Raging yet among the Scottish clergy, and dividing the Scottish community so far as the clergy had influence, was the controversy between the Resolutioners and the Remonstrants or Protesters (Vol. IV. pp. 201-214, 281-284, 288-289, and 361). By a law of political life, every community, at every time, must have some polarizing controversy; and this was Scotland's through the whole period of her absorption in the English Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Protesters were the Whigs, and the Resolutioners the Tories, of Scotland through that time; and the strife between the parties was all the fiercer because, Scottish autonomy being lost, it was the only native strife left for Scotsmen, and they were battened down to it, as an indulgence among themselves, by a larger and unconcerned rule overhead. General Assemblies of the Kirk being no longer allowed, it had to be conducted in Provincial Synods and Presbyteries only, or in sermons and pamphlets of mutual reproach. The exasperation was great; Church-censures and threats of such passed and repassed; all attempts at agreement failed; the best friends were parted. Leaders among the majority, or Resolutioner clergy, were Mr. Robert Douglas of Edinburgh, who had preached the coronation sermon of Charles II. at Scone, Mr. James Sharp of Crail (these two back for some time from the imprisonment in London to which Monk had sent them in 1651: Vol. IV. 296), Mr. James Wood of St. Andrews, old Mr. David Dickson, now Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh, and our perpetual friend Baillie. The minority, or Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, negociated between the two sides; and Mr. Robert Leighton, in his Edinburgh Principalship, looked on with saintly and philosophic indifference. He hoped that, while so many brethren "preached to the times," one brother might be allowed "to preach on eternity" and that the differences on earth would "make heaven the sweeter." In fact, however, the controversy was not merely a theoretical one. Not only was it involved whether the two last General Assemblies, of 1651 and 1652, swayed as they had been by the Resolutioners, should be recognised and their acts held valid, and what should be the spirit and constitution of the Kirk in future: present interests were also involved. It had been to the Protesters that Cromwell had turned with greatest liking and hope, both on political grounds and from spiritual sympathy, when he was fighting in Scotland; and, since the beginning of his Protectorate, they had been most in favour. Early in 1654 three of their number, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, Mr. John Livingston, and Mr. John Menzies, had been summoned to London to advise the Protector; they had been there two or three months; and the effects of their advice had been visible in an ordinance about vacant Kirk-livings very favourable to the Protesters, and generally in a continued inclination towards the Protesters in the proceedings of the English Government in Scotland. The ministers and others ejected by Cromwell's visitors had been mostly of the Resolutioner species; and one of Baillie's complaints is that Protesters, whether fit or not, were put into vacant livings by the English, and that only Scotsmen of that colour were conjoined with the English in the executive and the judicatories. Till 1656 all this had been very natural. The dregs of Stuartism, and consequent antipathy to the Protectorate, had persisted till then most visibly among the Resolutioners.¹

Though the Protesters were originally what we have called super-ultra-Presbyterians, it was not surprising that some of them had moved into Independency. There certainly were some Independents among the Scottish parish clergy at this time, especially about Aberdeen; and the Independents apart from the National Church had become numerous. But mere Independency now, or even Anabaptism, was nothing very shocking in Scotland; it was the increase of newer sectaries that alarmed the clergy. Quakerism had found its way into Scotland; so that there were now, we are told by a contemporary, "great numbers of that damnable sect of the Quakers, who, being deluded by Satan, drew away many to their profession, both men and women." As in England, Quaker preachers went about disturbing the regular service in churches, or denouncing every form of ministry but their own to open-air congregations, and often with physical convulsions and fits of insane phrenzy. The Church-courts and the civil authorities were much exercised by the innovation, and had begun action against the sect, the rather because many of the common people, in their weariness of the strife among their own clergy, "resetted" the Quaker preachers and said they "got as much good of them as of anybody else."¹

Not an importation like Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth, was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. "There is much witchery up and down our land," wrote Baillie: "the English be but too sparing to try it, but some they execute." Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland, consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But, indeed, very strange isms of quite another sort, and of which mere modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all the exercise of Presbyterian discipline, all the seeming distribution of the population universally into Resolutioners and Protesters, with interspersed Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other vehement Christians. Bead, from the Scottish correspondence of Needham's Mercurius Politicus, in the number for June 26-July 3, 1656, the following account of one of the cases that had come before Judge Smith and Judge Lawrence in their Dumfriesshire circuit of the previous May:—

