1651-2), VISCOUNT LISLE (Feb. 23), COMMISSIONER LISLE (March 22), CHIEF JUSTICE ROLLE (April 19), VANE (May 17), the EARL OF PEMBROKE (June 14), MR. BOND (July 12), PUREFOY (Aug. 9), SIR JAMES HARRINGTON (Sep. 7), SIR WILLIAM CONSTABLE (Oct. 5) SIR WILLIAM MASHAM (Oct. 27), SIR WILLIAM CONSTABLE again (Nov. 22). FIFTH COUNCIL OF STATE. Elected by ballot Nov. 24 and 25, 1652: Installed Dec. 1, 1652. Twenty-one members of the Fourth Council were continued: viz. CROMWELL (at the head of the poll, with 114 votes out of 121 voting papers given in), WHITLOCKE, ST. JOHN, ROLLE, VANE, HASILRIG, SCOTT, MORLEY, BOND, PUREFOY, BRADSHAW, GURDON, MR. LISLE, WALTON, HARRINGTON, LOVE, SIR WILLIAM MASHAM, CHALLONER, SIR PETER WENTWORTH, SIR GILBERT PICKERING. Of the twenty members elected to this Council, and not in the last, three had been in the first, second, and third Councils: viz. LORD GREY OF GROBY, SIR HENRY MILDMAY, and PHILIP SKIPPON; one had been in the first and second: viz. THE Earl of SALISBURY; and thirteen had been in the third only: viz. GOODWIN, ALDERMAN ALLEN, COLONEL THOMPSON, STRICKLAND, ATTORNEY-GENERAL PRIDEAUX, SIR JOHN TREVOR, THOMAS LISTER, SIR JOHN BOURCHIER, WILLIAM CAWLEY, SIR WILLIAM BRERETON, JOHN FIELDER, WILLIAM SAY, and MAJOR-GENERAL HARRISON. Three members totally new to the Council were COLONEL ALGERNON SIDNEY, COLONEL RICHARD NORTON, and *COLONEL RICHARD INGOLDSBY; the last of whom had been one of the Regicides. N. B.-The Presidents of this Council in succession were WHITLOCKE (Dec. 1), ROLLE (Dec. 29), BRADSHAW (Jan. 26, 1652-3), EARL OF SALISBURY (Feb. 23), BOND (March 23). DEATH OF IRETON: JOHN LILBURNE AGAIN: HIS BANISHMENT STABILITY OF THE COMMONWEALTH AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER: THE RUMP GOVERNMENT IN ITS RELATIONS WITH CROMWELL: MEASURES FOR THE UNION OF SCOTLAND WITH THE COMMONWEALTH : COMMISSIONERS FOR THE UNION SENT TO SCOTLAND: FEELINGS OF THE SCOTS ON THE SUBJECT: SUCCESS OF THE COMMISSIONERS: ACT OF INCORPORATION BROUGHT IN AND THE UNION DECLARED: ENGLISH ADMINISTRATION IN SCOTLAND, AND STATE OF THAT COUNTRY: VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND: LAMBERT APPOINTED TO SUCCEED IRETON THERE: THE POST TO HARDLY had the Fourth Council of State assumed office when news was received (Dec. 8, 1651) of the death of Ireton. He had died at Limerick, Nov. 27, of some violent illness, called plague, caught by exposure and fatigue during the siege of that town. The loss of so eminent a Republican, at the age of only forty-one, was widely regretted, and is said to have "struck a great sadness into Cromwell." Orders were issued for bringing his body to London for honourable funeral ; and handsome provision was at once enacted for his widow, Mrs. Bridget Ireton, Cromwell's eldest daughter.1 Another incident of the beginning of the year was the reappearance of John Lilburne in a new variety of his old character. Since we last saw him, in the winter of 1649-50, he had been comparatively silent, having found the existing government too strong, and having also been somewhat pacified by an Act of Parliament, good-naturedly procured by Cromwell and Henry Marten, securing him the arrears claimed from the State on old grounds. A family grievance, however, had given him more private scope for activity. An uncle of his, George Lilburne, had been ejected in 1649, by the Committee of Sequestrators for the County of Durham, from a valuable mining property in that county which he had acquired in 1647 by some transaction in Delinquents' Estates; and, when the business was appealed to the Haberdashers' Hall Committee in London, the judgment there, given in 1651, was still adverse. Lilburne's old enemy Sir Arthur Hasilrig having been chairman of the Durham Committee, the judgment was attributed by the Lilburnes to his malice; and in a pamphlet entitled A Just Reproof to Haberdashers' Hall, published by Lilburne in his uncle's behalf, July 1651, there was the most virulent defamation both of Hasilrig and of the London Committee. "Unjust and unworthy men," they were called, "fit to be spewed out of all human society, and deserving worse than to be hanged." No notice was taken of this libel or of one or two others that followed; but on the 23rd of December, 1651, Parliament was roused to action by a petition presented to itself. This Petition was nominally by a Josiah Primate, leather-seller, who came forward as the 1 Ludlow, 282-283; Whitlocke, Dec. 8, 1651; Council of State Order