Thus, though poor Charles had experienced the utmost difficulty in getting money granted for the payment of his debts, or even for the costs of his living like a king and a gentleman, the usurper Cromwell obtained at once the concession of a most liberal salary.
Notwithstanding the subservience the Parliament had in the first instance shown, symptoms of refractoriness in that quarter soon became visible. The Protector had made up his mind to go on changing it, as he would have done a set of domestic servants, until he could thoroughly suit himself; and accordingly, on the 22nd of January, 1656, he rang the bell, desired the legislature to appear before him, and announced that he had no further use for it. The members were desired to find themselves situations elsewhere; and though some of them had courage enough to hint that they "would be sure to better themselves, for they were tired of the quantity of dirty work they had had to do," the Parliament evinced, on the whole, a spirit, or rather a want of spirit, that was quite contemptible. Some of the malcontents ventured on a little revolutionary rising; but the levellers were speedily reduced to their old level. Major Wildman, a man rendered wild at the success of Cromwell's ambition, and hating the protectorate, had been heard to declare that he would "take the linch-pin out of the common-weal," and notwithstanding the flaw in the orthography, he was imprisoned on this evidence of hostility to the ruling power. At the moment when Wildman was arrested, he was sitting alone in his own back-parlour, evincing the same sort of enthusiasm that has immortalised the three tailors of Tooley Street, and drawing up "a declaration of the free and well-affected people of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esquire." The major thought he had accomplished something very stinging, in adding "Esquire" to Cromwell's name; and he was in the act of roaring out, "Hear, hear! Bravo, bravo!" after he had written out the title of his tremendous manifesto, when a sudden bursting open of the door, and a cry of "You must come along with us," threw the major into a state of surprise from which he had not recovered when he found himself put for safe keeping in the keep of Chepstowe Castle.
A few other insurrectionary movements were made, but all of them were of a very trifling character. Penruddock, Grove, and Lucas got up a little royalist trio, but their movement was soon turned into a dis-concerted piece, by a regiment of Cromwell's horse, who rode rough-shod over the three conspirators, and they were executed instead of their project.
The Protector was no less imperious towards foreign nations than towards his own, and having made some demands upon Spain, to which that country refused to accede, he sent Admiral Penn, familiarly termed his Nibs, to write his name upon some of the Spanish possessions. Assisted by General Venables, Penn, who may be distinguished as a steel-pen, for he carried a pointed sword, and never showed a white feather, took the island of Jamaica after a contest, in which he found among the inhabitants of Jamaica some rum customers. Blake worried the Spaniards in another quarter, and the Protector spread so much consternation among some of the European governments, that the celebrated Cardinal Mazarin, who greatly feared him, began to look so very blue, that a Mazarine blue retains to this very day a character for intensity.
Emboldened by his good fortune, Cromwell thought he might venture on another Parliament, which met on the 17th of September, 1656, the members having undergone at the door an examination as to their servility to the Protector's purposes. The first sitting was like the first night of any novelty at the pit of Her Majesty's Theatre, and two of Cromwell's creatures officiated as check-takers. Every member who presented himself at the doors was obliged to produce his credentials, and upon this being satisfactorily done, a cry of "Pass one," was raised to the officer in charge of the inner barrier. Nearly one hundred new members were sent back, after more or less altercation; and the words "I can't help it, sir; those are my orders; you must go back, sir," were being continually heard above the din of "Pass one," or "It's all right," which confirmed the privilege of admission claimed by many of the applicants.
A legislature with only one House soon began to be considered as a sort of sow with one ear, and even the ear that remained was closed by Cromwell's art against what he used to call in private "the swinish multitude." A suggestion was made by several that the House of Lords should be restored, and many began to sigh for a return to the old constitution, which had been broken up before there had been time to try the effect of a new one.
At length an alderman of London, one Sir Christopher Pack, started up, without any preliminary notice, and moved that the title of king should be offered to the Protector. Pack's proposition set off the entire pack of republicans in full cry against him, and they all continued to give tongue from the 23rd of February to the 26th of March, 1657, when Pack's motion was carried by a large majority. A deputation was appointed to request that "his Highness would be pleased to magnify himself with the title of king,"—a proposition almost as absurd as an offer to place Barclay and Perkins on the throne, or entreat Meux and Co. to write Henry IX. over the door of their brewery.
Cromwell gave an evasive reply to the requisition, approving most fully of the proposition to restore the House of Lords, but was hanging back about the "other little matter," when a declaration from some of his former friends and tools, that they had fought against monarchy and would do so again if required, completely settled him in his wavering refusal of the royal title. He was therefore inaugurated with much pomp as Lord Protector—and, indeed, he might well have been satisfied, for he had secured everything except the name of royalty. His manner of life and his Court were marked by no extravagant show, but he had everything very comfortable: and he was accustomed to say to his intimate friends, "What do I want with the gilt, for haven't I got the gingerbread?" He did not give very large parties at Hampton Court, but used to have a "few friends" to tea, and "a little music" in the evening.
He occasionally attempted a joke, "But this," says Whitelock, "was always a very ponderous business." One of his frolics—we start instinctively at the idea of Cromwell being frolicsome—was to order a drum to beat in the middle of dinner, falling unpleasantly on the drums of his guests' ears, and at the signal the Protector's guards were allowed to rush into the room, clear the table, pocket the poultry, and, on a certain signal from the drum, make off with the drumsticks.
