d r. f y 4 OLIVER CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. LONDON : PRINTED BY LEVEY, ROBSON, AND FRANKLYN, Great New Street, Fetter Lane. OLIVER CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES WITH ELUCIDATIONS. BY THOMAS CARLYLE. IN THREE VOLUMES. YOL. II. SECOND EDITION , ENLARGED. LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186 STRAND. MDCCCXLVI. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/olivercromwellsl02crom CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. 1649. Letter LXXXI. To Rev. Mr. Robinson : London, 1 Feb. 1648-9 5 This Letter and the Three following relate to Richard Cromwell’s Marriage. Pass .......... 6 Letter LXXXII. To R. Mayor, Esq. : London, 12 Feb. 1648-9 7 Order .......... 9 Letter LXXXIII. To R. Mayor, Esq. : London, 26 Feb. 1648-9 10 „ LXXXIY. To the same : London, 8 March, 1648-9 12 „ LXXXY. To Dr. Love: London, 14 March, 1648-9 15 Recommends a Suitor to him. LXXXVI. To R. Mayor, Esq.: London, 14 March, 1648-9 17 This and the Four following relate to Richard Crom- well’s Marriage. LXXXVII. To the same: London, 25 March, 1649 20 LXXXYIII. To the same : London, 30 March, 1649 22 LXXXIX. To the same : London, 6 April, 1649 . 23 XC. To the same: London, 15 April, 1649 . . 25 VOL. II. a VI CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. l'AGK The Levellers . . . . . . . . 28 Letter XCI. To Sir J. Harrington: London, 9 July, 1G49 37 Earl of Thomond’s Petition. ,, XCII. To Hon. W. Lentliall : London, 10 July, 1649 39 Recommends Mr. Lowry, his fellow Member. „ XCIII. ToR. Mayor, Esq. : Bristol, 19 July, 1649 . 41 In answer to a Recommendation. „ XCIY. To the same: Milford Haven, 13 Aug. 1649 43 News received from Ireland : Jones’s Defeat of Ormond at Bagatrath. „ XCY. To Mrs. Richard Cromwell : Milford Haven, 13 Aug. 1649 46 Religious Advices. „ XCY1. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Dublin, 22 Aug. 1649 48 Vice-Admiral Ayscough’s Lease. Irish War ......... 50 Letter XCYII. To the Chief Officer in Dundalk : Tredah, 12 Sept. 1649 . • • • • . . 56 Summons to Dundalk. ,, XCVIII. To President Bradshaw: Dublin, 16 Sept. 1649 56 Storm of Drogheda. „ XCIX. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Dublin, 17 Sept. 1649 58 The same. „ C. To the same: Dublin, 27 Sept. 1649 . . 66 Venables in Ulster : Supplies. „ CL To the same : Wexford, 14 Oct. 1649 . . 68 March to Wexford; Capture of Wexford. „ CII. To Governor Taaf : Ross, 17 Oct. 1649 . . 82 Ross summoned. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. VII page: Letter CIII. To the same : Ross, 19 Oct. 1649 . . . 84 Terms for Ross. „ CIV. To the same : same date . . . .86 Same subject. „ CY. To the same: Ross, 19 Oct. 1649 . . 87 Same subject. „ CYI. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Ross, 25 Oct. 1649 . 88 Account of the Gaining of Ross. „ CYII. To R. Mayor, Esq. : Ross, 13 Nov. 1649 . 91 Irish News, and Family Affairs. CYIII. To Hon. T. Scott: Ross, 14 Nov. 1649 . 92 The Vote of Lands to Lieut.-Gen. Jones : Lord Broghil. „ CIX. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Ross, 14 Nov. 1649 . 93 Proceedings in Munster; Cork, Youghal, Baltimore, Castlehaven; other Mercies. ,, CX. To the same : Waterford, Nov. 1649 . . 100 Reynolds takes Garrick- on- Suir ; defends it gallantly : Reflections. „ CXI. To the same : Cork, 19 Dec. 1649 . .107 Waterford not taken; Death of Lieut.-Gen. Michael Jones ; Repulse of the Enemy at Passage. „ CXII. To Lord Wharton : Cork, 1 Jan. 1649-50 . Ill Wharton’s Doubts. Declaration for the Undeceiving of Deluded People . . . . . . .116 Letter CXIII. To Hon. W. Lenthall: Castletown, 15 Feb. 1649-50 142 New Campaign : Reduction of many places in Tipperary and the Southwest. „ CXIV. To Governor of Cahir Castle : Cahir, 24 Feb. 1649-50 ....... 147 Summons to Cahir. „ CXY. To President Bradshaw : Cashel, 5 March, 1649-50 149 Progress of the Campaign: Cahir taken. Vlll CONTENTS OF VOLUME IT. TAGE Letter CXYI. To Governor of Kilkenny : Before Kilkenny, 22 March, 1649-50 149 Summons to Kilkenny. CXVII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Carrick, 2 April, 1650 151 Kilkenny taken ; Col. Hewson. CXVIII. To R. Mayor, Esq. : Carrick, 2 April, 1650 158 Reflections on the Mercies in Ireland. CXIX. To R. Cromwell, Esq. : Carrick, 2 April, 1650 160 Fatherly Advices : Raleigh’s History. PART VI. WAR WITH SCOTLAND. 1650-51. War with Scotland ....... 169 Letter CXX. To Hon. W. Lenthall : London, 20 June, 1650 175 On Behalf of Alderman Hooke of Bristol. „ CXXI. To R. Mayor, Esq. : Alnwick, 17 July, 1650 177 Concerning his Son and Daughter-in-law. ,, CXXII. To President Bradshaw : Musselburgh, 30 July, 1650 180 Appearance before Edinburgh : Lesley within his Lines. ,, CXXIII. To Scots Committee of Estates : Mussel- burgh, 3 Aug. 1650 . . . . . . 185 Remonstrates on their dangerous Courses, on their un- christian Conduct towards him. „ CXXIV. To Gen. Lesley : Camp at Pentland Hills, 14 Aug. 1650 . . . . . .161 Answer to Lesley’s Message and Declaration. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. IX Letter CXXV. To the Council of State : Musselburgh, 30 Aug. 1650 . . . . . . .195 Progress of the Scotch Campaign : Skirmish on the Stir- ling Road, no Battle; Retreat to the eastward again. Battle of Dunbar . . . . . . 199 Letter CXXYI. To Sir A. Haselrig : Dunbar, 2 Sept. 1650 200 Day before Dunbar Battle. Proclamation : The Wounded on the Field . . . 209 Letter CXXYII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 210 Of Dunbar Battle : — This Letter and the next Five. „ CXXYIII. To Sir A. Haselrig; Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 219 ,, CXXIX. To President Bradshaw : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 • . . 221 ,, CXXX. To Mrs. Cromwell : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 . 223 „ CXXXI. To R. Mayor, Esq. : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 224 „ CXXXII. To Lieut.-Gen. Ireton : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 225 ,, CXXXIII. To Lord Wharton : Dunbar, 4 Sept. 1650 227 Wharton’s Doubts again. ,, CXXXIV. To Governor Dundas : Edinburgh, 9 Sept. 1650 232 Has offered to let the Ministers in Edinburgh Castle preach in the City : Rebuke for their Refusal. ,, CXXXY. To the same: Edinburgh, 12 Sept. 1650 . 236 Second more deliberate Rebuke, with Queries. Queries ......... 242 Proclamation ; Inhabitants have free Leave to come and go 245 Letter CXXXYI. To President Bradshaw : Edinburgh, 25 Sept. 1650 ....... 246 Has marched towards Stirling, but been obliged to re- turn. X CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. PAGE Letter CXXXYII. To Scots Committee of Estates : Linlith- gow, 9 Oct. 1650 253 Remonstrates again with them concerning the folly and impiety of this War. ,, CXXXVIII. To Col. Strahan : Edinburgh, 25 Oct. 1650 256 On the foregoing Letter; desires a Friendly Debate. Proclamation : Mosstroopers . . . . . 260 Letter CXXXIX. To Governor of Borthwick Castle : Edin- burgh, 18 Nov. 1650 . . . . .261 Summons. ,, CXL. To Hon. W. Lentliall : Edinburgh, 4 Dec. 1650 261 Progress of Scotch Affairs : Ker and Strahan. „ CXLI. To Governor Dun das : Edinburgh, 12 Dec. 1650 267 This and the Six following, with the Pass and Proclama- tion, relate to the Siege of Edinburgh Castle. ,, CXLII. To the same : same date .... 268 „ CXLIII. To the same : Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1650 . 270 „ CXLIY. To the same : Edinburgh, 14 Dec. 1650 . 272 ,, CXLY. To the same : same date .... 273 ,, CXLYI. To the same: Edinburgh, 18 Dec. 1650 . 274 ,, CXLYII. To the same : same date . . . . 2 75 Pass 276 Proclamation ........ 276 Letter CXLYIII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Edinburgh, 24 Dec. 1650 278 Edinburgh Castle surrendered. ,, CXLIX. To Col. Hacker: Edinburgh, 25 Dec. 1650 281 Capt. Empson’s Commission cannot be revoked. Cen- sures a phrase of Hacker’s. a CL. To Gen. Lesley: Edinburgh, 17 Jan. 1650-1 . 283 Provost Jaffrav, Rev. Messrs. Waugh and Carstairs. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. xi PAGE Letter CLI. To Scots Committee of Estates : Edinburgh, 17 Jan. 1650-1 288 Augustin the German Mosstrooper. ,, CLII. To Committee of Army : Edinburgh, 4 Feb. 1650-1 290 Symonds, and the Medal for Dunbar Battle. „ CLIII. To Rev. Dr. Greenwood : Edinburgh, 4 Feb. .1650-1 .294 Has been elected Chancellor of Oxford University. ,, CLIY. To the same : Edinburgh, 14 Feb. 1650-1 . 297 Waterhouse : For an Oxford Degree. „ CLY. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Edinburgh, 1 1 March, 1650-1 299 Durham University. „ CLYI. To President Bradshaw : Edinburgh, 24 March, 1650-1 . . . . . . . 302 Has been dangerously unwell; thanks for their inquiring after him. „ CLVII. To Mrs. Cromwell: Edinburgh, 12 April, 1651 303 Domestic. The Lord Herbert. Richard and the other Children. ,, CLYIII. To Hon. A. Johnston: Edinburgh, 12 April, 1651 306 Public Registers of Scotland. Second Yisit to Glasgow 308 Letter CLIX. To Mrs. Cromwell : Edinburgh, 3 May, 1651 313 Domestic. Regards to his Mother. „ CLX. To President Bradshaw : Edinburgh, 3 June, 1651 315 Dangerous Relapse; now recovering : Drs. Wright and Bates. Xll CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. PAGE Letter CLXI. To Hon. W. Lenthall: Linlithgow, 21 July, 1651 317 Inverkeithing Fight. „ CLXII. To President Bradshaw : Dundas, 24 July, 1651 319 Gone over to Fife. ,, CLXIII. To the same: Linlithgow, 26 July, 1651 . 320 Inchgarvie surrendered. „ CLXIV. To R. Mayor, Esq. : Burntisland, 28 July, 1651 323 Rebukes his Son Richard for excess in expenditure. „ CLXV. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Burntisland, 29 July, 1651 326 Burntisland. Army mostly in Fife. „ CLXVI. To the same : Leith, 4 Aug. 1651 . . 326 St. Johnston taken : the Enemy suddenly gone south- ward. „ CLXVII. To Lord Wharton : Stratford-on-Avon, 27 Aug. 1651 332 Wharton’s Doubts once more. Battle of Worcester ...... 335 Letter CLXYIII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : near Worcester, 3 Sept. 1651 338 Battle of Worcester. ,, CLXIX. To the same : Worcester, 4 Sept. 1651 . 339 The same. PART VII. THE LITTLE PARLIAMENT. 1651-53. The Little Parliament . . . . . .351 Letter CLXX. To Rev. J. Cotton : London, 2 Oct. 1651 . 356 Reflections on Public Affairs : what Prophecies are now fulfilling. CONTENTS OF VOLUME IT. Xlll PAGE Letter CLXXI. To Mr. Hungerford : London, 30 July, 1652 368 Note on Private Business. „ CLXXII. To A. Hungerford, Esq. : Cockpit, 10 Dec. 1652 374 Not at Home when Hungerford called. „ CLXXIII. To Lieut. -Gen. Fleetwood : Cockpit, 1652 376 Domestic-Devotional. Difference between Love and Fear in matters of Religion. „ CLXXI Y. To Mr. Parker : Whitehall, 23 April, 1653 385 Riot in the Fen-Country. Summons ......... 386 Speech I. Opening of the Little Parliament, 14 July, 1653 . 388 Retrospective : aim of all these W ars and Struggles ; chief events of them ; especially dismissal of the Long Par- liament. Prospective : dayspring of divine Prophecy and Hope, to be struggled towards, though with difficulty. De- mits his authority into their hands. Letter CLXXV. To Lieut. -Gen. Fleetwood : Cockpit, 22 Aug. 1653 424 Complains ; heart- weary of the strife of Parties : Moses and the Two Hebrews. ,, CLXXYI. To Committee of Customs : Cockpit, Oct. 1653 426 In remonstrance for a poor Suitor to them. ,, CLXXYII. To H. Weston, Esq. : London, 16 Nov. 1653 427 Excuse for an Oversight : Speldhurst Living. VOL. II. b CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES, PART Y. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. 1649. YOL. II. B LETTERS LXXXI XC. On Tuesday, 30 th January, 1 648-9, it is ordered in the Commons House, f That the Post be stayed until tomorrow morning, ten of the clock and the same afternoon, the King’s Execution having now taken place, Edward Dendy, Sergeant at Arms, with due trumpeters, pursuivants and horse-troops, notifies, loud as he can blow, at Cheapside and elsewhere, openly to all men, That who- soever shall proclaim a new King, Charles Second or another, without authority of Parliament, in this Nation of England, shall be a Traitor and suffer death. For which service, on the morrow, each trumpeter receives ‘ ten shillings’ of the public money, and Sergeant Dendy himself — shall see what he will receive. 1 And all Sheriffs, Mayors of Towns and such like are to do the same in their respective localities, that the fact be known to every one. After which follow, in Parliament and out of it, such debat- ings, committee-ings, consultings towards a Settlement of this Nation, as the reader can in a dim way sufficiently fancy for himself on considering the two following facts. First, That on February 13 th. Major Thomas Scott, an hon- ourable Member whom we shall afterwards know better, brings in his Report or Ordinance for a Council of State, to be henceforth the Executive among us ; which Council, to the num- ber of Forty-one Persons, is thereupon nominated by Parliament ; and begins its Sessions at Derby House on the 17th. Bradshaw, Fairfax, Cromwell, Whitlocke, Harry Marten, Ludlow, Vane the Younger, and others whom we know, are of this Council. Second, That, after much adjustment and new-modelling, new Great Seals, new Judges, Sergeants-maces, there comes out, on May 19 th, an emphatic Act, brief as Sparta, in these words: * Commons Journals, vi. 126; Scobell’s Acts and Ordinances (London, 1658, 1657), ii. 3. 4 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [1 Feb. 4 Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament, and by c the authority of the same : That the People of England, and of ‘ all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are and. ‘ shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established and e confirmed to be, A Commonwealth or Free-State ; and shall ‘ from henceforth be governed as a Commonwealth and Free- ‘ State, — by the Supreme Authority of this Nation the Represen- * tatives of the People in Parliament, and by such as they shall ‘ appoint and constitute officers and ministers under them for ‘ the good of the People ; and that without any King or House ‘ of Lords/ 1 — What modelling and consulting has been needed in the interim the reader shall conceive. Strangely enough, among which great national transactions the following small family-matters again turn up ; asserting that they too had right to happen in this world, and keep memory of themselves, — and shew how a Lieutenant-General’s mind, busy pulling down Idolatrous Kingships, and setting up Religious Commonwealths, has withal an idle eldest Son to marry ! — There occurred ‘ a stick,’ as we saw some time ago, 2 in this Marriage-treaty : but now it gathers life again ; — and, not to agi- tate the reader’s sympathies overmuch, we will say at once that it took effect this time ; that Richard Cromwell was actually wedded to Dorothy Mayor, at Hursley, on Mayday 1649 ; 3 and, one point fairly settled at last ! — But now mark farther how Anne, second daughter of the House of Hursley, came to be married not long after to ‘John Dunch of Pusey in Berkshire;’ which Dunch of Pusey had a turn for collecting Letters. How Dunch, groping about Hursley in subsequent years, found ‘Seventeen Letters of Cromwell,’ and collected them, and laid them up at Pusey ; how, after a century or so, Horace Walpole, likewise a collector of Letters, got his eye upon them ; transcribed them, imparted them to dull Harris. 4 From whom, accordingly, here they still are and continue. This present fascicle of Ten is drawn principally from the Pusey stock ; the remainder will introduce themselves in due course. 1 Scobell, ii. 30; Commons Journals, 19 May. 2 Letter L. vol. i. p. 329. 3 Noble, i. 188. 4 Harris, p. 504. 1649.] LETTER LXXXI., LONDON. LETTER LXXXI. Colonel Norton, ‘dear Dick,’ was purged out by Pride; lazy Dick and lazy Frank Russel were both purged out, or scared away, and are in the lists of the Excluded. Dick, we infer, is now somewhat estranged from Cromwell; probably both Dick and Frank : Frank returned ; Dick too, though in a fitful man- ner. And so, there being now no ‘dear Norton’ on the spot, the Lieutenant-General applies to Mr. Robinson, the pious Preacher at Southampton, of whom we transiently heard already ; — a priest and counsellor, and acting as such, to all parties. For my very loving Friend , Mr. Robinson, Preacher at Southampton : These. Sir, ‘ London/ 1st February, 1648. I thank you for your kind Letter. As to the business you mention, I desire to use this plainness with you. When the last overture was, between me and Mr. Mayor, by the kindness of Colonel Norton, — after the meeting I had with Mr. Mayor at Farnham, I desired the Colonel (finding, as I thought, some scruples in Mr. Mayor), To know of him whether his mind was free to the thing or not. Col. Norton gave me this account, That Mr. Mayor, by reason of some matters as they then stood, was not very free thereunto. Whereupon I did acquiesce, submitting to the providence of God. Upon your reviving of the business to me, and your Letter, I think fit to return you this answer, and to say in plainness of spirit to you : That, upon your testimony of the Gentlewoman’s worth, and the common report of the piety of the Family, I shall be willing to entertain the re- newing of the motion, upon such conditions as may be to mutual satisfaction. Only I think that a speedy resolution 6 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [2 Feb. will be very convenient to both parties. The Lord direct all to His glory. I desire your prayers therein ; and rest, Your very affectionate friend, Oliver Cromwell.* ‘February 1st,’ — it is Thursday; the King was executed on Tuesday : Robinson at Southampton, I think, must have been writing at the very time. On Tuesday night last, a few hours after the King’s Execu- tion, Marquis Hamilton had escaped from Windsor, and been retaken in Southwark next morning, Wednesday morning. ‘ Knocking at a door,’ he was noticed by three troopers ; who questioned him, detected him p and bringing him to the Parlia- ment Authorities, made 40/. a-piece by him. He will be tried speedily, by a new High Court of Justice ; he and others. PASS. To all Officers and Soldiers , and all Persons whom these may concern. Whereas John Stanley of Dalegarth, in the County of Cumberland, Esquire, hath subscribed to his Composition, and paid and secured his Fine, according to the direction of Parliament : These are to require you to permit and suffer him and his servants quietly to pass into Dalegarth above-said, with their horses and swords, and to forbear to molest or trouble him or any of his Family there ; without seizing or taking away any of his horses, or other goods or estate whatso- ever ; and to permit and suffer him or any of his Family, at any time, to pass to any place, about his or their oc- * Harris, p. 504 ; one of the seventeen Letters found at Pusey. 1 Cromwelliana, p. 5 1 . 1649.] LETTER LXXXII., LONDON. 7 casions ; without offering any injury to him or any of his Family, either at Dalegarth, or in his or their travels : As you will answer your contempt at your utmost perils. Given under my hand and seal this 2d of February, 1648. Oliver Cromwell.