OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. PART X. SECOND PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT. 1657-1658. LETTERS CCXV., CCXVI. Two Letters near each other in date, and now by accident brought contiguous in place; which offer a rather singular constrast; the one pointing as towards the Eternal Heights, the other as towards the Tartarean Deeps! Between which two Extremes the Life of men and Lord Protectors has to pass itself in this world, as wisely as it can. Let us read them, and hasten over to the new Year Fifty-Seven, and last Department of our subject.. LETTER CCXV. NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, or the Municipal Authorities there, as we may perceive, are rather of the Independent judgment; and have a little dread of some encouragement his Highness has been giving to certain of the Presbyterian sect in those parts. This Letter ought to be sufficient reassurance. To the Mayor of Newcastle: To be communicated to the Whitehall, 18th December 1656. Carlyle, Cromwell. IV. 1 HARD FACTS, him, according to your desire therein expressed; which occasions this return from us to you. As nothing that may reflect to the prejudice of your outward Good, either Personal or as you are a Civil Government, shall easily pass with us; so, much less what shall tend to your discouragement, as you are Saints, to your Congregations, gathered in that way of fellowship commonly known by the name of Independents, whether of one judgment or other: 'this' shall be far from being actually discountenanced, or passively 'left to' suffer damage, by any applying themselves to me. I do, once for all, give you to understand, that I should thereby destroy and disappoint one of the main ends for which God hath planted me in the station I am in. cure. Wherefore I desire you in that matter to rest se True it is that two Ministers, one Mr. Cole and one Mr. Pye, did present to me a Letter in the name of divers Ministers of Newcastle, the Bishoprick of Durham and Northumberland; of an honest and Christian purpose: the sum whereof I extracted, and returned an Answer thereunto; a true Copy whereof I send you here enclosed. By which I think it will easily appear, that the consideration of my kindness is well deserved by them; provided they observe the condition 'there' expressed; which in charity I am bound to believe they will; and without which their own consciences and the world will know how to judge of them. Having said this, I, or rather the Lord, require of you, That you walk in all peaceableness and gentleness, inoffensiveness, truth and love towards them, as becomes the Servants and Churches of Christ. Know ing well that Jesus Christ, of whose diocese both they and you are, expects it. Who, when He comes to gather His People, and to make Himself “a name and "praise amongst all the people of the earth," He "will save her that halteth, and gather her that was "driven out, and will get them praise and fame in "every land, where they have been put to shame," * And such "lame ones" and "driven-out ones" were not the Independents only, and Presbyterians, a few years since, by the Popish and Prelatical Party in these Nations; but such are and have been the Protestants in all lands, persecuted, and faring alike with you, in all the Reformed Churches. And therefore, knowing your charity to be as large as all the Flock of Christ who are of the same Hope and Faith of the Gospel with you; I thought fit to commend these few words to you; being well assured it is written in your heart, So to do with this that I shall stand by you in the maintaining of all your just privileges to the uttermost. And committing you to the blessing of the Lord, I rest, CARDINAL MAZARIN, the governing Minister of France in those days, is full of compliance for the Lord Protector; whom, both for the sake of France and for the Cardinal's sake, it is very requisite to keep in good humour. On France's score, there is Treaty with France, and War with its enemy Spain; on the Cardinal's are obscure Court-intrigues, QueenZephaniah, iii. 19, 20. 8 Thurloe, v. 714: in Secretary Thurloe's hand. mothers, and one knows not what: in brief, the subtle Cardinal has found, after trial of the opposite course too, that friendship, or even at times obedient servantship to Cromwell, will be essentially advantageous to him. Some obscure quarrel has fallen-out between Charles Stuart and the Duke of York his Brother. Quarrel complicated with open politics, with Spanish War and Royalist Revolt, on Oliver's side; with secret Queen-mothers, and back-stairs diplomacies, on the Cardinal's: of which there flit, in the dreariest manner, this and the other enigmatic vestige in the night-realm of Thurloe;* and which is partly the subject of this present Letter. A Letter unique in two respects. It is the only one we have of Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan King, to Giulio Mazarini, the Sicilian-French Cardinal, and King of Shreds and Patches; ** who are a very singular pair of Correspondents brought together by the Destinies! It is also the one glimpse we have from Oliver himself of the subterranean Spy-world, in which by a hard necessity so many of his thoughts had to dwell. Oliver, we find, cannot quite grant Toleration to the Catholics; but he is well satisfied with this " our weightiest affair," - not with out weight to me at least, who sit expecting Royalist Insurrections backed by Spanish Invasions, and have Assassins plotting for my life at present "on the word of a Christian King!" Concerning the "affair" itself, and the personages engaged in it, let us be content that they should continue spectral for us, and dwell in the subterranean Night-realm which belongs to them. The "Person" employed from England, if anybody should be curious about him, is one Colonel Bamfield, once a flaming Presbyterian Royalist, who smuggled the Duke of York out of this Country in woman's clothes; and now lives as an Oliverian Spy, very busy making mischief for the Duke of York. "Berkley" is the Sir John Berkley who iv. 506; v. 753; &c. &c. ** Three insignificant official Notes to him: in Appendix, Nos. 29, 30. rode with Charles First to the Isle of Wight long since; the Duke of York's Tutor at present. Of "Lockhart," Oliver's Ambassador in France, we shall perhaps hear again. The others, let them continue spectral to us. Let us conceive, never so faintly, that their "affair" is to maintain in the Duke of York some Anti-Spanish notion; notion of his having a separate English interest, independent of his Brother's, perhaps superior to it; wild notion, of one or the other sort, which will keep the quarrel wide: as accordingly we find it did for many months, ** whatever notion it was. We can then read with intelligence sufficient for us. - 'To his Eminency Cardinal Mazarin.' 'Whitehall,' 26th December 1656. The obligations, and many instances of affection, which I have received from your Eminency, do engage 'me' to make returns suitable to your merits. But although I have this set home upon my spirit, I may not (shall I tell you, I cannot?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer to your call for Toleration.*** I say, I cannot, as to a public Declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my Government your Eminency, in the behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint as to rigour upon men's consciences than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to the truth of what I afffrm) made a differ ence; and, as Jude speaks, "plucked many out of the fire," † the raging fire of persecution, which did! * Antea, i. 244.' **Thurloe, iv. v. vi.: see also Biog. Brit. (2d edition), ii. 154. ***To the Catholics here. † Verses 22, 23: a most remarkable Epistle, to which his Highness often enough solemnly refers, as we have seen. |
