ready to help in any good work, to forward any local interest, or to succour those, like the independent ministers, who were persecuted for conscience' sake. He was yet but twenty-six, when he had so won upon his fellow townsmen that many of them endeavoured to return him to parliament as their representative. The effort then failed; but three years later, in 1628, he went up to Westminster to take his seat in the third parliament of Charles I, as member for his native town. By this time four sons and a daughter had been born to him. In that first session of parliament, though Pym, Eliot, Hampden, and others, were leaders, he stood worthily beside them, with few but notable words; then at the dissolution went back to ponder upon coming events, whose shadows already overcast the land. His next three years were passed in Huntingdon. His life was now in good repute and he was a justice of the peace. But his thoughts, diving profoundly into religious matters, as well as troubled with the state of public affairs, hindered his health, afflicting him to such an extent that his physician was very many times 'called up to him at midnight and such unseasonable hours upon a strong phansy which made him believe he was dying'. In 1631, leaving his mother in Huntingdon, he removed with his wife and family to St Ives, and took a small farm there. Here his work began. First in the close fervent piety of his own life, then in care for those around him, training his immediate dependents in religion and simplicity of life, praying with them, in that old earnest puritan fashion, before work in the morning, and when the service of the day had closed; and gaining through the neighbourhood the character of a zealous and devout man, ever ready to promote good works, and capable of esteeming good men. And thus the years went on till this man had spent his forty summers, and none knew of him but as a truthful gentleman, who reverenced the word of God, cared more for prayer than for temporal success, who was not even strong in health, but who was strong in soul, in zeal and the knowledge which maketh zeal efficient. We hear but of one public act during all these years, the fighting the people's battle in the matter of some undue interference of the government with the clearing of the Bedford level; and we may note one other incident, the arrival at St Ives, in 1641, of a number of long heavy swords with the initials O Cupon their hilts. In November, 1610, he entered Parliament again, as member for Cambridge: to take part in the impeachment of Strafford, the attainder of Laud, and the war against Charles Stuart. 'Who is that sloven?-asks one of Hampden,— that sloven who spoke just now. I see he is on our side by his speaking so warmly.' That sloven,'-replies Hampden-if we should ever come to a breach with the king, will be the greatest man in England.' Cromwell was the first man to draw the sword on the people's side. When there was no longer any doubt of the imminence of war, he suddenly left London for St Ives, to summon his Ironsides, the men whom with his own scanty means he had armed, the men with whom he had prayed, the men whom he knew, and who also knew him,-God-fearing men, strong-thewed and of most resolute will. These whom he had taught the justice of the Parliamentary quarrel he now gathered around him, and was in arms even before the king; doing good service in seizing plate that else had melted in the king's hands, and actively making such other preparations as seemed needful. How he fought his way from a mere uncommissioned leader of rebel troopers, to be General of the Commonwealth,-how his battle-cry of Truth and Peace, the Sword of the Lord and of Gideon, ran like wild-fire through England, consuming the royal power as stubble,-how his Ironsides at Waisby-field at his bidding lifted up their psalm and 'charged through' to victory,-how Naseby and Dunbar echoed the triumph of Marston-Moor, and Worcester kept gloriously the anniversary of Dunbar,-how 'the Lord gave his enemies into his hands,' till he sat upon England's throne, high enough for all Europe to see and worship him, who knows not ? England has not forgotten his victories, though she has not gathered yet their fruit, and though she still misdeems of him. Ready in resource, prompt in action, fearless of man, beloved by those who knew him, able to hold good men even of those who knew him not, no more capable man ever wielded the truncheon or the sceptre. What wonder that the truncheon became a sceptre, that when Victory had wreathed him as the foremost man in England he could not wait patiently the good pleasure of the Parliament, which with all its greatness of character and capacity for administration yet seemed— nay, was unequal to the task of holding a nation whose majority was clearly opposed to it. The sword had won-thought Cromwell; the sword must maintain. In himself and only in himself he saw sufficient power, and he took his course, careless of the conventionalities which held back other men. He had overthrown the king: was the blood of all the Hampdens to be poured out in vain? He had conquered Ireland (some say, with barbarous cruelty,-others say, with necessary severity): was that blood too shed for men's amusement? He had brought in Scotland: was Dunbar to be an idle triumph? So might Cromwell have argued when on the 20th of April, 1653 he violently dissolved the Long Parliament. All honour to that great Parliament: but was Cromwell therefore wrong? The right to rule was no more theirs than his. Was he usurping: so were they. The most august assembly that ever sat' as a Parliament-says Godwin. Most true; but the rest of his sentence not true. They had not all of them been elected by the people'. The people! Ludlow on one occasion gets returned for Hindon by nineteen voices-the whole number of electors being twenty-six. That they ruled England as the People's Chosen was but a fiction. They had the sword and the capacity; and now sword and capacity were turned against them. If Pride might purge them once, Vane and others consenting, why not Cromwell yet again with or without consent? But 'honest men fell off from him' great Vane and Bradshaw and most trusty Scot. And trusty Ireton and great Milton stood beside him. Blake served his country under him, and Blake's example (conscience allowing-we speak of policy) should have been followed by the rest. That Cromwell judged rightly, deeming his own hand the only one to hold the reins, the result abundantly proved. He, spite of all defections and oppositions, did hold the Commonwealth together, doing worthily He did so rule, submitted not to at home and gloriously abroad; grandly-let it be said-following in the steps of the Republicans. What they could do without him, alas! the scoundrel Monk but too easily made proof of. And could Vane and those like him, of real republican views, have rallied again to Cromwell, England might have been a republic now. Who knows? Yet in truth the difficulty seems to lie here. Vane and his friends sought a republic; but would accomplish it only by constitutional means. Cromwell, less republican than they, saw through the flimsiness of these legalities, cared nought for them. Why should he? He would have made himself king to rule England in all godliness and virtue. only