Chapter IV: The Commonwealth (2)

Montrose was at once conveyed to Edinburgh, where he arrived on the 18th of May; and having been carried bareheaded through the city in an open cart, and exposed to the insults and execrations of the mob, he was condemned as a traitor, and hanged on the 21st of May on a gibbet thirty feet high, his head being fixed on a spike in the capital, and his limbs sent for exposure in different towns. Such was the ignominious end of the gallant but sanguinary Montrose. But if the conduct of his enemies was ungenerous, what was that of his prince? No sooner did Charles hear of his defeat, than fearing that his rising might injure him with the Covenanters, he sent to the Parliament, protesting that he had never authorised him to draw the sword; nay, that he had done it contrary to the royal commands. Thus early did this worthless man display the meanness of his character, and practise the wretched maxims of the Stuart doctrine of kingcraft.

Charles had now complied with the demands of the Scottish Parliament, agreeing to take the Covenant, never to tolerate the Catholic religion in any part of his dominions, not even in Ireland, where the Catholics were a majority; to govern entirely by the authority of Parliament, and in religious matters by that of the Kirk. Thus did this man, for the sake of regaining the throne of one of his kingdoms, bind himself to destroy the religion of which he was at heart a believer, and to maintain a creed that he abhorred and despised. He landed in June in the Frith of Cromarty, and a court was established for him at Falkland, and nine thousand pounds sterling were allowed for its expenditure monthly.

But the pious Scots were speedily scandalised at the debauched habits of their royal puppet. He had delayed the expedition for some weeks, because he could not tear himself from his mistress, Mrs. Barlow, and now he came surrounded by a very dissipated crew--Buckingham, Wilmot, and others, whom nothing could induce him to part with, though many others were forbidden the Court.

Whilst these things were taking place in Scotland, in London as active measures were on foot for putting to flight this Covenanting king. On the 14th of June the Commons again appointed Fairfax Commander-in-Chief, and Cromwell Lieutenant-General. Fairfax, so far from favouring the invasion of Scotland, strongly argued against it, as a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant. Fairfax's wife is said to have been resolute against his taking up arms against the second Charles. She had sufficiently shown her spirit--that of a Vere, of the martial house of Vere--on his father's trial; and now Fairfax, not only strongly influenced by his wife, but belonging to the Presbyterian party, resigned his command, and retired to his estates in Yorkshire. It was in vain that a deputation, consisting of Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelock, and St. John, waited on him at Whitehall, opening their meeting with prayer. Fairfax stood firm, and on the 26th, two days afterwards, the Parliament appointed Cromwell Commander-in-Chief, in his place. On the 29th, only three days subsequently, Cromwell set out for the north. He had Lambert as Major-General, Whalley as Commissary-General, Pride, Overton, Monk, and Hodgson, as colonels of regiments. The Scottish Parliament had appointed the Earl of Leven generalissimo, but only nominally so out of honour, for he was now old and infirm. David Leslie was the real commander. The Scottish army was ordered to amount to sixty thousand men, and it was to lay waste all the country between Berwick and Edinburgh, to prevent the English from obtaining supplies. To frighten the country people away from the English army, it was rumoured that every male between sixteen and sixty would have their right hands cut off, and the women's breasts be bored through with red-hot irons.

Carisbrooke Castle, Sept. 8th, 1650.

AFTER THE PAINTING BY C. W. COPE, R.A.]

Cromwell passed the Tweed at Berwick on the 22nd of July, with a force of sixteen thousand men. They found the country desolate and deserted, except by a number of women, who on their knees implored mercy, and were set by the officers to bake and brew for the soldiers. That night the beacon fires of Scotland were lighted, and the English army encamped at Mordington, where they lay three days, and then marched to Dunbar, and thence to Musselburgh. They found the Scottish army under Leslie posted between Edinburgh and Leith, and well defended by batteries and entrenchments. Nothing could induce the wary Scottish commander to quit his vantage ground, and the country afforded no supplies to the English army; but their fleet followed them along the coast, and furnished them with provisions.

For a month Cromwell found it impossible to draw the Scottish general out of his strong position. He sometimes marched up close to his lines to tempt him to come to action, but it was in vain, and he did not think it prudent to attack him in his formidable position, which must have cost him an awful number of men even if he carried it.

