C

CHAPTER I.

Causes of the Restoration.

the Resto

Death of

ROMWELL left no successor. The nation CHAP. L had drifted into parties which no policy could Causes of reconcile, and which his genius only could so ration balance against each other as to control those Cromwell. reactionary tendencies which were to end in the Restoration. No man saw more clearly than the Protector the probable course of events when the helm should pass from his hands. Richard Cromwell was not a man to have won his way to power anywhere, and by no means the man to retain possession of the supreme power of the state in such circumstances. Had sovereignty come to him as it came to Charles I., he might have reigned long and happily, and England might have realized her progress without a civil war, and without passing through the years of disorganization which were to follow. Such consequences from the accidents of personal character in the sovereign, are incidents from which nations governed

BOOK II. by kings can never be secure, except as the national cha

the army.

racter shall become such as to ensure that even the king shall be a subject in the presence of the law. It was not to the credit of England that the death of a single man should have made the approaching revolution inevitable.

The conduct of the army in resisting the intolerance Conduct of of the Presbyterian faction in the Long Parliament, and in resisting its supporters elsewhere, was conduct which became men holding such a relation to their country. They had suffered much, and hazarded more, to put down priestly arrogance and arbitrary rule, and what they had aimed to do they had done. That they should refuse to cede a power to the presbyter which they had denied to the priest was only natural; and it was no less natural that they should regard the men as not likely to prove wise guardians of civil liberty, who so little understood the nature of religious liberty.

Feuds

But, unhappily, faction in the army was to become as mischievous as faction in some other connexions. soon grew up, as we have seen, between the Independents and the Presbyterians-especially between the former and the Scots. Differences on theological and ecclesiastical grounds followed, sect rivalling sect. Next came a new freedom in political speculation, dividing officers from men, and then the men among themselves. It may be doubted if there was a single man among those who took up arms at the commencement of the war, who did so with the remotest thought of becoming a republican. But the war was protracted; the continuance of war was the continuance of privation, inquietude, and danger. Every new rising among the royalists added to the old exasperation. In the train of these events came the many procrastinations, and the many duplicities, on

the part of the king. So the talk in camp and guard- CHAP. I. room came to be, that no terms with Charles Stuart would be safe; and that the bloodguiltiness resting on the land rested eminently on him. Cromwell was the last man to abandon the hope of saving the king. He prosecuted that policy until he dared not pursue it further. He knew that his efforts in that direction had impaired his influence and endangered his life. So deep and fixed did the democratic feeling in the army become, that the idea of kingship was not to be tolerated, even with Cromwell as king. It is probable that Colonel Lambert was more possessed with the notion of some day becoming protector, than with any real care about upholding republican institutions. But Harrison, Fleetwood, Desborough, Ludlow, and Hutchinson were all representative men, and sincere beyond doubt in their professed convictions. Nevertheless, they sealed the fate of themselves and of their followers when they succeeded in deterring their great leader from assuming the title of Oliver I. Cromwell saw what they had done, and conformed to their narrow and stubborn ways with a heavy heart. He knew England better than any other Englishman, and he knew the country would not long consent to be governed according to the fancies of those misguided men. Nine-tenths of the nation were in favour of a monarchy; and no small portion of the country would have given their allegiance to the hero of Naseby and Dunbar, if he had been allowed to take his place in history as the restorer of the ancient constitution. Clarendon saw clearly that the course taken by the army magnates had saved the nation for the king.*

It was confidently believed, that upon some addresses he had formerly made to some principal noblemen of the kingdom, and

BOOK II.

Long dissettlement

of the country.

On the death of Cromwell, nearly twenty years had passed since the peaceful avocations of England had been disturbed by the first rumours of civil war. Since that time the land had not known rest. In that interval the first great war had been followed by a second, and the country had never ceased to be a network of insurrection and conspiracy. As the nation had never sustained such armaments, it had never felt the need of so large an expenditure, and had never been subject to such heavy taxation. There was rigid economy, but there was of necessity a vast outlay. The exactions which fell specially upon the royalists strengthened the exchequer of the government, but tended to perpetuate and deepen inquietude among its opponents. Even the adherents to the popular cause often began to cool in their ardour, as the costs of their policy were found to be so serious, and as the prospect of realizing its object seemed to be constantly receding from them. Many thousand families seemed to have worn their mourning in vain. The industrious over all England had taxed their industry as their fathers had not, and the promise of a sufficient return was still only a promise, and a promise in which it became only more difficult than ever to confide. With the few, at such times, personal considerations may be a some friendly expostulation he had by himself, or through some 'friends with them, why they would have no acquaintance with him, 'the answer from them severally was, that if he would make himself king, they should easily know what they had to do, but they knew 'nothing of the obedience they were to pay to a protector, and that 'these returns first disposed him to that ambition. They who at that time exercised their thoughts with most sagacity, looked upon that ' refusal of his as an immediate act of Almighty God towards the king's restoration, and many of the soberest men in the nation confessed, 'after the king's return, that their dejected spirits were wonderfully 'raised by that infatuation of his.' Clarendon, Hist. vii. 201-204.

small matter compared with a great public interest; CHAP. I. but with the many, constancy under privation, and patience under delay, must not be expected to be so elastic. It was hardly surprising that a people, after so many years of unrest, should give signs of desiring As the new powers had not given them quiet, many began to doubt whether that boon was not destined to come after all from the old.

rest.

hostile

Presbyteri

ans.

We have seen something of the schism which had Alarm and grown up between the Presbyterians and Independents. policy of the It is clear from the writings of many of the Presbyterians, that the capacity, energy, and successes of the Independents had filled the minds of many in that party with a degree of awe and apprehension amounting to a superstition. The skill with which these new religionists, not long since so feeble and despised, had marred the ecclesiastical policy of the Presbyterians from the beginning of these changes; the daring with which they had swept one impediment after another from their path in the field; the success with which they had counteracted the most subtle forms of conspiracy; the splendour they had thrown about the English name by sea and land; and the boldness with which they avowed their innovating speculations concerning church matters, all combined to present to the sight of ordinary and timid men a spectacle so amazing as to seem to be supernatural. So great was the dread of this new power; so annoying and irritating was the arrogance which some of its adherents assumed-soldiers becoming dogmatists in theology, and sectaries forming their gathered churches' in parishes where the law had instituted a regular ministry—that the prospect of almost any change became welcome compared with subjection to such a state of things. The