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CROMWELL.
By THOMAS CARLYLE.
CROMWELL'S BIRTHPLACE.
HUNTINGDON itself lies pleasantly along the left
bank of the Ouse, sloping pleasantly upwards from
Ouse Bridge, which connects it with the old village of Godmanchester;
the Town itself consisting mainly of one fair
street, which towards the north end of it opens into a kind
of irregular market-place, and then contracting again soon
terminates. The two churches of All-Saints' and St. John's,
as you walk up northward from the Bridge, appear successively
on your left; the church-yards flanked with shops or
other houses. The Ouse, which is of very circular course
in this quarter, winding as if reluctant to enter the Fen-country,
— says one topographer, has still a respectable
drab-color gathered from the clays of Bedfordshire, has
not yet the Stygian black which in a few miles further it
assumes for good. Huntingdon, as it were, looks over into
the Fens; Godmanchester, just across the river, already
stands on black bog. The country to the East is all Fen
(mostly unreclaimed in Oliver's time, and still of a very
dropsical character); to the West it is hard green ground,
agreeably broken into little heights, duly fringed with wood,
and bearing marks of comfortable long-continued cultivation.
Here, on the edge of the firm green land, and looking over
into the black marshes with their alder-trees and willow-trees,
did Oliver Cromwell pass his young years.
COINCIDENCES.
While Oliver Cromwell was entering himself of Sidney-Sussex
College, William Shakespeare was taking his farewell
of this world. Oliver's Father had, most likely, come
with him; it is but some fifteen miles from Huntingdon;
you can go and come in a day. Oliver's Father saw Oliver
write in the Album at Cambridge: at Stratford, Shakespeare's
Ann Hathaway was weeping over his bed. The
first world-great thing that remains of English History, the
Literature of Shakespeare, was ending; the second world-great
thing that remains of English History, the armed
Appeal of Puritanism to the Invisible God of Heaven
against many very visible Devils, on Earth and Elsewhere,
was, so to speak, beginning. They have their exits and their
entrances. And one People, in its time, plays many parts.
Chevalier Florian, in his “Life of Cervantes,” has remarked
that Shakespeare's death-day, 23d April, 1616,
was likewise that of Cervantes at Madrid. “Twenty-third
of April” is, sure enough, the authentic Spanish date: but
Chevalier Florian has omitted to notice that the English
twenty-third is of Old Style. The brave Miguel died ten
days before Shakespeare; and already lay buried, smoothed
right nobly into his long rest. The Historical Student can
meditate on these things.
HIS CONVERSION.
In those years it must be that Dr. Simcott, Physician in
Huntingdon, had to do with Oliver's hypochondriac maladies.
He told Sir Philip Warwick, unluckily specifying no
date, or none that has survived, “he had often been sent for
“splenetic” (spleen-struck), often thought he was just about
to die, and also “had fancies about the Town Cross.”
Brief intimation, of which the reflecting reader may make a
great deal. Samuel Johnson, too, had hypochondrias; all
great souls are apt to have, — and to be in thick darkness
generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding-stars
disclose themselves, and the vague Abyss of Life knit
itself up into Firmaments for them. Temptations in the
wilderness, Choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or
loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a
soul in himself and be a man. Let Oliver take comfort in
his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow
he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy
he has, the quantity of faculty and victory he shall
yet have? Our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobleness.
The depth of our despair measures what capability
and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke as of
Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy
become flame, and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage!
It is therefore in these years, undated by History, that we
must place Oliver's clear recognition of Calvinistic Christianity;
what he, with unspeakable joy, would name his Conversion,
— his deliverance from the jaws of Eternal Death.
Certainly a grand epoch for a man: properly the one
epoch; the turning-point which guides upwards, or guides
downwards, him and his activity for evermore. Wilt thou
join with the dragons; wilt thou join with the Gods? Of
thee, too, the question is asked; — whether by a man in
Geneva gown, by a man in “Four surplices at Allhallowtide,”
with words very imperfect; or by no man and no
words, but only by the Silences, by the Eternities, by the
Life everlasting and the Death everlasting. That the
“Sense of difference between Right and Wrong” had filled
all Time and all Space for man, and bodied itself forth into
of those Puritan, Old-Christian Ages; — this is the
element which stamps them as Heroic, and has rendered
their works great, manlike, fruitful to all generations. It is
by far the memorablest achievement of our Species; without
that element in some form or other, nothing of Heroic
had ever been among us.
For many centuries Catholic Christianity — a fit embodiment
of that divine Sense — had been current more or less,
making the generations noble: and here in England, in the
Century called the Seventeenth, we see the last aspect of it
hitherto, — not the last of all, it is to be hoped. Oliver
was henceforth a Christian man; believed in God, not on
Sundays only, but on all days, in all places, and in all cases.
CHARLES AND THE PARLIAMENT.
Sir Oliver Cromwell has faded from the Parliamentary
scene into the deep Fen-country, but Oliver Cromwell,
Esq. appears there as Member for Huntingdon, at Westminster
“on Monday, the 17th of March,” 1627-8. This
was the Third Parliament of Charles; by much the most
notable of all Parliaments till Charles's Long Parliament
met, which proved his last.
Having sharply, with swift impetuosity and indignation,
dismissed two Parliaments because they would not “supply”
him without taking “grievances” along with them; and,
meanwhile and afterwards, having failed in every operation
foreign and domestic, at Cadiz, at Rhé, at Rochelle; and
having failed, too, in getting supplies by unparliamentary
methods, Charles “consulted with Sir Robert Cotton what
was to be done;” who answered, Summon a Parliament
again. So this celebrated Parliament was summoned. It
prorogation till March, 1629. The two former Parliaments
had sat but a few weeks each, till they were indignantly
hurled asunder again; this one continued nearly a year.
Wentworth (Strafford) was of this Parliament; Hampden,
too, Selden, Pym, Holles, and others known to us; all these
had been of former Parliaments as well; Oliver Cromwell,
Member for Huntingdon, sat there for the first time.
It is very evident, King Charles, baffled in all his enterprises,
and reduced really to a kind of crisis, wished much
this Parliament should succeed; and took what he must have
thought incredible pains for that end. The poor King
strives visibly throughout to control himself, to be soft and
patient; inwardly writhing and rustling with royal rage.
Unfortunate King, we see him chafing, stamping, — a very
fiery steed, but bridled, check-bitted, by innumerable straps
and considerations; struggling much to be composed.
Alas! it would not do. This Parliament was more Puritanic,
more intent on rigorous Law and divine Gospel,
than any other had ever been. As indeed all these Parliaments
grow strangely in Puritianism; more and ever more
earnest rises from the hearts of them all, “O Sacred Majesty,
lead us not to Antichrist, to Illegality, to temporal and
eternal Perdition!” The Nobility and Gentry of England
were then a very strange body of men. The English
Squire of the Seventeenth Century clearly appears to have
believed in God, not as a figure of speech, but as a very
fact, very awful to the heart of the English Squire. “He
wore his Bible doctrine round him,” says one, “as our
Squire wears his shotbelt; went abroad with it, nothing
doubting.” King Charles was going on his father's course,
only with frightful acceleration: he and his respectable
Traditions and Notions, clothed in old sheepskin and
respectable Church-tippets, were all pulling one way;
England and the Eternal Laws pulling another; the rent
fast widening till no man could heal it.
This was the celebrated Parliament which framed the Petition
of Right, and set London all astir with “bells and bonfires”
at the passing thereof; and did other feats not to be
particularized here. Across the murkiest element in which
any great Entity was ever shown to human creatures, it still
rises, after much consideration, to the modern man, in a dim
but undeniable manner, as a most brave and noble Parliament.
The like of which were worth its weight in diamonds
even now; but has grown very unattainable now,
next door to incredible now. We have to say that this Parliament
chastised sycophant Priests, Mainwaring, Sibthorp,
and other Arminian sycophants, a disgrace to God's
Church; that it had an eye to other still more elevated
Church-sycophants, as the mainspring of all; but was cautious
to give offence by naming them. That it carefully
“abstained from naming the Duke of Buckingham.” That
it decided on giving ample subsidies, but not till there were
reasonable discussion of grievances. That in manner it was
most gentle, soft-spoken, cautious, reverential; and in substance
most resolute and valiant. Truly with valiant, patient
energy, in a slow, steadfast English manner, it carried,
across infinite confused opposition and discouragement,
its Petition of Right, and what else it had to carry. Four
hundred brave men, — brave men and true, after their sort!
One laments to find such a Parliament smothered under
Dryasdust's shot-rubbish. The memory of it, could any
real memory of it rise upon honorable gentlemen and us,
might be admonitory, — would be astonishing at least.
A GENTLEMAN FARMER.
In or soon after 1631, as we laboriously infer from the
imbroglio records of poor Noble, Oliver decided on an
in Huntingdon, all or some of them; rented certain grazing-lands
at St. Ives, five miles down the River, eastward of his
native place, and removed thither. The Deed of Sale is
dated 7th May, 1631; the properties are specified as in the
possession of himself or his Mother; the sum they yielded
was £1800. With this sum Oliver stocked his Grazing-Farm
at St. Ives. The Mother, we infer, continued to
reside at Huntingdon, but withdrawn now from active occupation,
in the retirement befitting a widow up in years.
There is even some gleam of evidence to that effect: her
properties are sold; but Oliver's children born to him at St.
Ives are still christened at Huntingdon, in the Church he
was used to; which may mean also that their good Grandmother
was still there.
Properly this was no change in Oliver's old activities; it
was an enlargement of the sphere of them. His Mother
still at Huntingdon, within few miles of him, he could still
superintend and protect her existence there, while managing
his new operations at St. Ives. He continued here till the
summer or spring of 1636. A studious imagination may
sufficiently construct the figure of his equable life in those
years. Diligent grass-farming; mowing, milking, cattle-marketing:
add “hypocondria,” fits of the blackness of
darkness, with glances of the brightness of very Heaven;
prayer, religious reading and meditation; household epochs,
joys, and cares: — we have a solid, substantial, inoffensive
Farmer of St. Ives, hoping to walk with integrity and humble
devout diligence through this world; and, by his Maker's
infinite mercy, to escape destruction, and find eternal
salvation in wider Divine Worlds. This latter, this is the
grand clause in his Life, which dwarfs all other clauses.
Much wider destinies than he anticipated were appointed
him on Earth; but that, in comparison to the alternative of
Heaven or Hell to all Eternity, was a mighty small matter.
VESTIGES.
Oliver, as we observed, has left hardly any memorial of
himself at St. Ives. The ground he farmed is still partly
capable of being specified, certain records or leases being
still in existence. It lies at the lower or South-east end of
the Town; a stagnant flat tract of land, extending between
the houses or rather kitchen-gardens of St. Ives in that
quarter, and the banks of the River, which, very tortuous
always, has made a new bend here. If well drained, this
land looks as if it would produce abundant grass, but naturally
it must be little other than a bog. Tall bushy ranges
of willow-trees and the like, at present, divide it into fields;
the River, not visible till you are close on it, bounding
them all to the South. At the top of the fields next to the
Town is an ancient massive Barn, still used as such; the
people call it “Cromwell's Barn;” — and nobody can prove
that it was not his! It was evidently some ancient man's
or series of ancient men's.
Quitting St. Ives Fen-ward or Eastward, the last house
of all, which stands on your right hand among gardens,
seemingly the best house in the place, and called Slepe
Hall, is confidently pointed out as “Oliver's House.” It is
indisputably Slepe-Hall House, and Oliver's Farm was
rented from the estate of Slepe Hall. It is at present used
for a Boarding-school: the worthy inhabitants believe it to
be Oliver's; and even point out his “Chapel” or secret Puritan
Sermon-room in the lower story of the house: no Sermon-room,
as you may well discern, but to appearance some
sort of scullery or wash-house or bake-house. “It was here
he used to preach,” say they. Courtesy forbids you to
answer, “Never!” But in fact there is no likelihood that
this was Oliver's House at all: in its present state it does
not seem to be a century old; and originally, as is like, it
estate, not to the Farmer of a part thereof. Tradition
makes a sad blur of Oliver's memory in his native country!
We know, and shall know, only this, for certain here, that
Oliver farmed part or whole of these Slepe-Hall Lands,
over which the human feet can still walk with assurance;
past which the River Ouse still slumberously rolls towards
Earith Bulwark and the Fen-country. Here of a certainty
Oliver did walk and look about him habitually during those
five years from 1631 to 1636; a man studious of many
temporal and many eternal things. His cattle grazed here,
his ploughs tilled here, the heavenly skies and infernal
abysses overarched and underarched him here.....
How he lived at St. Ives: how he saluted men on the
streets; read Bibles; sold cattle; and walked, with heavy
footfall and many thoughts, through the Market Green or
old narrow lanes in St. Ives, by the shore of the black
Ouse River, — shall be left to the reader's imagination.
There is in this man talent for farming; there are thoughts
enough, thoughts bounded by the Ouse River, thoughts that
go beyond Eternity, — and a great black sea of things that
he has never yet been able to think.
SHIPMONEY.
