LETTER CXCII. To R. Mayor, Esq.: Whitehall, 4 May 1654. Dare not undertake the Purchase recommended. CXCV. To Sir T. Vyner: Whitehall, 5 July 1654 SPEECH II. Meeting of the First Protectorate Parliament, 4 Sept. Goodwin's Sermon, On the Deliverance out of Egypt, III. To the First Protectorate Parliament, 12 Sept. 1654 Cannot have the Foundations of Government submitted to debate in this Assembly. A free Parliament they; but LETTER CXCVI. To R. Bennet, Esq.: Whitehall, 12 Jan. 1654-5 Regrets that they have not communicated with him: CXCIX. To Lord Fleetwood: Whitehall, 22 June 1655 By the Rev. Mr. Brewster. Henry Cromwell gone to Ireland. Private feelings. To Vice-Admiral Goodson: Whitehall, Oct. 1655 Of Jamaica: This and the Two following. CCV. To D. Serle, Esq.: Whitehall, Oct. 1655. CCVI. To Major Gen. Fortescue: Whitehall, Nov. 1655 CCVII. To Henry Cromwell: Whitehall, 21 Nov. 1655 CCVIII. To the same: Whitehall, 21 April 1656 Fatherly Advices and Encouragements. Montague to come home and advise. SPEECH V. Meeting of the Second Protectorate Parliament, 17 Sept. 1656 Our difficulties: Spain, and why we have gone to war with Spain; Papists, Cavaliers, Levellers, Fifth-Mon- archists; the need there was of Major-Generals. Our remedies: To prosecute the War with vigour; to maintain steadily the aim of all these struggles, Liberty of Con- science and a pure Gospel Ministry; to reform the Law: -to reform Manners; that will be the grand remedy of 388 OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. PART VI. WAR WITH SCOTLAND. 1650-1651. (Continued.) LETTERS CL.-CLXI. HASTE and other considerations forbid us to do more than glance, timidly from the brink, into that sea of confusions in which the poor Scotch people have involved themselves by soldering Christ's Crown to Charles Stuart's! Poor men, they have got a Covenanted King; but he is, so to speak, a Solecism Incarnate: good cannot come of him, or of those that follow him in this course; only inextricability, futility, disaster and discomfiture can come. There is nothing sadder than to see such a Purpose of a Nation led on by such a set of persons; staggering into ever deeper confusion, down, down, till it fall prostrate into utter wreck. Were not Oliver here to gather up the fragments of it, the Cause of Scotland might now die; Oliver, little as the Scots dream of it, is Scotland's Friend too, as he was Ireland's: what would become of Scotch Puritanism, the one great feat hitherto achieved by Scotland, if Oliver were not now there! Oliver's Letters out of Scotland, what will elucidate Oliver's footsteps and utterances there, shall alone concern us at present. For sufficing which object, the Carlyle, Cromwell. III. 1 main features of these Scotch confusions may become conceivable without much detail of ours. a The first Scotch Army, now annihilated at Dunbar, had been sedulously cleared of all Hamilton Engagers and other Malignant or Quasi-Malignant Persons, according to a scheme painfully laid down in what was called the Act of Classes, General-Assembly Act, defining and classifying such men as shall not be allowed to fight on this occasion, lest a curse overtake the Cause on their account. Something other than a blessing has overtaken the Cause: - and now, on rallying at Stirling with unbroken purpose of struggle, there arise in the Committee of Estates and Kirk, and over the Nation generally, earnest considerations as to the methods of farther struggle; huge discrepancies as to the ground and figure it ought henceforth to take. As was natural to the case, Three Parties now develop themselves: a middle one, and two extremes. The Official Party, Argyle and the Official Persons, especially the secular portion of them, think that the old ground should as much as possible be adhered to: Let us fill up our old ranks with new men, and fight and resist with the Covenanted Charles Stuart at the head of us, as we did before. This is the middle or Official opinion. No answers an extreme Party. Let us have no more to do with your covenanting pedantries; let us sign your Covenant one good time for all, and have done with it; but prosecute the King's Interest, and call on all men to join us in that. An almost openly declared Malignant Party this; at the head of which Lieutenant-General Middleton, the Marquis of Huntly and other Royalist Persons are raising forces, publishing manifestos, in the Highlands near by. Against whom David Lesley himself at last has to march. This is the one extreme; the Malignant or Royalist extreme. The amount of whose exploits was this: They invited the poor King to run off from Perth and his Church-and-State Officials, and join them; which he did, - rode out as if to hawk, one afternoon, softly across the South Inch of Perth, then galloped some forty miles; found the appointed place, a villanous hut among the Gram |
