"him speak in these very words, or to this effect: 'I tell "you, Sir, you have no other way to deal with these men "but to break them to pieces."" More follows of what he overheard Cromwell say, with the information that he thinks it was Ludlow's voice that pressed for admitting them to bail, and this addition: "Upon which discourse of Cromwell's the "blood ran up and down in my veins, and I heartily wished "myself in again amongst them (being scarce able to contain "myself), that so I might have gone five or six storeys higher "than I did before." It was not till twelve at night that the Council broke up, after committing the four prisoners to the Tower.1 It On the same day the House ordered an Act to be prepared against ministers of London, or in England and Wales generally, who should vent sedition in their pulpits. This had been suggested by the case of a Mr. Thomas Cawton, a Presbyterian parish minister in the city, who had prayed for Charles II. publicly, and spoken for him in his sermon. took some time to pass the Act; but meanwhile both the House and the Council were vigilant. The Lord Mayor of London, Abraham Reynoldson, was ejected from his office, fined £2000, and sent to the Tower for a month (April 2), for having refused to proclaim the Act abolishing the Kingly office, and one or two Aldermen were discharged with him, or soon afterwards. There were orders against the circulation of Lilburne's New Chains, and of other and newer pamphlets which he and his fellow-prisoners contrived to send forth from the Tower. Also, in spite of three great petitions in favour of Lilburne, sent in, or forthcoming, from his London admirers, one of them signed entirely by women, the House resolved (April 11) to keep him and his companions in the Tower for future trial.2 Lilburne's tenets, or wilder tenets still, it appeared, did 1 Order Book of Council of State, March 28, 1649; and Tract called The Picture of the Council of State held forth to the free People of England, being in fact an account by Lilburne himself, with additions by Overton and the others, of the proceedings of the famous day. It was published from the Tower, April 11, i.e. within a fortnight after the facts, and is altogether a curiosity. 2 Commons Journals of days named and of March 6, and Council Order Books. pervade considerable masses, both of the people and of the Army. Beyond the Levellers, who would raze down all to one flat surface, there was a sect, calling themselves "The Diggers," who wanted to go down to the foundations. They consisted, however, only of a poor company of half-crazed men, who had gone out with a retired Army-man as their Prophet, to live on the Surrey hills, planting roots and beans, inviting all the world to join them, and preaching the community of goods and the iniquity of park-palings. These "Communists" were easily dispersed; but there was harder work with the "Levellers" proper. A spirit of mutiny which had been latent for some time among the common soldiers of the regiments quartered in London, or which was apparent at first only in the form of petitions in Lilburne's phraseology, and demands for a renewal of the system of Agitatorships among the rank and file, broke out at length in distinct riot at the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate Street. Fairfax and Cromwell had to hurry to the spot. Their presence was conclusive. Fifteen of the mutineers were tried by CourtMartial; six were condemned to death; five of these were pardoned; but one of them, Robert Lockyer, a young trooper, very popular with his comrades, was shot in St. Paul's Churchyard (April 26). There was much lamentation for him, with a great demonstration in the streets at his funeral; but the Levellers in the London regiments had been taught their lesson.1 One of the very first acts of the Council of State had been to appoint a committee of eight of their number to consider, with the benefit of Selden's advice, the whole subject of the diplomatic relations of the Commonwealth to "other Na"tions, Kingdoms, and Republics." The subject had recurred once or twice, more especially in connexion with the unsatisfactory state of diplomatic intercourse, since the King's death, between England and the Dutch. There was still a Dutch ambassador in London, left there after the departure of the special embassy that had pleaded for the King's life; and Mr. Walter 1 Whitlocke, March 1 and 3, and April 17, 20, and 26; Carlyle's Cromwell, II. 22-26; Godwin, III. 64 et seq. Strickland, who was English Resident at the Hague, was believed to be a very good man for that post. It was thought desirable, however, that some more express envoy to the United Provinces should be conjoined with Strickland. Accordingly, on the 18th of April, the Council of State resolved to recommend Dr. Isaac Dorislaus as a fit person for the mission. A Dutchman by birth and education, he had been long a naturalized Englishman; he had married an English wife, and had held, at various times, important offices and trusts in England. He had been History Professor at Cambridge, Professor in Gresham College, Advocate General of Essex's Parliamentarian Army, and, last of all, one of the counsel for the prosecution in the late King's trial. He was the very man to represent English interests at the Hague! So it was thought; and Dorislaus, having received his credentials, took ship for Holland immediately. It was a fatal mission. He had just arrived at the Hague, and was sitting at supper at the