Cromwell had the good taste to delight in the society of clever men, and there was always a knife and fork at Hampton Court for Milton, or for that marvel of his age, the celebrated Andrew Marvel. Waller, the poet, was welcome always; Dryden now and then; John Biddle sometimes; and Archbishop Usher, whom Cromwell use to call the only real gentleman usher of his day, was constantly kicking his heels under the Protector's mahogany.
We have now to record the death of poor Blake, who, having fluttered the Canaries in the isles of that name, was returning safe into Plymouth Sound, when he died of the scurvy, which, according to a wag of that day—happily the wretch is not a wag of this—showed that fortune had in store for him but scurvy treatment. Poor Blake had been in early life a candidate for an Oxford fellowship, but lost it from the lowness of his stature, * for in Blake's time very little fellows were not academically recognised. There is no doubt that with his general ability he would have taken a very high degree if he had been only big enough. He was buried at the Protector's expense, in Henry the Seventh's chapel, for Cromwell was a great undertaker, and was very fond of providing his friends with splendid funerals.
While these things were happening at home, the Protector was fortifying his position abroad, and had persuaded the French to abandon Charles the Second, known to the world in general, and to playgoers in particular, as the "merry monarch." This fugitive scamp—of whom more hereafter—was mean enough to offer to marry one of the Misses Cromwell, a daughter of the usurper, who had the good sense and spirit to turn up his puritanical nose at the idea of such a son-in-law. Orrery, whom Charles consulted with the vague idea that consulting an orrery was in fact consulting the stars, took the message to Cromwell, who replied, haughtily, "I am more than a match for Charles, but Charles is less than a match for my daughter." The Protector had what he called something better in view for his "gal," who, on the 17th of November, was wedded to Lord Falconbridge. The ceremony was described in the Morning Post of the period, which was then called the Court Gazette, and a column was devoted to an account of the festivities. We see from facts like these how ready are the declaimers against aristocracy to adopt the ways and even the weaknesses of a class that is ridiculed and abused chiefly by those who would, if they could, belong to it.
The ascendency of the puritan Protector was marked by the grossest corruption that ever prevailed under the most licentious of regal governments. Unlimited bribery of one portion of the people was effected by the unlimited robbery of the other, and thus the dupes were made to pay the knaves who sold themselves and betrayed their fellow-subjects for the sake of Cromwell's aggrandisement.
On the 20th of January, 1658, the Parliament met again, and fraternised with a little batch of peers, amounting to sixty in all, whom Cromwell had created, and who might, indeed—upon our honour, we don't say so for the sake of the pun—be justly called his creatures. Two of the Protector's sons, namely, Richard and Henry, were among the batch of anything but thoroughbreds, that formed the roll of Oliver's peerage. The number, however, included some highly respectable names, among whom we may particularly notice Lord Mulgrave, who took the family name of Phipps, because in the civil wars he would not at one time have given Phippence for his life; Lord John Claypole, whose head was as thick and whose brains were as muddy as his title implies; and a few old military friends of Cromwell. Colonel Pride, who had been a drayman, was also among the new peers; and the drayman of course offered a fair butt to the royalists, who threw his dray in his face and assailed him with the shafts of ridicule.
Scarcely any of the genuine nobles who had been called to Parliament condescended to come, and the Protector made his appearance before a house almost as poor as some of those in which the farce of legislation is enacted in these days at nearly the close of a very long session. Cromwell was really indisposed, or shammed indisposition on account of the scantiness of the audience, for, after having said a few words, he turned to his Lord Speaker Fiennes, exclaiming, "Fiennes! you know my mind pretty well; so just give it them as strongly as you like, for I'm too tired to talk to them." Fiennes, taking the hint, proceeded to rattle on at very rapid rate, mixing up a quantity of religious quotations and a vast deal of vulgar abuse, in the prevailing style of the period.
The Commons retired to their chamber in a huff; and four days afterwards, receiving a message mentioning the Upper House, refused to recognise the peers except as the "other house,"—for the little Shakspearean fable of the rose, the odour, and the name, was not at that time popular. The Protector, who always sent for the Parliament as he would have sent for his tailor, desired that the legislature should be shown into the banqueting or dining-room, where he advised them not to quarrel, and, producing the public accounts, he impressed upon them that things were very bad in the city. He exhorted them not to increase the panic by any dissensions among themselves, but he could not persuade them to change their note; and he accordingly got out of bed—some say, wrong leg first—very early on the 4th of February, when, calling for his hot water and his Parliament, he dissolved the latter without a moment's warning. The legislative body had enjoyed a short but not very merry life of fourteen days, when an end was thus put to its too weak existence.
The Protector was now in need of all his protective powers in consequence of the dangers that on all sides threatened him. The republicans were ready, as they generally are, to draw anything, from a sword to a bill; and the army, with its pay in arrear, did nothing but grumble. The royalists were being inspirited by the Marquis of Ormond, who was "up in town," quite incog.; and the levellers were, of course, ready to sink to any level, however degraded, in the cause of the first leader who was willing and able to purchase them.
