Sir Henry Vane, of matters which came to his knowledge from papers of his father. In respect to the death of King Charles, Vane was entirely blameless. He Vane. had taken no part in the transaction at any stage; he had protested against the project, from the moment of his first knowledge of it; and, when it had been carried into effect, he showed his displeasure by withdrawing for a time from Parliament and from participation in public affairs. Though he felt bound not to withhold his great abilities from the service of the country that rejected his counsel, he never lent himself to the personal elevation of Cromwell; and, during five years before the Protector's death, he had been part of the time self-banished from court, and part of the time in prison. The hour had not yet arrived when a prosecution of Vane would have been prudent. Dreamy recluse as he was apt to become when emergency and opportunity did not summon into exercise the practical sagacity, promptness, vigor, and resource, in which no man, in that age of memorable men, surpassed him, it cannot be said that he was ever a general favorite. But his great qualities and services, his unimpeached disinterestedness, and his independence of spirit, made him the object of a veneration which, marked as he was for vengeance, was for the present his safeguard. When, after two years, Lord Clarendon's skilful politics, and an extravagant reaction of the public mind, had made the mitre and the crown seem to their wearers omnipotent, the time was ripe for reckoning with Henry Vane. Denied the aid of counsel, he conducted his own defence in a manner worthy of his character for ability, and greatly adding to his reputation for courage. His unanswerable reasoning, to the effect that the indictment charged him with no acts but such as, according to the strictest tenor of the law of England, were consistent with the duty of a good citizen during a suspension of the established government, made 1662. June 6. no impression upon judges who had predetermined his fate. He was convicted, and sentenced to die as a traitor. The King, who had induced the Convention House of Commons to except him from the Act of Indemnity, by a promise, conveyed through Lord Clarendon, that, if convicted, he should receive a pardon, now wrote to that minister, "He is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way." Some of the horrible accompaniments of the penalty of treason were remitted. He was beheaded on Tower Hill. He was magnanimous and intrepid to the end. "Father, glorify thy servant in the sight of man," were his last words, "that he may glorify thee in the discharge of his duty to thee and to his country."1 June 14. Of the executions of actors in the late troubles, Vane's was the last. Lambert, excepted with him in the Act of general amnesty, had now ceased to be cared about. He was sentenced to die, but the punishment was commuted for perpetual imprisonment. He lived twenty-three years in gaol on the island of Guernsey and at Plymouth, and then died in the communion of the Church of Rome. Three other persons owed their fate to the newly awa kened loyalty of a New-England man,— a man eminent among the most able and the most unworthy that the venerable University of Massachusetts has reared. Emanuel Downing, of the Inner Temple, who had married a sis ter of Governor Winthrop, followed him to New October. England after a few years, bringing with the rest of his family his son George, who became a member of the class first graduated at the American Cambridge. 1638. "The courage of Sir H. Vane at his death is talked on everywhere as a miracle." (Pepys, Memoirs, 277; comp. 275, 276.) Pepys saw the execution. Vane's impracticable republicanism was very offensive to Richard Baxter. (See Reliq. Baxterian., L. 74-76; comp. "A Vindication of that Prudent and Honorable Knight, Sir Henry Vane, from the Lies and Calumnies of Mr. Richard Baxter," &c. 1659.) 2 His name stands second on the list of the seven thousand alumni; that of Benjamin Woodbridge, who also went 1645. Three years after the completion of his studies there, he was one of "three honest young men [as they Sir George were considered], good scholars and very hope- Downing. ful," who "went in a ship to the West Indies, to instruct the seamen." In three of the islands, Downing "gave such content, as he had large offers made to stay with them. But he continued in the ship to England, and, being a very able scholar, and of a ready wit and fluent utterance, he was soon taken notice of, and called to be a preacher in Sir Thomas Fairfax his army to Colonel Okey his regiment." He was at the battle of Worcester, of which he wrote an account to Parliament; and, in the following year, was ScoutMaster-General to the army in Scotland. The Protector employed him in negotiation with the Duke of Savoy; and he sat in Cromwell's last Parliament, and was sent by him as Ambassador to the Low Countries. In this position the Restoration found him. He had foreseen the event, and taken his course betimes; and, the week before Charles the Second sailed for England, he received the order of knighthood from that prince. Lord Clarendon continued him at his post, where he naturally desired to signalize himself by zeal and, activity. Accordingly when three of the regicides, Corbet, Barkestead, and Okey (his old commander), fled to England, and was employed there, being the first. In 1654, George Downing married the Lady Frances Howard, sister of the first Earl of Carlisle. Their oldest son, George, married a daughter of James, Earl of Salisbury. And the oldest son of this marriage, dying in 1747, endowed the College at Cambridge which bears the family name. For more than a hundred years, the first George Downing's name barbed a proverb of reproach in America. "If we may believe history," says the up 1652. 