Qass JJJi JtAa Book_^£jta COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT OLIVER CROMWELL. {After C. A. Waltner's etching, published in London, 1881.) OLIVER CROMWELL BY GEORGE H. CLARK, D. D. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM OLD PAINTINGS AND PRINTS It is the property of the hero, in every time, in every place, in every situation, that he comes back to reality ; that he stands upon things, and not shows of things.— Carlyle. BOSTON D. LOTHROP COMPANY 1893 /tfins/y Copyright, 1893, BY D. Lothrop Company. (A U rights reserved) The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe, Is never swell'd too high, nor sunk too low; Stands, like its origin above the skies, Ever the same great self, sedately wise ; Collected and prepared in every stage To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage. Henley. Unknown to Cromwell as to me, Was Cromwell's measure or degree. He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs, With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares, Till late he learned, through doubt and fear, Broad England harbored not his peer. Emerson. PREFACE. If the historians, poets, novelists, biographers, essayists, reviewers and writers of school histories who wrote adversely to Oliver Cromwell between the years 1660 and 1860 were alive, the largest room in the British Museum Library would not hold them. For those who, between the years named, did partial justice to Oliver's memory a small alcove would suffice. In that alcove would be writers like Nathan Ben Saddi, who suggests that the Protector was both a "righteous man" and a "rogue;" and Smollet, who says that he was a " compound of villainy and virtue." Within those two hundred years Macaulay, with one ex- ception, was the only great writer who justly measured and fairly described the Protector. The exception was Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle, by five years of patient and impatient toil, has made it possible for such books as the present one to be written ; and yet, while making much use of the " Letters and Speeches," I have made but little use of the elucidations of this great biographer. In the library of Trinity College, Hartford, is a PREFACE. remarkable collection of old folios relating to Eng- land's civil wars, in which may be found the Clar- endon "Letters," the Clarendon "State Papers," the Thurloe " State Papers," Dugdale, Rushworth, Nal- son, etc. These six works contain a large part of the material from which the histories of the Com- monwealth and the Protectorate have been made. It is noteworthy that within the twenty thousand folio pages of these volumes there is not to be found one charge adverse to Cromwell which is supported by credible evidence. The vilification of the Protector, with the exception of a few allega- tions, the most important of which are refuted in the following pages, is limited to the nicknames with which he was branded : such names as " Catiline," " Tiberius," " Nero," " Domitian," " Devil," etc. It was natural that royalists who had been ex- cluded from English politics for many years, and who had been in exile and in poverty, should re- sort to calumny after Oliver was dead ; but it is strange that with a few false statements and the use of opprobrious titles, they should have suc- ceeded in making the greatest and the purest ruler of his country the most infamous of all on the pages of modern history. With the help, however, of David Hume they have done so. It is to be remarked that the only documents throwing light on Cromwell were published, or were in manuscript, prior to the year 1700. Parts of this old material, including Pepys's Diary, Mrs. Hutchinson's "Memoirs," and most of the "Letters PREFACE. and Speeches," are recent acquisitions ; but all writings of authority relating to the Protector were either in print or in manuscript by the year 1698, when Ludlow's " Memoirs " were published. Those who wrote after that date simply gave their opinions based on what they had read. This remark applies to all historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It should also be remembered that outside of newspapers and pamphlets published during the life- time of Cromwell, the poetry of a few writers, the praise of Maidstone and of Milton, there was almost nothing produced for half a century that was not condemnatory. After the restoration of Charles II. the name and memory of the Protector rested chiefly on the attestations of royalist enemies ; but not wholly, for two or three Republicans, in- cited by military or political disappointment, made the charge of duplicity. Cromwell's best-known title, hypoerite, was so stamped on him, and so embodied in all kinds of English literature, that it was almost universally believed to be a just stigma, until the " Letters and Speeches " were produced by Carlyle in the year 1846. Since that date the real Cromwell, wise, true, pure, noble, has been recognized, and books wholly favorable to him have been written ; but to a large minority, if not to the majority of readers, he is still the "bad man," the "artful politician " and the " atrocious conspirator " de- picted by Clarendon and other historians. PREFACE. "I hate Cromwell," said a friend to me. "Have you ever read his speeches and letters?" I asked. "No, I wish to hate him." To the present writer, Oliver is the most interest- ing man who has ever had connection with the English Government ; more competent judges have pronounced him the ablest rider who has governed England. My thanks are due to the Eev. Edward E. Hale, D. D. ; to Mr. Frank B. Gay, of the Watkinson Library, Hartford ; to Charles J. Hoadley, LL. I). State Librarian of Connecticut ; to the Rev. Samuel Hart, D. D., Professor in Trinity College ; to the Eev. George Williamson Smith, President of Trin- ity College; to my brother, the Et. Eev. Thomas M. Clark, Bishop of Ehode Island, for courtesies rendered, and to the Et. Eev. Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, who has kindly allowed pictures from his collection to be reproduced in this book. George H. Clark. Hartford, Conn., April 29, 1892. ACKNOWLEDGMENT. The author and publishers desire to express their thanks to the following friends who have loaned valua- ble paintings and prints for reproduction in this book: Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. D. D., Boston Public Library, Harvard College, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, 1). I).. Mr. Philip L. Hale, and Mr. Justin Winsor, who have all helped forward most cordially the illustrations in this volume. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. Misapprehension of Cromwell's character. — True esti- mate of the man. — Walter Scott's picture of him in " Woodstock." — Disclosures of Pepys's Diary. — Dr. Bates on the " Late Troubles in England." — Silence of the Puritans in the reign of William III. — Inscrip- tion in Westminster Abbey suppressed. — John Banks's book in 1739. — James Heath's " Fiagellum." — Wal- ler, Dryden and South's change of base. — John Cleave- land's verses and subsequent career. — Cowley's ghostly visions. — Jeffrey's review in 1S0S. — Ma- caulay's boyish scrawls. — Mrs. Hutchinson's " Me- moirs." — Ludlow's attack. — Hume's misrepresenta- tions. — Carlyle's discovery of letters and speeches. — Guizot's view of Cromwell. — Change of public opin- ion. — Service appended to the English Prayer Book in 1S37. — Recently expunged .... CHAPTER II. THOMAS CARLYLE. Carlyle's rectification of the popular sentiment. — Froude's testimony. — Carlyle's fresh material and CONTENTS. change of design. — Emerson's discovery of Carlyle. — Taine's opinion of Cromwell. — Seventeenth century Puritans as usually depicted. — No faithful pictures of the royalists. — Lord Thurlow's remarkable state- ment 30 CHAPTER III. EARLY LIFE. Oliver's boyhood. — Early offense and church discipline. — His family not obscure. — King James visits his godfather. — Oliver's father and mother. — His home training. — Style of talk. — Dr. Peard's influence. — Marriages in the family. — Absurd stories of " Carrion Heath." — Education. — Sports. — His uncle's sumptu- ous house. — Funeral of his grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell. — Second visit of James I. — Knights cre- ated. — Great display — The host impoverished by the king's visit. — The brewery business. — Oliver's alienation from his uncle. — Return from Cambridge after his father's death. — Royalist slanders. — Studies law in London. — Marriage. — Return to farmer's life in Huntingdon. 41 CHAPTER IV. FARMER. Twenty years of farming life. — Influences of the re- gion and associates. — Alva's butcheries. — Refugees change the style of agriculture and other industries. — Association with Dutch settlers. — The friend of the poor. — A tolerably successful farmer. — Nicknamed " Lord of the Fens." — Loses his temper. — Habits of life. — Ambition not yet kindled. — Sir John Elliot's CONTENTS. death in the Tower. — Cromwell a silent member of the Parliament of 1628. —Eleven years to reflect upon what he heard there. — Reappears in the Parliament of 1640. — Removal to Ely. — Uugdale's story. — Cromwell's letter to Mrs. St. John. — Carlyle's com- ments 60 CHAPTER V. WARRIOR. The soldier as distinct from the statesman. — Real causes of the civil war. — No serious opposition under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. —The Puritans in 1581.— Bill for a " Fast in the House," and " Sermons. " — Froude's view as to the saving of the Church. — The day of vengeance. — Cromwell silent as yet. — Not prominent till he became a recruiting officer. — ^Gradual rise of the rebellion. — A war for prerogative. — The crisis pre- cipitated. — Rally of the leaders. — Cromwell's ap- pearance in the Commons. — Seizes a magazine. — Made captain of "Troup 67." — Enters upon his he- roic career at the age of forty-three. — Edgehill battle. — Reorganization of the army. — Series of successes. — Elevation in military rank. — Narrow escape from death. — Marston Moor. — Battle of Newbury. — General in command charged with weakness. — " Self Denying Ordinance" and " New Model." — Cromwell not to be dispensed with. — Encounter at Naseby. — Cromwell free from limitations. — End of the first civil war. — Cromwell and the Scotch army. — Great Preston victory. — The Irish war. — Apology for Cromwell's severity. — Contest with the Scotch Pres- byterians. — Fairfax declines to lead the army. — Cromwell made commander-in-chief. — Battle of Dun- bar. — Letter to his wife. — Battle of Worcester. — Cromwell's last battle in the field yS CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Parliament of 1628. — Cromwell's speech. — Parliament ends and he goes back to his farm. — Sent to the Par- liament of 1640 by the town of Cambridge. — The " Bishop's War." — Forced loans. — Scots and English not disposed to fight. — The Long Parliament. — Sent again by the town of Cambridge. — A member till its close in 1653. — Member of many committees. — Op- position to the Episcopal Church. — Archbishop Laud. — Beverning's letter to the States General. — Lon- doners petition for the restoration of the king. — Crom- well between 1646 and 1649. — Watching the course of events. — Negotiates with the king and gives him good advice. — The king plays a game of his own. — Es- capes to the Isle of Wight. — Cromwell clings to the hope of a compromise. — Proofs of his want of ambi- tion. — The Garter offered to him. — Danger of losing everything. — The one personal question in 1648. — Prayer meeting in Windsor Castle. — Polity of the Puritans. — Cromwell as a regicide. — England de- clared a Commonwealth. — Cromwell named Pro- tector. — Returns to London. — Grand reception. — Plampton Court assigned as his residence. — Com- ments of Frederick Harrison. — Parliament tries to perpetuate itself. — Cromwell breaks up " The Rump " and sends the members home. — Things go on with a Constable at the head of affairs. — The new Parlia- ment attempts many things and fails. — Cromwell be- comes Usurper as a matter of necessity. — Plots against his life. — Protectorate Parliament called in 1654. — He takes strong ground. — Meanwhile he is engaged in getting up a navy. — Parliament ends with Cromwell's sending the members home. — Another CONTENTS. Parliament in 1656. — His fifth speech. — The king- ship offered him. — Great spectacle at Whitehall. — Title of king declined. — Admiral Blake's achieve- ments on the sea. — General recognition of Cromwell's ascendancy. — Cardinal Mazarin's attentions. — Order issued in the first year of Victoria's reign for a new ser- vice in the Book of Common Prayer. — Afterward rescinded by Act of Parliament- — Cromwell and Wil- liam III. the men who deserve, thanks and praise . 107 CHAPTER VII. FOREIGN POLICY. Position of England under Cromwell. — Sudden recog- nition by the great European powers. — Proposed alli- ance on the part of Spain and France. — Cardinal Mazarin's deference. — Cromwell's assertion of dignity in foreign courts. — The lame ambassador from the States General. — Lords of His Imperial Majesty of Russia must take off their hats. — The Czar gives a dinner to Prideaux. — Portugal, Tuscany, Venice, Genoa, Tunis and Algiers pay homage. — Great ser- vices of Blake and Thurloe, one at sea and the other on land. — John Thurloe's volumes of " State Papers." — Walter Scott's estimate of those papers in 1S31. — Cromwell's career for the commercial and material in- terests of England. — The great protector of Protest- antism. — Treaties of peace with Denmark, Sweden and Holland. — Admiral Blake's wonderful career. — Atrocities of the Duke of Savoy stopped. — Inter- ference in behalf of the Huguenots at Nismes. — Wm. Lockhart's treaty with Louis. — While England rejoices over the acquisition of Dunkirk, Cromwell is at his daughter's bedside. — Effort to unite Protestant Europe. — The only English Protector the N. E. colonies ever CONTENTS. had. — Scheme to remove the colonists to a more con- genial clime. — The year 1S99, should be recognized by Massachsuetts and Connecticut . . . . 157 CHAPTER VIII. LATER DOMESTIC LIFE. The family. — Carlyle's opinion of Richard, the elder son. — Cromwell always busy. — Life at Whitehall. — Dinner given to the Dutch ambassadors. — Singing of metrical Psalms. — Scene at Whitehall when peace was proclaimed. — A plot discovered to kill Cromwell. — Contrast between Whitehall and other European courts. — Saintliness of Cromwell's life. — His chari- ties. — His library. — Kindness to the medalist. — Dinner of clergymen at Whitehall. — Great time at Whitehall. — Interview with banished Jews. — Slips some of them into London. — Ludlow at Whitehall. — Cromwell's domestic life disturbed. — Inauguration as Protector. — Plot of the royalists. — The Governor of the Tower marches with artillery into the city. — Victory follows victory. — The Puritan stands front to the world. — Domestic afflictions. — Death . . 1S3 CHAPTER IX. CROMWELL LETTERS. Letter to Mr. Downhall and Carlyle's comments. — Dr. Wells. — Mr. Benson.— Letter to Mrs. St. John, 1638. — Letters to his son-in-law. — Letter to his wife. — Refutation of the charge of hypocrisy. — Letter to his wife after the battle of Dunbar. — The war letters. — Letters of comfort and conferring honors. — Revela- tions made by his correspondence. — Letter of explan- ation to Anthony Hungerford, Esq. — Correspondence CONTENTS. as to his son's marriage. — Remarkable letter to Mr. Mayor, 1650. — The government in Ireland. — The Oli- ver Cromwell medal. —Plea for the artist. — Cardinal Mazarin. — Breaking up of the Long Parliament and calling of the Little Parliament.— His modest speech.— Wishes to retire.— Policy asjProtector— Toleration.— Letters to Am. Colonies.— Proposals to remove the col- onists from N. E. — Eliot Warburton's conjecture . 208 CHAPTER X. CHARACTER. Only positive evidence adverse to Cromwell's character. — Groundless charges. — Brought up a Low Church- ma,-,. —Laud's appointment as Archdeacon of Hun- tingdon. — Cromwell defamed. — Testimonials in his f aV or. — John Banks's book. —John Maidstone's letter to Governor Winthrop. — Rev. Mr. Hooke's letter. — Milton's testimony. —Gardiner's History. — Strong verdict for Cromwell. — Taine as contrasted with Guizot. — Ruckle's opinion. —Cromwell's goodness. — Benevolence. — Tenderness. — Sense of justice. — Righteous anger. — Richard Garnett's words. — Fred- erick Harrison's summary. — Dean Stanley's testi- mony. —Bishop Burnet's estimate. — Thurloe's reply to Charles II.— What Lord Clarendon said of Mont- rose. — Macaulay the champion of the Protector. — Indifference to his literary reputation. — Religion of Charles II. and of Cromwell. —The Boston Adver- tiser of 1846. —Slanders connected with the death of Charles. — Article in the last Encyclopaedia Britan- n ica. — Justice beginning to be done to Cromwell's memory. —Carlvle's book not likely to be generally rea d. — New materials. — Call for a new life of Cromwell. —Summing up of his character . . 235 OLIVER CROMWELL. CHAPTER I. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. I purpose to tell, iii a plain and simple way, the story of a hero who was neglected by the Puri- tans and defamed by royalists from the time of the restoration of Charles II. down to near the present age. The neglect on the Puritans' part is explained by history ; the malignity and false- hoods of writers devoted to the Stuarts requires no explanation. For nearly thirty years, from 1660 to 1688, no one in England dared to pub- lish a history of the Protectorate ; and after William III. came to the throne, though danger of imprisonment and death for a true life of the Protector no longer threatened, there was not a writer — Milton and nearly all those who had 1 25 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. known Oliver being dead — who cared to face the odium which was sure to follow a eulogy. Thurloe, one of the ablest ministers of the seventeenth century, had hidden in the garret above his rooms in Lincoln's Inn that vast col- lection of papers now preserved in more than six thousand folio pages ; a mine from which all late historians of England's Civil War have taken materials for their books. Forty years after Oliver's death a writer whose name is un- known, ventured to falsify Ludlow's fabrications ; but we now search in vain for any book written in England within half a century of the Protec- tor's death in praise of him. And through the seventeenth century and for forty-five years of the present century not a book was published which did justice to Cromwell. For nearly two hundred years he was the sport and derision of historians, poets and novelists ; sometimes de- picted in an elaborate, glaring picture, like that in Walter Scott's " Woodstock ; " sometimes branded with infamy in a single line, like that in Gray's "Elegy." His letters, with a few excep- tions, were not printed ; and his speeches, full of thought, lay dormant through all that time. Not a man or woman in England or in this country read or could read them. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 3 The only man who during the long reign of Charles II. wrote favorably about Oliver was Pepys. Mr. Pepys was a man who was willing to sacrifice himself, both under the Protector and under the king. He was an officer in the Naval Department, and lived in London. He knew Oliver, and he often met Charles; met him on business, and in the parks, and in White- hall Palace. Mr. Pepys kept a diary. He wrote under a cipher which no one could read but himself. After his interviews with the king, he would go home and make pictures of him, and, for contrast, pictures of Oliver. If Charles could have got sight of Mr. Pepys's diary, and have found an interpreter of it in the year 1667, Mr. Pepys would not only have lost his place in the navy office, but he would have walked the streets of London without his ears, which would have been to him a great calamity. But Charles did not get hold of the diary. Mr. Pepys kept it concealed till his death. It then got, with Mr. Pepys's books, into Magdalene College library, Cambridge, and there it lay unread till about the year 1825. How strange that the only good words written about Oliver during a period of twenty-five years, should have come to the light in this present century. 4 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. Iii one passage Mr. Pepys contrasts the feeble administration of the king with the strong ad- ministration of the Protector. "It is strange," he writes, " how everybody do nowadays reflect upon Oliver, and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbor princes fear him ; while here, a man come in with all the love and prayers and good liking of his people, hath lost all so soon, that it is a miracle what way a man could devise to lose so much in so little time." During the reign of James II. one would hardly have dared to praise Oliver even under a cipher. Doctor George Bates, physician to Charles II., published, in 1685, a book on " The Late Troubles in England." This book is now in the library of Trinity College, Hartford. Carlyle does not refer to it, and probably never saw it. Had he seen it he would have given Bates the same sort of immortality that he has given " Carrion Heath," the author of " Flagellum." The loyalty of Doctor Bates to the Stuarts is clearly indicated in his book. He speaks of the Star Chamber Court, and the Court of High Com- mission as " shining jewels in the imperial crown," and he says that those who in the time of Charles I. saw things which needed to be DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 5 amended in the government, could see "joynts in a bull rush." After alluding to this king- as one who combined in his character the pa- tience of Job, the piety of David, and the wisdom of Solomon, he became really poetical in the royal cause. He says he will "hoist sail " and " launch out into the ocean of Charles's virtues." He then changes his figure and says that he will "by a few, and those clouded beams " give " what sight he can of that Sun," " the great defender of the laws." He calls Cromwell a " Blade," and a " great master in lvypocrisy and dissimula- tion." He becomes responsible for the most as- tounding, incredible lie ever told by a historian, and he gives the lie on the authority of eye-wit- nesses, who told him of the deed. He says that Cromwell " opened the coffin " which con- tained the dead king, and, "with his ringers severed the head from the body ; " evidently sup- posing that his readers would believe such a sur- gical operation possible. He gives particulars of the condition of Cromwell's body after death, which are too disgusting to be repeated. But he corrects one error, for which he should have full credit. He says that Oliver "yielded up the ghost about three of the clock in the afternoon ; not (as was commonly reported) carried away 6 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. by the Devil, at midnight, but in clear daylight." He speaks of the " mercenary pen of the son of a certain scrivener, one Milton, a man of " livid and malicious wit," "employed to publish a de- fense of the king's murder." Carrion Heath and Buzzard Bates, the earliest literary champions of the Stuarts, whose books were once the delight of royalists, who gave in- spiration to later historians, and gave to English history a color and gloss which lasted for two centuries, and which, but for such investigations as Macaulay's and Carlyle's, would have lasted for two centuries more, are now, as authorities, happily extinct. In their day they were cele- brated, particularly the doctor, who was " a learned and eminent physician of London," who had " an easy access to most of the grandees," and whose book, when " in writing," was looked over by persons high in position. But after all, every- thing was not bright with Doctor Bates. In an " epilogue," he says that " there is an insolent defamer, who pretends I have fathered another man's work." Poor doctor, accused of literary theft ! charged with plagiarism ! and such plagi- arism ! Peace to his ashes. After William III. came to the throne, there was no danger of a Puritan's losing his life or DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 7 liberty for anything he might publish in favor of the Protector ; but it required an amount of moral courage to defend him which no one seems to have possessed. And then it must be re- membered that thirty years and more had passed since Oliver's death. A great deal is forgotten in that length of time. Those who knew him were nearly all in their graves. The materials for a history, or even of a biography, were limited ; but doubtless the strong prejudice against the Commonwealth, and against Oliver, prevented any attempt to publish eulogies. To indicate the prevailing feeling, a fact may be given. In the year 1710, an engraver was at work in West- minster Abbey on a Latin inscription to the memory of the poet John Phillips. He came to the words " Uni Jfiltono Secundus" — next to Milton. The Dean of the Abbey stopped the engraver. That hallowed building must not be desecrated even by the name of Milton on an- other man's monument. John Phillips, with his poetry, must go down to posterity without it. Four years later, however, Addison meanwhile having put into the " Spectator " some papers about John Milton and his "Paradise Lost," it was decided by another Dean (Atterbury, who though a loyalist seems to have had sense) that it 8 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. would do no harm to the Abbey to have Milton's name on John Phillips's monument. Things sometimes go strangely in this world. Phillips the poet, had a claim on the Abbey, for he had once made an attack on Oliver in a " Satyr against Hypocrites ; " but he was Milton's nephew, and in early life had written a defense of his uncle, whom Wood calls a "villanous leading incendiary." The canons and deans of Westminster, no doubt, talked a good deal over that "Uni Miltono Secundus" the relatives and friends of the poet, no doubt, told them that they