CHAP. V CHAOS OF THE SECTS 379 and when they parted Cromwell said to him, "Come again to my house; if thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul." When Fox lay in prison, a friend went to Cromwell and begged to be allowed to suffer in his stead. The Protector answered that it was contrary to the law, "and turning to his council, 'Which of you,' quoth he, 'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?" " Notwithstanding his own good-will, the Quakers suffered much bitter usage from county justices, from judges, and from military officers. The Friends complained that justices delighted in tendering to them the oath of abjuration, knowing that they could not take it, and so designing to make a spoil of them. "It was never intended for them," cried Oliver, "I never so intended it." When they were harshly punished for refusing to pay their tithe, Oliver disclaimed all share in such severities, and assured them that all persecution and cruelty was against his mind. Thurloe, on the other hand, who represented that secular spirit which is so apt to be the counterfeit of statesmanship, saw in the Quakers foes of civil government, and regarded them as the most serious enemies they had. The chapter of Quaker persecution must be considered a dark blot on the administration of the Protectorate, though from no intention in Cromwell. A curious interview is recorded (1654) between the Protector and some of his angry critics. John Rogers had denounced him from the pulpit, and written pamphlets lamenting over Oliver, Lord Cromwell, from that most useful of all texts, the everlasting Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin; and for these and other proceedings he was arrested. Cromwell admitted Rogers and a crowd of followers to an audience. Before they reached him they were struck, hustled, and abused as a pack of cursed dogs and damned rogues by the guards downstairs. When they came to the presence, "The Great Man had with him two gentlemen more, who stood by the fireside, and a pistol lay prepared at the window where he himself at first was. Then he came to the fireside in great majesty, without moving or showing the least civility of a man, though all stood bare to him and gave respect." Cromwell listened to them with rough good-nature, trying with homely banter to bring them to the point. "I believe you speak many things according to the Gospel, but what you suffer for is railing and evil-doing," and so forth, like a good-humoured police magistrate trying to bring street preachers to reason for blocking the thoroughfare. Even with Anglicanism, he was, in spite of the ordinance of 1656, for fair play. A deputation of London ministers waited upon the Protector and complained that the episcopal clergy got their congregations away from them. "Have they so?" said Oliver, making as if he would say something to the captain of the guard. "But hold," said he, "after what manner do the cavaliers debauch your people?" "By preaching," said the ministers. Then preach back again," said Oliver, and so left them to their reflections. Yet Cromwell's tolerance did not prevent a major-general from sending the harmless and virtuous Jeremy Taylor arbitrarily to prison. Cromwell's importance in church history has been said to rest on this, that he brought anabaptism or enthusiasm, one of the marked epochs of that history, to its close. "In him, its greatest leader, anabaptism reaches its climax, and yet it is by his action that anabaptism ceases to be a historic force. Henceforth it loses the universal significance that it has possessed for two centuries. Its political, CHAP. V CROMWELL AND THE SECTS 381 like its general reforming influence, is at an end, and its religious inspirations close." 1 When Mazarin (1656) pressed for the same toleration for catholics in England as was asked for protestants abroad, the Protector replied that he believed Mazarin had less reason to complain of rigour on men's consciences under him than under the parliament. "And herein it is my purpose as soon as I can remove impediments to make a further progress," but "I may not (shall I tell you I cannot) at this juncture of time answer your call for toleration; I say I cannot, as to a public declaration of my sense on that point." As constable of the parish Cromwell's power was only limited by the council of officers, but national leadership in the field of opinion he did not possess. In 1655 a retrograde proclamation was issued for the execution of the laws against Jesuits and priests, and for the conviction of popish recusants. Sensible men like Whitelocke protested that it was not needed, and little came of it. In 1651 Peter Wright, a priest, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, along with a group of ordinary criminals, for seducing the people, and in 1654 another priest, John Southworth, an old man of seventy-two, suffered the same fate for the same offence. In 1657 the independents, whose political existence had begun with their protest for toleration, passed an act by which anybody over sixteen suspected of being a papist might be called upon to abjure the leading articles of catholic belief, and if he failed to purge himself should forfeit two-thirds of his property. From this flagitious law the Protector did not withhold his assent. It was one of the last legislative performances of the Cromwellian parliament. The Jews had been banished by law from England since the end of the thirteenth century, yet it is pretty certain that their presence was not entirely 1 Weingarten, p. 158. unknown in either country or town. Shakespeare and Marlowe had made dark figures of them on the stage, though Shakespeare's glorious humanity had put into the mouth of Shylock one of the most pathetic appeals in all literature against the cruelty of racial and theologic hate. Puritanism itself was impregnated with ideas, language, argument, and history, all borrowed from Jewish antiquity and sacred books. Roger Williams, most unswerving of the advocates of toleration, argued strongly for breaking down the wall of superstition between Jew and Gentile. Stern men like Whalley saw reasons both of religion and policy why Jews should be admitted, for they would bring much wealth into the state, and they would be all the more likely to be converted. Cromwell with great earnestness held the same view, yet though the question was debated candidly and without heat, opinion in his Council was divided. In the end all that he felt himself able to do was to grant a certain number of private dispensations to individuals, and to connive at a small synagogue and a cemetery. It was enough to show him on the side of freedom, pity, and light. But the tolerance of the puritanism around him was still strictly limited. It would be graceless indeed to under-estimate or forget the debt we owe to both Quakers and independents: they it was who at a critical time made liberty of conscience a broad, an actual, and a fighting issue. Yet it was from a rising spirit of rationalism, and neither from liberal Anglicans like Taylor, nor from liberal puritans like Cromwell and Milton, that the central stream of toleration flowed, with strength enough in time to mitigate law and pervade opinion in the nation. CHAPTER VI KINGSHIP "He entered the sanctuary," says Cardinal de Retz of a French politician, "he lifted the veil that should always cover everything that can be said or can be believed, as to the right of peoples and the right of kings-rights that never agree so well together as in unbroken silence." This was the root of the difficulties that for nine years baffled the energy of Cromwell. The old monarchy had a mystic as well as a historical foundation. The soldier's monarchy, though Cromwell believed it to rest upon the direct will of heaven, yet could only be established on positive and practical foundations, and these must of necessity be laid in face of jealous discussion, without the curtain of convention to screen the builders. Meanwhile a new and striking scene was opening. The breakdown of military rule, consternation caused by plot upon plot, the fact that four years of dictatorship had brought settlement no nearer, all gave an irresistible impetus to the desire to try fresh paths. Sir Christopher Packe, an active and influential representative of the city of London and once Lord Mayor, startled the House one day (Feb. 23, 1657) by asking leave to bring forward a proposal for a new government, in which the chief magistrate was to take upon himself the title of king, and the parliament was to consist of two Houses. Violent controversy immediately broke |
