The Commonwealth. page 6

It was an overthrow complete, and most astonishing to both conquered and conquerors. Cromwell, in his letter to the parliament, styled it "a crowning mercy." The earl of Derby and seven others of the prisoners suffered death as traitors and rebels to the commonwealth. Derby offered the Isle of Man for his ransom, but his letter was read by Lenthall to the house too late, and he was executed at Bolton, in Lancashire.

As for Charles himself, the romance of his escape has been celebrated in many narratives. After being concealed for some days at Whiteladies and Boscobel, two solitary houses in Shropshire, and passing a day in the boughs of an oak, he made his way in various disguises, and by the assistance of different loyal friends, to Brighton, whence he passed in a collier over to Fecamp in Normandy, but this was not till the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle of Worcester.

On the 12th of September Cromwell arrived in town; Bulstrode, Whitelock, and three other gentlemen had been sent down to meet him and conduct him to London. They met him near Aylesbury, and they all joined a hawking party by the way At Aylesbury they passed the night.

Oliver was very affable, and presented to each of the commissioners a horse taken in the battle and a couple of Scotch prisoners. At Acton, the speaker of the commons, the lord- president, and many other members of parliament and of the council, the lord-mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, and crowds of other people, met him, and congratulated him on his splendid victory and all his successes in Scotland. The recorder, in his address, said he was destined to "bind kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron." Oliver, in his usual style, assigned all the glory to God. In London he was received with immense shoutings and acclamations. Parliament voted that the 3rd of September should be kept ever after as a holiday, in memory of his victory; and, in addition to twenty-five thousand pounds a year already granted in land, settled on him another forty thousand pounds a year in land.

Thus the royal party was for a time broken and put down. In Ireland Cromwell had left his son-in-law Ireton as his deputy, who went on with a strong hand putting down all opposition. The catholic party growing weary of Ormond, he had resigned his lord-deputy ship for the king, and Clanricarde had succeeded him. Still the catholic party was divided in itself, and Ormond, and after him Clanricarde, entered into a treaty with the duke of Lorraine, who agreed to send an army to Ireland to put down the Parliament, on condition that he should be declared protector-royal of Ireland, with all the rights pertaining to the office; an office, in fact, never before heard of. The Irish royalists obtained, however, at different times, twenty thousand pounds from Lorraine, and his agents were still negotiating for his protectorship, when the defeat of Charles at Worcester showed Lorraine the folly of his hopes. Disappointed in this expectation of assistance from abroad, the Irish royalists found themselves vigorously attacked by Ireton. In June he invested Limerick, and on the 27th of October it surrendered. Ireton tried and put to death seven of the chief leaders of the party. The court-martial refused to condemn the brave 0 s Niel, though Ireton urged his death for his stubborn defence of Clonmel. When Terence O'Brien, bishop of Ernly, was condemned, he exclaimed to Ireton, " I appeäl to the tribunal of God, and summon thee to meet me at that bar." These words were deemed prophetic by many, and were remembered with wonder when, about a month afterwards, Ireton fell ill of fever and died.

Cromwell appointed general Lambert his deputy in Ireland. This appointment was set aside before Lambert could pass over to that country, as it is said, through the management of Ireton's widow, Cromwell's daughter Bridget. Meeting the handsome and showy wife of Lambert in St. James's-park, that lady, as her husband was now lord- deputy, refused to give precedence to Mrs. Ireton. Offended at this, she prevailed on her father to revoke the appointment, and give it to Fleetwood, whom she soon after married, and so Lambert returned to Ireland in his former position. But there is reason to believe that Lambert never forgave the affront, though Cromwell endeavoured to soothe him, and made him compensation in money; for he was found to be one of the first to oppose Richard Cromwell after his father's death, and depose him from the protectorate. Ludlow and three other commissioners were joined with Fleetwood, so far as the civil administration was concerned, and they were ordered to levy sufficient money for the payment of the forces, not exceeding forty thousand pounds a month; and to exclude papists from all places of trust, from practising as barristers, or teaching in any kind of school. Thus the bulk of the natives were deprived of all participation in the affairs of their own country, and, what was worse, might be imprisoned or removed from one part of the country at the will of these dictators.

