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three or four from every regiment, mostly corporals or serjeants, few or none above the rank of an ensign, who were called Agitators, and were to be the army's House of Commons. The president of these Agitators was a remarkable man, by name James Berry; he had originally been a clerk in some iron-works. In the course of the revolution he sate in the Upper House. He was one of the principal actors in pulling down Richard Cromwell; became afterward one of the Council of State; was imprisoned after the Restoration as one of the four men whom Monk considered the most dangerous; and finally, being liberated, became a gardener, and finished his life in obscurity and peace.

Both the Council of Officers and the Agitators were composed of Cromwell's creatures, or of men who, being thorough fanatics, did his work equally well in stupid sincerity. They presented a bold address to Parliament declaring that they would neither be divided nor disbanded till their full arrears were paid, and demanding that no member of the army should be tried by any other judicatory than a council of war. "They did not," they said, "look upon themselves as a band of janizaries, hired only to fight the battles of the Parliament; they had voluntarily taken up arms for the liberty of the nation of which they were a part, and before they laid those arms down they would see that end well provided for." The men who presented this address behaved with such audacity at the bar of the House of Commons, that there were some who moved for their committal: but they had friends even there to protect them, one of whom replied that he would have them committed indeed, but it should be to the best inn in the town, where plenty of good sack and sugar should be provided for them. As the dispute proceeded, the army held louder language, and the Parliament took stronger measures, causing some of the boldest among the soldiers to be imprisoned. Cromwell supported the House in this, expressed great indignation at the insolence of the troops, and complained even with tears, that there had even been a design of killing him, so odious had he been made to the army by men who were desirous of again embruing the nation in blood! Yet he had said to Ludlow that it was a miserable thing to serve a parliament, to whom let a man be never so faithful, if one pragmatical fellow amongst them rise up and asperse him, he shall never

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wipe it off; whereas,” said he, “when one serves under a general, he may do as much service and yet be free from all blame and envy. And during these very discussions he whispered in the House to Ludlow, these men will never leave till the army pull them out by the ears." If Ludlow suspected any sinister view in Cromwell, he was himself too much engaged with the army to notice it at that time. But there were other members whose opposite interest opened their eyes; and who, knowing that Cromwell was the secret director of those very measures against which he inveighed, resolved to send him to the Tower, believing that if he were once removed the army might easily be reduced to obedience. They estimated his authority more justly than they did their own. It appears that he expected a more violent contest than actually ensued; for he and many of the Independents privately removed their effects from London, "leaving," says Hollis, "city and Parliament as marked out for destruction." He had timely notice of the design against him, and on the very morning when they proposed to arrest him, he set out for the army: but still preserving that dissimulation which he never laid aside where it could possibly be useful, he wrote to the House of Commons, saying, that his presence was necessary to reclaim the soldiers, who had been abused by misinformation; and desiring that the general (Fairfax), and such other officers who were in the House or in town, might be sent to their quarters to assist him in that good work.

On the very day that Cromwell joined the army, the King was carried from Holmby by Joyce [3 June, 1647]. That grey discrowned head, as he himself beautifully calls it, the sight of which drew tears from his friends, and moved many even of his enemies to compunction as well as pity, excited no feeling or respect in this hard and vulgar ruffian, who had formerly been a tailor and afterwards a menial servant in Hollis's family. He produced a pistol as the authority which the King was to obey, and Charles believed that the intention in carrying him away was to murder him. Whether Joyce was employed by the Agitators, of whose body he was one, or whether, as Hollis* asserts and as is generally believed, Cromwell sent him, is of no consequence in Cromwell's character (though his descendant strenuously [* Hollis, in Maseres' Tracts, vol. i. p. 246.]

endeavours to show that he had no concern in the transaction), for it is only a question whether he was mediately or immediately the author. The insolence with which the act was performed is imputable to the agent; and there is some reason to believe that, whatever may have been the intention of Ireton, St. John, Vane, and other men of that stamp, Cromwell himself was at that time very far from having determined upon the death of the King. It was plain that the Parliament had no intention of making any terms with the King, except such as would have left him less real power than the Oligarchs of Venice entrusted to their Doge; and it was not less obvious that, as Charles might expect more equitable conditions from the army, who would treat with him as a part of the nation, not as a body contending for sovereignty, so on his side he would come to the treaty with better hope and a kindlier disposition. Indeed at this time he looked upon them with the feelings of a British king: "though they have fought against me," said he, “yet I cannot but so far esteem that valour and gallantry they have sometimes showed, as to wish I may never want such men to maintain myself, my laws, and my kingdom, in such a peace as wherein they may enjoy their share and proportion as much as any men." He had changed his keepers and his prison, but not his eaptive condition; only there was this hope of bettering, that they who were such professed patrons of the people's liberty, could not be utterly against the liberty of the King: "what they demanded for their own conscience," said he, “they cannot in reason deny to mine;" and it consoled him to believe that the world would now see a king could not be so low as not to be considerable, adding right to that party where he appeared.