1653. 1657-1660. right and straightforward John Adams, "he was a scoundrel." (Works, X. 329; comp. Hutch. Hist., I. 107.) Pepys, who was a clerk in his office, judged him no more favorably. (Memoirs, I. 112, 252, 254; comp. Ludlow, Memoirs, 382.) Mr. Adams understood, as others have done, that the Parliamentary Navigation Act (see above, p. 282) originated with Downing, who had at that time a particular grudge against the Dutch. 1 Winthrop, II. 243. to Holland, he had them arrested at Delft, and hurried them off to England, where all three were conApril 19. victed and executed.1 1662. Ecclesiastical affairs in England. The restoration of the throne found ecclesiastical affairs in a condition altogether anomalous. Episcopacy and the liturgical service had never been abrogated by a joint act of King, Lords, and Commons. Presbytery, though established by Ordinances of Parliament, had not taken root in the kingdom, and at this time existed in no strength except in and about the City, and in Lancashire. Independent ministers occupied most of the Church livings. Nine ejected Bishops, who still survived, were now authorized to resume their sacred functions; and all ejected clergymen, to reclaim the places from which they had been removed. But the Presbyterian party had rendered such services in reinstating the royal authority, and still possessed such influence in the kingdom, that it was impossible as yet to treat them with outrage, or even to proceed without their active co-operation. Not only were Presbyterians, as Manchester, Hollis, Annesley (raised to the peerage as Lord Anglesea), and Sir Ashley Cooper (created Lord Shaftesbury), sworn into the Privy Council, but eminent Presbyterian ministers- Calamy, Reynolds, Baxter, and several others - were made royal chaplains. In a conference to which the dissenting clergymen were admit 1 Pepys saw them "drawn towards the gallows at Tyburn; and there they were hanged and quartered." He says: "They all looked very cheerful; but I hear they all die defending what they did to the King to be just." (Memoirs, &c., I. 258.) 2 Hooker and Cotton, of New England, had been still recognized as the leading champions of Independency, in the books on Presbytery which continued to be written in the time of the Commonwealth; for instance, in Daniel Cawdrey's elaborate treatise, "The Inconsistency of the Independent Way," &c., published in 1651, and in "Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici," and "Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici,” issued by the Presbyterian ministers of London in 1654. 3 According to Oldmixon (British Empire in America, I. 85), Benjamin Woodbridge, the first graduate of Harvard College, was one of these chaplains. But I do not remember any early authority for the statement. ted by the King, he assured them of his desire to effect by mutual concessions a composition between their communion and the prelatists, and added the gratifying words, "If this is not accomplished, the fault shall be on your part, and not on mine." 1661. March 25. 1660. Dec. 29. He considered himself to have fulfilled his engagement when he appointed twelve Presbyterian ministers, and as many bishops, to confer together respecting the terms of an agreement. The conference (called the Savoy Conference, from the place of its meeting, which was a house of the Bishop of London) was conducted with no spirit, and from its beginning promised no useful result. Several of the Episcopal commissioners never took their seats. The demands on their side were of a tenor to exclude the idea of any compromise. The Presbyterians argued their cause faintly, for already they saw around them only cause for discouragement and alarm. The Convention Parliament was dissolved at the end of a second session, devoted mostly to the Nov. 6transaction of ordinary business; and a portentous change had begun to reveal itself immediately afterwards. That Parliament had been chosen while Presbyterians and Independents were still in force, and no scheme for the restoration of royalty had taken form; a fact which sufficiently explains the moderation of its measures. Far different were the composition and the temper of its successor. Immediately upon the restoration of the King, a loyal madness possessed almost all classes of the people. The abuses, which, twenty years before, had roused the spirit of their fathers, were wellnigh forgotten. Their perturbed memory dwelt on the more recent grievances of frequent changes in government, military coercion, heavy exactions, and ascetic manners. With affectionate credulity they assumed that their young monarch was a person capable of being made sober by adversity, and of feeling a generous gratitude |