acknowledgment; as also for their willingness thereunto,-forasmuch as the same hath added so much to the reputation of your affairs. They are all despatched home again; which I hope will be much for the ease and satisfaction of the Country; which is a great fruit of these successes. The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy. Surely, if it be not, such a one we shall have, if this provoke those that are concerned in it to thankfulness; and the Parliament to do the will of Him who hath done His will for it, and for the Nation;—whose good pleasure it is to establish the Nation and the Change of the Government, by making the People so willing to the defence thereof, and so signally blessing the endeavours of your servants in this late great work. I am bold humbly to beg, That all thoughts may tend to the promoting of His honour who hath wrought so great salvation; and that the fatness of these continued mercies may not occasion pride and wantonness, as formerly the like hath done to a chosen Nation; but that the fear of the Lord, even for His mercies, may keep an Authority and a People so prospered, and blessed, and witnessed unto, humble and faithful; and that justice and righteousness, mercy and truth may flow from you, as a thankful return to our gracious God. This shall be the prayer of, Sir, Your most humble and obedient servant, OLIVER CROmwell. 1 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked:―(and thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness:) then he forsook Your Officers behaved themselves with much honour in this service; and the Person1 who is the Bearer hereof was equal, in the performance of his duty, to most that served you that day.* 'On Lord's day next, by order of Parliament,' these Letters are read from all London Pulpits, amid the general thanksgiving of men. At Worcester, the while, thousands of Prisoners are getting ranked, 'penned up in the Cathedral,' with sad outlooks: carcasses of horses, corpses of men, frightful to sense and mind, encumber the streets of Worcester; 'we are 'plucking Lords, Knights and Gentlemen from their lurking' holes,' into the unwelcome light.2 Lords very numerous; a Peerage sore slashed. The Duke of Hamilton has got his thigh broken; dies on the fourth day. The Earl of Derby, also wounded, is caught, and tried for Treason against the State; lays down his head at Bolton, where he had once carried it too high. Lauderdale and others are put in the Tower; have to lie there, in heavy dormancy, for long years. The Earls of Cleveland and Lauderdale came to Town together, about a fortnight hence. As they passed along Cornhill in their coaches with a guard of horse, the Earl of Lauderdale's 'coach made a stand near the Conduit: where a Carman gave 'his Lordship a visit, saying, “Oh, my Lord, you are welcome to London! I protest, off goes your head, as round as a 'God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation' (Deuteronomy, xxxii. 15). 6 1 Major Cobbet, who makes a relation,' and gets 1007. (Commons Journals, vii. 12, 13). Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, pp. 113, 14); Tanner мss. (in Cary, ii. 359-62). * Original Commission, signed O. Cromwell,' and dated 8 September, 1651, appointing Collonel John James' Governor of Worcester, is now among the мss. of Trin. Coll. Cambridge (copy penes me). hoop!" But his Lordship passed off the fatal compliment only with a laughter, and so fared along to the Tower." His Lordship's big red head has yet other work to do in this world. Having, at the Ever-blessed Restoration, managed, not without difficulty, 'to get a new suit of clothes," he knelt before his now triumphant Sacred Majesty on that glorious Thirtieth of May; learned from his Majesty, that "Presbytery was no religion for a gentleman;" gave it up, not without pangs; and resolutely set himself to introduce the exploded Tulchan Apparatus into Scotland again, by thumbikins, by bootikins, by any and every method, since it was the will of his Sacred Majesty ;-failed in the Tulchan Apparatus, as is well known; earned for himself new plentiful clothes-suits, Dukedoms and promotions, from the Sacred Majesty; and from the Scotch People deep-toned universal sound of curses, not yet become inaudible; and shall, in this place, and we hope elsewhere, concern us no more. On Friday the 12th of September the Lord General arrived in Town. Four dignified Members, of whom Bulstrode was one, specially