Notwithstanding the gathering storm, Cromwell boldly stuck up the sword of vengeance by his side, as a sort of lightning conductor to turn aside the destruction that threatened him. A pamphlet, called "Killing no Murder," put him to the expense of a steel shirt, the collar of which, by the way, could have required no starch; and he kept himself continually "armed in proof," but we do not know whether he selected an author's proof, which might have been truly impregnable armour, for getting through an author's proof is frequently quite impossible. He carried pistols in his pockets, to be let off when occasion required—a provision of which he never gave his enemies the benefit. Poor Dr. Hunt was cruelly cut off—or, at least, his head was—which amounted to much the same thing; and others were treated with similar severity.
On the Continent the Protector was very successful, and the English serving under Turenne, or, as some have called him, Tureen, poured down upon Dunkirk, which was overwhelmed and taken. Cromwell, however, lived a miserable life at home, being suspicious of every one about him, and he never dared sleep more than two consecutive nights in the same place—a circumstance that may account for the multiplicity of lodgings we have already alluded to. This continual changing of apartments must have rendered him very liable to get put into damp sheets, and, as hydropathy had not yet been reduced to a system, he caught the ague, instead of profiting by the moisture of the bed-clothes. On the 2nd of September he grew very bad indeed, and, in the presence of four or five of the Council, he named his son Richard to succeed him; but this youth was so complete a failure, that to talk of his succeeding was utterly ridiculous. Oliver Cromwell died between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 3rd of September, the day on which he always expected good luck, for it was the anniversary of some of his greatest victories. Death, however, is an enemy not to be overcome, and, in spite of the prestige of success which belonged to the day, the Protector was compelled to yield to the universal conqueror. He died in the fifty-ninth year of his age; and it is a singular coincidence that Nature brewed a tremendous storm—as if in compliment to the brewer—at the very moment of his dissolution.
The character of Cromwell was, as we have already intimated, a species of half-and-half, in which the smaller description One, Two, Three, and finder of beer appeared to preponderate. He had, like a pot of porter, a good head; but to draw a simile from the same refreshing fount, he was rather frothy than substantial in his political qualities. His speeches had the wonderful peculiarity of meaning nothing, and instead of saying a great deal in a few words, he managed to say very little in a great many. * Cromwell wrote almost as obscurely as he spoke, and could do little more than sign his name, for which he used to make the old excuse of the illiterate, that his education had been somewhat neglected; and indeed it seemed to have gone very little beyond those primitive pothooks intended for the hanging up of future more important acquisitions. The Protector's wit was exceedingly coarse, or rather particularly fine, for it was scarcely perceptible. It savoured much of the Scotch humourist, whose fun might be exceedingly good sometimes, if it were not always invisible. His practical jokes wore not particularly happy, and his smearing the chairs with sweetmeats at Whitehall, to dirty the dresses of the ladies, was a piece of facetiousness worthy of an eccentric scavenger, but highly unbecoming to the chief magistrate, for the time being, of such a country as England.
Though Cromwell could scarcely read the characters of caligraphy, he could peruse the characters of men with great acuteness. He was well acquainted with all the variations of human types, and could easily distinguish the capitals from the lower-case. In private life he was playful, though in his public capacity he was severe even to cruelty; and it has hence been prettily remarked, that, though he was a kitten in the bosom of his family, the puss became a tiger in the arena of politics. He never turned his back upon any of his children, except at leap-frog, in which he would often indulge with his sons, who had little of that vaulting ambition for which their parent was conspicuous.
ONSIDERING all things, we have some hesitation in devoting a chapter to this contemptible imbecile; but in taking up the thread of the history, we promise to wind him off in a very few pages.
The ceremony of proclamation was performed in London and Westminster, as well as in every city of the kingdom, and congratulatory addresses poured in upon the new Protector, as they would upon Brown, Jones, Robin-son, or any other piece of scum that the tide of chance might have thrown up to the same position. There was the usual junction of condolence on the death of the parent, and joy at the accession of the son; but both expressions were equally affected and hypocritical. Richard Cromwell was, however, such a mere nonentity, that he could not turn to account the advantages of his position: and when the army promised to stand by him to a man he had nothing to say beyond "Dear me! how very kind of the army!" He had, it is true, been born, as the saying is, with a "silver spoon in his mouth," and the qualities of the spoon had become incorporated with his being.
The soldiers soon began to discover that the brewer's son knew more about barrels of beer than barrels of gunpowder, and that his acquaintance with the musket was limited to the butt end of it. A petition was got up among the troops requesting him to resign; but he replied, that though he was very willing to do anything to oblige, he was sure his people did not wish him to relinquish the command of the army.
Richard had sent, as usual, for the coffers of the State, which have been generally the first object of solicitude to one attaining the post of chief magistrate. Some small change was all that the coffers contained, and he resolved to call a Parliament in order to replenish them. The legislative assembly met on the 27th of January, 1659, but was very soon torn by factions of every sort, except satisfaction, which there were no symptoms of in any quarter whatever. Fleetwood, the brother-in-law of Richard Cromwell, and Desborough, his uncle-in-law, who had married his aunt, got up a movement against him among the soldiers who resented their want of pay, and avowed their determination not to draw their swords until they had drawn their salaries. Finding there was nothing to be got out of the Parliament, Richard dissolved it, and the old one that Oliver had forcibly ejected had the impudence to resume its sittings. The new Protector beginning to think, like his father, that self-protection was the first duty he had to perform, withdrew to Hampton Court, and sent in his resignation, which was accepted immediately.