So far he was right; it is the lively expression of Hollis that the army made that use of the King which the Philistines would have made of the ark, and that and their power together made them prevail. The description which he gives of the Parliament at this crisis holds forth an awful warning to those who fancy that it is as easy to direct the commotions of a state as to excite them; it is a faithful picture drawn by a leading member of that faction which had raised and hitherto guided the rebellion. “They now thunder upon us," he says, "with remonstrances, declarations, letters, and messages every day, commanding one day one thing,

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the next day another, making us vote and unvote, do and undo; and when they had made us do some ugly thing, jeer us, and say our doing justifies their desiring it." "We feel as low as dirt," he says: "take all our ordinances in pieces, change and alter them according to their minds, and (which is worst of all) expunge our declaration against their mutinous petition, cry peccavimus to save a whipping: but all would not do !—All was dasht" (it is still Hollis the parliamentarian who speaks): “instead of a generous resistance to the insolencies of perfidious servants, vindicating the honour of the Parliament, discharging the trust that lay upon them to preserve a poor people from being ruined and enslaved to a rebellious army, they deliver up themselves and kingdom to the will of their enemies; prostitute all to the lust of heady and violent men; and suffer Mr. Cromwell to saddle, ride, switch, and spur them at his pleasure." Ride them indeed he did with a martingale; and it was not all the wincing of the galled jade that could shake the practised horseman in his seat. Poor Hollis complains that "Presbyterians were trumps no longer." Clubs were trumps now, and the knave in that suit, as in the former, was the best card in the pack. When the Parliament had done whatever the army required, "prostituting their honours, renouncing whatever would be of strength or safety to them, casting themselves down naked, helpless, and hopeless at the proud feet of their domineering masters, it is all to no purpose, it does but encourage those merciless men to trample the more upon them."

So it was, and properly so. This was the reward of the Presbyterian party

"For letting rapine loose and murther

To rage just so far and no further,

And setting all the land on fire

To burn to a scantling and no higher;

For venturing to assassinate,

And cut the throats of Church and State :"

This they had done; and instead of being, as they had calculated upon being,

"allowed the fittest men

To take the charge of both again,"

[* Hollis, in Maseres' Tracts, vol. i. p. 254.]

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As the question stood between the Parliament and the army, the army was in the right. Whatever arguments held good for resisting the King, availed à fortiori for resisting the Parliament: its little finger was heavier than his loins; and where the old authorities had used a whip, the Parliament had scourged the nation with scorpions. The change in ecclesiastical affairs was of the same kind. New Presbyter was old Priest written large and in blacker characters. Cromwell had force of reason as well as force of arms on his side; and if he had possessed a legitimate weight in the country, like Essex, it is likely that he would now have used it to the best purpose, and have done honourably for himself and beneficially for the kingdom, what was afterwards effected by Monk, with too little regard to any interest except his own. It is said that he required for himself, as the reward of this service to his sovereign, the garter, the title of the Earl of Essex, vacant by the death of the late general [14 Sept. 1646], and a proper object of ambition to Cromwell, as having formerly been in his family; to be made First-Captain of the Guards, and Vicar-General of the Kingdom. All this he would have deserved, if he had restored peace and security to the nation by re-establishing the monarchy with those just limitations, the propriety of which was seen and acknowledged by the King himself. But if Cromwell desired to do this, which may reasonably be presumed, the power which he then possessed was not sufficient for it. It was a revolutionary power, not transferable to the better cause without great diminution. In the movements of the revolutionary sphere his star was rising, but it was not yet lord of the ascendant; and in raising himself to his present station, he had, like the unlucky magician in romance, conjured up stronger spirits than he was yet master enough of the black art to control. Under his management, the moral discipline of the army was as perfect as that of the Swedes under the great Gustavus, whom it is not im

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