confession; goes mad; and in the January following dies,* and to his own relief and ours disappears, - poor Sexby. Sexby, like the Stormy Peterel, indicates that new Royalist-Anabaptist Tumult is a-brewing. "They are as the waves of the Sea, they cannot rest; they must stir up mire and dirt,” — it is the lot appointed them! In fact, the grand Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion is again on the anvil; and they will try it, this year, even without the Preface of Assassination. New troubles are hoped from this new Session of Parliament, which begins in January. The "Excluded Members" are to be readmitted then; there is to be a "Second House:" who knows what possibilities of trouble! A new Parliament is always the signal for new Royalist attempts; even as the Moon to waves of the sea: but we hope his Highness will be prepared for them! Wednesday, 11th November 1657. "This day," say the old Newspapers, "the most Illustrious Lady, the Lady Fran"ces Cromwell, youngest Daughter of his Highness the Lord "Protector, was married to the most noble gentleman Mr. "Robert Rich, Son of the Lord Rich, Grandchild of the Earl "of Warwick and of the Countess-Dowager of Devonshire; "in the presence of their Highnesses, and of his Grandfather "and Father, and the said Countess, with many other per"sons of high honour and quality." At Whitehall, this blessed Wednesday; all difficulties now overcome; - which we are glad to hear of, "though our friends truly were very few!" And on the Thursday of next week follows, at Hampton Court, the Lady Mary's own wedding.** Wedding "to the most noble lord, the Lord Fauconberg," lately returned from his Travels in foreign parts: a Bellasis, of the Yorkshire kindred so named, which was once very high in Royalism, but is now making other connexions. For the rest, a brilliant, ingenuous and hopeful young man, "in my opinion a person of extraordinary parts;"*** of whom his Highness has made due investigation, and finds that it may answer. * Ibid. pp. 169-70. **Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 169). *** Lockhart's report of him to Thurloe, after an interview at Paris, as And now for the new Session of Parliament which assembles in January next: the Second Session of Parliament, and indeed the last of this and of them all! SPEECHES XVI. — XVIII., LETTER CCXXV. THE First Session of this Parliament closed, last June, under such auspicious circumstances as we saw; leaving the People and the Lord Protector in the comfortable understanding that there was now a Settlement arrived at, at Government possible by Law; that irregular exercises of Authority, Major-Generals and such like, would not be needed henceforth for saving of the Commonwealth. Our Public Affairs, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, have prospered in the interim; nothing has misgone. Why should not this Second Session be as successful as the First was? Alas, success, especially on such a basis as the humours and parliamentary talkings and self-developments of Four-hundred men, is very uncertain! And indeed this Second Session meets now under conditions somewhat altered. For one thing, there is to be a new House of Lords: we know not how that may answer! For another thing, it is not now permissible to stop our Haselrigs, Scotts and Ashley Coopers at the threshold of the Parliament, and say, Ye shall not enter: if they choose to take the Oath prescribed by this new Instrument, they have power to enter, and only the Parliament itself can reject them. These, in this Second Session, are new elements; on which, as we have seen, the generation of Plotters are already speculating; on which naturally his Highness too has his anxieties. His Highness, we find, as heretofore, struggles to do his best and wisest, not yielding much to anxieties: but the result is, this Session proved entirely unsuccessful; perhaps the unsuccessfullest of all Sessions or Parliaments on record hitherto! The new House of Lords was certainly a rather questionable adventure. You do not improvise a Peerage: no, his ordered on Fauconberg's return homeward, 21st March 1657 (Thurloe, vi. 134; 125). Highness is well aware of that! Nevertheless "somewhat to stand between me and the House of Commons' has seemed a thing desirable, a thing to be decided on: and this new House of Lords, this will be a "somewhat,” — the best that can be had in present circumstances. Very weak and small as yet, like a tree new planted; but very certain to grow stronger, if it have real life in it, if there be in the nature of things a real necessity for it. Plant it, try it, this new Puritan Oliverian Peerage-of-Fact, such as it has been given us. The old Peerage-of-Descent, with its thousand years of strength, what of the old Peerage has Puritan sincerity, and manhood and marrow in its bones, will, in the course of years, rally round an Oliver and his new Peerage-of-Fact, as it is. already, by many symptoms, showing a tendency to do. If the Heavens ordain that Oliver continue and succeed as hitherto, undoubtedly his new