In Scotland Monk carried matters with the same high hand. On the 14th of August he compelled Stirling to surrender, and sent off the royal robes, part of the regalia, and the national records to London. He then commenced the siege of Dundee, and whilst it was progressing he sent colonels Alured and Morgan to Alyth in Angus, where he sui prised the two committees of the estates and the kirk, with many other noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of three hundred, and amongst them poor old Leslie, earl of Leven, met on royalist affairs, and sent them after the regalia to England. On the 1st of September Monk stormed Dundee, and gave up the city to the plunder and violence of the soldiery. There were said to be eight hundred soldiers and inhabitants killed, of whom three hundred were women and children. The place had been considered so safe that many people had sent their property there for security, and that and the ships in the harbour all fell into the hands of the conquerors. They are said to have got two hundred thousand pounds in booty, and perpetrated the most unheard-of atrocities. The fate of Dundee induced Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews to open their gates. The earl of Huntley and lord Balcarras submitted, and scarcely any noblemen of note, except Argyll, held out; and that was merely for the purpose of making good terms with the parliament.

The most vigorous means were adopted to keep the country in check. Military stations were appointed throughout the highlands, and sites fixed upon for the erection of strong forts at Ayr, Leith, Perth, and Inverness. The property and estates of the crown were declared forfeited to parliament, as well as the lands of all who had taken arms under the duke of Hamilton or the king against England. English judges were sent to go the circuits, assisted by Scotch ones, and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year was voted for the maintenance of the army in Scotland, which was raised to twenty thousand men. These were galling measures for the Scots, who had hoped to subject England again to the king, but they were far from the most humiliating. Vane, St. John, and six other commissioners were appointed to settle a plan for the incorporation of Scotland with England. They met at Dalkeith, and summoned the representatives of the counties and the burghs to assemble and consult with them on the matter. The ministers thundered from their pulpits against a union, and especially against putting the kirk under the power of the state; but twenty-eight out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs complied, and sent up twenty-one deputies to sit with the parliamentary commissioners at Westminster, to settle the terms of the union. The power of the English parliament, or rather of the army, was now so supreme, that both in Scotland and Ireland resistance was vain.

The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, have prevented us noticing the transactions of the commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now bring them up. Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles H. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was intrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the inclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the king of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects, soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The king of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The king of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one betwixt the commonwealth and the courts of the continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and, therefore, he employed three friars, who accompanied him, and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half-a-dozen royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some royalists had done to Dorislaus, the parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no objection to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and so escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English commonwealth, but the circumstances of the court prevented the spread of this feeling. The stadtholder, William II., had married the princess royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charles's. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league betwixt the family of the stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland, came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the stadtholder's court of the English parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the parliament, to an audience. But in November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and a few days afterwards, on the 6th of that month, his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became king of England. The infancy of the stadtholder now encouraged the republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the parliament of England, in the commencement of 1681, determined to send ambassadors to the states, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the chief justice of the common pleas. But no good was done; there were numbers of English royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous, that they were become proud and insolent, and had grown to regard the English parliament, through the representation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty states-general. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity. Edward, a younger brother of Rupert and Maurice, publicly called the ambassadors rogues and dogs; the royalists scornfully styled them "the things called ambassadors;" the servants of Strickland were attacked at his door by the cavaliers with drawn swords. They attempted to break into St. John's bedchamber, where, had they succeeded, they would, no doubt, have murdered him, as they did Ascham; and the duke of York meeting St. John in the streets, because he did not give him the wall, snatched his hat from his head, and flung it in his face, saying, "Learn, parricide, to respect the brother of your king." St. John was not a man to submit tamely to such an insult; he replied that he did not acknowledge any of that race of vagabonds, and the duke drawing his sword, there would have been bloodshed, had not the spectators interfered.