missioned by vote of Parliament,3 had met him the day before with congratulations, on the other side Aylesbury; whom he received with all kindness and respect; and ' after ceremonies and salutations passed, he rode with them across the fields; -where Mr. Winwood the Member for 'Windsor's hawks met them; and the Lord General, with the 'other Gentlemen, went a little out of the way a-hawking. They came that night to Aylesbury; where they had much 'discourse; especially my Lord Chief Justice St. John,' the dark Shipmoney Lawyer, now Chief Justice, as they supped 'together.' To me Bulstrode, and to each of the others, he gave 1 King's Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 507, § 18. 2 Roger Coke's Detection of the Court and State of England. 3 Commons Journals, vii. 13 (9 Sept. 1651). a horse and two Scotch prisoners: the horse I kept for carrying me; the two Scots, unlucky gentlemen of that country, I handsomely sent home again without any ransom whatever.1 And so on Friday we arrive in Town, in very great solemnity and triumph Speaker and Parliament, Lord President and Council of State, Sheriffs, Mayors, and an innumerable multitude, of quality and not of quality, eagerly attending us; once more splitting the welkin with their human shoutings, and volleys of great shot and small: in the midst of which my Lord General'carried himself with much affability; and now and afterwards, in all his discourses about Worcester, would ⚫ seldom mention anything of himself; mentioned others only; 'and gave, as was due, the glory of the Action unto God."2Hugh Peters, however, being of loose-spoken, somewhat sibylline turn of mind, discerns a certain inward exultation and irrepressible irradiation in my Lord General, and whispers to himself, "This man will be King of England yet." Which, unless Kings are entirely superfluous in England, I should think very possible, O Peters! To wooden Ludlow Mr. Peters confessed so much, long afterwards; and the wooden head drew its inferences therefrom.3 This, then, is the last of my Lord General's Battles and Victories, technically so called. Of course his Life, to the very end of it, continues, as from the beginning it had always been, a battle, and a dangerous and strenuous one, with due modicum of victory assigned now and then; but it will be with other than the steel weapons henceforth. He here sheaths his war-sword; with that, it is not his Order from the Great Captain that he fight any more. The distracted Scheme of the Scotch Governors to accom Whitlocke, p. 484; see also 2d edit. p. 509. plish their Covenant by this Charles-Stuart method has here ended. By and by they shall have their Charles Stuart back, as a general Nell-Gwynn Defender of the Faith to us all ;and shall see how they will like him! But as Covenanted King he is off upon his travels, and will never return more. Worcester Battle has cut the heart of that affair in two: and Monk, an assiduous Lieutenant to the Lord General in his Scotch affairs, is busy suppressing the details. On Monday the 1st of September, two days before the Battle of Worcester, Lieutenant-General Monk had stormed Dundee, the last stronghold of Scotland; where much wealth, as in a place of safety, had been laid up. Governor Lumsden would not yield on summons: Lieutenant-General Monk stormed him; the Town took fire in the business; there was once more a grim scene, of flame and blood, and rage and despair, transacted in this Earth: and taciturn General Monk, his choler all up, was become surly as the Russian bear; nothing but negatory growls to be got out of him: nay, to one clerical dignitary of the place he not only gave his "No!" but audibly threatened a slap with the fist to back it,—' ordered him, Not to speak one word, or he would scobe his mouth for him!'1 Ten days before, some Shadow of a new Committee of Estates attempting to sit at Alyth on the border of Angus, with intent to concert some measures for the relief of this same Dundee, had been, by a swift Colonel of Monk's, laid hold of; and the members were now all shipped to the Tower. It was a snuffing-out of the Government-light in Scotland. Except some triumph come from Worcester to rekindle it :—and, alas, no triumph came from Worcester, as we see; nothing but ruin and defeat from Worcester! The Government-light of Scotland remains snuffed out.-Active Colonel Alured, a swift devout man, somewhat given to Anabaptist notions, of whom 1 Balfour, iv. 316. |