The Parliament, though very long of date, was very short of cash, and coolly proposed selling the three royal palaces to ease the pecuniary pressure which the tightness in the city was occasioning. Royalists' plots, however, disturbed the plans of the assembly, whose members quarrelled fiercely with each other, and were terribly bamboozled by Monk, who had a large amount of monkish deception in his character. He wrote letters to cajole Parliament, while he was in treaty with the king; but the former being very short of cash soon decided, whatever doubts he might have entertained as to which was the best investment for his allegiance.
It having become tolerably sure that Charles the Second would be sent for, there was a sudden rush of competitors for the honour or dishonour, as the case may be, of bringing him back to England. Even Fleetwood, the brother-in-law of Richard Cromwell and the son-in-law of Oliver, was on the point of undertaking the job; but having entered into a sort of tacit agreement with Lambert, to give him a share in any job that he (Fleetwood) might undertake, the latter could not make up his mind to sell himself in the former's absence.
Monk continued to deceive the Parliament with so much success that he was invited by that body to come to London, and accept the situation of keeper of St. James's Park, a post of honour rather than of active duty; for, in those days, "the boys" had not gained such ascendency as to call for activity in the metropolitan beadlery. Monk used his new position for the purpose of promoting the object for the furtherance of which he had in fact sold himself to the king; and his majesty having sent a letter to the Parliament, in which the lords had again mustered very strong, a favourable answer was returned to it.
Charles was voted a sum of £50,000 to pay his expenses home, and the evening was spent in bell-ringing, beer, and bonfires. Royalty rushed up to a premium as exorbitant and unhealthy as the discount to which it had fallen in the days of the Commonwealth; and on the 8th of May, 1660, Charles was proclaimed at the gate of Westminster Hall, amidst loud cries of "Hats off!" "Down in front! Long live the king!" and "Where are you shoving to?"
Richard Cromwell made himself not the least obstacle to any arrangements that might be made for deposing him, and indeed begged the parties concerned would not "consider him" in any alterations that circumstances might require. His chief anxiety was to get a guarantee against the expenses of his father's funeral, for which "poor Richard" feared he was legally responsible. He sneaked eventually out of the kingdom, and making a call abroad on a foreign prince, who did not know him, was told to his face, in the course of a casual conversation, that "Oliver Cromwell, though a villain and a traitor, was fit to command, but that Richard was a mere poltroon and an idiot." * "What has become of the fellow?" added the prince; upon which Richard suddenly withdrew, and the conversation ended. He eventually returned to England, and taking the name of Clark, died unknown at a little place in Cheshunt.
We may as well finish off the Cromwells at once, while we are about them, by mentioning that the last known descendant of the family, who died in 1821, was on the roll of attorneys. From the throne of England to the stool in a solicitor's office, is undoubtedly a dreadful drop; and if Oliver Cromwell could have seen the last of his race making out a bill of costs, the Protector would have received a lesson by which he might have profited.
THAT improvement was not stationary during the period we have just been describing, will be inferred from the fact that, in 1625, Science called a hackney-coach into existence. Though in these days invention would seem to be at a stand if it went no further than the point we have indicated, still the hackney-carriage was a decided advance on the slow coaches of previous centuries. From a print of the period we perceive that the newly-invented vehicles resembled in shape something between a steam locomotive and a covered railway luggage-van, or in other words, exhibited a sort of combination of the 'bus and the boiler. The hackney-coachman did not long enjoy a monopoly, for in 1634 Sir Sanders Duncomb thrust a pair of poles through an old sentry-box, and calling it a sedan, started it as a "turn out" for his own convenience. The arrangement seeming to give satisfaction, he obtained a patent for fourteen in all, and S. D. advertised the careful removal of ladies and gentlemen by means of his new invention.
In the year 1630, London began to exhibit symptoms of outgrowing its strength, and fresh buildings within three miles of the gates were prohibited. So long as the metropolis extended on all sides alike, there could have been nothing to fear, for it would have been as broad as it was long, at any rate. It is a curious fact that those persons who had money in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not know what to do with it. They had been in the habit of keeping it in the Royal Mint, till Charles the First got into the ugly habit of going down to that establishment, clearing off the whole of the cash it contained, calling it a loan, and never paying it back again. The capitalists next tried the experiment of lodging their cash with their clerks and apprentices, and unfortunately it soon became current coin of the realm, for the clerks and apprentices all ran away with it. "The moneyed men, listening at last," says Anderson, "to these admoney-tory lessons, began to place their cash in the hands of goldsmiths," but these gentlemen used to pick out the heaviest coins and make a profit by the sweating process, so that instead of living by the sweat of their own brows, they lived by the sweating of other people's money. This was the origin of the banking business, which began in, or near, Sweeting's Alley, then called Sweating's Alley, from the practices we have mentioned.
