After the violent seclusion of the constitutional party from the House of Commons, on the 6th of December 1648, very few, not generally more than five, peers continued to meet. Their number was suddenly increased to twelve on the 2nd of January; when the vote of the Commons that it is high treason in the King of England for the time being to levy war against parliament, and the ordinance constituting the high court of justice, were sent up for their concurrence. These were unanimously rejected with more spirit than some, at least, of their number might be expected to display. Yet, as if apprehensive of giving too much umbrage, they voted at their next meeting to prepare an ordinance, making it treasonable for any future king of England to levy war against the parliament—a measure quite as unconstitutional as that they had rejected. They continued to linger on the verge of annihilation during the month, making petty orders about writs of error, from four to six being present: they even met on the 30th of January. On the 1st of February, six peers forming the house, it was moved, "that they would take into consideration the settlement of the government of England and Ireland, in this present conjuncture of things upon the death of the king;" and ordered that these Lords following (naming those present and three more) be appointed to join with a proportionable number of the House of Commons for that purpose. Soon after, the speaker acquainted the house that he had that morning received a letter from the Earl of Northumberland, with a paper enclosed, of very great concernment; and for the present the house ordered that it should be sealed up with the speaker's seal. This probably related to the impending dissolution of their house; for they found next day that their messengers sent to the Commons had not been admitted. They persisted, however, in meeting till the 6th, when they made a trifling order, and adjourned "till ten o'clock to-morrow."[389] That morrow was the 25th of April 1660. For the Commons, having the same day rejected, by a majority of forty-four to twenty-nine, a motion that they would take the advice of the House of Lords in the exercise of the legislative power, resolved that the House of Peers was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished.[390] It should be noticed that there was no intention of taking away the dignity of peerage; the Lords, throughout the whole duration of the commonwealth, retained their titles, not only in common usage, but in all legal and parliamentary documents. The Earl of Pembroke, basest among the base, condescended to sit in the House of Commons as knight for the county of Berks; and was received, notwithstanding his proverbial meanness and stupidity, with such excessive honour as displayed the character of those low-minded upstarts, who formed a sufficiently numerous portion of the house to give their tone to its proceedings.[391]

Thus by military force, with the approbation of an inconceivably small proportion of the people, the king was put to death; the ancient fundamental laws were overthrown; and a mutilated House of Commons, wherein very seldom more than seventy or eighty sat, was invested with the supreme authority. So little countenance had these late proceedings even from those who seemed of the ruling faction, that, when the executive council of state, consisting of forty-one, had been nominated, and a test was proposed to them, declaring their approbation of all that had been done about the king and the kingly office, and about the House of Lords, only nineteen would subscribe it, though there were fourteen regicides on the list.[392] It was agreed at length, that they should subscribe it only as to the future proceedings of the Commons. With such dissatisfaction at head-quarters, there was little to hope from the body of the nation.[393] Hence, when an engagement was tendered to all civil officers and beneficed clergy, containing only a promise to live faithful to the commonwealth, as it was established without a king or House of Lords (though the slightest test of allegiance that any government could require), it was taken with infinite reluctance, and, in fact, refused by very many; the presbyterian ministers especially showing a determined averseness to the new republican organisation.[394]

This, however, was established (such is the dominion of the sword) far beyond the control of any national sentiment. Thirty thousand veteran soldiers guaranteed the mock parliament they had permitted to reign. The sectaries, a numerous body, and still more active than numerous, possessed, under the name of committees for various purposes appointed by the House of Commons, the principal local authorities, and restrained by a vigilant scrutiny the murmurs of a disaffected majority. Love, an eminent presbyterian minister, lost his head for a conspiracy, by the sentence of a high court of justice, a tribunal that superseded trial by jury.[395] His death struck horror and consternation into that arrogant priesthood, who had begun to fancy themselves almost beyond the scope of criminal law. The cavaliers were prostrate in the dust; and, anxious to retrieve something from the wreck of their long sequestered estates, had generally little appetite to embark afresh in a hopeless cause; besides that the mutual animosities between their party and the presbyterians were still too irreconcilable to admit of any sincere co-operation. Hence, neither made any considerable effort in behalf of Charles on his march, or rather flight, into England; a measure, indeed, too palpably desperate for prudent men who had learned the strength of their adversaries; and the great victory of Worcester consummated the triumph of the infant commonwealth, or rather of its future master.

Schemes of Cromwell.—A train of favouring events, more than any deep-laid policy, had now brought sovereignty within the reach of Cromwell. His first schemes of ambition may probably have extended no farther than a title and estate, with a great civil and military command in the king's name. Power had fallen into his hands because they alone were fit to wield it; he was taught by every succeeding event his own undeniable superiority over his contemporaries in martial renown, in civil prudence, in decision of character, and in the public esteem, which naturally attached to these qualities. Perhaps it was not till after the battle of Worcester that he began to fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself, St. John, Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley, met Cromwell, at his own request, to consider the settlement of the nation. The four former were in favour of monarchy, Whitelock inclining to Charles, Widdrington and others to the Duke of Glocester; Desborough and Whalley were against a single person's government, and Fleetwood uncertain. Cromwell, who had evidently procured this conference in order to sift the inclinations of so many leading men, and to give some intimation of his own, broke it up with remarking, that, if it might be done with safety and preservation of their rights as Englishmen and Christians, a settlement of somewhat with monarchical power in it would be very effectual.[396] The observation he here made of a disposition among the lawyers to elect the Duke of Glocester, as being exempt by his youth from the prepossessions of the two elder brothers, may, perhaps, have put Cromwell on releasing him from confinement, and sending him to join his family beyond sea.[397]

