By that one blow the empire of the parliament
was confirmed through every corner of Great Britain—
the last hope of the Stuarts was in the dust,
never, as it seemed, more to rise—and he, the
conqueror, was received in the metropolis as no
scion of a royal stock had ever yet been greeted!
Congratulations, not of tongue-loyalty, but of sincere
and grateful love, were showered upon him,
as he drove into London in a gorgeous carriage,
escorted by the speaker and the leading members
of the commons—the mayor and sheriffs of the

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

city—and an enormous multitude of every age and
sex, who had gone out to Acton to show their gratitude
and reverence to one whom many thought it
no flattery to term the father and the saviour of his
country. A lodging was assigned to him in the
late residence of England's monarch!—a solemn
vote of thanks was tendered to him, all the members
standing, when he resumed his seat!—petitions,
couched in humbler language and decked
with loftier adulation than any sovereign since
Elizabeth had received from his subjects, were
sent up to him daily!—his praises were hymned
forth by a lyre, whose melody shall never be forgotten
while England's language lives upon the
earth—the lyre of the immortal Milton! Although
no king, Cromwell was, truly, the first man in England.
Modestly, however, and decorously, and
without any symptom of disorganizing or misproud
ambition, did he bear his high honours.
Wisdom and mercy marked his elevation in no
less degree than energy and valour signalized his
rise. His first act in the senate of the regenerated
land was to obtain the passing of a general amnesty
in the behalf of all who had engaged in the
late war, with the exception only of some two or
three, so obstinately and incurably devoted to the
exiled family and hostile to the commonwealth,
that public safety rendered their public punishment
a measure not of cruelty or vengeance, but of necessity.
His next was to procure a vote for taking
speedily into consideration the expediency of
fixing a time for their own dissolution. The period
named accordingly for the abdication of their immense,
and, thus far, well-exerted powers, was
the third day of November, 1654—a distance of
three years—a distance neither justified by any
rule or precedent of the constitution, nor anywise

[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

desirable or necessary—but proving merely that
having, by their exertions in past time, put down
the tyranny established on the abuse of prerogative,
they were determined now to build another
on the more popular but scarce less perilous abuse
of privilege. Having originally met in the year
`40, they had already held the reins of government
for a far longer time than any former parliament—
than would have been endured in times less turbulent—
than was, in short, consistent with the
rules of sound and equitable policy. Having originally
been composed of the best, the wisest, the
most independent men of England, they had been
gradually, but continually, reduced by death, desertion,
and proscription, to a mere knot of party
politicians, possessing nothing of a parliament except
the name, desirous solely of their own emolument
and power, and as entirely different from that
magnificent assembly which had resisted the first
Charles in all the terrors of his puissant sovereigaty,
as it is possible for one deliberative body
to be different from another. This, then, was the
house which now passed a vote securing to themselves
the supreme power of the realm for three
more years at least, in absolute defiance to the
wishes of the people, of the army, and of the
wisest patriots of the kingdom. Scotland, meantime,
subdued completely by the arms of Cromwell,
wielded by Monk, his able deputy, was in
a state of orderly and calm tranquillity widely at
variance with the confused and hopeless anarchy
in which it had been plunged for centuries by the
fierce and continual rivalry of its dogmatic and intolerant
sectarians. These had been now, at length,
by the wise energy of Oliver, compelled to endure
one another peacefully, and to forbear the angry
disputations that had incessantly convulsed the

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country since the first era of the reformation. Ireland,
unhappy Ireland, desolated by the fierce vengeance
of the independent conquerors, was perforce
quiet; and England, united, free, and wealthy,
required only a short interval of time, under a firm
and liberal government, to recover from the injuries
which intestine discord must bring upon a
state, how great soever may have been the benefits
acquired by the means of the keen remedy,
which is to nations as amputation to the human
frame. Abroad, her navies rode the ocean in triumphant,
if not undisputed, mastery; baffling at
every fresh encounter, and subduing the brave and
dogged Hollanders, who had so lately ploughed the
narrow seas with brooms at their mastheads, as
though they would have swept their island foemen
from their path like worthless dust!—bringing in
unresisted rich and gallant prizes of the volatile
and fiery Frenchman, who dared not, so had the
genius of the proud republic overcrowed the spirit
of that valiant nation, offer resistance to that people
now, which they had set at naught while governed
by a king!—winning respect from the cold
and haughty Spaniard!—making her fame as universal,
and her flag as widely known, as winds
could blow or billows bear!—and justifying the
high boast of Oliver, which he had uttered years
before to Ardenne, while yet an undistinguished
member in the great council of the kingdom, that
the time should come wherein the quality of Englishmen
should be as widely and as greatly honoured
as ever was the name of antique Roman.
It was, then, evident that there was now no cause
of fear which should in any degree sanction the
continued usurpation, for such indeed it was, of
the parliamentarian party, who seemed at this time
to have again determined on trying the same line

