The Commonwealth. page 2

The parliament was soon called on to defend itself against more dangerous enemies. The country was groaning under the exhaustion and ravages of the civil war. It had been for seven years bleeding at every pore; and now the war had ceased, the suffering people began to utter aloud their complaints, which, if uttered, had been drowned in the din of conflict. There was everywhere a terrible outcry against the burden of taxation; and famine and pestilence, the sure successors of carnage and spoliation, were decimating the people. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers were daily perishing, and the magistrates of Cumberland deposed that thirty thousand families in that county had neither seed nor bread-corn, nor the means of procuring either. What rendered this state of things the more dangerous, was the turbulence of the levellers. The Action of revolution was in danger of being devoured by his own hounds. The principles of republicanism which had borne on the heads of the army, threatened in turn to overwhelm them in their progress amongst the soldiers. It is easier to set in motion revolutionary ideas, than to say to them, "hitherto shall ye go and no further." In all revolutions in the world, the class revolutionising wishes to stop at the point that is most convenient to itself; but other classes beyond this line are equally anxious, and have an equal claim to the benefit of levelling principles. It is only power which limits their diffusion. The power now had passed from the king and the lords, and had centered in the leaders of the army. It was not convenient nor desirable for them that it should go farther. But the soldiers and the lower officers, with free-born John Lilburne at their head, claimed a republic in its more popular sense. They read in their Bibles, and preached from it in the field, that God was no respecter of persons; that human rights were as universal as the human race. They saw that Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and a few others were the men who ruled in the parliament, the council, and the army; and they conceived that they were no longer seeking the common rights of the community, but the aggrandisement of themselves. They suspected them of having put down the tyranny of one man to establish that of half a dozen; and they had no notion of a reform which would only leave the multitude where it was. In fact, communism, the bugbear of to-day, had sprung up, and was in full blow in the commonwealth army, and threatened to scatter it into atoms. Colonel John Lilburne was fast preaching primitive Christianity and equality of rights and of possessions to the regiments, a doctrine very Christian, but very unmilitary. He was pouring out pamphlet upon pamphlet, and disseminating them through the ranks and through the people – "England's New Chains Discovered," "The Hunting of the Foxes from Triploe Heath to Whitehall by Five Small Beagles." These foxes were Cromwell, Ireton, Fairfax, &c., who had suppressed the mutiny at Triploe Heath - and the five beagles those who had been made to ride the wooden horse for their insubordination, that is, set upon a sharp three-cornered wooden machine, with weights or muskets tied to their feet. News came to parliament that one Everard, a soldier passing for a prophet, and Winstanley, another, with thirty more, were assembled on St. George's Hill, near Cobham, in Surrey, and were digging the ground and planting it with roots and beans. They said they should shortly be four thousand, and invited all to come and help them, promising them meat, drink, and clothes. Two troops of horse were sent to disperse them, of which they loudly complained, and Everard and Winstanley went to the general, and declared "that the liberties of the people were lost by the coming in of William the Conqueror, and that ever since, the people of God had lived under tyranny and oppression worse than our forefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance was at hand, and God would bring his people out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the earth. There had lately appeared to him (Everard) a vision, which bade him arise and dig and plough the earth, and receive the fruits thereof. That their intent was to restore the earth to its former condition; that, as God had promised to make the barren fruitful, so now what they did was to restore the ancient community of enjoying the fruits of the earth, to distribute them to the poor and needy; that they did not intend to break down pales and destroy inclosures as was reported, but only to till the waste land, and make it fruitful for man; and that the time was coming when all men would willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this community of goods."

Here was the communism of the nineteenth century clearly enunciated in the seventeenth; but the revolution of Cromwell and Ireton contemplated nothing so primitive, and there was nothing for it but to trample it out as soon as possible. Lilburne had been engaged in the county of Durham, and to win him over, three thousand pounds were voted to him; but this did not move him for a moment. On his return, he appeared at the bar of the house with a petition against the form of the newly adopted constitution, which the officers had named, "The Agreement of the People," but which the people did not accept as their agreement. Lilburne protested against the provision that parliament should only sit six months every two years, and that the council should rule the other eighteen. This example was extensively followed, and the table of the house was quickly loaded with petitions from officers and soldiers, demanding a new parliament every year; a committee of the house to govern during the recess; no member of one parliament to be a member of the next; the self-denying ordinance to be enforced y the term of every officers' commission in the army to be limited; the high court of justice and council of state to be abolished as instruments of tyranny; all proceedings in the courts of law to be in English; lawyers reduced, and their fees too. Excise and customs they required to be abolished, and the lands of delinquents sold to remunerate the well affected. Religion to be "reformed according to the mind of God;" tithes abolished, conscience made entirely free, and the incomes of ministers of the Gospel to be fixed at one hundred and fifty pounds each, and raised by a rate on the parishioners.

There were much sound sense and gospel truth in these demands, but the day of their adoption was much nearer to the millennium than to 1649. It was resolved to send Cromwell to settle the disturbances in Ireland, but it was necessary to quash this communist insurrection first. Money was borrowed of the city, and after "a solemn seeking of God by prayer," lots were cast to see what regiments should go to Ireland. Fourteen of foot and fourteen of horse were selected by this mode. The officers expressed much readiness to go; the men refused. On the 26th of April there broke out a terrible mutiny in Whalley's regiment,, at the Bull, in Bishopsgate. The men seized their colours from the cornet, and refused to march without many of the communist concessions. Fairfax and Cromwell hastened thither, seized fifteen of the mutineers, tried them on the spot by court martial, condemned five, and shot one in St. Paul's churchyard on the morrow. This was Lockyer, a trooper, a brave young fellow, who had been in all the war, and was only yet three-and-twenty.

