Smiting with iron heel; The terrorism of the Protector’s government, and the almost universal hatred which it inspired, are powerfully painted by Hallam. ‘To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper’s wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector abandoned all thought of it. . . . All illusion was now (1655) gone, as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance.’
The blood-path; The trials under which Gerard and Vowel were executed in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, are the most flagrant instances of Cromwell’s perversion of justice, and contempt for the old liberties of England. But they do not stand alone.
Guile and coarseness; ‘A certain coarse good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity: quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes,’ is the deliberate summing-up of Hallam,—in the love of liberty inferior to none of our historians, and eminent above all for courageous impartiality,—iustissimus unus.
With glory he gilt; See Appendix C.
Success, the vulgar test; See Matthew Arnold’s finely discriminative Essay on Falkland.
MARSTON MOOR
July 2: 1644
O, summer-high that day the sun
His chariot drove o’er Marston wold:
A rippling sea of amber wheat
That floods the moorland vale with gold.
With harvest light the valley laughs,
The sheaves in mellow sunshine sleep;
—Too rathe the crop, too red the swathes
Ere night the scythe of Death shall reap!
Then thick and fast o’er all the moor
The crimson’d sabre-lightnings fly;
And thick and fast the death-bolts dash,
And thunder-peals to peals reply.