Belloc-Lingard - The History of England - CHAPTER VII.
Richard Cromwell Protector--Parliament Called--Dissolved--Military
Government--Long Parliament Restored--Expelled Again--Reinstated--Monk In
London--Re-Admission Of Secluded Members--Long Parliament Dissolved--The
Convention Parliament--Restoration Of Charles II.
By his wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, Cromwell left two sons, Richard and
Henry. There was a remarkable contrast in the opening career of these young
men. During the civil war, Richard lived in the Temple, frequented the
company of the Cavaliers, and spent his time in gaiety and debauchery.
Henry repaired to his father's quarters, and so rapid was his promotion,
that at the age of twenty he held the commission of captain in the regiment
of guards belonging to Fairfax, the lord-general. After the establishment
of the commonwealth, Richard married, and, retiring to the house of his
father-in-law, at Hursley in Hampshire, devoted himself to the usual
pursuits of a country gentleman. Henry accompanied his father in the
reduction of Ireland, which country he afterwards governed, first with the
rank of major-general, afterwards with that of lord-deputy. It was not till
the second year of the protectorate that Cromwell seemed to recollect that
he had an elder son. He made him a lord of trade, then chancellor of the
university of Oxford, and lastly a member of the new house of peers. As
these honours were far inferior to those which he lavished on other persons
connected with his family, it was inferred that he entertained a mean
opinion of Richard's abilities. A more probable conclusion is, that he
feared to alarm the jealousy of his officers, and carefully abstained from
doing that which might confirm the general suspicion, that he designed to
make the protectorship hereditary in his family.[1]
The moment he expired, the council assembled, and the result of their
deliberation was an order to proclaim Richard Cromwell protector, on the
ground that he had been declared by his late highness his successor in
that dignity.[2] Not a murmur of opposition was heard; the ceremony was
performed in all places after the usual manner of announcing the accession
of a new sovereign; and addresses of condolence and congratulation poured
in from the army and
[Footnote 1: "The Lord knows my desire was for Harry and his brother to
have lived private lives in the country, and Harry knows this very well;
and how difficultly I was persuaded to give him his commission for
Ireland."--Letter to Fleetwood, 22nd June, 1655.]
[Footnote 2: There appears good reason to doubt this assertion. Thurloe
indeed (vii. 372) informs Henry Cromwell that his father named Richard
to succeed on the preceding Monday. But his letter was written after the
proclamation of Richard, and its contents are irreconcilable with the
letters written before it. We have one from Lord Falconberg, dated on
Monday, saying that no nomination had been made, and that Thurloe had
promised to suggest it, but probably would not perform his promise (ibid.
365); and another from Thurloe himself to Henry Cromwell, stating the same
thing as to the nomination.--Ibid. 364. It may perhaps be said that Richard
was named on the Monday after the letters were written; but there is
a second letter from Thurloe, dated on the Tuesday, stating that the
protector was still incapable of public business, and that matters would,
he feared, remain till the death of his highness in the same state as he
described them in his letter of Monday.--Ibid. 366. It was afterwards said
that the nomination took place on the night before the protector's death,
in the presence of four of the council (Falconberg in Thurloe, 375, and
Barwick, ibid. 415); but the latter adds that many doubt whether it ever
took place at all.]
navy, from one hundred congregational churches, and from the boroughs,
cities, and counties. It seemed as if free-born Britons had been converted
into a nation of slaves. These compositions were drawn up in the highest
strain of adulation, adorned with forced allusions from Scripture, and with
all the extravagance of Oriental hyperbole. "Their sun was set, but no
night had followed. They had lost the nursing father, by whose hand the
yoke of bondage had been broken from the necks and consciences of the
godly. Providence by one sad stroke had taken away the breath from their
nostrils, and smitten the head from their shoulders; but had given them in
return the noblest branch of that renowned stock, a prince distinguished
by the lovely composition of his person, but still more by the eminent
qualities of his mind. The late protector had been a Moses to lead God's
people out of the land of Egypt; his son would be a Joshua to conduct them
into a more full possession of truth and righteousness. Elijah had been
taken into heaven: Elisha remained on earth, the inheritor of his mantle
and his spirit!"[1]
The royalists, who had persuaded themselves that the whole fabric of the
protectorial power would fall in pieces on the death of Cromwell, beheld
with amazement the general acquiescence in the succession, of Richard; and
the foreign princes, who had deemed it prudent to solicit the friendship of
the father, now
[Footnote 1: The Scottish ministers in Edinburgh, instead of joining in
these addresses, prayed on the following Sunday, "that the Lord would be
merciful to the exiled, and those that were in captivity, and cause them to
return with sheaves of joy; that he would deliver all his people from the
yoke of Pharaoh, and task-masters of Egypt, and that he would cut off their
oppressors, and hasten the time of their deliverance."--Thurloe, vii. 416.]
hastened to offer their congratulations to his son. Yet, fair and tranquil
as the prospect appeared, an experienced eye might easily detect the
elements of an approaching storm. Meetings were clandestinely held by the
officers;[a] doubts were whispered of the nomination of Richard by his
father; and an opinion was encouraged among the military that, as the
commonwealth was the work of the army, so the chief office in the
commonwealth belonged to the commander of the army. On this account the
protectorship had been bestowed on Cromwell; but his son was one who had
never drawn his sword in the cause; and to suffer the supreme power to
devolve on him was to disgrace, to disinherit, the men who had suffered so
severely, and bled so profusely, in the contest.
These complaints had probably been suggested, they were certainly fomented,
by Fleetwood and his friends, the colonels Cooper, Berry, and Sydenham.
Fleetwood was brave in the field, but irresolute in council; eager for the
acquisition of power, but continually checked by scruples of conscience;
attached by principle to republicanism, but ready to acquiesce in every
change, under the pretence of submission to the decrees of Providence.
Cromwell, who knew the man, had raised him to the second command in the
army, and fed his ambition with distant and delusive hopes of succeeding
to the supreme magistracy. The protector died, and Fleetwood, instead
of acting, hesitated, prayed, and consulted; the propitious moment was
suffered to pass by; he assented to the opinion of the council in favour of
Richard; and then, repenting of his weakness, sought to indemnify himself
for the loss by confining the
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Sept. 14.]
authority of the protector to the civil administration, and procuring
for himself the sole, uncontrolled command of the army. Under the late
government, the meetings of military officers had been discountenanced and
forbidden; now they were encouraged to meet and consult; and, in a body of
more than two hundred individuals, they presented to Richard a petition, by
which they demanded that no officer should be deprived, but by sentence of
a court-martial, and that the chief command of the forces, and the disposal
of commissions, should be conferred on some person whose past services
had proved his attachment to the cause. There were not wanting those who
advised the protector to extinguish the hopes of the factious at once by
arresting and imprisoning the chiefs; but more moderate counsels prevailed,
and in a firm but conciliatory speech,[a] the composition of Secretary
Thurloe, he replied that, to gratify their wishes, he had appointed his
relative, Fleetwood, lieutenant-general of all the forces; but that to
divest himself of the chief command, and of the right of giving or resuming
commissions, would be to act in defiance of the "petition and advice," the
instrument by which he held the supreme authority. For a short time they
appeared satisfied; but the chief officers continued to hold meetings in
the chapel at St. James's, ostensibly for the purpose of prayer, but in
reality for the convenience of deliberation. Fresh jealousies were excited;
it was said that another commander (Henry Cromwell was meant) would be
placed above Fleetwood; Thurloe, Pierrepoint, and St. John were denounced
as evil counsellors; and it became evident to all attentive observers that
the two parties must soon come into collision. The protector could depend
on the armies
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Oct. 14.]
in Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, his brother Henry governed without an
opponent; in Scotland, Monk, by his judicious separation of the troops,
and his vigilance in the enforcement of discipline, had deprived the
discontented of the means of holding meetings and of corresponding with
each other. In England he was assured of the services of eight colonels,
and therefore, as it was erroneously supposed, of their respective
regiments, forming one half of the regular force. But his opponents were
masters of the other half, constituted the majority in the council, and
daily augmented their numbers by the accession of men who secretly leaned
to republican principles, or sought to make an interest in that party which
they considered the more likely to prevail in the approaching struggle.[1]
From the notice of these intrigues the public attention was withdrawn by
the obsequies of the late protector. It was resolved that they should
exceed in magnificence those of any former sovereign, and with that view
they were conducted according to the ceremonial observed at the interment
of Philip II. of Spain. Somerset House was selected for the first part of
the exhibition. The spectators, having passed through three rooms hung with
black cloth, were admitted[a] into the funereal chamber; where, surrounded
with wax-lights, was seen an effigy of Cromwell clothed in royal robes, and
lying on a bed of state,
[Footnote 1: For these particulars, see the letters in Thurloe, vii. 386,
406, 413, 415, 424, 426, 427, 428, 447. 450, 452, 453, 454, 463, 490, 491,
492, 493, 495, 496, 497, 498, 500, 510, 511. So great was the jealousy
between the parties, that Richard and his brother Henry dared not
correspond by letter. "I doubt not all the letters will be opened, which
come either to or from your highness, which can be suspected to contain
business" (454). For the principle now professed by the Levellers, see note (I).]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. Sept. 26.]
which covered, or was supposed to cover, the coffin. On each side lay
different parts of his armour: in one hand was placed the sceptre, in the
other the globe; and behind the head an imperial crown rested on a cushion
in a chair of state. But, in defiance of every precaution it became
necessary to inter the body before the appointed day; and the coffin was
secretly deposited at night in a vault at the west end of the middle aisle
of Westminster Abbey, under a gorgeous cenotaph which had recently been
erected. The effigy was now removed to a more spacious chamber; it rose
from a recumbent to an erect posture; and stood before the spectators not
only with the emblems of royalty in its hands, but with the crown upon its
head. For eight weeks this pageant was exhibited to the public. As the day
appointed for the funeral obsequies approached, rumours of an intended
insurrection during the ceremony were circulated; but guards from the
most trusty regiments lined the streets; the procession consisting of the
principal persons in the city and army, the officers of state, the foreign
ambassadors, and the members of the protector's family, passed[a] along
without interruption; and the effigy, which in lieu of the corpse was
borne on a car, was placed, with due solemnity, in the cenotaph already
mentioned. Thus did fortune sport with the ambitious prospects of Cromwell.
The honours of royalty which she refused to him during his life, she
lavished on his remains after death; and then, in the course of a few
months, resuming her gifts, exchanged the crown for a halter, and the royal
monument in the abbey for an ignominious grave at Tyburn.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vi. 528, 529. Carrington apud Noble, i. 360-369. The
charge for black cloth alone on this occasion was six thousand nine hundred
and twenty-nine pounds, six shillings, and fivepence,--Biblioth. Stow. ii.
448. I do not notice the childish stories about stealing of the protector's
body.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Nov. 23.]
Before the reader proceeds to the more important transactions at home, he
may take a rapid view of the relations existing between England and foreign
states. The war which had so long raged between the rival crowns of France
and Spain was hastening to its termination; to Louis the aid of England
appeared no longer a matter of consequence; and the auxiliary treaty
between the two countries, which had been renewed from year to year, was
suffered to expire at the appointed[a] time. But in the north of Europe
there was much to claim the attention of the new protector; for the king
of Sweden, after a short peace, had again unsheathed the sword against his
enemy, the king of Denmark. The commercial interests of the maritime states
were deeply involved in the issue of this contest; both England and Holland
prepared to aid their respective allies; and a Dutch squadron joined the
Danish, while an English division, under the command of Ayscue, sailed to
the assistance of the Swedish monarch. The severity of the winter forced
Ayscue to return; but as soon as the navigation of the Sound was open, two
powerful fleets were despatched to the Baltic, one by the protector, the
other by the States; and to Montague, the English admiral, was intrusted
the delicate and difficult commission, not only of watching the proceedings
of the Dutch, but also of compelling them to observe peace towards the
Swedes, without giving them occasion to commence hostilities against
himself. In this he was successful; but no offer of mediation could
reconcile the contending
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. August.]
monarchs; and we shall find Montague still cruising in the Baltic at the
time when Richard, from whom he derived his commission, will be forced to
abdicate the protectorial dignity.[1]
In a few days after the funeral of his father, to the surprise of the
public, the protector summoned[a] a parliament. How, it was asked, could
Richard hope to control such an assembly, when the genius and authority of
Oliver had proved unequal to the attempt? The difficulty was acknowledged;
but the arrears of the army, the exhaustion of the treasury, and the
necessity of seeking support against the designs of the officers, compelled
him to hazard the experiment, and he flattered himself with the hope of
success, by avoiding the rock on which, in the opinion of his advisers,
the policy of his father had split. Oliver had adopted the plan of
representation prepared by the long parliament before its dissolution, a
plan which, by disfranchising the lesser boroughs, and multiplying the
members of the counties, had rendered the elections more independent of the
government: Richard, under the pretence of a boon to the nation, reverted
to the ancient system; and, if we may credit the calculation of his
opponents, no fewer than one hundred and sixty members were returned from
the boroughs by the interest of the court and its supporters. But to adopt
the same plan in the conquered countries of Scotland and Ireland would have
been dangerous; thirty representatives were therefore summoned from each;
and, as the elections were conducted under the eyes of the
[Footnote 1: Burton's Diary, iii. 576. Thurloe, vol. vii. passim. Carte's
Letters, ii. 157-182, Londorp, viii. 635, 708. Dumont, vi. 244, 252, 260.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. Nov. 30.]