Twelve months after this time, in a more confidential discourse with Whitelock alone, the general took occasion to complain both of the chief officers of the army and of the parliament; the first, as inclined to factious murmurings, and the second, as ingrossing all offices to themselves, divided into parties, delaying business, guilty of gross injustice and partiality, and designing to perpetuate their own authority. Whitelock, confessing part of this, urged that having taken commissions from them as the supreme power, it would be difficult to find means to restrain them. "What," said Cromwell, "if a man should take upon him to be king?" "I think," answered Whitelock, "that remedy would be worse than the disease." "Why," rejoined the other, "do you think so?" He then pointed out that the statute of Henry VII. gave a security to those who acted under a king, which no other government could furnish; and that the reverence paid by the people to that title would serve to curb the extravagances of those now in power. Whitelock replied that their friends having engaged in a persuasion, though erroneous, that their rights and liberties would be better preserved under a commonwealth than a monarchy, this state of the question would be wholly changed by Cromwell's assumption of the title, and it would become a private controversy between his family and that of the Stuarts. Finally, on the other's encouragement to speak fully his thoughts, he told him "that no expedient seemed so desirable as a private treaty with the king, in which he might not only provide for the security of his friends, and the greatness of his family, but set limits to monarchical power, keeping the command of the militia in his own hands." Cromwell merely said, "that such a step would require great consideration;" but broke off with marks of displeasure, and consulted Whitelock much less for some years afterwards.[398]

These projects of usurpation could not deceive the watchfulness of those whom Cromwell pretended to serve. He had on several occasions thrown off enough of his habitual dissimulation to show the commonwealth's men that he was theirs only by accident, with none of their fondness for republican polity.

Unpopularity of the parliament.—The parliament in its present wreck contained few leaders of superior ability; but a natural instinct would dictate to such an assembly the distrust of a popular general, even if there had been less to alarm them in his behaviour.[399] They had no means, however, to withstand him. The creatures themselves of military force, their pretensions to direct or control the army could only move scorn or resentment. Their claim to a legal authority, and to the name of representatives of a people who rejected and abhorred them, was perfectly impudent. When the house was fullest, their numbers did not much exceed one hundred; but the ordinary divisions, even on subjects of the highest moment, show an attendance of but fifty or sixty members. They had retained in their hands, notwithstanding the appointment of a council of state, most of whom were from their own body, a great part of the executive government, especially the disposal of offices.[400] These they largely shared among themselves or their dependents; and in many of their votes gave occasion to such charges of injustice and partiality as, whether true or false, will attach to a body of men so obviously self-interested.[401] It seems to be a pretty general opinion that a popular assembly is still more frequently influenced by corrupt and dishonest motives in the distribution of favours, or the decision of private affairs, than a ministry of state; whether it be that it is more probable that a man of disinterestedness and integrity may in the course of events rise to the conduct of government than that such virtues should belong to a majority; or that the clandestine management of court corruption renders it less scandalous and more easily varnished, than the shamelessness of parliamentary iniquity.

The republican interest in the nation was almost wholly composed of two parties, both off-shoots deriving strength from the great stock of the army; the levellers, of whom Lilburne and Wildman are the most known, and the anabaptists, fifth monarchy-men, and other fanatical sectaries, headed by Harrison, Hewson, Overton, and a great number of officers. Though the sectaries seemed to build their revolutionary schemes more on their own religious views than the levellers, they coincided in most of their objects and demands.[402] An equal representation of the people in short parliaments, an extensive alteration of the common law, the abolition of tithes, and indeed of all regular stipends to the ministry, a full toleration of religious worship, were reformations which they concurred in requiring, as the only substantial fruits of their arduous struggle.[403] Some among the wilder sects dreamed of overthrowing all civil institutions. These factions were not without friends in the Commons. But the greater part were neither inclined to gratify them, by taking away the provision of the church, nor much less to divest themselves of their own authority. They voted indeed that tithes should cease as soon as a competent maintenance should be otherwise provided for the clergy.[404] They appointed a commission to consider the reformation of the law, in consequence of repeated petitions against many of its inconveniences and abuses; who, though taxed of course with dilatoriness by the ardent innovators, suggested many useful improvements, several of which have been adopted in more regular times, though with too cautious delay.[405] They proceeded rather slowly and reluctantly to frame a scheme for future parliaments; and resolved that they should consist of 400, to be chosen in due proportion by the several counties, nearly upon the model suggested by Lilburne, and afterwards carried into effect by Cromwell.[406] It was with much delay and difficulty, amidst the loud murmurs of their adherents, that they could be brought to any vote in regard to their own dissolution. It passed on November 17, 1651, after some very close divisions, that they should cease to exist as a parliament on November 3, 1654.[407] The republicans out of doors, who deemed annual, or at least biennial, parliaments essential to their definition of liberty, were indignant at so unreasonable a prolongation. Thus they forfeited the good-will of the only party on whom they could have relied. Cromwell dexterously aggravated their faults; he complained of their delaying the settlement of the nation; he persuaded the fanatics of his concurrence in their own schemes; the parliament, in turn, conspired against his power, and, as the conspiracies of so many can never be secret, let it be seen that one or other must be destroyed; thus giving his forcible expulsion of them the pretext of self-defence. They fell with no regret, or rather with much joy of the nation, except a few who dreaded more from the alternative of military usurpation or anarchy than from an assembly which still retained the names and forms so precious in the eyes of those who adhere to the ancient institutions of their country.[408]

Little parliament.—It was now the deep policy of Cromwell to render himself the sole refuge of those who valued the laws, or the regular ecclesiastical ministry, or their own estates, all in peril from the mad enthusiasts who were in hopes to prevail.[409] These he had admitted into that motley convention of one hundred and twenty persons, sometimes called Barebone's parliament, but more commonly the little parliament, on whom his council of officers pretended to devolve the government, mingling them with a sufficient proportion of a superior class whom he could direct.[410] This assembly took care to avoid the censure which their predecessors had incurred, by passing a good many bills, and applying themselves with a vigorous hand to the reformation of what their party deemed the most essential grievances, those of the law and of the church. They voted the abolition of the Court of Chancery, a measure provoked by its insufferable delay, its engrossing of almost all suits, and the uncertainty of its decisions. They appointed a committee to consider of a new body of the law, without naming any lawyer upon it.[411] They nominated a set of commissioners to preside in courts of justice, among whom they with difficulty admitted two of that profession;[412] they irritated the clergy by enacting that marriages should be solemnised before justices of the peace;[413] they alarmed them still more, by manifesting a determination to take away their tithes, without security for an equivalent maintenance.[414] Thus having united against itself these two powerful bodies, whom neither kings nor parliaments in England have in general offended with impunity, this little synod of legislators was ripe for destruction. Their last vote was to negative a report of their own committee, recommending that such as should be approved as preachers of the gospel, should enjoy the maintenance already settled by law; and that the payment of tithes, as a just property, should be enforced by the magistrates. The house having, by the majority of two, disagreed with this report,[415] the speaker, two days after, having secured a majority of those present, proposed the surrender of their power into the hands of Cromwell, who put an end to the opposition of the rest, by turning them out of doors.

