4: Council Order Books, Aug. 14, 1656.
Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London, apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker, James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited Press Acts,—to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14, 1643 (that against which Milton had written his Areopagitica), the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647, the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning had never been able to free the Government with which he was connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood, Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers were men he had named in his Defensio Secunda as heroes of the Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all, it may have been, like some of the previous movements for press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself may have been against pamphlets like Killing no Murder or publications of the indecent order.1
1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis's Milton State Papers, 143-144 (the last for Malyn's Letter about Nayler). For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol. III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.
O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July 1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657, had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and, whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals, in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional changes in advance of the Articles of the Petition and Advice, though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come down from the late reign.1
1: In continuation of a former note giving a list of the Knighthoods of Cromwell's First Protectorate so far as I have ascertained them (ante p. 303), here is a list of the Knighthoods of the Second:—William Wheeler (Aug. 26, 1657); Edward Ward, of Norfolk (Nov. 2, 1657); Alderman Thomas Andrews (Nov. 14, 1657); Colonel Matthew Tomlinson (Nov. 25, 1657, in Dublin, by Lord Henry Cromwell as Lord Deputy for Ireland); Alderman Thomas Foot, Alderman Thomas Atkins, and Colonel John Hewson (all Dec. 5, 1657); James Drax, Esq., a Barbadoes merchant (Dec. 31, 1657); Henry Bickering and Philip Twistleton (Feb. 1, 1657-8); John Lenthall, Esq., son of Speaker Lenthall (March 9, 1657-8); Alderman Chiverton and Alderman John Ireton (March 22, 1857-8); Colonel Henry Jones (July 17, 1658, for distinguished bravery at the siege of Dunkirk).-Baronetcies conferred by Cromwell were the following:—John Read, of Hertfordshire (Juae 25. 1657); the Hon. John Claypole, father of Lord Claypole (July 20, 1657); Thomas Chamberlain (Oct. 6, 1657); Thomas Beaumont, of Leicestershire (March 5, 1657-8); Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, John Twistleton, Esq., and Henry Wright, Esq., son of the physician Dr. Wright (all April 10, 1658); Griffith Williams, of Carnarvonshire (May 28, 1658); Attorney General Edmund Prideaux and Solicitor General William Ellis (Aug. 13, 1668); William Wyndham, Esq., co. Somerset (Aug. 28, 1658). The Baronetcies, being rare, seem to have been much prized; and that of Henry Ingoldsby raised jealousies (see letter of Henry Cromwell in Thurloe, VII. 57).—Peerages conferred by Cromwell were not likely, any more than his Knighthoods and Baronetcies, to be paraded by their possessors after the Restoration. But Cromwell's favourite, Colonel Charles Howard, a scion of the great Norfolk Howards, was raised to the dignity of Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland in Cumberland; Cromwell's relative, Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, Berks, was created Baron Burnell, April 20, 1658; and Cromwell, just before his death, made, or wanted to make, Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount.
As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley, Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be expected then before the end of the year.1
1: Thurloe, VII. 99, 151-152, et seq.
Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will, intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom, his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already, besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family, all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call them to account again, which had for some time been growing in Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as "of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of confinement, attended by his physicians—on one of which days (the 13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made baronets—he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends. "Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard," says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and, when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless, had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again, but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making, through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome. Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself, though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of public business of which the Protector, though never more in the Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt, within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton, was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians, while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others, had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31, Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector. Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular, such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday, Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is; He will not—" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along, and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.' He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning, using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day, Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later that matter had been settled somehow.1
1: Council Order Books from July 8 to Sept. 2, 1658, giving minutes of fifteen meetings at Whitehall or Hampton Court, Cromwell present at the two first, viz. July 8 (Whitehall), July 15 (Hampton Court), and at the sixth, viz. July 29 (Hampton Court), but at no other; Thurloe, VII. 309, 320, 323, 340, 344, 354-356, 362-364, 366-367, 369-370; A Collection of Several Passages concerning his late Highness, Oliver Cromwell, in the Time of his Sickness (June 9, 1659, "London, Printed for Robert Ibbetson, dwelling in Smithfield, near Hosier Lane"); Cromwelliana, 174-178 (including an abridgment of the last tract); Whitlocke, IV. 334-335; Markham's Life of Fairfax, 373-374; Ludlow, 610; Godwin, IV. 564-575; Carlyle, III. 367-376 (which may well be read again and again); Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1. 242-245; Life of Newton by Sir David Brewster (1860), I. 14.