 | Cromwell |  |
CROMWELL.
BOOK IV.
Name to thee a man most like this night,
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol;
A man no mightier than thyself, or me.
In personal action; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. 'Tis Cæsar that you mean: is it not, Cassius?”
Shakspeare—Julius Cœsar,
1. CHAPTER I.
“And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud.”
Milton's Sonnets.
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
No thought was there of dastard flight;
Linked in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well.”
Marmion.
Once more upon the charger's back! once more
among the trumpets!
A year had passed since Cromwell, invested
with his new dignity of lord-lieutenant, landed
in Dublin Bay—a year — during the course of
which his arms, attended everywhere by victory,
and edged by deadly vengeance, had swept like
a tornado over devoted Ireland. Her strongest
holds were levelled to the dust, piles of fire-blackened
stones quenched with the life-blood of
their massacred defendants. It was a year of
merciless destruction — of unsparing, indiscriminating
slaughter—a year which cast a deep stain
on the name of Cromwell, never before attainted
by the dark charge of cruelty—a year the miseries
of which were such that they have branded that
name on the memories of the Irish with such imperishable
malediction is, “the curse of Cromwell be upon
you.” From his career of victory and havoc
Oliver was recalled, in the earlier months of '50,
to return to England and oppose the Prince of
Wales, who, having landed in the north, had been
proclaimed and crowned the King of Scots, and,
at the head of a large army, was preparing to
assert his rights. With his accustomed energy,
he instantly appointed Ireton his lord deputy and
Ludlow his lieutenant of the horse, delegating all
his powers to them, and leaving them to finish
what he had so effectually set in motion; and in a
very short space was in London to receive the
parliament's instructions. Here he was welcomed
with the highest honours and rewards; and, after
some delay, owing to the refusal of Lord Fairfax,
who was himself of that persuasion, to command
against the Scottish Presbyterians—a refusal which,
with much urgency, and, it would seem, with real
and unfeigned sincerity, Oliver strove to combat—
set forth, invested with the supreme command of
the land forces of the parliament, to crush, as was
expected, at a single blow, the power of the Scottish
royalists, and lead the second Charles in triumph
to the footstool of the proud republicans, or
to expel him from the kingdom of his fathers a
despairing fagitive.
In this their overweening confidence, however,
the English government were for a time disappointed;
for, having crossed the Tweed, and advanced
almost to the walls of Edinburgh before
the last days of July, their general was so far from
gaining any real or definitive advantage, that, after
two or three smartly-contested skirmishes, and
much manœuvring against the veteran Lesley, who
resolutely declined a general action, he was compelled,
five hundred of his men from Musselburgh for
Berwick, and with the remnant—described by one
of his best officers as “a poor, shattered, hungry
and discouraged army”—to fall back in some confusion
on Dunbar, where he might be supported by
his fleet and storeships. Having been pressed so
closely by the Scottish horse on his retreat from
Musselburgh to Haddington that he was at one
time in much danger—his rear-guard, which had
been outstripped by the centre and advance, being
exposed for a short time to the chance of an attack
from the whole power of the Scots—by favour of a
misty night he arrived within a few miles of Dunbar
late in the evening of the first day of September.
On the morning of the second, Oliver's army
lying in a low swampy plain, with an exhausted
country in their rear, a mountainous ridge held by
a superior force in front, a stormy and tempestuous
sea upon their right, and the weather such as to
prevent any communication with the fleet, scarce
any situation can be fancied more desperate and appalling
than that of the invaders. Throughout that
morning he saw the host of Lesley holding the hill
with resolute determination, in a position of such
formidable strength that he himself has mentioned
it as one wherein `ten men were better to hinder
than a hundred to make way.' Below this hill was
a small narrow plain, running down on the right
hand to the sea, between the ridge then occupied
by Lesley and a deep cleugh or dell, through
which a rapid and impetuous stream found its way
to the German Ocean, into which it falls at Broxmouth
Park. But, toward evening, he perceived a
movement in the hostile lines, and, shortly afterward,
a mighty shout rang on his ears. Immediately
he leaped upon his horse, and, galloping forth
brink of the ravine, from which he might behold
the Scottish ranks pouring tumultuously down from
their commanding station into that narrow strip
whereon their very numbers would but operate
against themselves, vociferously calling on their
officers to “lead them down to Ramoth Gilead
that they might slay the foe—even the blasphemous
accursed Philistine!” For a while he gazed
steadily upon them without speaking; and, by the
curl upon his lip, and the deep sneer of his expressive
nostril, many of those around him fancied that
he saw and detected some deep purpose in the
hostile movement; but when band after band came
rushing down, column on column of dark pikemen—brigade
after brigade of guns—and, finally,
the horse and the reserve, with Scotland's royal banner,
shouting, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon”—their
favourite war-cry—the gloom which
had sat upon his brow for many days passed suddenly
and was succeeded by a wild gleam of joy.
“The Lord,” he cried, flinging his arm aloft, and
giving the spur to his charger till he plunged and
bolted from the earth—“the Lord of Hosts—he
hath delivered them into mine hands!” and—while
the numbers of the Scottish, vastly superior to his
own, and ten times more than could be marshalled
fittingly upon that battle-ground, were drawing up,
as best they might, their crowded and disordered
ranks where they had neither room to fight, nor
any way by which to fly if routed—he coolly reconnoitred
the ravine, passable only at one point, and
that, though pervious even to artillery, a rugged ford,
between steep banks, shadowed with timber-trees,
and domineered by earthy mounds scarped naturally
by the wintry floods. Having determined instantly,
in his own mind, on an attack en masse upon the
foot to occupy this all-important station—selected
nine of his best regiments to force the passage at the
earliest dawn of day—and then, announcing his design
to his assembled officers in council, and ordering
all things to be in preparation for the attack
with the first glimmering of the east, threw himself
down on his camp bed without removing any
part of his attire, and slept so soundly that his attendants
had no easy task to rouse him from his
dreamless and untroubled slumbers when the appointed
hour had arrived. Ere he was in the saddle
day had dawned fully; and then, having relied
on Lambert for the due execution of the orders on
which his plan depended, he galloped to the front,
expecting to find all in readiness, and wondering
that his artillery was not yet heard, covering the
passage of his troops. He reached the advanced
lines, and all was in confusion. During the night,
Lesley, aware of the importance of that point, had
utterly cut off the guard detached for the defence
of the ravine—so utterly, indeed, that not a soldier
had escaped to bear the tidings of defeat to his superiors—and
occupied it with a force equal at least
to that which Cromwell had appointed to oppose
him. The sky was gray already, but the approach
of morning was delayed, or, at the least,
obscured by a thick mist arising from the seaboard,
and spreading over the flat land on which both
armies had slept upon their weapons in grim preparation
for the coming strife. A powerful horse-regiment,
which had been chosen to advance the
foremost, was in the very act of passing—some
having crossed the stream, and now laboriously
struggling up the banks on the Scotch side, and
the rest even now battling with the heavy current,
when a tremendous fire of musketry and ordnance
when, despite this fearful obstacle, they forced the
pass, they were charged instantly, and thrown into
disorder by a brigade of cuirassiers appointed for
this duty by the veteran Lesley. While they were
fighting with a desperate obstinacy, that, had they
been relieved or re-enforced, would even yet have
rendered them victorious, the infantry, who, in advancing
to support them, had suffered terribly by
the well-served artillery of the Presbyterians, were
in their turn charged, broken, and pushed back
across the clough by the pike-regiments, which
then, as in all former periods, composed the pride
and strength of the Scotch host. Just at this moment
Cromwell reached a small eminence that
overlooked the scene—he saw his scheme well-nigh
frustrated; one of his best brigades of horse
almost annihilated—his infantry repulsed—his attack
not merely disappointed, but on the very point
of being turned against himself—and all this time
Lambert, his major-general, had not brought up a
single gun, much less attempted to assist the
charge or cover the retreat of his defeated squadrons.
