor to this Public Testimony, Thee, Lord God, I make finally my
  witness, who explorest the inmost recesses of the spirit, who
  triest the reins, and knowest the secret motives of the breast, a
  Searcher of hearts to whom, as if by thorough dissection, all
  things are bare. Thee, God, Thee I call as my witness, who shalt
  one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the
  case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would
  that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not
  see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign.
  Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to
  be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of
  which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidst to Shimei,
  'Curse David.' Glory be to Thy name that hast chosen to preserve
  me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There
  is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the
  whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength;
  that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me
  I have not yet turned to full account--whether because I have
  followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have
  consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the
  evil-disposed, to whom, such has been Thy pleasure, I have been
  constantly an object of attack. Cover the past for me, regulate the
  future. Cleared before men, before Thee I shall be cleared never,
  unless Thy mercy shall be my succour. I confess I have sinned
  against Thee, nor shall I do so more. Thou seest how this paper on
  which I write is now all wet with my tears: pardon me, Redeemer
  mine, and grant that the vow I now take to Thee I may sacredly
  perform. Let a thousand dogs bark at me, a thousand bulls of Bashan
  rush upon me, as many lions war against my soul, and threaten me
  with destruction, I will reply no more, defended enough if only I
  feel Thee propitious. I will no more waste the time due to Thee,
  sacred to Thee, in mere trifles, or lose it in beating off the
  importunity of moths. Whatever extent of life it shall please Thee
  to appoint me still, I vow, I dedicate, all to Thee, all to Thy
  Church. So shall we be revenged on our enemies. Convert us all,
  Thou who only canst. Forgive us, forgive them also; nor to us, nor
  to them, but to Thy name, be the glory!"

Milton read this, but was not moved. On the 8th of August, 1655,
there was published his Rejoinder to the original _Fides
Publica_, with his notice of the _Supplementum_ appended. It
is a small volume of 204 pages, entitled _Joannis Miltoni_, _Angli_,
_Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum_, _Ecclesiasten_, _Libelli
famosi_, _cui titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum adversus
Parricidas Anglicanus'_, _authorem recte dictum. Londini_, _Typis
Newcomianis_, 1655 ("The English, John Milton's Defence for
Himself, in reply to Alexander Morus, Churchman, rightly called the
author of the notorious book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood to
Heaven against the English Parricides,' London, from Newcome's Press,
1655"). This is perhaps the least known now of all Milton's writings.
It has never been translated, even in the wretched fashion in which
his _Defensio Prima_ and _Defensio Secunda_ have been; and
it is omitted altogether in some professed editions of Milton's whole
works.[1]

[Footnote 1: The date of publication is from the Thomason copy in the
British Museum.]

After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel,
which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now
dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first
real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the _Regii
Sanguinis Clamor_. Morus's denials, or seeming denials, go for
nothing. Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial;
and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and
purposes, responsible for the book. "Unless I show this." he says,
"unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most
notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion
for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the
conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and
come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame." How is this
strong statement supported? In the first place, there is reproduced
the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour. "This I
say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a
countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk
about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called
its author, and they named no one for the author but you." To Morus's
assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the
book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex
answer. Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that
there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and
boasting of it. Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were
necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus
retained their former opinion. Partly he admits that there may
latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger
in being thought the author. Any criminal will deny his crime in
sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had
reason to expect when he knew that Milton's reply to the _Regii
Sanguinis Clamor_ was forthcoming, what had not the author of that
book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth
had been concluded? By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was
provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have
residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the
United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth
than the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_? No wonder that,
after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his
handiwork. The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection
from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were
what he had to fear. Were not these powerful enough motives for
denial to a man like Morus? Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters
from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning--the book, been
entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been
produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that
was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And
even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his
_Fides Publica_, how did the case stand?

  "That book [the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_] consists of various
  prooemia and epilogues [i.e. addition to the central text]--to wit,
  _An Epistle to Charles_, another _To the Reader_, and two
  sets of verses at the close, one eulogistic of Salmasius, the other
  in defamation of me. Now, if I find that you wrote or contributed
  any page of this whole book, even a single verse, or that you
  published it, or procured it, or advised it, or superintended the
  publishing, or even lent the smallest particle of aid therein, you
  alone, since no one else is to the fore, shall be to me responsible
  for the whole, the author, the 'Crier'. Nor can you call this
  merely my severity or vehemence; for this is the procedure
  established among almost all nations by right and laws of equity. I
  will adduce, as universally accepted, the Imperial Civil Law. Read
  _Institut. Justiniani l. IV. De Injuriis, Tit. 4_: 'If any one
  shall write, compose, or publish, or with evil design cause the
  writing, composing, or publishing, of a book or poem (or story) for
  the defamation of any one,' &c. Other laws add 'Even should he
  publish in the name of another, or without name;' and all decree
  that the person is to be taken for the author and punished as such.
  I ask you now, not whether you wrote the text of the _Regii
  Sanguinis Clamor_, but whether you made, wrote, published, or
  caused to be published, the Epistle Dedicatory to Charles prefixed
  to the _Clamor_, or any particle thereof; I ask whether you
  composed or caused to be published the other Epistle to the Reader,
  or finally that Defamatory Poem, You have replied nothing yet to
  these precise questions. By merely disowning the _Clamor_
  itself and strenuously swearing that you wrote no portion of it,
  you thought to escape with safe credit, and make game of us,
  inasmuch as the Epistle to Charles the Son, or that to the Reader,
  or the set of Iambic verses, is not the _Regii Sanguinis
  Clamor_. Take now this in brief, therefore, that you may not be
  able so to wheel about or prevaricate in future, or hope for any
  escape or concealment, and that all may know how far from
  mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not
  unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this
  in brief,--that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by
  testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the
  bringing out of the whole book entitled _Regii Sanguinis
  Clamor_, and corrected the printer's proofs, and composed,
  either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle
  to Charles II. which bears Ulac's name. Of this your own name
  'ALEXANDER MORUS,' subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has
  been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for
  you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are
  several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation,
  that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously....
  If you ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these
  statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I
  reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly
  on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made
  the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters
  written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words
  of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers,
  considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety
  independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me
  from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no
  common means of investigating this affair:--'I have ascertained
  beyond doubt (_exploratissimum mihi est_) that Morus himself
  offered the copy of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ to some other
  printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the
  correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the
  book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not
  a few.'... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and
  intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself
  and as abundantly witnessed there:--'It is most certain that almost
  all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the
  book called _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; for he corrected the
  sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name
  of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he
  was the author. He himself told a certain friend of mine that he
  was the author of that Epistle: nay there is nothing more certain
  than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of
  the same.' ... I add yet a third extract. It is from another letter
  from the Hague:--'A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me
  that he has in his possession a copy of the _Regii Sanguinis
  Clamor_ with Morus's own letter.'"

Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it
is also well to quote:

  "You say you 'will produce not rumours merely, not conversations
  merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail
  an innocent man.' Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which
  was written to you by 'that highly distinguished man, Lord
  Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,'--a letter, it is
  evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of
  proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He--and it
  shows the singular kindliness of 'the highly distinguished man'
  (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble
  on your most unworthy account?)--goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He
  communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had
  no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine,
  with that same letter of yours. What do they do? They read me that
  letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport
  also requests, that I will trust to your letter in which you deny
  being the author of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_. I answered
  that what they asked was not fair--that neither was Morus's word
  worth so much, nor was it customary to believe, in contradiction to
  common report and other ascertained evidence, the mere letter of an
  accused person and an adversary denying what was alleged against
  him. They, having nothing more to say on the other side, give up
  the debate.... When afterwards the Ambassador wanted to persuade
  Mr. Secretary Thurloe, he had still no argument to produce but the
  same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those
  'reasons' brought to me 'for which he desired' me to be so good as
  not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do
  not then corrupt the Ambassador's letter. Nothing there of 'hostile
  spirit,' nothing of the 'inopportune time;' all he writes is that
  he 'is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so
  little moderation'--sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his
  private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall
  and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but out. Let
  'the highly distinguished man,' especially as an Ambassador, hold
  me excused if I would not, and really could not, condone public
  injuries on private intercessions."

Before Milton passes to the review of Morus's vindication of his
character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as
objects intervening between him and that main task. For the _Fides
Publica_, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague
edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ to which the Rev. Dr.
Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence
of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to
Milton's charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several
pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called "a certain I know not
what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor," then taxed with ignorance,
garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way
with the phrase "But I do marvellously delight in Doctors." Ulac, as
having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. "_You
are a swindler, Ulac_, said I; _I am a good Arithmetician_,
says Ulac:" so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to
the effect that Ulac's creditors had been very ill satisfied with his
_counting_, that the rule of probity is not the _Logarithmic
canon_, that correct accounts are different things from _Tables
of Sines_ or _Tables of Tangents and Secants_, and that
acting on the square is not necessarily taught by
_Trigonometry_. After which Milton reverts to Ulac's
double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive
Dedication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ while he was
corresponding with Milton's friends in London and making kind
inquiries about Milton's health, and next in bringing out a pirated
edition of the _Defensio Secunda_, printing the same
inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the _Fides
Publica_ of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books
for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book
in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes
Milton's comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary
tradesman.

For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his
dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his
pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in
the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of
Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly
made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless.
There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same
kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by
Milton is to go over the _Fides Publica_, extracting phrases and
sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general
effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of
the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of
which are Geneva and Leyden.

Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the
_fama_ against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence
takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since
the _Fides Publica_ had appeared;--

  _From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654_ (i.e. from
  that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim
  that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the
  writer's name: sec ante pp. 172-173). "Our people here cannot
  sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly
  acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you
  personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours
  that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar
  terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (_tota,
  hominis histrionia_) have been more accurately or happily set
  forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand
  with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is
  on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For
  it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this
  part of the business that you have not brought forward either
  imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges
  of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends
  even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and
  vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther
  criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly
  any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he
  discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this
  Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his
  countenance to the man's prostituted character."

  _From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654_:--"As
  regards Morus's vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to
  entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak
  very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and
  everybody's hands against him, and that many ministers even of the
  Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the
  pastoral office. Nor here in Basel do I find men's opinion of him
  different from that in Holland of those who like him least."

The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about
Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name
of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to
have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him
from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia
Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of
Morus's alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than
enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus
between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in
one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and
in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus
in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He
repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for
having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a
misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from
Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and,
using information that had recently reached him, though we have been
in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he
thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave
damsel:--

  "You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day,
  and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia
  [he still keeps to the form 'Pontia'] last met in the house of
  Salmasius--you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name
  the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it
  was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the
  seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her
  Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your
  face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of
  Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin
  without quotation from your own _Fides Publica_)--you who, on
  the testimony of Crantzius, were _altier_ in French, or
  _fiercish_ in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had
  _terrible spurs for self-defence_, prepare to do your manly
  utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by
  as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the
  next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun,
  almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike
  Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She,
  getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of
  vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with
  wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she
  runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate
  subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines
  of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks
  fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a
  man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now
  but a Pontifical Doctor,--for you might have inscribed upon him, as
  on a painting, _Pontia fecit_. [We see now the reason for
  keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which
  his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new
  stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac's Tables of Tangents and
  Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers,
  printed on your skin."

How does Milton meet Morus's protestations of his innocence both at
Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf?
Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general
and that, like his denials of the authorship of the _Regii
Sanguinis Clamor_, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly.
Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and
the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright
manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses
and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue?
As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon
Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One
could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences
at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was.
Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of
the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an
unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been
a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of
the proceedings, had said to Morus, "_Never was a Moor so
whitewashed as you have been to-day_," could not everybody, with
any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been
joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod?
"_That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away
from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach
when there was occasion_." Was that a whitewashing with which to
be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper
testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is
considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may
be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things;
but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and
those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the
bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. "The
man of highest quality needs another's testimonial the least; nor
does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known."
Waiving that general question, however, one may _examine_
Morus's testimonials.

This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main
part of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_; but, as Morus had only
entered on his testimonials in the _Fides Publica_ as originally
published, and presented most of them in his _Supplementum_ to
that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an
appendix entitled separately _Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori
Supplementum Responsio_ ("The Author's Answer to Alexander More's
Supplement.") Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that
the preceding part of Milton's book had been written two months
before the _Supplementum_ had come into his hands.

Morus's published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it
may have been observed, into three sets--(1) those given him at
Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his
removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649
and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654,
after Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ had appeared, and in
contradiction of statements made in that book.--On the Genevese set
of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton's
criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date.
They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before
the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been
sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many
that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to
stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore
Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and
Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the
Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus's conduct; the elder
Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then
would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had
then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and
might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed
between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which
Morus had published and Morus's actual departure from Geneva. During
that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the
subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with
fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had
suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?--On the
Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much
one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have
soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business
about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg
too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther
experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm
friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now
understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having
produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion
that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains
that he had not said _ejected_, but only _turned adrift_,
and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's
report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but
nearly the whole Walloon Synod also, willingly _eject_
him.--Milton's greatest difficulty is with the three Amsterdam
testimonials of July 1654. He has to admit that they prove him to
have been misinformed when he said that the Amsterdam authorities had
interdicted Morus from the pulpit, just as he had been wrong in
calling Morus's Amsterdam professorship that of Greek. That admission
made (and it was hard for Milton ever to admit he was wrong, even in
a trifle), he contents himself with quoting sentences from the
Amsterdam testimonials to show how merely formal they were, how
little hearty, and with this characteristic observation about the
Amsterdam dignitaries, tossing their testimony aside in any case:
"_Et id nescio_, [Greek: aristindên] _an_ [Greek:
ploutindên], _virtute an censu, magistratum ilium in civitate suâ
obtineant_: And I know not, moreover, whether it is by merit or by
wealth that the gentlemen hold that magistracy in their city." This
is, doubtless, Milton's return for the slighting mention of himself
in the Amsterdam testimonials.[1]

[Footnote 1: A Hague correspondent of Thurloe, commenting on the
appearance of the first part of Morus's _Fides Publica_ and its
abrupt ending had written, Nov. 3, 1654, thus: "The truth is Morus
durst not add the sentence [text of the judicial finding] against
Pontia; for the charges are recompensed [costs allowed her], and
where there is payment of charges that is to say that the action of
Pontia is good, but that the proofs fail.... The attestations of his
life at Amsterdam and at the Hague, he could not get them to his
fancy" (Thurloe, 11.708).]

While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of
Milton's extraordinary _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum
Morum_, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be
of interest in the study of Milton's character. There is, for
example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a
criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (_verba
nuda et prætextata_) in speaking of very gross things. He makes
two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from
Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus,
Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of
Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as
examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism.
Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the
charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette,
likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of
Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly
conclude our account of the _Pro Se Defensio_:--

  "To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle
  of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are
  equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and
  we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the
  right management of life. The two things, in short, are so
  interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the
  vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of
  the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both
  sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever
  vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very
  heavy things at once,--accusing another, and thinking well of
  himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and
  bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy
  together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and
  intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth,
  under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary
  eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the
  same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at
  the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of
  antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again
  with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of
  Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of
  enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in
  the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and
  call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing
  would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as
  imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs,
  to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the
  sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real
  arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the
  one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of
  the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the
  present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with
  studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and
  chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and
  saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask
  and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to
  be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are
  some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not,
  would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour
  rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess,
  and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from
  theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the
  literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned
  men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to
  the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far,
  to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of
  private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and
  corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons,
  prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result,
  not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common
  adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the
  Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour
  to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean
  ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly
  interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so
  trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing
  to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State."

What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would
seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he
could out of hearing. When Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_ appeared,
Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May,
1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as
he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from
his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to
have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It
was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out
that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain
of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the
Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point,
it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting
of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great
opportunities "for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the
Gospel." We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made
acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton
had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom
Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered
Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is
even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged
especial compliments at Rome with Milton's old friend Holstenius, the
Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with
Milton's beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most
affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all
seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the
Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he
returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically
reblazoned through Holland by Milton's perseverance for his ruin, or
on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon
church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we
must leave him for the present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bayle's Dict, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of
Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One
hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so
fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate
Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and
Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for
nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr.
McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same
Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more "profound veneration"
than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit.
1840, pp. 52-57). He was "a Whig of the Old School," with liberal
political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman
Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord
George Gordon, of the "No Popery Riots" of 1780. He wrote many books
and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may
have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of
Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish
parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian
Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate,
he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of
scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly
dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man,
consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure,
he was the author of _Paradise Lost_; but that much-praised poem
had serious religious defects too! There is something actually
refreshing in the _naïveté_ and courage with which the
sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent
from the common Milton-worship.--The authority for Morus's
acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection
of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under
the title of _Alexandri Mori Poemata_. It contains his poem, a
longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the
Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary
elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius.
One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed "_Ad Franciscum Turretinum,
raræ indolis ac summæ spei juvenem_." This Francis Turretin (so
addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva
together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton's
letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the
other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the
first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the
Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him
the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in
Hexameters, and entitled "_Ægri Somnium: ad præstantem virum
Carolum Dati_" ("An Invalid's Dream: To the excellent Carlo
Dati"). It represents Morus as very ill in Florence and thinking
himself dying. Should he die in Florence and be buried there, he
would have a poetic inscription over his grave to the effect that
while alive he also had cultivated the Muses, and begging the
passer-by to remember his name ("_Qui legis hæc obiter, Morique
morique memento_"). How kind Dati had been to him--Dati, "than
whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses,
the ornament of his country, having the reputation of being all but
unique in Florence for learning in the vanished arts, siren at once
in Tuscan, Latin, and Greek! ... This Dati soothed my fever-fits with
the music of his liquid singing, and sat by my bed-side, and spoke
words of sweetness, which inhere yet in my very marrow." And so
Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and
680-683) had been charitable to poor Morus, whom he knew to be a
fugitive from Milton's wrath, and who could name Milton, if at all,
only with tears and cursing.]

It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have
suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of
the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book
for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the
real amount of Morus's responsibility in it?

That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has
been already evident. He had written his _Defensio Secunda_, in
firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper
author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, or that it had been
concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of
the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the
_Defensio Secunda_ left the press, he had let it go forth as it
was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The
more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the _Fides
Publica_, however, with the references there to another person as
the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name,
had produced an effect. The authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the
_Fides Publica_ Morus had interposed himself personally,--not
only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still,
as the _Fides Publica_ would never have been written had not
Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ and dragged him before the world solely on that account,
Milton had necessarily, in replying to the _Fides Publica_,
adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the
_Pro Se Defensio_, was a modified one. It was that, whatever
facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or
five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain
that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of
the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the
circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the
Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The
question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was
correct.

Almost to a tittle, it _was_. That Morus was the editor of the
book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the
circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the
documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by
independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp.
459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton's
evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the
Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous
praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton,
was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were
still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that
Morus's denial of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_
was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body
of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several
passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so
remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we
called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had
not so much as known the fact of Milton's blindness at the time of
the publication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and therefore
could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the
Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "_If anything occurred to me
that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind_,"--a
phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an
admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had
employed the familiar quotation there ("_monstrum horrendum,
informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_") only metaphorically. All in
all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the
editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon
Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however,
Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He
was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger.

The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The
father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called _Molinæus_ in
Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had
resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I.,
officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the
King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to
France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of
eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people
in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary
and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from
disrespectful, in one of Milton's Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply
to Bishop Hall.[1] Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled
permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in
English public affairs, though in very different directions.--The
younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having taken the degree
of Doctor of Physic at Leyden, had come to England when but a young
man, and, after having been incorporated in the same degree at
Cambridge (1684), had been in medical practice in London. At the
beginning of the Long Parliament, he had taken the Parliamentarian
side, and had written, under the name of "Irenæus Philalethes," two
Latin pamphlets against Bishop Hall's _Episcopacy by Divine
Right_--pamphlets very much in the same vein of root-and-branch
Church Reform as those of the Smectymnuans and Milton at the same
time. Since then, still adhering to the Parliament through the Civil
War, he had become well known as an Independent--much, it is said, to
the chagrin of his old father, who was a Presbyterian, with leanings
to moderate Episcopacy; and in 1647, in the Parliamentary visitation
of the University of Oxford, he had been rewarded with the Camden
Professorship of History in that University. He had been made M.D. of
Oxford in 1649. At least three publications had come from his pen
since his appointment to the Professorship, one of them a Translation
into Latin (1650) of the first chapter of Milton's
_Eikonoklastes_. From this we should infer, what is
independently likely, that he was acquainted with Milton
personally.[2]--Very different from the Independent and
Commonwealth's man Lewis Du Monlin. M.D. and History Professor of
Oxford, was his elder brother PETER DU MOULIN, D.D. Born in 1600, he
had been educated, like his brother, at Leyden, and had taken his
D.D. degree there. He is first heard of in England in 1640, when he
was incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge; and at the
beginning of the Civil War he was so far a naturalised Englishman as
to be Rector of Wheldrake, near York. From that time, though a
zealous Calvinist theologically, he was as intensely Royalist and
Episcopalian as his brother was Parliamentarian and Independent. So
we learn most distinctly from a brief MS. sketch of his life through
the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, written by himself after the
Restoration, for insertion into a copy of the second edition of one
of his books, of date 1660, presented by him to the library of
Canterbury Cathedral. "Our gracious King and now glorious Martyr,
Charles the First, he there says, finding that his rebellious
subjects, not content to make war against him in his kingdom,
assaulted him with another war out of his kingdom with their tongues
and pens, he set out a Declaration to invite all his loving subjects
and friends that could use the tongues of the neighbouring states to
represent with their pens the justice of his cause, especially to
Protestant Churches abroad. That Declaration smote my heart, as
particularly addressed to me; and I took it as a command laid upon me
by God himself. Whereupon I made a solemn vow to God that, as far as
Latin and French could go in the world, I would make the justice of
the King's and the Church's cause to be known, especially to the
Protestants of France and the Low Countries, whom the King's enemies
did chiefly labour to seduce and misinform. To pay my vow, I first
made this book" [entitled originally "_Apologie de la Religion
Reformée, et de la Monarchie et de I'Église d'Angleterre, contre les
Calomnies de la Ligue Rebelle de quelques Anglois et Écossois_";
but in an imperfect English translation the title was afterwards
changed into "_History of the Presbyterians_", and in the second
French edition, on a copy of which Du Moulin was now writing, it
became "_Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens, Anglois et
Écossois_"]--which was begun "at York, during the siege [i.e. June
1644, just before Marston Moor], in a room whose chimney was beaten
down by the cannon while I was at my work; and, after the siege and
my expulsion from my Rectory at Wheldrake, it was finished in an
underground cellar, where I lay hid to avoid warrants that were out
against me from committees to apprehend me and carry me prisoner to
Hull. Having finished the book, I sent it to be printed in Holland by
the means of an officer of the Master of the Posts at London, Mr.
Pompeo Calandrini, who was doing great and good services to the King
in that place. But, the King being dead, and the face of public
businesses altered, I sent for my MS. out of Holland, and reformed it
for the new King's service. And it was printed, but very
negligently, by Samuel Browne at the Hague [1649?] ... Much about the
same time I set out my Latin Poem, _Ecclesiæ Gemitus_ ('Groans
of the Church'), with, a long Epistle to all Christians in the
defence of the King and the Church of England; and, two years after
[1652], _Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum_. God blessed these
books, and gave them the intended effect, the disabusing of many
misinformed persons. And it was so well resented by his Majesty, then
at Breda, that, being showed my sister Mary among a great company of
ladies, he brake the crowd to salute her, and tell her that he was
very sensible of his obligations to her brother, and that, if ever
God settled him in his kingdom, he would make him know that he was a
grateful prince." Here, then, in Dr. Peter Du Moulin's own hand,
though not till after the Restoration, we have the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ claimed as his, with the information that it was one of a
series of books written by him with the special design of maintaining
the cause of Charles II. and discrediting the Commonwealth among
Continental Protestants.[3]

[Footnote 1: See close of _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's
Defence_.]

[Footnote 2: Wood's Fasti, II. 125-126; Whitlocke, II. 290. The
writings of Lewis Du Moulin I have here mentioned are known to me
only by the titles and descriptions given by Wood and his annotator
Dr. Bliss.]

[Footnote 3: Wood's Fasti, II. 195; and _Gentleman's Magazine_
for 1773, pp. 369-370. In the last is given the autobiographic
sketch of Du Moulin, transcribed from the copy of his _Histoire
des Nouveaux Presbytériens_ (edit. 1660) in the Canterbury
Library.--The Mary du Moulin, the sister of Peter and Lewis,
mentioned in the autobiographic sketch, died at the Hague in Feb.
1699, having, like most of the Du Moulins, attained a great age.
The father, Dr. Peter the elder, died in 1658 at the age of ninety;
Lewis died in 1683 at the age of seventy-seven; and Peter the
younger, of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, died in 1684 at the
age of eighty-four.--The reader will have noted the Pompeo
Calandrini mentioned as an official in the London Post Office in
the time of the Civil War, and as secretly aiding Charles I. in his
correspondence. He was, doubtless, of the Italian-Genevese family of
Calandrinis already mentoned, _ante_ pp. 172-173 and footnote.]

Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter's own hand. In
the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of
the original edition of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; and in
that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac's name to
Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to
it in Du Moulin's hand; "_Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri
Mori, quæ mihi valde non probatur_" ("Epistle which they say is by
Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),[1] All the
rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we
have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him
in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his
_Paradise Lost_. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge
University Press a volume entitled _Petri Molinæi P. F. [Greek:
Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres_. It was a collection of Dr. Peter
Du Moulin's Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and
now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged,
entitled respectively "Hymns to the Apostles' Creed," "Groans of the
Church" (_Ecclesiæ Gemitus_), and "Varieties." In the second
division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally
formed part of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, with their full
titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great
Salmasius for his _Defensio Regia_, and the set of scurrilous
Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and
Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are
several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different
points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though
the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may
seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore
trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must
not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as
known well enough to his friends. At another place (pp. 141-2 of the
volume) there is, by way of afterthought or extension, a larger and
more express statement about the Iambics against Milton, which must
here be translated in full: "Into what danger I was thrown," says Du
Moulin, "by the first appearance of this Poem in the _Clamor Regii
Sanguinis_ would not seem to me worthy of public notice now, were
it not that the miracle of divine protection by which I was kept safe
is most worthy of the common admiration of the good and the praise of
the Supreme Deliverer. I had sent my manuscript sheets to the great
Salmasius, who entrusted them to the care of that most learned man,
Alexander Morus. This Morus delivered them to the printer, and
prefixed to them an Epistle to the King, in the Printer's name,
exceedingly eloquent and full of good matter. When that care of
Morus over the business of printing the book had become known to
Milton through the spies of the Regicides in Holland, Milton held it
as an ascertained fact that Morus was the author of the
_Clamor;_ whence that most virulent book of Milton's against
Morus, entitled _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano_. It had
the effect, moreover, of making enemies for Morus in Holland; for at
that time the English Tyrants were very much feared in foreign parts.
Meanwhile I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, at
seeing my bantling laid at another man's door, and the blind and
furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked
horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck
and whom he struck in return. But Morus, unable to stand out against
so much ill-will, began to cool in the King's cause, and gave Milton
to know who the author of the _Clamor_ really was (_Clamoris
authorem Miltono indicavit_). For, in fact, in his Reply to
Milton's attack he produced two witnesses, of the highest credit
among the rebels, who might have well known the author, and could
divulge him on being asked. Thus over me and my head there hung the
most certain destruction. But that great Guardian of Justice, to whom
I had willingly devoted both my labour and my life, wrought out my
safety through Milton's own pride, as it is customary with His Wisdom
to bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness. For Milton, who
had gone full tilt at Morus with his canine eloquence, and who had
made it almost the sole object of his _Defensio Secunda_ to cut
up the life and reputation of Morus, never could be brought to
confess that he had been so grossly mistaken: fearing, I suppose,
that the public would make fun of his blindness, and that
grammar-school boys would compare him to that blind Catullus in
Juvenal who, meaning to praise the fish presented to Domitian,

                 "'Made a long speech,
  Facing the left, while on his right there lay
  The actual turbot.'

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, as in last note.]

"And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus
for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not,
without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other
than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my
getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position
himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had
treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard.
Don't laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most
good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer."

This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember)
seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration,
retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for
Milton's life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect,
giving "Mr. Abr. Hill" as his authority: "His [Milton's] sharp
writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake,
notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador,
all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called
_Clamor_ was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one
[said Milton]; he having writ it [the _Defensio Secunda_], it
should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the
other.'"--_Bentrovato_; but there is at least one vital
particular in which neither Du Moulin's amusing statement in 1670 nor
Aubrey's subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact
truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real
authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been better and
longer kept than Du Moulin's statement would lead us to suppose. Even
Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the
author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know,
having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and
several others then knew, having been told in confidence by
Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have
been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret
generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at
the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton's wrath and
stop the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, seems evident,
and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May
1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the
publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the
denial of Morus that he was the author--nothing of any information
from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had
about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that
he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to
"a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the
_Fides Publica_, published some months afterwards, Morus was
still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real
author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so
far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of
Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only
appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so,
as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his _Pro Se
Defensio_, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct
ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's
responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at
the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author
was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself,
as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's
own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did
Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus
in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at
all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory
Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only
person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du
Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen,
was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his
handiwork.

Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of
1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow.
In 1652, when the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ appeared, Du Moulin,
then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized
Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had
been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the
very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known
something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is
closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have
been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner.
The author had evidently read Milton's _Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates_ and his _Eikonoklastes_, as well as his
_Defensio Prima_; he was aware of the significance given to the
first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the
King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the
Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton's Divorce Pamphlets and
Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton's
detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others
during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with
Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin
could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has
told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the
_Defensio Regia_ of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and
successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big
performance; and not even to the son of the respected European
theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the
Commonwealth as Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, could Parliament or the Council
of State have shown mercy after such an offence. As for Milton, the
attack on whom ran through the more general invective, not for "forty
thousand brothers" would _he_ have kept his hands off Dr. Peter
had he known. Providentially, however, Dr. Peter remained
_incognito_, and it was Morus that was murdered, Dr. Peter
looking on and "softly chuckling." Rather, I should say, getting more
and more alarmed, and almost wishing that the book had never been
written, or at all events praying more and more earnestly that he
might not be found out, and that Morus, murdered irretrievably at any
rate, would take his murdering quietly and hold his tongue. For the
Commonwealth had firmly established itself meanwhile, and had passed
into the Protectorate; and all rational men in Europe had given up
the cause of the Stuarts, and come to regard pamphlets in their
behalf as so much waste paper; and was it not within the British
Islands after all, ruled over though they were by Lord Protector
Cromwell, that a poor French divine of talent, tied to England
already by various connexions, had the best chances and outlooks for
the future? So, it appears, Du Moulin had reasoned with himself, and
so he had acted. "After Ireland was reduced by the Parliamentary
forces," we are informed by Wood, "he lived there, some time at
Lismore, Youghal, and Dublin, under the patronage of Richard, Earl of
Cork. Afterward, going into England, he settled in Oxon (where he was
tutor or governor to Charles, Viscount Dungarvan, and Mr. Richard
Boyle his brother); lived there two or more years, and preached
constantly for a considerable time in the church of St. Peter in the
East."[1] His settlement at Oxford, near his brother Dr. Lewis, dates
itself, as I calculate, about 1654; and it must have been chiefly
thence, accordingly, that he had watched Milton's misdirected
attentions to poor Morus, knowing himself to be "the actual turbot."
There is proof, however, as we shall find, that he was, from that
date onwards, a good deal in London, and, what is almost startlingly
strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him
into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his
company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew
his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and
unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason
to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus
publication, put himself substantially right with the public about
the extent of Morus's concern in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_,
and had scarcely anything to retract. What he could do in addition
was Du Moulin's danger. He could drag a new culprit to light and
immolate a second victim. That he refrained may have been owing, as
we have supposed most likely, to his continued ignorance that the Dr.
Du Moulin now going about in Oxford and in London, so near himself,
was the original and principal culprit; or, if he did have any
suspicions of the fact, there may have been other reasons, in and
after 1655, for a dignified silence.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 195.]

In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published
his _Pro Se Defensio_, to his life through the rest of Oliver's
Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands
that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their
coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the
islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of
this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius
and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and
indeed of controversy altogether for a good while.

In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in
his life after his second castigation of Morus. "Being now quiet from
state adversaries and public contests," says Phillips, "he had
leisure again for his own studies and private designs"; and Wood's
phrase is all but identical: "About the time that he had finished
these things, he had more leisure and time at command." Both add
that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three
labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many
years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite
hack-employments when he had nothing else to do--his compilations for
his intended _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, his _History of
Britain_, and his _Body of Biblical Theology_. The mere
mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty
France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms
conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in
a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees
him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and
amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves,
listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and
requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so
at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping
of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use,
are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table
or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by
himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel.
And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise
in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the
park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on
office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three
together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the
pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.

Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of
1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan
girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but
seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no
one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and
left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with
perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed
the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also
belonging to it.

That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him
occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as
amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now
twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither
of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of
subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers
as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's
interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by
his _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio_ of 1652, written in
behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is
probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds
and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the
commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's
_Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices_, published
in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled
_Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices_, which had
contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the _Divine
Poems_ of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman,
published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne"
by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must
have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe
dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer--no other
than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from
Scotland himself--mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had
not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to
the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing
had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had
interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that
information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness
and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at
Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he
says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to
solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the
Commissioners at Leith; who by _his last letter_ promiseth to
give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that
Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the
business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland,
he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns
an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other
than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt,
however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London,
still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his
ever being anything else.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. IV. 760-769 and 212; Lawes's _Ayres and
Dialogues_; Thurloe, II. 226-227.--At the date of the letter to
Thurloe (April 11, 1654) Sandelands was still in great straits. He
had been arrested for debt and was then in prison. He reminds Thurloe
of his attempts to be useful for the last year or more, not
forgetting his project, in the winter of 1652-3, of timber and tar
from the Scottish woods. The "stirs in Scotland" since, it appears,
had obstructed that design after it had been lodged, through Milton,
with the Committee of the Admiralty; but Sandelands hopes it may be
revived, and recommends a beginning that summer in the wood of
Glenmoriston about Loch Ness, where the English soldiers are to be
plentiful at any rate. "Sir," he adds, "if a winter journey into
Scotland to do the State service, and my long attendance here, hath
not deserved a small reward, or at least the taking off of the
sequestration from my parsonage in Yorkshire, I hope ere long I
shall merit a far greater, when by my means his Highness's revenues
shall be increased."--Milton, I may mention, had, about this time,
several old acquaintances in the Protector's service in Scotland.
One was the ex-licencer of pamphlets, Gilbert Mabbot. I find him, in
June 1653, in some official connexion with Leith (Council Order
Book, June 3).]

On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication
of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_, there appeared anonymously in
London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a
poem in rhyming heroics, entitled _A Satyr against Hypocrites_.
In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes
from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura
negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can
be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly
written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which
the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He
describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of
Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom
of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant
supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The
christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still
in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable
resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark
Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer
natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against
Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion,
upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis
under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of
anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that
of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and
the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency
in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a
specimen:--

  "Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare
  Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer,
  Play with that fear, with that religious awe,
  Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law!
  What can they but the worst of Atheists be
  Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety,
  Affront the throne of God with their false deeds?
  Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds.
  Are these the men that would the age reform,
  That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm
  This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface,
  But worship pride and avarice in their place?
  _Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what
  Religion is, unless it be to prate!"

That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in
the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its
anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism
rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable
circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the
author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought
up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated
wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the
surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house;
and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like
evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late,
got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his
own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had
forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease
with him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy
for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_,
49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 764.--The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ is
ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have
found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That
it passed at the time as Edward Phillips's seems proved by the entry
of it in the Stationers' Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: "_A
Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent_," the
publisher's name being given as "Nathaniel Brooke." I cannot explain
this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would
be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss's notes to Wood
that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in
Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675, the
piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his
"vein of burlesque and facetious poetry" (Godwin, Lives of the
Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first
published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.]

During the whole time of Milton's residence in Petty France, his
elder nephew tells us, "he was frequently visited by persons of
quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he
instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out
of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and
lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz.
Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President
of Oliver's Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of
_Politicus_, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner." To these may be
added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and
others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an
interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have
the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to
Milton and to each other. As one's curiosity is keenest, at this
point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.

On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol.
III. 658-660) who she was,--by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh,
wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage,
but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle,
first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her
brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.--Of
her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork,
lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there;
and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief
properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill,
already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and
for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in
Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. _He_ may be
called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto
had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish
his long romance or novel called _Parthenissa_, and so to begin
a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies,
comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at
our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was
Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four
years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr.
Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this
extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in
1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed
in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly
with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town
himself, when he would attend those meetings of the _Invisible
College_, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights
of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life
he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad,
till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his
latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make
a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace
such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will
afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to
construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens,
where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of
looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since
then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of
two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical
spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so
unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;"
and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only
kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On
returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the
society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis,
and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently
transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming
the Oxford offshoot of the _Invisible College_, as distinct from
the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from
Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London;
and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his
sister, Lady Ranelagh.--What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh
herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many
years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her
residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of
Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property
seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue;
and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account
or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on
subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though
hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and
her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he
was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with
her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr.
Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In
1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself
being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or
three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as
well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one
of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She
corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the
philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert
peculiarly her _protegé_. In his letters to her, all written
carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see
the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her
letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest
in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best
idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to
which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by
calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which
was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as
common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the
affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly
it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time,
with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and
philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in
feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert
Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her
taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then
in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy
Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short
a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded
with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother
Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he
and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief
that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer
prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of
the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein
it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale
philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the
doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has
ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by
variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished.
One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep
foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious
determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as
possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was
sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her
up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet
her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and
friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard
to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon
the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when
she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though
perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be
called a very liberal Puritan.[1]

[Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of
Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of
Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley
to his edition of _Worthington's Diary and Correspondence_ for
the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green's Calendar
of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.]

How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her
nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils
in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that
he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun
as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the
intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and
fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the
acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more
intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his
house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that
more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase,
announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were
close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his
having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now
the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been
satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some
extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some
time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though
we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third
Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of
Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican
establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this
particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been
one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons
from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the
likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that
Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy
to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall
Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read
Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind
of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed
one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references
to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment
in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of
a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel
will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible
that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she
might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For
her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He
had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and
Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and
he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p.
224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1]
What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting
between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social
connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The
Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them,
that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about
him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President
Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and
the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and
presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to
have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's
nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention,
had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's
pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle
life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or
perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie,
Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible
College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and
corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony
of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at
Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the
wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a
German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in
constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's
on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend,
Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we
shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and
Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this
connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is
remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's
only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in
the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle's friends
and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at
Boyle's request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a
little book called _The Devil of Mascon_, a French story of
well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by
Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to
it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the
first part of his _Parerga_ or Collection of Latin Poems, the
second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against
Milton from the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_.--See Birch's Life of
Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle's
Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written
after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to
"My Honourable Lady Ranelagh" in terms implying long-established
acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin's
long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.]

[Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his
mother's will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton's pupil. See
a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his
sister, the young Earl's mother (Boyle's Works, V. 240). For the
intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence
see a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).]

[Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle's
Works.]

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have
been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. _Their_ visits to
Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were
still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have
been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on
business connected with the _Mercurius Politicus_; for Milton
had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship
of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double,
_The Public Intelligencer_, also edited by Needham and published
by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe.
Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and
Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be
altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner"
is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his
uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time.
The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of
Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his
attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to
depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding
it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of
Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack
Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing
first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in
particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading
them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of
age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:--

(1)

  When I consider how my light is spent
  Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
  And that one talent which is death to hide
  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
  To serve therewith my Maker, and present
  My true account, lest He, returning, chide,
  "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
  I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
  That murmur, soon replies:--"God doth not need
  Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
  Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
  And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
  They also serve who only stand and wait."

(2)

  Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
  To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
  Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
  Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
  Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
  Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
  Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
  Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
  Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
  The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
  In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
  Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
  This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque
  Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

(3)

  Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
  Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
  Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
  Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
  From the hard season gaining? Time will run
  On smoother, till Favonius reinspire
  The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
  The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
  What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
  Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
  To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
  Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
  He who of those delights can judge, and spare
  To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

(4)

  Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
  Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
  Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,
  Which others at their bar so often wrench,
  To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
  In mirth that after no repenting draws;
  Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
  And what the Swede intend, and what the French.
  To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
  Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
  For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
  And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
  That with superfluous burden loads the day,
  And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of
their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must
have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how
are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with
Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness?
There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second
or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which
we have printed them,--with the exception of No. 2, which had then to
be omitted on account of its political point,--come immediately after
the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons
of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to
about the same date as No. 2, the opening--words of which date
_it_ near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much
of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them
from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton
on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful
expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the
image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great
monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the
energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2,
addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only
reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the
literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the
intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as
cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures
too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some
little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had
been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should
be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner
should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual,
to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of
the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps
to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of
1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the
country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of
his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack.
To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at
home--"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine,"
that there may be no doubt in that particular--to be followed by a
long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in
the metrical missive to _him_; and the same day (unless, as we
may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in
Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are
model cards of invitation.[1]

[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3,
and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions
to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of
No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now
always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to
side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by
Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy
is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the
Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the
true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless
the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more
sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an
editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."]

We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial
work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the
business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655.
Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not,
however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris
Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque
Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra
Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put
forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice
of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is
demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length
of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in
editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not
quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was
the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War
furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been
his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the
Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the
Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present
manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either
of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his
recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies.
Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It
passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days
after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days
after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and
the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2]
Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch,
which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been
printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or
two in translation. The opening is as follows:--

  "That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain
  Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the
  possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree
  reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he
  will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always
  conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of
  America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the
  least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they
  are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood,
  our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and
  fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of
  their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews
  as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name
  all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate
  those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right
  for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and
  the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that
  western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and
  unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so
  many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of
  maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home,
  rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the
  English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the
  Spaniards there,--nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as
  God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
  the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before
  appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ...
  Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the
  transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons
  for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain
  general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our
  eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the
  transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the
  state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were
  concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies
  and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as
  they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world
  vast changes, but especially as between the English and the
  Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse
  and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of
  their affairs."

The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations
between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at
last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English
ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given,
with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the
cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it
discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole
sovereignty in the West Indies,--the Papal donation, and the right of
first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends
with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout
Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is
brought into the plea. Thus:--

  "If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our
  countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or
  vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important
  part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy
  (especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry
  home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by
  which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to
  such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to
  that deliberation of his in 1588 'whether it would be more prudent
  to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of
  Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of
  England';--beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but
  even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with
  England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these
  designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us
  first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would
  be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately
  by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is
  to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox
  Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret
  councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry
  friars whom they call missionaries (_per illos fraterculos
  missionarios quos vacant Hispanicæ aulæ consiliis intimis
  informata primitus ac designata erat_)."

How far Milton's hand helped in this important document of the
Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably
drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for
re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the
work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been
partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that
Milton's hand was to _some_ extent employed in the document, it
may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655,
after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his
batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in
Piedmont.[1]

[Footnote 1: The _Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_
was reprinted, as indubitably Milton's, in 1738, and again in 1741,
to assist in rousing British feeling afresh against Spain; and Birch
and all succeeding editors of Milton have agreed in regarding it as
his. Godwin, however (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 217-219,
footnote), suggests doubts.]

What adds to the probability that Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain,
dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton's
composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention,
that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent
beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign
States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May
1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian
documents, and require elucidation:--

  (LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, _Dec. 1655_:--His Highness
  congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over
  the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships
  they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called
  _The Great Prince_, belonging to William and Daniel Williams
  and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the
  Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish
  soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the
  affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt
  that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their
  friendship by causing the ship to be restored.--The naval victory
  of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated
  In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp.
  212-213).

  (LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:--Samuel Mico, William
  Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned
  his Highness about a ship of theirs, called _The Unicorn_,
  which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by
  the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo
  worth £34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then
  peace between England and France, and express promises had been
  recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de
  Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with
  France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness
  expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants
  as "the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed
  alliance."

  (LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Jan._ 1655-56:[1]--His
  Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the
  part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On
  the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted
  into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English
  Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented
  the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain
  Robert Vessey of the _Nightingale_ war-ship, and further
  secured Dillon's escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at
  his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent
  Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the
  Governor's conduct and give satisfaction.

[Footnote 1: Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in
the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in
Hamilton's Milton Papers (p. 4).]

  (LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _Jan._ 1655-6. To
  understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that
  in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil
  War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz,
  Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the
  Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen,
  Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to
  help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss
  Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and
  proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into
  Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as
  his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but
  Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his
  special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the
  Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in
  Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for
  the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the
  Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the
  Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of
  Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant
  Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their
  Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news
  from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the
  Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar
  application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the
  following is Cromwell's answer:--"Both from your public acts
  transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and
  Morland], and from your letter dated at Zürich, Dec. 27, we
  understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.--too
  abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve
  to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured,
  yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part,
  we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your
  adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new
  occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy
  in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are
  driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any
  one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated
  them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith,
  no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul
  slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved
  friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave;
  do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of
  Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of
  idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the
  champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to
  succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all means in
  your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese:
  firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a
  passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part,
  be assured [the expression in the singular: _de me scitote_]
  that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety
  than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or
  than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and
  their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are
  concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been
  informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of
  your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable
  persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for
  their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible
  to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have
  come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to
  you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of
  Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most
  righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war."--From a
  private letter of Thurloe's to Pell, of the same date as this
  official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on
  the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection
  (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business
  and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to
  prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of
  Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made
  for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very
  earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer
  the Cantons of Zürich and Bern a subsidy of £20,000, at the rate of
  £5000 a month, on security for repayment--the first £5000, however,
  to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe's Letter in Vaughan's _Protectorate_,
I, 334-337.]

  (LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Feb._ 1655-6:[1]--This
  letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its
  circumstances; and it requires introduction.--Charles X., or
  Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on
  the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor
  Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in
  Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new
  King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had
  entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole
  reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of
  Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland,
  between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of
  which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been
  immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German
  empire generally, were interested in saving Poland, and therefore
  tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other
  hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it
  convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian
  possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been
  likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated
  continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous
  letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling
  on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that
  of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still
  Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell's respect. Nor was
  Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of
  the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had
  accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell--"Whitlocke's
  Treaty," as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be
  Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war,
  there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership
  between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England
  in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X.
  being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a
  splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT
  CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with
  attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally
  proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally
  called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual
  gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent
  torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to
  convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they
  landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were
  feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge,
  for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had
  audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a
  great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to
  say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector
  acquitted himself best. "The Ambassador's people," says Whitlocke,
  "were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails
  in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and
  carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and
  divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the
  Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on
  the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and
  Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they
  [the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at
  the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador
  a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the
  Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador's three
  salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they
  saluted each other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector
  put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other.
  After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to
  speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he
  named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England,
  he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or
  the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the
  Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility." The
  speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin
  by the Ambassador's secretary, was to the effect that the King of
  Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for
  additional treaty. Cromwell's reply, delivered in English, which
  the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very
  willing to enter into "a nearer and more strict alliance" with the
  King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count
  Bundt's proposals.--All this had been in the last days of July
  1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the
  Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by
  the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and
  September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty
  had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector--the Treaty
  with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War
  with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell
  perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen.
  Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet
  Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had
  become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after
  month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience
  had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke,
  who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because
  other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to
  the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655,
  "he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to
  his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and
  acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it
  mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time
  a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success
  of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes'
  victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in
  Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden
  and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of
  foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6,
  Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been
  empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and
  the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties,
  however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and
  the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief
  Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant
  interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special
  League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound,
  arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries
  in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there
  was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell
  even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending
  Whitlocke thither for the second time as
  Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had
  no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count
  Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted.
  At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new
  instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet
  Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way
  in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in
  the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and
  the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset
  House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of
  ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching
  contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn,
  hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's
  descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was
  partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages
  for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic
  and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one
  more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than
  Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his
  subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.--In the
  midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived
  of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King.
  The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden,
  occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in
  London. "Feb. 20," writes Whitlocke, "the Swedish Ambassador kept a
  solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden.
  All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large,
  being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers
  were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and
  inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the
  birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms
  were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles,
  glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and
  writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the
  street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a
  tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets,
  which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company
  at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg
  Residents, Mynheer Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford
  and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or
  three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord
  George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides
  the Ambassador's company. It was a very great feast, of seven
  courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the
  Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to
  them."--Milton's Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell's name
  relates itself to this last incident. The King had written
  specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his
  son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:--"As it is
  universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether
  adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest
  among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable
  duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by
  express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying
  to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly
  civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself,
  so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling
  that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly
  rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so
  excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father's valour and
  glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of
  domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old
  that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was
  congratulated--the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of
  the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been
  simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the
  Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a
  horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke
  of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though
  with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great
  consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant
  an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son
  like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we
  truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so
  propitious to your affairs,"--It is clear that Cromwell desired to
  be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long
  delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on
  slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.[2]

[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner
Transcript.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, IV. 208-227; i.e. from July 1655 to Feb. 20,
1655-6.]

  (LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Feb._
  1655-6(?)[1]:--John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London
  merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs
  was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653
  because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the
  toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own
  account, that he might pocket the money. There had been
  negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there
  had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though
  the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only
  effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it
  is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of
  evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The
  offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum
  evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth £3000; will his
  Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation?

[Footnote 1: Quite undated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and
Skinner Transcript, but conjecturally of about this date.]

  (LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES,
  _April_ 1, 1656:--A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel,
  Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs,
  called _The Edmund and John_, on her voyage from Brazil to
  Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded
  by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property
  of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the
  merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their
  case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the
  chief authority.

  (LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _April_ 9, 1656 (?): This is
  the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the
  French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the
  Protector's envoys, it may be translated entire: "WILLIAM LOCKHART,
  to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is
  a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for
  his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He,
  that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able
  assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty,
  and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but
  also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the
  amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive
  him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be
  occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be
  said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been
  said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as
  ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your
  Majesty and your kingdom."

  (LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _April_ 9, 1656 (?):--A Letter
  accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the
  Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs
  of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily
  increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity
  and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged
  accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to
  your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most
  expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of
  honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us
  besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence
  may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in
  our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my
  confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return.
  From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again
  profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your
  great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your
  reputation and dignity."[1]

[Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the
Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner
Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed
by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 9-10). He dates
them both, as in the Transcript, "_West., Aug._ 1658;" but that
is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places
in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec.
1655, and he "took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way
to France" (see a letter of Thurloe's to Pell in Vaughan's
_Protectorate_, I. 376-377). I have ventured to affix the exact
date "April 9, 1656" to the two letters, because it is on that day
that I find Lockhart's departure on his embassy definitely settled
in the Council Order Books. Before "Aug. 1658" Lockhart had known
Louis XIV. and the Cardinal intimately for more than two years and
needed no introduction.]

  (LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 17,
  1656:--Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his
  Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the
  Swedish Treaty.--That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the
  Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their
  colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch,
  tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden,
  trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other
  items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the
  business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he
  had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because,
  waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept
  half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty
  he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; "he
  durst not for his head," he said, "admit of such dishonour to his
  master"; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see
  the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The
  propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the
  Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the
  Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe
  taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen,
  so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was
  amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than
  he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the
  necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have
  broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and
  others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, "when a man professed
  sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing"; if a
  man meant _Yea_ he said _Yea_, and if he meant _No_
  he said _No_; but in England it seemed to be different. The
  explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed
  him down again, the Treaty proceeded.--One of the most important
  meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke's account, was on the 8th of
  April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there
  by appointment, and read "the new Articles in English as they were
  drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council." A long
  debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged "to be
  excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they
  being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they
  had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but
  he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making
  pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the
  staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that
  the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and
  they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and
  then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the
  Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and "Mynheer
  Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in
  their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband
  goods," &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then
  Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer
  Coyet,--also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The
  discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other
  topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said "he desired a copy
  of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might
  have it in Latin, which he would consider of." This was
  promised.--The meeting so described was nearly the last in which
  the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his
  departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to
  finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for
  Cromwell to his Swedish Majesty has reference to that fact. "Peter
  Julius Coyet," it begins, "having performed his mission to us, and
  so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the
  distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning
  to your Majesty"; and in three sentences more very handsome
  testimony is borne to Coyet's ability and fidelity in the discharge
  of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the
  Protector's high regard for himself. "A constant course of
  victories against all enemies of the Church" is the Protector's
  wish for him.--Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the
  issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the
  Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special
  paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: "This day the Protector
  gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of
  Sweden's Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a
  fair jewel, with his Highness's picture, and a rich gold chain: it
  cost about £400." Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a
  fortnight after the date of Milton's letter.[1] Indeed he remained
  a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 227-255: i.e. from Feb. 20, 1655-6, to
May 3, 1656.]

  (LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 14, 1656:[1]--John
  Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London,
  and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to
  his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs,
  called _The Jonas of London_, was taken at the mouth of the
  Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the
  son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the
  French King by M. L'Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at
  the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor.
  Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct
  justice to be done.

[Footnote 1: Not dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, or Skinner
Transcript; but dated by reference to it in a subsequent letter.]

  (LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_
  1656:--Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of
  insurance on one. She was _The Good Hope of London_, belonging
  to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured
  in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India
  Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to
  pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been
  hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of
  real hardship.

  (LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, _May_ 1656:--Three times before letters
  have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas
  and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their
  father's will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by
  powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court.
  This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful.

These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove
that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton's services were again
in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the
whole of his renewed industry in that employment.

The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his
master's interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm,
searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging
Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt,
it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It
was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke,
that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke,
Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being
present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the
Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to
the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in
Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the
Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt,
inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him;
but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and
Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin,
in reply to some of M. Coyet's observations in the same tongue, as if
to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a
commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector's Court. There
had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin
translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for
fault-finding, did not let it escape him. "The Swedish Ambassador,"
relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, "again complained of the
delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the
Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in
Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that
translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them
into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him,
and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he
pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a
blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the
Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the
Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke's Treaty], and so he heard the
Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR.
MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the
Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is
exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the
8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been
nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it
exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for
complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important
secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an
amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the
Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and
that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk
from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to
have taken more easily than became their places, or than the
Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count
that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and
undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not
Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin
sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had
taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story
of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the
course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the
Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still
_not_ one of the Council.]

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the
Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants
of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast
have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin
Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the
negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded
far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of
England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special
agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council
meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of
from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a
great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the
Latin Secretaryship had been £200 a year, his allowance for the
Portuguese agency was to be £800 a year or more. On the 21st of
February he had £300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he
was voted £100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due
to him, with £50 more for the quarter then current but not completed;
and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His
departure, I should say--preceded perhaps by a week or two of
cessation from office duty in preparation for it--was the real cause
of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as
we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for
the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the
Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might
justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch
written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows's Portuguese mission had been
resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and
Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating
draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And
this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For,
despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the
Protector's official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find,
were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but
were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best
alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such
underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief
is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for
ordinary business.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec.
1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty
by Thurloe's orders.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates. It is curious that
Whitlocke, noting the new appointment of Meadows, under March 1655-6,
enters it thus: "Mr. Meadows was going for _Denmark_, agent for
the Protector." Meadows did go to Denmark, but not till a good while
afterwards; and the blunder of _Denmark_ at this date for
_Portugal_ is one of the many proofs that Whitlocke's memorials
are not all strictly contemporary, but often combinations of
reminiscences and afterthoughts with the materials of an actual
diary.]

Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector's
Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature.

It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and
capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong
government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and
leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people's
fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning
over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady
increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of
secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology.
One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as
if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming
once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of
humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and
comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare's _Venus and
Adonis_, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets
of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey
Moseley, Milton's publisher of 1645, faithful to his old
trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was
still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry
Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill's _Parthenissa_, had
begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and
humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the
Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King
Charles's reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more
recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian
rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may
now state more distinctly, were Milton's nephews, Edward and John
Phillips.[1]

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Stationers' Registers, from 1652 to
1656.]

Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly
free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct
from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw's Press-Act of
1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the
trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the
imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary
trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's
Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from
politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of
printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass
into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open
immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief
duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually
attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country
under the military police of his Major-Generals and their
subordinates. Then it is that we hear most of the suppressing of
horse-races and the like, and that we are least surprised at
encountering such a piece of information as that "players were taken
in Newcastle and whipped for rogues." Now, though by this time there
had already, by previous care on the part of Government, been a
considerable cleansing of the Popular Literature of London, yet
something or other in the state of the book-world about 1655-6 seems
to have occasioned new and more special interference. I believe it to
have been the increased frequency of ballads, facetiæ, and reprints,
of higher literary character than the coarse pamphlets that had been
suppressed, but objectionable on the same moral grounds. At all
events, all but simultaneously with the Order of the Protector and
his Council, of Sept. 5, 1655, concentrating the whole newspaper
press in the hands of Needham and Thurloe (see ante pp. 51-52), there
had been a new general Ordinance "against Scandalous Books and
Pamphlets and for the Regulation of Printing" (Aug. 18, 1655), and it
was not long before this Ordinance was put in operation in one or two
cases of the kind indicated. Here are some extracts from the Order
Books of the Council in April and May 1656:--

  _Tuesday, April_ 1656:--"That it be referred to the Earl of
  Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them,
  to examine the business touching the book entitled _Sportive Wit
  or the Muses' Merriment_, and to send for the author and
  printer, and report the same to the Council."

  _Friday, April_ 25, 1656:--Present: the Lord President
  Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert
  Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of
  Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General
  Skippon, and Lord Strickland. "Colonel Jones reports from the
  Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of
  a book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, that
  the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious,
  scurrilous, and profane matter. _Ordered_ by his Highness the
  Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the
  Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for
  the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said
  book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever
  they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those
  already seized, to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and
  Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly
  burnt.--He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at
  the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the
  printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James
  Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of
  Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory.
  _Ordered_, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight,
  Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and
  Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons
  according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the
  Council on Tuesday next."--Milton's younger nephew, therefore, had
  been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of
  Council present when this fact came out, six were among those
  friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his
  _Defensio Secunda_: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence,
  Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.

  _Saturday, April_ 26, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector
  approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him
  all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is
  the order "for burning the book called _Sportive Wit_."

  _Friday, May_ 9, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector
  present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert,
  Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and
  Jones:--_Ordered_, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of
  London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do
  cause all the books entitled _Choice Droliery, Songs and
  Sonnets_ (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending
  to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall
  be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of
  London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same
  be burnt."

Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and
his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was
a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of
February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this
full title, _Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection
of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never
before printed_. I have not seen any copy of the other book
bearing the precise title _Sportive Wit, or the Muses'
Merriment_; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same
with an alternative title, viz. _Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems,
never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other
admirable wits_. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6,
had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably
printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto "_Ut nectar
ingenium_" under the title, and with, the imprint _London.
Printed for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill_, 1656. It
contains moreover a Dedication "To the truly noble Edward Pepes,
Esq.," and an Epistle "To the Courteous Reader," both signed with the
initials J.P. Either, therefore, this is the same book as the
_Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ which, figures in the
Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for
Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his _Satyr against
Hypocrites_ in the preceding August) two books of the same general
character. Even on the latter supposition, _Wit and Drollery,_
in the absence of _Sportive Wit,_ may serve as a representative
of that production of the same editor and the same publisher. The
substance of Phillips's Epistle to the Reader in _Wit and
Drollery_ is as follows:--

  "Reader,--To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this
  _Wit_ I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion,
  invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy,
  assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good
  company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of
  Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are
  here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called
  _The White Devil,_ subscribes that the action of Perkins
  crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and
  readest the sign of 'Ben Jonson's Head, in the backside of the
  Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,' where they are sold, enquire
  who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit."

Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on
Ben Jonson for his _Magnetic Lady_ and Ben Jonson's reply to the
same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of
Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume
consists chiefly of specimens of _"Sir J. M."_ (Sir John
Mennes), _"Jas. S."_ (James Smith), _"Sir W. D"_ (Sir
William Davenant), and _"J. D."_ (Dr. Donne), professing not to
have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the
pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern
us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and
some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect
to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery"
the following stanzas from a poem entitled _"Nonsense"_ may be a
sample:--

  O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease!
  But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch,
  And are as mangy as the Irish seas,
  That doth engender windmills in a bitch.

  I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep,
  Snort like a woodknife in a lady's eyes;
  Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep;
  For creeping puddings only please the wise.

  Note that a hard-roed herring should presume
  To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse,
  For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome
  By lessening of the fault should make it worse.

  For 'tis most certain winter woolsacks grow,
  Till that the sheepshorn planets give the hint,
  From geese to swans, if men could keep them so,
  And pickle pancakes in Geneva print.

At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a
kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the
names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this
was the same book as the _Sportive Wit,_ or at all like that
book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought
Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had,
escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy of _Wit and Drollery_ in the British
Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.--I failed to find a book with the
title _The Sportive Wit_ in the Thomason Collection, and hence
my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I
am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have
a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the
titles and the other with the other, advertised in a contemporary
newspaper list of books on sale by the publisher Brooke. In Lowndes's
Bibliog. Manual by Bohn, _sub voce_ "Wit," the two books are
given as distinct; but then _Sportive Wit or the Muses'
Merriment_ is there dated 1656, while there is no notice of an
edition of _Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems,_ till 1661. Though
I leave the matter in doubt, some collector of Facetiac may know all
about it. In any case, if _Wit and Drollery_ was not the
identical book condemned, it is of interest to us as being one of
Phillips's editing at the same moment.--Donne, who figures so
strangely in _Wit and Drollery,_ had been dead twenty-five
years, but was accessible in various editions and reprints of his
Poems. The other three poets named in the title-page as the chief
authors of the pieces--Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and
Davenant--were still alive and publishing for themselves. Indeed the
_Musarum Delitice, or Muses' Recreation,_ consisting of pieces
by Mennes and Smith, had been published by Herringman only the year
before (1655), and was in its second edition in 1658; and it may have
been the success of this and Smith in it. Mennes, a stout book that
led to Phillips's publication and to the use of the names of Mennes
Royalist sea-captain, who had served with Prince Rupert, and was in
exile at our present date, became Chief Comptroller of the Navy after
the Restoration and lived to 1670. Smith was a Devonshire clergyman,
of Royalist antecedents, who had complied with the existing powers
and retained his living. After the Restoration he had promotion in
the Church: and he died in 1667.]

Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary
appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips.
On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had
registered _Wit and Drollery_ edited by John Phillips, i.e. on
Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called
"_The Illustrious Shepherdess_" and "_The Imperious
Brother_" both "written originally in Spanish and now Englished by
Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from
the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by
Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls "an
extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception,
of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off,
there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his;
and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of
accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary
performance of Edward Phillips's of the same date. This was his
edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.

[Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers of date.]

[Footnote 2: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 138-139. I
know the translations only from Godwin's account of them.]

Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or
in Edinburgh, not only his _History of Scotland from 1423
to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, but
also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in
addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond's son
and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly
on Drummond's brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a
well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the
troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of
these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet
of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials
who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been
turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into
private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had
become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round
again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to
believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the
Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if
not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of
the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all
events, _was_ then under discussion in the Council, with the
result that his fine, which had been originally £1500, but had been
reduced to £500, was first reduced farther to £300, and next,
apparently by Cromwell's own interposition, altogether "discharged
and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the
service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself,
then seventy years of age, had come to London on the business, he
must have brought Drummond's MSS., or copies of them, with him. On
the 16th of January 1854-5 there had been registered at Stationers'
Hall, as forthcoming, Drummond's _History of Scotland through the
Reigns of the Five Jameses_, with a selection of other
prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume
did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655,
and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry
Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the
appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative
doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly
prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without
significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it
had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's
Inn,"--i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw
brought in, at £100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the
Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in
some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever
since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of
Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer
Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind
of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it
becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the
editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly
complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This
volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the
Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then
as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, _"Poems by that most
famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for
Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner,_ 1656."
The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes
about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which
Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision
of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface,
signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full
"Edward Phillips."

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.]

Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary
state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the
successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in
Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that
Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one
of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain
through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it
miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben
Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not
difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton's own
mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London
edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in
that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond's genius is
exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable.
Thus:--

  "To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most
  polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although
  it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that
  that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is
  not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that
  neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined
  spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can
  challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be
  judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though
  he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as
  many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration
  that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by
  breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher
  admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at
  length with so much the more forcible rays..."

Milton's interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently
removed from London to Oxford. "In the beginning of this year," says
Wood in his _Fasti_ for 1656, "studied in Oxon, in the condition
of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes
GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was
entered a, student by the name of _'Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis,
Nobilis Saxo'_: at which time he was tutor to a young Irish
nobleman, called Henry O'Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then
also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having
been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see
that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone
to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in
the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle,
Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot
from the _Invisible College_ of London. Desirable on its own
account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him
financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that
he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names.
But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg's only pupil at
Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him
thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his
charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own
Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among
Milton's pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton's recent
instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to
be thenceforward the youth's more regular tutor. It does not seem to
have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a
college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but
only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its
ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of
his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle. If these
two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr.
Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come
necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret
admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's
head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg
might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the
young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young
Ranelagh about sixteen.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 197.]

Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton's
Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four
in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is
Milton's first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford
under Henry Oldenburg's charge. The date may be in or about May
1636:--

  "To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.

  "I received your letter much after its date,--not till it had lain,
  I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother's. Most
  gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me
  and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness
  to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but
  justified, I hope, both your excellent mother's opinion of me and
  confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as
  you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you
  now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if
  only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of
  the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem
  wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is
  splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made
  more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you
  might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most
  justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added
  a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady
  care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different
  state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you
  diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly
  accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved
  Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety,
  like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman,
  your mother.

  "Westminster."

In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship
assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something
in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her
motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with
him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of
Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from
Milton.

The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it
after all, is even more apparent in Milton's next letter, addressed
not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears,
not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on
a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from
Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:--

  "To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government.

  "Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy;
  and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have
  certainly kept _your_ departing promise of writing to me, and
  that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in
  the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present
  retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to
  you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which
  enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the
  ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of
  contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however,
  besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have
  found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to
  be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the
  discipline of the place,--unless perchance, from missing you here,
  I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you
  yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose
  occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their
  frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely
  nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so
  much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better
  for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood
  downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini[1] are
  doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the
  thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add
  to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns
  the salutation. Farewell.

  "Westminster: June 25, 1656."

[Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born
1614 and died 1661.]

That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in
the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved
by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately
after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the
month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:

  (LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, _June_
  1656:[1]--This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER
  GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in
  the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church
  at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for
  some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to
  assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren
  (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls,
  agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free
  passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even
  haughtily Protestant. On the ground that "most people think in
  Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have received
  from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after
  imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own
  perception and knowledge," the case of Romswinckel is represented
  as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as "the Papal
  superstition" are not spared. The passport was probably expected to
  come only into Protestant hands.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not given in the Printed Collection or
in Phillips; it is in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed
by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 5-6).]

  (LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _June_ 1656:[1]--A
  special recommendation of the above Romswinckel to the Swedish
  King, in the same high Protestant tone.

[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection or Phillips, but in
Skinner Transcript, and printed by Hamilton (_Milton Papers_,
6-7).]

  (LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _July_ 1656:--The Portuguese
  merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a
  considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650.
  The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his
  Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the
  debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the
  Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the
  debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest.

  (LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _July_ 1656:--After
  more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and
  the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been
  frequent new displays of the Count's high temper, the Treaty
  between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily
  finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he
  and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over
  the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and
  sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus:
  "Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our
  war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the
  King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of
  it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done." On the
  whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some
  admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of
  his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of
  the Treaty by special compliments and favours. "The Swedish
  Ambassador," says Whitlocke under date July 25, "having taken his
  leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from
  him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted
  with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one
  of his [the Ambassador's] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the
  mareschal." The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was
  the letter of honourable dismissal which the Swede was to take back
  to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by
  the Protector's blind Latinist.--"Oliver, Protector of the
  Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most
  Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and
  Vandals, &c." is the heading of the letter; which proceeds
  thus:--"Most Serene King,--As we have justly a very high regard for
  the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous
  for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious
  Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose
  endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified
  between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent
  account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly
  judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most
  praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the
  highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent
  merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and
  honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our
  commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and
  prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved
  shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and
  meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His
  Church's defence and in the affairs of Sweden!--From our Palace of
  Westminster,--July 1656. Your Majesty's most affectionate, OLIVER,
  Protector &c."--Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a
  month more after all, receiving farther attentions and
  entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking
  with him not only Milton's Letter, but also a present from the
  Protector of £1200 worth of "white cloth" and a magnificent jewel.
  It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he
  had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. "The jewel was his
  Highness's picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a
  five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen
  fair diamonds, each diamond valued at £60: in all worth about
  £1000." The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his
  breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257-273.]

  (LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--Mr. Philip
  Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his
  mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still
  danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in
  a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of
  Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at
  night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was
  attacked by two horsemen, who "discharged two pistols into the
  litter and shot him through the left hand."[1] The wound was not
  serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern.
  He offered a large reward for the discovery of the criminals; and,
  in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated "Alcantara, May 26, N.S.," he
  professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were
  English refugees or native Portuguese.[2] The present Letter by
  Milton is the Protector's reply. Though there has been some
  interval since the receipt of his Majesty's letter, his Highness
  has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he
  insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search
  and recommends that it should be put into the hands of "some
  persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations."

[Footnote 1: Thurloe to Pell, June 26, Vaughan's _Protectorate_,
I. 432.]

[Footnote 2: See Letter itself in Thurloe, V. 28.]

  (LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, _Aug._ 1656:--Again about
  a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.--Richard Baker and
  Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of
  theirs, called _The Endeavour_, William Jopp master, laden at
  Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November
  last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of
  a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the
  crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on
  the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse,
  except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed
  the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector
  now demands that £16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also
  that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French
  Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the
  English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise
  all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

  (LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, _Aug._ 1656:--On the same
  subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an
  outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter
  also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular
  prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the
  chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and
  vigilance."

  (LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES,
  _Aug._ 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We
  doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony--that
  no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting
  foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of
  Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred
  than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the
  friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their
  enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new
  dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of
  signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should
  there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the
  common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has
  already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he
  has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to
  obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the
  chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you
  by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you
  by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that,
  abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the
  French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a
  close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now
  forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning." The
  Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to
  be on their guard. "We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom,
  often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of
  Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants:
  how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept
  in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions
  to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the
  Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which,
  plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the
  Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money;
  how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the
  Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction
  which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German
  Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the
  Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the
  King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant
  champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole
  strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the
  most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces
  are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your
  Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here,
  finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King."
  What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be
  an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will
  not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a
  friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly
  understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of
  any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is
  about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to
  him also the sentiments of this letter.--That the preparation of
  this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears
  from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books
  for Tuesday Aug. 19:--"Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of
  a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was
  read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of
  the Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present
  debate, and report it again to the Council." Cromwell was himself
  present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert,
  Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The
  draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into
  Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the
  document itself was substantially Milton's. Thurloe can hardly have
  drafted _such_ a document. He may have gone to Milton first.

  (LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--The Protector
  has received his Portuguese Majesty's Ratification of the Peace
  negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in
  1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same;
  and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at
  Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the
  English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being
  now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations,
  dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty
  with all cordiality. As to his Majesty's letters of June 24th,
  mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which
  would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have
  these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may
  be perilled by tampering with any part of it.