"Alexander Agnew, commonly called Jock of Broad Scotland," [apparently an itinerant beggar, or Edie Ochiltree, of Dumfriesshire] was tried on this indictment.—"First, the said Alexander, being desired to go to church, answered 'Hang God: God was hanged long since; what had he to do with God? he had nothing to do with God'. Secondly, He answered he was nothing in God's common; God gave him nothing, and he was no more obliged to God than to the Devil; and God was very greedy. Thirdly, When he was desired to seek anything in God's name, he said he would never seek anything for God's sake, and that it was neither God nor the Devil that gave the fruits of the land: the wives of the country gave him his meat. Fourthly, Being asked how many persons were in the Godhead, answered there was only one person in the Godhead, who made all; but, for Christ, he was not God, because he was made, and came into the world after it was made, and died as other men, being nothing but a mere man. Sixthly, He declared that he knew not whether God or the Devil had the greater power; but he thought the Devil had the greatest; and 'When I die,' said he, 'let God and the Devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.' Seventhly, He denied there was a Holy Ghost, or knew there was a Spirit, and denied he was a sinner or needed mercy. Eighthly, He denied he was a sinner, and [said] that he scorned to seek God's mercy. Ninthly, He ordinarily mocked all exercise of God's worship and convocation in His name, in derision saying 'Pray you to your God, and I will pray to mine when I think time.' And, when he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, 'Take a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them, and take your breakfast off them.' To others he said, 'I will give you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.' To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the ground by him, he said, 'If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry to God before he give it me again.' To others he said, 'Take a bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.' Tenthly, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he answered he had never had any profession, nor never would—he had never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but, for the second person of the Trinity, he had been the second person of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.—And these aforesaid blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.—Which indictment being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew, called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries, their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while [till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat."

The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.¹ Not only were Lauderdale, Eglinton, Marischal, David Leslie, and a number of the other distinguished Scottish prisoners of 1651, still detained in London, in more or less strict custody, with their wives and retainers near them; but many Scots whose proper residence was in Scotland were coming to London, on visits of some length, for their own or for public business. Among these, late in 1655, was Lockhart,—to be converted, as we know, into the Protector's ambassador to the Court of France. The eccentric ex-Judge Scot of Scotstarvet had already been in London, petitioning for the remission or reduction of his fine of £1500 for former delinquency, and succeeding completely at last, "in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth." The Earl of Lothian was in London, painfully prosecuting petitions for the recovery of certain lost family-properties. But the most remarkable apparition was that of the Marquis of Argyle. He came to London in September, 1655, and he seems to have remained there for a long while. What had brought him up was also a suit with the Protector and the Council for reparation of some portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. "Came to visit me." says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court, in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, "the old Marquis of Argyle. Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. Note: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for owls." It had been his characteristic mistake through life.²

