I. Second Section…

I. Second Section

THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED RUMP:

MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659.

NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM: COUNCIL OP STATE OF THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION OP THE NEW GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE CROMWELLIANS AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE OF THE LEADING CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL, MONK, HENRY CROMWELL, LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AS AMBASSADOR FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF THE ARMY, NAVY, AND MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS FOR A SIMULTANEOUS RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES ROUND MONK AT DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S INSURRECTION CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON AND HIS POLITICAL THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS IN THE ARMY: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT'S BRIGADE: SEVERE NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED: LAMBERT'S RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT.

The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the 25th, the day of Richard's abdication. In obedience to a summons sent out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety. In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House. Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long Parliament to his present reappearance:--

The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a Regicide, i.e. an actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720). The contraction Rec. prefixed signifies that the person was not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov. 1640, but one of the Recruiters who came in at various times afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of these came in between Aug. 1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about eight persons were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the institution of the Commonwealth. R added to a name signifies a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; O^1 a member of Oliver's First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; O^2 a member of Oliver's Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The addition [t] in the last case denotes that the person was one of the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session, but restored at the beginning of the second. R denotes a member of the Commons in Richard's late Parliament, just dissolved; and L denotes that the person had been one of Oliver's and Richard's Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted. Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought correct by the restored Republic.

Speaker: William Lenthall (ætat. 68), O^1, O^2, L Rec. Andrews, Robert R Rec. Anlaby, John B, R Rec. Ash, James O^1, O^2, R Rec. Atkins, Alderman Rec. Baker, James R Barker, Col. John Rec. Bennett, Col. Robert B, O^1, R Rec. Bingham, Col. John B, 0^1, O^2, R Rec. Birch, Col. John O^1, O^2[t], R *Rec. Blagrave, Daniel O^2, R Rec. Boone, Thomas O^1, R *Rec. Bourchier, Sir John Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart. Rec. Brewster, Robert O^1, O^2, R * Carew, John B * Cawley, William R *Rec. Challoner, Thomas R Rec. Corbet, John Rec. Crompton, Thomas O^1, O^2, R Rec. Darley, Henry O^2[t] Rec. Darley, Richard O^2[t] *Rec. Dixwell, Col. John O^1, O^2, R Rec. Dormer, John Rec. Dove, John *Rec. Downes, Col. John Dunch, Edmund O^1, O^2 Rec. Earle, Serjeant Erasmus Ellis, Sir William O^1, O^2, R Rec. Eyre, Col. William R Rec. Fagg, John O^1, O^2, R Rec. Fielder, Col. John R Rec. Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles O^1, O^2, L *Rec. Garland, Augustine O^1 Rec. Gold, Nicholas R Goodwin, Robert R Goodwyn, John O^1, O^2[t], R Rec. Gurdon, Brampton Gurdon, John O^1 Hallows, Nathaniel Harby, Edward Rec. Harrington, Sir James O^1 Rec. Harvey, Col. Edward O^1, O^2[t] Hasilrig, Sir Arthur, Bart. O^1, O^2[t], R, L Rec. Hay, William O^1, O^2, R Heveningham, William Rec. Hill, Roger R Holland, Cornelius O^1 *Rec. Hutchinson, Col. John *Rec. Jones, Col. John (Cromwell's brother-in-law) O^2[t], L Rec. Jones, Col. Philip B, O^1, O^2, L Rec. Leman, William Rec. Lechmere, Nicholas O^1, O^2, R Rec. Lenthall, Sir John R Lisle, Lord Commissioner O^1, O^2, L Lisle, Viscount Philip B, L Rec. Lister, Thomas O^1, O^2[t] *Rec. Livesey, Sir Michael Rec. Love, Nicholas R Lowry, John R Rec. Lucy, Sir Richard, Bart., B, O^1, O^2[t], R Rec. Ludlow, Lieut.-Gen. Edmund R * Marten, Henry Rec. Martin, Christopher B, R *Rec. Mayne. Simon Mildmay, Sir Henry O^1, O^2[t], R *Rec. Millington, Gilbert Monson, Viscount (Irish Peer) Morley, Col. Herbert O^1, O^2, R Rec. Nelthorpe, James Rec. Neville, Henry R Nicholas, Robert Nutt, John Oldworth, Michael Palmer, Dr. John Pembroke, the Earl of (Earl since 1650) Pennington, Alderman Isaac Pickering, Sir Gilbert, Bart. B, O^1, O^2 Rec. Pigott, Gervase Prideaux, Sir Edmund O^1, O^2, R * Purefoy, Col. William O^1, O^2, R Pury, Thomas, Senr. O^1, O^2 Rec. Pury, Thomas, Junr. Pyne, Col. John B Rec. Raleigh, Carew (son of the great Raleigh) R Reynolds, Robert R Rec. Rich, Col. Charles R Rec. Robinson, Luke O^1, O^2 St. John, Chief Justice L Rec. Salisbury, the Earl of O^1, O^2[t] Salway, Major Richard B *Rec. Say, William *Rec. Scott, Thomas O^1, O^2[t], R Rec. Skinner, Capt. Augustine O^1 Rec. Skippon, Major-Gen. O^1, O^2, L Rec. Sidney, Col. Algernon Rec. Smith, Philip *Rec. Smyth, Henry Rec. Strickland, Walter B, O^1, O^2, L Strickland, Sir William O^1, O^2, L Rec. Sydenham, Col. Wm. B, O^1, O^2, L *Rec. Temple, James *Rec. Temple, Peter Rec. Thompson, Col. George R Rec. Thorpe, Serjeant Francis O^1, O^2[t] Trenchard, John O^1, O^2, R Trevor, Sir John O^1, O^2, R Vane, Sir Henry R Rec. Wallop, Robert O^1, O^2, R Walsingham, Sir Thomas * Walton, Col. Valentine (Cromwell's brother-in-law) *Rec. Wayte, Col. Thomas Rec. Weaver, Edmund Rec. Wentworth, Sir Peter Rec. West, Edmund Rec. Weston. Benjamin R Rec. White, Col. William Whitlocke, Lord Commissioner O^1, O^2, L Widdrington, Sir Thomas O^1, O^2 *Rec. Wogan, Thomas Rec. Wroth, Sir Thomas O^2, R Wylde, Chief Baron R[1]

[Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been prepared:--(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the five months of its sittings--Commons Journals, Vol. VII. pp. 644-797--and collected the names appearing in the lists of Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with a list in Parl. Hist., III. 1547-8. It is much less complete than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have referred to Mr. Carlyle's Revised List of the Long Parliament, appended to Vol. II. of his Cromwell, and to the Lists of the Barebones Parliament, Oliver's two Parliaments, and Richard's Parliament in Vol. III. of the Parl. Hist.--With all my care, I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian name. The Journals often omit that.--I have seen, since writing the above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving what it calls "a perfect list of the Rumpers." It includes 121 names, and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite--containing one or two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more authentic.]

From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval, but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed--e.g. Birch, John Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand, some--e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John, Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke--had merged their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell, and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed, finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to what was going on.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded divisions in the Journals for the whole session.]

A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again denoting Regicides:--

Parliamentary Members (In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot).

*Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Sir Henry Vane Colonel *Lieut.-General Ludlow Lieut.-General Fleetwood Major Richard Salway Colonel Herbert Morley *Thomas Scott Colonel Robert Wallop Sir James Harrington *Colonel Valentine Walton *Colonel John Jones Colonel William Sydenham Algernon Sidney Henry Neville *Thomas Challoner *Colonel John Downes Lord Chief Justice St. John George Thompson Lord Commissioner Whitlocke *Colonel John Dixwell Robert Reynolds Non-Parliamentary Members.

Seven appointed without ballot.

Thomas, Lord Fairfax O^1, R Major-General Lambert O^1, O^2, R Colonel John Desborough O^1, O^2, L Colonel James Berry O^2, L *John Bradshaw O^1, O^2[t], R Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. B, O^1, O^2[t], R Sir Horatio Townshend R

Three chosen, by ballot.

Josiah Berners O^1 Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston L Sir Robert Honeywood R

Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb. 1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected. His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a bonâ fide Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham's Fairfax, 375; Baillie's Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.]

There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic--to wit, the Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community, but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May 1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament, without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies, and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd theoretically; for, though there were then Republicans--Milton for one--who had adopted the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory. But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought to be nothing in it a priori whatever, were yet believers in the indefeasible and a priori authority of that Republican system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should be no government except by the people themselves through a Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to their senses!

These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed.

The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by their defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went. Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the 16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the Rumpers.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French reckoning)--especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402); Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]

Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf here and there, but they died away.--Monk, about whose conduct in the crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense gain.--Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from the new Government.--There had been more uncertainty about Henry Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day, having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace, by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz, that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was present in many of your administrations before you were last interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April 1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died." Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts, as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the understanding that his income should receive such an increase as should raise it to £10,000 a year in all.--Monk, Lockhart, and the Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July 2, 1659.]

The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July, had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath they must strive to keep out the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with the old dynasty?

All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard, Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of. Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course which in him, at all events, would have been infamous; and, though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in their "further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to assist them with advices and information.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.]

Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton, Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the chair.

