[1659 A.D.] retirement, appeared once more on the stage. So artfully did he act his part that, though a royalist at heart, he was designed by them for the office of lord-general, in the event of the expulsion or the abdication of Richard. 3. The moderates or neuters" held in number the medium between the protectorists and republicans. Of these, some wavered between the two parties; but many were concealed cavaliers, who, in obedience to the command of Charles, had obtained seats in the house, or young men who, without any fixed political principles, suffered themselves to be guided by the suggestions of the cavaliers.

To the latter, Hyde had sent instructions that they should embarrass the plans of the protector, by denouncing to the house the illegal acts committed under the late administration; by impeaching Thurloe and the principal officers of state; by fomenting the dissension between the courtiers and the republicans; and by throwing their weight into the scale, sometimes in favour of one, sometimes of the other party, as might appear most conducive to the interests of the royal exile. The lords, aware of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful not to provoke the hostility of the commons. They sent no messages; they passed no bills; but exchanging matters of state for questions of religion, contrived to spend their time in discussing the form of a national catechism, the sinfulness of theatrical entertainments, and the papal corruptions supposed to exist in the Book of Common Prayer.

In the lower house, the first subject which called forth the strength of the different parties was a bill which, under the pretence of recognising Richard Cromwell for the rightful successor to his father, would have pledged the parliament to an acquiescence in the existing form of government. The men of republican principles instantly took the alarm. Each day the debate grew more animated and personal; charges were made, and recriminations followed: the republicans enumerated the acts of misrule and oppression under the government of the late protector; the courtiers balanced the account with similar instances from the proceedings of their adversaries during the sway of the Long Parliament. Weariness at last induced the combatants to listen to a compromise, that the recognition of Richard as protector should form part of a future bill, but that at the same time, his prerogative should be so limited as to secure the liberties of the people. From the office of protector, the members proceeded to inquire into the constitution and powers of the other house; and this question, as it was intimately connected with the former, was debated with equal warmth and pertinacity.

The new lords had little reason to be gratified with the result. They were acknowledged, indeed, as a house of parliament for the present; but there was no admission of their claim of the peerage, or of a negative voice, or of a right to sit in subsequent parliaments. The commons consented "to transact business with them" (a new phrase of undefined meaning), pending the parliament, but with a saving of the rights of the ancient peers, who had been faithful to the cause; and, in addition, a few days later (April 8th), they resolved that, in the transaction of business, no superiority should be admitted in the other house, nor message received from it, unless brought by the members themselves. On all questions, whenever there was a prospect of throwing impediments in the way of the ministry, or of inflaming the discontent of the people, the royalists zealously lent their aid to the republican party. It was proved that, while the revenue had been doubled, the expenditure had grown in a greater proportion; complaints were made of oppression, waste, embezzlement, and tyranny in the collection of the excise: the inhumanity of selling obnoxious individuals for slaves to the West India planters was severely

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reprobated; instances of extortion were daily announced to the house by the committee of grievances.

THE DISCONTENT IN THE ARMY

But, while these proceedings awakened the hopes and gratified the resentments of the people, they at the same time spread alarm through the army; every man conscious of having abused the power of the sword began to tremble for his own safety; and an unusual ferment, the sure presage of military violence, was observable at the head-quarters of the several regiments.

Hitherto the general officers had been divided between Whitehall and Wallingford House, the residences of Richard and of Fleetwood. At Whitehall, the Lord Fauconberg, brother-in-law to the protector, Charles Howard, whom Oliver had created a viscount, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe, and a few others, formed a military council for the purpose of maintaining the ascendancy of Richard in the army. At Wallingford House, Fleetwood and his friends consulted how they might deprive him of the command, and reduce him to the situation of a civil magistrate; but now a third and more numerous council appeared at St. James's, consisting of most of the inferior officers, and guided by the secret intrigues of Lambert, who, holding no commission himself, abstained from sitting among them, and by the open influence of Desborough, a bold and reckless man, who began to despise the weak and wavering conduct of Fleetwood. Here originated the plan of a general council of officers, which was followed by the adoption of The Humble Representation and Petition, an instrument composed in language too moderate to give reasonable cause of offence, but intended to suggest much more than it was thought prudent to express. It made no allusion to the disputed claim of the protector, or the subjects of strife between the two houses; but it complained bitterly of the contempt into which the good old cause had sunk.