The death of this young man, who was greatly beloved, roused all the soldiers and the working men and women of the city to a fearful degree. He was shot on Friday, amid the tears and execrations of thousands. On Monday his troop proceeded to bury him with all a soldier's honours. Whitelock says, "About a hundred went before the corpse, five or six in a file, the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding a soldier's knell. Then the trooper's horse came, clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary, one half-stained in blood, and the sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed in rank and file; all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the rear. At the new church in Westminster, some thousands more, of the better sort, met them, who thought not fit to march through the city."

This was not a promising beginning for the generals, but they were not men to be put down. They arrested Lilburne and his five small beagles, who published, on the 1st of May, their "Agreement of the People," and clapped them in the Tower, and hastened down to Salisbury to quell the insurrection which had broken out in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts in the army. The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds, and Horton, all declared for the Lilburne "Agreement," and swore to stand by each other. At Banbury, a captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred men, issued a manifesto called "England's Standard Advanced," demanding the completion of public freedom, vowing justice on the murderers of Arnold and Lockyer, and threatening, if a hair of Lilburne's was touched, they would avenge it seventy-and-seven fold. Reynolds, the colonel of the regiment, attacked Thompson, put him to flight, and prevailed on the soldiers to lay down their arms; but another party of ten troops of horse, a thousand strong, under cornet Thompson, brother of the captain, marched out of Salisbury for Burford, increasing their numbers as they went. But Fairfax and Cromwell were marching rapidly after them. They came upon them in the night at Burford, took them all prisoners, and the next day, Thursday, the 17th of May, shot cornet Thompson and two corporals in Burford churchyard. The rest were pardoned, and agreed to go to Ireland. A few days after captain Thompson was overtaken in a wood in Northamptonshire, and killed. The mutiny was at an end, if we except some partial disturbances, in Devon, Hants, and Somersetshire. Fairfax and Cromwell were received at Oxford in triumph, and feasted and complimented, being made doctors; and on the 7th of June a day of thanksgiving was held in London, with a great dinner at Grocers' Hall, given to the officers of the army and the leaders of parliament, and another appointed for the whole kingdom on the 21st.

Cromwell was already appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and on the 10th of July he set forth at five in the evening from London, by way of Windsor to Bristol. He set out in state approaching to royalty. He rode in a coach drawn by six Flanders mares, whitish grays, a number of carriages containing other officers following, attended by a life-guard of eighty men, the meanest of whom was a commander or esquire; many of them were colonels in very rich uniforms, and the whole procession attended by a resounding flourish of trumpets. But before following the farmer of Huntingdon, now risen to all but royal grandeur, we must notice the affairs of Scotland.

Though Argyll held the chief power in Scotland, and was on friendly terms with Cromwell, he could not prevent a strong public feeling showing itself on the approaching trial of the king. The Scots reproached themselves for giving up Charles to the English army, and considered that heavy disgrace would fall upon the country if the king should be put to death. They demanded, therefore, that a strong remonstrance should be sent to the parliament of England, and Argyll was too timid or too cautious to oppose this. The commissioners in London received and presented the remonstrance, but obtained no answer till after the execution of the king, and that which they did then receive was in very unceremonious terms. Forthwith the authorities in Edinburgh proclaimed Charles as king, and the commissioners at London, protesting against what was done, and against the alteration of the government into a republic, and declaring themselves guiltless of the blood of the king, hastened to Gravesend, to quit the kingdom. But the parliament, resenting this language as grossly libellous, and calculated to excite sedition, sent an officer to conduct them under guard to the frontiers of the kingdom.

Passing over this insult, the Scots in March despatched the earl of Cassilis to the Hague, attended by four commissioners, to wait on Charles and invite him to Scotland. They found there the earl of Lanark, now duke of Hamilton by the execution of his brother, earls of Lauderdale, Callendar, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth. Some of these were old royalists, some of whom were called "Engagers," or of the party of Hamilton. The court of Charles, small as it was, was rent by dissensions, and both the engagers and the commissioners under Cassilis, joined in protesting against any junction with Montrose, whose cruelties to the covenanters, they said, had been so great, that to unite with him would turn all Scotland against the king. They insisted on Charles taking the covenant, but this Montrose and the old royalists vehemently resisted, declaring that to do that would alienate both catholics and episcopalians, and exasperate the independents to tenfold bitterness.

Whilst matters were in this unsatisfactory state, Dr. Dorislaus arrived as ambassador from the English parliament to the states of Holland. He was a native of that country, but had lived some time in England, had been a professor of Gresham College, and drew the charge for parliament against the king. That very evening, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the inn where he was at supper, and desiring those present not to alarm themselves, as they had no intention of hurting any one but the agent of the English rebels who had lately murdered their king, they dragged Dorislaus from the table, and one of them stabbed him with a dagger. Seeing him dead, they sheathed their swords, and walked quietly out of the house. They were known to be all Scotchmen and followers of Montrose; and Charles, seeing the mischief this base assassination would do his cause, and especially in Holland, prepared to quit the country. It was first proposed that he should go to Ireland, where Ormond was labouring in his favour, and where Rupert was off the coast with a fleet; but he changed his mind and went to Paris, to the queen, his mother. Before doing that, he sent chancellor Hyde and lord Cottington as envoys to Spain, to endeavour to move the king in his favour, and he returned an answer to the Scottish commissioners, that though he was and always had been ready to grant them the freedom of their religion, he could not consent to bind himself to the covenant. They admitted that he was their king and therefore they ought to obey him, and not he them, and this he must expect from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. With this answer they departed in no very satisfied mood.