A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell, and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland; re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions in two departments: (1) Church and Religion, On the 27th of June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition, however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause," and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism, and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few, on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers, contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question, so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in Religion; but the probability is that the question was only adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and, though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was merely continued. (2) Relations with Foreign Powers. In this matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements. No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length, early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone, a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident, there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death; negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and, though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism were but expensive moonshine.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl. Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 165-172.]

In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor. Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill, passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment, consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400 in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,--e.g. Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and Pride,--should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were to be now properly but two Generals, and that the highest officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations, were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and Monk, to rank on one level as merely Colonels. As far as to these Colonels, the result was as follows:

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.

I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. Colonels of Horse Regiments: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert Morley. 2. Colonels of Foot-Regiments: Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert Barrow.--One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,--All these appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood over for consideration.--In the Journals Lambert is styled "Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse.

II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:--Here, probably because of Monk's passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only, by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen), Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.

II. IRELAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.

Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should be at liberty to return to England on occasion.

Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence, Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell, for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.

In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man, having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.--More a matter of wonder still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties, just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug. 2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour, from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to Ludlow's Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with Monk in Scotland, and Overton's former military experience in high command had been chiefly in Scotland.]

The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.

After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home, had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton, Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists." Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border; and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax, Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller, Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others, were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest," Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others, went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to embark together.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot, 191-204.]

As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31 the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short, whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in several other places those who straggled together dispersed themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey, Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth, the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords, Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire, where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in, and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken the initiative.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips, 649-652 (where Booth's Proclamation is given).]

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.--Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk. He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in it were enjoined to secrecy.--The news was that Sir George Booth's Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August 17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days afterwards.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner's Life of Monk, 90-104; Wood's Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.]

At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth £1000 was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller ("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord Falconbridge (discharged on bail of £10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.--For, in fact, the Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits. Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined £100 each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the House, when fines of £100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington (Rec., O²), John Carew (*Rec., B), Thomas Mackworth (Rec., O¹, O², R), Alexander Popham (O^1, O^2, R), Richard Norton (Rec., B, O^1, O^2, R), and John Stephens (Rec., R). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected. But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines, ranging from £5 to £40, twenty-five members who had been attending of late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John, Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of Major-General Harrison (*Rec., O^1, R). He, of course, had never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of his complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had been fined £5 or £20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely settling all scores together.--In what high spirits Lambert's victory had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 et seq.) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should "have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw, Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton, Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14 (Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734 (about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11 to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2, 1658, the day before Oliver's death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct. 25, 1659, there is again a gap.]

Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the Government of this Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville, Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee! It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic, without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time," he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedæmonian Ephori, who should have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person, touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power finally to resolve and determine--every year a third part to go out and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences, Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous. Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by appointing the present Committee.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.--After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom "that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The basis must be a systematic classification of the community in accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.--Harrington's ideal had been set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled The Commonwealth of Oceana, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues, and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in 1658, had published a second treatise, called The Prerogative of Popular Government, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines of the Oceana, but more in a style of direct dissertation.--The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous. Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament. On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth, was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured, in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300 members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws; the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each House would be entirely changed.--Not content with petitioning Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously through the press. A Discourse showing that the spirit of a Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy, was a pamphlet of Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was entitled Aphorisms Political, and consisted of a series of brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples, through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called The Rota. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house--to which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair: and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those. This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of tentamens; which being not used or known in England before upon this account, the room every evening was very full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire, Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet, Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen. Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London, yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these physical philosophers. What were their occupations over drugs, water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]

[Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126; Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets (for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates. The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration. They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form. Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of "the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants, and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert, once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five (Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562; Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).]

Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers, cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine proposals. The preamble complained generally of the misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade, and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of his decided sympathies with them rather than with the Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost, or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act, calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer, Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken, and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed. Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the Parliament know that he would stand by them against the Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz. Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry, Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of seven,--to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton, Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and, having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night, they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8; Phillips, 656-660; Skinner's Life of Monk, 111-113.]

Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why. "This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army, whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the members from coming to the House and attending their service there." This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about, coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert, perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council, had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed. The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a restored session, of five months.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV. 364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.]

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I. Second Section (continued)

THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT. 13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS COMMITTEE OF SAFETY: BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF BRADSHAW.--ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD, LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.--FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS CHANCES IN ENGLAND.--DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.--MONK AT COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON: VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND TIME.

For about a fortnight after Lambert's coup d'état, the Council of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the 26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford--House officers, and called The Committee of Safety. It consisted of twenty-three persons, as follows:--

Whitlocke (made also_ Lord Keeper of the Great Seal_, Nov. 1).

