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 vapour, 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.1 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. 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 rumour 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, 1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 172). 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 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 goingon 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 Kennet, iii. 214 Clarendon, iii. 914. 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. The Lord Protector, his Parliament having been dismissed with such brevity, is somewhat embarrassed in his finances. But otherwise his affairs stand well; visibly in an improved condition. Once more he has saved Puritan England; once more approved himself invincible abroad and at home. He looks with confidence towards summoning a new Parliament, of juster disposition towards Puritan England and him.2 With a Parliament, or if extremity of need arrive, without a Parliament and in spite of Parliaments, the Puritan Gospel Cause, sanctioned by a Higher than Parliaments, shall not sink while life remains in this Man. Not till Oliver Cromwell's head lie low, shall English Puritanism bend its head to any created thing. Erect, with its foot on the neck of Hydra Babylon, with its open Bible and drawn Sword, shall Puritanism stand, and with pious all-defiance victoriously front the world. That was Oliver Cromwell's appointed function in this piece of Sublunary Space, in this section of swift-flowing Time; that noble, perilous, painful function: and he has manfully done it,—and is now near ending it, and getting honourably relieved from it. LETTER CCXXV. THE poor Protestants of Piedmont, it appears, are again in a state of grievance, in a state of peril. The Lord Protector, in the thickest press of domestic anarchies, finds time to think of these poor people and their case. Here is a Letter to Ambassador Lockhart, who is now at Dunkirk Siege, in the French King and Cardinal's neighbourhood: a generous pious Letter; dictated to Thurloe, partly perhaps of Thurloe's composition, but altogether of Oliver's mind and sense;-fit enough, since it so chances, to conclude our Series here. 1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, pp. 172-3; 15th-21st June 1658). Among the Lockhart Letters in Thurloe, which are full of Dunkirk in these weeks, I can find no trace of this new Piedmont business but in Milton's Latin State-Letters, among the Litera Oliverii Protectoris, there are Three, to the French King, to the Swiss Cantons, to the Cardinal, which all treat of it. The first of which, were it only as a sample of the Milton-Oliver Diplomacies, we will here copy, and translate that all may read it. An emphatic State-Letter; which Oliver Cromwell meant, and John Milton thought and wrote into words; not unworthy to be read. It goes by the same Express as the Letter to Lockhart himself; and is very specially referred to there : 66 66 "Serenissimo potentissimoque Principi, Ludovico Galliarum Regi. "SERENISSIME POTENTISSIMEQUE REX, AMICE AC FEDERATE 66 AUGUSTISSIME, "Meminisse potest Majestas Vestra, quo tempore inter nos de renovando Fœdere agebatur (quod optimis auspiciis initum “multa utriusque Populi commoda, multa Hostium communium exinde "mala testantur), accidisse miseram illam Convallensium Occisionem ; quorum causam undique desertam atque afflictam Vestra misericordia atque tutela, summo cum ardore animi ac miseratione, commenda"vimus. Nec defuisse per se arbitramur Majestatem Vestram officio "tam pio, immo verò tam humano, pro eâ quâ apud Ducem Sabaudie "valere debuit vel auctoritate vel gratiâ: Nos certè aliique multi Principes ac Civitates, legationibus, literis, precibus interpositis, non de"fuimus. “Post cruentissimam utriusque sexûs omnis ætatis Trucidationem, "Pax tandem data est; vel potiùs inducta Pacis nomine hostilitas quæ"dam tectior. Conditiones Pacis vestro in oppido Pinarolii sunt latæ: "duræ quidem illæ, sed quibus miseri atque inopes, dira omnia atque "immania perpessi, facile acquiescerent, modò iis, duræ et iniquæ ut "sint, staretur. Non statur; sed enim earum quoque singularum falsâ interpretatione variisque diverticulis, fides eluditur ac violatur. Antiquis sedibus multi dejiciuntur, Religio Patria multis interdicitur ; “Tributa nova exiguntur; Arx nova cervicibus imponitur, unde milites " crebrò erumpentes obvios quosque vel diripiunt vel trucidant. Ad hæc nuper nova copiæ clanculum contra eos parantur; quique inter eos "Romanam Religionem colunt, migrare ad tempus jubentur: ut omnia nunc rursus videantur ad illorum internecionem miserorum spectare, quos illa prior laniena reliquos fecit. 66 66 66 Quod ergò per dextram tuam, Rex Christianissime, quæ Fœdus "nobiscum et amicitiam percussit, obsecro atque obtestor, per illud 66 "Christianissimi tituli decus sanctissimum, fieri ne siveris: nec tan"tam sæviendi licentiam, non dico Principi cuiquam (neque enim in "ullum Principem, multò minus in ætatem illius Principis teneram, aut "in muliebrem Matris animum, tanta sævitia cadere potest), sed sacer"rimis illis Sicariis, ne permiseris. Qui cum Christi Servatoris nostri servos atque imitatores sese profiteantur, qui venit in hunc mundum "ut peccatores servaret, Ejus mitissimi Nomine atque Institutis ad "innocentium crudelissimas cædes abutuntur. Eripe qui potes, quique “in tanto fastigio dignus es posse, tot supplices tuos homicidarum ex "manibus, qui cruore nuper ebrii sanguinem rursus sitiunt, suæque "invidiam crudelitatis in Principes derivare consultissimum sibi ducunt. "Tu verò nec Titulos tuos aut Regni fines istá invidiá, nec Evangelium "Christi pacatissimum istâ crudelitate fœdari, te regnante patiaris. "Memineris hos ipsos Avi tui Henrici Protestantibus amicissimi Dedi"titios fuisse; cùm Diguierius per ea Loca, quà etiam commodissimus “in Italiam transitus est, Sabaudum trans Alpes cedentem victor est "insecutus. Deditionis illius Instrumentum in Actis Regni vestri Pub"licis etiamnum extat: in quo exceptum atque cautum inter alia est, ne cui posteà Convallenses traderentur, nisi iisdem conditionibus qui"bus eos Avus tuus invictissimus in fidem recepit. Hanc fidem nunc ' implorant, avitam abs te Nepote supplices requirunt. Tui esse quàm cujus nunc sunt, vel permutatione aliquâ si fieri possit, malint atque 'optârint: id si non licet, patrocinio saltem, miseratione atque per"fugio. 66 66 66 66 "Sunt et rationes regni quæ hortari possint ut Convallenses ad te confugientes ne rejicias: sed nolim te, Rex tantus cum sis, aliis rati"onibus ad defensionem calamitosorum quam fide à Majoribus datá, pietate, regiáque animi benignitate ac magnitudine permoveri. Ita pulcherrimi facti laus atque gloria illibata atque integra tua erit, et ipse Patrem Misericordiæ ejusque Filium Christum Regem, cujus "Nomen atque Doctrinam ab immanitate nefariâ vindicaveris, eò magis 'faventem tibi et propitium per omnem vitam experieris. 66 "Deus Opt. Max. ad gloriam suam, tot innocentissimorum hominum "Christianorum tutandam salutem, Vestrumque verum decus, Majestati "Vestra hanc mentem injiciat. 66 6 'Majestatis Vestra Studiosissimus "OLIVERIUS PROTECTOR REIP. ANGLIE,' &c. "Westmonasterio, Maii '26o die,' anno 1658.”1 Of which here is a Version the most literal we can make : The Prose Works of John Milton (London, 1833), p. 815. |