Part 5

With the death of William the Silent the Netherlands lost their noblest hero, their most sublime patriot, and one of the greatest leaders of all time. Few are the names worthy to be ranked with that of this Prince of the blood who gave his wealth, his strength and finally his life for the cause of liberty. Ruling with a strong hand, he was not a despot; brave, he was not reckless; giant, he was also gentle; warring against the Inquisition, with its thumbscrews and fagots, he held himself back from bloodthirstiness and revenge. The victim of every kind of attack that hate could devise or malignity invent, he never degraded himself by meeting hate with hate or crime with crime. When the long struggle for liberty which he began was brought to an issue, Spain had buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions for the destroying of freedom, and sunk from the ranks of the first power in Europe to the level of a fourth-rate country--stagnant in ideas, cruel in government, superstitious in religion. But brave little Holland had emerged to serve forever as a rock against tyranny and a refuge from oppression.

IV

OLIVER CROMWELL

(1599-1658)

_And the Rise of Democracy in England_

Society's ingratitude to its heroes and leaders is proverbial. Earth's bravest souls have been misunderstood in youth, maligned in manhood and neglected in old age. The fathers slay the prophets, the children build the sepulchres, and the grandchildren wear deeply the path the heroes trod. History teems with illustrations of this principle. Socrates is the wisest prophet, the noblest teacher, the truest citizen and patriot that Athens ever had, and Athens rewards him with a cup of poison. In a critical hour Savonarola saves the liberty of his city, and Florence burns him in the market-place. Cervantes writes the only world-wide thing in Spanish literature, and for an abiding place Spain rewards him, not with a mansion, but with a blanket in a dungeon, feeds him, not upon the apples of Paradise, but on the apples of Sodom, and gives him to drink, not the nectar of the gods, but vinegar mingled with gall.

Next to the Bible in influence upon English literature comes the _Pilgrim's Progress_. England kept John Bunyan in jail at Bedford for twelve years, as his reward. For some reason, nations reserve their wreaths of recognition until the heart is broken, until hope is dead, and the ambitions are in heaven. The history of the other great leaders, therefore, leads us to expect that the greatest, because the most typical, Englishman of all time, shall be unique in his obloquy and shame, as he was signal in his supreme gifts. During his life the very skies rained lies and cruel taunts; in his death the mildewed lips of slander took up new falsehoods. In the grave the very dust of this hero furnished a sure foundation for the temple of liberty, but his grave was despoiled. With pomp and pageantry Charles the Second ordered his bones to be exhumed, and the skeleton hung between thieves at Tyburn to satisfy his hatred. For twelve years Cromwell's skull was elevated upon a pole above Westminster Hall, where it stood exposed to the rains of twelve summers and the snows of twelve winters.

And now that two hundred and fifty years have passed away, these centuries have not availed for extinguishing the fires of hatred and controversy, or for doing justice to the memory of this man, Oliver Cromwell, God's appointed king.

We would naturally expect that time would have availed to clear the name and fame of Cromwell and to secure for him the recognition that his achievements deserve. But it was hard for some royalists to forgive this man who turned his hand against the sacred person of the King. For nearly three centuries the conflict has raged. The royal historians count Cromwell the greatest hypocrite in history, the trickster, the regicide, the political Judas of all time. For a hundred years after his death, no man was found brave enough to mention the name of Oliver Cromwell in Windsor Castle or the House of Lords. England's Abbey has made a place for the statues of that one-talent general, Burgoyne, whose chief business was to surrender his troops to our colonial soldiers, but the Abbey has no niche for a bust of the only English general who ranks with the great soldiers of history--Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Grant, and now Foch--these six and no more.

The British Houses of Parliament are crowded with statues of politicians who gave the people what they wanted, and some statesmen who gave the people what they ought to have. And there, too, are found the busts of kings and queens, Bloody Mary, contemptible John, those little feeblings and parasites named the Georges. But low down and bespattered with mud she has written the name of her greatest monarch, and the most powerful ruler that ever sat upon a throne.

Not until Carlyle came forward did the cloud of slander begin to lift. When the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cromwell was celebrated, Great Britain awakened to the fact that too little recognition had been given to the great reformer whose career was one of the marvels of English history. The measure of a nation's greatness is the kind of man it admires. To-day, it is of little consequence what we think of Cromwell, but it is of the first importance that Cromwell should approve the leaders of our world-capitals. Only in the last generation has the tide turned, and the reaction begun to set in. John Morley, busied with his biography of Gladstone, took time to write a history of the man whom he calls the maker of English history. Professor Gardiner asserts that England has done injustice to Cromwell and that the time has come for her to right a great wrong. All the world has at last begun to recognise the fact that the farmer of Huntingdon was an uncrowned king, ruling of his own natural right.