The weather being very wet he fell back upon Musselburgh, the enemy then making a sally, and harassing his rear, and wounding General Lambert. Cromwell and the Scottish Assembly, as well as Cromwell and General Leslie, who lay in the ground now occupied by the New Town of Edinburgh, had a voluminous correspondence, in which they quoted much Scripture, and each declared himself the favoured or justified of heaven. The Scots reproached Cromwell and his party with breaking the League and Covenant, and Cromwell retorted on them, that though they pretended to covenant and fight against Malignants, they had entered into agreement with the head and centre of the Malignants himself, which he said he could not understand. Cromwell, leaving a force to invest Dunbar, which was said to suffer extreme famine, being cooped by the English both on land and sea, about the 13th of August shifted his camp to the Pentland Hills to the west of Edinburgh, in order to cut off Leslie's supplies.

Whilst lying there the young king himself made a visit to the army at Leith, where he was received by the soldiers with acclamations; but the Assembly of the Kirk was soon scandalised by the drunkenness and profanity which his presence brought into the camp, and set on foot an inquiry, the result of which was that eighty officers, with many of their men, were dismissed that they might not contaminate the rest of the army. They also required Charles to sign a declaration to his subjects in his three kingdoms, informing them that he lamented the troubles which had been brought on the realm by the resistance of his father to the Solemn League and Covenant, and by the idolatry of his mother; that for himself he had subscribed the Covenant with all his heart, and would have no friends or enemies but the friends or enemies of the Covenant; that he repented making a peace with the Papists of Ireland, and now declared it null and void; that he detested all popery, prelacy, idolatry, and heresy; and finally, that he would accord to a free Parliament of England the propositions agreed upon by the Commissioners of the two kingdoms, and would settle the English Church according to the plan organised by the Westminster Assembly of divines.

Never was so flagrant a set of falsehoods forced on a reluctant soul! Charles read the declaration with indignation, and declared that he would sacrifice everything rather than thus cast reproach on his parents and their supporters, who had suffered so much on their behalf, or belie his own sentiments. But he was soon convinced that he must see his cause totally abandoned if he did not comply, and at the end of three days he signed with tears and shame the humiliating document. The exulting Kirk then proclaimed a certain victory from heaven over "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army."

And truly, affairs appeared very likely to come to such a conclusion. Cromwell found it difficult to feed his army; the weather continued stormy and wet, and his soldiers suffered extremely from fevers and other illness from exposure to the weather. Cromwell made a sudden march in the direction of Stirling, as though he intended to cut off that town from communication with the capital. This set Leslie in motion; he hastily sent forward his forces, and the vanguards came to skirmishing, but could not engage in complete battle on account of the boggy ground between them. Cromwell as suddenly retreated, and firing his huts on the Pentlands, withdrew towards Dunbar. This effectually roused the Scots; they knew his distress from sickness and lack of supplies, and they thought he meant now to escape into England. To prevent that, and to make themselves masters of the whole English army, as they now confidently expected, they marched rapidly along the feet of the Lammermuir Hills, and Leslie managed to outstrip him, and hem him in between Dunbar and Doon Hill. A deep ravine called Cockburnspath, or, as Oliver pronounced it, Copper's Path, about forty feet deep and as many wide, with a rivulet running through it, lay between Oliver and the Scottish army, which was posted on Doon Hill. On Oliver's right lay Belhaven Bay, on his left Broxmouth House, at the mouth of a brook, and where there is a path southward. Leslie had secured the passes of Cockburnspath, and imagined that he had Cromwell and his army secure from Sunday night to Tuesday morning, the 3rd of September. But on Monday afternoon, Cromwell observed Leslie moving his right wing down into the plain towards Broxmouth House, evidently intending to secure that pass also; but Cromwell at once espied his advantage. He could attack and cut off this right wing, whilst the main body of Leslie's army, penned between the brook and the hills, could not manœuvre to help it. On observing this, Cromwell exclaimed to Lambert, "The Lord hath delivered us!" and arrangements were made to attack the right wing of Leslie at three o'clock in the morning. Leslie had twenty-three thousand men--Cromwell about half as many; but by a vigorous, unexpected attack on this right wing, after three hours of hard fighting, the Scots were thrown into confusion, and Cromwell exclaimed, "They run! I profess they run!" In fact, the horse of the Scots dashed frantically away over and through their own foot, and there was a wild flight in all directions. Three thousand slain lay on the spot, the Scots army was in wild rout, and as the sun just then rose over St. Abb's Head and the sea, Oliver exclaimed to his soldiers, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!" "The Lord-General," says Hodgson, "made a halt till the horse could gather for the chase, and sang the 117th Psalm." Then the pursuit was made as far as Haddington. Ten thousand prisoners were taken, with all the baggage, artillery, and ammunition of the enemy. A thousand men were slain in the pursuit. By nine o'clock in the morning, David Leslie, the general, was in Edinburgh, old Lord Leven reached it by two, and what a city! The general complained that the preachers had occasioned the disaster; they would not let him rest till he descended from his height to attack the enemy on a disadvantageous ground. The ministers, though all their prophecies of victory were falsified, had yet plenty of other reasons for it. They published a "Short Declaration and Warning," in which they enumerated no less than thirteen causes for this terrible overthrow--the general wickedness of the country, the especial wickedness of the king's house, and the number of Malignants amongst the king's followers, and so forth. Cromwell told them plainly in letters addressed to them, that they had been punished for taking up a family that the Lord had so eminently lifted up His hand against, and for pretending to cry down Malignants, and yet receiving and setting up the head of them all. He advanced to Edinburgh, where he closely blockaded the castle, which was soon compelled to surrender.