* Oliver’s seal of ‘six quarterings’ is at the top. Of course only the seal and signature are specially his : but this one Pass may stand here as the sample of many that were then circulat- ing, — emblem of a time of war, distress, uncertainty and danger, which then was. The 2d of February is Friday. Yesterday, Thursday, there was question in the House of ‘ many Gentlemen from the Northern Counties, who do attend about Town to make their compositions,’ and of what is to be done with them. 1 The late business that ended in Preston Fight had made many new delinquents in those parts ; whom now we see painfully with pale faces dancing at- tendance in Goldsmiths’ Hall, — not to say knocking importun- ately at doors in the grey of the morning, in danger of their life ! Stanley of Dalegarth has happily got his composition finished, his Pass signed by the Lieutenant-General ; and may go home, with subdued thankfulness, in a whole jskin. Dalegarth Hall is still an estate or farm, in the southern extremity of Cumberland ; on the Esk river, in the Ravenglass district; not far from that small Lake which Tourists go to see under the name of Devock Water. Quiet life to Stanley there ! LETTER LXXXII. For my very worthy Friend , Richard Mayor , Esq . .* These . Sir, 1 London/ 12th February, 1648. I received some intimations formerly, and by the last return from Southampton a Letter from Mr. * Jefferson's History and Antiquities of Allerdale Ward, Cumberland (Carlisle, 1842), p. 284. 1 Commons Journals, in die. 8 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [12 Feb. Robinson, concerning the reviving of the last year’s motion touching my Son and your Daughter. Mr. Robinson was also pleased to send enclosed in his a Letter from you, bearing date the 5th of this instant February, wherein I find your willingness to entertain any good means for the completing of that business. From whence I take encouragement to send my Son to wait upon you ; and by him to let you know, That my desires are, if Providence so dispose, very full and free to the thing, — if, upon an interview, there prove also a free- dom in the young persons thereunto. What liberty you will give herein, I wholly submit to you. I thought fit, in my Letter to Mr. Robinson, to mention somewhat of expedition ; because indeed I know not how soon I may be called into the field, or other occasions may remove me from hence ; having for the present some liberty of stay in London. The Lord direct all to His glory. 1 rest, Sir, Your very humble servant, * ^ Oliver Cromwell.* Thomas Scott is big with the Council of State at present ; he produces it in the House tomorrow morning, 13th February; and the List of actual Councillors, as we said, is voted the next day. There is also frequent debate about Ireland 1 in these days, and what is to be done for relief of it : the Marquis of Ormond, furnished with a commission from the Prince, who now calls himself Charles II., reappeared there last year; has, with endless patience and difficulty, patched up some kind of alliance with the Papists, Nuncio Papists and Papists of the Pale ; and so far as numbers go, looks very formidable. One does not know how soon one c may be called into the field.’ However, there will several things turn up to be settled first. * Harris, p. 505 ; one of the Pusey seventeen. 1 Cromwelliana, 14 February, &c. 1649.] ORDER. 9 ORDER. On the Saturday 17th February, 1648-9, more properly on Mon- day 1 9th, the Council of State first met, to constitute itself and begin despatch of business. 1 Cromwell seems to have been their first President. At first it had been decided that they should have no constant President ; but after a time, the inconveniences of such a method were seen into, and Bradshaw was appointed to the office. The Minute-book of this Council of State, written in the clear old hand of Walter Frost, still lies complete in the State-Paper Office ; as do the whole Records of the Committee of Both King- doms, of the Committee of Sequestrations in Goldsmiths’ Hall, and many other Committees and officialities of the Period. By the long labour of Mr. Lemon, these waste Documents, now ga- thered into volumes, classed, indexed, methodised, have become singularly accessible. Well read, the thousandth or perhaps ten- thousandth part of them well excerpted, and the nine hundred and ninety-nine parts well forgotten, much light for what is really English History might still be gathered there. Alas, if the 30,000/. wasted in mere stupidities upon the old-parchment Record Commission, had been expended upon wise labours here ! — But to our ‘ Order? Sir Oliver Fleming, a most gaseous but indisputable historical Figure, of uncertain genesis, uncertain habitat, glides through the old Books as f Master of the Ceremonies,’ — master of one knows not well what. In the end of 1643 he clearly is nomi- nated £ Master of the Ceremonies’ by Parliament itself ; 2 and glides out and in ever after, presiding over c Dutch Ambassadors,’ € Swedish Ambassadors’ and such like, to the very end of the Protectorate. A Blessed Restoration, of course, relieved him from his labours. He, for the present, wants to see some Books in the late Royal Library of St. James’s. This scrap of paper still lies in the British Museum. 1 Commons Journals, vi. 146. 2 2 November, 1643, Commons Journals, iii. 2 99. 10 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [22 Feb. To the Keeper of the Library of St. James's . These are to will and require you, upon sight hereof, to deliver unto Sir Oliver Fleming, or to whom he shall appoint, two or three such Books as he shall choose, of which there is a double copy in the Library : to he by him disposed ‘ of ’ as there shall be direction given him by the Council. Of which you are not to fail, and for which this shall be your warrant. Given at the Council of State, this 22d day of Febru- ary, 1648. In the name, and signed by Order of, the Council of State appointed by Authority of Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, {Presses pro tempore)* There is already question of selling the late King’s goods, crown-jewels, plate, and ‘ hangings,’ under which latter title, we suppose, are included his Pictures, much regretted by the British connoisseur at present. They did not come actually to market till July next. 1 LETTER LXXXIII. Reverend Mr. Stapylton, of whom we heard once before in Edinburgh, has been down at Hursley with Mr. Richard ; Miss Dorothy received them with her blushes, with her smiles ; the elder Mayors ‘ with many civilities :’ and the Marriage-treaty, as Mr. Stapylton reports, promises well. * Additional Ayscough mss. 12,098. 1 Scobell, Part ii. 46, the immense Act of Parliament for sale of them. 1649.] LETTER LXXXIII., LONDON. 11 For my very worthy Friend , Richard May or , Esquire : These . Sir, ‘ London/ 26th February, 1648. I received yours by Mr. Stapylton ; together with an account of the kind reception and the many civilities afforded ‘to’ them, 1 — especially to my Son, in the liberty given him to wait upon your worthy Daughter. The report of whose virtue and godliness has so great a place in my heart, that I think fit not to neglect anything, on my part, which may consummate a close of the busi- ness, if God please to dispose the young ones’ hearts thereunto, and other suitable ordering ‘of’ affairs towards mutual satisfaction appear in the dispensation of Provi- dence. For which purpose, and to the end matters may be brought to as near an issue as they are capable of, — not being at liberty, by reason of public occasions, to wait upon you, nor your health, as I understand, permitting it, — I thought fit to send this Gentleman, Mr. Stapylton, instructed with my mind, to see how near we may come to an understanding one of another therein. And although I could have wished the consideration of things had been between us two, it being of so near concernment, — yet Providence for the present not allowing, I desire you to give him credence on my behalf. Sir, all things which yourself and I had in conference, at Farnham, do not occur to my memor}~, through multi- plicity of business intervening. I hope I shall with a very free heart testify my readiness to that which may be ex- pected from me. I have no more at present: but desiring the Lord to 1 To Richard Cromwell and him. 12 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [8 Mar. order this affair to His glory and the comfort of His ser- vants, I rest, Sir, Your humble servant, Oliver Cromwell.* LETTER LXXXIY. This Thursday 8th March, 1648-9, they are voting and debating in a thin House, hardly above 60 there. Whether Duke Hamilton, Earl Holland, Lords Capel, Goring, and Sir John Owen, — our old friend ‘Colonel Owen’ of Nottingham Castle, Jenner and Ashe’s old friend, 1 — are to die or to live ? They have been tried in a new High Court of Justice, and all found guilty of treason, of levying w ar against the Supreme Authority of this Nation. Shall they be executed ; shall they be respited ? The House by small Majorities decides against the first three ; decides in favour of the last ; and as to Goring, the votes are equal, — the balance-tongue trembles, “ Life or Death !” Speaker Lenthall says, Life. 2 Meanwhile, small private matters also must be attended to. For my very worthy Friend , Richard Mayor, Esquire ; These. Sir, ‘London/ 8th March, 1648. Yours I have received ; and have given further instructions to this Bearer, Mr. Stapylton, to treat with you about the business in agitation between your Daughter and my Son. I am engaged 3 to you for all your civilities and respects * Harris, p. 505 ; one of the Pusey seventeen : Signature only is in Cromwell’s hand. 1 Letter LXXVI. vol. i. p. 424. 2 Commons Journals, vi. 159. 3 obliged. 1649.] LETTER LXXXIV., LONDON. 13 already manifested. I trust there will be a right under- standing between us, and a good conclusion : and though I cannot particularly remember the things spoken of at Farnham, to which your Letter seems to refer me, yet I doubt not but I have sent the offer of such things now as will give mutual satisfaction to us both. My attendance upon public affairs will not give me leave to come down unto you myself; I have sent unto you this Gentleman with my mind. I salute Mrs. Mayor, though unknown, with the rest of your Family. I commit you, with the progress of the Business, to the Lord ; and rest, Sir, Your assured friend to serve you, Oliver Cromwell.* On the morrow morning, poor versatile Hamilton, poor ver- satile Holland, with the Lord Capel who the first of all in this Parliament rose to complain of Grievances, mCet their death in Palaceyard. The High Court was still sitting in Westminster Hall as they passed through ‘from Sir Robert Cotton’s house.’ Hamilton lingered a little, or seemed to linger, in the Hall ; still hopeful of reprieve and fine of 100,000/. : but the Earl of Den- bigh, his brother-in-law, a Member of the Council of State, stept up to him; whispered in his ear; — the poor Duke walked on. That is the end of all his diplomacies ; his Scotch Army of Forty- thousand, his painful ridings to Uttoxeter, and to many other places, have all issued here. The Earl of Lanark will now be Duke of Hamilton in Scotland : may a better fate await Tiim ! The once gay Earl of Holland has been ‘ converted’ some days ago, as it were for the nonce, — poor Earl ! With regard to my Lord Capel again, who followed last in order, he behaved, says Bulstrode, ‘much after the manner of a stout Roman. He ‘ had no Minister with him, nor shewed a iy sense of death ap- * Harris, p. 506 ; one of the seventeen. 14 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Mar. 1 proaching ; but carried himself all the time he was upon the ‘ scaffold with that boldness and resolution as was to be admired. ‘ He wore a sad-coloured suit, his hat cocked up, and his cloak ‘ thrown under one arm : he looked towards the people at his ' first coming up, and put off his hat in manner of a salute ; he ‘ had a little discourse with some gentlemen, and passed up and c down in a careless posture .’ 1 Thus died Lord Capel, the first who complained of Grievances : in seven years time there are such changes for a man ; and the first acts of his Drama little know what the last will be ! — This new High Court of Justice is one of some Seven or Eight that sat in those years, and were greatly complained of by Con- stitutional persons. Nobody ever said that they decided con- trary to evidence ; but they were not the regular Judges. They took the Parliament’s law as good, without consulting Fleta and Bracton about it. They consisted of learned Sergeants and other weighty persons nominated by the Parliament, usually in good numbers, for the occasion. Some weeks hence, drunken Poyer of Pembroke and the confused Welsh Colonels are tried by Court Martial ; Poyer, Powel, Laughern are found to merit death. Death however shall be executed only upon one of them ; let the other two be par- doned : let them draw lots which two. ‘ In two of the lots was 'written. Life given by God ,• the third lot was a blank. The * Prisoners were not willing to draw their own destiny ; but a f child drew the lots, and gave them : and the lot fell to Colonel * Poyer to die / 2 He was shot in Covent Garden ; died like a soldier, poor confused Welshman ; and so ended. And with these executions, the chief Delinquents are now got punished. The Parliament lays up its axe again ; willing to par- don the smaller multitude, if they will keep quiet henceforth. 1 Whitlocke, p. 380 (the first of the two pages 380 which there are). 2 Ibid. 21 April, 1649. 1649.] LETTER LXXXV., LONDON. 15 LETTER LXXXY. For my worthy Friend , Dr . Love , Master of Benet College , { Cambridge .*’ These . Sir, ‘ London/ 14th March, 1648. I understand one Mrs. Nutting is a suitor unto you, on the right of her Son, about the renewing of a Lease which holds of your College. The old interest I have had makes me presume upon your favour. I desire nothing hut what is just; leaving that to y our j udgment ; and beyond which I neither now nor at any time shall move. If I do, denial shall be most welcome and ac- cepted by, Sir, Your affectionate servant, Oliver Cromwell.* This is not the Christopher Love who preached at Uxbridge, during the Treaty there in 1644; who is now a minister in Lon- don, and may again come before us ; this is a Cambridge ‘ Dr. Love/ of whom I know nothing. Oliver, as we may gather, had befriended him in the old Cambridge days ; nothing hard had befallen him during the reform of that University in 1644. Probably in Baker’s Manuscripts it might be ascertained in what year he graduated, where he was born, where buried ; but nothing substantial is ever likely to be known of him, — or is indeed necessary to be known. ‘Mrs. Nutting’ and he were evidently children of Adam, breathing the vital air along with Oliver Crom- well; and Oliver, on occasion, endeavoured to promote justice and kindness between them ; and they remain two ‘ shadows of small Names.’ 1 ' Yesterday, Tuesday 13th March, there was question in the Council of State about ‘ modelling of the forces that are to go to * Lansdown mss. 1236, fol. 83. 1 Cooper’s Annals, iii. 491. — Mrs. Nutting, it appears, succeeded (Cam- bridge ms. 'penes me). 16 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Mar. Ireland and a suggestion was made, by Fairfax probably, who had the modelling to do, that they would model much better if they knew first under what Commander they were to go. 1 It is thought Lieutenant-General Cromwell will be the man. On which same evening, furthermore, one discerns in a faint but an authentic manner, certain dim gentlemen of the highest authority, young Sir Harry Vane to appearance one of them, repairing to the lodging of one Mr. Milton, ‘a small house in Holborn which opens backwards into Lincoln’s Inn Fields to put an official question to him there ! Not a doubt of it they saw Mr. John this evening. In the official Book this yet stands legible : ( Die Martis, 13° Mart'll 1648.’ ‘That it is referred to the ‘ same Committee,’ Whitlocke, Yane, Lord Lisle, Earl of Denbigh, Harry Marten, Mr. Lisle, ‘ or any two of them, to speak with Mr. ‘ Milton, to know, Whether he will be employed as Secretary for ‘ the Foreign Languages ? and to report to the Council.’ 2 I have authority to say that Mr. Milton, thus unexpectedly applied to, consents ; is formally appointed on Thursday next ; makes his proof-shot, ‘ to the Senate of Hamburgh,’ 3 about a week hence ; — and gives, and continues to give, great satisfaction to that Coun- cil, to me, and to the whole Nation now, and to all Nations ! Such romance lies in the State-Paper Office. Here, however, is another Letter on the Hursley Business, of the same date as Letter LXXXV. ; which must also be read. I do not expect many readers to take the trouble of representing before their minds the clear condition of ‘Mr. Ludlow’s lease,’ of ‘ the 25 01 ., 3 ‘ the 150/.,’ &c., in this abstruse affair : but such as please to do so will find it all very straight at last. We observe Mr. Mayor has a decided preference for ‘ my ould land ;’ land that I inherited, or bought by common contract, instead of getting it from Parliament for Public Services ! In fact, Mr. Mayor seems somewhat of a sharp man : but neither has he a dull man to deal with — though a much bigger one. 1 Order-Book of the Council of State (in the State- Paper Office), i. 86. 2 Ibid. ; Todd's Life of Milton (London, 1826), pp. 96, 108-123. 3 Senatus Populusque Anglicanus Amplissimo Civitatis Hamburgensis Senatui , Salutem. (In Milton’s Liter ce Senatus Anglicani , this first Letter to the Hamburgers is not given.) 1649.] LETTER LXXXVI., LONDON. 17 LETTER LXXXVI. * For my worthy Friend , Richard Mayor , Esquire , at Hursley : These, 1 Sir, ‘ London,’ 14th March, 1648. I received your Paper by the hands of Mr. Stapylton. I desire your leave to return my dissatisfaction therewith. I shall not need to premise how much I have desired (I hope upon the best grounds) to match with you. The same desire still continues in me, if Providence see it fit. But I may not be so much wanting to myself nor family as not to have some equality of consideration to- wards it. 1 I have two young Daughters to bestow, if God give them life and opportunity. According to your Offer, I have nothing for them; nothing at all in hand. If my Son die, what consideration is there to me ? And yet a jointure parted with ‘ on my side.’ If she die, there is ‘ on your side’ little ‘ money parted with ;’ ‘ even’ if you have an heir male, ( there is’ but 3,000/., ‘ and’ without time ascertained. 2 As for these things, * indeed,’ I doubt not but, by one interview between you and myself, they might be accom^ modated to mutual satisfaction ; and in relation to these, I think we should hardly part, or have many words, so much do I desire a closure with you. But to deal freely with you : the settling of the Manor of Hursley, as you propose it, sticks so much with me, that either I under- stand you not, or else it much fails my expectation. As you offer it, there is 400/. per annum charged upon it. For the 150/. to your Lady, for her life, as a jointure, I stick not 1 ‘ it’ is not the family, but the match. 