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Table of Contents | |
Section | Page |
Start of eBook | 1 |
BOOK I. | 1 |
BOOK II. | 4 |
BOOK III. | 6 |
BOOK I. | 11 |
THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON, | 11 |
CHAPTER I. | 11 |
SECTION I. | 12 |
SECTION II. | 34 |
IRELAND. | 86 |
SECTION III. | 91 |
CHAPTER II. | 124 |
139 | |
231 | |
BOOK II. | 249 |
CHAPTER I. | 249 |
OTHER RELATIVES | 254 |
CHAPTER II. | 296 |
BOOK III. | 337 |
CHAPTER I. | 338 |
CHAPTER I. | 367 |
CHAPTER I. | 398 |
CHAPTER I. | 416 |
CHAPTER I. | 434 |
CHAPTER II. | 453 |
CHAPTER II. | 476 |
CHAPTER II. | 510 |
CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA IN VOLS. IV. AND V. | 560 |
September 1654-June 1657.
History:—Oliver’s first protectorate continued.
Biography:—Milton’s life
and secretaryship through the first
protectorate continued.
Chap. I. Section I. Oliver and his First Parliament: Sept. 3, 1654-Jan. 22, 1654-5.—Meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate: Its Composition: Anti-Oliverians numerous in it: Their Four Days’ Debate in challenge of Cromwell’s Powers: Debate stopped by Cromwell: His Speech in the Painted Chamber: Secession of some from the Parliament: Acquiescence of the rest by Adoption of The Recognition: Spirit and Proceedings of the Parliament still mainly Anti-Oliverian: Their Four Months’ Work in Revision of the Protectoral Constitution: Chief Debates in those Four Months: Question of the Protector’s Negatives: Other Incidental Work of the Parliament: Question of Religious Toleration and of the Suppression of Heresies and Blasphemies: Committee and Sub-Committee on this Subject: Baxter’s Participation: Tendency to a Limited Toleration only, and Vote against the Protector’s Prerogative of more: Case of John Biddle, the Socinian.—Insufficiency now of our former Synopsis of English Sects and Heresies: New Sects and Denominations: The Fifth-Monarchy Men: The Ranters: The Muggletonians and other Stray Fanatics: Bochmenists and other Mystics: The Quakers or Friends: Account of George Fox, and Sketch of the History of the Quakers to the year 1654.—Policy of the Parliament with their Bill for a New Constitution: Parliament outwitted by Cromwell and dissolved: No Result.
Chap. I. Section II. Between the Parliaments, or the Time of Arbitrariness: Jan. 22, 1654-55—Sept. 17, 1656.—Avowed “Arbitrariness” of this Stage of the Protectorate, and Reasons for it.—First Meeting of Cromwell and his Council after the Dissolution: Major-General Overton in Custody: Other Arrests: Suppression of a wide Republican Conspiracy and of Royalist Risings in Yorkshire and the West: Revenue Ordinance and Mr. Cony’s Opposition at Law: Deference of Foreign Governments: Blake in the Mediterranean: Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants: Details of the Story and of Cromwell’s Proceedings in consequence: Penn in the Spanish West Indies: His Repulse from Hispaniola and Landing in Jamaica: Declaration of War with Spain and Alliance with France: Scheme of the Government of England by Major-Generals: List of them and Summary of their Police-System: Decimation Tax on the Royalists, and other Measures in terrorem: Consolidation of the London Newspaper Press: Proceedings of the Commission of Ejectors and of the Commission of Triers: View of Cromwell’s Established Church of England, with Enumeration of its various Components: Extent
Chap. I. Section III. Oliver and the First Session of his Second Parliament: Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657.—Second Parliament of the Protectorate called: Vane’s Healing Question and another Anti-Oliverian Pamphlet: Precautions and Arrests: Meeting of the Parliament: Its Composition: Summary of Cromwell’s Opening Speech: Exclusion of Ninety-three Anti-Oliverian Members: Decidedly Oliverian Temper of the rest: Question of the Excluded Members: Their Protest: Summary of the Proceedings of the Parliament for Five Months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7): Administration of Cromwell and his Council during those Months: Approaches to Disagreement between Cromwell and the Parliament in the Case of James Nayler and on the Question of Continuation of the Militia by Major-Generals: No Rupture.—The Soxby-Sindercombe Plot.—Sir Christopher Pack’s Motion for a New Constitution (Feb. 23, 1656-7): Its Issue in the Petition and Advice and Offer of the Crown to Cromwell: Division of Public Opinion on the Kingship Question: Opposition among the Army Officers: Cromwell’s Neutral Attitude: His Reception of the Offer: His long Hesitations and several Speeches over the Affair: His Final Refusal (May 8, 1657): Ludlow’s Story of the Cause.—Harrison and the Fifth Monarchy Men: Venner’s Outbreak at Mile-End-Green.—Proposed New Constitution of the Petition and Advice retained in the form of a Continued Protectorate: Supplements to the Petition and Advice: Bills assented to by the Protector, June 9: Votes for the Spanish War.—Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain: Dispatch of English Auxiliary Army, under Reynolds, for Service in Flanders: Blake’s Action in Santa Cruz Bay.—“Killing no Murder”: Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice: Abstract of the Articles of the New Constitution as arranged by the two Documents: Cromwell’s completed Assent to the New Constitution, and his Assent to other Bills. June 26, 1657: Inauguration of the Second Protectorate that day: Close of the First Session of the Second Parliament.
Chap. II. Milton’s Life and Secretaryship through the First Protectorate continued: September 1654-June 1657.—Section I.: From September 1654 to January 1654-5, or Through Oliver’s First Parliament.—Ulac’s Hague Edition of Milton’s Defensio Secunda, with the Fides Publica of Morus annexed: Preface by Dr. Crantzius to the Reprint: Ulac’s own Preface of Self-Defence: Account of Morus’s Fides Publica, with Extracts: His Citation of Testimonies to his Character: Testimony of Diodati of Geneva: Abrupt Ending of the Book at this Point, with Ulac’s Explanation of the Cause.—Particulars of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Milton’s Friend Overton.—Three more Latin State-Letters by Milton for Oliver (Nos. XLIX.-LI.): No State-Letters by Milton for the next Three Months: Milton then busy on a Reply to the Fides Publica of Morus.
CHAP. II. SECTION II.: From January
1654-5 to September 1656, or Through the Period of
Arbitrariness.—Letter to Milton from Leo
de Aitzema: Milton’s Reply: Letter
to Ezekiel Spanheim at Geneva: Milton’s
Genovese Recollections and Acquaintances: Two
more of Milton’s Latin State-Letters (Nos.
LII., LIII.): Small Amount of Milton’s
Despatch-Writing for Cromwell hitherto.—Reduction
of Official Salaries, and Proposal to Reduce Milton’s
to L150 a Year: Actual Commutation of his L288
a Year at Pleasure into L200 for Life: Orders
of the Protector and Council relating to the Piedmontese
Massacre, May 1655: Sudden Demand on Milton’s
Pen in that Business: His Letter of Remonstrance
from the Protector to the Duke of Savoy, with Ten
other Letters to Foreign States and Princes on the
same Subject (Nos. LIV.-LXIV.): His Sonnet
on the Subject.—Publication of the Supplementum
to More’s Fides Publica: Account
of the Supplementum, with Extracts: Milton’s
Answer to the Fides Publica and the Supplementum
together in his Pro Se Defensio, Aug. 1655:
Account of that Book, with Specimens: Milton’s
Disbelief in Morus’s Denials of the Authorship
of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor: His Reasons,
and his Reassertions of the Charge in a Modified Form:
His Notices of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac: His Renewed
Onslaughts on Morus: His Repetition of the Bontia
Accusation and others: His Examination of Morus’s
Printed Testimonials: Ferocity of the Book to
the last: Its Effects on Morus.—Question
of the Real Authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor
and of the Amount of Morus’s Concern in it:
The Du Moulin Family: Dr. Peter Du Moulin the
Younger the Real Author of the Regii Sanguinis
Clamor, but Morus the Active Editor and the Writer
of the Dedicatory Epistle: Du Moulin’s own
Account of the whole Affair: His close Contact
with Milton all the while, and Dread of being found
out.—Calm in Milton’s Life after the
Cessation of the Morus-Salmasius Controversy:
Home-Life in Petty France: Dabblings of the Two
Nephews in Literature: John Phillips’s Satyr
Page 4
against Hypocrites: Frequent Visitors at
Petty France: Marvell, Needham, Cyriack Skinner,
&c.: The Viscountess Ranelagh, Mr. Richard Jones,
and the Boyle Connexion: Dr. Peter Du Moulin in
that Connexion: Milton’s Private Sonnet
on his Blindness, his Two Sonnets to Cyriack Skinner,
and his Sonnet to young Lawrence: Explanation
of these Four Sonnets.—Scriptum Domini
Protectoris contra Hispanos: Thirteen more
Latin State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos.
LXV.-LXXVII.), with Special Account of Count Bundt
and the Swedish Embassy in London: Count Bundt
and Mr. Milton.—Increase of Light Literature
in London: Erotic Publications: John Phillips
in Trouble for such: Edward Phillips’s
London Edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden:
Milton’s Cognisance of the same.—Henry
Oldenburg and Mr. Richard Jones at Oxford: Letters
of Milton to Jones and Oldenburg.—Thirteen
more State-Letters of the Milton Series (Nos.
LXXVIII.-XC.): Importance of some of them.
CHAP. II. SECTION III.: From September 1656 to June 1657, or Through the First Session of Oliver’s Second Parliament.—Another Letter from Milton to Mr. Richard Jones: Departure of Lady Ranelagh for Ireland: Letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach: Milton’s Second Marriage: His Second Wife, Katharine Woodcock: Letter to Emeric Bigot: Milton’s Library and the Byzantine Historians: M. Stoupe: Ten more State-Letters by Milton for the Protector (Nos. XCI.-C.): Morland, Meadows, Durie, Lockhart, and other Diplomatists of the Protector, back in London: More Embassies and Dispatches over Land and Sea: Milton Standing and Waiting: His Thoughts about the Protectorate generally.
JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658
HISTORY:—OLIVER’S SECOND PROTECTORATE.
BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP
THROUGH THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE.
CHAP.
I. Oliver’s Second Protectorate: June 26,
1657-Sept. 3, 1658.—Regal
Forms and Ceremonial of the Second Protectorate:
The Protector’s
Family: The Privy Council: Retirement of
Lambert: Death of Admiral
Blake: The French Alliance and Successes in Flanders:
Siege and
Capture of Mardike: Other Foreign Relations of
the Protectorate:
Special Envoys to Denmark, Sweden, and the United
Provinces: Aims of
Cromwell’s Diplomacy in Northern and Eastern
Europe: Progress of his
English Church-Establishment: Controversy between
John Goodwill and
Marchamont Needham: The Protector and the Quakers:
Death of John
Lilburne: Death of Sexby: Marriage of the
Duke of Buckingham to Mary
Fairfax: Marriages of Cromwell’s Two Youngest
Daughters: Preparations
for another Session of the Parliament: Writs
for the Other House:
List of Cromwell’s Peers.—Reassembling
of the Parliament. Jan. 20,
1667-8: Cromwell’s Opening Speech, with
the Supplement by Fiennes:
CHAP. II. Milton’s Life and Secretaryship through the Second Protectorate. —Milton still in Office: Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, with Milton’s Opinion of Sallust: Letters to Young Ranelagh and Henry Oldenburg at Saumur: Morus in New Circumstances: Eleven more State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos. CI.-CXI.): Andrew Marvell brought in as Assistant Foreign Secretary at last (Sept. 1657): John Dryden now also in the Protector’s Employment: Birth of Milton’s Daughter by his Second Wife: Six more State-Letters of Milton (Nos. CXII.-CXVII.): Another Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, and another to Peter Heimbach: Comment on the latter: Deaths of Milton’s Second Wife and her Child: His two Nephews, Edward and John Phillips, at this date: Milton’s last Sixteen State-Letters for Oliver Cromwell (Nos. CXVIII.-CXXXIII), including Two to Charles Gustavus of Sweden, Two on a New Alarm of a Persecution of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Several to Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin: Importance of this last Group of the State-Letters, and Review of the whole Series of Milton’s Performances for Cromwell: Last Diplomatic Incidents of the Protectorate, and Andrew Marvell in connexion with them: Incidents of Milton’s Literary Life in this Period: Young Guentzer’s Dissertatio and Young Kock’s Phalaecians: Milton’s Edition of Raleigh’s Cabinet Council: Resumption of the old Design of Paradise Lost and actual Commencement of the Poem: Change from the Dramatic Form to the Epic: Sonnet in Memory of his Deceased Wife.
SEPTEMBER 1658—MAY 1660.
HISTORY:—THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL,
THE ANARCHY,
MONK’S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.
RICHARD’S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.
THE ANARCHY:—
STAGE I.:—THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659—OCT. 13, 1659.
STAGE II.:—THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT:
OCT. 13,
1659—DEC. 26, 1659.
STAGE III.:—SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP,
WITH MONK’S
MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB.
21, 1859-60.
MONK’S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT,
AND THE
RESTORATION.
BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP
THROUGH RICHARD’S
PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK’S DICTATORSHIP.
CHAP. I. FIRST SECTION. The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell: Sept. 3, 1858—May 25, 1659.—Proclamation of Richard: Hearty Response from the Country and from Foreign Powers: Funeral of the late Protector: Resolution for a New Parliament.—Difficulties in Prospect: List of the most Conspicuous Props and Assessors of the New Protectorate: Monk’s Advice to Richard: Union of the Cromwellians against Charles Stuart: Their Split among themselves into the Court or Dynastic Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party: Chiefs of the Two Parties: Richard’s Preference for the Court Party, and his Speech to the Army Officers: Backing of the Army Party towards Republicanism or Anti-Oliverianism: Henry Cromwell’s Letter of Rebuke to Fleetwood: Differences of the Two Parties as to Foreign Policy: The French Alliance and the War with Spain: Relations to the King of Sweden.—Meeting of Richard’s Parliament (Jan. 27, 1658-9): The Two Houses: Eminent Members of the Commons: Richard’s Opening Speech: Thurloe the Leader for Government in the Commons: Recognition of the Protectorship and of the Other House, and General Triumph of the Government Party: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament.—Dissatisfaction of the Army Party: Their Closer Connexion with the Republicans: New Convention of Officers at Wallingford-House: Desborough’s Speech; The Convention forbidden by the Parliament and dissolved by Richard: Whitehall surrounded by the Army, and Richard compelled to dissolve the Parliament.—Responsible Position of Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, and the other Army Chiefs: Bankrupt State of the Finances: Necessity for some kind of Parliament: Phrenzy for “The Good Old Cause” and Demand for the Restoration of the Rump: Acquiescence of the Army Chiefs: Lenthall’s Objections: First Fortnight of the Restored Rump: Lingering of Richard in Whitehall: His Enforced Abdication.
CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION. The Anarchy, Stage I.: or The Restored Rump: May 25, 1659-Oct. 13, 1659.—Number of the Restored Rumpers and List of them: Council of State of the Restored Rump: Anomalous Character and Position of the New Government: Momentary Chance of a Civil War between the Cromwellians and the Rumpers: Chance averted by the Acquiescence of the Leading Cromwellians: Behaviour of Richard Cromwell, Monk, Henry Cromwell, Lockhart, and Thurloe, individually: Baulked Cromwellianism becomes Potential Royalism: Energetic Proceedings of the Restored Rump: Their Ecclesiastical Policy and their Foreign Policy: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart at the Scene of the Negotiations as Ambassador for the Rump: Remodelling and Reofficering of the Army, Navy, and Militia: Confederacy of Old and New Royalists for a Simultaneous Rising: Actual Rising under Sir George Booth in Cheshire: Lambert sent to quell the Insurrection: Peculiar Intrigues round Monk at Dalkeith: Sir George Booth’s Insurrection crushed: Exultation of the Rump and Action taken against the Chief Insurgents and their Associates: Question of the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: Chaos of Opinions and Proposals: James Harrington and his Political Theories: The Harrington or Rota Club: Discontents in the Army: Petition, and Proposals of the Officers of Lambert’s Brigade: Severe Notice of the same by the Rump: Petition and Proposals of the General Council of Officers: Resolute Answers of the Rump: Lambert, Desborough, and Seven other Officers, cashiered: Lambert’s Retaliation and Stoppage of the Parliament.
CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage II.: or The Wallingford-House Interregnum: Oct. 13, 1659-Dec. 26, 1659.—The Wallingford-House Government: Its Committee of Safety: Behaviour of Ludlow and other Leading Republicans: Death of Bradshaw.—Army—Arrangements of the New Government: Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, the Military Chiefs: Declared Championship of the Rump by Monk in Scotland: Negotiations opened with Monk, and Lambert sent north to oppose him: Monk’s Mock Treaty with Lambert and the Wallingford-House Government through Commissioners in London: His Preparations meanwhile in Scotland: His Advance from Edinburgh to Berwick: Monk’s Army and Lambert’s.—Foreign Relations of the Wallingford-House Government: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart: Charles II. at Fontarabia: Gradual Improvement of his Chances in England.—Discussions of the Wallingford-House Government as to the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: The Vane Party and the Whitlocke Party in these Discussions: Johnstone of Warriston, the Harringtonians, and Ludlow: Attempted Conclusions.—Monk at Coldstream: Universal Whirl of Opinion in favour of him and the Rump: Utter Discredit of the Wallingford-House Rule in London: Vacillation and Collapse of Fleetwood: The Rump Restored a second time.
CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage III.: or Second Restoration of the Rump, with Monk’s March from Scotland: Dec. 26, 1659-Feb. 21, 1659.—The Rump after its Second Restoration: New Council of State: Penalties on Vane, Lambert, Desborough, and the other Chiefs of the Wallingford-House Interregnum: Case of Ludlow: New Army Remodelling: Abatement of Republican Fervency among the Rumpers: Dispersion of Lambert’s Force in the North: Monk’s March from Scotland: Stages and Incidents of the March: His Halt at St. Alban’s and Message thence to the Rump: His Nearer View of the Situation: His Entry into London, Feb. 3, 1659-60: His Ambiguous Speech to the Rump, Feb. 6: His Popularity in London: Pamphlets and Letters during his March and on his Arrival: Prynne’s pamphlets on behalf of the Secluded Members: Tumult in the City: Tumult suppressed by Monk as Servant of the Rump: His Popularity gone: Blunder retrieved by Monk’s Reconciliation with the City and Declaration against the Rump: Roasting of the Rump in London, Feb. 11, 1659-60: Monk Master of the City and of the Rump too; Consultations with the Secluded Members: Bill of the Rump for Enlarging itself by New Elections; Bill set aside by the Reseating of the Secluded Members: Reconstitution of the Long Parliament under Monk’s Dictatorship.
CHAP. I. THIRD SECTION. Monk’s Dictatorship, the Restored Long Parliament, and the Drift to the Restoration: Feb. 21, 1659-60—April 25, 1660.—The Restored Long Parliament: New Council of State: Active Men of the Parliament: Prynne, Arthur Annesley, and William Morrice: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament: Release of old Royalist Prisoners: Lambert committed to the Tower: Rewards and Honours for Monk: “Old George” in the City: Revival of the Solemn League and Covenant, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and all the Apparatus of a Strict Presbyterian Church-Establishment: Cautious Measures for a Political Settlement: The Real Question evaded and handed over to another Parliament: Calling of the Convention Parliament and Arrangements for the Same: Difficulty about a House of Lords: How obviated: Last Day of the Long Parliament, March 16, 1659-60: Scene in the House.—Monk and the Council of State left in charge: Annesley the Managing Colleague of Monk: New Militia Act carried out: Discontents among Monk’s Officers and Soldiers: The Restoration of Charles still very dubious: Other Hopes and Proposals for the moment: The Kingship privately offered to Monk by the Republicans: Offer declined: Bursting of the Popular Torrent of Royalism at last, and Enthusiastic Demands for the Recall of Charles: Elections to the Convention Parliament going on meanwhile: Haste of hundreds to be foremost in bidding Charles welcome: Admiral Montague and his Fleet in the Thames: Direct Communications at last between Monk and Charles: Greenville the Go-between: Removal of Charles and his Court from Brussels to
CHAP.
II. FIRST SECTION. Milton’s Life and
Secretaryship through Richard’s
Protectorate: Sept. 1658-May 1659.—Milton
and Marvell still in the
Latin Secretaryship: Milton’s first Five
State-Letters for Richard
(Nos. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): New Edition of
Milton’s Defensio
Prima: Remarkable Postscript to that Edition:
Six more
State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.):
Milton’s
Relations to the Conflict of Parties round Richard
and in Richard’s
Parliament: His probable Career but for his Blindness:
His continued
Cromwellianism in Politics, but with stronger private
Reserves,
especially on the Question of an Established Church:
His Reputation
that of a man of the Court-Party among the Protectoratists:
His
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes:
Account of
the Treatise, with Extracts: The Treatise more
than a Plea for
Religious Toleration: Church-Disestablishment
the Fundamental Idea:
The Treatise addressed to Richard’s Parliament,
and chiefly to Vane
and the Republicans there: No Effect from it:
Milton’s Four last
State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXLIV.-CXLVII.):
His Private Epistle
to Jean Labadie, with Account of that Person:
Milton in the month
between Richard’s Dissolution of his Parliament
and his formal
Abdication: His Two State-Letters for the Restored
Rump (Nos.
CXLVIII.-CXLIX.)
CHAP. II. SECOND SECTION. Milton’s Life and Secretaryship through the Anarchy: May 1659—Feb. 1659-60.—First Stage of the Anarchy, or The Restored Rump (May—Oct. 1659):—Feelings and Position of Milton in the new State of Things: His Satisfaction on the whole, and the Reasons for it: Letter of Moses Wall to Milton: Renewed Agitation against Tithes and Church Establishment: Votes on that Subject in the Rump: Milton’s Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Its thorough-going Voluntaryism: Church-Disestablishment demanded absolutely, without Compensation for Vested Interests: The Appeal fruitless, and the Subject ignored by the Rump: Dispersion of that Body by Lambert.—Second Stage of the Anarchy, or The Wallingford-House Interruption
CHAP. II. THIRD SECTION. Milton through Monk’s Dictatorship: Feb. 1659-60—May 1660.—First Edition of Milton’s Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Vehement Republicanism of the Pamphlet, with its Prophetic Warnings: Peculiar Central Idea of the Pamphlet, viz. the Project of a Grand Council or Parliament to sit in Perpetuity, with a Council of State for its Executive: Passages expounding this Idea: Additional Suggestion of Local and County Councils or Committees: Daring Peroration of the Pamphlet: Milton’s Recapitulation of the Substance of it in a short Private Letter to Monk entitled Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth: Wide Circulation of Milton’s Pamphlet: The Response by Monk and the Parliament of the Secluded Members in their Proceedings of the next fortnight: Dissolution of the Parliament after Arrangements for its Successor: Royalist Squib predicting Milton’s
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 1654—JUNE 1657.
HISTORY:—OLIVER’S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.
BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP
THROUGH THE FIRST
PROTECTORATE CONTINUED.
WITH THE
HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
* * * * *
OLIVER’S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654-JUNE 26, 1657.
Oliver’s First Protectorate extended over three years and six months in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three Sections, as follows:—
Section I:—From Sept. 3, 1654 to Jan. 22, 1654-5. This Section, comprehending four months and a half, may be entitled OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT.
Section II:—From Jan. 22, 1654-5 to Sept. 17, 1656. This Section, comprehending twenty months, may be entitled BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS.
Section III:—From Sept. 17, 1656
to June 26, 1657.
This Section, comprehending nine months, may be entitled
OLIVER AND
THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT.
We map out the present chapter accordingly.
OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT:
SEPT, 3, 1654-JAN. 22, 1654-5.
MEETING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE:
ITS
COMPOSITION: ANTI-OLIVERIANS NUMEROUS IN IT:
THEIR FOUR DAYS’ DEBATE
IN CHALLENGE OF CROMWELL’S POWERS: DEBATE
STOPPED BY CROMWELL: HIS
SPEECH IN THE PAINTED CHAMBER: SECESSION OF SOME
FROM THE PARLIAMENT:
ACQUIESCENCE OF THE REST BY ADOPTION OF THE RECOGNITION:
SPIRIT AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT STILL MAINLY
ANTI-OLIVERIAN: THEIR FOUR MONTHS’ WORK
IN REVISION OF THE
PROTECTORAL CONSTITUTION: CHIEF DEBATES IN THOSE
FOUR MONTHS:
QUESTION OF THE PROTECTOR’S NEGATIVES:
OTHER INCIDENTAL WORK OF THE
PARLIAMENT: QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
AND OF THE SUPPRESSION
OF HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE
ON THIS
SUBJECT: BAXTER’S PARTICIPATION: TENDENCY
TO A LIMITED TOLERATION
ONLY, AND VOTE AGAINST THE PROTECTOR’S PREROGATIVE
OF MORE: CASE OF
JOHN RIDDLE, THE SOCINIAN.—INSUFFICIENCY
NOW OF OUR FORMER SYNOPSIS
OF ENGLISH SECTS AND HERESIES: NEW SECTS AND
DENOMINATIONS: THE
FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: THE RANTERS: THE MUGGLETONIANS
AND OTHER STRAY
FANATICS: BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS:
THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:
ACCOUNT OF GEORGE FOX, AND SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF
THE QUAKERS TO
THE YEAR 1654.—POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT
WITH THEIR BILL FOR A NEW
CONSTITUTION: PARLIAMENT OUTWITTED BY CROMWELL
AND DISSOLVED: NO
RESULT.
Before the 3rd of September, 1654, the day fixed by the Constitutional Instrument for the meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate, the 460 newly elected members, or the major part of them, had flocked to Westminster. They were a gathering of the most representative men of all the three nations that could be regarded as in any sense adherents of the Commonwealth. All the Council of State, except the Earl of Mulgrave and Lord Lisle, had been returned, some of them by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe had been returned; Cromwell’s two sons, Richard and Henry, had been returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen holding posts in his Highness’s household had been returned. Of the old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary fame already were ex-Speaker Lenthall, Whitlocke, Sir Walter Earle, Dennis Bond, Sir Henry Vane Senior, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Scott, William Ashurst, Sir James Harrington, John Carew, Robert Wallop, and Sir Thomas
[Footnote 1: Complete list gives in Parl. Hist, III. 1428-1433.]
The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell’s “Fortunate Day,” chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and his opening speech was deferred till next day, On Monday, accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much that he liked. It was a political sermon, on “Israel’s bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,”—Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to. Goodwill seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly “conservative” speech. Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the three nations, Then he withdrew. That same day they chose Lenthall for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk.[1]
[Footnote 1: Cromwell’s Second Speech (Carlyle, III. 16-37); Commons Journals of dates.]
Cromwell’s hopes were blasted. The political division of the population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last denominations hardly separable by any clear line, Now, in this new Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians together formed a majority. They needed only to coalesce, and the Parliament called by Oliver’s own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian Parliament. And this is what happened.
No sooner was the House constituted, with about 320 members present out of the total 460, than it proposed for its first business what was called “The Matter of the Government”; by which was meant a review of that document of forty-two Articles, called the Government of the Commonwealth, which was the constitutional basis of the Protectorate. On Thursday, Sept. 7, accordingly, they addressed themselves to the vital question of the whole document as propounded in the first of the Articles. “Whether the House shall approve that the Government shall be in one Single Person and a Parliament”: such was the debate that day in Grand Committee, after a division on the previous question whether they should go into Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted No, with Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State) for their tellers, but 141 had voted Yea, with Bradshaw and Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of the Commonwealth, already introduced somehow as a matter of fact, should be continued. On this subject the House debated through the rest of that sitting, and the whole of the next, and the next, and the next,—i.e. till Monday, Sept 11. Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Scott took the lead for the Republicans, not that they hoped to unseat Cromwell, but that they wanted to assert the paramount authority of Parliament, and convert the existing Protectorship into a derivative from the House then sitting. Lawrence, Wolseley, Strickland, and others of the Council of State, describable as the ministerial members, maintained the existing constitution of the Protectorate, and pointed out the dangers that would arise from plucking up a good practical basis for mere reasons of theory. Matthew Hale interposed at last with a middle motion, substantially embodying the Republican view, but affirming the Protectorship at once, and reserving qualification. All in all, there was great excitement, much confusion, and an outbreak from some members of very violent language about Cromwell.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates: Parl. Hist. III. 1445; Godwin, IV. 116-125.]
What might have been the issue had a vote come on can only be guessed. Things were not allowed to go that length. On Tuesday, Sept, 12, the members, going to the House, found the doors locked, soldiers in and around Westminster Hall, and a summons from the Lord Protector to meet him again in the Painted Chamber. Having assembled there, they listened to Cromwell’s “Third Speech.” It is one of the most powerful of all his speeches. It began with a long review of his life in general and the steps by which he had recently been brought to the Protectorship. It proceeded then to a recitation of what he called “the witnesses” to his Government, or proofs of its validity—the
[Footnote 1: Carlyle’s Cromwell, III. 37-61.]
Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and others, would not sign the document offered them, which was a brief engagement “to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth,” and not to propose alteration of the Government as “settled in a single Person and a Parliament.” The Parliament, therefore, lost these leaders; but within an hour “The Recognition,” as it came to be called, was signed by a hundred members, and the number was raised to 140 before the day was over, and ultimately to about 300. And so, with this goodly number, the House went on. But the Anti-Oliverian leaven was still strong in it. This appeared even in the immediate dealings of the House with the Recognition itself. They first (Sept, 14) declared that it should not be construed to comprehend the whole Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, but only the main principle of the first Article; and then (Sept. 18) they converted the Recognition into a resolution of their own, requiring all members to sign it, Next, in order to get rid of the stumbling-block of the First Article altogether, they resolved (Sept. 19) that the Supreme Legislative authority was and did reside in “One Person and the People assembled in Parliament,” and also (Sept. 20) that Oliver Cromwell was and should he Lord Protector for life, and that there should be Triennial Parliaments. Thus free to advance through the rest of the Forty-two Articles at their leisure, they made that thenceforward almost their sole work. Through the rest of September, the whole of October, and part of November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty Articles instead of the Forty-two. A Bill for enacting this Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these amendments and others.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given and of Nov. 7, and Godwin, IV, 130-132.]
In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the House on November 10. In the first the question was whether the Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200 votes to 60 that it should not. This was not strictly an Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell’s family, many of the undoubted Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell. More distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was on a question of deep interest to Cromwell: viz. the amount of his prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on fundamentals. In his last speech he had himself indicated these “fundamentals,” which ought to be safe against attack even by Parliament—one
[Footnote 1: Journals of dates and Godwin, IV. 134-139.]
As we have said, almost the sole occupation of the Parliament was this revision of the flooring on which itself and the Protectorate stood. They did, however, some little pieces of work besides. They undertook a revision of the Ordinances that had been passed by the Protector and his Council, and also of the Acts of the Barebones Parliament; and they proposed Bills of their own to supersede some of these,—especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery. But of all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul of the Lord-Protector.
After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be called incidental. It was part and parcel of their main work of revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question of Cromwell’s negatives. Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of preaching outside the Established Church to “such as profess faith in Jesus Christ,” and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as one of the “fundamentals” he was bound to preserve. How did the Parliament meet the difficulty? Very ingeniously. They said that the phrase “such as profess faith in Jesus Christ” was a vague phrase, requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into a Committee
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of days given; Neal, IV. 97-100; Baxter’s Life, 197-205. On this visit to town, Baxter had the honour to preach before Cromwell, having never done so till then, “save once long before when Cromwell was an inferior man among other auditors.” He had also the honour of two long interviews with Cromwell, the first with one or two others present, the second in full Council. They seem to have been reciprocally disagreeable. On both occasions, according to Baxter, Cromwell talked enormously for the most part “slowly” and “tediously” to Baxter’s taste, but with passionate outbreaks against the Parliament. On the second occasion the topic was Liberty of Conscience, and what was being done in the Subcommittee and by the Divines on the subject. Baxter ventured to hint that he had put his views on paper and that it might save time if his Highness would read them. “He received the paper after, but I scarce believe that he ever read it; for I saw that what he learned must be from himself—being more disposed to speak many hours than to hear one, and little heeding what another said when he had spoken himself.” Cromwell had made up his mind about Baxter long ago (Vol. III. p. 386), but had apparently now given him another trial, on the faith of his reputed liberality on the Toleration question. But Baxter did not gain upon him.]
As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject, the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had continued in power. At large since 1651, he had been living rather quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of Biddle’s, called A Two-fold Catechism, published in 1654, had given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr. Biddle’s body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. III. 593-598; Commons Journals of dates.]
It was really of very great consequence to the Commonwealth of the Protectorate what theory of Toleration should be adopted into its Constitution, whether the Parliament’s or Cromwell’s. For the ferment of religious and irreligious speculation of all kinds in the three nations was now something prodigious, and there were widely diffused denominations of dissent and heresy that had not been in existence ten years before, when the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly first discussed the Toleration Question. Our synopsis of the English sects and Heresies of 1644 (Vol. III. 143-159) is not, indeed, wholly out of date for 1654, but it would require extensions and modifications to adjust it accurately to the latter year. There had been the natural flux and reflux of ideas during the intervening decade, the waning of some sects and singularities that had no deep root, the interblending of others, and new bursts in the teeming chaos. Atheists, Sceptics_, Mortalists or Materialists, Anti-Scripturists, Anti-Trinitarians or Socinians, Arians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Seekers, and Divorcers or Miltonists: all these terms were still in the vocabulary of the orthodox, describing persons or bodies of persons of whose opinions the Civil Magistrate was bound to take account. Sects, on the other hand, that had been on the black list ten years ago had now been admitted to respectability. Baptists or Anabaptists, Antinomians, Brownists_, nay even INDEPENDENTS generally, had been regarded in 1644 as dark and dangerous schismatics; but now, save in the private colloquies or controversial tracts of Presbyterians, no feeling of horror attached to those names. INDEPENDENTS, indeed, were now the Lords of the Commonwealth, and Anabaptists and Antinomians were in high places, so that the most orthodox Presbyterians found themselves side by side with them in private gatherings and committees. In the Established Church of the Protectorate there was to be a comprehension of Presbyterians, Independents, and such Baptists and other really Evangelical Sectaries as might be willing; and, accordingly, the question of mere Toleration outside the Established Church no longer concerned the Evangelical sects lying immediately beyond ordinary Independency. If, from objection to the principle of an Establishment, they chose to remain outside, they would have toleration there as a matter of course. To make up, however, for this removal of so many of the old Sectaries from all practical interest in the question on their own account, there were new religious denominations of such strange ways and tendencies, such unknown relations to anything hitherto recognised as Orthodoxy or as Heresy, that the poor Civil Magistrate, or even the coolest Abstract Tolerationist, in contemplating them, might well be puzzled. The following is a list of the chief of these new Sects that had sprung up since 1644:—
FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN:—At first sight this does not appear a new sect, but merely a continuation of the old MILLENARIES or CHILIASTS (Vol. III, pp. 152-153), who believed that the Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years was approaching. The change of name, however, indicates greater precision in the belief, and also greater intensity. According to the wild system of Universal Chronology then in vogue, the past History of the World, on this side of the Flood, had consisted of four great successive Empires or Monarchies—the Assyrian, which ended B.C. 531; the Persian, which ended B.C. 331; the Macedonian, or Greek Empire of Alexander, which was made to stretch to B.C. 44; and the Roman, which had begun B.C. 44, with the Accession of Augustus Caesar, and which had included, though people might not see how, all that had happened on the Earth since then. But this last Monarchy was tottering, and a Fifth Universal Monarchy was at hand. It was that foreshadowed in Rev. xx.: “And I saw an Angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the Bottomless Pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that great serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw Thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the worship of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” This prophecy was the property of all Christians, and might receive different interpretations. The literal interpretation, favoured by some theologians, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and that in the glorious reign of Righteousness and the subjugation of all Evil thus begun for a thousand years men then living, or the true saints among them, might partake. This interpretation, though scouted by the more rational theologians, had seized on many of the more fervid English Independents and Sectaries, so that they had begun to see, in the great events of their own time and land, the dazzling edge of the near Millennium. The doctrine had caught the souls of Harrison and other men of action, hitherto classed as Anabaptists or Seekers. Now, so far there was no harm in it, nor could any of the orthodox who rejected it for themselves dare to treat it as one of the heresies to be restrained by the Civil Magistrate. Evidently, however, there was
[Footnote 1: Hearne’s Ductor Historicus, 1714 (for the old doctrine of the Four Monarchies); Thomason Pamphlets; Carlyle’s Cromwell, III. 24-27.—The Fifth Monarchy notion was by no means an upstart oddity of thought among the English Puritans of the seventeenth century. It was a tradition of the most scholarly thought of mediaeval theologians as to the duration and final collapse of the existing Cosmos; and it may be traced in the older imaginative literature of various European nations. Thus the Scottish Sir David Lindsay’s long poem entitled Monarchy, or Ane Dialogue betwix Experience and one Courtier of the Miserable Estate of the World, the date of which is 1553, is a moralized sketch of the whole previous history of the world, according to the then accepted doctrine of the Four past Secular Monarchies, with a glance around at the Europe of Lindsay’s own time as already certainly in the dregs of “The Latter Days,” and an anticipation, as if with assured personal belief, of a glorious Fifth Monarchy, or miraculous reconstitution of the whole Universe into a new Heaven and Earth, to begin probably about the year 2000.]
RANTERS:—“These made it their business,” says Baxter, “to set up the Light of Nature under the name of Christ in Man, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, and the present Ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine of Libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life. They taught, as the FAMILISTS, (see Vol. III. p. 152), that God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure ... I have seen myself letters written from Abington, where among both soldiers and people this contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses and blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their Religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God.” The Ranters, in fact, seem to have been ANTINOMIANS (see Vol. III. 151-152) run mad, with touches from FAMILISM and SEEKERISM greatly vulgarized. Of no sect do we hear more in the pamphlets and newspapers between 1650 and 1655, though there are traces of them of earlier date. The pamphlets about them generally take the form of professed accounts of some of their meetings, with reports of their profane discourses and the indecencies with which they were accompanied. There are illustrative wood-cuts in some of the pamphlets; and, on the whole, I fancy that some low printers and booksellers made a trade on the public curiosity about the Ranters, getting up pretended accounts of their meetings as a pretext for prurient publications. There is plenty of testimony, however, besides Baxter’s word, that there was a real sect of the name pretty widely spread in low neighbourhoods in towns, and holding meetings. Among Ranters named in the pamphlets I have noticed a T. Shakespeare. “The horrid villainies of the sect,” says Baxter, “did not only speedily extinguish it, but also did as much as ever anything did to disgrace all sectaries, and to restore the credit of the ministry and the sober unanimous Christians;” and this, or the transfusion of Ranterism into equivalent phrenzies with other names, may account for the fact that after a while the pamphlets about the Ranters cease or become rare. Clearly, in the main, the regulation of such a sect, so long as it did last, was a matter of police; and the only question is whether there were any tenets mixed up with Ranterism, or held by some roughly called Ranters, that were capable of being dissociated, and that were in fact in some cases dissociated, from offences against public decency. Exact data are deficient, and there were probably varieties of Ranters theologically. Pantheism, or the essential identity of God with the universe, and his indwelling in every creature, angelic, human, brute, or inorganic, seems to have been the belief of most Ranters that could manage to rise to a metaphysics—with which belief was conjoined also a rejection of all essential distinction between good and evil, and a rejection of all Scripture as mere dead letter; but from a so-called “Carol of the Ranters” I infer that Atheism, or at least Mortalism or Materialism (see Vol. III. p. 156-157), had found refuge among some of the varieties. Thus:—
“They prate of God! Believe it, fellow-creature,
There’s no such bugbear: all
was made by Nature.
We know all came of nothing, and shall
pass
Into the same condition once it was
By Nature’s power, and that they
grossly lie
That say there’s hope of immortality.
Let them but tell us what a soul is:
then
We shall adhere to these mad brainsick
men."[1]
[Footnote 1: Baxter’s Life, 76-77; and Thomason Pamphlets passim. The pamphlet last quoted is in Vol. 485 (old numbering). I have also used a quotation from another pamphlet in Barclay’s Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth (1876), pp. 417-418.]
STRAY FANATICS: THE MUGGLETONIANS:—Sometimes confounded with the Ranters, but really distinguishable, were some crazed men, whose crazes had taken a religious turn, and whose extravagances became contagious.—Such was a John Robins, first heard of about 1650, when he went about, sometimes as God Almighty, sometimes as Adam raised from the dead, with the power of raising others from the dead. He had raised Cain and Judas, and other personages of Scripture, forgiving their sins and blessing them; which personages, changed in character, but remembering their former selves quite well, went about in Robins’s company and were seen and talked with by various people. He could work miracles, and in dark rooms would exhibit himself surrounded with angels, and fiery serpents, and shining lights, or riding in the air. He had been sent to Bridewell, and his supernatural powers had left him.—One heard next, in 1652, of two associates, called John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton, who professed to be “the two last Spiritual Witnesses (Rev. xi.) and alone true Prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ, God alone blessed to all eternity.” They believed in a real man-shaped God, existing from all eternity, who had come upon earth as Jesus Christ, leaving Moses and Elijah to represent him in Heaven—also in the mortality of the soul till the resurrection of the body; and their chief commission was to denounce and curse all false prophets, and all who did not believe in Reeves and Muggleton. They visited Robins in Bridewell and told him to stop his preaching under pain of eternal damnation; but they favoured some eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers of London with letters to the same effect. They dated their letters “from Great Trinity Lane, at a Chandler’s shop, against one Mr. Millis, a brown baker, near Bow Lane End;” and the editor of Mercurius Politicus, who had received one of their letters so dated, had the curiosity to go to see them, with some friends of his, in the end of August 1653. He found them “at the top of an old house in a cockloft,” and made a paragraph of them thus:—“They are said to be a couple of tailors: but only one of them works, and that is Muggleton; the other, they say, writes prophecies. We found two women there whom they
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 313-317; Mercurius Politicus, No. 167 (Aug. 18-25, 1653); Commons Journals, Dec. 30, 1654; Barclay’s Religious Societies, pp. 421-422.]
BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS:—Of the German Mystic Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) there had been a Life in English since 1644, with a catalogue of his writings, and since then translations of some of the writings themselves had appeared at intervals, mostly from the shop of one publisher, Humphrey Blunden. The interest in “the Teutonical Philosopher” thus excited had at length taken form in a small sect of professed BOEHMENISTS, propounding the doctrine of the Light of Nature, i.e. of a mystic intuitional revelation in the soul itself of all true knowledge of divine and human things. Of this sect Baxter says that they were “fewer in number,” and seemed
[Footnote 1: Stationers’ Registers from 1644 to 1654; Baxter, 77-78; Neal, IV. 112-113.]
[Footnote 2: Engl. Cycl. Art. Lilly; Stationers’ Registers of date June 10, 1653 (Gataker’s Tract) and of other dates (Lilly’s Almanacks).]
[Footnote 3: Baxter, 74-76; Milton Papers by Nickolls, 78-79; Wood’s Ath. III, 578 et seq. and IV. 136-138.]
QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:—Who can think of the appearance of this sect in English History without doing what the sect itself would forbid, and reverently raising the hat? And yet in 1654 this was the very sect of sects. It was about the Quakers that there had begun to be the most violent excitement among the guardians of social order throughout the British Islands.—It was then six or seven years since they had first been heard of in any distinct way, and four since they had received the name QUAKERS. A Derbyshire Justice of the Peace, it is said, first invented that name for them, because they seemed to be fond of the text Jer. v. 22, and had offended him by addressing it to himself and a brother magistrate: “Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye not tremble at my presence?” But Robert Barclay’s account of the origin of the name in his Apology for the Quakers (1675) is probably more correct, though not inconsistent. He says it arose from the fact that, in the early meetings of “The Children of the Light,” as they first called themselves, violent physical agitations were not unfrequent, and conversions were often signalized by that accompaniment.
[Footnote 1: Sewel’s History of the People called Quakers (ed. 1834), I, I—136; Rules and Discipline of the Society of Friends (1834), Introduction; Baxter, 77; Neal, IV. 31-41; Pamphlets in Thomason Collection; Robert Barclay’s Apology for the Quakers (ed. 1765), pp. 4, 48, 118, 309-310. This last is a really able and impressive book—far the most reasoned exposition even yet, I believe, of the principles of early Quakerism. Though not written till twenty years after our present date, it was the first accurate and articulate expression, I believe, of the principles that had really, though rather confusedly, pervaded the Quaker teachings and writings at that date.—There are many particles of information about the early Quakers, and about other contemporary English sects, in The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, published in 1878, the posthumous work of a second Robert Barclay, two hundred years after the first. But the book, though laborious, is very chaotic, and shows hardly any knowledge of the time of which it mainly treats.]
Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament, however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid sooner than had been expected.
It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for his assent. In particular they had postponed, as much as possible, all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government. By this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp. By the instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve them till they had sat five months,—which, by ordinary counting from Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5. But, if they could contrive that it should be Cromwell’s interest not to dissolve them then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament. To postpone supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell’s assent, to wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of the Anti-Oliverians. The Bill, it will be remembered, had passed the second reading on Dec. 23, had then gone into Committee for amendments, and had come back to the House with these amendments. On the 10th of January, 1654-5, when the Bill was almost ready to be engrossed, it was moved by the Oliverians that there should be a conference about
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 148-157; Carlyle, III. 70-95.]
BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS: JAN. 22, 1654-55—SEPT. 17, 1656.
AVOWED “ARBITRARINESS” OF THIS STAGE OF
THE PROTECTORATE, AND REASONS
FOR IT.—FIRST MEETING OF CROMWELL AND HIS
COUNCIL AFTER THE
DISSOLUTION: MAJOR-GENERAL OVERTON IN CUSTODY:
OTHER ARRESTS:
SUPPRESSION OF A WIDE REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY AND OF
ROYALIST RISINGS
IN YORKSHIRE AND THE WEST: REVENUE ORDINANCE
AND MR. CONY’S
OPPOSITION AT LAW: DEFERENCE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS:
BLAKE IN THE
MEDITERRANEAN: MASSACRE OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS:
DETAILS OF
THE STORY AND OF CROMWELL’S PROCEEDINGS IN CONSEQUENCE:
PENN IN THE
SPANISH WEST INDIES: HIS REPULSE FROM HISPANIOLA
AND LANDING IN
JAMAICA: DECLARATION OF WAR WITH SPAIN AND ALLIANCE
This long stretch of twenty months was to be another period of the government of the Commonwealth by the Lord Protector and the Council of State on their own responsibility and without a Parliament. In the circumstances in which the late Parliament had left them, without supplies and without a single concluded and authoritative enactment, they could only fall back on the original Instrument of the Protectorate, amending its defects by their own ingenuity as exigencies occurred, with a suggestion now and then snatched, for the sake of quasi-Parliamentary countenance, from the wreck of the late Constitutional Bill. Hence a character of “arbitrariness” in Cromwell’s government throughout this period greater perhaps than in any other of his whole Protectorate. For that, however, he was prepared. At the first meeting of the Council after the Dissolution of Parliament (Tuesday, Jan. 23, 1654-5) there were present, I find, His Highness himself, and thirteen out of the eighteen Councillors, viz.: Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Viscount Lisle, Lambert, Desborough, Fiennes, Montague, Sydenham, Strickland, Sir Charles Wolseley, Skippon, Jones, and Rous; and it was then “ordered by his Highness and the Council that Friday next be set apart for their seeking of God, and that Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Denn, and Mr. Sterry, be desired then to give their assistance.” In entering on the new period of their Government, the Protector and the Council thought a day of special prayer very fitting.[1]
[Footnote 1 Council Order Book of date.—Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, having shown Anti-Oliverian tendencies in the late Parliament, did not reappear in the Council after the Dissolution, and had virtually ceased to be a member. Colonel Mackworth had died Dec. 26, 1654. The three other members not present at the meeting of Jan. 23, 1664-5 were Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Richard Mayor. Fleetwood was in Ireland; Pickering’s absence was accidental, and he was in his place very regularly afterwards; Mayor did not attend steadily.]
In the Dissolution Speech Cromwell, rebuking the Parliament for their inattention to what he considered their real duty, had compared them to a tree under the shadow of which there had been a too thriving growth of other vegetation. Interpreting the parable, he had explained to them that there was at that moment a new and very complex conspiracy against the Commonwealth, that the Levellers at home had been in correspondence with the Cavaliers abroad, that their plans were laid and their manifestos ready, that commissioners from Charles Stuart had arrived and stores of arms and money had been collected, and also (worst of all) that there had been tamperings with the Army by Commonwealth men of higher note than the mere Levellers. He did not believe, he said, that any then in Parliament were in the Cavalier interest in the connexion, but he was not sure that they were all perfectly clear of the connexion on all its sides. At all events, he knew that their policy of starving the Army had given the enemy their best opportunity. Fortunately, he had already some of the chief home-conspirators in custody, and the Cavalier part of the plot might explode when it liked.[1]
[Footnote 1: Speech IV (Carlyle, III 75-81.)]
The chief of those in custody when Cromwell spoke was the Republican Major-General Overton. He had been under suspicion before, as we have seen, but had cleared himself sufficiently to Cromwell, and had been sent back to Scotland as second in command to Monk (Sept. 1654). Since then, however, he had relapsed into the Anti-Oliverian mood, and had become, it was believed, the head of the numerous Anti-Oliverians or Republicans in Monk’s Army, The proposal was to seize Monk, make Overton the commander-in-chief, and march into England, But, information having been received in time, there had been the necessary arrests of the guilty officers (Dec. 1654). Most of them had been kept in Edinburgh to be dealt with by Monk; but the chiefs had been sent at once to London, and among them Overton, whose arrest had taken place at Aberdeen. He was committed to the Tower Jan. 16, 1654-5. The clue having thus been furnished, further investigation had disclosed more. In concert with the Anti-Oliverian movement in the Army of Scotland, and depending on that movement for help, there had been plottings in England, in which Harrison, Colonel Okey, Colonel Alured, Colonel Sexby, Adjutant-General
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 158-165; Carlyle, III. 66-70 and 98-99; Whitlocke, IV. 182-188 (Wildman’s Proclamation); Life of Robert Blair, 319.]
Much sharper was Cromwell’s method of dealing with the attempted invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently. Hopes had risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been extensive. Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers of the enterprise were already moving about in various English counties. Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of Charles’s emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had arrived and were in their beds. They were seized; and
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 824-827; Whitlocke, IV. 188; Godwin, IV. 167-169; Carlyle, III. 99-100.]
Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of L120,000 per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of L90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and, though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the assessment for three months more at L60,000 per month, the Bill had never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at L60,000 per month. This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of Parliament, he had been fined L500 by the Commissioners of Customs, and had been committed to prison for non-payment. On a motion for a writ of habeas corpus his case came on for trial in May 1655. Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 174-183; Whitlocke, through April, May, June, and July, 1655.]
For such “arbitrariness” in some of the Protector’s home-proceedings there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad. Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, had come to London to assist Cardenas in the negotiations for Spain; but Mazarin was indefatigable in his offers, through M. de Bordeaux and otherwise.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books passim; Guizot, II. 203.]
While the Parliament was still sitting, Cromwell had sent out two fleets, one under the command of Blake (Oct. 1654), the other under that of Penn (Dec. 1654). There was the utmost secrecy as to the destination and objects of both, but the mystery did not last long about Blake’s. He had received instructions to go into the Mediterranean, make calls there on all powers against which the Commonwealth had claims,
[Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 186-198, with, documents in Appendix; Godwin, IV. 187-188; Whitlocke. IV., 206-207.]
While Blake was in the Mediterranean, one Italian potentate did a sudden act of infamy, which resounded through Europe, and for which Cromwell would fain have clutched him by the throat in his own inland capital. This was Carlo Emanuele II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont.
In the territories of this young prince, in the Piedmontese valleys of Luserna, Perosa, and San Martino, on the east side of the Cottian Alps, lived the remarkable people known as the Vaudois or Waldenses. From time immemorial these obscure mountaineers, speaking a peculiar Romance tongue of their own, had kept themselves distinct from the Church of Rome, maintaining doctrines and forms of worship of such a kind that, after the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before. They had experienced persecutions
On the 25th of January, 1654-5, an edict was issued, under the authority of the Duke of Savoy, “commanding and enjoining every head of a family, with its members, of the pretended Reformed Religion, of what rank, degree, or condition soever, none excepted, inhabiting and possessing estates in the places of Luserna, Lucernetta, San Giovanni, La Torre, Bubbiana, and Fenile, Campiglione, Briccherassio, and San Secondo, within three days, to withdraw and depart, and be, with their families, withdrawn, out of the said places, and transported into the places and limits marked out for toleration by his Royal Highness during his good pleasure, namely Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna, Rorata, and the County of Bonetti, under pain of death and confiscation of goods and houses, unless they gave evidence within twenty days of having become Catholics.” Furthermore it was commanded that in every one even of the tolerated places there should be regular celebration of the Holy Mass, and that there should be no interference therewith, nor any dissuasion of any one from turning a Catholic, also on pain of death. All the places named are in the Valley of Luserna, and the object was a wholesale shifting of the Protestants of that valley out of nine of its communes and their concentration into five higher up. In vain were there remonstrances at Turin from those immediately concerned. On the 17th of April, 1655, the Marquis di Pianezza entered the doomed region with a body of troops, mainly Piedmontese, but with French and Irish among them. There was resistance, fighting, burning, pillaging, flight to the mountains, and chasing and murdering for eight days, Saturday, April 24, being the climax. The names of about three hundred of those murdered individually are on record, with the ways of the deaths of many of them. Women were ripped open, or carried about impaled on spikes; men, women, and children, were flung from precipices, hacked, tortured, roasted alive; the heads of some of the dead were boiled and the brains eaten; there are forty printed pages, and twenty-six ghastly engravings, by way of Protestant tradition of the ascertained variety of the devilry. The massacre was chiefly in the Valley of Luserna, but extended also into the other two valleys. The fugitives were huddled in crowds high among the mountains,
[Footnote 1: Morland’s History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, with a Relation of the Massacre (1658), 287-428; Guizot, II. 213-215.]
There was a shudder of abhorrence through Protestant Europe, but no one was so much roused as Cromwell. In the interval between the Duke of Savoy’s edict and the Massacre he had been desirous that the Vaudois should publicly appeal to him rather than to the Swiss; and, when the news of the Massacre reached England, he avowed that it came “as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned.” On Thursday the 17th of May, and for many days more, the business of the Savoy Protestants was the chief occupation of the Council. Letters, all in Milton’s Latin, but signed by the Lord Protector in his own name, were despatched (May 25) to the Duke of Savoy himself, to the French King, to the States General of the United Provinces, to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, to the King of Sweden, to the King of Denmark, and to Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania. A day of humiliation was appointed for the Cities of London and Westminster, and another for all England. A Committee was appointed, consisting of all the Councillors, with Sir Christopher Pack and other eminent citizens, and also some ministers, to organize a general collection of money throughout England and Wales in behalf of the suffering Vaudois. The collection, as arranged June 1, was to take the form of a house-to-house visitation by the ministers and churchwardens in every city, town, and parish on a particular Lord’s day, for the receipt of whatever sum each householder might freely give, every such sum to be noted in presence of the donor, and the aggregates, parish by parish, or city by city, to be remitted to the treasurers in London, who were to enter them duly in a general register. The subscription, which lagged for a time in some districts, produced at length a total of L38,097 7_s._ 3_d._—equal to about L137,000 now. Of this sum L2000 (equal to about L7500 now) was Cromwell’s own contribution, while London and Westminster contributed L9384 6_s._ 11_d._, and the various counties sums of various magnitudes, according to their size, wealth, and zeal, from Devonshire at
[Footnote 1: Letter from Thurloe to Pell at Geneva (Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 158-159); Council Order Books, May 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, June 1 and July 8, 1655; Morland, 562-596. Morland gives an interesting abstract of the Treasurer’s Accounts of the Collection; but the original accounts in a large folio book, entitled Committee for Piedmont &c., are in the Record Office. The counties are arranged there alphabetically and the parishes alphabetically under each county, with the sums which the parishes individually subscribed. Some parishes seem wholly to have neglected the subscription, and there are blanks opposite their names.]
At the time of the massacre Cromwell had two agents in Switzerland, viz. Mr. JOHN PELL (Vol. IV. p. 449) and the ubiquitous JOHN DURIE. They had been sent abroad early in 1654, to cultivate the friendly intercourse already begun between the Evangelical Cantons and the Commonwealth, and also to watch the progress of a struggle which had just broken out between the Popish Cantons of the Confederacy and the Evangelical Cantons. As the Evangelical Cantons were also astir about the Vaudois, whose cause was so closely connected with their own, the services of Pell and Durie were now available for that business. Cromwell, however, had thought an express Commissioner necessary, with instructions to negotiate directly with the Duke of Savoy, and had selected for the purpose Mr, SAMUEL MORLAND, an able and ingenious man, about thirty years of age, who had been with Whitlocke in his Swedish Embassy, and had been taken into the Council office on his return as assistant to Thurloe. On the 26th of May Morland left London, carrying with him the letters addressed to Louis XIV. and the Duke of Savoy. He was at La Fere in France on the 1st of June, treating with the French King and Mazarin, and was able to despatch thence a letter from the French King to Cromwell, expressing willingness to do all that could be done for the Vaudois, and explaining that he had already conveyed his views on the subject to the Duke of Savoy. Thence Morland continued his journey to Rivoli, near Turin, where he arrived on the 21st of June. He was received most politely, was entertained and driven about both at Rivoli and at Turin itself, and was admitted to a formal audience on or about the 24th. He there made a speech in Latin to the Duke, the Duchess-mother being also present, and delivered Cromwell’s letter, The speech was a very bold one. He spared no detail
[Footnote 1: Morland, 563-583; and Letters between Pell and Thurloe given in Vaughan’s Protectorate.]
Meanwhile Cromwell, dissatisfied with the coolness of the French King and Mazarin, and also with the shuffling and timidity of the Swiss Cantons, had been taking the affair more and more into his own hands. He had despatched, late in July, another Commissioner, Mr. GEORGE DOWNING, to meet Morland at Geneva, help Morland to infuse some energy into the Cantons, and then proceed with him to Turin to bring matters to a definite issue. He had been inquiring also about the fittest place for landing an invading force against the Duke, and had thought of Nice or Villafranca. Blake’s presence in the Mediterranean was not forgotten. All which being known to Mazarin, that wily statesman saw that no time was to be lost. While Mr. Downing was still only on his way to Geneva through France, Mazarin had instructed M. Servien, the French minister at Turin, to insist, in the French King’s name, on an immediate settlement of the Vaudois business. The result was a Patente di Gratia e Perdono, or “Patent of Grace and Pardon,” granted by Charles Emanuel to the Vaudois Protestants, Aug. 19, in terms of a Treaty at Pignerol, in which the French Minister appeared as the real mediating party and certain Envoys from the Swiss Cantons as more or less assenting. As the Patent substantially retracted the Persecuting Edict and restored the Vaudois to all their former privileges, nothing more was to be done. Cromwell, it is true, did not conceal that he was disappointed.
[Footnote 1: Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II. 220-225; Council Order Book, July 17.]
Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise. It was now some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn’s command. The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth. It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual conveyance across the Atlantic. Much discretion was left to Penn and Venables, but on the whole St. Domingo, then called Hispaniola, was indicated for a beginning. Blake’s presence in the Mediterranean with the other fleet had been timed for an assault on Spain at home when the news should arrive of the disaster to her colonies.[1]
[Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 184-186; Godwin, IV. 180-194.]
Penn and Venables together were not equal to one Blake. They opened their sealed instructions at Barbadoes, one of the two or three small Islands of the West-Indies then possessed by the English, and, after counsel and preparation, proceeded to Hispaniola. The fleet now consisted of about sixty vessels, and there were about 9000 soldiers on board, some of them veterans, but most of them recruits of bad quality. They were off St. Domingo, the capital of the Island, on the 14th of April, 1655, and from that moment there was misunderstanding and blundering. Penn, Venables, and the Chief Commissioner who had been sent out with them, differed as to the proper landing point; the
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 195-203; Carlyle, III. 122-123; Guizot, II. 226-231; Letters of Cromwell to Vice-Admiral Goodson and Major-General Fortescue (Carlyle, III. 126-132).]
One result of the West Indian expedition was that the long-delayed alliance with France was now a settled affair. Cardenas had his pass-ports sent him, and on the 22nd of October, 1655, he left England. The Court of Madrid had already recalled him, laid an embargo on all English property in Spain, and conferred a Marquisate and pension on the Governor of Hispaniola. On the 24th of October the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Cromwell and Louis XIV. was finally signed; and within a few days afterwards there was out in London an elaborate document entitled “Scriptum Domini Protectoris, ex consensu atque sententia Concilii sui editum, in quo hujus Reipublica causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur” ("The Lord-Protector’s Manifesto, published with the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the Cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated"). Now, accordingly, the Commonwealth entered on a new era of her history. Cromwell and Mazarin were to be fast friends, and the Stuarts were to have no help or countenance any more from the French crown; while, on the other hand, there was to be war to the
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV, 214-217 and 298-300; Guizot, II. 231-234; Thomason copy of the Declaration against Spain, dated Nov. 9, 1655; Council Order Books, Oct. 2, 1655; Article on Lockhart in Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary of Scotsmen; Carlyle, III. 309-310.]
It was just about this time of change and extension in the foreign relations of the Commonwealth that the people of England and Wales became aware that they were, and had been for some time, under an entirely new system of home-government, called Government by Major-Generals.
The difficulties of the home-government of the Protectorate were great and peculiar. The power of the Lord-Protector and his Council to pass ordinances had been called in question. Judges and lawyers were not only pretty unanimous in the opinion that resistance to payment of imposts not enacted by Parliamentary authority might be made good at law, and that the Ordinance for Chancery Reform was also legally invalid; they doubted even whether, in strict law, there could be proceedings for the preservation of the public peace, by courts and magistrates, under any Council ordinance about crimes and treasons. All this Cromwell had been meditating. How was revenue to be raised? How were Royalist and Anabaptist plottings to be suppressed? How were police regulations about public manners and morals to be enforced? How was the will of the Central Government at Whitehall, in any matter whatsoever, to be transmitted to any spot in the community and made really operative? Meditating these questions, Cromwell, as he expressed it afterwards, “did find out a little poor invention”: “I say,” he repeated, “there was a little thing invented."[1] The little invention consisted in a formal identification of the Protector’s Chief Magistracy with his Headship of the Army. He had resolved to map out England and Wales into districts, and to plant in each district a trusty officer, with the title of Major-General, who should be nominally in command of the militia of that district, but should be really also the executive there for the Central Government in all things. A beginning had been made in the business as early as May 1655, when Desborough was appointed Major-General of the Militia in the six southwestern counties; and the districts had been all marked out and the Major-Generals chosen in August. But there had been very great secrecy about the scheme; and not till the 31st of October was there official announcement of the new organization. Only about mid-winter, 1655-6, did people fully realise what it meant. The Major-Generalcies then stood thus:—
[Footnote 1: Speech V. (Carlyle, III. 176).]
Person. District.
1. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON. London.
2. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BARKSTEAD. Westminster and Middlesex.
3. MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS KELSEY. Kent and Surrey.
4. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM GOFFE. Sussex, Hants, and Berks.
5. FLEETWOOD (with MAJOR-GENERAL
Oxford, Bucks, Herts,
HEZEKIAH HAYNES as his deputy). Norfolk,
Suffolk, Essex,
and
Cambridge.
6. MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD WHALLEY.
Lincoln, Notts, Derby,
Warwick,
and Leicester.
7. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM BUTLER.
Northampton, Bedford,
Hunts,
and Rutland.
8. MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES WORSLEY
Chester, Lancaster, and
(succeeded by MAJOR-GENERAL Stafford.
TOBIAS BRIDGES).
9. LAMBERT (with MAJOR-GENERAL
York, Durham, Cumberland
ROBERT TILBURNE and MAJOR-GENERAL Westmorland,
CHARLES HOWARD as his deputies). and
Northumberland.
10. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN DESBOROUGH.
Gloucester, Wilts, Dorset,
Somerset,
Devon, and
Cornwall.
11. MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES BERRY.
Worcester, Hereford, Salop,
and
North Wales.
12. MAJOR-GENERAL DAWKINS.
Monmouthshire and
South
Wales.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, as digested by Godwin, IV. 228-229.]
The powers intrusted to these Major-Generals and to their subordinate officers in the several counties were all but universal. They were to patrol the counties with horse and foot, but especially with horse. They were to guard against robberies and tumults and to bring criminals to punishment. They were to take charge of the public morals, and see the laws put in force against drunkenness, blasphemy, plays and interludes, profanation of the Lord’s Day, and disorderliness generally. They were to keep a register of all disaffected persons, remove arms from their houses, note their changes of residence, and take security for the good behaviour of themselves, their families, and servants. All travellers and strangers were bound to appear before them, and give an account of themselves and their business. They were to arrest vagabonds and persons with no visible means of living. Above all, they were to see to the execution of a certain very severe and far-reaching measure which the Protector and the Council had determined to adopt in consequence of the late Royalist insurrection and conspiracy.
Either from information that had been received, or merely in terrorem, there had, during the past summer and autumn, been numerous arrests of persons of rank and wealth that had hitherto been allowed to live quietly in their country mansions, on the understanding that, though Royalists, they had ceased to be such, in any active sense. The Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Lindsey, the Earl of Newport, the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Rivers, the Earl of Peterborough, Viscount Falkland, and Lords Lovelace, St. John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, Lucas, and Willoughby of Parham, with a great many commoners of distinction,
[Footnote 1: Godwin, 223-242; Carlyle, III. 101.]
What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts, what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see. Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under ban. Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more closely looked after than they had been. But what shall we say about this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:—“Wednesday, 5th Sept., 1655—At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State”? The effect of the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz. Needham’s Mercurius Politicus, published on Thursdays, and The Public Intelligencer,
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of 1655 and 1658 passim; Merc. Pol. and Public Intelligencer of dates given.]
