Commonwealth (Continued). page 6

This aroused the generals, who were themselves divided into two great factions. One set met at Whitehall under Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe, lord Charles Howard, and others favourable to the protector; another, under Fleetwood and Desborough, met at Wallingford House, who, though the protector's relations, were bent on their own and the army's ascendancy. They were joined by Lambert, who, after being deprived of his commission, had remained at Wimbledon, cultivating his garden, and seeming to be forgotten; but now he came forth again, was received with enthusiasm by the soldiers, who had great confidence in his ability, and he and Desborough used to meet with a third party, consisting chiefly of the inferior officers, at St. James's.

At this place of meeting a council of officers was organised, which soon became influential with the Wallingford House or Fleetwood section. Here they drew up an address to Richard, complaining of the arrears of their pay being withheld, and of the neglect with which the army was treated; of the attempts to overthrow the acts passed by the Long Parliament, and the encouragement thereby given to the royalists, who were flocking over from Flanders, and exciting discontent against " the good old cause," and against the persons and interests of those who had shed their blood for the commonwealth. This address was presented on the 14th of April by Fleetwood, with no less than six hundred signatures. Though it did not even mention the name of this parliament, that body felt that it was directed entirely against them, and immediately voted that no meeting or general council of officers should be held without the consent and order of the protector, and that no person should hold any command by sea or land who did not immediately sign an engagement that he would not in any way disturb or prevent the free meeting and debates of parliament, or the freedom of any member of parliament. This was certain to produce a retort from the army - it was an open declaration of war upon it - and accordingly Fleetwood and Desborough waited on Richard and assured him that it was absolutely necessary to dissolve the parliament; and Desborough, who was a bold, rough soldier, declared that if he did not do it, he felt sure the army would soon pull him out of Whitehall.

It may be questioned how far this declaration was warranted by the real facts of the case. The majority of the army was probably opposed to any violence being shown to the son of the great protector, but in critical times it is the small knot of restless, unscrupulous spirits who rule the inert mass, and impose their own views upon the sluggish and the timid; and Desborough well knew the irresolute and impressionable character of Richard Cromwell.

On the other hand, many members of Parliament protested that they would stand by him, that if he allowed the army to suppress the parliament, he would find it immediately his own master, and would be left without a friend. Ingoldsby, Goffe, and Whalley supported this view, and one of them offered to go and kill Lambert, who was the originator of all the mischief. Richard called a council to consider the proposition: Whitelock represented the danger of dissolving the parliament, and leaving himself at the mercy of the army; but Thurloe, lord Broghill, Fiennes, and Wolseley declared there was no alternative, for if the army and parliament came to strife, the cavaliers would rise and bring in Charles. Richard reluctantly gave way, and on the 22nd of April he signed a commission empowering Fiennes, the keeper of the seal, to dissolve the parliament. Fiennes summoned the commons to the upper house by the usher of the black rod, but they shut the door in the face of that officer, and refused to obey, adjourning themselves for three days. Fiennes, however, declared the parliament dissolved, the commons having been duly summoned to witness it, and a proclamation was issued to that effect.

The warning of Whitelock was immediately verified; the moment that the parliament ceased, all regard to Richard by the army ceased with it. From that moment he was utterly deserted except by the small knot of officers - Goffe, Whalley, and Ingoldsby, and he was as completely annihilated as protector as if all parties had deposed him by assent and proclamation. The council of officers proceeded to take measures for the exercise of the supreme power. They placed guards to prevent the adjourned commons retaking their seats at Westminster as they proposed, and by their own authority dismissed Ingoldsby, Goffe, Whalley, and the other officers who had adhered to Richard, from their commands in the army, and restored Lambert and all the others who had been cashiered by Oliver. Having thus restored the republicanism of the army, they determined to recall the Rump, as a body that they believed they could command; and they accordingly issued an order for the reassembling of the house of commons which Oliver had so unceremoniously dismissed on the 20th of April, 1653. At this call, Lenthall, the old speaker of the Rump, with about forty or fifty members of the Rump, hastened the next day to Westminster, where Lambert kept guard with the troops, and after some discussion in the Painted Chamber, they went in a body to the house through two files of Lambert's soldiers, and took their places as a real parliament. But their claim to this exclusive right was immediately disputed. The same day, 'the 7th of May, a large number of the members who had been excluded by Pride's purge, in 1648, of whom one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, and eighty of them residing in the capital, assembled in Westminster Hall, and sent up to the house a deputation of fourteen, headed by Prynne, Annesley, and Sir George Booth, to demand equal liberty to sit; but as this would have overwhelmed them with a presbyterian majority, the doors were closed against them: they were kept back by the soldiers who filled the lobby, who were ironically called "the keepers of the liberties of England," and they were informed that no member could sit who had not already signed the engagement. On the 9th, however, Prynne made his way into the house, and kept his seat, spite of all efforts to dislodge him, till dinner time; but going out to dine, he found himself shut out on his return.