  (LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, _Aug._ 1656:--This is a
  letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the
  foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count's zeal
  and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the
  opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King,
  relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows.

  (LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Aug._ 1656:--A
  letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the
  States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a
  champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the
  Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is
  one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding
  between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he
  hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The
  Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on
  his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago,
  upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let
  him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! "Who is ignorant
  that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have,
  for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations,
  slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so
  many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among
  Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers
  in whose valour, resources, and constancy lies the greatest
  safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail,
  the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an
  extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name
  to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which
  becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid
  of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our
  enemies can do." O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific
  settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will
  gladly do anything to secure that result.

  (LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, _Sept._ 1856:--William
  Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that
  his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about
  thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was
  brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the
  people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be
  used in the Provinces ("_id autem erat parvi sigilli in
  Provinciis constitutio_"). For the working this invention he had
  taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of
  Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to
  about £300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing,
  however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so
  much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred
  their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim.
  The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper
  the promised annual pension, with arrears.

  (XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, _Sept._ 1656:--His Highness is
  sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of
  English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called
  Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a
  Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and
  Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but;
  instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped
  in his factor's hands. He could have no redress from the French
  court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector
  now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council.
  If acts done before the League are to be called in question,
  Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an
  example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.

Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong
to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton's largest
contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very
beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of
letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor
ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are
particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that
passionate Protestantism of the Protector which had prompted his bold
stand in the matter of the Piedmontese Persecution, and which had
matured itself politically since then into the scheme of an express
League or Union of all the Protestant Powers of Europe. It cannot be
by mere accident that, when Cromwell wanted letters written in the
highest strain of his most characteristic passion, they should have
always been supplied by Milton. Whatever might be done by the office
people that Thurloe had about him, it must have been understood that,
for things of this sort, there was always to be recourse to the Latin
Secretary Extraordinary.

A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have
heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council
Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:--"Upon consideration of the
humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and
a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness,
and by his Highness referred to the Council, _Ordered_ ... That
the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to
exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov.
24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to
the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties,
notwithstanding." And so even the author of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a
Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell's
Established Church. _Can_ his secret have possibly been then
known? _Can_ the Council have known that the man who petitioned
the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the
Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter
book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had
abused the Commonwealth men as "robbers, traitors, parricides" and
"plebeian scoundrels," who had written of Cromwell "Verily an egg is
not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet," and who had capped
all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him "more vile
than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?[1]

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter du Moulin did become a Vicar in Cromwell's
Established Church. He was inducted into the Vicarage of Bradwell, in
Bucks, Oct. 24, 1657, but quitted it in a few days, apparently for
something better (Wood's Fasti, II. 195: Note by Cole).]



SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST
SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT.

ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY
RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S
SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO
EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M.
STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS.
XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS
OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER
LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE
PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.


Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that
section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of
the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is
recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of
his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his
State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, _alias_
young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days
after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that
tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for
the youth:--

  "To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

  "Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was
  first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of
  such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an
  excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most
  excellent mother, on her way to Ireland--whose departure ought to
  be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she
  has stood in the place of all kith and kin: _nam et mihi omnium,
  necessitudinum loco fuit_)--carries you this letter herself.
  That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and
  I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more
  of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me
  to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only
  engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on
  the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will
  accomplish,--not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to
  pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you.
  I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself;
  which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same
  time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also
  to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect
  that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me
  believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser:
  you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories
  of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort
  in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too
  much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and
  his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native
  land of _wethers_ there are born strong horns, able to
  _ram_ down most powerfully cities and towns? [_Quid enim
  magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur
  cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint?_
  Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion
  of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you,
  already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters
  not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance.
  Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the
  highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.

  "Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656."

If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is
correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no
particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to
her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at
least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of
Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses,
&c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's
Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1]
She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family
business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the
blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had
been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much
that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady
Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of
their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical
form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so
finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase,
duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any
eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there
wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his
behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto,
we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old
Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the
Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the
Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering
angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom
English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of
Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her
henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.

[Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.]

The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament
of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a
private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed,
Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for
some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train
of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in
London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely
enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther
that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but
was now on a visit to Holland.

[Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small
folio, is entitled "_Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum
Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnæ Brittaniæ
Protectorem, veræ Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum,
Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi
Cottrellii_, 1656." The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his
conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the
Universities, are especially noticed.]

  "To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.

  "Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all
  the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the
  exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised
  that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my
  desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been
  absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly
  performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should
  procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price
  of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the
  Mauritanian mountain _Atlas_, I think, and not a book, that
  you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the
  luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a
  library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a
  villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted
  maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes
  the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the
  price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be
  my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much
  farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return,
  how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the
  two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more
  correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your
  speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell,
  and come back to us as soon as you can.

  "Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."

One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It
was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton
enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of
John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658,
consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent
_Geographia Blaeviana_, or Atlas of the geographer and printer
John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven
volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of
maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu
for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own
trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound
after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata
and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or
illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to
1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu's four
volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price
of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be
twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked
to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1]

[Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu's general
Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same
year is from a curious letter in the _Correspondence of the Earls
of Ancram and Lothian_, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in
1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).]

Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the
12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less
consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second
marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the
Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a
justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the
parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The
agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the
Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of
the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several
market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and
Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and,
no exceptions being made against their intention, they were,
according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by
Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace
for this City of London."[1] Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs."
before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we
learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain
Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her
family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for
£13 8_s._ to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the
disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no
other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.[2] There is
reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady
before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never
_seen_ her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life
allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his
dark household.

[Footnote 1: Given in Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1840; but I owe
my copy to the kindness of Colonel Chester, who took it direct from
the Register of St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and who supplies me with
the following information in connexion with it: "It is generally
said that the marriage took place in that church; but this, I
think, may be doubted. I noticed, in several instances, that, when
the religious ceremony was performed after the civil one, the fact
was recorded; but it is not so in this case. I think that the
City marriages at that period usually took place in the Guildhall,
where a magistrate sat daily; though I believe they were sometimes
solemnized at the residence of one of the parties."]

[Footnote 2: Phillips; Hunter's _Milton Gleanings_, p. 35.
Colonel Chester tells me that, although Katharine Woodcock is
described in the Register as "of the parish of Mary's in
Aldermanbury," he found no trace of her family in that parish at the
time. "There were Woodcocks there at a much earlier period (say 100
years before); but about this time I found only one burial, that of
Michael Woodcock, whose will I have since looked at, but which does
not mention her." The conjecture that Mr. Francis Woodcock, minister
of St. Olave's, Southwark, was a relative, receives no support from
what is known of his principles (see Vol. III, 184). A contemporary
Puritan divine, Thomas Woodcock, for some time minister of St. Andrew
Undershaft, is found living at Hackney after the Restoration.]

The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the
first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness
for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new
management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who
occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to
imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which
the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain,
Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in
Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there
for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it
into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March
1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine
Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private
life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:--

  "To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

  "That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought
  by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and
  naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation
  by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying
  still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps
  on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly
  return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment,
  or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to
  congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published
  writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented
  next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain
  the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any
  writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there
  will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight
  personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of
  reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet
  greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and
  laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived
  from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and
  sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am
  glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of
  spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the
  pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of
  visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the
  deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost
  as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than
  the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think
  of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them,
  grievously though they have mulcted me,--were it only that I am
  instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus
  of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the
  weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, _On the
  Manner of Holding Parliaments_, I have caused the marked
  passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful,
  confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the
  illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will
  see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with
  your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is
  extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald
  who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar
  terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among
  those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring
  literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine
  Historians, _Theophanis Chronographia_ (folio: Greek and
  Latin), _Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum_, with
  _Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis_
  (folio: Greek and Latin), _Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et
  Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum_ (folio); to which be so good as to
  add, from the same press, _Michael Glycas_, and _Joannes
  Cinnamus_, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out.
  I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because
  there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of
  that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed
  and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money
  for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of
  carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after,
  is my sincere desire. Farewell.

  "Westminster: March 24, 1656-7."

Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an
excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the
most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a
native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal
profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside
from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the
acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which
had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting
at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary
intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and
information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could
for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published
but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have
published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France,
and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate
friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was
modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the
best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about
sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his
whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age
of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time
ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his
respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from
Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man
such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to
have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On
the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in
London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid
recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition,
and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of
foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate
commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in
return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course
of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of
Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine
Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers,
Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from
the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our
information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages.
The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six
volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and
Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in
1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians
were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the
earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate
prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however,
which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of
Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811;
also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a
metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also
the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century,
entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also
that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_.
The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out
(all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian
editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael
Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to
A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by
_Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As
the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till
1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot
can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine
books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in
the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it
gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion
for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the
use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains,
at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the
rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot,
with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of
Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased
attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second
marriage?

[Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure,
that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled
_Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos_, by Henry Elsynge,
Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was
Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4).
The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in
1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for
it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such
places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw's. Actually Elsynge's
autograph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date
of Milton's letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book,
"enriched with a large addition from the author's original MS.," was
published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum
(Bonn's _Lowndes_, Article "Elsynge").]

The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in
Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM
RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under
the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the
post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the
"MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine
volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.--He was no
common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as
minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post
to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers
or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret
missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the
interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this
kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his
talent for collecting information in London itself by means of
correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the
Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more
a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more
anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The
anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own
intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own
account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies
before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been
called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very
intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being
Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay
of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of
Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination,
"Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on
the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him
very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he
offered to lay down £10,000 if he could make any discovery of that.
Stoupe owned to me that he had a great mind to the money, and fancied
he betrayed nothing if he did discover the grounds of these
conjectures, since nothing had been trusted to him; but he expected
greater matters from Cromwell, and said only that in a diversity of
conjectures that seemed to him more probable than any others."
Another of Stoupe's stories to Burnet was even more curious. Having
learnt by a letter from Brussels that a certain refugee had come over
to assassinate Cromwell, and was lodged in King Street, Westminster,
he had hurried to Whitehall, and sent in a note to Cromwell, then in
Council, saying he had something to communicate. Cromwell, supposing
it might be one of Stoupe's ordinary pieces of intelligence, had sent
out Thurloe to him. Though "troubled at this," Stoupe had no option
but to show Thurloe the letter. To his surprise, Thurloe had made
light of the matter, saying that they had rumours of that kind by the
score, and it was not for a great man like the Protector to trouble
himself about them. Stoupe, who had hoped his fortune would be made,
went away "much cast down," to write to Brussels for surer evidence.
He mentioned the matter, however, to Lord Lisle; and so, when Sexby's
or Sindercombe's Plot was discovered a while afterwards, Lisle,
talking of it with the Protector, and not doubting that the Protector
knew all about Stoupe's previous revelation, said _that_ must be
the man Stoupe had spoken of. "Cromwell seemed amazed at this, and
sent for Stoupe, and in great wrath reproached him for his
ingratitude in concealing a matter of such consequence to him. Stoupe
upon this shewed him the letters he had received, and put him in mind
of the note he had sent in to him, which was immediately after he had
the first letter, and that he had sent out Thurloe to him. At that
Cromwell seemed yet more amazed, and sent for Thurloe, to whose face
Stoupe affirmed the matter; nor did he deny any part of it, but only
said that he had many such advertisements sent him, in which till
this time he had never found any truth. Cromwell replied sternly that
he ought to have acquainted _him_ with it, and left _him_
to judge of the importance of it. Thurloe desired to speak in private
with Cromwell. So Stoupe was dismissed, and went away, not doubting
but Thurloe would be disgraced." What was his surprise, however, to
find not only that Thurloe was not disgraced, but that he himself was
thenceforth less in favour? Thurloe, in justifying himself, had told
Cromwell more about Stoupe than he previously knew, and "possessed
Cromwell with such an ill opinion of him that after that he never
treated him with any confidence."[1] If the story is true, Stoupe's
loss of favour dates from Jan. 1656-7, or two months before Milton's
letter to Bigot. It would seem, however, that he was still employed
in some way as one of Thurloe's agents; and hence Milton's use of him
to convey the cash to France.[2] That Milton knew Stoupe would have
been certain without this evidence; but the evidence is
interesting.[3]

[Footnote 1: Burnet's _Hist. of his Own Time_, Book I.]

[Footnote 2: Of the £2000 sent from London to Geneva in June 1655 as
the first instalment of relief for the Piedmontese Protestants
(Cromwell's own subscription) £500 had been sent through Stoupe. See
ante p. 190.]

[Footnote 3: Stoupe might make a good character in any historical
novel of the time of the Protectorate. His career did not end then.
He was to be "a brigadier-general in the French armies," and one
knows not what else, before Burnet made his acquaintance.]

Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our
present section of his life, five bear date before his second
marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer
intervals than those before:--

  (XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--Peace with
  Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching
  THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to
  introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty.

  (XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1656:--A soldierly
  knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now
  returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The
  Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so
  distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should
  be paid his arrears.

  (XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--An English
  ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute
  his claim for £7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages
  sustained by the seizure of his ship, the _Scipio_, six years
  before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company's
  service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the
  Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot
  but write specially in this case.

  (XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, _Oct. 16, 1656:_--Long ago,
  in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays,
  being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died
  intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the
  Hamburg Court, assigning them all the said Alexander's property,
  except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly
  by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in
  Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in
  extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers
  it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he
  writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that
  the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the
  Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of
  an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal
  will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he
  forwards. "But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary,
  and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of
  retaliation." His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the
  prudence of the Senate.

  (XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Nov. 1656:_--No answer has
  yet been received to his Highness's former letter, of May 14, on
  the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of
  London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the
  capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles
  Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L'Estrades,
  the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253).
  Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L'Estrades was
  then away with the army in Flanders; but "now he is living in Paris
  itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court
  enriched with the spoils of our people." His Highness now
  imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter.
  It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and
  good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.--It is a
  curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this
  strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight
  should have solemnised Milton's marriage with Katharine Woodcock.
  Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of
  in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been
  written after Lord Mayor's day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656.

  (XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Dec. 1856:_--This
  is another of Cromwell's fervid Protestant letters, very much in
  the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the
  United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with
  identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his
  Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon
  de Pitkum, his Majesty's agent. They have been so gratifying, and
  the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been
  looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential
  minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon:
  meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of
  Europe that are much occupying his Highness. The dissensions among
  Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is
  grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two
  such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they
  not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which
  his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same
  effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should
  Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let
  him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in
  Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal
  machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are
  inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can
  be brought about. The Protector's good offices towards that end
  shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the
  King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with
  him.--Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date
  Tuesday, Dec. 2: "The draft of a letter from his Highness to the
  King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the
  several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some
  amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered
  to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will
  please to send the same." The letter, therefore, was deemed
  important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first
  supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go
  back to him.

  (XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, _March
  1656-7_:--After an apology to the Landgrave for not having
  sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago,
  the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among
  Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the
  exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and
  elsewhere. "We have particularly desired the same peace for the
  Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of
  too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same
  fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any
  possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain
  still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to
  each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of
  settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend
  themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly.
  For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those
  of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of
  one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally,
  by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot
  consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however,
  they might allow one to entreat--that, as they do differ, they
  would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other
  nevertheless." It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange
  sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished
  Protestant ancestry.

  (XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, _March 1657_:--After
  thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some
  time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the
  Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a
  Scotchman, master of one of the Duke's ships. The ship had been
  wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone's fault. The pilot, to
  whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been
  alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke
  for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes
  the Duke will not stop his pay.

  (XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, _April
  1657_:--The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great
  respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King
  of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit
  of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen
  otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is
  rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to
  request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck,
  who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his
  captivity easier.

  (C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, _April 1657_:--On the throne of
  this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis,
  the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new
  dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He
  had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since
  then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father's policy
  for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with
  the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for
  service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I.,
  however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had
  ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the
  Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this
  high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian
  interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually
  brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had
  been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with
  Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under
  rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at
  Archangel, and have a factory there, but "not to go up in the
  country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."[1] The envoy
  himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence,
  or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition
  of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally
  called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than
  knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor, his vast military
  forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental
  submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and
  manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great
  resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way
  of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in
  fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general
  European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about
  him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles
  of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of
  North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United
  Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose
  movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved,
  therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special
  envoy to "the Great Duke of Muscovia"; and, on the 12th of March
  1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the
  Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his
  Highness as the proper person.[2] The present letter of Milton,
  accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take
  with him.--The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as
  punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: "Oliver,
  Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c.,
  to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor
  and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and
  Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow,
  Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great
  Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow,
  Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of
  Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."[3] After referring to
  the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the
  Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his
  most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far
  outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself
  so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he
  introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his
  instructions.

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, II. 562.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 3: Compare this address with that which the Envoy of the
United Provinces was instructed by the States-General to be most
punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six
years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):--"Most illustrious,
most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz,
Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof,
Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of
Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer,
Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada
and the low lands of Zenigow, Resan, Polotzko, Rostof, Yareslav,
Belooseria, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, Wietepsky, M'Stitslof, Lord of
all the Northern Lands, Lord of the Land of Iversky, Czar of
Cartalinsky and Grusinsky, and of the Land of Cardadinsky, Prince of
the Circasses and Gorshes, heir of his Father and Grand-father, and
Lord and Sovereign of many other Easterly, Westerly, and Northerly
Lordships and Dominions." Milton, for the Protector, is somewhat more
economical and uses _Rex_ for _Czar_.]

The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the
Protector's diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as
Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND,
after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the
business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had
been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the
hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656,
had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report
of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee
for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his
accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done
met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was
voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have £700 for 'the
charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies
of his History,' and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland's
_History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont_, which appeared
in the following year, was therefore a State publication the
copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still
was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special
mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular
duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned
to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for
another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of
Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec.
1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To
Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in
itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial
accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be £1000 a
year; a special sum of £400 was voted for the expense of his journey;
and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese
mission, £100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine
years--a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a
present money-payment of £1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in
England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of
his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other
parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found
for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther
service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a
Pan-Protestant Union. Of two new diplomatic appointments that were
soon to be made, both above Durie's mark, we shall hear in time. The
most splendid diplomatic appointment of all in the Protector's
service had, as we already know (ante p. 114), just received an
increase of dignity. The Scottish COLONEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, the
husband of Cromwell's niece, and his Ambassador at the Court of
France since April 1656, had been back on a visit in the end of the
year to attend Parliament and to consult with Cromwell; and now,
knighted by Cromwell, he had returned to France as SIR WILLIAM
LOCKHART, with his great allowance of £100 a week, or £5200 a
year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates Jan. 1, 27, Feb. 3, 24,
March 5, 12, 19, 1656-7, and May 5, 1657; Letter of Durie, dated
"Westminster, May 28, 1657," in Vaughan's Protectorate (II. 173).]

At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had
there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of
the Protector's service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell's alliance
offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7),
leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army
under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders
(ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such
activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with
this in Cromwell's general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a
League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first
perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655,
but had gradually, as so many of Milton's subsequent State-Letters
prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the
Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the
Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern
parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell's influence
could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the
promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the
defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie's old dream of
Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who
had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now,
consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service
generally,

           "Thousands at his bidding speed,
  And post o'er land and ocean without rest."

While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a
year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only
"stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old
assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of
somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the
new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out
for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like
proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed
secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in
London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's
State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact
that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series,
bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go
away again. What passed during these months we already know. The
great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been
in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton
had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8,
when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First
Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not
in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in
that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed
by the Parliament in their so-called _Petition and
Advice_.--What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship
question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he
was one of the private "_Contrariants_," one of those Oliverians
who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected
theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and
were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the
constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time,
it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still
a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly
an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the
Protector and the Protectorate in his _Defensio Secunda_. Even
then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in
advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have
professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and
self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction,
which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the
Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal.
Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary
device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell
himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures
distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must
have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of
liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more
sympathy with the spirit of Milton's _Areopagitica_ than most of
his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have
sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more
than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary
constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of
Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand
that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as
Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting
on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there
_had_ been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent
questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded
Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged
disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the
plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too
(for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than
the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into
devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand
infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved
the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that
institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually
fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the
old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of
stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here,
above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's
Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there
be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in
what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what
could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews
with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps
in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments
at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank
expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a
loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as
I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the
Second.



BOOK II.

JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658.

HISTORY:--OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.

BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE.



CHAPTER I.

OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657--SEPT. 3, 1658.

REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE: THE
PROTECTOR'S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL: RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH
OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS:
SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE
PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND THE UNITED
PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL'S DIPLOMACY IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN
EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CONTROVERSY
BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM: THE PROTECTOR AND THE
QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL'S TWO YOUNGEST
DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS
FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL'S PEERS.--REASSEMBLING OF THE
PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE
SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES: ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS: THEIR
OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE: CROMWELL'S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE:
PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION: CROMWELL'S LAST
SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.--STATE OF
THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL'S
DEALINGS WITH THEM: HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED
COMMONWEALTH'S MEN: THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND
RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME: ARRESTS OF
ROYALISTS. AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT: THE CONSPIRACY
CRUSHED: DEATH OF ROBERT RICH: THE EARL OF WARWICK'S LETTER TO
CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH: MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND
CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK: SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN
CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.: NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE
PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL _DE
PROPAGANDA FIDE_; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT: DESIRE OF
THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH: ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES:
CROMWELL'S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK: HIS DESIGN FOR
THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS: HIS GRANTS TO
THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND:
MONK AT DALKEITH: CROMWELL'S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND
JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS: FIRMNESS
AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658: CROMWELL'S BARONETCIES
AND KNIGHTHOODS: WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: DEATH OF
LADY CLAYPOLE: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS
AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP.


Whether Cromwell's Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as
agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had
accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on
the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with
more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had
been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which
would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes
of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his
First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had
worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and
the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own
military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him
by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in
purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as
in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.

Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had
been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage
of sovereignty. The phrases "His Highness's Court" and "His
Highness's Household" had become quite familiar. On all public
occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he
rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in
front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council
prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful
etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings
was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell's
approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing
upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic
forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less
sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;[1] in
mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become
Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in
retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,--e.g. "The
Marquis of Hertford," "The Earl of Warwick," "The Earl of Mulgrave,"
"The Lord Viscount Lisle," "The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill";
and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by
calling Fleetwood "My Lord Deputy," Whitlocke "Lord Commissioner
Whitelocke," Fiennes "Lord Commissioner Fiennes," and Lawrence "Lord
President Lawrence," but there had been a curious extension of usage
in this last particular. The Protector's sons had become respectively
"The Lord Richard Cromwell" and "The Lord Henry Cromwell" in the
newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or
other, probably on account of places held in his Highness's Household
or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors
had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning
of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called "Major-General Lambert," and
had become "Lord Lambert," and from the beginning of 1656 "Mr.
Strickland" had passed into "Lord Strickland." They are so named both
in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session
of the Second Parliament.

[Footnote 1: Here is a list of Cromwell's Knights of the First
Protectorate, so far as I have ascertained them:--Lord Mayor Thomas
Viner (Feb. 8, 1653-4); John Copleston (June 1, 1655); Colonel John
Reynolds (June 11, 1655); Lord Mayor Sir Christopher Pack (Sept. 20,
1655); Colonel Thomas Pride, of 'Pride's Purge' celebrity (Jan. 17,
1655-6); Major-General John Barkstead, Lieutenant of the Tower (Jan.
19, 1655-6); M. Coyet, of the Swedish Embassy (April 15, 1656);
Richard Combe (Aug. 1656); Lord Mayor Dethicke and George Fleetwood,
Esq. of Bucks (both Sept. 15, 1656); Ambassador Lockhart, Lord Mayor
Robert Tichbourne, Sheriff James Calthorpe, and Lislebone Long, Esq.,
Recorder of London (all Dec. 10, 1656); Colonel James Whitlocke, a
son of Bulstrode Whitlocke (Jan. 6, 1656-7); Thomas Dickson, of York
(March 3, 1656-7); Richard Stayner (June 11, 1657).]

If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the
First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the
Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in
the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally
thrown round himself. The Protector's very aged Mother having died in
honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her
last words[1], the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as
follows:--

[Footnote 1: At "ninety-four years of age" according to a letter of
Thurloe's the day after her death (Thurloe to Pell, Nov. 17, 1654, in
Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 79-81); but Colonel Chester
(_Westminster Abbey Registers, 521, Note_) sees reason for
believing she had been baptized at Ely, Oct. 28, 1565, and was
therefore only in her ninetieth year at her death.]

  HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: _ætat. 58._

  HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS.

  Children and Children-in-Law.

  1. THE LADY BRIDGET: _ætat. 33_: Ireton's widow, married to
  Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from
  Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then,
  retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657.

  2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: _ætat._ 31: married since 1649
  to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley,
  Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a
  fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in
  some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament,
  and in the Council of the Protectorate.--Though Lord Richard's
  tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with "hawking, hunting,
  and horse-racing," he had been in both the Parliaments of the
  Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His
  father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when
  the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector
  resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the
  18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at
  Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he
  was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the
  Council's Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:--"The Lord Richard
  Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being
  administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General
  Desborough, in virtue of his Highness's Commission under the Great
  Seal." He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and
  generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next
  after the President's in the _sederunt_.

  3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: _ætat. 29_: in the Army since his
  boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in
  Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second
  Protectorate he was still in the Government of Ireland with his
  military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn
  into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had
  been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of
  Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.

  4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: _ætat. 28_: married in her seventeenth
  year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had
  been made the Lord Protector's "Master of Horse," and had therefore
  been known for some time by the courtesy-title of "Lord Claypole."
  He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as
  Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the
  late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the
  household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court;
  and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.

  5. THE LADY MARY: _ætat. 21_. She was unmarried when the
  Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said
  to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector
  on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became
  the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of
  the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been
  abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his
  inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in
  that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as
  "a person of extraordinary parts." On his own account, and also
  because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady
  Mary was thought an excellent match.

  6. THE LADY FRANCES: _ætat. 19_. This, the youngest of
  Cromwell's children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the
  Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old
  Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and
  Cromwell's ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell's pupil at Eton
  with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances,
  as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp.
  616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being
  now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in
  due time.[1] For the Lady Frances, his Highness's youngest
  daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been
  vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that
  Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a
  restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more
  than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with
  Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after
  his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great
  and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won
  round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late
  Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant
  facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means
  indifferent to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part
  of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week
  before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady
  Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the
  marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the
  Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married
  again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1.

[Footnote 1: The will of John Dutton, Esq., of Sherborne,
Gloucestershire, was proved June 30, 1657, just four days after the
beginning of the Second Protectorate; and young Mr. William Dutton
married a widow eventually--"Mary, daughter of John, Viscount
Scudamore, and relict of Thomas Russell of Worcestershire, Esq."
(Noble's Cromwell, I, pp 153-154).]

OTHER RELATIVES

Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second
Protectorate, were the following;--(1) The Protector's eldest
surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, _ætat. 64_, living at Ely,
unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She
lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, _ætat._ 61,
first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and
afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for
Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the
first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time
in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member of the
Protector's Second Parliament. (3) The Protector's youngest sister
ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife
of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held
the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the
office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her
first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson.
(4) The Protector's niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister
Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The
Protector's brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been
member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the
Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His
first wife; Oliver's sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a
second, and had for some time been less active politically and less
Oliverian. (6) The Protector's brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known
as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of
Cromwell's stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and
Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his
Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the
Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife,
Cromwell's sister Jane. (7) The Protector's cousin, or father's
sister's son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the
Regicides, and latterly member of both Parliaments of the
Protectorate and one of the Major-Generals. (8) The Protector's aunt,
or father's sister, Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMPDEN, mother of the famous
Hampden, and now a very aged widow, living about Whitehall, with
another son alive, besides grandchildren by her famous dead son, the
eldest of whom, Richard Hampden, was a member of the present
Parliament. (9) The Protector's cousin's son, COLONEL RICHARD
INGOLDSBY, a Recruiter in the Long Parliament, one of the signers of
Charles's death-warrant, and one of the members for Buckinghamshire
in both Parliaments of the Protectorate. More distant kindred of the
Protector were the DUNCHES of Berkshire, and the MASHAMS of Essex,
the head of whom, Sir William Masham, Bart., had been member for that
county in the Long Parliament, and a member of all the Councils of
the Commonwealth and of the first Parliament of the Protectorate. The
poet WALLER was connected with the Protector by his cousinship with
the Hampdens.[1]

[Footnote 1: Among authorities for the facts in this compilation,
besides Council Order Books, and the whole narrative heretofore, are
Carlyle's three genealogical Notes (I. 16, 20-21, and 54-55), Wood's
Fasti, II. 155-8, various passages in Codwin, and two "Narratives"
in _Harl. Misc_ III. 429-468.]

The Protector's new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not
constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after
his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn
in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the _Petition
and Advice_, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord
Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr.
Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary
Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by
special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few
meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir
Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to
thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel
Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and
Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On
comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First
Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell
retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert,
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec.
1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that
he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the
opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell's
father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have
been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary
omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in
the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the
Government of the Second? His Oliverianism, it appears, had
evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new
constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the
first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with
Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental
colonelcies, his major-generalship, and £10 a day which he had for
the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord
Lambert," and with a pension of £2000 a year granted him by Cromwell,
he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the
cultivation of tulips.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward;
Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.]

The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its
meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home
and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the
Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20,
1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.

Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all
people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero,
recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his
battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further
employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance
and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in
England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died,
utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged
fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the
13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners
for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment
of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all
things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in
such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they
give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception
of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body,
having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was
brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on
the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the
Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a
multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had
made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor
and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther
comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had
made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. "When news was
brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then
encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis
not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from
fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's
popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, Aug. 13, 1657: Godwin, IV. 420-421;
Wood's Fasti, I. 371.]

Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since
August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet
under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay
chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector's army of 6000 foot under
General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of
Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain
of Mazarin's wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the
expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines,
Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and
Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops
obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of
their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was
studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from
Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of
matters. "I pray you tell the Cardinal from me," he said, "that I
think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to
_get_ ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty
with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any
design he hath." He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary;
but he added in a postscript, "If indeed the French be so false to us
as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the
water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the
giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly,
Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your
dealing with the French on these accounts." The Cardinal at once
succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept.
21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty,
given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A
little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of
Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of
English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but,
by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague's assisting
fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus
obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with
English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was
prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish
Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with
Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took
his oath and place in the Council.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 306-315 (including two Letters of Cromwell
to Lockhart); Godwin, IV. 543-544; Guizot, II. 379-381;
_Cromwelliana_, 168; Council Order Books, Oct. 24, 1657.]

Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and
his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an
order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of £1000
more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid
to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that
matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another
despatch of £1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for
the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with
the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness
in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed
Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness
being himself present in the Council, and having communicated "a
petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed
Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through
persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition
from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these
exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings,"
it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee
for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another
collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the
more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and
the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears
especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new
Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of
entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much
intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord
Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there.
But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by
his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern
Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as
long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in
London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in
Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both
Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish
Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally,
on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of
the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some
temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante
pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of
Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 311-313;
and _Cromwelliana_, 168-169.]

The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657
requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal
for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his
diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so
extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union
seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be
retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and
magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of
things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X.
or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial
admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred
spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see
him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn
himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the
Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great
Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great
Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his
ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and,
Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the
Swede, "_actum jam videbatur de Polonia_" as an old annalist
says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers,
for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for
the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to
his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German
Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or
Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance
even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of
Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that
alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which
the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full
sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the
Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being
ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring
war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When
the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected
him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have
seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton's
composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an
unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King's
career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready
for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that
new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the
Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had
turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the
interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two
powers--the Poles, the German Catholics, the Muscovites, the Elector
of Brandenburg, the Dutch, and other powers, looking on more or less
in sympathy with the Danes, and some of them ready to strike in. To
end the war, if possible, by reconciling Charles X. and Frederick
III, was Cromwell's first object; and, with that aim in view, Jephson
was to attach himself more particularly to Charles X., whatever might
be his war-track, and Meadows more particularly to Frederick III. But
they might cross each other's routes, deal with other States along
these routes, and work into each other's hands. RICHARD BRADSHAW,
likewise, who had been sent as Envoy to the Czar of Muscovy in the
beginning of the year (ante pp. 292-294), would be moving about
usefully on the east of the Baltic. And, if a reconciliation between
Sweden and Denmark should by any means be brought about, what then
should be aimed at but a repair of the rupture between the Elector of
Brandenburg and the Swedish King, so as to save the Elector from the
threatened vengeance of the Swede, and then farther the aggregation
of other Protestant German States, and of the Dutch, round this
nucleus of a Swedish-Danish-Brandenburg alliance, for common action
against Poland, Austria, and German Catholicism? Even the Muscovites,
as of the Greek Church, might be brought in, or at least they might
be rendered neutral. All this was in contemplation, as a tissue of
ideal possibilities, when MEADOWS and JEPHSON were despatched in
August, and the mission of DOWNING four months later to the United
Provinces was partly in the same great interest. It may seem matter
for wonder that a man of Cromwell's practical sagacity, already so
deeply implicated on the Continent by his Flanders enterprise and his
alliance with France, should have had such a passion for farther
interference as thus to insert his hands into the apparently
measureless entanglement in northern and eastern Europe. But, in the
first place, his practical sagacity was not at fault. Precisely that
it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two
sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was
the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards
that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality
in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the
Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other
thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on
its chances. But, in the second place, the business of the French
alliance and the Flanders enterprise was vitally inter-connected with
the so-called entanglement in the north and east. The German Emperor
Ferdinand III. had died in April 1657; the Empire was vacant; Mazarin
had set his heart on obtaining that central European dignity for his
young master, Louis XIV., and was intriguing with the Electors for
the purpose; it was still uncertain whether, when the time came, a
majority of the Electoral College would vote for Louis XIV. or would
retain the Imperial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the
late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of
Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and,
whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of
the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to
prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian
Catholicism.[1]

[Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from
those of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden
and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous
passage in Baillie's Letters (III. 370-371), and with facts and dates
from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the
_Rationarium Temporum_ of the Jesuit Petavius (edit. 1745, I.
562-564), and from Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_,
I. 222-223.]

At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time
brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory
to himself. The machinery of the _Ejectors_ and the
_Triers_ was still in full operation; and, on reports from the
_Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers_, his Highness and
the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering
new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still
existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become
comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established
Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the _Petition and
Advice_. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of
an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the
present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. "_The
Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men_"
was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since
May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent
a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated
as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist,
Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. "_The Great Accuser
cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street,
London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason_," was a pamphlet
by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated "To His Most Serene
Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector," &c., in such terms as
these:--"Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath
taken a strange creature, immediately to present it to the Prince:
whereupon I, having taken one of the strangest that (I think) any
part of your Highness's dominions hath these many years produced, do,
with all submissiveness, make bold to present him, bound hand and
foot with his own cords (as I ought to bring him), to your Highness.
He need not be sent to the Tower for his mischievousness: there is no
danger in him now, nor like to be henceforth, as I have handled him."
In a prefixed Epistle to the Reader there is a good deal of
scurrility against Goodwin. He is described as "worse than a common
nuisance." He is taxed also with inconsistency, inasmuch as he had
been one of those who, in Feb. 1651-2, had signed the famous
_Proposals of Certain Ministers to the Committee for the
Propagation of the Gospel_, in which the principle of an
Established Church had been assumed and asserted (ante, IV. 392). In
the body of the pamphlet Needham maintains that principle. "Christ
left no such rules and directions," he says, "nor was it his
intention to leave such, for propagating the Gospel, as exclude the
Magistrate from using his wisdom and endeavours in order thereunto."
He defends the Commission of Triers and the Commission of Ejectors,
and more than once twits Goodwin with having taken up at last the
extreme crotchets of Roger Williams the American. "_A Letter of
Address to the Protector occasioned by Mr. Needham's Reply to Mr.
Goodwin's Book against Triers_" appeared Aug. 25; but we need not
follow the controversy farther. It had come to be Mr. John Goodwin's
fate to be the severest public critic of Cromwell's Established
Church; it had come to be Mr. Marchamont Needham's to be the most
prominent defender of that institution.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same for
dates.]

More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open
revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers. They were now
very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and
everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form
of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings. They
were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment,
according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the
local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly
towards gentleness with them. Hardly had the new Council of State
been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most
eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were
instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to
consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body
in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther
detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose
circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish
Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter
or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker,
Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually
penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and
after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent,
the Quakers being all _Contrariants_ on that point. "O
Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many
generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy
from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep
Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had
Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing
thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this
world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God."
There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart,
while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at
an interview, sitting on a table and talking in "a light manner," as
Fox himself tells us, he would end with some serious words. Both to
Fox personally, and to the letters from him and other Quakers, his
reply in substance uniformly was that they were good people, and
that, for himself, "all persecution and cruelty was against his
mind." Cromwell was only at the centre, however, and could not
regulate the administration of the law everywhere.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date; and Sewel's _History of
the Quakers_, I. 210-233.]

John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally
new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the
Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply "for the
peace of this nation" (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the
Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this
last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had
had access to him, with very marked effects. "Here, in Dover Castle,"
Lilburne had written to his wife, Oct. 4, 1655, "through the
loving-kindness of God, I have met with a more clear, plain, and
evident knowledge of God, and myself, and His gracious outgoings to
my soul, than ever I had in all my lifetime, not excepting my
glorying and rejoicing condition under the Bishops." Again, in a
later letter: "I particularly can, and do hereby, witness that I am
already dead or crucified to the very occasions and real grounds of
outward wars, and carnal sword-fightings, and fleshly bustlings and
contests, and that therefore confidently I now believe that I shall
never hereafter be a user of the temporal sword more, nor a joiner
with those that do. And this I do here solemnly declare, not in the
least to avoid persecution, or for any politic ends of my own, or in
the least for the satisfaction of the fleshly wills of any of my
great adversaries, or for satisfying the carnal will of my poor weak
afflicted wife, but by the special movings and compulsions of God now
upon my soul ... and that thereby, if yet I must be an imprisoned
sufferer, it may from this day forward be for the truth as it is in
Jesus, which truth I witness to be truly professed and practised by
the savouriest of people, called Quakers." This had not at once
procured his release, for he remained in Dover Castle through at
least part of 1656. At length, however, after some proposal to let
him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations,
security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been
allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere,
he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and
here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following
Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house
called "The Bull and Mouth" at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of
the London Quakers. "At this place, that afternoon, assembled a
medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for
number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony
of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major
part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock
in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out,
there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth over the
coffin, and he endeavoured to do it; but, the crowd of Quakers not
permitting it and having gotten the body on their shoulders, they
carried it away without further ceremony, and the whole company
conducted it into Moorfields, and thence into the new churchyard
adjoining to Bedlam, where it lieth interred." Lilburne at his death
was but thirty-nine years of age. He was popular to the last with the
Londoners, and there were notices of him, comic and serio-comic,
long after his death. By order of Council, Nov. 4, his Highness
himself present, payment of the arrears of an allowance he had of
40_s._ a week, with continuation of the same allowance
thenceforward, was granted to his wife, Elizabeth.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the Quakers_. I. 160-163
(where, however, there is an error as to the date of Lilburne's
death); Wood's Ath. III. 357; _Cromwelliana_, 168; Council
Order Books of Nov. 4, 1657.]

When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers,
his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy,
the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom.
He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great
over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to
Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of
an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist
invasion. What _would_ have been his doom can be but guessed. He
became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13,
1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of
the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot,
that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he
was the author of _Killing no Murder_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ of dates, as quoted in
_Cromwelliana_, 167-170.]

So quiet and even was the course of home-affairs through the first
seven months of the new Protectorate that such glimpses and anecdotes
of particular persons have to suggest the general history. Yet one
more of the sort.

In the parish register of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire there is this
entry: "George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mary, the daughter
of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, of Nunappleton within this
Parish of Bolton Percy, were married the 15th day of September
_anno Dom_. 1657." This was, in fact, the marriage of the great
Fairfax's only child, Marvell's former pupil, now nineteen years of
age, to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham, aged thirty. The poet
Cowley, who had known the Duke since their Cambridge days together,
acted as his best man at the wedding, which was celebrated with great
festivities at Nunappleton, Cowley contributing a poem. But surely
it was a most extraordinary marriage, and, though there had been
rumours of such a possibility for several years, it was heard of with
surprise. The only child and heiress of the great Parliamentarian
General, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, married to this
Royalist of Royalists, the handsome young insurgent in the Second
Civil War of 1648, the boon-companion of Charles II. for some time
abroad, his boon-companion and buffoon all through his dreary year of
Kingship among the Scots, his fellow-fugitive from the field of
Worcester, and ever since, though less in Charles's company than
before, and serving as a volunteer in the French army, yet a main
trump-card in Charles's lists! How had it happened? Easily enough.
The great Fairfax, with ample wealth of his own, had made most
honourable and chivalrous use of the accessions to that wealth that
had come in the shape of Parliamentary grants to him out of the
confiscated estates of Royalists. Now, one such grant, in lieu of a
money pension of £4000 a year, had been a portion of the confiscated
property of the young Duke of Buckingham, including an estate in
Yorkshire and York House in the Strand. The young Duke, stripped of
his revenues of £25,000 a year, had been living meanwhile on the
proceeds of a great collection of pictures, Titians and what not,
that had been made by his father, and which had been quietly conveyed
abroad for sale. But Fairfax had not forgotten the splendid young
man, and had every wish to retrieve his fortunes for him. There had
probably been communications to that end, not only with Buckingham
himself, but even with Charles II.; and the result had been the
Duke's return to England and appearance in Yorkshire, early in 1657,
to woo Mary Fairfax or to complete the wooing. Who could resist him?
It might have been better for Mary Fairfax had she died in her
girlhood, fresh from Marvell's teaching; but now she was Duchess of
Buckingham. York House and the estate in Yorkshire had been restored
to her husband by gift, and Nunappleton and other Fairfax estates
were to be settled on him and her for their lives, and on their heirs
should there be any.[1]

[Footnote 1: Markham's Life of Fairfax, 364-372.]

Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the
arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to whom anything in reason
would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that
Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports
from Thurloe's foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and
Charles II.,[1] no one could challenge Fairfax's honour or doubt his
passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him
altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage at
Nunappleton was discussed at the Council in London. On the 9th of
October, his Highness and eight more being present, it was ordered
that a warrant should issue for arresting, and confining in the Isle
of Jersey, George, Duke of Buckingham, who had been "in this nation
for divers months without licence or authority." This led, of course,
to earnest representations from Fairfax. Accordingly, Nov. 17, "His
Highness having communicated to the Council that the Lord Fairfax
hath made addresses to him, with some desires on behalf of the Duke
of Buckingham," it was ordered "That the Resolves and Act of
Parliament in the case of the said Duke be communicated to the Lord
Fairfax as the grounds of the Council's proceedings touching the said
Duke, and that there be withal signified to the Lord Fairfax the
Council's civil respects to his Lordship's own person." The message
was to be conveyed by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Deputy Fleetwood,
and Lord Strickland. Fairfax and the young couple must have made
farther appeal; for, Dec. 1, his Highness "delivered in to the
Council a paper containing an offer of some reasons in reference to
the Duke of Buckingham his liberty," whereupon it was minuted "That
the Council do declare it as their opinion that it is not consistent
with their duty to advise his Highness to grant the Duke of
Buckingham his liberty as is desired, nor consistent with his
Highness's trust to do the same." Lord Strickland and Sir Charles
Wolseley were to communicate the minute to Fairfax. Probably Fairfax
had come up to town on the business. The young couple would seem to
have remained in the country; nor do I find that the order for the
arrest of the Duke was yet actually enforced.[2]

[Footnote 1: As early as Nov. 1654 Charles II. had written to
Fairfax, begging him to "wipe out all he had done amiss" by such
services to the Royal cause as he might yet render (Macray's
Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, II. 426).]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]

What may have disposed Cromwell not to be too harsh about the
marriage was the fact that he had just celebrated the marriages of
his own two youngest daughters. Lady Frances, the youngest, became
Mrs. Rich on the 11th of November, and Lady Mary became Viscountess
Falconbridge on the 18th.

The drift of public interest was now towards the reassembling of the
adjourned Parliament on the 20th of January 1657-8. Especially there
was great curiosity as to the persons that would be called by his
Highness to form the Second or Upper House. That was satisfied in the
course of December by the issue of his Highness's writs under the
great seal (quite in regal style, with the phrases "We," "ourself,"
"our great seal," &c.) to the following _sixty-three_ persons,
the asterisks to be explained presently:--

  *Lord Richard Cromwell (_Councillor_, &c.).
  Lord Henry Cromwell (_Lord Deputy of Ireland_).

    Of the Titular Nobility.

  The Earl of Warwick.
  The Earl of Manchester.
  The Earl of Mulgrave (_Councillor_).
  The Earl of Cassilis (Scotch).
  William, Viscount Say and Sele.
  *Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge (_son-in-law_).
  *Philip, Viscount Lisle (_Peer's son and Councillor_).
  *Charles, Viscount Howard (raised to this rank by Cromwell,
      July 20, 1657).
  Philip, Lord Wharton.
  *George, Lord Eure.
  *Roger, Lord Broghill (_Peer's son_).
  *John, Lord Claypole (_son-in-law and "Master of our Horse"_).

    Great Army and Navy Officers.

  *Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood (_son-in-law and
      Councillor_).
  *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," John Desborough (_brother-in-law
      and Councillor_: made Admiral in suecession to Blake).
  *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," Edward Montague (_Councillor,
      and one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury_).
  *Commissary-General of Horse, Edward Whalley (_cousin_).
  Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General George Monk.

    Great State and Law Officers.

  *Nathaniel Fiennes (_Councillor_),
  Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal.
  *John Lisle, ditto.
  *Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.
  *William Sydenham (_Councillor_), ditto.
  *Henry Lawrence (_Lord President of the Council_).
  Oliver St. John, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
  *John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of the Upper Bench.
  *William Lenthall, Master of the Rolls.
  William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

    Baronets.

  Sir Gilbert Gerrard.
  Sir Arthur Hasilrig.
  *Sir John Hobart.
  *Sir Gilbert Pickering (_Councillor and Chamberlain to the
      Household_).
  *Sir Francis Russell (_Henry Cromwell's father-in-law_).
  *Sir William Strickland.
  *Sir Charles Wolseley (_Councillor_).

  Knights.

  *Sir John Barkstead (knighted by Cromwell Jan, 19, 1655-6).
  Sir George Fleetwood (knighted by Cromwell Sept. 15, 1656).
  *Sir John Hewson (_Colonel_, knighted by Cromwell
      Dec. 5, 1657).
  *Sir Thomas Honeywood.
  Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (Scotch).
  Sir William Lockhart (_Ambassador_, knighted by Cromwell
      Dec. 10, 1656).
  *Sir Christopher Pack (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell
      Sept. 20, 1656).
  *Sir Richard Onslow.
  *Sir Thomas Pride (Colonel Pride, knighted by Cromwell
      Jan, 17, 1655-6).
  *Sir William Roberts.
  *Sir Robert Tichbourne (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell
      Dec. 10, 1656).
  Sir Matthew Tomlinson (_Colonel_, knighted in Dublin by Lord
      Henry Cromwell. Nov. 25, 1657).

  Others.

  *James Berry (_the Major-General_).
  John Clerke (_Colonel_).
  *Thomas Cooper (_Colonel_).
  John Crewe.
  *John Fiennes.
  *William Goffe (_the Major-General_).
  *Richard Ingoldsby (_Cousin's son and Colonel_).
  *John Jones (_brother-in-law and Colonel_).
  *Philip Jones (_Councillor and Colonel_, and now "_Comptroller
      of our Household_").
  *Richard Hampden (son of the great Hampden).
  William Pierrepoint.
  Alexander Popham.
  *Francis Rous (_Councillor and Provost of Eton_).
  *Philip Skippon (_Councillor and Major-General_).
  *Walter Strickland (_Councillor_).
  *Edmund Thomas.[1]

[Footnote 1: In compiling the list I have used the enumerations in
Parl. Hist. III. 1518-1519, Whitlocke, IV. 313-314, and Godwin. IV.
469-471 (the last two not perfect): also a Pamphlet of April 1659
called _A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament_.]

Such were "Oliver's Peers or Lords," remembered by that name now, and
so called at the time, not because they were Peers or Lords in the
old sense, but because they were to be members of that "Other House"
which, by Article V. of the _Petition and Advice_, was to
exercise some of the functions of the old House of Lords. The
selection was various enough, and probably as good as could be made;
but there must have been great doubts as to the result. Would those
of the old English hereditary nobility whom it had been deemed
politic to summon condescend to sit as fellow-peers with Hewson, once
a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer's drayman, and Berry, once a clerk
in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly
quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and
Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the
very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons
notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig
and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as
a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have
some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would
be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would
have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most
distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson,
were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if,
after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought
together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of
the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading
members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most
dangerous. For, by the _Petition and Advice_, were not the
Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety
or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let
or hindrance from the Protector?

Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his
Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a
Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of
the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his
own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House
take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and
orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might
increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own
broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now
come when the difficulty must be faced.

On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of
them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of
the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of
Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had
presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath
prescribed in the _Petition and Advice_, They were the
forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list
of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of
those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele,
Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but
for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House
mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most
conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed
ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt
Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele,
Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the
absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had
not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he
would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member
for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded
thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same
seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he
reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile
for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with
Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had
mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the
Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the
prescribed oath of the _Petition and Advice_, by which they, as
well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other
things, "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector," &c., and not
to "contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or
lawful authority." It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to
the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be
stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early
hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many as
150 or 180 members in all, the formerly excluded and the old sitters
together, seem to have been in the House, thus sworn, about the time
when the forty-three were assembled in the adjacent Other House. The
Commons had then resumed business, on their own account, as met after
regular adjournment. They had appointed a Mr. John Smythe to be their
Clerk, in lieu of Mr. Henry Scobell, now made general "Clerk of the
Parliament" and transferred to the Other House, and they had fixed
that day week as a day of prayer for divine assistance, when the
Usher of the Black Rod appeared to summon them to meet his Highness
in the Other House. Arranging that the Sergeant-at-Arms should carry
the mace with him, and stand by the Speaker with the mace at his
shoulder through the whole interview with his Highness, the House
obeyed the summons.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Jan. 20, 1657-8, et seq.; Ludlow,
596-597; List of the 43 who sat in the Upper House in pamphlet of
1659 already cited, called _A Second Narrative_, &c.]

Cromwell's speech to the two Houses (Speech XVI.) opened
significantly with the words "_My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House
of Commons_." It was a very quiet speech, somewhat slowly and
heavily delivered, with "peace" for the key-word. He represented the
nation as now in such a nourishing state, especially in the
possession of a settled and efficient Public Ministry of the Gospel,
and at the same time of ample religious liberty for all, that nothing
more was needed than oblivion of past differences, and a hearty
co-operation of the two Houses with each other, and with himself.
Apologizing for being too ill to discourse more at length, he asked
Lord Commissioner Fiennes to do so for him. The speech of Fiennes was
essentially a continuation in the same strain, but with a
gorgeousness and variety of metaphor, Biblical and poetical, in
description of the new era of peace and its duties, utterly beyond
the bounds of usual Parliamentary oratory even then, and to which
Cromwell and the rest, with all their experience of metaphor from the
pulpit, must have listened with astonishment. "Jacob, speaking to his
son Joseph, said _I had not thought to have seen thy face, and lo!
God hath showed me thy seed, also:_ meaning his two sons, Ephraim
and Manasseh. And may not many amongst us well say some years hence
_We had not thought to have seen a Chief Magistrate again among us,
and lo! God hath shown us a Chief Magistrate in his Two Houses of
Parliament?_ Now may the good God make them like Ephraim and
Manasseh, that the Three Nations may be blessed in them, saying
_God made thee like these Two Houses of Parliament, which two, like
Leah and Rachel, did build the House of God!_ May you do worthily
in Ephrata, and be famous in Bethlehem!" There was more of the same
kind, including a comparison of the new constitution of the
_Petition and Advice_ to the perfected eduction of the orderly
universe out of chaos. It was the speech of a Puritan Jean Paul.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 320-326; Commons Journals Jan. 21 and
Jan. 25, 1657-8. Fiennes's speech is given in full under the last
date, and must have much talked of. Whitlocke also prints it, IV.
315-329.]

Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes's
own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted
themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable
Manasseh. The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or
nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by
oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the _Petition
and Advice_ generally, would be to question the powers of the new
House as defined in the constituting document. The definition had
been rather vague. The meaning had certainly been that the new House
should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same
relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not
merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with
general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty
affairs. This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons
contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break
down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution. They
had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims
of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general
"Clerk of the Parliament," to the possession of certain documents;
but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting
(Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that "some gentlemen were at
the door with a message from the Lords." The message was merely a
request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his
Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the
three nations; but, purporting to be from "the Lords," it cut very
deep. By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved
"That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own,"
i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject. Two more days
passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but
nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo! Sir
Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on
being sworn and admitted to his seat. He had disdained the summons to
the Other House, and his proper place was _here!_ With some
hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of
Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House. He, Thomas Scott, Sir
Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two
others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors. Outside
there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the
Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the
Protector.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 479-495; Carlyle,
III. 328.]

At this point the Protector interposed. On the afternoon of the same
day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were
summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another
speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the
Other House together. It opened with the phrase "_My Lords and
Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament_," to obviate any
objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of
five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of
respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support. But it
expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech,
the pressing reasons for unanimity now. It surveyed, first, the state
of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman
Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause
from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from
the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of
Sweden, who had "adventured his all against the Popish Interest In
Poland." It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this,
if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts
was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme. "You have
accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from
all the world beside. Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch,
nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into
troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves
on _terra firma_." Then, turning to the state of affairs at
home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of
the existing settlement. One Civil War more, he said, would throw the
nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of
the Stuarts, and, if _with_ such a restoration, then with
consequences to some that they did not now contemplate. He made no
express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few
days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on
the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real
work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 329-347.]

The appeal to the Commons was in vain. After three or four more
meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be
returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House. By a vote
of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand
Committee on the subject. This having been done, they resolved, Jan.
30, "That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to
be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made." On this
one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the
oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply "The
Other House," as in the _Petition and Advice_, and the
Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been
employed in the _Petition and Advice_ only as a blank to be
afterwards filled up, and that the proper name would be "The House of
Lords." In one of two divisions on Feb. 3 the votes were eighty-seven
against eighty-six; in the other they were ninety-three against
eighty-seven. These divisions, however, were merely incidental, and
the debate was still going on fiercely on Thursday, Feb. 4. Scott had
spoken and was trying to speak again in defiance of rule, with
Hasilrig backing him, when "Mr. Speaker informed the House that the
Usher of the Black Rod was at the door with a message from his
Highness." Hasilrig seems to have been still on his feet when the
Black Rod, having been admitted, delivered his message: "Mr. Speaker,
His Highness is in the Lords House, and desires to speak with you."
Thither they adjourned, and there his Highness briefly addressed the
two Houses once again (Speech XVIII.). Or rather he addressed both
Houses only through about half of his speech; for, at a particular
point, he turned deliberately to the Commons and proceeded thus: "I
do not speak to these Gentlemen, or Lords, or whatsoever you will
call them; I speak not this to _them_, but to _you_. You
advised me to come into this place [the Second Protectorship], to be
in a capacity by your advice. Yet, instead of owning a thing, some
must have I know not what; and you have not only disjointed
yourselves but the whole Nation, which is in likelihood of running
into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have
sat than it hath been from the rising of the last session to this
day. Through the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that
some people might be the men that might rule all! And they are
endeavouring to engage the Army to carry that thing. And hath that
man been true to this Nation, whosoever he be, especially that hath
taken an oath, thus to prevaricate? These designs have been made
among the Army, to break and divide us. I speak this in the presence
of some of the Army: that these things have not been according to
God, nor according to truth, pretend what you will. These things tend
to nothing else but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may
so call him); and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to
prevent it. That which I told you in the Banqueting House was true:
that there are preparations of force to invade us, God is my witness,
it hath been confirmed to me since, not a day ago, that the King of
Scots hath an Army at the water's side, ready to be shipped for
England. I have it from those who have been eyewitnesses of it. And,
while it is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far
from this place to stir up the people of this town into a
tumulting--what if I said into a rebellion? And I hope I shall make
it appear to be no better, if God assist me. It hath been not only
your endeavour to pervert the Army while you have been sitting, and
to draw them to state the question about a Commonwealth; but some of
you have been listing of persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to
join with any insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come
upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood
and confusion? And, if this be so, I do assign it to this cause: your
not assenting to what you did invite me to by your _Petition and
Advice,_ as that which might prove the Settlement of the Nation.
And, if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I
think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I DO
DISSOLVE THIS PARLIAMENT. And let God be judge between you and
me!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; and Carlyle, III. 348-353.]

Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second
Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end. Cromwell's explanation
of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate. Through the
first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by
the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a
thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a
reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through
the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had
been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but
the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members
and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian
conclave. Fourteen folio pages of the _Commons Journals_ are
the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate
Session. Oliver's Lords can have had little more to do than meet and
look at each other.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived. For seven
months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say,
more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies
in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain.

There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy
Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special
summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the
councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of
the late Parliament retained the name of "Lords." Lord President
Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord
Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl
of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (_alias_
"The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord
Sydenham, Lord Jones (_alias_ "Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr.
Secretary Thurloe: such would have been the minute of a complete
_sederunt_ of the Council when, it resumed duty after the
dissolution of the Parliament. There never was such a complete
_sederunt:_ ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance,
rising sometimes to twelve. Occasionally Cromwell came to one of
their meetings; but generally they transacted business among
themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately. A few
of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest;
Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about
special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness
daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe. His Highness had, moreover, a
private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already
for several years.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Feb. 1857-8 onwards; Thurloe,
II. 224.]

As Cromwell had intimated in his Dissolution Speech, his first labour
after the dissolution was to attack that vast complication of dangers
of which he had already sure knowledge, and which he declared to have
been caused, or brought to a head, by the wretched conduct of the
Commons through their sixteen days of session, and by the positive
treason of some of their number. He had described the dangers as
gathering from two quarters, though they were already interrelated
and would run together at last. There was "the King of Scots' game,"
or the plot of a Royalist commotion in conjunction with a threatened
invasion of the Spanish-Stuartist Army; and there was the design of a
great insurrection of Old Commonwealth's men for a subversion of the
Protectorate and a return to the pure Single-House Republic. Of the
first danger he had said, "I think myself bound before God to do what
I can to prevent it"; the second he had denounced as rebellion,
saying, "I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist
me." For three or four months he was to be engaged in making good
these words; but he had begun already. On February 6, at a great
meeting of the Army-officers in the Banqueting House, he had
discoursed to them impressively for two hours, abashing two or three
that had been tampered with, and receiving from the rest assurances
of their eternal fidelity. Ludlow says that, for several nights
successively, before or after this meeting, Cromwell himself took the
inspection of the watch among the soldiers at Whitehall.[1]

[Footnote 1: 2 Ludlow, 598-600; Godwin. IV. 496-7.]

As always, Cromwell's tenderness towards the Republicans or Old
Commonwealth's men appeared now in his dealings with the new
commotion on that side. Colonel Packer and Captain Gladman, two
disaffected officers in his own regiment of horse, appear to have
been merely dismissed from their commands; and one hears besides of
but a few arrests, with no farther consequences than examination
before the Council and temporary imprisonment. Harrison was again
arrested, the Fifth-Monarchy men having, of course, lent themselves
to the agitation, and Harrison having this time, Whitlocke says, been
certainly "deep in it." Among the others arrested were Mr. John
Carew, the Regicide and Councillor under the Commonwealth, John
Portman, who had been secretary to Blake in the Fleet, a Hugh
Courtney, and John Rogers, a preacher. There seems to have been no
thought of any proceedings against Hasilrig, Scott, Sir Anthony
Ashley Cooper, and the other Anti-Cromwellian leaders in the late
Parliament. This, however, is less remarkable than that, with
information in Cromwell's possession that some of the members of the
Parliament, nominally Commonwealth's men, had actually commissions
from Charles II. and were enlisting persons under such commissions
for any possible insurrection whatever, he had contented himself with
announcing the fact in his Dissolution Speech and so merely
signifying to the culprits that their lives were in his hands.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 599-600; Whitlocke, IV. 330; Godwin, IV.
502-503.]

The Royalist project and its ramifications were really very
formidable. A Spanish Army of about 8000 men, with Charles II. and
his refugees among them, _was_ gathered about Bruges, Brussels,
and Ostend, with vessels of transport provided; and the burst of a
great Royalist Insurrection at home, in Sussex, London, and
elsewhere, _was_ to coincide with the invasion from abroad. The
Duke of Ormond himself had come to London in disguise, to observe
matters and make preparations. He was in London for three weeks,
living in the house of a Roman Catholic surgeon in Drury Lane, till
Cromwell, who knew the fact, generously sent Lord Broghill to him
with a hint to be gone. This was early in March, some days after a
proclamation "commanding all Papists and other persons who have been
of the late King's party or his son's to depart out of the cities of
London and Westminster," and another proclamation forbidding such
persons living in the country to stir more than five miles from their
fixed places of abode. On the 12th of that month the Lord Mayor,
Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London met his Highness
and the Army-officers by appointment at Whitehall, where his Highness
explained to them at length the nature of the crisis, informed them
particularly of the strength of the Flanders army of invasion,
Ormond's visit, &c., and solemnly committed to them the safety of the
City. The response of the City authorities was extremely loyal.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 507-508; Carlyle, III. 353-354; _Merc.
Pol._, of March 11-18, 1657-8, quoted in _Cromwelliana_,
pp. 170-171. The Proclamation ordering Papists and other Royalists
out of London and Westminster, and that ordering such persons in the
country to keep near home, are both dated Feb. 25, 1657-8. There are
copies at the end of one of the volumes of the Council's minutes.]

On the principle that the country could not afford for ever this
periodical trouble of a Royalist Conspiracy, and that some examples
of severity might make the present upheaving the last of the kind,
Cromwell had resolved on a few such examples. His information,
through Thurloe and otherwise, was unerring. He knew, and had known
for some time, who were the members of the so-called "Sealed Knot,"
i.e. that secret association of select Royalists resident in England
who were in closest correspondence with Hyde and the other
Councillors of Charles abroad, and were chiefly trusted by them for
the management of the cause at home, Indeed, Sir Richard Willis, one
of the chiefs of the "Sealed Knot," had for some time been in
understanding with Cromwell, pledged to him by a peculiar compact,
and revealing to him all that passed among the Royalists. Hence,
before the end of April, some of the members of the "Sealed Knot,"
and a number of leading Royalists besides, had been lodged in the
Tower. Among them were Colonel John Russell (brother of the Earl of
Bedford), Colonel John White, Sir William Compton, Sir William
Clayton, Sir Henry Slingsby (a prisoner in Hull since the Royalist
rising of 1654-5, but negotiating there desperately of late to secure
the officers and the town itself for Charles), Sir Humphrey Bennett,
Mr. John Mordaunt (brother of the Earl of Peterborough), Dr. John
Hewit (a London Episcopal clergyman), Mr. Thomas Woodcock, and a
Henry Mallory. It was part of the understanding with Willis that
several of the prisoners, Willis's particular friends, should be
ultimately released. For trial were selected Slingsby, Clayton,
Bennett, Mordaunt, Woodcock, Mallory, and Dr. Hewit. The trials were
in Westminster Hall, in May and June, before a great High Court of
Justice, consisting of all the judges, some of the great state
officers, and a hundred and thirty commissioners besides, all in
conformity with an Act of the late Parliament prescribing the mode of
trial for such prime offences. Five of the seven were either
acquitted or spared: only Slingsby and Dr. Hewit were brought to the
scaffold. They were beheaded on Tower Hill, June 8. Much influence
was exerted in behalf of Hewit; but, besides that he had been deeply
implicated, he had been contumacious in the Court, challenging its
competency, and refusing to plead. Prynne had stood by him, and
prepared his demurrer.--From the evidence collected in Dr. Hewit's
case it appeared that he, if not Ormond, had been calculating on the
co-operation of Fairfax, Lambent, Sir William Waller, and a great
many other persons of name, up and down the country, not included
among those whom Cromwell had seen fit to arrest. As Thurloe
distinctly says, "It's certain Sir William Waller was fully engaged,"
the omission, of that veteran commander from the number must have
been an act of grace. About Lambert the speculation seems to have
been absurd; and, though Cromwell must have known that Fairfax was
now inclining generally towards a Restoration, he cannot have
believed anything stronger at present in his case. There was no
public reference to such high personages; nor, with the exception of
some friendly expostulation by the Protector with a young Mr. John
Stapley of Sussex (son of Stapley the Regicide and Councillor of the
Commonwealth), who _had_ been lured into the business, was any
account taken of the other miscellaneous persons in Hewit's list of
reputable sympathisers. It was enough for Cromwell to know who had
swerved so far, and to have made examples of Hewit himself and
Slingsby.--These two would have been the only victims but for a wild
sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and
Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the
chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a
Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several
times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a
midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the
guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near
the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the
Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands
on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets
with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty
of them London prentices. Six of the principals were condemned July
2, of whom one was hanged, two were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and
three were reprieved. For the prentices there was all clemency.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-870; Godwin, IV. 508-527; _Merc.
Pol_, May 13-20, 1658, quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 171-172;
Thurloe, VII. 25, 65-69, 88-90, 100, and 147-8; Whitlocke, IV. 334.]

Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded
till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had
been over in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the
report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too
strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our
narrative.

The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell's son-in-law since the
preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days
after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the
event himself, had found time even then to write letters of
condolence and comfort to the young man's grandfather, the Earl of
Warwick. The Earl's reply, dated March 11, is extant. "My pen and my
heart," it begins, "were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are
become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation,
and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising
letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand,
express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian
advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me." Then,
after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation,
he concludes with words that have a historical value. "My Lord," he
says, "all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which
gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen
being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship's many weighty and
noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and
honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my
grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a
whole country's, yea three kingdoms'--for which you justly possess
interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand
escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to
exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a
pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!" On the 19th of April
1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl
himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away,
and Cromwell's "prudent, heroic, and honourable managery" had again
been widely confessed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 527-531, where Warwick's beautiful letter is
quoted in full, but where his death is postdated by a month. See
Thurloe, VII. 85.]

Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters
Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in
Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance
having been renewed for another year (March 28, 1658), reinforcements
were sent to the English auxiliary army to fit it for farther work in
the Netherlands. Sir John Reynolds, the first commander of that army,
having been unfortunately drowned in returning to England on a short
leave of absence (Dec. 5, 1657), the Governorship of Mardike had
come into the hands of Major-General Morgan, while the command in the
field had been assigned to Lockhart, hitherto the Protector's
Ambassador only, though soldiering had been formerly his more
familiar business. In conjunction with Turenne, Lockhart had been
pushing on the war, and at length (May 1658) the two armies, and
Montagu's fleet, were engaged in the exact service which Cromwell
most desired, and Lockhart had been always urging. This was the siege
of Dunkirk, with a view to the possession of that town, as well as
Mardike, by the English. To be near the scene of such important
operations, Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin had taken up their
quarters at Calais; and, not to miss the opportunity of such near
approach of the French monarch to the shores of England, Cromwell
despatched his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge on a splendid embassy
of compliment and congratulation. He landed at Calais on the 29th of
May, was received by both King and Cardinal with such honours as they
had never accorded to an ambassador before, and returned on the 3rd
of June to make his report. The very next day there was a tremendous
battle close to Dunkirk between the French-English forces under
Turenne and Lockhart and a Spanish army which had come for the relief
of the besieged town under Don John of Austria and the Prince of
Condé, with the Dukes of York and Gloucester in their retinue. Mainly
by the bravery of Lockhart's "immortal six thousand," the victory of
the French and English was complete; and, though the Marquis of
Leyda, the Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, maintained the defence
valiantly, the town had to surrender on the 14th of June, two days
after the Marquis had been mortally wounded in a sally. Next day,
according to the Treaty with Cromwell, the town was at once delivered
to Lockhart, Louis XIV. himself, who was on the spot, handing him the
keys. Already, while that event was unknown, and merely to
reciprocate the compliment of Falconbridge's embassy to Calais, there
had been sent across the Channel, in the name of Louis XIV., the Duke
de Crequi, first Gentleman of his Bedchamber, and M. Mancini, the
nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, "accompanied by divers of the nobility of
France and many gentlemen of quality." Met at Dover by Fleetwood and
an escort, they arrived in London June 16, and remained there till
the 21st, having audiences with his Highness, delivering to him
letters from Louis and the Cardinal, and entertained by him with all
possible magnificence. While they were there, a special envoy joined
them, announcing the capture of Dunkirk; and so the joy was complete.
There was nothing the French King would not do to show his regard for
the great Protector; and, but for his Majesty's illness at that
moment from small-pox, the Cardinal himself would have come over
instead of sending his nephew. And why should there not be a renewal
of the Treaty after the expiry of the present term, to secure another
year or two of that co-operation of the English Army and Fleet with
Turenne which had led already to such excellent results? What if
Ostend, as well as Dunkirk and Mardike, were to be made over to the
Protector? These were suggestions for the future, and meanwhile new
successes _were_ added to the capture of Dunkirk. Town after
town in Flanders, including Gravelines at last, yielded to Turenne,
or other generals, and received French garrisons, and through the
summer autumn the Spaniards were so beset in Flanders that an
expedition thence for the invasion of England in the interest of
Charles Stuart, or in any other interest, was no longer even a
possibility.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 544-551; where, however, the digest of facts
does not seem accurate in every point. Compare Thurloe, VII. 173-177
and-192-3, and _Merc. Pol._ June 10-17 and June 17-24, 1658 (as
quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 172-173), and Guizot, II 380-388.]

While thus turning to account the alliance with the only Catholic
power with which there could be safe dealing, the Protector clung
firmly to his idea of a League among the Protestant Powers
themselves. If Burnet's information is correct, it was about this
time that he contemplated the institution in London of "a Council for
the Protestant Religion in opposition to the Congregation _De
Propaganda_ _Fide_ at Rome." It was to sit at Chelsea
College: there were to be seven Councillors, with a large yearly fund
at their disposal; the world was to be mapped out into four great
regions; and for each region there was to be a Secretary at £500 a
year, maintaining a correspondence with that region, ascertaining the
state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference.
That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of
Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark,
of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and
there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint
action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May
1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the
Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of
£3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of £500 out
of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty
distressed Bohemian families. Indeed in that month his Highness was
again at white heat on the subject of his favourite Piedmontese. The
Treaty of Pignerol, by which the persecuting Edict of 1655 had been
recalled and liberty of worship again yielded to the poor Vaudois
(ante pp. 43-44), had gradually been less and less regarded; there
were new troubles to the Vaudois from the House of Savoy; there were
even signs of a possible repetition in the valleys of all the former
horrors. How to prevent that was a serious thought with Cromwell amid
all his other affairs; and he made his most effective stroke by an
immediate appeal to the French King. On the 26th of May there went to
his Majesty one of Milton's Latin State Letters in the Protector's
name, adjuring him, by his own honour and by the faith of their
alliance, to save the poor Piedmontese and secure the Treaty which
had been made in their behalf by former French intervention; and on
the same day there went a letter to Lockhart urging him to his utmost
diligence in the matter, and suggesting that the French King should
incorporate the Piedmontese valleys with his own dominion, giving the
Duke of Savoy some bit of territory with a Catholic population in
exchange. Reaching Louis XIV. and Lockhart at the moment of the great
success before Dunkirk, these letters accomplished their object. The
will of France was signified at Turin, and the Protestants of the
Valleys had another respite.[1]

[Footnote 1: Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 133; Letters of Downing, &c. in
Thurloe, Vol. VII.; Council Order Books of date; Carlyle, III.
357-365.]

Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in
Cromwell's attention through all the events and transactions that
have hitherto been noticed, the answer must still be the same for
this as for all the previous portions of his Protectorate. It was
"The Propagation of the Gospel," with all that was then implied in
that phrase as construed by himself.

As regarded England and Wales, the phrase meant, all but exclusively,
the sustenance, extension, and consolidation of Cromwell's Church
Establishment. The _Trustees for the better Maintenance of
Ministers_, as well as the _Triers_ and _Ejectors_, were
still at work; and in the Council minutes of the summer of 1658, just
as formerly, there are orders for augmentations of ministers'
stipends, combinations of parishes and chapelries, and the like.
Substantially, the Established Church had been brought into a
condition nearly approaching Cromwell's ideal; but he had still
notions of more to be done for it in one direction or another, and
especially in the direction of wider theological comprehension. He
did not despair of seeing his great principle of concurrent endowment
yet more generally accepted among those who were really and
evangelically Protestant. Much would depend on the nature of that
Confession of Faith which Article XI. of the _Petition and
Advice_ had required or promised as a standard of what should be
considered qualifying orthodoxy for the Church of the Protectorate.
For such a purpose the Westminster Confession of Faith, even though
its doctrinal portions might stand much as they were, could hardly
suffice as a whole. That Confession was to be recast, or a new one
framed. So the _Petition and Advice_ had provided or suggested;
but it may be doubted whether Cromwell was very anxious for any such
formal definition of the creed of his Established Church. He
preferred the broad general understanding which all men had, with
himself, as to what constituted sound Evangelical Christianity, and
he had more trust in administration in detail through his Triers and
Ejectors than in the application of formulas of orthodoxy. Here,
however, Owen and the other Independent divines most in his
confidence appear to have differed from him. They felt the want of
some such confession and agreement for Association and Discipline as
might suit at least the Congregationalists of the Established Church,
and be to them what the Westminster Confession was to the
Presbyterians. "From the first, all or at least the generality of our
churches," they said, "have been in a manner like so many ships,
though holding forth the same general colours, yet launched singly,
and sailing apart and alone on the vast ocean of these tumultuous
times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct
than that of the word and spirit, and their particular elders and
principal brethren, without association among themselves, or so much
as holding out common lights to others to know where they were." A
petition to this effect, though not in these terms, having been
presented to his Highness, he reluctantly yielded. He allowed a
preliminary meeting of representatives of the Congregational churches
in and about London to be held on June 21, 1658, and circular letters
to be sent out to all the Congregational churches in England and
Wales convoking a Synod at the Savoy on the 29th of September. The
Confession of Faith, if any, to be drawn up by this Synod was not, of
course, to be the comprehensive State Confession foreshadowed in
Article XI. of the _Petition and Advice_, but only the voluntary
agreement of the Congregationalists or Independents for themselves.
In fact, to all appearance, if the harmonious comprehension of
moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, within
one and the same Church, was to be signified by written symbols as
well as carried out practically, this could be done only by a plan of
concurrent confessions justifying the concurrent endowments. Even for
that, it would seem, Cromwell was now prepared. Yet he was a little
dubious about the policy of the coming Synod, and certainly was as
much resolved as ever that Synods and other ecclesiastical assemblies
should be only a permitted machinery for the denominations
severally, and that the Civil Magistrate should determine what
denominations could be soldered together to make a suitable
State-Church, and should supervise and make fast the junctions.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of May 1658; Neal's Puritans, IV.
188 et seq.; Orme's Life of Owen, 230-232.]

There is very striking evidence of Cromwell's attention at this time
to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.--Early in 1657 we
left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner
clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr.
James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle
in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his
Highness's favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante
pp. 115-116). Both deputations had remained on in London
perseveringly, Sharp making interest with the Protector through
Broghill; Thurloe, and the London Presbyterian ministers, while Owen,
Lockyer, and the rest of the Independent ministers, with Lambert and
Fleetwood, took part rather with the agents of the Protesters.
Wearied with listening to the dispute personally, Cromwell had
referred it to a mixed committee of twelve English Presbyterians and
Independents, and at length had told both parties to "go home and
agree among themselves." Sharp, Simpson, and Guthrie had,
accordingly, returned to Scotland before the autumn of 1657; and,
though Gillespie, Warriston, and Argyle were left behind, it was
difficult to say that either party had won the advantage. Baillie,
indeed, writing from Glasgow after Sharp's return, could report that
the Protesters had, on the whole, been foiled, and chiefly by the
instrumentality of "that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young
man, Mr. James Sharp." But, on the other hand, the Protesters had
obtained some favours. As far as one can discern, Cromwell's judgment
as between the two parties of Scottish Kirkmen had come to be that
they were to be treated as a Tory majority and a pugnacious Whig
minority, whose differences would do no harm if they were both kept
under proper control, and that both together formed such a
Presbyterian body as might suitably possess, and yet divide, the
Church of Scotland. For, as has been remarked already, Cromwell, in
his conservatism, had come, on the whole, to be of opinion that the
national clergy of Scotland must be left massively Presbyterian, and
that it would not do to weld into the Scottish Establishment, as into
the English, Baptists, or even ordinary professing Independents, in
any considerable number. This would be bad news for those Scottish
Independents and Baptists who had naturally expected encouragement
under Cromwell's rule, but had already been disappointed. It would be
the common policy of the Resolutioners and Protesters to keep or
drive such erratic spirits out of the Kirk.[1]--Whether because the
long stay of the Scottish deputations in London had turned much of
Cromwell's thoughts towards Scotland, or simply because his own
anxiety for the "Propagation, of the Gospel" everywhere in his
dominions, had led his eyes at last to that portion of Great Britain,
we have now to record one of Cromwell's designs for Scotland worthy
of strong mark even in the total history of his Protectorate. On
Thursday, April 15, 1658, there being present In the Council the Lord
President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, the Earl of Mulgrave, and
Lords Meetwood, Wolseley, Sydenham, Lisle, Strickland and Jones, the
following draft was agreed to:--"Oliver, by the grace of God Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and
the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, To our
well-beloved Council in Scotland greeting: Whereas for about the
space of one hundred years last past the Gospel, blessed be God! hath
been plentifully preached in the Lowlands of the said nation, and
competent maintenance provided for the ministers there, yet little or
no care hath been taken for a very numerous people inhabiting in the
Highlands by the establishing of a ministry or maintenance,--where
the greatest part have scarce heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or
not, though there be some in several parts, as We are informed, that
hunger and thirst after the means of salvation,--and that there is a
concealed maintenance detained in unrighteousness, and diverted from
the right ends to the sole benefit of particular persons; And being
also informed that there hath been much revenue for many years
together in the late King's time and since concealed and detained
from Us by such persons as have no right or title thereunto, and that
some ministers that were acquainted with the Highland language have
in a late summer season visited those parts and been courteously used
by many professing there breathings after the Gospel: We do
therefore, in consideration of their sad condition, the great honour
and glory of God, and the good that may redound to the souls of many
poor ignorant creatures, Will and Require you, with all care,
industry and conveniency, to find out a way and means for the
Planting of the Gospel in those parts, and that, in pursuance thereof
and the better carrying on of so pious a work, our Barons of our
Exchequer in Scotland do search and find out _£600 per annum_
of concealed estates and revenues belonging to Us, or that may belong
to Us and our Successors, and issue forth and pay the same unto such
person or persons as by our said Council shall be nominated and
appointed, out of such concealed rents or any other concealed
revenues whatsoever, quarterly or half-yearly as there shall be
cause, by and with their assent and approbation, to the only use and
end aforesaid. For which so doing this shall be your and their
warrant. Witness Ourself at our Palace at Westminster the ---- day
---- 1658." This does not seem to have sufficed for his Highness; for
on Tuesday, May 4, the Council returned to the subject and prepared
another draft, beginning, "Forasmuch as We, taking into consideration
the sad condition of our People in Scotland living in the Highlands,
for want of the Preaching of the Gospel and Schools of Learning for
training up of youth in Learning and Civility, whereby the
inhabitants of those places in their lives and whole demeanour are
little different from the most savage heathens," and ending with
instructions that £1200 a year, or double the sum formerly proposed,
should be set apart out of still recoverable rents and revenues of
alienated Chaplaincies, Deaneries, &c. of the old Popish and
Episcopal Church of Scotland, and applied to the purposes of
preaching and education in the Highlands. The sum, in the Scotland of
that time, might go as far as £7000 or £8000 a year now, though in
England it would have been worth only about £4200 of present value.
Spent on an effective Gaelic mission of travelling pastors, and on a
few well-planted schools, it might have accomplished a good
deal.[2]--Since the beginning of the Protectorate there had been
some care in finding new funds for the Scottish Universities as well
as for the English. Principal Gillespie of Glasgow had procured a
grant for the University of that city (Vol. IV. p. 565), and
something had been done for University-reform in Aberdeen.
Accordingly, that Edinburgh might not complain, it was now agreed, at
a meeting of Council, July 15, 1658, his Highness himself present; to
issue an order beginning, "Know ye that We, taking into our
consideration the condition of the University of Edinburgh, and that
(being but of late foundation, viz. since the Reformation of Religion
in Scotland) the rents thereof are exceedingly small," and concluding
by putting £200 a year at the disposal of the Town Council of
Edinburgh, "being the founders and undoubted patrons of the said
University," to be applied for University purposes with the advice
and consent of the Masters and Regents. The gift, it appears, had
been promised to Principal Leighton, when he had been in London, some
time before, on one of his yearly journeys for his own bookish
purposes, and certainly neither as Resolutioner nor Protester. "Mr.
Leighton does nought to count of, but looks about him in his
chamber," is Baillie's characteristic fancy-sketch of Leighton when
he was back in Edinburgh and the £200 a year had become a certainty;
but he adds that the saint had shown more temper than usual at
finding that Mr. Sharp had contrived that £100 of the sum should go
to Mr. Alexander Dickson (son of the Resolutioner David Dickson) who
had been recently appointed to the Hebrew Professorship, and whom
Leighton did not like. Indeed Baillie makes merry over the
possibility that the poor £200 a year for Edinburgh might never be
forthcoming, any more than the richer "flim-flams" Mr. Gillespie had
obtained for Glasgow, though in _them_ he confessed a more
lively interest.[3]--Whether Scotland should ever actually handle the
new endowments for her Universities, or the more important £1200 a
year for the civilization of the Highlands, depended on the energy
and ability of his Highness's Scottish Council in finding out ways
and means. Broghill being still absent in England, but on the wing
for Ireland, and Lockhart and others being also absent, the most
active of the Councillors now left in Scotland, in association with
Monk, seem to have been Lord Keeper Desborough, Swinton of Swinton,
and Colonel Whetham. Since August 1656, by the Protector's orders,
_three_ had been a sufficient quorum of the Council. Monk, of
course, was the real Vice-Protector. Scotland had become his home. He
had lived for some years in the same house at Dalkeith, "pleasantly
seated in the midst of a park," occupying all his spare time "with
the pleasures of planting and husbandry"; he had buried his second
son, an infant, in a chapel near; and to all appearance he might
expect to spend the rest of his days where he was, a wealthy English
soldier-farmer naturalized among the Scots, acquiring estates among
them, and keeping them under quiet command.[4]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, III, 836-874 and 577-582; Blair's Life,
333-334; Council Order Books, Feb. 12 and March 5, 1656-7, and Sept.
18, 1657; and a pamphlet published in London in July 1659 with the
title "_The Hammer of Persecution, or the Mystery of Iniquity in
the Persecution of many good people in Scotland under the Government
of Oliver, late Lord Protector, and continued by others of the same
spirit, disclosed with the Remedies thereof, by Robt. Pitilloh,
Advocate._" The Persecution complained of by Mr. Pitilloh, a
Scottish lawyer who had left Presbyterianism, was simply the
discouragement under the Protectorate of such Scottish ministers as
had turned Independents and Baptists. The names of some such are
given: e.g. Mr. John Row, Principal of the College of Old Aberdeen;
Mr. Thomas Charters, Kilbride; Mr. John Menzies, Aberdeen; Mr.
Seaton, Old Aberdeen; Mr. Youngston, Durris; Mr. John Forbes,
Kincardine. "As soon as Oliver was lift up to the throne," says
the writer, "some of the Presbyterian faction were sent for; and, to
ingratiate himself with them, intimating tacitly that it was his
law no minister in Scotland should have allowance of a livelihood
but a National Presbyterian, he ordered that none should have
stipends as ministers ... but such as had certificates from some
four of a select party, being thirty in all, ... of the honest
Presbyterian party."]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]

[Footnote 3: Council Order Books of date, and Baillie, III. 356 and
365-366. Another interesting item of Scottish History under
Cromwell's rule may have a place here, though it belongs properly to
the First Protectorate. In the Council Order Books under date Feb.
17, 1656-7, is this minute:--"On consideration of a report from his
Highness's Attorney General, annexed to the draft of a Patent
prepared by his High Counsel learned, in pursuance of the Council's
order of the 13th of January last, according to the purport of an
agreement in writing presented to the Council under the hand of the
Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that city and of Dr. Purves on
behalf of the Physicians of Scotland, the same being for erecting a
College of Physicians in Scotland: _Ordered_, That it be
offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his
Highness will be pleased to issue his warrant for Mr. Attorney
General to prepare a Patent for his Highness's signature according
to the said Draft."]

[Footnote 4: Council Order Books, Aug. 14, 1656.]

Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry
everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we
have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties
of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents
itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now
concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in
custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved
for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London,
apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at
liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker,
James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his
Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an
account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by
his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler
well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that
he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single
word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his
Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet
advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had
received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers
generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than
Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought
within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or
intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against
liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde
in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that
month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was
agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a
Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his
Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are
divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in
force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing
of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for
the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are
contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected
to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to
themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to
write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious,
blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to
the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of
all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns
Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due
execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to
the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with
Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the
strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited
Press Acts,--to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14,
1643 (that against which Milton had written his _Areopagitica_),
the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647,
the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press
Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the
same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred
nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press
licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning
had never been able to free the Government with which he was
connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood,
Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord
Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to
consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to
report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly
retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less
because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers
were men he had named in his _Defensio Secunda_ as heroes of the
Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the
minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at
once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be
first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all,
it may have been, like some of the previous movements for
press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the
legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself
may have been against pamphlets like _Killing no Murder_ or
publications of the indecent order.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis's _Milton
State Papers_, 143-144 (the last for Malyn's Letter about Nayler).
For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol.
III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.]

O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July
1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and
now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the
Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing
acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in
arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the
very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British
Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those
hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them
towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great
schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies,
in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which
time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to
face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the
chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second
Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657,
had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no
new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current
expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the
Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted
income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was
greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and,
whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the
effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for
subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that
agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what
had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that
should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from
that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals,
in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional
changes in advance of the Articles of the _Petition and Advice_,
though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately
rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not
accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might
not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go
the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life
only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to
the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the
civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament
remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be
amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all
the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a
House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part
and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should
be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were
symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for
life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general
purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and
titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his
Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy
appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late
Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least
two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come
down from the late reign.[1]

[Footnote 1: In continuation of a former note giving a list of the
Knighthoods of Cromwell's First Protectorate so far as I have
ascertained them (ante p. 303), here is a list of the Knighthoods of
the Second:--William Wheeler (Aug. 26, 1657); Edward Ward, of Norfolk
(Nov. 2, 1657); Alderman Thomas Andrews (Nov. 14, 1657); Colonel
Matthew Tomlinson (Nov. 25, 1657, in Dublin, by Lord Henry Cromwell
as Lord Deputy for Ireland); Alderman Thomas Foot, Alderman Thomas
Atkins, and Colonel John Hewson (all Dec. 5, 1657); James Drax, Esq.,
a Barbadoes merchant (Dec. 31, 1657); Henry Bickering and Philip
Twistleton (Feb. 1, 1657-8); John Lenthall, Esq., son of Speaker
Lenthall (March 9, 1657-8); Alderman Chiverton and Alderman John
Ireton (March 22, 1857-8); Colonel Henry Jones (July 17, 1658, for
distinguished bravery at the siege of Dunkirk).-Baronetcies conferred
by Cromwell were the following:--John Read, of Hertfordshire (Juae
25. 1657); the Hon. John Claypole, father of Lord Claypole (July 20,
1657); Thomas Chamberlain (Oct. 6, 1657); Thomas Beaumont, of
Leicestershire (March 5, 1657-8); Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, John
Twistleton, Esq., and Henry Wright, Esq., son of the physician Dr.
Wright (all April 10, 1658); Griffith Williams, of Carnarvonshire
(May 28, 1658); Attorney General Edmund Prideaux and Solicitor
General William Ellis (Aug. 13, 1668); William Wyndham, Esq., co.
Somerset (Aug. 28, 1658). The Baronetcies, being rare, seem to have
been much prized; and that of Henry Ingoldsby raised jealousies (see
letter of Henry Cromwell in Thurloe, VII. 57).--_Peerages_
conferred by Cromwell were not likely, any more than his Knighthoods
and Baronetcies, to be paraded by their possessors after the
Restoration. But Cromwell's favourite, Colonel Charles Howard, a
scion of the great Norfolk Howards, was raised to the dignity of
Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland in Cumberland;
Cromwell's relative, Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, Berks, was
created Baron Burnell, April 20, 1658; and Cromwell, just before his
death, made, or wanted to make, Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount.]

As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since
June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the
chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in
every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords
Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley,
Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few
glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where
also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of
such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and
no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be
expected then before the end of the year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 99, 151-152, et seq.]

Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though
but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will,
intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom,
his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his
ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier
and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and
to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical
breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was
there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the
terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the
death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She
had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal
disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton
Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and
long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the
fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for
business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its
meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present
at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July
22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting
at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day
Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already,
besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord
Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family,
all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of
July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at
Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on
Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions
was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such
injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his
cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day
seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a
dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call
them to account again, which had for some time been growing in
Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested
the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the
meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her
death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as
"of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come
to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's
remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for
them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to
Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of
confinement, attended by his physicians--on one of which days (the
13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made
baronets--he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till
Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others
thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his
illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it
may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he
showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court
Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that
George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his
Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of
condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her
illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to
Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he
had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends.
"Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard,"
says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and,
when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless,
had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again,
but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making,
through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's
fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when
Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could
not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that
his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must
be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself
distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few
days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian,"
i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most
violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome.
Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for
a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself,
though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise
as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the
malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to
Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his
fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and
to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on
at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who
had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion
of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady
Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some
miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new
suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless
with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed
him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall
this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in
consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be
permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax
himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to
tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the
Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in
the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell
could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old
commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at
Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as
he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of
public business of which the Protector, though never more in the
Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he
visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he
was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes
Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The
last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four
days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between
his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent
messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked
crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two
fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday
passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that
extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have
taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that
ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind
raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up
trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders
and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt,
within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an
old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton,
was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping
first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by
the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it
shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the
sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking
in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians,
while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers
that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an
adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had
several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others,
had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as
an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell
at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet
hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are
mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31,
Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector.
Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to
London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a
wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late
at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I
arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by
Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come
to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and
ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such
haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter
that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his
Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of
Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be
removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in
confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry
Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving
this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As
near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself
uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly
as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his
chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the
most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector
from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey
tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to
Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular,
such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency
of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts
of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more
frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which
Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the
summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these
eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and
wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I
may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though
very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee
service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though
others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou
dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them
consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to
deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of
Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy
instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to
trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too;
and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's
sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday,
Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the
Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that
day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward
Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that
the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on
account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their
sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and
great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the
name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie
in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The
letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday
went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full
Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for
the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to
Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of
Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again
noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is;
He will not--" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed
him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave
me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along,
and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in
the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to
be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.'
He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to
himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was
desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he
answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is
to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning,
using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and
peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words,
annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day,
Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary
of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though
the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not
cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew
that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days
there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the
nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later
that matter had been settled somehow.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from July 8 to Sept. 2, 1658,
giving minutes of fifteen meetings at Whitehall or Hampton Court,
Cromwell present at the two first, viz. July 8 (Whitehall), July 15
(Hampton Court), and at the sixth, viz. July 29 (Hampton Court), but
at no other; Thurloe, VII. 309, 320, 323, 340, 344, 354-356,
362-364, 366-367, 369-370; _A Collection of Several Passages
concerning his late Highness, Oliver Cromwell, in the Time of his
Sickness_ (June 9, 1659, "London, Printed for Robert Ibbetson,
dwelling in Smithfield, near Hosier Lane"); _Cromwelliana_,
174-178 (including an abridgment of the last tract); Whitlocke, IV.
334-335; Markham's Life of Fairfax, 373-374; Ludlow, 610; Godwin, IV.
564-575; Carlyle, III. 367-376 (which may well be read again and
again); Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1. 242-245; Life of Newton by
Sir David Brewster (1860), I. 14.]



CHAPTER II.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.

MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, WITH MILTON'S
OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT
SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF
MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.): ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN
AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657): JOHN DRYDEN NOW
ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR'S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH OF MILTON'S DAUGHTER BY HIS
SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON (NOS. CXII.-CXIII.):
ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER TO PETER HEIMBACH:
COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON'S SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD:
HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS DATE: MILTON'S
LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS.
CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN. TWO
ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND
SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST
GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SERIES OF
MILTON'S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE
PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH THEM: INCIDENTS
OF MILTON'S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD: YOUNG GUNTZER'S
_DISSERTATIO_ AND YOUNG KECK'S PHALAECIANS: MILTON'S EDITION OF
RALEIGH'S _CABINET COUNCIL_: RESUMPTION OF THE OLD DESIGN OF
_PARADISE LOST_ AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE POEM: CHANGE FROM
THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED
WIFE.


Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as
before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the
commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in
afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full
Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;[1] but we
hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin
Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the
Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath
may have been administered to him privately, or his old general
engagement may have sufficed.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 13 and 14, 1657.]

Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is
in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young
foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt
from the letter itself:--

  "To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

  "I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their
  surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the
  fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests,
  but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every
  quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to
  me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive
  knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise
  rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to
  assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as
  it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person
  of your uncommon talents.

  "As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and
  request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which
  for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark,
  I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor
  should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you
  refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly
  what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin
  historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the
  Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest
  of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his
  might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that
  the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has
  been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting
  that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with
  reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his
  _Catilinarian War_--as to the extreme difficulty of writing
  History, from the obligation that the expressions should be
  proportional to the deeds--by what method I think a writer of
  History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that
  he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental
  endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer
  of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and
  measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended
  them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste
  speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care
  about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have
  frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown
  in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian
  should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the
  Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows
  truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils
  his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust,
  in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,--to be able to
  throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one
  can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at
  the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either
  elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction
  of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few
  words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such
  are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that
  would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he
  records.

  "But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you
  have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you
  have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than
  yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice
  for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in
  replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon
  my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion.
  Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for
  acquiring wisdom.

  "Westminster: July 15, 1657."

Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, _alias_ young
Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's
stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over
more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education
of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady
Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of
whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine;
and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg
at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.[1] Young Ranelagh, I find,
took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant
to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie
calls him.[2] The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the
conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.[3]

[Footnote 1: Letter of Oldenburg to Boyle, dated April! 5, 1657,
given in Boyle's Works (V. 299).]

[Footnote 2: Letters of Durie in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (II.
174 and 195).]

[Footnote 3: Letter of Oldenburg in Boyle's Works (V. 301).]

They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a
pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had
selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An
Italian master was procured to teach young Jones "something of
practical geometry and fortification"; and, for the rest, Oldenburg
himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good
deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might
be supposed congenial to a nephew of Boyle, and which had become
interesting to himself. "As for us here," wrote Oldenburg to Boyle
from Saumur, Sept. 8, 1657, "we are, through the goodness of God, in
perfect health; and, your nephew having spent these two or three
months we have been here very well and in more than ordinary
diligence, I cannot but give him some relaxation in taking a view of
this province of Anjou during this time of vintage; which, though it
be a very tempting one to a young appetite, yet shall, I hope, by a
careful watchfulness, prove unprejudicial to his health."[1] A good
while before Oldenburg wrote this letter to Boyle both he and his
pupil had written to Milton, and Milton's replies had already been
received. They are dated on the same day, but we shall put that to
young Ranelagh first. It will be seen that Oldenburg must have had a
sight of it from his pupil before he wrote the above to Boyle:--

[Footnote 1: Boyle's Works, V. 299.]

  "To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

  "That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and
  that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly
  reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy
  literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both
  heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition.
  There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in
  harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks,
  and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you
  thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to
  delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that
  juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the
  Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a
  first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult
  best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent
  mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may
  accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell;
  and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured
  as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most
  delightful result.

  "Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:--

  "To HENRY OLDENBURG.

  "I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your
  travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news
  would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for
  your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey
  to be so honourable and praiseworthy.

  "As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been
  called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one
  else had heard it in Charon's boat than you in that of Charenton;
  for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to
  heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world
  awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the
  omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the
  ears,--ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called
  _Reformed_, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring
  in.

  "In not having given copies of my writings to any one that does not
  ask for them, you have done well and discreetly, not in my opinion
  alone, but also in that of Horace:--

    "Err not by zeal for us, nor on our books
    Draw hatred by too vehement care.

  "A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He
  wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only
  one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had
  lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should
  be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you
  trouble and myself expense. But,

    "If chance my load of paper galls your back,
    Off with, it now, rather than in the end
    Dash down the panniers cursing.

  "To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your
  name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or
  care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good
  health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your
  wishes fulfilled.

  "Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."

The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by
Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg's charge must have been copies of the
_Defensio Secunda_ and of the _Pro Se Defensio_. The person
mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of
those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For
Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh
discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He
had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the
Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of
Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and
the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism
generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their
places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which
they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical
rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of
the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were
associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or
pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all
men of celebrity in the French Protestant world--viz. Mestrezat,
Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daillé, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two
first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it
was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited
from Amsterdam. Oldenburg, as we understand, had heard this piece of
news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in
June. He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat--i.e.
as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and
Charenton. Hence the punning phraseology of Milton's reply. He would
rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board
_Charon's/_ boat than by Oldenburg on board the _Charenton_
wherry. Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of
the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we
can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be
averted.--For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had
been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about
the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus
pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took
with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution.
Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving
the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on
account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among
the congregation and even in the consistory itself. One hears of
Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in
the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of
the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one.
In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of
France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into
communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in
Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can
imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so
extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact,
for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus
from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch
Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him
before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now
roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back
into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more
sinned against than sinning.[1]--And so for the present (Aug. 1657)
Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in
France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the
case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that
Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that _his_ influence
should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible,
against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus
to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives
originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into
France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers
from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now
be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation.
Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter
with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the
pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he
says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp.
626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts
on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore,
may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much.

[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus; Brace's Life of Morus, 204 et
seq.--It was deemed of great importance by the English Royalists
that they should be able to report of Charles II., when Paris was
his residence, that he attended the church at Charenton. There is a
letter to him of April 17, 1653, saying his non-attendance there was
"much to his prejudice." (Macray's Cal. of Clarendon Papers, II.
193).]

In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as
the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for
the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release
from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was
again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval
between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission
to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton's resumption of this kind
of duty with the precise time of Meadows's preparations for his new
absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he
should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the
mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and
now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just
begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz.
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a
suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden
(ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten
Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and
forming his first contribution of letters for the Second
Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:--

  (CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _August_ 1657:--His
  Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out
  between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13:
  see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant
  cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable
  WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as
  Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in
  other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson.

  (CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, _August_ 1657:--On his way
  to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would
  have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all
  through the territories of this old and assured friend of the
  English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424,
  480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and
  requests all furtherance for him.

  (CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN, _August_
  1657:--Also to introduce and recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route
  from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through Bremen.

  (CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_
  1657:--Still requesting attention to JEPHSON on his transit.

  (CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK, _August_
  1657:--Still recommending JEPHSON; who, at Lubeck, would be near
  his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus.

  (CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _August_
  1657:--At first this Prince, better known now as "The Great
  Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia," had been on the side of
  Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus,
  he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had
  nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached
  from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already
  explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play
  in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.--As Jephson had
  instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as
  with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him
  formally. "The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in
  war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already
  so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes
  are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself
  a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may
  understand that we also are in the number of those that have the
  highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the
  Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable
  WILLIAM Jephson," &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere
  request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.--The
  relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been
  rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly
  complimentary strain of this letter.

  (CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_
  1657:--All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written
  between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between
  Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set
  out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission,
  two days afterwards.[1] His route was not to be quite the same as
  Jephson's; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore
  recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that
  city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had,
  doubtless, already been made out,--possibly by himself. They are
  not among Milton's State-letters.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, under Aug. 1657.]

  (CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE
  FRENCH KING, _August_ 1657:--There has been presented to the
  Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and
  John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after
  the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called _The
  Speedwell_ ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the
  master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage
  from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into
  Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages
  altogether are valued at £2,500. The petitioners have not been able
  to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the
  Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a
  just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to
  compensation in money. "I therefore request of your Excellency, and
  even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that
  you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your
  office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be
  done." The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the
  Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the
  Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally
  to write to an Ambassador in such a case.

  (CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _Sept._ 1657:--A letter
  of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called
  _The Little Lewis_, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha
  of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to
  Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself;
  instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had
  gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. "The act is
  one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on
  the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes
  of merchants living under the Turk." The Grand-Duke is therefore
  requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody,
  and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored
  to the Sultan.

  (CX.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY (undated)[1]:--This letter to the prince
  on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity
  is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London
  ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his
  Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a
  French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the
  Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is
  estimated at £25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are
  restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in
  any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness.

[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the
Skinner Transcript as No. 120 with the title _Duci Subaudiæ_,
and printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp.
11-12). No date is given in the Skinner Transcript; and the insertion
of the letter here is a mere guess. The place where it occurs in the
Skinner Transcript suggests that it came rather late in the
Protectorate, perhaps even after the present point. The years 1656
and 1657 seem the likeliest.]

  (CXI.) TO THE MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _Sept._ 1657:--This is
  an important letter. "By our last letter to your Highness," it
  begins, "either already delivered or soon to be delivered by our
  agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation
  intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of
  your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you.
  Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on
  your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so
  highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume
  that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more
  willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large.
  And justly so, when news is brought to our ears every day that your
  faith and constancy, though tempted by all kinds of intrigues,
  solicited by all contrivances, yet cannot by any means be shaken,
  or diverted from the friendship of the brave King your ally,--and
  that too when the affairs of the Swedes are in such a posture that,
  in preserving their alliance, it is manifest your Highness is led
  rather by regard to the common cause of the Reformed Religion than
  by your own interests; when we know too that, though surrounded on
  all sides, and all but besieged, either by hidden or nearly
  imminent enemies, you yet, with your valiant but far from large
  forces, stand out with such firmness and strength of mind, such
  counsel and prowess of generalship, that the sum and weight of the
  whole business seems to rest, and the issue of this war to depend,
  mainly on your will." The Protector goes on to say that, in such
  circumstances, he would consider it unworthy of himself not to
  testify in a special manner his sympathy with the Elector and
  regard for him. He apologizes for delay hitherto in treating with
  the Elector's agent in London, JOHN FREDERICK SCHLEZER, on the
  matters about which he had been sent; and he closes with fervent
  good wishes.--Evidently, the recognition of the importance of the
  Elector, and anxiety as to the part he might take in the war now
  involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and part of Germany, had been
  growing stronger in Cromwell's mind within the last few weeks. From
  the language of the letter one would infer either that Cromwell did
  not yet fully know of that treaty of Nov. 1656 by which the Polish
  King had bought off the Elector from the Swedish alliance by ceding
  to him the full sovereignty of East Prussia, or else that since
  then the Elector had been oscillating back to the
  alliance.--SCHLEZER had been in London since 1655, and had lodged
  at Hartlib's house in the end of that year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of Hartlib's in Worthington's Diary and
Correspondence, edited by Crossley (I, 66).]

Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do
consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector
and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at
this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship.

It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the
Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left
too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business
now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its
complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as
Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday
Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood,
Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe,
there was this minute: "Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector,
by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the
absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr.
Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks
_per annum_ be allowed him for the same."[1] Whether this Mr.
Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and
salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative
of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence
because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually
appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say "at last," for had
he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and
a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now
to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in
recognition of Marvell's merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and
of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no
record of Marvell's appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us
himself it was in the year 1657. "As to myself," he wrote in 1672,
"I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor
correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year
1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not
altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of
some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public
employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said
that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters,
nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough
for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September
in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin
Secretaryship. "_Colleague_" we may call him, for his salary was
to be £200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry),
the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet
not _quite_ "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's £200 a year was a
life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place,
Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while
something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign
Secretaryship still encircled Milton.--Just as Marvell had for some
time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a
scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same
condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in. "Received
then of the Right honble. Mr. Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty
pounds: £50: _by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19
October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office--the words
"_by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the
body of the receipt. The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the
cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important
men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian. The poet
left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A. degree,
"about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards
that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert. As he
cannot have got the £50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is
that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly
or literary work for the Council. No harm, at all events, in
remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus
linked to the Protectorate at its centre. Milton was in his
forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his
twenty-seventh.[2]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date.]

[Footnote 2: Marvell's _Rehearsal Transprosed_ (in Mr. Grosart's
edition of Marvell's Prose Works), I. 322; Receipt in Record Office
as quoted; Christie's Memoir of Dryden prefixed to Globe edition of
Dryden's Poetical Works.--That Marvell was appointed Milton's
colleague or assistant precisely in September 1657 is proved by the
fact that his first quarter's salary appears in certain accounts as
due in the following December (see Thurloe, VII. 487).]

On the day on which Dryden received his fifty pounds from Thurloe
there was this entry in the birth-registers of the parish of St.
Margaret's, Westminster: "October 19, 1657, _Katherin Milton, d. to
John, Esq., by Katherin_." The entry may be still read in the
book, with these words appended in an old hand some time afterwards:
"_This is Milton, Oliver's Secretary_." It is the record of the
birth of a daughter to Milton by his second wife, Katharine Woodcock,
in the twelfth month of their marriage. The little incident reminds
us at this point of the domestic life in Petty France; but it need
not delay us. We proceed with the Secretaryship.

Whatever share of the regular work of the Foreign Department may have
been now allotted to Marvell, an occasional letter was still required
from Milton. The following Latin dispatches were written by him
between September 1657 and Jan. 1657-8, when the Protector's Second
Parliament reassembled for its second session, as a Parliament of two
Houses:--

  (CXII.) TO M. DE BORDEAUX, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR, _Oct._
  1657:--This is not in the Protector's name, but in that of the
  President of the Council. It is about the case of a Luke Lucy
  (_Lucas Lucius_) a London merchant. A ship of his, called
  _The Mary_, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by
  tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit
  of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to
  abide a trial at law of this person's claim. Now, his claim was
  preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far
  back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on
  board a ship called _The Santa Clara_. He was not the owner of
  the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio
  Fernandez, for the real owners; there had been a quarrel between
  the partners; and the Parliament had stopped the goods till it
  should be decided by law who ought to have them. Fernandez was
  willing to try the action in the English Courts; but De Lauzon had
  made no appearance there. And now De Lauzon had hit on the
  extraordinary expedient of seizing Lucy's ship and dragging the
  totally innocent Lucy into an action in the French Courts. All
  which having been represented to the Protector by Lucy's petition,
  it is begged that De Lauzon may be told he must go another way to
  work.

  (CXIII.) TO THE DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, _Oct._ 1657:--A
  rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector
  congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks,
  not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but
  also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation
  of all Christians under Turkish servitude." But, under cover of
  this congratulation, he calls to their attention again the case of
  a certain brave ship-captain, Thomas Galilei (_Thomam
  Galileum_). He had, some five years ago, done gallant service
  for the Venetians in his ship called _The Relief_, fighting
  alone with a whole fleet of Turkish galleys and making great havoc
  among them, till, his own ship having caught fire, he had been
  taken and carried away as a slave. For five years he had been in
  most miserable captivity, unable to ransom himself because he had
  no property in the world besides what might be owing to him for his
  ship and services by the Venetian Government. He had an old father
  still alive, "full of grief and tears which have moved Us
  exceedingly"; and this old man begs, and His Highness begs, that
  the Doge and Senate will arrange for the immediate release of the
  captive. They must have taken many Turkish prisoners in their late
  victories, and it is understood that those who detain the captive
  are willing to exchange him for any Turk of equal value. Also his
  Highness hopes the Doge and Senate will pay at once to the old man
  whatever may be due to his captive son. This, his Highness
  believes, had been arranged for after his former application on the
  subject; but probably, in the multiplicity of business, the matter
  had been overlooked. May the Republic of Venice long flourish, and
  God grant them victories over the Turks to the very end!

  (CXIV.) TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS, THE STATES GENERAL OF THE
  UNITED PROVINCES, _Nov._ 1657:--This is a letter of
  commendation of the Dutch Ambassador William Nieuport on his
  temporary return home on private affairs (see ante p. 312). Through
  the "several years" of His Highness's acquaintance with him, he had
  found him of "such fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and justice, in
  the discharge of his office" that he could not desire a better
  Ambassador, or believe their High Mightinesses could find a better
  one. He cannot take leave of him, though but for a short time,
  without saying as much. Throughout his embassy, his aim had been,
  "without deceit or dissimulation," to preserve the peace and
  friendship that had been established; and, so long as he should be
  Dutch Ambassador in London, his Highness did not see "what occasion
  of offence or scruple could rankle or sprout up" between the two
  States. At the present juncture he should regret his departure the
  more if he were not assured that no man would better represent to
  their High Mightinesses the Protector's goodwill to them and the
  condition of things generally. "May God, for His own glory and the
  defence of the Orthodox Church, grant prosperity to your affairs
  and perpetuity to our friendship!"--In writing this letter, Milton
  must have remembered Nieuport's interference in behalf of Morus,
  for the suppression at the last moment, if possible, of the
  _Defensio Secunda_. He had not quite relished that
  interference, or the manner of it. See Vol. IV, pp. 631-633, and
  ante p. 202-203.

  (CXV.) TO THEIR HIGH MIGHTINESSES THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED
  PROVINCES, _Dec._ 1657:--A fit sequel to the foregoing, for it
  is the Letter Credential to GEORGE DOWNING, just selected to be his
  Highness's Resident at the Hague, and so the counterpart of
  Nieuport (ante p. 312). "GEORGE DOWNING," it begins, "a gentleman
  of rank, has been for a long time now, by experience of him in many
  and various transactions, recognised and known by Us as of the
  highest fidelity, probity, and ability." He is, accordingly,
  recommended in the usual manner; and there is intimation, though
  not in language so strong as that of Lockhart's credentials to
  France, that "communications" with him will be the same as with his
  Highness personally. "Communications" only this case, Downing not
  being a plenipotentiary like Lockhart.[1]

[Footnote 1: Downing's father was Emanuel Downing, a settler in
Massachusetts, and his mother was a sister of the celebrated
Governor John Winthrop. Though born in this country (in or near
Dublin in 1623), their son had grown up in New England, much under
the charge of Hugh Peters, who was related to him. He graduated at
Harvard University in 1642. Thence he had come to England, and, from
being a preacher in Okey's regiment of dragoons in the New Model
(1645), had passed gradually into other employments. He had been
Scoutmaster-General to the Army in Scotland (1653), but had been
attached since 1655 to Thurloe's office, and employed, as we have
seen, in diplomatic missions. His appointment to be Cromwell's
minister at the Hague was a great promotion. His salary in the post
was to be £1100 a year, worth nearly £4000 a year now. (Sibley's
_Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University_. I.
28-53, with corrections at p. 583.)]

  (CXVI.) TO THE PROVINCIAL STATES OF HOLLAND, _Dec._
  1657:--While recommending DOWNING to the States General, his
  Highness cannot refrain from recommending him also specially to the
  States of Holland, self-governed as they are internally, and "so
  important a part of the United Provinces" besides.

  (CXVII.) TO FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _Dec._
  1657:--The Protector's last letter to the Grand Duke (ante 372) had
  produced immediate effect. The rascally Englishman Ellis, who, to
  the discredit of English and Christian good faith, had run off
  with the cargo of rice, sugar, and coffee, belonging to the Sultan
  of Turkey, had been arrested in Leghorn. So the Grand Duke had
  informed Cromwell in a letter dated Nov. 10. The present is a reply
  to that letter, and is very characteristic. "We give you thanks for
  this good office; and now we make this farther request,--that, as
  soon as the merchants have undertaken that satisfaction shall be
  made to the, Turks, the said Master be liberated from custody, and
  the ship and her lading be forthwith let off, lest perchance we
  should seem to have made more account of the Turks than of our own
  citizens. Meanwhile we relish so agreeably your Highness's
  singular, conspicuous, and most acceptable good-will towards us
  that we should not refuse the brand of ingratitude if we did not
  eagerly desire a speedy opportunity of gratifying you in return by
  the like promptitude, by means of which we might prove to you in
  very deed our readiness also in returning good offices. Your
  Highness's most affectionate OLIVER."

To the same month as the last three of these Latin State-Letters
belong two more of Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles. The persons to
whom they are addressed are already known to us:

  "To the very distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

  "Having been hindered these days past by some occupations,
  illustrious Sir, I reply later than I meant. For I meant to do so
  all the more speedily because I saw that your present letter, full
  of learning as it is, did not so much leave me room for suggesting
  anything to you (a thing which you ask of me, I believe, out of
  compliment to me, not for your own need) as for simple
  congratulation. I congratulate myself especially on my good fortune
  in having, as it appears, so suitably explained Sallust's meaning,
  and you on your so careful perusal of that most wise author with so
  much benefit from the same. Respecting him I would venture to make
  the same assertion to you as Quintilian made respecting
  Cicero,--that a man may know himself no mean proficient in the
  business of History who enjoys his Sallust. As for that precept of
  Aristotle's in the Third Book of his Rhetoric [Chap. XVII] which
  you would like explained--'Use is to be made of maxims both in the
  narrative of a case and in the pleading, for it has a moral
  effect'--I see not what it has in it that much needs explanation:
  only that the _narration_ and the _pleading_ (which last
  is usually also called the _proof_) are here understood to be
  such as the Orator uses, not the Historian; for the parts of the
  Orator and the Historian are different whether they narrate or
  prove, just as the Arts themselves are different. What is suitable
  for the Historian you will have learnt more correctly from the
  ancient authors, Polybius, the Halicarnassian, Diodorus, Cicero,
  Lucian, and many others, who have handed down certain stray
  precepts concerning that subject. For me, I wish you heartily all
  happiness in your studies and travels, and success worthy of the
  spirit and diligence which I see you employ on everything of high
  excellence. Farewell.

  "Westminster: December 16, 1657."


  "To the highly accomplished PETER HEIMBACH.

  "I have received your letter dated the Hague. Dec. 18 [foreign
  reckoning: the English would be Dec. 8], which, as I see it
  concerns your interests, I have thought I ought to answer on the
  very day it has reached me. After thanking me for I know not what
  favours of mine,--which, as one who desires everything good for
  you, I would were really of any consideration at all,--you ask me
  to recommend you, through Lord Lawrence, to our Minister appointed
  for Holland [DOWNING, whose credential letters Milton had drawn up
  only a day or two before]. I really regret that this is not in my
  power, both because of my very few intimacies with the men of
  influence, almost shut up at home as I am, and as I prefer to be
  (_propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi
  fere, idque libenter, me contineo_), and also because I believe
  the gentleman is now embarking and on his way, and has with him in
  his company the person he wishes to be his Secretary--the very
  office about him you seek. But the post is this instant going,
  Farewell.

  "Westminster: December 18, 1657."

Too much is not to be made of certain phrases in this note. Milton
was declining, in as civil terms as possible, a request which might
perhaps have been troublesome even if the Secretaryship to Mr.
Downing had been vacant; and, though it would have been enough, as
far as Heimbach's present application was concerned, to tell him that
Mr. Downing was already provided, the other reason may have been
thrown in by way of discouragement of such applications in future.
We have had proof that Milton liked Heimbach; but we do not know
what estimate he had formed of Heimbach's abilities. Still, any words
used by Milton about himself are always to be taken as in
correspondence with fact; and hence we are to suppose that, at the
time he wrote, he did keep himself as much aloof as possible from the
magnates of the Council, performing the pieces of work required of
him in his own house, rather than making them occasions for visits
and colloquies. His old and intimate friend Fleetwood, and his friend
Lord President Lawrence, with Desborough, Pickering, Strickland,
Montague, and Sydenham, all of whom had been mentioned by him with
more or less of personal regard in the _Defensio Secunda_ in
1654, were still Councillors, and formed indeed more than half the
Council; but his intercourse with some of these individually may have
been less since his blindness. Then, of the rest, Thurloe was the
real man of influence, the real _gratiosus_ who could carry or
set aside a request like Heimbach's; and, though Milton's
communications with Thurloe must necessarily have been more frequent
than with any other person of the Council, one has an indefinable
impression that Thurloe had never taken cordially to Milton or Milton
to Thurloe. At the date of Milton's note to Heimbach, too,
_gratiosi_ were becoming plentiful all round the Council.
Cromwell's sixty-three writs for the new Upper House had gone out, or
were going out, and in a week or two many more "lords" were to be
seen walking in couples in any street in Westminster. Milton, in
_his_ quiet retreat there, may have had something of all this in
his mind when he wrote to young Mr. Heimbach.

The short second session of the Parliament, with its difficult
experiment of the two Houses once more, and the angry dispute of the
Commons whether the name of "Lords" _should_ be allowed to the
Other House, had come and gone (Jan. 20--Feb. 4, 1657-8), and of
Milton or his thoughts and doings through that crisis we have no
trace whatever. Our next glimpse of him is just after the moment of
the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, when Cromwell was
addressing himself again, single-handed, to the task of grappling
with the double danger of anarchy within and a threatened invasion
from without. The glimpse is a very sad one.

"_Feb._ 10, 1657-8, _Mrs. Katherin Milton_," and again
"_March_, 20, 1657-8, _Mrs. Katherin Milton_," are two
entries, within six weeks of each other, in the burial registers of
St, Margaret's, Westminster. They are the records of the deaths of
Milton's second wife and the little girl she had borne him only in
October last. Which entry designates the mother and which, the child
we should not know from the entries themselves; but a sentence in
Phillips's memoir of his uncle settles the point. "By his second
wife; Katharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney," says
Phillips, "he had only one daughter, of which the mother, the first
year after her marriage, died in childbed, and the child also within
a month after." The first entry, therefore, is for the mother, and
the second for the child. The mother died exactly at the time of the
dissolution of the Parliament, and not in child-birth itself, but
nearly four months after child-birth; and the little orphan,
outliving the mother a short while, died at the age of five months.
And so Milton was again left a widower, with his three daughters by
the first marriage, the eldest in her twelfth year. His private life,
for eighteen years now, had certainly not been a happy one; but this
death of his second wife seems to have been remembered by him ever
afterwards with deep and peculiar sorrow. She had been to him during
the short fifteen months of their union, all that he had thought
saintlike and womanly, very sympathetic with himself, and maintaining
such peace and order in his household as had not been there till she
entered it. And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must
grope on, and in which things must happen as they would.

Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his
nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or
even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship,
but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary
Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash,
which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous
form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism
and its belongings. The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ by his
younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and
Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger
nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in _The Sportive Wit or
Muses' Merriment_, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther
in the same direction. By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips
had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known
among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian. We have no express
publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been
scribbling anonymously. Of the literary industry of his more sedate
and likeable elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence. _A
New World of Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Terms,
Etymologies, Definitions, and Perfect Interpretations, of the proper
Significations of hard English words throughout the Arts and
Sciences_: such is the title of a folio volume published by him in
1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards accused of
having plagiarized largely from the _Glossographia_ of one
Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year. In this piece of
labour, which was doubtless a bookseller's commission, he must have
had, the question of plagiarism apart, his uncle's thorough
good-will; but it cannot have been the same with his _Mysteries of
Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, as they
are managed in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and
other eminent Places_. That performance, which appeared in August
1658, with a Preface "To the Youthful Gentry," and which must have
been in progress at our present date, was much more in the vein of
his brother John, and indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel
Brooke, the bookseller who had published John's _Satyr against
Hypocrites_, and also the more questionable _Sportive Wit or the
Muses' Merriment_. "The book," says Godwin, "is put together with
conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy, and is entitled to no
insignificant rank among the multifarious productions which were at
that time issued from the press to debauch the manners of the nation
and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary conversations and
forms of address for conversation, poems, models of letters,
questions and answers, an Art of Logic with examples from the poets,
and various instructions and helps to the lover for the composition
of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross provocations to
libertinism and vice which everywhere occur in the book, it might be
mentioned as no unentertaining illustration of the manners of the men
of wit and gallantry in the time when it was published." To Godwin's
description we may add that the book includes a Rhyming Dictionary,
"useful for that pleasing pastime called Crambo," also a collection
of parlour-games, and a number of other clever things. The poems and
songs interspersed with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted,
some of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were Phillips's
own. Of the model phrases or set expressions which form one of the
prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of
gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,--"With your ambrosiac
kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can
enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk
in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton
dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came
within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a
frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic
restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother;
and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could
have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton,
very attentively.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_ (1815), 49-57,
and 139-140; Wood's _Ath._ IV. 760-769. I have not myself
examined Phillips's _New World of Words_; but I have looked at
the Thomason copy of his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_,
where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little
too severe in his account of it.]

During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two
months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's
State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on
the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the
Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this
period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred
from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued
Secretaryship:--

  (CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _March_ 30,
  1658:--The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last
  of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the
  Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot,
  and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic
  ice, and takes an island without shipping,--Island of Fünen,
  across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea
  _open_, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from
  Fünen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of
  ice; and takes Zealand itself--to the wonder of mankind." Such, in
  Mr. Carlyle's summary (_History of Frederick the Great, i. 223,
  edit._ 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his
  Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between
  the two Powers, called _The Peace of Roeskilde_, by which
  Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous
  terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had
  been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but
  also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this
  letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell's name:--"Most serene
  and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,--The Letter of
  your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought
  Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account,
  and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be
  affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King
  of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or
  interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your
  sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much
  bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was
  really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the
  war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could
  in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long
  ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer
  merely of the letters of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an
  easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship
  and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in
  particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole
  adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope,
  so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of
  Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength
  otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now
  have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for
  conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for
  themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave
  King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to
  pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have
  lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the
  King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God's
  help, in their own crushing overthrow."[1] From this letter it will
  be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially
  that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the
  missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been
  accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the
  association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these
  two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain.
  How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment
  everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's
  letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned
  Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by
  a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with
  other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture,
  and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord
  forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our
  wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches,
  civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and
  Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the
  Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if,
  on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles
  Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their
  associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league.
  It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the
  Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."[2] Very much in the
  direction of Baillie's hopes were Cromwell's envoys, Meadows,
  Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months.
  Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and
  disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in
  _Thurloe_; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing
  gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was
  relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that
  mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows
  (Thurloe, VII. 63-64).

[Footnote 1: The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually
careless. It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace
between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place,
but only to be hoped for by Cromwell. In fact, Phillips's
translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, III. 371.]

  (CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _April_ 7, 1658:--A John
  Hosier, master of a ship called _The Lady_, had been swindled
  in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has
  moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight
  belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani
  at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred
  from appearing there by threats of personal violence. "We therefore
  request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also
  to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your
  accustomed justice."

  (CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 26, 1658:[1]--This is a
  very momentous letter. It is Cromwell's appeal to the French King
  in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:--"Most
  serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--Your Majesty
  may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for
  the renewing of our League [April 1655]--the highly auspicious
  nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting
  advantages to both nations and much damage to the common
  enemy--there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the
  Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we
  commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity
  and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was
  wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your
  authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail
  with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and
  States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters,
  interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody
  slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last
  granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with
  the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your
  town of Pignerol--hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched
  and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal
  might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they
  were to be stood to. They are _not_ stood to; for the promise
  of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false
  interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their
  ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion;
  new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads,
  whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all
  they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are
  secretly being got ready against them, and those among them who
  profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a
  time, so that all things now again seem to point to an
  exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were
  left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to
  be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that
  right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us,
  by that most sacred ornament of the title of _Most Christian_;
  that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not
  say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come
  upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or
  into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy
  assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and
  imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to
  save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage
  slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such
  a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of
  yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently,
  thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for
  themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own
  cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the
  territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ,
  to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois
  submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer
  of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguières, through those
  parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into
  Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The
  instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of
  your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly
  provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be
  handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which,
  by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them
  into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore;
  as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the
  grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather
  than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that
  could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at
  least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them
  so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to
  drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such
  a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of
  those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise
  of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of
  soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be
  yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find
  the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and
  doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more
  favouring and propitious to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own
  glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings,
  and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!" The
  letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English
  auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver
  it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his
  own counsels.[2] It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or
  near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it
  is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must
  have exerted himself in the composition.

[Footnote 1: The exact day of the month is not given either in the
Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but it is
determined by a letter of Cromwell's to Ambassador Lockhart on the
same business. The two letters went together (see Carlyle, III.
357-365).]

[Footnote 2: Letter of Cromwell to Lockhart of date May 25, 1658,
printed by Mr. Carlyle, _loc. cit._, from the Ayscough MSS.]

  (CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May_ 26,
  1658:[1]--On the same great business as the last.--"Illustrious and
  most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:--Concerning the Vaudois,
  your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable
  things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion's sake,
  besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because
  of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous
  to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We
  have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good
  while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of
  Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of
  his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that
  all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been
  rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which
  violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the
  Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless
  they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie
  down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself
  forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same
  havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and
  children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if
  it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can
  the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet
  no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with
  furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has
  brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense
  of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly
  not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren,
  cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety
  of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by
  too great an interval of space, have heartily performed all we
  could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do
  you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries
  of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies,
  consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that
  betimes, what is now _your_ duty; on the question of what
  assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your
  neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your
  own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of
  Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see
  you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in
  the same by-past year, _have_ seen you destroyed by an
  intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to
  the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very
  oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that
  remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their
  safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the
  next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we
  advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on
  our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to
  do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or
  for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken
  all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God
  grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a
  settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn
  all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of
  His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!"

[Footnote 1: The day of the month not given either in the Printed
Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but we may date by the last
letter.]

  (CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of
  _May_ 1658:[1]--This is a group of four letters, two to the
  King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid
  embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law,
  Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that
  the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp.
  340-341):--(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most
  august Friend and Ally,--Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my
  son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and
  desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and
  testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your
  Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his
  society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt
  but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most
  prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return
  to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in
  a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind
  and wish. And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to
  bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes,
  yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your
  Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured
  and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe,
  and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the
  Christian world."--(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord
  Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the
  French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact,
  and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also.
  "Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he
  hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your
  favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain
  and guard such great affairs in that kingdom." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.
  "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--As
  soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and
  was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of
  pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope
  that now in a short time, by God's good assistance, the sea will be
  less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your
  Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of
  the Spaniard,--one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden,
  another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the
  most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to
  congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to
  explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty's
  achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all
  wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty's self safe
  and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the
  Christian world." (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his
  son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his
  French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to
  convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, "by whose
  fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought
  about that French business is so prosperously managed against the
  common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in
  neighbouring Flanders." It is clear that all these letters cannot
  have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two
  letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent
  incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be
  guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord
  Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own
  curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his
  whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that
  afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an
  avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell's own name, and
  letters 3 and 4 were then substituted. Perhaps, however, there was
  no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did
  actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the
  notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not
  used.

[Footnote 1: Exact day not given either in Printed Collection or in
Skinner Transcript; but the occasion fixes the time pretty closely.]

  (CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _May_ 1658:--This is
  in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to
  the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).--His Highness has
  been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet
  off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on
  which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke.
  Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to
  Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water;
  English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul,
  have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been
  fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the
  Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, "let
  your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued
  your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries
  from-good-will."

  (CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. _June_
  1658:--On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid
  return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the
  splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M.
  Mancini, the Cardinal's nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself
  would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment
  from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there
  came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had
  for some time been intently expecting--the capture of Dunkirk. On
  the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely
  delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that
  the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular.
  Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event
  to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent
  hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M.
  Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate
  to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16,
  when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when
  they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. "Most serene and
  potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--That your Majesty has
  so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my
  mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of
  your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a
  manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and
  dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on
  which account, in their name, I duly return your Majesty my most
  cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our
  conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on
  June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I
  rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in
  that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you,
  or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour.
  As for Dunkirk, your Majesty's hopes for the near surrender of
  which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of
  being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now
  actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will
  presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city
  only,--the effecting of which result by the capture of the other
  town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your
  Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your
  Majesty's farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in
  that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of
  such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the
  word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de
  Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to
  the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish." (2.) To
  CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell's
  correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal
  then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning
  his long career of _Grand Monarque_ at the age of twenty,
  while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that
  ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the
  minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in
  1642. This letter of Cromwell's to the Cardinal is even more
  interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:--"Most
  Eminent Lord,--While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King,
  who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and
  congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent
  most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same
  time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to
  testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in
  all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and
  highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had
  any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that
  person in preference,--adding a reason which, coming from the
  judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise
  and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in
  blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me.
  Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no
  stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth
  and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant
  examples in you, by which they may learn how to administer kingdoms
  and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence
  may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of
  the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a
  distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be
  wanting." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.[1] A more formal letter than the
  last, acknowledging the French King's own intimation that Dunkirk
  had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. "That
  Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by
  your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard
  by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did
  it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have
  been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had
  abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of
  that letter, I have all confidence,--the master in ordinary of your
  Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther
  weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of
  his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he
  does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let
  your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of
  either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains
  of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For
  the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the
  very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty
  grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such
  congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is
  on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will
  suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will
  all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance
  fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to
  desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details,
  had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or
  answer your opinion of him."--It is curious, after these two last
  letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell
  refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain
  expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which
  Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in
  a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of
  Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the
  delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he
  anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship
  of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of
  money, adds,--"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal]
  willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and
  Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call _un
  si bon morceau_, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to
  his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general,
  notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this
  place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also
  exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than
  I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to
  Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be
  God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to
  his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to
  Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called "The Key of
  Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the
  Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of
  Cromwell's great acts.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed
Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No.
102 there), and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton
Papers_, 7-8.]

[Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection. It
stands as No. 103 in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by
Hamilton, p. 8.]

[Footnote 3: Thurloe, VII. 173 et seq.]

  (CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _June_
  1658:--Since Cromwell's last letter by Milton to this heroic
  Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace
  with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern
  Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and
  Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most
  perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and
  Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the
  object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome
  negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and
  every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full
  burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the
  prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows,
  Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with
  their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of
  affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:--"Most serene
  and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,--As often as we look
  upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common
  enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how
  necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would
  be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these
  adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be
  conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally
  your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal,
  that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would
  have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in
  such a condition and position that the League could have been
  ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the
  other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they
  first treated of the matter with Us. Nor, truly, were they wanting
  to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this
  matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been
  so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though
  several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form
  new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and
  routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy,
  that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto
  been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire
  strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What
  was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have
  already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this
  direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty's interests, we
  shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with
  you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be
  opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in,
  your Majesty's most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire
  with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own
  Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very
  long one."--So far as Milton's state-letters show, this is the last
  of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden.
  But, in _Thurloe_ and elsewhere, there are farther traces of
  the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest
  which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some
  weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither
  in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy,
  Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all
  Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with
  Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen.
  His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to
  explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near
  Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell
  only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the
  world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers
  for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as
  ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken
  place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was
  the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis
  XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted _Imperator
  Romanorum_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning,
but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe
have to be rectified.]

  (CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _August_ 1658:--A John
  Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of
  property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been
  tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his
  Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been
eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and
nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but
forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years
and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship,
it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his
Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the
Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is
rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the
Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the
post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the
Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State
in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a
blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the
increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for
the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the
secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's
secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by
ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which
were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and
at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for
the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was
very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters
about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or
sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued
to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there
been a series of more important letters from Milton's pen than those
just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months
of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or
three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that,
even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not
wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest
to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese
Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm?
Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on
his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to
introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous
return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be
acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with
the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event
there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the
Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the
delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex
message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand
eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles
Gustavus struggling with _his_ peculiar difficulties, to give
him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that
they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to
lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and
the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero?
Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's
despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the
Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly
knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts
into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.[2]

[Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton,
from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell,
that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the
Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as
possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The
exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for
Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner
Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not
worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but
only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal--whether for those
under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear,
though perhaps that might be ascertained. The scrap may be numbered
at this point, though inserted only as a note:--(CXXXIII.) "We,
Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the
Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such
steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately
deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by
birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under
protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will
deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James
Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge,
that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we
engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a
return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects
of France."]

[Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for
the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more
important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea
that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him. In
the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private
injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there
Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the
facts in his own expressions. But there was not a man about the
Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters
as we now have them. My idea as to the way in which they were
composed is that, on each occasion, Milton learnt from Thurloe, or
even in a preappointed interview with the Council, or with Cromwell
himself, the sort of thing that was wanted, and that then, having
himself dictated and sent in an English draft, he received it back,
approved or with corrections and suggested additions, to be turned
into Latin. Special Cromwellian hints to Milton for the letter to
Louis XIV, on the alarm of a new persecution of the Piedmontese
(ante pp. 387-9) must have been, I should say, the causal reference
to a certain pass as the best military route yet into Italy from
France, and the suggestion of an exchange of territories between
Louis and the Duke of Savoy so as to make the Vaudois French
subjects. The hints may have been given to Milton beforehand, or
they may have been [n]otched in by Cromwell in revising Milton's
English draft.]

The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of
Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell's death, and
the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less
than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the
diplomacies proper to Milton's office round the dying Protector.
Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his
colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell.

The Dutch Lord-Ambassador Nieuport, after having been absent in
Holland since November 1657, had been sent back by their High
Mightinesses, the States-General, to resume his post. The
complication of affairs in northern Europe by the movements of
Charles Gustavus, and the menacing attitude of that King not only
pretty generally all round the Baltic, but also towards the Dutch
themselves, had rendered Nieuport's renewed presence in London very
necessary. Newly commissioned and instructed, he made his voyage, and
was in the Thames on the night of the 23rd of July, though too late
to reach Gravesend that night. The arrival of an ambassador being
then an affair of much punctilio, he sent his son up the river in a
shallop, to inform Mr. Secretary Thurloe and Sir Oliver Fleming, the
master of the ceremonies, and to deliver to Thurloe a letter
requesting that the pomp of a public reception might be waived and he
might be permitted to take up his quarters quietly in the Dutch
Embassy, still furnished and ready, just as he had left it. Young
Mynheer Nieuport, coming to London on this errand, found things there
in unexpected confusion,--the Lord Protector at Hampton Court,
attending the death-bed of his daughter Lady Claypole, and leaving
business to itself, and Secretary Thurloe also out of town.
Fortunately, Thurloe was not then at Hampton Court, but only at his
own country-house two miles off. Thither young Nieuport rode at once.
He met Thurloe coming in his coach to Whitehall; whereupon Thurloe,
after all proper salutations, informed him that his Highness had
already heard of his father's arrival and had given orders for his
suitable reception. Meanwhile, would young Mr. Nieuport come into the
coach, so that they might drive back to Whitehall together? Arrived
at Whitehall, Thurloe immediately gave orders for the preparation of
one of his Highness's barges to be sent down to Gravesend, "with a
gentleman called Marvell, who is employed in the despatches for the
Latin tongue." Apparently this gentleman was on the spot, and was at
once introduced by Thurloe to young Nieuport. Then young Nieuport
went down the river by himself, rejoining his father at Gravesend,
and bringing him a letter from Thurloe, to the effect that his
Highness was very anxious that his reception should be in all points
such as became the respect due to himself and his office, but that
Mr. Marvell would come expressly to discuss and arrange particulars
and that whatever Lord Nieuport should finally judge fitting should
also be satisfactory to his Highness. That was on the night of
Saturday, the 24th. Next day, Sunday the 25th, Marvell was duly down
at Gravesend in the barge, actually before morning-sermon, as the
Ambassador himself informs us, bidding the Ambassador formally
welcome in the Lord Protector's name, and sketching out for him "a
public reception, with barges and coaches, and also an entertainment,
such as is usually given to the chiefest Ambassadors." Lord Nieuport
still preferring less bustle on his own account, and thinking also
that a great public reception would be unseemly at a time when "the
Lord Protector and the whole Court were in great sadness for the
mortal distemper of the Lady Claypole," Marvell remained in waiting
on him at Gravesend that day, and in the night brought him up to town
in his barge _incognito_. It was thought that his Highness might
possibly be able to come from Hampton Court to Whitehall the next day
or the next; but, that chance having passed, it was arranged that the
Ambassador should himself go to Hampton Court, and have an audience
with the Protector at three o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the
29th. Accordingly, at eleven o'clock on that day the master of the
ceremonies was at the Dutch Embassy, with three six-horse coaches;
and, having been driven to Hampton Court, the Ambassador was received
by Thurloe "at the second gate of the first court," and taken to his
Highness's room. After interchange of compliments, his Highness
expressed his regret "that his own indisposition, and other domestic
inconveniencies, had hindered him from coming to London"; and then,
the general company having been dismissed, and only Lord President
Lawrence, Lord Strickland, and Thurloe, remaining in the room, there
was some talk on business. Various matters were mentioned, but only
generally, Nieuport not thinking it fit to trouble his Highness with
"a large discourse," and his Highness indeed intimating that he did
not find himself well enough to talk much. But all was very amicable,
and at the end of the interview Cromwell, saying he hoped to be in
London next week, insisted on conducting the Ambassador to the door
of the antechamber, leaving Lawrence, Strickland, and Thurloe, to do
the rest by attending him through the galleries back to the coaches.
On that same day there had been a Council-meeting at Hampton Court,
the last at which Cromwell was present. Possibly Dutch business was
discussed there, and also at the next meeting of Council, which was
at Whitehall on the 3rd of August, and without Cromwell. On the 5th,
at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell
not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p. 355), a minute on
Dutch business of a very ominous character. Cromwell's heart was now
with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch;
and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport
would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to
their High Mightinesses. But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole
was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of
Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and
dimmer in his regards. Perhaps to the last moment of his
consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was
the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother
was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the
Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector
avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again
invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time,"
wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the
morning of August 27. Cromwell, therefore, had learnt that fact
before his death, and it must have mingled with his thoughts in his
dying hours. In these very hours, we find, not only was Ambassador
Nieuport close at hand again, for Dutch negotiations in which the
fact would naturally be of high moment, but Herr. Schlezer also, the
London agent of the Brandenburg Elector, was at the doors of the
Council office, with express letters from the Elector, which he was
anxious to deliver to Thurloe himself, in case even at such a time
some answer might be elicited. Thurloe choosing to be inaccessible,
he had left the letters with Mr. Marvell. Thus, twice in the last
weeks of Oliver's Protectorate we have a distinct sight of Marvell in
his capacity of substitute for Milton. He barges down the Thames very
early on a Sunday morning to salute an Ambassador in the name of the
Protector and bring him up to town in a proper manner; and he
receives in the Whitehall office a troublesome diplomatic agent, who
has come with important despatches.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII 286 and 298-299 (Letters of Nieuport to
the States-General), 362 (Letter of Thurloe to Henry Cromwell), and
373-374 (Latin letter of Schlezer to Thurloe, two days after
Cromwell's death).]

Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are
the productions of Milton's pen we have hitherto registered as
belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three
incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have
yet to be noticed before we leave the period.

Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a
solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"_Dissertationis ad quoedam
loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Præsids Dn. Jacobo
Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t.
Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb.
Christophorus Güntzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici
Spoor, 1657_" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages
of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of
James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical
Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the
occasion, Christopher Güntzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on
the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657").
Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with
a publication of his in 1653, also entitled _Dissertatio ad loca
quædam Miltoni_, and appended then to certain
_Exercitationes_ concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic
jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have
retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among
those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he
is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject
by a Christopher Güntzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young
Güntzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already;
for this is but the "second part" of his performance. The "first
part" I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The
"second part" is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with
the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and
academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and
not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces
of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of
the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the
liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalæcians signed
"Christianus Keck." Phalæcians are not to be attempted in English;
but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose,
the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:--

  "What Salmasius, he whom all men hailed as
  Learning's prodigy, Phoenix much too big for
  His own late generation, ay or any old one,
  Wrote so bravely against the sin of Britain,
  Then all wet with the royal bloodshed in her,
  Milton answered with pen that, be it granted,
  Showed vast genius, nor a mind without some
  Real marks of artistic cultivation,
  Though, O shame! patronizing such an outrage.
  Milton's pen is refuted next by Schaller's,--
  Quite a different pen and more respected."

Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their
eminent Professor Schaller's Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton
had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been
of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and
cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now
young Güntzer, the accomplished young Güntzer, has placed himself by
the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable
torch of truth.[1]--In all probability, Milton never heard of such a
trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and
his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and
corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was
then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in
Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was
that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the
publication of his _Defensio Prima_, but which, as Aubrey tells
us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. "He was mightily
importuned," says Aubrey, "to go into France and Italy. Foreigners
came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great
preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several
foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O.
Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and
chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at
home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we
have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign
preferment of which Aubrey speaks.

[Footnote 1: The copy I have seen of Güntzer's _Dissertatio_ is
in the British Museum Library. The figure "17" is inserted in MS.
after the word "_die_" in the title-page.]

In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was
published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this
title-page: "_The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of
Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and
Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And
illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations.
By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John
Milton Esq._-Quis Martem tunicâ tectum Adamantinâ digne
scripserit?-_London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at
the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end,
1658."_ Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into
twenty-six chapters, is a note "_To the Reader,"_ as follows:
"Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter
Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance
among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a
kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author
from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of
his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me
for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected
several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."[1]

[Footnote 1: There were subsequent reprints of Raleigh's _Cabinet
Council_ from this 1658 edition by Milton, with changes of
title. See Bohn's Lowndes under _Raleigh_]

By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life
under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its
close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called
Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed
this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after
having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was
left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he
resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell
back when he had nothing else to do,--his History of England and his
compilations for a Latin Dictionary,--Phillips adds, "But the highth
of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly
employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem,
entitled _Paradise Lost_, the noblest," &c. In this passage,
however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his
recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655
and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information (1680), originally
derived from Phillips himself, is that _Paradise Lost_ was begun
"about two years before the King came in," i.e. about May 1658. This
would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately
following the death-of Milton's second wife. In such a matter exact
certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that
the resumption of _Paradise Lost_ was an event of the latter
part of Cromwell's Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the
poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster,
while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters
for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched
from the house into St. James's Park across part of what is now the
ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took
distinct shape in Milton's mind, and here he began the great
dictation.

Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after
his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred
it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition
with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a
sacred tragedy, one with the precise title _Paradise Lost_, and
another with the title _Adam Unparadised_ (Vol. II. pp. 106-108,
and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years
the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to
return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his
memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and
destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten
lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present
_Paradise Lost_. He had imagined, for the opening of his
tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and
alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and
the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan,
in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin,
thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:--

  "O thou that with surpassing glory crowned,
  Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
  Of this new World,--at whose sight all the stars
  Hide their diminished heads,--to thee I call,
  But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
  O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
  That bring to my remembrance from what state
  I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,
  Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
  Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King!"

And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with
the resolution, made natural by Milton's literary observations and
experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be
abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written
originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of
the Epic.[1] With our present _Paradise Lost_ before us, we can
see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan
must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our
earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the
transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own
prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe,
newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no
evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the
midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue
sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and
mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his
conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this
MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL
from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and
surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and
turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had
been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the
Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming point, was the great
EMPYREAN or HEAVEN of HEAVENS, the abode of Angels and of Eternal
Godhead. Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about
that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined,
representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses
those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might
bear on the terrestrial story. It must dare also into those
infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general
story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge,
through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World,
upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the
title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme.