It was part of the duty of the Major-Generals to assist, so far as might still be necessary, in the execution of the Ordinance of Aug. 1654 for the ejection of scandalous and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (Vol. IV. p. 564 and p. 571), The County Committees of Ejectors under that Ordinance had already performed their disagreeable work in part, but were still busy. On the whole, though they turned out many, they seem not to have abused their powers. “I must needs say,” is Baxter’s testimony, “that in all the counties where I was acquainted, six to one at least, if not many more, that were sequestered by the Committees were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or both—especially guilty of drunkenness or swearing,—and those that, being able godly preachers, were cast out for the war alone, as for their opinions’ sake, were comparatively very few. This, I know, will displease that party; but this is true.” Baxter admits, indeed, that there were cases in which the Committees were swayed too much by mere political feeling, and ejected men from their pulpits whom it would have been better to retain. Other authorities assert the same more strongly, but rather fail in the proof. The most notorious instance produced of a blunder on the part of any of the Committees was in Berkshire. The Rector of Childrey in this county was the learned orientalist Pocock, who had lost his Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford for refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, but still held the Arabic lectureship there, because there was no one else who knew Arabic sufficiently. Not liking his look, or not seeing what Orientalism had to do with the Gospel, the rude Berkshire Committee were on the point of turning him out of his Rectory, when Dr. Owen interfered manfully and prevented the scandal. About the same time, it is said, Thomas Fuller was in some trepidation about his living of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, but acquitted himself before the Committee handsomely.[1]
[Footnote 1: Baxter, 74; Wood’s Ath. IV. 319; Godwin, IV. 40-41.]
Distinct from the County Committees of Ejectors, and forming the other great constitutional power in Cromwell’s Church-Establishment, was the Central or London Committee of the Thirty-eight Triers (Vol. IV. p. 571). It was their duty to examine “all candidates for the public ministry,” i.e. all persons presented to livings by the patrons of the same, and pass only those that were fit. Baxter’s report of the work of these Triers, as done either by themselves in conclave, or by Sub-commissioners for them in the counties, is the more remarkable because he disowned the authority under which the Triers acted and was in controversy with most of them. “Though their authority was null,” he says, “and though some few over-busy and over-rigid Independents among them, were too severe against all that were Arminians, and too particular in inquiring after evidences of sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of unlearned and erroneous men that favoured Antinomianism or Anabaptism, yet, to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers. That sort of men that intended no more in the ministry than to say a sermon as readers say their common prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the people asleep with on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with them to the ale-house and harden them in sin; and that sort of ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as men that never were acquainted with it; all those that used the ministry but as a common trade to live by, and were never likely to convert a soul:—all these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted of any that were able serious preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that, though they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men, and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the Church that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in.” Royalist writers after the Restoration give, of course, a different picture. “Ignorant, bold, canting fellows,” they say, “laics, mechanics, and pedlars,” were brought into the Church by Cromwell’s Triers. One may, in the main, trust Baxter.[1]
[Footnote 1: Baxter, 72; Noal, IV. 102-109.]
Cromwell’s Established Church of England and Wales may now be imaged with tolerable accuracy. It contained two patches of completed Presbyterian organization, one in London and the other in Lancashire. The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire, however, the system
[Footnote 1: Baxter, 96-97 and 180-188; Wood’s Ath. III. 1083; Council Order Books of dates; Neal, IV. Chap. 3; Marchamont Needham’s Book against John Goodwin, entitled The Great Accuser Cast Down, published in July 1657. The information about Cromwell’s practice in his patronage of livings is from the last. The book was dedicated to Cromwell.]
But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however, rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring himself for the Civil Magistrate’s Authority in matters of Religion, he still cherished the extreme theory of Toleration as it might be applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe, he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like, detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about “the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;” and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published A Second Beacon Fired, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector’s new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly adjuring him to “do what might be expected from Christian magistrates” in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved abundantly that the Protector’s idea of Toleration would have been voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from Cromwell’s favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1]
[Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The Second Beacon Fired was published in Oct. 1654 by six London booksellers—Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John Webster, and Feake. John Goodwin replied to the booksellers in A fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of “The Second Beacon Fired,” published in Jan. 1654-5, and so found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called An Apology for the Six Booksellers.]
A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers, nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would publish one day The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation, and George Fox would print the next day The Unmasking and Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true light which comes from Christ Jesus. Nor, of course, was there, any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell’s Government lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of Dissenters from his Established Church—the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews.
(1) The Papists. Papists might be Papists under Cromwell’s government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had passed through Cromwell’s mind, and the results of his ruminations upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin. After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of Protestants in Catholic
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 202-203. The letter is dated Dec. 26, 1656.]
(2) The Episcopalians. The question under this heading is not about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church, but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of England. Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance. It was published Nov. 24, 1655, under the title of An Ordinance for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth, and it ordered that after Jan. 1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately, celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer, under pain of being prosecuted. The Ordinance seems to have been issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther plottings. At all events, it was announced in the Ordinance itself that there would be great delicacy in the application of it, so as to favour such of the ejected as deserved tender treatment; and, in fact, it was never applied or executed at all. No one was prosecuted under it; and, though it was not recalled, it was understood that it was suspended by the pleasure of his Highness, and that chaplains, teachers, and preachers, of the Episcopal persuasion, might go on as before, and reckon on all the toleration
[Footnote 1: Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110; Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656 (date of publication of Usher’s Reduction); Wood’s Fasti, I. 446.]
(3) Anti-Trinitarians. The crucial test of Cromwell’s Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr. John Biddle. The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped and he had been set at liberty (March 1655). But it was only to get into fresh trouble. The orthodox in London were determined that he should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, “in the new meeting-house at Paul’s, commonly called Captain Chillingdon’s church meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about 500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday.” Cromwell himself was present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague, Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland. What were they to do? They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous. The affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648. Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term. Meanwhile
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 3 and Oct. 5, 1655; Merc. Pol. Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Wood’s Ath. III. 599-601; Thomason Catalogue (Tracts for and against Biddle).]
(4) The Quakers. There was immense difficulty with this new sect—from the fact, as has been already explained, that they had not settled down into mere local groups of individuals, asking toleration for themselves, but were still in open war with all other sects, all other forms of ministry, and prosecuting the war everywhere by itinerant propagandism. George Fox himself and the best of his followers seem by this time indeed to have given up the method of actually interrupting the regular service in the steeple-houses in order to preach Quakerism; but they were constantly tending to the steeple-houses for the purpose of prophesying there, as was the custom in country-places, after the regular service was over. Thus, as well as by their conflicts with parsons of every sect wherever they met them, and their rebukings of iniquity on highways and in market-places, not to speak of their obstinate refusals to pay tithes in their own parishes, they were continually getting into the hands of justices of the peace and the assize-judges. Take as one example of their treatment in superior courts the appearance of William Dewsbury and other Quakers before Judge Atkins at Northampton after they had been half a year in Northampton jail.—Seeing them at the bar with their hats on, the Judge told the jailor he had a good mind to fine him ten pounds for bringing prisoners into the Court in that fashion, and ordered the hats to be removed by the jailor’s man. Then, after some preliminary parley, “What is thy name?” said the Judge to Dewsbury, who had made himself spokesman for all. “Unknown to the World,” said Dewsbury. “Let us hear what that name is that the World knows not,” said the Judge goodhumouredly. “It is,” quoth Dewsbury, “known in the light, and none can know it but he that hath it; but the name the world knows me by is William Dewsbury.” Then to the question of the Judge, “What countryman art thou?” the reply was, “Of the Land of Canaan.” The Judge remarked that Canaan was far off. “Nay,” answered Dewsbury, “for all that dwell in God are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from Heaven, where the soul is in rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom the union is with the Father of Light.” The Judge admitted that to be very true, but asked Dewsbury whether, being an Englishman, he was ashamed of that more prosaic fact. “Nay,” said Dewsbury, “I am free to declare that my natural birth was in Yorkshire, nine miles from York towards Hull.” The Judge then said, “You pretend to be extraordinary men, and to have an extraordinary knowledge of God.” Dewsbury replied, “We witness the work of regeneration to be an extraordinary work, wrought in us by the Spirit of God.” The conversation then turned on their preaching itinerancy,
[Footnote 1: Sewel’s History of the Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 137-173; Baxter, 77 and 180; Public Intelligencer of April 14-21, 1656; Council Order Book, Feb. 6, 1655-6.]
(5)_The Jews._ A very interesting incident of Cromwell’s Protectorate was his attempt to obtain an open toleration for the Jews in England. Since the year 1290, when they had been banished in a body out of the kingdom under Edward I., there had been only isolated and furtive instances of visits to England or residence in England by persons of the proscribed race. Of late, however, a certain Manasseh Ben Israel, an able and earnest Portuguese Jew, settled in Amsterdam as a physician, had conceived the idea that, in the new age of liberty and other great things in England, there might be a permission for the Jews to return and live and trade freely. He had opened negotiations by letter, first with the Rump and then with the Barebones Parliament, but had at length come over to London to deal directly with the Protector. “To his Highness the Lord Protector, &c. the Humble Addresses of Manasseh Ben Israel, Divine and Doctor of Physic, in behalf of the Jewish Nation,” were in print on the 5th of November, 1655; and they were formally before the Council on the 13th, his Highness present in person. The petition was for a general protection of such Jews as might come to reside in England, with liberty of trade, freedom for their worship, the possession of a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in London, and a revocation of all statutes contrary to such privileges. Cromwell was thoroughly in favour of the proposal and let the fact be known; but, as it was necessary to proceed with caution, the matter was referred to a conference between the Council and twenty-eight persons outside of it, fourteen of whom were clergymen (Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Cudworth, Hugh Peters, Sterry, &c.), and the rest lawyers (St. John, Glynne, Steele, &c.), or city merchants (Lord
[Footnote 1: Merc. Pol. Nov. 1-8, 1655; Council Order Book, Nov. 13; Godwin, IV. 243-251; Carlyle, III. 136, note. Prynne opposed the Readmission of the Jews in a pamphlet, in two parts, called A Short Demurrer to the Jews’ long discontinued Remitter (March 1656); and Durie published, in the form of a letter to Hartlib, A Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth (June 27, 1656). I have not seen Durie’s letter; but Mr. Crossley (Worthington’s Diary, I. 83, note) reports it as moderately favourable to the Jewish claim. The letter is dated, he says, from Cassel, Jan. 8, 1655-6.]
Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate’s powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for education should find any countenance from his Protectorate. Nor did it.
The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long before Cromwell’s accession to the supreme power—Cambridge in 1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III. 92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Pembroke (IV. 51-52). The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke’s death. His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his native University of Cambridge also within his grasp. He availed himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both, and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and privileges.—To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol. IV. p. 565), a new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine disputes, &c. The result was that the two Universities were now in better and quieter working order than they had been since the first stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War. Each reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors. In Oxford there was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the Professors. Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry More, and others now less remembered. And under the discipline and teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the century. Even Clarendon admits as much. It was a wonder to him to find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, that the “several tyrannical governments mutually succeeding each other” through so many previous years had not so affected
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Fasti Oxon. from 1654 onwards; Orme’s Life of John Owen, 175-187; Clarendon, 623; Godwin, IV. 102-104 and 595; Neal, IV. 121-123; with references to Worthington’s Diary by Crossley, and Cattermole’s Literature of the Church of England.]
While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly friendly.
Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov. 20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already, or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were alive at the midpoint of Oliver’s Protectorate, and could and did then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his implacable and exiled enemies. We divide the list into groups according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656; but the names within each group are arranged in the order of seniority:[1]—
[Footnote 1: There may be errors and omissions in the list; but, having taken some pains, I will risk it as it stands.]
ADHERENTS MORE OR LESS CORDIAL.
George Wither (aetat 68).
John Goodwin (aetat 63).
Edmund Calamy (aetat 56).
Thomas Goodwin (aetat 56).
John Lightfoot (aetat 54).
Edmund Waller (aetat 51).
John Rushworth (aetat 49).
Milton (aetat 48).
Benjamin Whichcote (aetat 46).
James Harrington (aetat 45).
Henry More (aetat 42).
John Wilkins (aetat 42).
John Owen (aetat 40).
John Wallis (aetat 40).
Ralph Cudworth (aetat 39).
Algernon Sidney (aetat 39).
Marchamont Needham (aetat 36).
Andrew Marvell (aetat 36).
Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (aetat
35).
William Petty (aetat 33).
Thomas Stanley (aetat 31).
John Aubrey (aetat 30).
Robert Boyle (aetat 29).
John Bunyan (aetat 28).
Sir William Temple (aetat 27).
John Tillotson (aetat 26).
John Howe (aetat 26).
Edward Phillips (aetat 26).
John Phillips (aetat 25).
John Dryden (aetat 25).
Henry Stubbe (aetat 25).
John Locke (aetat 24).
Samuel Pepys (aetat 24).
Edward Stillingfleet (aetat 21).
SUBJECTS BY COMPULSION.
Ex-Bishop Hall (died Sept. 8, 1656, aetat
82).
John Hales (died May 19, 1656, aetat
72).
Robert Sanderson (aetat 69).
Thomas Hobbes (aetat 68).
Robert Herrick (aetat 65).
John Hacket (aetat 64).
Izaak Walton (aetat 63).
James Shirley (aetat 62).
James Howell (aetat 62).
Gilbert Sheldon (aetat 58).
William Prynne (aetat 56).
Brian Walton (aetat 56).
Peter Heylin (aetat 56).
Jasper Mayne (aetat 52).
Thomas Fuller (aetat 52).
Edward Pocock (aetat 52).
Sir William Davenant (aetat 51).
Thomas Browne of Norwich (aetat
51).
William Dugdale (aetat 51).
Henry Hammond (aetat 51).
Richard Fanshawe (aetat 48).
Aston Cockayne (aetat 48).
Samuel Butler (aetat 44).
Jeremy Taylor (aetat 43).
John Cleveland (aetat 43).
John Pearson (aetat 43).
John Birkenhead (aetat 41).
John Denham (aetat 41).
Richard Baxter (aetat 41).
Roger L’Estrange (aetat 40).
Abraham Cowley (aetat 38).
John Evelyn (aetat 36).
Isaac Barrow (aetat 26).
Anthony Wood (aetat 25).
Robert South (aetat 23).
ACTIVE ENEMIES IN EXILE.
John Bramhall (aetat 63).
George Morley (aetat 58).
John Earle (aetat 55).
Sir Kenelm Digby (aetat 53).
Sir Edward Hyde (aetat 48).
Thomas Killigrew (aetat 45).
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (aetat
29).
The relations of Cromwell to such persons varied, of course, with their attitudes towards himself and his government.
The theologian among his adherents to whom he seems to have been drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. “Sir, you are a person I must be acquainted with,” he had said to Owen in Fairfax’s garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April 1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;[1] and so, from being merely minister of Coggeshall in Essex, Owen had become Cromwell’s friend and chaplain in Ireland, and had still, through his subsequent promotions, ending with the Deanery of Christ Church and the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford, been much about Cromwell and much trusted by him. Perhaps the only difference now between them was that Owen’s theory of Toleration was less broad than Cromwell’s. Next to Owen among the divines of the Commonwealth, the Protector seems to have retained his liking for Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and for such other fervid or Evangelical Independents as Caryl, Sterry, Hugh Peters, and Nicholas Lockyer, with a gradual tendency to John Howe, the youngest of his chaplains. For the veteran free-lance and Arminian John Goodwin, a keen critic now of Cromwell’s Commission of Triers and of other parts of his Church-policy, his liking must have been less; but Goodwin’s merits were fairly appreciated, and he had at least perfect liberty to conduct his congregation as he pleased and to publish his pamphlets. So, on the other hand, eminent Presbyterian divines like Calamy, accommodated amply in Cromwell’s Established Church, had all freedom and respect.—As to his dealings with non-clerical men of letters friendly to his government, we know a good deal already. Milton, of whose relations to the Protectorate we shall have to speak more at large, was his Latin Secretary; Needham was his journalist; Marvell was in his private employment and was looking for something more public. Still younger men were growing up, in the Universities or just out of them, regarding the Protectorate as now the settled order of things, in which they must pass their future lives. Cudworth, recently promoted from the mastership of Clare College, Cambridge, to that of Milton’s old College of Christ’s, had been asked by the Protector to recommend to him any very promising young Cambridge men he might discover;[2] and, doubtless, there had been a similar request to Owen of Oxford. Dryden, still at Cambridge, though now twenty-five years of age, and already, by his father’s death, a small Northamptonshire squire of L40 a year, was looking forward, we shall find, as his family connexions with the Parliamentarians and the Commonwealth made natural, to a life in London under the great Protector’s shadow.
[Footnote 1: Orme’s Life of Owen (1820), p. 113.]
[Footnote 2: Life of Cudworth, as cited by Godwin, IV. 596.]
All that could be expected by divines and scholars ranking in our second category, i.e. as subjects of the Protectorate by mere compulsion, and known to be strongly disaffected to it, was protection and safety on condition of remaining quiet. This they did receive. For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of Nov. 24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics. That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been in terrorem at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter. The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the old Anglicans. That case was exceptional. Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather than suffering anything more of the kind. Peter Heylin was in similar circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful. Jeremy Taylor alternated between the Earl of Carbery’s seat, called “the Golden Grove,” in Caernarvonshire, near which he taught a school, and the society of his friend John Evelyn, in London or at Sayes Court in Surrey,—tending on the whole to London, where he resumed preaching, and, after a brief arrest and some little questioning, was left unmolested. Hammond was mainly at Sir John Packington’s in Worcestershire; Sanderson and Fuller were actually in parochial livings, the one in Lincolnshire, the other in Essex; and Pocock was in a Professorship. Sorely vexed as such men were, and poorer in the world’s goods than they had been, this was the time of the greatest literary productiveness of some of them. Old Bishop Hall had not ceased to write, but was to leave trifles of his last days to be published after the Restoration as “Shakings of the Olive Tree”; and works, or tracts and sermons, by Sanderson, Heylin, Hammond, Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor, some of them of a highly Episcopal tenor, were among the publications of the Protectorate. Fuller’s Church History of Britain, one of the best and most lightsome books in our language, was published in 1655-6. Brian Walton’s great Polyglott had not yet been carried farther than the third volume; but the Protector had continued to that scholar the material furtherance in his arduous work which had been yielded first by the Rump Government, apparently on some solicitation by Milton (Vol. IV. pp. 446, 447); and the work,
[Footnote 1: Details in this paragraph are from various sources: e.g. Wood’s; ’Ath. and Fasti and Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy under the several names, Cattermole’s Literature of the Church of England, Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual by Bohn, and the Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets. See also, for Jeremy Taylor, Evelyn’s Diary and Correspondence, about date 1855-6. Evelyn was greatly concerned about Cromwell’s ordinance for suppressing preaching and schoolmastering by the Anglican clergy, and about its probable results for Taylor in particular. See one of his letters to Taylor (pp. 593-4, ed. 1870).]
The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed, comparatively small. This arose from the fact that some who had been in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell’s “subjects by compulsion.” Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience, may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though he had never gone into exile, but had remained in England, taking the risks.—HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. III. 1207-1212, and 972.]
[Footnote 2: Wood’s Ath. III. 805-806. In Davenant’s works (pp. 341-359 of folio edition of 1673) will be found, by those who are curious, a copy of "The First Day’s Entertainment at Rutland House by Declamations and Musick: after the manner of the Ancients." It strikes one as very proper and very heavy, but it may have been a godsend to the Londoners after their long deprivation of theatrical entertainments. The music was partly by Henry Lawes.]
[Footnote 3: Cromwelliana, 154; Wood’s Fasti, I. 499; Godwin, IV. 240-241. There is a MS. copy of Cleveland’s letter among the Thomason large quartos. It is dated “Oct. 1657;” but that, I imagine, is an error.]
“Ah! that my author had been tied,
like me,
To such a place and such a company,
Instead of several countries, several
men,
And business which the Muses
hate!"[1]
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Fasti, II. 209-213; Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, with Cunningham’s Notes (1854), I. 7-12. Cowley did receive the M.D. degree at Oxford, Dec. 2, 1657, and did remain in England through the rest of Cromwell’s Protectorate; and, though the Royalists welcomed him back after Cromwell’s death, his compliance was to be remembered against him.]
As the Muses were returning to England in full number,
and ceasing to be so Stuartist as they had been, it
was natural that there should be express celebrations
of the Protectorate in their name. There had
been dedications of books to Cromwell, and applauses
of him in prose and verse, from the time of his first
great successes as a Parliamentary General; and such
things had been increasing since, till they defied
enumeration. In the Protectorate they swarmed.
Matchless still among the tributes in verse was Milton’s
single Sonnet of May 1652, “Cromwell, our
Page 76
chief of men,” and Milton had written no
more to or about Cromwell in the metrical form since
the Protectorate had begun, but had contented himself
with adding to his former prose tributes in various
pamphlets that most splendid and subtle one of all
which flames through several pages of his Defensio
Secunda. It is Milton now, almost alone, that
we remember as Cromwell’s laureate; but among
the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant.
Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical
fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility,
had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from
some kind of military superintendentship he held in
the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship
at last, but that is surely an exaggeration), two
Oliverian poems, one called The Protector:
A Poem briefly illustrating the Supereminency of that
Dignity, the other A Rapture occasioned by
the late miraculous Deliverance of his Highness the
Lord Protector from a desperate danger.[1] In
stronger and more compact style, though still rather
rough, Andrew Marvell, in the same year, had added
to his former praises of Cromwell a poem of 400 lines,
published in a broad-sheet, with the title The
First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness
the Lord Protector. It began:—
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. III. 762-772.]
“Like the vain curlings of the watery
maze
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight
does raise,
So man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years,
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does
close.
Cromwell alone with greater vigour runs,
Sun-like, the stages of succeeding suns;
And still the day which he doth next restore
Is the just wonder of the day before.
Cromwell alone doth with new lustre spring,
And shines the jewel of the yearly ring;
’Tis he the force of scattered Time
contracts,
And in one year the work of ages acts."[1]
[Footnote 1: Marvell’s Works, edited by Dr. Grosart, I. 169-170.]
But the most far-blazoned eulogy at the time, and the smoothest to read now, was one in forty-seven stanzas, which appeared May 31, 1655, with the title A Panegyric to my Lord Protector of the present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq. The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are four of the stanzas:—
“Your drooping country, torn by
civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious state,
The seat of Empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their
doom.
“The sea’s our own; and now
all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our
fleet;
Your power extends as far as winds can
blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.
“Heaven, that hath placed this Island
to give law
To balance Europe and its states to awe,
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,—
The greatest Leader and the greatest Isle
....
“Had you some ages past this race
of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your
story;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last."[1]
[Footnote 1: Waller’s Poems: date of this from Thomason’s Catalogue.]
Waller’s verses, if nothing else, would suggest that we ought to know something more, at this point, of the state of Scotland, Ireland, and even the Colonies, under Cromwell’s Protectorate.
SCOTLAND.
After August 1654, when the Glencairn-Middleton insurrection had been suppressed (Vol. IV, p. 532), the administration of Scotland had been again for some time wholly in the hands of Monk, as the Commander-in-chief there, with assistance from the four resident English Judges and minor officials. Cromwell and his Council in London, however, had been thinking of a more regular method for the Government of Scotland; and, at length, in the end of July 1655, the following was the arrangement:
I. CIVIL ESTABLISHMENT.
COUNCIL, SITTING IN EDINBURGH.
President of Council (L2000 a year): Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill.
General Monk.
Major-General Charles Howard.
Colonel Adrian Scroope.
Colonel Cooper.
Colonel Nathaniel Whetham.
Colonel William Lockhart (soon afterwards
Sir William, and Ambassador to
France).
John Swinton, Laird of Swinton (afterwards
Sir John).
Samuel Desborough, Esq. (brother of the
Regicide).
Chief Clerk to the Council (L300 a year): Emanuel Downing.
SUPREME COMMISSIONERS OF JUSTICE (in lieu of the Old Scotch Court of Session):—This was a body of Seven Judges; four of whom were English—George Smith, Edward Moseley, William Lawrence, and Henry Goodyere (the last two in the places of two of the original four of 1652),—but three of them native Scots, accustomed to Scottish law and practice. These native Judges had been added for some time already, and there had been, and were to be, changes of the persons; but one hears most of Lockhart, Swinton, Sir James Learmont, Alexander Pearson, and Andrew Ker. At hand, and helping much, though no longer now the great man he had been in Scotland, was Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston.
STATE OFFICERS:—Most of the state-offices of the old Scottish constitution were still kept up, but were held, of course, by the new Councillors and Judges. The Keepership of the Great Seal was given to Desborough; the Signet or Privy Seal, with the fees of the old Secretaryship, to Lockhart; the Clerk Registership to Judge Smith; &c.
TRUSTEES OF FORFEITED AND SEQUESTRATED ESTATES:—Under this name, by the Ordinance of April 12, 1654 (Vol. IV. pp. 561-562), there was a body of seven persons, about half of them English, looking after the rents and revenues of those numerous Scottish nobles and lairds the punishment of whom, for past delinquency, by total or partial seizing of their estates, had been one of the necessary incidents of the Conquest (Vol. IV. pp. 559-561).
II. MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT.
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, General George Monk (head-quarters Dalkeith), with Major-General Howard, Colonels Cooper, Scroope, and Whetham, and other Colonels and inferior officers, under him. The total force of horse and foot in Scotland may have been about 7000 or 8000. It was distributed over the country in forts and garrisons, the chief being those of Edinburgh, Leith, Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee, Perth, Aberdeen, Dunnottar, Burntisland, Linlithgow, Dumbarton, Ayr, Dunstaffnage, and Inverness. Everywhere the English soldiers acted as a police, and their officers superseded, or were conjoined with, the native magistrates and sheriffs in the local courts.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of the English Council July 26, 1655, containing letter from “Oliver P.” to Monk, announcing the new establishment; Perfect Proceedings, No. 307, publishing for the Londoners, under date July 27, the names of his Highness’s new Council for Scotland; Baillie’s Letters, III. 249-250; Godwin, IV. 462-3.]
Under this government Scotland was now very tranquil and tolerably prosperous. True, almost all the old poppy-heads or thistle-heads, the native nobles and notables, were gone. Those of them who had been taken at Worcester, or had been sent out of Scotland as prisoners about the same time by Monk, were still, for the most part, in durance in England; others were in foreign exile; the few that remained in Scotland, such as Argyle, Loudoun, Lothian, the Marquis of Douglas, and his son Angus, were out of sight in their country-houses, utterly broken by private debts or fines and forfeitures, and in very low esteem. Then, among many Scots of good status throughout the community, there were complaints and grumblings on account of the taxes for the support of the English Army, or on account of loss of posts and chances by the admission of Englishmen to the same, or by the promotion of such other Scots as the English saw fit to favour, Incidents of this kind, much noted at the time, had been the ejection of some Professors from the Universities by the English Visitors in 1653, and the appointments by the same visitors of men of their own choice to University posts—e.g. Mr. Robert Leighton, minister of Newbattle, to the Principalship of Edinburgh University, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie to that of the University of Glasgow. But even Baillie, whose complaints on such grounds had been bitter in 1654, and to whom the appointment of Gillespie to the Glasgow Principal-ship had been a particular private grievance, was in better spirits before 1656. Glasgow, he then reports, was flourishing. “Through God’s mercy, our town, in its proportion, thrives above all the land. The Word of God is well loved and regarded; albeit not as it ought and we desire, yet in no town of our land better. Our people has much more trade in comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and fairness.”
[Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 236-321 (including letters to Spang, July 19, 1654, Dec. 31, 1655, and Sept. 1, 1656); Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 104-105; Chambers’s Domestic Annals of Scotland, II. 249; Carlyle, III. 342-3 (Cromwell’s Speech XVII.).]
Raging yet among the Scottish clergy, and dividing the Scottish community so far as the clergy had influence, was the controversy between the Resolutioners and the Remonstrants or Protesters (Vol. IV. pp. 201-214, 281-284, 288-289, and 361). By a law of political life, every community, at every time, must have some polarizing controversy; and this was Scotland’s through the whole period of her absorption in the English Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Protesters were the Whigs, and
[Footnote 1: Baillie, ut supra; Life of Robert Blair, 313 et seq.; Wodrow’s Introduction to his History (1721); Beattie’s Church of Scotland during the Commonwealth (1842), Chap. III.]
Though the Protesters were originally what we have called super-ultra-Presbyterians, it was not surprising that some of them had moved into Independency. There certainly were some Independents among the Scottish parish clergy at this time, especially about Aberdeen; and the Independents apart from the National Church had become numerous. But mere Independency now, or even Anabaptism, was nothing very shocking in Scotland; it was the increase of newer sectaries that alarmed the clergy. Quakerism had found its way into Scotland; so that there were now, we are told by a contemporary, “great numbers of that damnable sect of the Quakers, who, being deluded by Satan, drew away many to their profession, both men and women.” As in England, Quaker preachers went about disturbing the regular service in churches, or denouncing every form of ministry but their own to open-air congregations, and often with physical convulsions and fits of insane phrenzy. The Church-courts and the civil authorities were much exercised by the innovation, and had begun action against the sect, the rather because many of the common people, in their weariness of the strife among their own clergy, “resetted” the Quaker preachers and said they “got as much good of them as of anybody else."[1]
[Footnote 1: The quotations are from Chambers’s Dom. Annals of Scotland, II. 232-234.]
Not an importation like Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth, was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. “There is much witchery up and down our land,” wrote Baillie: “the English be but too sparing to try it, but some they execute.” Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland, consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But, indeed, very strange isms of quite another sort, and of which mere modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all the exercise of Presbyterian discipline, all the seeming distribution of the population universally into Resolutioners and Protesters, with interspersed Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other vehement Christians. Bead, from the Scottish correspondence of Needham’s Mercurius Politicus, in the number for June 26-July 3, 1656, the following account of one of the cases that had come before Judge Smith and Judge Lawrence in their Dumfriesshire circuit of the previous May:—
“Alexander Agnew, commonly called Jock of Broad Scotland,” [apparently an itinerant beggar, or Edie Ochiltree, of Dumfriesshire] was tried on this indictment.—“First, the said Alexander, being desired to go to church, answered ’Hang God: God was hanged long since; what had he to do with God? he had nothing to do with God’. Secondly, He answered he was nothing in God’s common; God gave him nothing, and he was no more obliged to God than to the Devil; and God was very greedy. Thirdly, When he was desired to seek anything in God’s name, he said he would never seek anything for God’s sake, and that it was neither God nor the Devil that gave the fruits of the land: the wives of the country gave him his meat. Fourthly, Being asked how many persons were in the Godhead, answered there was only one person in the Godhead, who made all; but, for Christ, he was not God, because he was made, and came into the world after it was made, and died as other men, being nothing but a mere man. Sixthly, He declared that he knew not whether God or the Devil had the greater power; but he thought the Devil had the greatest; and ‘When I die,’ said he, ’let God and the Devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.’ Seventhly, He denied there was a Holy Ghost, or knew there was a Spirit, and denied he was a sinner or needed mercy. Eighthly, He denied he was a sinner, and [said] that he scorned to seek God’s mercy. Ninthly, He ordinarily mocked all exercise of God’s worship and convocation in His name, in derision saying ’Pray you to your God, and I will pray to mine when I think time.’ And, when he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, ’Take a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them, and take your breakfast off them.’ To others he said, ’I will give you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.’ To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the ground by him, he said, ’If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry to God before he give it me again.’ To others he said, ’Take a bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.’ Tenthly, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he answered he had never had any profession, nor never would—he had never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but, for the second personPage 83
of the Trinity, he had been the second person of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.—And these aforesaid blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.—Which indictment being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew, called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries, their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while [till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat.”
The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.[1] Not only were Lauderdale, Eglinton, Marischal, David Leslie, and a number of the other distinguished Scottish prisoners of 1651, still detained in London, in more or less strict custody, with their wives and retainers near them; but many Scots whose proper residence was in Scotland were coming to London, on visits of some length, for their own or for public business. Among these, late in 1655, was Lockhart,—to be converted, as we know, into the Protector’s ambassador to the Court of France. The eccentric ex-Judge Scot of Scotstarvet had already been in London, petitioning for the remission or reduction of his fine of L1500 for former delinquency, and succeeding completely at last, “in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth.” The Earl of Lothian was in London, painfully prosecuting petitions for the recovery of certain lost family-properties. But the most remarkable apparition was that of the Marquis of Argyle. He came to London in September, 1655, and he seems to have remained there for a long while. What had brought him up was also a suit with the Protector and the Council for reparation of some portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. “Came to visit me.” says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court, in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, “the old Marquis of Argyle. Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. Note: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for owls.” It had been his characteristic mistake through life.[2]
[Footnote 1: In the London Public Intelligencer for April 12-19, 1658, among other advertisements of stage-coaches starting from “the George Inn, without Aldersgate,” is one of a fortnightly stage-coach for Edinburgh, the fare L4. Something of the sort may have been running already.]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of the Protectorate through 1655 and 1656; Mere. Pol. for Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Evelyn’s Diary (ed. 1870), p. 248. In the Council Order Books, under date Sept. 11, 1656, is minuted an order that, in terms of an Act of the Estates of Scotland of March 16, 1649, the Marquis of Argyle shall, from and after Nov. 10, 1657, have half the excise of wines and strong waters in Scotland, but not exceeding L3000 in any one year, until he is satisfied of a debt of L145,400 Scots due to him by Scotland on public grounds.]
Any influence which the Marquis could now have with the Protector in matters of Scottish Government must have been small; but it was understood that, such as it was, it would be on the side of the Kirk party of the Protesters. And this had become of some consequence. In and through 1656, if not earlier, it had become obvious that the inclinations of the Protector to that party had been considerably shaken. The change was attributed partly to Lord President Broghill. Almost from his first coming to Scotland, this nobleman had found it desirable to win over the Resolutioners. “The President Broghill,” says Baillie, “is reported by all to be a man exceeding wise and moderate, and by profession a Presbyterian: he has gained more on the affections of the people than all the English that ever were among us. He has been very civil to Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickson, and is very intime with Mr. James Sharp. By this means we [the Resolutioners] have an equal hearing in all we have ado with the Council. Yet their way is exceeding longsome, and all must be done first at London.” So far as Broghill’s communications with London might serve, the Resolutioners, therefore, might count on him as their friend. And by this time he had reasons to show. Had he not succeeded, where the stern Monk had failed, in inducing the Resolutioner clergy to give up public praying for King Charles and otherwise to conform; and was it not on this ground that Monk was believed still to befriend the Protesters? But perhaps it hardly needed Broghill’s representations to induce Cromwell to reconsider his Scottish policy in regard to the Kirk. That same Conservatism which had been gaining on him in the English department of his Protectorate, leading him rather to discourage extreme men while tolerating them, had begun to affect his views of Kirk parties in Scotland. The Resolutioners were numerically the larger party: if they would be reconciled, might they not be his most massive support in North Britain? It is possible that the institution of the new Scottish Council under Broghill’s Presidency may have been the result of such thoughts, and that Broghill thus only took a course indicated for him by Cromwell. At all events, various relaxations of former orders, about admission to vacant livings and the like, had already been made in favour of the Resolutioners; and, in and from 1656, it was noted that extreme men in Scotland too were not to his Highness’s
[Footnote 1: Baillie, Letters to Spang, in 1655 and 1656, as already cited, with III. 568-573 for Instructions to Sharp and Propositions of the Protesters; Life of Robert Blair, 325-329.]
No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp’s mission than the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year, a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been sooner acquainted, and saying he had “fallen in love” with Fuller’s books and was longing for his Church History. This was not the only sign of Baillie’s mellower temper by this time towards the Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters, however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie’s interest in Mr. Sharp’s mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous, Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he was to correspond with Sharp himself. “I pray God help you and guide you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars,” is the memorable ending of the first letter that Sharp in London was to receive from Baillie.[1]
[Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 234-335; with Mr. Laing’s Life of Baillie.]
There had been little of novelty in Ireland for some time after the proclamation of the Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 551). Fleetwood, with the full title of “Lord Deputy” since Sept. 1654, had conducted the Government, as well as he could, with a Council of assessors, consisting, after that date, of Miles Corbet, Robert Goodwin, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Colonel Robert Hammond. This last, so brought into the Protector’s service after long retirement, died at Dublin in July 1655. Ludlow still kept aloof, disowning the Protectorate, though remaining in Ireland with his old military commission. Left very much to themselves, Fleetwood and his Council had carried out, as far as possible, the Acts for the Settlement of the country passed or proposed by the Rump in 1652, but not pushing too severely the great business which the Rump had schemed out, of a general and gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 447-449.]
It had occurred to Cromwell, however, that more could be done in Ireland, and that his son-in-law Fleetwood was perhaps not sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently Oliverian, for the purpose. Accordingly, about the same time that Fleetwood had been raised to the Lord-Deputyship, Cromwell’s second son, Henry, had been appointed Major-General of the Irish Army. The good impression he had made in his former mission to Ireland (Vol. IV. p. 551) justified the appointment. Not till the middle of 1655, however, did he arrive in Ireland. His reception then was enthusiastic, and was followed by the sudden recall of Fleetwood to London, professedly for a visit only, but really not to return. The title of Lord-Deputy of Ireland was still to be Fleetwood’s for the full term of his original appointment; but he was to be occupied by the duties of his English Major-Generalship and his membership of Oliver’s Council at home, and the actual government of Ireland was thenceforth in the hands of Henry Cromwell. The young Governor, whose wife had accompanied him, held a kind of Court in Dublin, with Fleetwood’s Councillors about him, or others in their stead, and a number of new Judges. The diverse tempers of these advisers, among whom were some Anabaptists or Anti-Oliverians, and his own doubts as to some of the instructions that reached him from his father, made his position a very difficult one; but, though very anxious and sensitive, he managed admirably. In particular, it was observed that, in matters of religion, he had all his father’s liberality. It was “against his conscience,” he said, “to bear hard upon any merely on account of a different judgment.” He conciliated the Presbyterian clergy in a remarkable manner; the Royalists liked him; he would not quarrel with the Anabaptists; and he was as moderate as possible towards the Roman Catholics.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 449-458; Milton Papers by Nickolls, 187-138; Carlyle, III. 108-109, and 133-140 (Letters from Cromwell to his son Harry).]
One of Henry Cromwell’s difficulties would have been Ludlow, had that uncompromising Republican remained in Ireland. From that he was relieved. In January 1655 Fleetwood had been ordered by the Protector to make Ludlow give up his commission; and, as Ludlow questioned the legality of the demand, he had arranged with Fleetwood to go and settle the matter with the Protector himself. The Protector seeming to prefer that Ludlow should stay where he was, and having sent orders to that effect, Fleetwood was himself In England, and Henry Cromwell was in his place in Dublin, and still there seemed no chance of leave for Ludlow to cross the Channel. At length, without distinct leave, but trusting to a written engagement Fleetwood had given him, he ventured on the passage; and on Dec. 12, 1655, after the experience of a most stormy sea, he had that of a more stormy interview with the Protector and some of his Council at Whitehall. Cromwell rated him roundly for his past behaviour generally and for his return without leave, and demanded his parole of submission to the established Government for the future. Some kind of parole Ludlow was willing to give, declaring that he saw no immediate chance of a subversion of the Government and knew of no design for that end, but refusing to tie his hands “if Providence should offer an occasion.” With that Cromwell, who had begun to “carry himself more calmly” towards the end of the interview, was obliged to be content. He became quite civil to Ludlow, saying he “wished him as well as he did any of his Council,” and desiring him to make “choice of some place to live in where he might have good air.” Ludlow retired into Essex[1].
[Footnote 1: Ludlow’s Memoirs, 481-557; Carlyle, III. 136.]
THE COLONIES.
With the exception of a factory of the London East India Company, which had been established at Surat on the west coast of Hindostan in 1612, and a settlement on the Gambia on the western coast of Africa, dating from 1631, all the considerable Colonies of England in 1656 were American:—I. NEW ENGLAND. The four chief New England Colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, confederated since 1643, together with the outlying Plantations of Providence and Rhode-Island, &c., still belonged politically to the mother-country; and through Cromwell’s Protectorate, as before, the connexion had been signified by references of various subjects to the Home-Government, discussions of these by that Government, and orders and advices transmitted in return. In the main, however, the Colonies remained independent, each with its annually elected Governor, and the Confederacy with its annually elected Board of Commissioners besides; and, while professing high admiration of Cromwell and approval generally of his rule, they were not troubled with questions of rule seriously affecting their own interests. The war with the Dutch did for some
[Footnote 1: Palfrey’s Hist. of New England, II. 304-415, and especially 388-390.]
[Footnote 2: Various minutes in Council Order Books from 1649 onwards; Carlyle, III, Appendix, 442-443.]
[Footnote 3: Mills’s Colonial Constitutions (1856), 124-133, Introd. XXXIV. et seq.; Carlyle, III. 124-133; Palfrey’s New England, II. 390-393.]
OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OP HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT: SEPT. 17, 1656-JUNE 26, 1657.
SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE CALLED:
VANE’S HEALING
QUESTION AND ANOTHER ANTI-OLIVERIAN PAMPHLET:
PRECAUTIONS AND
ARRESTS: MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT: ITS
COMPOSITION: SUMMARY OF
CROMWELL’S OPENING SPEECH: EXCLUSION OF
NINETY-THREE ANTI-OLIVERIAN
MEMBERS: DECIDEDLY OLIVERIAN TEMPER OF THE REST:
QUESTION OF THE
EXCLUDED MEMBERS: THEIR PROTEST: SUMMARY
OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE
PARLIAMENT FOR FIVE MONTHS (SEPT. 1656-FEB. 1656-7):
ADMINISTRATION
OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL DURING THOSE MONTHS:
APPROACHES TO
DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN CROMWELL AND THE PARLIAMENT IN
THE CASE OF JAMES
NAYLER AND ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUATION OF THE
MILITIA BY
MAJOR-GENERALS: NO RUPTURE.—THE SEXBY-SINDERCOMBE
PLOT.—SIR
CHRISTOPHER PACK’S MOTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION
(FEB. 23, 1656-7):
ITS ISSUE IN THE PETITION AND ADVICE AND OFFER
OF THE CROWN TO
CROMWELL: DIVISION OF PUBLIC OPINION ON THE KINGSHIP
QUESTION:
OPPOSITION AMONG THE ARMY OFFICERS: CROMWELL’S
NEUTRAL ATTITUDE: HIS
RECEPTION OF THE OFFER: HIS LONG HESITATIONS
AND SEVERAL SPEECHES
OVER THE AFFAIR: HIS FINAL REFUSAL (MAY 8, 1657):
LUDLOW’S STORY OF
THE CAUSE.—HARRISON AND THE FIFTH-MONARCHY
MEN: VENNER’S OUTBREAK AT
MILE-END-GREEN.—PROPOSED NEW CONSTITUTION
OF THE PETITION AND
ADVICE RETAINED IN THE FORM OF A CONTINUED PROTECTORATE:
SUPPLEMENTS TO THE PETITION AND ADVICE:
BILLS ASSENTED TO BY
THE PROTECTOR, JUNE 9: VOTES FOR THE SPANISH
WAR,—TREATY OFFENSIVE
AND DEFENSIVE WITH FRANCE AGAINST SPAIN: DISPATCH
OF ENGLISH
AUXILIARY ARMY, UNDER REYNOLDS, FOR SERVICE IN FLANDERS:
BLAKE’S
ACTION IN SANTA CRUZ BAY.—"KILLING—NO
MURDER": ADDITIONAL
AND EXPLANATORY PETITION AND ADVICE: ABSTRACT
OF THE ARTICLES OP THE
NEW CONSTITUTION AS ARRANGED BY THE TWO DOCUMENTS:
CROMWELL’S
COMPLETED ASSENT TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND HIS
ASSENT TO OTHER
BILLS, JUNE 26, 1657: INAUGURATION OF THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE THAT
DAY: CLOSE OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SECOND
PARLIAMENT.
Willing to relieve his government, if possible, from the character of “arbitrariness” it had so long borne, Cromwell had at last resolved on calling another Parliament. The matter had been secretly deliberated in Council in May and June 1656, and the writs were out on July 10. There had ensued, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, a great bustle of elections, the Major-Generals in England and the Councils in Scotland and Ireland exerting themselves to secure the return of Oliverians, and the Protector and his Council by no means easy as to the result. Two recent Republican pamphlets had caused agitation. One, which had been called forth by a Proclamation of a General East a month or two before, was by Sir Henry Vane, and was entitled A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved. It was temperate enough, approving of the government in some respects, and even suggesting the continuance of some kind of sovereignty in a single person, but containing censures of the “great interruption” of popular liberties, and appeals to the people to do their part. The other and later pamphlet (Aug. 1), directly intended to bear on the Elections, was called England’s Remembrancer, and was virtually a call on all to use their votes so as to return a Parliament that should unseat Oliver. The author of this second pamphlet evaded detection; but Vane was brought to task for his. He was summoned to London from his seat of Belleau in Lincolnshire, July 29; by an order of Aug. 21 he was required to give security in L5000 that he would do nothing “to prejudice the present government”; and, on his refusal, there issued a warrant, signed by Henry Lawrence, as President of the Council, for his committal to King Charles’s old prison, Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. About the same time, precautions were taken with Bradshaw, Harrison, Ludlow, Lawson, Rich, Okey, Alured, and others. Bradshaw was suspended for a week or two from his Chief-Justiceship of Chester; Harrison was sent to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; Rich to Windsor; security in L5000 was exacted from Ludlow, or rather arranged for him by Cromwell; and the others were variously under guard. Nor did leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament, a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still there. All this new “arbitrariness” for the moment was for the purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books through July, Aug. and Sept. 1656; Godwin, IV. 261-277; Ludlow, 568-573; Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets.]
It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon from Dr. Owen. Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales were the Protector’s eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon, Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry, Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne). Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,—this last long an absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were Englishmen: e.g. President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk’s brother-in-law) for Ross, Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews, &c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart, Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay. Ireland had returned, among her thirty (who were nearly all Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles Coote, and several Colonels.[1]—Not a few of the chief members had been returned by more than one constituency: e.g. Lord Broghill, for Cork as well as for Edinburgh. Several of those returned cannot have been expected to give attendance, at least at first. Thus, Admirals Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and Portugal. But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge. Ambassador Lockhart also had come over, or was coming.
[Footnote 1: List of the members returned for the Second Parliament of the Protectorate in Part. Hist. III. 1479-1484.]
There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen’s opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to business.
One was the Lord Protector’s opening speech in the Painted Chamber, now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series. It was very long, of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter. The pervading topic was the war with Spain. This was justified, with approving references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the subject, entitled Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c. (Milton’s?),
[Footnote 1: Speech V.; Carlyle, III. 159-196.]
Then, however, there was the second intervention. It was in the lobby of the House. Some persons, acting for the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, stood there, with tickets certifying that such and such members had been duly returned and also “approved by his Highness’s Council"; the doors of the House were guarded by soldiers; and none but those for whom the tickets had been made out were allowed to enter. About ninety-three found themselves thus excluded; among whom, were Hasilrig, Scott, Irby, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Maynard, four of the six members for the city of London, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. The residue, who had received tickets, proceeded to constitute the House, and unanimously elected Sir Thomas Widdrington, Sergeant at Law and one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, for their Speaker. Almost the only other business that day was to thank Dr. Owen for his sermon, and order it to be printed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept. 17, 1656; and Parl. Hist. III. 1484-1487.]
The next day there was read in the House a letter to the Speaker, signed by a number of the excluded, informing him of the fact and desiring to be admitted. Through that and the two following sittings, an inquiry into the circumstances of the exclusion formed part of the proceedings. The Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, being required to attend, did at last present himself, and explained that he had but obeyed orders. He had received a letter from Mr. Jessop, the Clerk of the Council, ordering him to deliver tickets only to such of the persons elected as should be certified to him as approved by the Council; and he had acted accordingly. With some reluctance, he produced the letter; and the House then resolved to ask the Council for their reasons for excluding so many members. These were given, on the 20th, by Fiennes for the Council. They were to the effect that Article XXI. of the constituting Instrument of the Protectorate, called The Government of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 542-544), required the Clerk of the Commonwealth
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept, 18-22, 1656; Whitlocke, IV. 274-280 (where the Remonstrance of the Excluded is given in full); Ludlow, 579-580.]
So it proved. Some of the excluded having been admitted after all, and new elections having been made in cases where members had been returned by two or more constituencies, the House went on for the first five months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7) with a pretty steady working attendance of about 220 at the maximum—which implies that, besides the excluded, there must have been a large number of absentees or very lax attenders. During these five months a large amount of miscellaneous business was done, with occasional divisions, but no vital disagreement within the House, or between it and the Protector. There was an Act for renouncing and disavowing Charles II, over again, and an Act for the safety of the Lord Protector’s person and government, both made law, by Cromwell’s assent, Oct. 27. There was a vote of approbation of the war with Spain, with votes of means for carrying it on. There were Bills, more formal than before, for adjusting and completing the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland with the Commonwealth. There were Committees of all sorts for maturing these and other Bills. Among the grand Committees was one for Religion. There were votes of reward to various persons for past services. The better observance of the Lord’s Day was one of the subjects of discussion. Amid the minor or more private business
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals over period and for dates named; Whitlocke, IV. 280-286.]
About a fortnight after the Parliament had met (Oct. 2), there had come splendid news from Blake and Montague. A Spanish fleet from the West Indies, with the ex-Viceroy of Peru and his family on board, and a vast treasure of silver, had been attacked in Cadiz bay by six English frigates under the command of Captain Stayner. Two of the ships had been taken, two burnt and sunk (the ex-Viceroy, his wife, and eldest daughter, perishing most tragically in the flames), and there had been a great capture of silver. The rejoicing in London was great, and it was renewed a month afterwards by the actual arrival of the silver from Portsmouth, a long train of waggon-loads through the open streets, on its way to the Mint, Admiral Montague himself had come with it. He was in the House Nov. 4, welcomed with thanks and applauses to his place for a while among the legislators.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and Godwin, IV, 300-303.]
Legislative work being back in the hands of a Parliament, the Protector and his Council had confined themselves meanwhile to matters of administration, war, and diplomacy. Vane had been released from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight by order of Council, Dec. 11, and permitted to return to Lincolnshire; and there had been other relaxations of the severities attending the opening of the Parliament. There had been an order of Council (Oct. 2) for the release of imprisoned Quakers
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates given, and of others (e.g. Nov. 4 and Dec. 2, 1656, and Jan. 12 and Feb. 12, 1656-7); Merc. Pol. No. 340 (Dec. 11-18, 1656); Life of Robert Blair, 329-331; Baillie, III. 328-341.]
One matter In which there had been an approach to disagreement between the Parliament and the Protector was the famous Case of James Nayler;—Quakerism and its extravagancies were irritating the sober part of the nation unspeakably, and this maddest of all the Quakers, on account of the outrageous “blasphemies” of his recent Song-of-Simon procession through the west of England—repeated at Bristol after his release from Exeter jail—had been selected by Parliament for an example. On the 31st of October, 1856, a large committee was appointed on his case; and on the 5th of December, Nayler and others having been brought prisoners to London meanwhile, the report of the Committee was made, and there began a debate on the case, which was protracted through ten sittings, Nayler himself brought once or twice to the bar. It was easily resolved that he had been “guilty of horrid blasphemy” and was a “grand impostor and great seducer of the people”: the difficult question was as to his punishment. On the 16th of December it was carried but by ninety-six votes to eighty-two that it should not be death, and, after some faint farther argument on the side of mercy, this was the sentence: “That James Nayler be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, in the New Palace, Westminster, during the space of two hours, on Thursday next, and shall be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, there likewise to be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, for the space of two hours, between the hours of eleven and one on Saturday next—in each of the said places wearing a paper containing an inscription of his crimes: and that at the Old Exchange his tongue shall be bored through with a hot iron; and that he be there also stigmatized in the forehead with the letter B: And that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, and conveyed into and through the said city on a horse bare-ridged, with his face backwards, and there also publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither: And that from thence
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Carlyle III, 213-215; Sewel’s History of the People called Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 179-207.]
Another matter in which a disagreement might have been feared between Cromwell and his Parliament was that of The Major-Generalships. This “invention” of Cromwell’s for the police of England and Wales generally, and specially for the collection of the Decimation or Militia Tax from the Royalists, had been so successful that he had congratulated himself on It in his opening speech to the Parliament. He, doubtless, desired that Parliament should adopt and continue it. On the 7th of January, 1656-7, accordingly, there was read for the first time “a Bill for the continuing and assessing of a Tax for the paying and maintaining of the Militia forces in England and Wales,” i.e. for prolonging Cromwell’s Decimation Tax of 1655, and virtually the whole machinery of the Major-Generalships. That there would be serious opposition in the House had been foreseen since Dec. 25, when there had been two divisions on the question of leave to bring in the Bill, and leave had been obtained only by eighty-eight votes to sixty-three. Among the opponents were Whitlocke and the other lawyers, all those indeed who wanted to terminate the time of “arbitrariness,” and objected to a tax now on old political delinquents as contrary to the Parliamentary Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2. On the other hand, the Bill was strongly supported by Lambert. Fiennes, Lisle, Pickering, Sydenham, other members of Council, and the Major-Generals themselves. It was, in fact, a Government Bill, Nevertheless, after a protracted debate of six days, the second reading of the Bill was negatived Jan. 29 by 121 to 78, and the Bill absolutely rejected by 124 to 88. Cromwell himself had helped to bring about this result. Much as he liked his “invention,” he had perceived, in the course of the debate, that it must be given up; and he had given hints to that effect. The House, in short, had understood that they were left to their own free will. And so the Major-Generalships disappeared, the police of the country reverted to the ordinary magistracy, and Cromwell was to trust to Parliament for necessary supplies in more regular ways.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 327-331.]
What drew the Parliament and the Protector more closely together about this time was the explosion of a new plot against the Protector’s life. At the centre of the plot was that “wretched creature, an apostate from religion and all honesty,” of whom Cromwell had spoken in his opening speech as going between Charles II. and the King of Spain, and negotiating for a Spanish invasion of England. In other words, he was Edward Sexby, once a stout trooper and agitator in the Parliamentarian army (Vol. III. p. 534), afterwards Captain and even Colonel in the same, but since then one of the fiercest Anabaptist malcontents. He had been in the Wildman plot of Feb. 1654-5, but had then escaped abroad; and since then his occupation had been as described by Cromwell,—now
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 18; Carlyle, III. 204-211; Godwin, IV. 331-333; Merc. Pol. No. 349 (Feb. 12-19, 1656-7); Whitlocke, IV. 286; Parl. Hist. III. 1490.]
Three days after the great dinner in Whitehall, i.e. on Monday, Feb. 23, 1656-7, there was an incident in the House which turned all the future proceedings of this Second Parliament of the Protectorate into a new channel. It is thus entered in the Journals:—
" ... Sir Christopher Pack [Ex-Mayor of London, knighted by Cromwell, Sept. 25, 1655, and now one of the members for the City] presented a Paper to the House, declaring it was somewhat come to his hand tending to the Settlement of the Nation and of Liberty and Property, and prayed it might be received and read; and, it being much controverted whether the same should be read without farther opening [preliminary explanation] thereof, the Question being propounded That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be further opened by him before it is read, and the Question being put That this Question be now put, it passed in the Negative. The Question being propounded That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read, and the Question being put That that Question be now put, the House was divided. The Noes went forth:—Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Robinson, Tellers for the Noes—with the Noes 54; Sir Charles Wolseley, Colonel Fitzjames, Tellers for the Yeas—with the Yeas 144. So it passed in the Affirmative. And, the main Question being put, it was Resolved That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read. The said Paper was read accordingly, and was entitled ’The Humble Address and Remonstrance of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, now assembled in the Parliament of this Commonwealth.’"[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.]
The debate on the Paper was protracted to the evening “a candle” having been ordered in for the purpose; and it was then adjourned to the next day. In fact, for the next four months, or through the whole remainder of the session, the House was to continue the debate, or questions arising out of it, and to do little else. For, on the 24th of February, it was resolved by a majority of 100 to 44 (Lambert and Strickland tellers for the Minority) that the paper should be taken up and discussed in its successive parts, “beginning at the first Article after the Preamble;” and, though an attempt was made next day to throw the subject into Grand Committee, that was defeated by 118 to 63. In evidence of the momentousness of the occasion, a whole Parliamentary day was set apart for “seeking the Lord” upon it, with prayers and sermons by Dr. Owen and others; and, when the House met again after that ceremonial (Feb. 28), it was resolved that no vote passed on any part of the Paper should be binding till all should be completed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.]
Sir Christopher Pack’s paper of Feb. 23, 1656-7, entitled The Humble Address and Remonstrance, &c., was nothing less than a proposed address by Parliament to the Protector, asking him to concur with the Parliament in a total recast of the existing Constitution. It had been privately considered and prepared by several persons, and Whitlocke had been requested to introduce it, “Not liking—several things in it,” he had declined to do so; but, Sir Christopher having volunteered, Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne and others, were to back him. Indeed, all the Oliverians were to back him. Or, rather, there was to grow out of the business, according as the Oliverians were more hearty or less hearty in their cooperation, a new distinction of that body into Thorough Oliverians and Distressed Oliverians or Contrariants. Why this should have been the case will appear if we quote the First Article of the proposed Address after the Preamble. It ran thus: “That your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of KING of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and exercise thereof, to hold and enjoy the same, with the rights and privileges and prerogatives justly, legally, and rightfully, belonging thereunto: That your Highness will be pleased, during your life-time, to appoint and declare the person who shall, immediately after your death, succeed you in the Government of these Nations.” The rest of the Address was to correspond. Thus Article II. proposed a return to the system of two Houses of Parliament, and generally the tenor was towards royal institutions. On the other hand, the regality proposed was to be strictly constitutional. There was to be an end to all arbitrary power. There were to be free and full Parliaments once in three years at farthest; there was to be no violent interference in future with the process of Parliament, no exclusion of any persons that had been duly returned by the constituencies; and his Highness and Council were not to make ordinances by their own authority, but all laws, and changes or abrogations of laws, were to be by Act of Parliament. Oliver was to be King, if he chose, and a King with very large powers; but he was to keep within Statute.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 286 and 289; Commons Journals of March 2, 3, and 24, 1656-7, and March 25, 1657 (whence I have recovered the original wording of Article I. of the Address).]
On March 2 and 3 the First Article of the Address was debated, with the result that it was agreed to postpone any vote on the first and most important part of the Article, offering Oliver the Kingship, but with the passing of the second part, offering him, whether it should be as King or not, the power of nominating his successor. A motion for postponing the vote on this part also was lost by 120 to 63. Then, on the 5th, Article II., proposing Parliaments of
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and between March 5 and March 25.]
Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the introduction of Sir Christopher Pack’s paper and the conversion of the same into the Petition and Advice, with the distinct offer of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate. Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals, and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It had been
How far Cromwell had been aware beforehand of such a project as that of Sir Christopher Pack’s paper may be a question. That he had let it be known for some time that he was not disinclined to a revision and enlargement of the constitution of the original Protectorate may be fairly assumed; but that he had concocted Pack’s project and arranged for bringing it on (which is Ludlow’s representation, and, of course, that of all the Histories) is very unlikely. The project, as in Pack’s paper, and as agreed upon by Whitlocke, Glynne, and other lawyers and Parliament men, was by no means, in all its parts, such a project as Cromwell himself would have originated. To the Kingship he may have had no objection, and we have his own word afterwards that he favoured the idea of a Second House of Parliament; but there were accompanying provisions not so satisfactory. What he had hitherto valued in his Protectorate was the place and scope given to his own supreme personality, his power to judge what was best and to carry it through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public interests, or for his own comfort, he could put himself in new shackles for the mere name of King. What, for example, of the proposed restitution of the ninety-and-odd excluded members to the present Parliament? How could he get on after that? In short, there was so much in Pack’s paper suggestive of new and difficult questions as to the futurity of Cromwell, his real influence in affairs, if he exchanged the Protectorship for Kingship, that the paper, or the exact project it embodied, cannot have been of Cromwell’s devising. There are subsequent events in proof of the fact.
On the 27th of February, the fourth day after the introduction of Pack’s paper, and the very day of the Fast appointed by the House prior to consideration of it in detail, Cromwell had been waited on by a hundred officers, headed by the alarmed Major-Generals, imploring him not to allow the thing to go farther. His reply was that, though he then specifically heard of the whole project for the first time, he could by no means share their instantaneous alarm. Kingship was nothing in itself, at best “a mere feather in a man’s hat”; but it need be no bugbear, and at least ought to be no new thing to them. Had they not offered it to him at the institution of the Protectorate, though the title of Protector had been then preferred? Under that title he had been often a mere drudge of the Army, constrained to things not to his own liking. For the rest, were there not reasons for amending, in other respects, the constitution of the Protectorate? Had it not broken down in several matters, and were there not deficiencies in it? If there had been
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 349-353; Carlyle, III. 217.]
It was on Tuesday, March 31, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, that Speaker Widdrington, attended by the whole House, and by all the high State-officers, formally presented to Cromwell, after a long speech, the Petition and Advice, engrossed on vellum. The understanding, by vote of the House, was that his Highness must accept the whole, and that otherwise no part would be binding. Cromwell’s answer, in language very calm and somewhat sad (Speech VII.), was one of thanks, with a request for time to consider. On the 3rd of April, a Committee of the House, appointed by his request, waited on him for farther answer. It was still one of thanks: e.g. “I should be very brutish did I not acknowledge the exceeding high honour and respect you have had for me in this Paper”; but it was in effect a refusal, on the ground that, being shut up to accept all or none, he could not see his way to accept (Speech VIII.). Notwithstanding this answer, which could hardly be construed as final, the House next day resolved, after two divisions, to adhere to their Petition and Advice, and to make new application to the Protector. On the previous question the division was seventy-seven to sixty-five, Major-Generals Howard and Jephson telling for the majority, and Major-General Whalley and Colonel Talbot for the minority; on the main question there was a majority of seventy-eight, with Admiral Montague and Sir John Hobart for tellers, against sixty-five, told by General Desborough and Colonel Hewson. A Committee having then prepared a brief paper representing to his Highness the serious obligation he was under in such a matter, there was a second Conference of the whole House with his Highness (April 8).
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 218-228 (with Cromwell’s Speeches VII., VIII., and IX.); Commons Journals of dates.]
It seemed as if it would never be reached. The Conferences of the Committee with Cromwell between April 11 to May 8, their reasonings with him to induce him to accept the Kingship, his reasonings in reply in the four speeches now numbered X.-XIII. of the Cromwell series, his doubts, delays, avoidances of several meetings, and constant adjournments of his final answer, make a story of great interest in the study of Cromwell’s character, not without remarkable flashes of light on past transactions, and on Cromwell’s theory of his Protectorship and of Government in general. Speech XIII., in particular, which is by far the longest, and which was addressed to the Committee on April 21, is full of instruction. Having in his previous speeches dealt chiefly with the subject of the Kingship, and stated such various objections to the kingly title as the bad associations with it, the blasting as if for ever which it had received from God’s Providence in England, and the antipathy to it of many good men, he here took up the rest of the Petition and Advice. Approving, on the whole, of the spirit and contents of the document, and especially of the apparent rejection in it of that notion of perpetually-sitting Single-House Parliaments which he considered the most fatal fallacy in politics, and persistence in which by the Rump had left him no option but to dissolve that body forcibly and assume the Dictatorship, he yet found serious defects in some of the Articles, and want of precision on this point and that. His criticisms of this kind were masterly examples of his breadth of thought, his foresight, and his practical sagacity, and made an immediate impression. For, at this stage of the proceedings, the belief being that he would ultimately accept the Kingship, the House, whose sittings had been little more than nominal during the great Whitehall Conferences, applied itself vigorously, by deliberations in Committee and exchanges of papers with the Protector,
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 280-301 (with Speeches X.—XIV.); Commons Journals of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 289-290.]
The story in Ludlow is that to the last moment Cromwell had meant to accept, and that his sudden and unexpected refusal was occasioned by a bold stroke of the Army-men. Having invited himself to dine at Desborough’s, says Ludlow, he had taken Fleetwood with him, and had begun “to droll with them about monarchy,” and ask them why sensible men like them should make so much of the affair, and refuse to please the children by permitting them to have “their rattle.” Fleetwood and Desborough still remaining grave, he had called them “a couple of scrupulous fellows,” and left them. Next day (May 6) he had sent a message to the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber next morning; and, casually encountering Desborough again, he had told Desborough what he intended. That same day Desborough had told Pride, whereupon that resolute colonel had surprised Desborongh by saying he would prevent it still. Going to Dr. Owen on the instant, Pride had made him draft an Officers’ Petition to the House. It was to the effect that the petitioners, having “hazarded their lives against monarchy,” and being “still ready to do so,” observed with pain the “great endeavours to bring the nation again under their old servitude,” and begged the House not to allow a title to be pressed upon their General which would be destructive to himself and the Commonwealth.
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 586-591; Commons Journals of dates. There had been public pamphlets against the Kingship: e.g. one by Samuel Chidley, addressed to the Parliament, and called “Reasons against choosing the Protector to be King.”]
While the great question of the Kingship had been in progress there had been a detection of a conspiracy of the Fifth-Monarchy Men.
Ever since the abortive ending of the Barebones Parliament these enthusiasts had been recognisable as a class of enemies of the Protectorate distinct from the ordinary and cooler Republicans. While Vane and Bradshaw might represent the Republicans or Commonwealth’s men generally, the head of the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans was Harrison. The Harrisonian Republic, the impassioned dream of this really great-hearted soldier, was the coming Reign of Christ on Earth, and the trampling down, in anticipation of that reign, of all dignities, institutions, ministries, and magistracies, that might be inconsistent with it. In the Barebones Parliament, where the Fifth-Monarchy Men had been numerous, and where Harrison had led them, they had gone far, as we know, in conjunction with the Anabaptists, in a practical attempt to convert Cromwell’s interim Dictatorship, with Cromwell’s assent or acquiescence, into a beginning of the great new era. They had voted down Tithes, Church-Establishments, and all
That Harrison had ever practically implicated himself in any attempt to upset the Protectorate by force hardly appears from the evidence. He was an experienced soldier, and, with all his fervid notions of a Fifth Monarchy, too massive a man to stir without calculation. All that can be said is that he was an avowed enemy of Cromwell’s rule, that he was looked up to by all the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans, and that he held himself free to act should there be fit opportunity. But there were Harrisonians of a lower grade than Harrison. Especially in London, since the winter of 1655, there had been a kind of society of Fifth-Monarchy Men, holding small meetings in five places, only one man in each meeting knowing who belonged to the others, but the five connecting links forming a central Committee for management and propagandism. It must have been from this Committee, I suppose, that there emanated, in Sept. 1656, a pamphlet called “The Banner of Truth displayed, or a Testimony for Christ and against Antichrist: being the substance of several consultations holden and kept by a certain number of Christians who are waiting for the visible appearance of Christ’s Kingdom in and over the World, and residing in and about the City of London.” Probably as yet these humble Fifth-Monarchy Men had not gone beyond private aspirations. At all events, Thurloe, though aware of their existence, had not thought them worth notice. But Sindercombe’s Plot of Feb. 1656-7, and the subsequent proposal of the Kingship for Cromwell, had excited them prodigiously,
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 372-375; Carlyle, III. 228-229; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Commons Journals, April 11, 1657; Thurloe, I. 289.]
