The fall of the Long Parliament was received with general satisfaction. “There was not so much as the barking of a dog or any general and visible repining at it,” said Cromwell afterwards. His words are justified by the facts. Hyde termed it a most popular and obliging act, and the French Ambassador told his Government that nobility and populace universally rejoiced at General Cromwell’s noble deed. Public feeling found vent in ballads. One described the scene of the dissolution, relating what Cromwell had said, and how the members had looked.
“Brave Oliver came to the House like a sprite,
His fiery face struck the Speaker dumb,
‘Begone,’ said he, ‘you have sate long enough;
Do you mean to sit here until Doomsday come?’”
OLIVER CROMWELL.
(From the painting by Sir Peter Lely.)
“Cheer up, kind countrymen, be not dismayed,” sang another street poet, ending every verse with 327the exultant chorus: “Twelve parliament men shall be sold for a penny.”
For a few weeks, Cromwell was the most popular man in the nation. Royalists whispered that the King would marry Cromwell’s daughter, and that Cromwell would content himself with a dukedom and the viceroyalty of Ireland. A more general belief was that he would assume the crown himself. An enthusiastic partisan hung up in the Exchange a picture of Cromwell crowned, with the invitation underneath:
“Ascend three thrones, great captain and divine,
I’ th’ will of God, old Lion, they are thine.”
Cromwell’s own view of his position was that, being Commander-in-chief by Act of Parliament, his commission made him the only constituted authority left standing. His desire was to put an end to this dictatorship as soon as he could. The sword must be divested of all power in the civil administration, and the army leaders must prove to the world that they had not turned out the Long Parliament in order to grasp at power themselves. The army itself accepted Cromwell’s view, but on the nature of the new civil authority to be set up there were two views amongst the officers. For the present, a temporary Council of State, consisting of thirteen persons, most of whom were officers, carried on the daily business of administration.
As to the future, Major-General Lambert advocated one kind of government, and Major-General Harrison another. Lambert was a gentleman of 328good family, with some political aptitude and some constitutional knowledge, but less of either than he fancied. A dashing leader and a skilful tactician, he was popular because of his gallant bearing and his genial temper, and believed to be honest because he was good-natured. As a politician he was an intriguer, inscrutable, scheming, and insatiably ambitious. Harrison was a man of no birth and little education, bred on perverted prophecies, full of desperate courage and high-flown enthusiasms,—a man born to lead forlorn hopes and die for lost causes, who did both even to the admiration of his enemies. Unselfish in his own aims, he swayed others by his devotion and his zeal. But he was fitter to command the left wing in the battle of Armageddon than to take any part in the government of earthly states.
Lambert wished to entrust power to a small council of ten or twelve. Harrison wished to give it to a larger council of seventy members like the Jewish Sanhedrin. Lambert’s party proposed that the council should be assisted by an elected Parliament, and the authority of both defined by a written constitution. Harrison’s followers wished to dispense with a Parliament altogether. The first adhered to the principles laid down in the Agreement of the People, which they had drawn up four years earlier. The second were inspired by the opinions of the Fifth Monarchy men, and believed that the time had come to realise their hopes. Of the four great monarchies of the world’s history, the Assyrian and the Persian, the Macedonian and the Roman, three had fallen, and the fourth was tottering to its fall. At last, as the prophets had foretold, the monarchy of Christ was to begin, and till He came to reign in person, His saints were to rule for Him. A text which Harrison had often in his mouth was—“The saints shall take the kingdom and possess it.”
JOHN LAMBERT.
(From a painting by Robert Walker, in the National Portrait Gallery.)
329When Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament, he had no definite plan for the future government of England. He was not a Fifth Monarchy man, but he had no faith in paper constitutions. He was convinced that godly men would make the best governors, but he felt that a government somewhat like a Parliament would be most satisfactory to the nation.
