that, as an English earl, he was amenable to the justice of the country; to Capel, that the court had been established by the parliament, the supreme authority to which all must submit; to each, that quarter given on the field of battle insured protection from the sword of the conqueror, but not from the vengeance of the law. All five were condemned[a] to lose their heads; but the rigour of the judgment was softened by a reference to the mercy of parliament. The next day the wives of Holland and Capel, accompanied by a long train of females in mourning, appeared at the bar, to solicit the pardon of the condemned. Though their petitions were rejected, a respite for two days was granted. This favour awakened new hopes; recourse was had to flattery and entreaty; bribes were offered and accepted; and the following morning[c] new petitions were presented. The fate of Holland occupied a debate of considerable interest. Among the Independents he had many personal friends, and the Presbyterians exerted all their influence in his favour. But the saints expatiated on his repeated apostasy from the cause; and, after a sharp contest, Cromwell and Ireton obtained a majority of a single voice for his death. The case of Goring was next considered. No man during the war had treated his opponents with more bitter contumely, no one had inflicted on them deeper injuries; and yet, on an equal division, his life was saved by the casting voice of the speaker. The sentences of Hamilton and Capel were affirmed by the unanimous vote of the house; but, to the surprise of all men, Owen, a stranger, without friends or interest, had the good fortune to escape. His forlorn condition moved the pity of Colonel Hutchinson; the efforts of Hutchinson
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. March 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. March 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. March 8.]
were seconded by Ireton; and so powerful was their united influence, that they obtained a majority of five in his favour. Hamilton, Holland, and Capel died[a] on the scaffold, the first martyrs of loyalty after the establishment of the commonwealth.[1]
But, though the avowed enemies of the cause crouched before their conquerors, there was much in the internal state of the country to awaken apprehension in the breasts of Cromwell and his friends. There could be no doubt that the ancient royalists longed for the opportunity of avenging the blood of the king; or that the new royalists, the Presbyterians, who sought to re-establish the throne on the conditions stipulated by the treaty in the Isle of Wight, bore with impatience the superiority of their rivals. Throughout the kingdom the lower classes loudly complained of the burthen of taxation; in several parts they suffered under the pressure of penury and famine. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers perished through want; and it was certified by the magistrates of Cumberland that thirty thousand families in that county "had neither seed nor bread corn, nor the means of procuring either."[2] But that which chiefly created alarm was the progress made among the military by the "Levellers," men of consistent principles and uncompromising conduct under the guidance of Colonel John Lilburne, an officer distinguished by his talents, his eloquence, and
[Footnote 1: If the reader compares the detailed narrative of these proceedings by Clarendon (iii. 265-270), with the official account in the Journals (March 7, 8), he will be surprised at the numerous inaccuracies of the historian. See also the State Trials; England's Bloody Tribunal; Whitelock, 386; Burnet's Hamiltons, 385; Leicester's Journal, 70; Ludlow, i. 247; and Hutchinson, 310.]
[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 398, 399.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Mar. 9.]
his courage.[1] Lilburne, with his friends, had long cherished a suspicion that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison sought only their private aggrandizement under the mantle of patriotism; and the recent changes had converted this suspicion into conviction. They observed that the same men ruled without control in the general council of officers, in the parliament, and in the council of state. They contended that every question was first debated and settled in the council of officers, and that, if their determination was afterwards adopted by the house, it was only that it might go forth to the public under the pretended sanction of the representatives of the nation; that the council of state had been vested with powers more absolute and oppressive than had ever been exercised by the late king; and that the High Court of Justice had been established by the party for the purpose of depriving their victims of those remedies which would be afforded by the ordinary courts of law. In some of their publications they went further. They maintained that the council of state was employed as an experiment on the patience of the nation; that it was intended to pass from the tyranny of a few to the tyranny of one; and that Oliver Cromwell was the man who aspired to that high but dangerous pre-eminence.[2]
A plan of the intended constitution, entitled "the
[Footnote 1: Lilburne in his youth had been a partisan of Bastwick, and had printed one of his tracts in Holland. Before the Star-chamber he refused to take the oath ex officio, or to answer interrogatories, and in consequence was condemned to stand in the pillory, was whipped from the Fleet-prison to Westminster, receiving five hundred lashes with knotted cords, and was imprisoned with double irons on his hands and legs. Three years later (1641), the House of Commons voted the punishment illegal, bloody, barbarous, and tyrannical.—Burton's Diary, iii. 503, note.]