"Own your call," he says to the first of his own Parliaments, "for it is marvellous, and it hath been unprojected. It's not long since either you or we came to know of it. And indeed this hath been the way God dealt with us all along. To keep things from our eyes all along, so that we have seen nothing in all His dispensations long beforehand." And there is the famous saying of his, that "he goes furthest who knows not where he is going,' - of which Retz said that it showed Cromwell to be a simpleton. We may at least admit the peril of a helmsman who does not forecast his

course.

It is true that the situation was a revolutionary one, and the Remnant was no more a legal Parliament than Cromwell was a legal monarch. The constitution had long vanished from the stage. From the day in May, 1641, when the king had assented to the bill, making a dissolution depend on the will of Parliament, down to the days in March, 1649, when the mutilated Commons abolished the House of Lords and the office of king, story after story of the constitutional fabric had come crashing to the ground. The Rump alone was left to stand for the old tradition of Parliament and it was still clothed, even in the minds of those who were most querulous about its present failure of performance, with a host of venerated associations - the same associations that had lifted up men's hearts all through the fierce tumults of civil war. The rude destruction of the Parliament gave men a shock that awakened in some of them angry distrust of Cromwell, in others a broad resentment at the overthrow of the noblest of experiments, and in the largest class of all, deep misgivings as to the past, silent self-questioning whether the whole movement since 1641 had not been a grave and terrible mistake.

Guizot truly says of Cromwell that he was one of the men who know that even the best course in political action always has its drawbacks, and who accept, without flinching, the difficulties that might be laid upon them by their own decisions. This time, however, the day was not long in coming when Oliver saw reason to look back with regret upon those whom he now handled with such impetuous severity. When he quarrelled with the first Parliament of his Protectorate, less than two years hence, he used his old foes, if foes they were, for a topic of reproach against his new ones. "I will say this on behalf of the Long Parliament, that had such an expedient as this government (the Instrument) been proposed to them, and could they have seen the cause of God provided for, and been by debates enlightened in the grounds of it,

whereby the difficulties might have been cleared to them, and the reason of the whole enforced, and the circumstances of time and persons, with the temper and disposition of the people, and affairs both abroad and at home might have been well weighed, I think in my conscience well as they were thought to love their seats they would have proceeded in another manner than you have done." To cut off in a fit of passion the chance of such a thing was a false step that he was never able to retrieve.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, especially on the coup d'état of 1653. Hallam, Constitutional History, Pt. 2, chap. x. Ranke, History of England, Vol. III, pp. 71 ff. Source materials in Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution.

CHAPTER VII

THE RESTORATION SETTLEMENT IN STATE AND CHURCH

ALL during the Puritan Revolution the majority of English people were doubtless loyal to the king, and when Cromwell died in 1658, factions broke out in the army, by which alone the Protectorate had been maintained. The people, moreover, were heartily tired of an absolutism more expensive and galling than the personal government of Charles I. The restoration of the monarchy was inevitable. In 1660 a freely elected convention Parliament met, and having received fair promises from Charles II in his Declaration of Breda, it announced that "according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is and ought to be by King, Lords, and Commons." In May, 1660, Charles landed in England and was duly invested with royal authority.

§ 1. The Restoration and Problems for Settlement1

It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. Nor can this be attributed to the usual fickleness of the multitude. For the late government, whether under the Parliament or the Protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The king's return the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted them with its name a liberty secure from enormous assessments, which, even when lawfully imposed, the English had always paid with reluctance, and from the insolent despotism of the soldiery. The young and lively looked forward to a release from the rigors of fanaticism, and were too ready to exchange that hypocritical austerity of the late times for a licentiousness and impiety that became characteristic of the 1 Hallam, Constitutional History of England, Vol. II, pp. 68 ff.

present. In this tumult of exulting hope and joy there was much to excite anxious forebodings in calmer men; and it was by no means safe to pronounce that a change so generally demanded, and in most respects so expedient, could be effected without very serious sacrifices of public and particular interests.

Four subjects of great importance, and some of them very difficult, occupied the convention Parliament from the time of the king's return till their dissolution in the following December: a general indemnity and legal oblivion of all that had been done amiss in the late interruption of government; an adjustment of the claims for reparation which the crown, the Church, and private loyalists had to prefer; a provision for the king's revenue, consistent with the abolition of military tenures; and the settlement of the Church. These were, in effect, the articles of a sort of treaty between the king and the nation, without some legislative provisions as to which no stable or tranquil course of law could be expected.

§ 2. Punishment of the Revolutionists

The king in his well-known Declaration from Breda, dated the 14th of April, had laid down, as it were, certain bases of his restoration, as to some points which he knew to excite much apprehension in England. One of these was a free and general pardon to all his subjects, saving only such as should be excepted by Parliament. It had always been the king's expectation, or at least that of his chancellor, that all who had been immediately concerned in his father's death should be delivered up to punishment; and, in the most unpropitious state of his fortunes, while making all professions of pardon and favor to different parties, he had constantly excepted the regicides. Monk, however, had advised, in his first messages to the king, that none, or at most not above four, should be excepted on this account; and the Commons voted that not more than seven persons should lose the benefit of the indemnity both as to life and estate. Yet, after having named seven of the late king's judges, they proceeded in a few days to add several more, who had been concerned in managing his trial, or otherwise forward in promoting his death. They went on to pitch upon twenty persons, whom, on account of their deep concern in the transactions of the last twelve years, they determined to affect with penalties not extending to death and to be determined by some future act of Parliament. As their passions grew warmer, and the wishes of the court became better known,

they came to except from all benefit of the indemnity such of the king's judges as had not rendered themselves to justice according to the late proclamation. In this state the bill of indemnity and oblivion was sent up to the Lords. But in that House the old Royalists had a more decisive preponderance than among the Commons. They voted to except all who had signed the deathwarrant against Charles I, or sat when sentence was pronounced, and five others by name, - Hacker, Vane, Lambert, Haslerig, and Axtell. They struck out, on the other hand, the clause reserving Lenthall and the rest of the same class for future penalties. They made other alterations in the bill to render it more severe; and with these, after a pretty long delay, and a positive message from the king, requesting them to hasten their proceedings (an irregularity to which they took no exception, and which in the eyes of the nation was justified by circumstances), they returned the bill to the Commons.

The vindictive spirit displayed by the Upper House was not agreeable to the better temper of the Commons, where the Presbyterian or moderate party retained great influence. Though the king's judges (such, at least, as had signed the death-warrant) were equally guilty, it was consonant to the practice of all humane governments to make a selection for capital penalties; and to put forty or fifty persons to death for that offence seemed a very sanguinary course of proceeding, and not likely to promote the conciliation and oblivion so much cried up. But there was a yet stronger objection to this severity. The king had published a proclamation, in a few days after his landing, commanding his father's judges to render themselves up within fourteen days, on pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity, either as to their lives or estates. Many had voluntarily come in, having put an obvious construction on this proclamation. It seems to admit of little question that the king's faith was pledged to those persons, and that no advantage could be taken of any ambiguity in the proclamation without as real perfidiousness as if the words had been more express. They were at least entitled to be set at liberty, and to have a reasonable time allowed for making their escape, if it were determined to exclude them from the indemnity. The Commons were more mindful of the king's honor and their own than his nearest advisers. But the violent Royalists were gaining ground among them, and it ended in a compromise. They left Hacker and Axtell, who had been prominently concerned in the king's death, to their fate. They even admitted the exceptions of Vane and