Book 1 — CHAPTER I. (continued 3)

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

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

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

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

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

IRELAND.

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

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

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 Essex¹.

THE COLONIES.

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

SECTION III.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The next day there was read in the House a letter to the Speaker, signed by a number of the excluded, informing him of the fact and desiring to be admitted. Through that and the two following sittings, an inquiry into the circumstances of the exclusion formed part of the proceedings. The Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, being required to attend, did at last present himself, and explained that he had but obeyed orders. He had received a letter from Mr. Jessop, the Clerk of the Council, ordering him to deliver tickets only to such of the persons elected as should be certified to him as approved by the Council; and he had acted accordingly. With some reluctance, he produced the letter; and the House then resolved to ask the Council for their reasons for excluding so many members. These were given, on the 20th, by Fiennes for the Council. They were to the effect that Article XXI. of the constituting Instrument of the Protectorate, called The Government of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 542-544), required the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, for the first three Parliaments of the Protectorate, to report to the Council what persons had been returned, and empowered the Council to admit those duly qualified and to exclude others, and also that, by another clause in the same Instrument (Art. XVII.), it was required that the persons elected should be "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation." All which being undeniable, it was resolved by the House, after debate, Sept. 22, by a majority of 125 to twenty-nine, to refer the excluded to the Council itself for any farther satisfaction they wanted, and meanwhile "to proceed with the great affairs of the nation." The House, without the excluded, it will be seen, was decidedly Oliverian in the main. The excluded, or some of them, took their revenge by printing and distributing a Protest or Remonstrance addressed to the Nation, with the names of all the ninety-three attached, those of Hasilrig and Scott first. It was a document of extreme vehemence, denouncing the Protector as an armed tyrant and all who had abetted him in his last act as capital enemies to the Commonwealth, and disowning beforehand, as null and void, all that the truncated Parliament might do. Cromwell took no notice whatever of this Remonstrance. By one more stroke of "arbitrariness," bolder than any before, but allowed, he might plead, by the Instrument of his Protectorate, he had fashioned for himself a Second Parliament, likely to be more to his mind than his First.¹

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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