public table in an inn called "The Swan," when some men in masks entered, begged the company not to disturb themselves, and stabbed him dead (May 3). It was believed that the assassins were some Scottish refugee-officers, of Montrose's following.1 The news of the assassination of Dorislaus reached London on the 9th of May; and for some days there was a profound sensation on the subject, with discussions in the Council and in Parliament, and votes of a pension of £200 a year for his son, £500 at once for each of his daughters, and a public funeral when his body should be brought home. There would be some difficulty, it was now seen, in finding men willing to go abroad on such perilous diplomatic service. There was more pressing business on foot, however, than the choice of a successor to Dorislaus; and Fairfax and Cromwell had been away from their places in the Council since the 7th of May, attending to that business in their military capacity.—The Levellers in the London regiments had been brought to 1 Council Order Books of dates; Clarendon, 711 and 742; Wood's Ath. III. 666-7; Whitlocke, May 9. Whitlocke speaks of the assassins as Eng VOL. IV. E lish cavaliers in disguise, and some such were suspected; but Clarendon was at the Hague, and was likely to know. order by mere Court-martial; but there were actual insurrections of Levellers in the Midlands and elsewhere, requiring stronger measures. A Captain William Thompson, from his rendezvous at Banbury in Oxfordshire, where he was at the head of two hundred horse, had sent forth (May 6) a manifesto, called England's Standard Advanced, or a Declaration from Mr. William Thompson and the oppressed people of this nation under his conduct: which manifesto was, in fact, a proclamation of adhesion to Lilburne and his fellowprisoners, with a demand for their release, for revival of the old system of Army-agitatorships, and for vengeance for the blood of Lockyer, and of his predecessor in martyrdom, Arnald. In Gloucestershire and at Salisbury there were similar outbreaks among disaffected regiments; there were communications between the centres of disaffection; a little delay, and there would be a junction of forces and a marching rebellion of thousands. Fortunately, Thompson's own Colonel, coming suddenly upon him and his band at Banbury, overpowered them at once (May 10), only Thompson himself and a few others escaping. It remained for Fairfax and Cromwell to deal with the other masses. As usual, they accomplished the task to perfection. The Salisbury mutineers, a thousand strong, had marched north through part of Hants and through Berks, gathering other insurgent bodies in their route, but opposed at a bridge over the Isis by the same Colonel that had routed Thompson, so that they had to wade or swim the river higher up in order to reach Burford in Oxfordshire. There it all ended. Fairfax and Cromwell, who had been on the way to Salisbury, had doubled north in pursuit; a single day's extraordinary march brought them to Burford; and at midnight, on the 14th of May, Cromwell entered the town with 2000 men. There were some shots, but no battle: all had to surrender. The necessary Council of War followed, with the usual clemency of Fairfax and Cromwell in executing its decisions. Cornet Thompson, brother of the Captain, and two Corporals, were shot; a Cornet Dean, sentenced also to be shot, was reprieved as penitent at the last moment; the rest, who had been looking on, and regarded themselves as liable to decimation, were but well lectured and dismissed, as men who must be under disgrace for a time, but might yet be useful to the Commonwealth. The fugitive Captain Thompson having been overtaken in a wood and killed fighting some days afterwards, the insurrection of the Levellers was over, and the Commonwealth was safe.1 TRIUMPHANT CONFIRMATION OF THE REPUBLIC: THE FAIRFAXIAN CREATION AT OXFORD, AND THE LONDON CITY BANQUET: REMOVAL OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE TO WHITEHALL: REMOVAL OF CHARLES II. FROM THE HAGUE: DEPARTURE OF CROMWELL FOR THE LORDLIEUTENANCY OF IRELAND: STATE OF ENGLAND AS HE LEFT IT. On the 19th of May, 1649, just after the suppression of the Levellers, Oxford was the scene of a remarkable ceremonial and festival. The presence of Fairfax and Cromwell in the vicinity, or rather their arrival in the city on the 17th, had suggested to the University authorities that there should be a grand demonstration of fraternity between the University and the Army. For Oxford, it is to be remembered, was no longer the old Oxford. The resistance to the Parliamentary Visitation and imposition of the Covenant, which had been begun in 1647 by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Fell (Vol. III. pp. 545, 546), and which had been protracted with the most desperate obstinacy by him, his wife, the Pro-Vicechancellors 1 Notes from Council Order Books of May; Whitlocke, various dates in same month; Clement Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 167-171, where Captain Thompson's manifesto is given; Godwin, III. 70-78; Carlyle's Cromwell, II. 26-28. The gravity of the crisis is attested by not a few contemporary printed tracts besides Thompson's manifesto (which reached London, May 12) e.g. The Unanimous [Levelling] Declaration of Colonel Scroope's and Commissary General Ireton's Regiments at a Rendezvous at Old Sarum, the 11th of May, 1649, and A Declaration from his Excellency [Fairfax] with the advice of his Council of War, con- 66 |