restiffness. Louis's first letter was addressed | To his most serene highness, Oliver, Lord Protector, &c., &c." This was rejected. Then "Mon Cousin" was offered. This also was refused. The ordinary address between sovereigns, "To our Dear Brother Oliver, &c.," was at last formally demanded. "What!" said Louis to Mazarin, “shall I call such a fellow my brother?" Ay!" rejoined the crafty Italian, "or your father, to gain your ends." Louis then submitted.* 66 And it must be confessed, though not for that immediate reason, he gained his ends.† * Many letters will be found in Thurloe, referring to this diplomatic dispute. I may quote one or two. De Bordeaux (the ambassador) thus opens the subject to De Brienne, the French secretary of state: "J'ai receu les deux lettres que vous m'avez fait l'honneur de m'écrir les 21 et 25 du mois passé, avec celle du roi, dans lesquelles je vois qu'il plait à S. M. me confier la negotiation du traité entre la France et l'Angleterre, avec la qualité d'ambassadeur. J'ai demandé audience au secrétaire du conseil, sous pretexte de lui en faire part, afin de descouvrir avec quels termes Monsieur le Protecteur disereroit que S. M. le traitast. Il ne voulut point s'expliquer autrement, si non que son altesse avoit l'autorité souveraine, et aussi grande que les rois, et que c'etoit à nous d'en user comme nous jugerions à propos. Depuis cette conversation un homme, qui se mêle d'intrigue, m'est venu trouver, et m'a voulu faire entendre, que le terme de frère seroit bien agréable. J'ai donné ordre à mon secrétaire, si l'on lui temoigne desirer le titre de frère, qu'il responde de soi-même, que les pouvoirs m'ont été envoiez, à fin d'avoir un pretexte pour me dispenser de donner cette qualité. Toutes les resolutions d'ici dans les rencontres de la moindre importance se prennent avec grand secret, et la politique est de surprendre."-Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 106. In a subsequent letter he says, "J'infere que S. A. n'est pas contente de ce que je ne suis pas qualifie ambassadeur pres d'elle, and de n'être pas traité de frère le maltre des ceremonies ayant adverti l'ambassadeur de Portugal de lui donner ce titre."-Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 143. A Paris letter to London shows that the matter was generally discussed and talked of. "The cardinal said yesterday that your Protector is angry that the King of France called him not mon frère, brother. He rallied much upon it, and demanded whether his father was ever in France? I hope our Protector will make him sing another song before summer be past."-Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 159. The Protector did make him sing another song, though he seems, by the fol lowing extract, to have consented in offe interval to a compromise: "Vous trouverez bon que je vous éclaircisse du doubte que je croiois avoir levé par quelqu'une de mes precedentes touchant la suscription des lettres du roy à M. le Protecteur. Il a refusé le titre de cousin, et s'est contenté, dans toutes les deux depêches de celui, de Monsieur le Protecteur de la République d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse, et Irlande. Celui de frère eut été bien plus agréable."-Thurloe, vol. ii., p. 228. Shortly after, the more agreeable "brother” was demanded and conceded. + Slingsby Bethel, in his World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell, makes this part of his foreign policy a grave charge of objection to him, and has been followed by Hume and others. Cromwell," he says, "contrary to our interest, made an unjust war with Spain, and an impolitic league with France, bringing the first thereby under, and making the latter too great for, Christendom, and by that means broke the balance betwixt the two crowns of Spain and France, which his predecessors, the Long Parliament, had always wisely preserved. In this dishonest war with Spain, he pretended and endeavoured to impose a belief on the world that he had nothing in his eye but the advancement of the Protestant cause and the honour of the nation; but his pretences were either fraudulent, or he was ignorant in foreign affairs (as I am apt to think that he was not guilty of too much knowledge in them); for he that had known anything of the temper of the popish prelacy and the French court policies, could not but see that the way to increase or preserve the Reformed interest in France was by rendering the Protestants of necessary use to their king; for, that longer than they were so, they could not be free from persecution, and that the way to render them so was by keeping the balance betwixt Spain and France even, as that which would consequently make them useful to their king; but by overthrowing the balance in his war with Spain, and Joning with France, he freed the French king from his fears of Spain, enabled him to subdue all factions at home, and thereby to bring himself into a condition of not standing in need of any of them; and from thence hath proceed. ed the persecution that hath since been, and still is, in that Cromwell, after a protracted negotiation, abruptly broke with the Spanish envoy, Don Alonzo Cardeñas, who demanded and