2 See Letter L. vol. i. p. 329. C VOL. II. 18 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Mar. at that : but the 2501. per annum until Mr. Ludlow’s Lease expires, the tenor whereof 1 know not, and so much of the 2501. per annum as exceeds that Lease in annual value for some time also after the expiration of the said Lease, 1 — gives such a maim to the Manor of Hursley as indeed renders the rest of the Manor very inconsiderable. Sir, if I concur to deny myself in point of present moneys, as also in the other things mentioned, as aforesaid, I may and do expect the Manor of Hursley to be settled without any charge upon it, after your decease, saving your Lady’s jointure of 150/. per annum , — which if you should think fit to increase, I should not stand upon it. Your own Estate is best known to you : but surely your personal Estate, being free for you to dispose, will, with some small matter of addition, beget a nearness of equality, - — if I hear well from others. And if the difference were not very considerable, I should not insist upon it. What you demand of me is very high in all points. I am willing to settle as you desire in everything ; saving for maintenance 400/. per annum , 300/. per annum . 2 I would have somewhat free, to be thanked by them for. The 300/. per annum of my old land 3 for a jointure, after my Wife’s decease, I shall settle ; and in the mean time * a like sum* out of other lands at your election : and truly, Sir, if that be not good, neither will any lands, I doubt. 1 ‘Ludlow’s Lease,’ &c. is not very plain. The ‘ tenor ofLudlow’s Lease’ is still less known to us than it was to the Lieutenant-General ! Thus much is clear: 250+150 = 400 pounds are to be paid off Hursley Manor by Richard and his Wife, which gives a sad ‘ maim’ to it. When Ludlow’s Lease falls in, there will be some increment of benefit to the Manor ; but we are to derive no advantage from that, we are still to pay the surplus ‘ for some time after.’ 2 Means, in its desperate haste : ‘ except that instead of 400/. per annum for maintenance, we must say 300/.’ 3 Better than Parliament-land, thinks Mayor ! Oliver too prefers it for his Wife; but thinks all land will have a chance to go, if that go. 1649.] LETTER LXXXVI., LONDON. 19 I do not much distrust, your principles in other things have acted 1 you towards confidence. — You demand in case my Son have none issue male but only daughters, then the * Cromwell’ Lands in Hantshire, Monmouth- and Glou- cestershire to descend to these daughters, or else 3,000/. apiece. The first would be most unequal ; the latter ‘ also’ is too high. They will be well provided for by being inheritrixes of their Mother ; and I am willing e that’ 2,000/. apiece be charged upon those lands ‘ for them.’ Sir, I cannot but with very many thanks acknowledge your good opinion of me and of my Son ; as also your great civilities towards him ; and your Daughter’s good respects, — whose goodness, though known to me only at a distance and by the report of others, I much value. And indeed that causeth me so cheerfully to deny myself as I do in the point of moneys, and so willingly to comply in other things. But if I should not insist as above, I should in a greater measure than were meet deny both my own reason and the advice of my friends ; which I may not do. Indeed, Sir, I have not closed with a far greater Offer of estate ; but chose rather to fix here : I hope I have not been wanting to Providence in this. I have made myself plain to you. Desiring you will make my Son the messenger of your pleasure and resolu- tion herein as speedily as with conveniency you may, I take leave, And rest, Your affectionate servant, Oliver Cromwell. I desire my service may be presented to your Lady and Daughters.* 1 actuated or impelled. * Harris, p. 507 ; Dunch’s Pusey seventeen. 20 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [25 Mar. On the morrow, which is Monday the 15th, day also of John Milton’s nomination to he Secretary, Lieutenant-General Crom- well was nominated Commander for Ireland; satisfactory appoint- ments both. LETTER LXXXYII. The Lieutenant-General is in hot haste today; sends a brief Letter ‘by your Kinsman,’ consenting to almost everything. — Mayor, as we saw before, decidedly prefers ‘my ould land’ to uncertain Parliamentary land. Oliver (see last Letter) offered to settle the 300/. of jointure upon his old land, after his Wife’s decease ; he now agrees that half of it, 150/., shall be settled directly out of the old land, and the other half out of what Parliamentary land Mayor may like best. — The Letter breathes haste in every line ; but hits, with a firm knock, in Cromwell’s way, the essential nails on their head, as it hurries on. ‘Your Kinsman,’ who carries this Letter, turns out by and by to be a Mr. Barton ; a man somewhat particular in his ways of viewing matters : unknown otherwise to all men. The Lieu- tenant-General getting his Irish Appointment confirmed in Par- liament, and the conditions of it settled, 1 is naturally very busy. For my worthy Friend , Richard Mayor, Esquire, at Hursley : These . Sir, ‘ London,’ 25th March, 1649. You will pardon the brevity of these lines ; the haste I am in, by reason of business, occasions it. To testify the earnest desire I have to see a happy period to this Treaty between us, I give you to understand, That I agree to 150/. jper annum out of the 300/. per annum of my old land for your Daughter’s jointure, and the other 150/. where you please. ‘ Also’ 400/. for present 1 Cromwelliana, p. 54 ; Commons Journals, &c. 1649.] LETTER LXXXVII., LONDON. 21 maintenance where you shall choose ; either in Hantshire, Gloucester- or Monmouth-shire. Those lands ‘ to be’ settled upon my Son and his heirs male by your Daughter; and in case of daughters , only 2,000/. apiece to be charged upon those lands. 6 On the other hand,’ 400/. jper annum free, 1 to raise portions for my two Daughters. I expect the Manor of Hursley to be settled upon your Daughter and her heirs, the heirs of her body. Your Lady a jointure of 150/. per annum out of it. For compensation to your younger Daughter, I agree to leave it in your power, after your decease, to charge it with as much as will buy in the Lease of the Farm at Allington 2 by a just computation. I ex- pect, so long as they 4 the young couple’ live with you, their diet, as you expressed ; or in case of voluntary part- ing ‘ from .you,’ 150/. per annum . £ You are to give’ 3,000/. in case you have a Son ; 3 to be paid in two years next fol- lowing. In case your Daughter die without issue, — 1,000/. within six months ‘ of the marriage.’ Sir, if this satisfy, I desire a speedy resolution. I should the rather desire so because of what your Kinsman can satisfy you in. The Lord bless you, and your Family, to whom I desire my alfections and service may be pre- sented. I rest, Your humble servant, Oliver Cromwell.* Your Kinsman can in part satisfy you what a multiplicity of business we are in: modelling the Army for Ireland; — which 1 Means, ‘ shall be settled on Richard and his Wife, that I may be left free.’ 2 ‘ Ludlow’s Lease,’ I fancy. Anne Mayor, * your younger Daughter,’ married Dunch ofPusey; John Dunch, to whom we owe these seventeen Letters. See also Letter 27 August, 1657. 3 Grandson, *. e.: in the next sentence, ‘ die’ means more properly live. * Harris, p. 50& ; one of the seventeen. 22 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [30 Mar. indeed is a most delicate dangerous operation, full of difficulties perhaps but partly known to your Kinsman ! For, in these days, John Lilburn is again growing very noisy ; bringing out Pamphlets, England’s New Chains Discovered, in several Parts. As likewise. The Hunting of the Foxes from Trip - loe Heath to Whitehall hy Five Small Beagles } — the tracking out of Oliver Cromwell and his Grandees, onward from their rendezvous at Royston or Triploe, all the way to their present lodgment in Whitehall and the seat of authority. ‘ Five small Beagles,’ Five vociferous petitionary Troopers, of the Levelling species, who for their high carriage and mutinous ways have been set to ‘ride the wooden horse’ lately. Do military men of these times understand the wooden horse ? He is a mere triangular ridge or roof of wood, set on four sticks, with absurd head and tail superadded ; and you ride him bare-backed, in face of the world, frequently with muskets tied to your feet, — in a very uneasy man- ner ! To Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn and these small Beagles it is manifest we are getting into New Chains , not a jot better than the old ; and certainly Foxes ought to be hunted and tracked. Three of the Beagles, the best-nosed and loudest-toned, by names Richard Overton, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, — these, with Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn, huntsman of the pack, are shortly after this lodged in the Tower ; 1 2 ‘ committed to the Lieutenant,’ to be in mild but safe keeping with that officer. There is, in fact, a very dangerous leaven in the Army, and in the Levelling Public at present, which thinks with itself : God’s enemies having been fought down, chief Delinquents all punished, and the Godly Party made triumphant, why does not some Millennium arrive ? LETTER LXXXVIII. ‘ Compensation,’ here touched upon, is the Compensation to your younger Daughter’ mentioned in last Letter ; burden settled on Hursley Manor, ‘ after your decease,’ ‘ to buy in the Lease of 1 Given in Somers Tracts, vi. 44-60. 2 27 March, 11 April, 1649 (Commons Journals, in diebus). 1649.] LETTER LXXXIX.j LONDON. 23 Allington Farm.’ Mayor wants it another way ; which f seems truly inconvenient,’ and in brief cannot be. For my worthy Friend , Richard Mayor , Esquire , at Hursley : These . Sir, * London/ 30th March, 1649. I received yours of the 28th instant. I desire the matter of compensation may be as in my last to you. You propose another way ; which seems to me truly inconvenient. I have agreed to all other things, as you take me, and that rightly, repeating particulars in your Paper. The Lord dispose this great Business (great between you and me) for good. You mention to send by the Post on Tuesday. 1 I shall speed things here as I may. I am designed for Ire- land, which will be speedy. I should be very glad to see things settled before I go, if the Lord will. My service to all your Family. I rest, Sir, Your affectionate servant, ‘ Oliver Cromwell.’* LETTER LXXXIX. Who the Lawyer, or what the ‘ arrest’ of him is, which occasions new expense of time, I do not know. On the whole, one begins to wish Richard well wedded; but the settlements do still a little stick, and we must have patience. 1 The 30th of March is Friday ; Tuesday is the 3d of April. * Harris, p. 508. PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [6 Apr. 24 For my worthy Friend , Richard Mayor , Esquire , at Hursley : These . Sir, * London,’ 6th April, 1649. I received your Papers enclosed in your Letter ; although I know not how to make so good use of them as otherwise might have been, to have saved expense of time, if the arrest of your Lawyer had not fallen out at this time. I conceive a draught, to your satisfaction, by your own Lawyer, would have saved much time ; wdiich to me is precious. I hope you will send some ( one’ up, perfectly instructed. I shall endeavour to speed w r hat is to be done on my part; not knowing how soon I may be sent down towards my charge for Ireland. And I hope to perform punctually with you. Sir, my Son had a great desire to come down and w T ait upon your Daughter. I perceive he minds that more than to attend to business here. 1 I should be glad to see him settled, and all things finished before I go. I trust not to be wanting therein. The Lord direct all our hearts into His good pleasure. I rest, Sir, Your affectionate servant, Oliver Cromwell. My service to your Lady and Family.* There is much to be settled before I can ‘ be sent down to my charge for Ireland.’ The money is not yet got ; — and the Army has ingredients difficult to model. Next week, a Parliamentary Committee, one of whom is the Lieutenant-General, and another is Sir Harry Vane, have to go to the City, and try if they will lend us 120,000/. for this business. Much speaking in the Guild- 1 The dog ! Harris, p. 509. 1649.] LETTER XC., LONDON. 25 hall there, in part by Cromwell. 1 The City will lend; and now if the Army were once modelled, and ready to march ? — LETTER XC. Here, at any rate, is the end of the Marriage-treaty, — not even Mr. Barton, with his peculiar ways of viewing matters, shall now delay it long. For my worthy Friend , Richard Mayor , Esquire : These. Sir, ‘ London,’ 15th April, 1649. Your Kinsman Mr. Barton and myself, re- pairing to our Counsel, for the perfecting of this Business so much concerning us, did, upon Saturday this 15th of April, draw our Counsel to a meeting : where, upon con- sideration had of my Letter to yourself expressing my consent to particulars, which ‘ Letter’ Mr. Barton brought to your Counsel Mr. Hales of Lincoln’s Inn; 2 — upon the reading that which expresseth the way of your settling Hursley, your Kinsman expressed a sense of yours contrary to the Paper in my hand, as also to that under your hand, of the 28th of March, which was the same as mine as to that particular. In 3 that which I myself am to do, I know nothing of doubt, but do agree it all to your Kinsman’s satisfaction. Nor is there much material difference s between us,’ save in this, — wherein both my Paper sent by you to your Counsel, and yours of the 28th, do in all literal and all 1 12th April, 1649, Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 55). 2 ‘ Hales’ is the future Judge Hale. 3 A mere comma here, instead of new paragraph ; greatly obscuring the sense : — ‘as to that particular, and I know nothing of doubt in that which I am to doe, but doe agree itt all,’ &e. 26 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [15 Apr. equitable construction agree, viz. : To settle an Estate in fee-simple upon your Daughter, after your decease ; which Mr. Barton affirms not to be your meaning, — although he has not (as to me) formerly made this any objection ; nor can the words bear it ; nor have I anything more consider- able in lieu of what I part with than this. And I have appealed to yours or any Counsel in England, whether it be not just and equal that I insist thereupon. And this misunderstanding, — if it be yours, as it is your Kinsman’s, — put a stop to the Business ; so that our Counsel could not proceed, until your pleasure herein were known. Wherefore it was thought fit to desire Mr. Barton to have recourse to you to know your mind ; he alleging he had no authority to understand that expression so, but the contrary; — which was thought not a little strange, even by your own Counsel. I confess I did apprehend we should be incident to mistakes, treating at such a distance; — although I may take the boldness to say, there is nothing expected from me but I agree to it to your Kinsman’s sense to a tittle. Sir, I desired to know what commission your Kinsman had to help this doubt by an expedient ; — who denied to have any ; but did think it were better for you to part with some money, and keep the power in your own hand as to the land, to dispose thereof as you should see cause. Where- upon an overture was made, and himself and your Counsel desired to draw it up ; the effect whereof this enclosed Paper contains. And although I should not like change of agreements, yet to shew how much I desire the perfect- ing of this Business, if you like thereof (though this be far the worse bargain), I shall submit thereunto ; your Counsel thinking that things may be settled this way with more clearness and less intricacy. There is mention made of 900/. per annum to be reserved : but it comes to but about 1649.] LETTER XC., LONDON. 27 8001. ; my lands in Glamorganshire being but little above 400/. per annum ; and the ‘ other’ 400/. per annum out of my Manor in Gloucester- and Monmouth-shire. I wish a clear understanding may be between us ; truly I would not willingly mistake. Desiring to wait upon Providence in this Business, I rest, Sir, Your affectionate friend and servant, Oliver Cromwell. I desire my service may be presented to your Lady and Daughters.'* This is the last of the Marriage-treaty. Mr. Barton, whom * no Counsel in England’ could back, was of course disowned in his over-zeal; the match was concluded; solemnised, 1st May, 1649. 1 Richard died 12th July, 1712, at Chesliunt, age 86 ; 2 his Wife died 5th January, 1675-6, at Hursley, and is buried there, — where, ever after Richard’s Deposition, and while he travelled on the Continent, she had continued to reside. In pulling down the old Hursley House, above a century since, when the Estate had passed into other hands, there was found in some crevice of the old walls a rusty lump of metal, evidently an antiquity ; which was carried to the new Proprietor at Winchester ; who sold it as ‘a Roman weight,’ for what it would bring. When scoured, it turned out, — or is said by vague Noble, quoting vague ‘ Vertue,’ ‘Hughes’s Letters,’ and t Ant. Soc.’ (Antiquarian So- ciety), to have turned out, — to be the Great Seal of the Common- wealth. 3 If the Antiquaries still have it, let them be chary of it. * Harris, p. 509. 1 Noble, i. 188. 2 Ibid. i. 176, 188. 3 Noble, i. 195. Bewildered Biography of the Mayors, ‘ Majors or Mai- jors,’ ibid. ii. 436-40. THE LEVELLERS. While Miss Dorothy Mayor is choosing her wedding-dresses, and Richard Cromwell is looking forward to a life of Arcadian felicity now near at hand, there has turned up for Richard’s Father and other parties interested, on the public side of things, a matter of very different complexion, requiring to be instantly dealt with in the interim. The matter of the class called Level- lers ; concerning which we must now say a few words. In 1647, as we saw, there were Army Adjutators ; and among some of them wild notions afloat, as to the swift attainability of Perfect Freedom civil and religious, and a practical Millennium on this Earth ; notions which required, in the Rendezvous at Corkbushfield, ‘ Rendezvous of Ware’ as they oftenest call it, to be very resolutely trodden out. Eleven chief mutineers were ordered from the ranks in that Rendezvous ; were condemned by swift Court-Martial to die ; and Trooper Arnald, one of them, was accordingly shot there and then ; which extinguished the mutiny for that time. War since, and Justice on Delinquents, England made a Free Commonwealth, and such like, have kept the Army busy : but a deep republican leaven, working all along among these men, breaks now again into very formidable deve- lopment. As the following brief glimpses and excerpts may satisfy an attentive reader who will spread them out to the due expansion in his mind. Take first this glimpse into the civil province ; and discern, with amazement, a whole submarine world of Calvinistic Sansculottism, Five-point Charter and the Rights of Man, threatening to emerge almost two centuries before its time ! ‘ The Council of State,* says Whitlocke, 1 just while Mr. Barton is bogghng about the Hursley Marriage-settlements, ‘ has ‘ intelligence of certain Levellers appearing at St. Margaret’s ‘ Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, and at St. George’s Hill,* in the 1 17 April, 1649, p. 384. 