A dark red flush rose to his cheek, his
brow!—his eye flashed lurid fire—as he dashed
up to the artillerists, fiercely commanding them,
with a voice tremulous and hoarse from ire—“To
shoot sharply and upon the instant, or, as the Lord
Jehovah liveth, ye shall swing from these oaks ere
the sun rises.” Awed by his threats and stimulated
by his presence, they struggled nobly to redeem
their error—gun after gun belched forth its
cloud of smoke and flame, and the shot plunged,
with accurate aim and awful execution, into the
serried masses of the Scotch, enabling the discomfited
and shattered cavalry to draw off and repass
the stream. “Ride for your life,” cried Oliver
my pike-regiment—mine own, I say—under the
trusty Goff! and Jepherson's horse-squadrons, and
Lumley's musketeers! Ride—ride, I tell thee, on
the spur! And thou,” he added, “away to Lambert,
Kingsland; let him bring up more guns—more
guns!” and, too impatient to await the execution
of his orders in quiet inactivity, he galloped furiously,
attended only by a slender staff and captain's
guard of cuirassiers, down to the steep banks
of the ford. There he stood, coolly gazing on the
advancing ranks of Lesley, a mark for the artillery,
and even for the small arms of the Scottish;
the balls from which shivered the trees and tore
the ground about him, but harmed not, strange to
say, either himself or any of the little group behind.
It was, indeed, a critical conjuncture—a
stout division of field-guns was whirled up, at the
speed of powerful and active horses, to the brink
opposite the very spot where Cromwell stood!—
and now they were unlimbered!—and now, with
matches lighted, the cannoneers were busily engaged
directing them toward him! Then, from
the dark and wooded gorge beneath, a prolonged
flourish of their trumpets announced the presence
of the enemy; who now, the independents having
been forced back bodily from their position, were
crowding down, in numbers almost irresistible, in
their turn to attempt the passage. The eye of
Cromwell for the first time grew anxious, and his
lip quivered visibly, as with the blast the heavy
tramp of the advancing pikemen was heard above
the ripple of the water, and the bright heads of
their long weapons were seen glimmering above
the mistwreaths which partially obscured the ranks
that bore them. A mounted officer dashed up to
him, spoke a few hurried words, and, ere the
steady march of his own regiment fell joyously
upon his ear! They halted, as the heads of their
long files came up, abreast of their commander;
while, with their matches ready lighted, six hundred
musketeers, under the gallant Lumley, hastened
to line the hither verge, availing themselves
of every crag or stunted bush whereby to hide
themselves, and whence to pour their unseen volleys
on the host below. With a few words, fiery,
and terse, and full of that enthusiastic confidence
which had so wonderfully gained the hearts of all
that followed him, Oliver now addressed his chosen
veterans. In deep, and, as it might seem, sullen
silence, they attended while he spoke; but, as he
ended, such a shout arose as startled Lesley's host
and roused them from their dreams of victory.
“Oliver! Oliver! hurrah!” and, with the words,
they rushed down headlong on the spears of the
advancing foe, shouting their cry—“The Lord!
the Lord of Hosts!” Meanwhile the musketry
of Lumley was not silent!—bright, bright, and
quick it flashed from every gray stone — every
bracken bush—and every tuft of broom that fringed
those broken banks!—and, to increase the din, ten
guns, which Lambert, wakened at length to energy,
wheeled up at the full gallop, opened their fire upon
the feebler ordnance of the Scottish, killing the cannoneers,
dismounting their light pieces, and silencing,
after a single ill-directed volley, their fruitless
effort. Taken thus absolutely by surprise, the
Presbyterian squadrons reeled in their turn—and
louder from the depths of the ravine arose that
awful shout, “The Lord! the Lord of Hosts!” as,
through the waters, whose dark current—dark with
human gore—flowed feebly now, choked and obstructed
with the bodies of the dead and dying, that
bearing the felics of the enemy before them,
with shrick, and yell, and execration, up! up! at
the pike's point! up to the level ground whence,
flushed with hope of easy triumph, they had but
now descended—and still the well-aimed shot of
Lumley's skirmishers fell thick among the flyers.
With half a glance Cromwell perceived—and with
him to perceive was instantly to profit by the moment
of advantage. Putting himself at the head
of Jepherson's brigade of ironsides, which came up
at a rapid trot just as Goff's pikemen were appearing
on the farther brow, brandishing high in air his
formidable rapier, and pointing with a grim smile
to the strife raging and reeling opposite, he spurred
his charger down the bank! Two bounds bore
him across the chasm, and, with a louder clang of
corslet, spur, and scabbard than had resounded yet
that day, down rushed those zealot horsemen!
The morning hitherto had been dull, gloomy,
and dispiriting; but, as the leader of the ironsides
spurred his black charger up the steep ascent, and
paused an instant there—a breathing statue, bolder,
and nobler, and more massively majestic than any
sculpture from the inspired chisel of the Greek!—
contemplating the features of the already half-gained
battle—for from their right wing to their
centre the whole army of the covenanters, crowded
together and unable to manœuvre, was reeling to
and fro in most tumultuous disarray—just at that
instant the mist bodily soared upward, and the
broad glorious sunlight streamed out rejoicingly,
kindling up all the field of battle and the rich valley
to the right, and the superb expanse of the wide
German Ocean, now calm and cradling on its azure
bosom the friendly vessels of the commonwealth,
that loomed like floating castles through the dispersing
change—and he who witnessed its effects the first,
inspired by the sublimity of what he looked upon,
struck by a thought no less sublime, cried out,
flinging his arm aloft in proud anticipation of his
coming triumph—“Let God arise, and let his enemies
be scattered!” The aspect of the man, rising,
as it were, suddenly from out the bowels of the
earth—the stern composure of his halt—the simultaneous
outburst of the sunbeams—and, above
all, the wonderful quotation, delivered in a voice
so loud as to be heard by hundreds of both hosts,
and yet so passionless and clear as to strike every
heart with something of that awe which would attach
to aught miraculous—completed what the ordinary
means of warfare had so well commenced.
Their broadswords flashing in the newly-risen
beams, and their united voices pealing forth, as it
were by inspiration, the apt words of their leader,
the ironsides swept onward to the charge!—and,
without pause or hesitation, catching enthusiasm
from the cries of those who went before—regiment
after regiment of the invaders poured unopposed
over the perilous chasm; and, forming as they
reached the level ground, plunged in with shot of
arquebuss and push of pike upon the wavering
masses, that could now offer only an inert resistance
to their impetuous onset.
For a short time the native valour of the Scots
supported them after their flank was turned, and
their whole line confused and shaken beyond all
hope of restoration!—for a short time they stood
firm with their serried spears—shoulder to shoulder—foot
to foot-when one man fell, another stepping
instantly into his place—and only ceasing to
resist when all had ceased to live. But, charged
front, flank, and rear, by horse and foot, pell-mell,
columns, it was impossible that they, or any,
should hold out. They broke—they scattered—
they retreated not, but fled—in wild and irretrievable
dismay—pursued, cut down, and slaughtered
by the fresh cavalry of Cromwell, who for eight
miles had execution of the flyers!—while the triumphant
general, calling a halt when he perceived
the battle won, sang, with his zealot legions swelling
the stormy chorus, the hundred and seventeenth
Psalm, in honour of that Lord who, as he
said, “after the first repulse, had given up his enemies
as stubble to the strong arms and the victorious
weapons of his own elected people.”
