15. The First Protectorate Parliament. 1654-1655.—On September 3, 1654, the First Protectorate Parliament met. Its first act was to question the authority of private persons to frame a constitution for the State, on which Oliver required the members of Parliament to sign a paper acknowledging the government as established in a single person and in Parliament, and turned out of the House those who refused to sign it. The House, thus diminished, drew up a new constitution, altering the balance in favour of Parliament, and expressly declaring that the constitution was liable to revision whenever the Protector and Parliament agreed to change it. It is probable that Oliver would have consented to this change, but a dispute arose upon the control of the army. Oliver wished that it should permanently remain under the Protector, and that Parliament should be unable to withdraw the sums of money fixed for its maintenance. Parliament, on the other hand, insisted on voting the money only for five years, thus claiming to determine, at the end of that time, whether the army should be disbanded or not. The only real solution of the difficulty lay in a frank acknowledgment that the nation must be allowed to have its way for evil or for good. Oliver, however, suspected—doubtless with truth—that, if the nation were freely consulted, it would sweep away not only the Protectorate, but Puritanism itself. Practically, therefore, the question at issue was whether the Government should be controlled by Parliament or by the army. On January 22, finding that the House was not likely to give way, he dissolved Parliament.
16. The Major-Generals. 1655.—The Instrument of Government authorised the Protector to levy sufficient taxes without consent of Parliament to enable him to meet the expenditure in quiet times, and after the dissolution Oliver availed himself of this authorisation. Many people, however, refused to pay, on the ground that the Instrument, unless recognised by Parliament, was not binding; and, as some of the judges agreed with them, Oliver could only enforce payment by turning out those judges who opposed him, and putting others in their places. Moreover, the Government was embarrassed by attempts to overthrow it. There were preparations for resistance by the republicans in the army—suppressed, indeed, by the arrest and imprisonment of the leaders—and there was an actual Royalist outburst, with wide ramifications, which showed itself openly in the South of England, where a Royalist gentleman named Penruddock rode into Salisbury at the head of 200 men, and seized the judges who had come down for the assizes. In the face of such danger, Oliver abandoned all pretence of constitutional government. He divided England into eleven military districts, over each of which he set a Major-General, with arbitrary powers for maintaining order, and, by a mere stroke of the pen, ordered a payment of 10 per cent. on the incomes of Royalists. Military rule developed itself more strongly than before. On November 27 Oliver, in his fear of the Royalists, ordered the suppression of the private worship of those who clung to the Book of Common Prayer; perceiving rightly that the most dangerous opponents of his system were to be found amongst sincere Episcopalians. He also made use of the Major-Generals to suppress vice and immorality by shutting up alehouses and imprisoning persons whose lives were disorderly.
17. Oliver's Foreign Policy. 1654-1655.—Partly, perhaps, because he hoped to divert attention from his difficulties at home, partly because he wished his country to be great in war as well as in peace, Oliver had for some time been engaging in naval enterprise. In the early part of his career he had been friendly to Spain, because France intrigued with the Presbyterians and the king. France and Spain were still at war, and when Cromwell became Protector he offered his alliance to Spain, on condition that Spain would help him to reconquer Calais, and would place Dunkirk in his hands as a pledge for the surrender of Calais after it had been taken. He also asked that commerce between England and her own West Indian colonies should be free from Spanish attacks, and for more open liberty of religion for the English in the Spanish dominions than had been offered by Spain in its treaty with Charles I. The Spanish ambassador replied that to ask these two things was to ask his master's two eyes, and plainly refused to admit an English garrison into Dunkirk. Upon this, Cromwell sent out, in the end of 1654, two fleets, one—under Blake—to go to the Mediterranean, to get reparation from the pirates of Tunis and Algiers for wrongs done to English commerce; and the other—under Penn and Venables—to seize a Spanish island in the West Indies. Blake was successful, but Penn and Venables failed in an attempt on San Domingo, though they took possession of Jamaica, which at that time was not thought to be of much value.
18. The French Alliance. 1655.—As Oliver could not get what he wanted from Spain, he agreed to a treaty with France to end what had been virtually a maritime war, in which trading-ships had been seized on both sides. Freedom of religion was to be accorded to Englishmen in France. Before any treaty had been signed, news arrived that the Duke of Savoy had sent his soldiers to compel his Vaudois subjects to renounce their religion, which was now similar to that of the Protestants, though they had revolted from the Papacy long before Luther's Reformation. These soldiers committed terrible outrages amongst the peaceful mountaineers. Those who escaped the sword were carried off as prisoners, or fled to the snowy mountains, where they perished of cold and hunger. Milton's voice was raised to plead for them. "Avenge," he wrote—
"O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold—
Even men who kept thy truth, so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones."
Cromwell at once told Mazarin that, if he cared for peace with England, this persecution must stop. Mazarin put pressure on the Duke of Savoy, and liberty of worship was secured to the Vaudois. Then, on October 24, 1655, Oliver concluded the treaty with France.