had better let the engraver insert the words into the epitaph, and so John Phillips survives in the memory of men. Carlyle is usually rather limited in his praises of authors, and he is particularly so touching those who, before himself, wrote about Oliver ; but he might have said a kind word for John Banks who, in the year 1739, published a book, in the preface of which he asks, " whether a character, so much declaimed against, might at the distance of almost a hundred years be suffered to stand the test of a fair examination ? " It needed courage then even to attempt to subject the Protector to a "fair examination," and Banks should have some credit for his book. And DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 9 Carlyle, too, might have spared Mark Noble, who put out his biography in 1787, the charge of ''extreme imbecility," and "a judgment for the most part dead asleep ; " for Noble, as his preface indicates, had at least discovered what other writers have but lately learned ; that Crom- well " was the greatest man that had owed his existence to England." The chief fountain of all the foolish lies that have been circulated about Oliver is the mournful, brown little book called " Flagellum " (a lash, whip, scourge), or the " Life and Death of Oliver Cromwell, the late Usurper," by James Heath. The book had on its title page a picture of the Protector with a halter about his neck. Five editions were published between 1663 and 1679 ; but now the book is not to be found in our libra- ries. It was not among the books which Carlyle bequeathed to Harvard University, and probably he used the copy which has been preserved in the British Museum Library. For nearly a hun- dred years royalist readers found consolation in "Flagellum ; " but when Hume appeared and put into eloquent language the fabrications which it contained, and added to them, Heath passed into oblivion. There were writers of Oliver's day who praised 10 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. him while he was living, or soon after his death, who afterward defamed him, and among those writers were Waller, Dryden and South. Wal- ler, in the year 1643, was banished from England for engaging in a plot which cost some men their lives. Ten years later, when Cromwell was in power, he kindly permitted him to return from exile, and he then presented to the Protector, says George Craik, " one of the most graceful pieces of adulation ever offered by poetry to power ; " but when Charles II. returned Waller forgot or overlooked the generosity of Cromwell, and welcomed the king to his father's throne. The poem inspired by the restoration, however, was inferior to that which his release from banish- ment called forth ; and it is related that Charles told the poet that his panegyric was not so good as Cromwell's ; to which Waller replied that poets succeeded better in fiction than in writing truth. Dryden, when Richard became Protector, wrote a long poem on Cromwell, in which are found the following lines : " His grandeur he derived from heaven alone, For he was great ere fortune made him so, And wars, that rise like mists against the sun, DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 11 " His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, His name, a great example, stands to show How strangely high endeavors may be blessed When piety and valor jointly go." Dryden's changes and apostacies came easily and naturally to him, we believe ; but these verses were probably a true expression of his emotions at the time when he wrote them, soon after the death of the Protector. The lines are not mere poetry. Oliver was by nature a grand man. He was great before success made him appear so. Wars did not make him greater grow, only made him seem greater to the common eye ; and in spite of the stigmas cast upon it, his name a great ex- ample stands, and will stand, to show how high endeavors may be blessed. England is reaping to-day fruits from the seed which he sowed. "We in this country are reaping blessings from the changes which he and the Long Parliament secured. Dryden greeted Charles on his return with his "Astraea Redux ;" but during the reign of this king he wrote, he says, only one play for himself ; all the rest, nearly thirty in number, were, he admits, " sacrifices to the vitiated taste of tlie 12 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. Robert South, a student at Oxford, wrote a eulogistic poem on Oliver telling him that he "only could the swelling waves restrain," and lay " fetters on the conquered main ; " but when South had become Doctor South, chaplain to royalty, he drew in a sermon a picture of Oliver which delighted the king and his court. " Who," he said, "that had beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell first entering the Parliament House, with a threadbare, torn coat, and a greasy hat (and perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that in course of so few years he should, by the murder of one king and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested with royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king but the changing of his hat into a crown." We now come to John Cleaveland, who for many years was supposed to be greatest among living English poets, and who was the "first champion of the royal cause who wrote in Eng- lish verse." From the beginning of the war to the end he was a royalist. Next to Cowley he claims our sympathy, and he commands our respect. His picture is not flattering, but it was honestly drawn. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 13 " What's a Protector? He's a stately thing That apes it in the non-age of a king ; A tragic actor, Caesar in a clown, He's a brass farthing, stamped with a crown! " In fine, he's one we must Protector call, From whom the King of kings protect us all." Cleaveland was active in the royal cause in 1655, and he found himself in prison. A prisoner, he appealed directly to Oliver. He wrote a letter to him, and wrote it in a spirit that would commend itself to a large-minded and generous-hearted man. There was no apology in the letter. It bore no resemblance to letters which many Englishmen, including Lord Bacon, had written to get themselves out of trouble. " For the service of his majesty," he said, " if it be objected, I am so far from excusing it that I am ready to allege it in my vindication. I cannot conceit that my fidelity to my Prince should taint me in your opinion; I should rather expect it should recommend me to your favor. The truth is, I am not qualified enough to serve him ; all I could do was to bear a part in his sufferings, and to give myself to be crushed by his fall." Had Cromwell possessed the spirit of not a few Euro- pean rulers the letter would have been unheeded, or would have led to a closer oversight of the 14 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. prisoner, but lie had nothing little in his nature. The tone of the letter must have touched him — the poet had his freedom. Lord Clarendon, in his " History of the Rebel- lion," admits that the Protector had courage, in- dustry, judgment and a wonderful understand- ing ; but he ends his eulogy thus : " He had all the wickedness against which damnation is de- nounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared," . . . and, " he will be looked on by posterity as a brave, bad man." Abraham Cowley's vision touching Oliver is a remarkable one. A kind of governing demon of the Protector appears first to the poet, and then Cromwell himself, or rather his ghost, appears. In the dialogue which ensues, the demon ad- vances arguments which Cowley finds it difficult to answer ; which he cannot successfully answer. " What more extraordinary," says the demon, " than that a person of mean birth, no eminent qualities of body or mind, should succeed in the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solid monarchies u]^on earth," ..." put his prince and master to an open and infamous death, banish that numerous and strongly allied family ; trample upon Parliament as he pleased, spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 15 them ; oppress his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice ; serve all parties patiently for a while, and command them victori- ously at last ; be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; call Parliaments with a word of his pen, scatter them with the breath of his month ; have the estates and lives of three king- doms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father ; be as noble and liberal in the spending of them (the estates), and be- queath all this with one word to his posterity ; to die with peace at home and triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings with more than royal solemnity, and to leave a name behind him not to be extinguished with the whole world;" This demon was not far amiss in parts of his picture. But now Cowley himself encounters Oliver ; but Oliver, the poet admits, takes what he says coolly, and even mirthfully. The poet sees " a figure taller than a giant, the body naked, the battle of Naseby painted on the breast, the eyes like burning brass, three crowns of red-hot metal on the head, a bloody sword in one hand ; in the other hand acts, ordinances, protestations, cove- nants, enGfao-ements, declarations, remonstrances." 16 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. Cowley was not at all daunted, he tells us, by this apparition. He faces the figure bravely, and calls out to it, " What art thou ? " Oliver, being now a spirit, answers in a boastful tone, unusual with him when on earth. He answers, " I am called the Northwest Principality, His Highness, the Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland." The poet and this monstrous creation of his fancy hold further intercourse ; and then Cowley says : " Here I stopped, and my pretended Protector, who I expected would have been very angry, fell a-laughing at the sim- plicity of my discourse." No wonder that Oliver thought that Cowley had made a ridiculous pict- ure, with the red-hot crowns, brass eyes and Naseby battle painted on the breast, and laughed at the poet's simplicity ; the wonder is that Cowley should have printed such a dream. Kind ami- able poet ! we wish you had been under the Pro- tector's wing, as Milton was ; but fate called you to kiss the hand of the meanest of the Stuarts. In the year 1808, six years after the first num- ber of the " Edinburgh Review " came out, Francis Jeffrey, its chief editor, expressed his doubt whether any historian " had given a more just or satisfactory account of this extraordinary person- age, Oliver Cromwell, than Mrs. Hutchinson, DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 17 whose husband, the Colonel, had « very early dis- covered to possess the profonndest duplicity.' M When he wrote this passage, Jeffrey knew no more of Cromwell than the precocious little Macaulay, then eight years old, who, in 1807, wrote in his epitome of history that Oliver " was an unjust and wicked man." This "boyish scrawl," says Trevelyan, may still be read ; the boy lived to throw light on the Commonwealth and on Cromwell. Two things Mrs. Hutchinson would have left out of her " Memoirs," had she been a shrewd woman. She would have omitted the fact that General Cromwell did not estimate highly the soldierly qualities of her husband. That was a discovery made by Colonel Hutchinson before his wife heard of Oliver's " duplicity." It hurt Mrs. Hutchinson's feelings to think that the general of the English army did not appreciate Colonel Hutchinson as an officer. She blurts out her feelings about this matter in her " Memoirs ; " she had better have written nothing about them if she expected readers to believe her aspersions on ,01iver and his family. But she had another and deeper grievance, which shall be told in her own words. "The Protector finding him (Col. H.) too 18 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. constant to be wrought upon to serve his tyranny, bad resolved to secure his person, lest he should head the people, who now grew very weary of his bondage. But though it was certainly confirmed to the Colonel, how much he was afraid of his honesty and freedom, and that he was resolved not to let him longer be at liberty, yet, before his guards apprehend the Colonel, death impris- oned himself, and confined all his vast ambition and all his cruel designs into the narrow compass of a grave." The allusion in this passage to Oliver's resolu- tion to secure the person of Colonel Hutchinson and deprive him of his liberty, lest he should "head the people and attack the government," throws light on the good wife's appreciation of her husband's executive and military abilities ; it would be interesting to know if she reflected at all on the probable result of a conflict between the Colonel at the head of " the people," and Oliver commanding the Ironsides. Mrs. Hutchinson's "Memoirs," instead of being " satisfactory " touching Jeffrey's k - extraordi- nary personage" of •• the profoundest duplicity," are wholly unworthy of notice. They contain the ebullitions of a woman who had within her insurmountable prejudices, founded on a con vie- DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 19 tion that her husband had not been rightly valued as an army officer ; they contain the unjust cen- sures of a writer whose virulence reached not only the immediate object of her aversion, the Protector, but his wife and children, and the court at Whitehall, which is described as " full of sin and vanity." She tells, however, one thing which is either favorable for Oliver, or damaging to the Puritan clergy : " Almost all the ministers everywhere," she informs us, " fell in and courted this beast." Mrs. Hutchinson and Ludlow have done more to create wrong impressions about Oliver than all other Puritan writers. Indeed, we are not aware that any old books, written by Puritans decidedly adverse to the Protector, are in exist- ence, though scattered passages left by his Pres- byterian, Anabaptist and other opposers can be found. It has seemed to the writer remarkable that so few of his contemporaries, great men, members of Parliament, army officers, came into collision with him ; that so few have left records of their opposition to him. - Of those who openly opposed the Protector and the Protectorate, Ludlow is the most con- spicuous. He was twenty years younger than Oliver. Bishop Warburton says that one may 20 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. judge of the spirit in which his "Memoirs " were written by his character, which was that of " a furious, mad, but apparently honest Republican and Independent." He was an Oxford graduate, a Temple Bar man, an army officer, one of the six men who arranged Pride's Purge, which was as much a political crime as the disruption of the " Rump," one of the king's judges and a signer of his death warrant. He was an ambi- tious and an able man. Cromwell had proved himself the abler soldier and the more successful politician. Ludlow be- came his enemy and made no secret of his position. He went to Whitehall soon after Oliver was made Protector, had an interview, avowed his opposition to the government, but promised to be peaceable so long as he saw no chance of overthrowing it. He asked to be per- mitted to retire to his home in Essex, and the request was granted. At Essex, Cromwell kept his eye upon him, and, even on his death-bed, on August 30, 1658, hearing that Ludlow was on his way to London, the Protector sent Fleet- wood to ask what his purpose was in leaving Essex. Ludlow replied that he was going to see his sick mother-in-law. A tempest that day was raging over England ; it stopped Ludlow's DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 21 coach at Epping ; it was typical of a worse storm soon to come. The state of mind in which the famous " Mem- oirs " were written can be inferred from these facts. Ludlow thought he discovered the ambition of Oliver for a crown as far back as the battle of Worcester, when the general, in his letter to Parliament, spoke of the success as a " crowning mercy." Oliver was not in the habit of punning, and had he been, he would have had sense enough to know that a play on words sent in an official letter to the Parliament, would not conduce to his elevation to the throne. A momentary imbecility combined with jeal- ousy can only account for Ludlow's imputation. And when the time arrives to save the nation from anarchy, " the perfidious Cromwell," says the embittered, malignant author, " forgetting his solemn promises, takes off his mask, resolves to sacrifice all victories to his pride and ambition, under the color of taking upon him the office, as it were, of a high Constable in order to keep the peace of the nation, and to restrain men from cutting each other's throats." No words could better indicate Oliver's position than those with which this sentence ends. Oliver's letters, his 22 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 5] aches and his actions. Milton's, Maidstone's and others' testimony, will throw light on this M perfidious " Protector before our book is done. Who would not be kind to Ludlow's memory, and remember what he endured when England no longer had a Constable ? Thirty-three years of banishment ! That was the penalty which he paid for his work in saving his country from Stuart tyranny. The present writer little thought, when standing, twenty years and more ago. at the exile's grave in Vevay, that the duty would ever fall to him. in vindication of Cromwell, to write a line adverse to Edmund Ludlow, the great Republican, who failed to see that in his time in England one man •• alone remained to conduct the government and to save the country." ssing down half a century we come to Hume. Touching Oliver. Hume venger. He worked in royalist sewers, dragged out the Protector uncleaned, put him in a historical picture-gallery between the Stuarts, and there he has been for a century and a half : the sight of him a delight to royalists, but an offense to Pur- itan England and to not a few Americans. Lt-t us look at Hume's statements, and remember that for rive or six generations he was pre-eminent for defaming- Cromwell. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 23 Hume tells his readers that Oliver was " an art- ful politician," " an atrocious conspirator," " a fanatical hypocrite," " a barbarian," and " a crim- inal, whose atrocious violation of sacred duty had, from every tribunal, human and divine, merited the severest vengeance." These amenities will recall to the reader two sewers, Clarendon and Cleaveland ; and, doubt- less, " Carrion Heath," from his " Flagellum," furnished the historian with nouns and adjectives ; as to substantiated facts, adverse to Oliver, there are none in these old books, nor in any books published before or since the year of " unspeak- able mercies," 1660. There is but little in the speeches of Cromwell that is obscure or difficult for a modern reader ; and it is unreasonable to suppose that the men of Cromwell's Parliament, many of whom had listened to Eliot and Pym and Wentworth, should listen patiently for two and even three consecutive hours to a man who spoke without "one glimmer of common sense ; " it is incredible that they should propose to make such a man their king. But Hume tells us that Cromwell did speak to his Parliaments " without one glimmer of com- mon sense." He tells us that Cromwell's elocu- tion was " always confused, embarrassed, unin- 24 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. telligible." He tells us that he "spoke in a manner which a peasant of the most ordinary capacity would be ashamed of." Such is Hume's estimate of speeches which are now read by some readers with more intense interest than any other speeches printed in our language, and which have been ranked by Canon Farrar with the speeches of Chatham, Pitt, Fox and Burke. Hume further says, that " a collection of Oliver's speeches, sermons and letters, with a few exceptions, might pass for a great curiosity, and one of the most nonsensical books in the world." The collection of speeches and letters made by Carlyle is, indeed, a curiosity. Hume himself, whom historians now unite in calling untrustworthy ; who painted the Stuarts black on one page, while he wrote on another that they were white ; whose works innumerable readers have devoured, age after age, with the certainty of becoming accurately informed about the past ; whose history has passed through more editions than the writings of any other English historian, perhaps, excepting Gibbon, is now the curiosit}% while Oliver's " Letters and Speeches " are re- garded as permanent additions to history, unsur- passed in value by no writings of past centuries. Met at first by a sale of his history in Eng- DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 25 land of only forty-five volumes within a year, and by cries of reproach and detestation, in which royalists, just recovering from the fear of the return of the Stuarts, largely shared, he be- comes, when all danger of a second battle of Culloden is over, the most popular historian of England ; he revives the old and almost extinct enthusiasm for the banished royal house. Scores of new editions are called for before the century has closed ; millions of people in peaceful homes, which they owed to the Long Parliament and to Cromwell, read and re-read his pages with de- light, and outside of England no history, except- ing that in the Bible, secured so many readers ; but Hume's day as a historian, let us hope, is nearly gone ; he will be read, at no distant time, only for his eloquence. It is not my purpose, within the compass of this book, even to name the English authors who, in describing Oliver's character, have followed in the track of this false historian. A mere cata- logue of the names of those who, after Hume, wrote adversely up to the year 1849, when War- burton published his " Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers," defaming Cromwell in it, would re- quire many pages. But there is one French writer who calls for a brief criticism. 26 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. Guizot has remarked that Cromwell's " relig- ious faith had exercised but little influence over his conduct ; " that " determined to become great, with cynical recklessness he had yielded to the passions of this world." A more unjust state- ment, based necessarily on information derived from royalist writers, and from Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson, does not stain the page of history. Guizot knew almost nothing of Cromwell ; had never read his speeches or his letters ; was igno- rant of his life, except as it had been depicted by enemies, and besides, it is to be remembered that this statesman held opinions about govern- ment which unfitted him to form a correct esti- mate of a man like Cromwell. He failed to see what France needed in the time of Louis Philippe, or, if he saw, failed to use his knowl- edge ; and it was not his place to instruct English- men about the civil wars of the Stuarts, or to tell them that Cromwell aspired to leave his name and race in possession of a throne, but that " his crimes raised up obstacles against him which he could not surmount." The reader must judge for himself, when he comes to the narrative of Oliver's life, about the truth of these aspersions ; but the present writer cannot refrain from commenting on them. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 27 Religious faith had but little influence on his con- duct ! It was the guiding- star of his entire life after he reached manhood. The proof ! His private letters, his deeds of charity and mercy, the testimony of men contemporary with him, whose characters have never been impeached — Maidstone and others. Yielded to the passions of the world with cynical recklessness, in order to become great ! Oliver's only recklessness was shown in meeting dangers in war, and exposing himself, as Constable, to assassins during the Protectorate ; not a line is to be found in his letters, nor a word in his speeches, nor an act in his life, to indicate a desire for position and greatness ; the evidence all points in other direc- tions : to the farm of St. Ives, and to a private, unnoticed life. Aspired to leave his name and race in possession of a throne ! If so, his reti- cence, his complete silence, his neglect to train a son to fill his place when he is gone, are unac- countable. If so, why did he not name his suc- cessor ? It is not proved that voluntarily he even spoke of Richard when near his death ; it is probable, however, that one of his Council named the son, and that he, having no special earthward aspirations at the moment, with feeble breath answered Yes. His crimes raised up 28 DEFAMATORY WRITERS. obstacles against him which he could not sur- mount ! This is nonsense ; a rhetorical nourish. The only obstacle which Oliver Cromwell ever en- countered which he did not surmount, was death. In closing this chapter it is impossible not to recur to the marked and, indeed, wonderful change in the tone of books in regard to Crom- well since the middle of the present century. Guizot, Southey, Walter Scott, John Forster, Eliot Warburton, all eminent writers, wrote adversely about the Protector ; some of them bitterly, virulently ; but since the year 1850, not one eminent man, the present writer thinks, has published a malignant or even defaming book. In 1857, according to usage at the beginning of a new reign, under the order of " J. Russell," minister of Her Majesty, Victoria, a blasphemous service, bearing hard on Oliver, was introduced into the English Prayer Book ; but that service has been expunged by act of Parliament. A tory review, a few years ago, announced that Oli- ver's character was a problem still to be solved ; but no Englishman, inclined to Stuart royalism, since the announcement was made, has, we be- lieve, undertaken to solve it. That problem was forever solved, for the reading public, in the year 1846. DEFAMATORY WRITERS. 