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not to do as Eli did, who told his sons "he did not hear well of them,” when perhaps he saw ill by them. And we know the severity of that. And therefore let me say,-though I will not descant upon the words,-that Mercy must be joined with Truth: Truth, in that respect, that we think it our duty to exercise a just severity, as well as to apply kindness and mercy. And, truly, Righteousness and Mercy must kiss each other. If we will have Peace without a worm in it, lay we foundations of Justice and Righteousness. [Hear this Lord Protector!] And if it shall please God so to move you, as that you marry this redoubtable Couple together, Mercy and Truth, Righteousness and Peace, you will, if I may be free to say so, be blessed whether you will or no! And that you and I may, for the time the Lord shall continue us together, set our hearts upon this, shall be my daily prayer. And I heartily and humbly acknowledge my thankfulness to you.*

On Monday 9th February, Sindercomb was tried by a jury in the Upper Bench; and doomed to suffer as a traitor and assassin, on the Saturday following. The night before Saturday his poor Sister, though narrowly watched, smuggled him some poison: he went to bed, saying, “Well, this is the last time I shall go to bed;" the attendants heard him snore heavily, and then cease; they looked, and he lay dead. 'He was of that wretched sect called Soul-Sleepers, who believe that the soul falls asleep at death :" a gloomy, far-misguided man. They buried him on Tower-hill with due ignominy, and there he rests; with none but Frantic-Anabaptist Sexby, or Deceptive-Presbyterian Titus, to sing his praise.2

Next Friday, Friday the 20th, which was Thanksgiving Day, 'the Honourable House, after hearing two Sermons at Margaret's 'Westminster, partook of a most princely Entertainment,' by invitation from his Highness, at Whitehall. After dinner his Highness withdrew to the Cockpit; and there entertained them with rare music, both of voices and instruments, till the evening ;'3 his

* Burton's Diary (from Lansdown Mss. 755, no. 244), ii. 490-3. Cromwelliana, p. 162.

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2 Equal to a Roman in virtue,' says the noisy Pamphlet Killing no Murder, which seems to have been written by Sexby; though Titus, as adroit King'sFlunkey, at an after-period, saw good to claim it. A Pamphlet much noisedof in those months and afterwards; recommending all persons to assassinate Cromwell;-has this merit, considerable or not, and no other worth speaking

of.

3 Newspapers (in Burton, i. 377); Commons Journals, vii. 493.

Highness being very fond of music. In this manner end, once more, the grand Assassination projects, Spanish-Invasion projects; unachievable even the Preface of them ;-and now we will speak of something else.

LETTER CCXVII.; SPEECHES VII-XIV.

KINGSHIP.

THIS Second Protectorate Parliament, at least while the fermenting elements or 'hundred Excluded Members' are held aloof from it, unfolds itself to us as altogether reconciled to the rule of Oliver, or even right thankful for it; and really striving towards Settlement of the Nation on that basis. Since the First constitutioning Parliament went its ways, here is a great change among us: three years of successful experiment have thrown some light on Oliver, and his mode of ruling, to all Englishmen. What can a wise Puritan Englishman do but decide on complying with Oliver, on strengthening the hands of Oliver? Is he not verily doing the thing we all wanted to see done? The old Parchments of the case may have been a little hustled, as indeed in a Ten-years Civil War, ending in the Execution of a King, they could hardly fail to be;— but the divine Fact of the case, meseems, is well cared for! Here is a Governing Man, undeniably the most English of Englishmen, the most Puritan of Puritans,-the Pattern Man, I must say, according to the model of that Seventeenth Century in England; and a Great Man, denizen of all the Centuries, or he could never have been the Pattern one in that. Truly, my friends, I think, you may go farther and fare worse!-To the darkest head in England, even to the assassinative truculent-flunkey head in steeplehat worn brown, some light has shone out of these three years of Government by Oliver. An uncommon Oliver, even to the truculent-flunkey. If not the noblest and worshipfullest of all Englishmen, at least the strongest and terriblest; with whom really it might be as well to comply; with whom, in fact, there is small hope in not complying!—

For its wise temper and good practical tendency, let us praise this Second Parliament;-admit nevertheless that its History, like that of most Parliaments, amounts to little. This Parliament did what they could: forbore to pester his Highness with quibblings

and cavillings and constitution-pedantries; accomplished respectably the Parliamentary routine; voted, what perhaps was all that could be expected of them, some needful modicum of supplies ' debated whether it should be debated,' ' put the question whether 'this question should be put;'-and in a mild way neutralised one another, and as it were handsomely did nothing, and left Oliver to do. A Record of their proceedings has been jotted down by one of their Members there present, who is guessed rather vaguely by Editorial sagacity to have been 'one Mr. Burton.' It was saved from the fire in late years, that Record; has been printed under the title of Burton's Diary; and this Editor has faithfully read it, -not without wonder, once more, at the inadequacy of the human pen to convey almost any glimmering of insight to the distant human mind! Alas, the human pen, oppressed by incubus of Parliamentary or other Pedantry, is a most poor matter. At bottom, if we will consider it, this poor Burton,-let us continue to call him 'Burton,' though that was not his name,—cared nothing about these matters himself; merely jotted them down pedantically, by impulse from without, that he might seem, in his own eyes and those of others, a knowing person, enviable for insight into facts of an high nature.' And now, by what possibility of chance, can he interest thee or me about them; now when they have turned out to be facts of no nature at all,-mere wearisome ephemera, and cast-clothes of facts, gone all to dust and ashes now; which the healthy human mind resolutely, not without impatience, tramples under its feet! A Book filled, as so many are, with mere dim inanity, and moaning wind. Will nobody condense it into sixteen pages; instead of four thick octavo volumes? For there are, if you look long, some streaks of dull light shining even through it; perhaps, in judicious hands, one readable sheet of sixteen pages might be made of it;-and even the rubbish of the rest, with a proper Index, might be useful; might at least be left to rot quietly, once it was known to be rubbish. But enough now of poor Mr. Burton and his Diary,—who, as we say, is not 'Mr. Burton' at all, if anybody cared to know who or what he was !! Undoubtedly some very dull man. Under chimerical circumstances he gives us, being fated to do it, an inane History of a Parliament now itself grown very inane and chimerical!—