2. CHAPTER II.
“And Worcester's laureate wreath.”
Milton's Sonnets.
* * * The king himself
Of his wings destitute, the army broken,
And but the backs of Britons seen, all flying
Through a strait lane; the enemy full-hearted,
Lolling the tongue with slaughtering.”
Cymbeline.
For several months after the battle of Dunbar
both parties rested in comparative inaction. Edinburgh
castle, after a brief siege, was surrendered
by Dundas, without, indeed, if the assertions of the
royalists are to be credited, any sufficient reason.
During the winter Oliver remained in the metropolis
of Scotland, engaged, for the most part, in disputations
with the Presbyterian clergy, who hated
he was attacked by a sharp fit of ague, threatening
to undermine his constitution, and actually reducing
him so low that it was early in July before
he was prepared to take the field. Meanwhile,
Charles had been crowned at Perth, on the first
day of January, '51, King of Great Britain, France,
and Ireland, most of the nobles being present in
their robes of state and coronets—had sworn both
to the “National Covenant” and to the “League
and Covenant”—had levied a strong army under
command of the stout veteran Lesley—and had
taken post, meaning to act on the defensive, on
strong ground in the neighbourhood of Torwood.
Here for some days the hostile armies faced each
other, manœuvring to gain, if possible, advantages
that might ensure success—Oliver continually desiring,
Lesley as obstinately shunning, any contact
that might lead to a general action. Skirmishes
occurred almost every day between the cavalry
and outposts — but none of much importance,
whether from loss sustained or permanent results
on the campaign; till, at last, wearied by a game in
which he had sagacity to see that he in the long
run must be the loser, Cromwell transported his
whole army into Fife, besieging and in two days
making himself the master of the town of Perth.
His object in this bold manœuvre was to draw
down the Scottish army from its ground of vantage,
and in this he succeeded fully, though not,
perhaps, exactly in the manner he had contemplated;
for, breaking up his camp at Torwood on
the thirty-first, Charles turned his face toward the
border, loading some twelve or fourteen thousand
men, with the intent of concentrating his powers at
Carlisle, where he expected to be re-enforced by
a great rising of the royalists en masse from all the
England at the news of this advance was general
and excessive—the parliament were in extremity
of terror and suspicion—Bradshaw himself, stout-hearted
as he was in public, privately owned his
fears, and more than half suspected the good faith
of Cromwell. Their terrors grew more and more
real daily, when it was told in London that the
cavaliers of Lancashire were gathering head under
Lord Derby, and the Presbyterians threatening to
make common cause with them under their Major-general
Massey; and, in good sooth, had it not
been for the insane fanaticism of the Scottish clergy—who,
with a fierce intolerance that ruined their
own cause, would suffer none to join the standard
of the king without subscribing to the covenant—
the forces of the royalists would have been truly
formidable, and might have, not improbably, succeeded
in restoring Charles to his ancestral throne.
But, happily for England, hundreds of gallant cavaliers
and hundreds of stout-hearted English Presbyterians
were refused the miserable boon of sacrificing
life and fortune in behalf of the least grateful
prince of an ungrateful line, because, forsooth,
they would not sacrifice the interests also of their
native land to the intolerant and selfish policy of
Scotland. Still, though his ranks swelled not as
rapidly as, under a more prudent system, they
would assuredly have done, Charles marched with
little opposition, and still less real loss, as far into
his southern kingdom as the fair town of Worcester.
Lilburne, indeed, with a small independent
party, surprised and utterly defeated, at Wigan-lane,
in Lancashire, three or four hundred gentlemen
commanded by the Earl of Derby; who, himself
desperately wounded, escaped with difficulty from
falling into the hands of his rude conquerors!
forces, to dispute the passage of the Mersey with
the king; but, after a few ineffectual charges, and
offering Charles an opportunity of bringing on a
general action, were forced to draw off, and permit
the enemy to enter Worcester unmolested. Here
he was instantly proclaimed, amid the acclamations
of the mob and the good wishes, faint though faithful,
of the loyal gentlemen assembled in that city.
While tarrying here it became visible to Charles
and his advisers that succour came not in by any
means so rapidly as they had hoped; that the
Welsh cavaliers, who had been most severely
handled in their last insurrections, were not disposed
to risk a general rising; and that there was
but little hope of any common or extensive movement
of the royalists until some such advantage
should be gained as would, at least, be a justification
to their daring. In this predicament it
was decided that they should await Cromwell's
arrival from the north, and give him battle there
beneath the walls of Worcester. Nor, indeed, had
they long to tarry; for, with his wonted energy of
mind and motion, that able leader had pursued the
footsteps of his enemy, so that, within a very few
days of the king's arrival, the various detachments
of the pursuing army concentrated on the Severn,
and on the twenty-eighth of August Oliver joined
in person, and found at his disposal not less than
thirty thousand soldiers of all arms, regular troops
and militia both enumerated. No sooner were the
hostile armies face to face than skirmishes, in
which there was much desperate fighting and much
loss on both sides, commenced and were continued
daily. Lambert, after a well-disputed contest, carried
the bridge at Upton, and established his position,
Massey having been wounded so severely as
first day of September, destroyed two bridges on
the Team about three miles from Worcester, and
the second was consumed in preparations for reestablishing
the communication. Late on that evening
Oliver dismounted from his charger at headquarters,
and issued his directions, brief, luminous,
and rapid, for the morrow—which, he reminded his
high-spirited but superstitious officers, was his peculiar
day of glory—“A day whereon, from his
childhood, by the Lord's wondrous grace, up to
that present time, he never had attempted aught
but he had therefrom reaped a golden harvest.
Wherefore,” he said, “let us fall on more boldly—
mindful of the last anniversary which saw the glorious
blessing at Dunbar—and putting trust in our
own stout right arms, and in the aid of that Lord
who is all in all—trusting, I say, that this shall
prove a final and decisive end to our labours—yea!
and a crowning mercy!” Fleetwood was then
commanded to force the passage of the Team at
noon, when they supposed the cavaliers would have
abandoned any thoughts of a decisive action for
that day, while Cromwell should himself establish
a bridge of boats across the Severn at Bunshill.
The morning of the third broke gloriously and
bright. The independent forces were full of ardour
for the onset, inflamed even beyond their
wont by the prophetic exhortations of their leader,
who, himself kindling like a warhorse to the trumpets,
proclaimed to them, no longer darkly nor in
doubtful hints, but in wild glowing eloquence, that
they should now ride forth to glory!—that their
right hands should teach them terrible things—that
they should smite the sons of Zeruiah utterly, and
suffer not a man of them to live. At the appointed
hour Fleetwood attacked in force, and, after a most
Team, and was already strengthening his position,
when Charles, alarmed by the incessant firing,
despatched strong re-enforcements to support his
friends, with orders at all hazards to prevent a
bridge from being formed. Again the action became
hot and doubtful—and now the independents
were forced back, although fighting foot by foot,
before the masses of the royalists; but just when
these imagined their success decisive, Fleetwood
in turn was re-enforced, and, acting with a fiery
daring, that was well seconded by his stout veterans,
charged instantly along his whole line, and
repulsed the Scots. Those sturdy troops, however,
rallied instantly, thus hoping to afford their
countrymen a chance of breaking Cromwell's regiments
on the other side of the Severn. The
ground on which they fought, though for the most
part level, was intersected everywhere by thick
strong fences of old thorn, with banks and ditches;
and each of these positions was lined with musketry,
and was defended with an obstinate and
dogged courage that cost the independents hundreds
on hundreds of their bravest soldiers. One
by one they were forced, however, at the pike's
point; and still, as Fleetwood's men advanced, the
Scotch pike-regiments rushed on, charging with
more of spirit than they had displayed throughout
the whole course of the war; and still, when forced
to give way, leisurely and in perfect order falling
back to the next fence, which was by this time
glancing with the sharp volleys of their musketeers.
