CROMWELL DISSOLVES THE LONG OR RUMP PARLIAMENT. T. CARLYLE. December 1652-March 1653. The Dutch war prospers and has prospered. Blake and Monk beating the Dutch in tough sea-fights; delinquents, monthly assess ments, and the lead of cathedrals furnishing the sinews; the Dutch are about sending ambassadors to treat of peace. With home affairs, again, it goes not so well. Through winter, through spring, that bill for a new representative goes along in its slow gestation, reappearing Wednesday after Wednesday; painfully struggling to take a shape that shall fit both parties, parliament grandees and army grandees both at once. A thing difficult; a thing impossible! Parliament grandees now become a contemptible Rump, wish they could grow into a reputable full parliament again, and have the government and the governing persons go on as they are now doing this naturally is their wish. Naturally too, the army party's wish is the reverse of this; that a full free parliament, with safety to the godly interests and due subordination of the presbyterian and other factions should assemble; but also that the present governing persons with their red tape habits unable to define an incumbrance in three months, should for most part be out of it. Impossible to shape a bill that will fit both of these parties; Tom Thumb and the Irish giant. You cannot, by the art of parliamentary tailoring, clip out a coat that will fit them both! We can fancy "conferences," considerations deep and almost awful; my lord general looking forward to possibilities that fill even him with fear. Puritan notables they will not have: these present governing men are clear against that; not Puritan notables; and if they themselves, by this new bill or otherwise, insist on staying there, what is to become of them? Dryasdust laments that this invaluable bill, now in process of gestation, is altogether lost to posterity; no copy even of itself, much less any record of the conferences, debates of contemporaneous considerations on it, attainable even in fractions by mankind. Much is lost, my erudite friend :--and we must console ourselves! The substantial essence of the bill came out afterwards into full practice, in Oliver's own parliaments. The present form of the bill I do clearly perceive, had one clause, "That all the members of this present Rump should continue to sit without reelection;" and still better, another, "That they should be a general election committee, and have power to say to every new member, 'Thou art dangerous, thou shalt not enter: go!'" This clearly is the bill: and not less clearly that the lord general and the army party would in no wise have a bill with this in it—or indeed, have any bill that was to be the old story over again, under a new name. So much, on good evidence, is very clear to me ;-the rest, which is all obliterated, becomes not inconceivable. Cost what it may cost, this Rump parliament, which has by its conduct abundantly "defined what an incumbrance is," shall go about its business. Terrible voices, supernal and other, have said it, awfully enough in the hearts of some men! Neither under its own shabby figure, nor under another more plausible, shall it guide the divine mercies and miraculous affairs of this nation any further. The last of the conferences was held at my lord general's house in Whitehall, on Tuesday evening, 19th of April, 1653. Above twenty leading members of parliament present and many officers. Conference which came to nothing, as all the others had done. Your bill with these clauses and visible tendencies in it, cannot pass, says the one party: Your scheme of Puritan notables seems full of danger, says the other. What remedy? "No remedy except-except that you leave us to sit as we are for a while yet," suggest the official persons. "In no wise!" answer the officers with a vehemence of look and tone, which my lord general, seemingly anxious to do it, cannot repress. "You must not and ** N cannot sit longer," say the officers ;-and their look says even, Shall not! Bulstrode went home to Chelsea very late, with the tears in his big dull eyes, at thought of the courses men were getting into. Bulstrode and Widdrington were the most eager for sitting; chief justice St. John, strange thing in a constitutional gentleman, declared that there could be no sitting for us any longer. We parted, able to settle on nothing, except the engagement to meet here again to-morrow morning, and to leave the bill asleep till something were settled on. "A leading person," Sir Harry Vane or another, undertook that nothing should be done in it till then. come. Wednesday, 20th April, 1653. My lord general accordingly is in his reception room this morning, "in plain black clothes, and gray worsted stockings," he, with many officers: but few members have yet come, though punctual Bulstrode and certain others are there. Some waiting there is; some impatience that the members would The members do not come instead of members comes a notice that they are busy getting on with their bill in the House, hurrying it double quick through all the stages. Possible? New message that it will be law in a little while, if no interposition take place! Bulstrode hastens off to the House; my lord general, at first incredulous, does now also hasten off,-nay, orders that a company of musketeers of his own regiment attend him. Hastens off with a very high expression of countenance, I think-saying or feeling: "Who could have believed it of them? It is not honest; yea, it is contrary to common honesty! My lord general, the big hour is come! Young colonel Sidney, the celebrated Algernon, sat in the House this morning; a House of some fifty-three.* Algernon has left distinct note of the affair; less distinct we have from Bulstrode, who was also there, who seems in some points to be even wilfully wrong. Solid Ludlow was far off in Ireland, but gathered many details in after years, and faithfully wrote them down, in the unappeasable indignation of his heart. Combining these three originals, we have, after various perusals and collations and considerations, obtained the following authentic, moderately conceivable account.