republican; and by others who detested any approach to the old aristocratic House of Lords. On the fourth

day of the session a message "from the Lords," delivered by two of the judges, who all attended as formerly in the Upper House, desired the concurrence of the Commons in an address to the Protector for a day of humiliation and fast. The Commons vehemently protested against the title assumed in the message, and would admit of no other than that of "the Other House." On the morrow, the 25th of January, upon a letter from the Protector to the Speaker of the House of Commons, they met his highness in the Banqueting House, and there he exhorted them to unity, and to the observance of their own laws and rules in "The Petition and Advance." Whitelock adds that he gave them a state of the public accounts and much good advice. But all this was of no avail; the majority in the Commons persevered in their attack, and presently broached the doctrine that the new House was, and must be, a mere dependency of the Commons-a thing invested with certain functions of legislature, and with nothing morethat it could never be a co-ordinate power with the Commons. Scot raked up the whole history of the peers since the commencement of the civil war; and then coming to the grand crisis, he said, "The lords would not join in the trial of the king. We must lay things bare and naked. We were either to lay all that blood of ten years' war upon ourselves, or upon some other object. We called the king of England to our bar, and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed; and so let all the enemies of God perish! The House of Commons had a good conscience in it. Upon this, the Lords' House adjourned, and never met, and hereby came a farewell of all those peers.' "'* Nor did Scot and his associates

limit their attack to the other House to mere declamation and oratory; they assaulted the protectorate itself, and a petition was circulated in the city by them and

* Burton.

by some officers of the army for the purpose of abolishing Cromwell's all but kingly office. "All these passages," says Whitelock, "tended to their own destruction, which it was not difficult to foresee." Accordingly, on the 4th of February, the Protector, without any intimation of his purpose, went down to the House of Lords early in the morning, summoned the Commons before him, and ended a short, complaining speech with saying:-"I do dissolve this parliament, and let God judge between me and you." And thus ended Cromwell's last parliament, which had sat only fourteen days.

66

The Protector was never in so much danger as at this moment: the republicans and their friends were ready both with arms and men to fall in with swords in their hands;" the army was murmuring for want of pay; the royalists were spirited and combined by means of the Marquess of Ormond, who, during the sitting of parliament, had passed several days in disguise and concealment in the city of London; the Levellers and Fifth-monarchy men were pledging their desperate services to those that could dupe them; Cromwell's old friend Harrison, who had been released from the Tower after a short confinement, "was deep in the plot;' Colonel Silas Titus, a Presbyterian royalist, or Colonel Sexby, or whoever was the author of the famed tract entitled 'Killing no Murder,' had invited all patriots to assassination, proclaiming that the greatest benefit any Englishman could render his country would be to murder Cromwell; and yet the Protector, even sick and dispirited as he was, was capable of conjuring this universal storm. He called a meeting of officers; he harangued the city and common common council; beheaded Dr. Hewit and Sir Henry Slingsby; threw other plotters into prison; hanged three that were taken with arms in their hands in Cheapside; and not only preserved his authority at home, but also prosecuted his wars abroad with vigour and success. Those English troops, serving with Turenne, gained a brilliant victory over the Spaniards commanded by Don Juan and the

Duke of York; helped to take Dunkirk, which according to the treaty was delivered to Cromwell, and well garrisoned with Englishmen. But the Protector was sinking to the grave. "The first symptoms of this great man's last sickness appeared presently upon the death of his daughter Claypole, whose end is thought by many to have hastened his dissolution. About the beginning of October his distemper discovered itself to be a bastard tertian ague; which, for a week's time, threatened no danger. But presently he began to grow worse, and so was brought from Hampton Court (where he first fell sick, and where he made a will as to his domestic affairs) to London."* At first he spoke confidently of his recovery, and of the good things he intended by the grace of heaven to do for his country; but his malady gained rapidly upon him, and during the night of the 2nd of September, less than a month after the death of his dear daughter, he was assured that his end was approaching, and was overheared by Major Butler uttering this prayer:- Lord, I am a poor foolish creature; this people would have me live; they think it will be best for them, and that it will redound much to thy glory. All the stir is about this.† Others would fain have me die. Lord, pardon them, and pardon thy foolish people; forgive them their sins, and do not forsake them; but love and bless them, and give them rest, and bring them to a consistency, and give me I am a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, through Jesus Christ who strengtheneth me."‡ In the course of that night, he declared, in the presence of four or five of the council, that " Lord Richard,"

rest.

