OLIVER CROMWELL.

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Sir John Owen, who was a gentleman of Wales, in the late outbreak had killed a sheriff. He pleaded quarter, and that he had only done what he thought his duty, in support of the king. As to killing the sheriff, the sheriff had risen against him with force, and was killed in the accident of war, which he might have avoided if he had stayed quietly at home. All five were condemned to lose their heads, the Earl of Holland as a double turncoat, and his conduct had certainly been anything but consistent and noble. Sir John Owen, on hearing the sentence, made a low bow and thanked the judges; and being asked why, he replied, that it was a very great honour for a poor gentleman of Wales to die like a lord, and he had not expected anything better than hanging. No sooner was the sentence passed, than the friends of Hamilton, Holland, and Capel, made great exertions to save their lives. The wives of Holland and Capel appeared at the bar, attended by long trains of females in mourning, to beg for their lives. Two days' respite was granted, and every effort, persuasion, and bribery was put in force. Hamilton had fewer friends than the rest, but it was urged that his death might occasion trouble with Scotland; but Cromwell knew that they had the interest of Argyll, and that Hamilton's being out of the way would strengthen that interest. The case of Holland occasioned a great debate. The Earl of Warwick, his brother, on one side urged his services to the Parliament for a long period—his enemies, his revolt from it on the other. Cromwell and Ireton were firmly against them, and the sentences of these three were confirmed. The votes regarding Goring were equal, and Lenthall, the Speaker, gave the casting vote in his favour, alleging that he formerly had done him an essential service. Sir John Owen, to the satisfaction of those who admired his frank and quaint humour, was also reprieved, and ultimately liberated. He had softened even the heart of Ireton, and greatly moved the good Colonel Hutchinson, and both spoke in his favour. Hamilton, Capel, and Holland, were beheaded in the Palace Yard on the 9th of March.

The Parliament was soon called on to defend itself against more dangerous enemies. The country was groaning under the exhaustion of the civil war. For seven years it had been bleeding at every pore; and now that the war had ceased, the people began to utter aloud their complaints, which, if uttered before, had been drowned in the din of conflict. There was everywhere a terrible outcry against the burden of taxation; and famine and pestilence—the sure successors of carnage and spoliation—were decimating the people. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers were daily perishing, and the magistrates of Cumberland deposed that thirty thousand families in that county had neither seed- nor bread-corn, nor the means of procuring either. What rendered this state of things the more dangerous, was the turbulence of the Levellers. The principles of Republicanism which had borne on the heads of the army, threatened in turn to overwhelm them in their progress amongst the soldiers. It is easier to set in motion revolutionary ideas, than to say to them, "Thus far shall ye go and no farther." In all revolutions, the class which initiates them wishes to stop at the point that is most convenient to itself; but other classes beyond this line are equally anxious, and have an equal claim to the benefit of levelling principles. It is only power which limits their diffusion. The power now had passed from the king and the lords, and had centred in the leaders of the army. It was not convenient or desirable for them that it should go farther. But the soldiers and the lower officers, with John Lilburne at their head, claimed a Republic in its more popular sense. They read in the Bible, and preached from it in the field, that God was no respecter of persons; that human rights were as universal as the human race. They saw that Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and a few others were the men who ruled in the Parliament, the Council, and the Army; and they conceived that they were no longer seeking the common rights of the community, but the aggrandisement of themselves. Colonel John Lilburne was pouring out pamphlet upon pamphlet, and disseminating them through the ranks and through the people—"England's New Chains Discovered," "The Hunting of the Foxes from Triploe Heath to Whitehall by Five Small Beagles." These foxes were Cromwell, Ireton, Fairfax, etc., who had suppressed the mutiny at Triploe Heath—and the five beagles those who had been made to ride the wooden horse for their insubordination, that is, set upon a sharp three-cornered wooden machine, with weights or muskets tied to their feet. News came to Parliament that one Everard, a soldier passing for a prophet, and Winstanley, another, with thirty more, were assembled on St. George's Hill, near Cobham, in Surrey, and were digging the ground and planting it with roots and beans. They said they should shortly be four thousand, and invited all to come and help them, promising them meat, drink, and clothes. Two troops of horse were sent to disperse them, of which they loudly complained, and Everard and Winstanley went to the general, and declared "that the liberties of the people were lost by the coming in of William the Conqueror, and that ever since, the people of God had lived under tyranny and oppression worse than our forefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance was at hand, and God would bring His people out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the earth. There had lately appeared to him [Everard] a vision, which bade him arise and dig and plough the earth, and receive the fruits thereof. He said that their intent was to restore the earth to its former condition; that, as God had promised to make the barren fruitful, so now what they did was to restore the ancient community of enjoying the fruits of the earth, to distribute them to the poor and needy; that they did not intend to break down pales and destroy enclosures, as was reported, but only to till the waste land, and make it fruitful for man; and that the time was coming when all men would willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this community of goods."