+ "The parliament sitting as usual and being in debate upon the bill with the amendments, which it was thought would have been passed that day, the lord general Cromwell came into the house, clad in plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings, and sat down, as he used to do, in an ordinary place." For some time he listens to this interesting debate on the bill; beckoning once to Harrison, who came over to him and answered dubitatingly. Whereupon the lord general sat still for about a quarter of an hour longer. But now the question being put, That this bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, "This is the time, I must do it!" and so rose up, put off his hat, and spake. At the first and for a good while, he spake to the commendation of the parliament for their pains and care of the public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self interest, and other faults-rising higher and higher into a very aggravated style indeed. An honourable member, sir Peter Wentworth by name, not known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises to order, as we phrase it; says, "It is a strange language this unusual within the walls of parliament this! And from a trusted servant too; and one whom we have so highly honoured; and one"“Come, come!" exclaims my lord general in a very high key, "We have had enough of this," -and in fact my lord general, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, "I will put an end to your prating," and steps forth into the floor of the House, and "clapping on his hat," and occasionally "stamping the floor with his feet," begins a discourse which no man can report! He says-he avers! he is heard saying: "It * That is Cromwell's number; Ludlow, far distant and not credible on this occasion, says 66 eighty or a hundred." + Blencowe's Sidney Papers. Whitelock. Ludlow. is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give place to better men !—Call them in !” adds he briefly to Harrison, in word of command: and "some twenty or thirty” grim musketeers enter, with bullets in their snaphances; grimly prompt for orders; and stand in some attitude of carry arms there. Veteran men; men of might, and men of war, their faces are as the faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes upon the mountains ;-not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at this moment! "You call yourselves a parliament," continues my lord general in clear blaze of eonflagration: "you are no parliament; I say you are no parliament! Some of you are drunkards," and his eye flashes on poor Mr. Chaloner, an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle: some of you are "—and he glares into Henry Marten, and the poor sir Peter who rose to order, "lewd livers both; living in open contempt of God's commandments. Following your own greedy appetites and the devil's commandments. Corrupt, unjust persons," and here I think he glanced at sir Bulstrode Whitelock, one of the commissioners of the great seal, giving him and others very sharp language, though he named them not. "Corrupt, unjust persons; scandalous to the profession of the gospel; how can you be a parliament for God's people? Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God,―go! 46 The House is, of course, all on its feet-uncertain almost whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen before in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my lord general, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, "What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away!"—and gave it to a musketeer. And now "Fetch him down!" says he to Harrison, flashing on the speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient Roman than anything else, declares, He will not come till forced. Sir," said Harrison, "I will lend you a hand;" on which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They all vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously, out to their ulterior businesses and respective places of abode; the Long Parliament is dissolved! "It's you that have forced me to this," exclaims my lord general: "I have sought the Lord night and day, that he would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work." At their going out, some say the lord general said to young sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name, That he might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler and had not common honesty. “Oh, sir Harry Vane, thou with thy subtle casuistries and abstruse hair splittings, thou art other than a good one, I think. The Lord deliver me from thee, sir Harry Vane!" "All being gone out the door of the House was locked, and the key with the mace, as I heard, was carried away by colonel Otley," and it is all over, and the unspeakable catastrophe has come and remains. Such was the destructive wrath of my lord general Cromwell against the nominal Rump parliament of England. Wrath which innumerable mortals since have accounted extremely diabolic; which some now begin to account partly divine. Divine or diabolic it is an indisputable fact: left for the commentaries of men. The Rump parliament has gone its ways; and truly except it be in their own, I know not in what eyes are tears at their departure. They went very softly, softly as a dream, say all witnesses. "We did not hear a dog bark at their going!" asserts my lord general elsewhere. It is said, my lord general did not on his entrance into the House contemplate quite as a certainty this strong measure, but it came upon him like an irresistible impulse or inspiration, as he heard their parliamentary eloquence proceed. "Perceiving the Spirit of God so strong upon me, I would no longer consult flesh and blood.”* He has done it at all events, and is responsible for the results it may have. A responsibility which he, as well as most of us, knows to be awful: but he fancies it was in * Godwin III., 456, (who cites Echard; not much of an authority in such matters.) answer to the English nation, and to the Maker of the English nation and of him: and he will do the best he may with it. THE "LITTLE" PARLIAMENT. DR. LINGARD. Whoever has studied the character of Cromwell, will have remarked the anxiety with which he laboured to conceal his real designs from the notice of his adherents. If credit were due to his assertions, he cherished none of those aspiring thoughts which agitate the breasts of the ambitious; the consciousness of his weakness taught him to shrink from the responsibility of power; and at every step in his ascent to greatness he affected to sacrifice his own feelings to the judgment and importunity of others. But in dissolving the late* parliament he had deviated from this his ordinary course he had been compelled to come boldly forward by the obstinacy of the policy of his opponents, who during twelve months had triumphed over his intrigues, and were preparing to pass an act which would place new obstacles in his