Cromwell had used the Venner outbreak to point a moral in one or two of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto Who shall rouse him up?; and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one called A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the Beast and the False Prophet. It was a fierce diatribe against Cromwell, with a scheme for the government of the Commonwealth on Fifth-Monarchy principles after his overthrow. The supreme authority was to be the Lord Jesus Christ; but there was to be an annually elected Sanhedrim or Supreme Council to represent Him, and to administer Biblical Law, and no other, with inferior elected judges for towns and counties. The Bible being the sole Law, a formal Legislature would be unnecessary; and all other magistracy besides the Sanhedrim and the Judgeships was to be abolished, and also, of course, all State ministry of Religion. Now, to Cromwell, who had read the Tract, all this furnished excellent illustration of the kind he wanted. Always frankly admitting that it might be said he had “griped at the government of the nations without a legal assent,” he had never ceased to declare that this had been a sheer necessity for the nations themselves.
[Footnote 1: I have taken the account of the Standard Set Up from Godwin, IV. 375-378, not having seen it myself. The passages in Cromwell’s speeches referring to it will be found in Carlyle, III, 260, and 276-277.]
After the Protector’s refusal of the Kingship the House proceeded to adjust the new constitution they had prepared in the Petition and Advice to that unavoidable fact. Not much was necessary. It was only necessary to re-shape the key-stone, by removing the word “King” from the first clause of the First Article and retaining the word “Protector”: all the rest would hold good. Accordingly, after some days of debate, it was finally agreed, May 22, that the former first clause of the First Article should be cancelled, and this substituted: “That your Highness will be pleased, by and under the name and style of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, to hold and exercise the office of Chief Magistrate of these Nations, and to govern according to this Petition and Advice in all things therein contained, and in all other things according to the Laws of these Nations, and not otherwise.” The remaining clause of the First Article, empowering Cromwell to appoint his immediate successor, was left untouched, as well as all the subsequent Articles. To the whole of the Petition and Advice, so arranged, Cromwell solemnly gave his assent in the Painted Chamber, May 25, addressing the House in a short speech, in which he expressed his thorough confidence in them in respect to those explanations or modifications of the document which they had promised in order to meet the objections he had taken the liberty of making. He did not doubt there would be “a perfecting of those things."[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. The speech of Cromwell in assenting to the Petition and Advice, May 25, 1657, had been accidentally omitted in the earlier editions of Carlyle’s Cromwell; but it was given in the Appendix to the edition of 1657. It may stand as Speech XIV*. in the numbering.]
The “perfecting of those things” occupied a good deal of time. What was necessary was to cast the resolutions already come to in supplement to the Petition and Advice, or those that might yet suggest themselves, into a valid legal form; and it was agreed, June 4, that, except in as far as it might be well to pass express Bills on specific matters, the best way would be to frame and submit to his Highness a Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice. The due framing of this, and the preparation of the necessary Bills, were to be work for three weeks more.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date, and afterwards.]
Meanwhile, in evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this point, notwithstanding the great business of the Petition and Advice and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed, but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body. On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, “some of the public, and the others of a more private, concernment,” were presented to his Highness by the whole House, assembled in the Painted Chamber, the Speaker, “after a short and pithy speech,” offering them as some grapes preceding the full vintage, and his Highness ratifying all by his assent.—Among these was one very comprehensive Act with this preamble: “Whereas, since the 20th of April, 1653, in the great exigences and necessities of these nations, divers Acts and Ordinances have been made without the consent of the People assembled in Parliament—which is not according to the fundamental laws of the nations and the rights of the People, and is not for the future to be drawn into example—yet, the actings thereupon tending to the settlement of the estates of several persons and families and the peace and quiet of the nations: Be it enacted by his Highness the Lord Protector and this present Parliament,” &c. What is enacted is that about a hundred Acts and Ordinances, all duly enumerated, out of those made by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 or by Oliver and his Council after the establishment of the Protectorate in Dec. 1656, together with all acts and ordinances of the same touching customs and excise, shall by this Act be confirmed and made good, either wholly and absolutely (which is the case with nearly all) or with specified modifications—“all other Acts and Ordinances, and every branch and clause therein contained, not confirmed by these presents, which have been made or passed between the 20th day of April 1653 and the 17th day of September 1656” to be absolutely null and void. In other words,
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Scobell’s Acts and Ordinances of 1656, given in mass in his book, Part II. p. 371 et seq. See especially there, pp. 389-395.]
Army and Navy purposes, and the carrying on of the Spanish War: these, through all the bustle of the Kingship question, had still been the deepest things in Cromwell’s mind. His alliance with France, settled so far by the Treaty of Peace and Commerce dated Oct. 24, 1655, but much imperilled since by Mazarin’s dexterity in evasion and his occasional oscillations towards Spain, had at length, by Lockhart’s exertions, been converted into a great Treaty “offensive and defensive,” signed at Paris, March 23rd, 1656-7, and ratified by Louis XIV. April 30, and by Cromwell himself May 4, 1657. By this treaty it was provided that there should be joint action against Spain, by sea and land, for the reduction and capture of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the three coast-towns of Spanish Flanders adjoining the French territories on the north-east. Gravelines, if taken, was to belong to France ultimately, but, if taken first, was to be held by the English till Mardyke and Dunkirk were taken—which two towns were to belong permanently to England, only with stipulation of inviolability of Roman Catholic worship for the inhabitants, and of no further English encroachments on Flanders. For the joint-enterprise France was to supply 20,000 men, and Cromwell an auxiliary army of 6000 foot (half at the expense of France), besides a fleet for coast-service. A secret article of the Treaty was that neither power should make separate peace with the Spanish Crown for the space of one year from the date of the Treaty.[1]—Cromwell had lost no time in fulfilling his part of the engagement. To command the auxiliary English army in Flanders he had selected Sir John Reynolds, who had served ably heretofore in Ireland, and was now, as we have seen, member for Tipperary and Waterford in the present Parliament, and a strong Oliverian. His commission was dated April 25; and by May 14 he and his 6000 English foot had all been landed at Boulogne. They were thought the most splendid body of soldiers in Europe, and were admired and complimented by Louis
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 540-542. But see Guizot’s Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, II. 377 (Engl. Transl. 1854), with Latin Text of the Treaty itself in Appendix to same volume.]
[Footnote 2: Godwin, IV. 542-543; Commons Journals of May 5, 1657 (leave to Reynolds to go on the service).]
[Footnote 3: Commons Journals, May 28 and 29, 1657; Godwin, IV. 418-420; Carlyle, III. 264 and 304-305.]
“Killing no Murder: briefly discoursed, in Three Questions, by William Allen:” such was the title of a pamphlet in secret circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity. It began with a letter “To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell,” in this strain: “To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are likely to leave it ... To hasten this great good is the chief end of my writing this paper.” There follows, accordingly, a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell. “We wish we had rather endured thee, O Charles,” it says, “than have been condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the condition of the slave.” Sindercombe is spoken of as “a brave man,” of as “great a mind” as any of the old Romans. At the end there is this postscript: “Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of paper on this
[Footnote 1: Copy of Killing no Murder (first edition, much rarer than a second and enlarged edition of 1659) among the Thomason Pamphlets, with the date “June 1657” marked on it: Wood’s Ath. IV. 624-5; Godwin, IV. 388-390 (where the pamphlet is assumed to have been out “early in May"); Carlyle, III, 67. After the Restoration, Sexby being then dead, the pamphlet was claimed by another.—An answer to Killing no Murder, under the title Killing is Murder, appeared Sept. 21, 1657. It was by a Michael Hawke, of the Middle Temple.]
People were still talking of Killing no Murder when the First Protectorate came to a close. We have now only to take account of the circumstances of that event, and of the differences there were to be, constitutionally, between the First Protectorate and the Second.
On the 25th of June, 1657, all the details of the Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice having been at length settled by the House, that supplement to the original Petition and Advice was also ready for his Highness’s assent. The two documents together, to be known comprehensively as The Petition and Advice, were to supersede the more military Instrument, called The Government of the Commonwealth, to which Cromwell had sworn in Dec. 1653, at his first installation, and were to be the charter of his new and constitutionalized Protectorate. The Articles of this new Constitution were seventeen in all, and deserve some attention:—Article I., as we know, confirmed Cromwell’s Protectorship and empowered him to choose his successor.—Article II. provided for the calling of Parliaments of Two Houses once in three years at furthest.—Article III. stipulated for all Parliamentary privileges and the non-exclusion of any of the duly elected members except by judgment of the House of which they might be members.—Article IV., which was much the longest, determined the classes of persons who should be disqualified from being elected or voting in elections. Universally, all Roman Catholics were to be excluded, and all who had abetted the Irish
[Footnote 1: The original Petition and Advice is given in full in Scobell (378-383), Whitlocke (IV. 292-301), and in Parl. Hist. (III. 1502-1511); the Additional Petition and Advice in Scobell 450-452, and Whitlocke, IV. 306-310. But see also Cromwell’s Speech XIII. with Mr. Carlyle’s elucidations (Carlyle, III. 279 et seq.)]
Friday, June 26, 1657, was the last day of the present Single House, and a day of high ceremonial in London. The House, having met as usual in the morning, and transacted some overstanding business, rose about two o’clock to meet his Highness in the Painted Chamber. There, with the words “The Lord Protector doth consent,” the Additional Petition and Advice, and therefore the whole new Constitution of the Protectorate, as just described, became law, and assent was given also to a number of Bills that had passed the House since the 9th. Among these was an “Act for convicting, discovering, and repressing of Popish Recusants,” an “Act for the Better Observation of the Lord’s Day,” and an “Act for punishing such persons as live at high rates and have no visible estate, profession, or calling, answerable thereto.” There were also two Money Bills for temporary supplies: viz. one for raising L15,000 from Scotland, to go along with the L180,000 from England, and the L20,000 from Ireland, voted for the three months just ended, and another general and prospective one, assessing England at L35,000 a month, Scotland at L6000 a month, and Ireland at L9000 a month, for the next three years. All these assents having been received, there was an adjournment to Westminster Hall for the solemn installation of his Highness in his Second Protectorate.—The Hall had been magnificently prepared, and contained a vast assemblage. The members of the House, the Judges in their robes, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their robes, and other dignitaries, were ranged in the midst round, a canopied chair of state. It was the royal chair of Scotland, with the mystic coronation-stone underneath it, brought for the purpose from the Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible, a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine. His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch Ambassador, and “divers of the nobility and other persons of great quality,” stood, beside the chair under the canopy. The Speaker, assisted by the Earl of Warwick, Whitlocke, and others, then attired his Highness in the purple velvet robe; after which he delivered to him the richly-gilt Bible, girt him with the sword, and put the gold sceptre into his hand. His Highness then swore the oath of office, administered to him by the Speaker, After that, the Speaker addressed him in a well-turned speech. “You have no new name,” he said, “but a new date now added to the old name: the 16th of December is now changed into the 26th of June.” He explained that the robe, the Bible, the sword, and the sceptre were presents to his Highness from the Parliament, and dwelt poetically on the significance of each. “What a comely and glorious sight,” he concluded, “it is to behold a Lord Protector in a purple robe, with a sceptre in his hand, a sword
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of June 26, 1657; Parl. Hist. III. 1514-1518 (Reprint of the authorized contemporary account of the Installation-Ceremony, which had a frontispiece by Hollar); Whitlocke, IV. 303-305; Guizot’s Cromwell, II. 337-339 (where some of the particulars of the Installation seem to be from French eye-witnesses).]
MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPTEMBER 1654—JUNE 1657.
For more than reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to divide this Chapter of Milton’s Biography into Sections corresponding with those of Oliver’s Continued Protectorate in the preceding Chapter.
SECTION I: FROM SEPTEMBER 1654 TO JANUARY 1654-5, OR THROUGH OLIVER’S FIRST PARLIAMENT.
ULAC’S HAGUE EDITION OF MILTON’S DEFENSIO SECUNDA, WITH THE FIDES PUBLICA OF MORUS ANNEXED: PREFACE BY DR. CRANTZIUS TO THE REPRINT: ULAC’S OWN PREFACE OF SELF-DEFENCE: ACCOUNT OF MORUS’S FIDES PUBLICA, WITH EXTRACTS: HIS CITATION OF TESTIMONIES TO HIS CHARACTER: TESTIMONY OF DIODATI OF GENEVA: ABRUPT ENDING OF THE BOOK AT THIS POINT, WITH ULAC’S EXPLANATION OF THE CAUSE.—PARTICULARS OF THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF MILTON’S FRIEND OVERTON.—THREE MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR OLIVER (NOS. XLIX.—LI.): NO STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS: MILTON THEN BUSY ON A REPLY TO THE FIDES PUBLICA OF MORUS.
In October 1654 there was out at the Hague, from Ulac’s press, a volume in two parts, with this title: “Joannis Miltoni Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum, cujus titulus ‘Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.’ Accessit Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastae, Sacrarumque Litterarum Professoris, Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni, Scurrae. Hagae-Comitum, ex Typographia Adriani Ulac, MDCLIV.” ("John Milton’s Second Defence for the English People in reply to an infamous Book entitled ‘Cry of the King’s Blood against the English Parricides.’ To which is added A Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman, and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton, Buffoon. Printed at the Hague by Adrian Ulac, 1654.”) The reprint of Milton’s Defensio Secunda fills 128 pages of the volume; More’s appended Fides Publica, or Public Testimony, in reply, is in larger type and fills 129 pages separately numbered. Morus, after all, it will be seen, had been obliged to acquiesce in Ulac’s arrangement (Vol. IV. p. 634). Instead of trying vainly any longer to suppress Milton’s book on the Continent, he had exerted himself to the utmost in preparing a Reply to it, to go forth with that reprint of it for the foreign market which Ulac had been pushing through the press and would not keep back.
Although Milton complains that Ulac’s edition of his book for the foreign market was not only a piracy, but also slovenly in itself, with printer’s errors vitiating the sense and arrangement in some cases,[1] it was substantially a reprint of the original. Its interest for us, therefore, lies wholly in the preliminary matter. This consists of a short Preface headed “Lectori” ("To the Reader”) and signed “GEORGIUS CRANTZIUS, S.S. Theol. D.,” and a longer statement headed “Typographus pro Se-ipso” ("The Printer in his own behalf”) and signed “A. ULACQ.”
[Footnote 1: Pro Se Def. (1655).]
The Rev. Dr. Crantzius, who does not give his exact address, writes in an authoritative clerical manner. Though in bad health, he says, he cannot refrain from penning a few lines, to say how much he is shocked at the length to which personalities in controversy are going. He really thinks Governments ought to interfere to put such things down. Readers will find in the following book of Milton’s a lamentable specimen. He knows nothing of Milton himself; but Milton’s writings show him to be a man of a most damnable disposition, and Salmasius had once shown him (Dr. Crantzius) an English book of Milton’s propounding the blasphemy “that the doctrine of the Gospel, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning Divorce is devilish.” Dr. Crantzius had known Salmasius very well; and O what a man he was! Nothing amiss in him, except perhaps a hasty temper, and too great subjection to a peculiar connubial fate! There was a posthumous book of Salmasius against Milton; and, should it ever
The “innocent printer’s” own preface to the Reprint shows him to have been a very shrewd person indeed. He keeps his temper better than any of them. Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Who the real author of the book was he did not even yet know. All he knew was that some one, who wanted to be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the book to press. Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make. He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his friends in their resentment of his part in the matter. It was for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton’s Defensio Secunda in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds, a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that
[Footnote 1: Long ago, foreseeing the interest I should have in ULAC, I made notes in the State-Paper Office of some documents appertaining to him when he was a Bookseller in London. They do not quite correspond with Ulac’s account of his reasons for leaving London. The documents, here arranged in what seems to be their chronological order, are as follows:—(1) Petition of Ulac, undated, to Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, that he would intercede with Laud in Ulac’s favour. His
And now for More’s own Fides Publica or Public Testimony for Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being, and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy—placed there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery, outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair, however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:—
“If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved; not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you, for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm, and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and, with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other people’s malicious humour. Choose which you please. I pray God Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may suggestPage 131
to me a true and modest oration, utterly free from all lying and obscenity,—that is, very unlike yours.”
On the point of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor Morus is emphatic enough. He declares over and over again that he was not the author, and he declares that Milton knew this perfectly well,—might have known it for two years, but had beyond all doubt known it before he had published the Defensio Secunda. We shall bring together the passages that refer to this subject:—
I neither wrote it, nor ever pretended to have done so,—this I here solemnly declare, and make God my witness,—nor did I contribute anything to the writing of it.... The real author is alive and well, unknown to me by face, but very well known to several good men, on the strength of whose joint knowledge of the fact I challenge with righteous detestation the public lie which wriggles everywhere through your whole book.... Let the author answer for himself: I neither take up his quarrel, nor thrust my sickle into his corn.... But I wish the anonymous author would come forth some time or other openly in his own name.... What then would Milton think? He might have reason to fame and detest the light of life, being manifestly convicted of lying before the world. He might say, indeed, “I had not thought of it: I have been under a mistake” ... But what if I prove by clear evidence that you knew well enough already that the author of this book was another person, not I? ... [Morus then goes on to say that Milton might have learnt the fact in various ways, even from a comparison of the style of the book with that of Morus’s acknowledged writings; but he lays stress chiefly on the information actually sent to Milton in 1652 by Ulac, and on the subsequent communications to him, through Durie and the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, before the Defensio Secunda had left the press] ... Will you hear a word of truth? You had certainly learnt the fact, and cannot for two whole years have been ignorant of it. But, as you perceived it would not suit your convenience to vent your spleen against an anonymous opponent, that is a nobody, and some definite person must be pitched upon as an adversary to bear your rage expressly, no one else seemed to you more opportune than I as an object of calumny, whether because you heard that I had many enemies, though (what proves their savageness) without any cause, who would hold up both thumbs in applause of your jocosities, or because you knew that, by the arts of a Juno, I was involved in a lawsuit, more troublesome in reality than dangerous, and you did not believe that I should be, as I have been, the winner before all the tribunals.... Your book once written, Morus must of necessity stand for your opponent, or Milton, the Defender of the People, would have done nothing in two years! He would have lost all the laborious compilation of his days and nights, all his punnings upon my name,Page 132
all his sarcasms on my sacred office and profession.... For, if you had taken out of your book all the reproaches thrown at me, how little would there have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your “People”! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your “gardens of Alcinous and Adonis,” of your little story about “Hortensius”; what of the “syca_more_,” what of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” what of the “Mulberry tree”? [All these are phrases in Milton’s book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in Geneva or in Leyden. The name Morus, which means “mulberry tree” and “fool” in Latin and Greek, and may be taken also for “Moor” or “Ethiop,” and in still other meanings, had yielded to the Dutch wits, as well as to Milton, no end of metaphors and punning etymologies in their squibs against the poor man] ... The real author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor neither lives among the Dutch,—is not “stabled” among them, to use your own expression—nor has he, I believe, anything in common with them ... Vehemently and almost tragically you complain that I have upbraided you with your blindness. I can positively affirm that I did not know till I read it in your own book that you had lost your eyesight. For, if anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is “Nam, si quid forte se dabat quod eo spectare videretur, ad animum referebam”] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness who did not know that you were blind,—with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall’s ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published, and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some Sermons of mine are in men’s hands; my books On Grace and Free Will are to be had; there are in print my Exercitations on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God, which I know have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,—as well as my Apology for Calvin, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I would put against a thousand Miltons. With God’s help others will appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back, while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these, including Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis: the list closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works, and not his French Sermons].
Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here are two specimens:
MILTON’S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:—“Do not think, obscurely though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about you; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain—what I for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hardly, bring my mind to credit—that there is a man living among Christians who, being himself a concrete of every form of outrageous iniquity, could so censure others?”
MILTON’S PRODIGIOUS SELF-ESTEEM:—“All which has so elated you that you would be reckoned next after the very first man in England, and sometimes put yourself higher than the supreme Cromwell himself; whom you name familiarly, without giving him any title of rank, whom you lecture under the guise of praising him, to whom you dictate laws, assign boundaries to his rights, prescribe duties, suggest counsels, and even hold out threats if he shall not behave accordingly. You grant him arms and rule; you claim genius and the gown for yourself. ‘He only is to be called great,’ you say, ’who has either done great things’—Cromwell, to wit!—–’or teaches great things’—Milton on Divorce, to wit!—’or writes of them worthily’—the same twice-great Milton, I suppose, in his Defence of the English People!”
How does Morus proceed in the main business of clearing his own character from Milton’s charges? His plan was to produce a dated and authenticated series of testimonials from others, extending over the period of his life which had been attacked, and to interweave these with explanations and an autobiographic memoir. He has reached the eightieth page of his book before he properly begins this enterprise. He gives first a testimonial from the Genevan Church, dated Jan. 25, 1648, and signed by seventeen ministers, of whom Diodati is one; then another from the Genevan Senate or Town Council, dated Jan. 26, 1648; then two more, one from the Church again, and one from the Senate again, both dated April 1648; then, among others, a special testimonial from Diodati, in the form of a long letter to Salmasius, dated “Geneva, 9th May, 1648.” Diodati’s testimonial, which is given both in French and in Latin, is the most interesting in itself, and will represent the others. “As to his morals,” says Diodati, writing of Morus to Salmasius, “I can speak from intimate knowledge, and do so with, strict conscientiousness. His natural disposition is good and without deceit or reservation, frank and noble, such as ought to put him in very harmonious relations with all persons
Suddenly, just when we have read this, and seen Morus self-described as far as to the year 1648, when he was about to leave Geneva for Holland, the book comes to a dead stop. Diodati’s letter ends on page 129; and when we turn over the leaf we find a Latin note from Ulac, headed “The Printer to the Reader” and expressed as follows:—
“Our labours towards finishing this Treatise had come to this point, when lo! M. Morus, who had been staying for some time here at the Hague with the intention of completing it, called away by I know not what occasion to France, and with a favourable wind hastening his journey, was prevented from bringing all to an end, and so gratifying with every possible speed the desire of many curious persons to read both Treatises at once, Milton’s and More’s. What to do I was for some days uncertain; but some gentlemen, not of small condition, at length persuaded me that I should not defer longer the publication of what of his I had already in print,—alleging that the remaining and still wanting testimonies of eminent men, and of the Senates and Churches of Middleburg, Amsterdam, &c., given for the vindication of M. Morus, and which were here to have been subjoined, might be afterwards printed separately when they reached me. Wishing to comply with their request, and my own inclination too, I now therefore do publish, Reader, what I am confident will please your curiosity, if not in full measure, at least a good deal. Let whosoever desires to see the sequel expect it as soon as possible.”
Was there ever such an unfortunate as Morus? Everything everywhere seems to go wrong with him. Here, at the Hague, having absented himself from Amsterdam for the purpose, he has been writing his Defence of Himself against Milton, doing it cleverly and in a way likely to make some impression, when, suddenly, for some reason unknown even to his printer, he is obliged to break off for a journey into France, just as he was approaching the heart of his subject. Had he absconded? This seems actually to have been the construction, abroad. “Morus is gone into France,” writes a Hague correspondent of Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; “it is believed that he has a calling, et quidem a Castris, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they do not desire that he should come to visit
In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus’s Fides Publica in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of the incident belong to Milton’s biography.
Overton’s former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654, to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen. Meanwhile, as Oliver’s First Parliament had been incessantly opposing him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if Thurloe’s informations were true, the design was nothing less than to depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, and the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents of Charles II. It may be a question how far Overton himself was a party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at Aberdeen. “I bless the Lord,” he writes mysteriously from that town, Dec. 26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend—“I bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much remembered) so far as I am able in everything. I know right well you and others do it much for me; and, pray, dear Sir, do it still. Heave me up upon the wings of your prayers to Him who is a God hearing prayers and granting requests. Entreat Him to enable me to stand to his Truth; which I shall not do if He deject or forsake me.” This letter, as well as several letters to Overton, had been intercepted by Monk’s vigilance; and hardly had it been written when Overton was arrested by Monk’s orders, and brought to Leith. At Leith his papers were searched, and there was found in his letter-case this copy of verses in his own hand:—
“A Protector! What’s
that? ’Tis a stately thing
That confesseth itself but the ape of
a King;
A tragical Caesar acted by a clown,
Or a brass farthing stamped with a kind
of crown;
A bauble that shines, a loud cry without
wool;
Not Perillus nor Phalaris, but the bull;
The echo of Monarchy till it come;
The butt-end of a barrel in the shape
of a drum;
A counterfeit piece that woodenly shows;
A golden effigies with a copper nose;
The fantastic shadow of a sovereign head;
The arms-royal reversed, and disloyal
instead;
In fine, he is one we may Protector call,—
From whom the King of Kings protect us
all!”
With this piece of doggrel, the intercepted letters, and the other informations, Overton was shipped off by Monk from Leith to London on the 4th of January, 1654-5; and on the 16th of that month he was committed to the Tower. Thence the next day he wrote a long letter to a private friend, in which he enumerates the charges against him, and replies to them one by one. He denies that he has broken trust with the Protector; he denies that he is a Leveller; and, what pleases us best of all, he denies the authorship of the doggrel lines just quoted. His exact words about these may be given. “But, say some, you made a copy of scandalous verses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called The Character of a Protector; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import and abuse.” It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have retained our faith in Milton’s character of Overton—“you, Overton, bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our tastes, and the sweetness of your manners”? Still to have copied and kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning; and, Thurloe’s investigations having made it credible otherwise that Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a general rising against the Protector’s Government, there was an end to the promising career of Milton’s friend under the Protectorate. He remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the 3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, “Mrs. Anne Overton,” had liberty from the Council “to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she shall so think fit."[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book, July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached, had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton’s own (Hist. of Commonwealth, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin in this, as in most things else.—That Overton’s disaffection was very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in Hyde’s hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or meant to be sent, by Charles II. to Overton. The substance of the letter, as in Mr. Macray’s abstract of it for the Calendar of the Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:—“The King to Col. Ov[erton]. Has received such information of his affection that he does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he or his family shall wish they shall receive, and what he shall promise to any of his friends who may concur with him shall be made good.” If this letter was among those found among Overton’s papers at Leith (which is not very likely), little wonder that Cromwell would not trust him at large a second time.]
At the date of Overton’s imprisonment the Protector was making up his mind to dismiss his troublesome First Parliament after his four months and a half of experience of its temper; and six days after that date he did dismiss it, to its own surprise, before it had sent him up a single Bill. How many Latin letters had Overton’s friend Milton written for the Protector in his official capacity during the four months and a half of that troublesome Parliament? So far as the records show, only three. They were as follows:—
(XLIX.) “To THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, LUIS MENDEZ DE HARO,” Sept. 4, 1654:[1]—The Spanish Prime Minister, Luis de Haro, had recently, in the Protector’s apparent indecision between the Spanish alliance and the French alliance, resolved to try to secure him for Spain by sending over a new Ambassador, to supersede Cardenas, or to co-operate with him. He had announced the same in letters to Cromwell; who now thanks him, professes his desire to be in friendship with Spain, and promises every attention to the new Ambassador when he may arrive, Cromwell pays a compliment to the minister himself. “To have your affection and approbation,” he says, “who by your worth and prudence have acquired such authority with the King of Spain that you preside, with a mind to match, over the greatest affairs of that kingdom, ought truly to be a pleasure to me corresponding with my apprehension of the honour I shall have from the good opinion of a man of excellence.” Milton is dexterous in wording his documents.
[Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month only is given).]
(L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, Oct. 25, 1654:—There has come to be a conflict between the City of Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton’s friend, Henry Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell’s good offices with the Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire than that “the whole Protestant denomination should at length coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord.”
(LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Oct. 28, 1654:—As announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring about a permanent reconciliation.
These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct. 26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months, leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he was then engaged on a Reply to More’s Fides Publica in the imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his Defensio Secunda in reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in reply to the Fides Publica of Morus should count also to the credit of Milton’s official services, even though it must necessarily be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its predecessors. But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked.
SECTION II: FROM JANUARY 1654-5 TO SEPTEMBER 1656, OR THROUGH THE PERIOD OF ARBITRARINESS.
LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON’S
REPLY: LETTER TO
EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON’S GENEVESE
RECOLLECTIONS AND
ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON’S LATIN
STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII.,
LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON’S DESPATCH-WRITING
FOR CROMWELL
HITHERTO.—REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES,
AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE
MILTON’S TO L150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION
OF HIS L288 A YEAR AT
PLEASURE INTO L200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR
AND COUNCIL
RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655:
SUDDEN DEMAND ON
MILTON’S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER
OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE
PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS
TO FOREIGN
STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS.
LIV.—LXIV.): HIS SONNET
ON THE SUBJECT.—PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM
TO MORE’S FIDES
PUBLICA: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH
EXTRACTS: MILTON’S
ANSWER TO THE FIDES PUBLICA AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM
TOGETHER IN
HIS PRO SE DEFENSIO, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT
OF THAT BOOK, WITH
SPECIMENS: MILTON’S DISBELIEF IN MORUS’S
DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF
THE REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR: HIS REASONS,
AND HIS REASSERTIONS
OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES
OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND
ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS
REPETITION OF THE BONTIA
ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS’S
PRINTED
TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST:
ITS EFFECTS ON
MORUS.—QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP
OF THE REGII SANGUINIS
CLAMOR AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS’S CONCERN
IN IT: THE DU MOULIN
FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL
AUTHOR OF THE
REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE
EDITOR AND THE
WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN’S
OWN ACCOUNT OF THE
WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL
THE WHILE, AND DREAD
OF BEING FOUND OUT.—CALM IN MILTON’S
LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE
MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY
FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF
THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS’S
SATYR AGAINST
HYPOCRITES: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE:
MARVELL, NEEDHAM,
CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH,
MR. RICHARD JONES,
AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN
IN THAT CONNEXION:
MILTON’S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS.
HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK
SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION
OF THESE FOUR
SONNETS.—SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS
CONTRA HISPANOS:
THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE
PROTECTOR (NOS.
LXV.—LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF
COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH
EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.—INCREASE
OF LIGHT
LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS:
JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE
Oliver had just entered on his period of Arbitrariness, or Government without a Parliament, when Milton received the following letter in Latin from Leo de Aitzema, or Lieuwe van Aitzema, formerly known to him as agent for Hamburg and the Hanse Towns in London, but now residing at the Hague in the same capacity (IV. 378-379). Aitzema, we may now mention, was a Frieslander by birth, eight years older than Milton, and is remembered still, it is said, for a voluminous and valuable History of the United Provinces, consisting of a great collection of documents, with commentaries by himself in Dutch.[1] This had not yet been published.
[Footnote 1: See Article Aitzema in Bayle’s Dictionary.]
“To the honourable and highly esteemed
Mr. John Milton, Secretary
to the Council of State, London.
“Partly because Morus, in his book, has made some aspersions on you for your English Book on Divorce, partly because many have been inquiring eagerly about the arguments with which you support your opinion, I have, most honoured and esteemed Sir, given your little work entire to a friend of mine to be translated into Dutch, with a desire to have it printed soon. Not knowing, however, whether you would like anything corrected therein or added, I take the liberty to give you this notice, and to request you to let me know your mind on the subject. Best wishes and greetings from
“Your very obedient
“LEO AITZEMA[1]
“Hague: Jan. 29, 1654-5.”
[Footnote 1: Communicated by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum, and published by the late Rev. John Mitford in Appendix to Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering’s Edition of Milton’s Works (1851).]
Milton’s answer, rather unusually for him, was immediate.
TO LEO VAN AITZEMA.
It is very gratifying to me that you retain the same amount of recollection of me as you very politely showed of good will by once and again visiting me while you resided among us. As regards the Book on Divorce which you tell me you have given to some one to be turned into Dutch, I would rather you had given it to be turned into Latin. For my experience in those books of mine has now been that the vulgar still receive according to their wont opinions not already common. I wrote a good while ago, I may mention, three treatises on the subject:—the first, in two books, in which The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (for that is the title of the book) is contained at large; a second, which is called Tetrachordon, and in which the four chief passages of ScripturePage 141
concerning that doctrine are explicated; the third called Colasterion, in which answer is made to a certain sciolist. [The Bucer Tract omitted in the enumeration.] Which of these Treatises you have given to be translated, or what edition, I do not know: the first of them was twice issued, and was much enlarged in the second edition. Should you not have been made aware of this already, or should I understand that you desire anything else on my part, such as sending you the more correct edition or the rest of the Treatises, I shall attend to the matter carefully and with pleasure. For there is not anything at present that I should wish changed in them or added. Therefore, should you keep to your intention, I earnestly hope for myself a faithful translator, and for you all prosperity.
Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.[1]
[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 16.]
The next letter, written in the following month, also connects itself, but still more closely, with the Morus controversy. It is addressed to Ezekiel Spanheim, the eldest son of that Frederick Spanheim, by birth a German, of whom we have heard as Professor of Theology successively at Geneva (1631-1642) and at Leyden (1642-1649). This elder Spanheim, it will be remembered, had been implicated in the opposition to Morus in both places—the story being that he had contracted a bad opinion of Morus during his colleagueship with him in Geneva, and that, when Salmasius, partly to spite Spanheim, of whose popularity at Leyden he was jealous, had negotiated for bringing Morus to Holland, Spanheim “moved heaven and earth to prevent his coming.” It is added that Spanheim’s death (May 1649) was caused by the news that Morus was on his way, and that he had said on his death-bed that “Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was altier, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel Spanheim was to attain to even greater celebrity than his father, and his varied career in different parts of Europe was not to close till 1710. At present he was only in his twenty-fifth year, and was living at Geneva, where he had been born, and whither he had returned from Leyden in 1651, to accept a kind of honorary Professorship that had been offered him, in compliment partly to his father’s memory, partly to his own extraordinary promise. As one who had lived the first thirteen years of his age in Geneva, and the next nine in Leyden (1642-1651), and who was now back in Geneva, he had been amply and closely on the track of Morus; and how little he liked him will now appear:—
[Footnote 1: Bayle, both in Article Spanheim and in Article Morus.]
TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.
I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has reached me little less than three months after date. There is clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for, though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done immediately.
You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me expressed in the beginning of your letter—to wit, that I am not likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy, and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very letter, part of which, with the author’s name not mentioned, I have not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of evidence in my forthcoming Defensio [in reply to More’s Fides Publica]. This book, as soon as it is published, I will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me, meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.
Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1]
[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.]
In writing this letter Milton must have had brought
back to his recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen
years before (June 1639) on his way home from Italy.
The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his friend Charles,
was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most,
and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim
had then been in the same city, and Morus too, and
the present Ezekiel Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth
year, and others, still alive, who had then known
Morus, and had since that time had him in view.
Milton had certainly not then himself seen Morus,
though he must have heard of him; but it is possible
he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and may now,
in writing to Spanheim’s son, have remembered
the fact. In any case there were links of acquaintanceship
still connecting Milton with Geneva and its gossip.
The “Calandrini,” for example, who is
mentioned in Milton’s letter, and who may be
identified with a Genevese merchant named “Jean
Louis Calandrin,” heard of in Thurloe’s
correspondence, must in some way have been known to
Milton personally, and interested in serving him.[1]
It had been in in consequence of a suggestion of this
Calandrini, “acting-with his usual courtesy,”
that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when Morus’s
fragmentary Fides Publica was just out or nearly
so, addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him
some additional information about the Genevese portion
of Morus’s career. The letter had not readied
Milton till the end of December or the beginning of
January 1654-5; and for nearly three months after that
he had left it unacknowledged. That he had been
moved to acknowledge it at last was, doubtless, as
his letter itself suggests, and as we shall see yet
more precisely, because he had then nearly ready his
Reply to the Fides Publica, and had used Spanheim’s
information there, only suppressing the name of his
informant. But that Milton had already had no
lack of private informants about Morus’s career,
whether in Geneva or in Holland, has appeared abundantly.
The Hartlib-Durie-Haak-Oldenburg connexion about him
in London was a perfect sponge for all kinds of gossip
from, abroad. We hear now, however, of another
person in particular who may have supplied Milton
with his earlier information as to the Genevese part
of Morus’s life, A family long of note in Geneva
had been that of the Turretins, originally from Italy,
and indeed from Lucca, whence they had been driven,
as the Diodatis had been, by their Protestantism, One
of this family, Benedict Turretin, born in Geneva,
had been a distinguished Theology Professor there,
and at his death in 1631 had left at least two sons.
One of these, Francis Turretin, born at Geneva in 1623,
had, after the usual wanderings of Continental scholars
in those days, just returned to Geneva (1653), and
settled there in what may be called the family-business,
i.e. the profession of Theology. In this
he was to attain extraordinary celebrity, his Institutio
Page 144
Theologiae Elencticae ranking to this day among
Calvinistic Theologians as a master-work of its kind.
Well, this Francis Turretin, rising into fame at Geneva,
just as Ezekiel Spanheim was, and seeing Spanheim
daily, had, it seems from Milton’s letter, a
brother in London, on intimate terms with Milton; and
Milton’s proposition to young Spanheim was that
they should correspond in future through the two Turretins.
Who would have thought to find the future author of
the Institutio Theologiae Elencticae used by
Milton for postal purposes? Is it not clear too
that the London Turretin must have been one of Milton’s
informants about Morus’s reasons for leaving
Geneva? Respectability everywhere, at our present
date at least, seems adverse to Morus.[2]
[Footnote 1: For mention of Jean Louis Calandrin, the Genevese merchant, see Letters between Pell and Thurloe in Vaughan’s Protectorate (I. 302, 308, 354). He died at Geneva, in Feb. 1655-6, about a year after this mention of him by Milton. It is possible he may have been a relative of a “Caesar Calandrinus” mentioned by Wood as one of the many foreigners who had studied at Exeter College, Oxford, during the Rectorship of Dr. Prideaux (1612-1641), and who was afterwards “a Puritanical Theologist,” intimate with Usher, a Rector in Essex, and finally minister of the parish of Peter le Poor in London, where he died in 1665, leaving a son named John. Wood speaks of him as a German (Wood, Ath. III. 269, and Fasti, I. 393-4); but the name is evidently Italian. Indeed I find that there had been an intermarriage in Italy between the Diodati family and a family of Calandrinis, bringing some of the Calandrinis also to Geneva about the year 1575. (Reprint, for private circulation, of a Paper on the Italian ancestry of Mr. William Diodate of New Haven, U.S., read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, June 28, 1875, by Edward E. Salisbury, p. 13). By the kindness of Colonel Chester, whose genealogical researches are all-inclusive, I have a copy of the will of the above-named Caesar Calandrini of St. Peter le Poor, London. It is dated Aug. 4, 1665, when he was “three score and ten,” and mentions two sons, Lewis and John, two daughters living, one of them married to a Giles Archer, and grandchildren by these children, besides nephews and nieces of the names of Papillon and Burlamachi. The son “John” in this will proved it in October 1665, and cannot have been the Calandrini of Milton’s letter; but that Calandrini may have been of the same connexion.]
[Footnote 2: Bayle, Art. Francois Turretin.]
Busy over his reply to the Fides Publica, Milton had stretched his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section. Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing. In April 1655, however, as if his reply to the Fides Publica were then off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin State-letters, as follows:—
(LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, April 4, 1655[1]:—This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than “to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church.” Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.—The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action—a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on.
[Footnote 1: No. 32 in Skinner Transcript (which gives the exact date); also in Printed Collection and in Phillips.]
(LIII.) To ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD of AUSTRIA, GOVERNOR OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (undated):—Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville’s pretext was that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the country where the cause of the action first arose. “The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most ready."[1]
[Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated “Aug. 1658” in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655, when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point by conjecture only, and may be wrong.]
In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his Defensio Secunda, and now the preparation of a Reply to More’s Fides Publica, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe’s office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of L288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his Defensio Secunda in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton’s name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655.
Tuesday, April 17, 1655:—Present the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Major-General Skippon.
“The Council resumed the debate
upon the Report made from the
Committee of the Council to whom it was
referred to consider of the
Establishment of the Council’s Contingencies.
“Ordered:—
“That the salary of L400 per annum granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council’s Contingencies be reduced to L300 per annum, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.
“That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of L288, &c., formerly charged on the Council’s Contingencies, be reduced to L150 per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness’s Exchequer.
“That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid out of the Council’s Contingencies,—that is to say L45 12_s._ 6_d._ per annum to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter Frost’s assistant,—per annum to Mr. John Hall,—per annum to Mr. Marchamont Needham,—per annum to Mr. George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,—per annum for the rent of Sir Abraham Williams’s house [for the entertainment of Ambassadors], and—per annum to M. Rene Angler,—be for the future retrenched and taken away.
“That some convenient rooms at Somerset
House be set apart for the
entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors upon
their address to his
Highness.
“That it be referred to Mr. Secretary Thurloe to put that part of the Intelligence [from abroad] which is managed by M. Rene Augier into the common charge of Intelligence, and to order it for the future by M, Augier or otherwise, as he shall see most for the Commonwealth’s service.
* * * * *
“That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that several warrants be issued under the great seal for authorizing and requiring the Commissioners of his Highness’s Treasury to pay, by quarterly payments, at the receipt of his Highness’s Exchequer, to the several officers, clerks, and other persons after-named, according to the proportions allowed them for their salary in respect of their several respective offices and employments during their continuance or till his Highness or the Council shall give other order: that is to say:—
“To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:—For his own office, after the proportion of L800 per annum; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of L200 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending his [Thurloe’s] office at 6_s._ 8_d._ per diem, a piece (which together amount to——); for the salaries of eleven messengers at 5_s._ per diem, apiece (which together amount to L1003 15_s._): amounting in the whole to ——
“To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the Council, or to either of them:—For their own offices, viz. Mr. Scobell L500 per annum, Mr. Jessop L500 per annum; for the salaries of—clerks attending their office at 6_s._ 8_d._ per diem (which together amount to ——): amounting in the whole to ——
“To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:—For his own office after the proportion of L365 per annum; for the salaries of his ten deputies at 3_s._ 4_d._ per diem a piece (which together amount to L608 6_s._ 8_d._); amounting in the whole to L973 6 8
“To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:—For himself and his assistants at 13_s._ per diem, (being L237 5_s_,Page 148
per annum); for Thomas Bennett’s salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4_s. per diem_ (being L73 per annum); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2_s. per diem_ (being L36 10_s. per annum_): amounting in the whole to L346 15 0
“The first payment of the said several
and respective sums
before-mentioned to commence from the
1st of April instant.
“To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness’s barge:—For his own office after L80 per annum; for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after L20 per annum; for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness’s barge, at L4 per annum to each (amounting together to L100 per annum): amounting in the whole to L200 per ann.
“The same to commence from 25th March, 1655.”
Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped altogether, including Needham’s subsidy or pension for his journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from L365 a year to L500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council’s business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea. It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now “Secretary of State”; but it will be observed that the department of Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that Meadows, with the designation of “Secretary for the Latin Tongue,” ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as “Clerks to the Council,” though under Thurloe too, are now important enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs. Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as Treasurer for the Council’s Contingencies, but by warrants to the Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included.
Milton’s case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from L288 18_s._ 6_d._ a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to L150 a year—i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton’s allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,—made equal, say, to Thurloe’s. Records must stand as they are, however, and must be construed coolly. Milton’s L288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost’s L600 a year, or Thurloe’s L800, for their more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a salary of over L1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at L700 a year had been for some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was exactly the course proposed in Milton’s case. The reduction from L288 to L150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the L288 a year had been at the Council’s pleasure, it was now proposed that the L150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of L288 a year, payable out of the Council’s contingencies, into a life-pension of L150 a year, payable out of the Protector’s Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over L1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between L500 and L600. On studying the document, I have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, into which his connexion with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting him, as Ex-Secretary Milton, a perfectly free and highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced salary of L150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of “Secretary for the Latin Tongue,” with a higher salary of L200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe’s notions of official symmetry in the proposed change. Milton’s Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary or Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary may have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general Secretaryship of State, and he may have desired that Milton should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.
The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I find, for example, that Needham’s pension or subsidy of L100 a year, which is one of the outlays the document proposed to “retrench and take away,” did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary, sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much out of the Council’s Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to Frost to pay Needham L50, “being for half a year’s salary due unto him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May”; and the subsequent series of warrants in Needham’s favour is complete to the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary of L150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must, therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council, or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and Jessop from L365 a year to L500 a year each must, indeed, have been made good,—for Scobell and Jessop’s successor in the colleagueship to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of L500 a year.[3] But, on the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were not confirmed, or were confirmed only partially. Frost is found afterwards distinctly in receipt of L365 a year,[4] The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from L400 to L300, as had been proposed, but only from L400 to L365, or back to what his salary had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the end of the Protectorate in receipt of L200 a year, and not of L150 only, as had been proposed In the Order.[5] The inference must be, therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction, but diminishing considerably the proposed amount of the reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham, there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton’s particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain
[Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.]
[Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.]
[Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid.]
As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and that Milton’s retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council relating to it:—
Thursday, May 17, 1655:—Present: HIS HIGHNESS THE LORD PROTECTOR, Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Lambert, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Mr. Strickland. Ordered, “That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Mr. Rous, and Colonel Jones, or any—of them to consider of the Petition [a Petition from London ministers and others], and also of the papers of intelligence already come touching the Protestants under the Duke of Savoy, and such other intelligence as shall come to Mr. Secretary Thurloe, and to offer to the Council what they shall think fit, as well touching writing of letters, collections, or otherwise, in order to their relief ... That it be referred to Colonel Fiennes, Mr. Strickland, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe, to prepare the draft of a letter to the French King upon this day’s debate touching the Protestants suffering in the Dukedom of Savoy, and to bring in the same to-morrow morning.”
Friday, May 18:—At a second, or afternoon sitting (present:Page 152
Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), “Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which, after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council.”
Tuesday, May 22:—Present: Lord President Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert. “The Latin draft of a Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his Territory was this day read. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said Duke.”
Wednesday, May 23:—“Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed. Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send the said letters in his Highness’s name to the said States-General and the Cantons respectively.”
Though Milton’s name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he, and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the occasion. The following is a list of them:—
(LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, May 25, 1655:[1]—This Letter may be translated entire. It is superscribed “OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince, EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting “; and it is worded as follows:—“Most Serene Prince,—Letters have reached us from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of all their estates, unless they should give security that, abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be revoked, and thatPage 153
they might be taken into their ancient favour and restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors, yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly, threw others into chains, and drove the rest into the deserts and snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us, we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods, ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed Religion,—ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your kindness and clemency to those poor people as the fruit of our solicitation. Which will moreover tie us to the performance of all good offices in return, and lay the firmest foundations not only for the establishment but even for the increase of the relationship and friendship between this Commonwealth and your Dominion. Nor do we less promise this to ourselves from your justice and moderation. We beg Almighty GodPage 154
to bend your mind and thoughts in this direction, and we heartily pray for you and for your people peace and truth and prosperity in all your affairs."[2]—The bearer of this letter to the Duke, as we know, was Mr. Samuel Morland, who had been selected as the Protector’s special Commissioner for the purpose. He left London on the 26th of May. He took with him, also, a copy of the Latin speech which he was to deliver to the Duke in presenting the letter. As there is much probability that this Latin speech is also in part of Milton’s composition, and as it is in even a bolder and more indignant strain than the letter, it may be well to translate it too:—“Your Serene and Royal Highnesses [the Duke and his mother both addressed?],—The Most Serene Lord, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, has sent me to your Royal Highnesses; whom he salutes very heartily, and to whom, with a very high affection and peculiar regard for your Serenities, he wishes a long life and reign, and a prosperous issue of all your affairs, amid the applauses and respect of your people. And this is due to you, whether in consideration of the excellent character and royal descent of your Highnesses, and the great expectation of the world from so many eminent good qualities, or in recollection, after reference to records, of the ancient friendship of our Kings with the Royal house of Savoy. Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.—The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is comprehended—their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers, to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy to these your very poor and most outcast subjects—those, I mean, who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants. For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering,Page 155
with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!—But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will understand better from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope, grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal Highnesses for evermore."[3]
[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record Office (Hamilton’s Milton Papers, p. 15) and in the copy actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)—the phrase in both being “Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii, 25 Maii, anno 1654.” In the Skinner Transcript, however, the dating is “Westmonsterio, May 10, 1655;” which again is changed into “Alba Aula, May 1655,” i.e. “Whitehall, May 1655” (month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.]
[Footnote 2: There are one or two slight verbal differences between Milton’s original draft, here translated, and the official copy as actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland. Thus, in the first sentence, instead of "Redditae sunt nobis e Geneva, necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestrae finitimis, literae," the official copy has simply "Redditae sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestae finitimis literae."]
[Footnote 3: I have translated the speech from the official Latin draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr. Hamilton, Milton Papers, pp. 18-20. Mr. Hamilton has no doubt that the composition is Milton’s. He founds his opinion partly on the style, and partly on the fact that the draft is “written in the same hand as the other official copies of Milton’s letters.” I agree with Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond controversy. The style is generally like Milton’s; there are phrases repeated from Milton’s Latin elsewhere—e.g. “montesque nivibus coopertos,” repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and “totius nominis Italici studiosissimum” which almost repeats the “toiius Graeci nominis ... cultor” of the second Letter to Philaras; and there are also phrases identical with some used in Milton’s other letters on the subject of the Massacre which have yet to be noted in this list. On the other hand, there are passages and expressions in the Speech that strike one as hardly Miltonic, while the purport in some places would favour the idea that Morland wrote the speech himself. What seems to negative this idea most strongly, and therefore to point most distinctly to Milton as the author, is the existence of the MS. official copy in the Record Office. The speech, that copy proves, must have been prepared before Morland left London, and must have been taken with him. For that it cannot have been merely deposited in the State Paper Office afterwards, as a record of what he did say at Turin, is proved by the fact that his actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with the draft-copy, differs in some particulars. In the actual speech the plural, “Your Royal Highnesses,” is changed into the singular, “Your Royal Highness,” for address to the Duke only, though the Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland to the Son of Croesus is entirely omitted; and there are other verbal changes, apparently suggested by Morland’s closer information as he approached Turin, or by his sense of fitness at the moment—in illustration of which the reader may compare the very strong passage about “the Neros of all times and ages” as we have just rendered it from the draft with the same passage as we have previously rendered it from Morland’s actual speech (ante p. 42). But, if Morland took the speech with him, unless he wrote it himself and had it approved before his departure, who so likely to have furnished it as Milton? All in all, that is the most probable conclusion; and anything un-Miltonic in the speech may be accounted for by supposing that, though the Latin was Milton’s, the substance was not entirely his. Morland, though he does not say in his book that the speech was furnished him, does not positively claim it as his own. He, at all events, used the liberty of deviating from the original draft.]
(LV.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, May 25, 1655[1]:—His Highness in this letter recapitulates the facts at some length, and expresses his conviction that the Cantons, so much nearer the scene of the horrors, are already duly roused. He informs them that he has written to the Duke of Savoy and hopes the intercession may have effect; but adds, “If, however, he should determine otherwise, we are prepared to exchange counsels with you on the subject of the means by which we may be able most effectively to relieve, re-establish, and save from certain and undeserved ruin, an innocent people oppressed and tormented by so many injuries, they being also our dearest brothers in Christ."[2]
[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy as dispatched, and as printed in Morland’s book, pp. 581-562; but draft dated “Westmonasterio, May 19, 1655” in the Skinner Transcript, the Printed Collection, and Phillips.]
[Footnote 2: One of the phrases in this letter about the poor Piedmontese Protestants is “nunc sine tare, sine teoto, ... per monies desertos atque nives, cum conjugibus ac liberis, miserrime vagantur.” The phrase occurs almost verbatim in Morland’s speech to the Duke of Savoy—“sine lare, sine tecto ... cum suis conjugibus ac liberis vagari.”]
(LVI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, May 25, 1655:—To the same effect as the last, mutatis mutandis. What sovereign can be more ready to stir in such a cause than his Swedish majesty, the successor of those who have been champions of the Protestantism of Europe? Gladly will the Protector form a league with him and with other powers to do whatever may be necessary.
(LVII.) TO THE KING OF DENMARK, May 25,
1655:[1]—An appeal in the
same strain to his Danish Majesty:
phraseology varied a little, But
matter the same.
[Footnote 1: This and the last both so dated in official copy as printed in Morland’s book, pp. 554-557; dated only “May 1655” in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips.]
(LVIII.) TO LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE, May 25, 1655:[1]—The story recapitulated for the benefit of his French Majesty, with the addition that it is reported that some troops of his Majesty had assisted the Piedmontese soldiery in the attack on the Vaudois. This the Protector can hardly believe: it would be so much against that policy of Toleration which the Kings of France have found essential for the peace of their own dominions. The Protector cannot doubt, at all events, that his Majesty will use his powerful influence with the Duke of Savoy to induce him at once, as far as may be possible, to repair the outrageous wrong already done.
[Footnote 1: This Letter is omitted in the Printed Collection and in Phillips; but it is given in the Skinner Transcript (No. 38 there), and Mr. Hamilton has printed it in his Milton Papers (p. 2). It had already been printed in Morland’s book (pp. 564-565).]
(LIX.) TO THE MOST EMINENT LORD, CARDINAL MAZARIN, May 25, 1625:[1]—Not content with writing to Louis XIV., Cromwell addressed also the great French Minister. After mentioning the dreadful occasion, the letter proceeds—“There is clearly nothing which has obtained for the French nation greater esteem with all their neighbours professing the Reformed Religion than the liberty and privileges permitted and granted to Protestants by edicts and public acts. It is for this reason chiefly, though for others as well, that this Commonwealth has sought for the friendship and alliance of the French to a greater degree than before. For the settlement of this there have now for a good while been dealings here with the King’s Ambassador, and his Treaty is now almost brought to a conclusion. Moreover, the singular benignity and moderation of your Eminence, always manifest hitherto in the most important transactions of the Kingdom relating to the French Protestants, causes me to hope much from your own prudence and magnanimity.”
[Footnote 1: Utterly undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and quite misplaced in both; properly dated “May 25, 1655” in Skinner Transcript.]
(LX.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, May 25, 1655:[1]—To the same effect as the letters to the Swiss Cantons and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, but with emphatic expression of his Highness’s peculiar confidence In the Dutch Republic in such a crisis. He offers in the close to act in concert with the States-General and other Protestant powers for any interference that may be necessary.
[Footnote 1: So dated in official copy, as printed in Morland’s book, pp. 558-560; but undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and dated “West., Junii—1655” in Skinner Transcript (No. 41 there). This last is a mistake; for Thurloe speaks of the letter as already written May 25 (Thurloe to Pell, Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 185). The official copy, as given in Morland, differs somewhat from Milton’s draft. “Ego” for Cromwell, in one sentence, is changed into “Nos;” and the closing words of the draft, “et is demum, sentiet orthodoxnon injurias atque miserias tam graves non posse nos negligere” are omitted in the official copy, possibly as too strong. These may be among the amendments made in Council, May 23.]
(LXI.) TO THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA, May, 1655:[1]—Transylvania, now included in the Austrian Empire, was then an independent Principality of Eastern Europe, in precarious and variable relations with Austria, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The population, a mixture of Wallachs, Magyars. Germans, and Slavs, was largely Protestant; and the present Prince, George Ragotzki, was an energetic supporter of the Protestant interest in that part of Europe, and a man generally of much political and military activity. He had written, it appears, to Cromwell on the 16thPage 159
of November, 1654, and had sent an Envoy to England with the letter. It had expressed his earnest desire for friendship and alliance with the Protector, and for co-operation with him in the defence of the Reformed Religion. Cromwell now acknowledges the letter and embassy, with high compliments to the Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy’s example may spread?
[Footnote 1: Dated so in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips—with the addition “Westminster” in the first, and “Whitehall” in the two last: no copy given in Morland’s book.]
(LXII.) TO THE CITY OF GENEVA, June 8, 1655:—This letter announces the collection in progress in England for the relief of the Piedmontese Protestants. It will take some time to complete the collection; but meanwhile the first instalment of L2000 [Cromwell’s personal contribution] is remitted for immediate use. His Highness is quite sure that the City authorities of Geneva will cheerfully take charge of the money, and see it distributed among those most in need. A postscript bids the Genevese expect L1500 of the sum through Gerard Hensch of Paris, and the remaining L500 through Mr. Stoupe, a well known travelling agent of Cromwell and Thurloe.
(LXIII.) TO THE KING OF FRANCE, July 29, 1655:—The Protector here acknowledges an answer received to his previous letter of May 25. [The answer had been delivered to Morland early in June, when he was on his way through Paris, and transmitted by him to the Protector. A translation of it is given in Morland’s book, pp. 566-567.] He is glad to be confirmed in his belief that the French officers who lent their troops to assist the Piedmontese soldiery in that bloody business did so without his Majesty’s order and against his will—glad also to learn that these officers have been rebuked, and that his Majesty has, of his own accord, remonstrated with the Duke of Savoy, and advised him to stop his persecution of the Vaudois. As no effect has yet been produced however, [Morland has by this time delivered his speech at Turin, and reported the dubious answer given by the Duke of Savoy: ante pp. 42-43], the Protector is now despatching a special envoy [i.e. Mr. George Downing] to Turin, to make farther remonstrances. This envoy will pass through Paris, and his mission will have the greater chance of success if his Majesty will take the opportunity of again impressing his views upon the Duke. By so doing, by punishing those French officers who employed his Majesty’s troops so disgracefully, and by sheltering such of the poor Vaudois as may have sought refuge in France, his Majesty will earn the respect of other Powers, and will strengthen the loyalty of his own Protestant subjects.
(LXIV.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, July
29, 1655:—This is a
special note, accompanying the foregoing
letter, and introducing
and recommending Mr. Downing to his Eminence.
Besides these official documents for Cromwell on the Piedmontese business, there came from Milton his memorable Sonnet on the same, expressing his own feelings, and Cromwell’s too, with less restraint. It may have been in private circulation at the Protector’s Court at the date of the last two of the ten letters:
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints,
whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine
mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth
so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped
stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their
groans
Who were thy sheep, and in
their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese,
that rolled
Mother with infant down the
rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and
they
To heaven. Their martyred
blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian
fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may
grow
A hundredfold, who, having
learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian
woe.[1]
[Footnote 1: If Morland’s speech at Turin was of Milton’s composition, as we have found probable, the contrast between one phrase in that speech and the opening of this Sonnet is curious. “Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity,” says the Speech; “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints,” says the Sonnet.]
From the Piedmontese Massacre we have now to revert to Morus. His Fides Publica, in reply to Milton’s Defensio Secunda, had been published in an incomplete state, as we have seen, by Ulac at the Hague in August or September 1654; and Milton had a rejoinder to this publication ready or nearly ready, as we have also seen, by the end of March 1655. The reason why this Rejoinder had not already appeared has now to be stated.
One of Morus’s reasons for hurrying into France
so unexpectedly, and leaving his unfinished book in
Ulac’s hands, seems to have been the chance
of a professorship or pastorship there that would enable
him to quit Holland permanently, and settle at length
in his own country. “Some speak of calling
Morus, against whom Mr. Milton writes so sharply,
to be Professor of Divinity at Nismes; but most men
say it will ruin that church,” is a piece of
Parisian news sent by Pell to Thurloe in a letter
from Zurich dated Oct. 28, 1654;[1] and, with that
prospect, or some other, Morus seems to have remained
in France for some time after that date. When
copies of his incomplete Fides Publica reached
him there, he may not have thanked Ulac for issuing
the book in such a state without leave given.
All the more, however, he must have felt himself obliged
to complete the book. Accordingly he did, from
France, forward the rest of the MS. to Ulac, with
the result of the appearance at last from Ulac’s
press of a supplementary volume with this title:
“Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastae et Sacrarum
Page 161
Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei Publicae
contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum,
Typis Adriani Ulacq, 1655.” ("Supplement
to the Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman
and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the
Calumnies of John Milton. Hague: Printed
by Adrian Ulac, 1655.”) Ulac prefixes, under
the heading “The Printer to the Reader,”
a brief explanatory Preface. “You have here,
good Reader,” he says, “the missing remainder
of the edition of a Treatise which we lately printed
and published under the title Aleaxandri Mori Fides
Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni.
This remainder that Reverend gentleman has sent me
from France. Of the whole matter judge as may
seem fair and just to you. Let it suffice for
me to have satisfied your curiosity. Farewell.”
It must have been this Supplementum of Morus,
reaching London perhaps in April 1655, or perhaps
during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese
massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton’s
already written Rejoinder to the imperfect Fides
Publica. He would notice this “Supplement”
as well as the volume already published, and so have
done with Morus altogether.
[Footnote 1: Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 73; where “Mr. Miton” appears as “Mr. Hulton.”]
Morus’s Supplementum consists of 105 pages, added to the original Fides Publica, but numbered onwards from the last page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently dated. The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which the Fides Publica, broke off. Referring to the testimony borne to his character in the venerable Diodati’s Letter from Geneva to Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton’s mention of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus:
“This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in the number of those who are vituperated by you. Would he were alive! How he would beat back your pride, not indeed with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt! How he would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all in one! How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with holy loathing, spit upon it! ‘With him,’ you say, ’I had daily society at Geneva.’ But what did you learn from him? What of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance? Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your country whom he commended on the score of either learning or goodness. Of you we never heard a syllable from him.”
Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he proceeds to quote other Testimonials,
From the Magistrates of Amsterdam, July 11, 1654:—“Whereas the Reverend and very learned Mr. Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History in our illustrious School, has complained to us that one John Milton, in a lately published book, has attacked his reputation with atrocious calumnies, and has added moreover that the Magistrates of Amsterdam have interdicted him the pulpit, and that only his Professorship of Greek remains,... We, &c., testify.” What they testify is that, since Morus had come to Amsterdam, “not only had he done nothing which could afford ground for such calumnies, or was unworthy of a Christian and Theologian,” but he had also discharged the duties of his Professorship with extraordinary learning, eloquence and acceptance. So far, therefore, were the Magistrates from censuring M. Morus that, on the contrary, they were ready still, on any occasion, to afford him all the protection and show him all the good will in their power. The certificate is sealed with the City seal, and signed by “N. Nicolai,” the City clerk.
From the Amsterdam Church (about same date):—Three Pastors of this Church—Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas de la Bassecour—certify, “in the name of the whole convocation of the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam,” that Morus discharges his Professorship with high credit; also “that, as regards his life and conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary, they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly orthodox,—which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged kind had been known to his brethren (quod heud factum fuisset si hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset).”
From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29, 1654:—To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. “We think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue.” Signed,Page 164
for the Curators, by “C. de Graef” and “Simon van Hoorne.”
After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies, and saying that “one favourable nod from any one of the persons concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand Miltons to all eternity,” Morus corrects Milton’s mistake as to the nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer in one’s lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he had been a Professor of Greek—in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton’s facetiousness on the subject of Greek, and his puns on Morus in Greek, was he ashamed of the fact. “For all learning whatever is Greek, so that whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must necessarily be a sciolist.” And here he detects the reason of Milton’s incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might be a fair Latinist—not immaculate in Latin either, as he might hear some time or other from Salmasius himself, though that was a secret yet—he knew that he could never snatch away from Salmasius the palm of the highest, i.e. of Greek, scholarship. Morus does not claim for himself the title of a perfect classic; he is content with his present position and its duties. Admirable lessons in life are to be obtained from the study of Church History. Of these not the least is the verification of the words in the Gospel, “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” What calumnies had been borne by Jerome, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and others of the best of men! With such examples before one, why should an insignificant person, like the writer, conscious too of many faults and weaknesses, take calumny too much to heart? This pathetic strain, attained towards the close of the book, is maintained most skilfully in the peroration.
“But, if credit enough is not given to my own solemn affirmation, nor to this Public Testimony, Thee, Lord God, I make finally my witness, who explorest the inmost recesses of the spirit, who triest the reins, and knowest the secret motives of the breast, a Searcher of hearts to whom, as if by thorough dissection, all things are bare. Thee, God, Thee I call as my witness, who shalt one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign. Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidstPage 165
to Shimei, ‘Curse David.’ Glory be to Thy name that hast chosen to preserve me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength; that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me I have not yet turned to full account—whether because I have followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the evil-disposed, to whom, such has been Thy pleasure, I have been constantly an object of attack. Cover the past for me, regulate the future. Cleared before men, before Thee I shall be cleared never, unless Thy mercy shall be my succour. I confess I have sinned against Thee, nor shall I do so more. Thou seest how this paper on which I write is now all wet with my tears: pardon me, Redeemer mine, and grant that the vow I now take to Thee I may sacredly perform. Let a thousand dogs bark at me, a thousand bulls of Bashan rush upon me, as many lions war against my soul, and threaten me with destruction, I will reply no more, defended enough if only I feel Thee propitious. I will no more waste the time due to Thee, sacred to Thee, in mere trifles, or lose it in beating off the importunity of moths. Whatever extent of life it shall please Thee to appoint me still, I vow, I dedicate, all to Thee, all to Thy Church. So shall we be revenged on our enemies. Convert us all, Thou who only canst. Forgive us, forgive them also; nor to us, nor to them, but to Thy name, be the glory!”