obtained his passports. Don Alonzo's bait had been the reconquest of Calais; Mazarin's, the counter temptation of the capture of Dunkirk. It is scarcely probable that Cromwell much cared for either. But it was more convenient to him, and to the safety of his personal power, to be on good terms with so near a neighbour as France, who had already, to oblige him, dismissed from Paris his rival Charles Stuart. And in the colonial possessions of Spain in the New World, he saw an opportunity to make large accessions to the maritime power of England; at the same moment, to dazzle and distract his oppressed countrymen by brilliant episodes of distant conquests, and get conveniently dismissed upon that service officers whose influence and whose principles he feared. illustrious Blake was the chief of these. The His first demonstration of his policy was accordingly to equip and send out two large armaments, one under Pen and Venables, the nation against the Reformed there; so that Oliver, instead of advancing the Reformed interest, hath, by an error in his politics, been the author of destroying it. The honour and advantage he propounded to this nation in his pulling down of Spain, had as ill a foundation; for if true, as was said, that we were to have had Ostend and Newport, as well as Dunkirk (when we could get them), they bore no proportion, in any kind, to all the rest of the King of Spain's European dominions, which must necessarily have fallen to the French king's share, because of their joining and nearness to him, and remoteness from us; and the increasing the greatness of so near a neighbour must have increased our future dangers." But all this was surely to have anticipated a little too rapidly the power and conquests of Louis the Fourteenth, and the maturity of our William the Third. Lord Bolingbroke followed up the charge. "Cromwell either did not discern," says he, "this turn of the balance of power [from Spain to France), or, discerning it, he was induced, by reasons of private interest, to act against the general interest of Europe. Cromwell joined with France against Spain; and though he got Jamaica and Dunkirk, he drove the Spaniards into a necessity of making a peace with France, that has disturbed the peace of the world almost fourscore years, and the consequences of which have wellnigh beggared in our times the nation he enslaved in his. There is a tradition-I have heard it from persons who lived in those days, and I believe it came from Thurloe-that Cromwell was in treaty with Spain, and ready to turn his arms against France, when he died. If this fact was certain, as little as I honour his memory, I should have some regret that he died so soon. But, whatever his intentions were, we must charge the Pyrenean treaty, and the fatal consequences of it, in great measure to his account. The Spaniards abhorred the thought of marrying their Infanta to Louis the Fourteenth. It was on this point that they broke the negotiation Lionne had begun; and if they resumed it afterward, and offered the marriage they had before rejected, Cromwell's league with France was a principal inducement to this alteration of their resolution." But I may close this note with a subtle remark of Bishop Warburton, who, in bitting much closer to the truth, unconsciously exposes, at the same time, what was undoubtedly the vice of the Protector's foreign as well as domestic policy, namely, the pursuit of temporary expedients of the brilliant and dashing sort, rather than general principles of the sober and enduring. Thus says the bishop: "Some modern politicians have affected to think contemptuously of Cromwell's capacity, as if he knew not that true policy required that he should have thrown himself into the lighter balance, which was that of Spain; or as if he did not know which was become the lighter. But this is talking as if Cromwell had been a lawful hereditary monarch, whom true policy would have thus directed. But true policy required that the usurper should first take care of himself, before he busied himself in adjusting the balance of Europe. Now France, by its vicinity, was the most dangerous power to disoblige, as well as by the near relationship of the two royal families of France and England; so that, though Cromwell gave out that which of the two states would give most for his friendship should have it, in order to raise the price, he was certainly determined in himself that France should have it." This subject may now be left with the folCromwell to Major-general Fortescue, whom Venables had left in command of the newlywon island, in which the Lord Protector forcibly explains his views of the proper policy for security and improvement of the conquest. other in command of Blake, with the professed | "Ho veduto prima," says Sagredo, “del mio purpose of restoring the natural dominion of partire piu squadre di soldati andar per Londra England on the sea, but whose real and secret cercandro donne di allegra vita, imbarcandone destination was to invade the American colo- 1200 sopra tre vascelli per tragittarle all' isola, nies, and surprise the Plate fleet of Spain, till a fine di far propagazione."