without the kingly name. Granted that he was a tyrant, he the majority. The voices were for Charles Stuart and misrule. He had drawn the sword against that. Charge through; or wherefore draw it at all? I will submit to the majority only under the Republic. The righteous rule is above any majority. And with Cromwell as with Hampden, with Pym, with Eliot, (nay Vane himself not objecting to a single person if properly appointed) the rule of righteousness did not exclude the king-ship of the ablest. Let us consider the principles of the time. And we shall judge honourably of Cromwell. Even in his own day, Vane, opposed to his usurpation, never says an ill word of him. Milton's panegyric outweighs a hundred judgements like that of simple honest credulous Ludlow who marshals so many convictions and impressions out of his own mind against the honesty of his long-trusted friend; and Algernon Sidney, the Republican, has left behind him the testimony, given after the death of Cromwell, that he had just notions of public liberty.' Of Cromwell's five years' rule, of all its difficulty from conspiracies and from pragmatical parliaments at home, of all its glory toward the world, of that royalty which Blake and Milton served, and under whose shield the persecuted of other lands found ample shelter, we mean not to speak here. History, even of the court liest penmanship, has not dared to overscrawl that page of English honour. But he and his opponent friends were all before their day. Their fiery lives rose once out of the dull wave of Time, like comets to foretell great change; then sank. Who has calculated the hour of their return?-the hour when the capable and the far-thoughted, the practical and the theoretical, shall again lead the Ironsides to victory and sit at England's council-board to rule the destinies of a people that has freely chosen them for its leaders and so the difference between Vane and Cromwell, the revolutionary difficulty, be fairly overcome. : Some few words may be worth our saying of the Hero in his private life. He was loving and beloved. Why, that is all. A fond and careful father, a most staunch friend. Truly, he was a great man every way. We could afford to own many faults, errors of judgement, say some sins even, of such a man. And yet the closer we look at him, looking with our own eyes, not through spectacles however honestly furnished, the nobler-souled he seems. His goodfor-nought son Dick shares the largeness of the father's heart, equally with his eldest hope-slain in battle at his side. When he becomes Protector his public duties sever him not from his private loves. His friends are no less dear; his old mother resides with him; and it is his daughter's death which, after all public anxieties and trials have done their worst, pulls the strong man down at last. 'Distempers, contracted by the long sickness of my lady Elizabeth'-by whose death-bed the Protector unremittingly had watched, hurried on his mortal sickness. And though on the 3rd of September, 1658, the farthermost shores of Europe shook with the storm which heralded his departing soul, yet with his last words for his country-('Lord continue and go on to do good for them, give them consistency of judgement, one heart and mutual love, and go on to deliver them!') were mingled the tenderest of personal regrets: murmuring to those who comforted him with the Bible, in which he implicitly believed-‘This Scripture did once save my life, when my eldest son died, which went as a "The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament to support him; but can not. His first Parliament, the one they call Barebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation of the Notables. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to the true cause: these are assembled to shape out a plan. They sanctioned what was passed; shaped as they could what was to come They were scornfully called Barebones's Parliament; the man's name, it seems, was not Barebones, but Barbone,- -a good enough man. a Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality, a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety I suppose most of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavouring to reform the Court of Chancery! They appointed Cromwell Protector, and went their ways. The seco ad Parliament, chosen by the rule these Notables had fixed upon, did assemble, and worked; but got, before long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector's right, as to 'usurpation,' and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding speech to these men is a remarkable one. Most rude, chaotic, as all his speeches are; but most earnest looking. You would say it was a sincere helpless man; not used to speak the great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about 'births of Providence:' all these changes, so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of me or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might! As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had foreseen it all, played it all off like a precontrived puppet show by wood and wire! These things were seen by no man, he says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were births of Not they-but after their dissolution-the ariny appointed Cromwell Protector. They seem to have broken down in attempting to do too much at once. Providence,' God's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, God's Cause triumphant in these nations; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be organised, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing that. 'You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had.' Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavilings and questionings about written laws for my coming here;-and would send the whole matter into chaos again, because I have no notary's parchment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. You have had your constitutional logic; and Mammon's law, not Christ's law rules yet in this land. God be judge between you and me!' Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever the constitutional formula: How came you there? Shew us some notary parchment! Blind pedants: Why, surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!' If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that? Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of despotism. Military dictators, each with his district, to coerce the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall not carry it, while the reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I while God leaves me life!--Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving it up! Prime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this Prime Minister was one that could not get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers wanted to kill him; to kill the Cause and him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could retire nowhither except into his tomb. Peace to him, Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it: Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well. From Carlyle's Hero-Worship. TRUTH AND PEACE. The charging-cry at Waisby-Field: erroneously stated to be Peace and Hope. For Peace and Hope are one; same growth, same root. $. |