It can admit of no doubt that the despotism of a wise man is more tolerable than that of political or religious fanatics; and it rarely happens that there is any better remedy in revolutions which have given the latter an ascendant. Cromwell's assumption, therefore, of the title of Protector was a necessary and wholesome usurpation, however he may have caused the necessity; it secured the nation from the mischievous lunacy of the anabaptists, and from the more cool-blooded tyranny of that little oligarchy which arrogated to itself the name of commonwealth's men. Though a gross and glaring evidence of the omnipotence of the army, the instrument under which he took his title, accorded to him no unnecessary executive authority. The sovereignty still resided in the parliament; he had no negative voice on their laws. Until the meeting of the next parliament, a power was given him of making temporary ordinances; but this was not, as Hume, on the authority of Clarendon and Warwick, has supposed, and as his conduct, if that were any proof of the law, might lead us to infer, designed to exist in future intervals of the legislature.[416] It would be scarcely worth while, however, to pay much attention to a form of government which was so little regarded, except as it marks the jealousy of royal power, which those most attached to Cromwell, and least capable of any proper notions of liberty, continued to entertain.

In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness, he had successively employed and thrown away several of the powerful factions who distracted the nation. He had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he had flattered the long parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the sectaries to crush the commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the royalists and the presbyterians, forming, in effect, the whole people, though too disunited for such a coalition as must have overthrown him, were the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration. Master of his army, which he well knew how to manage, surrounded by a few deep and experienced counsellors, furnished by his spies with the completest intelligence of all designs against him, he had no great cause of alarm from open resistance.

Parliament called by Cromwell.—But he was bound by the instrument of government to call a parliament; and in any parliament his adversaries must be formidable. He adopted in both those which he summoned, the reformed model already determined; limiting the number of representatives to 400, to be chosen partly in the counties, according to their wealth or supposed population, by electors possessing either freeholds, or any real or movable property to the value of £200; partly by the more considerable boroughs, in whose various rights of election no change appears to have been made.[417] This alteration, conformable to the equalising principles of the age, did not produce so considerable a difference in the persons returned as it perhaps might at present.[418] The court-party, as those subservient to him were called, were powerful through the subjection of the electors to the army. But they were not able to exclude the presbyterian and republican interests; the latter headed by Bradshaw, Haslerig, and Scott, eager to thwart the power which they were compelled to obey.[419] Hence they began by taking into consideration the whole instrument of government; and even resolved themselves into a committee to debate its leading article, the protector's authority. Cromwell, his supporters having lost this question on a division of 141 to 136, thought it time to interfere. He gave them to understand that the government by a single person and a parliament, was a fundamental principle, not subject to their discussion; and obliged every member to a recognition of it, solemnly promising neither to attempt nor to concur in any alteration of that article.[420] The Commons voted, however, that this recognition should not extend to the entire instrument, consisting of forty-two articles; and went on to discuss them with such heat and prolixity, that after five months, the limited term of their session, the protector, having obtained the ratification of his new scheme neither so fully nor so willingly as he desired, particularly having been disappointed by the great majority of 200 to 60, which voted the protectorate to be elective, not hereditary, dissolved the parliament with no small marks of dissatisfaction.[421]

Intrigues of the king and his party.—The banished king, meanwhile, began to recover a little of that political importance which the battle of Worcester had seemed almost to extinguish. So ill supported by his English adherents on that occasion, so incapable with a better army than he had any prospect of ever raising again, to make a stand against the genius and fortune of the usurper, it was vain to expect that he could be restored by any domestic insurrection, until the disunion of the prevailing factions should offer some more favourable opportunity. But this was too distant a prospect for his court of starving followers. He had from the beginning looked around for foreign assistance. But France was distracted by her own troubles; Spain deemed it better policy to cultivate the new commonwealth; and even Holland, though engaged in a dangerous war with England, did not think it worth while to accept his offer of joining her fleet, in order to try his influence with the English seamen.[422] Totally unscrupulous as to the means by which he might reign, even at the moment that he was treating to become the covenanted king of Scotland, with every solemn renunciation of popery, Charles had recourse to a very delicate negotiation, which deserves remark, as having led, after a long course of time, but by gradual steps, to the final downfall of his family. With the advice of Ormond, and with the concurrence of Hyde, he attempted to interest the pope (Innocent X.) on his side, as the most powerful intercessor with the catholic princes of Europe.[423] For this purpose it was necessary to promise toleration at least to the catholics. The king's ambassadors to Spain in 1650, Cottington and Hyde, and other agents despatched to Rome at the same time, were empowered to offer an entire repeal of the penal laws.[424] The king himself, some time afterwards, wrote a letter to the pope, wherein he repeated this assurance. That court, however, well aware of the hereditary duplicity of the Stuarts, received his overtures with haughty contempt. The pope returned no answer to the king's letter; but one was received after many months from the general of the jesuits, requiring that Charles should declare himself a catholic, since the goods of the church could not be lavished for the support of an heretical prince.[425] Even after this insolent refusal, the wretched exiles still clung, at times, to the vain hope of succour, which as protestants and Englishmen they could not honourably demand.[426] But many of them remarked too clearly the conditions on which assistance might be obtained; the court of Charles, openly or in secret, began to pass over to the catholic church; and the contagion soon spread to the highest places.

