afterward acted upon the very principles which he loudly condemned in the leaders of that celebrated assembly. Vane and his friends maintained that the country was not yet sufficiently settled to be entrusted with the irritating duty of a general election; and, therefore, it was necessary that a certain number of the old members should remain, not only for the purpose of conducting the government in the meantime, but also for instructing, in the forms of business, the new representatives who might be returned. For the same reason, it was provided by the bill which was about to be passed when the grenadiers entered the House, that there should not at any future period be a complete dissolution of the Commons, but that only a part of the members at one time should be returned to their constituents. It is remarkable, that in constituting this first parliament, he proceeded on the very ground now explained, and obviously for the same considerations; a proof, if any were wanted, that his anger was kindled against the Rump, not for their practical errors in the conduct of affairs, but for showing too much political wisdom, and for arranging a scheme of government which would soon have deprived the army of the dangerous power which had fallen into their hands.

Barbone's parliament, in like manner, was dismissed for being too honest. There were in it, no doubt, several hot-headed fools who aimed at impracticable improvements, and laboured to bring the English people to a condition of simplicity and innocence which has never been attained in the social state. But, with few exceptions-the " trepanners and spies" whom Cromwell had introduced-they had the good of their country at heart, and would have forced on some changes, which, by reducing the army, must have precluded the despotism on which the council of officers meant to establish their power. Finding, too, that they were disposed

to assert a degree of independence which he never intended they should possess, the general joined in the calumnies with which they were assailed; increased the ridicule which was directed against their proceedings; and, finally, by creating a schism in their body, drew over the venal and ambitious to his own ranks, and exposed the honest fanatics to everlasting contempt. By these means, however, he attained the rank and authority which were conferred upon him on the 16th of December, 1653; when he found himself in the possession of a more ample treasury, a finer navy, and more numerous land forces, than had ever supported the throne of England, or commanded the respect of foreign states.

CHAPTER IV.

From the Accession of Cromwell to the Protectorate, to his Death in September, 1658.

IT has been asserted, that in the Institute of Government under which Oliver assumed the supreme power, the title of king was originally engrossed, and that it was only in compliance with the scruples of certain individuals whose ambition had not yet been gratified, that the word Protector was afterward substituted. But the appellation in such cases is a mere sound; and Cromwell had determined to exercise the full rights of sovereignty, in the civil as well as in the military department. As is usual on the accession of an hereditary monarch, he issued new patents to the judges, and commissions to the principal officers of the army; obtaining, at the same time, a statute declaring it high treason to compass

or imagine any violence to the person or government of the Lord Protector, or to revive the claims and title of Charles Stuart.

He accepted, on the same occasion, the congratulations of foreign princes, through the medium of their ambassadors; whom he received at his palace with all the form and etiquette of the most ancient court. He had removed with his family to the apartments formerly occupied by the king, which were newly furnished in the most costly and magnificent style; and in the banqueting room was placed a chair of state on a platform raised a few steps above the floor. Here the Protector stood to receive the ambassadors. These functionaries were instructed to make three reverences; one at the entrance, the second as they advanced up the room, and the third at the lower step of the elevation on which the protectoral throne was erected,—to each of which his lordship answered by a slight inclination of the head. When they had delivered their speeches and heard the reply of his highness, they retired, observing the same ceremonial with which they had entered.

But Cromwell felt that, by ministering to his own ambition, he had lost the confidence of his first and most ardent friends. The republican party now became his bitterest enemies. He had deceived them in the tenderest point, while he employed them as instruments for accomplishing his personal views, at every stage of his advancement. Some of the more violent preachers did not hesitate to denounce him from the pulpit as a "dissembling, perjured-villain, and to threaten him with a worse fate than had befallen the last tyrant." To check such freedoms, he threw several individuals into prison, and committed to the Tower that long subservient and unscrupulous partisan-Major General Harrison. Alarmed with menaces of assassination, too, he let

loose his fury against the royalists, whom he charged with the intention of putting him to death. He hanged Vowell, a wrongheaded schoolmaster, and condemned to the punishment of a traitor a young man named Gerard, who declared with his dying breath that he had never given his consent to any plan of murder.

It required no small management to satisfy his republican friends that his intentions were still sincere and honest. The rise which he had already made looked like a step to kingship, which John Goodwin had long represented as the "great Antichrist that hindered Christ from being set on the throne." To these he declared with tears, that he would rather have taken a shepherd's staff than the protectorship, since nothing was more contrary to his genius than a show of greatness; but he saw it was necessary at that time to keep the nation from falling into extreme disorder, and from becoming open to the common enemy; and, therefore, he only stepped in between the living and the dead, till God should direct them on what bottom they ought to settle and he assured them, that then he would surrender the heavy load lying upon him, with a joy equal to the sorrow with which he was affected while under that show of dignity.*

Some of the chief officers on the Irish establishment resigned their commissions, and others expressed their dissatisfaction in the strongest terms at the assumption of arbitrary power, and the destruction of their favourite commonwealth. The majority, however, of the army stood faithful to his interests; amd by mixing favours with moderate coercion, he gained many of the less stern republicans; who, on reflection, were less offended to see on the throne a man of the people, than a member

* Burnet's Own Times, vol. i. p. 104.

of the detested house of Stuart. Even the zealots began to think that Cromwell was not, even as an enemy of the saints and of their expected kingdom, so much to be dreaded as a prince who claimed the sceptre as his personal right, and who had never exhibited any signs of grace.

It belongs to the general historian, rather than to the biographer of Cromwell, to relate the foreign wars and treaties which engaged the attention of parliament during the existence of the commonwealth. The triumphs of the English flag at sea shed a glory on the administration of the republicans which no subsequent events, brilliant as they may have been, have altogether eclipsed. The Dutch, after a gallant and protracted struggle, were compelled to acknowledge the superiority of their insular neighbours, on that element, too, whence they had derived at once their wealth and their fame; and about the period when Oliver assumed the protectoral sceptre, the United Provinces were disposed to sue for peace on terms very favourable to their maritime rivals. It has always been asserted that, instead of securing for his country the commercial advantages which he was entitled to demand, he sacrificed the victories of Blake to an impatience for peace, or to the furtherance of his own views against the Stuarts and the house of Orange.

From the conditions of the peace which Cromwell signed, and which were universally regarded as much inferior to those which the country had a right to ask, it has been inferred by an able historian, that the war with the States General must have been originally impolitic.* This remark shows, at least, that a feeling of disappointment had spread over the land, in regard to the inadequate result of the splendid triumphs gained by the naval commanders; and moreover, that there was some ground

* Hume, vol. vii. p. 276.