* then supposed by all men to be, and to be held, the most faithful ally of the Commonwealth.*lowing most able and characteristic letter from The bait took, and the most extraordinary excitement and pleasure was produced in various quarters of England. Preachers declared from their pulpits that the Protector intended to destroy Babylon; nothing less than the pope was, abroad, avowed to be his quarry; and Innocent X., expecting to be attacked in Rome, ordered fortifications to be built round the Church of our Lady of Loretto, the rich offerings in which were presumed to be the chief object of the heretic adventure! "Sir,-You will herewith receive instructions for the better carryinge on of your buisnes, which is not of small account here, although our discouragements have been many, for which we desier to humble ourselves before the Lorde, who hath sorely chastened us. I Meanwhile Pen's fleet, carrying upward of doe commend, in the midst of others' miscar4000 soldiers, had arrived at Barbadoes, where riages, your constancy and faithfulnesse to your they were instructed to open their sealed or- trust, in everywhere you are, and takinge care ders; and, opening them, there found instruc- of a company of poore sheepe left by their tions to take at once Cuba and Hispaniola. shepherds; and be assured, that as that which Re-enforcements of upward of 6000 additional you have done hath been good in itself, and betroops awaited them for that purpose, and they cominge an honest man, soe it hath a very good instantly set forth. They had scarcely landed savour here with all good Christians and all at Hispaniola, however, when they fell into an true Englishmen, and will not be forgotten by me, ambuscade, and were obliged to re-embark de-as oportunitie shall serve. I hope you have long feated. They made a subsequent descent on the island of Jamaica with better success. This great gain was yet held insufficient to balance the first defeat; and on the return of Pen and Venables, they were both committed to the Tower. //I may pause for an instant here to notice a sound example of Cromwell's far-seeing sagacity. Though men scouted in that day the acquisition of Jamaica, he saw its value in itself, and its importance in relation to future attempts on the continent of America. Exerting the inhuman power of a despot-occasionally, as hurricanes and other horrors, necessary for the purification of the world-he ordered his son Henry to seize on a thousand young girls in Ireland, and send them over to Jamaica,† for the purpose of increasing population there. A year later, and while the Italian Sagredo was in London, he issued an order that all females of disorderly lives should be arrested and shipped for Barbadoes for the like purpose. Twelve hundred were accordingly sent in three ships. It afterward appeared to have been argued by Cromwell in his council, to justify the measure, that since America was not named in the treaties of 1604 and 1630, hostilities in America would be no infraction of those treaties (!!); that the Spaniards had committed depredations on the English commerce in the West Indies, and were consequently liable to reprisals; that they had gained possession of these countries by force, against the will of the natives, and might, therefore, be justly dispossessed by force; and, lastly, that the conquest of these transatlantic territories would contribute to spread the light of the Gospel among the Indians, and to cramp the resources of popery in Europe. These were but shallow pretexts for concealment of more substantial personal aims. I quote from Henry Cromwell's answer to Thurloe: "Sir, I understand by your last letter that the transportation of a thousand Irish girles, and the like number of boyes, is resolved on by the councell, but as touchinge what you write for the charges you will be at to putt them in an equipage fitt to be sent (havinge advised with some persons heer), I know not well what answer to return you to it; but it's thought most adviseable to provide their clothes for them in London, which we thinke you may doe better and at cheaper rates than wee can heer. Wee shall have, upon the receipt of his highness his pleasure, the number you propound, and more if you think fitt."-Thurloe, vol. iv., p. 87. before this time received that good supplye which went from hence in July last, whereby you will perceive that you have not been forgotten heer. I hope alsoe the ships sent for New England are before this time with you; and lett me tell you-as an incouragement to you and those with you to improve the utmost diligence, and to excite your courage in this buisnes, though not to occasion any negligence in presentinge that affair, nor to give occasion to slacken any improvement of what the place may afford-that you will be followed with what necessary supplyes, as well for comfortable subsistance as for your security against the Spaniard, this place may afford or you want. And therefore study first your securitie by fortifyinge; and although you have not monies for the present wherewith to doe it in such quantities as were to be wished, yet your case beinge as that of a marchinge army, wherein every soldier, out of principles of nature, and accordinge