But, notwithstanding all their efforts, ere
nightfall they were driven from their every line
with unexampled loss—beaten at every point—and
forced to seek for refuge in the walls of Worcester.
On the other side the river the battle raged
five hours at the least. Cromwell, who had,
from a flying battery of heavy guns, commenced a
cannonade upon the fort built to defend the main
gate of the town, and brought up all his forces in
two lines to assault the place, was charged at all
points by a general sally of the whole infantry of
the king's army, who, issuing simultaneously from
several gates, firing and cheering till the welkin
rang as they came on, burst on the newly-levied
regiments and the militia with such enthusiastic
valour, that they drove them back in absolute confusion,
took Cromwell's battering guns, and turned
them with effect on his disordered squadrons. But
at this juncture Charles was unequal to the great
part which he had to play; had he brought out his
cavalry, and charged again while the militia of the
independents were forced pell-mell into the ranks
of the reserve, he hardly could have failed of gaining
a complete victory. But his horse, save one
squadron, were within the city—he saw his error
when it was too late, for the keen eye of Cromwell
saw it likewise, and gave him not a second's
space even to struggle to redeem it. Leading his
cavalry—his own invincibles—at a quick trot, in
squadrons, through the intervals of the defeated
regiments, he set up one of his triumphant hymns,
and, sweeping on like a springtide, with full five
thousand horse, he beat the victors back—regained
the cannon, sabring the artillerists over their guns
--and, while his cavalry reformed, brought up the
whole of his reserve—the conquerors of Marston,
Naseby, and Dunbar—column on column—with a
succession of tremendous charges that no troops
then in the world could have resisted! Scarce
had his musketry and pikemen shattered the Scottish
masses ere he again came thundering down
back! they were borne, hopelessly, irretrievably
defeated. Still they had steadiness enough to retreat
corps by corps, facing and firing till all were
within the walls who had the power to crawl into
that too precarious place of refuge. The last
beams of the setting sun glanced red and lurid on
the weapons of the last band that filed into the
gates—a feeble cheer arose! and then a heavy
cannonade ensued from the whole line of battlements,
compelling Oliver to draw his forces off for
a short space of relaxation and repose. Short
space it was, however; for twilight was yet lingering
upon that fatal plain when Cromwell's trumpets
summoned the fortress to surrender. The
summons was refused, and instantly a dozen rockets
rushed up to the darkening sky—the batteries
opened for ten minutes space more furiously than
ever—and then, with Cromwell personally leading
them on sword in hand, with an apalling shout,
the forlorn hope rushed forward—with ladders, and
fascines, and boarding-axe, and pike, and every
instrument most fearfully destructive, they hurried
to the walls, which now, from every porthole, battlement,
and embrasure, poured forth the ringing
volleys of the ordnance. Scarcely ten minutes
passed, however, before the cannon again ceased—
and the loud roar of thousands, blent with the maddened
shrieks of women, and all the horrid noises
of a captured city, announced that all was over.
The gates were instantly thrown open, and in
poured the furious zealots; throughout the livelong
night the din, and rage, and agony, and sacrilege
continued; full fifteen hundred men were slaughtered
in the streets; the thoroughfares were choked
with corpses, the kennels ran knee-deep with human
gore.
The morning of the fourth arose, like that of
the preceding day, serene and glorious. The massacre
was checked, peace was restored, and, at
the least, comparative tranquillity; the king was
a despairing fugitive, with scarce a hope remaining
even of personal escape; his army was annihilated—his
party was no more — his friends
slaughtered or hopeless captives — his kingdom
numbered, weighed, divided, and apportioned!—
and with a steady countenance, lighted by no fiery
exultation, the winner returned praises to the Giver
of all goodness for this HIS CROWNING MERCY!
3. CHAPTER III.
“Thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates.”
Childe Horold.
And freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise, when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled?”
Ibid.
By that one blow the empire of the parliament
was confirmed through every corner of Great Britain—the
last hope of the Stuarts was in the dust,
never, as it seemed, more to rise—and he, the
conqueror, was received in the metropolis as no
scion of a royal stock had ever yet been greeted!
Congratulations, not of tongue-loyalty, but of sincere
and grateful love, were showered upon him,
as he drove into London in a gorgeous carriage,
escorted by the speaker and the leading members
of the commons—the mayor and sheriffs of the
sex, who had gone out to Acton to show their gratitude
and reverence to one whom many thought it
no flattery to term the father and the saviour of his
country. A lodging was assigned to him in the
late residence of England's monarch!—a solemn
vote of thanks was tendered to him, all the members
standing, when he resumed his seat!—petitions,
couched in humbler language and decked
with loftier adulation than any sovereign since
Elizabeth had received from his subjects, were
sent up to him daily!—his praises were hymned
forth by a lyre, whose melody shall never be forgotten
while England's language lives upon the
earth—the lyre of the immortal Milton! Although
no king, Cromwell was, truly, the first man in England.
Modestly, however, and decorously, and
without any symptom of disorganizing or misproud
ambition, did he bear his high honours.
Wisdom and mercy marked his elevation in no
less degree than energy and valour signalized his
rise. His first act in the senate of the regenerated
land was to obtain the passing of a general amnesty
in the behalf of all who had engaged in the
late war, with the exception only of some two or
three, so obstinately and incurably devoted to the
exiled family and hostile to the commonwealth,
that public safety rendered their public punishment
a measure not of cruelty or vengeance, but of necessity.
