'WHITLOCKE. It is a great question indeed, and not suddenly to be resolved! Yet it were pity that a meeting of so many able and worthy persons as I see here, should be fruitless.-I should humbly offer, in the first place, whether it be not requisite to be understood in what way this Settlement is desired? Whether of an absolute Republic, or with any mixture of Monarchy. 'CROMWELL. My Lord Commissioner Whitlocke hath put us upon the right point: and indeed it is my meaning, that we should consider, whether a Republic, or a mixed Monarchical Government will be best to be settled? And if anything Monarchical, then, in whom that power shall be placed? 'SIR THOMAS WIDDRINGTON. I think a mixed Monarchical Government will be most suitable to the Laws and People of this Nation. And if any Monarchical, I suppose we shall hold it most just to place that power in one of the Sons of the late King. 'COLONEL FLEETWOOD. I think that the question, whether an absolute Republic, or a mixed Monarchy, be best to be settled in this Nation, will not be very easy to be determined! 'LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE ST. JOHN. It will be found, that the Government of this Nation, without something of Monarchical power, will be very difficult to be so settled as not to shake the foundation of our Laws, and the Liberties of the People. 'SPEAKER. It will breed a strange confusion to settle a Government of this Nation without something of Monarchy. 'COLONEL DESBOROW. I beseech you, my Lord, why may not this, as well as other Nations, be governed in the way of a Republic? 'WHITLOCKE. The Laws of England are so interwoven with the power and practice of Monarchy, that to settle a Government without something of Monarchy in it, would make so great an alteration in the Proceedings of our Law, that you will scarce have time to rectify it, nor can we well foresee the inconveniences which will arise thereby. 'COLONEL WHALLEY. I do not well understand matters of Law: but it seems to me the best way, Not to have anything of Monarchical power in the Settlement of our Government. And * Between this and November, 1654. ་ if we should resolve upon any, whom have we to pitch upon ? The King's Eldest Son hath been in arms against us, and his Second Son* likewise is our enemy. 'SIR THOMAS WIDDRINGTON. But the late King's Third Son, the Duke of Gloucester, is still among us; and too young to have been in arms against us, or infected with the principles of our .enemies. 'WHITLOCKE. There may be a day given for the King's Eldest Son,† or for the Duke of York his Brother, to come in to the Parliament. And upon such terms as shall be thought fit, and agreeable both to our Civil and Spiritual liberties, a Settle ment may be made with them. 'CROMWELL. That will be a business of more than ordinary difficulty! But really I think, if it may be done with safety, and preservation of our Rights, both as Englishmen and as Christians, That a Settlement with somewhat of Monarchical power in it would be very effectual.' Much other discourse there was, says my learned friend ;but amounting to little. The Lawyers all for a mixed Government, with something of Monarchy in it; tending to call in one of the King's Sons,-I especially tending that way; secretly loyal in the worst of times. The Soldiers again were all for a Republic; thinking they had had enough of the King and his Sons. My Lord General always checked that secret-loyalty of mine, and put off the discussion of the King's Son; yet did not declare himself for a Republic either;—was indeed, as my terrene fat mind came at length to image him, merely fishing for men's opinions,' and for provender to himself and his appetites, as I in the like case should have been doing!--The Conference broke up, with what of 'fish' in this kind my Lord General had taken, and no other result arrived at. James; who has fled to the Continent some time ago, in women's clothes,' with one Colonel Bamfield, and is getting fast into Papistry and other confusions. † Charles Stuart: a day' for him, upon whose head there was, not many weeks ago, a Reward of 10007.? Did you actually say this, my learned friend? Or merely strive to think, and redact, at an after-period, that you had said it, that you had thought it, meant to say it, which was virtually all the same, in a case of difficulty! So. Many Conferences held by my Lord General have broken up Four years ago, he ended one in King Street by playfully 'flinging a cushion' at a certain solid head of our acquaintance, and running down stairs.* Here too it became ultimately clear to the solid head that he had been 'fishing.' Alas, a Lord General has many Conferences to hold; and in terrene minds, ligneous, oleaginous, and other, images himself in a very strange manner!