On Friday, the 16th of December, about three o'clock in the afternoon, his Highness went in procession from Whitehall to the Court of Chancery in Westminster. Commissioners of the Great Seal, scarlet-robed Judges and Barons, and the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, with the usual accompaniments of civic splendour, were in attendance on the occasion. There on a dais stood a chair of state, near to a table on which lay a roll of parchment, containing, in a summary of forty-two articles, the fundamental principles of the Protectorate government.[67] His Highness having subscribed the document, and having sworn to maintain the constitution which it prescribed, sat down on his throne, and then received into his hands the great seal of the realm, the Lord Mayor's sword, and the cap of maintenance. His portrait at that moment has been sketched in the following graphic words: "Fifty-four years old gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray;" "massive stature; big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect—wart above the right eye-brow; nose of considerable blunt aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fierceness and rigours; deep, loving eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow."[68]
As the Protector returned to Whitehall, the Lord Mayor, uncovered, carried the sword before him; and in the banqueting house, Mr. Lockier, the Protector's chaplain, delivered an exhortation; after which the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Judges all departed home.[69]
State of Affairs at the Time.
A very wonderful day's work was that of the 16th of December.[70] It was an act of usurpation beyond all doubt, yet one which it would be pedantic to criticise according to constitutional rules. For when a house is catching fire, or a vessel is on the edge of a rock, people in their senses do not expect that a strong man, who can extinguish the flame, or steer the ship into open waters, should stand on ceremony and wait for red-tape formalities. A crisis had come, such as must come in the wake of great revolutions, when, however firmly we may maintain Locke's principles of the origin of government, we find people in such a state of perfect helplessness, and former rulers so utterly destitute of power to rule, so incapable, so inevitably rushing to destruction, dragging the whole country along with them—that in mercy to mankind we feel all theories woven of the wisest webs must be laid aside, and a competently skilful hand be allowed to gather up the scattered threads in such fashion as it may be able. Public affairs had now reached such a crisis that the alternative was a Protector or destruction, Cromwell or chaos. The fire long kindling now at length burst into a blaze, and there was only one man who could put an end to the conflagration. The ship was within an inch of foundering, and there remained but one pilot who had the power of steering her off the rocks.
1653.
The Church, it should be recollected, had not ceased to be a State Church. The constant discussion of its affairs by Parliament and the Council of State implied its continued subjection to secular control. No scheme of severance had been propounded, though certain proposals had been made which might seem to involve such a result. However desirable it may appear to some of our readers that the civil and ecclesiastical powers in a country should stand each on its own basis, and not interfere with one another's action; whatever anticipations may be formed of a new and better era of Christian civilization, to be inaugurated when a separation of the Church from the State shall take place, subject to the authority of New Testament teaching, aided by the lights of experience through the exercise of political sagacity, and under the inspiration of Christian disinterestedness; yet every one must see that the time had not then come for such a revolution. Such a revolution involved not only the settlement of questions touching ecclesiastical property and revenue, but also the determination of two other points, namely, that religion should be left to its own unfettered exercise, and that no man should be disqualified by his theological opinions for the discharge of the offices and the enjoyment of the honours of the State. Now, without doing injustice to the character of the Little Parliament, we certainly may go so far as to say that it never indicated the possession of that clearsightedness, that deep wisdom, and that broad sympathy which are essential to the satisfactory solution of the practical problems included in the change just indicated. The members had neither the intellectual nor the moral qualifications requisite for the task. It was in those days more difficult than it is at present to draw the line where free religious action comes to an end, and something else quite different from it begins; for millenarian opinions ran over into Fifth Monarchy schemes, and the Dutch wars had become mixed up in men's brains with the dominion of the saints. The Little Parliament lacked the mental power necessary in those days for carrying out the doctrines of voluntaryism, even had they understood them. But they did not understand them. Had they done so, they would not have clung to the idea in any form, of the State supporting the Christian ministry, nor would they have cherished the conviction that certain theological qualifications are indispensable for the discharge of political trusts.
State of Affairs at the Time.
And further, if the Little Parliament had been composed of the wisest of mortals, and had plainly and skilfully propounded a system of pure voluntaryism, such as is ably and successfully advocated in our own time, still, with the Presbyterians all against them; with many of the Independents against them; and with the Episcopalians also against them; in short, with the bulk of the wealth, of the intelligence, and of the power of the country against them—how useless would have been their attempts to work out the measure. Common sense teaches, and voluntaryism in its very nature implies, that before it can be established as the exclusive method of dealing with spiritual interests, a very large number of those who have to adopt it must be convinced of its wisdom. And as to the alternative of revising the Establishment, and placing it upon grounds adapted to the needs of existing society, that also was an undertaking which, it is needless to repeat, the Little Parliament did not accomplish, and one, too, with which the whole history of that Assembly proved that it was utterly incompetent to deal. The whole web of ecclesiastical affairs had raveled out, and it devolved on a more than ordinarily skilful hand to gather up the threads and arrange them in some sort of order.
1653.
Cromwell ever shewed himself to be a practical man, by no means wedded to any fine-spun theory. No ideal republic, such as was conceived by Plato or by Harrington, floated before his imagination. In this respect a marked distinction existed between him and his contemporaries of the philosophical schools which were led by Sir Harry Vane and Algernon Sidney; and, as in pure politics, so in ecclesiastical politics, he aimed simply at accomplishing what he saw to be practicable. His strong religious feelings, the mystic cast of his piety, his enthusiastic faith in prayer and providence, never turned him aside from plain paths of human action, where he could get common people to walk and work beside him. Whatever idea he might have had as to what was best in itself, and under other circumstances than those of England in his own day, then rocking with the throes of revolution, certainly the plan which he adopted was not that of attempting the exclusive establishment of a voluntary system of supporting religion. He saw that to alienate church property from sacred uses—had he wished to do so—would arouse against him at once all the Presbyterians of the country, and would give them a rallying point and a battle cry quite sufficient to render them irresistible. He knew, that supported in this respect by Episcopalians, and not without sympathy amongst Independents, the Presbyterians would have protested against spoliation, and would have contended for the inviolateness of tithe property with a temper too fierce and with an amount of influence too strong for any government to resist with success. He perceived the wisdom of conciliating the Presbyterian party, and even on that ground he would shrink from provoking them by the confiscation of all church revenues. His keen eye also discerned such a spirit in some of the sects, such violent anti-social principles abroad, such elements seething in the cauldron of religious excitement, that he felt it would not be safe to leave all theological teachers at that time to do and say just what they liked without any sort of legal restraint. The liberty which he believed it just and right to concede in reference to the discussion of simple questions of divinity, he did not consider it just and right to afford to all sorts of semi-political agitations; which, under the cover of prophetical study and of transcendental schemes of society, directly tended to overthrow all law and order, and with law and order, the very liberty which such enthusiasts themselves really desired to enthrone.