Any influence which the Marquis could now have with the Protector in matters of Scottish Government must have been small; but it was understood that, such as it was, it would be on the side of the Kirk party of the Protesters. And this had become of some consequence. In and through 1656, if not earlier, it had become obvious that the inclinations of the Protector to that party had been considerably shaken. The change was attributed partly to Lord President Broghill. Almost from his first coming to Scotland, this nobleman had found it desirable to win over the Resolutioners. "The President Broghill," says Baillie, "is reported by all to be a man exceeding wise and moderate, and by profession a Presbyterian: he has gained more on the affections of the people than all the English that ever were among us. He has been very civil to Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickson, and is very intime with Mr. James Sharp. By this means we [the Resolutioners] have an equal hearing in all we have ado with the Council. Yet their way is exceeding longsome, and all must be done first at London." So far as Broghill's communications with London might serve, the Resolutioners, therefore, might count on him as their friend. And by this time he had reasons to show. Had he not succeeded, where the stern Monk had failed, in inducing the Resolutioner clergy to give up public praying for King Charles and otherwise to conform; and was it not on this ground that Monk was believed still to befriend the Protesters? But perhaps it hardly needed Broghill's representations to induce Cromwell to reconsider his Scottish policy in regard to the Kirk. That same Conservatism which had been gaining on him in the English department of his Protectorate, leading him rather to discourage extreme men while tolerating them, had begun to affect his views of Kirk parties in Scotland. The Resolutioners were numerically the larger party: if they would be reconciled, might they not be his most massive support in North Britain? It is possible that the institution of the new Scottish Council under Broghill's Presidency may have been the result of such thoughts, and that Broghill thus only took a course indicated for him by Cromwell. At all events, various relaxations of former orders, about admission to vacant livings and the like, had already been made in favour of the Resolutioners; and, in and from 1656, it was noted that extreme men in Scotland too were not to his Highness's taste, and that, contrary to what might have been expected from his former relations to Scottish Presbyterianism, his aim now was to rebuild a good and solid Established Church in Scotland mainly on the native Presbyterian principle, though under control, and to leave extravagant spirits, including even those too forward for Independency among the Scots, to the mere benefits of an outside toleration. It was not his way to proceed hurriedly, however; and, as the Protesters were religiously the men most to his liking, and must by all means be kept within the Kirk, an agreement between them and the Resolutioners was a political necessity. To this end he had again, more than once recently, requested some of the leaders of both parties to come to London for consultation, as Gillespie, Livingston, and Menzies, for the Protesters, had done before. Appeals to the Civil Power in ecclesiastical matters being against the Presbyterian theory which the parties professed in common, that suggestion had not been taken, notwithstanding the precedent, and the parties had persisted in their war of mutual invective in Scotland, each getting what it could by private dealings with the Council there,—the Resolutioners through Broghill and the Protesters through Monk. But that could not last for ever; and, in August 1656, strict Presbyterian theory had been so far waived by both parties that both had resolved on direct appeal to his Highness in London. The Resolutioners had the start. They had picked out as their fittest single emissary Mr. James Sharp of Crail, then forty-three years of age, already well acquainted with London by his former compulsory stay there, and with the advantage now of intimacy with Broghill. His Instructions, signed by three of the leading Resolutioners, were ready on the 23rd of August. They were substantially that he should clear the Resolutioners with the Protector from the misrepresentations of the Protesters, paint the Protesters in return as mainly hot young spirits and disturbers, and obtain from his Highness a restoration of Presbyterian use and wont through the whole Kirk, with preponderance to the Resolutioners, though not with a General Assembly till times were more quiet. Per contra, the Protesters had drawn out certain propositions to be submitted to Cromwell. They asked for a Commission for the plantation of kirks, to be appointed by his authority and to consist of those he might think fit, to administer the revenues of the Kirk according to the Acts of Assemblies and the laws of the land prior to 1651, the fatal year of the "Resolutions." They asked also for a Commission of Visitation, one half to be elected by the Resolutioners and one half by the Protesters, to have the power of "planting and purging" in parishes and of composing differences in Synods and Presbyteries. For urging these propositions a deputation to Cromwell had been thought of, and actually appointed. As it was postponed, however, Sharp was to be in London first by himself. Hence some importance for the Protesters in any counterweight there might be in Argyle's presence there already. ¹

No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp's mission than the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year, a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been sooner acquainted, and saying he had "fallen in love" with Fuller's books and was longing for his Church History. This was not the only sign of Baillie's mellower temper by this time towards the Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters, however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie's interest in Mr. Sharp's mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous, Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he was to correspond with Sharp himself. "I pray God help you and guide you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars," is the memorable ending of the first letter that Sharp in London was to receive from Baillie.¹

IRELAND.

There had been little of novelty in Ireland for some time after the proclamation of the Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 551). Fleetwood, with the full title of "Lord Deputy" since Sept. 1654, had conducted the Government, as well as he could, with a Council of assessors, consisting, after that date, of Miles Corbet, Robert Goodwin, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Colonel Robert Hammond. This last, so brought into the Protector's service after long retirement, died at Dublin in July 1655. Ludlow still kept aloof, disowning the Protectorate, though remaining in Ireland with his old military commission. Left very much to themselves, Fleetwood and his Council had carried out, as far as possible, the Acts for the Settlement of the country passed or proposed by the Rump in 1652, but not pushing too severely the great business which the Rump had schemed out, of a general and gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics within the single province of Connaught. In the nature of things, that business, or indeed any actual prevention of the exercise of the Catholic Religion wherever Roman Catholics abounded, was impracticable. It was enough, in the Lord Protector's view, that the land lay quiet, the Roman Catholics and their faithful priests not stirring too publicly, the English soldiery keeping all under sufficient pressure, and English and Scottish colonization shooting in here and there, with Protestant preaching and Protestant farming in its track. On the whole, Fleetwood's Lord-Deputyship, if not eventful, was far from unpopular. ¹