29 The only recent publication which we have seen, which has in it the old royalist tone, is an American school history book, published in New York in 1891, which teaches children that Oliver's " perverted ambition . . . prompted him to wade through slaughter to a throne." CHAPTER II. THOMAS CARLYLE. Thomas Carlyle, by collecting and publish- ing, with elucidations, the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, brought into the light a hero who had been regarded for almost two hundred years, by nearly all readers of English histoiy, as a great soldier pretending to piety of which he was destitute ; and who, simply to gratify his personal ambition, aimed to seat himself on the English throne. Even at the present time, nearly fifty years after the publication of Carlyle's book, both in England and in the United States, the great majority of people who have any impression about the Protector, believe him to have been a hypocrite, and a selfish unprincipled usurper. It is seldom that a person can be found here in New England who does not hold the views THOMAS CARLYLE. 31 about Cromwell to which Hume, and writers who have copied Hume, have given currency. There are but few, even among our learned men, who have read Cromwell's letters and speeches. There are many who hate the name of Cromwell. There are some, advanced in age, who do not wish to abandon their life-long prejudices, and who will not seek light on this supreme historical person- age. There are others who have tried to read Carlyle's famous book, but have been repelled by the " dry as dust " and " anti dry as dust " contents of the first chapter, and the preliminary work of the second and third chapters. We ad- vise readers to begin at chapter four. Carlyle's work was not whitewashing, it was simply cleaning ; the kind of work done by re- storers of old pictures, or of old walls, on which, beneath the filth of centuries, are fine frescoes. Mr. John Fiske has written : " We have long had before our minds the colossal figure of Eoman Julius as the foremost man of all this world ; but as the seventeenth century recedes into the past, the figure of English Oliver begins to loom up as even, perhaps, the more colossal." True, and why does that figure begin to loom up now ? Simply because a few scholars like Mr. Fiske have read Carlyle's " Cromwell," and are able to 32 THOMAS CARLYLE. see the man whom no historical scholar saw, or could see, fifty years ago. The calm, cool, judicious Ha 11am, for instance, who was no advocate for political theories, but a judge, and the fittest man of his day to write the " Constitutional History of England," had not a true conception of Oliver, and he does our hero some injustice. This historian, like his distin- guished contemporaries referred to in the preced- ing chapter, lived before the " full recovery of a true human figure of immense historical impor- tance from below two centuries of accumulated slander and misconception." The quotation is from Froude. Carlyle recognized the gradual change in opin- ion which was going on, and he remarks : " In spite of the stupor of histories, it is beautiful once more to see how the memory of Cromwell, in its huge, inarticulate significance, not able to speak a wise word for itself to any one, has, nevertheless, been steadily growing clearer and clearer in the popular English mind ; how from the day when high dignitaries, and pamphleteers of the carrion species did their ever memorable feat at Tyburn, onward to this day, the progress does not stop." But, while this is true, it is em- phatically true that the " Letters and Speeches " THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 with the - Elucidations," have revealed to the world its greatest and its noblest ruler. Macaulay, as already intimated, saw more clearly than any writer of his time what sort of a man Oliver was ; but Macaulay had not the mate- rial to work on which Carlyle. by his patience and industry, secured. Could Macaulay have possessed himself of the letters and speeches, and then put into his plain and glowing language the thoughts which these letters and speeches suggest, the reading public would long ago have worshiped Cromwell's memory. It is harder work to read Carlyle than it is to read Macaulay's smooth sen- tences : but once having read him intelligently, one clings to him, and reads him over and over again. The debt, then, which we owe to Thomas Carlyle is a large one. With the letters, speeches and the elucidations he has made a picture of Oliver which no Stuart loyalist can ever mar or change. The order said to have been given to Lely, '•Paint me as I am," has been faithfully, accu- rately executed; and unless other letters and other speeches of a character wholly different from those now published, shall hereafter appear, the portraiture which he has drawn will stand, with not a blemish, amid the most notable his- toric portraits of modern times. 34 THOMAS CARLYLE. Before deciding on Cromwell for a subject, Carlyle worked on the Commonwealth, and " lost four years of good labor in the business " — " four years of abstruse toil, obscure speculations, futile wrestling and misery." He then burnt a part of his materials, " locked away " the rest, and de- cided to make " Oliver the center of his composi- tion." He seems to have come slowly to the opinion that the Protector was the great and good man whom he represents him to have been. Indeed, from one of the Craigen-puttock papers, it may be inferred that he shared in early life the prevailing opinions on the subject. He says himself that he began " not knowing what he would make of it." He was in " a hideous, enor- mous bog." His " progress is frightful, but his conscience drives him on." After a time he thinks he shall " make something of it in the end," little dreaming that he would produce the most valuable historical book of his century. When he sees " some fruit " of his " unspeakable puddlings and welterings," and possesses himself of the " authentic utterances of the man Oliver, fished up from the foul Lethean quagmires, where they lay buried," he hopes that he shall " get the poor book done, and that it will turn out to have been worth doing." " If I can show Oliver OLIVER CROMWKLL. (From the portrait by Vanilyfo' ) THOMAS CARLYLE. 35 as he is, I shall do a good turn." Such were the records of Carlyle in his diary, at about forty- five years of age, when editors of reviews and booksellers in England were still looking askant at him ; fearing to lose subscribers if they pub- lished his review articles, or fearing to lose money if they published his books. It is to the honor of New England that Emer- son discovered what was in Carlyle at a time when the man " expected nothing from the world but continued indifference ; " and sent him, when almost in the dregs of poverty, three drafts for the "French Revolution," from a Boston publish- ing house, before he had received one pound from London booksellers, for the same. As to his Cromwell, Froude says, " No shadow of a doubt about the genuineness of the portrait can be entertained ; " and he adds, " it is Carlyle's supreme merit that he first understood the speeches made by Cromwell in Parliament, and enabled us to understand them. Printed as they had hitherto been, they could only confirm the im- pression, either that the Protector's mind was hopelessly confused, or that he purposely con- cealed what was in it. Carlyle has shown that they are perfectly genuine speeches, not eloquent, as modern parliamentary speeches are, or aspire 36 THOMAS CARLYLE. to be thought, but the faithful expressions of the most real and determined meaning, about which those who listened to him could have been left in no doubt at all." The greatest man, and the best ruler of the seventeenth century, at last is rescued from the slums of history by the greatest Englishman of the nineteenth century ; or to use the words of Chambers's Encyclopaedia : " To Cartyle has fallen the unspeakable honor of replacing in the Pan- theon of English History the statue of Eng- land's greatest ruler." Cowper's line, "Build him a pedestal, and say, ' Stand there,' " would be no unfit motto for the work which Carlyle has done for the memory of Cromwell. " Let the reader," says H. A. Taine, member of the French Academy, " consider Carlyle's Cromwell, and he will see with what justice, exactness, depth of insight one may discover a soul beneath its actions and works ; how, behind the old general, in place of a vulgar, hypocritical schemer, we recover a man." " One may follow him from his farm and team to the general's tent, and to the Pro- tector's throne ; in his transmutations and de- velopment, in his pricks of conscience and his political conclusions, until the machinery of his mind and actions becomes visible ; and the tragedy, THOMAS CARLYLE. 37 ever changing and renewed, which exercised this great, darkling soul, passes, like one of Shake- speare's, through the soul of the looker-on." Again, says Taine : " We must read this his- tory of Carlyle to understand how far this senti- ment of actuality penetrates him ; with what knowledge it endows him ; how he rectifies dates and texts ; how he verifies traditions and genealo- gies ; how he visits places, examines the trees, looks at the brooks, knows the agriculture, prices the whole domestic and rural economy, all the political and literary circumstances ; with what minuteness, precision and vehemence he recon- structs before his eyes, and before our own, the external picture of objects and affairs, the inter- nal picture of ideas and emotions ; and it is not simply on his part conscience, habit, or prudence, but need and passion." Again we quote from Taine : " Grave consti- tutional histories hang heavy after this compila- tion. The author wished to make us comprehend a soid, the soul of Cromwell, the greatest of the Puritans, their chief, their abstract, their hero and their model. His narrative resembles that of an eye witness." ... u At last we are face to face with Cromwell. We have his words. We can hear his tone of voice ; we see him in 38 THOMAS CARLYLE. his tent, in council, . . . with his face and costume ; every detail, the most minute, is here. Would that all history were like this ; a selection of texts provided with a commentary. Crom- well comes forth, reformed and renewed. We divined pretty well already that he was not a mere man of ambition, a hypocrite ; but we took him for a fanatic and hateful wrangler. We considered these Puritans as gloomy madmen, shallow brains and full of scruples. Let us quit our French and modern ideas and enter into these souls ; we shall find in them something else than hypochondria, namely, a grand sentiment. Am I a just man ? and if God who is perfect justice were to judge me at this moment what sentence would he pass upon me ? Such is the original idea of the Puritans, and through them came the revolution in England. We laugh at a revolution about surplices and chasubles ; there was a sentiment of the divine underneath all these disputes of vestments. Those poor folk, shop-keepers and farmers, believed with all their hearts in a sublime and terrible God, and the manner how to worship him was not a trifling thing for them. This has caused the revolution, and not the Writ of Ship-money, or any other political vexation." THOMAS CARLYLE. 39 111 history, in novels, and in poetry the Puri- tan of the seventeenth century has often been depicted ; his picture, that of the sinister hypo- crite, is distinctly impressed on us ; but of the royalist churchman of the Charles II. type, we have no accurate portrait. The extreme Puritan we know ; but of the extreme political defenders of the church who cared nothing for religion, who were compelled to swear belief to the doc- trines of the church before securing a seat in Parliament, or admission to the court, royalist writers have given us only imperfect pictures. It was the church establishment, and not Chris- tianity, for which these conformists cared. Perhaps Mr. Rees, who was one of a com- mittee who waited on Lord Thurlow, minister of George III., to ask for the repeal of the Corpora- tion and Test Act may give us a correct idea of them: "Gentlemen," said Lord Thurlow, "I am against you, by God. I am for the established church, d — n me. Not that I have any more re- gard for the established church than for any other church, but because it is established. And if you could get your d — d religion established, I'll be for that too." In the time of Charles II., wdien a man could not be a custom-house officer unless he was a 40 THOMAS CARLYLE. churchman, there must have been Thurlows ; but they have not been described, like the Puritans, as unworthy members of society. It is unfair to keep Praise God Barebones in sight, and hide the Thurlows who were conformists. Outside the court, in the country towns and villages, during the seventeenth century, true piety was about equally shared by the Puritans and church- men. The homes of John Howe and George Herbert were not unlike. CHAPTER III. EARLY LIFE. It has been said that for Oliver's boyhood there is " nothing but unlimited conjecture and most dubious legend ; " and Carlyle tells us that the boy " went through the universal destinies which conduct all men from childhood to youth, in a way not particularized by an authentic record." But there is one authentic record which even Carlyle's careful search did not secure. In the parish book which records the baptism of Oliver is also a notice of his having been subjected to some sort of ecclesiastical discipline at the age of seventeen, for an offense which lie had committed. What the offense was is not indicated, but it probably was connected in some way with the church or its services. The date of the record is a little — perhaps a year — before the time when 41 42 EARLY LIFE. Laud was made Archdeacon of Huntingdon, his first promotion ; and it is not unlikely, trained as Oliver had been by his parents and by his schoolmaster, Dr. Beard, a Low Churchman, that he manifested some dislike of changes which he noticed in the manner of conducting the ser- vices, or in the chancel arrangements of the church. Perhaps Oliver had not an appreciating eye for the new ecclesiastical garments which were then coming into fashion, or perhaps he did not like to see the communion table to which his mother had become accustomed changed and made into an altar ; and, boy-like, was a little imprudent in speech or actions. We do not know, and we never shall know, what the trouble was, or what the punishment was ; but the record stands, and has stood for nearly three hundred years, on the parish book, telling that Oliver had done something wrong; and as this is the only indication of the kind connected with his life, the only proof adverse to his good character, it can do his memory no special harm to mention it here. Oliver was born in Huntingdon, a small ham- let about fifteen miles from Cambridge, on the twenty-fifth of April, 1599. The house in which EARLY LIFE. 43 he spent his early days is still standing, but it has been much changed. His family, at the time of his birth, was not an obscure one. His father and three of his uncles had sat in the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth. A royalist uncle, Oliver's godfather, who lived in the great, and even then, historical house, called Hinchinbrook, only half a mile from Oliver's home, was so prominent a man that King James nearly ruined him, finan- cially, by his visits. The Hinchinbrook mansion still remains, and its external appearance is now much as it was three hundred years ago. Besides the uncle, Sir Oliver, the boy had many relatives who were prominent in English society. One of his aunts was Mrs. Hampden, the mother of John Hampden, who was a great man, and at one period of his life the most talked of, and the most revered, of all the men in Eng- land. The social position, then, of Oliver's family was that of the English gentry, between the nobility and the yeomanry ; his relations were people of property, education and good breeding. But "better than all social rank," Oliver's father " is understood to have been a wise, devout, stead- fast and worthy man ; and to have lived a modest and manful life." Even in " Cromwelliana," we read that Mr. Robert Cromwell was " a gentleman 44 EARLY LIFE. who went no less in esteem and reputation than any of his ancestors for his personal worth, until his unfortunate production of his son and heir ; " and of Oliver's mother it is only necessary here to say that she imparted to her son some of her own good qualities, that she deeply loved her son, and that Oliver tenderly watched over her from the time when she became a widow in 1617, till, in 1654, she died in Whitehall Palace at the age of ninety-four. His parents were religious after the Puritan type, and from them he doubtless first learned that Bible language which clung to him through life, and which in his use of it was not cant, but the simplest and most natural form of speech. Oliver received his home-training at a time when a Puritan was what the name indicates; when the name was one of reproach ; when it suggested persecution, and when there was no advantage to be gained in being a hypocrite under it. There were but few, if any, hypocritical Puritans before the time of the Long Parliament, forty-one years after he was born ; there were many of them when Puritanism became a power in the government, and a title to favor and rewards. Oliver, too, in that Huntingdon home, in ad- dition to his religious training, was securing a EARLY LIFE. 45 political education (for religion and politics were identical in those days) from the time that he began to think at all seriously on any subject. The talks at the fireside were of the atrocities of Elizabeth's reign ; of the emigrants, sixty to seventy thousand of them who, driven by the persecutions of Philip II. and of Alva, had settled within fifty years in the eastern counties of Eng- land ; of that ecclesiastical farce, the Hampton Court Conference, which gave King James so much sport, and which gave the Puritans so much disappointment and distress ; of the Span- ish fleet, the Armada, which, a few years before his birth, had been sent for the purpose of con- quering the country and forcing it to become Roman Catholic ; of the attempt to blow up the Parliament House and all the Protestants in it ; of the stabbing by Jesuits, in Paris, of Henry, one of the Protestant champions of the day; of King James's claim to " absolute sovereignty," his claim to " freedom from all control by law," his claim to passive obedience as a religious obli- gation, binding on all his subjects, his claim to " the power to alter the religion " of men and women, as the representative of the Almighty, and to do this sacred work with shears and branding irons, where sermons failed ; to do this 46 EARLY LIFE. in behalf of the court of Heaven, when the orgies of the court at Whitehall were the scorn and derision of all Puritans. Talks about these matters Oliver often listened to in the Huntingdon home before he reached the age of twenty. These talks, and the abundant pamphlets of the time, gave him his early politi- cal training ; and two years after he was twenty, when a farmer, he was looking after his cows and sheep, leading a quiet peaceful life, his politi- cal education was supplemented by learning that the patriots of the Parliament of 1621, all of whom were loyal to the government, had failed in their object to control taxation, and to secure the "privilege of free discussion ;" that the king had been to the Parliament House, and with his own hand had torn from the statute-book the record of their votes, and had sent a message to the members forbidding them to inquire into the mysteries of State. It is conceivable that Oliver's thoughts, when news of these things reached him, were not limited to his cattle ; it is probable that his mind expanded not a little politically when he heard of the royal doings in the Parliament of 1G21. The reader must not for a moment suppose that we have been drawing a fancy picture. It is, EARLY LIFE. 47 and must be, a true picture even in its minutest details. Dr. Beard, Oliver's teacher when a boy, as well as his adviser in youth, besides be- ing- a reader of books, and a publisher of books, was a sharp-sighted man, ready for political or any other useful talk. He had his eyes wide open. He knew what was going on. Seven years after the time of which we have been speaking, when Oliver went up to London to sit as member in the Parliament of 1628, Dr. Beard had his eye on him, and furnished him with the subject of his first parliamentary speech. It is impossible that the boy and the young man should have escaped the education on politics which we have noted, with such a man as Dr. Beard at his side, shut up in a little village like Huntingdon. The home of Oliver's boyhood was a pleasant one. Through the grounds about it flowed a brook, which is suggestive of sport, though we are not sure that it contained trout. The fens abounded in game. There was nothing particu- larly interesting in the scenery, but the surround- ings of Hinchinbrook were attractive. The walk to the grand old hou°e of his uncle and godfather could be taken within a few minutes. Oliver's father had an income, it is reported, of about 48 EAKLY LIFE. five thousand dollars a year, and his mother had about one thousand dollars a year, reckoning money at its present value. There was probably no lack of such comforts as were found in the houses of the gentry. He had no brother, but he had six sisters who grew to womanhood, two of whom married colonels ; one married a general, and a fourth, after the death of her first husband, who was a doctor, married another doctor who became a bishop. These facts tell in favor of Oliver's sisters, and indicate that the family was not an obscure one. With these sisters the boy must have learned to sing, for in later life he sang in the midst of battle ; and in quiet hours, when such came, he sang in the palace of Whitehall. To the stories of royalists, that when a boy he stole apples out of orchards and that he fought with other boys, stories grounded on " human stupidity and Carrion Heath," Carlyle gives Christian burial. The probability is, that, with such a mother as he had, and with his many sisters, he was not, as represented in history, an evil-minded boy. The face, made from a cast taken after death, is a noble one — even beautiful when long looked at ; and though poets, in the Stuart interest, found a subject for their rhyme EARLY LIFE. 49 in his prominent red nose, it is pleasant to believe that the face of the youth was not at all ill-looking. One thing certainly can be put to Oliver's credit, his intimate connection, far into man- hood, with the teacher of his boyhood. Most fortunate were his relations to Dr. Beard. The doctor grounded him in Latin and prepared him for Cambridge ; but, as we have seen, he gave hi in another education, one that was to leave its effects on the history of England. Oliver se- cured enough Latin to enable him to talk in that language, but it is reported that he did not talk very well. It is not improbable that Dr. Beard awakened in him a love for books, and tliat he laid the foundation of his fine library while yet a farmer of Huntington and St. Ives. It is certain that long after the school days were over, scholar and teacher were often together, and they seem to have acted in concert. The doctor was a Puritan, but Puritans in his time, as before stated, were what the name implied. Sham Puritanism, thirty to forty years later than the years of which we are writing, was grim, sour, long-faced, whining ; not so that of Oliver's child- hood. The fact that Dr. Beard w r as a Puritan in Elizabeth's reign and in the first part of the 50 EARLY LIFE. seventeenth century, carries with it the idea that he was a good, kind and truly Christian man. Since writing this sentence my eye falls on the following one in Green's History : " The lighter and more elegant sides of the Elizabethan culture harmonize well enough with the temper of the Puritan gentleman." The sports within the reach of Oliver in his boyhood, apart from fowling and fishing, were rather limited ; but it is known that foot-ball was within his compass. The game played then in Huntingdon was not, indeed, what the game is to-day. It was not so scientific. No report of scores was sent over England. Cambridge and Oxford professors did not watch the results with any special interest. But, in spite of detrac- tions, the boy enjoyed his foot-ball, and it must have been a trial, after he had learned the game, to find a competitor at Cambridge who could beat him. Mrs. Hutchinson says that Oliver was afraid of her husband ; but the only authentic record of Oliver's ever having had fear connects itself, not with Colonel Hutchinson, but with foot-ball. This record may be found in a late publication of " The Prince Society," Boston, by Charles H. Bell. " I remember the time," said the Lord EARLY LIFE. 51 Protector, " when T was more afraid of meeting John Wheelwright at foot-ball, than I have been since of meeting an army in the field, for I was infallibly sure of being tripped up by him." Any gleam of light on our hero is worth having, but these words are especially interesting in this foot-ball age. We have but little hope of awak- ening interest touching Oliver among scholars, or even of their reading our little book ; but per- haps foot-ball men will find interest in it just here, and by the year 1899 will have erected a marble foot-ball group, with Oliver and Wheel- wrioht in the center, to commemorate two chain- o pious of the seventeenth century. The great ruler, the Protector of New England, may be neglected ; it may be difficult to raise money enough even to buy a picture of the warrior, the statesman and the saint ; but con- nect his memory with foot-ball, and the difficulty would be overcome. We do not think the sug- gested monument would be the most desirable one for the perpetuation of Oliver's