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109

PART NINTH.

THE MAJOR-GENERALS.

1655-1656.

:

CHRONOLOGICAL.

THE Plots and perils to the Commonwealth which my Lord Protector spoke of to his honourable Members, were not an imagination, but a very tragic reality. Under the shadow of this Constitutioning Parliament strange things had been ripening without some other eye than the Parliament's, Constitution and Commonwealth in general had been, by this time, in a bad way! A universal rising of Royalists combined with Anabaptists is in a real state of progress. Dim meetings there have been of Royalist Gentlemen, on nocturnal moors, in this quarter and in that, with cart-loads of arms,'-terrified at their own jingle, and rapidly dispersing again till the grand hour come. Anabaptist Levellers have had dim meetings, dim communications; will prefer Charles Stuart himself to the traitor Oliver, who has dared to attempt actual 'governing' of men. Charles Stuart has come down to Middleburg, on the Dutch coast, to be in readiness; Hyde is cock-sure.'1 From the dreary old Thurloes, and rubbish-continents, of Spy Letters, Intercepted Letters, Letters of Intelligence; where, scattered at huge intervals, the History of England for those years still lies entombed, it is manifest enough what a winter and spring this was in England. A Protector left without supplies, obliged to cut his Parliament adrift, and front the matter alone; England,

1 Manning's Letter, in Thurloe, iii. 384

from end to end of it, ripe for an explosion; for a universal blazing-up of all the heterogeneous combustibilities it had; the Sacred Majesty waiting at Middleburg, and Hyde cock-sure!

Nevertheless it came all to nothing;-there being a Protector in it. The Protector, in defect of Parliaments, issued his own Ordinance, the best he could, for payment of old rates and taxes; which, as the necessity was evident, and the sum fixed upon was low, rather lower than had been expected, the Country quietly complied with. Indispensable supply was obtained and as for the Plots, the Protector had long had his eye on them, had long had his nooses round them ;—the Protector strangled them everywhere at the moment suitablest for him, and lodged the ringleaders of them in the Tower. Let us, as usual, try to extricate a few small elucidative facts from the hideous old Pamphletary Imbroglio, where facts and figments, ten thousand facts of no importance to one fact of some, lie mingled, like the living with the dead, in noisome darkness all of them: once extricated, they may assist the reader's fancy a little. Of Oliver's own in reference to this period, too characteristic a period to be omitted, there is little or nothing left us: a few detached Letters, hardly two of them very significant of Oliver; which cannot avail us much, but shall be inserted at their due places.

February 12th, 1654-5. News came this afternoon that Major John Wildman, chief of the frantic Anabaptist Party, upon whom the Authorities have had their eye of late, has been seized at Exton, near Marlborough, in Wilts; 'by a party of Major Butler's horse.' In his furnished lodging; 'in a room upstairs;' his door stood open: stepping softly up, the troopers found him leaning on his elbow, dictating to his clerk 'A De'claration of the free and well-affected People of England now ' in Arms' (or shortly to be in Arms) 'against the Tyrant Oliver 'Cromwell :' a forcible piece, which can still be read, but only as a fragment, the zealous Major never having had occasion to finish it. They carried him to Chepstow Castle; locked him up there: and the free and well-affected People of England never got to Arms against the Tyrant, but were only in hopes of getting. Wildman was in the last Parliament; but could not sign the Recognition; went away in virtuous indignation,

* Whitlocke, p. 599; Cromwellianu, p. 151.

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