This paper, with six hundred signatures, was presented to Richard, who received it with an air of cheerfulness, and forwarded it to the lower house. There it was read, laid on the table, and scornfully neglected. But the military leaders treated the house with equal scorn; having obtained the consent of the protector, they established a permanent council of general officers; and then, instead of fulfilling the expectations with which they had lulled his jealousy, successively voted, that the common cause was in danger, that the command of the army ought to be vested in a person possessing its confidence, and that every officer should be called upon to testify his approbation of the death of Charles I, and of the subsequent proceedings of the military; a measure levelled against the meeting at Whitehall, of which the members were charged with a secret leaning to the cause of royalty. This was sufficiently alarming; but, in addition, the officers of the trained bands signified their adhesion to the Representation of the army; and more than six hundred privates of the regiment formerly commanded by Colonel Pride published their determination to stand by their officers in the maintenance "of the old cause."

The friends of the protector saw that it was time to act with energy; and, by their influence in the lower house, carried the following votes (April 18th): that no military meetings should be held without the joint consent of the protector and the parliament, and that every officer should forfeit his commission who would not promise, under his signature, never to disturb the sitting, or infringe the freedom of parliament. These votes met, indeed, with a violent opposition in the "other house," in which many of the members had

[1659 A.D.] been chosen from the military; but the courtiers, anxious to secure the victory, proposed another and declaratory vote in the commons, that the command of the army was vested in the three estates, to be exercised by the protector. By the officers this motion was considered as an open declaration of war: they instantly met; and Desborough, in their name, informed Richard that the crisis was at last come; the parliament must be dissolved, either by the civil authority, or by the power of the sword. He might make his election. If he chose the first, the army would provide for his dignity and support; if he did not, he would be abandoned to his fate, and fall friendless and unpitied. The protector called a council of his confidential advisers. Whitelocke opposed the dissolution, on the ground that a grant of money might yet appease the discontent of the military. Thurloe, Broghill, Fiennes and Wolseley maintained, on the contrary, that the dissension between the parliament and the army was irreconcilable; and that on the first shock between them, the cavaliers would rise simultaneously in the cause of Charles Stuart.

A commisssion was accordingly signed by Richard, and the usher of the black rod repeatedly summoned the commons to attend in the other house. But true to their former vote of receiving no message brought by inferior officers, they refused to obey; some members proposed to declare it treason to put force on the representatives of the nation, others to pronounce all proceedings void whenever a portion of the members should be excluded by violence; at last they adjourned for three days, and accompanied the speaker to his carriage in the face of the soldiery assembled at the door. These proceedings, however, did not prevent Fiennes, the head commissioner, from dissolving the parliament; and the important intelligence was communicated to the three nations by proclamation in the same afternoon of April 22nd. Whether the consequences of this measure, so fatal to the interests of Richard, were foreseen by his advisers, may be doubted. By the dissolution Richard had signed his own deposition; though he continued to reside at Whitehall, the government fell into abeyance; even the officers, who had hitherto frequented his court, abandoned him, some to appease, by their attendance at Wallingford House, the resentment of their adversaries, the others, to provide by their absence, for their own safety. If the supreme authority resided any where, it was with Fleetwood, who now held the nominal command of the army; but he and his associates were controlled both by the meeting of officers at St. James's, and by the consultations of the republican party in the city; and therefore contented themselves with depriving the friends of Richard of their commissions, and with giving their regiments to the men who had been cashiered by his father.

Unable to agree on any form of government among themselves, they sought to come to an understanding with the republican leaders. These demanded the restoration of the Long Parliament, on the ground that, as its interruption by Cromwell had been illegal, it was still the supreme authority in the nation; and the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage, insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate. But the country was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to the advantage of the exiled king. As a last resource, the officers, by an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding, invited the members of the Long Parliament to resume the trust of which they had been unrighteously deprived. With some difficulty, two-and-forty were privately collected in

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the Painted Chamber; Lenthall, the former speaker, after much entreaty, put himself at their head, and the whole body passed into the house through two lines of officers, some of whom were the very individuals by whom, six years before, they had been ignominiously expelled.

THE RECALL OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT: THE RUMP (MAY 7TH, 1659)

The reader will recollect that, on a former occasion, in the year 1648, the Presbyterian members of the Long Parliament had been excluded by the army. Of these, one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, eighty of whom actually resided in the capital. That they had as good a right to resume their seats as the members who had been expelled by Cromwell could hardly be doubted; but they were royalists, still adhering to the principles which they professed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, and from their number, had they been admitted, would have instantly outvoted the advocates of republicanism.