[Footnote 1: Phillips's words in quoting these lines are, "In the
Fourth Book of the Poem there are six [he says _six_, but quotes
all the _ten_] verses which, several years before the Poem was
begun, were shown to me and some others as designed for the very
beginning of the said Tragedy." These words, if the Epic was begun in
1658, might carry us back at farthest to about 1650 as the date when
the ten lines were in existence; but, besides that Phillips's
expression is vague, we have Aubrey's words in 1680 as follows:--"In
the [4th] Book of _Paradise Lost_ there are about six verses of
Satan's exclamation to the Sun which Mr. E. Phi. remembers about
fifteen or sixteen years before ever his Poem was thought of; which
verses were intended for the beginning of a Tragoedie, which he had
designed, but was diverted from it by other business." This, on
Phillips's own authority, would take the lines back to 1642 or
1643; and that, on independent grounds, is the probable date.
Hardly after 1642 or 1643 can Milton have adhered to his original
intention of writing _Paradise Lost_ in a dramatic form.]

  "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
  Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
  Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
  With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
  Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
  Sing, Heavenly Muse"--

Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now
all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry
him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could
already promise in it

  "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."

It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such
meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable
instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have
been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to
himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still,
the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep,
and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into
sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of
Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its
luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation
by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of
any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him
officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is
wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again
vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems
somehow all a mistake, and the household is _not_ desolate. A
radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him.
He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not
dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had
never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was
by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is
again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was
certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts;
but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream,
however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the
last of all his Sonnets:--

    "Methought I saw my late espoused saint
      Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
      Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
      Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.
    Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
      Purification in the Old Law did save,
      And such as yet once more I trust to have
      Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
    Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.
      Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
      Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
    So clear as in no face with more delight.
      But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
      I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."[1]

[Footnote 1: We do not know the exact date of this Sonnet; but the
internal evidence decidedly is that it was written not very long
after the second wife's death, and probably in 1658. The manuscript
copy of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is in the hand of a
person who was certainly acting as amanuensis for Milton early in
1660 and afterwards.]



BOOK III.

SEPTEMBER 1660--MAY 1660.

HISTORY:--THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY,
MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.

  RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659.

  THE ANARCHY:--

    STAGE I.:--THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659--OCT. 13, 1659.

    STAGE II.:--THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659--DEC.
      26, 1659.

    STAGE III.:--SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH
      FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1659-60.

  MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE
    RESTORATION.

BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S
PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.



CHAPTER I.

First Section.

THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659.

PROCLAMATION OF RICHARD: HEARTY RESPONSE FROM THE COUNTRY AND FROM
FOREIGN POWERS: FUNERAL OF THE LATE PROTECTOR: RESOLUTION FOR A NEW
PARLIAMENT.--DIFFICULTIES IN PROSPECT: LIST OF THE MOST CONSPICUOUS
PROPS AND ASSESSORS OF THE NEW PROTECTORATE: MONK'S ADVICES TO
RICHARD: UNION OF THE CROMWELLIANS AGAINST CHARLES STUART: THEIR
SPLIT AMONG THEMSELVES INTO THE COURT OR DYNASTIC PARTY AND THE ARMY
OR WALLINGFORD-HOUSE PARTY: CHIEFS OF THE TWO PARTIES: RICHARD'S
PREFERENCE FOR THE COURT PARTY, AND HIS SPEECH TO THE ARMY OFFICERS:
BACKING OF THE ARMY PARTY TOWARDS REPUBLICANISM OR ANTI-OLIVERIANISM:
HENRY CROMWELL'S LETTER OF REBUKE TO FLEETWOOD: DIFFERENCES OF THE
TWO PARTIES AS TO FOREIGN POLICY: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND THE WAR
WITH SPAIN: RELATIONS TO THE KING OF SWEDEN.--MEETING OF RICHARD'S
PARLIAMENT (JAN. 27, 1658-9): THE TWO HOUSES: EMINENT MEMBERS OF THE
COMMONS: RICHARD'S OPENING SPEECH: THURLOE THE LEADER FOR GOVERNMENT
IN THE COMMONS: RECOGNITION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP AND OF THE OTHER
HOUSE, AND GENERAL TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT PARTY: MISCELLANEOUS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT.--DISSATISFACTION OF THE ARMY PARTY:
THEIR CLOSER CONNEXION WITH THE REPUBLICANS: NEW CONVENTION OF
OFFICERS AT WALLINGFORD-HOUSE: DESBOROUGH'S SPEECH: THE CONTENTION
FORBIDDEN BY THE PARLIAMENT AND DISSOLVED BY RICHARD: WHITEHALL
SURROUNDED BY THE ARMY, AND RICHARD COMPELLED TO DISSOLVE THE
PARLIAMENT.--RESPONSIBLE POSITION OF FLEETWOOD, DESBOROUGH, LAMBERT,
AND THE OTHER ARMY CHIEFS: BANKRUPT STATE OF THE FINANCES: NECESSITY
FOR SOME KIND OF PARLIAMENT: PHRENZY FOR "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" AND
DEMAND FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RUMP: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE ARMY
CHIEFS: LENTHALL'S OBJECTIONS: FIRST FORTNIGHT OF THE RESTORED RUMP;
LINGERING OF RICHARD IN WHITEHALL: HIS ENFORCED ABDICATION.


OLIVER was dead, and Richard was Protector. He had been nominated, in
some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though
there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier
date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the
interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood
himself included, to accept the death-bed nomination. That having
been settled through the night following Oliver's death, Richard was
proclaimed in various places in London and Westminster on the morning
of September 4, amid great concourses, with firing of cannon, and
acclamations of "_God save His Highness Richard Lord
Protector!_" It was at once intimated that the Government was to
proceed without interruption, and that all holding his late
Highness's commissions, civil or military, were to continue in their
appointments.

Over the country generally, and through the Continent, the news of
Oliver's death and the news that Richard had succeeded him ran
simultaneously. For some time there was much anxiety at Whitehall as
to the response. From all quarters, however, it was reassuring.
Addresses of loyal adhesion to the new Protector poured in from
towns, counties, regiments, and churches of all denominations; the
proclamations in London and Westminster were repeated in Edinburgh,
Dublin, and everywhere else; the Armies in England, Scotland, and
Ireland were alike satisfied; the Navy was cordial; from Lockhart, as
Governor of Dunkirk, and from the English Army in Flanders, there
were votes of confidence; and, in return for the formal intimation
made to all foreign diplomatists in London of the death of the late
Protector and the accession of his son, there came mingled
condolences on the one event and congratulations on the other from
all the friendly powers. Richard himself, hitherto regarded as a mere
country-gentleman of simple and jolly tastes, seemed to suit his new
position better than had been expected. In audiences with deputations
and with foreign ambassadors he acquitted himself modestly and
respectably; and, as he had his father's Council still about him,
with Thurloe keeping all business in hand in spite of an inopportune
illness, affairs went on apparently in a satisfactory course.--A
matter which interested the public for some time was the funeral of
the late Protector. His body had been embalmed, and conveyed to
Somerset House, there to lie in open state, amid banners,
escutcheons, black velvet draperies and all the sombre gorgeousness
that could be devised from a study of the greatest royal funerals on
record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple,
ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till
the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by
a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to
deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself
had already been privately interred.--A week after this disappearance
of the last remains of Oliver (Nov. 29, 1658) it was resolved in
Council to call a Parliament. This, in fact, was but carrying out the
intention formed in the late Protectorate; but, while the cause that
had mainly made another Parliament desirable to Oliver was still
excruciatingly in force,--to wit, the exhaustion of funds,--it was
considered fitting moreover that Richard's accession should as soon
as possible pass the ordeal of Parliamentary approval. Thursday, Jan.
27, 1658-9, was the day fixed for the meeting of the Parliament.
Through the intervening weeks, while all the constituencies were
busy with the canvassing and the elections, the procedure of Richard
and his Council at Whitehall seemed still regular and judicious.
There was due correspondence with foreign powers, and there was no
interruption of the home-administration. The Protector kept court as
his father had done, and conferred knighthoods and other honours,
which were thankfully accepted. Sermons were dedicated to him as "the
thrice illustrious Richard, Lord Protector." In short, nearly five
months of his Protectorship passed away without any tumult or
manifest opposition.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._, from Sept. 1658 to Jan. 1658-9, as
quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 178-181; Thurloe, VII. 383-384, _et
seq._ as far as 541; Whitlocke, IV. 335-339; Phillips (i.e.
continuation of Baker's Chronicle by Milton's nephew, Edward
Phillips), ed. 1679, pp. 635-639; _Peplum Olivarii_, a funeral
sermon on Oliver, dated Nov. 17, 1658, among Thomason
Pamphlets.--Knights of Richard's dubbing in the first five months of
his Protectorate were--General Morgan (Nov. 26), Captain Beke (Dee.
6), and Colonel Hugh Bethel (Dee. 26). There may have been others.]

Appearances, however, were very deceptive. The death of Cromwell had,
of course, agitated the whole world of exiled Royalism, raising sunk
hopes, and stimulating Charles himself, the Queen-Mother, Hyde,
Ormond, Colepepper, and the other refugees over the Continent, to
doubled activity of intrigue and correspondence. And, though that
immediate excitement had passed, and had even been succeeded by a
kind of wondering disappointment among the exiles at the perfect calm
attending Richard's accession, it was evident that the chances of
Charles were immensely greater under Richard than they had been while
Oliver lived. For one thing, would the relations of Louis XIV. and
Mazarin to Richard's Government remain the same as they had been to
Oliver's? There was no disturbance of these relations as yet. The
English auxiliaries in Flanders were still shoulder to shoulder with
Turenne and his Frenchmen, sharing with them such new successes as
the capture of Ypres, accomplished mainly by the valour of the brave
Morgan. But who knew what might be passing in the mind of the crafty
Cardinal? Then what of the Dutch? In the streets of Amsterdam the
populace, on receipt of the news of Cromwell's death, had gone about
shouting "The Devil is dead"; the alliance between the English
Commonwealth and the United Provinces had recently been on strain
almost to snapping; what if, on the new opportunity, the policy of
the States-General should veer openly towards the Stuart interest?
All this was in the calculations of Hyde and his fellow-exiles, and
it was their main disappointment that the quiet acceptance and
seeming stability of the new Protectorate at home prevented the
spring against it of such foreign possibilities. "I hope this young
man will not inherit his father's fortune," wrote Hyde in the fifth
month after Richard's accession, "but that some confusion will fall
out which must make open a door for us." The speculation was more
likely than even Hyde then knew. Underneath the great apparent calm
at home the beginnings of a confusion at the very centre were already
at work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 405 and 414; Guizot's _Richard Cromwell
and the Restoration_ (English edition of 1856), I. 6-11.]

It will be well at this point to have before us a list of the most
conspicuous props and assessors of the new Protectorate. The name
_Oliverians_ being out of date now, they may be called _The
Cromwellians_. We shall arrange them in groups:--

I. THE COUNCIL.

  Lord President Lawrence.
  Lord Lieutenant-General Fleetwood (his Highness's brother-in-law).
  Lord Major-General Desborough (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
  Lord Sydenham (Colonel).
  Lord Pickering (_Chamberlain of the Household_).
  Lord Strickland.
  Lord Skippon.
  Lord Fiennes (_one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal_).
  Lord Viscount Lisle.
  Lord Admiral Montague.
  Lord Wolseley.
  Lord Philip Jones (_Comptroller of the Household_).
  Mr. Secretary Thurloe.[1]

[Footnote 1: On comparing this list of Richard's Council with the
list of the Council in Oliver's Second Protectorate (ante p. 308) two
names will be missed--those of the EARL of MULGRAVE and old FRANCIS
ROUS. The Earl of Mulgrave had died Aug. 28, 1658, five days before
Cromwell himself. The venerable Rous only just survived. He died
Jan. 7, 1658-9, and is hardly to be counted in the present list.
Richard's father-in-law, RICHARD MAYOR, though still alive and
nominally in the Council, had retired from active life.]

II. NEAR ADVISERS, NOT OF THE COUNCIL.

  Lord Viscount Falconbridge (his Highness's brother-in-law).
  Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel).
  Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel).
  Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected Cromwellian, and conjoined
      with Fiennes and Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal,
      Jan. 22, 1658-9).
  Lord Commissioner John Lisle.
  Lord Chief Justice Glynne.
  Lord Chief Justice St. John.
  William Pierrepoint.
  Sir Edmund Prideaux (_Attorney General_).
  Sir William Bills (_Solicitor General_).
  Sir Oliver Fleming (_Master of the Ceremonies_).
  Sir Richard Chiverton (_Lord Mayor of London_).
  Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
  Dr. John Owen.
  Dr. Thomas Goodwin.

III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:--Fleetwood
and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the
Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too,
with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of
the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to
these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the
Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among
these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John
Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias
Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John
Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their
military capacity, as merely _Colonels;_ but the first eight had
been among Cromwell's "Major-Generals," three of the thirteen had
their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe,
Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been
among his Parliamentary "Lords."--We have mentioned but the chiefs of
the Army, called "the Army Grandees;" but, since Richard's accession,
and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had
flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round
Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new
Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of
200 or more, in Fleetwood's residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to
Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the
smaller meetings of "the Army Grandees" in the same place, all
matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more
important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There
were also more secret meetings in Desborongh's house.

IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK,
_Commander-in-Chief in Scotland;_ with whom may be associated
such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel
Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton.
(2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, _Lord Deputy of Ireland_ hitherto, but
now, by his brother's commission, _Lord Lieutenant of Ireland_
(Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council
or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel
Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William
Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in
Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian
of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most
important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, _Lord
Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk;_ with whom
may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces,
and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart
managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658.

These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it
mainly depended, in the first months of Richard's Protectorate,
whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has
been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some
of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form,
and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This,
however, is quite a misconstruction.--Monk, who is chiefly suspected,
and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events
in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind
imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real
desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to
persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but
with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He
ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great
Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most
eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of
Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents
together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the
blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great
extent of Toleration." Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought
to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old
nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For
retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the
Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments
everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor
let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure
him "There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that
has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of
place." On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and
many of the ships re-officered[1]--Such were Monk's advices; and,
whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in
good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent
conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date
there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either
ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in
the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences,
the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible,
on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only
of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in
the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The
dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to
Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 387-388.]

Cromwell's death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that
had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests
had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain
mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it
appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed,
"Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery"
Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A.
[Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I'll make
the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from
A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him." One might
imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the
succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was
to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally,
which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain
it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most
loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of
his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform
Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these
letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main
fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests
round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his
adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may
be called the _Court Party_ or _Dynastic Party,_
represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague,
Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with
Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the
assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not
also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard's Protectorate an
avowed continuation of his father's, with the same forms, the same
powers, and the permanence of the _Petition and Advice_ as the
instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In
opposition to this party was the _Army Party,_ or
_Wallingford-House Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with
a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost
in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for
such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist
with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but
the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for
limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the
Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the
Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood
should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military
co-ordinate with the Protector.[1]

[Footnote 1: Falconbridge's Letters (deciphered) in Thurloe, VII.
365-366 et seq., with other Letters in Thurloe and Letters of the
French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, chiefly to Mazarin, appended to
Guizot's _Richard Cromwell and the Restoration,_ I. 231 _et
seq._]

For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at
Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were
with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had
proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke,
into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not
consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and
Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the
limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of
the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before
him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having
been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in
private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town
(Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully.
The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle
preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the
main subject. "I am sure it may be said of me," said Richard, "that
not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God
chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me
in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and
the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then
thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of
this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any
part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though
they may be better men than myself." He then instanced the two
things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. "For
instance," he said, "if I should trust it to any one person or more
to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the
_Petition and Advice_--which directs that the
commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other
field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the
consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only
to my disposal--I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than
the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would
commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the
Council, in the Lords' House, and all other magistracies. I leave it
to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power
to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a
Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the _Petition_
and _Advice_, which I must make my rule in my government, and
shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not
obliged to make _any_ Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own
liberty, as it was in my father's; only, if I will make any, it must
be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief
can be meant no other than the person who _under me_ commands
the whole Army, call him what you will--'Field-Marshal,'
'Commander-in-chief,' 'Major-General,' or 'Lieutenant-General.' ...
Commander-in-chief is the genus; the others are the species. And,
though I am not obliged to have any such person besides myself to
command all the forces, yet I _have_ made one: that is, I have
made my brother Fleetwood Lieutenant-General of all the Army, and so
by consequence commander-in-chief [_under me_]; and I am sure I
can do nothing that will give him more influence in the Army than
that title will give him, unless I should make him General
[_instead of me_]; and I have told you the reasons why I cannot
do that." Altogether, the speech, and the modesty with which it was
delivered, produced very considerable effect for the moment upon the
officers. Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and others are understood to have
shown more sympathy with Richard in consequence; there was respect
for his firmness among people generally when it came to be known;
and, though the meetings at Wallingford House and Desborough's house
were continued, action was deferred. One effect, however, had been to
rouse the dormant Anti-Cromwellianism of the Army-men, and to bring
out, more than Fleetwood and Desborough intended, that leaven of pure
Republicanism, or affection for the "good old cause" of 1648-1653,
which had not ceased, through all the submission to the Protectorate,
to lurk in the regiments in combination with Anabaptistry,
Fifth-Monarchism, and other extreme forms of religious Independency.
In the meetings round Fleetwood and Desborough there had been
reflections on the late Protector's memory far from respectful. Henry
Cromwell in Ireland had heard of this; and among many interesting
letters of his to various correspondents on the difficulties of his
brother's opening Protectorate, all showing a proud and fine
sensitiveness, with some flash of his father's intellect, there is
one (Oct. 20) of rebuke to his brother-in-law Fleetwood on account of
_his_ conjunction with the malcontents, "Pray give me leave to
expostulate with you. How came those 200 or 300 officers together?
... If they were called, was it with his Highness's privity? If they
met without leave in so great a number, were they told their error? I
shall not meddle with the matter of their petition, though some
things in it do unhandsomely reflect not only on this present, but
his late, Highness, I wish with all my heart you were
Commander-in-chief of all the forces in the three nations; but I had
rather have it done by his Highness's especial grace and mere motion
than put upon you in a tumultuary soldierly way. But, dear brother, I
must tell you (and I cannot do it without tears) I hear that dirt was
thrown upon his late Highness at that great meeting. They were
exhorted to stand up for that 'good old cause which had long lain
asleep,' &c. I thought my dear father had pursued it to the last. He
died like a servant of God, and prayed for those that desired to
trample upon his dust, for _they_ also were God's people. O dear
brother! ... whither do these things tend? Surely God hath a
controversy with us. What a hurly-burly is there made! A hundred
Independent ministers called together" [the Savoy Synod of the
Congregationalists, with Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Caryl, and
others, at their head, convoked Sept. 29, 1658, for framing a
Confession of Faith, by permission from the late Protector: see ante
p. 844]. "a Council, as you call it, of 200 or 300 officers of a
judgment! Remember what has always befallen imposing spirits. Will
not the loins of an imposing Independent or Anabaptist be as heavy as
the loins of an imposing Prelate or Presbyter? And is it a dangerous
error that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church
of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy?
... O dear brother, my spirit is sorely oppressed with the
consideration of the miserable estate of the innocent people of
these three poor nations. What have these sheep done that
_their_ blood should be the price of _our_ lust and
ambition? Let me beg of you to remember how his late Highness loved
you, how he honoured you with the highest trust in the world by
leaving the sword in your hand which must defend or destroy us; and
his declaring his Highness his successor shows that he left it there
to preserve _him_ and _his_ reputation. O brother, use it
to curb extravagant spirits and busybodies; but let not the nations
be governed by it. Let us take heed of arbitrary power. Let us be
governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in
their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world
may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. And truly,
brother, you must pardon me if I say God and man may require this
duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the Army, in point of
discipline, at _your_ door." Fleetwood could answer this (Nov.
9) but very lamely: "I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a
severe letter from you," &c. Fleetwood was really a good-hearted
gentleman, meaning no desperate harm to Richard or his Protectorate,
though desiring the Commandership-in-chief for himself, and perhaps
(who knows domestic secrets?) a co-equality of public status for his
wife, Lady Bridget, with the Lady-Protectress Dorothy. In fact,
however, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood and Major-General Desborough
between them had let loose forces that were to defy their own
management. Meanwhile, the phenomenon observable in the weeks
preceding the meeting of the Parliament which Richard had called was
that of a violent division already among the councillors and
assessors of the Protectorate. There was the _Court Party_ or
_Dynastic Party,_ taking their stand on the _Petition and
Advice,_ and advocating a strictly conservative and constitutional
procedure, in the terms of that document, on the lines laid down by
Oliver. There was also the _Army Party_ or _Wallingford-House
Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with an immediate retinue
of Cromwellian ex-Major-Generals and Colonels purposely in London,
and a more shadowy tail of majors, captains, and inferior officers,
coiled away among the regiments.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 447-449, 454-455, and 498; Phillips, 639;
Guizot, I. 13-19, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux appended to the
volume.]

More than questions of home-administration was involved in this
division of parties. It involved also the future foreign policy of
the Protectorate. The desire of Richard himself and of the Court
Party was to prosecute the foreign policy which Oliver had so
strenuously begun. Now, the great bequests from the late Protectorate
in the matter of foreign policy had been two: (1)_The War with
Spain, in alliance with France._ The Treaty Offensive and
Defensive with France against Spain, originally formed by Cromwell
March 23, 1656-7, and renewed March 28, 1658, was to expire on March
28, 1659. Was it to be then again renewed? If not, how was the war
with Spain to be farther conducted, and what was to become of
Dunkirk, Mardike, and other English conquests and interests in
Flanders? Mazarin was really anxious on this topic. The alliance
with England had been immensely advantageous for France; and could it
not be continued? In frequent letters, since Cromwell's death, to M.
de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London, Mazarin had pressed for
information on this point. The substance of the Ambassador's replies
had been that the new Protector and his Council, especially Mr.
Secretary Thurloe, were too much engrossed with home-difficulties to
be very explicit with him, but that he had reason to believe a loan
from France of £50,000 would aid the natural inclinations of the
Court-party to continue the alliance. This was more than Mazarin
would risk on the chance, though he was willing to act on the
suggestion of the ambassador that a present of Barbary horses should
be sent to Lord Falconbridge, or a jewel to Lady Falconbridge, to
keep _them_ in good-humour. There can be no doubt that
Falconbridge, Thurloe, Lockhart, and the Court Party generally, did
hope to preserve the close friendship with France and the hold
acquired by England on Flanders. Lockhart particularly had at heart
the hard, half-starved condition of his poor Dunkirk garrison and
the other forces in Flanders. On the other hand, there were signs
that public feeling might desert the Court Party in their desire to
carry on Oliver's joint-enterprise with France against the Spaniards.
Dunkirk and Mardike were precious possessions; but might it not be
better for trade to make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should
have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices?
This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the
pure Commonwealth's men, and was in favour with some of the
Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she
was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern
England? Was there not enough to do at home?[1] (2) _Assistance to
the King of Sweden_. A great surprise to all Europe just before
Cromwell's death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the
Peace of Roeskilde between Sweden and Denmark, with the reinvasion of
Zealand by Charles Gustavus, and his march on Copenhagen (ante p.
396). Had Cromwell lived, there is no doubt that, with whatever
regret at the new rupture, he would have stood by his heroic brother
of Sweden. For was not the Swedish King still, as before, the one
real man of mark in the whole world of the Baltic, the hope of that
league of Protestant championship on the Continent which Cromwell had
laboured for; and was he not now standing at bay against a most ugly
and unnatural combination of enemies? Not only were John Casimir and
his Roman Catholic Poles, and the Emperor Leopold and his Roman
Catholic Austrians, and Protestant Brandenburg and some other German
States, all in eager alliance with the Danes for the opportunity of
another rush against _him_; the Dutch too were abetting the
Danes for their own commercial interests? Actually this was the state
of things which Richard's Government had to consider. Charles
Gustavus was still besieging Copenhagen; a Dutch fleet, under Admiral
Opdam, had gone to the Baltic to relieve the Danes (Oct. 1658): was
Cromwell's grand alliance with the Swede, were the prospects of the
Protestant League, were English interests in the Baltic, to be of no
account? Applications for help had been made by the Swedish King;
Mazarin, through the French ambassador, had been urging assistance to
Sweden; the inclinations of Richard, Thurloe, and the rest, were all
that way. Here again, however, the perplexity of home-affairs, the
want of money, the refusal of Mazarin himself to lend even £50,000,
were pleaded in excuse. All that could be done at first was to
further the despatch to the Baltic of Sir George Ayscough, an able
English Admiral who had for some years been too much in the
background, but of whom the Swedish Count Bundt had conceived a high
opinion during his embassy to England in 1655-6, and who had
consequently been invited by the Swedish King to enter his service,
bringing with him as many English officers and seamen as he could.
This volunteer expedition of Ayscough Richard and his Council did at
once countenance. Nay, when news came (Nov. 8) of a great defeat of
Opdam's Dutch fleet by the Swedish Admiral Wrangel, the disposition
to help the Swede became stronger. On the 13th of that month a
special envoy from the Swedish King, who had been in London for some
weeks, took his departure with some satisfaction; and within a few
days Vice-Admiral Lawson and his fleet of some twenty or twenty-one
ships in the Downs had orders to sail for the Sound, for mediation at
least, but for the support of Charles Gustavus if necessary. The
fleet did put to sea, but with hesitations to the last and the report
that it was "wind-bound."[2]

[Footnote 1: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, I.
231-286, and II. 441-450; Thurloe, VII. 466-467.]

[Footnote 2: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux last cited,
with. Guizot, I. 23-26; Thurloe, VII. 412, 509, 529; Whitlocke for
Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. 1658, also for Aug. 1656; Phillips,
638.]

"Wind-bound" was the exact description of the state of Richard's
Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the
Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to
the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the
practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments
there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by
the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England
and Wales to about 400, instead of the 500 or more of the ancient
system, and allocating the 400 among constituencies rearranged so as
to give a vast proportion of the representation to the counties,
while reducing that of the burghs generally and disfranchising many
small old burghs altogether. The _Petition and Advice_ having
left this matter of the number of seats and their distribution open
for farther consideration, Richard and his Council had been advised
by the lawyers that it would be more "according to law" and therefore
more safe and more agreeable to the spirit and letter of the
_Petition and Advice_, to abandon the late temporary method,
though sanctioned by the Long Parliament, and revert to the ancient
use and wont. Writs had been issued, therefore, for the return of
over 500 members from England and Wales by the old time-honoured
constituencies, besides additions from Scotland and Ireland. Thus,
whereas, for the last two Protectoral Parliaments, some of the larger
English counties had returned as many as six, eight, nine, or twelve
members each, all were now reduced alike to two, the large number of
seats so set free, together with the extra hundred, going back among
the burghs, and reincluding those that had been disfranchised. London
also was reduced from six seats to four. It seems amazing now that
this vast retrogression should have been so quietly accepted. It
seems even to have been popular; and, at all events, it roused no
commotion. It had been recommended by the lawyers, and it was
expected to turn out favourable to the Government.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 615-619; and compare the List of Members of this
Parliament of Richard (_Part. Hist._ III. 1530-1537) with the
lists of Oliver's two Parliaments _(Part. Hist._ 1428-1433, and
1479-1484).]

On Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, the two Houses assembled in
Westminster. In the Upper House, where Lord Commissioner Fiennes
occupied the woolsack, were as many of Cromwell's sixty-three "Lords"
(ante pp. 323-324) as had chosen to come. All the Council, except
Thurloe, being in this House, and the others having been, for the
most part, carefully selected Cromwellians, it might have been
expected that Government would be strong in the House. As it
included, however, Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the chief Colonels
of the Wallingford-House party, it is believed that in such
attendances as there were (never more than forty perhaps) that party
may have been stronger than the Court party. But it was the
composition of the Commons House that was really of consequence, and
here appearances promised well for Richard. The total number of the
members, by the returns, was 558, of whom 482 were from English
counties and burghs, 25 from Wales, 30 from Ireland, and only 21 from
Scotland. Some fifty of the total number were resolute pure
Republicans, among whom may be noted Bradshaw (Cheshire), Vane
(Whitchurch in Hants), Scott (Wycombe), Hasilrig (Leicester), Ludlow
(Hindon), Henry Neville (Reading), Okey (Bedfordshire), and Weaver
(Stamford); and there was a considerable sprinkling of
Anti-Cromwellians of other colours besides, including Lord Fairfax
(Yorkshire), Lambert (Pontefract), Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Wilts),
and Major-General Browne (London). But Thurloe was there to represent
the Government in chief (returned by Cambridge University, but by
several other places also); and he could count about a hundred sure
English adherents on the benches; among whom were Sir Edmund
Prideaux (Saltash), Sir William Ellis (Grantham), together with his
own subordinate in the Council-office, William Jessop (Stafford), and
Milton's assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, Andrew Marvell
(Hull). There were not a few Army-officers of the Wallingford-House
party; but, on the whole, this element did not seem to be
particularly strong in the House. Among the members for Scottish
constituencies were the Marquis of Argyle (Aberdeenshire), Samuel
Desborough (Midlothian), the Earl of Tweeddale (East Lothian),
Colonel Adrian Scroope (Linlithgow group of Burghs), Swinton of
Swinton (Haddingtonshire), Colonel Whetham (St. Andrews, &c.), and
Monk's brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Clarges (Aberdeen, Banff, and
Cullen). Ireland had returned, among her thirty, Sir Hardress Waller
(Kerry, &c.), Sir Jerome Zanchy (Tipperary and Waterford), Sir
Charles Coote (Galway and Mayo), and two Ingoldsbys. The Scottish and
Irish representatives were, almost to a man, Government nominees.
Altogether, Thurloe's anxiety must have been about the yet unknown
mass of 300 or so, some scores of them lawyers, others
country-gentlemen, and many of them young, that formed the neutral
stuff to be yet operated upon. Among these, in spite of the oath of
fidelity to the Lord Protector, there were indubitably not a few who
were Stuartists at heart; but most wavered between Republicanism and
the Protectorate, and it was hopeful for Thurloe in this respect that
so much of the mass was Presbyterian. Ludlow, who did not at first
take his seat, tells us that he at last contrived to do so furtively
without being sworn, and seems to hint that Vane did the same. There
was negligence on the part of the doorkeepers, or they were confused
by the multitude of strange faces; for a stray London madman, named
King, sat in the House for some time, in the belief that, as one of
that name had been elected for some place, he might possibly be the
person.[1]

[Footnote 1: List in _Parl. Hist._ III. 1530-1537; Ludlow, 619
et seq.]

Richard's opening speech was in a good strain. It assumed loyalty to
the memory of his father and to the _Petition and Advice_, and
recommended immediate attention to the arrears of the Army and to
other money-exigencies, with zealous prosecution of the war with
Spain, and consideration of what might be done for the King of
Sweden, the cause of European Protestantism, and English interests in
the Baltic. The speech was delivered in the Lords, only a few of the
Commons attending. They were busy with swearing in their members, and
with the election of a Speaker. Mr. Chaloner Chute, a lawyer, one of
the members for Middlesex, was unanimously chosen; but, short as the
session was to be, the House was to have three Speakers in
succession. Mr. Chute acted till March 9, when his health broke down,
and Sir Lislebone Long, one of the members for Wells, was appointed
his substitute. Sir Lislebone died only seven days afterwards (March
16), and Mr. Thomas Bampfield, one, of the members for Exeter,
succeeded him. Chute having died also, Bampfield became full Speaker.
April 15, 1659.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Parl. Hist._ III. 1537-1540, and Commons Journals
of dates.]

A day or two having been spent in preliminary business, and the House
presenting the spectacle, long unknown in Westminster, of no fewer
than between 300 and 400 members in daily attendance, Thurloe, on the
1st of February, boldly threw down the gage by bringing in a bill for
recognising Richard's right and title to be Lord Protector. Hasilrig
and the Republicans were taken by surprise, and could only protest
that the motion was unseasonable and that other matters ought to have
precedence. The bill having been read the first time that day,
Thurloe consented that the second reading should be deferred to the
7th. On that day, accordingly, there began a debate which lasted for
seven successive days, and was a full trial of strength between the
Government and the Republicans. Hasilrig, Neville, Scott, Vane,
Ludlow, and others, exerted themselves to the utmost, Hasilrig
leading, and making one speech three hours long. It was evident,
however, that the Republicans knew themselves to be but a minority,
and used the debate only for re-opening the question of a Republic.
They did not attack the direct proposal of the Bill; on the contrary
they vied with the Cromwellians in language of respect for Richard.
"I confess I do love the person of the Lord Protector; I never saw
nor heard either fraud or guile in him." said Hasilrig. "I would not
hazard a hair of his present Highness's head," said Scott; "if you
think of a Single Person, I would have him sooner than any man
alive." They did not want, they said, to pull down the Protectorate;
they only objected to Thurloe's high-handed method for committing the
House to a foregone conclusion. But Thurloe beat. On Monday the 14th,
the question having been finally put "that it be part of this Bill to
recognise and declare his Highness Richard, Lord Protector, to be the
undoubted Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate," it was carried by 191
votes to 168 to retain the words "recognise and," and so to accept
Richard's accession as valid already. On a proposal to leave out the
word "undoubted" Thurloe did not think a division worth while, but
made the concession. He did oppose a resolution, suddenly brought
forward, to the effect that the vote just passed should not be
binding until the House should have settled the clauses farther
defining the powers of the Lord Protector; but that resolution,
having caught the fancy of the House, passed with his single dissent.
On the whole, he had succeeded in his first great battle with the
Republicans.--Nor was he less successful in the second. The
Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe's policy to push next
the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the
Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as
to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons
proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the
powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans,
having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the
question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws
should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were
beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a
month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one. It
involved other questions, some of them apparently independent. Thus,
on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn.
Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England
calling itself "The House of Lords," the Republican speakers had
played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm,
sneering at the existing "Other House," with its shabby equipment of
old colonels and other originally mean persons. If there was to be a
House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should
it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of
them honourable men, resume their places? "Why not?" was the instant
retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of
many in the House. Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not
fail to take advantage. "The old Peers," said Thurloe, "are not
excluded by the _Petition and Advice_: divers are
called,--others may be"; and the occasion was taken to pass a
resolution expressly reserving for such of the old peers as had been
faithful the privilege of being summoned to the Other House, should
the issue of the debate be in favour of the existence of that
institution. The divisions on this incidental resolution were the
largest recorded in the Journals of the House--the previous question
for putting the resolution being carried by 203 to 184, and the
resolution itself by 195 to 188. Though the majority was but small,
the gain to the Court Party was precious, because on an unexpected
point. But the Republicans had done themselves no good by their style
in the main discussion, A miscellaneous assembly always resents the
ungenerous, and the sneers at the existing composition of the Other
House had seemed ungenerous. "They have gone through wet and dry, hot
and cold, fire and water; they are the best officers of the best army
in the world; their swords are made of what Hercules's club was made
of": such were the terms in which one speaker defended the military
veterans of the Other House; and they were received with cheers. Nor
did the next step of the Republicans improve their position. Having
observed what a considerable proportion of Thurloe's majorities
consisted of the members from Scotland and Ireland, Cromwellians
nearly to a man, they tried to sweep these from the House in
anticipation of future votes. First, they raised the question about
the Scottish members, contending that their presence in an English
Parliament was unconstitutional, that the _de facto_
incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth had never been
legally consummated, &c. On this subject, the House having first
negatived the proposal that the Scottish members should withdraw
during the debate, it was decided, March 21, by a majority of 211
(Thurloe one of the tellers) to 120 (Vane one of the tellers), "That
the members returned for Scotland shall continue to sit as members
during this present Parliament," A like vote, March 23, retained the
Irish members. The Republicans had again lost character by this piece
of tactics. Not only was it offensive to Scotland and Ireland; but to
many disinterested English members it seemed a mean attempt to
depreciate, for a mere party purpose, those great achievements of
recent years which had made the British Islands, as if by miracle,
one body-politic at last. On the 28th of March the principal debate
came to an end in this two-claused Resolution: "That this House will
transact with the persons now sitting in the Other House, as an House
of Parliament, during the present Parliament; and that it is not
hereby intended to exclude such Peers as have been faithful to the
Parliament from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members
of that House." The final division was 198 to 125; but there had been
a preceding division on the question whether the words "when they
shall be approved by this House" should be inserted after the word
"Parliament" in the first clause. This very ingenious amendment of
the Anti-Cromwellians had been rejected by 183 votes to 146, the
tellers for the Cromwellian majority being the Marquis of Argyle and
Thurloe, and for the minority Lord Fairfax and Lord Lambert.--Thus,
at the end of the second month of the Parliament, the victory was
clearly with Thurloe and the Government. The Protectorship had been
recognised; and the Other House also had been recognised, rather
grudgingly indeed, and not by the desired name of "The House of
Lords," but with a proviso that seemed to put that and more within
reach. It had also been ascertained in general that, in a House of
Commons larger than had been seen in Westminster for many years,
Richard's Government was stronger, on vital questions, than the
Republicans and all other Anti-Cromwellians together. For there had
been discussions affecting the foreign policy of the Protectorate,
and in these the Republicans and Anti-Cromwellians had been equally
beaten. It had been, carried, for example, on Thurloe's
representation, to persevere in the despatch of a strong fleet to the
Baltic in the interest of the Swedish King; and such a fleet, now
under Admiral Montague's command, had actually sailed before the end
of March. It was in the Sound early in April.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and Guizot, I. 46-72 (where
the extracts from speeches are from _Burton's Diary_); also
Commons Journals of Feb. 21 and 24; and Thurloe, VII. 636-637 and
644-645.]

In minor matters the House had shown some independence. On the 23rd
of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham
from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver,
accepting the Duke's own word of honour, and Fairfax's bail of
£20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth. So,
on the 16th of March, they had released Milton's friend, the
Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years' imprisonment,
declaring Cromwell's mere warrant for the same to have been
insufficient and illegal. This was a most popular act, and the
liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations.
Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly
released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with
all reverence for Oliver's memory, were ready to take any occasion
for signifying that his more "arbitrary" acts must be debited to
himself only. There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in
the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in
it, to question the late Protector's liking for unlimited religions
toleration. They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established
Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and
Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more
rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with
"heresies and blasphemies." Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were
especially threatened. Here, indeed, the House meant rather to
indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for,
though. Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father's religious
liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a
few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the
Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of
Richard's Protectorate. The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps
more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other
political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind,
people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville,
for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some
parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like
that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest
Christian do but support the Protectorate?[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 26 and
April 2; Guizot, I. 103-104.]

April 1659 was the third month of the Parliament. About a hundred of
the members hitherto in attendance had then withdrawn, and the
attendances had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more
ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the
Protector's Government and the Opposition, and had become one between
the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the
farther use of Thurloe's victories.

The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into
relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not,
for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing
of the declared supporters of Richard's Protectorship, and their
chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe
had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now
therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be
ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the
Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication
with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only
secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the
Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with
not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed;
and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an
interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court
Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the
Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court
Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the
Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army
Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for
the "good Old Cause"? How well-founded was this calculation will
appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination
in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on
constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court
Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the
Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most
disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless
animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to
Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would
never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill,
Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and
parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into
docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland,
Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in
Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers
in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of
direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears
that they saw endangered, but that Army privilege of debating and
theorizing which had been asserted by Cromwell in the Civil War, and
which Cromwell afterwards, while regulating and checking it, had
never abolished. Were they to meet no more, agitate no more? Was the
great Army of the Commonwealth to be degraded, for the benefit of
this new Protector, into a mere collection of men paid for bestriding
horses and handling pikes and ramrods? So reasoned the rank and file
and the subalterns; but the chiefs, while sharing the general
feeling, had additional alarms of their own. They had left actions
behind them, done in their major-generalcies or other commands for
Cromwell, for which they might be called to account under a civilian
Protectorate, or other merely constitutional Government. There had
actually been signs in the present Parliament of a tendency to the
re-investigation of cases of military oppression and the impeachment
of selected culprits. Were the Army-men to consent, in such
circumstances, to give up their powers of self-defence and corporate
action? No! Oliver's son might deserve consideration; but Oliver's
Army had prior claims.

Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the
Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances
with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances
occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of
Richard's in one of these conferences had been widely reported and
had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing
wrong in appointing any but "godly" officers, he had said, "Here is
Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust
him before ye all." As nothing was to be made of Richard in this
private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention
of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army
affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament.
Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the
Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this
proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest
interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the
officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill,
Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found
that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and
Desborough, he _had_ given the permission, without even
consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention
meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court
party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659,
there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House,
Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and
Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe,
representing the other, while among the general body there were no
one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly
opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from
Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of
Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and
that therefore he would propose that every officer should be
cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience
that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was
lawful and just." Amid the cheers that followed, Lords Howard and
Falconbridge (two of the denounced "sons of Belial"?) left in
disgust; but Broghill remained and opposed bravely. He disliked all
tests; but, if there was to be a test, he would propose that it
should be simply an oath "to defend the Government as it is now
established under the Protector and Parliament." If the present
meeting insisted on a test, and did not adopt that one, he would see
that it should be moved in Parliament. This, supported by Whalley and
Goffe, calmed the meeting somewhat; and, after much more speaking, in
which the necessity of a separation of the military power from the
civil was a prominent topic, the result was "_A Humble
Representation and Petition of the Officers of the Armies of England,
Scotland, and Ireland_," expressed in general and not unrespectful
terms, but conveying sufficiently the Army's demands. Presented to
Richard in Whitehall on the 6th of April, this petition was forwarded
by him to the Commons on the 8th, with a letter to the Speaker. For
more than a week no notice was taken by the House; but, the petition
having been circulated in print, with other petitions and documents
more fierce for "the good old cause," and the general council of
officers still continuing the meetings at Wallingford House, with the
excitement of sermons and prayers added to that of their debates, the
House was driven at last into that attitude of direct antagonism to
the Army in the name of the Protectorate on which both Royalists and
Republicans had calculated. Thurloe would fain have avoided this, and
had almost longed for some Cavalier outbreak to occupy the two
conflicting Protectoral parties and reunite them. But the numerous
Cavaliers in London had been well instructed and lay provokingly
still; and the management of the crisis for Richard had passed from
Thurloe to the House itself. On Monday the 18th of April, in a House
of 250, with shut doors to prevent any from leaving, it was resolved,
by 163 votes to 87, "That, during the sitting of the Parliament there
shall be no general council or meeting of the officers of the Army
without the direction, leave, and authority of his Highness the Lord
Protector and both Houses of Parliament"; and it was also resolved,
"That no person shall have or continue any command or trust in any of
the Armies or Navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the
Dominions or Territories thereto belonging, who shall refuse to
subscribe, That he will not disturb nor interrupt the free meetings
in Parliament of any of the members of either House of Parliament, or
their freedom in their debates and counsels." The concurrence of the
Other House was desired in these votes; and the Commons, who had
noted with surprise that Hasilrig, Ludlow, Scott, and Vane, rather
took part with the Army in the debate, proceeded to the serious
consideration of the arrears of pay due to the officers and soldiers,
and of other real military grievances, in order to reconcile the
Army, if possible, to their strong Resolutions.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I.
112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de
Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.]

That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and
strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go
to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after
listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings
dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then,
to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers
still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with
the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused,
the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing
Richard's control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around
him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also
Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now
notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said,
and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The
question now was between a forced dissolution of the
Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the
Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard's objection to violence,
seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the
streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the
Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between
Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a
rendezvous in and round St. James's, by Fleetwood's order, of all the
regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard's name, was
attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would
have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no
soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of
Richard's guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then
happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. "About noon," says
the sturdy democrat, "Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell
at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament,
the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do
so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for
himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes,
Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells
us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the
others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly
yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a
commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes,
the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and
delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday
the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to
attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible
confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were
ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions
and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at
length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the
Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o'clock. The
Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation,
and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 639-641; Whitlocke under date April 21, 1659;
Commons Journals of April 22; Phillips, 641-642; Guizot, I.
120-128, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin appended at pp.
366-375.]

A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public
debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a
total of £2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in
Flanders. Of this sum £1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears,
£393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and £80,623
was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary
expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from
these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this
last item. The annual income from England was £1,517,275, and the
annual expenses in England £1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England
of £30,513; the annual income from Scotland was £143,652, but the
outlay £307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for
Scotland of £163,619; the annual income from Ireland was £207,790,
and the outlay £346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of £138,690.
This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary
administration, civil and military, of the three nations, £332,823;
but, as £252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England
for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real
deficit was £80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the £393,883
running on for the Navy, and the arrears of £1,747,584 besides, and
the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the
financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be
said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, April 16, 1659.]

The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time
to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those
who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most
complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular
form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their
immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had
come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against
the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from
abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the
Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to
constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and
carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and
Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only
deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of
officers continued, or a more select Council of their number
associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have
given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real
power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have
satisfied or beguiled for the moment the so-called Republicanism now
again rampant among the inferior Army-men. But there was no money;
Government in any form was at a deadlock until money could be raised;
and how was that to be effected? The Wallingford-House magnates did
meditate for an instant whether they should not try to raise money by
their own authority, but concluded that the experiment would be too
desperate, and that, for this reason, if for no other, some kind of
Parliament must be at once set up.--But what Parliament? Here they
had not far to seek. For the last month or more, placards on all the
walls of London, the very cries of news-boys in the streets, had been
telling them what Parliament. We have several times quoted the phrase
"The Good Old Cause," as coming gradually into use after Oliver's
death, and passing to and fro in documents and speeches. But no one
can describe now the force and frequency of that phrase in London and
throughout England in April 1659 and for months afterwards. If two
men passed you in the street, you heard the words "the good old
cause" from one of them; every second or third pamphlet in the
booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or
running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously
in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes
constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the
expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase,
generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly
remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. One might
have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the
Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a
Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have
passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been
founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution
of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's
Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the
natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question
whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but
calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone
with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to
revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact
answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now
pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be
than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had
dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat
the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the
Government.--With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours
that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane,
Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council
itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered.
They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such
Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old
Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme
magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour,
moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible
to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from
that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been
extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a
list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had
been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between
1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then
meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther
differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the
payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and
dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also
demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a
Select Senate or Other House. To these demands for a continuation of
the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield,
though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a
temporary Senate for definite purposes. The differences had not been
adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were
prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in
restoring the Rump. This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when
there was drawn up for the purpose "A Declaration of the Officers of
the Army," signed by the Army Secretary "by the direction of the Lord
Fleetwood and the Council of Officers," and when two deputations, one
of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of
independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house
in Covent Garden. It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at
its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 644-649; Parl. Hist. III. 1546-7; Thomason
Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.]

Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had
with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived
first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age,
sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says,
that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now
thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the
Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation
arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still
very uneasy. "He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late
King had not put an end to the Parliament." That objection having
been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once
issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet
him next morning and form a House, "he replied that he could by no
means do as we desired, having appointed a business of far greater
importance to himself, which he would not omit on any account,
because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. We then pressed
him to inform us what it might be: to which he answered that he was
preparing himself to participate of the Lord's supper, which he was
resolved to take on the next Lord's day. Upon this it was replied
that mercy is more acceptable to God than sacrifice, and that he
could not better prepare himself for the aforesaid duty than by
contributing to the public good." As he was still obdurate, the
deputations told him they would do without him. The list of members
was divided among such clerks as were at hand, and the circulars were
duly sent out.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 649-650.]

Next morning, Saturday May 7, 1659, about thirty of the members of
the old Rump were shaking hands with each other in the House of
Lords, waiting anxiously till as many more should drop in as would
make the necessary quorum of forty, before marching into the Commons.
Army officers and other spectators were in the lobbies, equally
anxious. Time passed, and a few more did drop in, including Henry
Marten, luckily remembered as in jail for debt near at hand, and
fetched thence in triumph. At length, about thirty-seven having
mustered, old Lenthall, who had spies on the spot, thought it best to
come in; and, about twelve o'clock, he led a procession of exactly
forty-two persons into the Commons House, the officers and other
spectators attending them to the doors with congratulations. The
House, having been constituted, entered at once on business, framing
a Declaration for the public suitable for the occasion, and
appointing several committees. They set apart next day, Sunday the
8th, for special religious services, with a re-inauguration sermon by
Dr. Owen.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 651-652; Commons Journals, May 7, 1659; Parl
Hist. III. 1547-1550.]

On Monday, May 9, the small new House had to re-encounter a
difficulty which had troubled them somewhat at their first meeting on
Saturday. On that day, besides the forty-two members of the Rump who
had answered the summons, there had come to the lobbies fourteen
persons who had been members of the Long Parliament before it became
the Rump, i.e. before that famous Pride's Purge of Dec. 6-7, 1648,
which excluded 143 of the Presbyterians and other Royalists from
their seats, and so converted the Long Parliament into the more
compact body wanted for the King's Trial and the formation of the
Republic (Vol. III. pp. 696-698). The fourteen, among whom were the
Presbyterians Sir George Booth and William Prynne, had insisted on
being admitted, but had been kept out by the officers after some
altercation. But now, on Monday, several of them were back, to see
the issue of a protest that had been meanwhile sent to the Speaker on
behalf of 213 members of the Long Parliament who were in the same
general predicament of "Secluded Members"--to wit, the 143 excluded
by Pride's Purge and seventy more who had been excluded at various
times before for Royalist contumacy. Finding the doors open, three of
these unwelcome visitors went in, of whom two came out again and were
not re-admitted, but one remained. That one was William Prynne. He
sat like a ghoul among the Rumpers. No persuasion on earth could
induce him to leave. Hasilrig stormed at him, and Vane coaxed him;
but there he sat, and there he would sit! He was a member of the Long
Parliament, and no other Parliament was or could be rightfully in
existence but that; if they turned him out, it should only be by
carrying him out by his feet and shoulders! Unwilling to resort to
that method, those present got rid of the intruder by postponing
their meeting to a later hour, and taking care that, when Prynne
reappeared, he should be turned back. The House that day passed an
order that none should sit in it but genuine Rumpers, appointing a
committee to ascertain who these were and to report on dubious cases;
and the order was affixed to the doors outside. For a day or two
Prynne and others still haunted the lobbies; but at length they
desisted, Prynne taking his revenge by at once printing _The
Republicans' and Others' spurious Old Cause briefly and truly
anatomized_, and then _One Sheet, or, if you will, a Winding
Sheet, for the Good Old Cause_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 138-141; Commons Journals, May 9, 1659;
Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets. The first of the two named pamphlets
of Prynne appeared, with his name in full, May 13; the second, "by
W.P.," May 30.--Prynne continued, in subsequent pamphlets, to
attack the Rumpers for the wrong done to him and the other secluded
members in still debarring them from their seats. One was entitled
_A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done, spoken, by and
between Mr. Prynne, the old and newly-forcibly late Secluded
Members, the Army Officers, and those now sitting both in the
Commons Lobby, House, and elsewhere, on Saturday and Monday last
(the 7 and 9 of this instant May)_. Though so entitled, it did
not appear till June 13. It contained this passage against the
Bumpers:--"Themselves in divers of their printed Declarations, and
their instruments in sundry books (as JOHN GOODWIN, MARKHAM
NEEDHAM, MELTON, and others), justified, maintained, the very
highest, worst, treasonablest, execrablest, of all Popish,
Jesuitical, Unchristian, tenets, practices, treasons, as the
murthering of Christian Protestant Kings." This is a sample at once
of Prynne's style and of his accuracy. He does not take the trouble
to know the names of the persons he writes about, but plods, on
like a rhinoceros in blinkers.]

For eighteen days after the resuscitation of the Rump, and
notwithstanding their distinct announcement in their public
declaration that they were to "endeavour the settlement" of the
Commonwealth "without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,"
Richard still lingered in Whitehall and his Protectorship remained
nominally in existence. But the Republicans made what haste they
could to put an end to that anomaly. Their difficulty lay in their
yet unadjusted differences with the Army-officers conjoined with them
in the Restoration of the Rump. Towards the removal of these
differences something was done on the 13th of May, when the House
appointed Fleetwood "Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the
land-forces in England and Scotland" (Ireland reserved), and
associated with him Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ludlow, Hasilrig, and
Vane, in a commission of seven empowered to nominate, for approval by
the Parliament, the commissioned officers of the whole Army. Even
with, this arrangement, however, the Army-magnates were not
satisfied; and it left other differences over, which were restated
that very day in a petition and address from the whole Council of
Officers. This Petition and Address, presented to the House by a
deputation of eighteen chief officers, headed by Lambert and
Desborough, consisted of fifteen Articles, the last three of which
contained the points of most vital debate with the pure Republicans.
In Article XIII. it was petitioned that, for the Legislative, there
should be, in addition to the Popular or Representative House, "a
select Senate, co-ordinate in power." Article XIV. required also, for
the Executive; a separate Council of State. Article XV. concerned the
Cromwell family. It did not demand a continuation of the
Protectorate, but It demanded the payment by the State of all debts
contracted by Oliver or Richard in their Protectorates, the
settlement of £10,000 a year on Richard and his heirs for ever, the
settlement of a farther £10,000 a year on Richard for his life, and
the settlement of £8,000 a year for life on "his honourable mother,"
the Protectress-dowager,--all this to the end that there might
remain to posterity "a mark of the high esteem this nation hath of
the good service done by his father, our ever-renowned General." The
House was not then prepared to answer the demands of Articles XIII.
and XV., but only that of Article XIV. after a certain fashion. It
was agreed that day that there should be an executive Council of
State, to consist of thirty-one persons, ten of them not members of
Parliament, the Council to hold office till Dec. 1 next ensuing; and
at that meeting and the two next the thirty-one Councillors were duly
chosen. Then, on the 21st of May, various addresses of confidence in
the new Government having by this time come in from London and other
parts, the Republicans felt themselves strong enough to discuss the
petition of the officers, article by article, accepting most of them,
but postponing the three last and another. Without saying what they
meant to do for the Cromwell family, they had In the Interim (May 16)
appointed a committee to "take into consideration the present
condition of the eldest son of the late Lord-General Cromwell, and to
inform themselves what his estate is, and what his debts are, and how
they have been contracted, and how far he doth acquiesce in the
government of this Commonwealth." There were interviews with Richard
in Whitehall accordingly, with the result that there was brought to
the House on the 25th of May a paper signed by him, together with a
schedule of his means and debts. The paper was, in fact, an
abdication, In these terms: "Having, I hope, in some degree, learnt
rather to reverence and submit to the hand of God than to be unquiet
under it, and, as to the late providences that have fallen out
amongst us, however, in respect of the particular engagements that
lay upon me, I could not be active in making a change in the
government of these nations, yet, through the goodness of God, I can
freely acquiesce in it, being made." He promised, in conclusion, to
live peaceably under the new government, and to do all in his power
to induce those with whom he had any interest to do the same. From
the accompanying schedule it appeared that his debts, incurred by his
father or himself in the Protectorship, amounted to £29,640, and that
his own clear revenue, after deduction of annuities to his mother and
others of the family, was but £1299 a year, and that encumbered by a
private debt of £3000. The House accepted the abdication, undertook
the discharge of the debts as stated, voted £2000 at once to Mr.
Richard, referred it to a committee to consider what more could be,
done towards his "comfortable and honourable subsistence," and, for
the rest, requested him to retire from Whitehall, and "dispose of
himself as his private occasions shall require." He lingered still a
little, fearing arrest by his creditors, but did at length retire to
Hampton Court, and thence into deeper and deeper privacy, to live
fifty-three years more and become very venerable, though the more
rude of the country-people would persist in calling him "Tumble-Down
Dick." In the week of his abdication there was on the London
book-stalls a rigmarole poem on the subject, called _The World in a
Maze, or Oliver's Ghost_. It opened with this dialogue between
father and son:--

_Oliver P._:      Richard.!. Richard! Richard!

_Richard_:        Who calls "Richard"? 'Tis a hollow voice;
                  And yet perhaps it may be mine own thoughts.

_Oliver_:         No: 'tis thy father risen from the grave;
                  Nor--would I have thee fooled, nor yet turn knave.

_Richard_:        I could not help it, father.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl.  Hist. III. 1551-1557;
Pamphlet, of  given title, dated May 21 in MS. in the Thomason copy.]



CHAPTER I.

Second Section.

THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED RUMP:

MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659.

NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM: COUNCIL OP STATE OF
THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION OP THE NEW
GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE CROMWELLIANS
AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE OF THE LEADING
CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL, MONK, HENRY CROMWELL,
LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES
POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR
ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE
AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AS AMBASSADOR
FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF THE ARMY, NAVY, AND
MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS FOR A SIMULTANEOUS
RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT
SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES ROUND MONK AT
DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S INSURRECTION CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE
RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS AND THEIR
ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON AND HIS POLITICAL
THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS IN THE ARMY:
PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT'S BRIGADE: SEVERE
NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE
GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT,
DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED: LAMBERT'S
RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT.


The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only
forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the
25th, the day of Richard's abdication. In obedience to a summons sent
out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by
that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety.
In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the
House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The
following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for
the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House.
Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or
resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long
Parliament to his present reappearance:--

  The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a _Regicide_, i.e. an
  actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720).
  The contraction _Rec._ prefixed signifies that the person was
  not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov.
  1640, but one of the _Recruiters_ who came in at various times
  afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of these came in between Aug.
  1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray
  Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about _eight_ persons
  were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the
  institution of the Commonwealth. _R_ added to a name signifies
  a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; _O^1_ a member of
  Oliver's First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; _O^2_ a
  member of Oliver's Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The
  addition [t] in the last case denotes that the person was one of
  the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session,
  but restored at the beginning of the second. _R_ denotes a
  member of the Commons in Richard's late Parliament, just dissolved;
  and _L_ denotes that the person had been one of Oliver's and
  Richard's Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction
  of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State
  of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in
  most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this
  distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the
  Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted.
  Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now
  stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought
  correct by the restored Republic.

  _Speaker_: William Lenthall (_ætat._ 68), _O^1_,
    _O^2_, _L_
  _Rec._ Andrews, Robert _R_
  _Rec._ Anlaby, John _B_, _R_
  _Rec._ Ash, James _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Atkins, Alderman
  _Rec._ Baker, James _R_
  Barker, Col. John
  _Rec._ Bennett, Col. Robert _B_, _O^1_, _R_
  _Rec._ Bingham, Col. John _B_, _0^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Birch, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
  *_Rec._ Blagrave, Daniel _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Boone, Thomas _O^1_, _R_
  *_Rec._ Bourchier, Sir John
  Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart.
  _Rec._ Brewster, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  * Carew, John _B_
  * Cawley, William _R_
  *_Rec._ Challoner, Thomas _R_
  _Rec._ Corbet, John
  _Rec._ Crompton, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Darley, Henry _O^2[t]_
  _Rec._ Darley, Richard _O^2[t]_
  *_Rec._ Dixwell, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Dormer, John
  _Rec._ Dove, John
  *_Rec._ Downes, Col. John
  Dunch, Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_
  _Rec._ Earle, Serjeant Erasmus
  Ellis, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Eyre, Col. William _R_
  _Rec._ Fagg, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Fielder, Col. John _R_
  _Rec._ Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles
  _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  *_Rec._ Garland, Augustine _O^1_
  _Rec._ Gold, Nicholas _R_
  Goodwin, Robert _R_
  Goodwyn, John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
  _Rec._ Gurdon, Brampton
  Gurdon, John _O^1_
  Hallows, Nathaniel
  Harby, Edward
  _Rec._ Harrington, Sir James _O^1_
  _Rec._ Harvey, Col. Edward _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
  Hasilrig, Sir Arthur, Bart. _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_, _L_
  _Rec._ Hay, William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Heveningham, William
  _Rec._ Hill, Roger _R_
  Holland, Cornelius _O^1_
  *_Rec._ Hutchinson, Col. John
  *_Rec._ Jones, Col. John (Cromwell's brother-in-law)
    _O^2[t]_, _L_
  _Rec._ Jones, Col. Philip _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  _Rec._ Leman, William
  _Rec._ Lechmere, Nicholas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Lenthall, Sir John _R_
  Lisle, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  Lisle, Viscount Philip _B_, _L_
  _Rec._ Lister, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
  *_Rec._ Livesey, Sir Michael
  _Rec._ Love, Nicholas _R_
  Lowry, John _R_
  _Rec._ Lucy, Sir Richard, Bart., _B_, _O^1_,
    _O^2[t]_, _R_
  _Rec._ Ludlow, Lieut.-Gen. Edmund _R_
  * Marten, Henry
  _Rec._ Martin, Christopher _B_, _R_
  *_Rec._ Mayne. Simon
  Mildmay, Sir Henry _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
  *_Rec._ Millington, Gilbert
  Monson, Viscount (Irish Peer)
  Morley, Col. Herbert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  _Rec._ Nelthorpe, James
  _Rec._ Neville, Henry _R_
  Nicholas, Robert
  Nutt, John
  Oldworth, Michael
  Palmer, Dr. John
  Pembroke, the Earl of (Earl since 1650)
  Pennington, Alderman Isaac
  Pickering, Sir Gilbert, Bart. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_
  _Rec._ Pigott, Gervase
  Prideaux, Sir Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  * Purefoy, Col. William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Pury, Thomas, Senr. _O^1_, _O^2_
  _Rec._ Pury, Thomas, Junr.
  Pyne, Col. John _B_
  _Rec._ Raleigh, Carew (son of the great Raleigh) _R_
  Reynolds, Robert _R_
  _Rec._ Rich, Col. Charles _R_
  _Rec._ Robinson, Luke _O^1_, _O^2_
  St. John, Chief Justice _L_
  _Rec._ Salisbury, the Earl of _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
  Salway, Major Richard _B_
  *_Rec._ Say, William
  *_Rec._ Scott, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
  _Rec._ Skinner, Capt. Augustine _O^1_
  _Rec._ Skippon, Major-Gen. _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  _Rec._ Sidney, Col. Algernon
  _Rec._ Smith, Philip
  *_Rec._ Smyth, Henry
  _Rec._ Strickland, Walter _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  Strickland, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  _Rec._ Sydenham, Col. Wm. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  *_Rec._ Temple, James
  *_Rec._ Temple, Peter
  _Rec._ Thompson, Col. George _R_
  _Rec._ Thorpe, Serjeant Francis _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
  Trenchard, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Trevor, Sir John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Vane, Sir Henry _R_
  _Rec._ Wallop, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Walsingham, Sir Thomas
  * Walton, Col. Valentine (Cromwell's brother-in-law)
  *_Rec._ Wayte, Col. Thomas
  _Rec._ Weaver, Edmund
  _Rec._ Wentworth, Sir Peter
  _Rec._ West, Edmund
  _Rec._ Weston. Benjamin _R_
  _Rec._ White, Col. William
  Whitlocke, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  Widdrington, Sir Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_
  *_Rec._ Wogan, Thomas
  _Rec._ Wroth, Sir Thomas _O^2_, _R_
  Wylde, Chief Baron _R_[1]

[Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been
prepared:--(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the
five months of its sittings--_Commons Journals_, Vol. VII. pp.
644-797--and collected the names appearing in the lists of
Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or
less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with
a list in _Parl. Hist._, III. 1547-8. It is much less complete
than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or
twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have
referred to Mr. Carlyle's Revised List of the Long Parliament,
appended to Vol. II. of his _Cromwell_, and to the Lists of the
Barebones Parliament, Oliver's two Parliaments, and Richard's
Parliament in Vol. III. of the _Parl. Hist._--With all my care,
I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several
persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian
name. The Journals often omit that.--I have seen, since writing the
above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving
what it calls "a perfect list of the Rumpers." It includes 121 names,
and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite--containing one or
two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting
one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more
authentic.]

From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow
was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still
alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at
Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of
those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long
Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about
one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out
of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement
during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about
two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval,
but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of
the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed--e.g. Birch, John
Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe
had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand,
some--e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John,
Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke--had merged
their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell,
and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described
as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that
many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and
that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed,
finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of
the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only
division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the
Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the
records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever
show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one
sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present
and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun
attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to
what was going on.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded
divisions in the Journals for the whole session.]

A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the
House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members
who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed
by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump
Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten
non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again
denoting Regicides:--

  Parliamentary Members
  (In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot).

  *Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart.
  Sir Henry Vane Colonel
  *Lieut.-General Ludlow
  Lieut.-General Fleetwood
  Major Richard Salway
  Colonel Herbert Morley
  *Thomas Scott Colonel
  Robert Wallop
  Sir James Harrington
  *Colonel Valentine Walton
  *Colonel John Jones
  Colonel William Sydenham
  Algernon Sidney
  Henry Neville
  *Thomas Challoner
  *Colonel John Downes
  Lord Chief Justice St. John
  George Thompson
  Lord Commissioner Whitlocke
  *Colonel John Dixwell
  Robert Reynolds
  Non-Parliamentary Members.

  _Seven_ appointed without ballot.

  Thomas, Lord Fairfax _O^1_, _R_
  Major-General Lambert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
  Colonel John Desborough _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
  Colonel James Berry _O^2_, _L_
  *John Bradshaw _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
  Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. _B_, _O^1_,
    _O^2[t]_, _R_
  Sir Horatio Townshend _R_

  _Three_ chosen, by ballot.

  Josiah Berners _O^1_
  Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston _L_
  Sir Robert Honeywood _R_

Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he
had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb.
1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His
nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he
withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the
Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was
avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland
as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single
Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like
a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected.
His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who
probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a _bonâ fide_
Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point
of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio
Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest
men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had
express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham's Fairfax,
375; Baillie's Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.]

There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump
Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or
a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in
glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself
put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic--to wit, the
Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as
freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long
Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the
same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community,
but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in
the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a
series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this
Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the
Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's
Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination
in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army
malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then
stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty
strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the
community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual
surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been
elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649.
Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but
the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced
in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of
representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May
1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was
there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with
their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had
gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for
election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by
that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity
or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the
community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the
last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the
people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not
odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament,
without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves
with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies,
and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this
for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just
ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd _theoretically_; for,
though there were then Republicans--Milton for one--who had adopted
the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of
States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but
may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not
profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People
through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical
tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the
People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory.
But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common
enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose
very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought
to be nothing in it _a priori_ whatever, were yet believers in
the indefeasible and _a priori_ authority of that Republican
system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should
be no government except by the people themselves through a
Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves
by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must
not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but
must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to
their senses!

These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express
the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and
explain what followed.

The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had
been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and
the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other
Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's
downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump,
the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by
_their_ defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his
Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of
Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army
might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the
Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was
Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral
Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his
devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other
Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent
events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went.
Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to
Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in
country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client
of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland,
to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there
could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused
material on which to work! There was the great body of the English
Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his
death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the
Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes
generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists;
and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether
in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like
Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private
hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were
Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great
man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid
of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had
been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de
Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part
of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his
communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed
my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the
16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump
and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more
distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an
interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the
King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish
the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The
Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that
Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine
opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her
own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was
not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London
remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them
all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the
Rumpers.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in
the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French
reckoning)--especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402);
Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]

Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was
not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall,
and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the
cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf
here and there, but they died away.--Monk, about whose conduct in the
crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had
sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that
they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the
Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose
their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored
Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been
received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though
there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his
independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense
gain.--Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering
what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all
thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had
returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The
Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the
circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's
Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain
Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent
him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from
the new Government.--There had been more uncertainty about Henry
Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the
country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than
anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert
brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as
he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to
the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not
till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day,
having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the
Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this
while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose
authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace,
by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the
people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet
having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had
brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now
think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial
apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz,
that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot
promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very
honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was
present in many of your administrations before you were last
interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April
1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy
persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in
the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their
impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the
instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of
peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which
many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late
Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as
verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father
(whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of
these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were
constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to
another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my
nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the
sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the
carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I
cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late
Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept
me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to
withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died."
Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells
then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of
July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered
that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish
affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire
himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own
occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the
mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject
of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts,
as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have
a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther
inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the
understanding that his income should receive such an increase as
should raise it to £10,000 a year in all.--Monk, Lockhart, and the
Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there
could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the
Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and
Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as
extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received
credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de
Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July
2, 1659.]

The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party
militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and
the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most
extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on
its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July,
had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own.
natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined
and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest
suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but
cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into
the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated
in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course,
impossible. To the last breath _they_ must strive to keep out
the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they
must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for
the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming
recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such
compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger
part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the
death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly
enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with
the old dynasty?

All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had
been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent
of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not
only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any
extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard,
Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of.
Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and
particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that
fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He
thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course
which in _him_, at all events, would have been infamous; and,
though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in _their_
"further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and
so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such
perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived
and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to
the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not
even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more
clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in
Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that
they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended
that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to
enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for
them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet
safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to
assist them with advices and information.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.]

Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of
the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members
most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow,
Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton,
Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of
the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of
the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the
politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map
for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to
do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and
ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed
without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in
the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with
their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a
non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high
influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the
chair.

A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell,
and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the
sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of
Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of
Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland;
re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person,
Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the
present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings
will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or
of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of
July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions
in two departments: (1) _Church and Religion_, On the 27th of
June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born
people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House
voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are,
unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and
comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers
were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the
Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition,
however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself
significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute
Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause,"
and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the
Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand
wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of
its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or
Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and
anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some
other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological
lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism,
and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which
would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few,
on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers,
contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the
prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought
impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give
offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question,
so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in
politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in
Religion; but the probability is that the question was only
adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new
Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and,
though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to
be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the
understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was
merely continued. (2) _Relations with Foreign Powers_. In this
matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was
to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements.
No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from
England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows
was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and
Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length,
early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully
recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert
Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone,
a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for
the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and
between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to
compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the
Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch
themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident,
there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There
was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth
Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the
Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that
the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But
the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign
policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French
alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain
was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The
Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time
been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been
received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in
which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death;
negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the
year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the
marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and,
though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so
far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of
hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on
military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to
get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two
Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain
independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been
re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went
to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and
the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their
consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such
ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult
mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had
done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and
the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a
trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling
them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War
with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism
were but expensive moonshine.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl.
Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I.
165-172.]

In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more
conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the
public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all
rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until
the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor.
Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General
and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not
giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him
only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the
House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more
stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates
that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House
proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of
England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the
Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill,
passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the
Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only
that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also
that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in
the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the
officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the
9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed
transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England
and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the
whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the
business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the
officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and
in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive
their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As
each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its
lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven
captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment,
consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains
besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one
may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations
and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and
commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400
in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering
commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far
that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the
general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large
proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the
scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,--e.g.
Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and
Pride,--should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right
stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were
to be now properly but two _Generals_, and that the highest
officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations,
were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and
Monk, to rank on one level as merely _Colonels_. As far as to
these Colonels, the result was as follows:

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

_Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.

I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. _Colonels of Horse
Regiments_: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John
Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert
Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John
Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert
Morley. 2. _Colonels of Foot-Regiments_: Lieutenant-General
Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with
John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William
Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur
Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert
Barrow.--One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison
commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower,
Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark
Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well
as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the
Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,--All these
appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood
over for consideration.--In the _Journals_ Lambert is styled
"Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no
commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this
by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in
holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse.

II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:--Here, probably because of Monk's
passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried
out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in
courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only,
by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that
Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of
Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas
Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at
Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen),
Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his
Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at
Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon
Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of
these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.

II. IRELAND.

_Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.

Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of
Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry
Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the
Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the
title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert
Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not
go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had
stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should
be at liberty to return to England on occasion.

Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited
for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for
England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the
distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and
other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence,
Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for
Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell,
for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote,
Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were
still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.

