of the judges "that they should not suffer the lawyers to prate what it would not become them to hear," yet says, “in ali other matters, which did not concern the loss of his jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for the law, rarely interposing between party and party." In his fiscal measures the most invidious was the imposition of an especial tax upon a limited number of royalists—a property tax, under which all those of the king's party who were considered disaffected, and who either possessed an income of a hundred a year from land, or a personal estate of fifteen hundred pounds in value, were called upon for a contribution of one-tenth. To assess and collect this tax it was necessary to call forth some new instruments. The Protector divided the country into ten districts, each under the authority of a Major-General, who had various large powers, and who had especially under bis command the Militia of the Counties. The Militia was a force essentially different from the regular army; a force not without strong popular instincts, and not so manageable in carrying through acts of oppression. It was a military police, especially appointed to enforce a system of partial repression. There was no resistance to the acts of the Major-Generals and their Commissioners, and there was no large amount of murmuring. The decimation of the richer royalists, who had already been so harassed by sequestrations, and for whose relief Cromwell had himself laboured to carry through the Act of Oblivion, was truly described by Ludlow as calculated to render its victims "desperate and irreconcileable, they being not able to call anything their own, whilst by the same rule that he seized one-tenth, he might also take away the other nine parts at his pleasure." There is a worse evil in despotic courses than that of making men “desperate and irreconcileable ”—that of making them time-serving, slavish, and apathetic. A passage in Baxter's life is illustrative of this: "James Berry was made Major-General of Worcestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and North Wales, the counties in which he had formerly lived as a servant, a clerk of iron-works. His reign was modest and short; but hated and scorned by the gentry that had known his inferiority, so that it had been better for him to have chosen a stranger place. And yet many of them attended him as submissively as if they had honoured him; so significant a thing is power and prosperity with worldly minds." That these Major-Generals meddled with other royalists than those of good property is shown by the arrest of "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 519. ↑ "Life," p. 97. SEVERITIES AGAINST PAPISTS AND EPISCOPALIANS. 73 John Cleveland, "that incomparable son of Apollo" according to the creed of the Cavaliers, for whose cause he has been writing bitter satires since the first days of the Long Parliament. Colonel Haynes has arrested him at Norwich, and sent him to prison at Yarmouth. Cleveland addressed a petition to the Protector, though he had ridiculed his "copper-nose," in which the unfortunate poet says, "I am inclined to believe that next to the adherence to the royal party, the cause of my confinement is the narrowness of my estate, for none stand committed whose estate can bail them. I only am the prisoner who have no acres to be my hostage. Now if my poverty be criminal, with reverence be it spoken, I must im plead your highness, whose victorious arms have reduced me to it, as accessory to my guilt." The Petition, an elaborate composition far more laudatory than insulting, procured the poet's release.* At this period the government of the Protector was more than usually harsh towards the Catholics and the Clergy of the Anglican Church. The plots against the Commonwealth were generally mixed up with the intrigues of Papists, and the harshness towards them was the practical continuance of the spirit of the severe penal laws. The Episcopalians were harassed at the instance of the Presbyterians, in spite of Cromwell's own ardent desire for toleration. One of the most odious measures against them was an ordinance prohibiting them to be received in private families as preceptors. Archbishop Usher, for whom the Protector had a deep respect, remonstrated with him against his injustice. He did not withdraw the ordinance, but it remained inoperative. Prejudices were too strong to allow him to act up to his own principles. But with the great Puritan body, and the various sectaries that sprang from them, he was determined to keep their animo des under the control of an equal justice. "If a man of one form,” he declared to the Parliament in 1656, "will be trampling heels of another form; if an Independent, for example, will despise him who is under Baptism, and will revile him, and will reproach and provoke him, I will not suffer it in him." Neither should the Independent censure the Presbyterian, nor the Presbyterian the Independent. This toleration made him many enemies: "I have borne my reproach; but I have, through God's mercy, not been unhappy in hindering any one religion to impose upon another." The Quakers, who were hunted and persecuted by every other sect, found a friend in Cromwell. George Fox, who had Printed with the Poems, edit, 1657. on the י" been seized in his preachings, and carried to London, managed to see the Protector, and exhorted him to keep in the fear of God; and Cromwell, having patiently listened to his lecture, parted with him, saying "Come again to my house. If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do my own soul."