Chapter II: The Talk in St. James's Park

The Council of State had done well; great names were among the members. Sir Harry Vane had devoted his patriotism and his great gifts to the administration of the navy, which was under the command of William Blake, already as renowned at sea as Cromwell on the land; the naval war with the United Provinces was already taxing the resources of the infant Commonwealth, and so far all had acquitted themselves with honour and distinction.

Rupert and his roving pirate ships had been swept from the seas, Deane and Monk kept an iron hand on Scotland, Fleetwood and Ludlow completed the bloody conquest of Ireland. Outwardly the new Republic might well present a uniform and solid appearance; but within it seethed with confusion.

The main cause of the two civil wars and the execution of the King--ecclesiastical questions--was still in abeyance; nothing was settled in Church or State. Nor were the finances of the country in a hopeful condition; neither the Church lands nor the King's lands nor all the revenues formerly given to royalty served to pay the expenses of the Dutch War. Cromwell's dreams of retirement vanished; urged from within by his own eager soul and from without by the appeals of those who could not bear their burdens without his help, he remained in the forefront of affairs, the leader of the army in name and fact, a figure slightly enigmatical, needed by all and by some feared.

He was not without his enemies. Edmund Ludlow, on one of his visits to London, told him frankly that the extreme Puritans could not forget his attempt to come to terms with the late King, and the extreme moderates could not forget his execution of the mutineers at Ware.

The last time Ludlow and Cromwell had crossed words Cromwell had ended the argument by hurling a cushion at his opponent's head. Now he answered mildly and declared that the Lord was bringing to pass through him what He had promised in the 110th Psalm; he expounded this theory for an hour, and Ludlow was silenced by rhetoric if not convinced by reason.

Meanwhile Cromwell, whether he silenced his critics by oratory or hurled cushions, went his way without heeding any of them; sometimes mildly, sometimes in sudden gusts of temper, sometimes in strange exalted excitements he pursued a policy which, however obscure and vague it might seem to others, was clear as crystal and bright as flame to him.

The feeling between the army and the remnant of Charles' last Parliament still ruling at Westminster became again restless and intense; all men began to see that the present Government was, and could be nothing else, but provisional. A date, three years off, was fixed for the dissolution of the present Parliament, and Cromwell called a conference between the chief lawyers and the chief captains, to whom he offered two vital questions: Should they have a republic or a monarchy? if a monarchy, who was to be King?

The Parliament men were mostly for a monarchy, the army men for a republic: Desborough and Whalley were especially strong for that.

Oliver Cromwell was not with them: he had never been at heart republican; but he said little, and the conference broke up, as the others had done, without solving a single difficulty.

Sometime after the Lord-General, coming from his luminous obscurity where he gleamed, keeping all men in an uncertainty as to his wishes and his intentions, asked the Lord Whitelocke, lawyer and Parliament man, to attend him in his walking in the Park, and to there discuss with him the unsettlement and turmoil of the State.

It was a day in November; the brambles in the hedges had sparse fox-coloured leaves; the trees in the orchard and archery ground were bare; the elms and oaks were hung with thin scattered gold leaves against a pale blue and frosty sky; the ground was hard with a thin ice in the ruts where yesterday had been mud; above the empty Palace, which might be plainly glimpsed through the bare trees, a solitary white cloud floated, like a forlorn banner. The Lord-General often looked at this cloud while he spoke: he had a habit of gazing much at the sky.

He wore a black suit and grey worsted hose, broad leathern shoes with wide steel buckles, sword, band, collar, and hat as plain as might be. There was nothing about his person to indicate the profession which he represented; he was in every way as plain as the plain lawyer to whom he talked. He opened with what was in his mind, but gently, indirectly and vaguely, after his usual manner.

"Where is the cause? Where is this for which we all fought? Lord Whitelocke, did so many poor people die to this end? Was the glorious climax of the war, the death of the tyrant to lead to no better conclusion than this? Hath the Lord led us out of Egypt to abandon us now? Truly, sir, I do not think it, yet I ask you where is the cause? I say that the cause is overlaid with jars, with jealousies, with confusion, and this must not be. The Lord will not have it--it is not as it should be, sir, in a Commonwealth."

Bulstrode Whitelocke hesitated a moment and struck at the frozen ground with his cane; he was a shrewd, prosaic man, a keen lawyer, and a fearless patriot. After his little pause he resolved on boldness: his quick, direct speech was a contrast to Cromwell's involved phrases.

"The peril we are in, sir, cometh from the arrogance of the army, from their high pretensions and unruly ways and desire for dominance."

The Lord-General gave him a long glance.

"Say you so?" he returned mildly. "Yet methinks they are a lovely company, worthy of all honour."

"They have had all honour and all profit too," returned Whitelocke grimly, "and now they would have all power as well, under your favour, sir."