In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within
Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man,
having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the
narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received
his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such
captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand
received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed
by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and
lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.--More a matter of wonder
still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and
Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but
remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and
re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the
Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from
that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties,
just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the
Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as
Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and
Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug.
2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour,
from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to
Ludlow's Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There
may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed
Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between
England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not
be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there
were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the
few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of
regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among
the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but
the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with
Monk in Scotland, and Overton's former military experience in high
command had been chiefly in Scotland.]

The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all
this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the
Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual
service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.

After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other
Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home,
had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general
insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John
Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton,
Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the
authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in
place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and
Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at
least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had
its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the
old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other
baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists."
Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir
George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his
influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas
Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the
Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham
that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel
Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey
were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border;
and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other
counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the
Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax,
Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller,
Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others,
were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne
had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London
Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles
himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for
the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for
use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the
confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in
his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I
cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on
the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a
distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in
lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his
adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by
Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest,"
Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to
leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to
Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much
was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the
success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to
England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others,
went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of
York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to
embark together.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot,
191-204.]

As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means
of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the
Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the
curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being
at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some
precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31
the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with
examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of
Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the
confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to
balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing
his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this
policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this
time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and
had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the
fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir
Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these
naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and
remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short,
whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a
simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less
demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his
friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in
several other places those who straggled together dispersed
themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey,
Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the
affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey
escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George
Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth,
the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having
met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made
of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords,
Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy
nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to
do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary
Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they
marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the
castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire,
where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by
brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming
the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in,
and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth
found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it
remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in
Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself
northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the
universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty
himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been
proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken
the initiative.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips,
649-652 (where Booth's Proclamation is given).]

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question
what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved
to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three
regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of
artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his
march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from
Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the
Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such
incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland,
and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with
much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its
chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet
declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might
determine their course.--Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking
southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In
Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his
brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in
Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had
been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for
her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business
besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before,
by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to
be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had,
accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there
and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges,
Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges,
without committing himself on the special subject of the mission,
easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk.
He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with
him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their
substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic
chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he
had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not
to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to
Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the
extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes
that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the
confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith
House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent
General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as
usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through
the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the
Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel
Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together
in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to
the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to
represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the
long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill
up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for
future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by
frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by
Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after
evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah
Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into
Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other
likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be
better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post
came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in
it were enjoined to secrecy.--The news was that Sir George Booth's
Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August
17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been
taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself
and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days
afterwards.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner's Life of
Monk, 90-104; Wood's Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.]

At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more
fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth £1000
was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers
and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had
gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through
the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and
the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the
Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George
Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller
("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to
pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord
Falconbridge (discharged on bail of £10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas
Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord
Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought
to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and
the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the
Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some
Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in
trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as
possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too
much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with
his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances
of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and
who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the
Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have
had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in
question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported
himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for
provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.--For, in fact, the
Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits.
Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had
been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony
Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council
appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions
remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched
against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result
that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never
attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined £100
each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted
on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with
Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from
sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high
treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the
House, when fines of £100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington
(_Rec., O²_), John Carew (*_Rec., B_), Thomas Mackworth
(_Rec., O¹, O², R_), Alexander Popham (_O^1, O^2, R_), Richard
Norton (_Rec., B, O^1, O^2, R_), and John Stephens (_Rec.,
R_). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never
attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected.
But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines,
ranging from £5 to £40, twenty-five members who had been attending of
late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John,
Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and
Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of
Major-General Harrison (*_Rec., O^1, R_). He, of course, had
never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he
had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the
Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him
altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a
Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of _his_
complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had
been fined £5 or £20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely
settling all scores together.--In what high spirits Lambert's victory
had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the
release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such
half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 _et
seq._) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member
of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should
"have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court
Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The
attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from
twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw,
Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton,
Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely
present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14
(Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734
(about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11
to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the
Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2,
1658, the day before Oliver's death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct.
25, 1659, there is again a gap.]

Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the
Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the
Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before
retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September
that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a
committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the
House in order to the settlement of the Government of this
Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to
report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the
Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville,
Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes,
Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee!
It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to
concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic,
without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of
Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of
possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the
varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of
constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's
summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or
pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time,"
he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of
Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the
Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be
joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have
the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People,
and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested
with executive power, and accountable to that which should next
succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should
determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People
constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others
proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select
number of men in the nature of the Lacedæmonian Ephori, who should
have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government
should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person,
touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and
other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of
opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if
there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist
of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing
laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power
finally to resolve and determine--every year a third part to go out
and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences,
Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should
consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the
deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the
Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should
be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous.
Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by
appointing the present Committee.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of
Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most
famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account
of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person
from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was
the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the
bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle
of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political
idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the
King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and
draw out his views.--After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing
very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived
for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's
Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting
those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated
him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied
and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato,
Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of
his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany,
and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian
Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was
that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and
ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained
to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so
accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine,
there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary
effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these
natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom
"that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and
confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he
thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as
to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of
Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from
the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by
adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a
mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any
other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something
worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet
conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The
basis must be a systematic classification of the community in
accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give
full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways
and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make
factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had
schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every
kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and
parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery
provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election
by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.--Harrington's ideal had been
set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled _The Commonwealth of
Oceana_, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book
was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues,
and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and
institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary
whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and
process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the
book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author
not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of
disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican
free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by
opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in
1658, had published a second treatise, called _The Prerogative of
Popular Government_, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines
of the _Oceana_, but more in a style of direct
dissertation.--The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous.
Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the
Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to
impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of
some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By
Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament.
On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers
well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many
thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on
the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through
the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a
petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and
they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition
referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth,
was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing
in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had
been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured,
in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any
form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it
represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the
adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative
part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be
elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300
members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws;
the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws
so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to
both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the
interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall
sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the
governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each
of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be
re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken
by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each
House would be entirely changed.--Not content with petitioning
Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously
through the press. _A Discourse showing that the spirit of a
Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a
Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy_, was a pamphlet of
Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was
entitled _Aphorisms Political_, and consisted of a series of
brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with
Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the
hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be
other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples,
through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper
engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of
noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The
Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called _The
Rota_. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says
Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's
Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the
stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house--to
which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair:
and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a
Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard,
for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those.
This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be
carried, by way of _tentamens_; which being not used or known in
England before upon this account, the room every evening was very
full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of
this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held
the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire,
Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held
the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth
in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet,
Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen.
Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a
physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood
of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine,
with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I
cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes
trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of
Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come
among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much
affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The
soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would
have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and
persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more
because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's
return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of
rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten
were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or
Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the
appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new
Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity
of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened
his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was
to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London,
yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such
meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the
nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that
Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these
physical philosophers. What were _their_ occupations over drugs,
water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches
into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William
Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in
troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]

[Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's
Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126;
Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets
(for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of
Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the
Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more
the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the
Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates.
The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the
discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the
delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers
individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic
worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that
it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of
which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding
thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance
in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration.
They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the
Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior
officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker
himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of
Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal
success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing
the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to
remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of
the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army,
always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore
to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been,
where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's
brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself,
more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the
distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's
brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for
concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a
meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the
16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a
small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form.
Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the
20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the
committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of
"the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord
Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be
presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it
was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a
letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be
brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the
House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the
original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that
Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all
purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and
five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with
complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants,
and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the
semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at
Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be
laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was
that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be
fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made
general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough
should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as
chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the
attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut
doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was
latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over
again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert,
once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as
the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was
resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general
officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is
needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion
for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five
(Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that
Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the
Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562;
Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).]

Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were
meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers,
cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over
the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern
expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's
advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and
some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers
then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine
proposals. The preamble complained generally of the
misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the
petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade,
and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to
Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person
Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The
articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the
Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the
Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and
especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be
cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate
on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still
in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of
his decided sympathies with them rather than with the
Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the
disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert
and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals
of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and
second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in
a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the
House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through
a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill
annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or
Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any
pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of
April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and
the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except
in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and
farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after
Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost,
or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the
Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might
have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act,
calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all
power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs
that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not
only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in
print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to
various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging
them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same
immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by
Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer,
Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel
Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to
Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken,
and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed.
Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their
answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when
they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding
their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from
Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the
Parliament know that he would stand by them against the
Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England
for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among
the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The
misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on
the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against
fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was
resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz.
Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry,
Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph
Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel
William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and
are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and
are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then
vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of
seven,--to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton,
Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and,
having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that
of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night,
they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8;
Phillips, 656-660; Skinner's Life of Monk, 111-113.]

Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in
the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why.
"This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army,
whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about
Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped
the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and
about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the
members from coming to the House and attending their service there."
This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve
hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the
manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were
faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have
been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to
remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in
an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all
accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped
by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to
his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few
did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who
had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the
morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about,
coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing
them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced
and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert,
perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed
masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse
refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a
battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and
had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in
Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council,
had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient
gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the
evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in
the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to
go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed.
The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was
circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of
Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the
Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary
charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular
authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a
restored session, of five months.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV.
364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.]



CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT.
13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_:
BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF
BRADSHAW.--ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD,
LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF
THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND
LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND
THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS
PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO
BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.--FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN:
LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS
CHANCES IN ENGLAND.--DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT
AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY
AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON,
THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.--MONK AT
COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE
RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON:
VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND
TIME.


For about a fortnight after Lambert's _coup d'état_, the Council
of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that
action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding
with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford
House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of
October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the
chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was
then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest
that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony
against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the
26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave
place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford--House
officers, and called _The Committee of Safety._ It consisted of
twenty-three persons, as follows:--

  Whitlocke (made also_ Lord Keeper of the Great Seal_, Nov. 1).

  Colonel Robert Bennett
  Colonel James Berry
  Henry Brandreth
  Colonel John Clerk
  Desborough
  Fleetwood
  Sir James Harrington
  Colonel Hewson
  Cornelius Holland
  Alderman Ireton
  Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston
  Lambert
  Henry Lawrence
  Colonel Robert Lilburne
  Ludlow
  Major Salway
  William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland)
  Walter Strickland
  Colonel William Sydenham
  Robert Thompson
  Alderman Tichbourne
  Sir Henry Vane.

The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted
ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly
pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation
of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent,
chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to
counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway,
and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and
Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been
detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and
seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the
Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body
at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their
struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel
John Jones as his _locum tenens_ there; and he had not heard the
astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh
coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland
and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his
arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of
Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual,
however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to
shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not
concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly
unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the
only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of
his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and
boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were
Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among
whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of
course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open
and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had
brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st
of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee,
leaving surely a most troubled world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659;
Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368;
Phillips, 662.]

Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the
Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named
Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the
Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the
Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the
Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the
omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed
for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on
it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been
removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining
discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of
nominations was to see that the officers throughout England,
Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the
newly-established order.--It was foreseen that in this there would be
great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many
officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the
Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out.
There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had
for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there
was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the
Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and
with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that
the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump
against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in
struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship,
after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless
have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the
Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that
predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that
such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait
for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch
Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and
to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.--They had
not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's _coup
d'état_ than he repeated his former determination most
emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground
and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace
and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker
Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the
liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be
God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the
same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes
in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private
persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was
seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28,
when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall,
it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the
antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of
the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades,
were in exultation accordingly.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729;
Phillips, 663-666; Skinner's Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II.
18-22.]

Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It
was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was
resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's
march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of
the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel
Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent
for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace.
They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed
within a few days by six other missionaries for the same
purpose--Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House
officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent
ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There
were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be
reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November,
Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there,
and gather forces to block the north of England against the
possibility of Monk's invasion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131,
140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.]

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov.
2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him,
was very willing to _seem_ to negotiate, and gave Clarges his
reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him,
that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late
Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading
officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not
want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to
their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the
regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at
Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee,
Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to
be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually
together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists
among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these,
and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at
least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force
would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's,
Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's,
Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his
own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted
Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had
£70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could
have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots
themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved,
however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an
English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but
indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished
by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in
England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk
and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of
negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a
meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel
Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as
Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them,
in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates."
They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump
would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips's
information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full
and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk's enterprise
henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a
continuation of _Baker's Chronicle_, is a contribution of
original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted,
as he tells us, the use of Monk's papers and those of his agents.
This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission
executed for Monk.]

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his
colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr.
Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them,
but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part.
When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a
conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk
listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr.
Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at
his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying
_they_ had begun the war, and, if they continued in their
course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent
ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more
welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been
lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to
come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He
delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to
be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did,
being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on
Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had
lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from
Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to
establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.]

Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in
parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of
the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to
London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be
known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and
on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a
treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part
of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the
Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over
this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy
reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's
Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges,
who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and
spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or
any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and
the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the
Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in
certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the
Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own
account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov.
18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved";
but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his
chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty--not,
indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea
that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther
specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two
Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and
that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these
and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place
near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had
all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay
only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King,"
repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be
pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says
Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each
part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was
Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his
forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came
on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He
was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December
1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each
other,--Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and
dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about
3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At
Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of
failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to
risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in
England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in
Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all
that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at
Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care
to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from
London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their
blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed.
Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and
there were desertions from the one to the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV.
373-377.]

All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had
been attending as well as they could to such general business as
belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and
temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the
26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only
exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also
prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of
the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to
prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief
Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a
conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the
Wallingford-House Council itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659
(i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II.
274-278.]

In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little
to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign
entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had
become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no
longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the
Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He
had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in
London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary.
If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a
revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles
Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request;
but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by
the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and
scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet
possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of
affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself,
does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the
Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London
early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had
been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the
United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch
Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the
French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign
residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.--One inquires with
most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at
or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain,
charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of
endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great
Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don
Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded
between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and
the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect
by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them
friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their
own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain
was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and
so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of
November, when it took the name of _The Treaty of the Pyrenees_,
and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with
the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken
his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very
crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but
remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded
by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of
which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid
high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of
December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still
undecided.--While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation
between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had
been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than
Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at
Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the
great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new
Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but,
when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a
new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become
disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the
idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene
of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be
considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the
conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the
journey _incognito_, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one
or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and
finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their
destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two,
Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their
reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost.
Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to
Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don
Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three
miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin.
Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court,
was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in
no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false
information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into
Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as
far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with
all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some
time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing
could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed,
resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without
leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet
should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes
from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the
expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of
his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through
France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the
time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each
other's paths and were again near neighbours.--Although the late Rump
Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and
had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France,
it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles
either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more
subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We
have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of
the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his
Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much
of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new
Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked
or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in
the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was
like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those
who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly
looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure
Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup _d'état_, there were
some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously
for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present
Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated
with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also
fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back
into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was
a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate
currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual
accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every
party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to
bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge
with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady
protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common
consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant.
When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict
his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as
well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists,
that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the
lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in
the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords
Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released
November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the
9th of December.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802;
Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I.
211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288,
294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13,
1659.]

In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of
the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of
November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting
of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on
this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the
General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with
the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does
not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names
the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words
afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.]

The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden
idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the
Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election
of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had
been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was
understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a
form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and
Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,"
was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration
of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of
course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of
Parliament? _The late Rump reinstated at once with full
authority_, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was
out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself
outvoted on that, and go on. _Richard's late Parliament_ had
been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in
the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard
himself. _The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump,
i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of
1642-1649 restored to their seats_, was a third proposal, of more
tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had
become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back
of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial
and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians
and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in
order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little
wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. _A
new Parliament, called by ourselves_, was the conclusion in which
they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a
Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should
the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate
with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or
should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the
larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then,
whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be
elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and
ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the
Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage
and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the
people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever
prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among
nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's
principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent?
Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any
fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the
Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch?
Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or
non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one
of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should
a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should
there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject?
Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the
Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these
questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of
Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that
Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority
for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If
so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1]

[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result
of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help
of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and
information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough,
some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de
Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes,
and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in
his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come
trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as
the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute
Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and
others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy
speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins
of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he
wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he
represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army
and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty
that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been
kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so
prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of
disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little
more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it
was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did
much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate
party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the
Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative
spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled
inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions;
preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the
existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so
guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian
excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of
Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a
position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither
Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the
Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of
Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November,
while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion
of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee
and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the
same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of
Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and
advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially
remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace
Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing
all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It
had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of
daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659,
laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed
that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of
the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:--1. "That the
politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota
adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint
some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall
how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be
restored; 2. That Harrington's _Aphorisms_ and other political
slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how
they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and
an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that
Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of
learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the
Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with
all seriousness. _Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a
Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus_ is the title
of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles
afresh.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters
of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason
Tract of date, entitled _Decrees and Orders, &c.;_ and
Thomason Catalogue.]

Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and
Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers,
before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in
the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the
mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be
entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named
(Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other
nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland,
three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body,
intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the
whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification
before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great
Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of
delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each
regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned
officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers
to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow,
approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of
sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless,
a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great
Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of
December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would
be ready.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.]

The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their
proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution
submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that
had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none
had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to
him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the
circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There
was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by
request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or
six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee
of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and
Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the
one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a
restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the
majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the
Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission
of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and
conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As
Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the
Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his
lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether
the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his.
And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single
House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but
in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for
keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive
from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme
Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by
Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised;
Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but
still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and
extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and
the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was
even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an
extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and
if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared,
to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword,
let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few
fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under
the name of _Conservators of Liberty_, twenty-one men to be
guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three
fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in
perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2)
Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements
except by the Conservators--the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a
list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of
Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight
on the list,--dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men
of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two
could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting
was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man
of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of
Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience,
and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the
Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville,
and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe.
Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved
that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless,
his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was
incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the
Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and
Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the
nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested,
and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M.
de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.]

Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from
Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a
deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of
Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come
from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was
going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue
of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native
forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the
Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves
and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little
while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have
the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The
minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but
against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would
have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him
in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those
rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying
about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There
must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England
with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from
Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert
respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and
the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals.
Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than
Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with
two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find
nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of
raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and
keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were
demoralising Lambert's.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.]

For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England
was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring
himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the
march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the
Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which
Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November.
All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been
talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him,
though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his
possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him
more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere,
mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of
positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced
a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when
the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a
new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends
at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever
meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own
folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let
himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed
treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be
the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth,
formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared
cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig,
Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to
account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville;
Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions
and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the
ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be
"warranted in his present actings" by their express commission;
risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England,
whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to
the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the
Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament
only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in
Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with
Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and
others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's
own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish
Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from
Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised
with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of
Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact,
Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims,
but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as
Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the
powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious
and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the
citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed
associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in
the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays
of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery.
Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by
the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London
tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of
the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local
management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this
time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton
had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's
fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported
himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the
highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable
in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which
Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the
Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution
necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's
one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of
Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might
have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in
seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and
indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at
the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's
ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English
world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner,
170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M.
de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.]

It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become
indescribable. "I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew
not how to get free of them," is Whitlocke's entry in his diary for
Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, "Most of the soldiery about
London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in
honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most
eager for Fleetwood's party became as violent against them, and for
the Parliament to sit again." In other words, the soldiers of
Fleetwood's own London regiments were tired of being insulted and
jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren
everywhere else, that Lambert's _coup d'état_ of Oct. 13 had
been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.--In these
circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of
Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought
himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate
project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk's design was
to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and,
if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of
all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's
mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be
the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of
two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to
fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free
Parliament"--not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing
writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House
"qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling
out,--and then either take the field with his forces under that
banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut
himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect
were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at
once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally
willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to
Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood,
had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of
him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they
found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At
Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and
Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an
hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I
cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had
just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no
such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that,
Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only
instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his
friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.--This
was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke
had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another,
suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to
the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us,
for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in
the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of
the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued
orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in Lincoln's Inn
Fields under the command of Okey, Alured, Markham, and Mosse.
Fleetwood, applied to for the keys of the Parliament house, willingly
gave them up and resigned all charge. On Saturday the 24th the mass
of the soldiers were gladly at the appointed rendezvous, and were
marched down Chancery Lane, where the Speaker came out to them at the
Rolls, and was received with shouts of joy and repentance. On Monday
the 26th all the members of the Rump who were at hand met the Speaker
in the Council-Chamber at Whitehall, and walked thence to Westminster
Hall, the mace carried before them, and the soldiers and populace
cheering as they passed. They constituted the House and proceeded at
once to business. They had been excluded two months and fourteen
days.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 380-384; Phillips, 676; Letter of M. de
Bordeaux to Mazarin of Dec. 28, 1659 (English reckoning), Guizot,
318-322.]



CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH
MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1659-60.

THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE:
PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER CHIEFS OF THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW: NEW ARMY REMODELLING:
ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS: DISPERSION OF
LAMBERT'S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND
INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN'S AND MESSAGE THENCE TO
THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION: HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON,
FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS
POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING HIS MARCH AND ON
HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE'S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS:
TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP:
HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK'S RECONCILIATION WITH
THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN
LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE CITY AND OF THE RUMP
TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: BILL OF THE RUMP FOR
ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE BY THE RESEATING OF
THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT UNDER
MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.


The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its
former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its
restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in
any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose
from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the
Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other
hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not
visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and
Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley
Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7,
1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose
name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat
in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members
renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again
refused.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals (Divisions and Committees) from Dec.
26, 1659 to Feb. 21, 1659-60.]

A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to
consist, as before, of _twenty-one_ Parliamentaries and
_ten_ non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1,
1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in
each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of
votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a
Regicide.

  PARLIAMENTARIES.

  Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart.
  Colonel Herbert Morley
  Robert Wallop
  *Colonel Valentine Walton
  *Thomas Scott
  Nicholas Love
  Chief Justice St. John
  Colonel William White
  John Weaver
  Robert Reynolds
  Sir James Harrington
  Sir Thomas Widdrington
  Colonel George Thompson
  *John Dixwell
  Henry Neville
  Colonel John Fagg
  John Corbet
  *Thomas Challoner
  *Henry Marten
  *William Say
  Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot).

  NON-PARLIAMENTARIES.

  Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed before his election as M.P.)
  Josiah Berners
  General Monk
  Vice-Admiral Lawson
  Alderman Love
  Thomas Tyrrell
  Lord Fairfax
  Alderman Foote
  Robert Rolle
  Slingsby Bethell.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec. 31, 1659 and Jan. 2, 1659-60.]

The proceeding's of the House for the first month showed no
diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who
was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in
such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed.
Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits
were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal
Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and
formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan.
17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for
the Protectorate.

A good deal of the first month's business consisted in votes of
approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption
and votes condemning the Wallingford-House "usurpers" and their acts.
Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks
were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was
resolved to bestow on him and his heirs £1000 a year. But there were
thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig,
Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council
of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and
to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus
Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of
delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of
Safety was styled "the late pretended Committee of Safety," and all
their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate
was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted
under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was
not so complete but that a few of the late chief's might expect some
punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought
before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered
into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same
day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield,
Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were
still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of
theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not
having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with
little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the
18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the
reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter
by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though
unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without
punishment. Whitlocke even ventured to appear in the House, but was
received so coolly that he soon withdrew into the country, leaving
instructions to his wife to burn a quantity of his papers and to
deliver the great seal to the Speaker. So far was Fleetwood from
being in danger that they were considering whether he might not be
retained as Commander-in-chief. Ludlow, much to his surprise, found
himself among the accused. This, however, was not because of the
middle course he had taken in London through the late interruption,
though he had lost some credit by that with his Republican friends.
He had unfortunately left London on his way back to Ireland on the
very eve of that happy restitution of the Rump which he had despaired
of seeing, and it was in Ireland that his enemies were most numerous
and violent. He had hardly arrived among them and attempted to resume
his command when he received notice from the House that he and
Colonel John Jones, with Miles Corbet and Matthew Tomlinson, were
required to come over to answer certain charges against them relating
to their Irish government (Jan. 5). Ludlow and the others obeyed, and
found, on their arrival in London in February, that Sir Charles Coote
and other officers in Ireland had lodged an impeachment against them
for nothing less than high treason.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Dec. 26,
1659 to Feb. 1659-60; Ludlow, 783-806; Whitlocke, IV. 384-392.]

Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too
familiar one of "re-modelling." Men not now satisfactory had to be
removed from all departments of the public service and more proper
men substituted. Whitlocke's great seal was given into new keeping,
and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused
by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began
again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for
new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker
which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To
Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre,
Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted
to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield,
Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is
puzzled by the appearance of many persons as "colonels" who had the
title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or
from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his
former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others
ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so
also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec, 1659 and Jan. 1659-60; Whitlocke
as before.]

Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs
of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency
which had characterized the House in its previous session. The
essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed.
It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State,
before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing "the pretended
title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King
James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which
shall pretend," &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought
in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any
succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom
were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel
Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other
than sound Commonwealth's men; but that oaths were becoming
frightfully frequent, and this one would be "a confining of
Providence," &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a
majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen
(Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that,
after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained
there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About
a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax,
St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council
rather than submit to the qualification made essential in
_their_ case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also
evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established
Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to
persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and
necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given
to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively
the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and
other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the
public "That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the
settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious
Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they
will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle
the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers;
and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due
Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not
meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of
mal-administration and appeals, &c." Such a declaration was adopted
and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to
conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the
Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but
to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the
Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic
exponents of the "good old cause." The very phrase "the good old
cause," one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word
"fanatics" as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use
within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig,
Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the
power going from their hands.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 678; Ludlow,
807-809; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 325-839.]

While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was
owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the
necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of
what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the
relations now subsisting between the House and Monk.

The House having been restored by Monk's agency, but without that
march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority
were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other
hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been
restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved
nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within
England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump
reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to
Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at
last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to
find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after
all. Lambert's army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on
orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for
himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his
march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and
deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained
five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a
conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his
Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to
attack Lambert's rear, in accordance with the understanding he had
come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk's business at York to
reform the wreck of Lambert's forces, incorporating some of them with
his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had
declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own
regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take
charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was
reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by
his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the
Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen
from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order
him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they
could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on
the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still
covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in
Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London
about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council
of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day,
at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing
farther information for his guidance. On the 22nd, as he was
approaching Leicester, Messrs. Scott and Robinson, who had been sent
from London as Commissioners from the Rump to attend him in the rest
of his march, made their appearance ceremoniously and were duly
received. They had come really as anxious spies on Monk's conduct,
and were very inquisitive and loquacious; but they relieved him
thenceforth of much of the trouble of answering the deputations and
addresses by which he was still beset on his route. They were with
him at Northampton, where he was on the 24th; at Dunstable, where he
was on the 27th; and at St. Alban's, where he arrived on the 28th.
Here, twenty miles from London, he rested for five days, to see the
issue of a very important message he had been secretly preparing for
the Parliament and which he now sent on by Dr. Clarges. It was a
request to the House to clear London of all but two of the regiments
then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood
and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to
be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the
House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his
march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting
at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of
his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had
come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr.
Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The
text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that
they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on
this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the
Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr.
Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the
Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God
led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came
thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people
_crinkledum cum crankledum_." Monk's present march was to be one
of the last of the windings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680;
Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).]

While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real
intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those
addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not
only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of
the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at
Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the
City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the
borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners
from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses
had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done,
they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen
either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted
into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of
1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or
(2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at
once. Both these methods implied the restoration of Charles, though
mention of that consequence, and by some even the thought of it, was
most studiously avoided. A full and free new Parliament meant, in the
present mood of the country, a recall of Charles rapidly and
unhesitatingly. The filling up of the present Parliament by the
restoration of the secluded members, and by new elections for other
vacancies, meant the reconstituting of the Long Parliament entire,
just as it had been while negotiations with Charles I. were going on,
and before the Army, in order to stop these negotiations and bring in
the Republic, ejected the Royalist and Presbyterian members. Such a
reconstituted Parliament, if time were given it, would also
inevitably recall Charles II., though it might do so after a
preliminary compact with him on the basis of that Treaty of Newport
which had been going on with his father late in 1648, and which might
be regarded as still embodying the views of the Presbyterians
respecting Royalty and its limits. Of the two methods the Cavaliers
or Old Royalists naturally preferred that which would bring in
Charles most speedily and with the fewest conditions; but, as they
were outnumbered by the Presbyterians or New Royalists, they were
willing to accept _their_ method. To the genuine Rumpers, of
course, either proposal was dreadful. To retain the power themselves,
enlarging their House, if at all, only by new elections permitted by
themselves, and not to part with their power unless to a new
Parliament the qualifications for which should have been carefully
pre-determined by themselves, was the only procedure by which they
could hope to preserve the Commonwealth. Hence, on the one hand,
their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely
essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their
anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the
Stuarts utterly. It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this
matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the
deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two
commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had
baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his
intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to
restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission
of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by
Fairfax. But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the
secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to
Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point.
To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or
indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities
which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or
Price, or the physician Dr. Barrow, been always at hand to explain
privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was
peculiar. Only in one matter was he explicit himself. He would not
permit the least insinuation that he designed to bring in Charles. At
York he had caned one of his officers for having said something
imprudent to that effect.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner and Phillips _ut supra_; Letter of M. de
Bordeaux to Mazarin, of date Jan. 21, in Guizot, II. 336-340.]

On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did
comply with Monk's request, by issuing orders for the removal of
Fleetwood's regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way
was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be
commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was
a mutiny among Fleetwood's soldiers on account of the disgrace put
upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters
after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the
desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers;
and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet
the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray's Inn Lane,
Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very
rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through
the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night,
and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall,
receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in
the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should
see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration
oath.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Skinner, 199-206; Phillips,
680-682.]

On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk
introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation
among them was only "Commissioner Monk"; for, though he had been
appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few
other members of the old Council of State during the late
interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no
other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert's
_coup d'état_ to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow,
Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last
three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his
equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his
extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker;
at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he
stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing
thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return the
speech he had carefully conned. "Sir, I shall not trouble you with
large narratives," he said; "only give me leave to acquaint you that,
as I marched from Scotland hither, I observed the people in most
counties in great and earnest expectations of Settlement, and they
made several applications to me, with numerous subscriptions. The
chiefest heads of their desires were:--for a free and full
Parliament, and that you would determine your sitting; a Gospel
Ministry; encouragement of Learning and Universities; and for
admittance of the members secluded before 1648, without any previous
oath or engagement. To which I commonly answered, That you are now in
a _free_ Parliament, and, if there were any force remaining upon
you, I would endeavour to remove it; and that you had voted to fill
up your House, and then you would be a _full_ Parliament
also...; but, as for those gentlemen secluded in 1648, I told them
you had given judgment in it and all people ought to acquiesce in
that judgment; but to admit any members to sit in Parliament without
a previous oath or engagement to secure the Government in being, it
was never yet done in England. And, although I said it not to them, I
must say it with pardon to you, that the less oaths and engagements
are imposed (with respect had to the security of the common cause)
your settlement will be the sooner attained to." He was now half
through his speech; and the rest consisted of general recommendations
of a policy in accordance with "the sober interest," with care that
"neither the Cavalier nor Fanatic party" should have a share of the
civil or military power. He ended with a glance at Ireland and
Scotland, bespeaking particular attention to the Scots, as "a nation
deserving much to be cherished," and sure to appreciate the late
declaration in favour of a sober and conservative Church policy,
inasmuch as no nation more dreaded "to be overrun with fanatic
notions." Having thus delivered himself, Monk withdrew, leaving the
House wholly mystified, but also a good deal distempered, by his
ambiguities. It seems to have been on this occasion that Henry Marten
vented that witty description of Monk which is one of the best even
of _his_ good sayings. "Monk," he said, "is like a man that,
being sent for to make a suit of clothes, should bring with him a
budget full of carpenter's tools, and, being told that such things
were not at all fit for the work he was desired to do, should answer,
'It matters not; I will do your work well enough, I warrant you.'"
Monk was now on the spot with his budget of carpenter's tools, and he
meant to make a tolerable suit of clothes with them somehow.[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a hiatus in the Journals at the point of
Monk's reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed
separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original
authority for Henry Marten's witticism is, I believe, Ludlow
(810-811).]

There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of
his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of
him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. _The
Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth_ was another
of Harrington's, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle
and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in
London, he was saluted by _The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and
lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced_, also by Harrington.
_A Coffin for the Good Old Cause_ was another, in a different strain;
and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of
letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival
at St. Alban's, indeed, he had become the universal target for
letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. _The
Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk_ was on the
book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to
the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were
watching to see what "Old George" would do. He did not yet know that
himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that
question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had
been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had
hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that
were coming out only those that could give him light on this question
can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now,
as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in
London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion
which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the
first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping
the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in
pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the
feeling that now prevailed. "Conscientious, Serious, Theological and
Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected,
Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto"; "Six Important Queries
proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament"; "Seven
Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members"; "Case of the
Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members"; "Three Seasonable
Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose
respective citizens have been forcibly excluded," &c.; "Full
Declaration": such are the titles of those of Prynne's pamphlets, the
last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were
delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the
secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named
of Prynne's pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical
list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded
members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk
was to do anything at all, was not Prynne's way the safest and most
popular? Practically, at all events, he could now see that the
possible courses had reduced themselves to two,--(1) The Rump's own
way, or self-enlargement of the present House by new writs, issued
with all Republican precautions; (2) The City's way, or Prynne's way,
which proposed to re-insert the secluded members into the present
House, so as to make it legally the Long Parliament over again, with
its rights and engagements precisely as they had been at the time of
the last negotiations with Charles I. in 1648. For which of these two
courses he should declare himself was the question Monk had to
ponder.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same; Wood's
Ath. III. 870-871.]

He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had
become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way.
On the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, they resolved
that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400
members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning
constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain
details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle
some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners,
tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of
the Rump's obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council
"whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government";
influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head
of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the
streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices.
Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the
midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant
decision for the one or the other was imperative.--On the night of
the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders
from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and
reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in
the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he
was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest
eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders,
though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were
really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the
leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the
surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did
execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the
second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments
that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he
had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had
removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor
and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common
Council and give the Parliament every satisfaction, he had thought it
best not to incense the City by the extreme insult of unhinging the
gates and wedging the portcullises. The Rumpers were in ecstasies.
Monk had committed himself, and was irredeemably theirs. "All is our
own: he will be honest," said Hasilrig to the friends beside him. In
their triumph, they rose once more for a moment to the full height of
Republican confidence. It happened that a deputation of London
citizens, headed by Mr. Praise-God Barebone, had come to the House
that day with a petition and address, signed by some thousands of
"lovers of the good old cause," who were anxious to disclaim all
connexion with the City tumults and with "the promoters of regal
interest" in the City or elsewhere. The petitioners demanded nothing
less than that the House should at once impose an oath abjuring
Charles Stuart upon all clergymen and other persons in public
employment; but even this did not prevent the House from thanking
them cordially. As for the City generally, now that Monk had brought
it to submission, the House would trample it under foot! The Lord
Mayor, having behaved discreetly through the tumults, was to be
thanked; but it was voted that the present Common Council should be
dissolved and a new one elected by such citizens only as the House
should deem worthy of the franchise. Nor was Monk to hesitate any
longer about the city gates and portcullises. Orders were sent to
him, not only to unhinge the gates and wedge the portcullises, as
the Council had already ordered, but to break them in pieces. The
City was to be overmastered utterly and finally, and Monk was to be
the agent.--Not even yet did Monk rebel. The gates and portcullises
were broken in pieces by his soldiers, and every other order was
punctually carried out. The soldiers were in indignation over their
base employment, and the citizens were stupefied. In vain were
Clarges, Dr. Barrow, and others of Monk's friends going about and
assuring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the General was a man of
very peculiar ways and must not be too hastily judged. "Very
peculiar ways indeed," thought the citizens, mourning for their
honours lost, and their broken gates and portcullises. On the night
of Friday, Feb. 10, when Monk returned to Whitehall, after his two
days of rough work in the city, it was, as it seemed, with his
reputation ruined for ever among the Londoners. A few days before
he had been the popular demigod, the man on whom all depended, and
who had all in his power. Now what was he but the slave and hireling
of the Rump?[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 684-685; Skinner,
211-219; Whitlocke, IV. 394-396.]

It was afterwards represented by Monk's admirers that his City
proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment.
He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his
command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would
have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable
process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and
ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was
himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been
handling his carpenter's tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it
is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that,
after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was
that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy
preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to
be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be
in the printer's hands before the House had received the original.

Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in
the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the
House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one
lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by
two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to
make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor,
to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the
regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his
Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having
taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less
than answer that he would expect the General. At the early
dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in
Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more
of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged
earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate
meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the
dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his
Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over,
and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about
five o'clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his
proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was
the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he
would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had
seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the
dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had
that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out
writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their
ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th
of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free
Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to
these demands and otherwise, he meant to remain in the City of London
with his regiments, making common cause with the faithful citizens!
Guildhall rang with acclamations; and, as the news was dispersed
thence through the City, confirmed by the printed copies of Monk's
letter to the Rump that were by this time in circulation, the
dejection of the two last days passed into a phrenzy of joy.
Housewives ran out to Monk's soldiers, who had been standing all day
under arms, carrying them food and drink without stint; crowds of
apprentices danced everywhere like delirious demons; the bells of all
the churches were set a-ringing; the houses of several "fanatics"
were besieged, and the windows in Barebone's all smashed; and far
into the night and into the Sunday morning the streets blazed with
long rows of bonfires. Whatever piece of flesh, in butcher's stall or
in family-safe, bore resemblance to a rump, or could be carved into
something of that shape, was hauled to one of these bonfires to be
flung in and burnt; and for many a day afterwards the 11th of
February 1659-60 was to be famous in London as _The Roasting of the
Rump_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 685-687; Skinner, 219-230; Parl. Hist. III.
1578-9; Letter of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 350-351; Pepys's Diary,
Feb. 11, 1659-60.]

On receiving Monk's letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the
House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into
the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two
previous days, and to assure him "that, as to the filling up of the
House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt
of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time." But
at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed
by that time of Monk's proceedings in the City, had shown their
resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the
Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by
thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and
Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir
Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did
appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling
the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always
be one of the quorum.--Through the following week, however, efforts
were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the
Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them
with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the
Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not
appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for
his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there,
first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers' Hall
in Throgmorton Street, holding _levées_ of the citizens and
city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other
members of the House. Even Ludlow, though one of the complaints in
Monk's letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it
notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from
Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion. He was shy at
first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had
discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart,
"Yea," said he, "we must live and die together for a Commonwealth."
The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was
that of the Secluded Members. The applications on their behalf by the
Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant.
Monk even yet had his hesitations. On the one hand, to avert, if
possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had
been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk's
letter. They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so
that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up
their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided. They had,
moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways. They had resolved
(Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament
should simply be, "I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of
England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and
Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords"; and
they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted
for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of
State. They had also complied with Monk's demands that there should
be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and
especially of Vane and Lambert. All this was to induce Monk to accept
the proffered _Self-Enlargement of the present House_, rather
than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for _the Long
Parliament reconstituted_. Nor were there wanting objections to
the latter plan in Monk's own mind. If a House with the secluded
members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present
exigency and future political order, there might be no harm. But
would it do so? With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all
that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended
Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all
those acts? Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the
sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the
fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the
soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now
depended? Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence? To come
to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk
himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews
with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had
been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's
invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a
dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the
Secluded. Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of
the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable.
Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the
Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the
representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their
absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement.----Monk then
took the matter into his own hands. Having, in the course of the
Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made
a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he
marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st;
and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall,
to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused
a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting
on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of
Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament
House. The incident had been expected; there were soldiers all round
the House already; and the procession walked through cheering crowds
of spectators. Monk remained at Whitehall himself, to hold a General
Council of his officers later in the day.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 687-688; Skinner,
233-242; Ludlow, 832-836; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II.
347-365.]

The Rump, which had been still busy on Saturday with the Bill of
Qualifications or "Disabling Bill," but whose sitting on Monday is
marked only by a hiatus in the Journals, had not formed the House on
Tuesday morning when the procession of secluded members, swelled to
about eighty by stragglers on the way, entered and took their seats.
A few of the Rumpers, seeing what had occurred, ruefully left the
House, to return no more; but most remained and amalgamated
themselves easily with the more numerous new comers. The
reconstituted House then plunged at once into business
thus:-"PRAYERS: _Resolved_, &c., That the Resolution of this
House of the 18th of December, 1648, 'that liberty be given to the
members of this House to declare their dissent to the vote of the 5th
of December 1648 that the King's Answer to the Propositions of both
Houses was a ground for this House to proceed upon for settlement of
the Peace of the Kingdom,' be vacated, and made null and void, and
obliterated." In other words, here was the Long Parliament, like a
Rip Van Winkle, resuming in Feb. 1659-60 the work left off in Dec.
1648, and acknowledging not an inch of gap between the two dates.
There were seven other similar Resolutions, cancelling votes and
orders standing in the way; and these, with orders for the discharge
of the citizens recently imprisoned by the Rump, and resolutions for
annulling the late new Army Commission of the Rump, and for
appointing Monk to be "Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, under
the Parliament, of all the land-forces of England, Scotland, and
Ireland," and continuing Vice-Admiral Lawson, in his naval command,
were the sum and substance of the business of the first sitting.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.]

Before night Monk and his officers had drafted a Letter to all the
regiments and garrisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining
to them that, by the grace of God and good London management, they
had passed through another revolution. The Letter began "Dear
Brethren and Fellow-Soldiers," and bore Monk's signature, followed by
those of Colonels Ralph Knight, John Clobery, Thomas Read, John
Hubblethorn, Leonard Lydcott, Thomas Sanders, William Eyre, John
Streater, Richard Mosse, William Parley, Arthur Evelyn, and sixteen
inferior officers. It was vague, but intimated that the Government
was still to be that of a Commonwealth, and that all disturbances of
the peace "in favour of Charles Stuart or any other pretended
authority" were to be put down. More explicit had been Monk's speech
at Whitehall that morning to the secluded members on their way to the
House, published copies of which were also distributed by Monk's
authority. He had assured the secluded members, "and that in God's
presence," that he had nothing before his eyes "but God's glory and
the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"; and
he had pointed out the interest of the Londoners especially in the
preservation of a Commonwealth, "that Government only being capable
to make them, through the Lord's blessing, the metropolis and bank of
trade for all Christendom." On the Church question he had been very
precise. "As to a Government in the Church," he had said, "the want
whereof hath been no small cause of these nations' distractions, it
is most manifest that, if it be monarchical in the State, the Church
must follow and Prelacy must be brought in--which these nations, I
know, cannot bear, and against which they have so solemnly sworn; and
indeed moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian Government, with a
sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present
to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the Church's
settlement." It is not uninteresting to know that Monk's chief
ecclesiastical adviser at this moment, and probably the person who
had formulated for him the description of the kind of Church that
would be most desirable, was Mr. James Sharp, from Crail in Scotland.
He had followed Monk to London with a commission from the leaders of
the Scottish Resolutioner clergy; and from his arrival there he had
been, Baillie informs us, "the most wise, faithful, and happy
counsellor" Monk had, keeping him from all wrong steps by his
extraordinary Banffshire sagacity.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 688-689; Parl. Hist. III, 1579-1581 (Monk's
Speech and Declaration); Baillie, III. 440-441. How uncertain it was
yet whether Monk would ever desert the Commonwealth, and how anxious
the Royalists were on the subject, appears from a letter of Mordaunt
to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the
Restoration of the Secluded Members (_Clar. State Papers_, III.
683). Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:--"The visible
inclination of the people; the danger he foresees from so many
enemies; his particular pique to Lambert; the provocation of the
Anabaptists and Sectaries, with whom I may now join the Catholics;
the want of money to continue standing armies; the divisions of the
chief officers in those respective armies; the advices of those near
him--I mean, in particular, Clobery and Knight...; the admonitions
daily given him by Mr. Annesley and Alderman Robinson;--unless God
has fed him to the slaughter, cannot but move him."]



CHAPTER I.

Third Section.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE DRIFT TO
THE RESTORATION: FEB. 21, 1659-60--APRIL 25, 1660.

THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: ACTIVE MEN OF THE
PARLIAMENT: PRYNNE, ARTHUR ANNESLEY, AND WILLIAM MORRICE:
MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT: RELEASE OF OLD ROYALIST
PRISONERS: LAMBERT COMMITTED TO THE TOWER: REWARDS AND HONOURS FOR
MONK: "OLD GEORGE" IN THE CITY: REVIVAL OF THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND
COVENANT, THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, AND ALL THE APPARATUS
OF A STRICT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CAUTIOUS MEASURES FOR
A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT: THE REAL QUESTION EVADED AND HANDED OVER TO
ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: CALLING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT AND
ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE SAME: DIFFICULTY ABOUT A HOUSE OF LORDS: HOW
OBVIATED: LAST DAY OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT, MARCH 16, 1659-60: SCENE
IN THE HOUSE.--MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE LEFT IN CHARGE: ANNESLEY
THE MANAGING COLLEAGUE OF MONK: NEW MILITIA ACT CARRIED OUT:
DISCONTENTS AMONG MONK'S OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS: THE RESTORATION OF
CHARLES STILL VERY DUBIOUS: OTHER HOPES AND PROPOSALS FOR THE MOMENT:
THE KINGSHIP PRIVATELY OFFERED TO MONK BY THE REPUBLICANS: OFFER
DECLINED: BURSTING OF THE POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM AT LAST, AND
ENTHUSIASTIC DEMANDS FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES: ELECTIONS TO THE
CONVENTION PARLIAMENT GOING ON MEANWHILE: HASTE OF HUNDREDS TO BE
FOREMOST IN BIDDING CHARLES WELCOME: ADMIRAL MONTAGUE AND HIS FLEET
IN THE THAMES: DIRECT COMMUNICATIONS AT LAST BETWEEN MONK AND
CHARLES: GREENVILLE THE GO-BETWEEN: REMOVAL OF CHARLES AND HIS COURT
FROM BRUSSELS TO BREDA: GREENVILLE SENT BACK FROM BREDA WITH A
COMMISSION FOR MONK AND SIX OTHER DOCUMENTS.--BROKEN-SPIRITEDNESS OF
THE REPUBLICAN LEADERS, BUT FORMIDABLE RESIDUE OF REPUBLICANISM IN
THE ARMY: MONK'S MEASURES FOR PARALYSING THE SAME: SUCCESSFUL DEVICE
OF CLARGES: MONTAGUE'S FLEET IN MOTION: ESCAPE OF LAMBERT FROM THE
TOWER: HIS RENDEZVOUS IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE: GATHERING OF A WRECK OF
THE REPUBLICANS FOUND HIM: DICK INGOLDSBY SENT TO CRUSH HIM: THE
ENCOUNTER NEAR DAVENTRY, APRIL 22, 1660, AND RECAPTURE OF LAMBERT:
GREAT REVIEW OF THE LONDON MILITIA, APRIL 24, THE DAY BEFORE THE
MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT: IMPATIENT LONGING FOR CHARLES:
MONK STILL IMPENETRABLE, AND THE DOCUMENTS FROM BREDA RESERVED.


In the nomination of a new Council of State the House adhered to the
now orthodox number of thirty-one. Monk was named first of all, by
special and open vote, on the 21st of February; and the others were
chosen by ballot, confirmed by open vote in each case, on the 23rd,
when the number of members present and giving in voting-papers was
114. The list, in the order of preference, was then, as follows:--

  General GEORGE MONK

  William Pierrepoint
  John Crewe
  Colonel Edward Rossiter (Rec.)
  Richard Knightley
  Colonel Alexander Popham
  Colonel Herbert Morley
  Lord Fairfax
  Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart.
  Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Bart.
  Lord Chief Justice St. John
  Lord Commissioner Widdrington
  Sir John Evelyn of Wilts
  Sir William Waller
  Sir Richard Onslow
  Sir William Lewis, Bart.
  Colonel (Admiral) Edward Montague (_Rec._)
  Colonel Edward Harley (_Sec._)
  Richard Norton (_Rec._)
  Arthur Annesley (_Rec._)
  Denzil Holles
  Sir John Temple (_Rec._)
  Colonel George Thompson (_Sec._)
  John Trevor (_Rec._)
  Sir John Holland, Bart.
  Sir John Potts, Bart.
  Colonel John Birch (_Rec._)
  Sir Harbottle Grimstone
  John Swinfen (_Rec._)
  John Weaver (_Rec._)
  Serjeant John Maynard.

With the exception of Monk and Fairfax, who were not members of the
Parliament, and the latter of whom was absent in Yorkshire, these
Councillors are to be imagined as also active in the business of the
House. About nine of them were Residuary Rumpers who had accepted
willingly or cheerfully the return of the secluded. The proportion of
Residuary Rumpers in the whole House was even larger. Though it had
been reported by Prynne that as many as 194 of the secluded were
still alive, and a contemporary printed list gives the names of 177
as available,[1] the present House never through its brief session
attained to a higher attendance than 150, the average attendance
ranging from 100 to 120; and I have ascertained by actual counting
that more than a third of these were Residuary Rumpers. It is strange
to find among them such of the extreme Republicans as Hasilrig,
Scott, Marten, and Robinson. They left the House for a time, but
re-appeared in it, whereas Ludlow and Neville and others would not
re-appear--Ludlow, as he tells us, making a practice of walking up
and down in Westminster Hall outside, partly in protest, partly to
show that he had not fled.[2] Actually six Regicides remained in the
House: viz. Scott, Marten, Ingoldsby, Millington, Colonel Hutchinson,
and Sir John Bourchier. The majority of the Residuary Rumpers,
however,--represented by such men as Lenthall, St. John, Ashley
Cooper, Colonel Thompson, Colonel Fielder, Carew Raleigh,
Attorney-General Reynolds, Solicitor-General Ellis, and Colonel
Morley, and even by two of the Regicides mentioned (Ingoldsby and
Hutchinson),--were now in harmony with the Secluded, and by no means
disposed to abet Hasilrig, Scott, and Marten in any farther contest
for Rump principles. In other words, the House was now led really by
the chiefs of the reinstated members. Prominent among these, besides
Crewe, Knightley, Gerrard, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, Sir William
Waller, Sir William Lewis, Arthur Annesley, Sir Harbottle Grimston,
and others named as of the Council, were Prynne, Sir Anthony Irby,
Major-General Browne, Sir William Wheeler, Lord Ancram (member for a
Cornish burgh), William Morrice, and some others, not of the
Council.--Prynne, who ought to have been on the Council, if courage
for the cause of the Secluded and indefatigable assiduity in pleading
it were sufficient qualifications, had not been thought fit for that
honour; but he was a very busy man in the House. He had taken his
place there very solemnly the first day, with an old basket-hilt
sword on; and he was much in request on Committees.--Of more
aristocratic manners and antecedents, and therefore fitter for the
Council, was Arthur Annesley, a man of whom we have not heard much
hitherto, but who, from this point onwards, was to attract a good
deal of notice. The eldest son of the Irish peer Viscount Valentia
and Baron Mountnorris, he had come into the Long Parliament in 1640
as member for Radnorshire; he had gone with the King in the beginning
of the Civil War; but he had afterwards done good service for the
Parliament in Ireland during the Rebellion, and had at length
conformed to the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. While the
Protectorate lasted he had been really a Cromwellian; but, like so
many other Cromwellians, he was now a half-declared Royalist. He had
been one of the chief negotiators with Monk for the re-seating of the
Secluded, and he took at once a foremost place among them, both in
the House and in the Council. He was now about forty-fire years of
age.--An accession to the House, after it had sat for a week or more,
was Mr. William Morrice. He was a Devonshire man, like Monk, to whom
he was related by marriage. He had been sent into the Long Parliament
in 1645 as Recruiter for Devonshire, and had been afterwards
secluded; and he had been returned to Oliver's two Parliaments and to
Richard's. Living in Devonshire as a squire "of fair estate," he had
acquired the character of an able and bookish man of enlightened
Presbyterian principles; he had been of use to Monk in the management
of his Devonshire property; there had been constant correspondence
between them; and there was no one for whom Monk had a greater
regard. Now, accordingly, at the age of about five and fifty, Morrice
had left his books and come from Devonshire to London at Monk's
request, not only to take his place in Parliament, but also to be a
kind of private adviser and secretary to Monk, more in his intimacy
than even Dr. Clarges.--To complete this view of the composition of
the new Government, we may add that on Feb. 24 Thomas St. Nicholas
was made Clerk of the Parliament, and that on the 27th the House
appointed Thurloe and a John Thompson to be joint-secretaries of
State. There was a division on Thurloe's appointment, but it was
carried by sixty-five votes to thirty-eight. The tellers against
Thurloe were Annesley and Sir William Waller, but he was supported by
Sir John Evelyn of Wilts and Colonel Hutchinson. Thurloe's former
subordinate, Mr. William Jessop, was now clerk to the Council of
State.[3]

[Footnote 1: A single folio fly-leaf, dated March 26 in the Thomason
copy, and called "_The Grand Memorandum: A True and Perfect
Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons," &c._
It was printed by Husbands on the professed "command" of one of the
members (Prynne?).]

[Footnote 2: The fly-leaf mentioned in last note gives the names of
thirty-three Rumpers who did not sit in the House after the
readmission of the secluded members. Arranged alphabetically they
were:--Anlaby, Bingham, John Carew, Cawley, James Challoner,
Crompton, Darley, Fleetwood, John Goodwyn, Nicholas Gold, John
Gurdon, Sir James Harrington, Hallows, Harvey, Heveningham, John
Jones, Viscount Lisle, Livesey, Ludlow, Christopher Martin,
Neville, Nicholas, Pigott, Pyne, Sir Francis Russell, the Earl of
Salisbury, Algernon Sidney, Walter Strickland, Sir William
Strickland, Wallop, Sir Thomas Walsingham, and Whitlocke. Compare
with the list of the Restored Rump, ante pp. 453-455.]

[Footnote 3: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21
to March 16, 1659-60, with examination of the lists of all the
Committees through that period; Ludlow, 845-846; Wood's Ath. IV. 181
et seq. (Annesley), and III. 1087 et seq. (Morrice); Clarendon, 891
and 895.]

By the rough compact made with Monk, the House was to confine itself
to the special work for which it was the indispensable instrument,
and to push on as rapidly as possible, through that, to an act for
its own dissolution. The majority was such that the compact was
easily fulfilled. Six-and-twenty days sufficed for all that was
required from this reinstated fag-end of the famous Long Parliament.

Naturally much of the work of the House took the form (1) of redress
of old or recent injuries, and (2) of rewards and punishments.
Almost the first thing done by the House was to restore the
privileges of the City of London, release the imprisoned Common
Council men and citizens, and issue orders for the repair of the
broken gates and portcullises. The City and the Parliament were now
heartily at one, and there was a loan from the City of £60,000 in
token of the happy reconciliation. Sir George Booth, who had been
recommitted to the Tower by the Rump, was finally released, though
still on security. There were several other releases of prisoners and
removals of sequestrations, and at length (Feb. 27) it was referred
to a Committee to consider comprehensively the cases of all persons
whatsoever then in prison on political grounds. On the 3rd of March
particular orders were given for the discharge of the Earl of
Lauderdale, the Earl of Crawford, and Lord Sinclair, from their
imprisonment in Windsor Castle; and thus the last of the Scottish
prisoners from Worcester Battle found themselves free men once more.
Twelve days afterwards the House went to the extreme of the merciful
process by ordering the release of poor Dr. Matthew Wren, the Laudian
ex-Bishop, who had been committed by the Long Parliament early in
1641 along with Laud and Strafford, and who had been lying in the
Tower, all but forgotten, through the intervening nineteen years. At
the same time discretionary powers were given to the Council of State
to discharge any political prisoners that might be still left.--In
the article of _punishments_ the House was very temperate
indeed. Notorious Rumpers were removed, of course, from military and
civil offices, and there were sharper inquiries after Colonel Cobbet,
Colonel Ashfield, Major Creed, and others too suspiciously at large;
but, with one exception, there seemed to be no thought of the serious
prosecution of any for what had been done either under the Rump
Government or during the Wallingford-House interruption. The
exception was Lambert. Brought before the Council, and unable or
unwilling to find the vast bail of £20,000 which they demanded for
his liberty, he was committed by them to the Tower; and the House, on
the 6th of March, confirmed the act, and ordered his detention for
future trial. While Lambert was thus treated as the chief criminal,
the rewards and honours went still, of course, mainly to Monk. To his
Commandership-in-chief of all the Armies there was added the
Generalship of the whole Fleet, though in this command, to Monk's
disappointment, Montague was conjoined with him (March 2). He was
also made Keeper of Hampton Court; and the £1000 a year in lands
which the Rump had voted him was changed by a special Bill into
£20,000 to be paid at once (March 16), As the Bill was first drafted,
the reward was said to be "for his signal services"; but by a vote on
the third reading the word "signal" was changed into "eminent."
Perhaps Annesley, Sir William Waller, and the other new chiefs at
Whitehall were becoming a little tired of the praises of so peculiar
an Aristides. But he was still a god among the Londoners. From St.
James's, which was now his quarters, he would go into the City every
other day, to attend one of a series of dinners which they had
arranged for him in the halls of the great companies, and at which he
found himself so much at ease in his morose way that he would hardly
ever leave the table "till he was as drunk as a beast." Ludlow, who
tells us so, would not have told an untruth even about Monk; and
Ludlow was then in London, knowing well what went on. Let us suppose,
however, that he exaggerated a little, and that old George was the
victim of circumstances.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21
to March 16; Ludlow, 855-856.]

A large proportion of the proceedings of the House and the Council
may be described as simply a re-establishment of Presbyterianism. The
secluded members being Presbyterians to a man, there was at once an
enthusiastic recollection of the edicts of the Long Parliament
between 1643 and 1648, setting up Presbytery as the national
Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols
and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of
Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had
been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries,
in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity
and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have
alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the
House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject of
Religion and Church affairs--Annesley, Ashley Cooper, Prynne, and Sir
Samuel Luke (i.e. Butler's Presbyterian "Sir Hudibras") being of the
number; and on the 2nd of March, on report from this Committee, the
Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, as it had been under
discussion in the Long Parliament in 1646 (Vol. III. p. 512), was
again brought before the House, and passed bodily at once, with the
exception of chapter 30, "_Of Church Censures_," and chapter 31,
"_Of Synods and Councils_"--which two chapters it was thought as
well to keep still in Committee. The same day there were other
resolutions of a Presbyterian tenor. But the climax was on March 5,
in this form: "_Ordered_, That the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be
printed and published, and set up and forthwith read in every church,
and also read once a year according to former Act of Parliament, and
that the said SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be also set up in this
House." Thus, when the bones of Alexander Henderson had been for more
than thirteen years in their tomb in Grey Friars churchyard in
Edinburgh, was the great document which he had drafted in that city
in August 1643, as a bond of religious union for the Three Kingdoms,
and only the first fortunes of which he had lived to see,
resuscitated in all its glory. What more could Presbyterianism
desire? That nothing might be wanting, however, there followed, on
the 14th of March, a Bill "for approbation and admittance of
ministers to public benefices and lectures," one of the clauses of
which prescribed means for the immediate division of all the counties
of England and Wales into classical Presbyteries, according to those
former Presbyterianizing ordinances of the Long Parliament which had
never been carried into effect save in London and Lancashire. The
Universities were to be constituted into presbyteries or inserted
into such; and the whole of South Britain was to be patterned
ecclesiastically at last in that exact resemblance to North Britain
which had been the ideal before Independency burst in. What measures
of "liberty for consciences truly tender" might be conceded did not
yet appear. Anabaptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts, and
Monk's "Fanatics" generally, might tremble; and even moderate and
orthodox Independents might foresee difficulty In retaining their
livings in the State Church. Indeed Owen was already (March 13)
displaced from his Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, by a vote of the
House recognising a prior claim of Dr. Reynolds to that post.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Neal, IV. 224-225.]

In the matter of a political settlement the proceedings were equally
rapid and simple. Celerity here was made possible by the fact that
the House considered itself quite precluded from discussing the whole
question of the future Constitution. Had they entered on that
question, the probability is that they would have decided for a
negotiation with Charles II., with a view to his return to England
and assumption of the Kingship on terms borrowed from the old Newport
Treaty with his father, or at all events on strictly expressed terms
of some kind, limiting his authority and securing the Presbyterian
Church-Establishment. Even this, however, was problematical. There
were still Republicans and Cromwellians in the Parliament, and not a
few of the Presbyterians members had been Commonwealth's men so long
that it might well appear doubtful to them whether a return to
Royalty now was worth the risks, or whether, if there must be a
return to Royalty, it was in the least necessary to fix it again in
the unlucky House of Stuart. Then the difficulties out of doors! No
one knew what might be the effect upon Monk's own army, or upon the
numerous Republican sectaries, of a sudden proposal in the present
Parliament to restore Charles. On the other hand, the Old Royalists
throughout the country had no wish to hear of such a proposal.
_They_ dreaded nothing so much, short of loss of all chance of
the King's return, as seeing him return tied by such terms as the
present Presbyterian House would impose. It was a relief to all
parties, therefore, and a satisfactory mode of self-delusion to some,
that the present House should abstain from the constitutional
question altogether, and should confine itself to the one duty of
providing another Parliament to which that question, with all its
difficulties, might be handed over.--On the 22nd of February, the
second day of the restored House, it was resolved that a new
Parliament should be summoned for the 25th of April, and a Committee
was appointed to consider qualifications. The Parliament was to be a
"full and free" one, by the old electoral system of English and Welsh
constituencies only, without any representation of Scotland or
Ireland. But what was meant by "full and free"? On this question
there was some light on the 13th of March, when the House passed a
resolution annulling the obligation of members of Parliament to take
the famous engagement to be faithful to "the Commonwealth as
established, without King or House of Lords," and directing all
orders enjoining that engagement to be expunged from the Journals.
This was certainly a stroke in favour of Royalty, in so far as it
left Royalty and Peerage open questions for the constituencies and
the representatives they might choose; but, taken in connexion with
the order, eight days before, for the revival of the Solemn League
and Covenant--in which document "to preserve and defend the King's
Majesty's person and authority" is one of the leading phrases--it was
received generally as a positive anticipation of the judgment on
these questions. There was yet farther light, however, between March
13 and March 16, when the House, on report from the Committee,
settled the qualifications of members and electors. All Papists and
all who had aided or abetted the Irish Rebellion were to be incapable
of being members, and also all who, or whose fathers, had advised or
voluntarily assisted in any war against the Parliament since Jan. 1,
1641-2, unless there had been subsequent manifestation of their good
affections. This implied the exclusion of all the very conspicuous
Royalists of the Civil Wars and the sons of such; and the present
House, as the lineal representative of the Parliamentarians in those
wars, could hardly have done less, especially as there was a
saving-clause of which moderate Royalists would have the benefit, and
as the electors were sure to interpret the saving-clause very
liberally. For there was not even the same guardedness in the
qualifications of the electors themselves. It was proposed, indeed,
by the Committee to disfranchise all "that have been actually in arms
for the late King or his son against the Parliament or have
compounded for his or their delinquency" with an exception only in
favour of manifest penitents; but this was negatived by the House by
ninety-three votes (Lord Ancram and Mr, Herbert tellers) to fifty-six
votes (Scott and Henry Marten tellers). Thus, active Royalists of the
Civil Wars, if they might not be elected, might at least elect; and,
as another regulation disqualified from electing or being elected all
"that deny Magistracy or Ministry or either of them to be the
Ordinances of God "--viz. all Fifth Monarchy men, extreme
Anabaptists, and Quakers--the balance was still towards the
Royalists. In short, as finally passed, the Bill was one tending to
bring in a Parliament the main mass of which should consist of
Presbyterians, though there might be a large intermixture of Old
Royalists, Cromwellians, and moderate Commonwealth's men. To such a
Parliament it might be safely left to determine what the future form
of Government should be, whether Commonwealth continued, restored
Kingship, or a renewal of the Protectorate. The present House had not
itself decided anything. It had not decided against a continuance of
the Commonwealth, should that seem best. It had only assumed that
possibly that might not seem the best, and had therefore removed
obstacles to the free deliberation of either of the other schemes.
The revival of the Solemn League and Covenant might seem to imply
more; but the phraseology of a document of 1643 might admit of
re-interpretation in 1660.--A special perplexity of the present House
was in the matter of the Other House or House of Lords. They were now
sitting themselves as a Single House, notwithstanding that the
Long Parliament, of which they professed themselves to be a
continuation, consisted of two Houses. This was an anomaly in itself,
nay an illegality; and there had been a hot-headed attempt of some of
the younger Peers to remove it by bursting into the House of Lords at
the same time that the secluded members took their seats in the
Commons. Monk's soldiers had, by instructions, prevented that; and,
with the full consent of all the older and wiser peers at hand, the
management of the crisis had been left to the one reconstituted
House. The anomaly, however, had been a subject of serious discussion
in that House. On the one hand, they could not pass a vote for the
restitution of the House of Peers without trenching on that very
question of the future form of Government which they had resolved not
to meddle with. On the other hand, absolute silence on the matter was
impossible. How could the present single House, for example, even if
its other acts were held valid, venture on, an Act for the
dissolution of that Long Parliament whose peculiar privilege, wrung
from Charles I. in May 1641, was that it should never be dissolved
except by its own consent, i.e. by the joint-consent of the two
component Houses? Yet this was the very thing--that had to be done
before way could be made for the coming Parliament. The course
actually taken was perhaps the only one that the circumstances
permitted. When the House, at their last sitting, on Friday, March
16, did pass the Act dissolving itself and-calling the new
Parliament, it incorporated with the Act a proviso in these words:
"Provided always, and be it declared, that the single actings of this
House, enforced by the pressing necessities of the present times, are
not intended in the least to infringe, much less take away, the
ancient native right which the House of Peers, consisting of those
Lords who did engage in the cause of the Parliament against the
forces raised in the name of the late King, and so continued until
1648, had and have to be a part of the Parliament of England." Here
again there was not positive prejudgment so much as the removal of an
obstacle.--It did seem, however, as if the House would not separate
without passing the bounds it had prescribed for itself. It had
already been debated in whose name the writs for the new Parliament
should issue? "In King Charles's" had been the answer of the
undaunted Prynne. He had been overruled, and the arrangement was that
the writs should issue, as under a Commonwealth, "in the name of the
Keepers of the Liberties of England." At the last sitting of the
House, just as the vote for the dissolution was being put, the
Presbyterian Mr. Crewe, provoked by some Republican utterance of
Scott, moved that the House, before dissolving, should testify its
abhorrence of the murder of the late King by a resolution disclaiming
all hand in that affair. The untimely proposal caused a great
excitement, various members starting up to protest that they at least
had never concurred in the horrid act, while others, who had been
King's judges or regicides, betrayed their uneasiness by
prevarications and excuses. Not so Scott. "Though I know not where to
hide my head at this time," he said boldly, "yet I dare not refuse
to own that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in that action";
and he concluded by declaring he should consider it the highest
honour of his existence to have it inscribed on his tomb: "_Here
lieth one who had a hand and a heart in the execution of Charles
Stuart_." Having thus spoken, he left the House, most of the
Republicans accompanying him. The Dissolution Act was passed, and
there was an end of the Long Parliament. Their last resolution was
that the 6th of April should be a day of general fasting and
humiliation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Ludlow, 863-864; Noble's
Lives of the Regicides, II. 169-199 (Life of Scott, with evidence of
Lenthall and others at his trial); Phillips, 694; Guizot, II.
167-168.]

Though the House was dissolved, the Council of State was to sit on,
with full executive powers, till the meeting of the new Parliament.
Annesley was now generally, if not habitually, the President of the
Council, and in that capacity divided the principal management of
affairs with Monk.

The Parliament having provided for expenses by an assessment of
£100,000 a month for six months, the Council could give full
attention to the main business of preserving the peace till the
elections should be over. Conjoined with this, however, was the
important duty of carrying out a new Militia Act which the Parliament
had framed. It was an Act disbanding all the militia forces as they
had been raised and officered by the Rump, and ordering the militia
in each county to be reorganized by commissioners of Presbyterian or
other suitable principles. The Act had given great offence to the
regular Army, naturally jealous at all times of the civilian
soldiery, but especially alarmed now by observing into what hands the
Militia was going. It would be a militia of King's men, they said,
and the Commonwealth would be undone! So strong was this feeling in
the Army that Monk himself had remonstrated with the House, and the
Militia Act, though passed on the 12th of March, was not printed till
the House had removed his objections. This had been done by pointing
to the clause of the Act which required that all officers of the new
Militia should take an acknowledgment "that the war undertaken by
both Houses of Parliament in their defence against the forces raised
in the name of the late King was just and lawful." When Monk had
professed himself satisfied, the re-organization of the Militia went
on rapidly in all the counties. Monk was one of the Commissioners for
the Militia of Middlesex, and to his other titles was added that of
Major-General and Commander-in-chief of the Militia of London.
Meanwhile the Council had issued proclamations over the country
against any disturbance of the peace, and most of the active
politicians had left town to look after their elections. The
Harringtonian or Rota Club, one need hardly say, was no more in
existence. After having been a five months' wonder, it had vanished,
amid the laughter of the Londoners, as soon as the secluded members
had added themselves to the Rump. Theorists and their "models" were
no longer wanted.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, March 10-16; Phillips, 694;
Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Wood's Ath. III. 1120.]

Not even yet was there any positive intimation that the Commonwealth
was defunct. No one could declare that authoritatively, and every one
might hope or believe as he liked. The all but universal conviction,
however, even among the Republicans, was that the Republic was
doomed, and that, if the last and worst consummation in a return of
Charles Stuart was to be prevented, it could only be by consenting to
some single-person Government of a less fatal kind. O that Richard's
Protectorate could be restored! The thing was talked of by St. John
and others, but the possibility was past. But might not Monk himself
be invested with the sovereignty? Hasilrig and others actually went
about Monk with the offer, imploring him to save his country by this
last means; and the chance seemed so probable that the French
ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, tried to ascertain through Clarges
whether Monk's own inclinations ran that way. Monk was too wary for
either the Rumpers or the Ambassador. He declined the offers of
Hasilrig and his friends, allowing Clarges privately to inform the
Council that such had been made; and, though he received the
Ambassador, it was but gruffly. "The French ambassador visited
General Monk, whom he found no accomplished courtier or statesman,"
writes Whitlocke sarcastically under March 24; and the ambassador's
own account is that he could get nothing more from Monk, in reply to
Mazarin's polite messages and requests for confidence, than a
reiterated statement that he had no information to give. And so, a
Single Person being inevitable, and the momentary uncertainty whether
it would be "Charles, George, or Richard again" being out of the way,
the long-dammed torrent had broken loose. And what a torrent! "King
Charles! King Charles! King Charles!" was the cry that seemed to
burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British
Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or
half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their
own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly
Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard's
Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian
Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence
of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. On the evening
of the 15th of March, the day before the Parliament dissolved
itself, some bold fellows had come with a ladder to the Exchange in
the City of London, where stood the pedestal from which a statue of
Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out
with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, "_Exit
tyrannus, Regum ultimus_," a large crowd gathering round them and
shouting "God bless Charles the Second" round an extemporized
bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight,
though all knew what all were thinking, there had been a hesitation
to speak out. It was in the end of March or the first days of April
1660, when the elections had begun, that the hesitation suddenly
ceased everywhere, and the torrent was at its full. They were
drinking Charles's health openly in taverns; they were singing songs
about him everywhere; they were tearing down the Arms of the
Commonwealth in public buildings, and putting up the King's
instead.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 695; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II.
381-395; Whitlocke, IV. 405; Pepys's Diary, from beginning to April
11, 1660.]

