At this time Cromwell courted popularity; he wished to engage honourable and eminent persons to support his government, and he thought an indisputable reputation for liberality and impartiality would expedite his ultimate projects. He had engaged some respectable characters in his service; and the description his emissaries gave him of Neville and Beaumont, showed him the impolicy of publickly sacrificing such victims for state-offences. He affected to think it was possible he might attach them to his interests, and declared he never could fear a disabled soldier and sequestered parson, but that he was even ready to vindicate the rights of a Loyalist, who had been injured by the partiality of the late tyrant, and thus prove his own impartial justice, while he transferred deserved odium on the memory of him who was called the Royal martyr. Monthault pleaded warmly for the Beaumonts, but not with disinterested earnestness. The appearance of Constantia in court revived the recollection of his former designs on her person, and as the acknowledged death of Eustace had removed what he supposed the chief barrier to his wishes, he deemed his suit might not be unsuccessfully urged, especially if he assumed the character of a mediator between her father and the government. He willingly obeyed Cromwell's order to adjourn the court to an indefinite time, till it could be ascertained if the prisoners would purchase prosperity by a change of principle, and he resolved to employ the interim in prosecuting his own designs.
None but the guilty are long and completely miserable.
Goldsmith.
The convulsions which seized Lady Bellingham, at again beholding what she still supposed was the apparition of her brother, had a speedy and fatal termination. The apparent reconciliation between herself and her lord had been effected for the purpose of revenge. Their enmity was the interminable feud of co-partners in iniquity, the hatred which ever exists between the contriver and the executor of horrible enormities. Their mutual recriminations and accusations were suspended; their aversion was made to look like grief, and they walked together into the court, as affectionate parents to prosecute the supposed murderer of their only child. But the sympathy which softens affliction, and even soothes despair, was here unknown. Lady Bellingham's false views of religion had, indeed, so far skinned over the wounds of her ulcerated conscience, as to produce a stupefaction, which might last as long as health and prosperity continued. But when, what she conceived to be a supernatural visitation, had terrified her into a dangerous indisposition; the anchor of absolute election trembled in her grasp, and her bodily weakness was rapidly increased by the wild agonies a soul roused to a sense of its danger, when the bridegroom called and the lamp of faith, unsupplied with good works, was extinguished. Her troubled spirit saw nothing but darkness in its future prospects, while, with a dying voice, she continued imploring her physicians to save her life, and wondering why this judgment was fallen upon her.
The most illiterate and presumptuous of the fanatical preachers crowded round her bed, and by the canting verbiage of delusion strove to revive the raptures of enthusiasm. Not one had the honesty to tell her that the figure which so appalled her, was her living brother. They feared the assurance of his existence acting upon her present terrors might induce her to do an act of justice, and to make an effectual effort to restore him to his ancient rights. They were equally silent as to the safety of her son, and careful to keep her husband out of her apartment. It was their aim to prevail upon her to bequeathe her large possessions to promote the interests of their party. With the spirit of the false prophets of old, they sounded in her ears, "The temple of the Lord." They reminded her of her prayers, alms, mortifications, and zeal for the good cause. They required her to recollect the time and circumstances of her conversion; the pangs she then suffered; her subsequent experiences and convictions of having received saving grace. They proceeded, as they termed it, to buffet Satan with prayers, while with impassioned hymns they endeavoured to awaken in the trembling sinner, the raptures of divine love. All sense of contrition for past offences, all disposition to be reconciled to her lord was prevented by their assurances of her safety, and their prayers for his conversion, which ran in the style of craving that he might no longer halt between two opinions, but renouncing the fears of the carnal man be perfected in faith and love. Every Scripture narrative, which, by falsifying some circumstances, could be made to answer their purpose, was presented to her remembrance. The murder, adultery, and acceptance of David; the liberality of Solomon to the church; the preservation of Rahab the harlot from the general massacre of her people, on account of her saving faith; the supposed profligacy of Magdalen's early life, atoned for by her sitting passive at the feet of her Lord.—All these instances were produced to prove the false and scandalous tenet, that a course of sin was a better preparative to conversion than a life of comparative innocence. Arguments were bandied from tongue to tongue; each one cavilled at the assertions of the other, yet all united in the purpose of pacifying an alarmed conscience, and changing despair into ill-founded confidence. The groans of Lady Bellingham, the consternation of her attendants, the fierce disputes of her ghostly assistants, occasionally suspended by ejaculations and hymns, exhibited a scene of distracting confusion, in which it would have been impossible for the firmest mind to have preserved its recollection. Lady Bellingham was soon induced to say that she knew she had once been in a state of grace, and this acknowledgement was welcomed as her pass-port to heaven[[1]]. She was informed that her salvation was unalienable; that grace could neither be resisted nor forfeited, and that though the saints might appear to sin, yet their offences were not imputable to them.