to the practice of all discipline, ought to be at the pains to secure the common quarter, wee hope no man among you will be soe wantinge to himself, consideringe food is provided for you, as not to be willinge to help to the uttermost therein; and therefore I require you and all with you, for the safetie of the whole, that this be made your principal intention. The doinge of this will require that you be verie careful not to scatter till you have begun a securitie in some one place. Next I desier you that you would consider how to form such a body of good horse as may, if the Spaniard should attempt upon you at the next cominge into the Indies with his gallions, be in a readiness to march to hinder his landinge, who will hardly land upon a body of horse; and if he shall land, be in a posture him from the provisions, if he shall endeavour to to keep the provisions of the country from him, or march towards you. Wee trust wee shall furnish you with bridles, saddles, and horse-shoes, and other thinges necessary for that worke, * A manuscript quoted by Dr. Lingard, vol. ii., p. 260. desiringe you to the uttermost to improve what you have already of those sorts. Should it be knowne that you had 500 horse well appointed, ready to march upon all occasions in that island, even that alone might deterre the Spaniard from attempting anythinge upon you. Wee have sent commissioners and instructions into New England to trye what people may be drawn thence. Wee have done the like to the English windward islands, and both in England, Scotland, and Ireland you will have what men and women wee can well transport. Wee thinke, and it is much designed amongst us, to strive with the Spaniard for the mastery of all those seas; and therefore wee could hartilie wish that the island of Providence were in our hands againe, believinge that it lyes so advantagiously in reference to the Mayne, and especially for the hindrance of the Peru trade and Cartagena, that you would not only have great advantage thereby of intelligence and surprize, but even blocke up the same. It is discoursed here, that if the Spaniard doe attempt you, it is most likely it will be on the east end of the island, towards Cuba; as also Cuba upon Cuba is a place easily attempted, and hath in it a very rich copper mine. It would be good for the first, as you have oportunitie, to informe yourself, and if there be need, to make a good worke thereupon, to prevent them; and for the other, and all thinges of that kinde, wee must leave them to your judgement upon the place, to doe therein as you shall see cause. To conclude, as wee have cause to be humbled for the reproof God gave us at St. Domingo upon the account of our owne sins, as well as others, soe truly upon the reports brought hither to us of the extreame avarice, pride, and confidence, disorders and debauchedness, profaneness and wickedness, commonly practised amongst the army, wee can not onlie bewail the same, butt desier that all with you may doe soe, and that a very special regard may be had soe to governe for time to come as that all manner of vice may be thoroughly discountenanced and severely punished, and that such a frame of government may be exercised, that virtue and godlinesse may receive due encouragement." Meanwhile Blake had triumphantly swept the Mediterranean, cleared that sea of pirates, and successively chastised the deys of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. He forced from the Grandduke of Tuscany a compensation for having some years before countenanced in his port the sale of unlawful English prizes by Prince Rupert, and was able to send home, as reparation to the English owners whose goods had been thus sold by his permission, the sum of £60,000 in sixteen vessels. The Republic of Genoa thanked the Protector by a special embassy for having thus afforded protection and safety to maritime commerce; the Vaivode of Transylvania solicited his aid against the Turks; the King of Poland requested his succour against the growing power of Russia; and the canton of Zurich appealed to him as the natural guardian of Protestant states. This was followed by other triumphs immediately connected with Cromwell's hypocritical pretences, and therefore of the greater service to him. It would not be becoming in this * [It is by no means proved that Cromwell was a hypo L work to enter into any detail of the massacre of the Vaudois in the valleys of Piedmont, or of that general feeling of sympathy aroused in England, and forever impressed on history by the sublime voice of Milton. "Avenge, O Lord! thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold To heaven!" Cromwell saw at once what a noble policy it would be to avenge these moans, and he did it in a manner which was worthy of the justice and sacredness of the cause. Milton conducted the negotiation. He refused to sign the French treaty with Mazarin, long and painfully protracted as it had been, till he had received what he quietly termed the "opinion" of Louis on the subject of the troubles in Piedmont. In vain Bordeaux remonstrated against this new pretext for delay; in vain maintained that the question bore no relation to the matter of