As for Charles II., he was rather delighted than otherwise with the defeat of his fanatic friends at Dunbar. He was grown most thoroughly tired of imperious dictation and morose religion, and he took the opportunity to steal away to join Murray, Huntly, Atholl, and the Royalists in the Highlands. On the afternoon of the 4th of October, on pretence of hawking, he rode out of Perth, and dashed away for the braes of Angus. After galloping forty miles he came to a wretched hovel at a place called Clova, where he had nothing but a turf pillow to sleep on. There he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery--for Argyll had been speedily apprised of his flight--and finding that two regiments of horse were at hand, Charles knew that escape was hopeless, and so he returned. But "the Start," which Charles's elopement was called, had opened the eyes of the Covenanters to the danger of pressing him too far. They now considerably relaxed their vigour towards him, admitted him to their deliberations in Council, and they thus induced him to prevail on Atholl, Middleton, and the Highland forces to disband.

Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the West, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the Committee of Estates, by Colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigtown, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the Clerk Register of Parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the Kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the Kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough Malignant. They drew up a Remonstrance of the Western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing his old veneration for the Covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the Reverend Zachary Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their Remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by Parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, agreeing with neither one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The Western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the Covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the Remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.

On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or rather was led, in procession, by his partisans to the church at Scone, and there solemnly crowned. There, on his knees, he swore to maintain the Covenant, to establish Presbyterianism, and embrace it himself, to establish it in his other dominions as soon as he recovered them. Argyll then placed the crown on his head, and Douglas, the minister, read him a severe lecture on the calamities which had followed the apostacy of his grandfather and father, and on his being a king only by compact with his people. But the fall of the Western army had weakened the rigid Presbyterian party. Argyll saw his influence decline, that of the Hamiltons in the ascendant, and numbers of the old Royalists pouring in to join the army. Charles's force soon displayed the singular spectacle of Leslie and Middleton in united command, and the army, swelled by the Royalists, was increased to twenty thousand men. Having fortified the passes of the Forth, the king thus awaited the movements of Cromwell. But the lord-general, during the spring, was suffering so much from the ague, that he contemplated returning home. In May, however, he grew better, and advanced towards Stirling. Whilst he occupied the attention of Charles and his army by his manœuvres in that quarter, he directed Lambert to make an attempt upon Fife, which succeeded, and Cromwell, crossing the Forth, advanced to support him. The royal army quickly evacuated Perth, after a sharp action, in which about eight hundred men on each side fell, and the Parliament colours were hoisted on the walls of that city.

If Cromwell's movement had been rapid and successful, he was now in his turn astonished by one as extraordinary on the part of the Prince. Charles saw that all the south of Scotland and a great part of England was clear of the enemy, and he at once announced his determination to march towards London. On the 31st of July his army was actually in motion, and Argyll, denouncing the enterprise as inevitably ruinous, resigned his commission and retired to Inverary.

