CHAP. IX

BLOWS AT CONSPIRACY

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and the constitution broke down. The succession of expedients and experiments may have been inevitable in view of the fundamental dislocation of things after rebellion and war. It is true that religious visionaries, hot-headed political theorists, the rivalries of men and factions, the clash of solid underlying interests, all worked to break down the fabric as fast as it was reared. Against these ceaseless dissolvents Cromwell heroically persisted, and he kept general order. Still, in face of such a spectacle and such results, it is hardly possible to claim for the triumphant soldier a high place in the history of original and creative statesmanship.

The Protector next flung himself into the work of tracking out the conspirators. That the design of a Spanish invasion to fit in with domestic insurrection would hopelessly miscarry, may have been probable. That the fidelity of the army could be relied upon, he hardly can have doubted. But a ruler bearing all the responsibilities of a cause and a nation, cannot afford to trust to the chapter of accidents. We who live nearly three centuries off cannot pretend to measure the extent of the danger, but nobody can read the depositions of witnesses in the cases of the spring of 1658, without feeling the presence of mischief that even the most merciful of magistrates was bound to treat as grave. The nation showed no resentment against treasonable designs; it was not an ordered and accepted government against which they were directed. This did not lighten the necessity of striking hard at what Henry Cromwell called these recurring anniversary mischiefs. Examples were made in the persons of Sir Henry Slingsby, Dr. Hewitt, and some obscurer persons. Hewitt was an episcopal clergyman, an acceptable preacher to those of his own way of thinking, a fervent royalist: the evidence is strong that he was deep in Stuart plots. Slingsby's case is less clear. That he was a royalist and a plotter

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is certain, but the evidence suggests that there was some ugly truth in what he said on his trial that he was trepanned" by agents of the government who, while he was in their custody at Hull, extracted his secrets from him by pretending to favour his aims. The High Courts of Justice before which these and other prisoners of the same stamp were arraigned, did not please steady lawyers like Whitelocke, but the Protector thought them better fitted to terrify evil-doers than an ordinary trial at common law. Though open to all the objections against special criminal tribunals, the High Courts of Justice during Cromwell's reign were conducted with temper and fairness they always had good lawyers among them, and the size of the court, never composed of less than thirty members, gave it something of the quality of trial by jury. It is said that Hewitt had privately performed the service according to the Anglican rite at the recent marriage of Mary Cromwell with Lord Fauconberg, and that the bride interceded for his life, but the Protector was immovable, and both Slingsby and Hewitt were sent to the scaffold (June 1658). Plots were once more for a season driven underground. But it is impossible that the grim circumstances of their suppression could have helped the popularity of the government.

"We

Meanwhile the Protectorate was sinking deeper and deeper into the bog of financial difficulty. are so out at the heels here," Thurloe says in April, "that I know not what we shall do for money.' At the end of the month, he reports that the clamour for money both from the sea and land is such that they can scarce be borne. Henry Cromwell, Lord-Deputy in Ireland since November, is in the last extremity. Hunger, he says, will break through stone walls, and if they are kept so bare, they will soon have to cease all industry and sink to the brutish practices of the Irish themselves.

CHAP. IX ATTEMPTS AT SETTLEMENT

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Fleetwood is sure they spend as little public money except for public needs as any government ever did; but their expenses, he admits, were extraordinary and could not with safety be retrenched. In June things are still declared to be at a standstill. The sums required could not possibly be supplied without a parliament, and in that direction endless perils lurked. Truly, I think, says Thurloe, in words that deserve attention, " that nothing but some unexpected Providence can remove the present difficulties, which the Lord it may be will afford us, if He hath thoughts of peace towards us." By July things are even worse, our necessities much increasing every day."

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Cromwell threw the deliberations on the subject of a parliament on to a junto of nine. What was the parliament to do when it should meet? How was the government to secure itself against cavaliers on one hand, and commonwealth ultras on the other? For the cavaliers some of the junto suggested an oath of abjuration and a fine of half their estates. This was not very promising. The cavaliers might take the oath, and yet not keep it. To punish cavaliers who were innocent, for the sins of the plotters, would be recognised as flagrantly unjust; and as many of the old cavaliers were now dead, it was clearly impolitic by such injustice to turn their sons into irreconcilables. The only thing in the whole list of constitutional difficulties on which the junto could agree, was that the Protector should name his successor. If this close council could only come to such meagre conclusion upon the vexed questions inseparable from that revision which, as everybody knew, must be faced, what gain could be expected from throwing the same questions on the floor of a vehemently distracted parliament? There is reason even for supposing that in his straits Oliver sounded some of the republicans, including men of such hard grit as

Ludlow and Vane. Henry Cromwell was doubtful and suspicious of any such combination, and laid down the wholesome principle in party concerns, "that one that runs along with you may more easily trip up the heels, than he that wrestles with you. We go wrong in political judgment if we leave out rivalries, heart-burnings, personalities, even among leading men and great men. History is apt to smooth out these rugosities; hero-worship may smooth them out; time hides them; but they do their work. Less trace of personal jealousy or cabal is to be found in the English rebellion than in almost any other revolutionary movement in history, and Cromwell himself was free from these disfigurements of public life. Of Lambert, fine soldier and capable man as he was, we cannot affirm so much, and he had confederates. Henry Cromwell's clear sight never failed him, and he perceived that the discussion was idle. Have you, after all," he asks of Thurloe, "got any settlement for men to swear to? Does not your peace depend upon his Highness' life, and upon his peculiar skill and faculty and personal interest in the army as now modelled and commanded? I say, beneath the immediate hand of God, if I know anything of the affairs of England, there is no other reason why we are not in blood at this day." In other words, no settlement was even now in sight, and none was possible if Cromwell's mighty personality should be withdrawn. This judgment from such a man is worth a whole chapter of our modern dissertation. It was the whole truth, to none known better than to the Lord Protector himself.

CHAPTER X

THE CLOSE

ONE parting beam of splendour broke through the clouded skies. The Protector, in conformity with the revised treaty made with France in March (1658), had despatched six thousand foot, as well as a naval contingent, to be auxiliaries to the French in an attack by land and sea upon Dunkirk. The famous Turenne was in general command of the allied forces, with Lockhart under his orders at the head of the English six thousand. Dramatic elements were not wanting. Cardinal Mazarin was on the field, and Louis the Fourteenth, then a youth of twenty, was learning one of his early lessons in the art of war. In the motley Spanish forces confronting the French king, were his cousins the Duke of York and the Duke of Gloucester, the two sons of Charles the First, and, like Louis himself, grandsons of Henry of Navarre. Along with the English princes were the brigades of Irish and royalist English who had followed the fortunes of the exiled line, and who now once more faced the ever-victorious Ironsides. Cromwell sent Fauconberg, his new son-in-law, to Calais with letters of salutation and compliment to the French king and his minister, accompanied by a present of superb English horses. The emissary was received with extraordinary courtesies alike by the monarch and the cardinal, and the latter even conducted him by the hand to the outer door, a compliment that he had never before been