--The candid imagination, busy to shape out some conceivable Oliver in these Thirty-one months, will accept thankfully the following small indubitabilities, or glimpses of definite events. December 8th, 1651. In the beginning of December (Whitlocke dates it 8th December) came heavy tidings over from Ireland, dark and heavy in the house of Oliver especially that Deputy Ireton, worn out with sleepless Irish services, had caught an inflammatory fever, and suddenly died. Fell sick on the 16th of November, 1651; died, at Limerick, on the 26th. The reader remembers Bridget Ireton, the young wife at Cornbury :‡ she is now Widow Ireton; a sorrowful bereaved woman. One brave heart and subtle-working brain has ended: to the regret of all the brave. A man able with his pen and his sword; 'very stiff in his ways.' Dryasdust, who much loves the brave Ireton in a rather blind way, intimates that Ireton's 'stern virtue' would probably have held Cromwell in awe; that had Ireton lived, there had probably been no sacrilege against the Constitution on Oliver's part. A probability of almost no weight, my erudite friend. The 'stern virtue' of Ireton was not sterner on occasion than that of Oliver; the probabilities of Ireton's disapproving what Oliver did, in the case alluded to, are very small, resting on solid Ludlow mainly; and as to those of Ireton's holding Cromwell 'in awe,' in this or in any matter he had himself decided to do, I think we may safely reckon them at Zero, my erudite friend! Lambert, now in Scotland, was appointed Deputy in Ireton's room; and meant to go; but did not. Some say the Widow * Ludlow, i., 240. † Wood, iii., 300, Whitlocke, p. 491. ‡ Letter XXIII., vol. i p. 201 Ireton, irritated that the beautiful and showy Lady Lamber should already 'take precedence of her in St. James's Park,' frustrated the scheme: what we find certain is, That Lambert did not go, that Fleetwood went; and farther, that the Widow Ireton in due time became Wife of the Widower Fleetwood: the rest hangs vague in the head of zealous Mrs. Hutchinson, solid Ludlow, and empty Rumor.* Ludlow, already on the spot, does the Irish duties in the interim. Ireton has solemn Public Funeral in England: copious monies settled on his Widow and Family: all honors paid to him, for his own sake and his Father-in-law's. March 25th, 1652. Above two years ago, when this Rump Parliament was in the flush of youthful vigor, it decided on reforming the Laws of England, and appointed a working Com mittee for that object, our learned friend Bulstrode one of them. Which working Committee finding the job heavy, gradually languished; and after some Acts for having Law-proceedings trans acted in the English tongue, and for other improvements of the like magnitude, died into comfortable sleep. On my Lord General's return from Worcester, it had been poked up again; and; now rubbing its eyes, set to work in good earnest; got a subsidiary Committee appointed, of Twenty-one persons not members of this House at all, To say and suggest what improvements were really wanted such improvements they the working Committee would then, with all the readiness in life, effectuate and introduce in the shape of specific Acts. Accordingly, on March 25th, first day of the new year 1652, learned Bulstrode, in the name of this working Committee, reports that the subsidiary Committee has suggested a variety of things; among others some improvement in our method of Transferring Property, of enabling poor John Doe, who finds at present a terrible difficulty in doing it, to inform Richard Roe, "I John Doe do, in very fact, sell to thee Richard Roe, such and such a Property, according to the usua. human meaning of the word sale; and it is hereby, let me again assure thee, indisputably SOLD to thee Richard, by me John:" which, my learned friend thinks, might really be an : * Hutchinson's Memoirs (London, 1806), p. 195; Ludlow, pp. 414, 449 450, &c improvement. To which end he will introduce an Act: nay there shall farther be an Act for the 'Registry of Deeds in each County,'-if it please Heaven. 'Neglect to register your Sale of Land in this promised County. Register within a given time,' enacts the learned Bulstrode,' such Sale shall be void. Be exact in registering it, the Land shall not be subject to any incum brance.' Incumbrance: yes, but what is incumbrance?' asks all the working Committee, with wide eyes, when they come actually to sit upon this Bill of Registry, and to hatch it into some kind of perfection. What is 'incumbrance?' No mortal can tell. They sit debating it, painfully sifting it, for three months;** three months by Booker's Almanac, and the Zodiac Horologe: March violets have become June roses; and still they debate what incumbrance' is ;-and indeed, I think, could never fix it at all; and are perhaps debating it, if so doomed, in some twilight foggy section of Dante's Nether World, to all Eternity, at this hour!-Are not these a set of men likely to reform English Law? Likely these to strip the accumulated owl-droppings and foul guano-mountains from your rock-island, and lay the reality bare, in the course of Eternities! The wish waxes livelier in Colonel Pride that he could see a certain addition made to the Scots Colors hung in Westminster Hall yonder. I add only, for the sake of Chronology that on the fourth day after this appearance of Bulstrode as a Law-reformer, occurred the famous Black Monday; fearfullest eclipse of the Sun ever seen by mankind. Came on about nine in the morning; darker and darker; ploughmen unyoked their teams, stars came out, birds sorrowfully chirping took to roost, men in amazement to prayers a day of much obscurity; Black Monday, or Mirk Monday; 29th March, 1652.† Much noised of by Lilly, Booker, and the buzzard Astrologer tribe. Betokening somewhat? Belike that Bulstrode and this Parliament will, in the way of Lawreform and otherwise, make a Practical Gospel, or real Reign of God, in this England ? ㄓ : July 9th, 1652. A great external fact which, no doubt, has Ludlow, i., 430; Parliamentary History, xx., 84; Commons Journals, rii., 67, 110, &c. † Balfour, iv., 349; Law's Memorials, p. 6. |