* George and some of his brethren had been dispersing "base books against the Lord Protector," as major-general Goffe informed Thurloe. Cromwell sent the Quaker unharmed away, having received from him a written promise that he would do nothing against his govern ment. * Fox's "Journal," quoted in Carlyle's "Cromwell,” vol. ii. p. 121. CROMWELL'S FOREIGN POLICY. 75 CHAPTER IV. Greatness of Cromwell in his Foreign Policy.-Naval armaments.-Blake's exploits.Jamaica taken.-Cromwell's interference for the Vaudois.-He attempts to procure the re-admission of the Jews to settle in England.-Hostility of the Republicans to the Protector.-Cromwell requires a pledge from Republican leaders.-Meeting of the Protector's Second Parliament.-Cromwell's opening Speech.-Members excluded from the Parliament.-Case of James Nayler.-Sindercomb's plot.-The Parliament votes that Cromwell shall be offered the Crown.-Conferences on the subject of Kingship.-Cromwell declines to accept the title.-Blake's victory at Santa Cruz.-Cromwell inaugurated as Protector under a new Instrument of Government. -Second Session of Parliament.-The Upper House.-The old secluded Members admitted to sit.-Cromwell's Speech.-Violent dissensions.-The Parliament dissolved.-Projected rising of Royalists.—Allied War in the Netherlands.—Dunkirk. -Cromwell's family afflictions.-His illness and death. "His greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad." So writes Clarendon of him who, he says, "will be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad man." The mere courtiers of Charles II. used to talk of the Protector as "that wretch, Cromwell."* It is something for Clarendon to acknowledge that "he had some good qualities." He had the highest of all qualities in a prince-a sense of public duty. He was an Englishman, bent upon sustaining the honour of his country amongst the nations. In this great design his genius luxuriated. He was not beset with difficulties, as at home, when he sent forth his fleets to sweep the Barbary pirates from the Mediterranean, or employed his diplomatists to express in distinct terms, that the Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys should not be massacred by a duke of Savoy, although supported by a king of France. He went straight to his object, when he concluded the French alliance, and rejected that of Spain, because "there is not liberty of conscience to be had from the Spaniard, neither is there satisfaction for injuries nor for blood." "Elizabeth, of famous memory, that lady, that great queen," as Cromwell terms her, was the load-star of his foreign policy; "nothing being more usual than his saying 'that his ships in the Mediterranean should visit Civita Vecchia, and that the •Letter of Henrietta Maria; Green, p. 380.. ↑ Speech, 17th September, 1656. sound of his cannon should be heard at Rome.'"* He raised his country out of the pitiful subjection to which the Stuarts had reduced it, to be again amongst the most respected of Christian powers. "It was hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friendship was current at the value he put upon it." ↑ The price which he demanded for his friendship was, that the liberties of Englishmen, their personal security, and their rights of conscience, should be respected throughout the world; that no sea should be closed against English commerce; that no combination of crowned heads should attempt to control the domestic government of these kingdoms. He made no pretensions to national supremacy inconsistent with the rights of other countries; but not a tittle would abate of that respect which was due to his own country and his own government. He was raised to supreme power by a revolution upon which all monarchical rulers must have looked with dread and suspicion and secret hatred; but he made no efforts to imbue other kingdoms with a revolutionary spirit. His moderation commanded a far higher respect than if he had formed schemes of European conquest; or had attempted to conciliate discontented colonels and murmuring troopers, by leading them in person against Condé or Don John of Austria. Truly has it been said, "He was a soldier; he had risen by war. Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have been easy for him to plunge his country into continental hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions which he ruled, by the splendour of his victories.”‡ He left to Blake the glory of making the flag of England triumphant on the seas, satisfied to counsel and encourage him. His practical spirit of doing everything for utility, and nothing for vain glory, was so infused into his officers, that when Turenne sent to Lockhart, Cromwell's general in the Netherlands, an explanation of the plan of the battle they were to fight with their allied forces, the Englishman, with a noble common sense that could lay aside the morbid vanity which too often mars the success of joint enterprises, exclaimed, “ Very good: I shall obey M. de Turenne's orders, and he may explain his reasons after the battle, if he pleases." § The maintenance and increase of the was the especial care of the Protector. "Clarendon," vol. vii. p. 297. Ibid. naval arm of our strength "I went," writes Evelyn Macaulay, "Essays,” vol. i. |