Gardening industry made wonderfully rapid strides during this era, for the peas were well drilled, the cabbages made to stand at ease in the open air, and the turnips to take close order at the commencement of the seventeenth century. Cherries soon after came amongst the English people, with a degree of cherry bounce that the beauty and delicacy of the fruit perhaps warranted. The apple was welcomed with enthusiasm, and Samuel Hartlib, a gardener of the day—week, month or year—was so affected by the flourishing growth of an apple-tree he had planted, that the well-known expression, "Go it, my pippin!" burst from his lips, and has taken its place in popularity with the Eureka of the old philosopher. The hops also presented themselves as candidates for British favour, and were soon at the top of the poll in all directions.
The woollen manufacturers of England acquired importance at a very early date; but the secret of dyeing the cloth could never be discovered, and every failure only threw a wretched stain upon national ingenuity. At length a Dutchman settled himself, in 1643, at Bow, and announced, by a notice in his bow-window, his intention to get a living by dyeing upon an entirely new principle. Hitherto the English had miserably failed in this branch of art, for when they attempted to master the dye and keep it under their control, it was always sure to come off with flying colours. The Dutchman of Bow had determined to conquer, even in dyeing, and he not only succeeded in producing a single shade, but he made such hits with his shots, that customers might safely stand the hazard of the dye, if they brought their orders to his establishment. He taught the art to the English, the fastness of whose colours had been previously shown in the extreme rapidity of their running.
In 1622. hemp and flax having been introduced ready dressed into this country, the rope manufacture twined itself with the industrial institutions of England. There had been always a prejudice against the use of coal for domestic purposes; but on its value in manufactures being discovered, it acquired a higher character, though its best friends were never able to say that coal after all is not so black as it had been painted. It was extensively employed in iron manufactories, which had greatly advanced; and we have seen an old woodcut of a saw which is one of those very "wise saws" that maybe considered equal to the best of our "modern instances."
Knowing the danger of playing with edge tools, we forbear to speak of them any longer in a sportive strain, and turn to the state of music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Henry the Eighth himself was a composer, if we are to believe Sir John Hawkins, but we suspect that the monarch's well-known overtures to the Pope may have misled the musical historian. There were several writers of madrigals, a class of production whose name has been ingeniously but ignorantly supposed to have reference to the mad wriggles into which the music throws itself.
Charles the First was an adept in the pleasing science, and pretended to play on the viol, though not without a sad viol-ation of some of the rules of harmony. He was, however, fond of melody, which, like everything else of a cheerful and agreeable nature, received a sad blow from the dull puritanical humbugs who rose into importance at the time of the Commonwealth. These psalm-singing sycophants were so fond of hearing their own melancholy and monotonous voices, that no accompaniments were allowed: and thus, to use the impassioned pun of Smith, * "one of the most disgusting specimens of an organised hypocrisy that the world ever saw was carried on entirely without the use of organs."
The Fine Arts flourished in England under Charles the First, who was a scholar, a man of taste, a gentleman, and, in fact, everything but what he ought to have been—namely, a good sovereign. He employed Vandyke to take off his head, or rather multiply it frequently, as if he felt a foreboding of his eventually losing it. He was also the patron of Inigo Jones, the architect of several public buildings, and of his own fortune.
The drama is a subject so exciting to antiquarian speculation, that we are afraid of losing ourselves in the mists of ages by plunging into it. We cannot hope to surpass in sagacity some of those ingenious annotators of the present day, who have had such a keen eye to Gammer Gurton's needle, that they actually trace its existence to so remote a date as some few years before the birth of its author. ** We need not particularise the various dramatic authors who gave lustre to the Elizabethan period, nor shall we fall into the affectation of talking about Master Beaumont, Master Fletcher, Master Jonson, Master Shakspeare, Master Deekes, and Master Hey wood, as if they had been so many precocious young gentlemen or juvenile prodigies of which the present age is somewhat prodigal.
The Long Parliament put down all stage plays, for the miserable mummers of whom that assembly was composed were desirous of having all the acting to themselves, though they made a very poor burlesque of the parts of statesmen and patriots. It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Collier, in his History of Dramatic Poetry, that the Puritanical Parliament suppressed the drama and dramatists less on conscientious grounds than from the fear of being made the subject of well-merited satire. The same feeling which would urge a legislature of pickpockets to abolish the police might have actuated the Republicans in their zeal to get rid of that moral watch which a well regulated state will always keep over cant and villainy.
If, however, dramatic performances were scarce during the ascendency of Cromwell and the Puritans, the public—had they known how to appreciate it—would not have been without food for mirth in the very ludicrous exhibitions which the events of the day were perpetually furnishing. The career of Cromwell himself might have suggested an amusing spectacle to those who are in the habit of turning to the ridiculous side of everything. A brewer on the throne, endeavouring to unite republican simplicity with royal state, presents to the imagination a figure almost as grotesque as that of an elephant on the tight-rope—an idea in which there is that rare combination of ponderosity and levity, which Cromwell's conduct on the protectorat elbow, or supreme arm-chair, will be found to have realised. His unwieldy gambols and great preponderance over all below him, were most fatal to that balance of power which can never be sustained without an equality of pressure and an equality of resistance on all sides.