[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]

of measures which had failed so signally before
the death of the first Charles. Yet the commencement
of the year 1652 found them still
struggling to maintain the sway in absolute despite
of their constituents. At this time England
had been, for nearly four years, under the
nominal form of a republic. The merit of successive
parliaments and unbiased representation was
on all sides acknowledged, yet was no step taken
or even contemplated toward the establishment of
such forms, or to the self-dissolution of the present
house. Month after month matters continued thus,
until another year had wellnigh joined its predecessor
in that great catacomb — the past!—the
country was dissatisfied!—the army waxed indignant,
the rather so that—as before, in the year '49—
foreseeing the determined opposition of the soldiery
to their unlawful measures, the commons
once again began to agitate the subjects of retrenchment
of expenses and the disbanding of one
half the standing forces. Thus things went on,
all prosperous abroad, all turbulent at home and
dubious, until the month of August in the second
year after the defeat of Worcester. At this time
the leaders of the army, which had now reached
the “very winter of their discontent,” presented a
petition of the host, by means of a deputation of
six officers, the devoted friends of Cromwell, the
boldest and most uncompromising favourers of universal
freedom in elections and universal toleration—
papistry alone excluded—in religious matters.
A council had been held some days before
at Lenthall's house of all the most important personages
of the land, civil and military; whereat it
was debated gravely, whether it would be better
to perpetuate the commonwealth on terms to be
fixed now immutably, or to establish once again

[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]

the government as vested in a limited mixed monarchy.
The officers in general were adverse to all
form of royalty, as holding the name “king,” alone
and in itself, subversive of true freedom! The
lawyers, on the other hand, with the sage Whitelocke
at their head, maintained that the time-honoured
constitution of the land, as comprehending
commons, lords, and king, was suited better, both
for stability and safety to the feelings and the principles
of Englishmen, than a new form of democratic
sway. Cromwell, during this council as before,
held himself much aloof; but, at the last,
when urged for his opinion, admitted that he, “so
far as he had thought upon so grave and onerous
a question, inclined his judgment rather to the last
expressed position, could it be any wise decided
what person might be called advisedly to fill the
vacant throne; since, of a truth, he thought not any
of the idolatrous and heaven-condemned scions of
the late man admissible to dwell among—much
less to govern—this regenerate and freedom-seeking
people.”

By some most underhanded means the tidings
of this meeting, and the opinions held therein, were
treasonably carried to the parliament, and they
proceeded instantly to force a bill for their own
dissolution through the house, encumbered with
provisions wholly at variance with the freedom of
election, and obnoxious to the great bulk of the
people. It was in vain that Harrison conjured
them, with most moving eloquence, to pause in
their career of reckless and unprincipled ambition!—
it was in vain!—they were that instant on the
point of voting that a new election should be holden
for four fifths of the members of the commons,
the one fifth remaining to hold their seats for a yet
farther time, and to possess the right of

[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]

sanctioning or disallowing the admission of the newly-chosen
delegates, as they might deem them honest
and worthy vessels, or unsuited to the work in hand.
At a late hour Oliver, who was waiting at White-hall
in his own private chambers, was advertised
of these strange and unjust proceedings; and, instantly
commanding a company of soldiers to repair
to the house, entered and took his seat among
the members. He was more plainly—nay, even
slovenly attired, than when he had appeared in
public at any time for several years. His dress
was of plain and coarse cloth, all black—doublet,
and cloak, and hose! with stockings of gray worsted
rolled up to his mid-thigh. While the debate
continued he sat immersed, apparently, in thought,
and listening most attentively to the opinions of the
different orators. The speaker at length rose, as
if to put the question—then beckoning to Harrison,
who sat opposite him, he stood up calmly, and,
as that officer approached him—“Now is the
time!” he said; “now I must do it!” and forthwith
he put off his hat, and began speaking in a
mild tone, and more to the point than usual in his
harangues, expressing his disapprobation, although
moderately and in measured terms, of the motion
before the house. But gradually, as he kindled
with his subject, his speech became more vehement
and fiery—his words rolled forth in one unbroken
stream of bitter and severe invective, scorching
and blighting as the electric flash—his features
were inflamed and writhen with tremendous
passion—his eyes lightened—and his whole frame
expanded with a most perfect majesty of wrathful
indignation. He rebuked them for their self-seeking
and profaneness!—their oftentimes denial of
true justice!—their oppression, their inordinate
and selfish love of power!—their neglect of the

