§ 1. Richard Cromwell, Protector. Feebleness of his government. The new Parliament. Contentions of the different parties.-§ 2. The army resolves to retain its supremacy, and compels Richard to dissolve the newly-summoned Parliament. Restoration of the "Long Parliament."-§ 3. Its declaration against any head of a government. Resignation of Richard. His contemptible character.-§ 4. Government of the "Rump." Popular discontent and confusion.—§ 5. General Monk and his army. His march through England. His designs kept secret. His terms with Charles II.-§ 6. A new Parliament assembled, and Charles II. proclaimed king.

1. THE two portraits in Hamlet were not more dissimilar than Oliver and his son. When we look on that picture and on this, we see the fortunes of the two men dependent on their personal qualities. The great broad views and persistent energies of the Protector are contrasted with the feeble will and uncertain aims of his successor. When Richard, therefore, was peacefully installed in the seat of power, all men felt that it was the name of his father which conveyed to him this authority, but that he was not the man to retain a sceptre which had nothing to hold it up but the force of his own right hand. Dissension and difficulties accordingly soon began. A Parliament was called, which failed to obtain the public confidence, as it was elected by the burgesses of small and rotten boroughs, instead of the large and rising towns to

which Oliver had transferred the franchise. It was divided into sections, of which for a while the strongest adhered to the new Protector. But when cabals began, and the military connexions of the family, Fleetwood, who had married the new Protector's sister, and Desborough, who had married his aunt, quarrelled for the command of the army, and only agreed on the point that it should not be continued in Richard, the sects and political parties perceived their opportunity. There were Independents and Presbyterians as before, but their acts became complicated by the mixed nature of their motives; there were kingsmen, who had bought their seats from the corrupt constituencies; absolute republicans who had been sent up by the enemies of all authority; and people who called themselves fifth monarchy-men, acknowledging no king nor ruler but the Saviour; and intriguing, promising, threatening, and flattering among all these divisions, were two or three who were intent on succeeding Oliver as chiefs of the army; two or three who wished to rule by their eloquence or skill in parliament; and a number of persons who waited patiently to see which side was strongest, with the purpose of joining it

at once.

§ 2. The army took the alarm, and resolved to retain the supremacy of the sword. While the Protector was consulting his friends, and anxious to allay the animosities which were spreading in the House itself, a deputation of officers put an end to his hesitation, and forced him to dissolve the newly-summoned Parliament, and recal from its dishonoured tomb the remains of the old one, which Oliver had so unceremoniously ejected six years before. It had still retained in the popular mind some of the reputation it had earned in the great days of its early existence, when it bore the first brunt of the civil war, and fought the battle of freedom against the king and the Cavaliers. Many of course were dead, several had changed their opinions, some had fallen into old age and upon evil days; but the survivors were ferreted out. Lenthal,

A.D. 1659.] THE "LONG PARLIAMENT" RESTORED.

603

the old Speaker, was still sound and talkative, and the reanimated Rump again took its seat, and called itself the Parliament of England.

§ 3. The first thing they did was to astonish the head of the government with a resolution that they required no head of a government whatever, whether called king or protector. They would also have nothing to do with a House of Lords, but would secure the wealth and happiness of all classes of the people by their own infallible wisdom and immaculate virtue. Charles, over at Breda, must have thought the Rump the truest friends of monarchy who had yet appeared. His adherents became so numerous that they scarcely concealed their hopes. Men who remembered the struggles of old, the orations of Pym and Hampden, the sacrifice of Eliot, so heroically made, and even the oracular sentences, half smoke, half fire, of Oliver himself, in the debates on the Grand Remonstrance, were ashamed of the pitiful race which had succeeded. Richard himself, who might have submitted to be schooled by the assailants of Laud and Strafford, could not condescend to take lessons from Lambert and Harrison. Moreover, he was of a gentle nature which hated blood; he was of a domestic nature which made him long for the charities of home; and he retired, after an angry discussion at Whitehall, to the quietude of Hampton Court; there he drew up and signed a resignation of his office, left the regal apartments and the guarded coach; and all that we hear of him is, that when a great debate, fifty years after this, was taking place in the reign of Queen Anne, an old gentleman was present, and deeply interested in the scene. "Were you ever here before," he was asked by one of the audience. "Ay," he said; "when last I was here I sat in that chair," and pointed to the throne. It was Richard Cromwell, who was content to descend to posterity as a weak and contemptible character, because he preferred tranquil happiness to uneasy power. He died in 1712.

§ 4. Some slight appearance of government was still kept up by the Rump; but the country had become distrustful of its designs, and alarmed at the appearance of the army. Sects were howling in all the villages against each other; property had so increased, that the number of persons interested in the maintenance of order was everywhere enlarged; fanaticism had had its day, and was found only to make earth less enjoyable without making heaven more sure. Old men recalled the peaceful days of quiet submission to authority, before ship-money or remonstrances were heard of; middle-aged men remembered their merry meetings on the village green, and junketings at the feasts of the church. There had been no Whitsun-ale for a long time, the Puritans were so very virtuous; and all the young people were greedily drinking in rumours of the gay doings at the court of the young king, the hero of all the Cavalier tales and ballads: how he had hidden in the royal oak after Worcester, and been entertained by Royalist ladies, and smuggled out of the country, like a paladin in the books of chivalry delivered by a sage enchantress, and the land was ripe for a return to the old order in Church and State.

The changes in the form of Government were still further to be increased by the ignominious expulsion even of the Rump. While there remained a Speaker and a mace, with a ministerial majority and a party in opposition, people might have been lulled into the belief that they were ruled by a constitutional Parliament; but Lambert, the most ambitious of the military adventurers produced by the revolution, was alarmed lest the apparent freedom of discussion within the Chamber might lead to dangerous consequences on the public mind. He marched a few regiments to Westminster, and dismissed the miserable relics of the greatest of English Parliaments amid the derision and contempt of the nation, and established a Committee of Safety. This most revolutionary form of government was a symptom of what was

A.D. 1659-1660.] GENERAL MONK AND HIS ARMY. 605

designed. Safety, it was evident, could only be found, in Major-General Lambert's opinion, under the protection of the sword, and in a very short time a Provisional Government was announced, from which all the civil elements of authority were rigorously excluded. A board of officers sat at Whitehall under the presidency of Fleetwood; and Royalists and Presbyterians perceived, when too late, that their divisions had exposed the country to the horrors of a military despotism.

§ 5. Desborough, Lambert, Fleetwood, and the rest of the military prefects under the Protector, had no reliance but on the army. But the only unspoiled portion of the troops were eight thousand well-disciplined, firmly-commanded old Parliamentarians, under the command of Monk, in Scotland. As to the preaching, bible-quoting, text-disputing brawlers in the different districts of England, the original spirit had died out, and left only the dregs. They discussed the prophecies and neglected drill. So king, and parliament, and people, and even the enthusiasts of the fifth monarchy, felt that the decision lay with the Ironsides of the north. Parliament would have made Monk their commander-in-chief; the people would have made him Protector; the fifth monarchy-men would have made him prime minister under the new dispensation; but Monk kept his own counsel, and listened to the more reasonable offers of the king.

There was nothing Charles would not have offered for a prize of half the value. He sent over his agents, rising in his promises and increasing in his prayers for restoration. Monk marched on, crossed the Border, and learned the state of opinion as he came through England. There were no huzzaings, except among the Cavaliers, who had strangely divined the secret, and claimed him as one of themselves. But the navy also divined the secret, and uttered warnings against him. Still the imperturbable gravity of the man carried him through, and a new aid came to the king's cause from the difficulty of discovering the general's real design