His next was to procure a vote for taking
speedily into consideration the expediency of
fixing a time for their own dissolution. The period
named accordingly for the abdication of their immense,
and, thus far, well-exerted powers, was
the third day of November, 1654—a distance of
three years—a distance neither justified by any
rule or precedent of the constitution, nor anywise
having, by their exertions in past time, put down
the tyranny established on the abuse of prerogative,
they were determined now to build another
on the more popular but scarce less perilous abuse
of privilege. Having originally met in the year
`40, they had already held the reins of government
for a far longer time than any former parliament—
than would have been endured in times less turbulent—than
was, in short, consistent with the
rules of sound and equitable policy. Having originally
been composed of the best, the wisest, the
most independent men of England, they had been
gradually, but continually, reduced by death, desertion,
and proscription, to a mere knot of party
politicians, possessing nothing of a parliament except
the name, desirous solely of their own emolument
and power, and as entirely different from that
magnificent assembly which had resisted the first
Charles in all the terrors of his puissant sovereigaty,
as it is possible for one deliberative body
to be different from another. This, then, was the
house which now passed a vote securing to themselves
the supreme power of the realm for three
more years at least, in absolute defiance to the
wishes of the people, of the army, and of the
wisest patriots of the kingdom. Scotland, meantime,
subdued completely by the arms of Cromwell,
wielded by Monk, his able deputy, was in
a state of orderly and calm tranquillity widely at
variance with the confused and hopeless anarchy
in which it had been plunged for centuries by the
fierce and continual rivalry of its dogmatic and intolerant
sectarians. These had been now, at length,
by the wise energy of Oliver, compelled to endure
one another peacefully, and to forbear the angry
disputations that had incessantly convulsed the
unhappy Ireland, desolated by the fierce vengeance
of the independent conquerors, was perforce
quiet; and England, united, free, and wealthy,
required only a short interval of time, under a firm
and liberal government, to recover from the injuries
which intestine discord must bring upon a
state, how great soever may have been the benefits
acquired by the means of the keen remedy,
which is to nations as amputation to the human
frame. Abroad, her navies rode the ocean in triumphant,
if not undisputed, mastery; baffling at
every fresh encounter, and subduing the brave and
dogged Hollanders, who had so lately ploughed the
narrow seas with brooms at their mastheads, as
though they would have swept their island foemen
from their path like worthless dust!—bringing in
unresisted rich and gallant prizes of the volatile
and fiery Frenchman, who dared not, so had the
genius of the proud republic overcrowed the spirit
of that valiant nation, offer resistance to that people
now, which they had set at naught while governed
by a king!—winning respect from the cold
and haughty Spaniard!—making her fame as universal,
and her flag as widely known, as winds
could blow or billows bear!—and justifying the
high boast of Oliver, which he had uttered years
before to Ardenne, while yet an undistinguished
member in the great council of the kingdom, that
the time should come wherein the quality of Englishmen
should be as widely and as greatly honoured
as ever was the name of antique Roman.
It was, then, evident that there was now no cause
of fear which should in any degree sanction the
continued usurpation, for such indeed it was, of
the parliamentarian party, who seemed at this time
to have again determined on trying the same line
the death of the first Charles. Yet the commencement
of the year 1652 found them still
struggling to maintain the sway in absolute despite
of their constituents. At this time England
had been, for nearly four years, under the
nominal form of a republic. The merit of successive
parliaments and unbiased representation was
on all sides acknowledged, yet was no step taken
or even contemplated toward the establishment of
such forms, or to the self-dissolution of the present
house. Month after month matters continued thus,
until another year had wellnigh joined its predecessor
in that great catacomb — the past!—the
country was dissatisfied!—the army waxed indignant,
the rather so that—as before, in the year '49
—foreseeing the determined opposition of the soldiery
to their unlawful measures, the commons
once again began to agitate the subjects of retrenchment
of expenses and the disbanding of one
half the standing forces. Thus things went on,
all prosperous abroad, all turbulent at home and
dubious, until the month of August in the second
year after the defeat of Worcester. At this time
the leaders of the army, which had now reached
the “very winter of their discontent,” presented a
petition of the host, by means of a deputation of
six officers, the devoted friends of Cromwell, the
boldest and most uncompromising favourers of universal
freedom in elections and universal toleration—papistry
alone excluded—in religious matters.
A council had been held some days before
at Lenthall's house of all the most important personages
of the land, civil and military; whereat it
was debated gravely, whether it would be better
to perpetuate the commonwealth on terms to be
fixed now immutably, or to establish once again
The officers in general were adverse to all
form of royalty, as holding the name “king,” alone
and in itself, subversive of true freedom! The
lawyers, on the other hand, with the sage Whitelocke
at their head, maintained that the time-honoured
constitution of the land, as comprehending
commons, lords, and king, was suited better, both
for stability and safety to the feelings and the principles
of Englishmen, than a new form of democratic
sway. Cromwell, during this council as before,
held himself much aloof; but, at the last,
when urged for his opinion, admitted that he, “so
far as he had thought upon so grave and onerous
a question, inclined his judgment rather to the last
expressed position, could it be any wise decided
what person might be called advisedly to fill the
vacant throne; since, of a truth, he thought not any
of the idolatrous and heaven-condemned scions of
the late man admissible to dwell among—much
less to govern—this regenerate and freedom-seeking
people.”
By some most underhanded means the tidings
of this meeting, and the opinions held therein, were
treasonably carried to the parliament, and they
proceeded instantly to force a bill for their own
dissolution through the house, encumbered with
provisions wholly at variance with the freedom of
election, and obnoxious to the great bulk of the
people. It was in vain that Harrison conjured
them, with most moving eloquence, to pause in
their career of reckless and unprincipled ambition!
—it was in vain!—they were that instant on the
point of voting that a new election should be holden
for four fifths of the members of the commons,
the one fifth remaining to hold their seats for a yet
farther time, and to possess the right of sanctioning
delegates, as they might deem them honest
and worthy vessels, or unsuited to the work in hand.
At a late hour Oliver, who was waiting at White-hall
in his own private chambers, was advertised
of these strange and unjust proceedings; and, instantly
commanding a company of soldiers to repair
to the house, entered and took his seat among
the members. He was more plainly—nay, even
slovenly attired, than when he had appeared in
public at any time for several years. His dress
was of plain and coarse cloth, all black—doublet,
and cloak, and hose! with stockings of gray worsted
rolled up to his mid-thigh. While the debate
continued he sat immersed, apparently, in thought,
and listening most attentively to the opinions of the
different orators. The speaker at length rose, as
if to put the question—then beckoning to Harrison,
who sat opposite him, he stood up calmly, and,
as that officer approached him—“Now is the
time!” he said; “now I must do it!” and forthwith
he put off his hat, and began speaking in a
mild tone, and more to the point than usual in his
harangues, expressing his disapprobation, although
moderately and in measured terms, of the motion
before the house. But gradually, as he kindled
with his subject, his speech became more vehement
and fiery—his words rolled forth in one unbroken
stream of bitter and severe invective, scorching
and blighting as the electric flash—his features
were inflamed and writhen with tremendous
passion—his eyes lightened—and his whole frame
expanded with a most perfect majesty of wrathful
indignation. He rebuked them for their self-seeking
and profaneness!—their oftentimes denial of
true justice!—their oppression, their inordinate
and selfish love of power!—their neglect of the
lawyers!—their trampling under foot the valiant
men who had bled for them in the field!—their
tampering with the false and time-serving Presbyterians!
“And for what,” he cried, with loud and
vehement tones, “for what all this? What but to
perpetuate your own ill-gotten power—to replenish
your own empty purses—empty through riot, and
debauchery, and bribery, and every kind of ill
which it befits not you to perpetrate—and which it
were to me degrading even to mention or to think
of! But now, I say,” he went on, stamping fiercely
on the ground, “your time hath come! The
Lord he hath disowned you! The God of Abraham,
and of Isaac, and of Jacob hath done with
you! He hath no need of you any more! Lo, he
hath judged you, and cast you forth, and chosen
fitter instruments to him, to execute that work in
which you have dishonoured him—”
“Order!” exclaimed one of the bolder of the
members; “order! I rise to order—never have I
yet heard any language so unparliamentary! so insolent!—the
rather that it cometh from our own
servant—one whom we have too fondly cherished
—one whom, by raising to this unprecedented and
undue elevation, we have endued with the daring
and the power thus to brave us!”