Peerage may succeed along with him, and gather to it whatever of the Old is worth gathering. In the mean while it has been enacted by the Parliament and him; his part is now, To put it in effect the best he can. The List of Oliver's Lords can be read in many Books; * but issuing as that matter did, it need not detain us here. Puritan Men of Eminence, such as the Time had yielded: Skippon, Desborow, Whalley, Pride, Hewson, these are what we may call the Napoleon-Marshals of the business: Whitlocke, Haselrig, Lenthall, Maynard, old Francis Rouse, Scotch Warriston, Lockhart; Notabilities of Parliament, of Religious Politics, or Law. Montague, Howard are there; the Earls of Manchester, Warwick, Mulgrave, some six Peers; of whom only one, the Lord Eure from Yorkshire, would, for the present, take his seat. The rest of the Six as yet stood aloof; even Warwick, as near as he was to the Lord Protector, could not think** of sitting with such a Napoleon Complete, in Parliamentary History, xxi. 167-9: incomplete, with angry contemporary glosses to each Name, which are sometimes curious, in Harleian Miscellany, vi. 460-71. An old Copy of the official Summons to these Lords is in Additional Ayscough мss., no. 3246. ** Ludlow, ii. 596. Marshal as Major-General Hewson, who, men say, started as a Shoemaker in early life. Yes; in that low figure did Hewson start; and has had to fight every inch of his way up hitherward, doing manifold victorious battle with the Devil and the World as he went along, — proving himself a bit of right good stuff, thinks the Lord Protector! You, Warwicks and others, according to what sense of manhood you may have, you can look into this Hewson, and see if you find any manhood or worth in him; - I have found some! The Protector's List, compiled under great difficulties,* seems, so far as we can now read it, very unexceptionable; practical, substantial, with an eye for the New and for the Old; doing between these two, with good insight, the best it can. There were some Sixtythree summoned in all; of whom some Forty and upwards sat, mostly taken from the House of Commons: - the worst effect of which was, that his Highness thereby lost some forty favourable votes in that other House; which, as matters went, proved highly detrimental there. However, Wednesday 20th January 1657-8 has arrived. The Excluded Members are to have readmission, - so many of them as can take the Oath according to this New Instrument. His Highness hopes if they volunteer to swear this Oath, they will endeavour to keep it; and seems to have no misgivings about them. He to govern and administer, and they to debate and legislate, in conformity with this Petition and Advice, not otherwise; this is, in word and in essence, the thing they and he have mutually with all solemnity bargained to do. It may be rationally hoped that in all misunderstandings, should such arise, some good basis of agreement will and must unfold itself between parties so related to each other. The common dangers, as his Highness knows and will in due time make · known, are again imminent; Royalist Plottings once more rife, Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion once more preparing itself. But now the Parliament reassembling on this Wednesday * Thurloe, vi. 648. the 20th, there begins, in the "Outer Court," since called the Lobby, an immense "administering of the Oath," the whole Parliament taking it; Six Commissioners appearing "early in the morning," with due apparatus and solemnity, minutely described in the Journals and Old Books;* and then labouring till all are sworn. That is the first great step. Which done, the Commons House constitutes itself; appoints "Mr. Smythe" Clerk, instead of Scobell, who has gone to the Lords, and with whom there is continual controversy thenceforth about "surrendering of Records" and the like. In a little while (hour not named) comes Black Rod; reports that his Highness is in the Lords House, waiting for this House. Whereupon, Shoulder Mace, yes, let us take the Mace, and march. His Highness, somewhat indisposed in health, leaving the main burden of the exposition to Nathaniel Fiennes of the Great Seal, who is to follow him, speaks to this effect; as the authentic Commons Journals yield it for us. SPEECH XVI. MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN 'OF' THE HOUSE OF I meet you here in this capacity by the Advice and Petition of this present Parliament. After so much expense of blood and treasure, we are now' to search and try what blessings God hath in store for these Nations. I cannot but with gladness of heart remember and acknowledge the labour and industry that is past, 'your past labour,' which hath been spent upon a business worthy of the best men and the best Christians. [May it prove fruitful!] It is very well known unto you all what difficulties we have passed through, and what 'issue' we are now arrived at. We hope we may say we have arrived if not altogether' at what we aimed at, yet at that which Commons Journals vii. 578; Whitlocke, p. 666; Burton, ii. 322. |