244 THE ARMY DISBANDED. [1660. to him for a specific purpose, but that he would abstain from exercising his right of doing what he pleased with his own as a gracious condescension to "the public." In six years more the Parliament discovered the value of his majesty's self-denial; and in the bill for a poll-tax introduced a clause that a commission should be appointed to inspect all the accounts of the money supplied, and the expenses incurred, during the war. Pepys records that in the lord treasurer's accounts there was a sum unaccounted for of more than two millions; and that it was thought that £400,000 of the money voted for the war had gone into the Privy Purse. He then says that the notion of a commission to inspect the accounts "makes the king and court mad; the king having given order to my lord chamberlain to send to the playhouses and brothels, to bid all the parliament-men that were there to go to the parliament presently." To the playhouses and brothels to search for the parliament-men! The times were altered since they were to be sought for in the churches and conventicles. At the period of the Restoration, the Army, which had been the instrument of effecting that great change, as it had effected so many other great changes, consisted of fifteen regiments of horse, and twenty-two regiments of foot, besides garrisons. That army was supported by monthly assessments of seventy-thousand pounds. An Act was passed "for the speedy provision of money for disbanding and paying off the forces of this kingdom both by land and sea."+ A contribution was to be raised from all ranks and degrees, under a commission in every county; and large sums were voted for the complete disbanding, in subsequent Acts. The Act for the speedy disbanding of the Army and garrisons, and also for paying off twenty-five ships,§ was followed by "an Act for enabling the soldiers of the Army now to be disbanded, to exercise Trades." This salutary Statute provides that the disbanded men, who would willingly employ themselves in the trades they had formerly been accustomed to, or those who were apt and fit for trades, might exercise their employments in corporate cities and towns, without being restrained by any bye-laws; and that those who had been apprenticed to trades, but had not served the seven years required by the Statute of the 5th of Elizabeth, should be qualified to labour in their vocation as freely as if they had completed their legal term. The industry of the country absorbed this formidable Army. It was composed of a higher order of men than were usually found in military service; and they became the most industrious of citizens as they had been the best disciplined of soldiers. The revenue assigned to the crown did not contemplate the continuance of any standing army; but Charles retained two regiments of horse in his pay, who were called his guards. Upon this narrow foundation was the present regular army of the United Kingdom established. In 1662, the king had five thousand troops in his service. A few years afterwards he began to talk of making the Commons "a courageous speech," for that he was "master of an army." || The great question of the Church Establishment was not brought forward in the Convention Parliament. The Presbyterian members were too strong * "Diary," December 8, 1666. +12 Car. II. c. 9. § 12 Car. II. c. 15. Pepys, 12 Car. II. c. 20, and c. 21. October 4, 1666. 1660.] LIVINGS-CHURCH AND CROWN LANDS. 245 in that Assembly to render it safe to propose such a sweeping change as would again make the Anglican Church supreme in endowments and political power. Amidst all the sectarian violence of the Civil War and of the Commonwealth, the legal provision for the Clergy had never been disturbed, and the private rights of presentation to benefices had been uninterruptedly exercised. The pulpits were, indeed, for the most part filled with ministers of Puritan principles, Presbyterian or Independent; and the Liturgy, with the ceremonial observances connected with it, had been abolished. These ministers, although they were not encouraged to believe that the Presbyterian form, which had never been universal, would be adopted, hoped for some compromise that would ensure them the quiet possession of their livings, and free them from any obligations repugnant to their consciences. "Because," said the king's Declaration from Breda, "the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in Religion, by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other (which, when they shall hereafter unite in freedom of conversation will be composed, or better understood), we do declare a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in question, for differences of opinion in matters of Religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom." In the Convention Parliament no attempt was made to contravene the spirit of this Declaration. The imposition of the Covenant upon all the beneficed Clergy had ejected large numbers of conscientious men from their livings.