path. Now, however, he had forcibly taken into his own hands the reins of government, it remained for him to determine whether he should retain them in his grasp, or deliver them over to others. He preferred the latter. For the maturity of time was not yet come; he saw that among the officers who blindly submitted to be the tools of his ambition, there were several, who would abandon the idol of their worship, whenever they should suspect him of a design to subvert the public liberty. But if he parted with power for the moment, it was in such a manner as to warrant the hope that it would shortly return to him under another form; not as won by the sword of the military, but as deposited in his hands by the judgment of parliament. It could not escape the sagacity of the lord general that the fanatics, with whose aid he had subverted the late government, were not the men to be entrusted with the destinies of the three kingdoms; yet he deemed it his interest to indulge them in their wild notions of civil and religious reformation, and to suffer himself for awhile to be governed by their counsels. Their first measure was to publish "A Vindication of their Proceedings." The Long parliament they pronounced incapable of "answering those ends which God, His people, and the whole nation expected." Had it been permitted to sit a day longer it would "at one blow have laid in the dust the interest of all honest men and of their glorious cause." In its place the council of war would "call to the government persons of approved fidelity and honesty;" and therefore required public officers and ministers to proceed to their respective places, and conjured those who feared and loved the name of the Lord, to be instant with him day and night in their behalf.† They next proceeded to establish a Council of State. Some proposed that it should consist of ten members, some of seventy, after the model of the Jewish Sanhedrim, and others of thirteen, in imitation of Christ and his twelve Apostles. The last project was adopted as equally Scriptural and more convenient. With Cromwell in the place of Lord President, were joined four civilians, and eight officers of high rank; so that the army still retained its ascendency, and the council of state became in fact a military council. The long parliament. Ludlow II., 24; Thurloe I., 289, 395. Sir H. Vane, after the affronts which he had received, was offered a place in the council; but he replied that, though the reign of the saints was begun, he would defer his share in it till he should go to heaven. Thurloe I., 205. From this moment for some months it would have embarrassed any man to determine where the supreme power resided. Some of the judges were superseded by others, new commissioners of the treasury and admiralty were appointed; even the monthly assessment of £120,000 was continued for an additional half-year; and yet these and similar acts, all of them belonging to the highest authority in the state, appeared to emanate from different sources: these from the council of war, those from the council of state, and several from the lord general himself, sometimes with the advice of one or other, sometimes without the advice of either of these councils. At the same time the public mind was agitated by the circulation of reports the most contradictory. This day it was rumoured that Cromwell had offered to recall the royal family on condition that Charles should marry one of his daughters, the next that he intended to ascend the throne himself, and for that purpose had already prepared the insignia of royalty. Here signatures were solicited to a petition for the re-establishment of the ancient constitution; there for a government by successive parliaments. Some addresses declared the conviction of the subscribers that the late dissolution was necessary, others prayed that the members might be allowed to return to the House, for the sole purpose of legally dissolving themselves by their own authority. In the meanwhile the lord general continued to wear the mask of humility and godliness; he prayed and preached with more than his wonted fervour; and his piety was rewarded, according to the reports of his confidants, with frequent communications from the Holy Spirit.† In the month of May, he spent eight days in close consultation with his military divan; and the result was to call a new parliament, but a parliament modelled on principles unknown to the history of this or of any other nation. It was to be a parliament of saints, of men who had not offered themselves as candidates, or been chosen by the people, but whose chief qualification consisted in holiness of life, and whose call to the office of legislators came from the choice of the council. With this view the ministers took the sense of the "Congregational churches" in the several counties, the returns contained the names of the persons "faithful, fearing God, and hating covetousness," who were deemed qualified for this high and important trust; and out of these the council in the presence of the lord general selected one hundred and thirty-nine representatives for England, six for Wales, six for Ireland, and five for Scotland. To each of these was sent a writ of summons under the signature of Cromwell, requiring his personal attendance at Whitehall on a certain day, to take upon himself the trust, and to serve the office of member for some particular place. Of the surprise with which the writs were received by many the reader may judge. Yet out of the whole number two only returned a refusal; by most the very extraordinary manner of their election was taken as a sufficient proof that the call was from heaven. ? On the appointed day, the 4th of July (1653) 120 of these faithful and godly men attended in the council chamber, at Whitehall. They were seated on chairs, round the table and the lord general took his station near the middle window, supported on each side by a numerous body of officers. He addressed the company standing, and it was believed by his admirers, perhaps by himself, “that the Spirit of God spoke in him and by him." Having vindicated, in a long narrative, the dissolution of the late parliament, he congratulated the persons present on the high office to which they had been called. It was not of their own seeking. It had come to them from God by the choice of the army, the usual * Whitelock, 556-7, 9; Leicester's Journal, 142; Merc. Polit. 157. †Thurloe I., 256, 289, 306. Thurloe L., 395. Compare the list of members in Heath (350) with the letters in Milton's State Papers, 92, 94, 96. |