Perfect Politician.

my

"Never," said his friend and secretary Thurloe, "was there any man so prayed for as he was during his sickness, solemn assemblies meeting every day to beseech the Lord for the continuance of his life; so that he is gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and upon the wings of the prayers of the saints."-Letter to Henry Cromwell, written on the 4th of September.

Kennet.

should be his successor." * On the following morning he was speechless, and he expired between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 3rd of September, the day which he accounted his happiest day, the anniversary of his great victories of Worcester and Dunbar. He was in the 60th year of his age.

Immediately after the death of Oliver Cromwell the council assembled, and being satisfied that the protector in his life-time, according to "The Petition and Advice," had declared his son Richard to be his successor, they gave orders for his being proclaimed in a solemn manner. The neighbouring princes and states sent ministers to condole with him on the death of his father, and to congratulate him on his happy and peaceable succession to the government. The army serving in Flanders, and still gaining laurels there, proclaimed Richard at Dunkirk and in their camp, and sent over respectful addresses to him. The officers of the navy gladly acknowledged his authority, and pledged themselves to stand by him; and the same was done by General Monk and his officers in Scotland. But Richard Cromwell was no soldier, and destitute of high commanding powers of any kind; he had lived a quiet, retired life, as far as possible away from the turmoil of government and the bustle of the camp, and he was almost a stranger to that soldiery which his father had known personally almost to a man, and over which by a rare combination of qualities-by a mixture of unflinching firmness in essentials and good nature in minor points, by devotion and by an easy familiarity which condescended to drollery, he had exercised an almost magical influence. The payment of the troops too was somewhat in arrears, and Richard found the coffers of the state almost empty. From these and other circumstances, which may be easily conceived, the military presently betrayed symptoms of discontent. His brother-in-law, Fleetwood, a

Letter of Lord Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell in Thurloe State Papers.

† Whitelock.-Thurloe.

good soldier, a favourite with the army, but a weak man
in other respects, as well as ambitious and imprudent,
became jealous of the new Protector, who had nominated
him to be, under himself, commander-in-chief of the
land forces. Fleetwood secretly encouraged a strange
petition, which was drawn up and presented, requiring
the Protector, in effect, to give up his control over the
army.* Richard replied, that he had given the com-
mand of the forces to Fleetwood, who seemed generally
acceptable to them; but that to gratify them further,
or wholly to give up the power of the sword, was con-
trary to the constitution which lodged that power in the
hands of the Protector and parliament jointly.

By the advice of Thurloe, St. John, Fiennes, and
others, Richard resolved to assemble the representatives
of the people and "the other House."

A.D. 1659.-The new parliament met on the 27th of
January. The other House was the same despised nul-
lity as before. Scarcely half of the members of the
Commons would obey the summons of Richard to meet
him in that "other House," at the opening of the ses-
sion. Without loss of time the Commons attacked his
right to be Lord Protector, and nearly every part of the
present constitution, clamouring against the inexpediency
and peril of allowing the "other House"" to exist. Some
of Richard's family and nearest connexions joined in this
outcry, some out of personal ambition or pique, some out
of sheer republicanism. The republicans were invigo-
rated by the return of Sir Harry Vane, Ludlow, and
Bradshaw, who facilitated the manœuvres of General
Monk, and the return of royalty, by the hot war they
waged against the Protector. The disguised royalists of
course joined the republicans. An Act of Recognition
was, however, passed, and a revenue was settled for the

*The petitioners required that no officer should be de-
prived of his commission except by a court-martial; and
that the power of granting commissions should be intrusted
to some person whose services had placed him above sus-
picion.