the treaty; in vain protested that the King of France would never interfere with the internal administration of an independent state; and still more vainly held that the Duke of Savoy had as good a right to make laws for his Protes estant subjects as the English government for the Catholics of the three kingdoms, and that the Vaudois were in reality rebels who had justly incurred the resentment of their sovereign. Cromwell stood unmoved. Bordeaux applied for an audience to take leave; still the Lord Protector abated no jot of his demand. The perplexity was ended by sudden intelligence that the Duke of Savoy, at the request of the King of France, had granted an amnesty to the Vaudois, and confirmed all their ancient privileges; that the boon had been gratefully received; and that the natives of the valleys, Protestants and Catholics, had met, embraced each other with tears, and sworn to live in perpetual amity together. Projects respecting the Jews occupied at this period also the mind of Cromwell, but of which it will not be necessary to say more in this work than that, having appointed an assembly of men of various professions, divines, lawyers, and merchants, to take into consideration the expediency of permitting them to trade in England (leave for which had been supplicated by Manasseh Ben Israel, one of their chief rabbis), the general prejudices were discovered to be as yet too strong against that people to allow of their obtaining the liberty desired, or other privileges which Cromwell would gladly have granted them.* crite, and certainly his interference on behalf of the persecuted Piedmontese affords no evidence. This interference was in keeping with his religious life and entire character. -C.] Thurloe thus writes to Henry Cromwell: "Wee have had very many disputations concerninge the admittance of the Jewes to dwell in this Commonwealth, they havinge made an earnest desire to his highnesse to be admitted, whereupon he hath beene pleased to advise with some of the judges, merchants, and divines. The point of conscience hath beene only controverted yet, viz., whether it be lawfull to admitt the Jewes now out of England to returne againe into it. The divines doe very much differ in their judgements about it, some beinge for their admittance upon fittinge cautions, others are in expresse termes against The treaty with France was after the submission of Savoy. up in Latin; and on its being observed that Louis styled himself Rex Gallia, since there was no longer an English king to claim the silly title, Cromwell objected, insisted on Rex Gallorum, and Mazarin at length complied. The chief conditions of this treaty were, that France should indemnify English merchants for injuries to their commerce; that the conquest of Dunkirk should be made for England by their joint forces; and that Charles II., his family, and his court, should be forever excluded from the French territory. Of the Stuarts, the Duke of York only was then in France; and Cromwell, at the request of Mazarin, con-languidly, without much sympathy on the part sented to his being allowed to remain there.* The duke repaid Cromwell for this concession by sending his brother, within a few days after, a deliberate proposition for the murder of the Lord Protector, accompanied by the last court burlesque. The letter was caught by the everwatchful Thurloe. signed shortly | Cardinall, will give you an account of it, soe It was drawn that I need not trouble you with it, or the other newes of this place; only this, that it is soe hot wether, that I have been a swiming this afternone, and never found the Water warmer. I send you some songs of the last ballett inclosed with the Gazette burlesque. This is all I have to trouble you with at present." Spain had now, of course, taken measures of extreme hostility, and had even sanctioned a most unnatural plot against the person of the English Protector, in connexion with a fierce Fifth-Monarchy Republican, Colonel Sexby, and the exiled Charles Stuart. The war between the two nations, however, proceeded of the people generally, and with the decided opposition of the London merchants, whose trade it so seriously interfered with. One incident then suddenly occurred to give to it a temporary brilliancy. Blake (whose stern Republicanism always kept Cromwell in fear) had been joined in the command by Montague, and sent in second pursuit of the Spanish Plate fleet. Without military force, however, they found they could not strike the necessary blow at Cadiz or Gibraltar, and therefore, abandoning the attempt, they sailed to Lisbon; completed the old treaty by forcing from Don John a stipulated payment of £50,000; returned to Cadiz; passed the Straits; insulted the Spaniards in Malaga, the Moors in Sallee; and after a fruitless cruise of more than two months, most opportunely and fortunately happened that one of their captains, Stayner, with a squadron of frigates, fell in with a Spanish fleet of eight sail from America. Of these he destroyed four and captured two, one of which was laden with golden ingots and other treasure. Montague was at once sent home with the prize, valued in his despatch at £200,000. The Protectorate