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 live. lier 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 ?— 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. its effect on all internal movements, is the War with the Dutch. The Dutch, ever since our Death-Warrant to Charles First, have looked askance at the New Commonwealth, which wished to stand well with them; and have accumulated offence on offence against it. Ambassador Dorislaus was assassinated in their country; Charles Second was entertained there; evasive slow answers were given to tough St. John, who went over as new Ambassador to which St. John responding with great directness, in a proud, brief and very emphatic manner, took his leave, and came home again. Came home again; and passed the celebrated Navigation Act,* forbidding that any goods should be imported into England except either in English ships or in ships of the country where the goods were produced. Thereby terribly maiming the 'Carrying Trade of the Dutch;' and indeed, as the issue proved, depressing the Dutch Maritime Interest not a little, and proportionally elevating that of England. Embassies in consequence, from their irritated High Mightinesses; sea-fightings in consequence; and much negotiating, apologising, and bickering mounting ever higher;-which at length, at the date above given, issues in declared War. Dutch War: cannonadings and fierce sea-fight in the narrow seas; land-soldiers drafted to fight on shipboard; and land-officers, Blake, Dean, Monk, who became very famous sea-officers; Blake a thrice-famous one ;poor Dean lost his life in this business. They doggedly beat the Dutch, and again beat them: their best Van Tromps and De Ruyters could not stand these terrible Puritan Sailors and Gunners. The Dutch gradually grew tame. The public mind, occupied with sea-fights and sea-victories, finds again that the New Representative must be patiently waited for; that this is not a time for turning out the old Representative, which has so many affairs on its hands. But the Dutch War brings another consequence in the train of it: renewed severity against Delinquents. The necessities of cash for this War are great: indeed the grand business of Parlia. ment at present seems to be that of Finance,-finding of sinews * Introduced, 5 August, 1651; passed 9 October, 1651: given in Scobell, i., 176. for such a War. Any remnants of Royal lands, of Dean-andChapter lands, sell them by rigorous auction: the very lead of the Cathedrals one is tempted to sell; nay almost the Cathedrala themselves,* if any one would buy them. The necessities of the Finance Department are extreme. Money, money: our Blakes and Monks, in deadly wrestle with the Dutch, must have money! Estates of Delinquents, one of the readiest resources from of old, cannot, in these circumstances, be forgotten. Search out Delinquents; in every County make stringent inquest after them! Many, in past years, have made light settlements with lax Committee-men; neighbors, not without pity for them. Many of minor sort have been overlooked altogether. Bring them up, every Delinquent of them; up hither to the Rhadamanthus-bar of Goldsmiths' Hall and Haberdashers' Hall; sift them, search them; riddle the last due sixpence out of them. The Commons Journals of these months have formidable ell-long Lists of Delinquents; List after List; who shall, on rigorous terms, be ordered to compound. Poor unknown Royalist Squires, from various quarters of England; whose names and surnames excite now no notion in us except that of No. 1 and No. 2: my Lord General has seen them' crowding by thirties and forties in a morning '† about these Haberdasher-Grocer Halls of Doom, with haggard expression of countenance; soliciting, from what austere official person they can get a word of, if not mercy, yet at least swift judgment. In a way which affected my Lord General's feelings. We have now the third year of peace in our borders: is this what you call Settlement of the Nation? LETTER CXXVI. THE following Letter to my honored Friend Mr. Hungerford the Elder,' which at any rate by order of time introduces itself here, has probably some reference to these Delinquent Businesses. There were three Hungerfords in Parliament, all Wiltshire peo. Speech, postea. *Parliamentary History, xx., 90. ple; two of them Puritans, but purged out by Pride: Henry, Esq., 'recruiter' for Bedwin since 1646; Sir Edward, recruiter for Chippenham in like manner. The third, Anthony Hunger. ford, original Member for Malmesbury, declared for the King in 1642; was of course disabled, and is and continues a Delinquent. One might guess, but nobody can know, that this Note was perhaps addressed to the first of these Hungerfords, in reference to the affairs of the last. Or as probably, it might refer to Sir Edward's affairs; who is now deceased, and has a Widow soliciting.* A hasty Note, on some 'business' now unknown, about which an unknown gentleman' has been making inquiry and negotiation; for the answer to which an unknown servant' of some 'Mr. Hungerford the Elder' is waiting in the hall of Oliver's House, the Cockpit, I believe, at this date :-in such faintly luminous state, revealing little save its own existence, must this small Document be left. For my honored Friend, Mr. Hungerford the Elder, at his SIR, House: These. London,' 30th July, 1652, I am very sorry my occasions will not permit me to return to you as I would. I have not yet fully spoken with the Gentleman I sent to wait upon you; when I shall do it, I shall be enabled to be more particular. Being unwilling to detain your servant any longer,-with my service to your Lady and Family, I take my leave, and rest, Your affectionate servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.‡ It is a sad reflection with my Lord General, in this Hungerford and other businesses, that the mere justice of any matter will so little avail a man in Parliament; you can make no way till you have got up some party on the subject there!§ In fact red-tape has, to a lamentable extent, tied up the souls of men in this Parliament of the Commonwealth of England. They are becoming hacks of office; a savor of Godliness still on their lips † reply. * Commons Journals, vii., 260 (18 February, 1652-3). Collinson's History of Somersetshire, iii., 357 (Note). Speech, postea. but seemingly not much deeper with some of them. I begin to have a suspicion they are no Parliament! If the Commonwealth of England had not still her Army Parliament, rigorous devout Council of Officers, men in right life-and-death earnest, who have spent their blood in this Cause, who in case of need can assemble and act again,-what would become of the Commonwealth of England? Earnest persons, from this quarter and that, make petition to the Lord General and Officers, That they would be pleased to take the matter in hand, and see right done. To which the Lord General and Officers answer always: Wait, be patient; the Parliament itself will yet do it. : What the state of the Gospel in Wales' is, in Wales or elsewhere, I cannot with any accuracy ascertain; but see well that this Parliament has shown no zeal that way; has shackled rather, and tied up with its sorrowful red-tape the movements of men that had any zeal.* Lamentable enough. The light of the Everlasting Truth was kindled; and you do not fan the sacred flame, you consider it a thing which may be left to itself! Unhappy and for what did we fight then, and wrestle with our souls and our bodies as in strong agony; besieging Heaven with our prayers, and Earth and its Strengths, from Naseby on to Worcester, with our pikes and cannon? Was it to put an official Junto of some Three-score Persons into the high saddle in England; and say, Ride ye? They would need to be Threescore beautifuller men! Our blood shed like water, our brethren's bones whitening a hundred fields; Tredah Storm, Dunbar death-agony, and God's voice from the battle-whirlwind: did they mean no more but you !-My Lord General urges us always to be patient: Patience, the Parliament itself will yet do it. That is what we shall see! On the whole, it must be seriously owned by every reader, this present Fag-end of a Parliament of England has failed altogether to realize the high dream of those old Puritan hearts. 'Incurnbrance,' it appears, cannot in the abstract be defined: but if you would know in the concrete what it is, look there! The thing we fought for, and gained as if by miracle, it is ours this long while * Speech, postea. |