The Rump now proceeded to appoint a committee of safety, and then a council of state, which included Fairfax, Lambert, Desborough, Bradshaw, Fleetwood, Ashley Cooper, Haselrig, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, and Whitelock. Letters were received from Monk in Scotland, congratulating the Rump on their return to power, but hypocritically begging them to keep in mind the services of Cromwell and his family. Lockhart sent over from Flanders the tendered services of the regiments there, and was confirmed in his office of ambassador, and also was commissioned to attend a conference betwixt the ministers of France and Spain, to be held at Fuentarabia, whither Charles Stuart had also betaken himself. Montague sent in the adhesion of the fleet, and, what was still more consoling, Henry Cromwell, whose opposition in Ireland was much dreaded, resigned his office, and was permitted to retire into private life.

The Wallingford House party of officers alone created serious apprehension. They sent in a list of fifteen demands from their own creatures of the house, which were immediately taken into consideration, and the Rump successively voted, in compliance, that a form of government should be passed calculated to preserve the liberties of the people, and that it should contain no single person as protector, nor house of peers. That liberty of conscience should be allowed to all believers in the Scriptures who held the doctrine of the Trinity, except papists and prelatists. But one of these demands was for lands of inheritance to be settled on Richard Cromwell to the value of ten thousand pounds a year, and a pension on her highness, his mother, of ten thousand pounds a year. On this it was remarked, that Richard was still occupying Whitehall as if he were protector, and they made it conditional that he should remove thence. They proposed that if he retired voluntarily from the protectorate, they would grant him twenty-nine thousand pounds for the discharge of his debts, two thousand pounds for present necessities, and ten thousand pounds to him and his heirs. Richard cheerfully agreed, and retired, but his pension was never paid. After going to the continent for some time after the restoration, Richard returned and lived peaceably on his estate at Cheshunt, or at the old manor of Mardon, at Hursley, near Winchester, which he received with Dorothy Major, and there spent a jolly life in old English state till the term of eighty years. During his father's life, he is said in convivial hours to have drank the health of his father's landlord, Charles Stuart; and there he had a chest which contained all the addresses and congratulations, even the protestations of profound fidelity from all the corporations, congregations, and almost all the public men, and on this chest he would seat himself in his jocund hours, amongst his convivial friends, and boast that he was sitting on the lives and fortunes of most of the leading men of England. Henry Cromwell also passed his life as a quiet country gentleman on his estate of Swinney, near Sohan, in Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1674. His government of Ireland was, on his resigning, put into the hands of five commissioners, and the command of the army was given to Ludlow.