For a few moments Cromwell glared on the
bold speaker, as though astonishment at the excess
of his audacity had robbed him of the faculty of
speech—then casting his hat on his disordered
locks, he pulled it doggedly down upon his brows,
and with a stamp that made the whole house echo,
advancing on the gentleman who was yet speaking—“Come,
sir,” he said, in a low hissing voice
through his set teeth, griping the while his dagger's
hilt as though he would have stabbed him on
your loud prating!” then turning his back suddenly
on him whom he addressed, he paced to and fro
the hall, his whole face black with the blood which
rushed to it as violently as though it would have
burst from every pore and vein—his broad breast
panting and heaving with emotion—and his entire
aspect displaying the most ungovernable and tremendous
passions—“You are no parliament, I
say,” he shouted at the pitch of his stentorian voice
—“you are no parliament! Ho! bring them in!
—without there!—bring them in!” There was a
sudden pause — a moment of unutterable terror!
for such was the expression painted upon the faces
of the craven members of the long parliament.
When, years before, a king had dared to violate, in
a far less degree, the privileges of that high assemblage,
their own undaunted valour, fired by a sense
of right—a proud uncompromising feeling of their
own inborn worth—had wellnigh armed those patriots—for
such they were—to battle with such
weapons as chance afforded them against the licensed
cut-throats of the sovereign—but, as the
door flew open, and Colonel Worseley entered
with a guard of twenty musketeers, blank and base
apprehension sat on the pallid brows of three
fourths of those present; nor did one man of the
whole number offer to make the least resistance,
to draw a sword, to raise a hand, or even to exchange
a look with the strange person who, from
so lately being their servant, or, at best, their equal,
had thus, by one bold effort, rendered himself their
master—their unquestioned, undisputed master!
“This is not honest!” cried Sir Henry Vane, at
length, when he had rallied from the first surprise.
“It is against morality and common honesty!”
Words cannot picture, language of man cannot
lineaments of Oliver. An instant—a short instant
only, ere Vane addressed him, all had been
virulent and active fury, lashed, as it were, by its
own goadings into a state purely animal and uncontrollable.
Now the fierce glare of anger instantly
subsided, leaving the face, for the moment, passionless
and vacant as an infant's; but, ere there
was time—not for words, but for thought—the
deepest sneer of scorn, of loathing, and unutterable,
undisguised contempt succeeded. “Sir Harry
Vane!” he replied, in a low stern whisper, which
drove the blood back curdling through the veins of
him on whose mind he had pounced, eagle-like,
with ayenging talons—“oh, Sir Harry Vane! The
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane! Honesty,
and Sir Harry Vane! Morality, and Harry Vane!
—who, if he so had pleased, might have prevented
this!—who is a juggler—a mere hypocrite—and
hath not common honesty himself! A parliament!
—I do profess, a precious parliament!—of drunkards!—knaves!—extortioners!—adulterers!
Lo,
there,” he added, pointing to Challoner, “there
sits a noted wine-bibber—a very glutton and a
drunkard! There!” casting his eyes toward Henry
Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth, “there two
most foul adulterers!” Then turning on his heel,
as if he had already said enough, he waved his
hand toward the soldiers, and in a voice as quiet
and unruffled as if he had not been in anywise excited,
commanded them to clear the house!
“I,” exclaimed Lenthall, boldly—for, seeing that
no violence was offered, he had recovered his
scared spirits—“I am the speaker of this house,
lawfully by its members chosen, and, save by vote
of those same members or by actual force, I never
quit its precinets while in life!”
Then Harrison stepped slowly up the body of
the long hall to the chair, attended by two musketeers;
he laid his hand on Lenthall's shoulder, and
prayed him to descend; and, without farther words,
he came down from his seat, and putting on his
hat, departed from the house all crestfallen and
astounded. Algernon Sidney followed him at once,
though with a statelier mien and bolder bearing,
eighty more of the members moving with him toward
the door. While there had seemed to be
the slightest chance of any opposition to his will,
Cromwell had stood in silence, with his arms folded
on his breast, facing the speaker's chair, with a
dark scowl upon his brow and his lips rigidly compressed;
but now, when he perceived that all,
without more words, were skulking away from the
house, he once again addressed them. “It is
you,” he exclaimed, “it is you who have thrust this
on me. Night and day have I prayed the Lord
that he would slay me rather than put me on the
doing of this work.”
“Then wherefore do it,” asked Allen, bluntly,
ere he left the house, “if that it be so grievous to
you? There is yet time enough to undo that
which is already done—and, as your conscience
tells you, ill done, my Lord of Cromwell!”
“Conscience! Ha! conscience! Alderman,”
retorted Oliver, “and what did thine tell thee when
thou, as treasurer of the army, didst embezzle
much more than one hundred thousand pounds to
thine own uses? What sayest thou to that, good
alderman! Ho! ho! methinks I have thee there.
Guards, apprehend this peculator! Away with
him! away with him! I say,” and he stamped angrily
upon the floor as to enforce his words, “until
he answers for his deep misdoings!”
Sullen, humiliated, and unpitied, for they had
the members of that parliament, which
had dethroned and slain a powerful monarch—destroyed
the constitution, and disenthralled the people
of a mighty nation—vanquished all foreign foes,
and raised their country from a secondary to a
firstrate power in Europe, now sneaked away to
find a miserable refuge in the despised obscurity
of private life—deserted by the people in their
turn, whom they had first deserted at the dictates
of a depraved and poor ambition. When all had
gone forth from the hall, the worker of this mighty
revolution fixed his eyes on the mace which lay
upon the board before the speaker's chair—“What
shall we do,” he said, “with this fool's bawble?
Here, carry it away!” and, at the word, a private
of the guard bore off that ancient emblem of the
people's delegated power—on which, not to preserve
his soul, Charles Stuart would have dared lay
a finger of offence—at the first bidding of the simple
citizen of a small English borough, raised by
his own strange sagacity and the interminable firmness
of his single will to a far loftier station than
the proudest despotism of the East! He snatched
the instrument of dissolution from the trembling
fingers of the clerk; ordered the great doors to be
locked; and, girt by his devoted guard, returned
to his own palace at Whitehall, in all, save name,
a king. The same day saw the dissolution of the
council; and, ere the members were forgotten, little
time as elapsed before they were so, the army
and the navy sent their addresses up to the lord-general,
declaring that they were content to live or
die in the support of these his measures; and every
corner of the island resounded with the loud hymns
of the fanatics, exulting that “the great and long-desired
reformation was now near the birth! Blessing
forth and led him on, not only in the high places
of the field, but also—among those mighty ones
whom God hath left—to the dissolving of the late
parliament!”—rejoicing that the fifth monarchy,
the kingdom of Messiah was at hand, and that the
promised reign—the grand millennium of the saints
—was now to be established in the renovated commonwealth!
And he—the self-deceiver—the fool of fancied
destiny—waked through the watches of the night
to seek the Lord in prayer!—to read the oracles of
the fates in the unquiet workings of his own restless
spirit!—to detect, in the success of his ambitious
projects—projects unknown or disguised to
his inmost soul—the wonderful fulfilment of the
prophecies of old!—to cry aloud in the dark solitude
of his nocturnal chamber. “True! true! It
was true that the spirit thundered at midnight in
mine ears! Lo! the accomplishment is here!
Am I not—am I not the first in England—though
I be not as yet called king?”
4. CHAPTER IV.
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.”
Milton's Sonnets.