name ; but it would be better than nothing, and nothing have we yet in New England. One great attraction for Oliver, outside of his home, was the house of his uncle. The sumptu- osities of that house, which, of course, included 52 EARLY LIFE. a good deal of eating and drinking, were sncli that they finally brought financial ruin to god- father Oliver, and compelled him to retire to a smaller and less expensive establishment far off in the fens. But the expenses and the shows were kept up all through Oliver's youth, and he had the full benefit of them. Pictures of Hinchinbrook mansion have lately been brought out in this country, showing the old Norman gateway, and a part of the old nun- nery : and the place is described as being now one of the loveliest of old English homes. Oli- ver's grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell, " en- larged and as good as built " Hinchinbrook. He was called the Golden Knight because he spent and gave away so much money. He died in January, 1603, when Oliver was nearly four years old. The little boy saw " funeralia and crapes, saw father and uncles with grave faces, and understood not well what it meant ; under- stood only, or tried to understand, that the good old grandfather was gone away, and would never pat his head any more." Oliver's uncle and godfather succeeded Sir Henry at Hinchinbrook ; and a few months after establishing himself, he received a message from King James of Scotland, that on his journey to EARLY LIFE. 53 London to take the crown, which Elizabeth's death had vacated, he would stop for a visit at the Hinchinbrook house. The king arrived about the last of April, lb'03, and remained as a guest for two days ; a short visit, but a good deal can be done in the matter of expense within a brief time when one has a king and his retinue to entertain. " Uncle Oliver, besides the ruinously splendid entertainments, gave James hounds, horses and astonishing gifts " . . . " in re- turn there were knights created, Sir Oliver the first of the batch we may suppose." " King James had decided that there should be no reflection for the want of knights." Let us take a glance into the big hall of the fine old house, and try to see what is going on there on the morning of April 28, 1603. Little Oliver is certain to be an early arrival. Noth- ing could keep him at home that morning. His good mother probably found it difficult to keep him quiet while she was arranging his cuffs and collar. There were no Barnum shows in that day at Huntingdon, and to see the gorgeous king and his Scotch attendants, in their strange dresses and feathers, and the tables spread with all kinds of luxuries that could be had, was a chance for him not to be missed. Knighthood, 54 EARLY LIFE. in the olden times of chivalry, had a significance ; it meant something when the receiver of it had " won his spurs ; " and in late times, men who have become distinguished by doing something worth doing, rightly have the honor conferred on them; but the chief use of knighthood in King James's time, appears to have been to get money to eke out the royal revenue. Sir Oliver had done nothing to entitle him to a garter or a ribbon, but the king knew that he was rich and was disposed to make presents. Later on the king directly sold the title of " Sir ; " but it is not likely that he began that sort of trade on the occasion of this visit, and before he was crowned. He secured his pay out of Sir Oliver indirectly — by visits at Hinchinbrook, by receiving gifts — until at last the knight became so reduced in income that he was compelled to sell Hinchinbrook to one of the Montagues ; the Montagues still hold the place. Hume tells us, and for such a statement he is credible, that James brought with him from Scotland a great number of Scottish courtiers, and that as he passed along all ranks of men flocked about him from every quarter. The nobility, of course, came to Hinchinbrook with their best clothes and ornaments, adding to the interest of the spectacle. EARLY LIFE. 55 Oliver, when lie became a man, was indifferent about dress, in fact, laid himself open to criti- cism for appearing in Parliament in a shabby suit made by a country tailor ; but the brilliant dresses in his uncle's hall must have delighted him, especially the Scottish ones. But the grand sight was the knighting. The king, in all his glory of adornment, surrounded by the glitter- ing crowd, had kneeling at his feet the subjects who henceforth were to belong to a noble order which could be traced far back of the Plantag- enets into dim antiquity. It is to be regretted if Uncle Oliver did not secure for his godson a good position where he could see all that was going on ; if, however, Oliver, at the age of four, had any of the persistency which marked his later life, he did not need his uncle's help. It rather detracts from the value and dignity of James's knights to know, as we do from his- tory, that he made more than two hundred of them before he had been in England six months ; but, happily, it was not known at Hinchinbrook, when he was there, that he would belittle the honor by the profusion of his favors. Queen Elizabeth had been blamed for making so few knights ; James, it was soon thought, had made too many. 56 EARLY LIFE. Royalists have related that in the following year, 1604, little Prince Charles, then four years old, on his way from Scotland to London was taken to Hinchinbrook ; that the two boys met there and got into a quarrel in which Oliver gave the Prince a bloody nose. This is the tradition. Probably the bo} r s met, played to- gether, may have quarreled, but there is no evidence to be found relating to this matter. Royalists must have been short of material adverse to Oliver when they jmt this report into English history. Historians have written not a little, in order to put a mark of disgrace on Cromwell, in con- nection with the brewing business. Brewer is a common title of the Protector, even now, and especially here in New England. The earliest Stuart writer on this matter says that he was not f brewer, that the brewing was done by his father. There is not, however, the least proof that the father carried on brewing as a business. The income of the family, six thousand dollars a year, would indicate that selling beer was not the source of so large a revenue. There was no tea or coffee in Huntingdon or in England during Robert Cromwell's life ; beer was a universal drink, and it is probable that a thrifty farmer EARLY LIFE. 57 would convert a part of his grain into that beverage. In the year 1617, King James is again at Hinchinbrook. He is on his way to Scotland. His object is to get his Scottish bishops to be reverenced and financially supported by Presby- terian Calvinists who hated the mere name of bishop. Dr. Laud, then king's chaplain and also Archdeacon of Huntingdon, is with him. Sir Oliver's purse is now " growing lank," and Robert Cromwell, at his house near by, is sick and not far from death. Oliver has been studying for a year at Cambridge, in Sidney-Sussex College, the focus of Puritanism. Probably he was at home at the time of the royal visit, but if at home he would not seek to see the king or the archdeacon ; sad to tell, it is doubtful if the uncle would care to see his godson. It was inevitable that they should separate. Sir Oliver was a devoted loyal- ist ; Oliver was already so imbued with Puritan- ism, and so well informed of the character and of the government of the king, that intercourse between his uncle and himself could hardly be agreeable. The after story is a very dismal one, and it is all comprehended in a few bare cold facts of history. Not a letter now extant alludes to it ; 58 EARLY LIFE. not a writer can tell it in its particulars. That Oliver suffered, that he suffered keenly at the estrangement, even into the time of the Protec- torate, into which his uncle lived, his general character, his humane feelings compel us to be- lieve ; that the uncle was overwhelmed, sorrow stricken, at what he deemed the disgraceful dis- loyalty of his nephew, cannot for a moment be doubted. What a scene, that at Eamsey, off in the fens, soon after the war broke out. The uncle was living there, " having burned out his splen- dors " at Hinchinbrook, and Oliver, now Captain Cromwell, is compelled by his duty to the Parlia- ment to search his house for arms, which might, if not secured, be sent to the king at York. The old books say that Captain Cromwell stood " uncovered " in the presence of his uncle while the search was going on ; what they said, what they thought, no one can ever know. Friend- ships were broken, families were torn asunder in the civil war ; but there was no sadder sight than that at Ramsey, when Sir Oliver Crom- well saw standing before him with uncovered head, the Parliament officer at whose christening in infancy he had stood as godfather. One or two more facts will bring us to the EARLY LIFE. 59 farming life of our hero. His father died in 1617, and he at once left Cambridge. He returned to his home to live with his mother, and to take the care of the estate. Royalist writers say, that the " blade," in early life, wasted his time and prop- erty in dissipation, but there is no proof offered by them, and the known facts of his life are certainly against this theory. Some months after his father's death he went to London, probably to get such knowledge of law as would be useful to a citizen, and there he is married to Elizabeth Bourchier, to whom, thirty years later, he could write, " Thou art dearer to me than any crea- ture." A record of the marriage now stands in the old registry of St. Giles's Church, Cripple- gate. The time was August, 1620. It was the month when the Mayflower, in the harbor of Southampton, took on board the pilgrims who were to land at Plymouth. He soon took his wife to Huntingdon, and there, in the same house with his mother, begins his life as a farmer. CHAPTER IV. FARMER. To make Oliver Cromwell visible as a farmer, with only four of his letters to throw light on his farming life, is not an easy thing to do ; and yet, some attempt to portray him in that character is suggested by the little that is known of his twenty years of life in that occupation. Some conception of his surroundings, of his lands, of his duties and cares, may be derived from en- cyclopaedias, and from Carlyle's descriptions ; and not a little may be inferred from what Doctor William Elliot Griffis has written in "The Influence of the Netherlands in the Making of the English Commonwealth, and the American Republic." Oliver spent ten years as a farmer in his home of Huntingdon, six years at St. Ives, which was 60 FATTIER. 61 only five miles away, and four years at Ely, a cathedral town, which was also but a short dis- tance from his early home. There were influences about him, through all these twenty years, which tended to the formation of a thoughtful and strong character. He lived through these years in that part of England (in one of the eastern counties) where lived nearty all the great English patriots of the early part of the seventeenth century, and where were born most of those emigrants who fled from James I. and Charles I. to New England. Going over the meadows and through the bogs with his branding- iron, which the Rev. Mark Noble says was in existence in his day, and which would be better worth seeing now than any crown which kings have worn, this young man, Oliver, was learning something all the time outside of his farming operations ; and in his hours of leisure he came in contact with not a few of the great men who were beginning a work which was to end in the extinction of those imperial " shining jewels," the " Star Chamber," and the " High Commission Courts," and in the overthrow of an oppressive Government. He was twenty years old when he began his farming life ; he was forty- one when he quitted 62 FARMER. it. Among the men with whom he consorted, during this period of his life, and who were lead- ers on the side of liberty, were some of his own relations. Sir William Masham, " a busy man in the politics of his time," was a cousin. St. John, the celebrated ship-money lawyer, who defended Hampden in the great lawsuit of 1637, was mar- ried to one of his cousins. Hampden himself, whose statue now stands in St. Stephen's Hall, " to represent the noblest type of the Parlia- mentary opposition," was the son of his father's sister. With these men, and others like them, he associated, and from them he learned of what was going on at the court and in the country. When Philip II. of Spain, in the year 1567, with a few strokes of his pen doomed to death from eighty to one hundred thousand inhabitants of the Netherlands, he little foresaw all the results of that decision. He little dreamed that Alva's work would sow the seeds of liberty on the eastern shores of England, and that those seeds would, within a century, be scattered beyond the Atlantic on a continent which would one day more than rival his South American dominions. Yet such was the fact. Dr. Griffis has demonstrated that fact, and the present writer will take the FARMER. 63 liberty to use some of his statements. He says that before the end of Alva's rule between eighty and one hundred thousand persons found a home in England ; that most of these refugees settled in the eastern counties ; that they made great changes there ; that they introduced table vege- tables and the cultivation of winter roots, which were unknown before they came ; that they drained the fens and taught the people to culti- vate the land ; that to these Dutchmen, who, in all kinds of cultivation and in all kinds of knowl- edge, " in the fine arts, music, civic architecture, painting, science, learning, agriculture, inventions, organized industries, navigation, finance, political science," were far superior to the English, may be traced influences which, in no small degree, led to changes, not only in the industrial, but in the political and religious conditions of the coun- try. Under the industry of these Hollanders " the fens of Eastern England became a garden," and Dr. Griffis claims that nearly all the polit- ical institutions peculiarly American came out of Holland and not out of England. Cromwell, during his farmer life, could not fail to have association and close intercourse with these Dutch settlers. He probably knew some of the earlier refugees, for Alva continued his 64 FARMER. destructive work for nearly twenty years — until 1573 — when he returned to Philip, and was able to report that, besides those whom he had slain in battle, there were eighteen thousand whom his " Court of Blood " had executed, and that there were about one hundred thousand who had left the country and gone into exile. Not only is it certain that Oliver knew many of these Dutch refugees, but it is probable that he employed some of them on his lands. The same sympathy which led him, when Protector, to watch over persecuted Protestants abroad, would lead him to give aid to those who had been compelled, in exile, to seek employment. Manj^of these refugees were learned men, hold- ing views about government and freedom of which Englishmen, in Elizabeth's time and later, had no conception ; it is not at all improbable that Oliver, the farmer, acquired, in no small degree from them, that knowledge and that spirit which led him, later on in life, when the Euro- pean world was clamoring for the divine right of kings, to become the advocate and the supporter of the divine right of the people. It is a fact well proved that this farmer's ac- tivities were not confined to the cultivation of his lands or the care of his cattle. It is proved that FARMER. 05 he was not a selfish accumulator. It is proved that his heart went out toward those in distress. He was known in his day as the friend of the poor. There are, indeed, but four letters which remain to throw light on these twenty years, but it happens that two of the four letters relate ex- clusively to charities, one written in the interest of a clergyman, and the other in the interest of a poor old sick man; and it happens, too, that the third letter asks the person to whom it is addressed to put a certain gentleman in mind " to do what he can for the poor cousin I did solicit him about." Now, when three out of four extant letters are of this sort, it may be inferred that kind deeds were done all through the farm- ing life. Few modern philanthropists, can show such good proportionate records as Oliver, in the matter of charity letters and charity works. The reader will mark that these three letters were written voluntarily ; that they came naturally out of his warm and generous heart. The fourth of the letters, all that are left of the twenty years of farming life, is the first of his extant letters, and a notable one ; it is embraced in the chapter on " Letters." It would be interesting to know just what kind of a farmer Oliver was, how much he worked 6'6 FARMER. himself ; how much labor he got out of his boys, Richard and Henry ; how he lived as to his table ; how he dressed ; if the Dutch taught him to have a vegetable garden, a rare luxury in England, then ; if he made a financial success with his cows and sheep, but these things and many others we shall never know about. Almost the only light from these farms comes to us through the charity letters. Still, it is pleasant for the present writer to think that he was a rather suc- cessful farmer. He knows that when Oliver went up to the Parliament of 1640, which was the end of his farming life, he had money, and enough of it to enable him to subscribe largely to the war fund, although the Eev. Dr. South intimates that his hat and coat were not paid for. The early Stuart historians would lead their readers to believe that Oliver was rather a fail- ure as a farmer ; that he was not a wise and pru- dent farmer ; that he spent altogether too much time in praying when he should have been looking after his idle men in the fields, who were taking advantage of his piety in recreation ; if so, he was a remarkable specimen of a hypocrite, wast- ing money thus on his laborers. These old royalist writers are sometimes very funny, and are often inconsistent. These writers' elucidations FARMER. 67 of Oliver are as much at variance as the pictured caricatures which have come down to us from the old engravers. At one time during his farmer life, Oliver emerged from obscurity and acquired the name, or nickname, of " Lord of the Fens." The drain- age of the fens meant the carrying of the water of the river Ouse twenty miles direct to the sea, and the prevention of its overflowing large por- tions of the country. It was a great work for those times, and promised to make cultivable lands that were useless. The idea of it, most likely, came from the Dutch. The work was nearly completed, when the king, in council, at- tempted to do a public injustice in regard to it. Thereupon a great meeting was held in Hunting- don, farmers coming to it from the surrounding country ; and at the meeting Oliver opposed the interference of the king, when that " operation of going in the teeth of the royal will was some- what more perilous than it would be now." He got into trouble about the business, and for a short time was deprived of his liberty. In his " History of the Rebellion," Lord Clarendon refers to this matter, and more than intimates that Oliver, in a conference with him about it, showed a good deal of temper. This is quite 68 FARMER. credible. Farmers living on boggy wet lands are inclined to secure drainage ; and if a king, or any one else, interferes with a sluice way or canal for carrying off excess of water, it would certainly be natural to show anger. It is evident from what occurred in connec- tion with this Huntingdon meeting of citizens, were there no other evidence, and from the title which Oliver secured, that he was an active and prominent man among his farmer neighbors ; and probably no better councilor or magistrate, or more just justice of the peace could be found in the region where he lived. The reader has already discovered that only a little can be told of the twenty years of farming ; but that what is discoverable indicates a man dis- charging his duties in a manful way, leading a quiet, unnoticed life, growing grass and raising cattle. "We have before us a stout, able-bodied Puritan, who reads his Bible, says his prayers, goes to church, has children born to him, has them baptized, leads an inoffensive, humble life ; does his duty as to charity, interferes with what he thinks is wrong about fen drainage ; looks after his mother, his wife and little children ; and learns, though a farmer, what he can of what is going on in England, and all this without a FARMER. 69 thought of the wonderful future which lies before him. Many a time, striding over those bogs of Huntingdon and St. Ives, this farmer reflected on the oppressed condition of his country ; but it is doubtful if he had then any heroic thoughts or had one glimpse of future greatness. Duty, in his narrow sphere, was all. Had he ambition to become a leader, had he nurtured such a wish in those quiet pastures, years would not have passed after he entered Parliament without some demonstration of that desire. When first he enters on public life he is but a plain farmer and a gentleman. He has, indeed, his thoughts on the political problems of his day, but he is no statesman ; he has no plans, he has no thought except to give his votes on the side of freedom from oppression, and liberty for those enslaved. Circumstances made him. Acts of others — Eliot, Pym, Hampden — yes, royalists too ; Falkland, Wentworth and others, created the conditions which brought him into notice, and which finally led him to offer his service to his country in the humblest position which a gentleman could hold, without a title and without a sword. It was in the second year of Oliver's residence at St. Ives — 1632 — that Sir John Eliot, an 70 FARMER. acquaintance and probably a friend, died in the Tower. The Parliament of 1G28 contained many great statesmen, but there were among them none who in genius, in power of using language, in loftiness of purpose, and devotion to his coun- try surpassed this great orator. The fragments of his speeches, which can now be read, indicate a man of superior ability, and a patriot inflexible in his purpose to reform the Government. He was one of those who, with "Went worth, then on the side of the people, framed the " Petition of Right," asking that no taxes be raised without the consent of Parliament, and that no freeman shall be imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes im- posed by the king alone ; and, on the last day of the sitting, he spoke against yielding to the un- just demands of James. A few days after the dissolution of the Parlia- ment, he and others were summoned to appear before the king's council, and after examination were committed to prison. All but Eliot after a time were set at liberty, not b}^ mercy, but rather from fear, warnings of trouble in the country having reached the king. Eliot's appeals were unavailing. He remained in the Tower for four years, until 1632, and a few weeks after asking for temporary release, on account of his impaired FARMER. 71 health, telling His Majesty at the same time that he was sorry to have displeased him, he died there, a martyr to the cause of English liberty. Eliot was not a Puritan ; he was simply the ad- vocate of a government for the people, and not for the exclusive use and benefit of the kin?. Oliver was a member, a farmer member, of that Parliament of 1628 ; he doubtless heard the speeches made by Eliot, and after the Par- liament was ended he had eleven years, up to the Parliament of 1640, to reflect upon them. They were speeches not to be forgotten. Many years have passed since the present writer read them, but the impressions which they left have not been effaced. What, then, must have been their effect on one who heard them, and was an observer and an actor in the politics of the time ! Children wfire born to Oliver during the years covered, 1 h needless here to record \eir nan yea 1 -lence c Wv, fen 1 1. "other, has made „ he. no longer watch over ^^ the L s, or walk through the narrow lanes, *. »nks of the black river Ouse. 72 FARMER. He becomes a resident of a cathedral town. u His mother appears to have joined him at Ely ; she quitted Huntingdon, returns to her native place, an aged grandmother, was not, however, to end her days there." Dagdale, one of the old vituperative writers, has an account of Oliver's joining in an attempt, in a court of law, to get lunacy proved against this uncle and to deprive him of the management of his property. The story of this " act of vil- lany " on Oliver's part is no more credible than Dr. Bates's surgical operation story, which has been related in another chapter. The court, Dugdale says, decided against Oliver, and the uncle continued to manage his own property. Sir Thomas Steward was a lunatic, if after such treatment from his nephew he made him his chie E heir, which he did. These royalist aspersions, so often referred I it may be are getting' to be wen 1 ' reader ; but the writer feels cor Stuart historians, so far a- -id fair showing. The reprodui marges which they brought against Croi . would be indeed unbecoming. We .o concealment except where it is necessai^. It is due to Oliver's memory that the views of his contem- FARMER. 