1649.] THE LEVELLERS. 29 same quarter : ‘ that they were digging the ground, and sowing 4 it with roots and beans. One Everard, once of the Army, who c terms himself a Prophet, is the chief of them :’ one Winstanley is another chief. * They were Thirty men, and said that they 4 should be shortly Four-thousand. They invited all to come in ‘ and help them ; and promised them meat, drink, and clothes. 4 They threaten to pull down Park-pales, and to lay all open ; * and threaten the neighbours that they will shortly make them 4 all come up to the hills and work.’ These infatuated persons, beginning a new era in this headlong manner on the chalk hills of Surrey, are laid hold of by certain Justices, ‘ by the country people,’ and also by 4 two troops of horse ;’ and complain loudly of such treatment ; appealing to all men whether it be fair. 1 This is the account they give of themselves when brought before the General some days afterwards : 4 April 20th, 1649. Everard and Winstanley, the chief of * those that digged at St. George’s Hill in Surrey, came to the 4 General and made a large declaration, to justify their proceed- 4 ings. Everard said, He was of the race of the Jews,’ as most men, called Saxon and other, properly are ; 4 That all the Liber- 4 ties of the People were lost by the coming in of William the ‘ Conqueror ; and that, ever since, the People of God had lived ‘ under tyranny and oppression worse than that of our Fore- * fathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance * was at hand ; and God would bring His People out of this sla- * very, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits 4 and benefits of the Earth. And that there had lately appeared * to him, Everard, a vision ; which bade him, Arise and dig and * plough the Earth, and receive the fruits thereof. That their 4 intent is to restore the Creation to its former condition. 4 That as God had promised to make the barren land fruitful, so 4 now what they did, was to restore the ancient Community of 4 enjoying the Fruits of the Earth, and to distribute the benefit 4 thereof to the poor and needy, and to feed the hungry and 4 clothe the naked. That they intend not to meddle with any < man’s property, nor to break down any pales or enclosures,* 1 King’s Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 427, § 6 (Declaration of the bloody and unchristian Acting of William Star, &c. in opposition to those that dig upon George-Hill in Surrey); ib. no. 418, § 5, &c. 30 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [20 Apr. in spite of reports to tlie contrary ; * but only to meddle with ‘ what is common and untilled, and to make it fruitful for the f use of man. That the time will suddenly be, when all men ‘ shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and 1 submit to this Community of Goods/ These are the principles of Everard, Winstanley, and the poor Brotherhood, seemingly Saxon, but properly of the race of the Jews, who were found dibbling beans on St. George’s Hill, under the clear April skies in 1649, and hastily bringing in a new era in that manner. ‘And for all such as will come in and work ‘ with them, they shall have meat, drink, and clothes, which is ‘ all that is necessary to the life of man : and as for money, there c is not any need of it ; nor of clothes more than to cover ( nakedness.’ For the rest, * That they will not defend tliem- ‘ selves by arms, but will submit unto authority, and wait till the ‘ promised opportunity be offered, which they conceive to be at ‘ hand. And that as their forefathers lived in tents, so it would f be suitable to their condition, now to live in the same. ‘ While they were before the General they stood with their * hats on ; and being demanded the reason thereof, they said, * Because he was but their fellow- creature. Being asked the ‘ meaning of that phrase. Give honour to whom honour is due, — 4 they said, Your mouths shall be stopped that ask such a ques- * tion.’ 1 Dull Bulstrode hath f set down this the more largely because it was the beginning of the appearance’ of an extensive levelling doctrine, much to be ‘ avoided ’ by judicious persons, seeing it is * a weak persuasion.’ The germ of Quakerism and much else is curiously visible here. But let us look now at the military phasis of the matter ; where ‘ a weak persuasion’ mounted on cavalry horses, with sabres and fire-arms in its hand, may become a very perilous one. Friday , 20 th April, 1649. The Lieutenant-General has con- sented to go to Ireland ; the City also will lend money ; and now this Friday the Council of the Army meets at Whitehall to decide what regiments shall go on that service. ‘ After a solemn seek- ing of God by prayer,’ they agree that it shall be by lot : tickets are put into a hat, a child draws them : the regiments, fourteen * Whitlocke, p. 384. 1649 ] THE LEVELLERS. 31 of foot and fourteen of horse, are decided on in this manner. 4 The officers on whom the lot fell, in all the twenty-eight regi- ( ments, expressed much cheerfulness at the decision/ The officers did : — but the common men are by no means all of that humour. The common men, blown upon by Lilburn and his five small Beagles, have notions about England’s new Chains, about the Hunting of Foxes from Triploe Heath, and in fact ideas con- cerning the capability that lies in man and in a free Common- wealth, which are of the most alarming description. Thursday , 2 6th April. This night at the Bull in Bishopsgate there has an alarming mutiny broken out in a troop of Whalley’s regiment there. Whalley’s men are not allotted for Ireland : but they refuse to quit London, as they are ordered ; they want this and that first : they seize their colours from the Cornet, who is lodged at the Bull there : — the General and the Lieutenant- General have to hasten thither ; quell them, pack them forth on their march ; seizing fifteen of them first, to be tried by Court- Martial. Tried by instant Court-Martial, five of them are found guilty, doomed to die, but pardoned ; and one of them. Trooper Lockyer, is doomed and not pardoned. Trooper Lockyer is shot, in Paul’s Churchyard, on the morrow. A very brave young man, they say ; though but three-and-twenty, ‘ he has served seven years in these Wars,’ ever since the Wars began. ‘ Religious’ too, ‘ of excellent parts and much beloved — but with hot no- tions as to human Freedom, and the rate at which the millen- niums are attainable, poor Lockyer ! He falls shot in Paul’s Churchyard on Friday, amid the tears of men and women. Paul’s Cathedral, we remark, is now a Horseguard ; horses stamp in the Canons’ stalls there : and Paul’s Cross itself, as smacking of Popery, where in fact Alablaster once preached flat Popery, is swept altogether away, and its leaden roof melted into bullets, or mixed with tin for culinary pewter. Lockyer’ s corpse is watched and wept over, not without prayer, in the eastern regions of the City, till a new week come ; and on Monday, this is what we see advancing westward by way of funeral to him. ‘ About one hundred went before the Corpse, five or six in a * file ; the Corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding ‘ a soldier’s knell ; then the Trooper’s Horse came, clothed all ‘ over in mourning, and led by a footman. The Corpse was 32 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [9 May, ‘ adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half stained in blood ; ‘ and the Sword of the deceased along with them. Some thou- ( sands followed in rank and file : all had seagreen-and-black ‘ Ribbon tied on their hats, and to their breasts : and the women ‘ brought up the rear. At the new Churchyard in Westminster, 4 some thousands more of the better sort met them, who thought ‘ not fit to march through the City. Many looked upon this * funeral as an affront to the Parliament and Army ; others called * these people “ Levellers but they took no notice of any one’s * sayings.’ 1 That was the end of Trooper Lockyer : six trumpets wailing stern music through London streets ; Rosemaries and Sword half-dipt in blood ; funeral of many thousands in seagreen Rib- bons and black : — testimony of a weak persuasion now looking somewhat perilous. Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn and his five small Beagles, now in a kind of loose arrest under the Lieutenant of the Tower, make haste to profit by the general emotion ; pub- lish on the 1st of May 2 their ( Agreement of the People,’ — their Bentham-Sieyes Constitution : Annual very exquisite Parliament, and other Lilburn apparatus ; whereby the Perfection of Human Nature will with a maximum of rapidity be secured, and a millen- nium straightway arrive, sings the Lilburn Oracle. May 9th. Richard Cromwell is safe wedded ; Richard’s Fa- ther is reviewing troops in Hyde Park, ‘ seagreen colours in some of their hats.’ The Lieutenant-General speaks earnestly to them. Has not the Parliament been diligent, doing its best? It has punished Delinquents ; it has voted, in these very days, resolutions for dissolving itself and assembling future Parliaments. 3 It has protected trade ; got a good Navy afloat. You soldiers, there is exact payment provided for you. Martial Law ? Death, or other punishment, of Mutineers ? Well ! Whoever cannot stand Mar- tial Law is not fit to be a soldier : his best plan will be to lay down his arms ; he shall have his ticket and get his arrears as we others do, — we that still mean to fight against the enemies of England and this Cause. 4 — One trooper shewed signs of inso- lence ; the Lieutenant-General suppressed him by rigour and by 1 Whitlocke, p. 385. 2 Whitlocke’s date, p. 385. 3 15 April, 1649, Commons Journals. 4 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 56). 1649.] THE LEVELLERS. 33 clemency : the seagreen ribbons were torn from such hats as had them. The humour of the men is not the most perfect. This Review was on Wednesday : Lilburn and his five small Beagles are, on Saturday, committed close Prisoners to the Tower, each rigorously to a cell of his own. It is high time. For now the flame has caught the ranks of the Army itself, in Oxfordshire, in Gloucestershire, at Salisbury where head-quarters are ; and rapidly there is, on all hands, a dangerous conflagration blazing out. In Oxfordshire, one Cap- tain Thompson, not known to us before, has burst from his quarters at Banbury, with a Party of Two-hundred, in these same days ; has sent forth his England's Standard Advanced j 1 insisting passionately on the New Chains we are fettered with ; indignantly demanding swift perfection of Human Freedom, justice on the murderers of Lockyer and Arnald ; — threatening that if a hair of Lilburn and the five small Beagles be hurt, he will avenge it c seventy-and-seven fold.’ This Thompson’s Party, swiftly at- tacked by his Colonel, is broken within the week ; he himself escapes with a few, and still roves up and down. To join whom, or to communicate with Gloucestershire where help lies, there has, in the interim, open mutiny, ‘ above a Thousand strong,’ with subalterns, with a Cornet Thompson brother of the Captain, but without any leader of mark, broken out at Salisbury : the General and Lieutenant-General, with what force can be raised, are hastening thitherward in all speed. Now were the time for Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn ; now or never might noisy John do some considerable injury to the Cause he has at heart : but he sits, in these critical hours, fast within stone walls ! Monday, 14 th May. All Sunday the General and Lieutenant- General marched in full speed by Alton, by Andover, towards Salisbury ; the mutineers, hearing of them, start northward for Buckinghamshire, then for Berkshire ; the General and Lieu- tenant-General turning also northward after them in hot chase. The mutineers arrive at Wantage ; make for Oxfordshire by New- bridge ; find the Bridge already seized ; cross higher up by swimming ; get to Burford, very weary, and ‘ turn out their horses to grass — Fairfax and Cromwell still following in hot speed, ‘ a march of near fifty miles’ that Monday. What boots 1 Given in Walker’s Hist, of Independency, part ii. 168; dated 6 Mav VOL. II. D 34 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 May, it ; there is no leader, noisy John is sitting fast within stone walls ! The mutineers lie asleep in Burford, their horses out at grass ; the Lieutenant-General, having rested at a safe distance since dark, bursts into Burford as the clocks are striking mid- night. He has beset some hundreds of the mutineers, 4 who could only fire some shots out of windows — has dissipated the mutiny, trodden down the Levelling Principle out of English affairs once more. Here is the last scene of the business ; the rigorous Court-Martial having now sat ; the decimated doomed Mutineers being placed on the leads of the Church to see : Thursday, \7th May. ‘This day in Burford Churchyard, * Cornet Thompson, brother to Thompson the chief leader, was * brought to the place of execution ; and expressed himself to ‘ this purpose, That it was just what did befall him ; that God * did not own the ways he went ; that he had offended the Gene- ‘ ral : he desired the prayers of the people ; and told the soldiers ‘ who were appointed to shoot him, that when he held out his ‘ hands they should do their duty. And accordingly he was im- ‘ mediately, after the sign given, shot to death. Next after him f was a Corporal, brought to the same place of execution ; where, ‘ looking upon his fellow-mutineers, he set his back against the ‘ wall ; and bade them who were appointed to shoot, “ Shoot!” ‘ and died desperately. The third being also a Corporal, was * brought to the same place ; and without the least acknowledg- ‘ ment of error, or shew of fear, he pulled off his doublet, stand- ‘ ing a pretty distance from the wall ; and bade the soldiers do ‘ their duty ; looking them in the face till they gave fire, not ‘ shewing the least kind of terror or fearfulness of spirit.’ — So die the Leveller Corporals ; strong they, after their sort, for the Liberties of England ; resolute to the very death. Misguided Corporals ! But History, which has wept for a misguided Charles Stuart, and blubbered, in the most copious helpless manner, near two centuries now, whole floods of brine, enough to salt the Herringfishery, — will not refuse these poor Corporals also her tributary sigh. With Arnald of the Rendezvous at Ware, with Lockyer of the Bull in Bishopsgate, and other misguided martyrs to the Liberties of England then and since, may they sleep well ! Cornet Dean who now came forward, as the next to be shot, f expressed penitence got pardon from the General : and there 1649 .] THE LEVELLERS. 35 was no more shooting. Lieutenant-General Cromwell went into the Church, called down the Decimated of the Mutineers ; re- buked, admonished ; said, The General in his mercy had forgiven them. Misguided men, would you ruin this Cause, which mar- vellous Providences have so confirmed to us to be the Cause of God ? Go, repent ; and rebel no more, lest a worse thing befall you ! ‘ They wept/ says the old Newspaper ; they retired to the Devizes for a time ; were then restored to their regiments, and marched cheerfully for Ireland. — Captain Thompson, the Cornet’s brother, the first of all the Mutineers, he too, a few days after- wards, was fallen in with in Northamptonshire, still mutinous: his men took quarter ; he himself ‘ fled to a wood fired and fenced there, and again desperately fired, declaring he would never yield alive ; — whereupon c a Corporal with seven bullets in his carbine’ ended Captain Thompson too ; and this formidable conflagration, to the last glimmer of it, was extinct. Sansculottism, as we said above, has to he submerged for almost two centuries yet. Levelling, in the practical, civil or military provinces of English things, is forbidden to be. In the spiritual provinces it cannot be forbidden ; for there it everywhere already is. It ceases dibbling beans on St. George’s Hill near Cobham ; ceases galloping in mutiny across the Isis to Burford ; — takes into Quakerisms, and kingdoms which are not of this world. My poor friend Dryasdust lamentably tears his hair over the ‘ intolerance ’ of that old Time to Quakerism and such like : if Dryasdust had seen the dibbling on St. George’s Hill, the threatened fall of * Park-pales,’ and the gallop to Burford, he would reflect that Conviction in an earnest age means, not lengthy Spouting in Exeter-Hall, but rapid silent Practice on the face of the Earth ; and would perhaps leave his poor hair alone. On Thursday night, 17 th of the month, the General, Lieu- tenant-General, and chief Officers arrive at Oxford ; lodge in All-Souls College ; head-quarters are to be there for some days. Solemnly welcomed by the reformed University ; bedinnered, bespeeched ; made Doctors, Masters, Bachelors, or what was suit- able to their ranks, and to the faculties of this reformed Univer- sity. Of which high doings, degrees and convocation-dinners, and eloquence by Proctor Zanchy, we say nothing, — being in haste for Ireland. This small benefit we have from the business : 36 PART Y. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 May. Anthony Wood, in his crabbed but authentic way, has given us biographical sketches of all these Graduates ; biographies, very lean, very perverse, but better than are commonly going then, and in the fatal scarcity not quite without value. 1 Neither do we speak of the thanking in the House of Com- mons ; or of the general Day of Thanksgiving for London, which is Thursday the 7th June (the day for England at large being Thursday 21st), 2 3 — and of the illustrious Dinner which the City gave the Parliament and Officers, and all the Dignitaries of Eng- land, when Sermon was done. It was at Grocers’ Hall, this City dinner ; really illustrious. Dull Bulstrode, Keeper, or one of the Keepers, of the Commonwealth Great Seal, was there, — Keeper of that lump of dignified metal, found since all rusty in the wall at Hursley : and my Lord of Pembroke, an Earl and Member of the Council of State, 4 speaking very loud’ as his manner was, insisted that illustrious Bulstrode should take place above him. I have given place to Bishop Williams when he was Keeper ; and the Commonwealth Great Seal is as good as any King’s ever was; — illustrious Bulstrode, take place above me: so! 3 4 On 4 almost every dish was enamelled a bandrol with the word Wel- 4 come. No music but that of drum and trumpet ;’ no balderdash, or almost none, of speech without meaning ; 4 no drinking of healths or other incivility:’ — drinking of healths; a kind of invocation or prayer, addressed surely not to God, in that hu- mour ; probably therefore to the Devil, or to the Heathen gods ; which is offensive to the well-constituted mind. Four-hundred pounds were given to the Poor of London, that they also might dine. 4 — And now for Bristol and the Campaign in Ireland. 