Charles Harding Firth

“ Our Civil War produced the union of England, Scotland and Ireland, but excepting in the war for the reconquest of Ireland there is no trace of that feeling against the dismemberment of the State which wrought so powerfully in America. "Remember, ye hypocrites," said Cromwell in his declaration to the Irish clergy, "Ireland was once united to England. You broke that union." While Ireland was a dependency which had shaken off the bond which linked it to England, Scotland was an independent nation linked to England merely by the accident of hereditary succession. ”

“ Sending his cavalry before to impede the king’s march, Cromwell hurried after him with the foot through central England, summoning all the militia of the southern and midland counties to meet him. With their aid he was able to surround Worcester with an army of thirty thousand men and attack the royalists with an overpowering force on both sides of the Severn. As usual Cromwell freely exposed himself in the battle. He was the first man to cross the Teme and bring support to Fleetwood’s hard-pressed troops. ”

“ One danger, however, threatened the new government from the very beginning. Thurloe, in announcing to Henry Cromwell his brother’s easy an peaceable entrance upon his government (‘There is not a dog that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in’) , was oblige to add: ‘There are some secret murmurings in the army, as if his highness were not general of the army as his father was.’ ‘Somewhat is brewing underhand,’ wrote Fauconberg a week later; ‘a cabal there is of persons, and great ones resolved, it is feared, to rule themselves or set all on fire’ (Thurloe, vii. 374, 386) . ”

“ Hyde, who remained two years in Jersey as Carteret's guest, writes of Sir George: ‘He was truly a worthy and most excellent person, of extraordinary merit towards the crown and nation of England; the most generous man in kindness, and the most dexterous man in business ever known; and a most prudent and skilful lieutenant-governor, who reduced Jersey not with greater skill and discretion than he kept it. ”

“ I will go further and say that the very idea of compromise was as unfamiliar to the average seventeenth-century Englishman as it was familiar to the average citizen of the United States. The constitution of the United States was itself a compromise; not a compromise slowly effected by the incessant and insensible action of opposing forces, as our constitution is, but a compromise made purposely and at once by the ingenious statecraft of able legislators. ”

“ Gardiner succeeded in stating fairly and sympathetically the position and the aims of both parties. He did not confine himself to relating facts, but traced the growth of the religious and constitutional ideas which underlay the conflict. No side of the national life was neglected. He won the praise of experts by his accounts of military and naval operations, elucidated continually the economic and social history of the time, and was the first to show the interaction of English and continental politics. ”

“ As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach, but shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suller for the same.’ Cromwell trusted that these measures would be followed in time by the conversion of the Irish. ‘We find the people,’ he wrote to John Sadler, ‘very greedy after the word, and flocking to christian meetings, much of that prejudice which lies upon people in England being a stranger to their minds. ”

“ Clarendon's want of administrative skill was, however, responsible for much. He disliked the new system of committees and boards which the Commonwealth had introduced, and clung to the old plan of appointing great officers of state, as the only one suitable to a monarchy. He thought it necessary to appoint men of quality who would give dignity to their posts, and underrated the services of men of business, while his impatience of opposition and hatred of innovations hindered administrative reform. ”

“ In America the claim of the minority to break up the government, if they could not direct it, linked the maintenance of free government and the maintenance of the union together. "I have thought it proper," said Lincoln, "to keep the integrity of our union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our side." The "war was commenced by the South to destroy our union," and "the administration accepted the war thus commenced for the sole avowed object of preserving our union." Any nation which accepted the principles of the Southern leaders must cease to be a nation. ”

“ Several anabaptist preachers were thrown into prison for attacking the government in their sermons. ‘Our practice,’ said Cromwell in his defence, ‘hath been to let all this nation see that whatever pretensions to religion would continue quiet and peaceable, they should enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves, but not to make religion a pretence for blood and arms’ (Carlyle, Speech v.) The sincerity of Cromwell’s desire to respect freedom of conscience showed itself in the protection he extended to many persons outside the pale of legal toleration. ”