73 poraries, and of such later adverse writers as we have room for, should be distinctly brought out in this book. We therefore quote from " Crom- welliana," a passage alluded to before, relating to this Steward property, and which reflects in other particulars on Oliver's character. " This, our Oliver," says the remarkable book, which contains extracts from more than a hundred newspapers, published during the civil wars, "this, our Oliver, was of Mr. Robert Cromwell, a gentleman who went no less in esteem and reputation than any of his ancestors, for his per- sonal worth, until his unfortunate production of this his son and heir, whom he had by his wife Elizabeth Steward, a niece of Sir Thomas Steward, a gentleman of competent fortune in this county, but of such a malignant effect on the course of this his nephew's life, that, if all the lands he gave him (as some were fenny ground) had been irrecoverably lost, it might have passed for a good Providence, and happy prevention of those ruins he caused in the three kingdoms. For that estate continued him here, after his de- bauchery had wasted and consumed his own patrimony, and diverted him from a resolution of going into New England, the Harbour of non- conformists, which design, upon his sudden and 74 FARMER. miraculous conversion, first to a civil and relig- ious deportment, and thence to a sour puritanism he strait with abandoned ; by the former repent- ance he gained the good will and affection of the orthodox clergy, who, by their persuasions and charitable insinuations, wrought him into Sir Robert Steward's favor, insomuch that he de- clared him his heir to an estate of five hundred pounds a year ; by his second change to non- conformity and scrupulous sanctity, he gained the estimation and favor of the faction ; some of the heads whereof, viz., Mr. Hampden and Mas- ter Goodwin, procured him the match with a kins- woman of theirs, Mistress Elizabeth Boucher aforesaid, the daughter of Sir James Boucher ; and afterward got him chosen a burgess for Cambridge, by their interest in that town, which was totally infected with Puritanism and Zealotry, and this was his first projection and design of ambition, besides that it privileged him from arrests, his estate being sunk again, and not to be repaired but by the general ruin." AVe had copied this extract from " Cromwelli- ana" (published at Westminster, 1810), when to our joy we found that the passage was from Heath. This is our first sight of anything from Carrion Heath who, it will be remembered, Carlyle says FAEMER. 75 was the chief fountain from which later historians drew their supplies. The passage is a curious one and suggests analyzing, but we let it stand without comment, so that the haters of Cromwell may have the full benefit of it. While living at Ely and still a farmer, at the age of thirty-nine, Oliver wrote a pious letter to his cousin, Mrs. St. John, in reply to a letter from her which evidently contained some rather flattering and pleasant expressions, called forth by a visit lately paid to her. Oliver writes : " Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself forth in the cause of God than I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand, and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me in his Son, and give me to walk in the light " . . . " blessed be his name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine. You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh ! I lived in and loved darkness, and hated the light. I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. Oh! the riches of his mercy." Carlyle thus comments on this letter : " Rev. Mark Noble, my reverend imbecile friend, dis- covers in this letter clear evidence that Oliver was once a very dissolute man ; that Carrion 76 FARMER. Heath spake truth in that Flagellum balderdash of his. 0, my reverend imbecile friend ! had'st thou thyself never any moral life, but only a sensitive and digestive ? Thy soul never longed toward the serene heights, all hidden from thee, and thirsted as the hart in dry places, where no water be ? It was never a sorrow to thee that the eternal pole star had gone out, veiled itself in dark clouds ; a sorrow only that this or the other noble patron forgot thee when a living fell vacant." So much for Mark Noble,who brought out his book on Cromwell in 1787. Again : " O, modern reader ! dark as this letter may seem, I will advise thee to make an attempt toward understanding it. There is in it a tradi- tion of humanity worth all the rest. Indisput- able certificate that man once had a soul ; that man once walked with God, his life a sacred island girdled with the Eternities and Godheads. Was it not a time for heroes ? Heroes were then possible." . . " Yes, there is a tone in the soul of this Oliver that holds of the Perennial. With a noble sorrow, with a noble patience, he longs toward the mark of the prize of the high calling. He, I think, has chosen the better part." . " Annihilation of self " . . . " cast- ing yourself at the footstool of God's throne to FARMER. 77 live or die forever ; as Thou wilt, not as I will." . . . " Brother,had'st thou never in any form such moments in thy history? Thou knowest them not even by credible rumor ? Well, thy earthly path was peaceabler, I suppose. But the highest was never in thee ; the highest will never come out of thee." The later domestic life of Oliver can be best told and understood, after we have related his career as a warrior and a ruler. CHAPTER V. WARRIOR. Carlyle collected the Cromwell letters and speeches, and made elucidations on them, with a view to a history of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century ; but he left his work as it now stands, a remarkable mixture ; conglom- erations such as no historian before him ever at- tempted, or, probably, in the future, ever will attempt ; a mixed mass, illuminated however, scintillated, we may say, by his unparalleled genius. On one page we have a picture of a battle, on the next page a letter from Oliver to his wife. Here we have a letter to a daughter, and in close proximity an account of the Irish war. Within a space of six pages we find a letter to " Dick Norton," a record of the king's execution, a WARRIOR. 79 soldier's pass, a letter to Mayor about Richard's marriage, an order of the Council of State and a request for lending out some books from the St. James's Library. This want of arrangement makes it difficult to keep the historical parts of the work connected and clear in the mind ; but at the same time it gives a peculiar interest to the narrative. It has occurred to the writer, instead of follow- ing the plan of Carlyle's book, to separate the materials collected from it, and from other sources, and to make a chapter in connection with the civil war, to be followed by a chapter on Oliver's connection with the Parliament, and the offer of kingship. Oliver's place in Parliament was not prominent prior to the war ; and for that reason, too, it will be best to trace his course as a soldier before telling the story of his life^m connection with the Government. The two lives, that of a warrior and that of a statesman are, it is true, contemporaneous ; but a clearer view of the man will be secured by separating, in our account of him, his course in the war from his course in legislation. It has been remarked by an English historian, that the attempt of Charles I. to seize the five members of his Parliament for imprisonment, in 80 WARRIOR. the year 1642, was undoubtedly the real cause of the civil war ; but this fatal action on the king's part was only the culmination of a tyranny which had long exasperated the people of England, and was rather the immediate occasion of the out- break than the real ground of it. The causes of the great contest may be traced far back into the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; they were augmented by the atrocities of the govern- ment of James I., and they became more and more intolerable during the eleven years when Charles I. governed the country without legisla- tion, violating his most sacred promises, and re- ducing his subjects to a condition of servitude, both as regards their political rights and their religious liberties. Opposition to the Government, through legisla- tion, was not attempted in the time of Henry VIII., though the Parliament met nearly every year ; and it was feeble all through the years of Elizabeth's rule in the few Parliaments which were called by this queen. In that of 1576, she gave the Commons to understand that she would rule the pulpits of the church, and she prohibited Puritan conventicles. But little effort was made to interfere with her prerogative; but at that early period there were complaints that a few WARRIOR. 81 persons about the court were made rich at the expense of honest merchants who secured no royal favor. Puritanism broke out in the Parlia- ment of 1581, in the person of Paul Went worth, and his bill for a " Fast for the House," and " Ser- mons," was carried by a majority of fifteen ; but Elizabeth, the day after the passage of the bill, sent word that she did not approve of such pro- ceedings, and she called for the rescinding of the resolution. The Parliament yielded to her voice of authority. Froude tells us that the Episcopal Church might not have been saved but for the young Puritans ; that without the support of the Puritans Elizabeth would have " changed her palace for a prison, and her scepter for a distaff ; " that "through all her trials" (touching the Church of Rome) " they had been true as steel." But the time came, during her reign, when the Puri- tans were persecuted ; when Penry was hanged, and Udal condemned to die in prison. No strong opposition, however, was made against Elizabeth, nor was opposition to the Government in James's time at all commensu- rate with the injustice which marked the king's government. The day of triumph for the Puri- tans came at last ; and it came with vengeance : 82 WARRIOR. with crime, according to the royalists, une- qualed in the annals of history; with a death- sentence passed on an anointed, sacred king ; came, said John Milton and other Puritans, said Cromwell and the fifty-eight judges with him, as an act of justice due to freemen, whose rights had been trampled on for fifty years and more, and as an act of mercy to future generations of Englishmen. It is pertinent here to say that Cromwell had hut little share with those who brought about the civil war. He took no part in the debates pre- ceding the time when Charles left Whitehall. The opposition of Eliot, Pym and others to the Government began long before he had a seat in St. Stephen's Hall. Though on committees, soon after the Parliament of 1640 met, there is no proof that he was looked on as a man who would be likely to take a prominent place in the affairs of the nation. His cousin Hampden knew what was in him, knew him to be a man of power ; but others were ignorant of that fact. When it was decided that there must be a war, he offered his services simply as a recruiting officer. One is inclined to wonder that patience and in- action lasted so long ; to wonder that resistance to OLIVER CROMWELL. {From ((portrait in the Lour,,.; WARRIOR. 83 prerogative did not earlier take a more aggres- sive and violent form; that the Puritans, when Charles declared, soon after he was crowned, that Parliaments were wholly in his power, to be or not to be, did not attempt to hurl him from his throne. But the time was not yet ripe; it was needed that promise after promise should be violated ; that oppression should succeed oppres- sion ; that perfidy should again and again be followed by a semblance of repentance ; that the Star Chamber should overwhelm with terror, and then mutilate and imprison those whose only crimes were an aversion to ritualism, and the practice of a simple worship which they loved ; that the people should wait through long years of tyranny, until the king had entered St. Stephen's Hall with armed followers, to arrest members of the Commons, and had gone to York to raise an army to enforce his rights, or what he deemed his rights. And even then the Puritans did not begin the contest until efforts to bring back the king had failed ; and if at any time during the seven years which intervened between his leaving Whitehall and his death, three of which years were spent in war, while no small part of the remaining four were spent in negotiations, Charles had been willing to drop 84 WARRIOR. the one word prerogative from his vocabulary, Puritans would have welcomed him to the throne. He began the war for prerogative, and for that only. The war transferred the Government to the Parliament, but the Government, after the king was completely beaten, still made earnest efforts to restore him, with an abated prerogative, Cromwell himself aiding ; bat duplicity, treachery, and clinging to prerogative, at last destroyed the monarchy, and changed England into a Commonwealth. It was on the sixth of January, 1642, that the abortive attempt to seize Pym, Hampden and others was made. Four days later the king left Whitehall, abandoning London and the Parlia- ment. It was now evident that civil war must come, and as soon as that was decided London began to supply the Parliament with funds. In that city, within a single day, four thousand men were enlisted to fight, if need be, against their king. Citizens offered their plate and women their jewelry. Six months pass before we hear of Cromwell. He does not appear until July. In that month " Mr. Cromwell " moves in the House of Com- mons "to allow the townsmen of Cambridge to raise two companies of volunteers, and to appoint WARRIOR. 85 captains over them." The next month it appears that " Mr. Cromwell " has seized the magazine in the Castle of Cambridge, and hath hindered the carrying of the plate from the University for the service of the king. Before the month is ended he is Captain Cromwell ; captain of "Troup Sixty-seven." And now begins, at the age of forty-three, the life of our hero as a warrior. A farmer member of Parliament for the first time finds himself in military dress, with a sword, and expected to do a kind of work of which he is ignorant. A month later, on the twenty-third of October, he is in Edgehill battle. The battle decides noth- ing ; but while it is going on, Oliver makes a discovery which was to make him and the army, which he afterward commanded, world famous. He discovers that the soldiers with whom he had met the king's army were not of the kind which will bring success. The men on the royal side are men of honor, gentlemen who have a deep in- terest in the result ; the men secured on the side of the Parliament are "a set of poor tapsters," and " town apprentices." This will never do, he thinks ; and then he suggests to his cousin Hampden that men of religion, and men who have a conscientious interest in the issue of the 86 WARRIOR. struggle, shall be enlisted. Hampden seems to see that the idea is a good one, but rather im- practicable. Oliver still thinks it is practicable. At any rate, he will try to put it into effect. He does try, and he succeeds. The army, which after a time he raises, becomes the most remarkable one to be found in the annals of Anglo-Saxon history ; the most memorable that ever fought an English battle. Cromwell could truly say, after it had done its work, that it was never beaten. It was made up chiefly of men of religion. No hard drinking was permitted in it; no oath could be heard without a fine. It was, perhaps, the first army in which violence to women after victory was unknown. It went into battle praying, and it sang the songs of David on the field in the intervals of slaughter. " The Lord of Hosts " was its battle-cry. It received and it deserved the name of Ironsides. It was an army which raised England to a position in Europe which before she had not held, and which she ceased to hold when the Protectorate was over. It not only crushed the armies of Charles I. and Charles II., but it was feared in France, in Spain, in Africa and at Rome. The mere dread of it arrested the awful slaughter of Protestants WARRIOR. 87 by the Duke of Savoy in the valley of Lucerne ; stopped the regiments of Louis XIV. when on their march to Nismes to punish and expel the Huguenots of that city, and so frightened was the Pope that he started processions through the streets of Rome in order to avert its power. It made England unattackable, and the arbiter of European nations. During the winter of 1643-44, Oliver was employed in the eastern counties, in forming an association for defense ; a work which secured those counties all through the war from inva- sions of the royal army. In the month of March he receives the title of colonel ; and in the Fen country, with his regiment of horse, he stands ready to " disperse royalist assemblages, to keep down disturbance, and care in every way that the Parliament cause suffer no damage." In May he has a successful skirmish at Gran- tham, and soon after he raises the siege of Croyland. In July he wins a victory at Gains- borough ; performs " very gallant service," and reports thus: "The honor of this retreat" (of the enemy) " belongs to God." It was at this time that his name began to be talked about. Gainsborough was the beginning of " his great fortunes." In August the Earl of Manchester 88 WARRIOR. accepts the control of the Eastern Association, and, a little later, Oliver became his second in com- mand. In October Cromwell was in the Winceby fight, and came near to death. His horse was killed, and he was thrown to the ground ; as he rose, he was attacked and ''knocked down" by a royalist. He regained his feet, mounted the horse of a soldier, made a charge, and routed the enemy. " My Lord of Manchester did not get up till the battle was over." In the early part of the next year, 1644, the Scots, seemingly not thankful to King Charles for what, with Archbishop Laud's help, he had done for them in the matter of bishops, entered England with an army of twenty thousand men to join the Parliament forces ; and, a few months later, " Prince Rupert, with some twenty thou- sand fierce men, came pouring over the hills toward York, where a royal force of six thou- sand men were besieged by these Scots, under Lesley, joined by the forces under Lords Fair- fax and Manchester, and Cromwell." We have now reached Marston Moor, and it is necessary to say that no attempt will be made to describe the battles in which our hero was engaged. We would hardly wish to retouch a painting made by a great master. As space WARRIOR. 89 allows, limited quotations are made, but there will be no attempt to reproduce the pictures of Basing Hall and Dunbar, or other battle scenes which Carlyle has so graphically described. The battle of Marston Moor, " the bloodiest of the whole war," was fought July 2, 1644, be- tween seven and ten o'clock in the evening ; " the most enormous hurly-burly of fire and smoke and steel flashings and death tumult ever seen in those regions " — " four thousand one hundred and fifty bodies to be buried, and total ruin to the king's affairs in those northern parts." "The Prince of Plunderers " (Rupert), " invincible hitherto, here first tasted the steel of Oliver's Ironsides, and did not in the least like it." York was taken, and Rupert " fled across into Lancashire to recruit again." A few months later, on the twenty-seventh of October, came the second battle of Newbury, which was to produce a very important change in the management of the war. Manchester refused to follow the king when he was retiring from the field. The contest of four hours had terminated rather to the advantage of the Parliament army, and just that opportunity was presented which the Ironsides needed for a victory. Cromwell urged Manchester to give the order for an advance. 90 WARRIOR. Manchester refused, and it became evident to Oliver that he was afraid of beating His Majesty thoroughly. Twelve days later, when the king was taking supplies into Denington Castle, Oliver urged his superior officer to permit an attack to be made. Again Manchester refused. About two weeks after this disagreement between these officers, on the twenty-fifth of November, Lieut.- Gen. Cromwell, in his place in Parliament, brought a charge against the earl, " that he hath always been indisposed and backward to engagements, and the ending of the war by the sword" — " that he hath drawn the army into, and detained them in such a position as to give the enemy fresh advantages." There was some talk of prosecuting Oliver ; but instead of lodging him in the Tower, the " Self Denying Ordinance " was passed, and a " New Model " for the army was made. This change called for the retirement of all officers who were members of the Parliament, including Cromwell, from military service ; but it was im- mediately seen that exceptions must be made, and Cromwell continued to hold a place as gen- eral. Sir Thomas Fairfax now became the superior officer, and " to him it is clear " that Oliver " cannot be dispensed with." Fairfax WARRIOK. 91 and his officers petition Parliament that Oliver be retained, and the Commons, " somewhat more readily than the Lords, continued by installments of forty days, then of three months, his services in the army, and at length grew to regard him as a constant element there." "To Cromwell himself there was no overpowering felicity in getting out to be shot at, except where wanted ; he very probably, as Sprigge intimates, did let the matter in silence take its own course." To the present writer, no part of Cromwell's public life, so far as his pure and lofty character is in- volved, is more significant than that which is now before us. It was the highest kind of patriotism which led him to impeach Manchester, and to favor the expulsion from the army of all officers who were members of the Parliament. It was not only a dangerous thing, which counted but little with such a man, but it was a project which was not unlikely to retire him to a private life. The newspapers of the day, and the letters in " Cromwelliana," indicate more than the possi- bility of Oliver's excluding himself from the army and forever depriving himself of the oppor- tunity of becoming distinguished, and of losing, what loyalists say he from the first was aiming after, his own elevation to supreme power. 92 WARRIOR. There is not space in this little book for an exposition of the famous " Self Denying Ordi- nance ; " but we quote from " Mercurius Brit- annicus " and from Fairfax in order to show how Fairfax and his officers felt in regard to the necessity of keeping Oliver for the successful prosecution of the war. The " Mercurius Britannicus " says : " It was ordered that Cromwell continue with the army three months, after the fifty days assigned him are expired. I cannot believe that any will re- pine at so necessary an order." The " Modern Intelligence " says, " It were to be wished he were in the army." Another report says, " The House fell into debate of that ever honored and thrice valiant and religious Lieut.-Gen. Cromwell, whose time, limited by both houses, is almost expired, and thereupon the House of Commons passed an ordinance for enlarging and adding the space of four months to continue his command as lieutenant-general, notwithstanding the ' Self Denying Ordinance,' and ordered to send to the Lords for their concurrence." Probably a letter from Fairfax settled this matter and secured Oliver as a permanent officer in the army. Fairfax wrote to the Parliament as follows : " The general esteem and affection which he WARRIOR. 93 hath, both with the officers and soldiers of this whole army, his own personal worth and ability for the employment, his great care, diligence, courage and faithfulness in the services you have already employed him in make us look upon it as the duty we owe to you and the pub- lic, to make it our humble request and earnest wish ... to appoint him unto this employ- ment." This letter is more than a tribute to Cromwell ; it reflects, at the distance of more than two centuries, a beautiful light on Sir Thomas Fairfax, his officers and his soldiers. It is the view of Gardiner, the historian, that Oliver " supported the first Self Denying Ordinance with the real intention of abandoning his position in the army." The next encounter which our hero had with the enemy, was on June 14, 1645, at Naseby. He can now fight under no limitations. Prince Rupert is again to meet him. The king is present or near the battle ground. It was the last battle in the field for Charles, and his forces were " shivered to atoms." Two days before this conflict, Cromwell arrived from the Eastern Association and was received " amid shouts from the whole army." On the morning of the conflict he had the "94 WARRIOR. ordering of the horse. When the battle began Prince Rupert " charged up hill and carried all before him," and then galloped off to plunder. Cromwell on the other wing, charged down hill carrying all before him, and "did not gallop off the field to plunder." The prince returns from his plundering episode to find the king's infantry a ruin, and after a useless effort his cavalry are broken and flee. They left behind them the king's carriage with the famous cabinet contain- ing letters which have made some noise in the world. Of this Naseby battle Cromwell wrote to the Parliament, " This is no other but the hand of God, and to him alone belongs the glory, wherein none are to share with him." No hope now remained for the royalist army, though a few places were still held for the king. Before the end of 1645, there were taken Bristol, Winchester, Basing House and Denington Castle. The first civil war was ended. We shall preserve the continuity of Cromwell's military history, passing for the present most of the events of three years, comprised in the inter- val between the defeat of Charles I. and the attempt of Charles IT. to restore royality. This attempt was made in 1648. Both Wales and Scotland in the summer of that year made prep- WARRIOR. 