CROMWELL 



579 



he resorted as usual to strong measures, marched 



(HI London, and rorired I he- |.ai liameiil. He WOM 



never revolutionary, but he eared not fir forum 

 when they stood in the way of what he thought 

 rixht. It was no douht Under his directions that 

 ,lo\.-e carried oil' tlu; king from Holm by. It seems 

 tli.it < Yomuell ill-sired, had it Ix-en possible, to 

 make terms with the king ; hut Charles was in- 

 curably |Mssesse<l witli the idea of recovering his 

 power by playing oir one party against the other. 

 Whether it was by Cromwell or by the Scotch 

 envoys that Charles was induced to fly from 

 Hampton Court is a question on which authorities 

 differ. 



As a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, the king, 

 while he was negotiating with the parliament, was 

 carrying on intrigues with his partisans in England 

 ami Scotland, wliich brought on the second Civil 

 War and the invasion of England by Hamilton. 

 Again Cromwell was called to take the field for his 

 cause, which was once more in extreme peril. After 

 swiftly quelling the insurrection in Wales, he 

 marched northwards, attacked the invading army 

 of Hamilton at Preston and totally destroyed it. 

 The soldiery now clamoured for justice on the king ; 

 and Cromwell, probably sharing their wrath and 

 despairing of any arrangement with the faithless 

 Charles, complied with their demand, brought the 

 king to trial, sat in the High Court of Justice, 

 and signed the death-warrant (January 1649). 

 Had ambition been his motive for this deed we 

 should hardly have found him at the same time 

 treating for the marriage of Richard, his heir, with 

 the daughter of Mr Mayor, a private gentleman. 

 The Commonwealth having been established, the 

 first service rendered by Cromwell to it was the 

 suppression of the formidable meeting of the 

 Levellers, which he accomplished by a characteristic 

 union of vigour with mercy. He was next sent to 

 Ireland to end the civil war still raging there. 

 This he did effectually, and on the whole humanely, 

 though it cost some strokes of sanguinary severity, 

 the necessity for which he himself deplored. 



On his return from Ireland he (Pairfax having 

 declined ) took the command against the Scots, 

 who had declared against the regicide republic and 

 called in Charles II. With his usual daring he 

 assumed the offensive and invaded Scotland. But 

 he was out-generalled by Leslie, and was in extreme 



Eeril, when a false move of the Scots, by affording 

 im battle, enabled him once more to display the 

 superiority of the soldiery which he had trained 

 and to win the decisive victory of Dunbar. The 

 image of militant Puritanism was never more 

 vividly presented than by Cromwell's bearing on 

 that scene. With the defeated Covenanters he 

 dealt as with estranged friends. The royalists 

 proper, who still held the field in Scotland, having 

 eluded his strategy and marched into England, he 

 followed, and on September 3, 1651, at Worcester, 

 gained the victory which he called his crowning 

 mercy and which ended the Civil War. Returning 

 to London in triumph, he declared for a constitu- 

 tional settlement and an amnesty. The parlia- 

 ment, now reduced by revolutionary expulsions to 

 the ' Rump,' was bent on perpetuating its own 

 power. After fruitless negotiations Cromwell 

 turned it out with unwise violence and contumely. 

 Supreme power being now in his hands and those of 

 the other chiefs of the army, he called the con- 

 vention of Puritan notables, nicknamed the Bare- 

 hones Parliament, for the settlement of the nation. 

 The Barebones Parliament proving too visionary 

 and revolutionary, was dismissed, and supreme 

 power reverted to Cromwell and his officers. 



Cromwell was now declared Protector under the 

 instrument of government, which provided for a 

 government by a single person with one House of 



parliament elected on a reformed basis of repre- 

 Mentation, and a Council of State, in the appoint- 

 ment of which nomination by the Protector wan 

 combined with election by the parliament (Decem- 

 ber 16, 1653). A power of legislating by ordinance 

 till parliament should meet was reserved to the 

 1'rotector, and was largely used by Cromwell for the 

 purposes of reorganisation and reform. Hi* aim 

 evidently was to restore in sulwtance the ancient 

 constitution of the realm, with a Protestant pro- 

 tectorate or monarchy, and full securities for 

 liberty, especially for the religious liberty which 

 had been in hi- mind at least the main object of 

 the Civil War. But when parliament met, though 

 elected under his writs, it fell to questioning his 

 authority, and he was compelled to exclude the 

 disaffected by a test. His second parliament, from 

 which the recalcitrants were excluded at the outset, 

 offered him the title of king. Cromwell wavered ; 

 but the stubborn resistance of the republican 

 soldiers decided him to decline the offer. The 

 Upper House of parliament was, however, restored, 

 and the Protector was empowered to name his 

 successor. A fixed revenue was also voted to him. 

 He was now installed as Protector with a cere- 

 monial resembling a coronation. When the parlia- 

 ment met again, its two Houses fell into a collision 

 which compelled Cromwell to dissolve it ; and his 

 power thenceforth rested upon the army, though 

 it was his constant desire to revert to constitutional 

 government, and he was preparing to call a new 

 parliament when he died. 



His protectorate was a perpetual conflict with 

 republican resistance on the one hand and with 

 royalist plots and risings on the other, while his 

 life was constantly threatened by royalist assassins. 

 To keep down the royalists he for a time put 

 the country under major-generals, supplying his 

 treasury at the same time by an impost on the 

 property of the cavaliers. He was, nevertheless, 

 able to inaugurate a great policy, home and 

 foreign. He reorganised the national church on 

 the principle of comprehension, including all but 

 Papists, Prelatists, and Antitrinitarians, while the 

 ministry was weeded by commission, the result 

 being, as Baxter, an opponent of the government, 

 testifies, a ministry very acceptable to the people. 

 Personally tolerant, Cromwell upheld toleration as 

 far as he could, especially in the case of the Sec- 

 taries, and curbed the persecuting tendencies of 

 parliament. For law reform he did his best, but 

 professional interests were too strong for him. He 

 united Scotland and Ireland to England, giving them 

 both representation in parliament. Scotland, hav- 

 ing free trade with England, enjoyed great pros- 

 perity under his rule. Ireland he sought to make 

 a second England in order and industry, and if his 

 measures were high-handed it must be rememlered 

 that the native Irish were then in an almost savage 

 state. It was his aim to enlist ability, without 

 distinction of party, and youths of promise from 

 the universities into the service of the state. He 

 saved the universities from the fanatics, put good 

 men at their head, and encouraged letters. 



But it is his foreign ]>olicy that has brought him 

 most renown. Under him the Commonwealth be- 

 came the head and protectress of Protestant 

 Europe. He made peace with Holland and tried 

 to form a league of all the Protestant states. He 

 protected the Waldenses of Piedmont against their 

 persecutors, using the pen of Milton inliis protest. 

 In the interest at once of religious liberty and 

 commerce he allied himself with France, as the 

 more liberal power, against Spain, the power of 

 persecuting Roman Catholicism and the tyrant of 

 the Western waters. He failed in an attempt on 

 Hispaniola, but took Jamaica, and thus gave 

 British enterprise a foothold in those seas. The 