1 Wood’s Athenae, iv. (Fasti, ii. 127-155): the Graduates of Saturday, 19th May, 1649, are, Fairfax , p. 148; Cromwell , p. 152; Colonels Scrope , Grosvenor, Sir Hardress Waller, Ingoldsby, Harrison, Goff, Okey ; Adjutant- General Sedascue, Scoutmaster Rowe: and of Monday, 21st, Lieutenant- Colonel Cobbet, p. 140 ; John Rushworth, Comet Joyce , p. 138: — of whom those marked here in Italics have biographies worth looking at for an instant. 2 Commons Journals, 26 May, 1649. 3 Whitlocke, p. 391. 4 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, pp. 59, 60). LETTERS XCI— XCVI. Tuesday, 10 th July, 1649. ( This evening about five of the clock, 4 the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland began his journey ; by the way 4 of Windsor, and so to Bristol. He went forth in that state and 4 equipage as the like hath hardly been seen ; himself in a coach 4 with six gallant Flanders mares, whitish grey ; divers coaches 4 accompanying him ; and very many great Officers of the Army; 4 his Lifeguard consisting of eighty gallant men, the meanest 4 whereof a Commander or Esquire, in stately habit; — with trum- 4 pets sounding, almost to the shaking of Charing Cross, had it 4 been now standing. Of his Lifeguard many are Colonels ; and 4 believe me, it’s such a guard as is hardly to be paralleled in the 4 world. And now have at you, my Lord of Ormond ! You will 4 have men of gallantry to encounter ; whom to overcome will be 4 honour sufficient, and to be beaten by them will be no great 4 blemish to your reputation. If you say, Csesar or Nothing : 4 they say, A Republic or Nothing. The Lord Lieutenant’s co- 4 lours are white.’ 1 Thus has Lord-Lieutenant Cromwell gone to the Wars in Ire- land. But before going, and while just on the eve of going, he has had the following, among a multiplicity of other businesses, to attend to. LETTER XCI. Barnabas O’Bryen, Sixth Earl ofThomond, Twentieth-and-odd King of Thomond, a very ancient Irish dignitary of the Limerick regions, whom it were still worth while to conciliate, has fallen into 4 straits,’ distresses ; applies to the Lord Lieutenant to help him a little. The Lord Lieutenant thinks his case good; forwards it with recommendation to Harrington, of the Council of State, the proper official person in such matters. Note, this is by no 1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 62). 38 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [9 July.- means Harrington of the Oceana , this ‘Sir James;’ this is Mem her (‘ recruiter’) for Rutlandshire, and only a distant cousin oi the Oceana’s. What the Earl of Thomond’s case was, as we have not seen fhe ‘ enclosed’ statement of it, shall remain somewhat vague to us. Thomond had not joined the Irish Massacre, in 1641 : hut nei- ther would he join against it ; he apologised to the King’s Lieu- tenant on that occasion, said he had no money, no force ; retired with many apologetic bows into England to the King himself ; leaving his unmonied Castle of Bunratty to the King’s Lieutenant, — who straightway found some 2,000/. of good money lying hid- den in it, and cheerfully appropriated the same. I incline to think, it may be for this Two-thousand and odd pounds, to have it ac- knowledged as a debt and allowed on the Earl of Peterborough’s estate, that the poor Earl, ‘ in the modesty of his desires,’ is now pleading. For he has been in active Royalist services since that passive one ; in Ormond Wars, cessations, sequestrations ; is a much mulcted, impoverished man. And as for the Earl of Peter- borough his son-in-law, he was one of poor Earl Holland’s people in that fatal futile rising of St. Neot’s, last year; and is now wan- dering in foreign parts, in a totally ruined condition. Readers who are curious may follow the indications in the note. 1 Earl Thomond’s modest desire was allowed. Bunratty Castle, where that 2,000/. was found ‘ buried in the walls,’ is now quite de- serted by the Thomonds ; is now ‘the largest Police-Barrack’ in those Limerick regions. ‘ For the Honourable Sir James Harrington, Knight, of the Council of State : These .’ SlR, ‘ London/ 9th July, 1649. You see by this Enclosed, how great damage the Earl of Thomond hath sustained by these Troubles, and what straits he and his family are reduced unto by reason thereof. You see the modesty of his desires to 1 Ludlow, i. 21 ; Whitlocke (2d edit.), p. 420, see also p. 201; Commons Journals, vi. 279, 445 (15 Aug. 1649, and 23 July, 1650); Collins’s Peerage, ii. 216; &c. &c. 1649.] LETTER XC1I., LONDON. 39 be such as may well merit consideration. I am confident, that which he seeks is not so much for advantage of him- self, as out of a desire to preserve his son-in-law the Earl of Peterborough’s fortune and family from ruin. If the result of the favour of the House fall upon him, although but in this way, it’s very probable it will oblige his Lordship to endeavour the peace and quiet of this Commonwealth. Which will be no disservice to the State; — perhaps of more advantage than the extremity of his Fine. Besides, you shewing your readiness to do a good office herein will very much oblige, Sir, Your affectionate servant, Oliver Cromwell.* LETTER XCIL Here likewise is a Letter which the Lord-Lieutenant, in still greater haste, now in the very act of departing, has had to write, — on behalf of his ‘ Partner’ or fellow Member for Cambridge ; which likewise the reader is to glance at, before going : For the Honourable William Lentliall , Esquire. Sir, ‘ London/ 10th July, 1649. I beseech you, upon that score of favour, if I be not too bold to call it friendship, which T have ever had from you, let me desire you to promote my Partner’s humble suit to the House ; and obtain, as far as possibly you may, some just satisfaction for him. I know his sufferings for the Public have been great, besides the loss Tanner mss. (in Cary, ii. 150). 40 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [10 July, of his calling by his attendance here. His affections have been true and constant ; and, I believe, his decay great in his Estate. It will be justice and charity to him ; and I shall acknowledge it as a favour to, Your most humble servant, Oliver Cromwell.* John Lowry, Esq., is Oliver’s fellow Member for Cambridge. What Lowry’s ‘ losses,’ ‘ estate,’ ‘ calling,’ or history in general were, remains nndiscoverable. One might guess that he had been perhaps a lawyer, some call him a ‘ chandler’ or trader, 1 of Pu- ritan principles, and fortune already easy. He did not sit in the short Parliament of 1640, as Oliver had done ; Oliver’s former ‘Partner,’ one Meautys as we mentioned already, gave place to Lowry when the new Election happened. Lowry in 1645 was Mayor of Cambridge. Some controversy as to the Privileges of the University there, which was now re- formed according to the Puritan scheme, had arisen with the Town of Cambridge : a deputation of Cambridge University men, with ‘ Mr. Vines’ at their head, comes up with a Petition to the House of Commons, on the 4th of August, 1645 ; reporting that they are like to be aggrieved, that the ‘ new Mayor of Cambridge will not take the customary oaths,’ in respect to certain privi- leges of the University ; and praying the House, in a bland and flattering way, to protect them. The House answers: “Yours is the University which is under the protection of this House Oxford, still in the King’s hands, being in a very unreformed state : “ this House can see no learning now in the Kingdom but by your eyes;” — certainly you shall be protected! — Counter- Petitions come from Lowry and the Corporation ; but we doubt not the University was protected in this controversy, and Gown made good against Town. 2 What the controversy specially was, or what became of it, let no living man inquire. Lowry here vanishes into thick night again ; nowhere reappears till in this Letter of Cromwell’s. * Harris, p. 516 ; Harleian mss. no. 6988 — collated, and exact. 1 Cooper’s Annals. 2 See Commons Journals, vi. 229, 241. 1649.] LETTER XCIII., BRISTOL. 41 Letter written, as its date bears, on the very day when he set out towards Bristol, to take the command in Ireland, ‘ 10th July, 1649, about five in the afternoon.’ In some Committee-room, or other such locality, in the thick press of business, Lowry had contrived to make his way to the Lord Lieutenant, and to get this Letter out of him. Which indeed proved very helpful. For on that day week, the 17th of July, 1649, we find as follows : ‘ The humble Petition of John Lowry, Esq., was this day read. ‘ Ordered, That the sum of Three-liundred pounds be allowed ‘ unto the said Mr. John Lowry, for his losses in the said ‘ Petition mentioned : and that the same be charged upon the ‘ revenue : and the Committee of Revenue are authorised and ‘ appointed to pay the same : and the same is especially recom- ‘ mended to Sir Henry Vane, Senior, to take care the same be 4 paid accordingly,’ 1 — which we can only hope it was, to the solace of poor Mr. Lowry, and the ending of these discussions. Ten years later, in Protector Richard’s time, on Friday 22d July, 1659, a John Lowry, Esquire, now quite removed from Cambridge, turns up again; claiming to be continued ‘Cheque in Ward in the Port of London,’ — which dignity is accordingly assured him till £ the first day of October next.’ 2 But whether this is our old friend the Mayor of Cambridge, and what kind of provision for his old age this same Chequeship in Ward might be, is unknown to the present Editor. Not the faintest echo or vestige henceforth of a John Lowry either real or even possible. The rest — gloomy Night compresses it, and we have no more to say. LETTER XCIII. Mayor of Hursley, with whom are the young Couple, is con- nected now with an important man : he has written in behalf of ‘ Major Long ;’ for promotion as is likely. The important man does not promote on the score of connexion ; and mildly sig- nifies so much. 1 Commons Journals, vi. 263. 2 Ibid. vii. 727. 42 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. L 19 July, For my very loving Brother , Richard Mayor , Esqyire, at Hursley : These . Loving Brother, Bristol, 1 9th July, 1649. I received your Letter by Major Long ; and do in answer thereunto according to my best understanding, with a due consideration to those gen- tlemen who have abid the brunt of the service. I am very glad to hear of your welfare, and that our children have so good leisure to make a journey to eat cherries : — it’s very excusable in my Daughter ; I hope she may have a very good pretence for it ! I assure you, Sir, I wish her very well ; and I believe she knows it. I pray you tell her from me, I expect she writes often to me ; by which I shall understand how all your Family doth, and she will be kept in some exercise. I have delivered my Son up to you ; and I hope you will counsel him : he will need it ; and indeed I believe he likes well what you say, and will be advised by you. I wish he may be serious; the times require it. I hope my Sister 1 is in health ; to whom I desire my very hearty affections and service may be presented; as also to my Cousin Ann , 2 to whom I wish a good husband. I desire my affections may be presented to all your Family, to which I wish a blessing from the Lord. I hope I shall have your prayers in the Business to which T am called. My Wife, I trust, will be with you before it be long, in her way towards Bristol. — Sir, discompose not your thoughts or Estate for what you are to pay me. Let me know wherein I may comply with your occasions and mind, and be confident you will find me to you as your own heart. Mrs. Mayor. 3 Miss Mayor, afterwards Mrs. Dunch of Pusey. 1649.] LETTER XCIV., MILFORD HAVEN. 43 Wishing jour prosperity and contentment very sin- cerely, with the remembrance of my love, I rest, Your affectionate brother and servant, Oliver Cromwell.* Mayor has endorsed this Letter: ‘Received 27 July, 1649, per Messenger express from Newbury. 1 He has likewise, says Harris, jotted on it ‘ some shorthand,’ and ‘ an account of his cattle and sheep.’ — Who the ‘Major Long’ was, we know not: Cromwell undertakes to ‘do’ for him what may be right and reasonable, and nothing more. Cromwell, leaving London as we saw on Tuesday evening July 10th, had arrived at Bristol on Saturday evening, which was the 14th. He had to continue here, making his preparations, gathering his forces, for several weeks. Mrs. Cromwell means seemingly to pass a little more time with him before he go. In the end of July, he quits Bristol ; moving westward by Tenby 1 and Pembroke, where certain forces were to be taken up, — to- wards Milford Haven ; where he dates his next Letters, just in the act of sailing. LETTER XCIY. The new Lord Lieutenant had at first designed for Munster, where it seemed his best chance lay. Already he has some regi- ments over, to reinforce our old acquaintance Colonel, now Lieu- tenant-General Michael Jones, at present besieged in Dublin, and enable him to resist the Ormond Army there. But on the 2d of August an important Victory has turned up for Jones : surprisal, and striking into panic and total rout, of the said Ormond Army; 2 which fortunate event, warmly recognised in the following Letter, * Harris, p. 510 : no. 8 of the Pusey seventeen. 1 At Tenby, 2d August, Commons Journals, vi. 277. 2 Rout at Rathmines or Bagatrath : Ormond’s own Account of it, m Carte’s Ormond Papers, ii. 403, 407-11 : Jones’s Account, in Cary’s Memo- rials, ii. 159-62. Commons Journals, vi, 278 (14 August, 1649), 44 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [13 Aug. clears Dublin of siege, and opens new outlooks for the Lord Lieutenant there. He sails thitherward ; from Milford Haven, Monday, August 13th. Ireton, who is Major-General, or third in command, Jones being second, follows with another division of the force, on Wednesday. Hugh Peters also went; and ‘Mr. Owen’ also, for another chaplain. The good ship John is still lying in Milford waters, we sup- pose, waiting for a wind, for a turn of the tide. ‘ My Son’ Richard Cromwell, and perhaps Richard’s Mother, we may dimly surmise, had attended the Lord Lieutenant thus far, to wish him speed on his perilous enterprise ? ‘ For my loving Brother , Richard Mayor , Esquire, at Hursley : These* 1 Milford Haven,’ From Aboard the John, Loving Brother, 13th Aug. 1649. I could not satisfy myself to omit this opportunity by my Son of writing to you ; espe- cially there being so late and great an occasion of acquaint- ing you with the happy news I received from Lieutenant- General Jones yesterday. The Marquis of Ormond besieged Dublin with Nine- teen-thousand men or thereabouts ; Seven- thousand Scots and Three-thousand more were coming to ‘join him in’ that work. Jones issued out of Dublin with Four-thou- sand foot and Twelve-hundred horse ; hath routed this whole Army ; killed about Four-thousand upon the place ; taken 2,5 17 prisoners, above Three -hundred ‘of them’ officers, some of great quality. 1 This is an astonishing mercy ; so great and seasonable that indeed we are like them that dreamed. What can we say ! The Lord fill our souls with thankfulness, that our mouths may be full of His praise, — and our lives too ; and 1 The round numbers of this account have, as is usual, come over greatly exaggerated (Carte, ubi supra). 1649.] LETTER XCIV., MILFORD HAVEN. 45 grant we may never forget His goodness to us. These things seem to strengthen our faith and love, against more difficult times. Sir, pray for me, That I may walk worthy of the Lord in all that He hath called me unto ! — I have committed my Son to you; pray give him ad- vice. I envy him not his contents ; but I fear he should be swallowed up in them. I would have him mind and understand Business, read a little History, study the Ma- thematics and Cosmography : — these are good, with sub- ordination to the things of God. Better than Idleness, or mere outward worldly contents. These fit for Public services , 1 for which a man is born. Pardon this trouble. I am thus bold because I know you love me ; as indeed I do you, and yours. My love to my dear Sister, and my Cousin Ann your Daughter, and all Friends. I rest, Sir, Your loving brother, Oliver Cromwell. ‘P.S.’ Sir, I desire you not to discommodate yourself because of the money due to me. Your welfare is as mine : and therefore let me know from time to time what will convenience you in any forbearance ; I shall answer you in it, and be ready to accommodate you. And there- fore do your other business ; let not this hinder.* Of Jones and his Victory, and services in Ireland, there was on the morrow much congratulating in Parliament : revival of an old Vote, which had rather fallen asleep, For settling Lands of a Thousand Pounds a-year on him ; and straightway, more special 1 Services useful to all men. * Forster’s Statesmen of the Commonwealth, iv. 267 ; from certain mss. of Lord Nugent’s. PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [13 Aug. 45 speedy Vote of ‘ Lands to the value of Five-hundred Pounds a- year for this last service — which latter Vote, we hope, will not fall asleep as the former had done. 1 LETTER XCV. Same date, same conveyance. To my beloved Daughter , Dorothy Cromwell , at Hursley : These. From Aboard the John, 13th August, 1649. My dear Daughter, Your Letter was very welcome to me. I like to see any thing from your hand ; because indeed I stick not to say I do entirely love you. And therefore I hope a word of advice will not be unwelcome nor unacceptable to thee. I desire you both to make it above all things your business to seek the Lord: to be frequently calling upon Him, that He would manifest Himself to you in His Son ; and be listening what returns He makes to you, — for He will be speaking in your ear and in your heart, if you attend thereunto. I desire you to provoke your Husband likewise thereunto. As for the pleasures of this Life, and outward Business, let that be upon the bye. Be above all these things, by Faith in Christ ; and then you shall have the true use and comfort of them, — and not otherwise . 2 I have much satisfaction in hope your spirit is this way set ; and I desire you may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and that I may 1 Commons Journals, vi. 278, 81 (14, 18 August, 1649). 2 How true is this ; equal, in its obsolete dialect, to the highest that man has yet attained to, in any dialect old or new ! 1649.] LETTER XCV., ABOARD THE JOHN. 47 hear thereof. The Lord is very near : which we see by His wonderful works : and therefore He looks that we of this generation draw near to Him. This late great Mercy of Ireland is a great manifestation thereof. Your Hus- band will acquaint you with it. We should be much stirred up in our spirits to thankfulness. We much need the spirit of Christ, to enable us to praise God for so admirable a mercy. The Lord bless thee, my dear Daughter. I rest, Thy loving Father, Oliver Cromwell. ‘ P.S.’ I hear thou didst lately miscarry. Prithee take heed of a coach by all means; borrow thy Father’s nag when thou intendest to go abroad.