It had occurred to Cromwell, however, that more could be done in Ireland, and that his son-in-law Fleetwood was perhaps not sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently Oliverian, for the purpose. Accordingly, about the same time that Fleetwood had been raised to the Lord-Deputyship, Cromwell's second son, Henry, had been appointed Major-General of the Irish Army. The good impression he had made in his former mission to Ireland (Vol. IV. p. 551) justified the appointment. Not till the middle of 1655, however, did he arrive in Ireland. His reception then was enthusiastic, and was followed by the sudden recall of Fleetwood to London, professedly for a visit only, but really not to return. The title of Lord-Deputy of Ireland was still to be Fleetwood's for the full term of his original appointment; but he was to be occupied by the duties of his English Major-Generalship and his membership of Oliver's Council at home, and the actual government of Ireland was thenceforth in the hands of Henry Cromwell. The young Governor, whose wife had accompanied him, held a kind of Court in Dublin, with Fleetwood's Councillors about him, or others in their stead, and a number of new Judges. The diverse tempers of these advisers, among whom were some Anabaptists or Anti-Oliverians, and his own doubts as to some of the instructions that reached him from his father, made his position a very difficult one; but, though very anxious and sensitive, he managed admirably. In particular, it was observed that, in matters of religion, he had all his father's liberality. It was "against his conscience," he said, "to bear hard upon any merely on account of a different judgment." He conciliated the Presbyterian clergy in a remarkable manner; the Royalists liked him; he would not quarrel with the Anabaptists; and he was as moderate as possible towards the Roman Catholics.¹

One of Henry Cromwell's difficulties would have been Ludlow, had that uncompromising Republican remained in Ireland. From that he was relieved. In January 1655 Fleetwood had been ordered by the Protector to make Ludlow give up his commission; and, as Ludlow questioned the legality of the demand, he had arranged with Fleetwood to go and settle the matter with the Protector himself. The Protector seeming to prefer that Ludlow should stay where he was, and having sent orders to that effect, Fleetwood was himself In England, and Henry Cromwell was in his place in Dublin, and still there seemed no chance of leave for Ludlow to cross the Channel. At length, without distinct leave, but trusting to a written engagement Fleetwood had given him, he ventured on the passage; and on Dec. 12, 1655, after the experience of a most stormy sea, he had that of a more stormy interview with the Protector and some of his Council at Whitehall. Cromwell rated him roundly for his past behaviour generally and for his return without leave, and demanded his parole of submission to the established Government for the future. Some kind of parole Ludlow was willing to give, declaring that he saw no immediate chance of a subversion of the Government and knew of no design for that end, but refusing to tie his hands "if Providence should offer an occasion." With that Cromwell, who had begun to "carry himself more calmly" towards the end of the interview, was obliged to be content. He became quite civil to Ludlow, saying he "wished him as well as he did any of his Council," and desiring him to make "choice of some place to live in where he might have good air." Ludlow retired into Essex¹.

THE COLONIES.