In the year 1654, the royalist intrigues in England began to grow more active and formidable through the accession of many discontented republicans.[427] Though there could be no coalition, properly speaking, between such irreconcilable factions, they came into a sort of tacit agreement, as is not unusual, to act in concert for the only purpose they entertained alike, the destruction of their common enemy. Major Wildman, a name not very familiar to the general reader, but which occurs perpetually, for almost half a century, when we look into more secret history, one of those dark and restless spirits who delight in the deep game of conspiracy against every government, seems to have been the first mover of this unnatural combination. He had been early engaged in the schemes of the levellers, and was exposed to the jealous observation of the ruling powers. It appears most probable that his views were to establish a commonwealth, and to make the royalists his dupes. In his correspondence however with Brussels, he engaged to restore the king. Both parties were to rise in arms against the new tyranny; and the nation's temper was tried by clandestine intrigues in almost every county.[428] Greater reliance however was placed on the project of assassinating Cromwell. Neither party were by any means scrupulous on this score: if we have not positive evidence of Charles's concurrence in this scheme, it would be preposterous to suppose that he would have been withheld by any moral hesitation. It is frequently mentioned without any disapprobation by Clarendon in his private letters;[429] and, as the royalists certainly justified the murders of Ascham and Dorislaus, they could not in common sense or consistency have scrupled one so incomparably more capable of defence.[430] A Mr. Gerard suffered death for one of these plots to kill Cromwell; justly sentenced, though by an illegal tribunal.[431]

Insurrectionary movements in 1655.—In the year 1655, Penruddock, a Wiltshire gentleman, with a very trifling force, entered Salisbury at the time of the assizes; and, declaring for the king, seized the judge and the sheriff.[432] This little rebellion, meeting with no resistance from the people, but a supineness equally fatal, was soon quelled. It roused Cromwell to secure himself by an unprecedented exercise of power. In possession of all the secrets of his enemies, he knew that want of concert or courage had alone prevented a general rising, towards which indeed there had been some movements in the midland counties.[433] He was aware of his own unpopularity, and the national bias towards the exiled king. Juries did not willingly convict the sharers in Penruddock's rebellion.[434] To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the kingdom into districts, he placed at the head of each a major-general as a sort of military magistrate, responsible for the subjection of his prefecture. These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the royalist party, and insolent towards all civil authority.[435] They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of 10 per cent., imposed by Cromwell's arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with the king during the late war, where their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among Thurloe's papers, display a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's. They complain that the number of those exempted is too great; they press for harsher measures; they incline to the unfavourable construction in every doubtful case; they dwell on the growth of malignancy and the general disaffection.[436] It was not indeed likely to be mitigated by this unparalleled tyranny. All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and defaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the star-chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court of justice? A sense of present evils not only excited a burning desire to live again under the ancient monarchy, but obliterated, especially in the new generation, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the apprehension of its former abuses.[437]

Cromwell's arbitrary government.—If this decimation of the royalists could pass for an act of severity towards a proscribed faction, in which the rest of the nation might fancy themselves not interested, Cromwell did not fail to show that he designed to exert an equally despotic command over every man's property. With the advice of his council, he had imposed, or, as I conceive (for it is not clearly explained), continued, a duty on merchandise beyond the time limited by law. A Mr. George Cony having refused to pay this tax, it was enforced from him, on which he sued the collector. Cromwell sent his counsel, Maynard, Twisden, and Wyndham, to the Tower, who soon petitioned for liberty, and abandoned their client. Rolle, the chief justice, when the cause came on, dared not give judgment against the protector; yet, not caring to decide in his favour, postponed the case till the next term, and meanwhile retired from the bench. Glyn, who succeeded him upon it, took care to have this business accommodated with Cony, who, at some loss of public reputation, withdrew his suit. Sir Peter Wentworth, having brought a similar action, was summoned before the council, and asked if he would give it up. "If you command me," he replied to Cromwell, "I must submit;" which the protector did, and the action was withdrawn.[438]

Though it cannot be said that such an interference with the privileges of advocates or the integrity of judges was without precedents in the times of the Stuarts, yet it had never been done in so public or shameless a manner. Several other instances wherein the usurper diverted justice from its course, or violated the known securities of Englishmen, will be found in most general histories; not to dwell on that most flagrant of all, the erection of his high court of justice, by which Gerard and Vowel in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, were brought to the scaffold.[439] I cannot therefore agree in the praises which have been showered upon Cromwell for the just administration of the laws under his dominion. That, between party and party, the ordinary civil rights of men were fairly dealt with, is no extraordinary praise; and it may be admitted that he filled the benches of justice with able lawyers, though not so considerable as those of the reign of Charles the Second; but it is manifest that, so far as his own authority was concerned, no hereditary despot, proud in the crimes of a hundred ancestors, could more have spurned at every limitation than this soldier of a commonwealth.[440]

Cromwell summons another parliament.—Amidst so general a hatred, trusting to the effect of an equally general terror, the protector ventured to summon a parliament in 1656. Besides the common necessities for money, he had doubtless in his head that remarkable scheme which was developed during its session.[441] Even the despotic influence of his major-generals, and the political annihilation of the most considerable body of the gentry, then labouring under the imputation of delinquency for their attachment to the late king, did not enable him to obtain a secure majority in the assembly; and he was driven to the audacious measure of excluding above ninety members, duly returned by their constituents, from taking their seats. Their colleagues wanted courage to resist this violation of all privilege; and, after referring them to the council for approbation, resolved to proceed with public business. The excluded members, consisting partly of the republican, partly of the presbyterian factions, published a remonstrance in a very high strain, but obtained no redress.[442]