prints raised the amount to two millions; and the friends of Cromwell hailed the event "as a renewed testimony of God's presence, and some witness of his acceptance of the engagement against Spain." To his more servile flatterers it suggested what they knew would be far more welcome to the Lord Protector. "And now," said Waller, "Returns victorious Montague, "There is a proposition has been made to me which is too long to put in a letter; so that I will, as short as I can, lett you know the heads of them. There are fower Roman Catholikes that have bound themselves in a solemn oath to kill Cromwell, and then to raise all the Catholikes in the Citty and the Army, which they pretend to be a number so considerable as may give a rise for your recovery, they beinge all warn'd to be ready for somethinge that is to be done, without knowinge what it is. They de-anchored a second time in the Tagus. Here it mand ten thousand livres in hand; and when the businesse is ended, some recompence for themselves ackording to their severall qualities, and the same liberty for Catholikes in England as the Protestants have in France. I thought not fit to reject this proposition, butt to acquainte you with it, becaus the first parte of the desine seems to me to be better layd and resolved on than any I have knowen of that kind; and for the defects of the second, it may be supply'd by some desines you may have to join to it. If you approve of it, one of the fower, intrusted by the rest, will repaire to you, his charges being borne, and give you a full account of the whole matter. In the mean time, he desires, in his owne name and theirs, that you would lett butt one or two, whome you most trust, know it, and enjoyne them secrecy. This is all I can say of it at this time. I have not much more to say at present, theire beinge no certaine newse of the treaty with Cromwell, though it is much reported that it is agreed on, though not sign'd. For my owne businesse, my Lord Jermine, who comes now from speaking with the it upon any termes whatsoever. The like difference I finde in the councell, and soe amongst all Christians abroad. The matter is debated with great candour and ingenuitie, and without any heat. What the issue thereof will be am not able to tell you, butt am apt to thinke that nothinge will be done therein."-Thurloe, vol. iv., p. 321. Lockhart was sent ambassador to France, where he was treated with peculiar favour. A Paris letter of a later date may describe this: "They do caress here the Lord Protector very much; also Colonel Lockhart was well dismissed. The lord-cardinal presented to him four exceeding fine horses, for the saddle, for the Lord Protector. The said Colonel Lockhart told me himself he never saw such fine horses, and that the lord his master would be mightily pleased with them. He told me likewise that this court had given him good content in all things, so that he went from hence very well satisfied, and thinks to return hither again shortly."-Thurloe, vol. v., p. 655. With laurels in his hand, and half Peru. Let the brave generals divide that hough, Our great Protector hath such wreaths enough; His conquering head has no more room for bays, Then let it be as the glad nation prays; Let the rich ore be forthwith melted down, And the state fixed, by making him ▲ CROWN; With ermine clad, and purple, let him hold A royal sceptre, made of Spanish gold." The same thought was already working in the brain of Cromwell, and might have worked more profitably there had there been more of this Spanish gold. But the truth was, that his treasury, notwithstanding these grateful supplies, notwithstanding all his infamous extortions, was at this instant wellnigh exhausted. The equipments of the various fleets had run it out, and, having been forced into contests for the right of levying taxes with some few spirited individuals in his own courts of law, even he durst not exercise his power of levying while Besides Cony, Sir Peter Wentworth and others had resisted his assessments in the country. the question was still under judgment. The | was not rash, he would not be dissuaded from, most famous case of this sort was that of a nor endure any contradiction of his power and merchant named Cony, who narrowly escaped authority, but extorted obedience from them the glory of another Hampden. He refused who were not willing to yield it. the payment of certain custom duties, on the "When he had laid some very extraordinary ground of their not being levied by authority of tax upon the city, one Cony, an eminent fanatParliament; referred to the opposition of Rolls, ic, and one who had heretofore served him very Valentine, and Chambers, in a similar case, to notably, positively refused to pay his part, and Charles I., and recalled to the memory of Crom-loudly dissuaded others from submitting to it, well his own expression in the Long Parlia-as an imposition notoriously against the law ment, "that the subject who submits to an il- and the property of the subject, which all honlegal impost is more the enemy of his country est men were bound to defend.' Cromwell than the tyrant who imposes it." Cromwell sent for him, and cajoled him with the