On discovering Charles's object, Cromwell put the forces to remain in Scotland under the command of General Monk, sent Lambert from Fife to follow the royal army with three thousand cavalry, and wrote to Harrison in Newcastle to advance and harass the flank of Charles's army. He himself, on the 7th of August, commenced his march after it with ten thousand men.

Charles advanced at a rapid rate, and he had crossed the Mersey before Lambert and Harrison had formed a junction near Warrington, and attempted to draw him into a battle on Knutsford Heath. But Charles continued his hasty march till he reached Worcester, where he was received with loud acclamations by the mayor and corporation, and by a number of county gentlemen, who had been confined there on suspicion of their disaffection, but were now liberated. But such had been the sudden appearance of Charles, that no expectation of it, and therefore no preparation for it, had been made by the Royalists; and the bigoted ministers attending his army sternly refused all who offered to join them, whether Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics, because they had not taken the Covenant. It was in vain that Charles gave orders to the contrary, and sent forward General Massey to receive and bring into order these volunteers; the Committee of the Kirk rejected them, whilst Cromwell's forces on their march were growing by continual reinforcements, especially of the county militias. Colonel Robert Lilburne met with a party of Charles's forces under the Earl of Derby, between Chorley and Wigan, and defeated them, killing the Lord Widdrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and Colonels Boynton, Trollope, and Throgmorton. Derby himself was wounded, but escaped.

Charles issued a proclamation for all his male subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his standard on the 26th of August; but on that day he found that the whole of his forces amounted to only twelve thousand men, whilst Cromwell, who arrived two days after, was at the head of at least thirty thousand. On the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell determined to attack the royal army. Lambert, overnight, crossed the Severn at Upton, with ten thousand men, and the next morning Cromwell and Fleetwood, with the two other divisions of the army, crossed, Cromwell the Severn, and Fleetwood the Teme. Charles, who had been watching their progress from the tower of the cathedral, descended and attacked Fleetwood before he had effected his passage; but Cromwell was soon up to the assistance of his general, and after a stout battle, first in the meadows, and then in the streets of the city, the forces of Charles were completely beaten. Charles fought with undaunted bravery, and endeavoured to rally his soldiers for a last effort, but they flung down their weapons and surrendered. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to fly, and save his life. Three thousand of the Royalists were slain, and six or seven thousand made prisoners, including a considerable number of noblemen--the Duke of Hamilton, but mortally wounded, the Earls of Rothes, Derby, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale, Lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison, and the Generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Talbot, and others, escaped with many adventures.

It was an overthrow complete, and most astonishing to both conquered and conquerors. Cromwell, in his letter to the Parliament, styled it "a crowning mercy." The Earl of Derby and seven others of the prisoners suffered death as traitors and rebels to the Commonwealth. Derby offered the Isle of Man for his ransom, but his letter was read by Lenthall to the House too late, and he was executed at Bolton, in Lancashire.

As for Charles himself, the romance of his escape has been celebrated in many narratives. After being concealed for some days at White-ladies and Boscobel, two solitary houses in Shropshire, and passing a day in the boughs of an oak, he made his way in various disguises, and by the assistance of different loyal friends, to Brighton, whence he passed in a collier over to Fécamp in Normandy, but this was not till the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle of Worcester.

On the 12th of September Cromwell arrived in town; Bulstrode, Whitelock, and three other gentlemen had been sent down to meet him and conduct him to London. They met him near Aylesbury, and they all joined a hawking party by the way. At Aylesbury they passed the night. Oliver was very affable, and presented to each of the commissioners a horse taken in the battle and a couple of Scottish prisoners. At Acton, the Speaker of the Commons, the Lord President, and many other members of Parliament and of the Council, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs, and crowds of other people, met him, and congratulated him on his splendid victory and his successes in Scotland. The Recorder, in his address, said he was destined to "bind kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron." In London he was received with immense shoutings and acclamations. Parliament voted that the 3rd of September should be kept ever after as a holiday, in memory of his victory; and, in addition to twenty-five thousand pounds a year already granted in land, they settled on him another forty thousand pounds a year in land.