Charles and his party abroad, watching the continual bickerings of their enemies in England, put in motion all their machinery to create confusion, and to seize the opportunity of taking every possible means of procuring a revolt amongst them. Charles, to encourage his partisans, announced his intention of coming to England to head them. The 1st of August was fixed on for a rising, and Charles hastened into Boulogne, to be ready to pass over into Wales or Cornwall. The duke of York was to lead over six hundred of the prince of Conde's veterans, and, crossing from Boulogne, land on the coast of Kent, whilst the duke of Gloucester was to proceed from Ostend with four thousand troops under marshal Marsin. Unfortunately for them, all their plans had been revealed to Thurloe by Sir Richard Willis, one of the king's sealed knot of seven trusted confidants. Convinced that from this treason the enterprise would fail, Charles sent circular letters to stop the rising. But these in many instances arrived too late. Many appeared in arms, and were fallen upon and routed or taken prisoners by the parliamentarians. Sir John Gore was arrested, the lady Mary Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire, and many other persons of distinction, were arrested on charges of high treason. In Cheshire Sir George Booth erected the royal standard, and took possession of Chester; but on learning the news of the king's deferring the enterprise, and that general Lambert was marching against them, he and his associates fled to Nantwich, where Lambert overtook and totally routed them. Colonel Morgan, with thirty of his men, fell on the field; the earl of Derby was taken disguised as a servant; Sir Thomas Middleton, who was eighty years old, fled to Chirk Castle, but soon surrendered; and Booth himself, disguised as a woman, and riding on a pillion, was betrayed and taken on the road to London, near Newton Pagnell. This unlucky outbreak and defeat threw the adherents of Charles abroad into despair. Montague, the admiral, who had been won over, and had brought his fleet to the mouth of the Thames to facilitate the passage of the king's troops, pretended that he had come for provisions, and, though he was suspected, he was allowed to return to his station. Charles himself, driven to despair, made a journey to Fuentarabia, where Mazarin and the Don Louis de Haro, the ministers of France and Spain, were engaged in a treaty, in the hope that, if it were concluded, he might obtain some support from them. But he was very coldly received; Mazarin would not even see him. In fact, his fortunes were apparently at the lowest ebb, but it was in reality only the dark hour before the dawn. The day of his fortune was at hand.

The parliament, on Lambert's victory, voted him thanks and one thousand pounds to purchase a jewel in memory of it; but Lambert distributed the money amongst his soldiers. The parliament resenting this, regarded it as intended to win the soldiers to his cause, that he might tread in Cromwell's steps, and make himself dictator. It was well known that he had entertained great hopes of being named his successor, and this suspicion was immediately confirmed by his officers, whilst on their march at Derby, signing a petition, and sending it up with a demand that Fleetwood should be made permanently commander-in-chief, and Lambert his lieutenant-general. No sooner did Haselrig see this petition, than he denounced it as an attempt to overturn the parliament, and moved the committal of Lambert and its author to the Tower. But Fleetwood repelled the charge by assuring them that Lambert, who was already in town when the petition was got up, knew nothing of it. The house, however, ordered all copies of the paper to be destroyed, and voted that any addition to the number of officers was needless, chargeable, and dangerous. At the same time they proceeded to conciliate the soldiers by advancing their pay, and, to discharge their arrears, on the 5th of October they raised the monthly assessment from thirty-five thousand pounds to one hundred thousand pounds.

Matters were, however, gone too far to be thus settled betwixt the parliament and the army. Haselrig, Scott, and their associates were of that class of sanguine republicans, who in their zeal think only of the principles they wish to establish, without calculating how far the country is prepared for them, and thus blindly rush on" their own defeat. The Wallingford House military council prepared another paper called a petition, but being far more of a hostile communication, declaring that whoever cast scandalous imputations on the army should be brought to condign punishment. That was distinct enough, but Haselrig and his party had got the adhesion of three regiments, and relied on the promises of Monk in Scotland, and Ludlow in Ireland. On the 11th of October a vote was passed, declaring it high treason to levy any money on the people without consent of parliament, and, therefore, as all the existing taxes expired on the first day of the new year, Haselrig's party believed they had thus rendered the army wholly dependent on them. The very next day Haselrig moved and carried a motion that Desborough, Lambert, six colonels, and a major, were deprived of their commissions for signing the late petition. By another vote Fleetwood was deprived of the office of commander-in-chief, but made president of a board of seven members, for the management of the army. The blind zealots had witnessed to little purpose the history of late years, and the movements of armies. On the n»ext day Lambert, with three thousand men, marched into Westminster, where he found the parliament house guarded by two regiments of foot, and four troops of horse. On his way he met the speaker, attended by a guard. He ordered the officer to dismount, and on refusing, according to Clarendon, pulled him from his horse, and sent Lenthall, the speaker, to his own house. The soldiers, on the two parties meeting, at once coalesced, and the Rump was once more dismissed. The officers at Wallingford House took upon themselves to annul Hazel- rig's votes of the last three days, and establish a provisional committee of twenty-three members. There was a party amongst them for restoring Richard Cromwell, who came up from Hampshire escorted by three troops of horse; but this party was outvoted by a small majority, and he retired again.