They assembled in Westminster Hall; and a deputation of fourteen, with Sir George Booth, Prynne, and Annesley at their head, proceeded to the house. The doors were closed in their faces; a company of soldiers, the keepers, as they were sarcastically called, of the liberties of England, filled the lobby; and a resolution was passed (May 9th) that no former member who had not subscribed the Engagement, should sit till further order of parliament. The attempt, however, though it failed of success, produced its effect. It served to countenance a belief that the sitting members were mere tools of the military, and supplied the royalists with the means of masking their real designs under the popular pretence of vindicating the freedom of parliament. By gradual additions, the house at last amounted to seventy members, who, while they were ridiculed by their adversaries with the appellation of the "Rump," constituted themselves the supreme authority in the three kingdoms. They appointed, first, a committee of safety, and then a council of state, notified the foreign ministers of restoration to power, and, to satisfy the people, promised by a printed declaration to establish a form of government, which should secure civil and religious liberty without a single person, or kingship, or house of lords. The farce of addresses was renewed; the "children of Zion," the asserters of the good old cause, clamorously displayed their joy; and heaven was fatigued with prayers for the prosperity and permanence of the new government.

That government at first depended for its existence on the good-will of the military in the neighbourhood of London; gradually it obtained promises of support from the forces at a distance. Monk, with his officers, wrote to the speaker, congratulating him and his colleagues on their restoration to power, and hypocritically thanking them for their condescension in taking up so heavy a burthen; but, at the same time, reminding them of the services of Oliver Cromwell, and of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to his family. Lockhart hastened to tender the services of the regiments in Flanders, and received in return a renewal of his credentials as ambassador, with a commission to attend the conferences between the ministers of France and Spain at Fuenterrabia. Montague followed with a letter from the fleet; but his professions of attachment were received with distrust. To balance his influence with the seamen, Lawson received the command of a squadron destined to cruise in the Channel; and, to watch his conduct in the Baltic, three commissioners, with Algernon Sydney at their head, were joined with him in his mission to the two northern courts.

THE RETIREMENT OF THE CROMWELLS (1659 A.D.)

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There still remained the army in Ireland. From Henry Cromwell, a soldier possessing the affections of the military, and believed to inherit the abilities of his father, an obstinate, and perhaps successful, resistance was anticipated. But he wanted decision. Three parties had presented themselves to his choice; to earn, by the promptitude of his acquiescence, the gratitude of the new government; or to maintain by arms the right of his deposed brother; or to declare, as he was strongly solicited to declare, in favour of Charles Stuart. Much time was lost in consultation. While he thus wavered from project to project, some of his officers ventured to profess their attachment to the commonwealth, the privates betrayed a disinclination to separate

their cause from that of their comrades in England, and Sir Hardress Waller, in the interest of the parliament, surprised the castle of Dublin (June 15th). The last stroke reduced Henry at once to the condition of a suppliant; he signified his submission by a letter to the speaker, obeyed the commands of the house to appear before the council, and on July 6th, having explained to them the state of Ireland, was graciously permitted to retire into the obscurity of private life. The civil administration of the island devolved on five commissioners, and (July 18th) the command of the army was given to Ludlow, with the rank of lieutenantgeneral of the horse.

But the republican leaders soon discovered that they had not been called to repose on a bed of roses. The officers at Wallingford House began to dictate to the men whom they had made their nominal masters, and forwarded to them fifteen demands, under the modest title of "the things which they had on their minds," when they restored the Long Parliament. The house took them successively into consideration. A committee was appointed to report the form of government the best calculated to secure the liberties of the people; the duration of the existing parliament was limited to twelve months; freedom of worship was extended to all believers in the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, with the usual exception of prelatists and papists; and an act of oblivion, after many debates, was passed, but so encumbered with provisoes and exceptions, that it served rather to irritate than appease. The officers had requested (July 12th) that lands of inheritance, to the annual value of £10,000, should be settled on Richard Cromwell, and a yearly pension of £8,000 on "her highness dowager," his mother. But it was observed in the house that, though Richard exercised no authority, he continued to occupy the state apartments at Whitehall; and a suspicion existed that he was kept Henry Cromwell resided on his estate of Swinney Abbey, near Soham, in Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1674.

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