Milton read this, but was not moved. On the 8th of August, 1655, there was published his Rejoinder to the original Fides Publica, with his notice of the Supplementum appended. It is a small volume of 204 pages, entitled Joannis Miltoni, Angli, Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, Ecclesiasten, Libelli famosi, cui titulus ’Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Caelum adversus Parricidas Anglicanus’, authorem recte dictum. Londini, Typis Newcomianis, 1655 ("The English, John Milton’s Defence for Himself, in reply to Alexander Morus, Churchman, rightly called the author of the notorious book entitled ’Cry of the King’s Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides,’ London, from Newcome’s Press, 1655"). This is perhaps the least known now of all Milton’s writings. It has never been translated, even in the wretched fashion in which his Defensio Prima and Defensio Secunda have been; and it is omitted altogether in some professed editions of Milton’s whole works.[1]
[Footnote 1: The date of publication is from the Thomason copy in the British Museum.]
After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel, which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Morus’s denials, or seeming denials, go for nothing. Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial; and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and purposes, responsible for the book. “Unless I show this.” he says, “unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame.” How is this strong statement supported? In the first place, there is reproduced the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour. “This I say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called its author, and they named no one for the author but you.” To Morus’s assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex answer. Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and boasting of it. Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus retained their former opinion. Partly he admits that there may latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger in being thought the author. Any criminal will deny his crime in sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had reason to expect when he knew that Milton’s reply to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was forthcoming, what had not the author of that book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth had been concluded? By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth than the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor? No wonder that, after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his handiwork. The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were what he had to fear. Were not these powerful enough motives for denial to a man like Morus? Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning—the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus’s own word? His friend Hotton’s only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus’s at second hand. And even now, after Morus’s repeated and studiously-worded denials in his Fides Publica, how did the case stand?
“That book [the Regii Sanguinis Clamor] consists of various prooemia and epilogues [i.e. addition to the central text]—to wit, An Epistle to Charles, another To the Reader, and two sets of verses at the close, one eulogistic of Salmasius, the other in defamation of me. Now, if I find that you wrote or contributed any page of this whole book, even a single verse, or that you published it, or procured it, or advised it, or superintended the publishing, or even lent the smallest particle of aid therein, you alone, since no one else is to the fore, shall be to me responsible for the whole, the author, the ‘Crier’. Nor can you call this merely my severity or vehemence; for this is the procedure established among almost all nations by right and laws of equity. I will adduce, as universally accepted, the Imperial Civil Law. Read Institut. Justiniani l. IV. De Injuriis, Tit. 4: ’If any one shall write, compose, or publish, or with evil design cause the writing, composing, or publishing, of a book or poem (or story) for the defamation of any one,’ &c. Other laws add ’Even should he publish in the name of another, or without name;’ and all decree that the person is to be taken for the author and punished as such. I ask you now, not whether you wrote the text of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, but whether you made, wrote, published, or caused to be published, the Epistle Dedicatory to Charles prefixed to the Clamor, or any particle thereof; I ask whether you composed or caused to be published the other Epistle to the Reader, or finally that Defamatory Poem, You have replied nothing yet to these precise questions. By merely disowning the Clamor itself and strenuously swearing that you wrote no portion of it, you thought to escape with safe credit, and make game of us, inasmuch as the Epistle to Charles the Son, or that to the Reader, or the set of Iambic verses, is not the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. Take now this in brief, therefore, that you may not be able so to wheel about or prevaricate in future, or hope for any escape or concealment, and that all may know how far from mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this in brief,—that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the bringing out of the whole book entitled Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and corrected the printer’s proofs, and composed, either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle to Charles II. which bears Ulac’s name. Of this your own name ‘ALEXANDER MORUS,’ subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation, that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously.... If youPage 168
ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers, considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no common means of investigating this affair:—’I have ascertained beyond doubt (exploratissimum mihi est) that Morus himself offered the copy of the Clamor Regii Sanguinis to some other printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not a few.’... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself and as abundantly witnessed there:—’It is most certain that almost all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the book called Regii Sanguinis Clamor; for he corrected the sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he was the author. He himself told a certain friend of mine that he was the author of that Epistle: nay there is nothing more certain than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of the same.’ ... I add yet a third extract. It is from another letter from the Hague:—’A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me that he has in his possession a copy of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor with Morus’s own letter.’”
Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it is also well to quote:
“You say you ’will produce not rumours merely, not conversations merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail an innocent man.’ Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which was written to you by ’that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,’—a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He—and it shows the singular kindliness of ‘the highly distinguished man’ (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)—goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine, with that same letter of yours. What do they do? They read me that letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport also requests, that I will trust to your letter in whichPage 169
you deny being the author of the Clamor Regii Sanguinis. I answered that what they asked was not fair—that neither was Morus’s word worth so much, nor was it customary to believe, in contradiction to common report and other ascertained evidence, the mere letter of an accused person and an adversary denying what was alleged against him. They, having nothing more to say on the other side, give up the debate.... When afterwards the Ambassador wanted to persuade Mr. Secretary Thurloe, he had still no argument to produce but the same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those ‘reasons’ brought to me ‘for which he desired’ me to be so good as not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do not then corrupt the Ambassador’s letter. Nothing there of ’hostile spirit,’ nothing of the ‘inopportune time;’ all he writes is that he ’is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so little moderation’—sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but out. Let ‘the highly distinguished man,’ especially as an Ambassador, hold me excused if I would not, and really could not, condone public injuries on private intercessions.”
Before Milton passes to the review of Morus’s vindication of his character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as objects intervening between him and that main task. For the Fides Publica, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague edition of Milton’s Defensio Secunda to which the Rev. Dr. Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to Milton’s charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called “a certain I know not what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor,” then taxed with ignorance, garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way with the phrase “But I do marvellously delight in Doctors.” Ulac, as having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. “You are a swindler, Ulac, said I; I am a good Arithmetician, says Ulac:” so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to the effect that Ulac’s creditors had been very ill satisfied with his counting, that the rule of probity is not the Logarithmic canon, that correct accounts are different things from Tables of Sines or Tables of Tangents and Secants, and that acting on the square is not necessarily taught by Trigonometry. After which Milton reverts to Ulac’s double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive Dedication of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor while he was corresponding with Milton’s friends in London and making kind inquiries about Milton’s health, and next in bringing out a pirated edition of the Defensio Secunda, printing the same inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the Fides Publica of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes Milton’s comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary tradesman.
For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless. There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by Milton is to go over the Fides Publica, extracting phrases and sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of which are Geneva and Leyden.
Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the fama against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since the Fides Publica had appeared;—
From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654 (i.e. from that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the writer’s name: sec ante pp. 172-173). “Our people here cannot sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (tota, hominis histrionia) have been more accurately or happily set forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this part of the business that you have not brought forward either imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his countenance to the man’s prostituted character.”
From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654:—“As regards Morus’s vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and everybody’s hands against him, and that many ministers even of the Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the pastoralPage 171
office. Nor here in Basel do I find men’s opinion of him different from that in Holland of those who like him least.”
The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of Morus’s alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton’s favourite. He repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and, using information that had recently reached him, though we have been in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave damsel:—
“You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day, and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia [he still keeps to the form ‘Pontia’] last met in the house of Salmasius—you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin without quotation from your own Fides Publica)—you who, on the testimony of Crantzius, were altier in French, or fiercish in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had terrible spurs for self-defence, prepare to do your manly utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia’s lines of beauty. At last, with difficulty,Page 172
either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,—for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, Pontia fecit. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form ‘Pontia.’] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac’s Tables of Tangents and Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers, printed on your skin.”
How does Milton meet Morus’s protestations of his innocence both at Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf? Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general and that, like his denials of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly. Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue? As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was. Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, “Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day,” could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod? “That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach when there was occasion.” Was that a whitewashing with which to be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things; but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. “The man of highest quality needs another’s testimonial the least; nor does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known.” Waiving that general question, however, one may examine Morus’s testimonials.
This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main part of Milton’s Pro Se Defensio; but, as Morus had only entered on his testimonials in the Fides Publica as originally published, and presented most of them in his Supplementum to that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an appendix entitled separately Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori Supplementum Responsio ("The Author’s Answer to Alexander More’s Supplement.”) Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that the preceding part of Milton’s book had been written two months before the Supplementum had come into his hands.
Morus’s published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it may have been observed, into three sets—(1) those given him at Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649 and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654, after Milton’s Defensio Secunda had appeared, and in contradiction of statements made in that book.—On the Genevese set of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton’s criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date. They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus’s conduct; the elder Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which Morus had published and Morus’s actual departure from Geneva. During that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?—On the Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now understood to speak of him with absolute detestation.
[Footnote 1: A Hague correspondent of Thurloe, commenting on the appearance of the first part of Morus’s Fides Publica and its abrupt ending had written, Nov. 3, 1654, thus: “The truth is Morus durst not add the sentence [text of the judicial finding] against Pontia; for the charges are recompensed [costs allowed her], and where there is payment of charges that is to say that the action of Pontia is good, but that the proofs fail.... The attestations of his life at Amsterdam and at the Hague, he could not get them to his fancy” (Thurloe, 11.708).]
While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of Milton’s extraordinary Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be of interest in the study of Milton’s character. There is, for example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (verba nuda et praetextata) in speaking of very gross things. He makes two daring quotations, one from Piso’s Annals and the other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly conclude our account of the Pro Se Defensio:—
“To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the right management of life. The two things, in short, are so interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very heavy things at once,—accusing another, and thinking well of himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth, under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs, to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenaei and Alexanders of the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not, would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess, and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far, to the utmostPage 176
of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons, prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result, not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State.”
What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he could out of hearing. When Milton’s Pro Se Defensio appeared, Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May, 1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point, it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great opportunities “for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the Gospel.” We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged especial compliments at Rome with Milton’s old friend Holstenius, the Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with Milton’s beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically reblazoned through Holland by Milton’s perseverance for his ruin, or on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we must leave him for the present.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bayle’s Dict, Art. Morus, and Bruce’s Life of Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr. McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more “profound veneration” than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit. 1840, pp. 52-57). He was “a Whig of the Old School,” with liberal political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord George Gordon, of the “No Popery Riots” of 1780. He wrote many books and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate, he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man, consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure, he was the author of Paradise Lost; but that much-praised poem had serious religious defects too! There is something actually refreshing in the naivete and courage with which the sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent from the common Milton-worship.—The authority for Morus’s acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under the title of Alexandri Mori Poemata. It contains his poem, a longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius. One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed “Ad Franciscum Turretinum, rarae indolis ac summae spei juvenem.” This Francis Turretin (so addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton’s letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in Hexameters, and entitled “AEgri Somnium: ad praestantem virum Carolum Dati” ("An Invalid’s Dream: To the excellent Carlo Dati"). It represents
It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the real amount of Morus’s responsibility in it?
That Milton’s original belief on this subject had been shaken has been already evident. He had written his Defensio Secunda, in firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, or that it had been concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus’s denial of the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the Defensio Secunda left the press, he had let it go forth as it was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the Fides Publica, however, with the references there to another person as the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name, had produced an effect. The authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the Fides Publica Morus had interposed himself personally,—not only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still, as the Fides Publica would never have been written had not Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor and dragged him before the world solely on that account, Milton had necessarily, in replying to the Fides Publica, adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the Pro Se Defensio, was a modified one. It was that, whatever facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac’s name. The question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was correct.
Almost to a tittle, it was. That Morus was the editor of the book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp. 459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton’s evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton, was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that Morus’s denial of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had not so much as known the fact of Milton’s blindness at the time of the publication of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, “If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind,”—a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum”) only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however, Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger.
The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called Molinaeus in Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I., officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from disrespectful, in one of Milton’s Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply to Bishop Hall.[1] Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in English public affairs, though in very different directions.—The younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having
[Footnote 1: See close of Animadversions on the Remonstrant’s Defence.]
[Footnote 2: Wood’s Fasti, II. 125-126; Whitlocke, II. 290. The writings of Lewis Du Moulin I have here mentioned are known to me only by the titles and descriptions given by Wood and his annotator Dr. Bliss.]
[Footnote 3: Wood’s Fasti, II. 195; and Gentleman’s Magazine for 1773, pp. 369-370. In the last is given the autobiographic sketch of Du Moulin, transcribed from the copy of his Histoire des Nouveaux Presbyteriens (edit. 1660) in the Canterbury Library.—The Mary du Moulin, the sister of Peter and Lewis, mentioned in the autobiographic sketch, died at the Hague in Feb. 1699, having, like most of the Du Moulins, attained a great age. The father, Dr. Peter the elder, died in 1658 at the age of ninety; Lewis died in 1683 at the age of seventy-seven; and Peter the younger, of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, died in 1684 at the age of eighty-four.—The reader will have noted the Pompeo Calandrini mentioned as an official in the London Post Office in the time of the Civil War, and as secretly aiding Charles I. in his correspondence. He was, doubtless, of the Italian-Genevese family of Calandrinis already mentoned, ante pp. 172-173 and footnote.]
Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter’s own hand. In the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of the original edition of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor; and in that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac’s name to Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to it in Du Moulin’s hand; “Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri Mori, quae mihi valde non probatur” ("Epistle which they say is by Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),[1] All the rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his Paradise Lost. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge University Press a volume entitled Petri Molinaei P. F. [Greek: Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres. It was a collection of Dr. Peter Du Moulin’s Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged, entitled respectively “Hymns to the Apostles’ Creed,” “Groans of the Church” (Ecclesiae Gemitus), and “Varieties.” In the second division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the “Eucharistic Ode,” to the great Salmasius for his Defensio Regia, and the set of scurrilous Iambics “To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide.” With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as known well enough to his
“’Made
a long speech,
Facing the left, while on his right there
lay
The actual turbot.’
[Footnote 1: Gentleman’s Magazine for 1773, as in last note.]
“And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not, without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard. Don’t laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer.”
This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember) seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration, retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for Milton’s life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect, giving “Mr. Abr. Hill” as his authority: “His [Milton’s] sharp writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador, all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called Clamor was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one [said Milton]; he having writ it [the Defensio Secunda], it should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the other.’”—Bentrovato; but there is at least one vital particular in which neither Du Moulin’s amusing statement in 1670 nor Aubrey’s subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had been better and longer kept than Du Moulin’s statement would lead us to suppose. Even Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know, having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and several others then knew, having been told in confidence by Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton’s wrath and stop the publication of the Defensio Secunda, seems evident, and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May 1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the denial of Morus that he was the author—nothing of any information from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to “a certain French minister,” no name was given. Farther, in the Fides Publica, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring
Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of 1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton’s elbow. In 1652, when the Regii Sanguinis Clamor appeared, Du Moulin, then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is closer knowledge of Milton’s position and antecedents than would have been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner. The author had evidently read Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and his Eikonoklastes, as well as his Defensio Prima; he was aware of the significance given to the first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the King’s Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton’s Divorce Pamphlets and Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton’s detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the Defensio Regia of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big performance; and not even to the son of the respected European theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the Commonwealth
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Fasti, II. 195.]
In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published his Pro Se Defensio, to his life through the rest of Oliver’s Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and indeed of controversy altogether for a good while.
In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in his life after his second castigation of Morus. “Being now quiet from state adversaries and public contests,” says Phillips, “he had leisure again for his own studies and private designs”; and Wood’s phrase is all but identical: “About the time that he had finished these things, he had more leisure and time at command.” Both add that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite hack-employments when he had nothing else to do—his compilations for his intended Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, his History of Britain, and his Body of Biblical Theology. The mere mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty France in the third or fourth year of Milton’s blindness confirms conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves, listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use, are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by himself, revising the day’s work mentally, and projecting the sequel. And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one’s company into the park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.
Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of 1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed the household, unless Milton’s two nephews are to be reckoned as also belonging to it.
That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle’s interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by his Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio of 1652, written in behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle’s superintendence; and it is probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes’s Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices, published in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices, which had contained Milton’s own sonnet to Lawes; and in the Divine Poems of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman, published in 1654, there are “Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne” by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe dated “Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654”, the writer—no other than Milton’s interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from Scotland himself—mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had interested himself in a new business: viz. “the prosecution of that information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at Leith.” Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he says, “I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton’s kinsman, to solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the Commissioners at Leith; who by his last letter promiseth to give me a very good account very speedily.” Whether this means that Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland, he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns an attempt on Milton’s part to find some public employment, other than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt, however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London, still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his ever being anything else.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. IV. 760-769 and 212; Lawes’s Ayres and Dialogues; Thurloe, II. 226-227.—At the date of the letter to Thurloe (April 11, 1654) Sandelands was still in great straits. He had been arrested for debt and was then in prison. He reminds Thurloe of his attempts to be useful for the last year or more, not forgetting his project, in the winter of 1652-3, of timber and tar from the Scottish woods. The “stirs in Scotland” since, it appears, had obstructed that design after it had been lodged, through Milton, with the Committee of the Admiralty; but Sandelands hopes it may be revived, and recommends a beginning that summer in the wood of Glenmoriston about Loch Ness, where the English soldiers are to be plentiful at any rate. “Sir,” he adds, “if a winter journey into Scotland to do the State service, and my long attendance here, hath not deserved a small reward, or at least the taking off of the sequestration from my parsonage in Yorkshire, I hope ere long I shall merit a far greater, when by my means his Highness’s revenues shall be increased.”—Milton, I may mention, had, about this time, several old acquaintances in the Protector’s service in Scotland. One was the ex-licencer of pamphlets, Gilbert Mabbot. I find him, in June 1653, in some official connexion with Leith (Council Order Book, June 3).]
On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton’s Pro Se Defensio, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled A Satyr against Hypocrites. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known “Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.” Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that of Godwin. “It is certainly written,” he says, “with considerable talent; and the scenes which the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer.” This last remark Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer natural humour, with no ulterior end, the The Satyr against Hypocrites “is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion, upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis under the name of Religion.” In other words, it is in a vein of anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a specimen:—
“Oh, what will men not dare, if
thus they dare
Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer,
Play with that fear, with that religious
awe,
Which keeps men free, and yet is man’s
great law!
What can they but the worst of Atheists
be
Who, while they word it ’gainst
impiety,
Affront the throne of God with their false
deeds?
Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds.
Are these the men that would the age reform,
That Down with Superstition cry,
and swarm
This painted glass, that sculpture, to
deface,
But worship pride and avarice in their
place?
Religion they bawl out, yet know
not what
Religion is, unless it be to prate!”
That such “a smart thing,” as Wood calls it, should have appeared in the middle of Cromwell’s Protectorate, and that, its anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the author should have been Milton’s younger nephew, who had been brought up from his very childhood under his uncle’s roof, and educated wholly and solely by his uncle’s own care. It would add to the surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton’s house; and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late, got quite beyond his uncle’s control, and had taken to courses of his own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had forsworn his uncle’s politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease with him.[1]
[Footnote 1: A Satyr against Hypocrites, 1655 (Thomason copy for date of publication); Godwin’s Lives of the Phillipses, 49-51; Wood’s Ath. IV. 764.—The Satyr against Hypocrites is ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That it passed at the time as Edward Phillips’s seems proved by the entry of it in the Stationers’ Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: “A Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent,” the publisher’s name being given as “Nathaniel Brooke.” I cannot explain this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss’s notes to Wood that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in Edward Phillips’s Theatrum Poetarum, published in 1675, the piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his “vein of burlesque and facetious poetry” (Godwin, Lives of the Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.]
During the whole time of Milton’s residence in Petty France, his elder nephew tells us, “he was frequently visited by persons of quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz. Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver’s Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of Politicus, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner.” To these may be added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to Milton and to each other. As one’s curiosity is keenest, at this point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.
On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol. III. 658-660) who she was,—by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.—Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell’s Council there. He may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called Parthenissa, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or “the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle.” When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the Invisible College, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption
[Footnote 1: Birch’s Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of Boyle’s Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley to his edition of Worthington’s Diary and Correspondence for the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green’s Calendar of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.]
How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton’s pupils in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the intermediate eight years of Milton’s changes of residence and fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase, announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were close neighbours, only St. James’s Park between their houses; and his having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some extent, be Milton’s pupil too. “My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed” are Phillips’s words on this point; and, though we included Lady Ranelagh’s son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of Milton’s pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy to come daily, or every other day, from his mother’s house in Pall Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references to books; and Lady Ranelagh’s son may have been his first experiment in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother’s account, the sequel will prove.
Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh’s visits to Milton, she might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For her ladyship’s circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p. 224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1] What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting between Du Moulin and Milton themselves
[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle’s friends and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at Boyle’s request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a little book called The Devil of Mascon, a French story of well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the first part of his Parerga or Collection of Latin Poems, the second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against Milton from the Regii Sanguinis Clamor.—See Birch’s Life of Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle’s Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to “My Honourable Lady Ranelagh” in terms implying long-established acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin’s long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.]
[Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his mother’s will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton’s pupil. See a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his sister, the young Earl’s mother (Boyle’s Works, V. 240). For the intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence see a letter of Hartlib’s to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).]
[Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle’s Works.]
Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh’s acquaintances. Their visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell’s, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome. Needham’s cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the Mercurius Politicus; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, The Public Intelligencer, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe. Both journals would come to Milton’s house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion. “Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner” is, however, Phillips’s phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle’s friends who were most frequently with him about this time. The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton’s had again “got near” him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:—
(1)
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and
wide,
And that one talent which is death to
hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul
more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light
denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies:—“God
doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts.
Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without
rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
(2)
Cyriack, this three years’ day these
eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the
year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor
bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and
steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost
thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them
overplied
In Liberty’s defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to
side.
This thought might lead me through the
world’s vain masque
Content, though blind, had I no better
guide.
(3)
Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous
son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways
are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by
the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time
will run
On smoother, till Favonius reinspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh
attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed
nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light
and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may
rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful
voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of those delights can judge, and
spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
(4)
Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal
bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
Pronounced, and in his volumes taught,
our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench,
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to
drench
In mirth that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intend, and what the
French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and
know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest
way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise
in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the
day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton’s circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness? There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton’s own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,—with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,—come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening—words of which
[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of No. 2 I have substituted the word “talks” for the word “rings,” now always printed in that place. “Of which all Europe rings from side to side,” is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the true text; and there the word is “talks.” Phillips had doubtless the echo of “rings” in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an editor hardly dares to revert to “talks.”]
We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. “Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicae Anglicae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicae Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur, 1655” ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton’s prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton’s performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only.
[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]
[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]
A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation. The opening is as follows:—
“That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturingPage 200
any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God’s bounty, of so many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home, rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the Spaniards there,—nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as God ’hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation’ [Acts xvii. 26] ... Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world vast changes, but especially as between the English and the Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of their affairs.”
The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given, with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole sovereignty in the West Indies,—the Papal donation, and the right of first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is brought into the plea. Thus:—
“If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy (especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to that deliberation of his in 1588 ’whether it would be more prudent to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of England’;—beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry friars whom they call missionaries (per illos fraterculos missionarios quos vacant Hispanicae aulae consiliis intimis informata primitus ac designata erat).”
How far Milton’s hand helped in this important document of the Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that Milton’s hand was to some extent employed in the document, it may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655, after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in Piedmont.[1]
[Footnote 1: The Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos was reprinted, as indubitably Milton’s, in 1738, and again in 1741, to assist in rousing British feeling afresh against Spain; and Birch and all succeeding editors of Milton have agreed in regarding it as his. Godwin, however (Hist. of Commonwealth, IV. 217-219, footnote), suggests doubts.]
What adds to the probability that Cromwell’s Manifesto against Spain, dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton’s composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention, that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May 1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian documents, and require elucidation:—
(LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, Dec. 1655:—His Highness congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called The Great Prince, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.—The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp. 212-213).
(LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:—Samuel Mico, William Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned his Highness about a ship of theirs, called The Unicorn, which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo worth L34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then peace between England and France, and express promises had been recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants as “the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed alliance.”
(LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Jan. 1655-56:[1]—His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert Vessey of the Nightingale war-ship, and further secured Dillon’s escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the Governor’s conduct and give satisfaction.
[Footnote 1: Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in Hamilton’s Milton Papers (p. 4).]
(LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, Jan. 1655-6. To understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the following is Cromwell’s answer:—“Both from your public acts transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and Morland], and from your letter dated at Zuerich, Dec. 27, we understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.—too abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured, yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part, we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith, no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved friends, as you always have been, be still, by God’s help, brave; do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all meansPage 204
in your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese: firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part, be assured [the expression in the singular: de me scitote] that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war.”—From a private letter of Thurloe’s to Pell, of the same date as this official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer the Cantons of Zuerich and Bern a subsidy of L20,000, at the rate of L5000 a month, on security for repayment—the first L5000, however, to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Thurloe’s Letter in Vaughan’s Protectorate, I, 334-337.]
(LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Feb. 1655-6:[1]—This letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its circumstances; and it requires introduction.—Charles X., or Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland, between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German empire generally, were interestedPage 205
in saving Poland, and therefore tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell’s respect. Nor was Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell—“Whitlocke’s Treaty,” as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war, there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X. being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, “generally proper handsome men and fair-haired.” Whitlocke, who was naturally called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they landed, to Sir Abraham Williams’s house in Westminster; there were feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector’s charge, for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector acquitted himself best. “The Ambassador’s people,” says Whitlocke, “were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they [the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador’s three salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they saluted eachPage 206
other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other. After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England, he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility.” The speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin by the Ambassador’s secretary, was to the effect that the King of Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for additional treaty. Cromwell’s reply, delivered in English, which the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very willing to enter into “a nearer and more strict alliance” with the King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count Bundt’s proposals.—All this had been in the last days of July 1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector—the Treaty with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen. Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador’s own expense, had become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke, who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because other “grandees” held aloof. “No Commissioners being yet come to the Swedish Ambassador,” writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655, “he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it mended.” In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time a man whose embassy compelled attention. “Letters of the success of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania,” “Letters of the Swedes’ victory against the Muscovites,” “The Swedes had good success in Poland and Moscovia,” “An Agreement made between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg:” such had been pieces of foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6, Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been empowered, on the Protector’s part, to treat with Count Bundt, and the Treaty had begun.—There were preliminary difficulties, however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League ofPage 207
the chief Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound, arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending Whitlocke thither for the second time as Ambassador-Plenipotentiary—greatly to Whitlocke’s horror, who had no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count Bundt’s displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted. At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet Cromwell’s views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset House. “A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of ships in one another’s dominions;” “long debates touching contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn, hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:” such are Whitlocke’s descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.—In the midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King. The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden, occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in London. “Feb. 20,” writes Whitlocke, “the Swedish Ambassador kept a solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden. All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large, being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles, glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets, which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg Residents, MynheerPage 208
Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides the Ambassador’s company. It was a very great feast, of seven courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to them.”—Milton’s Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell’s name relates itself to this last incident. The King had written specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:—“As it is universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself, so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father’s valour and glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was congratulated—the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so propitious to your affairs,”—It is clear that Cromwell desired to be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.[2]
[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript.]
[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, IV. 208-227; i.e. from July 1655 to Feb. 20, 1655-6.]
(LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, Feb. 1655-6(?)[1]:—John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653 because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own account, that he might pocket the money. There had been negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth L3000; will his Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation?
[Footnote 1: Quite undated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript, but conjecturally of about this date.]
(LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, April 1, 1656:—A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel, Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs, called The Edmund and John, on her voyage from Brazil to Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the chief authority.
(LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, April 9, 1656 (?): This is the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the Protector’s envoys, it may be translated entire: “WILLIAM LOCKHART, to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He, that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty, and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your Majesty and your kingdom.”
(LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, AprilPage 210
9, 1656 (?):—A Letter accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: “Seeing the affairs of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return. From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your reputation and dignity."[1]
[Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers (pp. 9-10). He dates them both, as in the Transcript, “West., Aug. 1658;” but that is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec. 1655, and he “took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way to France” (see a letter of Thurloe’s to Pell in Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 376-377). I have ventured to affix the exact date “April 9, 1656” to the two letters, because it is on that day that I find Lockhart’s departure on his embassy definitely settled in the Council Order Books. Before “Aug. 1658” Lockhart had known Louis XIV. and the Cardinal intimately for more than two years and needed no introduction.]
(LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, April 17, 1656:—Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the Swedish Treaty.—That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch, tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden, trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because, waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; “he durst not for his head,”Page 211
he said, “admit of such dishonour to his master”; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen, so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, “when a man professed sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing”; if a man meant Yea he said Yea, and if he meant No he said No; but in England it seemed to be different. The explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed him down again, the Treaty proceeded.—One of the most important meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke’s account, was on the 8th of April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there by appointment, and read “the new Articles in English as they were drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council.” A long debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged “to be excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe,” &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: “that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire,” and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and “Mynheer Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband goods,” &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer Coyet,—also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said “he desired a copy of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might have it in Latin, which he would consider of.” This was promised.—The meeting so described was nearly the last in which the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for Cromwell to his Swedish MajestyPage 212
has reference to that fact. “Peter Julius Coyet,” it begins, “having performed his mission to us, and so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning to your Majesty”; and in three sentences more very handsome testimony is borne to Coyet’s ability and fidelity in the discharge of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the Protector’s high regard for himself. “A constant course of victories against all enemies of the Church” is the Protector’s wish for him.—Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: “This day the Protector gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of Sweden’s Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a fair jewel, with his Highness’s picture, and a rich gold chain: it cost about L400.” Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a fortnight after the date of Milton’s letter.[1] Indeed he remained a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last.
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 227-255: i.e. from Feb. 20, 1655-6, to May 3, 1656.]
(LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, May 14, 1656:[1]—John Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London, and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs, called The Jonas of London, was taken at the mouth of the Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the French King by M. L’Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor. Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct justice to be done.
[Footnote 1: Not dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, or Skinner Transcript; but dated by reference to it in a subsequent letter.]
(LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, May 1656:—Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of insurance on one. She was The Good Hope of London, belonging to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of real hardship.
(LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, May 1656:—Three times before letters have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their father’s will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court. This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful.
These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton’s services were again in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the whole of his renewed industry in that employment.
The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his master’s interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm, searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt, it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke, that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke, Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt, inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him; but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin, in reply to some of M. Coyet’s observations in the same tongue, as if to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector’s Court. There had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for fault-finding, did not let it escape him. “The Swedish Ambassador,” relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, “again complained of the delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him, and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke’s Treaty], and so he heard the Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR. MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the 8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and that Milton’s amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to have taken more easily than became their places, or than the Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count that the Protector’s official retinue must be a ragged and undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav’s. May not Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.]
[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still not one of the Council.]
The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that “several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent.” They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been L200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be L800 a year or more. On the 21st of February he had L300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted L100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with L50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His departure, I should say—preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it—was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows’s Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector’s official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business.
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec. 1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty by Thurloe’s orders.]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates. It is curious that Whitlocke, noting the new appointment of Meadows, under March 1655-6, enters it thus: “Mr. Meadows was going for Denmark, agent for the Protector.” Meadows did go to Denmark, but not till a good while afterwards; and the blunder of Denmark at this date for Portugal is one of the many proofs that Whitlocke’s memorials are not all strictly contemporary, but often combinations of reminiscences and afterthoughts with the materials of an actual diary.]
Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector’s Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature.
It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people’s fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology. One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey Moseley, Milton’s publisher of 1645, faithful to his old trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill’s Parthenissa, had begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King Charles’s reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may now state more distinctly, were Milton’s nephews, Edward and John Phillips.[1]
[Footnote 1: My notes from the Stationers’ Registers, from 1652 to 1656.]
Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw’s Press-Act of 1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell’s
Tuesday, April 1656:—“That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them, to examine the business touching the book entitled Sportive Wit or the Muses’ Merriment, and to send for the author and printer, and report the same to the Council.”
Friday, April 25, 1656:—Present: the Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, and Lord Strickland. “Colonel Jones reports from the Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of a book entitled Sportive Wit or the Muses’ Merriment, that the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter. Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those already seized, toPage 217
be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly burnt.—He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory. Ordered, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the Council on Tuesday next.”—Milton’s younger nephew, therefore, had been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of Council present when this fact came out, six were among those friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his Defensio Secunda: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence, Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.
Saturday, April 26, 1656:—His Highness the Lord Protector approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is the order “for burning the book called Sportive Wit.”
Friday, May 9, 1656:—His Highness the Lord Protector present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert, Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and Jones:—Ordered, &c. “That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same be burnt.”
Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed. I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title Sportive Wit, or the Muses’ Merriment; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto “Ut nectar ingenium” under the title, and with,
“Reader,—To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this Wit I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion, invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy, assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called The White Devil, subscribes that the action of Perkins crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and readest the sign of ’Ben Jonson’s Head, in the backside of the Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,’ where they are sold, enquire who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit.”
Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill’s lampoon on Ben Jonson for his Magnetic Lady and Ben Jonson’s reply to the same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of "Sir J. M." (Sir John Mennes), "Jas. S." (James Smith), "Sir W. D" (Sir William Davenant), and "J. D." (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent “drollery” the following stanzas from a poem entitled "Nonsense" may be a sample:—
O that my lungs could bleat like buttered
pease!
But bleating of my lungs hath caught the
itch,
And are as mangy as the Irish seas,
That doth engender windmills in a bitch.
I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep,
Snort like a woodknife in a lady’s
eyes;
Which makes her grieve to see a pudding
creep;
For creeping puddings only please the
wise.
Note that a hard-roed herring should presume
To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse,
For fear the hailstones which did fall
at Rome
By lessening of the fault should make
it worse.
For ’tis most certain winter woolsacks
grow,
Till that the sheepshorn planets give
the hint,
From geese to swans, if men could keep
them so,
And pickle pancakes in Geneva print.
At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this was the same book as the Sportive Wit, or at all like that book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought Government censure upon Phillips’s volume, while others, as had, escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1]
[Footnote 1: Thomason copy of Wit and Drollery in the British Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.—I failed to find a book with the title The Sportive Wit in the Thomason Collection, and hence my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the titles and the other with the other, advertised in a contemporary newspaper list of books on sale by the publisher Brooke. In Lowndes’s Bibliog. Manual by Bohn, sub voce “Wit,” the two books are given as distinct; but then Sportive Wit or the Muses’ Merriment is there dated 1656, while there is no notice of an edition of Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems, till 1661. Though I leave the matter in doubt, some collector of Facetiac may know all about it. In any case, if Wit and Drollery was not the identical book condemned, it is of interest to us as being one of Phillips’s editing at the same moment.—Donne, who figures so strangely in Wit and Drollery, had been dead twenty-five years, but was accessible in various editions and reprints of his Poems. The other three poets named in the title-page as the chief authors of the pieces—Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and Davenant—were still alive and publishing for themselves. Indeed the Musarum Delitice, or Muses’ Recreation, consisting of pieces by Mennes and Smith, had been published by Herringman only the year before (1655), and was in its second edition in 1658; and it may have been the success of this and Smith in it. Mennes, a stout book that led to Phillips’s publication and to the use of the names of Mennes Royalist sea-captain, who had served with Prince Rupert, and was in exile at our present date, became Chief Comptroller of the Navy after the Restoration and lived to 1670. Smith was a Devonshire clergyman, of Royalist antecedents, who had complied with the existing powers and retained his living. After the Restoration he had promotion in the Church: and he died in 1667.]
Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips. On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered Wit and Drollery edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called “The Illustrious Shepherdess” and “The Imperious Brother” both “written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls “an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips’s of the same date. This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.
[Footnote 1: Stationers’ Registers of date.]
[Footnote 2: Godwin’s Lives of the Phillipses, 138-139. I know the translations only from Godwin’s account of them.]
Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond’s son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond’s brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, was then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally L1500, but had been reduced to L500, was first reduced farther to L300, and next, apparently by Cromwell’s own interposition, altogether “discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself,
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.]
Drummond’s Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that Drummond was one of Milton’s favourites, and regarded by him as one of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton’s own mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond’s genius is exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable. Thus:—
“To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at length with so much the more forcible rays...”
Milton’s interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford. “In the beginning of this year,” says Wood in his Fasti for 1656, “studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of ’Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo’: at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O’Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the Invisible College of London. Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names. But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg’s only pupil at Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton’s pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton’s recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth’s more regular tutor. It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Fasti, II. 197.]
Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton’s Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is Milton’s first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg’s charge. The date may be in or about May 1636:—
“To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.
“I received your letter much after its date,—not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother’s. Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother’s opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother.
“Westminster.”
In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton.
The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton’s next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:—
“To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government.
“Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy; and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have certainly kept your departing promise of writing to me, and that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,—unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini[1] are doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns the salutation. Farewell.
“Westminster: June 25, 1656.”
[Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born 1614 and died 1661.]
That Count Bundt’s remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in the Protector’s diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:
(LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, June 1656:[1]—This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls, agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even haughtily Protestant. On the ground that “most people think in Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have receivedPage 225
from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own perception and knowledge,” the case of Romswinckel is represented as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as “the Papal superstition” are not spared. The passport was probably expected to come only into Protestant hands.
[Footnote 1: This Letter is not given in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; it is in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers (pp. 5-6).]
(LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN,
June 1656:[1]—A
special recommendation of the above Romswinckel
to the Swedish
King, in the same high Protestant tone.
[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection or Phillips, but in Skinner Transcript, and printed by Hamilton (Milton Papers, 6-7).]
(LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, July 1656:—The Portuguese merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650. The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest.
(LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, July 1656:—After more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been frequent new displays of the Count’s high temper, the Treaty between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus: “Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done.” On the whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of the Treaty by special compliments and favours. “The Swedish Ambassador,” says Whitlocke under date July 25, “having taken his leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one of his [the Ambassador’s] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the mareschal.” The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was the letter of honourable dismissal which the SwedePage 226
was to take back to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by the Protector’s blind Latinist.—“Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, &c.” is the heading of the letter; which proceeds thus:—“Most Serene King,—As we have justly a very high regard for the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His Church’s defence and in the affairs of Sweden!—From our Palace of Westminster,—July 1656. Your Majesty’s most affectionate, OLIVER, Protector &c.”—Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a month more after all, receiving farther attentions and entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking with him not only Milton’s Letter, but also a present from the Protector of L1200 worth of “white cloth” and a magnificent jewel. It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. “The jewel was his Highness’s picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen fair diamonds, each diamond valued at L60: in all worth about L1000.” The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257-273.]
(LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—Mr. Philip Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was attacked by two horsemen, who “discharged two pistols into the litter and shot him through the left hand."[1] The wound was not serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern. He offered a large reward for the discovery of thePage 227
criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated “Alcantara, May 26, N.S.,” he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.[2] The present Letter by Milton is the Protector’s reply. Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty’s letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of “some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations.”
[Footnote 1: Thurloe to Pell, June 26, Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 432.]
[Footnote 2: See Letter itself in Thurloe, V. 28.]
(LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, Aug. 1656:—Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.—Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called The Endeavour, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector now demands that L16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French Majesty’s honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end.
(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, Aug. 1656:—On the same subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as “the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance.”
(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Aug. 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. “We doubt not,” It begins, “but all will bear us this testimony—that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies.” With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, howPage 228
the common enemy will rejoice! “To the Spaniard the prospect has already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that, abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning.” The Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to be on their guard. “We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom, often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants: how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which, plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money; how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here, finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King.” What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to him also the sentiments of this letter.—That the preparation of this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books for Tuesday Aug. 19:—“Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of thePage 229
Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present debate, and report it again to the Council.” Cromwell was himself present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the document itself was substantially Milton’s. Thurloe can hardly have drafted such a document. He may have gone to Milton first.
(LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—The Protector has received his Portuguese Majesty’s Ratification of the Peace negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in 1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same; and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations, dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty with all cordiality. As to his Majesty’s letters of June 24th, mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may be perilled by tampering with any part of it.
(LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, Aug. 1656:—This is a letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count’s zeal and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King, relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows.
(LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Aug. 1656:—A letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago, upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! “Who is ignorant that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have, for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations, slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers in whose valour,Page 230
resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do.” O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result.
(LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, Sept. 1856:—William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio"). For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about L300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim. The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears.
(XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, Sept. 1656:—His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor’s hands. He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council. If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.
Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton’s largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that
A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:—“Upon consideration of the humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness, and by his Highness referred to the Council, Ordered ... That the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov. 24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties, notwithstanding.” And so even the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell’s Established Church. Can his secret have possibly been then known? Can the Council have known that the man who petitioned the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had abused the Commonwealth men as “robbers, traitors, parricides” and “plebeian scoundrels,” who had written of Cromwell “Verily an egg is not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet,” and who had capped all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him “more vile than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?[1]
[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter du Moulin did become a Vicar in Cromwell’s Established Church. He was inducted into the Vicarage of Bradwell, in Bucks, Oct. 24, 1657, but quitted it in a few days, apparently for something better (Wood’s Fasti, II. 195: Note by Cole).]
SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST SESSION OF OLIVER’S SECOND PARLIAMENT.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES:
DEPARTURE OF LADY
RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER
HEIMBACH: MILTON’S
SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK:
LETTER TO
EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON’S LIBRARY AND THE
BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M.
STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR
THE PROTECTOR (NOS.
XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART,
AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS
OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES
AND DISPATCHES OVER
LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING:
HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE
PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.
Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton’s life through that section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for the youth:—
“To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.
“Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most excellent mother, on her way to Ireland—whose departure ought to be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she has stood in the place of all kith and kin: nam et mihi omnium, necessitudinum loco fuit)—carries you this letter herself. That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me to see in you. Which result, by God’s grace, I see you not only engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will accomplish,—not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you. I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself; which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser: you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native land of wethers there are born strong horns, able to ram down most powerfully cities and towns? [Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quae urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint? Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance. Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.
“Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656.”
If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at least another fortnight. The pass for “Lady Catharine, Viscountess of Ranelagh, and her two daughters,” with their servants, eight horses, &c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector’s Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1] She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had been to him, he says, “in the place of all kith and kin.” How much that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase, duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any eminent man’s life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his behalf. Twice in Milton’s life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto, we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her henceforth the honour also of having been Milton’s friend.
[Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.]
The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed, Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton’s letter suggests farther that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but was now on a visit to Holland.
[Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small folio, is entitled “Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnae Brittaniae Protectorem, verae Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum, Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi Cottrellii, 1656.” The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the Universities, are especially noticed.]
“To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.
“Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the Mauritanian mountain Atlas, I think, and not a book, that you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return, how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell, and come back to us as soon as you can.
“Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656.”
One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called Novus Atlas, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent Geographia Blaeviana, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, “Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens,” and “Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens.” The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu’s four volume Atlas of 1650 was L12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about L11. It was much as if one were asked to give L38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1]
[Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu’s general Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same year is from a curious letter in the Correspondence of the Earls of Ancram and Lothian, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in 1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).]
Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the 12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton’s second marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: “The agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the Parish of Margaret’s in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of the Parish of Mary’s in Aldermanbury, was published three several market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and, no exceptions being made against their intention, they were, according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace for this City of London."[1] Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the “Mrs.” before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we learn farther, from Phillips, that she was “the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney”; and that is nearly all that we know of her family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for L13 8_s._ to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.[2] There is reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never seen her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his dark household.
[Footnote 1: Given in Gentleman’s Magazine for June, 1840; but I owe my copy to the kindness of Colonel Chester, who took it direct from the Register of St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and who supplies me with the following information in connexion with it: “It is generally said that the marriage took place in that church; but this, I think, may be doubted. I noticed, in several instances, that, when the religious ceremony was performed after the civil one, the fact was recorded; but it is not so in this case. I think that the City marriages at that period usually took place in the Guildhall, where a magistrate sat daily; though I believe they were sometimes solemnized at the residence of one of the parties.”]
[Footnote 2: Phillips; Hunter’s Milton Gleanings, p. 35. Colonel Chester tells me that, although Katharine Woodcock is described in the Register as “of the parish of Mary’s in Aldermanbury,” he found no trace of her family in that parish at the time. “There were Woodcocks there at a much earlier period (say 100 years before); but about this time I found only one burial, that of Michael Woodcock, whose will I have since looked at, but which does not mention her.” The conjecture that Mr. Francis Woodcock, minister of St. Olave’s, Southwark, was a relative, receives no support from what is known of his principles (see Vol. III, 184). A contemporary Puritan divine, Thomas Woodcock, for some time minister of St. Andrew Undershaft, is found living at Hackney after the Restoration.]
The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain, Sindercombe’s plot against the Protector’s life, the debates in Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March 1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:—
“To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.
“That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps on the inducement of other people’s opinion; but you could hardly return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment, or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,—were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weaponPage 237
that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, On the Manner of Holding Parliaments, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine Historians, Theophanis Chronographia (folio: Greek and Latin), Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum, with Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis (folio: Greek and Latin), Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et Vitae Romanorum Pontificum (folio); to which be so good as to add, from the same press, Michael Glycas, and Joannes Cinnamus, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out. I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after, is my sincere desire. Farewell.
“Westminster: March 24, 1656-7.”
Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an excellent notice in Bayle. “EMERIC BIGOT,” says Bayle, “one of the most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have published others had he lived to complete them. M. Menage in France, and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about sixty-four years.” How exactly this description of
Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot’s immediate commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:—There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton’s library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the Chronographia of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the Brevarium Historicum of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the Lives of the Popes. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of Michael Glycas, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by Joannes Cinnamus, the imperial notary of the 12th century.—As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned
[Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure, that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos, by Henry Elsynge, Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4). The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in 1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw’s. Actually Elsynge’s autograph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date of Milton’s letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book, “enriched with a large addition from the author’s original MS.,” was published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum (Bonn’s Lowndes, Article “Elsynge").]
The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in Milton’s letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the “MR. STOUPE” who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.—He was no common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post to be one of Thurloe’s travelling-agents and political intelligencers or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his talent for collecting information in London itself by means of correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or “Christian,” had more anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own account, that knew of Cromwell’s design
[Footnote 1: Burnet’s Hist. of his Own Time, Book I.]
[Footnote 2: Of the L2000 sent from London to Geneva in June 1655 as the first instalment of relief for the Piedmontese Protestants (Cromwell’s own subscription) L500 had been sent through Stoupe. See ante p. 190.]
[Footnote 3: Stoupe might make a good character in any historical novel of the time of the Protectorate. His career did not end then. He was to be “a brigadier-general in the French armies,” and one knows not what else, before Burnet made his acquaintance.]
Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our present section of his life, five bear date before his second marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer intervals than those before:—
(XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, Oct. 1656:—Peace with Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty.
(XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, Oct. 1656:—A soldierly knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should be paid his arrears.
(XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, Oct. 1656:—An English ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute his claim for L7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages sustained by the seizure of his ship, the Scipio, six years before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company’s service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot but write specially in this case.
(XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, Oct. 16, 1656:—Long ago, in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays, being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the Hamburg Court, assigningPage 242
them all the said Alexander’s property, except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he forwards. “But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary, and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of retaliation.” His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the prudence of the Senate.
(XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Nov. 1656:—No answer has yet been received to his Highness’s former letter, of May 14, on the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L’Estrades, the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253). Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L’Estrades was then away with the army in Flanders; but “now he is living in Paris itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court enriched with the spoils of our people.” His Highness now imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter. It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.—It is a curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight should have solemnised Milton’s marriage with Katharine Woodcock. Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been written after Lord Mayor’s day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656.
(XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, Dec. 1856:—This is another of Cromwell’s fervid Protestant letters, very much in the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon de Pitkum, his Majesty’s agent. They have been so gratifying, and the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon: meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of Europe that are much occupyingPage 243
his Highness. The dissensions among Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can be brought about. The Protector’s good offices towards that end shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with him.—Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date Tuesday, Dec. 2: “The draft of a letter from his Highness to the King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to send the same.” The letter, therefore, was deemed important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go back to him.
(XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, March 1656-7:—After an apology to the Landgrave for not having sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago, the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and elsewhere. “We have particularly desired the same peace for the Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly. For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally, by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however, they might allow one to entreat—that, as they do differ, they would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other nevertheless.”Page 244
It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished Protestant ancestry.
(XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, March 1657:—After thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a Scotchman, master of one of the Duke’s ships. The ship had been wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone’s fault. The pilot, to whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes the Duke will not stop his pay.
(XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, April 1657:—The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck, who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his captivity easier.
(C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, April 1657:—On the throne of this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis, the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father’s policy for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I., however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at Archangel, and have a factory there, but “not to go up in the country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."[1] The envoy himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence, or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor,Page 245
his vast military forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved, therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special envoy to “the Great Duke of Muscovia”; and, on the 12th of March 1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his Highness as the proper person.[2] The present letter of Milton, accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take with him.—The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: “Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow, Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow, Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."[3] After referring to the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his instructions.
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, II. 562.]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Book of date.]
[Footnote 3: Compare this address with that which the Envoy of the United Provinces was instructed by the States-General to be most punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):—“Most illustrious, most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz, Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof, Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer, Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada and the low lands of Zenigow, Resan, Polotzko, Rostof, Yareslav, Belooseria, Udoria,
The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the Protector’s diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND, after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656, had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have L700 for ’the charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies of his History,’ and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland’s History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont, which appeared in the following year, was therefore a State publication the copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec. 1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be L1000 a year; a special sum of L400 was voted for the expense of his journey; and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese mission, L100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine years—a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a present money-payment of L1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a Pan-Protestant
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates Jan. 1, 27, Feb. 3, 24, March 5, 12, 19, 1656-7, and May 5, 1657; Letter of Durie, dated “Westminster, May 28, 1657,” in Vaughan’s Protectorate (II. 173).]
At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of the Protector’s service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell’s alliance offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7), leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders (ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with this in Cromwell’s general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655, but had gradually, as so many of Milton’s subsequent State-Letters prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell’s influence could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie’s old dream of Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now, consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service generally,
“Thousands
at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without
rest.”
While so many were thus coming and going, at L800 a year, L1000 a year, or L5000 a year, blind Milton, with his L200 a year, could only “stand and wait,” the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed secretarial duty at
JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658.
HISTORY:—OLIVER’S SECOND PROTECTORATE.
BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH
THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE.
OLIVER’S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657—SEPT. 3, 1658.
REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE:
THE
PROTECTOR’S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL:
RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH
OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES
IN FLANDERS:
SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS
OF THE
PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN,
AND THE UNITED
PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL’S DIPLOMACY
IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN
EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT:
CONTROVERSY
BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM:
THE PROTECTOR AND THE
QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF
SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL’S
TWO YOUNGEST
DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF
THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS
FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL’S
PEERS.—REASSEMBLING OF THE
PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL’S
Whether Cromwell’s Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.
Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage of sovereignty. The phrases “His Highness’s Court” and “His Highness’s Household” had become quite familiar. On all public occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell’s approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;[1] in mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,—e.g. “The Marquis of Hertford,” “The Earl of Warwick,” “The Earl of Mulgrave,” “The Lord Viscount Lisle,” “The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill”; and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by calling Fleetwood “My Lord Deputy,” Whitlocke “Lord Commissioner Whitelocke,” Fiennes “Lord Commissioner Fiennes,” and Lawrence “Lord President Lawrence,” but there had been a curious extension of usage in this last particular. The Protector’s sons had become respectively “The Lord Richard Cromwell” and “The Lord Henry Cromwell” in the newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or other, probably on account of places held in his Highness’s Household or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called “Major-General Lambert,” and had become “Lord Lambert,” and from the beginning of 1656 “Mr. Strickland” had passed into “Lord Strickland.” They are so named both in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session of the Second Parliament.
[Footnote 1: Here is a list of Cromwell’s Knights of the First Protectorate, so far as I have ascertained them:—Lord Mayor Thomas Viner (Feb. 8, 1653-4); John Copleston (June 1, 1655); Colonel John Reynolds (June 11, 1655); Lord Mayor Sir Christopher Pack (Sept. 20, 1655); Colonel Thomas Pride, of ‘Pride’s Purge’ celebrity (Jan. 17, 1655-6); Major-General John Barkstead, Lieutenant of the Tower (Jan. 19, 1655-6); M. Coyet, of the Swedish Embassy (April 15, 1656); Richard Combe (Aug. 1656); Lord Mayor Dethicke and George Fleetwood, Esq. of Bucks (both Sept. 15, 1656); Ambassador Lockhart, Lord Mayor Robert Tichbourne, Sheriff James Calthorpe, and Lislebone Long, Esq., Recorder of London (all Dec. 10, 1656); Colonel James Whitlocke, a son of Bulstrode Whitlocke (Jan. 6, 1656-7); Thomas Dickson, of York (March 3, 1656-7); Richard Stayner (June 11, 1657).]
If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally thrown round himself. The Protector’s very aged Mother having died in honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her last words[1], the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as follows:—
[Footnote 1: At “ninety-four years of age” according to a letter of Thurloe’s the day after her death (Thurloe to Pell, Nov. 17, 1654, in Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 79-81); but Colonel Chester (Westminster Abbey Registers, 521, Note) sees reason for believing she had been baptized at Ely, Oct. 28, 1565, and was therefore only in her ninetieth year at her death.]
HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: aetat. 58.
HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS.
Children and Children-in-Law.
1. THE LADY BRIDGET: aetat. 33: Ireton’s widow, married to Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then, retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657.
2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: aetat. 31: married since 1649 to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley, Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament, and in the Council of the Protectorate.—Though Lord Richard’s tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with “hawking, hunting, and horse-racing,” he had been in both the Parliaments of the Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the 18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the Council’s Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:—“The Lord Richard Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General Desborough, in virtue of his Highness’s Commission under the Great Seal.” He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next after the President’s in the sederunt.
3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: aetat. 29: in the Army since his boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second Protectorate he was stillPage 253
in the Government of Ireland with his military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.
4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: aetat. 28: married in her seventeenth year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had been made the Lord Protector’s “Master of Horse,” and had therefore been known for some time by the courtesy-title of “Lord Claypole.” He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court; and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.
5. THE LADY MARY: aetat. 21. She was unmarried when the Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as “a person of extraordinary parts.” On his own account, and also because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady Mary was thought an excellent match.
6. THE LADY FRANCES: aetat. 19. This, the youngest of Cromwell’s children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and Cromwell’s ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell’s pupil at Eton with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances, as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp. 616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in due time.[1] For the Lady Frances, his Highness’s youngest daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means indifferentPage 254
to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1.
[Footnote 1: The will of John Dutton, Esq., of Sherborne, Gloucestershire, was proved June 30, 1657, just four days after the beginning of the Second Protectorate; and young Mr. William Dutton married a widow eventually—“Mary, daughter of John, Viscount Scudamore, and relict of Thomas Russell of Worcestershire, Esq.” (Noble’s Cromwell, I, pp 153-154).]
Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second Protectorate, were the following;—(1) The Protector’s eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector’s sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood’s Council, and was now a member of the Protector’s Second Parliament. (3) The Protector’s youngest sister ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson. (4) The Protector’s niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The Protector’s brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His first wife; Oliver’s sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a second, and had for some time been less active politically and less Oliverian. (6) The Protector’s brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of Cromwell’s stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife, Cromwell’s sister Jane. (7) The Protector’s cousin, or father’s sister’s son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the Regicides, and latterly member
[Footnote 1: Among authorities for the facts in this compilation, besides Council Order Books, and the whole narrative heretofore, are Carlyle’s three genealogical Notes (I. 16, 20-21, and 54-55), Wood’s Fasti, II. 155-8, various passages in Codwin, and two “Narratives” in Harl. Misc III. 429-468.]
The Protector’s new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the Petition and Advice, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec. 1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell’s father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in the foundation of the First Protectorate;
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward; Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.]
The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness’s hands and the Council’s, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20, 1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.
Blake’s grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all people’s minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero, recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died, utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the 13th of August it was ordered by the Council, “That the Commissioners for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral.” The body, having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the Seventh’s chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. “When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, ’tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us.” The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake’s popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, Aug. 13, 1657: Godwin, IV. 420-421; Wood’s Fasti, I. 371.]
Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector’s army of 6000 foot under General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain of Mazarin’s wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines, Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of matters. “I pray you tell the Cardinal from me,” he said, “that I think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to get ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any design he hath.” He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary; but he added in a postscript, “If indeed the French be so false to us as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly, Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your dealing with the French on these accounts.” The Cardinal at once succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept. 21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty, given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but, by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague’s assisting fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took his oath and place in the Council.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 306-315 (including two Letters of Cromwell to Lockhart); Godwin, IV. 543-544; Guizot, II. 379-381; Cromwelliana, 168; Council Order Books, Oct. 24, 1657.]
Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of L1000 more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another despatch of L1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness being himself present in the Council, and having communicated “a petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings,” it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there. But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally, on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 311-313; and Cromwelliana, 168-169.]
The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657 requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X. or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the Empire, had come to be Cromwell’s desire and the desire in Great Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and, Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the Swede, “actum jam videbatur de Polonia” as an old annalist says: “it seemed then all over with Poland.” But a medley of powers, for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton’s composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King’s career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two powers—the Poles, the
[Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from those of Milton’s State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous passage in Baillie’s Letters (III. 370-371), and with facts and dates from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the Rationarium Temporum of the Jesuit Petavius (edit. 1745, I. 562-564), and from Carlyle’s History of Frederick the Great, I. 222-223.]
At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory to himself. The machinery of the Ejectors and the Triers was still in full operation; and, on reports from the Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers, his Highness and the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the Petition and Advice. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. “The Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men” was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin’s, which had been out since May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent a Commonwealth’s man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector’s journalist, Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. “The Great Accuser cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street, London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason,” was a pamphlet by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated “To His Most Serene Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector,” &c., in such terms as these:—“Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath taken a strange creature, immediately to present it to the Prince: whereupon I, having taken one of the strangest that (I think) any part of your Highness’s dominions hath these many years produced, do, with all submissiveness, make bold to present him, bound hand and foot with his own cords (as I ought to bring him), to your Highness. He need not be sent to the Tower for his mischievousness: there is no danger in him now, nor like to be henceforth, as I have handled him.” In a prefixed Epistle to the Reader there is a good deal of scurrility against Goodwin. He is described as “worse than a common nuisance.” He is taxed also with inconsistency, inasmuch as he had been one of those who, in Feb. 1651-2, had signed the famous Proposals of Certain Ministers to the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel, in which the principle of an Established Church had been assumed and asserted (ante, IV. 392).
[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same for dates.]
More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers. They were now very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings. They were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment, according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly towards gentleness with them. Hardly had the new Council of State been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were instructed “to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body in point of health”; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker, Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent, the Quakers being all Contrariants on that point. “O Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:” so had Fox written in one letter, ending, “O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God.” There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell’s heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date; and Sewel’s History of the Quakers, I. 210-233.]
John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply “for the peace of this nation” (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had had access to him, with very marked effects. “Here, in Dover Castle,” Lilburne had written to his wife, Oct. 4, 1655, “through the loving-kindness of God, I have met with a more clear, plain, and evident knowledge of God, and myself, and His gracious outgoings to my soul, than ever I had in all my lifetime, not excepting my glorying and rejoicing condition under the Bishops.” Again, in a later letter: “I particularly can, and do hereby, witness that I am already dead or crucified to the very occasions and real grounds of outward wars, and carnal sword-fightings, and fleshly bustlings and contests, and that therefore confidently I now believe that I shall never hereafter be a user of the temporal sword more, nor a joiner with those that do. And this I do here solemnly declare, not in the least to avoid persecution, or for any politic ends of my own, or in the least for the satisfaction of the fleshly wills of any of my great adversaries, or for satisfying the carnal will of my poor weak afflicted wife, but by the special movings and compulsions of God now upon my soul ... and that thereby, if yet I must be an imprisoned sufferer, it may from this day forward be for the truth as it is in Jesus, which truth I witness to be truly professed and practised by the savouriest of people, called Quakers.” This had not at once procured his release, for he remained in Dover Castle through at least part of 1656. At length, however, after some proposal to let him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations, security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere, he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house called “The Bull and Mouth” at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of the London Quakers. “At this place, that afternoon,
[Footnote 1: Sewel’s History of the Quakers. I. 160-163 (where, however, there is an error as to the date of Lilburne’s death); Wood’s Ath. III. 357; Cromwelliana, 168; Council Order Books of Nov. 4, 1657.]
When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers, his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy, the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom. He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist invasion. What would have been his doom can be but guessed. He became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13, 1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot, that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he was the author of Killing no Murder.[1]
[Footnote 1: Merc. Pol. of dates, as quoted in Cromwelliana, 167-170.]
So quiet and even was the course of home-affairs through the first seven months of the new Protectorate that such glimpses and anecdotes of particular persons have to suggest the general history. Yet one more of the sort.
In the parish register of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire there is this entry: “George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mary, the daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, of Nunappleton within this Parish of Bolton Percy, were married the 15th day of September anno Dom. 1657.” This was, in fact, the marriage of the great Fairfax’s only child, Marvell’s former pupil, now nineteen years of age, to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham,
[Footnote 1: Markham’s Life of Fairfax, 364-372.]
Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to whom anything in reason would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports from Thurloe’s foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and Charles II.,[1] no one could challenge Fairfax’s honour or doubt his passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage
[Footnote 1: As early as Nov. 1654 Charles II. had written to Fairfax, begging him to “wipe out all he had done amiss” by such services to the Royal cause as he might yet render (Macray’s Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, II. 426).]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]
What may have disposed Cromwell not to be too harsh about the marriage was the fact that he had just celebrated the marriages of his own two youngest daughters. Lady Frances, the youngest, became Mrs. Rich on the 11th of November, and Lady Mary became Viscountess Falconbridge on the 18th.
The drift of public interest was now towards the reassembling of the adjourned Parliament on the 20th of January 1657-8. Especially there was great curiosity as to the persons that would be called by his Highness to form the Second or Upper House. That was satisfied in the course of December by the issue of his Highness’s writs under the great seal (quite in regal style, with the phrases “We,” “ourself,” “our great seal,” &c.) to the following sixty-three persons, the asterisks to be explained presently:—
Lord Richard Cromwell (_Councillor_,
&c.).
Lord Henry Cromwell (_Lord Deputy of Ireland_).
Of the Titular Nobility.
The Earl of Warwick.
The Earl of Manchester.
The Earl of Mulgrave (Councillor).
The Earl of Cassilis (Scotch).
William, Viscount Say and Sele.
Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge (_son-in-law_).
Philip, Viscount Lisle (Peer’s
son and Councillor).
Charles, Viscount Howard (raised to
this rank by Cromwell,
July 20, 1657).
Philip, Lord Wharton.
George, Lord Eure.
Roger, Lord Broghill (_Peer’s
son_).
John, Lord Claypole (son-in-law
and “Master of our Horse").
Great Army and Navy Officers.
Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood
(_son-in-law and
Councillor_).
Admiral, or “General of our
Fleet,” John Desborough (brother-in-law
and Councillor:
made Admiral in suecession to Blake).
Admiral, or “General of our Fleet,”
Edward Montague (_Councillor,
and one of the
Lords Commissioners of the Treasury_).
Commissary-General of Horse, Edward
Whalley (cousin).
Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General
George Monk.
Great State and Law Officers.
Nathaniel Fiennes (_Councillor_), Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal. John Lisle, ditto. Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. William Sydenham (Councillor), ditto. Henry Lawrence (_Lord President of the Council_). Oliver St. John, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of the Upper Bench. William Lenthall, Master of the Rolls. William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Baronets.
Sir Gilbert Gerrard.
Sir Arthur Hasilrig.
Sir John Hobart.
Sir Gilbert Pickering (Councillor
and Chamberlain to the
Household).
Sir Francis Russell (_Henry Cromwell’s
father-in-law_).
Sir William Strickland.
Sir Charles Wolseley (_Councillor_).
Knights.
Sir John Barkstead (knighted by Cromwell
Jan, 19, 1655-6).
Sir George Fleetwood (knighted by Cromwell
Sept. 15, 1656).
Sir John Hewson (Colonel, knighted
by Cromwell
Dec. 5, 1657).
Sir Thomas Honeywood.
Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (Scotch).
Sir William Lockhart (_Ambassador_, knighted
by Cromwell
Dec. 10, 1656).
Sir Christopher Pack (Alderman,
knighted by Cromwell
Sept. 20, 1656).
Sir Richard Onslow.
Sir Thomas Pride (Colonel Pride, knighted
by Cromwell
Jan, 17, 1655-6).
Sir William Roberts.
Sir Robert Tichbourne (Alderman,
knighted by Cromwell
Dec. 10, 1656).
Sir Matthew Tomlinson (Colonel,
knighted in Dublin by Lord
Henry Cromwell.
Nov. 25, 1657).
Others.
James Berry (_the Major-General_).
John Clerke (_Colonel_).
Thomas Cooper (Colonel).
John Crewe.
John Fiennes.
William Goffe (the Major-General).
Richard Ingoldsby (_Cousin’s
son and Colonel_).
John Jones (brother-in-law and
Colonel).
Philip Jones (_Councillor and Colonel_,
and now “_Comptroller
of our Household_").
Richard Hampden (son of the great
Hampden).
William Pierrepoint.
Alexander Popham.
Francis Rous (_Councillor and Provost
of Eton_).
Philip Skippon (Councillor and
Major-General).
Walter Strickland (_Councillor_).
Edmund Thomas.[1]
[Footnote 1: In compiling the list I have used the enumerations in Parl. Hist. III. 1518-1519, Whitlocke, IV. 313-314, and Godwin. IV. 469-471 (the last two not perfect): also a Pamphlet of April 1659 called A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament.]
Such were “Oliver’s Peers or Lords,” remembered by that name now, and so called at the time, not because they were Peers or Lords in the old sense, but because they were to be members of that “Other House” which, by Article V. of the Petition and Advice, was to exercise some of the functions of the old House of Lords. The selection was various enough, and probably as good as could be made; but there must have been great doubts as to the result. Would those of the old English hereditary nobility whom it had been deemed politic to summon condescend to sit as fellow-peers with Hewson, once a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer’s drayman, and Berry, once a clerk in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson, were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if, after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most dangerous. For, by the Petition and Advice, were not the Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let or hindrance from the Protector?
Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now come when the difficulty must be faced.
On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath prescribed in the Petition and Advice, They were the forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele, Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele, Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the prescribed oath of the Petition and Advice, by which they, as well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other things, “to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector,” &c., and not to “contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or lawful authority.” It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Jan. 20, 1657-8, et seq.; Ludlow, 596-597; List of the 43 who sat in the Upper House in pamphlet of 1659 already cited, called A Second Narrative, &c.]