Thus the royal party was for a time broken and put down. In Ireland Cromwell had left his son-in-law Ireton as his deputy, who went on with a strong hand crushing all opposition. The Roman Catholic party growing weary of Ormond, he had resigned his lord-deputyship, and Clanricarde had succeeded him. Still the Catholic party was divided in itself, and Ormond, and after him Clanricarde, entered into a treaty with the Duke of Lorraine, who agreed to send an army to Ireland to put down the Parliament, on condition that he should be declared Protector-royal of Ireland, with all the rights pertaining to the office; an office, in fact, never before heard of. The Irish Royalists obtained, however, at different times, twenty thousand pounds from Lorraine, and his agents were still negotiating for his protectorship, when the defeat of Charles at Worcester showed Lorraine the folly of his hopes. Disappointed in this expectation of assistance from abroad, the Irish Royalists found themselves vigorously attacked by Ireton. In June he invested Limerick, and on the 27th of October it surrendered. Ireton tried and put to death seven of the leaders of the party. The court-martial refused to condemn the brave O'Neil, though Ireton urged his death for his stubborn defence of Clonmel. When Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, was condemned, he exclaimed to Ireton, "I appeal to the tribunal of God, and summon thee to meet me at that bar." These words were deemed prophetic, and were remembered with wonder when, about a month afterwards, Ireton fell ill of fever and died (Nov. 15, 1651).

Cromwell appointed General Lambert his deputy in Ireland. The appointment was cancelled before Lambert could pass over to that country, as it is said, through the management of Ireton's widow, Cromwell's daughter Bridget. The handsome wife of Lambert had refused--her husband being now Lord-Deputy--to give precedence to Mrs. Ireton in St. James's Park, where they met one day. Mrs. Ireton took offence, and prevailed on her father to revoke the appointment, and give it to Fleetwood, whom she soon after married, and so Lambert returned to Ireland in his former position. It is believed that Lambert never forgave the affront, though Cromwell endeavoured to soothe him, and made him compensation in money; for he was found to be one of the first to oppose Richard Cromwell after his father's death, and depose him from the protectorate. Ludlow and three others were joined with Fleetwood, so far as the civil administration of Ireland was concerned, and they were ordered to levy sufficient money for the payment of the forces, not exceeding forty thousand pounds a month; and to exclude Papists from all places of trust, from practising as barristers, or teaching in any kind of school. Thus the bulk of the natives were deprived of all participation in the affairs of their own country, and, what was worse, might be imprisoned or removed from one part of the country at the will of these dictators.

In Scotland Monk carried matters with the same high hand. On the 14th of August he compelled Stirling to surrender, and sent off the royal robes, part of the regalia, and the National Records to London. He then commenced the siege of Dundee, and whilst it was progressing he sent Colonels Alured and Morgan to Alyth in Angus, where he surprised the two Committees of the Estates and the Kirk, with many other noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of three hundred, amongst them poor old Leslie, Earl of Leven, met on Royalist affairs, and sent them after the regalia to England. On the 1st of September Monk stormed Dundee, and gave up the town to the plunder and violence of the soldiery. There were said to be eight hundred soldiers and inhabitants killed, of whom three hundred were women and children. The place had been considered so safe that many people had sent their property there for security, and this and the ships in the harbour all fell into the hands of the conquerors. They are said to have got two hundred thousand pounds in booty, and perpetrated the most unheard-of atrocities. The fate of Dundee induced Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews to open their gates. The Earl of Huntly and Lord Balcarres submitted, and scarcely any noblemen of note, except Argyll, held out; and he did so merely for the purpose of making good terms with the Parliament.

The most vigorous means were adopted to keep the country in check. Military stations were appointed throughout the Highlands, and sites fixed upon for the erection of strong forts at Ayr, Leith, Perth, and Inverness. The property and estates of the Crown were declared forfeited to Parliament, as well as the lands of all who had taken arms under the Duke of Hamilton or the king against England. English judges were sent to go the circuits, assisted by Scottish ones, and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year were voted for the maintenance of the army in Scotland, which was raised to twenty thousand men. These were galling measures for the Scots, who had hoped to subject England again to the king, but they were far from the most humiliating. Vane, St. John, and six other commissioners were appointed to settle a plan for the incorporation of Scotland with England. They met at Dalkeith, and summoned the representatives of the counties and the burghs to assemble and consult with them on the matter. The ministers thundered from their pulpits against a union, and especially against putting the Kirk under the power of the State; but twenty-eight out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs complied, and sent up twenty-one deputies to sit with the Parliamentary commissioners at Westminster, to settle the terms of the union. The power of the English Parliament, or rather of the army, was now so supreme, that both in Scotland and Ireland resistance was vain.