[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]

brave and honest army!—their idolizing of the
lawyers!—their trampling under foot the valiant
men who had bled for them in the field!—their
tampering with the false and time-serving Presbyterians!
“And for what,” he cried, with loud and
vehement tones, “for what all this? What but to
perpetuate your own ill-gotten power—to replenish
your own empty purses—empty through riot, and
debauchery, and bribery, and every kind of ill
which it befits not you to perpetrate—and which it
were to me degrading even to mention or to think
of! But now, I say,” he went on, stamping fiercely
on the ground, “your time hath come! The
Lord he hath disowned you! The God of Abraham,
and of Isaac, and of Jacob hath done with
you! He hath no need of you any more! Lo, he
hath judged you, and cast you forth, and chosen
fitter instruments to him, to execute that work in
which you have dishonoured him—”

“Order!” exclaimed one of the bolder of the
members; “order! I rise to order—never have I
yet heard any language so unparliamentary! so insolent!—
the rather that it cometh from our own
servant—one whom we have too fondly cherished—
one whom, by raising to this unprecedented and
undue elevation, we have endued with the daring
and the power thus to brave us!”

For a few moments Cromwell glared on the
bold speaker, as though astonishment at the excess
of his audacity had robbed him of the faculty of
speech—then casting his hat on his disordered
locks, he pulled it doggedly down upon his brows,
and with a stamp that made the whole house echo,
advancing on the gentleman who was yet speaking—
“Come, sir,” he said, in a low hissing voice
through his set teeth, griping the while his dagger's
hilt as though he would have stabbed him on

[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]

the spot, “come, come, sir, I will put an end to
your loud prating!” then turning his back suddenly
on him whom he addressed, he paced to and fro
the hall, his whole face black with the blood which
rushed to it as violently as though it would have
burst from every pore and vein—his broad breast
panting and heaving with emotion—and his entire
aspect displaying the most ungovernable and tremendous
passions—“You are no parliament, I
say,” he shouted at the pitch of his stentorian voice—
“you are no parliament! Ho! bring them in!—
without there!—bring them in!” There was a
sudden pause — a moment of unutterable terror!
for such was the expression painted upon the faces
of the craven members of the long parliament.
When, years before, a king had dared to violate, in
a far less degree, the privileges of that high assemblage,
their own undaunted valour, fired by a sense
of right—a proud uncompromising feeling of their
own inborn worth—had wellnigh armed those patriots—
for such they were—to battle with such
weapons as chance afforded them against the licensed
cut-throats of the sovereign—but, as the
door flew open, and Colonel Worseley entered
with a guard of twenty musketeers, blank and base
apprehension sat on the pallid brows of three
fourths of those present; nor did one man of the
whole number offer to make the least resistance,
to draw a sword, to raise a hand, or even to exchange
a look with the strange person who, from
so lately being their servant, or, at best, their equal,
had thus, by one bold effort, rendered himself their
master—their unquestioned, undisputed master!

“This is not honest!” cried Sir Henry Vane, at
length, when he had rallied from the first surprise.
“It is against morality and common honesty!”

Words cannot picture, language of man cannot

[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]

describe the change that flashed across the speaking
lineaments of Oliver. An instant—a short instant
only, ere Vane addressed him, all had been
virulent and active fury, lashed, as it were, by its
own goadings into a state purely animal and uncontrollable.
Now the fierce glare of anger instantly
subsided, leaving the face, for the moment, passionless
and vacant as an infant's; but, ere there
was time—not for words, but for thought—the
deepest sneer of scorn, of loathing, and unutterable,
undisguised contempt succeeded. “Sir Harry
Vane!” he replied, in a low stern whisper, which
drove the blood back curdling through the veins of
him on whose mind he had pounced, eagle-like,
with ayenging talons—“oh, Sir Harry Vane! The
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane! Honesty,
and Sir Harry Vane! Morality, and Harry Vane!—
who, if he so had pleased, might have prevented
this!—who is a juggler—a mere hypocrite—and
hath not common honesty himself! A parliament!—
I do profess, a precious parliament!—of drunkards!—
knaves!—extortioners!—adulterers! Lo,
there,” he added, pointing to Challoner, “there
sits a noted wine-bibber—a very glutton and a
drunkard! There!” casting his eyes toward Henry
Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth, “there two
most foul adulterers!” Then turning on his heel,
as if he had already said enough, he waved his
hand toward the soldiers, and in a voice as quiet
and unruffled as if he had not been in anywise excited,
commanded them to clear the house!