memory answered this by committing him to prison for of the old kindness and friendship that had contempt. He claimed his writ of habeas cor- been between them; and that, of all men, he pus, and retained three of the most eminent did not expect this opposition from him, in a lawyers at the bar, Maynard, Twisden, and matter that was so necessary for the good of Wadham Windham, to plead it for him. They the Commonwealth.' But it was always his did so, and are said to have urged such argu- fortune to meet with the most rude and obstiments, and enforced them with such vigour, nate behaviour from those who had formerly that, if ceded to, they would have shaken the been absolutely governed by him; and they comProtectorate to its base. Maynard and his fel- monly put him in mind of some expressions and low-pleaders were accordingly, the day after sayings of his own in cases of the like nature: these arguments, sent to the Tower, on the so this man remembered him how great an encharge of having held language destructive to emy he had expressed himself to such grievanthe existing government. ces, and had declared that all who submitted to them, and paid illegal taxes, were more to blame, and greater enemies to their country, than they who had imposed them; and that the tyranny of princes could never be grievous but by the tameness and stupidity of the people.' When Cromwell saw that he could not convert him, he told him that he had a will as stubborn as his, and he would try which of them two should be master.' Thereupon, with some terms of reproach and contempt, he committed the man to prison; whose courage was nothing abated by it, but, as soon as the term came, he brought his habeas corpus in the King's Bench, which they then called the Upper Bench. Maynard, who was of counsel with the prisoner, demanded his liberty with great confidence, both upon the illegality of the commitment, and the illegality of the imposition, as being laid without any lawful authority. could not maintain or defend either, and enough declared what their sentence would be; and therefore the Protector's attorney required a farther delay, to answer what had been urged. Before that day Maynard was committed to the Tower for presuming to question or make doubt of his authority, and the judges were sent for and severely reprehended for suffering that license. When they, with all humility, mentioned the law and Magna Charta, Cromwell told them, 'their magna f.... should not control his actions, which he knew were for the safety of the Commonwealth.' He asked them, Who made them judges? Whether they had any authority to sit there but what he gave them? and, if his authority were at an end, they knew well enough what would become of themselves, and therefore advised them to be more tender of that which could only pre But the case did not end here. The day following, Cony, unsupported by counsel, presented himself at the bar of the Upper Bench, and urged his own cause with so much power, that Rolle, who presided in the court, was either moved very far towards conviction, or suffered very heavily from shame. He delayed the case for a term on some formal pretence, gave in his resignation in the interim, and was at once succeeded by Glyn in the chair of the chief-justice. Maynard, Twisden, and Windham, on their submission, were discharged from confinement; and Cony was prevailed upon, by some secret means, which must forever dishonour a memory that had so nearly become illustrious, to bring his cause no more before the court. Cromwell was still left, however, in a most difficult position; a position from which the name and the forms of some Parliamentary authority could alone, he saw at last, by any possibility rescue him. So hard he found it, even with such resources as he had called into existence, to subdue utterly a nation which had once been free. Writs were issued for a Parliament to meet on the 17th of December, 1656. Before I proceed to sketch the incidents of that Parliament, it may be interesting to supply from the page of Lord Clarendon's history a view of the power and position of Cromwell, as it now appeared to the view of the Royalists. It marks an emphatic lesson in the life of the Lord Protector, that with all this show of influence and glory, which cannot be altogether in fairness disputed, his real resources should have been to the last degree mean, crippled, and low. There was, indeed, a ghastly skeleton under the painted face. The judges tion that they should not suffer the lawyers 'to prate what it would not become them to hear.' After he was confirmed and invested Pro-serve them,' and so dismissed them with cautector by the humble Petition and Advice, he consulted with very few upon any action of importance, nor communicated any enterprise he resolved upon with more than those who were to have principal parts in the execution of it; nor with them sooner than was absolutely necessary. What he once resolved, in which he "Thus he subdued a spirit that had been often troublesome to the most sovereign power, and made Westminster Hall as obedient and subservient to his commands as any of the rest of his quarters. In all other matters, which did |