This pious conflict (for in an age when fanaticism and hypocrisy were misnamed religion, these solemn mockeries passed for charitable assistance to the dying,) was interrupted by the presence of Monthault, now become the favourite and confidant of a chief leader of the fanatical party. This renegade-Loyalist had served Cromwell with conspicuous bravery in the Irish wars, and once, when a division of the army was thrown into great danger, by the retreat of the forlorn hope, before it had accomplished its purpose, he rushed forward, killed the commanding officer with his own hand, and seizing the colours, led them back, undismayed, by a grove of pikes and a shower of missile weapons. With desperate but successful valour he carried the redoubt and escaped with life. All this passed under the immediate observation of Cromwell, whose retentive memory never forgot any signal action, and whose discriminating policy generally placed the man who performed it in a situation suited to his character. He soon found Monthault to be as perfidious and unprincipled as he was daring and ready to undertake any office which would gratify his passions, which (being now past the heyday of youth) were diverted from licentious indulgence by the more substantial enjoyments of avarice and ambition.
At this time Cromwell was secretly panting to add the name and paraphernalia of a King to the authority which he actually exercised. The fanatics, whom he had so long courted, were the most active opponents of this project. The other sectaries had been long convinced, by experience, that their views of republican felicity and perfection were illusory. The respectable dissenters always professed themselves friends of a limited monarchy; many staunch royalists thought the renewal of kingly power would gradually turn the public eye on their exiled Prince; and some selfish ones would have been content with such an approach to the old order of things as would give them back their sequestered estates. Some parties would be brought over by seeming to fall in with their views, others cajoled by bribing their leaders, but the levellers and fanatics were invincible. They had been Cromwell's agents in subduing his enemies, and a consciousness of their power made them unmanageable; they were determined on owning no King but Jesus, and on thinking the regal title, when assumed by man, the mark of the beast and the seal of reprobation to its supporters. "The Protector's son-in-law, Fleetwood, kneeled and prayed publickly, that the Lord might spit in his face if the unrighteous mammon tempted him into this sin; and his brother Desborough anathematized him, and vowed to devote his own sword to Charles Stewart sooner than to him, if he persevered in longing for the forbidden spoil." Lambert, who was in the entire confidence of these two, had seduced the affections of the army; Cromwell, therefore, had a difficult game to play. His passionate desire of royalty combated those secret fears that arose from a mysterious warning which he received when he first meditated on the designs afterwards realized by his lucky and unprincipled ambition. A vision, or day-dream, impressed his enthusiastic imagination, detailing the steps by which he was to rise, and assuring him, "that he should be the greatest man in England, and near being King." Yet, though this seemed to warn him of an impassable bound to his greatness, the pageant of royalty which he had so often vilified and derided, on a close view appeared so irresistible, that he became enchanted with its fascinations, till, in aiming at the decorations of power, he nearly sacrificed the substance.
At this juncture the daring character and versatility of Monthault marked him out to the Protector as a proper instrument to negotiate with Lambert, whose talents were far more dangerous than the fanaticism of Fleetwood or Desborough's virulence. It was plain that though Monthault wore the enlarged phylacteries and sanctified demeanour of the sect he had lately adopted, he was more a hypocrite than an enthusiast. It is well known, that Cromwell found means to discover every private incident in the lives of his agents, and thus penetrated into all their views. While pleading for the imprisoned Beaumonts, the Protector read the soul of the former lover of Constantia, now known to be nearly allied to the true stock of the house of Bellingham. Cromwell therefore took occasion to commend the filial piety and courage which he heard that this young lady had exemplified; and declared himself resolved, not only to show Dr. Beaumont favour, but also to consider the case of Neville; intimating, that he looked on an hereditary and uncontaminated nobility as the strongest link between the people and the government; and from this acknowledgment he took occasion to glance at the benefit of a partial restoration of old usages, as most likely to unite all parties, and heal the wounds of the three kingdoms. The stress laid on the last word, (the use of which had been for some time interdicted,) shewed Monthault what was expected from him, and he left the presence, persuaded that if he would assist to gird the austere brows of the Usurper with the kingly diadem, the hand of his mistress, and a large portion of the Bellingham property, if not its reversionary honours, would be his reward.
It was with a further view of securing this prize that Monthault visited the dying Lady Bellingham, to whom their party-connexions gave him free access. Pretending he had received a special revelation, which he must impart to her alone, he dismissed the ministers, and assured her of the actual existence of her brother, whose pardon her again-alarmed conscience seemed most anxious to secure, even at the price of relinquishing to him those possessions which her increasing weakness told her she could not long retain. Monthault assured her it would be greatly for the benefit of her soul, if she would sign a deed bequeathing to Allan Neville the inheritance of their ancestors; and produced a prepared instrument, which Lady Bellingham was not in a state to read, or indeed to listen to its recital. Relying on the veracity of one whom she considered as a saint upon earth, and catching eagerly at every thing which would allay those inward terrors that had been rather benumbed than pacified, Lady Bellingham was induced to consent, and the ministers were re-introduced to certify her being in a sound mind and to witness the execution of a deed, which they trusted was to promote the good cause, but which in reality bequeathed the Bellingham estate, after the demise of Allan Neville, to Constantia Beaumont, provided she consented to marry Monthault. Thus cheated and bewildered in her last moments by those whom she believed to be endowed with super-human perfections, this wretched woman terminated her miserable and guilty life.