In the old parlour, still decorated, although years
had flown, with the same faded hangings—more
faded now—of dark green serge, before his desk of
ebony, and near a seacoal fire, which threw a brilliant
care-dispelling light upon the features still
comely and unwrinkled, upon the soft hair scarcely
streaked with any tinge of gray, and the bright eye
still clear and vivid as though it were not robbed
of its intelligence, sat that far greater and more
holy poet who, as himself has told us, did not
Those other two equalled with him in fate,
So were he equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mœunides;”
with knowledge of his own mighty genius, it was
not given to know that he should no less supersede
in fame, in immortality of praise, the objects
of his emulation, than he exceeded them in the
solemnity, the fervour, and the cultivation of his
unrivalled intellect. He sat not now, however, as
to speak strictly, beautiful, but still attractive, and
bearing in their pale features undoubted tokens of
nature's richest dower—high intellect—were seated
in the same small apartment. One, placed before
the organ, had just ceased drawing from its vocal
tubes that flood of rich religious harmony which
ever was the strongest source of inspiration to the
soul of her benighted parent. The other, who had
just received a packet from a servitor who was
now passing from the parlour, was in the act of
opening it, speaking the while in a voice which,
though more feminine, and, at the same time, very
similar in its peculiar sweetness, was still less musically
soft than her father's tones of unmixed
melody.
“If I err not,” she said, “this should be from
the hand of your much valued friend, Sir Edgar
Ardenne.”
“Indeed! is it, indeed?” cried Milton, eagerly.
“Dear, spirit wounded friend—fain would I hear
of him. Quick! quick, my girl. Truly my soul
thirsts for his tidings, as thirsts the panting hart for
the cool water-brooks! Is it a foreign letter?”
“Not foreign, sir,” she answered, “but surely
from your friend. It hath for date—`The commonwealth's
ship Jael, now off Spithead, June
29.' I will proceed to show you the contents;”
and, without farther words, she read it out in a
clear fluent voice, her father listening all the time
with a most earnest and unwavering attention depicted
on his pregnant and expressive features.—
“How shall I offer to console you, my most honoured
and beloved friend,” thus ran the letter,
“under the grievous dispensation with which it
has seemed good to Him who cannot err to make
yet farther trial of your excellence. If I should
and whispering sounds when brought beside the
powerful and all-assuaging harmonies which your
own tutored mind, mature in wisdom, and superior
no less far in fervid piety to mine than in the gifts
of science, hath poured forth, in a never-ceasing
stream, to lull the pains and minister to the repinings
of the flesh. Condolence, therefore, I nor
offer—nor would you, I think, receive!—nothing
except a conscience such as yours can bear the
body up beneath so sad a deprivation—and such
a one can do much more, and doth. Moreover, if
in such circumstance any thing can be termed happy,
happy it is that your enjoyments are for the
most part of that spiritual and internal nature, which
change of day or night—of noontide splendour or
of everlasting darkness—can nothing take away nor
yet deteriorate. Truly you have laid up for yourself
treasures `where the moth and the rust do not
corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.' I
have read through your task, in leisure moments
of my perilous and weary watches—your defence
of the English people—and IT IS A DEFENCE! If
you had written never any thing before, this should
prove you both patriot and poet—should win you
what, I fancy, you, no more than I, esteem at an inordinate
or priceless value—the vain world's voice
of praise—and greater far than this, the approbation
of all good and wise men now, and the eternal reverence
and gratitude of ages that shall be hereafter.
But of this enough! No words of mine, alas!
can remedy or sooth those griefs, if there be any,
which your own high philosophy have not removed
already—and, to assure you of my real sympathy,
they are, I know, even more needless. Of that you
can want no assurance! I would that we could
hold more intimate communion—for I have many
paper—the rather that that paper must now pass
under eyes not yours before its sense can be transmitted
to your ears. But since we cannot converse
freely face to face, as in more happy days of old—
days which, to both of us, are now but a delightful
memory of things that never can return—why we
must even interchange our sentiments as best we
may; setting down what we may in prudence and
with safety, and supplying—each from his own
knowledge of the others' wonted train of thought and
feeling—that which must be omitted. This, for my
own part, I will entreat you to assay to do, bearing
in mind the last important conversation which took
place between us—with my own fears concerning
things and persons of no small weight in England,
and your assurances that those my fears were fruitless
and ill-grounded. We have learned, here in
the fleet, but a few months ago, how the lord-general
hath dissolved the parliament by actual and
armed violence—and now we further hear that he
doth exercise in person all the prerogatives and
duties of an absolute uncontrolled monarch—making,
at his own pleasure, peace and war—signing
and ratifying treaties with foreign potentates—excluding
or admitting whom he will to the great
council of the nation; bearing himself, in short, as
if he were legitimately and of right the master of
the liberties and lives of freeborn, but, alas! no
more free, Englishmen. I may not here disguise
from you that, shortly after the intelligence of his
first usurpation—for such I, for one, hold the dissolution
of the parliament, as I may say at the
pike's point, how worthless or inadequate soever
it might be—a general council held by delegates
from every vessel of our victorious fleet voted an
address to the general, approving of the measure
his support. Nor, I imagine, have I any need to
state to you, that neither I, nor a far more important
person, to wit, our great commander, Blake, had
any share or portion in this vote or address—both
of us, for the time, holding ourselves content to do
our duty to our country against her foreign foes,
whatever the complexion of her internal policy.
The flag of England must not float less superbly
now than when it overcanopied the crowns of our
immortal sovereigns of old. But now I will entreat
you, ere I lay down my pen—which I must do somewhat
the more in haste that the last signal from our
admiral is to weigh anchors and stand out to sea
in chase of a Dutch squadron—to inform me at
your leisure of the more intricate and hidden motives
of late matters in the state. Whether this
man hath indeed, by his own daring only, and at
the prompting of insatiate ambition, compassed an
usurpation so beyond all exception flagrant and audacious,
that I comprehend not how even his sagacity
can cloak it in the eyes of men with a fair
semblance—or whether the times be indeed so
much out of joint that these most marvellous aggressions
on the privileges and the liberty of parliament
can be in anywise required or justified on
grounds of hindering greater anarchy and detriment
to England than shall arise from this invasion of
time-honoured usages. Our anchor is apeake already;
and some of our light brigantines, having
slipped their cables, are, as we well believe—for we
may hear their cannon although it is so hazy that we
can see scarce a league to seaward—even now engaged
with Van Trump's rearmost vessels. I send
this with the pilot, who shall despatch it by express
to London. I pray you once again write to me, as
to one secluded from intelligence of all those things
like, put back to Portsmouth after action, should it
seem fit to the great Moderator of the universe to
grant us victory, to which our endeavours shall be
in nowise wanting. To Him I now commend you.
Valeas, igitur, haud immemor observantissimi tui.
“Edgar Ardenne.”
Several times during the space occupied by the
recitation of this letter had Milton interrupted it by
comments to his gentle secretaries on its style, its
language, and, above all, the noble sentiments which
breathed in every line of it. At moments he was
affected almost to the point of tears, and again, at
others, a bright benignant smile would kindle his
whole aspect into sunny animation. After his
daughter had ceased reading, “Kind heart,” he
said—“kind heart, and generous, as kind. We
must forthwith reply to him. He knoweth not,
moreover, how dear and intimate a secretary and
attendant is vouchsafed to us in our diurnal gloom.
Hast thou thy vellum ready, girl, and pens? I will
dictate forthwith, for lo! his letter hath been long
delayed upon its route, and he hath anxiously, I
doubt not, looked for an answer to his queries.”
Having received an affirmative reply from her who
had been playing on the organ, and who now placed
herself beside him at the desk, he commenced dictating
in his wonted voice of slow and silvery music.
“TO THE MOST NOBLE GENTLEMAN, THE MUCH
ESTEEMED SIR EDGAR ARDENNE.