Colonel Robert Bennett Colonel James Berry Henry Brandreth Colonel John Clerk Desborough Fleetwood Sir James Harrington Colonel Hewson Cornelius Holland Alderman Ireton Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston Lambert Henry Lawrence Colonel Robert Lilburne Ludlow Major Salway William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland) Walter Strickland Colonel William Sydenham Robert Thompson Alderman Tichbourne Sir Henry Vane.

The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent, chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway, and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual, however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee, leaving surely a most troubled world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659; Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368; Phillips, 662.]

Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of nominations was to see that the officers throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the newly-established order.--It was foreseen that in this there would be great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out. There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship, after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.--They had not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's coup d'état than he repeated his former determination most emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28, when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall, it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades, were in exultation accordingly.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729; Phillips, 663-666; Skinner's Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II. 18-22.]

Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace. They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed within a few days by six other missionaries for the same purpose--Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November, Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there, and gather forces to block the north of England against the possibility of Monk's invasion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131, 140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.]

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to seem to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's, Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's, Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had £70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates." They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips's information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk's enterprise henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a continuation of Baker's Chronicle, is a contribution of original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted, as he tells us, the use of Monk's papers and those of his agents. This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission executed for Monk.]

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr. Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying they had begun the war, and, if they continued in their course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did, being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.]

Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved"; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty--not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King," repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December 1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each other,--Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about 3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from the one to the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV. 373-377.]

All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659 (i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II. 274-278.]

In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.--One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of The Treaty of the Pyrenees, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.--While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost. Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin. Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each other's paths and were again near neighbours.--Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France, it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup d'état, there were some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant. When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists, that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the 9th of December.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802; Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I. 211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288, 294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13, 1659.]

In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.]

The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of Parliament? The late Rump reinstated at once with full authority, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself outvoted on that, and go on. Richard's late Parliament had been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard himself. The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump, i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of 1642-1649 restored to their seats, was a third proposal, of more tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. A new Parliament, called by ourselves, was the conclusion in which they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then, whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent? Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch? Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject? Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1]

[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough, some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes, and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions; preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November, while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659, laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:--1. "That the politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be restored; 2. That Harrington's Aphorisms and other political slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with all seriousness. Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus is the title of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles afresh.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason Tract of date, entitled Decrees and Orders, &c.; and Thomason Catalogue.]

Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers, before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named (Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body, intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow, approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless, a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would be ready.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.]

The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised; Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared, to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword, let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under the name of Conservators of Liberty, twenty-one men to be guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2) Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements except by the Conservators--the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight on the list,--dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience, and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville, and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe. Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless, his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested, and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.]

Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals. Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were demoralising Lambert's.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.]

For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November. All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be "warranted in his present actings" by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery. Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner, 170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.]

It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become indescribable. "I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew not how to get free of them," is Whitlocke's entry in his diary for Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, "Most of the soldiery about London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most eager for Fleetwood's party became as violent against them, and for the Parliament to sit again." In other words, the soldiers of Fleetwood's own London regiments were tired of being insulted and jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren everywhere else, that Lambert's coup d'état of Oct. 13 had been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.--In these circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk's design was to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and, if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free Parliament"--not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House "qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling out,--and then either take the field with his forces under that banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood, had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that, Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.--This was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another, suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us, for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in Lincoln's Inn Fields under the command of Okey, Alured, Markham, and Mosse. Fleetwood, applied to for the keys of the Parliament house, willingly gave them up and resigned all charge. On Saturday the 24th the mass of the soldiers were gladly at the appointed rendezvous, and were marched down Chancery Lane, where the Speaker came out to them at the Rolls, and was received with shouts of joy and repentance. On Monday the 26th all the members of the Rump who were at hand met the Speaker in the Council-Chamber at Whitehall, and walked thence to Westminster Hall, the mace carried before them, and the soldiers and populace cheering as they passed. They constituted the House and proceeded at once to business. They had been excluded two months and fourteen days.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 380-384; Phillips, 676; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of Dec. 28, 1659 (English reckoning), Guizot, 318-322.]

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I. Second Section (continued)

THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1659-60.

THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER CHIEFS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW: NEW ARMY REMODELLING: ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS: DISPERSION OF LAMBERT'S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN'S AND MESSAGE THENCE TO THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION: HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON, FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING HIS MARCH AND ON HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE'S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP: HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK'S RECONCILIATION WITH THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE CITY AND OF THE RUMP TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: BILL OF THE RUMP FOR ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE BY THE RESEATING OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT UNDER MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7, 1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again refused.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals (Divisions and Committees) from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 21, 1659-60.]

A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to consist, as before, of twenty-one Parliamentaries and ten non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1, 1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a Regicide.