Cromwell’s speech to the two Houses (Speech XVI.) opened significantly with the words “My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons.” It was a very quiet speech, somewhat slowly and heavily delivered, with “peace” for the key-word. He represented the nation as now in such a nourishing state, especially in the possession of a settled and efficient Public Ministry of the Gospel, and at the same time of ample religious liberty for all, that nothing more was needed than oblivion of past differences, and a hearty co-operation of the two Houses with each other, and with himself. Apologizing for being too ill to discourse more at length, he asked Lord Commissioner Fiennes to do so for him. The speech of Fiennes was essentially a continuation in the same strain, but with a gorgeousness and variety of metaphor, Biblical and poetical, in description of the new era of peace and its duties, utterly beyond the bounds of usual Parliamentary oratory even then, and to which Cromwell and the rest, with all their experience of metaphor from the pulpit, must have listened with astonishment. “Jacob, speaking to his son Joseph, said I had not thought to have seen thy face, and lo! God hath showed me thy seed, also: meaning his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And may not many amongst us well say some years hence We had not thought to have seen a Chief Magistrate again among us, and lo! God hath shown us a Chief Magistrate in his Two Houses of Parliament? Now may the good God make them like Ephraim and Manasseh, that the Three Nations may be blessed in them, saying God made thee like these Two Houses of Parliament, which two, like Leah and Rachel, did build the House of God! May you do worthily in Ephrata, and be famous in Bethlehem!” There was more of the same kind, including a comparison of the new constitution of the Petition and Advice to the perfected eduction of the orderly universe out of chaos. It was the speech of a Puritan Jean Paul.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 320-326; Commons Journals Jan. 21 and Jan. 25, 1657-8. Fiennes’s speech is given in full under the last date, and must have much talked of. Whitlocke also prints it, IV. 315-329.]
Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes’s own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable Manasseh. The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the Petition and Advice generally, would be to question the powers of the new House as defined in the constituting document. The definition had been rather vague. The meaning had certainly been that the new House should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty affairs. This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution. They had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general “Clerk of the Parliament,” to the possession of certain documents; but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting (Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that “some gentlemen were at the door with a message from the Lords.” The message was merely a request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the three nations; but, purporting to be from “the Lords,” it cut very deep. By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved “That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own,” i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject. Two more days passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo! Sir Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on being sworn and admitted to his seat. He had disdained the summons to the Other House, and his proper place was here! With some hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House. He, Thomas Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors. Outside there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the Protector.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 479-495; Carlyle, III. 328.]
At this point the Protector interposed. On the afternoon of the same day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the Other House together. It opened with the phrase “My Lords and Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament,” to obviate any objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support. But it expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech, the pressing reasons for unanimity now. It surveyed, first, the state of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of Sweden, who had “adventured his all against the Popish Interest In Poland.” It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this, if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme. “You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from all the world beside. Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch, nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves on terra firma.” Then, turning to the state of affairs at home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of the existing settlement. One Civil War more, he said, would throw the nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of the Stuarts, and, if with such a restoration, then with consequences to some that they did not now contemplate. He made no express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real work.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 329-347.]
The appeal to the Commons was in vain. After three or four more meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House. By a vote of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand Committee on the subject. This having been done, they resolved, Jan. 30, “That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made.” On this one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply “The Other House,” as in the Petition and Advice, and the Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been employed in the Petition and Advice only
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; and Carlyle, III. 348-353.]
Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end. Cromwell’s explanation of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate. Through the first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian conclave. Fourteen folio pages of the Commons Journals are the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate Session. Oliver’s Lords can have had little more to do than meet and look at each other.
* * * * *
There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived. For seven months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say, more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain.
There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of the late Parliament retained the name of “Lords.” Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (alias “The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord Sydenham, Lord Jones (alias “Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr. Secretary Thurloe: such would have been the minute of a complete sederunt of the Council when, it resumed duty after the dissolution of the Parliament. There never was such a complete sederunt: ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance, rising sometimes to twelve. Occasionally Cromwell came to one of their meetings; but generally they transacted business among themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately. A few of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest; Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe. His Highness had, moreover, a private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already for several years.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Feb. 1857-8 onwards; Thurloe, II. 224.]
As Cromwell had intimated in his Dissolution Speech, his first labour after the dissolution was to attack that vast complication of dangers of which he had already sure knowledge, and which he declared to have been caused, or brought to a head, by the wretched conduct of the Commons through their sixteen days of session, and by the positive treason of some of their number. He had described the dangers as gathering from two quarters, though they were already interrelated and would run together at last. There was “the King of Scots’ game,” or the plot of a Royalist commotion in conjunction with a threatened invasion of the Spanish-Stuartist Army; and there was the design of a great insurrection of Old Commonwealth’s men for a subversion of the Protectorate and a return to the pure Single-House Republic. Of the first danger he had said, “I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it”; the second he had denounced as rebellion, saying, “I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist me.” For three or four months he was to be engaged in making good these words; but he had begun already. On February 6, at a great meeting of the Army-officers in the Banqueting House, he had discoursed to them impressively for two hours, abashing two or three that had been tampered with, and receiving from the rest assurances of their eternal fidelity. Ludlow says that, for several nights successively, before or after this meeting, Cromwell himself took the inspection of the watch among the soldiers at Whitehall.[1]
[Footnote 1: 2 Ludlow, 598-600; Godwin. IV. 496-7.]
As always, Cromwell’s tenderness towards the Republicans or Old Commonwealth’s men appeared now in his dealings with the new commotion on that side. Colonel Packer and Captain Gladman, two disaffected officers in his own regiment of horse, appear to have been merely dismissed from their commands; and one hears besides of but a few arrests, with no farther consequences than examination before the Council and temporary imprisonment. Harrison was again arrested, the Fifth-Monarchy men having, of course, lent themselves to the agitation, and Harrison having this time, Whitlocke says, been certainly “deep in it.” Among the others arrested were Mr. John Carew, the Regicide and Councillor under the Commonwealth, John Portman, who had been secretary to Blake in the Fleet, a Hugh Courtney, and John Rogers, a preacher. There seems to have been no thought of any proceedings against Hasilrig, Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and the other Anti-Cromwellian leaders in the late Parliament. This, however, is less remarkable than that, with information in Cromwell’s possession that some of the members of the Parliament, nominally Commonwealth’s men, had actually commissions from Charles II. and were enlisting persons under such commissions for any possible insurrection whatever, he had contented himself with announcing the fact in his Dissolution Speech and so merely signifying to the culprits that their lives were in his hands.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 599-600; Whitlocke, IV. 330; Godwin, IV. 502-503.]
The Royalist project and its ramifications were really very formidable. A Spanish Army of about 8000 men, with Charles II. and his refugees among them, was gathered about Bruges, Brussels, and Ostend, with vessels of transport provided; and the burst of a great Royalist Insurrection at home, in Sussex, London, and elsewhere, was to coincide with the invasion from abroad. The Duke of Ormond himself had come to London in disguise, to observe matters and make preparations. He was in London for three weeks, living in the house of a Roman Catholic surgeon in Drury Lane, till Cromwell, who knew the fact, generously sent Lord Broghill to him with a hint to be gone. This was early in March, some days after a proclamation “commanding all Papists and other persons who have been of the late King’s party or his son’s to depart out of the cities of London and Westminster,” and another proclamation forbidding such persons living in the country to stir more than five miles from their fixed places of abode. On the 12th of that month the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London met his Highness and the Army-officers by appointment at Whitehall, where his Highness explained to them at length the nature of the crisis, informed them particularly of the strength of the Flanders army of invasion, Ormond’s visit, &c., and solemnly committed to them the safety of the City. The response of the City authorities was extremely loyal.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 507-508; Carlyle, III. 353-354; Merc. Pol., of March 11-18, 1657-8, quoted in Cromwelliana, pp. 170-171. The Proclamation ordering Papists and other Royalists out of London and Westminster, and that ordering such persons in the country to keep near home, are both dated Feb. 25, 1657-8. There are copies at the end of one of the volumes of the Council’s minutes.]
On the principle that the country could not afford for ever this periodical trouble of a Royalist Conspiracy, and that some examples of severity might make the present upheaving the last of the kind, Cromwell had resolved on a few such examples. His information, through Thurloe and otherwise, was unerring. He knew, and had known for some time, who were the members of the so-called “Sealed Knot,” i.e. that secret association of select Royalists resident in England who were in closest correspondence with Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, and were chiefly trusted by them for the management of the cause at home, Indeed, Sir Richard Willis, one of the chiefs of the “Sealed Knot,” had for some time been in understanding with Cromwell, pledged to him by a peculiar compact, and revealing to him all that passed among the Royalists. Hence, before the end of April, some of the members of the “Sealed Knot,” and a number of leading Royalists besides, had been lodged in the Tower.
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-870; Godwin, IV. 508-527; Merc. Pol, May 13-20, 1658, quoted in Cromwelliana, 171-172; Thurloe, VII. 25, 65-69, 88-90, 100, and 147-8; Whitlocke, IV. 334.]
Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had been over in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our narrative.
The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell’s son-in-law since the preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the event himself, had found time even then to write letters of condolence and comfort to the young man’s grandfather, the Earl of Warwick. The Earl’s reply, dated March 11, is extant. “My pen and my heart,” it begins, “were ever your Lordship’s servants; now they are become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation, and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand, express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me.” Then, after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation, he concludes with words that have a historical value. “My Lord,” he says, “all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship’s many weighty and noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my grief will give me leave. Others’ goodness is their own; yours is a whole country’s, yea three kingdoms’—for which you justly possess interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!” On the 19th of April 1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away, and Cromwell’s “prudent, heroic, and honourable managery” had again been widely confessed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 527-531, where Warwick’s beautiful letter is quoted in full, but where his death is postdated by a month. See Thurloe, VII. 85.]
Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance having been renewed for another year (March 28, 1658), reinforcements were sent to the English auxiliary army to fit it for farther work in the Netherlands. Sir John Reynolds, the first commander of that army, having been unfortunately drowned in returning to England on a short leave of absence (Dec. 5, 1657), the Governorship of Mardike had come into the hands of Major-General Morgan, while the command in the field had been assigned to Lockhart, hitherto the Protector’s Ambassador only, though soldiering had been formerly his more familiar business. In conjunction with Turenne, Lockhart had been pushing on the war, and at length (May 1658) the two armies, and Montagu’s fleet, were engaged in the exact service which Cromwell most desired, and Lockhart had been always urging. This was the siege of Dunkirk, with a view to the possession of that town, as well as Mardike, by the English. To be near the scene of such important operations, Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin had taken up their quarters at Calais; and, not to miss the opportunity of such near approach of the French monarch to the shores of England, Cromwell despatched his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge on a splendid embassy of compliment and congratulation. He landed at Calais on the 29th of May, was received by both King and Cardinal with such honours as they had never accorded to an ambassador before, and returned on the 3rd of June to make his report. The very next day there was a tremendous battle close to Dunkirk between the French-English forces under Turenne and Lockhart and a Spanish army which had come for the relief of the besieged town under Don John of Austria and the Prince of Conde, with the Dukes of York and Gloucester in their retinue. Mainly by the bravery of Lockhart’s “immortal six thousand,” the victory of the French and English was complete; and, though the Marquis of Leyda, the Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, maintained the defence valiantly, the town had to surrender on the 14th of June, two days after the Marquis had been mortally wounded in a sally. Next day, according to the Treaty with Cromwell, the town was at once delivered to Lockhart, Louis XIV. himself, who was on the spot, handing him the keys. Already, while that event was unknown, and merely to reciprocate the compliment of Falconbridge’s embassy to Calais, there had been sent across the Channel, in the name of Louis XIV., the Duke de Crequi, first Gentleman of his Bedchamber, and M. Mancini, the nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, “accompanied by divers of the nobility of France and many gentlemen of quality.” Met at Dover by Fleetwood and an escort, they arrived in London June 16, and remained
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 544-551; where, however, the digest of facts does not seem accurate in every point. Compare Thurloe, VII. 173-177 and-192-3, and Merc. Pol. June 10-17 and June 17-24, 1658 (as quoted in Cromwelliana, 172-173), and Guizot, II 380-388.]
While thus turning to account the alliance with the only Catholic power with which there could be safe dealing, the Protector clung firmly to his idea of a League among the Protestant Powers themselves. If Burnet’s information is correct, it was about this time that he contemplated the institution in London of “a Council for the Protestant Religion in opposition to the Congregation De Propaganda Fide at Rome.” It was to sit at Chelsea College: there were to be seven Councillors, with a large yearly fund at their disposal; the world was to be mapped out into four great regions; and for each region there was to be a Secretary at L500 a year, maintaining a correspondence with that region, ascertaining the state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference. That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark, of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May 1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of L3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of L500 out of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty distressed Bohemian families.
[Footnote 1: Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 133; Letters of Downing, &c. in Thurloe, Vol. VII.; Council Order Books of date; Carlyle, III. 357-365.]
Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in Cromwell’s attention through all the events and transactions that have hitherto been noticed, the answer must still be the same for this as for all the previous portions of his Protectorate. It was “The Propagation of the Gospel,” with all that was then implied in that phrase as construed by himself.
As regarded England and Wales, the phrase meant, all but exclusively, the sustenance, extension, and consolidation of Cromwell’s Church Establishment. The Trustees for the better Maintenance of Ministers, as well as the Triers and Ejectors, were still at work; and in the Council minutes of the summer of 1658, just as formerly, there are orders for augmentations of ministers’ stipends, combinations of parishes and chapelries, and the like. Substantially, the Established Church had been brought into a condition nearly approaching Cromwell’s ideal; but he had still notions of more to be done for it in one direction or another, and especially in the direction of wider theological comprehension. He did not despair of seeing his great principle of concurrent endowment yet more generally accepted among those who were really and evangelically Protestant. Much would depend on the nature of that Confession of Faith which Article XI. of the Petition and Advice had required or promised as a standard of what should be considered
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of May 1658; Neal’s Puritans, IV. 188 et seq.; Orme’s Life of Owen, 230-232.]
There is very striking evidence of Cromwell’s attention at this time to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.—Early in 1657 we left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his Highness’s favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante pp. 115-116). Both deputations had remained on in London perseveringly, Sharp making interest with the Protector through Broghill; Thurloe, and the London Presbyterian ministers, while Owen, Lockyer, and the rest of the Independent ministers, with Lambert and Fleetwood, took part rather with the agents of the Protesters. Wearied with listening to the dispute personally, Cromwell had referred it to a mixed committee of twelve English Presbyterians and Independents, and at length had told both parties to “go home and agree among themselves.” Sharp, Simpson, and Guthrie had, accordingly, returned to Scotland before the autumn of 1657; and, though Gillespie, Warriston, and Argyle were left behind, it was difficult to say that either party had won the advantage. Baillie, indeed, writing from Glasgow after Sharp’s return, could report that the Protesters had, on the whole, been foiled, and chiefly by the instrumentality of “that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man, Mr. James Sharp.” But, on the other hand, the Protesters had obtained some favours. As far as one can discern, Cromwell’s judgment as between the two parties of Scottish Kirkmen had come to be that they were to be treated as a Tory majority and a pugnacious Whig minority, whose differences would do no harm if they were both kept under proper control, and that both together formed such a Presbyterian body as might suitably possess, and yet divide, the Church of Scotland. For, as has been remarked already, Cromwell, in his conservatism, had come, on the whole, to be of opinion that the national clergy of Scotland must be left massively Presbyterian, and that it would not do to weld into the Scottish Establishment, as into the English, Baptists, or even ordinary professing Independents, in any considerable number. This would be bad news for those Scottish Independents and Baptists who had naturally expected encouragement under Cromwell’s rule, but had already been disappointed. It would be the common policy of the Resolutioners and Protesters to keep or drive such erratic spirits out of the Kirk.[1]—Whether because the long stay of the Scottish deputations in London had turned much of Cromwell’s thoughts towards Scotland, or simply because his own anxiety for the “Propagation, of the Gospel” everywhere in his dominions, had led his eyes at last to that portion of Great Britain, we have now to record one
[Footnote 1: Baillie, III, 836-874 and 577-582; Blair’s Life, 333-334; Council Order Books, Feb. 12 and March 5, 1656-7, and Sept. 18, 1657; and a pamphlet published in London in July 1659 with the title “The Hammer of Persecution, or the Mystery of Iniquity in the Persecution of many good people in Scotland under the Government of Oliver, late Lord Protector, and continued by others of the same spirit, disclosed with the Remedies thereof, by Robt. Pitilloh, Advocate.” The Persecution complained of by Mr. Pitilloh, a Scottish lawyer who had left Presbyterianism, was simply the discouragement under the Protectorate of such Scottish ministers as had turned Independents and Baptists. The names of some such are given: e.g. Mr. John Row, Principal of the College of Old Aberdeen; Mr. Thomas Charters, Kilbride; Mr. John Menzies, Aberdeen; Mr. Seaton, Old Aberdeen; Mr. Youngston, Durris; Mr. John Forbes, Kincardine. “As soon as Oliver was lift up to the throne,” says the writer, “some of the Presbyterian faction were sent for; and, to ingratiate himself with them, intimating tacitly that it was his law no minister in Scotland should have allowance of a livelihood but a National Presbyterian, he ordered that none should have stipends as ministers ... but such as had certificates from some four of a select party, being thirty in all, ... of the honest Presbyterian party.”]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]
[Footnote 3: Council Order Books of date, and Baillie, III. 356 and 365-366. Another interesting item of Scottish History under Cromwell’s rule may have a place here, though it belongs properly to the First Protectorate. In the Council Order Books under date Feb. 17, 1656-7, is this minute:—“On consideration of a report from his Highness’s Attorney General, annexed to the draft of a Patent prepared by his High Counsel learned, in pursuance of the Council’s order of the 13th of January last, according to the purport of an agreement in writing presented to the Council under the hand of the Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that city and of Dr. Purves on behalf of the Physicians of Scotland, the same being for erecting a College of Physicians in Scotland: Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will be pleased to issue his warrant for Mr. Attorney General to prepare a Patent for his Highness’s signature according to the said Draft.”]
[Footnote 4: Council Order Books, Aug. 14, 1656.]
Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London, apparently with an intention on Cromwell’s part to set him at liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker, James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by his Highness’s command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to “dissuade” his Highness from “a work of tenderness and mercy,” he could hardly yet advise Nayler’s release, but would carefully apply the money he had received from his Highness for Nayler’s comfort. For the Quakers generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than Cromwell’s good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or intention of Cromwell’s Council in June 1658, which, if not against liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, “Whereas there are divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due execution of the said laws.” What followed was a special charge to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company, together
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis’s Milton State Papers, 143-144 (the last for Malyn’s Letter about Nayler). For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol. III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.]
O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July 1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector’s hands; those hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to face a new Parliament,
[Footnote 1: In continuation of a former note giving a list of the Knighthoods of Cromwell’s First Protectorate so far as I have ascertained them (ante p. 303), here is a list of the Knighthoods of the Second:—William Wheeler (Aug. 26, 1657); Edward Ward, of Norfolk (Nov. 2, 1657); Alderman Thomas Andrews (Nov. 14, 1657); Colonel Matthew Tomlinson (Nov. 25, 1657, in Dublin, by Lord Henry Cromwell as Lord Deputy for Ireland); Alderman Thomas Foot, Alderman Thomas Atkins, and Colonel John Hewson (all Dec. 5, 1657); James Drax, Esq., a Barbadoes merchant (Dec. 31, 1657); Henry Bickering and Philip Twistleton (Feb. 1, 1657-8); John Lenthall, Esq., son of Speaker Lenthall (March 9, 1657-8); Alderman Chiverton and Alderman John Ireton (March 22, 1857-8); Colonel Henry Jones (July 17, 1658, for distinguished bravery at the siege of Dunkirk).-Baronetcies conferred by Cromwell were the following:—John Read, of Hertfordshire (Juae 25. 1657); the Hon. John Claypole, father of Lord Claypole (July 20, 1657); Thomas Chamberlain (Oct. 6, 1657); Thomas Beaumont, of Leicestershire (March 5, 1657-8); Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, John Twistleton, Esq., and Henry Wright, Esq., son of the physician Dr. Wright (all April 10, 1658); Griffith Williams, of Carnarvonshire (May 28, 1658); Attorney General Edmund Prideaux and Solicitor General William Ellis (Aug. 13, 1668); William Wyndham, Esq., co. Somerset (Aug. 28, 1658). The Baronetcies, being rare, seem to have been much prized; and that of Henry Ingoldsby raised jealousies (see letter of Henry Cromwell in Thurloe, VII. 57).—Peerages conferred by Cromwell were not likely, any more than his Knighthoods and Baronetcies, to be paraded by their possessors after the Restoration. But Cromwell’s favourite, Colonel Charles Howard, a scion of the great Norfolk Howards, was raised to the dignity of Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland in Cumberland; Cromwell’s relative, Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, Berks, was created Baron Burnell, April 20, 1658; and Cromwell, just before his death, made, or wanted to make, Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount.]
As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley, Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be expected then before the end of the year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 99, 151-152, et seq.]
Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will, intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom, his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by “frequent and long convulsion-fits”; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already, besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family, all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions was “That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day seven-night.” This was a very important resolution, significant of a dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call them to account again, which had for some time been growing in Cromwell’s mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as “of the gout and other distempers”; and, though he was able to come to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole’s remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for them in Henry VIIth’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of confinement, attended by his physicians—on one of which days (the 13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from July 8 to Sept. 2, 1658, giving minutes of fifteen meetings at Whitehall or Hampton Court, Cromwell present at the two first, viz. July 8 (Whitehall), July 15 (Hampton Court), and at the sixth, viz. July 29 (Hampton Court), but at no other; Thurloe, VII. 309, 320, 323, 340, 344, 354-356, 362-364, 366-367, 369-370; A Collection of Several Passages concerning his late Highness, Oliver Cromwell, in the Time of his Sickness (June 9, 1659, “London, Printed for Robert Ibbetson, dwelling in Smithfield, near Hosier Lane"); Cromwelliana, 174-178 (including an abridgment of the last tract); Whitlocke, IV. 334-335; Markham’s Life of Fairfax, 373-374; Ludlow, 610; Godwin, IV. 564-575; Carlyle, III. 367-376 (which may well be read again and again); Sewel’s History of the Quakers, 1. 242-245; Life of Newton by Sir David Brewster (1860), I. 14.]
MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.
MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE
BRASS, WITH MILTON’S
OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH
AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT
SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN
MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF
MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.):
ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN
AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657):
JOHN DRYDEN NOW
ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR’S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH
OF MILTON’S DAUGHTER BY HIS
SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON
(NOS. CXII.-CXIII.):
ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER
TO PETER HEIMBACH:
COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON’S
SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD:
HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS
DATE: MILTON’S
LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS.
CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS
OF SWEDEN. TWO
ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE
PROTESTANTS, AND
SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN:
IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST
GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE
SERIES OF
MILTON’S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST
DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE
PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH
THEM: INCIDENTS
OF MILTON’S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD:
YOUNG GUNTZER’S
DISSERTATIO AND YOUNG KECK’S PHALAECIANS:
MILTON’S EDITION OF
RALEIGH’S CABINET COUNCIL: RESUMPTION
OF THE OLD DESIGN OF
PARADISE LOST AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE
POEM: CHANGE FROM
THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY
OF HIS DECEASED
WIFE.
Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;[1] but we hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath may have been administered to him privately, or his old general engagement may have sufficed.
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 13 and 14, 1657.]
Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt from the letter itself:—
“To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.
“I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests, but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person of your uncommon talents.
“As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark, I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his Catilinarian War—as to the extreme difficulty of writing History, from the obligation that the expressions should be proportional to the deeds—by what method I think a writer of History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the Historian, in explicating counsels and narratingPage 298
facts, follows truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust, in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,—to be able to throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he records.
“But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one’s advice for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion. Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for acquiring wisdom.
“Westminster: July 15, 1657.”
Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year’s stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine; and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.[1] Young Ranelagh, I find, took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant to Durie in his foreign travels: “my man, David Whitelaw,” as Durie calls him.[2] The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.[3]
[Footnote 1: Letter of Oldenburg to Boyle, dated April! 5, 1657, given in Boyle’s Works (V. 299).]
[Footnote 2: Letters of Durie in Vaughan’s Protectorate (II. 174 and 195).]
[Footnote 3: Letter of Oldenburg in Boyle’s Works (V. 301).]
They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An Italian master was procured to teach young Jones “something of practical geometry and fortification”; and, for the rest, Oldenburg himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might
[Footnote 1: Boyle’s Works, V. 299.]
“To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES.
“That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition. There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks, and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell; and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most delightful result.
“Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657.”
The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:—
“To HENRY OLDENBURG.
“I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey to be so honourable and praiseworthy.
“As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one else had heard it in Charon’s boat than you in that of Charenton; for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to heaven under the auspicesPage 300
of so foul a guide will be a whole world awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the ears,—ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called Reformed, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring in.
“In not having given copies of my
writings to any one that does not
ask for them, you have done well and discreetly,
not in my opinion
alone, but also in that of Horace:—
“Err not by zeal for
us, nor on our books
Draw hatred by too vehement
care.
“A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you trouble and myself expense. But,
“If chance my load of
paper galls your back,
Off with, it now, rather than
in the end
Dash down the panniers cursing.
“To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your wishes fulfilled.
“Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657.”
The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg’s charge must have been copies of the Defensio Secunda and of the Pro Se Defensio. The person mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all men of celebrity in the French Protestant world—viz. Mestrezat, Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daille, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited from Amsterdam. Oldenburg,
[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus; Brace’s Life of Morus, 204 et seq.—It was deemed of great importance by the English Royalists that they should be able to report of Charles II., when Paris was his residence, that he attended the church at Charenton. There is a letter to him of April 17, 1653, saying his non-attendance there was “much to his prejudice.” (Macray’s Cal. of Clarendon Papers, II. 193).]
In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton’s resumption of this kind of duty with the precise time of Meadows’s preparations for his new absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden (ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and forming his first contribution of letters for the Second Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:—
(CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, August 1657:—His Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13: see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson.
(CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, August 1657:—On his way to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all through the territories of this old and assuredPage 303
friend of the English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424, 480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and requests all furtherance for him.
(CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN,
August
1657:—Also to introduce and
recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route
from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through
Bremen.
(CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG,
August
1657:—Still requesting attention
to JEPHSON on his transit.
(CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK,
August
1657:—Still recommending JEPHSON;
who, at Lubeck, would be near
his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus.
(CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, August 1657:—At first this Prince, better known now as “The Great Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia,” had been on the side of Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus, he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.—As Jephson had instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him formally. “The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may understand that we also are in the number of those that have the highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable WILLIAM Jephson,” &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.—The relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly complimentary strain of this letter.
(CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, August 1657:—All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission, two days afterwards.[1] His route was not to be quite the same as Jephson’s; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had, doubtless, already been made out,—possibly by himself. They are not among Milton’s State-letters.
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, under Aug. 1657.]
(CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE FRENCH KING, August 1657:—There has been presented to the Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called The Speedwell ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages altogether are valued at L2,500. The petitioners have not been able to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to compensation in money. “I therefore request of your Excellency, and even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be done.” The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally to write to an Ambassador in such a case.
(CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, Sept. 1657:—A letter of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called The Little Lewis, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself; instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. “The act is one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes of merchants living under the Turk.” The Grand-Duke is therefore requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody, and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored to the Sultan.
(CX.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY (undated)[1]:—This letter to the prince on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is estimated at L25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness.
[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript as No. 120 with the title Duci Subaudiae, and printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers (pp. 11-12). No date is given in the Skinner Transcript; and the insertion of the letter here is a mere guess. The place where it occurs in the Skinner Transcript suggests that it came rather late in the Protectorate, perhaps even after the present point. The years 1656 and 1657 seem the likeliest.]
(CXI.) TO THE MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, Sept. 1657:—This is an important letter. “By our last letter to your Highness,” it begins, “either already delivered or soon to be delivered by our agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you. Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large. And justly so, when news is brought to our ears every day that your faith and constancy, though tempted by all kinds of intrigues, solicited by all contrivances, yet cannot by any means be shaken, or diverted from the friendship of the brave King your ally,—and that too when the affairs of the Swedes are in such a posture that, in preserving their alliance, it is manifest your Highness is led rather by regard to the common cause of the Reformed Religion than by your own interests; when we know too that, though surrounded on all sides, and all but besieged, either by hidden or nearly imminent enemies, you yet, with your valiant but far from large forces, stand out with such firmness and strength of mind, such counsel and prowess of generalship, that the sum and weight of the whole business seems to rest, and the issue of this war to depend, mainly on your will.” The Protector goes on to say that, in such circumstances, he would consider it unworthy of himself not to testify in a special manner his sympathy with the Elector and regard for him. He apologizes for delay hitherto in treating with the Elector’s agent in London, JOHN FREDERICK SCHLEZER, on the matters about which he had been sent; and he closes with fervent good wishes.—Evidently, the recognition of the importance of the Elector, and anxiety as to the part he might take in the war now involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and part of Germany, had been growing stronger in Cromwell’s mind within the last few weeks. From the language of the letter one would infer either that Cromwell did not yet fully know of that treaty of Nov. 1656 by which the Polish King had bought off the Elector from the Swedish alliance by ceding to him the full sovereignty of East Prussia, or else that since then the Elector had been oscillating back to the alliance.—SCHLEZER had been in London since 1655, and had lodged at Hartlib’s house in the end of that year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Letter of Hartlib’s in Worthington’s Diary and Correspondence, edited by Crossley (I, 66).]
Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship.
It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood, Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe, there was this minute: “Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr. Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks per annum be allowed him for the same."[1] Whether this Mr. Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say “at last,” for had he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in recognition of Marvell’s merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no record of Marvell’s appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us himself it was in the year 1657. “As to myself,” he wrote in 1672, “I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper.” When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not “the remotest relation” till then to public matters, nor any “correspondence with the persons then predominant.” Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton’s colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship. “Colleague” we may call him, for his salary was to be L200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton’s was, and the same as Meadows’s had been; and yet not quite “colleague,” inasmuch as Milton’s L200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows’s place, Marvell became one of Thurloe’s subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton.—Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date.]
[Footnote 2: Marvell’s Rehearsal Transprosed (in Mr. Grosart’s edition of Marvell’s Prose Works), I. 322; Receipt in Record Office as quoted; Christie’s Memoir of Dryden prefixed to Globe edition of Dryden’s Poetical Works.—That Marvell was appointed Milton’s colleague or assistant precisely in September 1657 is proved by the fact that his first quarter’s salary appears in certain accounts as due in the following December (see Thurloe, VII. 487).]
On the day on which Dryden received his fifty pounds from Thurloe there was this entry in the birth-registers of the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster: “October 19, 1657, Katherin Milton, d. to John, Esq., by Katherin.” The entry may be still read in the book, with these words appended in an old hand some time afterwards: “This is Milton, Oliver’s Secretary.” It is the record of the birth of a daughter to Milton by his second wife, Katharine Woodcock, in the twelfth month of their marriage. The little incident reminds us at this point of the domestic life in Petty France; but it need not delay us. We proceed with the Secretaryship.
Whatever share of the regular work of the Foreign Department may have been now allotted to Marvell, an occasional letter was still required from Milton. The following Latin dispatches were written by him between September 1657 and Jan. 1657-8, when the Protector’s Second Parliament reassembled for its second session, as a Parliament of two Houses:—
(CXII.) TO M. DE BORDEAUX, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR, Oct. 1657:—This is not in the Protector’s name, but in that of the President of the Council. It is about the case of a Luke Lucy (Lucas Lucius) a London merchant. A ship of his, called The Mary, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to abide a trial at law of this person’s claim. Now, his claim was preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on board a ship called The Santa Clara. He was not the owner of the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio Fernandez, for the real owners; there had been a quarrel between the partners; and the Parliament had stopped the goods till it should be decided by law who ought to have them. Fernandez was willing to try the action in the English Courts; but De Lauzon had made no appearance there. And now De Lauzon had hit on the extraordinary expedient of seizing Lucy’s ship and dragging the totally innocent Lucy into an action in the French Courts. All which having been represented to the Protector by Lucy’s petition, it is begged that De Lauzon may be told he must go another way to work.
(CXIII.) TO THE DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, Oct. 1657:—A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to “the liberation of all Christians under Turkish servitude.” But, under cover of this congratulation, he calls to their attention again the case of a certain brave ship-captain, Thomas Galilei (Thomam Galileum). He had, some five years ago, done gallant service for the Venetians in his ship called The Relief, fighting alone with a whole fleet of Turkish galleys and making great havoc among them, till, his own ship having caught fire, he had been taken and carried away as a slave. For five years he had been in most miserable captivity, unable to ransom himself because he had no property in the world besides what might be owing to him for his ship and services by the Venetian Government. He had an old father still alive, “full of grief and tears which have moved Us exceedingly”; and this old man begs, and His Highness begs, that the Doge and Senate will arrange for the immediate release of the captive. They must have taken many Turkish prisoners in their late victories, and it is understood that those who detain the captive are willing to exchange him for any Turk of equal value. Also his Highness hopes the Doge and Senate will pay at once to the old man whatever may be due to his captive son. This, his Highness believes, had been arranged forPage 309
after his former application on the subject; but probably, in the multiplicity of business, the matter had been overlooked. May the Republic of Venice long flourish, and God grant them victories over the Turks to the very end!
(CXIV.) TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS, THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Nov. 1657:—This is a letter of commendation of the Dutch Ambassador William Nieuport on his temporary return home on private affairs (see ante p. 312). Through the “several years” of His Highness’s acquaintance with him, he had found him of “such fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and justice, in the discharge of his office” that he could not desire a better Ambassador, or believe their High Mightinesses could find a better one. He cannot take leave of him, though but for a short time, without saying as much. Throughout his embassy, his aim had been, “without deceit or dissimulation,” to preserve the peace and friendship that had been established; and, so long as he should be Dutch Ambassador in London, his Highness did not see “what occasion of offence or scruple could rankle or sprout up” between the two States. At the present juncture he should regret his departure the more if he were not assured that no man would better represent to their High Mightinesses the Protector’s goodwill to them and the condition of things generally. “May God, for His own glory and the defence of the Orthodox Church, grant prosperity to your affairs and perpetuity to our friendship!”—In writing this letter, Milton must have remembered Nieuport’s interference in behalf of Morus, for the suppression at the last moment, if possible, of the Defensio Secunda. He had not quite relished that interference, or the manner of it. See Vol. IV, pp. 631-633, and ante p. 202-203.
(CXV.) TO THEIR HIGH MIGHTINESSES THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Dec. 1657:—A fit sequel to the foregoing, for it is the Letter Credential to GEORGE DOWNING, just selected to be his Highness’s Resident at the Hague, and so the counterpart of Nieuport (ante p. 312). “GEORGE DOWNING,” it begins, “a gentleman of rank, has been for a long time now, by experience of him in many and various transactions, recognised and known by Us as of the highest fidelity, probity, and ability.” He is, accordingly, recommended in the usual manner; and there is intimation, though not in language so strong as that of Lockhart’s credentials to France, that “communications” with him will be the same as with his Highness personally. “Communications” only this case, Downing not being a plenipotentiary like Lockhart.[1]
[Footnote 1: Downing’s father was Emanuel Downing, a settler in Massachusetts, and his mother was a sister of the celebrated Governor John Winthrop. Though born in this country (in or near Dublin in 1623), their son had grown up in New England, much under the charge of Hugh Peters, who was related to
(CXVI.) TO THE PROVINCIAL STATES OF HOLLAND, Dec. 1657:—While recommending DOWNING to the States General, his Highness cannot refrain from recommending him also specially to the States of Holland, self-governed as they are internally, and “so important a part of the United Provinces” besides.
(CXVII.) TO FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, Dec. 1657:—The Protector’s last letter to the Grand Duke (ante 372) had produced immediate effect. The rascally Englishman Ellis, who, to the discredit of English and Christian good faith, had run off with the cargo of rice, sugar, and coffee, belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, had been arrested in Leghorn. So the Grand Duke had informed Cromwell in a letter dated Nov. 10. The present is a reply to that letter, and is very characteristic. “We give you thanks for this good office; and now we make this farther request,—that, as soon as the merchants have undertaken that satisfaction shall be made to the, Turks, the said Master be liberated from custody, and the ship and her lading be forthwith let off, lest perchance we should seem to have made more account of the Turks than of our own citizens. Meanwhile we relish so agreeably your Highness’s singular, conspicuous, and most acceptable good-will towards us that we should not refuse the brand of ingratitude if we did not eagerly desire a speedy opportunity of gratifying you in return by the like promptitude, by means of which we might prove to you in very deed our readiness also in returning good offices. Your Highness’s most affectionate OLIVER.”
To the same month as the last three of these Latin State-Letters belong two more of Milton’s Latin Familiar Epistles. The persons to whom they are addressed are already known to us:
“To the very distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.
“Having been hindered these days past by some occupations, illustrious Sir, I reply later than I meant. For I meant to do so all the more speedily because I saw that your present letter, full of learning as it is, did not so much leave me room for suggesting anything to you (a thing which you ask of me, I believe, out of compliment to me, not for your own need) as for simple congratulation. I congratulate myself especially on my good fortunePage 311
in having, as it appears, so suitably explained Sallust’s meaning, and you on your so careful perusal of that most wise author with so much benefit from the same. Respecting him I would venture to make the same assertion to you as Quintilian made respecting Cicero,—that a man may know himself no mean proficient in the business of History who enjoys his Sallust. As for that precept of Aristotle’s in the Third Book of his Rhetoric [Chap. XVII] which you would like explained—’Use is to be made of maxims both in the narrative of a case and in the pleading, for it has a moral effect’—I see not what it has in it that much needs explanation: only that the narration and the pleading (which last is usually also called the proof) are here understood to be such as the Orator uses, not the Historian; for the parts of the Orator and the Historian are different whether they narrate or prove, just as the Arts themselves are different. What is suitable for the Historian you will have learnt more correctly from the ancient authors, Polybius, the Halicarnassian, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many others, who have handed down certain stray precepts concerning that subject. For me, I wish you heartily all happiness in your studies and travels, and success worthy of the spirit and diligence which I see you employ on everything of high excellence. Farewell.
“Westminster: December 16, 1657.”
“To the highly accomplished PETER HEIMBACH.
“I have received your letter dated the Hague. Dec. 18 [foreign reckoning: the English would be Dec. 8], which, as I see it concerns your interests, I have thought I ought to answer on the very day it has reached me. After thanking me for I know not what favours of mine,—which, as one who desires everything good for you, I would were really of any consideration at all,—you ask me to recommend you, through Lord Lawrence, to our Minister appointed for Holland [DOWNING, whose credential letters Milton had drawn up only a day or two before]. I really regret that this is not in my power, both because of my very few intimacies with the men of influence, almost shut up at home as I am, and as I prefer to be (propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi fere, idque libenter, me contineo), and also because I believe the gentleman is now embarking and on his way, and has with him in his company the person he wishes to be his Secretary—the very office about him you seek. But the post is this instant going, Farewell.
“Westminster: December 18, 1657.”
Too much is not to be made of certain phrases in this note. Milton was declining, in as civil terms as possible, a request which might perhaps have been troublesome even if the Secretaryship to Mr. Downing had been vacant; and, though it would have been enough, as far as Heimbach’s present application was concerned, to tell him that Mr. Downing was already provided, the other reason may have been thrown in by way of discouragement of such applications in future. We have had proof that Milton liked Heimbach; but we do not know what estimate he had formed of Heimbach’s abilities. Still, any words used by Milton about himself are always to be taken as in correspondence with fact; and hence we are to suppose that, at the time he wrote, he did keep himself as much aloof as possible from the magnates of the Council, performing the pieces of work required of him in his own house, rather than making them occasions for visits and colloquies. His old and intimate friend Fleetwood, and his friend Lord President Lawrence, with Desborough, Pickering, Strickland, Montague, and Sydenham, all of whom had been mentioned by him with more or less of personal regard in the Defensio Secunda in 1654, were still Councillors, and formed indeed more than half the Council; but his intercourse with some of these individually may have been less since his blindness. Then, of the rest, Thurloe was the real man of influence, the real gratiosus who could carry or set aside a request like Heimbach’s; and, though Milton’s communications with Thurloe must necessarily have been more frequent than with any other person of the Council, one has an indefinable impression that Thurloe had never taken cordially to Milton or Milton to Thurloe. At the date of Milton’s note to Heimbach, too, gratiosi were becoming plentiful all round the Council. Cromwell’s sixty-three writs for the new Upper House had gone out, or were going out, and in a week or two many more “lords” were to be seen walking in couples in any street in Westminster. Milton, in his quiet retreat there, may have had something of all this in his mind when he wrote to young Mr. Heimbach.
The short second session of the Parliament, with its difficult experiment of the two Houses once more, and the angry dispute of the Commons whether the name of “Lords” should be allowed to the Other House, had come and gone (Jan. 20—Feb. 4, 1657-8), and of Milton or his thoughts and doings through that crisis we have no trace whatever. Our next glimpse of him is just after the moment of the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, when Cromwell was addressing himself again, single-handed, to the task of grappling with the double danger of anarchy within and a threatened invasion from without. The glimpse is a very sad one.
“Feb. 10, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton,” and again “March, 20, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton,” are two entries, within six weeks of each other, in the burial registers of St, Margaret’s, Westminster. They are the records of the deaths of Milton’s second wife and the little girl she had borne him only in October last. Which entry designates the mother and which, the child we should not know from the entries themselves; but a sentence in Phillips’s memoir of his uncle settles the point. “By his second wife; Katharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney,” says Phillips, “he had only one daughter, of which the mother, the first year after her marriage, died in childbed, and the child also within a month after.” The first entry, therefore, is for the mother, and the second for the child. The mother died exactly at the time of the dissolution of the Parliament, and not in child-birth itself, but nearly four months after child-birth; and the little orphan, outliving the mother a short while, died at the age of five months. And so Milton was again left a widower, with his three daughters by the first marriage, the eldest in her twelfth year. His private life, for eighteen years now, had certainly not been a happy one; but this death of his second wife seems to have been remembered by him ever afterwards with deep and peculiar sorrow. She had been to him during the short fifteen months of their union, all that he had thought saintlike and womanly, very sympathetic with himself, and maintaining such peace and order in his household as had not been there till she entered it. And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must grope on, and in which things must happen as they would.
Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from
either of his nephews. Not that they had openly
separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be
deferential to him and proud of the relationship,
but that they had more and more gone into those courses
of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious
hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted
of late as an increasing and very ominous form of
protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism
and its belongings. The Satyr against Hypocrites
by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality,
an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and,
since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council
in 1656 for his share in The Sportive Wit or Muses’
Merriment, he had naturally stumbled farther and
farther in the same direction. By the year 1658,
I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up
his uncle’s political principles, and was known
among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian.
We have no express publications in his name of this
date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously.
Of the literary industry of his more sedate and likeable
elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence.
A New World of Words, or a General Dictionary,
Page 314
containing the Terms, Etymologies, Definitions, and
Perfect Interpretations, of the proper Significations
of hard English words throughout the Arts and Sciences:
such is the title of a folio volume published by him
in 1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards
accused of having plagiarized largely from the Glossographia
of one Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year.
In this piece of labour, which was doubtless a bookseller’s
commission, he must have had, the question of plagiarism
apart, his uncle’s thorough good-will; but it
cannot have been the same with his Mysteries of
Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and
Complimenting, as they are managed in the Spring Garden,
Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent Places.
That performance, which appeared in August 1658, with
a Preface “To the Youthful Gentry,” and
which must have been in progress at our present date,
was much more in the vein of his brother John, and
indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel Brooke,
the bookseller who had published John’s Satyr
against Hypocrites, and also the more questionable
Sportive Wit or the Muses’ Merriment.
“The book,” says Godwin, “is put
together with conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy,
and is entitled to no insignificant rank among the
multifarious productions which were at that time issued
from the press to debauch the manners of the nation
and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary
conversations and forms of address for conversation,
poems, models of letters, questions and answers, an
Art of Logic with examples from the poets, and various
instructions and helps to the lover for the composition
of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross
provocations to libertinism and vice which everywhere
occur in the book, it might be mentioned as no unentertaining
illustration of the manners of the men of wit and
gallantry in the time when it was published.”
To Godwin’s description we may add that the
book includes a Rhyming Dictionary, “useful
for that pleasing pastime called Crambo,” also
a collection of parlour-games, and a number of other
clever things. The poems and songs interspersed
with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted, some
of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were
Phillips’s own. Of the model phrases or
set expressions which form one of the prose parts
of the volume, by way of instruction in the language
of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,—“With
your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;” “You
are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me
with a smile;” “Midnight would blush at
this;” “You walk in artificial clouds
and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance.”
What could Milton do, so far as such a production came
within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle
smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew
too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had
not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother;
and we may partly retract in his case the statement
that Milton could have little comfort from him.
He still went and came about Milton, very attentively.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin’s Lives of the Phillipses (1815), 49-57, and 139-140; Wood’s Ath. IV. 760-769. I have not myself examined Phillips’s New World of Words; but I have looked at the Thomason copy of his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little too severe in his account of it.]
During the month immediately preceding his wife’s death, and the two months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton’s State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this period of Milton’s life we know little more than may be inferred from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued Secretaryship:—
(CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, March 30, 1658:—The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the Swedes. “In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping,—Island of Fuenen, across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea open, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fuenen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself—to the wonder of mankind.” Such, in Mr. Carlyle’s summary (History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit. 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called The Peace of Roeskilde, by which Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell’s name:—“Most serene and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,—The Letter of your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account, and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer merely of the lettersPage 316
of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope, so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God’s help, in their own crushing overthrow."[1] From this letter it will be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie’s letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell’s present despatch. “I am glad,” writes Baillie, “that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture, and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches, civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if, on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league. It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."[2] Very much in the direction of Baillie’s hopes were Cromwell’s envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months. Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in Thurloe; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows (Thurloe,Page 317
VII. 63-64).
[Footnote 1: The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually careless. It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place, but only to be hoped for by Cromwell. In fact, Phillips’s translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.]
[Footnote 2: Baillie, III. 371.]
(CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 7, 1658:—A John Hosier, master of a ship called The Lady, had been swindled in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred from appearing there by threats of personal violence. “We therefore request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your accustomed justice.”
(CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, May 26, 1658:[1]—This is a very momentous letter. It is Cromwell’s appeal to the French King in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:—“Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Your Majesty may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for the renewing of our League [April 1655]—the highly auspicious nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting advantages to both nations and much damage to the common enemy—there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters, interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your town of Pignerol—hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were to be stood to. They are not stood to; for the promise of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion; new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads, whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are secretly being got ready against them,Page 318
and those among them who profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a time, so that all things now again seem to point to an exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us, by that most sacred ornament of the title of Most Christian; that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently, thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ, to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguieres, through those parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which, by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore; as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more favouring and propitiousPage 319
to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings, and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!” The letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his own counsels.[2] It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must have exerted himself in the composition.
[Footnote 1: The exact day of the month is not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but it is determined by a letter of Cromwell’s to Ambassador Lockhart on the same business. The two letters went together (see Carlyle, III. 357-365).]
[Footnote 2: Letter of Cromwell to Lockhart of date May 25, 1658, printed by Mr. Carlyle, loc. cit., from the Ayscough MSS.]
(CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, May 26, 1658:[1]—On the same great business as the last.—“Illustrious and most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:—Concerning the Vaudois, your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion’s sake, besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren, cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by too greatPage 320
an interval of space, have heartily performed all we could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies, consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that betimes, what is now your duty; on the question of what assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in the same by-past year, have seen you destroyed by an intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!”
[Footnote 1: The day of the month not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but we may date by the last letter.]
(CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of May 1658:[1]—This is a group of four letters, two to the King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law, Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp. 340-341):—(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. “Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind and wish.Page 321
And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes, yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe, and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world.”—(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact, and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also. “Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain and guard such great affairs in that kingdom.” (3.) To LOUIS XIV. “Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—As soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope that now in a short time, by God’s good assistance, the sea will be less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of the Spaniard,—one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden, another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty’s achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty’s self safe and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world.” (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, “by whose fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought about that French business is so prosperously managed against the common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in neighbouring Flanders.” It is clear that all these letters cannot have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell’s own name, and letters 3 and 4 were then substituted.Page 322
Perhaps, however, there was no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not used.
[Footnote 1: Exact day not given either in Printed Collection or in Skinner Transcript; but the occasion fixes the time pretty closely.]
(CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, May 1658:—This is in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).—His Highness has been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke. Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water; English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul, have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, “let your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries from-good-will.”
(CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. June 1658:—On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini, the Cardinal’s nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had for some time been intently expecting—the capture of Dunkirk. On the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular. Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M. Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16, when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. “Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—That your Majesty has so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on which account, in theirPage 323
name, I duly return your Majesty my most cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you, or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour. As for Dunkirk, your Majesty’s hopes for the near surrender of which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city only,—the effecting of which result by the capture of the other town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your Majesty’s farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish.” (2.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell’s correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning his long career of Grand Monarque at the age of twenty, while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in 1642. This letter of Cromwell’s to the Cardinal is even more interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:—“Most Eminent Lord,—While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King, who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that person in preference,—adding a reason which, coming from the judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me. Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant examples in you, by which they may learn how to administerPage 324
kingdoms and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be wanting.” (3.) To LOUIS XIV.[1] A more formal letter than the last, acknowledging the French King’s own intimation that Dunkirk had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. “That Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of that letter, I have all confidence,—the master in ordinary of your Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such congratulations between us.” (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will suffice. “With what faith and expression of the highest good-will all was performed by you, though your Eminence’s own assurance fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details, had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or answer your opinion of him.”—It is curious, after these two last letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart’s to which Cromwell refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of money, adds,—“Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal] willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call un si bon morceau, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general, notwithstanding ourPage 325
differences in little particulars, to give this place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than I could have imagined.” Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, “blessed be God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to his Highness”; and there were subsequent longer letters both to Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called “The Key of Spanish Flanders”; and the conquest of this place for the Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of Cromwell’s great acts.
[Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No. 102 there), and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers, 7-8.]
[Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection. It stands as No. 103 in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Hamilton, p. 8.]
[Footnote 3: Thurloe, VII. 173 et seq.]
(CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, June 1658:—Since Cromwell’s last letter by Milton to this heroic Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell’s envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:—“Most serene and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,—As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in such a condition and position that the League could have been ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they first treated of the matter with Us. Nor,Page 326
truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty’s interests, we shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in, your Majesty’s most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very long one.”—So far as Milton’s state-letters show, this is the last of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden. But, in Thurloe and elsewhere, there are farther traces of the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen. His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted Imperator Romanorum.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning, but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe have to be rectified.]
(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, August 1658:—A John Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.
So ends the series of Milton’s Letters for Oliver. As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton’s industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector’s service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton’s secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton’s pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm? Milton. Cromwell’s son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed
[Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton, from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell, that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal—whether for those under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear, though perhaps that might be ascertained. The scrap may be numbered at this point, though inserted only as a note:—(CXXXIII.) “We, Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge, that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects of France.”]
[Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him. In the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the facts in his own expressions. But there was not a man about the Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters as we now have them. My idea as to the way in which they were composed is that, on each occasion, Milton learnt from Thurloe, or even in a preappointed interview with the Council, or with Cromwell himself, the sort of thing that was wanted, and that then, having himself dictated and sent in an English draft, he received it back, approved or with corrections and suggested additions, to be turned into Latin. Special Cromwellian hints to Milton for the letter to Louis XIV, on the alarm of a new persecution of the Piedmontese (ante pp. 387-9) must have been, I should say, the causal reference to a certain pass as the best military route yet into Italy from France, and the suggestion of an exchange of territories between Louis and the Duke of Savoy so as to make the Vaudois French subjects. The hints may have been given to Milton beforehand, or they may have been [n]otched in by Cromwell in revising Milton’s English draft.]
The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell’s death, and the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the diplomacies proper to Milton’s office round the dying Protector. Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell.
The Dutch Lord-Ambassador Nieuport, after having been absent in Holland since November 1657, had been sent back by their High Mightinesses, the States-General, to resume his post. The complication of affairs in northern Europe by the movements of Charles Gustavus, and the menacing attitude of that King not only pretty generally all round the Baltic, but also towards the Dutch themselves, had rendered Nieuport’s renewed presence in London very necessary. Newly commissioned and instructed, he made his voyage, and was in the Thames on the night of the 23rd of July, though too late to reach Gravesend that night. The arrival of an ambassador being then an affair of much punctilio, he sent his son up the river in a shallop, to inform Mr. Secretary Thurloe and Sir Oliver Fleming, the master of the ceremonies, and to deliver to Thurloe a letter requesting that the pomp of a public reception might be waived and he might be permitted to take up his quarters quietly in the Dutch Embassy, still furnished and ready, just as he had left it. Young
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII 286 and 298-299 (Letters of Nieuport to the States-General), 362 (Letter of Thurloe to Henry Cromwell), and 373-374 (Latin letter of Schlezer to Thurloe, two days after Cromwell’s death).]
Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are the productions of Milton’s pen we have hitherto registered as belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have yet to be noticed before we leave the period.
Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"Dissertationis ad quoedam loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Praesids Dn. Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657” ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God’s favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657"). Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with a publication of his in 1653, also entitled Dissertatio ad loca quaedam Miltoni, and appended then to certain Exercitationes concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject by a Christopher Guentzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young Guentzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already; for this is but the “second part” of his performance. The “first part” I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The “second part” is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller’s older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed “Christianus Keck.” Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:—
“What Salmasius, he whom all men
hailed as
Learning’s prodigy, Phoenix much
too big for
His own late generation, ay or any old
one,
Wrote so bravely against the sin of Britain,
Then all wet with the royal bloodshed
in her,
Milton answered with pen that, be it granted,
Showed vast genius, nor a mind without
some
Real marks of artistic cultivation,
Though, O shame! patronizing such an outrage.
Milton’s pen is refuted next by
Schaller’s,—
Quite a different pen and more respected.”
Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their eminent Professor Schaller’s Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now young Guentzer, the accomplished young Guentzer, has placed himself by the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable torch of truth.[1]—In all probability, Milton never heard of such a trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the publication of his Defensio Prima, but which, as Aubrey tells us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. “He was mightily importuned,” says Aubrey, “to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home.” This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign preferment of which Aubrey speaks.
[Footnote 1: The copy I have seen of Guentzer’s Dissertatio is in the British Museum Library. The figure “17” is inserted in MS. after the word “die” in the title-page.]
In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell’s
death, there was published in London a little volume
of about 200 pages, with this title-page: “The
Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of Empire,
and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and
Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience;
And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical
Observations. By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir
Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton Esq.-Quis
Martem tunica tectum Adamantina digne scripserit?-London,
Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson
Page 334
at the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near
the West-end, 1658." Prefixed to the body of the
volume, which is divided into twenty-six chapters,
is a note “To the Reader," as follows:
“Having had the manuscript of this Treatise,
written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands,
and finding it lately by chance among other books
and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind
of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent
an author from the public: it being both answerable
in style to other works of his already extant, as
far as the subject would permit, and given me for
a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had
collected several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."[1]
[Footnote 1: There were subsequent reprints of Raleigh’s Cabinet Council from this 1658 edition by Milton, with changes of title. See Bohn’s Lowndes under Raleigh]
By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton’s literary life under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called Paradise Lost. Phillips’s words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,—his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,—Phillips adds, “But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled Paradise Lost, the noblest,” &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle’s life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey’s earlier information (1680), originally derived from Phillips himself, is that Paradise Lost was begun “about two years before the King came in,” i.e. about May 1658. This would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately following the death-of Milton’s second wife. In such a matter exact certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that the resumption of Paradise Lost was an event of the latter part of Cromwell’s Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster, while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched from the house into St. James’s Park across part of what is now the ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took distinct shape in Milton’s mind, and here he began the great dictation.
Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title Paradise Lost, and another with the title Adam Unparadised (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present Paradise Lost. He had imagined, for the opening of his tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:—
“O thou that with surpassing glory
crowned,
Look’st from thy sole dominion like
the god
Of this new World,—at whose
sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads,—to
thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy
name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what
state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,
Till pride and worse ambition threw me
down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s
matchless King!”
And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with the resolution, made natural by Milton’s literary observations and experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of the Epic.[1] With our present Paradise Lost before us, we can see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane
[Footnote 1: Phillips’s words in quoting these lines are, “In the Fourth Book of the Poem there are six [he says six, but quotes all the ten] verses which, several years before the Poem was begun, were shown to me and some others as designed for the very beginning of the said Tragedy.” These words, if the Epic was begun in 1658, might carry us back at farthest to about 1650 as the date when the ten lines were in existence; but, besides that Phillips’s expression is vague, we have Aubrey’s words in 1680 as follows:—“In the [4th] Book of Paradise Lost there are about six verses of Satan’s exclamation to the Sun which Mr. E. Phi. remembers about fifteen or sixteen years before ever his Poem was thought of; which verses were intended for the beginning of a Tragoedie, which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business.” This, on Phillips’s own authority, would take the lines back to 1642 or 1643; and that, on independent grounds, is the probable date. Hardly after 1642 or 1643 can Milton have adhered to his original intention of writing Paradise Lost in a dramatic form.]
“Of Man’s first disobedience,
and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all
our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse”—
Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it
“Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”
It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton’s memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems somehow all a mistake, and the household is not desolate. A radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him. He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts; but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream, however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the last of all his Sonnets:—
“Methought I saw my
late espoused saint
Brought to me
like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove’s
great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death
by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from
spot of child-bed taint
Purification in
the Old Law did save,
And such as yet
once more I trust to have
Full sight of
her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white,
pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled;
yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness,
goodness, in her person shined
So clear as in no face with
more delight.
But oh! as to
embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled,
and day brought back my night."[1]
[Footnote 1: We do not know the exact date of this Sonnet; but the internal evidence decidedly is that it was written not very long after the second wife’s death, and probably in 1658. The manuscript copy of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is in the hand of a person who was certainly acting as amanuensis for Milton early in 1660 and afterwards.]
SEPTEMBER 1660—MAY 1660.
HISTORY:—THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK’S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.
RICHARD’S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.
THE ANARCHY:—
STAGE I.:—THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659—OCT. 13, 1659.
STAGE II.:—THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659—DEC.
26, 1659.
STAGE III.:—SECOND
RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK’S MARCH
FROM SCOTLAND:
DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.
MONK’S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED
LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE
RESTORATION.
BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD’S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK’S DICTATORSHIP.
First Section.
THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.
PROCLAMATION OF RICHARD: HEARTY RESPONSE FROM
THE COUNTRY AND FROM
FOREIGN POWERS: FUNERAL OF THE LATE PROTECTOR:
RESOLUTION FOR A NEW
PARLIAMENT.—DIFFICULTIES IN PROSPECT:
LIST OF THE MOST CONSPICUOUS
PROPS AND ASSESSORS OF THE NEW PROTECTORATE:
MONK’S ADVICES TO
RICHARD: UNION OF THE CROMWELLIANS AGAINST CHARLES
STUART: THEIR
SPLIT AMONG THEMSELVES INTO THE COURT OR DYNASTIC
PARTY AND THE ARMY
OR WALLINGFORD-HOUSE PARTY: CHIEFS OF THE TWO
PARTIES: RICHARD’S
PREFERENCE FOR THE COURT PARTY, AND HIS SPEECH TO
THE ARMY OFFICERS:
BACKING OF THE ARMY PARTY TOWARDS REPUBLICANISM OR
ANTI-OLIVERIANISM:
HENRY CROMWELL’S LETTER OF REBUKE TO FLEETWOOD:
DIFFERENCES OF THE
TWO PARTIES AS TO FOREIGN POLICY: THE FRENCH
ALLIANCE AND THE WAR
WITH SPAIN: RELATIONS TO THE KING OF SWEDEN.—MEETING
OF RICHARD’S
PARLIAMENT (JAN. 27, 1658-9): THE TWO HOUSES:
EMINENT MEMBERS OF THE
COMMONS: RICHARD’S OPENING SPEECH:
THURLOE THE LEADER FOR GOVERNMENT
IN THE COMMONS: RECOGNITION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP
AND OF THE OTHER
HOUSE, AND GENERAL TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT PARTY:
MISCELLANEOUS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT.—DISSATISFACTION
OF THE ARMY PARTY:
THEIR CLOSER CONNEXION WITH THE REPUBLICANS:
NEW CONVENTION OF
OFFICERS AT WALLINGFORD-HOUSE: DESBOROUGH’S
SPEECH: THE CONTENTION
FORBIDDEN BY THE PARLIAMENT AND DISSOLVED BY RICHARD:
WHITEHALL
SURROUNDED BY THE ARMY, AND RICHARD COMPELLED TO DISSOLVE
THE
PARLIAMENT.—RESPONSIBLE POSITION OF FLEETWOOD,
DESBOROUGH, LAMBERT,
AND THE OTHER ARMY CHIEFS: BANKRUPT STATE OF
THE FINANCES: NECESSITY
FOR SOME KIND OF PARLIAMENT: PHRENZY FOR “THE
GOOD OLD CAUSE” AND
DEMAND FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RUMP: ACQUIESCENCE
OF THE ARMY
CHIEFS: LENTHALL’S OBJECTIONS: FIRST
FORTNIGHT OF THE RESTORED RUMP;
LINGERING OF RICHARD IN WHITEHALL: HIS ENFORCED
ABDICATION.
OLIVER was dead, and Richard was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood himself included, to accept the death-bed nomination. That having been settled through the night following Oliver’s death, Richard was proclaimed in various places in London and Westminster on the morning of September 4, amid great concourses, with firing of cannon, and acclamations of “God save His Highness Richard Lord Protector!” It was at once intimated that the Government was to proceed without interruption, and that all holding his late Highness’s commissions, civil or military, were to continue in their appointments.
Over the country generally, and through the Continent, the news of Oliver’s death and the news that Richard had succeeded him ran simultaneously. For some time there was much anxiety at Whitehall as to the response. From all quarters, however, it was reassuring. Addresses of loyal adhesion to the new Protector poured in from towns, counties, regiments, and churches of all denominations; the proclamations in London and Westminster were repeated in Edinburgh, Dublin, and everywhere else; the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland were alike satisfied; the Navy was cordial; from Lockhart, as Governor of Dunkirk, and from the English Army in Flanders, there were votes of confidence; and, in return for the formal intimation made to all foreign diplomatists in London of the death of the late Protector and the accession of his son, there came mingled condolences on the one event and congratulations on the other from all the friendly powers. Richard himself, hitherto regarded as a mere country-gentleman of simple and jolly tastes, seemed to suit his new position better than had been expected. In audiences with deputations and with foreign ambassadors he acquitted himself modestly and respectably; and, as he had his father’s Council still about him, with Thurloe keeping all business in hand in spite of an inopportune illness, affairs went on apparently in a satisfactory course.—A matter which interested the public for some time was the funeral of the late Protector. His body had been embalmed, and conveyed to Somerset House, there to lie in open state, amid banners, escutcheons, black velvet draperies and all the sombre gorgeousness that could be devised from a study of the greatest royal funerals on record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple, ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself had already been privately interred.—A week after this
[Footnote 1: Merc. Pol., from Sept. 1658 to Jan. 1658-9, as quoted in Cromwelliana, 178-181; Thurloe, VII. 383-384, et seq. as far as 541; Whitlocke, IV. 335-339; Phillips (i.e. continuation of Baker’s Chronicle by Milton’s nephew, Edward Phillips), ed. 1679, pp. 635-639; Peplum Olivarii, a funeral sermon on Oliver, dated Nov. 17, 1658, among Thomason Pamphlets.—Knights of Richard’s dubbing in the first five months of his Protectorate were—General Morgan (Nov. 26), Captain Beke (Dee. 6), and Colonel Hugh Bethel (Dee. 26). There may have been others.]
Appearances, however, were very deceptive. The death of Cromwell had, of course, agitated the whole world of exiled Royalism, raising sunk hopes, and stimulating Charles himself, the Queen-Mother, Hyde, Ormond, Colepepper, and the other refugees over the Continent, to doubled activity of intrigue and correspondence. And, though that immediate excitement had passed, and had even been succeeded by a kind of wondering disappointment among the exiles at the perfect calm attending Richard’s accession, it was evident that the chances of Charles were immensely greater under Richard than they had been while Oliver lived. For one thing, would the relations of Louis XIV. and Mazarin to Richard’s Government remain the same as they had been to Oliver’s? There was no disturbance of these relations as yet. The English auxiliaries in Flanders were still shoulder to shoulder with Turenne and his Frenchmen, sharing with them such new successes as the capture of Ypres, accomplished mainly by the valour of the brave Morgan. But who knew what might be passing in the mind of the crafty Cardinal? Then what of the Dutch? In the streets of Amsterdam the populace, on receipt of the news of Cromwell’s death, had gone about
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 405 and 414; Guizot’s Richard Cromwell and the Restoration (English edition of 1856), I. 6-11.]
It will be well at this point to have before us a list of the most conspicuous props and assessors of the new Protectorate. The name Oliverians being out of date now, they may be called The Cromwellians. We shall arrange them in groups:—
I. THE COUNCIL.
Lord President Lawrence.
Lord Lieutenant-General Fleetwood (his
Highness’s brother-in-law).
Lord Major-General Desborough (his Highness’s
uncle-in-law).
Lord Sydenham (Colonel).
Lord Pickering (Chamberlain of the
Household).
Lord Strickland.
Lord Skippon.
Lord Fiennes (one of the Commissioners
of the Great Seal).
Lord Viscount Lisle.
Lord Admiral Montague.
Lord Wolseley.
Lord Philip Jones (Comptroller of the
Household).
Mr. Secretary Thurloe.[1]
[Footnote 1: On comparing this list of Richard’s Council with the list of the Council in Oliver’s Second Protectorate (ante p. 308) two names will be missed—those of the EARL of MULGRAVE and old FRANCIS ROUS. The Earl of Mulgrave had died Aug. 28, 1658, five days before Cromwell himself. The venerable Rous only just survived. He died Jan. 7, 1658-9, and is hardly to be counted in the present list. Richard’s father-in-law, RICHARD MAYOR, though still alive and nominally in the Council, had retired from active life.]