The result was a compromise by which a larger and more representative assembly than Harrison had proposed, was called together. In each county the Congregational Churches were asked to nominate suitable persons, and from this list the council of officers selected those it thought fittest. A hundred and forty persons were thus chosen, of whom five represented Scotland, six Ireland, and the rest England. A writ addressed to each person separately, from Oliver Cromwell, Captain-General, recited that he had been nominated by the General with the advice of his council of officers as one of the men to whom the weighty affairs of the Commonwealth were to be entrusted. All were Puritan notables, combining godliness with fidelity to the cause, and described in the writs as “men fearing God and hating covetousness.”
On July 4th, they met at Westminster, and on 330behalf of the army Cromwell presented them with a deed under his hand and seal, whereby the several persons therein mentioned were constituted the supreme authority. In his opening speech he related the causes which had led to the dissolution of the Long Parliament and their own convocation, adding some advice on the use they were to make of their power. Let them be just and tender to all kinds of Christians, endeavour the promoting of the Gospel, and study to win the support of the nation by their devotion to the public weal. “Convince them that as men fearing God have fought them out of their bondage, so men fearing God do now rule them in the fear of God.” In the war, and in the events which had led to the overthrow of the monarchy, there was “an evident print of providence,” and now the task of government had come to them “by the way of necessity, by the way of the wise providence of God.” “God manifests this to be the day of the power of Christ; having through so much blood, and so much trial as hath been upon these nations, made this to be one of the great issues thereof: to have His people called to the supreme authority.” Let them therefore own their call, for never any body of men had come into the supreme authority in such a way of owning God and being owned by Him.
It was not, said Cromwell, by his own design that this had come to pass.
“I never looked to see such a day as this.... Indeed it is marvellous, and it hath been unprojected. It’s not long since either you or we came to know of it. 331And indeed this hath been the way God hath dealt with us all along; to keep things from our eyes all along, so that we have seen nothing in all His dispensations long beforehand—which is also a witness, in some measure, to our integrity.”
Since God had brought about so wonderful a thing, why should they not hope for things more wonderful still? “Why should we be afraid to say or think, that this way may be the door to usher in the things that God hath promised and prophesied of, and set the hearts of His people to wait for and expect?” Again and again Cromwell reiterated these hopes. “Indeed I do think somewhat is at the door. We are at the threshold.” “You are at the edge of the promises and prophecies.” He ended by quoting the 68th Psalm as a prophecy of the glory and the triumph of “the Gospel Churches.” “The triumph of that Psalm is exceeding high, and God is accomplishing it.”
The assembly to which he spoke was equally confident that its meeting marked the opening of a new era. “They looked,” as they declared, “for the long-expected birth of freedom and happiness.” “All the world over amongst the people of God” there was “a more than usual expectation of some great and strange changes coming upon the world, which we can hardly believe to be paralleled with any times but those a while before the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Full of hope, the assembly set to work to fulfil its mission. It voted itself the title of Parliament, invited Cromwell and four other representative officers to take part in its 332proceedings, elected a new Council of State, and appointed twelve great Committees for the redress of all kinds of grievances. It took in hand, simultaneously, the reform of the Law and of the Church. The abolition of the Court of Chancery was voted after a single day’s debate. Its delays and costliness had long been a scandal, and it was said that twenty-three thousand causes of five to thirty years’ standing were lying there undetermined. Next came an Act establishing civil marriage, and providing for the registration of births, marriages, and burials. Acts were passed for the relief of prisoners for debt, for the safe custody of idiots and lunatics, and for the removal of some smaller legal abuses. A committee was appointed to codify the Law, and sanguine reformers talked of reducing its great volumes “into the bigness of a pocket book, as it is proportionable in New England and elsewhere.” The Fifth Monarchy preachers at Blackfriars went further, and bade them abolish the law of man, and set up in its place the law of God. They required not a simplification of the laws of England, but a code based on the laws of Moses.
