the London ministers, was condemned and beheaded by the same authority—then, indeed, Heaven and Earth are moved at such an enormity! "At the time of his execution, or very near it on that day, there was the dreadfulest thunder, and lightning, and tempest that was heard or seen for a long time before. This blow sunk deeper towards the root of the new Commonwealth than will easily be believed, and made them grow odious to almost all the religious party in the land except the sectaries. And there is, as Sir Walter Raleigh noteth of learned men, such as Demosthenes, Cicero, &c., so much more in divines of famous learning and piety, enough to put an everlasting odium upon those whom they suffer by, though the cause of the sufferers were not justifiable. Men count him a vile and detestable creature, who in his passion, or for his interest, or any such low account, shall deprive the world of such lights and ornaments, and cut off so much excellency at a blow.-After this the most of the ministers and good people of the land did look upon the new Commonwealth as tyranny."

The Long Parliament having made itself as much hated by the Presbyterians as it was by the Royalists, was odious at the same time to the army and the fanatics of both kinds, political and religious. Cromwell stated their misconduct to Whitelock strongly, and with none of that muddiness with which he frequently chose to conceal or obscure his meaning. On this occasion he spoke plainly: "Their pride," he said, “and ambition and self-seeking, ingrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends; and their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions: their delays of business, and design to perpetuate themselves and to continue their power in their own hands; their meddling in private matters between party and party, contrary to the institution of parliaments, and their injustice and partiality in those matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them,-these things do give too much ground for people to open their mouths against them and to dislike them. Nor can they be kept within the bounds of justice and law or reason, they themselves being the supreme power of the nation, liable to no account to any, nor to be controlled or regulated by any other power; there being none superior or co-ordinate with them." Whitelock confessed

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the evil, but said it would be hard to find a remedy. "What," said Cromwell, "if a man should take upon him to be king?" To this Whitelock replied that this remedy would be worse than the disease; that being general he had less envy and less danger than if he were called king, but not less power and real opportunities of doing good. And he represented to him that he was environed with secret enemies: that his own officers were elated with success; 66 many of them,” said he, are busy and of turbulent spirits, and are not without their designs how they may dismount your excellency, and some of themselves get up into the saddle, how they may bring you down and set up themselves." Cromwell would willingly have engaged Whitelock in his views ; but Whitelock was a cautious, temporising man, who generally chose the safest part, and never incurred danger by resisting what he could not prevent, or putting himself in the van when he could remain with the main body. In speaking honestly to Cromwell, he risked nothing; the feeling which his dissent excited was rather disappointment than displeasure, and he would be esteemed more for his sincerity.*

His concurrence was of little moment. Cromwell could count upon his faithful services when the thing was done, and he had plenty of other agents who were ready to go through with any thing. That memorable scene soon followed [20 April, 1653], when Cromwell turned out the Parliament, and locked the doors of the House of Commons. Whitelock says, that "all honest and

[* See the whole of this remarkable conversation in Whitelock, pp. 548-551, ed. 1732.

"Whitelock was a man who, taking at first, in honest conviction, what is called the patriotic side, adhered to it when men as honest as himself, of far higher intellectual powers, and greater moral courage, went over to the King's party. He conformed to all changes during the course of the Rebellion, not from any greedy or ambitious views, but because he hoped that every change might be the last, and dreaded the danger of any attempt at restoring that order of things which had been by violence subverted. The weight of his respectable character was thus thrown into whatever scale preponderated. But in all other respects he was so estimable a man-never injuring others, and seeking only to secure, not to aggrandize, himself—that the Royalists regarded him with no asperity; they looked upon his conduct as proceeding entirely from moral timidity, unmixed with any worse motive; and when he appeared at Charles II.'s court, to make his excuses, the king, with that goodnature which-though it was far from covering the multitude of his sins— gave a grace to much that he did and to everything he said, bade him gc home and take care of his fourteen children."--SOUTHEY, Letter to Jolin Murray, Esq., 'touching' Lord Nugent, p. 31.]

prudent indifferent men were highly distasted at this; that the royalists rejoiced; that divers fierce men, pastors of churches and their congregations, were pleased," as were the army in general, officers as well as soldiers; and he illustrates the principles upon which some of the officers were pleased with the change, by what one of them said to a member of the ejected Parliament, whose son was a captain," that this business was nothing but to pull down the father and set up the son, and no more but for the father to wear worsted, and the son silk stockings," so sottish, says Whitelock, were they in the apprehensions of their own risings !* -but he has not thought proper to observe, how much more sottish and less excusable were those persons who had set them the example of pulling down authority. Some of the severest republicans in the army served Cromwell in this his first act of explicit despotism. Ludlow, who was in Ireland, had some distrust; yet, he says that he and they who were with them thought themselves obliged, by the rules of charity, to hope the best, and, therefore, continued to act in their places and stations as before. They had never exercised that rule of charity towards Charles I.

