Parliamentum,' the Talking-Apparatus vanishes.* "God be judge between you and me!"-" Amen!" answered they,† thought they, indignantly; and sank into eternal silence.

It was high time; for in truth the Hydra, on every side, is stirring its thousand heads. "Believe me," says Samuel Hartlib, Milton's friend, writing to an Official acquaintance next week, “believe me, it was of such necessity, that if their Session had continued but two or three days longer, all had been in blood both in City and Country, upon Charles Stuart's account."‡

His Highness, before this Sunday's sun sets, has begun to lodge the Anarchic Ringleaders, Royalist, Fifth-Monarchist, in the Tower; his Highness is bent once more with all his faculty, the Talking-Apparatus being gone, to front this Hydra, and trample it down once again. On Saturday he summons his Officers, his Acting-Apparatus, to Whitehall round him; explains to them ' in a speech two hours long' what kind of Hydra it is; asks, Shall it conquer us, involve us in blood and confusion? "They answer from their hearts, No, it shall not! "We will stand and fall with your Highness, we will live and die with you!"'§-It is the last duel this Oliver has with any Hydra fomented into life by a Talking-Apparatus; and he again conquers it, invincibly compresses it, as he has heretofore done.

One day, in the early days of March next, his Highness said to Lord Broghil: An old friend of yours is in Town, the Duke of Ormond, now lodged in Drury Lane, at the Papist Surgeon's there you had better tell him to be gone!||-Whereat his Lordship stared; found it a fact, however; and his Grace of Ormond did go with exemplary speed, and got again to Bruges and the Sacred Majesty, with report That Cromwell had many enemies, but that the rise of the Royalists was moonshine. And on the

Burton, ii., 464.

† Tradition in various modern books (Parliamentary History, xxi., 203; Note to Burton, ii., 470); not supported, that I can find, by any contemporary witness.

Hartlib in London (11 Feb., 1657-8, to Moreland at Geneva; printed in Parliamentary History, xxi., 205).

§ Hartlib's Letter, ubi supra.

|| Godwin, iv., 508; Budgel's Lives of the Boyles, p. 49; &c.

6

12th of the month his Highness had the Mayor and Common Council with him in a body at Whitehall; and 'in a Speech at large' explained to them that his Grace of Ormond was gone only ' on Tuesday last ;' that there were Spanish Invasions, Royalist Insurrections and Frantic-Anabaptist Insurrections rapidly ripen. ing;-that it would well beseem the City of London to have its Militia in good order. To which the Mayor and Common Council, 'being very sensible thereof,** made zealous response by speech and by act. In a word, the Talking-Apparatus being gone, and ar Oliver Protector now at the head of the Acting-Apparatus, no Insurrection, in the eyes of reasonable persons, had any chance. The leading Royalists shrank close into their privacies again,considerable numbers of them had to shrink into durance in the Tower. Among which latter class, his Highness, justly incensed, and considering,' as Thurloe says, 'that it was not fit there should be a Plot of this kind every winter,' had determined that a High Court of Justice should take cognisance of some. High Court of Justice is accordingly nominated † as the Act of Parliament prescribes among the parties marked for trial by it are Sir Henry Slingsby, long since prisoner for Penruddock's business, and the Rev. Dr. Hewit, a man of much forwardness in Royalism. Sir Henry, prisoner in Hull and acquainted with the Chief Officers there, has been treating with them for betrayal of the place to his Majesty; has even, to that end, given one of them a Majesty's Commission; for whose Spanish Invasion such a Haven and Fortress would have been extremely convenient. Reverend Dr. Hewit, preaching sufferance, according to the old ritual, 'in St. Gregory's Church, near Paul's,' to a select disaffected audience, has farther seen good to distinguish himself very much by secular zeal in this business of the Royal Insurrection and Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion ;—which has now come to nothing, and left poor Dr. Hewit in a most questionable position. Of these two, and of others, a High Court of Justice shall take cognisance.

The Insurrection having no chance in the eyes of reasonable

* Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 171).

† 27 April, 1659. Act of Parliament, with List of the Names, is in Sco Dell, ii., 372-5: see also Commons Journals, vii., 427 (Sept., 1656).

Royalists, and they in consequence refusing to lead it, the large body of unreasonable Royalists, now in London City or gathering thither, decide, with Indignation, That they will try it on their owc score, and lead it themselves. Hands to work, then, ye unrea. sonable Royalists; pipe, All hands! Saturday, the 15th of May, that is the night appointed: To rise that Saturday Night; beat drums for 'Royalist Apprentices,' 'fire houses at the Tower,' slay this man, slay that, and bring matters to a good issue. Alas, on the very edge of the appointed hour, as usual, we are all seized; the ringleaders of us are all seized, At the Mermaid in Cheapside,' for Thurloe and his Highness have long known what we were upon! Barkstead Governor of the Tower' marches into the City with five drakes,' at the rattle of which every Royalist Apprentice, and party implicated, shakes in his shoes-and this also has gone to vapor, leaving only for result certain new individuals of the Civic class to give account of it to the High Court of Justice.