commanders of the forces, the members, with one solitary exception, proved
themselves the obsequious servants of government.[1]
It was, however, taken as no favourable omen, that when the protector, at
the opening of parliament, commanded the attendance of the Commons in the
House of Lords, nearly one-half of the members refused[a] to obey. They
were unwilling to sanction by their presence the existence of an authority,
the legality of which they intended to dispute; or to admit the superior
rank of the new peers, the representatives of the protector, over
themselves, the representatives of the people. As soon as the lower house
was constituted, it divided itself into three distinct parties. 1. The
protectorists formed about one-half of the members. They had received
instructions to adhere inviolably to the provisions of the "humble petition
and advice," and to consider the government by a single person, with the
aid of two houses, as the unalterable basis of the constitution. 2. The
republicans, who did not amount to fifty, but compensated for deficiency
in number by their energy and eloquence. Vane, Hazlerig, Lambert, Ludlow,
Nevil, Bradshaw, and Scot, were ready debaters, skilled in the forms of the
house, and always on the watch to take advantage of the want of knowledge
or of experience on the part of their adversaries. With them voted
Fairfax, who, after a long retirement, appeared once more on the stage. He
constantly sat by the side, and echoed the opinions of Hazlerig; and, so
artfully did he act his part, so firmly did he attach their confidence,
that, though a royalist at heart, he was designed by them
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 541, 550. Ludlow, ii. 170. Bethel, Brief
Narrative, 340. England's Confusion (p. 4), London, 1659.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Jan. 27]
for the office of lord-general, in the event of the expulsion or the
abdication of Richard. 3. The "moderates or neuters" held in number the
medium between the protectorists and republicans. Of these, some wavered
between the two parties; but many were concealed Cavaliers, who, in
obedience to the command of Charles, had obtained seats in the house, or
young men who, without any fixed political principles, suffered themselves
to be guided by the suggestions of the Cavaliers. To the latter, Hyde had
sent instructions that they should embarrass the plans of the protector,
by denouncing to the house the illegal acts committed under the late
administration; by impeaching Thurloe and the principal officers of state;
by fomenting the dissension between the courtiers and the republicans;
and by throwing their weight into the scale, sometimes in favour of one,
sometimes of the other party, as might appear most conducive to the
interests of the royal exile.[1]
The Lords, aware of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful
not to provoke the hostility of the Commons. They sent no messages; they
passed no bills; but exchanging matters of state for questions of religion,
contrived to spend their time in discussing the form of a national
catechism, the sinfulness of theatrical entertainments, and the papal
corruptions supposed to exist in the Book of Common
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 766; vii. 562, 604, 605, 609, 615, 616. Clarend.
Pap. iii. 423, 424, 425, 428, 432, 434, 436. There were forty-seven
republicans; from one hundred to one hundred and forty counterfeit
republicans and neuters, seventy-two lawyers, and above one hundred
placemen.--Ibid. 440. They began with a day of fasting and humiliation
within the house, and four ministers, with praying and preaching, occupied
them from nine till six.--Burton's Diary and Journals, Feb. 4.]
Prayer.[1] In the lower house, the first subject which called forth the
strength of the different parties was a bill which, under the pretence of
recognizing Richard Cromwell for the rightful successor to his father,
would have pledged the parliament to an acquiescence in the existing form
of government.[a] The men of republican principles instantly took the
alarm. To Richard personally they made no objection; they respected his
private character, and wished well to the prosperity of his family; but
where, they asked, was the proof that the provisions of the "humble
petition and advice" had been observed? where the deed of nomination by his
father? where the witnesses to the signature?--Then what was the "humble
petition and advice" itself? An instrument of no force in a matter of such
high concernment, and passed by a very small majority in a house, out of
which one hundred members lawfully chosen, had been unlawfully excluded.
Lastly, what right had the Commons to admit a negative voice, either in
another house or in a single person? Such a voice was destructive of the
sovereignty of the people exercised by their representatives. The people
had sent them to parliament with power to make laws for the national
welfare, but not to annihilate the first and most valuable right of their
constituents. Each day the debate grew more animated and personal; charges
were made and recriminations followed: the republicans enumerated the acts
of misrule and oppression under the government of the late protector; the
courtiers balanced the account with similar instances from the proceedings
of their adversaries during the sway of the long parliament; the orators,
amidst the
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, 559, 609, 615.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Feb. 1.]
multitude of subjects incidentally introduced, lost sight of the original
question; and the speaker, after a debate of eight days, declared that he
was bewildered in a labyrinth of confusion, out of which he could discover
no issue. Weariness at last induced the combatants to listen to a
compromise,[a] that the recognition of Richard as protector should form
part of a future bill, but that at the same time, his prerogative should be
so limited as to secure the liberties of the people. Each party expressed
its satisfaction. The republicans had still the field open for the advocacy
of their favourite doctrines; the protectorists had advanced a step,
and trusted that it would lead them to the acquisition of greater
advantages.[1]
From the office of protector, the members proceeded to inquire into the
constitution and powers of the other house; and this question, as it was
intimately connected with the former, was debated with equal warmth and
pertinacity. The opposition appealed to the "engagement," which many of the
members had subscribed; contended that the right of calling a second
house had been personal to the late protector, and did not descend to
his successors; urged the folly of yielding a negative voice on their
proceedings to a body of counsellors of their own creation; and pretended
to foretel that a protector with a yearly income of one million three
hundred thousand pounds, and a house of lords selected by himself, must
inevitably become, in the course of a few years, master of the liberties of
the people. When, at the end of nine days, the speaker was going to put the
question, Sir
[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 1, 14. Thurloe, 603, 609, 610, 615, 617. Clar.
Pap. iii. 424, 426, 429. In Burton's Diary the debate occupies almost two
hundred pages (iii. 87-287).]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Feb 14.]
Richard Temple, a concealed royalist, demanded that the sixty members from
Scotland and Ireland, all in the interest of the court, should withdraw.[a]
It was, he said, doubtful, from the illegality of their election,
whether they had any right to sit at all; it was certain that, as the
representatives of other nations, they could not claim to vote on a
question of such high importance to the people of England. Thus another
bone of contention was thrown between the parties; eleven days were
consumed before the Scottish and Irish members could obtain permission to
vote,[b] and then five more expired before the question respecting the
other house was determined.[c] The new lords had little reason to be
gratified with the result. They were acknowledged, indeed, as a house of
parliament for the present; but there was no admission of their claim of
the peerage, or of a negative voice, or of a right to sit in subsequent
parliaments. The Commons consented "to transact business with them" (a new
phrase of undefined meaning), pending the parliament, but with a saving of
the rights of the ancient peers, who had been faithful to the cause; and,
in addition, a few days later,[d] they resolved that, in the transaction of
business, no superiority should be admitted in the other house, nor message
received from it, unless brought by the members themselves.[1]
In these instances, the recognition of the protector, and of the two
houses, the royalists, with some exceptions, had voted in favour of the
court, under the impression that such a form of government was
[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 18, March 28, April 5, 6, 8. Thurloe, 615, 626,
633, 636, 640, 647, Clar. Pap. iii. 429, 432. Burton's Diary, iii. 317-369,
403-424, 510-594; iv. 7-41, 46-147, 163-243, 293, 351, 375.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. March 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. March 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. March 28.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1659. April 8.]
one step towards the restoration of the king. But on all other questions,
whenever there was a prospect of throwing impediments in the way of the
ministry, or of inflaming the discontent of the people, they zealously lent
their aid to the republican party. It was proved that, while the revenue
had been doubled, the expenditure had grown in a greater proportion;
complaints were made of oppression, waste, embezzlement, and tyranny in the
collection of the excise: the inhumanity of selling obnoxious individuals
for slaves to the West India planters was severely reprobated;[1] instances
of extortion were daily announced to the house by the committee of
grievances; an impeachment was ordered against Boteler, accused of
oppression in his office of major-general; and another threatened against
Thurloe for illegal conduct in his capacity of secretary of state. But,
while these proceedings awakened the hopes and gratified the resentments of
the people, they at the same time spread alarm through the army; every man
conscious of having abused the power of the sword began to tremble for his
own safety; and an unusual ferment, the sure presage of military violence,
was observable at the head-quarters of the several regiments.
[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 429, 432. Thurloe, 647. Burton's Diary, iii.
448; iv. 255, 263, 301, 403, 429. One petition stated that seventy persons
who had been apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising, after a year's
imprisonment, had been sold at Barbadoes for "1550 pounds' weight of sugar
a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties." Among them
were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at
the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island,
being bought and sold still from one planter to another, or attached as
horses or beasts for the debts of their masters, being whipped at the
whipping-posts as rogues at their masters' pleasure, and sleeping in sties
worse than hogs in England."--Ibid. 256. See also Thurloe, i. 745.]
Hitherto the general officers had been divided between Whitehall and
Wallingford House, the residences of Richard and of Fleetwood. At
Whitehall, the Lord Falconberg, brother-in-law to the protector, Charles
Howard, whom Oliver had created a viscount,[1] Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe,
and a few others, formed a military council for the purpose of maintaining
the ascendancy of Richard in the army. At Wallingford House, Fleetwood and
his friends consulted how they might deprive him of the command, and reduce
him to the situation of a civil magistrate; but now a third and more
numerous council appeared at St. James's, consisting of most of the
inferior officers, and guided by the secret intrigues of Lambert, who,
holding no commission himself, abstained from sitting among them, and by
the open influence of Desborough, a bold and reckless man, who began to
despise the weak and wavering conduct of Fleetwood. Here originated the
plan of a general council of officers,[a] which was followed by the
adoption of "the humble representation and petition," an instrument
composed in language too moderate to give reasonable cause of offence, but
intended to suggest much more than it was thought prudent to express. It
made no allusion to the disputed claim of the protector, or the subjects of
strife between the two houses; but it complained bitterly of the contempt
into which the good old cause had sunk, of the threats held out, and
the prosecutions instituted, against the patriots who had distinguished
themselves in its support, and of the privations to which the military were
reduced
[Footnote 1: Viscount Howard, of Morpeth, July 20, 1657, afterwards created
Baron Dacre, Viscount Howard of Morpeth and earl of Carlisle, by Charles
II., 30 April, 1661.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 6.]
by a system that kept their pay so many months in arrear. In conclusion, it
prayed for the redress of these grievances, and stated the attachment of
the subscribers to the cause for which they had bled, and their readiness
to stand by the protector and parliament in its defence.[1] This paper,
with six hundred signatures, was presented to Richard, who received it with
an air of cheerfulness, and forwarded it to the lower house. There it was
read, laid on the table, and scornfully neglected. But the military leaders
treated the house with equal scorn; having obtained the consent of the
protector, they established a permanent council of general officers; and
then, instead of fulfilling the expectations with which they had lulled his
jealousy, successively voted, that the common cause was in danger, that
the command of the army ought to be vested in a person possessing its
confidence, and that every officer should be called upon to testify his
approbation of the death of Charles I., and of the subsequent proceedings
of the military; a measure levelled against the meeting at Whitehall,
of which the members were charged with a secret leaning to the cause of
royalty.[2] This was sufficiently alarming; but, in addition, the officers
of the trained bands signified their adhesion to the "representation" of
the army; and more than six hundred privates of the regiment formerly
commanded by Colonel Pride published their determination to stand by their
officers in the maintenance "of the old cause."[3] The
[Footnote 1: "The Humble Representation and Petition, printed by H. Hills,
1659."--Thurloe, 659.]
[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 662. Ludlow, ii. 174.]