PARLIAMENTARIES.

Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Colonel Herbert Morley Robert Wallop *Colonel Valentine Walton *Thomas Scott Nicholas Love Chief Justice St. John Colonel William White John Weaver Robert Reynolds Sir James Harrington Sir Thomas Widdrington Colonel George Thompson *John Dixwell Henry Neville Colonel John Fagg John Corbet *Thomas Challoner *Henry Marten *William Say Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot).

NON-PARLIAMENTARIES.

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed before his election as M.P.) Josiah Berners General Monk Vice-Admiral Lawson Alderman Love Thomas Tyrrell Lord Fairfax Alderman Foote Robert Rolle Slingsby Bethell.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec. 31, 1659 and Jan. 2, 1659-60.]

The proceeding's of the House for the first month showed no diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed. Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan. 17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for the Protectorate.

A good deal of the first month's business consisted in votes of approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption and votes condemning the Wallingford-House "usurpers" and their acts. Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was resolved to bestow on him and his heirs £1000 a year. But there were thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of Safety was styled "the late pretended Committee of Safety," and all their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was not so complete but that a few of the late chief's might expect some punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield, Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the 18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without punishment. Whitlocke even ventured to appear in the House, but was received so coolly that he soon withdrew into the country, leaving instructions to his wife to burn a quantity of his papers and to deliver the great seal to the Speaker. So far was Fleetwood from being in danger that they were considering whether he might not be retained as Commander-in-chief. Ludlow, much to his surprise, found himself among the accused. This, however, was not because of the middle course he had taken in London through the late interruption, though he had lost some credit by that with his Republican friends. He had unfortunately left London on his way back to Ireland on the very eve of that happy restitution of the Rump which he had despaired of seeing, and it was in Ireland that his enemies were most numerous and violent. He had hardly arrived among them and attempted to resume his command when he received notice from the House that he and Colonel John Jones, with Miles Corbet and Matthew Tomlinson, were required to come over to answer certain charges against them relating to their Irish government (Jan. 5). Ludlow and the others obeyed, and found, on their arrival in London in February, that Sir Charles Coote and other officers in Ireland had lodged an impeachment against them for nothing less than high treason.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 1659-60; Ludlow, 783-806; Whitlocke, IV. 384-392.]

Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too familiar one of "re-modelling." Men not now satisfactory had to be removed from all departments of the public service and more proper men substituted. Whitlocke's great seal was given into new keeping, and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre, Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield, Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is puzzled by the appearance of many persons as "colonels" who had the title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec, 1659 and Jan. 1659-60; Whitlocke as before.]

Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency which had characterized the House in its previous session. The essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed. It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State, before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing "the pretended title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which shall pretend," &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other than sound Commonwealth's men; but that oaths were becoming frightfully frequent, and this one would be "a confining of Providence," &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that, after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax, St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council rather than submit to the qualification made essential in their case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the public "That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers; and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of mal-administration and appeals, &c." Such a declaration was adopted and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic exponents of the "good old cause." The very phrase "the good old cause," one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word "fanatics" as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig, Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the power going from their hands.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 678; Ludlow, 807-809; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 325-839.]

While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting between the House and Monk.

The House having been restored by Monk's agency, but without that march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after all. Lambert's army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to attack Lambert's rear, in accordance with the understanding he had come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk's business at York to reform the wreck of Lambert's forces, incorporating some of them with his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day, at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing farther information for his guidance. On the 22nd, as he was approaching Leicester, Messrs. Scott and Robinson, who had been sent from London as Commissioners from the Rump to attend him in the rest of his march, made their appearance ceremoniously and were duly received. They had come really as anxious spies on Monk's conduct, and were very inquisitive and loquacious; but they relieved him thenceforth of much of the trouble of answering the deputations and addresses by which he was still beset on his route. They were with him at Northampton, where he was on the 24th; at Dunstable, where he was on the 27th; and at St. Alban's, where he arrived on the 28th. Here, twenty miles from London, he rested for five days, to see the issue of a very important message he had been secretly preparing for the Parliament and which he now sent on by Dr. Clarges. It was a request to the House to clear London of all but two of the regiments then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr. Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr. Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people crinkledum cum crankledum." Monk's present march was to be one of the last of the windings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680; Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).]