The world's ingratitude to Cromwell becomes the more striking when we remember what he did for Great Britain, for her people, to right the wrongs of her poor, to found her free institutions and to give her a place among the nations of the earth. Oliver Cromwell found England almost next to nothing in the scale of European politics. France pitied poor little England, and Spain, the one world-wide force of the time, despised her. He found her people a group of quarrelling sects, divided, hostile and full of hate. Her soil was scored with countless insurrections; her commerce was dead; her navy was so miserably weak that pirates sailed up the Thames, dropped anchor in the night in front of Westminster Hall, and flung defiance to the frightened merchants. In a single year, three thousand Englishmen were impressed by these pirates and sold in the slave markets of Algiers, Constantinople and the West Indies. He found the king a tyrant, who one day made the boast that he had brought every man who had opposed his will to the Tower or the scaffold. He found Parliament saying, "We have struggled for twenty years, and every attempt has ended with a halter, and it is better to endure a present ill than flee to others that we know not of."

And in the very darkest hour of England's history, this farmer flung himself into the breach and besought his countrymen to unite in one supreme effort to achieve liberty for the common people. For forty years he had been a plain country gentleman, content with his farm; ten years later he was "the most famous military captain in Europe, the greatest man in England, and the wisest ruler England ever had." He lived to hold the destinies of his country in his hands, to enthrone justice and toleration over a great part of Europe, received overtures for alliances from many kings, and died in the royal palace at Whitehall, and was buried amid the lamentations of many who had been his bitter enemies.

Cromwell's greatness stirs our sense of wonder the more, because he accomplished what others had sought to achieve and failed. Balfour or Lloyd George trained for years to his task, is like one who stands in the midst of an arsenal, protected by walls and battlements, and served by cannon and machine guns. To employ Carlyle's expressive figure, a dwarf who stands with a match before a cannon can beat down a stronghold, but he must be a giant indeed who can capture an armed fortress with naked fists, as did Oliver Cromwell. He lived in an age of great men. The era of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, Jonson and Bacon was closing. It was the era of John Pym, called "The Old Man Eloquent." It was the era of Hampden, the patrician, the orator and hero. It was the time of Sir Harry Vane, the distinguished gentleman who came to Boston to be made ruler of that new city, and whom Wendell Phillips called the noblest patriot that ever walked the streets of the new capital. Coke was on the bench, meditating his decisions, while Lyttleton was perfecting his interpretations of the Constitution. John Milton was making his plea for the liberty of the press. Owen and Sherlock and Howe were in the pulpits.

These were among the bravest spirits that have ever stood upon our earth. All hated tyranny, and all loved liberty. All sought to overthrow the rule of the despot and yet, when all had done their best, England was sold like a slave in the market-place. It was the farmer of Huntingdon who, in that critical hour, came forward and showed himself equal to the emergency. It was this country gentleman, without political experience, this general who became a statesman without the discipline of statecraft, who became the shepherd of his people and overthrew that citadel of iniquity called the Divine Right of Kings; who rid England of her pirates, developed a great commerce, built up the most powerful navy that then sailed the sea--a possession England has never lost--corrected the code, rectified the Constitution, laid the foundation for the present Bill of Rights. This is why John Morley asks us to study carefully the lineaments of this man whose body England, to her undying shame, and in the days of her dishonour, hung in chains at Tyburn.

If we are to understand Cromwell's character and career and his place among the world's leaders, we must recall his age and time and the England of that far-off day, when he wrought his work and dipped his sword in heaven. What of the religious condition of England in the era of intolerance, when the prophet of God was anointed with the ointment of war, black and sulphurous? It is the year 1630, and Cromwell is still in his early manhood. One bright morning, with St. Paul's to his back, Cromwell entered Ludgate Circus. In the midst of the circus stood a scaffold and around it was a great throng, crowding and pressing toward the place of torture. At the foot of the scaffold was a venerable scholar, his white hair flowing upon his shoulders, a man of stainless character and spotless life, renowned for his devotion, eloquence and patriotism. When the executioner led the aged pastor up the steps, the soldiers tore off his garments. He was whipped until blood ran in streams down his back, both nostrils were slit and his ears cropped off, hot irons were brought and two letters, "S-S"--sower of sedition--were burned into his forehead.

What crime had this pastor committed? Perhaps he had lifted a firebrand upon the King's palace; perhaps he had organized some foul gunpowder plot to overthrow the throne itself. Perhaps he had been guilty of treason, or some foul and nameless sin against the State. Not so. The reading of the decision of the judge and the decree of the punishment made clear the truth. It seemed that a fortnight before, the aged pastor had been commanded to give up his extempore prayers and the singing of the Psalms, and had been commanded to read the written prayers and sing the hymns prescribed by the state Church. But the gentle scholar had disregarded the command, and on the following Sunday walked in the ways familiar and dear to him by reason of long association. He had dared to sing the same old Psalms and lift his heart to God in extempore prayer, after the manner of his fathers. And when the executioner announced that on the following Saturday at high noon the old scholar would be brought a second time into Ludgate Circus, and there scourged before the people, the cloud upon Oliver Cromwell's brow was black as the thunder-storm that stands upon the western sky, black and vociferous with thunder. Kings, the head of the Church of Jesus Christ!