Popular feeling having declared itself so unmistakeably for Charles,
it was but ordinary selfish prudence in all public men who had
anything to lose, or anything to fear, to be among the foremost to
bid him welcome. No longer now was it merely a rat here and there of
the inferior sort, like Downing and Morland,[1] that was leaving the
sinking ship. So many were leaving, and of so many sorts and degrees,
that Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles had ceased to count,
on their side, the deserters as they clambered up. He received now,
Hyde tells us, "the addresses of many men who had never before
applied themselves to him, and many sent to him for his Majesty's
approbation and leave to sit in the next Parliament." Between London
and Flanders messengers were passing to and fro daily, with perfect
freedom and hardly any disguise of their business. Annesley, the
President of the Council of State, was in correspondence with the
King; Thurloe, now back in the Secretaryship to the Council, was in
correspondence with him, and by no means dishonourably; and in the
meetings of the Council of State itself, though it was bound to be
corporately neutral till the Parliament should assemble, the drift of
the deliberations was obvious. The only two men whose resistance even
now could have compelled a pause were Monk and Montague. What of
them?----It was no false rumour that Montague, the Cromwellian among
Cromwellians, the man who would have died for Cromwell or perhaps for
his dynasty, had been holding himself free for Charles. Under a cloud
among the Republicans since his suspicious return from the Baltic in
September last, but restored to command by the recent vote of the
Parliament of the secluded members making him joint chief Admiral
with Monk, he was at this moment (i.e. from March 23 onwards) in the
Thames with his fleet, in receipt of daily orders from the Council
and guarding the sea-passage between them and Flanders. He had on
board with him, as his secretary, a certain young Mr. Samuel Pepys,
who had been with him already in the Baltic, had been meanwhile in a
clerkship in the Exchequer office, but had now left his house in Axe
Yard, Westminster, and his young wife there, for the pleasure and
emoluments of being once more secretary to so kind and great a
master. In cabin talk with the trusty Pepys the Lord Admiral made no
secret of his belief that the King would come in; but it was only by
shrewd observations of what passed on board, and of the strange
people that came and went, that Pepys then guessed what he afterwards
knew to be the fact. "My Lord," as Pepys always affectionately calls
his patron, was pledged to the King, and was managing most discreetly
in his interest.[2]--But the power of Montague, as Commander-in-chief
of the Navy only, was nothing in comparison with Monk's. How was Monk
comporting himself? Most cautiously to the last. Though it was the
policy of his biographers afterwards, and agreeable to himself, that
his conduct from the date of his march out of Scotland should be
represented as a slow and continuous working on towards the one end
of the King's restoration, the truth seems to be that he clung to the
notion of some kind of Commonwealth longer than most people, and made
up his mind for the King only when circumstances absolutely compelled
him. With the Army, or a great part of it, to back him, he might
resist and impede the restoration of Charles; but, as things now
were, could he prevent it ultimately? Why not himself manage the
transaction, and reap the credit and advantages, rather than leave it
to be managed by some one else and be himself among the ruined? That
he had been later than others in sending Charles his adhesion was no
matter. He had gained consequence by the very delay. He was no longer
merely commander of an Army in Scotland, but centre and chief of all
the Armies; he was worth more for Charles's purposes than all the
others put together; and Charles knew it! So Monk had been reasoning
for some time; and it was on the 17th of March, the day after the
dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members, that his
ruminations had taken practical effect. Even then his way of
committing himself was characteristic. His kinsman, Sir John
Greenville, the same who had been commissioned to negotiate with him
when he was in Scotland, was again the agent. With the utmost
privacy, only Mr. Morrice being present as a third party, Monk had
received Greenville at St. James's, acknowledged his Majesty's
gracious messages, and given certain messages for his Majesty in
return. He would not pen a line; Greenville was to convey the
messages verbally. They included such recommendations to his Majesty
as that he should smooth the way for his return by proclaiming a
pardon and indemnity in as wide terms as possible, a guarantee of
all sales and conveyances of lands under the Commonwealth, and a
liberal measure of Religious Toleration; but the most immediate and
practical of them all was that his Majesty should at once leave the
Spanish dominions, take up his quarters at Breda, and date all his
letters and proclamations thence. For the rest, as there were still
many difficulties and might be slips, the agreement between his
Majesty and Monk was to be kept profoundly secret.[3]

[Footnote 1: These two of the late public servants of Oliver--Downing
his minister at the Hague, and Morland his envoy in the business of
the Piedmontese massacre of 1655--had behaved most dishonourably.
Both, for some months past, had been establishing friendly relations
with Charles by actually betraying trusts they still held with the
government of the Commonwealth--Morland by communicating papers and
information which came into his possession confidentially in
Thurloe's office (_Clar. Hist._ 869), and Downing by
communicating the secrets of his embassy to Charles, and acting in
his interests in that embassy, on guarantee that he should retain
it, and have other rewards, when Charles came to the throne
(_Clar. Life_, 1116-1117). There was to be farther proof that
Downing was the meaner rascal of the two.]

[Footnote 2: Pepys's Diary, from beginning to April 11, 1660.
Montague seems to have first positively and directly pledged himself
to Charles in a letter of April 10, beginning "May it please your
excellent Majesty,--From your Majesty's incomparable goodness and
favour, I had the high honour to receive a letter from you when I was
in the Sound last summer, and now another by the hands of my cousin"
(Clar. State Papers). But the cousin had been already negotiating.]

[Footnote 3: Clarendon, 891-896; Thurloe, VII. 807-898; Skinner,
266-275; Phillips, 695-696.]

Over the seas went Greenville, as fast as ship could carry him, with
the precious messages he bore. At Ostend, where he arrived on the
23rd of March, he reduced them to writing; and the next day, and for
several days afterwards, Charles, Hyde, Ormond, and Secretary
Nicholas, were in joyful consultation over them in Brussels. The
advice of an instant removal to Breda fitted in with their own
intentions. Neither the Spanish territory nor the French was a good
ground from which to negotiate openly with England; nor indeed was
Spanish territory quite safe for Charles at a time when, seeing his
restoration possible, Spain might detain him as a hostage for the
recovery of Dunkirk and Mardike. To Breda, accordingly, as Monk
advised, the refugees went. They went in the most stealthy manner,
and just in time to avoid being detained by the Spanish authorities.
Before they reached Breda, however, but when Greenville could say
that he had seen them safe within Dutch territory, he left them, to
post back to England with a private letter to Monk in the King's own
hand, enclosing a commission to the Captaincy-General of all his
Majesty's forces, and with six other documents, which had been
drafted by Hyde, and were all dated by anticipation "_At Our Court
at Breda, this 4/14th of April 1660, in the Twelfth Year of Our
Reign_." One was a public letter "To our trusty and well-beloved
General Monk," to be by him communicated to the President and Council
of State and to the Army officers; another was to the Speaker of the
House of Commons in the coming Parliament; a third was a general
"Declaration" for all England, Scotland, and Ireland; a fourth was a
short letter to the House of Lords, should there be one; a fifth was
for Admirals Monk and Montague, to be communicated to the Fleet; and
the sixth was to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councilmen of
the City of London. Besides the originals, copies of all were sent to
Monk, that he might keep the originals unopened or suppress any of
them.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 896-902; Phillips, 696; Skinner, 276-280.]

It could be an affair now only of a few weeks, more or less. There,
at Breda, was his swarthy, witty, good-humoured, utterly profligate
and worthless, young Majesty, with his refugee courtiers round him;
at home, over all Britain and Ireland, they were ready for him,
longing for him, huzzahing for him, Monk and the Council managing
silently in London; and between, as a moveable bridge, there was
Montague and his fleet. When would the bridge move towards the
Continent? That would depend on the newly-elected Parliament, which
was to meet on the 25th. Could there be any mischance in the
meantime?

It did not seem so. The late politicians of the Rump were dispersed
and powerless. Hasilrig sat by himself in London, moaning "_We are
undone: we are undone_"; Scott was in Buckinghamshire, if
perchance they might elect him for Wycombe: Ludlow hid in Wiltshire
and Somersetshire, also nominated for a seat, but careless about it;
the rest absconded one knows not where. The "Fanatics," as the
Republican Sectaries were now called collectively, were silenced and
overwhelmed. Even Mr. Praise-God Barebone, tired of having his
windows broken, was under written engagement to the Council to keep
himself quiet. The same written engagement had been exacted from
Hasilrig and Scott.--But what of the Army, the original maker of the
Commonwealth, its defender and preserver through good report and bad
report for eleven years, and with strength surely to maintain it yet,
or make a stand in its behalf? The question is rather difficult. It
may be granted that something of the general exhaustion, the fatigue
and weariness of incessant change, the longing to be at rest by any
means, had come upon the Army itself. Not the less true is it that
Republicanism was yet the general creed of the Army, and that, could
a universal vote have been taken through the regiments in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, it would have kept out Charles Stuart. Nay, so
engrained was the Republican feeling in the ranks of the soldiery,
and so gloomily were they watching Monk, that, could any suitable
proportion of them have been brought together, and could any fit
leader have been present to hold up his sword for the Commonwealth,
they would have rallied round him with acclamations. Precisely to
prevent this, however, had been Monk's care. One remembers his advice
from Scotland to Richard Cromwell nineteen months ago, when Richard
was entering on his Protectorate. It was to cashier boldly. Not an
officer in the Army, he had said, would have interest enough, if he
were once cashiered, to draw two men after him in opposition to any
existing Government. The very soul of Monk lies in that maxim, and he
had been acting on it himself. Not only, as we have seen, had he
reofficered his own army in Scotland with the utmost pains before
venturing on his march into England; but, since his coming into
England, he had still been discharging officers, and appointing or
promoting others. He had done so while still conducting himself as
the servant of the Restored Rump; and he had done so again very
particularly after he had become Commander-in-chief for the
Parliament of the Secluded Members. The consequence was most apparent
in that portion of the Army which was more especially his own,
consisting of the regiments he had brought from Scotland, and that
were now round him in London. The officers--Knight, Read, Clobery,
Hubblethorn, &c.--were all men accustomed to Monk, or of his latest
choosing. His difficulty had been greater with the many dispersed
regiments away from London, once Fleetwood's and Lambert's. Not only
was there no bond of attachment between them and Monk; they were full
of bitterness against him, as an interloper from Scotland who had put
them to disgrace, and had turned some of them out of London to make
room for his own men. But with these also Monk had taken his
measures. Besides quartering them in the manner likeliest to prevent
harm, he had done not a little among them too by discharges and new
appointments. One of his own colonels, Charles Fairfax, had been left
at York; Colonel Rich's regiment had been given to Ingoldsby;
Walton's regiment to Viscount Howard; a Colonel Carter had been made
Governor of Beaumaris, with command in Denbighshire; the Republican
Overton had been removed from the Governorship of Hull; Mr. Morrice
had been converted into a soldier, and made Governor of Plymouth; Dr.
Clarges was Commissary General of the Musters for England, Scotland,
and Ireland; and colonelcies were found for Montague, Rossiter,
Sheffield, and Lord Falconbridge. When it is remembered that
Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, and others of the old
officers, Rumpers or Wallingford-House men, were already
incapacitated, and either in prison or under parole to the Council of
State, it will be seen that the English Army of April 1660 was no
longer its former self. There were actually Royalists now among the
colonels, men in negotiation with the King as Monk himself was.
Still, if Monk and these colonels had even now gone before most of
the regiments and announced openly that they meant to bring in the
King, they would have been hooted or torn in pieces. Even in
colloquies with the officers of his own London regiments Monk had to
keep up the Republican phraseology. Suspicions having arisen among
them, with meetings and agitations, his plan had been to calm them by
general assurances, reminding them at the same time of that principle
of the submission of the military to the civil authority which he and
they had accepted. On this principle alone, and without a word
implying desertion, of the Commonwealth, he prohibited any more
meetings or agitations, and caused strict orders to that effect from
the Council of State to be read at the head of every regiment. But an
ingenious device of Clarges went further than such prohibitions. It
was that as many of the officers as possible should be got to sign a
declaration of their submission to the civil authority, not in
general terms merely, but in the precise form of an engagement to
agitate the question of Government no more among themselves, but
abide the decision of the coming Parliament. Many who could not have
been brought to declare for Charles Stuart directly could save their
consciences by signing a document thus conditionally in his interest;
and the device of Clarges was most successful. On the 9th of April a
copy of the engagement signed by a large number of officers in or
near London was in Monk's hands, and copies were out in England,
Scotland, and Ireland, for additional signatures. As to the response
from Scotland there could be little doubt. Morgan, the
commander-in-chief in Scotland, had already reported the complete
submission of the Army there to the order established by the
Parliament of the Secluded Members. Only a single captain had been
refractory, and he far away in the Orkneys. From Ireland, where Coote
and Broghill were now managing, the report was nearly as good.
Altogether, by the 9th of April, Monk could regard the Republicanism
of the Army as but the stunned and paralysed belief of so many
thousands of individual red-coats.--It was no otherwise with the
Navy. Moored with his fleet in the Thames, or cruising with it
beyond, Montague could assure Pepys in private that he knew most of
his captains to be Republicans, and that he was not sure even of the
captain of his own ship; and, studying a certain list which Montague
had given him, Pepys could observe that the captains Montague was
most anxious about were all or nearly all of the Anabaptist
persuasion. Still there was no sign of concerted mutiny; and it was a
great thing at such a time that Vice-Admiral Lawson, Montague's
second in command, and the pre-eminent Republican of the whole Navy,
had shown an example of obedience.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 694-698; Skinner, 263-265; Ludlow, 865-873;
Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Pepys's Diary, March 28-April 9.]

There was to be one dying flash for the Republic after all. Lambert
had escaped from the Tower. It was on the night of April 9, the very
day on which Monk was congratulating himself on the engagement of
obedience signed by so many of his officers. For some days no one
knew where the fugitive had gone, and Monk and the Council of State
were in consternation. Proclamations against him were out, forbidding
any to harbour him, and offering a reward for his capture. Meanwhile
emissaries from Lambert were also out in all directions, to rouse his
friends and bring them to a place of rendezvous in Northamptonshire.
One of these emissaries, a Major Whitby, found Ludlow in
Somersetshire, and delivered Lambert's message to him. Ludlow was not
unwilling to join Lambert, but wanted to know more precisely what he
declared for. With some passion, Whitby suggested that it was not a
time to be asking what a man declared _for_; it was enough to
know what he declared _against_. Ludlow demurred, and said it
was always best to put forth a distinct political programme! He
merely circulated the information; therefore, in Somersetshire and
adjoining counties, and waited for further light. Along many roads,
however, especially in the midland counties, others were straggling
to the appointed rendezvous. Discharged soldiers, Anabaptists,
Republican desperates of every kind, were flocking to Lambert.--Alas!
before many of these could reach Lambert, it was all over. Hither and
thither, wherever there were signs of disturbance, Monk had been
despatching his most efficient officers; and, on the 18th of April,
having received more exact information as to Lambert's whereabouts,
he sent off Colonel Richard Ingoldsby to do his very best in that
scene of action. There could not have been a happier choice. For this
was honest Dick Ingoldsby, the Cromwellian, of whom his kinsman
Richard Cromwell had said that, though he could neither preach nor
pray, he could be trusted. He was also "Dick Ingoldsby, the
Regicide," who had unfortunately signed the death-warrant of Charles
I., to please Cromwell; and that recollection was a spur to him now.
Since the abdication of Richard, he had been telling people that he
would thenceforth serve the King and no one else, even though his
Majesty, when he came home, would probably cut off his head. That
consequence, however, was to be avoided if possible; and already,
since the restoration of the secluded members, Ingoldsby had been
doing whatever stroke of work for them might help towards earning
his pardon. Now had come his most splendid opportunity, and he was
not to let it slip.--On Sunday, the 22nd of April, being Easter
Sunday, he came up with Lambert in Northamptonshire, about two miles
from Daventry. Lambert had then but seven broken troops of horse, and
one foot company; but Colonels Okey, Axtell, Cobbet, Major Creed, and
several other important Republican ex-officers, were with him.
Ingoldsby had brought his own horse regiment from Suffolk; Colonel
Streater, with 500 men of a Northamptonshire foot-regiment, had
joined him; the Royalist gentry round were sending in more horse; the
country train-bands were up. The battle would be very unequal; was it
worth while to fight? For some hours the two bodies stood facing each
other, Lambert's in a ploughed field, with a little stream in his
front, to which Ingoldsby rode up frequently, parleying with such of
Lambert's troopers as were nearest, and so effectively as to bring
some of them over. At last, Lambert showing no signs of surrender,
Ingoldsby and Streater advanced, Ingoldsby ready to charge with his
horse, but Streater marching the foot first with beat of drum to try
the effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots,
which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that
the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see
the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not
necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; his
troopers now turned the noses of their pistols downwards; one troop
came off entire to Ingoldsby; the rest broke up and fled. But Lambert
himself was Ingoldsby's mark. Dashing up to him, pistol in hand, he
claimed him as his prisoner. There was a kind of scuffle, Creed and
others imploring Ingoldsby to let Lambert go; and in the scuffle
Lambert turned his horse and made off, Ingoldsby after him at full
gallop. They were men of about the same age, neither over forty, but
Ingoldsby the stouter and more fearless for a personal encounter. The
two horses were abreast, or Ingoldsby's a little ahead, the rider
turning round in his seat, with his pistol presented at Lambert, whom
he swore he would shoot if he did not yield. Lambert pleaded yet a
pitiful word or two, and then reined in and was taken.--On Tuesday,
the 24th of April, Lambert was again in the Tower, with Cobbet,
Creed, and other prisoners, though Okey and Axtell were not yet among
them. There had been a great review of the City Militia that day in
Hyde Park, at which the various regiments, red, white, green, blue,
yellow, and orange, with the auxiliaries from the suburbs, made the
magnificent muster of 12,000 men. The Parliament was to meet next
day, and Monk and the Council of State had no farther anxiety. Among
the measures they had taken after Lambert's escape had been an order
that the engagement, already so generally signed by the Officers,
pledging to agreement in whatever Parliament should prescribe as to
the future form of government, should be tendered also to the private
soldiers throughout the whole army. In the troops and companies of
Fleetwood's old regiments, as many as a third of the soldiers, or in
some cases a half, were leaving the ranks in consequence; but in
Monk's own regiments from Scotland only two sturdy Republicans had
stepped out.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 698-699; Skinner, 286-289; Ludlow, 873-877;
Wood's Fasti, II. 133-134; Whitlocke, IV. 407-409; M. de Bordeaux to
Mazarin, Guizot, II. 415.]

So sure was the Restoration of Charles now that the only difficulty
was in restraining impatience and braggartism among the Royalists
themselves. The last argument of the Republican pamphleteers having
been that the Royalists would be implacable after they had got back
the king, and that nothing was to be then expected but the bloodiest
and severest revenges upon all who had been concerned with the
Commonwealth, and some of the younger Royalists having given colour
to such representations by their wild utterances in private, there
had been printed protests to the contrary by leading Royalists in
London and in many of the counties. They desired no revenges, they
said; they reflected on the past as the mysterious course of an
all-wise Providence; they were anxious for an amicable reunion of all
in the path so wonderfully opened up by the wisdom and valour of
General Monk; they utterly disowned the indiscreet expressions of
fools and "hot-spirited persons"; and they would take no steps
themselves, but would confide in Monk, the Council of State, and the
Parliament, The London "declaration" to this effect was signed by ten
earls, four viscounts, five lords, many baronets, knights, and
squires, with several Anglican clergymen, among whom was Jeremy
Taylor. It was of no small use to Monk, who had equally to be on his
guard against too great haste. They were crowding round him now, and
asking why there should be any more delay, why the king should not be
brought to England at once. His one reply still was that the
Parliament alone could decide what was to be done, and that he and
others were bound to leave all to the Parliament. Meanwhile Sir John
Greenville had been back from his mission for some time, and had duly
delivered to Monk the important documents from Breda. Monk had kept
Charles's private letter, but had given Greenville back all the rest,
including his own commission to be his Majesty's Captain-General. Not
a soul was to know of their existence till the moment when they
should be produced in the Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 699-701; Skinner, 283-284 and 290-294;
Clarendon, 902.]



CHAPTER II.

First Section.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT.
1658-MAY 1659.

MILTON AND MARVELL STILL IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MILTON'S FIRST
FIVE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): NEW EDITION
OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO PRIMA_: REMARKABLE POSTSRCIPT TO THAT
EDITION: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.):
MILTON'S RELATIONS TO THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES ROUND RICHARD AND IN
RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT: HIS PROBABLE CAREER BUT FOR HIS BLINDNESS: HIS
CONTINUED CROMWELLIANISM IN POLITICS, BUT WITH STRONGER PRIVATE
RESERVES, ESPECIALLY ON THE QUESTION OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH: HIS
REPUTATION THAT OF A MAN OF THE COURT-PARTY AMONG THE
PROTECTORATISTS: HIS _TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL
CAUSES_: ACCOUNT OF THE TREATISE, WITH EXTRACTS: THE TREATISE MORE
THAN A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT THE
FUNDAMENTAL IDEA: THE TREATISE ADDRESSED TO RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT, AND
CHIEFLY TO VANE AND THE REPUBLICANS THERE: NO EFFECT FROM IT:
MILTON'S FOUR LAST STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXLIV.-CXLVII.):
HIS PRIVATE EPISTLE TO JEAN LABADIE, WITH ACCOUNT OF THAT PERSON:
MILTON IN THE MONTH BETWEEN RICHARD'S DISSOLUTION OF HIS PARLIAMENT
AND HIS FORMAL ABDICATION: HIS TWO STATE-LETTERS FOR THE RESTORED
RUMP (NOS. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.).


Milton and Marvell continued together In the Latin Secretaryship
through the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, The following were the
first Letters of Milton for Richard:--

  (CXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _Sept._ 5, 1658:--"Most
  serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As my most
  serene Father, of glorious memory, Oliver, Protector of the
  Commonwealth of England, such being the will of Almighty God, has
  been, removed by death on the 3rd of September, I, his lawfully
  declared successor in this Government, though in the depth of
  sadness and grief, cannot but on the very first opportunity inform
  your Majesty by letter of so important a fact, assured that, as you
  have been a most cordial friend to my Father and this Commonwealth,
  the sudden intelligence will be no matter of joy to you either. It
  is my business now to request your Majesty to think of me as one
  who has nothing more resolvedly at heart than to cultivate with all
  fidelity and constancy the alliance and friendship that existed
  between my most glorious parent and your Majesty, and to keep and
  hold as valid, with the same diligence and goodwill as himself, the
  treaties, counsels, and arrangements, of common interest, which he
  established with you. To which intent I desire that our Ambassador
  at your Court [Lockhart] shall be invested with the same powers as
  formerly; and I beg that, whatever he may transact with you in our
  name, you will receive it as if done by myself. Finally, I wish
  your Majesty all prosperity.--From our Court at Westminster."

  (CXXXIV.) To Cardinal Mazarin, _Sept._ [5], 1658:--Dispatched
  with the last, and to the same effect. Knowing the reciprocal
  esteem between his late Father and his Eminence, Richard cannot but
  write to his Eminence as well as to the King.

  (CXXXV.) To Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden. _October_
  1658:--"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate:
  As I think I cannot sufficiently imitate my father's excellence
  unless I cultivate and desire to retain the same friendships which
  he sought, and acquired by his worth, and regarded in his singular
  judgment as most deserving to be cultivated and retained, there is
  no reason for your Majesty to doubt that it will be my duty to
  conduct myself towards your Majesty with the same attentiveness and
  goodwill which my Father, of most serene memory, made his rule in
  his relations to you. Wherefore, although in this beginning of my
  Government and dignity I do not find our affairs in such a position
  that I can at present reply to certain heads which your agents
  have propounded for negotiation, yet the idea of continuing, and
  even more closely knitting, the treaty established with your
  Majesty by my Father is exceedingly agreeable to me; and, as soon
  as I shall have more fully understood the state of affairs on both
  sides, I shall indeed be always most ready, as far as I am
  concerned, for such arrangements as shall be thought most
  advantageous for the interests of both Commonwealths. Meanwhile may
  God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the
  guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church."--The peculiar
  state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English
  Government is here to be remembered. The heroic Swede, by his
  sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of
  enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver's
  death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the
  rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own
  making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and
  think him still in the right. That the second would have been
  Oliver's course there can be little doubt. The question had now
  descended to Richard and his Council. They were anxious to adhere
  to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in
  all other matters; but there were difficulties.

  (CXXXVI. AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, _Oct._
  1659:--Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on
  the last:--(1) In the first, dated "Oct. 13," Richard acknowledges
  a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in
  London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the
  English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has
  transmitted. He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty's kind
  expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father's
  memory, and of goodwill towards himself. There could not be a
  greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning
  of his government, than the congratulations of such a King. "As
  respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us
  concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your
  Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though
  our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of
  diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and
  still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind
  than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty
  made by my father with your Majesty. I have therefore arranged for
  sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our
  Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this
  whole business, will communicate to your Majesty." This was the
  fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the
  following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast. See
  ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough
  was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a
  volunteer.--(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated
  "Oct." merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the
  same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough. "I
  send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or
  excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George
  Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed for his knowledge of
  war, especially naval war, as proved by his frequent and many brave
  performances, but also gifted with probity, modesty, ingenuity, and
  learning, dear to all for the sweetness of his manners, and, what
  is now the sum of all, eager to serve under the banners of your
  Majesty, so renowned over the whole world by your warlike prowess."
  A favourable reception is bespoken for Ayscough, who is to bring
  certain communications to his Majesty, and who, in any matters that
  may arise out of these, is to be taken as speaking for Richard
  himself. It was not till the beginning of the following year that
  Ayscough did arrive in the Baltic.

These five letters were undoubtedly the most important diplomatic
dispatches of the beginning of Richard's Protectorate. They refer to
the two most momentous foreign interests bequeathed from Oliver: viz.
the French Alliance against Spain, and the entanglement in Northern
Europe round the King of Sweden. Milton, as having written all the
previous state-letters on these great subjects, was naturally
required to be himself the writer of the five in which Richard
announced to France and Sweden his resolution to continue the policy
of his father. Marvell's pen may have been used, then and afterwards,
for minor dispatches.

To the month of October 1658, the month after that of Oliver's death,
belongs also a new edition of Milton's _Defensio Prima_. It was
in octavo size, in close and clear type, and bore this title:
"_Joannis Miltonii, Angli, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra
Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam. Editio
correctior et auctior, ab Autore denuo recognita. Londini, Typis
Newcombianis, Anno Dom. 1658_" (John Milton's Defence, &c.
"_Corrected and Enlarged Edition, newly revised by the Author_"
London: from Newcome's press, &c.).[1] This edition seems to have
escaped the notice to which it is entitled. As far as my examination
has gone, the differences from the original edition through the body
of the work can be but slight. There is, however, a very important
postscript of two pages, which I shall here translate:--

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy in British Museum, with the date
"_Octob._" (no day) written on the title-page.]

  "Having published this book, some years ago now [April 1651], in
  the hurried manner then required by the interests of the
  Commonwealth, but with the notion that, if ever I should have
  leisure to take it into my hands again, I might, as is customary,
  afterwards polish up something in it, or perchance cancel or add
  something, this I fancy I have now accomplished, though with fewer
  changes than I thought: a monument, as I see, whosoever has
  contrived it, not easily to perish. If there shall be found some
  one who will defend civil liberty more freely than here, yet
  certainly it will hardly be in a greater or more illustrious
  example; and truly, if the belief is that a deed of such arduous
  and famous example was not attempted and so prosperously finished
  without divine inspiration, there may be reason to think that the
  celebration and defence of the same with such applauses was also by
  the same aid and impulse,--an opinion I would much rather see
  entertained by all than have any other happiness of genius,
  judgment, or diligence, attributed to myself. Only this:--Just as
  that Roman Consul, laying down his magistracy, swore in public that
  the Commonwealth and that City were safe by his sole exertion, so
  I, now placing my last hand on this work, would dare assert,
  calling God and men to witness, that I have demonstrated in this
  book, and brought publicly forward out of the highest authors of
  divine and human wisdom, those very things by which I am confident
  that the English People have been sufficiently defended in this
  cause for their everlasting fame with posterity, and confident also
  that the generality of mankind, formerly deceived by foul ignorance
  of their own rights and a false semblance of Religion, have been,
  unless in as far as they may prefer and deserve slavery,
  sufficiently emancipated. And, as the universal Roman People,
  itself sworn in that public assembly, approved with one voice and
  consent that Consul's so great and so special oath, so I have for
  some time understood that not only all the best of my own
  countrymen, but all the best also of foreign men, sanction and
  approve this persuasion of mine by no silent vote over the whole
  world. Which highest fruit of my labours proposed for myself in
  this life I both gratefully enjoy and at the same time make it my
  chief thought how I may be best able to assure not only my own
  country, for which I have already done my utmost, but also the men
  of all nations whatever, and especially all of the Christian name,
  that the accomplishment of yet greater things, if I have the
  power--and I _shall_ have the power, if God be gracious,--is
  meanwhile for their sakes my desire and meditation."

Perhaps one begins to be a little tired of this high-strained
exultation for ever and ever on the subject of his success in the
Salmasian controversy. The recurrence at this point, however, is not
uninstructive. At the beginning of Richard's Protectorate, we can see
Milton's defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the
unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton's European
celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least. It was
something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in
Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which
for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this
fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as
still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness. This
fruit of his past labours, he says, he would "gratefully enjoy," but
with no vulgar satisfaction. He would not confess it even to be with
any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind. In
his fiftieth year, and in his present state, he could feel himself
superior to that, and could describe his consciousness as something
higher. If he had done a great work already, as he himself believed,
and as the voice of all the best of mankind acknowledged, had it not
been because God had chosen and inspired him for the same, and might
he not in that faith send out a message to the world that perhaps God
had not yet done with him, and they might expect from him, blind and
desolate though he was, something greater and better still? The
closing sentence is exactly such a message, and one can suppose that
Milton was there thinking of his progress in _Paradise Lost_.

Whatever was the amount of Marvell's exertion in the secretaryship,
Milton was not wholly exempted from the duty of writing even the more
ordinary letters for Richard and his Council. There is a vacant
interval of three months, indeed, after the five last registered and
the next; but in January 1658-9 the series is resumed, and there are
six more letters of Milton for Richard between the end of that month
and the end of February. Richard's Parliament, it is to be
remembered, met on the 27th of January.

  (CXXXVIII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _Jan._ 27,
  1658-9 (i.e. the day of the meeting of the Parliament):--Samuel
  Piggott, merchant of London, has complained to the Protector that
  two ships of his--the _Post_, Tiddy Jacob master, and the
  _Water-dog_, Garbrand Peters master--are detained somewhere in
  the Baltic by his Majesty's forces. They had sailed from London to
  France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only,
  but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter
  Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his
  Majesty's port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of
  the herring cargo was the cause of the detention of the ships; but
  Piggott was the lawful owner of the ships themselves and of the
  rest of the goods. His Majesty is prayed to restore them, and so
  save the poor man from ruin.

  (CXXXIX.) To THE HIGH AND MIGHTY, THE STATES OF WEST FRIESLAND,
  _Jan._ 27, 1658-9:--A widow, named Mary Grinder, complains
  that Thomas Killigrew, a commander in the service of the States,
  has for eighteen years owed her a considerable sum of money, the
  compulsory payment of which he is trying now to evade by
  petitioning their Highnesses not to allow any suit against him in
  their Courts for debts due in England. "If I only mention to your
  Highnesses that she, whom this man tries to deprive of nearly all
  her fortunes, is a widow, that she is poor, the mother of many
  little children, I will not do you the injustice of supposing that
  with you, to whom I am confident the divine commandments, and
  especially those about not oppressing widows and the fatherless,
  are well known, any more serious argument will be needed against
  your granting this privilege of fraud to the man's petition."--The
  Thomas Killigrew here concerned may have been one of several
  well-known Killigrews, then refugee Royalists. Hence perhaps the
  earnestness of the letter.

  (CXL.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Feb._ 18, 1658-9:--"We have
  heard, and not without grief, that some Protestant churches in
  Provence were so scandalously interrupted by a certain
  ill-tempered bigot that the matter was thought worthy of severe
  notice by the magistrates of Grenoble, to whom the cognisance of
  the case belonged by law; but that a convention of the clergy, held
  shortly afterwards in, those parts, has obtained your Majesty's
  order that the whole affair shall be brought before your Royal
  Council in Paris, and that meanwhile, there being no decision there
  hitherto, these churches, and especially that of Aix, are
  prohibited from meeting for the worship of God." His Majesty is
  asked to remove this prohibition, and to see the author of the
  mischief properly censured. Such a missive proves that Richard and
  his Council kept to Oliver's rule of interference whenever there
  was persecution of Protestants, and also that they did not doubt
  their influence with Louis and Mazarin.

  (CXLI.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 19, 1658-9:[1]--The
  Duchess-Dowager of Richmond, with her son, the young duke, is going
  into France, and means to reside there for some time. His Eminence
  is requested to show all possible attention to the illustrious lady
  and her son.

[Footnote 1: So dated in the Skinner Transcript, but "29 Feb." in
Printed Collection and Phillips.]

  (CXLII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 22, 1658-9:[1]--About
  eight months ago the case of Peter Pett, "a man of singular
  probity, and of the highest utility to us and the Commonwealth by
  his remarkable skill in naval affairs," was brought before his
  Eminence by a letter of the late Lord Protector (not among Milton's
  letters). It was to request that his Eminence would see to the
  execution of a decree of his French Majesty's Council, as far back
  as Nov. 4, 1647, that compensation should be made to Pett for the
  seizure and sale of a ship of his, called the _Edward_, by one
  Bascon, in the preceding year. His Eminence has doubtless attended
  to the request; but there is still some impediment. Will his
  Eminence see where it lies and remove it?--Since the time of Queen
  Mary there had been three Peter Petts in succession, ship-builders
  and masters of the Royal Dockyard at Deptford; and the present
  Peter was the father of the more celebrated Sir Peter Pett, who was
  fellow of the Royal Society after the Restoration.

[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection and in the Skinner
Transcript; misdated "Feb. 25" in Phillips.]

  (CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _Feb._ 23,
  1658-9:[1]--Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a
  victory he had recently obtained over "our common enemy the
  Spaniard," with acknowledgment of his Majesty's handsome behaviour,
  through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction,
  according to an article in the League between Portugal and the
  English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out
  their vessels to the Brazil Company. But there is still one such
  merchant unpaid--a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, _The
  Three Brothers_, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the
  Company. They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others
  who had made but one voyage; and "why this is done I do not
  understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more
  worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned
  it twice." Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due?

[Footnote 1: In the Printed Collection and Phillips, and also, I
think, in the Skinner Transcript, the king's name is given as "John";
but John IV. of Portugal had died in 1656 and been succeeded by
Alfonso.]

These six letters belong to the first month of Richard's Parliament,
with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or
excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three
scores of recently-created Cromwellian "Lords." The battle between
the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons,
Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans
had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the
Single-Person principle and of Richard's title to the Protectorship;
and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence
and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the
Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too. From
January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the
country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this
controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single
sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of
Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution.
Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative
policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among
whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous
than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was
at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had
accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute
for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them
but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming
Richard's rule.

How Milton stood related to this controversy is a matter rather of
inference than of direct information. Having been a faithful adherent
and official of Oliver through his whole Protectorate, and still
holding his official place under Richard's Government, there is
little doubt that, if he had been obliged to post himself publicly on
either of the two sides, he would have gone among the Cromwellians.
Nay, if he had been obliged to choose between the two subdivisions of
this body, known as the _Court Party_ (supporting Richard
absolutely) and the _Wallingford-House Party_ (supporting
Richard's civil Protectorate, but wanting to transfer the military
power to the Army-chiefs), there can be little doubt that he would
have gone with the former. Had he been in the House of Commons, like
his colleague Andrew Marvell, his duty there, like Marvell's, would
have been that of a ministerial member, assisting Thurloe and voting
with him in all the divisions. But for his blindness, we may here
say, the chances are that he _would_ long ere now have been a
known Parliamentary man, and that, after having been a Cromwellian
leader in Oliver's second Parliament, he might have been now in
Thurloe's exact place in Richard's present Parliament, or beside
Thurloe as a strangely different chief. This, or that other
alternative of a foreign ambassadorship or residency, which must have
suggested itself again and again to the reader in the course of our
narrative, might have been the natural career of Milton through the
rule of the Cromwells, had not blindness disabled him. For, if
Meadows, his former mere assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, had
been for some time in the one career with increasing distinction, and
if an opening had been easily found for Marvell in the other, why may
not imagination trace either career, or a combination of the two, had
physical infirmity not prevented, for the greater Cromwellian of whom
these were but satellites? It is imagination only, and would not be
worth while, were it not for one important biographical question
which it brings forward. Had Milton remained capable of any such
practical career under the Cromwells, would he have retained, to the
same extent as he had done through his blindness, the necessary
qualification of being an Oliverian or Cromwellian? How far was his
present Cromwellianism the actual consequence of his blindness, the
mere submissiveness of a blind man to what he had no power to
disturb? It is partly an answer to this question to remember again
his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, with its great panegyric on
Cromwell. Milton had been but two years blind when that was
published, and had not lost aught of the vehemence of his Republican
convictions. Not without deliberation, therefore, had he given up the
first form of the Commonwealth, consisting in a single supreme House
of Parliament and an annual Council of State chosen by the same, and
accepted the later or Protectoral form, with Cromwell for its head, a
permanent Council of State round Cromwell, and Parliaments on
occasion. But, underneath this general adhesion to the Protectorate,
there had been even then certain Miltonic reserves, and especially
the reserve of a protest against the continuance of a State Church.
Now, had Milton been in a condition to act the part of a practical
statesman through Oliver's Protectorate, might not some extraordinary
development have been given to those reserves? With his boundless
courage and the non-conforming habits of his genius, would he ever
have been the Parliamentary servant of a Government from which he
differed at all,--from which he differed so vitally on the question
of Church Establishment? Probably in nothing else had Cromwell wholly
disappointed him. Through the Protectorate there had been all the
toleration of religious differences that could be desired, or what
shortcoming there had been had hardly been by Cromwell's own fault;
the other interferences with liberty had hardly perhaps, in Milton's
estimation, gone beyond the necessities of police; and in Cromwell's
foreign policy, with its magnificent championship of Protestantism
abroad, what man in England was more ardently at one with him than
the draftsman of his great foreign despatches? At the time of the
proposal of Cromwell's Kingship, and generally at the time of the
transition out of his first Protectorate into his second, with the
resuscitation then of so many aristocratic forms and the attempt to
reinstitute a house of peers, there may have been, as we have already
hinted, an uprising in Milton's mind of democratic objections, and
the effect may have been that Milton before the end of Oliver's
Protectorate was less of an Oliverian than he had been at the
beginning. Still, precluded from any active concern in those
constitutional changes, he may have reconciled himself to them easily
enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver
to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been
and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he
could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his
intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable
dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that
Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to
him that he was not called upon to act a Parliamentary part, in which
proclamation of the dissent and consequent rupture with Cromwell on
the ecclesiastical question would have been inevitable. It may have
been some satisfaction to him that he could go on faithfully and
honestly as a servant of Cromwell in the special business of the
Latin Secretaryship, and for the rest be a lonely thinker and take
refuge in silence. It is worth observing, indeed, that nothing of a
political kind had come from Milton's pen during the last three or
four years of Oliver's Protectorate,--nothing even indirectly bearing
on the internal politics of the Commonwealth since his _Pro Se
Defensio_ against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing
thereon since his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654. And so, if we
conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard's
accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a
Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and
these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about
right. To the public, however, in the present controversy between the
Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a
Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of
Richard and his Council.

Since Cromwell's death, we have now to add, Milton had been
re-mustering his reserves. Under a new Protector, and from the new
Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on
points on which he had for some time been silent? On this chance, he
had interrupted even his _Paradise Lost_, in order to prepare an
address to the new Parliament. As might be expected, it was on the
subject of the relations of Church and State. Meditating on this
subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time,
Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts. "Two
things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to
the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,--Force on the one
side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers
thereof." He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of
Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation,
and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same.
The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each
other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to
begin with the first, as the least irritating. Accordingly, before
the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met
there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with
this title-page: "_A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
Causes: Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to
compell in matters of Religion. The author J.M. London, Printed by
Tho. Newcomb, Anno_ 1659." The tract consists of an address "To
the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions
thereof," occupying ten of the small pages, and signed "John Milton"
in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.[1]

[Footnote 1: The little book was duly registered at Stationers' Hall,
under date Feb. 16, 1658-9, thus: "Mr. Tho. Newcomb entered for his
copy (under the hand of Mr. Pulleyn, warden) a book called A
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes by John Milton."]

After intimating that this was but the first of two tracts and that
the other would follow, and also that his argument is to be wholly
and exclusively from Scripture, Milton propounds the argument itself
under four successive heads or propositions.--The first is that,
there being, by the fundamental principle of Protestantism, "no other
divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another
as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us
but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that
Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves and to such whose
consciences we can so persuade," it follows that "no man or body of
men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in
matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own."
Having reasoned this at some length by quotations of Scripture texts
and explanations of the same, he proceeds to "yet another reason why
it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of
Religion: which is, because to judge in those things, though we
should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil
magistrate he hath no right." Under this second head, and also by
means of Scripture quotations, there is an exposition of Milton's
favourite idea of the purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom and
of the instrumentalities it permits. The third proposition advances
the argument by maintaining that not only is the civil magistrate
unable, from the nature of the case, to determine in matters of
Religion, and not only has he no right to try, but he also does
positive wrong by trying. In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton
dilates on the meaning of the "Christian liberty" of the true
believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed
spirit, the superiority to "the bondage of ceremonies" and "the weak
and beggarly rudiments." The fourth and last reason pleaded, still
from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion,
is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to
himself; "and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God,
next either the spiritual good of them whom he forces or the temporal
punishment of their scandal to others." Far from attaining either of
these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and
hypocrisy.--"On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square."
says Milton at the close, "this truth, the right of Christian and
Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended
consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men
most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity
would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against
the ways of God."

Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of
which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical.
"Pomp and ostentation of reading," he expressly says, "is admired
among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is
learnedest who is plainest." It was, we may remember, his first
considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and
what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still
retains of his old characteristic syntax.[1] The following are a few
of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:--

[Footnote 1: I have noted in the Tract one occurrence at least of the
very un-Miltonic word _its_, as follows:--"As the Samaritans
believed Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much
rather for his own, so we the Scripture first on the Church's word,
but afterwards and much more for its own as the word of God."]

  _Blasphemy._--"But some are ready to cry out 'What shall then
  be done to Blasphemy?' Them I would first exhort not thus to
  terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them
  better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that
  language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking,
  whether against God or man or anything to good belonging."

  _Heresy and Heretic_:--"Another Greek apparition stands in our
  way, 'Heresy and Heretic': in like manner also railed at to the
  people, as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them
  that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of
  evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion,
  good or bad, in religion or any other learning."

  _A Wrested Text of Scripture_:--"It hath now twice befallen me
  to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed
  place of Scripture [_Romans_ XIII, 'Let every soul be subject
  unto the higher powers,' &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and
  regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny
  over the Church."

  _Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated?_--"But, as for
  Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be
  tolerated, I have much less to say. Their Religion, the more
  considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman
  Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal
  dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion;
  being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the
  Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a
  foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by
  the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith,
  which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so,
  by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian
  liberty. Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being
  implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no
  conscience, as the will not free becomes no will? Nevertheless, if
  they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State
  more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to
  be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being
  no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for
  Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture,
  both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or
  rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to
  do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly
  err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and
  scandalous use thereof."

  _Christ's unique act of Compulsion_:--"We read not that Christ
  ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones
  out of his Temple, not to force them in."

  _Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers_:--"As
  to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion,
  and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I
  trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued,
  neither _they_ will continue in that intention, nor
  _these_ in that expectation from them, when they shall find
  that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular
  church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that
  the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he
  once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs,
  half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better
  tended."

       *       *       *       *       *

In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention
which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty
reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration,
of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the
Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers,
Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be
Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and
they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on
Cromwell's policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract
would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for
Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church
whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen
that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell,
almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the
settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on
the contrary having made such a supposed settlement of Religion one
of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and
on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and
assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves
in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a
basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between
Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of
abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of
Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize
themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary
association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to
cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good
Cromwell.

The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of
Cromwell's son. The preface, signed with Milton's name in full, is a
recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. "I have
prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your
sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all
Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been
written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and
affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in
a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier
accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and
interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he
continues:--"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to
many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in
this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to
have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority
to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so
well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only
voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any
there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might
doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have
confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if
ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern
between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be
admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable
hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on
the general ground that many members of the Parliament were old
Commonwealth's men, of the kind that would have carried the abolition
of Tithes and of a State-Church in the Barebones Parliament of 1653,
had not Rous broken up that Parliament and resurrendered the power
to Cromwell, and (2) on the special fact that some of them were men
whom Milton had himself heard with admiration, in the Councils of
State of the Commonwealth, when he first sat there as Foreign
Secretary in attendance, avowing and expounding the principle of
Voluntaryism in Religion, in its fullest possible extent. Among these
last Milton must have had in view chiefly such members of the Commons
House in Richard's Parliament as Vane, Bradshaw, Harrison, Neville,
Ludlow, and Scott, all of whom had been members of one, or several,
or all, of the Councils of State of the old Commonwealth; but he may
have had in view also such members of the present Upper House as
Fleetwood, St. John, and Viscount Lisle. Above all, Vane must have
been in his mind,--Vane, on whom half of his eulogy in 1652 had
been.

      "To know
  Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,
  What severs each, _thou_, hast learned; which few have done.
  The bounds of either sword to _thee_ we owe."

Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a
reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which
concerned Religion? Might they not induce the Parliament to revert,
in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of
Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but
really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament? Nothing less than
this is the ultimate purport of Milton's appeal; and little wonder
that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only as a private
man, and without any official authority whatever. "Of Civil Liberty,"
he says in the conclusion of his preface, "I have written heretofore
by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power:
of Christian Liberty I write now,--which others long since having
done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to
suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and
such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty,
although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an
inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully
discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all." The words
imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the
Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold.

Altogether, Milton's _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
Causes_ can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his
part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his
relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the
special interest of his extreme views on the religious question.
Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise
might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was
in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the
Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased
stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists. The
treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the
Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far. But only
or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of
an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as
involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and
State.

The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever. So
far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was
evident that the preservation of Cromwell's Church-Establishment, its
perpetuation as an integral part of Richard's Protectorate, was a
foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority. Any
Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or
from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by
the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the
Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians. The danger even was
that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration,
and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the
supporters of Richard might compel Richard's Government, against his
own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer
Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate. But,
indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the
Republicans found time or need to try their strength. Their battles
in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional
questions:--first, the question of the Protectorate itself or
Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House
or House of Lords. On the first they were definitively beaten in
February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively,
and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of
March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an
independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the
Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under
Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal
straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten
Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The _Court party_
of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to
preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the
Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper
place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the
_Army Party_, or _Wallingford-House Party_, represented by
Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the
civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power. The
differences between the two parties had been smouldering since
Richard's accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting
of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint
victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in
deadly strife, the Republicans looking on. Through that month the
ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in
Westminster--Richard's regular Parliament, and the irregular
Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers--watching each other
and interchanging threats and denunciations. It was on the 18th of
the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous
resolutions asserting their supreme authority. They were that the
Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and
no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of
the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the
established power (ante pp. 440-441). Then it was evident there would
be a crash, but in what form was still unknown.

Precisely at this crisis in Richard's Protectorship comes the last
batch of Milton's official letters for him. The letters are four in
number:[1]--

[Footnote 1: These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed
Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript,
and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton
Papers_, pp. 12-14.]

  (CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY,
  _April_ 19, 1659:--Two Letters to this Prince on the same day.
  (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London
  merchants, are owners of a ship called _The Happy Entrance_,
  which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the
  Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin. They can get no
  account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play the
  rogue with the ship and cargo and never return. It is believed that
  within two months he may put in at Leghorn; and the Protector
  requests the Grand Duke to give the merchants, in that case,
  facilities for the recovery of their property. (2) A James
  Modiford, merchant, complains to the Protector that certain goods
  of his, taken to Leghorn about 1652 by another English trader,
  Humphrey Sidney, were there seized by some Italian creditors of
  Sidney. Modiford has been unable to obtain redress; and the Grand
  Duke is now prayed to see his goods restored and any claims Sidney
  may have upon him referred to the English Courts.

  (CXLVI.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _April_
  1659:[1]--A Francis Hurdidge of London complains that a ship of
  his, called _The Mary and John_, cargo valued at 70,000
  crowns, employed in the Brazil trade in 1649 and 1650, was seized
  by the Portuguese. The ship was afterwards taken from the
  Portuguese by the Dutch. The Treaty between the English
  Commonwealth and Portugal provides for such cases; and his
  Portuguese Majesty is requested to make compensation to Hurdidge to
  the extent of 25,000 crowns. The man is in great straits.

[Footnote 1: "_Joanni Portugallioe Regi_" is the heading in Mr.
Hamilton's copy from the Skinner Transcript; but this is a mistake
(see ante p. 576, note).]

  (CXLVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _April_
  1659:--David Fithy, merchant, informs the Protector that, about a
  month ago, he contracted to supply to the Navy 150 sacks of hemp.
  He has the hemp now at Riga, and a ship ready to bring it thence
  for the use of the fleet--"part of which," the Protector skilfully
  adds, "has just sailed for the Baltic for your protection" (i.e.
  Montague's fleet, despatched this very month: see ante p. 435). It
  appears, however, that his Swedish Majesty has forbidden the
  exportation of hemp from his port of Riga without special
  permission. His Majesty is requested to give Fithy this permission,
  that he may be able to fulfil his contract. The Protector will
  consider himself much obliged by the kindness.

No more letters was poor Richard to write to crowned heads. On the
very day on which the two first of the foregoing were written, he
appeared in Wallingford House, and ordered the dissolution of the
Council of Officers according to the edict of the Parliament. Next
day it was known through all London that the question was between a
dissolution of this Council of officers and a dissolution of the
Parliament itself. The day after, Thursday, April 21, there was the
famous double rendezvous of the two masses of soldiery round
Whitehall to try the question, the rendezvous for Richard and the
Parliament utterly failing, while that for Fleetwood, Desborough, and
the other rebel chiefs, flooded the streets and St. James's Park.
That night, quailing before the rough threats of Desborough, Richard
and his Council yielded; and on Friday, the 22nd, the indignant
Parliament knew itself to be dissolved, and Richard's Protectorate
virtually at an end. Nominally, it dragged on for a month more.

On Thursday, April 21, the day of the dreadful double rendezvous, and
of Desborough's stormy interview with Richard in Whitehall to compel
the dissolution of the Parliament, Milton, in his house in Petty
France, on the very edge of the uproar, was quietly dictating a
private letter. It is that numbered 28 among his _Epistoloe
Familiares_, and headed "_Joanni Badioeo, Pastori
Arausionensi_," i.e. "To John Badiaeus, Pastor of Orange." With
some trouble, I have identified this "Badiaeus" with a certain French
JEAN LABADIE, who is characterized by Bayle as a "schismatic
minister, followed like an apostle," and by another authority as "one
of the most dangerous fanatics of the seventeenth century." The facts
of his life, to the moment of our present concern with him, are given
in the accepted French authorities thus:--Born in 1610 at
Bourg-en-Guyenne, the son of a soldier who had risen to be
lieutenant, he had received a Jesuit education at Bordeaux, had
entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest.
For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also
teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed "a prodigy of talent and
piety," but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must
found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in
public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his
peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to
leave the Jesuits. By reasonings and kindness, they managed to retain
him for a while; but he grew more odd and visionary, fasting often,
eating only herbs, and having divine revelations. After a dangerous
illness, which brought him to death's door, he did obtain his
dismissal from the Jesuit order in April 1639, and went over France
propagandizing. The Bishop of Amiens, caught by his eloquence, made
him prebendary of a collegiate church in that town; in connexion with
which, and with the Bishop's approval, he founded a religious
association of young women, called St. Mary Magdalene. All seemed to
go well for a time; but at length there was a scandal about him and a
girl in Abbeville, with a burst of similar scandals about his abuse
of the confessional for vicious purposes. To avoid arrest, he
absconded to Paris in August 1644, and thence to Bazas, where he
lived under a feigned name. But the Bishop of Bazas took him up; he
cleared himself to the Bishop and others, and defied his
calumniators. Only for a time; for again there were scandals, and he
was expelled the diocese. Going then to Toulouse, he gained the
confidence of the Archbishop there, who gave him charge of a convent
of nuns. In this post he developed more systematically his notions of
the religious life, described as a compound of Quietism and
Antinomianism, after the fashion of sects already known in France and
Germany, but with sexual extravangances which, when divulged, raised
an indignant storm. In November 1649, he had to abscond from
Toulouse; and, after various wanderings, in which he called himself
"Jean de Jesus Christ" and obtained popularity as a prophet, he came
to Montauban, and there publicly abjured Roman Catholicism in October
1650. Elected minister of the Protestant church of that town in 1652,
he lived there for some years in great esteem among the Protestants,
but in deadly feud with the Roman Catholics. The schism was such that
at last the magistrates had to banish him from the town as a
disturber of the peace. Then he had found refuge in Orange; and he
was in some kind of temporary Protestant pastorship in that town of
south-east France when there was this communication between him and
Milton.[1]

[Footnote 1: Article LABADIE in _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_
(1859), with additional information from Article on him in the
_Biographie Universelle_ (edit. 1819), and from _La Vie du
Sieur Jean Labadie_ by Bolsec (Lyon, 1664), and some passages in
Bayle's Dictionary (e.g. in Article _Mamillaires_). It is from
the additional authorities that I learn the fact of the removal of
Labadie from Montauban to Orange; the Article in the _N. Biog.
Gen._ omits it.--I have seen two publications of Labadie at
Montauban--one of 1650, entitled _Declaration de Jean de L'Abadie,
cydevant prestre_, giving his reasons for quitting the Church of
Rome; the other of 1651, entitled _Lettre de J. de L'Abadie à ses
amis de la Communion Romaine touchant sa Declaration_.]

  TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE.

  "If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our
  common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer
  the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he
  has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on
  the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel,
  I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to
  the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation
  you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile
  to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his
  speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the
  goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I
  am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when
  publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of
  such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the
  subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have
  become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I
  have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among
  good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see
  plainly--you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian
  Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many
  enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that,
  so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing
  against you their most certain hatred and maledictions. O happy man
  thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and
  learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell,
  and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his
  Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has
  happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to
  you sooner. For, when I understood from your letter that, assailed
  and besieged as you are on all hands by bitter enemies, you were
  looking round, and no wonder, to see where you might, in the last
  extremity, should it come to that, find a suitable refuge, and that
  England was most to your mind, I rejoiced on more accounts than one
  that you had come to this conclusion,--one reason being the hope of
  having you here, and another the delight that you should have so
  high an opinion of my country; but the joy was counterbalanced by
  the regret that I did not then see any prospect of a becoming
  provision for you among us here, especially as you do not know
  English. Now, however, it has happened most opportunely that a
  certain French minister here, of great age, died a few days ago.
  The persons of most influence in the congregation, understanding
  that you are by no means safe where you are at present, are very
  desirous (I report this not from vague rumour, but on information
  from themselves) to have you chosen to the place of that minister:
  in fact, they invite you; they have resolved to pay the expenses of
  your journey; they promise that you shall have an income equal to
  the best of any French minister here, and that nothing shall be
  wanting that can contribute to your pleasant discharge of the
  pastoral duty among them. Wherefore, take my advice, Reverend Sir,
  and fly hither as soon as possible, to people who are anxious to
  have you, and where you will reap a harvest, not perhaps so rich in
  the goods of this world, but, as men like you most desire,
  numerous, I hope, in souls; and be assured that you will be most
  welcome here to all good men, and the sooner the better. Farewell.

  "Westminster: April 21, 1659."

It is clear from this letter that Milton had never heard of the
scandals against M. Labadie's moral character, or, if he had, utterly
disbelieved them, and regarded him simply as a convert from Roman
Catholicism whose passionate and aggressive Protestant fervour had
brought intolerable and unjust persecution upon him in France. Durie
was his informant; and, for all we can now know, Milton's judgment
about Labadie may have been the right one, and the traditional French
account of him to this day may be wrong. It is certainly strange,
however, to find Milton befriending with so much readiness and zeal
this French Protestant minister, against whom there were exactly such
scandals abroad as those which he had himself believed and blazoned
about Morus, for the murder of Morus's reputation over Europe, and
his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the
reported sequel of Labadie's life, in the ordinary accounts of him,
lessen the wonder.--Labadie did not come to London, as Milton had
hoped. When he received Milton's letter, he was on the wing for
Geneva, where he arrived in June 1659, and where he continued his
preaching. Here, in the very city where Morus had once been, there
still were commotions round him; and, after new wanderings in
Germany, we find him at Middleburg in Holland in 1666, thus again by
chance in a town where Morus had been before him. At Middleburg he
seems to have attained his widest celebrity, gathering a body of
admirers and important adherents, the chief of whom was "Mademoiselle
Schurmann, so versed in the learned languages." At length a quarrel
with M. de Wolzogue, minister of the Walloon church at Utrecht,
brought Labadie into difficulties with the Walloon Synod and with the
State authorities, and he migrated to Erfurt, and thence to Altona,
where he died in 1674, "in the arms of Mademoiselle Schurmann," who
had followed him to the last. He left a sect called _The
Labadists_, who were strong for a time, and are perhaps not yet
extinct. Among the beliefs they inherited from him are said to have
been these:--(1) That God may and does deceive man; (2) That
Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the
Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) That there ought to be no
Baptism of Infants; (4) That truly spiritual believers are not bound
by law and ceremonies; (5) That Sabbath-observance is unnecessary,
all days being alike; (6) That the ordinary Christian Church is
degenerate and decrepit. One sees here something like a French
Quakerism, but with ingredients from older Anabaptism. Had Milton's
letter had the intended effect, the sect might have had its home in
London.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, as before.--It is
to be remembered that Milton himself authorized the publication of
his letter to Badiaeus with his other Latin Familiar Epistles in
1674 (see Vol. I. p. 239). By that time he must have known the whole
subsequent career of Labadie and all the reports about him; and he
cannot even then have thought ill of him or of Mad'lle Schurmann.
To the end, he liked all bold schismatics and sectaries, if they
took a forward direction.]

Virtually at an end on the 22nd of April by the enforced dissolution
of the Parliament, Richard's Protectorate was more visibly at an end
on the 7th of May, when the Wallingford-House chiefs agreed with the
Republicans in restoring the Rump. Eight days after that event Milton
was called on to write two letters for the new Republican
authorities. They were as follows:--

  (CXLVIII.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 15,
  1659:--"Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As
  it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are
  all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our
  pristine authority and the supreme administration of English
  affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your
  Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high
  regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and
  also our desire to promote to the utmost of our power such a peace
  between you and the King of Denmark, himself likewise a very potent
  Protestant prince, as may not be brought about without our
  exertions and most willing good offices. Our pleasure therefore is
  that our internuncio extraordinary, Philip Meadows, be continued in
  our name in exactly the same employment which he has hitherto
  discharged with your Majesty for this Commonwealth; and to that end
  we, by these presents, give him the same power of making proposals
  and of treating and dealing with your Majesty which he had by his
  last commendatory letters. Whatever shall be transacted and
  concluded by him in our name, the same we pledge our promise, with
  God's good help, to confirm and ratify. May God long preserve your
  Majesty as a pillar and defence of the Protestant cause.--WILLIAM
  LENTHALL, _Speaker of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of
  England_."

  (CXLIX) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _May_ 15,
  1659:--The counterpart of the foregoing. His Danish Majesty,
  addressed as "most serene King and very dear Friend" is informed by
  Lenthall of the change in English affairs, and of the sympathy the
  present English Government feels with him in his adversity. They
  will do their utmost to secure a peace between him and the King of
  Sweden; and Philip Meadows, their Envoy Extraordinary to the King
  of Sweden, has full powers to treat with his Danish Majesty too for
  that end. "God grant to your Majesty, as soon as possible, a happy
  and joyful outcome from all those difficulties of your affairs in
  which you behave so bravely and magnanimously!"

On the 25th of May Richard sent in his reluctant abdication, leaving
the Rump, which had already assumed the supreme authority, to
exercise that authority without further challenge or opposition on
his part. Most of the public officials remained in their posts, and
Milton remained In his. After five years and five months of
Secretaryship under a Single-Person Government, he found himself
again Secretary under exactly such a Republican Government as he had
served originally, consisting now of the small Parliament of the
Restored Rumpers and of a Council of State appointed by that
Parliament. In this Council of State were Bradshaw, Vane, Sir James
Harrington, St. John, Hasilrig, Scott, Walton, and Whitlocke, who had
been members of all the first five Councils of the Commonwealth, from
that which had invited Milton to the Secretaryship in 1649 to that
which Cromwell forcibly dissolved in 1653, besides Fairfax,
Fleetwood, Ludlow, John Jones, Wallop, Challoner, Neville, Dixwell,
Downes, Morley, Thompson, and Algernon Sidney, whom Milton had known
as members of one or more of those five Councils, and Lambert and
Desborough, who had not been in any of them, but were among his later
acquaintances.



CHAPTER II.

Second Section.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE ANARCHY: MAY 1659--FEB.
1659-60.

_FIRST STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE RESTORED RUMP_ (MAY--OCT.
1659):--FEELINGS AND POSITION OF MILTON IN THE NEW STATE OF THINGS:
HIS SATISFACTION ON THE WHOLE, AND THE REASONS FOR IT: LETTER OF
MOSES WALL TO MILTON: RENEWED AGITATION AGAINST TITHES AND
CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: VOTES ON THAT SUBJECT IN THE RUMP: MILTON'S
CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT
OF THE CHURCH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: ITS
THOROUGH-GOING VOLUNTARYISM: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT DEMANDED
ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT COMPENSATION FOR VESTED INTERESTS: THE APPEAL
FRUITLESS, AND THE SUBJECT IGNORED BY THE RUMP: DISPERSION OF THAT
BODY BY LAMBERT.

_SECOND STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE
INTERRUPTION_ (OCT.--DEC. 1659):--MILTON'S THOUGHTS ON LAMBERT'S
COUP D'ÉTAT IN HIS _LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCERNING THE RUPTURES OF
THE COMMONWEALTH_: THE LETTER IN THE MAIN AGAINST LAMBERT AND IN
DEFENCE OF THE RUMP: ITS EXTRAORDINARY PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF A
GOVERNMENT BY TWO PERMANENT CENTRAL BODIES: THE PROPOSAL COMPARED
WITH THE ACTUAL ADMINISTRATION BY THE _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_ AND
THE _WALLINGFORD-HOUSE COUNCIL OF OFFICERS_: MILTON STILL
NOMINALLY IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MONEY WARRANT OF OCT. 25,
1659, RELATING TO MILTON, MARVELL, AND EIGHTY-FOUR OTHER OFFICIALS:
NO TRACE OF ACTUAL SERVICE BY MILTON FOR THE NEW _COMMITTEE OF
SAFETY_: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE TREATY BETWEEN THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AND MONK IN SCOTLAND: HIS MEDITATIONS
THROUGH THE COMMITTEE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO THE FUTURE MODEL OF
GOVERNMENT: HIS INTEREST IN THIS AS NOW THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION, AND
HIS COGNISANCE OF THE MODELS OF HARRINGTON AND THE ROTA CLUB:
WHITLOCKE'S NEW CONSTITUTION DISAPPOINTING TO MILTON: TWO MORE
LETTERS TO OLDENBURG AND YOUNG RANELAGH: GOSSIP FROM ABROAD IN
CONNECTION WITH THESE LETTERS: MORUS AGAIN, AND THE COUNCIL OF FRENCH
PROTESTANTS AT LOUDUN: END OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION.

_THIRD STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE
RUMP_ (DEC. 1659-FEB. 1659-60):--MILTON'S DESPONDENCY AT THIS
PERIOD: ABATEMENT OF HIS FAITH IN THE RUMP: HIS THOUGHTS DURING THE
MARCH OF MONK FROM SCOTLAND AND AFTER MONK'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON: HIS
STUDY OF MONK NEAR AT HAND AND MISTRUST OF THE OMENS: HIS INTEREST
FOR A WHILE IN THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONSTITUTION OF THE NEW
PARLIAMENT PROMISED BY THE RUMP: HIS ANXIETY THAT IT SHOULD BE A
REPUBLICAN PARLIAMENT BY MERE SELF-ENLARGEMENT OF THE RUMP: HIS
PREPARATION OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PAMPHLET: THE PUBLICATION POSTPONED
BY MONK'S SUDDEN DEFECTION FROM THE RUMP, THE ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN
THE CITY, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS TO THEIR PLACES
IN THE PARLIAMENT: MILTON'S DESPONDENCY COMPLETE.


With what feelings was it that Milton found himself once more in the
employment of his old masters, the original Republicans or
Commonwealth's-men? That there may have been some sense of
awkwardness in the re-connexion is not unlikely. Had he not for six
years been a most conspicuous Cromwellian? Had he not justified again
and again in print Cromwell's _coup d'état_ of 1653, by which
the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored
Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott,
Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell's
unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate
interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter
to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a
fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it
a year later in his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, published some
months after the Protectorate had actually begun. In that famous
pamphlet, he had, amid much else to the same effect, made special
reference to Cromwell's Dissolution of the Rump in these words
addressed to Cromwell himself: "When you saw delays being contrived,
and every one more intent on his private interests than on the public
good, and the people complaining of being cheated of their hopes and
circumvented by the power of a few, you did what they themselves had
so often declined to do when asked, and put an end to their
Government" (Vol. IV. p. 604). Rumpers of tenacious memories cannot
have forgotten such published utterances of Milton, while the fact
that he had for some years past been an Oliverian, a Protectoratist,
a Court-official for Oliver and Richard, was patent to all. Yet, now
that the old Rumpers were restored to power, the survivors of the
original "few" whose dissolution by Cromwell he had publicly praised
and defended, here was Milton still in his secretaryship and writing
the first foreign letters they required.

How was this? It is hardly a sufficient answer to say that it is
quite customary for officials to remain in their places through
changes of Government. On the one hand, Milton was not a man to
remain in an element with which he could not conscientiously accord;
and, on the other, the Rumpers were rather careful in seeking public
servants of their own sort. Thurloe was out of the general
Secretaryship; and one of the first acts of the restored House was to
punish Mr. Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Parliament, for having
entered, the fact of Cromwell's Dissolution of the House on April 20,
1653, in the Journals tinder that date. They ordered a Bill to be
brought in for repealing the Act by which Scobell held the
Clerkship.[1] The truth, then, is that Milton was not, on the whole,
displeased by the return of his old friends to power. Though he had
justified Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump and had become openly an
Oliverian at the beginning of the Protectorate, he had never ceased
to regard with admiration and affection such of the old Republicans
as Vane, Bradshaw, and Overton. It had probably all along been a
question with him whether the blame of their disablement under the
Protectorate lay more with themselves or with Oliver. Then, as we
have abundantly seen, there is reason for believing that before the
end of the Protectorate his own Oliverianism or Cromwellianism had
become weaker than at first. The Miltonic reserves, as we have called
them, with which he had given his adhesion to the Protectorate even
at first, had taken stronger and stronger development in his mind;
and, whatever he found to admire in Cromwell's Government all in all,
the whole course of that Government in Church matters had been a
disappointment. Milton wanted to see Church and State entirely
separated; Cromwell had mixed them, intertwined them, more than ever.
Milton wanted to see the utter abolition in England of anything that
could be called a clergy; Cromwell had made it one of the chief
objects of his rule to maintain a clergy and extend it massively.
Whether this policy might not yet be reversed had been one of
Milton's first questions with himself after Cromwell's death; and his
_Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_, addressed to
Richard's Parliament, had been a challenge to that Parliament not to
shrink from the great attempt. In that treatise, it is not too much
to say, Milton had shaken hands again with the old Republican party.
In the preface to it he had dwelt fondly on his former connexion with
them, on his recollection especially of the speeches he had heard
from some of them in the old Councils of State of the Commonwealth,
when he had first the honour to sit there as Latin Secretary, and
listen to their private debates. What clearness then, what
decisiveness, in such men as Vane and Bradshaw, on that "important
article of Christianity," the necessary distinctness of the Civil
from the Religious! Ah! could those old days be back! He had written
as if those days had not been satisfactory, as if the dispersion of
his old masters of those days had been necessary; but, in so writing,
had he not been too hasty? So he had been asking himself of late; and
though, as Richard's Latin Secretary, and writing under his
Protectorate, he had not said a word against the established
Protectoral Government, he had expressed generally his conviction
that England would never be right till either those charged with the
Government should be men "discerning between Civil and Religious" or
none but such should be charged with the Government. Now, however, in
May 1659, he might speak more plainly. Richard's Government had been
swept away;--Richard's Parliament, which he had addressed, was no
more in being; and, by a revolution which he had not expected, and in
which he had taken no part, the pure Republic, with the relics of the
Parliament that had first created it, was again the established
order. All round about him the men he respected most were exulting in
the change, and calling it a revival of "the Good Old Cause." Without
pronouncing on the change in all its aspects, he could join in the
exultation for a special reason. Would not the restored Republican
Parliament and their Councils of State see it to be part of their
duty to assert at last the principle of absolute Religious
Voluntaryism?

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 19, 1659.]

This representation of Milton's position at the time of the
restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then
addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or
Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom
there are traces in Hartlib's correspondence and elsewhere.[1] Milton
had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his
_Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_; and this is
Wall's reply--written, it will be observed, the very day after
Richard's abdication:--

[Footnote 1: Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, by Crossley, I.
355 and 365.]

  "Sir,

  "I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you
  that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I
  have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about
  you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in
  your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your
  relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more
  friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light;
  but your last book resolved that doubt.

  "You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its
  retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is
  much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When
  those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our
  liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to
  be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,--when
  these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing
  committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force
  which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,--what
  can poor people do? You know who they were that watched our
  Saviour's sepulchre to keep him from rising [soldiers! see Matthew
  XXVII. and XXVIII.]. Besides, whilst people are not free, but
  straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be
  dejected and servile; and, conducing to that end [of rousing them],
  there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our
  manufactures, our fishery, our fens, forests, and commons, and our
  trade at sea, &c.: which would give the body of the nation a
  comfortable subsistence. And the breaking that cursed yoke of
  Tithes would much help thereto. Also another thing I cannot but
  mention; which is that the Norman Conquest and Tyranny is continued
  upon the nation without any thought of removing it: I mean the
  tenure of land by copyhold, and holding for life under a lord, or
  rather tyrant, of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their
  land by cost upon it, not knowing how soon themselves or theirs may
  be outed it, nor what the house is in which they live, for the same
  reason; and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor
  than the rest of the nation is to a king or supreme magistrate.

  "We have waited for liberty; but it must be God's work and not
  man's: who thinks it sweet to maintain his pride and worldly
  interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the
  precious liberty of mankind. But let us not despond, but do our
  duty; God will carry on that blessed work, in despite of all
  opposites, and to their ruin if they persist therein.

  "Sir, my humble request is that you would proceed, and give us that
  other member of the distribution mentioned in your book: viz. that
  Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty. It is like, if you do,
  you shall find opposers; but remember that saying,_'Beatius est
  pati quam frui,'_ or, in the Apostle's words, James V. 11.
  [Greek: Makarizomen tous hypomenontas] ['We count them happy that
  endure']. I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion)
  of that storied voice that should speak from heaven when
  Ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, _'Hodie
  venenum infunditur in Ecelesiam'_ ['This day is poison poured
  into the Church']; for, to use the speech of Gen. IV. _ult._,
  according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, 'Then began men
  to corrupt the worship of God.' I shall tell you a supposal of
  mine; which is this:--Mr. Durie has bestowed about thirty years'
  time in travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists
  and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest
  way were:--Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and
  preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those
  ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth
  into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet
  I shall lay this engagement upon myself,--to remain

  "Your faithful friend and servant,

  "M. Wall.[1]

  "Causham: May 26, 1659."

