In the meantime Spain was helping Charles with money which was spent in plots to assassinate the Protector. The effect of this underhand, contemptible warfare was several petitions and addresses offered in Parliament begging Cromwell to assume the ancient office of King, if only for the settlement of the nation. He was quite strong enough to have taken it, and there was nothing unmanly either in his desire for the crown or in his refusal of it. His conscience, not his reason, decided the question. He waited many a long, anxious night on his knees for some sign or token of God's approbation of the kingship, but it did not come; and Cromwell was never greater than when, steadily, and with dignity, he put the glittering bauble aside—"Because for it, he would not lose a friend, or even a servant." He told the Parliamentary committee offering him the title that he "held it as a feather in a man's cap;" then burst into an inspired strain, and quoting Luther's psalm, "that rare psalm for a Christian," he added, "if Pope and Spaniard and devil set themselves against us, yet the Lord of Hosts is with us, and the God of Jacob is our refuge." One thing he knew well, that the title of King would take all meaning out of the Puritan revolution, and he could not so break with his own past, with his own spiritual life, and with the godly men who had so faithfully followed and so fully trusted him.
Why should he fret himself about a mere word? All real power was in his hands: the army and the navy, the churches and the universities, the reform and administration of the law, the government of Scotland and of Ireland. Abroad, the war with all its details, the alliance with Sweden, with France, with the Protestant princes of Germany, the Protestant Protectorate extending as far as Transylvania, the "planting" of the West Indies, the settlement of the American Colonies, and their defense against their rivals, the French,—all these subjects were Cromwell's daily cares. He was responsible for everything, and his burden would have been lightened, if he could have conscientiously taken on him the "divinity which doth hedge a king." The English people love what they know, and they knew nothing of an armed Protector making laws by ordinance, and disposing of events by rules not followed by their ancestors. But Oliver knew that he would cross Destiny if he made himself King, and that this "crossing" always means crucifixion of some kind.
"To be a king is not in my commission," he said to Doctor Verity. "It squares not with my call or my conscience. I will not fadge with the question again; no, not for an hour."
The commercial and national glory of England at this time were, however, in a manner incidental to Oliver's great object—the Protection of Protestantism. This object was the apple of his eye, the profoundest desire of his soul. He would have put himself at the head of all the Protestants in Europe, if he could have united them; failing in this effort, he vowed himself to cripple the evil authority of Rome and the bloody hands of Inquisitorial Spain. His sincerity is beyond all doubt; even Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian, says, "Dissembling in religion is contradicted by the uniform tenor of his life." He wrote to Blake that, "The Lord had a controversy with the Romish Babylon, of which Spain is the under-propper;" and he made it his great business to keep guard over Protestants, and to put it out of the power of princes to persecute them. It is easy to say such a Protestant league was behind the age. It was not. Had it been secured, the persecutions of the Huguenots would not have taken place, and the history of those hapless martyrs—still, after the lapse of two hundred years, read with shuddering indignation—would have been very different. Cromwell knew well what Popery had done to Brandeburg and Denmark, and what a wilderness it had made of Protestant Germany, and his conception of duty as Protector of all Protestants was at least a noble one. Nor was it ineffective. On the very day he should have signed a treaty of alliance with France against Spain, he heard of the unspeakably cruel massacre of the Vandois Protestants. He threw the treaty passionately aside, and refused to negotiate further until Louis and Mazarin put a stop to the brutalities of the Duke of Savoy. As the details were told him, he wept; and all England wept with him. Not since the appalling massacre of Protestants in Ireland, had the country been so moved and so indignant. Cromwell instantly gave two thousand pounds for the sufferers who had escaped, and one hundred and forty thousand pounds was collected in England for the same purpose. It was during the sorrowful excitement of this time that Milton—now blind—wrote his magnificent Sonnet,
"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine Mountains cold."
Furthermore, it was in Milton's luminous, majestic Latin prose that Cromwell sent his demands to King Louis for these poor, pious peasants,—demands not disregarded, for all that could be found alive were returned to their desolated homes.
For the persecuted Jews his efforts were not as successful. They had been banished from England in A.D. 1290, but three hundred and sixty-five years of obstinate prejudice had not exhausted Christian bigotry. Cromwell made a noble speech in favour of their return to England, but the learned divines and lawyers came forward to "plead and conclude" against their admission, and Cromwell, seeing no legal sanction was possible, let the matter drop for a time. Yet his favour towards the Jews was so distinct that a company of Oriental Jewish priests came to England to investigate the Protector's genealogy, hoping to find in him "the Lion of the tribe of Judah."
So these three years were full of glory and romance, and the poorest family in England lived through an epic of such national grandeur as few generations have witnessed. Yet, amid it all, the simple domestic lives of men and women went calmly on, and birth, marriage, and death made rich or barren their homes. Jane Swaffham attained in their progress to a serene content she had once thought impossible. But God has appointed Time to console the greatest afflictions, and she had long been able to think of Cluny—not as lying in a bloody grave, but as one of the Sons of God among the Hosts of Heaven. And this consolation accepted, she had begun to study Latin and mathematics with Doctor Verity, and to give her love and her service to all whom she could pleasure or help. Indeed, she had almost lived with the Ladies Mary and Frances Cromwell, who had passed through much annoyance and suffering concerning their love affairs. But these were now happily settled, Lady Mary having married Viscount Fanconburg, and Lady Frances the lover for whom she had so stubbornly held out—Mr. Rich, the grandson of the Earl of Warwick.
Matilda's life during this interval had been cramped and saddened by the inheritance from her previous years. Really loving Cymlin, she could not disentangle the many threads binding her to the old unfortunate passion, for, having become wealthy, the Stuarts would not resign their claim upon her. Never had they needed money more; and most of their old friends had been denuded, or worn out with the never-ceasing demands on their affection. Thus she was compelled, often against her will, to be aware of plots for the assassination of Cromwell—plots which shocked her moral sense, and which generally seemed to her intelligence exceedingly foolish and useless. These things made her restless and unhappy, for she could not but contrast the splendour of the Protector's character and government with the selfishness, meanness and incapacity of the Stuarts.
She loved Cymlin, but she feared to marry him. She feared the reproaches of Rupert, who, though he made no effort to consummate their long engagement, was furiously indignant if she spoke of ending it. Then, also, she had fears connected with Cymlin. When very young, he had begun to save money in order to make himself a possible suitor for Matilda's hand. His whole career in the army had looked steadily to this end. In the Irish campaign he had been exceedingly fortunate; he had bought and sold estates, and exchanged prisoners for specie, and in other ways so manipulated his chances that in every case they had left behind a golden residuum. This money had been again invested in English ventures, and in all cases he had been signally fortunate. Jane had told Matilda two years previously that Cymlin was richer than his father, and she might have said more than this and been within the truth.