* Is the last phrase ironical ; or had the ‘ coach,’ in those ancient roads, overset, and produced the disaster? Perhaps ‘thy Father’s nag’ is really safer? Oliver is not given to irony; nor in a tone for it at this moment. These gentle domesticities and pieties are strangely contrasted with the fiery savagery and iron grimness, stern as Doom, which meets us in the next set of Let- ters we have from him ! On the second day following, on the 15th of August, 1 Crom- well with a prosperous wind arrived in Dublin ; ‘ where,’ say the old Newspapers, 2 ‘ he was received with all possible demonstra- ‘ tions of joy ; the great guns echoing forth their welcome, and ‘ the acclamations of the people resounding in every street. The ‘ Lord Lieutenant being come into the City, — where the con- ‘ course of the people was very great, they all flocking to see him ‘ of whom before they had heard so much, — at a convenient * Forster, iv. 268 : From certain mss. of Lord Nugent’s. 1 Carte, ii. 88. 2 In Kimber : Life of Cromwell (London, 1724), p. 126. 48 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [22 Aug. ‘ place he made a stand,’ rising in his carriage, we suppose, * and ‘ with his hat in his hand made a speech to them.’ Speech un- fortunately lost : it is to this effect ; “ That as God had brought “ him thither in safety, so he doubted not but by Divine Provi- “ dence to restore them all to their just liberties and properties,” much trodden down by those unblessed Papist-Royalist combi- nations, and the injuries of war ; “ and that all persons whose “ hearts’ affections were real for the carrying on of this great “ work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish and their “ confederates and adherents, and for propagating of Christ’s “ Gospel and establishing of Truth and Peace, and restoring of “ this bleeding Nation of Ireland to its former happiness and “ tranquillity, — should find favour and protection from the Par- “ liament of England and him, and withal receive such rewards “ and gratuities as might be answerable to their merits.” ‘ This c Speech,’ say the old Newspapers, ‘ was entertained with great f applause by the people ; who all cried out, “ We will live and f die with you !” ’ LETTER XCVI. Sir George Ayscough, now vigilantly cruising on those coasts, ‘ Vice-Admiral of the Irish Seas,’ who has done good service more than once, — he ought not to suffer in his private economics by absence on the Public Service. ( For the Honourable William Lenthall , Esquire , Speaker of the Parliament : These.' Sir, Dublin, 22d August, 1649. Before my coming for Ireland, I was bold to move the House on behalf of Sir George Ayscough; who then I thought had merited the favour of the Parlia- ment, but since, much more, by his very faithful and in- dustrious carriage in this place. 1649.] LETTER XCVT., DUBLIN. 49 It seems, whilst he is attending your service, a Lease he holds of the Deanery of Windsor had like to be pur- chased over his head, he not coming to buy it himself by the time limited. He holds a very considerable part of his estate in Church-leases ; one or more being in Impropriate Tithes, which he and his ancestors have held for a good time : all which is like to determine, and go from him and his, by your Orders. I found the Parliament well to resent the motion I made on his behalf at that time. I desire you please to revive the business; and to obtain the House’s favour for him, which they intended and expressed. He will, I pre- sume, herewith send his humble desires : for which I beg your furtherance ; and rest, Sir, Your most humble servant, Oliver Cromwell.* Ayscough is a Lincolnshire man. Last year, in the time of the Revolted Ships, he stood true to the Parliament ; and brought his own ship off to them, in spite of perils. Serves now under Blake; is fast rising as a Sea-officer. The Lord Lieutenant’s request in behalf of him has already been complied with . 1 * Tanner mss. (in Cary, ii. 163). 1 Commons Journals, 8 August, 1649 (vi. 276); — see ib. 9 July, 1649 (on which day most probably, the day of Thomond’s Letter too, Cromwell had been ‘ moving the House’ for him). Whitlocke (2d edition), p. 317. VOL. II. E LETTEES XCVIL— CXII. IRISH WAR. The history of the Irish War is, and for the present must con- tinue, very dark and indecipherable to us. Ireland, ever since the Irish Rebellion broke out and changed itself into an Irish Massacre, in the end of 1641, has been a scene of distracted controversies, plunderings, excommunications, treacheries, con- flagrations, of universal misery and blood and bluster, such as the world before or since has never seen. The History of it does not form itself into a picture ; but remains only as a huge blot, an indiscriminate blackness ; which the human memory cannot willingly charge itself with ! There are Parties on the back of Parties ; at war with the world and with each other. There are Catholics of the Pale, demanding freedom of religion ; under my Lord This and my Lord That. There are Old-Irish Catholics, under Pope’s Nuncios, under Abbas O’Teague of the excommuni- cations, and Owen Roe O’Neil ; — demanding not religious free- dom only, but what we now call ‘ Repeal of the Union ;’ and unable to agree with the Catholics of the English Pale. Then there are Ormond Royalists, of the Episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for King without Covenant : Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for King and Covenant : lastly, Michael Jones and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither King nor Covenant. All these plunging and tumbling, in huge discord, for the last eight years, have made of Ireland and its affairs the black unutterable blot we speak of. At the date of Oliver’s arrival, all Irish Parties are united in a combination very unusual with them ; very dangerous for the incipient Commonwealth. Ormond, who had returned thither with new Commission, in hopes to cooperate with Scotch Hamil- 1649 .] IRISH WAR. 51 ton during the Second Civil War, arrived too late for that object ; but has succeeded in rallying Ireland into one mass of declared opposition to the Powers that now rule. Catholics of the Pale, and Old-Irish Catholics of the Massacre, will at length act to- gether : Protestant English Royalism, which has fled hither for shelter ; nay, now at last Royalist Presbyterianism, and the very Scots in Ulster, — have all joined with Ormond ‘ against the Regi- cides.’ They are eagerly inviting the young Charles Second to come thither, and be crowned and made victorious. He as yet hesitates between that and Scotland ; — may probably give Scot- land the preference. But in all Ireland, when Cromwell sets foot on it, there remain only two Towns, Dublin and Derry, that hold for the Commonwealth ; Dublin lately besieged, Derry still be- sieged. A very formidable combination. All Ireland kneaded together, by favourable accident and the incredible patience of Ormond, stands up in one great combination, resolute to resist the Commonwealth. Combination great in bulk ; but made of iron and clay; — in meaning not so great. Oliver has taken survey and measure of it ; Oliver descends on it like the Hammer of Thor ; smites it, as at one fell stroke, into dust and ruin, never to reunite against him more. One could pity this poor Irish people ; their case is pitiable enough ! The claim they started with, in 1641, was for religious freedom. Their claim, we can now all see, was just : essentially just, though full of intricacy ; difficult to render clear and con- cessible ; — nay, at that date of the World’s History, it was hardly recognisable to any Protestant man, for just ; and these frightful massacrings and sanguinary blusterings have rendered it, for the present, entirely unrecognisable. A just, though very intricate claim : but entered upon, and prosecuted, by such methods as were never yet available for asserting any claim in this world ! Treachery and massacre : what could come of it ? Eight years of cruel fighting, of desperate violence and misery, have left matters worse a thousandfold than they were at first. No want of daring, or of patriotism so-called ; but a great want of other things ! Numerous large masses of armed men have been on foot ; full of fiery vehemence and audacity, but without worth as Armies : savage hordes rather ; full of hatred and mutual hatred, of dis- obedience, falsity and noise. Undrilled, unpaid, — driving herds 52 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [1 649 . of plundered cattle before them for subsistence ; rushing down from hillsides, from ambuscadoes, passes in the mountains ; tak- ing shelter always ‘in bogs whither the cavalry cannot follow them.’ Unveracious, violent, disobedient men. False in speech ; — alas, false in thought, first of all ; who have never let the Fact tell its own harsh story to them ; who have said always to the harsh Fact, “ Thou art not that way, thou art this way !” The Fact, of course, asserts that it is that way : the Irish Projects end in perpetual discomfiture ; have to take shelter in bogs whither cavalry cannot follow ! There has been no scene seen under the sun like Ireland for these eight years. Murder, pillage, confla- gration, excommunication ; wide-flowing blood, and bluster high as Heaven and St. Peter ; — as if wolves or rabid dogs were in fight here ; as if demons from the Pit had mounted up to deface this fair green piece of God’s Creation with their talkings and workings ! It is, and shall remain, very dark to us. Conceive Ireland wasted, torn in pieces ; black Controversy as of demons and rabid w olves rushing over the face of it so long ; incurable, and very dim to us : till here at last, as in the torrent of Heaven’s lightning descending liquid on it, we have clear and terrible view of its affairs for a time ! — Oliver’s proceedings here have been the theme of much loud criticism and sibylline execration ; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. We shall give these Twenty- three Letters of his in a mass, and without any commentary whatever. To those who think that a land overrun with Sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these Letters must he very horrible. Terrible Surgery this : but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely? That is a question which should be asked ; and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God’s Judgments ; and did not believe in the rose- water plan of Surgery ; — which, in fact, is this Editor’s case too ! Every idle lie and piece of empty bluster this Editor hears, he too, like Oliver, has to shudder at it ; has to think : “ Thou, idle bluster, not true, thou also art shutting men’s minds against the God’s Fact; thou wilt issue as a cleft crown to some poor man some day ; thou also wilt have to take shelter in bogs whither cavalry cannot follow!” — But in Oliver’s time, as I say, there was still belief in the Judgments of God ; in Oliver’s time, there J649.] IRISH WAR. 53 was yet no distracted jargon of ‘ abolishing Capital Punish- ments/ of Jean-Jacques Philanthropy, and universal rose-water in this world still so full of sin. Men’s notion was, not for abo- lishing punishments, but for making laws just : God the Maker’s Laws, they considered, had not yet got the Punishment abolished from them ! Men had a notion, that the difference between Good and Evil was still considerable ; — equal to the difference between Heaven and Hell. It was a true notion. Which all men yet saw, and felt in all fibres of their existence, to be true. Only in late decadent generations, fast hastening towards radical change or final perdition, can such indiscriminate mashing-up of Good and Evil into one universal patent-treacle, and most unmedical electuary, of Rousseau Sentimentalism, universal Pardon and Benevolence, with dinner and drink and one cheer more, take effect in our Earth. Electuary very poisonous, as sweet as it is, and very nauseous ; of which Oliver, happier than we, had not yet heard the slightest intimation even in dreams. The reader of these Letters, who has swept all that very omi- nous twaddle out of his head and heart, and still looks with a recognising eye on the ways of the Supreme Powers with this world, will find here, in the rude practical state, a Phenomenon which he will account noteworthy. An armed Soldier, solemnly conscious to himself that he is the Soldier of God the Just, — a consciousness which it well beseems all soldiers and all men to have always; — armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom ; doing God’s Judgments on the Enemies of God ! It is a Phenomenon not of joyful nature ; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a Phenomenon which you are called to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at sight : — thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing ; worthy to do other than hate it, and shriek over it ? Darest thou wed the Heaven’s lightning, then ; and say to it. Godlike One ? Is thy own life beautiful and terrible to thee ; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal splendours ? Thou also, art thou in thy sphere the minister of God’s Justice ; feeling that thou art here to do it, and to see it done, at thy soul’s peril? Thou wilt then judge Oliver with increasing clearness ; otherwise with increasing darkness, misjudge him. In fact, Oliver’s dialect is rude and obsolete ; the phrases of 54 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [ 1649 . Oliver, to him solemn on the perilous battlefield as voices of God, have become to us most mournful when spouted as frothy cant from Exeter Hall. The reader has, all along, to make steady allowance for that. And on the whole, clear recognition will be difficult for him. To a poor slumberous Canting Age, mumbling to itself everywhere, Peace, Peace, where there is no peace, — such a Phenomenon as Oliver, in Ireland or elsewhere, is not the most recognisable in all its meanings. But it waits there for re- cognition ; and can wait an Age or two. The Memory of Oliver Cromwell, as I count, has a good many centuries in it yet ; and Ages of very varied complexion to apply to, before all end. My reader, in this passage and others, shall make of it what he can. But certainly, at lowest, here is a set of Military Despatches of the most unexampled nature ! Most rough, unkempt ; shaggy as the Numidian lion. A style rugged as crags ; coarse, drossy : yet with a meaning in it, an energy, a depth ; pouring on like a fire-torrent ; perennial fire of it visible athwart all drosses and defacements : not uninteresting to see ! This man has come into distracted Ireland with a God’s Truth in the heart of him, though an unexpected one ; the first such man they have seen for a great while indeed. He carries Acts of Parliament, Laws of Earth and Heaven, in one hand ; drawn sword in the other. He addresses the bewildered Irish populations, the black ravening coil of sanguinary blustering individuals at Tredah and elsewhere : “ Sanguinary blustering individuals, whose word is grown worth- less as the barking of dogs ; whose very thought is false, repre- senting no fact but the contrary of fact, — behold, I am come to speak and to do the truth among you. Here are Acts of Par- liament, methods of regulation and veracity, emblems the near- est we poor Puritans could make them of God’s Law-Book, to which it is and shall be our perpetual effort to make them cor- respond nearer and nearer. Obey them, help us to perfect them, be peaceable and true under them, it shall be well with you. Refuse to obey them, I will not let you continue living ! As articulate-speaking veracious orderly men, not as a bluster- ing murderous kennel of dogs run rabid, shall you continue in this Earth. Choose!” — They chose to disbelieve him; could not understand that he, more than the others, meant any truth or justice to them. They rejected his summons and terms at 1649. J IRISH WAR. 55 Tredah : he stormed the place ; and according to his promise, put every man of the Garrison to death. His own soldiers are forbid- den to plunder, by paper Proclamation ; and in ropes of authentic hemp they are hanged when they do it. To Wexford Garrison the like terms as at Tredah ; and, failing these, the like storm. Here is a man whose word represents a thing ! Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds : what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact ; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed. This is the first King’s face poor Ireland ever saw ; the first Friend’s face, little as it recog- nises him, — poor Ireland ! But let us take the Letters themselves ; and read them with various emotions, in which wonder will not fail. What a rage, wide-sweeping inexorable as Death, dwells in that heart ; — close neighbour to pity, to trembling affection, and soft tears ! Some readers know that softness without rigour, rigour as of adamant to rest upon, is but sloth and cowardly baseness ; that without justice first, real pity is not possible, and only false pity and maudlin weakness is possible. Others, again, are not aware of that fact. — To our Irish friends we ought to say likewise that this Garrison of Tredah consisted mostly of Englishmen . 1 Perfectly certain this : — and therefore let “the bloody hoof of the Saxon,” &c. forbear to continue itself on that matter. At its peril ! Idle blustering, and untruth of every kind lead to the like terrible results in these days as they did in those. Letter Ninety-seventh, a Summons to Dundalk, will be fully understood so soon as the Two following it are read. The Two following it, on Tredah, or Drogheda as we now name it, contain in themselves, especially the Second and more deliberate of the two contains, materials for a pretty complete account of the Transaction there. It requires only to be added, what Crom- well himself has forborne to do, that on the repulse of the first attack, it was he, in person, who, ' witnessing it from the bat- teries,’ hastened forward and led on the new attack : My pretty men, we must positively not be repulsed ; we must enter here, we cannot do at all without entering ! — The rest of these Irish Letters may, I hope, tell their own tale. 1 Ludlow, i. 301. 56 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [12 Sept. LETTER XCYII. For the Chief Officer commanding in Dundalk : These. Sir, 1 Tredah/ 12th September, 1649. I offered mercy to the Garrison of Tredah, 1 in sending the Governor a Summons before I attempted the taking of it. Which being refused brought their evil upon them. If you, being warned thereby, shall surrender your Garrison to the use of the Parliament of England, which by this I summon you to do, you may thereby prevent effusion of blood. If, upon refusing this Offer, that which you like not befalls you, you will know whom to blame. I rest, Your servant, Oliver Cromwell.* What, in the interim, had become of Dundalk and its Chief and other Officers, will shortly appear. LETTER XCVIII. ‘ To the Honourable John Bradshaw , Esquire , President of the Council of State : These' Sir, ‘ Dublin/ 16th September, 1649. It hath pleased God to bless our endeavours at Tredah. After battery, we stormed it. The Enemy were about 3,000 strong in the Town. They made a stout 1 ‘ Treedagh,’ he writes. * Autograph, in the possession of the Earl of Shannon, at Castle-Martyr, in the County of Cork. 1649 .] LETTER XCVIII., STORM OF TREDAH. 