The other two ancient kingdoms that were joined to the new-born State of England were each of them centres of hostility and peril to the common fabric. On the continent of Europe, the new rulers of England had not a friend; even the Dutch were drawn away from them by a powerful Orange party that was naturally a Stuart party. It seemed as if an accident might make a hostile foreign combination possible, and almost as if only a miracle could prevent it. Rupert had possessed himself of a small fleet, the royalists were masters of the Isle of Man, of Jersey and the Scilly Isles, and English trade was the prey of their piratical enterprise. The Commonwealth had hardly counted its existence by weeks, before it was menaced by deadly danger in its very foundations, by signs of an outbreak in the armed host, now grown to over forty thousand men, that had destroyed the king, mutilated the parliament, and fastened its yoke alike upon the parliamentary remnant, the council of state, and the majority of the inhabitants of the realm. Natural right, law of nature, one He as good as another He, the reign of Christ and his saints in a fifth and final monarchy, all the rest of the theocratic and levelling theories that had startled Cromwell in 1647, were found to be just as applicable against a military commonwealth as against a king by divine right. The cry of the political leveller was led by Lilburne, one of the men whom all revolutions are apt to engenderintractable, narrow, dogmatic, pragmatic, clever hands at syllogism, liberal in uncharitable imputation and malicious construction, honest in their rather questionable way, animated by a pharisaic love of self-applause which is in truth not any more meritorious nor any less unsafe than vain love of the world's applause; in a word, not without sharp insight into theoretic principle, and thinking quite as little of their own ease as of the ease of others,

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but without a trace of the instinct for government or a grain of practical common sense. Such was Lilburne the headstrong, and such the temper in thousands of others with whom Cromwell had painfully to wrestle for all the remainder of his life. The religious enthusiasts, who formed the second great division of the impracticable, were more attractive than the scribblers of abstract politics, but they were just as troublesome. A reflective royalist or presbyterian might well be excused for asking himself whether a party with men of this stamp for its mainspring could ever be made fit for the great art of working institutions and controlling the forces of a mighty state. Lilburne's popularity, which was immense, signified not so much any general sympathy with his first principles or his restless politics, as aversion to military rule or perhaps indeed to any rule. If the mutiny spread and the army broke away, the men at the head of the government knew that all was gone. They acted with celerity and decision. Fairfax and Cromwell handled the mutineers with firmness tempered by clemency, without either vindictiveness or panic. Of the very few who suffered military execution, some were made popular martyrs, —and this was an indication the more how narrow was the base on which the Commonwealth had been reared.

Other dangers came dimly into view. For a moment it seemed as if political revolution was to contain the seeds of social revolution; Levellers were followed by Diggers. War had wasted the country and impoverished the people, and one day (April 1650), a small company of poor men were found digging up the ground on St. George's Hill in Surrey, sowing it with carrots and beans, and announcing that they meant to do away with all enclosures. It was the reproduction in the seventeenth century of the story of Robert Kett of

Norfolk in the sixteenth. The eternal sorrows of the toiler led him to dream, as in the dawn of the Reformation peasants had dreamed, that the Bible sentences for them too had some significance. "At this very day," wrote Gerrard Winstanley, a neglected figure of those times, "poor people are forced to work for twopence a day, and corn is dear. And the tithing priest stops their mouth, and tells them that' inward satisfaction of mind' was meant by the declaration: The poor shall inherit the earth. I tell you the Scripture is to be really and materially fulfilled. You jeer at the name Leveller. I tell you Jesus Christ is the head Leveller.” (Gooch, p. 220). Fairfax and the Council wisely made little of the affair, and people awoke to the hard truth that to turn a monarchy into a free commonwealth is not enough to turn the purgatory of our social life into a paradise.

Meanwhile the minority possessed of power resorted to the ordinary devices of unpopular rule. They levied immense fines upon the property of delinquents, sometimes confiscating as much as half the value. A rigorous censorship of the press was established. The most diligent care was enjoined upon the local authorities to prevent troublesome public meetings. The pulpits were watched, that nothing should be said in prejudice of the peace and honour of the government. The old law of treason was stiffened, but so long as trial by jury was left, the hardening of the statute was of little use. The High Court of Justice was therefore set up to deal with offenders for whom no law was strong enough.

The worst difficulties of the government, however, lay beyond the reach of mere rigour of police at home. Both in Ireland and Scotland the regicide Commonwealth found foes. All the three kingdoms were in a blaze. The fury of insurrection in Ireland had lent fuel to rebellion in England, and the flames of rebellion in England might have been put out,

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but for the necessities of revolt in Scotland. The statesmen of the Commonwealth misunderstood the malady in Ireland, and they failed to found a stable system in Britain, but they grasped with amazing vigour and force the problem of dealing with the three kingdoms as a whole. This strenuous comprehension marked them out as men of originality, insight, and power. Charles II. was in different fashions instantly proclaimed king in both countries, and the only question was from which of the two outlying kingdoms would the new king wage war against the rulers who had slain his father, and usurped the powers that were by law and right his own. Ireland had gone through strange vicissitudes during the years of the civil struggle in England. It has been said that no human intellect could make a clear story of the years of triple and fourfold distraction in Ireland from the rebellion of 1641 down to the death of Charles I. Happily it is not necessary for us to attempt the task. Three remarkable figures stand out conspicuously in the chaotic scene. Ormonde represented in varied forms the English interest-one of the most admirably steadfast, patient, clearsighted and honourable names in the list of British statesmen. Owen Roe O'Neill, a good soldier, a man of valour and character, was the patriotic champion of catholic Ireland. Rinuccini, the Pope's nuncio,—an able and ambitious man, ultramontane, caring very little for either Irish landlords or Irish nationalists, caring not at all for heretical royalists, but devoted to the interests of his church all over the world,-was in his heart bent upon erecting a papal Ireland under the protection of some foreign catholic sovereign.

All these types, though with obvious differences on the surface, may easily be traced in Irish affairs down to our own century. The nearest approach to an organ of government was the supreme council

S

of the confederate catholics at Kilkenny, in which the substantial interest was that of the catholic English of the Pale. Between them and the nuncio little love was lost, for Ireland has never been ultramontane. A few days before the death of the king (Jan. 1649), Ormonde made what promised to be a prudent peace with the catholics at Kilkenny, by which the confederate Irish were reconciled to the crown, on the basis of complete toleration for their religion and freedom for their parliament. It was a great and lasting misfortune that puritan bigotry prevented Oliver from pursuing the same policy on behalf of the Commonwealth, as Ormonde pursued on behalf of the king. The confederate catholics, long at bitter feud with the ultramontane nuncio, bade him intermeddle no more with the affairs of that kingdom; and a month after the peace Rinuccini departed.

It was clear that even such small hold as the parliament still retained upon Ireland was in instant peril. The old dread of an Irish army being landed upon the western shores of England in the royalist interest, possibly in more or less concert with invaders from Scotland, revived in full force. Cromwell's view of the situation was explained to the Council of State at Whitehall (March 23, 1649). The question was whether he would undertake the Irish command. "If we do not endeavour to make good our interest there," he said, after describing the singular combination that Ormonde was contriving against them, "we shall not only have our interests rooted out there, but they will in a very short time be able to land forces in England. I confess I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest; I had rather be overrun with a Scotch interest than an Irish interest; and I think of all, this is the most dangerous." Stating the same thing differently, he argued that even Englishmen who were for a restoration upon