On the very day while Oliver Cromwell was writing this
Letter at St. Ives, two obscure individuals, “Peter Aldridge
and Thomas Lane, Assessors of Shipmoney,” over in Buckinghamshire,
had assembled a Parish Meeting in the Church
of Great Kimble, to assess, and rate the Shipmoney of the
said Parish: there, in the cold weather, at the foot of the
Chiltern Hills, “11 January, 1635,” the Parish did attend,
“John Hampden, Esquire,” at the head of them, and by a
thereof, — witness the above “Assessors,” witness also two
“Parish Constables” whom we remit from such unexpected
celebrity. John Hampden's share for this Parish is thirty-one
shillings and sixpence: for another Parish it is twenty
shillings; on which latter sum, not on the former, John
Hampden was tried.
THE SHIPMONEY TRIAL.
In the end of that same year [1637] there had risen all
over England huge rumors concerning the Shipmoney Trial
at London. On the 6th of November, 1637, this important
Process of Mr. Hampden's began. Learned Mr. St. John,
a dark tough man, of the toughness of leather, spake with
irrefragable law-eloquence, law-logic, for three days running,
on Mr. Hampden's side; and learned Mr. Holborn
for three other days; — preserved yet by Rushworth in
acres of typography, unreadable now to all mortals. For
other learned gentlemen, tough as leather, spoke on the
opposite side; and learned judges animadverted, at endless
length, amid the expectancy of men. With brief pauses,
the Trial lasted for three weeks and three days. Mr.
Hampden became the most famous man in England, — by
accident partly. The sentence was not delivered till April,
1638; and then it went against Mr. Hampden: judgment
in Exchequer ran to this effect, “Consideratum est per eosdem
Barones quod prædictus Johannes Hampden de iisdem
viginti solidis oneretur,” — He must pay the Twenty shillings,
— “et inde satisfaciat.” No hope in Law-Courts,
then; Petition of Right and Tallagio non concedendo
have become an old song.
BATTLE OF NASEBY.
The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top,
very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern
border of Northamptonshire, some seven or eight miles
from Market-Harborough in Leicestershire, nearly on a
line, and nearly midway, between that Town and Daventry.
A peaceable old Hamlet, of some eight hundred souls; clay
cottages for laborers, but neatly thatched and swept;
smith's shop, saddler's shop, beer shop, all in order; forming
a kind of square, which leads off Southwards into two
long streets: the old Church, with its graves, stands in the
centre, the truncated spire finishing itself with a strange old
Ball, held up by rods; a “hollow copper Ball, which came
from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time,” — which has,
like Hudibras's breeches, “been at the Siege of Bullen.”
The ground is upland, moorland, though now growing corn;
was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat
bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart of England:
gentle Dulness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes
derives it from Navel; “Navesby, quasi Navelsby,
from being,” &c.: Avon Well, the distinct source of
Shakespeare's Avon, is on the Western slope of the high
grounds; Nen and Welland, streams leading towards Cromwell's
Fen-country, begin to gather themselves from boggy
places on the Eastern side. The grounds, as we say, lie
high; and are still, in their new subdivisions, known by
the name of “Hills,” “Rutput Hill,” “Mill Hill,” “Dust
Hill,” and the like, precisely as in Rushworth's time: but
they are not properly hills at all; they are broad blunt
clayey masses, swelling towards and from each other, like
indolent waves of a sea, sometimes of miles in extent.
It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England,
that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought
Army, which he had despised till then; and saw himself
shivered utterly to ruin thereby. “Prince Rupert, on the
King's right wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before
him;” but Lieutenant-General Cromwell charged down
hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him, —
and did not gallop off the field to plunder. He, Cromwell,
ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from the
Association two days before, “amid shouts from the whole
Army:” he had the ordering of the Horse this morning.
Prince Rupert, on returning from his plunder, finds the
King's Infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the
rallied Cavalry; but the Cavalry, too, when it came to the
point, “broke all asunder,” never to reassemble more. The
chase went through Harborough, where the King had already
been that morning, when in an evil hour he turned
back, to revenge some “surprise of an outpost at Naseby
the night before,” and give the Roundheads battle.
Ample details of this Battle, and of the movements prior
and posterior to it, are to be found in Sprigge, or copied
with some abridgment into Rushworth; who has also copied
a strange old Plan of the Battle; half-plan, half-picture,
which the Sale-Catalogues are very chary of, in the case of
Sprigge. By assiduous attention, aided by this Plan, as the
old names yet stick to their localities, the narrative can still
be, and has lately been, pretty accurately verified, and the
Figure of the old Battle dimly brought back again. The
reader shall imagine it, for the present. On the crown of
Naseby Height stands a modern Battle-monument; but, by
an unlucky oversight, it is above a mile to the east of where
the Battle really was. There are, likewise, two modern
Books about Naseby and its Battle, both of them without
value.
The Parliamentary Army stood ranged on the height
still partly called “Mill Hill,” as, in Rushworth's time, a
“Hill,” its back to Harborough, with the wide table of upland
now named Broad Moor between them, where indeed
the main brunt of the action still clearly enough shows itself
to have been. There are hollow spots, of a rank vegetation,
scattered over that Broad Moor, which are understood
to have once been burial mounds, some of which, one to my
knowledge, have been, with more or less of sacrilege, verified
as such. A friend of mine has in his cabinet two ancient
grinder-teeth, dug lately from that ground, and waits
for an opportunity to rebury them there. — Sound, effectual
grinders, one of them very large; which ate their breakfast
on the fourteenth morning of June, two hundred years ago,
and, except to be clinched once in grim battle, had never
work to do more in this world! “A stack of dead bodies,
perhaps about a hundred, had been buried in this Trench,
piled, as in a wall, a man's length thick; the skeletons lay
in courses, the heads of one course to the heels of the next;
one figure, by the strange position of the bones, gave us the
hideous notion of its having been thrown in before death.
We did not proceed far; — perhaps some half-dozen skeletons.
The bones were treated with all piety, watched rigorously
over Sunday, till they could be covered in again.”
Sweet friends, for Jesus' sake forbear!
At this Battle, Mr. John Rushworth, our Historical Rushworth,
had, unexpectedly, for some instants, sight of a very
famous person. Mr. John is Secretary to Fairfax, and they
have placed him to-day among the Baggage-wagons, near
Naseby Hamlet, above a mile from the fighting, where he
waits in an anxious manner. It is known how Prince Rupert
broke our left wing while Cromwell was breaking their
left. “A gentleman of public employment, in the late service
near Naseby,” writes next day, “Harborough, 15th
June, 2 in the morning,” a rough graphic Letter in the
Newspapers, wherein is this sentence: —
* * * “A party of theirs that broke through the left
wing of horse, came quite behind the rear to our Train, the
Leader of them being a person somewhat in habit like the
General, in a red montero, as the General had. He came
as a friend; our commander of the guard of the Train went
with his hat in his hand, and asked him, How the day
went? thinking it had been the General: the Cavalier, who
we since heard was Rupert, asked him and the rest, If they
would have quarter? They cried No; gave fire, and instantly
beat them off. It was a happy deliverance,” —
without doubt.
There were taken here a good few “ladies of quality in
carriages,” — and above a hundred Irish ladies not of quality,
tattery camp-followers, “with long skean-knives about a
foot in length,” which they well knew how to use, upon
whom, I fear, the Ordinance against Papists pressed hard
this day. The King's Carriage was also taken, with a Cabinet
and many Royal Autographs in it, which, when printed,
made a sad impression against his Majesty, — gave, in fact,
a most melancholy view of the veracity of his Majesty.
“On the word of a King,” all was lost!
BRIDGET CROMWELL'S WEDDING
And now, dated on the Monday before, at Holton, a
country Parish in those parts, there is this still legible in
the old Church Register, — intimately interesting to some
friends of ours! “HENRY IRETON, Commissary-General
to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and BRIDGET, Daughter to
Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant-General of the Horse, to the
said Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married, by Mr. Dell, in the
Lady Whorwood her house in Holton, June 15th, 1646. —
ALBAN EALES, Rector.”
Ireton, we are to remark, was one of Fairfax's Commissioners
on the Treaty for surrendering Oxford, and
busy under the walls there at present. Holton is some five
miles east of the City; Holton House, we guess, by various
indications, to have been Fairfax's own quarter. Dell, already
and afterwards well known, was the General's Chaplain
at this date. Of “the Lady Whorwood” I have traces,
rather in the Royalist direction; her strong moated House,
very useful to Fairfax in those weeks, still stands conspicuous
in that region, though now under new figure and ownership;
drawbridge become fixed, deep ditch now dry, moated
island changed into a flower-garden; — “rebuilt in 1807.”
Fairfax's lines, we observe, extended “from Headington
Hill to Marston,” several miles in advance of Holton
House, then “from Marston,” across the Cherwell, and
over from that to the Isis on the North side of the City”;
southward, and elsewhere, the besieged, “by a dam at St.
Clement's Bridge, had laid the country all under water”:
in such scenes, with the treaty just ending, and general
peace like to follow, did Ireton welcome his bride, — a
brave young damsel of twenty-one, escorted, doubtless, by
her Father, among others, to the Lord General's house,
and there, by Rev. Mr. Dell, solemnly handed over to
new destinies!
DEATH WARRANT.
The Trial of Charles Stuart falls not to be described in
this place: the deep meanings that lie in it cannot be so
much as glanced at here. Oliver Cromwell attends in the
High Court of Justice at every session except one; Fairfax
sits only in the first. Ludlow, Whalley, Walton, names
known to us, are also constant attendants in that High
Court, during that long-memorable Month of January, 1649.
comports himself with royal dignity, with royal haughtiness,
strong in his divine right; “smiles” contemptuously,
“looks with an austere countenance;” does not seem, till
the very last, to have fairly believed that they would dare
to sentence him. But they were men sufficiently provided
with daring; men, we are bound to see, who sat there as in
the Presence of the Maker of all men, as executing the judgments
of Heaven above, and had not the fear of any man or
thing on the Earth below. Bradshaw said to the King,
“Sir, you are not permitted to issue out in these discoursings.
This Court is satisfied of its authority. No Court will
bear to hear its authority questioned in that manner.” —
“Clerk, read the Sentence!”
And so, under date, Monday 29th January, 1648-9, there
is this stern Document to be introduced; not specifically of
Oliver's composition; but expressing in every letter of it
the conviction of Oliver's heart, in this, one of his most important
appearances on the stage of earthly life.
Phayr, and to every one of them.
At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of
Charles Stuart, King of England, 29th January, 1648.
Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and
standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason
and other high Crimes; and Sentence upon Saturday
last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to
death by the severing of his head from his body; of which
Sentence execution yet remaineth to be done:
These are therefore to will and require you to see the
said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall,
upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant
month of January, between the hours of Ten in the morning
doing, this shall be your warrant.
And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and
others the good People of this Nation of England, to be
assisting unto you in this service.
Given under our hands and seals.
Thomas Grey, “Lord Groby,”
Oliver Cromwell.
(“And Fifty-six others.”)
“Tetræ belluæ, ac molossis suis ferociores. Hideous monsters,
more ferocious than their own mastiffs!” shrieks Saumaise;
shrieks all the world, in unmelodious soul-confusing
diapason of distraction, — happily at length grown very
faint in our day. The truth is, no modern reader can conceive
the then atrocity, ferocity, unspeakability of this fact.
First, after long reading in the old dead Pamphlets does
one see the magnitude of it. To be equalled, nay to be preferred
think some, in point of horror, to “the Crucifixion of
Christ.” Alas, in these irreverent times of ours, if all the
Kings of Europe were cut in pieces at one swoop, and flung
in heaps in St. Margaret's Churchyard on the same day, the
emotion would, in strict arithmetical truth, be small in comparison!
We know it not, this atrocity of the English
Regicides; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the
most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History
ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves
to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you, —
when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out,
none knows the terror of the Phantom! The Phantom is a
poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster
dare now beard.
A certain Queen in some South-Sea Island, I have read
in Missionary Books, had been converted to Christianity
her people; said to them, “My faithful People, the gods do
not dwell in that burning mountain in the centre of our Isle.
That is not God; no, that is a common burning-mountain,
— mere culinary fire burning under peculiar circumstances.
See, I will walk before you to that burning-mountain;
will empty my wash-bowl into it, cast my slipper
over it, defy it to the uttermost; and stand the consequences!”
She walked accordingly, this South-Sea Heroine,
nerved to the sticking-place; her people following in
pale horror and expectancy: she did her experiment; —
and, I am told, they have truer notions of the gods in that
Island ever since! Experiment which it is now very easy
to repeat, and very needless. Honor to the Brave who deliver
us from Phantom-dynasties, in South-Sea Islands and
in North!
This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a
damp like death through the heart of Flunkeyism universally
in this world. Whereof Flunkeyism, Cant, Cloth-worship,
or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably
sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations,
very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not
be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas — not
till a new genuine Hero-worship has arisen, has perfected
itself; and had time to generate into a Flunkeyism and
Cloth-worship again! Which I take to be a very long date
indeed.
