THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON,

WITH THE

HISTORY OF HIS TIME.

CHAPTER I.

OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654— JUNE 26, 1657.

OLIVER'S First Protectorate extended over three years and six months in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three Sections, as follows:Section I-From Sept. 3, 1654 to Jan. 22, 1654-5.

This

Section, comprehending four months and a half, may be entitled OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT. Section II:-From Jan. 22, 1654-5 to Sept. 17, 1656. This Section, comprehending twenty months, may be entitled BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME

OF ARBITRARINESS.

Section III:-From Sept. 17, 1656 to June 26, 1657. This Section, comprehending nine months, may be entitled OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT.

We map out the present chapter accordingly.

SECTION I.

OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT :

SEPT. 3, 1654-JAN. 22, 1654-5.

MEETING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE ITS COMPOSITION: ANTI-OLIVERIANS NUMEROUS IN IT THEIR FOUR DAYS' DEBATE IN CHALLENGE OF CROMWELL'S POWERS: DEBATE STOPPED BY CROMWELL : HIS SPEECH IN THE PAINTED CHAMBER: SECESSION OF SOME FROM THE PARLIAMENT ACQUIESCENCE OF THE REST BY ADOPTION OF THE RECOGNITION: SPIRIT AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT STILL MAINLY ANTIOLIVERIAN: THEIR FOUR MONTHS' WORK IN REVISION OF THE PROTECTORAL CONSTITUTION: CHIEF DEBATES IN THOSE FOUR MONTHS: QUESTION OF THE PROTECTOR'S NEGATIVES: OTHER INCIDENTAL WORK OF THE PARLIAMENT: QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND OF THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE ON THIS SUBJECT: BAXTER'S PARTICIPATION: TENDENCY TO A LIMITED TOLERATION ONLY, AND VOTE AGAINST THE PROTECTOR'S PREROGATIVE OF MORE CASE OF JOHN BIDDLE, THE SOCINIAN.-INSUFFICIENCY NOW OF OUR FORMER SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND HERESIES: NEW SECTS AND DENOMINATIONS: THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: THE RANTERS: THE MUGGLETONIANS AND OTHER STRAY FANATICS: BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS : THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS: ACCOUNT OF GEORGE FOX, AND SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS TO THE YEAR 1654.-POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT WITH THEIR BILL FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION: PARLIAMENT OUTWITTED BY CROMWELL AND DISSOLVED: NO RESULT.

BEFORE the 3rd of September, 1654, the day fixed by the Constitutional Instrument for the meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate, the 460 newly elected members, or the major part of them, had flocked to Westminster. They were a gathering of the most representative men of all the three nations that could be regarded as in any sense adherents of the Commonwealth. All the Council of State, except the Earl of Mulgrave and Lord Lisle, had been returned, some of them by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe had been returned; Cromwell's two sons, Richard and Henry, had been returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen holding posts in his Highness's household had been returned. Of the old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary fame already were ex-Speaker Lenthall, Whitlocke, Sir Walter Earle, Dennis Bond, Sir Henry Vane Senior, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Scott, William Ashurst, Sir James Harrington, John Carew, Robert Wallop, and Sir Thomas Widdrington; and of Army or Navy men, of former Parliamentary experience or not, there were Colonels Whalley, Robert Lilburne, Barkstead, Harvey, Stapley, Purefoy, Admiral Blake, and ex-Major-General Harrison. Some of these had been returned by two constituencies. Bradshaw was a member, with two of the Judges, Hale and Thorpe, and ex-Judge Glynne. Lawyers besides were not wanting; and Dr. Owen, though a divine, represented Oxford University. One missed chiefly, among old names, those of Sir Henry Vane Junior, Henry Marten, Selden, Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow; but there were many new faces. Among the thirty members sent from Scotland were the Earl of Linlithgow, Sir Alexander Wedderburn, Colonel William Lockhart, the Laird of Swinton, and the English Colonels Okey and Read. Ireland had also returned military Englishmen in Major-General Hardress Waller, Colonels Hewson, Sadler, Axtell, Venables, and Jephson, with Lord Broghill, Sir Charles Coote, Sir John

Temple, Sir Robert King, and others, describable as Irish or Anglo-Irish.1

The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell's "Fortunate Day," chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and his opening speech was deferred till next day. On Monday, accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much that he liked. It was a political sermon, on " Israel's bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,"-Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart rule in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to. Goodwin seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly conservative" speech. Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the three nations. Then he withdrew. That same day they chose Lenthall for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk."

Cromwell's hopes were blasted. The political division of the population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last denominations hardly separable by any clear line. Now, in this new Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians together formed a ma

1 Complete list given in Parl. Hist. III. 1428-1433.

2 Cromwell's Second Speech (Carlyle,

III. 16-37); Commons Journals of dates.

jority. They needed only to coalesce, and the Parliament called by Oliver's own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian Parliament. And this is what happened.

No sooner was the House constituted, with about 320 members present out of the total 460, than it proposed for its first business what was called "The Matter of the Government"; by which was meant a review of that document of fortytwo Articles, called the Government of the Commonwealth, which was the constitutional basis of the Protectorate. On Thursday, Sept. 7, accordingly, they addressed themselves to the vital question of the whole document as propounded in the first of the Articles. "Whether the House shall approve that the Government shall be in one Single Person and a Parliament": such was the debate that day in Grand Committee, after a division on the previous question whether they should go into Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted No, with Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State) for their tellers, but 141 had voted Yea, with Bradshaw and Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of the Commonwealth, already introduced somehow as a matter of fact, should be continued. On this subject the House debated through the rest of that sitting, and the whole of the next, and the next, and the next,-i. e. till Monday, Sept 11. Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Scott took the lead for the Republicans, not that they hoped to unseat Cromwell, but that they wanted to assert the paramount authority of Parliament, and convert the existing Protectorship into a derivative from the House then sitting. Lawrence, Wolseley, Strickland, and others of the Council of State, describable as the ministerial members, maintained the existing constitution of the Protectorate, and pointed out the dangers that would arise from plucking up a good practical basis for mere reasons of theory. Matthew Hale interposed at last with a middle motion, substantially embodying the Republican view, but affirming the Protectorship at once, and reserving qualification.