While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done, they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of 1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or (2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at once. Both these methods implied the restoration of Charles, though mention of that consequence, and by some even the thought of it, was most studiously avoided. A full and free new Parliament meant, in the present mood of the country, a recall of Charles rapidly and unhesitatingly. The filling up of the present Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members, and by new elections for other vacancies, meant the reconstituting of the Long Parliament entire, just as it had been while negotiations with Charles I. were going on, and before the Army, in order to stop these negotiations and bring in the Republic, ejected the Royalist and Presbyterian members. Such a reconstituted Parliament, if time were given it, would also inevitably recall Charles II., though it might do so after a preliminary compact with him on the basis of that Treaty of Newport which had been going on with his father late in 1648, and which might be regarded as still embodying the views of the Presbyterians respecting Royalty and its limits. Of the two methods the Cavaliers or Old Royalists naturally preferred that which would bring in Charles most speedily and with the fewest conditions; but, as they were outnumbered by the Presbyterians or New Royalists, they were willing to accept their method. To the genuine Rumpers, of course, either proposal was dreadful. To retain the power themselves, enlarging their House, if at all, only by new elections permitted by themselves, and not to part with their power unless to a new Parliament the qualifications for which should have been carefully pre-determined by themselves, was the only procedure by which they could hope to preserve the Commonwealth. Hence, on the one hand, their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the Stuarts utterly. It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by Fairfax. But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point. To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or Price, or the physician Dr. Barrow, been always at hand to explain privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was peculiar. Only in one matter was he explicit himself. He would not permit the least insinuation that he designed to bring in Charles. At York he had caned one of his officers for having said something imprudent to that effect.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner and Phillips ut supra; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, of date Jan. 21, in Guizot, II. 336-340.]

On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did comply with Monk's request, by issuing orders for the removal of Fleetwood's regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was a mutiny among Fleetwood's soldiers on account of the disgrace put upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers; and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray's Inn Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration oath.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Skinner, 199-206; Phillips, 680-682.]

On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation among them was only "Commissioner Monk"; for, though he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few other members of the old Council of State during the late interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert's coup d'état to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker; at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return the speech he had carefully conned. "Sir, I shall not trouble you with large narratives," he said; "only give me leave to acquaint you that, as I marched from Scotland hither, I observed the people in most counties in great and earnest expectations of Settlement, and they made several applications to me, with numerous subscriptions. The chiefest heads of their desires were:--for a free and full Parliament, and that you would determine your sitting; a Gospel Ministry; encouragement of Learning and Universities; and for admittance of the members secluded before 1648, without any previous oath or engagement. To which I commonly answered, That you are now in a free Parliament, and, if there were any force remaining upon you, I would endeavour to remove it; and that you had voted to fill up your House, and then you would be a full Parliament also...; but, as for those gentlemen secluded in 1648, I told them you had given judgment in it and all people ought to acquiesce in that judgment; but to admit any members to sit in Parliament without a previous oath or engagement to secure the Government in being, it was never yet done in England. And, although I said it not to them, I must say it with pardon to you, that the less oaths and engagements are imposed (with respect had to the security of the common cause) your settlement will be the sooner attained to." He was now half through his speech; and the rest consisted of general recommendations of a policy in accordance with "the sober interest," with care that "neither the Cavalier nor Fanatic party" should have a share of the civil or military power. He ended with a glance at Ireland and Scotland, bespeaking particular attention to the Scots, as "a nation deserving much to be cherished," and sure to appreciate the late declaration in favour of a sober and conservative Church policy, inasmuch as no nation more dreaded "to be overrun with fanatic notions." Having thus delivered himself, Monk withdrew, leaving the House wholly mystified, but also a good deal distempered, by his ambiguities. It seems to have been on this occasion that Henry Marten vented that witty description of Monk which is one of the best even of his good sayings. "Monk," he said, "is like a man that, being sent for to make a suit of clothes, should bring with him a budget full of carpenter's tools, and, being told that such things were not at all fit for the work he was desired to do, should answer, 'It matters not; I will do your work well enough, I warrant you.'" Monk was now on the spot with his budget of carpenter's tools, and he meant to make a tolerable suit of clothes with them somehow.[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a hiatus in the Journals at the point of Monk's reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original authority for Henry Marten's witticism is, I believe, Ludlow (810-811).]

There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. The Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth was another of Harrington's, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in London, he was saluted by The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced, also by Harrington. A Coffin for the Good Old Cause was another, in a different strain; and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival at St. Alban's, indeed, he had become the universal target for letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. The Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk was on the book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were watching to see what "Old George" would do. He did not yet know that himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the feeling that now prevailed. "Conscientious, Serious, Theological and Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected, Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto"; "Six Important Queries proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament"; "Seven Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members"; "Case of the Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members"; "Three Seasonable Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose respective citizens have been forcibly excluded," &c.; "Full Declaration": such are the titles of those of Prynne's pamphlets, the last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named of Prynne's pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk was to do anything at all, was not Prynne's way the safest and most popular? Practically, at all events, he could now see that the possible courses had reduced themselves to two,--(1) The Rump's own way, or self-enlargement of the present House by new writs, issued with all Republican precautions; (2) The City's way, or Prynne's way, which proposed to re-insert the secluded members into the present House, so as to make it legally the Long Parliament over again, with its rights and engagements precisely as they had been at the time of the last negotiations with Charles I. in 1648. For which of these two courses he should declare himself was the question Monk had to ponder.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same; Wood's Ath. III. 870-871.]

