king nor covenant. All these, plunging and tumbling in huge discord for the last eight years, have made of Ireland and its 'affairs the black, unutterable blot we speak of. . . . Numerous large masses of armed men have been on foot, full of fiery vehemence and audacity, but without worth as armies; savage hordes rather, full of hatred and mutual hatred, of disobedience, falsity, and noise. Undrilled, unpaid, driving herds of plundered cattle before them for subsistence; rushing down from hill-sides, from ambuscadoes, passes in the mountains; taking shelter always in the bogs, whither the cavalry cannot follow them."

He con

1649.

Immense

32. Cromwell came upon all this, says Carlyle, "like a torrent of heaven's lightning." He was fiery and rapid as lightning certainly, and he did what he meant to do. quered the country, and he brought it into order and a sort of peace, but he was terribly cruel. numbers of soldiers, besides priests, friars, and others, were slaughtered, and thousands and thousands of people were driven from their homes, while English Protestants were settled down in their place. Cromwell writes about all this slaughter as if it were the work of the Spirit of God, and wishes "that all honest hearts may give the glory to God." It is bad enough when men lay all the blame of their wicked deeds on the devil, but it is much worse still when they give the glory of them to God.

33. After nine months of this work, and when Ireland was cowed and trampled into tranquillity, Cromwell returned to England, where he was received with great honours, and went to live in poor King Charles's palace at Whitehall. Some time afterwards the parliament gave him Hampton Court Palace, where Charles had also passed much of his time.

Prince Charles in

Scotland.

34. The next troubles were in Scotland, which took up the cause of the banished Prince Charles, under the brave and loyal Montrose, one of the noblest of all the Royalists. Though his expedition failed, and he himself was put to death, the prince ventured to come over to Scotland, and was received by a large part of the nation as king. He was a gay and pleasure-loving young fellow, but he now had to promise to be a Presbyterian (a promise which he never meant to keep), and to conform himself outwardly to their strict and gloomy ways. He was kept in such stern order, so preached at, scolded at, and watched, that it seems to have been the most wretched part of his life.

35. The Puritan clergy, Lord Clarendon says, "were in such

continual attendance upon him, that he was never free from their importunities, under pretence of instructing him in religion; and so they obliged him to their constant hours of their long prayers, and made him observe the Sunday with more rigour than the Jews accustomed to do their Sabbath; and reprehended him very sharply if he smiled on those days, and if his looks and gestures did not please them; whilst all their prayers and sermons, at which he was compelled to be present, were libels and bitter invectives against all the actions of his father, the idolatry of his mother, and his own malignity."

Battle of Worcester.

36. Cromwell marched into Scotland at the head of his invincible army, and beat the Royalists in a great battle at Dunbar. When Charles and his army left Scotland 1650. and marched into England, he followed, and utterly defeated them at Worcester. The young king had to fly for his life, and met with most wonderful adventures and hair-breadth escapes in endeavouring to take refuge in France. He seems to have been fond of telling these adventures afterwards, and they are fully recorded in Lord Clarendon's History. We have them also in a shorter form as they were heard from Charles's own lips, by Samuel Pepys, another man who kept a diary in these days; one of the most odd and amusing diaries that any one ever wrote. He tells us how the king "fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester, where it made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through; as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company that took them for rogues. His sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house, that had not seen him in eight years, did know him but kept it private; when at the same table there was one that had been of his own regiment at Worcester could not know him, but made him drink the king's health, and said that the king was at least four fingers higher than he. . . . In another place, at his inn, the master of the house, as the king was standing with his hands upon the back of a chair by the fireside, kneeled down and kissed his hand privately, saying that he would not ask him who he was, but bid God bless him whither he was going. Then the difficulties of getting a boat to get into France" (he started from Bright-hemsted, a small fisher town on the coast of Sussex, now called

Escape of

Charles.

Brighton), "where he was fain to plot with the master thereof to keep his design from the foreman and a boy (which was all the ship's company), and so get to Fécamp in France. At Rouen he looked so poorly that the people went into the rooms before he went away to see whether he had not stolen something or other." 37. It was just after the battle that the king hid himself in an oak tree, where he could sit in security watching those who came in search of him, and hearing them say what they would do with him when they caught him, which oak tree is still commemorated by the wearing of oak apples on the 29th of May; the day when he was restored to his kingdom. Even all these dangers and hardships must have been pleasanter than his life with the Scotch preachers, one would think.