II. NEAR ADVISERS, NOT OF THE COUNCIL.
Lord Viscount Falconbridge (his Highness’s
brother-in-law).
Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel).
Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel).
Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected
Cromwellian, and conjoined
with Fiennes and
Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal,
Jan. 22, 1658-9).
Lord Commissioner John Lisle.
Lord Chief Justice Glynne.
Lord Chief Justice St. John.
William Pierrepoint.
Sir Edmund Prideaux (Attorney General).
Sir William Bills (Solicitor General).
Sir Oliver Fleming (Master of the Ceremonies).
Sir Richard Chiverton (Lord Mayor of
London).
Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness’s
uncle-in-law).
Dr. John Owen.
Dr. Thomas Goodwin.
III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:—Fleetwood and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too, with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their military capacity, as merely Colonels; but the first eight had been among Cromwell’s “Major-Generals,” three of the thirteen had their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe, Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been among his Parliamentary “Lords.”—We have mentioned but the chiefs of the Army, called “the Army Grandees;” but, since Richard’s accession, and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of 200 or more, in Fleetwood’s residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the smaller meetings of “the Army Grandees” in the same place, all matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There were also more secret meetings in Desborongh’s house.
IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland; with whom may be associated such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton. (2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, Lord Deputy of Ireland hitherto, but now, by his brother’s commission, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, Lord Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk; with whom may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces, and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658.
These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it mainly depended, in the first months of Richard’s Protectorate, whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form, and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This, however, is quite a misconstruction.—Monk, who is chiefly suspected, and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness “too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration.” Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure him “There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of place.” On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and many of the ships re-officered[1]—Such were Monk’s advices; and, whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences, the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible, on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 387-388.]
Cromwell’s death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell’s death-bed, “Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery” Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: “I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I’ll make the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him.” One might imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally, which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may be called the Court Party or Dynastic Party, represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague, Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard’s Protectorate an avowed continuation of his father’s, with the same forms, the same powers, and the permanence of the Petition and Advice as the instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In opposition to this party was the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military co-ordinate with the Protector.[1]
[Footnote 1: Falconbridge’s Letters (deciphered) in Thurloe, VII. 365-366 et seq., with other Letters in Thurloe and Letters of the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, chiefly to Mazarin, appended to Guizot’s Richard Cromwell and the Restoration, I. 231 et seq.]
For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke, into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town (Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully. The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the main subject. “I am sure it may be said of me,” said Richard, “that not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though they may be better men than myself.” He then instanced the two things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. “For instance,” he said, “if I should trust it to any one person or more to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the Petition and Advice—which directs that the commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only to my disposal—I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the Council, in the Lords’ House, and all other magistracies. I leave it to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the Petition and Advice, which I must make my rule in my government, and shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not obliged to make any Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own liberty, as it was in my father’s; only, if I will make any, it must be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief can be meant no other than the person who under me commands the whole Army, call him what you will—’Field-Marshal,’ ‘Commander-in-chief,’
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 447-449, 454-455, and 498; Phillips, 639; Guizot, I. 13-19, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux appended to the volume.]
More than questions of home-administration was involved in this division of parties. It involved also the future foreign policy of the Protectorate. The desire of Richard himself and of the Court Party was to prosecute the foreign policy which Oliver had so strenuously begun. Now, the great bequests from the late Protectorate in the matter of foreign policy had been two: (1)_The War with Spain, in alliance with France._ The Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain, originally formed by Cromwell March 23, 1656-7, and renewed March 28, 1658, was to expire on March 28, 1659. Was it to be then again renewed? If not, how was the war with Spain to be farther conducted, and what was to become of Dunkirk, Mardike, and other English conquests and interests in Flanders? Mazarin was really anxious on this topic. The alliance with England had been immensely advantageous for France; and could it not be continued? In frequent letters, since Cromwell’s death, to M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London, Mazarin had pressed for information on this point. The substance of the Ambassador’s replies had been that the new Protector and his Council, especially Mr. Secretary Thurloe, were too much engrossed with home-difficulties to be very explicit with him, but that he had reason to believe a loan from France of L50,000 would aid the natural inclinations of the Court-party to continue the alliance. This was more than Mazarin would risk on the chance, though he was willing to act on the suggestion of the ambassador that a present of Barbary horses should be sent to Lord Falconbridge, or a jewel to Lady Falconbridge, to keep them in good-humour. There can be no doubt that Falconbridge, Thurloe, Lockhart, and the Court Party generally, did hope to preserve the close friendship with France and the hold acquired by England on Flanders. Lockhart particularly had at heart the hard, half-starved condition of his poor Dunkirk garrison and the other forces in Flanders. On the other hand, there were signs that public feeling might desert the Court Party in their desire to carry on Oliver’s joint-enterprise with France against the Spaniards. Dunkirk and Mardike were precious possessions; but might it not be better for trade to make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices? This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the pure Commonwealth’s men, and was in favour with some of the Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern England? Was there not enough to do at home?[1] (2) Assistance to the King of Sweden. A great surprise to all Europe just before Cromwell’s death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the Peace of Roeskilde
[Footnote 1: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, I. 231-286, and II. 441-450; Thurloe, VII. 466-467.]
[Footnote 2: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux last cited, with. Guizot, I. 23-26; Thurloe, VII. 412, 509, 529; Whitlocke for Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. 1658, also for Aug. 1656; Phillips, 638.]
“Wind-bound” was the exact description of the state of Richard’s Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England and Wales to about 400, instead of the 500 or more of the ancient system, and allocating the 400 among constituencies rearranged so as to give a vast proportion of the representation to the counties, while reducing that of the burghs generally and disfranchising many small old burghs altogether. The Petition and Advice having left this matter of the number of seats and their distribution open for farther consideration, Richard and his Council had been advised by the lawyers that it would be more “according to law” and therefore more safe and more agreeable to the spirit and letter of the Petition and Advice, to abandon the late temporary method, though sanctioned by the Long Parliament, and revert to the ancient use and wont. Writs had been issued, therefore, for the return of over 500 members from England and Wales by the old time-honoured constituencies, besides additions from Scotland and Ireland. Thus, whereas, for the last two Protectoral Parliaments, some of the larger English counties had returned as many as six, eight, nine, or twelve members each, all were now reduced alike to two, the large number of seats so set free, together with the extra hundred, going back among the burghs, and reincluding those that had been disfranchised. London also was reduced from six seats to four. It seems amazing now that this vast retrogression should have been so quietly accepted. It seems even to have been popular; and, at all events, it roused no commotion. It had been recommended by the lawyers, and it was expected to turn out favourable to the Government.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 615-619; and compare the List of Members of this Parliament of Richard (Part. Hist. III. 1530-1537) with the lists of Oliver’s two Parliaments (Part. Hist. 1428-1433, and 1479-1484).]
On Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, the two Houses assembled in Westminster. In the Upper House, where Lord Commissioner Fiennes occupied the woolsack, were as many of Cromwell’s sixty-three “Lords” (ante pp. 323-324) as had chosen to come. All the Council, except Thurloe, being in this House, and the others having been, for the most part, carefully selected Cromwellians, it might have been expected that Government would be strong in the House. As it included, however, Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the chief Colonels of the Wallingford-House party, it is believed that in such attendances as there were (never more than forty perhaps) that party may have been stronger than the Court party. But it was
[Footnote 1: List in Parl. Hist. III. 1530-1537; Ludlow, 619 et seq.]
Richard’s opening speech was in a good strain. It assumed loyalty to the memory of his father and to the Petition and Advice, and recommended immediate attention to the arrears of the Army and to other money-exigencies, with zealous prosecution of the war with Spain, and consideration of what might be done for the King of Sweden, the cause of European Protestantism, and English interests in the Baltic. The speech was delivered in the Lords, only a few of the Commons attending. They were busy with swearing in their members, and with the election of a Speaker. Mr. Chaloner Chute, a lawyer, one of the members for Middlesex, was unanimously chosen; but, short as the session was to be, the House was to have three Speakers in succession. Mr. Chute acted till March 9, when his health broke down, and Sir Lislebone Long, one of the members for Wells, was appointed his substitute. Sir Lislebone died only seven days afterwards (March 16), and Mr. Thomas Bampfield, one, of the members for Exeter, succeeded him. Chute having died also, Bampfield became full Speaker. April 15, 1659.[1]
[Footnote 1: Parl. Hist. III. 1537-1540, and Commons Journals of dates.]
A day or two having been spent in preliminary business, and the House presenting the spectacle, long unknown in Westminster, of no fewer than between 300 and 400 members in daily attendance, Thurloe, on the 1st of February, boldly threw down the gage by bringing in a bill for recognising Richard’s right and title to be Lord Protector. Hasilrig and the Republicans were taken by surprise, and could only protest that the motion was unseasonable and that other matters ought to have precedence. The bill having been read the first time that day, Thurloe consented that the second reading should be deferred to the 7th. On that day, accordingly, there began a debate which lasted for seven successive days, and was a full trial of strength between the Government and the Republicans. Hasilrig, Neville, Scott, Vane, Ludlow, and others, exerted themselves to the utmost, Hasilrig leading, and making one speech three hours long. It was evident, however, that the Republicans knew themselves to be but a minority, and used the debate only for re-opening the question of a Republic. They did not attack the direct proposal of the Bill; on the contrary they vied with the Cromwellians in language of respect for Richard. “I confess I do love the person of the Lord Protector; I never saw nor heard either fraud or guile in him.” said Hasilrig. “I would not hazard a hair of his present Highness’s head,” said Scott; “if you think of a Single Person, I would have him sooner than any man alive.” They did not want, they said, to pull down the Protectorate; they only objected to Thurloe’s high-handed method for committing the House to a foregone conclusion. But Thurloe beat. On Monday the 14th, the question having been finally put “that it be part of this Bill to recognise and declare his Highness Richard,
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and Guizot, I. 46-72 (where the extracts from speeches are from Burton’s Diary); also Commons Journals of Feb. 21 and 24; and Thurloe, VII. 636-637 and 644-645.]
In minor matters the House had shown some independence. On the 23rd of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver, accepting the Duke’s own word of honour, and Fairfax’s bail of L20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth. So, on the 16th of March, they had released Milton’s friend, the Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years’ imprisonment, declaring Cromwell’s mere warrant for the same to have been insufficient and illegal. This was a most popular act, and the liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations. Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with all reverence for Oliver’s memory, were ready to take any occasion for signifying that his more “arbitrary” acts must be debited to himself only. There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in it, to question the late Protector’s liking for unlimited religions toleration. They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with “heresies and blasphemies.” Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were especially threatened. Here, indeed, the House meant rather to indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for, though. Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father’s religious liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of Richard’s Protectorate. The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind, people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville, for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest Christian do but support the Protectorate?[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 26 and April 2; Guizot, I. 103-104.]
April 1659 was the third month of the Parliament. About a hundred of the members hitherto in attendance had then withdrawn, and the attendances had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the Protector’s Government and the Opposition, and had become one between the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the farther use of Thurloe’s victories.
The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not, for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing of the declared supporters of Richard’s Protectorship, and their chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed; and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for the “good Old Cause”? How well-founded was this calculation will appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill, Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland, Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears that they saw endangered, but that Army
Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of Richard’s in one of these conferences had been widely reported and had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing wrong in appointing any but “godly” officers, he had said, “Here is Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust him before ye all.” As nothing was to be made of Richard in this private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament. Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill, Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and Desborough, he had given the permission, without even consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659, there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House, Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe, representing the other, while among the general body there were no one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly opened with prayer
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.]
That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then, to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused, the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing Richard’s control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said, and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The question now was between a forced dissolution of the Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard’s objection to violence, seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a rendezvous in and round St. James’s, by Fleetwood’s order, of all the regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard’s name, was attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of Richard’s guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. “About noon,” says the sturdy democrat, “Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself.” There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o’clock. The Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation, and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 639-641; Whitlocke under date April 21, 1659; Commons Journals of April 22; Phillips, 641-642; Guizot, I. 120-128, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin appended at pp. 366-375.]
A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a total of L2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in Flanders. Of this sum L1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears, L393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and L80,623 was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this last item. The annual income from England was L1,517,275, and the annual expenses in England L1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England of L30,513; the annual income from Scotland was L143,652, but the outlay L307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for Scotland of L163,619; the annual income from Ireland was L207,790, and the outlay L346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of L138,690. This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary administration, civil and military, of the three nations, L332,823; but, as L252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real deficit was L80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the L393,883 running on for the Navy, and the arrears of L1,747,584 besides, and the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, April 16, 1659.]
The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and carrying on Richard’s Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard’s name, and the only deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of officers continued, or a more select Council of their number associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 644-649; Parl. Hist. III. 1546-7; Thomason Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.]
Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, “he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long,” the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver’s and Richard’s courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still very uneasy. “He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late King had not put an end to the Parliament.” That objection having been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet him next morning
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 649-650.]
Next morning, Saturday May 7, 1659, about thirty of the members of the old Rump were shaking hands with each other in the House of Lords, waiting anxiously till as many more should drop in as would make the necessary quorum of forty, before marching into the Commons. Army officers and other spectators were in the lobbies, equally anxious. Time passed, and a few more did drop in, including Henry Marten, luckily remembered as in jail for debt near at hand, and fetched thence in triumph. At length, about thirty-seven having mustered, old Lenthall, who had spies on the spot, thought it best to come in; and, about twelve o’clock, he led a procession of exactly forty-two persons into the Commons House, the officers and other spectators attending them to the doors with congratulations. The House, having been constituted, entered at once on business, framing a Declaration for the public suitable for the occasion, and appointing several committees. They set apart next day, Sunday the 8th, for special religious services, with a re-inauguration sermon by Dr. Owen.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 651-652; Commons Journals, May 7, 1659; Parl Hist. III. 1547-1550.]
On Monday, May 9, the small new House had to re-encounter a difficulty which had troubled them somewhat at their first meeting on Saturday. On that day, besides the forty-two members of the Rump who had answered the summons, there had come to the lobbies fourteen persons who had been members of the Long Parliament before it became the Rump, i.e. before that famous Pride’s Purge of Dec. 6-7, 1648, which excluded 143 of the Presbyterians and other Royalists from their seats, and so converted the Long Parliament into the more compact body wanted for the King’s Trial and the formation of the Republic (Vol. III. pp. 696-698). The fourteen, among whom were the Presbyterians Sir George Booth and William Prynne, had insisted on being admitted, but had been kept out by the officers after some altercation. But now, on Monday, several of them were back, to see the issue of a protest that had been meanwhile sent to the Speaker on behalf of 213 members of the Long
[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 138-141; Commons Journals, May 9, 1659; Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets. The first of the two named pamphlets of Prynne appeared, with his name in full, May 13; the second, “by W.P.,” May 30.—Prynne continued, in subsequent pamphlets, to attack the Rumpers for the wrong done to him and the other secluded members in still debarring them from their seats. One was entitled A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done, spoken, by and between Mr. Prynne, the old and newly-forcibly late Secluded Members, the Army Officers, and those now sitting both in the Commons Lobby, House, and elsewhere, on Saturday and Monday last (the 7 and 9 of this instant May). Though so entitled, it did not appear till June 13. It contained this passage against the Bumpers:—“Themselves in divers of their printed Declarations, and their instruments in sundry books (as JOHN GOODWIN, MARKHAM NEEDHAM, MELTON, and others), justified, maintained, the very highest, worst, treasonablest, execrablest, of all Popish, Jesuitical, Unchristian, tenets, practices, treasons, as the murthering of Christian Protestant Kings.” This is a sample at once of Prynne’s style and of his accuracy. He does not take the trouble to know the names of the persons he writes about, but plods, on like a rhinoceros in blinkers.]
For eighteen days after the resuscitation of the Rump, and notwithstanding their distinct announcement in their public declaration that they were to “endeavour the settlement” of the Commonwealth “without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,” Richard still lingered in Whitehall and his Protectorship remained nominally in existence. But the Republicans made what haste they could to put an end to that anomaly. Their difficulty lay in their yet unadjusted differences with the Army-officers conjoined with them in the Restoration of the Rump. Towards the removal of these differences something was done on the 13th of May, when the House appointed Fleetwood “Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the land-forces in England and Scotland” (Ireland reserved), and associated with him Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ludlow, Hasilrig, and Vane, in a commission of seven empowered to nominate, for approval by the Parliament, the commissioned officers of the whole Army. Even with, this arrangement, however, the Army-magnates were not satisfied; and it left other differences over, which were restated that very day in a petition and address from the whole Council of Officers. This Petition and Address, presented to the House by a deputation of eighteen chief officers, headed by Lambert and Desborough, consisted of fifteen Articles, the last three of which contained the points of most vital debate with the pure Republicans. In Article XIII. it was petitioned that, for the Legislative, there should be, in addition to the Popular or Representative House, “a select Senate, co-ordinate in power.” Article XIV. required also, for the Executive; a separate Council of State. Article XV. concerned the Cromwell family. It did not demand a continuation of the Protectorate, but It demanded the payment by the State of all debts contracted by Oliver or Richard in their Protectorates, the settlement of L10,000 a year on Richard and his heirs for ever, the settlement of a farther L10,000 a year on Richard for his life, and the settlement of L8,000 a year for life on “his honourable mother,” the Protectress-dowager,—all this to the end that there might remain to posterity “a mark of the high esteem this nation hath of the good service done by his father, our ever-renowned General.” The House was not then prepared to answer the demands of Articles XIII. and XV., but only that of Article XIV. after a certain fashion. It was agreed that day that there should be an executive Council of State, to consist of thirty-one persons, ten of them not members of Parliament, the Council to hold office till Dec. 1 next ensuing; and at that meeting and the two next the thirty-one Councillors were duly chosen. Then, on the 21st of May, various addresses of confidence in the new Government having by this time come in from London and other parts, the Republicans felt themselves strong enough to discuss the petition of the officers, article by article, accepting most of them, but postponing the three last
Oliver P.: Richard.!. Richard! Richard!
Richard: Who calls “Richard”?
’Tis a hollow voice;
And
yet perhaps it may be mine own thoughts.
Oliver: No: ’tis thy
father risen from the grave;
Nor—would
I have thee fooled, nor yet turn knave.
Richard: I could not help it, father.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. III. 1551-1557; Pamphlet, of given title, dated May 21 in MS. in the Thomason copy.]
Second Section.
THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED RUMP:
MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659.
NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM:
COUNCIL OP STATE OF
THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION
OP THE NEW
GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN
THE CROMWELLIANS
AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE
OF THE LEADING
CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL,
MONK, HENRY CROMWELL,
LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED
CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES
POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF
THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR
ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY:
TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE
AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS
AS AMBASSADOR
FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF
THE ARMY, NAVY, AND
MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS
FOR A SIMULTANEOUS
RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH
IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT
SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES
ROUND MONK AT
DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH’S INSURRECTION
CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE
RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS
AND THEIR
ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION
OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON
AND HIS POLITICAL
THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS
IN THE ARMY:
PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT’S
BRIGADE: SEVERE
NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND
PROPOSALS OF THE
GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS
OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT,
DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED:
LAMBERT’S
RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT.
The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the 25th, the day of Richard’s abdication. In obedience to a summons sent out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety. In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House. Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long Parliament to his present reappearance:—
The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a Regicide, i.e. an actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720). The contraction Rec. prefixed signifies that the person was not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov. 1640, but one of the Recruiters who came in at various times afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of thesePage 368
came in between Aug. 1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about eight persons were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the institution of the Commonwealth. R added to a name signifies a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; O^1 a member of Oliver’s First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; O^2 a member of Oliver’s Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The addition [t] in the last case denotes that the person was one of the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session, but restored at the beginning of the second. R denotes a member of the Commons in Richard’s late Parliament, just dissolved; and L denotes that the person had been one of Oliver’s and Richard’s Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted. Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought correct by the restored Republic.
Speaker: William Lenthall
(aetat. 68), O^1,
O^2, L
Rec. Andrews, Robert R
Rec. Anlaby, John B, R
Rec. Ash, James O^1, O^2,
R
Rec. Atkins, Alderman
Rec. Baker, James R
Barker, Col. John
Rec. Bennett, Col. Robert
B, O^1, R
Rec. Bingham, Col. John B,
0^1, O^2, R
Rec. Birch, Col. John O^1,
O^2[t], R
*_Rec._ Blagrave, Daniel O^2, R
Rec. Boone, Thomas O^1,
R
*_Rec._ Bourchier, Sir John
Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart.
Rec. Brewster, Robert O^1,
O^2, R
* Carew, John B
* Cawley, William R
*_Rec._ Challoner, Thomas R
Rec. Corbet, John
Rec. Crompton, Thomas O^1,
O^2, R
Rec. Darley, Henry O^2[t]
Rec. Darley, Richard O^2[t]
*_Rec._ Dixwell, Col. John O^1,
O^2, R
Rec. Dormer, John
Rec. Dove, John
*_Rec._ Downes, Col. John
Dunch, Edmund O^1, O^2
Rec. Earle, Serjeant Erasmus
Ellis, Sir William O^1, O^2,
R
Rec. Eyre, Col. William R
Rec. Fagg, John O^1, O^2,
R
Rec. Fielder, Col. John R
Rec. Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles
[Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been prepared:—(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the five months of its sittings—Commons Journals, Vol. VII. pp. 644-797—and collected the names appearing in the lists of Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with a list in Parl. Hist., III. 1547-8. It is much less complete than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have referred to Mr. Carlyle’s Revised List of the Long Parliament, appended to Vol. II. of his Cromwell, and to the Lists of the Barebones Parliament, Oliver’s two Parliaments, and Richard’s Parliament in Vol. III. of the Parl. Hist.—With all my care, I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian name. The Journals often omit that.—I have seen, since writing the above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving what it calls “a perfect list of the Rumpers.” It includes 121 names, and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite—containing one or two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more authentic.]
From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about one-third of the total
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded divisions in the Journals for the whole session.]
A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again denoting Regicides:—
Parliamentary Members
(In the order of the number of votes they
obtained in the ballot).
Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Sir Henry Vane Colonel Lieut.-General Ludlow Lieut.-General Fleetwood Major Richard Salway Colonel Herbert Morley Thomas Scott Colonel Robert Wallop Sir James Harrington Colonel Valentine Walton Colonel John Jones Colonel William Sydenham Algernon Sidney Henry Neville Thomas Challoner Colonel John Downes Lord Chief Justice St. John George Thompson Lord Commissioner Whitlocke Colonel John Dixwell Robert Reynolds Non-Parliamentary Members.
Seven appointed without ballot.
Thomas, Lord Fairfax O^1, R
Major-General Lambert O^1, O^2,
R
Colonel John Desborough O^1, O^2,
L
Colonel James Berry O^2, L
John Bradshaw _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. _B_,
_O^1_,
_O^2[t]_, _R_
Sir Horatio Townshend _R_
Three chosen, by ballot.
Josiah Berners O^1
Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston
L
Sir Robert Honeywood R
Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb. 1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected. His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a bona fide Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham’s Fairfax, 375; Baillie’s Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.]
There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump Government. It came together in the name of “the good old cause,” or a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic—to wit, the Sovereignty of the People. Richard’s House of Commons had been as freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community, but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver’s Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag
These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed.
The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard’s downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by their defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went. Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver’s rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague’s, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his communications with Richard and Thurloe. “I have frequently renewed my offers of the King’s assistance,” he wrote to the Cardinal on the 16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump and eleven days before Richard’s abdication; and again, more distinctly, on the 19th, “Having yesterday contrived to get an interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success,” The Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold
[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French reckoning)—especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402); Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]
Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf here and there, but they died away.—Monk, about whose conduct in the crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had sulkily wanted to know at first what this “Good Old Cause” was that they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense gain.—Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell’s Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain Lockhart’s services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from the new Government.—There had been more uncertainty about Henry Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as he says, “only from common fame,” Henry had very bravely held out to the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day, having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. “All this while,” he wrote, “I expected directions from his Highness, by whose authority I was placed here, still having
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July 2, 1659.]
The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July, had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath they must strive to keep out the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with the old dynasty?
All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard, Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of. Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course which in him, at all events, would have been infamous; and, though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in their “further superstructures,” he could wish them well on the whole, and so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to the Parliament, and Charles’s letter, when it did reach him, was not even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two “sons of Belial” in Desborongh’s esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to assist them with advices and information.[1]
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.]
Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of the “good old cause” was strong in the two or three scores of members most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton, Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the chair.
A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell, and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland; re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions in two departments: (1) Church and Religion, On the 27th of June, In reply to a petition from “many thousands of the free-born people of this Commonwealth” for the abolition of Tithes, the House voted that “the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and comfortable maintenance.” Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition, however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of “the good old cause,” and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell’s Church policy, and anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some other leading Rumpers
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl. Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 165-172.]
In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor. Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill, passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the officer personally from the Speaker’s own hands.
I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.
Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. Colonels
of Horse
Regiments: John Lambert (with Richard Creed
for his Major), John
Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his
Major), Robert
Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer
(with John
Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders,
and Herbert
Morley. 2. Colonels of Foot-Regiments:
Lieutenant-General
Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured,
John Hewson (with
John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John
Biscoe, William
Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield,
Sir Arthur
Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon,
Robert
Barrow.—One finds, besides, certain Colonels
appointed to garrison
commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch
to be Governor of the Tower,
Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth,
II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:—Here, probably because of Monk’s passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in courtesy he might still be called “General Monk,” should have only, by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen), Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.
II. IRELAND.
Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.
Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but with the military title of “Lieutenant-General of Horse.” For the Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should be at liberty to return to England on occasion.
Probably because Ludlow’s recommendations from Ireland were waited for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence, Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell, for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow’s memoirs, were still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.
In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth’s man, having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received his commission from the Speaker’s hands on the 8th of June; such captains and other officers for Lawson’s Fleet as were at hand received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and lieutenants in Montague’s Baltic Fleet.—More a matter of wonder still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties, just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug. 2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1]
[Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour, from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to Ludlow’s Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with Monk in Scotland, and Overton’s former military experience in high command had been chiefly in Scotland.]
The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.
After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home, had resolved on testing the King’s improved chances by a general insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton, Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot;
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot, 191-204.]
As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe’s means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe’s information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31 the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the confederates. It had all along been Willis’s good-natured policy to balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this time been made aware of Sir Richard’s long course of treachery, and had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir Richard’s counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short, whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in several other places those who straggled together dispersed themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey, Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth, the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made of the King, but it was merely declared that certain “Lords, Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy nation,” tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire, where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in, and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken the initiative.[1]
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips, 649-652 (where Booth’s Proclamation is given).]
After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth’s Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.—Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King’s interest. He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk’s brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk. He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King’s letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk’s domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King’s commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King’s letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth’s rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves. “The thinking silent General,” we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow,
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner’s Life of Monk, 90-104; Wood’s Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.]
At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth L1000 was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller ("upon suspicion of high treason,” aggravated by his refusal to pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord Falconbridge (discharged on bail of L10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances of his fellow-plenipotentiaries,
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14 (Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734 (about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11 to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2, 1658, the day before Oliver’s death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct. 25, 1659, there is again a gap.]
Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert’s success did the Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a committee of twenty-nine “to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the Government of this Commonwealth.” The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville, Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee! It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic, without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow’s summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. “At this time,” he says, “the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others proposed that there
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]
Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account of them is here necessary.
Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the “Sir James Harrington” now of the Council of State. He was the “Mr. James Harrington” who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King’s amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.—After the King’s death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil’s Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world. He had convinced himself “that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies
[Footnote 1: Harrington’s Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland’s Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood’s Ath., III. 1115-1126; Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets (for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of Harrington’s Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]
While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates. The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration. They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert’s brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army’s real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert’s brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert’s brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert’s brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action.
As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert’s brigade. At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form. Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of “the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition.” The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562; Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).]
Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers, cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert’s northern expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk’s advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine proposals. The preamble complained generally of the misrepresentation, by some, “to evil and sinister ends,” of the petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert’s brigade, and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8; Phillips, 656-660; Skinner’s Life of Monk, 111-113.]
Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why. “This day,” runs the entry, “the late Principal Officers of the Army, whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the members from coming to the House and attending their service there.” This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the manner described. Morley’s regiment and Mosse’s regiment were faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in an outer ring round Morley’s and Mosse’s, so as to block all accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about, coming up now and then to Morley’s men or Mosse’s and haranguing them. Would they suffer nine of
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV. 364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.]
Second Section (continued).
THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT. 13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.
THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS COMMITTEE
OF SAFETY:
BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS:
DEATH OF
BRADSHAW.—ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW
GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD,
LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS:
DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF
THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED
WITH MONK, AND
LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK’S
MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND
THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS
IN LONDON: HIS
PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE
FROM EDINBURGH TO
BERWICK: MONK’S ARMY AND LAMBERT’S.—FOREIGN
RELATIONS OF THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN
FRANCE AND SPAIN:
LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA:
GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS
CHANCES IN ENGLAND.—DISCUSSIONS OF THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT
AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
THE VANE PARTY
AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS:
JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON,
THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.—MONK
AT
COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR
OF HIM AND THE
RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE
RULE IN LONDON:
VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP
RESTORED A SECOND
TIME.
For about a fortnight after Lambert’s coup d’etat, the Council of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting’s to the 25th of October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest that, “being now going to his God,” he must leave his testimony against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the 26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford—House officers, and called The Committee of Safety. It consisted of twenty-three persons, as follows:—
Whitlocke (made also_ Lord Keeper of the Great Seal_, Nov. 1).
Colonel Robert Bennett
Colonel James Berry
Henry Brandreth
Colonel John Clerk
Desborough
Fleetwood
Sir James Harrington
Colonel Hewson
Cornelius Holland
Alderman Ireton
Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston
Lambert
Henry Lawrence
Colonel Robert Lilburne
Ludlow
Major Salway
William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland)
Walter Strickland
Colonel William Sydenham
Robert Thompson
Alderman Tichbourne
Sir Henry Vane.
The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent, chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway, and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert’s action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual, however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not concealing his opinion that Lambert’s act had
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659; Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368; Phillips, 662.]
Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of nominations was to see that the officers throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the newly-established order.—It was foreseen that in this there would be great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out. There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow’s deputy Colonel John Jones, and with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship, after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729; Phillips, 663-666; Skinner’s Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II. 18-22.]
Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk’s march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of the 28th of October, Monk’s brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel Talbot, one of Monk’s favourite officers, then in London, were sent for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace. They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed within a few days by six other missionaries for the same purpose—Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November, Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there, and gather forces to block the north of England against the possibility of Monk’s invasion.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131, 140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.]
Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to seem to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips’s information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk’s enterprise henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a continuation of Baker’s Chronicle, is a contribution of original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted, as he tells us, the use of Monk’s papers and those of his agents. This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission executed for Monk.]
And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk’s intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening,
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.]
Meanwhile Monk’s three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk’s Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, “very silent and reserved”; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty—not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk’s part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty
[Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV. 373-377.]
All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.[1]
[Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659 (i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II. 274-278.]
In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.—One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of The Treaty of the Pyrenees, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802; Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I. 211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288, 294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13, 1659.]
In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke’s words afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.]
The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. “Such a form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,” was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of Parliament? The late Rump reinstated at once with full authority, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself outvoted on that, and go on. Richard’s late Parliament had been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard himself. The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump, i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of 1642-1649 restored to their seats, was a third proposal, of more tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King’s trial and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in order to make the King’s trial and a Commonwealth possible, little wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. A new Parliament, called by ourselves, was the conclusion in which they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then, whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever prescribed qualifications, but to allow them
[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough, some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes, and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]
One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it was, though, as Whitlocke says, he “was hard to be satisfied and did much stick to his own apprehensions.” The leader of the more moderate party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative spirits.
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason Tract of date, entitled Decrees and Orders, &c.; and Thomason Catalogue.]
Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers, before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in the Treaty with Monk’s Commissioners in London. One was as to the mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named (Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body, intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow, approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless, a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would be ready.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.]
The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk’s army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert’s. There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane’s, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke’s. As Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.]
Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those rumours that “the King was at the bottom of it” which were flying about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals. Monk’s personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than Lambert’s at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were demoralising Lambert’s.[1]
[Footnote 1: Skinner’s Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.]
For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk’s march into England was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November. All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of “Silent Old George,” as Monk’s own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner, 170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.]
It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become indescribable. “I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew not how to get free of them,” is Whitlocke’s entry in his diary for Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, “Most of the soldiery about London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most eager for Fleetwood’s party became as violent against them, and for the Parliament to sit again.” In other words, the soldiers of Fleetwood’s own London regiments were tired of being insulted and jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren everywhere else, that Lambert’s coup d’etat of Oct. 13 had been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.—In these circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk’s design was to bring in the King; if so, the King’s return was inevitable; and, if the King should return by Monk’s means, the lives and fortunes of all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King’s or Monk’s mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to fraternize with the City, declare for “a full and free Parliament”—not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House “qualifications,” for which the Royalists had been astutely calling out,—and then either take the field with his forces under that
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 380-384; Phillips, 676; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of Dec. 28, 1659 (English reckoning), Guizot, 318-322.]
Second Section (continued).
THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK’S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.
THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL
OF STATE:
PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER
CHIEFS OF THE
WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW:
NEW ARMY REMODELLING:
ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS:
DISPERSION OF
LAMBERT’S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK’S
MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND
INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN’S
AND MESSAGE THENCE TO
THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION:
HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON,
FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE
RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS
POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING
HIS MARCH AND ON
HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE’S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF
OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS:
TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK
AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP:
HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK’S
RECONCILIATION WITH
THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING
OF THE RUMP IN
LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE
CITY AND OF THE RUMP
TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS:
BILL OF THE RUMP FOR
ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE
BY THE RESEATING OF
THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG
PARLIAMENT UNDER
MONK’S DICTATORSHIP.
The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7, 1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again refused.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals (Divisions and Committees) from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 21, 1659-60.]
A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to consist, as before, of twenty-one Parliamentaries and ten non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1, 1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a Regicide.
PARLIAMENTARIES.
Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Colonel Herbert Morley Robert Wallop Colonel Valentine Walton Thomas Scott Nicholas Love Chief Justice St. John Colonel William White John Weaver Robert Reynolds Sir James Harrington Sir Thomas Widdrington Colonel George Thompson John Dixwell Henry Neville Colonel John Fagg John Corbet Thomas Challoner Henry Marten William Say Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot).
NON-PARLIAMENTARIES.
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed
before his election as M.P.)
Josiah Berners
General Monk
Vice-Admiral Lawson
Alderman Love
Thomas Tyrrell
Lord Fairfax
Alderman Foote
Robert Rolle
Slingsby Bethell.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec. 31, 1659 and Jan. 2, 1659-60.]
The proceeding’s of the House for the first month showed no diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed. Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan. 17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for the Protectorate.
A good deal of the first month’s business consisted in votes of approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption and votes condemning the Wallingford-House “usurpers” and their acts. Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was resolved to bestow on him and his heirs L1000 a year. But there were thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of Safety was styled “the late pretended Committee of Safety,” and all their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was not so complete but that a few of the late chief’s might expect some punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield, Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the 18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without punishment.
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 1659-60; Ludlow, 783-806; Whitlocke, IV. 384-392.]
Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too familiar one of “re-modelling.” Men not now satisfactory had to be removed from all departments of the public service and more proper men substituted. Whitlocke’s great seal was given into new keeping, and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre, Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield, Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is puzzled by the appearance of many persons as “colonels” who had the title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec, 1659 and Jan. 1659-60; Whitlocke as before.]
Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency which had characterized the House in its previous session. The essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed. It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State, before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing “the pretended title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which shall pretend,” &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other than sound Commonwealth’s men; but that oaths were becoming frightfully frequent, and this one would be “a confining of Providence,” &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that, after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax, St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council rather than submit to the qualification made essential in their case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the public “That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers; and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of mal-administration and appeals, &c.” Such a declaration was adopted and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic exponents of the “good old cause.” The very phrase “the good old cause,” one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word “fanatics” as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig, Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the power going from their hands.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 678; Ludlow, 807-809; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 325-839.]
While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not “confining Providence” too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting between the House and Monk.
The House having been restored by Monk’s agency, but without that march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after all. Lambert’s army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to attack Lambert’s rear, in accordance with the understanding he had come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk’s business at York to reform the wreck of Lambert’s forces, incorporating some of them with his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day, at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing farther information for his
[Footnote 1: Skinner’s Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680; Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).]
While Monk is at St. Alban’s, we may inquire into his real intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done, they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude
[Footnote 1: Skinner and Phillips ut supra; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, of date Jan. 21, in Guizot, II. 336-340.]
On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did comply with Monk’s request, by issuing orders for the removal of Fleetwood’s regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was a mutiny among Fleetwood’s soldiers on account of the disgrace put upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers; and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray’s Inn Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month’s march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration oath.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Skinner, 199-206; Phillips, 680-682.]
On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation among them was only “Commissioner Monk”; for, though he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few other members of the old Council of State during the late interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert’s coup d’etat to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker; at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return
[Footnote 1: There is a hiatus in the Journals at the point of Monk’s reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original authority for Henry Marten’s witticism is, I believe, Ludlow (810-811).]
There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. The Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth was another of Harrington’s, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in London, he was saluted by The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced, also by Harrington. A Coffin for the Good Old Cause was another, in a different strain; and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival at St. Alban’s, indeed, he had become the universal target for letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. The Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk was on the book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were watching to see what “Old George” would do. He did not yet know that himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the feeling that now prevailed. “Conscientious, Serious, Theological and Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected, Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto”; “Six Important Queries proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament”; “Seven Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members”; “Case of the Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members”; “Three Seasonable Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose respective citizens have been forcibly excluded,” &c.; “Full Declaration”: such are the titles of those of Prynne’s pamphlets, the last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named of Prynne’s pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk was to do anything at all, was
[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same; Wood’s Ath. III. 870-871.]
He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way. On the 4th of February, the day after Monk’s arrival, they resolved that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400 members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners, tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of the Rump’s obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council “whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government”; influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices. Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant decision for the one or the other was imperative.—On the night of the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders, though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common Council and give the
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 684-685; Skinner, 211-219; Whitlocke, IV. 394-396.]
It was afterwards represented by Monk’s admirers that his City proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment. He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been handling his carpenter’s tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that, after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be in the printer’s hands before the House had received the original.
Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor, to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less than answer that he would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship’s house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over, and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about five o’clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to these demands
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 685-687; Skinner, 219-230; Parl. Hist. III. 1578-9; Letter of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 350-351; Pepys’s Diary, Feb. 11, 1659-60.]
On receiving Monk’s letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two previous days, and to assure him “that, as to the filling up of the House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time.” But at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed by that time of Monk’s proceedings in the City, had shown their resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always be one of the quorum.—Through the following week, however, efforts were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there, first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers’ Hall in Throgmorton Street, holding levees of the citizens and city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other members of the House. Even Ludlow,
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 687-688; Skinner, 233-242; Ludlow, 832-836; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 347-365.]
The Rump, which had been still busy on Saturday with the Bill of Qualifications or “Disabling Bill,” but whose sitting on Monday is marked only by a hiatus in the Journals, had not formed the House on Tuesday morning when the procession of secluded members, swelled to about eighty by stragglers on the way, entered and took their seats. A few of the Rumpers, seeing what had occurred, ruefully left the House, to return no more; but most remained and amalgamated themselves easily with the more numerous new comers. The reconstituted House then plunged at once into business thus:-"PRAYERS: Resolved, &c., That the Resolution of this House of the 18th of December, 1648, ’that liberty be given to the members of this House to declare their dissent to the vote of the 5th of December 1648 that the King’s Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was a ground for this House to proceed upon for settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom,’ be vacated, and made null and void, and obliterated.” In other words, here was the Long Parliament, like a Rip Van Winkle, resuming in Feb. 1659-60 the work left off in Dec. 1648, and acknowledging not an inch of gap between the two dates. There were seven other similar Resolutions, cancelling votes and orders standing in the way; and these, with orders for the discharge of the citizens recently imprisoned by the Rump, and resolutions for annulling the late new Army Commission of the Rump, and for appointing Monk to be “Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, under the Parliament, of all the land-forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” and continuing Vice-Admiral Lawson, in his naval command, were the sum and substance of the business of the first sitting.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.]
Before night Monk and his officers had drafted a Letter to all the regiments and garrisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining to them that, by the grace of God and good London management, they had passed through another revolution. The Letter began “Dear Brethren and Fellow-Soldiers,” and bore Monk’s signature, followed by those of Colonels Ralph Knight, John Clobery, Thomas Read, John Hubblethorn, Leonard Lydcott, Thomas Sanders, William Eyre, John Streater, Richard Mosse, William Parley, Arthur Evelyn, and sixteen inferior officers. It was vague, but intimated that the Government was still to be that of a Commonwealth, and that all disturbances of the peace “in favour of Charles Stuart or any other pretended authority” were to be put down. More explicit had been Monk’s speech at Whitehall that morning to the secluded members on their way to the House, published copies of which were also distributed by Monk’s authority. He had assured the secluded members, “and that in God’s presence,” that he had nothing before his eyes “but God’s glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations”; and he had pointed out the interest of the Londoners especially in the preservation of a Commonwealth, “that Government only being capable to make them, through the Lord’s blessing, the metropolis and bank of trade for all Christendom.” On the Church question he had been very precise. “As to a Government in the Church,” he had said, “the want whereof hath been no small cause of these nations’ distractions, it is most manifest that, if it be monarchical in the State, the Church must follow and Prelacy must be brought in—which these nations, I know, cannot bear, and against which they have so solemnly sworn; and indeed moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian Government, with a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the Church’s settlement.” It is not uninteresting to know that Monk’s chief ecclesiastical adviser at this moment, and probably the person who had formulated for him the description of the kind of Church that would be most desirable, was Mr. James Sharp, from Crail in Scotland. He had followed Monk to London with a commission from the leaders of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy; and from his arrival there he had been, Baillie informs us, “the most wise, faithful, and happy counsellor” Monk had, keeping him from all wrong steps by his extraordinary Banffshire sagacity.[1]
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 688-689; Parl. Hist. III, 1579-1581 (Monk’s Speech and Declaration); Baillie, III. 440-441. How uncertain it was yet whether Monk would ever desert the Commonwealth, and how anxious the Royalists were on the subject, appears from a letter of Mordaunt to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the Restoration of the Secluded Members (Clar. State Papers, III. 683). Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:—“The
Third Section.
MONK’S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE DRIFT TO THE RESTORATION: FEB. 21, 1659-60—APRIL 25, 1660.
THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT: NEW COUNCIL OF
STATE: ACTIVE MEN OF THE
PARLIAMENT: PRYNNE, ARTHUR ANNESLEY, AND WILLIAM
MORRICE:
MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT:
RELEASE OF OLD ROYALIST
PRISONERS: LAMBERT COMMITTED TO THE TOWER:
REWARDS AND HONOURS FOR
MONK: “OLD GEORGE” IN THE CITY:
REVIVAL OF THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND
COVENANT, THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, AND
ALL THE APPARATUS
OF A STRICT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT:
CAUTIOUS MEASURES FOR
A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT: THE REAL QUESTION EVADED
AND HANDED OVER TO
ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: CALLING OF THE CONVENTION
PARLIAMENT AND
ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE SAME: DIFFICULTY ABOUT A
HOUSE OF LORDS: HOW
OBVIATED: LAST DAY OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT, MARCH
16, 1659-60: SCENE
IN THE HOUSE.—MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE
LEFT IN CHARGE: ANNESLEY
THE MANAGING COLLEAGUE OF MONK: NEW MILITIA ACT
CARRIED OUT:
DISCONTENTS AMONG MONK’S OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS:
THE RESTORATION OF
CHARLES STILL VERY DUBIOUS: OTHER HOPES AND PROPOSALS
FOR THE MOMENT:
THE KINGSHIP PRIVATELY OFFERED TO MONK BY THE REPUBLICANS:
OFFER
DECLINED: BURSTING OF THE POPULAR TORRENT OF
ROYALISM AT LAST, AND
ENTHUSIASTIC DEMANDS FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES:
ELECTIONS TO THE
CONVENTION PARLIAMENT GOING ON MEANWHILE: HASTE
OF HUNDREDS TO BE
FOREMOST IN BIDDING CHARLES WELCOME: ADMIRAL
MONTAGUE AND HIS FLEET
IN THE THAMES: DIRECT COMMUNICATIONS AT LAST
BETWEEN MONK AND
CHARLES: GREENVILLE THE GO-BETWEEN: REMOVAL
OF CHARLES AND HIS COURT
FROM BRUSSELS TO BREDA: GREENVILLE SENT BACK
FROM BREDA WITH A
COMMISSION FOR MONK AND SIX OTHER DOCUMENTS.—BROKEN-SPIRITEDNESS
OF
THE REPUBLICAN LEADERS, BUT FORMIDABLE RESIDUE OF
REPUBLICANISM IN
THE ARMY: MONK’S MEASURES FOR PARALYSING
THE SAME: SUCCESSFUL DEVICE
OF CLARGES: MONTAGUE’S FLEET IN MOTION:
ESCAPE OF LAMBERT FROM THE
TOWER: HIS RENDEZVOUS IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE:
GATHERING OF A WRECK OF
THE REPUBLICANS FOUND HIM: DICK INGOLDSBY SENT
TO CRUSH HIM: THE
ENCOUNTER NEAR DAVENTRY, APRIL 22, 1660, AND RECAPTURE
OF LAMBERT:
GREAT REVIEW OF THE LONDON MILITIA, APRIL 24, THE
DAY BEFORE THE
MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT: IMPATIENT
LONGING FOR CHARLES:
MONK STILL IMPENETRABLE, AND THE DOCUMENTS FROM BREDA
RESERVED.
In the nomination of a new Council of State the House adhered to the now orthodox number of thirty-one. Monk was named first of all, by special and open vote, on the 21st of February; and the others were chosen by ballot, confirmed by open vote in each case, on the 23rd, when the number of members present and giving in voting-papers was 114. The list, in the order of preference, was then, as follows:—
General GEORGE MONK
William Pierrepoint
John Crewe
Colonel Edward Rossiter (Rec.)
Richard Knightley
Colonel Alexander Popham
Colonel Herbert Morley
Lord Fairfax
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart.
Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Bart.
Lord Chief Justice St. John
Lord Commissioner Widdrington
Sir John Evelyn of Wilts
Sir William Waller
Sir Richard Onslow
Sir William Lewis, Bart.
Colonel (Admiral) Edward Montague (Rec.)
Colonel Edward Harley (Sec.)
Richard Norton (Rec.)
Arthur Annesley (Rec.)
Denzil Holles
Sir John Temple (Rec.)
Colonel George Thompson (Sec.)
John Trevor (Rec.)
Sir John Holland, Bart.
Sir John Potts, Bart.
Colonel John Birch (Rec.)
Sir Harbottle Grimstone
John Swinfen (Rec.)
John Weaver (Rec.)
Serjeant John Maynard.
With the exception of Monk and Fairfax, who were not members of the Parliament, and the latter of whom was absent in Yorkshire, these Councillors are to be imagined as also active in the business of the House. About nine of them were Residuary Rumpers who had accepted willingly or cheerfully the return of the secluded. The proportion of Residuary Rumpers in the whole House was even larger. Though it had been reported by Prynne that as many as 194 of the secluded were still alive, and a contemporary printed list gives the names of 177 as available,[1] the present House never through its brief session attained to a higher attendance than 150, the average attendance ranging from 100 to 120; and I have ascertained by actual counting that more than a third of these were Residuary Rumpers. It is strange to find among them such of the extreme Republicans as Hasilrig, Scott, Marten, and Robinson. They left the House for a time, but re-appeared in it, whereas Ludlow and Neville and others would not re-appear—Ludlow, as he tells us, making a practice of walking up and down in Westminster Hall outside, partly in protest, partly to show that he had not fled.[2] Actually six Regicides remained in the House: viz. Scott, Marten, Ingoldsby, Millington, Colonel Hutchinson, and Sir John Bourchier. The majority of the Residuary Rumpers, however,—represented by such men as Lenthall, St. John, Ashley Cooper, Colonel Thompson, Colonel Fielder, Carew Raleigh, Attorney-General Reynolds, Solicitor-General Ellis, and Colonel Morley, and even by two of the Regicides mentioned (Ingoldsby and Hutchinson),—were
[Footnote 1: A single folio fly-leaf, dated March 26 in the Thomason copy, and called “The Grand Memorandum: A True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons,” &c. It was printed by Husbands on the professed “command” of one of the members (Prynne?).]
[Footnote 2: The fly-leaf mentioned in last note gives the names of thirty-three Rumpers who did not sit in the House after the readmission of the secluded members. Arranged alphabetically they were:—Anlaby, Bingham, John Carew, Cawley, James Challoner, Crompton, Darley, Fleetwood, John Goodwyn, Nicholas Gold, John Gurdon, Sir James Harrington, Hallows, Harvey, Heveningham, John Jones, Viscount Lisle, Livesey, Ludlow, Christopher Martin, Neville, Nicholas, Pigott, Pyne, Sir Francis Russell, the Earl of Salisbury, Algernon Sidney, Walter Strickland, Sir William Strickland, Wallop, Sir Thomas Walsingham, and Whitlocke. Compare with the list of the Restored Rump, ante pp. 453-455.]
[Footnote 3: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21 to March 16, 1659-60, with examination of the lists of all the Committees through that period; Ludlow, 845-846; Wood’s Ath. IV. 181 et seq. (Annesley), and III. 1087 et seq. (Morrice); Clarendon, 891 and 895.]
By the rough compact made with Monk, the House was to confine itself to the special work for which it was the indispensable instrument, and to push on as rapidly as possible, through that, to an act for its own dissolution. The majority was such that the compact was easily fulfilled. Six-and-twenty days sufficed for all that was required from this reinstated fag-end of the famous Long Parliament.
Naturally much of the work of the House took the form (1) of redress of old or recent injuries, and (2) of rewards and punishments. Almost the first thing done by the House was to restore the privileges of the City of London, release the imprisoned Common Council men and citizens, and issue orders for the repair of the broken gates and portcullises. The City and the Parliament were now heartily at one, and there was a loan from the City of L60,000 in token of the happy reconciliation. Sir George Booth, who had been recommitted to the Tower by the Rump, was finally released, though still on security. There were several other releases of prisoners and removals of sequestrations, and at length (Feb. 27) it was referred to a Committee to consider comprehensively the cases of all persons whatsoever then in prison
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21 to March 16; Ludlow, 855-856.]
A large proportion of the proceedings of the House and the Council may be described as simply a re-establishment of Presbyterianism. The secluded members being Presbyterians to a man, there was at once an enthusiastic recollection of the edicts of the Long Parliament between 1643 and 1648, setting up Presbytery as the national Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject of Religion and Church affairs—Annesley, Ashley Cooper, Prynne, and Sir Samuel Luke (i.e. Butler’s Presbyterian “Sir Hudibras”) being of the number; and on the 2nd of March, on report from this Committee, the Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith, as it had been under discussion in the Long Parliament in 1646 (Vol. III. p. 512), was again brought before the House, and passed bodily at once, with the exception of chapter 30, “Of Church Censures,” and chapter 31, “Of Synods and Councils”—which two chapters it was thought as well to keep still in Committee. The same day there were other resolutions of a Presbyterian tenor. But the climax was on March 5, in this form: “Ordered, That the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be printed and published, and set up and forthwith read in every church, and also read once a year according to former Act of Parliament, and that the said SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be also set up in this House.” Thus, when the bones of Alexander Henderson had been for more than thirteen years in their tomb in Grey Friars churchyard in Edinburgh, was the great document which he had drafted in that city in August 1643, as a bond of religious union for the Three Kingdoms, and only the first fortunes of which he had lived to see, resuscitated in all its glory. What more could Presbyterianism desire? That nothing might be wanting, however, there followed, on the 14th of March, a Bill “for approbation and admittance of ministers to public benefices and lectures,” one of the clauses of which prescribed means for the immediate division of all the counties of England and Wales into classical Presbyteries, according to those former Presbyterianizing ordinances of the Long Parliament which had never been carried into effect save in London and Lancashire. The Universities were to be constituted into presbyteries or inserted into such; and the whole of South Britain was to be patterned ecclesiastically at last in that exact resemblance to North Britain which had been the ideal before Independency burst in. What measures of “liberty for consciences truly tender” might be conceded did not yet appear. Anabaptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts, and Monk’s “Fanatics” generally, might tremble; and even moderate and orthodox Independents might foresee difficulty In retaining their livings in the State Church. Indeed Owen was already (March 13) displaced from his Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, by a vote of the House recognising a prior claim of Dr. Reynolds to that post.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Neal, IV. 224-225.]
In the matter of a political settlement the proceedings were equally rapid and simple. Celerity here was made possible by the fact that the House considered itself quite precluded from discussing the whole question of the future Constitution. Had they entered on that question, the probability is that they would have decided for a negotiation with Charles II., with a view to his return to England and assumption of the Kingship on terms borrowed from the old Newport Treaty with his father, or at all events on strictly expressed terms of some kind, limiting his authority and securing the Presbyterian Church-Establishment. Even this, however, was problematical. There were still Republicans and Cromwellians in the Parliament, and not a few of the Presbyterians members had been Commonwealth’s men so long that it might well appear doubtful to them whether a return to Royalty now was worth the risks, or whether, if there must be a return to Royalty, it was in the least necessary to fix it again in the unlucky House of Stuart. Then the difficulties out of doors! No one knew what might be the effect upon Monk’s own army, or upon the numerous Republican sectaries, of a sudden proposal in the present Parliament to restore Charles. On the other hand, the Old Royalists throughout the country had no wish to hear of such a proposal. They dreaded nothing so much, short of loss of all chance of the King’s return, as seeing him return tied by such terms as the present Presbyterian House would impose. It was a relief to all parties, therefore, and a satisfactory mode of self-delusion to some, that the present House should abstain from the constitutional question altogether, and should confine itself to the one duty of providing another Parliament to which that question, with all its difficulties, might be handed over.—On the 22nd of February, the second day of the restored House, it was resolved that a new Parliament should be summoned for the 25th of April, and a Committee was appointed to consider qualifications. The Parliament was to be a “full and free” one, by the old electoral system of English and Welsh constituencies only, without any representation of Scotland or Ireland. But what was meant by “full and free”? On this question there was some light on the 13th of March, when the House passed a resolution annulling the obligation of members of Parliament to take the famous engagement to be faithful to “the Commonwealth as established, without King or House of Lords,” and directing all orders enjoining that engagement to be expunged from the Journals. This was certainly a stroke in favour of Royalty, in so far as it left Royalty and Peerage open questions for the constituencies and the representatives they might choose; but, taken in connexion with the order, eight days before, for the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant—in which document “to preserve and defend the King’s Majesty’s
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Ludlow, 863-864; Noble’s Lives of the Regicides, II. 169-199 (Life of Scott, with evidence of Lenthall and others at his trial); Phillips, 694; Guizot, II. 167-168.]
Though the House was dissolved, the Council of State was to sit on, with full executive powers, till the meeting of the new Parliament. Annesley was now generally, if not habitually, the President of the Council, and in that capacity divided the principal management of affairs with Monk.
The Parliament having provided for expenses by an assessment of L100,000 a month for six months, the Council could give full attention to the main business of preserving the peace till the elections should be over. Conjoined with this, however, was the important duty of carrying out a new Militia Act which the Parliament had framed. It was an Act disbanding all the militia forces as they had been raised and officered by the Rump, and ordering the militia in each county to be reorganized by commissioners of Presbyterian or other suitable principles. The Act had given great offence to the regular Army, naturally jealous at all times of the civilian soldiery, but especially alarmed now by observing into what hands the Militia was going. It would be a militia of King’s men, they said, and the Commonwealth would be undone! So strong was this feeling in the Army that Monk himself had remonstrated with the House, and the Militia Act, though passed on the 12th of March, was not printed till the House had removed his objections. This had been done by pointing to the clause of the Act which required that all officers of the new Militia should take an acknowledgment “that the war undertaken by both Houses of Parliament in their defence against the forces raised in the name of the late King was just and lawful.” When Monk had professed himself satisfied, the re-organization of the Militia went on rapidly in all the counties. Monk was one of the Commissioners for the Militia of Middlesex, and to his other titles was added that of Major-General and Commander-in-chief of the Militia of London. Meanwhile the Council had issued proclamations over the country against any disturbance of the peace, and most of the active politicians had left town to look after their elections. The Harringtonian or Rota Club, one need hardly say, was no more in existence. After having been a five months’ wonder, it had vanished, amid the laughter of the Londoners, as soon as the secluded members had added themselves to the Rump. Theorists and their “models” were no longer wanted.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, March 10-16; Phillips, 694; Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Wood’s Ath. III. 1120.]
Not even yet was there any positive intimation that the Commonwealth was defunct. No one could declare that authoritatively, and every one might hope or believe as he liked. The all but universal conviction, however, even among the Republicans, was that the Republic was doomed, and that, if the last and worst consummation in a return of Charles Stuart was to be prevented, it could only be by consenting to some single-person Government of a less fatal kind. O that Richard’s Protectorate could be restored! The thing was talked of by St. John and others, but the possibility was past. But might not Monk himself be invested with the sovereignty? Hasilrig and others actually went about Monk with the offer, imploring him to save his country by this last means; and the chance seemed so probable that the French ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, tried to ascertain through Clarges whether Monk’s own inclinations ran that way. Monk was too wary for either the Rumpers or the Ambassador. He declined the offers of Hasilrig and his friends, allowing Clarges privately to inform the Council that such had been made; and, though he received the Ambassador, it was but gruffly. “The French ambassador visited General Monk, whom he found no accomplished courtier or statesman,” writes Whitlocke sarcastically under March 24; and the ambassador’s own account is that he could get nothing more from Monk, in reply to Mazarin’s polite messages and requests for confidence, than a reiterated statement that he had no information to give. And so, a Single Person being inevitable, and the momentary uncertainty whether it would be “Charles, George, or Richard again” being out of the way, the long-dammed torrent had broken loose. And what a torrent! “King Charles! King Charles! King Charles!” was the cry that seemed to burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard’s Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. On the evening of the 15th of March, the day before the Parliament dissolved itself, some bold fellows had come with a ladder to the Exchange in the City of London, where stood the pedestal from which a statue of Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, “Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus,” a large crowd gathering round them and shouting “God bless Charles the Second” round an extemporized bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight, though all knew what all were thinking, there had been
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 695; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 381-395; Whitlocke, IV. 405; Pepys’s Diary, from beginning to April 11, 1660.]
Popular feeling having declared itself so unmistakeably for Charles, it was but ordinary selfish prudence in all public men who had anything to lose, or anything to fear, to be among the foremost to bid him welcome. No longer now was it merely a rat here and there of the inferior sort, like Downing and Morland,[1] that was leaving the sinking ship. So many were leaving, and of so many sorts and degrees, that Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles had ceased to count, on their side, the deserters as they clambered up. He received now, Hyde tells us, “the addresses of many men who had never before applied themselves to him, and many sent to him for his Majesty’s approbation and leave to sit in the next Parliament.” Between London and Flanders messengers were passing to and fro daily, with perfect freedom and hardly any disguise of their business. Annesley, the President of the Council of State, was in correspondence with the King; Thurloe, now back in the Secretaryship to the Council, was in correspondence with him, and by no means dishonourably; and in the meetings of the Council of State itself, though it was bound to be corporately neutral till the Parliament should assemble, the drift of the deliberations was obvious. The only two men whose resistance even now could have compelled a pause were Monk and Montague. What of them?——It was no false rumour that Montague, the Cromwellian among Cromwellians, the man who would have died for Cromwell or perhaps for his dynasty, had been holding himself free for Charles. Under a cloud among the Republicans since his suspicious return from the Baltic in September last, but restored to command by the recent vote of the Parliament of the secluded members making him joint chief Admiral with Monk, he was at this moment (i.e. from March 23 onwards) in the Thames with his fleet, in receipt of daily orders from the Council and guarding the sea-passage between them and Flanders. He had on board with him, as his secretary, a certain young Mr. Samuel Pepys, who had been with him already in the Baltic, had been meanwhile in a clerkship in the Exchequer office, but had now left his house in Axe Yard, Westminster, and his young wife there, for the pleasure and emoluments of being once more secretary to so kind and great a master. In cabin talk with the trusty Pepys the Lord Admiral made no secret of his belief that the King would come in; but it was
[Footnote 1: These two of the late public servants of Oliver—Downing his minister at the Hague, and Morland his envoy in the business of the Piedmontese massacre of 1655—had behaved most dishonourably. Both, for some months past, had been establishing friendly relations with Charles by actually betraying trusts they still held with the government of the Commonwealth—Morland by communicating papers and information which came into his possession confidentially in Thurloe’s office (Clar. Hist. 869), and Downing by communicating the secrets of his embassy to Charles, and acting in his interests in that embassy, on guarantee that he should retain it, and have other rewards, when Charles came to the throne (Clar. Life, 1116-1117). There was to be farther proof that Downing was the meaner rascal of the two.]
[Footnote 2: Pepys’s Diary, from beginning to April 11, 1660. Montague seems to have first positively and directly pledged himself to Charles in a letter of April 10, beginning “May it please your excellent Majesty,—From your Majesty’s incomparable goodness and favour, I had the high honour to receive a letter from you when I was in the Sound last summer, and now another by the hands of my cousin” (Clar. State Papers). But the cousin had been already negotiating.]
[Footnote 3: Clarendon, 891-896; Thurloe, VII. 807-898; Skinner, 266-275; Phillips, 695-696.]
Over the seas went Greenville, as fast as ship could carry him, with the precious messages he bore. At Ostend, where he arrived on the 23rd of March, he reduced them to writing; and the next day, and for several days afterwards, Charles, Hyde, Ormond, and Secretary Nicholas, were in joyful consultation over them in Brussels. The advice of an instant removal to Breda fitted in with their own intentions. Neither the Spanish territory nor the French was a good ground from which to negotiate openly with England; nor indeed was Spanish territory quite safe for Charles at a time when, seeing his restoration possible, Spain might detain him as a hostage for the recovery of Dunkirk and Mardike. To Breda, accordingly, as Monk advised, the refugees went. They went in the most stealthy manner, and just in time to avoid being detained by the Spanish authorities. Before they reached Breda, however, but when Greenville could say that he had seen them safe within Dutch territory, he left them, to post back to England with a private letter to Monk in the King’s own hand, enclosing a commission to the Captaincy-General of all his Majesty’s forces, and with six other documents, which had been drafted by Hyde, and were all dated by anticipation “At Our Court at Breda, this 4/14th of April 1660, in the Twelfth Year of Our Reign.” One was a public letter “To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk,” to be by him communicated to the President and Council of State and to the Army officers; another was to the Speaker of the House of Commons
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 896-902; Phillips, 696; Skinner, 276-280.]
It could be an affair now only of a few weeks, more or less. There, at Breda, was his swarthy, witty, good-humoured, utterly profligate and worthless, young Majesty, with his refugee courtiers round him; at home, over all Britain and Ireland, they were ready for him, longing for him, huzzahing for him, Monk and the Council managing silently in London; and between, as a moveable bridge, there was Montague and his fleet. When would the bridge move towards the Continent? That would depend on the newly-elected Parliament, which was to meet on the 25th. Could there be any mischance in the meantime?
It did not seem so. The late politicians of the Rump were dispersed and powerless. Hasilrig sat by himself in London, moaning “We are undone: we are undone”; Scott was in Buckinghamshire, if perchance they might elect him for Wycombe: Ludlow hid in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, also nominated for a seat, but careless about it; the rest absconded one knows not where. The “Fanatics,” as the Republican Sectaries were now called collectively, were silenced and overwhelmed. Even Mr. Praise-God Barebone, tired of having his windows broken, was under written engagement to the Council to keep himself quiet. The same written engagement had been exacted from Hasilrig and Scott.—But what of the Army, the original maker of the Commonwealth, its defender and preserver through good report and bad report for eleven years, and with strength surely to maintain it yet, or make a stand in its behalf? The question is rather difficult. It may be granted that something of the general exhaustion, the fatigue and weariness of incessant change, the longing to be at rest by any means, had come upon the Army itself. Not the less true is it that Republicanism was yet the general creed of the Army, and that, could a universal vote have been taken through the regiments in England, Scotland, and Ireland, it would have kept out Charles Stuart. Nay, so engrained was the Republican feeling in the ranks of the soldiery, and so gloomily were they watching Monk, that, could any suitable proportion of them have been brought together, and could any fit leader have been present to hold up his sword for the Commonwealth, they would have rallied round him with acclamations. Precisely to prevent this, however, had been Monk’s care. One remembers his advice from Scotland to Richard Cromwell nineteen months ago, when Richard was entering on
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 694-698; Skinner, 263-265; Ludlow, 865-873; Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Pepys’s Diary, March 28-April 9.]
There was to be one dying flash for the Republic after all. Lambert had escaped from the Tower. It was on the night of April 9, the very day on which Monk was congratulating himself on the engagement of obedience signed by so many of his officers. For some days no one knew where the fugitive had gone, and Monk and the Council of State were in consternation. Proclamations against him were out, forbidding any to harbour him, and offering a reward for his capture.
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 698-699; Skinner, 286-289; Ludlow, 873-877; Wood’s Fasti, II. 133-134; Whitlocke, IV. 407-409; M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, Guizot, II. 415.]
So sure was the Restoration of Charles now that the only difficulty was in restraining impatience and braggartism among the Royalists themselves. The last argument of the Republican pamphleteers having been that the Royalists would be implacable after they had got back the king, and that nothing was to be then expected but the bloodiest and severest revenges upon all who had been concerned with the Commonwealth, and some of the younger Royalists having given colour
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 699-701; Skinner, 283-284 and 290-294; Clarendon, 902.]
First Section.
MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD’S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 1658-MAY 1659.