MR. MILTON
On which same evening, [March 13, 1468,] furthermore,
one discerns in a faint but an authentic manner, certain dim
gentlemen of the highest authority, young Sir Harry Vane
to appearance one of them, repairing to the lodging of one
into Lincoln's Inn Fields; to put an official question
to him there.” Not a doubt of it they saw Mr. John this
evening. In the official Book this yet stands legible:
“Die Martis, 13° Martii, 1648.” “That it is referred to
the same Committee,” Whitlocke, Vane, Lord Lisle, Earl
of Denbigh, Harry Marten, Mr. Lisle, “or any two of them,
to speak with Mr. Milton, to know, Whether he will be employed
as Secretary for the Foreign Languages? and to report
to the Council.” I have authority to say that Mr.
Milton, thus unexpectedly applied to, consents; is formally
appointed on Thursday next; makes his proof-shot, “to the
Senate of Hamburgh,” about a week hence; — and gives,
and continues to give, great satisfaction to that Council, to
me, and to the whole Nation now, and to all Nations!
Such romance lies in the State-Paper Office.
THE LEVELLERS — ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM.
While Miss Dorothy Mayor is choosing her wedding-dresses,
and Richard Cromwell is looking forward to a life
of Arcadian felicity now near at hand, there has turned up
for Richard's Father and other parties interested, on the
public side of things, a matter of very different complexion,
requiring to be instantly dealt with in the interim. The
matter of the class called Levellers; concerning which we
must now say a few words.
In 1647 there were Army Adjutators; and among some
of them wild notions afloat, as to the swift attainability of
Perfect Freedom, civil and religious, and a practical Millennium
on this Earth; notions which required, in the Rendezvous
at Corkbushfield, “Rendezvous of Ware,” as they
oftenest call it, to be very resolutely trodden out. Eleven
were condemned by swift Court-Martial to die;
and Trooper Arnald, one of them, was accordingly shot
there and then; which extinguished the mutiny for that
time. War since, and Justice on Delinquents, England
made a Free Commonwealth, and such like, have kept the
Army busy; but a deep republican leaven, working all
along among these men, breaks now again into very formidable
development. As the following brief glimpses and
excerpts may satisfy an attentive reader who will spread
them out, to the due expansion, in his mind. Take first
this glimpse into the civil province; and discern with
amazement, a whole submarine world of Calvinistic Sansculottism,
Five-point Charter, and the Rights of Man, threatening
to emerge almost two centuries before its time.
“The Council of State,” says Whitlocke, just while
Mr. Barton is boggling about the Hursley Marriage-settlements,
“has intelligence of certain Levellers appearing at St.
Margaret's Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, and at St. George's
Hill,” in the same quarter: “that they were digging the
ground, and sowing it with roots and beans. One Everard,
once of the Army, who terms himself a Prophet, is the
chief of them:” one Winstanley is another chief. They
were Thirty men, and said that they should be shortly Four-thousand.
They invited all to come in and help them; and
promised them meat, drink, and clothes. They threatened
to pull down Park-pales, and to lay all open; and threaten
the neighbors that they will shortly make them all come up
to the hills and work.” These infatuated persons, beginning
a new era in this headlong manner on the chalk hills
of Surrey, are laid hold of by certain Justices, “by the country
people,” and also by “two troops of horse;” and complain
loudly of such treatment; appealing to all men
whether it be fair. This is the account they give of themselves
when brought before the General some days afterwards:
“April 20th, 1649. Everard and Winstanley, the chief
of those that digged at St. George's Hill in Surrey, came to
the General and made a large declaration, to justify their
proceedings. Everard said, He was of the race of the
Jews,” as most men called Saxon, and other, properly are;
“That all the Liberties of the People were lost by the coming
in of William the Conquerer; and that, ever since, the
People of God had lived under tyranny and oppression
worse than that of our Forefathers under the Egyptians.
But now the time of deliverance was at hand; and God
would bring His People out of this slavery, and restore
them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of
the Earth. And that there had lately appeared to him,
Everard, a vision; which bade him, Arise and dig and
plough the Earth, and receive the fruits thereof. That
their intent is to restore the Creation to its former condition.
That as God had promised to make the barren land
fruitful, so now what they did, was to restore the ancient
Community of enjoying the Fruits of the Earth, and to distribute
the benefit thereof to the poor and needy, and to feed
the hungry and clothe the naked. That they intend not
to meddle with any man's property, nor to break down any
pales or enclosures,” in spite of reports to the contrary;
“but only to meddle with what is common and untilled, and
to make it fruitful for the use of man. That the time will
suddenly be, when all men shall willingly come in and give
up their lands and estates, and submit to this Community of
Goods.”
These are the principles of Everard, Winstanley, and the
poor Brotherhood, seemingly Saxon, but properly of the
race of the Jews, who were found dibbling beans on St.
George's Hill, under the clear April skies in 1649, and
hastily bringing in a new era in that manner. “And for
all such as will come in and work with them, they shall
have meat, drink, and clothes, which is all that is necessary
of it; nor of clothes more than to cover nakedness.” For
the rest, “That they will not defend themselves by arms,
but will submit unto authority, and wait till the promised
opportunity be offered, which they conceive to be at hand.
And that as their forefathers lived in tents, so it would be
suitable to their condition, now to live in the same.
“While they were before the General, they stood with
their hats on; and being demanded the reason thereof, they
said, Because he was but their fellow-creature. Being
asked the meaning of that phrase, Give honor to whom honor
is due, — they said, Your mouths shall be stopped that
ask such a question.”
Dull Bulstrode hath “set down this the more largely because
it was the beginning of the appearance” of an extensive
levelling doctrine, much to be “avoided” by judicious
persons, seeing it is “a weak persuasion.” The germ of
Quakerism, and much else, is curiously visible here. But
let us look now at the military phasis of the matter; where
“a weak persuasion,” mounted on cavalry horses, with
sabres and fire-arms in its hand, may become a very perilous
one.
Friday, 20th April, 1649. The Lieutenant-General has
consented to go to Ireland; the City also will lend money;
and now this Friday the Council of the Army meets at
Whitehall to decide what regiments shall go on that service.
“After a solemn seeking of God by prayer,” they
agree that it shall be by lot: tickets are put into a hat, a
child draws them: the regiments, fourteen of foot and fourteen
of horse, are decided on in this manner. “The officers
on whom the lot fell, in all the twenty-eight regiments,
expressed much cheerfulness at the decision.” The officers
did: — but the common men are by no means all of that
humor. The common men, blown upon by Lilburn, and
his five small Beagles, have notions about England's new
and in fact ideas concerning the capability that lies in man,
and in a free Commonwealth, which are of the most alarming
description.
Thursday, 26th April. This night at the Bull in Bishopsgate
there has an alarming mutiny broken out in a
troop of Whalley's regiment there. Whalley's men are not
allotted for Ireland: but they refuse to quit London, as they
are ordered; they want this and that first; they seize their
colors from the Cornet, who is lodged at the Bull there: —
the General and the Lieutenant-General have to hasten
thither; quell them, pack them forth on their march; seizing
fifteen of them first, to be tried by Court-Martial.
Tried by instant Court-Martial, five of them are found
guilty, doomed to die, but pardoned; and one of them,
Trooper Lockyer, is doomed and not pardoned. Trooper
Lockyer is shot, in Paul's Churchyard, on the morrow. A
very brave young man, they say; though but three-and-twenty,
“he has served seven years in these Wars,” ever
since the Wars began. “Religious,” too, “of excellent
parts and much beloved;” — but with hot notions as to
human Freedom, and the rate at which the millenniums
are attainable, poor Lockyer! He falls shot in Paul's
Churchyard on Friday, amid the tears of men and women.
Paul's Cathedral, we remark, is now a Horseguard; horses
stamp in the Canons' stalls there: and Paul's Cross itself,
as smacking of Popery, where in fact Alablaster once
preached flat Popery, is swept altogether away, and its
leaden roof melted into bullets, or mixed with tin for
culinary pewter. Lockyer's corpse is watched and wept
over, not without prayer, in the eastern regions of the City,
till a new week come; and on Monday, this is what we see
advancing westward by way of funeral to him.
“About one hundred went before the Corpse, five or six
in a file; the Corpse was then brought, with six trumpets
clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The
Corpse was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half
stained in blood; and the Sword of the deceased along with
them. Some thousands followed in rank and file: all had
sea-green-and-black ribbons tied on their hats, and to their
breasts: and the women brought up the rear. At the new
Churchyard in Westminster, some thousands more of the
better sort met them, who thought not fit to march through
the City. Many looked upon this funeral as an affront to
the Parliament and Army; others called these people `Levellers;'
but they took no notice of any one's sayings.”
That was the end of Trooper Lockyer: six trumpets wailing
stern music through London streets; Rosemaries and
Sword half-dipped in blood; funeral of many thousands in
seagreen Ribbons and black: — testimony of a weak persuasion,
now looking somewhat perilous. Lieutenant-Colonel
Lilburn, and his five small Beagles, now in a kind of
loose arrest under the Lieutenant of the Tower, make haste
to profit by the general emotion; publish on the 1st of May
their “Agreement of the People,” — their Bentham-Sieyes
Constitution: Annual very exquisite Parliament, and other
Lilburn apparatus; whereby the Perfection of Human Nature
will with a maximum of rapidity be secured, and a
millennium straightway arrive, sings the Lilburn Oracle.
May 9th. Richard Cromwell is safe wedded; Richard's
Father is reviewing troops in Hyde Park, “seagreen colors
in some of their hats.” The Lieutenant-General speaks earnestly
to them. Has not the Parliament been diligent, doing
its best? It has punished Delinquents; it has voted, in
these very days, resolutions for dissolving itself and assembling
future Parliaments. It has protected trade; got a
good Navy afloat. You soldiers, there is exact payment
provided for you. Martial Law? Death, or other punishment
of mutineers? Well! Whoever cannot stand Martial
lay down his arms; he shall have his ticket, and get his arrears
as we others do, — we that still mean to fight against
the enemies of England and this Cause. — One trooper
showed signs of insolence; the Lieutenant-General suppressed
him by rigor and by clemency: the seagreen ribbons
were torn from such hats as had them. The humor
of the men is not the most perfect. This Review was on
Wednesday: Lilburn and his five small Beagles are, on
Saturday, committed close Prisoners to the Tower, each
rigorously to a cell of his own.
It is high time. For now the flame has caught the
ranks of the Army itself, in Oxfordshire, in Gloucestershire,
at Salisbury, where head-quarters are; and rapidly
there is, on all hands, a dangerous conflagration blazing out.
In Oxfordshire, one Captain Thompson, not known to us
before, has burst from his quarters at Banbury, with a
Party of Two-Hundred, in these same days; has sent forth
his England's Standard Advanced; insisting passionately on
the New Chains we are fettered with; indignantly demanding
swift perfection of Human Freedom, justice on the
murderers of Lockyer and Arnald; — threatening that if a
hair of Lilburn and the five small Beagles be hurt, he will
avenge it “seventy-and-seven fold.” This Thompson's Party,
swiftly attacked by his Colonel, is broken within the
week; he himself escapes with a few, and still roves up and
down. To join whom, or to communicate with Gloucestershire
where help lies, there has, in the interim, open mutiny,
“above a Thousand strong,” with subalterns, with a
Cornet Thompson brother of the Captain, but without any
leader of mark, broken out at Salisbury: the General and
Lieutenant-General, with what force can be raised, are
hastening thitherward in all speed. Now were the time for
Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn; now or never might noisy
John do some considerable injury to the Cause he has at
walls!
Monday, 14th May. All Sunday the General and Lieutenant-General
marched in full speed, by Alton, by Andover,
towards Salisbury; the mutineers, hearing of them,
start northward for Buckinghamshire, then for Berkshire;
the General and Lieutenant-General turning also northward
after them in hot chase. The mutineers arrive at
Wantage; make for Oxfordshire by Newbridge; find the
Bridge already seized; cross higher up by swimming; get
to Burford, very weary, and “turn out their horses to
grass; Fairfax and Cromwell still following in hot speed,
a march of near fifty miles that Monday. What boots
it, there is no leader, noisy John is sitting fast within stone
walls! The mutineers lie asleep in Burford, their horses
out at grass; the Lieutenant-General, having rested at a
safe distance since dark, bursts into Burford as the clocks
are striking midnight. He has beset some hundreds of the
mutineers, “who could only fire some shots out of windows;”
— has dissipated the mutiny, trodden down the Levelling
Principle out of English affairs once more. Here
is the last scene of the business; the rigorous Court-Martial
having now sat; the decimated doomed Mutineers being
placed on the leads of the Church to see.
