Commonwealth (Continued). page 3

Blake therefore did not hesitate. The wind was blowing into the harbour on the morning of the 20th of April; and though an admiral of our time, with a cautionary letter from Sir James Graham "to take care of his ships," would have wondered how he was to get out again, Blake, trusting to the omnipotent instincts of courage, dashed into the harbour at eight o'clock in the morning. Captain Stayner, who had so lately defeated the Spanish Plate fleet, and destroyed in it the viceroy of Peru, now led the way in a frigate, and Blake followed in the larger ships. His fleet altogether amounted to twenty-five sail. It was received with a hurricane of fire from the batteries on both sides the harbour and the fleet in front; but discharging his artillery right and left, he advanced, silencing the forts, and soon driving the seamen from the front fine of galleons into the merchant ships. For four hours the terrible encounter continued, the British exposed to a deadly hail of ball from the land as well as the ships, but still pressing on till the Spanish ships were all in flames, and reduced to ashes, the troops in them having escaped to land. The question, then, was how to escape out of the harbour, and from the fury of the exasperated Spaniards on the land around. But Blake drew his ships out of reach of the forts, and as if Providence had wrought in his favour, as Blake firmly believed he did, the wind about sunset veered suddenly round, and the fleet sailed securely out to sea.

The fame of this unparalleled exploit rang throughout Europe, and raised the reputation of England for naval prowess to the highest pitch. Unhappily, death was fast claiming the undaunted admiral. He was sick and suffering at the moment that he won this great triumph, and, sailing homewards, he expired on board his ship, the St. George, just as it entered the harbour of Plymouth. We have quoted the encomium of Clarendon, we may add that of a writer of his own party and time, in the admiring narrative of the "Perfect Politician" - "He was a man most wholly devoted to his country's service, resolute in his undertakings, and most faithful in his performances of them. With him valour seldom missed its reward, nor cowardice its punishment. When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the state at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, it was not our duty to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us. In all his expeditions the wind seldom deceived him, but mostly in the end stood his friend, especially in his last undertaking in the Canary Islands. To the last he lived a single life, never being espoused to any but his country's quarrels. As he lived bravely, he died gloriously, and was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel, yet enjoying at this time no other monument but what is raised by his valour, which time itself can hardly deface." Hume, with all his dislike of the commonwealth, supports this eulogy, and adds, "Disinterested, generous, liberal, ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies, he forms one of the most perfect characters of the ace, and the least stained with those errors and violences which were then so predominant."

During this summer, Oliver had not only been gloriously engaged at sea, but he had been busy on land. He was in league with Louis XIV. of France to drive the Spaniards from the Netherlands. The French forces were conducted by the celebrated marshal Turenne, and the Spanish by Don John of Austria, and the French insurgent chief, the prince of Conde. Cromwell sent over six thousand men under Sir John Reynolds, who landed near Boulogne on the 13th and 14th of May. They were supported by a strong fleet under admiral Montague, the late colleague of Blake, which cruised on the coast. The first united operations were to be the reductions of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the first of which places, when taken, was to belong to France, the two latter to England. If Gravelines was taken first, it was to be put into possession of England, as a pledge for the conveyance of the two latter. This bold demand, on the part of Cromwell, astonished his French allies, and was violently opposed by the French cabinets, who told Louis that Dunkirk, once in the hands of the English, would prove another Calais to France. But without Dunkirk, which Cromwell deemed necessary as a check to the royalist invasions from the Netherlands, with which he was continually threatened, no aid was to be had from the protector, and it was conceded, whence came the angry declaration from the French, that u Mazarin feared Cromwell more than the devil."

The French court endeavoured to employ the English forces on other work than the reduction of these stipulated places. The young French king went down to the coast to see the British army, and having expressed much admiration of them, recommended them to lay siege to Montmedi, Cambray, and other towns in the interior. Cromwell was, however, too much of a man of business and a general to suffer this. He ordered his ambassador, Sir William Lockhart, who had married his niece, Miss Rosina Sewster, to remonstrate, and insist on the attack of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk. He told the ambassador that to talk of Cambray and interior towns as guarantees, were "parcels of words for children. If they will give us garrisons, let them give us Calais, Dieppe, and Boulogne." He bade him tell the cardinal that if he meant any good from the treaty with him he must keep it, and go to work on Dunkirk, when, if necessary, he would send over two thousand more of his veterans. This had the necessary effect: Mardyke was taken after a siege of three days only, and put into the hands of the English on the 23rd of September. The attack was then tinned on Gravelines; but the enemy opened their sluices, and laid all the country round under water. On this Turenne, probably glad of the delay, put his troops at that early period into winter quarters. During this time attempts were made to corrupt the English officers by the Stuart party. The duke of York was in the Spanish army with the English royalist exiles, and communications were opened as of mere civility with the English at Mardyke. As the English officers took their rides betwixt Mardyke and Dunkirk, they were frequently met by the duke's officers, and conversation took place. Sir John Reynolds was imprudent enough to pay his respects to the duke on these occasions, and he was soon ordered to London to answer for his conduct; but both he and a colonel White, who was evidence against him, were lost on the 5th of December on the Goodwin Sands. The duke of York now made a treacherous attack on Mardyke, but was repulsed, and the affairs of Charles II. appeared so hopeless, that Burnet asserts, and the same thing is asserted also in the Orrery letters, that he was now mean enough to offer to marry one of Cromwell's daughters, and thus settle all differences, but that Cromwell told lord Orrery that Charles was so damnably debauched, that he would undo them all. Cromwell, indeed, just now married his two remaining single daughters, Frances and Mary, to the lords Rich and Falconberg. Frances married lord Rich, the son of the earl of Warwick, and Mary, lord Falconberg, of the Yorkshire family of Bellasis, formerly so zealous for the royal party.