MILTON AND MARVELL STILL IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP:
MILTON’S FIRST
FIVE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.):
NEW EDITION
OF MILTON’S DEFENSIO PRIMA: REMARKABLE
POSTSRCIPT TO THAT
EDITION: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS.
CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.):
MILTON’S RELATIONS TO THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES
ROUND RICHARD AND IN
RICHARD’S PARLIAMENT: HIS PROBABLE CAREER
BUT FOR HIS BLINDNESS: HIS
CONTINUED CROMWELLIANISM IN POLITICS, BUT WITH STRONGER
PRIVATE
RESERVES, ESPECIALLY ON THE QUESTION OF AN ESTABLISHED
CHURCH: HIS
REPUTATION THAT OF A MAN OF THE COURT-PARTY AMONG
THE
PROTECTORATISTS: HIS TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER
IN ECCLESIASTICAL
CAUSES: ACCOUNT OF THE TREATISE, WITH EXTRACTS:
THE TREATISE MORE
THAN A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT
THE
FUNDAMENTAL IDEA: THE TREATISE ADDRESSED TO RICHARD’S
PARLIAMENT, AND
CHIEFLY TO VANE AND THE REPUBLICANS THERE: NO
EFFECT FROM IT:
MILTON’S FOUR LAST STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD
(NOS. CXLIV.-CXLVII.):
HIS PRIVATE EPISTLE TO JEAN LABADIE, WITH ACCOUNT
OF THAT PERSON:
MILTON IN THE MONTH BETWEEN RICHARD’S DISSOLUTION
OF HIS PARLIAMENT
AND HIS FORMAL ABDICATION: HIS TWO STATE-LETTERS
FOR THE RESTORED
RUMP (NOS. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.).
Milton and Marvell continued together In the Latin Secretaryship through the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, The following were the first Letters of Milton for Richard:—
(CXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, Sept. 5, 1658:—“Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As my most serene Father, of glorious memory, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, such being the will of Almighty God, has been, removed by death on the 3rd of September, I, his lawfully declared successor in this Government, though in the depth of sadness and grief, cannot but on the very first opportunity inform your Majesty by letter of so important a fact, assured that, as you have been a most cordial friend to my Father and this Commonwealth, the sudden intelligence will be no matter of joy to you either. It is my business now to request your Majesty to think of me as one who has nothing more resolvedly at heart than to cultivate with all fidelity and constancy the alliance and friendship that existed between my most glorious parent and your Majesty, and to keep and hold as valid, with the same diligence and goodwill as himself, the treaties, counsels, and arrangements, of common interest, which he established with you. To which intent I desire that our Ambassador at your Court [Lockhart] shall be invested with the same powers as formerly; and I beg that, whatever he may transact with you in our name, you will receive it as if done by myself. Finally, I wish your Majesty all prosperity.—From our Court at Westminster.”
(CXXXIV.) To Cardinal Mazarin, Sept. [5], 1658:—Dispatched with the last, and to the same effect. Knowing the reciprocal esteem between his late Father and his Eminence, Richard cannot but write to his Eminence as well as to the King.
(CXXXV.) To Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden. October 1658:—“Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As I think I cannot sufficiently imitate my father’s excellence unless I cultivate and desire to retain the same friendships which he sought, and acquired by his worth, and regarded in his singular judgment as most deserving to be cultivated and retained, there is no reason for your Majesty to doubt that it will be my duty to conduct myself towards your Majesty with the same attentiveness and goodwill which my Father, of most serene memory, made his rule in his relations to you. Wherefore, although in this beginning of my Government and dignity I do not find our affairs in such a position that I can at present reply to certain heads which your agents have propounded for negotiation, yet the idea of continuing, and even more closely knitting, the treaty established with your Majesty by my Father is exceedingly agreeable to me; and, as soon as I shall have more fully understood the state of affairs on both sides, I shall indeed be always most ready, as far as I am concerned, for such arrangements as shall be thought most advantageousPage 455
for the interests of both Commonwealths. Meanwhile may God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church.”—The peculiar state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English Government is here to be remembered. The heroic Swede, by his sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver’s death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and think him still in the right. That the second would have been Oliver’s course there can be little doubt. The question had now descended to Richard and his Council. They were anxious to adhere to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in all other matters; but there were difficulties.
(CXXXVI. AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, Oct. 1659:—Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on the last:—(1) In the first, dated “Oct. 13,” Richard acknowledges a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has transmitted. He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty’s kind expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father’s memory, and of goodwill towards himself. There could not be a greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning of his government, than the congratulations of such a King. “As respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty made by my father with your Majesty. I have therefore arranged for sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this whole business, will communicate to your Majesty.” This was the fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast. See ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a volunteer.—(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated “Oct.” merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough. “I send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed forPage 456
his knowledge of war, especially naval war, as proved by his frequent and many brave performances, but also gifted with probity, modesty, ingenuity, and learning, dear to all for the sweetness of his manners, and, what is now the sum of all, eager to serve under the banners of your Majesty, so renowned over the whole world by your warlike prowess.” A favourable reception is bespoken for Ayscough, who is to bring certain communications to his Majesty, and who, in any matters that may arise out of these, is to be taken as speaking for Richard himself. It was not till the beginning of the following year that Ayscough did arrive in the Baltic.
These five letters were undoubtedly the most important diplomatic dispatches of the beginning of Richard’s Protectorate. They refer to the two most momentous foreign interests bequeathed from Oliver: viz. the French Alliance against Spain, and the entanglement in Northern Europe round the King of Sweden. Milton, as having written all the previous state-letters on these great subjects, was naturally required to be himself the writer of the five in which Richard announced to France and Sweden his resolution to continue the policy of his father. Marvell’s pen may have been used, then and afterwards, for minor dispatches.
To the month of October 1658, the month after that of Oliver’s death, belongs also a new edition of Milton’s Defensio Prima. It was in octavo size, in close and clear type, and bore this title: “Joannis Miltonii, Angli, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam. Editio correctior et auctior, ab Autore denuo recognita. Londini, Typis Newcombianis, Anno Dom. 1658” (John Milton’s Defence, &c. “Corrected and Enlarged Edition, newly revised by the Author” London: from Newcome’s press, &c.).[1] This edition seems to have escaped the notice to which it is entitled. As far as my examination has gone, the differences from the original edition through the body of the work can be but slight. There is, however, a very important postscript of two pages, which I shall here translate:—
[Footnote 1: Thomason copy in British Museum, with the date “Octob.” (no day) written on the title-page.]
“Having published this book, some years ago now [April 1651], in the hurried manner then required by the interests of the Commonwealth, but with the notion that, if ever I should have leisure to take it into my hands again, I might, as is customary, afterwards polish up something in it, or perchance cancel or add something, this I fancy I have now accomplished, though with fewer changes than I thought: a monument, as I see, whosoever has contrived it, not easily to perish. If there shall be found some one who will defend civil liberty more freely than here, yet certainly it will hardly be in a greater or more illustrious example; and truly, if the belief is that a deed of such arduous andPage 457
famous example was not attempted and so prosperously finished without divine inspiration, there may be reason to think that the celebration and defence of the same with such applauses was also by the same aid and impulse,—an opinion I would much rather see entertained by all than have any other happiness of genius, judgment, or diligence, attributed to myself. Only this:—Just as that Roman Consul, laying down his magistracy, swore in public that the Commonwealth and that City were safe by his sole exertion, so I, now placing my last hand on this work, would dare assert, calling God and men to witness, that I have demonstrated in this book, and brought publicly forward out of the highest authors of divine and human wisdom, those very things by which I am confident that the English People have been sufficiently defended in this cause for their everlasting fame with posterity, and confident also that the generality of mankind, formerly deceived by foul ignorance of their own rights and a false semblance of Religion, have been, unless in as far as they may prefer and deserve slavery, sufficiently emancipated. And, as the universal Roman People, itself sworn in that public assembly, approved with one voice and consent that Consul’s so great and so special oath, so I have for some time understood that not only all the best of my own countrymen, but all the best also of foreign men, sanction and approve this persuasion of mine by no silent vote over the whole world. Which highest fruit of my labours proposed for myself in this life I both gratefully enjoy and at the same time make it my chief thought how I may be best able to assure not only my own country, for which I have already done my utmost, but also the men of all nations whatever, and especially all of the Christian name, that the accomplishment of yet greater things, if I have the power—and I shall have the power, if God be gracious,—is meanwhile for their sakes my desire and meditation.”
Perhaps one begins to be a little tired of this high-strained exultation for ever and ever on the subject of his success in the Salmasian controversy. The recurrence at this point, however, is not uninstructive. At the beginning of Richard’s Protectorate, we can see Milton’s defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton’s European celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least. It was something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness. This fruit of his past labours, he says, he would “gratefully enjoy,” but with no vulgar satisfaction. He would not confess it even to be with any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind. In his fiftieth
Whatever was the amount of Marvell’s exertion in the secretaryship, Milton was not wholly exempted from the duty of writing even the more ordinary letters for Richard and his Council. There is a vacant interval of three months, indeed, after the five last registered and the next; but in January 1658-9 the series is resumed, and there are six more letters of Milton for Richard between the end of that month and the end of February. Richard’s Parliament, it is to be remembered, met on the 27th of January.
(CXXXVIII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, Jan. 27, 1658-9 (i.e. the day of the meeting of the Parliament):—Samuel Piggott, merchant of London, has complained to the Protector that two ships of his—the Post, Tiddy Jacob master, and the Water-dog, Garbrand Peters master—are detained somewhere in the Baltic by his Majesty’s forces. They had sailed from London to France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only, but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his Majesty’s port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of the herring cargo was the cause of the detention of the ships; but Piggott was the lawful owner of the ships themselves and of the rest of the goods. His Majesty is prayed to restore them, and so save the poor man from ruin.
(CXXXIX.) To THE HIGH AND MIGHTY, THE STATES OF WEST FRIESLAND, Jan. 27, 1658-9:—A widow, named Mary Grinder, complains that Thomas Killigrew, a commander in the service of the States, has for eighteen years owed her a considerable sum of money, the compulsory payment of which he is trying now to evade by petitioning their Highnesses not to allow any suit against him in their Courts for debts due in England. “If I only mention to your Highnesses that she, whom this man tries to deprive of nearly all her fortunes, is a widow, that she is poor, the mother of many little children, I will not do you the injustice of supposing that with you, to whom I am confident the divine commandments, and especially those about not oppressing widows and the fatherless, are well known, any more serious argument will be needed against your granting this privilege of fraud to the man’s petition.”—ThePage 459
Thomas Killigrew here concerned may have been one of several well-known Killigrews, then refugee Royalists. Hence perhaps the earnestness of the letter.
(CXL.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Feb. 18, 1658-9:—“We have heard, and not without grief, that some Protestant churches in Provence were so scandalously interrupted by a certain ill-tempered bigot that the matter was thought worthy of severe notice by the magistrates of Grenoble, to whom the cognisance of the case belonged by law; but that a convention of the clergy, held shortly afterwards in, those parts, has obtained your Majesty’s order that the whole affair shall be brought before your Royal Council in Paris, and that meanwhile, there being no decision there hitherto, these churches, and especially that of Aix, are prohibited from meeting for the worship of God.” His Majesty is asked to remove this prohibition, and to see the author of the mischief properly censured. Such a missive proves that Richard and his Council kept to Oliver’s rule of interference whenever there was persecution of Protestants, and also that they did not doubt their influence with Louis and Mazarin.
(CXLI.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, Feb. 19, 1658-9:[1]—The Duchess-Dowager of Richmond, with her son, the young duke, is going into France, and means to reside there for some time. His Eminence is requested to show all possible attention to the illustrious lady and her son.
[Footnote 1: So dated in the Skinner Transcript, but “29 Feb.” in Printed Collection and Phillips.]
(CXLII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, Feb. 22, 1658-9:[1]—About eight months ago the case of Peter Pett, “a man of singular probity, and of the highest utility to us and the Commonwealth by his remarkable skill in naval affairs,” was brought before his Eminence by a letter of the late Lord Protector (not among Milton’s letters). It was to request that his Eminence would see to the execution of a decree of his French Majesty’s Council, as far back as Nov. 4, 1647, that compensation should be made to Pett for the seizure and sale of a ship of his, called the Edward, by one Bascon, in the preceding year. His Eminence has doubtless attended to the request; but there is still some impediment. Will his Eminence see where it lies and remove it?—Since the time of Queen Mary there had been three Peter Petts in succession, ship-builders and masters of the Royal Dockyard at Deptford; and the present Peter was the father of the more celebrated Sir Peter Pett, who was fellow of the Royal Society after the Restoration.
[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript; misdated “Feb. 25” in Phillips.]
(CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, Feb. 23, 1658-9:[1]—Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a victory he had recently obtained over “our common enemy the Spaniard,” with acknowledgment of his Majesty’s handsome behaviour, through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction, according to an article in the League between Portugal and the English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out their vessels to the Brazil Company. But there is still one such merchant unpaid—a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, The Three Brothers, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the Company. They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others who had made but one voyage; and “why this is done I do not understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned it twice.” Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due?
[Footnote 1: In the Printed Collection and Phillips, and also, I think, in the Skinner Transcript, the king’s name is given as “John”; but John IV. of Portugal had died in 1656 and been succeeded by Alfonso.]
These six letters belong to the first month of Richard’s Parliament, with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three scores of recently-created Cromwellian “Lords.” The battle between the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons, Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the Single-Person principle and of Richard’s title to the Protectorship; and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too. From January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution. Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming Richard’s rule.
How Milton stood related to this controversy is a matter rather of inference than of direct information. Having been a faithful adherent and official of Oliver through his whole Protectorate, and still holding his official place under Richard’s Government, there is little doubt that, if he had been obliged to post himself publicly on either of the two sides, he would have gone among the Cromwellians. Nay, if he had been obliged to choose between the two subdivisions of this body, known as the Court Party (supporting Richard absolutely) and the Wallingford-House Party (supporting Richard’s civil Protectorate, but wanting to transfer the military power to the Army-chiefs), there can be little doubt that he would have gone with the former. Had he been in the House of Commons, like his colleague Andrew Marvell, his duty there, like Marvell’s, would have been that of a ministerial member, assisting Thurloe and voting with him in all the divisions. But for his blindness, we may here say, the chances are that he would long ere now have been a known Parliamentary man, and that, after having been a Cromwellian leader in Oliver’s second Parliament, he might have been now in Thurloe’s exact place in Richard’s present Parliament, or beside Thurloe as a strangely different chief. This, or that other alternative of a foreign ambassadorship or residency, which must have suggested itself again and again to the reader in the course of our narrative, might have been the natural career of Milton through the rule of the Cromwells, had not blindness disabled him. For, if Meadows, his former mere assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, had been for some time in the one career with increasing distinction, and if an opening had been easily found for Marvell in the other, why may not imagination trace either career, or a combination of the two, had physical infirmity not prevented, for the greater Cromwellian of whom these were but satellites? It is imagination only, and would not be worth while, were it not for one important biographical question which it brings forward. Had Milton remained capable of any such practical career under the Cromwells, would he have retained, to the same extent as he had done through his blindness, the necessary qualification of being an Oliverian or Cromwellian? How far was his present Cromwellianism the actual consequence of his blindness, the mere submissiveness of a blind man to what he had no power to disturb? It is partly an answer to this question to remember again his Defensio Secunda of 1654, with its great panegyric on Cromwell. Milton had been but two years blind when that was published, and had not lost aught of the vehemence of his Republican convictions. Not without deliberation, therefore, had he given up the first form of the Commonwealth, consisting in a single supreme House of Parliament and an annual Council of State chosen by the same, and accepted the later or Protectoral form, with Cromwell
Since Cromwell’s death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves. Under a new Protector, and from the new Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on points on which he had for some time been silent? On this chance, he had interrupted even his Paradise Lost, in order to prepare an address to the new Parliament. As might be expected, it was on the subject of the relations of Church and State. Meditating on this subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time, Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts. “Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,—Force on the one side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers thereof.” He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation, and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same. The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to begin with the first, as the least irritating. Accordingly, before the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with this title-page: “A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to compell in matters of Religion. The author J.M. London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb, Anno 1659.” The tract consists of an address “To the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions thereof,” occupying ten of the small pages, and signed “John Milton” in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.[1]
[Footnote 1: The little book was duly registered at Stationers’ Hall, under date Feb. 16, 1658-9, thus: “Mr. Tho. Newcomb entered for his copy (under the hand of Mr. Pulleyn, warden) a book called A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes by John Milton.”]
After intimating that this was but the first of two tracts and that the other would follow, and also that his argument is to be wholly and exclusively from Scripture, Milton propounds the argument itself under four successive heads or propositions.—The first is that, there being, by the fundamental principle of Protestantism, “no other divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves and to such whose consciences we can so persuade,” it follows that “no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men’s consciences but their own.” Having reasoned this at some length by quotations of Scripture texts and explanations of the same, he proceeds to “yet another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of Religion: which is, because to judge in those things, though we should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil magistrate he hath no right.” Under this second head, and also by means of Scripture quotations, there is an exposition of Milton’s favourite idea of the purely spiritual nature of Christ’s kingdom and of the instrumentalities it permits. The third proposition advances the argument by maintaining that not only is the civil magistrate unable, from the nature of the case, to determine in matters of Religion, and not only has he no right to try, but he also does positive wrong by trying. In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton dilates on the meaning of the “Christian liberty” of the true believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed spirit, the superiority to “the bondage of ceremonies” and “the weak and beggarly rudiments.” The fourth and last reason pleaded, still from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion, is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to himself; “and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God, next either the spiritual good of them whom he forces or the temporal punishment of their scandal to others.” Far from attaining either of these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and hypocrisy.—“On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square.” says Milton at the close, “this truth, the right of Christian and Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against the ways of God.”
Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical. “Pomp and ostentation of reading,” he expressly says, “is admired among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is learnedest who is plainest.” It was, we may remember, his first considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still retains of his old characteristic syntax.[1] The following are a few of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:—
[Footnote 1: I have noted in the Tract one occurrence at least of the very un-Miltonic word its, as follows:—“As the Samaritans believed Christ, first for the woman’s word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the Scripture first on the Church’s word, but afterwards and much more for its own as the word of God.”]
Blasphemy.—“But some are ready to cry out ’What shall then be done to Blasphemy?’ Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or anything to good belonging.”
Heresy and Heretic:—“Another Greek apparition stands in our way, ‘Heresy and Heretic’: in like manner also railed at to the people, as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning.”
A Wrested Text of Scripture:—“It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God’s assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture [Romans XIII, ’Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,’ &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny over the Church.”
Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated?—“But, as for Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their Religion, the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion; being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith, which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so, by voluntary servitude to man’s law, forfeits her Christian liberty. Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free becomes no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and scandalous use thereof.”
Christ’s unique act of Compulsion:—“We
read not that Christ
ever exercised force but once; and that
was to drive profane ones
out of his Temple, not to force them in.”
Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers:—“As to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion, and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued, neither they will continue in that intention, nor these in that expectation from them, when they shall find that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended.”
* * * * *
In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration, of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on Cromwell’s policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell, almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on the contrary having made such a supposed settlement of Religion one of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good Cromwell.
The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of Cromwell’s son. The preface, signed with Milton’s name in full, is a recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. “I have prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your sitting,” Milton there says, “this treatise; which, though to all Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty
“To know
Both spiritual power and civil, what each
means,
What severs each, thou, hast learned;
which few have done.
The bounds of either sword to thee
we owe.”
Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which concerned Religion? Might they not induce the Parliament to revert, in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament? Nothing less than this is the ultimate purport of Milton’s appeal; and little wonder that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only
Altogether, Milton’s Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question. Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists. The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far. But only or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and State.
The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever. So far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was evident that the preservation of Cromwell’s Church-Establishment, its perpetuation as an integral part of Richard’s Protectorate, was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority. Any Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians. The danger even was that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration, and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the supporters of Richard might compel Richard’s Government, against his own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate. But, indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the Republicans found time or need to try their strength. Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:—first, the question of the Protectorate
Precisely at this crisis in Richard’s Protectorship comes the last batch of Milton’s official letters for him. The letters are four in number:[1]—
[Footnote 1: These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript, and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers, pp. 12-14.]
(CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 19, 1659:—Two Letters to this Prince on the same day. (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London merchants, are owners of a ship called The Happy Entrance, which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin. They can get no account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play thePage 470
rogue with the ship and cargo and never return. It is believed that within two months he may put in at Leghorn; and the Protector requests the Grand Duke to give the merchants, in that case, facilities for the recovery of their property. (2) A James Modiford, merchant, complains to the Protector that certain goods of his, taken to Leghorn about 1652 by another English trader, Humphrey Sidney, were there seized by some Italian creditors of Sidney. Modiford has been unable to obtain redress; and the Grand Duke is now prayed to see his goods restored and any claims Sidney may have upon him referred to the English Courts.
(CXLVI.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, April 1659:[1]—A Francis Hurdidge of London complains that a ship of his, called The Mary and John, cargo valued at 70,000 crowns, employed in the Brazil trade in 1649 and 1650, was seized by the Portuguese. The ship was afterwards taken from the Portuguese by the Dutch. The Treaty between the English Commonwealth and Portugal provides for such cases; and his Portuguese Majesty is requested to make compensation to Hurdidge to the extent of 25,000 crowns. The man is in great straits.
[Footnote 1: “Joanni Portugallioe Regi” is the heading in Mr. Hamilton’s copy from the Skinner Transcript; but this is a mistake (see ante p. 576, note).]
(CXLVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, April 1659:—David Fithy, merchant, informs the Protector that, about a month ago, he contracted to supply to the Navy 150 sacks of hemp. He has the hemp now at Riga, and a ship ready to bring it thence for the use of the fleet—“part of which,” the Protector skilfully adds, “has just sailed for the Baltic for your protection” (i.e. Montague’s fleet, despatched this very month: see ante p. 435). It appears, however, that his Swedish Majesty has forbidden the exportation of hemp from his port of Riga without special permission. His Majesty is requested to give Fithy this permission, that he may be able to fulfil his contract. The Protector will consider himself much obliged by the kindness.
No more letters was poor Richard to write to crowned heads. On the very day on which the two first of the foregoing were written, he appeared in Wallingford House, and ordered the dissolution of the Council of Officers according to the edict of the Parliament. Next day it was known through all London that the question was between a dissolution of this Council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. The day after, Thursday, April 21, there was the famous double rendezvous of the two masses of soldiery round Whitehall to try the question, the rendezvous for Richard and the Parliament utterly failing, while that for Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other rebel chiefs, flooded the streets and St. James’s Park. That night, quailing before the rough threats of Desborough, Richard and his Council yielded; and on Friday, the 22nd, the indignant Parliament knew itself to be dissolved, and Richard’s Protectorate virtually at an end. Nominally, it dragged on for a month more.
On Thursday, April 21, the day of the dreadful double rendezvous, and of Desborough’s stormy interview with Richard in Whitehall to compel the dissolution of the Parliament, Milton, in his house in Petty France, on the very edge of the uproar, was quietly dictating a private letter. It is that numbered 28 among his Epistoloe Familiares, and headed “Joanni Badioeo, Pastori Arausionensi,” i.e. “To John Badiaeus, Pastor of Orange.” With some trouble, I have identified this “Badiaeus” with a certain French JEAN LABADIE, who is characterized by Bayle as a “schismatic minister, followed like an apostle,” and by another authority as “one of the most dangerous fanatics of the seventeenth century.” The facts of his life, to the moment of our present concern with him, are given in the accepted French authorities thus:—Born in 1610 at Bourg-en-Guyenne, the son of a soldier who had risen to be lieutenant, he had received a Jesuit education at Bordeaux, had entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest. For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed “a prodigy of talent and piety,” but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to leave the Jesuits. By reasonings and kindness, they managed to retain him for a while; but he grew more odd and visionary, fasting often, eating only herbs, and having divine revelations. After a dangerous illness, which brought him to death’s door, he did obtain his dismissal from the Jesuit order in April 1639, and went over France propagandizing. The Bishop of Amiens, caught by his eloquence, made him prebendary of a collegiate church in that town; in connexion with which, and with the Bishop’s approval, he founded a religious association of young women, called St. Mary Magdalene. All seemed to go well for a time; but at length there was a scandal about him and a girl in Abbeville, with a burst of similar scandals about his abuse of the confessional for vicious purposes. To avoid arrest, he absconded to Paris in August 1644, and thence to Bazas, where he lived under a feigned name. But the Bishop of Bazas took him up; he cleared himself to the Bishop and others, and defied his calumniators. Only for a time; for again there were scandals, and he was expelled the diocese. Going then to Toulouse, he gained the confidence of the Archbishop there, who gave him charge of a convent of nuns. In this post he developed more systematically his notions of the religious life, described as a compound of Quietism and Antinomianism, after the fashion of sects already known in France and Germany, but with sexual extravangances which, when divulged, raised an indignant storm. In November 1649, he had to abscond from Toulouse; and, after various wanderings, in which he
[Footnote 1: Article LABADIE in Nouvelle Biographie Generale (1859), with additional information from Article on him in the Biographie Universelle (edit. 1819), and from La Vie du Sieur Jean Labadie by Bolsec (Lyon, 1664), and some passages in Bayle’s Dictionary (e.g. in Article Mamillaires). It is from the additional authorities that I learn the fact of the removal of Labadie from Montauban to Orange; the Article in the N. Biog. Gen. omits it.—I have seen two publications of Labadie at Montauban—one of 1650, entitled Declaration de Jean de L’Abadie, cydevant prestre, giving his reasons for quitting the Church of Rome; the other of 1651, entitled Lettre de J. de L’Abadie a ses amis de la Communion Romaine touchant sa Declaration.]
TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE.
“If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel, I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see plainly—you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that, so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing against you their most certain hatred and maledictions.Page 473
O happy man thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell, and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to you sooner. For, when I understood from your letter that, assailed and besieged as you are on all hands by bitter enemies, you were looking round, and no wonder, to see where you might, in the last extremity, should it come to that, find a suitable refuge, and that England was most to your mind, I rejoiced on more accounts than one that you had come to this conclusion,—one reason being the hope of having you here, and another the delight that you should have so high an opinion of my country; but the joy was counterbalanced by the regret that I did not then see any prospect of a becoming provision for you among us here, especially as you do not know English. Now, however, it has happened most opportunely that a certain French minister here, of great age, died a few days ago. The persons of most influence in the congregation, understanding that you are by no means safe where you are at present, are very desirous (I report this not from vague rumour, but on information from themselves) to have you chosen to the place of that minister: in fact, they invite you; they have resolved to pay the expenses of your journey; they promise that you shall have an income equal to the best of any French minister here, and that nothing shall be wanting that can contribute to your pleasant discharge of the pastoral duty among them. Wherefore, take my advice, Reverend Sir, and fly hither as soon as possible, to people who are anxious to have you, and where you will reap a harvest, not perhaps so rich in the goods of this world, but, as men like you most desire, numerous, I hope, in souls; and be assured that you will be most welcome here to all good men, and the sooner the better. Farewell.
“Westminster: April 21, 1659.”
It is clear from this letter that Milton had never heard of the scandals against M. Labadie’s moral character, or, if he had, utterly disbelieved them, and regarded him simply as a convert from Roman Catholicism whose passionate and aggressive Protestant fervour had brought intolerable and unjust persecution upon him in France. Durie was his informant; and, for all we can now know, Milton’s judgment about Labadie may have been the right one, and the traditional French account of him to this day may be wrong. It is certainly strange, however, to find Milton befriending with so much readiness and zeal this French Protestant minister, against whom there were exactly such scandals abroad as those which he had himself believed and blazoned about Morus, for the murder of Morus’s reputation over Europe, and his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the reported sequel
[Footnote 1: Nouvelle Biographie Generale, as before.—It is to be remembered that Milton himself authorized the publication of his letter to Badiaeus with his other Latin Familiar Epistles in 1674 (see Vol. I. p. 239). By that time he must have known the whole subsequent career of Labadie and all the reports about him; and he cannot even then have thought ill of him or of Mad’lle Schurmann. To the end, he liked all bold schismatics and sectaries, if they took a forward direction.]
Virtually at an end on the 22nd of April by the enforced dissolution of the Parliament, Richard’s Protectorate was more visibly at an end on the 7th of May, when the Wallingford-House chiefs agreed with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. Eight days after that event Milton was called on to write two letters for the new Republican authorities. They were as follows:—
(CXLVIII.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, May 15, 1659:—“Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our pristine authority and the supreme administration of English affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and also our desire to promote to the utmost of our power such a peace between you and the King of Denmark, himself likewise a very potent Protestant prince, as may not be brought about without our exertions and most willing good offices. Our pleasure therefore is that our internuncio extraordinary, Philip Meadows, be continued in our name in exactly the same employment which he has hitherto discharged with your Majesty for this Commonwealth; and to that end we, by these presents, give him the same power of making proposals and of treating and dealing with your Majesty which he had by his last commendatory letters. Whatever shall be transacted and concluded by him in our name, the same we pledge our promise, with God’s good help, to confirm and ratify. May God long preserve your Majesty as a pillar and defence of the Protestant cause.—WILLIAM LENTHALL, Speaker of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England.”
(CXLIX) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, May 15, 1659:—The counterpart of the foregoing. His Danish Majesty, addressed as “most serene King and very dear Friend” is informed by Lenthall of the change in English affairs, and of the sympathy the present English Government feels with him in his adversity. They will do their utmost to secure a peace between him and the King of Sweden; and Philip Meadows, their Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Sweden, has full powers to treat with his Danish Majesty too for that end. “God grant to your Majesty, as soon as possible, a happy and joyful outcome from all those difficulties of your affairs in which you behave so bravely and magnanimously!”
On the 25th of May Richard sent in his reluctant abdication, leaving the Rump, which had already assumed the supreme authority, to exercise that authority without further challenge or opposition on his part. Most of the public officials remained in their posts, and Milton remained In his. After five years and five months of Secretaryship under a Single-Person Government, he found himself again Secretary under exactly such a Republican Government as he had served originally, consisting now of the small Parliament of the Restored Rumpers and of a Council of State appointed by that Parliament. In this Council of State were Bradshaw, Vane, Sir James Harrington, St. John, Hasilrig, Scott, Walton, and Whitlocke, who had been members of all the first five Councils of the Commonwealth, from that which had invited Milton to the Secretaryship in 1649 to that which Cromwell forcibly dissolved in 1653, besides Fairfax, Fleetwood, Ludlow, John Jones, Wallop, Challoner, Neville, Dixwell, Downes, Morley, Thompson, and Algernon Sidney, whom Milton had known as members of one or more of those five Councils, and Lambert and Desborough, who had not been in any of them, but were among his later acquaintances.
Second Section.
MILTON’S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE ANARCHY: MAY 1659—FEB. 1659-60.
FIRST STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE RESTORED RUMP (MAY—OCT. 1659):—FEELINGS AND POSITION OF MILTON IN THE NEW STATE OF THINGS: HIS SATISFACTION ON THE WHOLE, AND THE REASONS FOR IT: LETTER OF MOSES WALL TO MILTON: RENEWED AGITATION AGAINST TITHES AND CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: VOTES ON THAT SUBJECT IN THE RUMP: MILTON’S CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: ITS THOROUGH-GOING VOLUNTARYISM: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT DEMANDED ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT COMPENSATION FOR VESTED INTERESTS: THE APPEAL FRUITLESS, AND THE SUBJECT IGNORED BY THE RUMP: DISPERSION OF THAT BODY BY LAMBERT.
SECOND STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION (OCT.—DEC. 1659):—MILTON’S THOUGHTS ON LAMBERT’S COUP D’ETAT IN HIS LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCERNING THE RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE LETTER IN THE MAIN AGAINST LAMBERT AND IN DEFENCE OF THE RUMP: ITS EXTRAORDINARY PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF A GOVERNMENT BY TWO PERMANENT CENTRAL BODIES: THE PROPOSAL COMPARED WITH THE ACTUAL ADMINISTRATION BY THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: MILTON STILL NOMINALLY IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MONEY WARRANT OF OCT. 25, 1659, RELATING TO MILTON, MARVELL, AND EIGHTY-FOUR OTHER OFFICIALS: NO TRACE OF ACTUAL SERVICE BY MILTON FOR THE NEW COMMITTEE OF SAFETY: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE TREATY BETWEEN THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AND MONK IN SCOTLAND: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE COMMITTEE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO THE FUTURE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT: HIS INTEREST IN THIS AS NOW THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION, AND HIS COGNISANCE OF THE MODELS OF HARRINGTON AND THE ROTA CLUB: WHITLOCKE’S NEW CONSTITUTION DISAPPOINTING TO MILTON: TWO MORE LETTERS TO OLDENBURG AND YOUNG RANELAGH: GOSSIP FROM ABROAD IN CONNECTION WITH THESE LETTERS: MORUS AGAIN, AND THE COUNCIL OF FRENCH PROTESTANTS AT LOUDUN: END OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION.
THIRD STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP (DEC. 1659-FEB. 1659-60):—MILTON’S DESPONDENCY AT THIS PERIOD: ABATEMENT OF HIS FAITH IN THE RUMP: HIS THOUGHTS DURING THE MARCH OF MONK FROM SCOTLAND AND AFTER MONK’S ARRIVAL IN LONDON: HIS STUDY OF MONK NEAR AT HAND AND MISTRUST OF THE OMENS: HIS INTEREST FOR A WHILE IN THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONSTITUTION OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT PROMISED BY THE RUMP: HIS ANXIETY THAT IT SHOULD BE A REPUBLICAN PARLIAMENT BY MERE SELF-ENLARGEMENT OF THE RUMP: HIS PREPARATION OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PAMPHLET: THE PUBLICATION POSTPONED BY MONK’S SUDDEN DEFECTION FROM THE RUMP, THE ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN THE CITY, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS TO THEIR PLACES IN THE PARLIAMENT: MILTON’S DESPONDENCY COMPLETE.
With what feelings was it that Milton found himself once more in the employment of his old masters, the original Republicans or Commonwealth’s-men? That there may have been some sense of awkwardness in the re-connexion is not unlikely. Had he not for six years been a most conspicuous Cromwellian? Had he not justified again and again in print Cromwell’s coup d’etat of 1653, by which the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott, Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell’s unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it a year later in his Defensio Secunda of 1654, published some months after the Protectorate had actually begun. In that famous pamphlet, he had, amid much else to the same effect, made special reference to Cromwell’s Dissolution of the Rump in these words addressed to Cromwell himself: “When you saw delays being contrived, and every one more intent on his private interests than on the public good, and the people complaining of being cheated of their hopes and circumvented by the power of a few, you did what they themselves had so often declined to do when asked, and put an end to their Government” (Vol. IV. p. 604). Rumpers of tenacious memories cannot have forgotten such published utterances of Milton, while the fact that he had for some years past been an Oliverian, a Protectoratist, a Court-official for Oliver and Richard, was patent to all. Yet, now that the old Rumpers were restored to power, the survivors of the original “few” whose dissolution by Cromwell he had publicly praised and defended, here was Milton still in his secretaryship and writing the first foreign letters they required.
How was this? It is hardly a sufficient answer to say that it is quite customary for officials to remain in their places through changes of Government. On the one hand, Milton was not a man to remain in an element with which he could not conscientiously accord; and, on the other, the Rumpers were rather careful in seeking public servants of their own sort. Thurloe was out of the general Secretaryship; and one of the first acts of the restored House was to punish Mr. Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Parliament, for having entered, the fact of Cromwell’s Dissolution of the House on April 20, 1653, in the Journals tinder that date. They ordered a Bill to be brought in for repealing the Act by which Scobell held the Clerkship.[1] The truth, then, is that Milton was not, on the whole, displeased by the return of his old friends to power. Though he had justified Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump and had become openly an Oliverian at the beginning of the Protectorate, he had never ceased to regard with admiration and affection such
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 19, 1659.]
This representation of Milton’s position at the time of the restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom there are traces in Hartlib’s correspondence and elsewhere.[1] Milton had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and this is Wall’s reply—written, it will be observed, the very day after Richard’s abdication:—
[Footnote 1: Worthington’s Diary and Correspondence, by Crossley, I. 355 and 365.]
“Sir,
“I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light; but your last book resolved that doubt.
“You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,—when these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,—what can poor people do? You know who they were that watched our Saviour’s sepulchre to keep him from rising [soldiers! see Matthew XXVII. and XXVIII.]. Besides, whilst people are not free, but straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be dejected and servile; and, conducing to that end [of rousing them], there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our manufactures, our fishery, our fens, forests, and commons, and our trade at sea, &c.: which would give the body of the nation a comfortable subsistence. And the breaking that cursed yoke of Tithes would much help thereto. Also another thing I cannot but mention; which is that the Norman Conquest and Tyranny is continued upon the nation without any thought of removing it: I mean the tenure of land by copyhold, and holding for life under a lord, or rather tyrant, of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their land by cost upon it, not knowing how soon themselves or theirs may be outed it, nor what the house is in which they live, for the same reason; and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor than the rest of the nation is to a king or supremePage 480
magistrate.
“We have waited for liberty; but it must be God’s work and not man’s: who thinks it sweet to maintain his pride and worldly interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the precious liberty of mankind. But let us not despond, but do our duty; God will carry on that blessed work, in despite of all opposites, and to their ruin if they persist therein.
“Sir, my humble request is that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the distribution mentioned in your book: viz. that Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty. It is like, if you do, you shall find opposers; but remember that saying,_’Beatius est pati quam frui,’_ or, in the Apostle’s words, James V. 11. [Greek: Makarizomen tous hypomenontas] [’We count them happy that endure’]. I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion) of that storied voice that should speak from heaven when Ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, ’Hodie venenum infunditur in Ecelesiam’ [’This day is poison poured into the Church’]; for, to use the speech of Gen. IV. ult., according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, ’Then began men to corrupt the worship of God.’ I shall tell you a supposal of mine; which is this:—Mr. Durie has bestowed about thirty years’ time in travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest way were:—Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet I shall lay this engagement upon myself,—to remain
“Your faithful friend and servant,
“M. Wall.[1]
“Causham: May 26, 1659.”
[Footnote 1: Copy in Ayscough: MS. in British Museum, No. 4292 (f. 121); where the copyist “J. Owen” (the Rev. J. Owen of Rochdale) certifies it as from the original. It was printed, not very correctly, by Richard Baron, in 1756, in his preface to his edition of the Eikonoklastes.]
Here, from a man evidently after Milton’s own heart on the Church question, we have Milton’s welcome back into the ranks of the old Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first Restoration of the Rump (May 7—Oct. 13) the friends of “the good old cause” had reason to know that Milton was again one of themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however, were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before; and of the completeness of Milton’s re-adherence to the Republican Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him for the Rump or its Council.
Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of “the good old cause.” We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but they may be given here more in detail:—Hardly had the Rump been reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One such, called “The Humble Representation and Petition of many well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire,” was read in the House on the 14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the House resolved “to give encouragement to a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, and for that end to continue the payment of Tithes till they can find out some other more equal and comfortable maintenance for the ministry, and satisfaction of the people; which they intend with all convenient speed.” That day, accordingly, in a division of thirty-eight Yeas (Carew Raleigh and Sir William Brereton tellers) to thirty-eight Noes (Hasilrig and Colonel White tellers) it was carried, by the Speaker’s casting vote, to refer the question of some substitute for Tithes to a Grand Committee. On the 27th of June, there having been other petitions against Tithes in the meantime, signed by “many thousands,” the House came to a more definite resolution, which they ordered to be printed and published by the Judges in their circuits. It was “That this Parliament doth declare that, for the encouragement of a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other,” &c. As the word unless had been, substituted for the word until without a division, it is evident that the House had gone back in their intentions in the course of the fortnight, and were less disposed to commit themselves to any serious interference with the Church Establishment as left by Cromwell. The disappointment to the petitioning thousands must have been great. Still, the question had been raised, and might be regarded as only adjourned. What was wanted was continued agitation out of doors, more petitioning and more pamphleteering.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.]
It was in this last way that Milton could help. As advised by his friend Moses Wall, he had been busy over that second Disestablishment tract which he had promised; and in August 1659 it appeared in this form: "Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc’d of Tithes, Church-fees, Church Revenues; and, whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl’d by law. The author J.M. London, Printed by T.N. for L. Chapman at the Crown in Popes-head Alley, 1659.” The volume is a very small octavo, and contains eighteen unnumbered pages of prefatory address to the Parliament in large open type, signed “John Milton” in full, followed by 153 pages of text.[1]
[Footnote 1: Copy in Thomason Collection, with date “Aug.” marked on title-page—month only, no day.]
The Address to the Parliament deserves particular notice. The following is the main portion of it, with two phrases Italicised:—
“Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate, this liberty of writing which I have used these eighteen years on all occasions to assert the just rights and freedoms both of Church and State, and so far approved as to have been trusted with the representment and defence of your actions to all Christendom against an adversary of no mean repute, to whom should I address what I still publish on the same argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, the authors and best patrons of Religious and Civil Liberty that ever these Islands brought forth? The care and tuition of whose peace and safety, after a short but scandalous night of interruption, is now again, by a new dawning of God’s miraculous Providence among us, revolved upon your shoulders. And to whom more appertain these Considerations which I propound than to yourselves, and the debate before you, though I trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great expectation, not whether ye will gratify, were it no more than so, but whether ye will hearken to the just petition of many thousands best affected both to Religion and to this your return, or whether ye will satisfy (which you never can) the covetous pretences and demands of insatiable Hirelings, whose disaffection ye well know hath to yourselves and your resolutions? That I, though among many others in this common concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my thoughts also are, your own judgment and the success thereof hath given me the confidence: which requests but this—that, if I have prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of this Commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the reason and ability whereon ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole reputation to the world either grown less by more maturity and longer study or less available in English than in another tongue: but that, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings, though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no controversy else among Protestants.”
This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton’s re-adhesion to the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had ever parted from
After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:—
“Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when our Saviour saith, ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire.’ That which makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess thereof brought toPage 484
the Church perhaps was not found by experience till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud, ’This day is poison poured into the Church’ [Note the adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall’s letter]. Which the event soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient observation, that ’Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter devoured the Mother.’ But, long ere wealth came into the Church, so soon as any gain appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof [References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who preached ‘for filthy lucre’s sake,’ or made a mere trade of the Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at first into the Church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minister were, as St. Paul, contented to teach gratis: but few such are to be found. As therefore we cannot justly take away all Hire in the Church, because we cannot otherwise quite remove Hirelings, so are we not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in, but rather, in regard the evil, do what we can, will always be incumbent and unavoidable, to use our utmost diligence how it may be least dangerous. Which will be likeliest effected if we consider,—first what recompense God hath ordained should be given to ministers of the Church (for that a recompense ought to be given them, and may by them justly be received, our Saviour himself, from the very light of reason and of equity, hath declared, Luke X. 7, ’The labourer is worthy of his hire’); next, by whom; and, lastly, in what manner.”
In this passage and in other passages throughout the
Treatise it is clear that Milton’s ideal was
a Church in which no minister should take pay at all
for his preaching or ministry, whether pay from the
state or from his hearers, but every minister should,
as St. Paul did, preach, absolutely and systematically
gratis, deriving his livelihood and his leisure
to preach from his private resources, or, if he had
none such, then from the practice of some calling or
handicraft apart from his preaching. Deep down
in Milton’s mind, notwithstanding his professed
deference to Christ’s words, “The labourer
Page 485
is worthy of his hire,” we can see this conviction
that it would be better for the world if religious
doctrine, or in fact doctrine of any kind, were never
bought or sold, but all spiritual teachers were to
abhor the very touch of money for their lessons, being
either gentlemen of independent means who could propagate
the truth splendidly from high motives, or else tent-makers,
carpenters, and bricklayers, passionate with the possession
of some truth to propagate. This, however, having
been acknowledged to be perhaps an impossibility on
any great scale, he goes on to inquire, as proposed,
what the legitimate and divinely-appointed hire of
Gospel-ministers is, from whom it may come, and in
what manner. The general result is as follows:—I.
The Tithes of the old Jewish dispensation are utterly
abolished under the Gospel. Nearly half the treatise
is an argument to this effect, and consequently for
the immediate abolition of the tithe-system in England.
Here Milton lends his whole force to the popular current
on this subject among the friends of “the good
old cause,” advocating those petitions to the
Rump of which he has spoken in his preface. But
he goes farther than the abolition of tithes.
He will not allow of any statutory substitute for
tithes, any taxation of the people in any form for
the support of Religion. The only substitute
for tithes which he discusses specifically is compulsory
church-fees for ministerial offices, such as baptisms,
marriages, and burials. These, as well as tithes,
he utterly condemns; and he winds up this part of
his inquiry thus: “Seeing, then, that God
hath given to ministers under the Gospel that only
which is justly given them (that is to say, a due
and moderate livelihood, the hire of their labour),
and that the heave-offering of Tithes is abolished
with the Altar (yes, though not abolished, yet lawless
as they enjoy them), their Melchizedekian right also
trivial and groundless, and both tithes and fees,
if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous, we
may hope, with them removed, to remove Hirelings
in some good measure.” II. It is maintained
that the lawful maintenance of the ministry can consist
only in the voluntary offerings of those they instruct,
whether tendered individually, or collected into a
common treasury for distribution. The flocks
ought to maintain their own pastors, and no others
are bound to contribute for the purpose. But
what of poor neighbourhoods that cannot maintain pastors
and yet need them most sorely? Milton has unbounded
confidence that these will be overtaken and provided
for by the zeal of pious individuals, or by “the
charity of richer congregations,” taking the
form of itinerant missions. “If it be objected
that this itinerary preaching will not serve to plant
the Gospel in those places unless they who are sent
abide there some competent time, I answer that, if
they stay there for a year or two, which was the longest
time usually staid by the Apostles in one place, it
The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:—
Mr. Prynne’s Defences of Tithes:—“To heap such unconvincing citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,—a fierce Reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat,—would send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas, two Canonical Promoters."[1]
[Footnote 1: The reference is to Prynne’s Ten Considerable Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions for their Total Abolition: 1659.]
Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same:—“As for Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is (which our Selden hath well observed I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb.) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction, and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best, indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor. VII. ’In the Lord’); yet not therefore invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,—which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,—all which, no less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our Divines deny it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil Magistrates” [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in accordance with which had been Milton’s own second marriage: see ante p. 281, and Vol. IV. p. 511].
Sitting under a Stated Minister:—“If men be not all their lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, or Mathematics,Page 488
... certainly it is not necessary to the attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard indeed over his elbow-cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty or fifty years, teaches them scarce half the principles of Religion, and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little purpose of benefiting as the sheep in their pews at Smithfield.”
Congregations for mutual Edification:—“Notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an incumbent,—I may say such an incubus ofttimes,—as will be meanly hired to abide long in those places.”
A Reflection on Cromwell for his Established Church:—“For the magistrate, in person of a nursing father, to make the Church his mere ward, as always in minority,-the Church to whom he ought as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) ’to bow down with his face toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,’—her to subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her free election of ministers,—is neither just nor pious: no honour done to the Church, but a plain dishonour.”
University Education of Ministers:—State of the Facts: “They pretend that their education, either at School or University, hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in future by a plentiful maintenance: whereas it is well known that the better half of them, and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public provision but their poverty and the unjust favour of friends, have had the most of their breeding, both at School and University, by scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public cost,—which might engage them the rather to give freely, as they have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the latter place, they have after two or three years left the course of their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken, though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some gentleman’s house, to the frequent imbasing of his sons with illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there [at the University] upon their own, who knows not that seven years’ charge of living there,—to them who fly not from the government of their parents to the licence of a University, but come seriously to study,—is no more than, may be well defrayed and reimbursed by one year’s revenuePage 489
of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then means of breeding from their parents, ’tis likely they have more now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and accomplishment. But they will say ’We had betaken us to some other trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better livelihood by the Ministry.’ This is what I looked for,—to discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel.”
University Education of Ministers not Necessary: “What Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ... Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at L600 [equivalent to L2000 now], may be competently furnished for L60 [equivalent to L200 now]. If any man, for his own curiosity or delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. But Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges! I will show them therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation: Tit. I. 9; ’Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince gainsayers,’—who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which is either not in Scripture or against it. To pursue them further through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our Religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries, and there will not want men in the Church who of their own inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any other Adversary.”
No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in all their length and breadth. Disestablishment, Disendowment, Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament. Even in that House, however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was on the question
As the Restored Rumpers had already decreed that an Established Church should be kept up in England, and had gone no farther on the Tithes question than to say that Tithes must be paid, as by use and wont, until some substitute should be provided, it is not likely that, however long they had sat, Milton’s views would have had much countenance from them. There were individuals among them of Milton’s way of thinking on the whole; but he had probably made a mistake in fancying that he had materially improved his influence, or the chances of his notions of Church-polity, by his public re-adhesion to the Rump. In fact, the continued existence of the Rump was more precarious than he had thought. In August 1659, while his pamphlet was in circulation, Lambert was away in the
Of Milton’s thoughts over the change effected by Lambert’s coup d’etat we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated “October 20, 1659” (i.e. just a week after the coup d’etat), and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the previous night. It appears in his works now with the title “A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth: Published from the Manuscript."[1] Who the Friend was does not appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs. “Sir,” it begins, “upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been wont,—resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for those that govern. And, since you have not only stirred up my thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us, may remove them.” At the close of the Letter he says, “You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that, in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of showing the readiness which
[Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam Edition of Milton’s Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been communicated to him “by a worthy friend, who, a little after the author’s death, had it from his nephew”—i.e. from Phillips.]
He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert’s coup d’etat. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:—
“I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard that the Army, under the working of God’s holy Spirit, as I thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none well-affected but will confess they have deserved much more of these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage [Lambert’s victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately punished in those Cheshire Rebels,—that they should now dissolve that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day’s Humble Representation: and all this for no apparent cause of public concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this action,—not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak only what itPage 493
appears to us without doors till better cause be declared, and I am sure to all other nations,—most illegal and scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause, thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like disorder and confusion.”
He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one “jealous of their honour,” to “manifest and publish with all speed some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning to these disorders,”—in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert. But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done.
“Being now in anarchy, without a counselling and governing power, and the Army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a SENATE or GENERAL COUNCIL OF STATE, in whom must be the power first to preserve the public peace, next the commerce with foreign nations, and lastly to raise moneys for the management of these affairs. This must either be the [Rump] Parliament readmitted to sit, or a Council of State allowed of by the Army, since they only now have the power. The terms to be stood on are Liberty of Conscience to all professing Scripture to be the Rule of their Faith and Worship and the Abjuration of a Single Person. If the [Rump] Parliament be again thought on, to salve honour on both sides, the well-affected party of the City and the Congregated Churches may be induced to mediate by public addresses and brotherly beseechings; which, if there be that saintship among us which is talked of, ought to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to reconcilement. If the Parliament be thought well dissolved, as not complying fully to grant Liberty of Conscience, and the necessary consequence thereof, the Removal of a forced Maintenance from Ministers [Milton’s own sole dissatisfaction with the Restored Rump], then must the Army forthwith choose a Council of State, whereof as many to be of the Parliament as are undoubtedly affected to these two conditions proposed. That which I conceive only able to cement and unite the Army either to the
There is considerable boldness in these proposals of Milton, and yet a cast of practicality which is unusual with him. They prove again, if new proof were needed, that he was not a Republican of the conventional sort. He glances, indeed, at the possibility of an “Annual Democracy,” i.e. a future succession of annual Parliaments, or at least of annual Plebiscites for electing the Government. But he rather dismisses that possibility from his calculations; and moreover, even had he entertained it farther, we know that the Parliaments or Plebiscites he would have allowed would not have been “full and free,” but only guarded representations of the “well-affected” of the community,—to wit, the Commonwealth’s-men. But the Constitution to which he looks forward with most confidence, and which he ventures to think might answer all the purposes of a perfect democracy, is one that should consist of two perpetual or life aristocracies at the centre,—one a civil aristocracy in
The consulting authorities at Whitehall and Wallingford House did adopt a course having some semblance of that suggested by Milton. Before the 25th of October, or within six days after the date of Milton’s letter, the relics of the Council of State of the Rump agreed to be transformed, with additions nominated by the Officers, into the new Supreme Executive called The Committee of Safety; and, as The Wallingford-House Council of Officers still continued to sit in the close vicinity of this new Council at Whitehall, the Government was then vested, in fact, in the two aristocracies, with Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and others, as members of both, and connecting links between them. But the new Committee of Safety was not such a Senate or Council as Milton had imagined. For one thing, it consisted but of twenty-three persons (see the list ante p. 494), whereas Milton would have probably liked to see a Council of twice that size or even larger. For another, it was not composed of persons perfectly sound on Milton’s two proposed fundamentals of Liberty of Conscience and Abjuration of any Single Person. Vane, to be sure, was on the Committee, and a host in himself for both principles; and there were others, such as Salway and Ludlow, that would not flinch on either. But Whitlocke, Sydenham, and the majority, were but moderately for Liberty of Conscience, and certainly utterly against that Miltonic
Such as it was, the new Government of the Wallingford-House Interruption had no objection to retaining Mr. Milton in the Latin Secretaryship if he cared to keep it. That he had held the post throughout the whole of the Government of the Restored Rump (though all but in sinecure, as we must conclude from the cessation of the series of his Latin Letters in the preceding May) appears from a very interesting document in the Record Office. The Council of State of the Rump, it is to be remembered, had not vanished with the Rump itself on Oct. 13, but had sat on for twelve days more, though with its number reduced by the secession of Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and other very vehement Rumpers,—the object being to maintain the continuity of the public business and to make the most amicable arrangement possible with the Army-officers. That object having been accomplished by the institution, of the new Committee of Safety, the Council of the Rump, before demitting its powers to this new body, which was to meet on the 28th of October, held its own last meeting at Whitehall on the 25th. At such a last meeting it was but business-like to clear off all debts due by the Council; and, accordingly, this was done by the issue of the following comprehensive money-warrant, signed by Whitlocke as President, and by four others of those present.
“These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are or shall come into your hands, to pay unto the several persons whose names are endorsed the several sums of money to their names mentioned, making on the whole the sum of Three Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-two Pounds, Eight Shillings, and Six Pence: being so much due to them for their salaries and service to this Council unto the Two-and-twentieth day of this instant October.Page 497
Hereof you are not to fail; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. Given at the Council of State at Whitehall this 25th day of October, 1659.
“B. WHITLOCKE, President.
A. JOHNSTON.
JAMES HARRINGTON.
CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
JA. BERRY.
“To GUALTER FROST, Esq.,
“Treasurer for the Council’s Contingencies.”
“The eighty-six persons to
whom the payments are to be made are
divided into groups in the Warrant, the particular
sum due to each
person appended to his name. The first five
groups stand thus:—
L s. d. Richard Deane 234 7 6 "At L500 per annum each Henry Scobell 234 7 6 William Robinson 83 0 0
At L1 per day Richard Kingdon 86 0 0
At L200 per annum each JOHN MILTON 86 12 0 ANDREW MARVELL 86 12 0
Gualter Frost 138 0 10 At 20s._ per diem each_ Matthew Fairbank 139 0 0 Samuel Morland 88 0 0 Edward Dendy 169 0 0
Matthew Lea 56 6 8 At 6s._ 8_d._ per diem each_ [Clerks] Thomas Lea 56 6 8 William Symon 56 6 8”
Then follow the names of twenty-nine persons at 5_s._ per diem each: viz. Zachary Worth, David Salisbury, Peter Llewellen, Edward Cooke, Richard Stephens, Stephen Montague, Thomas Powell; Henry Symball, Joseph Butler, Thomas Pidcott, Richard Freeman, George Hussey, Roger Read, Edward Osbaldiston, William Feild, Robert Cooke (or his widow), Thomas Blagden, William Ledsom, Edward Cooke; Edward Tytan, Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas Hill, Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbetter, Alexander Turner, Thomas Wright, William Geering, and Edward Bridges. The occupations of the first seven are not described, but they were probably under-clerks; the next twelve were “messengers”; the last ten “serjeant deputies” under Dendy as Serjeant-at-Arms. The sums ordered to be paid to them vary from L4 to L42 5_s._—Forty-four more persons are added more miscellaneously, with the sums due to them respectively. Among these I may note the following:—“George Vaux, Housekeeper” (L69 9_s._ 8_d._), “Mr. Nutt, the Barge-keeper” (L65), “Mr. Embrey, Surveyor” (L140 12_s._ 6_d._), and “Mr. Kinnereley, Wardrobe-keeper” (L140 12_s._ 6_d._).[1]
[Footnote 1: From Warrant Book in Record Office. On comparing the list of persons in this warrant with that in the extract from the Order Books of Oliver’s Council of date April 17, 1655 (pp. 177-179), and with lists in a former Council minute of date Feb. 3, 1653-4, and in a Money Warrant of Oliver of same date (Vol. IV. pp. 575-578), it will be seen that there had been changes in the staff meanwhile. Milton, Scobell, Gualter Frost, Serjeant Dendy, Housekeeper Vaux, Bargemaster Nutt, and about a dozen of the clerks,
There is nothing in this warrant to show that Milton’s services were transferred to the new Committee of Safety; but the fact seems to be that he did remain nominally in the Latin Secretaryship with Marvell through the whole duration of that body and of the Fleetwood-Lambert rule, i.e. to Dec. 26, 1659. Nominally only it must have been; for we have no trace of any official work of his through the period. There was very little to do for the Government at that time in the way of foreign correspondence, and for what there was Marvell must have sufficed.
Through the months of November and December Milton’s thoughts, like those of other people, must have been much occupied with the negotiations going on between the new Government and their formidable opponent in Scotland. What would be the issue? Would Monk persevere in that championship of the ill-treated Rump which he had so boldly undertaken? Would he march into England to restore the Rump, as he had threatened; or would he yet be pacified and induced to accept the Wallingford-House order of things, with a competent share in the power? No one could tell. Lambert was in the north with his army, to beat and drive back Monk if he did attempt to invade England,—at York early in November, and at Newcastle from the 20th of November onwards; Monk was still in Scotland,—at Edinburgh or Dalkeith till the end of November, then at Berwick, but from the beginning of December at Coldstream. Between the two armies agents were passing and repassing; negotiators on the part of the London Government were round about Monk and reasoning with him; Monk’s own Commissioners in London had concluded their Treaty of the 15th of November with Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House Council, and there had been rejoicings over what seemed then the happy end of the quarrel; but again the news had come from Scotland that Monk repudiated the agreement made by his Commissioners, and that the negotiation must be resumed at Newcastle. To that the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had consented; but, through Monk’s delays, the negotiation
No less interesting to Milton must have been the activity of the new Government meanwhile in their great business of inventing “such a Form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth.”——The Rump itself, as we know, had been busy with this problem through the last month of its sittings, having appointed on the 8th of September a great Committee on the subject, with Vane named first, but all the most eminent Rumpers included (ante p. 480). Through this Committee there had been an inburst into the Parliamentary mind, as Ludlow informs us, of the thousand and one competing proposals or models of a Commonwealth already devised by the Harringtonians and other theorists; and, in fact, while the Committee was sitting, there had started up for its assistance, close to the doors of Parliament, the famous Harrington or Rota Club, meeting nightly in Miles’s Coffee-house, and including Neville and others of the Rumpers among its most constant members (ante pp. 484-486). That Milton knew already about Harrington and his “models” by sufficient readings of Harrington’s books there can be no doubt. In the address to the Rump prefixed to his Considerations touching Hirelings in August last he had distinctly referred to the kind acceptance by the Rump of “new models of a Commonwealth” daily tendered to them in Petitions, and must have had specially in view the Petition of July 6, which had been drawn up by Harrington, and which proposed a constitution of two Parliamentary Houses, one of 300 members, the other much larger, on such a system of rotation as would change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, “no model whatsoever of a Commonwealth,
So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced. Monk’s dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert’s coup d’etat and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert’s own soldiery were falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood’s soldiery in London were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost perplexity.
One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,—“To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t. Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes.” There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton’s cousinship, on his mother’s side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling
[Footnote 1: Ormerod’s Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel Chester.—By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw’s death has been given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.]
* * * * *
More than two years had elapsed since Milton’s last letters to Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367). They were then at Saumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not earlier, they had been boarding in Paris. There are glimpses of them in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh. Thus, in a letter of Hartlib’s to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from Oldenburg’s last: “I have had some discourse with an able but somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced (as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want experience in these matters.” Young Ranelagh seems to have fully acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:—“This week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a very singular observation in these words: ’Concerning the generation of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,—which I endeavour fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls; which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in revenge of your observations. I heard lately a very remarkable story about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town, which you will be glad, I believe, to hear. A certain German baron of about twenty-four
[Footnote 1: Letters of Oldenburg and Hartlib to Boyle in Boyle’s Works (1744), V. 280-296 and 300-302.]
Very possibly with this last letter of Oldenburg’s to Hartlib there had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his story of the German baron and his alchemic powders, but only to have sent his dutiful regards, with excuses for long neglect of correspondence. Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to the state of affairs at home. Among the pieces of news were two of some personal interest to Milton. One was that the unfinished reply to his Defensio Prima, which Salmasius had left in manuscript at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous publication. The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again discussed. For, though it was more than two years since Morus had received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to the charge had
[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus, and Bruce’s Life of Morus, 204-226.]
Milton’s replies to the two letters will now be intelligible. He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and “wishing himself out of these daily hazards":—
TO HENRY OLDENBURG.
“That forgiveness which you ask for your silence you will give rather to mine; for, if I remember rightly, it was my turn to write to you. By no means has it been any diminution of my regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me guilty of the intermitted duty. As you desire to be informed, I am, by God’s mercy, as well as usual. Of any such work as compiling the history of our political troubles, which youPage 505
seem to advise, I have no thought whatever [longe absum]: they are worthier of silence than of commemoration. What is needed is not one to compile a good history of our troubles, but one who can happily end the troubles themselves; for, with you, I fear lest, amid these our civil discords, or rather sheer madnesses, we shall seem to the lately confederated enemies of Liberty and Religion a too fit object of attack, though in truth they have not yet inflicted a severer wound on Religion than we ourselves have been long doing by our crimes. But God, as I hope, on His own account, and for His own glory, now in question, will not allow the counsels and onsets of the enemy to succeed as they themselves wish, whatever convulsions Kings and Cardinals meditate and design. Meanwhile, for the Protestant Synod of Loudun, which you tell me is so soon to meet [Milton does not seem to know that it had been sitting already for six weeks] I pray—what has never happened to any Synod yet—a happy issue, not of the Nazianzenian sort,[1] and am of opinion that the issue of this one will be happy enough if, should they decree nothing else, they should decree the expulsion of Morus. Of my posthumous adversary, as soon as he makes his appearance, be good enough to give me the earliest information. Farewell.
“Westminster: December 20, 1659.”
[Footnote 1: The allusion seems to be to the great OEcumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed Gregory Nazianzen in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in which Gregory presided for some time and inefficiently.]
TO THE NOBLE YOUTH, RICHARD JONES.
“For the long break in your correspondence with me your excuses are truly most modest, inasmuch as you might with more justice accuse me of the same fault; and, as the case stands, I am really at a loss to know whether I should have preferred your not having been in fault to your having apologised so finely. On no account let it ever come into your mind that I measure your gratitude, if anything of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path, pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell.
“Westminster: December 20, 1659.”
Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and Fleetwood’s soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December, Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old places. We have arrived, therefore, at that Third Stage of the Anarchy which may be called “The Second Restoration of the Rump.”
* * * * *
Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his thoughts.
As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the Commonwealth by any of the existing parties. Even the Second Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve, and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have brought him but little increase of expectation. If, in its best estate, after its first restoration, the Rump had disappointed him, what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry Marten? Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans, but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose Republicanism was of a very dubious character! For Milton cannot have failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session. What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism? Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience. How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the Rumpers? An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than take the oath, and Hasilrig’s proposal to require the same oath from all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that it had fallen to the ground. Then, on the religious question, what was the deliberate offer of the House to the
With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk’s proceedings and intentions than of those of the Parliament. Monk’s march from Coldstream southwards on the 2nd of January; the vanishing of the residue of Lambert’s forces before him; the addresses to him in the English counties all along his route; his answers or supposed answers to these addresses; his wary behaviour to the two Parliamentary Commissioners that had been sent to attach themselves to him and find out his disposition in the matter of the Abjuration Oath; his arrival at St. Alban’s on the 28th of January; his message thence to the Parliament to clear all Fleetwood’s regiments out of London and Westminster before his own entry; that entry itself on the 3rd of February, when he and his battered columns streamed in through Gray’s Inn Lane; finally his first appearance in the House and speech, there:—of all this Milton had exact cognisance through the newspapers of his friend Needham and otherwise. It was very puzzling and by no means reassuring. If he had ever thought of Monk as by possibility such a saviour of the Commonwealth as he had been longing for, the study of the actually approaching physiognomy of Old George all the way from Scotland, and still more Old George’s first deliverance of himself in the Parliament, must have undeceived him. The Abjuration Oath, it appeared, was not at all to Monk’s mind. He would not take it himself in order to be qualified for the seat voted him in the Council of State, and he plainly intimated his opinion that the day for such oaths and engagements was past. Milton cannot have liked that rejection by the General of one of the tests on which he had himself placed so much reliance. But, further, what meant Monk’s very ambiguous utterance respecting the three immediate courses one of which must be chosen? He had distinctly mentioned in the House that the drift of public opinion, as he could ascertain it from the addresses made to him along his march, was towards either an enlargement of the present House by the re-admission of the Secluded Members or a full and free Parliament by a new general election; and, though he had seemed to
Nevertheless, here was Monk, such as he was, the armed constable of the crisis, the one man who could keep the peace and let the Rumpers proceed in doing their best. That “best” as they had agreed specifically on the 4th of February, the day after Monk’s arrival, was to be the recruiting of their own House up to a total of 400 members for England and Wales, such recruiting to be effected by the issue of a certain number of new writs, together with a scheme of qualifications calculated to bring in only sound Republicans, or persons likely to cooperate in farther measures with the present Rumpers. This being what was promised by the conjunction of Monk and the Rump, what could Milton do but acquiesce, be glad it was no worse, and contribute what advice he could? This, accordingly, is what he did. Pamphlets on the crisis, as we know, had been coming out abundantly—pamphlets for the good old cause of the Republic, pamphlets from Rota-men, pamphlets from Prynne and other haters of the Rump, pamphlets from crypto-Royalists, and pamphlets openly Royalist; and many of these had taken, and others were still to take, the form of letters addressed to Monk. It need be no surprise that Milton had his pamphlet in preparation. He had begun it just after Monk’s arrival in London and the resolution, of the Rump to recruit itself; he had written it hurriedly and yet with some earnest care; and it seems to have been ready for the press about or not long after the middle of February. Before it could go to press, however, there had been another revolution, obliging him to hold it back. There had been the rebellion of the Londoners because of the resolution of the Rump to perpetuate itself by recruiting, instead of either readmitting the secluded members or calling a new free and full Parliament; there had been Monk’s notorious two days in the City, by order of the Rump, quashing the rebellion, and breaking the gates and portcullises (Feb. 9-10); there had been his extraordinary return the third day, with his profession of regret before the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen and Common Council, and his announcement that he had dissolved his connexion with the Rump,—that third day wound up with yells of delight through all the City, the smashing of Barebone’s windows, and the universal Roasting of the Rump in street-bonfires (Feb. 11); there had been the ten more days of Monk’s continued residence in the City, the Rumpers vainly imploring reconciliation with him, and the Secluded Members and their friends gathering round him and negotiating; and, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when he did remove from the City to Westminster, it was with the Secluded Members in his train, to be marched under military guard to their seats beside the Rumpers. The writs issued by the Rump for recruiting itself were now useless. It had been recruited in the way it least liked, by the sudden reappearance in it of the excluded Presbyterians and Royalists of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament.