The Church was taken in hand with the same rough vigour as the Law. A proposal to abolish tithes at once was lost by a few votes, but even its opponents were willing to abolish them if lay tithe-owners were compensated, and if some other maintenance were provided for the clergy. So the whole question was referred to a committee. On the other hand, a resolution abolishing patronage was passed by seventeen votes, and a bill ordered to be drawn up to 333carry it into effect. There were also persistent rumours of an impending attack on the endowments of the universities, and a large party in the House were opposed to any established Church, or any ministry not dependent on voluntary support. Outside Parliament, the Fifth Monarchy preachers denounced the parochial clergy as “hirelings” and “priests of Baal.” Their sermons described the Church as an “outwork of Babylon,” and a part of the “Kingdom of the Beast.” The great design of Christ, they said, was to destroy all anti-Christian forms and churches and clergy all over the world. Their hymns summoned the faithful to follow the Lord to war.
“The Lord begins to honour us,
The Saints are marching on,
The sword is sharp, the arrows swift
To destroy Babylon.”
In private, the Fifth Monarchy men were caballing to make Harrison Lord General instead of Cromwell.
Cromwell was dissatisfied and alarmed at the conduct of the Little Parliament and its consequences. Instead of promoting the Gospel, they had threatened to deprive its ministers of the means of subsistence. Instead of allaying sectarian strife their policy had embittered it. His own persistent attempts to reconcile religious animosities met with little success. Vainly he arranged conferences between Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist ministers to persuade them to live harmoniously together. As he complained to his son-in-law, Fleetwood: “Fain would 334I have my service accepted of the Saints, if the Lord will, but it is not so. Being of different judgments, and those of each sort seeking most to propagate their own, that spirit of kindness that is to all, is hardly accepted of any.” When he tried to mediate between the fighting ecclesiastics, they turned on him as the two Israelites did on Moses, and asked, “Who made thee a prince or a judge over us?” Because he wished to support a national Church the Blackfriars preachers abused him as “The Old Dragon” and “The Man of Sin.” Because he had not called a real Parliament, the Levellers accused him of high treason to “his lords the people of England.” For what he had done and what he had left undone Cromwell was attacked by fanatics of all parties.
At the same time the position of the Republic had changed for the worse since the Little Parliament began to sit. The Dutch war still continued, and though Monk had gained two decisive victories, on June 3rd and July 31st, over the Dutch fleet, peace was still far off. The chief obstacle to it was the exorbitant terms which the Little Parliament demanded, and on this question also Cromwell was at issue with the men now in power. Peace had become a necessity to England as well as Holland, for in September it was discovered that there would be a deficit of over half a million on the estimates for the navy. A new insurrection, fanned by promises of Dutch aid, had broken out in Scotland. In England there was a marked revival of royalist feeling, and a plot for the surprise of 335Portsmouth had been discovered. The Levellers were once more raising their heads. Lilburn, defying the penalty imposed by the act of banishment, had returned to England, and in August, 1653, he was tried for his contumacy. Crowds flocked to hear him tried, or to rescue him if condemned, and when he was acquitted their shouting was heard a mile off. Even the soldiers set to guard the Court blew their trumpets and beat their drums for joy, and it seemed as if the agitation suppressed in 1649 was beginning again.
Cromwell was now thoroughly disillusioned and began to repent his part in putting the men of the Little Parliament in power.
In later years, when he referred to his experiment, he called it apologetically “a story of my own weakness and folly.”
“And yet,” he said, “it was done in my simplicity. It was thought then that men of our own judgment, who had fought in the wars, and were all of a piece upon that account, why surely these men will hit it, and these men will do it to the purpose, whatever can be desired. And such a company of men were chosen and did proceed to action. And this was the naked truth, that the issue was not answerable to the simplicity and honesty of the design.”
Besides repenting his own act, Cromwell began to doubt his own motives. Was his eagerness to transfer supreme power to others an honest constitutional scruple, or a cowardly evasion of responsibility? Was it not, perhaps, “a desire, I am afraid sinful 336enough, to be quit of the power God had most clearly by His providence put into my hands before He called me to lay it down; before those honest ends of our fighting were attained and settled.”
Not only the General, but the officers, too, were dissatisfied with their creation. Apart from political or religious considerations, the ............