“The letter which you sent to me, my true and
honoured friend, addressed from Spithead hither,
previously to the renowned and memorable victory
of July, wherein not only was the indefeisible and
ancient right of England to be the queen and mistress
established by the tried arms of our stout
seamen, but that most brave and dangerous foe—
during whose lifetime never had the sturdy Hollanders
yielded to us the palm—Van Trump was
laid at rest from troubling us now any more—hath
but now reached me, although frore winter is already
treading hard on the retiring footsteps of his
more lusty predecessor. Grateful, indeed, and
pleasing to my spirit are the kind sympathizings
which you have therein displayed with my infirmities—great,
truly, is the loss of light—the shutting
out of wisdom from one of its most easy and familiar
entrances—the quenching of the finest, the most
delicate, and subtile of the senses. But surely,
under this affliction mighty and manifold, all glory
be to Him who to the shorn lamb tempereth the wind,
are still my consolations, and—truly I can use the
word in its full sense—my joys! First, do I feel
this proud conviction, that, ere mine eyes were
sealed in night, they had performed their task, not
negligently, nor with a niggard and reluctant labour,
but with such ample execution, such overflowing
measure of success, that not alone the cause which
I have laboured to uphold, even to the self-sacrifice
of God's first gift of light, hath been admitted true
in every land of Christendom, and I, its author, robed
in a vestment of such high repute as might compensate
for any loss less grievous, but more the ill-advised
and senseless wretch who dared to strive
against me in the arena of the schools hath paid for
his temerity, not only by the utter deprivation of
all renown which might before have been conceded
him, but by his own decease—perishing of the rankling
hatred and mean jealousy which follows ever
on defeat when sustained by a poor, base spirit.
These things, then, are to me a great and wondrous
my duty to my beloved country—secondly, that to
her the sacrifice hath not been profitless nor the
devotion unacceptable—and, thirdly, that to me it
hath brought that best boon of the world's giving—
that boon to pant for which is, of a truth, `the last
infirmity of noble minds'—a high, and, though myself
I say it, not an unmerited renown. Nor fancy,
my kind friend, that, in my blindness, I am deserted
quite and robbed of natural enjoyments—no! by
the gracious mercy of that Lord who never casts
us into peril, or temptation, or adversity, but likewise
he finds for us a way of escape from the
same; I am so piously attended by the affectionate
and loving cares of my two daughters, my organists,
my secretaries, nurses, and companions, that
less acutely do I feel the greatness of my loss than
it were easy for you to imagine. Besides, long
since have I looked forward to this consummation
of my daily and nocturnal labours, as to a certain
unavoidable result—and poor, indeed, were the resources
and the energies of him who, having long
foreseen a coming evil, should lack the power to
reconcile himself to its endurance, when it seemed
good unto the Lord to send it in his own appointed
time.
“Now, with regard to what you say touching the
difficulty or the danger of intimate communion between
us by epistle—relieve yourself from any terror—it
is a child's tongue which conveys the sense
of all the letters he receives to her blind parent's
ear—it is a child's hand which commits to writing
each syllable that flows from her blind parent's
mouth. Wherefore, whatever you would say to
me, write now, and ever, with all fearlessness and
freedom, as I will answer to your queries. Surely
the matters which have caused so much of grieving
been a stumbling-block to many. Needful it was for
England's weal, for her salvation I might say, that
the self-seeking carnal-minded junto—who arrogated
to themselves the rights and titles of a parliament,
and who, having once liberated, were now
striving to enslave their country—should be cast
forth from the high places of their usurpation.
And by whom could they be cast forth save by the
excellent and most wise person whom I am grieved
to see that you do still mistrust? Deeply, most
deeply was he moved—and fervently, with tears
and prayers continually, and supplications earnest
and importunate, did he beseech the Ruler of all
mortal councils that this cup should pass from him
—but it might not be granted. Truly, had Cromwell
been ambitious, would he at once have yielded
up the power which he for a short time assumed,
to a new chosen parliament, assembled at the earliest?
Truly, had he so willed, he might have
then been king—but no! he laboured for his country's
weal, and he has won it! And again, if he be
now protector of the land, wielding the sword of execution,
and weighing with the balances of justice
—I pray you, how was he so eminently raised
above his fellows? Did he so elevate himself,
carving his way through patriotic opposition to that
thorny seat of power? Doth he sit now upon unruly
and unwilling necks of subjugated and rebellious
citizens? Oh no! But by the resignation of
the free elected parliament—which succeeded that
base remnant over whose fall not one man shed a
tear in England—of all their delegated powers—
powers which they soon learned they could not
profitably wield—into the hands of him whom they
saw—and saw truly—to be the only person capable
of holding England's helm aright amid the turbulent
anarchy. Remember you how we discoursed
one time touching the possibility of the
existence of republics? And how I, dazzled by the
immortal glare of classic stories, caught by the light
which I then deemed a star—a living star of glory
—but now have ascertained to be a false delusive
meteor—how I contended that, as Rome and Greece
were free and mighty once, so England should be
likewise when modelled to a form of pure democracy?
Do you remember this—and your own arguments
against me? Now, I confess it, you have
conquered—and I, wise as I held myself, was groping
like a benighted traveller amid the ruined labyrinths
and fallen shrines of false divinities. Truly
there is no tyranny like to the tyranny of multitudes.
Till the majority of men shall be, as you
then said, wise and unselfish, virtuous, honest, and
enlightened, till then it is in vain to hope for good
from any government administered by that majority
—that hundred-headed, fickle-willed, false-hearted
monster which is called the people.
“England was tottering on the brink of ruin in
the years that preceded the all-glorious '49, and
Oliver stepped in and rescued her from lying the
dishonourable victim of one tyrant. England again
was falling headlong—headlong into an abyss of
anarchy and vice, and misery and folly—and now
again has the same guardian of his country—the
same great Oliver stepped in, and saved her from
becoming the most miserable slave and harlot of
ten millions, fiercer each one and more tyrannical
than he who paid the forfeit of his crimes upon the
scaffold of Whitehall. Never, in any former day,
were all men's liberties so well defined, so jealously
secured, so strictly and so punctually guarded, as
they now are—never was justice yet so equally
Each man of England can, indeed, sit now under
his own vine and his own fig-tree, fearless, content,
and free. Happy, and virtuous, and rich at
home—honoured and feared abroad—succouring
the oppressed in every foreign clime—riding the
ocean in secure and undisputed mastery—shielding
her sons, in whatsoever quarter of the wide
world they may be wandering, by the mere shadow
of her name. This is the lot of England
now! When was it so before? And now that it
has once been won for her—won by her Great
Protector—who shall e'er wrest it from her?
when shall it cease to be? But I grow warm—
enthusiastical—as who would not, that knows him
as he should be known, in praise of this most
wondrous man? I have a boon to ask of you—a
boon which I beseech you—by the memory of those
pleasant days when we two wandered by the classic
waters of the Tiber and Ilissus, when we two
mused among the ruins of the Coliseum and the palace-tombs
of the dead Cæsars—grant to me. It is
the first I ever asked of you, and you will not refuse
it. Peace is concluded with the sturdy Hollanders;
our fleets may float from the white cliffs of Albion
beyond the pillars of the Grecian hero—beyond
the far Symplegades—beyond the islands of the
blessed—over the vanished Atalantis, even to the
free forest-shores of that great western land named
of our virgin queen—and find no flag to brave them.
Sheath, then, your sword. England hath need of
you at home. Return, return, and you shall own
me right in my opinion and Cromwell clear in his
great office; else will I be content that you shall
call me now no longer
| Cromwell | |