57 resistance ; and near 1,000 of our men being entered, the Enemy forced them out again. But God giving a new courage to our men, they attempted again, and entered ; beating the Enemy from their defences. The Enemy had made three retrenchments, both to the right and left ‘of’ where we entered; all which they were forced to quit. Being thus entered, we refused them quarter ; having the day before summoned the Town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think Thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did, are in safe cus- tody for the Barbadoes. Since that time, the Enemy quitted to us Trim and Dundalk. In Trim they were in such haste that they left their guns behind them. This hath been a marvellous great mercy. The Enemy, being not willing to put an issue upon a field-battle, had put into this Garrison almost all their prime soldiers, being about 3,000 horse and foot, under the command of their best officers ; Sir Arthur Ashton being made Governor. There were some seven or eight regiments, Ormond’s being one, under the command of Sir Edmund Varney. I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one Lieutenant, who, I hear, going to the Enemy said, That he was the only man that escaped of all the Garrison. The Enemy upon this were filled with much terror. And truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs. ‘ As’ for instruments, they were very inconsider- able the work throughout. * * * Captain Brandly did with forty or fifty of his men very 58 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 Sept. gallantly storm the Tenalia ; for which he deserves the thanks of the State. ‘ I rest, Your most humble servant,’ Oliver Cromwell.* ‘ Tenalia ,’ I believe, is now called Tenaille by engineers ; a kind of advanced defensive-work, which takes its name from resemblance, real or imaginary, to the lip of a pair of pincers. The ‘ Sir Edmund Varney’ who perished here was the son of the Standard-bearer at Edgehill. For Sir Arthur Ashton see Clarendon. Poor Sir Arthur had a wooden leg which the sol- diers were very eager for, understanding it to be full of gold coin ; but it proved to be mere timber : all his gold, 200 broad pieces, was sewed into his belt, and scrambled for when that came to light. 1 There is in Wood’s Life 2 an old-soldier’s account of the Storm of Tredah, sufficiently emphatic, by Tom Wood, Anthony’s brother, who had been there. LETTER XCIX. ‘ For the Honourable William Lenthall Esquire , Speaker of the Parliament of England : These.' Sir, Dublin, 17th September, 1649. Your Army being safely arrived at Dublin ; and the Enemy endeavouring to draw all his forces toge- ther about Trim and Tecroghan, as my intelligence gave me, — from whence endeavours were made by the Marquis of Ormond to draw Owen Roe O’Neil with his forces to his assistance, but with what success I cannot yet learn, — I resolved, after some refreshment taken for our weather- * Whitlocke, p. 412. 'Ibid. 2 Prefixed to the Athenoe Oxonienses. 1649.] LETTER XCIX., STORM OF TREDAII. 59 beaten men and horses, and accommodations for a march, to take the field. And accordingly, upon Friday the 30th of August 1 last, rendezvoused with eight regiments of foot, six of horse and some troops of dragoons, three miles on the north side of Dublin. The design was, To endeavour the regaining of Tredah ; or tempting the Enemy, upon his hazard of the loss of that place, to fight. Your Army came before the Town upon Monday fol- lowing. 2 Where having pitched, as speedy course was taken as could be to frame our batteries; which took up the more time because divers of the battering guns were on shipboard. Upon Monday the 9th 3 of this instant, the batteries began to play. Whereupon I sent Sir Arthur Ashton, the then Governor, a summons, To deliver the Town to the use of the Parliament of England. To the which receiving no satisfactory answer, I proceeded that day to beat down the Steeple of the Church on the south side of the Town, and to beat down a Tower not far from the same place, which you will discern by the Chart en- closed. Our guns not being able to do much that day, it was resolved to endeavour to do our utmost the next day to make breaches assaultable, and by the help of God to storm them. The place pitched upon was that part of the Town-wall next a Church called St. Mary’s ; which was the rather chosen because we did hope that if we did enter and possess that Church, we should be the better able to keep it against their horse and foot until we could make way for the entrance of our horse ; and we did not con- ceive that any part of the Town would afford the like ad- vantage for that purpose with this. The batteries planted were two : one was for that part of the Wall against the 1 Friday is 31st ; this error as to the day of the month continues through the Letter. 2 3d September. 3 10th. 60 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 Sept. east end of the said Church ; the other against the Wall on the south side. Being somewhat long in battering, the Enemy made six retrenchments : three of them from the said Church to Duleek Gate ; and three of them from the east end of the Church to the Town-wall and so backward. The guns, after some two or three hundred shot, beat down the corner Tower, and opened two reasonable good breaches in the east and south Wall. Upon Tuesday, the 10th of this instant, about five o’clock in the evening, we began the Storm : and after some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hun- dred men ; the Enemy disputing it very stiffly with us. And indeed, through the advantages of the place, and the courage God was pleased to give the defenders, our men were forced to retreat quite out of the breach, not without some considerable loss ; Colonel Castle being there shot in the head, whereof he presently died ; and divers officers and soldiers doing their duty killed and wounded. There was a Tenalia to flanker the south Wall of the Town, be- tween Duleek Gate and the corner Tower before men- tioned ; — which our men entered, wherein they found some forty or fifty of the Enemy, which they put to the sword. And this ‘ Tenalia’ they held : but it being without the Wall, and the sally-port through the Wall into that Ten- alia being choked up with some of the Enemy which were killed in it, it proved of no use for an entrance into the Town that way. Although our men that stormed the breaches were forced to recoil, as is before expressed ; yet, being en- couraged to recover their loss, they made a second attempt : wherein God was pleased so to animate them that they got ground of the Enemy, and by the goodness of God, forced him to quit his entrenchments. And after a very hot dis- pute, the Enemy having both horse and foot, and we only 1649 .] LETTER XCIX., STORM OF TREDAH. 61 foot, within the Wall, — they gave ground, and our men became masters both of their retrenchments and ‘ of’ the Church ; which indeed, although they made our entrance the more difficult, yet they proved of excellent use to us ; so that the Enemy could not ‘ now’ annoy us with their horse, but thereby we had advantage to make good the ground, that so we might let in our own horse ; which accordingly was done, though with much difficulty. Divers of the Enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount : a place very strong and of difficult access ; being exceed- ingly high, having a good graft, and strongly pallisadoed. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable Officers being there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the Town : and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men; — divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the Town, where about 100 of them pos- sessed St. Peter’s Church-steeple, some the west Gate, and others a strong Round Tower next the Gate called St. Sunday’s. These, being summoned to yield to mercy, refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s Church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: “God damn me, God confound me ; I burn, I burn.” The next day, the other two Towers were summoned ; in one of which was about six or seven score ; but they refused to yield themselves : and we knowing that hunger must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until their stomachs were come down. From one of the said Towers, notwithstanding their con- dition, they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head ; 62 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 Sept. and every tenth man of the soldiers killed ; and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other Tower were all spared, as to their lives only ; and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes. I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood ; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future. Which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret. The offi- cers and soldiers of this Garrison were the flower of their Army. And their great expectation was, that our attempt- ing this place would put fair to ruin us ; they being confi- dent of the resolution of their men, and the advantage of the place. If we had divided our force into two quarters to have besieged the North Town and the South Town, we could not have had such a correspondency between the two parts of our Army, but that they might have chosen to have brought their Army, and have fought with which part ‘of ours’ they pleased, — and at the same time have made a sally with 2,000 men upon us, and have left their walls manned ; they having in the Town the number here- after specified, but some say near 4,000. Since this great mercy vouchsafed to us, I sent a party of horse and dragoons to Dundalk; 1 which the Enemy quitted, and we are possessed of, — as also ‘ of another Cas- tle they deserted, between Trim and Tredah, upon the Boyne. I sent a party of horse and dragoons to a House within five miles of Trim, there being then in Trim some Scots Companies, which the Lord of Ardes brought to assist the Lord of Ormond. But upon the news of Tre- dah, they ran away ; leaving their great guns behind them, which also we have possessed. 1 Antea, Letter XCVII. 1649 .] LETTER XCIX., STORM OF TREDAH. 63 And now give me leave to say how it comes to pass that this work is wrought. It was set upon some of our hearts, That a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God. And is it not so, clearly ? That which caused your men to storm so coura- geously, it was the Spirit of God, who gave your men courage, and took it away again ; and gave the Enemy courage, and took it away again; and gave your men courage again, and therewith this happy success. And therefore it is good that God alone have all the glory. It is remarkable that these people, at the first, set up the Mass in some places of the Town that had been monasteries ; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the last Lord’s day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great Church called St. Peter’s, and they had public Mass there : and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promis- cuously but two ; the one of which was Father Peter TaafF, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took, the next day, and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under the repute of a Lieutenant, and when he understood that the officers in that Tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a Friar ; but that did not save him. A great deal of loss in this business fell upon Colonel Hewson’s, Colonel Castle’s, and Colonel Ewer’s regiments. Colonel Ewer having two Field-Officers in his regiment shot ; Colonel Castle and a Captain of his regiment slain ; Colonel Hewson’s Captain -Lieutenant slain. I do not think we lost 100 men upon the place, though many be wounded. I most humbly pray the Parliament may be pleased 64 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [17 Sept. ‘ that’ this Army may be maintained ; and that a conside- ration may be had of them, and of the carrying on affairs here, ‘such’ as may give a speedy issue to this work. To which there seems to be a marvellous fair opportunity offered by God. And although it may seem very charge- able to the State of England to maintain so great a . force ; yet surely to stretch a little for the present, in following God’s providence, in hope the charge will not be long — I trust it will not be thought by any (that have not irrecon- cilable or malicious principles) unfit for me to move, For a constant supply ; which, in human probability as to out- ward things, is most likely to hasten and perfect this work. And indeed if God please to finish it here as He hath done in England, the War is like to pay itself. We keep the field much ; our tents sheltering us from the wet and cold. But yet the Country-sickness overtakes many : and therefore we desire recruits, and some fresh re- giments of foot, may be sent us. For it’s easily conceived by what the Garrisons already drink up, what our Field- Army will come to, if God shall give more Garrisons into our hands. Craving pardon for this great trouble, I rest, Your most obedient servant, Oliver Cromwell. P.S. Since writing of my Letter, a Major who brought off forty-three horse from the Enemy told me that it’s re- ported in their camp that Owen Roe and they are agreed. The defendants in Tredah consisted of : The Lord of Ormond’s regiment; Sir Edmund Varney Lieutenant- Colonel’s, of 400 ; Colonel Byrn’s, Colonel Warren’s, and Colonel Wall’s, of 2,000 ; the Lord of Westmeath’s, of 200 ; Sir James Dillon’s, of 200 ; and 200 horse.* Newspapers ; in Parliamentary History (London, 1763), xix. 201. 1649.] LETTER XCIX., STORM OF TREDAH. 65 The report as to Owen Roe O’Neil is correct. Monk, who had lately in Ulster entered upon some negotiation with O’Neil and his Old-Irish Party, who, as often happened, were in quarrel with the others, found himself deserted by his very soldiers, and obliged to go to England ; where this policy of his, very useful as Monk had thought, is indignantly disavowed by the Authori- ties, who will not hear of such a connexion. 1 Owen Roe O’Neil appears to have been a man of real ability : surely no able man, or son of Order, ever sank in a more dismal welter of confusions unconquerable by him ! He did no more service or disservice henceforth ; he died in some two months, of a disease in the foot, — poisoned, say some, by the gift of a ‘pair of russet-leather boots’ which some traitor had bestowed on him. 2 Such was the Storm of Tredah. A thing which, if one wanted good assurance as to the essential meaning of it, might well * work remorse and regret for indisputably the outer body of it is emphatic enough ! Cromwell, not in a light or loose man- ner, but in a very solemn and deep one, takes charge for himself, at his own peril. That it is a Judgment of God : and that it did ‘ save much effusion of blood,’ we and all spectators can very readily testify. ‘ The execrable policy of that Regicide,’ says Jacobite Carte on the occasion, ‘had the effect he proposed. It spread abroad the terror of his name; it cut* — In fact, it cut through the heart of the Irish War. Wexford Storm followed (not by forethought, it would seem, but by chance of war) in the same stern fashion ; and there was no other storm or slaughter needed in that Country. Rose-water Surgeons might have tried it otherwise ; but that was not Oliver’s execrable policy, not the Rose-water one. And so we leave it, standing on such basis as it has. Ormond had sent orders to ‘ burn’ Dundalk and Trim before quitting them ; but the Garrisons, looking at Tredah, were in too much haste to apply the coal. They marched away at double- quick time ; the Lord Lieutenant got possession of both Towns unburnt. He has put Garrisons there, we see, which ‘ drink up* some of his forces. He has also despatched Colonel Venables, of 1 10 August, 1649 (Commons Journals, vi. 277). 2 Carte, ii. 83. VOL. II. F 66 PART Y. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [27 Sept. 'whom we shall hear again, with a regiment or two, to reduce Carlingford, Newry, — to raise what Siege there may be at Derry, and assist in settling distracted Ulster : of whose progress here are news. LETTER C. For the Honourable William Lenthall , Esquire , Speaker of the Parliament of England : These. Mr. Speaker, Dublin, 27th September, 1649. I had not received any account from Colonel Venables, — whom I sent from Tredah to endeavour the reducing of Carlingford, and so to march Northward towards a conjunction with Sir Charles Coote, — until the last night. After he came to Carlingford, having summoned the place, both the three Castles and the Fort commanding the Harbour were rendered to him. Wherein were about Forty Barrels of Powder, Seven Pieces of Cannon ; about a Thousand Muskets, and Five-hundred Pikes wanting twenty. In the entrance into the Harbour, Captain Fern, aboard your man-of-war, had some danger; being much shot at from the Sea Fort, a bullet shooting through his main-mast. The Captain’s entrance into that Harbour was a considerable adventure, and a good service ; — as also was that of Captain Brandly , 1 who, with Forty seamen, stormed a very strong Tenalia at Tredah, and helped to take it ; for which he deserves an owning by you. Venables marched from Carlingford, with a party of Horse and Dragoons, to the Newry ; leaving the Foot to come up after him. He summoned the place, and it was yielded before his Foot came up to him. Some other in- formations I have received from him, which promise well 1 Antea, p. 57. 1649 .] LETTER C., DUBLIN. 67 towards your Northern Interest ; which, if well prosecuted, will, I trust God, render you a good account of those parts. I have sent those things to be presented to the Coun- cil of State for their consideration. I pray God, as these mercies flow in upon you, He will give you an heart to improve them to His glory alone ; because He alone is the author of them, and of all the goodness, patience, and long- suffering extended towards you. Your Army has marched; and I believe, this night lietli at Arklow, in the County of Wicklow, by the Sea- side, between thirty and forty miles from this place. I am this day, by God’s blessing, going towards it. I crave your pardon for this trouble ; and rest Your most humble servant, Oliver Cromwell. P.S. I desire the Supplies moved for may be hastened. I am verily persuaded, though the burden be great, yet it is for your service. If the Garrisons we take swallow up your men, how shall we be able to keep the field ? Who knows but the Lord may pity England’s sufferings, and make a short work of this ? It is in His hand to do it, and therein only your servants rejoice. I humbly present the condition of Captain George Jenkins’s Widow. He died presently after Tredah Storm. His Widow is in great want. The following Officers and Soldiers were slain at the storming of Tredah : — Sir Arthur Ashton, Governor ; Sir Edmund Varney, Lieutenant-Colonel to Ormond’s Regi- ment ; Colonel Fleming, Lieutenant-Colonel Finglass, Ma- jor Fitzgerald, with eight Captains, eight Lieutenants, and eight Cornets, all of Horse ; Colonels Warren, Wall, and Byrne, of Foot, with their Lieutenants, Majors, &c. ; the 68 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. Lord TaafFs Brother, an Augustine Friar ; forty-four Captains, and all their Lieutenants, Ensigns, & c. ; 220 Reformadoes and Troopers; 2,500 Foot-soldiers, besides Staff-Officers, Surgeons, &c.'