Our survey of the literature of the seventeenth century would be incomplete if we were to omit to notice the 3rd of November, 1640, as being the date of the earliest English newspaper. It bore the name of the "Diurnal Occurrences; or, Daily Proceedings of Both Houses," but though it professed to give daily news, it was only a weekly periodical. There arose rapidly a provincial press, but its pretensions were slight, and News from Hull, Truths from York, Warranted Tidings from Ireland, were the names of some of the chief of these country newspapers. Their leading articles were not much in the style we are accustomed to at the present day; but the ancient order of penny-a-liners seemed to be ever agog for these precocious gooseberries, showers of frogs, and fading reminiscences of oldest inhabitants, that are still the staple of the productions of this humble class of contributors. It is a remarkable coincidence that the circulation of the blood and the circulation of newspapers should both have belonged to this period of our country's history.
Furniture and costume improved wonderfully in this age, and the wealthy became less chary of expense in their chairs, while they began to sleep on down, or, in other words, to feather their nests with great luxuriance. The clothes of the times of the two Charles's were made much too large for the wearers, and may be considered characteristic of the loose habits of the period. The hair was cut short by the Republican party, or Roundheads, in memory of whom the culprits at Clerkenwell and other prisons are cropped exceedingly close, though this is not the only point of resemblance between the modern rogues and the old regicides.
The condition of the people was not very enviable in the era we have described, and it is a remarkable as well as a most instructive fact, that commonwealth is usually synonymous with common poverty. Wages were invariably low, for a man-servant who could thrash a cornfield and kill a hog, received only fifty shillings per annum. Poverty and knavery, begging and filching, were at their height under the reign of the Puritans; for "Like master, like man" was at all times a proverb that could be thoroughly relied upon.
THOUGH we find Charles the Second at the commencement of this chapter seated comfortably enough upon the English throne, the question "How came he there?"—when we remember the straits and the crookeds through which he passed—very naturally suggests itself. There is an anecdote connected with his escape from Worcester, which we have not given before, because, as it rests chiefly on the authority of the "Merry Monarch" himself, the story is very likely to be dubious. Whether fact or fiction, we may give it a place in the history of his reign, for if the tale is made up, the manufacture is entirely his own, and so far may be considered to belong to his annals. We shall therefore follow the thread of the king's own narrative, and if the yarn he has spun was of a fabricated fabric, it is to Charles and not to us that the imposture must be attributed.
On the battle of Worcester being utterly lost, Charles began to think of saving himself; but his adherents, who had been thoroughly beaten, insisted on sticking to him with rather inconvenient loyalty. Feeling that a small party could run away much faster than a large one, he resolved to give his too faithful friends the slip; and when night came on he succeeded in doing so, leaving his supporters, who would have stuck to him till death, to shift for themselves. Charles, with that scamp Wilmot, afterwards Rochester, and three or four others, got clean off in a very dirty manner. Some advised the king to take shelter among the Scotch; but his majesty, having no desire to be regularly sold, declined putting himself in the power of a people who at that time valued the virtues for exactly what they might bring, and would no doubt have received the king with open arms as an eligible investment to be speedily realised. He determined, therefore, to proceed towards London, and, by the aid of a leathern doublet, grey breeches, and green jerkin, he "made up" very effectually as a stage countryman.
Taking with him a real countryman, one Richard Penderell, as a companion, Charles went into a wood, from the edge of which he saw a troop of horse: but the rain poured down in such torrents that the troop retired, instead of taking shelter in the wood, which was certainly the wisest course they could have adopted. The anecdote is, however, so essentially dramatic, that the soldiers were perfectly in character when they went quite in the opposite direction to that they should have taken, like those pursuers on the stage who usually overlook the person they are in search of, and who, to every one else, is most conspicuously visible. Charles's position on this occasion resembled, in a minor degree, the situation of the fugitive at the fair, who, pointing to a painted blind representing a tree with a hole cut down the centre of it, expressed his determination to conceal himself in "yonder thicket." Finding accommodation only for his body in the tree's imaginary trunk, his legs of course protruded from the "shady grove," when two assassins in hot pursuit tumbling over the out-hanging heels of the wretched runaway, exclaimed confidentially in the ears of the audience, "By 'ivins, he 'as eluded us!" Such must have been the good fortune of Charles, and the stupid blindness of the troop, when the former sat on the forest's edge, and the latter never noted him.
This incident being over, another soon afterwards ensued of an equally melodramatic character. Charles and Penderell, after travelling two nights on foot, had put up at the house of one of Penderell's brothers; but it was not thought safe to remain in it, and his majesty was recommended to an oak, whose parent stem would afford friendly shelter, while all the junior branches might be thoroughly relied upon. The king having supplied himself with bread, cheese, and beer, which could not have been table beer, for there was no table to put it on—though there were plenty of leaves—made the best of the imperfect accommodation that the tree afforded him. He had no sooner settled on his perch, and made himself a kind of nest in the boughs, than some soldiers entered on the o. p. side, and looked everywhere—except in the right place—for the fugitive monarch. His legs, as usual, were visible enough, but the troopers possibly mistook them for a pair of stockings hanging up to dry, and they were not even struck by the shoes at the end, that should have awakened them to the value of the booty. The most infantine participators in the game of hide-and-seek, would not have been at fault under circumstances of a similar kind; and there can scarcely be a doubt, that if any urchin had only raised a suggestive cry of "Hot beans and butter!" Charles would have been laid by the heels without a scruple on the part of those who were in search of him.
