3. LETTER TO CAMBRIDGE, WITH 'PROTESTATION' AND 'PREAMBLE' 4. EASTERN ASSOCIATION: THREATENED RISING OF PAPISTS IN NOR- 11. LETTER TO THE DERBY-HOUSE COMMITTEE AFTER PRESTON BATTLE 12. LETTER TO DERBY-HOUSE COMMITTEE: MARCH INTO SCOTLAND, 1648 407 17. IRELAND: OPERATIONS IN TIPPERARY 18. HASELRIG AND DUNBAR BATTLE. 19. LETTER IN BEHALF OF COLONEL MALEVERER'S FAMILY 20. LETTER IN BEHALF OF JOHN ARUNDEL OF TRERICE 21. LETTER IN BEHALF OF COLONEL CLAYTON 30. FROM 1654-1655: VOWEL'S PLOT; RECTORY OF HOUGHTON CONQUEST; 32. FINAL SPEECH ON (OR RATHER not ON) THE MATTER OF THE KINGSHIP 445 OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. PART VIII. FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT. 1654. LETTERS CXCII.-CXCV. THE 3d of September ever since Worcester Battle has been kept as a Day of Thanksgiving; commemorative of the mercy at Dunbar in 1650, and of the crowning-mercy which followed next year;—a memorable day for the Commonwealth of England. By Article Seventh of the Instrument of Government, it is now farther provided that a Parliament shall meet on that auspicious Anniversary when it next comes round. September 3d, 1654, then shall the First Protectorate Parliament meet; successive Parliaments, one at least every Three years, are to follow, but this shall be the First. Not to be dissolved, or prorogued, for at least Five months. Free Parliament of Four-hundred; for England Three-hundred-andforty, for Scotland Thirty, for Ireland Thirty; fairly chosen by election of the People, according to rules anxiously constitutional, laid down in that same Instrument, which we do not dwell upon here. Smaller Boroughs are excluded; among Counties and larger Boroughs is a more equable division of representatives according to their population: nobody to vote that has not some clearly visible property to the value of Two-hundred Pounds; but all that have can vote, and can be voted for,-except, of course, all such as have appeared against the Parliament in any of these Wars' since the First of January 1642,' and 'not since given signal testimony' of their repenting that step. To appearance, a very reasonable Reform Bill;-understood to be substantially the same with that invaluable measure once nearly completed by the Rump: only with this essential difference, That the Rump Members are not now to sit by nature and without election; not now to decide, they, in case of extremity, Thou shalt sit, Thou shalt not sit:— others than they will now decide that, in cases of extremity. How this Parliament, in its Five-months Session, will welcome the new Protector and Protectorate is naturally the grand question during those Nine or Ten Months that intervene. A question for all Englishmen; and most of all for Oliver Protector; who however, as we can perceive, does not allow it to overawe him very much; but diligently doing this day the day's duties, hopes he may fir d, as God has often favoured him to do, some good solution for the morrow, whatsoever the morrow please to be. A man much apt to be overawed by any question that is smaller than Eternity, or by any danger that is lower than God's Displeasure, would not suit well in Oliver's place at present! Perhaps no more perilous place, that I know clearly of, was ever deliberately accepted by a man. The post of honour,'-the post of terror and of danger and forlorn-hope: this man has all along been used to occupy such. To see a little what kind of England it was, and what kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following small and few fractions of Authenticity, of various complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes and dust-vortexes, and hang them. out at their places in the void night of things. They are not very luminous; but if they were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight measure. Sunday, 18th December 1653. A certain loud-tongued, loudminded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague, seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a Preaching-Establishment, this good while past, in Blackfriars; a PreachingEstablishment every Sunday, which on Monday Evening becomes a National - Charter Convention as we should now call it: there Feak, Powel and Company are in the habit of vomiting forth from their own inner-man, into other inner-men greedy of such pabulum, a very flamy fuliginous set of doctrines, such as the human mind, superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some attempt to conceive. Sunday the 18th, which is two days after the Lord Protector's Installation, this Feak-Powel Meeting was unusually large; the Feak-Powel inner-man unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious; fuliginous-flamy in a very high degree! At a time, too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting, but longs to become instant Action. Go and tell your Protector,' said the Anabaptist Prophet, That he has deceived the Lord's People; that he is a perjured villain,'—' will not reign long,' or I am deceived; will end worse than the last Protector did,' Protector Somerset who died on the scaffold, or the tyrant Crooked Richard himself! Say, I said it!