* Venables went on, rapidly accomplishing his service in the North ; without much hurt ; though not without imminent peril, — by a camisado, or surprisal in the night-time, which is after- wards alluded to in these Letters. The Lord Lieutenant, we ob- serve, still dates from Dublin, but is to quit it 4 this day his 4 Army has already marched Southward now, on a new series of operations. LETTER CI. For the Honourable William Lenthall , Esquire , Speaker of the Parliament of England : These . Sir, Wexford, 14th October, 1649. The Army marched from Dublin, about the 23d of September, into the County of Wicklow, where the Enemy had a Garrison about fourteen miles from Dub- lin, called Killincarrick ; which they quitting, a Company of the Army was put therein. From thence the Army marched through almost a desolated country, until it came to a passage over the River Doro, 1 about a mile above the Castle of Arklow, which was the first seat and honour of the Marquis of Ormond’s family. Which he * King’s Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 441, art. 7, ‘ Letters from Ireland, printed by Authority' (p. 13). Parliamentary History (xix. 207-9) has copied this Letter from the old Pamphlet (as usual, giving no reference) ; and after the concluding 4 Surgeons, &c.,’ has taken the liberty of adding these words, 4 and many inhabitants of which there is no whisper in the old Pamphlets ; — a very considerable liberty indeed ! 1 River Darragh a branch of what is now called the Avoca ; well known to musical persons. 1649 .] LETTER Cl., WEXFORD. 69 had strongly fortified : but it was, upon the approach of the Army, quitted; — wherein we left another Company of Foot. From thence the Army marched towards Wexford; where in the way was a strong and large Castle, at a town called Limbrick, the ancient seat of the Esmonds ; where the Enemy had a strong Garrison ; which they burnt and quitted, the day before our coming thither. From thence we marched towards Ferns, an episcopal seat, where was a Castle ; to which I sent Colonel Reynolds with a party to summon it. Which accordingly he did, and it was sur- rendered to him; where we having put a company, — ad- vanced the Army to a passage over the River Slaney, which runs down to Wexford; and that night, we marched into the fields of a Village called Enniscorthy, belonging to Mr. Robert Wallop j 1 where was a strong Castle very well manned and provided for by the Enemy ; and, close under it, a very fair House belonging to the same worthy person, — a Monastery of Franciscan Friars, the consider- ablest in all Ireland : they ran away the night before we came. We summoned the Castle; and they refused to yield at the first ; but upon better consideration, they were willing to deliver the place to us : which accordingly they did ; leaving their great guns, arms, ammunition and pro- visions behind them. Upon Monday, the First of October, we came before Wexford. Into which the Enemy had put a Garrison, consisting of ‘ part of’ their Army ; this Town having, 1 Wallop is Member (‘ recruiter’) for Andover ; a King V Judge ; Mem- ber of the Council of State ; now and afterwards a conspicuous rigorous republican man. He has advanced money, long since, we suppose, for the Public Service in Ireland ; and obtained in payment this ‘ fair House,’ and Superiority of Enniscorthy ; properties the value or no-value of which will much depend on the Lord Lieutenant’s success at present. — W allop’s repre- sentative, a Peer of the Realm, is still owner here, as it has proved. 70 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. until then, been so confident of their own strength as that they would not, at any time, suffer a Garrison to be im- posed upon them. The Commander that brought in those forces was Colonel David Sinnott; who took upon him the command of the place. To whom I sent a Summons* a Copy whereof is this enclosed ; between whom and me there passed Answers and Replies, Copies whereof these also are : 1 . “ To the Commander-in-Chief of the Town of Wexford . Sir, “ Before Wexford, 3d October, 1649. “ Having brought the Army belonging to the “ Parliament of England before this place, to reduce it to “ its due obedience : to the end effusion of blood may be “ prevented, and the Town and country about it preserved “ from ruin, I thought fit to summon you to deliver the “ same to me, to the use of the State of England. “ By this offer, I hope it will clearly appear where the “ guilt will lie, if innocent persons should come to suffer “ with the nocent. I expect your speedy answer; and “ rest, “ Sir, “ Your servant, “ Oliver Cromwell.” “ For the Lord General Cromwell . 11 Wexford, 3d October, 1649. “ Sir, — I received your Letter of Summons for the delivery “ of this Town into your hands. Which standeth not with my “ honour to do of myself ; neither will I take it upon me, with- “ out the advice of the rest of the Officers, and Mayor of this “ Corporation ; this Town being of so great consequence to all “ Ireland. Whom I will call together, and confer with ; and (( return my resolution to you, tomorrow by twelve of the clock. 1649 .] LETTER Cl., WEXFORD. 71 “ In the meantime, if you be so pleased, I am content to forbear all acts of hostility, so you permit no approach to be “ made. Expecting your answer in that particular, I remain, — “ my Lord, — your Lordship’s servant, “ D. SlNNOTT.” 2. “ To the Commander-in- Chief of the Town of Wexford . “ Sir, “ Before Wexford, 3d October, 1649. “ I am contented to expect your resolution “ by twelve of the clock tomorrow morning. Because our “ tents are not so good a covering as your houses, and for “ other reasons, I cannot agree to a cessation. I rest, — “ your servant, “ Oliver Cromwell.” “ For the Lord General Cromwell . u Wexford, 4th October, 1649. " Sir, — I have advised with the Mayor and Officers, as I pro- “ mised, and thereupon am content that Four, whom I shall em- “ ploy, may have a Conference and Treaty with Four of yours, to “ see if any agreement and understanding may be begot between “ us. To this purpose I desire you to send mine a Safe-conduct, “ as I do hereby promise to send unto yours when you send me “ their names. And I pray that the meeting may be had to- “ morrow at eight of the clock in the forenoon, that they may have sufficient time to confer and debate together, and deter- “ mine the matter ; and that the meeting and place may be “ agreed upon, and the Safe-conduct mutually sent for the said “ meeting this afternoon. Expecting your answer hereto, I rest, “ — my Lord, — your servant, “ D. SlNNOTT. “ Send me the names of your Agents, their qualities and “ degrees. Those I fix upon are : Major James Byrne, Major “ Theobald Dillon, Alderman Nicholas Che vers, Mr. William “ Stafford.” 72 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. 3. “ To the Commander-in-Chief of the Town of Wexford. “ Sir, “ Before Wexford, 4th October, 1649. “ Having summoned you to deliver the “ Town of Wexford into my hands, I might well expect “ the delivery thereof, and not a formal Treaty ; which is “ seldom granted but where the things stand upon a more “ equal foot. “ If therefore yourself or the Town have any desires i( to offer, upon which you will surrender the place to me, “ I shall be able to judge of the reasonableness of them “ when they are made known to me. To which end, if “ you shall think fit to send the Persons named in your “ last, entrusted by yourself and the Town, by whom I “ may understand your desires, I shall give you a speedy “ and fitting Answer. And I do hereby engage myself, “ that they shall return in safety to you. “ I expect your answer hereunto within an hour ; and “ rest, “ Your servant, Oliver Cromwell.” “ For the Lord General Cromwell. “ Wexford, 4th October, 1649. “ Sir, — I have returned you a civil Answer, to the best of “ my judgment ; and thereby, I find, you undervalue me and “ this place so much, that you think to have it surrendered with- “ out Capitulation or honourable Terms, — as appears by the “ hour’s limitation in your last. " Sir, had I never a man in this Town but the Townsmen, “ and Artillery here planted, I should conceive myself in a very “ befitting condition to make honourable conditions. And “ having a considerable party, ‘ along’ with them, in the place, “ I am resolved to die honourably, or make such conditions as “ may secure my honour and life in the eyes of my own Party. 1649 .] LETTER Cl., WEXFORD. 73 “ To which reasonable terms if you hearken not, — or give “ me f not’ time to send my Agents till eight of the clock in the " forenoon tomorrow, with my Propositions, with a further “ Safe-conduct, — I leave you to your better judgment, and “ myself to the assistance of the Almighty ; and so conclude. — “ Your servant, “ D. SlNNOTT.” “ For the Lord General Cromwell. u Wexford, 5th October, 1649. “ Sir, — My Propositions being now prepared, I am ready “ to send my Agents with them unto you. And for their safe “ return, I pray you to send a Safe-conduct by the Bearer “ unto me, — in hope an honourable agreement may thereupon “ arise between your Lordship and, — my Lord, — your Lordship’s “ servant, • “ D. SlNNOTT.” Whilst these papers were passing between us, I sent the Lieutenant-General 1 with a party of dragoons, horse and foot, to endeavour to reduce their Fort, which lay at the mouth of their harbour, about ten miles distant from us. To which he sent a troop of dragoons; but the Enemy quitted their Fort, leaving behind them about seven great guns ; betook themselves, by the help of their boats, to a Frigate of twelve guns lying in the harbour, within cannon-shot of the Fort. The dragoons possessed the Fort: and some seamen belonging to your Fleet coming happily in at the same time, they bent their guns at the Frigate, and she immediately yielded to mercy, — both herself, the soldiers that had been in the Fort, and the seamen that manned her. And whilst our men were in her, the Town, not knowing what had happened, sent another small vessel to her ; which our men also took. 1 Michael Jones. PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. The Governor of the Town having obtained from me a Safe-conduct for the four persons mentioned in one of the papers, to come and treat with me about the surrender of the Town, I expected they should have done so. But instead thereof, the Earl of Castlehaven brought to their relief, on the north side of the river, 1 about five-hundred foot. Which occasioned their refusal to send out any to treat; and caused me to revoke my Safe-conduct, not thinking it fit to leave it for them to make use of it when they pleased : “ For the Lord General Cromwell . “ Wexford, 5th October, 1649. “ My Lord, — Even as I was ready to send out my Agents “ unto you, the Lord General of the horse came hither with a “ relief. Unto whom I communicated the proceedings between “ your Lordship and me, and delivered him the Propositions “ I intended to despatch unto your Lordship; — who hath de- “ sired a small time to consider of them, and to speed them unto “me. Which, my Lord, I could not deny, he having a com- “ manding power over me. “ Pray, my Lord, believe that I do not do this to trifle out “ time ; but for his present consent ; — and if I find any long “ delay in his Lordship’s returning them back unto me, I will “ proceed of myself, according to my first intention. To which I beseech yotir Lordship give credit; at the request, — my “ Lord, — of your Lordship’s ready servant, “ D. Sinnott.” 4. “ To the Commander-in-Chief of the Town of Wexford. “ Sir, “ Wexford, 6th October, 1649. “ You might have spared your trouble in the “ account you give me of your transaction with the Lord- “ General of your horse, and of your resolution in case he 1 Carte, li, 92. 1649 .] LETTER Cl., WEXFORD. 75 “ answer not your expectation in point of time. These “ are your own concernments, and it behoves you to im- “ prove the relief you mention to your best advantage. “ All that I have to say is, To desire you to take notice, “ that I do hereby revoke my Safe-conduct from the per- “ sons mentioned therein. When you shall see cause to “ treat, you may send for another. — I rest, “ Sir, “ Your servant, “ Oliver Cromwell.” Our cannon being landed, 1 and we having removed all our quarters to the south-east end of the Town, next the Castle, ‘which stands without the Walls,’ — it was gener- ally agreed that we should bend the whole strength of our artillery upon the Castle ; being persuaded that if we got the Castle, the Town would easily follow. Upon Thursday the 11th instant (our batteries being finished the night before), we began to play betimes in the morning; and having spent near a hundred shot, the Go- vernor’s stomach came down ; and he sent to me to give leave for four persons, intrusted by him, to come unto me, and offer terms of surrender : “ For the Lord General Cromwell, “ Wexford, 11th October, 1649. “ Sir, — In performance of my last, I desire your Lordship “ to send me a Safe-conduct for Major Theobald Dillon, Major “ James Byrne, Alderman Nicholas Chevers, and Captain James “ Stafford, whom I will send to your Lordship instructed with “ my desires. And so I rest, — my Lord, — your servant, “ D. SlNNOTT.” 6th October (ib.). 76 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. Which I condescending to, two Field-Officers with an Alderman of the Town, and the Captain of the Castle, brought out the Propositions enclosed, — which for their abominableness, manifesting also the impudency of the men, I thought fit to present to your view; — together with my Answer : “ The Propositions of Colonel David Sinnott , Governor of “ the Town and Castle of Wexford, for and on the he - “half of the Officers and Soldiers and Inhabitants in “ the said Town and Castle , unto General Cromwell. “ 1. In primis , That all and every the Inhabitants of the said “ Town, from time to time and at all times hereafter, shall have “ free and uninterrupted liberty publicly to use, exercise and pro- “ fess the Roman Catholic Religion, without restriction, mulct or “ penalty, any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding. “2. That the Regular and Secular Roman Catholic Clergy “ now possessed of the Churches, Church-livings, Monasteries, “ Religious-houses and Chapels in the said Town, and in the sub- “ urbs and franchises thereof, and their successors, shall have, “ hold and enjoy, to them and their successors forever, the said “ churches, church-livings, monasteries, religious-houses and “ chapels, and shall teach and preach in them publicly, without (t any molestation, any law or statute to the contrary notwith- “ standing. “ 3. That Nicholas, now Lord Bishop of Ferns, and his suc- “ cessors, shall use and exercise such jurisdiction over the Catho- “ lies of his Diocese as since his consecration hitherto he used. “ 4. That all the Officers and Soldiers, of what quality or de- “ gree soever, in the said Town and Castle, and such of the Inha- “ bitants as are so pleased, shall march with flying colours, and “ be conveyed safe, with their lives, artillery, ordnance, ammuni- “ tion, arms, goods of all sorts, horses, moneys and what else “ belongs to them, to the Town of Ross, and there to be left safe “ with their own party ; allowing each musketeer, towards their “ march, a pound of powder, four yards of match and twelve “ brace of bullets ; and a strong Convoy to be sent with the said 1649 .] LETTER Cl., WEXFORD. 77 “ soldiers, within four-and-twenty hours after the yielding up of “ the said Town. “ 5. That such of the Inhabitants of the said Town as will desire to leave the same at any time hereafter, shall have free “ liberty to carry away out of the said Town all their frigates, ar- “ tillery, arms, powder, bullets, match, corn, malt, and other pro- “ vision which they have for their defence and sustenance, and all “ their goods and chattels, of what quality or condition soever, “ without any manner of disturbance whatsoever, and have passes “ and safe-conducts and convoys for their lives and said goods to “ Ross, or where else they shall think fit. “ 6 . That the Mayor, Bailiffs, Free Burgesses and Commons “ of the said Town, may have, hold and enjoy the said Town and “ Suburbs, their commons, their franchises, their liberties and * ( immunities, which hitherto they enjoyed ; and that the Mayor, “ Bailiffs and Free Burgesses may have the government of the “ said Town, as hitherto they enjoyed the same from the Realm of ** England, and that they may have no other government, they ad- “ hering to the State of England, and observing their orders, and “ the orders of their Governors in this Realm for the tims being. “ 7. That all and every the Burgesses and Inhabitants, either “ native or strangers, of the said Town, who shall continue their “ abode therein, or come to live there within three months, and “ their heirs, shall have, hold and enjoy all and singular their “ several castles, messuages, houses, lands, tenements and heredi- “ taments within the land of Ireland, and all their goods and “ chattels, of what nature, quality or condition soever, to them “ and their heirs, to their own several uses forever, without “ molestation. “8. That such Burgess or Burgesses, or other Inhabitant of “ the said Town, as shall at any time hereafter be desirous to “ leave the said Town, shall have free leave to dispose of their “ real and personal estates respectively to their best advantage ; “ and further have full liberty and a safe-conduct respectively to “ go into England or elsewhere, according to their several plea- sures who shall desire to depart the same. “ 9. That all and singular the Inhabitants of the said Town, “ either native or strangers, from time to time and at all times (< hereafter, shall have, reap and enjoy the full liberty of free-born 78 PART V. CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND. [14 Oct. “ English subjects, without the least incapacity or restriction “ therein ; and that all the Freemen of the said Town, from time “ to time, shall be as free in all the seaports, cities and towns in “ England, as the Freemen of all and every the said cities and “ towns ; and all and every the Freemen of the said cities and “ towns to be as free in the said Town of Wexford as the Free- “ men thereof, for their greater encouragement to trade and com- “ merce together on all hands. “ 10. That no memory remain of any hostility or distance “ which was hitherto between the said Town and Castle on the “ one part, and the Parliament or State of England on the other “ part ; but that all act and acts, transgressions, offences, depre- “ dations and other crimes, of what nature or quality soever, be “ they ever so transcendent, attempted or done, or supposed to “ be attempted or done, by the Inhabitants of the said Town or