Leaving his majesty's legs to dangle in the air, and allowing credulity to score one for his heels on the cribbage-board of fancy, we proceed to contemplate Charles in a more dignified position on the throne of England. He arrived at Dover on the 25th of May, with his two little brothers, who had grown to men, but were still called "the boys" by those who remembered them before their exile from the land of their forefathers. Monk received the royal trio, who rode to the hotel in the same hackney-coach with the general, forgetting that there had been a good deal of truly monkish cunning in the conduct of that individual, who being the latest with his service, obtained the favour due to much earlier and older royalists.
The principle of "first come, first served!" was in this instance laid aside, and the rule of "last come served best" was ungratefully adopted. A most unreasonable reaction towards royalty now ensued, and the anxiety to deal mercilessly with the regicides ran into a most sanguinary extreme, surpassing in fury the most bloodthirsty predilections of the fiercest republicans.
Both Houses of Parliament met, and an Act of Indemnity was passed for the benefit of the king's enemies; but, like the old story of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, most of the persons interested in the Act were excepted from its provisions. Nineteen of the regicides surrendered; and ten more being in custody, formed a batch of twenty-nine to be brought to trial. A commission was issued for the purpose, and on the 9th of October, 1660, the proceedings began before a tribunal of thirty-four, many of whom had been Long Parliament men, masked Presbyterians, or miscellaneous scamps, of quite as revolutionary a turn as some of the prisoners submitted to their judgment. Sir Hardress Waller, who was number one on the list, had prepared a very fine speech in his defence; but looking over the document he made up his mind that it was rather strong, and could certainly do no good, upon which he pleaded guilty. Harrison and Carew, who came next, made each a very eloquent and enthusiastic harangue, glorying in their respective acts, by which they laid down their lives as an investment for a reversionary interest in the good books of posterity.
Henry Marten, "the wit of the House of Commons," made a most dismal attempt to laugh the matter off, and to joke the prosecution out of court; but his humour, notwithstanding its extreme heaviness, had no weight with his judges. He began by demanding the benefit of the Act of Oblivion, and in a lame bon mot claimed to be allowed to forget himself. He was sharply told he must plead guilty or not guilty, but he insisted on the benefit of the Act of Indemnity, saying his name did not appear among the exceptions, and that in fact he had never been an exceptionable character. Irritated by these dismal jokes—so insulting to the understanding of the court—the Solicitor-General ordered the Act to be produced, with the name Henry Marten inserted legibly enough, when "the droll," with a miserable quibble not even amounting to a pun, exclaimed, "My name is not so—it is Harry Marten." This unmeaning objection being very properly overruled, the "mad wag" endeavoured to stand upon his reputation for mad waggery, and urged that being known as a wit, he had done nothing with a serious intention. He was, however, told that regicide in sport was high treason in earnest, when, after some few further attempts at facetiousness, the "witty Harry Marten" was found guilty, and retired cutting wretched jokes upon the disgusted turnkey.
The court, which, in order to get beforehand with its work, had prepared most of its verdicts before the trials commenced, had already determined on fixing the act of cutting off the king's head on the shoulders of William Hewlett. Everything went to prove that the common hangman had performed the sanguinary job for £30, but the commissioners had made up their minds, and were unwilling to open the very small parcels for the purpose of looking at the charge by the light of the evidence. Hewlett was condemned, but people beginning to talk of the glaring injustice of the verdict, he was eventually saved from capital punishment. Poor Garland was another of the intended victims, and it may well be said that Garland by his heroism has made himself a wreath of immortality. He would have pleaded guilty to the accusation of having signed the death warrant of Charles, but indignantly repudiated the charge of having insulted the fallen sovereign. "I was a regicide, it is true," exclaimed Garland, "but as for the assertion of my having been base enough to spit in the face of the king, I throw it back in the face of my enemies."
Upon this the Solicitor-General called as a witness a low, needy fellow, named Clench, who swore not only to the spitting by Garland, but to the king having wiped his face immediately afterwards, and from the supplementary lie told by Clench to support the first falsehood, the term Clencher obviously took its origin. Poor Garland was found guilty, of course, but his life was not eventually forfeited. The executions of the regicides were very numerous, and conducted in a spirit of barbarous brutality, that excited a great deal of disgust at the time among all but those who were animated by the desire to retaliate the atrocities that the other side had committed. It is in fact, a very common fault among philanthropists, and others who rush about with a strong sense of great social wrongs, to commit some other wrongs equally great, or even greater, upon the persons by whom their virtuous indignation may have been excited.
We feel naturally interested in the fate of poor Harry Marten, the "funny man" of the Long Parliament. While in prison under sentence of death, he was visited by some aristocratic friends, who recommended the wit to petition in a jocose strain, but his humour had become exceedingly dreary in his dingy dungeon. He contrived, nevertheless, to serve up one small pun in a lengthy document begging for mercy; and though the Commons did not see the fun of the thing, the Lords good-naturedly took it for granted that, coming from a professed wag, there must be "something in it," and with a patronising "Ha, hal—very clever—amazingly droll!"—the Peers remitted his sentence.