* Seventeen years had intervened; and another large body of conscientious men, differing as to Church government, had succeeded to the duties and emoluments of the Episcopal Clergy. The Parliament of 1660 enacted that all the ejected ministers who survived should be restored to their benefices, but without the right of claiming any past emoluments. By the same Statute those who were in actual possession of those livings for which there was no claimant as previous possessor, were confirmed in their titles. This measure, apparently so just, was in reality a delusion. Clarendon, the ruling minister of the first years of the Restoration, although infinitely superior in honesty and ability to the profligate courtiers and unprincipled politicians with whom he was associated, seldom scrupled to "palter" with "the word of promise," when he had a long-cherished hope to realise, or a deliberate revenge to gratify. The settlement of the Church establishment was only one amongst the complicated questions that arose, of necessity, out of the Restoration. Many of the Crown lands and the Church lands had been sold under the authority of the Long Parliament. The title seemed so safe that in many cases they had been sold at fifteen, and even eighteen years' purchase. A Bill was brought in to determine this matter, which involved so many adverse interests. It was strenuously debated by the Commons, in 1660; and the only agreement that the House came to was, that the Crown lands should be left out of the proposal for sales to be confirmed or indemnity to be given. One member declared himself against the purchasers of the Crown lands by quoting a proverb that "he that eats the king's goose should be choked by its feathers." The House was disinclined to such an unconditional restoration of Church property. But the discussion was at length cut short by the dissolution of * Sce Ante, p. 30. 246 ACT OF INDEMNITY. [1660. the Parliament; and the purchasers had no protection against the due course of law, under which their titles were defective. Unconditional restitution was the necessary result. The Declaration of Breda had said, "because, in the continued distractions of so many years, and so many and great revolutions, many grants and purchases of estates have been made to, and by, many officers, soldiers, and others, who are now possessed of the same, and who may be liable to actions at law upon several titles, we are likewise willing that all such differences, and all things relating to such grants, sales, and possessions, shall be determined in Parliament." By the adroit management of Clarendon, Parliament was relieved from the responsibility of the determination. Loud complaints, no doubt, were made by many who had been honest purchasers; but their complaints were neutralised by the louder murmurings of the Cavaliers, who, although some had returned to the possession of their estates, were deprived of any compensation for their sequestrations, and compositions for delinquency, during the authority of the Long Parliament. They were shut out from any legal process for relief by the Act of Indemnity. Bitter were their murmurings against the ingratitude of the king, from whom they expected the magician's power of annihilating all the natural and moral consequences of twenty years of vicissitude. Such are the mortifications and miseries to be endured by all parties when revolutions have run their course. During the conflicts of great principles men are elevated above their merely selfish interests; but when the sword is sheathed there arise the bitterer animosities of changed fortunes and disappointed hopes. Then come the odious thoughts of revenge for the past,schemes of insulting triumph or dangerous machination. The calm after a great revolution is more to be dreaded than its storms. Clarendon saw this danger, though, when his own passions and prejudices were concerned he yielded to the baser influences. At the adjournment of the Parliament, in September, after the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity had been passed, he thus spoke, as Chancellor:-" Shall we fold our arms towards one another, and contract our hearts with envy and malice to each other, by any sharp memory of what hath been unneighbourly or unkindly done heretofore? What is this but to rebel against the person of the king, against the excellent example and virtue of the king, against the known law of the land, this blessed Act of Oblivion? My Lords and Gentlemen, the king is a suitor to you, makes it his suit very heartily, that you will join with him in restoring the whole nation to its primitive temper and integrity, to its old good manners, its old good humour, and its old good nature; Good nature, a virtue so peculiar to you, so appropriated by God Almighty to this nation, that it can be translated into no other language, hardly practised by any other people: And that you will, by your example, by the candour of your conversation, by your precepts, and by your practice, and by all your interest, teach your neighbours and your friends how to pay a full obedience to this clause of the Statute, how to learn this excellent art of forgetfulness." "This excellent art of forgetfulness" was not easy to be learnt. Certainly the government did not encourage its acquirement by the example of its own magnanimity; but, eager as the Court was for the exercise of some vengeance for the past, it was but a faint expositor of the passions of many of the Lords and Commons, who cried "havoc" with their loudest voices. Three weeks before the return of Charles II., the House of Commons 1660.] EXCEPTIONS OF REGICIDES AND OTHERS. 247 had decided that seven persons should be excepted from a proposed Amnesty; and that all who had sate upon the king's trial should be arrested, as well as some others who had been ministers of the Protectorate.* After the Restoration it became evident that the Court was by no means satisfied with so limited an exception from a general pardon as that of seven who had been engaged in the transactions of twelve years of revolution. The debates in both Houses on the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion are very imperfectly recorded; but there is enough to show how the spirit of the country had been abased and demoralised-how completely the feeling of national pride had departed from the public men of England-how insensible the majority had become to those principles of honour, by which the evils of the Civil War had been mitigated on both sides. For three months this Bill of Indemnity was debated in both Houses. The Commons went on adding name after name to those of the seven who were originally excepted. The Lords voted that all who had signed the death-warrant of Charles I., as well as five others, should