He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way. On the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, they resolved that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400 members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners, tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of the Rump's obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council "whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government"; influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices. Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant decision for the one or the other was imperative.--On the night of the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders, though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common Council and give the Parliament every satisfaction, he had thought it best not to incense the City by the extreme insult of unhinging the gates and wedging the portcullises. The Rumpers were in ecstasies. Monk had committed himself, and was irredeemably theirs. "All is our own: he will be honest," said Hasilrig to the friends beside him. In their triumph, they rose once more for a moment to the full height of Republican confidence. It happened that a deputation of London citizens, headed by Mr. Praise-God Barebone, had come to the House that day with a petition and address, signed by some thousands of "lovers of the good old cause," who were anxious to disclaim all connexion with the City tumults and with "the promoters of regal interest" in the City or elsewhere. The petitioners demanded nothing less than that the House should at once impose an oath abjuring Charles Stuart upon all clergymen and other persons in public employment; but even this did not prevent the House from thanking them cordially. As for the City generally, now that Monk had brought it to submission, the House would trample it under foot! The Lord Mayor, having behaved discreetly through the tumults, was to be thanked; but it was voted that the present Common Council should be dissolved and a new one elected by such citizens only as the House should deem worthy of the franchise. Nor was Monk to hesitate any longer about the city gates and portcullises. Orders were sent to him, not only to unhinge the gates and wedge the portcullises, as the Council had already ordered, but to break them in pieces. The City was to be overmastered utterly and finally, and Monk was to be the agent.--Not even yet did Monk rebel. The gates and portcullises were broken in pieces by his soldiers, and every other order was punctually carried out. The soldiers were in indignation over their base employment, and the citizens were stupefied. In vain were Clarges, Dr. Barrow, and others of Monk's friends going about and assuring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the General was a man of very peculiar ways and must not be too hastily judged. "Very peculiar ways indeed," thought the citizens, mourning for their honours lost, and their broken gates and portcullises. On the night of Friday, Feb. 10, when Monk returned to Whitehall, after his two days of rough work in the city, it was, as it seemed, with his reputation ruined for ever among the Londoners. A few days before he had been the popular demigod, the man on whom all depended, and who had all in his power. Now what was he but the slave and hireling of the Rump?[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 684-685; Skinner, 211-219; Whitlocke, IV. 394-396.]

It was afterwards represented by Monk's admirers that his City proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment. He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been handling his carpenter's tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that, after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be in the printer's hands before the House had received the original.

Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor, to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less than answer that he would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over, and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about five o'clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to these demands and otherwise, he meant to remain in the City of London with his regiments, making common cause with the faithful citizens! Guildhall rang with acclamations; and, as the news was dispersed thence through the City, confirmed by the printed copies of Monk's letter to the Rump that were by this time in circulation, the dejection of the two last days passed into a phrenzy of joy. Housewives ran out to Monk's soldiers, who had been standing all day under arms, carrying them food and drink without stint; crowds of apprentices danced everywhere like delirious demons; the bells of all the churches were set a-ringing; the houses of several "fanatics" were besieged, and the windows in Barebone's all smashed; and far into the night and into the Sunday morning the streets blazed with long rows of bonfires. Whatever piece of flesh, in butcher's stall or in family-safe, bore resemblance to a rump, or could be carved into something of that shape, was hauled to one of these bonfires to be flung in and burnt; and for many a day afterwards the 11th of February 1659-60 was to be famous in London as The Roasting of the Rump.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 685-687; Skinner, 219-230; Parl. Hist. III. 1578-9; Letter of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 350-351; Pepys's Diary, Feb. 11, 1659-60.]