Far more than the mere stopping of his pamphlet was involved for Milton in the events of that fortnight. He could construe them no otherwise than as the breaking down of the inner rampart that defended the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart. The Roasting of the Rump in London was but a rough popular metaphor for “Down with the Republic”; and, had the tumult of that night extended from the City to Westminster and the breaking of the windows of “fanatics” become general, Milton’s would not have escaped. Then, in the course of the negotiations with Monk through the fatal fortnight, had not the Rump itself quailed? Had they not offered to cancel the solemn Abjuration Oath, alike for the Councillors of State and for future members of Parliament, and to substitute only a general engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth, without King, Single Person, or House of Lords? Hardly anywhere now did there seem to be that stern, bold, uncompromising opposition to Royalty which would register itself, as Milton wanted, in an oath before God and man, but only that feebler Republicanism which would pledge itself with the understood reservation of “circumstances permitting.” But worst of all was the crowning fact that the Secluded Members had been restored. By that one stroke of Monk’s all that had happened since the Commonwealth had been set up was put in question, and the power was given back into the hands of the very men who had protested and struggled against the setting up of the Commonwealth eleven years ago. How would these act? It might be hoped perhaps that some of the more prudent among them, having regard to the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, might not think it their duty to be as vehemently Royalist now as they had been in 1648, and also perhaps that the power of Monk, if Monk himself remained true, might restrain the rest. But would Monk remain true, or would his power avail long in restraining a Parliament the majority of which were Presbyterians and Royalists? Not to speak of the varied ability and subtlety of such of the new Parliamentary chiefs as Annesley, Sir William Waller, Denzil Holles, Ashley Cooper, and Harbottle Grimstone, what was to be expected from the remorseless obstinacy, the rhinoceros persistency, of such a Presbyterian as Prynne? How often had Milton jeered at Prynne and the margins of his endless pamphlets! It might be of some consequence to him now to remember that he had done so, and had therefore this virtual Attorney-General of the Secluded for his personal enemy. Altogether, Milton’s despondency had never yet been so deep as it must have been at this beginning of the last phase of the long English Revolution, represented in the Parliament of the Secluded Members and in Monk’s accompanying Dictatorship.
Third Section.
MILTON THROUGH MONK’S DICTATORSHIP. FEB. 1659-60—MAY 1660.
FIRST EDITION OF MILTON’S READY AND EASY
WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE
COMMONWEALTH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH
EXTRACTS: VEHEMENT
REPUBLICANISM OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH ITS PROPHETIC
WARNINGS: PECULIAR
CENTRAL IDEA OF THE PAMPHLET, VIZ. THE PROJECT
OF A GRAND COUNCIL OR
PARLIAMENT TO SIT IN PERPETUITY, WITH A COUNCIL OF
STATE FOR ITS
EXECUTIVE: PASSAGES EXPOUNDING THIS IDEA:
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION OF
LOCAL AND COUNTY COUNCILS OR COMMITTEES: DARING
PERORATION OF THE
PAMPHLET: MILTON’S RECAPITULATION OF THE
SUBSTANCE OF IT IN A SHORT
PRIVATE LETTER TO MONK ENTITLED PRESENT MEANS AND
BRIEF
DELINEATION OF A FREE COMMONWEALTH: WIDE
CIRCULATION OF MILTON’S
PAMPHLET: THE RESPONSE BY MONK AND THE PARLIAMENT
OF THE SECLUDED
MEMBERS IN THEIR PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEXT FORTNIGHT:
DISSOLUTION OF
THE PARLIAMENT AFTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR ITS SUCCESSOR:
ROYALIST SQUIB
PREDICTING MILTON’S SPEEDY ACQUAINTANCE WITH
THE HANGMAN AT TYBURN:
ANOTHER SQUIB AGAINST MILTON, CALLED THE CENSURE
OF THE ROTA UPON
MR. MILTON’S BOOK: SPECIMENS OF THIS
BURLESQUE: REPUBLICAN APPEAL
TO MONK, CALLED PLAIN ENGLISH: REPLY TO
THE SAME, WITH ANOTHER
ATTACK ON MILTON: POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM
DURING THE FORTY DAYS
OF INTERVAL BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED
MEMBERS AND THE
CONVENTION PARLIAMENT (MARCH 16, 1659-60—APRIL
25, 1660): CAUTION OF
MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE: DR. MATTHEW GRIFFITH
AND HIS ROYALIST
SERMON, THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE KING:
GRIFFITH IMPRISONED FOR
HIS SERMON, BUT FORWARD REPUBLICANS CHECKED OR PUNISHED
AT THE SAME
TIME: NEEDHAM DISCHARGED FROM HIS EDITORSHIP
AND MILTON FROM HIS
SECRETARYSHIP: RESOLUTENESS OF MILTON IN HIS
REPUBLICANISM: HIS
BRIEF NOTES ON DR. GRIFFITH’S SERMON:
SECOND EDITION OF HIS
READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH:
REMARKABLE ADDITIONS AND ENLARGEMENTS IN THIS EDITION:
SPECIMENS OF
THESE: MILTON AND LAMBERT THE LAST REPUBLICANS
IN THE FIELD: ROGER
L’ESTRANGE’S PAMPHLET AGAINST MILTON,
CALLED NO BLIND GUIDES:
LARGER ATTACK ON MILTON BY G.S., CALLED HE DIGNITY
OF KINGSHIP
ASSERTED: QUOTATIONS FROM THAT BOOK:
MEETING OF THE CONVENTION
PARLIAMENT, APRIL 25, 1660: DELIVERY BY GREENVILLE
OF THE SIX ROYAL
LETTERS FROM BREDA, APRIL 28—MAY 1, AND
VOTES OF BOTH HOUSES FOR THE
RECALL OF CHARLES; INCIDENTS OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK:
MAD IMPATIENCE
OVER THE THREE KINGDOMS FOR THE KING’S RETURN:
HE AND HIS COURT AT
THE HAGUE, PREPARING FOR THE VOYAGE HOME: PANIC
AMONG THE SURVIVING
REGICIDES AND OTHER PROMINENT REPUBLICANS: FLIGHT
OF NEEDHAM TO
HOLLAND AND ABSCONDING OF MILTON FROM HIS HOUSE IN
PETTY FRANCE: LAST
SIGHT OF MILTON IN THAT HOUSE.
The Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers had been sitting for a few days, had confirmed Monk in the Dictatorship by formally appointing him Captain-General and Commander-in-chief (Feb. 21), and had also (Feb. 22) intimated their resolution to devolve all really constitutional questions on a new “full and free Parliament,” when Milton did send forth the pamphlet he had written. It was a small quarto of eighteen pages with this title-page: “The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence therof compar’d with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation. The author J.M., London, Printed by T.N., and are to be sold by Livewell Chapman at the Crown in Popes-Head Alley. 1660.” Copies seem to have been procurable before the end of February 1659-60, but Thomason’s copy bears date “March 3."[1] That was the day of the order of Parliament for the release of the last remaining Scottish captives of Worcester Battle.
[Footnote 1: In Wood’s Fasti (I. 485) the pamphlet is mentioned as “published in Feb.” The publication, we learn from subsequent words of Milton himself, was very hurried, and copies got about without his press-corrections. I find no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers’ Registers.—It is particularly necessary to remember that this was but the first edition of the pamphlet. Another was to follow. In all the editions of Milton’s collected works, from that of 1698 onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two editions is more important.]
The pamphlet opens thus:—
“Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things hath had some change, writs for new elections [by the late Rump] have been recalled, and the members at first chosen [for the original Long Parliament] readmitted from exclusion to sit again in Parliament, yet, not a little rejoicing to hear declared the resolutions of all those who are now in power, jointly tending to the establishment of a Free Commonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this unsound humour of returning to old bondage instilled of late by some cunning deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people, I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping it may perhaps (the Parliament now sitting more full and frequent) be now much more useful than before: yet submitting what hath reference to the state of things as they then stood to present constitutions, and, so the same end be pursued, not insisting on this or that means to obtain it. The treatise was thus written as follows.”
This is an attempt by Milton even yet to disguise his despondency. He had written the pamphlet while the late Rump was still sitting, while the conjunction between them and Monk was unbroken, and when the last news was that they had issued, or were about to issue,
The despondency which he disguises in the preface appears in the pamphlet itself. Or rather it is a despondency dashed with a sanguine remnant of faith that all might yet be well, and that the means of perpetuating a Republic, all contrary appearances notwithstanding, might yet be shown to be “ready and easy.” The use of these two words in the title of such a pamphlet at such a time is very characteristic. It was the public theorist, however, that ventured on them, rather than the secret and real man. Throughout the pamphlet there is a sad and fierce undertone, as of one knowing that what he is prophesying as easy will never come to pass.
About half of the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government, and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form of Government after having had so much prosperous experience of the other. In the following specimen of the declamation the reader will note the prophecy of actual events as far as to the Revolution of 1688:—
“After our liberty thus successfully fought for, gained, and many years possessed (except in those unhappy interruptions which God hath removed), ... to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship, not only argues a strange degenerate corruption suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our neighbours. And what will they say of us but scoffingly as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower and was not able to finish it: ’Where is this goodly Tower of a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow Kings and be another Rome in the West? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues but of factions, than those at the Tower of Babel, and have left no memorial of their work behind them remaining but in the common laughter of Europe.’ Which must needs redound the more to our shame if we but look on our neighbours THE UNITED PROVINCES, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who, notwithstanding, in the midst of great difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly, went through with the same work, and are settled in all the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this day.—Besides this, if we return to kingship, and soon repent (as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments coming on by little and little upon our consciences, which must needs proceed from King and Bishop united inseparably in one interest), we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought and spend over again all that we have spent, but are never likely to attain, thus far as we are now advanced to the recovery of our freedom, never likely to have it in possession as we now have it,—never to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies and signal assistance from Heaven in our cause, if by our ingrateful backsliding we make these fruitless to ourselves, all His gracious condescensions and answers to our once importuning prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned under to become now of no effect, by returning of our own foolish accord, nay running headlong again with full stream wilfully and obstinately, into the same bondage: making vain and viler than dirt the blood of so many thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen, who left us in this liberty bought with their lives; losing by a strange after-game of folly all the battles we have won, all the treasure we have spent (not that corruptible treasure only, but that far more precious one of all our late miraculous deliverances), and most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that Free Government which we have so dearly purchased,—a Free Commonwealth: not only held by wisest men in all ages the noblest, the manliest, the equalest, the justest Government, the most agreeable to all due liberty, and proportionedPage 515
equality both human, civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion, but also, (I may say it with greatest probability) plainly commended or rather enjoined by our Saviour Himself to all Christians, not without remarkable disallowance and the brand of Gentilism upon Kingship [quotation here of Luke XXII. 25, 26][1] ... And what Government comes nearer to this precept of Christ than a Free Commonwealth? Wherein they who are greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and charges,—neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren,—live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration: whereas a King must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty Court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masques and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female,—nor at his own cost, but on the public revenue,—and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people.”
[Footnote 1: This is one of Milton’s very long sentences; and the length shows, I think, the glow and rapidity of the dictation.]
Having thus expressed his belief that “a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had,” Milton glances at the objection that recent experience in England has shown such government to be practically unattainable. He denies this, alleging that all disappointment hitherto “may be ascribed with most reason to the frequent disturbances, interruptions, and dissolutions which the Parliament hath had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people, partly from some ambitious leaders in the Army”; and he declares that the present time is peculiarly favourable for one more vigorous effort. “Now is the opportunity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a Free Commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the land without difficulty or much delay.” He had written this when the Rump was sitting, and when he had in view the new elections that were to recruit that “small remainder of those faithful worthies who at first freed us from tyranny and have continued ever since through all changes constant to their trust”; but he lets it stand now, as not inapplicable to the new condition of things brought in by the sudden mixture of the Secluded with the Rumpers. The “Ready and Easy Way,” however, has still to be explained; and to that he proceeds.
The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for Life. This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions of the value of the bodies called Parliaments. If those previous passages of his writings are studied, however, it will be found that he is not now so inconsistent as he looks. He had always thought a broad general council of fit men in the centre of a nation the essential of good government; and his chief recommendation to Cromwell, even when approving of his exceptional Sovereignty, had been that he should keep round him such a general Council. Further, it will be found that permanence of the same men at the centre of affairs had always been his implied ideal, whether permanence of an exceptional Single-Person sovereignty surrounded by a Council, or permanence of a Council without a Single-Person sovereignty. His real objection to so-called Parliaments, it will be found, lay in the association with them of the ideas of shiftingness, interruptedness, successiveness, the turmoil and debauchery of successive general elections. So possessed was he with the notion of permanence of tenure as desirable in the governing agency, whatever it might be, that he had even modified the notion, as we have seen, to suit the anomalous conditions of that stage of the Anarchy which we have called the Wallingford-House Interruption, He had recommended then the experiment of a duality of life-aristocracies, one civil and the other military. And now, the turn of circumstances and of his speculations shutting him up once more to a single Civil Parliament of the ordinary size and kind, he will insist on the quality of permanence or perpetuity as that which alone will make it answer the purpose. But, the very name “Parliament” having been vitiated so as to make a permanent Parliament a difficult conception for most people, he would rather get rid of the name altogether, and call the central governing body simply THE GENERAL OR GRAND COUNCIL OF THE NATION.
All this appears in Milton’s own words, as follows:—
“The ground and basis of every just and free Government (since men have smarted so oft for committing all to one person) is a GENERAL COUNCIL OF ABLEST MEN, chosen by the people to consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good. This Grand Council must have the forces by sea and land in their power, must raise and manage the public revenue, make laws as need requires, treat of commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations; and, for the carrying on some particular affairs of State with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as theyPage 517
have already, out of their own number and others, a Council of State, And, although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men’s minds are prepossessed with the conceit of successive Parliaments, I affirm that the GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL, being well chosen, should sit perpetual: for so their business is, and they will become thereby skilfullest, best acquainted with the people, and the people with them. The Ship of the Commonwealth is always under sail: they sit at the stern; and, if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this that the GRAND COUNCIL is both foundation and main pillar of the whole State, and to move pillars and foundations, unless they be faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not therefore how we can be advantaged by successive Parliaments, but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle rather than to settle a free Government, to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, and serve only to satisfy the ambition of such men as think themselves injured and cannot stay till they be orderly chosen to have their part in the Government. If the ambition of such be at all to be regarded, the best expedient will be, and with least danger, that every two or three years a hundred or some such number may go out by lot or suffrage of the rest, and the like number be chosen in their places (which hath been already thought on here, and done in other Commonwealths); but in my opinion better nothing moved, unless by death or just accusation.... [Farther argument for the permanence of the Supreme Governing Body, with illustrations from the Sanhedrim of the Jews, the Areopagus of Athens, the Senates of Lacedaemon and Home, the full Venetian Senate, and the States-General of the United Provinces]. I know not therefore what should be peculiar in England to make successive Parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in all other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are Islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. I suppose therefore that the people, well weighing these things, would have no cause to fear or murmur, though the Parliament, abolishing that name, as originally signifying but the parley of our Commons with their Norman King when he pleased to call them, should perpetuate themselves, if their ends be faithful and for a free Commonwealth, under the name of a GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL: nay, till this be done, I am in doubt whether our State will be ever certainly and thoroughly settled.... The GRAND COUNCIL being thus firmly constituted to perpetuity, and still upon the death or default of any member supplied and kept in full number, there can be no cause alleged why peace, justice, plentiful trade, and all prosperity, should not thereupon ensue throughout the whole land, with as much assurance as can be of human things that they shall so continuePage 518
(if God favour us and our wilful sins provoke Him not) even, to the coming of our true and rightful and only to be expected King, only worthy as He is our only Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his Eternal Father, the only by Him anointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption finished, Universal Lord of all mankind. The way propounded is plain, easy, and open before us, without intricacies, without the mixture of inconveniences, or any considerable objection to be made, as by some frivolously, that it is not practicable. And this facility we shall have above our next neighbouring Commonwealth (if we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a Duke of Venice, put lately into many men’s heads by some one or other subtly driving on, under that pretty notion, his own ambitious ends to a crown),[1] that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement to such a potent family as the House of Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation, in the world.”
[Footnote 1: The allusion here is vague.]
In effect, therefore, Milton’s Ready and Easy Way, recommended to the mixed Parliament of Residuary Rumpers and their reseated Presbyterian half-brothers of March 1659-60, is that this Parliament, nailing the Republican flag to the mast, should make itself, or some enlargement of itself, the perpetual supreme power under the name of THE GRAND COUNCIL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, appointing a smaller Council of State, as heretofore, to be the working executive, but plainly intimating to the people that there are to be no more general Parliamentary elections, but only elections to vacancies as they may occur in the Grand Council by death or misdemeanour. He is himself against the adoption of Harrington’s principle of rotation to any extent whatever; but, if it would reconcile people to his scheme, he would concede rotation so far as to let a portion of the Grand Council go out every second or third year to admit new men.
While expounding his main idea, Milton had intimated that he had another suggestion in reserve, which might help to reconcile reasonable men of democratic prepossessions to the seeming novelty of an irremovable apparatus of Government at the centre. This suggestion he brings forward near the end of the pamphlet. He arrives at it in the course of a demonstration in farther detail of certain superiorities of Commonwealth government over Regal. “The whole freedom of man,” he says, “consists either in Spiritual or Civil Liberty.” Glancing first at Spiritual Liberty, he contents himself with a general statement of the principle of Liberty of Conscience, as implying the absolute and unimpeded right of every individual Christian to interpret the Scripture for himself and give utterance and effect to his conclusions; and, though he does not conceal that in his own opinion such Liberty of Conscience cannot be complete without Church-disestablishment, he does not press that for the present. Enough that Liberty of Conscience, according to any endurable definition of it, is more safe in a Republic than in a Kingdom,—which, by various instances from history, he maintains to be a fact. Then, coming to Civil Liberty, he propounds his reserved suggestion, or the second real novelty of his pamphlet, thus:—
“The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit: the enjoyment of those never more certain, and the access to these never more open, than in a free Commonwealth. And both in my opinion may be best and soonest obtained if every county in the land were made a Little Commonwealth, and their chief town a City if it be not so called already; where the nobility and chief gentry may build houses or palaces befitting their quality, may bear part in the [district or city] government, make their own judicial laws, and execute them by their own elected judicatures, without appeal, in all things of Civil Government between man and man. So they shall have justice in their own hands, and none to blame but themselves if it be not well administered. In these employments they may exercise and fit themselves till their lot fall to be chosen into THE GRAND COUNCIL, according as their worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the people. As for controversies that may happen between men of several counties, they may repair, as they now do, to the Capital City. They should have here also [i.e. in their own Cities and Counties] schools and academies at their own choice, wherein their children may be bred up in their own sight to all learning and noble education, not in grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises.”
This is what would now be called a scheme of Decentralization or Systematic Local Government. The counties, with their chief cities, should be so many little independent communities, each with its legislative council, its law-courts, and its other institutions, employing and tasking the political energies and abilities of the citizens or inhabitants of the district. While this would be advantageous in itself, inasmuch as it would stimulate mental activity and social improvement everywhere, and would relieve the GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL of much work more properly appertaining to municipalities, it would doubtless reconcile many to the existence of such a GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL in perpetuity. Energetic and ambitious spirits would have scope and training in their own cities and neighbourhoods, and the hope of being elected to the Central Government when there should be a vacancy there would be a fine incitement to the best to qualify themselves to the utmost for national statesmanship.
The following is the closing passage of the whole pamphlet:—
“With all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty, to speak in season and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken; but a few main matters now put speedily into execution will suffice to recover us and set allPage 520
right. And there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times I find not many. What I have spoken is the language of the Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth, to tell the very soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise of these stones to become Children of Liberty, and may enable and unite in their noble resolutions to give a stay to these our ruinous proceedings and to this general defection of the misguided and abused multitude.”
To understand fully the tremendous daring of this peroration, one must turn to the passage of Hebrew prophecy which it cites and applies to Charles Stuart. It is Jeremiah XXII. 24-30, where woe is denounced upon Coniah, Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the worthless King of Judah, no better than his father Jehoiakim:—“As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence. And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die. But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return. Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not? O Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord: Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.”
A curious supplement to Milton’s Ready and
Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth exists
in the shape of a private letter which he addressed
to General Monk. It was not published at the time,
and bears no date, but must have been written immediately
after the publication of the pamphlet, while the Parliament
of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers was
still sitting. Milton, it would seem, had sent
Monk a copy of the pamphlet; and this private letter
is nothing but a brief summary of the suggestions of
the pamphlet for the General’s easier reading,
should he think fit. It is entitled, in our present
copies, “The Present Means and Brief Delineation
of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice
Page 521
and without delay: In a Letter to General Monk."[1]
The whole consists of less than three of the present
pages. Believing that all endeavours must now
be used “that the ensuing election be of such,
as are already firm or inclinable to constitute a
Free Commonwealth,” Milton appeals to Monk to
be himself the man to lead in these endeavours.
“The speediest way,” he says, “will
be to call up forthwith [to London] the chief gentlemen
out of every county, [and] to lay before them (as your
Excellency hath already, both in your published Letters
to the Army and your Declaration recited to the Members
of Parliament), the danger and confusion of readmitting
kingship in this land.” Then let the gentlemen
so charged return at once to their counties, and elect
or cause to be elected, “by such at least of
the people as are rightly qualified,” a STANDING
COUNCIL in every city and great town, all great towns
henceforth to be called Cities. Let it
be understood that these councils are to be permanent
seats of district and local judicature and of political
deliberation; but, while setting up such councils,
let the gentlemen also see to the election of “the
usual number of ablest knights and burgesses, engaged
for a Commonwealth, to make up the PARLIAMENT, or,
as it will from henceforth be better called, THE GRAND
OR GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE NATION.” The
local or city councils having meanwhile been set up,
and it having been intimated that on great occasions
their assent will be required to measures proposed
by the Grand Council of the nation, Milton does not
anticipate that there will be much opposition “though
this GRAND COUNCIL be perpetual, as in that book [his
pamphlet] I proved would be best and most conformable
to best examples”; but, should there be opposition,
“the known expedient may at length be used of
a partial rotation.” This is all
that Milton has to say, with one exception:—“If
these gentlemen convocated refuse these fair and noble
offers of immediate liberty and happy condition, no
doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully
accept them, your Excellency once more declaring publicly
this to be your mind, and having a faithful veteran
Army so ready and glad to assist you in the prosecution
thereof.”—What Monk thought of Mr.
Milton’s Letter, if he ever took the trouble
to read it, may be easily guessed. It was at
this time that he was so often drunk or nearly so
at the dinners given in the City, and that Sir John
Greenville, on the part of Charles, was watching for
an interview with him at St. James’s.
[Footnote 1: “Published from the Manuscript” is the addition in all our present reprints. In other words, this Letter to Monk, together with the previous Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, came into Toland’s hands in the manner described in Note p. 617, and was also given by Toland for use in the 1698 edition of Milton’s Prose Works.]
Not one of Milton’s pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative. Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb. 2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so. No other construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastical matters. Hardly was Milton’s pamphlet out when he knew that they had voted the revival of the Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith as the standard of doctrine in the National Church (March 2), and the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant as a document of perpetual national obligation (March 5). Then followed (March 14) their vote for mapping out all England and Wales according to the strict pattern of the Scottish Presbyterian organization. But, that there might be no mistake, their votes predetermining the composition of the coming Parliament were also in the direction of the admission of Royalists and the exclusion of those that could be called Fanatics for the Republic. The engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth without King or House of Lords was annulled (March 13); the clauses disqualifying even the active and conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars were far from stringent; and the very act by which the House dissolved itself contained a proviso saving the legal and constitutional rights of the old House of Lords and pointing to the restitution of the Peerage. How significant also that scene in the House on the last day of their sittings, Friday, March 16, when Mr. Crewe moved for a vote of execration on the Regicides, and poor Thomas Scott, standing up on the floor, and reckless though the words should seal his doom, declared himself to be one of the blood-stained band and claimed the fact as his highest earthly honour! What Scott did that day in the House Milton had done even more publicly a fortnight before in the daring peroration of his pamphlet. From March 16, 1659-60, Milton and Scott, whoever else, might regard themselves as in the list for the future hangman.
In the list for the future hangman! It is a strong expression, but true historically to the very letter. Read the following from a scurrilous pamphlet, of six pages in shabby print, called The Character of the Rump, which was out in London on Saturday the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament:—
“An ingenious person hath observed
that Scott is the Rump’s man
Thomas; and they might have said to him,
when he was so busy with
the General,
“Peace, for the Lord’s
sake, Thomas! lest Monk take us,
And drag us out, as Hercules
did Cacus.
“But John Milton is their goose-quill champion; who had need of a help-meet to establish anything, for he has a ram’s head and is good only at batteries,—an old heretic both in religion and manners, that by his will would shake off his governors as he doth his wives, four in a fortnight. The sunbeams of his scandalous papers against the late King’s Book is [sic] the parent that begot his late New Commonwealth; and, because he, like a parasite as he is, by flattering the then tyrannical power, hath run himself into the briars, the man will be angry if the rest of the nation will not bear him company, and suffer themselves to be decoyed into the same condition. He is so much an enemy to usual practices that I believe, when he is condemned to travel to Tyburn in a cart, he will petition for the favour to be the first man that ever was driven thither in a wheelbarrow. And now, John, you must stand close and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington’s Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, he’s but a demi-semi in the Rump’s music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to make a concert of grindstones."[1]
[Footnote 1: Pamphlet, of title and date given, in the Thomason Collection. I have mended the pointing, but nothing else.]
Such was the popular verdict, in March 1660, on Milton and his last pamphlet, and all his deserts and accomplishments in the world he had lived in for one-and-fifty years. More of the like may be found on search; but I will pass to one retort on his Ready and Easy Way, of somewhat higher literary quality than the last, and which retains a certain celebrity yet.
It appeared on March 30, as a small quarto of sixteen pages, with this title: “The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton’s Book, entituled ’The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.’” On the title-page is the imprint, “London, Printed by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the Windmill in Turne-againe Lane. 1660,” and also a professed extract from the minutes of the Rota Club, “Die Luna 26 Martii 1660,” certified by “Trundle Wheeler, Clerk to the Rota,” authorizing and ordering Mr. Harrington, as Chairman of the Club, to draw up and publish a narrative of that day’s debate of the Club over Mr. Milton’s pamphlet, and to transmit a copy of the same to Mr. Milton. The thing, though it has been mistaken by careless people as actually a production of Harrington’s, is in reality a clever burlesque by some Royalist, in which, under the guise of an imaginary debate in the Rota over Milton’s pamphlet, Milton and the Rota-men are turned into ridicule together. The mock-names on the title-page (Paul Giddy, Trundle Wheeler, &c.) are part of the burlesque; and it is well kept up in the tract itself, which takes the form of a letter gravely addressed to Milton and signed with Harrington’s initials, “J. H."[1]
[Footnote 1: The Rota Club, as we already know (ante p. 555), can have had no meeting on the day supposed in the burlesque, having disappeared, with all its appurtenances, ballot-box included, at or immediately after the swamping of the old Rump by the readmission of the secluded members. The last glimpses we have of it are these from Pepys’s Diary:—Jan. 10, 1659-60. “To the Coffee-house, where were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz. Mr. Harrington, Poulteney (chairman), Gold, Dr. Petty, &c.; where admirable discourse till 9 at night.”—Jan. 17. “I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very good discourse. It was in answer to Mr. Harrington’s answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government: so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another.”—Feb. 20 (day before Restitution of the Secluded). “I to the Coffee-house, where I heard Mr, Harrington and my Lord Dorset and another Lord talking of getting another place [for the Club meetings] at the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come to something.” Had there been an express order for closing the Club?]
Mr. Harrington is supposed to begin by expressing his regret to Mr. Milton that his duty obliges him to make so unsatisfactory a report as to the reception of Mr. Milton’s last pamphlet by the Club. “For, whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything, how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning of your book to the end.” First, one gentleman had objected to the very name of the book, The Ready and Easy Way, &c., and had remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic. A second gentleman had been even more impolite. “He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said that he himself reprieved the whole Defence of the People of England for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour
“He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy.... All your politics are derived from the works of Declaimers, with which sort of writers the ancient Commonwealths had the fortune to abound ... All which you have outgone (according to your talent) in their several ways: for you have done your feeble endeavour to rob the Church, of the little which the rapine of the most sacrilegious persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; you have slandered the dead worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty outrage on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were but your usher. These have been the attempts of your stiff formal eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in your way, right or wrong,—not only begging but stealing questions, and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn. For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions: the most impious Mahometan doctrine that ever was vented among Christians."...
This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton’s remark that Christ himself had put “the brand of Gentilism” upon Kingship, “a young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight with the King’s Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney’s Princess Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, ’a heathen woman,’ and therefore he thought that by Heathenish you meant English, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English nation, as it hath been proved in all ages. To which another objected that such a sense was quite
“I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I told them, as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most in your treatise was that there is not one word of The Balance of Property, nor the Agrarian, nor Rotation, in it from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a Lord Archon) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not only in my writings but public exercises in that coffee-house, that there is no possible foundation of a free Commonwealth. To the first and second of these,—that is, the Balance and the Agrarian,—you made no objection; and therefore I should not need to make any answer. But for the third,—I mean Rotation,—which you implicitly reject in your design to perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I have already said and written on that subject: That a Commonwealth is like a great top, that must be kept up by beingPage 527
whipt round, and held in perpetual circulation; for, if you discontinue the rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle and stand still, down it falls immediately. And, if you had studied this point as carefully as I have done, you could not but know there is no such way under Heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of Wheeling."...[1]
[Footnote 1: There is a reprint of this Censure of the Rota in the Harleian Miscellany (IV. 179-186). I take the date of publication from the Thomason copy of the original.]
How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the contemporary London pamphlets.——Perhaps the last formal and collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this title:—Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the King. Printed at London in the year 1660. The first part of the tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a letter dated “March 22,” by some persons who do not give their names, but sign themselves “your Excellency’s most faithful friends and servants in the common cause”; after which, in smaller type, comes a reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585). The letter begins thus:—“My Lord and Gentlemen,—It is written The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time; and ’tis like we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also. In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you for help,—you that, through God’s goodness, have helped us so often, and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ... We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage.” There follows an earnest invective against the Stuarts; but the tone of respectfulness to Monk is kept up studiously throughout. There is no sign of Milton in the language, and one guesses on the whole that
“Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called Plain English, directed to the General and his Officers.... It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer. By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect it for a blot of the same pen that wrote Eikonoklastes. It runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness.... Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang yourself; beg right; here’s your true method of begging:—’O, for Tom Scott’s sake, for Hasilrig’s sake, for Robinson, Holland, Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton, Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham’s sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent brethren’s sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].’”
[Footnote 1: The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are from copies in the Thomason Collection. Such references to Milton in the pamphlets of March—April 1660 might be multiplied. He was then in all men’s mouths.]
We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16, 1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State, with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk, keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or suppress.
At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman over sixty years of age, once a protege of the poet Donne. Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of the King’s chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to preach in the Mercers’ Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he had chosen for his text Prov. XXIV. 21, which he translated thus: “My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change.” On this text he had preached a very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that, as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content
[Footnote 1: “April” only, without day, is the date in the Thomason copy; but it was registered at Stationers’ Hall, March 31, and there is proof that the publication was immediate.]
“My Lord,—If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient, then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession. When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul’s, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this title: A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public Peace), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our hearts: hoping that, by God’s blessing on the means, I should have prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet, finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were) to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functionsPage 531
again in such poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit (contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship’s pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to make a king than to be one. Your proper name minds you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as Jethro’s magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country.”
Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King’s cause otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, “to please and blind the fanatical party” for the moment, Dr. Griffith was sent to Newgate.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. III. 711-713.—Hyde, writing from Breda, April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: “This very last post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be ... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned.” Ibid., note by Bliss.]
It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take similar precautions against too violent expressions of anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers. Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his Officers entitled Plain English, and their procedure by proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope’s Head Alley, the publisher of Milton’s Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, and also of his more recent Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of the Council of State against this person, dated “Wednesday, 28 March, 1660,” and signed “William Jessop, Clerk of the Council.” It began in these terms:—“Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice”; and it ended with an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of Plain English, there would be additional reason for suspecting that Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but there can be no doubt that among the “seditious and treasonable books” the publication of which constituted Chapman’s offence was Milton’s own Ready and Easy Way. The authorities had not yet struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They had ordered the arrest of his publisher.
Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton’s publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.—Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself The Public Intelligencer on Mondays and Mercurius Politicus on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of defending not only Oliver’s
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. As only the Intelligencer is named in the orders, one infers that Needham retained the editorship of the Mercurius during his three months of suspension. He may have had more of a proprietary hold on that paper.]
[Footnote 2: Thomason Catalogue: large quartos.]
[Footnote 3: Didapper: a duck that dives and reappears.]
[Footnote 4: Wood’s Ath. III. 1180-1190; Whitlocke as cited; Pepys, under date Jan. 9, 1659-60; Evelyn’s Diary, Feb. 17, 1659-60 et seq.; Baker’s Chronicle continued by Edward Phillips (ed. 1679), pp. 699-700.—It is curious to read Phillips’s remarks on the “several seditious pamphlets” put forth by the Republican fanatics “to deprave the minds of the people” and prevent the Restoration. Though he must have remembered well that his uncle’s were the chief of these, he avoids naming him. He mentions, however, the News from Brussels, and dilates on the great service done by Evelyn in replying to it. Phillips had meanwhile (1663-1665) been in Evelyn’s employment as tutor to his son.]
If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held for eleven years. Phillips’s words are that he was “sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging”; but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.
Though the last of Milton’s state-letters now preserved and known as his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately after the subversion of Richard’s Protectorate, we have seen him holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of L200 a year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding, thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659, would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that Milton remained Marvell’s nominal colleague till Monk’s final termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized
[Footnote 1: Phillips’s narrative of his uncle’s dismissal is a blotch of confused wording and pointing:—“It was but a little before the King’s Restoration that he wrote and published his book in defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true sentiments to the world; and not long before his Power of the Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs and his Treatise against Hirelings, just upon the King’s coming over; having a little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging, he was force,” &c. This, as it stands, defies interpretation. The Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes appeared in April 1659, or eight months before the same. There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop after Hirelings, and the rest should have run on thus:—“Just upon the King’s coming over, having a little before been sequestered from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging, he was force,” &c.]
* * * * *
In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680. Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans. Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out of sight, the last under ban already by his
“He, patient, but undaunted, where
they led him
Came to the place.”
The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith’s performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having had Dr. Griffith’s Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: “Brief Notes upon a late Sermon, titled ‘The Fear of God and the King’; Preach’d, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of Scripture, and other falsities are observed."[1]
[Footnote 1: Original copies of this pamphlet of Milton must be very scarce. I could not find one in the British Museum, and I have looked in vain elsewhere. Probably, at the date when it was published, the Council of State had become very alert in suppressing such things. I take the title and extracts from Pickering’s (1851) collective edition of Milton’s Works, “printed from the original editions.”]
The tract, which is very short, opens thus:—
“I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled The Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of readmitting Kingship in this Nation, that ’the humour of returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some deceivers’: and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted in his stead.”
The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the preacher’s theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the intellectual calibre of his antagonist, whom he once names “a pulpit-mountebank,” and of whom he once says that “the rest of his preachment is mere groundless chat,” Yet, on the other hand, he would evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the average Church-of-England clergyman. “O people of an implicit faith, no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!” he once exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction.
The only portions of the Notes of interest now are those that bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith’s sermon, there is an evident struggle on Milton’s part to speak as if one might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was “to please and blind the fanatical party,” may have had some such temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one “who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action,” and he characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is prayed “to carry on what he had so happily begun,” as nothing less than “an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence.” It charges him, says Milton, “most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future.” Throughout the Notes, however, one sees that even this small lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to Monk’s own assumption of the Crown:—
“Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet, choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,—will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can be more unworthy?”
Of far more moment than the Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith’s Sermon was a second and enlarged edition of the Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.
Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening paragraph that this edition is a “revised and enlarged” one, not till after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of Milton’s art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth is to be taken, in short, for Milton’s Biography at least, as an important new publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here noticed.[1]
[Footnote 1: The fact that there are two editions of the Ready and Easy Way, though Milton calls express attention to it in the second, seems to have escaped all the bibliographers. There is no note of it in Lowndes. What is most curious, however, is that, while it is the second or enlarged edition alone that is now accessible to everybody in the collective editions of Milton’s Prose Works, from the so-called Amsterdam edition of 1898 to Pickering’s and Bonn’s, yet original copies of this second edition seem, to have wholly disappeared. There are several original copies of the Ready and Easy Way in the British Museum, but all of the first edition, not one of the second; the Bodleian has no copy of the second; every original copy of the tract that I have been able to see or hear of anywhere else has always turned out to be one of the first edition. In my perplexity, I began to ask myself whether this was to be explained by supposing that Milton, after he had prepared the second edition for the press, did not succeed in getting it published, and so that it was not till 1698 that it saw the light, and then by the accident that his enlarged press-copy had survived, and come (through Toland or otherwise) into the hands of the printers of the Amsterdam edition of the Prose Works. But, though several pieces in that edition are expressly noted as “never before published” (see notes ante, p. 617 and p. 656), there is no such editorial note respecting The Ready and Easy Way, but every appearance of mere reprinting from a previously published copy of 1660. On the whole, therefore, I conclude that Milton did publish his second and enlarged edition some time in April 1660; and I account for
Among the additions the most prominent is this motto (an extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:—
“Et nos
Consilium dedimus Syllae: demus
Populo nunc”;
which may be translated:—
“We have advised
Sulla himself: advise we now the
People.”
Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his Defensio Secunda of tendering wholesome advices even to the great Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have depended then on Milton’s estimate of the character of the real or Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by their own infatuation, “under the tyranny of Sulla.” Now, though we have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of Cromwell’s Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk, not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the metonymy Sulla. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the other day, containing that specific
“This advice
we have given
Sulla himself: ’tis for the
People now.”
In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology, we note reference to the course of events since the publication of the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):—
... “I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves to have all things represented to them that may direct their judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as follows.”
Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:—
“What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence? Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and strictest charge of his father, to persevere in not the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and] not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and Schisms,—among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief. Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the Covenant, how will he keep faith to us with disobedience to him, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?”
Perhaps the most striking instance of omission in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was now striving. To this end it is that again and again
There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes care to extend also his former references to Harrington’s principle of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington, he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these particular enlargements:—
The Rotation Principle:—“But, if the ambition of such as think themselves injured that they also partake not of the Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election, and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and this they call Partial Rotation. But I could wish that this wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune. For it appears not how this can be done without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved, unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side.”
Contrast of Harrington’s Model with Milton’s, and a Suggestion for the mode of Elections:—“And this annual Rotation of a Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land,—unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation; incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way will be to wellPage 544
qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest.... But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate the odious power and name of Committees) in the chief towns of every County,—without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so long residing from their own houses, or removing of their families,—to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the wariest rotation.”
Glance at some of Harrington’s other notions:—“The way propounded [Milton’s] is plain, easy, and open before us: without intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or terms, or exotic models,—ideas that would effect nothing, but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian Liberty.”
As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had rendered Milton’s defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state of society they will bring in. Thus:—
“There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already, together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal issue, and ere long severally their sumptuous Courts, to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms.”
But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the Royalist scurrilities against himself:—
“Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations; yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so low that, though they would never so fain, and at the samePage 545
rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about it,—utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and their song will then be to others How sped the Rebellious English?, to our posterity How sped the Rebels your fathers?.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,—for those are individual: both which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men’s estates, or a heavy imposition on all men’s purses,—benefit to none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informations,—who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,—if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how their necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,—these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal pox,—can draw one way, under Monarchy,Page 546
to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on their backs. And do they among them who are so forward to bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are wont reconciled enemies,—neglected and soon after discarded, if not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third part actors, of all that followed.”
Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts that by “the trial of just battle” the larger part of the population of England long ago “lost the right of their election what the form of Government shall be,” and that, if even a majority of the rest would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. “Is it just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves.” When he wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there even by that single modification of the language which might seem at first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God’s decree of exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now, and sending his words on to an unknown posterity.
“What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss The Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth!, to tellPage 547
the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing; to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous, but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies, to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and abused multitude.”
To exhort a torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In Milton’s mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent, rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad haste which London and all England were making in the end of April 1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important relic of opposition, the Republicanism of the Army, and how that had been already managed by Monk, and was still being managed by him, we have taken account. Its dying effort, as we saw, took the form of Lambert’s escape from the Tower on the 9th of April, and his thirteen days of wild wandering and skulking on the chance of bringing the dispersed remains of Republicanism to a rendezvous. That was over on Easter-Sunday, April 22, when Dick Ingoldsby, with flushed face, and pistol in hand, collared the fugitive Lambert on his horse in a field near Daventry, and brought him back, with others, to his prison in the Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1]
[Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton’s Ready and Easy Way is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have been made. In the second extract the phrase “What can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant &c.?” seems distinctly to certify that Milton was writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded Members had dissolved itself. The first extract, giving the new and enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for the new “free and full” Parliament which had been called,—i.e. what is now known as The Convention Parliament. He thinks that his pamphlet, as modified, “may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament or their sitting to consider freely of the Government.” Now, the elections went on from the end of March to about the 20th of April, and Milton’s words almost imply that he expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on April 25. The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to imply that Milton had read the Censure of the Rota on his first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of April, inasmuch as the Censure was not out till March 30. Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared, and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed in his Notes to Dr. Griffith’s Sermon seems more particularly to certify that those Notes preceded the new edition of the Ready and Easy Way by a week or more. On the whole, I do not think I am wrong in regarding the new edition as Milton’s very last performance before the Restoration, and in dating it somewhere between April 9, the day of Lambert’s escape from the Tower, and April 24, when Lambert was brought back a prisoner to London and the members of the Convention Parliament were already gathered in town. As Thomason’s copy of the first edition is marked “March 3,” this would make the interval between the two editions about a month and a half.]
The wrestlings now were ended. All that remained for the blind Samson was to listen, with bowed head, to the renewed burst of Philistine hissings, howlings, and execrations, against him, before they would let him retire. It came from all quarters; but at least two persons stepped out from the crowd to convert the mere inarticulate uproar into distinct invective and insult.
“No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton’s entituled ‘Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.’ Addressed to the Author.—’If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into the ditch.’—London, Printed for Henry Brome, April 20, 1660.” This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was Roger L’Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer.[1] The following specimen will represent the rest:—
[Footnote 1: Wood’s Ath. III. 712. The date of the actual appearance of the tract is from the Thamason copy.]
“Mr. Milton,
“Although in your life and doctrine you have resolved one great question, by evidencing that devils may indue human shapes and proving yourself even to your own wife an incubus, you have yet started another; and that is whether you are not of that regiment which carried the herd of swine headlong into the sea, and moved the people to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts. (This may be very well imagined from your suitable practices here.) Is it possible to read your Proposals of the benefits of a Free State without reflecting upon your tutor’s ‘All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me’? Come, come, Sir: lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much malice and against knowledge. Act like a man, that a good Christian may not be afraid to pray for you. Was it not you that scribbled a justification of the murder of the King against Salmasius, and made it good too thus: that murder was an action meritorious compared with your superior wickedness? ’Tis there (as I remember) that you commonplace yourself into set forms of railing, two pages thick; and, lest your infamy should not extend itself enough within the course and usage of your mother-tongue, the thing is dressed up in a travelling garb and language, to blast the English nation to the universe, and give every man a horror for mankind when he considers you are of the race. In this you are above all others; but in your Eikonoklastes you exceed yourself. There, not content to see that sacred head divided from the body, your piercing malice enters into the private agonies of his struggling soul, with a blasphemous insolence invading the prerogative of God himself (omniscience), and by deductions most unchristian and illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass directly to your Brief Notes upon a late Sermon ... Any man that can but read your title may understandPage 550
your drift, and that you charge the royal interest and party through the Doctor’s sides. I am not bold enough to be his champion in all particulars, nor yet so rude as to take an office most properly to him belonging out of his hand. Let him acquit himself in what concerns the divine; and I’ll adventure upon the most material parts of the rest.” [Extracts from Milton’s Notes on Dr. Griffith’s Sermon follow, with brief comments, of no interest, and showing no ability.]
Almost immediately there followed “The Dignity of Kingship Asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton’s ’Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.’ Proving that Kinqship is both in itself and in reference to these nations farre the most Excellent Government, and the returning to our former Loyalty or Obedience thereto is the only way under God to restore and settle these three once flourishing, now languishing, broken, and almost ruined nations. By G. S., a Lover of Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street. 1660.” It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and his Officers and to the two Houses of Parliament about to meet, and then three pages more of concluding address to his Majesty. Though the author does not give his name, he hints in the course of the volume that he may “be inquired after and perhaps soon found out.” He says also that his profession “much differs from politics.” Hence it may be doubted whether the conjecture is right which assigns the book to a George Searle, who had been an original member of the Long Parliament for Taunton, and had been one of the Secluded. One might venture rather on the query whether the author may not have been Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, soon to be Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, but for the present waiting with anxiety for the certainty of Charles’s recall, and doing all he could, with other divines, to hasten it.[1]
[Footnote 1: The Thomason copy gives “May,” without any day, as the date of publication; but I find the book entered in the Stationers’ Registers as early as March 31, 1660. The writing had been then begun, and the printing of the book had been going on through April. There is internal evidence that the new Parliament had not met, or at least that the Restoration was not positively resolved on, when the book was finished. Both in the dedication and in the peroration, the parts last written, the event is spoken of as only in near prospect.—Sheldon, though a man of public distinction in his time, has left hardly any writings by which his style could be
Whoever wrote the book must have had a touch of scholarly candour in his nature. Though there is plenty of abuse of Milton, with the stereotyped allusions to his Divorce Doctrine and its effects, and with such occasional phrases as “your wind-mill brain,” “the unpracticableness of these your fanatic state-whimsies,” and though there is abuse also, in the coarse familiar strain, of the Rumpers and Commonwealths-men generally, and of “Oliver, the copper-nosed saint,” we come upon such passages as the following, appreciative at least of Milton’s literary power:—
“I am not ignorant of the ability of Mr. Milton, whom the Rump (which was well-stored with men of pregnant though pernicious wits) made choice of before others to write their Defence against Salmasius; one of the greatest learned men of this age, both for reality and reputation.”
“... made choice of Mr. Milton to be their champion to answer Salmasius; who, as may be conceived, not vulgarly rewarded for this service, undertakes it with as much learning and performance as could be expected from the most able and acute scholar living: concerning whose answer thus much must be confessed,—that nothing could be therein desired which either a shrewd wit could prompt or a fluent elegant style express. And, indeed, to give him his due, in whatever he vomited out against his Majesty formerly, or now declaims against Monarchy in behalf of a Republic, he then did, and doth now, want nothing on his side but truth.”
These are casual expressions in the course of the argumentation with Milton; and, as there is no need to exhibit the argumentation itself, a single quotation more will suffice. It is from the Dedication to Charles II. That, though coming first in the book, was probably written last, when the writer could exult in the idea that his Majesty was so soon to land on the British shores, and could have pleasure in being one of the first to address him ceremoniously and in public with all his royal titles. Let it be remembered that, by the introduction of Milton into this Dedication, not only prominently, but even singly and exclusively, it was as if pains were taken to remind Charles, just as he was preparing to step into the ship that was to convey him to England, of the name of that one man among his subjects who had done more to keep him out, and had attacked him and his more ferociously, more relentlessly, and more successfully, than any other living. Suppose that his Majesty, waiting at Breda, was curious to know already, for certain reasons, what person, not on the actual list of those who had signed his father’s death-warrant, would be designated to him by universal opinion at home as the least pardonable traitor; and read this as the answer of G.S.:—
This detestable, execrable murder, committed by the worst of parricides, accompanied with the disclaiming of your whole royal stock, disinheriting your Majesty’s self and the rest of the royal branches, driving you and them into exile, with endeavouring to expunge and obliterate your never-to-be-forgotten just title; tearing up and pulling down the pillars of Majesty, the Nobles; garbling and suspending from the place of power all of the Commons House that had anything of honesty or relenting of spirit toward the injured Father of three Nations and his royal posterity: acts horrible to be imagined, and yet with high hand most villainously, perfidiously, and perjuriously perpetrated by monsters of mankind, yet blasphemously dishonourers of God in making use of His name and usurping the title of Saints in their never-before-paralleled nor ever-sufficiently-to-be-lamented-and-abhorred villanies:—this Murder, I say, and these Villainies, were defended, nay extolled and commended, by one MR. JOHN MILTON, in answer to the most learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father’s spotless life (human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice, he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, a bloody tyrant, and an implacable enemy to all his good subjects; and thereupon calls that execrable and detestable horrible Murder a just Execution, and commends it as an heroic action: and, in a word, whatever was done in prosecution of their malice toward your Royal Progenitor and his issue, or relations, or friends and assistants, he calls Restoring of the nation to its Liberty. Yea! to make your illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that incomparable piece of his writing, his Eikon Basilike, but in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled Eikonoklastes, he would not spare his devout prayers (which no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed, abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God’s vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his), nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least) persuasive with some, and because in these last and worst daysPage 553
those dangerous times are come in which many account Treason to be Saintship, and the madness of the people, like the inundation of waters, hath for many years overflowed all the bounds, &c ... [The writer, in continuation, refers to the assiduity of the fanatical enemies of Charles, still working, though at the end of their wits, to keep him out.] Among many of whom MR. MILTON comes on the stage in post haste and in this juncture of time, that he may, if possible, overthrow the hopes of all good men, and endeavours what he can to divert those that at present sit at the helm, and by fair pretences and sophisticate arguments would, &c ... Which I taking notice of, and meeting with this forementioned pamphlet of MR. MILTON’S, and upon perusal of it finding it dangerously ensnaring, the fallacy of the arguments being so cunningly hidden as not to be discerned by any nor every eye,—observing also the language to be smooth and tempting, the expressions pathetical and apt to move the affections, ... I thought it my duty, &c.
Before this salutation of his returning Majesty was visible on the book-stalls the great event which it anticipated was as good as accomplished.
The two Houses of Parliament had met on Wednesday, the 25th of April. There was not only the “full and free” House of Commons for which writs had been issued, but a House of Lords also, assembled by its own will and motion. In the Commons, where Sir Harbottle Grimstone was elected Speaker, there were present over 400 out of the total of 500 and more that were actually due; in the Lords, where the Earl of Manchester was chosen Speaker pro tem., there were present on the first day only nine peers besides himself: viz. the Earls of Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Suffolk, Viscount Say and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Hunsdon, Grey of Wark, and Maynard. It was for these two bodies to execute between them the task appointed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist., for the opening of the Convention Parliament.]
The meetings of the first three days were but preliminary, and not a word passed in either House to signify what was coming. On Friday, the 27th of April, there was an adjournment of both Houses to Tuesday, the 1st of May. During that breathless interval it was as when a mine is ready, the gunpowder and other explosives all stored, the train laid, and what is waited for is the application of the lighted match. That duty fell to Sir John Greenville, and the mode in which it should be performed was settled privately between him and wary Old George.
On Saturday, April 28, the Council of State are met at Whitehall, Annesley in the chair as usual. Colonel Birch, one of the members, entering late, informs General Monk that there is a gentleman at the door who desires to speak with him. Monk goes to the door, finds Sir John Greenville there, and receives him as a perfect stranger, the guards looking on. Sir John delivers to him a letter, and tells him that he does so by command of his Majesty. Monk orders the guards to detain this gentleman, and returns to the Council-room with the letter. Having broken the seal, but not opened the letter, he hands it to the President, intimating from whom it has come. The superscription itself leaves no doubt on that point. The letter is one of the six, dated “At our Court at Breda this 4/14th of April 1660, in the twelfth year of Our Reign,” which Sir John Greenville had brought over to be used by Monk at his discretion, and which Monk had given back into Greenville’s custody till the proper moment for using them should arrive. It was that particular one of the six which was addressed to Monk himself, to be communicated by him to the Council of State and the Officers of the Army. There was much surprise in the Council, real or affected, Colonel Birch protesting that he knew nothing of the business, but had merely found a gentleman at the door inquiring for General Monk and had brought in his message to the General. That gentleman was sent for and asked how he came by the letter. “It was given to me by his Majesty with his own hand,” said Sir John. Altogether the Council were at a loss how to act; but finally it was agreed that they dared not read the letter without leave from Parliament. There was some question of sending Greenville into custody meanwhile; but Monk said he was a kinsman of his and he would be answerable for his appearance. In short, this attempt to apply the match in the Council had not sufficiently succeeded, and Sir John knew that he must be forthcoming in the two Houses themselves.
Sir John was equal to the occasion. Early in the morning of Tuesday, the 1st of May, he was at the door of the House of Lords with that one of the six Letters from Breda which was addressed to their Lordships. There were now forty-two peers present. By one of these Greenville sent in his name to Speaker the Earl of Manchester, with an intimation of the nature of his message. The Earl had no sooner informed the House who and what were at the door than it was voted that the Earl should walk down the floor, all present attending him, to receive his Majesty’s letter. Sir John having thus got rid of two of his documents, presented himself next at the door of the Commons, to try his chance with a third. He had already conveyed to Speaker Sir Harbottle Grimstone the fact that he was in attendance with a letter from his Majesty. He came now at the most fit moment, for the House had just received a report from the Council of State of what had happened at the sitting
[Footnote 1: Lords and Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. IV. 10-25; Phillips (continuation of Baker), 701-705; Skinner’s Life of Monk, 297-302; Whitlocke, IV. 409-411.]
The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at an end at last. In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John Greenville had left the House, it was “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty’s Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his Majesty.” The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for his care in the discharge of his duty. The rest of that day was spent in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration. Thus, in the Commons, still in the forenoon, “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the sum of L50,000 be presented to the King’s Majesty from this House,” and “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to the
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist. of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 411.]
Yet another week for the formalities of its burial. A few of the leading incidents of that week may be presented in abstract:—
May 2:—Ordered by the Lords “that the statues of the late King’s Majesty be set up again in all the places from whence they were pulled down, and that the Arms of the Commonwealth be demolished and taken away wherever they are, and the King’s Arms be put up in their stead.” Same day in the Commons:—Leave given to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London, to return an answer to his Majesty’s Letter addressed to them. This was the fifth of the Breda documents. Also leave given to Dr. Clarges, a member of the House, to go at once to Breda, with Monk’s answer to the letter he had received.
May 3:—Sir John Greenville brought into the House of Commons to receive thanks, and the information that the House had voted him L500 to buy a jewel. The Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, addressed him as follows:—“Sir John Greenville, I need not tell you with what grateful and thankful hearts the Commons now assembled in Parliament have received his Majesty’s gracious Letter. Res ipsa loquitur: you yourself have been ocularis et auricularis testis de rei veritate: our bells and our bonfires have already proclaimed his Majesty’s goodness and our joys. We have told the people that our King, the glory of England, is coming home again; and they have resounded it back again in our ears that they are ready, and their hearts open, to receive him. Both Parliament and People have cried aloud to the King of Kings in their prayers Long live King Charles the Second.” The rest of the speech was compliment to Sir John himself.
Same day, in Montague’s Fleet in the Downs:—His Majesty’s letter to Monk and Montague, intended to be communicated to the Fleet, having been sent by express from Monk, reached Montague that morning on board his flagship the Naseby. His secretary Pepys describes what followed: “My Lord summoned a Council of War, and in the meantime did dictate to me how he would have the vote ordered which he would have pass this Council. Which done, the Commanders all came on board, and the Council sat in the coach [Council cabin], the first Council of War that had been in my time; where I read the Letter and Declaration; and, while they were discoursing upon it, I seemed to draw up a vote, which, being offered, they passed. Not one man seemed to say No to it, though I am confident many in their hearts were against it. After this was done, I went up to the quarterdeck with my Lord and the Commanders, and there read both the papers and the vote; which done, and demanding their opinion, the seamen did all of them cry out God save King Charles.” Pepys then made a circuit of the other ships with the same great news. “Which was a very brave sight, to visit all the ships, and to be received with the respect and honour that I was on board them all, and much more to see the great joy that I brought to all men, not one through the whole fleet shewing the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King’s to him, and another from the Duke of York, in such familiar style as their common friend, with all kindness imaginable. And I found by the letters, and so my Lord told me too, that there had been many letters passed between them for a great while, and I perceive unknown to Monk.”
May 5. On report from the Council of State, a General Proclamation adopted by the Commons, with concurrence of the Lords, forbidding tumults, and instructing all in authority to continue in their respective offices and exercise the same thenceforth in his Majesty’s name.
May 7. Sir George Booth, Lord Falkland, Mr. Denzil Holles, Sir John Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Bruce, Sir Horatio Townshend, Lord Herbert, Lord Castleton, Lord Fairfax, Sir Henry Cholmley, and Lord Mandeville, chosen by the House of Commons to be the persons to carry to his Majesty the answer of the House to his Majesty’s gracious Letter. The similar deputation from the Lords’ House was to consist of the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Middlesex, Viscount Hereford,Page 558
Lord Berkley, and Lord Brooke. Same day, on receipt from Montague of a copy of his Majesty’s letter addressed to Monk and himself, as Generals of the Fleet, with news of the reception of the same by the Fleet on the 3rd, Monk and Montague were authorized to answer that letter. Thus the sixth and last of the Breda documents was finally disposed of.—Resolved also that Thursday next should be a day of thanksgiving in London and Westminster for the happy reconciliation with his Majesty, and farther, “That all and every the ministers throughout the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, do, and are hereby required and enjoined in their public prayers to, pray for the King’s most excellent Majesty by the name of Our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second, by the grace of God King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.”—Resolved also that the King be proclaimed to-morrow.
Tuesday, May 8. Proclamation of Charles accordingly in Westminster Hall, and at Whitehall, Temple Bar, Fleet Conduit, the Exchange, and other places, his reign to date from the death of his father. Copies of the Proclamation to be sent to all authorities over Great Britain and Ireland, that it may be repeated everywhere. Also “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the King’s Majesty be desired to make his speedy return to his Parliament and to the exercise of his Kingly Office."[1]
[Footnote 1: These Notes, except the extract from Pepys, are compiled from the Commons Journals and the Parliamentary History for the week between May 1 and May 8, with references to Whitlocke and Phillips.]
And so all was settled between Charles and his Three Kingdoms. By this time, indeed, not only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but all over the main island from Land’s End to Caithness and all over the lesser from Mizen Head to Malin Head, there was simply a universal impatience till it should be known that Montague’s fleet had shot from the Downs towards the Dutch coasts, to bring his Majesty and his Court, on the decks of his own ships, within hail of the cheering from Dover cliffs. The delay was chiefly because of the necessity of certain upholstering and tailoring preparations on both sides. At home there had to be due preparations of a household for his Majesty, and of households for his two brothers, when they should arrive. There had to be got ready not only a new crown and sceptre, and new robes and ermines, but also the velvet bed, with the gold embroidery, the lining of satin or cloth of silver, the satin quilts, the fustian quilts to lie under the satin quilts, the down bolster, the fustian blankets, the Spanish blankets, the Holland sheets, with other accoutrements for his Majesty’s own bedroom, besides similar furnishing for the bedrooms of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, a new coach for his Majesty, liveries for his coachmen, footmen, and other servants, and
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys’s Diary, from the 8th of May onwards.]
And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money, had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us attend only to Needham and Milton.
Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was out in London, in the form of a printed squib, An Hue and Cry after Mercurius Politicus, giving a sketch of his career, and containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:—
“But, if at Amsterdam you meet
With one that’s purblind in the
street,
Hawk-nosed,
turn up his hair,
And in his ears two holes you’ll
find;
And, if they are, not pawned behind,
Two rings
are hanging there.
“His visage meagre is and long,
His body slender,” &c.[1]
[Footnote 1: “O. Cromwell’s Thankes to the Lord General faithfully presented by Hugh Peters in another Conference, together with an Hue and Cry after Mercurius Politicus: London, Printed by M.T.” ("1660, May 10” in the Thomason copy).]
Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day “John Milton, of the City of Westminster,” transferred to his friend “Cyriack Skinner, of Lincoln’s Inn, Gentleman,” a Bond for L400 given by the Commissioners of the Excise in part security for money which Milton had invested in their hands. In the deed of conveyance, still extant, under the words at the end, “Witness my hand and seal thus,” there follows the signature “JOHN MILTON,” not in his own hand, but recognisably in the fine and peculiar hand of that amanuensis to whom he had dictated the sonnet in memory of his second wife about two years before. In yet another hand is the date “7th May, 1660”; but attached, to verify all, is Milton’s family-seal of the double-headed eagle. Milton, we can see, wanted some money for sudden and urgent occasions, and his friend Cyriack advanced it. Cyriack and others had, doubtless, been already about him for some days, imploring him to hide himself, and devising the means; and that very night, or the next, as we are to fancy, he is conveyed furtively out of his house in Petty France to some obscure but suitable shelter. The three children he has parted with, the eldest not yet fourteen years old, the second not twelve, and the third just eight, are left under what tendence there may be, hardly knowing what has happened, but uncertain whether they shall ever again see their strange blind father. All is dark, and we may drop the curtain.[1]
[Footnote 1: Sotheby’s Ramblings in Elucidation of Milton’s Autograph, p. 129, and plate after p. 124. The document mentioned was purchased in Aug. 1858, for L19, by Mr. Monckton Milnes (now Lord Houghton), apparently under the impression that the signature was Milton’s own.]
Vol. IV. pp. 272-273:—From Mrs. Everett Green’s Calendar of Domestic State Papers for the Third Year of the Commonwealth I learn that the first meeting of the Council of State for that year was on Feb. 17, 1650-51, and not on Feb. 19. There had been two meetings before that of the 19th, and at the first of these Bradshaw had been re-appointed President.
Vol. IV. pp. 416-418 and 423-424:—To Milton’s Letter to the Oldenburg agent Hermann Mylius, translated and commented on pp. 416-418, and to the story, as told at pp. 423-424, of the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg’s subjects obtained from the English Council of State by the joint exertions of Mylius and Milton, an interesting addition has turned up in the form of another Latin letter from
Vol. IV. p. 560:—For the Earl of Airly, mentioned as one of the delinquent Scottish noblemen who were fined by Oliver’s ordinance for Scotland of April 12, 1654, substitute the Earl of Ethie. He was Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, co. Forfar, Lord Lour since 1639, and created Earl of Ethie in 1647,—which title he exchanged, after the Restoration, for that of Earl of Northesk.
Vol. V. p. 227, in connexion with Vol. IV, pp. 487-494:—A paper found very recently by Mrs. Everett Green in the Record Office, and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me to throw some further light on Milton’s friend and correspondent Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton’s assistance. The paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated “30 June, 1653,” i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it is addressed “For the Honor’ble. Sir Gilbert Pickering”—Pickering being then, it would seem, President of Cromwell’s Interim Council of Thirteen (see Vol. IV. pp, 498-499); and it is headed “A Brief Narration of my Transactions concerning some Woods in Scotland.” From this statement of Sandelands it appears that he had first broached his scheme of obtaining masts and tar for the English navy from the woods of Scotland to Cromwell himself in August 1652, and that it was in consequence of Cromwell’s recommendation of the scheme to the Council of State then in power that the business had been referred to the Commander-in-chief in Scotland and Sandelands had gone to Scotland ("at my own charge,” he says) and had the conferences with Major-General Dean and Colonel Lilburne described at pp. 490-491 of Vol. IV. The result had been that detailed written explanation of his scheme to Lilburne the substance of which has been quoted in the same pages—“the copy whereof,” adds Sandelands, “now remains in Mr. Thurloe’s hands.” He means, of course, the copy he had enclosed to Milton in his letter of Jan. 15, 1652-3, and which Milton had duly delivered to the Council of State. More had come of the matter than we knew at that date; for Sandelands proceeds thus in his statement:—“The Council of State, having received this information (recommended by the Commander-in-chief), gave order that Colonel Lilburne should prosecute the design effectually. Upon receipt of which order, Colonel Lilburne was pleased to employ me to try whether the Earl of Tullibardine (who had an interest of the third part of the woods of Abernethy and Glencalvie) would sell his share; which I did, and brought with me an agreement under his hand that for L221 he would yield up all his interest in the former woods and all other be-north Tay, upon condition that the money should be paid before the 25th of March last [1653]; which Colonel Lilburne certified to the Council of State. But, their greater affairs [the discussions with Cromwell just before his coup d’etat] obstructing this design, neither money nor orders were sent. Therefore I did entreat Colonel Lilburne to do me that justice to certify my diligence; which he did; and [having come to London meanwhile] I delivered it to his Excellency [Cromwell] the 12th of June [a month and three weeks after the
End of Volume V