[Footnote 1: Copy in Ayscough: MS. in British Museum, No. 4292 (f.
121); where the copyist "J. Owen" (the Rev. J. Owen of Rochdale)
certifies it as from the original. It was printed, not very
correctly, by Richard Baron, in 1756, in his preface to his edition
of the _Eikonoklastes._]

Here, from a man evidently after Milton's own heart on the Church
question, we have Milton's welcome back into the ranks of the old
Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first
Restoration of the Rump (May 7--Oct. 13) the friends of "the good
old cause" had reason to know that Milton was again one of
themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his
for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already
quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed
by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the
known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however,
were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before;
and of the completeness of Milton's re-adherence to the Republican
Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could
have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him
for the Rump or its Council.

Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of
Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of "the
good old cause." We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but
they may be given here more in detail:--Hardly had the Rump been
reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of
petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One
such, called "The Humble Representation and Petition of many
well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some
parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire," was read in the House on the
14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the
House resolved "to give encouragement to a godly, preaching, learned
ministry throughout the nation, and for that end to continue the
payment of Tithes till they can find out some other more equal and
comfortable maintenance for the ministry, and satisfaction of the
people; which they intend with all convenient speed." That day,
accordingly, in a division of thirty-eight Yeas (Carew Raleigh and
Sir William Brereton tellers) to thirty-eight Noes (Hasilrig and
Colonel White tellers) it was carried, by the Speaker's casting vote,
to refer the question of some substitute for Tithes to a Grand
Committee. On the 27th of June, there having been other petitions
against Tithes in the meantime, signed by "many thousands," the House
came to a more definite resolution, which they ordered to be printed
and published by the Judges in their circuits. It was "That this
Parliament doth declare that, for the encouragement of a godly,
preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, the payment of
Tithes shall continue as now they are, _unless_ this Parliament
shall find out some other," &c. As the word _unless_ had been,
substituted for the word _until_ without a division, it is
evident that the House had gone back in their intentions in the
course of the fortnight, and were less disposed to commit themselves
to any serious interference with the Church Establishment as left by
Cromwell. The disappointment to the petitioning thousands must have
been great. Still, the question had been raised, and might be
regarded as only adjourned. What was wanted was continued agitation
out of doors, more petitioning and more pamphleteering.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.]

It was in this last way that Milton could help. As advised by his
friend Moses Wall, he had been busy over that second Disestablishment
tract which he had promised; and in August 1659 it appeared in this
form: _"Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove
Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes,
Church-fees, Church Revenues; and, whether any maintenance of
ministers can be settl'd by law. The author J.M. London, Printed by
T.N. for L. Chapman at the Crown in Popes-head Alley,_ 1659." The
volume is a very small octavo, and contains eighteen unnumbered pages
of prefatory address to the Parliament in large open type, signed
"John Milton" in full, followed by 153 pages of text.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copy in Thomason Collection, with date "Aug." marked on
title-page--month only, no day.]

The Address to the Parliament deserves particular notice. The
following is the main portion of it, with two phrases Italicised:--

  "Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate, this liberty of writing
  which I have used these eighteen years on all occasions to assert
  the just rights and freedoms both of Church and State, and so far
  approved as to have been trusted with the representment and defence
  of your actions to all Christendom against an adversary of no mean
  repute, to whom should I address what I still publish on the same
  argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and
  unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal
  tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like
  Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father
  to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these
  nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged,
  next under God, _the authors and best patrons of Religious and
  Civil Liberty that ever these Islands brought forth?_ The care
  and tuition of whose peace and safety, _after a short but
  scandalous night of interruption,_ is now again, by a new
  dawning of God's miraculous Providence among us, revolved upon your
  shoulders. And to whom more appertain these Considerations which I
  propound than to yourselves, and the debate before you, though I
  trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great expectation, not
  whether ye will gratify, were it no more than so, but whether ye
  will hearken to the just petition of many thousands best affected
  both to Religion and to this your return, or whether ye will
  satisfy (which you never can) the covetous pretences and demands of
  insatiable Hirelings, whose disaffection ye well know hath to
  yourselves and your resolutions? That I, though among many others
  in this common concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my
  thoughts also are, your own judgment and the success thereof hath
  given me the confidence: which requests but this--that, if I have
  prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of
  this Commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the reason and
  ability whereon ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole
  reputation to the world either grown less by more maturity and
  longer study or less available in English than in another tongue:
  but that, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy
  the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings,
  though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against
  weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a
  spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no
  controversy else among Protestants."

This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton's re-adhesion to
the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had
ever parted from them. After all, he could call them "the authors and
best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these Islands
brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering
also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian
controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their
return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his
Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems
utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "_a short but
scandalous night of interruption_" was intended to apply to the
entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship and Protectorship.
That had not been a "short" interruption, for it had exceeded in
length the whole duration of the Commonwealth it had interrupted; and
it would be the most marvellous inconsistency on record if Milton
could ever have brought himself to call it "scandalous." Who had
written the panegyric on Cromwell and his actually established
Protectorship in the _Defensio Secunda?_ Who had been Oliver's
Latin Secretary from first to last, and penned for him his despatches
on the Piedmontese massacre and all his greatest besides? The
likelihood, therefore, is that "the short but scandalous night of
interruption" in Milton's mind was the fortnight or so of
Wallingford-House usurpation which broke up Richard's Parliament and
Protectorate, and from the continuance of which, with all the
inconveniences of a mere military despotism, the restoration of the
Rump had seemed a happy rescue. But, though this single phrase may be
thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of
gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver
living. And the reason at this point is most obvious. Was it not
precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation
of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the
Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calling themselves
a Clergy--was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued
a contrary policy--that it remained for Milton now, seven years after
the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and
on mere printed paper, his own poor _Considerations touching the
likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church?_ It was not
in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say
his best for the memory of Cromwell.

After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise
with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:--

  "Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil
  note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when
  our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which
  makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a
  word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or
  the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess
  thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience
  till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he
  could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might
  be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the
  nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical
  traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that
  those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud,
  _'This day is poison poured into the Church'_ [Note the
  adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall's letter]. Which the event
  soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient
  observation, that 'Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter
  devoured the Mother.' But, long ere _wealth_ came into the
  Church, so soon as any _gain_ appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS
  were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof
  [References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the
  second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that
  among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who
  preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the
  Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in
  wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving
  it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to
  hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at
  first into the Church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather
  the impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minister
  were, as St. Paul, contented to teach _gratis:_ but few such
  are to be found. As therefore we cannot justly take away all Hire
  in the Church, because we cannot otherwise quite remove Hirelings,
  so are we not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use
  therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in, but rather, in
  regard the evil, do what we can, will always be incumbent and
  unavoidable, to use our utmost diligence how it may be least
  dangerous. Which will be likeliest effected if we consider,--first
  what recompense God hath ordained should be given to ministers of
  the Church (for that a recompense ought to be given them, and may
  by them justly be received, our Saviour himself, from the very
  light of reason and of equity, hath declared, Luke X. 7, '_The
  labourer is worthy of his hire'_); _next,_ by whom; and,
  _lastly,_ in what manner."

In this passage and in other passages throughout the Treatise it is
clear that Milton's ideal was a Church in which no minister should
take pay at all for his preaching or ministry, whether pay from the
state or from his hearers, but every minister should, as St. Paul
did, preach, absolutely and systematically _gratis_, deriving
his livelihood and his leisure to preach from his private resources,
or, if he had none such, then from the practice of some calling or
handicraft apart from his preaching. Deep down in Milton's mind,
notwithstanding his professed deference to Christ's words, "_The
labourer is worthy of his hire,_" we can see this conviction that
it would be better for the world if religious doctrine, or in fact
doctrine of any kind, were never bought or sold, but all spiritual
teachers were to abhor the very touch of money for their lessons,
being either gentlemen of independent means who could propagate the
truth splendidly from high motives, or else tent-makers, carpenters,
and bricklayers, passionate with the possession of some truth to
propagate. This, however, having been acknowledged to be perhaps an
impossibility on any great scale, he goes on to inquire, as proposed,
what the legitimate and divinely-appointed hire of Gospel-ministers
is, from whom it may come, and in what manner. The general result is
as follows:--I. The Tithes of the old Jewish dispensation are utterly
abolished under the Gospel. Nearly half the treatise is an argument
to this effect, and consequently for the immediate abolition of the
tithe-system in England. Here Milton lends his whole force to the
popular current on this subject among the friends of "the good old
cause," advocating those petitions to the Rump of which he has spoken
in his preface. But he goes farther than the abolition of tithes. He
will not allow of any statutory substitute for tithes, any taxation
of the people in any form for the support of Religion. The only
substitute for tithes which he discusses specifically is compulsory
church-fees for ministerial offices, such as baptisms, marriages, and
burials. These, as well as tithes, he utterly condemns; and he winds
up this part of his inquiry thus: "Seeing, then, that God hath given
to ministers under the Gospel that only which is justly given them
(that is to say, a due and moderate livelihood, the hire of their
labour), and that the heave-offering of Tithes is abolished with the
Altar (yes, though not abolished, yet lawless as they enjoy them),
their Melchizedekian right also trivial and groundless, and both
tithes and fees, if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous, we
may hope, with _them_ removed, to remove Hirelings in some good
measure." II. It is maintained that the lawful maintenance of the
ministry can consist only in the voluntary offerings of those they
instruct, whether tendered individually, or collected into a common
treasury for distribution. The flocks ought to maintain their own
pastors, and no others are bound to contribute for the purpose. But
what of poor neighbourhoods that cannot maintain pastors and yet need
them most sorely? Milton has unbounded confidence that these will be
overtaken and provided for by the zeal of pious individuals, or by
"the charity of richer congregations," taking the form of itinerant
missions. "If it be objected that this itinerary preaching will not
serve to plant the Gospel in those places unless they who are sent
abide there some competent time, I answer that, if they stay there
for a year or two, which was the longest time usually staid by the
Apostles in one place, it may suffice to teach them who will attend
and learn all the points of Religion necessary to salvation: then,
sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number, out of
the ablest and zealousest of them to create elders, who, exercising
and requiring from themselves what they have learnt (for no learning
is retained without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may
teach and govern the rest: and, so exhorted to continue faithful and
stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and
the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity
to visit them again and to confirm them." The only concession Milton
will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be
made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in
these temporary and itinerant missions. For the rest, it will be
seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a
permanent pastorate anywhere. If there is to be a body of men in the
community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and
populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services,
for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial
persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings
convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be
helped; but the picture most to Milton's fancy is that of an England
generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or
regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local
cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or
barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple
teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within
itself. Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional
preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to
rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed.
There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere;
but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known
among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their
ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income,
would be reduced to a minimum. In a Church so constituted there would
still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were
wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly
reduced. III. Under the third head of the "manner" of the recompense
to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of
Milton's remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the
recompense must be studiously maintained. It must be purely an alms,
an oblation of benevolence. Hence it should never take the form of a
life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a legal title to
demand payment. The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a
law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his
ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with
disgust. Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery
by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend
in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church?

The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing
than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual
passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic
strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found
in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:--

  _Mr. Prynne's Defences of Tithes_:--"To heap such unconvincing
  citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our
  rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour
  of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for
  Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the
  margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,--a fierce Reformer
  once, now rankled with a contrary heat,--would send us back, very
  reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas,
  two Canonical Promoters."[1]

[Footnote 1: The reference is to Prynne's _Ten Considerable
Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions
for their Total Abolition_: 1659.]

  _Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same_:--"As for
  Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not
  sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no
  ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is
  (which our Selden hath well observed _I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb._)
  that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to
  use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be
  profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators
  only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they
  insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction,
  and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a
  Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free
  to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best,
  indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor.
  VII. '_In the Lord_'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy
  without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than
  any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,--which ought
  all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,--all which, no
  less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as
  material to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our Divines deny
  it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently
  a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from
  their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering
  thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil
  Magistrates" [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in
  accordance with which had been Milton's own second marriage: see
  ante p. 281, and Vol. IV. p. 511].

  _Sitting under a Stated Minister:_--"If men be not all their
  lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy,
  Ethics, or Mathematics, ... certainly it is not necessary to the
  attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their
  life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard
  indeed over his elbow-cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty
  or fifty years, teaches them scarce half the principles of
  Religion, and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little purpose
  of benefiting as the sheep in their pews at Smithfield."

  _Congregations for mutual Edification:_--"Notwithstanding the
  gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we
  may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a
  manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such
  meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive,
  they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and
  reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an
  incumbent,--I may say such an incubus ofttimes,--as will be meanly
  hired to abide long in those places."

  _A Reflection on Cromwell for his Established Church:_--"For
  the magistrate, in person of a nursing father, to make the Church
  his mere ward, as always in minority,-the Church to whom he ought
  as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) '_to bow down with his face
  toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,_'--her to
  subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering
  her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her
  free election of ministers,--is neither just nor pious: no honour
  done to the Church, but a plain dishonour."

  _University Education of Ministers:--State of the Facts:_
  "They pretend that their education, either at School or University,
  hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in
  future by a plentiful maintenance: whereas it is well known that
  the better half of them, and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no
  merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public
  provision but their poverty and the unjust favour of friends, have
  had the most of their breeding, both at School and University, by
  scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public
  cost,--which might engage them the rather to give freely, as they
  have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the
  latter place, they have after two or three years left the course of
  their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken,
  though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and
  ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some
  gentleman's house, to the frequent imbasing of his sons with
  illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there [at
  the University] upon their own, who knows not that seven years'
  charge of living there,--to them who fly not from the government
  of their parents to the licence of a University, but come seriously
  to study,--is no more than, may be well defrayed and reimbursed by
  one year's revenue of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then
  means of breeding from their parents, 'tis likely they have more
  now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous
  in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those
  liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have
  indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and
  accomplishment. But they will say 'We had betaken us to some other
  trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better
  livelihood by the Ministry.' This is what I looked for,--to
  discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very
  seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel."

  _University Education of Ministers not Necessary_: "What
  Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister
  may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ...
  Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the
  Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of
  all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather
  perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than
  enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence
  we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of
  his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at £600
  [equivalent to £2000 now], may be competently furnished for £60
  [equivalent to £200 now]. If any man, for his own curiosity or
  delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned
  as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. But
  Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers
  and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges! I will show them
  therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation: _Tit. I._
  9; 'Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he
  may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince
  gainsayers,'--who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which
  is either not in Scripture or against it. To pursue them further
  through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and
  Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not
  requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our
  Religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought
  needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries,
  and there will not want men in the Church who of their own
  inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any
  other Adversary."

No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones
Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view
to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in
all their length and breadth. Disestablishment, Disendowment,
Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and
Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament. Even in that House,
however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was
on the question of the continuance of Tithes, and it is dubious
whether some in that half of the House which voted against Tithes
would not have been for preserving a Church Establishment or
Preaching Ministry by some other form of state-maintenance. Nor can
one imagine, even in those eager and revolutionary times, an utter
disregard of that principle of compensation for life-interests which
any Parliament now, contemplating a scheme of Disestablishment, would
consider binding in common equity. The old Bishops, and the Prelatic
Clergy, indeed, had been disestablished without much consideration of
life-interests; but the procedure in their case had been of a penal
character, and it is unlikely that it would have been equally
unceremonious with the new clergy of Presbyterians and Independents,
allowed generally to be orthodox. From any hesitation on that score
Milton is absolutely free. He sees no difficulties, takes regard of
none. It is not with a flesh-and-blood world that he deals, a world
of men, and their wives, and their families, and their yearly
incomes, and their fixed residences and household belongings. It is
with a world of wax, or of flesh and blood that must be content to be
treated as wax. It is thought right to disestablish the Church: well,
then, let the Clergy go! Abolish tithes; provide no substitute;
proclaim that, after this day week, or the first day of the next
year, not a penny shall be paid to any man by the State for preaching
the Gospel, or doing any other act of the ministry: and what then?
Why, there will be a flutter of consternation, of course, through
some ten thousand or twelve thousand parsonages; ten thousand or
twelve thousand clerical gentlemen will stare bewilderedly for a
while at their wives' faces: but do not be too much concerned! They
will all shift very well for themselves when they know they must; the
best of them will find congregations where they are, or in other
places, and will work all the harder; and, if the drones and dotards
go threadbare and starve for the rest of their lives, that is but
God's way with such since the beginning of the world! Be instant, be
rapid, be decisive, be thoroughgoing, O ye statesmen! What are vested
interests in the Church of Christ?

As the Restored Rumpers had already decreed that an Established
Church should be kept up in England, and had gone no farther on the
Tithes question than to say that Tithes must be paid, as by use and
wont, until some substitute should be provided, it is not likely
that, however long they had sat, Milton's views would have had much
countenance from them. There were individuals among them of Milton's
way of thinking on the whole; but he had probably made a mistake in
fancying that he had materially improved his influence, or the
chances of his notions of Church-polity, by his public re-adhesion to
the Rump. In fact, the continued existence of the Rump was more
precarious than he had thought. In August 1659, while his pamphlet
was in circulation, Lambert was away in the north, suppressing the
Cheshire Insurrection of Sir George Booth; in the next month
discontent with the Rumpers and their rule was rife in Lambert's
victorious northern Brigade; and in the beginning of October London
was again in agitation with the rupture of the hasty alliance that
had been patched up between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House
Council of Army Officers. It was on the 12th of October that the Rump
defied the Army by cashiering Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and six
other officers; and on the 13th Lambert retaliated by his _coup
d'état_, filling the streets with his soldiery, catching the
Rumpers one by one as they went to the House, and informing them that
it was the will of the Army that they should sit no more. Thus had
begun that "Second Stage of the Anarchy" which we have called _The
Wallingford-House Interruption_.

Of Milton's thoughts over the change effected by Lambert's _coup
d'état_ we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated
"October 20, 1659" (i.e. just a week after the _coup d'état_),
and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the
previous night. It appears in his works now with the title "_A
Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth:
Published from the Manuscript_."[1] Who the Friend was does not
appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very
near the centre of affairs. "Sir," it begins, "upon the sad and
serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these
dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy,
which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to
consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been
wont,--resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the
wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that
either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for
those that govern. And, since you have not only stirred up my
thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly
than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion
thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my
apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God
in mercy regard us, may remove them." At the close of the Letter he
says, "You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I
understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the
persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some
way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be
endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With
this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or
suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that,
in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which
might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not
been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of
showing the readiness which I have, in the midst of my unfitness, to
whatever may be required of me as a public duty." The expressions
might suggest that the friend who had been talking with Milton was
Vane or some one else of those Councillors of the Rump who still sat
on at Whitehall consulting with the Wallingford-House Chiefs as to
the form of Government to be set up instead of the Rump (ante pp.
494-495). It may, however, have been some lesser personage, such as
Meadows, back from the Baltic this very month. In any case, the
letter was meant to be shown about, if not printed. It was, in fact,
Milton's contribution, at a friend's request, to the deliberations
going on at Whitehall.

[Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam
Edition of Milton's Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to
the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been
communicated to him "by a worthy friend, who, a little after the
author's death, had it from his nephew"--i.e. from Phillips.]

He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert's _coup
d'état_. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more
strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had
welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:--

  "I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard
  that the Army, under the working of God's holy Spirit, as I
  thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian
  humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding
  from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance
  in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament
  which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the
  famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none
  well-affected but will confess they have deserved much more of
  these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God
  was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such
  a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were
  desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage
  [Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now
  amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving
  thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so
  soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so
  lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately
  punished in those Cheshire Rebels,--that they should now dissolve
  that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and
  acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day's _Humble
  Representation_: and all this for no apparent cause of public
  concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for
  discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not
  been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions
  against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this
  action,--not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak
  only what it appears to us without doors till better cause be
  declared, and I am sure to all other nations,--most illegal and
  scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled
  among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause,
  thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other
  nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so
  renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us
  here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great
  officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces
  should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison
  against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of
  France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like
  disorder and confusion."

He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one
"jealous of their honour," to "manifest and publish with all speed
some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto
appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition
in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning
to these disorders,"--in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert.
But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the
second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be
useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done.

"Being now in anarchy, without a counselling and governing power, and
the Army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at
once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out
with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a
SENATE or GENERAL COUNCIL OF STATE, in whom must be the power first
to preserve the public peace, next the commerce with foreign nations,
and lastly to raise moneys for the management of these affairs. This
must either be the [Rump] Parliament readmitted to sit, or a Council
of State allowed of by the Army, since they only now have the power.
The terms to be stood on are _Liberty of Conscience to all
professing Scripture to be the Rule of their Faith and Worship_
and the _Abjuration of a Single Person_. If the [Rump]
Parliament be again thought on, to salve honour on both sides, the
well-affected party of the City and the Congregated Churches may be
induced to mediate by public addresses and brotherly beseechings;
which, if there be that saintship among us which is talked of, ought
to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to reconcilement. If the
Parliament be thought well dissolved, _as not complying fully to
grant Liberty of Conscience, and the necessary consequence thereof,
the Removal of a forced Maintenance from Ministers_ [Milton's own
sole dissatisfaction with the Restored Rump], then must the Army
forthwith choose a Council of State, whereof as many to be of the
Parliament as are undoubtedly affected to these two conditions
proposed. That which I conceive only able to cement and unite the
Army either to the Parliament recalled or this chosen Council must be
a mutual League and Oath, private or public, not to desert one
another till death: that is to say that the Army be kept up and all
these Officers in their places during life, and so likewise the
Parliament or Councillors of State; which will be no way unjust,
considering their known merits on either side, in Council or in
Field, unless any be found false to any of these two principles, or
otherwise personally criminous in the judgment of both parties. If
such a union as this be not accepted on the Army's part, be confident
there is a Single Person underneath. That the Army be upheld the
necessity of our affairs and factions will [at any rate] constrain
long enough perhaps to content the longest liver in the Army. And
whether the Civil Government be an annual Democracy or a perpetual
Aristocracy is not to me a consideration for the extremities wherein
we are, and the hazard of our safety from our common enemy, gaping at
present to devour us. That it be not an Oligarchy, or the Faction of
a few, may be easily prevented by the numbers of their own choosing
who may be found infallibly constant to those two conditions
forenamed--full Liberty of Conscience and the Abjuration of Monarchy
proposed; and the well-ordered Committees of their faithfullest
adherents in every county may give this Government the resemblance
and effects of a perfect Democracy. As for the Reformation of Laws
and the Places of Judicature, whether to be here, as at present, or
in every county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such proposals
tending no doubt to public good, they may be considered in due time,
when we are past these pernicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health
and firm constitution. But, unless these things which I have above
proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in my fear (which God
avert!), we instantly ruin, or at best become the servants of one or
other Single Person, the secret author and fomenter of these
disturbances."

There is considerable boldness in these proposals of Milton, and yet
a cast of practicality which is unusual with him. They prove again,
if new proof were needed, that he was not a Republican of the
conventional sort. He glances, indeed, at the possibility of an
"Annual Democracy," i.e. a future succession of annual Parliaments,
or at least of annual Plebiscites for electing the Government. But he
rather dismisses that possibility from his calculations; and
moreover, even had he entertained it farther, we know that the
Parliaments or Plebiscites he would have allowed would not have been
"full and free," but only guarded representations of the
"well-affected" of the community,--to wit, the Commonwealth's-men.
But the Constitution to which he looks forward with most confidence,
and which he ventures to think might answer all the purposes of a
perfect democracy, is one that should consist of two perpetual or
life aristocracies at the centre,--one a civil aristocracy in the
form of a largish Council of State, the other a military aristocracy
composed of the great Army Officers,--these two aristocracies to be
pledged to each other by oath, and sworn also to the two great
principles of Liberty of Conscience and resistance to any attempt at
Single Person sovereignty. What communication between the Central
Government so constituted and the body of the People might be
necessary for the free play of opinion might be sufficiently kept
up, he hints, by the machinery of County Committees. The entire
scheme may seem strange to those whose theory of a Republic refuses
the very imagination of an aristocracy or of perpetuity of power in
the same hands; but both, notions, and especially that of perpetuity
of power in the same hands, had been growing on Milton, and were not
inconsistent with _his_ theory of a Republic. Nor was his
present scheme, with all its strangeness, the least practical of the
many "models" that theorists were putting forth. It would, doubtless,
have failed in the trial,--for the conception of a perpetual Civil
Council at Whitehall always in harmony with a perpetual Military
Council in Wallingford House presupposed moral conditions in both
bodies less likely to be forthcoming in themselves than in Milton's
thoughts about them. But everything else would have failed equally,
and some of the "models" perhaps more speedily. Since the subversion
of Richard's Protectorate by Fleetwood and Desborough there had been
no possible stop-gap against the return of the Stuarts.

The consulting authorities at Whitehall and Wallingford House did
adopt a course having some semblance of that suggested by Milton.
Before the 25th of October, or within six days after the date of
Milton's letter, the relics of the Council of State of the Rump
agreed to be transformed, with additions nominated by the Officers,
into the new Supreme Executive called _The Committee of Safety_;
and, as _The Wallingford-House Council of Officers_ still
continued to sit in the close vicinity of this new Council at
Whitehall, the Government was then vested, in fact, in the two
aristocracies, with Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and
others, as members of both, and connecting links between them. But
the new _Committee of Safety_ was not such a Senate or Council
as Milton had imagined. For one thing, it consisted but of
twenty-three persons (see the list ante p. 494), whereas Milton would
have probably liked to see a Council of twice that size or even
larger. For another, it was not composed of persons perfectly sound
on Milton's two proposed fundamentals of Liberty of Conscience and
Abjuration of any Single Person. Vane, to be sure, was on the
Committee, and a host in himself for both principles; and there were
others, such as Salway and Ludlow, that would not flinch on either.
But Whitlocke, Sydenham, and the majority, were but moderately for
Liberty of Conscience, and certainly utterly against that Miltonic
interpretation of it which implied Church-disestablishment, while one
at least, the Scottish Johnstone of Warriston, was positively against
Liberty of Conscience beyond very narrow Presbyterian limits. Nor,
though probably all would have assented at that time to an oath
abjuring Charles Stuart, were they all without taint of the Single
Person heresy in other forms. Some of them, including Whitlocke and
Berry, would have liked to restore Richard; and Fleetwood and Lambert
were not wrongly suspected of seeing the most desirable Single Person
every morning in the looking-glass. Milton's former regard for
Fleetwood must have suffered considerably by recent events; and he
thought of Lambert as the very "Achan" to be dreaded. But, farther,
even had the two aristocracies been of perfectly satisfactory
composition, they had abandoned that idea of their own permanence
which Milton had made all but essential. They had agreed that their
chief work should consist in shaping out a fit constitution for the
Commonwealth, and that the _Committee of Safety_ should continue
in power only till that should be done and the new Constitution
should come into operation.

Such as it was, the new Government of the Wallingford-House
Interruption had no objection to retaining Mr. Milton in the Latin
Secretaryship if he cared to keep it. That he had held the post
throughout the whole of the Government of the Restored Rump (though
all but in sinecure, as we must conclude from the cessation of the
series of his Latin Letters in the preceding May) appears from a very
interesting document in the Record Office. The Council of State of
the Rump, it is to be remembered, had not vanished with the Rump
itself on Oct. 13, but had sat on for twelve days more, though with
its number reduced by the secession of Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and
other very vehement Rumpers,--the object being to maintain the
continuity of the public business and to make the most amicable
arrangement possible with the Army-officers. That object having been
accomplished by the institution, of the new _Committee of
Safety_, the Council of the Rump, before demitting its powers to
this new body, which was to meet on the 28th of October, held its own
last meeting at Whitehall on the 25th. At such a last meeting it was
but business-like to clear off all debts due by the Council; and,
accordingly, this was done by the issue of the following
comprehensive money-warrant, signed by Whitlocke as President, and by
four others of those present.

  "These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are or
  shall come into your hands, to pay unto the several persons whose
  names are endorsed the several sums of money to their names
  mentioned, making on the whole the sum of Three Thousand Six
  Hundred Eighty-two Pounds, Eight Shillings, and Six Pence: being so
  much due to them for their salaries and service to this Council
  unto the Two-and-twentieth day of this instant October. Hereof you
  are not to fail; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient
  warrant. Given at the Council of State at Whitehall this 25th day
  of October, 1659.

  "B. WHITLOCKE, _President._
  A. JOHNSTON.
  JAMES HARRINGTON.
  CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
  JA. BERRY.

  "To GUALTER FROST, Esq.,

  "Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies."

  "The eighty-six persons to whom the payments are to be made are
  divided into groups in the Warrant, the particular sum due to each
  person appended to his name. The first five groups stand thus:--

                                                            £  _s._ _d._
                                          Richard Deane    234  7    6
  _"At £500 per annum each_               Henry Scobell    234  7    6
                                          William Robinson  83  0    0

  _At £1 per day_                         Richard Kingdon   86  0    0

  _At £200 per annum each_                JOHN MILTON       86 12    0
                                          ANDREW MARVELL    86 12    0

                                          Gualter Frost    138  0   10
  _At 20_s._ per diem each_          Matthew Fairbank 139  0    0
                                          Samuel Morland    88  0    0
                                          Edward Dendy     169  0    0

                                          Matthew Lea       56  6    8
  _At 6_s._ 8_d._ per diem each_ [Clerks] Thomas Lea        56  6    8
                                          William Symon     56  6    8"

  Then follow the names of _twenty-nine_ persons at 5_s._
  per diem each: viz. Zachary Worth, David Salisbury, Peter
  Llewellen, Edward Cooke, Richard Stephens, Stephen Montague, Thomas
  Powell; Henry Symball, Joseph Butler, Thomas Pidcott, Richard
  Freeman, George Hussey, Roger Read, Edward Osbaldiston, William
  Feild, Robert Cooke (or his widow), Thomas Blagden, William Ledsom,
  Edward Cooke; Edward Tytan, Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas
  Hill, Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbetter, Alexander Turner, Thomas
  Wright, William Geering, and Edward Bridges. The occupations of the
  first seven are not described, but they were probably under-clerks;
  the next twelve were "messengers"; the last ten "serjeant deputies"
  under Dendy as Serjeant-at-Arms. The sums ordered to be paid to
  them vary from £4 to £42 5_s._--_Forty-four_ more persons
  are added more miscellaneously, with the sums due to them
  respectively. Among these I may note the following:--"George Vaux,
  _Housekeeper_" (£69 9_s._ 8_d._), "Mr. Nutt, the
  _Barge-keeper_" (£65), "Mr. Embrey, _Surveyor_" (£140
  12_s._ 6_d._), and "Mr. Kinnereley,
  _Wardrobe-keeper_" (£140 12_s._ 6_d._).[1]

[Footnote 1: From Warrant Book in Record Office. On comparing the
list of persons in this warrant with that in the extract from the
Order Books of Oliver's Council of date April 17, 1655 (pp. 177-179),
and with lists in a former Council minute of date Feb. 3, 1653-4, and
in a Money Warrant of Oliver of same date (Vol. IV. pp. 575-578), it
will be seen that there had been changes in the staff meanwhile.
Milton, Scobell, Gualter Frost, Serjeant Dendy, Housekeeper Vaux,
Bargemaster Nutt, and about a dozen of the clerks, messengers, and
serjeant-deputies remain (one of the former clerks, Matthew
Fairbank, now promoted from his original 6_s._ 8_d._ a day
to 20_s._ a day); but Thurloe, Jessop, Meadows, two younger
Frosts, and a good many others are gone, while new men are Deane,
Robinson, Kingdon, Morland, Marvell, and others. Morland, as we
know, had been brought in a while ago to assist Thurloe; and his
salary, we now see, was larger than Milton's.--When Milton's salary
was reduced, in April 1655, it was arranged that it should be a
life-pension, and payable out of the Exchequer; but the present
warrant Directs payment to him, as to the rest, out of the
Council's contingencies. It would seem, therefore, that Oliver's
arrangement for him had not taken effect, or had been cancelled by
the Rump, and that he was now not a life-pensioner, but once more a
mere official at the Council's pleasure.]

There is nothing in this warrant to show that Milton's services were
transferred to the new Committee of Safety; but the fact seems to be
that he did remain nominally in the Latin Secretaryship with Marvell
through the whole duration of that body and of the Fleetwood-Lambert
rule, i.e. to Dec. 26, 1659. Nominally only it must have been; for we
have no trace of any official work of his through the period. There
was very little to do for the Government at that time in the way of
foreign correspondence, and for what there was Marvell must have
sufficed.

Through the months of November and December Milton's thoughts, like
those of other people, must have been much occupied with the
negotiations going on between the new Government and their formidable
opponent in Scotland. What would be the issue? Would Monk persevere
in that championship of the ill-treated Rump which he had so boldly
undertaken? Would he march into England to restore the Rump, as he
had threatened; or would he yet be pacified and induced to accept the
Wallingford-House order of things, with a competent share in the
power? No one could tell. Lambert was in the north with his army, to
beat and drive back Monk if he did attempt to invade England,--at
York early in November, and at Newcastle from the 20th of November
onwards; Monk was still in Scotland,--at Edinburgh or Dalkeith till
the end of November, then at Berwick, but from the beginning of
December at Coldstream. Between the two armies agents were passing
and repassing; negotiators on the part of the London Government were
round about Monk and reasoning with him; Monk's own Commissioners in
London had concluded their Treaty of the 15th of November with
Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House Council, and there had been
rejoicings over what seemed then the happy end of the quarrel; but
again the news had come from Scotland that Monk repudiated the
agreement made by his Commissioners, and that the negotiation must be
resumed at Newcastle. To that the Committee of Safety and the
Wallingford-House Council had consented; but, through Monk's delays,
the negotiation had not yet been resumed. Would it ever be, or would
Monk's army and Lambert's come into clash at last? If so, for which
ought one to wish the victory? So far as Milton was concerned, he was
bound to wish the success of Monk. Was not Monk the champion of that
little Restored Rump to which Milton had himself adhered, and the
late suppression of which he had pronounced to be "illegal and
scandalous"? Was not Monk also professing and proclaiming that very
principle of the proper submission of the military power to the civil
on which Milton himself had dilated? Would it not be only God's
justice if Lambert, "the secret author and fomenter of these
disturbances," should be disgraced and overthrown? Yet, on the other
hand, who could desire even that consequence, or the Restoration of
the Rump, at the expense of another civil war and bloodshed? Where
would the process stop? And, besides, was Monk, with his Presbyterian
notions, learnt among the Scots, the man from whose ascendancy Milton
could hope anything but farther disappointment in the Church
question? All in all, we are to imagine Milton anxious for a
reconciliation.

No less interesting to Milton must have been the activity of the new
Government meanwhile in their great business of inventing "such a
Form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and
Commonwealth."----The Rump itself, as we know, had been busy with
this problem through the last month of its sittings, having appointed
on the 8th of September a great Committee on the subject, with Vane
named first, but all the most eminent Rumpers included (ante p. 480).
Through this Committee there had been an inburst into the
Parliamentary mind, as Ludlow informs us, of the thousand and one
competing proposals or models of a Commonwealth already devised by
the Harringtonians and other theorists; and, in fact, while the
Committee was sitting, there had started up for its assistance, close
to the doors of Parliament, the famous Harrington or Rota Club,
meeting nightly in Miles's Coffee-house, and including Neville and
others of the Rumpers among its most constant members (ante pp.
484-486). That Milton knew already about Harrington and his "models"
by sufficient readings of Harrington's books there can be no doubt.
In the address to the Rump prefixed to his _Considerations touching
Hirelings_ in August last he had distinctly referred to the kind
acceptance by the Rump of "new models of a Commonwealth" daily
tendered to them in Petitions, and must have had specially in view
the Petition of July 6, which had been drawn up by Harrington, and
which proposed a constitution of two Parliamentary Houses, one of 300
members, the other much larger, on such a system of rotation as would
change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only
criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own
notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, "no model
whatsoever of a Commonwealth, would prove successful or undisturbed."
At that time, accordingly, Milton was so engrossed with his
Church-disestablishment notion as to be comparatively careless about
the general question of the Form of Government. But, two months
later, as we have seen, in his _Letter on the Ruptures of the
Commonwealth_ occasioned by Lambert's assault on the Rump, he had
abandoned this indifference, and had proposed a model Constitution of
his own, adapted to the immediate exigencies. From that time, we may
now report, though Church-disestablishment was never lost sight of,
the question of the Form of Government had fastened itself on
Milton's mind as after all the main one. From that time he never
ceased to ruminate it himself, and he attended more to the
speculations and theories of others on the same subject. If, once or
twice in the winter months of 1659, Cyriack Skinner, the occasional
chairman of the Rota Club, did not persuade Milton to leave his house
in Petty France late in the evening, and be piloted through the
streets to the Coffee-house in New Palace Yard to hear one of the
great debates of the Club, and become acquainted with their method of
closing the debate by a ballot, it would really be a wonder.----Not
in the Rota Club, however, but in the Committee of Safety at
Whitehall and in the Wallingford-House Council, was the real and
practical debate in progress. On the 1st of November the Committee
had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new
Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the
sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that
intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of
radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in
all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his
peculiar Scottish point of view. So far as Milton was cognisant of
the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend
Vane. If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert
articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience
into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those
articles as tenets of his private creed so much earlier and so much
more tenaciously than any other public man? Seven years ago Milton
had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on
whose firm hand she could lean in peace. Now that he was again in
power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary
body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a
Constitution _de novo_, what might he not accomplish? That Vane
did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with
Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also
that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the
lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane,
and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was
substantially Whitlocke's. It was on the 6th of December that this
draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy
delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after
modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's
than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved
and ratified. A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet
in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be
appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up,
and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample
State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of
Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more
was the parturition after all. If Ludlow was in despair because no
sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be
true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were
disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted,
Milton's regret can have been no less. Government after government,
but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the
heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary
state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of
Hirelings!

So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange
phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion
which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution
nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop
Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just
been announced. Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done
the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight
Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk
with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert's _coup
d'état_ and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had
revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert's own soldiery were
falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood's soldiery in London
were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts
and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were
such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost
perplexity.

One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public
feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of
November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on
the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March
22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His
wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his
extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were
various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the
second codicil,--"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t.
Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes." There is
nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship,
on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling
one, equivalent to £35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated
on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them
together as the two literary officials who had been so much in
contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his
Presidency of the Council of State,--Needham as the appointed
journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and
for some time Needham's censor and supervisor. In Milton's case
perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the
publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, the legacy may have been
intended not merely as a small token of general respect and
friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold
eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his
relations to Cromwell.

[Footnote 1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim
extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel
Chester.--By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been
given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.]

       *       *       *       *       *

More than two years had elapsed since Milton's last letters to
Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367). They were then at
Sáumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that
time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not
earlier, they had been boarding in Paris. There are glimpses of them
in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of
Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has
received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh. Thus, in a
letter of Hartlib's to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from
Oldenburg's last: "I have had some discourse with an able but
somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though
without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the
sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced
(as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want
experience in these matters." Young Ranelagh seems to have fully
acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental
science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have
read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:--"This
week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a
very singular observation in these words: 'Concerning the generation
of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the
cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your
next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,--which I endeavour
fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls;
which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in
revenge of your observations. I heard lately a very remarkable story
about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town,
which you will be glad, I believe, to hear. A certain German baron
of about twenty-four years old, being in prison here at Paris, in
the same chamber with a Frenchman (who told this, as having been
eyewitness of it, to him that told it me), they having both need of
money, the baron sent his man to a goldsmith to buy seven or eight
ordinary pearls, of about twenty pence a piece, which he put
a-dissolving in a glass of vinegar; and, being well dissolved, he
took the paste and put it together with a powder (which I should be
glad to know) into a golden mould, which he had in his pocket, and so
put it a-warming for some time upon the fire; after which, opening
the mould, they found a very great and lovely oriental pearl in it,
which they sold for about two hundred crowns, although it was a great
deal more worth. The same baron, throwing a little powder he had with
him into a pitcher of water, and letting it stand about four hours,
made the best wine that a man can drink.' Thus far the truly hopeful
young gentleman, whereby he hath hugely obliged me. I wish he had the
forementioned powder, that we might try whether we could make the
like pearls and wine." From a subsequent letter of Hartlib's, dated
Nov. 29, 1659, it appears that Oldenburg and Jones were both much
interested in the optical instruments of a certain Bressieux, then in
Paris, who had for two years been chief workman in that line for
Descartes. They were anxious to make him a present of some good glass
from London, because he was rather secretive about his workmanship,
and such a present would go a great way towards mollifying him.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letters of Oldenburg and Hartlib to Boyle in Boyle's
Works (1744), V. 280-296 and 300-302.]

Very possibly with this last letter of Oldenburg's to Hartlib there
had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young
Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had
received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the
universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance
of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled
Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his
story of the German baron and his alchemic powders, but only to have
sent his dutiful regards, with excuses for long neglect of
correspondence. Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but
with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to
the state of affairs at home. Among the pieces of news were two of
some personal interest to Milton. One was that the unfinished reply
to his _Defensio Prima_, which Salmasius had left in manuscript
at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous
publication. The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the
French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again
discussed. For, though it was more than two years since Morus had
received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant
Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to
the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the
United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter
on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on
disgracing him. In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at
Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the
ministerial office and from the holy communion "until by a sincere
repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has
brought upon us." In spite of this, a French Provincial Synod, held
at Ai in Champagne in the following month, had ordered his admission
to be carried into effect, and the Parisian consistory had obeyed
this order, though two members of it protested. There had since then
been another Walloon Synod, held at Nimeguen in September, in which
the former sentence of the Tergou Synod was confirmed, but, for the
sake of peace between the Walloon Church and their brethren of the
French Protestant Church, it was agreed to waive all farther
jurisdiction over Morus in Holland and to "remit the whole cause unto
the prudence, discretion, and charity of the National Assembly of the
French churches to meet at Loudun." This was the Synod of whose
approaching meeting Oldenburg had informed Milton--the Synod of
Loudun in Anjou (Nov. 10, 1659--Jan. 10, 1660). It was to be a very
important assembly indeed,--no mere Provincial Synod, but a national
one, expressly allowed by Louis XIV., and to consist of deputies,
clerical and lay, from all the Protestant churches of France,
empowered to transact all business relating to those churches under
certain royal regulations and restrictions, and in the presence of a
royal Commissioner. As there had been no such National Protestant
Synod in France for fifteen years, there was an accumulation of
business for it, the case of Morus included. They were to examine
that case _de novo_, and to pronounce finally whether Morus was
guilty or not guilty, whether he should remain a minister of the
French Church or not.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus,
204-226.]

Milton's replies to the two letters will now be intelligible. He
writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on
which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and
"wishing himself out of these daily hazards":--

  TO HENRY OLDENBURG.

  "That forgiveness which you ask for _your_ silence you will
  give rather to _mine_; for, if I remember rightly, it was my
  turn to write to you. By no means has it been any diminution of my
  regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has
  been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or
  perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me
  guilty of the intermitted duty. As you desire to be informed, I am,
  by God's mercy, as well as usual. Of any such work as compiling the
  history of our political troubles, which you seem to advise, I have
  no thought whatever [_longe absum_]: they are worthier of
  silence than of commemoration. What is needed is not one to compile
  a good history of our troubles, but one who can happily end the
  troubles themselves; for, with you, I fear lest, amid these our
  civil discords, or rather sheer madnesses, we shall seem to the
  lately confederated enemies of Liberty and Religion a too fit
  object of attack, though in truth they have not yet inflicted a
  severer wound on Religion than we ourselves have been long doing by
  our crimes. But God, as I hope, on His own account, and for His
  own glory, now in question, will not allow the counsels and onsets
  of the enemy to succeed as they themselves wish, whatever
  convulsions Kings and Cardinals meditate and design. Meanwhile, for
  the Protestant Synod of Loudun, which you tell me is so soon to
  meet [Milton does not seem to know that it had been sitting already
  for six weeks] I pray--what has never happened to any Synod yet--a
  happy issue, not of the Nazianzenian sort,[1] and am of opinion
  that the issue of this one will be happy enough if, should they
  decree nothing else, they should decree the expulsion of Morus. Of
  my posthumous adversary, as soon as he makes his appearance, be
  good enough to give me the earliest information. Farewell.

  "Westminster: December 20, 1659."

[Footnote 1: The allusion seems to be to the great OEcumenical
Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed Gregory Nazianzen
in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in which Gregory presided
for some time and inefficiently.]

  TO THE NOBLE YOUTH, RICHARD JONES.

  "For the long break in your correspondence with me your excuses are
  truly most modest, inasmuch as you might with more justice accuse
  me of the same fault; and, as the case stands, I am really at a
  loss to know whether I should have preferred your not having been
  in fault to your having apologised so finely. On no account let it
  ever come into your mind that I measure your gratitude, if anything
  of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in
  letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be
  strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which
  you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your
  perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You
  have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that
  theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that
  the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet
  to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought
  now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path,
  pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with
  your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous
  and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you
  have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so
  faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell.

  "Westminster: December 20, 1659."

Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration
round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme
that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they
should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for
Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and
Fleetwood's soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were
marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his
forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December,
Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the
Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old
places. We have arrived, therefore, at that _Third Stage of the
Anarchy_ which may be called "The Second Restoration of the
Rump."

       *       *       *       *       *

Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing
directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his
thoughts.

As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to
Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the
Commonwealth by any of the existing parties. Even the Second
Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve,
and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have
brought him but little increase of expectation. If, in its best
estate, after its first restoration, the Rump had disappointed him,
what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled
condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during
the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had
worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others
of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores
of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry
Marten? Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans,
but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose
Republicanism was of a very dubious character! For Milton cannot have
failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of
that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session.
What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism?
Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a
solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of
every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience.
How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the
Rumpers? An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed
indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those
nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than
take the oath, and Hasilrig's proposal to require the same oath from
all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that
it had fallen to the ground. Then, on the religious question, what
was the deliberate offer of the House to the country in their heads
for a public Declaration on the 21st of January 1659-60? "Due
liberty to tender consciences" was promised; but that was a mere
phrase of custom, implying little or nothing, and it was utterly
engulphed, in Milton's estimate, by the accompanying engagement to
"uphold a learned and pious ministry of the nation and their
maintenance by Tithes." On the Church-disestablishment question the
House had actually receded from its former self by announcing that it
was not even to prosecute the inquiry as to a possible substitute for
Tithes. Altogether, before the twice-restored Rump had sat a month,
Milton must have seen that his ideal Commonwealth was just as far off
as ever. All he could hope was that the wretched little Parliament
would not prove positively treacherous.

With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk's
proceedings and intentions than of those of the Parliament. Monk's
march from Coldstream southwards on the 2nd of January; the vanishing
of the residue of Lambert's forces before him; the addresses to him
in the English counties all along his route; his answers or supposed
answers to these addresses; his wary behaviour to the two
Parliamentary Commissioners that had been sent to attach themselves
to him and find out his disposition in the matter of the Abjuration
Oath; his arrival at St. Alban's on the 28th of January; his message
thence to the Parliament to clear all Fleetwood's regiments out of
London and Westminster before his own entry; that entry itself on the
3rd of February, when he and his battered columns streamed in through
Gray's Inn Lane; finally his first appearance in the House and
speech, there:--of all this Milton had exact cognisance through the
newspapers of his friend Needham and otherwise. It was very puzzling
and by no means reassuring. If he had ever thought of Monk as by
possibility such a saviour of the Commonwealth as he had been longing
for, the study of the actually approaching physiognomy of Old George
all the way from Scotland, and still more Old George's first
deliverance of himself in the Parliament, must have undeceived him.
The Abjuration Oath, it appeared, was not at all to Monk's mind. He
would not take it himself in order to be qualified for the seat voted
him in the Council of State, and he plainly intimated his opinion
that the day for such oaths and engagements was past. Milton cannot
have liked that rejection by the General of one of the tests on which
he had himself placed so much reliance. But, further, what meant
Monk's very ambiguous utterance respecting the three immediate
courses one of which must be chosen? He had distinctly mentioned in
the House that the drift of public opinion, as he could ascertain it
from the addresses made to him along his march, was towards either
_an enlargement of the present House by the re-admission of the
Secluded Members_ or _a full and free Parliament by a new
general election_; and, though he had seemed to acquiesce in that
third course which was proposed by the House itself, viz. _the
enlargement of the House by a competent number of new writs issued by
itself under a careful scheme of qualification for electing or being
eligible_, he had left a very vague impression as to his real
preference. Now to Milton, as to all other ardent Commonwealth's men,
the vital question was which of these three courses was to be taken.
To adopt either of the two first was to subvert the Commonwealth. To
re-admit the secluded members into the present House was to convert
it into a House with an overwhelming Presbyterian majority, and to
bring back the days of Presbyterian ascendancy, with the prospect of
a restoration of Royalty on merely Presbyterian terms. To summon what
was called a new full and free Parliament was, all but certainly, to
bring back Royalty by a more hurried process still. Only by the third
method, the Rump's own method, did there seem a chance of preserving
the Republican constitution; and yet Monk's assent to it had been but
hesitating and uncertain. More ominous still had been his few words
intimating his wishes in the matter of ecclesiastical policy. He
could conceive nothing so good, on the whole, as the Scottish
Presbyterianism he had been living amidst for the last few years, and
he thought that the 'sober interest' in England, steering between the
'Cavalier party' on the one side and the 'Fanatic party' on the
other, would be most secure by keeping to a moderate Presbytery in
the State-Church. That Milton's views as to the merits of Scottish
Presbytery were not Monk's is an old story, needing no repetition
here. What must have concerned him was to see Monk not only at one
with the great mass of his countrymen on the subject of a
Church-Establishment, but actually retrograde on the question of the
desirable nature of such an Establishment, inasmuch as he seemed to
signal his countrymen back out of Cromwell's broad Church of mixed
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, into a Church more
strictly on the Presbyterian model. Then another unpleasant novelty
in Monk's case was his fondness for the phrases _Fanatics, Fanatic
Notions_, the _Fanatic Party_. The phrases were not new; but
Monk had sent them out of Scotland before him, and had brought them
himself out of Scotland, with a new significance. Very probably they
had been supplied to him out of the vocabulary of his Scottish
clerical adviser Mr. James Sharp, or of the Scottish Resolutioner
clergy generally. At all events, it is from and after the date of
Monk's march into England that one finds the name _Fanatics_ a
common one for all those Commonwealth's men collectively who opposed
a State-Church or the moderate Presbyterian or semi-Presbyterian form
of it. Had Monk drawn out a list of his 'Fanatics,' he would have had
to put Milton himself at the top of them, with Vane, Harrison,
Barebone, and the leading Quakers.

Nevertheless, here was Monk, such as he was, the armed constable of
the crisis, the one man who could keep the peace and let the Rumpers
proceed in doing their best. That "best" as they had agreed
specifically on the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival,
was to be the recruiting of their own House up to a total of 400
members for England and Wales, such recruiting to be effected by the
issue of a certain number of new writs, together with a scheme of
qualifications calculated to bring in only sound Republicans, or
persons likely to cooperate in farther measures with the present
Rumpers. This being what was promised by the conjunction of Monk and
the Rump, what could Milton do but acquiesce, be glad it was no
worse, and contribute what advice he could? This, accordingly, is
what he did. Pamphlets on the crisis, as we know, had been coming out
abundantly--pamphlets for the good old cause of the Republic,
pamphlets from Rota-men, pamphlets from Prynne and other haters of
the Rump, pamphlets from crypto-Royalists, and pamphlets openly
Royalist; and many of these had taken, and others were still to take,
the form of letters addressed to Monk. It need be no surprise that
Milton had _his_ pamphlet in preparation. He had begun it just
after Monk's arrival in London and the resolution, of the Rump to
recruit itself; he had written it hurriedly and yet with some earnest
care; and it seems to have been ready for the press about or not long
after the middle of February. Before it could go to press, however,
there had been another revolution, obliging him to hold it back.
There had been the rebellion of the Londoners because of the
resolution of the Rump to perpetuate itself by recruiting, instead of
either readmitting the secluded members or calling a new free and
full Parliament; there had been Monk's notorious two days in the
City, by order of the Rump, quashing the rebellion, and breaking the
gates and portcullises (Feb. 9-10); there had been his extraordinary
return the third day, with his profession of regret before the Lord
Mayor and the Aldermen and Common Council, and his announcement that
he had dissolved his connexion with the Rump,--that third day wound
up with yells of delight through all the City, the smashing of
Barebone's windows, and the universal Roasting of the Rump in
street-bonfires (Feb. 11); there had been the ten more days of Monk's
continued residence in the City, the Rumpers vainly imploring
reconciliation with him, and the Secluded Members and their friends
gathering round him and negotiating; and, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when
he did remove from the City to Westminster, it was with the Secluded
Members in his train, to be marched under military guard to their
seats beside the Rumpers. The writs issued by the Rump for recruiting
itself were now useless. It had been recruited in the way it least
liked, by the sudden reappearance in it of the excluded Presbyterians
and Royalists of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament.

Far more than the mere stopping of his pamphlet was involved for
Milton in the events of that fortnight. He could construe them no
otherwise than as the breaking down of the inner rampart that
defended the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart. The _Roasting of
the Rump_ in London was but a rough popular metaphor for "Down
with the Republic"; and, had the tumult of that night extended from
the City to Westminster and the breaking of the windows of "fanatics"
become general, Milton's would not have escaped. Then, in the course
of the negotiations with Monk through the fatal fortnight, had not
the Rump itself quailed? Had they not offered to cancel the solemn
Abjuration Oath, alike for the Councillors of State and for future
members of Parliament, and to substitute only a general engagement to
be faithful to the Commonwealth, without King, Single Person, or
House of Lords? Hardly anywhere now did there seem to be that stern,
bold, uncompromising opposition to Royalty which would register
itself, as Milton wanted, in an oath before God and man, but only
that feebler Republicanism which would pledge itself with the
understood reservation of "circumstances permitting." But worst of
all was the crowning fact that the Secluded Members had been
restored. By that one stroke of Monk's all that had happened since
the Commonwealth had been set up was put in question, and the power
was given back into the hands of the very men who had protested and
struggled against the setting up of the Commonwealth eleven years
ago. How would these act? It might be hoped perhaps that some of the
more prudent among them, having regard to the lapse of time and the
change of circumstances, might not think it their duty to be as
vehemently Royalist now as they had been in 1648, and also perhaps
that the power of Monk, if Monk himself remained true, might restrain
the rest. But _would_ Monk remain true, or would his power avail
long in restraining a Parliament the majority of which were
Presbyterians and Royalists? Not to speak of the varied ability and
subtlety of such of the new Parliamentary chiefs as Annesley, Sir
William Waller, Denzil Holles, Ashley Cooper, and Harbottle
Grimstone, what was to be expected from the remorseless obstinacy,
the rhinoceros persistency, of such a Presbyterian as Prynne? How
often had Milton jeered at Prynne and the margins of his endless
pamphlets! It might be of some consequence to him now to remember
that he had done so, and had therefore this virtual Attorney-General
of the Secluded for his personal enemy. Altogether, Milton's
despondency had never yet been so deep as it must have been at this
beginning of the last phase of the long English Revolution,
represented in the Parliament of the Secluded Members and in Monk's
accompanying Dictatorship.



CHAPTER II.

Third Section.

MILTON THROUGH MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. FEB. 1659-60--MAY 1660.

FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S _READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE
COMMONWEALTH_: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: VEHEMENT
REPUBLICANISM OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH ITS PROPHETIC WARNINGS: PECULIAR
CENTRAL IDEA OF THE PAMPHLET, VIZ. THE PROJECT OF A GRAND COUNCIL OR
PARLIAMENT TO SIT IN PERPETUITY, WITH A COUNCIL OF STATE FOR ITS
EXECUTIVE: PASSAGES EXPOUNDING THIS IDEA: ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION OF
LOCAL AND COUNTY COUNCILS OR COMMITTEES: DARING PERORATION OF THE
PAMPHLET: MILTON'S RECAPITULATION OF THE SUBSTANCE OF IT IN A SHORT
PRIVATE LETTER TO MONK ENTITLED _PRESENT MEANS AND BRIEF
DELINEATION OF A FREE COMMONWEALTH_: WIDE CIRCULATION OF MILTON'S
PAMPHLET: THE RESPONSE BY MONK AND THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED
MEMBERS IN THEIR PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEXT FORTNIGHT: DISSOLUTION OF
THE PARLIAMENT AFTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR ITS SUCCESSOR: ROYALIST SQUIB
PREDICTING MILTON'S SPEEDY ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HANGMAN AT TYBURN:
ANOTHER SQUIB AGAINST MILTON, CALLED THE _CENSURE OF THE ROTA UPON
MR. MILTON'S BOOK_: SPECIMENS OF THIS BURLESQUE: REPUBLICAN APPEAL
TO MONK, CALLED _PLAIN ENGLISH_: REPLY TO THE SAME, WITH ANOTHER
ATTACK ON MILTON: POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM DURING THE FORTY DAYS
OF INTERVAL BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS AND THE
CONVENTION PARLIAMENT (MARCH 16, 1659-60--APRIL 25, 1660): CAUTION OF
MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE: DR. MATTHEW GRIFFITH AND HIS ROYALIST
SERMON, _THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE KING_: GRIFFITH IMPRISONED FOR
HIS SERMON, BUT FORWARD REPUBLICANS CHECKED OR PUNISHED AT THE SAME
TIME: NEEDHAM DISCHARGED FROM HIS EDITORSHIP AND MILTON FROM HIS
SECRETARYSHIP: RESOLUTENESS OF MILTON IN HIS REPUBLICANISM: HIS
_BRIEF NOTES ON DR. GRIFFITH'S SERMON_: SECOND EDITION OF HIS
_READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH_:
REMARKABLE ADDITIONS AND ENLARGEMENTS IN THIS EDITION: SPECIMENS OF
THESE: MILTON AND LAMBERT THE LAST REPUBLICANS IN THE FIELD: ROGER
L'ESTRANGE'S PAMPHLET AGAINST MILTON, CALLED _NO BLIND GUIDES_:
LARGER ATTACK ON MILTON BY G.S., CALLED _HE DIGNITY OF KINGSHIP
ASSERTED_: QUOTATIONS FROM THAT BOOK: MEETING OF THE CONVENTION
PARLIAMENT, APRIL 25, 1660: DELIVERY BY GREENVILLE OF THE SIX ROYAL
LETTERS FROM BREDA, APRIL 28--MAY 1, AND VOTES OF BOTH HOUSES FOR THE
RECALL OF CHARLES; INCIDENTS OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK: MAD IMPATIENCE
OVER THE THREE KINGDOMS FOR THE KING'S RETURN: HE AND HIS COURT AT
THE HAGUE, PREPARING FOR THE VOYAGE HOME: PANIC AMONG THE SURVIVING
REGICIDES AND OTHER PROMINENT REPUBLICANS: FLIGHT OF NEEDHAM TO
HOLLAND AND ABSCONDING OF MILTON FROM HIS HOUSE IN PETTY FRANCE: LAST
SIGHT OF MILTON IN THAT HOUSE.


The Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers had been
sitting for a few days, had confirmed Monk in the Dictatorship by
formally appointing him Captain-General and Commander-in-chief (Feb.
21), and had also (Feb. 22) intimated their resolution to devolve all
really constitutional questions on a new "full and free Parliament,"
when Milton did send forth the pamphlet he had written. It was a
small quarto of eighteen pages with this title-page: "_The Readie
and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence
therof compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting
kingship in this nation. The author J.M., London, Printed by T.N.,
and are to be sold by Livewell Chapman at the Crown in Popes-Head
Alley_. 1660." Copies seem to have been procurable before the end
of February 1659-60, but Thomason's copy bears date "March 3."[1]
That was the day of the order of Parliament for the release of the
last remaining Scottish captives of Worcester Battle.

[Footnote 1: In Wood's Fasti (I. 485) the pamphlet is mentioned as
"published in Feb." The publication, we learn from subsequent words
of Milton himself, was very hurried, and copies got about without his
press-corrections. I find no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers'
Registers.--It is particularly necessary to remember that this was
but the _first edition_ of the pamphlet. Another was to follow.
In all the editions of Milton's collected works, from that of 1698
onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the
first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two
editions is more important.]

The pamphlet opens thus:--

  "Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things
  hath had some change, writs for new elections [by the late Rump]
  have been recalled, and the members at first chosen [for the
  original Long Parliament] readmitted from exclusion to sit again in
  Parliament, yet, not a little rejoicing to hear declared the
  resolutions of all those who are now in power, jointly tending to
  the establishment of a Free Commonwealth, and to remove, if it be
  possible, this unsound humour of returning to old bondage instilled
  of late by some cunning deceivers, and nourished from bad
  principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people, I
  thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping it may
  perhaps (the Parliament now sitting more full and frequent) be now
  much more useful than before: yet submitting what hath reference to
  the state of things as they then stood to present constitutions,
  and, so the same end be pursued, not insisting on this or that
  means to obtain it. The treatise was thus written as follows."

This is an attempt by Milton even yet to disguise his despondency. He
had written the pamphlet while the late Rump was still sitting, while
the conjunction between them and Monk was unbroken, and when the last
news was that they had issued, or were about to issue, writs for the
recruiting of their body by a large number of like-minded additional
members; but he will assume that the pamphlet may yet answer its
purpose, with hardly a change of phraseology. No longer, it is true,
does the power lie with the Rump, recruited or unrecruited; it lies
now in the unexpected Parliament of the Residuary Rumpers _plus_
Monk's restored representatives of the pre-Commonwealth period of the
Long Parliament. But he will suppose the best even after that
surprise. There is, at any rate, a more "full and frequent"
Parliament than before: and there has been no declaration hitherto of
any intention to subvert the Commonwealth. On the contrary, had not
Monk, both in his speech to the Secluded Members before readmitting
them, and also in his Declaration or Address to the Army published
after their re-admission, used the language of a true
Commonwealth's-man, and even called God to witness that his only aim
was "God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon
Commonwealth foundations"? Had not the Secluded Members virtually
made a compact with Monk upon these terms? Milton will not, for the
present, suppose either Monk or the Parliament false in the main
matter. He will only suppose that they have perceived, with himself,
the infatuated drift of the popular humour towards a restoration of
Royalty, and will themselves listen, and allow the country to listen,
to what he had written on that subject two or three weeks ago.

The despondency which he disguises in the preface appears in the
pamphlet itself. Or rather it is a despondency dashed with a sanguine
remnant of faith that all might yet be well, and that the means of
perpetuating a Republic, all contrary appearances notwithstanding,
might yet be shown to be "ready and easy." The use of these two words
in the title of such a pamphlet at such a time is very
characteristic. It was the public theorist, however, that ventured on
them, rather than the secret and real man. Throughout the pamphlet
there is a sad and fierce undertone, as of one knowing that what he
is prophesying as easy will never come to pass.

About half of the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on
the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government,
and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British
Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form of
Government after having had so much prosperous experience of the
other. In the following specimen of the declamation the reader will
note the prophecy of actual events as far as to the Revolution of
1688:--

  "After our liberty thus successfully fought for, gained, and many
  years possessed (except in those unhappy interruptions which God
  hath removed), ... to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly
  as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested
  thraldom of kingship, not only argues a strange degenerate
  corruption suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new
  slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our
  neighbours. And what will they say of us but scoffingly as of that
  foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a
  tower and was not able to finish it: 'Where is this goodly Tower of
  a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to
  overshadow Kings and be another Rome in the West? The foundation
  indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a worse confusion, not of
  tongues but of factions, than those at the Tower of Babel, and have
  left no memorial of their work behind them remaining but in the
  common laughter of Europe.' Which must needs redound the more to
  our shame if we but look on our neighbours THE UNITED PROVINCES, to
  us inferior in all outward advantages; who, notwithstanding, in the
  midst of great difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly, went
  through with the same work, and are settled in all the happy
  enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this
  day.--Besides this, if we return to kingship, and soon repent (as
  undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments
  coming on by little and little upon our consciences, which must
  needs proceed from King and Bishop united inseparably in one
  interest), we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we
  have fought and spend over again all that we have spent, but are
  never likely to attain, thus far as we are now advanced to the
  recovery of our freedom, never likely to have it in possession as
  we now have it,--never to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies
  and signal assistance from Heaven in our cause, if by our
  ingrateful backsliding we make these fruitless to ourselves, all
  His gracious condescensions and answers to our once importuning
  prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned under to become
  now of no effect, by returning of our own foolish accord, nay
  running headlong again with full stream wilfully and obstinately,
  into the same bondage: making vain and viler than dirt the blood of
  so many thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen, who left us in
  this liberty bought with their lives; losing by a strange
  after-game of folly all the battles we have won, all the treasure
  we have spent (not that corruptible treasure only, but that far
  more precious one of all our late miraculous deliverances), and
  most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that
  Free Government which we have so dearly purchased,--a Free
  Commonwealth: not only held by wisest men in all ages the noblest,
  the manliest, the equalest, the justest Government, the most
  agreeable to all due liberty, and proportioned equality both human,
  civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion,
  but also, (I may say it with greatest probability) plainly
  commended or rather enjoined by our Saviour Himself to all
  Christians, not without remarkable disallowance and the brand of
  Gentilism upon Kingship [quotation here of _Luke_ XXII. 25,
  26][1] ... And what Government comes nearer to this precept of
  Christ than a Free Commonwealth? Wherein they who are greatest are
  perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and
  charges,--neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above
  their brethren,--live soberly in their families, walk the streets
  as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly,
  without adoration: whereas a King must be adored like a demigod,
  with a dissolute and haughty Court about him, of vast expense and
  luxury, masques and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry
  both male and female,--nor at his own cost, but on the public
  revenue,--and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and
  drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the
  superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in
  progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject
  people."

[Footnote 1: This is one of Milton's very long sentences; and the
length shows, I think, the glow and rapidity of the dictation.]

Having thus expressed his belief that "a Free Commonwealth, without
Single Person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, _if
it can be had_," Milton glances at the objection that recent
experience in England has shown such government to be practically
unattainable. He denies this, alleging that all disappointment
hitherto "may be ascribed with most reason to the frequent
disturbances, interruptions, and dissolutions which the Parliament
hath had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people, partly
from some ambitious leaders in the Army"; and he declares that the
present time is peculiarly favourable for one more vigorous effort.
"Now is the opportunity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a
Free Commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the land without
difficulty or much delay." He had written this when the Rump was
sitting, and when he had in view the new elections that were to
recruit that "small remainder of those faithful worthies who at first
freed us from tyranny and have continued ever since through all
changes constant to their trust"; but he lets it stand now, as not
inapplicable to the new condition of things brought in by the sudden
mixture of the Secluded with the Rumpers. The "_Ready and Easy
Way_," however, has still to be explained; and to that he
proceeds.

The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is
_One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for
Life_. This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that
Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held
necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but
also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at
this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions
of the value of the bodies called Parliaments. If those previous
passages of his writings are studied, however, it will be found that
he is not now so inconsistent as he looks. He had always thought a
broad general council of fit men in the centre of a nation the
essential of good government; and his chief recommendation to
Cromwell, even when approving of his exceptional Sovereignty, had
been that he should keep round him such a general Council. Further,
it will be found that _permanence of the same men at the centre of
affairs_ had always been his implied ideal, whether permanence of
an exceptional Single-Person sovereignty surrounded by a Council, or
permanence of a Council without a Single-Person sovereignty. His real
objection to so-called Parliaments, it will be found, lay in the
association with them of the ideas of shiftingness, interruptedness,
successiveness, the turmoil and debauchery of successive general
elections. So possessed was he with the notion of permanence of
tenure as desirable in the governing agency, whatever it might be,
that he had even modified the notion, as we have seen, to suit the
anomalous conditions of that stage of the Anarchy which we have
called the Wallingford-House Interruption, He had recommended then
the experiment of a duality of life-aristocracies, one civil and the
other military. And now, the turn of circumstances and of his
speculations shutting him up once more to a single Civil Parliament
of the ordinary size and kind, he will insist on the quality of
permanence or perpetuity as that which alone will make _it_
answer the purpose. But, the very name "Parliament" having been
vitiated so as to make a permanent Parliament a difficult conception
for most people, he would rather get rid of the name altogether, and
call the central governing body simply THE GENERAL OR GRAND COUNCIL
OF THE NATION.

All this appears in Milton's own words, as follows:--

  "The ground and basis of every just and free Government (since men
  have smarted so oft for committing all to one person) is a GENERAL
  COUNCIL OF ABLEST MEN, chosen by the people to consult of public
  affairs from time to time for the common good. This Grand Council
  must have the forces by sea and land in their power, must raise and
  manage the public revenue, make laws as need requires, treat of
  commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations; and, for the
  carrying on some particular affairs of State with more secrecy and
  expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own
  number and others, a _Council of State_, And, although it may
  seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men's minds are
  prepossessed with the conceit of successive Parliaments, I affirm
  that the GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL, being well chosen, should sit
  perpetual: for so their business is, and they will become thereby
  skilfullest, best acquainted with the people, and the people with
  them. The Ship of the Commonwealth is always under sail: they sit
  at the stern; and, if they steer well, what need is there to change
  them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this that the GRAND COUNCIL
  is both foundation and main pillar of the whole State, and to move
  pillars and foundations, unless they be faulty, cannot be safe for
  the building. I see not therefore how we can be advantaged by
  successive Parliaments, but that they are much likelier continually
  to unsettle rather than to settle a free Government, to breed
  commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, and serve only
  to satisfy the ambition of such men as think themselves injured and
  cannot stay till they be orderly chosen to have their part in the
  Government. If the ambition of such be at all to be regarded, the
  best expedient will be, and with least danger, that every two or
  three years a hundred or some such number may go out by lot or
  suffrage of the rest, and the like number be chosen in their places
  (which hath been already thought on here, and done in other
  Commonwealths); but in my opinion better nothing moved, unless by
  death or just accusation.... [Farther argument for the permanence
  of the Supreme Governing Body, with illustrations from the
  Sanhedrim of the Jews, the Areopagus of Athens, the Senates of
  Lacedaemon and Home, the full Venetian Senate, and the
  States-General of the United Provinces]. I know not therefore what
  should be peculiar in England to make successive Parliaments
  thought safest, or convenient here more than in all other nations,
  unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are
  Islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct
  the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. I
  suppose therefore that the people, well weighing these things,
  would have no cause to fear or murmur, though the Parliament,
  abolishing that name, as originally signifying but the
  _parley_ of our Commons with their Norman King when he pleased
  to call them, should perpetuate themselves, if their ends be
  faithful and for a free Commonwealth, under the name of a GRAND OR
  GENERAL COUNCIL: nay, till this be done, I am in doubt whether our
  State will be ever certainly and thoroughly settled.... The GRAND
  COUNCIL being thus firmly constituted to perpetuity, and still upon
  the death or default of any member supplied and kept in full
  number, there can be no cause alleged why peace, justice, plentiful
  trade, and all prosperity, should not thereupon ensue throughout
  the whole land, with as much assurance as can be of human things
  that they shall so continue (if God favour us and our wilful sins
  provoke Him not) even, to the coming of our true and rightful and
  only to be expected King, only worthy as He is our only Saviour,
  the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his Eternal Father, the
  only by Him anointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption
  finished, Universal Lord of all mankind. The way propounded is
  plain, easy, and open before us, without intricacies, without the
  mixture of inconveniences, or any considerable objection to be
  made, as by some frivolously, that it is not practicable. And this
  facility we shall have above our next neighbouring Commonwealth (if
  we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a Duke of
  Venice, put lately into many men's heads by some one or other
  subtly driving on, under that pretty notion, his own ambitious ends
  to a crown),[1] that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered
  over by any engagement to such a potent family as the House of
  Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we
  shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation, in the world."

[Footnote 1: The allusion here is vague.]