[Footnote 3: The Humble Representation and Petition of Field Officers, &c.
of the Trained Bands. London, 1659. Burton's Diary, iv. 388, note.]
friends of the protector saw that it was time to act with energy; and, by
their influence in the lower house, carried the following votes:[a] that no
military meetings should be held without the joint consent of the protector
and the parliament, and that every officer should forfeit his commission
who would not promise, under his signature, never to disturb the sitting,
or infringe the freedom of parliament. These votes met, indeed, with a
violent opposition in the "other house," in which many of the members had
been chosen from the military; but the courtiers, anxious to secure the
victory, proposed another and declaratory vote in the Commons,[b] that the
command of the army was vested in the three estates, to be exercised by
the protector. By the officers this motion was considered as an open
declaration of war: they instantly met; and Desborough, in their name,
informed Richard that the crisis was at last come; the parliament must be
dissolved, either by the civil authority, or by the power of the sword. He
might make his election. If he chose the first, the army would provide for
his dignity and support; if he did not, he would be abandoned to his fate,
and fall friendless and unpitied.[1]
The protector called a council of his confidential advisers. Whitelock
opposed the dissolution, on the ground that a grant of money might yet
appease the discontent of the military. Thurloe, Broghill, Fiennes, and
Wolseley maintained, on the contrary, that the dissension between the
parliament and the army was irreconcilable; and that on the first shock
between them, the Cavaliers would rise simultaneously in the
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, 555, 557, 558, 662. Burton's Diary, iv. 448-463,
472-480. Ludlow ii. 176, 178.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. April 21.]
cause of Charles Stuart. A commission was accordingly signed by Richard,
and the usher of the black rod repeatedly summoned the Commons to attend in
the other house.[a] But true to their former vote of receiving no message
brought by inferior officers, they refused to obey; some members proposed
to declare it treason to put force on the representatives of the nation,
others to pronounce all proceedings void whenever a portion of the members
should be excluded by violence; at last they adjourned for three days,
and accompanied the speaker to his carriage in the face of the soldiery
assembled at the door. These proceedings, however, did not prevent Fiennes,
the head commissioner, from dissolving the parliament; and the important
intelligence was communicated to the three nations by proclamation in the
same afternoon.[1]
Whether the consequences of this measure, so fatal to the interests of
Richard, were foreseen by his advisers, may be doubted. It appears that
Thurloe had for several days been negotiating both with the republican and
the military leaders. He had tempted some of the former with the offer
of place and emolument, to strengthen the party of the protector; to the
latter he had proposed that Richard, in imitation of his father on one
occasion, should raise money for the payment of the army by the power of
the sword, and without the aid of parliament.[2] But these intrigues were
now at an end; by the dissolution Richard had signed his own deposition;
though he continued to reside at Whitehall, the government fell into
abeyance; even the officers, who had hitherto frequented
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 677. England's Confusion, 9. Clarendon Papers, 451,
456. Ludlow, ii. 174. Merc. Pol. 564.]
[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 659, 661.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. April 22.]
his court, abandoned him, some to appease, by their attendance at
Wallingford House, the resentment of their adversaries, the others, to
provide, by their absence, for their own safety. If the supreme authority
resided any where, it was with Fleetwood, who now held the nominal command
of the army; but he and his associates were controlled both by the meeting
of officers at St. James's, and by the consultations of the republican
party in the city; and therefore contented themselves with depriving the
friends of Richard of their commissions, and with giving their regiments
to the men who had been cashiered by his father.[1] Unable to agree on
any form of government among themselves, they sought to come to an
understanding with the republican leaders. These demanded the restoration
of the long parliament, on the ground that, as its interruption by Cromwell
had been illegal, it was still the supreme authority in the nation; and
the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage,
insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate
authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate. But the country
was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland
and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and
Cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to
the advantage of the exiled king. As a last resource, the officers, by
an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding,
invited[a] the members of the long parliament to resume the trust of
[Footnote 1: See the Humble Remonstrance from four hundred Non-commissioned
Officers and Privates of Major-general Goffe's Regiment (so called) of
Foot. London, 1659.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 6.]
which they had been unrighteously deprived. With some difficulty,
two-and-forty were privately collected in the Painted Chamber; Lenthall,
the former speaker, after much entreaty, put himself at their head,[a] and
the whole body passed into the house through two lines of officers, some
of whom were the very individuals by whom, six years before, they had been
ignominiously expelled.[1]
The reader will recollect that, on a former occasion, in the year 1648, the
Presbyterian members of the long parliament had been excluded by the army.
Of these, one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, eighty of whom
actually resided in the capital. That they had as good a right to resume
their seats as the members who had been expelled by Cromwell could hardly
be doubted; but they were royalists, still adhering to the principles which
they professed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, and from their
number, had they been admitted, would have instantly outvoted the advocates
of republicanism. They assembled in Westminster Hall;[b] and a deputation
of fourteen, with Sir George Booth, Prynne, and Annesley at their head,
proceeded to the house. The doors were closed in their faces; a company of
soldiers, the keepers, as they were sarcastically called, of the liberties
of England, filled the lobby; and a resolution was passed that no former
member, who had not subscribed the engagement, should sit till further
order of parliament.[c] The attempt, however, though it failed of success,
produced its effect. It served to countenance a belief that the sitting
members were mere tools of the military, and supplied the royalists with
the means of masking their
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 179-186. Whitelock, 677. England's Confusion, 9.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. May 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. May 9.]
real designs under the popular pretence of vindicating the freedom of
parliament.[1]
By gradual additions, the house at last amounted to seventy members, who,
while they were ridiculed by their adversaries with the appellation of the
"Rump," constituted themselves the supreme authority in the three kingdoms.
They appointed, first, a committee of safety, and then a council of state,
notified to the foreign ministers their restoration to power, and, to
satisfy the people, promised by a printed declaration[a] to establish a
form of government, which should secure civil and religious liberty without
a single person, or kingship, or house of lords. The farce of addresses
was renewed; the "children of Zion," the asserters of the good old cause,
clamorously displayed their joy; and Heaven was fatigued with prayers for
the prosperity and permanence of the new government.[2]
That government at first depended for its existence on the good-will of the
military in the neighbourhood of London; gradually it obtained[b] promises
of support from the forces at a distance. 1. Monk, with his
[Footnote 1: Journ. May 9. Loyalty Banished, 3. England's Confusion, 12.
On the 9th, Prynne found his way into the house, and maintained his right
against his opponents till dinner-time. After dinner he returned, but was
excluded by the military. He was careful, however, to inform the public of
the particulars, and moreover undertook to prove that the long parliament
expired at the death of the king; 1. On the authority of the doctrine laid
down in the law books; 2. Because all writs of summons abate by the king's
death in parliament; 3. Because the parliament is called by a king regnant,
and is his, the king regnant's, parliament, and deliberates on his
business; 4. Because the parliament is a corporation, consisting of king,
lords, and commons, and if one of the three be extinct, the body corporate
no longer exists.--See Loyalty Banished, and a true and perfect Narrative
of what was done and spoken by and between Mr. Prynne, &c., 1650.]
[Footnote 2: See the Declarations of the Army and the Parliament in the
Journals, May 7.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. May 17.]
officers, wrote to the speaker, congratulating him and his colleagues on
their restoration to power, and hypocritically thanking them for their
condescension in taking up so heavy a burthen; but, at the same time,
reminding them of the services of Oliver Cromwell, and of the debt of
gratitude which the nation owed to his family.[1] 2. Lockhart hastened to
tender the services of the regiments in Flanders, and received in return a
renewal of his credentials as ambassador, with a commission to attend the
conferences between the ministers of France and Spain at Fuentarabia. 3.
Montague followed with a letter from the fleet; but his professions of
attachment were received with distrust. To balance his influence with the
seamen, Lawson received the command of a squadron destined to cruise in the
Channel; and, to watch his conduct in the Baltic, three commissioners, with
Algernon Sydney at their head, were joined with him in his mission to the
two northern courts.[2] 4. There still remained the army in Ireland. From
Henry Cromwell, a soldier possessing the affections of the military, and
believed to inherit the abilities of his father, an obstinate, and perhaps
successful, resistance was anticipated. But he wanted decision. Three
parties had presented themselves to his choice; to earn, by the promptitude
of his acquiescence, the gratitude of the new government; or to maintain by
arms the right of his deposed brother; or to declare, as he was strongly
solicited to declare, in favour of Charles Stuart. Much time was lost in
consultation; at length the thirst of resentment, with the lure of reward,
determined him
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 678.]
[Footnote 2: Thurloe, 669, 670. Ludlow, ii. 199. Journals, May 7, 9, 18,
26, 31.]
to unfurl the royal standard;[1] then the arrival of letters from England
threw him back into his former state of irresolution; and, while he thus
wavered from project to project, some of his officers ventured to
profess their attachment to the commonwealth, the privates betrayed a
disinclination to separate their cause from that of their comrades in
England, and Sir Hardress Waller, in the interest of the parliament,
surprised the castle of Dublin.[a] The last stroke reduced Henry at once to
the condition of a suppliant; he signified his submission by a letter
to the speaker, obeyed the commands of the house to appear before the
council,[b] and, having explained to them the state of Ireland, was
graciously permitted to retire into the obscurity of private life. The
civil administration of the island devolved on five commissioners, and
the command of the army was given to Ludlow,[c] with the rank of
lieutenant-general of the horse.[2]
But the republican leaders soon discovered that they had not been called
to repose on a bed of roses.[d] The officers at Wallingford House began to
dictate to the men whom they had made their nominal masters, and forwarded
to them fifteen demands, under the modest title of "the things which they
had on their minds," when they restored the long parliament.[3] The house
took them successively into consideration. A committee was appointed to
report the form of government the best calculated to secure the liberties
of the people; the duration of the existing parliament was
[Footnote 1: Carte's Letters, ii. 242. Clar. Pap. 500, 501, 516.]
[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 683, 684. Journals, June 14, 27, July 4, 17.
Henry Cromwell resided on his estate of Swinney Abbey, near Sohan, in
Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1674.--Noble, i. 227.]
[Footnote 3: See the Humble Petition and Address of the Officers, printed
by Henry Hills, 1659.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. June 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. July 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. July 18.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1659. May 15.]
limited to twelve months; freedom of worship was extended to all believers
in the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, with the usual exception
of prelatists and papists; and an act of oblivion, after many debates, was
passed, but so encumbered with provisoes and exceptions, that it served
rather to irritate than appease.[1] The officers had requested[a] that
lands of inheritance, to the annual value of ten thousand pounds, should be
settled on Richard Cromwell, and a yearly pension of eight thousand pounds
on her "highness dowager," his mother. But it was observed in the house
that, though Richard exercised no authority, he continued to occupy the
state apartments at Whitehall; and a suspicion existed that he was kept
there as an object of terror, to intimate to the members that the same
power could again set him up, which had so recently brought him down. By
repeated messages, he was ordered to retire; and, on his promise to obey,
the parliament granted him the privilege of freedom from arrest during six
months; transferred his private debts, amounting to twenty-nine thousand
six hundred and forty pounds, to the account of the nation, gave him two
thousand pounds as a relief to his present necessities, and voted that
a yearly income of ten thousand pounds should be settled on him and his
heirs, a grant easily made on paper, but never carried into execution.[2]
[Footnote 1: Declaration of General Council of Officers, 27th of October,
p. 5. For the different forms of government suggested by different
projectors, see Ludlow, ii. 206.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, May 16, 25, July 4, 12, 16.--Ludlow (ii. 198) makes
the present twenty thousand pounds; but the sum of two thousand pounds is
written at length in the Journals; May 25. While he was at Whitehall, he
entertained proposals from the royalists, consented to accept a title and
twenty thousand pounds a year, and designed to escape to the fleet under
Montague, but was too strictly watched to effect his purpose.--Clar. Pap.
iii. 475, 477, 478.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1659. July 12.]
But the principal source of disquietude still remained. Among the fifteen
articles presented to the house, the twelfth appeared, not in the shape
of a request, but of a declaration, that the officers unanimously owned
Fleetwood as "commander-in-chief of the land forces in England." It was the
point for which they had contended under Richard; and Ludlow, Vane, and
Salloway earnestly implored their colleagues to connive at what it was
evidently dangerous to oppose. But the lessons of prudence were thrown
away on the rigid republicanism of Hazlerig, Sydney, Neville, and their
associates, who contended that to be silent was to acknowledge in the
council of officers an authority independent of the parliament. They
undertook to remodel the constitution of the army. The office
of lord-general was abolished; no intermediate rank between the
lieutenant-general and the colonels was admitted; Fleetwood was named
lieutenant-general, with the chief command in England and Scotland, but
limited in its duration to a short period, revocable at pleasure, and
deprived of several of those powers which had hitherto been annexed to
it. All military commissions were revoked, and an order was made that a
committee of nine members should recommend the persons to be officers in
each regiment; that their respective merits should be canvassed in the
house; and that those who had passed this ordeal should receive their
commissions at the table from the hand of the speaker. The object of this
arrangement was plain: to make void the declaration of the military, to
weed out men of doubtful fidelity, and to render the others dependent
for their situations on the pleasure of the house. Fleetwood, with his
adherents, resolved never to submit to the degradation, while the privates
amused themselves with ridiculing the age and infirmities of him whom they
called their new lord-general, the speaker Lenthall; but Hazlerig prevailed
on Colonel Hacker, with his officers, to conform; their example gradually
drew others; and, at length, the most discontented, though with shame
and reluctance, condescended to go through this humbling ceremony. The
republicans congratulated each other on their victory; they had only
accelerated their defeat.[1]
Ever since the death of Oliver, the exiled king had watched with intense
interest the course of events in England; and each day added a new stimulus
to his hopes of a favourable issue. The unsettled state of the nation,
the dissensions among his enemies, the flattering representations of his
friends, and the offers of co-operation from men who had hitherto opposed
his claims, persuaded him that the day of his restoration was at hand.