Two hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln, standing in the market-place of New Orleans, was to see a coloured child torn from its mother's arms, held by the auctioneer upon the block and sold to the highest bidder. With a lump in his throat, Abraham Lincoln turned to his brother and said: "If the time ever comes when I can strike, I will hit slavery as hard a blow as I can." And when Cromwell turned away from that scene in Ludgate Circus he went home to dream about the era of toleration and liberty and charity, and registered a vow to strike, when the time came, the hardest blow he could against the citadel of intolerance and bigotry on the part of the Church.

But political England was as dark and troublesome as the religious world of that day. One of the noblest men of the time was Sir John Eliot. He was the child of wealth and opportunity. The university had lent him culture, travel had lent breadth, and leisure had given him the opportunity to grow wise and ripe. His nature was singularly lofty and devout, his temper ardent and chivalric. His one ambition was to serve his mother country. A vice-admiral, he was given power to defend the commerce of the country and overthrow the pirates. After many attempts, by a clever but dangerous maneuver he entrapped the king of the pirates, Nutt, who had taken one hundred and twenty English ships and sold the sailors in the slave market of Algiers and Tripoli. But King Charles freed the pirate, and punished the vice-admiral by four months' imprisonment, for he had taken bribes against his own sailors.

When Sir John Eliot had been released, he charged the King with complicity in a crime. For reply the King levied an illegal fine. Sir John Eliot was rich, and he might have bought immunity. In his home dwelt a beautiful wife and little children, and with flight he might have escaped his prison. His wealth would have enabled him to live abroad in ease, but he preferred to stay at home and die in London Tower for principle. And no martyr, going to his stake, no hero, falling at the head of a battle line, ever did a nobler thing than Sir John Eliot, when he refused to pay his fine and preferred death to enjoying the pleasures of expediency for a season. For three years the hero bore his imprisonment and endured the tortures of confinement. The rigours of the Tower could not break his dauntless spirit. One day he found blood upon his handkerchief. Fearing that death was near, he sent a request to the royal palace. "A little more air, your majesty, that I may gain strength to die in!" But John Eliot had thwarted the King's policy, and Charles carried his vindictiveness even to death. "Not humble enough," was the King's reply. Blows cannot break the will, waters cannot drown the will, flames cannot consume the will, and in the hour of Eliot's death, Charles knew that his opponent had conquered. One day John Eliot's son petitioned the King that he might carry his father's remains to Cornwall to lie with those of his ancestors. Charles wrote on the petition: "Let Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the parish where he died, and his ashes lie unmarked in the Chapel of the Tower."

But the social England of the era of Cromwell is a darker picture still. If our age is the era of the rise and reign of the common people, that was an age when the middle-class was as yet almost unknown. Feudalism still survived. There were the plebeians on the one hand, and the patrician class on the other. Theoretically the King owned the land, and the lords and gentlemen were agents under him. Kenilworth Castle and its lord stand for the social England of that day. My lord dwelt in a castle--the people dwelt in mud huts. He wore purple and fine linen--his people wore coats of sheepskin, slept on beds of straw, ate black bread, knew sorrow by day and misery by night. Did a farmer sow a field and reap the harvest? Every third shock belonged to the lord of the castle. Did the husbandman drive his flocks afield? In the autumn, every third sheep and bullock belonged to my lord. Was the grain ripe in the field? If the peasant owed twenty days' labour without return at the time of sowing to my lord, he had to give ten days more to the lord of the castle in the time of the harvest. Again without recompense. And so it generally came about that for want of proper time to plough and plant and for opportunity of reaping in the hour when his grain was ripe, the serf fronted the winter with an empty granary, and the cry of his children was exceeding bitter.

There were few bridges across the streams, there was no glass in the farmer's window, not one in a thousand owned a book, sanitation was almost unknown, every other babe died in infancy; if the upper classes came out of the Black Death almost unscathed, about a third of the peasant class was swept off by that scourge, which the physicians now know was caused by insufficient food and decayed grain. It was an era of ignorance and brutality among the poor, an era of snobs and of criminals. Cromwell found a hundred laws upon the English statute books that involve hanging for petty infringements against the rights of the King. He found woman a chattel and one day saw a man sell his wife in the market-place and beheld the purchaser lead the girl off in a halter. When the traveller rode up to London, he passed between a line of gibbets, where corpses hung rotting in chains. Highwaymen rode even into London, at nightfall, and tied their horses in Hyde Park, robbed people in the streets, broke into stores and rode away unmolested. One advertisement read thus: "For sale, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Inquire at the Coffee House, Threadneedle Street, behind the Royal Exchange."