In effect, therefore, Milton's _Ready and Easy Way_, recommended
to the mixed Parliament of Residuary Rumpers and their reseated
Presbyterian half-brothers of March 1659-60, is that this Parliament,
nailing the Republican flag to the mast, should make itself, or some
enlargement of itself, the perpetual supreme power under the name of
THE GRAND COUNCIL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, appointing a smaller
_Council of State_, as heretofore, to be the working executive,
but plainly intimating to the people that there are to be no more
general Parliamentary elections, but only elections to vacancies as
they may occur in the Grand Council by death or misdemeanour. He is
himself against the adoption of Harrington's principle of rotation to
any extent whatever; but, if it would reconcile people to his scheme,
he would concede rotation so far as to let a portion of the Grand
Council go out every second or third year to admit new men.

While expounding his main idea, Milton had intimated that he had
another suggestion in reserve, which might help to reconcile
reasonable men of democratic prepossessions to the seeming novelty of
an irremovable apparatus of Government at the centre. This suggestion
he brings forward near the end of the pamphlet. He arrives at it in
the course of a demonstration in farther detail of certain
superiorities of Commonwealth government over Regal. "The whole
freedom of man," he says, "consists either in Spiritual or Civil
Liberty." Glancing first at Spiritual Liberty, he contents himself
with a general statement of the principle of Liberty of Conscience,
as implying the absolute and unimpeded right of every individual
Christian to interpret the Scripture for himself and give utterance
and effect to his conclusions; and, though he does not conceal that
in his own opinion such Liberty of Conscience cannot be complete
without Church-disestablishment, he does not press that for the
present. Enough that Liberty of Conscience, according to any
endurable definition of it, is more safe in a Republic than in a
Kingdom,--which, by various instances from history, he maintains to
be a fact. Then, coming to Civil Liberty, he propounds his reserved
suggestion, or the second real novelty of his pamphlet, thus:--

  "The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and
  advancements of every person according to his merit: the enjoyment
  of _those_ never more certain, and the access to _these_
  never more open, than in a free Commonwealth. And _both_ in my
  opinion may be best and soonest obtained if every county in the
  land were made a _Little Commonwealth_, and their chief town a
  _City_ if it be not so called already; where the nobility and
  chief gentry may build houses or palaces befitting their quality,
  may bear part in the [district or city] government, make their own
  judicial laws, and execute them by their own elected judicatures,
  without appeal, in all things of Civil Government between man and
  man. So they shall have justice in their own hands, and none to
  blame but themselves if it be not well administered. In these
  employments they may exercise and fit themselves till their lot
  fall to be chosen into THE GRAND COUNCIL, according as their worth
  and merit shall be taken notice of by the people. As for
  controversies that may happen between men of several counties, they
  may repair, as they now do, to the Capital City. They should have
  here also [i.e. in their own Cities and Counties] schools and
  academies at their own choice, wherein their children may be bred
  up in their own sight to all learning and noble education, not in
  grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises."

This is what would now be called a scheme of _Decentralization_
or _Systematic Local Government_. The counties, with their chief
cities, should be so many little independent communities, each with
its legislative council, its law-courts, and its other institutions,
employing and tasking the political energies and abilities of the
citizens or inhabitants of the district. While this would be
advantageous in itself, inasmuch as it would stimulate mental
activity and social improvement everywhere, and would relieve the
GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL of much work more properly appertaining to
municipalities, it would doubtless reconcile many to the existence of
such a GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL in perpetuity. Energetic and ambitious
spirits would have scope and training in their own cities and
neighbourhoods, and the hope of being elected to the Central
Government when there should be a vacancy there would be a fine
incitement to the best to qualify themselves to the utmost for
national statesmanship.

The following is the closing passage of the whole pamphlet:--

  "With all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty, to speak
  in season and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not
  but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry
  the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many
  circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things
  whereof I have spoken; but a few main matters now put speedily into
  execution will suffice to recover us and set all right. And there
  will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set
  their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these
  most difficult times I find not many. What I _have_ spoken is
  the language of the Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it
  will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders.
  Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should
  have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but,
  with the Prophet, _O Earth, Earth, Earth_, to tell the very
  soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for
  ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of
  sensible and ingenuous men,--to some perhaps whom God may raise of
  these stones to become Children of Liberty, and may enable and
  unite in their noble resolutions to give a stay to these our
  ruinous proceedings and to this general defection of the misguided
  and abused multitude."

To understand fully the tremendous daring of this peroration, one
must turn to the passage of Hebrew prophecy which it cites and
applies to Charles Stuart. It is _Jeremiah XXII._ 24-30, where
woe is denounced upon Coniah, Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the worthless
King of Judah, no better than his father Jehoiakim:--"As I live,
saith the Lord, though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, King of Judah,
were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence.
And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and
into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans.
And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another
country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die. But to the
land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return.
Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is
no pleasure? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are
cast into a land which they know not? O Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the
word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord: Write ye this man childless, a
man that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his seed shall
prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in
Judah."

A curious supplement to Milton's _Ready and Easy Way to establish a
Free Commonwealth_ exists in the shape of a private letter which
he addressed to General Monk. It was not published at the time, and
bears no date, but must have been written immediately after the
publication of the pamphlet, while the Parliament of the Secluded
Members and Residuary Rumpers was still sitting. Milton, it would
seem, had sent Monk a copy of the pamphlet; and this private letter
is nothing but a brief summary of the suggestions of the pamphlet for
the General's easier reading, should he think fit. It is entitled, in
our present copies, "_The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a
Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice and without delay: In a
Letter to General Monk_."[1] The whole consists of less than three
of the present pages. Believing that all endeavours must now be used
"that the ensuing election be of such, as are already firm or
inclinable to constitute a Free Commonwealth," Milton appeals to Monk
to be himself the man to lead in these endeavours. "The speediest
way," he says, "will be to call up forthwith [to London] the chief
gentlemen out of every county, [and] to lay before them (as your
Excellency hath already, both in your published Letters to the Army
and your Declaration recited to the Members of Parliament), the
danger and confusion of readmitting kingship in this land." Then let
the gentlemen so charged return at once to their counties, and elect
or cause to be elected, "by such at least of the people as are
rightly qualified," a STANDING COUNCIL in every city and great town,
all great towns henceforth to be called _Cities_. Let it be
understood that these councils are to be permanent seats of district
and local judicature and of political deliberation; but, while
setting up such councils, let the gentlemen also see to the election
of "the usual number of ablest knights and burgesses, engaged for a
Commonwealth, to make up the PARLIAMENT, or, as it will from
henceforth be better called, THE GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE
NATION." The local or city councils having meanwhile been set up, and
it having been intimated that on great occasions their assent will be
required to measures proposed by the Grand Council of the nation,
Milton does not anticipate that there will be much opposition "though
this GRAND COUNCIL be perpetual, as in that book [his pamphlet] I
proved would be best and most conformable to best examples"; but,
should there be opposition, "the known expedient may at length be
used of a partial _rotation_." This is all that Milton has to
say, with one exception:--"If these gentlemen convocated refuse these
fair and noble offers of immediate liberty and happy condition, no
doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept
them, your Excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your
mind, and having a faithful veteran Army so ready and glad to assist
you in the prosecution thereof."--What Monk thought of Mr. Milton's
Letter, if he ever took the trouble to read it, may be easily
guessed. It was at this time that he was so often drunk or nearly so
at the dinners given in the City, and that Sir John Greenville, on
the part of Charles, was watching for an interview with him at St.
James's.

[Footnote 1: "_Published from the Manuscript_" is the addition
in all our present reprints. In other words, this Letter to Monk,
together with the previous _Letter to a Friend concerning the
Ruptures of the Commonwealth_, came into Toland's hands in the
manner described in Note p. 617, and was also given by Toland for
use in the 1698 edition of Milton's Prose Works.]

Not one of Milton's pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or
provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his _Ready and Easy
Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every
atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative.
Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume
that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had
restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of
Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the
five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb.
2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that
point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the
Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and
free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so. No other
construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastical
matters. Hardly was Milton's pamphlet out when he knew that they had
voted the revival of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith
as the standard of doctrine in the National Church (March 2), and
the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant as a document of
perpetual national obligation (March 5). Then followed (March 14)
their vote for mapping out all England and Wales according to the
strict pattern of the Scottish Presbyterian organization. But, that
there might be no mistake, their votes predetermining the composition
of the coming Parliament were also in the direction of the admission
of Royalists and the exclusion of those that could be called Fanatics
for the Republic. The engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth
without King or House of Lords was annulled (March 13); the clauses
disqualifying even the active and conspicuous Royalists of the Civil
Wars were far from stringent; and the very act by which the House
dissolved itself contained a proviso saving the legal and
constitutional rights of the old House of Lords and pointing to the
restitution of the Peerage. How significant also that scene in the
House on the last day of their sittings, Friday, March 16, when Mr.
Crewe moved for a vote of execration on the Regicides, and poor
Thomas Scott, standing up on the floor, and reckless though the words
should seal his doom, declared himself to be one of the blood-stained
band and claimed the fact as his highest earthly honour! What Scott
did that day in the House Milton had done even more publicly a
fortnight before in the daring peroration of his pamphlet. From March
16, 1659-60, Milton and Scott, whoever else, might regard themselves
as in the list for the future hangman.

In the list for the future hangman! It is a strong expression, but
true historically to the very letter. Read the following from a
scurrilous pamphlet, of six pages in shabby print, called _The
Character of the Rump_, which was out in London on Saturday the
17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament:--

  "An ingenious person hath observed that Scott is the Rump's man
  Thomas; and they might have said to him, when he was so busy with
  the General,

    "Peace, for the Lord's sake, Thomas! lest Monk take us,
    And drag us out, as Hercules did Cacus.

  "But John Milton is their goose-quill champion; who had need of a
  help-meet to establish anything, for he has a ram's head and is
  good only at batteries,--an old heretic both in religion and
  manners, that by his will would shake off his governors as he doth
  his wives, four in a fortnight. The sunbeams of his scandalous
  papers against the late King's Book is [sic] the parent that begot
  his late _New Commonwealth_; and, because he, like a parasite
  as he is, by flattering the then tyrannical power, hath run himself
  into the briars, the man will be angry if the rest of the nation
  will not bear him company, and suffer themselves to be decoyed into
  the same condition. He is so much an enemy to usual practices that
  I believe, when he is condemned to travel to Tyburn in a cart, he
  will petition for the favour to be the first man that ever was
  driven thither in a wheelbarrow. And now, John, _you_ must
  stand close and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton
  standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth
  didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was
  one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for
  cracking. As for Harrington, _he's_ but a demi-semi in the
  Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for
  wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time
  find out the way to make a concert of grindstones."[1]

[Footnote 1: Pamphlet, of title and date given, in the Thomason
Collection. I have mended the pointing, but nothing else.]

Such was the popular verdict, in March 1660, on Milton and his last
pamphlet, and all his deserts and accomplishments in the world he had
lived in for one-and-fifty years. More of the like may be found on
search; but I will pass to one retort on his _Ready and Easy
Way_, of somewhat higher literary quality than the last, and which
retains a certain celebrity yet.

It appeared on March 30, as a small quarto of sixteen pages, with
this title: "_The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book,
entituled 'The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free
Commonwealth_.'" On the title-page is the imprint, "_London,
Printed by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the
Windmill in Turne-againe Lane_. 1660," and also a professed
extract from the minutes of the Rota Club, "_Die Luna 26 Martii_
1660," certified by "_Trundle Wheeler, Clerk to the Rota_,"
authorizing and ordering Mr. Harrington, as Chairman of the Club, to
draw up and publish a narrative of that day's debate of the Club over
Mr. Milton's pamphlet, and to transmit a copy of the same to Mr.
Milton. The thing, though it has been mistaken by careless people as
actually a production of Harrington's, is in reality a clever
burlesque by some Royalist, in which, under the guise of an imaginary
debate in the Rota over Milton's pamphlet, Milton and the Rota-men
are turned into ridicule together. The mock-names on the title-page
(_Paul Giddy, Trundle Wheeler, &c._) are part of the burlesque;
and it is well kept up in the tract itself, which takes the form of a
letter gravely addressed to Milton and signed with Harrington's
initials, "_J. H._"[1]

[Footnote 1: The Rota Club, as we already know (ante p. 555), can
have had no meeting on the day supposed in the burlesque, having
disappeared, with all its appurtenances, ballot-box included, at or
immediately after the swamping of the old Rump by the readmission of
the secluded members. The last glimpses we have of it are these from
Pepys's Diary:--_Jan._ 10, 1659-60. "To the Coffee-house, where
were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz. Mr. Harrington, Poulteney
(chairman), Gold, Dr. Petty, &c.; where admirable discourse till 9 at
night."--_Jan._ 17. "I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very
good discourse. It was in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said
that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government,
and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand
and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of
war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government,
though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it
was an unsteady government: so to-morrow it is to be proved by the
opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in
another."--_Feb._ 20 (day before Restitution of the Secluded).
"I to the Coffee-house, where I heard Mr, Harrington and my Lord
Dorset and another Lord talking of getting another place [for the
Club meetings] at the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come
to something." Had there been an express order for closing the
Club?]

Mr. Harrington is supposed to begin by expressing his regret to Mr.
Milton that his duty obliges him to make so unsatisfactory a report
as to the reception of Mr. Milton's last pamphlet by the Club. "For,
whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or
obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at
one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath,
and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything,
how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to
defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily
against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did
against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning
of your book to the end." First, one gentleman had objected to the
very name of the book, _The Ready and Easy Way_, &c., and had
remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his
pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic. A second
gentleman had been even more impolite. "He wondered you did not give
over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose;
for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never
been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are
your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said
that he himself reprieved the whole _Defence of the People of
England_ for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour
and the Rump £300 a year." Then a third gentleman, a member of the
Long Robe, had been very severe and sarcastic on Mr. Milton's
knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had
followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton's knowledge
of European history. This last speaker was beginning to be prosy,
when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir
Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn
in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the
Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels. The laughter over
this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave
opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length
on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr. Milton's Political
Philosophy:--

  "He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those
  reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are
  swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a
  modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to
  live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly
  scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable
  eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy.... All
  your politics are derived from the works of Declaimers, with which
  sort of writers the ancient Commonwealths had the fortune to abound
  ... All which you have outgone (according to your talent) in their
  several ways: for you have done your feeble endeavour to rob the
  Church, of the little which the rapine of the most sacrilegious
  persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; you have
  slandered the dead worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty
  outrage on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were
  but your usher. These have been the attempts of your stiff formal
  eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in
  your way, right or wrong,--not only begging but stealing questions,
  and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn. For
  you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his
  canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions: the
  most impious Mahometan doctrine that ever was vented among
  Christians."...

This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton's remark that
Christ himself had put "the brand of Gentilism" upon Kingship, "a
young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted
by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight
with the King's Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney's Princess
Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, 'a
heathen woman,' and therefore he thought that by _Heathenish_
you meant _English_, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you
inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English
nation, as it hath been proved in all ages. To which another objected
that such a sense was quite contrary to your purpose; to which he
immediately replied that it was no new thing with you to write that
which is as well against as for your purpose. After much debate, they
agreed to put it to the ballot; and the young gentleman carried it
without contradiction." Then another critic fell foul of Mr. Milton's
Divinity and Church notions,--one of which, he said, was "that the
Church of Christ ought to have no head upon earth, but the monster of
many heads, the multitude," and another "that any man may turn away
his wife, and take another as oft as he pleases": to which last
accusation is added the comment, "As you have most learnedly proved
upon the fiddle [_Tetrachordon_], and practised in your life and
conversation; for which you have achieved the honour to be styled the
founder of a sect." The audience by this time becoming weary, "a
worthy knight of this Assembly stood up and said that, if we meant to
examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing, we
should never have done; he would therefore, with leave, deliver his
judgment upon the whole: which in brief was this:--That it is all
windy foppery from the beginning to the end, written, to the
elevation of that rabble and meant to cheat the ignorant; that you
fight always with the flat of your hand like a rhetorician, and never
contract the logical fist; that you trade altogether in universals,
the region of deceits and fallacy, but never come so near
particulars as to let us know which among divers things of the same
kind you would be at ... Besides this, as all your politics reach but
the outside and circumstances of things, and never touch at
realities, so you are very solicitous about _words_, as if they
were charms, or had more in them than what they signify; for no
conjuror's devil is more concerned in a spell than you are in a mere
word." This last speaker having moved that Mr. Harrington himself, in
conclusion, should deliver _his_ opinion on Mr. Milton's book,
the result was as follows:--

  "I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I
  told them, as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most
  in your treatise was that there is not one word of _The Balance
  of Property_, nor the _Agrarian_, nor _Rotation_, in
  it from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a
  _Lord Archon_) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not
  only in my writings but public exercises in that coffee-house, that
  there is no possible foundation of a free Commonwealth. To the
  first and second of these,--that is, the _Balance_ and the
  _Agrarian_,--you made no objection; and therefore I should not
  need to make any answer. But for the third,--I mean
  _Rotation_,--which you implicitly reject in your design to
  perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I
  have already said and written on that subject: That a Commonwealth
  is like a great top, that must be kept up by being whipt round, and
  held in perpetual circulation; for, if you discontinue the
  rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle and stand still, down it
  falls immediately. And, if you had studied this point as carefully
  as I have done, you could not but know there is no such way under
  Heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and
  of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of
  _Wheeling_."...[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a reprint of this _Censure of the Rota_
in the Harleian Miscellany (IV. 179-186). I take the date of
publication from the Thomason copy of the original.]

How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant
Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself
in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for
their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the
contemporary London pamphlets.----Perhaps the last formal and
collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in
power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this
title:--_Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and
the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but
to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the
Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons
why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the
King. Printed at London in the year_ 1660. The first part of the
tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a
letter dated "March 22," by some persons who do not give their names,
but sign themselves "your Excellency's most faithful friends and
servants in the common cause"; after which, in smaller type, comes a
reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total
rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585).
The letter begins thus:--"My Lord and Gentlemen,--It is written
_The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time_; and 'tis like
we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very
throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also.
In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you
for help,--you that, through God's goodness, have helped us so often,
and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return
of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ...
We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are
strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your
consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be
returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with
them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage."
There follows an earnest invective against the Stuarts; but the tone
of respectfulness to Monk is kept up studiously throughout. There is
no sign of Milton in the language, and one guesses on the whole that
the tract was a concoction of a few of the City Republicans, with
Barebone among them, meeting privately perhaps in the back-parlour of
the Republican bookseller who ventured the publication anonymously;
but it is possible that Milton may have been consulted, or at least
have been cognisant of the affair. The reprinting of the reasons of
the Long Parliament for their No-Address Resolutions of January
1647-8 was an excellent idea, inasmuch as it reminded people of that
disgust with Charles I., that impossibility of dealing with him even
in his captive condition, which had driven the Parliamentarians to
the theory of a Republic a year before the Republic had been actually
founded; and this feature of the tract may have seemed good to
Milton.----The Tract must have annoyed Monk and the other
authorities, for it was immediately suppressed. This we learn from a
reply to it, which appeared on the 3rd of April, with the title
_Treason Arraigned, in answer to Plain English, being a Trayterous
and Phanatique Pamphlet which was condemned by the Counsel of State,
suppressed by Authority, and the Printer declared against by
Proclamation ... London, Printed in the year_ 1660. The reply
takes the very curious form of a reproduction of the condemned tract
almost textually, paragraph by paragraph, with a running comment of
vituperation upon the author or authors. The following sentences,
culled from the vituperative comment, will show that the writer
suspected Milton as the person chiefly responsible, and will
sufficiently represent the entire performance:--

  "Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called
  _Plain English_, directed to the General and his Officers....
  It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer.
  By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect
  it for a blot of the same pen that wrote _Eikonoklastes_. It
  runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the
  murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his
  ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his
  sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh
  [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It
  relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness....
  Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say
  where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang
  yourself; beg right; here's your true method of begging:--'O, for
  Tom Scott's sake, for Hasilrig's sake, for Robinson, Holland,
  Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton,
  Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham's
  sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent
  brethren's sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].'"

[Footnote 1: The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are
from copies in the Thomason Collection. Such references to Milton in
the pamphlets of March--April 1660 might be multiplied. He was then
in all men's mouths.]

We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty
days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last
fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free
Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16,
1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State,
with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk,
keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming
Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely
in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a
restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full
force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting
for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already
certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the
Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other
Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be
anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With
letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or
guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look
as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the
multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full
permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only
managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any
outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with
the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular
expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of
disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or
suppress.

At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty
and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman
over sixty years of age, once a _protegé_ of the poet Donne.
Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory
of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King
through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of
the King's chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived
there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those
that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms
by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found
themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is
said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles
II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to
preach in the Mercers' Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he
had chosen for his text _Prov._ XXIV. 21, which he translated
thus: "My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that
be seditious or desirous of change." On this text he had preached a
very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that,
as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content with having
preached the sermon, Dr. Griffith resolved to publish it, in an
ostentatious manner and with certain accompaniments. "_The Fear of
God and the King. Press'd in a Sermon preach'd at Mercers Chappell on
the 25th of March, 1660. Together with a brief Historical Account of
the Causes of our unhappy distractions and the onely way to heal
them. By Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King.
London, Printed for Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls
Churchyard_, 1660": such was the name of a duodecimo out in London
in the first days of April.[1] The volume consists of three
parts,--first, a dedicatory epistle "To His Excellency George Monck,
Captain-General of all the Land Forces of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, and one of the Generals of all the Naval Forces"; then the
sermon itself in fifty-eight pages; and then an addition, in the
shape of a directly political pamphlet, headed "_The Samaritan
Revived_." The gem is the dedication to Monk. The substance of
that is as follows:--

[Footnote 1: "April" only, without day, is the date in the Thomason
copy; but it was registered at Stationers' Hall, March 31, and there
is proof that the publication was immediate.]

  "My Lord,--If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in
  the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the
  body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient,
  then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and
  how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession.
  When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason
  of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible
  indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome
  electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon
  which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint
  Paul's, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this
  title: _A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public
  Peace_), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our
  hearts: hoping that, by God's blessing on the means, I should have
  prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet,
  finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take
  so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my
  so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being
  in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but
  also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling
  and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and
  deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of
  Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with
  the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were
  sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us
  became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly
  emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were)
  to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functions again in such
  poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not
  only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit
  (contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession
  and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with
  divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to
  help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill
  humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put
  pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and
  impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in
  all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is
  to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded
  traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with
  oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our
  national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might
  be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the
  healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see
  these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so
  it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered
  you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry
  bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself
  more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by
  all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from
  the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to
  _make_ a king than to _be_ one. Your proper name minds
  you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to
  stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human
  policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as
  Jethro's magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing
  truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory
  due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer
  of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country."

Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a
cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and
its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King's cause
otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a
tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the
more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even
in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address
to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified
his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had
hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an
impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and
announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively
irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, "to
please and blind the fanatical party" for the moment, Dr. Griffith
was sent to Newgate.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 711-713.--Hyde, writing from Breda,
April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: "This very last
post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the
very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their
late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the
Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be
... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned." _Ibid._, note by Bliss.]

It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take
similar precautions against too violent expressions of
anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers.
Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in
their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his
Officers entitled _Plain English_, and their procedure by
proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am
not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope's Head
Alley, the publisher of Milton's _Considerations touching the
likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_, and also
of his more recent _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free
Commonwealth_. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of
the Council of State against this person, dated "Wednesday, 28 March,
1660," and signed "William Jessop, Clerk of the Council." It began in
these terms:--"Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell
Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage
the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and
treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and
obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice"; and it ended with
an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and
that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially
officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of _Plain
English_, there would be additional reason for suspecting that
Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but
there can be no doubt that among the "seditious and treasonable
books" the publication of which constituted Chapman's offence was
Milton's own _Ready and Easy Way_. The authorities had not yet
struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They
had ordered the arrest of his publisher.

Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's
publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their
displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican
associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.--Not without
difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since
1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling
itself _The Public Intelligencer_ on Mondays and _Mercurius
Politicus_ on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good
Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of
defending not only Oliver's Established Church, but also all else in
his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been
discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of
the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place
going then to John Canne. But Needham's versatility was matchless,
and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint
him to the editorship.[1] Since then, having already in succession
been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth's man or Rumper, and all
but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his
fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth's man again. Not only in
his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the
Good Old Cause. One such pamphlet, published with his name in August
1659, under the title of _Interest will not lie_,[2] had been in
reply to some Royalist who had propounded "a way how to satisfy all
parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the
late King": against whom Needham's contention was "that it is really
the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him
out." One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately
quoted, Needham was named as "the Commonwealth didapper"[3] along
with Milton as "their goose-quill champion," and why the public were
there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn
together.--But the final performance of Needham's, it is believed,
was a tract called _News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near
attendant on his Majesty's person to a Person of Honour here_. It
purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style,
and was out in London on March 23. The publication is said to have
been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the
tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham. Being
"fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court," as Wood
says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible
severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to
England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John
Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic
contradiction, called _The late News or Message from Brussels
unmasked_. Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so
violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican
manifesto called _Plain English_, which appeared in the same
week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under
date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged
Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and
Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of
European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury. His colleague
Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry
Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good
scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London
press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up
again beside the authorized _Mercurius_ and
_Intelligencer_), and had been writing for the Rumpers. He had
just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get
money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. As only the
_Intelligencer_ is named in the orders, one infers that Needham
retained the editorship of the _Mercurius_ during his three
months of suspension. He may have had more of a proprietary hold on
that paper.]

[Footnote 2: Thomason Catalogue: large quartos.]

[Footnote 3: _Didapper_: a duck that dives and reappears.]

[Footnote 4: Wood's Ath. III. 1180-1190; Whitlocke as cited; Pepys,
under date Jan. 9, 1659-60; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 17, 1659-60 _et
seq._; Baker's Chronicle continued by Edward Phillips (ed. 1679),
pp. 699-700.--It is curious to read Phillips's remarks on the
"several seditious pamphlets" put forth by the Republican fanatics
"to deprave the minds of the people" and prevent the Restoration.
Though he must have remembered well that his uncle's were the chief
of these, he avoids naming him. He mentions, however, the _News
from Brussels_, and dilates on the great service done by Evelyn in
replying to it. Phillips had meanwhile (1663-1665) been in Evelyn's
employment as tutor to his son.]

If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do
less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this
time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held
for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from
his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging";
but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was
shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.

Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as
his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately
after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him
holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of £200 a
year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House
Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking
that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House
Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding,
thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the
Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659,
would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so
respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his
Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that
Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final
termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded
members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once
dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the
Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of
State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and
moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect
of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized
Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the
Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such
instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of
proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his
_Ready and Easy Way_. The probability, therefore, is that it was
after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that
Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to
the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to
the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and
keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the
Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in
no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of
his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of
the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the
Council of State were left in the management. As Milton had been
originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament,
it was in the Council's pleasure to continue him or dismiss him. They
were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not
yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell
Chapman's arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that
or thereabouts may be the date of Milton's discharge.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips's narrative of his uncle's dismissal is a
blotch of confused wording and pointing:--"It was but a little
before the King's Restoration that he wrote and published his book in
defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true
sentiments to the world; and not long before his _Power of the
Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs_ and his _Treatise
against Hirelings,_ just upon the King's coming over; having a
little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and
the salary thereunto belonging, he was force," &c. This, as it
stands, defies interpretation. The _Treatise of Civil Power in
Ecclesiastical Causes_ appeared in April 1659, or eight months
before the same. There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop
after _Hirelings_, and the rest should have run on thus:--"Just
upon the King's coming over, having a little before been sequestered
from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging,
he was force," &c.]

       *       *       *       *       *

In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had
determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be
silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no
grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless
fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680.
Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans.
Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out
of sight, the last under ban already by his former brothers of the
Commonwealth; Needham was extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had
gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton
alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of
others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had
been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make
them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by
common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's last exertions,
and had sent to bring him on the stage. They laughed, they shouted,
they shrieked, the gathered Philistine thousands:

  "He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him
  Came to the place."

The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the
stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a
jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an
onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted
some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's
performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for
the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having
had Dr. Griffith's Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he
dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: "_Brief
Notes upon a late Sermon, titled 'The Fear of God and the King';
Preach'd, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and
Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of
Scripture, and other falsities are observed._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Original copies of this pamphlet of Milton must be very
scarce. I could not find one in the British Museum, and I have
looked in vain elsewhere. Probably, at the date when it was
published, the Council of State had become very alert in
suppressing such things. I take the title and extracts from
Pickering's (1851) collective edition of Milton's Works, "printed
from the original editions."]

The tract, which is very short, opens thus:--

  "I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled _The
  Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of
  readmitting Kingship in this Nation_, that 'the humour of
  returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some
  deceivers': and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not
  without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the
  people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted
  in his stead."

The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the
sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or
misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the
preacher's theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual
disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the
intellectual _calibre_ of his antagonist, whom he once names "a
pulpit-mountebank," and of whom he once says that "the rest of his
preachment is mere groundless chat," Yet, on the other hand, he would
evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the
average Church-of-England clergyman. "O people of an implicit faith,
no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!" he once
exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction.

The only portions of the _Notes_ of interest now are those that
bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice
of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith's sermon,
there is an evident struggle on Milton's part to speak as if one
might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the
censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was
"to please and blind the fanatical party," may have had some such
temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one
"who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action," and he
characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is
prayed "to carry on what he had so happily begun," as nothing less
than "an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence." It charges
him, says Milton, "most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing
of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament
and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such
insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future."
Throughout the _Notes_, however, one sees that even this small
lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too
sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power
to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the
following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than
see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to
Monk's own assumption of the Crown:--

  "Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest
  for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with
  prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate,
  corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the
  former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free
  Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the
  latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of
  our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be
  governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet,
  choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people
  and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we
  may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a
  victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished
  was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good
  policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the
  subdued,--will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and
  perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which
  what can be more unworthy?"

Of far more moment than the _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's
Sermon_ was a second and enlarged edition of the _Ready and Easy
Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening
paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till
after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how
much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are
omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new
pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of
Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in
recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages
into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had
ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his
blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his
own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But
there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a
month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the
falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had
passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the
_Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_ is to be
taken, in short, for Milton's Biography at least, as an important new
publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here
noticed.[1]

[Footnote 1: The fact that there are two editions of the _Ready and
Easy Way_, though Milton calls express attention to it in the
second, seems to have escaped all the bibliographers. There is no
note of it in Lowndes. What is most curious, however, is that, while
it is the second or enlarged edition alone that is now accessible to
everybody in the collective editions of Milton's Prose Works, from
the so-called Amsterdam edition of 1898 to Pickering's and Bonn's,
yet original copies of this second edition seem, to have wholly
disappeared. There are several original copies of the _Ready and
Easy Way_ in the British Museum, but all of the first edition, not
one of the second; the Bodleian has no copy of the second; every
original copy of the tract that I have been able to see or hear of
anywhere else has always turned out to be one of the first edition.
In my perplexity, I began to ask myself whether this was to be
explained by supposing that Milton, after he had prepared the second
edition for the press, did not succeed in getting it published, and
so that it was not till 1698 that it saw the light, and then by the
accident that his enlarged press-copy had survived, and come (through
Toland or otherwise) into the hands of the printers of the Amsterdam
edition of the Prose Works. But, though several pieces in that
edition are expressly noted as "never before published" (see notes
ante, p. 617 and p. 656), there is no such editorial note respecting
_The Ready and Easy Way_, but every appearance of mere
reprinting from a previously published copy of 1660. On the whole,
therefore, I conclude that Milton did publish his second and enlarged
edition some time in April 1660; and I account for the rarity of
original copies of this second edition by supposing that either the
impression was seized before many copies had got about, or the
Restoration itself came so rapidly after the publication as to make
it all but abortive. Original copies of Milton's contemporary
_Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seem, as I have mentioned (ante
p. 675, note), to be equally scarce with original copies of the
second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_. They were the two
last utterances of Milton before the Restoration, and so close to
that event as perhaps to be sucked down in the whirlpool. Yet, as we
know for certain that the _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ did
appear, there is no need for a contrary supposition respecting the
other. Very possibly original copies of both _have_ survived
somewhere; and I should be glad to hear of the fact. As it is, I have
had to take my descriptions of both from the copies in the collective
Prose Works. By the bye, it is an error in bibliographers and editors
to give only the titles of old books from the original title-pages,
without adding the imprints of the publishers. Much historical and
biographical information lies in such imprints. In the present
instance, for example, I should have liked very much to know whether
Livewell Chapman was nominally the publisher of the second edition as
well as of the first, or whether Milton was obliged to put forth the
second edition without any publisher's name.]

Among the _additions_ the most prominent is this motto (an
extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:--

  "_Et nos_
  _Consilium dedimus Syllæ: demus Populo nunc_";

which may be translated:--

  "We have advised
  Sulla himself: advise we now the People."

Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable
conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and
that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his _Defensio
Secunda_ of tendering wholesome advices even to the great
Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now
to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have
depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or
Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional
one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present
edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by
their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we
have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of
Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an
epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so
panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk,
not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the
metonymy _Sulla_. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the
other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL
NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties
which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is
thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain
English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may
have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk;
he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter,
perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh
to the people at large, for whom they were first written. The
translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:--

      "This advice we have given
  Sulla himself: 'tis for the People now."

In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology,
we note reference to the course of events since the publication of
the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of
the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same
paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):--

  ... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that
  it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely
  published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or
  their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves
  to have all things represented to them that may direct their
  judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any
  tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time
  of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute
  determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude
  they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak
  freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former
  edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were
  suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took
  the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to
  enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for
  a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as
  follows."

Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late
Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh
text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly
would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the
fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it
was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service
as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the
following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest
is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:--

  "What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the
  good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought
  persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse
  principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and
  Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence?
  Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having
  revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged
  themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles
  returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard
  the last and strictest charge of his father, _to persevere in not
  the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and]
  not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and
  Schisms_,--among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief.
  Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the
  Covenant, how will he keep faith to _us_ with disobedience to
  _him_, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the
  breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the
  reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against
  Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?"

Perhaps the most striking instance of _omission_ in the new
edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph
on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made
at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to
Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or
three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that
there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of
Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion
between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this
omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It
was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the
Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his
peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to
himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the
defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an
argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a
State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be
avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into
insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question
whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back,
and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of
the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part
and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should
have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and
disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the
single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was
now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of
the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between
the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the
miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the
beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of
three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the
steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth;
and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of
Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had
not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in
his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble
and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient
Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain
from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in
his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic
cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against
the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the
constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our
victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over
mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a
written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto
convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts
abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with
this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of
the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some
of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the
thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his
days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have
to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world.

There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota
on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or
modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the
considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his
main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes
care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle
of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it
was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of
the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing
Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington,
he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these
particular enlargements:--

  _The Rotation Principle_:--"But, if the ambition of such as
  think themselves injured that they also partake not of the
  Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the
  perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that
  long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known
  expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if
  the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of
  Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election,
  and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the
  settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and
  this they call _Partial Rotation_. But I could wish that this
  wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be
  avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune.
  For it appears not how this can be done without danger and
  mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in
  whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced,
  and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the
  worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual
  Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this
  land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing
  Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands.
  Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or
  interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved,
  unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be
  expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I
  forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be
  found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side."

  _Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion
  for the mode of Elections_:--"And this annual Rotation of a
  Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also
  another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable
  Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those
  inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be
  troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session,
  to the whole land,--unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so
  great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any
  be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts
  remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then
  to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or
  ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation;
  incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and
  always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless
  will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the
  changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done
  with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and
  safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way
  will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to
  the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only
  those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they
  will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose
  a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth
  sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen
  who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest....
  But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their
  several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate
  the odious power and name of _Committees_) in the chief towns
  of every County,--without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of
  summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so
  long residing from their own houses, or removing of their
  families,--to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or
  subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous
  Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the
  wariest rotation."

  _Glance at some of Harrington's other notions_:--"The way
  propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without
  intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or
  terms, or exotic models,--ideas that would effect nothing, but with
  a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of
  mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and
  necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian
  Liberty."

As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had
rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he
inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for
Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state
of society they will bring in. Thus:--

  "There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood
  outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already,
  together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal
  issue, and ere long severally _their_ sumptuous Courts, to the
  multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of
  nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but
  of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms."

But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration
and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe
also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the
Royalist scurrilities against himself:--

  "Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations;
  yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot
  but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their
  former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves
  sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter
  from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so
  low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of
  their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what
  they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from
  any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about
  it,--utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest
  attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all
  Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and
  their song will then be to others _How sped the Rebellious
  English?_, to our posterity _How sped the Rebels your
  fathers?_.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate
  this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue
  must be found, a new Episcopal,--for those are individual: both
  which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or
  assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be
  recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's
  estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,--benefit to
  none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to
  be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by
  it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on
  our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered
  and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his
  adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits,
  indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints,
  informations,--who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps
  neuters,--if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines,
  banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour,
  discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known
  Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the
  new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old
  doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever
  conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this,
  nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how
  other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the
  diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now
  appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers
  of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but
  hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly
  animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their
  Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the
  spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of
  licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring
  to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us
  to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever
  they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous
  backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how
  _their_ necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,--these new
  fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with
  nothing holier than the venereal pox,--can draw one way, under
  Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these
  new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke
  with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on
  _their_ backs. And do they among them who are so forward to
  bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long
  regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are
  wont reconciled enemies,--neglected and soon after discarded, if
  not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and
  more than to the third part actors, of all that followed."

Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the
restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts
that by "the trial of just battle" the larger part of the population
of England long ago "lost the right of their election what the form
of Government shall be," and that, if even a majority of the rest
would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. "Is it
just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of
Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More
just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel
a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty
than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness,
compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves." When he
wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in
vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there
even by that single modification of the language which might seem at
first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation
of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the
prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God's decree of
exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But
this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation
that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of
mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace
throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the
worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of
insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah
precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no
longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the
sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration
to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now,
and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.

  "What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called
  amiss _The Good Old Cause_: if it seem strange to any, it will
  not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus
  much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have
  spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with
  the Prophet, _O Earth, Earth, Earth!_, to tell the very soil
  itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what
  I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create
  Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants
  of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust
  I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and
  ingenuous men,--to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these
  stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim,
  though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to
  bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing;
  to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous,
  but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and
  uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how
  open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies,
  to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to
  what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness
  would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and
  abused multitude."

To exhort a torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In
Milton's mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent,
rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and
jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad
haste which London and all England were making in the end of April
1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important
relic of opposition, the Republicanism of the Army, and how that had
been already managed by Monk, and was still being managed by him, we
have taken account. Its dying effort, as we saw, took the form of
Lambert's escape from the Tower on the 9th of April, and his thirteen
days of wild wandering and skulking on the chance of bringing the
dispersed remains of Republicanism to a rendezvous. That was over on
Easter-Sunday, April 22, when Dick Ingoldsby, with flushed face, and
pistol in hand, collared the fugitive Lambert on his horse in a field
near Daventry, and brought him back, with others, to his prison in
the Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that
Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself
maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least
liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a
desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had
happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as
the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a
small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1]

[Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton's _Ready
and Easy Way_ is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note
here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have
been made. In the second extract the phrase "_What can this last
Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the
Covenant &c.?_" seems distinctly to certify that Milton was
writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded
Members had dissolved itself. The first extract, giving the new and
enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while
Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for
the new "free and full" Parliament which had been called,--i.e. what
is now known as The Convention Parliament. He thinks that his
pamphlet, as modified, "_may now be of much more use and
concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a
Free Parliament or their sitting to consider freely of the
Government_." Now, the elections went on from the end of March to
about the 20th of April, and Milton's words almost imply that he
expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition
was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had
any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on
April 25. The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to
imply that Milton had read the _Censure of the Rota_ on his
first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of
April, inasmuch as the _Censure_ was not out till March 30.
Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have
already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the
stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared,
and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and
withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed
in his _Notes to Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seems more particularly
to certify that those _Notes_ preceded the new edition of the
_Ready and Easy Way_ by a week or more. On the whole, I do not
think I am wrong in regarding the new edition as Milton's very last
performance before the Restoration, and in dating it somewhere
between April 9, the day of Lambert's escape from the Tower, and
April 24, when Lambert was brought back a prisoner to London and the
members of the Convention Parliament were already gathered in town.
As Thomason's copy of the first edition is marked "March 3," this
would make the interval between the two editions about a month and a
half.]

The wrestlings now were ended. All that remained for the blind Samson
was to listen, with bowed head, to the renewed burst of Philistine
hissings, howlings, and execrations, against him, before they would
let him retire. It came from all quarters; but at least two persons
stepped out from the crowd to convert the mere inarticulate uproar
into distinct invective and insult.

"_No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J.
Milton's entituled 'Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.' Addressed to
the Author_.--'If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into
the ditch.'--_London, Printed for Henry Brome, April_ 20, 1660."
This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which
was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was
Roger L'Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer.[1] The following
specimen will represent the rest:--

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 712. The date of the actual appearance
of the tract is from the Thamason copy.]

  "Mr. Milton,

  "Although in your life and doctrine you have resolved one great
  question, by evidencing that devils may indue human shapes and
  proving yourself even to your own wife an incubus, you have yet
  started another; and that is whether you are not of that regiment
  which carried the herd of swine headlong into the sea, and moved
  the people to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts.
  (_This_ may be very well imagined from your suitable practices
  _here_.) Is it possible to read your _Proposals of the
  benefits of a Free State_ without reflecting upon your tutor's
  'All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me'?
  Come, come, Sir: lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much
  malice and against knowledge. Act like a man, that a good Christian
  may not be afraid to pray for you. Was it not you that scribbled a
  justification of the murder of the King against Salmasius, and made
  it good too thus: that murder was an action meritorious compared
  with your superior wickedness? 'Tis there (as I remember) that you
  commonplace yourself into set forms of railing, two pages thick;
  and, lest your infamy should not extend itself enough within the
  course and usage of your mother-tongue, the thing is dressed up in
  a travelling garb and language, to blast the English nation to the
  universe, and give every man a horror for mankind when he considers
  _you_ are of the race. In this you are above all others; but
  in your _Eikonoklastes_ you exceed yourself. There, not
  content to see that sacred head divided from the body, your
  piercing malice enters into the private agonies of his struggling
  soul, with a blasphemous insolence invading the prerogative of God
  himself (omniscience), and by deductions most unchristian and
  illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain
  inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor
  are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being
  suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to
  rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your
  factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford
  them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass directly
  to your _Brief Notes upon a late Sermon_ ... Any man that can
  but read your title may understand your drift, and that you charge
  the royal interest and party through the Doctor's sides. I am not
  bold enough to be his champion in all particulars, nor yet so rude
  as to take an office most properly to him belonging out of his
  hand. Let him acquit himself in what concerns the divine; and I'll
  adventure upon the most material parts of the rest." [Extracts from
  Milton's _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ follow, with brief
  comments, of no interest, and showing no ability.]

Almost immediately there followed "_The Dignity of Kingship
Asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's 'Ready and Easie Way to establish
a Free Commonwealth.' Proving that Kinqship is both in itself and in
reference to these nations farre the most Excellent Government, and
the returning to our former Loyalty or Obedience thereto is the only
way under God to restore and settle these three once flourishing,
now languishing, broken, and almost ruined nations. By G. S., a Lover
of Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent
Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,
true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over
against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at
the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street._ 1660."
It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying
twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a
peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and his
Officers and to the two Houses of Parliament about to meet, and then
three pages more of concluding address to his Majesty. Though the
author does not give his name, he hints in the course of the volume
that he may "be inquired after and perhaps soon found out." He says
also that his profession "much differs from politics." Hence it may
be doubted whether the conjecture is right which assigns the book to
a George Searle, who had been an original member of the Long
Parliament for Taunton, and had been one of the Secluded. One might
venture rather on the query whether the author may not have been Dr.
Gilbert Sheldon, soon to be Bishop of London and Archbishop of
Canterbury, but for the present waiting with anxiety for the
certainty of Charles's recall, and doing all he could, with other
divines, to hasten it.[1]

[Footnote 1: The Thomason copy gives "May," without any day, as the
date of publication; but I find the book entered in the Stationers'
Registers as early as March 31, 1660. The writing had been then
begun, and the printing of the book had been going on through April.
There is internal evidence that the new Parliament had not met, or
at least that the Restoration was not positively resolved on, when
the book was finished. Both in the dedication and in the peroration,
the parts last written, the event is spoken of as only in near
prospect.--Sheldon, though a man of public distinction in his time,
has left hardly any writings by which his style could be
ascertained. I think the guess worth risking that the present
performance may have been his, if only because the offer of the guess
may lead to its confutation. George Searle is the man proposed by the
bibliographers (see Bohn's _Lowndes_, Art. Milton, and note p.
108 of Todd's Life of Milton, edit. 1852); but I know not on what
authority except that his initials are "G.S." and that he was "a
writer."--As far as I have observed, it was the first edition of
Milton's pamphlet only that G.S. had before him as he wrote.]

Whoever wrote the book must have had a touch of scholarly candour in
his nature. Though there is plenty of abuse of Milton, with the
stereotyped allusions to his Divorce Doctrine and its effects, and
with such occasional phrases as "your wind-mill brain," "the
unpracticableness of these your fanatic state-whimsies," and though
there is abuse also, in the coarse familiar strain, of the Rumpers
and Commonwealths-men generally, and of "Oliver, the copper-nosed
saint," we come upon such passages as the following, appreciative at
least of Milton's literary power:--

  "I am not ignorant of the ability of Mr. Milton, whom the Rump
  (which was well-stored with men of pregnant though pernicious wits)
  made choice of before others to write their _Defence against
  Salmasius;_ one of the greatest learned men of this age, both for
  reality and reputation."

  "... made choice of Mr. Milton to be their champion to answer
  Salmasius; who, as may be conceived, not vulgarly rewarded for this
  service, undertakes it with as much learning and performance as
  could be expected from the most able and acute scholar living:
  concerning whose answer thus much must be confessed,--that nothing
  could be therein desired which either a shrewd wit could prompt or
  a fluent elegant style express. And, indeed, to give him his due,
  in whatever he vomited out against his Majesty formerly, or now
  declaims against Monarchy in behalf of a Republic, he then did, and
  doth now, want nothing on his side but truth."

These are casual expressions in the course of the argumentation with
Milton; and, as there is no need to exhibit the argumentation itself,
a single quotation more will suffice. It is from the Dedication to
Charles II. That, though coming first in the book, was probably
written last, when the writer could exult in the idea that his
Majesty was so soon to land on the British shores, and could have
pleasure in being one of the first to address him ceremoniously and
in public with all his royal titles. Let it be remembered that, by
the introduction of Milton into this Dedication, not only
prominently, but even singly and exclusively, it was as if pains were
taken to remind Charles, just as he was preparing to step into the
ship that was to convey him to England, of the name of that one man
among his subjects who had done more to keep him out, and had
attacked him and his more ferociously, more relentlessly, and more
successfully, than any other living. Suppose that his Majesty,
waiting at Breda, was curious to know already, for certain reasons,
what person, not on the actual list of those who had signed his
father's death-warrant, would be designated to him by universal
opinion at home as the least pardonable traitor; and read this as the
answer of G.S.:--

  This detestable, execrable murder, committed by the worst of
  parricides, accompanied with the disclaiming of your whole royal
  stock, disinheriting your Majesty's self and the rest of the royal
  branches, driving you and them into exile, with endeavouring to
  expunge and obliterate your never-to-be-forgotten just title;
  tearing up and pulling down the pillars of Majesty, the Nobles;
  garbling and suspending from the place of power all of the Commons
  House that had anything of honesty or relenting of spirit toward
  the injured Father of three Nations and his royal posterity: acts
  horrible to be imagined, and yet with high hand most villainously,
  perfidiously, and perjuriously perpetrated by monsters of mankind,
  yet blasphemously dishonourers of God in making use of His name and
  usurping the title of Saints in their never-before-paralleled nor
  ever-sufficiently-to-be-lamented-and-abhorred villanies:--this
  Murder, I say, and these Villainies, were defended, nay extolled
  and commended, by one MR. JOHN MILTON, in answer to the most
  learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid
  arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so
  bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father's spotless life
  (human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical
  pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice,
  he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal
  Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion
  and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, a bloody
  tyrant, and an implacable enemy to all his good subjects; and
  thereupon calls that execrable and detestable horrible Murder a
  just Execution, and commends it as an heroic action: and, in a
  word, whatever was done in prosecution of their malice toward your
  Royal Progenitor and his issue, or relations, or friends and
  assistants, he calls Restoring of the nation to its Liberty. Yea!
  to make your illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he
  by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that
  incomparable piece of his writing, his _Eikon Basilike_, but
  in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled
  _Eikonoklastes_, he would not spare his devout prayers (which
  no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he
  expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal
  of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed,
  abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's
  vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the
  People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither
  of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his),
  nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign
  deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath
  in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together
  with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least)
  persuasive with some, and because in these last and worst days
  those dangerous times are come in which many account Treason to be
  Saintship, and the madness of the people, like the inundation of
  waters, hath for many years overflowed all the bounds, &c ... [The
  writer, in continuation, refers to the assiduity of the fanatical
  enemies of Charles, still working, though at the end of their wits,
  to keep him out.] Among many of whom MR. MILTON comes on the stage
  in post haste and in this juncture of time, that he may, if
  possible, overthrow the hopes of all good men, and endeavours what
  he can to divert those that at present sit at the helm, and by fair
  pretences and sophisticate arguments would, &c ... Which I taking
  notice of, and meeting with this forementioned pamphlet of MR.
  MILTON'S, and upon perusal of it finding it dangerously ensnaring,
  the fallacy of the arguments being so cunningly hidden as not to be
  discerned by any nor every eye,--observing also the language to be
  smooth and tempting, the expressions pathetical and apt to move the
  affections, ... I thought it my duty, &c.

Before this salutation of his returning Majesty was visible on the
book-stalls the great event which it anticipated was as good as
accomplished.

The two Houses of Parliament had met on Wednesday, the 25th of April.
There was not only the "full and free" House of Commons for which
writs had been issued, but a House of Lords also, assembled by its
own will and motion. In the Commons, where Sir Harbottle Grimstone
was elected Speaker, there were present over 400 out of the total of
500 and more that were actually due; in the Lords, where the Earl of
Manchester was chosen Speaker _pro tem._, there were present on
the first day only nine peers besides himself: viz. the Earls of
Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Suffolk, Viscount Say and Sele,
and Lords Wharton, Hunsdon, Grey of Wark, and Maynard. It was for
these two bodies to execute between them the task appointed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist., for the opening of the
Convention Parliament.]

The meetings of the first three days were but preliminary, and not a
word passed in either House to signify what was coming. On Friday,
the 27th of April, there was an adjournment of both Houses to
Tuesday, the 1st of May. During that breathless interval it was as
when a mine is ready, the gunpowder and other explosives all stored,
the train laid, and what is waited for is the application of the
lighted match. That duty fell to Sir John Greenville, and the mode in
which it should be performed was settled privately between him and
wary Old George.

On Saturday, April 28, the Council of State are met at Whitehall,
Annesley in the chair as usual. Colonel Birch, one of the members,
entering late, informs General Monk that there is a gentleman at the
door who desires to speak with him. Monk goes to the door, finds Sir
John Greenville there, and receives him as a perfect stranger, the
guards looking on. Sir John delivers to him a letter, and tells him
that he does so by command of his Majesty. Monk orders the guards to
detain this gentleman, and returns to the Council-room with the
letter. Having broken the seal, but not opened the letter, he hands
it to the President, intimating from whom it has come. The
superscription itself leaves no doubt on that point. The letter is
one of the six, dated "_At our Court at Breda this 4/14th of April
1660, in the twelfth year of Our Reign_," which Sir John
Greenville had brought over to be used by Monk at his discretion, and
which Monk had given back into Greenville's custody till the proper
moment for using them should arrive. It was that particular one of
the six which was addressed to Monk himself, to be communicated by
him to the Council of State and the Officers of the Army. There was
much surprise in the Council, real or affected, Colonel Birch
protesting that he knew nothing of the business, but had merely
found a gentleman at the door inquiring for General Monk and had
brought in his message to the General. That gentleman was sent for
and asked how he came by the letter. "It was given to me by his
Majesty with his own hand," said Sir John. Altogether the Council
were at a loss how to act; but finally it was agreed that they dared
not read the letter without leave from Parliament. There was some
question of sending Greenville into custody meanwhile; but Monk said
he was a kinsman of his and he would be answerable for his
appearance. In short, this attempt to apply the match in the Council
had not sufficiently succeeded, and Sir John knew that he must be
forthcoming in the two Houses themselves.

Sir John was equal to the occasion. Early in the morning of Tuesday,
the 1st of May, he was at the door of the House of Lords with that
one of the six Letters from Breda which was addressed to their
Lordships. There were now forty-two peers present. By one of these
Greenville sent in his name to Speaker the Earl of Manchester, with
an intimation of the nature of his message. The Earl had no sooner
informed the House who and what were at the door than it was voted
that the Earl should walk down the floor, all present attending him,
to receive his Majesty's letter. Sir John having thus got rid of two
of his documents, presented himself next at the door of the Commons,
to try his chance with a third. He had already conveyed to Speaker
Sir Harbottle Grimstone the fact that he was in attendance with a
letter from his Majesty. He came now at the most fit moment, for the
House had just received a report from the Council of State of what
had happened at the sitting of the Council on the preceding Saturday.
The scene will be best imagined from the record in the Journals of
the House:--"_Tuesday, May the 1st_, 1660. PRAYERS. Mr. Annesley
reports from the Council of State a Letter from the King, unopened,
directed 'To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk, to be
communicated to the President and Council of State, and to the
Officers of the Armies under his command,' being received from the
hands of Sir John Greenville. The House, being informed that Sir
John Greenville, a messenger from the King, was at the door,
_Resolved_, &c. That Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the
King, be called in. He was called in accordingly, and, being at the
bar, after obeisance made, said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am commanded by the
King, my master, to deliver this Letter to You, and he desires that
You will communicate it to the House.' The Letter was directed 'To
Our trusty and well-beloved the Speaker of the House of Commons';
which, after the messenger was withdrawn, was read to the House by
the Speaker." The bold Sir John had now got rid of three of his six
documents. Nay, he had got rid of four; for in each of the three
there had been enclosed a copy of his Majesty's general
_Declaration_, or Letter to "all Our Loving Subjects of what
degree or quality soever." It was for the Parliament to determine
what should be done with this Declaration, as well as with the other
two remaining Letters, one of them addressed to Generals Monk and
Montague for communication to the Fleet, and the other to the Lord
Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London. The train
had been sufficiently fired already by the delivery of four of the
Breda documents.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lords and Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. IV.
10-25; Phillips (continuation of Baker), 701-705; Skinner's Life of
Monk, 297-302; Whitlocke, IV. 409-411.]

The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at
an end at last. In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John
Greenville had left the House, it was "RESOLVED, _nemine
contradicente_, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty's
Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His
gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty
for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his
Majesty." The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and
had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for
his care in the discharge of his duty. The rest of that day was spent
in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions
and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the
forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration. Thus, in the
Commons, still in the forenoon, "RESOLVED, _nemine
contradicente_, that the sum of £50,000 be presented to the King's
Majesty from this House," and "RESOLVED, _nemine
contradicente_, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to
the House and that to the Lord General, and his Majesty's Declaration
which came enclosed, be entered at large in the Journal Book of this
House"; and, again, at an afternoon sitting, the conference with the
Lords having meanwhile been held, "RESOLVED, That this House doth
agree with the Lords, and do own and declare that, according to the
ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and
ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons." The news of what was doing
in Parliament was already rushing hither and thither among the
Londoners; the day ended among _them_, of course, with bonfires
and ringing of bells and the roar of rejoicing cannon; in the boom of
the cannon, and in whatever form of rude telegraph or of horsemen at
the gallop along the four great highways, London was shaking the
message from itself in palpitations through all the land; nor among
the galloping horsemen were those the least fleet that were spurring
through Kent to the seaside to unmoor the packet-boats and convey the
tidings to Charles. On the 1st of May, 1660, the English Commonwealth
was no more.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist. of dates; Whitlocke,
IV. 411.]

Yet another week for the formalities of its burial. A few of the
leading incidents of that week may be presented in abstract:--

  _May_ 2:--Ordered by the Lords "that the statues of the late
  King's Majesty be set up again in all the places from whence they
  were pulled down, and that the Arms of the Commonwealth be
  demolished and taken away wherever they are, and the King's Arms be
  put up in their stead." _Same day in the Commons_:--Leave
  given to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City
  of London, to return an answer to his Majesty's Letter addressed to
  them. This was the fifth of the Breda documents. Also leave given
  to Dr. Clarges, a member of the House, to go at once to Breda, with
  Monk's answer to the letter _he_ had received.

  _May_ 3:--Sir John Greenville brought into the House of
  Commons to receive thanks, and the information that the House had
  voted him £500 to buy a jewel. The Speaker, Sir Harbottle
  Grimstone, addressed him as follows:--"Sir John Greenville, I need
  not tell you with what grateful and thankful hearts the Commons now
  assembled in Parliament have received his Majesty's gracious
  Letter. _Res ipsa loquitur_: you yourself have been
  _ocularis et auricularis testis de rei veritate_: our bells
  and our bonfires have already proclaimed his Majesty's goodness and
  our joys. We have told the people that our King, the glory of
  England, is coming home again; and they have resounded it back
  again in our ears that they are ready, and their hearts open, to
  receive him. Both Parliament and People have cried aloud to the
  King of Kings in their prayers _Long live King Charles the
  Second_." The rest of the speech was compliment to Sir John
  himself.

  _Same day, in Montague's Fleet in the Downs_:--His Majesty's
  letter to Monk and Montague, intended to be communicated to the
  Fleet, having been sent by express from Monk, reached Montague that
  morning on board his flagship the Naseby. His secretary Pepys
  describes what followed: "My Lord summoned a Council of War, and in
  the meantime did dictate to me how he would have the vote ordered
  which he would have pass this Council. Which done, the Commanders
  all came on board, and the Council sat in the coach [Council
  cabin], the first Council of War that had been in my time; where I
  read the Letter and Declaration; and, while they were discoursing
  upon it, I seemed to draw up a vote, which, being offered, they
  passed. Not one man seemed to say _No_ to it, though I am
  confident many in their hearts were against it. After this was
  done, I went up to the quarterdeck with my Lord and the Commanders,
  and there read both the papers and the vote; which done, and
  demanding their opinion, the seamen did all of them cry out _God
  save King Charles_." Pepys then made a circuit of the other
  ships with the same great news. "Which was a very brave sight, to
  visit all the ships, and to be received with the respect and honour
  that I was on board them all, and much more to see the great joy
  that I brought to all men, not one through the whole fleet shewing
  the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going
  on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns,
  which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest
  of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets
  go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and
  finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord
  was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport
  of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and
  another from the Duke of York, in such familiar style as their
  common friend, with all kindness imaginable. And I found by the
  letters, and so my Lord told me too, that there had been many
  letters passed between them for a great while, _and I perceive
  unknown to Monk_."

  _May_ 5. On report from the Council of State, a General
  Proclamation adopted by the Commons, with concurrence of the Lords,
  forbidding tumults, and instructing all in authority to continue in
  their respective offices and exercise the same thenceforth in his
  Majesty's name.

  _May_ 7. Sir George Booth, Lord Falkland, Mr. Denzil Holles,
  Sir John Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Bruce, Sir
  Horatio Townshend, Lord Herbert, Lord Castleton, Lord Fairfax, Sir
  Henry Cholmley, and Lord Mandeville, chosen by the House of Commons
  to be the persons to carry to his Majesty the answer of the House
  to his Majesty's gracious Letter. The similar deputation from the
  Lords' House was to consist of the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of
  Warwick, the Earl of Middlesex, Viscount Hereford, Lord Berkley,
  and Lord Brooke. Same day, on receipt from Montague of a copy of
  his Majesty's letter addressed to Monk and himself, as Generals of
  the Fleet, with news of the reception of the same by the Fleet on
  the 3rd, Monk and Montague were authorized to answer that letter.
  Thus the sixth and last of the Breda documents was finally disposed
  of.--Resolved also that Thursday next should be a day of
  thanksgiving in London and Westminster for the happy reconciliation
  with his Majesty, and farther, "That all and every the ministers
  throughout the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the
  Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, do, and are
  hereby required and enjoined in their public prayers to, pray for
  the King's most excellent Majesty by the name of Our Sovereign
  Lord, Charles the Second, by the grace of God King of England,
  Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith."--Resolved
  also that the King be proclaimed to-morrow.

  _Tuesday, May_ 8. Proclamation of Charles accordingly in
  Westminster Hall, and at Whitehall, Temple Bar, Fleet Conduit, the
  Exchange, and other places, his reign to date from the death of his
  father. Copies of the Proclamation to be sent to all authorities
  over Great Britain and Ireland, that it may be repeated everywhere.
  Also "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, that the King's
  Majesty be desired to make his speedy return to his Parliament and
  to the exercise of his Kingly Office."[1]

[Footnote 1: These Notes, except the extract from Pepys, are compiled
from the Commons Journals and the Parliamentary History for the week
between May 1 and May 8, with references to Whitlocke and Phillips.]

And so all was settled between Charles and his Three Kingdoms. By
this time, indeed, not only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but all
over the main island from Land's End to Caithness and all over the
lesser from Mizen Head to Malin Head, there was simply a universal
impatience till it should be known that Montague's fleet had shot
from the Downs towards the Dutch coasts, to bring his Majesty and his
Court, on the decks of his own ships, within hail of the cheering
from Dover cliffs. The delay was chiefly because of the necessity of
certain upholstering and tailoring preparations on both sides. At
home there had to be due preparations of a household for his Majesty,
and of households for his two brothers, when they should arrive.
There had to be got ready not only a new crown and sceptre, and new
robes and ermines, but also the velvet bed, with the gold embroidery,
the lining of satin or cloth of silver, the satin quilts, the fustian
quilts to lie under the satin quilts, the down bolster, the fustian
blankets, the Spanish blankets, the Holland sheets, with other
accoutrements for his Majesty's own bedroom, besides similar
furnishing for the bedrooms of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, a
new coach for his Majesty, liveries for his coachmen, footmen, and
other servants, and innumerable etceteras. Then, on the other side of
the water, where his Majesty had meanwhile received with
extraordinary satisfaction, through Sir John Greenville, the £50,000
voted him by the Commons, £10,000 of it in gold from England, and the
rest in bank bills payable at sight in Amsterdam, and where the Duke
of York had been promised another £10,000 and the Duke of Gloucester
£5000, much of the money had to be converted into the apparel and
other equipments required for the suitable appearance of the three
royal personages and their retinues when they should present
themselves in England. A great deal might be done at Breda, where
already there was swarming round his Majesty a miscellany of private
visitors, English, Scottish, and Irish, all anxious to be useful, and
many of them with presents of money. But the final arrangements were
to be at the Hague, the capital of the United Provinces, amid
whatever stately ceremonial of congratulation and farewell the Dutch
Government could now offer in atonement for previous neglect or
indifference. There had been most pressing solicitations, indeed,
from the Spanish authorities of Flanders, that Charles would return
to Brussels and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent a
message at last, begging him to honour France by making Calais his
port of departure; but Charles preferred the Hague. It was at the
Hague, therefore, that the commissioners from the two Houses of
Parliament, with deputations from the City of London and the London
clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that he was to confer
his first large collective batch of English knighthoods, following
the single knighthood conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges
at Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great
embarkation for Dover.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys's Diary, from the 8th of May
onwards.]

And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether
the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in
peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or
before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money,
had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of
the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us
attend only to Needham and Milton.

Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very
beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was
out in London, in the form of a printed squib, _An Hue and Cry
after Mercurius Politicus_, giving a sketch of his career, and
containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:--

  "But, if at Amsterdam you meet
  With one that's purblind in the street,
       Hawk-nosed, turn up his hair,
  And in his ears two holes you'll find;
  And, if they are, not pawned behind,
       Two rings are hanging there.

  "His visage meagre is and long,
  His body slender," &c.[1]

[Footnote 1: "_O. Cromwell's Thankes to the Lord General faithfully
presented by Hugh Peters in another Conference, together with an Hue
and Cry after Mercurius Politicus: London, Printed by M.T._"
("1660, May 10" in the Thomason copy).]

Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the
public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day "John Milton,
of the City of Westminster," transferred to his friend "Cyriack
Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for £400 given by the
Commissioners of the Excise in part security for money which Milton
had invested in their hands. In the deed of conveyance, still extant,
under the words at the end, "_Witness my hand and seal thus_,"
there follows the signature "JOHN MILTON," not in his own hand, but
recognisably in the fine and peculiar hand of that amanuensis to whom
he had dictated the sonnet in memory of his second wife about two
years before. In yet another hand is the date "7th May, 1660"; but
attached, to verify all, is Milton's family-seal of the double-headed
eagle. Milton, we can see, wanted some money for sudden and urgent
occasions, and his friend Cyriack advanced it. Cyriack and others
had, doubtless, been already about him for some days, imploring him
to hide himself, and devising the means; and that very night, or the
next, as we are to fancy, he is conveyed furtively out of his house
in Petty France to some obscure but suitable shelter. The three
children he has parted with, the eldest not yet fourteen years old,
the second not twelve, and the third just eight, are left under what
tendence there may be, hardly knowing what has happened, but
uncertain whether they shall ever again see their strange blind
father. All is dark, and we may drop the curtain.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sotheby's _Ramblings in Elucidation of Milton's
Autograph_, p. 129, and plate after p. 124. The document mentioned
was purchased in Aug. 1858, for £19, by Mr. Monckton Milnes (now
Lord Houghton), apparently under the impression that the signature
was Milton's own.]



CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA IN VOLS. IV. AND V.

_Vol. IV. pp._ 272-273:--From Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of
Domestic State Papers for the Third Year of the Commonwealth I learn
that the first meeting of the Council of State for that year was on
Feb. 17, 1650-51, and not on Feb. 19. There had been two meetings
before that of the 19th, and at the first of these Bradshaw had been
re-appointed President.

_Vol. IV. pp._ 416-418 _and_ 423-424:--To Milton's Letter
to the Oldenburg agent Hermann Mylius, translated and commented on
pp. 416-418, and to the story, as told at pp. 423-424, of the
Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg's subjects obtained from the
English Council of State by the joint exertions of Mylius and Milton,
an interesting addition has turned up in the form of another Latin
letter from Milton to Mylius, preserved "in a collection of
autographs belonging to the Cardinal Bishop-Prince von
Schwartzenberg." A copy was sent by Dr. Goll of Prague to Professor
Alfred Stern of Bern, author of _Milton und Seine Zeit_; and
Professor Stern communicated it to the _Academy_, where it
appeared Oct. 13, 1877. It may be here translated:--"Yesterday, my
most respected Hermann, after you had gone, there came to me a
mandate of the Council, ordering me to compare the Latin copy [of the
Safeguard] with the English, and to take care that they agreed with
each other, and then to send both to Lord Whitlocke and Mr. Neville
for revision; which I did, and at the same time wrote fully to Lord
Whitlocke on the subject of the insertion you wanted made,--namely
that there should be a clause in favour also of the successors and
descendents of his Lordship the Count, and this in the formula which
you yourself suggested: I added moreover the reasons you assigned
why, unless that were done, the business would seem absolutely null.
What happened in the Council in consequence I do not know for
certain, for I was kept at home by yesterday's rain and was not
present. If you write to the President of the Council
[_Concilii_ only in the copy, but one guesses that the word for
'President' has to be inserted], or, better still, if you send one of
your people to Mr. Frost, you may yourself, I believe, hear from
them; or, at all events, you shall know in the evening from me,--your
most devoted JOHN MILTON. Feb. 13, 1651 [i.e. 1651-2]." The letter
accords in every particular with the extract we have given from the
minutes of the Council of State of Feb. 11, and enables us to see how
the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg did emerge, in the desired
form at last, in Parliament on Feb. 17. Professor Stern, in his
communication to the _Academy_, adds that the Safeguard is
"printed by J.J. Winkelmann in his _Oldenburgische Friedens und der
benachbarten Oerter Kriegshandlungen_, p. 390, with the
annotation, '_Hoc diploma ex Anglico originali in Latinum verbatim
versum est._ JOANNES MILTONIUS. _Westmonasterii, 17 Febr.,
anno_ 1651-2" ('This diploma is turned verbatim into Latin from
the English original. JOHN MILTON. Westminster, 17 Febr., in the year
1651-2'), I assume, but am not certain, that it is the same as that
mentioned as given in Thurloe, i, 385-6.

_Vol. IV. p._ 560:--For the Earl of Airly, mentioned as one of
the delinquent Scottish noblemen who were fined by Oliver's ordinance
for Scotland of April 12, 1654, substitute the Earl of Ethie. He was
Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, co. Forfar, Lord Lour since 1639, and
created Earl of Ethie in 1647,--which title he exchanged, after the
Restoration, for that of Earl of Northesk.

_Vol. V. p. 227, in connexion with Vol. IV, pp._ 487-494:--A
paper found very recently by Mrs. Everett Green in the Record Office,
and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for
which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me
to throw some further light on Milton's friend and correspondent
Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the
fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton's assistance. The
paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated "30 June,
1653," i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the
Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it is addressed "For the
Honor'ble. Sir Gilbert Pickering"--Pickering being then, it would
seem, President of Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen (see Vol.
IV. pp, 498-499); and it is headed "_A Brief Narration of my
Transactions concerning some Woods in Scotland_." From this
statement of Sandelands it appears that he had first broached his
scheme of obtaining masts and tar for the English navy from the woods
of Scotland to Cromwell himself in August 1652, and that it was in
consequence of Cromwell's recommendation of the scheme to the Council
of State then in power that the business had been referred to the
Commander-in-chief in Scotland and Sandelands had gone to Scotland
("at my own charge," he says) and had the conferences with
Major-General Dean and Colonel Lilburne described at pp. 490-491 of
Vol. IV. The result had been that detailed written explanation of his
scheme to Lilburne the substance of which has been quoted in the same
pages--"the copy whereof," adds Sandelands, "now remains in Mr.
Thurloe's hands." He means, of course, the copy he had enclosed to
Milton in his letter of Jan. 15, 1652-3, and which Milton had duly
delivered to the Council of State. More had come of the matter than
we knew at that date; for Sandelands proceeds thus in his
statement:--"The Council of State, having received this information
(recommended by the Commander-in-chief), gave order that Colonel
Lilburne should prosecute the design effectually. Upon receipt of
which order, Colonel Lilburne was pleased to employ me to try whether
the Earl of Tullibardine (who had an interest of the third part of
the woods of Abernethy and Glencalvie) would sell his share; which I
did, and brought with me an agreement under his hand that for £221 he
would yield up all his interest in the former woods and all other
be-north Tay, upon condition that the money should be paid before the
25th of March last [1653]; which Colonel Lilburne certified to the
Council of State. But, their greater affairs [the discussions with
Cromwell just before his _coup d'état_] obstructing this design,
neither money nor orders were sent. Therefore I did entreat Colonel
Lilburne to do me that justice to certify my diligence; which he did;
and [having come to London meanwhile] I delivered it to his
Excellency [Cromwell] the 12th of June [a month and three weeks after
the _coup d'état_]; who was pleased immediately after to revive
this motion to the Council of State [Cromwell's Interim Council of
Thirteen], and they to refer it to Mr. Carew [one of the Thirteen].
Since which time I have given my daily attendance at Whitehall,
expecting the event of the business." He ends by soliciting
Pickering, as he had solicited Milton some months before, to bring
the matter to some such conclusion as might reimburse him for his
journey to Scotland and all his care and pains there at his own
charge. From a note appended to the Statement, it appears that the
whole business was referred by Cromwell's Interim Council to a
Committee; but, as we have found Sandelands still in distress and in
want of employment as late as April 1654 (Vol. V. p. 227), his
renewed application can have had but small success.

End of Volume V





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