The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, has prevented our noticing the transactions of the Commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now recount these. Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles II. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was entrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the enclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the King of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the Republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to Cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The King of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the Republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The King of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the Commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one between the Commonwealth and the Courts of the Continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the Parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and therefore he employed three friars, who accompanied him and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half a dozen Royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some Royalists had done to Dorislaus, the Parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these Cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no objection to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and so escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the Royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a Protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a Republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English Commonwealth, but the circumstances of the Court prevented the spread of this feeling. The Stadtholder, William II., had married the Princess Royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charleses. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the Duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league between the family of the Stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the Stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large Republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the Stadtholder on account of his regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English Parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the Stadtholder's Court of the English Parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great Republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the Stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the Parliament, to an audience. But on the 6th of November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and on the 14th of that month his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became King of England. The infancy of the Stadtholder now encouraged the Republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the commencement of 1651, determined to send ambassadors to the States, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. But no good was done. There were numbers of English Royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous that they were become proud and insolent, and had come to regard the English Parliament, through the misrepresentation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty States-General. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the Royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity.

The Parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the States-General made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong in his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English Parliament received them with a cool haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European States, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. Parliament passed a Navigation Act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English vessels, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible Act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been lightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English Court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up between the two maritime nations. The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced--Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt. The English Parliament, on their part, ordered their admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flag in the narrow seas as had been paid to that of the king. They also demanded indemnification for the losses sustained in the East Indies from the Dutch, and insisted on the stipulated contribution of the tenth herring from the Dutch fishermen in the British seas.

It was impossible, under such circumstances, that hostilities should be long deferred. Commodore Young was the first to call on the convoy of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen to salute the British flag. They refused, and Young attacked them so smartly that in the end they complied. In a few days Van Tromp, who was a zealous partisan of Orange, and therefore of the house of Stuart, appeared in the Downs with two-and-forty sail. To Commodore Bourne, whom he found there, he disclaimed any hostile intentions, but pleaded the loss of several anchors and cables for putting in; but the next day, being the 19th of May, he encountered Blake off Dover, and that commander, though he had only twenty ships, demanded that Van Tromp should do homage to his flag. Van Tromp refused, and sailed right on till he came nearly opposite Blake, when the English admiral fired a gun three successive times at the Dutch admiral's flag. Van Tromp returned the compliment by firing a broadside into Blake's ship; and the two fleets were instantly engaged, and a desperate battle was fought from three in the afternoon till darkness separated them. The English had taken two ships, one of which, on account of the damage done it, was allowed to sink.

There was much dispute between the two countries which was the aggressor; but it appears the most probable fact that Van Tromp sought an occasion to resist the demand of lowering the Dutch flag to the English one, and found an admiral as prepared to assert that superiority as he was to dispute it.

The English Parliament immediately issued strict orders to all its commodores to pursue and destroy all the ships of the Dutch fleet that they could find on the seas; and in the space of a month they took or burnt seventy sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war. The Dutch protested that the battle had not been sought by them, and proposed inquiry, and the punishment of whichever of the commanders should be proved the aggressor; but the Parliament replied that it was satisfied that the States were bent on usurping the rights of England on the seas, and on destroying the fleets, which were the walls and bulwarks of the nation, and therefore that it was necessary to stand on the defensive. The States sent De Pauw to reiterate the assurances of their peaceful intentions, and to urge the court of inquiry; but the Parliament was now as high as the States had been before, and insisted on reparation and security. De Pauw demanded what these terms meant, and was answered, full compensation for all the expense that the Commonwealth had been put to by the hostile preparations of the States, and a confederation for the mutual protection of the two nations. De Pauw knew that the first of these terms would be declined, and took his leave. On the 19th of July the Parliament proclaimed war against the States.