95 arations for another war. The king Is still living, and negotiations with him are still going on, though three years have passed since his last battle. On the announcement of the movement in Wales, Cromwell takes his army there and spends a little more than two months, quells the disturbance, so far as he can within that limited time, and in July starts toward Scotland to undertake a far more difficult enterprise than the reduction of Wales. The Scots had voted an army of forty thousand men for the overthrow of Parliament, and this force, or half of it, is ready to invade England. Prince Charles, with such prospects of aid in sight, takes passage with a fleet, anchors in Yar- mouth Harbor, and from thence issues orders for Loudon to join him, which orders Loudon disregards. He crossed the Channel in July. On the twentieth of the following month, Oliver, at his writing-table in Warrington, is giving the Parliament a long and minute account of Preston battle. A day of thanksgiving is ap- pointed for the victory, and the prince with his fleet can sail back to Holland. The prisoners and the slain after the battle of Preston outnum- bered the Parliament army. There were twenty- one thousand men on the royal side ; Cromwell 96 WARRIOR. had about eight thousand six hundred men, but the Ironsides were among them. After the defeat of the Scotch royalists, Crom- well with his army moves on to Edinburgh, where he was well received by Argyle and the Scots party, which was not in sympathy with royalty. The time is now near when the king is to die ; but of this tragedy it is unnecessary at present to say anything, except that on the death of his father Prince Charles assumed the title of King. We must now follow Cromwell to Ireland and as briefly as possible dispose of the Irish war, keeping in mind that the vindication of our hero, and not history, is the chief object of the present book. At the time of the arrival of the English army at Dublin, the Duke of Ormond had united the various Irish parties and they had invited Prince Charles to come to their island and be crowned ; while at the same time Scotland, on certain conditions, is ready to receive the prince as its king. Charles, then, has the opportunity, such as it is, to choose between these two offers ; and whichever offer is accepted, the purpose is to place the prince, if possible, on the English throne. Here, then, are two games to be played for the crown ; the first in Ireland, the second in WARRIOR. 97 Scotland. Both were played, and in both the prince was the loser. It was in August, 1649, that the English fleet entered Dublin Harbor; and before September was gone the Irish game was nearly decided — cer- tainly all hope for Charles from that island was extinguished before the Parliament army left it. Oar present interest relates exclusively to Cromwell and his cause in Ireland. Banishment of war prisoners was a custom for which Parlia- ment was responsible, and it is unfair that the name of one commander should be branded with infamy for a practice that was a common one in his age, and which continued into the eighteenth century. As to the storming of towns, the ac- counts do not agree. Some loyalists acquit him of guilt ; others have stained his name by charg- ing him with needless cruelties. Cromwell himself claims that he did no wrong: or injustice to any inhabitant of the island. He claims this in his " Declaration to the Irish Bishops." He claims it too in a letter which he sent to the " Commander in Rosse," on the seven- teenth of October, 1649. The letter may be read in " Cromwelliana." He wrote, " Since my coming into Ireland, I have this witness for myself, that I have endeavored to avoid effusion - YYAKKIOK. of blood, having boon before no place to which rms have nor boon sent as might have tied ro the good and preservation of those to whom they were offered." That Cromwell be- ad not only that he was doing what was right, that God ssed him in his work, there can be no doubt. Ills private letters, written in Ire- land, prove this. n\ o quote from one letter : "Only this let me say. which is the best intelligence to friends who are truly Christian : the Lord is pleased still to vouchsafe ns his presence, and to prosper his own work in our hands : which to ns is more eminent because, truly, we are a company of poor weak worthless creatures. Truly our work is neither from our own brains, nor from our courage and strength ; but we follow the Lord. who goeth before, and gather what he scattereth, that so all may appear to be from him." An- other thing i- worth recording. If Cromwell had possessed that unscrupulous, unprincipled am- bition, which nearly all royalist writers have ibuted to him. ho would not have gone to Ire- land, ho would have remained in London i watched there the course of events. There was nothing for him to gain in tho Irish- campaign : there was only duty to be done. WABBIO 99 When the work in Ireland was BO far accom- plished that it could be left with safety, Crom- well sailed for England, where he arrived in . 1650. Prince Charles's prospects from the Irish are- now gone, but hope rises for him in Scotland. He reached Edinburgh about the time of Oliv* arrival in London. lie was made king of the id was also proclaimed king ( -id. This was mainly the work of the Presbyterian Calvinistic party. The terms of this kingship were: subscriptions to the rigid doctrines of the '• Covenant." acknowledgment of his fatl. tyranny, and acknowledgment of his mother's idolatry. The men of Mar-ton Moor, who had fought for the Parliament in that battle, now stand pledged to Charles as their king, and are willing to fight to plaee this useless scion of Scotch royalty on the English throne. It is evi- dent that Oliver has more war work before him. The young prince did not at all like the terms which were offered him ; but he could not evade them. He is said to have recoiled at the thought of confessing his mother an idolatress : but yet, that being one of the conditions insisted on by the pious party, he signed the compact. And now we see an army of praying men, 100 WARRIOR. controlled largely by ministers of the gospel, and mingled with them a few men not so used to prayers as oaths ; and over this army float the banners of the Stuarts. It is to meet at Dunbar another army of praying men — the Ironsides. Now, if ever, with such a gathering of Calvinists, Presbyterians, Independents, and royalist churchmen, is the time for that bright star of courtesy, with which poetry decks war ; and after the battle that star did shine a little, but not before. Lord Fairfax, who has been for some years the nominal commander of the English forces, though urged by the Council of State and by Cromwell to lead the army against the Scots, declines to do so, influenced, it is said, by his wife. And now Cromwell becomes, for the first time, " Commander-in-Chief." His title is changed, but nothing more. He has long been the supreme man in England. It was on the twenty-sixth of June, 1650, that our hero was made the chief commander of the army. Three days later he was on his way to the North. In August his tents are pitched within sight of Edinburgh. For the intricate movements about that city, the letters which were exchanged between the belligerents, the difficult WARRIOR. 101 position into which the Parliament army was forced, we have not space in this work. The reader must go to Carlyle if he would have light on these matters ; and to Carlyle he must go, as intimated before, if he wishes to read the account of the Dunbar battle, the most graphic piece of war history, perhaps, to be found in the English language. By the second of September, failing to bring the commander, David Lesley, to an engage- ment, and needing supplies, Oliver's army has been forced to take a position at Dunbar, fifteen miles from Edinburgh, and a mile or two from the sea. The army is inclosed there between the heaths and mountains. Some ships are at anchor in the bay, but they can be of no present service. Cromwell's men are dying fast from dis- ease. In these desperate circumstances, like the true, unselfish man that he was, on the second of September he writes to the governor of New- castle these noble words : " Whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can together, and the South to help you what it can." Whatever becomes of us, let the war go on. David Lesley follows Cromwell to Dunbar, and on the evening before the battle his soldiers, 102 WARRIOR. descending from a hill, were placed in a position which gave Oliver hope. Lesley thinks that Oliver is lost. Oliver, seeing the disposition which Lesley is making of his troops, believes that he is not lost. The Scotch commander, who on the morning of the third expected that Cromwell and his army would be extinguished, in the after- noon of that day was back in Edinburgh, with leisure for reflection. His force had been about twenty thousand men ; Oliver's about half that number. Cromwell's letter to the Parliament, dated the fourth, reports two hundred colors taken, all the artillery, fifteen thousand arms, near ten thousand prisoners, and about three thousand slain. He writes, " I do not believe we have lost twenty men ; " and at the time of writing he had not heard of one commissioned officer lost. He fur- ther writes, " Since we came in Scotland, it hath been our desire and longing to have avoided blood in this business." No doubt of that, but Charles Stuart must be kept out of England, if it does cost some Calvinistic and Presbyterian blood to do it. It was, also, on the fourth, the day after the battle, that he wrote a touching letter (quoted elsewhere) to his wife, telling her that she was " dearer to him than any creature." WARRIOR. 103 Soon after the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell fixes his quarters at Edinburgh. Charles is at Sterling, where it is impossible to reach him. The army which had been destroyed at Dunbar was made up of men whose death the king is said not to have regretted, because they were Presbyterians ; they fought for him, many of them had died for him, but they were Calvin- ists, who had forced him to listen to theological discussion, and at last to accept their covenant, which he hated. From Lesley's army those who, naturally, most sympathized with the king were, so far as possible, excluded ; but among the parties in Scotland was one which had no affiliation whatever with the Presbyterians, and from that party Charles succeeded in creating another army. This new army Cromwell had no opportunity to meet. It was impossible for him to ascend the hill on which the Castle of Sterling stands. The winter and the spring, therefore, passed away without any general battle. When sum- mer came the kin? had his choice of retreating? to the North with this new army, where it would be next to impossible for the Parliament army to encounter him, or to venture into England. Cromwell placed his army, either from necessity 104 WARRIOR. or by design, in such a position that the way to England was open. Charles chose that way, expecting, doubtless, that his force would be increased as he advanced southward, and that he would be able not only to secure a defensive position, but also to destroy the army of the Parliament. Except on such a supposition, his course must be regarded as a wild and des- perate one. The people of England did not, however, flock to his standard. One or two attempts were made to aid him, but they failed. In his march of three hundred miles through the heart of England less than two thousand men joined him. It has often been said that the Puritans were a minority of the people ; if so, the royalists showed lack of spirit in refusing to come to the succor of the king. Instead of being able, by increasing his numbers, to make a stand and fight a battle, Charles was forced to march southward to Worcester. Cromwell followed him at a distance ; and as he advanced recruits came in from all quarters, so that he had, on reaching Worcester, thirty thousand men, an army superior in number to any which he had before commanded ; and which, it has been re- ported, could be increased, if necessary, to over WARRIOR. 105 one hundred thousand men. The indications are that the cause of the Parliament was more popu- lar, even outside the eastern counties, than that of the king. The result of the battle of Worcester mio-ht easily have been foreseen. The position held by the royal army was, indeed, very strong, and it required more strategic work to overthrow it than Cromwell had yet undertaken ; but it was inevi- table, situated as Charles was, that he should be beaten. It was but a question of time. One rather wonders, when the defeat of the king might be made absolutely certain by the vast army which surrounded the little city, that Crom- well, as old writers tell us, " did exceedingly haz- zard himself riding up and down in the midst of the fire.'' His reputation for courage was estab- lished, and yet he puts himself where a bullet might make an end of those dark, ambitious schemes, which royalists assure us were then, and even earlier, covered over and concealed by his hypocrisy. It was his purpose, in that Wor- cester battle, to do his duty regardless of personal consequences. He thought no more of future place and power than the meanest soldier who fought under him. He could, probably, have gone from that Worcester battle to a throne, but 106 WARRIOR. his sole object in it was to keep Charles Stuart out of England. The battle was fought on the third of Septem- ber, 1651, one year from the day of Dunbar. The fighting on both sides was bravely done. Charles, says one report, watched the first part of the engagement from the top of the cathedral ; an. I then, at what he thought an opportune mo- ment, descended to join in it. But what could he do against Cromwell and the Ironsides? Nothing. His Sacred Majesty can only escape — flee to the oak-tree for a hiding place, and, finally, to the Continent ; but " fourteen thousand other men, sacred too, after a sort, though not Sacred Majesties, did not escape ; one could weep for such a death, for brave men, in such a cause." This was the last of Cromwell's battles ; he is soon to begin another kind of warfare. If in this country, as in France, it were the custom to recognize, by public monuments, heroes who in their day were misrepresented or neg- lected, Oliver Cromwell, long since, would have stood on many of our public squares to represent a warrior who fought only for duty, and to secure for Englishmen, and for the colonists of New England, the blessings of civil and religious liberty. CHAPTER VI. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Oliver was a member of the Parliament of 1G28. He was now twenty-nine years old, and represented Huntingdon, his native place. This was the third Parliament of Charles I., and the first in which Oliver sat. It met in March, and continued its sessions, with one interruption, for a year. England was now awake to the enormities of the Government, and so fully awake that the Speaker of the House, who was ordered by the king not to put to vote a question involving the people's liberties, was held by force in his chair until the vote could be taken. The vote was passed by acclamation, the king's usher standing meanwhile outside the door of the House. The men responsible for this proceeding paid the 107 108 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. penalty of it by imprisonment ; it would hardly be unjust to say that one of them, Sir John Eliot, for his share in it, was murdered in the Tower by Charles I. Oliver, a young farmer fresh from the country, looked, we may suppose, with some surprise on this scene. It was something new in English history. In the time of Henry VIII., or in Elizabeth's time it would not have been possible for subjects, in that way, to insult anointed maj- esty. But it was done in Charles's Parliament, and done, so far as we know, without help from Oliver. The scene was a part of his education. He saw the king, not at bay, but near it, " strug- gling much to be composed, but yet writhing with royal rage." Just before the session closed, and near the end of its year, the member for Huntingdon rose to his feet and said that his old schoolmaster, Dr. Beard, had told him that Dr. Alabaster "had preached flat popery at Saint Paul's Cross." It certainly was not much of a speech which the new member made ; and it may as well be re- marked here, as elsewhere, that Oliver, unlike most men who have ability, was not fond of mak- ing speeches. Later on, after the wars, he was able to make very long speeches, but he never PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 109 liked the business, and he always spoke extem- poraneously ; further, he never took the least pains to have what writers took down corrected and preserved. A great man more oblivious to literary reputation has never lived ; yet he was a strong writer. Some of his war letters, which he felt it his duty to write to the Parliament, are very ably written. The episode of Denzil Holies, John Selden, Sir John Eliot and others, made an end of the famous Parliament of 1628, which sat till March, 1629, and then Oliver went back to his farming. About eleven years later, the king having ruled alone, or with Wentworth's and Laud's assistance, in the interval, Oliver is sent by the town of Cambridge to the Parliament of April 13, 1640. That Parliament continued for only three weeks. His Majesty has on his hands what has been called the " Bishop's War," a war to force sur- plices and other ecclesiastical appendages on the Scots. Failing to get money from the Parlia- ment for this purpose, His Majesty dismissed the members and decided to raise the needed funds by " forced loans, or how he could." The Scots, under these circumstances, conclude not to wait for the king's army to enter Scotland, but to enter England with their army. 110 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. The two armies meet near Newcastle ; the English army, seemingly not so much interested in the Episcopal mission as the king, shows but little inclination to fight, does a little fighting and marches southward to York. The Scots then take possession of the north of England and hold it for about a year. The Puritans looked on them as their saviors. Ballad singers in the streets of London sang their praises. The king and Laud lament to find the Scots so indif- ferent to religion. Again a Parliament is summoned ; the most famous, the most infamous, of all the Parliaments in the records of English history. It met on the third of November, 1640. To this Long Parlia- ment Oliver is sent to represent again the town of Cambridge ; and he continues a member of it while serving in the army, and up to the hour when he dissolved it, twelve years later, on the morning of April 20, 1653. For more than twelve years, doing good work and bad work, and toward the end only bad work, it sat until compelled to sit no longer. But the good which it accomplished far exceeded the evil ; to it and to what grew out of it, England is in- debted, in our day, to the gracious speeches which are made by the Queen to her Parliaments. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Ill Prerogative unlimited was doomed after 1640, as Charles and his brother James learned to their disappointment and humiliation. In the Parliament of 1640, or rather in the early years of it, Cromwell was a silent member ; but he was on many committees, and on one com- mittee to which it is necessary to refer. He was on the committee appointed to look into the cases of the victims of tryanny. The most delicate and unpleasant part of the present writer's task is that which compels him to refer to his hero's opposition to the Episcopal Church. Archbishop Laud was in the Tower. He Avas impeached by the Commons soon after the meeting of the Parliament. It does not ap- pear that Cromwell took any part in the discus- sions which terminated so fatally for the head of the Church. He, certainly, was no more respon- sible for the needlessly cruel sentence than the members, a majority of the House, who voted for it ; but he was, to a great degree, responsible for the temporary suspension of the kind of Episcopacy which Laud and the Star Chamber had enforced. Lenient in after life, he was not inclined to be so in 1641. Perhaps the reader will find some excuse for him, if all the accessible facts are considered. 112 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Trained as he had been in childhood, baptized himself, and having his children baptized, at Episcopal fonts ; inclined, both from taste and from principle, to a simple form of worship ; irritated, it is probable, by changes and innova- tions in the parish of Huntingdon of which Laud was made archdeacon, while he [Oliver] was yet a boy ; inclined to freedom of conscience in matters of religion, it is hardly to be wondered at that he deviated from a right course touching: the Church, and especially after his investigations as a member of the Parliament committee had shown that Prynne and Dr. Bastwick and the Rev. Mr. Burton had had their ears cropped, and their cheeks stamped with hot irons, and had been put into pillories, in Old Palace Yard, in sight of all who chose to see them, because they did not like Laud's system or his surplices. "It is too hot to last," said the Rev. Mr. Bur- ton, as he was carried fainting to his house. In addition to these matters you must recall what we may designate as Oliver's general ecclesi- astical education ; remember that he had been taught in his earlier years to hate papacy, and in later years to consider prelacy but another name for papacy, which he might naturally do when the archbishop soon after consecration was offered PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 113 a cardinal's hat by the Pope of Rome. It is true that Laud could not accept the offered cardinal- ship, but that he was a man to whom it could be offered was significant. And what, was Oliver's ecclesiastical education in his earlier life ? To answer this question some things referred to in another chapter, must be repeated. It is not improbable that those who had lived in Mary's time had told him of Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer burned in the streets of Oxford ; if not, he knew well enough the awful history of Mary's reign. It is quite possible that he had heard from eye-witnesses of the scene in the great square of Brussels, in 1568, when Horn and Egmont, champions of the Protestants, in sight of Spanish soldiers had their heads struck off by order of Alva's bloody council ; if not, he had often read of the vast destruction of human lives in the Netherlands, which was going on a few years before he was born. The Armada, composed of one hundred and twenty-nine vessels, which, with Parma's Ant- werp fleet, it was hoped would land forty thou- sand men on the coasts of England only eleven years before his birth, had been sent by Philip of Spain to convert Episcopalians, then about 114 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. half the population of the country, into Roman Catholics — to convert them, if possible, by the sledge-hammer and fire processes which Alva had found ineffective twenty years before ; which had proved a failure after a hundred thousand lives had been sacrificed, and an almost equal number driven to other lands. The Gunpowder Plot, for blowing up whoever might happen to be in the Parliament House on the opening day — king, lords, churchmen and Puritans — was discovered on the eve of its execu- tion, in November, 1605. Oliver, then six years old, would keep that story, often told at his father's fireside, in memory, and it would be sure to leave its mark on his character. Then came the cruel death of Henry, by Jesuits in Paris, and the commencement of the Protestant and Catholic thirty years' war. In forming an opinion of Cromwell, so far as regards prelacy that came near to papacy, all these things should be remembered ; and it should also be remembered that toleration was a blessing yet to be discovered in the middle of the seven- teenth century. Cromwell, in 1641, was not tolerant. No king in Europe at that time was tolerant. When Protector he was probably the most tolerant ruler in the world. He did not PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 115 then interfere with Episcopalians or with Ana- baptists so long as they kept to their legitimate work, and made no attempt to overthrow the Government. It was not the Church, but the minister who connected himself with politics and with the schemes of Charles, that he opposed. Thurloe, in his " State Papers," has a letter to the States General, written by Beverning soon after the Protectorate began, in which it is stated that the Lord Protector " doth take a great deal of pains, and hath already spent much time about the affairs of the Church of England, to bring the same, by some toleration . . . into a peaceable condition to the content of all differ- ing parties, and that the business is so far ad- vanced that a meeting is, upon certain conditions agreed on, not under the name of a synod, but of a loving and Christian-like reception, where every one may propound for a mutual toleration. It is also firmly agreed on, that, to that end, the Bishops and Anabaptists shall be admitted into it, as well as the Independents and Presbyterians ; but with this proviso, that they shall not dispute one another's principia but labor to agree in union." The only important object had in view in the preparation of this book, was the vindication of 116 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Cromwell ; to show that he was a true man all through his life, honest in all his private and public acts. The stains which the writer wished to obliterate, or at least in part to remove, were connected with his opposition to the Church and his part in the king's death. The reader must judge whether or not he is vindicated touching the Church ; he must certainly see that the provo- cation to put the Church out of the control of the Star Chamber Court was great enough to en- list the service of a pious and honorable man, and must also see that it was inevitable that Cromwell, with his education, should believe that a religious organization could be established better than that which the king and his bishops had controlled. Surely it is not difficult to attri- bute to him honest intentions, however much one may criticise his policy. Three years passed between the time of Charles's defeat and his death, years of infinite confusion. The king flew from Oxford to the Scots. . The Scots offer to fight for him if he will accept their covenant and sanction the Pres- byterian worship. English Presbyterians will also join the Scots. The king refuses the offer. He hopes to get the Independents, of whom Cromwell was the chief, and the Presbyterians PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 117 to fighting among themselves ; hopes to extir- pate in this way the two great parties. Charles is still revered by all parties, and all would be glad to see him on the throne again. Oliver, as will soon appear, was most desirous to have him restored. Of the fate which awaited him no one thought or dreamed. The Scots, a rather singular sort of people in those days, and much divided, failing to get the king to accept their form of religion, held Charles and finally virtually sold him to the Parliament, for four hundred thousand pounds. Charles goes back to England a prisoner, under escort of par- liamentary commissioners. After a time the In- dependent party, which was in the main the army party, stole the king away from the Parliament or Presbyterian party, and the excuse for this act was, that the Presbyterians were likely to restore him without just and needed limitations. These things were going on in the year 1646. In December of that year, Londoners sent up a petition to the Parliament asking that His Majesty may again be king. In the following February, Sir Thomas Fairfax, who was still the nominal commander-in-chief of the army, went northward to meet Charles, kissed his hand and then con- ducted him to Holmby. The limits of our book 118 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. confine us to the minimum of history ; only space is taken to give so much as will serve to make clear Oliver's position. He is rather an obscure figure during a greater part of the three years from 1646 to 1649. " The quarrel between city and army, . . . the split of Parliament into two clearly hostile parties of Presbyterian and Independents, the deadly wrestle of these two parties, with victory to the latter, all this trans- acts itself . . . without autografic note, or indisputable authentic utterances of Oliver's, to elucidate it for us." For a long time, so far as we can see, he simply watches from his place in the army, or in the Parliament, the course of events. On June 2, 1647, Cornet Joyce, with five hundred troopers, appears at Holmby house " to the horror and despair of the Parliament Com- missioners in attendance there, but clearly to the satisfaction of His Majesty ; " and with Cornet Joyce His Majesty rides off to Hinchinbrook, where Colonel Montague, now its owner, receives him. It was that same house in which, forty-four years before, Sir Oliver Cromwell had enter- tained King James, and where little Oliver, Sir Oliver's godchild, and little Charles, now the dis- crowned king, had probably played together. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 119 Col. Whalley, who in after years was a pro- tected regicide here in New England, was sent by Gen. Fairfax with a strong force to release the king and take him back to Holinby. Charles refuses the proffered aid; prefers to be a prisoner under the army rather than under the Parliament. Pie is taken to Hampton Court and there, though under surveillance, he is treated with respect, and with him negotiations are carried on with a view to his restoration. Cromwell, month after month, visits him, estab- lishes seemingly agreeable relations with him, and does what he can to persuade the king, whom he discovers to be an able man, to accept a modified Government. It soon, however, becomes appar- ent that it was not the purpose of Charles to be placed on the throne by Cromwell and the army. He has other plans concealed, he hopes, under his chicanery. While Oliver is visiting him, with danger to himself, for a part of the army begins to suspect their great leader of treachery, the king is playing a separate game of his own ; a game which, if successful, would be fatal to the Puritans, and almost certain death to Oliver. In November, 1G47, he manages to escape from Hampton Court and get to the Isle of Wight ; but there, where he hoped to be received 120 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. by the governor as a guest and to be protected, he finds himself again a prisoner. When at Hampton Court " a plan of political reform," says Green in his •• History of the English People." was presented to the king. •• Belief and worship were to be free to all." '-Acts enforc- ing the use of the Prayer Book, or attendance at church, or the enforcement of the covenant were to lie repealed. Even Catholics were to be freed from the bondage of compulsory worship." 4 - Cromwell . . . clung to the hope of ac- commodation with a passionate tenacity. His mind, conservative by tradition, and above all practical in temper, saw the political difficulties which would follow on the abolition of monarchy, and in spite of the king's evasions, he persisted in negotiating with him ; but Cromwell stood almost alone." It must be remembered that these efforts for the king's restoration were made after seven years of war : and certainly, if Green is correct in his statements, it would seem that the charges made so often against Cromwell, as ambitious for the throne, are wholly without foundation. Proofs that his ambition did not look in that direction, but only to a good government for England, will multiply as we go on. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 121 Cromwell risking his life for the king, is a part of his history which royalist writers connect with duplicity. Hume, who can perhaps be be- lieved in such a matter, says that during the negotiations at Hampton Court Charles offered the garter — the garter to Oliver ; the old brand- ing-iron of St. Ives, with O. C. on it, at the moment of this offer, would have pleased Oliver better than all the garters which the kino- had at his disposal. Knightship, the future of his country being in the balance, was but a small thing to the man who, at a later time, could say that the crown was but " a feather in one's cap." England is now in danger. All that has been done by Cromwell and the Puritans may be lost. The men who went into the struggle in 1640 in good faith, with half the country to support them, are likely to find themselves condemned to die. Hamilton, and men not of the Presbyterian type, have now got control of the Scotch Parliament ; and an army, not of the praying kind like that of Dunbar, is threatened. Charles, at the Isle of Wight, to give further evidence of his perfidy, signs a treaty with the Scots for an invasion of the kingdom ; and a new war, as parties then stood, would leave but little hope. Wales, too, with its Presbyterian colonels, is declaring for 122 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. royalism ; the country is in danger. What, then, shall Cromwell and his officers do under such circumstances ? Shall they die, or shall they kill the king? That is the one personal question for them to decide in the year 1648. They, natu- rally, prefer not to die ; prefer that the king should die. There were, of course, great interests pertain- ing to the nation to be considered ; but apart from all matters of national welfare, reducing the case to a personal one, it is difficult to see wherein the regicides are worthy of blame. Charles had played his desperate diplomatic game until the patience of Cromwell and his fellow Puritans was exhausted ; played it until there was a certainty either that the general of the army and other leaders in the war must lose all that they had fought for, and then give up their lives, or that the king must pay the penalty for his crimes. There was no other alternative in sight when the beginning of the year 1649 approached. Long before the time of which we are writing, in the early part of 1648, there was held in Windsor Castle a prayer meeting such as never before and never since have those old walls echoed to. It was a prayer meeting of army officers. PARLIAMENT AND KINGSIIIP. 123 It was continued into the third day. The " strongest heads and the strongest hearts " of England were in it. Strange as such a thing seems in this age, Lieut.-Gen. Cromwell was there, and did " press very earnestly," says one who was at the meeting, " on all there pres- ent, to a thorough consideration of our actions and of our ways, particularly, as private Chris- tians, to see if any iniquity could be found in them, and what it was, that, if possible, we might find it out," etc. At the close of the meeting: this decision was arrived at : " That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed, and the mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations." The polity of the Puritans was, possibly, defect- ive. It might have been more judicious to re- tain the king a prisoner; but if ever capital punishment is just and right it was surely so in this case. The judges had to deal with a man who, after seventeen years of misrule, had committed a most brutal, savage- like act, by attacking the Parliament with hundreds of armed men at his back, and demanding the surrender of members to him, to be dealt with, doubtless, as 124 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. Eliot had been dealt with ; who then, a few days after this atrocity, fled from the members of the Commons who had been sent to St. Stephen's to make laws for their country ; who then, for the sake of prerogative and that only, had kept up a seven years' war ; who, as ruler, was incapable of telling the truth, or of keeping a treaty, or of governing justly ; a man, in a word, who had put himself outside the pale of mercy. Cromwell, then, was a regicide. His name stands the third on the list of the fifty-nine signers of Charles's death warrant. Charles returns to Whitehall to die. Royalism all over Europe utters a shriek, " happily, at length, grown very faint in our day." The Puritans in England, and the Puritans in the colonies of New England, utter no shriek, but are, on the contrary, grateful to the daring men who have placed a king, whom they had known only as a despot, where he could no longer do them harm. Milton sang the j)raises of Cromwell, " the chief of men." Not long after the death of Charles, in May, 1649, it was declared, after much debating in the Parliament, and consultations in committees, that England should be a Commonwealth. Four years and more are now to pass before Oliver is named Protector. During a part of PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 125 this time he is occupied in carrying' on the war in Ireland, and the Scotch war which terminated at Worcester, in September, 1651. The interval between his last battle and the Protectorate included more than two years. At the beginning of this period it was impossible, after his victories in both the civil wars, also in the campaign in Ireland, and in the war with Scotland, that he should fail of recognition as the strongest, ablest man among Englishmen ; and, though he had been but little in the Parliament House, and had scarcely ever spoken there, it must also have been discovered that he had in him the elements of a statesman. His return to London was a triumph rarely accorded to a conqueror. He was met by a com- mittee of the Parliament at a distance from the city. \Vhitelocke, the eminent lawyer, was one of those who went out to meet him with congratu- lations. On entering the streets of London he is met by the Speaker of the House, by the Council of State, by sheriffs, mayors, and a vast multitude ; but he has the good sense to rightly estimate the worth of such a crowd, and is said to have re- marked that more people would come out to see him hung. He is silent, for the most part, about himself, while he praises the soldiers who have 126 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. fought with him. One who looked on him in this scene, and who knew him well, is reported to have said, " This man will be king of England yet." The great conqueror is voted, for a home, Cardinal Woolsey's Hampton Court Palace, the residence of sovereigns from the time of Henry VIII. " This was the moment," says Fred- erick Harrison, " when a Bonaparte would have seized the vacant throne;" but "he betook him- self to work as a simple member of the Council." Ten years and more have now gone since as plain Mr. Cromwell he had offered to loan a part of his property for the service of the Com- monwealth, and to undertake the dangerous business of recruiting soldiers in the town of Cambridge ; and now, when his clear sight, his valor and his character have placed him at the head of the nation, and the Parliament had almost marked him for a supreme ruler, he goes to work as a common citizen, a committee mem- ber, hoping to aid in settling the Government ; an exceptional man presenting a noble example. It has not yet become popular to represent Cromwell on canvas, but the time will come when painters will abandon, for a while, the saints of mediaeval times, and hang not a few Crom- well historical pictures on the walls of English PABLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 127 galleries. Tlie frail beauties of Charles's court, who now smile on admiring' crowds in Hampton Palace, will one clay divide with the Protector, the Protectress, with Elizabeth Claypole and Puritan chiefs, the attention of English and American sightseers anxious to study the history of the seventeenth century. Between the day of the Worcester battle and the breaking up of the Long Parliament, the records of Oliver's life are but few, and there are no letters of that time which throw new light on him ; but it is well known that he was then constantly laboring for the settlement of the Government. Mr. Harrison has clearly explained his position during this period, and the present writer here avails himself of some of the state- ments of this author, rather than attempt to put into his own language what has been so lucidly set forth. He says that Cromwell did not bring himself " conspicuously before the nation ; " that while " legally in control of the whole military forces " he " worked on at the administrative business," and " worked without display, accept- ing the shadowy authority of the remnant, or fag end, of the Long Parliament ; " that he was "zealous for social order," and "looked directly for the mending of practical wrongs ; " that the 128 PARLIAMENT AND KIXGSIIIP. " twenty-three thousand unheard eases waiting in chancery was a perpetual grievance to him ; " that he " was constantly troubled about the abuses of the law ; " that he was a man to whom official tyranny never appealed in vain ; " '• that lie was bent on a settlement,*' and " showed such a willingness to come to terms with the defeated party, and such a real sympathy with their pro- tracted sufferings, that the sterner spirits at once aeeused him of gaining the good will of the royalists to serve his own designs ; " that he " saw plainly that the nation was not prepared for a definite republic, nor had he any preference for it ; " that he " saw that without some mo- narchical element . . . the English scheme of government and law could scarcely be got into work again ; " that " a person as ruler was essential ; " that he " inclined toward a personal head of the State, though he shrunk from the name of king; " that soon after his return from Worcester " the question of a new Parliament was raised ... at his desire ; " that he " felt himself to be the guardian of the interests of all, even of those whom he had defeated ; " that he was " addressed by petitions for the re- dress of grievances in the matter of law, of imprisonment, of exactions, of tithes, as to one PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 129 . . . into whose hands the sword was put ; " that he came into the position of general moder- ator ; " that, while some statesmen inclined to a restoration of one of the Stuart princes," he " objected to any recall of the princes ; " and that he "desired a settlement, with himself in- vested with some monarchical power, though as to name or prerogative of king he felt, and con- tinued to feel, the deepest hesitation and doubt." It will be noticed that allusion is made to a proposition for calling in one of the Stuart princes, and that Cromwell objected to the pro- posal, as he naturally would do after ten years of effort to keep that family from the throne. It has often struck the writer as a strange thins: that Bulstrode Whitelocke, at the conference of grandees at Speaker Lenthall's house, after the defeat at Worcester, should have said, "There may be a day given for the king's eldest son, or for the Duke of York to come in to the Parlia- ment ; " and not strange, if this was really said, that Oliver should have replied, "That will be a business of more than ordinary difficulty ; " a mild reply to an offensive remark. But did \Ybitelocke, at that famous conference, say what he reports himself to have said ? AVe doubt it. The account of the conference did not see the 130 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. light until after the restoration. It may have been changed years after Cromwell was dead. Whitelocke himself wrote it. The learned law- yer, solid though he be, has in him " a kind of dramaturgic turn," a " poetic f riskiness " which " detracts from one's confidence " in his entire accuracy in this record. The Parliament, in the more than twelve years of its session, has been greatly reduced in the number of its members. On its fatal day, ac- cording to the highest estimates, less than one hundred were present at the meeting ; according to some estimates, less than sixty. But great or small, with many members or with few, it has determined, without any legal or moral right, to perpetuate itself. Cromwell and others tried, in every possible peaceful way, to induce the Parlia- ment not to perpetuate itself, but to dissolve itself, and give the country the opportunity for a new election. It must be remembered, in this connection, that Oliver was the soul of the Commonwealth. It was not in St. Stephen's Hall, where the debates were going on year after year, that the founda- tions of the Commonwealth were supported, but at Naseby, at Dunbar and at Worcester. There were great statesmen in the Parliament, OLIVER CROMWELL. i From Philip L. Rale's copy of Robert Walker' 8 portrait.) PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 131 but these statesmen, without Oliver, would have been powerless to maintain the Government. In the field, in battling against Charles L, against Charles II., against the Irish, against the Scots, the commander of the Ironsides had done the work which was essential to the very existence of the Republic. With a mental and moral consistency rarely, if ever, surpassed ; with a decision that never for a moment failed him, and a vigor that was in- flexible ; with personal bravery equal to that of Caesar, and devotion to his work like Hannibal's ; with honesty, piety and prayer to God to bless his labors, this man, in sickness, trials, dangers, with humility and self-depreciation, ascribing all his successes to Providence, from the time when he took command of the army to the time when he entered St. Stephen's to tell the members to be gone, was, it is not too much to say, the only support of the Government that could be trusted with safety. If a figure that has truth in it may be used, he was both the corner-stone and the key-stone of the political structure which had been erected in place of a monarchy over the English people. Shall that structure go to pieces, allowing Charles on the ruins of it to build up his kingdom ? This was the question^ pre- 132 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. sented to Cromwell on the morning of April 20, 1G53. To prevent, if possible, this catastrophe, lie decides to break up the " Rump " of the Par- liament, and send the members to their homes. It is best to fortify the position here taken, which, it is needless to say, is not new or original, by a quotation which the writer was surprised to find in the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. " The Parliament, that great as- sembly that had molded the Commonwealth, had now, at the end of twelve years, exhausted its vitality, and dwindled into a mere mockery of representative government. It had become, in fact, an oligarchy which had absorbed to itself, not merely the whole administration of public affairs, but the control of many private interests." It was their " only serious occupation to main- tain themselves in power and defend themselves against their enemies." It was a daring act to dissolve even such a Parliament, and especially so in view of the after responsibility, which must, by necessity, fall on Cromwell. Whether or not he had taken a measure of the consequences of the dissolution, or had come to any decision as to what could be the probable result to himself personally, we have no means of knowing. We only know that PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 133 duty compelled him to the act of dissolving the Parliament. On the night before the exploit many leading members and many officers of the army were at Oliver's house, and when the meet- ing broke up it was with the understanding tiiat the shameless proposition that the members of the existing Government " were to be de jure members of the new, and to constitute a com- mittee for deciding on the admission of their successors," should at least lie over, and that another meeting should be held the next morning. The next morning Oliver, in his reception-room, was waiting with a few members for others to come, when a message reached him that the Parliament was hurrying to a vote on the ob- noxious bill. What a supreme moment for the St. Ives farmer! The destiny of England is to be decided. The situation was not unlike that in which Julius Caesar was placed before he ad- vanced from Ravenna on Rome. Cromwell, like the Roman, did not hesitate. He starts off for St. Stephen's Hall in his plain clothes, calling, as he goes, on a company of his regiment to attend him, and to wait outside the House. He goes to his seat, listens for a while to the debate, and when the bill is about to be voted on he rises, as though intending simply to present his views on 134 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. it. It is soon discovered that lie does not confine himself to the question. He wanders from it. He commends the House for some things it has done ; he censures it for its faults ; and at last says, "It is not fit that you sit here any longer." He calls for twenty or thirty musketeers, and the work is done. The scene in its details we have not space to describe. It is enough to say that Oliver has now taken the sole responsibility of destroying what remained of the legislature of his country. He has broken up the most famous Parliament that ever sat in England. His com- ment on this act is almost as remarkable as the act itself. " We did not hear a dog bark at their going," meaning that England quietly ac- cepted what had been done. The judges of the courts, the generals of the army, the captains in the navy send in their adherence to Cromwell, and the Government goes on with a " Constable " at the head of it. On the day following this judicious violence, the news journal, "Mercurius Politicus," con- tained the following : " The Lord General de- livered yesterday in Parliament divers reasons wherefore a present period should be put to the sitting of this Parliament, and it was accordingly done, the speaker and the members all departing ; PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 135 the grounds of which proceedings will, it is prob- able, shortly be made public/' Such was the brief, official notice given to England, by Oliver, of this world-important event. The brevity and simplicity of the message are significant. What next ? Chaos or a government ? The old Government is gone, it was not worth saving ; it would soon, probably, have brought a new war and ruin to the country, but, good or bad, it no longer exists. There is no supreme authority. Cromwell's voice has destroyed all constitu- tional authority, and the responsibility is now laid on him to reconstruct, with such help as he can get, a government for the country. To a truth-seeking impartial observer, his efforts for the next five years must indicate a man, not of such ambition as has been almost universally attributed to him, but with an ambition limited to the pure and noble desire to secure for the people a good and safe representative adminis- tration. Instead of execration, he calls for our admiration and our sympathy. Within a few weeks one hundred and forty Puritan notables, men of approved fidelity and honesty, are summoned to act as a Parliament in the existing emergency. This extraordinary assembly met on the fourth of July. " The old 136 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. and vulgar charge against them," says the En- cyclopaedia Britannica, " as a herd of mean and contemptible fanatics, is of a piece with the general run of historic portraiture of Cromwell himself, and has been sufficiently answered even by writers who have little sympathy for him. They were, indeed, a body of most sincere and earnest men, only too eager and comprehensive in their efforts to accomplish a national reform ; but they attempted too much." Of the one hundred and forty all save two came on the summons, and Oliver makes a speech to them which Carlyle says is all glowing with the splendors of genuine veracity and heroic depths and manfulness, and which seems to express the image of the soul it came from. Oliver was now fifty-four years old. Time had begun to leave its marks on him. Labor, care, sorrow, have left their imprints on his brow. Ambitious, then, of power and preferment ? Read the speech and you will dismiss that thought ; read it again and carefully, and Oliver will come before you a pitiable man, discharging a duty for the sake of England ; read it the third time, and your hatred will be turned to love. The " Little Parliament," so called, proved a failure. It sat for five months, attempted to PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 137 abolish tithes, for one thing, and