—A very foul chimney indeed, here got on fire. And Major-General Harrison, 'the most eminent man of the Anabaptist Party, being consulted whether he would own the new Protectoral Government, answered 'frankly, No;'-was thereupon ordered to retire home to Staffordshire, and keep quiet.' Does the reader bethink him of those old Leveller Corporals at Burford, and Diggers at St. George's Hill five years ago; of Quakerisms, Calvinistic Sansculottisms, and one of the strangest Spiritual Developments ever seen in any country? The reader sees here one foul chimney on fire, the Feak-Powel chimney in Blackfriars; and must consider for himself what masses of combustible material, noble fuel and base soot and smoky explosive fire-damp, in the general English Household it communicates with! Republicans Proper, of the Long Parliament; Republican Fifth-Monarchists of the Little Parliament; the solid Ludlows, the fervent Harrisons from Harry Vane down to Christopher Feak, all manner of Republicans find Cromwell unforgivable. To the Harrisonand-Feak species Kingship in every sort, and government of man by man, is carnal, expressly contrary to various Gospel Scriptures. Very horrible for a man to think of governing men ;-whether he ought even to govern cattle, and drive them to field and to needful penfold, except in the way of love and persuasion,' seems doubtful to me! But fancy a Reign of Christ and his Saints; Christ and his Saints just about to come,—had not Oliver Cromwell stept in and prevented it! The reader discerns combustibilities enough; conflagrations, plots, stubborn disaffections and confusions, on the Republican and Republican-Anabaptist side of things. It is the first Plot-department, which my Lord Protector will have to deal with, all his life long. This he must wisely damp down, as he may. Wisely: for he knows what is noble in 1 Thurloe, i. 641;-442, 591, 621. the matter, and what is base in it; and would not sweep the fuel and the soot both out of doors at once. Tuesday, 14th February 1653-4. At the Ship-Tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr. Thomas Amps,' we come upon the second lifelong Plot-department: Eleven truculent, rather threadbare persons, sitting over small drink there, on the Tuesday night, considering how the Protector might be assassinated. Poor broken Royalist men; payless Old-Captains, most of them, or such like; with their steeple-hats worn very brown, and jackboots slit,—and projects that cannot be executed. Mr. Amps knows nothing of them, except that they came to him to drink; nor do we. Probe them with questions; clap them in the Tower for a while: Guilty, poor knaves; but not worth hanging:-disappear again into the general mass of Royalist Plotting, and ferment there. 6 The Royalists have lain quiet ever since Worcester; waiting what issue matters would take. Dangerous to meddle with a Rump Parliament, or other steadily regimented thing; safer if you can find it fallen out of rank; hopefullest of all, when it collects itself into a Single Head. The Royalists judge, with some reason, that if they could kill Oliver Protector, this Commonwealth were much endangered. In these Easter weeks, too, or Whitsun weeks, there comes from our Court' (Charles Stuart's Court) at Paris,' great encouragement to all men of spirit in straitened circumstances. A Royal Proclamation "By the King," drawn up, say some, by Secretary Clarendon; setting forth that 'Whereas a certain base mechanic fellow, by name Oliver Crom'well, has usurped our throne,' much to our and other people's inconvenience, whosoever will kill the said mechanic fellow 'by sword, pistol or poison,' shall have 5007. a-year settled upon him, with colonelcies in our Army, and other rewards suitable, and be a made man,—‘ on the word and faith of a Christian King." A Proclamation which cannot be circulated except in secret; but is well worth reading by all loyal men. And so Royalist Plots also succeed one another, thick and threefold through Oliver's whole life; -but cannot take effect. Vain for a Christian King and his cunningest Chancellors to summon all the Sinners of the Earth, and whatsoever of necessitous Truculent - Flunkeyism there may be, and to bid, in the name of Heaven and of Another place, for the Head of Oliver Cromwell: once for all, they cannot have it, that Head of Cromwell;-not till he has entirely done with it, and can make them welcome to their benefit from it! We shall come upon these Royalist Plots, Rebellion Plots and Assassin Plots, in the 1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 135). 2 Thurloe, ii. 248. Given at Paris, 3d May (23d April by old style), 1654.' |