"Nay," returned Cromwell, "this is not so. The army is the poor instrument by which the Lord saved England; they did some little service at Naseby--at Preston--at Dunbar and Winchester, and though I dare say they would sooner die than take any of the glory of these mercies, yet the Lord chose them as His instruments, and that must be accounted to them as an honour. Sir, the army hath laboured much, sweated in your service; sir, without the army"--he pointed to Whitehall--"that Palace would now be the dwelling-place of the young man, Charles Stewart. I pray you consider these things."

"Yet I repeat," insisted the Lord Whitelocke, who was voicing the feeling of the entire Parliament and a great portion of the nation, "that the army is the cause of these present jars--their imperious carriage is hard to be borne, sir, and from it arises the confusions and jealousies which oppress us. As to their merits, the Council of State hath done somewhat too--the war with the Dutch----"

"Because of this war my spirit hath groaned!" interrupted Cromwell. "Should there not rather be a union between two Protestant republics than war? And what do not you spend on it? All that which you have gained from King and bishops. I say it were more befitting us, as Christians and Englishmen, to have peace with the Dutch."

Whitelocke refused to be drawn into this argument. He returned to his point.

"The Council of State rule well and wisely--the people uphold them."

"Nay, do they?" interrupted the Lord-General, in a very decided tone. "I tell you this, Mr. Whitelocke, I have been up and down the country and heard the opinions of many men, and I say that most, and the best of them, do loathe the Parliament."

"Where is this leading?" asked the lawyer sharply.

"Ay, where?" repeated Cromwell. "There are the people new come from civil strife unheard of, and ye lay on them the great burden of a foreign war; ye settle nothing and strive after nothing but to prolong your own sitting. There are scandalous members among you--ay, I know it well--self-seekers, drunkards, men of lewd life. I say it is not well these should be uncontrolled in power, therefore I spoke for a king or for one with a king's authority. They have none to check them, they do as they will, they are slow, they are idle, they meddle in private matters; it will not do. Let them look to their authority, which is on high; let them seek God painfully."

He spoke with passion now, but also with a certain weariness, as if he was oppressed with great thoughts and slowly struggled to the outward expression of them.

"You are a soldier and therefore impatient," returned Whitelocke quietly. "The Parliament is slow--but that is within human reason."

The Lord-General turned and looked at him grimly.

"There is another thing which is not within human reason, which is that this Commonwealth should stand without a master set over the Parliament."

"How may one do that?" demanded the lawyer sharply, "when the Parliament is itself the authority from which we derive ours?"

"That is a formal difficulty," replied Cromwell impatiently. "Do you think I should be stopped by nice points of law?"

Whitelocke marked the pronoun the soldier had used.

"Would you withstand the Parliament?" he asked keenly. "They are your masters."

"They are no man's masters; they are means to an end," replied Cromwell. "I am a poor thing, but the Lord hath made some use of me these ten years past--yea, a little use. He hath been pleased to appoint me to do a few things for Him, some little work, and I will do it, despite Parliament as I did and despite a king. I say we will have righteousness and justice; if need be these men can be put down as the tyrant was put down, and the poor and simple be cared for and the groans of the needy heard."

"These are stern words," said Whitelocke; "and how will you justify them?"

"God will justify them," replied the Lord-General, "as He hath hitherto upheld what I have said in His name. What was I? What did I know of armies or of the battalion? Yet the Lord said, 'Be thou ruler, even among Mine enemies,' and sent me forth to conquer kings and princes. And we were but a handful and they gentlemen. Yet we did it. 'With His own right hand and with His holy arm hath He gotten Himself the victory!' And now I am bidden to labour still in His cause and to go forward--and do you think that poor remnant sitting at Westminster shall hinder me?"

The Lord Whitelocke was silent; he was rather startled at what he took to be the kernel of Cromwell's speech--his enmity to the Parliament--and he was not deceived by the gentleness and self-effacement of the Lord-General, who, he knew, was indeed capable of doing away with the Parliament as he and his had done away with the King. And there was now, as always, the great fact to be remembered and reckoned with that Cromwell had behind him the army of his own creation, that fierce military whose enthusiasm was not much curbed or checked by regard for mere formal institutions and laws of men's framing.

"In very deed," he replied, "your power and the power behind you is too high. How can we withstand it?"

"My power, such as it be," returned the soldier mildly, "cometh from God and the People. Be assured that if I use it for other than the glory of one and the good of the other it will pass from me. I say this because meseemeth you have fear of the army, poor souls; but I did not open this talk for any matter of argument with thee, but rather in a friendly spirit to discuss the present jars."

"You have discussed them to good purpose, sir," returned Whitelocke dryly. "I perceive that you look upon the Parliament and the Council of State with ill-will and mistrust."