“ In his defence Saye not only complained that the climate of New England was cold and the soil barren, but attacked the whole organisation of the colony, both as to church and state. ‘No wise man would be so foolish as to live where every man is a master and masters must not correct their servants, where wise men propose and fools deliberate.’ Their liberty was not ‘the desirable liberty such as wise men would wish to enjoy and live under’ (Massachusetts Historical Collection, i. 297) . ”

“ He termed himself one of the common people. Once, as he told his secretary, he dreamt that he was in a great assembly which made way to let their President pass. As he passed, someone said, "He is a common looking fellow." In his dream Lincoln turned -to the critic and answered, "Friend, the Lord prefers common looking people; that is why he made so many of them." Lincoln always felt that he was one of the many and sympathised with the many, not with the few. His definition of a free government was one "where every man has a right to be equal with every other man." ”

“ Cromwell shared the general opinion of the army that a settlement could best be obtained by negotiation with the king. Whatever the world might judge of them, he said to Berkeley, they would be found no seekers of themselves, further than to have leave to live as subjects ought to do, and to preserve their consciences, and they thought that no men could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the king had his rights (Maseres, Tracts, i. 360) . Accordingly he exerted all his influence to render the propositions of the army acceptable to the king ”

“ In July 1670 Charles sent Buckingham to Versailles to negotiate a second treaty with Louis XIV, which was to be a repetition of the first so far as concerned the war with Holland, but to omit the provisions relative to religion. Louis received Buckingham with the greatest distinction, gave him a pension of ten thousand livres a year for Lady Shrewsbury, and promised to stipulate that he should command the English auxiliary forces in the intended war. ‘I have had more honours done me than ever were given to any subject,’ wrote Buckingham to Arlington. ”

“ Cromwell saw in the midst of the English people a smaller body, "a peculiar people," "the people of God," "a people that are to God as the apple of His eye." It was the cause of "the people of God" that he had always in his mind, not that of the people in general, though he held that the interests of the two were not incompatible. Lincoln, when he qualified the word "people," spoke of "the plain people" as his special care, and of himself as their representative. One man thought of a class which included all but the whole nation; the other of a minority consisting of a number of allied sects. ”

“ Cromwell had not ceased to remind parliament of the necessity of establishing the toleration promised in the vote of September 1614. ‘Honest men served you faithfully in this action,’ he wrote after Naseby; ‘I beseech you not to discourage them. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience and you for the liberty he fights for’ (Letter xxix.) ”

“ Clarendon was well aware of one cause of its superiority. 'It is not,' he says, ' a collection of records, or an admission to the view and perusal of the most secret letters and acts of state [that] can enable a man to write a history, if there be an absence of that genius and spirit and soul of an historian which is contracted by the knowledge and course and method of business, and by conversation and familiarity in the inside of courts, and [with] the most active and eminent persons in the government' (Tracts, p. 180) . ”

“ Take two races of the same stock, both trained by free institutions and both nurtured by the same creeds, heat them in the fire of political passions, subject them to the strain and pressure of civil war, and we should expect results of much the same kind to follow. ”

“ Though he might despise insults, Cromwell could not despise the dangers with which this agitation threatened the Commonwealth. ‘You have no other way to treat these people,’ said he to the council, ‘but to break them in pieces; if you do not break them, they will break you’ (Lilburn, The Picture of the Council of State, p. 15) . His advice was followed, the leaders of the levellers were arrested, and the mutiny in the army swiftly and vigorously suppressed by himself and Fairfax (May 1649) . ”

“ If a protector were to be chosen other than one of Cromwell's sons, no one had stronger claims than Fleetwood. He was the officer highest in rank in the armies of the three kingdoms. The military services of Lambert and Harrison might have made them dangerous rivals, but both had been distinguished by their opposition to the existing government, and neither was at present a member of the army. Fleetwood's connection with the Cromwell family furnished a guarantee to the adherents of Cromwell, and he was at the same time trusted by the extreme sectaries. ”