be excepted, either as regarded life or estate. They carried the principle of private revenge so far, that they declared that the surviving relations of four peers who had been executed under the Long Parliament, should nominate four to be put to death of the surviving members of the High Court of Justice by which those peers had been condemned. There was a difficulty, however, in the way of the sweeping proscription which the Lords. desired, which became a touchstone of honourable feeling in both Houses. The king, shortly after his landing, had issued a proclamation, in which he commanded those who had sat as judges of his father to render themselves up within fourteen days, "on pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity as to their lives or estates." The Parliament had suggested this proclamation. Was it a trap to induce these men to surrender, or was it an indirect pledge that, so surrendering, they should partake of the benefits of a general pardon? The honour of the king was unquestionably committed to the most favourable construction of the proclamation. Some, such as Ludlow, had the prudence not to place confidence in ambiguous words; and they fled abroad. "Other poor gentlemen were trepanned that were brought in by proclamation."+ Clarendon, the chancellor, shuffled odiously about a document whose ambiguity was doubtless well studied by him. Southampton, the treasurer, with the high spirit of the old Cavaliers, maintained "that since it was not thought fit to secure the lives of those who had been ordered to surrender their persons upon the faith of the proclamation, they ought at least to give them the like number of days for saving themselves as were appointed by that paper for their coming in." The Commons debated this point of the proclamation with a more moderate and honester feeling than the majority of the Lords. Although one rabid member had the baseness to say "that these people's lives were but as a bucket of water in the ocean, in regard of so many more as were to receive benefit by the Act of Pardon ;" and another had the effrontery to maintain that "their coming in upon the proclamation was, that God had infatuated them to bring them to justice,-" yet the general temper of the Commons was better represented by Hale, who * Ante, p. 236. Hutchinson, vol. ii. p. 279. Ludlow, iii. p. 43. 248 EXECUTIONS, AND INSULTS TO THE DEAD. [1660. pleaded "for the honour of the king and the two Houses;" and by Colonel Birch, who said "if he should give articles to a garrison, he should think himself very unworthy to break them." This matter was at last compromised between the Lords and Commons by a proviso in the Bill, that if the nineteen persons therein named should be legally attainted, then nevertheless the execution of the persons so attainted should be suspended until execution should be ordered by Act of Parliament. The most remarkable exceptions to the Statute of Indemnity, in addition to all the regicides with few omissions, were Sir Henry Vane and General Lambert; but the Houses concurred in an address to the king that if these two leading men of the revolution were tried and attainted, their lives should be spared. The king assented. The trials of the regicides and others in custody, who were excepted from pardon as to life and estate, took place in October. Twenty-five of those who had sat in judgment upon Charles I. were dead: nineteen had fled to foreign countries. Twenty-nine persons were brought to trial as traitors, before a Court of thirty-four commissioners; and they were all convicted. Of these, the nineteen who had surrendered under the proclamation were imprisoned for life. Ten were executed. These were Harrison, and five others, who had subscribed the death-warrant of Charles; Cook, who acted as leading counsel upon the trial; Axtell and Hacker, two officers who commanded the guard over the royal prisoner; and the famous Hugh Peters. These men died in the belief that they unjustly suffered for the discharge of a great public duty. In their strong religious principles, which approached to the enthusiasm of martyrs, in Harrison especially, they found support under the cruelties of the old law of treason, which was executed to the minutest point of its brutality. It is not creditable to Charles that he was a spectator of these scenes. Evelyn writes, on the 17th of October, "Scott, Scroop, Cook, and Jones, suffered for reward of their iniquities at Charing Cross, in sight of the place where they put to death their natural prince, and in the presence of the king his son, whom they also sought to kill. I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled, and cut, and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle." A more disgusting spectacle took place on the 30th of January 1661, which Evelyn also records: "This day (0 the stupen dous and inscrutable judgments of God!) were the carcases of those archrebels, Cromwell, Bradshaw (the judge who condemned his Majesty), and Ireton (son-in-law to the Usurper), dragged out of their superb tombs in Westminster among the kings, to Tyburn, and hanged on the gallows there from nine in the morning till six at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument in a deep pit; thousands of people who had seen them in all their pride being spectators." On the 4th of December, the Parliament, upon the motion of colonel Titus-the colonel Titus who now claimed the honour of having written "Killing no Murder "—had voted unanimously that this revolting exhibition should take place. One Englishman has recorded his sentiment upon this vote as regarded Cromwell"which, methinks, do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was should have that dishonour."+ On the 12th of September, by a special order of the king to the dean of Westminster, these bodies had been taken out of * 12 Car. II. c. 11. + Pepys' "Diary," December 4, 1660. |