The Lord General, such was his title now, called a meeting of officers to deliberate concerning what should next be done. Lambert was for entrusting the supreme power to a few persons, not more than ten or twelve. Harrison would have preferred seventy, being the number of which the Jewish Sanhedrim consisted. The deliberation ended in summoning† to a parliament a hundred and twenty-eight persons chosen by the Council of Officers, from the three kingdoms. The members thus curiously chosen, and notorious by the name of Praise-God Barebones' Parliament, met accordingly [4 July, 1653], and were harangued by Cromwell, who acknowledged the goodness of the Lord, in that he then saw the day wherein the Saints began their rule in the earth! They began their business in a saintly manner, by a day of humiliation in which God did so draw forth the hearts of the members both in speaking and prayer, that they did not find any necessity to call for the help of any minister." They were, indeed, for dispensing with ministers as well as kings, looking upon the *Whitelock, p. 555, ed. 1732.]

[† 8th June, 1653. See a summons in Whitelock, p. 557.]

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function as Anti-Christian, and upon tithes as absolute Judaism 90 and the better to insure the abolition of that odious order, they proposed to sell all the college lands, and apply the money in aid of taxes. It had been intended that they should sit fifteen months, and that, three months before their dissolution, they should make choice of others to succeed them for a year, the three kingdoms being then to be governed by Annual Parliaments, each electing its successor. Five months, however, convinced Cromwell that the only use to be made of them was, to make them surrender their power into his hand, acknowledge their own insufficiency, (which they might do with perfect truth,) and beseech him to take care of the commonwealth. The Council of Officers were now again in possession of the supreme power; and they declared that the government of the Commonwealth should reside in the single person of Oliver Cromwell, with the title of Lord Protector, and a council of one-and-twenty to assist him.*

Constitutions were made in that age as easily as in this, and the articles were not more durable then than they are now, though wiser heads were employed in making them. The name, however, which Oliver chose for his piece of parchment was the Instrument of Government. It was there ordained, that the Protector should call a parliament once in every three years, and not dissolve it till it had sat five months; that the bills which were presented to him, if he did not confirm them within twenty days, should become laws without his confirmation; and his select council should not be more in number than twenty-one, nor less than thirteen; that with their consent, he might make laws which should be binding during the intervals of parliament; that he should have power to make peace and war; that immediately after his death, the council should choose another Protector, and that no Protector after him should be general of the army. The first use which he made of his power was to make peace with the Dutch and with Portugal, in both cases upon terms honourable and advantageous to England; nor could any measures have been more popular than these, which delivered the

[* He was installed Lord Protector 16th December, 1653, and proclaimed the 19th. The Barebones' Parliament ended 12th December, 1653.] [† See it at length in Whitelock, pp. 571-577, ed. 1732.]

nation in the first instance from an expensive and bloody contest, and in the other, restored to it its most productive foreign trade. France and Spain were emulously courting the friendship of the fortunate usurper: Ireland and Scotland thoroughly subdued, their governments united with that of England, by the right of conquest, and both countries undergoing that process of civilization which Cromwell, like the Romans, carried on by the sword. When Charles I. was treating with the Scotch, before he put himself into their hands, he said in a letter to the French agent, whom they authorized to promise him protection, "Let them never flatter themselves so with their good successes; without pretending to prophecy, I will foretell their ruin, except they agree with me, however it shall please God to dispose of me. They had reason to remember this when they were under Cromwell's government. His orders to Monk, whom he left to complete the subjugation of the country, were, that if he found a stubborn resistance at any place, he should give no quarter, and allow free plunder; orders which Monk observed with the utmost rigour, and "made himself as terrible as man could be."* "He subdued them," says Clarendon, "to all imaginable tameness, though he had exercised no other power over them than was necessary to reduce that people to an entire submission to that tyrannical yoke. In all his other carriage towards them, but what was in order to that end, he was friendly and companionable enough; and as he was feared by the nobility and hated by the clergy, so he was not unloved by the common people, who received more justice and less oppression from him, than they had been accustomed to under their own lords." A more thorough conquest was never effected: everything was changed, the whole frame of government new-modelled, the Kirk subjected to the sole order and direction of the Commander-in-Chief; the nobles stripped of their power; the very priests tamed and muzzled,—and all this was submitted to obediently!-in reality, it had brought with it so much real benefit to a barbarous people, that at the Restoration, Lord Clarendon admits “it might well be a question, whether the generality of the nation was not better contented with it than to return into the old road of subjection."

[* Clar. Hist., vi. 494, ed. 1826.]