Though Royalty had risen wonderfully in public respect, there was nothing in the conduct of the royal family to render it respectable. The queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, returned to England with an extensive French suite, and ran into debt even over her head and ears, which being very long, may enable us to measure the depths of her extravagance. The utmost dissoluteness prevailed at Court, and the king's brother, the Duke of York, had married—several months later than he should have done—Miss Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon. This consummate old humbug affected to be much pained at the degradation of his prince, through his marriage with Clarendon's own daughter, and the chancellor, affecting to doubt the fact, declared, if it were true, "The woman should go to the Tower and have her head chopped off!" in accordance with an Act of Parliament he would himself draw up for that purpose. All this unnatural abuse of his own child, instead of earning him the smallest respect, simply rendered him infamous in the minds of all but those who believed he was acting a part, and who regarded him, therefore, as simply contemptible. He is believed to have been secretly engaged in promoting the marriage against which he publicly protested; and the recognition of his daughter as Duchess of York, which soon afterwards took place, was purchased, it is said, by Clarendon's paying the debts of the queen-mother, by, of course, robbing the people.
It is impossible to say much for the magnanimity of the royalist party, whose triumph was signalised by continued acts of mingled ferocity and littleness. A law was passed attainting Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, who were dragged from their graves in Westminster Abbey, and hanged at Tyburn, on the 30th of January, the day of the death of Charles the First—in celebration of his martyrdom. This was certainly one way of crying quits with the regicides in the game of butchery, and both sides were thus brought to the same degraded level. The royalist resurrectionists having commenced the desecration of the dead did not relinquish their loathsome pursuit until they had ex-humed, as we learn nom Hume, the remains of Cromwell's highly-respectable mother and inoffensive daughter, as well as numerous others who had done nothing in life to render them in death the objects of enmity.
All parties now began to claim the merit of the Restoration in the hope of obtaining a reward, and bills for old arrears of alleged loyalty were sent in to the Government. The Scotch were of course not backward in looking after the profits due, or supposed to be due, on account of any assistance rendered to Charles in his misfortunes; but the king and his friends having been sold two or three times over by the crafty Caledonians, his majesty thought they had really made their full money out of him. When, therefore, the Marquis of Argyle asked permission to pay his respects, a friendly reply was despatched to bring him up to town; but on his arrival at Whitehall, he had scarcely knocked at the door when he found he was regularly let in, for a guard, tapping him on the shoulder, walked him off as a traitor. He was sent to be tried by his own countrymen; for as some of them would profit by his death, it was considered that making them his judges would be a sure method of getting rid of him. The result realised the estimate formed of the character of the Scotch, who condemned him and hanged him as a matter of beesness, because there was a small profit to be got out of the transaction. Poor Argyle had been the very party who had put the crown on the king's head a few years before at Scone; but, "Life," said he, on the scaffold, "is a toss up, and it's heads I lose on this melancholy occasion."
On the 8th of May, 1661, a new Parliament met, which lasted even longer than the long one par excellence, and, indeed, the lengths to which it went might alone have entitled it to the epithet bestowed on its Republican predecessor. The Cavaliers had a very large majority in this assembly, and the off-hand manner in which it dealt with the country rendered the words cavalier treatment and bad treatment synonymous. The royal prerogative was the object of nearly all the acts of this assembly; and the rights of monarchy were being continually declared, in the same spirit as the artist who wrote "This is a lion," under his picture, because there would have been room for doubt in the absence of the epigraph. Thus the frequent assertions of the Parliament that the king was paramount, and indeed absolute, were tolerably good evidence of the fact that the position is not altogether incontrovertible.
After a brief session, in which the Cavaliers helped themselves to £60,000, by way of compensation-money, and voted a supply to the king, the Parliament adjourned from the 30th of July till the 28th of November, by which time Charles and his minister, Clarendon, had got up a little mare's nest of a pretended conspiracy, to give a new impetus to the prevailing spirit of inconsiderate loyalty. The servile Commons called at once for a few supplementary executions, and with this view it was resolved to look through the back numbers, or stock remaining on hand, of the regicides. Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mild-may, and Sir Robert Wallop, were "unearthed" from the obscurity into which they had crept, and were dragged on sledges, with ropes round their necks, to Tyburn and back again. Poor Wallop's name was cruelly made suggestive of ruffianly attacks, which, by turning the first person present—Wallop—into the participle in ing, the reader will at once mentally realise.
The subserviency of the Parliament to Charles was absolutely sickening, and it is a fact worthy of remark, that the epithet "most religious," applied to the sovereign in portions of the Church service, was bestowed originally upon this profane and immoral reprobate. His necessities, or rather his extravagances, were supplied lavishly by Parliament, who voted him a hearth-tax for every fire-place, or in other words, gave him a draft upon every chimney. Notwithstanding the odious domestic character of Charles, every match-making old mother of royalty abroad endeavoured to get off some daughter by offering her as a wife to the heartless libertine. "He put himself up to auction," says a brother historian, * and we may add that it is much to be regretted he was not knocked down according to his merits. Portugal having bid the Princess Catherine, with half a million sterling, and other contingent advantages, the bargain was struck, and a ship sent over for herself and her dowry.