Cromwell designs to take the crown.—Cromwell, like so many other usurpers, felt his position too precarious, or his vanity ungratified, without the name which mankind have agreed to worship. He had, as evidently appears from the conversations recorded by Whitelock, long since aspired to this titular, as well as to the real, pre-eminence; and the banished king's friends had contemplated the probability of his obtaining it with dismay.[443] Affectionate towards his family, he wished to assure the stability of his son's succession, and perhaps to please the vanity of his daughters. It was indeed a very reasonable object with one who had already advanced so far. His assumption of the crown was desirable to many different classes; to the lawyers, who, besides their regard for the established constitution, knew that an ancient statute would protect those who served a de facto king in case of a restoration of the exiled family; to the nobility, who perceived that their legislative right must immediately revive; to the clergy, who judged the regular ministry more likely to be secure under a monarchy; to the people, who hoped for any settlement that would put an end to perpetual changes; to all of every rank and profession who dreaded the continuance of military despotism, and demanded only the just rights and privileges of their country. A king of England could succeed only to a bounded prerogative, and must govern by the known laws; a protector, as the nation had well felt, with less nominal authority, had all the sword could confer. And, though there might be little chance that Oliver would abate one jot of a despotism for which not the times of the Tudors could furnish a precedent, yet his life was far worn, and under a successor it was to be expected that future parliaments might assert again all those liberties for which they had contended against Charles.[444] A few of the royalists might perhaps fancy that the restoration of the royal title would lead to that of the lawful heir; but a greater number were content to abandon a nearly desperate cause, if they could but see the more valuable object of their concern, the form itself of polity, re-established.[445] There can be, as it appears to me, little room for doubt that if Cromwell had overcome the resistance of his generals, he would have transmitted the sceptre to his descendants with the acquiescence and tacit approbation of the kingdom. Had we been living ever since under the rule of his dynasty, what tone would our historians have taken as to his character and that of the house of Stuart?

The scheme however of founding a new royal line failed of accomplishment, as is well known, through his own caution, which deterred him from encountering the decided opposition of his army. Some of his contemporaries seem to have deemed this abandonment, or more properly suspension, of so splendid a design rather derogatory to his firmness.[446] But few men were better judges than Cromwell of what might be achieved by daring. It is certainly not impossible that, by arresting Lambert, Whalley, and some other generals, he might have crushed for the moment any tendency to open resistance. But the experiment would have been infinitely hazardous. He had gone too far in the path of violence to recover the high road of law by any short cut. King or protector, he must have intimidated every parliament, or sunk under its encroachments. A new-modelled army might have served his turn; but there would have been great difficulties in its formation. It had from the beginning been the misfortune of his government that it rested on a basis too narrow for its safety. For two years he had reigned with no support but the independent sectaries and the army. The army or its commanders becoming odious to the people, he had sacrificed them to the hope of popularity, by abolishing the civil prefectures of the major-generals,[447] and permitting a bill for again decimating the royalists to be thrown out of the house.[448] Their disgust and resentment, excited by an artful intriguer, who aspired at least to the succession of the protectorship, found scope in the new project of monarchy, naturally obnoxious to the prejudices of true fanatics, and who still fancied themselves to have contended for a republican liberty. We find that even Fleetwood, allied by marriage to Cromwell, and not involved in the discontent of the major-generals, in all the sincerity of his clouded understanding, revolted from the invidious title, and would have retired from service had it been assumed. There seems therefore reason to think that Cromwell's refusal of the crown was an inevitable mortification. But he undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for the short remainder of his life.[449]

The fundamental charter of the English commonwealth under the protectorship of Cromwell, had been the instrument of government, drawn up by the council of officers in December 1653, and approved with modifications by the parliament of the next year. It was now changed to the petition and advice, tendered to him by the present parliament in May 1657, which made very essential innovations in the frame of polity. Though he bore, as formerly, the name of lord protector, we may say, speaking according to theoretical classification, and without reference to his actual exercise of power, which was nearly the same, that the English government in the first period should be ranged in the order of republics, though with a chief magistrate at its head; but that from 1657 it became substantially a monarchy, and ought to be placed in that class, notwithstanding the unimportant difference in the style of its sovereign. The petition and advice had been compiled with a constant respect to that article, which conferred the royal dignity on the protector;[450] and when this was withdrawn at his request, the rest of the instrument was preserved with all its implied attributions of sovereignty. The style is that of subjects addressing a monarch; the powers it bestows, the privileges it claims, are supposed, according to the expressions employed, the one to be already his own, the other to emanate from his will. The necessity of his consent to laws, though nowhere mentioned, seems to have been taken for granted. An unlimited power of appointing a successor, unknown even to constitutional kingdoms, was vested in the protector. He was inaugurated with solemnities applicable to monarchs; and what of itself is a sufficient test of the monarchical and republican species of government, an oath of allegiance was taken by every member of parliament to the protector singly, without any mention of the commonwealth.[451] It is surely, therefore, no paradox to assert that Oliver Cromwell was de facto sovereign of England, during the interval from June 1657, to his death in September 1658.

The zealous opponents of royalty could not be insensible that they had seen it revive in everything except a title, which was not likely to remain long behind.[452] It was too late however to oppose the first magistrate's personal authority. But there remained one important point of contention, which the new constitution had not fully settled. It was therein provided that the parliament should consist of two houses; namely, the Commons, and what they always termed, with an awkward generality, the other house. This was to consist of not more than seventy, nor less than forty persons, to be nominated by the protector, and, as it stood at first, to be approved by the Commons. But before the close of the session, the court party prevailed so far as to procure the repeal of this last condition;[453] and Cromwell accordingly issued writs of summons to persons of various parties, a few of the ancient peers, a few of his adversaries, whom he hoped to gain over, or at least to exclude from the Commons, and of course a majority of his steady adherents. To all these he gave the title of Lords; and in the next session their assembly denominated itself the Lords' house.[454] This measure encountered considerable difficulty. The republican party, almost as much attached to that vote which had declared the House of Lords useless, as to that which had abolished the monarchy, and well aware of the intimate connection between the two, resisted the assumption of this aristocratic title, instead of that of the other house, which the petition and advice had sanctioned. The real peers feared to compromise their hereditary right by sitting in an assembly where the tenure was only during life; and disdained some of their colleagues, such as Pride and Hewson, low-born and insolent men, whom Cromwell had rather injudiciously bribed with this new nobility; though, with these few exceptions, his House of Lords was respectably composed. Hence, in the short session of January 1658, wherein the late excluded members were permitted to take their seats, so many difficulties were made about acknowledging the Lords' house by that denomination, that the protector hastily and angrily dissolved the parliament.[455]