38. Though in the course of his wanderings Charles was recognized by a large number of both men and women, and though a proclamation was issued promising £1000 to any one who would deliver him up, and declaring the penalty of high treason against any who should harbour or conceal him, not one of them all had a thought of betraying him, either through hope of reward or dread of punishment.

LECTURE XLIX. THE PROTECTOR AND THE KING.

The rule of Oliver. The fame of England. Death of Oliver. The army Recall of Charles II. Reaction against the Puritans. The Plague and the Fire.

supreme.

1. OLIVER and his army were now victorious everywhere. The poor remains of the Long Parliament, which had begun so grandly and had done such brave things, were now sunk into contempt. They looked on with displeasure at the new tyranny which was growing up, but they were quite helpless. At last, one day Oliver marched into the House with a body Cromwell of soldiers, had the Speaker pulled out of his chair breaks up by force, called his mace a bauble, and after abusing

1653.

the and insulting the members, turned them all out of parliament. the House, and locked the door. No one dared cry "Privilege of Parliament" this time; Oliver and the Ironsides were too strong for them.

Lord Protector.

the

army,

2. The government was now supposed to be republican, and England was called a commonwealth; but in fact the whole country lay at the feet of Cromwell. He would have He is made liked very much to be made king and called so, but much as they honoured and trusted him, hated the title of king, and he was instead called the Lord Protector. He now resolved to try and govern in the old way, with a House of Lords and a House of Commons; but his plan did not succeed very well. One of the parliaments he summoned was not fairly elected, and was generally despised. One of its most active members being the leather-seller, PraiseGod Barebone, it was derisively called by the people "Barebone's Parliament." His other parliament, when it attempted to do its duty and to put some check on his despotic will, he dissolved, just as James or Charles would have done. His House of Lords was ridiculed by everybody. Scarcely any of the real nobility of the old families which the people respected would attend; it was said that Oliver invited draymen and cobblers to take seats

in it. It was quite true that men of all trades had been officers in Cromwell's army, had done good and true work for the country, and were worthy of all respect; but when they attempted to appear as lords and nobles they became ridiculous, and even the House of Commons would not honour them by calling them lords.

His

government.

3. If ever there was an absolute monarch in the world, Oliver became one now. Bad as it would have been for the country if this had gone on, it cannot be denied that as long as Oliver reigned he reigned gloriously. He restored justice and order; no judge dared touch a bribe now; no one dared stir up strife or tumult. He was even, for those days, tolerant in religion. The great parties had broken up into many different sects by this time, and Oliver strove to make them live peaceably together. He even allowed the Jews to come back to England; none of whom had entered the country since the day when Edward I. had banished them. It is curious to consider that when Shakespeare drew the character of Shylock, he had probably never seen a Jew. Some of them were now permitted to come back, and they, by degrees, established themselves in London, though they were not allowed to build a synagogue till 1662. Cromwell, indeed, became so famous that some of the Jews in foreign parts began to think he must be their expected Messiah, and sent a body of Rabbis to England to try and find out whether he had not had some Jewish ancestors. Cromwell does not seem to have been at all flattered by this compliment, and sent the Rabbis off again in great indignation.

4. It was while Cromwell was Lord Protector that the first missionaries were sent out by England to convert the heathen. England is now, probably, the greatest missionary country in the world; very large sums of money are raised every year by the Church of England and other bodies for the purpose of spreading Christianity far and wide. It was now that the first interest was excited in the cause. The government caused collections to be made in every parish in England for sending missionaries to the American Indians. The first of the missionaries was a most devoted and heroic man named Eliot, who converted a great many of the savages, and translated the Bible into their language.

5. England now rose to great fame and glory abroad. After Elizabeth's death she had sunk down under the Stuart kings to be almost a second-rate power; but Cromwell's wisdom and strength raised her up again, till she seemed the greatest and mightiest nation in Europe.

England's

famo.