noble aid to Marshal Turenne in besieging those sea-board towns in Flanders. According to the treaty, Dunkirk was handed over to the protector, exactly a century after the final loss of Calais by the English crown. The great protector's strength was now well-nigh worn out. The death of his daughter Elizabeth, Lady Claypole, on August 6th, completely prostrated him. Removing to Whitehall, for better air his physicians said, he laid him down to die. On the Monday night before his death, amid the fitful pauses of a great wind that shook the London roof-trees, a feeble voice was heard rising in solemn tones from the sick-bed. Dying Oliver was praying for his people-alike for those who had valued him and for those who had sought or had wished his death. tory presents no picture more solemn or more pathetic. Speechless on the morning of Friday, September 3, at four that evening he was dead. Twice before, that September sun had set upon Oliver victorious in the field of war; now, it looked through Whitehall casements upon the restful figure of the victor in a greater strife. His Sept. 3, 1658 CHAPTER XV. THE RESTORATION OF MONARCHY. Richard Cromwell-General Monk-Joy-bells-The Pension ParliamentScotland-Sale of Dunkirk-Act of Uniformity-The Conventicle Act --The Five Mile Act-War; plague; fire-Rullion Green-Fall of Clarendon. BORN ORN in 1626, Richard Cromwell, the protector's third son, was in his thirty-third year when his father died. He succeeded to the protectorship by proclamation of the council, and for five months his rule went smoothly on. Jan. 29, 1659 Going back to the old system of issuing writs for the smaller boroughs, he called a Parliament, which met on the 29th of January 1659. It was a divided assembly, mainly formed of three sections the Moderate party, which supported the government; the Republicans, who had the army at their back; and concealed Royalists, who generally opposed the government. It had the support, however, of the thirty Scottish and thirty Irish members, who were chosen as in Oliver's time. One of the earliest acts of the Parliament was the recognition of Oliver's Lords, but the Republicans were powerful enough to add clauses showing their dislike and jealousy of "the Other House." The army was exasperated because no steps were taken to clear off the arrears of pay. At the same time the heads of the army-Fleetwood, his brotherin-law, and Lambert, who had been a major-general-began to intrigue against Richard. The officers of the army held a meet ing, at which they resolved to make a representation to the protector. The Parliament declared such councils of officers illegal. This hastened the crisis. Fleetwood and Desborough insisted that the Parliament should be dismissed; and accordingly Richard, yielding to a pressure he could not with stand, dissolved it on the 22nd of April. The restora- April 22. tion of the Rump was then resolved on, and a fortnight later Lambert and his pikemen guarded the relics of the Long Parliament, as they went to take once more the seats from which Oliver had driven them. Scarcely was the business of the Parliament begun, when Richard gladly escaped from the toils and perils of the protectorship into the station of a private gentleman. May 25. Then began a year of anarchy, filled with Royalist plottings and the ambitious struggling of Haselrig, who led the Parliament, and Lambert, who had the officers to back him. The wretched ghost of a Parliament yielded a second time to the power of the sword, and vanished-not quite for ever, since it reappeared at Westminster for a few days of 1660 to perform the ceremony of dissolving itself. Into the middle of the mellay stepped that silent man whom Oliver had left behind him to manage Scotland. Crossing Tweed in November 1659, General George Monk pushed southward with his seven thousand soldiers. At York he was joined by Lord Fairfax, and he entered London on the 3rd of February 1660. In the hands of this cautious mover lay the destinies of 1660 England. Long silent, revolving no doubt many plans, and watching every chance that opened, Monk at last declared for a free Parliament. The Rump, having appointed a Council of State favourable to the king, and having made Monk captaingeneral of the forces, then at length dissolved itself. A Convention or Parliament, summoned with writs not royal, was called for the 25th of April. When it had been sitting some days, Sir John Grenville entered Monk's house in London with a 30 (875) letter from the king. Accompanying it was the "Declaration of Breda," in which Charles promised to pardon his enemies and to submit all grievances to Parliament. When these were read in the Houses, which overflowed with Presbyterians, a shout of joy arose. Money without stint was voted freely to bring back a king who had signed the Covenant. Bells, tarbarrels, and gunpowder did their best to show the joy of England on that glorious May-day. May 29, 1660 The landing of Charles the Second at Dover, where Monk met him on the 25th of May, was a splendid sight; but still more splendid was the pageant of the 29th, his own birthday, when he entered London through streets carpeted with flowers and dressed with rainbow flags. Kettledrums and trumpets sounded an incessant welcome. Men with brimming eyes cheered until they could cheer no more. The army alone gloomed on the scene, for the days of military despotism were now at an end. Edward Hyde, the companion and counsellor of the exiled king, became Earl of Clarendon and Lord High Chancellor of England. General Monk was created Duke of Albemarle. The king's brother, the Duke of York (afterwards James the Second), became Lord High Admiral. Tunnage and poundage were granted to the restored monarch for life. Binding himself by no treaty-unless the Declaration of Breda were a treaty-he ascended the throne of his ancestors with the brightest hopes; hopes, however, which were destined to end in disappointment and ruin. The punishment of the regicides closed the year of Restoration. Brave old Major-General Harrison led the van, dying as he had lived, an undaunted Puritan of the extremest kind (Oct. 13). Nine others followed him to the gallows, suffering all the horrors of the barbarous law against traitors. And in the following January, on the day darkened by royal blood, the decayed bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were torn from the sacred rest of Westminster, hanged in their ghastliness on Tyburn tree, and then beheaded at the gallows' foot. The bodies were huddled into the earth, while 1661 the heads went to the spikes of Westminster Hall. The dust of Pym, of Blake, and of others, both men and women, associated with the Commonwealth, was also cast with a pitiful show of contempt from the great national cemetery. The Convention, which sat until December 1660, occupied itself with four great subjects of debate and settlement. An Act of Indemnity and Oblivion was passed, in accordance with the Declaration of Breda; the crown and church lands, and certain great Royalist estates, which had been sold under the Republic, were returned to their former owners; the income of the king was fixed at £1,250,000 a year, and feudal tenures were abolished; finally, the army, engine of so much mingled good and evil, was broken up. Monk's Coldstream Horse and two other regiments, amounting in all to about five thousand men, alone remained, under the name of Life Guards, to be the nucleus of a standing army by-and-by When the new Parliament met in May 1661, Episcopacy was evidently on the eve of being re-established in England. The members agreed to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Anglican Church; and voted also that the Solemn League and Covenant should be burned by the 1661 common hangman. So the Pension Parliament* began the first of its many sessions. One of its earliest productions was the Corporation Act, which, levelled against the Presbyterian party, enacted that magistrates and others holding corporate offices should renounce the Covenant, take the sacrament in Anglican fashion, and swear never to bear arms against the king. It became daily more evident to the Presbyterians that the king had tricked them, and meant to do them all the mis * Pension Parliament, so called because so many of its members received bribes from the king, or from Louis XIV., or from other foreign powers. |