Tuesday, 25th May, 1658, the High Court of Justice sat; a formidable Sanhedrim of above a Hundred-and-thirty heads; consisting of all the Judges,' chief Law Officials, and others named in the. Writ according to Act of Parliament;—sat 'in Westminster Hall, at nine in the morning, for the Trial of Sir Henry Slingsby Knight, John Hewit Doctor of Divinity,' and three others whom we may forget.* Sat day after day till all were judged. Poor Sir Henry, on the first day, was condemned; he pleaded what he could, poor gentleman, a very constant Royalist all along but the Hull business was too palpable; he was condemned to die. Reverend Dr. Hewit, whose proceedings also had become very palpable, refused to plead at all; refused even 'to take off his hat,' says Carrion Heath, 'till the Officer was coming to do it for him ;' had a Paper of Demurrers prepared by the learned Mr. Prynne,' who is now again doing business this way;-'conducted himself not very wisely,' says Bulstrode. He likewise received sentence of death. The others, by narrow missing escaped; by good luck, or the Protector's mercy, suffered nothing.

:

* Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 172).

As to Slingsby and Hewit, the Protector was inexorable. Hewit has already taken a very high line: let him persevere in it! Slingsby was the Lord Fauconberg's Uncle, married to his Aunt Bellasis; but that could not stead him,—perhaps that was but a new monition to be strict with him. The Commonwealth of England, and its Peace, are not Nothing! These Royalist Plots every winter, deliveries of garrisons to Charles Stuart, and reckless' usherings of us into blood,' shall end! Hewit and Slingsby suffered on Tower Hill, on Monday, 8th June; amid the manifold rumor and emotion of men. Of the City Insurrectionists six were condemned; three of whom were executed, three pardoned. And so the High Court of Justice dissolved itself; and at this and not at more expense of blood, the huge Insurrectionary movement ended, and lay silent within its caves again.

Whether in any future year it would have tried another rising against such a Lord Protector, one does not know,-one guesses rather in the negative. The Royalist Cause, after so many failures, after such a sort of enterprises 'on the word of a Christian King,' had naturally sunk very low Some twelvemonth hence, with a Commonwealth not now under Cromwell, but only under the impulse of Cromwell, a Christian King hastening down to the Treaty of the Pyrenees, where France and Spain were making Peace, found one of the coldest receptions. Cardinal Mazarin 'sent his coaches and guards a day's journey to meet Lockhart the Commonwealth Ambassador ;' but refused to meet the Christian King at all; would not even meet Ormond, except as if by accident on the public road,' to say that there was no hope. The Spanish Minister, Don Luis de Haro, was civiller in manner; but as to Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasions or the like, he also decisively shook his head.* The Royalist Cause was as good as desperate in England; a melancholy Reminiscence, fast fading away into the realm of shadows. Not till Puritanism sank of its own accord, could Royalism rise again. But Puritanism, the King of it once away, fell loose very naturally in every fibre,— fell into Kinglessness, what we call Anarchy; crumbled down, ever faster, for Sixteen Months, in mad suicide, and universal

*Kennet, iii., 214; Clarendon, ii 914.

clashing and collision; proved by trial after trial, that there lay not in it either Government or so much as Self-government any more; that a Government of England by it was henceforth an impossibility. Amid the general wreck of things, all Government threatening now to be impossible, the Reminiscence of Royalty rose again, "Let us take refuge in the Past, the Future is not possible!"—and Major-General Monk crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, with results which are well known.

Results which we will not quarrel with, very mournful as they have been! If it please Heaven, these Two Hundred Years of universal Cant in Speech, with so much of Cotton-spinning, Coalboring, Commercing, and other valuable Sincerity of Work going on the while, shall not be quite lost to us! Our Cant will vanish, our whole baleful cunningly-compacted Universe of Cant, as does a heavy Nightmare Dream. We shall awaken; and find ourselves in a world greatly widened.-Why Puritanism could not continue? My friend, Puritanism was not the Complete Theory of this immense Universe; no, only a part thereof! To me it seems, in my hours of hope, as if the Destinies meant something grander with England than even Oliver Protector did! We will not quarrel with the Destinies; we will work as we can towards fulfilment of them.

But in these same June days of the year 1658, while Hewit and Slingsby lay down their heads on Tower Hill, and the English Hydra finds that its Master is still here, there arrive the news of Dunkirk alluded to above: Dunkirk gloriously taken, Spaniards gloriously beaten : victories and successes abroad, which are a new illumination to the Lord Protector in the eyes of England. Splendid Nephews of the Cardinal, Manzinis, Ducs de Crequi, come across the Channel to congratulate 'the most invincible of Sovereigns;' young Louis Fourteenth himself would have come, had not the attack of small-pox prevented. With whom the elegant Lord Fauconberg and others busy themselves: their pageantry and gilt coaches, much gazed at by the idler multitudes, need not detain us here.

* Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, pp. 172-3; 15-21 June, 1658).