“I,” exclaimed Lenthall, boldly—for, seeing that
no violence was offered, he had recovered his
scared spirits—“I am the speaker of this house,
lawfully by its members chosen, and, save by vote
of those same members or by actual force, I never
quit its precinets while in life!”

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Then Harrison stepped slowly up the body of
the long hall to the chair, attended by two musketeers;
he laid his hand on Lenthall's shoulder, and
prayed him to descend; and, without farther words,
he came down from his seat, and putting on his
hat, departed from the house all crestfallen and
astounded. Algernon Sidney followed him at once,
though with a statelier mien and bolder bearing,
eighty more of the members moving with him toward
the door. While there had seemed to be
the slightest chance of any opposition to his will,
Cromwell had stood in silence, with his arms folded
on his breast, facing the speaker's chair, with a
dark scowl upon his brow and his lips rigidly compressed;
but now, when he perceived that all,
without more words, were skulking away from the
house, he once again addressed them. “It is
you,” he exclaimed, “it is you who have thrust this
on me. Night and day have I prayed the Lord
that he would slay me rather than put me on the
doing of this work.”

“Then wherefore do it,” asked Allen, bluntly,
ere he left the house, “if that it be so grievous to
you? There is yet time enough to undo that
which is already done—and, as your conscience
tells you, ill done, my Lord of Cromwell!”

“Conscience! Ha! conscience! Alderman,”
retorted Oliver, “and what did thine tell thee when
thou, as treasurer of the army, didst embezzle
much more than one hundred thousand pounds to
thine own uses? What sayest thou to that, good
alderman! Ho! ho! methinks I have thee there.
Guards, apprehend this peculator! Away with
him! away with him! I say,” and he stamped angrily
upon the floor as to enforce his words, “until
he answers for his deep misdoings!”

Sullen, humiliated, and unpitied, for they had

[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]

lost already the respect of honest men of all denominations,
the members of that parliament, which
had dethroned and slain a powerful monarch—destroyed
the constitution, and disenthralled the people
of a mighty nation—vanquished all foreign foes,
and raised their country from a secondary to a
firstrate power in Europe, now sneaked away to
find a miserable refuge in the despised obscurity
of private life—deserted by the people in their
turn, whom they had first deserted at the dictates
of a depraved and poor ambition. When all had
gone forth from the hall, the worker of this mighty
revolution fixed his eyes on the mace which lay
upon the board before the speaker's chair—“What
shall we do,” he said, “with this fool's bawble?
Here, carry it away!” and, at the word, a private
of the guard bore off that ancient emblem of the
people's delegated power—on which, not to preserve
his soul, Charles Stuart would have dared lay
a finger of offence—at the first bidding of the simple
citizen of a small English borough, raised by
his own strange sagacity and the interminable firmness
of his single will to a far loftier station than
the proudest despotism of the East! He snatched
the instrument of dissolution from the trembling
fingers of the clerk; ordered the great doors to be
locked; and, girt by his devoted guard, returned
to his own palace at Whitehall, in all, save name,
a king. The same day saw the dissolution of the
council; and, ere the members were forgotten, little
time as elapsed before they were so, the army
and the navy sent their addresses up to the lord-general,
declaring that they were content to live or
die in the support of these his measures; and every
corner of the island resounded with the loud hymns
of the fanatics, exulting that “the great and long-desired
reformation was now near the birth!

[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]

Blessing the God of Heaven, who had called Cromwell
forth and led him on, not only in the high places
of the field, but also—among those mighty ones
whom God hath left—to the dissolving of the late
parliament!”—rejoicing that the fifth monarchy,
the kingdom of Messiah was at hand, and that the
promised reign—the grand millennium of the saints—
was now to be established in the renovated commonwealth!

And he—the self-deceiver—the fool of fancied
destiny—waked through the watches of the night
to seek the Lord in prayer!—to read the oracles of
the fates in the unquiet workings of his own restless
spirit!—to detect, in the success of his ambitious
projects—projects unknown or disguised to
his inmost soul—the wonderful fulfilment of the
prophecies of old!—to cry aloud in the dark solitude
of his nocturnal chamber. “True! true! It
was true that the spirit thundered at midnight in
mine ears! Lo! the accomplishment is here!
Am I not—am I not the first in England—though
I be not as yet called king?”

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