Drunkenness and gambling were all but universal. One Secretary of State was notorious as the greatest drunkard and the most unlucky gambler of his era. A Prime Minister was allowed to appear at the opera house with his mistress, and was esteemed the finest public man of his century. We are face to face with corruption in politics, incompetence in council and paganism in religion. To-day a member of the Cabinet who would use his private information for purposes of gambling in Wall Street would be instantly ruined. But in that era, the King and his courtiers filled their coffers by such methods without any criticism.

In such an era, Cromwell saw that there was no hope for England until there was a middle class. He determined to destroy the castles that offered shelter to the princes who had spoiled and robbed and outraged the poor, who had no defense to which they could flee when they had outraged the law. It has often been said that he was an iconoclast; in razing the castles of England to the ground and overthrowing the strongholds he was the greatest criminal of his age; but if he loved the castles and architecture less, it was because he loved the poor more. He levelled stones down that he might have a foundation upon which the poor could climb up, and thereby he destroyed the strongholds of feudalism and laid the foundations of the Bill of Rights of 1832, and was the forerunner of our own Washington and Lincoln.

Who is this King Charles who stands for the old order, and who is the great representative of the doctrine of the divine right of kings? He was a grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, who, in fleeing from Scotland, seized the hand of Lord Lindsay, her foe, and holding it aloft in her grasp swore by it, "I will have your head for this, so I assure you." His father was James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland, who had some gifts and also virtues, but who after all was simply an animated stomach, carried far by a handful of intellectual faculties. That Charles the First had qualities denied to his father all must confess. He was gifted with a certain taste for pictures, he had some imagination, and loved good literature. During his imprisonment he read Tasso, Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, and, above all, Shakespeare. He was methodical and decorous, but his favourite essay was Bacon's "Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation." As a diplomat he believed that Machiavelli's _Prince_ was the ideal to be followed, in that truth is so precious a quantity that it ought not to be wasted on the common people. He was not renowned for chivalry or a sense of gratitude. Witness his foul desertion of Strafford in the hour when Strafford exclaimed: "Put not your trust in princes!"

Again and again, through his selfishness, he spoiled his people. To obtain money he sold to one of his favourites the exclusive right to use sedan chairs in London, and put chains across the streets and made it a criminal offense for a gentleman to drive his coach into the limits of the city. He taxed the shoes the people wore, the salt they ate, the beds on which they slept, and the very windows through which the light came. He hired spies to make out a list of merchants who had an income of more than £2,000 a year and by indirect blackmail obtained money therefrom. When the Black Death broke out, and the streets of London were piled with corpses, and the committee of relief asked for public subscriptions, Charles the First fled to Hampton Court and made no subscription, large or small, to the relief fund.

And how did he amuse himself during those days when every house in London was left desolate? In his far-off palace, surrounded by guards, beyond whom no messenger could pass, Charles the First sat, surrounded by his court. He sent to Amsterdam for jewellers and paid £10,400 for a necklace. He paid £8,000 for a gold collar for himself, and £10,000 for a diamond ring for the Queen. On the ground that Parliament had not imposed taxes sufficient for his expenses, he made a tax proclamation for himself. Then Parliament, led by Pym and Hampden and Eliot, brought in a bill of remonstrance. They assumed that the King ruled under preëxisting laws. They declared that if Charles refused to call a Parliament and arrogated its power to himself, twelve peers might call a Parliament, and if this failed, the citizens might come together through a committee and elect their representatives.

But the King was consumed with egotism and vanity. He sent orders to Parliament to deliver to him the five leaders who stood for the liberties of the people, and with a mob of soldiers he entered the House of Commons to seize Hampden and Pym. But the House refused to give up its members, and helped them to escape through one of the windows, and the next day it brought them back in a triumphal procession. Returning to his palace, the King found the streets crowded with people, silent, sullen, dark with anger. He heard threats and growls from every side. One prophet of righteousness called out, "To your tents, O Israel!" Suddenly Charles the First realized that his people, driven to bay, had at last bestirred themselves, and, fearing he might be driven into a corner, his cheek went white as marble. That night, conscious of his danger, he fled to Hampton Court, while the whole city applauded the five leaders who had escaped the snare. He had furnished the dynamite to blow up his throne. The people, represented by Parliament, stood over against the peers, represented by the King, as enemies. It was "either your neck, or my neck," and when a few weeks passed, there began the era of civil war, with blazing towns and castles and strongholds. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."