Cromwell returned from his insidious visit, disappointed and dejected. He had failed of the end which he proposed to himself by his condescension. A reconciliation with two such distinguished Loyalists, founded on the mutual benefits of submission and restitution, would have strengthened his government; but he found abstinence from treacherous hostility was all that his blandishments could obtain, and this he would owe rather to their own principles of honour and religion than to his threats or his promises. Though stung to the heart by the bold taunts of Neville, he could not punish him. The very aspect and figure of the two venerable sufferers were so fitted to excite sympathy and indignation, that he durst not expose them on a scaffold, nor could he privately cut them off. The fate of Syndercome, a daring Anabaptist, who had several times attempted his life, and, on his trial, persevered in expressing his determination, if possible, to kill him, alike deterred Cromwell from bringing his private enemies to the bar of a court of justice, or resorting to private measures of revenge. He had with difficulty procured this man's condemnation; but the night previous to his intended execution he escaped, by suicide, the Protector's power; and so prejudiced were the populace against their Ruler, that they accused him of having poisoned the victim he feared to bring to a public death. If the prosecution of a notorious and avowed ruffian brought him into this dilemma, what odium would the death of two respectable and aged Loyalists excite, especially as their story was become public, and the wrongs of Neville, and the generous friendship of Beaumont, had awakened a powerful sympathy. Yet his narrow soul could not accede to the generous alternative of giving them freedom. Pretending that the state had a claim to the Bellingham-property, he prevented Monthault from taking any measures to establish the will of the guilty Countess, and contented himself with keeping the lawful claimant in prison, hoping that confinement would accelerate the decays of nature, and thus give a safe quietus to his own fears.
But ere that event happened the Usurper was called to the dreadful tribunal for which few among the descendants of Adam were apparently less prepared. His restless, intriguing ambition; the dissimulation and hypocrisy by which he rose to supreme power; the ability with which he wielded it; his splendid wretchedness; the terror he excited and felt; his cruelty and fanaticism, his determined spirit, and occasionally timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints. O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme power and consummate misery!
Nor does the death-bed of Cromwell afford a less useful warning to the pen of instruction, when she aims at distinguishing true piety from hypocrisy or fanaticism. It is still doubtful under which of those counterfeits of religion we must rank this great but wicked man. Yet, whether he deceived his own soul, or attempted to deceive others; whether he really believed himself an elected instrument of Providence; or, having long worn devotion as the mask of ambition, retained it to the last,—his almost unexampled crimes (so plainly forbidden by that scripture he had ever on his lips), and the security and confidence of his last moments, furnish stronger arguments than a thousand volumes of controversy, to prove the fallacy and danger of those speculative notions which he patronized, propagated, and exemplified.
[ [1]] The Usurper's terrors at hearing this fine song of Shirley's is an historical fact. Some of the speeches attributed to him in this interview, he really used to persons he had confined, and wished to win over. In the close of his life he grew timid; and, conscious of being hated, bore insults calmly. Bishop Wren rejected his offered favours in as strong language as that attributed to Neville.
A good man should not be very willing, when his Lord comes, to be found beating his fellow-servants; and all controversy, as it is usually managed, is little better. A good man would be loth to be taken out of the world reeking hot from a sharp contention with a perverse adversary; and not a little out of countenance to find himself, in this temper, translated into the calm and peaceable regions of the blessed, where nothing but perfect charity and good-will reign for ever.
Tillotson.
During the turbulent era that immediately followed the death of Cromwell, obscurity was the only asylum for integrity and innocence. The respective demagogues contended for mastery; and the nation gazed on their contests as on so many prize-fighters, whose uninteresting warfare regarded only themselves. Weary of confusion and discord; aware that faction had broken every promise and frustrated every hope; that the visions of freedom had been the harbingers of despotism; and that pretensions to moderation, disinterestedness, and purity, were but the disguise of rapacity, pride, and selfishness, the nation longed for the restoration of a lineal Sovereign, a regular government, and determinate laws. Even those who first signalized themselves by opposition to the late King, acknowledged that his government was preferable to the oligarchy and military tyranny that followed; and the Presbyterians felt their horror of Episcopacy abate while contrasting the temperance of established supremacy with the violence of the numerous sects who strove for superiority as soon as the hierarchy was overthrown. The easy good humour and affable manners of the exiled King were enlarged upon, and perhaps honoured with too much celebrity. Offenders in general anticipated forgiveness; and those who were adroit and dexterous anticipated rewards. To assist in restoring the regal power was deemed not merely a rasure of past crimes, but a qualification for trust and employment; and those who now sought the shelter of royalty as a protection from their late co-partners in rebellion, seemed, by the high value which they put on their present services, to overlook, with equal contempt and injustice, the claims and the wrongs of the Loyalists, who having never changed their principles, had much to be repaid, and nothing to be forgiven.
In the struggles which immediately preceded the Restoration, while Monk's designs were wrapped in mystery, the cruelty of the regicides increased with their ambition, and the jails were successively crowded with every party, as the unsettled government alternately vibrated from the rump to the fanatical faction. Within the walls of the same prison, suffering the same restraint, and, like himself, the victim of a conscience which would not temporize, Dr. Beaumont met his worthy friend Barton. They congratulated each other on having thus far weathered the political tempest without deserting their principles, or impugning their honour. The Doctor learned from Barton the particulars of Lady Bellingham's death, and the claims of Monthault on her fortune, which, by the turbulence of the times, were still kept in abeyance. Lord Bellingham was yet alive, poor and wretched, courting every faction, trusted by none, and so universally despised as to endure the odium of more crimes than he had even dared to commit. He was allowed a small stipend out of his vast possessions, the income of the remainder being still paid into the public treasury; while Morgan, now become a man of consequence, and a commissioner for compounding forfeited property, was enabled amply to glut his rapacity, and resided at Bellingham-Castle in a style of the grossest sensual indulgence. Monthault had joined the army of Lambert, against whom General Monk was now marching from Scotland; and as the King had given reiterated commands to all his friends to remain passive, and wait the event, it seemed as if he had some private intelligence with Monk's party, to whom, therefore, each honest Englishman wished success.