Before closing the events of 1657, we may notice the death of colonel John Lilburne, one of the most outre and undaunted republicans of the period. Lilburne, after his fiery and irritable career, adopted the principles of George Fox, and became a member of the peaceable Society of Friends, and his remains were attended by them to their graveyard in Moorfields, August 31st; some disturbance arising on the occasion from some of his worldly friends insisting on the coffin being covered by a pall, and the Mends as stoutly refusing, so that contention seemed doomed to attend "John against Lilburne and Lilburne against John" even to the grave.

The year 1658 opened by the opening of the new parliament. It was a critical adventure, and not destined to succeed better than the former ones. To constitute the new house, called the other house, he had been obliged to remove to it most of the leading and best affected members of the commons. To comply with the "Petition and Advice," he had been obliged to admit into the commons many who had been expelled from the former ones for their violent republicanism. The consequences immediately appeared. The other house consisted of sixty-three members. It included six of the ancient peers, the earls of Manchester, Warwick, Mulgrave, Falconberg, Saye and Sele, and lord Eure. But none but Eure and Falconberg took their seats, not even the earl of Warwick, whose son and heir, lord Rich, had just married the protector's daughter. He and the others objected to sit in the same house with general Hewson, who had once been a shoemaker, and Pride, who had been a drayman. Amongst the members of this other house appeared a considerable number of the officers of the army, and the chief ministers of state. There the protector's two sons, Richard and Henry Cromwell, Fiennes, keeper of the great seal, Lisle, Fleetwood, Monk, Whalley, Whitelock, Bark- stead, Pride, Hewson, Goffe, Sir Christopher Pack, alderman of London, general Claypole, St. John, and other old friends of the protector, besides the lords already mentioned. As they had been called by writs, which were copies of the royal writs used on such occasions, the members immediately assumed that it made them peers, and gave them a title to hereditary rank. They were addressed by Cromwell in his opening speech as " My lords, and gentlemen of the house of commons." His speech was very short, for he complained of indisposition, the truth being, that the life of excitement, struggle, and incessant cares for twenty years had undermined his iron frame, and he was broken up; but he congratulated them on the internal peace attained, warned them, however, of danger from without, and exhorted them to unity and earnestness for the public good. Fiennes, after his retirement, addressed them in a much longer speech on the condition of the nation.

But all hopes of this nondescript parliament were vain. The other house no sooner met apart, than they began inquiring into their privileges, and assuming that they were not merely the other house, but the upper house, sent a message after the fashion of the ancient peers by the judges, to desire a conference with them on the subject of a fast. The commons, however, who were by the new instrument made judges of the other house, being authorised to approve or disapprove of it, soon showed that they meant the other house to be not an upper house, but a lower house than themselves. They claimed to be the representatives of the people; but who, they asked, had made the other house a house of peers, who had given them an authority and a negative voice over them? The first thing which the commons did on meeting, was to claim the powers of the new instrument, and admit the most violent of the excluded members, for none were to be excluded except the rebellious or papists. Haselrig, who had been appointed one of the other house, refused to sit in it; but having been elected to the commons, he appeared there, and demanded his oath. Francis Bacon, the clerk of the house, replied that he dared not give it him; but Haselrig insisted, and being supported by his party, he at length obtained his oath and took his seat. It was then soon seen that the efficient government members were gone to the other house, and Haselrig, Scott, Robinson, and the most fiery members of the republican section now carried things their own way, and commenced a course of the most vehement opposition. Scott ripped up the whole history of the house of lords during the struggle of the commonwealth. He said - "The lords would not join in the trial of the king. We called the king to our bar and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed, and so let all the enemies of God perish! The house of commons had a good conscience in it. Upon this the lords' house adjourned, and never met again; and it was hoped the people of England should never again have a negative upon them." But the hostility of this party was not to the other house merely, it was to the protectorate itself which it declaimed against, and not only in the house, but out of it, setting on foot petitions for the abolition of the protectorate by the commons. Whitelock remarks that this course boded the speedy dissolution of the house. Cromwell summoned both houses to Whitehall January 25th, only five days after their meeting, and in a long and powerful speech remonstrated with the commons on their frantic proceedings. He took a wide view of the condition of Europe, of the peace and protestantism of England, and asked them what were their hopes, if, by their decision, they brought back the dissolute and bigoted court which they had dismissed. He declared that the man who could contemplate the restoration of such a state of things must have the heart of a Cain; that he would make England the scene of a bloodier civil war than they had had before. He prayed, therefore, that whoever should seek to break the peace, God Almighty might root that man out of the nation; and he believed that the wrath of God would prosecute such a man to his grave, if not to hell.

But all argument was lost on that fiery section. Scott and Haselrig continued their assaults on the whole frame of government more vehemently than ever; and on the 4th of February, fifteen days from the meeting of parliament, amid a confused bickering of Scott and Haselrig, with the wearied house, arrived the usher of the black rod to summon the members to the other house, which he called boldly, the house of lords. Haselrig, in the midst of his harangue, was reminded of the presence of the black rod. "What care I for the black rod? " he exclaimed, but he was compelled to obey.

The protector expressed the intensity of his disappointment that the very men who had importuned him to assume the burden of this government, and even to the title of king, should now, instead of attending to the urgent business of the nation, endeavour violently to destroy that government, and throw everything into chaos. He observed, " I can say in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under a wood side, to have kept a flock of sheep rather than have undertaken such a government as this. But undertaking it by the advice and petition of you, I did look that you, who had offered it unto me, should make it good." He added, "And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time to put an end to your sitting; and I do dissolve this parliament." And thus closed the last parliament of Cromwell, after a session of a fortnight.