Before sunset on the memorable day
on which King Charles the First was executed, the
House of Commons passed an act declaring it treason
in any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales or
anybody else King of England. Soon
afterwards, it declared that the House of Lords was
useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished;
and directed that the late King’s statue should
be taken down from the Royal Exchange in the City and
other public places. Having laid hold of some
famous Royalists who had escaped from prison, and
having beheaded the DUKE OF HAMILTON, LORD HOLLAND,
and LORD CAPEL, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very
courageously), they then appointed a Council of State
to govern the country. It consisted of forty-one
members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw was
made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted
members who had opposed the King’s death, and
made up its numbers to about a hundred and fifty.
But, it still had an army of more
than forty thousand men to deal with, and a very hard
task it was to manage them. Before the King’s
execution, the army had appointed some of its officers
to remonstrate between them and the Parliament; and
now the common soldiers began to take that office
upon themselves. The regiments under orders for
Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city of
London seized their own flag, and refused to obey
orders. For this, the ringleader was shot:
which did not mend the matter, for, both his comrades
and the people made a public funeral for him, and
accompanied the body to the grave with sound of trumpets
and with a gloomy procession of persons carrying bundles
of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver was the
only man to deal with such difficulties as these,
and he soon cut them short by bursting at midnight
into the town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the
mutineers were sheltered, taking four hundred of them
prisoners, and shooting a number of them by sentence
of court-martial. The soldiers soon found, as
all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled
with. And there was an end of the mutiny.
The Scottish Parliament did not know
Oliver yet; so, on hearing of the King’s execution,
it proclaimed the Prince of Wales King Charles the
Second, on condition of his respecting the Solemn League
and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that time,
and so was Montrose, from whose help he had hopes
enough to keep him holding on and off with commissioners
from Scotland, just as his father might have done.
These hopes were soon at an end; for, Montrose, having
raised a few hundred exiles in Germany, and landed
with them in Scotland, found that the people there,
instead of joining him, deserted the country at his
approach. He was soon taken prisoner and carried
to Edinburgh. There he was received with every
possible insult, and carried to prison in a cart, his
officers going two and two before him. He was
sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a gallows
thirty feet high, to have his head set on a spike in
Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other places,
according to the old barbarous manner. He said
he had always acted under the Royal orders, and only
wished he had limbs enough to be distributed through
Christendom, that it might be the more widely known
how loyal he had been. He went to the scaffold
in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end
at thirty-eight years of age. The breath was
scarcely out of his body when Charles abandoned his
memory, and denied that he had ever given him orders
to rise in his behalf. O the family failing
was strong in that Charles then!
Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament
to command the army in Ireland, where he took a terrible
vengeance for the sanguinary rebellion, and made tremendous
havoc, particularly in the siege of Drogheda, where
no quarter was given, and where he found at least a
thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in the
great church: every one of whom was killed by
his soldiers, usually known as OLIVER’S IRONSIDES.
There were numbers of friars and priests among them,
and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his despatch that
these were ‘knocked on the head’ like the
rest.
But, Charles having got over to Scotland
where the men of the Solemn League and Covenant led
him a prodigiously dull life and made him very weary
with long sermons and grim Sundays, the Parliament
called the redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish
men on the head for setting up that Prince.
Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general in
Ireland in his stead (he died there afterwards), and
he imitated the example of his father-in-law with
such good will that he brought the country to subjection,
and laid it at the feet of the Parliament. In
the end, they passed an act for the settlement of
Ireland, generally pardoning all the common people,
but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier
sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in
any killing of Protestants, or who refused to lay
down their arms. Great numbers of Irish were
got out of the country to serve under Catholic powers
abroad, and a quantity of land was declared to have
been forfeited by past offences, and was given to
people who had lent money to the Parliament early
in the war. These were sweeping measures; but,
if Oliver Cromwell had had his own way fully, and
had stayed in Ireland, he would have done more yet.
However, as I have said, the Parliament
wanted Oliver for Scotland; so, home Oliver came,
and was made Commander of all the Forces of the Commonwealth
of England, and in three days away he went with sixteen
thousand soldiers to fight the Scottish men.
Now, the Scottish men, being then as you
will generally find them now mighty cautious,
reflected that the troops they had were not used to
war like the Ironsides, and would be beaten in an
open fight. Therefore they said, ’If we
live quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if
all the farmers come into the town and desert the
country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron
hunger and be forced to go away.’ This
was, no doubt, the wisest plan; but as the Scottish
clergy would interfere with what they knew
nothing about, and would perpetually preach long sermons
exhorting the soldiers to come out and fight, the soldiers
got it in their heads that they absolutely must come
out and fight. Accordingly, in an evil hour
for themselves, they came out of their safe position.
Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three thousand,
and took ten thousand prisoners.
To gratify the Scottish Parliament,
and preserve their favour, Charles had signed a declaration
they laid before him, reproaching the memory of his
father and mother, and representing himself as a most
religious Prince, to whom the Solemn League and Covenant
was as dear as life. He meant no sort of truth
in this, and soon afterwards galloped away on horseback
to join some tiresome Highland friends, who were always
flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was overtaken
and induced to return; but this attempt, which was
called ‘The Start,’ did him just so much
service, that they did not preach quite such long sermons
at him afterwards as they had done before.
On the first of January, one thousand
six hundred and fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned
him at Scone. He immediately took the chief
command of an army of twenty thousand men, and marched
to Stirling. His hopes were heightened, I dare
say, by the redoubtable Oliver being ill of an ague;
but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, and went
to work with such energy that he got behind the Royalist
army and cut it off from all communication with Scotland.
There was nothing for it then, but to go on to England;
so it went on as far as Worcester, where the mayor
and some of the gentry proclaimed King Charles the
Second straightway. His proclamation, however,
was of little use to him, for very few Royalists appeared;
and, on the very same day, two people were publicly
beheaded on Tower Hill for espousing his cause.
Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick
speed, and he and his Ironsides so laid about them
in the great battle which was fought there, that they
completely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the
Royalist army; though the Scottish men fought so gallantly
that it took five hours to do.
The escape of Charles after this battle
of Worcester did him good service long afterwards,
for it induced many of the generous English people
to take a romantic interest in him, and to think much
better of him than he ever deserved. He fled
in the night, with not more than sixty followers,
to the house of a Catholic lady in Staffordshire.
There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty left
him. He cropped his hair, stained his face and
hands brown as if they were sunburnt, put on the clothes
of a labouring countryman, and went out in the morning
with his axe in his hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters
who were brothers, and another man who was their brother-in-law.
These good fellows made a bed for him under a tree,
as the weather was very bad; and the wife of one of
them brought him food to eat; and the old mother of
the four brothers came and fell down on her knees
before him in the wood, and thanked God that her sons
were engaged in saving his life. At night, he
came out of the forest and went on to another house
which was near the river Severn, with the intention
of passing into Wales; but the place swarmed with soldiers,
and the bridges were guarded, and all the boats were
made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft covered
over with hay, for some time, he came out of his place,
attended by COLONEL CARELESS, a Catholic gentleman
who had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all
next day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak.
It was lucky for the King that it was September-time,
and that the leaves had not begun to fall, since he
and the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could catch
glimpses of the soldiers riding about below, and could
hear the crash in the wood as they went about beating
the boughs.
After this, he walked and walked until
his feet were all blistered; and, having been concealed
all one day in a house which was searched by the troopers
while he was there, went with LORD WILMOT, another
of his good friends, to a place called Bentley, where
one MISS LANE, a Protestant lady, had obtained a pass
to be allowed to ride through the guards to see a
relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a
servant, he rode in the saddle before this young lady
to the house of SIR JOHN WINTER, while Lord Wilmot
rode there boldly, like a plain country gentleman,
with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir
John Winter’s butler had been servant in Richmond
Palace, and knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon
him; but, the butler was faithful and kept the secret.
As no ship could be found to carry him abroad, it
was planned that he should go still travelling
with Miss Lane as her servant to another
house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; and
then Miss Lane and her cousin, MR. LASCELLES, who had
gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home.
I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin,
for I am sure she must have been a brave, kind girl.
If I had been that cousin, I should certainly have
loved Miss Lane.
When Charles, lonely for the loss
of Miss Lane, was safe at Trent, a ship was hired
at Lyme, the master of which engaged to take two gentlemen
to France. In the evening of the same day, the
King now riding as servant before another
young lady set off for a public-house at
a place called Charmouth, where the captain of the
vessel was to take him on board. But, the captain’s
wife, being afraid of her husband getting into trouble,
locked him up and would not let him sail. Then
they went away to Bridport; and, coming to the inn
there, found the stable-yard full of soldiers who
were on the look-out for Charles, and who talked about
him while they drank. He had such presence of
mind, that he led the horses of his party through
the yard as any other servant might have done, and
said, ‘Come out of the way, you soldiers; let
us have room to pass here!’ As he went along,
he met a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed his eyes and
said to him, ’Why, I was formerly servant to
Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes
seen you there, young man?’ He certainly had,
for Charles had lodged there. His ready answer
was, ’Ah, I did live with him once; but I have
no time to talk now. We’ll have a pot of
beer together when I come back.’
From this dangerous place he returned
to Trent, and lay there concealed several days.