Thursday, 17th May. — “This day in Burford Church-yard,
Cornet Thompson, brother to Thompson the chief
leader, was brought to the place of execution; and expressed
himself to this purpose, That it was just what did
befall him; that God did not own the ways he went; that
he had offended the General: he desired the prayers of the
people; and told the soldiers who were appointed to shoot
him, that when he held out his hands, they should do their
duty. And accordingly he was immediately, after the sign
given, shot to death. Next after him was a corporal,
brought to the same place of execution; where, looking
and bade them who were appointed to shoot, `Shoot!' and
died desperately. The third, being also a corporal, was
brought to the same place; and without the least acknowledgment
of error, or show of fear, he pulled off his doublet,
standing a pretty distance from the wall; and bade the
soldiers do their duty; looking them in the face till they
gave fire, not showing the least kind of terror or fearfulness
of spirit.” So die the Leveller Corporals; strong they,
after their sort, for the Liberties of England; resolute to
the very death. Misguided Corporals! But History, which
has wept for a misguided Charles Stuart, and blubbered, in
the most copious helpless manner, near two centuries now,
whole floods of brine, enough to salt the Herring fishery, —
will not refuse these poor Corporals also her tributary sigh.
With Arnald of the Rendezvous at Ware, with Lockyer of
the Bull in Bishopsgate, and other misguided martyrs to
the Liberties of England then and since, may they sleep
well!
Cornet Dean who now came forward, as the next to be
shot, expressed penitence; got pardon from the General:
and there was no more shooting. Lieutenant-General Cromwell
went into the Church, called down the Decimated of
the Mutineers; rebuked, admonished; said, the General in
his mercy had forgiven them. Misguided men, would you
ruin this Cause, which marvellous Providences have so confirmed
to us to be the Cause of God? Go, repent, and rebel
no more lest a worse thing befall you! “They wept,”
says the old Newspaper; they retired to the Devizes for a
time; were then restored to their regiments, and marched
cheerfully for Ireland. Captain Thompson, the Cornet's
brother, the first of all the Mutineers, he too, a few days
afterwards, was fallen in with in Northamptonshire, still
mutinous; his men took quarter; he himself “fled to a
wood,” fired and fenced there, and again desperately fired,
Corporal with seven bullets in his carbine” ended Captain
Thompson too; and this formidable conflagration, to the
last glimmer of it, was extinct.
Sansculottism, as we said above, has to lie submerged for
almost two centuries yet. Levelling, in the practical civil
or military provinces of English things, is forbidden to be.
In the spiritual provinces it cannot be forbidden; for there
it everywhere already is. It ceases dibbling beans on St.
George's Hill near Cobham; ceases galloping in mutiny
across the Isis to Burford; takes into Quakerisms, and kingdoms
which are not of this world. My poor friend Dryasdust
lamentably tears his hair over the intolerance of that
old Time to Quakerism and such like; if Dryasdust had seen
the dibbling on St. George's Hill, the threatened fall of
“Park-pales,” and the gallop to Burford, he would reflect
that conviction in an earnest age means, not lengthy Spouting
in Exeter-hall, but rapid silent Practice on the face of
the Earth; and would perhaps leave his poor hair alone.
SCOTCH PURITANISM.
The faults or misfortunes of the Scotch People, in their
Puritan business, are many; but, properly their grand fault
is this, That they have produced for it no sufficiently heroic
man among them. No man that has an eye to see beyond
the letter and the rubric; to discern, across many consecrated
rubrics of the Past, the inarticulate divineness too of the
Present and the Future, and dare all perils in the faith of
that! With Oliver Cromwell born a Scotchman, with a
Hero King and a unanimous Hero Nation at his back, it
might have been far otherwise. With Oliver born Scotch,
one sees not but the whole world might have become Puritan;
itself according to that divine Hebrew Gospel, — to the exclusion
of other Gospels not Hebrew, which also are divine,
and will have their share of fulfilment here! — But of such
issue there is no danger. Instead of inspired Olivers, glowing
with direct insight and noble daring, we have Argyles,
Loudons, and narrow, more or less opaque persons of the
Pedant species. Committees of Estates, Committees of
Kirks, much tied-up in formulas, both of them: a bigoted
Theocracy without the Inspiration; which is a very hopeless
phenomenon indeed. The Scotch People are all willing,
eager of heart; asking, Whitherward? But the Leaders
stand aghast at the new forms of danger, and in a vehement
discrepant manner some calling, Halt! others calling, Backward!
others, Forward! — huge confusion ensues. Confusion
which will need an Oliver to repress it; to bind it up
in tight manacles, if not otherwise; and say, “There, sit
there and consider thyself a little!”
The meaning of the Scotch Covenant was, That God's
divine Law of the Bible should be put in practice in these
Nations; verily it, and not the Four Surplices at Allhallowtide,
or any Formula of cloth or sheepskin here or elsewhere
which merely pretended to be it: but then the Covenant
says expressly, there is to be a Stuart King in the
business: we cannot do without our Stuart King! Given
a divine Law of the Bible on one hand, and a Stuart King,
Charles First or Charles Second, on the other: alas, did
History ever present a more irreducible case of equations in
this world? I pity the poor Scotch Pedant Governors, still
more the poor Scotch People, who had no other to follow!
Nay, as for that, the People did get through in the end,
such was their indomitable pious constancy, and other worth
and fortune: and Presbytery became a Fact among them,
to the whole length possible for it; not without endless results.
But for the poor Governors this irreducible case
will look narrowly at it, governed Scotland, or even well
known that they were there to attempt governing it. Once
they lay on Dunse Hill, “each Earl with his Regiment of
Tenants round him,” For Christ's Crown and Covenant;
and never since had they any noble National act, which it
was given them to do. Growing desperate of Christ's
Crown and Covenant, they, in the next generation, when
our Annus Mirabilis arrived, hurried up to Court, looking
out for other Crowns and Covenants; deserted Scotland
and her Cause, somewhat basely; took to booing and booing
for Causes of their own, unhappy mortals; — and Scotland
and all Causes that were Scotland's have had to go on very
much without them ever since!
THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR.
The small Town of Dunbar stands, high and windy, looking
down over its herring-boats, over its grim old Castle
now much honeycombed, — on one of those projecting rock
promontories with which that shore of the Frith of Forth is
niched and vandyked, as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful
sea; good land too, now that the plougher understands
his trade; a grim niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it
from the chafings and tumblings of the big blue German
Ocean. Seaward, St. Abb's Head, of whinstone, bounds
your horizon to the east, not very far off; west, close by, is
the deep bay, and fishy little village of Belhaven: the
gloomy Bass and other rock-islets, and farther the Hills of
Fife, and foreshadows of the Highlands, are visible as you
look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven Bay to that
of the next sea-bight, St. Abb's ward, the Town and its
environs form a peninsula. Along the base of which peninsula,
Oliver Cromwell's Army, on Monday, the 2d of September,
1650, stands ranked, with its tents and Town behind
it, — in very forlorn circumstances. This now is all the
ground that Oliver is lord of in Scotland. His Ships lie in
the offing, with biscuit and transport for him; but visible
elsewhere in the Earth no help.
Landward, as you look from the Town of Dunbar there
rises, some short mile off, a dusky continent of barren heath
Hills; the Lammermoor, where only mountain-sheep can
be at home. The crossing of which, by any of its boggy
passes, and brawling stream-courses, no Army, hardly a
solitary Scotch Packman could attempt, in such weather.
To the edge of these Lammermoor Heights, David Lesley
has betaken himself; lies now along the outmost spur of
them, — a long Hill of considerable height, which the Dunbar
people call the Dun, Doon, or sometimes for fashion's
sake the Down, adding to it the Teutonic hill likewise,
though Dun itself in old Celtic signifies Hill. On this
Doon Hill lies David Lesley, with the victorious Scotch
Army, upwards of Twenty thousand strong; with the Committees
of Kirk and Estates, the chief Dignitaries of the
Country, and in fact the flower of what the pure Covenant
in this the Twelfth year of its existence can still bring
forth. There lies he, since Sunday night, on the top and
slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable heath continents
behind him: embraces, as within outspread tiger-claws,
the base-line of Oliver's Dunbar Peninsula; waiting
what Oliver will do. Cockburnspath with its ravines has
been seized on Oliver's left, and made impassable; behind
Oliver is the sea; in front of him Lesley, Doon Hill, and
the heath-continent of Lammermoor. Lesley's force is of
Three-and-twenty thousand, in spirits as of men chasing:
Oliver's about half as many, in spirits as of men chased.
What is to become of Oliver?....
The base of Oliver's Dunbar Peninsula, as we have
called it (or Dunbar Pinfold, where he is now hemmed in,
upon “an entanglement very difficult”), extends from Belhaven
Bay on his right, to Brocksmouth House on his left;
“about a mile and a half from sea to sea:” Brocksmouth
House, the Earl (now Duke) of Roxburgh's mansion,
which still stands there, his soldiers now occupy as their
extreme post on the left. As its name iudicates, it is the
mouth or issue of a small Rivulet, or Burn called Brock,
Brocksburn; which, springing from the Lammermoor, and
skirting David Lesley's Doon Hill, finds its egress here,
into the sea. The reader who would form an image to
himself of the great Tuesday, 3d of September, 1650, at
Dunbar, must note well this little Burn. It runs in a deep
grassy glen, which the South-country Officers in those old
Pamphlets describe as a “deep ditch, forty feet in depth,
and about as many in width,” — ditch dug out by the little
Brook itself, and carpeted with greensward, in the course of
long thousands of years. It runs pretty close by the foot of
Doon Hill; forms, from this point to the sea, the boundary
of Oliver's position: his force is arranged in battle-order
along the left bank of this Brocksburn, and its grassy glen;
he is busied all Monday, he and his Officers, in ranking
them there. “Before sunrise on Monday” Lesley sent
down his horse from the Hill-top, to occupy the other side
of this Brook; “about four in the afternoon,” his train
came down, his whole Army gradually came down; and
they now are ranking themselves on the opposite side of
Brocksburn, — on rather narrow ground; cornfields, but
swiftly sloping upwards to the steep of Doon Hill. This
goes on, in the wild showers and winds of Monday, 2nd
September, 1650, on both sides of the Rivulet of Brock.
Whoever will begin the attack, must get across this Brook
and its glen first; a thing of much disadvantage.
Behind Oliver's ranks, between him and Dunbar, stand
face of this “Peninsula”; which is a low though very uneven
tract of ground; now in our time all yellow with
wheat and barley in the autumn season, but at that date
only partially tilled, — describable by Yorkshire Hodgson
as a place of plashes and rough bent-grass; terribly beaten
by showery winds that day, so that your tent will hardly
stand. There was then but one Farm-house on this tract,
where now are not a few: thither were Oliver's Cannon
sent this morning; they had at first been lodged “in the
Church,” an edifice standing then as now somewhat apart,
at the south end of Dunbar.....
And now farther, on the great scale, we are to remark
very specially that there is just one other “pass” across the
Brocksburn; and this is precisely where the London road
now crosses it; about a mile east from the former pass,
and perhaps two gunshots west from Brocksmouth House.
There the great road then as now crosses the Burn of
Brock; the steep grassy glen, or “broad ditch forty feet
deep,” flattening itself out here once more into a passable
slope: passable, but still steep on the southern or Lesley
side, still mounting up there, with considerable acclivity, into
a high table-ground, out of which the Doon Hill, as outskirt
of the Lammermoor, a short mile to your right, gradually
gathers itself. There, at this “pass,” on and above the
present London road, as you discover after long dreary dim
examining, took place the brunt or essential agony of the
Battle of Dunbar long ago. Read in the extinct old Pamphlets,
and ever again obstinately read, till some light arise
in them, look even with unmilitary eyes at the ground as it
now is, you do at least obtain small glimmerings of distinct
features here and there, — which gradually coalesce into a
kind of image for you; and some spectrum of the Fact becomes
visible; rises veritable, face to face on you, grim and
sad in the depths of the old dead Time. Yes, my travelling
London road, you may say to yourselves, Here without
monument is the grave of a valiant thing which was done
under the Sun; the footprint of a Hero, not yet quite undistinguishable,
is here!
“The Lord General about four o'clock,” say the old Pamphlets,
“went into the Town to take some refreshment,” a
hasty late dinner, or early supper, whichever we may call
it; “and very soon returned back,” — having written Sir
Arthur's Letter, I think, in the interim. Coursing about
the field, with enough of things to order; walking at last
with Lambert in the Park or Garden of Brocksmouth
House, he discerns that Lesley is astir on the Hillside;
altering his position somewhat. That Lesley in fact is
coming wholly down to the basis of the Hill, where his
horse had been since sunrise: coming wholly down to the
edge of the Brook and glen, among the sloping harvest-fields
there; and also is bringing up his left wing of horse,
most part of it, towards his right; edging himself, “shogging,”
as Oliver calls it, his whole line more and more to
the right! His meaning is, to get hold of Brocksmouth
House and the pass of the Brook there; after which it will
be free to him to attack us when he will! Lesley in fact
considered, or at least the Committee of Estates and Kirk
consider, that Oliver is lost; that, on the whole, he must
not be left to retreat, but must be attacked and annihilated
here. A vague story, due to Bishop Burnet, the watery
source of many such, still circulates about the world, That
it was the Kirk Committee who forced Lesley down against
his will; that Oliver, at sight of it, exclaimed, “The Lord
hath delivered,” &c.: which nobody is in the least bound to
believe. It appears, from other quarters, that Lesley was
advised or sanctioned in this attempt by the Committee of
Estates and Kirk, but also that he was by no means hard to
advise; that, in fact, lying on the top of Doon Hill, shelterless
necessity; and that if anybody pressed too much upon him
with advice to come down and fight, it was likeliest to be
Royalist Civil Dignitaries, who had plagued him with their
cavillings at his cunctations, at his “secret fellow-feeling for
the Sectarians and Regicides.” ever since this War began.