That the opportunity might not be forfeited by his own backwardness, he
announced[a] to the leaders of the royalists his intention of coming to
England, and of hazarding his life in the company of his faithful subjects.
There was scarcely a county in which the majority of the nobility and
gentry did not engage to rally round his standard; the first day of August
was fixed for the general rising; and it was determined[b] in the council
at Brussels that Charles should repair in disguise to the coast of
Bretagne, where he might procure a passage into Wales or Cornwall; that the
duke of York, with six hundred veterans furnished by the prince of Condé,
should attempt to land from Boulogne on the coast of Kent; and that the
duke of Gloucester should follow
[Footnote 1: Journals, passim. Ludlow, ii. 197. Declaration of Officers, 6.
Thurloe, 679. Clarend. Hist. iii. 665.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. June 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. July.]
from Ostend with the royal army of four thousand men under the Marshal
Marsin. Unfortunately his concerns in England had been hitherto conducted
by a council called "the Knot," at the head of which was Sir Richard
Willis. Willis, the reader is aware, was a traitor; but it was only of late
that the eyes of Charles had been opened to his perfidy by Morland, the
secretary of Thurloe, who, to make his own peace, sent to the court at
Bruges some of the original communications in the writing of Willis. This
discovery astonished and perplexed the king. To make public the conduct of
the traitor was to provoke him to farther disclosures: to conceal it, was
to connive at the destruction of his friends, and the ruin of his own
prospects. He first instructed his correspondents to be reserved in their
communications with "the Knot;"[a] he then ordered Willis to meet him on
a certain day at Calais;[b] and, when this order was disregarded, openly
forbade the royalists to give to the traitor information, or to follow his
advice.[1]
But these precautions came too late. After the deposition of the protector,
Willis had continued to communicate with Thurloe, who with the intelligence
[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 514, 517, 518, 520, 524, 526, 529, 531, 535,
536. Willis maintained his innocence, and found many to believe him. Echard
(p. 729) has published a letter with Morland's signature, in which he is
made to say that he never sent any of the letters of Willis to the king,
nor even so much as knew his name; whence Harris (ii. 215) infers that the
whole charge is false. That, however, it was true, no one can doubt who
will examine the proofs in the Clarendon Papers (iii. 518, 526, 529, 533,
535, 536, 542, 549, 556, 558, 562, 563, 574, 583, 585), and in Carte's
Collection of Letters (ii. 220, 256, 284). Indeed, the letter from Willis
of the 9th of May, 1660, soliciting the king's pardon, leaves no room for
doubt.--Clar. Pap. 643. That Morland was the informer, and, consequently,
the letter in Echard is a forgery, is also evident from the reward which
he received at the restoration, and from his own admission to Pepys.--See
Pepys, i. 79, 82, 133, 8vo. See also "Life of James II." 370.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. July 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 7.]
which he thus obtained, was enabled to purchase the forbearance of his
former opponents. At an early period in July, the council was in possession
of the plan of the royalists. Reinforcements were immediately demanded from
the armies in Flanders and Ireland; directions were issued for a levy of
fourteen regiments of one thousand men each;[a] measures were taken for
calling out the militia; numerous arrests were made in the city and every
part of the country; and the known Cavaliers were compelled to leave the
metropolis, and to produce security for their peaceable behaviour. These
proceedings seemed to justify Willis in representing the attempt as
hopeless; and, at his persuasion, "the Knot" by circular letters forbade
the rising, two days before the appointed time.[b] The royalists were thus
thrown into irremediable confusion. Many remained quiet at their homes;
many assembled in arms, and dispersed on account of the absence of their
associates; in some counties the leaders were intercepted in their way
to the place of rendezvous; in others as soon as they met, they were
surrounded or charged by a superior force. In Cheshire alone was the
royal standard successfully unfurled by Sir George Booth, a person of
considerable influence in the county, and a recent convert to the cause of
the Stuarts. In the letter which he circulated, he was careful to make
no mention of the king, but called on the people to defend their rights
against the tyranny of an insolent soldiery and a pretended parliament.[c]
"Let the nation freely choose its representatives, and those
representatives as freely sit without awe or force of soldiery." This was
all that he sought: in the determination of such an assembly, whatever that
determination might be, both he and
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 13.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 29.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. August 2.]
his friends would cheerfully acquiesce.[1] It was in effect a rising on
the Presbyterian interest; and the proceedings were in a great measure
controlled by a committee of minister, who scornfully rejected the aid of
the Catholics, and received with jealousy Sir Thomas Middleton, though a
known Presbyterian, because he openly avowed himself a royalist.
At Chester, the parliamentary garrison retired into the castle, and the
insurgents took possession of the city. Each day brought to them a new
accession of strength; and their apparent success taught them to augur
equally well of the expected attempts of their confederates throughout the
kingdom. But the unwelcome truth could not long be concealed; and when they
learned that they stood alone, that every other rising had been either
prevented or instantly suppressed, and that Lambert was hastening against
them with four regiments of cavalry and three of foot, their confidence
was exchanged for despair; every gentleman who had risked his life in the
attempt claimed a right to give his advice; and their counsels, from fear,
inexperience, and misinformation, became fluctuating and contradictory.[a]
After much hesitation, they resolved to proceed to Nantwich and defend the
passage of the Weever; but so rapid had been the march of the enemy, who
sent forward part of the infantry on horseback, that the advance was
already arrived in the neighbourhood; and, while the royalists lay
unsuspicious of danger in the town, Lambert forced the passage of the river
at Winnington.[b] In haste, they filed out of Nantwich into the nearest
fields; but here they found that most of their ammunition was still at
Chester;[c] and, on the suggestion that the position was
[Footnote 1: Parl. Hist. xxiii. 107.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 18.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. August 19.]
unfavourable, hastened to take possession of a neighbouring eminence.
Colonel Morgan, with his troop, attempted to keep the enemy in check; he
fell, with thirty men; and the rest of the insurgents, at the approach of
their adversaries, turned their backs and fled. Three hundred were made
prisoners in the pursuit, and few of the leaders had the good fortune to
escape. The earl of Derby, who had raised men in Lancashire to join the
royalists, was taken in the disguise of a servant. Booth, dressed as a
female, and riding on a pillion, took[a] the direct road for London, but
betrayed himself at Newton Pagnell by his awkwardness in alighting from
the horse. Middleton, who was eighty years old, fled to Chirk Castle; and,
after a defence of a few days, capitulated,[b] on condition that he should
have two months to make his peace with the parliament.[1]
The news of this disaster reached the duke of York at Boulogne, fortunately
on the very evening on which he was to have embarked with his men. Charles
received it at Rochelle, whither he had been compelled to proceed in search
of a vessel to convey him to Wales. Abandoning the hopeless project, he
instantly continued his journey to the congress at Fuentarabia, with the
delusive expectation that, on the conclusion of peace between the two
crowns, he should obtain a supply of money, and perhaps still more
substantial aid, from a personal interview with the ministers, Cardinal
Mazarin and Don Louis de Haro.[2] Montague, who had but recently become a
proselyte to the royal cause,
[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 672-675. Clar. Pap. iii. 673, 674. Ludlow,
ii. 223. Whitelock, 683. Carte's Letters, 194, 202. Lambert's Letter,
printed for Thomas Neucombe, 1659.]
[Footnote 2: Both promised to aid him secretly, but not in such manner as
to give offence to the ruling party in England.--Clar. Pap. iii. 642.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. August 24.]
was drawn by his zeal into the most imminent danger. As soon as he heard of
the insurrection, he brought back the fleet from the Sound, in defiance of
his brother commissioners, with the intention of blockading the mouth
of the Thames, and of facilitating the transportation of troops. On his
arrival he learned the failure of his hopes; but boldly faced the danger,
appeared before the council, and assigned the want of provisions as the
cause of his return. They heard him with distrust; but it was deemed
prudent to dissemble, and he received permission to withdraw.[1]
To reward Lambert for this complete, though almost bloodless, victory,
the parliament[a] voted him the sum of one thousand pounds, which he
immediately distributed among his officers. But while they recompensed his
services, they were not the less jealous of his ambition. They remembered
how instrumental he had been in raising Cromwell to the protectorate; they
knew his influence in the army; and they feared his control over the timid,
wavering mind of Fleetwood, whom he appeared to govern in the same manner
as Cromwell had governed Fairfax. It had been hoped that his absence on the
late expedition would afford them leisure to gain the officers remaining in
the capital; but the unexpected rapidity of his success had defeated their
policy; and, in a short time, the intrigue which had been interrupted by
the insurrection was resumed. While Lambert hastened back to the capital,
his army followed by slow marches; and at Derby the officers subscribed[b]
a petition, which had been clandestinely forwarded to them from Wallingford
House. In it they complained that adequate rewards were not conferred on
the deserving; and
[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 16. Clar. Pap. iii. 551. Carte's Letters, ii.
210, 236. Pepys' Memoirs, i. 157.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Sept. 14.]
demanded that the office of commander-in-chief should be given to Fleetwood
without limitation of time, and the rank of major-general to their
victorious leader; that no officer should be deprived of his commission
without the judgment of a court-martial; and that the government should be
settled in a house of representatives and a permanent senate. Hazlerig,
a man of stern republican principles, and of a temper hasty, morose, and
ungovernable, obtained a sight of this paper, denounced[a] it as an attempt
to subvert the parliament, and moved that Lambert, its author, should be
sent to the Tower; but his violence was checked by the declaration of
Fleetwood, that Lambert knew nothing of its origin; and the house contented
itself with ordering all copies of the obnoxious petition to be delivered
up, and with resolving[b] that "to augment the number of general officers
was needless, chargeable, and dangerous."[1] From that moment a breach was
inevitable. The house, to gratify the soldiers, had advanced their daily
pay; and with the view of discharging their arrears, had raised[c] the
monthly assessment from thirty-five thousand pounds to one hundred thousand
pounds.[2] But the military leaders were not to be diverted from their
purpose. Meetings were daily and nightly held at Wallingford House; and
another petition with two hundred and thirty signatures was presented by
Desborough, accompanied by all the field-officers in the metropolis; In
most points it was similar to the former; but it contained a demand that,
whosoever should afterwards "groundlessly and causelessly inform the house
against their servants, thereby creating jealousies, and casting scandalous
imputations upon them, should be
[Footnote 1: Journ., Aug. 23, Sept. 22, 23. Ludlow, ii. 223, 227, 233,
244.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., May 31, Aug. 18, Sept. 1]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Sept. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. Oct. 5.]
brought to examination, justice, and condign punishment." This was a
sufficient intimation to Hazlerig and his party to provide for their own
safety. Three regiments, through the medium of their officers, had already
made the tender of their services for the protection of the house; Monk,
from Scotland, and Ludlow, from Ireland, wrote that their respective armies
were animated with similar sentiments; and a vote was passed and ordered
to be published,[a] declaring it to be treason to levy money on the people
without the previous consent of parliament, a measure which, as all the
existing taxes were to expire on the first day of the ensuing year, made
the military dependent for their future subsistence on the pleasure of
the party. Hazlerig, thus fortified, deemed himself a match for his
adversaries; the next morning he boldly threw down the gauntlet;[b] by one
vote, Lambert, Desborough, six colonels, and one major, were deprived of
their Commissions for having subscribed the copy of the petition sent to
Colonel Okey; and, by a second, Fleetwood was dismissed from his office
of commander-in-chief, and made president of a board of seven members
established for the government of the army. Aware, however, that he might
expect resistance, the republican chieftain called his friends around him
during the night; and, at the dawn of day, it was discovered that he had
taken military possession of King-street and the Palace-yard with two
regiments of foot and four troops of horse, who protested aloud that they
would live and die with the parliament.[1][c]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 28, Oct. 5, 10, 11, 12. Ludlow, ii. 229, 247.
Carte's Letters, ii, 246. Thurloe, vii. 755. Declaration of General Council
of Officers, 9-16. True Narrative of the Proceedings in Parliament, Council
of State, &c., published by special order, 1659. Printed by John Redmayne.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Oct 12.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1659. Oct 13.]
Lambert mustered about three thousand men. His first care was to intercept
the access of members to the house, and to prevent the egress of the
militia from the city. He then marched to Westminster. Meeting the speaker,
who was attended by his guard, he ordered the officer on duty to dismount,
gave the command to Major Creed, one of those who had been deprived of
their commissions by the preceding vote, and scornfully directed him to
conduct the "lord-general" to Whitehall, whence he was permitted to return
to his own house. In Westminster, the two parties faced each other; but the
ardour of the privates did not correspond with that of the leaders; and,
having so often fought in the same ranks, they showed no disposition to
imbrue their hands in each other's blood. In the mean time the council
of state assembled: on the one side Lambert and Desborough, on the other
Hazlerig and Morley, appeared to support their pretensions; much time
was spent in complaint and recrimination, much in hopeless attempts to
reconcile the parties; but the cause of the military continued to make
converts; the advocates of the "rump," aware that to resist was fruitless,
consented to yield; and it was stipulated that the house should cease to
sit, that the council of officers should provide for the public peace,
arrange a new form of government, and submit it to the approbation of a new
parliament. An order, that the forces on both sides should retire to their
respective quarters, was gladly obeyed; the men mixed together as friends
and brothers, and reciprocally promised never more to draw the sword
against each other.[1]
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 685. Journals, Oct. 13. Clar. Pap. iii. 581, 590.
