In the Dissolution Speech Cromwell, rebuking the Parliament for their inattention to what he considered their real duty, had compared them to a tree under the shadow of which there had been a too thriving growth of other vegetation. Interpreting the parable, he had explained to them that there was at that moment a new and very complex conspiracy against the Commonwealth, that the Levellers at home had been in correspondence with the Cavaliers abroad, that their plans were laid and their manifestos ready, that commissioners from Charles Stuart had arrived and stores of arms and money had been collected, and also (worst of all) that there had been tamperings with the Army by Commonwealth men of higher note than the mere Levellers. He did not believe, he said, that any then in Parliament were in the Cavalier interest in the connexion, but he was not sure that they were all perfectly clear of the connexion on all its sides. At all events, he knew that their policy of starving the Army had given the enemy their best opportunity. Fortunately, he had already some of the chief home-conspirators in custody, and the Cavalier part of the plot might explode when it liked.1
1: Speech IV (Carlyle, III 75-81.)
The chief of those in custody when Cromwell spoke was the Republican Major-General Overton. He had been under suspicion before, as we have seen, but had cleared himself sufficiently to Cromwell, and had been sent back to Scotland as second in command to Monk (Sept. 1654). Since then, however, he had relapsed into the Anti-Oliverian mood, and had become, it was believed, the head of the numerous Anti-Oliverians or Republicans in Monk's Army, The proposal was to seize Monk, make Overton the commander-in-chief, and march into England, But, information having been received in time, there had been the necessary arrests of the guilty officers (Dec. 1654). Most of them had been kept in Edinburgh to be dealt with by Monk; but the chiefs had been sent at once to London, and among them Overton, whose arrest had taken place at Aberdeen. He was committed to the Tower Jan. 16, 1654-5. The clue having thus been furnished, further investigation had disclosed more. In concert with the Anti-Oliverian movement in the Army of Scotland, and depending on that movement for help, there had been plottings in England, in which Harrison, Colonel Okey, Colonel Alured, Colonel Sexby, Adjutant-General Allen, Admiral Lawson, Major John Wildman, Lord Grey of Groby, Carew, and even Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Henry Marten, were, or were said to be, more or less involved. The aim seems to have been a combination of the Anabaptist Levellers with the more eminent Republicans,—the Levellers, or some of them, quite willing to combine also with the Royalists, and indeed in confidential negotiation with them. How the scheme, or medley of schemes, would have turned out in the working, was never to be known. It was frustrated by the arrest, in January and February, of most of the suspected. The most important arrest was that of Major Wildman, the undoubted chief of the Levelling section of the conspiracy. When arrested in Wiltshire, he was found in the act of dictating a "Declaration of the Free and Well-affected People of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esq." He was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle. Sexby, the most active man after Wildman in the Levelling or Anabaptist section of the conspiracy, escaped and went abroad. Adjutant-General Allen, and others less deeply implicated, were dismissed from their posts in the Army. Harrison was confined in the Isle of Portland, Carew in St. Mawes, in Cornwall, and Lord Grey of Groby in Windsor Castle. None of all the Republicans, higher or lower, it was remarked, suffered any punishment beyond such seclusion or dismissal from the service. Clemency on that side was always Cromwell's policy.1
1: Godwin, IV. 158-165; Carlyle, III. 66-70 and 98-99; Whitlocke, IV. 182-188 (Wildman's Proclamation); Life of Robert Blair, 319.
Much sharper was Cromwell's method of dealing with the attempted invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently. Hopes had risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been extensive. Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers of the enterprise were already moving about in various English counties. Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of Charles's emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had arrived and were in their beds. They were seized; and next morning Wagstaff issued orders for hanging them, but was stopped in the act by the remonstrances of Colonel John Penruddock and others. From Salisbury, finding no encouragement among the citizens, the insurgents moved westward till they reached South Molton in Devonshire, where they were overtaken on the night of Wednesday, March 14, by Captain Unton Crook. There was a brief street-fight, ending in the defeat of the Royalists, and the capture of Penruddock and about fifty more. Wagstaff escaped. Of the contemporary insurgents in the north there had meanwhile escaped Malevrier and also Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had come from abroad to head the Royalist insurrection generally, had gone to the north, but had not awaited the actual upshot. He lay concealed in London for a time, and got to Cologne at last. In the trials which ensued those who suffered capitally were Penruddock, beheaded at Exeter, a Captain Hugh Grove and several others at other places in the West, and two or three at York. Many of the inferior culprits, capitally convicted, had their lives spared, but were sent in servitude to Barbadoes.1
1: Clarendon, 824-827; Whitlocke, IV. 188; Godwin, IV. 167-169; Carlyle, III. 99-100.
Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of £120,000 per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of £90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and, though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the assessment for three months more at £60,000 per month, the Bill had never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at £60,000 per month. This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of Parliament, he had been fined £500 by the Commissioners of Customs, and had been committed to prison for non-payment. On a motion for a writ of habeas corpus his case came on for trial in May 1655. Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded so effectively that they were committed to the Tower for what was called language destructive to the Government. Cony himself then went on with the pleading, and so sturdily that Chief Justice Rolle was non-plussed, and had to confess as much to Cromwell. It was only by delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate. Similarly the Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the consciences of Lawyers and Judges. There were such remonstrances to Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench. He removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while by Commissionerships of the Treasury. For all this "arbitrariness" Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea of absolute necessity. The very existence of his Protectorate was at peril; and that meant, he declared, the existence of the Commonwealth.1
1: Godwin, IV. 174-183; Whitlocke, through April, May, June, and July, 1655.
For such "arbitrariness" in some of the Protector's home-proceedings there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad. Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, had come to London to assist Cardenas in the negotiations for Spain; but Mazarin was indefatigable in his offers, through M. de Bordeaux and otherwise.1
1: Council Order Books passim; Guizot, II. 203.