Lilburne had been engaged in the county of Durham, and to win him over, three thousand pounds were voted to him; but this did not move him for a moment. On his return, he appeared at the bar of the House with a petition against the form of the newly adopted constitution, which the officers had named, "The Agreement of the People," but which the people did not accept as their agreement. Lilburne protested against the provision that Parliament should only sit six months every two years, and that the Council should rule the other eighteen. This example was extensively followed, and the table of the House was quickly loaded with petitions demanding a new Parliament every year; a committee of the House to govern during the recess; no member of one Parliament to be a member of the next; the Self-denying Ordinance to be enforced; the term of every officer's commission in the army to be limited; the High Court of Justice and Council of State to be abolished as instruments of tyranny; all proceedings in the courts of law to be in English; lawyers reduced, and their fees too. Excise and customs they required to be abolished, and the lands of delinquents sold to remunerate the well affected. Religion was to be "reformed according to the mind of God;" tithes were to be abolished, conscience made free, and the incomes of ministers of the Gospel were to be fixed at one hundred and fifty pounds each, and raised by a rate on the parishioners.

There was much sound sense and gospel truth in these demands, but the day of their adoption was much nearer to the millennium than to 1649. It was resolved to send Cromwell to settle the disturbances in Ireland, but it was necessary to quash this communist insurrection first. Money was borrowed of the City, and after "a solemn seeking of God by prayer," lots were cast to see what regiments should go to Ireland. Fourteen of foot and fourteen of horse were selected by this mode. The officers expressed much readiness to go; the men refused. On the 26th of April there broke out a terrible mutiny in Whalley's regiment, at the Bull, in Bishopsgate. The men seized their colours from the cornet, and refused to march without many of the communist concessions. Fairfax and Cromwell hastened thither, seized fifteen of the mutineers, tried them on the spot by court martial, condemned five, and shot one in St. Paul's churchyard on the morrow. This was Lockyer, a trooper, a brave young fellow, who had served throughout the whole war, and was only yet three-and-twenty.

The death of this young man who was greatly beloved, roused all the soldiers and the working men and women of the City to a fearful degree. He was shot on Friday, amid the tears and execrations of thousands. On Monday his troop proceeded to bury him with military honours. Whitelock says, "About a hundred went before the corpse, five or six in a file, the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding a soldier's knell. Then the trooper's horse came, clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary, one half-stained in blood, and the sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed in rank and file; all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the rear. At the new church in Westminster, some thousands more, of the better sort, met them, who thought not fit to march through the City."

This was not a promising beginning for the generals, but they were not men to be put down. They arrested Lilburne and his five small beagles, who published, on the 1st of May, their "Agreement of the People," and clapped them in the Tower, and hastened down to Salisbury to quell the insurrection which had broken out in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts in the army. The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds, and Horton, all declared for the Lilburne "Agreement," and swore to stand by each other. At Banbury, a Captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred men, issued a manifesto called "England's Standard Advanced," demanding the completion of public freedom, vowing justice on the murderers of Lockyer, and threatening, if a hair of Lilburne's was touched, they would avenge it seventy-and-seven fold. Reynolds, the colonel of the regiment, attacked Thompson, put him to flight, and prevailed on the soldiers to lay down their arms; but another party of ten troops of horse, a thousand strong, under cornet Thompson, brother of the captain, marched out of Salisbury for Burford, increasing their numbers as they went. But Fairfax and Cromwell were marching rapidly after them. They came upon them in the night at Burford, took them all prisoners, and the next day, Thursday, the 17th of May, shot Cornet Thompson and two corporals in Burford churchyard. The rest were pardoned, and agreed to go to Ireland. A few days afterwards Captain Thompson was overtaken in a wood in Northamptonshire, and killed. The mutiny was at an end, if we except some local disturbances in Devon, Hants, and Somersetshire. Fairfax and Cromwell were received at Oxford in triumph, and feasted and complimented, being made doctors; and on the 7th of June a day of thanksgiving was held in London, with a great dinner at Grocers' Hall, given to the officers of the army and the leaders of Parliament, and another appointed for the whole kingdom on the 21st.

Cromwell had already been made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and on the 10th of July he set forth at five in the evening from London, by way of Windsor to Bristol. He set out in state approaching to royalty. He rode in a coach drawn by six Flanders mares, whitish greys, a number of carriages containing other officers following, attended by a life-guard of eighty men, the meanest of whom was a commander or esquire; many of them were colonels in rich uniforms, and the whole procession was attended by a resounding flourish of trumpets. But before following the farmer of Huntingdon, now risen to all but royal grandeur, we must notice the affairs of Scotland.

Though Argyll held the chief power in Scotland, and was on friendly terms with Cromwell, he could not prevent a strong public feeling showing itself on the approaching trial of the king. The Scots reproached themselves for giving up Charles to the English army, and considered that heavy disgrace would fall upon the country if the king should be put to death. They demanded, therefore, that a strong remonstrance should be sent to the Parliament of England, and Argyll was too timid or too cautious to oppose this. The Commissioners in London received and presented the remonstrance, but obtained no answer till after the execution of the king, and that which they did then receive was in most unceremonious terms. Forthwith the authorities in Edinburgh proclaimed Charles as king, and the Scottish Commissioners in London, protesting against the alteration of the Government into a Republic, and declaring themselves guiltless of the blood of the king, hastened to Gravesend, to quit the kingdom. But the Parliament, resenting this language as grossly libellous, and calculated to excite sedition, sent an officer to conduct them under guard to the frontiers of the kingdom.