"I think," replied Cromwell, still gazing at the pale cloud floating in the pale sky over Whitehall, "that we need a Governor over this England."

"Where is he to be found?" demanded Whitelocke.

"The Lord will bring such an one forward in His good leisure," said Cromwell.

Whitelocke liked this speech still less than those which had gone before it; he thought it meant that the Lord-General intended in truth to set himself against the Parliament.

"Who will be your Governor of England?" he asked.

"Who can resolve that question?" said Cromwell evasively.

"What is your proposal to solve the present difficulties?" was Whitelocke's next question. He was determined that he would, if possible, gain something definite from the present conversation.

The Lord-General made no answer, and they walked on slowly and in silence. The very last leaves were scattered from the boughs overhead on to the frosty ground at their feet, and a little low, sharp wind was blowing across the city.

Bulstrode Whitelocke waited for the Lord-General's answer. Himself a moderate man, to a point he was wholly with Cromwell's tolerance and large-mindedness; but when Cromwell's moderation suddenly culminated in daring action, then Whitelocke refused to follow him. He had been one of the most active of those who had endeavoured to frame a treaty with the late King, and had warmly supported Cromwell's attempts to bring Charles to a compromise; but he had refused to sit in the High Court of Justice that had tried and condemned the King. So now he felt that they were again reaching a crisis when he could not support any longer the man whom he so sincerely admired.

But the Lord-General would not any further disclose himself, and when Whitelocke was about to press for a reply he caused a distraction by pausing and pointing to a gentleman walking near the archery fields, to which they had now nearly approached.

"I know his face, who is he?" asked Cromwell.

Bulstrode Whitelocke, somewhat vexed at this abrupt change of subject, answered briefly--

"He is the Latin Secretary to the Council of State."

"Ah," said the Lord-General, "a very worthy citizen. I have heard of him. From the first he hath given his testimony to the good cause. I would there were many more such among you."

By this, the person of whom he spoke drew near, and seeing the two gentlemen, and knowing Whitelocke and recognizing Cromwell, he stopped and bowed.

Cromwell turned towards him, and Whitelocke had no choice but to do likewise.

"You are the Latin Secretary," said the Lord-General. "You have written much in defence of the cause. I have often sought an occasion to speak to you."

The gentleman thus addressed bowed in some confusion like one overwhelmed by a great honour.

"Do you know me?" asked Cromwell.

"I do, my Lord-General," was the reply, given in a sweet musical voice. "What lover of truth and freedom doth not?--'My lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy days.'"

He spoke with a warm sincerity which raised his words above the suspicion of flattery, and a flush overspread his naturally pallid features.

There was something about his person and manner wholly attractive; in his youth (he was now in middle age) he must have been of a beauty almost feminine, and his traits still had a frail and delicate comeliness; his large dark blue eyes were fatigued and heavy lidded as if swollen with overuse, and his pale cheek and the brow shaded by the long locks of brown hair bore traces of sickness and anxiety; his figure was slender and noble, and his black clothes were fine in quality; his whole appearance was of an elegance wholly lacking to the Lord-General's person; indeed, for all the sobriety of his attire, he appeared more like one of the unfortunate Cavaliers than one of the most vigorous champions of the Independents, the author of _Eikonoclastes_.

"I thank you, Mr. Milton," replied Cromwell. "I hope we may be better acquainted. You have laboured much and your reward halts, but I believe you have that greatness in you which is pleased to serve England without fee."

"For the little that I do I am even overpaid," replied John Milton, with a deepening of his boyish flush.

The glance of the two men met, and a look flashed between them as if they were wholly one in spirit; then the Secretary bowed again, and each went his way.

"The Council have bidden him write an answer to Salmasius' work," said Whitelocke. "He calls it _A Defence of the People of England_--but it doth not proceed as quickly as he would wish because his eyes fail him. He told me that at times he could hardly see the letters on the paper."

Cromwell looked back at the slender, erect figure walking away under the bare trees.

"Thou hast a brave heart if I mistake not," he murmured.

Then he went on again, Bulstrode Whitelocke still waiting for him to deliver himself.

Not until they had almost reached the confines of the Park and the houses of Charing Cross did the Lord-General speak.

Then, turning suddenly to his expectant companion, he said--

"What if a man should take it upon himself to be king?"

Whitelocke stared, startled beyond concealment.

"Well?" urged Cromwell gently.

The lawyer, recovering himself, took refuge in the pedantic, formal objections offered by the law and the constitution.

Cromwell listened patiently. When Whitelocke, rather confused and breathless, had brought his speech to an end he answered mildly--

"Neither the law nor the constitution gave authority for the execution of a king. Yet we did it. Therefore we may do other things for which there is no warrant in charter or Parliament roll, but for which the warrant cometh from God. Yet for the moment I have no more to say."