to have the Christian ministry otherwise supported ; at- tempted also to abolish the Court of Chancery, in which the twenty-three thousand suits were pending, and to contrive and establish a court in which contestants would not have to wait twenty to thirty years for a settlement of their cases. These legislators of the " Little Parliament " were too wise, too honest, too good, too advanced for the England of that asre. The Presbyterian clergy, snugly settled on tithes, and the lawyers of Temjde Bar, having an eye to the continuance of, at least, a part of the twenty-three thousand cases in Chancery, upset Oliver's first schemes for England's good. Do you mean, asked the clergy, to deprive us of our tithes ? Do you mean, asked the lawyers, to de- prive us of our " learned wigs," and our " lucra- tive long-windedness," with your search for " God's law," and " simple justice ? " Poor Oliver must try again. Public selfish clamor puts an end, for the time, to his proposed reforms, and his Parliament resigns its powers into his hands. He is in a dilemma. What his emotions and griefs were, the reader can imagine. What next ? Shall he become a usurper? That seems to be the best possible thing. Usurper, 138 PARLIAMENT AXD KINGSHIP. until he can secure a settlement. He calls a council of officers and other persons of interest in the nation, and it is decided that he is to be known as the Lord Protector of England, Ire- land and Scotland, and is to have a council to aid him in his work. Usurper then, in one sense, Oliver has now become, though he calls himself, not much elated, a w * Constable." Bent, as before and always to the very end of life, on securing a constitutional and stable government. and seeing anarch v. at this time, a danger, and the return of Charles Stuart a menace, he takes a position unknown to the law and to a well- ordered community. It was bravely and nobly done. " Perhaps," remarks Carlyle, " no more perilous place was ever deliberately accepted by a man. The post of honor? Xo : the post of terror, and of danger, and forlorn hope." From a time near the beginning of the Protec- torate to the end of it, plots were laid every year to take the life of Cromwell, and large rewards, with honors, were offered to those who should succeed in the business ; but of those efforts and their failure we shall here say nothing. A Protectorate Parliament of four hundred members was called for September 3, 1654. At its opening the Protector announced that the end PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 139 of the meeting was " healing and settling." " If this meeting/' he said, " prove not healing, what shall we do ? " Poor man. The speech was re- ceived with favor; but the " healing " was not secured. Among four hundred men there would necessarily be some not possessing wisdom, or even common sense, and these members soon be- gan foolishly to debate about the form of govern- ment, with its " single person." The Protector appears again and talks for an hour and a half, partly in defense of himself, and partly to let the members know that, called as they had been by himself to the Parliament, they had no right whatever to dispute his position or his authority. It was their business to legislate for the interests of the people, under the Government as it then stood. lie then tells them that he called not himself to the Protectorate, and affirms that some of the members know that fact. " Gentlemen that un- dertook to form the Government" called him to the guidance of it ; that he will not now " part with the duty, unless God and the people shall take it from him ; " that he hoped, in a private capacity, to reap the benefits " of our hard labors and hazzards ; " that he had begged long ago to be dismissed of his charge, begged it again and 140 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. again (referring to a time antecedent to that of the Protectorate), and that that fact was also known to very many ; that the chief end of summoning that assembly, the Little Parliament, so far as it related to himself, was to lay down the power which was in his hands. " I say it to you again, in the presence of that God who hath blessed and been with me in all my adversities and successes, that was, as to my- self, my greatest end. . . . The authority I had in my hand, being so boundless as it was (for by act of Parliament I was General of all the forces of the three nations of England, Scotland and Ireland, in which unlimited condition I did not desire to live a day), we called that meeting for the ends before expressed." " Divers persons here do know whether I lie in that." He then tells them that the Protectorate did not put him into a higher capacity than before, but that it limited him ; bound him to do nothing without the consent of a council. He asks the members if they had not met under his writs, and tells them that persons " so chosen should not have the power to alter the Government, as now settled in one single person and a Parlia- ment." He tells them that a few days before they came thither the affairs of the nation were PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 141 in peace and quiet ; that enemies abroad were hopeless and scattered ; but that the Parliament, since it met, had put everything into confusion, and was making the Government the scorn of the Dutch ambassadors who were then in London to negotiate their master's affairs. Becoming more earnest toward the end, he says that before he will throw away the Govern- ment he will be rolled into his grave and buried with infamy. Near the close of his speech he says, " I have caused a stop to be put to your entrance into the Parliament House ; I am sorry that there is cause for this, but there is cause." The Constable then tells the members that they will find in the lobby, without the Parlia- ment door, a thing for them to sign. The " thing " is a parchment, on which is engraved a promise to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth, and not to alter the Government as it is settled in a single o person and a Parliament. Before a month has passed three hundred of the four hundred members have put their names to the pledge. A rather singular sort of gover- nor you find this farmer of St, Ives to have been, but pure, true, honest. Even if one cannot love him, it is interesting to watch his movements ; to 111! PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. see him become the complete master of all the great statesmen of his day, the master oi Eng- land, and the most invincible of European rulers. lie tells Bradshaw and the rest of them, fanner- like, in the speech just quoted from, that he is '•almost tired talking to them so long," and he evidently is very sorry to stop the parliamentary harangues. While this is going on inside the Parliament, outside of it Oliver is projecting a movement which is to make the navy of England a permanent and notable power in the world. Vet not one of the four hundred Parliament men knew what he was doing outside the House, while he was scoring them inside, for their in- felicitous conduct ; not one of them know what the Meet which he was forming is to do, or where it is to go. Although tired of speaking, and annoyed because he has to speak, he is not too tired for action. In this third speech Oliver was not at his best, but it were better to lose a speech of Burke's or Webster's than to omit reading this talk of the St. Ives farmer to his first Protectorate Parliament. Large bodies of men. with varying interests, personal and local, as shown in the French Revo- lution and in the history of the United States, find it dillieult work to settle a government, and PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 143 so it proved in England. After about five months Oliver discovers that the Parliament is likely to do nothing, or rather nothing but mis- chief. And then the " Constable " calls the members to the "Painted Chamber," and makes another long speech to them, which he cl< with these words : " I think it my duty to tell you that it is not for the profit of these nations, nor for common and public good, for you to con- tinue here any longer : and therefore I do de- clare unto you that I do dissolve this Parliament. " That the members listened in silence, is both a proof of his greatness and of the truth of what lie had said. lie told them that he had not in- terfered in any way with their proceedings ; that he had been caring for their quiet sitting, and that they had kept him u locked up " as to what they were transacting. u You might have pro- Led to make those good and wholesome laws which the people expected from you ; " hut instead of " peace and settlement," instead of " mercy and truth, . . . weeds and nettles, briars and thorns have thriven under your shadow. . . Dissettlement and division, discontent and dis- satisfaction . . . have been more multiplied within the five months of your sitting than in some years before." 144 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. What a charge ! What a rebuke ! How sharp, yet how tender ! But for the restraints of his moral endowments, but for the pious element in him, this man Oliver might have in our day, in the annals of sarcasm, a place with Dean Swift and Junius. He was too good, how- ever, to be needlessly cutting, and so he let the members off rather kindly and mildly. It is to be regretted that our limited space forbids more of this speech to be given ; but enough has been quoted to indicate the sort of material Oliver was made of, and that he had good and sufficient reasons for sending the members to their homes. Carlyle says that this Parliament " considered that its one duty was to tie up the hands of the Protector well," and that Oliver " thought far otherwise." Another comment is, " Courage, my brave Oliver ! Thou hast but three years more of it, and then the coils and puddles of this earth are all behind thee ; and Carrion Heath, and Chancellor Hyde, and Charles Stuart, the Christian king, can work their will." On the seventeenth of September, 1G5G, an- other Parliament and the Protector met in the Painted Chamber. Oliver began his speech by saying that he had pity on himself when he thought of the duty before him ; but he turns his PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 145 pity to the members when he considers how they will have to listen to him, in a close heated room. This was his fifth speech. It was extempora- neous like all his speeches. Oliver had, in earlier life, preached to his soldiers, and in that way we suppose he had acquired the art of talk- ing* in public, not, however, on politics. On this occasion he became very weary, and said to the members, " I know you are so, too." It was a great speech ; a remarkable one for a man to make who had been for twenty years a farmer, and for ten years a soldier; "rude, massive, genuine, not so fit for Drury Lane as for Val- halla and the Sanhedrim of the gods." AVe regret that in a work of this nature space forbids our quoting a line of it. In the lobby, as they were retiring, the members learned that they were to be winnowed ; that something less than a hundred of them were to be excluded. A protest is made, to which the Protector pays no attention. The imperial Constable has de- cided, and can waste no time on protests. It was at this time, or a little later, that thirty- eight wagon loads of Spanish silver passed through the streets of London to be coined at the Tower into English money ; an evidence that the Government is not limited to speech-making. 146 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. That naval movement, which was so much a mystery to the members of the previous Parlia- ment, has begun to take effect. A large minority, at least, of the people of England have now discovered that, not only in war but in peace, Cromwell is the fittest man that they have to hold the supreme command. When he returned from Worcester, they recog- nized him as their greatest soldier ; they now see that he is also their greatest statesman ; the ablest man for governing that can be found ; not a Protector only, but a born ruler. The mem- bers of the new Parliament recognize his worth, and by a large majority they vote to offer him the kingship. A king he has been for three years, but now he is asked to accept the title. On the last day of March, in the year 1G57, Cromwell being then fifty-eight years old, the banqueting-room at Whitehall presented a spec- tacle which never before, and never since that day, has had a parallel. It may have been the custom in ancient times for men to raise upon their shields their strongest, ablest warrior and call him king ; but two centuries ago, kingship was supposed to be a divine gift, received through those in whose veins flowed royal and sacred blood. Not so thought the men of this second PARLI IMENT AND KINGSHIP. 147 Protectorate Parliament. They saw in Cromwell a true king ; one needing no anointing ; a leader fit to lead, a ruler fit to rule, and now they come to Whitehall to offer the Protector the crown which William the Conqueror and Elizabeth had worn. The entire House came to present the " Petion " with the title King on it. As is his custom, Oliver replies that "the thing" will deserve the utmost deliberation and consideration. Three days later a Parliament committee waits upon him, and he then declines the title, saying, " that may be fit for you to offer, which may not be fit for me to undertake." A few days further on a larger committee, composed of ninety-nine members, waits upon him, and urges his acceptance. AVhitelocke and others ex- haust their legal learning, touching kingship, in the effort to convince him that it is his duty to take the name of king. There are seven speeches of Oliver's about this matter, and in not one of them can a line be found to indicate that he had the slightest ambition for a crown. One sees in them (or rather the writer sees in them) a man struggling to find the path before him ; groping his way on the side of a volcano, amid smoke and increasing darkness, hoping, yet almost against hope, to 148 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. reach sun-lit valleys in safety ; a man, appealing to our hearts for sympathy, for affection, for pity. With the approval of all, and especially of the army, it is possible he would have acceded to the request ; that he desired the title, or put the least value upon it, there is no proof ; there is the opposite of proof. Constable is yet the better name for this immortal man. Let me quote a few of his words. " I am not able for such a trust and charge. . . . Out of necessity I undertook the business of Protector." He " has not desired the continuance cf his power or place, under one title or another. Truly, I have, as before God, often thought that I could not tell what my business was in the place I stood in, save comparing my- self to a good constable set to keep the peace of the parish. ... If the wisdom of the Parliament should have found a way to settle the interests of the nation upon the foundations of justice, truth and liberty, I would have lain at their feet that things might have run in such a current." Justice, truth, liberty ! When, in the Roman Forum, or in any modern hall of legislation, have patriots uttered a more comprehensive, or a nobler desire ? Finally he says, " I should not be an PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 149 honest man if I did not tell you that I cannot un- dertake this Government with the title of king, and that is mine answer to this great and weighty business." While Oliver has the parchment offering king- ship in his hands, and is trying to tell the Parlia- ment in proper and grateful language that he declines the offer, Admiral Blake, under his orders, is sinking Spanish ships in the harbor of Santa Cruz, across the Atlantic, and an army is getting ready in England to join Turenne in the Low Countries to fight the Spaniards there. The Protector evidently has enough to do out- side of Whitehall and kingship, and he has also a most disagreeable obligation soon to discharge, touching this very Parliament which has offered him the crown. The discussion about that mat- ter being over, a new frame of Government includ- ing two Houses having been voted, Oliver having been formally installed as Protector, the prospect for harmony seemed bright, but it proved illusive. The first session of the Parliament closed harmoni- ously, and public affairs went on prosperously ; but all hope of a settlement vanished soon after the second session began. " Success on such a basis as the humors and parliamentary talking of four hundred men, is very uncertain." 150 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. The first session decided to have another House, but did not decide what to call it. Oliver made up the " other House," with six peers, and such " men of eminence as the time had yielded." On the opening of the second session, his health not being* good, he spoke but little, and then called on Mr. Fennes to discover particularly what may be proper for the meeting. Mr. Fennes dis- covers, among other things, that cosmos is rising out of chaos in England ; but poor Oliver, a day or two later, sees more chaos than cosmos, and he deals with the chaos in his characteristic way. The Commons began their work in a dispute touching the name of the other House. Shall it be called a House of Lords ? Four hundred men in a crazy vessel floating on a dangerous shore, and some of them foolish enough, instead of helping to avert wreckage, to quarrel about the shape of their sails and the colors of their flags ! A few years later, standing at Charing Cross, under the gibbets, or passing through the water- gate to the dungeons of the Tower, they could repent their short-sightedness and their folly. Some of them had leisure to repent it in exile. Hearing of the proceedings in the Commons, Oliver instantly summoned both Houses to White- hall; the members must appear at three o'clock PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 151 in the banqueting-room. The Constable of Eng- land is sick, but not yet too sick for duty. To that banqueting-room, where kingship had been offered, like sheep obeying the voice of a shepherd, the four hundred came at the appointed hour, and Oliver says to them : "I look upon this to be the great dut}^ of my place, as being set on a watch- tower, to see what may be for the good of these nations, and what may be for the preventing of evil." You are now come, in as great straits and difficulties as ever nation was in. It is the "being" rather than the well-being that is at stake. He pleads for the Protestant cause abroad, and tells them that concerns the good interests of England ; that the Spaniards have been asked to help the Cavaliers ; that the " sects " are all striving to be uppermost; that it will be wisdom to uphold the "settlement;" that he will be ready to stand or fall with them in the seemingly promising union ; that he has taken his oath to govern according to the laws which are now made ; and then he repeats, in stronger language than ever, what he has often said before : " I sought not this place. I speak it before God, angels and men, I did not. You sought me for it. You brought me to it." The speech was the despairing appeal of a 152 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. hero, but it accomplished no good. Some of the members, indeed, attempt wise legislation : but others of the four hundred keep up. for ten days. their noise and " yelping " about the form of the Government. When on this earth did ever four hundred wise men get together and speak wisely ? And now the Protector does not call the mem- bers to Whitehall. He goes to them. Black Rod, sign of his coming and sign that debate must stop, appears in the Commons. The Pro- tector, it is announced, is in the " other House,'' Lords' House ; and there he makes his last Par- liament speech. A few months later his voice will be forever silent, and England will have no one to rule her well : will have, however, a Con- vocation that can make about six hundred changes in the Prayer Book, to annoy and snub the Presbyterians: a Parliament that can pull a hun- dred and more lifeless bodies out of their tombs, and pack up Baxter, Banyan and an innumerable company of non-conformists in jail : and a king who deserves to be remembered, because, after twenty-five years of misrule, he was able to gasp out on his dying bed, the humane wish that Xelly might not stawre, and so leave one good record of his reign. In his last speech Oliver tells the members, PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 153 rather plainly, what he thinks of them, and what a coil they had got him into at the very time when the king of Scots is getting ready to in- vade England ; and then he dissolves the Parlia- ment. In this speech he says : « I can say, in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertake such a government as this." Cant? Hypocrisy? No, my reader. His thoughts go back to his old home, to his quiet woodside of St. Ives, to the peaceful, pleasant memories of his farmer life ; but that life is not for him now. He knows that there is no other man in England capable of saving it ; and it is now doubtful if he can do it. But he must go on. Almost at the moment when these pathetic words fell from him, the Duke of Ormond, Charles's head man, lies concealed in London, and the Dutch have hired out ships to bring an army over. The Protector's return to private life is impossible, so long as he is struck with the duty of keeping Charles Stuart out of Eng- land. This prince must wait until Cromwell dies, and then he can come back ; but he will come to 154 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. an England which, since his father's day, has changed ; an England in which his foul court, with its Nell Gwynns and its beastly spectacles, will be but as an eruption and a stench on the fair face of the country ; an England, too, which will have its constitution and its liberty before the century has closed, in spite of the restoration of this monarch and the succession of his brother James. Almost immediately after uttering his last words to the Parliament, " God be judge be- tween you and me," Oliver summons his army officers, summons the mayor and council of Lon- don, and begins the work of arresting royalist ring-leaders. Some are sent to the Tower ; death is the penalty of a few ; mercy is accorded to the rest. The insurrection is suppressed. " An old friend of yours is in town," Oliver said to Lord Broghill, " in Drury Lane." " You had bet- ter tell him to be gone." The Duke of Ormond did not need to be told twice. He was off in a twinkle across the Channel, to inform His Sacred Majesty that the game was up. It is a remark of Bishop Burnet, that it was generally believed that Oliver's life and all his arts were exhausted at once ; and that had he lived longer he could not have held things PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. 155 together. It is to be hoped that the good bishop derived comfort from this reflection ; but the fact is that Oliver never stood higher or more firmly than in the months immediately preced- ing his death. It was then that news came of great victories abroad ; of Dunkirk taken. It was in June, before his life went out, that Louis XIV. sent a splendid embassy to congratulate the " most invincible of sovereigns," and the embassy was still in London with its splendors when the clouds gathered in the autumn over Hampton Court; in fact, whatever Bishop Bur- net's friends related to him, the mere ghost of Cromwell, a year after his death, made Cardinal Mazarin, the great minister of France, refuse an interview with His Majesty, Charles, while he " sent his coaches and guards a day's journey, to meet Lockhart, the Commonwealth's ambassador. The government of Cromwell was not exhausted nor was it in the least degree weakened, not- withstanding the unwise Parliaments, until he ceased to control it; and even' after his death it stood for a while on the power which his name left with it. Thurloe, who knew more of Oliver's plans than others, and who, indeed, was the protector of the Protector, intimates that another Parlia- 156 PARLIAMENT AND KINGSHIP. ment would have been summoned had not death put an end to future efforts, and at the same time extinguished all the hopes of the Puritans. In the first year of the reign of Victoria, as intimated before, an order was issued from the court to have annexed to the Prayer Book forms of service for use in all the Episcopal Churches of the kingdom. One of these services was for the " unspeakable mercies " which followed the restoration ; and, singularly enough, another of them called for praise for the coming into Eng- land of King William in safety. The Thanks- giving Service, made by act of Parliament in Charles's time, was worth preserving as a curious piece of history ; but to connect Victoria with its collects was a tribute to Charles wholly un- called for, and one for which Her Majesty, in her mature years, could feel no gratitude. The service for the " unspeakable mercies " of the restoration is not found now in the English Prayer Book ; and the matter is only alluded to here to show that adoration of Charles II. and, perhaps, contempt for Cromwell, have in late years somewhat abated. Cromwell and William III. are the men who deserve thanks and praise from the sovereigns and from the people of England. CHAPTER VII. FOREIGN POLICY. England rose suddenly, under Cromwell, to a position among the nations of Europe which she had never occupied before ; but within a few years of the Protector's death she fell back to her old place, and even far below it ; Dutch guns were then heard on the banks of the river Thames, and Dunkirk became purchasable by France. For two hundred years England was not so low down in the scale of nations as she fell during the reign of Charles II. ; for seven hundred and thirty years, from the time of William I. to the time of William III., there was no rei