Ludlow, ii. 247-251. Ludlow's account differs considerably from that
by Whitelock. But the former was in Ireland, the latter present at the
council.]
Thus a second time the supreme authority devolved on the meeting of
officers at Wallingford House. They immediately established their favourite
plan for the government of the army. The office of commander-in-chief,
in its plenitude of power, was restored to Fleetwood; the rank of
major-general of the forces in Great Britain was given to Lambert; and all
those officers who refused to subscribe a new engagement, were removed from
their commands. At the same time they annulled by their supreme authority
all proceedings in parliament on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of October,
vindicated their own conduct in a publication with the title of "The Army's
Plea,"[1] vested the provisional exercise of the civil authority in a
committee of safety of twenty-three members, and denounced the penalties of
treason against all who should refuse to obey its orders, or should venture
to levy forces without its permission. An attempt was even made to replace
Richard Cromwell in the protectorial dignity;[a] for this purpose he came
from Hampshire to London, escorted by three troops of horse; but his
supporters in the meeting were out-voted by a small majority, and he
retired to Hampton Court.[2]
[Footnote 1: See Declaration of the General Council of Officers, 17. The
Army's Plea for its Present Practice, printed by Henry Hills, printer to
the army, 1659, is in many parts powerfully written. The principal argument
is, that as the parliament, though bound by the solemn league and covenant
to defend the king's person, honour, and dignity, did not afterwards
scruple to arraign, condemn, and execute him because he had broken his
trust; so the army, though they had engaged to be true and faithful to the
parliament, might lawfully rise against it, when they found that it did not
preserve the just rights and liberties of the people. This condition was
implied in the engagement; otherwise the making of the engagement would
have been a sin, and the keeping thereof would have been a sin also, and so
an adding of sin to sin.]
[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 685, 686. Ludlow, ii. 250, 286, 287. Clar. Pap.
591. At the restoration, Richard, to escape from his creditors, fled to the
continent; and, after an expatriation of almost twenty years, returned to
England to the neighbourhood of Cheshunt, where he died in 1713, at the age
of eighty-six.--Noble, i. 228.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct 26.]
Of all the changes which had surprised and perplexed the nation since
the death of the last king, none had been received with such general
disapprobation as the present. It was not that men lamented the removal of
the Rump; but they feared the capricious and arbitrary rule of the army;
and, when they contrasted their unsettled state with the tranquillity
formerly enjoyed under the monarchy, many were not backward in the
expression of their wishes for the restoration of the ancient line of their
princes. The royalists laboured to improve this favourable disposition; yet
their efforts might have been fruitless, had the military been united among
themselves. But among the officers there were several who had already made
their peace with Charles by the promise of their services, and many
who secretly retained a strong attachment to Hazlerig and his party in
opposition to Lambert. In Ireland, Barrow, who had been sent as their
representative from Wallingford House, found the army so divided and
wavering, that each faction alternately obtained a short and precarious
superiority; and in Scotland, Cobbet, who arrived there on a similar
mission, was, with seventeen other officers who approved of his proposals,
imprisoned by order of Monk.[1]
From this moment the conduct of Monk will claim a considerable share of the
reader's attention. Ever since the march of Cromwell in pursuit of the king
to Worcester he had commanded in Scotland; where, instead of concerning
himself with the intrigues and parties in England, he appeared to have no
other occupation
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, ii. 237, 252, 259, 262, 300. Clar. Pap. iii. 591.
Carte's Letters, 266.]
than the duties of his place, to preserve the discipline of his army,
and enforce the obedience of the Scots. His despatches to Cromwell from
Scotland form a striking contrast with those from the other officers of the
time. There is in them no parade of piety, no flattery of the protector, no
solicitation for favours. They are short, dry, and uninteresting, confined
entirely to matters of business, and those only of indispensable necessity.
In effect, the distinctive characteristic of the man was an impenetrable
secrecy.[1] Whatever were his predilections or opinions, his wishes or
designs, he kept them locked up within his own breast. He had no confidant,
nor did he ever permit himself to be surprised into an unguarded avowal.
Hence all parties, royalists, protectorists, and republicans, claimed him
for their own, though that claim was grounded on their hopes, not on
his conduct. Charles had been induced to make to him repeatedly the most
tempting offers, which were supported by the solicitations of his wife and
his domestic chaplain; Monk listened to them without displeasure, though he
never unbosomed himself to the agents or to his chaplain so far as to put
himself in their power. Cromwell had obtained some information of these
intrigues; but, unable to discover any real ground of suspicion, he
contented himself with putting Monk on his guard by a bantering postscript
to one of his letters. "Tis said," he added, "there is a cunning fellow in
Scotland,
[Footnote 1: "His natural taciturnity was such, that most of his friends,
who thought they knew him best, looked upon George Monk to have no other
craft in him than that of a plain soldier, who would obey the parliament's
orders, and see that his own were obeyed."--Price, Mystery and Method of
his Majesty's happy Restoration, in Select Tracts relating to the Civil
Wars in England, published by Baron Maseres, ii. 700.]
called George Monk, who lies in wait there to serve Charles Stuart; pray
use your diligence to take him and send him up to me."[1] After the fall
of the protector Richard, he became an object of greater distrust. To
undermine his power, Fleetwood ordered two regiments of horse attached
to the Scottish army to return to England; and the republicans, when the
military commissions were issued by the speaker, removed a great number of
his officers, and supplied their places with creatures of their own. Monk
felt these affronts: discontent urged him to seek revenge; and, when he
understood that Booth was at the head of a considerable force, he dictated
a letter to the speaker, complaining of the proceedings of parliament, and
declaring that, as they had abandoned the real principles of the old cause,
they must not expect the support of his army. His object was to animate the
insurgents and embarrass their adversaries; but, on the very morning
on which the letter was to be submitted for signature to his principal
officers, the news of Lambert's victory arrived;[a] the dangerous
instrument was instantly destroyed, and the secret most religiously kept by
the few who had been privy to the intention of the general.[2]
To this abortive attempt Monk, notwithstanding his wariness, had been
stimulated by his brother, a clergyman of Cornwall, who visited him with a
message from Sir John Grenville by commission from Charles Stuart.
After the failure of Booth, the general dismissed him with a letter of
congratulation to the parliament, but without any answer to Grenville, and
under an oath to keep secret whatever he had learnt
[Footnote 1: Price, 712.]
[Footnote 2: Id. 711, 716, 721.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. August 23.]
respecting the past, or the intended projects of his brother.[1] But the
moment that Monk heard of the expulsion of the members,[a] and of the
superior rank conferred on Lambert, he determined to appear openly as the
patron of the vanquished, under the alluring, though ambiguous, title of
"asserter of the ancient laws and liberties of the country." Accordingly,
he secured with trusty garrisons the castle of Edinburgh and the citadel
of Leith,[b] sent a strong detachment to occupy Berwick, and took the
necessary measures to raise and discipline a numerous force of cavalry. At
Leith was held a general council of officers; they approved of his object,
engaged to stand by him, and announced their determination, by letters
directed to Lenthall, the speaker, to the council at Wallingford House, and
to the commanders of the fleet in the Downs, and of the army in Ireland.
It excited, however, no small surprise, that the general, while he thus
professed to espouse the defence of the parliament, cashiered all the
officers introduced by the parliament into his army, and restored all
those who had been expelled. The more discerning began to suspect his real
intentions;[2] but Hazlerig and his party were too
[Footnote 1: All that Grenville could learn from the messenger was, that
his brother regretted the failure of Booth, and would oppose the arbitrary
attempts of the military in England; an answer which, though favourable
as far as it went, still left the king in uncertainty as to his real
intentions.--Clar. Pap. iii. 618.]
[Footnote 2: Ludlow, ii. 269. Whitelock, 686, 689, 691. Price, 736, 743.
Skinner, 106-109. Monk loudly asserted the contrary. "I do call God
to witness," he says in the letter to the speaker, Oct. 20, "that the
asserting of a commonwealth is the only intent of my heart."--True
Narrative, 28. When Price remonstrated with him, he replied: "You see who
are about me and write these things. I must not show any dislike of them.
I perceive they are jealous enough of me already."--Price, 746. The fact
probably was, that Monk was neither royalist nor republican: that he sought
only his own interest, and had determined to watch every turn of affairs,
and to declare at last in favour of that party which appeared most likely
to obtain the superiority.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Oct. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Oct. 18.]
elated to dwell on the circumstance, and, under the promise of his
support, began to organize the means of resistance against their military
oppressors.
Monk soon discovered that he was embarked in a most hazardous undertaking.
The answers to his letters disapproved of his conduct; and the knowledge of
these answers kindled among his followers a spirit of disaffection which
led to numerous desertions. From the general of an army obedient to his
commands, he had dwindled into the leader of a volunteer force, which it
was necessary to coax and persuade. Two councils were formed, one of
the colonels of the longest standing, the other of all the commissioned
officers. The first perused the public despatches received by the general,
and wrote the answers, which were signed by him as the chairman; the other
was consulted on all measures respecting the conduct of the army, and
confirmed or rejected the opinion of the colonels by the majority of
voices. But if Monk was controlled by this arrangement, it served to screen
him from suspicion. The measures adopted were taken as the result of the
general will.
To the men at Wallingford House it became of the first importance to win
by intimidation, or to reduce by force, this formidable opponent. Lambert
marched against him from London at the head of seven thousand men; but the
mind of the major-general was distracted by doubts and suspicions; and,
before his departure, he exacted a solemn promise from Fleetwood to agree
to no accommodation, either with the king, or with Hazlerig, till he had
previously received the advice and concurrence of Lambert himself.[1] To
Monk delay was as necessary as expedition was desirable to his opponents.
In point of numbers and experience the force under his command was no
match for that led by Lambert, but his magazines and treasury were amply
supplied, while his adversary possessed not money enough to keep his army
together for more than a few weeks. Before the major-general reached
Newcastle, he met three deputies from Monk on their way to treat with the
council in the capital. As no arguments could induce them to open the
negotiation with him, he allowed them to proceed, and impatiently awaited
the result. After much discussion, an agreement was concluded in London;
but Monk, instead of ratifying it with his signature, discovered,[a]
or pretended to discover, in it much that was obscure or ambiguous, or
contrary to the instructions received by the deputies; his council agreed
with him in opinion; and a second negotiation was opened with Lambert at
Newcastle, to obtain from him an explanation of the meaning of the officers
in the metropolis. Thus delay was added to delay; and Monk improved the
time to dismiss even the privates whose sentiments were suspected, and to
fill up the vacancies in the regiments of infantry by levies among the
Scots. At the same time he called a convention of the Scottish estates at
Berwick, of two representatives from each county and one from each borough,
recommended to them the peace of the country during his absence, and
obtained from them the grant of a year's arrears of their taxes, amounting
to sixty thousand pounds, in
[Footnote 1: See the Conferences of Ludlow and Whitelock with Fleetwood,
Ludlow, ii. 277; Whitelock, 690.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Nov. 19.]
addition to the excise and customs. He then fixed his head-quarters at
Coldstream.[1]
In the mean while the detention of Lambert in the north by the artifices of
Monk had given occasion to many important events in the south. Within
the city several encounters had taken place between the military and the
apprentices;[2] a free parliament had become the general cry; and the
citizens exhorted each other to pay no taxes imposed by any other
authority. Lawson, though he wavered at first, declared against the army,
and advanced with his squadron up the river as far as Gravesend. Hazlerig
and Morley were admitted into Portsmouth by the governor, were joined by
the force sent against them by Fleetwood, and marched towards London, that
they might open a communication with the fleet in the river. Alarm produced
in the committee of safety the most contradictory councils. A voice
ventured to suggest the restoration of Charles Stuart; but it was replied
that their offences against the family of Stuart were of too black a dye to
be forgiven; that the king might be lavish of promises now that he stood in
need of their services; but that the vengeance of parliament would absolve
him from the obligation, when the monarchy should once be established. The
final resolution was to call a new parliament against the 24th of January,
and to appoint twenty-one conservators of the public peace during the
interval. But they
[Footnote 1: Price, 741-744. Whitelock, 688, 699. Ludlow, 269, 271, 273.
Skinner, 161, 164.]
[Footnote 2: The posts occupied by the army within the city were, "St.
Paul's Church, the Royall Exchange, Peeter-house in Aldersgate-street, and
Bernet's Castle, Gresham Coledge, Sion Coledge. Without London, were the
Musses, Sumersett-house, Whitehall, St. James's, Scotland-yeard."--MS.