The poor Scotch Clergy have enough of their own to answer
for in this business; let every back bear the burden
that belongs to it. In a word, Lesley descends, has been descending
all day, and “shogs” himself to the right, urged I
believe, by manifold counsel, and by the nature of the case;
and, what is equally important for us, Oliver sees him, and
sees through him, in this movement of his.
At sight of this movement, Oliver suggests to Lambert
standing by him, Does it not give us an advantage, if we,
instead of him, like to begin the attack? Here is the
Enemy's right wing coming out to the open space, free to
be attacked on any side; and the main-battle hampered in
narrow sloping ground, between Doon Hill and the Brook,
has no room to manœuvre or assist: beat this right wing
where it now stands; take it in flank and front with an
overpowering force, — it is driven upon its own main-battle,
the whole Army is beaten? Lambert eagerly assents “had
meant to say the same thing.” Monk, who comes up at
the moment, likewise assents; as the other Officers do,
when the case is set before them. It is the plan resolved
upon for battle. The attack shall begin to-morrow before
dawn.
And so the soldiers stand to their arms, or lie within instant
reach of their arms, all night; being upon an engagement
very difficult indeed. The night is wild and wet; —
2d of September means 12th by our calendar: the Harvest
Moon wades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. Whoever
has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the
wrestle of death is at hand. Pray, — and withal keep his
like a man! Thus they pass the night; making that
Dunbar Peninsula and Brock Rivulet long memorable to
me. We English have some tents; the Scots have none.
The hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and heavy
against these whinstone bays; the sea and the tempests are
abroad, all else asleep but we, — and there is One that rides
on the wings of the wind.
Towards three in the morning, the Scotch foot, by order
of a Major-General, say some, extinguish their matches, all
but two in a company; cower under the corn-shocks, seeking
some imperfect shelter and sleep. Be wakeful, ye English;
watch, and pray, and keep your powder dry. About
four o'clock comes order to my pudding-headed Yorkshire
friend, that his regiment must mount and march straightway;
his and various other regiments march, pouring swiftly
to the left to Brocksmouth House, to the Pass over the
Brock. With overpowering force let us storm the Scots
right wing there; beat that, and all is beaten. Major
Hodgson, riding along, heard, he says, “a Cornet praying
in the night”; a company of poor men, I think, making
worship there, under the void Heaven, before battle joined:
Major Hodgson, giving his charge to a brother Officer,
turned aside to listen for a minute, and worship and pray
along with them; haply his last prayer on this Earth, as it
might prove to be. But no; this Cornet prayed with such
effusion as was wonderful; and imparted strength to my
Yorkshire friend, who strengthened his men by telling them
of it. And the Heavens, in their mercy, I think, have
opened us a way of deliverance! — The Moon gleams out,
hard and blue, riding among hail-clouds; and over St. Abb's
Head a streak of dawn is rising.
And now is the hour when the attack should be, and no
Lambert is yet here, he is ordering the line far to the right
yet; and Oliver occasionally, in Hodgson's hearing, is impatient
thinking to surprise us; there is their trumpet sounding, we
heard it once; and Lambert, who was to lead the attack, is
not here. The Lord General is impatient; — behold Lambert
at last! The trumpets peal, shattering with fierce
clangor Night's silence; the cannons awaken along all the
line: “The Lord of Hosts! The Lord of Hosts!” On,
my brave ones, on!
The dispute “on this right wing, was hot and stiff for
three quarters of an hour.” Plenty of fire, from field-pieces,
snaphances, matchlocks, entertained the Scotch main-battle
across the Brock; — poor stiffened men, roused from
the corn-shocks with their matches all out! But here on
the right, their horse “with lancers in the front rank,”
charge desperately; drive us back across the hollow of the
Rivulet; back a little; but the Lord gives us courage, and
we storm home again, horse and foot, upon them, with a
shock like tornado tempests; break them, beat them, drive
them all adrift. “Some fled towards Copperspath, but most
across their own foot.” Their own poor foot, whose
matches were hardly well alight yet! Poor men, it was a
terrible awakening for them: field-pieces and charge of foot
across the Brocksburn: and now here is their own horse in
mad panic, trampling them to death. Above Three-thousand
killed upon the place: “I never saw such a charge of
foot and horse,” says one; nor did I. Oliver was still near
to Yorkshire Hodgson, when the shock succeeded. Hodgson
heard him say: “They run! I profess they run!”
And over St. Abb's Head, and the German Ocean, just
then, burst the first gleam of the level sun upon us, “and I
heard Nol say, in the words of the Psalmist, `Let God arise,
let His enemies be scattered,'” — or in Rous's metre,
Let all his enemies be;
And let all those that do him hate
Before his presence flee!
Even so. The Scotch Army is shivered to utter ruin;
rushes in tumultuous wreck, hither, thither; to Belhaven,
or, in their distraction, even to Dunbar; the chase goes as
far as Haddington; led by Hacker. “The Lord General
made a halt,” says Hodgson, “and sang the Hundred-and-seventeenth
Psalm,” till our horse could gather for the
chase. Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of the
Doon Hill; there we uplift it, to the tune of Bangor, or
some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against
the sky:
All nati-ons that be;
Likewise ye people all accord
His name to magnify!
For great to-us-ward ever are
His loving kindnesses;
His truth endures for evermore:
The Lord, O do ye bless!
The prisoners are Ten-thousand, — all the foot in a mass.
* * * Such is Dunbar Battle; which might almost be
called Dunbar Drove, for it was a frightful rout. Brought
on by miscalculation; misunderstanding of the difference
between substances and semblances; — by mismanagement
and the chance of war.
DISMISSAL OF THE RUMP.
Wednesday, 20th April, 1653. — My Lord General is in
his reception-room this morning, in plain black clothes and
gray worsted stockings; he, with many Officers: but few
Members have yet come, though punctual Bulstrode and
certain others are there. Some waiting there is; some impatience
not come: instead of Members, comes a notice that they
are busy getting on with their Bill [for Parliamentary Reform]
in the House, hurrying it double quick through all
the stages. Possible, New message that it will be Law in
a little while, if no interposition take place! Bulstrode
hastens off to the House: my Lord General, at first incredulous,
does now also hasten off, — nay orders that a company
of Musketeers of his own regiment attend him. Hastens
off, with a very high expression of countenance, I think;
saying or feeling: Who would have believed it of them?
“It is not honest; yea it is contrary to common honesty!” —
My Lord General, the big hour is come!
Young Colonel Sidney, the celebrated Algernon, sat in
the House this morning: a House of some Fifty-three. Algernon
has left distinct note of the affair; less distinct we
have from Bulstrode, who was also there, who seems in
some points to be even wilfully wrong. Solid Ludlow was
far off in Ireland, but gathered many details in after-years;
and faithfully wrote them down, in the unappeasable indignation
of his heart. Combining these three originals, we
have, after various perusals and collations and considerations,
obtained the following authentic, moderately conceivable
account.
“The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate
upon the Bill, with the amendments, which it was thought
would have been passed that day, the Lord General Cromwell
came into the House, clad in plain black clothes and
gray worsted-stockings, and sat down, as he used to do, in
an ordinary place.” For some time he listens to this interesting
debate on the Bill; beckoning once to Harrison,
who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly. Whereupon
the Lord General sat still, for about a quarter of an
hour longer. But now the question being to be put, That
this Bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says,
his hat, and spake. At the first, and for a good while, he
spake to the commendation of the Parliament for their pains
and care of the public good; but afterwards he changed his
style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest,
and other faults,” — rising higher and higher, into
a very aggravated style indeed. An honorable Member,
Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not known to my readers,
and by me better known than trusted, rises to order, as we
phrase it; says, “It is a strange language this; unusual
within the walls of Parliament this! And from a trusted
servant too; and one whom we have so highly honored;
and one —” “Come, come!” exclaims my Lord General,
in a very high key. “We have had enough of this,” —
and in fact my Lord General, now blazing all up into clear
conflagration, exclaims, “I will put an end to your prating,”
and steps forth into the floor of the House, and “clapping
on his hat,” and occasionally “stamping the floor with his
feet,” begins a discourse which no man can report! He
says — Heavens! he is heard saying: “It is not fit that you
should sit here any longer! You have sat too long here for
any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give
place to better men! — Call them in!” adds he briefly, to
Harrison, in word of command: “and some twenty or
thirty” grim musketeers enter, with bullets in their snap-hances;
grimly prompt for orders; and stand in some attitude
of Carry-arms there. Veteran men: men of might
and men of war, their faces are as the faces of lions, and
their feet are swift as the roes upon the mountains: — not
beautiful to honorable gentlemen at this moment.
“You call yourselves a Parliament,” continues my Lord
General, in clear blaze of conflagration: “you are no Parliament;
I say, you are no Parliament! some of you are
drunkards,” — and his eye flashes on poor Mr Chaloner, an
official man of some value, addicted to the bottle; “some of
poor Sir Peter, who rose to order, lewd livers both; “living
in open contempt of God's Commandments. Following
your own greedy appetites, and the Devil's Commandments.
`Corrupt, unjust persons.'” “And here, I think,
he glanced at Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners
of the Great Seal, giving him and others very
sharp language, though he named them not”: “Corrupt,
unjust persons; scandalous to the profession of the Gospel:
how can you be a Parliament for God's People? Depart,
I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of
God, — go!”
The House is of course all on its feet, — uncertain almost
whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen
before in any House of Commons. History reports with a
shudder that my Lord General, lifting the sacred Mace
itself, said, “What shall we do with this bawble? Take it
away!” — and gave it to a musketeer. And now, “Fetch
him down!” says he to Harrison, flashing on the Speaker.
Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient Roman than anything
else, declares, He will not come till forced. “Sir,” said
Harrison, “I will lend you a hand”; — on which Speaker
Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They all
vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their ulterior
business, and respective places of abode: the Long
Parliament is dissolved! “`It 's you, that have forced me to
this,' exclaims my Lord General: `I have sought the Lord
night and day, that He would rather slay me than put me
upon the doing of this work.' At their going out, some say,
the Lord General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling
him by his name, that he might have prevented this; but
that he was a juggler, and had not common honesty. `O,
Sir Harry Vane, thou with thy subtle casuistries, and abstruse
hair-splittings, thou art other than a good one, I
think! The Lord deliver thee from me, Sir Harry Vane!'
the Key with the Mace, as I heard, was carried away by
Colonel Otley”; — and it is all over, and the unspeakable
Catastrophe has come, and remains.
THE BAREBONES PARLIAMENT.
Concerning this Puritan Convention of the Notables,
which in English History is called the Little Parliament,
and derisively Barebones's Parliament, we have not much
more to say. They are, if by no means the remarkablest
Assembly, yet the Assembly for the remarkablest purpose
who have ever met in the Modern World. The business is,
No less than introducing of the Christian Religion into real
practice in the Social Affairs of this Nation. Christian Religion,
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments: such,
for many hundred years, has been the universal solemnly
recognized Theory of all men's Affairs; Theory sent down
out of Heaven itself; but the question is now that of reducing
it to Practice in said Affairs; — a most noble, surely,
and most necessary attempt; which should not have been
put off so long in this Nation! We have conquered the Enemies
of Christ; let us now, in real practical earnest, set
about doing the Commandments of Christ, now that there is
free room for us! Such was the purpose of this Puritan Assembly
of the Notables, which History calls the Little Parliament,
or derisively Barebones's Parliament.
It is well known they failed: to us, alas! it is too evident
they could not but fail. Fearful impediments lay against
that effort of theirs; the sluggishness, the slavish half-and-halfness,
the greediness, the cowardice, and general opacity
and falsity of some ten million men against it; alas, the
whole world, and what we call the Devil and all his angels,
arrangements, investments to be sold off at a tremendous
sacrifice; in general the entire set of luggage-traps
and very extensive stock of merchant-goods and real and
floating property, amassed by that assiduous Entity above-mentioned,
for a thousand years or more! For these, and
also for other obstructions, it could not take effect at that
time; and the Little Parliament became a Barebones's Parliament,
and had to go its ways again.
CONSPIRACIES.
To see a little what kind of England it was, and what
kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following
small and few fractions of Authenticity of various
complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes, and
dust vortexes, and hang them out at their places in the void
night of things. They are not very luminous; but if they
were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well
forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight
measure.
