CHAP. V QUESTION OF A CONSTITUTION

299

the systems that were now one after another to take the place of the parliament were loathed just as bitterly. "It is not the manner of settling these constitutional things," he said, "or the manner of one set of men or another doing it; there remains always the grand question after that; the grand question lies in the acceptance of it by those who are concerned to yield obedience to it and accept it." This essential truth of all sound government he had in the old days proclaimed against the constitution-mongers of the camp, and this was the truth that brought to naught all the constructive schemes of the six years before him. For it became more and more apparent that the bulk of the nation was quite as little disposed to accept the rule of the army as the rule of the mutilated parliament.

In December (1651) Cromwell held one of the conferences, in which he had more faith than the event ever justified, between prominent men in parliament and leading officers in the army. He propounded the two questions, whether a republic or a mixed monarchy would be best; and if a monarchy, then who should be the king. The lawyers, St. John, Lenthall, Whitelocke, were of opinion that the laws of England were interwoven with monarchy. When King Charles bade farewell to his children at St. James's Palace on the eve of his execution, he took the young Duke of Gloucester on his knee, and said to him, “Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king; but, mark what I say: You must not be a king, so long as your brothers Charles and James do live." This very solution was now favoured by the lawyers, and they were for naming a period within which the youthful Duke might come in to the parliament. Cromwell held his hand. Desborough and Whalley could not see why this, as well as other nations, should not be governed in the way of a republic. That was the sentiment of the army. Cromwell thought that it

a

would be difficult, and inclined to the belief that, if it could be done with safety and preservation of rights both as Englishmen and Christians, settlement with somewhat of monarchical power in it would be very effectual." When the Duke of Gloucester was sent abroad, the only chance of such a settlement went with him.

A little later his reflections brought him to use words of deeper and more direct import. We need invoke neither craft nor ambition to explain the rise of the thought in Cromwell's mind that he was perhaps himself called to take the place and burden of chief governor. The providences of ten years had seemed to mark him as the instrument chosen by heaven for the doing of a great work. He brooded, as he told men, over the times and opportunities appointed to him by God to serve him in; and he felt that the blessings of God therein bore testimony to him. After Worcester, he hoped that he would be allowed to reap the fruits of his hard labours and hazards, the enjoyment to wit of peace and liberty, and the privileges of a Christian and a man. Slowly he learned, and was earnestly assured by others, that this could not be. The continuing unsettlement was a call to him that, like Joshua of old, he had still a portion of the Lord's work to do and must be foremost in its doing.

Walking one November day (1652) in St. James's Park, he sought a conversation with Whitelocke, who better than any of those about him represented the solid prose of the national mind. Cromwell opened to him the dangers with which their jars and animosities beset the Cause. Whitelocke boldly told him that the peril sprang from the imperious temper of the army. Cromwell retorted that on the contrary it sprang rather from the members of parliament, who irritated the army by their self-seeking and greediness, their spirit of faction, their delay in the public business, their design for prolonging their own

CHAP. V MILITARY REVOLUTION AT HAND 301

power, their meddling in private matters between party and party who ought to have been left to the law-courts. The lives of some of them were scandalous, he said. They were irresponsible and uncontrolled; what was wanted was some authority high enough to check all these exorbitances. Without that, nothing in human reason could prevent the ruin of the Commonwealth. To this invective, not devoid of substance but deeply coloured by the soldier's impatience of a salutary slowness in human affairs, Whitelocke replied by pressing the constitutional difficulty of curbing the parliamentary power from which they themselves derived their own authority. Cromwell broke in upon him with the startling exclamation, "What if a man should take upon him to be king?" The obstacles in the path were plain enough, and the lawyer set them before Cromwell without flinching. For a short time longer the Lord-General said and did no more, but he and the army watched the parliament with growing suspicion and ill-will. A military revolution became every day more imminent.

CHAPTER VI

THE BREAKING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT

;

66

THE military revolution of 1653 is the next tall landmark after the execution of the king. It is almost a commonplace, that "we do not know what party means, if we suppose that its leader is its master " and the real extent of Cromwell's power over the army is hard to measure. In the spring of 1647, when the first violent breach between army and parliament took place, the extremists swept him off his feet. Then he acquiesced in Pride's Purge, but he did not originate it. In the action that preceded the trial and despatching of the king, it seems to have been Harrison who took the leading part. In 1653, Cromwell said, Major - General Harrison is an honest man, and aims at good things; yet from the impatience of his spirit, he will not wait the Lord's leisure, but hurries one into that which he and all honest men will have cause to repent." If we remember how hard it is to fathom decisive passages in the history of our own time, we see how much of that which we would most gladly know in the distant past must ever remain a surmise. But the best opinion in respect of the revolution of April 1653 seems to be that the royalists were not wrong who wrote that Cromwell's authority in the army depended much on Harrison and Lambert and their fanatical factions; that he was forced to go with them in order to save himself; and that he was the member of the triumvirate who was

CHAP. VI

CONFERENCE OF OFFICERS

303

most anxious to wait the Lord's leisure yet a while longer.

The immediate plea for the act of violence that now followed is as obscure as any other of Cromwell's proceedings. In the closing months of 1652, he once more procured occasions of conference between himself and his officers on the one hand, and members of parliament on the other. He besought the parliament men by their own means to bring forth of their own accord the good things that had been promised and were so long expected,-" so tender were we to preserve them in the reputation of the people." The list of "good things" demanded by the army in the autumn of 1652 hardly supports the modern exaltation of the army as the seat of political sagacity. The payment of arrears, the suppression of vagabonds, the provision of work for the poor, were objects easy to ask, but impossible to achieve. The request for a new election was the least sensible of all.

When it was known that the army was again waiting on God and confessing its sinfulness, things were felt to look grave. Seeing the agitation, the parliament applied themselves in earnest to frame a scheme for a new representative body. The army believed that the scheme was a sham, and that the semblance of giving the people a real right of choice was only to fill up vacant seats by such persons as the House now in possession should approve. This was nothing less than to perpetuate themselves indefinitely. Cromwell and the officers had a scheme of their own that the parliament should name a certain number of men of the right sort, and these nominees should build a constitution. The parliament in other words was to abdicate after calling a constituent convention. On April 19, a meeting took place in Oliver's apartment at Whitehall with a score of the more important members of parliament. There the plan of the officers and the rival plan of Vane and his friends were brought face to