On receiving Monk's letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two previous days, and to assure him "that, as to the filling up of the House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time." But at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed by that time of Monk's proceedings in the City, had shown their resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always be one of the quorum.--Through the following week, however, efforts were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there, first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers' Hall in Throgmorton Street, holding levées of the citizens and city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other members of the House. Even Ludlow, though one of the complaints in Monk's letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion. He was shy at first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart, "Yea," said he, "we must live and die together for a Commonwealth." The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was that of the Secluded Members. The applications on their behalf by the Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant. Monk even yet had his hesitations. On the one hand, to avert, if possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk's letter. They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided. They had, moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways. They had resolved (Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament should simply be, "I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords"; and they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of State. They had also complied with Monk's demands that there should be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and especially of Vane and Lambert. All this was to induce Monk to accept the proffered Self-Enlargement of the present House, rather than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for the Long Parliament reconstituted. Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk's own mind. If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm. But would it do so? With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts? Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended? Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence? To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the Secluded. Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable. Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement.----Monk then took the matter into his own hands. Having, in the course of the Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st; and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall, to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament House. The incident had been expected; there were soldiers all round the House already; and the procession walked through cheering crowds of spectators. Monk remained at Whitehall himself, to hold a General Council of his officers later in the day.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 687-688; Skinner, 233-242; Ludlow, 832-836; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 347-365.]

The Rump, which had been still busy on Saturday with the Bill of Qualifications or "Disabling Bill," but whose sitting on Monday is marked only by a hiatus in the Journals, had not formed the House on Tuesday morning when the procession of secluded members, swelled to about eighty by stragglers on the way, entered and took their seats. A few of the Rumpers, seeing what had occurred, ruefully left the House, to return no more; but most remained and amalgamated themselves easily with the more numerous new comers. The reconstituted House then plunged at once into business thus:-"PRAYERS: Resolved, &c., That the Resolution of this House of the 18th of December, 1648, 'that liberty be given to the members of this House to declare their dissent to the vote of the 5th of December 1648 that the King's Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was a ground for this House to proceed upon for settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom,' be vacated, and made null and void, and obliterated." In other words, here was the Long Parliament, like a Rip Van Winkle, resuming in Feb. 1659-60 the work left off in Dec. 1648, and acknowledging not an inch of gap between the two dates. There were seven other similar Resolutions, cancelling votes and orders standing in the way; and these, with orders for the discharge of the citizens recently imprisoned by the Rump, and resolutions for annulling the late new Army Commission of the Rump, and for appointing Monk to be "Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, under the Parliament, of all the land-forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland," and continuing Vice-Admiral Lawson, in his naval command, were the sum and substance of the business of the first sitting.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.]

Before night Monk and his officers had drafted a Letter to all the regiments and garrisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining to them that, by the grace of God and good London management, they had passed through another revolution. The Letter began "Dear Brethren and Fellow-Soldiers," and bore Monk's signature, followed by those of Colonels Ralph Knight, John Clobery, Thomas Read, John Hubblethorn, Leonard Lydcott, Thomas Sanders, William Eyre, John Streater, Richard Mosse, William Parley, Arthur Evelyn, and sixteen inferior officers. It was vague, but intimated that the Government was still to be that of a Commonwealth, and that all disturbances of the peace "in favour of Charles Stuart or any other pretended authority" were to be put down. More explicit had been Monk's speech at Whitehall that morning to the secluded members on their way to the House, published copies of which were also distributed by Monk's authority. He had assured the secluded members, "and that in God's presence," that he had nothing before his eyes "but God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"; and he had pointed out the interest of the Londoners especially in the preservation of a Commonwealth, "that Government only being capable to make them, through the Lord's blessing, the metropolis and bank of trade for all Christendom." On the Church question he had been very precise. "As to a Government in the Church," he had said, "the want whereof hath been no small cause of these nations' distractions, it is most manifest that, if it be monarchical in the State, the Church must follow and Prelacy must be brought in--which these nations, I know, cannot bear, and against which they have so solemnly sworn; and indeed moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian Government, with a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the Church's settlement." It is not uninteresting to know that Monk's chief ecclesiastical adviser at this moment, and probably the person who had formulated for him the description of the kind of Church that would be most desirable, was Mr. James Sharp, from Crail in Scotland. He had followed Monk to London with a commission from the leaders of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy; and from his arrival there he had been, Baillie informs us, "the most wise, faithful, and happy counsellor" Monk had, keeping him from all wrong steps by his extraordinary Banffshire sagacity.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 688-689; Parl. Hist. III, 1579-1581 (Monk's Speech and Declaration); Baillie, III. 440-441. How uncertain it was yet whether Monk would ever desert the Commonwealth, and how anxious the Royalists were on the subject, appears from a letter of Mordaunt to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the Restoration of the Secluded Members (Clar. State Papers, III. 683). Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:--"The visible inclination of the people; the danger he foresees from so many enemies; his particular pique to Lambert; the provocation of the Anabaptists and Sectaries, with whom I may now join the Catholics; the want of money to continue standing armies; the divisions of the chief officers in those respective armies; the advices of those near him--I mean, in particular, Clobery and Knight...; the admonitions daily given him by Mr. Annesley and Alderman Robinson;--unless God has fed him to the slaughter, cannot but move him."]

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