It is a singular part of Cromwell's system of policy, that he would neither reign with parliaments nor without them; impatient of an opposition which he was sure to experience, he still never seems to have meditated the attainment of a naked and avowed despotism. This was probably due to his observation of the ruinous consequences that Charles had brought on himself by that course, and his knowledge of the temper of the English, never content without the exterior forms of liberty, as well as to the suggestions of counsellors who were not destitute of concern for the laws. He had also his great design yet to accomplish, which could only be safely done under the sanction of a parliament. A very short time, accordingly, before his death, we find that he had not only resolved to meet once more the representatives of the nation, but was tampering with several of the leading officers to obtain their consent to an hereditary succession. The majority however of a council of nine, to whom he referred this suggestion, would only consent that the protector for the time being should have the power of nominating his successor; a vain attempt to escape from that regal form of government which they had been taught to abhor.[456] But a sudden illness, of a nature seldom fatal except to a constitution already shattered by fatigue and anxiety, rendered abortive all these projects of Cromwell's ambition.

Cromwell's death, and character.—He left a fame behind him proportioned to his extraordinary fortunes and to the great qualities which sustained them; still more perhaps the admiration of strangers than of his country, because that sentiment was less alloyed by hatred, which seeks to extenuate the glory that irritates it. The nation itself forgave much to one who had brought back the renown of her ancient story, the traditions of Elizabeth's age, after the ignominious reigns of her successors. This contrast with James and Charles in their foreign policy gave additional lustre to the era of the protectorate. There could not but be a sense of national pride to see an Englishman, but yesterday raised above the many, without one drop of blood in his veins which the princes of the earth could challenge as their own, receive the homage of those who acknowledged no right to power, and hardly any title to respect, except that of prescription. The sluggish pride of the court of Spain, the mean-spirited cunning of Mazarin, the irregular imagination of Christina, sought with emulous ardour the friendship of our usurper.[457] He had the advantage of reaping the harvest which he had not sown, by an honourable treaty with Holland, the fruit of victories achieved under the parliament. But he still employed the great energies of Blake in the service for which he was so eminently fitted; and it is just to say that the maritime glory of England may first be traced from the era of the commonwealth in a track of continuous light. The oppressed protestants in catholic kingdoms, disgusted at the lukewarmness and half-apostasy of the Stuarts, looked up to him as their patron and mediator.[458] Courted by the two rival monarchies of Europe, he seemed to threaten both with his hostility; and when he declared against Spain, and attacked her West India possessions with little pretence certainly of justice, but not by any means, as I conceive, with the impolicy sometimes charged against him, so auspicious was his star that the very failure and disappointment of that expedition obtained a more advantageous possession for England than all the triumphs of her former kings.

Notwithstanding this external splendour, which has deceived some of our own, and most foreign writers, it is evident that the submission of the people to Cromwell was far from peaceable or voluntary. His strong and skilful grasp kept down a nation of enemies that must naturally, to judge from their numbers and inveteracy, have overwhelmed him. It required a dexterous management to play with the army, and without the army he could not have existed as sovereign for a day. Yet it seems improbable that, had Cromwell lived, any insurrection or conspiracy, setting aside assassination, could have overthrown a possession so fenced by systematic vigilance, by experienced caution, by the respect and terror that belonged to his name. The royalist and republican intrigues had gone on for several years without intermission; but every part of their designs was open to him; and it appears that there was not courage or rather temerity sufficient to make any open demonstration of so prevalent a disaffection.[459]

The most superficial observers cannot have overlooked the general resemblances in the fortunes and character of Cromwell, and of him who, more recently and upon an ampler theatre, has struck nations with wonder and awe. But the parallel may be traced more closely than perhaps has hitherto been remarked. Both raised to power by the only merit which a revolution leaves uncontroverted and untarnished, that of military achievements, in that reflux of public sentiment, when the fervid enthusiasm of democracy gives place to disgust at its excesses and a desire of firm government. The means of greatness the same to both, the extinction of a representative assembly, once national, but already mutilated by violence, and sunk by its submission to that illegal force into general contempt. In military science or the renown of their exploits, we cannot certainly rank Cromwell by the side of him, for whose genius and ambition all Europe seemed the appointed quarry; but it may be said that the former's exploits were as much above the level of his contemporaries, and more the fruits of an original uneducated capacity. In civil government, there can be no adequate parallel between one who had sucked only the dregs of a besotted fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and philosophy were open. But it must here be added that Cromwell, far unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a legislative mind, or any desire to fix his renown on that noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions. Both were eminent masters of human nature, and played with inferior capacities in all the security of powerful minds. Though both, coming at the conclusion of a struggle for liberty, trampled upon her claims, and sometimes spoke disdainfully of her name, each knew how to associate the interests of those who had contended for her with his own ascendancy, and made himself the representative of a victorious revolution. Those who had too much philosophy or zeal for freedom to give way to popular admiration for these illustrious usurpers, were yet amused with the adulation that lawful princes showered on them, more gratuitously in one instance, with servile terror in the other. Both too repaid in some measure this homage of the pretended great by turning their ambition towards those honours and titles which they knew to be so little connected with high desert. A fallen race of monarchs, which had made way for the greatness of each, cherished hopes of restoration by their power till each, by an inexpiable act of blood, manifested his determination to make no compromise with that line. Both possessed a certain coarse good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity; quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes. Their fortunes in the conclusion of life were indeed very different; one forfeited the affections of his people, which the other, in the character at least of their master, had never possessed; one furnished a moral to Europe by the continuance of his success, the other by the prodigiousness of his fall. A fresh resemblance arose afterwards, when the restoration of those royal families, whom their ascendant had kept under, revived ancient animosities, and excited new ones; those who from love of democratical liberty had borne the most deadly hatred to the apostates who had betrayed it, recovering some affection to their memory, out of aversion to a common enemy. Our English republicans have, with some exceptions, displayed a sympathy for the name of Cromwell; and I need not observe how remarkably this holds good in the case of his mighty parallel.[460]