Diary by Thomas Rugge.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Dec. 8.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Dec. 17.]
reckoned on an authority which they no longer possessed. The fidelity
of the common soldiers had been shaken by the letters of Monk, and the
declaration of Lawson. Putting themselves under the command of the officers
who had been lately dismissed, they mustered[a] in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
marched before the house of Lenthall in Chancery Lame, and saluted him
with three volleys of musketry as the representative of the parliament and
lord-general of the army. Desborough, abandoned by his regiment, fled in
despair towards Lambert; and Fleetwood, who for some days had done nothing
but weep and pray, and complain that "the Lord had spit in his face,"
tamely endeavoured to disarm by submission the resentment of his
adversaries. He sought the speaker, fell on his knees before him, and
surrendered his commission.[1]
Thus the Rump was again triumphant. The members, with Lenthall at their
head, resumed[b] possession of the house amidst the loud acclamations
of the soldiery. Their first care was to establish a committee for the
government of the army, and to order the regiments in the north to separate
and march to their respective quarters. Of those among their colleagues who
had supported the late committee of safety, they excused some, and punished
others by suspension, or exclusion, or imprisonment: orders were sent to
Lambert, and the most active of his associates, to withdraw from the army
to their homes, and then instructions were given to the magistrates to take
them into custody. A council of state was appointed, and into the oath to
be taken by the
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 268, 276, 282, 287, 289, 290, 296, 298. Whitelock,
689, 690, 691. Clar. Pap. 625, 629, 636, 641, 647.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. Dec. 24.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. Dec. 26.]
members was introduced a new and most comprehensive abjuration of kingship
and the family of Stuart. All officers commissioned during the interruption
by any other authority than that of Monk were broken; the army was entirely
remodelled; and the time of the house was daily occupied by the continued
introduction of officers to receive their commissions in person from the
hand of the speaker.[1]
In the mean while, Monk, to subdue or disperse the army of Lambert, had
raised up a new and formidable enemy in his rear. Lord Fairfax was become
a convert to the cause of monarchy; to him the numerous royalists in
Yorkshire looked up as leader; and he, on the solemn assurance of Monk that
he would join him within twelve days or perish in the attempt, undertook to
call together his friends, and to surprise the city of York. On the first
day of the new year,[a] each performed his promise. The gates of York were
thrown open to Fairfax by the Cavaliers confined within its walls;[2] and
Monk, with his army, crossed the Tweed on his march against the advanced
posts of the enemy. Thus the flame of civil war was again kindled in the
north; within two days it was extinguished. The messenger from parliament
ordered Lambert's forces to withdraw to their respective quarters.
Dispirited by the defection of the military in the south, they dared not
disobey: at Northallerton the officers bade adieu with tears to their
general; and Lambert retired in privacy to a house which he possessed in
the county. Still, though the weather was
[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 26, Jan. 31.]
[Footnote 2: That the rising under Fairfax was in reality a rising of
royalists, and prompted by the promises of Monk, is plain from the
narrative of Monkton, in the Lansdowne MSS. No. 988, f. 320, 334. See also
Price, 748.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 1.]
severe, though the roads were deeply covered with snow, Monk continued[a]
his march; and, at York, spent five days in consultation with Fairfax; but
to the advice of that nobleman, that he should remain there, assume the
command of their united forces, and proclaim the king, he replied that,
in the present temper of his officers, it would prove a dangerous, a
pernicious, experiment. On the arrival of what he had long expected, an
invitation to Westminster, he resumed his march, and Fairfax, having
received the thanks of the parliament, disbanded[b] his insurrectionary
force.[1]
At York, the general had caned[c] an officer who charged him with the
design of restoring the kingly government; at Nottingham, he prevented with
difficulty the officers from signing an engagement to obey the parliament
in all things "except the bringing in of Charles Stuart;" and at Leicester,
he was compelled to suffer[d] a letter to be written in his name to the
petitioners from Devonshire, stating his opinion that the monarchy could
not be re-established, representing the danger of recalling the members
excluded in 1648, and inculcating the duty of obedience to the parliament
as it was then constituted.[2] Here he was met by two of the most active
members, Scot and Robinson, who had been commissioned to accompany him
during his journey, under the pretence of doing him honour, but, in
reality, to sound his disposition, and to act as spies on his conduct.
He received them with respect as the representatives of the sovereign
authority; and so flattered were they by his attentions, so duped by his
wariness, that they could not see through the veil which he spread over his
intentions.
[Footnote 1: Price, 749-753. Skinner, 196, 200, 205. Journals, Jan. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. 754. Kennet's Register, 32.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. Jan. 16.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. Jan. 19.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1660. Jan. 23.]
As he advanced, he received at every stage addresses from boroughs, cities,
and counties, praying him to restore the excluded members, and to procure
a free and a full parliament. With much affectation of humility, Monk
referred the deputies to the two delegates of the supreme power, who
haughtily rebuked them for their officiousness, while the friends of
Monk laboured to keep alive their hopes by remote hints and obscure
predictions.[1]
To lull the jealousy of the parliament, Monk had taken with him from York
no more than five thousand men, a force considerably inferior to that which
was quartered in London and Westminster. But from St. Alban's he wrote[a]
to the speaker, requesting that five of the regiments in the capital
might be removed before his arrival, alleging the danger of quarrels and
seduction, if his troops were allowed to mix with those who had been so
recently engaged in rebellion. The order was instantly made; but the men
refused[b] to obey. Why, they asked, were they to leave their quarters for
the accommodation of strangers? Why were they to be sent from the capital,
while their pay was several weeks in arrear? The royalists laboured to
inflame the mutineers, and Lambert was on the watch, prepared to place
himself at their head; but the distribution of a sum of money appeased
their murmurs; they consented to march; and the next morning[c] the general
entered at the head of his army, and proceeded to the quarters assigned to
him at Whitehall.[2]
Soon after his arrival, he was invited to attend and
[Footnote 1: Price, 754. Merc. Polit. No. 604. Philips, 595. Journals, Jan.
16.]
[Footnote 2: Price, 755, 757, 758. Jour. Jan. 30. Skinner, 219-221.
Philips, 594, 595, 596. Clar. Pap. iii. 666, 668. Pepys, i. 19, 21.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Jan. 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. Feb. 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. Feb. 3.]
receive the thanks of the house. A chair had been placed for him within
the bar: he stood uncovered behind it; and, in reply[a] to the speaker,
extenuated his own services, related the answers which he had given to
the addresses, warned the parliament against a multiplicity of oaths and
engagements, prayed them not to give any share of power to the Cavaliers or
fanatics, and recommended to their care the settlement of Ireland and the
administration of justice in Scotland. If there was much in this speech
to please, there was also much that gave offence. Scot observed that the
servant had already learned to give directions to his masters.[1]
As a member of the council of state, he was summoned to abjure the house of
Stuart, according to the late order of parliament. He demurred. Seven of
the counsellors, he observed, had not yet abjured, and he wished to know
their reasons, for the satisfaction of his own conscience. Experience had
shown that such oaths were violated as easily as they were taken, and to
him it appeared an offence against Providence to swear never to acquiesce
in that which Providence might possibly ordain. He had given the strongest
proofs of his devotion to parliament: if these were not sufficient, let
them try him again; he was ready to give more.[2]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 6. New Parl. Hist. iii. 1575. Philips, 597.
Price, 759. The Lord-general Monk, his Speech. Printed by J. Macock, 1660.]
[Footnote 2: Gumble, 228. Price, 759, 760. Philips, 595. About this time,
a parcel of letters to the king, written by different persons in different
ciphers, and intrusted to the care of a Mr. Leonard, was intercepted by
Lockhart at Dunkirk, and sent by him to the council. When the writers
were first told that the letters had been deciphered, they laughed at the
information as of a thing impracticable; but were soon undeceived by the
decipherer, who sent to them by the son of the bishop of Ely copies of
their letters in cipher, with a correct interlineary explanation of
each. They were astonished and alarmed; and, to save themselves from the
consequences of the discovery, purchased of him two of the original letters
at the price of three hundred pounds.--Compare Barwick's Life, 171, and
App. 402, 412, 415, 422, with the correspondence on the subject in the
Clarendon Papers, iii. 668, 681, 696, 700, 715. After this, all letters of
importance were conveyed through the hands of Mrs. Mary Knatchbull, the
abbess of the English convent in Gand.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 6.]
The sincerity of this declaration was soon put to the test. The loyal party
in the city, especially among the moderate Presbyterians, had long been on
the increase. At the last elections the common council had been filled with
members of a new character; and the declaration which they issued demanded
"a full and free parliament, according to the ancient and fundamental laws
of the land." Of the assembly sitting in Westminster, as it contained no
representative from the city, no notice was taken; the taxes which it
had imposed were not paid; and the common council, as if it had been
an independent authority, received and answered addresses from the
neighbouring counties. This contumacy, in the opinion of the parliamentary
leaders, called for prompt and exemplary punishment; and it was artfully
suggested that, by making Monk the minister of their vengeance, they
would open a wide breach between him and their opponents. Two hours after
midnight he received[a] an order to march into the city, to arrest eleven
of the principal citizens, to remove the posts and chains which had lately
been fixed in the streets, and to destroy the portcullises and the gates.
After a moment's hesitation, he resolved to obey, rather than hazard the
loss of his commission. The citizens received him with groans and hisses;
the soldiers murmured; the officers tendered their resignations. He merely
replied that his orders left nothing to his discretion; but the reply was
made with a sternness of
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 9.]
tone, and a gloominess of countenance, which showed, and probably was
intended to show, that he acted with reluctance and with self-reproach.[1]
As soon as the posts and chains were removed, Monk suggested, in a letter
to the speaker, that enough had been done to subdue the refractory spirit
of the citizens. But the parliamentary leaders were not satisfied: they
voted that he should execute his former orders; and the demolition of the
gates and portcullises was effected. The soldiers loudly proclaimed
their discontent: the general, mortified and ashamed, though he had been
instructed to quarter them in the city, led them back to Whitehall.[2]
There, on the review of these proceedings, he thought that he discovered
proofs of a design, first to commit him with the citizens, and then to
discard him entirely. For the house, while he was so ungraciously employed,
had received, with a show of favour, a petition from the celebrated
Praise-God Barebone, praying that no man might sit in parliament, or hold
any public office, who refused to abjure the pretensions of Charles Stuart,
or of any other single person. Now this was the very case of the general,
and his suspicions were confirmed by the reasoning of his confidential
advisers. With their aid, a letter to the speaker was prepared[a] the same
evening, and approved the next morning by the council of officers. In
it the latter were made to complain that they had been rendered the
instruments of personal resentment against the citizens, and to require
that by the following Friday every vacancy in the house should be filled
up, preparatory to its
[Footnote 1: Journ. Feb. 9. Price, 761. Ludlow, ii. 336. Clar. Pap. iii.
674, 691. Gumble, 236. Skinner, 231-237.]
[Footnote 2: Journ. Feb. 9. Philips, 599.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 10.]
subsequent dissolution and the calling of a new parliament. Without waiting
for an answer, Monk marched back into Finsbury Fields: at his request, a
common council (that body had recently been dissolved by a vote of the
parliament) was summoned; and the citizens heard from the mouth of the
general that he, who yesterday had come among them as an enemy by the
orders of others, was come that day as a friend by his own choice; and that
his object was to unite his fortune with theirs, and by their assistance to
obtain a full and free parliament for the nation. This speech was received
with the loudest acclamations. The bells were tolled; the soldiers were
feasted; bonfires were lighted; and among the frolics of the night was "the
roasting of the rump," a practical joke which long lived in the traditions
of the city. Scot and Robinson, who had been sent to lead back the general
to Whitehall, slunk away in secrecy, that they might escape the indignation
of the populace.[1]
At Westminster, the parliamentary leaders affected a calmness and
intrepidity which they did not feel. Of the insult offered to their
authority they took no notice; but, as an admonition to Monk, they brought
in a bill[a] to appoint his rival, Fleetwood, commander-in-chief in England
and Scotland. The intervention of the Sunday allowed more sober counsels to
prevail.
[Footnote 1: Price, 765-768. Clar. Pap. iii. 681, 692, 714. Ludlow, 337.
Gumble, 249. Skinner, 237-243. Old Parl. Hist. xxii. 94. Pepys, i. 24,
25. "At Strand-bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires; in
King-street, seven or eight, and all along burning, and roasting, and
drinking for rumps; there being rumps tied upon sticks, and carried up and
down. The butchers at the May-pole in the Strand rang a peal with their
knives, when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate-hill there
was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied to it, and another basting
of it. Indeed it was past imagination."--Ibid. 28.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 11.]