Sunday, 18th December, 1653. A certain loud-tongued,
loud-minded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion,
with a Colleague seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a
Preaching-Establishment, this good while past in Black-friars;
a Preaching-Establishment every Sunday, which on
Monday evening becomes a National-Charter Convention
as we should now call it; there Feak, Powel, and Company
are in the habit of vomiting forth from their own inner-man,
into other inner-men greedy of such pabulum, a very flamy
fuliginous set of doctrines, — such as the human mind,
superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some
attempt to conceive. Sunday, the 18th, which is two days
Meeting was unusually large; the Feak-Powel inner-man
unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious:
fuliginous flamy in a very high degree! At a time,
too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting,
but longs to become instant Action. “Go and tell your
Protector,” said the Anabaptist Prophet, “that he has deceived
the Lord's People; that he is a perjured villain,” —
“will not reign long,” or I am deceived: “will end worse
than the last Protector did,” Protector Somerset who died
on the scaffold, or the tyrant Crooked Richard himself!
Say I said it! A very foul chimney indeed, here got on
fire. And “Major General Harrison, the most eminent
man of the Anabaptist Party, being consulted whether
he would own the new Protectoral Government, answered
frankly, No”; was thereupon ordered to retire home to
Staffordshire, and keep quiet.
Does the reader bethink him of those old Leveller Corporals
at Burford, and Diggers at St. George's Hill five
years ago; of Quakerisms, Calvinistic Sansculottisms, and
one of the strangest Spiritual Developments ever seen in
any country? The reader sees here one foul chimney on
fire, the Feak-Powel chimney in Blackfriars; and must consider
for himself what masses of combustible materials, noble
fuel and base soot and smoky explosive fire-damp, in
the general English Household it communicates with! Republicans
Proper, of the Long Parliament; Republican
Fifth-Monarchists of the Little Parliament; the solid Ludlows,
the fervent Harrisons: from Harry Vane down to
Christopher Feak, all manner of Republicans find Cromwell
unforgivable. To the Harrison-and-Feak species Kingship
in every sort, and government of man by man, is carnal,
expressly contrary to various Gospel Scriptures. Very horrible
for a man to think of governing men; whether he
ought even to govern cattle, and drive them to field and to
seems doubtful to me! But fancy a reign of Christ
and his Saints; Christ and his Saints just about to come,
— had not Oliver Cromwell stept in and prevented it!
The reader discerns combustabilities enough; conflagrations,
plots, stubborn disaffections and confusions, on the Republican
and Republican-Anabaptist side of things. It is the
first Plot-department which my Lord Protector will have to
deal with all his life long. This he must wisely damp down,
as he may. Wisely: for he knows what is noble in the
matter, and what is base in it; and would not sweep the
fuel and the soot both out of doors at once.
Tuesday, 14th February, 1653-4. “At the Ship-Tavern
in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr. Thomas Amps,” we come
upon the second life-long Plot-department: Eleven truculent,
rather threadbare persons, sitting over small drink
there, on the Tuesday night, considering how the Protector
might be assassinated. Poor broken Royalist men; payless
old Captains, most of them, or such like; with their steeplehats
worn very brown, and jack-boots slit, — and projects
that cannot be executed. Mr. Amps knows nothing of
them, except that they came to him to drink; nor do we.
Probe them with questions; clap them in the Tower for a
while; Guilty, poor knaves: but not worth hanging: — disappear
again into the general mass of Royalist Plotting,
and ferment there.
The Royalists have lain quiet ever since Worcester, waiting
what issue matters would take. Dangerous to meddle
with a Rump Parliament; or other steadily regimented
thing; safer if you can find it fallen out of rank; hopefullest
of all when it collects itself into a Single Head.
The Royalists judge, with some reason, that if they could
kill Oliver Protector, this Commonwealth were much endangered.
In these Easter weeks, too, or Whitsun weeks,
there comes “from our Court,” (Charles Stuart's Court,)
straitened circumstances, A Royal Proclamation “By the
King,” drawn up, say some, by Secretary Clarendon; setting
forth that “Whereas a certain base, mechanic fellow,
by name Oliver Cromwell, has usurped our throne,” much
to our and other people's inconvenience, whosoever will kill
the said mechanic fellow “by sword, pistol, or poison,” shall
have £ 500 a year settled upon him, with colonelcies in our
Army, and other rewards suitable, and be a made man, —
“on the word and faith of a Christian King.” A Proclamation
which cannot be circulated except in secret; but is
well worth reading by all loyal men. And so Royalist
Plots also succeed one another, thick and threefold through
Oliver's whole life; — but cannot take effect. Vain for a
Christian King and his cunningest Chancellors to summon
all the sinners of the Earth, and whatever of necessitous
Truculent-Flunkeyism there may be, and to bid, in the
name of Heaven and of another place, for the Head of
Oliver Cromwell; once for all, they cannot have it, that
Head of Cromwell; — not till he has entirely done with it,
and can make them welcome to their benefit from it.
JAMES NAYLER AND COMPANY.
“In the month of October, 1655,” there was seen a
strange sight at Bristol in the West. A Procession of
Eight Persons; one, a man on horseback, riding single; the
others, men and women, partly riding double, partly on foot,
in the muddiest highway, in the wettest weather; singing,
all but the single rider, at whose bridle splash and walk two
women: “Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth!”
and other things, “in a buzzing tone,” which the impartial
hearer could not make out. The single-rider is a rawboned
hat drawn close over his brows; “nose rising slightly in the
middle;” of abstruse “down look,” and large dangerous
jaws strictly closed: he sings not; sits there covered; and
is sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges, and
mud knee-deep: “so that the rain ran in at their necks, and
they vented it at their hose and breeches”: a spectacle to
the West of England and Posterity! Singing as above;
answering no question except in song. From Bedminster
to Ratcliffe Gate, along the streets to the High Cross of
Bristol: at the High Cross they are laid hold of by the
Authorities; — turn out to be James Nayler and Company.
James Nayler, “from Andersloe” or Ardsley “in Yorkshire,”
heretofore a Trooper under Lambert; now a Quaker
and something more. Infatuated Nayler and Company;
given up to Enthusiasm, — to Animal-Magnetism, to
Chaos and Bedlam in one shape or other! Who will need
to be coerced by the Major-Generals, I think; — to be forwarded
to London, and there sifted and cross-questioned.
Is not the Spiritualism of England developing itself in
strange forms? The Hydra, royalist and sansculottic, has
many heads.
THE WEST INDIAN INTEREST.
The Grand Sea-Armament which sailed from Portsmouth
at Christmas, 1654, proved unsuccessful. It went westward;
opened its sealed Instructions at a certain latitude;
found that they were instructions to attack Hispaniola, to
attack the Spanish Power in the West Indies; it did attack
Hispaniola, and lamentably failed; attacked the Spanish
Power in the West Indies, and has hitherto realized almost
nothing, — a mere waste Island of Jamacia, to all appearance
little worth the keeping at such cost. It is hitherto
concern with. Desborow fitted it out at Portsmouth, while
the Lord Protector was busy with his First refractory Pedant
Parliament; there are faults imputed to Desborow: but
the grand fault the Lord Protector imputes to himself, That
he chose, or sanctioned the choice of Generals improper to
command it. Sea-General Penn, Land-General Venables,
they were unfortunate, they were incompetent; fell into
disagreements, into distempers of the bowels; had critical
Civil Commissioners with them, too, who did not mend
the matter. Venables lay “six weeks in bed,” very ill of
sad West-India maladies; for the rest, a covetous lazy dog,
who cared nothing for the business, but wanted to be home
at his Irish Government again. Penn is Father of Penn
the Pennsylvanian Quaker; a man somewhat quick of temper
“like to break his heart,” when affairs went wrong;
unfit to right them again. The two Generals came voluntarily
home in the end of last August [1655], leaving the
wreck of their forces in Jamaica; and were straightway
lodged in the Tower for quitting their post.
A great Armament of Thirty, nay of Sixty ships; of
Four-thousand soldiers, two regiments of whom were veterans,
the rest a somewhat sad miscellany of broken Royalists,
unruly Levellers, and the like, who would volunteer, —
whom Venables augmented at Barbadoes, with a still more
unruly set to Nine-thousand: this great Armament the
Lord Protector has strenuously hurled, as a sudden fiery
bolt, into the dark Domdaniel of Spanish Iniquity in the far
West; and it has exploded there, almost without effect.
The Armament saw Hispaniola, and Hispaniola with fear
and wonder saw it, on the 14th of April, 1655: but the
Armament, a sad miscellany of distempered unruly persons,
durst not land “where Drake had landed,” and at once take
the Town and Island: the Armament hovered hither and
thither; and at last agreed to land some sixty miles off;
heats, till it was nearly dead with mere marching;
was then set upon by ambuscadoes; fought miserably ill,
the unruly persons of it, or would not fight at all; fled
back to its ships a mass of miserable disorganic ruin; and
“dying there at the rate of two-hundred a day,” made for
Jamaica.
Jamaica, a poor unpopulous Island, was quickly taken, as
rich Hispaniola might have been, and the Spaniards were
driven away: but to men in biliary humor it seemed hardly
worth the taking or the keeping. “Immense droves of
wild cattle: cows and horses, run about Jamaica”; dusky
Spaniards dwell in hatos, in unswept shealings: “80,000
hogs are killed every year for the sake of their lard, which
is sold under the name of hog's-butter at Carthagena”: but
what can we do with all that! The poor Armament continuing
to die as if by murrain, and all things looking worse
and worse to poor biliary Generals. Sea-General Penn set
sail for home, whom Land-General Venables swiftly followed:
leaving Vice-Admiral Goodson, “Major-General
Fortescue,” or almost whosoever liked, to manage in their
absence, and their ruined moribund forces to die as they
could; — and are now lodged in the Tower, as they deserved
to be. The Lord Protector, and virtually England
with him, had hoped to see the dark empire of bloody
Antichristian Spain a little shaken in the West; some
reparation got for its inhuman massacrings, and long continued
tyrannies, — massacrings, exterminations of us, “at
St. Kitts in 1629, at Tortuga in 1637, at Santa Cruz
in 1650”: so, in the name of England, had this Lord Protector
hoped; and he has now to take his disappointment.
The ulterior history of these Western Affairs, of this new
Jamaica under Cromwell, lies far dislocated, drowned deep,
in the Slumber-Lakes of Thurloe and Company; in a most
dark, stupefied, and altogether dismal condition. A history
reawaken it to life, is in itself sufficiently dismal. Not
much to be intermeddled with here. The English left in
Jamaica, the English successively sent thither, prosper as ill
as need be; still die, soldiers and settlers of them, at a
frightful rate per day; languish, for most part, astonished in
their sultry strange new element; and cannot be brought to
front with right manhood the deadly inextricable jungle of
tropical confusions, outer and inner, in which they find themselves.
Brave Governors, Fortescue, Sedgwick, Brayne,
one after the other, die rapidly, of the climate and of broken
heart; their life-fire all spent there, in that dark chaos, and
as yet no result visible. It is painful to read what misbehavior
there is, what difficulties there are.
Almost the one steady light-point in the business is the
Protector's own spirit of determination. If England have
now a “West-India Interest,” and Jamaica be an Island
worth something, it is to this Protector mainly that we owe
it. Here too, as in former darknesses, “Hope shines in
him, like a pillar of fire, when it has gone out in all the
others.” Having put his hand to this work, he will not for
any discouragement turn back. Jamaica shall yet be a colony;
Spain and its dark Domdaniel shall yet be smitten to
the heart, — the enemies of God and His Gospel, by the
soldiers and servants of God. It must, and it shall. We
have failed in the West, but not wholly; in the West and in
the East, by sea and by land, as occasion shall be ministered,
we will try it again and again..... Reinforcement
went on the back of reinforcement, during this Protector's
lifetime; “a Thousand Irish Girls” went; not to
speak of the rogue-and-vagabond species from Scotland, —
“we can help you” at any time “to two or three hundred
of these.” And so at length a West-India Interest did take
root; and bears spices and poisons, and other produce, to
this day.
QUARTERMASTER SINDERCOMB THE ASSASSIN.
Miles Sindercomb, now a cashiered Quartermaster living
about Town, was once a zealous Deptford lad, who enlisted
to fight for Liberty, at the beginning of these wars.
He fought strongly on the side of Liberty, being an earnest
fierce young fellow; — then gradually got astray into Levelling
courses, and wandered ever deeper there, till daylight
forsook him, and it became quite dark. He was one
of the desperate misguided Corporals, or Quartermasters,
doomed to be shot at Burford, seven years ago: but he escaped
over night, and was not shot there; took service in
Scotland; got again to be Quartermaster; was in the Overton
Plot, for seizing Monk and marching into England,
lately; whereupon Monk cashiered him: and he came to
Town; lodged himself here, in a sulky threadbare manner,
— in Alsatia or elsewhere. A gloomy man and Ex-Quartermaster;
has become one of Sexby's people, “on the
faith of a Christian King”; nothing now left of him but the
fierceness, groping some path for itself, in the utter dark.
Henry Toope, one of his Highness's Lifeguard: gives us,
or will give us, an inkling of Sindercomb; and we know
something of his courses and inventions, which are many.
He rode in Hyde Park among his Highness's escort, with
Sexby; but the deed could not then be done. Leave me
the £ 1600, said he; and I will find a way to do it. Sexby
left it him and went abroad.