Cromwell's son succeeds him—The death of a great man, even in the most regular course of affairs, seems always to create a sort of pause in the movement of society; it is always a problem to be solved only by experiment, whether the mechanism of government may not be disordered by the shock, or have been deprived of some of its moving powers. But what change could be so great as that from Oliver Cromwell to his son! from one beneath the terror of whose name a nation had cowered and foreign princes grown pale, one trained in twenty eventful years of revolution, the first of his age in the field or in council, to a young man fresh from a country life, uneducated, unused to business, as little a statesman as a soldier, and endowed by nature with capacities by no means above the common. It seems to have been a mistake in Oliver that with the projects he had long formed in his eldest son's favour, he should have taken so little pains to fashion his mind and manners for the exercise of sovereign power, while he had placed the second in a very eminent and arduous station; or that, if he despaired of Richard's capacity, he should have trusted him to encounter those perils of disaffection and conspiracy which it had required all his own vigilance to avert. But, whatever might be his plans, the sudden illness which carried him from the world left no time for completing them. The Petition and Advice had simply empowered him to appoint a successor, without prescribing the mode. It appeared consonant to law and reason that so important a trust should be executed in a notorious manner, and by a written instrument; or, if a verbal nomination might seem sufficient, it was at least to be expected that this should be authenticated by solemn and indisputable testimony. No proof however was ever given of Richard's appointment by his father, except a recital in the proclamation of the privy council, which, whether well founded or otherwise, did not carry conviction to the minds of the people; and this, even if we call it but an informality, aggravated the numerous legal and natural deficiencies of his title to the government.[461]

This very difference however in the personal qualifications of the father and the son, procured the latter some friends whom the former had never been able to gain. Many of the presbyterian party began to see the finger of God, as they called it, in his peaceable accession, and to think they owed subjection to one who came in neither by regicide, nor hypocrisy, nor violence.[462] Some cool-headed and sincere friends of liberty entertained similar opinions. Pierrepont, one of the wisest men in England, who had stood aloof from the protector's government till the scheme of restoring monarchy came into discussion, had great hopes, as a writer of high authority informs us, of settling the nation in the enjoyment of its liberties under the young man; who was "so flexible," says that writer, "to good counsels, that there was nothing desirable in a prince which might not have been hoped in him, but a great spirit and a just title; the first of which sometimes doth more hurt than good in a sovereign; the latter would have been supplied by the people's deserved approbation." Pierrepont believed that the restoration of the ancient family could not be effected without the ruin of the people's liberty, and of all who had been its champions; so that no royalist, he thought, who had any regard to his country, would attempt it: while this establishment of monarchy in Richard's person might reconcile that party, and compose all differences among men of weight and of zeal for the public good.[463] He acted accordingly on those principles; and became, as well as his friend St. John, who had been discountenanced by Oliver, a steady supporter of the young protector's administration. These two, with Thurloe, Whitelock, Lord Broghill, and a very few more, formed a small phalanx of experienced counsellors around his unstable throne. And I must confess that their course of policy in sustaining Richard's government appears to me the most judicious that, in the actual circumstances, could have been adopted. Pregnant as the restoration of the exiled family was with incalculable dangers, the English monarchy would have revived with less lustre in the eyes of the vulgar, but with more security for peace and freedom, in the line of Cromwell. Time would have worn away the stains of ignoble birth and criminal usurpation; and the young man, whose misfortune has subjected him to rather an exaggerated charge of gross incapacity, would probably have reigned as well as most of those who are born in the purple.[464]

But this termination was defeated by the combination of some who knew not what they wished, and of some who wished what they could never attain. The general officers who had been well content to make Cromwell the first of themselves, or greater than themselves by their own creation, had never forgiven his manifest design to reign over them as one of a superior order, and owing nothing to their pleasure. They had begun to cabal during his last illness. Though they did not oppose Richard's succession, they continued to hold meetings, not quite public, but exciting intense alarm in his council. As if disdaining the command of a clownish boy, they proposed that the station of lord general should be separated from that of protector, with the power over all commissions in the army, and conferred on Fleetwood; who, though his brother-in-law, was a certain instrument in their hands. The vain ambitious Lambert, aspiring, on the credit of some military reputation, to wield the sceptre of Cromwell, influenced this junto; while the commonwealth's party, some of whom were, or had been, in the army, drew over several of these ignorant and fanatical soldiers. Thurloe describes the posture of affairs in September and October, while all Europe was admiring the peaceable transmission of Oliver's power, as most alarming; and it may almost be said that Richard had already fallen when he was proclaimed the lord protector of England.[465]