Book, same day; Commons Journals, Dec. 9 and 18. person principally interested in the Durham property; but Lilburne was the real promoter, and he had distributed printed copies of the Petition freely about London. It accused Hasilrig of violence and fraud, and the Haberdashers' Hall Committee of fraudulent collusion with him. A committee of investigation was at once appointed; Primate, Lilburne, and other witnesses, with relative documents, were examined: and on the 15th of January 1651-2 the case was ripe for the decision of the House. They declared the Petition "false, malicious, and scandalous," and the printing and dispersing of it "a high breach of Privilege of Parliament "; they ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the hangman; and they resolved that Primate should pay a fine of £3000 to the State, £2000 to Sir Arthur Hasilrig, and £500 to each of the four members of the Haberdashers' Hall Committee that had been chiefly libelled, and should be imprisoned in the Fleet till the fines should be paid, and that Lilburne should pay the like fines, and be banished moreover out of the Commonwealth, with prohibition of return under the pain of death. The sentences were pronounced by the House on the 20th, Primate receiving his meekly, but Lilburne, as usual, obstinately refusing to kneel at the bar; and on the 30th Lilburne's banishment for life was confirmed by a formal Act. Both the rigour of the sentence on Lilburne, and the boldness of the House in acting as the judicial tribunal in his case, have been severely censured by modern constitutionalists. In fact, however, Lilburne's offence, though in appearance only a defamation of individuals, was essentially a defamation of the Commonwealth. He had given the government an opportunity to get rid of the most turbulent blockhead of an honest and popular kind living in that generation; and the government had used it. The fines were but ostensible parts of the sentences. Primate's fine to the State was remitted, and Primate himself released from the Fleet, within three months (April 7, 1652); by which time Lilburne, his fines unpaid, was walking disconsolately somewhere on the continent, incapable of farther mischief. Just when England lost one of her celebrities in this way, she recovered another. On the 27th of November, 1651, Parliament had pardoned the poet Waller for his old treason of Nov. 1644, and given him leave to return from his exile.1 Ireton's death and the banishment of John Lilburne being recollected as isolated events of the beginning of the Fourth year of the Commonwealth, the history of the Commonwealth otherwise through that year, and as far as to April 1653, flows on steadily in the channel cleared for it by the Battle of Worcester. Charles II. and his cause had been swept from the face of the British Islands, as it might seem, for ever; and the government, with a consciousness of stability which it had never before possessed, could proceed at leisure to whatever farther work lay before it. Still, as before, it is in the Parliament and the Council of State that we see the government lodged; and still, as before, the Parliament is that curious historical anomaly called The Rump, consisting of the surviving or persevering shred of what had once been a large representative assembly. On such an extreme occasion as the annual ballot for a new Council of State, as we have seen, as many as 120 or 125 persons could show themselves in the House; but practically, during the seventeen months on which we have now entered, the attendance, as proved by the recorded divisions, ranged from thirty-six to ninty-seven, rising more frequently to seventy or eighty in the course of 1652 than in the three preceding years, though often dwindling again to fifty or lower. Between this anomalous Parliament and its Council of State, each body maintaining within itself the customary sub-agency of committees, all business passed and repassed as before. Not the less, all through the seventeen months, are we aware of a certain personal presence and influence at the back of both Parliament and Council, and felt uneasily by both of them. No longer away in Ireland or in Scotland, but back permanently in London, with all his battles fought and his mind free for state-affairs, "The LordGeneral," as he was called, was an authority by himself. As he walked about Whitehall or in the Park, sometimes still in 1 Commons Journals of the dates given; and Godwin's Commonwealth, III. 333 -339. |