With the exception of a factory of the London East India Company, which had been established at Surat on the west coast of Hindostan in 1612, and a settlement on the Gambia on the western coast of Africa, dating from 1631, all the considerable Colonies of England in 1656 were American:—I. NEW ENGLAND. The four chief New England Colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, confederated since 1643, together with the outlying Plantations of Providence and Rhode-Island, &c., still belonged politically to the mother-country; and through Cromwell's Protectorate, as before, the connexion had been signified by references of various subjects to the Home-Government, discussions of these by that Government, and orders and advices transmitted in return. In the main, however, the Colonies remained independent, each with its annually elected Governor, and the Confederacy with its annually elected Board of Commissioners besides; and, while professing high admiration of Cromwell and approval generally of his rule, they were not troubled with questions of rule seriously affecting their own interests. The war with the Dutch did for some time involve them in inconveniences with their Dutch neighbours; but their dissensions were chiefly with each other, or domestically within each colony. The harsh proceedings in Massachusetts and elsewhere against Baptists and other Sectaries gave some colour to Roger Williams's assertion that, in the matter of religious toleration, New England was becoming old while Old England was becoming new; and, as soon as Quakerism had broken out in New England and Quakers had appeared there (1656), it became evident that there would be even less mercy for that sect in New England than on the other side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, with their zealous Puritanism, their energy and industry, and the abilities of their Bradfords, Bradstreets, Winslows, Winthrops, Standishes, Endicotts, Hayneses, Hopkinses, Newmans, Williamses, and other prominent governors or assistant-governors, the Confederacy and the Plantations went on prosperously towards their ultimate, though yet unforeseen, destiny in the formation of the United States. Cromwell, indeed, had a scheme which would have stopped that issue. He had a scheme for fetching all the Puritans of New England back and planting them splendidly in Ireland. Communications on the subject had passed as early as 1651, when Ireland had been just reconquered; but naturally without effect. The New Englanders were not then too numerous perhaps to have been transported to Ireland bodily; but, as one of their historians says, "they had taken root." Their increase, however, for more than a century thenceforward was to be mainly within themselves, for new arrivals from England had become scarce.¹ II. OTHER COLONIES AND SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. These too went on very much at their own will, though not quite unnoticed. Virginia, dating from 1608, and Maryland, dating from 1634, continued to be the favourite colonies for Royalist settlers, Anglican or Roman Catholic; but there had been recent additions of English Puritans, and of transported Scottish prisoners of war, to the population of Virginia, and the connexions with the mother-country had remained unbroken. There were commercial regulations about both Colonies by the English Council, and grants of passes to them. Canada and the other regions about the St. Lawrence, the possession of which had been contested by the English and the French in the reign of Charles I, had lapsed long ago into the hands of the French; but Major Sedgwick had wrested back for Cromwell, in 1654, the peninsula then called Acadie, but now Nova Scotia, being part of the territory that had been granted under that name by Charles to his Scottish Secretary, the Earl of Stirling, and had been colonised by Scots, to some extent, from 1625 onwards. Off the mainland, Newfoundland, which had contained an English fishing population for at least twenty years, was not neglected; and, beyond the bounds of any of the North-American Colonies or Plantations that were definitely named and recognised, there may have been stragglers knowing themselves to be subjects of the Protectorate.² III. THE WEST INDIES. The Bermudas or Summer Islands had been English since 1612, and had now a considerable population of opulent settlers, attracted by their beauty and the salubrity of the climate; Barbadoes, English since 1605, and with a population of more than 50,000, had been a refuge of Royalists, but had been taken for the Commonwealth in 1652, and had been much used of late for the reception of banished prisoners; such other Islands of the Lesser Antilles as Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat, and the Virgin Islands, together with The Bahamas, to the north of Cuba, had been colonised in the late reign; and Jamaica had been Cromwell's own conquest from the Spaniards, by Penn's blunder, in 1655. The war with Spain had given new importance to those West India possessions of the Protectorate. They had become war-stations for ships, with considerable armed forces on some of them; and some of Cromwell's best officers had been sent out, or were to be sent out, to command in them. Of them all Jamaica was Cromwell's pet island. He had resolved to keep it and do his best with it. The charge of it had been given to a commission consisting of Admiral Goodson, Major-General Fortescue, Major-General Sedgwick (the recaptor of Nova Scotia from the French), and Daniel Serle, Governor of Barbadoes; and Fortescue and Sedgwick, and others in succession, were to die at their posts there. To have the rich island colonised at once with the right material was the Protector's great anxiety; and his first thoughts on that subject, as soon as he had learnt that the Island was his, had issued in a most serious modification of his former offer to the New Englanders. As they had refused to come back and colonise Ireland, would they not accept Jamaica? "He did apprehend the people of New England had as clear a call to transport themselves thence to Jamaica as they had had from England to New England, in order to the bettering of their outward condition;" besides which, their removal thither would have a "tendency to the overthrow of the Man of Sin." They should be transported free of cost; they should have lands rent-free for seven years, and after that at a penny an acre; they should be free from customs, excise, or any tax for four years; they should have the most liberal constitution that could be framed: only his Highness would keep the right of appointing the successive Governors and their Assistants. The answer of the Massachusetts people, when it did arrive, was evasive. They spoke of the reported unhealthiness of Jamaica, and they assured Ms Highness of their admiration, their gratitude, and their prayers. The answer had not been received at the date we have reached (Sept. 1656), and the Protector still cherished his idea. As it proved, the New Englanders were to remain New Englanders, and Jamaica was to be colonised slowly and with less select material.³

SECTION III.

OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OP HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT: SEPT. 17, 1656-JUNE 26, 1657.

SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE CALLED: VANE'S HEALING QUESTION AND ANOTHER ANTI-OLIVERIAN PAMPHLET: PRECAUTIONS AND ARRESTS: MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT: ITS COMPOSITION: SUMMARY OF CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH: EXCLUSION OF NINETY-THREE ANTI-OLIVERIAN MEMBERS: DECIDEDLY OLIVERIAN TEMPER OF THE REST: QUESTION OF THE EXCLUDED MEMBERS: THEIR PROTEST: SUMMARY OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT FOR FIVE MONTHS (SEPT. 1656-FEB. 1656-7): ADMINISTRATION OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL DURING THOSE MONTHS: APPROACHES TO DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN CROMWELL AND THE PARLIAMENT IN THE CASE OF JAMES NAYLER AND ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUATION OF THE MILITIA BY MAJOR-GENERALS: NO RUPTURE.—THE SEXBY-SINDERCOMBE PLOT.—SIR CHRISTOPHER PACK'S MOTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION (FEB. 23, 1656-7): ITS ISSUE IN THE PETITION AND ADVICE AND OFFER OF THE CROWN TO CROMWELL: DIVISION OF PUBLIC OPINION ON THE KINGSHIP QUESTION: OPPOSITION AMONG THE ARMY OFFICERS: CROMWELL'S NEUTRAL ATTITUDE: HIS RECEPTION OF THE OFFER: HIS LONG HESITATIONS AND SEVERAL SPEECHES OVER THE AFFAIR: HIS FINAL REFUSAL (MAY 8, 1657): LUDLOW'S STORY OF THE CAUSE.—HARRISON AND THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: VENNER'S OUTBREAK AT MILE-END-GREEN.—PROPOSED NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE PETITION AND ADVICE RETAINED IN THE FORM OF A CONTINUED PROTECTORATE: SUPPLEMENTS TO THE PETITION AND ADVICE: BILLS ASSENTED TO BY THE PROTECTOR, JUNE 9: VOTES FOR THE SPANISH WAR,—TREATY OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE WITH FRANCE AGAINST SPAIN: DISPATCH OF ENGLISH AUXILIARY ARMY, UNDER REYNOLDS, FOR SERVICE IN FLANDERS: BLAKE'S ACTION IN SANTA CRUZ BAY.—"KILLING—NO MURDER": ADDITIONAL AND EXPLANATORY PETITION AND ADVICE: ABSTRACT OF THE ARTICLES OP THE NEW CONSTITUTION AS ARRANGED BY THE TWO DOCUMENTS: CROMWELL'S COMPLETED ASSENT TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND HIS ASSENT TO OTHER BILLS, JUNE 26, 1657: INAUGURATION OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE THAT DAY: CLOSE OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SECOND PARLIAMENT.

Willing to relieve his government, if possible, from the character of "arbitrariness" it had so long borne, Cromwell had at last resolved on calling another Parliament. The matter had been secretly deliberated in Council in May and June 1656, and the writs were out on July 10. There had ensued, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, a great bustle of elections, the Major-Generals in England and the Councils in Scotland and Ireland exerting themselves to secure the return of Oliverians, and the Protector and his Council by no means easy as to the result. Two recent Republican pamphlets had caused agitation. One, which had been called forth by a Proclamation of a General East a month or two before, was by Sir Henry Vane, and was entitled A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved. It was temperate enough, approving of the government in some respects, and even suggesting the continuance of some kind of sovereignty in a single person, but containing censures of the "great interruption" of popular liberties, and appeals to the people to do their part. The other and later pamphlet (Aug. 1), directly intended to bear on the Elections, was called England's Remembrancer, and was virtually a call on all to use their votes so as to return a Parliament that should unseat Oliver. The author of this second pamphlet evaded detection; but Vane was brought to task for his. He was summoned to London from his seat of Belleau in Lincolnshire, July 29; by an order of Aug. 21 he was required to give security in £5000 that he would do nothing "to prejudice the present government"; and, on his refusal, there issued a warrant, signed by Henry Lawrence, as President of the Council, for his committal to King Charles's old prison, Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. About the same time, precautions were taken with Bradshaw, Harrison, Ludlow, Lawson, Rich, Okey, Alured, and others. Bradshaw was suspended for a week or two from his Chief-Justiceship of Chester; Harrison was sent to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; Rich to Windsor; security in £5000 was exacted from Ludlow, or rather arranged for him by Cromwell; and the others were variously under guard. Nor did leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament, a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still there. All this new "arbitrariness" for the moment was for the purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.¹