The Dutch were by no means afraid of the war, though they dreaded the destruction of their trade which it would occasion. They had acquired a great reputation as a naval people, and the sailors were eager to encounter the English, and revenge their defeat upon them. Van Tromp once more appeared with seventy sail of the line, and boasted that he would sweep the English from the face of the ocean. The Vice-Admiral Sir George Ayscough (or Ayscue), had just returned victorious from the reduction of Barbadoes, and was left in charge of the Channel whilst Blake went northward, in quest of the squadron which protected the Dutch fishermen. Van Tromp could not come up with Ayscough, owing to a change of wind; he, therefore, went northward after Blake, who had captured the Dutch squadron, and made the fishermen pay the tenth herring, but a storm dispersed Van Tromp's fleet, several of his ships falling into the hands of the English. When he again returned to port, he was received with great indignation by the people, who had expected wonders from him, and in his mortification he resigned.

De Ruyter was advanced into his post, and put to sea in charge of a merchant fleet, and in return fell in with Ayscough off Plymouth, who broke through his line, but was not followed up vigorously by the captains of the other vessels, and the Dutch ships escaped. Ayscough was superseded, the Parliament suspecting him of a royal tendency.

De Ruyter joined De Witt, and attacked Blake, who had under him Admirals Bourne and Penn, and a fierce engagement took place, which lasted the whole of the 28th of September. The next morning the Dutch were seen bearing away for their own coasts, several of their vessels having gone down, and one of them being taken. Blake gave chase as far as Goree, but could not pursue them amongst the shoals and sandbanks, where the small vessels of the Dutch had taken refuge. Wherever English and Dutch ships now met, there was battle. There was an affray between them in the Mediterranean, where Van Galen, with a greatly superior force, attacked and defeated Captain Baily, but was himself slain; the King of Denmark also joined the Dutch with five ships, laid an embargo on English merchandise in the Baltic, and closed the Sound against them. There were, moreover, numerous vessels under the French flag cruising about in quest of merchantmen.

As winter, however, approached, Blake, supposing the campaign would cease till spring, dispersed a number of his vessels to different ports, and was lying in the Downs with only thirty-seven sail, when he was surprised by a fleet of eighty men-of-war, and ten fire-ships. It was Van Tromp, whom the States had again prevailed on to take the command, and who came vehement for the recovery of his tarnished reputation. Blake's stout heart refused to shrink from even so unequal a contest; and he fought the whole Dutch fleet with true English bulldogism, from ten in the morning till six in the evening, when the increasing darkness led to a cessation of hostilities on both sides. Blake took advantage of the night to get up the Thames as far as the quaint fishing village of Leigh. He had managed to blow up a Dutch ship, disable two others, and to do much damage generally to the Dutch fleet; but he had lost five ships himself. Van Tromp and De Ruyter sailed to and fro at the mouth of the river, and along the coast from the North Foreland to the Isle of Wight, in triumph, and then convoyed home the Dutch and French fleets. There was huge rejoicing in Holland over the great English admiral, which, considering the immense inequality of the fleets, was really an honour to Blake, for it showed how they esteemed his genius and courage. The whole of Holland was full of bravado at blocking up the Thames, and forcing the English to an ignominious peace. Van Tromp was so elated, that he stuck a besom at his masthead, intimating that he would sweep the English from off the seas.

The English Parliament, during the winter, made strenuous efforts to wipe out this reverse. They refitted and put in order all their ships, ordered two regiments of infantry to be ready to embark as marines, raised the wages of the seamen, ordered their families to be maintained during their absence on service, and increased the rate of prize money. They sent for Monk from Scotland, and joined him and Dean in command with Blake.

The Dutch navy was estimated at this period at a hundred and fifty sail, and was flushed with success; but Blake was resolved to take down their pride, and lay ready for the first opportunity. This occurred on the 18th of February, 1653. Van Tromp appeared sailing up the Channel with seventy-two ships of war and thirty armed traders, convoying a homeward-bound merchant fleet of three hundred sail. His orders were, having seen the merchantmen safe home, to return and blockade the Thames. Blake saved him the trouble, by issuing from port with eighty men-of-war, and posting himself across the Channel. Van Tromp signalled the merchant fleet under his convoy to take care of themselves, and the battle between him and Blake commenced with fury. The action took place not far from Cape La Hogue, on the coast of France. Blake and Dean, who were both on board the _Triumph_, led the way, and their ship received seven hundred shots in her hull. The battle lasted the whole day, in which the Dutch had six ships taken or sunk, the English losing none, but Blake was severely wounded.