They solicited the general to return to Whitehall; they completed the bill
for the qualifications of candidates and electors; and, on the day fixed by
the letter of the officers, ordered[a] writs to be issued for the filling
up of the vacancies in the representation. This measure had been forced
upon them; yet they had the ingenuity to make it subservient to their own
interest, by inserting a provision in the act, that no man should choose or
be chosen, who had not already bound himself to support a republican form
of government. But immediately the members excluded in 1648 brought forward
their claim to sit, and Monk assumed the appearance of the most perfect
indifference between the parties. At his invitation, nine of the leaders on
each side argued the question before him and his officers; and the result
was, that the latter expressed their willingness to support the secluded
members, on condition that they should pledge themselves to settle the
government of the army, to raise money to pay the arrears, to issue
writs for a new parliament to sit on the 20th of April, and to dissolve
themselves before that period. The general returned[b] to Whitehall;
the secluded members attended his summons; and, after a long speech,
declaratory of his persuasion that a republican form of government and a
moderate presbyterian kirk were necessary to secure and perpetuate the
tranquillity of the nation, he advised them to go and resume their seats.
Accompanied by a great number of officers, they walked to the house; the
guard, under the command of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, opened to let
them pass; and no opposition was made by the speaker or the members.[1]
Hazlerig, however, and the
[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 11, 13, 15, 17, 21. Price, 768-773. Ludlow, ii.
345, 351, 353. Skinner, 256-264. Clar. Pap. 663, 682, 688. Gumble, 260,
263. Philips, 600. The number of secluded members then living was one
hundred and ninety-four, of members sitting or allowed to sit by the orders
of the house, eighty-nine.--"A Declaration of the True State of the Matter
of Fact," 57.]
[Sideline a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 17.]
[Sideline b: A.D. 1660. Feb. 21.]
more devoted of his adherents, rose and withdrew--a fortunate secession for
the royalists; otherwise, with the addition of those among the restored
members who adhered to a commonwealth, the republicans might on many
questions have still commanded a majority.[1]
To the Cavaliers, the conduct of Monk on this occasion proved a source
of the most distressing perplexity. On the one hand, by introducing the
secluded members he had greatly advanced the cause of royalty. For though
Holles, Pierpoint, Popham, and their friends still professed the doctrines
which they had maintained during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, though
they manifested the same hatred of popery and prelacy, though they still
inculcated the necessity of limiting the prerogative in the choice of the
officers of state and in the command of the army, yet they were royalists
by principle, and had, several of them, made the most solemn promises to
the exiled king of labouring strenuously for his restoration. On the other
hand, that Monk at the very time when he gave the law without control,
should declare so loudly in favour of a republican government and
a presbyterian kirk, could not fail to alarm both Charles and his
abettors.[2] Neither was this the only instance: to all, Cavaliers or
republicans, who approached him to discover his intentions, he uniformly
professed the same sentiments, occasionally confirming his professions with
oaths and imprecations. To explain this inconsistency between
[Footnote 1: Hutchinson, 362.]
[Footnote 2: Clar. Hist. iii. 720, 721, 723, 724; Papers, ii. 698.]
the tendency of his actions and the purport of his language, we are told by
those whom he admitted to his private counsels, that it was forced upon him
by the necessity of his situation; that, without it, he must have forfeited
the confidence of the army, which believed its safety and interest to be
intimately linked with the existence of the commonwealth. According to
Ludlow, the best soldier and statesman in the opposite party, Monk had
in view an additional object, to deceive the suspicions and divert the
vigilance of his adversaries; and so successfully had he imposed on the
credulity of many (Hazlerig himself was of the number), that, in defiance
of every warning, they blindly trusted to his sincerity, till their eyes
were opened by the introduction of the secluded members.[1]
In parliament the Presbyterian party now ruled without opposition. They
annulled[a] all votes relative to their own expulsion from the house in
1648; they selected a new council of state, in which the most influential
members were royalists; they appointed Monk commander-in-chief of the
forces in the three kingdoms, and joint commander of the fleet with Admiral
Montague; they granted him the sum of twenty thousand pounds in lieu of
the palace at Hampton Court, settled on him by the republican party;
they discharged[b] from confinement, and freed from the penalty of
sequestration, Sir George Booth and his associates, a great number of
Cavaliers, and the Scottish lords taken after the battle at Worcester;
they restored the common council, borrowed sixty thousand pounds for the
immediate pay of the army,
[Footnote 1: Price, 773. Ludlow, 349, 355. Clar. Pap. iii. 678, 697, 703,
711.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. Feb. 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. March.]
declared the Presbyterian confession of faith to be that of the church of
England, ordered copies of the solemn league and covenant to be hung up in
all churches, offered rewards for the apprehension of Catholic priests,
urged the execution of the laws against Catholic recusants, and fixed the
15th of March for their own dissolution, the 25th of April for the meeting
of a new parliament.[1]
Here, however, a serious difficulty arose. The House of Commons (according
to the doctrine of the secluded members, it could be nothing more) was
but a single branch of the legislature. By what right could it pretend to
summon a parliament? Ought not the House of Lords, the peers who had been
excluded in 1649, to concur? Or rather, to proceed according to law, ought
not the king either to appoint a commission to hold a parliament, as was
usually done in Ireland, or to name a guardian invested with such power,
as was the practice formerly, when our monarchs occasionally resided in
France? But, on this point, Monk was inflexible. He placed guards at the
door of the House of Lords to prevent the entrance of the peers; and he
refused to listen to any expedient which might imply an acknowledgment of
the royal authority. To the arguments urged by others, he replied,[a] that
the parliament according to law determined by the death of Charles I.; that
the present house could justify its sitting on no other ground but that of
necessity, which did not apply to the House of Lords; and that it was in
vain to expect the submission of the army to a parliament called by royal
authority. The military had, with reluctance, consented to the restoration
of
[Footnote 1: Journals, passim.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 3.]
the secluded members; and to ask more of them at present was to hazard all
the advantages which had hitherto been obtained.[1]
Encouraged by the downfall of the republicans, the royalists throughout
the country expressed their sentiments without restraint. In some places
Charles was proclaimed by the populace; several ministers openly prayed
for him in the churches: the common council, in their address, declared
themselves not averse to his restoration; and the house itself was induced
to repeal[a] the celebrated engagement in favour of a commonwealth, without
a single person or a house of peers, and to embody under trusty officers
the militia of the city and the counties, as a counterpoise to the
republican interest in the army. The judges of the late king, and the
purchasers of forfeited property, began to tremble. They first tempted the
ambition of the lord-general with the offer of the sovereign authority.[2]
Rejected by him, they appealed to the military; they represented the loss
of their arrears,
[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 704. Ludlow, 364, 365. Price, 773.]
[Footnote 2: Gumble, 270. Two offers of assistance were made to the
general, on the supposition that he might aspire to the supreme power; one
from the republicans, which I have mentioned, another from Bordeaux, the
French ambassador, in the name of Cardinal Mazarin. On one of these offers
he was questioned by Sir Anthony Ashley Copper in the council of state. If
we may believe Clarges, one of his secret advisers, it was respecting the
former which Clarges mentioned to Cooper. With respect to the offer from
Bordeaux, he tells us that it was made through Clarges himself, and
scornfully rejected by Monk, who nevertheless consented to receive a
visit from Bordeaux, on condition that the subject should not be
mentioned.--Philips, 602, 604. Locke, on the contrary, asserts that Monk
accepted the offer of the French minister; that his wife, through loyalty
to the king, betrayed the secret; and that Cooper put to the general such
searching questions that he was confused, and, in proof of his fidelity,
took away the commissions of several officers of whom the council was
jealous.--Memoirs of Shaftesbury, in Kennet's Register, 86. Locke, ix, 279.
See note (K).]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 10.]
and of the property which they had acquired, as the infallible consequences
of the restoration of the royal exile; and they so far wrought on the fears
of the officers, that an engagement to oppose all attempts to set up a
single person was presented[a] to Monk for his signature, with a request
that he would solicit the concurrence of the parliament. A second
council of officers was held the next morning;[b] the general urged the
inexpediency of troubling the house with new questions, when it was on
the point of dissolving itself; and by the address and influence of his
friends, though with considerable difficulty, he procured the suppression
of the obnoxious paper. In a short time he ordered the several officers
to join their respective regiments, appointed a commission to inspect and
reform the different corps, expelled all the officers whose sentiments he
had reason to distrust, and then demanded and obtained from the army an
engagement to abstain from all interference in matters of state, and to
submit all things to the authority of the new parliament.[1]
Nineteen years and a half had now elapsed since the long parliament first
assembled--years of revolution and bloodshed, during which the nation had
made the trial of almost every form of government, to return at last to
that form from which it had previously departed. On the 16th of March,
one day later than was originally fixed, its existence, which had been
illegally prolonged since the death of Charles I., was terminated[c] by
its own act.[2] The reader is already acquainted with its history. For the
glorious stand
[Footnote 1: Philips, 603, 606. Price, 781. Kennet's Reg. 113. Thurloe,
vii. 852, 859, 870. Pepys, i. 43. Skinner, 279-284.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, March 16.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. March 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. March 16.]
which it made against the encroachments of the crown, it deserves both
admiration and gratitude; its subsequent proceedings assumed a more
ambiguous character; ultimately they led to anarchy and military despotism.
But, whatever were its merits or demerits, of both posterity has reaped the
benefit. To the first, we are indebted for many of the rights which we
now enjoy; by the second, we are warned of the evils which result from
political changes effected by violence, and in opposition to the habits and
predilections of the people.
Monk had now spent more than two months in England, and still his
intentions were covered with a veil of mystery, which no ingenuity,
either of the royalists or of the republicans, could penetrate. Sir John
Grenville, with whom the reader is already acquainted, paid frequent visits
to him at St. James's; but the object of the Cavalier was suspected, and
his attempts[a] to obtain a private interview were defeated by the caution
of the general. After the dissolution, Morrice, the confidential friend
of both, brought them together, and Grenville delivered to Monk a most
flattering letter from the king. He received and perused it with respect.
This was, he observed, the first occasion on which he could express with
safety his devotion to the royal cause; but he was still surrounded with
men of hostile or doubtful sentiments; the most profound secrecy was still
necessary; Grenville might confer in private with Morrice, and must consent
to be himself the bearer of the general's answer. The heads of that
answer were reduced to writing. In it Monk prayed the king to send him a
conciliatory letter, which, at the proper season, he might lay before the
parliament; for himself he asked
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 10.]
nothing; he would not name, as he was desired, his reward; it was not for
him to strike a bargain with his sovereign; but, if he might express his
opinion, he advised Charles to promise a general or nearly general pardon,
liberty of conscience, the confirmation of the national sales, and the
payment of the arrears due to the army. As soon as this paper had been,
read, he threw it into the fire, and bade Grenville rely on his memory for
its contents.[1]
By Charles at Brussels the messenger was received as an angel from heaven.
The doubts which had so long tormented his mind were suddenly removed; the
crown, contrary to expectation, was offered[a] without previous conditions;
and nothing more was required than that he should aid with his pen the
efforts of the general; but when he communicated the glad tidings to
Ormond, Hyde, and Nicholas, these counsellors discovered that the advice,
suggested by Monk, was derogatory to the interests of the throne and the
personal character of the monarch, and composed a royal declaration which,
while it professed to make to the nation the promises recommended by Monk,
in reality neutralized their effect, by subjecting them to such limitations
as might afterwards be imposed by the wisdom of parliament. This paper was
enclosed[b] within a letter to the speaker of the House of Commons; another
letter was addressed to the House of Lords; a third to Monk and the army;
a fourth to Montague and the navy; and a fifth to the lord mayor and the
city. To the general, open copies were transmitted, that he might deliver
or destroy the originals
[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 734-736. Price, 785. Philips, 605. Clar. Pap.
iii. 706, 711. From the last authorities it is plain that Mordaunt was
intrusted with the secret as well as Grenville--also a Mr. Herne, probably
a fictitious name.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 26.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. April 2.]
as he thought fit. Notwithstanding the alterations made at Brussels, he
professed himself satisfied with the declaration, and ordered[a] Grenville
to keep the papers in his custody, till the proper season should arrive.[1]
In the mean while, the writs for the new parliament had been issued; and,
as there was no court to influence, no interference of the military to
control the elections, the result may be fairly taken to express the sense
of the country. The republicans, the Cavaliers, the Presbyterians, all made
every effort in their power to procure the return of members of congenial
sentiments. Of the three parties, the last was beyond comparison the
most powerful, had not division paralyzed its influence. The more rigid
Presbyterians, though they opposed the advocates of the commonwealth
because they were sectaries, equally deprecated the return of the king,
because they feared the restoration of episcopacy. A much greater number,
who still adhered with constancy to the solemn league and covenant, deemed
themselves bound by it to replace the king on the throne, but under the
limitations proposed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight. Others, and
these the most active and influential, saw no danger to be feared from
a moderate episcopacy; and, anxious to obtain honours and preferment,
laboured
[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 737-740, 742-751. Price, 790. Monk had been
assured, probably by the French ambassador, that the Spaniards intended to
detain the king at Brussels as a hostage for the restoration of Jamaica and
Dunkirk. On this account he insisted that the king should leave the Spanish
territory, and Charles, having informed the governor of his intention to
visit Breda, left Brussels about two hours, if Clarendon be correct, before
an order was issued for his detention. The several letters, though written
and signed at Brussels, were dated from Breda, and given to Grenville the
moment the king placed his foot on the Dutch territory.--Clar. 740.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 10.]
by the fervour of their present loyalty to deserve the forgiveness of their
past transgressions. These joined with the Cavaliers; their united efforts
bore down all opposition; and, in most places, their adversaries either
shrunk from the contest, or were rejected by overwhelming majorities.[1]
But the republicans sought for aid in another direction. Their emissaries
penetrated into the quarters of the military, where they lamented the
approaching ruin of the good old cause, regretted that so many sacrifices
had been made, so much blood had been shed in vain, and again insinuated to
the officers, that they would forfeit the lands which they had purchased,
to the privates, that they would be disbanded and lose their arrears.[2]
A spirit of discontent began to spread through several corps, and a great
number of officers repaired to the metropolis. But Monk, though he still
professed himself a friend to republican government, now ventured to assume
a bolder tone. The militia of the city, amounting to fourteen thousand men,
was already embodied under his command; he had in his pocket a commission
from Charles, appointing him lord-general over all the military in the
three kingdoms; and he had resolved, should circumstances compel him to
throw off the mask, to proclaim the king, and to summon every faithful
subject to repair to the royal standard. He first ordered[a] the officers
to return to their posts; he then directed the promise of submission to the
new parliament to be tendered to
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii, 866, 887. Price, 787. Carte's Letters, ii. 326.
