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nions, which had begun, was likely to terminate: this only was certain, that there must inevitably be great evil in the process, and that whatever extreme prevailed, the end must needs be one which no good man, or true friend of his country, could contemplate without sorrow. In any other age, Charles I. would have been the best and the most popular of kings. His unambitious and conscientious spirit would have preserved the kingdom in peace; his private life would have set an example of dignified virtue, such as had rarely been seen in courts; and his love of arts and letters would have conferred permanent splendour upon his age, and secured for himself the grateful applause of after generations. But he succeeded to a crown whose prerogatives had been largely asserted and never defined; to a scanty revenue, and to a popular but expensive war, no ways honourable to the nation either in its cause or conduct. The history of his reign thus far had been a series of errors and faults on all sides, so that an impartial observer would have found it difficult to satisfy himself whether the King and his ministers or the Parliaments were the most reprehensible; or which party had given the greatest provocation, and thereby afforded most excuse for the conduct of the other. Unable to govern with a parliament, and impatient of being governed by one, Charles had tried the perilous experiment of governing without one. There can be no doubt that the liberties of Great Britain must have been destroyed if that experiment had been successful; and successful in all human probability it would have been, if a spirit of religious discord had not possessed the nation. For though the system of Charles's administration was arbitrary, and therefore tyrannical, the revenue which he raised by extraordinary means was not greater than what would cheerfully have been granted him in the ordinary and just course of government; it was frugally administered, and applied in a manner suitable to the interest and honour of the kingdom, which, for twelve years, in the words of Lord Clarendon, "enjoyed the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age, for so long time together, have been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all the other parts of Christendom." Foreign and domestic trade flourished and increased; towns grew, not with a forced and unhealthy growth, occasioned by the unnatural

activity of a manufacturing system, but in just proportion to the growing industry and wealth of the country. England was respected abroad and prosperous at home; it even seemed as if the physical condition of the island had undergone a beneficial change, for the visitations of pestilence were abating, which had been so frequent in the preceding reign. But a severer judgment was impending over a headstrong generation, insensible of the blessings with which they were favoured, and ungrateful for them..

While this long calm endured, the most sagacious politicians were so far from perceiving any indications of the storm which they were to direct, that, believing the country was doomed and resigned to the loss of its liberties, they resolved upon leaving it, and transporting themselves, in voluntary exile, to a land of freedom. Lord Brooke, Lord Say and Sele and his sons, Pym, and other distinguished men of the same sentiments, were about to remove to a settlement in New England, where the name of Saybrooke, in honour of the two noble leaders, had already been given to a township in which they were expected. Eight vessels with emigrants on board were ready to sail from the Thames, when the King by an order of council forbade their departure, and compelled the intended passengers to come on shore, fatally for himself; for among those passengers Haslerigge and Hampden, and Cromwell, with all his family, had actually embarked. There are few facts in history which have so much the appearance of fatality as this.

Charles and his ministers feared that so many discontented and stirring spirits would be perilous in a colony which, being decidedly hostile to the Church of England, might easily be alienated from the state. They saw clearly the remote danger, but they were blind to the nearer and greater evil; and in that error they stopt the issue which the peccant humours had opened for themselves. Cromwell returned to Ely, and there continued to lead a respectable and pious life. A letter which he wrote at this time to Mrs. St. John (already mentioned) has been preserved; it is better expressed than most of his compositions, and is remarkable not merely for its characteristic language, but for a passage which may perhaps be thought to imply the hope, if not the expectation. of making himself conspicuous in defence of his religious sentiments. "Dear Cousin," he says, "I thankfully acknowledge your

love in your kind remembrance of me upon this opportunity. Alas, you do too highly prize my lines, and my company! I may be ashamed to own your expressions, considering how unprofitable I am and the mean improvement of my talent. Yet to honour my God by declaring what he hath done for my soul, in this I am confident, and I will be so. Truly then this I find, that He giveth springs in a dry and barren wilderness, where no water is. I live (you know where) in Mesheck, which they say signifies prolonging; in Kedar, which signifieth blackness: yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do prolong, yet He will, I trust, bring me to his tabernacle, to his resting place. My soul is with the congregation of the first born: my body rests in hope; and if here I may honour my God, either by doing or suffering, I shall be more glad. Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put forth himself in the cause of his God than I. I have had plentiful wages before hand, and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me in his Son, and give me to walk in the light, and give us to walk in the light, as he is in the light: He it is that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness. I dare not say he hideth his face from me; he giveth me to see light in his light. One beam in a dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it; blessed be his name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine!"

