and yet not ours; within grasp of us, it lies there unattainable, enchanted under Parliamentary formulas. Enemies are swept away; extinguished as in the brightness of the Lord and no Divine Kingdom, and no clear incipiency of such, has yet in any measure come !-These are sorrowful reflections.

For, alas, such high dream is difficult to realize! Not the Stuart Dynasty alone that opposes it; all the Dynasties of the Devil, the whole perversions of this poor Earth, without us and within us, oppose it.-Yea, answers with a sigh the heart of my Lord General: Yea, it is difficult, and thrice difficult ;—and yet wo to us, if we do not with our whole soul try it, make some clear beginning of it; if we sit defining incumbrances' instead of bending every muscle to the wheel that is encumbered! Who art thou that standest still; that having put-to thy hand, turnest back? In these years of miracle in England, were there not great things, as if by divine voices, audibly promised? "The Lord said unto my Lord!'-And is it all to end here? In Juntos of three-score; in Grocers-Hall Committees, in red-tape, and official shakings of the head?

My Lord General, are there no voices, dumb voices from the depths of poor England's heart, that address themselves to you, even you? My Lord General hears voices; and would fain distinguish and discriminate them. Which, in all these, is the God's voice? That were the one to follow. My Lord General, I think has many meditations, of a very mixed, and some of a very at struse nature, in these months.

August 13th, 1652. This day came a 'Petition from the Off cers of my Lord General's Army,' which a little alarmed us Petition craving for some real reform of the Law; some real at tempt towards setting up a Gospel Ministry in England; real anc general ousting of scandalous, incompetent and plainly diabolic persons from all offices of Church and State; real beginning, in short, of a reign of Gospel Truth in this England;-and for one thing, a swift progress in that most slow-going Bill for a New Representative; an actual ending of this present Fag-end of a Par. liament, which has now sat very long! So, in most respectful language, prays this Petition* of the Officers. Petition prefaced,

*Whitlocke, p, 516.

they say, with earnest prayer to God: that was the preface or prologue they gave it ;—what kind of epilogue they might be prepared to give it, one does not learn: but the men carry swords at their sides; and we have known them!-Many thought this kind of Petition dangerous; and counselled my Lord General to put a stop to the like: but he seemed to make light of it,' says Bulstrode. In fact, my Lord General does not disapprove of it: my Lord General, after much abstruse meditation, has decided on putting himself at the head of it. He, and a serious minority in Parliament, and in England at large, think with themselves, once more, If it were not for this Army Parliament, what would become of us?-Speaker Lenthall 'thanked' these Officers, with a smile which I think must have been of the grimmest, like that produced by eating thistles.

September 14th, 1652. The somnolent slow-going Bill for a New Representative, which has slept much, and now and then pretended to move a little, for long years past, is resuscitated by this Petition; comes out, rubbing its eyes, disposed for decided activity;—and in fact sleeps no more; cannot think of sleep any more, the noise round it waxing ever louder. Settle how your Representative shall be: for be it now actually must!

This Bill, which has slept and waked so long, does not sleep again but, How to settle the conditions of the New Representative?—there is a question! My Lord General will have good security against 'the Presbyterial Party' that they come not into power again; good security against the red-tape Party, that they sit not for three months defining an incumbrance again. How shall we settle the New Representative;—on the whole, what or how shall we do? For the old stagnancy is verily broken up: these petitioning Army Officers, with all the earnest armed and unarmed men of England in the rear of them, have verily torn us from our moorings: and we do go adrift,-with questionable havens, on starboard and larboard, very difficult of entrance; with Mahlstroms and Niagaras very patent right ahead! We are become to mankind a Rump Parliament; sit here we cannot much longer; and we know not what to do!

'During the month of October, some ten or twelve conferences took place,'-private conferences between the Army Officers and

the Leaders of the-Parliament: wherein nothing could be agreed upon. Difficult to settle the New Representative; impossible for this Old Misrepresentative or Rump to continue! What shall or can be done? Summon, without popular intervention, by earnest selection on your and our part, a Body of godly wise Men, the Best and Wisest we can find in England: to them entrust the whole question; and do you abdicate, and depart straightway, say the Officers. Forty good Men, or a Hundred-and-forty; choose them well, they will define an incumbrance in less than three months, we may hope, and tell us what to do! Such is the notion of the Army Officers, and my Lord General; a kind of Puritan 'Convention of the Notables,' so the French would call it to which the Parliament Party see insuperable objection What other remedy, then? The Parliament Party mournfully insinuate that there is no remedy, except,-except continuance of the present Rump!*