Clar. Pap. iii. 705, 714, 726, 730, 731, 733. It appears that many of the
royalists were much too active. "When the complaint was made to Monk, he
turned it off with a jest, that as there is a fanatic party on the one
side, so there is a frantic party on the other" (721, 722).]
[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 870.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 9.]
the privates, and every man who refused to make it was immediately
discharged.[1] At the same time, the friends of the commonwealth resolved
to oppose Lambert, once the idol of the soldiery, to Monk. Lambert, indeed,
was a prisoner in the Tower, confined by order of the council, because he
had refused to give security for his peaceable behaviour; but, with the aid
of a rope, he descended[a] from the window of his bed-chamber, was received
by eight watermen in a barge, and found a secure asylum in the city. The
citizens, however, were too loyal to listen to the suggestions of the
party; he left his concealment, hastened[b] into Warwickshire, solicited,
but in vain, the co-operation of Ludlow, collected from the discontented
regiments six troops of horse and some companies of foot, and expected in a
few days to see himself at the head of a formidable force. But Ingoldsby,
who, of a regicide, was become a royalist, met him[c] near Daventry with
an equal number; a troop of Lambert's men under the command of the younger
Hazlerig, passed over to his opponents; and the others, when he gave the
word to charge, pointed their pistols to the ground. The unfortunate
commander immediately turned and fled; Ingoldsby followed; the ploughed
land gave the advantage to the stronger horse; the fugitive was overtaken,
and, after an ineffectual effort to awaken the pity of his former comrade,
submitted to his fate. He was conducted[d] back to the Tower, at the time
when the trained bands, the volunteers, and the auxiliaries raised in the
city, passed in review before the general in Hyde Park. The auxiliaries
drank the king's health on their knees; Lambert was at the moment driven
under Tyburn
[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 715.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. April 13.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. April 21.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1660. April 24.]
and the spectators hailed with shouts and exclamations the disgrace of the
prisoner.[1]
The Convention parliament (so it was called, because it had not been
legally summoned) met[a] on the appointed day, the 25th of April. The
Presbyterians, by artful management, placed Sir Harbottle Grimstone, one of
their party, in the chair; but the Cavaliers, with their adherents, formed
a powerful majority, and the new speaker, instead of undertaking to stem,
had the prudence to go along with, the stream. Monk sat as representative
of Devonshire, his native county.
To neutralize the influence of the Cavaliers among the Commons, the
Presbyterian peers who sat in 1648, assembled in the House of Lords, and
chose the earl of Manchester for their speaker. But what right had they
exclusively to constitute a house of parliament? They had not been summoned
in the usual manner by writ; they could not sit as a part of the long
parliament, which was now at least defunct; and, if they founded their
pretensions on their birthright, as consiliarii nati, other peers were
in possession of the same privilege. The question was propounded to the
lord-general, who replied that he had no authority to determine the claims
of any individual. Encouraged by this answer, a few of the excluded peers
attempted to take their seats, and met with no opposition; the example was
imitated by others, and in a few days the Presbyterian lords did not amount
to more than one-fifth of the house. Still, however, to avoid cavil, the
peers who sat in the king's parliament at Oxford, as well as those whose
patents bore date after the
[Footnote 1: Kennet's Reg. 120. Price, 792, 794. Ludlow, 379. Philips, 607.
Clar. Pap. iii. 735.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. April 25.]
commencement of the civil war, abstained for the present from demanding
admission.[1]
Monk continued to dissemble. By his direction Grenville applied to a
member, who was entering the council-chamber, for an opportunity of
speaking to the lord-general. Monk came to the door, received from him a
letter, and, recognizing on the seal the royal arms, commanded the guards
to take care that the bearer did not depart. In a few minutes Grenville
was called in, interrogated by the president as to the manner in which he
became possessed of the letter, and ordered to be taken into custody. "That
is unnecessary," said Monk; "I find that he is my near kinsman, and I will
be security for his appearance."
The ice was now[a] broken. Grenville was treated not as a prisoner, but a
confidential servant of the sovereign. He delivered to the two houses the
letters addressed to them, and received in return a vote of thanks, with a
present of five hundred pounds. The letter for the army was read by Monk
to his officers, that for the navy by Montague to the captains under his
command, and that for the city by the lord mayor to the common council
in the Guildhall. Each of these bodies voted an address of thanks and
congratulation to the king.
The paper which accompanied the letters to the two houses,--1. granted a
free and general pardon to all persons, excepting such as might afterwards
be excepted by parliament; ordaining that every division of party should
cease, and inviting all who were the subjects of the same sovereign to live
in union and harmony; 2. it declared a liberty to tender consciences, and
that no man should be disquieted or called in
[Footnote 1: Lords' Journ. xi. 4, 5, 6.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 1.]
question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which did not
disturb the peace of the kingdom, and promised moreover the royal assent to
such acts of parliament as should be offered for the full granting of
that indulgence: 3. it alluded to the actions at law to which the actual
possessors of estates purchased by them or granted to them during the
revolution might be liable, and purposed to leave the settlement of all
such differences to the wisdom of parliament, which could best provide for
the just satisfaction of the parties concerned: lastly, it promised to
liquidate the arrears of the army under General Monk, and to retain the
officers and men in the royal service upon the same pay and conditions
which they actually enjoyed. This was the celebrated declaration from
Breda, the royal charter on the faith of which Charles was permitted to
ascend the throne of his fathers.[1]
Encouraged by the bursts of loyalty with which the king's letters and
declaration had been received, his agents made it their great object to
procure his return to England before limitations could be put on the
prerogative. From the Lords, so numerous were the Cavaliers in the upper
house, no opposition could be feared; and the temper already displayed
by the Commons was calculated to satisfy the wishes of the most ardent
champions of royalty. The two houses voted, that by the ancient and
fundamental laws of the realm the government was and ought to be by king,
lords, and commons; they invited Charles to come and receive the crown to
which he was born; and, to relieve his more urgent necessities, they sent
him a present of fifty thousand pounds, with ten thousand pounds for his
brother the duke of York, and five
[Footnote 1: Lords' Journ. xi. 7, 10.]
thousand pounds for the duke of Gloucester. They ordered the arms and
symbols of the commonwealth to be effaced, the name of the king to be
introduced into the public worship, and his succession to be proclaimed
as having commenced from the day of his father's death.[1] Hale, the
celebrated lawyer, ventured, with Prynne, to call[a] upon the House of
Commons to pause in their enthusiasm, and attend to the interests of the
nation. The first moved the appointment of a committee to inquire what
propositions had been offered by the long parliament, and what concessions
had been made by the last king in 1648; the latter urged the favourable
opportunity of coming to a mutual and permanent understanding on all those
claims which had been hitherto subjects of controversy between the two
houses and the crown. But Monk rose, and strongly objected to an inquiry
which might revive the fears and jealousies, the animosities and bloodshed,
of the years that were past. Let the king return while all was peace and
harmony. He would come alone; he could bring no army with him; he would
be as much at their mercy in Westminster as in Breda. Limitations, if
limitations were necessary, might be prepared in the interval, and offered
to him after his arrival. At the conclusion of this speech, the house
resounded with the acclamations of the Cavaliers; and the advocates of the
inquiry, awed by the authority of the general and the clamour of their
opponents, deemed it prudent to desist.[2]
Charles was as eager to accept, as the houses had been to vote, the address
of invitation. From Breda he had gone to the Hague, where the States,
anxious to atone for their former neglect, entertained him with
[Footnote 1: Journals of both houses.]
[Footnote 2: Burnet, i. 88. Ludlow, iii. 8, 9.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 7.]
unusual magnificence. The fleet, under Montague,[1] had anchored in the Bay
of Scheveling; and Charles, as soon as the weather permitted, set sail[a]
for Dover, where Monk, at the head of the nobility and gentry from the
neighbouring counties, waited to receive the new sovereign. Every eye
was fixed on their meeting;[b] and the cheerful, though dignified,
condescension of the king, and the dutiful, respectful homage of the
general, provoked the applause of the spectators. Charles embraced him as
his benefactor, bade him walk by his side, and took him into the royal
carriage. From Dover to the capital the king's progress bore the appearance
of a triumphal procession. The roads were covered with crowds of people
anxious to testify their loyalty, while they gratified their curiosity. On
Blackheath he was received[c] by the army in battle array, and greeted with
acclamations as he passed through the ranks; in St. George's Fields the
lord mayor and aldermen invited him to partake of a splendid collation in a
tent prepared for the purpose; from London Bridge to Whitehall the houses
were hung with tapestry, and the streets lined by the trained bands, the
regulars, and the officers who had served under Charles I. The king was
preceded by troops of horsemen, to the amount of three thousand persons, in
splendid dresses, attended by trumpeters and footmen; then came the lord
mayor, carrying the naked sword, after him the lord-general and the duke of
Buckingham, and lastly the king himself, riding between his two brothers.
The cavalcade was closed by the general's life-guard, five regiments
[Footnote 1: Montague had long been in correspondence with the king, and
disapproved of the dissimulation of Monk, so far as to call him in private
a "thick-sculled fool;" but thought it necessary to flatter him, as he
could hinder the business.--Pepys, i. 69.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. May 23.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1660. May 25.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1660. May 29.]
of horse, and two troops of noblemen and gentlemen. At Whitehall Charles
dismissed the lord mayor, and received in succession the two houses, whose
speakers addressed him in strains of the most impassioned loyalty, and
were answered by him with protestations of attachment to the interests and
liberties of his subjects. It was late in the evening before the ceremonies
of this important day were concluded; when Charles observed to some of his
confidants "It must sorely have been my fault that I did not come before;
for I have met with no one to-day who did not protest that he always wished
for my restoration."[1]
That the re-establishment of royalty was a blessing to the country will
hardly be denied. It presented the best, perhaps the only, means of
restoring public tranquillity amidst the confusion and distrust, the
animosities and hatreds, the parties and interests, which had been
generated by the events of the civil war, and by a rapid succession of
opposite and ephemeral governments. To Monk belongs the merit of having, by
his foresight and caution, effected this desirable object without bloodshed
or violence; but to his dispraise it must also be recorded, that he
effected it without any previous stipulation on the part of the exiled
monarch. Never had so fair an opportunity been offered of establishing a
compact between the sovereign and the people, of determining, by mutual
consent, the legal rights of the crown, and of securing from future
encroachment the freedom of the people. That Charles would have consented
to such conditions,
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 702. Kennet's Reg. 163. Clarendon's Hist. iii. 772.
Clarendon's Life by Himself, Continuation, p. 7, 8. Evelyn's Diary, ii.
148.]
we have sufficient evidence; but, when the measure was proposed, the
lord-general declared himself its most determined opponent. It may have
been, that his cautious mind figured to itself danger in delay; it is more
probable that he sought to give additional value to his services in the
eyes of the new sovereign. But, whatever were the motives of his conduct,
the result was, that the king ascended the throne unfettered with
conditions, and thence inferred that he was entitled to all the powers
claimed by his father at the commencement of the civil war. In a few years
the consequence became manifest. It was found that, by the negligence or
perfidy of Monk, a door had been left open to the recurrence of dissension
between the crown and the people; and that very circumstance which Charles
had hailed as the consummation of his good fortune, served only to prepare
the way for a second revolution, which ended in the permanent exclusion of
his family from the government of these kingdoms.
* * * * *
Belloc-Lingard - The History of England - CHAPTER VII.