This readiness to do and to suffer in a righteous cause might have been confined to the ignoble theatre of a Bishop's court, if a wider field had not soon been opened for puritanical ambition. Cromwell had usually attended the church-service, joining probably, like Baxter, "in the common prayer, with as hearty fervency, as afterwards he did with other prayers :"-" As long as I had no prejudice against it," says that good man, “I had no stop in my devotions from any of its imperfections." But even before he left Huntingdon his house had been a retreat for those non-conforming preachers who had provoked the law; and a building behind it is shown, which he is said to have erected for their use, and in which, according to the same tradition, he sometimes edified them by a discourse himself. It is certain that he put himself forward in their cause so as to be looked upon as the head of their party in that country; and Williams, who was then Bishop of Lincoln, and whom he often troubled on such occa

sions, says that he was a common spokesman for sectaries, and maintained their part with stubbornness. Whatever part indeed Cromwell took up would be well maintained, and the time was now approaching when he was to take a conspicuous one.

A rebellion broke out in Scotland, where no disaffection had been suspected. By prudent measures it might easily have been averted, by vigorous ones it might easily have been crushed; and both were wanting. The King raised an army which, by the [ management of designing persons, and the mismanagement of others, was rendered useless. A treaty was made by which nothing was concluded; all the savings of the preceding years were wasted in this disgraceful expedition; and Charles, who had so long governed without a parliament, was now compelled to call one, for the purpose of obtaining supplies. The majority of that parliament consisted of men who knew their duty to their king and country, and, in asserting the constitutional liberties of the people, would have sacredly preserved the rights of the crown, wherein those liberties have their surest safeguard. There were however some persons, of great ability, who were determined upon effecting some change both in the ecclesiastic and civil institutions of the land, not having acknowledged to others, nor perhaps to themselves, how far they were willing that that change should extend. The state of their mind was well expressed by Cromwell, who, when Sir Thomas Chichley and Sir Philip Warwick asked him with what concessions he would be satisfied, honestly replied, "I can tell you, Sirs, what I would not have, though I cannot tell what I would." This parliament was hastily dissolved by the counsel of Sir Henry Vane the elder, and Herbert the solicitor-general: the latter acted with no worse motives than peevishness and mortified pride; the former appears to have intended the mischief which ensued. The discontented party did not conceal their joy at an event which made all good men mournful. Cromwell's cousin St. John, whose dark and treacherous spirit at all other times clouded his countenance, met Mr. Hyde with a smiling and cheerful aspect, and seeing him melancholy, "as in truth he was from his heart," asked what troubled him. The same, he replied, which troubled most good men, that in such a time of confusion, so wise a parliament, which alone could have found remedy for it was so

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unseasonably dismissed. But St. John warmly made answer, that all was well: and that it must be worse before it was better: and that this parliament could never have done what was necessary to be done" as indeed," says Hyde, "it would not what he and his friends thought necessary." Cromwell was one of those friends; he had been returned to this parliament for the town of Cambridge, and was returned for the same seat to the next-the famous and infamous Long Parliament, which Charles found it necessary to call in six months after the dissolution.

Cromwell's appearance in this assembly is happily described by Sir Philip Warwick. "The first time," he says, "that ever I took notice of him, was in the very beginning of the parliament held in November, 1640,* when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman, for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes. I came one morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking, whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was

plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar: his hat was without a hat-band; his stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swoln and reddish, his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervour," But it was more by heat and earnestness than by eloquence that Cromwell made himself noticed at this time. One of the first occasions upon which he spoke in this parliament was in a committee, in opposition to Lord Kimbolton, upon the Earl of Manchester's inclosure business. He behaved intemperately, "ordering the witnesses and petitioners in the method of proceeding, and seconding, and enlarging upon what they said with great passion." When the chairman endeavoured to preserve order, by speaking with authority, Cromwell accused him of being partial and discountenancing the witnesses; and when, says Lord Clarendon, who was himself the chairman, Lord Kimbolton, "upon any mention of matter of fact, or the pro

[He sat in this Parliament-commonly known as the Long Parliamentfor the town of Cambridge. His fellow-member was John Lawry, Esq.] + Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, ed. 1702, p. 247.]

Lord Clarendon's Life of himself, ed. 1827, vol. i. p. 89.] 1.

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