November 7th, 1652. 'About this time,' prior or posterior to it, while such conferences and abstruse considerations are in progress, my Lord General, walking once in St. James's Park, beckons the learned Bulstrode, who is also there; strolls gradually aside with him, and begins one of the most important Dialogues. Whereof learned Bulstrode has preserved some record; which is unfortunately much dimmed by just suspicion of dramaturgy on the part of Bulstrode; and shall not be excerpted by us here. It tends conspicuously to show, first, how Cromwell already entertained most alarming notions of making oneself a King,' and even wore them pinned on his sleeve, for the inspection of the learned; and secondly, how Bulstrode, a secret royalist in the worst of times, advised him by no means to think of that, but to call in Charles Stuart,-who had an immense popularity among the Powerful in England just then! 6 My Lord General did not in words express any anger, but only by looks and carriage; and turned aside from me to other company,'-as this Editor, in quest of certainty and insight, and not of doubt and fat drowsy pedantry, will now also do!

November, 1652-March, 1653. The Dutch War prospers and

* Speech postea.

has prospered, Blake and Monk beating the Dutch in tough seafights; Delinquents, monthly Assessments, and the lead of Cathedrals furnishing the sinews: the Dutch are about sending Ambassadors to treat of Peace. With home affairs, again, it goes not so well. Through winter, through spring, this Bill for a New Representative goes along in its slow gestation; reappearing Wednesday after Wednesday; painfully struggling to take a shape that shall fit both parties, Parliament Grandees and Army Grandees both at once. A thing difficult; a thing impossible! Parliament Grandees, now become a contemptible Rump, wish they could grow into a Reputable Full Parliament again, and have the Government and the Governing Persons go on as they are now doing: this naturally is their wish. Naturally too the Army Party's wish is the reverse of this: that a Full free Parliament, with safety to the Governing Interests, and due subordination of the Presbyterian and other factions, should assemble; but also 'that the present Governing Persons, with their red tape habits unable to define an incumbrance in three months, should for most part be out of it. Impossible to shape a Bill that will fit both of these Parties: Tom Thumb and the Irish Giant, you cannot, by the art of Parliamentary tailoring, clip out a coat that will fit them both! We can fancy 'conferences,' considerations deep and almost awful; my Lord General looking forward to possibilities that fill even him with fear. Puritan Notables they will not have these present Governing men are clear against that: not Puritan Notables;—and if they themselves, by this New Bill or otherwise, insist on staying there, what is to become of them?

Dryasdust laments that this invaluable Bill, now in process of gestation, is altogether lost to Posterity; no copy even .of itself, much less any record of the conferences, debates, or contemporaneous considerations on it, attainable even in fractions by mankind. Much is lost, my erudite friend;-and we must console ourselves! The substantial essence of the Bill came out afterwards into full practice, in Oliver's own Parliaments. The present form of the Bill, I do clearly perceive, had one clause, That all the Members of this present Rump should continue to sit without re-election; and still better, another, That they should be a general Election Committee, and have power to say to every new

Member, "Thou art dangerous, thou shalt not enter; go!" This clearly in the Bill: and not less clearly that the Lord Crene. ral and Army Party would in nowise have a Bill with this in it,— or indeed have any Bill that was to be the old story over again under a new name. So much, on good evidence, is very clear to me; the rest, which is all obliterated, becomes not inconceivable. Cost what it may cost, this Rump Parliament, which has by its conduct abundantly 'defined what an incumbrance is,' shall go about its business. Terrible Voices, supernal and other, have said it, awfully enough, in the hearts of some men! Neither under its own shabby figure, nor under another more plausible, shall it guide the Divine Mercies and Miraculous Affairs of this Nation any farther.

The last of all the conferences was held at my Lord General's house in Whitehall, on Tuesday evening, 19th of April, 1653. Above twenty leading Members of Parliament present, and many Officers. Conference of which we shall have some passing glimpse from a sure hand by and by.* Conference which came to nothing, as all the others had done. Your Bill with these clauses and visible tendencies in it cannot pass, says the one party: Your Scheme of Puritan Notables seems full of danger,

says the other. What remedy? "No remedy except,-except

that you leave us to sit as we are, for a while yet!" suggest the Official persons."In no wise!" answer the Officers, with a vehemence of look and tone, which my Lord General, seemingly anxious to do it, cannot repress. You must not, and cannot sit longer, say the Officers;—and their look says even, Shall not. Bulstrode went home to Chelsea, very late, with the tears in his big dull eyes, at thought of the courses men were getting into Bulstrode and Widdrington were the most eager for sitting; Chief Justice St. John, strange thing in a Constitutional gentleman. declared that there could be no sitting for us any longer. We parted, able to settle on nothing, except the engagement to meet here again to-morrow morning, and to leave the Bill asleep till something were settled on. A leading person,' Sir Harry Vane or another, undertook that nothing should be done in it till then.

VOL. II.

* Speech, postea; see also Whitlocke, p. 529.

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