Then he escaped to Heale, near Salisbury; where, in
the house of a widow lady, he was hidden five days,
until the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in
Sussex, undertook to convey a ‘gentleman’
to France. On the night of the fifteenth of October,
accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, the King
rode to Brighton, then a little fishing village, to
give the captain of the ship a supper before going
on board; but, so many people knew him, that this
captain knew him too, and not only he, but the landlord
and landlady also. Before he went away, the
landlord came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and
said he hoped to live to be a lord and to see his
wife a lady; at which Charles laughed. They had
had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking
and drinking, at which the King was a first-rate hand;
so, the captain assured him that he would stand by
him, and he did. It was agreed that the captain
should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should
address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt
who was running away from his creditors, and that
he hoped they would join him in persuading the captain
to put him ashore in France. As the King acted
his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty
shillings to drink, they begged the captain to do
what such a worthy gentleman asked. He pretended
to yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe
to Normandy.
Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland
kept quiet by plenty of forts and soldiers put there
by Oliver, the Parliament would have gone on quietly
enough, as far as fighting with any foreign enemy went,
but for getting into trouble with the Dutch, who in
the spring of the year one thousand six hundred and
fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under their ADMIRAL
VAN TROMP, to call upon the bold English ADMIRAL BLAKE
(who was there with half as many ships as the Dutch)
to strike his flag. Blake fired a raging broadside
instead, and beat off Van Tromp; who, in the autumn,
came back again with seventy ships, and challenged
the bold Blake who still was only half
as strong to fight him. Blake fought
him all day; but, finding that the Dutch were too
many for him, got quietly off at night. What
does Van Tromp upon this, but goes cruising and boasting
about the Channel, between the North Foreland and the
Isle of Wight, with a great Dutch broom tied to his
masthead, as a sign that he could and would sweep
the English of the sea! Within three months,
Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom too;
for, he and two other bold commanders, DEAN and MONK,
fought him three whole days, took twenty-three of
his ships, shivered his broom to pieces, and settled
his business.
Things were no sooner quiet again,
than the army began to complain to the Parliament
that they were not governing the nation properly, and
to hint that they thought they could do it better
themselves. Oliver, who had now made up his
mind to be the head of the state, or nothing at all,
supported them in this, and called a meeting of officers
and his own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings
in Whitehall, to consider the best way of getting
rid of the Parliament. It had now lasted just
as many years as the King’s unbridled power
had lasted, before it came into existence. The
end of the deliberation was, that Oliver went down
to the House in his usual plain black dress, with
his usual grey worsted stockings, but with an unusual
party of soldiers behind him. These last he
left in the lobby, and then went in and sat down.
Presently he got up, made the Parliament a speech,
told them that the Lord had done with them, stamped
his foot and said, ’You are no Parliament.
Bring them in! Bring them in!’ At this
signal the door flew open, and the soldiers appeared.
‘This is not honest,’ said Sir Harry Vane,
one of the members. ‘Sir Harry Vane!’
cried Cromwell; ’O, Sir Harry Vane! The
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!’ Then
he pointed out members one by one, and said this man
was a drunkard, and that man a dissipated fellow, and
that man a liar, and so on. Then he caused the
Speaker to be walked out of his chair, told the guard
to clear the House, called the mace upon the table which
is a sign that the House is sitting ’a
fool’s bauble,’ and said, ‘here,
carry it away!’ Being obeyed in all these orders,
he quietly locked the door, put the key in his pocket,
walked back to Whitehall again, and told his friends,
who were still assembled there, what he had done.
They formed a new Council of State
after this extraordinary proceeding, and got a new
Parliament together in their own way: which Oliver
himself opened in a sort of sermon, and which he said
was the beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth.
In this Parliament there sat a well-known leather-seller,
who had taken the singular name of Praise God Barebones,
and from whom it was called, for a joke, Barebones’s
Parliament, though its general name was the Little
Parliament. As it soon appeared that it was
not going to put Oliver in the first place, it turned
out to be not at all like the beginning of heaven
upon earth, and Oliver said it really was not to be
borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament
in much the same way as he had disposed of the other;
and then the council of officers decided that he must
be made the supreme authority of the kingdom, under
the title of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
So, on the sixteenth of December,
one thousand six hundred and fifty-three, a great
procession was formed at Oliver’s door, and he
came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of
boots, and got into his coach and went down to Westminster,
attended by the judges, and the lord mayor, and the
aldermen, and all the other great and wonderful personages
of the country. There, in the Court of Chancery,
he publicly accepted the office of Lord Protector.
Then he was sworn, and the City sword was handed
to him, and the seal was handed to him, and all the
other things were handed to him which are usually
handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions.
When Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite
made and completely finished off as Lord Protector;
and several of the Ironsides preached about it at
great length, all the evening.