Inventive Sindercomb then took a House in Hammersmith;
Garden-House, I think, “which had a banqueting-room
looking into the road”; road very narrow at that
part; — road from Whitehall to Hampton Court on Saturday
afternoons. Inventive Sindercomb here set about providing
blunderbusses of the due explosive force, — ancient
“infernal machines,” in fact, — with these he will blow his
if it please Heaven. It did not please Heaven, — probably
not Henry Toope of his Highness's Lifeguard. This
first scheme proved a failure.
Inventive Sindercomb, to justify his £ 1600, had to try
something. He decided to fire Whitehall by night, and have
a stroke at his Highness in the tumult. He has “a hundred
swift horses, two in a stable, up and down”: — set a
hundred stout ruffians on the back of these, in the nocturnal
fire; and try Thursday, 8th January, 1656-7; that is to be
the Night. On the dusk of Thursday, January 8th, he with
old-trooper Cecil, his second in the business, attends Public
Worship in Whitehall Chapel; is seen loitering there afterwards,
“near the Lord Lambert's seat.” Nothing more is
seen of him: but about half-past eleven at night, the sentinel
on guard catches a smell of fire; — finds holed wainscots,
picked locks; a basket of the most virulent wildfire,
“fit almost to burn through stones,” with lit match slowly
creeping towards it, computed to reach it in some half-hour
hence, about the stroke of midnight! — His Highness is
summoned, the Council is summoned; — alas, Toope of the
Lifeguard is examined and Sindercomb's lodging is known.
Just when the wildfire should have blazed, two Guardsmen
wait upon Sindercomb; seize him, not without hard defence
on his part, “wherein his nose was nearly cut off”; bring
him to his Highness. Toope testifies; Cecil peaches: —
inventive Sindercomb has failed for the last time. To the
Tower with him, to a jury of his country with him! — The
emotion in the Parliament and in the Public, next morning,
was great. It had been proposed to ring an alarm at the
moment of discovery, and summon the Trainbands; but his
Highness would not hear of it.
This Parliament, really intent on settling the Nation,
could not want for emotions, in regard to such a matter!
Parliament adjourns for a week, till the roots of the Plot are
a day of Thanksgiving for the Nation; Friday, come
four weeks, which is February 20th, that shall be the general
Thanksgiving Day: and in the mean time we decide to
go over in a body, and congratulate his Highness. A mark
of great respect to him.....
On Monday, 9th February, Sindercomb was tried by a
jury in the Upper Bench; and doomed to suffer as a traitor
and assassin, on the Saturday following. The night before
Saturday his poor Sister, though narrowly watched, smuggled
him some poison: he went to bed, saying, “Well, this
is the last time I shall go to bed”; the attendants heard him
snore heavily, and then cease; they looked, and he lay dead.
“He was of that wretched sect called Soul-Sleepers, who believe
that the soul falls asleep at death”; a gloomy, far-misguided
man. They buried him on Tower-hill, with due ignominy,
and there he rests; with none but frantic Anabaptist
Sexby, or Deceptive Presbyterian Titus, to sing his praise.
INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR.
Land-General Reynolds has gone to the French Netherlands,
with Six-thousand men, to join Turenne in fighting
the Spaniards there; and Sea-General Montague, is about
hoisting his flag to co-operate with him from the other element.
By sea and land are many things passing; — and
here in London is the loudest thing of all: not yet to be
entirely omitted by us, though now it has fallen very silent
in comparison. Inauguration of the Lord Protector; second
and more solemn Installation of him, now that he is fully
recognized by Parliament itself. He cannot yet, as it
proves, be crowned King; but he shall be installed in his
Protectorship with all solemnity befitting such an occasion.
Friday, 26th June, 1657. The Parliament and all the
Session being now complete, the last finish being now given
to our new Instrument of Government, to our elaborate
Petition and Advice, we will add this topstone to the work,
and so amid the shoutings of mankind, disperse for the
recess. Friday at two o'clock, “in a place prepared,” duly
prepared, with all manner of “platforms,” “cloths of state,”
and “seats raised one above the other,” “at the upper end of
Westminster Hall.” Palace Yard, and London generally,
is all a-tiptoe, out of doors. Within doors, Speaker Widdrington
and the Master of the Ceremonies have done their
best: the Judges, the Aldermen, the Parliament, the Council,
the foreign Ambassadors, and domestic Dignitaries without
end; chairs of state, cloths of state, trumpet-peals, and
acclamations of the people — Let the reader conceive it; or
read in old pamphlets the “exact relation” of it with all the
speeches and phenomena, worthier than such things usually
are of being read.
“His Highness standing under the Cloth of State,” says
Bulstrode, whose fine feelings are evidently touched by it,
“the Speaker, in the name of the Parliament, presented to
him: First, a Robe of purple velvet; which the Speaker,
assisted by Whitlocke and others, put upon his Highness.
Then he,” the Speaker, “delivered to him the Bible richly
gilt and bossed,” an affecting symbolic Gift: “After that,
the Speaker girt the Sword about his Highness; and delivered
into his hand the Sceptre of massy gold. And then,
this done, he made a Speech to him on these several things
presented”; eloquent mellifluous Speech, setting forth the
high and true significance of these several Symbols, Speech
still worth reading; to which his Highness answered in
silence by dignified gesture only. “Then Mr. Speaker
gave him the Oath”; and so ended really in a solemn manner.
“And Mr. Manton, by prayer, recommended his
Highness, the Parliament, the Council, the Forces by land
Three Nations, to the blessing and protection of God.” —
And then “the people gave several great shouts”; and
“the trumpets sounded; and the Protector sat in his chair
of state, holding the Sceptre in his hand”; a remarkable
sight to see. “On his right sat the Ambassador of
France,” on his left some other Ambassador; and all round,
standing or sitting were Dignitaries of the highest quality;
“and near the Earl of Warwick, stood the Lord Viscount
Lisle, stood General Montague and Whitlocke, each of
them having a drawn sword in his hand,” — a sublime sight
to some of us!
And so this Solemnity transacts itself; — which, at the
moment, was solemn enough; and is not yet, at this or any
hollowest moment of Human History, intrinsically altogether
other. A really dignified and veritable piece of Symbolism;
perhaps the last we hitherto, in these quack-ridden
histrionic ages, have been privileged to see on such an occasion.
ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE.
His Highness, before this Monday's sun sets [Feb. 4,
1658], has begun to lodge the Anarchic Ringleaders, Royalist,
Fifth-Monarchist, in the Tower; his Highness is bent
once more with all his faculty, the Talking-Apparatus being
gone, to front this Hydra, and trample it down once again.
On Saturday he summons his Officers, his Acting-Apparatus,
to Whitehall round him; explains to them “in a Speech
two hours long” what kind of Hydra it is; asks, Shall it conquer
us, involve us in blood and confusion? They answer
from their hearts, No, it shall not! “We will stand and
fall with your Highness, we will live and die with you!” —
It is the last duel this Oliver has with any Hydra fomented
it, invincibly compresses it, as he has heretofore done.
One day, in the early days of March next, his Highness
said to Lord Broghil: An old friend of yours is in Town,
the Duke of Ormond, now lodged in Drury Lane, at the
Papist Surgeon's there; you had better tell him to be gone!
Whereat his Lordship stared; found it a fact however; and
his Grace of Ormond did go with exemplary speed, and got
again to Bruges and the Sacred Majesty, with report That
Cromwell had many enemies, but that the rise of the Royalists
was moonshine. And on the 12th of the month his
Highness had the Mayor and Common Council with him in
a body at Whitehall; and “in a Speech at large” explained
to them that his Grace of Ormond was gone only “on Tuesday
last”; that there were Spanish Invasions, Royalist Insurrections,
and Frantic-Anabaptist Insurrections rapidly
ripening; — that it would well beseem the City of London
to have its Militia in good order. To which the Mayor and
Common Council “being very sensible thereof,” made zealous
response by speech and by act. In a word, the Talking-Apparatus
being gone, and an Oliver Protector now at
the head of the Acting-Apparatus, no Insurrection, in the
eyes of reasonable persons, had any chance. The leading
Royalists shrank close into their privacies again, — considerable
numbers of them had to shrink into durance in the
Tower. Among which latter class his Highness, justly incensed,
and “considering,” as Thurloe says, “that it was not
fit there should be a Plot of this kind every winter,” had
determined that a High Court of Justice should take cognizance
of some. High Court of Justice is accordingly nominated
as the Act of Parliament prescribes: among the parties
marked for Trial by it are Sir Henry Slingsby, long
since prisoner for Penruddock's business, and the Rev. Dr.
Hewit, a man of much forwardness in Royalism. Sir Henry,
prisoner in Hull and acquainted with the Chief Officers
to his Majesty; has even, to that end, given one of them a
Majesty's Commission; for whose Spanish Invasion such a
Haven and Fortress would have been extremely convenient.
Reverend Dr. Hewit, preaching by sufferance, according to
the old ritual, “in St. Gregory's Church near Paul's,” to a
select disaffected audience, has farther seen good to distinguish
himself very much by secular zeal in this business of
the Royalist Insurrection and Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion;
— which has now come to nothing, and left poor Dr.
Hewit in a most questionable position. Of these two, and
of others, a High Court of Justice shall take cognizance.
The Insurrection having no chance in the eyes of reasonable
Royalists, and they in consequence refusing to lead it,
the large body of unreasonable Royalists now in London
City, or gathering thither, decide, with indignation, That they
will try it on their own score and lead it themselves. Hands
to work, then, ye unreasonable Royalists; pipe, All hands!
Saturday the 15th of May, that is the night appointed: To
rise that Saturday Night; beat drums for “Royalist Apprentices,”
“fire houses at the Tower,” slay this man, slay
that, and bring matters to a good issue. Alas, on the very
edge of the appointed hour, as usual, we are all seized; the
ringleaders of us are all seized, “at the Mermaid in Cheapside,”
— for Thurloe and his Highness have long known
what we were upon! Barkstead, Governor of the Tower,
“marches into the City with five drakes,” at the rattle of
which every Royalist Apprentice, and party implicated,
shakes in his shoes: — and this also has gone to vapor,
leaving only for result certain new individuals of the Civic
class to give account of it to the High Court of Justice.
Tuesday, 25th May, 1658, the High Court of Justice sat;
a formidable Sanhedrim of above a Hundred-and-thirty
heads; consisting of “all the Judges,” chief Law Officials,
and others named in the Writ, according to Act of Parliament;
for the Trial of Sir Henry Slingsby, Knight, John Hewit,
Doctor of Divinity,” and three others whom we may forget.
Sat day after day till all were judged. Poor Sir Henry, on
the first day, was condemned; he pleaded what he could,
poor gentleman, a very constant Royalist all along; but the
Hull business was too palpable; he was condemned to die.
Reverend Dr. Hewit, whose proceedings also had become
very palpable, refused to plead at all; refused even “to take
off his hat,” says Carrion Heath, “till the officer was coming
to do it for him”; had a “Paper of Demurrers prepared by
the learned Mr. Prynne,” who is now again doing business
this way; “conducted himself not very wisely,” says Bulstrode.
He likewise received sentence of death. The others,
by narrow missing, escaped; by good luck, or the Protector's
mercy, suffered nothing.
As to Slingsby and Hewit, the Protector was inexorable.
Hewit has already taken a very high line: let him persevere
in it! Slingsby was the Lord Fauconberg's uncle,
married to his Aunt Bellasis; but that could not stead him,
— perhaps that was but a new monition to be strict with
him. The Commonwealth of England and its Peace are not
nothing! These Royalist Plots every winter, deliveries
of garrisons to Charles Stuart, and reckless “usherings of us
into blood,” shall end! Hewit and Slingsby suffered on
Tower Hill, on Monday, 8th June; amid the manifold
rumor and emotion of men. Of the City insurrectionists
six were condemned; three of whom were executed, three
pardoned. And so the High Court of Justice dissolved
itself; and at this and not at more expense of blood, the
huge Insurrectionary movement ended, and lay silent within
its caves again.
Whether in any future year it would have tried another
rising against such a Lord Protector, one does not know, —
one guesses rather in the negative. The Royalist Cause,
the word of a Christian King,” had naturally sunk very low.
Some twelvemonth hence, with a Commonwealth not now
under Cromwell, but only under the impulse of Cromwell,
a Christian King hastening down to the Treaty of the Pyrenees,
where France and Spain were making Peace, found
one of the coldest receptions. Cardinal Mazarin “sent his
coaches and guards a day's journey to meet Lockhart, the
Commonwealth Ambassador”; but refused to meet the
Christian King at all; would not even meet Ormond except
as if by accident, “on the public road,” to say that there was
no hope. The Spanish Minister, Don Louis de Haro, was
civiller in manner; but as to Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasions
or the like, he also decisively shook his head. The
Royalist cause was as good as desperate in England; a melancholy
Reminiscence, fast fading away into the realm of
shadows. Not till Puritanism sank of its own accord, could
Royalism rise again. But Puritanism, the King of it once
away, fell loose very naturally in every fibre, — fell into
Kinglessness, what we call Anarchy; crumbled down, ever
faster, for Sixteen Months, in mad suicide, and universal
clashing and collision; proved, by trial after trial, that there
lay not in it either Government or so much as Self-Government
any more; that a Government of England by it was
henceforth an impossibility. Amid the general wreck of
things, all Government threatening now to be impossible,
the Reminiscence of Royalty rose again, “Let us take
refuge in the Past, the Future is not possible!” and Major-General
Monk crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, with
results which are well known.