A parliament called.—It was necessary to summon a parliament on the usual score of obtaining money. Lord Broghill had advised this measure immediately on Oliver's death,[466] and perhaps the delay might be rather prejudicial to the new establishment. But some of the council feared a parliament almost as much as they did the army. They called one, however, to meet Jan. 27, 1659, issuing writs in the ordinary manner to all boroughs which had been accustomed to send members, and consequently abandoning the reformed model of Cromwell. This Ludlow attributes to their expectation of greater influence among the small boroughs; but it may possibly be ascribed still more to a desire of returning by little and little to the ancient constitution, by eradicating the revolutionary innovations. The new parliament consisted of courtiers, as the Cromwell party were always denominated, of presbyterians, among whom some of cavalier principles crept in, and of republicans; the two latter nearly balancing, with their united weight, the ministerial majority.[467] They began with an oath of allegiance to the protector, as presented by the late parliament, which, as usual in such cases, his enemies generally took without scruple.[468] But upon a bill being offered for the recognition of Richard as the undoubted lord protector and chief magistrate of the commonwealth, they made a stand against the word recognise, which was carried with difficulty, and caused him the mortification of throwing out the epithet undoubted.[469] They subsequently discussed his negative voice in passing bills, which had been purposely slurred over in the Petition and Advice; but now everything was disputed. The thorny question as to the powers and privileges of the other house came next into debate. It was carried by 177 to 113, to transact business with them. To this resolution an explanation was added, that it was not thereby intended to exclude such peers as had been faithful to the parliament, from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members of that house. The court supporting this absurd proviso, which confounded the ancient and modern systems of government, carried it by the small majority of 195 to 188.[470] They were stronger in rejecting an important motion, to make the approbation of the Commons a preliminary to their transacting business with the persons now sitting in the other house as a house of parliament, by 183 voices to 146. But the opposition succeeded in inserting the words "during the present parliament," which left the matter still unsettled.[471] The sitting of the Scots and Irish members was also unsuccessfully opposed. Upon the whole, the court party, notwithstanding this coalition of very heterogeneous interests against them, were sufficiently powerful to disappoint the hopes which the royalist intriguers had entertained. A strong body of lawyers, led by Maynard, adhered to the government, which was supported also on some occasions by a part of the presbyterian interest, or, as then called, the moderate party; and Richard would probably have concluded the session with no loss of power, if either he or his parliament could have withstood the more formidable cabal of Wallingford House. This knot of officers, Fleetwood, Desborough, Berry, Sydenham, being the names most known among them, formed a coalition with the republican faction, who despaired of any success in parliament. The dissolution of that assembly was the main article of this league. Alarmed at the notorious caballing of the officers, the Commons voted that, during the sitting of the parliament, there should be no general council, or meeting of the officers of the army without leave of the protector and of both houses.[472] Such a vote could only accelerate their own downfall. Three days afterwards, the junto of Wallingford House insisted with Richard that he should dissolve parliament; to which, according to the advice of most of his council, and perhaps by an overruling necessity, he gave his consent.[473] This was immediately followed by a declaration of the council of officers, calling back the Long Parliament, such as it had been expelled in 1653, to those seats which had been filled meanwhile by so many transient successors.[474]

It is not in general difficult for an armed force to destroy a government; but something else than the sword is required to create one. The military conspirators were destitute of any leader whom they would acknowledge, or who had capacity to go through the civil labours of sovereignty; Lambert alone excepted, who was lying in wait for another occasion. They might have gone on with Richard, as a pageant of nominal authority. But their new allies, the commonwealth's men, insisted upon restoring the Long Parliament.[475] It seemed now the policy, as much as duty, of the officers to obey that civil power they had set up. For to rule ostensibly was, as I have just observed, an impracticable scheme. But the contempt they felt for their pretended masters, and even a sort of necessity arising out of the blindness and passion of that little oligarchy, drove them to a step still more ruinous to their cause than that of deposing Richard, the expulsion once more of that assembly, now worn out and ridiculous in all men's eyes, yet seeming a sort of frail protection against mere anarchy, and the terror of the sword. Lambert, the chief actor in this last act of violence, and indeed many of the rest, might plead the right of self-defence. The prevailing faction in the parliament, led by Haslerig, a bold and headstrong man, perceived that, with very inferior pretensions, Lambert was aiming to tread in the steps of Cromwell; and, remembering their negligence of opportunities, as they thought, in permitting the one to overthrow them, fancied that they would anticipate the other. Their intemperate votes cashiering Lambert, Desborough, and other officers, brought on, as every man of more prudence than Haslerig must have foreseen, an immediate revolution that crushed once more their boasted commonwealth.[476] They revived again a few months after, not by any exertion of the people, who hated alike both parties, in their behalf, but through the disunion of their real masters, the army, and vented the impotent and injudicious rage of a desperate faction on all who had not gone every length on their side, till scarce any man of eminence was left to muster under the standard of Haslerig and his little knot of associates.[477]

Impossibility of establishing a republic.—I can by no means agree with those who find in the character of the English nation some absolute incompatibility with a republican constitution of government. Under favouring circumstances, it seems to me not at all incredible that such a polity might have existed for many ages in great prosperity, and without violent convulsion. For the English are, as a people, little subject to those bursts of passion which inflame the more imaginative multitude of southern climates, and render them both apt for revolutions, and incapable of conducting them. Nor are they again of that sluggish and stationary temper, which chokes all desire of improvement, and even all zeal for freedom and justice, through which some free governments have degenerated into corrupt oligarchies. The most conspicuously successful experiment of republican institutions (and those far more democratical than, according to the general theory of politics, could be reconciled with perfect tranquillity) has taken place in a people of English original; and though much must here be ascribed to the peculiarly fortunate situation of the nation to which I allude, we can hardly avoid giving some weight to the good sense and well-balanced temperament, which have come in their inheritance with our laws and our language. But the establishment of free commonwealths depends much rather on temporary causes, the influence of persons and particular events, and all those intricacies in the course of Providence which we term accident, than on any general maxims that can become the basis of prior calculation. In the year 1659, it is manifest that no idea could be more chimerical than that of a republican settlement in England. The name, never familiar or venerable in English ears, was grown infinitely odious; it was associated with the tyranny of ten years, the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical despotism of Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British citizens for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the scaffold without legal trial, the tedious imprisonment of many with denial of the habeas corpus, the exclusion of the ancient gentry, the persecution of the Anglican church, the bacchanalian rant of sectaries, the morose preciseness of puritans, the extinction of the frank and cordial joyousness of the national character. Were the people again to endure the mockery of the good old cause, as the commonwealth's men affected to style the interests of their little faction, and be subject to Lambert's notorious want of principle, or to Vane's contempt of ordinances (a godly mode of expressing the same thing), or to Haslerig's fury, or to Harrison's fanaticism, or to the fancies of those lesser schemers, who in this utter confusion and abject state of their party, were amusing themselves with plans of perfect commonwealths, and debating whether there should be a senate as well as a representation; whether a given number should go out by rotation; and all those details of political mechanism so important in the eyes of theorists?[478] Every project of this description must have wanted what alone could give it either the pretext of legitimate existence, or the chance of permanency, popular consent; the republican party, if we exclude those who would have had a protector, and those fanatics who expected the appearance of Jesus Christ, was incalculably small; not, perhaps, amounting in the whole nation to more than a few hundred persons.