1 Compare the Diary, vol. ii. p. 404, line 2, and vol. ii. p. 347, line 7, with Commons Journals, vii. 588: and again Diary, vol. ii. p. 346, line 13, with Commons Journals, vii. 450, 580: Two Parliament-Committees, on both of which "I" the writer of the Diary sat; in neither of which is there such a name as Burton. Guess rather, if it were worth while to guess, one of the two Suffolk Bacons; most probably Nathaniel Bacon, Master of the 'Court of Requests,'a dim old Law-Court fallen obsolete now.

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This Parliament, as we transiently saw, suppressed the MajorGenerals; refused to authorise their continued Decimation' or Ten-per-centing of the Royalists; whereupon they were suppressed. Its next grand feat was that of James Nayler and his Proces sion which we saw at Bristol lately. Interminable Debates about James Nayler,—excelling in stupor all the Human Speech, even in English Parliaments, this Editor has ever been exposed to. Nay ler, in fact, is almost all that survives with one, from Burton, as the sum of what this Parliament did. If they did aught else, the human mind, eager enough to carry off news of them, has mostly dropped it on the way hither. To Posterity they sit there as the James-Nayler Parliament. Four-hundred Gentlemen of England, and I think a sprinkling of Lords anong them, assembled from all Counties and Boroughs of the Three Nations, to sit in solemn debate on this terrific Phenomenon; a Mad Quaker fancying or seeming to fancy himself, what is not uncommon since, a new Incarnation of Christ. Shall we hang him, shall we whip him, bore the tongue of him with hot iron; shall we imprison him, set him to oakum; shall we roast, or boil, or stew him ;-shall we put the question whether this question shall be put; debate whether this shall be debated;-in Heaven's name, what shall we do with him, the terrific Phenomenon of Nayler? This is the history of Oliver's Second Parliament for three long months and odd. Nowhere does the unfathomable Deep of Dulness which our English character has in it, more stupendously disclose itself. Something almost grand in it; nay, something really grand, though in our impatience we call it “dull." They hold by Use and Wont, these honourable Gentlemen, almost as by Laws of Nature,-by Second Nature almost as by First Nature. Pious too; and would fain know rightly the way to new objects by the old roads, without trespass. Not insignificant this English character, which can placidly debate such matters, and even feel a certain smack of delight in them! A massiveness of eupeptic vigour speaks itself there, which perhaps the liveliest wit might envy. Who is there that has the strength of ten oxen, that is able to support these things? Couldst thou debate on Nayler, day after day, for a whole Winter? Thou, if the sky were threatening to fall on account of it, wouldst sink under such labour, appointed only for the oxen of the gods!-The honourable Gentlemen set Nayler to ride with his face to the tail, through various streets and cities; to be whipt (poor Nayler), to be branded, to be bored through the tongue, and then to do oakum ad libitum upon bread-and-water; after which he repented, con

1 Commons Journals, 7th to 29th Jan. 1656-7.

fessed himself mad, and this world-great Phenomenon, visible to Posterity and the West of England, was got winded up.1

LETTER CCXVII.

CONCERNING Which, however, and by what power of jurisdiction the honourable Gentlemen did it, his Highness has still some inquiry to make;-for the limits of jurisdiction between Parliament and Law-Courts, Parliament and Single Person, are never yet very clear; and Parliaments uncontrolled by a Single Person have been known to be very tyrannous before now! On Friday 26th December, Speaker Widdrington intimates that he is honoured with a Letter from his Highness; and reads the same in these words:

To our Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Sir Thomas Widdrington, Speaker of the Parliament: To be communicated to the Parliament.

O. P.

Right Trusty and Well-beloved, We greet you well. Having taken notice of a Judgment lately given by Yourselves against one James Nayler: Although We detest and abhor the giving or occasioning the least countenance to persons of such opinions and practices, or who are under the guilt of the crimes commonly imputed to the said Person: Yet We, being entrusted in the present Government, on behalf of the People of these Nations; and not knowing how far such Proceeding, entered into wholly without Us, may extend in the consequence of it,—Do desire that the House will let us know the grounds and reasons whereupon they have proceeded.

Given at Whitehall, the 25th of December 1656.*

A pertinent inquiry; which will lead us into new wildernesses of Debate, into ever deeper wildernesses;—and in fact into our far

1 Sentence pronounced, Commons Journals, vii. 486, 7 (16th Dec. 1656); executed in part, Thursday 18th Dec. (ib. 470);-petitions, negotiations on it do not end till May 26th, 1657. James Nayler's Recantation is in Somers Tracts, vi. 22-29.

* Burton, i. 370; see Commons Journals, vii. 475.

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