Part 28

His ill-disguised attempts upon the Electorate of Mentz, which he first intended to bestow upon the Elector of Brandenburg, as the dower of his daughter Christina, and afterward destined for his chancellor and friend Oxenstiern, evinced plainly what liberties he was disposed to take with the constitution of the empire. His allies, the Protestant princes, had claims on his gratitude, which could be satisfied only at the expense of their Roman Catholic neighbors, and particularly of the immediate Ecclesiastical Chapters; and it seems probable a plan was early formed for dividing the conquered provinces (after the precedent of the barbarian hordes who overran the German empire) as a common spoil, among the German and Swedish confederates. In his treatment of the Elector Palatine, he entirely belied the magnanimity of the hero, and forgot the sacred character of a protector. The Palatinate was in his hands, and the obligations both of justice and honor demanded its full and immediate restoration to the legitimate sovereign. But, by a subtlety unworthy of a great mind, and disgraceful to the honorable title of protector of the oppressed, he eluded that obligation. He treated the Palatinate as a conquest wrested from the enemy, and thought that this circumstance gave him a right to deal with it as he pleased. He surrendered it to the Elector as a favor, not as a debt; and that, too, as a Swedish fief, fettered by conditions which diminished half its value, and degraded this unfortunate prince into a humble vassal of Sweden. One of these conditions obliged the Elector, after the conclusion of the war, to furnish, along with the other princes, his contribution toward the maintenance of the Swedish army--a condition which plainly indicates the fate which, in the event of the ultimate success of the king, awaited Germany. His sudden disappearance secured the liberties of Germany, and saved his reputation, while it probably spared him the mortification of seeing his own allies in arms against him, and all the fruits of his victories torn from him by a disadvantageous peace.

EARL OF STRAFFORD.

BY DAVID HUME.

[Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, born 1593, executed 1641. At first a leading member of the opposition to Charles I in Parliament, he afterward joined the court party and became successively Viscount Wentworth and Earl of Strafford. As governor of Ireland, he organized the first standing army in English annals; and afterward formulated the policy of “Thorough”--an executive system which would have made Charles an absolute monarch, free of parliamentary or other shackles. His remarkable political genius inspired such dread that Parliament looked on his death as essential to their cause. He was impeached as a traitor, an indictment undoubtedly true, but which could not be legally proved. He was finally condemned by a bill of attainder. The worst blot on Charles I is that he should have yielded up Strafford to his foes with hardly a struggle. Though traitor to his country, he was the most loyal and devoted of servants to his king. Hume’s estimate of Strafford is more lenient than that of other historians.]

In the former situation of the English Government, when the sovereign was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose his ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them, in expectation that they will afterward become more careful not to diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims of government. But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant to those of the Puritans that the leaders whom he gained lost from that moment all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors with implacable hatred and resentment.

This was the case with Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom the king created first a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed in him; his character was stately and austere--more fitted to procure esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong impressions from private interest and ambition.

The death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had, that very day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason for having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was, therefore, brought into the Lower House immediately after finishing these pleadings; and preparatory to it a new proof of the earl’s guilt was produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained with regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.

Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council after the dissolution of the last Parliament; and being at a distance, he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, Sir Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper of notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of Commons. The question before the council was, _offensive or defensive war with the Scots_. The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand pounds; go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience; for I am confident the Scots can not hold out five months.” There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally violent, with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of government.

The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable objections, was the real cause of Strafford’s unhappy fate, and made the bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients, for which they were beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of their adversaries.

Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants. Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.”

Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent--“And now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner.

Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution, it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.

Even those violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint that the constitution was subverted, had been all of them conducted, so far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his private advice might be, this salutary maxim he failed not, often and publicly, to inculcate in the king’s presence, that if any

inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws, this license ought to be practiced with extreme reserve, and as soon as possible a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury which it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first Parliament after the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and even a few weeks after Strafford’s execution this very Parliament remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence, as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been conducted.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

[Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth, and leader of the Revolution of 1640, born 1599, died 1658. Descended from a good race, connected with some of the best families in England, he became identified with the Puritan cause in the contest with King Charles I. He took active part in hostilities from the first, formed the famous Ironsides, and reorganized the parliamentary army, of which he soon became the chief general. He was active in the formation of the High Commission, which tried and condemned the king, and thenceforward was the ruler of England. It was not till 1651, however, that he became the titular Lord Protector, and reorganized the government mainly on the lines of monarchy.]

The soul of his party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the king were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of fearful potency. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and the remodeled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his English subjects.

In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders as strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell’s pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain. The military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the realm, the king should expiate his crimes with blood. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the machinery of government. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders before thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting hall of his own palace.

King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed; and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that they were emancipating her. The book which they most venerated furnished them with a precedent, which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even so had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his brethren in spite of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the taskmasters and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready to employ, without scruple, any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no king had even exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.

The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had been; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views had undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat little knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political education of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of a party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for which they now pined.

The course afterward taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory of one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the house of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the wounds of the lacerated state would heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles I or King Charles II, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now remained sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part in public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by the writ of a king in possession, gladly resume their ancient functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to bear the crown and the spurs, the scepter and the globe, before the restorer of aristocracy. A sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the people to the new dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to his posterity.

The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his own judgment, the exiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directly opposed to the feelings of the only class which he dared not offend. The name of king was hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person. The great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions which might resist his authority: but they would not consent that he should assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward of his personal merit, should be declared hereditary in his family. All that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution as like the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear.

Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation might have found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination. But the grievances which the country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when compared with that of the neighboring states and with the resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who refrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in peace whatever the civil troubles had left him. The laws were violated only in cases where the safety of the Protector’s person and government was concerned. Justice was administered between man and man with an exactness and purity not before known. Under no English government, since the Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution. The unfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they would abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London.