Results which we will not quarrel with, very mournful as
they have been! If it please Heaven, these Two Hundred
Years of universal Cant in Speech, with so much of Cotton-spinning,
Coal-boring, Commercing, and other valuable Sincerity
of Work going on the while, shall not be quite lost to
Universe of Cant, as does a heavy Nightmare
Dream. We shall awaken; and find ourselves in a world
greatly widened. — Why Puritanism could not continue?
My friend, Puritanism was not the Complete Theory of this
immense Universe; no, only a part thereof! To me it
seems, in my hours of hope, as if the Destinies meant something
grander with England than even Oliver Protector did!
We will not quarrel with the Destinies; we will work as
we can towards fulfilment of them.
DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR.
Oliver's look was yet strong; and young for his years,
which were Fifty-nine last April [1658]. The “Threescore
and ten years,” the Psalmist's limit, which probably
was often in Oliver's thoughts and in those of others there,
might have been anticipated for him: Ten years more of
Life; — which, we may compute, would have given another
History to all the Centuries of England. But it was not to
be so, it was to be otherwise. Oliver's health, as we might
observe, was but uncertain in late times; often “indisposed”
the spring before last. His course of life had not been
favorable to health! “A burden too heavy for man!” as
he himself, with a sigh, would sometimes say. Incessant
toil; inconceivable labor, of head and heart and hand; toil,
peril, and sorrow manifold, continued for near Twenty years
now, had done their part: those robust life-energies, it afterward
appeared, had been gradually eaten out. Like a Tower
strong to the eye, but with its foundations undermined;
which has not long to stand; the fall of which, on any shock,
may be sudden.
The Manzinis and Ducs de Crequi, with their splendors,
populations and general public, had not yet withdrawn, when
at Hampton Court there had begun a private scene, of
much deeper and quite opposite interest there. The Lady
Claypole, Oliver's favorite Daughter, a favorite of all the
world, had fallen sick we know not when; lay sick now, —
to death, as it proved. Her disease was of internal female
nature; the painfullest and most harassing to mind and
sense, it is understood, that falls to the lot of a human creature.
Hampton Court we can fancy once more, in those
July days, a house of sorrow; pale Death knocking there,
as at the door of the meanest hut. “She had great sufferings,
great exercises of spirit!” Yes: — and in the depths
of the old Centuries, we see a pale anxious Mother, anxious
Husband, anxious weeping Sisters, a poor young Frances
weeping anew in her weeds. “For the last fourteen days”
his Highness has been by her bedside at Hampton Court,
unable to attend to any public business whatever. Be still,
my Child; trust thou yet in God: in the waves of the Dark
River, there too is He a God of help! — On the 6th day of
August she lay dead; at rest forever. My young, my beautiful,
my brave! She is taken from me; I am left bereaved
of her. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away;
blessed be the Name of the Lord!....
In the same dark days occurred George Fox's third
and last interview with Oliver..... George dates nothing;
and his facts everywhere lie round him like the leatherparings
of his old shop: but we judge it may have been
about the time when the Manzinis and Ducs de Crequi
were parading in their gilt coaches, That George and two
Friends “going out of Town,” on a summer day, “two of
Hacker's men” had met them, — taken them, brought them
to the Mews. “Prisoners there a while”: — but the Lord's
power was over Hacker's men; they had to let us go.
Whereupon:
“The same day, taking boat I went down” (up) “to
Kingston, and from thence to Hampton Court, to speak
with the Protector about the Sufferings of Friends. I met
him riding into Hampton-Court Park; and before I came to
him as he rode at the head of his Lifeguard, I saw and felt
a waft” (whiff) “of death go forth against him.” — — Or
in favor of him, George? His life, if thou knew it, has not
been a merry thing for this man, now or heretofore! I fancy
he has been looking, this long while, to give it up, whenever
the Commander-in-chief required. To quit his laborious
sentry-post; honorably lay up his arms, and be gone to
his rest: — all Eternity to rest in, O George! Was thy
own life merry, for example, in the hollow of the tree; clad
permanently in leather? And does kingly purple, and governing
refractory worlds instead of stitching coarse shoes,
make it merrier? The waft of death is not against him I
think, — perhaps against thee, and me, and others, O
George, when the Nell-Gwyn Defender and Two Centuries
of all-victorious Cant have come in upon us! My unfortunate
George, — — “a waft of death go forth against him;
and when I came to him, he looked like a dead man.
After I had laid the Sufferings of Friends before him, and
had warned him accordingly as I was moved to speak to
him, he bade me come to his house. So I returned to
Kingston; and, the next day, went up to Hampton Court
to speak farther with him. But when I came, Harvey, who
was one that waited on him, told me the Doctors were not
willing that I should speak with him. So I passed away,
and never saw him more.”
Friday, the 20th of August, 1658, this was probably the
day on which George Fox saw Oliver riding into Hampton
Park with his Guards for the last time. That Friday, as
we find, his Highness seemed much better: but on the morrow
a sad change had taken place; feverish symptoms, for
which the Doctors vigorously prescribed quiet. Saturday
of tertian ague, “bastard tertian” as the old Doctors name
it; for which it was ordered that his Highness should return
to Whitehall, as to a more favorable air in that complaint.
On Tuesday, accordingly, he quitted Hampton Court; —
never to see it more.
“His time was come,” says Harvey, “and neither prayers
nor tears could prevail with God to lengthen out his life,
and continue him longer to us. Prayers abundantly and
incessantly poured out on his behalf, both publicly and privately,
as was observed, in a more than ordinary way. Besides
many a secret sigh, — secret and unheard by men, yet
like the cry of Moses, more loud, and strongly laying hold
on God, than many spoken supplications. All which, — the
hearts of God's People being thus mightily stirred up, —
did seem to beget confidence in some, and hopes in all; yea
some thoughts in himself, that God would restore him.”
“Prayers public and private”: they are worth imagining
to ourselves. Meetings of Preachers, Chaplains, and Godly
Persons; “Owen, Goodwin, Sterry, with a company of
others in an adjoining room”; in Whitehall, and elsewhere
over religious London and England, fervent outpourings of
many a loyal heart. For there were hearts to whom the
nobleness of this man was known; and his worth to the
Puritan Cause was evident. Prayers, — strange enough to
us; in a dialect fallen obsolete, forgotten now. Authentic
wrestlings of ancient Human Souls, — who were alive then,
with their affections, awe-struck pieties; with their Human
Wishes, risen to be transcendent, hoping to prevail with the
Inexorable. All swallowed now in the depths of dark
Time; which is full of such, since the beginning! Truly it
is a great scene of World-History, this in old Whitehall:
Oliver Cromwell drawing nigh to his end. The exit of
Oliver Cromwell, and of English Puritanism; a great
Light, one of our few authentic Solar Luminaries, going
great victorious summer Sun — its course now finished.
“So stirbt ein Held,” says Schiller; “So dies a Hero! Sight
worthy to be worshipped!” He died, this Hero Oliver, in
Resignation to God, as the Brave have all done. “We could
not be more desirous he should abide,” says the pious
Harvey, “than he was content and willing to be gone.” The
struggle lasted, amid hope and fear, for ten days.....
On Monday, August 30th, there roared and howled all
day a mighty storm of wind. Ludlow, coming up to Town
from Essex, could not start in the morning for wind; tried
it in the afternoon; still could not get along, in his coach,
for head-wind; had to stop at Epping. On the morrow,
Fleetwood came to him in the Protector's name, to ask,
What he wanted here? — Nothing of public concernment,
only to see my mother-in-law! answered the solid man. For
indeed he did not know that Oliver was dying; that the glorious
hour of Disenthralment, and immortal “Liberty” to
plunge over precipices with one's self and one's Cause, was
so nigh! — It came; and he took the precipices, like a
strongboned resolute blind ginhorse, rejoicing in the breakage
of its halter, in a very gallant constitutional manner.
Adieu, my solid friend; if I go to Vevay, I will read thy
Monument there, perhaps not without emotion, after all!
It was on this stormy Monday, while rocking-winds, heard
in the sick-room and everywhere, were piping aloud, that
Thurloe and an Official person entered to inquire, Who, in
case of the worst, was to be his Highness's Successor? The
Successor is named in a sealed Paper already drawn up,
above a year ago, at Hampton Court; now lying in such
and such a place. The Paper was sent for, searched for;
it could never be found. Richard's is the name understood
to have been written in that Paper: not a good name; but
in fact one does not know. In ten years' time, had ten
years more been granted, Richard might have become a
Or perhaps it was Fleetwood's name, — and the Paper by
certain parties was stolen? None knows. On the Thursday
night following, “and not till then,” his Highness is
understood to have formally named “Richard!” — or perhaps
it might only be some heavy-laden “Yes, yes!” spoken
out of the thick death-slumbers, in answer to Thurloe's question
“Richard?” The thing is a little uncertain. It was,
once more, a matter of much moment; — giving color probably
to all the subsequent Centuries of England, this answer!....
Thursday night the writer of our old Pamphlet was himself
in attendance on his Highness; and has preserved a
trait or two; with which let us hasten to conclude. To-morrow
is September Third, always kept as a Thanksgiving-day,
since the Victories of Dunbar and Worcester. The
wearied one, “that very night before the Lord took him to
his everlasting rest,” was heard thus, with oppressed voice,
speaking: —
“`Truly God is good; indeed, He is; He will not —'
then his speech failed him, but, as I apprehended, it was,
`He will not leave me.' This saying, `God is good,' he frequently
used all along; and would speak it with much
cheerfulness, and fervor of spirit, in the midst of his pains.
Again he said: `I would be willing to live to be farther
serviceable to God and His People: but my work is done.
Yet God will be with His People.'
“He was very restless most part of the night, speaking
often to himself. And there being something to drink
offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavor
to sleep. Unto which he answered: `It is not my desire
to drink or sleep; but my design is, to make what haste I
can to be gone.'
“Afterwards, towards morning, he used divers holy expressions,
implying much inward consolation and peace;
words, annihilating and judging himself. And truly it was
observed, that a public spirit to God's Cause did breathe in
him, — as in his lifetime so now to his very last.”
When the morrow's sun rose, Oliver was speechless; between
three and four in the afternoon, he lay dead. Friday,
3d September, 1658. “The consternation and astonishment
of all people,” writes Fauconberg, “are inexpressible; their
hearts seem as if sunk within them. My poor Wife, — I
know not what on earth to do with her. When seemingly
quieted, she bursts out again into a passion that tears her
very heart to pieces.” Husht, poor weeping Mary! Here
is a Life-battle right nobly done. Seest thou not,
At His command and will;
So that the waves which raged before,
Now quiet are and still!
Then are they glad, — because at rest
And quiet now they be:
So to the haven He them brings
Which they desired to see.
“Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord”; blessed are
the valiant that have lived in the Lord. “Amen, saith the
Spirit,” Amen. “They do rest from their labors, and their
works follow them.”
“Their works follow them.” As, I think, this Oliver
Cromwell's works have done, and are still doing? We have
had our “Revolutions of Eighty-eight,” officially called “glorious”;
and other Revolutions not yet called glorious, and
somewhat has been gained for poor Mankind. Men's ears
are not now slit off by rash Officiality; Officiality will, for
long henceforth, be more cautious about men's ears. The
tyrannous Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical Kings
and Surplices at All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense
works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and
obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish.
What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man
and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities,
remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of
Things; and no owl's voice, this way or that, in the least,
avails in the matter. But we have to end here.
Oliver is gone; and with him England's Puritanism,
laboriously built together by this man, and made a thing
far-shining miraculous to its own Century, and memorable
to all the Centuries, soon goes. Puritanism, without its
King, is kingless, anarchic; falls into dislocation, self-collision;
staggers, plunges into ever deeper anarchy; King,
Defender of the Puritan Faith there can none now be
found; — and nothing is left but to recall the old disowned
Defender with the remnants of his Four Surplices, and
Two Centuries of Hypocrisis (or Play-acting not so called),
and put up with all that, the best we may. The Genius of
England no longer soars Sunward, world-defiant like an
Eagle through the storms, “mewing her mighty youth,” as
John Milton saw her do: the Genius of England, much
more like a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a
whole skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward
with its Ostrich-head stuck into the readiest bush of old
Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other “sheltering Fallacy”
there may be, and so awaits the issue. The issue has
been slow; but it is now seen to have been inevitable.
No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and sticking
its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day, —
in a terrible a posteriori manner, if not otherwise! —
Awake before it come to that! God and man bid us awake!
The Voices of our Fathers, with thousand-fold stern monition
to one and all, bid us awake.
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