The next day the fight was renewed off Weymouth as fiercely as before, and was continued all day, and at intervals through the night; and on the third day the conflict still raged till four o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind carrying the contending fleets towards the shallow waters between Boulogne and Calais, Van Tromp, with his lesser ships, escaped from the English, and pursued his course homewards, carrying the merchant fleet safely there. In the three days' fight the Dutch, according to their own account, had lost nine men-of-war and twenty-four merchantmen; according to the English account, eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen. They had two thousand men killed, and fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English had only one ship sunk, though many of their vessels were greatly damaged, and their loss of killed and wounded was very severe. But they had decidedly beaten the enemy, and the excitement in Holland, on the return of the crest-fallen though valiant boaster Van Tromp, was universal. It was now the turn of the English sailors to boast, who declared that they had paid off the Dutch for Amboyna. But the defeat of their navy was nothing in comparison to the general mischief done to their trade and merchant shipping. Their fisheries employed one hundred thousand persons: these were entirely stopped; the Channel was now closed to their fleet, and in the Baltic the English committed continual ravages on their traders. Altogether, they had now lost sixteen hundred ships, and they once more condescended to seek for accommodation with the English Parliament, which, however, treated them with haughty indifference; and it was, therefore, with great satisfaction that they now beheld the change which took place in England.

The Reformers of various shades and creeds had at first been combined by the one great feeling of rescuing the country from the absolute principles of the Stuarts. They had fought bravely side by side for this great object; but in proportion as they succeeded, the differences between themselves became more apparent. The Presbyterians, Scots and English, were bent on fixing their religious opinions on the country as despotically as the Catholics and Episcopalians had done before them. But here they found themselves opposed by the Independents, who had notions of religious freedom far beyond the Presbyterians, and were not inclined to yield their freedom to any other party whatever. Their religious notions naturally disposed them towards the same equalising system in the State, and as the chiefs of the army were of this denomination, they soon found themselves in a condition to dictate to the parliament. Pride's Purge left Parliament almost purely independent, and it and the army worked harmoniously till the sweeping victories of Cromwell created a jealousy of his power. This power was the more supreme because circumstances had dispersed the other leading generals into distant scenes of action. Monk and Lambert were in Scotland till Monk was called to the fleet, Fleetwood was in Ireland, Ireton was dead. The Long Parliament, or the remnant of it, called the Rump, ably as it had conducted affairs, was daily decreasing in numbers, and dreaded to renew itself by election, because it felt certain that anything like a free election would return an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and that they would thus commit an act of _felo de se_.

At no period did what is called the Commonwealth of England present any of the elements of what we conceive by a republic, that is, by a government of the free representatives of the people. Had the people been allowed to send their representatives, there would have been a considerable number of Catholics, a much greater number of Episcopalians, and both of these sections Royalists. There would have been an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and a very moderate one of Independents. The Government was, therefore, speedily converted into an oligarchy, at the head of which were the generals of the army, and some few of the leaders of Parliament. The army, by Pride's Purge, reduced the Parliament to a junto, by turning out forcibly the majority of the representatives of the people, and the time was now fast approaching when it must resolve itself into a military dictatorship.

Cromwell had long been accused by his own party of aiming at the possession of the supreme power. At what time such ideas began to dawn in his mind is uncertain; but as he felt himself rising above all his contemporaries by the energy and the comprehensive character of his mind, there is no doubt that he secretly indulged them. Ludlow, Whitelock, Hutchinson, and others, felt that such was the spirit growing in him; and many of those who had most admired his genius fell away from him, and openly denounced his ambitious intentions as they became more obvious. The excellent Colonel Hutchinson and Sir Henry Vane charged him with the ruin of the Commonwealth. But Cromwell must have long felt that nothing but a military power could maintain the ascendency of those principles which he and his fellow Independents entertained and held sacred. The world was not prepared for them. The roots of royalty were too deeply struck into the heart of the nation by centuries of its existence, to be torn out by the follies and tyrannies of one family. But if a free Parliament, which it had been the proud boast of the Reformers to be the sole seat of the national power, could not exist; if the sitting body calling itself a Parliament could not even add to its members without endangering its own existence either from itself or from the jealousy of the army--what could exist? Clearly nothing but a dictatorship, and the strongest man must come uppermost. That strongest man was without a question Cromwell.