It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon from Dr. Owen. Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales were the Protector's eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon, Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry, Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne). Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,—this last long an absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were Englishmen: e.g. President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk's brother-in-law) for Ross, Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews, &c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart, Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay. Ireland had returned, among her thirty (who were nearly all Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles Coote, and several Colonels.¹—Not a few of the chief members had been returned by more than one constituency: e.g. Lord Broghill, for Cork as well as for Edinburgh. Several of those returned cannot have been expected to give attendance, at least at first. Thus, Admirals Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and Portugal. But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge. Ambassador Lockhart also had come over, or was coming.

There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen's opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to business.

One was the Lord Protector's opening speech in the Painted Chamber, now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series. It was very long, of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter. The pervading topic was the war with Spain. This was justified, with approving references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the subject, entitled Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c. (Milton's?), and with vehement expressions of his Highness's personal abhorrence of Spain and her policy. He represented her and her allies and dependents as the anti-English and anti-Christian Hydra of the world, while France, though Roman Catholic too, stood apart from all the other Catholic powers in not being under the Pope's lash and so able to be fair and reasonable. He urged the most energetic prosecution of the war that had been begun. But with the Spanish war he connected the dangers to England from the Royalist risings and conspiracies of the last two years, announcing moreover that he had now full intelligence of a compact between Spain and Charles II., a force of 7000 or 8000 Spaniards ready at Bruges in consequence, and other forces promised by Popish princes, clients of Spain. There were English agents of the alliance at work, he said, and one miscreant in particular who had been an Anabaptist Colonel; and, necessarily, all schemes and conspiracies against the present government would drift into the Hispano-Stuartist interest. He acquitted some of the opponents of his government, calling themselves "Commonwealth's men" and "Fifth Monarchy men," from any intention of that conjunction; but so it would happen. His arrests of some such had been necessary for the public safety. He knew his system of Major-Generalships was much criticised, and thought arbitrary; but that had been necessary too, and a most useful invention. He had called this Parliament with a hope of united constitutional action with them for the future, and would recommend, in the domestic programme, under the general head of "Reformation," certain great matters to their care. There was the Sustentation of the Church and the Universities; there was Reformation of Manners; and there was the still needed Reformation of the Laws. On the Church-question he avowed, more strongly than ever before, his desire to uphold and perpetuate an Established Church. "For my part," he said, "I should think I were very treacherous if I took away Tithes, till I see the Legislative Power settle maintenance to Ministers another way." He knew that some of the ministers themselves would prefer some other form of State-provision; but, on the whole, believing that some distinct State-maintenance of the Clergy, whether by tithes or otherwise, was "the root of visible profession." he adjured the Parliament not to swerve from that. He expounded also his principle of comprehending Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and all earnest Evangelical men amicably in the Established Church, with small concern about their differences from each, other, and expressed his especial satisfaction that the Presbyterians had at length come round to this view, and given up much of their old Anti-Toleration tenet. "I confess I look at that as the blessedest thing which hath been since the adventuring upon this government." Towards the end of the speech there was just a hint that he stood on his Protectorship for life, and regarded that as a fundamental, not to be called in question. "I say, Look up to God: have peace among yourselves. Know assuredly that, if I have an interest, I am by the voice of the People the Supreme Magistrate, and, it may be, do know somewhat that might satisfy my conscience, if I stood in doubt. But it is a union, really it is a union, between you and me; and, both of us united in faith and love to Jesus Christ, and to His peculiar Interest in the world,-that must ground this work. And in that, if I have any peculiar interest which is personal to myself, which is not subservient to the public end, it were not an extravagant thing for me to curse myself, because I know God will curse me if I have." After quoting the 85th Psalm, he dismissed them to choose their Speaker.¹